I'm not even sure what day it is anymore. I suppose that’s normal considering I’ve gone thirty five hours, twelve minutes, and fifteen seconds without sleeping. Too long. For me anyway...

Squad leader pulls me from my bunk almost as soon as I lie down. I didn’t even bother with taking my boots off. Good thing, cause we’re going on another run. Not tomorrow, not in three or four hours, right freakin’ NOW.

“On your feet, soldier! It’s time to FLY!” Brisk, not cheery. Motivational, not promising. He knows we’re all going to break eventually. Probably just hoping that he’ll earn his stripes by being the last of us to go.

In my fighter, I can hardly wrap my head around powering up the engines. It’s second nature to me, but by this point even first nature’s getting kinda fuzzy—everything seems so distant... Shouldn’t be flying, should NOT be flying. Feels like I’m watching someone else’s hands traveling over the controls, doing the checks and talking into the headset. I’m just a casual observer watching from the background, waiting to get off this boat.

I let my head fall too far forward, and my neck nearly gets snapped when the catapult launches me off the deck, out the doors into space. I can see the Beyonds streaming at me right away as I’m immediately sucked into the raging firefight. I almost puke because I can’t force my body to remember that in the vastness of space, forward becomes down as soon as my fighter leaves the hanger. Besides that, odds are better than good I’m not going to make it home this trip.

No better reason than that to lose my lunch.

A piece of debris nearly clips my wing because my reflexes are still back in my bunk where I left them, and I maneuver my ship out of the way only just in time. It takes two more minutes after that for me to realize I need to start engaging the enemy, because I’m staring out the side of my cockpit wondering why my fighter even has wings when there isn’t any air in space to provide lift.

My buddy Fox’s voice crackles in my ear over the comm, snapping me back to attention. “You with me, Spades?” he asks.

“Barely,” I admit, wondering if I sound half as bad as I feel.

I cut hard to port, and at last start firing, blasting a Beyond fighter tube out of the proverbial sky. When I come back around for another pass, I join up on Fox’s wing, staying there as we wait for the commander to grace us with orders or his presence or both in the midst of this epic battle for our lives. Because that is what we’re fighting for now; our lives. It used to be all about being the dominate race in the sector, but that was before we ever knew what a ‘Beyond’ was. Or how good they are at killing us.

“I’m hit!” Angel screamed in my ear, and I cringe as her voice cuts off and an explosion that’s far too close for comfort leaves me half-blinded. When I finally open my eyes I’m breathless, ‘cause losing one of my best mates, hearing her last scream, felt like getting sucker punched in the gut. Angel was with me from the beginning of flight school, she kept my secret.

She’s dead.

“No!” Fox yells, immediately turning his nose against the grain and engaging, taking me and a number of other guys flying in formation around his ship in with him.

I’m following, seeing spots on my vision where the explosion is still burning into my eyes. I know this is suicide. If we go straight for the heart like this instead of trimming the edges, every single man in the formation is going to die.

Ah, what the hell. We’re all gonna to die anyway. Might as well go like men.

The switch to my brain finally gets tripped as my adrenaline kicks in at last. I look over at where my hand’s resting on the silver throttle, and slowly, and then with more intensity, I push it all the way forward. I quickly settle into a familiar routine of firing, finding another target, and firing again. It’s all a game to me at this point. Just a first person shooter where I get to call the shots from a safe distance.

Of course, if it really was just a game, I wouldn’t be alone now. I’m still blowing ships away, my vision almost blurring as I fall into the rhythm and my brain disengages, but my companions are gone. I’m the only one left...it just hasn’t hit me yet.

They come closer, and closer, surrounding me, preparing to put me out of my misery, but I’m too busy chasing after this one ship to notice. I never let up for a second, because I’m so focused on the one thing in front of me I don’t perceive anything else. Not until the fabric of space itself opens up in front of me, replacing the blanket of stars and black space with every color imaginable.

Just realized that it’s over.

It’s all over.

Sorry, Mama. I don’t think I’m coming home this time.

Miss you.

Never meant to hurt you.

Please, don’t cry for me.