by Hugh Howey
I can’t stop thinking on the suicides. As I wend my way down foreign corridors, placing a tentacle here and there on the unfamiliar pipes and plates that squeeze in around me, I wonder what madness in some strange woman brought me here. Not that I haven’t killed myself, but that was a very long while ago, after my second or third invasion. I remember waking up in the same body the next morning—same but newer and still smelling of the vats—and realizing the futility of it all. My supervisor at the time—Yim, I believe—sat me down and explained that bodies weren’t cheap and to cut that shit out. I soon realized that taking a blaster to my own head was no different than falling in battle, just more expensive. It took centuries to work off that debt, what with the interest. It only takes once to know the headache is not worth it, that the numbness is not worth it. Going to sleep at night is a more useful and less costly way to not exist for some short while.
Unless . . . maybe this girl in my old bunk is so far in debt that more of it is hardly felt. Maybe she enjoys the waking. Maybe she loves learning to use her tentacles again. I remember that, the deadness in my suckers after reviving. Like I’d slept on them wrong. That is not a feeling I crave enough to kill myself for. But there are those much crazier than I.
Eight days to planetfall, and here I am lost on another’s ship and thinking on nonsense. This will be one of those invasions where I am useless, standing on the sidelines and watching, no time to adequately prepare. I’m comfortable with that. No one can blame me. The late transfer is not my fault.
I pass a woman in the corridor and notice the way her stalks follow mine. Hey, maybe a new ship will be good for me. Maybe my bunkmate is lousy at gambling. I can get used to this life, as I have so many others. This is what I tell myself, that I can be happy in this skin of mine. For what other choice is there?
I find Supervisor Bix in the Sector 1 command hall, near the front of the ship. A terminal tech points him out through the glass. There are three men and two women bent over a table that glows with a land map. Stretching my stalk, I can see Sector 1 and part of Sector 2. I watch these supervisors argue, can hear their muffled annoyance through the glass, and I see that things operate similarly here as everywhere else—with very little grease and a lot of grind.
The more I watch, though, the more I note the added stress among Bix’s superiors, those men and women wearing emblems of High Command. I don’t know these commanders personally (nor anyone of their rank—I report to those who report to them), but I can clearly see the tension in their tentacles, in the twitch of their stalks, and I do not envy them their jobs.
The display screen is centered on the fat land of my new sector. I see great swaths of blue, and then the coast of my old sector at the very edge of the map. The men and women inside the room seem nervous. Tentacles are waving, and I can hear shouts through the thick glass. Eight days to planetfall, and this must be the stress of ultimate responsibility. Why any ship jockeys to lead these incursions is beyond me. Surely it is best to be number two.
Cycles ago, after selecting Earth as a target and assigning sectors, there was a pissing match between my ship and this one over who had final rank. This happens when you study a planet long enough. You see its history through the lens of your sector, and you feel rightly that your target is the most crucial. With Sector 2, I would have landed on a long continent pinched in the middle like a woman sucking in her gut. Sparsely populated, but my supervisor liked to point out that the wealth per life form was high and that their military spending outpaced all other sectors. But invasions are about bodies in the end, and no one can compete with Sector 1.
Heh. Funny how quickly I adopt the other side’s arguments now that I’m here. Part of me always thought they had it right. Or so I tell myself. The homesickness is draining away as I wait for Supervisor Bix to finish his meeting. I imagine that he requested me personally. He must have studied my files. My chest inflates with the sudden pride of a new home, a new position, new people to know and impress. It is like a new body, but I get to keep the scars.
I make eyestalks with one of the receptionists in the waiting room. She smiles, and I can see her neck splotch in embarrassment. “Here to see Supervisor Bix,” I say, tucking a tentacle into my waistband. “I work in Intelligence.”
The receptionist opens her mouth to reply when Bix comes out, trailing his superiors. I introduce myself and offer a tentacle, which Bix declines. He seems confused. And then his eyestalks straighten with awareness. “From Sector Two,” he says.
“That’s right.” I puff out my gut. “Liaison Hyk. Intelligence, Sector Two.”
Bix waves a tentacle. “No, no. You’ve been moved to Gunnery. Go see Yut for your assignment. I’m busy.”
The air is out of me. I look to the receptionist, who diverts her stalk. “Ship’s gunner?” I ask with all the hope I can muster.
“Ground gunner,” Bix says. “See Yut.”
“But I’m a man of learning,” I complain.
Someone snickers, and I see that I’m a walking cliché.
“I haven’t been a gunner in lifetimes,” I add. “I’ll last five minutes down there.”
“Then you’ll wake up here and be sent right back in,” Bix says. “I suggest you die heroically, so the body doesn’t cost you.”
“But why was I transferred?” I ask. “Was there something in my files—?”
Bix swivels his eyestalks toward me. “You’re on this ship to get someone else off it,” he says. “Nothing more. You can show us what you’re made of”—I catch him looking at another officer with something like worry—“the next go-around.”
With this, Bix and these other men and women of high station lumber off on their tentacles. The receptionist looks at me with pity for the barest of moments, and then turns back to her work, leaving me to show myself out.
Gunnery is in the rear of the ship, where all the other little ships are kept. It’s far enough to take a shuttle, which allows me to sit in sullen silence. I watch the stars go by. I pick out my old ship among the fleet. At least, I think it’s mine. I wonder if my bodies are still on that ship. If the shuttle loses pressure and I die right now, where will I wake up? And what would be the last thing I remembered? It’s been a while since I saved my thoughts. I’ll have to do that soon.
The constellations are strange from this point in space, but I can pick out a few stars we’ve visited. I have small souvenirs from a few. There are others that exist only in the history books. Like Celiad, where we learned the secret of the vats. Or ancient Osh, where our ancestors learned how to store the memories of man into machine.
Our current gun tech came from Aye-Stad, which I visited countless cycles ago. Our ships are from Rael. And thanks to the K’Bk, we no longer have disease, but I remember how such things as plagues used to work. The races I study still employ their immune systems, and the parallels between those systems and us as a race are striking. For we have become what Earthlings would call white blood cells. We remove foreign bodies from the cosmos. And every one leaves an imprint, a bauble of tech or a new idea, all of which we neatly coil into our lives, into our molecular structure. We are an immune system, and we are immune to death. This last, alas, is our curse.
As the shuttle takes us aft, I gaze through the cockpit past the pilot, and I imagine Second Fleet off in the distance, those ships out there identical to our own. Second Fleet trails us dutifully in case something awful happens. A backup full of backups. With my sudden demotion, I wonder what it would be like to wake up there, in the wake of my former home, with true mortality within tentacle’s reach.
Thinking of tentacles makes me realize mine have slimed up with thoughts of Gunnery. It has been a long time since I landed on a planet with the first wave. Surely this is temporary, this demotion. Didn’t Bix say so? It is simply because of the short time until planetfall. It is because of that silly woman with her second suicide. She is being punished, and so they punish us both. It should have been Kur sent here, a true gunner.
>
When was the last time I fought with a first wave? Memories of bright and colorful worlds swirl together. The one thing in common is the brown mud on my boots. Slogging through battlefields. Noticing details like how the insides of sentient things have much in common: the same blood that colors red in the air, the sacs for breathing, the sacs for pumping blood through tubes, the tendrils for turning thoughts into things.
The dead and these worlds, they blur together like all colors into a dull brown. All I remember in the end is that I did my job, shooting so I would not be shot. All I remember in the beginning is the fear of death.
This is something you get over. You live with the fear until you die for the first time, and then you realize death isn’t the end. Not when you have another body waiting in a vat with a backup of your recent recollections. It is painful, though, both the death and the rebirth. Painful and expensive. Both are deterrents meant to keep us on our guard. That’s my theory, anyway. That they add the rebirth pain on purpose so you avoid dying the way a tentacle avoids a fire.
I no longer fear death, but still I try not to draw her attention. I like this me, however imperfectly it fits. I like my small scars, even if I can’t recall where I got them. I search my tentacle for an old wound as the shuttle banks around the ass of my new ship, but some scars are memories that have faded, and some memories go with scars that no longer exist.
A glimmer of stars beyond my porthole distracts me from these sentimental thoughts. I think I can see Second Fleet, those little pinpricks among pinpricks, back there where true immortality lies. Though I fear a return to Gunnery, I know I will go into battle invulnerable. Our fleet is invincible when planetfall comes. We march through civilizations the way a child splashes through puddles, for in the distance lies our safety valve. One day, of course, we will face a surprisingly resilient foe. Or we will drop our guard because a thousand conquered worlds have left us bored with victory. Someone will vanquish us, but we will awaken in bright new ships, and we will show this foe that we do not die so easily.
Bah. Listen to me. An hour back in Gunnery, and I am giving speeches meant to clench loins and rush boys into battle. Already pretending to be brave. When what I really need is a strong drink and to meet those among my new bunkmates who gamble recklessly.
TO: Third Rank Gunner Hyk
FROM: First Rank Gunner Kur
You’ve only been gone two days, and I can still nose your stink in the bathroom! I have other insults prepared, but now is not the time for banter. I need a favor. You know your old bunk? I’m sleeping in it. Why? Because I’m sexing my new bunkmate every night! You are envious, I know. Of her! Ha!
Only one problem: She’s crazier than a hogtied rampus-mare. I’ve stopped her from killing herself two more times, and all she does is sit around, slack-jawed and oozing on herself. I’m worried if she manages to kill herself again, they won’t bring her back. Or worse: that they’ll bring you back!
Har. Anyway, lend me a tentacle and I’ll forget about the fifty you owe me. Can you find out what’s eating at my sex-mate? I’d like to know before we hit the ground. Handing this beautiful creature a gun feels like a bad idea.
Fuck off,
Kur
It is six days to planetfall, and instead of working on my aim with the new and improved double-barreled GAW13s, here I am in the smelly hall of records digging through files. I am looking for a girl who I’m not even sexing on behalf of a former bunkmate who little loves me. My mother would say the suckers on my tentacles have grown soft, and she would be right. Look at how little a fight I put up with the demotion to Gunnery. I would think myself spineless were it not for the invasion of Hemput III, where I got a damn fine look at my backbones before the lights went fully out.
I find the suicide girl’s records by looking up her bunk. Easy to do since I sleep in the thing. Mil. I do like that name. And so of course I imagine Kur sexing her. My brain loves torturing the rest of me.
I start a ship-to-ship file transfer to Kur’s terminal so he can pry on his own. Aware that Mil might be the one checking the terminal, I come up with an innocuous header for the message: Hey, Fart-Sac—The report you wanted. While the computer does its job, I scan the file for myself. I remember my transfer orders saying Mil was in Telecoms. Now I read that she was a terminal technician in the radio wing. Gad, I would kill myself too! But now our suicide girl has brains, and Kur is sexing her even more. I resolve to get out tonight and meet someone. Why was Kur not transferred instead of me?
Speaking of transfer, the ship-to-ship is taking forever. Less than an Earth cycle to planetfall, and the networks are as packed as a mess hall on garbum night. I decide to send myself a copy on the intership network, just in case. Besides, I have nothing to read. Sector 1’s written language is nothing like Sector 2’s. If you planted a bomb in Sector 2’s language and scattered the remains on a terminal screen, you would have Sector 1’s language. It’s no wonder this planet is always at war. My language instructor once said: No two people have ever battled that read each other’s poetry, and I believe that. It’s why we in Intelligence are told to avoid poetry at all costs. Learn, but do not empathize.
That should apply here as well, as I read up on Mil. I tell myself I’m doing a bunkmate a favor, but the truth is that I’m in love with a woman I have never met. A woman my former friend is most likely sexing at this very moment. A woman who seems to hate her life as much as I hate mine.
Second Squad, Gunner Troop 5, Sector 1, plays cards with some fucked-up rules. Quks are wild, but only if you have a five-tentacled Kik in your hand. And in a run, you can skip a number if all the cards on both sides are the same gender. They call this the “missing buck” play. What I’m missing is thirty-five credits, and it isn’t because of any difference in skill. It’s because I can’t keep these blasted rules straight.
“Two pair,” Urj says. He’s bluffing, and I wait for the player to his left to call him on it, but a card is drawn instead. This squad will have me broke before they get me killed.
“Urj says you were a liaison officer.”
It takes me a moment to realize I’m being spoken to. I’m trying to determine if my Quk is wild or not.
“Yes,” I tell the brawny woman across from me. Rov is her name. Hard to keep all the new eyestalks straight. “I worked in Intelligence on Warship Two.”
“Warship Two,” someone says with something like sympathy.
I take a sip of my bitter drink.
“Lot of transfers all of a sudden,” Urj, our squad leader, says. He aims a tentacle at Rov. “You were in Accounting, right?”
Rov waves in the affirmative.
“And I was in Water Reclamation until two weeks ago,” Bek says. We’re all waiting on him to play, but he doesn’t seem to be in a hurry. He has one tentacle curled protectively around an enviable pile of credits.
“I thought you all had been together a long time,” I say. I feel less like the new guy. It makes being down thirty-five creds even harder to bear. Unless these are ship-wide rules.
“Nah, they’re throwing everyone to Gunnery for this one,” Urj says. “Heard it from Sergeant Tul. Said it’s ‘All-Tentacles’ this go-around.”
I think back to the argument Bix and his superiors were having when I reported for duty. Seemed tense, but I figure the pressure is always greater on Warship 1. Taking the lead into battle is a heavy responsibility. Performances are judged against prior conquests, and there is a lot of open space between worlds in which to measure one another.
“So what’s this world like?” Rov asks. “If you were a liaison officer, you must’ve done a lot of reading up on the natives. You fluent?”
“Not for our landing sector,” I admit.
Rov looks disappointed.
“But I know quite a bit about the planet in general. From studying Sector Two.”
Urj squares his cards and rests them by his remaining credits. A chair squeaks as the player to my right settles back. All eyestalks are lo
oking at me, and I realize these gunners aren’t curious so much as worried. We’ve had a few All-Tentacle raids in the past. Last time, Warship 5 was lost in orbit, taking all the vats onboard with it. A replacement ship had to be called up from the trailing fleet. Until everyone could be sorted and new bodies grown, there were men and women walking around on their last sets of lives.
“They write about us a lot,” I tell my squad mates. I can see their tentacles stiffen. Except for Bek, who ties three of his limbs into knots of worry. “I don’t mean us, exactly. I mean . . . their culture is full of doomsday musings. Raids from space are a particularly popular trope.”
“All races are full of doomsday musings,” Bek says. He looks to the others, is trying to comfort them more than himself. “We have our own stories of all this coming to an end. It’s fear of final death.”
“This is worse than most,” I say. “I can only really speak for Sector Two, but they think on little else. They spend more of their money on warfare than any other thing. We submitted a report to the Command Committee about this a while back—”
“Must be your report that has me back in Gunnery,” Rov says, her accusation flying across the table.
“And him too, don’t forget,” Bek points out, waving a tentacle at me.
“Hey, what’s wrong with being a gunner?” asks Urj, who has obviously never been anything but.
“Pipe down,” someone shouts from a bunkroom down the hall. Sounds like the sergeant. A hush settles, and eyestalks swivel guiltily toward the door. Someone makes a move at a pile of credits, but a tentacle slaps the thievery away.
“Tul heard from High Command that the warships are to be kept in low atmo,” Urj says quietly. He is squad commander and to report out of chain is a great sin. Somehow, the hush deepens. The game is forgotten, even the thirty-five that I’m in the hole.