Rebirth: Achilles’s Choice…
23 Jan 2023Astraeius
Was hardly a choice at all, if you are to lend credence to the bold orators that lead others onto the front. For a brave man’s heart calls him ever towards glory, and only a coward could refuse to heed the call. To those men I say: what ignorant fools you are, and what lying hypocrites.Were you to know anything about heroes and myths – or even simply about the bravery you flaunt – you would know how little the search for glory has to do with possessing a brave man’s heart. How those who rush towards danger with the sole goal of gilding their names, often flee back at the first sight of danger. How those that truly stand until their last in defiance of the enemy, do so not for glory, but for the cherished ones that they’ve left behind. How even great Achilles was ready to abandon eternal glory, when he was shown what tyrant’s hunger his efforts truly fed, and how it was love and despair that finally led him to death and immortality.
Oh, but I too am now quite the hypocrite, soliloquising against the great powers of the world, who send wide eyed youth to die in this great and terrible war – and to whom I owe my wealth and my status. And, worse of all, this tirade was ushered not by some deep evaluation nor self-chastising reflection. Rather, it was spurred on by mild annoyance, aimed at an innocent pilot who sought nothing more than to be a saviour of humanity. One not so different from myself, give or take a few months of experience fighting Thargoids. One who had the ill luck of dancing into my crosshairs as I prepared to fire against an enemy interceptor.
No, I am not about to admit to murder. And I certainly hope that my reaction to such an event would not be simple annoyance. My shots but grazed the pilot, leaving him in great health, to enjoy his new millions somewhere in the black. Unless the enemy got to him, I suppose. But that would not be a fault of mine. No, my annoyance stems not from a soiled conscience, but from the bounty that those grazing shots incurred me, since the pilot on who they landed – like so many who are new on the front – had forgotten to register his ship amongst the combatants, and had further not bothered with blocking his computer from reporting any crimes committed against him. The two things together meant, of course, that my accidental friendly fire was reported as a case of assault.
Realising – only upon landing – that bureaucratic technicalities had robbed me of the relative safety of a burning station in which to scrub off the acid sludge of the enemy’s weapons, I sped across the battlefield, my jaw suddenly toothless, and high waked to the closest inhabited system. The caustic refuse I burnt off before jumping, but I had no desire to remain in a battlefield without any chance to rearm or repair. A simple misunderstanding, it would take less time to clear up than it would to synthesise new ammunition. That is how often these accidents happen.
It did, however, mark the first time that I used my newly crafted nom-de-guerre, rather than my actual name. The fact that I had been forced to land anonymously added a level of irony to the event, that made it that much more enjoyable. Because I’d like to downplay the name – claim that many pilots fly under an assumed call sign, that it eases access in Federation ports… but the truth is that I thoroughly enjoyed docking as Elus and taking off as Commander Astraeius.
Were someone to ask, I would probably instinctively answer that I adopted the monicker for the sake of my family. To protect them. Not from any Imperial meddling – I have no intention of going mercenary for the Federals. And, even if I did, I doubt it would take the Imperial inquisition more than a handful of minutes before connecting my name with the call sign. No, I would rather they be protected from grief, should the worst happen. I would rather they learn of it through the message I have recorded for them, rather than a bulletin of the fallen. And that is, in part, the truth.
Because I have made Achilles's choice after all, and will not be returning to a peaceful life.