Everyone is familiar with the creepypasta "The Gift of Mercy" right?  Here's a humanity's side view of the same event I wrote about a year ago on a sleepless night when feeling verbose and I felt like sharing tonight...

"The Burden of Vengeance" - Northern_winter

:/Command Admiral's Log

 It came with almost no warning.  At near relativistic speeds it appeared in the heavens, it's passing noted by our most distant probes as a fast-moving oddity in the Eridani sector.   Our strongest telescopes on Earth had picked it up a few seconds later, and dumped data to the Sol System Data Network. A light had flashed on a console in the greater Dallas-SanHouston Metroplex where technicians had pulled the data from the anomalous log.  Boredom had turned to fear as the meaning of the data dawned to the technicians of the Global Space Administration's oldest division.  Were they the only one's getting this? Panicked holocalls were made to other divisions.  SpaceComm3 in Moscow-korolyov and SpaceComm5 in Dongfeng were the first to respond, confirming the fears of SpaceComm1.  Like wildfire the information passed up the various chains of command.  SpaceComm commanders began reserving seats on outbound jumpships for themselves and their families.  At some point the information leaked to the outside world and global panic ensued.

 The markets crashed as traders withdrew from corporations that wouldn't exist a few hours later, transferring credits to offworld institutions in hopes that they would survive to re-invest.  In most of these cases they would never see it again.  People left their jobs and rushed to reserve space on the jumpships as well.  All outbound jumps were filled to capacity within a few minutes of the news breaking.  There was chaos at the spaceports as fights erupted.  Those that couldn't buy space on a jump attempted to force their way, and in one case had damaged the locking ring in the ship, dooming everyone aboard that vessel.  It survived only 48 minutes after primary ignition, then the structure failed at the ring and the internal pressure rent the hull open, venting atmosphere into the cold of space and suffocating every soul aboard.

 Everyone that had the means to do so, left.  Those that couldn't started uploading anything, everything VIA NeuralNet hoping to preserve some piece of themselves and their legacy from this invader that had doomed them all.  Research data, family histories, photos, holofilms and, in some cases, mirrors of consciousness' were sent in huge batches, taxing the Sol System's upload capacity.  They had tried to push 22 trillion lives worth of memory through a system designed to handle 1/3rd of that.  NeuralNet nodes crashed as they reached capacity and locked, leaving fragmented data and half completed uploads.  Countless freshly imprinted clones in off-world ships would later need destroyed when it was discovered they had half, or worse, a fragmented personality from these crashes.

 In the end, the citizens of the Terran Union's homeworld had 3 minutes from the moment the anomaly became visible in the night sky to it's impact.  Parting prayers and embraces were likely shared, though no log exists of this as the NeuralNet / Sol System Data Network interface was at complete lock-up at this point.

 Those of us off-world could only watch in horror as the cradle of creation was obliterated in a single impact.  What we initially thought to be a comet struck with the force of a billion of our long decommissioned nuclear bombs, destroying our homeworld.  Huge fragments of the Earth, torn apart in the impact, scattered away into the void.  Most were grabbed by the inexorable pull of Sol and drawn into it, burning up as they entered the corona.  A few managed to reach escape velocity and left our system, bound to tumble endlessly as jagged fragments until perchance they should come across another star and find their fiery end there.  These latter had their trajectories mapped and warnings were issued to any colonies near their paths.

 Despair, Denial, Fear.  All were felt in the days following the destruction of Earth, but the scientists kept working.  Were there other comets following this one? Why hadn't we seen it before?  The data that could be gleaned from the sensors that had been focused on the comet was scrutinized for any info we could use, and had revealed an anomaly.  Structures. Apparently artificial structures.  Structures that resembled the drives of our jump ships now fleeing the tumbling remnants of a destroyed Earth.

 As Command Admiral of Terran Expedition Forces, this information was brought to me, and a new emotion entered the field.  Anger.  Seething anger.  An emotion long thought to have been successfully "bred-out" by the geneticists back on Earth.  The destruction of our homeworld was purposeful and planned.  I'd ordered the scientists to map the trajectory of the weapon in reverse in order to find the orchestrators of our calamity.  It pointed to a freshly discovered region on our charts, and an extremely distant main sequence star.  A star that apparently had intelligent life.  It would take us decades to get there.

 I called a meeting with the collective of Vice Admirals and we discussed our options.  In the end the vote was unanimous.  We would take from them what they have taken from us.  A homeworld.  We would modify  our ships in transit to meet our needs on arrival.  The knowledge of our warlike ancestors was retained in the network and would need re-learned, but we are a patient people and re-learn it we would.  Our mining vessels possessed lasers that could bore several thousand meters beneath a planets crust from orbit.  Our ore carriers can be used as personnel carriers, and both were heavily shielded for use in the asteroid belts.  The decades in transit will provide us the time needed to re-learn our lost art of war.  We lit the fusion engines of our fleet and headed out.

 I ordered a channel opened to all ships in the cluster, for narrow-beam rebroadcast to the distant star.  "We know you are out there, and we are coming."

:/end log

 Thanks for the listen,  - Nw -

Well done. Do you think you'll write more?

Thank you.  I don't know if I'll write more.  The original "Mercy" was a great short, it just always seemed (to me) to shout for the "other side's" story.  Would mankind find these repentant extraterrestrials and realize the obliteration of their homeworld and decimation of their species was a simple misunderstanding due to the extraterretrial's perception and apparent underestimation of humanity's ability to change, or would the extraterrestrials find their world subject to a rain of drop ships and shock troopers crying for whatever life-giving fluids the alien bastards bore instead of blood?

There's so many possibilities when all that lies before you is a blank slate.

  - Nw -

Thanks OP. Long time Sci-fi fan here. Would love to read more.