He laid there with blood gushing from his chest. His helmet had been knocked off when he hit the ground. I stood frozen unable to accept the that Earthen soldier I had just shot in the chest was my twin brother George. It had been six years since I last saw George.
“Help!” I screamed.
Nothing. There was no one around for miles. There was just desert. It was supposed to be an easy ambush on an Earthian force base in the Diemosian desert, which was south of the capital. We had intercepted communications from the Earthen forces to Earth and it was revealed they planned to launch a strike on our capital. A declaration of inter-planetary war. For years it had been rumored that the government of Mars would seek its independence from the Earthen Coalition (E.C.), the joint governing body of Mars made of countries of Earth that controlled the Martian government and set out to govern Mars by itself. It was argued that since Mars was colonized two hundred years ago and many of our citizens had never even been to Earth so the Earthen coalition had no business governing how we lived on Mars. Others argued that if we did declare independence we would be breaking the bond from the mother planet and our connection as humans. After what seemed to be decades of rumors, the Martian government declared its independence from Earth and the Earthen coalition. I was in my second year at the Central University of Science when the announcement was made. The announcement was followed by several days of joyous celebration from many of the Martian citizens and the departure of some back to Earth. After several weeks of celebration, the realization settled in that Mars could have just started a long battle for independence from the Earthen Coalition who were not going to give up their control over Mars and its resources.

“Ahhh!” he yelled, as he gained consciousness
“Theo, you shot me?” He asked.
It was clear that even after six years apart from my twin brother: he still recognized me.
“I didn’t shoot you: I shot an Earthen soldier with their helmet on who happened to be you,” I replied.
“Just my luck” I added
“Since when did you become a soldier for the Martian government?”
“Since your imperialist Earthen Coalition declared war on us” I replied

After the E.C had declared that they did not accept the Martian government declaration of independence, a draft for all healthy eighteen to thirty-five-year-olds to join the Martian defense unit was enabled. I had been assigned to the Ventura base near the capital for training. I only had  three months of training when the message of Earth’s first attack on Martian soil was intercepted. The mission of his assigned squad was to ambush and take control one of the many Earthen landing bases that the Earthen forces held control of even after the declaration of independence. The reasoning was if they didn’t have any landing bases left the Earthen forces would have had to land in deep desert putting them at a severe military disadvantage.
We launched the planet wide ambush on all Earthen held landing bases at the crack of dawn. My unit had been assigned what seemed like an easy mission: a small unfortified base in the middle of the Diemosian desert. We were confident that they were going to surrender power at the sight of our spacecraft in the sky. When we arrived it was everything but easy, the reports of the base lacking military weapons had been ridiculously wrong, they had blaster cannons stationed on every conceivable entry point and their soldiers had been situated everywhere waiting for us. I can still remember the sound of the first blaster cannon shot after the charge at the station began.

Booom.

Several feet away from me I saw our first soldier crumble, the electricity from the cannon killed him in a second. His scream cut short. They out-powered us but we outnumbered them by several hundred soldiers. After what seemed to be an hour, there countless amounts of our soldiers dead on the floor and the smell of electrocuted bodies was so thick in the air you could have choked on it; however, we managed to break past their entry and into the inner base. It seemed that they had put their hopes on being able to stop us from even getting into the base that their inner base had no blaster cannons situated or other defenses prepared but their outnumbered soldiers. We quickly gained ground and pinned them further back. I heard
Then I looked up and saw their first space shuttle rise in the air from behind building that we had pinned them back to and speed off. I counted three more shuttles do the same before our commander order a group of us to head back to our craft and chase down as many of the many of the shuttles as possible. Our one goal was to blow them out of the sky. We managed to track down one shuttle and shot them down. We only managed to hit the wing of the shuttle and we knew that the soldiers were still alive in the crashed shuttle.We had been given one goal and that was to kill. Once we landed, we advanced on the shuttle, as we neared the shuttle the front blew up. The blast had killed everyone that was within thirty feet of it. I had been stationed near the back of the group so I was lucky enough not to be blasted into pieces but the explosion launched me backward several hundred feet. I lost consciousness. I woke up to see the shuttle in flames and the backs of several buggies speeding away from the crash. It became clear to me that the Earthen soldiers had rigged the front half of the ship to explode once we got near it. I saw one buggy going in the opposite direction of the rest and coming near me, the driver had been assigned the same job I was given when we landed: to make sure that there were no surviving enemy soldiers. My body was covered in sand and my helmet had been knocked off after I fell. I reached back into my holster for my blaster pistol and hid it under my stomach. My plan was to pretend to be dead until the buggy was passing by me and shoot the driver when he got close. I was going to take the buggy to see if any of the guys who had been launched backward with me survived and drive back to the Diemosian to rejoin my unit. I laid there patiently waiting and in a span of four seconds when he was several feet away. I whipped the blaster pistol from underneath my stomach and fired a shot at his head. It turned out that I aimed too low so the electric bullet hit him in his chest. The shot knocked him out of the buggy and into the sand. I checked to see if the other buggies turned around but they were nowhere in site. I crawled to the buggy out of fear that the Earthen soldiers would return and see me stealing their buggy. As I crawled near the buggy, I saw the guy laying there bleeding and then I noticed his helmet had been knocked off. I looked up at his face and froze.
   laying there was my brother George. I had not seen him since he abandoned me and ran off to join the Earthen Coalition Academy (E.C.A) when we were twelve?. George and I didn’t have spectacular childhoods; our parents were both killed in a space shuttle malfunction that caused it to explode when we were ten and we spent three years in an orphanage. On the day of our thirteenth birthday, he told me of his plan to join the E.C.A now that we were old enough. The E.C.A was the Earthen Coalition’s training academy that trained its soldiers from as young as the age of thirteen even though they could not serve until eighteen. When he told me I was automatically opposed to the idea; the E.C.A’s campus was located on Earth and joining meant leaving home and I was not in the least bit fascinated with the idea of being a soldier, I wanted to be a scientist. George told me that I was being stupid and that the E.C.A was the best chance to leave the orphanage. He tried to convince me for months after that and I said no every time and then one day I woke up and he had disappeared. He left a letter saying that he had gone to the launch base for the E.C.A recruiters and the spacecraft that was taking the recruits to Earth was leaving that night. Yep, my twin brother abandoned me in an orphanage and left nothing but a letter saying I could still join him to do something completely opposed to. I did not go to the base and George and I never spoke again. Now he laid there dying because of the shot.
“So let me get this straight, you refused to join the E.C.A. because you didn’t want to be a soldier only to end up as a soldier?” He asked
“Would you shut up and let me make sure you don’t die” I replied
I had propped him against the buggy after he had regained consciousness, it seemed that his armored padding had prevented the bullet from killing him but it was deep enough that he would have bled out. I tore a piece of his uniform and used it to plug the wound.
“And no, I didn’t choose to be a soldier: I was selected in the draft,” I added
 “Oh, so what's the plan for getting me help?” He asked
“What makes you think I am going to get you help. For all you know I could leave you here and  let your people come back to collect you once they realize they’re missing a soldier and buggy.”
“You wouldn’t, I could bleed out before they could come back.” He said
“Well, then you would bleed out in the name of the Earthen Coalition that you loved enough to abandon me for,” I said
I moved him away from the buggy and laid him down on the sand. I got on the buggy and in that moment had set my mind on driving away.
“Theo, Theo please don’t” He yelled
“Theo, please”
Maybe I am just a better person than George or maybe I just didn’t want his death to be my fault. I got off the buggy and lifted him onto the back seat.

I started walking to my left to look for a dead body.

“Where are you going?” He asked.

“I need to find a Martian army uniform for you to wear, else you will be arrested the moment we get near the base.”

“The base we just fought over?”

“No, there is a medical center near our base in Ventura where we can get you help.” I said

“A couple of my friends from college were assigned there, so we can get you fixed and then we can think about what to do next” I added

“Sounds like a plan,” he said

“What do you know about good plans” I scoffed

And with that, I started the buggy and proceeded to drive with the brother who had left me back to the home he had abandoned.