Blue Sky Ranch

I held out the glass of carnacka juice to my father and he stood up, wiping a hand against his brow before he took it. The suns were out in full force and we’d spent the day working on the edge of the ranch fixing nox-fences.

It wasn’t a big ranch. There were larger on New Babylon, and plenty smaller, but it was my home. It had been my home for as long as I could remember and the three suns were as familiar to me as the constellations here were alien to my father. We grew sorghum and issiognahm wheat along with a decent herd of bison, enough to meet the quotas on the union ships that came down to collect the harvest before the winds kicked up at the end of the season.

This far from Eridu, the closest thing to a city on Babylon, we could look out for a hundred miles and not see another sign of humanity in any direction. Only the line of posts, their silver tops soaking in the sunlight and turning it into an invisible perimeter boundary to keep out the more pesky local fauna, spaced out until they met the horizon.

“Did I ever tell you about the time I made grub-stew on Proxima P?” my father asked.

“Yes dad. More than once.”

He just smiled and I knew he was thinking about it, the time he’d spent in the service before he’d traded it all away to move to the edge of civilisation to live on a tiny ball of rock and raise a family.

He still wore the old fashioned sunglasses he’d got from the army, the kind that were permanently dark to keep the light out of your eyes. I loved my dad, but he was a relic just like they were.

I finished my drink and picked up the lump hammer, ready to haul it to the next post that needed some TLC. The nox packs would attack them at night when it was cooler, taking out the signal and then they’d be free to wander closer to the ranch and pick off the bison. It was physical labour but the kind I’d grown up doing every day of my life.

“It’s your birthday next week,” my father said. “Eighteen.”

I stood with the hammer resting between my feet and waited. Had he come to a decision? Would he let me enlist?

He took another sip of his drink.

“My old man was a vet.”

Grandad? My eagerness was washed away in a single sentence and I realised my question had had a deeper impact than causing my parents to argue about my future for the past month since first stating my intentions. Dad had never mentioned anything about his own father. There wasn’t a single vid or snap of the man anywhere in the house.

“He did two tours and came home to my mom with half his muster pay and one leg blown away. He was a mean fucking bastard.”

“You’re not like that,” I said.

It was the only thing I could think to say.

“I almost was.”

He sat down, his back against the most recent post we’d seated, and his cargo shorts sent up a cloud of fine dust. He ran his hand through the dust and let it fall to the ground. The gravity here was high, I could see it in the way foreigners struggled to do even the most basic things whenever I caught the shuttle into the capital.

“I ever tell you about the time I made grub-stew on Proxima P?” he said and he was smiling, but he wasn’t smiling at me.

“Yes dad.”

“Did I ever tell you why I made grub-stew on Proxima P?

“No?”

“When my old man went to war it was easy. No, wrong word. It was simple. The guys you went to war against were just like you and your friends, men and women. They might follow some tinpot dictator on a reborn-colony, but at the end of the day, you look at them and you see a person.

“But after the horde showed up that all changed. Those things were monstrous, no arms or legs, just a mass of movement. If one of them got into a bunkhouse it was easier to burn it than try and clean up the mess.”

“I’ve seen the pictures they have on the school apps,” I said.

“That’s the difference,” my dad said, standing up and taking the hammer from me. “All you’ve done is look at war through the pictures on your tablet, but the real thing is something else entirely.”

“I still want to go,” I said. “I can take it.”

“On P, we were ten thousand of the best soldiers and after three weeks we were reduced to eating whatever was crawling on that rock just to survive so don’t tell me you can take it. You’ve never had to face anything worse than a spark-storm.

“I left my friends on a planet so cold we couldn’t even make a proper grave for their bodies. I came home with five fingers and five toes but I know a lot more who came home a few short, your grandpa included. And you want to tell me that you know what it’s like?”

“They’re still out there somewhere dad. Someone’s gotta stop them coming back.”

“Not you,” he said and I hadn’t realised he was crying until the tears fell from behind his sunglasses. “Not you.”

“I need to.”

There was nothing but the whistle of the wind through the sparse brush and I wondered if that was it. The final word. I’d spend my life living on this world, slowly going mad.

“I won’t stop you if you leave.”

His words hit me in the chest. He’d agreed. He was going to let me enlist. I wanted to run home and snatch up my bag and head to Eridu as quick as I could. But I stayed and watched my dad break.

“Dad.”

“My dad told me I wouldn’t be a real man unless I fought. ‘Wear the stripes and then you can lecture me about drinking’ he’d say. I never wanted that for you son. I never wanted to make you think this was something you had to do.”

“It wasn’t dad, I promise.”

“All those stories I told. Your mother was right, I should have kept my mouth shut.”

“They were funny stories dad. They made us laugh remember.”

“For every funny story, there are a hundred that your mother would have killed me if I ever told you when you were little. Maybe if I’d told you them sooner you’d think differently.”

“This is a decision I’ve made. I’ve read the stories on the grid when the data comes in, I know we beat the horde and kicked them back. We can win.”

“Tetron.”

The world that had been the turning point. The place where humanity drew a line in the sand and said no more. My dad said it with the pain I’d only seen in recordings of other veterans of that battle.

“You’ve never even touched a tree,” he said. “I should have let you make a few skips when you were younger, see the system. Tetron was a paradise. God, what a beautiful place. We forced their ships to the ground and poured every ounce of strength we had on them and we burnt that entire planet to cinders in the fight.”

He turned to me and focused me with a gaze I could feel through the sunglasses he wore, hotter than any of the suns.

“If you ever see one of them son, don’t stop shooting until the plasma of your rifle is eating away at your armour and you’re sure it’s dead and then you keep on shooting until you can’t feel your arms.”

“I will dad.”

“Your mother is going to kill me,” he said, standing and shouldering the heavy hammer and deciding to turn back towards the ranch. In the distance I could make out the domed roof.

“She’ll understand.”

“No, she won’t. But she’ll let you go and she’ll be there the moment you get home. We both will.”

“I know dad.”

“When you get up there, don’t think about us. You have to do this for yourself. Find a good squad, people you can rely on, people who rely on you, and you do right by them.”

“I will.”

He took off his sunglasses and held them out. I looked at them, the old relics, and then I looked at my father. He was hurt and sorry and proud and my old man. I took them and put them on.

“And make sure you find someone to fuck,” he said, clapping me on the back. “Before you drive your bunkmates crazy.”

*Part two, Red Sky Home, is available here*