My name is Joe Bishop, I was twenty years old on the day the Ruhar attacked Earth, a Specialist in the US Army. Before the Army cut it, I had slightly longer than medium length hair, an indeterminate blonde-brown color, which I got from my mother. She called the color ‘mouse fur brown’ and had dyed her own hair a golden blonde as long as I could remember. Blue eyes I got from both my parents, and my height at six feet three inches definitely came from my father’s side, my mom barely stands five-four in her stocking feet. In high school I played third base on the baseball team, wide receiver on the football team, and was a backup shooting guard on the basketball team, although I didn’t play basketball my senior year. Truth is, I wasn’t a star athlete at baseball or football either. I worked hard, put the team first, and we won our share of games. When it came time to send out applications to colleges, I didn’t know where I wanted to go to school, or what I wanted to be when I grew up. Other than knowing that, I didn’t want to sit behind a desk all day. And I wanted to get out of Thomson Corners. My father had been in the Air Force for a couple years, then he went into the reserves, as a mechanic. Same type of job he did at the paper mill. He liked working with his hands, fixing stuff, and I kind of did too. Money was tight, and I didn't want to bury my self in debt with student loans, so the military sounded good to me.

When I’d signed up for the Army, I did it because I wanted to serve my country, and because the Army would pay for college. The life also appealed to me, I loved the outdoors; camping, hunting, fishing, hiking, canoeing. The training was tough, sure, nothing that I didn’t expect, and I was proud to get through basic, and be assigned where I wanted: the 10th ‘Mountain’ Infantry Division, in Fort Drum, New York. Peacekeeping duty in Nigeria wasn’t what I would have wished for, but we got orders, and I went. I was surprised that peacekeeping involved killing so many people, but it is what it is.

So, now you know why I was laying under a bush atop a small ridge that overlooked the center of my hometown, staring at that busted Ruhar transport ship, and trying to figure what, if anything, we should do.

“That is one big damned hamster, Bish, you ain’t lying.” Tom Paulson said as he handed the binoculars back to me. “What’re we gonna do?”