We are the last. This is our final day.
Our gift of intelligence now merely offers us knowledge of our coming extinction.
Nothing lives anymore in the cradle of our home planet. The attack rent the continental plates apart. Magma consumed the seas and sucked oxygen from the skies. No record of life has endured. The attack moved to the inter-solar colonies. The unknown ships glided to orbit around the planets, moons and asteroids which our people had touched on our nascent journey to the stars. Devastation was unleashed. Then the life that huddled in ships fleeing into the void was extinguished with anonymous precision.
The attack was impersonal and mute. We saw no faces, heard no voices, and were given no answers. We only heard the sound of our own desperation as communication systems were kept open during the Armageddon. This stricken babble of sound soon faded to silence as our species was consumed.
The process of extinction is drawing to a close. We sit together in a crater in the frozen gloom of this planetoid which forms our most distant advance into space. The soldiers tend to their weapons, drawing comfort from the touch of their firearms despite being aware of their impotence. A mother cradles her child, forcing the grief from her voice. Someone tries to scratch symbols into the iron-hard frozen ground. Another screams to the airless sky in a rage turned madness, his com-link disconnected to spare us the sound of his keening. No-one prays for that requires hope.
I have come to understand the meaning of oblivion. No generations will add to the story of our species. Our works are ashen and our tale only lingers in our own fragile memories.
We have little time. Earlier, the vibrations of a ship landing in the valley below echoed through our bodies. The soldiers’ sensors warn of ground movement towards us and it seems that we remnants of our species will be provided with a final muted dignity – a vision of our executioners. Yet no-one looks above the crater rim to witness the advance. There is no curiosity, and anger has been dulled by a self-obsessed fatalism. We wait for death together, fused into the last community of our people.
I cannot accept oblivion. I/we must be remembered. Something must linger, in however a reduced form. I realise that our final canvass can only be the memories of our destroyers. Our final moments must be of defiance, of pride and our pyre must burn brightly. I surprise myself by standing and walking to the edge of the crater. No-one follows. My thoughts are focused on my new purpose. My emotions grow numb. I check the charge on my rifle, and open the grenade pouch at my side. I count to three and launch myself over the crater lip.
A group of attackers have started the climb toward us up the small hill. With my peripheral vision I can see others moving around outside their landing craft. I try to keep my thoughts calm, but cannot avoid the reflex to consider the alien-ness of the beings before me. They are bipedal, symmetrical, and through their masks I see faces which frame forward-facing predator eyes. I pause for an instant and it proves fatal. With my rear feet planted on the lip of the crater to resist the recoil of my rifle, I lean forward and aim with my front arms. My lower right arm arcs back to throw a grenade. I am too slow. The bi-peds have advanced towards us with weapons focused on the hill. Sparks of fire from below are followed by rending pain as projectiles strike my body. I fall to the ground convulsing, my turquoise blood pooling around me. The beings walk around me to the lip of the crater, raise their weapons and fire. I am now alone. Sorrow burns inside me and partly douses my awareness of the pain. One of the beings reaches down and places a small canister beside me, turns and walks back down the hill with the others. As my thoughts slow and my emotions fade I know that death is close. My last image is of the infinite ocean of stars above me.
The device next to the creature explodes and super-heated energy shears the top of the hill. Disinterested, the men continue to walk back to their troop carrier. Behind them sheets of melted rock glisten in the darkness before quickly cooling in temperatures approaching absolute zero. Within minutes the hilltop is smooth and featureless.
Humanity marches on. It would be interesting to know the reason behind such senseless destruction.