The Miniature Wife: and Other Stories (18 page)

Life on Capra II

J
ust as we bag that piece of shit swamp monster, the robots attack. Ricky goes down immediately, and that’s a fucking shame because he was a good guy, and also he owes me—owed me—a pack of cigarettes and had promised to introduce me to the tomato who runs the commissary, a pretty little thing named Becky who he’d known back when he was in grade school. That lady has a fine ass and has expended more T&E avoiding me than I’ve spent trying to get her attention, and Ricky was my last chance, and maybe it’s cold of me, but as I watch him fall face-first in the swamp muck, my first thought is how all those plans have just gone straight to hell.

Fucking robots,
being my second thought.

I think about hoisting him up out of the muck and throwing him over my shoulder and hoofing him back to the convoy, if only to have some good story to tell Becky once we get back to the barracks, maybe make like he wasn’t killed with the first shot, that he was barely breathing but that I wouldn’t leave my good friend Ricky behind, and that he expended his last breath to tell me to keep going, to never give up, that I would someday find true love in the sympathetic heart of a beautiful woman. But then I figure I don’t actually have to go through all the trouble of carrying Ricky’s deadweight body to be able to tell that same story, so I leave him where he is and start beating a hasty retreat.

That’s one of the first lessons any new cadet learns here on Capra II: Simplify your life.

Twenty minutes later and five cadets lighter, we finally make it back to the convoy. Turns out we weren’t the only battalion to be ambushed by the sonsabitches, and, unlikely as it seems, the piece of shit swamp monsters and the fucking robots made some sort of concerted play on us.

Five minutes later we’re in the air on our way back to the barracks.

I look out the window down at the wreckage. Someone set fire to the swamp muck. I squint, wondering for a minute or two if I can see Ricky, but mostly all I can see are glints of light reflecting off the robot body parts and the last few of the swamp monsters writhing in flames. Then I put my head back and close my eyes and try to catch a little sleep.

When the New Worlds Confederation started casting about for a planet to house the excess settlers, those who didn’t exactly fit the profile of the young, able-bodied, handsome folk who settled Capra I, they took their money, shipped them off, deposited them on this piece of rock, and then forgot about them, that is, until the tithing stopped, which is why we’re here.

It’s a strange planet, Capra II. Or, hell, maybe it’s not even a planet, just some rock floating through space the New Worlds Confederation decided to terraform. You can’t tell these days, and, sure, maybe there was a briefing about it all when we shipped out, but I’ll say right now, I’m not one for holding on to the finer details of an assignment. Either way, it’s a strange fucking place. For one, the colors seem off. I can’t explain how they seem off, only that when I’m looking around, the whole world looks like it’s covered in some kind of filter, or like I’m wearing a yellow-tinted visor, even when I’m not. Blues look green. Reds look orange. Everything is covered in a haze. Something about the atmosphere makes us light-headed, too, and suppresses the smell of things, which, when you’re living in a barracks with a hundred other grunts, isn’t the worst thing you could ask for.

Still. It’s a bit off-putting.

What worries me most is the emptiness of this place. Most of what we’ve got are those wild and unending swamplands, and whatever asshole decided to terraform a planet of swamps deserves a swift kick in the balls if you ask me. Practically uninhabitable, and even if you could devise some kind of structure that would survive the swamp muck, which seems to eat anything inorganic, one that could keep out the bugs and swamp rats and not allow the poisonous swamp gas to seep into your bedroom and kill you while you slept, you’d still have to contend with those piece of shit swamp monsters. You get pockets here and there, dry lands just above sea level that could pass for livable, and you’ll see structures and the signs of society—a glass-cased infirmary, a one-room schoolhouse, carbide huts that make you wonder why the hell you’d take a material as formidable as carbide and build out of it a hut like you’re part of some ancient civilization—and maybe if you squint and put your imagination to the test, you can picture how a life of sorts might’ve been obtained here, but the people are gone, and no one knows for sure why, though my money’s on the swamp monsters or the robots having some hand in all of that. And whatever the case, it’s a goddamn ghost planet out here, and to me it seems like we’re just biding our time, giving whatever evil thing resides here a chance to size us up, find out that weakest part of us, and then do to us what was done to the colonists who first gave it a go here.

We are hunting swamp monsters, and part of me wants to say that we have done this before, wants to say we are in the swamps hunting swamp monsters again, but that can’t be right, and so I shake the feeling off and do my best to keep myself steady, alert.

Ricky’s on my right flank and, to release the tension building in the back of my neck and to give us something to do while we truck through this hellhole, I’m about to ask him about Becky, ask him about what she was like when they were in grade school together. He’s made noise about how he can introduce me, make me seem like a decent enough sort of guy, that he and she go way back, and I want to know if he’s bullshitting me or if he’s serious. But then one of the swamp bastards rears up between the two of us, and it’s a monster, all right, which I know. I know these things are real monsters, that what we’re playing at here is no joke, but the sight of them, no matter how many surveillance videos I’ve watched, no matter how many pictures I’ve seen, no matter how many good men we’ve lost to these bastards, the sight of them does not fail to surprise me.

For one thing, they’re
of
the swamp more than they are
from
the swamp. It’s as if the swamp rises up, ten, fifteen feet up in the air, takes on a face with eyes and a mouth hole and swampy teeth of a sort, forms arms and clawed hands, a torso but no real legs, no legs to speak of, just a hovering jet of swamp muck that pushes these monsters up against gravity, against physics, against God. They make for a sick and unsettling sight, and this one’s looking right down on me, and I’ve got a good shot, an opportunity to take this fucker out, but for some goddamn reason I’m holding the wrong gun. I’ve got a sniper rifle in my hands, and I feel like I’m in some kind of anxiety dream, where I come to school having forgotten a major test I have to take, or my clothes, because what the fuck is a sniper rifle going to do to this thing made of swamp shit and twigs?

There’s a moment when I feel like I know what’s going to happen next.

A moment when everything is all at once familiar and uncanny—where Ricky is standing, the gassy smell of the swamp monster, the glint of sunlight glancing off the guns and armor of Johnson, Harald, and Spigs, the sound of the convoy in the distance, even these thoughts running through my mind—and in this moment, I’m struck suddenly by an all-consuming urge to shove Ricky down into the swamp, to heave myself at him with the whole of me, to shove the lot of us out of harm’s way, and it’s all I can do to stop myself, to curb this sudden and forceful urge, and then the robots attack—coming in out of nowhere—and I am surprised and I am not surprised.

Just as we bag the swamp monster, the robots attack. It’s a shock to see them there, the sun glinting off their metallic bodies, but it’s almost more of a shock that I’m staring straight at the one about to laser Ricky’s ass, as if I had some sixth sense telling me where it was going to rear up, my grenade launcher armed and ready. I blow the fucker’s head off, and I’m about to look at Ricky and say “What the hell?” but he’s off and running without even a “Thanks, dude,” and I want to yell at him that he still owes me a pack of cigarettes, but what’s the point because there are explosions all around me, all around us, and I bag another robot, and then a third, and I’m feeling pretty lucky to be carrying this grenade launcher when I could have sworn just a few minutes ago I had a sniper rifle in my hands, and before that, my service pistol.

I run through the swamps, first left and then right, looking for more swamp monsters or robots, or even anyone else from my squad, and then find myself looking at a wall of swamp trees with no way through or around. This sort of thing happens to me more frequently than I care to admit. I chalk it up to enthusiasm, the rush of adrenaline clouding my senses, so that I turn around and see that all the action is behind me, but by the time I run back to catch up to them, the swamp monsters have mostly dissolved back into the primordial muck, but I see one robot close enough that if I hustle I can tag him with my last grenade, but just as I’m honing in on him, I trip over something and land face-first in the swamp. I pull myself up. The slimy green water cascades down my helmet visor. The robot’s gone—jet pack—and I look to see what I’ve tripped over, and it’s Ricky, or the top half of him, anyway, and it’s a fucking shame. He owes me—owed me—a pack of cigarettes and had promised to introduce me to a pretty young thing who runs the commissary who he’d known back in grade school. For a second, I consider reaching down and grabbing his dog tags, though what I would do with them—“Here you go, something to remember your old grade school chum by”—I don’t have a damn clue, but then the comm in my helmet comes blaring into my ears, my commander yelling at me to hurry the fuck up unless I want to biv in the swamps tonight, and I leave Ricky, leave his tags, and hoof it to the rendezvous point.

Five minutes later we’re in the air on our way back to the barracks.

I look out the window down at the wreckage. Someone set fire to the swamp muck. I squint, wondering for a minute or two if I can see Ricky, but mostly all I can see are glints of light reflecting off the robot body parts and the last few of the swamp monsters writhing in flames. Then I put my head back and close my eyes and try to catch a little sleep.