‘After Umbara’

Umbara still glowed. It did so millenia before the war, and will do so long after every single creature that witnessed this massacre has perished.

The jungle pulsed in slow waves of color, violet reeds, blue-veined trees, fungi that breathed light into the mist. The air was thick and wet, carrying the smell of rot, ozone, and old fuel that never quite burned off.

The first outpost emerged from the fog like a corpse surfacing.

Durasteel walls leaned inward, bent by impact and time. Vines crept through firing slits. A Republic emblem clung to the gate, its edges blackened by blaster scoring. Some wildlife tried to get into the base, yet only scratch marks were visible. Durasteel did its job. Wind moved through broken panels, producing a low, hollow whistle, almost like breathing.

Inside, boots lay where they’d been kicked off. Helmets rested on bunks, visors spiderwebbed. Power packs were drained, their faint warning chirps long dead.

No bodies. Just what was left behind when the troops didn’t have time to clean up.

The gunship came next.

It lay half-buried in the mud, split open along its flank, one wing snapped and swallowed by glowing undergrowth. The hull was scorched black, streaked with dried fuel that smelled sharp and metallic even years later.

The cockpit canopy was gone.

Inside, the pilot’s seat hung sideways, restraints cut clean through. Consoles were frozen mid-warning, faint, rhythmic beeps still echoing from a dying power cell, ticking like a distant heartbeat.

Past the wreck, the visitor found the medic station.

White panels stained dark, the smell here different. Antiseptic long gone sour, mixed with rust and wet earth. Empty bacta canisters lay cracked open, their residue dried into pale streaks across the floor.

A stretcher frame had been dragged halfway outside, one leg broken, left where it finally became too heavy to move.

A cracked speaker on the wall emitted a faint hiss whenever the wind shifted, as if trying to finish an announcement that never came.

The trench line stretched away into fog, walls pocked with blaster impacts at shoulder height. Footprints had hardened into the mud, frozen in retreat and advance both. Umbara’s plants had grown around them, preserving the shapes instead of erasing them.

Someone had placed a helmet on the edge of the trench. Not dropped. Placed. Facing the jungle.

As night fell, the sounds changed.

The distant hum of insects. The wet click of plants closing. Metal creaking as temperature shifted.

The smell of fuel faded, replaced by damp soil and bioluminescent pollen. The war was being absorbed, slowly, patiently.

And as the visitor turned back toward their ship, the jungle lights dimmed behind them, not from darkness, but from the plants folding in, sealing the battlefield away again.

Like it always had.

Red line

The sportsbike gleams under the parking lot lights like a weapon. Matte black, engine still hot. Jake stands beside it, helmet dangling from one hand, watching his reflection ripple in the tank’s curve. It’s the same bike his brother rode, the same model, same color. The one they called the Phantom.

A year ago tonight, his brother didn’t make the turn on County Road 12. Jake wasn’t there. He was supposed to be, but he’d backed out, said he was tired. He’d heard the sirens from his apartment balcony and didn’t know yet what they meant.

He runs a glove across the handlebar, feeling the texture of the grips, remembering the weight of his brother’s hand, how they’d race side by side, engines howling like something alive and hungry.

The keys are in the ignition. The salesman had been eager, said this model was smoother, faster, safer. As if that mattered.

Jake swings a leg over, settles into the seat. The night air smells like rain and gasoline. He hits the starter. The machine shudders awake with a sound that lifts the hairs on his arms.

He pulls out onto the road, past the edge of the city, where the asphalt opens wide and the streetlights fall away. The wind hits his chest hard, snapping the ghosts loose.

At a stoplight, he looks left, the road where his brother went down is a dark scar against the hillside.

When the light turns green, Jake leans forward, twists the throttle, and rides straight past it. Not fast. Not slow. Just enough.

The redline hums under his palms like forgiveness.