Novemberr 12th, 2340
Ma was upset today. She said it was the news. Ma says we shouldn't trust the Darloks ever, and if they say they are friends they are lying.
Ma says our friends will have to make special markets for trading with the Darloks, and that is bad. She is glad it is only a little trade but she says it should be no trade. She says Darloks should stay at their three stars and not come here. She called them lots of bad names and words I don't know like "a-grass-if." She says the Darloks will hurt our friends from the ship. She means the ship that came when I was a very little kitten. I don't remember it but she says they went to a red star. I don't know where that is. All the stars look white to me. Ma says the sun is a green star but it is just the sun.
Febrruarry 10th, 2344
Everyone is very excited. A colony ship finally got to Berel! It could have landed a few days ago, but they were afraid there might be delays and they might end up doing something important on February 9th. February 9th is a bad day because last year some people found the Guardian that day at the red star near the middle of the galaxy. The Guardian is scary. There is another colony ship on its way to Willow, but that is far away. Berel is close, and it is almost as close to the Darloks as Maretta! The people from the ship are excited too. They sent a picture, and they forgot to fix the date, just like the one at Maretta when I was a kitten!
There are some Darlok ships going there too, with two different kinds of destroyers! I think the Darloks wanted to make a colony there just like us. Ma says we can't trust them and they will attack for sure. She says it's lucky we'll have a lot of Minutecats there. She says we have to help them be strong against the Darloks. We are going there! We will fly to Berel with millions of other Mrrshans and help them build the colony faster. Lots more of us will come later too, just like at Maretta. Some will even come from Maretta because it is so close, but not until there are more Mrrshans there.
I have not asked Ma if we can trust the Meklar. They are scary. They have five planets just like us, but they are not cats, they are machines, and their leader says things that don't make sense and scares me. They are also close to Berel. They have spaceships in the nebula and one of them is very big and very very scary. I hope they are not going to Berel like us. But Ma will probably say we shouldn't trust them.
Januarry 12th, 2346
This is another bad thing about hyperspace. You sometimes find out what's happening in the world outside, but you can't do anything about it. It was not as bad last year when we found out the Willow colony was a success. Willow is far away and we couldn't help with it anyway. It was bad this year when the Darlok fleet got to Berel when the whole reason we're going there is to help protect it from them. (And maybe from the Meklar too. I hope we don't have to fight the Meklar.) We couldn't do a lot back home from Reticuli, and that is why we are on our way, but at least our lives wouldn't depend on something we can't help. If the colony at Berel is destroyed, there won't be a hyperspace beacon for our transports, and we'll never get out of hyperspace again ever.
Luckily the Minutecats won the battle, even though two of them were destroyed. They blew up both Hornet destroyers, and they would have gotten the Venoms too, but those are missile boats that always just fire their payload and run away. Two more just like them even went to Maretta this year and did the same thing. I guess Ma was right about those guys. I just hope she's wrong about the Meklar.
Aprril 18th, 2348
Planetfall! Finally! Berel 2 is a funny world, but I think we will be happy here if the Meklar do not kill us all. Everything is backward on this planet. The ground is green, and the sun is yellow! Ma says the ground is really brown, but there is so much grass and moss and so many leaves everywhere that it looks green. It is funny that the plants all are green here, except they have brightly colored flowers. The whole world feels nice to look at even though it is backward. Ma says this is what Fierias looks like, except without as many plants everywhere and with a lot more Mrrshans around. I hope there will be more Mrrshans here soon too, and not dead ones. I have heard rumors that every Mrrshan shipyard in the galaxy is working overtime to build a star fleet that can fight against the giant Meklar ship if it attacks us. The giant ship is coming here and I am scared.
I will be going to a new school here. I did not want to at first but then I met my science and technology teacher. Her name is Mirrasha. She knows all about the latest technology and what is being researched now and she is beautiful. I think it is because of the way she smiles and the way her ears move when she is happy. She is happy about science a lot. She makes me happy about science.
Mirrasha was one of the scientists who helped to improve our terraforming here on Berel. She says we are working very hard now to learn how to live on ice worlds. That is very different from Berel 2, which is much warmer than home. Except this is home now if the Meklar do not kill us all, so I hope it is home for a long time. Mirrasha also understands about hand lasers, which are things the weapons engineers want to make for us in case someone wants to invade. I asked if she meant like the Meklar, but she smiled and that made everything better again.
Januarry 19th, 2349
I am scared. The giant Meklar ship is called a Nemesis and it has a lot of heavy lasers. Our brave Minutecat pilots flew toward it in case it had mostly bombs or missiles because then they might have a chance, and if it had lots of bombs they would have to chase it away to stop it from killing all of us. We are lucky that it didn't have bombs, but it blew up all our Minutecats before they could get away, and now it is firing its heavy lasers down at us! It is dark down here in the bomb shelter, and I am scared because Ma is out in the jungle helping to terraform it so we will be able to defend ourselves better when the Meklar invade, and Mirrasha is out there leading the way because she is our best scientist and she understands about terraforming better than anybody, and the Meklar are shooting at them, and also they will shoot at the transports that came after us from Reticuli, and they are killing so many of us and I am very scared!
June 24th, 2351
Something has changed. It is very quiet. I don't hear any explosions from outside. Everybody can't be dead because the Meklar have been trying very hard to kill us for more than two years, and even though they have killed two million of us here already, plus millions and millions of helpless colonists while they were still vulnerable on their transports, it's taken them a long time to do it because lasers are not good weapons for shooting at Mrrshans living in a jungle under a thick atmosphere, and there are still millions and millions and millions and millions of us here! But the Nemesis can't be gone either. There's going to be a giant combat fleet here to destroy it, but we'll have to survive the first wave of Meklar combat transports first. That's why we've been working so hard on terraforming the world. It's the only thing we can do that might help in time to fight off those first Meklar soldiers.
I don't understand. This is amazing! The Nemesis is gone! I had to run and find Mirrasha to make sure. I asked her if it was flying to Maretta, but she said it wasn't flying anywhere!
She said the Meklar must have come up with some new technology or something and decided their Nemesis was out of date, because their automated fuel-miners started breaking it apart in space and shipping its parts and fuel back to their home colonies. I couldn't believe it! Why would they mine their own ship when they had been using it to attack us for so long? But Mirrasha smiled one of her pretty smiles and said it must have been a flaw in the software of their automated fuel mining systems. And then I remembered what Mirrasha had been telling me earlier this year that she was going to lead a brand-new computer science research team. I don't know if she figured out a trick to use on their miners, because I didn't ask her. I saw the way she twitches her ears when she is happy, and it made me feel happy too, and I decided to just pretend that she did and maybe my pretending is even true. So now everyone is celebrating, but I think we're about to get right back to work, because we'll need to build some new Minutecat fighters to chase the Meklar colony ship away and try to stop their transports from getting here! There will be more Minutecats and ground troops coming to help from Maretta, but they're still a pretty new colony too, and they have the Darloks to worry about, and the more soliders we can shoot down in space, the fewer of us they can gun down on the ground.
Marrch 2nd, 2353
They are here. I know I should not be scared. I have been of age for almost a year, and I know how to use my assault rifle, and the titanium plates of my body armor are strong, but there are twenty combat transports coming in to kill us, and I am scared of them whether I like it or not. There are Minutecat fighters up there somewhere to intercept the transports as they come, but not enough - not close to enough - and I am scared.
June 19th, 2353 I visited Ma again today. I like to tell her about the news when I hear it, since the battle.
I have heard we are trading a lot more with the Darloks now, five times as much as ever before, and I know she always said we can't trust them, so I thought I should tell her. Mirrasha says it is better than trusting the Meklar though. At least the Darloks are not insane. I tried to explain to Ma, but I do not know if she can hear me.
I am still trying to tell myself that she is happy. Today I can say it is because she does not have to trade with any Darloks anymore. I still can say it is because she took three of the battle Meks with her and because we won and I am alive and so is the colony. I still do not know if it is true. Even Mirrasha does not know if there is an afterlife where you can hear things and be happy.
Maybe if there is, you can forget the smell of burning fur when you finally get there. Maybe then you can stop having nightmares about Meklar sweeping the battlefield with their portable lasers.
There is bright green grass over the grave. The sun is yellow in the sky. Maybe she knows. Maybe she will see it rising every morning and know it rises on our people and knows we will get stronger and we will not trust the Meklar.
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NEXT: Hot War!
