What about the plants in the kitchen sink and the drip, drip, drip...

Somewhere a bulkhead creaks under the pressure. Bulkheads don't do that in space. An explosion rocks the bridge. Must have been one of the lower decks taking a direct hit. She's big, but it's only a matter of time. She's big and she's an easy target, once they sort it out that she's not as agile as the Victory Class.

Hell, she's not agile at all.

Who builds a ship so damn big that it's too big?

I hesitate to consider the kind of inferiority complex that fueled her construction. How weak they were. How weak, right under our noses, and yet we followed them. We were like dogs chasing an empty sausage cart.

At this moment I remember all the things that I needed to remember yesterday. In this chaos, this stark ugly minute of enlightenment, I remember clearly. There is nothing I can do, but I remember. Everything. All the things left undone will haunt me forever.

Little things.

Little things that do not matter, except now.

The smell of burning insulation reminds me of camp fires and trips with the Junior Commanders. There were trees like those on that world beneath us. We wore khaki shorts and navy sweaters and our legs were always bitten cruelly by bizz-bugs. We sang songs and called each other names. I never returned my brother's garrison cap to him and I still have it in the trunk at my aunt's. I wonder if anyone else knows the password to the lock on that trunk-there are many things that mean a lot to me in there. At the end I wonder if all of those things look worthless, will they throw my memories away? I should have left a copy of the password with someone. There's a singleshot image viewer of me and my mother at the bottom of it all. She doesn't look sick in that picture. I hid it away as my own private treasure. I wish my brother knew it was there. He'd have something. Mum wasn't always sick. But, she died when we were on one of those camping trips. She knew she was dying and she sent us off for the weekend.

Endor. I never even told him where I was going.

She didn't tell us either.

There's a lieutenant wiping his face on his sleeve as he reads damage reports. The screen is lit up like a house boat on Praxia. I can do nothing. We're in over our heads. We let them get too close and they're bleeding us to death. Hubris. They'll win because they're smaller. That's how they did it the first time and we learned nothing.

Hubris.

I wish I had a god to curse.

My subordinate sees it first.

My subordinate sees it first and time stops to taunt us. A doomed fighter careens towards the bridge. A dying man shares his hell with his mortal enemies. There is nothing we can do. We're not the heroes that are elsewhere in this battle. We're just soldiers. We're just soldiers and soldiers die every day.

I didn't think it would be today, when I woke up yesterday.

My subordinate, his name is Johannus, pushes me to the floor. A voice screams "Incoming!" What folly. There is nowhere to hide. Someone yells "Admiral!" We've past the point of formality-you can call me the bastard that I am. We are dead men. In the nothing that lies beyond this world, there are no titles, there is no formality, there are no voices. There is only darkness.

Yet, to reach that darkness you must travel through fire.

Our world ends.

The transparisteel splinters, the brilliant fiery explosion only lasts a second. The heat comes and goes just as quick. And the lights around me begin to fade. Space consumes the cries of the wounded, my own included, and the mournful groans of our ship as she begins to do the unthinkable. She sinks. It was as though she were floating in an ugly black sea and now she sinks.

She sinks.

She was too big and we were too arrogant.

Now all that matters are the little things.

I left the faucet dripping on the plants. How big will they grow? What will become of them now that I'm gone?