This is an older piece, if finally getting around to writing down a recurring dream can be called such. Still have it from time to time. Still picking up little pieces, little details each time I have it. I think it fits into the future of the Chronicles of Ascension Universe, may years past the end of Chaos Fountain. I hope to someday find where it fits in that history.
He strands on the ships bridge, looking out at the planet through the large window. A planet surrounded by warships from 10,000 worlds, and encased in shields, not to protect it, but to contain what has infected it. He had ordered it hundreds of times, but this world was different, special. This was his world, his home, and while there have been colony worlds, a few thousand, or a million beings, most were barren worlds, devoid of life, or at least only primitive forms.
He watches as a few distant flashes and explosions bloom just past the edge of the atmosphere. Ships trying to escape, destroyed by the defensive systems of the world turned against the world they were designed to protect, smashed against the shields, or shot down by the fleet ships surrounding the planet. This world. A world of 10 trillion beings, his home.... But to not do it..., that risk was too great. There was no other way to stop the spread. By the ancients he wished there was.
He hears the report that everything is ready. With a deep breath, knowing that there are pockets of beings who are uninfected, and knowing that those lives must be sacrificed to prevent the spread. He speaks loudly so all can hear, knowing that his voice would be carried to all the craft in the fleet, to the world below, screaming back at him in rage, begging for mercy, for help, but he has no help for them save death.
The words spoken, pre-arranged that it not be uttered offhandedly, that the gravity of the order would not be lost upon the one tasked with it. The gravity, the weight of it so much heavier with this world. "Now I am become Death. The Destroyer of worlds..." Turning to the bridge crew. "FIRE!" He turns back to the window to watch that which he has commanded.
Warships of 10,000 and more worlds, tens of thousands of craft each, open fire as one upon the world below them. Weapons from simple auto-cannons to capitol ship beam cannons, and worse, rain death down upon the world until there is nothing but a smooth molten ball where a living world of trillions was but a few moments before.
Then his ship, the only one to not yet fire its weapons, unleashes its payload. A weapon of true permanence, to ensure nothing from this world escapes. The beam lances down to the planet, and it immediately begins to collapse around the point of contact of the beam, material pulled into the spot, until only a singularity remains.
His ship fires again, and again, and again, missiles this time, one for each major planet in the system. Each a weapon of awesome and terrifying power, collapsing each planet into a stellar mass black hole. Then a final missile, dooming even the star of the system to the crushing destruction of becoming a black hole. The ships jumping clear of the system, watching as the now system of black holes collapses and coalesces into a single black hole.
Turning with a heavy sigh, he orders monitors in place and retires. Knowing his fleet, his crews, can handle it from there. They have done this before, and will again. It was never easy when the infection is discovered, but it is not usually an inhabited world, so this one weighs heavier on him as he walks to his cabin. Not only his former home, setting him and many members of the fleet homeless beyond the very ships upon which they reside, but wordless......