Old Man's War

Maggie is the first of John’s group to die. Outside a planet named Temperance, she is deployed to fight an invading species called the Ohu. However, the CDF ship explodes on the way down, hurling Maggie into the atmosphere. In her final moments, she uses her gun to shoot several rockets at nearby Ohu ships. Then, she sends a message to John’s group—a “jisei,” or death haiku, in which she tells her “friends” not to mourn her, as she “fall[s] as a shooting star / into the next life” (185).

After three months in the military, John finally feels like he fits in with the other soldiers. He realizes that this is likely because he has completed his first battle. He also notices that he has started to treat other recruits how he was treated—with distance and uncertainty—until they, too, prove themselves in battle.

One such soldier is Thaddeus Bender, a former ambassador and senator. Bender tries to force his fellow soldiers to like him, which John feels is a form of “campaigning” that Bender is used to from his life on Earth. In one instance, Bender offends Viveros and, by extension, John when he suggests that the CDF is not trying diplomacy often enough with alien species.