Thirty Years After The Great War, A Soldier Tells His Story.

They told us it wasn't a war about water, but we knew better.

How could it not be? Have you ever seen a picture of that planet? The bright blue will almost blind you if you don't put on your special gamma-ray combat spectacles. And the parts that aren't blue are almost a perfect white from the water in their atmosphere. These creatures literally breathed water! Rumor had it their bodies were almost 80 percent of it. That's they kind of crazy shit you hear in combat. The tales your commanders will tell to try and de-glockerize the gockerizans you have been sent to kill.

Or, I should say, sent to be killed by. They lined us up in neat little rows, one behind the other, and told us to just keep going. We told them it was insanity, that it was a slaughter waiting to happen, but our words fell on deaf ears. Column after column was mowed down by their base cannon. I lost some good friends that day. Some of the best Glockerites you ever would have had the pleasure of knowing. I still hear their cries sometimes at night. I still see them in my dreams.

Why did they just march us straight at them like that? How could they not know they were getting 20 shots off for every one we could fire? I was only 19 years old, and I was terrified. We told them every time they flew over in one of their command ships that this was a turkey shoot, but even after three of their command ships were destroyed, nothing changed.

Continue forward the orders read. Increase your speed.

I can't claim to be a hero. I don't even remember firing the shot that was the one that destroyed their last base cannon. I just remember the cold. Cold that would freeze you down to the last froggio of your being. I was no braver, no smarter, no more worthy than any of my brothers left on the battlefield that day. Yet fate chose me as the one to live.

In the end we got their water. We installed Reagan as their leader and he gave us all the water we wanted. We started pumping carbon dioxide into their atmosphere and as soon as that shitty little planet of theirs warms up enough to support decent Glockerzians, we have a new colony.

I can't help but to think if it was worth it though. I know it sounds heretical, but sometimes I think that if maybe we just would have invested more in wind and solar energy, my brothers would still be alive.

I can admit it now. It was all about the water.