What's Scarier Than A Sphere (pt. 2 - JH)

"Are you sure this it?" asked Shatbutt, staring through the ship's porthole. Shatbutt looked at Mezmar's reflection in the window and heard the nearly inaudible response: "It's not as I remembered."

They both looked through the window at a broken planet. Or half of it; thousands of pureblack shards were floating in orbit. Shatbutt and Mezmar watched as a fragment of the planet loosened and floated into the circling and silent black wake.

Mezmar floated away from the window and made a soft metallic tock as he hit the floor. Shatbutt did not know how to comfort the orb, but Mezmar's moment of mourning soon passed. With the same rumble of his first announcement, Shatbutt said "I join my cause to yours. Where you go, so do I. Where you die, so do I."

The dark orb floated to the door, and it buckled under Mezmar’s slow and incredible pressure. The fist-sized hinges cracked. The door collapsed. Mezmar hung in the opening.

Guards yelled down the hall and once they fired, Mezmar floated in their direction. Shatbutt sat stunned in the cell and could only hear the laser fire, the yells, and much worse, the sound of crushed armor and skull. When it became silent, Shatbutt went to the door and saw Mezmar on the foot of a fallen guard. The guard had passed out and lay tremoring as Mezmar rolled up his leg, snapping armor and leaving his leg a flattened bit of flesh in a pool of blood. The guard shook until Mezmar rolled over his face.