Nic sat on the edge of his bed in Team Scarlet’s Zeta-Class Patrol ship. “The Priority Four Defensive Operation on Planet Telum was a success,” he recited brightly. He spoke directly into his wall-mounted holophone’s forward cam. He had to get his solo debriefing just right, and he only had one shot to record it. “Our mission was to defend the Proxima Manufacturing facility from a standard Hexadian incursion. Enemy dispatched one Seed containing three Eggs. However, enemy used some unprecedented tactics and weaponry, including an air-to-air missile. They drew out a strike team to separate our forces. They also used a pincer formation with almost no warning. The enemy’s tactics may be evolving. Still, the Proxima Manufacturing facility took only minor damage. GDF casualties were minimal.” His eyelid twitched. Crap. Please don’t catch that.
“Eleven soldiers from Red Battalion were tragically KIA,” he went on, and he put the appropriate level of mournfulness in his voice. If he went totally stoic, GDF would flag him for daily psych evals—he learned that the hard way. If he said how he really felt, he’d get his PTSD diagnosis flagged and receive another mandatory Psilocybex prescription. Hard to believe they hadn’t improved that formula in centuries; the pills didn’t work, and the nausea and bad night trips weren’t worth it. He had to lay on the professional grief at just the right level to fly under GDF’s radar. “Any casualty is too many, of course. We lost eleven good soldiers. Crimson Three. Barn Five. Garnet Five. Carmine One...” That’s it. Keep it up. “...and Brick Four.”
Long-clawed aliens tearing into armorsuit joints.
He blinked the image away naturally without skipping a beat. “They gave their lives defending human space. Their sacrifice helped us complete our mission, and we fight on to honor their memory. A crucial GDF asset is still standing and contributing to the war effort. Mission success. Scarlet One out.” The red light on his holophone cam went dark.
“Thank God,” Nic breathed. “And thank you, RTIFIS.”
Nic stood up gently. Stempaste had technically healed the severed ligament in his right knee. It still ached every now and then, and sometimes it seemed to click when he walked.
He made his way out into the common area, finding it deserted. He checked the gym. Maqsud was doing pullups wearing an audiovisor, a telltale sign he wanted to be left alone. Jarek was in the Simnasium, jacked in; the only way Nic could get his attention would be to strap on a SimSuit himself, and he didn’t feel like it now. He’d only kill Jarek’s vibe on Furflower Island.
That left Perri. He found her in her room, polishing her antique replica wooden record player. He remembered the day she’d purchased that during a Wargame shore leave on Planet Baitian. Like we even needed shore leaves back then, he thought with a smirk. “Hey,” he mumbled.
She looked up, her focus broken. “Hey. You pass debrief?”
“Yep.”
She smiled. “Good.” She patted the bed next to her and he sat. “You good?”
“Yeah, of course.” He tried to act natural about it, failing miserably. She shot him a dubious look. “As good as anyone in our shoes can be, I guess.” Even this was a lie. He misled everyone so often, even his own girlfriend, even himself, that he almost believed it. His life had become an exercise in pretending. “I mean, I could ask you the same question.”
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“I’m fine.”
“Perri, we saw some things on this mission that we’ve never seen before. The units. The tactics. You took a damn Centaur-sized spike through the cockpit—you broke your arm.”
“Well, it’s healed now.” She shrugged. “Others had it worse. Kincaid lost her arm. She’ll be in a prosthesis until she can afford a regrown replacement, probably never.” She tilted her head to check the wood’s shine. “And I’m still alive. And so are you. So are Max and Jarek. That’s more than we can say for some.”
“I mean, true... But that doesn’t mean we had it easy.”
“Nic, we haven’t had it easy in about fourteen years.” She rose and set down her record player gently on her desk. “But I refuse to let myself be a victim. It is what it is. We keep on going. We find joy where we can. We hold onto our dreams that keep us waking up in the morning. That’s all we can do.”
“I don’t have any dreams. Not good ones, anyway—not anymore.”
She furrowed her brow at him. “No, like, a dream. Something to hope for someday. That kind of dream. You know what I mean?” He shook his head. “Everybody needs a dream.”
“You’ve never told me yours.”
“You never asked.” She joined him on her bed. “I’ve always wanted to travel. Ever since my dads showed me books and holos about other planets, I was obsessed with traveling. I like to think that I inherited that from them, even now that they’re...” She gestured vaguely to an Earth-centric star chart poster on her wall. “Well, somewhere out there. Dead or alive. Whatever they did with their lives... Our parents were all poor, so I don’t know if they were ever able to travel like that, but I still can.
“That’s part of what I liked about the Wargames at first. Seeing new planets. I was excited to see a new planet on every mission. I could have done that for decades... My dream now is to be the first person to set foot on a thousand planets.”
“A thousand planets,” Nic echoed. “That is a lot.”
“I know! That’s what would make it so cool to be the first.”
“I would’ve thought someone from WorldGov or a terraforming corp would have beaten you to that.”
Perri made an aha gesture with her finger. “That’s what I thought, too, so I checked! RTIFIS?”
“What’s the galactic record for most planets that a person has personally visited in their lifetime?”
“Whoa,” Nic breathed. His mind spun with these figures.
“Yikes,” Nic muttered. “But, dang, 802—you’d blow his record out of the water!”
“I want it to be a tough one to beat,” Perri replied with a grin. “So that people will remember my name!” She laid her head on his shoulder. “You can come, too, if you want.”
“Oh, I’m honored. Well, we’ve barely cracked thirty planets in the past year and a half. We better get moving!”
“You can only come to some, though. I don’t want to share the record with you.”
“Duh. I wouldn’t want to steal your spotlight.” They shared an unvoiced laugh. Nic moved his leg slightly and definitely heard his knee click this time.
“What about you?” Perri asked. “What’s your dream? And don’t tell me you don’t have one. I don’t buy that. You wouldn’t fight as hard as you do otherwise—even before the war.”
Nic shrugged. “Really, I don’t think I’ve ever had one. Maybe when I was a kid... Not now.” He stared at the star chart on her wall.
“Dreams are what keep people going. What’s in it for you, then? What do you get out of all this if you don’t have something you’re working toward in the end?”
“I don’t know. I used to need to win. It didn’t matter what I won... I just needed to win. But now...” He sighed a long, pensive sigh. “I guess, rather than wanting to get something in the end, I just...” His eyes were then drawn to their shore leave planet on the idle viewscreen in Perri’s bedroom, a bluish-gray marble with flecks of green and stripes of hazy white clouds. It wasn’t a true rest—they’d be on call, so it was just intermission like always. “I’m afraid of losing what I already have. Life has a habit of taking that from me... I don’t know if that makes sense.”
“It does. My parents left me on Ayrus, too. I lost Shanti, too. Trust me... I get it.” He put his hand on hers, and she squeezed his hand in response. “But you won’t lose me. I promise.”
“Perri, I love you...” He kissed the top of her forehead. “...but you don’t know what you’re promising.”