Pretty much the only thing I like about the i35 is that it's fast. It doesn't maneuver very well, which sucks, but it's fast.

  I zipped away from Jupiter's tiny moon, Kore, toward the yellow icon's coordinates in the nav computer, running a systems check, and waved goodbye to the solace of Kore.

  When I want to get away from it all, and I have time to relax or take a nap, I find the Pasiphae moons (Jupiter's outermost cluster of tiny moons) to be my favorite spot. And the Alliance Starmada doesn't seem to care if I use my breaks there, as long as I have a working Alcubierre warp drive.

  We lovingly call the Alcubierre drive the Dark Energy Annihilation Drive (DEAD).

  Doesn't that sound ominous!?!

  "Dark energy annihilation drive!" I screamed aloud, pulling the DEAD switch on the panel. The space in front of me contracted as the space behind expanded, propelling the i35 forward to close in on my destination.

  One thing I hate is that people call it the DEAD drive, but that acronym already has drive in it, so it's redundant. It should technically just be DEAD or maybe the DEA drive. I admit it, though, it just sounds wrong out loud without saying drive, so I do it too.

  Anyway, this lovely device killed many people during its creation, so DEAD is fitting. Scientifically, it's just sucking up dark energy around us in space and forcing anti-matter annihilation of the particles to create energy, which is used to form a warp bubble for travel. Blah blah blah.

  The first goal of our physicists and engineers was to get a DEAD drive to do the same speed as our solar sails, about 10% the speed of light, but without the fuss of needing photons to power the solar sail (because otherwise, in the darker regions of space, you have no fuel). My i35 didn't have a solar sail to back up the DEAD drive. Stupid ship. But, then again, it was an Alliance ship, and being farther from the sun, we don't rely on solar sails as much as the Solar Union. That's why we're often called Darksiders.

  As I sped off into deep space, rubbing my sore head, I checked the mission log to see what I was going to be getting myself into.

  Mission 5.503.521 - Show and Go

  Suspected Solar Union activity. Ship signature detected. No known Alliance settlements, ships, or trade routes in the region. Your mission objective is to alert the Solar Union of our presence and chase them off. You will be accompanied by two additional Wavepilots, @glitchmaker and @novaheart.

  That didn't sound so bad. Typical assignment. Spot potential Union activity. Chase them off. Sometimes it wasn't the Solar Union. It could be a third-party organization, space pirates, smugglers, random people in an unregistered vessel, or dumb Darksiders out for a joy-flight.

  I vaguely knew of the pilots who were going to join me, @glitchmaker more so because we had been in 15 combat runs together. I've clocked 6,127 combat missions, so it's not like we were buddies or anything. @novaheart and I had been on only two missions together (and a half if you count dying on the way to the mission).

  If you aren't part of the Alliance Starmada, you probably don't know how all this works for aiways like me.

  In the 131 years since I was drafted into Wavepilot status, I've always been ready for death. The Outer System Alliance doesn't want me to die. They don't want the ship to blow up. These things cost time and money. But at the end of the day, we are expendable. There are more ships. They can reanimate me, and now I'm even better equipped for battle based on every new experience, every death, every battle.

  I often wonder if this war will ever end, when we just keep producing more ships and more clones for even more battles. The reality is probably that whoever has the most money will win. The real objective is to bankrupt the other party. But that doesn't change anything for me.

  I'm just a lowly Wavepilot, the ones they send in waves, expecting most of us to be swatted out of the sky like flies. I get to pilot a trivial ship, this i35 that I'm charging into battle on. It's a cheaper model. They send us in first, we try to survive, and they learn from what happens before sending in more expensive forces. Hopefully, we simply win and move on.

  I have to be on the ship because if I get disconnected from the outside world, I must be a wholly capable being, able to continue fighting. Jamming signals are just the way of the world, so pilotless drones won't cut it, and there are strict laws against autonomous AI drones that could make their own decisions. Said another way, I am the drone. That sounds great, right?

  In a few minutes, the bubble from my DEAD drive collapsed, and I found myself in the Hilda's Triangle cluster of asteroids.

  As I dropped out of DEAD space, I spotted a squad of five Union ships. I recognized them right away as Whirligigs, named after the beetle because of their dark oval shapes and advanced maneuverability. Whirligigs were a classic Union fighter that I had gone up against hundreds of times. They were slightly more powerful than my i35, but at least we weren't facing Borers, Clippers, or something even worse.

  What I really didn't like was that there were five of them. Normally, it's a solitary wayward ship, a scout perhaps, something easy to scare away. What these five Whirligigs were doing here made no sense to me.

  You see, war is full of routines.

  When the Alliance Starmada was alerted, someone probably pushed the accept button, or maybe the alert automatically triggered our mission. Regardless, sending only @glitchmaker, @novaheart, and me meant we were expecting a passing encounter at most, just a quick hello and go your merry way, low risk of an actual fight.

  Maybe this is a Solar Union training mission, I thought, and it just got misclassified on our end. If not, something else was going on here, and that got on my nerves.

  The thing is, I've picked up training missions before. Solar Union training missions allow us to counter with Alliance Starmada training missions. It's a win-win. But we weren't on a training mission. We were on a Show and Go mission. The Solar Union was up to something. I was sure of it, and I had a bad feeling about this.

  Like clockwork, their jamming signals came on, blocking my long-range comms.

  I returned the favor, firing off my jammers, and started pumping out the old Earth song "We Will Rock You" by Queen in the cabin of my i35. My two accompanying Alliance Wavepilots bleeped into existence around me, while I sang along to my slightly altered version.

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  buddy you're a bot, make a big spark

  playing in the stars, be a mega machine someday

  you got dusted in space

  you big disgrace

  leaving your memories all over the place

  singing

  we will, we will, rock you!

  @glitchmaker, @novaheart, and I began to auto-sync, exchanging data across ships so that if at least one ship survived, our memories would be stored to upload later upon reanimation. I would have a copy of my memories on the other ships, my ship, and the chip in my head. Otherwise, if I was destroyed, I wouldn't remember anything that happened after the jamming signals came on.

  Our most treasured thing, our memories, would be gone.

  Since I was the first to the party, I received the right to issue commands to the others. It was a small matter of pride among Wavepilots. We raced like idiots to be first to a mission.

  kittyboy: "Five Burners. Form up."

  Burners was what we called the People of the Solar Union because, you know, get too close to the sun and you'll get burned.

  novaheart: "What's the mission?"

  I wanted to scream at them for not reading the log, but let's be honest here. I've flown thousands of missions. They have too. It's pretty much the same every time. Either nothing happens, or you fight until you die. There's not a lot to it. Sometimes we get cool missions to escort a ship, but we're Wavepilots. Our lives are pretty repetitive. I'm either patrolling or rushing into battle.

  kittyboy: "Show and Go. Zip in and scare them off."

  novaheart: "Scare off five?"

  Yeah, three Wavepilots weren't going to scare off five Whirligigs, but no matter what their intentions were for being here, now that we had shown up, they would probably run off anyway.

  kittyboy: "Not a training mission, so I doubt they want to fight. They rarely do."

  Statistically speaking, I was correct. Most of these encounters are boring, and only 21.8% of the time do I actually die. That varies based on the severity of the war. We were in a relatively peaceful period for the last decade, which was why I could take some lovely rest and relaxation from time to time.

  I was wrong this time.

  As we assumed our formation for an inbound run, three of the enemy ships fired their missiles.

  Blamo!

  @novaheart was nova-gone in a nova-flash.

  I pulled hard right to the solar east and upward toward orbit 0. That means the Earth's orbital plane is above me; we call it orbit 0. I was flying at minus 51 degrees from orbit 0.

  On missions like this one, with jammers on, there was no way the Alliance Starmada would know a battle had ensued, even if it was just a "minor battle."

  kittyboy: "Hey, @glitch. Think we're screwed here."

  I accelerated and tried to put some distance between my ship, the Whirligigs, and the remains of @novaheart's ship. @glitchmaker had started the other direction, but he adjusted and was fast on my tail, following my line to skirt the Solar Union starships.

  glitchmaker: "Yup."

  For some reason, he seemed chipper to me. But then, who am I to judge? My leg was bouncing to the music.

  buddy in-the-zone man, trance man

  singing in your ship, gonna blow up the world someday

  you got missiles away

  the sweet embrace

  sending your memories out into deep space

  singing

  we will, we will, rock you!

  Like I said, these i35s are fast. They don't do anything else well. Turning is a pain, which means I'm mostly making really fast, wide loops in the space around my enemies, hoping they can't keep up. My trajectory is always predictable because of how horribly it handles. But when I get there is another matter entirely since I can at least quickly change speeds.

  Okay @freddie_mercury, I said to myself. Let's rock them!

  Fun fact: There is a city on Mercury named Freddie, but it's very touristy.

  I transmitted a blip of the music I had pumping through my ship to @glitchmaker.

  kittyboy: "Let's rock them!"

  It sounded as cheesy in my head as it must have over the comms. I groaned at myself. In that moment, I felt like I deserved to be blown up.

  Instead, I looped to minus 71 and dipped solar southwest, slowing down rapidly, then hitting max speed. I repeated it again and again, using my skip technique to throw them off.

  glitchmaker: "I'm listening to Clairvoyant Nebula."

  kittyboy: "What's that?"

  I fired ballistic rounds at the lead ship, hoping to catch a few others in the spray. They scattered. I completed my loop and swung the counter direction in a figure eight, managing to catch one of the Burners in my targeting crosshairs. I fired a torpedo.

  glitchmaker: "40 Hz binaural beats. Good music for reanimation. On your left!"

  I took a shot to the side from their guns, but the damage was minor, along the first hull, and it was worth it for the opportunity to get a good shot at my enemy. An explosion appeared in the lower right corner of the screen, and I registered one less Whirligig on sensors. My torpedo had landed. Four to go.

  @glitchmaker impressed me. Not with his flying, but with what he had said about the music. I bet most of the time he died in his ship, just like me. If he had that music playing when he died, then when he reanimated, his brain would wake up to that memory and recognize the music that was playing. He would be quicker to recognize that he wasn't dying - he was being reborn.

  I wondered how many times I would have to die to the same music before it eased my screaming during reanimation. He should submit that idea to the Aiways Resources department, or maybe I would.

  I studied the HUD to refocus on the Whirligigs that were whirligigging around us. Four-on-two was still bad odds. Even worse, @glitchmaker's ship was signaling a power loss. He'd been hit and was losing energy fast.

  I could see what was unfolding, my predictive mind forecasting it.

  Yes, I can see the future.

  Kind of.

  If you pay attention, you can reasonably forecast a number of scenarios and intuitively make assumptions about reasonable outcomes. Some people call this "following their gut." Aiways prize this because it makes us seem more human than AI. It's one of those things we value as part of our authenticity.

  I'd argue my gut was one of the best, so good sometimes that people think I'm cheating and doing advanced algorithms. Maybe I am? But it all makes sense to me. I just know it. That's what I call "futurecasting." I see it play out clearly in my mind.

  What was clear to me was that we were both going to be blown to bits if we stayed here. Three ships were coming around on us, and they would target @glitchmaker first. The fourth was looping like me, trying to appear like it was fleeing to regroup, but I knew better.

  If I rotated to the solar south, accelerated, and aimed for minus 113 orbits, I could get clear. That was my path to safety from the first three ships, but that was also where the fourth Whirligig would be looping to intercept. If I slowed, those three ships would catch me. I should have seen this sooner. Game over for @kittyboy.

  kittyboy: "@glitch, get out of here. You should still be able to make it."

  Maybe he could see it too, or maybe it was just because I had the right of command on this mission, but he acknowledged me immediately.

  glitchmaker: "Thank you for the memories."

  kittyboy: "May you remember."

  This was a customary exchange. He had my most recent memories and would do his best to return them safely to the Alliance Starmada. His only shot was to activate his DEAD drive and warp away now while he still could, as long as he could get the drive powered and activated before they took him out.

  I took the risk of putting myself in the way of the three ships, slowing to let @glitchmaker take a lead position. Ship number four couldn't get him. I was in the way of the other three, but they weren't in firing position yet.

  I know this sounds all heroic and all, like I'm sacrificing myself to allow @glitchmaker to get away. Nice of you to think that, but I did it for my memories. Our memories are always the most important thing, and @glitchmaker had the first and best chance, statistically proven in the scenarios I ran, to get away from here with those memories intact. It wasn't even a choice, just the logical thing to do.

  5 … 4 … 3 … 2 … 1 … zip.

  @glitchmaker was gone.

  I time-stamped it and started a new memory log. These would be the memories I couldn't get back if I perished.

  Four-on-one is way worse than four-on-two, but that's what I signed up for. I didn't believe I had time to power the DEAD drive, but that was my only shot to get away. I triggered it to start my bubble-warp, but I must have taken more damage than I suspected. My DEAD drive was dead.

  And I was dead, or soon to be, anyway.

  "Motherfucker!" I screamed.

  I slammed on the braking thrusters and rotated my stupid i35 while the Whirligigs closed in.

  Facing the Solar Union ships, I pulled the accelerator to full speed and shot my ballistic cannon toward them, bullets flying to catch any incoming missiles. I continued screaming as my ship blasted past them and into the darkness of space.