A War With Humanity

As I close my eyes, and open my mind I can still see my home. My special place glistening with blue water as far as the eye can see. Where the water is so clear you can see the bottom from a hundred feet out. The wind was pure, clean and crisp. Sand unadulterated and fresh, John and I were the only ones that ever came. That was before they arrived.

The first time I ever saw them was one day in my special place. John and I had just finished a race around the island. He won of course. John was always better at me in everything. The teachers liked him more, he had better grades, and even my parents liked him more. We were seemingly incompatible, but John and I always had something in common.

It appeared like a star streaking through the sky. A lumbering giant metal container foreign to such a beautiful place untainted by industry. John and I both stared in awe.

"What do you think it is?" John asked, "This space is a restricted no-fly zone."

John always knew these kinds of things; his father was a captain in the UPA, and kept up with these things. The only thing I really had over John was a family. Ever since his mother died his father was never the same. After six months of mourning his father enlisted in the Universal Protection Agency, and John pretty much became my adopted brother.

"It looks like a class M space ship, but why is it here?" I replied, attempting to sound smart.

"No," he said, "it’s going too slow. It has to be a class L, look at the writing on the side." Sure enough in a strange writing on the side looked like the marking for a class L ship.

After another few minutes of staring I said, "It looks like it’s going to crash, we should go warn them." And then we were off swimming back home, right where the ship was heading. That was the last time my memories of my home were pleasant.

That was 20 years ago, the end of my childhood, and the beginning of the war. The aliens were from a galaxy that was eight thousand light years away; it took them twenty years to make their trip. After their crash landing on the planet they were introduced into our society with great enthusiasm. Everywhere was flooded with exclusive stories about these strange new visitors, who were coming more by the day. By the end of six years they had already created a colony for their planet on a small island. The colony grew slowly, yet surely, and started gaining power within the Universal Union. Soon they had control of a total of 18 large islands in the Leau Sea. I watched this all unfold from my private room at the UPA academy.

John and I had both done well in school. We were the top two in our class, you can imagine who was in front of who. The academy had accepted us with open arms, and we gladly agreed to their generous offer. With dreams of glory and fame of military service deep within us, we departed our picturesque home. While John excelled in the physical part of the academy, my true talents started to shine as soon as I was assigned as squad leader. I was able to utilize others strengths, and compensate for their weaknesses, as well as my own. I finally got to feel how John felt all those years before: in charge and aware of it.