The Shortest Straw
©August, 2002
by Jason Halstead

	It was hot.  Not the sticky and muggy heat people would complain about during a backyard barbecue when Earth was still around.  No, this heat was dry and deadly.  My suit read off 55 degrees centigrade as the outside temperature.
	I was born and trained on the Earth Systems research station that used to orbit Mars.  Keywords being ‘used to’.  The top secret military outpost was gone now.  Then again, so was Mars.
	My brothers and sisters and I were pioneers of genetic engineering.  Not mere cloning, gene manipulation, or selective breeding.  Humans had been doing that for over a couple of hundred years, either publicly or privately, depending upon the laws passed by the administration during that term.  No, we were 100% gene-spliced and custom designed hard core sons (and daughters) of bitches.  Lean, mean, fighting machines.  Earth Systems Marines.  Semper Fi to the Nth power.
	But all of those enhanced genes I had, all of the state of the art weaponry and armor and equipment, and all of the exacting training I had been through my entire life… none of it prepared me for just how damn hot it was here.
	The natives called the planet Acathia.  We had captured some of their people and they had captured some of ours.  Hard to believe, given the unforgiving nature of combat in a vacuum with weapons powerful enough to destroy small moons.  Up until cracking our first Acathian, we had just called it Alpha Centauri Prime and the black skinned powerfully built humanoids Centaurians.  Not the type with four legs ending in hooves and a tail either.  Those are centaurs and this sure as shit ain’t no fairy tale I’m living!
	Acathia orbited the primary star in the Alpha Centauri system, with the secondary star also orbiting the primary, but at a distance ranging from 11 AU to 35 AU as opposed to Acathia’s 1.2 AU.  Proxima, the third (and final) star in the system was a dim and small little red dwarf, barreling along through the universe at a whopping 13,000 AU from the other two stars.  The fact that the primary star was almost 10% larger then our belated Sol explained the larger climate, or so the scientists told us.  That and a full cycle of daylight due to the three suns.  I was a marine, I could handle a weird light schedule.  Hell I had fought down the rebellion on Mercury’s power station back in 2309.  That was hot too, now that I think about it.  We had better suits then though, after all, Mercury had no atmosphere.
	Come to think of it, Mercury has a lot less now.
	“Ell-Tee, there’s a village down in that gully!”
	That pulled me out of my musings.  About damn time we found something on this rock.  “Hill, Watson, cover that rock, Jackson you got point.  Lead us in!”
	The mission was recovery.  My marines could do it all, of course, but we preferred blowing stuff up.  One of our pilots got shot down a standard week back but his ship was only cracked up, not destroyed.  With Earth gone every bit of material we can salvage could mean the difference between survival and extinction.  But even more important, all the readings the Columbus got back from the wounded fighter told us the pilot was still alive.  Normal ground pounder ethics insists that nobody gets left behind, but with only a few thousand of us humans left, every one of us is invaluable regardless of outfit, rank, or status.  Kinda makes you feel all warm and fuzzy inside.
	We were moving then, with corporals Hill and Watson setting up on a rocky mound that covered our approach into the dry gully where the Acathian village was at.  Being the snipers in my platoon, both men had their laser rifles tuned in and ready to go at a moments notice.  Most of the rest of us were sporting GARs, or Gauss Assault Rifles.  The GAR’s used electro-magnetically accelerated Teflon jacketed tungsten alloy 4 millimeter slugs propelled at a speed of over 9000 meters per second.  I’m no tech, but they told us the kinetic energy caused by one of those slugs hitting a man sized target was equivalent to handing your victim a get out of life free card and waving goodbye.  Very messy.
	Jackson, as the point man, was cradling his favorite weapon.  Based on the historical room sweeper shotgun, the Soundblaster could incapacitate or pulverize multiple targets at relatively close range with a blast of ultra low frequency sound waves.  A couple other marines followed his style, thinking that a close in weapon would be more effective in a village.
	As ready as we were, we were not ready for what happened next.  Jackson rounded the first corner out of the gully and into the village and stopped cold, his weapon pointed menacingly before him then lowering slowly.  “Lieutenant Snow, I could use a little help up here,” he said, his voice trailing away.
	I double timed it up there, my light body armor custom fit to my rock hard muscles to ensure maximum maneuverability.  Rounding the corner my mouth dropped open too.  
	Lieutenant Junior Grade Eric Grindholm stood facing us in the middle of the path.  He smiled and waved weakly.  He appeared to be in good health, if somewhat worse for the heat.  I could appreciate that at least.  It was the company he was in that had me speechless.
	I had seen one of the captured Acathians back on the E.S.S. Columbus.  Truth be told, I felt rather dignified when I saw him.  Granted, I was genetically engineered, but I still studied history growing up.  I was fiercely proud of my black skin and African heritage, even if it was not acquired during a process involving a lot of sweating and moaning.  All of the Acathians we captured or found proof of had been even darker skinned then I was, and I was an especially dark skinned black woman.
	The creatures that stood beside the downed pilot resembled humans in no way other then being bipedal and upright.  I mean… they had tails!  Sure, they were kind of short and stubby, but they were still tails!
	Okay, so humans evolved from monkeys.  Fair enough I suppose, perhaps these things were not very far up the evolutionary ladder.  It was an entirely different ladder though, because these things ranged in color from green to gray and brown.  That and their skin resembled a lizards.  Sort of like walking iguanas I guess.  I never did pay much attention to herpetology.  Even their heads were heavily reptilian, with beady eyes of similar dark colors.
	“Friend,” one croaked out, his voice harsh, grating, and hissing.  It had both its arms out to the side, indicating that it carried no weapons.
	“What the hell are these?” Jackson asked from beside me.  He had spoken quietly but apparently the lizards had good hearing because they started talking in their own language to each other.  It did not sound angry, but it was making me nervous.  I tightened my grip on my own GAR and glanced around, making out where some of them had hidden in nearby stone huts or in defensible positions.  Still, I saw that not a one of them brandished a weapon.
	The apparent leader of the walking iguanas turned to Eric then and gestured towards us.  Eric nodded and walked forward slowly.  “These… um, guys, found me where I crashed and hid me from the Acathians that tried to find me.  The acathians got my fighter, but I destroyed all of the sensitive equipment in it beforehand.”
	“What,” I began then stopped.  “Who are they?”
	“I’ve only been here a few days, Lieutenant, I really don’t know other then they call themselves the Faradwim.  They seem to be no friends of the Acathians we’ve been fighting though.”
	“The enemy of my enemy?” I asked rhetorically, staring at the lizard-man that had spoken to us.
	“Perhaps.  They have an incredible gift for our language.  In the short time I’ve been here they have learned the basics of English.  No reading or writing, but their potential has astonished me.”
	I looked again at the leader of the Faradwim.  This time I saw intelligence in its eyes.  It was taller then me and if I was any judge of body size, probably stronger as well.  Hanging from a leather-like thong at its side was a bone handled rock club.  A similar material made up the creatures outfit, which consisted of little more then a loin cloth and a harness over its chest from which various charms and items hung.  I had no idea what to make of him, and was about to admit to being out of my element.  After all, the creed of the marines is that we get to travel to strange and exciting new places, we get to see beautiful new horizons and sights, we meet strange new cultures and people, and then we get to kill them.  Diplomacy was not my forte.
	“Lieutenant, come with me into a hut so we can discuss this.  I think we have a great potential here.  And there’s somebody else I want you to meet.” The space jockey said to me with a hint of grin.  It almost reminded me of a leer.  I was more then willing to defer to his lead, even though I was technically his superior officer.
	The hut was small and fashioned entirely out of stone.  Walls, roof, everything.  Far from being windproof or weatherproof, the shade was nevertheless welcome.  Enough holes remained in it for ventilation to prevent the air from being stifling.  I reached up for my helmet to remove it but stopped when I saw the inhabitant of the hut.  It explained the pseudo-leer Grindholm had given me.
	In a word, she was beautiful.  White skinned but deeply tanned by the harsh sun of Acathia, she looked like one of the human girls I had seen worshipping the sun on one of the Venusian beaches back when there was a Venus.  She had long strawberry blond hair to the middle of her back and deep blue eyes that you could get lost in.  She was a shorter then me by 6 or 7 centimeters, but I was tall for a Earth girl at 179 centimeters tall.  Fashioned out of the same leather-like material as the Faradwim’s outfit was her sandals and clothing.  Though ‘clothing’ was sort of a poor term.  She wore a patchwork skirt that was loose fitting and ended before it reached her knees.  An armband graced her right forearm and from her waist hung a curved sword fashioned out of a strange metal I could not place.  A long jagged knife hung from her other side.  Resting lightly across her shoulders was a bow carved out of a bone of some sort of animal, the string of it ran across her chest and slipped gracefully through the valley between her nicely rounded and firm, if a bit small and athletic, breasts.  Hey, I may be a woman, but I can appreciate beauty when I see it.  And besides, I like ‘em athletic.
	Where she differed from us humans was arguable.  Her ears were an obvious change of pace, being slightly elongated and pointy.  Her cheekbones and facial features seemed rather long and airy as well.  Overall her build reminded me of an underfed waif, but I could see from the tone in her form and the stance she took that mistaking her for a weakling would be a grave mistake.  Save for her breasts, she seemed possessed of almost no body fat.  Reminded me of myself and my fellow marines, actually, since our bodies were designed to have a higher metabolism.
	I caught myself staring at her body and then found that I was blushing.  The thought infuriated me.  Jessica Snow, 29 standard years old and 1^st lieutenant in the Earth Systems Marine Corp.  I had coupled with countless partners.  That this girl with her outlandish and somehow strangely familiar beauty could do this to me was ridiculous!
	“Who is this?” I snapped, more harshly then I intended to.  Better I sounded gruff I suppose, since I was unsure of whether my voice would work properly!
	“She is a Pudarin.  Her name is Jethallin,” Eric said.  Upon hearing her name the woman puffed out her chest and stepped forward.  Her chin was thrust forward defiantly.  It was all that Eric and I could do to keep our attention above her prominently displayed bosoms.
	“How do you know all this?” I asked suspiciously.  I still could not take my eyes off of Jethallin.
	“The Faradwim,” He said.  “They are amazing with their ability to communicate.  They are able to converse with her easily, and less so with us.”
	“Is she one of the Acathians?” I asked, surprised by my own interest in the question.
	“No, she’s a Pudarin.” I gave him an exasperated look which asked the question for me.  “I’m not sure what that means.  I think it’s the three type of people on this planet.  Acathians are the advanced ones that we are fighting.  They run the planet and apparently pissed off the other indigenous life forms.  The Faradwim and Pudarin are less advanced and apparently lesser powers… at least in the eyes of the Acathians.”
	“This is going to give me a headache,” I muttered.  I turned around and walked to the doorway to the hut.
	“Gunny!” I snapped out, getting the attention of Gunnery Sergeant King, my second in command.  “Get me a heavily encrypted line up to the Columbus, we have a clusterfu- a situation here!”
	“You got it Ell-Tee!” He responded, already turning to snap orders to my men to get them situated.  He would have the men in defensive positions too.  Half the work of being a successful commander was in having skilled people under me.  Made my job that much easier.
	“You,” I pointed towards the Faradwim that was standing nearby, the same one that had addressed us earlier.  “Um, would you please join us and help me figure out what the fu- help me figure out just what is going on here?”
	The lizard nodded after a moment of thought and walked forward, moving past me and into the hut.  I looked up to the sky and regretted it instantly.  That sun was bright.  Dreading the decisions that were to come, I turned and headed back into the shaded hut.

*****

	“I’m out!”
	The woman beside me, Lance Corporal Doyle, yanked a magazine out from her body armor and tossed it to the trooper that had run dry.  He snapped it into his GAR fluidly and turned back to where the Acathian armor column was advancing on us.
	It was similar to the space battles that had already taken place.  Our weapons were superior to theirs, but they had us outnumbered heavily.  Every casualty we took meant a narrowing of the gene pool, but for them it was less then a drop in the bucket.
	I drew a bead down on a quick moving lightly armored hovercraft and sent several slugs slamming into the thin coiling around the bottom of it.  It dipped down, whatever device  giving it the mysterious power of levitation damaged.  I grinned fiercely and fired again, this time cutting into the squad of Acathians riding in the open topped vehicle.  A few jumped free but most succumbed to my lethal weapon.
	I started to track the survivors on the ground but held my fire when I saw a quickly moving person approaching them.  It was Jethallin, the Caucasian Pudarin that damn near everybody in my platoon had the hots for.  Turned out she was something of a hero to her own people as well.  Or her tribe or something, I never did figure it out.  Might have even been a clan of them.  One of her sources of honor was in the strangely forward curving metal sword she used.  Metal seemed by and large to be a rarity for the Pudarin and the Faradwim.  I think it had something to do with their relatively primitive cultures and lack of mining technology.  
	She used her weapon well, primitive or not.  I saw the Acathian soldiers trying to reach cover from my men.  They were unaware of her as she leapt into their midst from behind, sword in one arm and long knife in the other.  The Acathians were armored lightly, wearing some sort of lightweight tan colored material that provided minimal safety from our hypervelocity GARs.  About all their armor could do was provide token resistance to a light charge from a laser rifle, but both of my snipers were too good to make the mistake of letting the piecemeal armor get in their way more then once.  Jethallin seemed equally skilled with her blades, dispatching three of the Acathians before they knew she was amongst them.  The fourth went down spraying blood from his throat and firing his particle rifle blindly.
	The beam passed just over Jethallin, scorching her shoulder in its passing, and slammed into the head of the fifth survivor from the downed hovercraft.  The resulting explosion as the Acathian’s brain was instantly superheated was less then pretty.  Of all the sights I take to my dreams every time I enter HIBS (HIBernation Sleep), I knew I would relish seeing that one again very little.  Damn scientists still insist that you do not dream in HIBS sleep too, the idiots.
	I gave Jethallin a wave and a grin, which I doubted she could see through my tinted faceplate, and turned back to pick out some more targets.  Jethallin melted into the landscape, stalking her next victim.  From their hiding spots the Faradwim were using their slings and bows as best they could.  Occasionally they would do something effective, but mostly they only served to distract the Acathian’s from my far more deadly marines.
	A hovertank approached along the same path as the personnel carrier, coming right down my line of fire.  The wonderful thing about the state of warfare in the 24^th century was miniaturization.  Pulling out my own Soundblaster I set the power to low on it and attached an armor piercing grenade to the acoustic barrel.  I keyed the release on the grenade and took a moments aim while I counted off four seconds in my head.  The sonic burst propelled the grenade flew out when I pulled the trigger on the gun.  It hit a little high on the tank, bouncing still higher up on it before it went off.  The blast sent the hover tank dipping towards the ground before the stabilizers in it recovered.
	The top of the tank was a mess of scarred metal.  Two of the three particle cannons on the turret were damaged, and the hatch leading into the crew compartment was nowhere to be found.
	Gravity on Acathia was stronger the Earth’s by  roughly half a gee, due to it being about 15% larger then the Earth had been.  Still, my boys and girls were trained marines.  We had trained and operated missions on all sorts of varying environments, including missions upwards of 3 gees.  Nevertheless, not a single one of us could have done what I saw Jethallin do next (even if we were practically naked like she was).  She leapt off a nearby rock some ten feet horizontally and about 3 feet vertically to grab onto the side of the damaged tank.  She scrambled up quickly and dropped into the crew area, both of her weapons in her hands by that point.  She was a wildcat who was ready to party.  A minute later I glimpsed her leaping away from the tank moments before it plowed into the ground.
	I needed to see if I could get her to enlist in the marine corp.!
	Outnumbered nearly 3 to 1 at that point, it was only a matter of time.  I had two soldiers down, one permanently and another only wounded.  Had it been for the recovery of only one man, Lieutenant Junior Grade Eric Grindholm, then I would have been pissed.  But it had turned out to be a hell of a lot more.  Now it turned out that not only were we acquiring some allies, but we were also fighting to establish a beachhead on Acathia.
	Like I said, it was only a matter of time.  In another 20 minutes we beat off the last of the Acathians and set about standing down to a ready alert status.  Overheard our fighters performed similarly against the Acathian air forces, destroying the majority and driving the rest back.  A few more ships were shot down and pilots killed, but all in all, the Earth Systems fleet – the last of the human race – were doing more then their share.

*****

	“Well done, Lieutenant,” Alexia Tomlonovich, Commander and XO of the E.S.S. Columbus said.  She rose up from her seat at the head of the table and saluted me.
	I returned the salute smartly.  I had received another couple of medals for my securing of a landing zone, recovery of a downed pilot, and discovery of allies in our fight to keep humanity alive.  I had not done all of it, but I was apparently the token girl this week.  The other officers around the table rose as well.  Captain Hartley, my own boss, and then Major O’Leary.
	I was dismissed then, so I headed back towards where the shipside barracks we were quartered in.   My mind kept flashing back to Jethallin and how she slipped in and out of danger.  She was as ferocious a warrior as any I had ever seen, myself and my marines included.  I never got another chance to talk to her, but I did see her again on my way to the transport that brought me back up to the Columbus.  She was standing on a rock a ways off, staring at our transport and, I would like to think, me as well.  Damn that girl had done a number on me.
	A few more of her people, the Pudarin, had arrived before we shipped out.  I had to admit, they were all surprisingly admirable.  I have no idea why, but for some reason I felt drawn to them.  She occupied my thoughts more then the rest, of course, but I attribute that to her being the first one of them I saw.  Maybe it was those damned impossibly blue eyes of hers.  Could have been the pointy ears she had too.  They already had started calling her and the other Pudarin elves.
	Sometimes I swear if I was not fighting for the human race, I would like nothing more then to kill some of the ignorant sons of bitches.  It is actually a shame we had to find an inhabited planet.  Humanity had left racism and petty differences behind.  The archaic practice of religion had been all but abolished since the early 21^st century, and once that was gone people began to realize they really did not have any decent reasons to hate each other anymore.  At least not in a stereotypical sort of way.  Now here we were already applying slang racial terms to one of the first new races we had encountered.
	Commander Tomlonovich had said something interesting to me.  I guess she had sensed my irritation because she had felt the need to remind me in the debriefing that Earth was gone.  All the core worlds were gone, actually.  Our (former) sun, the closest star to Alpha Centauri, was now a supernova.
	We (the human race) knew that was going to happen over 50 years ago when the scientists figured it out.  Left us with about 40 years to develop a lot of technology, since traveling beyond our own solar system had not yet been accomplished by any manned ships.  The explorer class E.S.S. Columbus  was the result, along with a handful of other lesser ships.  5 Colony ships holding a thousand people a piece, plus hydroponic gardens were all that was left of the Earth’s civilian population and natural resources (animal and vegetable, at least).  4 vindicator class vessels (new name for a good old navy destroyer), 8 expansion class ships (cruisers / frigates), and close to 20 tankers carrying spare equipment, ammunition, fuel, food, and other expendables.  Not all the tankers had arrived in system yet, since they had less powerful engines.  Of course we had lost a few ships during the space battles too.
For some odd reason all these logistical thoughts went through my mind while I was on the shuttle heading back down to the planet.  Our fighter screen dealt with the Acathian ships that flew after us, buying us enough cover to get under the protective cover of our basecamp’s anti-aircraft guns.  I watched a 3d display showing the air battle around us and was alarmed to discover that I was actually pleased to see that lots of damage was done to both sides, but nobody was killed.  I think I need to get my head examined.
	After checking in with my platoon I decided that it was sack-time.  We were off duty at present, with 2^nd platoon covering base defense.  The privilege of being an officer means I do not have to sleep with the grunts… normally.  Considering our hasty preparations and still unfinished camp, space was at a premium.
	I entered the hastily erected pavilion tent with the shirt of my uniform already halfway off.  Pulling it over my head I located an empty ready-bed and headed for it.  The ready-beds were one of the only nice invention ever made for us poor grunts.  They were made out of some kind of industrial strength plastic that was inflated or deflated rapidly via a small motor that ran off of the same battery packs we used for our weapons.  Kind of handy.  When compressed they folded up into a nice little plastic ball the size of a softball.  Very handy.
	Other marines were in the pavilion, most sleeping and others just trying to relax.  It was fairly dark, a welcome relief from the way-to-bright sun outside.  Someone had cobbled together a makeshift fan, blowing the hot air into the tent from the entrance.  Sadly, it beat the dead air we would have otherwise had to put up with.
	I tossed my Kevlar threaded shirt onto the floor next to the bed I had chosen and worked on removing the flat black armored vest I had on underneath.  The armor only protected my vitals and was not terribly effective considering we were in the age where a bullet can move so fast it ionizes the air it passes through and leaves you dead before you realize you have even been shot at.  Still, it had come in handy in the past keeping shrapnel and other dangerous objects that were not instantly lethal away from my innards when the body armor we wore did not.  It worked a lot better then the cheap Kevlar and ballistic nylon threaded uniforms we were issued, that’s for sure!
	I started to ditch my pants too when I stopped and realized that we were very much in a combat zone still.  No sense in literally getting caught with my pants down.  I scowled unhappily and wished I had thought to use the ‘fresher up on the ship.   I was used to my own stink, but if I was anything like the aroma of all the other marines in the relatively closed air space, then I was no daisy.
	With nothing left to do and my eyelids burning from too many reports and too little sleep, I gave in and collapsed on the ready-bed.  My last thought was of removing my boots.  Nah, too much work.

*****

Then I was up.  The unmistakable sound of combat had roused us all.  The low roar of GAR turrets spitting out thousands of rounds nonstop at supersonic speeds, the crackle of discharging enemy particle beams, and even the barely felt hum of Soundblasters going off that causes the hair to rise on your skin and makes you clench your teeth.  Smoke was filling the air as well, burning my sinuses and making me cough, but I was not sure what it was.  Then I realized – it was our tent!
All of this was in and out of my combat trained head faster then I realized it.  Superior genetics; what can I say?  I found myself on the floor of the tent next to my bed, I had instinctively rolled out and gotten low for cover.  Good girl.  I grabbed my vest and slipped into it quickly, not bothering with any of the latches, if the elastic fabric would not hold it on, then I guess I was just screwed.
“Ell-Tee!”
I heard Gunnery Sergeant King call for me from over near the door.  It was getting bad in there, the smoke was thick enough I could barely see more then a few feet.  Flickering light made me realize that the source of the fire, or at least one of them, was between me and the door.  That will teach me to pick a bed in the back.
“Gunny, I’m going out the back way!” I called out to him.  I never waited to hear his response, I had more important things on my mind.  Staying as low as possible, I tried to breathe shallowly through my mouth while moving towards the back of the tent.
At the back wall of the tent I pulled a small stiletto knife with a 5 centimeter blade out of my boot.  The blade was small and mostly useless for any sort of self defense, but it shone in moments like that one.  I slipped it through the wall of the tent, it’s mono-molecular edge making short work of the armored threading in the fabric.  I had to resist the urge to retch from the smoke as I finished cutting a slit in the tent.  Some fresh odors had assailed me, including that most distinctly unpleasant smell of burnt flesh.  I hoped it was not mine.
Outside of the makeshift barracks I stumbled for cover behind the nearest rock, hacking out what seemed to me to be important parts of my respiratory system along the way.  So much for flame retardant materials.  Alternately panting for fresh air and coughing out bad air, I noticed the black smoke rolling out from the tent I had recently occupied.  Flames licked at parts of the roof of it as well from within.  Then a particle beam sliced into it, whether on purpose or not I do not know, but that only added to the fire.
Above us our fighters appeared to be giving as good as they got.  I urged them on inside, after all, those bastards had tried to kill me in my sleep.  A few hours ago I was hoping for peace, now I wanted to strangle every last Acathian I could.  I am a woman, I can do that.
I spat out some coughed up phlegm and tried not to notice what color it was.  Everything came in at a rush then, and I felt my repetitively trained instincts calling me.  I sprinted out from behind the rock and made my way towards the front of the tent.  What I saw there took any possible feelings of compassion I had for the acathians.  A group of them had somehow managed to get into our base on a hovercraft that had crashed into a stone hut the Faradwim used.  The three that survived the crash were sniping any of my marines that tried to escape the burning tent via the front entrance.  Coming out the back of it was the only escape, and odds are I was the only one able to do so.
The three acathians seemed preoccupied.  One kept the tent covered, firing at it occasionally even if he saw no one.  The other two kept a watch towards where the rest of the men were trying to come to the rescue from near some hastily erected tents to the south.  Some of those were on fire too.  That left me on my own to the northwest of the acathians that I wanted so very badly to meet.  Me and my pocketknife.
Sneaking up on the acathians was not a difficult task.  They were preoccupied, as I said, and even had they not been the windows out of the stone hut did not allow for much visibility.  Conversely, those same windows provided good cover to the acathians, and the stone was dense enough and thick enough that our GAR’s did not seem to be able to punch through them.
So there I was, crouched low and hiding under one of the windows waiting for a chance to do something.  My chance came when one of the attackers stuck his gun out the window and prepared to fire another shot at the tent.  I grabbed the barrel and yanked on it.  Hard.
Being a marine I have had a good chance to familiarize myself with the enemies weapons.  The hand held ones, at least.  Their most common weapon was something our techs called a particle rifle, because simply put, it fired a charged particle beam.  What that meant, so they told me, was that it was a burst of super-accelerated neutral particles.  Or simply put a beam of hydrogen traveling at nearly the speed of light.  To anyone who has seen a particle rifle that was fully powered up close, they would note the strangely glowing fog contained within the coils that made up the barrel.  A flash of light indicated that a low power laser had just fired through the plasma (the glowing fog), setting up acceleration waves within it.  Of course, if you saw this flash and had it directly pointed at you, the next thing you would see would be nothing.  After all, the particles are released so quickly after the laser is fired that it defies the ability for humans to even note that there is a delay of roughly 250 picoseconds.
Did I mention that plasma is incredibly warm?  Naturally, in order to combat the heat of the plasma, and to keep the magnetic containment rings from overheating from the high levels of power they have to put out themselves, they must be cooled.  Keeping things simple, the acathian particle rifle uses liquid hydrogen to cool the magnetic rings.
Those rings are what I grabbed.  The rings are held in place by means of some slender metal rods on the outside of them.  Those rods, in addition to keeping the rings stationary, also serve as tubes for the liquid hydrogen.  Liquid hydrogen… that’s –253 degrees Celsius at 1 standard atmospheric pressure.  20 degrees above absolute zero.  Luckily for me they are insulated pretty well, the pressure within the rods is much higher then standard, and the heat from the plasma cloud is intense enough to further overpower it.
The end result was fingers that felt like I had exposed them to the vacuum of space for a few seconds.  So cold that I did not even realize it was cold at first, they just went sort of numb on me.  As I yanked it out of the acathian’s hands, the chill caught up with me.  He was pulled forward himself in surprise, and found that his upper body and head was sticking out the window.
I swung that rifle with everything I had, and I do not mind admitting, that is quite a bit.  The stock of the rifle was covered in black solar panels that reflected almost no light back whatsoever so good was the Acathian solar cell technology.  They cracked and shattered when they connected with the acathian’s jaw, proof that with a big enough hammer you can break almost any tech.  He went sailing back into the stone hut, unconscious before he hit the floor.  I would like to think I even managed to lift him off the ground with that homerun swing, but that is probably just my imagination.
I reversed the rifle in my hand and stabbed my left thumb onto the firing button on it.  A half-hearted particle beam spat out, stabbing into one of the other two acathians that were only just now turning around to see what had happened to their buddy.
Have I mentioned now nasty particle beams are?  Even wimpy little ones that have not had enough time to charge all the way up for a full blast?  The accelerated hydrogen particles are going so fast that they generally punch into, and sometimes through, their target.  Along the way they interact with the atoms in the atmosphere, slowing the particle beam and releasing various types of radiation that tends to wrap the beam itself in a cocoon of hurt.  Then when it passes through its target (or whatever it hits), it releases all that kinetic energy, causing soft enough targets to just explode from the heat and power of it all.
Well, at a range of about 2 meters even a particle beam fired at less then half power can really do some damage.  My targets mouth opened in a silent scream of agony as his stomach and chest were flash boiled from inside.  Dimly I heard some muffled popping as some of his organs exploded inside of him.  The only visible damage from where I was standing was a small burn hole in the strange shirt that he wore and some blistered up flesh on his chest where the beam had hit him.  Needless to say, his invitation to the barbecue had been revoked.
The other acathian saw his friend drop and tried to fire his particle rifle at me.  He had just fired it though, and it had not cooled enough to allow him to fire it again without disabling the safety mechanism built into it.  He threw it at me and charged.
I batted his rifle away with my own but then dropped mine too, for mine was as useless as his, having just discharged.  Normally they took roughly 3 to 5 seconds to cool, then another 2 or 3 seconds to recharge for another firing.  He did get the drop on me though, crashing into my stomach with his shoulder and wrapping his powerful arms around my back.
The increased gravity on Acathia had made the natives quite strong in comparison to us puny humans.  Fortunately for me, I was not quite human.  Still, I was impressed when he lifted me off the ground and set to squeezing me for all he was worth.  Acathian and human biology was quite similar.  Similar organ layouts and purposes, similar nervous system, and a similar skeletal structure.  This clown was clearly trying to break my back.  If I had not done something about it soon, he would have done it too!
I arched my back away from him, causing me more discomfort, but letting me reach my boot.  The same boot that had my trusty little dagger stashed in it.  I pulled it out and slammed it into him, aiming for his throat.  At some point something strange happened, and I am really not sure what it was.  All I can be certain of was we were suddenly on the ground and that my knife found a home, sinking in as deeply as possible into his right shoulder.  He growled at me and spat something out in his language.  I suspect what he said was non-complimentary and had to do with my sexual orientation and or relationship with animals.  Clearly not something a lady should have to put up with.  Damn shame I was not much of a lady.
He squeezed even harder though, making me lose my grip on the handle of my knife.  My vision began to get a little blurry as I struggled to get some fresh air into my nearly collapsed lungs.  My ribs screamed at me from the crushing they were taking as well.  On the plus side, my spine seemed to be holding up well, thanks to that armored vest I had.
I was certain that I was hallucinating then.  Colored spots in my field of vision, black spots crowding the edges of it.  I had little left in me when I thought I saw a momentary glint of light come out of him.  He dropped me then, and continued to fall forward onto me.  His head fell free of his body, landing on my stomach before rolling off while the rest of his body lay collapsed on my legs.
I gasped for breath, feeling the pain of tortured ribs with each breath but unable to stop myself.  I crab walked out from under him as best I could, wondering how in the world he had managed to lose his head.  I knew he was upset with me, but I did not think he was that upset!
Jethallin stood there, staring down at me like a guardian angel.  I could have kissed her if I had been able to move better.  Instead I just gave her a weak smile and fell backwards onto the ground.  I wanted to lay there for a few days, but it was less then three breaths later I realized that my men were still trapped in that burning tent.
I managed to stumble to my feet a bit unsteadily and move to the door of the hut.  Already other marines were converging on the tent.  They had rushed forward as soon as they saw me make my move on the first acathian.  Chemical fire retardants were sprayed and thrown on the tent while some fully armored marines charged in, looking for survivors.
I ran over there, my hurts forgotten in the fresh adrenaline rush.  I plunged into the black and smoky interior of the tent, spotting several of my men collapsed on the ground.  I grabbed the legs of the closest one to me and dragged him back out into the open.  Heedless of my own safety, I went back in and did it again and again, perhaps five times before all of my platoon that could be evacuated had been evacuated.
At some point during my suicidal rescue mission a piece of burning tent had fallen on my back.  It took me a second to realize it, and I was at a point where it was more important for me to pull Gunny out of the doorway to the tent then it was to save myself from a little burn.  I found out later that the fire retardant materials they use in those tents are pretty good at what they do.  When they do burn though, it takes such a high temperature that they burn hot.  It melted almost completely through the armor plate on the back of my vest, and gave me some very impressive burns on my right arm and side to think about for a while to come.
The good news is most of the marines made it.  That is, most of the ones we were able to get out, which was about 12 of them.  As they came around and seemed good enough to hold a gun, I sent them up to help 2^nd platoon bolster the defense against the acathian force that was bound and determined to break us.
“Lieutenant Snow!” a corporal called out after he ran over to our makeshift infirmary on the ground.
“Here, what is it corporal?” I asked, standing up and turning around to face him.  The look on his face told me that as bad as I felt, I probably looked worse.
“We’re pulling out of here, Ell-Tee.  Get your men together and get them loaded into a transport,” he said.
	“What the fu… damnit, after all we’ve been through we can’t just abandon this place and these people!” I spat out at him.
	“Something is happening up there, Ell-Tee, we’ve got our orders.”
	I looked up towards the sky where he had motioned and wondered just what indeed was going on up there.  We had beaten the acathian’s space forces a few standard months back, or at least as much as they had thrown at us or shown us they had.  If they had another fleet hidden somewhere, we could be in big trouble.
	I nodded, “Alright corporal, tell Captain Hartley I’ll evac my wounded to the shuttles.”  The corporal saluted me and was off before I could even notice his name on his uniform.  I glanced down and realized that at least he had a full uniform.
	“Gunny, get your ass up!” I snapped at the barely conscious man.  “No time for napping on the job.”
	He hacked a few more lungfuls of smoke out and staggered up with a fierce grin on his face.  “Yes Lieutenant.”
	I noticed the multiple burns on him and promised myself that I would gladly give him some decent R&R once we were out of here.  “All the ones that can’t move, get ‘em on a transport.  Make sure you go up with them.”
	“Yes Ma’am,” He responded, already turning to order the more able bodied survivors to help the less able bodied.
	An enemy fighter screamed by overhead, leaking smoke from several holes in its hull.  It crashed into the remains of our barracks tent, permanently removing any chance of salvage from it.  It dug a deep trench into the hard packed ground before it slammed into a rocky wall and lay forever still.
	“Lieutenant,” King called out to me after we had all started to regain our feet from the near miss.  “You’re wounded bad too, you’d better come with us.”
	The heat of the moment was on me.  Genetically enhanced adrenal gland working overtime.  I felt no pain.  “We’re marines, soldier, we have jobs to do.  You do yours and let me do mine!”
	His jaw clenched for a moment but he nodded and snapped off a salute to me before he turned and helped pick up a man who had to have part of the skin on his cheek cut off to separate the burning piece of tent fabric that had clung to him.  I saw that the man was missing part of his foot too.  He was so badly maimed I could not recognize him.
	Tabling the image for later, I turned and ran off towards where I deemed the heaviest fighting to be.  I cast about, looking for Jethallin, but found her nowhere to be seen.  I did find a spare soundblaster on my way to the wall, thanks to a marine who had been unlucky enough to be separated from her lower torso.  There ain’t no good way to die, but I hoped that for her at had at least been quick.
	The situation at the wall was bleak, to say the least.  There I was, using a short range weapon in a long range fight and wearing a half melted vest.  I guess it really did not matter, but it was just the principle of the matter.  It might have even been the X chromosome in me.  Granted a battle of this size was not exactly a social event, but I still preferred to be dressed for it.
	Then something happened that made me really miss my uniform.  A particle beam passed extremely close to my leg.  My pants, certified ES Marine combatwear, actually kept my shin from acquiring much more then a tingly sensation.  The ionized air and radiation around the beam should have burned my leg fairly badly.  Of course that leg on my pants now had a gaping hole on the outside of it just below my knee, but it had served its purpose.
	I missed my helmet too.  Without it, I had no visor to block the light and the flashes of explosions.  I had no tactical heads up display.  And most importantly, I had no comm-link.  I was just another grunt on the line.  Worse, a blind and deaf grunt on the line.
	I had to get some spare power packs from the marines near me since the former owner of the soundblaster I had acquired had none on her.  Usually spare battery packs are worn around the waist and she had misplaced that portion of her anatomy.
	The acathians pushed in on us slowly, our numbers dwindling as individual marines were called back to board the shuttles.  Called back or killed.  I glanced back into the base during my last switch to a fresh pack and saw that there was only 2 transports left.  Two transports and about 36 marines.  Plenty of room, but without the few of us to hold off the acathians charge, we would not last a minute.
	My momentary distraction cost me.  When I turned back around I saw seven acathians charging our position.  One went down under the fire of the marine on my left.  Before he could cut anymore of them down he lost his GAR and his hand as a particle beam sheared right through them.  Handy thing about particle beams, at least they cauterize the wound.
	I was yanking the trigger on my soundblaster as quick as I could then, but my aim was pretty lousy since they were way out of range and I had four particle rifles alternating their fire at me.  My riot gun charged and fired roughly once every second, and theirs about once every 6 to 8 seconds.  But with them alternating, that cut my time back to two seconds on a good day.  Maybe.  I did not push my luck, considering what all I had survived so far that day.
	“Get the fuck out of here, marines!  That’s an order!” I screamed out to the guys who were left crouched in the hastily dug trench with me.   Only 3 of us, including the recovering Private Stumpy.  He cradled his soundblaster in his left hand, preparing to use it.
	I grabbed it from him and did a little trick that is not in the field manual to it.  It involved setting it to a maximum charge and then disabling the power converter on the power pack.  Only took a couple of seconds, which I used between shots with my own gun.  When I looked up again there were more acathians charging our position, black skin gleaming in the incredibly bright Acathian sun.  They had started out at roughly 300 meters, and were now within 50.  Sadly they were just about in prime soundblaster range.  All 14 of them.
	I fired one last time, catching one of the acathians in the leg with the narrow cone of ultrasonic waves.  It whipped him around and shattered his leg, making him crumple to the ground.  Chalk one up for me.  My satisfaction was short lived though, for that time multiple particle beams came my way.  I could faintly smell the burning hair of one that narrowly missed my buzz cut head, but that was secondary to the ones that slammed into the rock in front of me and beside me.  Splinters and, in my opinion small boulders, broke free and slammed into me.  I was knocked senseless briefly as a rock the size of a baseball careened off my cheek.
	I picked myself up as quickly as I could.  It felt like forever to me, but I think it was a matter of only a few heartbeats time.  I had dropped both of the soundblasters, one near where I had been hiding before I had been knocked away from it, and the other near me.  Luck once again was on my side, the one near me was the good one.  I pulled myself to it and noticed that my right foot felt kind of funny.
	I read somewhere once that some crazy guy did not believe in luck.  Instead he insisted that chance favors the prepared mind.  No sane person prepares for this kind of stuff.  I would have liked to have seen him in my position, because without a healthy dose of luck on my side, I would never have even made it to where I was then.
	Nor would I have been able to survive the explosion that I caused as soon as three of the acathians jumped over the pile of rubble that had served as cover for me a few minutes ago.  I fired the soundblaster as soon as I saw them, hitting the booby-trapped one squarely and causing the overloaded power pack to release its stored energy in a glorious fireball.  I was picked up and sent skidding backwards along the ground, acquiring countless more scrapes, bruises, and cuts along the way.  But without my lucky rabbits foot, there was no way I could have managed to stay breathing through that.
	Breathing yes.  Conscious yes.  Lucid… well maybe not quite.  It took me several seconds to realize that the world was upside down.  Several more seconds for me to realize that I could fix that by just rolling over.  A pity though, it had looked rather neat and I thought that maybe blood was finally falling upwards.
	That funny feeling in my foot had disappeared, now it just felt numb.  When I tried to use it a stabbing pain made me collapse back to my knees.  I guessed I had broken my foot at some point.  A quick glance changed my mind, there was actually a jagged rock splinter stuck all the way through my foot, from top to bottom.  Well enough, it was time to crawl.  Do or die, that is how the marines live.  Or maybe do and die.  I get confused, especially when suffering a major concussion.
	Somebody tried to pick me up then, but I had no idea who and I was not taking any chances.  I twisted as best I could and used my elbows and hands as weapons.  It was clumsy and whoever had me avoided it easily enough by dropping me.  I saw a uniformed leg directly in front of me and I lashed out at it, trying to bite.  My teeth could not get through the armor in the fabric though, but the crushing of my jaw did draw a curse from whoever my assailant was.
	Funny thing was, the curse was in English.  The uniform was a marine uniform.  Oops.
	I had not realized my hearing was gone until then.  Probably because it suddenly came back to me.  Came back with a terrible ringing in my ears, sure sign of permanent hearing loss, but more then that, it was also a familiar voice calling out to me.
	“Ell-Tee, knock it off and let me help you!”
	Good old Sergeant King.  He had never let me down.  “Gunny!” I said.  Or at least I think I said it.  I could not hear myself talk, and it may very well have come out as something terribly garbled.  Regardless he picked me up and threw me over his shoulder.
	I was suddenly laughing, or doing whatever someone who has been beaten within an inch of her life does to approximate a hysterical laugh.  I am not sure what was so funny to me at the time, maybe it was just being still alive.
	He set me down a few minutes later and forced me to look into his eyes.  That sobered me up, seeing the cuts and burns on his face.  We were in the transport though, so things felt like just maybe they were going to be okay.  I should have known better.
	“How are the men?” I asked him quietly.  Turned out I yelled it, but it sure did seem like a whisper to me at the time.
	He just pointed up, letting me know that the ones that had made it were headed back to the Columbus.  He tied a strap around me to keep me in my seat and then fell into the one next to me.  The transport lifted before he had finished securing his own restraints.  Across the narrow aisle from me in the transport was the marine I had been crouched down next to while defending the base.  He clutched his stump of an arm in his good hand and stared off into space with streaks of tears running down his cheeks.  His jaw was clenched and he made not a sound.  I had no choice but to admire him.
	“What’s your name?” I asked him, still talking much to loudly.
	He glanced and me and noticed that I had been next to him in the trenches.  He looked down at his arm and then ran his eyes over my body.  I wondered what he saw, I did not have the guts to look at myself and see what was left.  “Private Demmer, Ma’am”
	I nodded.  “You did a great job out there private.  They can fix that when we get back, you just hold on.”
	He nodded and offered me a weak smile.  It was true, in a couple of weeks the doctors could have a new lower arm and hand grown and in place on Private Demmer’s arm.  There was not much they could not fix anymore, and since we were so short handed (sorry), nobody was worried about not getting proper medical care.
	The transport rocked then, hit by fire from below.  A wing of our fighters had strafed the ground before we took off, giving the last of us stupid groundpounders the chance to get aboard the last transport.  One of those fighter pilots never made it back though, his ship was tattooed with particle beams.
	With only one fighter to provide cover for our transport, it was a rocky ride.  We were less then a thousand feet up when I felt our ship shudder again.  Believe me when I tell you that there is no worse feeling for a marine then to be trapped inside a ship of whatever type, unable to fight back or even see what was going on.  Total helplessness, and that is where all 15 of us where then.
	Then we shuddered again and lost pressure.  A sizeable hole had appeared to the aft end of the cabin, drops of red hot metal dripping around the edges.  What was worse was that in addition to losing pressure, we were suddenly losing altitude.  With no cabin pressure there was no way we could escape the atmosphere.  My day just could not get any worse.
	There really should be a law against thinking that thought or uttering those words.  It seems as though it is an open invitation to misery.  As fate would have it, a couple of the repellers that gave us lift in the atmosphere had been shot out, causing the ones that were left to be too overloaded to allow us to stay airborne.  The pilots did what they could, there was no doubt about that, but when you toss a floating brick into the air and take away its means to float, there is only one alternative.
	The last thought that went through my mind before we started bouncing off the rocky landscape below was that it just did not seem fair.  All that I had gone through was for nothing.  Sure, I saved the lives of several men and women in my platoon, but damnit, I was hoping to save myself too!  My hand found Gunny’s in a final act of humanity that neither of us genetically bred homo-superiors had ever expected to share.