Ten years ago, the scene had been much different. Space had been criss-crossed with trails from spacecraft as they hastily fled the coming invaders, racing for the jump gate that they prayed might lead to salvation. Today there was silence.
They came, they destroyed, and they moved on. They had no interest in Earth, of course. Their motive was to prove a point, of all things. To prove that we were vulnerable. To prove that although we held the line for five long, bloody years, they were still superior. They made their point, at the cost of seven billion human lives.
I was there the day it all ended. My parents had insisted on staying to the last - their pride wouldn't allow otherwise. By then, though, there weren't many ships left. My mother and brother made it onto the last one leaving from Norfolk, a ramshackle little freighter called Hope Floats. Dad and I were on the next one, the unceremoniously-named B 7119. They caught us at the jump gate. The warships were too far off, and we were helpless. I remember having my face pressed to the viewport, watching in horror as Hope Floats caught a kinetic harpoon and came apart, people and cargo spilling out into vacuum. The last thing I remember was our ship diving into the yawning hyperspace vortex before I passed out. I caught about four grays. It was awful, but I survived. Dad wasn't so lucky.
I was there, too, when we met them in combat and smashed their fleets to splinters outside the orbit of Merasz. And now I'm here, looking at Earth for the first time in ten years. My triumphant return. Our triumphant return. Only, I can't even call this triumphant. It's not a victory march. At best, it's a cold and broken hallelujah.
I look down at my watch. Fifteen minutes until the rest of the fleet arrives. I relax and watch the magnified view. Slowly, things tumble by. Mostly unrecognizable jumbles of metal, occasional things that were clearly once part of a ship. A few frozen, dessicated corpses - poor souls who met a kinder end than those left stranded below. A mass of shiny strings - on closer examination, a tangled mass of gold necklaces, and not far from it, a burnt jewelry box, tumbling slowly end over end. A child's teddy bear floats past. Nobody remembers any of this stuff. I catch sight of another corpse, holding the body of a child close, and my heart sinks...