He was blind - and he was pretty sure it was permanent. He'd had the misfortune of looking up when the sky fell in and the galaxy went mad: that is, when the heavens lit with light so blinding it seared his retinas raw. He heard from others, those around him, those who weren't blinded, that it seemed to strobe, to flash, waver and strengthen. Some of those around him were soldiers, and they said it meant there was more than one explosion.
None of them had answers as to what was exploding, so bright, so close, and what it meant.
None of them needed answers to the last question. What it meant was that everything was upside down, and when the metal rain started, it meant that what started as standard busy day for the Calth muster had become a nightmare.
He struggled through the insanity that descended, hearing everything that happened. Hearing the distant percussion of gunfire, wondering who was shooting at whom, asking, asking, asking the supply clerk from Numinus who was helping - dragging him, really - along.
She didn't know. She didn't know. All the radios were dead silent, and the detachments of the Army, they didn't know anything either. All she knew, she kept repeating, was that a fugging starship fell out of the sky onto Numinus. Kept saying it. He didn't see it. Hadn't seen it. Couldn't see it. But he felt it, even though Numinus was fifty miles away, he felt it when the ground leapt up and knocked them all flat, when his gut clenched and churned at the overpressure and the concussion wave of the impact slammed them a dozen feet sideways.
He didn't see it, but oh he believed it.
Updated because I called the Army the Guard. Woops.