"I'm three," Bohr said, a little defensively.
I held up my hand. "Look," I said. "Let's turn this around for a minute. I'm seventy-six, and I did make a leap of faith when I joined the CDF. On the other hand, it was my choice. I didn't have to go. If you have a hard time imagining what it must be like for me, think about it on my end." I pointed to Mendel. "When I was five, I hardly knew how to tie my own shoes. If you can't imagine what it's like to be my age and joining up, imagine how hard it is for me to imagine being an adult at five years of age and knowing nothing but war. If nothing else, I have an idea of what life is like outside the CDF. What is it like for you?"
Mendel looked at his companions, who looked back at him. "It's not anything we usually think about, sir," Mendel said. "We don't know that there's anything unusual about it at first. Everyone we know was 'born' the same way. It's you who are the unusual ones, from our perspective. Having a childhood and living an entire other life before you get into this one. It just seems like an inefficient way to do things."
"Don't you ever wonder about what it would be like not to be in the Special Forces?" I asked.
"I can't imagine it," Bohr said, and the others nodded. "We're all soldiers together. It's what we do. It's who we are."
"That's why we find you so interesting," Mendel said. "This idea that this life would be a choice. The idea that there's another way to live. It's alien."
"What did you do, sir?" asked Bohr. "In your other life?"
"I was a writer," I said. They all looked at each other. "What?" I asked.
"Strange way to live, sir," Mendel said. "To get paid for stringing words together."
"There were worse jobs," I said.
"We don't mean to offend you, sir," Bohr said.
"I'm not offended," I said. "You just have a different perspective on things. But it does make me wonder why you do it."
"Do what?" Bohr said.
"Fight," I said. "You know, most people in the CDF are like me. And most people in the colonies are even more different from you than I am. Why would you fight for them? And with us?"
"We're human, sir," Mendel said. "No less than you are."
"Given the current state of my DNA, that's not saying much," I said.
"You know you're human, sir," Mendel said. "And so do we. You and we are closer than you think. We know about how the CDF picks its recruits. You're fighting for colonists you've never met—colonists who were your country's enemy at one point. Why do you fight for them?"
"Because they're human and because I said I would," I said. "At least, that's why I did at the start. Now I don't fight for the colonists. I mean, I do, but when it comes down to it, I fight—or did fight—for my platoon and my squad. I looked out for them, and they looked out for me. I fought because doing any less would have been letting them down."
Mendel nodded. "That's why we fight, too, sir," he said. "So that's one thing makes us all human together. That's good to know."
"It is," I agreed. Mendel grinned and picked up his fork to eat, and as he did, the room came alive with the clattering utensils. I looked up at the noise, and from a far corner saw Jane staring back at me.
Major Crick got right to the point at the morning briefing. "CDF intelligence believes the Rraey are frauds," he said. "And the first part of our mission is to find out if they're right. We're going to be paying a little visit to the Consu."
That woke me right up. Apparently I wasn't the only one. "What the hell do the Consu have to do with any of this?" asked Lieutenant Tagore, who sat directly to my left.
Crick nodded to Jane, who was sitting near him. "At the request of Major Crick and others, I did some research into some of the other CDF encounters with the Rraey to see if there's been any indication of technological evolution," Jane said. "Over the last hundred years, we've had twelve significant military encounters with the Rraey and several dozen smaller engagements, including one major encounter and six smaller engagements over the last five years. During this entire time, the Rraey technological curve has been substantially behind our own. This is due to a number of factors, including their own cultural biases against systematic technological advancement and their lack of positive engagement with more technologically advanced races."
"In other words, they're backward and bigoted," Major Crick said.
"In the case of skip drive technology, this is especially the case," Jane said. "Up until the Battle of Coral, Rraey skip technology was far behind ours—in fact, their current understanding of skip physics is directly based on information provided by the CDF a little over a century ago, during an aborted trade mission to the Rraey."
"Why was it aborted?" asked Captain Jung, from across the table.
"The Rraey ate about a third of the trade delegates," Jane said.
"Ouch," said Captain Jung.
"The point here is that given who the Rraey are and what their level of tech is, it's impossible that they could have gone from being so far behind us to so far ahead of us in one leap," Major Crick said. "The best guess is that they didn't—they simply got the tech for skip drive prediction from some other culture. We know everyone the Rraey know, and there's only one culture that we estimate has the technological ability for something like this."
"The Consu," said Tagore.
"The Consu indeed," agreed Crick. "Those bastards have a white dwarf yoked to the wheel. It's not unreasonable to assume they might have skip drive prediction licked as well."
"But why would they have anything to do with the Rraey?" asked Lieutenant Dalton, down near the end of the table. "The only time they deal with us is when they want a little exercise, and we're far more technologically advanced than the Rraey are."
"The thinking is that the Consu aren't motivated by technology like we are," Jane said. "Our tech is valueless to them much in the same way the secrets of a steam engine might be valueless to us. We think they're motivated by other factors."
"Religion," I said. All eyes shifted to me, and I suddenly felt like a choirboy who has just farted during a chapel service. "What I mean is, when my platoon was fighting the Consu, they started with a prayer that consecrated the battle. I said to a friend at the time that I thought the Consu thought they were baptizing the planet with the battle." More stares. "Of course, I could be wrong."
"You're not wrong," Crick said. "There's been some debate in the CDF about why the Consu fight at all, since it's clear that with their technology they could wipe out every other space-faring culture in the region without much of a second thought. The prevailing thought is that they do it for entertainment, like we play baseball or football."
"We never play football or baseball," said Tagore.
"Other humans do, jackass," Crick said with a grin, then sobered up again. "However, a significant minority of CDF's intelligence division believes that their battles have ritual significance, just as Lieutenant Perry has suggested. The Rraey may not be able to trade tech with the Consu on an equal basis, but they might have something else the Consu want. They might be able to give them their souls."
"But the Rraey are zealots themselves," Dalton said. "That's why they attacked Coral in the first place."
"They have several colonies, some less desirable than others," Jane said. "Zealots or not, they might see trading one of their less successful colonies for Coral as a good trade."
"Not so good for the Rraey on the traded colony," Dalton said.
"Really, ask me if I care about them," Crick said.