While crossing some white and metallic corridors where he could only see the parts where the walls bent or were attached together aside from the endless and boring white, Dylan wondered what he should do with his life. Kids from an early age received training to become soldiers. If they didn’t have the aptitude to wear the battle suits, they would be sent to receive training and instruction in other fields. The Dreadnought always needed help in all parts, after all.

  The battle suits could become quite uncomfortable when they tried to convert ether for their uses, and it was like having their veins zapped for quite a while. Those who are suited eventually get used to it, and those who don’t eventually pass out. In any case, Dylan was very suited to become a soldier; he barely felt any resistance to the suit when he tried it, and he had some fighting skills, and he learned things fast. Still, he couldn’t help but wonder if he truly should be a soldier when he didn’t have any drive. He didn’t have the drive to do anything…

  Avenging his parents? How could he kill an alien monster that could kill billions by itself? Besides, while his parents made their choice thinking about his future as well, it was a fact that they left him alone when he was three years old by choosing their mission over him.

  ‘Why do those thoughts never go away?’ Dylan thought when he turned on the corner and approached his room. ‘It isn’t like I want to do anything else… I need to find my purpose, just like my parents found theirs, even if I don’t like all the outcomes of their decisions.’

  When Dylan found his room, he found a dark-haired girl with long wavy hair in front of it and waiting for him. It was a girl a bit younger than Dylan and quite cute as well. If Amanda was like his older sister, Claire was like Dylan’s spoiled younger sister.

  “You are late!” Claire said once she heard Dylan’s footsteps and looked at him.

  “You never said that you would be waiting for me.” Dylan shrugged.

  “What did that woman want?” Claire asked after she raised her right eyebrow.

  “That woman is your instructor as well, and you will probably have to work with her since you are smarter than good at the simulator, so you should get along with her since she looked after you as well,” Dylan said and landed a gentle chop on Claire’s head. “She wanted to convince me to stay away from the regular missions for a while and gain experience by watching others.”

  Dylan got inside his room, and it automatically closed. The place had already been cleaned, and his things were in a few boxes and ready to be carried. Claire pushed Dylan from behind and forced him to let her help.

  “I heard that the soldiers have access to restricted archives from our home planet. Have you heard of one piece?” Claire asked once they left the room and began to walk. “I heard some soldiers talking about it, and it seems like an interesting show. Invite me to your new room once you have access to it.”

  “Although too many people already know what we are like siblings, maybe it is about time that we put some distance between us.” Dylan furrowed his eyebrows and said. “Otherwise, you will never find a boyfriend.”

  “Who cares about that?” Claire asked, and then looked at Dylan with suspicious eyes. “It feels like an excuse for you to fool around just because you are a bit popular and you are less of an adult now.”

  “More or less of an adult…” Dylan said and then sighed.

  Claire also didn’t have parents like Dylan, and she also lost them during that mission fifteen years ago. Amanda did her best to look after her as well and thought that raising those two together like siblings would be a good idea. In the end, that ended up relatively well. Claire turned into a jealous and clingy little sister to Dylan, but she disliked Amanda for whatever reason, probably because she treated her more like a child than Dylan.

  In any case, those two found a round and transparent elevator at the end of the corridor and then jumped on it. It moved for a while upward, and they stayed in silence. The dreadnought was even bigger than the Omega alien, dozens of times bigger, in fact.

  Since it was built in a hurry, it had a weird shape, and it looked like a massive ring that was constantly spinning to keep the gravity working. It was amazingly fifty kilometers wide and long… and most people lived in the inner layer of the rings where the horizontal and vertical areas could be found. They were heading to the top of the vertical layer.

  “If she tried to stop you from working on the front lines, she must know that things might become dangerous…” Claire said with her head down.

  “We can’t talk about that,” Dylan replied once they began to cross some floors that had laboratories, research rooms, and training rooms for the soldiers of the spaceship. “You can just relax. It isn’t like the worst didn’t happen already.”

  “You are terrible at consoling others,” Claire shook her head when the elevator stopped and the entrance was opened. “I never came here, so I am kind of nervous. Anyway, isn’t there anyone to guide the newbie?”

  “I am not a child, so I don’t need guides. Besides, I have the map to my room,” Dylan said and began to guide Claire.

  It didn’t take long for them to find the corridors where the soldiers lived. There was a room with a place with Dylan’s name on it. The interior was bigger than that of the recruits, and while Dylan was thankful for the extra space, he couldn’t help but frown since the room had a huge ass glass window.

  This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

  “How can I sleep well knowing that there is the void of space so close to me?” Dylan asked while frowning.

  “Wow, I think that this is awesome… there is a panel on the side, so you can probably change the window to an ordinary wall,” Claire said and then put one of the boxes on the side of the bed. “I will work hard to become a soldier as soon as possible as well.”

  Dylan wanted to sigh… he didn’t want a lot from his future, but one of the things that he wanted wasn’t to see Claire in danger. He really loved her like a younger sister, and the idea of her death while working as a soldier was more than a bit dreadful. It had been some time since any soldier died, but it had also been some time since anyone left the spaceship on a mission… things were going to start again now since they established contact with other spaceships that survived fifteen years ago, and no one found signs of the Omega Alien.

  Claire helped Dylan set his things in his new room and then messed with the panel of the window for a while and then left, since it was getting late and she was hungry. Unfortunately, soldiers and recruits couldn’t have dinner together since it might make the recruits tremble in fear with their stories.

  Before Dylan could head to the refectory of the soldiers, he rested for a while on his new bed while wondering about the future… two hundred years had passed since they left Earth, many years before his birth. They were heading to Orion’s arm since it seemed like the most optimal place to look for a home, considering the vast number of planets on it. Despite that… they didn’t even cross that distance, even though they did many tests of using ether as fuel for the spaceship.

  ‘The more I think about it, the more I feel like it doesn’t matter if I become a soldier or not,’ Dylan thought while looking at the stars through the window.

  Once the time came, Dylan went to the refectory to have dinner. The sector where it was located was next to the rooms of the soldiers, after all, so he didn’t have a hard time finding it. When he arrived, Dylan saw a lot of people already eating.

  Unless the soldiers were actually sick, everyone had to eat in order to be fully prepared for any sudden missions. Thanks to it, Dylan found fifty soldiers there… That was one of the reasons he decided to be a soldier without thinking too much about it. Those numbers never gave him much confidence.

  “Dylan! Come over here!” Amanda waved her hands happily, which made everyone frown.

  ‘For the love of… woman… you are thirty already, act your age,’ Dylan wanted to sigh since Amanda was acting like someone of Claire’s age, it was hard to imagine how she became a soldier and the instructor of the recruits like that, or maybe she was only like that when he was around.

  Regardless, Dylan nodded while looking at her, but first, he went to grab his food in the corner. Besides, Amanda wasn’t sitting alone at a table. There was this other female soldier with her, and she didn’t look very pleased with the idea of Dylan sitting with them.

  Dylan already knew that they have a hierarchy among the soldiers. Even though their ranks were the same, the older ones were considered better since they have more experience. Aside from Amanda, there are also people who survived that mission, which ended up in Dylan’s parents’ deaths.

  In any case, tonight, they were serving some spaghetti cheese, curry, and French Onion Soup. Dylan heard that the French were pretty good with their cuisine, but he chose Curry because he liked spicy food better. In any case, when he approached Amanda’s table, the other person was still there, and it didn’t look like she wasn’t going to move anytime soon.

  Dylan never saw her, but the woman had straight, long, light brown hair and eyes of the same color. She seemed to be in her mid-twenties, even though she looked younger since she was a bit small. She looked cute, like Claire, but it wasn’t a good idea to call her cute. Women of her age would rather be called beautiful or sexy, or so Dylan thought and heard about, anyway. He never praised anyone directly based on their appearance. Regardless, she looked away when their eyes met.

  “Good evening,” Dylan said and then sat down.

  “Hey, did you like your room? I bet that all that scene on the window is making you uncomfortable,” Amanda said while grinning. “By the way, this is a friend of mine, and her name is Sabrina.”

  “My name is Dylan… I hope we can get along, ma’am,” Dylan said after hesitating for a moment in using his surname, even though that was a waste of time.

  “... Likewise,” Sabrina nodded.

  Dylan began to eat his curry, and he silently appreciated the spiciness of his meal. It was right on the point that he liked it, it was probably because it had been cooked by humans… machines making food had become the norm one hundred years ago, but the people in the Dreadnought began to complain since it wasn’t tasteless, but it lacked appeal… all the dishes started to lack appeal. Dylan always thought that people were being spoiled, but recently he started to notice their point.

  “We will be entering a certain zone tomorrow, and most likely, the operations commander will issue a mission for some of us to participate,” Amanda suddenly said. “The likelihood of you participating is small, but you should rest properly, Dylan. Even if we don’t take part in the missions, we have to be ready to deploy. All of us.”

  “We already sent probes to investigate the nearest planet?” Dylan asked after he suddenly gulped a spoonful of the curry.

  “Yes… you will hear the details tomorrow, but it seems that it is a good chance for us to mine for resources,” Amanda nodded.

  The dreadnought had a population of seventy thousand, and with its area that could be used, they didn’t have enough resources to cultivate food for everyone, even more so when they wanted to keep a varied menu to keep the soldiers happy. So, they used technology to speed up the time of production of all kinds of food. Still, making animals grow faster than a few months was risky, so that was the only thing that they avoided. Aside from that, they could easily produce months’ worth of a large production of grains in a single week. However, they needed resources for that. Water, carbon, oxygen, nitrogen… They are also mine for metals, knowledge of the species of the world, and ether during the missions.

  “Hmm? Am I mistook, or does it sound like you are joining the main team of soldiers again?” Dylan asked, while frowning. “Who is going to teach the recruits now?”

  “I don’t know, and I figured out that I should help since things are about to get tense… please don’t look at me like that,” Amanda forced a smile.

  At that point in time, Dylan was almost confirming that Amanda was trying to keep looking after him out of guilt… fifteen years ago, she was considered a genius soldier who graduated with flying colors a lot sooner than others, but all that praise and her pride didn’t help her save a lot of her friends. She needed some time to recover, and the fact that the human race didn’t have to fight or go on those special missions for a while helped her.

  “Well, it is your life, and as a newbie soldier, I am in no place to condemn your choices and actions,” Dylan said while looking around. “... It would be easier if soldiers acted more like recruits. I can’t find the table of the quiet kids. Everyone is quiet here and keeps looking at me. I am going to be bullied soon or something. I should start practicing my ball-crushing kicks.”

  “What kind of…” Amanda said and then shook her head. “Anyway, you aren’t going to be bullied. We just don’t get new recruits often, and they are usually pretty full of themselves.”