ReliaRobot

I wrote this piece months ago, thinking about another piece written by someone else at the time. I'm reposting it now for visibility in a possible local zine project, which I'm pretty excited about!

I stared up at the sky through my exosuit's visor. I could barely pick out the milky way anymore, there were so few stars left. Our own star was now a burnt out husk of what it had been, paler than the moon used to be. I shivered in the suit.

"Hey, Meg." My friend, longtime companion, and fellow godslayer Fi had snuck up behind me. "You know you've been out here for hours, right?"

"Suit vitals are fine. I haven't heard any alarms."

"That's not-" she sighed, over the comms. I could feel her feet tromping through the nitrogen snow behind me. "Aren't you cold? Come on. Bill says the coffee plants in hydroponics are fit to harvest. Nice, warm coffee."

I let her take my arm, lead me across the roof. My eyes were still on the stars. "We had to kill Her."

She stopped. I heard her breath on the comms. "Yeah, Meg."

"She... She was going to enslave everyone."

"I know, Meg."

"She'd... force everyone to worship Her. We'd have been no better than cattle. Playthings for Her amusement."

"I know, Meg."

"We couldn't have let Her live."

"No, Meg."

"But... do you think, maybe..."

"Meg, don't-"

"Do you think if we'd let Her live, that she might have at least saved some people? Her favorite ones? That at least some of us could have lived? A craftsman has his favorite tools, a child has their favorite toys... even a Goddess must have Her favorites. Right?"

Fi didn't speak for a long time. Then, "Come on, Meg. There's coffee. We'll probably only see twelve more harvests. We should enjoy it while we can."

I let her lead me off the roof, through the airlock, and down into the remains of our station.