by Hugh Howey
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 guards 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 not Kur 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 2.”
“Warship 2,” 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-’round.”
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 2.”
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 looking 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 squadmates. 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 2, 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 Gunner,” 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 Gunner?” asks Urj, who has obviously never been anything but.
“Pipe down,” someone shouts from a bunk room 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.
“Reboot and reload?” Gha, a Gunner, asks.
Urj nods.
“What’s that mean?” Bek asks, and I am thankful. I grow tiresome of admitting my ignorance on these things.
“It means there are more of us in the vats, and those bodies may be needed as well.”
“Fast as they can grow us,” Gha says, “they’ll send us down.”
Everyone looks at me like I’m responsible for this mess. But what do I know? It’s been ages since I took a life or gave one up. There have been occasional worlds that we passed by because they were deemed too dangerous to take on. There have been worlds we conquered with a single warship. Then there are worlds like these that worry the stalks of those much higher in rank than I’ll ever be. So many types of worlds, and I’ve studied them all.
* * *
Instead of spending my free time greasing the outdated gear I’ve been assigned or going over the tactics in my squad manual, I sit in my bunk in the days before planetfall reading about Mil, my absent bunkmate. This is what I call her: my absent bunkmate. We share our bunks, hers and mine, just not at the same time. She is sexed where I used to sleep, while I suffer the dreadful slobbering snores of her old roommate, Lum. I wonder at times, woken at night by the awful noise of Lum sleeping, if the mystery of Mil’s suicides is not right there, one bunk below me.
Mil’s files are full of a vague strangeness, but nothing I can put my sucker on, either for myself or for Kur. Lots of messages are gone—the original ordering is intact, but some numbers are skipped. Reminds me of the “missing buck” play my squad inanely ascribes to.
Quite a few messages are to and from a secretary at High Command, saying that Mil’s reports are being passed along. The actual reports are not among her files, however. There is one partial report quoted, describing a missing signal of some sort. I wonder if one of our advanced scout ships has been taken out. It is from these ships that all my intel came. Does Earth have warning of our arrival? Wouldn’t be the first time. And it would explain the All-Tentacles and the consternation among the higher-ups.
I think of the long-range scans of Earth I used to study. It was evident that fighting had taken place recently and might still be going on. Not unusual on planets we raid, and this planet’s inhabitants are an especially warlike people. If they stopped that fighting and trained their guns toward us, that would be very much not-good. The problem with hitting an aggressive race isn’t just their honed skills, but their state of readiness.
Maybe I’m reading too much into Mil’s records, but with so many bodies being thrown into Gunner, it is time to consider that we are being lowered like a skink into boiling water. Maybe Mil was suggesting we bypass this planet entirely, and High Command is having none of such talk from a radio tech. Perhaps they deleted her suggestions in case she turns out to be right.
But why the suicides? It’s not just that suicides are expensive, it’s that the chances of offing oneself twice in a single cycle are low. Whatever is ailing someone is not likely to be present when they are brought back.
When my new bunkmate Lum returns from her station duties, I set the terminal aside and broach the touchy subject.
“Hey, Lum,” I say.
My bunkmate is eating a gurd. With her mouth full, she raises her stalks questioningly.
“Did you… notice anything strange about Mil before she… well, before either of her suicides?”
“Mmm,” Lum says. She swallows and starts taking off her work clothes. I haven’t been able to tell if she is coming on to me, but I knot my tentacles that she isn’t.
“Yeah,” she says. “She was very different the days before. Both times.”
“How so?” I ask.
Lum throws her clothes into the chute and steps into the crapper to run the shower. “She got real calm,” she says. Steam starts rising in the crapper. I’ve scalded myself twice showering after Lum’s lava blasts.
“You mean, she wasn’t usually calm?”
“Her normal state was to raise hell,” Lum says. She sticks her head out of the crapper, but I notice a tentacle wrapping around the edge of the door. She is dying to shut the conversation off and get in the shower. “The reason Lum offed herself was because of her demotions. She was in High Command a few raids ago. Got bumped down, and she’s been getting bumped down ever since. Causes too much trouble.” Lum screws up her eyestalks. “Spe
aks her mind,” she says, as if this is a great sin.
“Seems weird,” I say. “Two suicides in a cycle. Taking on that much debt.”
Lum eyes the shower. The steam is, blessedly, cloaking her lower half.
“You ever done it?” I ask. “Ever… you know.”
“No,” she says, smiling. She looks down at herself. “I’m all original. And I’m wasting water. You wanna come in? I can tell you about my crazy ex-bunkmate and you can scrub the barnacles off my back.”
“I’m good,” I say. “Just curious is all.”
Lum seems, if anything, relieved. I can’t get a bead on her. “Suit yourself.” She starts to pull the door shut, then sticks her head out one last time. Considers something. I’m waiting.
“You were in Intelligence,” she says.
“Still am,” I say. “Gunner is just this one time.”
“And other races, they do it too? Off themselves?”
“A lot,” I say.
“But it’s final death for them,” Lum says.
“Yeah. That’s the point,” I say. “They do it when they get depressed.” Here, I’m drawing more from my own experiences than any of my studies. I remember feeling like I wanted to sleep for a long time. Forever, if I could.
The steam is filling our bunkroom. I feel sweat gathering on my back. Lum studies me for a painfully long while.
“I don’t think Mil was depressed,” she finally says. “I think she was… satisfied. Content, maybe. Or resigned. Or maybe…”
“Maybe what?”
“Or maybe she was scared out of her senses, and she couldn’t get anyone to pay attention. So she finally gave up.”