John Scalzi - Old Man's War

"Don't let it go to your head, Private. You are still a dipshit. Just not a very big one."

"Of course, Master Sergeant."

"Good. And now, if you will excuse me. Sometimes you just gotta hit the road." Master Sergeant Ruiz saluted. Alan and I saluted back. Ruiz glanced at us both, offered a tight, tight smile, and then walked away without looking back.

"That man scares the shit out of me," Alan said.

"I don't know. I kind of like him."

"Of course you do. He thinks you're almost not a dipshit. That's a compliment in his world."

"Don't think I don't know it," I said. "Now all I have to do is live up to it."

"You'll manage," Alan said. "After all, you do still get to be a dipshit."

"That's comforting," I said. "At least I'll have company."

Alan grinned. The shuttle doors opened. We grabbed our stuff and went inside.

"I can take a shot," Watson said, sighting over his boulder. "Let me drill one of those things."

"No," said Viveros, our corporal. "Their shield is still up. You'd just be wasting ammo."

"This is bullshit," Watson said. "We've been here for hours. We're sitting here. They're sitting there. When their shield goes down, we're supposed to do what, walk over and start blasting at them? This isn't the fucking fourteenth century. We shouldn't make an appointment to start killing the other guy."

Viveros looked irritated. "Watson, you're not paid to think. So shut the fuck up and get ready. It's not going to be long now, anyway. There's only one thing left in their ritual before we get at it."

"Yeah? What's that?" Watson said.

"They're going to sing," Viveros said.

Watson smirked. "What are they going to sing? Show tunes?"

"No," Viveros said. "They're going to sing our deaths."

As if on cue, the massive, hemispherical shield enclosing the Consu encampment shimmered at the base. I adjusted my eyesight and focused down the several hundred meters across the field as a single Consu stepped through, the shield lightly sticking to its massive carapace until it moved far enough away for the electrostatic filaments to collapse back into the shield.

He was the third and final Consu who would emerge out of the shield before the battle. The first had appeared nearly twelve hours ago; a low-ranking grunt whose bellowing challenge served to formally signal the Consu's intent to battle. The low rank of the messenger was meant to convey the minimal regard in which our troops were held by the Consu, the idea being that if we had been really important, they would have sent a higher-up. None of our troops took offense; the messenger was always of low rank, regardless of opponent, and anyway, unless you are extraordinarily sensitive to Consu pheromones, they pretty much all look alike.

The second Consu emerged from behind the shield several hours later, bellowed like a herd of cows caught in a thresher, and then promptly exploded, pinkish blood and bits of his organs and carapace momentarily splashing against the Consu shield and sizzling lightly as they drizzled down to the ground. Apparently the Consu believed that if a single soldier was ritually prepared beforehand, its soul can be persuaded to reconnoiter the enemy for a set amount of time before moving on to wherever it is Consu souls go. Or something along that line. This is a signal honor, not lightly given. This seemed to me to be a fine way to lose your best soldiers in a hurry, but given that I was one of the enemy, it was hard to see the downside for us in the practice.

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.