Impulse Control

It's a wonder the UAS didn't question why we weren't fighting them last night as their soldiers moved into the massive clearing around Haven. Our scouts and watchers spied them from a distance, angry men and women marching toward our home, emerging from the trees like ghosts in the dying light. You'd think the first question they would have asked themselves was why, if there were so many of us out there, would we not be firing at them?

The answer to that unasked question came in the form of land mines. I suppose a better question might have been "Why did the Union forces attack us the other from all directions except from Haven itself? Because explosives in the ground, that's why.

Didn't manage to kill a lot of them, but as a method of discouragement it's top-notch. Whatever sneaky assault the enemy might have been planning fell through when several dozen soldiers splattered across the face of the people following behind them. I'm glad for that, and that bothers me. The deeply logical part of my brain tells me those deaths prevented or at least postponed even more carnage. The deeply emotional Josh is weary of the violence, more so than ever.

I feel the anger, the hate for the stupidity and waste around me. I see my home damaged and evacuated, the heart of the Union injured, and I the animal instinct in me is to lash out and kill. And it's true there is a good argument for defending yourself and others, protecting what you have. Doesn't mean I have to like what we do to accomplish that.

They're out there right now, readying themselves again despite knowing the cost to their forces. The UAS will come for us again, striking at us and losing soldiers. Our own will die with them, a waste beyond calculation in a world bereft of almost our entire species. Later today, maybe even by dinner, the weakened but furious UAS will move as one.

We will respond, because we have no other choice. I'll do my part no matter how I feel about it, because that's what you do. You defend. You die if you have to.

You regret and you hope things can change, but at the end of the day you move forward.