The sky was red that evening.
Not sunset-red — not the warm, quiet hue Steve used to watch from his deck chair with a cold drink in one hand and a hand-rolled cigar in the other.
No. This was war-red. The kind that bled through the clouds, full of ash and orbital fire, lit by the dying screams of freedom-loving planets. You could taste it — ozone, burnt mulch, and the sweet rot of dying Verdant gardens.
Steve didn’t flinch.
He stood in his yard — boots planted in a dry, crater-pocked lawn he’d once fertilized with nothing but pride and nitrogen. His apron read:
KISS THE GRILLMASTER OR GET OUT OF MY YARD.
Behind him stood the sacred altar: a triple-barreled charcoal-and-propane hybrid beast welded from the husk of a Verdancy Rootspike transport and the charred skeleton of a Traeger XL.
Tonight, it was lit.
The rest of the platoon watched from a distance — crouched behind scorched hedges and what used to be the HOA playground. Sergeant Dale muttered into comms.
“What in God’s crabgrass is he doing…?”
“He’s grilling,” said Commander Rick, adjusting the dials on his hedge-trimmer rifle. “Steve always grills the night before a big push.”
“There’s literally a sporewave inbound, sir.”
“Yeah,” Rick said. “But that bastard makes a rack of ribs so good it could burn through Veilnet encryption.”
Steve worked the grill with holy precision: one hand flipping meat, the other adjusting a spice sprayer loaded with a classified blend of mesquite, paprika, and anti-photosynthetic agent D-17 — codename: RIBSAW.
Smoke curled into the twilight — thick with seasoning and defiance.
The sky howled.
And then — the first bloom touched down.
Tendrils reached up from the grass like fingers asking for forgiveness. Psychoactive pollen hissed through the air. The scent of lavender, motherhood, and false comfort.
Steve turned. Eyed them.
He pulled the cover off the side grill.
Inside: a claymore mine. Laced with barbecue skewers.
The first wave hit with a whisper — vines slithering through the smoke, trying to lull the men with emotive hallucinations. Whispering:
“It’s okay now.”
“You’ve earned rest.”
“Join the Bloom…”
But the smoke wasn’t just meat. It was war sauce.
And no cocktail of neuro-suppressants could cut through the sting of Steve’s secret marinade: Gasoline. Chili flakes. Testosterone.
The mine went off. Skewers screamed through the dark. Steve drew his sidearm — a battered .45 with “THE GRILL IS MY CHURCH” etched into the slide — and stepped into the breach.
He made his last stand there — in the smoke, in the spice, in the heart of the grill — defending humanity’s right to grill freely.
They never found his body.
Only a scorched apron. A pair of tongs. And a half-steak so tender, it made a grown man cry.
To this day, recruits in the 27th Terran Mowing Division are taught the first rule of War-Grilling:
Always preheat.
And never underestimate a man with a smoker and a cause.
The platoon won the battle.
The war burned on.
But Steve fed the fire.