Dancing in the Darkness

It was a cold and moonless night planet-side, the cities dark and desolate, only the glow of the dimly lit street lights and a passing searchlight strafing through the skies and piercing the dark, offering the only beacon of resistance to the black.
The Rebels were in town, their spaceships littered the outpost that surrounded the city as crews loaded up their gear, in the distance a small squadron of security drones patrolled the docking ring menacingly.


The noise of the ships as they blasted off from the outpost and into the skies was tremendous, loud and brash, engines rattled and thrusters whistled. Three Rifters bolted at speed in formation, closely followed by a Hawk and then a stealth bomber. A Myrmidon then listed slightly above the platform as its engines reached peak power before it awkwardly blasted into space. Lastly, a Tengu followed the gang into orbit, the quietness of this craft much more obvious from its noisy gangmates.

Some cold nights are translucent by reason of their coldness, as the outpost fell silent again a lone worker on the platform gazed into the skies, the trails of the ships still visible to the naked eye. He could see the empty spaces between the stars, the lights of the craft getting smaller and smaller until his gaze falls farther and farther into the blue-black deadness of the beyond, and the stars themselves begin to sink away into the void.

But then, like some kind of ancient firework display the night sky is alive, the calm is pierced by the light show and a crackle of noise booms loudly. Distant spaceships in dogfight, tiny dots brawling for superiority, trails of missiles, rockets and lasers blitz the sky. The show is amazing but the city sleeps. The platform worker, now joined by the rest of his crew watch in awe.

The workers look on and the gut wrenching realisation of what is above them hits them hard as one by one, explosion after explosion, crews and craft are lost as spaceships burn and tumble in the sky like winter's first snowflakes landing on the surface of some black pond which has not yet frozen, and the spaceships spin down, like snowflakes, down into the water, so murky up there that no one can tell whether they will simply melt away or drift to the rotten edge of the galaxies.


Moments later the night is restored and the show is no more.

Isenan VI

MB.