Starcrossed

Black Dawn

THEY BURIED SOMEONE LIKE HIM IN THE OLD WAY, covered with earth instead of being scorched to ashes.

Eo, dressed in a chrome-white piece with a snowy cape containing a abyss-black underside, stood at an honored position from the other captains in front of the colossal gathering of people. Insignia and decorations worn by the audience glinted in the white, gloomy afternoon like stars.

The commanders stood in black capes, jumpsuits, and boots around the pile of dirt covering Commander Bog's body, like ravens by their own dead.

Eo shivered on the planet their star base had came for the ceremony. The climate matched what he felt in his heart the day that he heard the news in private, after he had followed instructions to sit down, sip some water, and breathe slowly. He had heard someone scream for ages, later realizing it was himself.

"I need an answer, Captain," whispered the chief at his side.

Eo trembling from cold and raw grief, clenched his friend's personal banner of the fleet to his heart, then burying his nose in the fabric and finding another scent. The flag wet again from new tears.

"Time waits for no one," the Chief went on in a fatherly tone. "There will be many more lives lost in the work we do. Some times those people are ones we love the most."

Eo felt the Chief's words were another passing wind in the air. Meant to exist but only heard and forgotten.

"I need time," Eo croaked, barely heard above the wind. Eo sensed there was some acknowledgement of that by the way the Chief tightened the grip of his pauldron on his shoulder.

"You will be given another 24 hours," the Chief stated.

Eventually, the assembly returned to the star base to settle in for the return from Pluto, a usual gravesite for fallen service members. All except for a junior captain who couldn't take her eyes away from how broken the normally upbeat Eo was.

His usually lively, tan skin was grey from her viewpoint. And instead of breaking into a dance whenever he felt like it, he looked molded there by Bog's side in a stiff death grip on the item bequeathed to him by the ceremonial guard earlier in the memorial.

Even as a fellow captain, she knew Eo was her senior, so she shouldn't stare. But she didn't listen to her comrades gently calling her for dinner. She made her way to Eo's side and stayed there for a while longer, not caring if Eo didn't breathe a word until sunset.

"Let's go, captain," she whispered finally. "Everyone needs to eat." He didn't respond, so she carefully guided him away. He slowly followed her lead and together their boots made a steady rhythm on the darkening ice.

"Who are you?" Eo mumbled.