Second Suicide: A Short Story (Kindle Single) by Hugh Howey Read Free Book Online Page A

too,” I say. It is a half-truth. But my feelings are raw that Kur seems not sad at all. Part of me expects him to grieve.
    “I wonder if
she’s cute,” Kur says. He is making his bunk before
breakfast, a feat I have never witnessed. He says her name aloud: “Mil.” Almost
as if he is tasting the sound of it. Tasting her.
    “I think she
must be deranged is what,” I say. “Two suicides in a cycle. How much do
suicides cost these days?”
    “Two
thousand credits,” Kur says. “ Squadmate of mine had to pay recently. Cut his neck shaving with a butcher’s knife.
Swears up and down it was an accident.” He turns and shrugs his tentacle as if
to say: No damn way it was an accident.
    “Well, glad
I’m not getting this roommate,” I say. “She’ll probably kill herself in the
crapper while you sleep.”
    Kur laughs. “You’re jealous. And
I’m not the one with eight days to learn a Sector.”
    This only
now occurs to me. Sector 1. That’s the continent known as Asia in native. A
large landmass, heavily populated. I pray the languages there are mere dialects
of Sector 2‘s. Hate to waste my vocab.
    I also mull
the four thousand credits this Mil from Telecoms now owes for the two suicides.
That’s a lot of cred. All of that in a lump sum would be nice. It takes five
thousand credits to buy a settlement slot these days. I could own a small plot
of land on one of these worlds we conquer. Watch the fleet sail on without me.
    Such are my
thoughts as I pile my belongings onto my bed and knot the corners of the
sheets. Everything I own can be lifted with two tentacles. Kur describes in lurid detail a girl he has yet to meet while I double-check that
my locker is empty and I have everything. I find myself imagining this Mil
dangling by her own tentacle from the overhead vent—and then I see Kur sexing her like this, and I need out of that room.
Maybe he is right about me being jealous.
    Opening the
door and setting my sack in the hall, I turn to my mate of the last three
invasions. Who knows when I’ll see him again?
    Kur has a tentacle out. He is
looking at me awkwardly and plaintively, as if this goodbye has come just as
suddenly for him. I am overwhelmed by this unexpected display of affection,
this need to touch before I leave the ship, this first and final embrace.
    “Hey—”
he says, his eyestalks moist. “About that fifty you owe me—”
    #
    The transfer
shuttle is waiting for me. The pilot seems impatient and undocks before I get
to my seat. As he pulls away from my home of a dozen lifetimes, I peer through
the porthole and gaze longingly at the great hull of the ship, searching for
familiar black streaks and pockmarks from our shared journey through space.
This far from our target star, the hull is nearly as dark as the cosmos, her
battle wounds impossible to find. My face is to the glass, and it is as though
an old friend refuses to look back. Suddenly, it is not the shuttle peeling
away from my ship. It is my ship withdrawing from me.
    I remember
when she was built. It was in orbit above Odeon, thousands of years ago during
a resupply lull. It was the last time I was transferred. Those thousands of
years now feel like hundreds. I try to remember a time before this ship, but
those days are dulled by the vast expanse of time. It often seems as though we
were born together—like the ship is my womb but the two of us share the
same mother.
    I brush the
glass with a tentacle as I gaze at her, and I hunt for the marks of wear upon
my own flesh. I search for reminders from my years as a Gunner—but those
scars must be on another tentacle. It was so long ago. Or maybe I am
remembering old scars that are gone now, washed clean when last I died. It is a
shame to lose them. With them go my memories of how they occurred. Those
reminders should be a part of me, just as I was part of that ship. But now its
steel plates fall away and lose detail, until my old home is just a wedge of
pale gray among hundreds of