My squad trusts him, I trust him. He has no reason to lie. Through the gate we go bodies converting to energy and back to matter before we know what’s happened. The inhospitable climate beyond is imperceptible through our heavy clothes. What is perceptible however, is the muddy trenches and bodies. We’re surrounded by a score of corpses, mostly laying in tattered shreds, as if an uncountable number of conscripts were fed into a wood chipper. This is not an armory. Nor any kind of staging ground.


    Memories rise, how most of the thousand recruits died replays in my mind. Friendly fire incidents, when artillery shells encountered a strong headwind and fell short, onto our positions. A lottery that no skill or action on your part could influence. It simply came down to getting lucky.


    Today, we did not get lucky.


    Shadows scatter around us, more than I can count. One sprints towards us, tackling seven. I see gills, claws, and bulging eyes. As if this creature is a deep sea fish in too low a pressure. As conscripts we only wear armor over our chests and a helmet to protect our vitals. The logic being those are places where a fight ending injury can occur the easiest, but they missed a spot. Our necks. The thing, whatever it is, clamps down on seven’s neck. Inch long fangs pierce her coat, radiation liner, and flesh.


    Four squadmates join the melee, yanking the creature off its four feet. A knife appears, straight edged but with an S curved handle, not made for human hands. Flash training has turned these flabby Americans into hardened warriors. Each hand or foot is bent backwards leveraging digits until the creature is a shattered mess. A fifth squadmate grabs the knife plunging it into the creature''s eye. Spasms run through the piranha like humanoid. Jaw clenches shut, severing Seven’s spine.


    “No!” Shouts someone, I never learn who.


    My hesitation only took a half second, but that’s all the time it takes to end the fight. Nine people are clustered around the two bodies knee deep in violence. The perfect target for any smart artillery.


    “We’re clustered, spread–” Begins one.


    Artillery vaporizes number one. Direct hit. A high explosive shell crushes the man, plowing six feet into muddy trench before the proximity fuse understands it hit something. Fire annihilates most of the squad, only tearing me in half.


    Memories remind me that Mom gets nothing if we don’t win these wargames. We must take the planet. The pressure wave knocks me unconscious before I can feel pain, killing Sable Yurten.


    —


    >Matriarch Hygieia: OW! WHAT THE HELL! WARN ME


    >Executrix Alaea: Wasn’t me. I’m safe on this Azhurai ship. Tiny quarters though.


    >Executrix Alaea: I felt it too. Like getting cut in half. We must have a third


    >Matriarch Hygieia: had a third. feels like we are gonna die.


    >Executrix Alaea: There is time. have location, sending my medkit. Only have one.


    A moment passed between messages. Information returning to the Azhurai Conglomerate warship.


    >Executrix Alaea: Extensive damage. Bots need biomass to plug these holes.


    >Matriarch Hygieia: shit


    >Matriarch Hygieia: die now or tomorrow


    >Executrix Alaea: I don’t want to die…


    >Matriarch Hygieia: Oh man, this is gonna hurt… take my legs. side legs. I can regrow them.


    —


    Sable Yurten died. As people tend to do when they are killed.


    Her veneer of lies stripped away by unfriendly fire–


    –And the bitch left me holding the bag. I became aware slowly, light coming back into my pupils. Legs tingle for several minutes as feeling returns, coming in a distinct wave that starts near my ribs and ripples down, through my pelvis, over my hips, into knees, calves, feet, and finally my toes. They’re all weirdly cold, I look down and find blue arcs of light crawling over my –once again– naked lower half. Weird, how did my toenails get painted black? The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.


    I shake the distraction, more annoyed at an emergent pattern, one I am already fed up with! What philandering jerk leaves a woman naked in the trenches? Baz-hole?


    The blue sparks tickle my legs, creeping entirely too close to my lady bits.


    “Eek!” I swat them away, or try to.


    Fingers touch sparks and I get gently tased. Like licking a nine volt battery if you mixed the sensation with spicy shaving cream, thick, painfully tingly and now all over my freaking hands! I throw myself sideways, kicking and flailing until my sparkly hands land on the severed torso of twelve. Sparks leap from me to her, encircling her upper half and arcing to her legs, she was cut in half like me, not vaporized like number one.  In a sort of negative flash the sparkles and body vanish.


    [+1 biomass]


    “What the hel–”


    Before I can finish the thought, text appears in my mind, so similar to the chat function in Wings of Liberty, a game I once played. It''s been years since I’ve seen that style of text, mainly because I have the chat function muted. Nothing is left there except friends who haven’t logged on in three years and edgy politics. Not here. Two people have been having a conversation for what looks like hours. As if they existed while I was still in my cryotube, before Jim ran his tests.


    >Matriarch Hygieia: tasty. like radioactive pork thats oversalted and undercooked. wait… this doesnt taste like the biopools. its not my biomass.


    >Executrix Alaea: Wasn’t me.


    >Matriarch Hygieia: Is our other half alive?


    >Executrix Alaea: Can you have three halves? Hey! Athena Finley, say hello! You know which buttons to press.


    >Matriarch Hygieia dna is a double helix so this is human. asshole, you sent me human biomass?


    “This can’t be real…” I begin to say, coming up short.


    My voice trails off as I stare at my toes, whatever is making the nails dark isn’t polish. A permanent fashion statement that will forever ruin my favorite heels. Yet, I have larger concerns, my legs are no longer the same, already showing more muscle and less fat, although that might just be the perfect shave. I run my fingers over them, glass has more friction than these sexy bitches. I’m dazed. So much has occurred I need a moment.


    My mouth works out my thoughts.


    “In the past day I was cheated on, conscripted into a galactic military, cloned or something, transported across planets, and implanted with the memories of an entire life. Blown in half and rebuilt by… something indistinguishable from magic. This really isn’t all that strange.” I say aloud, scrambling into the pants left behind by number twelve.


    Hey, I don’t like graverobbing at all, but I ain''t running around a planet without pants on! Besides, twelve’s body is gone, no blood or viscera remains, leaving guilt free pants behind. Boots too. Ambient radiation will give me cancer inside of an hour, best armor up. This war feels so lost, hopeless even. Fifteen seconds is how quickly my entire squad survived, from the first man through the gate to the last casualty. Why they sent humans here and not sealed tanks and mechs is a strategic error I struggle to comprehend.


    So stupid.


    Earth has tanks!


    Jim said those were taken, so why not use them?


    Through my helmet I hear whistling. More artillery. I can still recall the sensation of being blown in half. Panic ignites my feet. I duck and run, sprinting through the muddy trenches in search of safety or cover. There’s none. Someone built this trench to be a highway. Thirty feet deep with logs and metal grating to line them. A sort of reinforcement that limits how deep your average fatass would sink into the mud, a Technomancy tactic so their war machines can keep on warring without getting stuck. Useless in keeping an infantryman’s boots dry. I’m exposed here. A trench alone isn’t enough to protect from bombardment, standard singularity training says bunkers should be placed every quarter mile at a minimum. While the Technomancy standard is a mile or two. A shell lands in front of me, burying itself in the wet dirt before exploding. Dirt rises in a split second, sending a concussion wave that kicks me in the face. My helmet takes the brunt, and I''m grateful for the integrated gas mask. Quality gear, built to function after a direct hit. Which I’ve taken two of. Together they manage to keep my head intact as the wind forcibly exits my lungs, ears pop. Silence follows. Were it not for the twin glass circles my eyes would be gone as well. Concussed. I lay in the mud for several seconds, wheezing as my entire body reels in pain. Like I’ve been tenderized by a dozen Rock Johnsons. Or a dildo factory, but I repeat myself.


    No one comes to save me, there are no weapons here, only the odd chat window. I sprint down the trench hoping to find a bunker where I can get my bearings and link up with Singularity forces. Praetorian Panoptes is right, I know the buttons. The window isn’t really a window, it''s a borderless square in the bottom right hand corner of my vision.


    >Executrix Alaea: Ouch! Please don’t die, Earth needs you. Mom needs you. Can’t heal you again.


    >Matriarch Hygieia: I’ll kill you if you die! Stay alive! Hide in a hole if you have to!!!!!!


    Mentally I press enter, flicking my pinky to open chat.


    >Human Athena: artillery strike. I’m alive. ouch.


    >Matriarch Hygieia: what the hell… HUMAN?


    >Matriarch Hygieia: AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH


    >Executrix Alaea: Ignore her. Shes uh… I don’t know how to say this, not human anymore? Kinda zergy, but don’t worry about that.


    >Human Athena: Is that why my toenails are black? Did you make me half zergy?


    >Matriarch Hygieia: HA! serves you right.