Two ships burn bright off the shoulder of the planet, screaming out of superluminal and ablaze with a thousand colours. They careen into the upper atmosphere, spinning in a dance of death, still fighting until they split apart and the forces of the universe shred their bodies and throw them into the surface of the planet.
One burns a hole through a range of mountains, its nose nestling past the crust and into the mantle. The other boils an ocean away with its fury and breaks apart the ocean floor into a vast crevasse.
On both wrecks there are survivors, and none of them have their appetite for waging war dulled by the cataclysmic crash. They haul themselves from their smouldering ruins and look around at the untouched nature about them and wonder how they can use it to continue their endless bloodshed.
Paddy Dobson
6th September 2022