A True Hero

21 - A True Friend

Nicolette

I opened my eyes in a cold sweat, gasping for air. It took a second for my eyes to adjust to the darkness of the room, and I began to remember where I was. Garlude's soft snoring came from my right and her new recruit's sleep talking at my feet. Rolling over onto my side, I rubbed my face and tried to forget the terrible dream. Reaching under my pillow, I felt the smooth, cold handle of my katanas.

Silently rising to a sitting position, I saw the faint outline of our new recruit, Valorie, or better known as Val. She was a light-purple colored bird with pale lavender eyes hidden under dark purple goggles, and she had a metallic, yellow beak. Her tall, skinny frame tossed and turned beneath the sheets as she muttered things. She was most likely suffering from a nightmare like I was.

Since the retrieval of the Bushido Katanas, which was over a year ago, many events had happened, such as the promotion of Arthur to second-in-command under the Captain and my eighteenth birthday. However, even with my aging and Yamikage graduating me from NSF training, the Captain refused to promote me to a fully graduated Star Warrior.

The army had also nearly doubled in size. The Captain became adamant about the proportion of our army to NME's, so he sent several soldiers to nearby planets to recruit new people. I and Garlude and I were required to attend one such rally, and that's where we met Val. She barely made the cut from the long line of people, but she did because of a special connection: her father. Like my dad, her's was a famous soldier in the GSA. He was a captain aboard a nearby starfighter named after him; the Vul. It was he who requested she room and train with one of the best Star Warriors on our division, so the Captain assigned her to Garlude. Several other Star Warriors throughout the army were now forced to share their rooms with new recruits; I never thought I'd say this, but the Enterprise was now almost too small to accommodate the thousands of soldiers on board.

I silently climbed out of bed and slipped out of the room. With my armor off, my bare feet padded through the dark halls with no noise. The temperature around the ship had been lowered to make up for the growing expenses that came with our growing population, so my thin, gray under armor was not equipped to keep me warm.

Shivering, I entered the quiet lobby and found my seat in front of the large window overlooking the landing platform. Outside, a brand new fleet of golden starships gleamed in the faint midnight light. I had grown used to life in space; it was impossible to tell time or dates by looking outside, for there was no sun to orbit us. A trusty radio clipped on my left side always told me what time it was and the current stardate. Right now it was 0215, or 2:15 in the morning.

I sat down on the thin cushion of the long window seat and wrapped my arms around my shoulders. My long hair cascaded past my shoulders and wrapped around my arms, providing some warmth. Outside, the stars twinkled all of the colors of the rainbow.

My father used to tell me that the sky was a snapshot of space from a long time ago because we're so far away from them. From the time the nearest star emits light and zooms through space until reaching our eyes, several years will have passed. Now, looking out at the hundreds of millions of stars trillions of light years away, I thought of the possibility of planets orbiting some of those stars and wondered what picture I was seeing of those worlds. Were there living creatures on them? Were they looking up like I was? Had the war hit them?

Were those worlds destroyed by Nightmare yet, or was what I was seeing a glimpse of the life that once was?

A soft creak came from behind me and I jumped up with both Bushido Katanas drawn near my head, but I dropped them when I saw what had caused the noise.

"Hey, Nikki," Ren said with a smile, and dramatically threw one hand into the air while with the other he pressed a finger to his mouth. I rolled my eyes and slid the katanas back into their sheaths on my back.