Read A Once Crowded Sky for Free Online

instead he watches as the figure in the mirror lifts the weapon to his temple, his finger, as ever,placed with confidence inside that lovingly curved trigger-well. Pull the trigger.
    The game’s over. You can’t shoot Survivor. You can’t shoot Prophetier. There’s no use to any of that. All those boys killed in all those wars as you won all those medals fighting all those enemies. That’s all done. Pull the trigger. All those families killed in all those adventures while you were fighting with your perfectly matched villain. All that life lost. Mashallah. It’s done.
    A destiny. A gun. Another battle won. Well done. Well done. Pull the trigger.
    It’s over, it’s over, and now you got nothing. No family. No wife. No skill or use beyond the killing you’ve done and the killing you can’t do no more. Pull the trigger. Better men should be in your place, taking your air. Men who haven’t done what you’ve done.
    You think you’re better than Survivor? Because maybe you killed for a cause, or at least tried to? But, here you are, just like him, staring at the same destiny, clutching the same gun. But have you the guts to go as he did? Pull the trigger. Can you face up to what you’ve done? Until next time! Pull the trigger.
    You think you’re better than Prophetier? Think you’re fixed while he’s cracked? You think you’re beyond the hope we all’ll come back, that it’ll just be so darn exciting to turn the page and find yourself once again leaping into battle? But here you are. With California to your head. How sad is that? How childish. Like the destiny. Like the gun. Pull the trigger.
    Is that it? Is that it? Or maybe you think you’re better than him? Better than Ultimate, ready to give your life to save all others, finally let this game go on without you. You think you can rise off into the empty blue and be finally free. Fine then. Here you are. So pull the trigger. Show them what it means.
    Pull the trigger, Soldier. Pull the trigger! PULL THE GODDAMN TRIGGER!

 
     
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    The Blue Aftermath: The Funeral, #1 of 2
The Soldier of Freedom
    “Thank you. Thank you all for coming.
    “My grandfather Washington, when he was giving a speech up North to his men about why they shouldn’t abandon the cause, he took out a letter to read to them. The letter had some small writing on it, and he took out his spectacles, and he put them on, and he said—he apologized to the troops there for having to do that, and he said he was sorry but he’d sacrificed his eyes for his country along with everything else.
    “So now, if you all don’t mind, I’m going to pinch a line here from him while putting on my own glasses, first pair I’ve ever worn after too many years of service. And let me apologize now for having to do this, but like most of y’all in the room tonight, I’ve done a touch of giving for this world, and I’ve given my eyes along with the rest of me.
    “But we have all given a lot. Given a lot of what made us. Most of you in the room—well, I know most of you. One time or another, weteamed up against some villain trying to rob a bank, or destroy a world, or whatever was the latest scheme.
    “And we fought that villain best we could, and we beat him ’cause we knew we had to, knew that we, the people here, we’d been given something extra, and it was our duty to use that to help folk. So we fought, and we risked, and we did some real good. I don’t like to brag, in fact I can’t much stand a braggart, but I can recognize when something’s gone right. When some people’s done something right.
    “That was our greatest joy, I think. And I know we all did it for our own reasons, and I know that some of those reasons weren’t always moral like. But that don’t matter all that much at the end of it. What matters was that people felt safe, people could live the lives they wanted because of what we were doing. That there’s what was important. That there’s what made our own lives worth