“When the weapon is war, you are the target no matter where you aim. Firing on the enemy leads to self annihilation, immolation, or mutilation. War wounds; even if the harm is not visible.”
– Lincoln Lazlo, last words in the trenches of Mimas.
ONCE MORE WE FIGHT. Contemplating Lazlo’s words from a century before. Now carrying quantum disruptors rather than rail guns. Our ship popped above ring’s edge to draw in Saturn’s fleet. They took the bait and gave chase. Now their Mechs deploy against us on Mimas.
We had taken the moon fairly easily. They hadn’t expected us to dive deep. Figured we’d secure the outer moons first. Strategy designed to make them lose face. They reacted quickly, bloody Ringers!
Now to finish off their ground forces. Even with air superiority, it would be fruitless to destroy their own people. Who’d remain to rebuild after nuking their homelands? Earth may be a shithole, but it is our shithole. We want what is theirs. Deserve it, and will win it.
My glove on her breast, I pulled the newbie down in the trench. A micron more and she’d have a hair part beginning at her upper lip.
“Hey, hands!” Cherish blurted, then more subdued, “Thanks Sarg,” as iridescent beams flashed over our heads.
“Grope a dope,” joked Smithers.
“Shut it!” I ordered. “At least she was working the problem.”
“Fire the perimeter charges as they breach the ridge?” Smithers asked.
I looked at him frowning in disappointment. Maggot, I thought, you know the drill.
Smithers peered through his periscope, saw the line of tracks coming over the top and snapped his fingers. With that, he vaporized the ridge and all the climbing Mechs.
“Get some!” shouted Cherish in her helmet. My ears popped.
“Forward!” I ordered, and my platoon leaped up and surged. Hop running toward the enemy, we spread out as we ran to minimize target. Mechs vaporizing as we charged. Impressions of terror in the faces behind canopies. Things were going well. We were a flying wedge of destruction.
“Sarg, starboard flank…” Cherish yelled, sublimating a micron later.
There was a ripping sound in my left ear. Visor vanished, I was sucking vacuum then drowning in blood. Total black hole, frozen time.
***
Next thing I knew there was walrus flippers slapping my shoulder. Walrus?
“Sarg, we won!”
“You sure it’s him?”
“Ident tag reads as…”
“Where am I?”
Maurishka, my corporal, answered, “Sick Bay on the Eclezious. It was real close.”
“You say we won?”
“Wiped them clean.”
“What’s left of me?”
“Got a new face for a new hero.”
Then I felt the canker sores. Mouth burning like bad pineapple.
“What’s happening to him?” asked Smithers.
“Face melt,” said a cute medic, appearing in view, “happens sometimes. Acute rejection of face transplant.”
“Yeesh!”
I stayed faceless. Hard on my love life, but scares the hell out of the enemy.
DR. KEITH RAYMOND is a Family and Emergency Physician that practiced in eight countries in four languages. Currently living in Austria with his wife. When not volunteering his practice skills with refugees, he is writing or lecturing. He has multiple medical citations, along with publications in Flash Fiction Magazine, The Grief Diaries, The Examined Life Journal, The Satirist, Chicago Literati, Blood Moon Rising, Frontier Tales Magazine, and in the Zimbell House Sci Fi anthology Sanctuary among others.
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