A young navy reserve pilot contemplates the infinite.
It feels like the stars are looking at me sometimes. I feel like they are accusing me of something, but I don't know what.
They sit there, still and motionless in the blackness, so unlike the stars I remember when I was growing up on Lave. I used to sit for hours and look at the stars twinkling there, imagining that they were wnking at me in conspiratoral merriment.
They never wink any more. Maybe that's why I think they are accusing me of something.
This morning we got word that we were mobilising for another major offensive against the Thargoids. Most of us were glad - border skirmishes are tedious at best with more waiting than action. We spent most of the day prepping our ships for loading onto the Behemoth for transit to the frontlines, then sat watching the huge tractor arms lift them into the launch bays. By lights-out we were in transit to the next battle.
Yet again I have no idea where we are. Command thinks that as a reserve unit we don't need to know where we are. Civilians shouldn't know the master plan that the glorious Navy has for the war. They try to tell us it's for our own safety, but I think the truth is that there's no plan - Command send us where they think the lines need shoring up.
The reserve units are a strange place. No-one talks much to each other. There's probably no need. There's one member of this squadron who has been here over two years. He doesn't say much at all. He always sits alone in the mess hall, if he goes there at all. He flies a beat up Cobra 3 that is covered in dents and patches. He maintains it himself: seemingly he's loathe to let the navy mechanics touch it. He's one of the best pilots in the unit though: he's bagged more insects than the rest of the unit put together!
We flew through a battle zone recently - that put a lot of this war into perspective. Wrecked ships everywhere, as far as the eye could see. Some of the ones in the distance reflected the local sun's light as they lazily turned, flashing quickly and catching the eye.
Those are the only stars that wink in space: the light of dead spacers winking at me as I float silently by.
As we floated through that graveyard, the Cobra pilot, I don't even know his name, was sitting at one of the other viewports staring out at the view. There was nothing in his eyes though - like he was as dead inside as the spacers on the other side of the plexiglas window.
That's what this war does: you die a little every time one of your unit dies.
We lost five in the last battle, but that was only a border skirmish. The galling thing was that the Thargoid ships had a flight of Sidewinders with them. Human pilots killing thier own kind beside those insects. The Sidewinders took three of ours down before we managed to get on top of the battle.
That's the most disheartening thing about this war. Which is the worst enemy? The Thargoids or the traitors that side with them just for the pickings left at the end of the fight. Thargoids don't have cargo scoops: they just kill you and leave. The pirates and thier like trawl the debris for anything useful. Graverobbing.
Sickening.
We took on a load of new recruits after that battle. We stopped at Beenri and held a recruiting drive. Eleven new recruits showed up, and two more joined us on the way to the witchspace point. We got three more at Gelegeus and spend a couple of days there training the newbies before we got the order to move out.
They all look so eager. Or is it that I've become so complacent about this: so jaded, maybe? The weeks that I've been here haven't seemed that bad. The killing I've seen has maybe affected me more than I thought. Odd thing to think, considering that I've sent a lot of people do thier deaths myself getting to a Dangerous rating.
Everyone dies in the end, I suppose. It won't be long until we go to war again, alongside the Galactic Navy's finest. Once again I'll sit in my Krait and dance with the enemy. All the while the stars will stare, thier merry winks a thing of the past. This time I might end up as one of the dead metal stars that wink in space, floating in a galaxy of my own.
That's a nice thought.