A Verdancy War Chronicle – Circa 2217 CE
The grill was already hot when Clancy lit his last cigarette.
Not for dinner. Not for celebration.
This time, the heat had only one purpose.
Betty — a six-tonne grillrig — sat hissing in the center of the cul-de-sac, venting pressure through a cracked smoker pipe. She was built with a John Deere Mark I turret, a dismantled furnace core, and Clancy's old smoker, welded with the molten spite of a man who had nothing left to lose.
The sky overhead pulsed green.
The bloom was close.
Clancy took a slow drag, eyes bloodshot behind scratched safety glasses, and stared at the spot where the lawn had once ended — now just a wet, rippling carpet of chlorophyll lies.
But he didn't see the chlorophyll.
He saw his old porch.
And the boots sitting by the screen door.
His wife's gardening wellingtons. The hikers he got his boy for his birthday.
Empty. Hers with the mud stains that never came out, his, with the double-knot he always did, because it was "easier" - even if he could never untie them afterwards.
The Verdancy took them both in the first wave.
Didn’t kill them.
Took them.
Clancy saw them walk outside together that morning — his son, skipping, holding his mother's hand — and he saw them stop in unison.
They never screamed.
Just smiled.
Turned.
Walked barefoot into the woods, vines coiling up their legs like they’d always belonged.
He never found them.
Not really.
But he’d seen shapes in the hedges.
Heard the echo of a laugh that sounded almost right.
Once, he saw a shadow grilling in his backyard that looked a little too much like him.
He never set foot in the house again.
So when the evacuation order came down for Proxima Ridge, Clancy didn’t hesitate.
He waved the boys off.
Loaded their ships with propane, tools, hotdogs, and enough 36-stroke nanolubricant to fuel a battalion's worth of fusion-hedgers.
And then he towed Betty into the driveway one last time.
“Ain’t gonna be much of a retirement party,” he muttered,
“but I’ll send ya off with a bang.”
The grill groaned as he loaded her.
Lawnmower fuel. Fire starter logs soaked in bourbon.
Two tanks of compressed propane.
A coil of magnesium ignition wire from his old welding kit.
One photograph, laminated with tape:
His family, before everything fell apart.
Fourth of July.
Her, grinning - soda in hand. She never did drink. His boy, smiling and waving at the photo.
He tucked it under the lid.
And finally, 12 ounces of antimatter, stabilized with a Penning vacuum trap - all contained within an old Bud can he had laying around.
“Time to get loud, baby girl.”
The bloom arrived like a wave.
No sudden crash — just slow, hungry saturation.
The trees folded forward.
The roads cracked with roots.
The air sweetened, thickened.
And then the voices began.
“Clancy.”
“Come back inside.”
“They’re waiting for you.”
“You were a good father. You did your best.”
“It’s time to rest.”
He didn’t look.
Instead, he pulled the igniter cord once — slow and smooth.
Betty purred like a dragon clearing its throat.
“Ain’t no rest for dads who don’t finish the job.”
The first vine curled over the hood of a neighbor’s truck.
Then dozens.
Hundreds.
Thousands.
Shapes formed in the bloom — faces.
His wife’s silhouette on the lawn.
His son standing in the driveway, holding a burger like he’d just taken a bite.
“We forgive you, Clancy.”
“Come sit with us.”
He flicked the switch.
A dozen valves screamed open.
Bertha bellowed.
And for a moment, there was nothing but light.
The evac fleet was five clicks up when the white flash broke through the clouds.
Sensors screamed.
Cameras fried.
One old vet whispered, “That bastard really did it.”
Two seconds later, the hyperdrives spooled, and the last of the ships made the jump to the quiet sector that will eventually form the foundation of the DAD DIVISION.
Six seconds later, the shockwave hit.
The upper atmosphere buckled.
Trees were turned into matchsticks.
One of the moons shifted its orbit.
The planet cracked.
Split in half, by the sheer force of the annihilation of one beer can's worth of antiparticles.
A scar of molten earth tore down the equator of Proxima Ridge, venting smoke and dad-fueled vengeance into the void.
Betty — and Clancy — gone.
But the bloom?
Burned off the face of the broken planet. The soil, now glass.
The sorry facsimiles of his boy and his wife were gone too.
He freed them. And for him, that was plenty.