The Sky Rained Fire

It was the day the sky rained fire. It was the day the sun died. It was the day THEY came.

First were the booms and crashes. Great impacts seemed to come one after another. Giant bollides ripped through the sky, crashing into the defensive bases around the world. The impact were targeted. No nuclear or antimatter weapons were used. Just rocks. Really, really big rocks.

While that might be kind because there was residual radiation, it was also cruel because the sky turned black and blotted out the sun. Impacts as great as those on that day send massive shock waves, but also incredible thermal pulses: fires ignited in the forests and in the shattered buildings. The fires produced smoke. And the smoke blackened the skies. The blacked skies blotted out the sun. The warmth of the sun denied, the world froze.

That alone might have doomed us. It might not have, too. A technological species is truly hard to destroy: we are like the fungus of the universe. A gift once contracted by a world that would keep on giving.

However, THEY were not satisfied with merely bombarding our military installations, our industry and our spaceports. They wanted to be sure. They wanted to eradicate us.

Before the skies blackened, immediately after the impacts, lances of light stabbed from on high. They vitrified swathes of our budding grounds. A vicious and nasty act: they killed the young. They were obvious from orbit. They could not be mistaken. In so do so, the enemy burned their own people. Vile, vile beings.

The communal matriarchs sang a dirge of death, depression and defeat. We joined in. The harmony and meter of our song careened off in odd and devilish ways. Hateful, spiteful and seeking vengeance, our song also acknowledged our probable genocide. Such evil. Such evil was being visited upon us.

This was not enough though.

The enemy came down upon our nest world and sought out ever last one of us. None were to be allowed to survive. Burned and fried and consumed by fire. They used beam weapons designed to burst anything, anything! they touched into flame. They meant for no part of us to survive.

When we looked into their orbs, we could taste the hate. There would be no escape. Under no circumstances would they allow any of us to live. These foul and disgusting humans. They intended our utter demise.

Here I was, a pseudo pod extended, firing a plasma rifle and hoping to kill off as many of them as possible. I'd given up on capture: prisoners were no longer of use. Any of them we captured, they simply dropped a rock on from orbit, obliterating where they were being kept. They denied us the ability to even meet them on something of even terms: there was no way to recapitulate our losses.

I burbbled my death song when I saw the squad of humans coming towards me. I could not take out so many and my war-sibs were in too bad of condition to help me now. I dropped a memory blob and sent it off. It ought to make it back to the base. I kept some coagulated photo receptors on the blob as it scurried off and attempted to take my knowledge, memory and skills back to the matriarchs so they might know what I did and learn from what happened.

I watched and hoped I would be serve the collective at least that much. However, a beam of light lanced out and rendered it to ash. They could not get me directly that way, but they could stop me from reporting back in the traditional manner: memory blobs had to go above ground since the tunnels back to base were smashed.

I considered merging with my war-sibs, but knew that to be futile: they were too harmed. I might eat them if I lived long enough, but I could not become one with them and gain strength. They knew and sang me encouragement.

I slithered over to another firing position from our labyrinth bunker and started firing again.

Why were these humans out to kill us all? Their hate was ridiculous. They were ending an entire sentient race. Such foulness, such nastiness, such evil. We did not do that to them when we came and culled their Earth. We simply did what we and some other species did: we rounded up their excess population and used them as hosts for our young. Even their own wasps did something similar. And we helped them with their population problem. We don't return to a world unless it has a population problem again. Most never see a breeding cull ever again!

We didn't even take half! 3 billion isn't that much after all. AND! They were such bad hosts only one in ten was a successful bursting.

And then they came seeking our extermination.

Foul, foul humans.