• shone brightly up here; nothing like home, home was now a distant memory.
    I can still remember the smell of the ocean as I sat on the balcony of my house, the sounds of the waves crashing the beach, the feeling as the cold sea breeze brushed upon my skin.

    I missed the smell of my mum’s cooking the most, the smell of bread in the morning, the smell of roast on a lazy Sunday afternoon, but most of all the smell of that day’s pie, be it raspberry or apple, it always made me hungry.

    That was all too distant now, so I lay down and looked up at the majestic lights of the Milky Way. I did this more and more since I came here to this place, I never did it back home, there were always too many lights to see very far into space but here it was perfect.

    Then a light not from space tore my dreams away, it was followed by another light, then another and another. I knew what was going on so I rolled over and slid the long silvery object that lay next to me, closer to me. I watched as another set of long streaking lights streaked through the sky followed by another burst, if I wasn’t so scared of them, I would have thought they were beautiful, long orangey white lines that flew with no real particular place to go, they were only strays though, they weren’t intended for me so I didn’t have to worry much, but they still scared me.

    I pulled the tripod down on my rifle and looked through the scope, I looked for the origin of the tracer rounds to find out if they were friend or foe, it wouldn’t have been such a hard find as the foe were very easy to spot in there badly designed army uniforms. Then I watched, this time through the scope, another set of tracer rounds and I traced them back until I found the rifle that had ejected them moments before, I knew then that I was in trouble, but from they amount of rounds I had witnessed I figured that it didn’t matter very much anyway, the guy was a bad shot.

    I aimed for his head and took a deep breath and waited for him to fire at my comrades again. I had to figure out the measurements, the wind, the distance and the rate of movement. Five seconds later I received my wish, he shot but this time he didn’t miss, he put four rounds into one of my friends, Kyle, he was a good man, loyal to the end I later found out, what I couldn’t see was the fallen soldier behind Kyle, the man he was trying to protect.

    I exhaled after I finished my quick calculations and readied the gun, I breathed in once more and exhaled again, this could be my last breath so I had to cherish it, if an enemy Sniper sees my shot I’m dead, they, the enemy, always had up to and most likely more, six Sniper teams and we only had me, I had no spotter and no back up, if I died then we wouldn’t have a sniper.

    I exhaled and then squeezed the trigger, the bright flash was followed by a large bang as the bullet hit the speed of sound about a foot in front of the barrel, the grass that surrounded me and the rifle was long but that wasn’t a good thing, a few blades of grass were, until a second before, merely waving in the wind in front of me, but now they flew up into the air, shattered, never to merely wave in the wind again, that and as they fell they burned like mini LOOK-HERE signs, most people wouldn’t have seen it but I wasn’t really worried by most people, it was the people that would see it that I was afraid of. But nothing, no searing pain, no blood, just the sound of gun fire below. I was still alive, oh how great that felt, I briefly thanked anything that was listening and then I went back to my task.

    The fight went on for an hour, but I only scored four people and I only saved one person and that was me.

    I was now alone, the enemy pulled out, there was another more pressing matter going on further back, back the way they came, a bunch of my army’s ships were seen landing in a field. I was contacted by my commander who had been back at HQ during this fight, I was to evacuate to that very field. I was going home. A war hero he said. I didn’t feel like a hero, I felt like a looser, I felt like I should have died tonight.


    ---- To be continued ----