Second Suicide: A Short Story (Kindle Single) (2 page)

Heh
. Funny how quickly I adopt
the other side’s arguments now that I’m here. Part of me always thought they
had it right. Or so I tell myself. The homesickness is draining away as I wait
for Supervisor
Bix
to finish his meeting. I imagine
that he requested me personally. He must have studied my files. My chest
inflates with the sudden pride of a new home, a new position, new people to
know and impress. It is like a new body, but I get to keep the scars.

I make
eyestalks with one of the receptionists in the waiting room. She smiles, and I
can see her neck splotch in embarrassment. “Here to see Supervisor
Bix
,” I say, tucking a tentacle into my waistband. “I work
in Intelligence.”

The
receptionist opens her mouth to reply when
Bix
comes
out, trailing his superiors. I introduce myself and offer a tentacle, which
Bix
declines. He seems confused. And then his eyestalks
straighten with awareness. “From Sector 2,” he says.

“That’s
right.” I puff out my gut. “Liaison
Hyk
.
Intelligence, Sector 2.”

Bix
waves a tentacle. “No, no.
You’ve been moved to Gunner. Go see
Yut
for your
assignment, I’m busy.”

The air is
out of me. I look to the receptionist, who diverts her stalk. “Ship’s Gunner?”
I ask with all the hope I can muster.

“Ground
Gunner,”
Bix
says. “See
Yut
.”

“But I’m a
man of learning,” I complain.

Someone
snickers, and I see that I’m a walking cliché.

“I haven’t
been a Gunner in lifetimes,” I add. “I’ll last five minutes down there.”

“Then you’ll
wake up here and be sent right back in,”
Bix
says. “I
suggest you die heroically, so the body doesn’t cost you.”

“But why was
I transferred?” I ask. “Was there something in my files—?”

Bix
swivels his eyestalks toward
me. “You’re on this ship to get someone else off it,” he says. “Nothing more.
You can show us what you’re made of”—I catch him looking at another
officer with something like worry—“ the next go-around.”

With this,
Bix
and these other men and women of high station lumber
off on their tentacles. The receptionist looks at me with pity for the barest
of moments, and then turns back to her work, leaving me to show myself out.

#

Gunnery is
in the rear of the ship, where all the other little ships are kept. It’s far
enough to take a shuttle, which allows me to sit in sullen silence. I watch the
stars go by. I pick out my old ship among the fleet. At least, I think it’s
mine. I wonder if my bodies are still on that ship. If the shuttle loses
pressure and I die right now, where will I wake up? And what would be the last
thing I remembered? It’s been a while since I saved my thoughts. I’ll have to
do that soon.

The
constellations are strange from this point in space, but I can pick out a few
stars we’ve visited. I have small souvenirs from a few. There are others that
exist only in the history books. Like
Celiad
, where
we learned the secret of the vats. Or ancient Osh, where our ancestors learned
how to store the memories of man into machine.

Our current
gun tech came from Aye-
Stad
, which I visited
countless cycles ago. Our ships are from
Rael
. And
thanks to the
K’Bk
, we no longer have disease, but I
remember how such things as plagues used to work. The races I study still
employ their immune systems, and the parallels between those systems and us as
a race are striking. For we have become what Earthlings would call white blood
cells. We remove foreign bodies from the cosmos. And every one leaves an
imprint, a bauble of tech or a new idea, all of which we neatly coil into our
lives, into our molecular structure. We are an immune system, and we are immune
to death. This last, alas, is our curse.

As the
shuttle takes us aft, I gaze through the cockpit past the pilot, and I imagine
Second Fleet off in the distance, those ships out there identical to our own.
Second Fleet trails us dutifully in case something awful happens. A backup full
of backups. With my sudden demotion, I wonder what it would be like to wake up
there, in the wake of my former home, with true mortality within tentacle’s
reach.

Thinking of
tentacles makes me realize mine have slimed up with thoughts of Gunnery. It has
been a long time since I landed on a planet with the first wave. Surely this is
temporary, this demotion. Didn’t
Bix
say so? It is
simply because of the short time until
planetfall
. It
is because of that silly woman with her second suicide. She is being punished,
and so they punish us both. It should have been
Kur
sent here, a true Gunner.

When was the
last time I fought with a first wave? Memories of bright and colorful worlds
swirl together. The one thing in common is the brown mud on my boots. Slogging
through battlefields. Noticing details like how the insides of sentient things
have much in common: the same blood that colors red in the air, the sacs for
breathing, the sacs for pumping blood through tubes, the tendrils for turning thoughts
into things.

The dead and
these worlds, they blur together like all colors into a dull brown. All I
remember in the end is that I did my job, shooting so I would not be shot. All
I remember in the beginning is the fear of death.

This is
something you get over. You live with the fear until you die for the first
time, and then you realize death isn’t the end. Not when you have another body
waiting in a vat with a backup of your recent recollections. It is painful,
though, both the death and the rebirth. Painful and expensive. Both are
deterrents meant to keep us on our guard. That’s my theory, anyway. That they
add the rebirth pain on purpose so you avoid dying the way a tentacle avoids a
fire.

I no longer
fear death, but still I try not to draw her attention. I like this me, however
imperfectly it fits. I like my small scars, even if I can’t recall where I got
them. I search my tentacle for an old wound as the shuttle banks around the ass
of my new ship, but some scars are memories that have faded, and some memories
go with scars that no longer exist.

A glimmer of
stars beyond my porthole distracts me from these sentimental thoughts. I think
I can see Second Fleet, those little pinpricks among pinpricks, back there
where true immortality lies. Though I fear a return to Gunnery, I know I will
go into battle invulnerable. Our fleet is invincible when
planetfall
comes. We march through civilizations the way a child splashes through puddles,
for in the distance lies our safety valve. One day, of course, we will face a
surprisingly resilient foe. Or we will drop our guards because a thousand
conquered worlds have left us bored with victory. Someone will vanquish us, but
we will awaken in bright new ships, and we will show this foe that we do not
die so easily.

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
not
Kur
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 2.”

“Warship 2,”
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-’round.”

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.