The false dawn washed soft and cold across a thin strange horizon, and Yusef Rakotoarisoa set down his rifle and watched. He was not on watch yet, did not have to rise from his seat on the rickety bench, but he would be soon. From behind a long heavy magazine in one of his armor's many ammunition pouches, he took a paper photograph, and held it in front of his face.

Yusef could not actually see much of the portrait and the person it depicted, not in the dim light, and he did not really need to, he knew it that well. Or maybe he did not really want to, because he could have used a light, he was not close enough to the front for serious light and sound discipline to be in place, at least not anymore.

It had been seven days. He stared at the image he could not see, but knew. A young woman, looking into the camera with just a hint of a smile gracing her wide mouth and the corners of her large dark eyes. Eyes very much like his own, like the mother who had raised them both.

It had been seven days. He'd come back from the front unharmed but haunted, like uncounted numbers of soldiers before him, old and young, soft and hardened. He'd killed her, another woman whose name he did not know. Not right away, just a mortal wound, just enough time for him to render aid after the brief skirmish and find that there was not enough he could do before the medic arrived. He'd held her, arm behind her shoulders, not out of any tenderness but to hold her up so that she would not die choking on her own blood.

He'd watched her big dark eyes unfocus, stare at nothing, somehow lose the reflection of living light, or maybe he had just imagined that because he knew she was dead, could see the vital signals go to nothing in the emergency medical displays. And he'd dropped her back roughly to the ground, and stood up, and looked away. And he was sorry about that, and not sure why.

"Status?" his sergeant had asked as she walked by, the gentle electric whine of her heavy armor incredibly loud in the still after-action air.

"Dead, sergeant. Did what I could."

She'd just nodded and moved on. Yusef had gone to help one of his fellow privates repair the actuators under a cratered armor plate, letting his hands and mind run on the well-oiled tracks of his training.

Seven days. They said the war was nearly over, the Coalition had essentially won, the wildcats were ready to disperse back to the corners of the system, find less well-defended resources to pillage, lick their wounds. Yusef had felt the same righteous indignation as the other colonist's kids, watching the videos of raids farms and extraction fields that all their parents had worked so hard to build. So he'd gone to war, and now he'd be done with it. No more watch, no more rifle and powered armor. Back to school, back to figuring out what to do with the rest of what would hopefully be a long life.

Yusef stared at the photograph. He knew exactly where the eyes would be, their outlines, the warm serious centers of dark brown and black. Plenty of light, always. Always with Nurul. He hoped she'd live forever, or at least longer than him, because he never wanted to see that again, the light gone away out of eyes like hers. Never again.

But Yusef Rakotoarisoa was not done with war, because before he could be formally discharged from the Coalition militia, the Amanareh arrived, appearing at the edges of the system with their big sleek ships. It was not First Contact, the Terra Union had relatively peaceful trade relations with a handful of other species at the edges of their territory.

But it was First War.

Perhaps it started as a misunderstanding, perhaps the actions of rogue officers on one side or both, perhaps the humans of the sparsely-settled system were still too keyed-up from the Wildcat War they'd just fought. That was for historians to argue. For everyone else, war had come, blood had been shed, the enemy must be fought, for the survival of the species. This wasn't like the Wildcat War. The enemy was not even human. They could and should be fought without mercy.

The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

Private Rakotoarisoa was made Corporal Rakotoarisoa, and Yusef went back to war, still with the paper photograph tucked behind the long heavy magazine in an ammunition pouch. For the first few months he saw no action, just endless guard duty, movement from here to there, ready, waiting, the dreary anxious grind of war.

Then one day they were sent on the attack, just a small skirmish at the edge of a greater war, for although the conflict had started in this system, most of it had moved on to rage elsewhere.

This time, Yusef did not kill anyone, only provided suppressing fire, and when the enemy was wounded by his fire team, he did not move to render aid. But he did walk by one of the alien-enemy, wounded on the ground, after, and she looked up and saw him and said a single word, translated by his audio-implant.

"Please."

And he did not want to look at the dying Amanareh, in fact knew he shouldn't, couldn't even really be sure she was dying, could he? She was a different sort of creature, and she died differently from the human woman he had killed, months that seemed like years ago.

But she was dying, and he did know it, and she did not bleed all that differently even if the color was not the same. And as he crouched down, hearing the gentle electric whine of his armor, seeing the damage, he wanted to look away.

She reached up with shaking arms, and began unfastening her helmet.

"Corporal Rako!" came a call from across the field. His squad leader. "Finish the Ama bastard and let's get going!"

"Think there's tech to be salvaged!" he called back. And it wasn't precisely a lie, but it also was, because salvage was not what he was doing. He moved his hands to match the small story he had told, but did not touch her. He knew her gender from the shape under the thin-but-strong armor she wore, though it was a very different shape from that other woman on that other field, months-like-years ago.

Off came the helmet. Her eyes were large, but not dark. Yellow, maybe gold. They looked at him, saw, and he thought how eyes were never very different, not in Earth creatures, not in others. The form followed function, and hers held that same light he maybe only imagined, seeing his face until they didn't, unfocused, dead. No more light, imagined or not.

He crouched there a small moment that stretched out to a thousand horizons inside his head, then picked up the helmet and stood. Salvage, like he'd said. He carried it back to the transport.

The war went on. Yusef fought as best he could. Field promotions came. Sergeant, Lieutenant, Captain. Major. The war ended, and Yusef went back to his parent's colony with a new shining arm and a thousand hard memories surrounding that one soft center. Golden eyes, gone dim.

He hugged his sister and he wept, and she thought she knew why but would never really understand all of it, but that was alright, he would be alright and his world could move on.

But he wasn't, and it couldn't. He went to all his appointments and worked through all the piled-on grief and trauma and guilt, but what he couldn't shake was the knowledge. Golden eyes, gone dim.

And he stood for office, representing their little colony, then their little world, then the system, sitting in a grand chair circling a chamber on Old Earth.

And he stood to face the man across the aisle, listened to him argue for a new war, a new conquest, something to be taken, for humans, for them, for the only ones who really matter.

"No, Senator," he said. "I have seen war with the Amanareh already. The gain would not be worth the cost."

"The cost? We could take a dozen worlds before they sue for peace, with almost no losses on our side," the man said. "They're arrogant and proud and merciless, and they've shed a small ocean of human blood already."

"Their government is arrogant and proud and merciless," Yusef said. "Much like our own. As I can clearly see, with you standing before me. The Amanareh are just people, with the same sort of bad luck as your own constituents."

"You have killed plenty of Amanareh yourself!" the man said, angered at the laughter coming from all sides.

"Yes," Yusef said. "And I have seen them die. And I will tell the story."

And he did. And they listened, and some wept, because he was after all Yusef Rakotoarisoa, warrior-poet of the Terran Senate. And war did not come. Not then.

And Yusef went back to his office, and shut the door, and pulled a very old paper photograph from his back pocket. And it was dark in his office, shades drawn, no lights; he could not see the person portrayed in the portrait. But he wept all the same.

Therefore, send not to know For whom the bell tolls, It tolls for thee.

- John Donne, For Whom the Bell Tolls

Do not go gentle into that good night. Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

- Dylan Thomas, Do not go gentle into that good night