In The Snow

In the Snow

An icy breeze bit Sellas face as she crouched in the snow.  The world around was white, barren, filled with towering cliffs of ice, and vapors rising from the valley below.  A dead tree loomed behind her, where rested the boxy form of her red and green shuttle, her only way off this planet.  Seasons never changed here, though the sun did shine faintly over the horizon, the bitter cold had ruled for hundreds of years and would rule for thousands more.  The tree was a fossil, a twisted gray rock that had died before her people had crafted even the simplest tools.

Sentient life had never existed here, never would, this would not be a suitable place for her to stay.  But stay she did, if only for a moment.

She tightened her cloak, deep blue against her light green skin, and closed her eyes..




Long ago there had been a battle, in the skies above.  Two ships met beneath the expanse of the stars, one torn and battered, practically limping in its flight, the other pristine and undamaged; an Aggressor.  The wounded ship had only the time to alarm its fellows, who were dozens of trillions of miles away, before the second ship fired its deadly white hot blasts.

Soon the sky filled with the radiance of hundreds of lights.  The Defenders, hulking gray vessels who responded to the alarm, were of greater number yet were still fearful of the coming battle.  The Aggressors, those in brilliant yellow ships, showed no fear and proved it by charging straight at their enemies.

Beams glared between the fleets, each one cutting ships into wide ribbons, painlessly reducing crew to mist.  Each explosion marked the end to hundreds, sometimes thousands of lives.  Metal ruptured and split, spreading fire and death across every hall of every ship, and the vivid lights of vessel upon vessel grew dim and then dark.

Soon, after only hours, the only lights in the sky were those of the stars, all ships both Defender and Aggressor having been reduced to skeletons and ash.

Across the galaxy a grand admiral heard news of the battle.  Gruffly - though not without remorse - he addressed the masses of a billion cities, relaying the results of the battle, asking for courage from the families of the deceased.  Asking for new recruits to avenge them.  News of battle never came easy to the green, warty Defenders.

Beneath another sun equally distant, a small meeting was held.  Here two thin creatures walked gracefully under a lofty skyline, in a golden park.  Though the flowers around were beautiful, and the sprinkling of nearby fountains soothing, news of the battle was dire.  After only a short time, both Aggressors resolved not to tell their people of the tragedy; pain would be spared for now, such news would only hurt the war effort.




Sellas opened her eyes.  It was darker now, the air more sinister.  Looking up, she saw that the sun had been blotted out by the orbiting fleet of hundreds of dead ships.  She sighed, stood up.  She was the only Defender now; alive only by virtue of having never served in battle.  Her fellows had been cut down to the last, across every city they had ever built.  The Aggressors had moved on, left for a new galaxy and new battles soon after they reduced every world but their own to cinders.

Sellas had always wished them dead, burnt like her own people, but in this moment, after one-thousand of years of searching for other life and failing to find any, she came to the realization that that wasn't what she wanted at all. 

For the first five-hundred years she despised her own people for their suicidal fight to extinction.  For the next five-hundred she despised only the Aggressors for the killing, and for leaving.  But now she understood she didn't truly hate anyone, not after all the things she had seen.  The truth was she despised violence; and how it consumed like a wild flame anyone who could ever relieve her of her loneliness.

Sellas brushed the snow from her cloak and turned toward her shuttle.  Perhaps there would be someone on the next planet over.  There was always that possibility.