Trespassers

The holy braziers gone to dust. The columns tumbled. The altar of Her might, crushed like it was pumice. The Vox Nalia temple grounds left scorched and irradiated in the aftermath of a doomed star.
“The probe will not survive long,” said Penitent Nith. Nith had been born to Hatch Krel, but all servants of the Church gave up their familial bonds to serve the Goddess. The penitent swiveled her snout to regard her superior with glassy black eyes.
Yurk, formerly of Hatch Vril, had been Lead Chanter in the Church before the supernova. He had escaped Lebal with only two hours to spare. Now, he sat in a cramped transport shuttle, currently in a parking orbit around a wrecked Clawed Fist Fleet battlecruiser that had been scavenged down to its skeletal frame since the evacuation.
As the penitent predicted, the image from the AI-driven probe turned to static and then lost signal.
It’s really gone, he thought. But we’re not. The word of Nalia…
A pleasant ding announced a new sensor contact.
“Destroyer,” Nith said, checking the scan for details. “It is the Overwhelming Glory.”
Yurk’s fangs clacked together. “Flee. Immediately.”
A new sound, not pleasant at all: weapons lock klaxon.
“We should not have come,” Yurk grumbled. “I should not have put you at risk, Nith.”
“I had to know too,” she said. She looked back at him. “Maybe they will show us mer-“
As the transport exploded around him, Yurk’s final thought: “Maybe *this* is mercy.”