Old Man's War

After only two hours of sleep, John is woken by an alert on his BrainPal: Ruiz will be arriving in two minutes, and he expects John’s squad to be standing at attention. John immediately notifies his squad leaders, and they manage to rouse all the recruits just as Ruiz arrives. However, they did not have time to dress, earning a reprimand from Ruiz.

Outside, to John’s relief, all the other platoons are under-dressed as well. Ruiz tells the recruits that their new bodies only need two hours of sleep. Over the next week, Ruiz shows them all the things that their new bodies can do, pushing the limits of their physical strength. Each of the recruits has moments where they lose their nerve, but John notes that this is always mental rather than a physical limitation.

On the fourth day, the recruits are given a 25-kilogram bag of sand and forced to jump into a pool. They are instructed to stay at the bottom of the pool holding their breath for six minutes. Because John fell onto a covered pool as a child, he has always struggled with water. He panics after less than two minutes underwater. However, Alan taps into his BrainPal and tells John to distract himself by checking in with the other squad leaders and recruits. Ultimately, all the recruits stay under for over six minutes, with John lasting more than seven.

In the second week, the recruits receive their rifles. They are capable of firing a variety of bullets with a single, high-density ammunition, including rifle bullets, grenades, streams of flames, and more. The BrainPals are used to operate them. As John experiments with the settings on his rifle, he hears Ruiz yelling at a recruit whom John identifies as Sam McClain. Ruiz demands that Sam repeat what he said, and Sam makes a comment about feeling bad for the aliens who face such strong weapons. Ruiz interrupts him, smashing him in the face with his rifle and knocking him to the ground. Ruiz warns the platoon that they are underestimating their enemies. He makes it clear that the CDU gives them these rifles—and their new, stronger bodies—because it is the “absolute minimum that will allow [them] to fight and survive out there” (156).

In addition to doing physical work, the recruits also spend time in classrooms. A lieutenant named Oglethorpe tries to teach them to think differently about their brains, just as they are doing with their bodies. In one exercise, he shows them two images—one of a strange-looking alien and one that resembles a deer. He then informs them that the strange one is actually an ally to the CDF, while the deer inseminates humans to then eat their children.

Oglethorpe also explains the dangers of fighting for the CDF: The war is different than any that has been fought before, and each battle is unique. As a result, past experience—even within the CDF—is essentially useless. On one colony, soldiers may fight with ocean-dwelling aliens, while on another, they may encounter biological warfare in the desert. He warns them to forget everything they know about war.

One of the recruits asks why the CDF cares so much about humanity when it can create “better” humans. Oglethorpe provides two reasons. First, genetically modifying humans makes them incapable of reproducing, so the CDF cannot just create an entirely new human species. Second, he tells them that humans are already evolving and that the CDF supports the human “potential” to control the universe. The recruits should care about humanity’s future even if humans evolve into something unrecognizable and it takes generations more to do so.

Over the next several weeks and with Alan’s help, John helps his platoon become the strongest. They win the war games, defeating seven other platoons and eliminating over half the competition while only losing a third of their own members. John then becomes a private in the CDF. He is sent with Alan back to Phoenix, where they will be picked up by the CDFS Modesto to join the 2nd Platoon, Company D, of the 233rd CDF Infantry Battalion. Just before they depart, Ruiz tells John that he is “not nearly the dipshit that most of [his] fellow recruits have turned out to be” (166).

For his first two years in the military, John will simply be a soldier—going where he is told to go and doing what he is told to do. For each battle, he puts on his suit, which is designed to regulate his body temperature and protect him, even from bullets. He also has a belt that holds ammo, a shelter, and a multipurpose tool that’s better than even the best on Earth. The commander of his platoon is Lieutenant Arthur Keyes.

In his first battle, John fights a species called the Consu. He spends hours watching the Consu battle ritual with his corporal, Viveros, and his squadmate, Watson. The Consu are infamous for fighting for the pure joy of it; they have no interest in colonization yet land on human-inhabited planets just to engage in battle. They are technologically advanced, often adjusting their weapons to ensure a fair fight with their enemies. Just before the battle starts, the Consu begin to sing—the final stage of their ritual. John notes that it feels like a “baptism,” as they sing about their enemies’ rebirth as Consu after death.

John, Viveros, and Watson begin to snipe as many of the Consu as they can from a distance. John realizes that the Consu require two shots to be killed, which is data that the BrainPal did not have. He mentally tells his rifle to begin firing two consecutive shots—the second one explosive—and his rifle immediately complies. John then relays the information to the others in his platoon. Throughout, John is annoyed at Watson, who is excited to kill the Consu and ignores orders from Viveros while talking loudly, despite Viveros’s insistence that they only use their BrainPals to communicate.

When John, Watson, and Viveros are spotted, Viveros orders them to take cover. The boulders above them explode, nearly hitting John. After several moments, Viveros instructs them to throw grenades over the ledge, which kills most of the Consu. However, Watson jumps over before they can confirm that the Consu are all dead. To John’s surprise, Watson is shot in the face from point-blank range by a Consu. John reacts by killing the Consu and then firing over 30 rounds into its dead corpse. Viveros pulls him away, insisting that they need to find cover and leave Watson’s body. The CDF wins the battle with the Consu. John’s platoon suffers only four injuries and two deaths. 

Afterward, John goes back to get Watson’s body, but when he finds it, it has largely been eaten by scavengers. As John carries Watson’s body to the morgue, Alan joins him. John asks what Alan thought of the Consu ritual, and Alan comments on its size and strength. John points out that it was religious and ritualistic. When Watson died, the Consu who killed him kept repeating the word “redeemed.” John speculates that the CDF is wrong; it believes that the Consu left the planet because they recognize that they lost, but John thinks that by spilling their blood on a planet, they claim ownership of it. He wonders if they’ll come back to occupy it at a later date, perhaps on some religious day or “Armageddon.”

Keyes, Viveros, and Lieutenant Colonel Rybicki, the commander of another platoon, interrupt the conversation. The three of them thank John for coming up with the tactic that killed the Consu. John is humble, insisting that someone else would have thought of it, but Rybicki praises him for it.