The Forever War

‘Folk hero.’ I sipped at the beer. ‘Where is John Wayne now that we really need him?’ ‘John Wayne?’ He shook his head. ‘I never went in the can, you know. I’m no expert at military history.’ ‘Forget it.’

So after another month of logy calisthenics and drill, at a constant two gravities, we got our first look at the planet we were going to attack. Invaders from outer space, yes sir.

The 1143-year-long war had been begun on false pretenses and only because the two races were unable to communicate.

I hated myself for smiling. It was slaughter, even though our flank was outnumbered five to one.

Relativity propped it up, at least gave it the illusion of being there … the way all reality becomes illusory and observer-oriented when you study general relativity. Or Buddhism. Or get drafted.

Then what the hell are you, we, am I, answered the other side. A peace-loving, vacuum-welding specialist cum physics teacher snatched up by the Elite Conscription Act and reprogrammed to be a killing machine. You, I have killed and liked it.

But while my conscious mind was rejecting the silliness, somewhere much deeper, down in that sleeping animal where we keep our real motives and morals, something was thirsting for alien blood, secure in the conviction that the noblest thing a man could do would be to die killing one of those horrible monsters …

Heaven was a lovely, unspoiled Earth-like world; what Earth might have been like if men had treated her with compassion instead of lust.

Most people work at a desk for five years and are discharged. A few lucky souls, about one in eight thousand, are invited to volunteer for combat training. Refusing is ‘sociopathic,’ even though it means signing up for an extra five years. And your chance of surviving the ten years is so small as to be negligible; nobody ever had. Your best chance