“The blood-red sun around which we orbit rises on the horizon, casting gruesome dark shadows of towering, terrible foliage across the murky grey surface of Lake Tu’chen. Another day in paradise.”

Kelly scribbled these poetic nothings in her leather-bound journal, one of the three items she entered cryo-sleep with before leaving Earth. She closed the book, placing it carefully on her nightstand along with the ballpoint pen she used to write. Kelly, her partner, Victoria, along with the extensive crew of the Grey Goose had awoken four months prior to blaring sirens, alerting all those aboard — Generationals and crew members alike — to the spaceship’s landing protocol’s activation.

The crew’s entire waking lives had been spent training: physically, mentally, emotionally, even spiritually for the journey they were bred to undertake. They were created for intergalactic colonization, then — through brutal training regiments — forced to become the perfect people to fit their assigned mission roles. On their 21st “birthdays”, each was given a salute and a handshake before entering the stasis chambers wherein they would spend the next three millennia frozen, both literally and in time itself.

The Generationals — the other occupants of the ship — had entirely different experiences. No starship could possibly survive three-thousand years of travel through new, unknown space completely unattended. Therefore, 5000 commoners were enlisted to perform regular ship maintenance, breed, then quickly die, making room for the new generation of what were essentially slaves. The crew was raised in total isolation, separating them physically and by title from the Generationals. Interaction between the groups was forbidden.

For the good of the human race.

Four months had passed since their arrival and building a civilization from scratch was no easy task. Kelly was a nurse, spending her days tending to wounds. Large abrasions caused by strange, sharp plant-life; broken bones, common due to the planet’s strong gravity; new-found infections and viruses never before treated by human physicians with symptoms previously found only in popular sci-fi fiction. All of these were commonplace in their new society as the crew performed their various, dangerous jobs.

Her partner, Victoria, was the commander of the small squadron of military professionals aboard the Grey Goose. They primarily protected the infant colony from hostile alien life, a common danger and another cause of regular injury to the crew. The Generationals were safe from outside dangers, locked aboard the ship to continue their duty of keeping it in top shape.

After setting down her journal, Kelly walked over to the small kitchenette in her living quarters. She removed a pot from a cabinet, then a variety of ingredients from the icebox; she opened a drawer, scrounging around in search of her kitchen knife. It was nowhere to be found.

“How odd,” she thought to herself, “I must have misplaced it.” She continued her search around the kitchen, checking every nook and cranny to no avail. She shrugged it off, making a mental note to ask Victoria if she’d seen it when she returned from her venture tomorrow. Victoria had been away from Kelly for nearly two weeks at this point, an unusual amount of time for a deployment. She finished preparing her evening meal and sat down at the small table in the corner of the room to eat.

It was the next day around noon and Kelly had spent her morning treating patients from the team who’d returned to base — along with Victoria and her collective of warriors — bearing binders full of fresh, exciting data as well as various wounds requiring immediate attention.

She was on her lunch break; sitting outside the clinic, vape in one hand, pen in the other, she wrote, “The returning explorers were in rough shape. Bruises to the face, two broken bones, a collection of abrasions likely caused by hostile life. Nothing abnormal there. The strange thing were the whispers exchanged between them while they were being treated.” She paused momentarily and took a long drag from her vape pen, letting loose a thick cloud of fog, then continuing, “I only caught fragments of the conversation. My attention was directed at my work. But I swear that the words ‘…sentience..’, and ‘…intelligent life…’ were among them.”

To this point, nothing of the sort had been discovered. The beings known to inhabit the vast rainforest-like terrain dominating the planet’s surface were feral. There was no better word. They were seemingly driven solely by instinct: kill, eat, survive, reproduce, die. This was the extent of their capabilities. The aggression they displayed was nothing short of demonic; the humans were, to them, simply another source of precious, easy protein.

Ever since her arrival here, Kelly had dreamed of the discovery of intelligent life on a near-daily basis: “What an honor, what a thrill would it be to be among the first group of humans to ever contact true, sentient alien life?”

“I have to see if these strange mutterings hold any weight,”; she closed her journal and stood up to return to work.

Later that evening, Kelly knew that she had precisely an hour between the end of her shift and when Victoria would arrive home from her post-mission debriefing. As soon as the alarm sounded marking the end-of-day, she took off, headed for the records department.

“Hey, Jessie!” Kelly exclaimed to the slender man working the front desk, “I need a small favor.” She was well aware that he had a thing for her and had no moral objections to using her charm to get what she needed.

“Yeah sure, whatever you need,” said Jessie, agreeing before he even knew what it was and exposing his feelings for her instantly.

Kelly explained what she needed — to see the new species record from the recent venture — but left out the exact reason why and was quickly, quietly lead to the locked records library by Jessie who smiled warmly but slyly as she slipped in, “I’m sure he’s excited at the prospect of me owing him,” Kelly laughed to herself.

She made her way down the dimly lit aisles, tracing the various filing labels with her finger in search of the correct one. Eventually, she found it. A black plastic box that, when opened, revealed a series of files dated the same as the exploration trip she was curious about. She thumbed through them, drawing out the three labeled ‘New Species Discoveries’. At a nearby table, Kelly spread out the papers inside and began her search.

16 new species had been discovered on this expedition of various different types. But, as she dug a bit deeper, she began noticing some inconsistencies in the reports. A few redacted sentences here and there. Some odd phrasing, almost as if certain paragraphs had been doctored or rewritten before being published.

Then, she found it. The piece of evidence confirming her mounting suspicions. Two words at the end of a pair of redacted sentences, obviously overlooked by the editor. They read, “…total genocide.”

Kelly fell back in her chair, stunned. “Genocide? They’d never use that word for any form of non-sentient life. Holy shit…The explorers aren’t even armed. That must mean-“, her train of thought was abruptly cut off.

“Hello, Kelly,”; a raspy female voice emanated ominously from the shadows; Kelly recognized it instantly.

“Victoria!”, Kelly exclaimed, the fear in her voice all-but obvious. She tried to act normal: “What are you doing here? I was just about to come home and cook dinner!”

Kelly summoned a nervous smile and stood up slowly, carefully. “C’mon, let’s go home, honey.”

“Sorry. I know how you are, Kelly. If you leave here you’ll talk. They can’t know about this. We need the planet — the whole planet — for our species survival.” Victoria stepped closer; Kelly scrambled backwards instinctually, never before had she seen this malicious, hardened look in her partner’s eyes. “This is her war face,” Kelly realized. Adrenaline shot through her veins and her eyes darted around, back against the metal shelving, looking for some way out.

“Victoria, baby, it’ll be okay. You did a bad thing. Let’s just get out of here and-“

“NO!” Victoria yelled. “I did nothing wrong. This, this was for our own good, our own survival. Don’t you see that? Don’t you understand? It’s my duty to eliminate threats wherever I see them and, Kelly, they were primitives. They would have fought us, given the chance. I did this for us!”

“Do you even hear yourself right now?!” Kelly yelled back, full of rage and contempt for the former love of her life. “We could have coexisted! They could have taught us so much about this place and how to survive here! And you just killed them in cold blood? How could you?”

“Enough talk.”

Victoria pulled from her waistband the missing kitchen knife: Kelly instantly understood. Victoria had known they were out there. The warrior squad, lead by her, had taken the explorers along for the two-week genocidal mission, roughed the explorers up a bit, then probably threatened that, if they spoke of the situation to anyone outside the group, they would pay for it later. Victoria had enough forethought to steal the knife to use on any blabbermouths; it was easily discarded and totally untraceable, unlike her actual weapons. “Who is this woman? I spent all my waking life by her side, yet I don’t know her at all.”

Victoria saw the steely glint of hatred in Kelly’s eyes. For a moment, her face fell and she broke eye contact, a single tear rolling down her cheek. “Sorry, baby. I have to do my duty. It’s what we are here for, it’s what we were made for: don’t you understand that?”

Kelly retorted, “I don’t. I never will.” She spat in Victoria’s direction, but she dodged it with ease. Immediately, the rage took control. Victoria launched herself at Kelly. She tried to scream for help, but Victoria’s hand was already over her mouth, the knife was already deep inside her chest. She felt no pain. Only disappointment. Disappointment in herself for not knowing her partner better. Disappointment in Victoria for being just another drone, willing to do whatever it took, no matter how horrible to ensure the survival of her own, selfish needs. Finally, she felt disappointment in her species.

Before this moment, she had never considered humans to be evil creatures. But she thought back to her childhood, being forced into brutal training from before she could even understand what was happening by unseen masters only concerned with the survival of their species, a cause the crew was taught was noble, but she now realized was completely selfish. She thought about the Generationals, living and dying sad, lonely lives in space for millennia then enclosed in a metal box, disallowed from exploring the new world they had such an integral part in reaching by those same terrible rulers. She even thought about herself, how she had never, before her dying breath, even considered that her passive contribution to the systematic oppression of the Generationals and the role she played in the morally corrupt human society was in itself a selfish act. In this moment, Kelly wished for justice. The human race should have been extinct long ago. It was only the unwavering brutality and selfish tenacity of their species that had kept them alive this long. As a lifelong atheist (she had been born to be one), her final act of defiance came in the form of a prayer.

“Please, God, if you’re out there, if you’re real and if you’re just, please end the universe’s suffering from the disease that is humanity.”

This was her final thought, Kelly’s final act. As she felt herself fade into blackness, she gathered the last remnants of her energy, pushing it all out in the form of a final breath, full of hateful intent directed at the human race as a whole.