I’m proud to have done what I did. Not many people have the strength to do it, or the will to see it through. But it doesn’t change the fact that I still have some regrets.

  I’m not an archetype, but I was one of the first pilots recruited during the early days of the Interpnetary War, before the handler program was even a thing, even. My pnet, New Rhodes, was directly in the path of the Archdiocese’s first crusade. We knew it was just a matter of time before they got there; reports from the front were sporadic but they painted a bleak picture of UGS defenses slowly but surely crumbling as our fleet AIs failed to adapt to AGD electronic warfare.

  At the time, I was already working for the war effort as a civilian. Schwartzkopf Armory was churning out small arms for UGS troops, and I was part of the logistics department. Keeping up the flow of rifles, grenade unchers, and machine guns to the front felt like the best thing I could do, because there was no way I could be a “real” soldier due to my endocrine disorder.

  The UGS Adam Selene incident changed that. The Adam Selene was nearly autonomous warship, brought in to provide long-range orbit-to-surface fire support that the UGS cked during their border skirmishes with the Chartered Systems. We never needed it against the CCSNS after it was developed, but it was one of many things that AGD intelligence agencies tracked and caused them to start the goddamned war in the first pce.

  When the AGD turned out to not only have a sufficiently advanced cyberwarfare branch that they could interfere with the Adam Selene’s systems, but breach its encryption keys and remotely control them, it caused no shortage of hell for UGS forces. The AGD tried to py coy with it, but blue-on-blue was supposed to be impossible with the support fleet. All forces in-theatre were re-tasked to bring down the compromised Adam Selene, and it didn’t go down without a fight. The Midori system fell a few days ter; what few surviving UGS units were left on the surface didn’t stand any chance.

  I remember watching news of the withdrawal with my then-girlfriend in horror. Her family was from Midori. Only a few of them got out; others were whisked away into AGD internment camps and never heard from again. I didn’t want the same thing to happen to her, to us. I couldn’t let it happen.

  When word reached me that the UGS was recruiting for a new type of armored warfare program, I initially ignored it, thinking it was just another call for tankers until one of my friends showed me the fine print. I talked to a recruiter, who told me he could get a waiver for my endocrine disorder, that it actually might make me an even better recruit for the mech program. She told me it made me less a liability and more of a “bnk ste.”

  I dwelled on it for a few weeks; while I’d always wanted to join, to be like so many others I’d known and admired over the years, but it could also mean the end of me. The end of us. My girlfriend would catch me lost in thought during those weeks, staring at a wall or ceiling while I processed the potential directions my life could go with a single signature. I didn’t tell her what was going through my mind at the time. I figured she’d think I was insane.

  One night she finally broke the silence and asked me what had so obviously been eating at me. I was terrified she was thinking it was some horrible secret I’d been hiding from her, like an affair or a disease, and I was at a loss for words for nearly half an hour. Eventually she offered her own hypothesis:

  “You’re enlisting, aren’t you?”

  I had no idea how she’d figured it out on her own, but I broke down, telling her how badly the UGS needed volunteers for this new role, how worried I was about it, how I couldn’t get the idea that I should do it out of my head, how I worried I’d fuck it up and fail at this new life too, how I was mortified that it would mean the end of us.

  She embraced me, comforted me, told me she wanted to support me. I trusted her to be telling the truth.

  The months that followed were a bit of a blur. She tried to show her support however she could by pointing out little things I could do to prepare for service, teaching me how to press my clothes better, pushing me to do what little physical training I had the stamina for. She even made me a bracelet, which I still wear, to take with me to basic training – a little piece of cord with two beads, one amethyst, one jade, representing our bond. Shen even accompanied me to sign my contract and saw me off to basic.

  I didn’t see her again until I graduated pilot training. She knew I’d change during the intake process, that I’d have to be subjected to MCIS augmentation, that my body would change due to the time I’d spend in a frame’s cockpit. But I don’t think she was ready to see the new me, the “me” that had finally found her calling in this universe.

  The first time I saw her after graduated, I rushed to hug her tightly, but something felt off. She seemed uncomfortable touching my skin, seeing how I’d softened from the person she had loved for years to that point. I asked her what was wrong, and she told me that there was just something fundamentally different about me now. Something that had broken her attraction to me.

  She told me that her body was betraying her heart.

  We were over as a couple, right then and there. I couldn’t bme her for it. She still cared for me deeply; I could see it in her eyes, but you can’t change a person’s orientation any more than you can change humankind’s nature. We sat for a while, watching the suns set one st time together.

  Before I left, I told her I still loved her. That I’d always love her. That I was gd that she realized we wouldn’t work now rather than ter, because I valued her future more than my own, and the st thing I’d ever want would be for me to hold her down, attached to someone - some thing – that she no longer held romantic feelings for.

  She told me she felt the same. That she was thankful that I still held her in such high esteem. That she was happy I was on a path to a happier, more satisfied life. That she was proud that I was doing the right thing for both of us, no matter how much it hurt in the moment.

  The war never actually came to New Rhodes. My unit was pushed out to retake Midori and prevent it from being used as a supply hub for an eventual invasion on New Rhodes. We were wildly successful; I was one of the first ANGLs to ever provide orbit-to-surface fires direction from a mech frame. Without any way to interrupt or prevent our orbital bombardment, the AGD colpsed and fell back in a hurry. Even so, we were on station for months before being rotated back to New Rhodes for repair and resupply.

  When I came back, I tried to reach out to my now-ex, only to find out that she was no longer in the same city where we’d met and lived what felt like a lifetime ago. I dug around a bit, trying to track her down, just to catch up. When I finally found her, I discovered she’d moved on. She was living with a new boyfriend, in a new city, living a new life, building a new, happy family.

  I’m proud to know I successfully protected her future. I’m proud I became what I was meant to be.

  I just wish I could still have her too.

  -ANGL “Songbird”Date Unknown