The forgotten memoirs
Chapter 2: Nightmares
2549 - UNSC frigate god's speed
5 years after the Deltan incident
Darkness. Darkness is the first thing I see when I bolt up out of my cot. I raise my to wipe off a cold sheen of sweat from my forehead realizing it was just a bad dream. 5 years that's how longs its been. For 5 years that's how long these nightmares, my memories have haunted me. How every night I wake up a scream trapped in my throat and a pain in my chest to remind me how much of a coward I am and how I should be dead along with all the other men and women who died that day back on Deltan.
Survivors guilt they called it. Psychiatrists. I was forced to see them after I was recovered . The truth is I don't remember much from after the battle. I read the report to the minute details, apparently I walked to the rendezvous point as if in in a trance ignoring the pilot it says id strapped myself in and didn't move until I was forced to back on the ship. Post traumatic stress syndrome they say I have that to, well screw em they don't know shit they haven't been there and done it all but I have at least now I have anyway. I didn't stay on that ship for very long after that, I signed up for the ODST guess I only got in cause the brass were desperate for more volunteers. Under normal circumstances id be sent home unfit for duty as its known, but in a war for our very survival if you can breathe and hold a gun then you can fight. An that's what I've been doing ever since then. Signing up for every dangerous mission every suicidal op hoping maybe I could repent to those lost souls that I failed. Huh didn't work though still plagued by death every time I shut my eyes, never was one much to believe in god guess that kinda proves it. So that's why I transfer after every mission. I cant get close to people not again its to much, so I stay emotionally detached dead inside if I don't people die and I wont, no I cant be responsible for that again you get attached you get sloppy and people lose their lives I'm not gonna let that happen never again not on my watch. It wont be any different when this next missions done after the debriefing I'll request a ship transfer and the cycle I've completed so many times will start all over again the next chance I get to jump ships. And that's all there is to it.
I look to my left to see my alarm clock flashing 03:30 in the darkness of my cabin. I have to be up in an hour for a routine medical exam. There's no sense in going back to sleep again so I shift to the end of my bed and sit there in the silent darkness of my room. A dim eerie light shines through the small window of my cabin casting a faint shadow in the blackness of my quarters. Moving to it I get lost in the calm unnatural but strangely soothing colours of slipspace. Its odd some people don't like staring directly into the void were travelling in most are just indifferent, I don't know for me its like a focus point which lets me loose sense of my surroundings meditation if you will which I'm thankful for with the night terrors that haunt me it seems to help. My mind drifts off and starts to think over recent events. We've been in slipspace now for a couple of weeks now maybe a month I don't know its hard to keep track of time here like its not relative or something. There's been no contact with any other UNSC vessels and its as if the officers seem jumpy on edge especially the captain who seems to be brooding, I think something's gonna go down my opinion spec ops defiantly low key. Guess we'll just have to wait and see I'll find out eventually or at least if I get picked for the mission otherwise I'll never even know.
I don't like being kept I the dark figuratively anyway, missions like these always get people killed unless they know what they're going into. I smell ONI all over this mess. And I hate ONI.