The mess hall aboard the CMC vessel Intrepid was filled with the hum of quiet conversation. Soldiers, technicians, and pilots sat at tables scattered across the large room, some with trays full of nutrient paste, others with their faces buried in their data pads. It was a rare moment of downtime, but even in these moments, the air was thick with the weight of the war. The CMC had always been about control, but now, it was about survival—preserving the empire at any cost.
Lieutenant Aris Cole, a seasoned veteran who had seen the bloodshed of countless campaigns, sat at a corner table with a half-finished meal. He wasn't one to engage much in idle chatter, but today, something in the air made him linger. The war had worn him down, and the quiet, unspoken tension between the soldiers and the pilots was harder to ignore than usual.
As the door slid open, a group of pilots entered, their uniforms still dusted with the remnants of their latest mission. They were the new blood, the ones fresh out of training, eager to prove themselves in battle. Aris watched them closely. It wasn't that he resented them—he just couldn't ignore the stark contrast between their enthusiasm and the tired faces of the soldiers who had been here far too long.
One of the pilots, a young woman with short-cropped hair and a scar running down her cheek, took a seat next to him. Her name was Mara, and she had been piloting mechs for barely six months. Aris had seen her around before, always with that look of determination in her eyes. He didn't know her well, but he had seen enough to know that she was a product of the CMC's intense training programs. They were all products of it, molded into tools of war. But the question, as always, was: What did that make them when the war was over?
"Not eating much, Lieutenant?" Mara asked, sliding into the seat across from him. "You look like you've been through a hell of a week."
Aris smirked but didn't answer right away. He just stared at his plate, pushing the food around with a fork. It wasn't as if he had anything to say that would make sense. Not to someone like her.
"It's different for you, isn't it?" he finally said, his voice low, almost as if he were thinking out loud. "You pilots, you get the glory. All the flashy tech, the big mechs, the front lines. It's glamorous. But the rest of us, the soldiers... we're just here to clean up your mess."
Mara didn't immediately respond. Instead, she looked around the room, as if measuring the mood of the others. The soldiers were still, their faces hardened, some lost in their thoughts, others scanning the room for threats. The pilots, on the other hand, sat together at a nearby table, laughing and chatting like it was a night out on the town.
"You think it's easier for us?" Mara finally asked, her voice quieter now. "You think we're just sitting in our shiny mechs while you do all the grunt work? You don't understand. Those mechs are a part of us. We have to trust them, or they'll kill us. And if you think sitting in a cockpit and waiting for a battle to come isn't a lonely existence, then you've never had to fight a war alone."
Aris looked up, his eyes meeting hers. There was a brief moment of silence before he replied, his tone rougher than he intended.
"I wasn't saying it's easy. But you pilots? You're the ones who get to make the choices. When we're on the ground, we're waiting for you to give us orders. We follow you, but we never get to lead."
Mara took a deep breath, as if trying to find the right words. Her fingers drummed lightly against the table, the rhythmic tapping filling the space between them.
"It's not as simple as that," she said, her voice now softer. "Most of us are just following orders too. But the difference is, the decisions we make up there—whether or not we go in for the kill, whether or not we risk everything for a mission—those decisions weigh on us differently. And it's not something we can undo once it's done. It haunts you."
Aris paused, chewing on his words. She was right, in a way. They were all haunted by the same thing. The war. The violence. The bloodshed. And no matter how much armor they wore, no matter how many victories they achieved, it was all just a mask.
"You ever wonder why we're still here?" he asked, his voice barely above a whisper. "Why we keep fighting this war, even when we know it's never going to end?"
Mara's eyes met his, and for a moment, the weight of the question hung between them. It wasn't a question with a clear answer, not for anyone who had spent years in the heart of this conflict.
"I think about it every day," she said quietly. "But the real question is—how do we stop it? Once you're in, once you've seen what we've seen, there's no going back. And that's the hardest part—knowing that no matter how much we wish for peace, the war is never really over. It just changes."
The words lingered in the air, heavy with the unspoken understanding of their shared reality. They had both been shaped by the war, molded into weapons by the same machine. Soldiers, pilots, engineers—it didn't matter. They were all products of the CMC, driven by the same relentless need for dominance. And deep down, they all knew that the price of victory was far higher than they were willing to admit.
As Mara stood to leave, she gave Aris a nod, her expression unreadable.
"Stay safe, Lieutenant," she said, her tone almost an afterthought. "And don't forget, we're all in this together."
Aris watched her walk away, her figure disappearing into the crowd of soldiers and pilots. He wasn't sure if her words were meant to comfort him or if they were a reminder of just how far they had all fallen. But in that moment, he realized one thing: there were no true winners in this war. There were only survivors.
And no matter how many battles they won, no matter how many mechs they destroyed, they would all be haunted by the ghosts of the past.