As is so often the case, disaster came from a mix of incompetence, and good intentions. Abnormally though, the source was the first interesting point in the whole affair. Captain Rha’Janok, leader of the First Erisian Scouting Force, watched the human broadcasts being played on the main screen.
“It seems a pity doesn’t it Adjutant?” He said to the officer at the pilot’s seat.
“Sir?”
“I mean, they’re so bound by physics, and logic. They’re all stuck with only one form, and whatever they can scrape out of the earth. Look at that! This broadcast is about an entire war fought just over a small patch of land! A man should determine his destiny by force of will I say. Not by random circumstance!”
“I suppose sir.” The Adjutant said nervously. The Captain was politically powerful due to his family's influence, and thus could not be denied some form of command; however, he had been assigned to the Scouting Force due to his tendency toward rash actions. Not to mention general incompetence. The prevailing theory was if he was far away from any important races, there was less chance he could spark a diplomatic incident. Naturally, all of the bridge officers were keenly aware of this. All of them had been given in-person briefings; by an admiral no less, with instructions to do everything within their authority to reign in his wilder impulses.
“You know sir, such a place must seem rather boring to someone such as yourself. Perhaps we should-”
“Nonsense Adjutant, nonsense! In fact, I would say it’s incumbent on us to alleviate their suffering. Wouldn’t you?”
“Not at all sir, it’s not our affair. Perhaps we should-”
The Captain continued as if the Adjutant hadn’t spoken. In fact, he appeared oblivious to the growing unease amongst the entirety of his bridge crew. “I know just what we can do! Engineer, prepare a chaos seed!” He said, turning to a portly fellow who manned a station to the captain’s right.
The Engineer balked at this. Partly due to the nature of the request, partly because of his frustration with the captain’s inability to remember his name. “Sir, That would be highly inappropriate. Chaos seeds are weapons of mass destruction intended for ship to ship combat. They’re designed to unravel the fabric of reality. They’re not something you lob at helpless civilians on a planet!”
The captain huffed. “I didn’t mean a full-strength one you fool. Prepare a highly diluted one. Say one percent strength.”
“But sir-”
“Are you defying my authority Engineer?”
Images of his wife and children on the homeworld flashed through the Engineer’s mind. Part of the briefing they had been given included the rules for mutiny. Any orders given by the Captain would fall on his own shoulders, and no one else’s. Mutiny would only be allowed if he ordered them to fire on the vessel or planet of a recognized intergalactic entity, which this clearly was not. Outside of that, there was only one response to mutiny in the Erisian Navy.
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“No sir, I will follow your orders. I just highly recommend-”
The captain smiled congenially. “Good, glad we have that straightened out. Carry on.”
The Engineer hung his head as he stalked off. Though the Erisians did not have a religion exactly, they had constructed a god. It had been a highly technical process involving the use of chaos essence to bend the rules of causality in a space, which was then filled with a quantity of will energy. When all was said and done, the god that emerged from the participant’s collective unconscious had been a judgemental one. The Engineer knew he would likely spend his afterlife in one of the planes of punishment for what he was about to do. The more tangible punishment for mutiny extended to one’s immediate family; however, so he accepted it as an unfortunate necessity.
An hour later, the device detonated on the surface of the planet. The engineer had done his best to “accidentally” dilute the device even further, but no one was prepared for what happened next. The thing was, that the nature of the energy they named chaos was in fact chaotic, making it unpredictable in any quantity. What’s more, thanks to intergalactic law, no one had ever detonated such a device on an inhabited planet before. The Engineer watched stoically as the planet’s atmosphere burned. The Captain sighed.
“Well damn, I really thought that would go better. Still, at least we freed them from such a miserable existence eh?”
The entire bridge staff was silent, and no one looked at the captain. In fact, though the captain’s words weren’t broadcast, most of the ships crew was simultaneously silent as they watched the world beneath them suddenly turn into a ball of flame. Most of them didn’t know what had happened, and simply carried on with their duties; assuming the captain had gotten bored, and done something crazy to an uninhabited planet. The majority of the crew had only ever known him as a rather eccentric drinking buddy they were obligated to spend time with after all.
The bridge crew knew differently. After a full minute of silence following the captain’s statement, the Engineer spoke up.
“Permission to leave the bridge sir?”
The captain nodded nonchalantly. “Permission granted.”
The Engineer strode to the transport pad, and winced as his molecules shifted from one location to another, specifically the space allocated as officer’s quarters. Entering his personal living space, he sat down at his desk, staring at the terminal screen. He remained this way for a full two minutes before he began writing a report to the admiralty marked **URGENT** That done, he next wrote a message addressed to his wife, with a second message for his firstborn son to read.
The former officer of the First Erisian Scouting Force opened a drawer in his desk, and pulled out a conical object. It had been given to him as a memento by his grandfather several centuries before, when the stodgy old man had left for war. That had been his grandfather’s third enlistment, and the last time he had seen him alive. The former officer caressed the object lovingly, remembering his grandfather for a moment, before putting the weapon to his head, and pulling the trigger.
A beam of light lanced from it; piercing his corpse, and the wall behind it before his grip finally slackened enough for the trigger to reset; ending the firing sequence. His body crashed to the floor, taking the desk and terminal with it. On the screen his final letter to his wife flashed.
To: Ihl’Lora
I love you with every fiber of my being, but there is a place for love, and a place for punishment. I am headed for the latter. I have done something so horrible that I would gladly give back the love we have shared, and draw upon myself all the suffering of all the hells, if I could only take back a single decision I made. Do not remember me. Tell the children to forget I ever existed. Burn all evidence that I ever lived. I do not wish any fragment of the stain I bear to touch any of you. Forget me.
-Ihl’Rezen