"Johnson, get your ass over here!" I managed to hear my unintelligible name over the din; the Chig rifles were loud enough as it was, and the fact that our artillery was pounding the hell out of their impossibly strong bunkers wasn't helping matters any. "Johnson!"

I ran flat out, crouching behind the pile of dirt that was my only lifeline, save for the rifle in my hands and my Brother Marines at my side. "Lieutenant!"

"Johnson, the Chigs are pounding the shit outta us! Our artillery ain't got any effect on their bunkers! I need suppressing-fire while we work our way around! C'n you provide that, marine?"

"Yessir!"

"Good! Give Matheson a hand! He and Wilman'll handle that .50! You think you can cover us?"

"You can count on me, lieutenant!"

"Get up in those ruins behind Matheson and Wilman! We'll be moving out once you get in position! Good luck, marine."

"Good luck, sir!" I nodded at my commanding officer and ignored the sick feeling in my stomach as a thick, metallic odor pervaded my senses. I always had to, even though I'd been around the scent of blood for so many months; killing, even if the enemy was extra-terrestrial, or even especially if, only made my stomach that much weaker. Add onto it the fact that my enemy never even knew I existed until it was too late, and I had a hard time swallowing C-rats, as good as they always are.

I patted Matheson's back as he reloaded the .50 cal with his only gun crew, Wilman, relaying the message lieutenant Danson had given me. He nodded in understanding as he pulled the trigger and released a fatal volley of lead.

I found a collapsed wall in the once-solid concrete shed that had probably stored farm tools before the Chigs decided to invade the one human colony in our solar system that wasn't on earth.

When the Quaoran campaign had begun, everyone was surprised, but they'd all done the last thing anyone had expected; which was just like them.

As Quaor's red sky and thin atmosphere burned with pillars of acrid black smoke, I gave a confirmation through my earpiece. "Alright, lieutenant. I'm in position. I've got your ass."

"And I've got yours, sergeant. Alright, boys! Let's plow these motherfuckers!" I watched as fourteen other men leaped over the wall of dirt and made their way to the Chig's right flank, where we knew they were falling apart; where we knew they couldn't cover themselves properly. And as they gave their warcry, I found my scope and peered thrugh the lens, finding nothing but dirt, dirt, dirt... all the way to a low hill with half a meter of a gap between the wall and the ceiling that I knew to be the Chig bunker.

The Savage 119-5 CB, the one thing that stood between me and death, I now found to be the most important piece of my heart, my best, most useful piece of equipment.

Although the Chigs hadn't yet entirely grasped the concept of the sniper's job, they sure were learning fast about what got them killed and what kept them alive on the battlefield when they were up against the United States Marines. In spite of this being true, though, a quick flicker of movement caught my eye, and my breath caught automatically in my throat as I realized that the Chigs were expecting my brother marine's approach. "Die, motherfucker." I squeezed the trigger, holding my breath and hoping against hope that my hammering heart slowed long enough for me to squeeze of just one precious round. That one interim between beats, when my two lower chambers and two upper chambers gave their job up to the aorta. Only four months ago, I would have felt a smile gracing my lips as the firing pin hit the primer, but now was not then.

My mouth was pulled in what I knew was a pained grimace as I felt the almost non-existent recoil of my Savage, and as I watched through the scope, I saw the Chig's head spray viscous greenish blood over the dirt as he disappeared from view. "Lieutenant, they're expecting you on their right flank. Advise."

"Roger that, sergeant." I could hear the burp of the alien machine gun on my officer's end of the conn. "Dammit, we're pinned down over here! These mofos have trenches stretching from here to fuckin' Toledo out here!"

"Lieutenant!" There was another cry on the other end. "Lieutenant, Lashing's been hit!"

"He's fucking dead! Leave him!"

"Fuck!"

"Christ almighty, Johnson! We've got one helluva situation over here! We haven't had a fuckin' break in their fuckin' fire! We need someone over here now!"

"Got it, lieutenant! I'll be there asap!"

"Fuck! Grenade!" The moment I stood sprung to a crouch to dash out toward our line's left flank, to mirror that of the enemy's right, I caught sight of a distant cloud of dirt, and the line magnified a blast so loud that the feedback actually deafened me in that ear for a moment.

Even in spite of the pain, I moved on, using the hillside as cover, only to duck not fifty meters from the ruins of the shed when a burst of gunfire pinned me behind an outcrop of rock.

The moment seemed like forever, but it ended when a man on an artillery crew sent a well-aimed shell to land directly in front of the Chig's bunker.

I dashed out from behind the rock and sprinted madly for a crater where a metor had landed millenia before and jumped in, where I found, to some relief, that I could now see where a Chig machine gun had been only moments before, its enormous bipod at an awkward angle from which it could topple any moment. "Lieutenant!" I said into the earpiece. "Lieutenant! Can you hear me?"

As I spoke, a small humanoid figure appeared from the junction where the trench down which I looked ended, while the other crossed it. The figure was only there for a moment, but it was closely followed by twelve, thirteen other figures, one of them with a slight limp. "Affirmative, sergeant! I hear you!"

"Are you in need of assistance, sir?"

There was a moment of silence on the other end of the connection. "I don't think so, sergeant. Looks like SA-43s. The Wildcards are here."

I couldn't believe my ears, but I couldn't look up. Even so, out of the corner of my eye, five Hammerheads entered the atmosphere at well above the speed of sound, sending an ultrasonic boom reverberating through the ground, lasting several seconds and ending at the tips of my fingers. We were finally making progress on Quaor.

And even with this progress, I found myself wondering how in the fuck we actually lasted that entire four months. By the beginning of the fifth, we'd just barely taken that bunker, and the Wildcards were rookies on our battlefield.

Still, they had us out of a pretty good pinch that first day they arrived... We'd lost nearly a hundred marines that day, which was only a small portion of what we could have, had they not shown up and dropped that one LGB on that Chig bunker. That in itself, even with the bloodshed, was a profound, gratifying moment. I had to keep in mind that if I ever met a Wildcard in person, I'd have to thank 'im. Because without them, there's definitely no doubt that we would've lost Quaor to the hands of the Chigs.

We didn't take that victory to mean that it was by any means over, though. There was still plenty to do, and this was the first dent we'd made against the Chigs in a long time, marine pilots or no. Even with Poseidon Field down, we had a long way to go.