“Hello? Is anyone out there? If you are, if you’re alive, know that you’re not alone. We are few, but according to Vandre, we are enough to restart society. If you’re out there, know that Earth still stands. We have sick, we have wounded, but we are alive.” – Message received after the collapse, recording of questionable value.

  Nessa walked hesitantly to the table, nervous they would say something about her defeat at the hands of an enemy. But this, this wasn’t a battlefield, was it?

  When she really thought about it, it was ironic that she was always willing to charge into battle with nothing more than a light suit of armor and a sword. But social gatherings, especially ones where she was the center of focus, required significantly more effort for her to stand up and be seen.

  “So, you bastards came to an Irish pub without me?” she said, plastering on a false smile.

  It was a face she’d worn her entire life, and it was one she would continue to wear until she was as comfortable with these people as she was with Warren.

  “Not at all. In fact, we picked this place for you,” Jack said, motioning to an open chair, “but I think we’re all just a little surprised you left sick bay.”

  “Having a leg eaten off is not the same as being sick. And besides, the doctor said everything went as well as can be expected.”

  “Yeah, but that doesn’t mean you should leave the second you can stand,” Thea said, raising her eyebrows.

  “There goes mom. Ness, I wouldn’t piss her off too much or she just might drag you back to the hospital.” Dave said, his customary wide grin beaming like the sun, “Granted, I’m pretty sure we would all eat in your hospital room if it meant keeping you from doing something stupid.”

  “I’ve no desire to go back to that damned place until they are ready for the implant. Until then, I want to have a meal with my friends and sleep in my bed,” Nessa replied, ignoring Warren’s glare and waving for a drink. “So, how did the after-action go?”

  “Honestly, better for us than others,” Jack replied, drawing nods from around the table. “One squad had a death, and others had a few on tables like yours.”

  “So, my leg wasn’t the big news we thought it was?”

  “In terms of raw numbers, no. But that doesn’t mean I couldn’t have done a better job of leading us through that mess,” Jack said, taking a deep pull from his drink.

  “Stop that,” she said sharply, “I… we don’t need you taking the self-deprecation train to sad-land. I plan on doing enough of that for everyone. No one on our team died, and that is a win. But even if someone had, it’s part of the job, isn’t it? You would have gone through fire to get the memory print if one of us fell, and we know it. It’s not your fault that I did the stupid thing and moved into melee range when bullets were doing well enough. Injury and loss are parts of being a warrior. It’s fortunate that my loss is just a limb.”

  The table fell silent. They were used to Nessa chastising what she saw as pointless behavior, but this was a whole new level for her. She was a firm believer in the reality that a harsh truth didn’t stop it from being true.

  “The part that sucks is that you get cool robot parts before I do. In what world does the infantry chick get cybernetics before the mechanic? That breaks like… all the rules!” Alec said, lifting the mood in a spectacularly insensitive fashion.

  The outburst helped break the tension, but didn’t stop her introspection.

  She could say this ordeal didn’t bother her, but that wasn’t true. The loss of a leg was something she wished no one would have to live through, but she knew they would, despite her desire. A small part of her would’ve preferred to die. At least then, they could’ve brought her back as a Steel Cast and she wouldn’t have to stare at the mark of her failure.

  The image of her leg swam through her memory. The place where the scars ended felt like fate taunting her, telling her she could have been reborn completely instead of just one stupid leg. Being an android was better than this mish-mash of parts, wasn’t it?

  Interrupting a story she’d heard Dave tell a thousand times, she raised a pint filled with a dark liquid. “I’ve been waiting to say this since finding out there was an Irish bar on this boat. To friends, to comrades, to family, Slàinte!”

  The whole table raised their glasses and clinked them together, shouting the phrase into the night. Taking a good long drink from hers, Nessa hoped she could fake her happiness long enough for it to become real. If nothing else, having people by her side would help to drive away the demons… wouldn’t it? Nessa saw these people cared about her in a way that was deeper than anything she’d known before. The fact that they were here with her proved it.

  It wasn’t perfect, but was perfect really a thing?

  She would overcome this pain. She would force herself out of the shadows of her mind and into the light, forever refusing to let go. She wouldn’t back down, she wouldn’t give in.

  To steal the phrase Jack was so fond of; she would rise.

  ~~**~~

  “There you are!” Sergeant Sanchez shouted. His voice cutting through the crowd like a hot knife through butter. “I’ve been looking all over this stars-cursed ship. If it wouldn’t have been for Alfson, I would’ve never found you.”

  Jack broke off his conversation with Thea to look toward the unexpected voice in confusion as a Latin man cut through the crowd and grabbed his shoulder, “Eh hombre, you better not be too borracho or this night is about to get a lot less memorable.”

  “Sanchez!” Jack said excitedly, clearly more than a little drunk. There wasn’t a single member of Spier Squad that wasn’t already there, but Jack and Thea were so far down that hole, it would truly be an ordeal to get home. “You guys got pretty banged up, huh? How’re you, you good?”

  “Hombre, you’re in for a rough ride tonight. Specialist Alfson, I need to commandeer your sergeant for a while… he will be back in the morning,” he said, ignoring Jack’s questions.

  “Umm, where are you taking him?” she asked, trying to maintain her focus.

  “To the NCO club. Now that he is one of us–however recently–there are certain traditions he needs to be part of.”

  “Which are?”

  “For him to know and you to find out when you’re an NCO,” he said dismissively, pulling Jack toward the exit, “I’ll have him back in your cabin tonight, though I can’t promise what kind of shape he’ll be in.”

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  Before they could go too far, Thea reached out a hand to grab Jack’s. Green Light danced across her fingertips and sank into his skin. Satisfied, she waved goodbye to Jack and turned back to the group.

  “What did she just do?” Sanchez asked, walking toward the elevator.

  “Healed me. She forced my body to metabolize the Alcohol and sober me up. But the better question is why I’m being pulled away from the people that need me most tonight?” Jack explained, straightening the cuff of his sleeve and forming an audio Link to his group.

  “Quite the skilled specialist, odd to think that you were all privates just a few days ago.”

  “If it would’ve meant not seeing the crap we have already, I would gladly have stayed a private.”

  The Latin man chucked, “Man, you have no idea how many times I’ve thought that exact thing during my career.”

  “Why is war so terrible?”

  “Because we tell the lie that it’s fun. We hide what it’s really like so the outside world can pretend that we have fun out here. Sometimes it is, but most of the time…” he said, stepping onto the platform and leaning against the far wall.

  “After Ortiz, I just wanted to drink until I couldn’t feel the pain anymore. How are you still sober knowing that you lost a guy?”

  “Because he died, but I didn’t lose him. Sure, one guy became Steel Cast today, but that just means he has another chance at life. Albeit in a different form than he once knew. The only difference between him and Specialist Walker is that she will still have an organic existence for a while.”

  “A while?” Jack asked, eyebrows raised.

  “Yeah, a while. Breakers tend to end up in the Steel Corps a lot more often than others. Mostly because combat specialists like them get killed more often.” Sanchez explained.

  “That’s a helpful thought.”

  “Hey, I never said you would like my answers.”

  The platform eventually stopped to reveal a deck Jack had never seen, much less heard of. Until then, he never imagined that parts of the ship were inaccessible to everyone. In fact, he’d always assumed the ship was an open book as long as you wanted to learn it. But now he was learning there were many places you couldn’t go unless you met certain rank requirements.

  The entrance to the NCO club was a shrine to the soldiering profession, and exactly what he expected from a group of battle-hardened veterans.

  A large vault door–probably taken from an armory somewhere–stood open as if waiting for guests. Above it, a plaque was emblazoned with the three most important words in an NCO's career.

  This We’ll Defend.

  “What is this?” Jack asked, listening to the cheerful voices inside.

  “This… this is why we fight. This is why we drive our soldiers to be better every day, why we push for them to grow, and why we push ourselves to do the same. Inside that room are the faces of honor and sacrifice, the reminder of what we fight for and what it means to lose. Those words,” Sanchez explained, pointing to the plaque, “Are part of the promise we make to the civilians that depend on us. It’s a promise to deploy at a moment’s notice, and to run to the fight so they don’t have to.”

  Sanchez stared at those immortal words for a moment before walking through the door and leaving Jack behind.

  He was giving the new sergeant a choice; leave now and prove that he wasn’t a true brother in arms, or walk in and accept the burden of responsibility. It should have been easy, but it was a decision that would either mark a turning point in his life or haunt him forever.

  For the first time, he thought he understood the why behind what they did.

  The idea of the AHF was to defend mankind, but what did it mean when they were attacking a planet with no humans on it? How were they defending? Was he just supposed to trust they were in the right? He knew there would be times when they were the bad guys. But that didn’t mean he would do it alone.

  Walking slowly through the doorway, he made his decision.

  Immediately inside, he saw a wall lined with helmets. Below each was a small engraving that explained who the soldier was and why they’d earned a place here. Approaching one covered in drawings clearly done by children, he read:

  SFC Andrew Baxton, Aegis of the Seventh Mechanized Infantry—died defending a school from an invasion of Malektor on New Avalon. His sacrifice saved 156 children. On his death, he was awarded the Golden Sun of Valor.

  “The Wall of the Fallen,” a familiar voice said behind him.

  Turning, he saw First Sergeant Summers staring with a serene expression. His eyes were on the wall, but his mind was far, far away.

  Falling into Parade Rest, he said, “I’m sorry, First Sergeant, I didn’t see you there.”

  “Would you just relax? I didn’t like you doing that crap on Algol, and I don’t like it here. When we are in this room, my name is Karyl,” the First Sergeant said, blinking away a memory. “This is your first time here?”

  “Yeah… we haven’t exactly had a lot of time since my promotion.”

  “About a day, right?”

  “Give or take,” Jack replied, trying to get used to this level of familiarity with Karyl. “Why do we need to honor the fallen if they are reborn as Steel Cast? There shouldn’t be any fallen.”

  “On one hand, yes. However, this wall is for those who died in such a spectacular way, there is no coming back from it.”

  “Such as?”

  In typical Summers fashion, he just pointed to the engraved plaque and waited for Jack to put the pieces together.

  “The death was so traumatic, the mind couldn’t survive,” Jack muttered, realizing for the first time that it was very possible to die in service to the AHF, “but doesn’t this just remind everyone of their eventual fate?”

  “For some, maybe. For me, no. It reminds me that we fight for something greater than ourselves and that we are all heroes. Sure, it’s a memorial, but more than that, it is inspiration.”

  They walked down the line of helmets, each one telling the story of the soldier who wore it. At the end of the row hung a large metal sheet with an inscription carved into its surface.

  “The NCO creed. Your creed, now that you’re one of us,” the older Optic said before reading aloud:

  I am a Non-Commissioned Officer,

  No one is more professional than I.

  I am a leader of Soldiers and a member of the military backbone,

  I will conduct myself at all times to bring honor to my title, my service, and my republic,

  I will never use my grade or position to attain pleasure, profit, or personal safety.

  Competence is my watchword,

  My two most basic responsibilities will always be at the forefront of my mind.

  I will accomplish the mission and ensure the welfare of my soldiers to the best of my ability.

  I will strive to remain technically and tactically proficient,

  I am aware of my role and will strive to fulfill the responsibilities inherent to it.

  All Soldiers are entitled to outstanding leadership, and I will provide that leadership.

  I will always place the needs of my Soldiers above my own,

  I will communicate with them constantly and never leave them uninformed.

  I will be fair and impartial when recommending both reward and punishment.

  I will earn the respect and confidence of both the Officers in my unit and my Soldiers.

  I will be loyal to those with whom I serve,

  I will exercise initiative by taking appropriate action in the absence of orders.

  I will not compromise my integrity, nor my morality.

  I will never forget that I am a leader, and I will always strive to be a better one.

  Silence lingered long after Karyl finished reading. It was more than just a jumble of words slapped together by someone with a grandiose vision; it was a promise to be the best leader—and soldier—you could be. This creed wasn’t something you could understand fully in passing. It took time to sink in.

  Time Jack would’ve had if he’d risen through the ranks like other soldiers.

  Sadly, the powers that be compelled Jack to assume the burden of responsibility long before he was ready.

  But that didn’t matter. His job as a leader demanded he learn how to step up and be an example for his squad.

  “It is so much more than the surface words, isn’t it?” Jack asked, seeking confirmation of what he already knew. “And the truth is; not a single person in this room can say they understand it fully. These words, they take a lifetime to achieve, don’t they?”

  “You’re more insightful than I give you credit for,” Karyl replied, walking toward a group of soldiers standing around a table. “And yes, they take a lifetime. Luckily, a lifetime is what you have ahead of you.”

  Reaching the table, the first sergeant slammed a hand down to grab everyone’s attention, “Hey guys, we have a brand new sergeant here tonight and he’s never been introduced to The Seven.”

  “Actually, I’ve met quite a few of them,” Jack said, immediately regretting the words as the room burst into laughter.

  “That’s not the same seven we’re talking about, bud,” a big man said when the noise died down.

  The bartender set out seven shot glasses and filled them with brightly colored drinks that matched each of the corps. In the back of his mind, he hoped they were not terribly strong.

  “Welcome to the ranks of the NCOs.” Summers said, “It’s time to show us what you’re made of.”

  His hope was severely in vain.