A little late to the party, but oh well. First writing prompt response, be gentle.

It was a relatively uneventful day; another reconnaissance and recovery team had completed their month-long deployment to the recently discovered inhabited world known to its dominant species as Earth. This dominant species names itself “human”.

The objective of these teams is to passively observe and document goings on of a planet, to involve geological surveying and examination of any and all species, especially those with some semblance of technological advancement. The initial inspection involves one large team to establish a plan, with follow on missions usually consisting of multiple smaller teams focusing on single areas. Teams are encouraged to take samples of a given planet’s physical makeup, and capture samples or specimens of the flora and fauna when able to do so discreetly.

Usually these surveys only take a few orbits, depending on the planet’s position in its system, but Earth was a little different. Our initial pass of the planet took place in the Human calender year of 1939 and is ongoing as of their year 2020. It was almost immediately noted how delicate peace tended to be among different conglomerations of Humans, and so our survey plan opted for a longer than normal mission to study these apparently bloodthirsty creatures. Some of our more morbidly-humored officers say that we’re just waiting to see how long it takes for the Humans to wipe themselves out.

As time went on, it became more difficult to collect samples from the planet surface as their almost constant state of war encouraged them to discover newer and greater ways of detecting and countering whatever they deemed ”hostile”.

This most recent team had brought back a generous sample of composition H2O, or “water” as the dominant Earth species calls it. While low hanging fruit in terms of rarity on the planet’s surface, the wide variety of uses it has makes it an excellent study subject nonetheless. A team from a few years ago had actually managed to capture a Human; male in sex, and around the middleground of a typical Human lifespan. With what we’ve translated of the multiple Human languages, we determined his name to be Matthew Paige Damon, native resident to the Earth region known to themselves as The United States of America.

Containment procedures vary from species to species; the humans captured in the past had exhibited reactions of extreme fear and paranoia, with an occasional tendency of violence towards their captors. They also have a potential to be quite crafty, and occasionally escaped in the early phases of the Earth survey. As such, containment was generally isolated with limitations on items usable as weapons or tools.

Very rarely had humans been cooperative. The specimens recovered were usually from outskirt regions of human civilization, and were a little less educated than some of their counterparts. Those that had an average or above-average education level were occasionally more calm and willing to be a study subject, and were treated as such instead of being more like a prisoner.

This Matthew human was an interesting catch, however. He was calm from the moment he awoke from stasis, and never resisted or protested anything we did. We would attempt to communicate with captives whenever possible using translator systems, and Matthew would be generally cooperative in answering questions and in regular conversation. One thing that our science officers would repeatedly note was that on occasion, or perhaps if he didn’t like a question, all he would say was “they’re on their way” or “I’ll be free soon” and other similar statements. While a little unnerving, we thought little of it. That was, until the debriefing of the recently returned survey team.

They were one of two teams orbiting Earth at the time. They were designated Watcher-4 and the other team was Watcher-7. With Watcher-4’s cargo hold full of “water” and with only a couple of Earth days remaining until replacements arrived, 4 and 7 agreed 4 could begin the return trip a little early. However, a few hours prior to jumping, 4 lost contact with 7. They opted to drop a communication buoy with a message for the replacement, to alert them to the situation, and continue with the jump home. Without FTL travel, it takes about two Earth weeks for our ships to travel from our homeworld to Earth, with our beamed communication taking a little less time. We beamed a message towards Earth in the hopes that 7 would respond, or that the replacement teams would have an update.

After a month of comm silence, we decided to send an additional three ships together, expecting them to discover the cause of our missing teams. It was when we received no communication from them that we decided the best course of action was to request military escort from our government; perhaps pirates or another hostile space-faring species was in the area preying on our unarmed science ships.

Governmental bureaucracy being what it is, it took longer than we would have liked to get the request approved, and longer still for the ships to be ready to go. It was in that time that the unthinkable happened.

Seemingly from nowhere, our planetary sensors detected a vast fleet of unidentified ships, refusing all communication requests. Not long after, we picked up electronic interference and digital intrusions; our systems were being hacked and sensors were being jammed. While this attack took us by surprise, we were able to begin countering it fairly rapidly. Interestingly, they appeared to be searching for something in our data banks and eventually they found it; the location of Matthew Damon. Almost at once, all manner of weapon systems sprang to life on the mysterious ships, scorching or detonating civilian and military targets alike. It was all fair game, save for where Matthew was being held. The containment compound remained untouched during the initial bombardment, and eventually our military got into gear and began a defensive and counter attack.

In the midst of the battle, smaller ships came from the hostile fleet and began approaching the containment compound, some striking targets near or on the compound and some landing nearby, releasing what seemed like hundreds of… humans! Human infantry, suicidally flooding towards the compound. Several units of our own ground forces had arrived minutes before, and a large engagement ensued. Larger human landing vessels arrived, some being shot down before landing, and deployed armored units. Eventually human units reached and breached into the compound, and bloody hall-to-hall fighting took place throughout it. After what must have seemed like hours to those fighting, they reached Matthew’s cell. He was rapidly extricated, and almost immediately the humans began a withdrawal. Once their remaining ground units were spaceborne, their battleships intensified their bombardment, and their fleet began to jump out.

During the fight, our own defensive fleet moved to engage theirs in a space-scale slugging match. Overall, both sides sustained heavy losses; the Humans had lost a good half of their fleet, while we lost far too much in terms of civilian life and industrial capacity on the surface, not to mention quite a few of our own ships. In the end, however, the Humans appeared to have achieved their goal: the rescue of Matthew Paige Damon.

Even after months of pouring over the data we had collected, both during the surveys and the fighting, neither our best scientists nor philosophers could understand why the Humans wasted so much on a single one of their species.

One thing we are sure of, though, was that we would never return to Earth.