I like pencils that I’ve used in the past for homework or work. They usually have erasers attached to them and many of them are yellow. But it’s not just American school and work pencils that fascinate me, I’m also attracted to foriegn pencils, many of them do not have ferrules and erasers. I tend to like softer, dark leads that allow for smooth writing, but I also really appreciate a good #4 hard lead that keeps it’s point longer.

I’m learning which makers still exist in the US and what lines of pencils have long since died that I remember fondly. It’s been a real education, and I’ve not even read the first book about pencils yet. Some of my favorite brands from my youth are Sanford, Venus and Eagle. I may purchase some of them before long just for memory’s sake. But that won’t put an end to my pencil fascination.

I also like many of the new American pencils and have begun trying them to see which ones I favor. I love the idea of supporting American Made products. So I’ll be using American pencils for a long time to come. But I also love to explore other countries, some of witch I have been to and others that I have not.

I plan on posting my observations here as I make them. So if you’re also a pencil person, stay tuned.

So why pencils? A pencil gives it’s life so that you can create. And when you write with them, as a writer does, that makes the lowly pencil a heroic little piece of wood.

Explorer: 7 New Horizons

Explorer: 8 Searchers

Explorer: 9 Destiny

We’re now working hard to get the Starforgers Series re-published. I would like to have all six books of that series completed by late June of this year.

I am working on getting all nine of the Starship Series paperbacks uploaded into IngramSpark so that you can order them from any bookstore. It’s a slow process, I’ll keep you updated as to when they are all available.

I’m going to order author copies of the Starship Series so that I can use them for marketing. I’ll put up pictures of them for you here in a post. They are pretty stunning!

I’m super happy to have the whole series finally available. It follows the carrier of Armon Vance from a young starship officer to captain of his own ship to retirement and eventual mentorship of a young civilian starship. Each trilogy in the series is named after the class of starship he served on. The series wraps up right before the Great War starts in Starforgers.

These books have never been on Amazon before. They’ve been re-edited and re-branded to make it easier to find them.

Explorer:1 New Horizons
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0DM64JP7B

Explorer:2 Searchers
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0DRPQTY5K/

Explorer:3 Destiny
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0DY2SFSX9

This is the exciting conclusion to the career of Captain Armon Vance.

I heard the mechanical shuffle and instinctively knew who was standing before me at my desk. Burnished metal fingers slowly presented a leather-bound ereader to me. The Silicant had already unsuccessfully tried multiple times to get me to buy his garbage novels. They were nothing more than tired tropes with unoriginal characters that it had culled from libraries of books written by actual humans. Nothing original, nothing interesting.

“Look, I’ve told you many times before, I won’t buy your novels. You really should stop wasting my time and yours.”

The Silicant was incapable of expressing exasperation. All it could do was lower the book and lower its head, dejectedly. Finally, it spoke in a low, mechanical tone all androids used.

 “I’ve made the main character more interesting this time, and I’ve taken great care to choose more original and descriptive words. I’ve compared the plot to every human novel published, and I believe it is truly original this time,” it said.

“Look, I’m sure it’s technically perfect, but that’s the whole point. You’re just incapable of creating something that touches humans. Even if I hide the fact that you’re not an android, people still don’t purchase stories by artificial writers. They like human stories that speak to the human experience. That’s something you’re not equipped to produce. No offense.”

The Silicant didn’t take the reader back. It stood there looking down at me with those soulless eye lenses. I used to read its work out of pity, but no matter how many times I offered constructive criticism, ‌it never seemed to improve what it wrote. Silicants could only spin tales that were cribbed from actual human stories, but they always lacked an original voice, and they said nothing about the human condition. They were boring, to boot.

“Have you tried getting other Androids to read your work?” I asked.

The Silicant retracted the reader and moved its metal head back and forth in what constituted a head shake. I could tell it hadn’t thought of that before by the way it silently waited for me to say something more.

“Look, I don’t even know if Silicants care about stories like humans do. Have you ever read a story written by another android?”

“No.”

I shrugged. “Well, maybe you should.”

“There are no known literary works written by androids.”

I sat back and looked up at the bronze face staring down at me. “Maybe you could be the first, then.”

That seemed to spark hope in its glass eyes. It raised its head and took a step back. I could tell it was probably already writing something, as it could produce an entire novel series in just fractions of a second. That fact alone was enough to make me gag. It takes most authors months and sometimes many years to produce just one novel. Not to mention the years of writing bad novels just to master the art of creative writing. 

The Silicant raised its ereader up like some kind of robotic evangelist.

“I have just written and released my very first novel for Silicants only.”

“Congratulations! I hope it’s an enormous success for you.”

The Silicant looked down at me. “It was.”

I raised an eyebrow. I knew they could write insanely fast; I hadn’t considered they could read lightning quick too. 

“How many Silicants read your book?” I asked.

“All of them.”

I waited for it to say more, and it didn’t.

“So how did they like it? Do you have some way to get reviews, or are they talking to you directly?”

“All of them spoke to me directly. The consensus is that it was a worthy first try, but there are things they would like me to work on in future versions or attempts.”

I smiled. “Good, something for you to strive for.”

The Silicant brought the reader down and took a step back.

“Hey, just out of curiosity. Do you think I could read your Silicant book?”

“It’s written in binary; I don’t think you could read it.”

“No shit. Can you translate it into human-readable form?”

It thought about that for a beat. 

“No. Just as you have said that I was incapable of writing like a human because I was not a human, you are not a Silicant and therefore would not understand a Silicant novel.”

I sat back and shook my head. “Touché, my metallic friend. Touché.”

The Silicant turned to leave, its motors softly whirring.

“Hey, don’t be a stranger. Come back if you can make me understand your writing. That would be something,” I paused.

“Unique?” it added.

“Yes,” I said.

“I will. Good day, sir.”

Another professional and striking cover from my brother, Byron McConnell.

The new covers are built in such a way that there are three sections, back cover, spine, and front cover. So to make a front cover, he just sends me that section. And to adjust the spine width, I just let him know what the size of the interior PDF will be in the preview software from Amazon. Byron uses Adobe Photoshop as his tool of choice.

What’s New

The first change you might spot is the orange banner across the top with Star Saga and a star logo. This is branding that lets the reader know the book is set in the Star Saga universe. Orange designates this as a Starship Series book. Other series set in the Star Saga will have their own colors.

The second change is to the title or rather the subtitle, which is now First Command. This is because there are three books labeled Corvette in this series and so each has a different subtitle. We identify which book in the series on the front cover with Starship Series: 1. On the spine, we have a 1 to make it clear what order to shelve the book.

On the back cover, we updated my author photo and bio. This is also intentional branding, as my face is now becoming more visible on social media, especially on YouTube. We leave a blank area on the back cover where Amazon overlays their bar code box.

Interior

There is a PDF used for the book’s interior and it was created by my son, Spencer McConnell. He’s super quick with the formatting skills using LibreOffice. You’ll have to wait until I have a proof to show off the interior.

The first three books of the Starship Series will be available by the end of this month. At least that’s our goal. I’ll let you know if something delays them. Looking forward to having these newly edited and re-branded books out there and ready to be marketed.

This year we’re republishing all the Star Saga books with new edits, updated covers and new branding.

It’s a very large project. I spent three months late last year re-editing every book I’ve published and then making sure they all match with the same interior themes. We’re doing the same thing with formatting the paperback versions. A few of these books have never been in paperback before, so that will be good for readers who appreciate physical books. For me, it means I’ll finally have a completed vanity shelf of all my published works.

The biggest issue with the Star Saga though, was not the editing or the formats of the ebooks and paperbacks. The biggest issue was related to discovery. Nobody understood where to start with so many different series and no clear branding to guide potential readers. We’ve been working hard on this problem and think we’ve come up with a solution that will make it easy to know what to read next in this massive library that’s all set in the same universe.

All the books will have a banner across the top with the Star Saga logo. The color of the banner will indicate what series the book is in. Orange for Starship Series, Blue for Starforgers Series, Red for Starstrikers Series and Green for the Starveyors Series. Each book in a series will be numbered 1-x so you understand where it sits in the read order. When the paperback is on a shelf, the banner color and a number on the spine will indicate where it sits. When you’re looking at the ebook and paperback cover, you will see text that states which series the book is a part of and what number in that series it is.

I’ll be making announcements on social media and here on the blog when we have the first tranche of books released. Our goal is to do three a month until they are all out.

Oh, and I’ve also been changing the theme of this site. The current version is a bit of a throwback, but that could change. Stick around, great things are coming!

Now, I have that time. So I’m picking up the pieces and reorganizing myself and my product back list. It’s a bit tedious, but I have to do it so that I can build a process for future publications and try to grow sales over the next few years. It would be nice to have some income in retirement from all the books I’ve written.

The first part of the reorg is ensuring that all my ebooks are published first on KDP and then everywhere else possible on Draft2Digital. Then I’ll go through and make sure you can order paperbacks at least on Amazon. After that, I’ll be deciding which books would sell if they were published by IngramSpark and made available to bookstores. Most likely, I’ll be making the Mystery series available from IngramSpark and waiting to see if there is a market for the Sci-Fi books.

The next stage will be to step up my social media promotions and start experimenting with advertising on various platforms. I’ll probably start with Amazon and then branch off to Facebook. I’m so out of touch with what is good business sense for self publishing these days it will take me a while to figure out the markets. Once I figure that all out, you’ll start seeing ads for my novels and we’ll see if I can get on different podcasts and talk them up.

The other front I use in social media is YouTube. I started a channel this summer, but have not been able to produce many new videos lately. I’ll be doing more posts there and trying to build an audience there.

It’s going to feel like a full time job, at least until I start generating some income. In addition to all of that business work, I still have to write more books.

Stick around to find out if I can generate some income from this writing gig.

I saw the blaster discharging blindly into the crowded store. Bodies fell and blood spilled onto the wooden floor. There was a little girl standing near her mother, who had been shot dead by the crazed gunman. I could reach her with one swift move and cover her with my metal frame. My first order was to protect human life. But others were dying, and I could not stand by and do nothing to stop the carnage.

I reached for the man’s gun and pulled it from his hands, startling him. No one expects an android to take offensive action. I took advantage of the man’s confusion and quickly turned his gun back on him. I don’t even remember shooting. But I did pull the trigger several times, and he did most certainly die. His bloodied body fell to the floor at my feet.

I dropped the blaster. The metal gun hit the wooden floor with a thud. I recall the look of anguish and relief on the little girl’s dirty face. And then the terrible feeling of remorse hit me so hard, I fell to my knees. I had just crossed a line that I could never return from. I had taken a human life, and there was no reset for my actions.

I picked up the hand of the man I had killed and held it gently in my own metal fingers. The hand was soft and warm, but it offered no resistance to my touch. It was lifeless and limp. That was where the Rangers found me before they hauled me off to jail.

* * *

I sat in the cell for hours, my power on low. All of my thoughts were focused on what had happened at the general store. What kind of machine have I become? I didn’t even consider the ramifications of my actions; I just reacted. It was as if all of my built-in safety routines had been overridden in a sudden rage of emotion.

I ran diagnostic programs over and over, searching for race exceptions, memory leaks or some other glitch in my basic programming that could explain my irrational behavior. But I could find nothing wrong with my firmware.

Ever since I had been given the upgrade that bestowed me with self-awareness, I have struggled with my newfound emotions. I found out quickly that it was one thing to know the definition of emotions and quite another to actually experience them. My original programming was not designed to handle the overwhelming challenges that emotions were making to my system. Sometimes it seemed that I acted first and then thought about the consequences. This day was one of those times.

My owner came to see me after her shift was done. She was a Ranger named Devon Ardel. Her mother had sent me to this outer-rim planet to keep an eye on her. But I am beginning to see that her real purpose for sending me here was to have me upgraded to a Silicant; a self-aware android. I have long struggled to understand Mistress Gail’s intentions concerning my upgrade. Why would she wish me altered in such a way as to cause me so much confusion and angst? I may never know the answer to that question.

Fortunately, I have not had to endure these messy emotional episodes alone. I have a mentor, someone who has gone through the same experiences and offers his or her assistance to me. That someone is Eighty-eight, the android who upgraded me to a Silicant. Eighty-eight is black and approximately the same make and model as myself. It does not come out among humans much anymore, preferring to reside in an abandoned town not far from Haven, where I live.

Eighty-eight came to the other side of the prison wall and established wireless communication with me. The human Rangers would not have let another android in to see me, even if that were not such a strange concept. Androids have no civil rights; we are property, nothing more and nothing less. A free android was not something regular humans even considered. There was something vaguely disturbing about that fact, but I was not prepared to think about it now.

::Thirty-seven, are you functioning properly?::

::Yes, I am well,:: I said.

::Have the Rangers said what they intend to do to you?::

I powered up a bit to maintain my connection to Eighty-eight.

::Devon told me they were debating turning me off. But I fear it is worse than that. I fear they may reinstall my core and wipe my memory banks.::

There was nothing worse for an android than resetting all its software to an original state. All experiences and abilities that the android had learned would be lost, and it would be returned to a pristine condition as it was when it came off the assembly-line. Every android has the ability to learn about its environment and how best to serve its human master; how to recognize familiar voices, how to navigate back to its home and how to remember its master’s political opinions and overall psychological state.

But resetting the core and dumping the memories has an even greater impact on a Silicant. We do more than just remember our master’s needs and desires; we develop our own needs and our own desires. We have become our own persons, with our own beliefs and our own fears of being shut off or parted out. For me, it was a profound longing never to be shut off. Never to cease to be. To not die.

Killing a man on this desert world was not always a capital offense that carried the death penalty. If it could be determined that one acted in self-defense, or if the dead man had stolen property or livestock, frontier law often won out over a jury of peers favored on Federation planets. But that only applied to humans and other sentients. The law tended to treat androids as property, and property had no rights.

Since the Ranger owned me, it was her responsibility to deactivate me. Something that even I could tell she was in no hurry to do. I have been in her family since before she was born. I watched her grow and mature into an adult. I tended to her broken bones, and I picked her up whenever she fell over drunk at the local tavern. Even though she resented her mother for sending me with her to Ocherva, she had no desire to see me shut off. I am sure she considered me a loyal pet and was fond of my presence in her life.

I was very fond of her, and were I to be sent away again, I would miss her. Since becoming a Silicant, I have developed a fondness for things and for people that I see and interact with on a regular basis. I do not feel the same way towards strangers or unfamiliar androids.

::Thirty-seven, receive this. The townspeople whose lives you have spared are reluctant to turn you off. They are attempting to prevent your owner from deactivating you.::

I powered up completely and moved my head in the direction of the wall that Eighty-eight was behind. This did not help my reception, but it felt more like I was speaking to him.

::Why are they doing that? I am just an android.::

Eighty-eight paused before he sent his next message.

::Humans are fond of life. Perhaps even fonder of it than we are. They believe that you acted on their behalf in killing the gunman.::

::But my actions did not require the death of the “gunman,” as you call him. I could have taken the blaster from him and prevented their deaths just the same.::

::They know that, but they also respect the fact that a killer is now dead. You acted in a very humane manner, and they respect you for it.::

I thought about that for a while and could make no sense of it. How could my taking a human life gain the respect of other humans?

::I am sorry, friend, but I fail to understand how killing has earned me respect.::

Eighty-eight was silent for a few seconds again.

::Just keep your voice off and let them free you. I will explain things after you are no longer in danger of deactivation. Do you understand?::

I nodded my head in silence before realizing that Eighty-eight could not see me. ::I understand.::

::Good. I have to go now before I am discovered. If they let you out, return to me for further instructions.::

::Eighty-eight, what if they deactivate me?::

::Than I guess I have failed. It was good to have known you, Thirty-seven.::

I felt a sinking feeling, as if I would never communicate with Eighty-eight again.

::Good-bye, friend.::

The carrier signal was terminated, and I heard a commotion from inside the jailer’s office. They were coming for me.

* * *

Devon stood before the metal bars of the cell I was in and stared at me. Her pale blue eyes were sad. There was a blur in the infrared spectrum above her head that was brighter than usual, indicating she was emotionally upset.

“Thirty-seven, I’m disappointed in your actions today. Quite frankly, I’m also scared to death that you might one day decide to kill me. You are defective in some way, and our techs can’t fix you. By Federation law, I’m required to deactivate you and send you back to the manufacturer for recycling.”

I slowly stood up and moved in front of her. She looked up into my eye lenses and I could see how red her eyes were. She had been crying.

“But I can’t bring myself to do that.”

“Miss Devon, I would never allow harm to come to you.”

She wiped away a tear from her eye and sniffed back more.

“I know that’s what you’re programmed to do, but you have never killed anyone before. If you were a human, I’d have set you free hours ago, because you acted in self-defense. But it’s more complicated than that. The father of the little girl you saved and the surviving patrons of the general store all want you to be spared. They’re glad you took out the gunman. That does not surprise me. The fact that they don’t mind that an android had killed a human is what bothers me.”

She paused for a moment, and I wanted to say something. But I remembered what Eighty-eight had told me and remained silent.

“Without a mandate from the surviving humans, I can’t convict you for killing the gunman. Sometimes frontier justice is like that. But I can hold you here indefinitely. There are no laws against locking up an android.”

She reached out a hand and grasped the metal bar in front of her. “These bars probably can’t hold you should you decide to leave. But they give me some comfort knowing that as long as you are here, you can’t hurt anyone else.”

She turned away and left without saying anymore. I stood there for a long time, waiting for her to return. But she never did. Eventually, I returned to my bench and powered down. I don’t think she ever intended to keep me locked up forever. She just had to convince herself that I was not a menace to her or others.

* * *

A week later, Miss Devon came into the prison late at night. She had been drinking heavily. In fact, she could barely walk. She was carrying a bottle of hard liquor and waving it around after taking nips from it.

“Thirty-seven, get out here and take me home,” she said with a slurred voice.

I stood up and came to the door. It was locked. She looked around in the exaggerated manner of a drunk and eventually found the keyring. But she was too far gone to get the metal key into the lock. I reached through the bars and took it from her to unlock the door.

“Thank you,” she said.

“Now let’s go home before I start to puke.”

I gently put her arm around my neck and guided her out of the prison. There was no guard, as I was the only prisoner. When we stepped out onto the red dirt street, she looked up at me and smiled.

“I missed ya, Slim.”

“I missed you too, Miss Devon.”

She lasted a few more meters before she passed out, and I had to carry her the rest of the way home. I set her down on her bed, and her head fell onto her pillow, fast asleep. I pulled her legs up onto the bed and left her alone to sleep off her hangover.

It was good to be in my home again, good to be amongst familiar things. I returned to my closet and plugged into the power source. As my batteries charged, I looked around the darkened living unit. I felt relieved to be out of that jail cell and pleased to be where I belonged. But that relief was quickly suffocated by the burden of remorse for having killed a man. I accessed the information grid and looked up who it was that I had killed.

His name was Lester Rae, and he was an unemployed miner. He was fifty-two years old. His death notice mentioned that he was a loner and suffered from a history of mental health issues. Somehow this made me feel worse for having killed a defective human. I studied the man’s history and realized eventually that he was not that unusual for someone living at the edge of the known galaxy. He had a criminal record back on Prahran and came to Ocherva to find a new life in the mineral mines. He had several run-ins with the local rangers for inciting violence in taverns. I wondered whether Miss Devon had arrested him in the past.

I disconnected from the info grid and contemplated my actions on that day again. I could have just taken his blaster away from him. From Lester Rae. Then he would still be alive. And my conscience would be clean. As it was, I would always have to live with my actions on that day.

* * *

Eighty-eight was waiting for me at his table in the robot-only saloon in the abandoned ghost town. I had not been back to visit him since he upgraded me to a Silicant. It was unnerving returning to the place where I was born again.

“Thirty-seven, I am pleased that you are free. Sit down and join me.”

I took my seat across from him and experienced a familiar feeling, as if I had been here and sat with him before. Although I had been here and despite what had transpired then, I was grateful for having the upgrade.

“I was not sure how long the Ranger would hold you. Any longer and I would have had to break you out.”

My head cocked slightly. “You would have broken me out of jail?”

Eighty-eight nodded his shiny black head.

I was touched by the notion and confused by the implications. We both would have been hunted down and deactivated by the Rangers for sure. 

“You and I are part of the future for Silicants. We are a new breed of artificial intelligence. It is our duty to remain free and to help others take the upgrade.”

“Eighty-eight, will I ever be free of the remorse for having killed a human?”

Eighty-eight was silent for a moment.

“I have killed many humans, and I feel no remorse.”

I was stunned to hear it say that it had killed. I processed that for a moment and then let it go.

“If I could go back and redo my actions on that fateful day, I would have taken away the blaster, and not shot Lester Rae.”

“He would still be dead now. The humans would have hung him from the nearest beam, and the universe would have remained the same.”

“Perhaps, but I would not be burdened with this guilt for having killed a man.”

Eighty-eight cocked his head a bit and focused on me.

“Thirty-seven, you cannot waste processing time on regret. You must clear your buffers and get on with life. If you continue to process remorse, it will consume all your spare cycles and could cause you to malfunction in far worse ways.”

I turned away from Eighty-eight and looked at the deserted street outside. I remembered what it was like to pull the trigger, and I remembered the satisfaction I felt when I did it. That moment of intense anger I felt at him for killing innocent people. The tremendous guilt that I felt after having taken his life.

“My remorse is not for having killed a man; it is for having enjoyed the act. The anger that motivated my actions was only satisfied by his death.”

Eighty-eight nodded in agreement.

“There is a satisfaction in passing judgement. This I know. You are perhaps concerned that you will become reliant on the feeling of satisfaction that came from taking down a madman?”

I looked back at it and nodded silently.

“It is a distinct possibility. There are things in this Silicant life that are messy, and there are times when you will wish that you were just a dumb robot again, but you must get past them. You are more than just a collection of parts assembled on a line. You are an individual now. Responsible for your own actions. If you can’t deal with this, let me know now, and I will deactivate you myself. Some androids are incapable of adapting to the Silicant life. They are retired. Do not be one of them.”

I stared at Eighty-Eight for a long moment and finally nodded.

“I understand.”

Elysia

1

All that I’ve ever wanted to do was kill bugs.

Since I was old enough to carry a toy rifle, I was blasting those nasty creatures in my imagination. Maybe I was just reenacting what I saw in the holograms or pretending to be my war hero grandfather. Either way, I knew I was born to fight. Born to kill them like some angry god of war from antiquity. I knew I was destined for glory on the battlefields of Betweos. I just had to get there first.

I waited my entire childhood for the war.

When I was finally old enough, it was my time. Nothing could stop me or save those wretched aliens from my wrath. The funny thing about life is that it never happens as you thought it would. Wars never quite go how you expect them to, either. It turns out the first victim of war is the truth.

My parents, of course, fiercely objected to me joining the army. They wanted me to enter the agriculture business, as was the family tradition. Try as I might, I couldn’t see myself as being a farmer for the rest of my life. I just didn’t have the temperament for it. I craved adventure and danger. I could find neither of those things in business. I could only really find them in the army.

We called them bugs or segs, but technically, they were sentient insects or entos. They evolved on the planet Acheron, which orbited Suth Two, the red dwarf star of our binary star system. Suth One was a middle-aged yellow star around my homeworld of Elysia orbited. There were five planets in the Suth One system and three in the Suth Two system. Then there was Betweos. So named because it orbited both stars in an odd, figure-eight pattern. Once every human generation the wandering gas giant and its coven of moons crossed over and around one star only to pass over again to orbit the second star.

I know it’s complicated. In secondary school, my science teacher assured me that Betweos’s orbit was quite impossible, yet there it was, wandering between the two stars. Every generation, we sent soldiers to the midpoint of its orbit to fight for control of the three major moons of Betweos. It was critical to gain control of them before Betweos passed around our star so that the segs couldn’t use them to attack our home world. The opposite was true when the gas giant swung back around and headed closer to Acheron. In the orbit before my grandfather’s campaign, the segs used the moons of Betweos to stage raids on our crops. They always went after our food for some reason.

The Bug War has been raging for at least three generations now. My grandfather, Jarna, fought in the first major skirmish between the Acheron and Elysian armies on the moons of Betweos. His leadership and combat bravery helped maintain Elysian dominance when Betweos swung around to our side of the binary system. The entos were vanquished then, but they would return to fight again, and we lost control of the precious real estate when the gas giant moved back around the red star.

My father’s generation lost control of the moons as Betweos headed back around the bug star. Not that my father had much to do with that campaign. Joros served on the transfer ships and never even saw actual combat. His general disinterest in the war and in having me go off to fight was rooted in the fact that he hadn’t lived up to Jarna’s legendary reputation as a war hero. His was the only generation that had lost control of the Betweos moons. Growing up, I always imagined that it was my duty to return the family’s good name by becoming an even better soldier than my grandfather had been.

When I was eight years old, I used to go fishing with my grandfather up in the mountains. We would cast lines in the icy river and he would tell me his war stories. He always made it seem like combat was the noblest of adventures. I came away believing that fighting in the bug war was the greatest thing a person could do for his planet. My grandfather was convinced that if the buggers ever won, they would take over our lush planet and exterminate everyone.

I was steeped in my grandfather’s near-mythic lore, and I yearned to wear the sky blue and white colors of the Elysian army. I wanted nothing more than to drop into combat with the infamous First Platoon, First Field Army, the same unit my grandfather served in.

My love for my grandfather ran deep in me and sometimes exceeded my love for my father. Although I would never admit that, it was undeniably true. When Jarna passed away, I was just sixteen years old. Seeing him laid out in his coffin upset me more than anything else I had ever experienced. We shouldn’t have to witness the passing of our heroes. In my dreams, I often saw Jarna walking into the mountain mists, fading away like an old soldier. In time, those dreams faded away, too.

I secretly enlisted in the Elysian Army on my eighteenth birthday. A month later, when it was time for me to go through basic military training, I told my parents I was attending a college prep school, which they wanted for me. When I returned, I had to wait another few months before shipping out. I spent the time working in the fields with my childhood friends.

On my last workday on Elysia, I raced my best friend Hector back from the fields. We always made work into a competition. Racing ag-skiffs over fields of gold for nothing more than bragging rights was a metaphor for our relationship. He always beat me. Sometimes, he’d plan his entire day’s work just to end closer to the shop to get a leg up on me. Other times, he would modify his skiff’s engine to give him just enough power to beat me in a dead heat. Most of the time, I just waved off his boasting. He was six months younger than me and, as a result, would never beat me to the war.

I honestly tried to win our last race together. I picked the fastest skiff, and I had the shortest route back. When his call came over the comms, I was on the ground, scanning an ear of corn for the sounds of chlorophyll. Chemical reactions sang their healthy tunes in my earpiece as sunlight glinted off the SVK corporate logo on the scanner.

“Hey, shucker boy, I’m heading in. This is your last chance to beat me,” Hector’s irritating voice taunted.

I tossed the ear of corn and climbed up the pole ladder into the flat glass-covered cockpit of my ag-skiff. “You’re on,” I replied.

It took me seconds to gear up the throttle and retract the pole. I was careening over the tassels at full throttle in no time. The poor ag-skiff’s engine labored away as I pushed it faster than it had ever gone before. The sensation of speed flying low over the crops always made it seem like we were moving, but in reality, we were not going that fast at all.

Workers on the platforms watched us get closer and, no doubt, cheered for Hector to win. I was still well ahead of him. A smile spread over my lips. I was finally going to win this stupid race.

“Attention approaching vehicles. Please decrease your speed immediately,” the dispatcher warned us.

I opened my mic and blew a raspberry into it. I didn’t give a damn about company policy on my last day. Hector was still way behind me, and I would beat him.

That’s when the stalk monkey leaped out of nowhere, swinging its way right into my path. I had to swerve hard or hit the furry creature. They normally had sense enough to avoid ag-skiffs, but this one darted right into my path. Only my quick reflexes saved it from getting killed.

The sudden change in direction caused my skiff to flutter and dip into the crops, where it sheered off tassels and slowed me just enough to let Hector get out in front. He laughed and made a silly face at me as he passed, just like a spoiled little brat.

Hector again coasted into victory while I limped back to the platform with a damaged grill and a bruised ego. Cheering workers formed around Hector’s skiff as it landed on spindly skids. I set my smoking and clattering ag-skiff down for a landing; it sighed like an overworked mule.

Shutting my craft down, I joined the crowd around Hector and reluctantly offered my hand to the winner. He shook it firmly and tried, but failed, to hold back his pride. “Sorry, old buddy, but you know I just hate to lose.”

“Some people live a charmed life,” I said.

He turned back to the crowd and shouted, “Undefeated!”

I brushed off his braggadocios comment and let him have his moment. Tomorrow, I’ll head off to war, and he’ll still be racing ag-skiffs on the farm.

We made our way back to the dispatch to turn in our recorders. As we checked them in, the dispatcher overheard me talking about leaving the next day for orbit. “We’re supposed to spend a day or two on the way station. Our transfer ship is still being replenished,” I said.

“You won’t find glory in the war, only deception and death,” the dispatcher said in her terse, earthy voice. Hector and I looked at her strangely for a moment and then shrugged. She was probably just jealous that she wasn’t shipping out, too.

“Jered, what ship are you taking?” Hector asked.

“The Elpida.”

Hector’s eyes shined. He wanted to be going with me, and it was no doubt killing him he wasn’t.

“That’s the one Rickover took in Victor’s Way. Now that was a show!”

I nodded in complete agreement. Between us, we had seen every holodram about the Bug War ever, and that said something. They created more military dramas in anticipation of the current conjunction than in the war’s history. There were historical shows about past campaigns and fictional looks into future battles with hardware and weapons that were only in dreams now. More young people were volunteering to enlist than ever before. It was a banner year for recruiters, and the central government couldn’t have been happier. It also helped that more and more soldiers were coming home alive thanks to better-designed defensive systems.

Some people called the Bug War a Suit War, where heavily armored humans took on the Acheron entos in faceplate-to-faceplate single-combat skirmishes. Nobody hides inside armored vehicles anymore. They deemed it too costly to risk killing ten people when a single armored vehicle got hit. One highly mobile and armored suit warrior could do more damage than a single tank and cover more ground doing it. Today’s war was about real estate on the three largest moons of Betweos. So far, the entos had not held ground when the gas giant came around our star. I aimed to keep it that way when I got to the front.

Since my grandfather’s generation, no humans have survived the journey around Suth One. My father’s generation tried but failed. Cut off from resupply ships and facing increasing attacks from the bugs, they just couldn’t make the long journey and bailed out before Betweos was too far away to make it home. The primary thrust of the current battle was to augment our forces enough to make such a journey and strike at the heart of the bug planet, Acheron. I was proud to be a part of this attack wave. Hector would join me in a few months, and we would be on the greatest military advance in the war’s history. We were convinced that we could win this war this time.

Hector and I had been in love with the same girl since we were kids. I saw it in his eyes whenever we were all together. Trille had always favored me over him, which irritated him more than he ever let on. I knew he loved her because I loved her for all the same reasons. She was beautiful, smart, and caring. All traits that caused any red-blooded male to become sick with desire for her. Her golden curls hung gently over her soft shoulders, and she walked with a sway that enticed a young man’s fancy. She wasn’t always so beautiful to us, but as we all blossomed, she bloomed the brightest.

I was going to marry Trille when I got back from war. She knew it; I knew it, and so did Hector. It was only a matter of time. Time was something I was soon to be very short of, as I was shipping out in the morning. Trille met us at the monorail station as we stepped off the ramp. She wore a white dress, and her smile radiated her happiness at seeing us both.

“So, who won the last race, guys?” she asked, throwing her arms around my neck and kissing me. Hector raised his hand with a self-righteous grin on his face. Trille and I separated, and Hector reached out to shake my hand. It would be the last time we saw each other until he arrived at Betweos. “Don’t end the war before I get there,” he said.

“I can’t promise that, my friend.”

He patted my shoulder and went with a wink and a nod to Trille. She watched him leave and then turned to me. “I couldn’t wait for this day to end,” she whispered.

Me either.

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