Another Time, Another Place

The seas heaved below my feet, threatening to knock me off the ship and into their grasping depths. Instead, I slammed painfully into the taffrail at the stern, earning myself a few bruises ribs and nearly losing my cutlass, as the unlucky fellow I was fighting fared worse. He did go over, vanishing under the roiling black waves before I had time to say farewell.

Our captain was a right fool to engage the enemy vessel in combat during a storm but I suppose he didn’t have much choice in the matter. Nor I.

There were two more of the same ilk as the lad that’d fallen, except these were a bit steadier in their balance. They bounded across the deck toward me, a malicious gleam in their eyes. I gave a valiant fight, parrying, riposting, becoming a blur of steel powered by a raging sailor. But two on one’s not a fair game, and my blade went flying. Then I was knocked over the railing.

I plunged into the stormy seas, buffeted by a great force I could not see nor fully understand in the darkness of the abyss…

Rocketing through space, the sound of my twin-engines mute in the void. Two fighters on my tail, one nearly had a target lock. I fumbled at my display, hitting buttons and flipping levers for in preparation for a maneuver that would either end in me being a hero or another frozen corpse floating with their eyes blown out in the void. Either way, it wouldn’t matter soon.

Beyond, between the twin moons of Mars, the war raged on. Fighters intertwined in an angry, vibrating mass not entirely dissimilar to watching a swarm of bees, except with more lasers and less buzzing as two great capital ships, one from Terra and the other representing Mars, exchanged railgun fire.

It struck me as odd in that moment that we could still fight so viciously despite having, well, all of the universe to spread too. That we still bickered over territory in this Sol system when there was Andromeda, Circinus, Medusa Merger…take your pick. Even these goliath vessels, each practically a small moon in their own right, seemed so small when faced with the vastness of it all.

The monitor beeped, affirming that the ships behind me had target lock, and I was snapped back to the fight. The missiles fired just as I hit the booster and rocketed forward, banking around the nearest moon’s – Deimos, I think – gravity well.

Maybe I didn’t have to fight. I could ride the inertia all the way to the edge of the Milky Way and then hit up a ride with some big freighter with a warp drive. There I’d be another refugee face in a crowd of thousands, another deserter Terra’s Federation didn’t have the time to find and prosecute. It’d be so simple.

Instead, I rocketed around Deimos and re-entered the fray, forward lasers firing at full blast. Another fighter in the swarm, hardly worth noting, but it was at least more interesting to be another face in here than on some worker’s colony out in Andromeda mining gas giants. And I could always tell myself that there was some meaning in being a soldier.

Mars’ capital ship turned its railgun into the fray, seeing its fighters were slowly losing out, and decided to even out the tides with a bold move. It blew a hole right through the swarm, taking out a few friendlies and a lot of enemies – myself included.

The war raged on as what remained of me was caught in the gravity of the same moon I swung around. My collision kicked up too much dust, I couldn’t see…

When it settled, I was on my hands and knees in the sand. The sun was brutal, beating down from on high with the intent to dry any moisture left in my flesh and probably give me cancer or whatever. It didn’t matter – I had more pressing concerns.

The large gladiator standing a few feet away from me bellowed, his twin-swords raised high to the audience circling us in the stands. They roared their approval, chanted for my death, demanded to see blood, whoever’s was fine. They stamped their feet and frothed at the mouth until gladiator was satisfied with his showmanship, then he turned to me, and ran a thumb across his throat.

That’s a bit cliché, don’t you think?

I didn’t think, not in that moment. Didn’t have time.

His muscles heaved, his swords cut a swath in front of him, and I was backpedaling away from their bite, still in a half-crouch. They swept low and almost slowly, tauntingly, teasing the audience of the death to come and sate their hunger. He had me backed in a corner and he knew it.

I stumbled and fell on my ass. He stood tall and raised both his swords at once, tensing for the killing strike. It would be big and flashy just as he wanted, so the crowd would eat it up.

It left him too open.

I brought my hands up and threw a palmful of sand into his face – that got me a few boos, but it didn’t matter. As he started to reel back, wiping at his eyes with his forearm, I was shooting forward. I didn’t have a blade in hand, but he had a knife tucked into his belt.

He’d just about had his vision cleared when I slipped it free and planted it into his stomach, going for short, shallow stabs. He roared, brought his swords down in blind retaliation, but I was already moving behind him.

Quick jabs, nicks and scraps to bleed him dry. He fought like any wounded animal, nearly cleaving me in half or taking my head a few times before the fight left him, and he dropped.

The crowd roared. I was victorious! I was…

I was sitting at my desk, typing in another Excel sheet.

Click. Click. Click. Filled. Saved. Sent. Onto the next.

The clock hit five, and my day was done. Off to home, dinner, sleep, a new day of working in my cubicle.

All the while I daydreamed and wondered of the lives I could’ve led if only I lived in another time, and another place.