Homecoming

“Promise me you’ll come back,” his wife had pleaded, “whatever it takes.”

Captain Baker studied the viewscreen image of the Celestia asteroid base. Over fifty thousand men, women and children called it home. The military called it 'strategically vital to the war effort.’

At Baker’s terse command, the antimatter missiles were unleashed. Rock and flesh alike boiled into space as, briefly, the light of two suns burned in the system.

- - -

She ran forward as her husband walked through the door at last. He’d survived! But when she saw his eyes she stopped, for who had returned she did not know.