Old Man's War omw-1

by John Scalzi

  This third Consu was a member of the highest caste, and his role was simply to tell us the reasons for our death and the manner by which we would all die. After which point, we could actually get to the killing and dying. Any attempt to hasten things along by preemptively taking a shot at the shield would be useless; short of dropping it into a stellar core, there was very little that could ding a Consu shield. Killing a messenger would accomplish nothing other than causing the opening rituals to be restarted, delaying the fighting and killing even more.

  Besides, the Consu weren't hiding behind the shield. They just had a lot of prebattle rituals to take care of, and they preferred that they were not interrupted by the inconvenient appearance of bullets, particle beams or explosives. Truth was, there was nothing the Consu liked better than a good fight. They thought nothing of the idea of tromping off to some planet, setting themselves down, and daring the natives to pry them off in battle.

  Which was the case here. The Consu were entirely disinterested in colonizing this planet. They had merely blasted a human colony here into bits as a way of letting the CDF know they were in the neighborhood and looking for some action. Ignoring the Consu wasn't a possibility, as they'd simply keep killing off colonists until someone came to fight them on a formal basis. You never knew what they'd consider enough for a formal challenge, either. You just kept adding troops until a Consu messenger came out and announced the battle.

  Aside from their impressive, impenetrable shields, the Consu's battle technology was of a similar level as the CDF's. This was not as encouraging as you might think, as what reports filtered back from Consu battles with other species indicated that the Consu's weaponry and technology were always more or less matched with that of their opponent. This added to the idea that what the Consu were engaging in was not war but sports. Not unlike a football game, except with slaughtered colonists in the place of proper spectators.

  Striking first against Consu was not an option. Their entire inner home system was shielded. The energy to generate the shield came from the white dwarf companion of the Consu sun. It had been completely encased with some sort of harvesting mechanism, so that all the energy coming off it would fuel the shield. Realistically speaking, you just don't fuck with people who can do that. But the Consu had a weird honor system; clean them off a planet in battle, and they didn't come back. It was like the battle was the vaccination, and we were the antiviral.

  All of this information was provided by our mission database, which our commanding officer Lieutenant Keyes had directed us to access and read before the battle. The fact that Watson didn't seem to know any of this meant he hadn't accessed the report. This was not entirely surprising, since from the first moment I met Watson it was clear that he was the sort of cocky, willfully ignorant son of a bitch who would get himself or his squadmates killed. My problem was I was his squadmate.

  The Consu unfolded its slashing arms—specialized at some point in their evolution to deal with some unimaginably horrifying creature on their homeworld, most likely—and underneath, its more recognizably armlike forelimbs raised to the sky. "It's starting," Viveros said.

  "I could pop him so easy," Watson said.

  "Do it and I'll shoot you myself," Viveros said.

  The sky cracked with a sound like God's own rifle shot, followed by what sounded like a chain saw ripping through a tin roof. The Consu was singing. I accessed Asshole and had it translate from the beginning.

  Behold, honored adversaries,

  We are the instruments of your joyful death.

  In our ways we have blessed you

  The spirit of the best among us has sanctified our battle.

  We will praise you as we move among you

  And sing your souls, saved, to their rewards.

  It is not your fortune to have been born among The People

  So we set you upon the path that leads to redemption.

  Be brave and fight with fierceness

  That you may come into our fold at your rebirth.

  This blessed battle hallows the ground

  And all who die and are born here henceforth are delivered.

  "Damn, that's loud," Watson said, sticking a finger in his left ear and twisting. I doubted he had bothered to get a translation.

  "This isn't a war or a football game, for Christ's sake," I said to Viveros. "This is a baptism."

  Viveros shrugged. "CDF doesn't think so. This is how they start every battle. They think it's their equivalent of the National Anthem. It's just ritual. Look, the shield's coming down." She motioned toward the shield, which was now flickering and failing across its entire length.

  "About fucking time," Watson said. "I was about to take a nap."

  "Listen to me, both of you," Viveros said. "Stay calm, stay focused and keep your ass down. We've got a good position here, and the lieutenant wants us to snipe these bastards as they come down. Nothing flashy—just shoot them in the thorax. That's where their brains are. Every one we get means one less for the rest of them to worry about. Rifle shots only, anything else is just going to give us away faster. Cut the chatter, BrainPals only from here on out. You get me?"

  "We get you," I said.

  "Fucking A," Watson said.

  "Excellent," Viveros said. The shield finally failed, and the field separating human and Consu was instantly streaked with the trails of rockets that had been sighted and readied for hours. The concussive burps of their explosions were immediately followed by human screams and the metallic chirps of Consu. For a few seconds there was nothing but smoke and silence; then a long, serrated cry as the Consu surged forward to engage the humans, who in turn kept their positions and tried to cut down as many Consu as they could before their two fronts collided.

  "Let's get to it," Viveros said. And with that she raised her Empee, sighted it on some far-distant Consu, and began to fire. We quickly followed.

  How to prepare for battle.

  First, systems check your MP-35 Infantry Rifle. This is the easy part; MP-35s are self-monitoring and self-repairing, and can, in a pinch, use material from an ammunition block as raw material to fix a malfunction. Just about the only way you can permanently ruin an Empee is to place it in the path of a firing maneuvering thruster. Inasmuch as you're likely to be attached to your weapon at the time, if this is the case, you have other problems to worry about.

  Second, put on your war suit. This is the standard self-sealing body-length unitard that covers everything but the face. The unitard is designed to let you forget about your body for the length of the battle. The "fabric" of organized nanobots lets in light for photosynthesis and regulates heat; stand on an arctic floe or a Saharan sand dune and the only difference your body notes is the visual change in scenery. If you somehow manage to sweat, your unitard wicks it away, filters it and stores the water until you can transfer it to a canteen. You can deal with urine this way, too. Defecating in your unitard is generally not recommended.

  Get a bullet in your gut (or anywhere else), and the unitard stiffens at the point of impact and transfers the energy across the surface of the suit, rather than allowing the bullet to burrow through. This is massively painful but better than letting a bullet ricochet merrily through your intestines. This only works up to a point, alas, so avoiding enemy fire is still the order of the day.

  Add your belt, which includes your combat knife, your multipurpose tool, which is what a Swiss army knife wants to be when it grows up, an impressively collapsible personal shelter, your canteen, a week's worth of energy wafers and three slots for ammo blocks. Smear your face with a nanobot-laden cream that interfaces with your unitard to share environmental information. Switch on your camouflage. Try to find yourself in the mirror.

  Third, open a BrainPal channel to the rest of your squad and leave it open until you return to the ship or you die. I thought I was pretty smart to think of this in boot camp, but it turns out to be one of the holiest of unofficial rules during the heat of battle. BrainPal communication mea
ns no unclear commands or signals—and no speaking to give away your position. If you hear a CDF soldier during the heat of battle, it's because he is either stupid or screaming because he's been shot.

  The only drawback to BrainPal communication is that your BrainPal can also send emotional information if you're not paying attention. This can be distracting if you suddenly feel like you're going to piss yourself in fright, only to realize it's not you who's about to cut loose on the bladder, but your squadmate. It's also something none of your squadmates will ever let you live down.

  Link only to your squadmates—try to keep a channel open to your entire platoon and suddenly sixty people are cursing, fighting and dying inside your head. You do not need this.

  Finally, forget everything except to follow orders, kill anything that's not human and stay alive. The CDF makes it simple to do this; for the first two years of service, every soldier is infantry, no matter if you were a janitor or surgeon, senator or street bum in your previous life. If you make it through the first two years, then you get the chance to specialize, to earn a permanent Colonial billet instead of wandering from battle to battle, and to fill in the niche and support roles every military body has. But for two years, all you have to do is go where they tell you, stay behind your rifle, and kill and not be killed. It's simple, but simple isn't the same as easy.

  It took two shots to bring down a Consu soldier. This was new—none of the intelligence on them mentioned personal shielding. But something was allowing them to take the first hit; it sprawled them on whatever you might consider to be their ass, but they were up again in a matter of seconds. So two shots; one to take them down, and one to keep them down.

  Two shots in sequence on the same moving target is not easily accomplished when you're firing across a few hundred meters of very busy battleground. After figuring this one out, I had Asshole create a specialized firing routine that shot two bullets on one trigger pull, the first a hollow tip, and the second with an explosive charge. The specification was relayed to my Empee between shots; one second I was squeezing off single standard-issue rifle ammo, the next I was shooting my Consu killer special.

  I loved my rifle.

  I forwarded the firing specification to Watson and Viveros; Viveros forwarded it up the chain of command. Within about a minute, the battlefield was peppered with the sound of rapid double shots, followed by dozens of Consu puffing out as the explosive charges strained their internal organs against the insides of their carapaces. It sounded like popcorn popping. I glanced over at Viveros. She was emotionlessly sighting and shooting. Watson was firing and grinning like a boy who just won a stuffed animal at the state farm BB shoot.

  Uh oh—sent Viveros. We're spotted get down—

  "What?" Watson said, and poked his head up. I grabbed him and pulled him down as the rockets slammed into the boulders we'd been using for cover. We were pelted with newly formed gravel. I looked up just in time to see a chunk of boulder the size of a bowling ball twirling madly down toward my skull. I swatted at it without thinking; the suit went hard down the length of my arm and the chunk flew off like a lazy softball. My arm ached; in my other life I'd be the proud owner of three new, short, likely terribly misaligned arm bones. I wouldn't be doing that again.

  "Holy shit, that was close," said Watson.

  "Shut up," I said, and sent to Viveros. What now?—

  Hold tight—she sent and took her multipurpose tool off her belt. She ordered it into a mirror, then used it to peek over the edge of her boulder. Six no seven on their way up—

  There was a sudden krump close by. Make that five—she corrected, and closed up her tool. Set for grenades then follow up then we move—

  I nodded, Watson grinned, and when Viveros sent Go—we all pumped grenades over the boulders. I counted three each; after nine explosions I exhaled, prayed, popped up and saw the remains of one Consu, another dragging itself dazedly away from our position, and two scrambling for cover. Viveros got the wounded one; Watson and I each plugged one of the other two.

  "Welcome to the party, you shitheads!" Watson whooped, and then bobbled up exultantly over his boulder just in time to get it in the face from the fifth Consu, who had gotten ahead of the grenades and had stayed low while we mopped up its friends. The Consu leveled a barrel at Watson's nose and fired; Watson's face cratered inward and then outward as a geyser of SmartBlood and tissue that used to be Watson's head sprayed over the Consu. Watson's unitard, designed to stiffen when hit by projectiles, did just that when the shot hit the back of his hood, pressuring the shot, the SmartBlood, and bits of skull, brain and BrainPal back out the only readily available opening.

  Watson didn't know what hit him. The last thing he sent through his BrainPal channel was a wash of emotion that could best be described as disoriented puzzlement, the mild surprise of someone who knows he's seeing something he wasn't expecting but hasn't figured out what it is. Then his connection was cut off, like a data feed suddenly unexpectedly shut down.

  The Consu who shot Watson sang as it blew his face apart. I had left my translation circuit on, and so I saw Watson's death subtitled, the word "Redeemed" repeated over and over while bits of his head formed weeping droplets on the Consu's thorax. I screamed and fired. The Consu slammed backward and then its body exploded as bullet after bullet dug under its thoracic plate and detonated. I figured I wasted thirty rounds on an already dead Consu before I stopped.

  "Perry," Viveros said, switching back to her voice to snap me out of whatever I was in. "More on the way. Time to move. Let's go."

  "What about Watson?" I asked.

  "Leave him," Viveros said. "He's dead and you're not and there's no one to mourn him out here anyway. We'll come for the body later. Let's go. Let's stay alive."

  We won. The double-bullet rifle technique thinned out the Consu herd by a substantial amount before they got wise and moved to switch tactics, falling back to launch rocket attacks rather than to make another frontal assault. After several hours of this the Consu fell back completely and fired up their shield, leaving behind a squad to ritually commit suicide, signaling the Consu's acceptance of their loss. After they had plunged their ceremonial knives into their brain cavity, all that was left was to collect our dead and what wounded had been left in the field.

  For the day, 2nd Platoon came through pretty well; two dead, including Watson, and four wounded, only one seriously. She'd be spending the next month growing back her lower intestine, while the other three would be up and back on duty in a matter of days. All things considered, things could have been worse. A Consu armored hovercraft had rammed its way toward 4th Platoon, Company C's position and detonated, taking sixteen of them with it, including the platoon commander and two squad leaders, and wounding much of the rest of the platoon. If 4th Platoon's lieutenant weren't already dead, I'd suspect he'd be wishing he were after a clusterfuck like that.

  After we received an all clear from Lieutenant Keyes, I went back to get Watson. A group of eight-legged scavengers was already at him; I shot one and that encouraged the rest to disperse. They had made impressive progress on him in a short amount of time; I was sort of darkly surprised at how much less someone weighed after you subtracted his head and much of his soft tissues. I put what was left of him in a fireman's carry and started on the couple of klicks to the temporary morgue. I had to stop and vomit only once.

  Alan spied me on the way in. "Need any help?" he said, coming up alongside me.

  "I'm fine," I said. "He's not very heavy anymore."

  "Who is it?" Alan said.

  "Watson," I said.

  "Oh, him," Alan said, and grimaced. "Well, I'm sure someone somewhere will miss him."

  "Try not to get all weepy on me," I said. "How did you do today?"

  "Not bad," Alan said. "I kept my head down most of the time, poked my rifle up every now and then and shot a few rounds in the general direction of the enemy. I may have hit something. I don't know."

  "Did you listen to the death c
hant before the battle?"

  "Of course I did," Alan said. "It sounded like two freight trains mating. It's not something you can choose not to hear."

  "No," I said. "I mean, did you get a translation? Did you listen to what it was saying?"

  "Yeah," Alan said. "I'm not sure I like their plan for converting us to their religion, seeing as it involves dying and all."

  "The CDF seems to think it's just ritual. Like it's a prayer they recite because it's something they've always done," I said.

  "What do you think?" Alan asked.

  I jerked my head back to indicate Watson. "The Consu who killed him was screaming, 'Redeemed, redeemed,' as loud as he could, and I'm sure he'd have done the same while he was gutting me. I'm thinking the CDF is underestimating what's going on here. I think the reason the Consu don't come back after one of these battles isn't because they think they've lost. I don't think this battle is really about winning or losing. By their lights, this planet is now consecrated by blood. I think they think they own it now."

  "Then why don't they occupy it?"

  "Maybe it's not time," I said. "Maybe they have to wait until some sort of Armageddon. But my point is, I don't think the CDF knows whether the Consu consider this their property now or not. I think somewhere down the line, they're going to be mightily surprised."

  "Okay, I'll buy that," Alan said. "Every military I've ever heard of has a history of smugness. But what do you propose to do about it?"

  "Shit, Alan, I haven't the slightest idea," I said. "Other than to try to be long dead when it happens."

  "On an entirely different, less depressing subject," Alan said, "good job thinking up the firing solution for the battle. Some of us were really getting pissed off that we'd shoot those bastards and they'd just get up and keep coming. You're going to get your drinks bought for you for the next couple of weeks."

  "We don't pay for drinks," I said. "This is an all-expenses-paid tour of hell, if you'll recall."