My squad trusts him, I trust him. Lieutenant pencil pusher has no reason to lie. Through the gate we go-- bodies unraveling into energy then reassembling into flesh and bone before we know what’s happened. Harsh winds rip around our greatcoats, imperceptible to our focused intent. Hearts pounding as the battlefield materializes around us, that oh-so familiar feel of war, the eerie quiet that can only come from looking at the corpse of another human being.

  Of the dead.

  Scores of them, strewn across the mud, torn to ribbons. Conscripts reduced to shreds as if funneled through a gargantuan wood chipper. Air whistles through my mask, unable to filter the iron stink of blood and ozone from still-smoldering craters.

  This is not an armory.

  Nor any kind of staging ground.

  Memories rise, replaying how thousands of Sable's fellow recruits were filtered out. Friendly fire. When artillery shells encountered a strong headwind and fell short, onto our positions. A survival lottery that no skill or action on your part could influence. It simply came down to getting lucky.

  Today, we did got especially unlucky.

  "Missed our LZ, sound off." Rogers calls, his deep voice steadying our pulse like nothing else can.

  I know in that moment I would follow him to war, just to hear the his voice say, 'Follow me and you will live."

  Shadows scatter around us, more than I can count. One sprints towards us, tackling clone archetype seven, Sarah Green-

  -gills, claws, and bulging eyes. As if this creature is a deep sea fish in too low a pressure. Bulbous flesh trembling on the brink of bursting. We have no armor save our helmets, a calculated risk protecting our brains, while leaving our necks exposed.

  The mutant, whatever it is, clamps down on Sarah Green's neck. Inch long fangs pierce her coat, radiation liner, and flesh. Before I can think the FNX is in my hand, safety off. I’m running. One finger taps the loaded chamber indicator telling me the weapon is fully loaded. I need only pull the trigger.

  Four squadmates tackle the creature ahead of me, yanking the creature off its feet. A knife flashes, jerked aside by Rogers' iron grip. My peers from college are no more, replaced by hardened warriors. Familiar with violence. Mutated hands and feet are bend backwards leveraging digits til bones crunch. Hissing, screaming, flailing as four humans methodically shatter the alien. A fifth squadmate grabs the knife, taking it up in two hands, plunging it into the creature's eye. Spasms run through the piranha-like humanoid. Jaw clenches shut, severing Sarah Green's spine.

  Drawing the pistol 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 unthinkable violence. The perfect target for any smart artillery. Number one--Rogers speaks first, unphased by violence as an untrained earthling ought to be.

  Were Sable not piloting my body, I'd be vomiting on the floor, unable to grasp the wreckage of dead around me. But she is, giving me a spine.

  “We’re clustered, spread–”

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

  Memories remind me of Jim's deal, of how I'll never again sit between mom and dad, eating popcorn. Mom gets nothing if we don’t lose.

  Just when I found the will to fight, I die. Damnit. If only I had a second chance, time to find armor.

  The pressure wave knocks me unconscious before I can feel pain, killing Sable Yurten.

  —

  Two voices speak inside my mind, products of the two linked cryopods.

  >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.

  >Matriarch Hygieia: what happens if they die?

  >Executrix Alaea: There is time. have location, sending my personal nanites.

  A moment passed between messages. Information crossing lightyears of subspace to Exec Kaalra's Destroyer. A humble ship, more yacht than warship, befitting an ambassador.

  >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…

  >Matriarch Hygieia: take my hip arms

  >Matriarch Hygieia: wont need them til the combat drop

  >Matriarch Hygieia: can regrow them by then

  —

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

  Her veneer of lies stripped away by un-friendly fire–

  –And the bitch left me holding the bag.

  I became aware slowly, light coming back into my pupils. Legs tingling 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, when did I paint my toenails black?

  The author's narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

  Did Whorely paint my nails when I was sleeping?

  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?

  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 Green. 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. One moment they are present, the next I receive a mental alert, so similar to Jim and Haime’s draft notice.

  [+1 Biomass]

  0 / 1 Biomass

  “What the hel–”

  Before I can finish the thought, text appears in my mind, so similar to the chat function of a game, specifically shaped like the Starcraft chat function. It's been years since I’ve seen that style of text, mainly because I have the chat function muted these days. Nothing is left there except friends who haven’t logged on in three years and edgy politics. The polar opposite of the two women I now see chatting inside my mind.

  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

  >Matriarch Hygieia: like radioactive pork thats oversalted and undercooked

  >Matriarch Hygieia: wait…

  >Matriarch Hygieia: this doesnt taste right, its not like the biopools

  >Matriarch Hygieia: 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

  >Matriarch Hygieia: asshole

  >Matriarch Hygieia: you sent me human biomass?

  >Executrix Alaea: Ick. But… Does it matter if you aren’t human yourself?

  >Matriarch Hygieia: guess not

  >Matriarch Hygieia: its the thought that counts

  “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. But shopping can wait, 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 cryo-shave. I run my fingers over them, glass has more friction than these sexy bitches. I’m dazed. Brain whirling as I try to grasp my death and resurrections.

  My mouth works thought into the world.

  “In the past day I was cheated on, conscripted into a galactic military, flashtrained to be a fake clone, then actually cloned, 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.

  A shiver runs up my spine. Wind chilling my bare skin. One quick glance around and I scramble into the clothes left behind after my ally's body vanished. Warped out by Alaea's personal engine, a protochronian device gifted to her directly from the -nameless-

  "How do I know that?" I mutter aloud, stripping everything of value from my former allies.

  Hey, I don’t like graverobbing at all, but some of her pragmatism seems to have seeped into my psyche. 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. Life saving protection when you consider the ambient radiation will give me cancer inside of an hour. Best armor up. Somehow my FNX pistol survived along with the magazines. A small miracle.

  I am no longer Sable Yurten, but we are both better for having known each other.

  I will make it home.

  This war feels 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! Why not use them?

  Through my helmet I catch the haunting whistle of incoming shells. More artillery. An itch spreads across my waist, the old war wound 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 military highway, a thirty-foot-deep chasm reinforced with logs and metal grating. Meant to support Thirty feet deep with logs and metal grating to line them. A sort of reinforcement that limits how deep even the heaviest of fatasses or tanks can sink--a Technomancy tactic ensuring their war machines can keep on warring without getting mires-- yet it does nothing to keeping mud from coating my boots.

  Walls give me a false sense of security, dirt trenching alone isn’t enough to protect from bombardment. The Singularity training manual -courtesy of Sable- suggests bunkers be dug every quarter mile at a minimum. While our rival's -the Novan Technomancy of Steel- standard is looser at a mile or two. What do they care if a few additional humans die?

  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, saving my soft squishy grey matter from trauma -Quality gear, built to function after a direct hit-- which I’ve taken two of.

  Pressure 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 is coming to save me, no one is my true ally, there are no weapons here, only the odd chat window. I drag myself onto my feet, wobbling down the trench in what feels like a sprint; hoping to find a bunker where I can get my bearings and link up with Singularity forces. Even pretending is better than dying.

  Deep within my mind Sable Yurten encounters my memories of StarCraft 2, drooling over power armored infantry, siege tanks, and instantly acquiring a crippling fascination with shields. Ideas and technology available for production from a fully supplied nanofactory.

  I have a pathway to victory, to impose my will onto this battlefield and compel a wargame only I can win. It will only take a little coordination with my other thirds.

  Executrix Alaea is right, I know the buttons required to speak. 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, I need you Athena. Can’t heal you again.

  >Matriarch Hygieia: I’ll kill you if you die!

  >Matriarch Hygieia: Stay alive!

  >Matriarch Hygieia: Hide in a hole if you have to!!!!!!

  Mentally I press enter, flicking my pinky to open chat. An affectation I soon learn is unnecessary.

  >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? Having a hard time adjusting. 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.