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around Joe’s torso.  In a flood of tears, the little
boy cried for his Mom.
    Joe
held him, startled, before he felt his own eyes start stinging.  Awkwardly, he
tightened his arms around the little boy in a hug.  “It’s okay,” he finally
said, though he knew it was stupid, that it wasn’t okay, that they weren’t
going to see their families again for many years…maybe never.  But he said it
anyway and the boy eventually relaxed in his arms and stopped crying.  It was
at least an hour before his breathing quieted and his grip loosened enough to
allow Joe to carry him over and tuck him into a bunk. 
    The boy
didn’t whimper again after that, but although Joe returned to his own bed to
the perfect sound of silence, he couldn’t sleep.  Lying there, remembering how
the aliens had executed kids , Joe didn’t know if he would ever sleep
again.
    It was
probably because of this that he was the only one who noticed the tiny tubes
that emerged from the walls several hours later.  One was a few inches from his
head and Joe could hear the hissing of gas.
    “Oh shit!”
Joe cried, lunging away from the wall.  “Everybody wake up!  Wake up!  They’re
gassing us!  Shit!”  He threw his shirt over his mouth and backed to the center
of the room, heart hammering painfully in his ears.
    All
around him, kids on the beds were sitting up in wild-eyed confusion…
    …Only
to have their eyes roll up into the backs of their heads and their little
bodies slump limply back to the beds.
    They’re
gassing us, Joe thought on a surge of panic,
watching the kids fall all around him like little lifeless puppets.  The aliens
are gassing us…
    Though
Joe tried to keep his mouth protected, he nonetheless caught an overpoweringly acrid
tang that shot biting waves of acid through his lungs and up into his brain.  He
was dimly aware of the bitter tang turning to pounding waves of ice before his
legs went limp beneath him and he surrendered to oblivion.
     

 
    CHAPTER 3 :  The Origin of Zero
     
    “Commander Tril?”
    Kihgl’s voice at his door was
soft, sympathetic.
    “Not now, Commander,” Tril said,
barely able to keep his voice under control.  “I need some time alone, please.”
    Tril’s Secondary Commander
remained in his doorway for long moments in silence.  “This was your first
time, wasn’t it?” Kihgl finally asked.
    Tril refused to look up.  He was
staring at his desk, where he had plucked his potted ferlii to pieces. 
It was a gift from Corps Director Niile from when he had left her service for
the excitement of teaching a newly-discovered species to speak Congie. 
Somehow, in the last hour, he had snapped the stone-hard limbs into
pebble-sized chunks without even knowing it.  It confused him.  Surely he would
have heard himself doing it.
    Kihgl came in, unbidden.  “What
you did today is unfortunate, but it must be done.”
    Of course it was.  Tril knew
that.  It was a leftover tradition from the formation of Congress, when the
Jreet had to teach the first Ooreiki the art of war.  The Ooreiki, artists and
craftsmen all, had refused to fight.  The Jreet, pitiless warriors that they
were, began executing ten percent of every incoming class on principle, keeping
only the strongest, killing the weak as an example.
    Yet, in forcing the peace-loving
Ooreiki to adapt the skills of war, the Jreet had hit upon such an
overwhelmingly successful tactic that it would be passed down from generation
to generation of the Congressional Army for almost two million years.  Kill the
rebels and the sickly as a warning to the others.  Show them the consequences
of failure.  Prove to them that it wasn’t a game.  Give them incentive to succeed.
    As a former intelligence officer,
Tril was well-versed in the psychology behind it, but he had still never
thought it would be so hard.  They were aliens .  Why should it have
bothered him to shoot aliens ?
    The answer was simple: The large
Human.  The one who almost