Hugh Howey: Company

I turn off the shower as the heat starts to die down from boiling to mere scalding. My flesh is red. Steam rises off me as I leave the pod. Cricket is fast asleep on my bed; she wakes long enough to glance at me, make sure she isn’t missing anything, then goes back to sleep.

I rifle through my clothes, sniffing everything. All the same degree of mildly clean. It’s only now that I see the amber light flashing over my bunk. Damn. Message on the QT. I go up the ladder two rungs at a time and check the display. Three messages from NASA asking me to report back in about the SOS.

I key in the number 55 . Then I press through three screens of warnings before the entangled particles tickle their entangled twins back in Houston. Five by five is what someone used to say back in some other time to mean that everything is okay. Not sure why this is any more efficient than just saying OK. It probably has something to do with the state of Oklahoma. All their fault. Just like it’s Germany’s fault we have to say the number nine as “niner.” Everyone causes trouble. It’s not just me.

I turn the message alarm off and walk a big circle around the command module. Then another circle. Cricket wakes up below, realizes I’m gone, and arrives at the command module with two leaps, a grunt, and some kicking. She curls up on the blanket I leave under the dash for her and watches me pace.

I shake my arms like they’re still wet, like there’s something in them I need to get out, like those nerves a soldier feels before a big push out of the trenches. What the hell is wrong with me? A trickle of water runs down my breastbone, leaking from the porous rock I wear around my neck. I wipe this away, cross to the porthole, and watch the flashing light for a while. I turn to the HF, wondering what I would say if I picked it up. I turn back to the light.

This is worse than being completely alone.

I dream of my company that night. My old company. B Company.

Bravo, boys.

Take a bow.

Clap Company.

The kind of clap you don’t want to receive.

They cured that shit centuries ago, but they still called us the VD crew. Very Desperate. Veterans Disabled. Vaginas & Dicks. Vapor Dust. But my favorite: Verily Dead.

You need one company set aside for the glory runs and photo-ops. That’s not us. That would be the Alpha Company boys and girls. They think they’re the shit, because they get the milk runs. Might seem like they get the worst targets, the toughest assignments, but they’re the targets with all the intel, the battles we know we can win. A good chess player doesn’t send out the queen unless he knows she’s gonna take a couple pawns and not take a nick. So the top scorers, the squeaky clean, the square-cut jaws, the Aces and Champs, they get sent out with the best gear and the best air support and the best artillery crews and the biggest budgets, and they always get their buggers.

Charlie Company is for those you barely trust with a gun. The swinging barrels in a crowded dropship that have you ducking so fast you throw your back out.

That leaves Bravo Company, the expendables who know what they’re doing. When you’ve gotta hit something, and you don’t know its soft spot, you clap twice for Company B.

SIR YES SIR! SIR, MOTHERFUCKING RIGHT, SIR! SIR, AIM ME AND FIRE, SIR!

We think on our boots in Company B. We fight our way, bewildered, through the confusion and the haze. We don’t make it out the other side, not all of us. But somewhere, there’s the click of a pen, a proud signature, a father’s hand on a young man’s shoulder, and we reload. That’s the sound of our collective gun cocking, the click of that pen. That’s us racking another round in the chamber. Fire that boy out, hope you hit something. If he gets three before he goes home in his own bag, then the numbers look good. That father gets his medal. No one else to wear it. Goes in a frame above the mantel, and on holidays glasses are raised. First you raise the kids, and then you raise a toast.

I see it all in my dreams; I see it every night. The shrapnel seems to come from the earth. When the kinetic missiles hit, the ground vomits hot death. An eruption of soil, a cloud of screaming metal reaching out for the unfortunate, grabbing limbs and lives with abandon.

I see the boys and girls in my dreams. The brothers and sisters. I see the mangled. I see my best friend Hank, who hated when I peed in the shower, and he’s standing there with his trousers wet, looking at me, dumbfounded, like he’d shrug at it all if he had the limbs, like the cosmos would be a funny place if that was pee all over him.

“—just need a quick hand.”

Yes, we all need a hand. Titanium. Carbon fiber. Neurologically integrated. Five hundred and twelve degrees of hot and cold sensitivity. Better than the real thing. Everyone needs a hand. And a leg. And a new colon. I have half mine. I have a goddamn semicolon. I’m naked in class, and Mrs. Phister is asking me a question about grammar. I pee myself while the kids laugh. There are shower nozzles everywhere, shooting soil and shrapnel into the classroom. Kids laughing and dying. I remember the rule for semicolons; the sentences on both sides have to be full ones. Full people. Whole. Not many of them anymore.

“You listening?”

I’m listening. I’m paying attention. I have no idea what’s going on, but I’m paying attention. I take it all in slack-jawed, assuming the guy next to me knows what he’s doing. I’ll follow him. Someone else is following me.

“Digger? Hello? Soldier, you there?”

I wake up in my sleep sack. There’s a squawk of noise from the module above me. Cricket has her head across my chest, is snoring softly. As I blink away the nightmare, she stirs and peers at me from half-lidded eyes. “Shit,” I say. “Up. Gotta get up.”

I crawl out of the bag, even as Cricket tries to stop me, her head weighing a ton, a paw on my arm. I run naked to the ladder and scramble up, banging my knee and cursing. Snatching the mic, a little breathlessly and a lot desperately, I wheeze, “Yeah— Hello? Hey. I’m here. Wassup?”

I gulp and exhale and suck in a deep breath. Then I remember to add: “Over.”

“You okay?” Claire radios back.

“Me? Yeah.” Gulps of air. “I’m great. Whatcha need?”

“Shit. I woke you up, didn’t I? What’s the time here? I’m still on Houston time. Hell, I’m always on Houston time. You wanna check in with me in the morning? Your morning? Over.”

I could listen to her babble like this forever. I get ships passing through now and then, get to chat with traders and ore tug captains. They give me sports scores and war updates, which often sound like much the same thing. But this is someone right next door who is staying there, who goes to sleep and wakes up there. A mere hundred klicks away.

“No, I’m up,” I promise her. “How can I help?”

I’ll wear my good clothes this time. I rub my face, feeling the smooth skin. Sniff my armpit.

“I need you to give me a full sweep with your gwib. Trying to calibrate this bucket, but there’s so much debris here. Can’t clear the noise.”

Yes, the debris. That would be my fault. I did that. Sorry.

“Yeah, sure,” I say, disappointed that it’s something I can do from here. “No problem.” I go to my dash and power up the GWB for a full pulse. The lights dim a little while the massive capacitors two modules down charge up. I try to picture Claire standing over there, looking at her own console, watching and waiting. I see her in her sweatpants and tank top. Her hair in a ponytail. A few loose strands tucked behind her ear. Reddish hair. The color of rust.