Forgiveness

Forgiveness

It is easier to forgive an enemy than a friend. Those are the words the human ambassador told us. It was the reason given for why the Dex was almost entirely wiped out. This is the story from their perspective from one of the soldiers.

The Dex were the ones who had helped us reach the stars, gave us the secret to FTL travel. Because of them, we were included in the galactic fold. We gained allies and new trading partners. We also gained the knowledge that we were woefully average compared to the races in the galaxy.

48 years, for 48 years the alliance held. We even had a holiday for it, it’s The 28th of august. It was the day of humanity’s dreams coming true. We were known as diplomats and constructors, traders and protectors, and even as good allies and friends.

Our past is not something we looked back on fondly for it was full of death and destruction. We had buried it after joining the fold because we didn’t want to muddy the relationships with our new friends, Of course, we still built weapons of war but only for protection and sheer curiosity.

Violence was never something we wanted because to participate was to unearth a monster that sat long-buried. That was until the Dex attacked us. They had seen us as a crop they meant to harvest, they had waited for the right moment and invaded. They tried to take our factories and force our people to work for them, but when it didn’t work and they realized it was more effort than the worth they glassed our planet and everyone on it.

Trillions were wiped out immediately. At this time humanity was beyond our home planet, we had many colonies with billions on them. But Earth was special to us, It was our Home. We didn’t take the time to grieve, We were sad but an old feeling lodged itself in our hearts. That feeling is one we haven’t had in a long time, Rage.

In all the wars we’ve waged we always had empathy for our enemies, after all in many situations it was kill or be killed. Never before have we not had an ounce of empathy for our enemy. There is an old adage of our people, It’s easier to forgive an enemy than a friend.

It didn’t take long for our ambassador to reach their leader and we asked only one thing. We wanted their immediate and total surrender. They declined but the ambassador persisted saying that if surrender was not offered it would almost certainly be never accepted again. They didn’t only decline, they killed the ambassador.

We sent warships to their outer colony and asked one last time for their total surrender to which they responded with an attack. We fired one shot, not at the ship but the planet. As the projectile hit the atmosphere it ignited and torched the entire planet, The fire from the enemy stopped for a moment to witness what just happened. The flames from what was once the atmosphere were flowing like a liquid and the surface looked like a star.

The moment of silence didn’t last long as the battle commenced, projectiles launched back and forth but our firepower was superior. The first battle ended as quickly as it began. We continued on to planet after planet and annihilating them entirely. Soon our fleets reached their final destination, The Dexes Home planet. They sent transmission begging for mercy, to spare them.

It pained us to see what once was our deepest ally in such despair but the screams of death that our people faced at the hands of them were worse. We only sent one last transmission back “We are sorry this had to happen we wish it didn’t have to come to this but you killed trillions of our people. Perhaps this in another time we could’ve stayed allies, Goodbye friends we will miss you.” As the message was sent we waited for enough time for it to be read and launched the projectile.

The vision of the planet being destroyed did not fill us with joy but sadness, It truly pained us for it to end this way. On that day the Dex was not completely wiped out, we kept a single planet alive, and with it millions of Dex civilians. We did our best to help them, we gave them everything they needed to thrive and live on. That planet now has billions of Dex on it and we have included them into our fold just like they once did, but we had no plans of hurting them any further.

This is why we wanted nothing but peace because the horrors we can unleash horrify us deeply, We would rather this never happened in the first place.