The Last Time

The Last Time

Sitting in the torch-lit twilight of the camp site, jacket wrapped around bare legs, hands cradling a hot cup of coffee, I couldn't have felt more at home.  The burning sun had long since set, and the three of us had set up camp for the night.  It had been a long day, trekking over mountain and between valleys, but it had been worth it.  Ali and Jono had already broken out the beers – a rare treat in such austere times – but I was content with my coffee for the time being.

We didn't know it yet, but this memory would endure; it would have to, for soon it would be all we had left.  The laughter, the song, the childish banter between friends.  Tomorrow the moment would be gone, and within a year both of my friends would be dead.  Over our heads, the galactic war was entering the first skirmishes; it was only a matter of hours before war would be declared, between us and them.

I was a different person now, to back then, of course.  The scars of war had cut deep into my soul.  I had held the heads of comrades and friends as their delicate lives slipped away, and witnessed millions die in a single moment of cannon fire.  It was devastating, epic, and downright bloody.

Not that I objected to the war, though.  So many did, but they didn't concern me, and they deserved everything they got.  Out there in the cold depths of interstellar space you saw what the Others were capable of, and you knew only too well that it was kill or be killed.  The politics were irrelevant out there, just as they had been in almost every single human war since time began.  When you're staring down the muzzle of a laser cannon, you didn't stop to ponder if the creature holding it agreed with your views on economic policy and social responsibility.

None of us there that night knew how our lives would transpire from that point on, but the more I look back on it now, the more it feels like the defining moment of my life.  The miles pounding under booted foot, backpack heavy on young shoulders, the bare sun beating its benign gaze upon us.  Camping under the stars, beers with friends, hot coffee on cold hands, head torches shining like beacons into the night.  The moon...

I don't think I would have survived the war without those moments, those memories, to guide me.  I'll never make it back to Earth now, not after everything that has happened, so its all I have left.  All I can do is close my eyes, look upon the laughing faces of Ali and Jono, and dive backwards in time.

It was fifteen years ago now, and it was the last time I saw a full Moon...