Against Us

My ears were ringing.

 "mam?! Thy rr iting rd!"

"WHAT?!" 

"THEY ARE FIGHTING HARD!" Staff Sgt. Pierce shouted.

"What's there?" I asked.

Some sort of grenade exploded near me and threw me down. My back was hot; I'd been dragged back to cover. I looked around. 

"Nothing. No signatures! No radiation! No signals! Nothing! But they want it bad!" shouted Pierce.

"The fuck are they doing, then?" I shouted back. Looking at the platoon, there were a few missing limbs our medics were tending to. Some people were bleeding from the ears. I touched the side of head and found the dull red flakes. I'd been bleeding from ears, too. 

"Not sure." shouted Pierce.

"Fine. Fuck it! Fuck them. They want it!? FUCK THEM. We're taking it!" I shouted. 

Pierce put her hand on my shoulder. "They'll do whatever you tell them, you know that? After that?"

 "After what?" I said.

And then the smell. Bodies blown apart. The sickly sweet smell, if you inhaled too much, you would smell shit. But floating above it? Blood. When bodies get blown apart, their blood is vaporized and, if you could stop? Yes, it does smell good. Like meat.

Yes. I am ashamed. I smell the blood of my fellow people and it just makes me want pay back real hard. And a hamburger.

I don't smell the blood of ... whatever they are. It smells like moss.

They insist we not name them or give them a name because their "language is too complex."

Yeah. Whatever. Pretentious ass alien invaders. These scum bags learned our language and we can't learn their's?

Yeah, I'm fixing to kill them just for being pretentious.

These fucking monsters.

I used to be a kindergarten teacher! I was a linguist, in fact. I learned the core linguistics in the name of world peace. And then these Mother Fuckers. Trying to take my planet away. My. Planet. My life. My friends.

If we weren't in a firefight right now? I'd be having goddamned Sunday brunch.

No. No you don't.

I take a deep breath. I think about the past.

"Pierce! How bad do they want it?"

I'm a foot taller than Pierce and about twenty pounds heavier, but he's scared of nothing. He's a good soldier.

"They want it bad, Ma'am." he says.

Oh. Duh. 

"Okay. How bad am I?" I asked him.

"You're all patched up, Ma'am. Give it another five to ten minutes and the nanites will..." 

I felt a cold rush of anger.

"You put nanites in me?!" I shouted.

Pierce grabs my hand, clenches around my thumb and frowns hard.

"If I didn't, Ma'am? You would be dead!" His face is sincere. 

I look around. Yeah. They fought us hard. Okay.

"They want this building. I want to know why. How many more of these things do you have left?" I ask Pierce. 

"That depends on what you want, Ma'am." Pierce said.

"Anyone with no severed limbs gets an infusion." I spat, already figuring it out.

"Yes Ma'am!" Pierce said, his voice already moving away from me.

What do you want? What. Do. You. Want. ?

"Platoon sergeant up!" I hear Rawlins say. I raise my hand to shoulder and hold it parallel to the marching surface and push it down to my hip. 

The silence is his response.

I gestured for the grid coordinates to Rawlings and he passed it to the GPS guy. He wrote it on a pad and tossed it to me.

"39.325206,-76.6123748"

Why was that familiar? Why did the Faction want it? These were normal humans that decided to join the aliens. What would they want with... a warehouse?

Their messages were everywhere. "Make History. Fight Back." Vague bullshit that they would put out when they did something horrible. They made a war zone out of Baltimore. They hurt people. They made everyone so angry at them that gang violence fell to zero. No one wanted to be thought of as being their friend; at least openly. 

What did they want with this building? I gestured the IO soldier to get me all the information about the ware house.

Then silence. They weren't shooting at our position anymore. The fuck?

"We got blueprints?" I rasped. Someone tapped my shoulder and gave me a print out from a mobile printer. "Take this to the GPS soldier, have him impose it over the street map, copy?"

"They." said the GPS  soldier.

"What?" I said. 

"They uh, they're non-binary. They prefer they." the GPS soldier said.

"Oh, shit, my bad. Have them impose it for me, roger?" I said. 

"Yes, Ma'am!" the GPS soldier said. Shit. Did I fuck up?! Dammit. I should have asked about the whole gender thing before the mission began. Dammit.

We wait. The sun starts to set. I signal "Anyone got a cigarette?"  

A pack of Marlboro's got passed to me. I drew one out and lit it and sucked on it. That hot angry smoke made my hands and feet twitch. I sit there and let it flow. I hate my addiction to this garbage but it's calmed me down during this... thing. Police action? Fuck. 

"Ma'am!"

Jesus! No has said a word for at least an hour and half! I signal with hand "WHAT?!"

Pierce hand signals, "They have it!"

I gesture "Get them here!"

Pierce runs up. "It's full of books.":

"Oh is it?!" I say. Mother. Fuckers. I signal with hands "who has an M-240 Bravo? And who can man another?"

I have them set up the secondary, targeting the windows. Three round bursts, randomly, best they can.

The sun is setting.

Bravo team will move up to the northern door and start trying to pry it open, loudly and badly.

No one says anything. I know they think I'm crazy and this is stupid.

But I got an idea. I think they were desperate and that last volley was all the heavy stuff they have.

Fuck you. We're taking it.

I have get a breacher from the people that can still fight. She's young. Big eyes. Cute even in her armor. I was like her once. I tell her the plan.

"What's the plan, Ma'am?" she asks. I tell her. Her name is Rosa Jackson.

She breaches. I go in with a large machine gun and shoot anyone still standing and she covers my six with her regular service weapon.

She nods.

I run up to the door, she fires he breach round from a shotgun and goes to rifle. One of them screams something at me and I shoot them. I shoot another and another. Die. Traitors. Die.

The cordite smell fills the air and I love it. I feel good. I look around. There are explosives taped to the walls. Their detonators are cell phones.

"CLASS FOUR E-M-P, NOW!" Rosa shouts into her radio. Her radio dies as the cell phone detonators do.

There is whine from somewhere out side and the cellphones die, blinking out like street lights at dawn. Like streets lights used to blink out when Baltimore had power.

"That was close..." I say to her Rosa.

"Yes Ma'am. Look..." she says.

We are in a library. Books. Everywhere.

You mother fuckers aren't going to erase us or our history. We got our books back.