This is my third piece, which was inspired by an early sequence of events in the game Mass Effect 3, hence the song (WAIT! DON'T PLAY IT YET). I believe the story would be best enjoyed with the song playing, perhaps on repeat as it increases in length from the past two. I'm getting slightly better by this point, but still, not my best piece. To be perfectly honest, none of the pieces in this omnibus are my best piece (until the end... Dun dun duuuun).
Anyway. I'm off topic. READ.
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The sight I remember the most about the war is the young child, of about 10, who was killed in an evacuating gunship.
I first met him while fighting in the urban streets of New Sydney on KOI-1686.01, a Super-Earth 1,004 light years from the Sol System. The system can only be reached by a complicated network of Trans-Galaxy gates. The Enemy reached that planet using a wormhole drive, and caught us by surprise.
I was fighting on that planet because I was on shore leave from the Orion, a starship of the line. I found him bedraggled and scared in a tipped over dustbin. He had grime and dirt in his hair, face, and even underneath his fingernails.
It was to no surprise that he didn't want to leave it, saying that 'No-one can help me...' I didn't know what to do, so I called for a medic and went on fighting.
It was 30 minutes later that I was picked up by the Starship Firestorm, a battered cargo freighter that had been hastily converted into a warship. It was when I was looking at the Grand Piazza from the cargo hatch when I saw him, walking hand in hand with a male medic who was comforting him.
It was then that The Enemy attacked again, and I was forced to watch the medic and the child run towards a shuttle, only to be shot down as they took off. I found out his name, but only after months of searching.
Daniel Cooper was that child, and he died 1004 light years from his home, Earth.