The Blackener
Stone-faced, I stared out of the porthole at the small star cluster where I was born. It was gone; it had been gone for almost a year already, but the light of it’s death was just beginning to reach me.
I blinked. When I opened my eyes, Celo 2 had disappeared, the entire system was left in the cold.
Celo 1 nova-ed from the sudden change in gravity and incinerated what was left of it and it’s neighbor’s system.
The Blackener’s ships then fired at the Rena system’s star and doused it like a cosmic fire engine.
“Forgive me,” I whispered to Rena, my old home.
“Do you regret?” The Blackener said.
“No,” I said. I still watched the blinking out of the lights of my home. “Well, possibly. What if there was still some good?”
“All the more terrible a future then. For, that good would surely have fallen to corruption, in eventuality.”
“Yes, yes. You’re right.”
“You are no murderer. Your actions are justified.”
I thought about that for a moment. My face remained in a hard frown.
“I’m no hero either. I cowered off into hyper-space before the attack.”
There was silence from then on as we watched, The Blackener through my eyes, as the last star simply died.
