Jon Adcock visited the Starfarer’s Café this week with a tale of a man who fought in the Human-Newt War. Fighting in such a bloody war is certainly a challenge, but sometimes coming home from the war is even greater one.

Bang upon the big drum, crash upon the cymbals
We’ll sing as we go marching along boys, along – Rudyard Kipling.

now…

In pain and disoriented, Dane took a gasping breath before rolling over and vomiting the remnants of the acceleration gel over the edge of the pod. Newly awakened from stasis, he was sensitive even to the dim lights of the bay, so he kept his eyes tightly shut as he listened to the groans and retching of the soldiers around him. If this had been a combat drop, they would have been pumped full of pain relievers and stimulants by now, but the war was over. They were going home.

He rolled over onto his back, one arm resting across his eyes as he waited for the disorientation to pass. If they were being decanted, the transport would be in-system, likely past Mars. Deceleration would have started a few days ago, with the transport shedding velocity until it was safe to collapse the Zhao-Briggs bubble surrounding it. Now they were traveling at a percentage of c, instead of cheating and exceeding it. The puddle of acceleration gel he was lying in slowly congealed as he listened to the curses of the other soldiers climbing out of their pods and making their way to the showers at the far end of the bay. He began to itch as the gel covering him dried.

“Waiting for an invite, Lieutenant?” a voice said, and Dane slowly opened his eyes. Captain Singh stood over him, freshly showered and drying his hair.

“Just shaking off the stasis fog, sir. Seems a little rougher than usual.”

“Here.” Singh reached out a hand. Dane took it with his prosthetic and climbed out of the pod.

‘Thanks.”

“Make sure you grab something to eat once you clean up, Dane. There’s an orientation at 0900. Don’t miss it. There’s been…changes, and everyone needs to be aware of them.”

“Will do, sir.”

The heaters had activated, but the pod bay floor still felt cold under his bare feet. He joined the line for the showers. Like him, everyone was naked. War had treated their bodies like clay, carving deep scars into the soft flesh and sometimes taking pieces away. Several prosthetics were visible among the group. Dane glanced down at his own, a jet-black arm that looked almost skeletal. What it lacked in aesthetics, it made up for with functionality—or so the Army doctors had told him.

***

…and then…

A chiming sounded, persistent and slowly growing in volume. Dane tapped his implant twice to signal his AI assistant that he was awake, then quietly got out of bed. It was just after dawn, and enough light filtered through the blinds for him to dress without waking Lexi. Before leaving the bedroom, he paused to watch his wife sleep. After they had made love the night before, she had clung to him with what felt like desperation.

Dane didn’t have much of an appetite, but he forced himself to eat two protein bars while pacing back and forth in the small living room. Afterward, he checked his duffel bag for the tenth time to ensure everything on the basic training list was included.

“Planning on leaving without saying goodbye?” Lexi stood in the bedroom doorway, arms crossed.

“No, just wanted to let you sleep a little longer, Lex.” Dane kissed her and wrapped his arms around her, hugging Lexi closely. “Look, I know you’re not happy about my enlistment, but we owe the Newts some payback. And there’s New Eden. What’s the government’s slogan? Breathing Room. New Eden will give us breathing room. The Newts don’t have the right to claim that system, and it won’t take much to push them out. After that, vets and their families are guaranteed a spot on the colony ships. We can make a new start there, Lex.”

“Promise you’ll come back to us.”

“I promise, Lex, and you know I always keep my word.”

They stood like that for several minutes, quietly holding each other. Dane finally told her he needed to leave.

“Let me get Madison so she can say goodbye to you,” his wife said, as she hurried to their daughter’s room. Their four-year-old was irritable at being woken; she buried her face in her mother’s robe and refused to look at her father. Dane embraced his wife one last time, told her and their daughter he loved them, and grabbed his duffel bag. As he pulled the door of their small apartment closed, he glanced back for a final look. The soft light of the newly forged sun streamed through the window blinds, brushing his wife and daughter with gold. Dane had never seen anything more beautiful. As he walked away, Dane realized he was leaving a part of his heart behind.

***

The train station was crowded with people. The dust storm had been raging for days, and all flights were still canceled. Beneath the noise of the announcements and the hubbub of the crowd, the wind sounded like an eerie moan. There was a loud tapping whenever a particularly strong gust drove dirt and small pebbles against the station’s windows. Small maintenance bots weaved their way between people’s legs as they attempted to clean up the dust that blew in each time the station’s doors were opened.

Dane stood amid the chaos, his filtration mask dangling from his neck, trying to figure out where to buy a ticket. In the distance, sleek and quiet, the maglev trains sped in and out of the station. It felt strange to be in civilian clothes, but before he left the base, he took the warnings to heart and changed out of his uniform. An unpopular war and twenty years of martial law had made anyone in uniform a target for abuse.  

When asked, a passerby pointed to the nearby ticket kiosks. As Dane walked toward them, holographic ads flickered just within his line of sight, their spiels a low murmur in his audio implants. He found them irritating but had yet to figure out how to block them.

While waiting in line, Dane surfed the news feeds to supplement the shipboard orientation given before planetfall. Four years earlier, the authoritarian central government had collapsed amid a series of scandals. The most damning revelation was that the entire justification for the war was based on a lie – the Newts didn’t destroy the colony ship. Instead, a mechanical failure caused the ship’s Zhao-Briggs bubble to collapse. Once that happened, the laws of Einsteinian physics reasserted themselves violently, liquifying all organic matter on board and tearing the ship apart.

Dane recalled with disgust how images of the colonists had dominated the feeds for months, with the government exploiting their deaths to incite anger and calls for retribution. When war had been declared, he was one of the first to enlist. Now, it was all over. Brokering a peace deal with the Newts had been the new coalition government’s first action.

After reaching the ticket kiosk, Dane silently cursed as he received an error message every time he attempted to purchase a ticket to San Francisco.

“Need some help?” a voice asked.

Dane glanced behind him and saw a man in his late fifties. He wore a friendly smile and looked at Dane with a questioning gaze. “Yeah, I can’t figure this out,” Dane admitted.

The man talked him through the software updates his implants needed, and Dane was finally able to purchase the ticket. Smiling, Dane extended his hand and said, “Thanks for the help.”

“No problem, and welcome home, soldier,” the man replied, shaking Dane’s hand. As Dane’s smile quickly faded, the man added, “Don’t worry, I’m not one of the haters. My dad served too. You remind me of him after he came home last year. If you don’t mind me asking, how long were you gone?”

“Five years subjective and almost seventy years Earth time,” Dane responded after a pause.

“Shit, I’m sorry. When my dad came back, he was almost as young as my son. Time’s a bitch, ain’t it?”

“Yeah, it is.”

***

The Newt crawled toward Dane, pulling itself along with its two larger arms while whatever noises it made registered as a subsonic rumble in Dane’s ears. Ramirez stepped forward and finished it off with a short burst.

“And fuck you, you fucking fuck,” Ramirez spat out.

“Ya know, Ramirez, there’s more swear words than just fuck. You need to broaden your vocabulary a bit,” Dane said as he knelt by the corpse.

“Fuck you, Winters.”

While waiting for the rest of the squad to reach them, Dane examined the body. Greenish blood pooled around it. Like most members of the warrior caste, the centaur-like Newt was the size of a small horse and had eight limbs: four legs and two sets of arms. Its skin was rubbery and mottled, and it had a flat head resembling a newt’s, perched on a long, sinuous neck. The creature was eyeless, and fleshy, anemone-like appendages dangled from the back of its head and neck, functioning as sensory organs.

“Not exactly one of God’s more beautiful creations,” a mechanical voice remarked from behind him. Dane turned to glance over his shoulder. The mantis-like remote that made up the rest of the remaining fire team stood behind him, piloted by Ye, whose body was safely jacked in miles away. Thirty meters back, during their second-to-last maneuver, Rozan’s remote had been reduced to scrap metal. The worst thing Rozan was dealing with at the moment was likely a headache, and Dane couldn’t help but feel a twinge of envy as he looked down at the torn armor and bloody field dressing on his right side.

“Makes you wonder what we look like to them,” Dane said, as he extended an armored hand and gave the Newt’s exposed flesh a hard poke with his index finger.

“I’m sure I’d be their version of angelic. Ramirez, though, would probably be the stuff of nightmares.”

“Shit, I hope I give them some fucking nightmares. When this campaign is over with, I want to be their fucking boogie man and haunt their dreams every night,” Ramirez said, prodding the corpse with his toe. Just behind him and ten meters overhead, the overwatch drones slowly circled, their AI scanning for threats. There was sporadic gunfire occurring throughout the Newt base, primarily at the far end, but it was tapering off.

“Didn’t this seem weird to anyone else?” Dane asked. “They’re usually cunning as hell, but they started acting more and more frantic the closer we got to this building.”

“Aliens gonna be fucking alien,” was Ramirez’s only response.

While the rest of the platoon set charges around the base, Dane’s squad breached the squat building the Newts had desperately defended. Ye led the way, with the other remaining remote, piloted by Hayder, in the stacked position behind him. The remotes were twice the size of a man and resembled gray mantises. The weapon systems mounted on their shoulders slowly swiveled as they entered the building.

The wide door opened into a spacious foyer, illuminated by the dull red lighting favored by the Newts. Even for New Eden, it felt warm and humid inside. At the end of the foyer, large stairs gently descended. They could hear water running from below.

“What the fuck is this place? Doesn’t look like a fucking command center to me,” Ramirez said quietly as they descended the stairs.

At the bottom of the stairs, there was a large, cavernous room that stretched at least one hundred meters in length. Pools of water were scattered throughout the space, interconnected by walkways. Ye noticed movement in the distance and turned on his spotlight. The bright beam cut through the reddish gloom, revealing several Newts crouched against the far wall. These Newts belonged to a different caste than the warriors; they were smaller, more yellowish, and lacked the larger set of arms. Small shapes clung to them, rippling with movement when the light struck them. Dane knelt at the edge of the nearest pool, where he saw a cluster of translucent, rubbery orbs about the size of softballs attached to the side of it. He could see something moving inside each of them.

‘Ramirez, this is a nursery. Those are caretakers and kids,” Dane called out.

“I’ll tell the Lieutenant.” After a few moments, Ramirez stepped away from the squad and cupped his hand over his mouth. His body language and hand gestures became increasingly agitated as he talked.

Time seemed to slow as they waited. There were a dozen nursemaid Newts crouched against the wall, surrounded by the infants, who either clung to them or gathered at their feet.

“Nothing is to be left alive,” Ramirez said after the conversation ended, unwilling to look at them.

‘This isn’t right,” Dane said.

“It’s a direct order. Look, does being court-martialed and sent home in an automated cargo ship sound good to any of you? ‘Cause it sure as fuck doesn’t to me. Ye and Hayder, light them up…Now!”

After a moment’s hesitation, the two remotes moved toward the far wall. When fire streamed from the flamethrowers mounted on their harnesses, Dane felt a strange sensation in his inner ears. He fell to his knees and vomited when he realized he was hearing the screams of children.

***

The train ride felt surreal, with the view outside the window resembling scenes from a distant alien world. The air was thick with dust, casting a hazy red hue over the sky. Years of drought had transformed the landscape into shades of brown and gray, and the few trees that remained were stunted, their bare branches reaching up from the dust drifts like skeletal hands emerging from a grave. Things improved once they left the Dust Bowl, and Dane eventually fell asleep under blue skies.

After switching trains at the hub in the Central Valley, Dane finally arrived in San Francisco. He stood in line outside the station, waiting for one of the AI rickshaws to be available. The sky was overcast, and a breeze with a soft bite blew. Occasionally, the sun peeked out from behind the clouds, and sunlight poured down like warm honey. As Dane sat in the rickshaw, he found it difficult to stay still. When he was still a couple of miles away from his destination, he asked the AI to pull over so he could walk the rest of the way.

The coastal flooding had worsened in the years he’d been away. Ahead of him, the remains of the Palace of Fine Arts rose from the bay like the ruins of Atlantis. He paced back and forth for several minutes at the edge of the shore, watching as the seagulls wheeled above its shattered columns. Finally, he forced himself to sit on one of the nearby benches. As the sun broke through the clouds and its warmth enveloped him, Dane closed his eyes, leaned his head back, and took slow, deep breaths. When he heard voices, he quickly got up.

A group of six people approached him. Among them was a tall, dignified woman with gray hair, who walked with a cane. She spoke to the others, and they stopped and waited while she walked over to Dane.

“Madison?” Dane asked her.

“Hello, Dad.” She reached out to shake his hand before finally pulling him into an awkward embrace. Afterward, Dane held her at arm’s length for a moment, searching her face for signs of the young girl he had left behind. She looked like a much older version of his wife.

“Thanks for meeting me,” he said, finally letting her go.

“Of course, and welcome home. Are you sure you’re up for this? She has her good days and her bad days.”

“I need to see her, Madi.”

The memory care facility was close by, and they walked there, with Madi’s aides maintaining a discreet distance. As they walked, Madi updated him on Lex’s condition. When the conversation tapered off into an awkward silence, Dane quietly said, “I read that profile about you. I’m proud of you, Madi.”

“The journey from radical anti-war activist to successful politician was a long and strange one,” she said with a small laugh.

The room Lex was in was dimly lit, and Madi went over to open the blinds. Dane stared at the figure in the bed, struggling to reconcile this small, brittle-looking woman with the memories of his wife.

 “Mom, wake up. Dad’s here,” Madi said softly, gently touching her mother’s shoulder. “Mom, it’s Dane.”

Lex opened her eyes and looked at the two of them in confusion. The right side of her face was drooping, a telltale sign of the stroke. Dane sat in the chair next to her bed, holding her hand and gently stroking her hair. Her eyes, the same rich brown that had first attracted him, met his gaze. Without a sign of recognition, Lex smiled weakly at him before closing her eyes again and drifting back to sleep.

“I told you I would come back, Lex, and I always keep my word,” Dane said softly as he raised her hand to his lips to kiss it.

“I spent so many years being angry with you, Dad,” Madi said, standing at the window with her back turned to him. “Angry at you for leaving us. For leaving her. Growing up, I could hear her crying at night.”

“I’m sorry, Madi. I don’t know what else to say to you.”

“There were men in her life now and then. But no one special, and no one who stayed for very long. She spent her life waiting for you to come home. All those years wasted because of lies.”

“I’m still struggling to understand everything, Madi,” Dane said quietly. “I’ve never felt so lost and confused. It sounds naïve, but we believed everything they told us. They banged the drums, and we marched off to war without question. The time dilation might have been manageable if the war had ended as quickly as they told us it would, but it went on for year after bloody year. All that time lost…all those lives lost.”

“I know it’s not your fault, Dad.” She turned away from the window and stretched her hand out to him. “I’ve been angry with myself too. On the day you left, I refused to say goodbye or tell you that I loved you. I’m so sorry for that.”

Dane reached across the gulf of years, pulling his daughter close and embracing her.

***

Dane cycled through the feeds from the recon drones. The extraction point was still four kilometers to the west. For the moment, they were safely sheltered behind a crystalline outcropping. A thick, milky white mist drifted around their knees, while the nearby clumps of fleshy, fern-like plants swayed eerily, as if disturbed by their presence. Above, silhouetted against the larger of the four moons, the two remaining combat drones quietly hovered.

“Does this fucking rock even have a name?” Ramirez said, his voice muffled by the breather he wore. He was lying on the ground while Rooyen applied a bonding gel to his leg to stop the bleeding. During the earlier firefight, the Newts’ flechette weapons had cut through his armor with ease.

“Nope. Just the star name and its numerical position in orbit,” she said as injecting Ramirez with a painkiller.

“From now on, we’re calling it The Devil’s Asshole.”

“Noted,” she said.

“How’s he doing?” Sgt. Chang asked as she knelt beside Rooyen.

“He’s stable, but the quicker he’s in a med bay, the better.”

“Got a way out for us, Winters?” Chang asked, turning toward the remote that Dane was piloting.

“Yeah, got a path that will thread us between the Newts. Sending it to the HUDs now.” Dane said, his mechanically reproduced voice still sounding eerie to his ears.

He waited while Chang reviewed her heads-up display and the plotted route. Dane was aboard a troop carrier, injured and recovering, but currently jacked into the remote as support. This was only the third time he had piloted a remote, and the experience was still strange to him. He felt no awareness of his physical body at all; for all intents and purposes, he was the remote.

“Looks good,” Chang said. “Diaz and Hart, help Ramirez. Let’s get the fuck out of here.”

The remnants of the platoon moved out in a staggered formation, with Dane and the remaining combat drones leading the way. The planet was smaller than Earth, and, due to its lower gravity and the power armor they wore, the troops moved with a long, loping gait. So far, the campaign to seize the system had been a months-long, bloody slog. The Newts, equipped with new and formidable tech, had fought back fiercely. On the second day of the ground offensive, Dane had lost an arm to their flechettes. His armor had provided so little protection that he might as well have been wearing paper.

They descended into a shallow caldera and navigated a rugged landscape of volcanic outcrops, fissures, and steaming fumaroles, dominated by the gray of ash and the yellow of sulfur deposits. Whenever they encountered a depression, they waded through mist that reached up to their waists and higher. The translucent, fern-like plants flourished there, with the densest growths near the sulfur deposits. Large insects with lace-like wings flitted among the stalks. The LZ was located on a relatively flat, ancient lava flow near the northern edge of the caldera. As they waited for evac, dawn began to paint the edges of the horizon with crimson and gold, while a meteor shower left fiery trails in the night sky above them.

The transport flew in low and fast. As it cleared the top of the caldera, twin lances of light struck it, and it disintegrated in noise and flames. Wreckage rained down, and they scrambled for cover as a large section of the fuselage cartwheeled across the LZ. Suddenly, like a giant bird of prey, one of the Newts’ flicker-ships swooped down and began a strafing run. As explosive rounds detonated around him, Dane crouched in a shallow hollow at the base of one of the basalt formations. The fighter made three passes and then left.

The first Newt landed three meters away, its armor absorbing the impact of its jump from its troop carrier. Dane’s shoulder-mounted Gatling gun left it a bloody heap. More Newts landed near the LZ. Rooyen and Mays were the first casualties in the subsequent firefight, struck by a barrage of flechettes before they could reach cover. A second Newt troop carrier cleared the rim of the caldera. Dozens of shapes were falling from it, their jump jets activating to slow their descent. The carrier exploded in a brilliant flash after a missile from a shoulder-mounted launcher struck it.

Dane sprinted toward Chang, Ramirez, Diaz, and four other soldiers taking cover behind a volcanic outcropping. As he crouched down next to them, flechettes and high-velocity rounds began to chip away at their cover.

“I can’t raise C2 for air support or another transport,” Chang said with frustration. Dane, staring past her, slowly lifted one of the remote’s arms and pointed. Fiery streaks still marred the reddish sky, but among them was a huge fireball. A ship was burning up in the atmosphere. What they had thought were meteors were actually fragments of wreckage.

“Fuck. The cavalry won’t be coming anytime soon,”  Chang said. “We’re too exposed here. If they get up on the caldera’s sides, they can easily pick us off. Sic the drones on them, Dane, and we’ll pull back to a more defensible position.”

Dane activated the combat drones and set them to berserker mode. The drones furiously attacked the Newts from the flanks, unleashing chaos. He then instructed the recon drones to target the nearest Newts and ram them at full speed.

Chang’s orders to withdraw and the designated rally point were received on their HUDs. The troops started to leapfrog across the lava flow, using whatever cover they could find. Each fire team took turns moving while the others provided suppressive fire. Diaz and Dane supported Ramirez as they made their way to the rally point.

Emergency acceleration in 10 minutes—disengage from remote. The message scrolled across Dane’s HUD, and a yellow light began to strobe.

“I’m getting a warning,” Dane said as he and Diaz lowered Ramirez behind some boulders. Diaz began firing on the advancing Newts. “Something about emergency acceleration and disengaging.”

“They must be bugging out. That was one of our ships doing that death dive.” Ramirez carefully raised the launcher’s barrel over the boulders and fired three smart grenades. “I’m guessing Newt reinforcements arrived. Must be a shit show up top. Christ, I’m gonna die on this fucking rock, and I don’t even know the name of the fucking star it’s circling.”

Emergency acceleration in 5 minutes—disengage from remote. The strobing light changed to red. Dane was overwhelmed by frustration and guilt. When the link to the remote was severed, he’d still be safe aboard the carrier while the rest of the team faced an unknown fate.

“Our turn to haul ass,” Diaz said.

“Help Ramirez. I only have a few minutes left to do some damage,” Dane told him.

“Fuck ‘em up. When you get home, light a candle for me,” Ramirez said, as he hobbled away with Diaz.

Emergency acceleration in 2 minutes—disengage from remote. The red light strobed faster.

Dane crouched behind the boulders, listening as the Newt fire team approached. When they were close enough, he leaped onto the rocks and opened fire with his Gatling gun. Afterward, he dropped down to the ground and used his combat shotgun to finish off the one still moving. Noticing a larger group about thirty meters away, Dane began to run toward them, firing his Gatling gun freely.

Emergency acceleration in 30 seconds…

29…

28…

High-velocity rounds and flechettes ripped into the remote. Its front legs buckled, and the remote pitched forward. Dane used its arms to pull the remote forward, the Gatling gun out of ammo, and clicking impotently.

10…

9…

Dane looked up. A Newt stood over him and slowly raised its weapon. In a fit of rage, Dane screamed as the creature pulled the trigger. His scream transformed into one of agony when the neurolinks that connected him to the remote were severed.  As he lay in the control pod of the troop carrier with a blinding headache, he gradually became aware of a new pain; it felt as though his entire body was being squeezed in a vice. The AI was walking a fine line between exceeding acceleration safety margins and not bursting the fragile organics onboard.

On the far wall, there was a viewscreen that Dane managed to turn his head to see. The planet filled the screen, but it was rapidly shrinking as the ship accelerated away. There were bright flares of light all across it.

Each flare of light was an exploding ship.

***

It rained on the morning of Lex’s funeral. Dane sat in the small church, surrounded by Madi’s children, grandchildren, and family friends. It had been three years since his homecoming, and he had visited Lex every day. She had her good days and her bad days, and most of the time, she didn’t recognize him. On those days, he would sit quietly with her, holding her hand. But there were other days, the diamond days, when the spark of memory flared bright, and she knew who he was. On those days, the years melted away, and in her mind, Madi was still a child, and they were both still young.

Later that evening, as Madi said goodbye to the mourners and well-wishers, he sat on her balcony and stared up at the night sky. The rain had stopped hours ago, and most of the cloud cover had broken up. Each star shone like a bright lantern in some distant, dark field. Dane tried to remember their names and pick out which systems he had fought in. The sliding door opened behind him, and Madi came out on the balcony.

“Are you warm enough out here, Dad?” she asked.

“I’m fine. It was a nice service today, wasn’t it?”

“It was. Do you mind if I sit with you a while?”

“Please, take a seat.” Dane moved the glass of bourbon he had set on the chair next to him. “I wanted to thank you for letting me stay here so long.”

“You don’t have to thank me, Dad, and you’re welcome.” They sat in companionable silence for a while, and then Madi quietly asked, “Are you sure you want to do this?”

“The Newts…”

“The Tau Ceti.”

“The Tau Ceti weren’t blameless. Leading up to the war, there was plenty of xenophobia on both sides. The embassies might help bridge the gap between us, and I want to be part of it. Maybe it’s partly for atonement, but it’s something I have to do. Thanks for pulling the strings to get me on the diplomatic mission.”

“I know where all the bodies are buried,” she said with a laugh.

“I probably haven’t told you this enough, but I’m proud of the woman you became, Madi. Your mom did a great job raising you.”

“Mom raised me, but I’m very much your daughter, Dad. I’m glad I got the opportunity to learn that.”

Three months later, Dane was on a shuttle heading to the orbital station where the diplomatic ship was docked, ready to take him to Tau Ceti Prime. Madi had dropped him off at the spaceport that morning, and their farewell had been tearful.

There was a small Catholic church located just outside the spaceport. After Madi left, Dane walked to it. A few elderly parishioners were scattered throughout the pews, deep in prayer. Dane lit a candle for Ramirez and for all the dead, both human and Tau Ceti.

Jon Adcock is a lover of alt-rock, Akira Kurosawa movies, and craft beer. He lives in California with his wife and two kids. His beautiful wife definitely could do better, but luckily for him she hasn’t caught on to that fact yet.