Old Man's War

by John Scalzi

  “What happened to them?” I asked. “Where did they go?”

  “I’m not really sure,” Jane said, vaguely. Then, “Tomorrow I want you to stick by me.”

  “I understand,” I said.

  “You’re still too slow,” Jane said. “I don’t want you to interfere with my other people.”

  “Thanks,” I said.

  “I’m sorry,” Jane said. “I realize that wasn’t very tactful. But you’ve led soldiers. You know what my concern is. I’m willing to assume the risks involved in having you around. Others shouldn’t have to.”

  “I know,” I said. “I’m not offended. And don’t worry. I’ll carry my own weight. I plan to retire, you know. I have to stay alive a little bit longer to do that.”

  “Good that you have motivations,” Jane said.

  “I agree,” I said. “You should think about retiring yourself. As you say, it’s good to have a motivation to stay alive.”

  “I don’t want to be dead,” Jane said. “It’s motivation enough.”

  “Well,” I said, “if you ever change your mind, I’ll send you a postcard from wherever I retire. Come join me. We can live on a farm. Plant some chickens. Raise some corn.”

  Jane snorted. “You can’t be serious,” she said.

  “Actually, I am,” I said, and I realized that I was.

  Jane was silent for a moment, then said, “I don’t like farming.”

  “How would you know?” I said. “You’ve never done it.”

  “Did Kathy like to farm?” Jane said.

  “Not in the least,” I said. “She barely had the tolerance to keep a garden going.”

  “Well, there you have it, then,” Jane said. “Precedent is working against me.”

  “Give it some thought, anyway,” I said.

  “Maybe I will,” Jane said.

  Where the hell did I put that ammo clip—Jane sent, and then the rockets hit. I threw myself down to the ground as rock from Jane’s position on the outcropping showered around me. I looked up and saw Jane’s hand, twitching. I started up toward her, but was held back by a spray of fire. I wheeled backward and got back behind the rock where I had been positioned.

  I looked down at the team of Rraey that had blindsided us; two of them were moving slowly up the hill toward us, while a third was helping a final one load another rocket. I had no doubts where that one was headed. I flipped a grenade toward the two advancing Rraey and heard them scrambling for cover. When it went off I ignored them and took a shot at the Rraey with the rocket. It went down with a thud and triggered its rocket with an expiring twitch; the blast scorched the face of its companion Rraey, who screamed and flailed about, clutching at its eyeband. I shot it in the head. The rocket arced up and away, far from me. I didn’t bother to wait to see where it landed.

  The two Rraey who had been advancing on my position started to scramble back up; I launched another grenade in their general direction to keep them busy and headed to Jane. The grenade landed directly at the feet of one of the Rraey and proceeded to take those feet off; the second Rraey dove back to the ground. I launched a second grenade at that one. He didn’t avoid that one fast enough.

  I kneeled over Jane, who was still twitching, and saw the chunk of rock that had penetrated the side of her head. SmartBlood was rapidly clotting, but small spurts were leaking out at the edges. I spoke to Jane, but she didn’t respond. I accessed her BrainPal, to erratic emotional blips of shock and pain. Her eyes scanned sightlessly. She was going to die. I clutched her hand and tried to calm the sickening rush of vertigo and déjà vu.

  The counterattack had begun at dawn, not long after we took the tracking station, and it had been more than heavy; it had been ferocious. The Rraey, realizing their protection had been ripped away, had struck back hard to reclaim the tracking station. Their attack was haphazard, belying the lack of time and planning, but it was relentless. Troopship after troopship floated over the horizon, bringing more Rraey into combat.

  The Special Forces soldiers used their special blend of tactics and insanity to greet the first of these troopships with teams racing to meet the ships as they landed, firing rockets and grenades into the troop bays the moment the landing doors opened. The Rraey finally added air support and troops began landing without being blown up the moment they touched down. While the bulk of our forces were defending the command center and the Consu technological prize it hid, our platoon had been roaming the periphery, harassing the Rraey and making their forward progress that much more difficult. It’s why Jane and I were on the outcropping of rock, several hundred meters from the command center.

  Directly below our position, another team of Rraey were beginning to pick their way toward us. It was time to move. I launched two rockets at the Rraey to stall them, then bent down and grabbed Jane in a fireman’s carry. Jane moaned, but I couldn’t worry about that. I spotted a boulder Jane and I had used on our way out and launched myself toward it. Behind me, the Rraey took aim. Shots whipped by; shattered rock cut at my face. I made it behind the boulder, set Jane down, pumped a grenade in the Rraey’s direction. As it went off, I ran out from behind the boulder and leaped at their position, covering much of the distance in two long strides. The Rraey squawked; they didn’t quite know what to do with the human launching itself directly at them. I switched my Empee to automatic fire and got them at close range before they could get themselves organized. I hurried back to Jane and accessed her BrainPal. Still there. Still alive.

  The next leg of our journey was going to be difficult; about a hundred meters of open ground lay between me and where I wanted to be, a small maintenance garage. Rraey infantry lines bordered the field; a Rraey aircraft was heading in the general direction I wanted to go, looking for humans to shoot. I accessed Asshole to locate the positions of Jane’s people and found three near me: two on my side of the field, thirty meters away, and another on the other side. I gave them the order to cover me, grabbed Jane again and sprinted toward the shed.

  The air erupted in gunfire. Turf jumped up at me as shots buried themselves into the ground where my feet had been or would be. I was hit with a glancing blow to my left hip; my lower half torqued as pain flashed through my side. That was going to leave a bruise. I managed to keep my footing and kept running. Behind me I could hear the crumpled thump of rockets impacting on Rraey positions. The cavalry had arrived.

  The Rraey airship turned to get a shot at me, then swerved to avoid the rocket launched at it from one of our soldiers. It accomplished this, but wasn’t so lucky at avoiding the other two rockets bearing down on it from the other direction. The first crashed into its engine; the second into the windshield. The aircraft dipped and listed, but remained aloft long enough to get kissed by a final rocket that lodged itself in the shattered windshield and erupted into the cockpit. The aircraft collapsed into the ground with a shuddering rumble as I made it to the shed. Behind me, the Rraey who had been targeting me turned their attention to Jane’s people, who were causing them far more damage than I was. I tore open the door to the shed and slid myself and Jane into the recessed repair bay inside.

  In the relative calm I reassessed Jane’s vitals. The wound in her head was completely caked over with SmartBlood; it was impossible to see how much damage there was or how deep the rock fragments went into her brain. Her pulse was strong but her breathing was shallow and erratic. This is where the extra oxygen-carrying capacity of SmartBlood was going to come in handy. I was no longer certain she was going to die, but I didn’t know what I could do to keep her alive on my own.

  I accessed Asshole for options, and one was produced: the command center had housed a small infirmary. Its accommodations were modest but featured a portable stasis chamber. It would keep Jane stable until she could make it onto one of the ships and back to Phoenix for medical attention. I recalled how Jane and the crew of the Sparrowhawk stuffed me into a stasis chamber after my first trip to Coral. It was time to return the favor.

  A series of bulle
ts whined through a window above me; someone had remembered I was there. Time to move again. I plotted my next sprint, to a Rraey-built trench fifty meters in front of me, now occupied by Special Forces. I let them know I was coming; they obligingly laid down suppressing fire as I ran brokenly toward them. With that I was behind Special Forces lines again. The remainder of the trip to the command center proceeded with minimal drama.

  I arrived just in time for the Rraey to begin lobbing shells at the command center. They were no longer interested in taking back their tracking station; now they were intent on destroying it. I looked up at the sky. Even through the brightness of the morning sky, sparkling flashes of light glistened through the blue. The Colonial fleet had arrived.

  The Rraey weren’t going to take very long to demolish the command center, taking the Consu technology with it. I didn’t have very much time. I ducked into the building and ran for the infirmary as everyone else was streaming out.

  There was something big and complicated in the command center infirmary. It was the Consu tracking system. God only knows why the Rraey decided to house it there. But they did. As a result, the infirmary was the one room in the entire command center that wasn’t all shot up; Special Forces were under orders to take the tracking system in one piece. Our boys and girls attacked the Rraey in this room with flash grenades and knives. The Rraey were still there, stab wounds and all, splayed out on the floor.

  The tracking system hummed, almost contentedly, flat and featureless, against the infirmary wall. The only sign of input/ output capability was a small monitor and an access spindle for a Rraey memory module lying haphazardly on a hospital bedside table next to the tracking system. The tracking system had no idea that in just a couple of minutes it was going to be nothing more than a bundle of broken wiring, thanks to an upcoming Rraey shell. All our work in securing the damn thing was going to go to waste.

  The command center rattled. I stopped thinking about the tracking system and placed Jane gently on an infirmary bed, then looked around for the stasis chamber. I found it in an adjoining storeroom; it looked like a wheelchair encased in a half cylinder of plastic. I found two portable power sources on the shelf next to the stasis chamber; I plugged one into the chamber and read the diagnostic panel. Good for two hours. I grabbed another one. Better safe than sorry.

  I wheeled the stasis chamber over to Jane as another shell hit, this one shaking the entire command center and knocking out the power. I was pushed sideways by the hit, slipped on a Rraey body and cracked my head on the wall on the way down. A flash of light pulsed behind my eyes and then an intense pain. I cursed as I righted myself, and felt a small ooze of SmartBlood from a scrape on my forehead.

  The lights flicked on and off for a few seconds, and in between those few flickers Jane sent a rush of emotional information so intense I had to grab the wall to steady myself. Jane was awake; aware and in those few seconds I saw what she thought she saw. Someone else was in the room with her, looking just like her, her hands touching the sides of Jane’s face as she smiled at her. Flicker, flicker, and she looked like she looked the last time I saw her. The light flickered again, came on for good, and the hallucination went away.

  Jane twitched. I went over to her; her eyes were open and looking directly at me. I accessed her BrainPal; Jane was still conscious, but barely.

  “Hey,” I said softly, and took her hand. “You’ve been hit, Jane. You’re okay now, but I need to put you in this stasis chamber until we can get you some help. You saved me once, remember. So we’re even after this. Just hold on, okay?”

  Jane gripped my hand, weakly, as if to get my attention. “I saw her,” she said, whispering. “I saw Kathy. She spoke to me.”

  “What did she say?” I asked.

  “She said,” Jane said, and then drifted a little before focusing in on me again. “She said I should go farming with you.”

  “What did you say to that?” I asked.

  “I said okay,” Jane said.

  “Okay,” I said.

  “Okay,” Jane said and slipped away again. Her BrainPal feed showed erratic brain activity; I picked her up and gently as possible placed her in the stasis chamber. I gave her a kiss and turned it on. The chamber sealed and hummed; Jane’s neural and physiological indices slowed to a crawl. She was ready to roll. I looked down at the wheels to navigate them around the dead Rraey I’d stepped on a few minutes before and noticed the memory module poking out of the Rraey’s abdomen pouch.

  The command center rattled again with a hit. Against my better judgment I reached down, grabbed the memory module, walked over to the access spindle, and slammed it in. The monitor came to life and showed a listing of files in Rraey script. I opened a file and was treated to a schematic. I closed it and opened another file. More schematics. I went back to the original listing and looked at the graphic interface to see if there was a top-level category access. There was; I accessed it and had Asshole translate what I was seeing.

  What I was seeing was an owner’s manual for the Consu tracking system. Schematics, operating instructions, technical settings, troubleshooting procedures. It was all there. It was the next best thing to having the system itself.

  The next shell broadsided the command center, knocked me square on my ass, and sent shrapnel tearing through the infirmary. A chunk of metal made a gaping hole through the monitor I was looking at; another punched a hole through the tracking system itself. The tracking system stopped humming and began making choking sounds; I grabbed the memory module, pulled it off the spindle, grabbed the stasis chamber’s handles and ran. We were a barely acceptable distance away when a final shell plowed through the command center, collapsing the building entirely.

  In front of us, the Rraey were retreating; the tracking station was the least of their problems now. Overhead, dozens of descending dark points spoke of landing shuttles, filled with CDF soldiers itching to take back the planet. I was happy to let them. I wanted to get off this rock as soon as possible.

  In the near distance Major Crick was conferring with some of his staff; he motioned me over. I wheeled Jane to him. He glanced down at her, and then up at me.

  “They tell me you sprinted the better part of a klick with Sagan on your back, and then went into the command center when the Rraey began shelling,” Crick said. “Yet I seem to recall you were the one who called us insane.”

  “I’m not insane, sir,” I said. “I have a finely calibrated sense of acceptable risk.”

  “How is she?” Crick asked, nodding to Jane.

  “She’s stable,” I said. “But she has a pretty serious head wound. We need to get her into a medical bay as soon as possible.”

  Crick nodded over to a landing shuttle. “That’s the first transport,” he said. “You’ll both be on it.”

  “Thank you, sir,” I said.

  “Thank you, Perry,” Crick said. “Sagan is one of my best officers. I’m grateful you saved her. Now, if you could have managed to save that tracking system, too, you would really have made my day. All this work defending the goddamn tracking station was for nothing.”

  “About that, sir,” I said, and held up the memory module. “I think I have something you might find interesting.”

  Crick stared at the memory module, and then scowled over at me. “No one likes an overachiever, Captain,” he said.

  “No, sir, I guess they don’t,” I said, “although it’s lieutenant.”

  “We’ll just see about that,” Crick said.

  Jane made the first shuttle up. I was delayed quite a bit.

  EIGHTEEN

  I made captain. I never saw Jane again.

  The first of these was the more dramatic of the two.

  Carrying Jane to safety on my back through several hundred meters of open battlefield, and then placing her into a stasis chamber while under fire, would have been enough to get a decent write-up in the official report of the battle.

  Bringing in the technical schematics for the Consu tracking sy
stem as well, as Major Crick intimated, seemed a little like piling on. But what are you going to do. I got a couple more medals out of the Second Battle of Coral, and the promotion to boot. If anybody noticed that I had gone from corporal to captain in under a month, they kept it to themselves. Well, so did I. In any event, I got my drinks bought for me for several months afterward. Of course, when you’re in the CDF, all the drinks are free. But it’s the thought that counts.

  The Consu technical manual was shipped directly to Military Research. Harry told me later that getting to flip through it was like reading God’s scribble pad. The Rraey knew how to use the tracking system but had no idea how it worked—even with the full schematic it was doubtful that they would have been able to piece together another one. They didn’t have the manufacturing capability to do it. We knew that because we didn’t have the manufacturing capability to do it. The theory behind the machine alone was opening up whole new branches of physics, and causing the colonies to reassess their skip drive technology.

  Harry was tapped as part of the team tasked to spin out practical applications of the technology. He was delighted with the position; Jesse complained it was making him insufferable. Harry’s old gripe about not having the math for the job was rendered immaterial, since no one else really had the math for it, either. It certainly reinforced the idea that the Consu were a race with whom we should clearly not mess.

  A few months after the Second Battle of Coral, it was rumored that the Rraey returned to Consu space, imploring the Consu for more technology. The Consu responded by imploding the Rraey’s ship and hurling it into the nearest black hole. This still strikes me as overkill. But it’s just a rumor.

  After Coral, the CDF gave me a series of cushy assignments, beginning with a stint touring the colonies as the CDF’s latest hero, showing the colonists how The Colonial Defense Forces Are Fighting For YOU! I got to sit in a lot of parades and judge a lot of cooking contests. After a few months of that I was ready to do something else, although it was finally nice to be able to visit a planet or two and not have to kill everyone who was there.