Captain Telo rocketed down to the asteroid himself to deliver the news. The news must have been important, since nobody over the rank of corporal had even visited the system in the entire year the dozen men had been deployed there. The asteroid belt was so far out from its star that the dim light barely reached it and the temperature inside the station barely reached much above freezing. The system barely met the criteria to be classified as a star system, with a weak and dying star and no planets to speak of.
When he received word the captain would be arriving in ten minutes, Private Ubrecht roused the boys and told them to turn out smart - or as much as was possible in this nowhere-hole - because the top brass was paying a visit.
"He's the captain of the ship what dropped us off here," he told them. Ubrecht was the de facto leader of the group, because he had been in the force the longest. He'd been fighting the war for ten years – including seven years before the first official military engagement.
The dozen men in the station didn't stand much on ceremony, but they assembled in the cramped meeting room and waited for the captain's ship to dock. For the past year, they had been controlling a fleet of droneships, which hid in the various systems at the edge of the galaxy and preyed upon convoys coming to resupply enemy lines. This unnamed asteroid was so remote that their station had gone undetected for all that time. The system itself didn't even have a name, nor did the star, although it did have a designation number.
When the captain docked, they discovered he had come alone. This wasn't standard procedure, but the station was so small that only small ships could dock with it, and so the captain had taken his personal craft.
They all stood when he walked into the room, and tried to remember how to salute properly. He waved a hand in the direction of the grubby fingers held to unkempt foreheads.
"Don't bother," he said. "I didn't expect to find regulation haircuts and pressed uniforms out here."
"Sir," said Rupert, a former oilman who had brought two years’ worth of tobacco with him to the station, "Permission to chew?"
"Chew what, private?"
"Tobacco, sir. Where I come from, we all chew it. Don't worry - the new kind you don't have to spit."
The captain seemed perplexed, but nodded. "Fine, fine. Scratch yourselves, do what you like. I don't care."
"Sir," said Ubrecht, "Good thing you came when you did. Our food an' water'll only hold another month'r so."
The captain laughed. "Well, I have good news," he said. "You don't have to be out here any longer. There's a transport coming to collect you later today. I wanted to stop by myself and give you the news, but I have to make a jump in half an hour and I got to be back in Hyan Spacebase tonight."
"What's the word, cap?" asked Dyler, a gap-toothed reformed bank robber who had been given a choice of ten years’ service or life in prison, and who stood on ceremony even less than the others. "We're bein' sent back to the front? I was gettin' bored here blowing up convoys from a distance."
"No," said the captain with a smile. "Peace broke out."
There was a pause. "Yer rippin' me," replied Dyler.
"I’m not. There was an armistice declared. A ceasefire. The war's over for now."
"For now," snorted Fredok, another former convict.
"Yes, for now. The prime minister..."
"The prime minister can kiss my ass," cut in Ubrecht, folding his tattooed arms across his chest. "The war ain't over just cause he says it’s over. I didn't sign up for him."
"Well, he is your duly elected leader."
"I didn't vote for him. You think I vote out here?"
"Me neither."
"Yeah, same. I heard it's a scam."
"Hold on," began the captain, but the men were getting to their feet. "Listen. You’re being sent home."
"No, you listen," said Rupert. "We get transmissions out here. We know about Baka. We know about Odest. Six million women and children. Sir, you think we don't know about Quive? Another four million. What about OIbla? You expect us to stop fighting?"
"No, you listen to me," said Captain Telo, pointing a finger at Rupert’s neck. "You're insubordinate private. You want a court martial? You want to do twenty years of hard time? Because I can make that happen. You don't talk to me like that."
"You don't understand, sir," said Fredok. "All of us have lost people. The Kirks have gone and killed what, a trillion civilians? Seven hundred billion? You think we're just going to lay down our arms and stop fighting because some politician..."
"The war is over, private."
"The war ain't over. The war will be over when it's won. You think the Kirks will stop raiding our villages? Maybe you live in one of the inner systems where that never happens, but I'm thirty-one and it's been happening since my grandfather was a boy. You think it's just going to stop because some armistice has been signed?"
The captain looked around at the hard faces, some clean-shaven, some with beards. All of them scarred. All with eyes that knew no softness or easy living. This wasn't going well.
"Both sides have their..."
But he was interrupted again, this time by a small man named Artur, who hadn't spoke yet.
"Both sides nothing. Don't talk like a traitor."
Telo drew his gun. But already Ubrecht was on him and Ubrecht had seventy pounds and six inches on him. Telo found himself tossed up against the wall, the gun pulled from his hands.
​"You listen to us, you son of a bitch," said Ubrecht, whose halitosis made Telo's eyes go wide. "You want us to go home? I don't have any home to go back to. There ain't nothing for me back in the villages. I got nobody left. Your army made us into the toughest, roughest, most uncivilized bastards human beings can make. You wanted that. You did that to us. You made us what we are and you made us to kill. You took a bunch of scoundrels, most of whom had been killing other men since before the war got started and you told us if we volunteered for the most dangerous missions, you’d make something out of us. You beat us until there wasn’t no peace nor mercy in us and you sent us out here to live off rehydrated beans and recycled air in a frozen hell. Then you just expect us to go home now and go live normal lives? What's wrong with you?"
"Private," said the captain with tight jaw, "I came here to give you the courtesy of letting you know the war was over. I will be on my ship heading home in fifteen minutes. Your transport comes this afternoon. If you don't want to starve to death on this rock, you'll get on that transport." He looked around at the men clustered watching him. "Hell," he said. "You think I don't think the same way you do? This was all a crock and if you ask me the war'll be back on in a year. Maybe you can spend that year resting and getting ready, or maybe you can spend it drinking and whoring. I could care less. But what you are going to do is you are going to release me, and then you are going to get on that transport when it comes. Is that understood? I could have each of you executed for assaulting an officer. But it is my intention to leave here and never discuss what transpired. I will give my recommendation that each of you be awarded medals and honorably discharged to go on your way. Is that understood?"
"Yes sir."
"Good. Now, what are you going to do?"
Ubrecht released him. "I apologize, sir," he said.
"Don't bother."
"I guess I'll go back and join the militias. I came out of them when I joined. They'll keep fighting the war."
"Your government has said that any militia activity violates the terms of the armistice and will not be protected. If you are caught by the Kirks, your government will not help you."
"Officially," laughed Ubrecht. "S'exactly the way it was before."
"Well, then," said the captain. "I have said what I came to say and I will now be on my way. Gentlemen." He saluted them, and they returned it more or less. Then he turned on his heels and marched out to his ship, sat down in the pilot's chair, undocked from the station, rocketed up out of the asteroid belt, and jumped out of the system.