The Forever War

While digging holes—a laborious procedure involving boring into the ice and rock with a laser and dropping a tachyon grenade into the hole—one of their platoonmates dies. After dropping a grenade into her freshly lasered hole, Private Bovanovich is caught in a rockslide while climbing out of a deep crater. She frees herself, but the delay costs her precious time. The timed grenade goes off before she puts enough distance between herself and the crater, and a fragment of exploding rock decapitates her. Her death casts a sobering pall over the platoon.

The platoon practices a simulated attack on an enemy bunker. Mandella, the “grenadier” for A Team, launches salvos at the target while B Team is pinned down in a crater. While gauging his accuracy, he is “hit” by an enemy laser and is officially “dead.” After the simulation is over, Mandella and Margay Potter, the temporary team leader, walk back to the billet where she tells him that he launched four direct hits, taking out the enemy bunker.

Captain Stott summons the platoon for a debriefing. He chastises them for losing 37 soldiers in a “simulated battle against a very stupid robot enemy” (30). Those who “died” will receive only water and vitamin rations for the next three days. Acting Corporal Potter is penalized as well for Mandella’s facial burns during the exercise. Commiserating over their mutual punishment, they sack together that night.

After two weeks of training, 11 soldiers have died. The rest of the platoon is transferred to Charon’s dark side, where they pull building materials out of a helium pool and construct a bunker. As acting corporal with a 10-person team, Mandella notices one recruit, Singer, is unsteady on his feet after a fall. He calls for a medic who doesn’t notice anything serious, so he orders another recruit—Sanchez—to do a maintenance check on Singer’s suit. They find the heat exchangers have been damaged in the fall. With no way to repair them in these conditions, Sanchez privately tells Mandella that Singer is a “deader.” Mandella orders Sanchez to warm up a spare suit; then, he gathers some permaplast materials to build a temporary shelter around Singer in which he can switch suits. By the time the shelter is complete, Singer is unconscious, so Mandella crawls into the shelter with him to place his body into the new suit. After he successfully transfers Singer into the replacement suit, the shelter is cut open and the two men pulled out. Mandella notices a black ship approaching on the horizon: an unexpected, simulated attack.

Captain Stott disembarks from the ship and scolds the platoon for not firing on an “attacking” ship. They spend the rest of the day assembling drones for target practice and finishing the bunker, a featureless structure with a “swivel-mounted gigawatt laser” mounted on top (41). While members of the platoon take turns operating the laser, the rest practice dark side maneuvers. During a simulated attack, the laser destroys both incoming rockets, but molten debris showers the bunker, killing three more recruits.