Hugh Howey - Machine Learning

Bah. Listen to me. An hour back in Gunnery, and I am giving speeches meant to clench loins and rush boys into battle. Already pretending to be brave. When what I really need is a strong drink and to meet those among my new bunkmates who gamble recklessly.

TO: Third Rank Gunner Hyk

FROM: First Rank Gunner Kur

You’ve only been gone two days, and I can still nose your stink in the bathroom! I have other insults prepared, but now is not the time for banter. I need a favor. You know your old bunk? I’m sleeping in it. Why? Because I’m sexing my new bunkmate every night! You are envious, I know. Of her! Ha!

Only one problem: She’s crazier than a hogtied rampus-mare. I’ve stopped her from killing herself two more times, and all she does is sit around, slack-jawed and oozing on herself. I’m worried if she manages to kill herself again, they won’t bring her back. Or worse: that they’ll bring you back!

Har. Anyway, lend me a tentacle and I’ll forget about the fifty you owe me. Can you find out what’s eating at my sex-mate? I’d like to know before we hit the ground. Handing this beautiful creature a gun feels like a bad idea.

Fuck off,

Kur

It is six days to planetfall, and instead of working on my aim with the new and improved double-barreled GAW13s, here I am in the smelly hall of records digging through files. I am looking for a girl who I’m not even sexing on behalf of a former bunkmate who little loves me. My mother would say the suckers on my tentacles have grown soft, and she would be right. Look at how little a fight I put up with the demotion to Gunnery. I would think myself spineless were it not for the invasion of Hemput III, where I got a damn fine look at my backbones before the lights went fully out.

I find the suicide girl’s records by looking up her bunk. Easy to do since I sleep in the thing. Mil. I do like that name. And so of course I imagine Kur sexing her. My brain loves torturing the rest of me.

I start a ship-to-ship file transfer to Kur’s terminal so he can pry on his own. Aware that Mil might be the one checking the terminal, I come up with an innocuous header for the message: Hey, Fart-Sac—The report you wanted. While the computer does its job, I scan the file for myself. I remember my transfer orders saying Mil was in Telecoms. Now I read that she was a terminal technician in the radio wing. Gad, I would kill myself too! But now our suicide girl has brains, and Kur is sexing her even more. I resolve to get out tonight and meet someone. Why was Kur not transferred instead of me?

Speaking of transfer, the ship-to-ship is taking forever. Less than an Earth cycle to planetfall, and the networks are as packed as a mess hall on garbum night. I decide to send myself a copy on the intership network, just in case. Besides, I have nothing to read. Sector 1’s written language is nothing like Sector 2’s. If you planted a bomb in Sector 2’s language and scattered the remains on a terminal screen, you would have Sector 1’s language. It’s no wonder this planet is always at war. My language instructor once said: No two people have ever battled that read each other’s poetry, and I believe that. It’s why we in Intelligence are told to avoid poetry at all costs. Learn, but do not empathize.

That should apply here as well, as I read up on Mil. I tell myself I’m doing a bunkmate a favor, but the truth is that I’m in love with a woman I have never met. A woman my former friend is most likely sexing at this very moment. A woman who seems to hate her life as much as I hate mine.

Second Squad, Gunner Troop 5, Sector 1, plays cards with some fucked-up rules. Quks are wild, but only if you have a five-tentacled Kik in your hand. And in a run, you can skip a number if all the cards on both sides are the same gender. They call this the “missing buck” play. What I’m missing is thirty-five credits, and it isn’t because of any difference in skill. It’s because I can’t keep these blasted rules straight.

“Two pair,” Urj says. He’s bluffing, and I wait for the player to his left to call him on it, but a card is drawn instead. This squad will have me broke before they get me killed.

“Urj says you were a liaison officer.”

It takes me a moment to realize I’m being spoken to. I’m trying to determine if my Quk is wild or not.

“Yes,” I tell the brawny woman across from me. Rov is her name. Hard to keep all the new eyestalks straight. “I worked in Intelligence on Warship Two.”

“Warship Two,” someone says with something like sympathy.

I take a sip of my bitter drink.

“Lot of transfers all of a sudden,” Urj, our squad leader, says. He aims a tentacle at Rov. “You were in Accounting, right?”

Rov waves in the affirmative.

“And I was in Water Reclamation until two weeks ago,” Bek says. We’re all waiting on him to play, but he doesn’t seem to be in a hurry. He has one tentacle curled protectively around an enviable pile of credits.

“I thought you all had been together a long time,” I say. I feel less like the new guy. It makes being down thirty-five creds even harder to bear. Unless these are ship-wide rules.

“Nah, they’re throwing everyone to Gunnery for this one,” Urj says. “Heard it from Sergeant Tul. Said it’s ‘All-Tentacles’ this go-around.”

I think back to the argument Bix and his superiors were having when I reported for duty. Seemed tense, but I figure the pressure is always greater on Warship 1. Taking the lead into battle is a heavy responsibility. Performances are judged against prior conquests, and there is a lot of open space between worlds in which to measure one another.

“So what’s this world like?” Rov asks. “If you were a liaison officer, you must’ve done a lot of reading up on the natives. You fluent?”

“Not for our landing sector,” I admit.

Rov looks disappointed.

“But I know quite a bit about the planet in general. From studying Sector Two.”

Urj squares his cards and rests them by his remaining credits. A chair squeaks as the player to my right settles back. All eyestalks are looking at me, and I realize these gunners aren’t curious so much as worried. We’ve had a few All-Tentacle raids in the past. Last time, Warship 5 was lost in orbit, taking all the vats onboard with it. A replacement ship had to be called up from the trailing fleet. Until everyone could be sorted and new bodies grown, there were men and women walking around on their last sets of lives.

“They write about us a lot,” I tell my squad mates. I can see their tentacles stiffen. Except for Bek, who ties three of his limbs into knots of worry. “I don’t mean us, exactly. I mean… their culture is full of doomsday musings. Raids from space are a particularly popular trope.”

“All races are full of doomsday musings,” Bek says. He looks to the others, is trying to comfort them more than himself. “We have our own stories of all this coming to an end. It’s fear of final death.”

“This is worse than most,” I say. “I can only really speak for Sector Two, but they think on little else. They spend more of their money on warfare than any other thing. We submitted a report to the Command Committee about this a while back—”

“Must be your report that has me back in Gunnery,” Rov says, her accusation flying across the table.

“And him too, don’t forget,” Bek points out, waving a tentacle at me.

“Hey, what’s wrong with being a gunner?” asks Urj, who has obviously never been anything but.

“Pipe down,” someone shouts from a bunkroom down the hall. Sounds like the sergeant. A hush settles, and eyestalks swivel guiltily toward the door. Someone makes a move at a pile of credits, but a tentacle slaps the thievery away.