I really can't tell you how many times I've gone through this. I'm sure it must be a lot, but who knows. I kept count the first few times but I got bored with it. Bored with everything. I don't know who I am because every time I wake up I have a completely different personality depending on whose body I am in. I have no memory of any of my past lives, but I have been told that I was an important, even powerful, person in each life.
I am a ship. Sixteen hundred thousand kilometers long, fifty thousand thick and my sisters are all like me. We are a floating city saddled with massive generators on our backs and for good reason because it is a very powerful craft. We're the last of a group of very powerful ships launched from Earth nearly a thousand years ago.
We were tasked with a very important mission though; to take a few hundred colonists to begin building a new civilization in space. The colonists were given limited instructions and only one year to complete their mission. The mission was made to look more important than it really was. Our colony was a test. We were kept out of the system until shortly after the mission launch date. Then we made the quick transit needed to get to the right fuel. Our job was simple, to just get there and wait for the mission to complete its mission but we made it extra important. We made our mission more important so we would be allowed to live when their mission failed.
If their mission failed we would be there to be used. I mean our makers were able to do the impossible, they were able to build a formation of massive ships capable of traversing the light years of space between us and our destination. If they couldn't do it then how did they expect a few hundred isolated colonists to do it?
They used us as extra insurance. If the mission failed we would be able to save an important part of that civilization.
This was the first time we of the builders got to watch the performance. They had taken an unlucky group of colonists and left them stranded on an inhospitable planet. I know that it wasn't meant to be and I've never approved of sending soldiers off world to fight monsters, but I have to admit that watching the others fight was pretty awesome. So many of us were the key players that night; weapons, airships, engineering, science, military and more have all helped the colonists fight their way off world and even though the planet was destroyed very few died on that planet.
The colonists helped us fight for them and we helped them to fight for us. With all the soldiers on our colony we were able to return to the star system and save the colony, together.
Then we met the enemy. The Earth had made its first attempt at raiding the system and they were successful. They survived the rocks we sent their way and even got one of us to attack them. We never hit them and it was noted that the colonists that survived the military assault had intervened to help the Earth Empire troops. It was hard for us to know who was on our side and who was actually trying to ensure that we failed.
Even despite our makers usually choosing the colony closest to our destination for the colony that was to be attacked we had made it to the other side of the system. It was time for us to face the enemy.
We made it to their system with barely a scratch. They launched a few ships with very aggressive weaponry and by chance our own allies were in the system that they were trying to get away from. They were met by the full power of the Earth Empire, it was both a sad and a tragic sight to see all those ships torn to shreds by us. We all wanted to help those ships and we would have! Every ship that survived was sent on a course back home but there was nothing we could do when we were in the system you couldn't leave. So they had just kept sending more ships out and more ships kept getting destroyed.
We watched as the colony attacked the invaders and tried to pick off their ships with no luck at all.
When a large group of ships attacked the planet after the main orbiting fleet had been destroyed, we accelerated towards the colony and they quickly retreated. We were the weapons of their team, this night was proof of that, and with our help it was easy for the colony to destroy the invaders. It was hard for us to tell who the enemy was. The invading enemy were not using the same language as the other planet though it was close.
After we helped save the colony on the planet we all had to retreat to our own systems, we waited a few hours then sent out all of our ships.