There was nothing to be afraid of. He knew it, but it didn’t matter.

It was the noise more than anything. He sat on his mother’s lap with his hands over his ears, her hands cupped over his. Gareth sat straight up on the blanket next to their father, the remnants of their picnic scattered around them—reusable plates smeared with potato salad and the carcasses of two roast chickens. A bottle of wine poked its neck out of the wicker basket. A pan once full of brownies sat empty—not one square left.

All along the hill, hundreds of other families sat, listening to the symphonic band below trilling out a bombastic version of the 1812 Overture, and then Into the Great Beyond, a piece written specifically for this occasion. Sparklers spritzed and sputtered from the hands of twirling children oblivious to just how close they were to getting burned.

And then, when it was finally dark enough, the sky exploded. Like the steady volley of cannons from the deck of an ancient wooden galleon, the thunderclap of fireworks assaulted Leo’s ears as the embers burst and then turned to cold, dead ash drifting.

He shut his eyes, hoping that if he couldn’t see it, then he somehow wouldn’t hear it, but all that did was make it worse, taking the good—the bright and beautiful spectrum of light—and leaving the bad. So he opened them again to see the endless stretch of black above set afire with reds and blues and oranges like a flower bed blooming all at once.

He knew he should be happy. It was a party, after all. The anniversary of First Contact Day, honoring the moment the Aykari arrived and introduced humanity to the rest of the galaxy. People all around the world were celebrating the occasion the same way they celebrated most things: by blowing things up.

It was solely a human holiday—the Aykari saw no need for such revelry—though a member of the Aykari High Council always deigned to deliver a speech for the occasion, transmitted to every digital billboard and datapad planetwide. The speech was always the same, too: stating how honored the Aykari were to have established such a mutually beneficial partnership with such an admirable species, detailing all the advances that had been made together. The speech ended with the promise of forging an even stronger alliance in the future, one that would last for eternity. In the meantime, humanity could rest at ease, knowing the Aykari had its back, sort of like making friends with the biggest, tallest, most popular kid in class on your first day at school.

Off in the distance, so far away that Leo could barely make out the silver contours of its stabilizers and engines, an Aykarian transport could be seen heading spaceward, its holds no doubt laden with cores of ventasium. Leo pointed it out to the others in between the firework bursts.

“I wonder what they must think of all of this,” Grace Fender said.