I keep havin' this dream. In it, I'm in the woods back in Serenity Valley, walking through. I see the soldiers in my platoon, men and women I led, but we never fought in the woods. They're laid out just like they were in the valley, behind rocks and boulders stained with their blood. I don't hear the battle, but it's with every body I see. There are echoes, a mighty sound that I can't even describe.

I've never told Zoe, but I know how each of them were when they died. They were hopeful, hopeful 'cause I kept tellin' em that our calvary was gonna come, bright as the morning sun. I told them, and they believed me.

I used to say that everyone's going to die sometime, someone's just carrying a bullet for you and it's up to you to die of old age before they find you. These kids ain't seen much of a life before it was taken from them – for a fight they didn't start, and for a fight that many of them didn't care much to understand. They just knew in their gut that it was a righteous one. So they fought, and they died, not ever getting to know how it would all end.

Now I'm slippin' about in the edge of space, and there are times where I wonder why I'm the one out there in the black, instead of them. What made me so special? Who decided for me that I could be worthy? I used to think it was God, but when I died at Serenity Valley, so did the part that had hope.

Shepherd Book used to talk about faith – faith in something higher. I don't see much faith in my life nowadays, it being interrupted by people wanting it to end and all. But somewhere along these dangerous ways, I found myself wondering very well why I survived those years.

Then I look at my life again, I gather that there are men out there who want me dead, who want my crew dead. They hold to the idea that me and mine aren't a proper fit in this 'verse. I don't see eye to eye with that, so maybe we hafta keep on flyin', for those people that didn't fit in either, and died without a chance to survive like we are, to find a crew, and a ship to call home.

Ours is a grim reality. Tomorrow ain't guaranteed for people like us. As long as my ship is in the air, I'm going to be in it. Til that day comes when my ship ain't seeing the port of harbor, I'm going to be with her. She'll fly true.