Author : Roi R. Czechvala, Staff Writer

The drop from orbit was as uneventful as they ever are, and if they’re not you usually don’t live long enough for it to bother you. Grounding was pretty hard though.

After I gathered my senses I saw that somebody’s leg had snapped off and was lying right in front of me. That’s gonna suck for somebody I thought to myself, then I noticed the bright green and blue ident tags. It was mine. Shit.

The rear door of the troop boat fell, and I managed to hustle out and form up with as much agility as I could muster. I wondered if I’d get any down time to re-grow it. Yeah right. My attention was diverted when our CO called us to attention.

“Listen up maggots, you are the sorriest bunch of pupae that I have ever seen, but I guess I’m stuck with you.” We beamed with reflected pride. This was the best outfit in the entire division and she knew it. It had been since before I hatched. This was the CO’s way of showing us her respect.

“It isn’t going to be easy. The enemy is well trained, and skilled in all forms of combat. But they are extremely vulnerable. A carapace blast we would hardly feel boils away their bodies in an instant. You have your orders, fall out.”

It was nest to nest combat. Why couldn’t the aliens live underground like normal people. My friend “Stench”, she had a thing for fermented dung, disgusting, was my battle buddy. She was a good three segments longer than I, so I had no fears, no matter what we went up against.

For the most part it was a routine mop up. I lost another foreleg, but nothing major happened until we came upon that one dwelling.

In the more civilized space below the above ground construction, we came across one of the creatures with a brood of it’s young clustered about. Instantly Stench and I laid waste to the young while it yanked at it’s head growth, and hurled unintelligible noise at us. Within seconds they were all dead, little more than bubbling puddles of tasty looking goo. The adult creature, apparently a female, lay in a heap shuddering violently yet silently.

Stench flipped it over and deftly slashed open it’s thorax with her pincer. Her midsection bloomed like a moist red flower. In the centre of the blossom was an incomplete version of the adult form.

My mind ran to my own hatchlings. How would I feel if a thousand or so were brutally murdered?

“Hey,” I asked Stench, “do you really think what we are doing here is right? I mean, what have they ever…,”

“Don’t worry about it buddy,” Stench interrupted, stroking my antennae with hers releasing calming pheromones, “God is on Our side.”