[ WP ] As a Space marine you have an allowance of one call home a day . Today 's battle was especially bad and your best friend died I 'm the heat of it all . Time to call home .

A meticulous job, cleaning a plasma rifle. Since the barrel shoots superheated plasma out the front, sometimes the shot flares out and splatters the barrel. Sometimes it even pokes holes in the end of the barrel, like the pores in skin. People have been killed by this. Not Trots. 
 
 Jason `` Trots'' Volchenko had moved into my neighborhood in fifth grade. We always made fun of his name. Half the time we called him `` Volvo,'' like the car, and that would piss him off. 
 
 `` Volvo's are n't even *Russian* cars! They're fucking Swedish!'' he would shout at us. `` At least use a Russian car name!'' 
 
 He was good with cars and machines. He ended up being a mechanic in the Marine Corps. Any machine that I flew in, I knew had to be worked on by Trots. I flew in a different ship once, and it had crashed behind enemy lines. Trots' machines flew faster, flew better, and came back in one piece. 
 
 The phone rings in my quarters. My rifle is torn apart, the plasma splatters in the barrel have been cleaned and re-welded. The X-Ray shows no more holes or cracks. 
 
 `` Phone call from Millie Phillips.'' 
 
 The screen popped up and her hair was as curly as ever. The night lights were on in the background, long tubes that ran from ceiling to floor that were florescent. 
 
 `` Hey! How are you?'' she asked. 
 
 I looked at my rifle again. The battery was showing 80 %. I had fired a full battery and changed it out. I did n't fire it at anything in particular. 
 
 `` I'm okay, I guess,'' I replied. I removed a pack of Lucky Strikes from my shirt pocket. Bizarre, that after all the medical advances were made back on Earth, that we still manufactured filterless cigarettes. I was used to smoking only one or so a day. Today, I'd smoked about eight or nine cigarettes. 
 
 `` What's wrong? Something's wrong?'' A pause. `` Are you in a different room? It does n't have our pictures in it.'' 
 
 `` Yeah. We were invaded today.'' 
 
 Another lengthy pause. 
 
 `` Invaded.'' 
 
 `` Yeah.'' 
 
 Trots was working in the hangar when they showed up. They landed in the hangar while there was roughly fifty or so working there. 
 
 The worst part is they did n't start shooting right away. 
 
 `` So what ship are you on now?'' 
 
 `` The'Firma''' I said. Short for Terra Firma, this was one of the first ships created on Earth for interstellar travel. What a fucking shithole. Somehow they were able to maintain it, even if it was an old hulk. 
 
 Jason was supposedly the first one to approach the Extra Terrestrials. I had only seen them a handful of times, and only behind the sight of my rifle, so it must have been bizarre trying to communicate with them. He had approached with a communicator. Things seemed alright, at first, from what the survivors detail, but then when the comm system broke, they had a fundamental issue. 
 
 They could n't understand each other. 
 
 `` So what happened? Is everything okay?'' 
 
 Jason went down first. They shot him in the head, on the floor, like a dog, while he was trying to fix the comm system. It was n't even that hard to fix, he just did n't fix it quick enough. 
 
 `` Yeah, yeah, everything's fine.'' 
 
 `` Where's Jason?'' 
 
 `` He's not here. He never made it off the landing deck.'' 
 
 `` Oh god, honey, I'm so sorry,'' she teared up. 
 
 I had made it up to the hangar to repel the invasion, and quickly, I noticed Jason's body on the floor. His head was burned, and badly, as some sort of indescribable matter bled out from where his hairline had been. Two German medics moved his body out to the morgue when the battle was over. 
 
 I did n't say anything. 
 
 `` I understand if you want to be alone.'' 
 
 `` I just miss you. I'm sorry. I ca n't talk about this right now. I love you. I'll call you tomorrow.'' 
 
 `` Call ended with Millie Phillips.'' 
 
 We called him'Trots' because he played the back legs of my Halloween costume that year. We dressed as a horse, but he only wanted to run. He continued to shove me and screamed `` C'mon, Phillips! Move faster! It'll impress people!'' until I fell out, the head of the costume and my body collapsing, while the tail end of the horse moved and trotted. Jason did n't just give up, he kept running. 
 
 His tags were wrapped around the butt of my rifle. 
 
 I was granted an honorable because of Jason's death. When I had got onto the pod to leave the ship, it said in bright letters above the door, `` Inspected by 401JV,'' and I knew I would make it home.
