I’ve survived. 
A hollow victory against an unfeeling foe. Time will eventually win this war, but for now, I seem to have won the battle. Now, I stand alone in this hellish place, above the battlefield that took my entire crew and the colonists with them. 

Time. 

The wind whispers it to me even now as the binary stars dip toward the horizon.

I’ve seen more time than anyone ever should. In flashes and grabs, in gasps and punches. In a non-reality that stands at once before my eyes, and then shimmers away and stands, glassy, in the eyes of my crew. In the seconds that tick away their life as they fall, phaser pistols still hot, dropping from their hands.

Still, I am standing here. I failed to go mad; to succumb to the illusions and mania that caused the slaughter in the valley. A few of us did, somehow immune to the panic in a way that the others weren’t. The captain and I, a medic, two science officers, several others. We were studied until the rest fell to the hands of the others. Then, in a brief moment of lucidity, I managed to drag the captain into the hills, away from the glazed eyes and phasers and bloody fists and makeshift daggers. 

Time is cruel. It twists good people into monsters. 

The captain is nowhere to be seen. I fear that he, too, has now fallen victim to time. There will be no one to bury him, or the others. No one to stand over us and mourn. Only a warning beacon that we managed to release, if it should even be discovered, will stand as legacy to our fate.

As it should be.