I always looked up at the stars. The stars of red and yellow, blue and green. So many worlds. The night sky was always riddled with holes. Holes into other universes. Other times. I looked up to the stars and I dreamt of adventure.

Most of the adults had been to the stars. They were trained as pilots, all of them. We were the largest trading corporation for ten star systems. Anyone who had received basic training could be called up as a pilot. Thousands of men and women left their families each day. Not all of them returned alive.

I had lived under the threat of invasion for so long I was sure they would never come for us. They had passed over us too many times. When our transportation freighters started to disappear we suspected space pirates. But the elite guards we sent never returned. Neither did the ships or the cargo. Something was out there, in the black, waiting.

We were not a warring people. We had no enemies, no civil war and very little crime. That was why we had been passed over. We had no value. Our soil wasn't worth mining. They couldn't move on our sand. Our food was traded to us. Our clothes were simple. Our buildings were made by outside hands. The ships we built were basic. But they day they came. They day they bought death down upon us. We had nothing they wanted. But the worst creatures you could possibly imagine didn't need any excuses to kill us. They did it because they wanted to.

I had to run when they came. I took my little brother and I ran for the hills. I never saw my father alive again. And then I lost my brother. I was heart broken. Dead. Those monsters had taken everything from me. Left me on my home world, now a lifeless rock, with no escape. They couldn't come down onto the sand so they sent their slaves, who massacred us mercilessly. And I ran, I searched. I ran so far. But I couldn't find him.

When the recovery and rescue ship arrived I had been alone for hours. My mother had run out, looking for him. She never came back. I was a wreck. The rescuers had to carry me to the ship. I couldn't walk. Over the next few days all I did was listen. I saw the destruction and devastation of my home world. The monsters were coming out in force and whole civilisations were falling. It was when they returned and blew my home world out of the sky I swore my oath. I would fight for my people. I would wipe the monsters from the sky.

I trained hard. I became a soldier for the time agency. A monster killer. A hero. I didn't make mush difference though. No one could. But I made just enough to keep myself sane. Just enough to keep myself from self destructing. Saving a life here, a life there. A child, a baby, a family. I remember my forty-first mission. I had failed to protect a family of four. All were dead but the man. He was being dragged off by heir servants. I knew what would happen to him. So I raised my gun and shot him.

All time agents had access to the universal list of the dead. I checked it every day. I found my mother and father two days after I was rescued. But I still haven't found my brother. He depended on me. He hung onto my hand and he trusted me completely. But I let him down. I let him go.

"Grey"