“But you said you were on leave for Unification Day,” She said to him.

“I know baby, I know,” He responded, fastening the clasp on the collar of his uniform. “But you saw on the news, they’ve lost contact with the Mars colony, they’re sending my ship to see what happened.”

“Your ship… Captain… still haven't gotten used to that,” She said, unnecessarily straightening his collar and dusting off the new Captain’s epaulets.

“You and me both, love you honey bee,” He told her as he exited the front door of their town house, where a flash of light on the horizon caught his eye. “What the hell?”

The front of the house faced west and it was still too early for sunrise, so the sight of the sky brightening to almost dawn before darkening, then repeating every fifteen seconds left him dumbfounded.

“What is it?” She asked. As he watched pale blue dot crest the horizon with twin shafts of light jetting from either end, he knew instantly what it was.

He grabbed his wife, using his body in a futile attempt to shield her from what he could never stop.

As the northern shaft of light descended down, everything that was alive was turned to ash in an instant.

2346 – Colony Ship Hope
Sol System Asteroid Belt

“What we're looking at is a computer model of how PSR J8324, what my chief astrogator is calling ‘Vishnu’, entered our solar system opposite from where we are now.” Captain Jackson Campbell told those gathered on his ship's control centre.

Amongst those gathered were the Captains of the two other colony ships and the crew of a mining freighter.

“You’ll have to forgive me but I failed my high school astronomy class, what is a PSR whatever it is?” The freighter captain asked.

“It’s a pulsar, or more accurately, a rapidly spinning neutron star.” Captain Campbell started to explain. “Imagine our sun, which is one point three million kilometres in diameter, scrunched down to the size of Texas. All that mass in such a small space creates incredibly strong gravity, heat, light, and deadly exotic radiation.”

The captain stood there silently, slowly letting what was explained sink in. With all questions answered, everyone watched the computer model play out.

‘Vishnu’ approached the solar system along the orbital plane of the planets at incredible speed, passing within a few million kilometres of Jupiter, it's gravity taking hold of the system’s largest planet, flinging it out of the solar system before slicing through the asteroid belt and slamming into Mars. Everyone gathered let out a collective gasp as the first of the pulsar’s deadly shafts of light and radiation pass over Earth repeatedly. As Vishnu passed Earth at a wider berth than it did Jupiter, the gravity could still be felt by the small planet as it ripped it apart, spilling the molten core out into space. In the corner of the projection was a clock, telling everyone that what they saw took place over less than a week.

“I’ve seen enough,” One of the other Colony Ship Captains said, walking over to the holographic projection and shut it off. “Now what?”

“We’ve been sending out broadcasts calling any surviving ships, and so far we’ve only received responses from two isolated mining platforms that are near us now, and this Captain’s freighter...” Campbell said, pausing so he could will himself to continue. “We’re all that’s left of Humanity.”

“Before we start saying that, I want to know how we missed this, why was there no warnings?” One of the freighter crewman asked.

“Despite all our advanced scanning tech, space is just too huge to monitor everything. Our analysis of the Pulsar, which is now locked in orbit with our sun, was first discovered two hundred years ago, and should be passing by our system harmlessly a light year distant.” Campbell told him. “Something out there, something massive, something we can’t detect, was able to divert a bloody pulsar towards us at a speed that would have made any warnings moot. I’d love to know why too, but we have bigger problems right now, on all our ships there's twenty-eight thousand, six hundred and twenty-three people. We need to focus on survival.”

Everyone gathered nodded in agreement.

“OK, Captain,” Campbell said turning to the freighter captain and his crew. “There’s enough cryopods for your crew and the miners, but you’ll have to be split up among the three colony ships, and you’ll have to leave your ship behind.”

“Do we have too, she’s a good ship,”

“She doesn’t have an interstellar drive, and there's no way to dock her with the colony ships, sorry Captain.” Campbell explained. “She will have a purpose though, we’re going to place a military grade transmitter on her and have her transmit a repeating message in case anyone else survived but were unable to contact us, telling them where we’re headed if they can follow.”

“If that’s what is going to happen to her, I can live with that.”

“Next question, do we tell the people already in cryo what just happened?” The third colony ship captain asked.

“Tell them now and it’ll just cause a panic, tell them later, at least they’ll have their new home to focus on.” Campbell said. “But this isn’t something that someone can decide unilaterally, I vote no, anyone vote differently?” Campbell stated, then looked his fellow Captains in the eyes, but got no response. “Ok then, Lieutenant Bhatia, arrange for the transport for everyone that isn’t staying on board to where they need to go, then contact engineering about that transmitter.”

Lieutenant Jasminder Bhatia nodded in acknowledgement of her order. Brushing a lock of jet black hair out of her eyes, she set to work.

It didn’t take long to get everything situated for their long journey to Wolf 1061c. In her cryogenic suit, Jasmine, as she liked to be called, to the great annoyance of her parents, walked along the long row of cryopods, stopping two pods away from her own.

Activating the status screen of the two pods, she checked the vitals of her parents, Rasleen and Akal Bhatia, which read stable and in the green. Satisfied, she went to the control station next to her pod and opened a com link to Captain Campbell.

“Everyone tucked in over there?”

“Yes sir,” She said, looking over at her sleeping parents and smiling.

“Ok, I'm going to activate my pod, the navigation systems of the Courage and Renewal, are slaved to your console.” He told her. “Jasmine, the fate of humanity is in your hands.”

“Don't worry, Jack, I got this, sleep well, Sir.”

“You as well, Lieutenant, Campbell out.”

She waited for her terminal to tell her that all souls were in cryogenic suspension before she started entering in the commands needed to plot their course to Wolf 1061c, but stopped short of entering in the final command.

While she didn't fully understand the technology behind the cryopod system, she knew that when under suspension, for all intents and purposes, you were clinically dead.

Technically, she was the last human alive, and that significance wasn't lost on her. Stepping away from her terminal, Jasmine walked over to the small rectangular view port. Through the polarised glass, she looked towards the sun, now with a tendril of plasma linking it with the pulsing blue dot that had snuffed out human civilisation as they knew it.

Glancing back to her parents, both devout Hindus, she wondered what they would say when she told them what happened, and what they would think that it was their daughter that inadvertently named the pulsar by quoting from the Bhagavad-Gita when she saw Earth torn apart.

Turning away from the window, she returned to the console and entered in the final command. It would take about eighty-three years to travel the thirteen-point-eight light years to their destination. Originally discovered in 2015, 1061c was thought to have been tidally locked with its parent red dwarf star because of how close it was to its star, and even if it had an atmosphere capable of supporting human life, would either be too hot on one side, or cold on the other, with only a thin strip of habitable zone on the terminator.

That all changed a hundred years ago when telemetry from one of the first deep space probes sent out into the black with the newly invented interstellar drive which made travelling between stars with generational crews possible. 1061c wasn't tidally locked, in fact, the temperatures were perfect, the atmosphere was breathable, even with its higher oxygen content. It even had a moon.

More detailed information wouldn't come though, as contact was lost with the probe before it could enter the system, but that was all that was needed to begin working on plans to colonize it.

Now, despite recent events, a century of planning and preparation was coming to fruition, but instead of making humanity an interstellar species, it would be its salvation.

Stepping into her pod, she attached the cryotubes to her suit and activated the suspension system, all the while cursing whatever God responsible for the near death of humanity.

83 Years Later
Equus – Ponyville

Twilight sat peered through her telescope into the night sky. This night’s target being a binary star that could barely be seen through the veil, a vast swath of exceedingly tiny dust particles that formed a belt between Equus and Conuus, the second and third planets in the solar system.

This binary star system had become something of a curiosity in the astronomy community when, some time ago, long before she or even her father were born, suddenly became dimmer than it already was thanks to the veil, and was joined seemingly overnight with a blue pulsar. Pulsars don't just appear out of nowhere, and the mystery has never been solved. It made for good stargazing, though. Twilight thought.

Almost out of her sight, she noticed a flash of light, moving her telescope slightly, she focused in on its source, the upper edge of the veil. Using her magic, she amplified the magnification of the telescope far beyond what it was originally capable and saw three silver tubes, two of which were breaking apart. The third was getting bigger, very very fast

“What is that?” She said aloud.

“What is what, Twilight?” Starlight asked.

“I don't know, but something is coming our way.”

Author's Note

That is the video that inspired this story. It's an interesting documentary.

I've tried to keep things as accurate as my limited understanding of science can muster, but as this A) a Sci-Fi, B) a Pony-Fic, some supernatural things will creep their way in.

Wolf 1061c is a real exoplanet, only discovered last year.

As for why the pulsar was called Vishnu, google "Now I am become death, destroyer of worlds"