We all have our stories, and we all need to hear each other.

I was fifty years an Imperial Scout Marine. Retired now, just trying to take care of myself and live right. I’ve got people here, and a couple dogs, and a little patch of land to raise gemango, rabbit beans, and maw melons. 

It’s nice to have people again. Being a Scout Marine is mostly being alone. Long stretches in space, looking for new planets. Scan and map from orbit, and if it’s green-friendly maybe go down and have a look. And yeah, you see some amazing stuff. Really. I wish I could tell you, but I’m no poet. 

So it’s mostly just you out there. I know some who had pets, or talked to AIs. We all have our ways, right? 

I didn’t mind being alone. I liked having the time and space to think without having to shape myself to someone else’s want. 

Just me and all that empty. The great big black, I call it. 

That’s mostly what the universe is, what life is; the space between. Between planets, events, people, all of it. Little specks of light in a great big dark. All those little moments between weddings and funerals and stubbing your toe and eating cookies. Between birth and death. 

How we die is as random as how we live. There’s no destiny, no shaper; the river shapes the stone, the rain shapes the river, and the clouds drift on the wind.  

So the last things we say won’t matter much to the great big black, even if there’s anyone to hear them. Just the sound of dust going back to dust. Maybe back on Earth everyone died in bed, loved and comforted, and they had time to think of something pretty to say. Something to sum it all up.

But that’s not our life out here. This is a hard life. We’re poor, scattered, and scared, most of us. So if we can give each other some last little bit of comfort, we should.

Mostly that’s being there and hearing them one last time.

We all have our stories, and we all need to hear each other.

The first time I saw someone die, I was twenty-three and the ink just dry on my commission. Second Lieutenant Jaydra Sabban, Imperial Scout Marines. I had a head more full of stories than sense. 

Sent me and a tough platoon of scars in armor to some little ball of rock no one had bothered to name yet. Settlers took a vote to join the Empire before Indigo could take over, so they sent me to plant the flag.

Like I said, my head was full of stories. I wanted to be the first one to set foot on this new moon, like I was claiming it. My sergeant wanted me to let them set a perimeter, but I thought I’d impress the platoon going out first.

If you think you want to be impressive, stop; you can’t own that, and you can’t earn that, and you mostly shouldn’t try. That was the day’s first lesson.

Soon as my boot kissed dust, a slug smacked my shoulder. No harm done, I was all decked out in combat armor, but I sure felt it. I dropped to a crouch and drew my sidearm, looking for the shooter. My suit spotted a shape with a rifle, and I put a flechette center mass just like they taught me. Just like in the stories.

It was a kid. Maybe two, three years younger than me. Just a dumb kid who saw a dropship and combat armor and wanted to protect his own. And he was dying because another dumb kid saw a gun and thought “threat” before “screwup”.

Sergeant didn’t say anything then. Just bellowed for our medic. But there wasn’t much they could do. I took off my helmet and my gauntlet so I could hold his hand and show my face.

“I’m sorry,” he said. Blood gurgled in his throat. His chest was a wet red wreck.

I didn’t know what to say. I squeezed his hand and hoped someone would come for him. I wanted out, away, anywhere else. I wanted there to be more than me and the kid I killed.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I thought you came to kill us.”

“It’s all right,” I said. “I did, too.”

He nodded, barely. “I’m sorry. Tell my dads I’m sorry. My baby -”

And then he was gone. I laid him down there, and I turned to explain to the people running toward us that I was a dumb kid, too. Didn’t help much. Cold comfort to them,  and none for me. They were angry and hurt deep.

His fathers held him and cried. I wanted to talk to them, but all I saw was guilt and all they saw was loss. I told them I was sorry, but their friends kept me from them. We waited with them until my CO arrived and took charge.

They were good people. When their forgiveness came years later, it just made it harder for me to forgive myself. Honestly, I’m not sure I have yet. Hard to give yourself grace when you killed a kid, when someone died just because you were young and dumb. 

We all have our stories, and we all need to hear each other.

My father died a few years later. That was hard, too. 

It took him a long time. Weeks, I guess, but I wasn’t there for most of it. I didn’t request leave until Mama told me I needed to come home. Even then it was five days before he crossed over.

He was in pain the whole time. The doctor gave us drugs that helped. And he was never, ever one to complain. He carried me three clicks on a broken foot once and I never knew it. But I could see it, we could all see it. It wasn’t going to be long. 

We all took turns sitting with him. I’m a night owl, so I was with him on the middle watch. It was quiet, and he mostly slept except to ask for some water or another pill. I wrote in my journal, and I made little sketches of him. Not as he was, not sick and shriveled and small. I wanted to remember him whole and strong, the lively man who taught me to sing and shoot and wrestle. I didn’t want that man to slip out of mind, I didn’t want to be haunted by what little was left of him.

On the last night he woke up suddenly. It was 0215 by the clock. He shot up in bed and knocked over a glass I’d just filled with ice water. 

“Baba, please,” I said. “What do you need?”

“Jaydra,” he said. “I don’t like these sheets.”

“Mama just changed them this morning,” I said. I got a towel to clean up the mess.

“They don’t feel right,” he said. He scanned the room like a cornered animal. “This room, it’s not right. It’s not right!”

“Shhh, Baba. It’s the same room as always. You just woke up and you’re confused. Rest, please.”

“Why confused? When we wake, we should be clearer. It’s not right.”

I started cleaning up the spilled ice water. He grabbed my hand. His eyes were so bright, and his grip was so strong. He scared me.

“It’s not right, Jaydra. Make it right for me, please.”

He sank back into bed with a sigh. 

“I never told your mother,” he said. “When we were young, before you were born, there was someone else.”

I stared at him. The people we know aren’t always the people they are. But at the end that gap narrows.

“Baba, please. You don’t owe me your secrets. Please, just rest.”

He waved me off and went on, his voice fading. “His name was Antoine. He was the most beautiful man I had ever seen. Strong, graceful, with thick black hair and strong hands. When we kissed it was milk and honey in the summer. 

“I loved your mother, but we never had much time to be in love together. We barely knew each other when we left our parents and made all of you. Our love was commitment and duty, not passion. Love is so much, but life is so much more.”

He lowered himself back into the bed. His head looked to be drowning in his pillow.

“I did love her, but I loved Antoine, too. We were fire and soaring and sweetness. He was so light, Jaydra, a feather. A sunbeam. 

“But I couldn’t bear to leave my family, so I left him. I never told your mother.

“I never told your mother,” he sighed.

Then he was gone. Now his burden was mine.

I told Mama after we buried him. I tried to be gentle, but it was hard for her to hear. I wish she could have heard it from him so there wouldn’t be hurt in my words to her.

We all have our stories, and we all need to hear each other.

For years after that it was just me and the great big black.  I didn’t mind, like I said. I’m not antisocial, I have friends. I love people. I just don’t feel like my life’s not enough without them.

I caught an SOS signal about ten years later. Before that, I’d probably gone a year or so without any human contact. I’m a camel when it comes to that.

The signal was too weak to reach much past my ship, but they meant to be heard.

The voice on the comm was in sorry shape. 

“SOS, SOS, this is Charles and Spenser registered Alemanthine, Xu-9 133-91-208, anyone please respond. Engines dead, life-support critical and losing power.”

“Charles and Spenser, this is ISMV Kateryna Zakharova registered Moskva. Barely receiving you,  can you do better?”

“Negative, Zakharova. We’e on emergency power and almost out. How soon do you make us?”

I cranked up the gain and glanced at the nav for calculations. “I’m on my way. Best speed has me at your coordinates in three-nine minutes. How many souls aboard?’

“Seventeen souls still alive, Zakharova. Please hurry, we’re dying.”

I took a deep breath. Seventeen was fifteen more than I could help.

“Spenser, this is a scout ship. I can take two. I’ll relay your signal; keep sending.”

When I got there I saw it was worse than I thought. 

“Wing and a prayer” would have been cruelty in mercy’s cloak for that ship.  Someone had torn them apart like a terrier shaking a rat. I didn’t see anyone around, and I didn’t want to spend much time looking for trouble. I’d found enough.

I docked with what was left and boarded. Most of the bodies were twisted, broken, torn. Worse than the ship. And I hope I never see what they saw, what painted those expressions on their faces.

The comms officer I talked to was the only one left. I found them in an emergency suit, their compartment open to space, strapped to what remained of their station.

They kept saying the same thing, over and over: ‘It came out of nothing, too big to see-“

I couldn’t get their attention. I don’t know if they could hear me. Maybe their gear was down to one-way, maybe their mind was past any other thoughts, maybe they just burned to get their words out before they ran out of breath.

Which came soon enough, mercifully. I set a nav beacon to warn ships about the wreck, then set off back into the black. Not much more I could do there among the ruined dead.

All that was left was to tell the bare thumbnail I knew. 

We all have our stories, and we all need to hear each other.

Every now and then you get a new mission. Odds and ends, little stuff no one else wants to do and you’re kind of close so why not? 

So here’s me, getting orders to find the nearest gate and jump to some rock I never heard of. Instructions when you make orbit. Kind of strange, but job pays the same for normal as strange.

Turns out I was needed to give a message. They already had it by wave, but they needed to hear it one more time and maybe let it sink in.

The Khy’ri were coming.

The killers? Yeah, that’s them. Living in a Dyson sphere out where no one goes. Hardly anyone knows anything about the Khy'ri but “run fast and far”. They tell you they want your planet, you leave. Or they kill you, all of you, before you ever see a single strange face. Doesn’t matter who you are, how many, how smart your tech, you run. No one’s ever beat them. Not many try anymore.

And they were coming. They gave thirty days to get everyone gone, and we were twenty-five days deep in their count with a few hundred souls left who wouldn’t move. So I was the last lifeline.

I got to explain that they were either going to leave or they were going to die. Jaydra Sabban, harbinger of doom.

One of them was Giraud Rains. Old man who’d lived there seventy years. Exo-archaeologist. The planet was covered with wrecks from all over the galaxy, like a dumping ground for everyone’s old ships. Stripped of most tech, but he told me he’d learned a lot from the rotting hulks.

I thought maybe he had some hope of actually seeing the Khy’ri. I hadn’t learned to listen yet. So I told him he’d never lay eyes on them, not a one. They’d flip a switch from well beyond orbit that would kill him and anyone else still clinging to that junk heap; missile, beam, kinetic strike, didn’t matter. There was no fight to be picked.

He laughed. “You know, I’ve studied exties my whole life. Juk-xo, 35-Naggue, Zgratu, Gatruvians, whoever. And I’ve never seen any of them in the flesh. Not even a Gaeshuin. So no, I’m not dying to see a Khy’ri. That’s like a, a birdwatcher drinking poison to hope a, a Nabiri blood-hummer comes for his eyes before he fades. I hope I’m never that mad.”

So I asked him why.

“Because it’s all I have,” he said. “This is home for most of my life. My wife’s buried over there, under that tree. Our first boy is there, too, and our second is a few miles over those hills, under whats’s left of a Palajhene sailer that collapsed on him. My wife built this house for us while I studied those wrecks, and every day I came home she made this place more ours.”

He reached out to stroke the wall like it was her cheek. “It’s her sweat and thought and love that’s kept us safe and alive all this time. I can’t leave all that for what, a few more years on some new rock with nothing but memories fading? I can’t see it. I don’t want to.”

“At least here it’ll come quick, and I won’t be alone to see it,” he said.

I thanked him for hearing me out, and wished him well. Then I went on my way.

The next morning the Khy’ri hauled the planet out of orbit and into deep space. No more ships left before that started. So they all died in cold and dark, together. I hope we all do.

We all have our stories, and we all need to hear each other.

I retired after that. I’d had enough alone time, I guess. Settled down here and took up painting. Met a man, my husband later on. Eric. Good man.

But cancer got to him five years on. I guess it started before I met him, but he wasn’t much for doctors when he felt well. So there it was, nothing to be done. Took him a year later.

I stayed by him every minute I could. Near the end, I was the sun on his face and the breeze in his hair. I don’t remember much else about those last few weeks but watching him fade, seeing to his needs. Not sure I even ate or slept.

One night I was reading to him from “The Prophet”. He loved Gibran. The moon was a bare sliver over the mountains, and the stars slept behind clouds.

“Only love and death will change all things,” I read. He smiled, and squeezed my hand; that meant “stop so we can talk”.

“I like that,” he said. “‘Only love and death will change all things,’” he said.

“It’s true,” I said. “It feels true, anyway.”

He coughed up a little blood. This was happening more and more. 

I knew what it meant. 

So did he.

“My father told me he cheated on my mom,” I said. I don’t know why I said it.

“You never told me that.”

“I didn’t like knowing that. I don’t say much about it.”

“Every broken bird longs to fly again,” he said. “It’s sad that he waited so long.”

“It’s sad that he cheated on Mama.”

He nodded. “And now you carry that. But I don’t know why.”

I thought about that.

“I don’t know what else to do with it.”

He reached for his water glass. I guided it to his lips, and he sipped a little. More went on his chin than in his mouth.

I cleaned him up gently.

“I heard a story,” he said, “about a young monk and an old master. They were on their way to another temple when they came to a river. The spring rains pushed the river up its banks, and the shallow ford was waist-deep in fast water.

“A beautiful young woman was there, afraid to cross. The old master offered to carry her. The young monk frowned, but said nothing, and the woman accepted.

“When they had crossed, she thanked them and went her own way. The old master pressed on and the young monk followed him.

“But the incident had disturbed the young man. After several miles, he had to say something.

“‘Master,’ he said, ‘we have taken holy vows never to touch a woman. And yet you held that beautiful girl close all the way across the river. How could you?’

But the old monk smiled.

“‘You saw a beautiful girl. I saw someone in need of help. You see my vows broken, and I see them completed.’

“‘I set her down and went my way. You remain with her.’”

“You think I’m judging him too harshly,” I said.

“I think he wanted you to free him, not imprison yourself,” he said. “I never met him, but I think he would never want that for you. What father would?”

We all have our stories, and we all need to hear each other.

Maybe the words themselves don’t matter much. Maybe every word matters, because someone took the time to speak it. Maybe one last kindness is the least we owe each other. 

We all have our stories, and we all need to hear each other.