by John Scalzi
The CDF avoided a wide-scale random bombing of major cities, since wanton civilian death was not the goal. CDF intelligence suspected major casualties downstream of the destroyed dams, but that really couldn't be helped. There would have been no way for the Whaidians to stop the CDF from cratering the major cities, but the thinking was the Whaidians would have enough problems with the disease, famine and the political and social unrest that inevitably comes as a result of having your industrial and technological base yanked out from under you. Therefore, actively going after the civilian population was seen as inhumane and (equally as important to the CDF brass) an inefficient use of resources. Aside from the capital city, which was targeted strictly as an exercise in psychological warfare, no ground attacks were even considered.
Not that the Whaidians in the capital seemed to appreciate that. Projectiles and beams were bouncing off our troop transports even as we landed. It sounded like hail and frying eggs on the hull.
"Two by two," Viveros said, pairing up the squad. "No one goes off on their own. Refer to your maps and don't get trapped. Perry, you got Bender watch. Try to keep him from signing any peace treaties, if you please. And as an added bonus, you two are first out the door. Get high and deal with snipers."
"Bender." I motioned him over. "Set your Empee for rockets and follow me. Camo on. BrainPal chatter only." The transport ramp went down and Bender and I sprinted out the door. Directly in front of me at forty meters was an abstract sculpture of some description; I nailed it as Bender and I ran. Never much liked abstract art.
I was heading for a large building northwest of our landing position; behind the glass in its lobby I could see several Whaidians with long objects in their paws. I launched a couple of missiles in their direction. The missiles would impact on the glass; they probably wouldn't kill the Whaidians inside, but they'd distract them long enough for Bender and I to disappear. I messaged Bender to blow out a window on the building's second floor; he did, and we launched ourselves at it, landing in what looked like a suite of office cubicles. Hey, even aliens have got to work. No live Whaidians to speak of, however. I imagine most of them had stayed home from work that day. Well, who could blame them.
Bender and I found a rampway that spiraled upward. No Whaidians followed us up from the lobby. I suspected they were so busy with other CDF soldiers that they forgot all about us. The rampway terminated at the roof; I stopped Bender just before we rose into view and crept up slowly to see three Whaidians sniping down the side of the building. I plugged two and Bender got the other one.
What now — sent Bender.
Come with me — I sent.
Your average Whaidian looks rather like a cross between a black bear and a large, angry flying squirrel; the Whaidians we shot looked like large angry flying bear-squirrels with rifles and the backs of their heads blown out. We crab-walked as quickly as possible to the edge of the roof. I motioned to Bender to go to one of the dead snipers; I took the one next to him.
Get under it — I sent.
What? — Bender sent back.
I motioned to other roofs. Other Whaidians on other roofs — I sent. Camouflage while I take them out—
What do I do? — Bender sent.
Watch the roof entrance and don't let them do to us what we did to them — I sent.
Bender grimaced and got under his dead Whaidian. I did the same and immediately regretted it. I don't know what a live Whaidian smells like but a dead one smells positively fucking rank. Bender shifted and aimed at the door; I sent to Viveros, gave her an overhead view through the BrainPal, and then started doing damage to other rooftop snipers.
I got six on four different roofs before they began to figure out what was going on. Finally I saw one train its weapon onto my roof; I gave it a love tap in the brain with my rifle and sent to Bender to ditch his corpse and clear the roof. We made it off a few seconds before the rockets hit.
On the way down we ran into the Whaidians I was expecting on our way up. The question of who was more surprised, us or them, was answered when Bender and I opened fire first and wheeled back to the closest building level. I pumped a few grenades down the ramp to give the Whaidians something to think about while Bender and I ran.
"What the hell do we do now?" Bender yelled at me as we ran through the building level.
BrainPal, you asshole — I sent, and turned a corner. You'll give us away — I went to a glass wall and looked out. We were at least thirty meters up, too far to jump even with our enhanced bodies.
Here they come — Bender sent. From behind us came the sound of what I suspected were some very angry Whaidians.
Hide — I sent to Bender, trained my Empee at the glass wall closest to me, and fired. The glass shattered but didn't break. I grabbed what I would guess was a Whaidian chair and threw it out the window. Then I ducked into the cubicle next to Bender.
What the hell — Bender sent. Now they're coming right for us—
Wait — I sent. Stay down. Be ready to fire when I tell you. Automatic—
Four Whaidians turned the corner and carefully made their way toward the shattered wall pane. I heard them gargling to each other; I turned on the translation circuit.
"—went out the hole in the wall," one was saying to another as they approached the wall.
"Impossible," another said. "It is too far down. They would die."
"I have seen them leap great distances," the first said. "Perhaps they would survive."
"Even those [untranslatable] cannot fall 130 deg [unit of measurement] and live," said the third, coming up on the first two. "Those [untranslatable] eaters of [untranslatable] are still here somewhere."
"Did you see [untranslatable—probability personal name] on the ramp? Those [untranslatable] tore [it] apart with their grenades," said the fourth.
"We came up the same ramp as you," said the third. "Of course we saw [it]. Now quiet yourselves and search this area. If they are here, we will exact revenge on the [untranslatable] and celebrate it in service." The fourth closed the gap between him and the third Whaidian, and reached out a great paw to it, as if in commiseration. All four were now conveniently standing in front of the gaping hole in the wall.
Now — I sent to Bender and opened fire. The Whaidians jerked like marionettes for a few seconds and then fell as the force of the bullet impacts pushed them back into the wall that wasn't there anymore. Bender and I waited a few seconds, then snuck back to the ramp. It was unoccupied except for the remains of [untranslatable—probability personal name], which smelled even worse than his dead sniper compatriots up on the roof. So far, the entire experience of the Whaid homeworld had been a real nasal treat, I had to say. We headed back down to the second floor and headed out the same way we had come in, passing by the four Whaidians whom we had helped out the window.
"This isn't really what I expected," Bender said, gawking at the remains of the Whaidians as he passed.
"What did you expect?" I asked.
"I don't rightly know," he replied.
"Well, then, how can it not be what you expected," I said, and switched my BrainPal to speak to Viveros. We're down — I sent.
Come over here — Viveros sent and sent her location information. And bring Bender. You're not going to believe this— And as she said it, I heard it over the random fire and grenade booms: a low, guttural chant, echoing through the buildings of the government center.
"This is what I told you about," Bender declared, almost joyously, as we cleared the final corner and began our descent into the natural amphitheater. In it, hundreds of Whaidians had assembled, chanting and swaying and waving clubs. Around it, dozens of CDF troops had staked out positions. If they opened fire, it would be a turkey shoot. I switched on my translation circuit again but came up with nothing; either the chants meant nothing or they were using a dialect of Whaidian speech that Colonial linguists hadn't figured out.
I spotted Viveros and went to her. "What's going on?" I shouted to her, over the din.
"You tell me, Perry," she shouted back. "I'm just a spectator here." She nodded over to her left, where Lieutenant Keyes was conferring with other officers. "They're trying to figure out what we should do."
"Why hasn't anyone fired?" Bender asked.
"Because they haven't fired on us," Viveros said. "Our orders were not to fire on civilians unless necessary. They appear to be civilians. They're all carrying clubs but they haven't threatened us with them; they just wave them around while they chant. Therefore, it's not necessary to kill them. I'd think you'd be happy with that, Bender."
"I am happy about that," Bender said, and pointed, clearly entranced. "Look, the one that's leading the congregation. He's the Feuy, a religious leader. He's a Whaidian of great stature. He probably wrote the chant they're singing right now. Does anyone have a translation?"
"No," Viveros said. "They're not using a language we know. We have no idea what they're saying."
Bender stepped forward. "It's a prayer for peace," he said. "It has to be. They must know what we've done to their planet. They can see what we're doing to their city. Any people to whom this has been done must be crying for it to cease."
"Oh, you are so full of shit," Viveros snapped. "You have no fucking clue what they're chanting about. They could be chanting about how they're going to rip off our heads and piss down our necks. They could be chanting for their dead. They could be singing their goddamn grocery list. We don't know. You don't know."
"You're wrong," Bender said. "For five decades I was on the front lines of the battle for peace on Earth. I know when a people are ready for peace. I know when they're reaching out." He pointed to the chanting Whaidians. "These people are ready, Viveros. I can feel it. And I'm going to prove it to you." Bender set down his Empee and started toward the amphitheater.
"God damn it, Bender!" Viveros yelled. "Get back here now! That's an order!"
"I'm not 'just following orders' anymore, Corporal!" Bender yelled back, and then started to sprint.
"Shit!" Viveros screamed, and started after him. I grabbed for her and missed.
By now Lieutenant Keyes and the other officers looked up and saw Bender racing toward the Whaidians, Viveros chasing behind. I saw Keyes yell something and Viveros pull up suddenly; Keyes must have sent his order over the BrainPal as well. If he had ordered Bender to stop, Bender ignored the command and continued his race to the Whaidians.
Bender finally stopped at the lip of the amphitheater, and stood there silently. Eventually the Feuy, the one leading the chant, noticed the sole human standing at the edge of his congregation and stopped his chanting. The congregation, confused, lost the chant and spent a minute or so muttering before noticing Bender as well, and turned to face him.
This was the moment Bender was waiting for. Bender must have spent the few moments while the Whaidians noticed his presence composing what he was going to say and translating it into Whaidian, because when he spoke, he attempted their language, and by all professional accounts, did a reasonable job of it.
"My friends, my fellow searchers for peace," he began, reaching out to them with his hands curved in.
Data culled from the event would eventually show that no fewer than forty thousand tiny needlelike projectiles that Whaidians call avdgur struck Bender's body in the space of less than one second, shot from clubs that were not clubs at all, but traditional projectile weapons in the shape of a tree branch sacred to the Whaidian people. Bender literally melted as each avdgur sliver penetrated his unitard and his body, slicing away at the solidity of his form. Everyone agreed later that it was one of the most interesting deaths any of us had ever seen in person.
Bender's body fell apart in a misty splash and the CDF soldiers opened fire into the amphitheater. It was indeed a turkey shoot; not a single Whaidian made it out of the amphitheater or managed to kill or wound another CDF soldier other than Bender. It was over in less than a minute.
Viveros waited for the cease-fire order, walked over to the puddle that was what was left of Bender, and started stamping in it furiously. "How do you like your peace now, motherfucker?" she cried as Bender's liquefied organs stained the lower half of her legs.
"Bender was right, you know," Viveros said to me on the way back to the Modesto.
"About what?" I asked.
"About the CDF being used too fast and too much," Viveros said. "About it being easier to fight than to negotiate." She waved in the general direction of the Whaidian home planet, which was receding behind us. "We didn't have to do this, you know. Knock these poor sons of bitches out of space and make it so they spend the next couple of decades starving and dying and killing each other. We didn't murder civilians today—well, other than the ones that got Bender. But they'll spend a nice long time dying from disease and murdering each other because they can't do much of anything else. It's no less of a genocide. We just feel better about it because we'll be gone when it happens."
"You never agreed with Bender before," I said.
"That's not true," Viveros said. "I said that he didn't know shit, and that his duty was to us. But I didn't say he was wrong. He should have listened to me. If he'd have followed his fucking orders, he'd be alive now. Instead I'm scraping him off the bottom of my foot."
"He'd probably say he died for what he believed in," I said.
Viveros snorted. "Please," she said. "Bender died for Bender. Shit. Walking up to a bunch of people whose planet we just destroyed and acting like he was their friend. What an asshole. If I were one of them, I'd have shot him, too."
"Damn real live people, getting in the way of peaceful ideals," I said.
Viveros smiled. "If Bender were really interested in peace instead of his own ego, he'd have done what I'm doing, and what you should do, Perry," she said. "Follow orders. Stay alive. Make it through our term of infantry service. Join officer training and work our way up. Become the people who are giving the orders, not just following them. That's how we'll make peace when we can. And that's how I can live with 'just following orders.' Because I know that one day, I'll make those orders change." She leaned back, closed her eyes and slept the rest of the way back to our ship.
Luisa Viveros died two months later on a shithole ball of mud called Deep Water. Our squad walked into a trap set in the natural catacombs below the Hann'i colony that we'd been ordered to clear out. In battle we'd been herded into a cave chamber that had four additional tunnels feeding into it, all ringed with Hann'i infantry. Viveros ordered us back into our tunnel and began firing at its mouth, collapsing the tunnel and sealing it off from the chamber. BrainPal data shows she then turned and began taking out the Hann'i. She didn't last long. The rest of the squad fought our way back to the surface; not an easy thing to do, considering how we'd been herded in the first place, but better than dying in an ambush.
Viveros got a medal posthumously for bravery; I was promoted to corporal and given the squad. Viveros' cot and locker were given to a new guy named Whitford, who was decent enough, as far as it went.
The institution had replaced a cog. And I missed her.
ELEVEN
Thomas died because of something he ate.
What he ingested was so new the CDF didn't have a name for it yet, on a colony so new it also didn't have a name, merely an official designation: Colony 622, 47 Ursae Majoris. (The CDF continued to use Earth-based stellar designations for the same reason they continued to use a twenty-four-hour clock and a 365-day year: Because it was easiest to do it that way.) As a matter of standard operating procedure, new colonies transmit a daily compilation of all colony data into a skip drone, which then skips back to Phoenix so that the Colonial government can keep tabs on colony matters.
Colony 622 had sent drones since its landing six months earlier; aside from the usual arguments, snafus and scuffles that accompany any new colony founding, nothing of any note was reported, except for the fact that a local slime mold was gunking up damn near everything, popping up in machinery, computers, animal pens and ev
en colony living quarters. A genetic analysis of the material was sent back to Phoenix with the request that someone create a fungicide that would get the mold literally out of the colonist's hair. Blank skip drones started arriving immediately after that, with no information uploaded from the colony.
Thomas and Susan were stationed on the Tucson, which was dispatched to investigate. The Tucson attempted to raise the colony from orbit; no luck. Visual targeting of the colony buildings showed no movement between buildings—no people, no animals, no nothing. The buildings themselves, however, didn't seem to be damaged. Thomas' platoon got the call for recon.
The colony was covered with goo, a coating of slime mold several centimeters thick in some places. It dripped off power lines and was all over the communication equipment. This was good news—there was now a possibility that the mold had simply overwhelmed the equipment's transmission ability. This momentary burst of optimism was brought to an abrupt halt when Thomas' squad got to the animal pens to find all of the livestock dead and deeply decomposed thanks to the industrious work of the mold. They found the colonists shortly thereafter, in much the same state. Nearly all of them (or what was left of them) were in or near their beds; the exceptions being families, who were often found in children's rooms or the hallways leading to them, and the members of the colony working the graveyard shift, who were found at or near their posts. Whatever hit, hit late and so fast that colonists simply didn't have time to react.
Thomas suggested taking one of the corpses to the colony's medical quarters; he could perform a quick autopsy that might give some insight into what had killed the colonists. His squad leader gave assent, and Thomas and a squadmate hunkered over one of the more intact bodies. Thomas grabbed under the arms and the squadmate took the legs. Thomas told his squadmate to lift on the count of three; he got to two when the slime mold rose up from the body and slapped him wetly on the face. He gasped in surprise; the slime mold slid into his mouth and down his throat.
