The Forever War

Mandella and Margay return to Columbia, where they find Beth coughing violently. When Mandella tries to call a doctor, he is informed that his mother has a “zero priority rating” from the Universal Medical Security System (156); she is not important enough to warrant life-saving care. Mandella tries to treat her himself, but his efforts are not enough. She dies four days later. Surrounded by death and facing a bleak future, Mandella and Margay reenlist as combat training specialists, choosing the moon as their preferred assignment. They take a transport to a Lunar base, where the army reneges on its promise and transfers them to Stargate. They are now combat platoon leaders facing battle once again. 

Now a second lieutenant with 10 soldiers under his command, Mandella reenters combat but with improved technology: better space suits, for example, and the possibility of limb regeneration after amputation. Soldiers are also given drugs to lighten their mood during battle. Mandella’s platoon boards the assault ship and descends to a small planet, preparing to attack a Tauran outpost. As the ship decelerates, something goes wrong. The ship crashes into the surface, and Mandella’s leg is crushed in the wreckage. Within seconds, his suit automatically amputates part of the leg, cauterizes it, and doses him with painkiller. He loses consciousness.

He wakes up in a medical bay with feeding tubes attached to him. Margay lies next to him, one arm amputated above the elbow. She informs him that, according to the army’s new directive, all soldiers must complete four combat missions before retiring to “Heaven,” an idyllic, unspoiled world populated with human colonies. After the disastrous assault on Aleph-7, a mission that cost 54 lives, the ship is bound for Heaven’s hospital facility. A few days later, he undergoes surgery for a prosthetic leg. The technology, he is informed, has become quite advanced in his time away from Earth (he is now 215 in Earth years); the leg will grow nerves and respond to mental commands, just like a real leg. The nerve growth process and the physical therapy are painful, but in time, he and Margay begin to recover.

Heaven is pleasant but not very exciting compared to combat. One day, when a large sea predator slips past the “presser field” into the water near the beach, Mandella, Margay, and several others volunteer to kill it. Equipped with explosive spears and scuba gear, they enter the water. The beast, “twelve meters of flexible muscle with a razor-sharp tail at one end and a collection of arm-length fangs at the other” (174), attacks; they kill it, but not before it severely wounds one of the volunteers.

Once Mandella and Margay are pronounced fit for service, they are given six months of rest and recreation before returning to duty. They spend their accumulated back pay exploring the planet and indulging in the extravagant luxury of Skye, a floating resort. They spend with abandon, certain they won’t survive the next three years of service.

When they receive their new orders, they both receive promotions but different assignments. Even if they both survive combat and leave for Earth at the same time, time dilation will separate their return by decades. One of them will likely not survive to see the other. Despite Mandella’s protests, the army does not relent. From the vantage of a desert peak, he watches Margay’s ship depart, a fading star in the night sky. He contemplates suicide but refuses to let the army have control over his life and death.