Moons of Tripoli

Moons of Tripoli

“This is the first world I’ve ever been to, except Earth. Colonel Kwan says it’s called Tripoli because we’re marines, but I think the three moons might have something to do with it. We can breathe the air, but it’s pretty thin and smells like wet ash. It leaves a taste in my mouth, so I keep my helmet on and the filters running when I’m outside.

“There’s not much life here, just the sticky orange fuzz that clumps on the ground. The Professor – Corporal Krieger – he says that it’s a complex life form, like lichen. I never thought of scum on the rocks as complex. I’ve seen some orange and black centipede-like things that scurry about and burrow in the ground. Got some wicked barbs that aren’t supposed to be poisonous, but I’m not going out without my boots on. I’ve seen a couple of four-legged scorpion-things as big as my fist. Some real nasty pincers there; and the things have better camouflage than any chameleon.

“We don’t know exactly where we are. That’s classified. The Professor says that’s crap because there were only two habitable – if you call it that here – planets ever surveyed with three moons, and the sun here only matches one of them. He says this has to be [CENSORED] and the stars back him up, but I can’t tell Arcturus from Deneb, so I don’t know.

“Gunny says we shouldn’t worry about it. We have a lot to do, setting up this base for the Fleet. He says the world could have been charted after the war started by one of the scouting forces. At least the gravity is pretty low. Corporal Grabowski keeps complaining about the grav, but he’s from Mars. We’re an integrated unit now.

“The novelty of the place is already running thin. I came here to fight, not build and guard some base with crappy camouflage. I’ve been in the Corps nearly two years and I’ve never fired a shot at the enemy. Wish the green bastards would show up so I could waste their asses back to wherever they came from.”

- found among the personal effects of Lance Corporal Lawrence Bouchard, Confederation Marines. Golden Starburst, posthumous. KIA January 12, 2256.