The Horse’s Night Out

Summary

An elderly war veteran imparts harsh truths about military life to young, idealistic women at a bar on a space station.

Abstract

In "The Horse’s Night Out," three young women, eager for tales of adventure and armed with credits, approach a seasoned war veteran at a bar on the space station Sans Merci. The man, initially perceived as a potential source of grandiose war stories, instead delivers a sobering account of the horrors of space warfare, including the processing of fallen comrades into shipfood and the pain of nanotek limb replacements. As the night unfolds, his tales shift from glorious battles to the grim realities of war, leading one of the women to threaten him with violence, doubting the value of his stories. However, the veteran suggests that the true value lies in the sobering truth that may save them from a glorified death in battle, affirming that a mundane life is a human's rightful destiny.

Opinions

The young women initially seek out the veteran for exhilarating tales of combat, expecting a romanticized version of war.
The veteran's initial stories are grand and adventurous, meeting the women's expectations, but later reveal the grim and disturbing aspects of war.
The women's perception of the veteran shifts from a potential entertainer to a "decrepit fraudster" as the true nature of his experiences contradict their romanticized notions of war.
The veteran believes that his stories, though unsettling, hold value by potentially saving the women from seeking out a romanticized but dangerous life in the military.
The veteran's perspective implies a critique of the glorification of war and the importance of understanding its true cost.

The Horse’s Night Out

Some of the best advice may be found at a warhorse’s drinking hole.

The three young women, their bodies inked in the fashion of the asteroid shipyards, approach the seated man, burdened with years. Fresh off the system shuttle to Sans Merci, hitting the bars ahead of the next day’s big opening of the annual recruitment fair of the Imperial Marines, they talk loud and bold, buoyed by booze.

“Hey, oldtimer, wake up and dry the spittle off your chin,” the foxy-haired lithe package of spunkiness says to the man with the patched machine legs and signals to the bar.

“We have credits enough to keep you drunk all night! So start telling us how it is out there, fighting the Heretic Colonies.”

The man considers for a while, then smiles, a sea of wrinkles arising from his ravaged face.

He speaks of gleaming destroyers pulsating through hyperspace, mythical descents into fiery maelstroms of pan-planetary battles, the clash and dazzle of millions of drones and missiles and men clad in impenetrable suits of armour dealing death to retreating enemies.

But as the night progresses, he speaks of the corpses of fallen comrades processed into shipfood, lost limbs replaced with nanotek appendages that burn with each movement, and the swelling death by boiling in the vacuum of ruptured starships.

As his voice fails, the redhead pulls out a knife.

“Return our money, or I will cut off your lying lips, you decrepit fraudster! What you have spun is of no value to us!”

The old man’s holottoo of a Marine Colonel that had activated turns a deeper burgundy as he watches the decent one with sad eyes drag her two saffron-skinned sidekicks away.

He sighs. “Oh, sweet girls, value you did receive. A life you will retain, with a dullness a human deserves.”

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