Chapter One: Gracing Oblivion

“Last of your kind?” The creature besides me asked from his uncomfortable wall-mounted seat, “me too. Sucks, right?”

I didn’t quite know how to respond. It was a fact I’d lived with since the death of my parent four years ago, and a fact I often tricked myself into thinking I’d come to terms with. Hearing it laid out like that – in eight blasé words – made it surprisingly realer than it already felt.

“How long?” I asked. It was a question that should have felt bigger – billions of years of evolution, countless genetic lines branching off into wonderous things, all culminating with an unattractive full-stop squashed into the chair besides me in the dimly lit armoury of an aging starship.

“Oh, long as I can remember,” they sighed with the two vertical flaps on their face, “I must’ve had parents, my race breeds with gametes according to the databanks. So there’s probably a whole range of sensations I’m missing out on. How about you, greenie?”

I wasn’t quite sure if they were referring to my lack of military experience or making an offensive racial comment about my skin, but they seemed nice enough, so I gave them the benefit of the doubt.

“My kind are – we were asexual,” I explained, trying to make it a biological lecture rather than an obituary, “budding, I think.”

“Ah, lucky bastard,” they slapped one of their claw-like hands against my armoured shoulder, “survive this battle and your race might see a future yet!”

A future.

I almost snorted at the idea. There was no future for my kind. No future for anyone. And if they thought they did, they were kidding themselves.

Through the tiny window of the Frigate Ultimatum of Infinity, I could see our star in its dying days, named ‘Sun’ in honour of the mythical human homeland. A tiny white sphere barely bigger than the world we’d disembarked from, casting its fading light into a dying universe.

Because the universe was dying, truly dying. People disputed it, ignored it, coughed politely when the subject came up. But it was true.

The Sun was the final star, the very last point of light in the night, and she was dying. I’d heard songs and poems about how things had once been, billions of years ago, when the universe was young. The sky like a pitch-black sheet, sprinkled with tiny sparkling stars and twirling galaxies, countless possibilities, and trillions of worlds. I couldn’t even imagine such hope, such incredible amounts of hope and joy and life.

Species had evolved, and died, and evolved again. Civilisations had sprung into existence, and spread, and collapsed, only to grow into something new. Technologies had been invented and forgotten and made anew and reimagined into countless dreams. People had spread through the universe, relationships had been built, everything temporary except the stars themselves.

But the stars were temporary. They were temporary, and nobody had understood. Stars died, and fewer stars were born. People moved to the new stars, and everything seemed hopeful once more. Then the stars died, billions of years later, and it all happened again. Birth and death, birth and death, locked in battle forever. Except it wasn’t forever. Except death was winning. Except nobody realised, nobody knew until then sky fell back and the last spots of red turned to white turned to black.

All the while, they’d been running from it. Fleeing the night. Chased through space until the last spark of civilisation was finally corralled to this system. This last remaining system.

The sun was their final star.

A white-dwarf star, spluttering the universe’s last energy out into the void, with perhaps three-thousand years of light left to spend. One star, momentarily sustaining the final echoes of life.

And now, they were going to fight over it.

The universe was dying, and all they could do was fight.

It seemed that was all anyone could ever do, after billions of years of trying.

Soon enough they’d be fighting in the dark.

But for now, all they had was the light.

“You okay, Greenie?” my companion frowned, or I assumed they were frowning at least. Hard to tell, from two vertical mouths and zero eyebrows to speak of. “You’re kinda spacing out.”

“Yes,” I lied, swallowing, “I’m fine.”

There was nothing to lose. Nothing.