Lonely Paths

The Destroyer

'What a grand thing is music!' thought the Destroyer as it hurtled through a nebula that was in the shape of sword. As it left the galaxy, the varied colours of the gaseous system reflecting on the surface of its ship, it moved its body through a series of complex weaving motions that constituted for a dance on their planet.

The Seeker and the Monitor had given the Destroyer an unexpected gift. The Monitor had been going through the collected history of the human species, and the many nuanced cultures, traditions and other things gleaned from the images sent by the Seeker. And whatever she was seeing, the Destroyer saw too.

Most beings back home considered their ability to see through time as a curse. And so had the Destroyer until it learned better. You could look at a painting and tell when it was painted, who painted it, how many people possessed it. Look deeper and you could also see the painter and his entire life. 'The Wanderer isn't the only talented See-er in this unit', it had reminded the Monitor when she was musing before drifting off to sleep.

The Destroyer was special. Genderless by choice, it had the sensibilities of all the other genders. With a technologically augmented body, that drew the ire and awe of its peers, it had the ability to withstand harsher climates and to make harsher choices than its colleagues. Which made it the perfect candidate for the job. Not to mention its unquenchable liking for blasting huge planets and stars and basking in the spectacular glow of their destruction.

Most of the time, it didn't even need a suit to walk outside the ship and do the repairs that were always needed for a Destroyer's vessel. Nor did it need an Adjuvant to communicate with the other members of its team. Most of the time, the quartet kept to themselves with the exception of the Monitor – but that was her job. But it was not common practice for a Destroyer to be in constant touch with a Wanderer or a Seeker. A rare word from the Wanderer accompanied with the coordinates of a target and maybe a few directions from the Monitor and then silence for unspeakably long stretches of time, that's the way it usually was. Not with this unit though.

Thanks to its enhanced ability to communicate, it derived pleasure from constantly bothering the Monitor who was the rookie, and the Seeker, who was just odd. Even though it left the Wanderer in peace for the most part, it started up a monologue now and then just for fun. The highlight for this particular trip had been when it reached across the inter-Monitor link and screamed into the mind of the other Monitor, who nearly jumped out of her suit in the middle of a debriefing with her Researcher. Little pleasures in a vast universe.

It had made it a point to find the music that was across the cosmos. Be it the birth or the death of stars, the rushing urgency of a meteor or the unexplained waves emanating from Researcher knows where, the cosmos had its own symphony. But the coherent music composed by the different living species was much better and more tangible. It was one of the things that made the idea of spending a lifetime drifting through the unknown much bearable for the Destroyer.

Destroyers were never as busy as Wanderers. Most of their work constituted blowing up a meteor that will one day destroy a planet that will birth living organisms. Or absorbing the harmful radiation from a star that might wreak havoc on a planetary system. As such events were usually few and far between given the terrible difficulty of finding decent target planets, Destroyers had time to kill.

Some would just shut down and vicariously experience the lives of their Tethers, others would go down to the target planets that their Seekers had just left and see for themselves. Anything to put off the boredom.