New Flash Fiction: An Auspicious Introduction ¡

So I'm not quite sure what happened to Thursday (well actually I do know: it was lost in tech and comms problems hell here at the Grievous Angel office) but anyway one day late here is your latest dose of flash fiction. The piece is called An Auspicious Introduction and I must admit that I exchanged a number of emails with the author Ellie Snyder over whether we should use the word "Auspicious" or "Inauspicious" in case readers didn't realise the irony. In the event I've stuck with Ellie's original title and just added a sarc-mark (aka an upside-down exclamation mark) at the end.

About Ellie... after some prompting she replied "I'll say that I'm a student with a bit of a sci-fi obsession. I have only begun to try my own hand at writing short stories this past summer and am still finding my voice. This will be the first story I've sold, though another was accepted for publication on OMNI Reboot."
 
AN AUSPICIOUS INTRODUCTION ¡
by Ellie Snyder 

When mankind landed for the first time on an intelligently inhabited planet other than Earth it decided to do so right in the middle of a city, despite all better judgment. This was undoubtedly the action of the captain of the particular ship doing the landing, a Wallace Suthers, for he was an arrogant sod who liked to make an entrance, especially an entrance that would immortalize his name forever.

The ship descended through an opaque layer of cloud in a blaze of glory, all flame and shining metal and roaring noise. It came to rest in the center of the city, a public square of course, decided on after a quick glance by Captain Suthers at photos taken by the discreet imaging probes. The vapor dissipated slowly from around the ship and Suthers stood at the joint from which the exit ramp lowered, preparing himself for his grand entrance as an actor prepares to enter the stage.

After deciding that enough time had passed for the inhabitants to be sufficiently dumbstruck by the awesome display of manpower and ready to be introduced to a perfect specimen of the race, he signaled his men to lower the ramp, and to make sure the fog machine was running, for dramatic effect of course. The ramp hit the ground and he waited just a moment longer, to make his appearance all the more affective, then strolled regally down the slope amidst roiling vapor. He smiled largely and raised his arms, as if welcoming the inhabitants, though the roles should more logically have been reversed. “Hello!” He boomed, “I am-“

And then a bullet, or the alien equivalent of one, entered his brain. It was very unfortunate but the residents of the first intelligently inhabited planet other than Earth that we decided to meet had no desire to meet us. 

Or perhaps they simply had instinctively good taste.