Lisse perched on what used to be a concrete wall – more accurately termed rubble, after the last hour – the weariness soaking through her bones until she felt glued to the pointed orb poking through her battle gear into her right buttock. Cold seeped through her fatigues, soaked with blood and ichor from a thousand arms of swarming foes. Her fingers were clenched in a frozen grip on her rifle’s stock.
Her back twitched in a failed automatic response as she recognized the footprints approaching. “Sarge.”
He kicked a small boulder to the side, where it bounced off a pile of tentacles and wobbled to a stop on the dusty ground covered in sticky, drying goo. He settled his bulk in beside her. “There a reason you’re lollygagging when the cleanup’s not verified yet?”
It took several minutes. Her voice didn’t want to work. “You’re here too.” Her words were slurred, almost drunken. “This is what I know, Sarge.”
In the distance, the white flare went up that meant the thirteen klick sphere zone had been verified clear. A shower of sparks fell onto the lake the space octopi had swarmed from, a sizzle filling the air with the sound of frying bacon.
“Doesn’t have to be,” he mused. “You’ve done this twenty years, eh? Mayhap it’s time for something new.”
She hissed in speechless aversion.
“There’s more to life than octopus tentacles,” Sarge insisted. He leaned forward and picked one up, pale pink with red suckers, waved it in her direction. “You knew to look in the lake, didn’t you?”
She nodded, her breath coming more steadily as she slipped into automatic habits. “Piss-poor location for a colony, if you don’t look for alien threats in the water. Can’t make assumptions.”
“Can always use more people who understand threats,” he mused, and threw the tentacle back into the pile. “Back on the battle station. Lots of options for those who keep their eyes open.”
She stared at him, eyes wide with shock. Her body rocked back and forth slightly. “I don’t know how to start over.”
“And…?”
The drawled question had an automatic answer in this unit, though her words came reluctantly.
“Try it and find out.” She coughed, then repeated the words above a whisper. “Try it and find out.”
“More than one way to serve.” He stood and clapped her on the shoulder. “Back to the ship, soldier. Sleep, then grieve. Then you keep living. Red-rimmed eyes don’t suit you.”
***
I’m not happy with this one, because I just went through what felt like an impossible dilemma – and I guarantee that the deep wells of emotion that come with making a lifechanging decision are insufficiently captured here. Perhaps it’s too soon.
Read more at MOTE.
