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February 14, 2229
Somewhere in Hyperspace

So this is my first journal entry, and the only reason I started keeping one was because Jenkins had one too many beers and got philosophical.

See, we were sitting in mess hall 7117 after training, kicking back and having a couple of beers, and we started reflecting on just how great the ol' "Valley Forge" is. Biggest troop transport in its class, powerful as hell and faster than shit on skates. Anyway, Jenkins started talking about how the really awesome think about the Forge isn't how powerful it is, but how robust it is. Sure, most of the one billion troops it carries are sleeping peacefully in cryo, but there are still about fifty million troops still awake and training, like me and Jenkins.

That number got him even more philosophical. 1 billion. A couple of hundred years ago, that many people was about a quarter of the entire human population in existence. Now we send that many soldiers to far-off worlds to go fight aliens. About half of them get to see home again. So that's five hundred million soldiers dead just like that. Jenkins, being a complete jerk when he gets philosophical, started ranting about how our lives have no meaning in the big picture: we're just casualty number four million six hundred fifty thousand and ninety, not Jimmy Jenkins from Aldebaran.

Anyway, he finally passed out and left me behind to shoulder the weight of his philosophy, and so I figured I may as well try and leave something for posterity behind to prove that Steve Lee of Proxima 7 was more than just a number. More than just another nameless soldier fighting and dying far from home. So here it is, my journal.

Where to start. . . well. My parents were doctors, and we emigrated from Earth to Proxima 7 beacause Earth was getting too crowded and expensive, and we wanted a fresh start. Proxima was where I grew up: it was where I learned to drive, where I had my first kiss and other things that followed, and where the Yor decided to start their invasion.

They hit us without warning: their heavy fighters had shot down our Defenders before we knew what was happening, and then their troop transports started dropping hunter-killers from orbit. Two billion people died in the next four days, including Doctors Crystal and Derek Lee. I, on the other hand, survived, was recruited into the resistance, handed a laser rifle and told to shoot it at anything that didn't have skin. Never fired it once: Earth sent in the cavalry first, and I became yet another refugee running away from the front lines of the Second Interstellar War.

Funny thing is, it wasn't my parents dying that made me join up. It was running away from that fight on that refugee ship. Something about that feeling of being totally helpless and running for your life that I didn't like. Decided I was going to go ahead and take my destiny in my own hands, something like that, be better to be able to shoot back than have to run all the time. I enlisted the moment the refugee ship touched ground again.

Boot camp was eight weeks of hell crammed into six: I can't remember a time when I wasn't cold, hungry, tired, or all three. But soon enough, I'd gone from "This is a plasma rifle, there are many like it but this one is mine," to "I solemnly swear to defend the Terran Alliance and all its interests from all threats domestic and foreign." A couple of hours later, I was on the Valley Forge headed to the front lines.

As "training cadre," we weren't put into cryo, but put into rigorous training: they can do a lot with cryo-hypno, but there are things you have to learn for yourself. I learned how to be a Combat Anti-armor and Tactical Support driver: flivver pilot. If you don't know what we do: take a hovercar, armor it up, and attach a big gun to the top. We're nowhere near as heavy as a real tank, but we're faster, smaller, we have better range, and we're more expendable. The last part is what makes us nervous, and why we get called "eggshells with sledgehammers."

Anyway, Jenkins is waking up, and he'll be totally insufferable when he's hung over, so I'll stop there. Will talk about more when there's more to say.

Ciao