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Rain fell everywhere, washing blood and gore through the city like a grotesque flood. Bodies were strewn about everywhere, some buried in rubble, others piled in streets and fairly intact buildings. Some of those bodies were encased in armor. Others belonged to those who wore robes. Many more belonged to those who wore clothing of some form. Most carried weapons, but some were unarmed. They were all of different species, coming from all walks of life. None of it mattered to the salvage teams, who simply cleared grotesque conglomerates of debris, weapons, and body parts, and hauled away corpses.
Rain fell everywhere, putting out the fires that still hadn’t been extinguished. This was far from the only time the city had seen so much violence. Only months earlier, the city was shaken by a violent coup attempt that failed after an exponentially more brutal crackdown. Rumor had it that some foreign infiltrators had tried to take advantage of the chaos to conduct their own assassination, but their attempt failed. This time, there was no need for rumors, at least in that regard. Everyone knew off-worlders initiated the attack, but very few people, either here or at home, knew their true purpose. They weren’t terrorists, blindly targeting innocent people to send a twisted message. They came to save a friend.
Rain fell everywhere, but it didn’t matter to the crew of a small freighter that was already in hyperspace, heading farther and farther away from the planet where they had all suffered so much agony, so much loss. Silence reigned in the ship, weighing everyone down like a thick sheet of lead. There was no conversation, and no one made a move to break the quietude and help the other survivors come to terms with their failure.
Failure. It was such a perfect word to describe how they all felt. They arrived on this distant, rainy world to rescue the one person who could save the galaxy, but their rescue mission went nowhere. Instead, almost their entire force was brutally cut down, and they made no progress at all in finding that prisoner. There was no use in still searching, especially when they were outnumbered, outgunned, and deep in unfamiliar territory.
The fight was over. They had lost.