“I’d be careful if I were you… one move and our planet gets wiped of all life.” His smile was endearing, even for a try-hard.

“You messed it up.”

“What?”

“It’s Uranus.”

“My anus?”

“No, the word. For the joke to work, it’s not, look, you said ‘our planet,’ but the joke only works if you say ‘Uranus.’”

Dmitri looked at his friend with the dead-eyed stare of a child listening to his father stumble over algebra homework. “I don’t get this thing you say. You said this joke and everyone laughed. I say this joke and there is no laughter.”

“It’s, whatever. Don’t worry about it. It’s a whole thing, with Captain Kirk and Klingons. What does he have in common with toilet paper? Star Trek? It’s a silly school kid joke that relies on a couple of pop culture puns. You know, never mind, it was a TV show from like a hundred years ago. It’s actually pretty gross if you think about it.”

“What is ‘Teebeeshow?’”

“Uh, you know what, buddy, let’s not worry about that. We have work to do. Let’s do that.”

“I was doing the work. Cleaning the latrine. Is it not my day to do so?”

“No, it is. You’re all good, buddy. I’ll start on the rest of the chore list.” Mitch patted his Russian colleague on the shoulder and moved around him, grabbing the chore list clipboard off the wall. He decided to knock out resupplying the food pods when the All-Hands klaxon started blaring, lights flashing throughout the various corridors. Without word, both he and Dmitri pulled themselves along the walls to their respective battle stations.

“Medyved in position,” Dmitri radioed.

“MacDougal in position.”

Mitch started punching commands into his Vartek console as the rest of the crew radioed their readiness to take action.

Finally, Commander Nguyen relayed the BLUF. “Alright folks, look like we have a level three contact in the Quantol 7 sector. Commander Graziani has requested we assist, as these visitors don’t seem too keen on playing nicely. And as you know I’m fond of reminding you, this is why you signed up for Space Force in the first place. Oo-hah?”

The crew returned the “oo-hah” in a spirited unison.

As Mitch triple-checked his scans and ensured his weapons systems were ready to rock he couldn’t help remembering discussions with his grandfather about this very thing. It happened every time he was called into combat. Something about the adrenaline mixing with the mundanity of system checks and process-following, the conflicting feelings of desiring a warriors death and not wanting to face his own mortality—It all came together in his mind in the form of conversations with a man that had been dead for over a decade.

“We’re wasting our time out there, kid.”

“Then why did you do it? Why does papa do it?”

Grandfather took a long pull of his Gandalf-esq pipe and let the smoke slowly escape in fat circles. It smelled like books and cinnamon. Mitch loved that smell. He’d taken up pipe smoking in the hopes of finding that exact mix, but gave up after being unsuccessful for years. Besides, spending years in space where every molecule of O2 is precious didn’t lend itself to the hobby of breathing in scented fire.

“We do it because of the chance. The one-in-a-million-million-million chance that we’re wrong. Don’t misunderstand me, boy, they’re out there. The math says they’re out there. The math also says that there is no way in hell that we’ll ever make any meaningful connection with them. But the math also says that our very existence is as near impossible as something can be, yet here we are.” He took another slow puff and looked into the night sky. They sat, rocking back and forth on handmade chairs, the gentle sounds of polite conversation mixed with hand-washed dishes just inside the home. His grandparents were that way: They lived on the cutting edge of technology and science for fifty years, so everything at home was analog, simple: Vinyl instead of streaming; Books instead of eReaders; Wood stove instead of HVAC.

Mitch loved it at his grandparents house.

“Papa said the real reason for Space Force was that we used to fight with Russia.”

“We used to wiggle our wieners at each other, but we never really fought with them.”

Mitch giggled, imaging what as sight that would have been. From the looks of the old men that always seemed to be in politics, he couldn’t imagine how that would ever have led to anything more than uproarious laughter.

“Don’t tell your grandma I said that.”

Mitch remembered those warm summer evenings—the times spent talking on the porch with Grandpa—as the best times of his life. It was the only way he made it through the early years, when either mom or dad seemed to always be training for space, in space, or in quarantine from having gone to space.

It wasn’t until he was in Space Force Pre-Training that first contact was made. It seemed so long ago. It had only been nine years since, but so much had changed. The first groups were fleeing something, in need of our help.

Humanity could help the Carbons.

The others, well, he never knew what happened to them, where they went next. They were all peaceful, or at least incapable of doing harm. Unfortunately, though, once communication was established with the Garlons it became clear that not every alien race needed our help. They weren’t all running from something; Some of them were the reason other aliens were running.

The immediate benefit of this newfound knowledge was that the petty bickering of various sovereign states ended and Earth came together to internationalize the Space Force and, with the help of the Garlons and Wo’Olars, work on ammunitions and armaments that would be capable of defending our home. It was a total, global effort.

The first battles were sloppy. If any of the major races had attacked Earth first than it would have been over as fast as it started. Luck or Divine Providence intervened and the first intergalactic baddies that attacked were soundly defeated, in spite of Space Force Command making just about every tactical error possible. Mitch remembered those days. He was at the Academy and it seemed like lesson plans were being uploaded hourly as new information was discovered, new technologies recovered. He stopped worrying about learning specifics and just got very good at learning quickly. Adapting. Becoming an expert on something quickly and for only as long as he had to before repeating the process when new information presented itself.

“30 seconds, you starry-eyed war-fighters.”

Commander Nguyen had ice in her veins. Only three classes ahead of him and she was already a legend. Mitch didn’t know if he wanted to be with her, or be her.

“Oo-hah!”

Mitch checked his radial and tapped his HUD into place.

Over the radio, in a slight Russian accent, he heard, “Let’s find these Klingons and wipe their anuses!”

Mitch shook his head and smiled as the first bogie popped up on his tracker.