Old Man’s War

by John Scalzi

  "Christ, Perry! Don't you assume that being dressed is part of being at attention?"

  "I would not presume to assume, Master Sergeant!"

  "'Presume to assume'? Are you being a smartass, Perry?"

  "No, Master Sergeant!"

  "Well, presume to get your platoon out to the parade ground, Perry. You have forty-five seconds. Move!"

  "A squad!" I bellowed and ran at the same time, hoping to God my squad was following directly behind me. As I went through the door, I heard Angela hollering at B squad to follow her; I had chosen her well. We made it to the parade grounds, my squad forming in a line directly behind me. Angela formed her line directly to my right, with Terry and the rest forming subsequently. The last man of F squad formed up at the forty-four-second mark. Amazing. Around the parade grounds, other recruit platoons were also forming up, also in the same state of undress as the 63rd. I felt briefly relieved.

  Ruiz strolled up momentarily, trailed by his two assistants. "Perry! What is the time!"

  I accessed my BrainPal. "Oh one hundred local time, Master Sergeant!"

  "Outstanding, Perry. You can tell time. What time was lights out?"

  "Twenty-one hundred, Master Sergeant!"

  "Correct again! Now some of you may be wondering why we're getting you up and running on two hours of sleep. Are we cruel? Sadistic? Trying to break you down? Yes we are. But these are not the reasons we have awakened you. The reason is simply this—you don't need any more sleep. Thanks to these pretty new bodies of yours, you get all the sleep you need in two hours! You've been sleeping eight hours a night because that's what you're used to. No longer, ladies and gentlemen. All that sleep is wasting my time. Two hours is all you need, so from now on, two hours is all you will get.

  "Now, then. Who can tell me why I had you run those twenty klicks in an hour yesterday?"

  One recruit raised his hand. "Yes, Thompson?" Ruiz said. Either he had memorized the names of every platoon recruit, or he had his BrainPal on, providing him the information. I wouldn't hazard a guess as to which it was.

  "Master Sergeant, you had us run because you hate each of us on an individual basis!"

  "Excellent response, Thompson. However, you are only partially correct. I had you run twenty klicks in an hour because you can. Even the slowest of you finished the run two minutes under the cutoff time. That means that without training, without even a hint of real effort, every single one of you bastards can keep pace with Olympic gold medalists back on Earth.

  "And do you know why that is? Do you? It's because none of you is human anymore. You're better. You just don't know it yet. Shit, you spent a week bouncing off the walls of a spaceship like little wind-up toys and you probably still don't understand what you're made of. Well, ladies and gentlemen, that is going to change. The first week of your training is all about making you believe. And you will believe. You're not going to have a choice."

  And then we ran 25 kilometers in our underwear.

  Twenty-five-klick runs. Seven-second hundred-meter sprints. Six-foot vertical jumps. Leaping across ten-meter holes in the ground. Lifting two hundred kilos of free weights. Hundreds upon hundreds of sit-ups, chin-ups, push-ups. As Ruiz said, the hard part was not doing these things—the hard part was believing they could be done. Recruits were falling and failing at every step of the way for what's best described as a lack of nerve. Ruiz and his assistants would fall on these recruits and scare them into performing (and then have me do push-ups because I or my squad leaders clearly hadn't scared them enough).

  Every recruit—every recruit—had his or her moment of doubt. Mine came on the fourth day, when the 63rd Platoon arrayed itself around the base swimming pool, each recruit holding a twenty-five-kilo sack of sand in his or her arms.

  "What is the weak point of the human body?" Ruiz asked as he circled around our platoon. "It's not the heart, or the brain, or the feet, or anywhere you think it is. I'll tell you what it is. It's the blood, and that's bad news because your blood is everywhere in your body. It carries oxygen, but it also carries disease. When you're wounded, blood clots, but often not fast enough to keep you from dying of blood loss. Although when it comes down to it, what everyone really dies of is oxygen deprivation—from blood being unavailable because it's spewed out on the fucking ground where it doesn't do you a goddamned bit of good.

  "The Colonial Defense Forces, in their divine wisdom, have given human blood the boot. It's been replaced by SmartBlood. SmartBlood is made up of billions of nano-sized 'bots that do everything that blood did but better. It's not organic, so it's not vulnerable to biological threats. It speaks to your BrainPal to clot in milliseconds—you could lose a fucking leg and you wouldn't bleed out. Most importantly to you right now, each 'cell' of Smart-Blood has four times the oxygen-carrying capacity of your natural red blood cells."

  Ruiz stopped walking. "This is important to each of you right now because you're all about to jump into the pool with your sacks of sand. You will sink to the bottom. And you will stay there for no less than six minutes. Six minutes is enough to kill your average human, but each of you can stay down for that long and not lose a single brain cell. To give you incentive to stay down, the first of you that comes up gets latrine duty for a week. And if that recruit comes up before the six minutes are up, well, let's just say that each of you is going to develop a close-up and personal relationship with a shit hole somewhere on this base. Got it? Then in you go!"

  We dove, and as promised, sank straight down to the bottom, three meters down. I began to freak out almost immediately. When I was a child, I fell into a covered pool, tore through the cover and spent several disoriented and terrified minutes trying to break through to the surface. It wasn't long enough for me to actually begin to drown; it was just long enough for me to develop a lifelong aversion to having my head completely enveloped by water. After about thirty seconds, I began to feel like I needed a big, fresh gulp of air. There was no way I was going to last a minute, much less six.

  I felt a tug. I turned a little wildly, and saw that Alan, who had dived in next to me, had reached over. Through the murk, I could see him tap his head and then point to mine. At that second, Asshole notified me that Alan was asking for a link. I subvocalized acceptance. I heard an emotionless simulacrum of Alan's voice in my head.

  Something wrong — Alan asked.

  Phobia — I subvocalized.

  Don't panic — Alan responded. Forget you're underwater—

  Not fucking likely — I replied.

  Then fake it — Alan responded. Check on your squads to see if anyone else is having trouble and help them—

  The eerie calm of Alan's simulated voice helped. I opened a channel to my squad leaders to check on them and ordered them to do the same with their squads. Each of them had one or two recruits on the edge of panic and worked to talk them down. Next to me, I could see Alan make an accounting of our own squad.

  Three minutes, then four. In Martin's group, one of the recruits began to thrash, jerking his body back and forth as the bag of sand in his hand acted as an anchor. Martin dropped his own bag and swam over to his recruit, grabbing him roughly by the shoulders, and then bringing his recruit's attention to his face. I tapped into Martin's BrainPal and heard him say — Focus on me on my eyes — to his recruit. It seemed to help; the recruit stopped his thrashing and began to relax.

  Five minutes, and it was clear that extended oxygen supply or not, everyone was beginning to feel the pinch. People began shifting from one foot to the other, or hopping in place, or waving their bags. Over in a corner, I could see one recruit slamming her head into her sandbag. Part of me laughed; part of me thought about doing it myself.

  Five minutes forty-three seconds, and one of the recruits in Mark's squad dropped his bag and began heading for the surface. Mark dropped his bag and silently lunged, snagging the recruit by the ankle and using his own weight to drag him back down. I was thinking Mark's second in command should probably help his squad leader
with the recruit; a quick BrainPal check informed me that the recruit was his second in command.

  Six minutes. Forty recruits dropped their bags and punched to the surface. Mark let go of his second in command's ankle and then pushed him from underneath to make sure he would break the surface first, and get the latrine duty he was willing to get for his whole platoon. I prepared to drop my sandbag when I caught Alan shaking his head.

  Platoon leader — he sent. Should stick it out—

  Blow me — I sent.

  Sorry, not my type — he replied.

  I made it through seven minutes and thirty-one seconds before I went up, convinced my lungs were going to explode. But I had made it through my moment of doubt. I believed. I was something more than human.

  In the second week, we were introduced to our weapon.

  "This is the CDF standard-issue MP-35 Infantry Rifle," Ruiz said, holding out his while ours sat where they had been placed, still within protective wrapping, in the parade-ground dirt at our feet. "The 'MP' stands for 'Multi-Purpose.' Depending on your need, it can create and fire on the fly six different projectiles or beams. These include rifle bullets and shot of both explosive and nonexplosive varieties, which can be fired semiautomatically or automatically, low-yield grenades, low-yield guided rockets, high-pressure flammable liquid, and microwave energy beams. This is possible through the use of high-density nano-robotic ammunition"—Ruiz held up a dully gleaming block of what appeared to be metal; a similar block was located next to the rifle at my feet—"that self-assembles immediately prior to firing. This allows for a weapon with maximum flexibility with minimum training, a fact that you sad lumps of ambulatory meat will no doubt appreciate.

  "Those of you who have military experience will remember how you were required to frequently assemble and disassemble your weapon. You will not do this with your MP-35. The MP-35 is an extremely complex piece of machinery and you cannot be trusted to fuck with it! It carries onboard self-diagnostic and repair capabilities. It can also patch into your BrainPal to alert you of problems, if any, which there will be none, since in thirty years of service there has yet to be an MP-35 that has malfunctioned. This is because, unlike your dipshit military scientists on Earth, we can build a weapon that works! Your job is not to fuck with your weapon; your job is to fire your weapon. Trust your weapon, it is almost certainly smarter than you are. Remember this and you may yet live.

  "You will activate your MP-35 momentarily by taking it out of its protective wrapping, and accessing it with your BrainPal. Once you do this, your MP-35 will truly be yours. While you are on this base, only you will be able to fire your MP-35, and then only when you are given clearance from your platoon leader or your squad leaders, who must in turn get clearance from their drill instructors. In actual combat situations, only CDF soldiers with CDF-issued BrainPals will be able to fire your MP-35. So long as you don't piss off your own squadmates, you will never have to fear your own weapon being used against you.

  "From this point forward you will take your MP-35 with you everywhere you go. You will take it with you when you take a shit. You will take it with you when you shower—don't worry about getting it wet, it will spit out anything it regards as foreign. You will take it to meals. You will sleep with it. If you somehow manage to find time to fuck, your MP-35 damn well better have a fine view.

  "You will learn how to use this weapon. It will save your life. The U.S. Marines are fucking chumps, but the one thing they got right was their Marine Rifle Creed. It reads, in part, 'This is my rifle. There are many like it, but this one is mine. My rifle is my best friend. It is my life. I must master it as I must master my life. My rifle, without me, is useless. Without my rifle, I am useless. I must fire my rifle true. I must shoot straighter than my enemy who is trying to kill me. I must shoot him before he shoots me. And I will.'

  "Ladies and gentlemen, take this creed to heart. This is your rifle. Pick it up and activate it."

  I knelt down and removed the rifle from its plastic wrap. Notwithstanding everything Ruiz described about the rifle, the MP-35 did not appear especially impressive. It had heft but was not unwieldy, was well balanced and well sized for maneuverability. On the side of the rifle stock was a sticker. "TO ACTIVATE WITH BRAINPAL: Initialize BrainPal and say Activate MP-35, serial number ASD-324-DDD-4E3C1."

  "Hey, Asshole," I said. "Activate MP-35, serial number ASD-324-DDD-4E3C1."

  MP-35 ASD-324-DDD-4E3C1 is now activated for CDF Recruit John Perry, Asshole responded. Please load ammunition now. A small graphic display hovered in the corner of my field of vision, showing me how to load my rifle. I reached back down and picked up the rectangular block that was my ammunition—and nearly lost my balance trying to pick it up. It was impressively heavy; they weren't kidding about the "high density" part. I jammed it into my rifle where instructed. As I did so, the graphic showing me how to load my rifle disappeared and a counter sprang up in its place, which read:

  Firing Options Available

  Note: Using One Type of Round Decreases Availability of Other Types

  Rifle Rounds: 200

  Shot Rounds: 80

  Grenade Rounds: 40

  Missile Rounds: 35

  Fire Rounds: 10 Minutes

  Microwave: 10 Minutes

  Rifle Rounds Currently Selected.

  "Select shot rounds," I said.

  Shot rounds selected, Asshole replied.

  "Select missile rounds," I said.

  Missile rounds selected, Asshole replied. Please select target. Suddenly every member of the platoon had a tight green targeting outline; glancing directly at one would cause an overlay to flash. What the hell, I thought, and selected one, a recruit in Martin's squad named Toshima.

  Target selected. Asshole confirmed. You may fire, cancel, or select a second target.

  "Whoa," I said, canceled the target, and stared down at my MP-35. I turned to Alan, who was holding his weapon next to me. "I'm scared of my weapon," I said.

  "No shit," Alan said. "I just nearly blew you up two seconds ago with a grenade."

  My response to this shocking admission was cut short when, on the other side of the platoon, Ruiz suddenly wheeled into a recruit's face. "What did you just say, recruit?" Ruiz demanded. Everybody fell silent as we turned to see who had incurred Ruiz's wrath.

  The recruit was Sam McCain; in one of our lunch sessions I recalled Sarah O'Connell describing him as more mouth than brain. Unsurprisingly, he'd been in sales most of his life. Even with Ruiz hovering a millimeter from his nose, McCain projected smarminess; a mildly surprised smarminess, but smarminess all the same. He clearly didn't know what got Ruiz so worked up, but whatever it was, he expected to walk away from this encounter unscathed.

  "I was just admiring my weapon, Master Sergeant," McCain said, holding up his rifle. "And I was telling recruit Flores here how it almost made me feel sorry for the poor bastards we're going up against out—"

  The rest of McCain's comment was lost to time when Ruiz grabbed McCain's rifle from the surprised recruit and with one supremely relaxed spin clocked McCain in the temple with the flat side of the rifle butt. McCain crumpled like laundry; Ruiz calmly extended a leg and jammed a boot into McCain's throat. Then he flipped the rifle around; McCain stared up, horrified, into the barrel of his own rifle.

  "Not so smug now, are you, you little shit?" Ruiz said. "Imagine I'm your enemy. Do you almost feel sorry for me now? I just disarmed you in less time than it takes to fucking breathe. Out there, those poor bastards move faster than you would ever believe. They are going to spread your fucking liver on crackers and eat it up while you're still trying to get them in your sights. So don't you ever feel almost sorry for the poor bastards. They don't need your pity. Are you going to remember this, recruit?"

  "Yes, Master Sergeant!" McCain rasped, over the boot. He was very nearly sobbing.

  "Let's make sure," Ruiz said, pressed the barrel into the space between McCain's eyes, and pulled the trigger with a dry click. Ever
y member of the platoon flinched; McCain wet himself.

  "Dumb," Ruiz said after McCain realized he wasn't, in fact, dead. "You weren't listening earlier. The MP-35 can only be fired by its owner while it's on base. That's you, asshole." He straightened up and contemptuously flung the rifle at McCain, then turned to face the platoon at large.

  "You recruits are even stupider than I have imagined," Ruiz declared. "Listen to me now: There has never been a military in the entire history of the human race that has gone to war equipped with more than the least that it needs to fight its enemy. War is expensive. It costs money and it costs lives and no civilization has an infinite amount of either. So when you fight, you conserve. You use and equip only as much as you have to, never more.

  He stared at us grimly. "Is any of this getting through? Do any of you understand what I'm trying to tell you? You don't have these shiny new bodies and pretty new weapons because we want to give you an unfair advantage. You have these bodies and weapons because they are the absolute minimum that will allow you to fight and survive out there. We didn't want to give you these bodies, you dipshits. It's just that if we didn't, the human race would already be extinct.

  "Do you understand now? Do you finally have an idea of what you're up against? Do you?"

  But it wasn't all fresh air, exercise, and learning to kill for humanity. Sometimes, we took classes.

  "During your physical training, you've been learning to overcome your assumptions and inhibitions regarding your new body's abilities," Lieutenant Oglethorpe said to a lecture hall filled with training battalions 60th through 63rd. "Now we need to do this with your mind. It's time to flush out some deeply held preconceptions and prejudices, some of which you probably aren't even aware you have."

  Lieutenant Oglethorpe pressed a button on the podium where he stood. Behind him, two display boards shimmered to life. In the one to the audience's left a nightmare popped up—something black and gnarled, with serrated lobster claws that nestled pornographically inside an orifice so dank you could very nearly smell the stench. Above the shapeless pile of a body, three eyestalks or antennae or whatever perched. Ochre dripped from them. H. P. Lovecraft would have run screaming.