Nic needed a shower. He’d had one not three hours earlier, but he craved another one already. He’d taken more of a liking to showers these days, over a year after first leaving home, because they were warm and soothing and gave him time to think... or not think. Maybe that’s what he liked even more.
There was no time for another shower now. He and his three squadmates were strapped into their seats in the control room. Team Scarlet’s Zeta-Class Patrol ship rumbled as it broke through the planet’s atmosphere.
“I always miss our old Corvette during entry,” Perri sighed, blowing a tousled lock of blond hair out of her face. She winced uncomfortably during the bumpy descent.
“Corvette’s a different kinda ship now,” said Jarek. He scratched his scalp, recently shaven according to his style as of late. “But it ain’t all that much bigger than a Patrol. Doubt it’s any smoother a ride, neither. I think it’s just how they make ‘em these days.”
“We should all count ourselves exceedingly fortunate we’re not skilled enough to pilot an Epsilon-Class Corvette,” Maqsud opined.
Perri cleared her throat. “Well, except—”
“Except you,” Maqsud finished for her with a snarky look of half-praise, half-mockery. “Of course, Perri. But don’t speak that possibility into existence! I know you play all the WorldGov naval sims on the market and a few you downloaded through backchannels. My point is that space combat is many orders more dangerous than doing it on the ground, due in large part to severe strategy limitations, and we should hope never to find ourselves in that predicament. There’s a reason it was one of the first things outlawed in the Secession Wars.”
“Not like she’d see any action anyway,” Jarek argued. “When’s the last time you even heard of a space engagement? Other than the rogues. But those are few and far between.” Nic felt Jarek look at him from two seats down in the control room. This room had a different configuration, two rows of three seats each. “What do you think, Squad Leader?”
Nic found himself wondering which of the two empty seats would have been occupied. “Space engagements are costly,” said Nic, “when your enemy can camouflage and adapt hull durability to withstand attacks. On the ground...” He blinked and saw an alien battlefield. A suit of red vac-armor on the ground. “On the ground... well, they’re squishy enough if you know where to aim. I like the ground.” His squadmates nodded in agreement.
Nic had been forced to learn a lot in the past year. Combat strategies. Basic, archaic first aid. The diverse anatomies of the enemy. The knowledge served him well, but even with all this wisdom of war weighing on his mind, his central focus was on more pressing matters.
In five hours, this mission will be over, was his mantra. In five hours, this mission will be over.
“Y’all ready or what?” said Jarek, grinning and rubbing his hands together. “We been through this a couple times already. Third time’s the charm, right?”
“This part always makes me anxious,” Perri replied, shaking the nerves out of her hands and then running them through her platinum blond hair. “Even though I know everything will probably be fine in the end. What about you?” Her blue eyes looked up probingly at Nic, her index finger grazing the knuckles of his right hand.
“I’m good,” Nic lied with a nod.
In five hours, this mission will be over.
“I cannot wait to enjoy a good, hearty meal once this is all over,” said Maqsud, reclining as far as his seat would allow. “With the brass footing the bill, I trust it will be a veritable feast!”
“These missions always make me queasy,” said Perri with a slight grimace. “I think it’s from seeing all their faces. Being watched so much... Not a fan.”
“You sure you good, man?” Jarek chuckled, giving Nic a friendly but dubious look. “I mean, you’re gonna be on the front lines this mission, after all. You ready for that?”
Nic shrugged. “I survived the last two times, didn’t I?” His squadmates laughed.
That’s good, he congratulated himself. You still know how to make them laugh. Keep doing that. Don’t let them know how much you’re sweating on the inside. And remember... In five hours, this mission will be over.
In six months, our contract will be up.
The author's tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.
Nic let out a brusque sigh and disconnected his safety harness.
Home sweet home.
***
Nic and the others faced a large crowd of students in an auditorium hab. He and his squad sat on folding chairs next to a tall wooden podium; the podium bore a black plaque with gold embossed letters reading PARADIGM MILITARY ACADEMY. The students in the stadium seating would have been peers a couple of years prior, but now they looked like children to him. There were also twice as many of them as there used to be in a class—nearly a thousand.
A holosphere at the front of the auditorium stage played a large three-dimensional hologram presentation in crisp sapphire light.
“Nuclear proliferation,” said a disembodied voice over a holographic explosion of an atomic bomb. “Declining fertility. The Climate Crises. In our not-so-distant past, humanity has teetered on the brink of oblivion, but we’ve come back stronger each time. Our great civilization was almost lost on the pale blue dot we once called home.” A scarred, smoking model of Earth twirled on its axis and was suddenly healed, pristine again. “Now that same cradle of life exists as the Global Preserve, humanity’s first Galactic Heritage Site!”
“And home to over two billion of the wealthiest humans who have ever lived,” Maqsud muttered, tapping his foot on the floor. It was a nervous twitch he’d developed in the past year.
“Since the end of Climate Crisis II, we’ve expanded farther and faster than some of our ancestors thought possible. From our first clumsy steps on Luna, Mars, Titan, and other Sol bodies, we expanded to other star systems, building on new worlds and terraforming them to make them like home. We crawled back from a twenty-second century low of just four billion survivors to the booming population of sixty-five billion we have today. But this is just the beginning!
“We’ve already settled thousands of planets in our little interstellar neighborhood. Scientists now estimate there are well over ten million more planets, moons, and other bodies in our reach that we can comfortably terraform with current technology—technology that is always improving. Imagine a galaxy full of human life, full of our unified culture of time-honored Earth traditions! Imagine the day we cross one trillion living humans! With FTL technology constantly improving as well, look out, Andromeda Galaxy—we may one day have our sights set on you!”
There was an abrupt tonal shift as the holo took on a reddish hue and the accompanying music turned grim, almost funereal.
“This was our reality before the Contact War. Before the Hexadians.” A holographic alien face suddenly appeared, facing away from Nic and his squad. A Commander. This part no longer surprised Nic, since he’d seen the same presentation twice before. The alien growled menacingly—scattered gasps rose from the crowd.
The view zoomed out and panned to a chaotic battlefield, where the Commander lifted a smaller human with its six-fingered claw. Spikes suddenly tore through the human victim’s chest and the body went limp. When Nic blinked, he could see Nereus again, just a glimpse of the ocean, the rising sun bleeding orange across the dawn. He tried not to blink again for a while.
More spikes flew through the simulated smoke and bullets soon joined them. Over the pandemonium of combat, the somber voiceover continued, “Ruthless, coldblooded killers. Invaders from unknown space. The first aggressors in a bloody war that has now lasted almost a year. These monsters threaten not only our way of life, our progress, but our very existence as a species. Is this our final hour? Will we let this last, greatest threat defeat us?”
“Not me,” said a stern male soldier holding a vac-armor helmet.
“Not me,” said a female soldier stepping into her own suit of vac-armor, her eyes set in a determined glare.
A split-screen shot of the two soldiers’ faces zoomed in on their helmet visors to show a third-person view of armored soldiers storming the battlefield. The humans drew Submachine Guns from behind their backs, snatched grenades from their belts and tossed them in stylized arcs toward enemy lines. Half of the hologram was combat; the other half showed soldiers escorting civilians to safety.
Nic noticed for the first time that the humans were not the kind he was used to seeing on his live missions—they were dressed like nobodies, like common colonists, rather than the employees of weapons depots or armorsuit factories. Hexadians haven’t attacked civilian colonies... yet. He thought nothing of it.
“Will you forget their sacrifice?” the voiceover asked. It showed a historical photo of World War II on Earth, a group of soldiers raising a flag of stars and stripes, the banner of a historical country called America. “Or theirs?” Then a snapshot of firefighters battling a continent-wide blaze in Climate Crisis II. “Or theirs?” A recording of the Battle of Nereus flashed on the hologram—this was new, something Nic had never seen in previous iterations. Purple and yellow soldiers in vac-armor sustained spike wounds. Then one of the red ones got impaled through the neck.
“Jesus Christ,” Maqsud spat, sounding more disappointed than anything else.
Nic felt his stomach drop. Felt his breakfast bubbling up to the base of his throat. Something squeezed the inside of his chest again, just like what he’d felt during the Battle of Nereus, as it was now called, and every breath he drew was thinner than the last. He desperately wanted a shower.
“Not me!” said the soldiers in unison. One last shot panned out to show battle formations of hundreds, then thousands, of vac-armored soldiers, who all placed their fists over their hearts in unison. It was a new salute that had gained popularity since the start of the war.
“Terra et populus!” a crowd of voices cried out in unison, and they beat their fists once against their chests. “Terra et populus!”
The Galactic Defense Force lieutenant at the podium snapped the same salute. He yelled out, “Terra et populus!”
In a matter of seconds, all the students in the audience were on their feet, beating their chests in salute, yelling the same words, screaming them, many of them teary-eyed with passionate resolve. The din grew to a crushing crescendo that made Nic feel incredibly small in his seat. It pressed him down like extra gravity, the sound filling his ears like the roar of an angry ocean.
At some point, the lieutenant called on Nic to deliver his usual speech that he’d given at the last two assemblies. “...is a decorated veteran of the Battle of Nereus, as well as a Paradigm alumnus. Please welcome Nicolas Siegfried.” The military slogan echoing in his head gave way to waves of applause and cheers.
It still sounded like an ocean far from home.