100 People who have died across the galaxy is a series of short stories.

23 - Neil

Neil stood in the barren wastes, Arthur's corpse lying next to him, he placed his jacket over the soldier's face, tears softening onto his face like stalectites, across that now dead battlefied, the dead lied, and the dying screamed, the very yollopian soil was a casualty here, her delicate flesh stabbed repeatedly with a rusty, corroded knife, shot by bombs, and burned with horrible light.

In one of the craters, a small cannister emerged, Neil calmly walked over to it, religiously, almost, and opened it.

"Comrades of the future, we leave this message to you"

The note was dated fifty years ago, drafted by the Socialist Union of Yollop (SUOY), he was born in the SUOY, seen it die at the hands of the federation, and was standing on her soil once more.

"We bestow Calgexia upon you, what was, for decades, a place of wooden huts and cold, has been turned into an engine, keepng it's people warm and creating furniture for the continent, within these past decades, we give you this, and our efforts in science, young ones of the 21st century, we know you will live better lives than us, you will do great things in the galaxy, and make our planet great, we are a little jealous of you who are celebrating the centenary of our motherland, but we also know you will be jealous of our generation, we had a clear aim, a great future ahead of us, and many things to accomplish."

Further down the page, quotes from "knights of labour" were recorded.

"How lucky you are! You who have abolished the scourge of war, who never must cry "Shame on the Kalenah aggressor!", or read of the attacks against revolutionary Tor, I am sure that you have justified the trust your heroic predecessors have invested in you, that you have created a new world."

He kept reading, "In our wildest dreams, we imagine that you might've destroyed death itself", one quote said.

"We are building communism, and you are living in it!" read another.

At the very end, there was a quote from a recipient of the Socialist Medal of Bravery and Valour recipient, Garlow Brig;

"We paid a heavy price for our victory against Tarshenk, the brutal attackers on our Yollopian country, you who do not know war, please remember their sacrifice, guard their tombs and memorials like sacred relics".

At the bottom of the page was what looked like a regiments picture, thirty smiling faces and a companion animal stared back at Neil.

And captioning that picture, was a quote, a quote that men had marched on hearing for decades, whose victory on yollop was met with federation dropships.

"All men are brothers."

Neil fell to his knees, as his brain, his ego, everything he was shattered and reformed like a window pane being thrown agains the back of a kiln.

Neil stood to his feet, and picked up his rifle.

From that day on, he walked through life like a drone, he shot at who he needed to shoot, when bravery was called for, he retrieved her, when they were in peril, he retrieved his comrades from the jaws of death, and fought the great dragon of reaction with all that remained in his drained heart.

Neil's time came later, near the end of the grand campaign, where he died like so many before him, an unlucky hit, and a quick trip to the station.

Slowly, the cloud of the empire was chipped away, until in it's wake, a community of hardy men, who would drop their rifles on hillsides and spend the rest of their days looking out to beautiful vistas, confident that their children would take the burning torch they had lit to the ends of the galaxy.

But that wasn't today.

Today, Neil died, in the mud, out of that blackened, hellbound pit came a new man, who said nothing, did everything, and died 7 months later.

23 - Neil