Unheard Magazine Issue 3
Moon Dust by Adam J. Whitlatch
We never even saw it coming; the Caruu came down upon us like a summer rain - hard and fast. Their goal was to terrify us, to grind us into a weeping, pathetic pulp before destroying us, and they accomplished this with gusto when they destroyed the moon; Luna, a symbol of love and hope, the receiver of countless prayers of star-crossed lovers, the first of many goals facing every little boy that stares up into the night sky dreaming to be an astronaut. I’ll admit that even I wept when I saw the glowing, irradiated chunks of our moon slowly drifting apart, but the icy blood in my veins rose to a boil when the first Caruu fighters plunged through the glowing moon dust toward Earth at attack speed. Then the commander’s voice rang out over the loudspeakers, and the Old Man finally spoke the words that I had been waiting to hear, “All fighters to your Raptors!” The Caruu will never know just how well their plan worked in terrifying us, nor will they ever know just how badly they fucked up, but I’d like to think that they may have gotten a small inkling of that feeling when they saw over 200,000 screaming Raptors tearing through the stratosphere to meet them halfway. It is, as they say, ‘a good day to die’... but I have other plans.
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