an answer just once. Maybe not. But it was fun to test himself.
* * *
—
They had no engagements for five days, then three in a row. Each time, the salamanders performed a new variation of turns and the ship’s pulse fried them slightly later. Nine days after that, they were called to station and there were no enemies, only a wide field of debris, which seemed to be composed of dead salamanders.
“Battlefield,” Gilly said. “Maybe Montana went through here.”
“There’s nothing to kill,” Anders said.
“No, doesn’t look like it.”
“Then why call us to station?”
“I’m sorry,” Jackson said, “do you have somewhere to be?”
“It’s annoying,” Anders said. “Getting here and finding there’s nothing to do.”
“We’re over half a million kills,” Beanfield said. “Not enough for you?”
“Not even close.” He sounded irritable. “This is bullshit.”
“Hive debris at one fifty-niner,” Gilly said.
“I see it,” said Jackson. “Weapons, this battleship was not designed for your convenience. It was designed to blow the ever-loving crap out of an alien species.”
“So call me if you see any.”
“Command, I’m getting something in that hive debris,” Gilly said, before Jackson could start tearing strips off Anders.
“Like what?”
“I don’t know. Maybe nothing.”
“I’m not seeing any movement larger than our minimums.”
“Yeah. But there’s something that’s not spin.” He brought up a visual and filtered out the wrecked hive. Some part of a salamander was in there, encased in resin. Beneath the resin, something twitched.
“I see it,” Jackson said.
“What is that?” said Beanfield.
“Wriggler,” Gilly said.
“What’s a wriggler?”
“I don’t know. Something that’s wriggling. Can we hold here?”
“Requesting,” Jackson said. The ship would either comply or not, depending on its threat assessment. After a moment, the engines began to rotate on his board. “Green-lit. Prepping for deceleration burn.”
“Thanks.” He queued up probes. “I’m seeing more of them.”
“More wrigglers?” Beanfield said.
“Yeah.”
“Where?” Jackson said. “I’m not seeing that.”
“They’re not moving, but they match composition. All over.”
“You’re referring to the body parts?”
“Yeah.”
“What?” said Beanfield.
“After an engagement, we leave a lot of salamander pieces behind,” Gilly said. “Tens of thousands. Hundreds of thousands.”
“And one of them is wriggling?”
“Yes,” he said.
“Ship wants to move,” Jackson said.
“That’s an advisory?”
“Yes.”
If the ship really wanted to move, it would go ahead and move. “I want to wait a minute and run a few more scans, if that’s okay.”
“What are you thinking?”
“Well,” he said.
“Say it.”
“Pregnant salamander,” he said.
“Excuse me?” Beanfield said. No one answered. “They can be pregnant?”
“No,” Gilly said. “Not that we know. Soldiers and workers are sexless. We’ve never encountered a breeder type.”
“So what’s this?”
“It’s a dead salamander body part that’s wriggling. If you have any more ideas for what that could be, go ahead.”
“Well, heck,” Beanfield said, after a moment.
“Ship has upgraded advisory to recommendation,” Jackson said. “It wants to move.”
“It always wants to move,” Gilly said. “It’s probably calculating how many more salamanders it could kill if we weren’t sitting here.”
“I’m doing a similar calculation myself.”
“I don’t understand how they are at all,” Beanfield said suddenly. “How they come from nowhere and throw themselves at us like they don’t care if they live or die.”
“That part is simple enough,” Gilly said. “Salamanders are clones. Genetically identical.”
“So?”
“So life is really about gene propagation. It’s common for animals to act in ways that protect their wider gene pool, even when that risks their own lives.”
“Which animals?” Beanfield said. “Because that definitely doesn’t describe me.”
“You’re literally on a warship,” Gilly said. “It’s what we’re doing right now.”
“Hold on,” she said. “I didn’t go to war to protect a