Thanks for the comment, and your thoughts are spot on. I can see now where readers would assume obliteratio the only impetus rather than the retrieval of the gold. I appreciate the thought and will apply that to a revision of the script.

This is a cute and deliberate attempt at a 2000AD style Future Shock, and it works pretty well. The only thing I might change is that the final reveal would have more punch if there was something in the text to suggest that the humans were aiming to retrieve the gold, rather than just wipe out the aliens.

It’s a natural assumption to make once the story finishes, but the broad strokes that the story is drawn in – appropriate to the genre! – mean that the fact that that detail is left to interpretation detracts from the twist. Until the final speaker is shocked to find the gold missing, it hasn’t been mentioned in a while, so obliteration seemed to be more the goal than gold!