[color=2e3192][h2]Sawbones[/h2][/color]

[indent]Beryl Spencer jolted to wakefulness at the sound of a voice, and for a dull, bleary-eyed moment, she couldn’t remember what mission this was. Her sleek black gear was new—unmarred by action except for the scarred hilt of her dad’s battered combat knife, safe in the sheath on her thigh. The people around her were strangers, but that wasn’t unusual. She’d been pulled from her unit for engagements before, and the inside of V-22 Osprey was more familiar than her bedroom—she’d slept in enough of them. The metal-and-gas stench hardly registered.

It was the commander’s voice that brought her back. You couldn’t listen to a man explain the necessities of a planetary task force and not ingrain it into your memory. She was here because the aliens were fucking real—go figure— and a few of the world’s super powers wanted to keep an eye on them—as they usually did. Hell, getting to see an alien up close might just make it worth it, if it didn’t get her killed. She still had her hopes up for little green men or a Spock-like live-long-and-prosper.

Beryl shifted, reaching for the camera in the pouch beneath her chair and slipping its band around her head. It was snug enough to be uncomfortable, catching her hair and pressing into her skin. But that was military life, wasn’t it? You dealt with the discomfort and slept every time you got the chance.

Even aliens wouldn’t change all that much. No matter what they were shooting at, Beryl’s job was still to patch up the humans on their side. Now, getting to patch up an alien? That would be interesting. If they didn’t save it for some lab coat that would sniff at a mere doctor.[/indent]

Ah, well, a girl could dream.

[indent]Eight minutes fell just short of Beryl’s time requirements for a nap, so she sat up and took in the confines of the aircraft. She wasn’t the only one. The blond boy two seats down from her broke the silence in a friendly sort of way, and to Beryl’s way of thinking, friendly usually deserved a response.[/indent]

[color=2e3192]“Nice to meet you, kiddo,”[/color] Beryl said, leaning around the red-headed woman next to her to shake his hand and catching a whiff of tobacco stronger than a casino’s gambling floor. [color=2e3192]“It takes time to learn how to put sharpshooters back together when they break.”[/color]

[color=lightgreen]"What do you mean, break? Who's breaking the guy firing from a kilometre away?"[/color] The sharpshooter's posture seemed to tense up, as though he was contemplating the concept that he [i]could[/i] be broken.

Beryl just smiled lazily. [color=2e3192]"Who knows? We're talking about aliens, after all. Good news is, if they lance you with a cranial probe from a kilometer away, you probably won't feel it."[/color]