In general this story is not suitable for kids!!



Journal found among the ruins of _base_ Halinar 2064

March 17th 2061

I can’t believe they sent me to this _base_, it feels so far away from home. If I didn’t find this journal to write in I think I’d go mad. It feels strange having to write everything by hand but also sort of liberating. Let’s see, I don’t even know where to start. First my “commanding officer” is a complete ass. He is very strict about not letting me call home and keeps pushing us to exercise harder and harder. “A fit body means a fit mind” he likes to keep ringing in our heads. Yeah that’s nice Sarge! I’m lucky I even have the time to write in here. Hmm, what else. Well it has been quiet here, not a sign of any other life. The surrounding landscape is beautiful. The reservoir to the back of the _base_ is surrounded by mountains and directly in front of the _base_ is wild grasslands. At night the sky is lit up with what looks like thousands of tiny green explosions as the lightning bugs dance through the air. The _base_ itself is pretty cool, I’ve never seen a bigger hunk of _meta_l before. There are more turrets, and combat vehicles than I would have ever imagined. The Strogg definitely won’t have an easy time if they ever tried to take it. I hope the Strogg never come up here and decide to pick up camp and go away so I can go back home. I miss Violet so much. I can’t believe that I’m going to miss her seventh birthday. I have to keep remembering that I’m here protecting her. If the reservoir is compromised then we are all in danger. I can’t let that happen as little as I want to be here.

March 21st 2061

Another boring day of training and playing with the fancy equipment. I can’t stop thinking of Violet and wishing I was with her. Today I pulled out a picture of us at the lake. She was towing the back end of my kayak and dragging me along the sandbar of the island. People who were looking on had quite funny _expression_s, I think the last thing in the world they expected was to see a six year old towing around a twenty five year old man, haha. She made quite a good motor that little one! And not to shabby at tossing the ol Frisbee either. She has a gun with that arm! Nearly took my head off a few times, haha. My beautiful little Violet. She was so sad watching me leave, her little blue eyes were filled tears and her long brown hair was its usual tangled mess. Haha her hair used to get tangled in such strange ways that I’m sure that some people would consider the random loops and curls some kind of art. How her hair always ended up like that I’ll never know. Ah well, that’s my girl, haha. I want nothing more than to just scoop her up in my arms and feel her warm soft body clamp against mine.

April 3rd 2061

I haven’t had a chance to write in here for a while because the activity of the _base_ has been crazy. We have been hearing signs of the war in the distance. Boom Boom Boom like drums, there almost seems to be a rhythm to it. We haven’t actually seen any activity but we can feel the ground shaking under vibrations of the explosions. It really makes me nervous to think that the Strogg might be showing up here soon. I have never seen a real one before and I’m not anxious to. They sound quite horrible, chopping off their own limbs to replace it with weapons and mechanical enhancements. Some of the guys were saying that if you get captured by one they turn you into one of them. That they have assembly lines that chop off your limbs and replace them with their equipment. How sick is that? And if that isn’t your fate, you are sent to a factory to be processed as their food. Thinking about this makes me want to fight. I can’t let something like that happen to Violet. I will drive them all away by myself if I have to, I can’t let them take my little girl. Those horrid abominations! How can there be a God if he/she/it allows such deranged creatures to exist. What purpose could they possibly serve? They don’t deserve to live, every last one of them needs to be slaughtered!

April 9th 2061

Today we have seen the first of the Strogg. I have seen their heavy vehicles moving in the distance and I can feel them closing in on us. I feel so trapped being here. What if I don’t make it out of this? What if I can’t save Violet? I don’t want to die here to these things. And worse I don’t want to be turned into one of them, or be their food. We are on alert here at the fort and tripled the guard patrols around the _base_. I’m glad I’m not a part of the infantry. Hopefully they let me stay up in the recesses of the fort and snipe. I never thought I’d be able to kill a living being but how can these creatures even considered living beings. They are more _meta_l and mutation than any sort of natural creature. I think that somethin

April 11th 2061

Last entry I had to leave quickly. We had a red alert because a small force of Strogg attacked the _base_. I think they wanted to test us and scout out our _base_. I don’t think they care at all about their own. I saw my first Strogg through the scope of my gun. It was running along the grasslands towards the _base_ with around twenty others. Its face was wrinkled and gray, almost like that of an old person. Various tubes were in its skin and were attached to some sort of device that was stuck in its mouth. Its legs were not even flesh but looked like _meta_llic peg legs. Both of its arms were stumps with firearms attached. I couldn’t see its eyes well from that distance but from what I could tell they looked red or perhaps bloodshot. It was like something out of a nightmare. I have a feeling that this is only the beginning. The _base_ turrets quickly picked off the small group but I know there are going to be more, a lot more. I just hope to God or whatever force is out there that Violet never has to see one of those things.

April 15th

The combat has become really heavy. I don’t know how much more I’ll get to write, even now I’m lucky to get in every last word. The Strogg seem to have briefly pulled back but not without giving us a hell of a fight. The sky was red, orange and purple with all of the explosions and firearms. They have destroyed many of our combat vehicles and the engineers are working full time at repairing our turrets. We still have some fight left in us and we’re not going down easily. I have never been more frightened in my life. All around me I could see vehicles blowing up and people dying. I could see their open mouths but their screams were mute under the sound of the explosions. The stench of death mixed with the smell of sulfur. I’ve killed my first Strogg too. It was a driver of a heavy combat vehicle. It was driving towards our _base_ and unleashing a battery of weapons. I was able to get the driver in my sights and after two misses I was able to put one through its ungodly skull. I was able to kill a few others that were running on foot towards our turrets and some that were manning guns of the various vehicles. It was so horrible though, so horrible. I can’t come close to fully describing it. I don’t know how I’ll even be able to look Violet in the eye again. To know that such horrors could exist is beyond anything that I could have ever dreamed. I don’t know how this world can ever be the same.