Duty, 1: One Day
18 Apr 2022Meowers
One day can change your life. One well said sentence can change your life. It's all about heeding to it and the mindset you had at the moment. Then it could be like a catalyst. Your thoughts begin to link with each other, forming a chain reaction, and then you realise what you should do. Truly should. What will be the right thing to do.
It was an early morning in a day cycle of the Bluford Station in Komotae, a place where I lived for a long time already. A place that is well known to me. I was the only guest in an empty bar, enjoying the quietness with a cigarette and a cup of warm coffee, that little calm moment before the start of the day, when people begin filling the streets and corridors with their usual scurrying noise. I'll be in the hangars already when that happens, sitting in the cockpit of Marshmallow, running some basic checks, reading the news and realising... That I don't want to fly anywhere. Why should I?
Bartender was clicking the buttons on the remote, looking at the big screen on the wall, maybe trying to find something interesting amongst the morning shows. And then a picture on one of the countless channels attracted my attention, so I asked him to switch back to that channel again.
It was a record of the speech, transmitted from quite far away, signal was unstable, but I heard the voice perfectly. It was sharp, lively and energetic. Inspiring. Reaching the soul. Black woman in a military uniform, about my age, was standing in front of dozens of soldiers and pilots and encouraging them to protect everything that's dear, telling that fate of whole humanity is in the hands of those valiant warriors, that the threat is severe and the enemies should be stopped. Record was short and edited, and I started watching it from the middle, however... I asked the bartender to send a link to this channel to my datapad.
I reached the hangars, got into the cockpit and downloaded the the full version of the speech¹.
Oh. This was... Breathtaking. Her voice, telling about the threat to the whole humanity and video feed from frontlines far away had left me thinking about... Pretty much everything. For a long minutes even after the speech ended. It was something... That I needed. Maybe, needed the most. Subconsciously, without realising it. Something that turned my stale little world upside down. She just opened an invisible door within my mind and I finally felt the fresh air and left the endless labyrinth where I was lost.
I've spent a long time trying to protect freedom and independence of people, to free them from the corporate rule or the greedy politicians who exploited them. I thought it's a right thing to do and I was devoted to that fight. But people will always want more. Be it a full-scale war or a local conflict in a backward nameless system, there's always someone who wants more and someone refusing to give it away without a fight. Every war has the same explanation, scales are different, reasons are the same. And there's always will be a war somewhere.
So... Why did I stop? When did I lose that spark in my eyes? When I realised that... Those infightings are pointless and endless. There's no 'good' or 'bad', everyone has their own version of truth. And their own greed. Those whom I helped once were turning into aggressors later, using their newly gained advantages. Those who were aggressors once also were oppressed by a larger force. Leaders who were looking honest were turning into exploiters and usurpers. I can't stop this, nobody can stop this, this is almost primal. This is a spoiled nature of humanity.
But the Thargoids are here. They don't care about our politics, our property, our territories. They want more too, and we don't want to give it away. And they cannot be reasoned with. Only fought. Only stopped at the borders before they get a chance to lay waste on all those careless idiots most of which don't even know about their existence. Humanity may be a bunch of dumb, greedy and power-hungry arseholes, but that bunch deserves a chance to see a better future, to have a shot at building it.
And if I want to play my part in giving that chance to humanity, that's where I really should be. If that means I have to leave everything behind, cut all ties, become the part of the force, forget about the previous version of self, then let it be that way. Let it be that way, because here, I have nothing to fight for. Nothing to live for.
During the next week I was arranging everything. Burning the bridges. And listening to the speech every evening. It was encouraging, more and more. I've sold all my stored ships, leaving only Marshmallow registered on my name. Raised money were enough to pay off all the bounties that corporations placed on my head. I was clean now, far away and far above their scuffles. To mark this step, I've ordered to repaint Marshmallow white, defiantly white. Clean and clear. Also I've stopped my rental contract for the living compartment on Bluford and everything that I've had there, except my combat suit, some casual clothing and personal weapons, was donated to charity. I don't need a place here to return to, not anymore.
The only thing I took with me was Kittenshine. Wherever my new home might be, it will guard me while I sleep.
And whoever you are, brave woman, thank you for your words.
* * *
My personal thanks to J-Dog162 for allowing me to make the reference and to introduce my character into the same 'sub-setting' where the fictionalised version of the squadron exists, making her a part of AXDF story-wise as well. And for the encouraging speech, of course. The full version of it is published on the YouTube.
'Kittenshine' is a kitten-shaped nightlight that was mentioned in one of my earlier series, 'Light and Haze', and a photo of its real prototype, that has an immense meaning to me personally, was published in 'Revelations', the last episode of that series.
And welcome to the new chapter of my journey. I'll be posting it without any schedule this time, as it's not yet written completely at the moment. But I hope I'll be able to keep the reasonable pace. And, of course, I hope you will enjoy it.