Chapter 12 Chapter Eleven
Thomas died from something he ate.
What he ate was so new that the colonial army hadn't named it yet; the place where he ate was a new colony planet, which didn't have a name yet, only an official code name: Colony Planet No. 622 in Ursa Major. (The colonists still use the names of the constellations on Earth for the same reason they continue to use the twenty-four-hour clock and the 365-day year: it is the easiest way to do so.) According to standard operating procedure, the new colony planet Every day, all the data compilations of the colony are sent to a remote-controlled jump ship, which jumps back to the Phoenix system, so that the colonial government can closely monitor the situation on the colony planet.
Colony 622 has been sending remote-controlled spacecraft since landing on the planet six months ago.Aside from the disputes, chaos, and melee that is inherent in the founding of every new colony, colony planet 622 reported nothing of note except for a native slime mold that kept clinging to everything .They show up on mechanical equipment, on computers, in barns, and even in the living quarters of the colony.Genetic analysis of the substance was sent back to the Phoenix system and someone was asked to invent a fungicide so the colonists could rid their hair of the bacteria.Immediately afterwards, the returned remote-controlled jump ship was empty, and no message came from the colony.
Thomas and Susan, who were stationed on the Tucson at the time, were sent to investigate.The Tucson attempted to call the colony from orbit, but was unable to make contact.Observations of the colonial buildings show no movement between the buildings - no people, no animals, nothing, but the buildings themselves do not appear to have been damaged in any way.Thomas' platoon was ordered to reconnaissance.
The entire colony was covered in slime, and in some places the slime mold was several centimeters thick.They dripped from the wires, completely covering the communications equipment.That's good news—it's possible that the slime mold is just damaging the device's ability to transmit.But in the blink of an eye, the optimism evaporated.Thomas's squad arrives at the barn to find all living things dead and deeply decayed by the slime mold's toil.Shortly thereafter, they found the colonists, in more or less the same state as cattle.Almost all of them (or recognizable humanoid remains) were lying in bed, or staying near the bed, except those with small families, who were usually collapsed in the children's room, or halfway to the children's room; The colonists who were on duty after twelve o'clock in the morning collapsed on or near their posts.Whatever it was that attacked, it came so quickly, at night, that the colonists had no time to react.
Thomas suggested moving one of the bodies back to the Colony Infirmary, where he could do a quick autopsy and perhaps see what had killed the colonists.His monitor agreed.Thomas and a comrade squatted next to a relatively intact corpse, Thomas grasped the arms of the corpse, and his comrade lifted the corpse's feet.Thomas told his comrades to lift on the count of three; as soon as he counted to two, the slime mold flew up from the corpse and slapped him wet in the face.Surprised, he opened his mouth and gasped.Boeria slid into his mouth and down his throat.
The remaining soldiers in Thomas' squad immediately ordered their respective combat uniforms to provide masks.It was too late, and seconds later, the slime mold jumped up from every crevice to attack, and the attack broke out almost simultaneously throughout the colony.Six other comrades in Thomas' platoon also found their mouths full of slime mold.
Thomas tried to pull the slime mold out of his mouth, but the bacteria slid down his throat, blocked his windpipe, forced its way into his lungs, and slid down his esophagus into his stomach.Through BrainPal, Thomas told his comrades that he should be carried back to the medical room, where they might be able to suck the bacteria out of his body and allow him to breathe again.The presence of intelligent blood meant they had almost fifteen minutes before Thomas' brain was permanently damaged.It was a good idea, and it probably worked, but the problem was that the slime mold started secreting digestive acid into Thomas' lungs, eating him alive from the inside.Immediately, Thomas' lungs began to dissolve, and within minutes he died of shock and asphyxiation, as did six other soldiers in the platoon.It was later agreed that this was also the fate of the dead colonists.
Thomas's platoon leader ordered Thomas and the other victims to stay, and the soldiers withdrew the transport boat and returned to the Tucson.The traffic boats were forbidden to dock, and the soldiers in the platoon were brought into the spaceship one by one, and subjected to high-intensity vacuum cleaning to kill all slime mold left on their clothes, followed by a thorough external and internal sterilization process .Every step is as painful as it sounds.
Subsequent unmanned reconnaissance revealed that there were no survivors anywhere on Colony 622.Those slime molds are intelligent enough to launch two well-coordinated separate attacks, and on top of that, they're virtually invulnerable to conventional weapons.Bullets, grenades, and missiles affect only a small fraction of the bacteria, leaving the rest intact; incendiary bombs burn the top layer of slime mold, leaving the layers below unscathed; energy beam weapons sweep through bacteria, but only Causes minimal surface damage.Research on the fungicide requested by the colonists was initiated, but was terminated after it was confirmed that slime molds were found throughout almost the entire planet.Finding another habitable planet is certainly not as expensive as exterminating slime molds planet-wide.
Thomas' death reminds us that in the outside world, we not only don't know what we're going to face, sometimes we can't imagine it at all.The mistake Thomas made was thinking that the enemy would be somewhat like us.He was wrong.He lost his life for it.
I'm starting to kind of understand what it's like to conquer the universe.
Restless moods breed on Jindal.There, we ambushed Jindal soldiers as they returned to their high castle, wounding their broad wings with laser beams and missiles, causing them to fall screaming down a two-kilometer cliff.In the air on Yoda Spiris, this emotion really started to affect me.In order to better grasp the balance, we kept jumping on the crater rocks of Yoda Spiris with energy packs that can hysteresis inertia, and played hide-and-seek with the spider-like Wendi.These people had a habit of throwing rocks down the mountain, carefully planning the trajectory to cause the most damage, so that the falling rocks were aimed at the Human Colony of Halford.I was on the verge of a nervous breakdown when I arrived at Kowa Banda.
This may be because of the Kovandu people.In many ways, they are clones of ourselves: they are bipedal mammals, they are extremely talented in the arts, especially poetry and drama, they reproduce very quickly, and they are in the face of the universe and they are in the universe. particularly aggressive when it comes to status issues.Humans often compete with the Kevandu for the same undeveloped land.To be honest, Kovabanda was colonized by humans long before it became a colony of the Kovandu people; but a local virus caused the residents to grow extra ugly limbs and their personalities became murderous, so this The colony was abandoned by humans.But this virus has no effect on the Kevandu people, and they live here alone.Sixty-three years later, colony scientists have finally developed a vaccine and hope to get the planet back.Unfortunately, the Kovandu, who are so human-like, are not too happy to share them with others.So we broke in and fought the Kovandu.
The tallest of them was less than an inch.
Of course, the Kovandu were not stupid enough to pit their tiny army against humans whose body size was sixty or seventy times their size.In the beginning, they hit us with planes, long-range mortars, tanks, and other weapons that sort of did damage—and did do some damage.On our side, it is not easy to destroy an aircraft flying at a speed of several hundred kilometers per hour and only twenty centimeters long.But you can do what you can to make them afraid to use their weapons (our countermeasure is to land in the park in the main city of Cova Bandar, so that any shells that miss us will hit their own people).You can always get rid of the annoying stuff in the end anyway.Our men were more careful than usual in destroying the Kevandu army, not only because the Kovandu were small and required more concentration to hit, but also because no one wanted to be killed by an enemy an inch tall. die.
But in the end, you end up shooting down all the planes, destroying all the tanks, and then you have to deal with the Kovandu one by one.Well, this is how you play against a single Kovandu: you step on him.You just put your foot down, apply pressure, and you're done.When you do, the Kovandu will fire their weapons at you while using up their little lung capacity to scream in a way that you might just faintly hear.Everything they did was useless.Your battle suit is designed to block high-energy human projectiles, making you barely feel whatever Kovandu strikes at your toes; you barely feel that little thing you step on your foot .You spot another Kovandu, so walk over and repeat what you just did.
We walked through the main city of Kowabanda like this for several hours, stopping from time to time to aim at five or six-meter-high skyscrapers and knock them down with one shot.Some of our soldiers blasted cannonballs into the building, sending every bullet big enough to break a Kovandu's head and neck flying wildly through the building like pinballs.But the main action is still stomping.When I left the earth, the famous Japanese monster was being resurrected on the silver screen for the umpteenth time, and it must have felt that this was heaven.
I can't remember exactly when I started crying and kicking skyscrapers.By the time Alan was finally called to wake me up, I had been kicking hard for a long time.The jerk told me I had successfully kicked and broken three toes.Alan walked me back to the downtown park where we landed and sat me down.As soon as I sat down, a Kovandu emerged from behind a boulder and aimed a weapon at my face.I felt little grains of sand hit my cheeks.
"Damn it," I said, grabbing the Kovandu like a ball and throwing him angrily at a nearby skyscraper.He flew away with a whoosh, spun around in an arc, slowed down slightly, hit the building with a bang, fell straight down two meters, and landed on the ground.The other Kovandu in the area have apparently decided to give up trying to murder me.
I turn to Alan. "Why aren't you looking after your class?" I asked.He was promoted after his squad leader was slapped in the face by an angry Jindal.
"I could ask you the same question," he said, shrugging his shoulders. "They're all well and carrying out orders, and besides, there's no real opposition here anymore. Pretty much cleared out everywhere." Now, Tipton can manage the whole class. Keyes asked me to come and comfort you and see what's wrong with you. What's wrong with you?"
"Holy shit, Alan," I said, "I just spent three hours trampling a bunch of intelligent life like they were goddamn bugs. That's what's wrong with me. I'm using my goddamn double Foot crushing people. All this," I waved my hand, "is just ridiculous, Alan. These people are only an inch high. It's like Gulliver beating up a Lilliputian."
"We don't get to choose which battles we fight, John," said Allen.
"How did this fight make you feel?" I asked.
"I don't feel well," Alan said. "It's not a serious battle. We're blasting these guys to hell. On the other hand, the biggest casualty in my class was a soldier with a ruptured eardrum." .Such a small casualty is a miracle. So overall, I feel pretty good. Besides, the Kovandu people are not completely helpless, and overall, the scoreboard is almost a tie for both sides."
Surprisingly, this is true.The Kovandu's size gives them an advantage in space warfare.It is difficult for us to track their ships.Alone, their little fighters did little damage to us, but when swarmed together they did us a lot of damage.Only when it comes to ground wars do we have an absolute advantage.Kowabanda is guarded only by a relatively small space fleet, which is one of the reasons why the colonial army decided to reclaim lost ground.
"I'm not talking about who leads the overall score, Alan," I said, "I'm talking about our enemies being only a fucking inch tall. Before here, we fought spiders; before that, we fought spiders at Fighting the damn pterosaurs. It's confusing my sense of size. It's confusing my sense of myself. I don't feel human anymore, Alan."
"Strictly speaking, you are indeed no longer a human being," said Alan.He said that to make me feel at ease.
It didn't work. "Well, let's just say I don't feel like I have human qualities anymore," I said, "Our job is to deal with strange new races, new civilizations, and kill those bitches as quickly as possible Our knowledge of these men is limited to the facts necessary to fight them. So far as we know, they exist only as our enemies. Except for the ingenuity they display in counterattacking, we almost seem to be fighting Fight animals."
"It makes accepting war easier for most of us," Allan said. "As long as you don't feel like a spider, you don't have to feel bad about killing a spider, even if it's a spider." Big, smart. Killing a big, smart spider might be more acceptable than killing a dumb little one."
"That's probably what's bothering me," I said. "I can do things now with no consequences. I just grab a living thinking creature and throw him against a building. It doesn't hurt at all. I feel bad. That's why, Alan, I really feel bad. We should be thinking about the consequences of our actions, whether they are justified or not. Now, I feel sorry for what I did No fear at all; that's why I'm panicking. I'm panicking at what's in it. I'm like a fucking monster trampling this city, and I'm already starting to feel like a monster .I'm already a monster. I'm a monster, and you're a monster. We're all bloody inhuman monsters, and we don't think there's anything fucking wrong with that."
Alan was speechless.So we watched our soldiers trample the Kovandu to death until there was nothing left to trample.
"Okay, what's the matter with him?" Lieutenant Keyes asked Alan about my situation in a brief summary with the other squad leaders after the battle.
"He thinks we're all inhuman monsters," Allan said.
"Oh, so that's it," Keyes said, turning to me. "How long have you been in the Army, Perry?"
"Almost a year," I said.
Lieutenant Keyes nodded. "Just in time, Perry. It takes most people a year or so before they realize they've become some sort of soulless killing machine with no conscience or moral sense. Some earlier, some later. Kimson here," he was referring to another monitor, "didn't break down until about fifteen months old.
Tell him what you did, Kimson. "
"I shot Keyes," Ron Kinson said. "I took him to be the incarnation of the evil system that turned me into a killing machine."
"That shot nearly knocked my head off," Keyes said.
"You're lucky," Jinsen admitted.
"Yeah, good luck not hitting me. Otherwise I'd be dead and your brain would be floating in a glass jar, deranged from lack of external stimulation. You see, Perry, it happens to everyone. kind of thing. You're liberated when you realize you're not really an inhuman monster. You're just cranky in the face of chaos. You've been living the same life for seventy-five years. The exciting part is being able to sleep with someone every now and then. After that, you find yourself trying to kill the space octopus with MP before they get killed by them. God, I can't believe those guys who didn't go crazy the whole time."
"Alan isn't crazy," I said, "and he's been in the Army as long as I've been."
"Yes," said Keyes, "what do you say, Rosenthal?"
"My heart has already become a boiling boiler, full of messy anger, Lieutenant."
"Ah, depression," Keyes said. "Good. When it finally explodes, try not to shoot me, please."
"I can't promise anything, sir," said Alain.
"You know how I do it?" said another class president, Amy Webb. "I list things on Earth that I miss. It's depressing, but in another way, it makes me feel You're not completely off Earth. As long as you miss things, you're still attached to them."
"What do you miss?" I asked.
"Like," she said, "on my last night on earth, I saw a perfect Macbeth. My God, it was something. And here we don't seem to have anything worth mentioning Live drama."
"I miss my daughter's chocolate chip cookie," Kimson said.
"You can get chocolate chip cookies aboard the Modesto," Keyes said. "They're delicious."
"It's not as good as my daughter's. The trick is to add syrup."
"That sounds disgusting," Keyes said. "I hate syrup."
"It's a good thing I didn't know that when I shot you," Kimson said, "otherwise I wouldn't have missed it."
"I miss swimming," Greg Ridley said. "I used to swim in the river next to my private property in Tennessee. It was freezing cold most of the time, but I loved that."
"Roller coasters," Keyes said. "Large roller coasters, the kind that make you feel like your guts are getting tangled up."
"Book," said Alain, "a big thick hardcover on Sunday morning."
"Well, Perry," Webb said, "is there anything you miss?"
I shrugged. "Only one," I said.
"There's nothing more stupid than nostalgia for a roller coaster," Keyes said. "Speak up. It's an order."
"The only thing I really miss is married life," I said. "I miss sitting with my wife and just talking, reading, whatever."
There was silence. "It's really new to hear people miss it," Ridley said.
"Damn it, I don't miss that," Kimson said. "The last twenty years of our marriage, I can't even talk about it."
I looked around, "Did any of you have a spouse who was in the military? Don't you keep in touch with them?"
"My husband signed up before me," Weber said. "He was dead when I first went out."
"My wife is stationed in Powys," Keyes said, "and she leaves me messages now and then. I don't think she misses me very much. I think thirty-eight years with me is enough."
"Everybody rushes off the planet and comes here, and you don't want to go back to your old life," Kimson said. "Of course, we will miss some little things-like Amy said, it's you who keep yourself from going crazy. But if you were to go back in time, before you made all your decisions and started the rest of your life, would you still make the same decisions? Probably not. Why would you make the same choices? You've already lived that way. That being said, I don't regret my choice. But I'm really in no rush to make the same choice again. My wife is here too, yes. But she's happy to live A new life, a new life without me. And, to be honest, I'm not really that keen on going back to the old ways."
"That doesn't make me happy, comrades," I said.
"What do you miss about married life?" Alan asked.
"Well, I miss my wife." I said, "I miss that feeling, I can't explain it, but it's a very comfortable feeling. It feels like I've found my home, with the person I'm meant to be. Here, I There's clearly no sense of belonging. We go where we need to fight, with people who might die fighting tomorrow or the day after tomorrow. I didn't mean to offend anyone."
"It's all right," Keyes said.
"There's no security here," I said. "There's nothing that really makes me feel safe. My marriage has its ups and downs like everyone else's; but even when it hits the bottom, I know it's solid. I miss that security." Sense, that feeling of clinging to someone. What our existence means to other people, and what other people's existence means to us—it's part of being human. I miss that feeling, I miss that humanness . That's what I miss about married life."
A longer silence. "Well, damn it, Perry," Ridley said at last, "I miss married life too, hearing you say that."
Kimson snorted. "I don't. Just miss your married life, Perry. I'm going to continue to miss my daughter's cookies anyway."
"Syrup," Keyes said, "is disgusting."
"Stop saying that, sir," Kimson said, "or I'll be reaching for my MP."
Susan's death followed Thomas's almost immediately.Drillers on Paradise went on strike, and oil production plummeted.The Tucson was tasked with transporting the drilling workers who did not participate in the strike there, and was responsible for protecting them and restoring the work of several drilling platforms.Striking drillers attacked one of the rigs with improvised cannons, and Susan happened to be there.The explosion knocked Susan and two other soldiers off the platform and into the sea tens of meters below.Two other soldiers died before hitting the water, and Susan, who was badly burned and nearly unconscious, survived.
Suzanne is pulled out of the sea by the strike drillers who launched the attack, and they decide to make an example.There is a very special large scavenger in the sea area of Paradise Star, called the yawn fish. Its big mouth is big enough to swallow a person in one bite.Yawnfish frequent the oil rig, feeding on trash thrown from the platform into the sea.The drillers propped Susan up, slapped her awake, spouted a proclamation at her, and sent their proclamation to the colonial army via her BrainPal link.They then found Susan guilty of collaborating with the enemy, sentenced her to death, and threw her overboard, directly under the platform's garbage channel.
Not long after, a yawning fish swam over; with one bite, Susan fell into its mouth.At this time, Susan was still alive, and she struggled to get out of the hole she fell into just now.But before she succeeded, a striker driller shot the yawnfish in its dorsal fin, where its brain is located.The yawnfish was killed on the spot and sank with Susan in its mouth.Susan died, neither from being eaten by a fish nor from drowning, but from the pressure of the water as the yawn fish that swallowed her sank into the abyss.
The striking drillers celebrated the crushing blow to their oppressors, but the festivities were soon over.Forces from the Tucson leveled the drillers' camp, arrested dozens of strike leaders, shot them and fed them to the yawnfish.Except for those who killed Susan, they were directly fed to the fish, omitting the intermediate shooting link.Soon, the strike was over.
Susan's death made me understand something, reminded me that humans can be as inhuman as aliens.Had I been on the Tucson, I would have fed the bastard who killed Susan to the yawnfish without a trace of guilt.When fighting the Kevandu, I used to be terrified that I would be ruthless.I don't know how this incident has affected my good and evil heart, but anyway, I no longer worry that I will be less human than before.
Notes:
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