There is a strange feeling that comes after leaving a place you once called home.
By the time the decision had fully materialized, the combat pilot and the scout had already departed from our old C1 system. The system that, for a time, had been ours. The one whose static we knew by heart.
Only the salvager pilot remained behind. He stayed to watch the entrance, in case we changed our minds and decided to return. In case we chose to finish what we had started and finally destroy that citadel. In case “leaving” turned out to mean “not yet.”
He retrieved the remaining loot from the container, perhaps opening it for the last time, and then warped off into deep space. In thirty days, the container will self-destruct.
An explosion noone to witness. A final signal noone to catch. Just a quiet removal from the fabric of space, as if we had never been there.
The pilot will remain, suspended in a kind of dormant watch. Not truly present, yet not entirely gone. A silent placeholder in a system that is no longer ours.
Until he is needed again. On a new base. Wherever that base may be.