Elysia
1
All that I’ve ever wanted to do was kill bugs.
Since I was old enough to carry a toy rifle, I was blasting those nasty creatures in my imagination. Maybe I was just reenacting what I saw in the holograms or pretending to be my war hero grandfather. Either way, I knew I was born to fight. Born to kill them like some angry god of war from antiquity. I knew I was destined for glory on the battlefields of Betweos. I just had to get there first.
I waited my entire childhood for the war.
When I was finally old enough, it was my time. Nothing could stop me or save those wretched aliens from my wrath. The funny thing about life is that it never happens as you thought it would. Wars never quite go how you expect them to, either. It turns out the first victim of war is the truth.
My parents, of course, fiercely objected to me joining the army. They wanted me to enter the agriculture business, as was the family tradition. Try as I might, I couldn’t see myself as being a farmer for the rest of my life. I just didn’t have the temperament for it. I craved adventure and danger. I could find neither of those things in business. I could only really find them in the army.
We called them bugs or segs, but technically, they were sentient insects or entos. They evolved on the planet Acheron, which orbited Suth Two, the red dwarf star of our binary star system. Suth One was a middle-aged yellow star around my homeworld of Elysia orbited. There were five planets in the Suth One system and three in the Suth Two system. Then there was Betweos. So named because it orbited both stars in an odd, figure-eight pattern. Once every human generation the wandering gas giant and its coven of moons crossed over and around one star only to pass over again to orbit the second star.
I know it’s complicated. In secondary school, my science teacher assured me that Betweos’s orbit was quite impossible, yet there it was, wandering between the two stars. Every generation, we sent soldiers to the midpoint of its orbit to fight for control of the three major moons of Betweos. It was critical to gain control of them before Betweos passed around our star so that the segs couldn’t use them to attack our home world. The opposite was true when the gas giant swung back around and headed closer to Acheron. In the orbit before my grandfather’s campaign, the segs used the moons of Betweos to stage raids on our crops. They always went after our food for some reason.
The Bug War has been raging for at least three generations now. My grandfather, Jarna, fought in the first major skirmish between the Acheron and Elysian armies on the moons of Betweos. His leadership and combat bravery helped maintain Elysian dominance when Betweos swung around to our side of the binary system. The entos were vanquished then, but they would return to fight again, and we lost control of the precious real estate when the gas giant moved back around the red star.
My father’s generation lost control of the moons as Betweos headed back around the bug star. Not that my father had much to do with that campaign. Joros served on the transfer ships and never even saw actual combat. His general disinterest in the war and in having me go off to fight was rooted in the fact that he hadn’t lived up to Jarna’s legendary reputation as a war hero. His was the only generation that had lost control of the Betweos moons. Growing up, I always imagined that it was my duty to return the family’s good name by becoming an even better soldier than my grandfather had been.
When I was eight years old, I used to go fishing with my grandfather up in the mountains. We would cast lines in the icy river and he would tell me his war stories. He always made it seem like combat was the noblest of adventures. I came away believing that fighting in the bug war was the greatest thing a person could do for his planet. My grandfather was convinced that if the buggers ever won, they would take over our lush planet and exterminate everyone.
I was steeped in my grandfather’s near-mythic lore, and I yearned to wear the sky blue and white colors of the Elysian army. I wanted nothing more than to drop into combat with the infamous First Platoon, First Field Army, the same unit my grandfather served in.
My love for my grandfather ran deep in me and sometimes exceeded my love for my father. Although I would never admit that, it was undeniably true. When Jarna passed away, I was just sixteen years old. Seeing him laid out in his coffin upset me more than anything else I had ever experienced. We shouldn’t have to witness the passing of our heroes. In my dreams, I often saw Jarna walking into the mountain mists, fading away like an old soldier. In time, those dreams faded away, too.
I secretly enlisted in the Elysian Army on my eighteenth birthday. A month later, when it was time for me to go through basic military training, I told my parents I was attending a college prep school, which they wanted for me. When I returned, I had to wait another few months before shipping out. I spent the time working in the fields with my childhood friends.
On my last workday on Elysia, I raced my best friend Hector back from the fields. We always made work into a competition. Racing ag-skiffs over fields of gold for nothing more than bragging rights was a metaphor for our relationship. He always beat me. Sometimes, he’d plan his entire day’s work just to end closer to the shop to get a leg up on me. Other times, he would modify his skiff’s engine to give him just enough power to beat me in a dead heat. Most of the time, I just waved off his boasting. He was six months younger than me and, as a result, would never beat me to the war.
I honestly tried to win our last race together. I picked the fastest skiff, and I had the shortest route back. When his call came over the comms, I was on the ground, scanning an ear of corn for the sounds of chlorophyll. Chemical reactions sang their healthy tunes in my earpiece as sunlight glinted off the SVK corporate logo on the scanner.
“Hey, shucker boy, I’m heading in. This is your last chance to beat me,” Hector’s irritating voice taunted.
I tossed the ear of corn and climbed up the pole ladder into the flat glass-covered cockpit of my ag-skiff. “You’re on,” I replied.
It took me seconds to gear up the throttle and retract the pole. I was careening over the tassels at full throttle in no time. The poor ag-skiff’s engine labored away as I pushed it faster than it had ever gone before. The sensation of speed flying low over the crops always made it seem like we were moving, but in reality, we were not going that fast at all.
Workers on the platforms watched us get closer and, no doubt, cheered for Hector to win. I was still well ahead of him. A smile spread over my lips. I was finally going to win this stupid race.
“Attention approaching vehicles. Please decrease your speed immediately,” the dispatcher warned us.
I opened my mic and blew a raspberry into it. I didn’t give a damn about company policy on my last day. Hector was still way behind me, and I would beat him.
That’s when the stalk monkey leaped out of nowhere, swinging its way right into my path. I had to swerve hard or hit the furry creature. They normally had sense enough to avoid ag-skiffs, but this one darted right into my path. Only my quick reflexes saved it from getting killed.
The sudden change in direction caused my skiff to flutter and dip into the crops, where it sheered off tassels and slowed me just enough to let Hector get out in front. He laughed and made a silly face at me as he passed, just like a spoiled little brat.
Hector again coasted into victory while I limped back to the platform with a damaged grill and a bruised ego. Cheering workers formed around Hector’s skiff as it landed on spindly skids. I set my smoking and clattering ag-skiff down for a landing; it sighed like an overworked mule.
Shutting my craft down, I joined the crowd around Hector and reluctantly offered my hand to the winner. He shook it firmly and tried, but failed, to hold back his pride. “Sorry, old buddy, but you know I just hate to lose.”
“Some people live a charmed life,” I said.
He turned back to the crowd and shouted, “Undefeated!”
I brushed off his braggadocios comment and let him have his moment. Tomorrow, I’ll head off to war, and he’ll still be racing ag-skiffs on the farm.
We made our way back to the dispatch to turn in our recorders. As we checked them in, the dispatcher overheard me talking about leaving the next day for orbit. “We’re supposed to spend a day or two on the way station. Our transfer ship is still being replenished,” I said.
“You won’t find glory in the war, only deception and death,” the dispatcher said in her terse, earthy voice. Hector and I looked at her strangely for a moment and then shrugged. She was probably just jealous that she wasn’t shipping out, too.
“Jered, what ship are you taking?” Hector asked.
“The Elpida.”
Hector’s eyes shined. He wanted to be going with me, and it was no doubt killing him he wasn’t.
“That’s the one Rickover took in Victor’s Way. Now that was a show!”
I nodded in complete agreement. Between us, we had seen every holodram about the Bug War ever, and that said something. They created more military dramas in anticipation of the current conjunction than in the war’s history. There were historical shows about past campaigns and fictional looks into future battles with hardware and weapons that were only in dreams now. More young people were volunteering to enlist than ever before. It was a banner year for recruiters, and the central government couldn’t have been happier. It also helped that more and more soldiers were coming home alive thanks to better-designed defensive systems.
Some people called the Bug War a Suit War, where heavily armored humans took on the Acheron entos in faceplate-to-faceplate single-combat skirmishes. Nobody hides inside armored vehicles anymore. They deemed it too costly to risk killing ten people when a single armored vehicle got hit. One highly mobile and armored suit warrior could do more damage than a single tank and cover more ground doing it. Today’s war was about real estate on the three largest moons of Betweos. So far, the entos had not held ground when the gas giant came around our star. I aimed to keep it that way when I got to the front.
Since my grandfather’s generation, no humans have survived the journey around Suth One. My father’s generation tried but failed. Cut off from resupply ships and facing increasing attacks from the bugs, they just couldn’t make the long journey and bailed out before Betweos was too far away to make it home. The primary thrust of the current battle was to augment our forces enough to make such a journey and strike at the heart of the bug planet, Acheron. I was proud to be a part of this attack wave. Hector would join me in a few months, and we would be on the greatest military advance in the war’s history. We were convinced that we could win this war this time.
Hector and I had been in love with the same girl since we were kids. I saw it in his eyes whenever we were all together. Trille had always favored me over him, which irritated him more than he ever let on. I knew he loved her because I loved her for all the same reasons. She was beautiful, smart, and caring. All traits that caused any red-blooded male to become sick with desire for her. Her golden curls hung gently over her soft shoulders, and she walked with a sway that enticed a young man’s fancy. She wasn’t always so beautiful to us, but as we all blossomed, she bloomed the brightest.
I was going to marry Trille when I got back from war. She knew it; I knew it, and so did Hector. It was only a matter of time. Time was something I was soon to be very short of, as I was shipping out in the morning. Trille met us at the monorail station as we stepped off the ramp. She wore a white dress, and her smile radiated her happiness at seeing us both.
“So, who won the last race, guys?” she asked, throwing her arms around my neck and kissing me. Hector raised his hand with a self-righteous grin on his face. Trille and I separated, and Hector reached out to shake my hand. It would be the last time we saw each other until he arrived at Betweos. “Don’t end the war before I get there,” he said.
“I can’t promise that, my friend.”
He patted my shoulder and went with a wink and a nod to Trille. She watched him leave and then turned to me. “I couldn’t wait for this day to end,” she whispered.
Me either.
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