“Why do you insist on continuing this?” asked the Captain, addressing the smaller creature on the ground in front of him.
The thing scrambled forward on its limbs moving at an unnatural gait unable to raise itself back up to the stance he had seen in the rest of the species.
It hit and bounced off of his armor, and once again collapsed onto the floor. Leaning down the Captain grabbed one of its upper limbs in his claw and lifted it into the air. The creature struggled for a moment before going limp as he brought it up to his face.
Blood streamed down the limb where he had gripped it, and the Captain marveled at how delicate the thing was, it and the rest of its species. They were perhaps the weakest creatures to have ever achieved interstellar flight yet it had taken the Torvin Empire nearly a decade to subdue them.
The creature shuddered, and turning its face to him the Captain was momentarily frozen. The eyes were not unlike those of his own species, expressive. Inside of them he could see the pain the creature was in, but more prominent was the hatred smoldering inside its soul.
The creature coughed and a small amount of blood drippled down its face and onto the disheveled armor it was wearing. The creature smiled, “I’m still alive,” it said, its voice raspy and barely discernable over the din of the machines in the compartment.
“You have lost, your planet has fallen and your species has been reduced to nothing more than a spattering of desperate refugees. Your pitiful attempt to try and sabotage my ship has failed, yet you still fight. Why?” asked the Captain.
The Creature glared at him and then shifting slightly it pulled itself up higher, the blood from its limb flowed faster around the Captain’s claw as it did so, moving higher it placed its other limb on his claw and brought it face up to the Captain’s appendage which was with only the smallest amount of force possible holding it up in the air.
Bringing its face forward the creature quickly clamped its pitiful mandible on his claw. The Captain frowned, he barely felt the pressure as it strained to bite him.
“Stop, you will only harm yourself further,” said the Captain.
The creature continued for several moments, and the Captain heard an audible crack. The Creature release its hold and a fresh gout of blood poured from its mouth.
Unsure what to do the Captain released his grip on the thing and it collapsed to the ground.
For several moment’s the captain watched as it collected itself and then slowly and lethargically once again tried to attack him, crawling forward to simply hit his foot with its weak appendage applying no more force than a newborn would.
After several moment’s the creature seemed to lose the energy it had and stopped attacking him, after a moment it rolled over onto its back and brought the damaged limb closer to its chest cradling it. The Captain looked down at it, the creature’s eyes were closed.
Then a small sound escaped its lips, one that the Captain had not heard issue forth from any of the other specimens. It took him a moment but the Captain quickly recognized it as laughter. What started as a small chuckle quickly built until the creature was laughing as if drunk.
“I’m still alive, we don’t surrender to death. We fight him more fiercely than we fought you,” said the creature.
The Captain frowned, “You can’t hurt me without your weapons, and I could kill you by accident. There is no fight,” said the Captain.
The creature laughed again, “I know, but I’m still going to kill you. You destroyed everything we fought for centuries to build in only a few years. I can’t not fight you.”
“You fight even if you cannot win?” asked the Captain.
The creature opened its eyes, and mixed with the pain and hatred the Captain saw another emotion, pity. It was something he had never seen in the eyes of the species he conquered for the Torvin Empire, hate and fear, rage were emotions he saw in the eyes of those he interrogated. He had never seen pity.
The creature rolled over and slowly put itself up on three limbs, the damaged one still held close to its chest.
“You wouldn’t?” asked the creature, “you wouldn’t fight until your limbs fail and your mind begins to slip away if you were faced with death? You would surrender to him?” asked the creature.
The Captain frowned, unsure what to say. In the history of the Empire their victory had never been in question, and the soldiers of the Empire did not fear death, they would kill themselves before allowing themselves to be taken captive.
“If it were my time,” said the Captian.
The creature laughed again, “Then you are a coward, death is the greatest enemy, and we don’t give him ground. We have fought him for thousands of years, and we will continue to do so. We will make sure you fear him as well, we will make sure that you see us as Death!” the Creature took a breath and collapsed onto the ground, into a pool of its blood on the floor.
The com panel in the room flashed on, and a harried looking subordinate came into view.
“Sir!”
“What?” asked the Captain.
“Something is wrong with the primary!” said the subordinate, and the image flickered to the main star of the system. The Captain was not an astrophysicist but he knew that the black puckering at the center of it was not normal.
“What’s going on?” asked the Captain.
“A space-time rupture has been formed, and it has collapsed our warp fields. We cannot escape!” said the subordinate.
The Captain turned to the creature, “what did you do? Collapse your star into a black hole?” he asked.
The creature made its odd laughing noise again but said nothing.
The Captain turned to the display, “what is it?” he asked.
“A collapse, a complete collapse of the energy of the Universe Captain! The False energy state theory!” The subordinate turned to look at the Captain, “If these reading are correct the bubble will expand at the speed of light collapsing all matter and energy to its lowest state! This will destroy the galaxy!”
The Captain rounded on the creature to demand an explanation, it was staring at him its broken teeth visible, “Now we become death, the destroyer of worlds.”