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 chant 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."

"Well, if we did, you would," Alan said.

"I'm sure it's not that big of a deal," I said, and then noticed that Alan had stopped and was standing at attention. I looked up and saw Viveros, Lieutenant Keyes, and some officer I didn't recognize striding toward me. I stopped and waited for them to reach me.

"Perry," Lieutenant Keyes said.

"Lieutenant," I said. "Please forgive the lack of salute, sir. I'm carrying a dead body to the morgue."

"That's where they go," Keyes said, and motioned at the corpse. "Who is that?"

"Watson, sir."

"Oh, him," Keyes said. "That didn't take very long, did it."

"He was excitable, sir," I said.

"I suppose he was," Keyes said. "Well, anyway. Perry, this is Lieutenant Colonel Rybicki, the 233rd's commander."

"Sir," I said. "Sorry about not saluting."

"Yes, dead body, I know," said Rybicki. "Son, I just wanted to congratulate you on your firing solution today. You saved a lot of time and lives. Those Consu bastards keep switching things up on us. Those personal shields were a new touch and they were giving us a hell of a lot of trouble there. I'm putting you in for a commendation, Private. What do you think about that?"

"Thank you, sir," I said. "But I'm sure someone else would have figured it out eventually."

"Probably, but you figured it out first, and that counts for something."

"Yes, sir."

"When we get back to the Modesto, I hope you'll let an old infantryman buy you a drink, son."

"I'd like that, sir," I said. I saw Alan smirk in the background.

"Well, then. Congratulations again." Rybicki motioned at Watson. "And sorry about your friend."

"Thank you, sir." Alan saluted for the both of us. Rybicki saluted back, and wheeled off, followed by Keyes. Viveros turned back to me and Alan.

"You seem amused," Viveros said to me.

"I was just thinking that it's been about fifty years since anyone called me 'son,'" I said.

Viveros smiled, and indicated Watson. "You know where you're taking him?" she asked.

"Morgue's just over that ridge," I said. "I'm going to drop off Watson and then I'd like to catch the first transport back to the Modesto, if that's okay."

"Shit, Perry," Viveros said. "You're the hero of the day. You can do anything you want." She turned to go.

"Hey, Viveros," I said. "Is it always like this?"

She turned back. "Is what always like this?"

"This," I said. "War. Battles. Fighting."

"What?" Viveros said, and then snorted. "Hell, no, Perry. Today was a cakewalk. This is as easy as it gets." And then she trotted off, highly amused.

That was how my first battle went. My era of war had begun.

Maggie was the first of the Old Farts to die.

She died in the upper atmosphere of a colony named Temperance, an irony because like most colonies with a heavy mining industry, it was sprinkled liberally with bars and brothels. Temperance's metal-laden crust had made it a hard colony to get and a difficult one for humans to keep—the permanent CDF presence there was three times the usual Colonial complement, and they were always sending additional troops to back them up. Maggie's ship, the Dayton, caught one of these assignments when Ohu forces dropped into Temperance space and salted an army's worth of drone warriors onto the surface of the planet.

Maggie's platoon was supposed to be part of the effort to take back an aluminum mine one hundred klicks out of Murphy, Temperance's main port. They never made it to the ground. On the way down, her troop transport hull was struck by an Ohu missile. It tore open the hull and sucked several soldiers into space, including Maggie. Most of these soldiers died instantly from the force of the impact or by chunks of the hull tearing into their bodies.

Maggie wasn't one of them. She was sucked out into the space above Temperance fully conscious, her combat unitard automatically closing around her face to keep the air from vomiting out of her lungs. Maggie immediately messaged to her squad and platoon leader. What was left of her squad leader was flapping about in his descent harness. Her platoon leader wasn't much more help, but he wasn't to blame. The troopship was not equipped for space rescue and was in any event gravely damaged and limping, under fire, toward the closest CDF ship to discharge its surviving passengers.

A message to the Dayton itself was likewise fruitless; the Dayton was exchanging fire with several Ohu ships and could not dispatch rescue. Nor could any other ship. In nonbattle situations she was already too small a target, too far down Temperance's gravity well and too close to Temperance's atmosphere for anything but the most heroic retrieval attempts. In a pitched battle situation, she was already dead.