Raze 2

J. Rockit- Taking Out the Trash

The past few weeks have not been fun.

Raze got the worst of it- he had to train the new recruits on strategy, how to shoot, control, and reload certain guns, and team bonding exercises. How he accomplished this all without speaking, I have no idea. I however, had to train them all on close quarters combat. It was so painful. All of them sucked except for that guy Ezreal, but even he wasn't anywhere close to where we need these guys to be. After three weeks, though, they've improved immensely. Right now, we're in the training dome where everyone watched Raze show off his mad combat skills on their first day. Everyone's goofing around after a long day of training. A few of them are having a paintball fight, Ezreal is stabbing a tree, and those two recruits that I was initially very impressed with are deeply engaged in conversation.

I see those two together a lot. They came here from the same military branch and it seems like they've been close friends for a while now. They're by far the best recruits here. One has reddish brown hair that he maintains in a short buzzcut, and the other has floppy white-blond hair that falls over his gray-blue eyes. I'm pretty sure the guy with the buzzcut was the guy that talked back to Dani on the first day. He's managed to avoid any more major conflict since then.

The sun's coming down fast- we're going to have to go inside soon. But just as I'm about to call everyone in, I hear the loud, distinct sound of glass shattering above us. I look up, and a huge alien ship is overhead.

"WE'RE BEING ATTACKED!" I yell, frantically taking my katana off my back. "GET YOUR WEAPONS!"

Everyone does what they're told. The recruits frantically exchange their paintball guns for real guns as Ezreal takes his sword out of the tree and buries it into the first alien's chest. I grab an ion cannon for good measure, and Raze grabs a shotgun.

Thank god we've been training for as long as we have- if the aliens had ambushed us during the first week of training, we'd be toast. As I'm slicing into as many aliens as my katana can make contact with at once, I hear two voices that definitely do not belong to any of the recruits or even to Raze.

"I thought these were supposed to be new recruits!" says one.

"Looks like they've been training hard. Wipe them out." replies the other.

My stomach drops as I realize these voices have to belong to the aliens. They can speak english? This is bad. Now they can intercept our communications, and we still wouldn't know squat about theirs if they speak in their native tongue. We've been trying for years to understand the alien language, but it's almost as if they change it completely every time we feel like we've made a major breakthrough. This species must be even smarter than we previously thought if they've figured out how to speak our language.

But now's not the time to be worrying about anything other than the task at hand. I shove my katana directly into an alien's face and push those thoughts aside momentarily.

I'm impressed with how the recruits are doing in combat. They've never fought actual aliens until now, but they've managed to kill almost all of the invaders. In fact, the remaining ones are starting to flee- they're trying to make their way back to their ship. We don't try to stop them, and soon enough the aliens are gone just as quickly as they came.

For a second, all anyone can do is stare at the alien ship in shock, and then at the few recruits that the aliens did manage to kill. I've never been in silence this heavy in my life.

"Well," says Dani after a minute or so. "Nice job, everyone. Do what you want now- feel free to go to bed whenever you please. You all get a day off tomorrow."

Everyone kind of vaguely nods, and the recruits slowly make their way back to their sleeping quarters. I doubt any of them will be able to sleep tonight. I know I won't.