A biography, huh.

Long have I derided such things as self-aggrandizing and narcissist. Every time I saw a book about "The Biography of random important person", I just asked myself who even had the interest in reading such content.
Instead, I was happy just waking up every day and doing my job. Which as an independent pilot, could and most certainly would be different every day.

But the more time I spent out there in the great darkness of space, the more I felt the void seeping into me. I began to lose feeling, objective, purpose...
The psychologist gave me a name for that affliction: early onset of "Space Madness", he called it. Apparently that's an actual thing.
Some people get vertigo due to space not having an up and down per se, others see lights, voices... in my case, I seem to be losing touch with my surroundings.
He suggested that I write my memoirs as a means to 'ground' myself in life. I of course replied with my beliefs on biographies, but he retorted.
"Don't treat your biography as something for others to read. It is, and primarily always will be, something for you to read. So that you understand and remember where you came from, and where you're going."

Well, so here we are.
I was born in Sol - yeah, of the thousands of places I could've been born in these times, I was born in the cradle of mankind. Of 18 years I am... I wish. That's in Martian years. In standard Earth years, I'm 35.

There's not much to my early life. I had a father, a mother and a brother who was older than me by 3 Earth years. We weren't rich, but we were happy. Our parents worked hard to provide for us, and we tried to help how we could. Father eventually became known in the company as determined and unforgiving, which earned him a few promotions, and life became a bit easier by it.
Oftentimes, I played with my brother outside, ever always looking at the Martian sky. "You know" He told me one day. "I'm gonna be a captain! I'll command one of those Battlecruisers one day!"
I just smiled and nodded, thinking of it as just an idle fantasy.

But Brother's dream was serious. When he turned 18, he signed up for the Federal Navy. And I was happy for him; he knew what he wanted and he'd gone right for it.
As for me... I never was sure. For a time, I thought I'd follow him, but the strictness of military life didn't appeal to a laidback casual person like me. In my childhood, I had delighted myself with studying history, and so I went for that. It wasn't well-paid, but it was something I enjoyed.

As such, I merely watched and observed as events unfolded around me. The schism in the Empire that led to the Marlinist breakaway, the Presidential conspiracy in the Federation, the Alliance vowing to do better and yet falling to the same issues, the ever present in-fighting, the appearance of an unknown and our first reaction being to wipe them out... in all that I witnessed, I observed only patterns. All of this had happened before in Earth history. And not just once, not just twice, not even just ten times.

And I asked myself, "What is the point?". Why then am I an historian? Why then do I catalog the events of the past with such meticulous detail, if like biographies, no one will ever read it? Humans just keep committing the same mistakes over and over, and the only thing that changes is the scale of these mistakes."

Thus I decided, I too would become a pilot. It was a form of pilgrimage, in hopes that I might find the good that mankind espoused.

My parents weren't happy about it. Already they worried constantly about one son, who being in the Navy was ever at risk of being deployed to actual combat. Little did they know that such had already happened many times, but he never told them so as to not worry them.
They eventually came to terms with it and said they would support my decision.

My first few jobs after leaving the Flight Academy were just cargo runs for rare goods. It paid well, and an independent commander must learn to rely on nobody but himself for funding to acquire new ships. Piracy was an issue, and often I came to brush with seedy pilots seeking my cargo, but I always found a way to give them the slip.

Barely had I begun getting my feet on the ground in terms of financing a new ship, when I began hearing of Azimuth Biochemicals and their plans to end the 2nd Thargoid War with a superweapon. I said nothing at the time, but hearing that gave me a chill. It was not a good omen.

I should probably become a seer, for it came true. A complete disaster. And now we're left to deal with the aftermath.
My knowledge of the past tells me we're at a turning point in history. And every time we have one, one thing's for certain.

Not all of us will be walking out of it.