The Starras were a peaceful race, though painfully shy. Almost no one in the galaxy knew about them, except through age-old legends and myths, most of which were false.
They did not have a planet to call home- they hadn’t had one for several thousand years, and the memory of its previous splendor existed only in dusty scriptures and paintings, tucked away in the deepest corners of their ship.
The Starras were explorers of the cosmos, with such detailed maps and information it was comparable to the Interstellar Federation’s own archive. They were not a part of the Interstellar Federation- they felt that they had no business in other planets’ affairs, so they chose to keep themselves unknown to the rest of the universe.
Their planet, at the height of its civilization, was one of the most well-known spots in the universe, a popular tourist destination for those in the galaxy. It was said to be the most beautiful planet among them all, and for good reason.
Starra had rich, purple seas that tasted of chocolate, with sands darker than space. Thick forests of cotton-like trees coated the land, rivers winding through and up the trees. Sprawling cities appeared out of nowhere, ascending up into the sky, and deep to the core of the planet. The capital city, Kansi, was located in the middle of the Usala Ocean, down at the bottom at the sea floor. The citizens lived in a large glass dome, inspired by the ancient Earthen myth of the city Atlantis. Rainbow fish with holographic scales swam by the city, sizes ranging from skyscrapers to grains of sand. Eels wrapped themselves around the great dome, glowing to give the people light in the darkest months.
To put it simply, it was paradise.
For millions of years, the Starras had lived in peace. They welcomed visitors with open arms, produced enough resources to be self-sustaining, maintained their planet with the highest level of care and respect for the environment.
Then tragedy struck.
Their rival in the tourist industry, Nimka, had been holding a grudge against them for several thousand years. One year, the tourist rate on Starra skyrocketed, leaving the Nimkas in the dust. They couldn’t stand it.
So they shot a series of bombs at Starra.
Bomb after bomb after bomb landed on Starra, until the planet was left in tatters, a mere shell- no, not a shell. Less than a shell. Craters dotted the planet where the bombs had landed. More than half the population had been wiped out. The purple seas tasted of ash, the white cotton trees blackened.
In short, the planet was now inhospitable.
In a desperate attempt to save whoever was left, the government issued a giant spaceship to be built immediately. Anyone still alive boarded it a mere three months after the tragedy, and they left the planet forever.
So the spaceship became their new home. Named Mercy, the ship wandered space with no direction, no purpose, no motivation. The Starras’ spirits were dead. Without their beloved planet, they were lost in the endless sea that is the universe, with no land in sight.
For many years they wandered aimlessly, occasionally docking at a friendly looking planet to beg for food and other resources. It was a pathetic sight when the Mercy landed down on a planet. The captain himself would approach the leader and get down on his knees and ask for help. Usually, the other planet’s leader would allow them to stay for a little bit- mostly out of pity than anything else.
For the Starras, this kind of humiliation was unbearable. Once such a prominent, respected race, they had now been reduced down to this.
Wanderers.
Hitchhikers.
Beggars.
The Starras simply couldn’t stand it, but what could they do but continue on, and try to keep their race alive? Stories of the luxurious, lustrous Starra race were worn down to mere fantasies, dismissed as fictional tales. The Starras made fewer and fewer trips to other planets, out of shame.
They starved and died off in droves, but for them, it was better than being seen as borrowers and beggars. Slowly the halls of Mercy grew hollow and quiet. The food in the storeroom dwindled faster than the population. Nothing passed by the windows but the light of long dead stars. The Starras were fading.
Then, a miracle happened.
One day, the young captain was dozing off in his chair, having put the ship on autopilot. Suddenly, a beeping alert startled him, practically sending him off his chair. The captain approached the console in front of him. The screen displayed a stream of dialogue, notifying him that they were approaching a planet, and if autopilot should proceed with normal protocol- to avoid it.
The captain glanced over the notification with bored eyes, and was about to push the green button as always, when his eyes caught the name of the planet.
Starra.
The captain blinked, confused. Starra? Was...was this his home planet?
Having been raised on the Mercy, the captain was filled with an overwhelming curiosity to see this legendary planet. For the first time in several months, he pushed the red button.
Manual control.
The captain settled back into his seat, and carefully guided Mercy towards the planet, peering over the dashboard. He cut off the engines when he was at the edge of the planet’s atmosphere.
He stood up and went to the window to see what was left of his ancestors’ home. A large planet, the whole thing a strange metallic blue color, faded and grimy. Wisps of smoke swirled up and clouded the atmosphere, layering it in a toxic white cloud.
The captain scrunched up his eyebrows, confused. This was not the eternal beauty he had been trained to expect. This was not raging purple seas, this was not cottony forests, this was not skyscrapers that pierced the atmosphere. All this was was a rocky, cratered hunk of stone, vaguely in the shape of a sphere- the last and only hint that it had ever been anything more than a barren asteroid.
The captain, now thoroughly disgusted, turned away from the window, unable to look at the planet anymore- if you could even call it that. He returned to his place behind the console, and scrolled through the stream of dialogue, checking to see if there was anything worthwhile left on the planet.
He flicked away the old statistics, the ones from the glory days- he already knew those by heart. Instead, he brought up the readings he was getting from the planet now.
NO BEINGS DETECTED.
NO PLANT LIFE DETECTED, the display read. The captain continued reading.
NO KNOWN MINERALS DETECTED.
That was odd. The Mercy had all the information known to the Interstellar Federation and more, so why wasn’t it understanding what was in the planet? The captain quickly typed in a command, asking for an analysis of the mineral it was finding.
Nothing. Just a color reading, and that it existed in all four states of matter on the surface of the planet. No chemical analysis was available- or in other words, anything of use to the captain would have to be found out by the Starras themselves.
Immediately, the captain sent a message to the Prime, filling her in on the situation, as well as a special request.
The Prime sat at her desk, poring over the stack of thin, brittle paper on her desk. It was the best they had on Mercy, what with avoiding the other planets. All the decreasing numbers made her head spin- from food stores to population to the Starras’ happiness to the health of her people.
The Prime had won her place in an easy competition. After all, it is quite difficult to lose an election when there is no opponent. Once her allotted term was over, she should have gone back to being a civilian, but no one else wanted the job. The Council rewrote the rule about how many terms a Prime could have, and asked her to keep the job.
So this was how she came to be the longest sitting Prime in a thousand years- she had been working for nearly twenty years now, and it seemed as though she wouldn’t be relieved of the job anytime soon.
The Prime sat with the windows blacked out, for full concentration. It also provided a convenience for when she felt like taking a nap. After all, the Mercy had no real goals except keeping the people alive, and she felt that the Starras could manage themselves for the most part.
And so, when a bright holographic message popped up in front of her, she shied away from the light until her eyes adjusted. She quickly read through the message- it was from the captain, he had something urgent to ask her, they were right outside Starra, could she please come down to the-
They were right outside Starra?!
The Prime rushed to the window and lifted the blackout film on her window to look outside.
And there it was.
Her home planet. Like the captain, she had been raised on the ship, which meant that seeing Starra for the first time did not go how she had imagined it.
Anyhow, she immediately issued a full ship blackout of the windows, before anyone could figure out where they were, and shut off the ship tracking software that all the citizens had access to.
She then proceeded to hurry down to the cockpit, where she met with the captain. He explained the situation to her, and asked her something curious- he wanted to have the planet examined.
The Prime was obviously quite surprised at this, but after she went through the Mercy’s analysis, she agreed. At best, it might give them some useful information; at worst they wasted some of their unlimited time.
So a task force was sent down almost immediately, fully suited up in case of harmful chemicals in the air. They pried up a large chunk of the bluish rock, and brought it back along with a sample of the liquid that floated in small pools on the surface, as well as an air sample.
They put everything in a quarantined room at the base of the ship, and kept it a secret from the general population. As far as they were concerned, the Mercy was still on its way to nowhere.
A team of scientists were hired to examine the strange substances. They worked day and night, with only meal breaks, but they didn’t complain. They finally had something to do. At first, the investigation bore no fruits. It only seemed that the substance was in all four forms- solid, liquid, gas, and plasma. Nothing else was discovered until they were a couple weeks in.
They had been testing how the gas version affected small rodents from a different planet. It seemed to do nothing to them- they could breathe it in just fine. It was, in fact, a replacement to oxygen.
With that discovery, more and more began to appear. The liquid substituted for water, and the solid was malleable and easy to shape. When baked, it turned harder than spider silk, cutting through bricks like butter. Perfect for weapons or other metal objects one might need.
The Prime was ecstatic. This strange, metallic blue substance- it was a godsend. Somehow, the bombs that blew their cities apart had returned in this form, after the chemicals had mixed and stewed for thousands of years in their absence. The Prime began to make plans to visit some resource rich planets. They were no longer beggars.
The Prime had decided that their first trading planet would be Earth- a terrestrial planet, rich in agricultural resources as well as meat and water. The people were less advanced than them, but that was alright.
When they reached Earth, they found that a trading route was already in full swing, - all they needed to do is blend in with the Earthens, and trade in their special substance, which they had named oxyl, after the weapon of their beloved god. They sent down about a hundred Starras, each with a box of oxyl, all in solid form.
Some were sent to the place known as China, others to Europe, and still more to northern Africa. They integrated seamlessly into the crowd, and traveled along what was known as the Silk Road. They wished to remain anonymous, as it seemed that the Earthens were quite touchy when it came to other beings- the presence of aliens always caused chaos and disorder. No, it was better to masquerade as Earthen than try to convince them to trust the Starras.
The Starras stayed for a couple months, trading and learning about the culture on Earth. The Earthens were amazed by the oxyl, and traded meat, furs, grains, and fruits and vegetables for it. The Starras refused any metals, as oxyl was good enough for them.
The Starras left after about six months, as the trade began to slow. The Mongol Empire, which held the Silk Road together was fracturing, and the Starras decided to leave before chaos ensued.
Within six months of their departure, the Starras received news that the Earthens had suffered the worst epidemic their world had ever seen- a horror they called the Black Death. Millions of Earthens had died from a painful, terrifying disease.
All fingers pointed at the oxyl.
No one knew that the Starras had the oxyl. No one knew that they were the last visitors to Earth before the tragedy. No one knew that the Starras had discovered the most powerful poison in the galaxy.
And the Prime had an idea.
A horrifying idea.
It was so terrible that it scared the Prime herself.
But she decided to do it anyway.
Everyone on the ship knew who the Starras’ greatest enemy was. The Nimkas. Their name was cursed in every history book they owned, made out to be greedy, arrogant people driven by jealousy alone.
If the Starras had a way to get back at them, they would have done it in a heartbeat, no doubt. But no one thought they really ever would have a way. And now they did. So the decision was made.
They sped off in the direction of Nimka, and when they reached the planet- now luxurious and large, up to par with Starra back in the day- they sent down a messenger.
He carried a simple message: We come in peace, and we wish to trade with you.
The Nimkas, seeing no harm in trading with their now pathetic rivals, agreed quite willingly. So the Prime offered them the oxyl, praising its amazing properties, and promising great things, only asking for a few resources in return.
It had crossed the minds of the Nimkas that something was suspicious about this sudden friendly behavior, but in their arrogance, they put it off as desperation and a will to survive.
This, of course, did not end well for them.
They traded with the Starras, who left with copious amounts of food and water and other resources to keep them going for at least a year or so. The Starras sped away quickly, not wanting to be near the scene when the news hit.
A month later, the Interstellar Federation received word that the entire Nimka civilization was dead.
The news exploded throughout the galaxies, and countless theories emerged as to why such an illustrious planet had suddenly been destroyed- some sort of toxic chemical leak, a terrorist attack, a hostile new race.
An investigation was launched, and scientists and police worked around the clock trying to figure out the cause of this massacre, but they couldn’t find anything- not a trace of poison, blood, or even weaponry. No bombs had been used, and the Nimkas hadn’t recently been involved in war either. So what was the cause?
No one suspected the Starras. They laid low, and quietly veered out of the way when the Interstellar Federation came their way. They went nowhere near Nimka either- the other races who had sent messengers and such to Nimka were being heavily investigated for their curiosity.
Inside their unassuming little ship, the Starras were overflowing with joy and celebration. Their greatest enemy had finally been defeated! The Starras were more active than they had been in hundreds of years- they milled around the ship, congratulating each other on the success, and gorging themselves on their new supply of food.
The celebrations continued for weeks. The Starras decorated the interior of the ship, held huge parties with quite a lot of alcohol, and toasted the Prime on her excellent idea. Regaining their dignity had somehow fueled them with energy and happiness and pride.
Perhaps...perhaps too much.
See, this newfound pride was slowly evolving into something more sinister. The Starras began to voice their opinion of some of the other races- not good opinions either. With their large supply of oxyl, they suggested that they trade it out again for more resources, even though they had plenty. Some of them even called for the blood of the other races who had wronged them.
And that’s when one mad Starra stood up, and decided to tell everyone on the ship exactly what he thought they should do. The idea he proposed was immensely controversial at first, but slowly and surely, it seeped into everyone’s minds like a drug, poisoning them, maddening them, suffocating them- until it was them.
This idea- this toxic, corrupting idea- was so terrible and so amazing that the Starras just had to do it.
You see, this one Starra had decided that the ship should continue doing what they did to the Nimkas, to all of the other planets. He said it was because no one had come to their aid when they were in such dire need of resources, when they were so close to extinction.
He thought they should be punished for it.
So the Starras quietly went back to their home planet.
They pulled up a giant chunk of oxyl, and put it in the ship.
They set off for the other side of the galaxy, where a small, lonely solar system was located.
And they headed straight in, to the planet just next to Earth- a planet with a tiny population of one million.
The planet where life had once existed, and could still exist, if it weren’t for the oxyl.
The planet which we call Mars.
-Janani Thoguluva, 15