Old Man's War Universe: Short Stories Read online

  Harry looked over to Schmidt. Schmidt looked at him with something akin to raw terror on his face. It took Harry a minute to figure out why.

  Oh, right, Harry thought to himself. I’m supposed to lose.

  Harry sighed and stopped juicing the Korban, letting the leg go. The Korban, still in pain, eventually sat up and looked at Harry, with a look that Harry could only imagine was complete confusion. Harry walked over and knelt down into the Korban’s face.

  “You have no idea how much it kills me to do this,” Harry said, reached out to the Korban’s face and made a grabbing motion. Then he stuck his thumb out from between his index and middle fingers and showed it to the Korban. The Korban stared at him, non-comprehending.

  “Look,” Harry said. “I got your nose.“

  The Korban swung a haymaker straight into Harry’s temple, and the lights went out.

  * * *

  “That’s really not the way we expected you to do that,” Schmidt said.

  From his bunk, Harry tried very hard not to grimace. Facial expressions hurt. “You asked me to keep it close, and you asked me to lose,” he said, moving his jaw as little as humanly possible.

  “Yes,” Schmidt said. “But we didn’t think you’d make it so obvious.”

  “Surprise,” Harry said.

  “The good news is, it actually worked for us,” Schmidt said. “The Korban leader—who, incidentally, you caused to get drenched in fruit juice when you kicked your competitor into the stands—wanted to know why you let your competition win. We had to admit we told you to lose. He was delighted to hear it.”

  “He had money on the other guy,” Harry said.

  “No,” Schmidt said. “Well, probably, but that’s not the point. The point was he said that your willingness to follow orders even when winning was in your grasp showed that you could make a short-term sacrifices for long-term goals. He saw you almost winning as making a point about CDF strength, and then losing as making a point about the value of discipline. And since he seemed quite impressed with both, we said those were indeed exactly the points we had wanted to make.”

  “So you have brains after all,” Harry said.

  “We rolled with the changes,” Schmidt said. “And it looks like we’ll come out of this with an agreement after all. You saved the negotiations, Harry. Thank you.”

  “You’re welcome,” Harry said. “And I’ll bill you.”

  “I have a message for you from Ambassador Abumwe,” Schmidt said.

  “I can’t wait,” Harry said.

  “She thanks you for your service and wants you to know she’s recommended you for commendation. She also says that never wants to see you again. Your stunt worked this time but it could just as easily have backfired. All things considered, you’re not worth the trouble.”

  “She’s welcome,” Harry said.

  “It’s nothing personal,” Schmidt said.

  “Of course not,” Harry said. “But I like the idea that I had choreographed having the crap kicked out of me down to that level of detail. Makes me feel like a genius, it does.”

  “How do you feel?” Schmidt said. “Are you okay?”

  “You keep asking that same very dumb question,” Harry said. “Please, stop asking it.”

  “Sorry,” Schmidt said. He turned to go, and then stopped. “It does occur to me that we know the answer to another question, though.”

  “What’s that?” Harry said.

  “How well you can take a punch,” Schmidt said.

  Harry smiled, and then grimaced. “God, Hart, don’t make me smile,” he said.

  “Sorry,” Schmidt said again.

  “How well do you take a punch, Hart?” Harry asked.

  “If this is what it takes to find out, Harry,” Schmidt said, “I don’t want to know.“

  “See,” Harry said. “I told you you were soft.“

  Schmidt grinned and left.

  - end -

  Questions for a Soldier

  John Scalzi

  Questions for a Soldier

  Copyright © 2005 by John Scalzi.

  All rights reserved.

  Cover and interior illustrations

  Copyright © 2005 by Bob Eggleton.

  All rights reserved.

  Electronic Edition

  ISBN

  9781596064683

  Subterranean Press

  PO Box 190106

  Burton, MI 48519

  www.subterraneanpress.com

  COLONIAL DEFENSE FORCES

  Colonial Outreach Command

  CDF Public Relations, 3rd Platoon

  Colonel Wm. Schafer, Cmdr

  DATE:

  238.05.15 SUSN

  (see linked table for local equivalents)

  FILE NUMBER:

  COC/CPR-OOI-3793/16(N)

  FILE TITLE: Public Speech, CDF Capt. John Perry, Huckleberry Colony, 238.05.10

  FILE DESCRIPTION:

  Capt. Perry meets with citizens of village of New Goa on Huckleberry Colony; answers questions about life of CDF servicepersons and other queries.

  PRINCIPAL SPEAKERS:

  Capt. Perry, New Goa administrator Rohit Kulkarni,

  seven New Goa villagers

  CLASSIFICATION:

  Non-classified

  REDACTION:

  None. Editing for clarity: Standard voice to text algorithms

  RECORDED BY:

  Capt. John Perry, unedited BrainPal audio feed

  FILED BY:

  Cpl. John Scalzi, Acting Librarian, CDFPR 3rd Platoon

  CC: Col. Wm. Schafer

  ——TRANSCRIPT BEGINS 238.05.10 03:05:34

  (21:30:15 LOCAL)——

  ROHIT KULKARNI:

  Please, please, everyone. I see Naren Bhatia setting down his dessert, so I truly know that it is time to move on to the next portion of the evening. (laughter) You have licked that bowl clean, Naren? (laughter) My Anjali will be pleased to know her contribution to the evening met with such success.

  It is not often that our simple village receives a visitor of such esteem as the man I have the honor of presenting to you this evening. As with all of the colonies in the Union, Huckleberry and New Goa remember with horror of the Rraey invasion of Coral, one of the oldest and most precious of our colonies. The Rraey slaughtered all of the colonists there, more than 100,000 lives ended. It was one of the darkest hours in the history of the Union.

  But the Rraey did not hold Coral for long, thanks in part to the efforts of our guest, whose courageous actions in battle caused him to be awarded the Silver Star and the Distinguished Service Cross, as well as the first Order of Coral award. He is here tonight to share some of his experiences as part of the Colonial Defense Forces that keep all of the colonies safe, including our own. With great honor, I present to you Captain John Perry.

  (applause)

  CAPT. PERRY:

  Thank you, and thank you, Administrator Kulkarni. It was your wife who made tonight’s dessert? No wonder you look so happy. (laughter) The whole dinner was wonderful, really. I don’t think I’ve eaten this well in years.

  KULKARNI:

  I don’t doubt you say that everywhere you go.

  PERRY:

  Well, I do, but this time I mean it. (laughter) And I’ve been having a wonderful visit here in New Goa. I have to warn you all that in addition to doing this goodwill tour of the Colonies for the CDF, I also have an ulterior motive: I’m checking out colonies for when I retire. So get a good look at this face; you might have to get used to it one day. (laughter)

  KULKARNI:

  We would welcome you, Captain.

  PERRY:

  You say that now, Administrator. (laughter) I do have to say that one advantage of settling in New Goa is that although I come from a different culture than you back on Earth, we do share a common language, or at least share one common language. Before I came to Huckleberry, I was on Shaw Colony, which was settled by Norwegians. I had to use an interpreter while I was there. I
think I accidentally declared war on them at least once. (laughter) There is much less of a chance of that here.

  Now, my understanding is that I’m supposed to stand up here and lecture you all on how the Colonial Defense Forces are working to protect you from the rest of the universe, but I have to say that I did that a couple of times and then I got really bored of hearing my own voice. And everywhere I go, people have questions that they want to ask. So if it’s all right with you, I’m going to suggest we skip whatever bad speech I would give you and go right to the questions. (pause) Since I see about two dozen hands, I’m guessing that means it’s okay with you. (laughter) Yes, ma’am. You here in the front.

  VILLAGER #1:

  Are you married? (Uproarious laughter) Not for me! For my niece. She is about your age.

  PERRY:

  Well, thank you. I’m deeply flattered, although I’m sure your niece would be surprised to find out you’re trying to get her hitched.

  VILLAGER #1:

  Not at all! She’s here in the room! Aparna! Stand up! (more laughter)

  PERRY:

  Hello, Aparna. Please, sit. You’re safe from me. (laughter) To answer the question, I’m not married. But it’s also against CDF policy for soldiers to be married. We ship all over this part of the universe and it would be very difficult to maintain a marriage. In fact, when we sign up for service back on Earth, we’re legally declared dead, which ends any marriage we were in. Some of the people I served with were thankful for that, (laughter) but I don’t think it would have made me happy. I was married before I signed up, but my wife passed away before I left. We had been married for over 40 years.

  Ah, that look. I get that every time I mention something relating to my age. Ladies and gentlemen, I’m 77 years old. So, ma’am, not only am I too old for Aparna, I’m too old for you. (laughter) One of the advantages of joining the CDF is that they give you a new body. I’m older than I look. Yes, sir.

  VILLAGER #2:

  Why are you green?

  PERRY:

  The food was so good, I ate too much. (laughter) The real answer is that these bodies we’re given are engineered to use chlorophyll to give us an extra energy boost, which we need to help maintain other improvements in this body, like more and denser muscles, faster reflexes and other things. We can also go longer without food than most people, although we don’t like it any more than anyone else.

  I can see some of you wish that you could have an improved body, but I want to make you aware of the tradeoffs. First, this body is so modified that it can’t reproduce. That’s definitely not an advantage on a colony. Second, the only way to get a body like this is join the CDF, where you’ll have to serve for ten years. In those ten years eight out of ten of the people you joined with will have died in service. I know for myself that of the people I met and became friends with when I joined up, only two are still alive. Look around you in this room and imagine that sort of mortality rate among the people you love and care for. So you have to ask yourself if the new body is really worth it. Yes, sir. Yes, you.

  VILLAGER #3:

  I am sure you have encountered many alien species. Is there one encounter that is more vivid than others?

  PERRY:

  Well, there was the time I was eaten. (audible muttering)

  VILLAGER #3:

  I believe we would all like to hear about that.

  PERRY:

  All right. It was about a month before the Battle of Coral, and I and my platoon were sent to an unexplored planet to find a colonial survey team that had disappeared. The first tip-off that something was strange about the planet should have been that it looked gorgeous — perfect for human habitation — but it was completely uninhabited. That’s strange because if a planet is perfect for us, it’s perfect for a couple hundred other intelligent species, too. And that means it should have been colonized by then. It’s like that old joke: A doctor and economist are walking down the street when the doctor looks down and says “there’s a $20 bill on the sidewalk.” And the economist says “Impossible! If it were a $20 bill, someone would have picked it up by now!” This planet was a $20 bill on the street if there ever was one. It was impossible that it would be uninhabited. And yet it seemed to be. So they sent out a survey team, and after a couple of days they disappeared.

  We landed at the coordinates where the survey team had been, and there was no sign the survey team had ever been there — I mean, nothing: No portable buildings, no vehicle tracks or hover pressure damage, no litter. And no bodies. It was as if they simply hadn’t landed. All we saw was a long, rolling plain of what looked like some form of grass. It was very pretty, actually. It was like the universe’s biggest front lawn. It was very peaceful, at least until the worms came out of it.

  Have any of you ever seen a blue whale? You’ve seen pictures at least. Imagine something of that size coming up out of the ground right underneath you. We felt a rumbling before they breached the surface — but not as much as you might expect — and then these huge things were all around us. I remember feeling the ground rumbling and then looking over to see one of my platoonmates fall. As she was trying to stand up, the ground lifted up under her. One of those worms had tunneled under her and had opened its mouth just as it was coming up, so about two or three meters of ground on every side of her was already in the thing’s mouth. She was reaching up as the mouth shut on her. I saw her arm and hand dangling out as the worm slid back into the ground, waving like a parody of Moby Dick.

  I and some of my squadmates started running back for the landing craft when one of the worms surfaced behind us and literally jumped into the air to come down on where we were. My friend Alan Rosenthal was directly in front of me, so I shoved him forward as hard as I could. It worked, because the thing missed Alan. But it got me. It was like a big fleshy wall came down on top of my head, and then I was tumbling ass over head — excuse the language — in this thing’s mouth, along with about a ton of dirt. After a minute of this I felt the dirt clearing behind me. The worm was starting to swallow what was in its mouth, dragging me down its throat.

  My Empee — that’s the rifle we use — was somewhere in the worm’s mouth with me, but I didn’t keep a grip on it and it was pitch black in there, so it was useless to me. I tried grabbing onto the side of the mouth to keep from sliding back but I had no traction. Finally I took the combat knife from my belt and jammed it into what I guessed was its lower jaw. That kept me from sliding long enough for me to get out my multi-purpose tool. I don’t know if any of you know about this; it’s a block of nanobots that can take the form of just about any sort of thing you need. It’s like the Swiss army knife of the gods. I ordered it into a barbed hook and jammed it in right next to the combat knife just as worm jostled the knife free. The knife slipped out of my hand and down the worm’s throat, and I hoped the worm would choke on it. No such luck, though.

  I wasn’t in danger of being digested at that minute, but it didn’t mean I wasn’t in trouble. If the worm opened its mouth, there would be a new avalanche of dirt coming in on me, and that could knock me off my hook and down its throat. No matter what, every second I was in the worm was another second I was moving away from my platoonmates. If the worm went deep into the ground, even if I managed to kill it, I would be buried alive. So I had to kill the thing, and kill it fast. I had two grenades on me, so after I got as secure a grip on my hook as I could with my left hand, I activated the grenades and threw them behind me, down the worm’s gullet.

  They didn’t go down as far as I hoped — I was struck in the foot with shrapnel as they detonated — but they did the job, because the worm’s mouth immediately started filling with blood, and the thing stopped moving forward and began twitching. After a few minutes of this the worm stopped moving altogether. I waited a few more minutes to make sure it really was dead, and then I endured the worst part of the whole ordeal: I had to actually force myself down the worm’s throat to get my Empee. Because you don’t leave your rifle behi
nd if you can help it.

  KULKARNI:

  How did you eventually get out of the creature’s mouth?

  PERRY:

  It involved a lot of digging. (laughter) But my experience explained why this world, which seemed so suitable for intelligent life, was in fact entirely clear of any species we’d met before. Any creatures who landed on its surface were turned into worm food in a matter of hours or even minutes. Those vast plains were the worm’s roaming grounds — and not only that, they seemed designed that way. Remember the “grass” I told you about? Within an hour of our worm attacks, that “grass” had completely covered where the worms had come out of the ground. Visually, it was like the attack had never happened. We did sonic tests — unmanned tests — and the ground underneath the plains was hardly packed at all, even hundreds of feet down. It was like topsoil. Which made it easy for the worms. It was like they were swimming in the earth. And these plains covered almost all of the landmass of the planet. Which our scientists said didn’t make sense, because the planet was tectonically active. It should have had mountains and rock formations like any other planet.