'Confront them with annihilation, and they will then survive; plunge them into a deadly situation and they will then live. When people fall into danger, they are then able to strive for victory.'

-Sun Tzu

'The overwhelming desire to kill lent wings to my stride. Rage squeezed bitter tears from my eyes. The immense desire to destroy that overhung the battlefield

precipitated a red mist in our brains.'

-Ernst Junger

Two sounds of very different origin filled the hilly area in which a damaged shuttle lay; a fallen lunar angel. A squishing sound multiplied into a cacophony of

predatory intent and the loud blasts of kinetic weaponry built on a lonely satellite 238, 900 miles away.

Dong Shen Yin picked her shots with her pulse carbine carefully. Squibs were deadly at close range although not impossible to deal with even with primitive hand weapons. They had no armor and while strong were not overwhelmingly so. Terran barbarians successfully hunted them with pneumatic weapons and even bow and arrows. It was just the razor sharp tentacles were so sharp and the fact that there were usually hundreds, if not thousands of them. In the three minutes of the initial engagement she had taken out more squibs than in all her previous contact missions combined.

This was the largest swarm she had ever witnessed in her young life. A cold feeling went through the spine despite the blessed warming effect of adrenaline.

Lieutenant Dong turned and spoke calmly but evenly into her intercom. "Fall back to the Perimeter A, pronto!"

Her six battle able comrades laid down covering fire for each other as they had been trained. Dong Shen Yin was the last to fall back, taking out three more squibs with the first battery charge for her carbine nearly empty. One more perimeter before the mines would activate. Hopefully the squibs would be less numerous by then.

"Lt Dong! How many do you think we have killed?" Corporal Pui shouted with an intense look. She was terrified but the training and conditioning was doing its job.

"Can't tell, It don't work that way, Pui. We will know after the battle or we won't."

She plugged in her second battery charge. "Resume Fire!"

The loud blasting continued. Both ear protection and reinforced inner ear enhancements were mandatory for Luna troopers.

Squib after squib was blasted apart, head shots dropping them instantaneously as their cerebral system exploded into a gelatinous mess. A pile of dead squibs was now making a barrier that the others had to climb over. But they kept coming. It was said that the first victory over the western barbarians by the Han had taken place using such tactics; sheer numbers proving time and time again its superiority over fighting skill and technology; the grim and unfair reign of quantity. But nothing was decided until it was over and this battle was only beginning.

Dong Shen Yin was already halfway through her second battery pack, her carbine spitting out beams of energy that killed a squib with every pull of the trigger. It looked like they were thinning in number but only slightly. She glanced over briefly to see how the other blossoms were fairing. Zhuo, Pui and Fan were wasting some of their kinetic ammo for their rail guns. Every shot counted in this primate versus mollusk war.

"Pick your shots! That ammo costs and its going to possibly buy you back your lives!" Lieutenant Dong shouted in her intercom loudly. It was difficult hearing even what was implanted in one's auditory canal with all the ordinance being used. Underneath the cacophony the ever present squishing sound. Turning back she saw three squibs going specifically for her. The bark of her carbine less than its bite, she killed the first two instantly.

The third squib got closer than Dong Shen Yin preferred and before she could hit it square it leaped at her. Switching her grip on the carbine, she drew her moon blade while arcing back over in a tumble. The vibrating and flexible blade cutting the squib nearly in half but she failed to get the brain stem, which for squibs was in three separate clusters. Two of its tentacles whipped at her and cut into the armor on her forearm and torso. As if sentient, the tentacles sought the softer target of her face.

Rotating her whole arm in a semi circular fashion she wrapped both tentacles in a tight overhook and felt the sting of the razor barbs piercing her flesh. Painful but not poisonous thank goodness. That split second move saved her scars on her face and perhaps much worse. More importantly it enabled her to decapitate the predatory mollusk sperm in one slice. Immediately she rolled in another tumble back to the perimeter.

The jiggling corpse of the squib she had just killed was grasped and torn asunder by two more. Dong Shen Yin knew they would do that. It was how an old comrade, Sergeant Fong Lee met her end on the last mission. She had taken too long to extricate herself from a squib and was swarmed, her honor bomb blowing Fong and her murderers to bits. Dong Shen Yin would never forget the look on her face; calm and peaceful.

Lieutenant Dong began firing again as soon as she got a stance but now saw in her peripheral vision what she had feared. Squibs were now passing through the perimeter and overrunning the Blossoms. They countered by having Zhuo, Pui and Ma pick off the trespassers to the rear who seemed to be heading for the shuttle and the wounded Captain Zheng. The squibs were shot down but this left three less guns to pick off the oncoming ones.

Then the inevitable happened.

Corporal Fan was taken down by a squib and was soon swarmed by two more. She began to scream in terror and pain but mixed with a component of rage. Within seconds her blood sprayed into the air. Even as she killed one of the squibs with her rail gun another took its place. Private Guo who was closest to her began to scream to her comrade and went to save her.

"No! Private Guo, get back. Get back! That’s a command!" Lieutenant Dong shouted.

Now two less guns were shooting at the storm of tentacles.

More screaming was heard but not Corporal Fan. Another human form was in the swarm of razor sharp tentacles, trying to get to a now shuddering Fan. Two Squib heads (or what approximated heads) dropped to the ground. Private Guo stopped in her tracks. Dong Shen Yin also could not believe her eyes but was able to keep firing her carbine, now halfway through its third battery pack.

Private Lu was hacking and slicing away, killing another squib with her blade hand. With her other/original hand she pulled a bloody but still breathing Corporal Fan away.

Another Squib leapt at Lu but her carbine was hooked on the blade, just as Dong Shen Yin had recommended. The squib's head was blown off as its forward momentum carried its body and tentacles towards Lu. The barbs fell short as the main body was impaled on the nearly three and half foot long blade. Private Lu was smiling! Shaking off the dead squib with a flicking motion of her arm, she scooped up Corporal Fan with the other arm and then retreated backward blasting away.

Corporal Fan’s heroics provided a momentary morale boost, although Lu could have been blasted apart by Fan's honor bomb. Gambling too many times on Terra was foolish or insane. Private Lu seemed to be in the latter category.

"Okay, retreat to Perimeter B!"

Now the mines would do some of the work. The damn things were expensive enough and heavy enough to carry, time to fulfill their goal of split second devastation. But one of her comrades could not.

Corporal Pui was cut off and soon swarmed. Fighting bravely to the end she was taken down and gave one, long scream of defiance. Her battle sisters watched on helplessly, although Private Lu began to run towards her direction and had to be restrained.

"For the Han! For Luna! For my comrades!" The youngest of the Blossoms looked back to her unit as a squib tentacle shredded her face.

With that, her honor bomb ignited and the shockwave shook the hill, the squibs and her comrades.

Dong Shen Yin began firing on the line again but saw two of the Blossoms begin to falter. Corporal Ma was near physical collapse and blood dripped from her armor.

She had been wounded by a squib but had kept fighting anyway. Private Zhuo was bearing a worse malady; her face the picture of an imminent psychological collapse.

Her eyes were wide with terror and she was shaking. Lieutenant Dong then remembered that four of their fatalities had been her closest friends in the academy. The core group of her socialization as a young woman all gone; killed in the most horrific manner despite their holy duty and mission.

The squishing sounds now started up again. The squibs were getting ready to swarm again although thankfully there were indeed less of them. Dong Shen Yin

now saw that they had a chance. They might be able to win this engagement. The mines were going to make the difference—hopefully.

Perimeter B had been set up behind a beveled trench like area to shield from the explosions to come. Guo, bloody and worn Ma, and angry Lu who was yelling at them for holding her back from saving Pui, a possibly dying and unconscious Corporal Fan and a shivering and now tearful Zhuo were waiting for Lieutenant Dong inside.

"I could have saved her!" Lu was fuming.

"Die. We came here to die. Food for the devil clams. Born, bred and raised just for consumption." Zhuo said softly.

Corporal Ma and Private Guo said nothing but Dong Shen Yin could see they were getting close to the psychological breaking point as well. The combat had lasted only twenty minutes! Private Guo managed to retrieve some of her military bearing and addressed Lieutenant Dong.

"Lieutenant, now what?"

Dong Shen Yin had to regain control where she could. Her impatient instinct was to smack Zhuo and grab the useful but psychopathic Lu by her collar and slam her against the

stone wall of the trench. Instead she focused on the badly wounded Corporal Fan.

"How is she?"

"Not going to make it." An utterly exhausted Corporal Ma said with little emotion. Fan was very still and her breath nearly gone. What life was left in her could barely be heard in a flow of air trying to push through a rapidly failing set of lungs and heart.

Dong Shen Yin felt guilty for the thought she now had. Corporal Fan was now useful as an improvised explosive. In the end they all were to be honest.

"Alright then, rig her and trigger her. When the mines are finished, we will have another explosive to use on the survivors.”

Under normal circumstances such a cold-blooded but efficient statement might have elicited a different response. But now the coherent Luna battle sisters concurred, even the defiant Private Lu.

"Yes, she would want this; to still strike at these devil squids one last time."

"Nothing, it is all nothing. It was all for Nothing." Zhuo began to whisper in almost a chant like monotone. Private Lu turned on her with an angry expression, as if she was staring at the traitor bitch Kuan Hong who had sold secrets to the Terran barbarians a century ago. Anger shot up in Dong Shen Yin as well and had she been the second in command would have probably enacted corporal punishment right then and there. Instead she tried to salvage what was left of an otherwise skilled and useful soldier. She blocked Lu with her own body and put a gentle hand on the shell shocked soldier.

"Your right, Zhuo. I'll let you in on a secret. Everything is Nothing. That means all we can do is create meaning within it to light the darkness. The death of your sisters

has hurt you, but it hurts you because they were real. They came from Nothing but were they Nothing as well? You know they weren't."

Zhuo seemed to not listen but inside her mind, Lieutenant Dong was cracking the defensive wall of denial.

Soon something else was going to do some cracking. The first wave of squibs was hitting the wire.

Dong Shen Yin grabbed Zhuo and put her on the floor of the trench. "Get down!" Her comrades soon followed.

Explosions soon reverberated through the air and rock. The God of War, be he Greek or Chinese (and most definitely male) hammered the battlefield relentlessly with his war hammers. What he thought of amazon warriors fighting mollusk devils of the sea would be forever a mystery.

To be continued in Anti Mother