We had always thought of uses in preserving perishable freight between systems or sparing crews from shear boredom durring trans-galatic flights. Although not even our military scientists had dreamed of using it as a weapon of war. That was probably because for us the technology was only theory. The Fiend taught us differently. Of all our encounters with other races we had never met them till the bloody assaults on our border colonies. Thousands of colonist were killed in the initial assault, and thousands more died before our military forces could respond. We defeated the invaders fairly easily but only because we were fighting on our turf. As we chased them back accrosss the galaxy we discovered their colonies. And there we discovered the stasis mines.

Even with modern weapons of destruction it always seemed to boil down to a ground war. Flushing the enemy out of their holes in the ground. In the first charge into the outpost on Riga Prime the marines were the first to discover the weapon. That was our first real defeat and it was more like a slaughter. As the marines ran forward bright translucent balls of energy sprang from the ground, trapping marines by themselves or in small groups, frozen in mid stride.

We had never seen anything like it and command gave the order to retreat immediately. Less than half the our men were able to.

Then the slaughter began. We watched from afar as the Fiend advanced behind the cover those spheres. Screams of terror could be heard from soldiers who were only partially encased in the traps. Sporadic gunfire came from those who still held their weapons but we all knew they were the sounds of the doomed. The fiend were cautious, killed the ones still holding weapons first. Then we watched dumbfounded as they went from sphere to sphere, carefully aiming and firing. Of course the bullets didn’t go through the spheres, they only stuck at the edge where they were fired. When they were done we watched puzzeled as they retreated to their bunkers. Then the real honor began.

The spheres started shrinking.

It started slowly, almost imperceptable as we watched helplessly. The bullets fired into the edges of the spheres moved slowly towards the soldiers frozen inside. As the spheres collapsed some soldiers began to scream desperately for help as they became partially freed. Those screams turned to death shrieks as the bullets slowly penetrated, mutilated and killed them. The lucky ones took hits to the head, the others could only agonize over the impending death. We watched every single marine die.

That’s what gave us these past two days of respite.  Two days to sit in our make shift bunkers and think about dying.  That had never occured to us before.  Sure we had some casualties in the war, but never a defeat.  Our ships were bigger, faster and we had the range advantage as well.  So we never suffered a major loss.  We had assumed that the same thing would happen on the ground.  Our success gave rise to our arrogance and now, our terror.  We all knew the Brass would analyze the situation, come up with a plan and then we’d conquer the Fiend.  As  the minutes turned to hours and finally days we grew more restless, until they announced the plan that made us all affraid.

As we sat lined up in the trench, waiting for the order to go over the top, I’m sure I wasn’t the only one questioning what we were about to do.  Wondering who would survive.  The plan was simple enough.  One massive charge to the enemies side, overcome their defenses and wipe them out.  Those who got caught in the spheres would only have to wait for them to die out and they would be free.

Oh it sounded simple enough, but what the brass didn’t tell us is what we were all thinking; what happens if the charge fails?  The tension broke when the order came.

We swarmed over the trenches, a thousand screaming, terrified souls.  We ran for our lives, into the jaws of death.  As we reached the ground where our comrads died the stench of decay was almost as powerful as our own fear.

There was no fire from the Fiends side and that made things strangely worse.  No spheres sprang up where our comrads had fallen. We ran on.  Bursts of tracer fire streaked to the Fiends position as some of us lost nerve and started to fire at an enemy we couldn’t see yet.  We ran on. I could almost see the shadows of the Fiend moving behind the dark slits of their bunkers when we ran into the second line of their defense.

Spheres began to spring up all through our charge, and still we ran on.  Battle cries were cut short as marines were frozen in their tracks.  And then it happened.  The milisecond between knowing something is about to happen and the actual happening.  I was trapped.  The sounds of the battlefield were silenced.  I couldn’t move, I couldn’t hear, not even the sound of my own blood pounding through my veins.  But I could still see, that wasn’t suppoesd to happen.

I was affraid before, now I was horrified only I coudln’t scream.  If this was a stasis field why could I still think? Why could I still see? I couldn’t move my eyes or focus them away from the Fiends bunker, but I could see those marines who were behind me now running past into my field of view, more spheres sprang up in front.  Funneling the charge into small, tight rivulets of marines running accross the battle field.  Forcing them into compact kill zones.  I was only a grunt, but even I knew what was going to happen.

The Fiend opened fire.

The first marines to stream out of the canyons produced by the minefield fell as arms, legs, and chests disappeared in burst of blood red mist.  Those that followed stumbled fatally on the remenants of their commrads as the Fiend only increased their fire.  In seconds the canyons were damned with the bodies of the dead and dieing.  The Fiend slowed their rate of fire, killing those who crested the damns, adding to the mass of body parts.  Most of the marines didn’t even get a shot off.

I couldn’t hear if the order to retreat had been given, but from the look on the faces of the marines who ran back to our lines it didn’t matter if it had come from the brass, shear terror and the instinct to survive were giving the orders now.  I even saw some marines gun down their own in their efforts to get away.

The Fiend stopped firing and all I could do, all any of us trapped in the spheres could do, was wait.  We knew what would happen next.  For a phenomina in which time wasn’t supposed to pass at all, it felt like years went by.  Then I saw the flicker of movement out of the corner of my eye.  It wouldn’t be long now.

They passed in and out of my view, going from sphere to sphere.  Up close, they were actually quite graceful.  I couldn’t see the face of the one that visited my sphere, my eyes were focused on the bunker in the distance, all I saw was a shadowy form and and a burst of light from the muzzle blast.  Did I mention that time passed slowly before?  Knowing that death is certain seems to speed it up.

The shadowy figures of the Fiend disappeared behind me and an eternity later I could make them out, heading back to their bunkers. If my heart had been beating I would have suffered a hundred heart attacks over the next few minutes. The sphere that was my execution chamber  was shrinking.

It felt like an itch in the center of my forehead, but the pressure grew exponentially as the sphere shrunk around me.  The barrels of their guns must have been rifled, I could feel the shell twisting slowly into my skin, tearing it’s way through to the bone.   Contact.  The presure grew more intense, and the feeling was like that of grinding an ice cube between ones teeth. It even popped like anmdkk icssse jcl;puifj l laf l;bf;kj;gl;lkgdoigh