Other than eating chow, sleeping, sponge bathing, reading, and speculating on the deviant behavior of others, for the next five hundred days we cleaned weapons, broke them apart, and cleaned them again until we were afraid we’d rub them down into useless metal slivers.

We did calisthenics in the training bays. We double-timed laps around the outer-perimeter corridors like hamsters in an interplanetary wheel. We moved crates and keyed letters into Chipboards that we hoped someone would read someday. We maneuvered in units small and large. We took target practice on virtual and live-fire ranges.

And all the while we tried to forget what we were preparing for.

One of those attempts to forget became my third court-martial offense.

It began innocently. Everyone, except General Cobb who spent his so-called off hours prowling the ship in search of ways to make his troops’ lives better, got one day off duty out of every ten. You might wonder why bother, sealed up with the same ten thousand others in a taupe-walled tin can.

But that free day became the cherry on everybody’s sundae. First, you could wear civvies. Everyone had been permitted to bring one change of civilian clothing. Second, you could sleep until noon if you chose. Third, you could play. Some soldiers formed bands, mixing everything from bagpipes to balalaikas. Others went to the holos. One of the teaching classrooms had a killer setup and it was given over to recreation half of every day. The cooks even took turns making free popcorn, theater-style.

I always went to the holos. Not for the shows, though the ship had every title imaginable. I begged Munchkin to clue me when the world’s best dropship pilot scheduled her free days, men I bartered desserts and extra duty like a rug merchant until my schedule matched Pooh’s. Pooh loved holos. At least, she was always there when I turned up.

It took me weeks to figure out that Pooh and Munchkin planned Pooh’s schedule to match mine, anyway. Women think men are idiots. They’re right.

Pooh hailed from western Wyoming. Her civvies were a plaid shirt and jeans that fit either too tight or just tight enough, depending on one’s perspective.

No nonfraternization reg restricted one’s perspective, nor how good an officer could smell. On that day Pooh’s jeans fit indecently, and she smelled of lilac.

“I’ve seen this one already. I’m skipping.” She pointed at the bulkhead holo poster.

I had been aching to see it for weeks. “Me too.”

She ducked her head toward her popcorn bag and plucked a kernel out with her moist tongue tip. “Gravity’s less in the storage bays at the ship’s axis. I thought I might go try it.”

“Want company?”

“C’mon.” She waved her hand as I followed her jeans to the elevator tube.

The munitions bays were always populated as the Space Force armorers checked and rechecked the millions of pounds of precision-guided munitions that Hope would rain down from her orbit around Ganymede to support us. Similarly active were the vehicle bays where mechanics maintained the GOATs.

Deepest inside were stored the upships. They were packed away because they would only fetch us back up to Hope from Ganymede if and when we had won. Rumor had it they only held five thousand, total. That meant the planners calculated that one of every two of us would buy the farm on Ganymede. I preferred to calculate the perfection of Pooh’s jeans.

The provisions-storage areas were dimly lit and deserted.

Hope’s core rotated more slowly than the inhabited, perimeter decks. The resultant reduced gravity caused my first step to bounce me off the deck as I stepped from the elevator into a freight-palette maze. I read a label. One of our zillion palettes of epoxy that had displaced fresh fruit.

Ahead of me, Pooh hopped and touched fingers to the twelve-foot ceiling. Her giggle echoed in the emptiness. She lost her balance on the way down, spun to face me, and I caught her at the waist

The right thing was to set her down and let her go. Fraternization was a court-martial offense in combat, and we had begun drawing combat pay when the first booster lit at Canaveral.

Her lips and mine were eight inches apart, and the warmth of her breath feathered my cheek. She closed her eyes, and I forgot about the right thing.

The most wonderful thirty minutes of my life later, the roar of my own breath in my ears was interrupted.

“Jason? What are you doingT The words exploded an electric shock up my spine. I knew General Cobb’s voice without opening my eyes, even here where no one should be. The best commanders inspect what the troops ignore.

What to answer? Practicing mouth-to-mouth? Pooh’s mouth was in no position to improve my respiration.

I opened one eye and saw General Cobb standing hands on hips, jaw hung open. I tried to straighten to attention and screen Pooh from view but tripped on my pants. I tried to salute but tangled my hand in her bra.

General Cobb averted his eyes. “Don’t answer. I’m old, but I remember what you’re doing.”

Pooh and I tucked ourselves back into our clothing, then he turned and faced us. I knew he would recognize Pooh as an officer. As Number One Dropship pilot, his life and that of all of us in Headquarters Battalion would be in her hands. Which, at the moment, she was wiping on her jeans to obscure certain evidence.

I squeezed one eye shut. “Sir—”

General Cobb held up his palm and sighed. “You two aren’t the first.” He shook his head. “Stuff ten thousand kids with maybe two years to live in a steel tube. Then pretend they aren’t human. Sex won’t kill us, but time wasted hiding it might.”

He turned away. “Carry on.”

The next day regs changed. Cabin hatches could be closed during social hour with no questions asked. Rumors spread that even marriage might not be questioned.

One hatch that closed immediately was to the commodore’s cabin. I never saw Metzger or Munchkin anymore except when I guarded a staff meeting he attended and when Munchkin and I trained together.

At sixty DTD, or days-to-drop, we had an early-morning University-of-Hibble class in Slug biology. Munchkin and I sat together as gunner and her loader.

The lecturer, Dr. Zhou, held captain rank, but she was just a cryp. Short for cryptozoologist. “Pseudocephalo-pod physical construction is barely more complex than the amoebae under your high-school-biology microscope. The lone specimen lacked neural structures consistent with independent thought. Socially, Slug society may resemble a single organism.”

On a high-school-science trip into the Rockies, I saw the world’s largest single living thing, an aspen grove that looked like a thousand separate trees. It was centuries old when the Slugs killed it.

Howard Hibble chimed in. “Expect perfect coordination among individual enemy soldiers, directed by a hive intelligence.”

Someone asked, “What will that intelligence tell them to do?”

Howard shrugged. “To behave like perfect soldiers. We’ll learn as we go.”

I swallowed. Sixty days remained before school would be in. Lots of us would learn only how to die. The day before, somebody leaked onto the ship’s net a Pentagon study made before we left. It ranked GEF military-occupational-specialty categories for combat survivability in the coming action. The release infuriated the chain of command, and the study quickly became known as “The Numbers.”

Hope’s stay-in-orbit crew had the longest life expectancy, followed by the dropship pilots like Pooh. The flyers would stay at arm’s length from the fight.

Projected lifetimes for other MOS shrank after that. Shortest were the commanding general’s personal security detachment. Not only did the theater commander in chief have an invisible bull’s-eye painted on his butt, the soldiers assigned to protect him were expected to throw themselves in front of it to save him. According to the Earthside computers, once a firelight started, Munchkin and I each had eleven seconds to live.