Transcription - The Forever War; Lieutenant Mandella 2024-2389 AD

This part of the story continues on from the last part as both Mandella and Potter are travelling to their next destination from Stargate, their destination is a small black unnamed planet which is not illuminated in any way other than when it covers stars as it is passed. Due to the huge technological advance since Mandella left Earth in the first place pills can be taken for just about anything and in this case the arm give out pills to be taken before soldier go into battle to make them more optimistic about what they’re doing and in the case of low levels of success the pills have the effect of keeping them in a normal mindscape as oppose to getting fearful of the consequences. Four separate shuttles leave ships and converge on the enemy Tauran outpost surrounding it on a raid mission to capture Tauran artefacts as well as prisoners to be studied. The shuttle that Mandella and Potter were on sustains damage from enemy fire and as a result crash lands killing and injuring many of the crew. The mission fails and Mandella wakes up in the ships infirmary realising he’s lost a leg which was crushed by the ship in the crash landing and Potter has lost an arm.

Due to the massive casualties sustained in the battle the ship sets course for a planet named Heaven, which is a planet like earth but unspoilt by man as cities have been incorporated into the landscape as oppose to destroying it to make way for cities, it is a planet where wounded are sent to recover before returning to combat. It turns out that with the massive technological surge prosthetic limbs have become a thing of the past and body parts are replaced with metal bone structures then the missing body part is grown around the metallic skeleton. William and Margay both recover from their lost limbs and spend their 6 months in recovery exploring the planet and spending their now billion’s worth of pay which they’d been accumulating over the Earth years.

Finally they both receive word of new posting, however they are posted apart! Both being the others only link back to their original time and the only friend they have retained through the war and their interstellar travel, they try and get postings together however they can’t manage to. The two of them spend their last days together and Mandella goes out to the desert to watch Margay’s ship launch into space which contemplating suicide but deciding the army’s running his life and it’s insignificant if he dies so in defiance he doesn’t take his own life.