Strange Dogs (Expanse 6.50)
“I’ll like it better than Compassionate Removal.” E drained the last of eir beverage.
“Look on the bright side,” Captain Uisine said, himself, to Ingray, in Yiir, as he took the cup from not-Pahlad. “I’ll refund you eir passage, and you’ll be able to eat actual food for the next couple of days.”
If you enjoyed
STRANGE DOGS
look out for
THE ETERNITY WAR: PARIAH
by Jamie Sawyer
Humanity has spread across the galaxy and, after years of interspecies warfare, entered into an uneasy truce with the Krell. But when the Krell send an ambassador to the human Alliance to request aid, they discover that their civilizations face a much deadlier mutual enemy: the Shard, an alien super species that are pouring from the Outer Dark into real-space.
Captain Keira Jenkins of the Alliance leads a team of simulant soldiers in a joint military action, but when the mission goes down in flames, an injured and humiliated Jenkins is offered one last chance at redemption: a mission deep into contagion-infested enemy territory.
She has one last chance, and so does mankind.
CHAPTER ONE
JACKALS AT BAY
I collapsed into the cot, panting hard, trying t
o catch my breath. A sheen of hot, musky sweat—already cooling—had formed across my skin.
“Third time’s a charm, eh?” Riggs said.
“You’re getting better at it, is all I’ll say.”
Riggs tried to hug me from behind as though we were actual lovers. His body was warm and muscled, but I shrugged him off. We were just letting off steam before a drop, doing what needed to be done. There was no point in dressing it up
“Watch yourself,” I said. “You need to be out of here in ten minutes.”
“How do you handle this?” Riggs asked. He spoke Standard with an accented twang, being from Tau Ceti V, a descendant of North American colonists who had, generations back, claimed the planet as their own. “The waiting feels worse than the mission.”
“It’s your first combat operation,” I said. “You’re bound to feel a little nervous.”
“Do you remember your first mission?”
“Yeah,” I said, “but only just. It was a long time ago.”
He paused, as though thinking this through, then asked, “Does it get any easier?”
“The hours before the drop are always the worst,” I said. “It’s best just not to think about it.”
The waiting was well recognised as the worst part of any mission. I didn’t want to go into it with Riggs, but believe me when I say that I’ve tried almost every technique in the book.
It basically boils down to two options.
Option One: Find a dark corner somewhere and sit it out. Even the smaller strikeships that the Alliance relies upon have private areas, away from prying eyes, away from the rest of your squad or the ship’s crew. If you’re determined, you’ll find somewhere private enough and quiet enough to sit it out alone. But few troopers that I’ve known take this approach, because it rarely works. The Gaia-lovers seem to prefer this method; but then again, they’re often fond of self-introspection, and that isn’t me. Option One leads to anxiety, depression and mental breakdown. There aren’t many soldiers who want to fill the hours before death—even if it is only simulated—with soul-searching. Time slows to a trickle. Psychological time-dilation, or something like it. There’s no drug that can touch that anxiety.
Riggs was a Gaia Cultist, for his sins, but I didn’t think that explaining Option One was going to help him. No, Riggs wasn’t an Option One sort of guy.
Option Two: Find something to fill the time. Exactly what you do is your choice; pretty much anything that’ll take your mind off the job will suffice. This is what most troopers do. My personal preference—and I accept that it isn’t for everyone—is hard physical labour. Anything that really gets the blood flowing is rigorous enough to shut down the neural pathways.
Which led to my current circumstances. An old friend once taught me that the best exercise in the universe is that which you get between the sheets. So, in the hours before we made the drop to Daktar Outpost, I screwed Corporal Daneb Riggs’ brains out. Not literally, you understand, because we were in our own bodies. I’m screwed up, or so the psychtechs tell me, but I’m not that twisted.