55/365 - Watery Grave
It’s the glowing catfish moustache that gives the only light down here, the fish’s lower lip tracing powdered silt on the ocean floor.
The dead eyes of dead faces stare eternally, skull-holes hollowed out by crab-things long ago. Each dog tag wrapped around bird skull furred with mold. Fistfuls of lariats and identification cards stick up out of the ground like exposed wiring and Barbie-doll gravestones. Magnetic strips discolor with algae. Barnacles clog the gun barrels. Long strands of seaweed reach up through ribcages with too many ribs.
Fore-armed is forsworn, said the recruitment packages. Join Earth’s Army to Help Bring Civilization to the Stars. First pick of the spoils. Beings signed up. Jelimorphs, hellicorns, annamen, retreads, and silicates. Even now and then an esper became corporeal, risking truedeath to join the fight and get a slice.
And now, down here under intense pressure in the blackness of an ammonia sea miles deep, bottom feeders nudge their bones. The soldiers are strewn across hectares of dull, smooth reef down here amongst the glowing fish that target carrion. Soldiers with many limbs and some with only a few. Soldiers with hard bones and soldiers with exoskeletons. Soldiers with tentacles and soldiers with articulated mandibles. Poverty-stricken, uneducated, and greedy. Their death is not a tragedy.
An entire shipload arced into orbit here with an exterial winch brushing too close to a moon that wasn’t on the charts. The explosion was instant and inside the shields. The ship opened wide and spilled nearly a million sleeping soldiers through the soupy atmosphere into the cold ammonia sea.
They never woke up.
Here they lie while battles rage and lovers love light years away on other planets. The ebb and flow of conflict and union continues to play its song across the stars.
While these dead soldiers are watched by a glowing constellation of fish.
tag
The dead eyes of dead faces stare eternally, skull-holes hollowed out by crab-things long ago. Each dog tag wrapped around bird skull furred with mold. Fistfuls of lariats and identification cards stick up out of the ground like exposed wiring and Barbie-doll gravestones. Magnetic strips discolor with algae. Barnacles clog the gun barrels. Long strands of seaweed reach up through ribcages with too many ribs.
Fore-armed is forsworn, said the recruitment packages. Join Earth’s Army to Help Bring Civilization to the Stars. First pick of the spoils. Beings signed up. Jelimorphs, hellicorns, annamen, retreads, and silicates. Even now and then an esper became corporeal, risking truedeath to join the fight and get a slice.
And now, down here under intense pressure in the blackness of an ammonia sea miles deep, bottom feeders nudge their bones. The soldiers are strewn across hectares of dull, smooth reef down here amongst the glowing fish that target carrion. Soldiers with many limbs and some with only a few. Soldiers with hard bones and soldiers with exoskeletons. Soldiers with tentacles and soldiers with articulated mandibles. Poverty-stricken, uneducated, and greedy. Their death is not a tragedy.
An entire shipload arced into orbit here with an exterial winch brushing too close to a moon that wasn’t on the charts. The explosion was instant and inside the shields. The ship opened wide and spilled nearly a million sleeping soldiers through the soupy atmosphere into the cold ammonia sea.
They never woke up.
Here they lie while battles rage and lovers love light years away on other planets. The ebb and flow of conflict and union continues to play its song across the stars.
While these dead soldiers are watched by a glowing constellation of fish.
tag