Why He Fights

A soldier of a fledgling multi-planetary Empire is reminded why he fights, while a King hopes that many more will follow after him

Corporal Jo'nathane sat scraping the viscera clean from his armour, wondering at what he'd seen earlier.

The enemy had sent wave after wave of soldiers against their makeshift fortifications, barely making a dent in the first line of bastions. Granted, that was because Jo'nathane and his squadmates had been knocking their birds out of the sky almost as fast as they appeared, but he couldn't hit them all. His brothers had held firm against the lucky few that had hit the dirt in one piece.

Debrief had noted he was responsible for over 200 enemy dead, with only 70 shots fired and 80% as hits. A cold way to track a man fighting for his life, his squadmates' lives, and the assets they were evacuating. 4 men and as much specialized equipment as they could wrestle from the logistics boys, holding back over 700 enemy soldiers. As the last of the blood, he guessed, slid from his once shining armour onto the wash deck, he shuddered to think how their foe could accept that kind of defeat. What kind of being could look at that and see anything but a need to plea for terms? How could they afford that? Even for a planetary invasion, 700 dead in a single engagement in 20 minutes?

The sheer numbers their foe must command to ignore that, it threatened to break his nerve. Just like their damned eyes glowing as they approach. Their harsh radio-static voices. Ship after ship flying in over their heads. Surrounded. He smiled, remembering his first mission seemingly so long ago, "Surrounded? Can't miss then, can we?" He still hadn't figured out if his Sergeant had meant it as a warning or a joke.

His Sergeant never left that foxhole. He could feel some part of himself reeling at the scale of the horrors he'd stood toe to toe with, threatening to turn coward in the face of the enemy. Thankfully, the majority of him was holding firm against the unending tide. He centred himself as he finished wiping down the pockmarked metal plates. Pushing down the grief again, pushing away the thoughts of the millions who'd died in a skint few months of war. The victims of soulless abominations that mocked their forms. The only thing to be done was to make the planet's worth of dead mean something.

Jo'nathane had only recently stopped seeing the malformed skulls leering in his sleep. Even without flesh, he swore they grinned everytime they sensed your eyes on them. They'd look you dead in the eyes even through a scope across over 100 yards. Most of them tried to shoot you. Some started sprinting straight for you, ignoring any semblance of cover for a dead straight line right to you, keen to gut you wherever you stood, lay, or crouched. Their commanders were the worst, though.

They just looked to the sky and screeched. A horrid, garbled scream. A vile mix of animal noise and the kind of grinding noise an engine made if you filled it with sand and not oil. Every blasted monstrosity came calling when that happened. A few times, he or his squad dropped them before that damn noise came out. No reinforcements made everything that little bit easier, even sleep months down the line.

What should have been his hand spasmed, a nerve in his mind trying to talk to its fellows in his left hand, pulling him back to the present. Blackened steel didn't respond. It didn't stop the occasional itch or spasm, though. Nor the memory of how he'd lost his left arm from just above the elbow. The wet slap as Daveed's insides had splashed across him. The roar of the explosion as it swallowed a man he'd bled with on a dozen worlds. Both memories from before the war was acknowledged by the High Command or the government.

He stored his armour, pulling a freshly refurbished set from the locker before going to the mess hall. He only had a handful of hours before the next op. Eating was his highest priority right now, before redeploying in another hellhole on the same planet. Thousands of men and women floated high in orbit beside him. A few dozen holding the Corvette together, maintaining its critical systems, requisitioning supplies from Command, "cooking". It was the one thing Jo'nathane hated about the ship. The cramped quarters he could ignore, the hum of the drive was quiet enough most of the time, and the freezers full of the Chilled meant the rest of the ship stayed pleasantly warm.

But the food. Ugh, it was, well. He'd not died, yet. He'd not lost weight or muscle. As best he could tell, he was in the best shape in his life, courtesy of a block of... something. It wasn't obvious what it was. It tasted vaguely like meat, felt like an oat cake, and smelled of nothing whatsoever. It was all the galley served. Your only choice was as-is, fried, roasted, or boiled and mashed. He had time, so he picked roasted. By the time he reached the counter, it was waiting on a tray for him, a simple name card sitting on his tray beside the plate of typically off-white, now gently browned matter.

He made to read the card as he took his regular seat at the single, round table. The card wasn't entirely new, but something about it felt ominous. As he touched it, he realized why. The paper was thicker, heavier. Cardstock, not the standard weight stuff ubiquitous on the ship. This wasn't the typical note affirming their mission, reminders of tactics or the day's war cry. This was special. Personal. Hand-written.

By her.

His wife's signature stared at him on the corner, the flowing lines hitting him in the gut. He dropped the note on the plate, stunned briefly as the paper greedily absorbed whatever juices had released from his food.

It was his birthday. He'd been in the service for just a bit more than a year. A year without her. Without his kids. A year. He rescued the note from the plate, wiping it as carefully as possible in his full kit, gloves slickening again. The writing hadn't smugded just yet. He read it again and again, her voice in his ears as the food sat, forgotten. He was now savouring something far sweeter.

Yet he was not alone. Elsewhere, whole systems away, another observed him. Saw the dreams evident in the tears under his helmet. Steeled his will for what was to come. This crying man, insignificant against the stars he fought in, held as but a number among thousands against but the forward scouts of an implacable enemy, drove the King’s will forward. Corporal Jo’nathane couldn’t be saved. His name may not ever grace a sentence, even in local history. His family was likely to be snuffed out. Yet at least one would remember him in the litanies of the dead to come. One would see him in his dreams and hold out hope that such men were numbered enough to count in the war for the stars that dwarfed them all.