“[WP] Aliens, offended at constant portrayals of themselves losing in movies, invade Earth solely to prove to humanity that no, in an actual war they would crush us.”
The relativistic kill vehicle did not destroy the Earth, in the sense that the planet ceased to exist. It is more accurate to say that the weapon rapidly rearranged the world into a new distribution of elements in roughly the same shape. Of course, all living creatures were dead in a few imperceptible fractions of a second.
There was less detritus than one might expect. Gravity, it turns out, is fairly potent. Some of the ejected matter was along the weapon’s entry point, which in a great display of the universal appeal of irony, was centered on the former city of Washington D.C. The majority, however, clustered over the exit in the former Indian Ocean.
By some degree of chance and a lesser degree of good piloting, the International Space Station managed to dance around the newly minted molten moons long enough for the crew to develop a working theory as to what had just happened.
Colonel Michael Adams, United States Air Force was the mission lead, and due to recent events, the Supreme Commander of all Earth Forces. He turned to his multinational task force of three and spoke grimly,
“Ladies and Gentlemen, we have not yet begun to fight”