Acrid black smoke rose above the charred ground. The last few plasma fires burned across the battlefield, making the usually cool air almost unbreathable. The remnant of a small river ran nearby, but it's waters were choked with the bodies of the dead, native and alien alike. Others lay all around and about, all lifeless.
Alone and forgotten, the soldier sat on the most comfortable rock he had been able to find. His uniform, the military fatigues of the Trappist army, was tattered and burned and hung loosely from his lean frame. His rifle was lying across his lap, partly forgotten. His battle-scarred face strangely vacant as he took in what was around him.
This land had been beautiful once. Rich, fertile land giving over to the primal green of a deciduous forest. The result of years of careful, painstaking terraforming. Reduced in an instant to a crater filled wasteland.
This had once been their fresh start. This world, all the worlds in the Trappist-1 system, had once represented a new hope for humanity, somewhere they could start again. But then there had been the water wars and those who had stayed in the Solar system had begun demanding more from the colonies. This had escalated into all-out war between the colonists of Trappist-1 and the Solarans.
The soldier had no idea where Earth was in the night sky but, as it was over thirty-nine light years away, he would be unlikely to see it even if he did. He could, however, see Kaiyō, the world that had once been Trappist-1G, shining like a sapphire in the black. He had been born on that planet. Had gone to school there, played there. And when the Solarans had invaded, he had joined the army to defend it.
It had all come to a head here, on Trappist-1F, the jewel of the system, the world they had once called Hoffnung. He missed his home, but knew he could not go back there. Not if it was anything like here. The soldier could not bear to see the once blue oceans polluted with the machines of war, the bodies of the dead. Like the ones that lay everywhere around him.
The soldier heard a noise behind him and, on instinct, turned towards it, his rifle raised and ready. Another man stood there, this one wearing the uniform of an officer of the United Earth Forces. He too had a weapon, a pistol, which was pointed straight at the soldier.
Neither of them moved. Both were waiting for the other. Then the soldier looked again at the bodies that lay in the dirt. Both Solaran and Trappist. From different worlds yet all the same. All human.
Slowly the soldier lowered his rifle.
'Nasty bloody business,' he said.
The UEF officer lowered his own weapon. He smiled a small, sad smile.
'Ain't that the truth,' he replied. The officer sat down beside the soldier and, together, they waited for the small sun to rise.
