Steel Plated B####
copyright 2014 Faeriemage
After-Life as a soldier is always tough.

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AUTHOR'S NOTE: No idea where the idea for this story really came from. think it was the title first and everything flowed from there. There is situational violence, but nothing really graphic. Not one for Splatter-fests. In fact, there is nothing really graphic at all here. the cautions are for the use of strong language (occasional and brief) and the discussion of some strong subjects.

Also, happy news, this is a completed story in one shot. There might be a sequel to this one, but I have no idea of the story I would tell yet, so we'll have to see.

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“I don’t care who this was, and it wouldn’t matter if he was God almighty, the reincarnation of Babe Ruth and George Washington all rolled into one. If I tell you there aren’t any spares left, then there aren’t any spares left.”

The voices talking above me weren’t really within my scope of understanding. They should have had meaning to me, but the last thing that really had meaning was when the anti-tank round had passed through my right shoulder. It shouldn’t have even been an issue then. If my armor had been buttoned up right...but then I’d told the mechanic that he should have replaced the support structure under the right pectoral plate three skirmishes ago.

“That’s not altogether true, doctor,” a quiet, and strangely enough female voice says. That gets my attention. Men and women are treated in different wings of the hospital. Not due to any sort of segregation bullshit, but because there are different procedures in place for each one. Each male soldier had frozen a lifetime supply of our sperm before we’d shipped out. Because a soldier just doesn’t have the time necessary for it, egg donation just isn’t an option. They want to ensure as many fertile survivors as they can so...

“Oh, hell no.” private Donovan say. Not sure what he’s getting so up in arms about.

“Oh come on, Donovan, don’t think a woman can lead?” Corporal Parks asks. Parks is one of my youngest corporals. She can also bench more than Donovan. The question doesn’t make sense to my drug and pain addled mind.

“We’re losing him,” I hear another male voice say, and then the world just goes way.

01000010 01010010
When I wake up, I begin silently cursing the mechanic. My mind is in that hyper clear state that it always is when you’ve just been transferred into a spare. The One Life fanatics we’re fighting will never know this feeling, this complete moment of mental clarity...before your life comes crashing down on your head.

I don’t know if a human being has a soul, but I do know that whatever is the essence of me, that spark of life, can’t be duplicated. They’ve tried, but the second they transfer you, the old body becomes completely brain-dead. Personally, I like to believe that our soul knows what’s good for it, and heads down the electron pipe with the rest of our personality.

I sit up. I can feel the weight of my hair, and I grab onto it. It’s a lot longer than I’d have thought, longer than it should be. I pull it over my shoulder and it just pools in my lap.

“Someone forget to give me a haircut before I woke up?”

My voice gives me pause. The spares are designed for two things; keeping you alive while they prepare a custom job for you; keeping you from going into rejection shock. As such, the spare picks up as much as it can from your memories so that it can adjust the minor things for you and make transition as simple as possible. It reads how your brain controls things like your muscles and your breathing. It even modulates the vocal chords so that you sound the same to yourself when you speak. You always sound a little weird to everyone else but that’s because sound reverberates differently in the synthetics that make up a spare’s head.

My singing voice was a baritone, and my speaking voice wasn’t all that much higher. There’s no way I should be sounding like a freaking Alto right now. My voice has the right tonality, it’s just too high.

I try a couple of bars from La Traviata, and even though I’m singing the songs I’m used to I sound a lot more like a ‘Flora’ than a ‘Giorgio.’ I start to sing scales. This spare hasn’t been properly locked down...or possibly it’s just that it doesn’t mesh properly with my memories, but I find myself singing an A two octaves above high C before the thing actually runs into a block. I can’t get much below G, but that gives me an impressive range none the less.

“Nevermind Flora, I’ll be able to go out for the part of Violetta,” I say and then I giggle. I meant for it to come out as a chuckle...but it was so comfortable to just, well, giggle. It had been a habit I’d been trying to break myself of for years, my habit to giggle. Ever since I’d turned thirteen in fact. It was hard enough being a young opera singer without the added stigma of sounding gay. Unfortunately it had been a persistently hard habit to break.

I stop it immediately, but I can feel something moving on my chest. I put my hand up to touch my chest...and punch myself in the breast. “Son of Beelzebub, that hurt!” I say as I massage what is most definitely a breast of the female variety.

“Up to your creative swearing already, Sarge?” a voice says from the doorway.

“Captain Anderson!” I say and make a move to get out of bed.

“Stop right there, First Sergeant. You’re on mandated bed rest.” He only uses my full title when he wants to get my attention. The order doesn’t make any sense to me.

“I was swapped to a faulty spare, I’m sure…”

“There is nothing wrong with your spare, Sarge,” the captain says. I think there’s a note of sadness in his voice that I simply can’t place. Why would he be sad? Sure, they’ll have to grow me a new custom, but it’s not like that will take more than a couple of weeks at most.

“I mean, sure, it’s got a high pitched voice synthesizer, and it has breasts...no…” horror washes over me. This isn’t possible. This shouldn’t be possible. “No, this shouldn’t...this can’t…”

He walks over to me and takes my hand, something he only does for the female soldiers and I snatch it away. It’s a little too much for me at the moment. “Captain Anderson!” I say blushing. Why should I be blushing?

“We’re worried about how you’ll handle the new spare, Sarge.”

“That’s not the greater concern. Why am I in a female spare?”

“Well, Sarge, we had two choices, and one of them was to let you die.”

“Why were we out of male spares?”

“That is the question, now, isn’t it? The enemy has begun targeting rebirth facilities.” There is an icy pit in my stomach. The one thing that we’d always had on our side, since we never had numbers, was that there was no end to our numbers. You kill one of them once and they’re through. They had a limited number of people that they could throw at us, while as long as we were even technically alive we could be brought back. That precluded any really suicidal charges, but just about anything short of that…

“How many?” I said quietly.

“How many what?”

“How many did we lose. How many of my soldiers aren’t coming back?”

“Our company is fine. You were the last of your soldiers that we needed to transfer. I still think that’s a stupid thing to have put in your standing medical orders. I could have overridden it you know,” he says looking at me kindly.

I don’t know why I want to blush. I never have in the past. Then it strikes me between the eyes: he’s not looking at me like he normally does.

“Captain, you really can’t...I mean I’m still an NCO even if I’m…”

His face goes red and he stands up and turns his back on me. “Sergeant, are you gay?”

“You can’t ask me…”

“Come on, you flirt with me, so just tell me the truth. You’ve never been effeminate or dated...you know...men…”

“No, what I meant, Captain Anderson is that you really can’t be asking me that. And I can’t answer you.” No matter how much I want to, I finished in the safety of my own thoughts. I decided to toss him a bone, “I like flirting with you because it’s safe. You’re never going to take me up on it, because you’re not...I mean you weren’t attracted to me. I guess that’s going to have to change now…”

“Stow it, Sarge. The men and women under our command wouldn’t know how to handle it if mom and dad stopped teasing each other.”

“Wait, you knew about that?”

Behind his back, a lot of the soldiers called him Dad and to my face they called me Mom. It’s funny because I’m 6’6” and two hundred seventy pounds of muscle. I was…

The thought propels me out of bed. The Captain’s back is still to me, I stand up straight and push my back into his. He is...Six...two, so that should leave a couple of inches difference in our heights...which is does. At least my height is correct.

I look down at myself...and squeak. “Why in the outer realms of hades and I naked?” I can feel Captain Anderson begin to turn and I reach around and grab him behind me. I try not to think what my hands are near. “Don’t. This is hard enough as it is,” I say.

“You have no idea,” he says and I feel a slight stirring.

“Horse-monkey flying excrement,” I say and release him. I grab the sheet from the bed, the thing I should have done the first time, and wrap it around myself toga-style. My hair get’s caught in the folds.

“I have way too much hair,” I say.

“That’s not possible,” the captain says turning around.

“No, I mean, I have so much hair. See, it’s all caught up in the sheets…”

“You’re not dizzy, disoriented, anything like that?”

“Why should I be...it’s my body after...shit.”

“Let me go get the doctor,” he says and walks out the door. I think it was me actually swearing more than anything else.

Fifteen years in a mixed-gender army and you pick up a couple of things, especially when you’ve spend a few years in the training cadre. I’d picked up how to french braid my own hair. It had been helpful to demonstrate as it was the accepted hairstyle for women. I’d been able to get away with being a man with shoulder-length hair because I was a Drill-Instructor...and I kept it properly braided.

So, I proceeded to braid my hair while I waited for the captain to come back with a doctor. As I was braiding, I realized that my hands were smaller than I was used to. It was a subtle thing, but I knew what I was capable of, and I found my hands making adjustments almost on their own. I say almost because I knew the adjustments I needed to make.

It shouldn’t be this easy.

Being slammed into the body of the opposite gender is a traumatic experience, or it’s supposed to be. Everything changes, and not for the better. Different center of gravity, different voice, different everything. It’s supposed to be more difficult than this. Sure, there were the rumors, but no one ever believes the rumors.

I start humming an aria I’d always liked but had never had the range for. I don’t know the words by heart, but at least I know the tune. I begin gently rocking with the beat and continue braiding my hair. It’s in front of me and still going.

“You’re right. That is more hair that is allowed in the regs.”

“Captain,” I squeak and pull up the sheet from where it had fallen around my waist.

“You can still sing, I see.”

“None of the old pieces that I knew.”

“You’ll just have to learn new ones,” he says.

“Not like I have time. Couple of weeks and…” his smile slides off his face as I’m talking and a horrible realization strikes me, “the facilities…”

“It’s going to take almost a month just to get a basic facility up and running…”

“And they never trade you spare for spare.”

“Not when they can avoid it.”

A spare was a one use temporary body. They were customized for the user, and once you were transferred out, the circuitry began to degrade. Not even you could be returned to a spare once you’d left it. So, if you were in a damaged one, sure, they’d transfer you, but never from a fully functioning one like I was in.

A basic facility could only produce spares. Mentally I said it with the sneer that most people gave to them.

“Frea’s Garter on a Pike! What am I supposed to do now.”

“Never heard that one before.”

“It’s new,” I said with my normal lopsided grin.

“Don’t do that,” Captain Anderson said turning away from me.

“Do what?”

“Smile like that. That smile is like...pure sex.”

“My smile is like sex”

“Well, it seems that you two are keeping yourselves entertained,” the doctor said as he walked in.

“Hadley…you did this to me?”

“I’d insist on you calling me ‘Major Hadley,’ but I know you’d just refuse.”

“Sorry, Major,” I said backing down for once, “I’ll try to be a little more...proper,” I said and thrust out my chest while letting the sheet fall. Captain Anderson barked out an explosive burst of laughter and walked out of the room. I picked up the sheet and lay back against the bed. The Major was stock still with his head half cocked, just standing there.

“Captain? I think I broke the Major,” I say in a singsong. His laughing gets more intense.

“First Sergeant de la Flora, could you refrain from joking until I finish my examination.”

I just begin to think, why he checks my reflexes and asks my general condition. It’s something I learned to do a long time ago. It’s not that I can really think about two things at once, or maybe it is which makes me such an excellent armor pilot, but I’m able to put most of my actions on a sort of autopilot while my higher brain functions work through a problem.

I’d always had a problem with the girly last name. No, let’s be accurate; I’ve had a problem with other people having a problem with it. I loved my last name. I loved my name period; Antonio de la Flora. “Guess I should go by Antonia for a little while,” I say with a giggle.

The Major looks up at me sharply. I bite my lips and try to hold in my mirth. “We’ll have to get you some suitable attire, but you seem to be in working order,” the doctor says and walks out of the room.

“So, apparently I’m shipshape and Bristol fashion,” I say in my mock cockney accent as the captain returns.

“Apparently so,” he says with a worried smile.

“What’s wrong?” I ask. It’s not my normal gruff tone. I put more feeling into it because it felt more...right to me and he looks at me sharply. “What?” I say.

“You’re sure taking to that form really easily.”

“Yeah, well, um…” I say and begin to blush. This really isn’t going to be a subject that I bring up now, or ever.

“She’s got a full bill of health,” a female doctor says as she enters the room. I’ve never seen her before, of course.

“Why did the Major examine me?”

She looks startled, “I, well, I…”

She’s a lt. colonel by her rank insignia. “I’m sorry, ma’am. I shouldn’t have been so rude.”

“Oh, don’t be. Major Kreiter has always had a stick up his ass. As for your other question, it’s because the captain went to the wrong desk,” she says and glares at Captain Anderson. He pales visibly. “Would you mind giving us some privacy, Captain?”

I’ve never seen the captain move so quickly, not even when we had a tank platoon charging at us from over that hill in...never mind. Not important.

“How are you feeling, First Sergeant de la Flora?”

“That is a mouthful.”

“I know it is, so if you promise to call me Jenae, I’ll call you Antonio.”

“Not in this body you wont. Antonia, please.”

She looked at me strangely for a moment, “You’d prefer a feminine name? Interesting…”

“Not really,” I say and try to hide my embarrassment.

She gets a shrewd look on her face and then says, “I can understand your ability to manipulate your limbs well, since they’re basically the same, proportionally. The different in center of gravity, and your ease with it…”

“Apparently it’s like riding a bike,” I say, a blush invading my cheeks.

“What is?”

“Oh, this is so embarrassing. Can we do this some other time...like the day after never?”

“I need to know your medical history if I’m going to…”

“What? Oh, I’ve never, I mean, nothing like…I used to be a girl.”

“Wait, what?”

“On stage. My voice didn’t break until I was seventeen. My opera company was a small one, and we were always missing the female cross dressing roles because I was the only one who could sing mezzo-soprano. You know how prudish some audiences can get, even though originally those were played by boys…”

“What female crossdressing roles?”

“You know, where a female actress plays a young boy, of course in Marriage of Figaro Cherubino is often played by a woman who plays a man who dresses like a woman…”

“You’re making my head spin a little. What does this have to do with…”

“I had to be a girl any time I was in or around the theatre. It wasn’t just the pants roles that I was doing, you see. I could still sing soprano, and so I got some female roles as well…”

“This doesn’t explain anything. It seems a little thin. If people would have been fine with a woman playing as a man why wouldn’t they…”

“Because a woman wearing men’s clothing is sexy and a man wearing women’s clothing is a pervert.”

She opens her mouth to speak and then just begins laughing, “it’s because of your peers wasn’t it.”

“Yes,” I say quietly.

“You performed at your school occasionally?”

“A couple of times a year. One of the biggest bullies in the class had a crush on me. He didn’t know it was me when he was pounding my face into the sidewalk. Oh, there were so many times I considered telling him just to get back some of my own.”

“How did he not know if you had the same injuries to your face…”

“Oh, he was dense, and I was good. I even spun a story about the dickless sod monkey who beat me up when he came with his sympathy…” I stopped and thought for a moment and then my face grew pale and I began to be nauseous. “I’m going to throw up.”

“Spares don’t vomit.”

“Oh yes they do...it’s just a psycho-somatic…” and then I was dry heaving and leaning over the railing on the bed and Jenae was holding my hair for me, just as if I were really flesh and blood instead of wires and tubes.

“Learn something new every day,” Jenae said almost to herself.

“Yeah, this is my…” I stopped and did a quick calculation. “Well, this is my three hundredth spare.”

“Three hundred?” She looks shocked at my declaration. “You’ve died that many times?”

“Point of the spear, ma’am.”

“Oh, you’re one of those guys,” she says with a look of distaste.

“123rd Armored Infantry,” I say with a grin.

“We get more of you all DOA than any other division, you know that right?”

“Not from G company. Never had a single deadhead among us.”

Her mouth dropped open as if something had just clicked for her. “Tin Plated Bastard...that is you”

“Not so much a bastard at the moment as a...nother B word.”

She chuckles at this, “Yeah, I can see that. And it sounds as though the rumors are true.”

“What rumors,” I say growing a little cold.

“Well, that you refuse to swear, can plait a better braid than nine tenths of the soldiers in your company, including the females, and that you try your best never to take anything seriously.”

“Now wait a minute, I take a lot seriously.”

“Relax, Antonia. I didn’t mean anything by it.”

I snort and then sit looking at the end of my hair. “So, can you get me a scrunchie?” She hands me a bright pink lace one and I look at it as if it were a snake. “I can’t wear that back to base.”

“It’s the only one I have, Sergeant.”

I sigh and roll my eyes and then take it. I finish the last couple of feet of my hair and then tie off the end with the scrunchie. I have to admit, it looks good there on my honey-blonde hair. When I look up I realize the doctor is gone. It’s a little upsetting but I live with it. There’s a little ensuite, as there is with most private hospital rooms, so I head in to get a good look at myself. I leave the sheet at the entrance to the bathroom and enter the room completely naked. The first word that comes to mind is statuesque.

After that I realize that I’m still in here. The face is softer, but it is mine. The shoulders narrower, the hips more pronounced, but it is me, or as close to me as they could get with a female spare.

“Antonia?” I hear Jenae’s voice say from the other room.

“In here,” I call and walk out.

“Usually we have your measurements and can get you a new set of clothing easily, in this case…”

“Hey, we’re all in virgin territory here, Doc.” At her glare I amend it, “sorry, Jenae.”

“I’d think this familiarity would be easy for you?”

“Why’s that?”

“You’re the sergeant who’s never saluted an officer.”

“Not exactly true. I didn’t earn the medal of honor until my third week out of basic. Saluted lots of officers there.”

She snorts at this and I smile. The hands me an assortment of seven or eight bras and I look at them in a bit of horror. “What do you want me to do with these?”

“Well, you shouldn’t have too much trouble with them, especially with your background.”

“Could we keep that between us? And it’s been eighteen years since the last time…”

“Last time what,” Captain Anderson said as he came through the door. When he caught sight of me he stopped and turned around. I fled back into the bathroom with my braid flying out behind me like a pennant.

“Little yellow bird balls, Captain, don’t you knock?”

“I’m coming to visit my first sergeant, Sarge, I haven’t knocked any time in the last five years we’ve worked together.”

“Well, I’d appreciate you knocking until we get this mess sorted out,” I say from the other side of the door. The bras are white. The only other thing they share in common is that they are very feminine. When I’d been cross-dressing as a teen, the bras and panties I’d worn had been as neutral as they could be. No lace, no ribbons, no frills of any sort. These were something else entirely. They had lace and frills and borders and they were...delicate. I tried them all on, one at a time, and ended up with a demi bra with cups made almost entirely out of lace. It fit the best. I took the remaining bras out with me.

“Do you have any…”

“Still here,” Captain anderson said, and I just glared at him. He turned his back on me again and I just giggled. The officers had the luxury of private showers. We enlisted men and women didn’t. We got used to seeing a little flesh. In the back of my head, a little voice wondered why I’d run into the bathroom then.

“Underwear?”

“Here,” Jenae said and handed me a number of panties. These, at least, were plain, light grey and cotton. The bra might be hidden under the undershirt when all was said and done, but the panties would occasionally be visible so had to match the proper uniform colors. There were a number of cuts, but they were all of the briefs variety. The brass had tried for years to get something of a uniform nature in women’s underwear. So far they had resisted all efforts. At least thongs were completely out of the question, thank goodness. I selected a pair of bikini cut briefs that felt comfortable. The rest of my clothing was more straight forward. It was easy to select the right light grey undershirt. The grey digital camo blouse and pants were the easiest. They’d been picked for length and I used the ties to adjust their fit. I’d lost four shoe sizes, but I felt somewhat human as soon as I got the dark grey wool socks and the boots in place.

“So, how do I look, Captain?”

“Um...like a valkyrie?”

“Well, if you want to be insulting…”

“Oh, yeah, sorry, what I meant to say it that you look very feminine and at the same time you look like you could kick my ass.”

“Let’s go kick some...ass then,” I say. I begin blushing furiously the moment that I say it.

“Wow, the TPB blushing. I never thought I’d see the day,” Jenae says.

“You really are bad at swearing,” the captain says.

“Hush, you,” I say and they both laugh...at me. “This is going to be difficult, isn’t it?”

“What do you mean,” Jenae asks. “Something I haven’t seen already? You seem to be working out well with your new spare.”

“Oh, the spare is perfect,” I say, for once not thinking of these bodies with the normal disdain that most of us feel. “No, people aren’t going to take me seriously in this body,” I say and the captain gets serious.

“You’re still a capable field commander and I’ll…”

“All due respect, but shut it, sir. This is something I have to deal with.”

With that, I walked out the door and into my future.

01000010 01010010
“George, next time I tell you to fixe the fastenings on my armor, and make sure that the ablative plates are properly connected I better be obeyed as if I were Thor himself with Mjolnir panted in that hole you and your boyfriend are so fascinated with.”

“Who the hell are you?” George says, climbing out from the insides of the aforementioned armor suit. It’s clear someone told him I would be coming, but didn’t want to spoil the surprise.

“I’m the woman who’s about to make your life a living hell, private Michelson. Whether or not you recognize my face, the device you see here on my lapels should be enough for you to understand that you are in a deep pit monkey turds with the walls caving in.”

“Sergeant de la Flora?”

“He has a brain after all! Afternoon, George, and what were we discussing before you sent me out to be slaughtered by the 1L’s. Did I perhaps tell you that the jointing matters? Did I perhaps tell you that this is life or death? And what, was your response when I said that?”

“There’s always a spare,” he mumbles to himself.

“Sorry, could you say that loud enough so everyone can hear?” I say using my DI bellow. It’s not exactly a bellow, but it is talking with a commanding voice, and it is pitched to carry.

“There’s always a spare,” he shouts. He’s not even using his normal disdain for the synthetic bodies, one like I’m wearing now.

“That’s right. That’s what you said. Well, guess what? There aren’t anymore.” The shock in the rest of the room was palpable. “For once the 1Ls hit us where it hurts, in the replacements. You may have noticed there is a problem with my gender,” I say, directing this to the rest of the people in the motor-pool. “That’s because we are, quite literally, out of male spares. So, unless one of you pretty boys wants to join me on the other side of the fence, then you better get these rigs up to 100% or sure as Pluto is a ball of ice I will make your lives miserable.”

“I thought Pluto was an animated dog,” I hear one of the guys joke with his neighbor. I stalk over to him, as silent as a new pair of boots will allow me to get. I’d broken and shaped my old pair so that I could walk across concrete without any sort of sound betraying my presence. Lucky for me, he didn’t hear the slight clicking sound my boots made since everyone else in the garage was deathly silent.

I’m willing to joke as much as the next person, but there is a time and a place for it, and when you’re getting dressed down by an NCO for dereliction of duty, well, that’s not the time or the place.

He realizes there is someone there about the time I take in a deep breath, “Private, is there something funny about the way I’m talking? Or maybe it’s the egg I didn’t eat for breakfast that is all over this nice new uniform? Could you please share with the rest of us what is so ever living funny that you thought to interrupt me when I was talking?” It begins somewhere around the volume of a firecracker and goes on up to somewhere in the range of a jet taking off. I’m a little red in the face when I’m done, but one thing that my years of opera singing, and training for opera singing has done for me is given me muscles on the diaphragm muscles. And the spare has been configured exactly so that it will produce the same force for the same effort.

“I’m a corporal,” he says with just the tiniest bit of a sneer.

“He says he’s a corporal,” I say with a smile looking around the room at the other grease monkeys. Most of them look like they’re about to be sick. “You better be Odin One-Eye because I am two steps away from having you sent to Leavenworth.”

“Who do you think you are..?” he begins but then the guy he was standing next to hisses, “shut up, Butter. This is the TPB.”

“I thought he…” and then he catches my glowering face, and certain things I’d said finally catch up with him.

“Hi,” I say with a grim smile, “welcome to the conversation. Do any of you know what dereliction of duty is?” As soon as I finish a couple of the pit boys actually lose their breakfasts all over my motor pool.

“Welcome boys...and girls,” I say nodding to a tight cluster of females on one side of the garage, “to the new reality. This is G company. In this company G stands for Excelent. That means, from now on, I expect these suits to be as pristine as they were when they came off the assembly line, and I expect you to keep them that way twenty-five hours a day, eight days a week.”

“But there are…” one of the people began, only to be shushed by his neighbors.

“Private Butters, you will report for an article 15 in my office in thirty minutes exactly,” I say as I glance at my watch, noting the time so that I could know when he was late.

01000010 01010010
“So, you think I overreacted then?”

“Not so much that, as you probably shouldn’t have threatened him with demotion. Now, you either end up looking silly for what amounts to a personal insult.”

I will not whine in front of this man. He’s been a mentor to me over the years and I don’t want to let him down. Unfortunately, my body has other things in mind, “dad,” and it comes out as a whine that even I cringe at.

“Oh, don’t give me that young...lady.” This gets me laughing.

“I’m thirty-five, dad.”

“I’m well aware of how old you are, my girl, but that doesn’t change how weird this conversation is, nor does it explain why you called me in.”

“Cause I gave him a thirty minute deadline, ‘cause I was angry, and you were the only one I could be sure would come when I called.”

“If you weren’t my son, er, daughter I wouldn’t have come out here on such short notice. Plus, it’s overkill and you know it.”

“No, it’s not. You know the situation we’re in, and these guys have become lazy. You know what my mechanic said before I went out the last time. “

“Yes, and it’s the same thing that nearly every mechanic has said in nearly every motor pool in this country since the war began. There are entire brigades that have had over 5000% casualties in the past year.”

“I didn’t know. How many of those were fatalities?”

“Thankfully, not that many, but that has put a strain on our facilities. We were barely meeting demand, and then they took out one, just one, of our three hundred facilities and within a week we have shortages all over.”

“Should you really be telling me this?” My heart is fluttering in my chest. It’s not fear that I’m feeling, but it’s the closest I’ve been to it in twenty years.

“No, I shouldn’t, but I’m not going to leave my daughter out here with her damned death wish and not let her know how bad the situation is.”

“Dad, I don’t want to die.”

“Oh, really? Then what is this I hear tell that you refuse to be swapped until every other member of your team is taken care of. I almost lost you this time...no, let’s be honest. I did lose you this time. You’re not my son anymore.”

“Dad,” I say and I can see he’s near tears. He’s never cried since mom died when I was seventeen.

“I understand, Ant. My little Ant...it’s going to be the opera house all over again, isn’t it?”

My face flushes with anger, “I joined the military because of you, Daddy. I’m here, and I’m serving, because of you. I was good...no, I was great. As a soprano I had a future, but who cares about one more baritone…”

“Ant…”

“Dad, I’m sorry, but this isn’t about the opera. This isn’t about singing, and this wasn’t some evil scheme of mine to get into a female spare.”

My dad looks shocked for a moment and then begins to laugh, “can you see that? Calling up the enemy command?”

“Hi, so I want to be swapped into a female spare, I was wondering if you’d bomb one of our rebirth facilities to put everything behind just enough for me to be forced into a female body ‘against my will.’”

“Hmm, just enough...they’re trying to make us desperate.” He gets up to leave and I just look at him. “Your mother used to give me that look,” he says with a pained smile.

“Good,” I say, “It’s about time I reminded you of mom,” as soon as the words are out of my mouth I want to take them back.

He just closes his eyes for a moment and then opens them and really looks at me. “You’re comfortable, aren’t you?”

“For the moment, I suppose, but I know I’ll be going back soon, so I’m trying not to think about it.” There’s a knock on the door. “I need to talk to you about something else, after.”

“Come,” I call out in my command voice.

“Corporal Butters reporting as…” he stops the moment he sees my father. Seeing a five star General of the Army in the flesh is a heart stopping thing, especially when you expected to see just your company First Sergeant.

“Hello, Corporal Butters, do you know why you’re here?”

“I’m here because I wasn’t properly respectful, Sir.”

“If that were the issue, I’d instruct First Sergeant de la Flora to get her head out of her ass and to just get the captain to sign off on a work detail. No, the charge is actually dereliction of duty, of which you are guilty.”

“Sir,” he begins in a mollifying tone.

“Be pleased that I don’t add insubordination to it was well. We could look for everything that you’re in the slightest guilty and skip the non-judicial punishment and go straight to a court martial.”

I feel the slightest bit sorry for the Corporal. He’s white as a sheet and beginning to shake a little. “What the General means to say is that we’re no longer accepting malingerers in this army. Too long have we assumed that superior life-saving devices are enough to make up for failure of the mechanics to send us into battle with working gear.” the General says.

“I’m going to be lenient,” he continues, “and I’m not going to bust you back to private. You are, however, going to be restricted to base for thirty days. You’re going to be on extra duty for thirty days, and you’re going to be docked two-weeks pay.”

“Two-weeks,” the still corporal begins, but a glare from my father stops it dead.

“Your extra duty will consist of making the First Sergeant’s armor absolutely perfect. You will also be required to come up with a new device for the Sergeant’s armor. Saut device is to be no bigger than her left pectoral armor plate and will have to meet with her approval before you are dismissed from the extra duty.”

The General signed the Article 15, then I did, and so did Corporal Butters. He stumbled out of my office shortly after.

“You think that was wise?”

“What, putting him in a position where he can totally screw himself over even further? Yes. I want this war to end, and we haven’t had an offensive mission for over three months. We’re in a defensive position, and people are content to leave it so. This was has been going on for three years. We’re getting used to it. Out populace never sees the front lines. They just know that we’re defending them, and that’s all they care about.”

He looks at me for a minute or two, as I sit there with my braid in my lap, working on how I’m going to say this.

“Daddy,” I begin in the sweetest, softest tone possible. He sits there quietly, waiting. “Do you possibly have that spot in BOLC still open for me?”

“You want to go to the Basic Officer Leadership Course…now? I’ve been trying to get you to mustang for the past fifteen years, ever since you enlisted. Why now?”

“Because I’m in love with my company commander...and he knows it.”

“I...have nothing to say to that,” he says with a huge smile on his face.

“You’re just happy your little girl is finally going to become an officer.”

“Yes, I am, and if he doesn’t keep his grubby mits of my little girl…”

“Daddy,” I say, blushing.

“Sorry, but you’re my little girl, not matter how you came to become so, and even if you’re 35, I’m planning on you remaining pure and innocent until you are eighty.”

I stop smiling and I just look at him and he smiles sweetly at me, “Yes, you can go to BOLC. I held a slot open for you, and it will be waiting for you in six months when the next class with an opening occurs.”

“Dad…” I begin.

“I have to let that spot go eventually, I always have. Even if you became a man tomorrow, would your feelings change?”

“No,” I say quietly.

“And he’ll still know?”

“Yes,” I say, and he holds up a finger. “Then you need to soldier on, girl. Running away isn’t an option.”

“This is a tactical withdrawal until I can come back with something approximating equal footing,” I say blushing even worse than before. I keep my eyes focused on my father, thought and watch as his expression softens.

“I thought you were just exaggerating. You want to become an officer...I’ll see what I can do.”

“Daddy?” I say, confused.

“If there are any earlier spots, then I’ll pull a string or two. You’re more than qualified, and your file more than qualifies you for it. And if he hurts you...but only after you become an officer, you hear me. Fraternization and all that.”

He stands up, and I rise and hug him, “Thanks, dad.”

“You’re going by Antonia again?”

“Yes,” I say and he smiles. “I always did like the sound of that name,” he says and walks out the door.

01000010 01010010
When all of your outfits are uniforms, and when you have no real time to shop for yourself, you can slip back into routines exceptionally easily. I was issued an array of 38b bras by the hospital. They were in a number of styles, some of which felt much more comfortable than others. My panties were all bikini-cut and came from the PX. Like a good soldier I got a second pair of boots and three more ACUs to go with the fourteen pairs of sock, bras, and panties.

Something else I made sure to do was get myself a selection of neutral hair bands in black, white, and varying shades of grey. I’m wearing a white one today, and playing with the end of my braid as I read through yet another after action report for last weeks debacle. We still hadn’t actually lost a soldier, but we came close in a couple of instances, and we had just under half of our personnel in spares at the moment. My dad was right, that we were just short of our normal output with the loss of the one facility. What he hadn’t mentioned to me, and I could understand why, is that this loss had happened close to two months ago. In that time, we had slowly lossed whatever surplus we had, which had never been much, and begun cutting corners where necessary.

The fifteen hundred men in the same situation as I’m now in aren’t all as lucky as I am. There are a few, a very small percentage, that are back at work like nothing happened. The majority are in some state between catatonia, a shocking twenty three percent, and unable to get out of bed.

I pinch the bridge of my nose with the hand not playing with my braid and just breathe for a few minutes.

“Got a minute, Antonia?” Heath says from the doorway. Somewhere in between our awkward first meeting back at work and the necessity to move past it we had begun calling each other by our first names. It worried me whenever I lay awake, unable to sleep for the thoughts running through my head.

“What’s up?” I say, trying not to beam a smile at him.

“We’re having a problem down in the motor pool that has you written all over it.”

“So, you think I’ll be able to resolve this dispute in my normal…”

“No, I mean literally.”

“Corporal Butters?”

“Yep,” he says with a grin and I shake my head.’

“I’ll go get this over with. I still have no idea where he already got naked photos of me for that first attempt.”

“Oh, I have some idea, but I’m letting it play out because if I actually look into it then I’ll have to ‘do something’ and...you’re not the only female soldier this has happened to.”

“Heath,” I say. I can feel the scowl beginning to form on my face and he holds up his hands. “Hey, the other soldier asked me not to do anything about it. This time, however, I made mention that if it didn’t stop I’d make it stop.”

“Subtle, sir.”

He stuck his tongue out at me and walked across the hall to his office. I looked back at the report on my display and grimaced. I wasn’t supposed to have to go through this. My job was to ensure the soldiers were ready and then to go out and play in the mud every time we were deployed. It was the Captain’s job to deal with all this big pile of green, half-digested, horse manure.

“Excrement,” I say under my breath and rose to leave for the motor pool. Private Donnelly was standing in the doorway, looking worried, and playing with her, much shorter, braid.

“Looks like we share a nervous habit,” I say pointing to her hair.

“Yes, ma’am, I mean sir...I mean Sergeant.”

“Calm down there, Donnelly. Is there a problem?”

“Well, before, when you were, well, this is embarrassing.”

“Walk with me, Donnelly. I have places to go and foundations to rock.”

“Excuse me?” she said going bright red.

“What did I...oh, sorry, that could be taken in another way entirely...you know I’m not that type of girl, Donnelly. I wasn’t that type of guy either,” I’m blushing myself as I say this. Sure, we’re supposed to be hardened soldier gals in the army, but if you ever really find one, then I’ll give you a thousand dollars. Let me take that back, some of us try to pretend that we’re just as jaded as the guys, but it’s all for show.

I’m not trying to say that we can’t be just as crude as your average Joe soldier. I’m saying that when we’re alone, just the girls, we tend to be more straightforward about what we’re talking about, and don’t do it for the shock value.

“I meant to say that I plan on making some people wear their gluteus maximus as earrings, and I’ll be using my boot to perform the surgery.”

She begins to laugh and I smile. Her laughter fades almost as quickly as it came. “Sarge? I was...I mean I’m being…sorry, I can’t do this.” She turns to leave and I call out to her.

“Private Donnelly, why didn’t you approach Corporal Parks about this. She’s your squad leader.”

“Oh, I couldn’t do that. She’d think that I...never mind Sarge. I can deal with this.”

I come to a complete stop and then turn around and head the fifty or so feet back to my office. She follows me looking a little cautious. “Sit,” I say and she scoots into one of the chairs facing my desk along the back wall. There are no chairs in front of my desk as I usually expect supplicants to stand while addressing me. I close the door behind me and take a chair near hers.

“Ok, so, if I understand the subtext, you think that Parks would be fine with a soldier under her command being sexually assaulted, and that she’d just tell you to soldier on. Is that about the size of it?”

“Yes, Sergeant,” she says quietly and I actually swear. I try not to. It’s not that I don’t know how to swear, as some people in the past have assumed, its that it has always taken me more time to come up with a nice phrase instead of using the thing that first comes to mind, and more often than not it causes a chuckle or two where there could be offense.

This, however, is no laughing matter for me.

“How many,Donnelly.”

“How many what, Sarge?”

“How many women under my command have been assaulted, photographed, or otherwise made to feel inferior while I was wandering along in a daze actually thinking things were working properly?” I have to work hard to keep the anger out of my tone, because I never want anyone in the position that Donnelly is now to think I’m mad at them. I’m mostly successful.

“Well, um, you see, I know of two other girls that were...you know...like me…”

I put my finger up, motioning for her to stop. I get up and open the door. I walk out and shut it behind me. I then walk into Captain Anderson’s office and shut his door behind me.

“Captain Anderson?” I say as sweetly as possible, “When were you planning on letting me know that we’ve had three sexual assaults in this company, and fairly recently from what I can tell?”

“We’ve had what?” he says so loudly that for a moment I’m afraid that my eardrums have ruptured. He has quite the pair of lungs on him.

“Well, good to know that you weren’t in on anything like that.”

“No, Antonia, I’d never…”

My voice is deceptively calm as I interrupt him, “I’ll just go back and check on Private Helena Donnelly.”

“Donnelly?” he says, deflating visibly.

“Yeah, Donnelly.”

What his subtext just said was that we were in a lot of trouble, even if Donnelly didn’t know about it. While she thought this was business as usual, the annual sexual assault seminar that everyone went to notwithstanding, the honorable Senator James Donnelly would recognize that this was an issue if she ever told him about it.

This wasn’t a matter to be swept under the rug, but neither should it become national headlines at a time when we were fighting for our lives.

I walk into the other room and I close the door again and sit down. “Helena, please, tell me everything. I’m going to need the details if were going to properly pursue this.”

01000010 01010010
I’m almost three hours later than I’d planned, three hours since I’d actually started out for the motor pool the firsts time. I’m a lot more emotionally wrung out than I’d been the first time. If I don’t hurry I’ll be late for evening formation.

“Corporal Butters,” I call out as I enter the garage. He starts and turns around to look at me. Fear suffuses his features. The rest of the grease monkeys continue to head out through the door.

“S-Sergeant?”

“Just the man I wanted to see. Is my armor polished and ready to go?”

He just stands there, looking as if he doesn’t understand the words I’m saying. “Jerry, help Butters. You two have one minute to get me suited up.”

They leapt into action. Of all the things that they may be failing at, and both Jerry and Butters had improved immensely over the past week, they both knew how to do combat prep like nobody’s business.

Combat Armor is armor first and a mechanized suit second. It’s not designed to make you a hulking brute of a thing. They tried that with the walking main battle tanks of the thirties and forties. The problem was, that a single launch man portable anti-tank rocket could still take you out, and the bigger they were, the less maneuverable they became.

Maneuverability and size, the lack of it this time, were the primary concerns of Combat Armor systems. I could do ballet in my suit, provided I knew how to do ballet in the first place.

They’d adjusted my suit beautifully. It added, at most, another six inches to my height and some bulk in general, but it still fit me like a glove. It had to be custom fit to each user, because it had to move with you, almost at the moment you began to move.

My thick braid hung out the back of my helmet, which was completely non-regulation, but I’d still not had the time, nor the inclination, to hack it off. The helmet was a little tight.

“I think someone forgot to adjust my mellon carrier a little. Seems to be a bit tight. You two run off to formation, I’ll be right along.”

They take me literally. I make it to formation before they do, but the ability to run at thirty miles an hour will do that for you. I slow to a walk and move to the front of the company. They’re still standing around, in something resembling the formations that they’ll fall into, while waiting for someone to call them to order. When Butters is still fifty feet away, but running for all he’s worth, I call them to order.

In the twenty seconds or so it takes them to form up both Butters and Jerry are able to get into their places in the squad devoted to the motor pool.

“Company! Apparently, some of you are under the mistaken impression that this is a party dress. Does this look like a party dress?”

“No, Sergeant,” can the reply from five hundred throats. I smiled. “Some of you will notice holes appearing in your formation. MPs are currently arresting some of you in conjunction with some accusations that have been leveled against you.” I release the safety on my main weapon. The weapon cycles and it makes a clunk as it readies to fire. “If any of you have ideas of trying to run...the MPs are fully qualified to slam your fairy-white worthless backsides into my tarmac. If you’re wondering what I’m doing up here, I’m considering whether or not the court martial would be worth it if I decided to just open fire and remove you from my army.” Never once do I raise my voice higher than the command level I’d started at. In a group this large, you could well consider my volume to be conversational. “Please, make my decision for my and even think to protest your arrest,” I say. My eyes meet Parks’ as I’m saying this and I’m holding her gaze while the MPs take her away.

It’s not long after that when the last of them are taken from formation by the MPs and lead away in restraints. There are holes in the formation. When compared to the slightly overstrength number of five hundred thirty seven that we were at the beginning of today, the fifty-three individuals who have just been lead away aren’t all that many, but when you realized that my company has just been literally decimated leaving the formations looking like swiss cheese.

“Guide right!” I call out. The formations shift, erasing the holes.

“Company, these are your new positions. Memorize them. Fall out!” It’s a much subdued company that leaves the formation versus the one that gathered before hand. Many of those left behind know that they were close to being with those who are even now riding to lock up.

I stand for a minute just staring off into space when I hear the voices of some of my soldiers talking to each other.

“Isn’t Tin Plated Bitch with a T? What is S there for?”

“It’s because she’d become Steel ever since her accident,” is the awe-filled reply. I glance in that direction out of the corner of my eye. It was Private Donnelly who just answered.

“What about the flower? The sarge never had no flowers before.”

This I answer myself, “My name is First Sergeant de la Flora. Flora means flower.” They hastily retreat after that but not before Donnelly smiles at me and whispers, “Thank you.”

01000010 01010010
The sound of my metal feet colliding with the reinforced concrete of the garage shattered the silence and caused everyone who was left to turn and look in my direction. A larger percentage of troops were culled from the motor pool than from any of my other platoons.

I walk up to Butters and Jerry Stevens with a scowl plastered all over my face. Corporal Butters, Sergeant Stevens, explain this to me,” I say gesturing at the crest I still haven’t seen yet.

“It was my idea, Sergeant,” Jerry says, but Butters jumps in, “I take full responsibility for it, Sarge. I thought you’d appreciate it, and I thought the rose was perfect, since Flora just means flower, and I could paint all those thorns. I even painted the drops of blood to show that you’re not just pretty...I mean,” he began blushing and I realized I really had to see this.

“Get me out of this armor and we can inspect it together.”

As soon as they’re done, they do something that you only do during maintenance, which is why I didn’t see the device before. They close up my armor without anyone in it. The device is almost the full size of my left armor plate, which makes it about twice the size of a normal device of this type. The rose itself is almost a foot tall and is superimposed over big block letters going from the upper left of the device to the lower right. S P B. The rose is photorealistic and if I couldn’t see the brush strokes I’d have assumed that he’d photo-printed it on. There are some drops of dew on the petals, and it’s one of the most beautiful roses I’ve even seen. The thorns are slightly scythe shaped and remind me of my close quarters weapon. The thought of those sharpened spikes makes me realize that those thorns are based upon that weapon on my armor. The blood drops falling from two of the thorns are shiny and seem to reflect the room behind me.

“Wow,” is all I can think to say. “I think that you’re done, Butters.”

“But, Sergeant!”

“No, I mean it’s perfect. Thank you, Corporal.”

With that I walk out without another word.

01000010 01010010
There is nothing but a single chair, bolted to the ground, in the room. I’m sitting in the chair when Corporal Parks is brought into the room.

“You fucking bitch,” she says and lunges at me. The MP jerks her up short and then clips her ankle shackles to an eye-bolt in the floor. If she really tried she could still get at me. I’m not going to give her the opportunity.

“Why?” is all I say. She looks bewildered for a moment and then asks, “Why what?”

“Why did you feel the need to throw in with these...animals? Why were you pimping out the females in my company?”

“Because they were weak. They needed a little toughening up. They’d either beat off the bastards or…”

“And Donnelly? That wasn’t a single time, Parks.”

“She was a stuck up princess with no business being in my army.”

“It’s not your army,” I say coldly and for the first time Parks really looks at me. She goes pale. “Sarge.”

“I’d suggest you cease speaking now, Parks. Really. You see, I’d like nothing more than to shove my hand down your throat and tear your lungs out with my bear hands. I’m reasonably sure that I’ll be able to do it, to. Not sure if you’ll still be alive when I accomplish it, though. It will take some work, though, and you’ll likely have suffocated long before I finish.

“You see, I’ve read your file, Parks. All of it. I know what your brothers did to you, and what you did to them. I know that people have failed you your entire life. I get that. I’ve lead a blessed existence compared to you.

“You see, I understand what you’ve been through.”

“There’s no way you could understand what I’ve been through. Big strong guy like you? Your not the type to be a victim.”

“Not anymore.”

“Sure, but until that accident…”

“No, I mean I’m not the type to be a victim anymore.” Her face goes pale again and she begins to shake a little.

“Let me tell you about what it was like growing up with the name Antonia de la Flora. No one in my high school would admit my name was really Antonio. No one would accept that I was a good heterosexual male. No, I sang opera. You might have heard me.”

She nods once, but the horror never leaves her face. She can’t look away as I talk. She knows what’s coming, but even so, she physically can’t shut up her ears and so she has to listen.

“You see, in my heart where I kept all that was precious, in my soul, I knew the truth. I wasn’t really a boy. Sure, I would pretend for the world, for high school, but that wasn’t me. I was seventeen, but I looked like a thirteen year old. Sure, I was tall, I’d always been tall, but I didn’t have the facial hair or the bulging muscles of my school mates.”

“No,” she begins to moan.

“Oh, don’t want the torture? Don’t want to hear about my first time with a boy? I can tell you it wasn’t my choice. He thought it would prove something to me. That’s not the worst part of this story, Parks.

“I’ll skip all the parts you don’t want to hear, and tell the parts you must hear. You see, my mother was home early as a surprise for my birthday. She had been preparing all day. She had a special gift for me, one she knew that I’d love. Her surprise would have changed my life, but I came home, bleeding, and my mother bundled me into the car and drove me to the hospital.

“I can remember that ride, eighteen years ago…”

“Shut up, shut up, shut the fuck up!”

“Sergeant Major, would you please gag the prisoner?”

“With pleasure,” he says. There’s nothing like pleasure in his face, but I ignore the pity I see there. I’m going to finish this and then I’m going to go back to my room and cry for a bit.

“It had rained all day, and the lights seemed to shine so much brighter in the clear air. There was that clean smell, you know? Even in as much pain as I was, feeling like my body and soul had been ripped in two, I felt how clean that night was, and my mom was taking me for a ride to the hospital.”

I stop for a moment, and just breathe in and out. “I grew up in New Orleans. Every day is a day to drink there, but I was born on the 31st of December. We saw three people running red lights as we went, and my mom was a careful driver. She’d just turned around to look at me, saying everything would be alright. We were stopped at an intersection when a truck that was jacked up way too high plowed into us head on.

“I saw it all happen because I was lying on the back seat of our sedan. The only reason I’m here today is that I was too low to the ground. The top of the car peeled away, and most of my mother with it.”

I stop for a moment and blink back a tear. This little self important piece of sewage doesn’t get to see me hurt. The anger burns away the tears I still feel. I look directly at her, and I can see her horror. “So, you little gutter snipe, you medusa, you little revenge poisoned rat, you get to pay for your crimes. You get to rot in here, and then you get to be put up on charges fitting the crime. Do you know what you’re being charged with? Desertion in the face of the enemy. In the past three days just over twenty women have come forward saying they planned to go AWOL the next time that we had a call up. Guess what, since you were the root cause, you and your little harem of male sluts...no your slavering pack of dogs, you are getting charged with just over twenty infractions, because you know what we’re called? The point of the spear. We are out here in front, we are the one and only line of defence and you tried to break us.”

“Enjoy the remaining hours of your life, since if you are convicted of even one of those, your life ends.”

She was screaming into her gag as I left. The Sergeant Major removed her gag and I just heard her continue to scream. It gave me no pleasure to do this. That was the sound of a broken woman that I left behind me. She had nothing left because I had taken it away. I only hoped that it would be enough to one day redeem these women she’d tried to destroy.

01000010 01010010
The blaring of the raid siren wakes me from a deep sleep, but not deep enough that I forget myself. I’m in my ACUs and running toward the garage before I fully even register that I’m out of bed. A few of the other women let their hair down while they slept, and they are putting their hair up while they ran. I’d learned long ago that a little pain was worth the time savings in cases like this.

The Garage is an ant hive of activity as mechanics ran from place to place. I’d never seen the place this clean. It even smelled clean. Usually there was a slight odor of rancid oil about the place. It just smells...ready. I climb into my suit and close all but the final latches myself. Jerry stops by and checks my connections and then closes me in. I’m weapon’s free the moment I close up and I run to join Captain Anderson at the headquarters point. The first thing I notice is that the tacmap is filled with the blinking red icons of assumed tank platoons. “We’re being invaded,” I say quietly and the Captain just grunts.

“”Permission to lead the troops into battle, Sir.”

“Not this time, Sarge. We go together this time.”

Fear suffuses my being as I realize what this means. There’s not going to be a centralized command. We’re already too far into it. We arrive at the garage just as the company is forming up outside it and we move out. We merge with first platoon and take out positions in formation. Even with Overwatch updating the tacmap for us everything is confused. We pop up over a hill directly into an oncoming tank platoon. There are a couple of tentative icons on the fringes suggesting that individual soldiers are filling holes, but the 1Ls have never had our tech base. I send a stream of high-velocity depleted uranium rounds through the first tank in line, designating additional targets to my companions.

“They’re already across the Mississippi,” someone says over the group channel before I spout, “cut the chatter and stick to your assigned targets.”

The tentative hostiles never materialize out of the forest and it’s making me a bit antsy, so I drop a couple of thermobaric rounds out there. A couple of my squad mates, having taken out their own targets, join suit. There is a firestorm that leaves the surrounding vegetation scattered and blackened. Some of the tentative marks change to the black Xs of confirmed kills. All of them fade after a moment or two.

We top the next rise and we see wave after wave of tanks crossing the Mississippi. There have to be more than a thousand tanks already across and at least a thousand in the process. The captain is calling for people to form up and I’m assigning targets on the floating bridges. As soon as I get acknowledgements I begin firing at my own targets. The high-explosive rounds pound down into river and shatter the unprotected sides of the barges. Even a few of the rounds hitting a single barge sends it to the bottom with the tank travelling across it. Unfortunately these tanks are partially amphibious. It may slow them, but it doesn’t stop them. We begin pouring depleted uranium rounds. Round after round pounds out into the tanks and tank after tank is take out. Some of them burn and some of them just grumble to a stop.

Still the tanks keep coming. My first magazine runs dry so I switch to the second. The rounds pound down range. This landing area has become a complete mess. Tanks and parts of tanks are strewn all over across the seven mile front. The heavy pounding sound of the anti-tank guns lessens and lessens as people run dry, and still the tanks keep coming. My round counter runs down from a hundred as I watch it. I keep pointing at new targets and pulling my trigger, trying to stretch out my rounds as far as they’ll go. The counter winds down to zero and I’m out. I was one of the last few soldiers to fire my last round. A sort of silence comes down upon the battlefield. Not once has a tank been able to bring their main gun to bear on us, we’ve been carrying the day. Now, with all of our ammunition gone, the tanks are able to begin sending rounds back out direction. The short lived almost silence is now punctuated by the sounds of their field pieces pounding out. We cover as best as we can on the lee side of the hill but it’s not going to be enough.

People are praying but I can hear the Captain on the radio with someone. He’s barely done and smiling at me when I hear the sound like a thousand bees. Drones begin dropping thermobarics all over the landing area. The river for almost a mile in either direction flashes into steam. I can tell the problem long before the Captain. He’s never been on the ground when visibility went completely to the ninth circle of hades.

“Get down!” I shout on the all-hands channel and tackle the captain. The bombs begin dropping all around us, and I can hear them getting closer. I know this is the end, the last opportunity I’ll have to say anything because no one is going to be this lucky. I’m completely exposed, and these are truly heavy explosives.

“Heath, I love you,” I say on the command net and then the world ends in a continuous roar.

01000010 01010010
My body hurts. I don’t know why it hurts, and even more strange, I’m sure that if I’m aware enough for it to hurt, that it shouldn’t be hurting. There’s a low pitched whine just barely at the edge of my consciousness. It seems to come and go with the pain. Everything is just the slightest bit off and I can’t figure it out.

I try to sit up and find myself almost folding in half. It’s as if I’m too light, or off balance. The world spins and sways and I get up out of bed. I can’t find my balance and collapse to the ground. I open my eyes and the pain becomes more intense. “What’s wrong with me,” I say and a voice I don’t recognize as my own greats me. It’s so deep that it has to be subsonic, or that’s the way it feels.

I stand on shaky legs and Climb back into bed, dizzy and exhausted from the pain.

“It hurts,” I call out to no one in particular. My chest feels funny. I put a hand there and realize it’s flat, My breasts are missing. An emptiness opens up in the pit of my stomach and I sob.

“Someone get the major,” I hear a voice that is just slightly off yell. Everything suddenly becomes clear. I’m in a spare and it’s a male one. I begin to sob uncontrollably. “Put me back,” I begin mumbling over and over, “just put me back.”

“What’s wrong with her?” I hear the slightly wrong voice say.

“You’ve just hit the nail on the head. Her mind is rejecting the sensory input from the spare. This is by far the most severe case I’ve seen in a while. You’d think that with how easily she took to a female spare...but that’s likely the exact reason that she’s having so much trouble now. For two weeks, her mind was in a body that fit her gloriously well. She really didn’t know what she was missing. Now, that she knows…”

“She can’t handle it.”

“Let me die,” I say, and I can feel the tears running down my face.

“Antonia, stay there, we’re going to get you taken care of,” Janae says and leaves the room.

“Antonia, stay there, we’ll fix this.”

“How, Heath? They don’t swap from one spare to another.”

“Well, they can just damn well do it this time. You saved over half the company and more than three quarters of the division.”

“Are the rest like me?”

“Oh, Antonia...the rest are dead.”

Pain that is entirely in my head stabs through my heart. People I had known, people I had served with and played with are now dead.

“Donnelly?”

“Alive,” he says and I let out a sigh that I immediately regret. Of the two hundred and fifty who died all I cared about were two people. I hate myself even more for that. “I should have died with them.

“No way am I letting you die now,” he says and there’s this growl of need that comes from him.

“Captain, we can’t,” I say quietly.

“As of fifteen hundred hours you were officially attached to the next BOLC-A group. As soon as we get you resolved here you’re shipping out. You’re not in my command, Cadet.”

It’s not exactly an officer rank, but unless I wash out, that’s exactly what I’m going to become. My mind moves more slowly than his and he pins me to the bed with a kiss that is so fierce that It stops the pain and I’m lost in the feel of his lips pressed against mine. when it ends I simply lie there, looking up at him in wonder.

“But, I’m hideous,” I say as soon as I can find my voice. He laughs. It’s a pleasant laugh full of joy.

“Antonia, you may be many things, but hideous has never been one of them.”

“I’m a man,” I say quietly. I could feel myself stirring as we kissed. It had been a distant feeling, something that hadn’t bothered me as the kiss went on, but now was all I could think about.

“That’s also something you’ve never been,” he says with the kindest smile Ive ever seen. I’m blushing and I can’t think of a single thing to say. We’re still like that when Janae returns. She has a full technical team with her.

“What did you do?” she asks the captain when she notices I’m no longer writhing in pain.

“Distracted her,” he says with a chuckle. At this reminder of what went before I can feel the pain, held at bay by my shock at his behaviour, return. “Ow,” I say in a quiet whimper that I just can’t hold in.

“Seems it didn’t last long. Step back, Captain.”

The wheel in a full diagnostic suite and hook me up to it. It seems that they want to be sure that I’m not just acting before they proceed. We may get our spares for free in the military but they still cost about ten thousand dollars each.

Even untrained as I am, the storm that appears on the monitors is troubling, and it grows worse as I watch. “Damn,” one of the techs says, “this is the worst case of spare rejection that I’ve ever seen.”

“Yeah, they’ll not even be able to use it as a test case,” another says, “since no one would believe that we didn’t just put noise on the set.”

“Verify that it isn’t noise then,” Janae says.

In the midst of my pain one thought surfaces. My mind is attacking my body. They quickly make adjustments, and the ‘noise’ goes down a little, but not by enough and they begin wheeling my bed away and out into the corridor. Janae slams her hand into an alarm button as she leaves my room. Everywhere I can see people scattering out of the way. This shouldn’t me for me is all I can think. I don’t deserve this, but by this point the pain is too severe and I can’t even moan.

“Hold on, Sergeant,” I hear Janae say as she puts something cool against my forehead and then everything goes black.

01000010 01010010
As soon as I begin to feel something again, I immediately search through my memories, looking for holes. I have to laugh the moment I realize what I’m doing. Most holes in your memory aren’t going to be something that you’re able to just think your way into. They’re more the type of thing you notice when someone else points them out to you.

I just feel...right My body is how it should be. There is no pain and I open my eyes. Heath is sitting next to me in a chair and if his snores are any indication then he’s asleep. I trie to sit up, and realize my hair is pinned between me and the bed. I roll a bit and extract it from beneath me. I slip into Heath’s lap and put my arms around me.

“Will you still kiss me if I’m beautiful?” I ask, my face just inches from his. His sleepy eyes blink and widen and then he just grins at me. Instead of answering he acts. It isn’t as intense as our first kiss, but it is a kiss and that is all I can ask for in this very moment.