Enemy: Part 1 (Short)

This is either a femboy or transgirl focused short.  A poll will be up shortly to decide which it is.  Obviously if these aren't to your taste give Enemy a pass.

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I saw him there among the floating ash and burning bodies and thought him a woman despite his uniform, such was the loveliness of his face.  Quite simply it was the most fetching face I’d ever seen.  In the orange glow of the flames his peaceful visage looked as delicate as fading starlight at the rising of the sun.  His lithe body as well added to the illusion of femininity as his hips were curved, his buttocks full and round, and his waist slender in a way I’d rarely seen on any but the fairer sex.

But I knew him to be a man.  And I knew him to be the enemy.  Yet still it broke my heart to see something so beautiful snuffed out so needlessly.  With a sigh I shake my head sadly.  What was one more beautiful thing crushed beneath the boot of war?  What was one more man’s life sacrificed for the glory of Empire?

We couldn’t have looked more different he and I.  He had wavy blond hair, mine was shaved short and pure black.  His skin was near as fair as a lily’s petals, mine a deep mahogany brown.  He was slender, I was stout.  His fine cheeks smooth and mine covered with a dense beard.  But in him I see myself.  We were both soldiers, both in our mid-twenties and both caught up in a cause not of our making.  Somewhere, possibly lying dead in this very village, this man once had family, friends, and a life that mattered.

I look up to the stars above and to the tiny yellow speck of distant Sol.  Our species had come so far and yet history just continued to repeat itself.  No matter how far we roamed or how many worlds we terraformed there never seemed to be enough room to live and let live.  The savagery of our race followed us where ever we went.

There was a gap in the burning wall that would allow me to reach him and I was tempted to do so just to turn him over and let his bones rest facing the sky.  But as he lay now I could not see the wound that had claimed his last breath.  It could have simply been the concussive blast of the grav-tank’s shell that destroyed the building around him but it could be so much worse as well.  I’d seen enough blood this night, I’d shed enough blood this night, I did not wish to see more.

The cracks of gunfire pop sporadically around the settlement as my fellow marines go house to house putting down any survivors from the resistance force.  This had been the final stand of the colonists and the brass wanted us to make sure that every last seed of rebellion was purged from the planet.  We all knew we were taking part in a war crime.  We also knew that there wasn’t a damn thing we could do about it if we wanted to see home again.  Military justice out here on the fringe was brutal and swift.  The worst part was yet to come.  A lifetime of being celebrated for my service in this ‘glorious victory’ for the Empire, which I had no doubt was already being reported on the newscasts back home.

“Rest in peace.”  I whisper to the beautiful stranger.  He looked like an angel and now he sang among them in heaven.  A fate that my blood soaked soul would never find.

I sigh and turn to go but one final lingering glance pauses my steps.  As a fluff of ash drifts down to settle near his nostril it suddenly is pushed away to land a couple of inches away.  He was still breathing!

Never had I felt such a rush of elation followed so instantly by a gut punch of despair.

My orders had been clear.  Eradicate any enemy soldier or potential combatant summarily.  We were taking no prisoners and leaving no survivors of fighting age for tonight wasn’t simply about victory, it was also about sending a message to any other uppity colony who thought they were out of reach for the Empire.

Two more pops of gunfire echo out behind me.  Like me the others in my company were scouring every inch of this settlement.  Some of them gleefully so as they wanted to rack up the highest body count possible before our tour of duty was over.  I grit my teeth and grip my rifle as I scowl at the man.  ‘Why couldn’t you have just been dead?’  I think.  ‘This would have been so much easier.’

I shake my head.  I remind myself that he was my enemy and that just an hour ago he would have shot me without hesitation.  Creeping closer I peer up the inside of the building to make sure I wasn’t about to be crushed by support beam or something.  There is nothing above but billowing smoke and glowing embers dancing among the stars beyond.  I step through into the smoldering ruin and over the other bodies to come and stand over the unconscious man.  Despite telling myself not to I use the end of my barrel to flip him over onto his back.  I just wanted to see him plainly once before the end.

“Hmmmm.”  His moan is soft and lilting, as effeminate at his fair face.  His right side was darkened with dirt and soot, his feet and lower legs mangled beyond recognition, and still his ethereal grace somehow shone through.

Why him?  Why me?  And why did I expect anything like fairness in world at war?

If I left him perhaps his wounds would claim him on their own.  Perhaps the building would collapse in and burn him.  Or maybe, just maybe, if I left him alone the others of my unit would think him just another corpse as I did.  And if they didn’t…at least it wouldn’t be me to pull the trigger.

“Fuck.”

I don’t know why but it bothered me that he might become just another notch on another soldier’s ego counter.  Besides, I had my orders.  Why should his looks spare him from a fate I had handed out so heartlessly so many times before?  Why should he escape death when all around him were slain?  As if he were special and they weren’t.  I step over him, straddling him between my booted feet, and train my muzzle directly at his beating heart.  I say a quick prayer and squeeze the trigger…and squeeze the…and squeeze…and…

My finger would not pull.  It simply would not move.

A realization was washing over me and as it did something inside of me…broke.  The war was over.  All of my battles were fought.  No more ambushes, no more losing friends, no more atrocities.  After this night I would never have to pick up a weapon again if I did not want to.  My years long nightmare was at an end and I could finally return…home.  With that realization I am reminded of the fresh faced recruit in his crisp new uniform staring back at me in the mirror just days before deployment.  I knew I would never see innocence in those large brown eyes again…but could I at least find honor again?  God, what have I become?

My hands shake and I slowly pull the rifle away.  I couldn’t do it.  Not anymore.  Not to somebody so sweet and fair and lovely.

“You bastard.”  I mutter as I blame the man for the shattering of my warrior’s mettle.  “You fucking bastard.”

I stand at a loss as to what to do.  I could not kill him.  More than that, I could not stand by and let him be killed.  In the blink of an eye that downed soldier had come to test everything that I was, I am, and what I would become.

A smattering of full-auto fire followed by the raucous laughter of other soldiers in a nearby building breaks my reverie.  I scan about looking for anywhere I might hide him.  Potentially among the other bodies?

That option is dashed as he stirs and let out a long suffering moan.  “Hohhhhh…mommaaaa…mommmaaaaaa…”

“Jesus.”  I cough, the smoke around us was getting thicker by the second.  “Are you trying to make this difficult?”

I knew I hadn’t much time before others arrived and I lost control of the situation.  As I look about the the torsos and limbs and broken corpses, one man barely recognizable from another, a terrible idea strikes me.  With no other ideas at hand I go with terrible.

Slinging my gun and kneeling down beside him I scramble.  After years of battlefield looting I was a practiced hand at going over a body.  I pull off his belt and holster and throw them to the side.  I unbutton his uniform shirt and pull his limp limbs through the arms.  Removing it from him I toss it to the nearest open flame.  His shredded pants I slice away from him with my combat knife.  The remnants of his boots pull away with nauseating sucking sound as the flesh and bone within had been pulverized into an amorphous bloody pulp.

“Ohhhhh!”  He groans in pain.

“Shut up.”  I grunt.

I give his limp willowy body a quick once over for other wounds.  Excluding his lower legs, which were beyond any hope, he had escaped with just a few bruises.  I knew I must hurry and yet I cannot help but to look over him one more time, this time with a different eye.  His flesh was so smooth, so soft, and unblemished by scars.  His palms were supple without even a hint of callousing.   His build was so…so…effeminate.  That was the only word for it. His lean pecs were…different.  Not muscular but puffy near the large plump nipples.  Even now in just his boxers it took a second glance to confirm that this was a dude and not a damsel.  A man this soft could not have been serving for very long.  Had this been his very first action?

Shaking my head I focus again.  I didn’t have time for this shit right now.  I pause at the cusp of making my terrible idea become a terrible reality but the approaching voices from outside spurs me to action.  Without even a moment to read them I pull his dog tags from around his neck and cast them aside.  Rummaging in my breast pocket I find another set.  A set I had found on the long rotting body of a marine I found crumpled inside of a hedgerow just that morning.  I’d planned on turning them in so that the man’s family would finally know his fate.  Those plans had changed.  I sit the man up and slip the dog tags of his enemy around his slender neck. 

“What do you got there Joe?”  Snaps a familiar voice before I’d even had time to regret my decision.

“One of ours Sarge.”

“Shit.  You sure?”

“Yeah.”  I say as I gently brush the filth from the man’s cheek.  “I met him once on R and R.”  I take a glance at the tags.  “His name’s Eli.”

“Mother fuckers had a marine?”  Says another.  He then spits on the nearest body.  “Rest in pieces bitches.”

I scoop him up in my arms and shield him as I run back through the gap in the burning wall.  I cough and spit and take a breath of fresh night air.  

“Any other survivors?”

“No Sir, just him.”

My sergeant gives the man a look, his eyes lingering a moment at the feet.  “Get him to med-tent.”

“Yes Sir.”

I pull him in close to me and start back toward the field base.  His flesh was cold and clammy in my hands.  He was an easy load as he weighed no more than maybe a hundred and thirty pounds at most.  I weave through the streets of the battered and burning settlement.  Every rational voice I had left in my mind was screaming at me to stop but something wouldn’t let me stop.

Unlike every other battle I’d been a part of I see the med-tent half empty as I approach.  This final battle had been such a rout that we took very few losses on our side.  A waiting medic sees me coming and was already directing me toward a bed.  As I lay him down the man groans and paws at me feebly.  I sit back to look at him and see the most striking pale blue eyes I’d ever seen.  Those striking eyes loll about only partially focused.  His mind blunted and blurred by pain and confusion he casts his gaze about.

“Huunnghhh…”  He groans.

“Shhh.”  I pat his chest.  “You’re safe now.”  That was such a lie but I didn’t know what else to say.

From the left a medic hurries to his side as to the right a stern looking captain comes to loom over us.

“What’s his story?”  Asks the captain.

“P.O.W., Sir.”  I say.  “I found him with his captors.  They’re all dead.”

“Any more of ours?”

“Not that I saw.”

“Who is he?”

“His tags say that he’s from Parcae V.”  I say.  The beautiful man was conscious but struggling to focus through the haze.  He looked ready to say something but I cut him off before he could blow this for both of us.  “He’s a sniper Sir.”  I grit my teeth as I realize the error I’d just made.  That information I’d dredged up from a patch I saw on the body I’d lifted the tags from, not the dog tags themselves.  Thankfully the captain doesn’t catch it.

“He’s from Echo Company.”  He replies with confidence.  “They shipped back home over a month ago.  Poor bastard, he’d be walking ’round in civvies  and gettin pussy by now if he hadn’t been nabbed.”

“Yes Sir.”

The man’s ashen expression, contorted by unspeakable pain, squints to focus on my face.  The medic at his side was swabbing a patch of his shoulder in preparation of giving him a shot of something.  Something to kill the pain or knock him out no doubt.  I didn’t have much time with him.

“How’d he get captured?”

“Not sure Sir.  He doesn’t remember.”

“Shell shock?”

“Amnesia I think.”  I say slowly and clearly, hoping my voice was getting through the man’s fog of pain.  “He took a hell of a knock.  I don’t think he remembers anything.  I’m no medic though.”

“Name?”

“Corporal Elijah Jackson.”  I say as I stare into the man’s bleary eyes, desperate to communicate this to him far more than my commanding officer.  “His name is Elijah…Jackson.”

“Mrs. Jackson is one lucky Momma.”

“Yes Sir.”

The light fades from those crystal clear blue eyes as the needle does its work.  Two more medics hurry to the bed, shoving me out of the way as they ready him for whatever came next.

“Alright trooper.”  The captain slaps my shoulder.  “Get yer ass back in the shit.”

“Yes Sir!”

The next thing I knew I was hustling back to join my platoon without a god damned clue what I had just left in my wake.  Had I done good?  Had I done bad?  I don’t know.  I only knew that I’d done what I needed to do.

Part 2