“Aim for the mouth, men!” roared the general in front of me, “Aim for the mouth right after the creature fires a blast! It’s where they're the most vulnerable!”

“Easier said than done,” I shouted at my friend, Davis, to my right, “It takes, what, five seconds for a Scricrod to recharge its salivary glands! You’d get fried by its blast before you could aim a shot.”

“Well, in case you haven’t noticed, we’re not making much of an impact shooting its exoskeleton!” retorted Davis as the both of us dodged a slashing attack from two out of the eight razor-sharp legs of the Scricrod, “So unless you’ve got a better idea…”

I didn’t have a better idea. I cursed the planet Egov, the homeworld of the Scricrods. The creatures were like locusts. They went from planet to planet devouring everything edible and destroying everything else. Not to mention they had the resiliency and invincibility of a cockroach and looked just as ugly. Our elite unit had one mission: total Scricrod extinction. This was supposed to be the last planet they would ever destroy. We had to hold the line, but we definitely wouldn’t succeed in our mission if the Scricrods killed us all first.

The Scricrod screeched so loud it interrupted my thoughts. A second later, Davis and I dove for cover behind a nearby boulder as the creature vaporized our front line.

A weakness, the monster had to have some kind of exploitable weakness other than its super-charged mouth. All creatures have a weakness. That’s what the big-brained scientist back home had been trying to discover for the past two years, I reminded myself. If the best and brightest hadn’t found a weakness in two years, how was I supposed to find one in the next few seconds?

I peeked over the top of the boulder to survey the ashy remains of our front line smoldering in pink fire. We were now all that was left of our unit. The Scricrod was advancing.

“I’m going to go for the mouth,” Davis muttered grimly next to me.

A stab of adrenaline pinched my chest, “What? No way! It’s suicide!”

“I just got a message from base,” Davis answered, tapping his earpiece, “two more Scricrods are heading this way from the north. We need to terminate this one as soon as possible in order to have time to regroup.”

“Why didn’t I get the memo?” I groped for my earpiece and took it off to examine it. It was completely smashed. “Well, I guess that answers that question,” I threw the useless gadget on the ground.

Davis took a deep breath and prepared to stand.

“Wait!” I said, grabbing his shoulder, “You’ve got, what, a fifty-fifty chance of actually aiming a laser down that monster’s throat and a one hundred percent chance you won’t live to talk about it! We’ll think of something else!”

“We don’t have time!” Davis yelled at me. I didn’t let go of him. I’d lost so much on this mission, I wasn’t going to lose him. Not like this. My brain felt sluggish under the stress. With my peripheral vision, I spotted the Scricrod about to shoot a blast in our direction.

“Move!” I barked, yanking Davis to his feet. We had only cleared the boulder by a few inches when it exploded from the Scricrod’s blast, the force of the explosion pushing us face first into the dirt.

I must have been unconscious for a few minutes because when I opened my eyes and looked around, I was now several feet away from the crumbled remains of the boulder. A strange pool of boiling yellow liquid was oozing out of the rubble as well. The Scricrod was now standing where Davis and I had been hiding a second ago. I saw Davis crouched on his knees a few feet in front of the Scricrod. He had his extra-precision viewfinder mounted to his gun. He was going to go for the mouth.

“No!” I croaked weakly, but my head began to spin. I held my head in my hands for several seconds in order to clear it. That’s when I realized that my hands were wet and warm. I dropped my hands to my lap and gazed at the thin coat of crimson.

A sudden hissing sound caught my attention, and I looked blearily around for the source. The Scricrod was slightly retreating now, screeching in pain. The hissing sound was coming from one of its back legs which was dipped in the yellow liquid oozing from the boulder. The liquid was smoking like acid, eating through the Scricrod’s exoskeleton.

‘Thank the maker!’ I thought, ‘A weakness!’

“Give me some cover!” I yelled at Davis, who actually looked surprised and relieved that I was still alive. Davis powered down his extra-precision viewfinder and began pelting the Scricrod with his lasers. The Scricrod retreated farther, protesting incessantly.

Leaving my gun behind, I ran to the crumbled remnants of the boulder which still bled with the yellow liquid that was our only hope. I scanned the liquid’s atomic make up with the sensors in my combat gloves. The results of the scan soon popped up on the screen inside my helmet. The scan confirms that the yellow substance is, in fact, gold. Melted gold? Two years of this war and the best scientists on earth haven’t figured out that this overgrown cockroach’s weakness is melted gold?

Suppressing my bubbling anger at the thought, I picked up a large rock covered in the precious metal. I reverted all power to my arm that held the rock. I was extremely vulnerable with my shields down, but if I could throw this rock hard enough it would do a ton of damage.

As I pulled my arm back in preparation, A random memory passed through my mind’s eye. I was seven years old, and my younger brother was five when our parents took us to our very first baseball game at Fenway Park back in Boston. When we got home, my dad spent the rest of the day teaching us how to catch and throw a baseball. My father’s instructions echoed in my head, ‘What you want to do is aim the ball at the other person’s chest.’

I hurled the gold covered rock at the Scricrod, directing it straight at the creature’s heart. The rock hit its mark. The acid-like hissing sound erupted again. Before my very eyes, I saw the rock completely melt the monster's exoskeleton and sink deep into his chest. The Scricrod howled in pain before falling to the ground, unmistakably dead.

My head began to spin again as relief washed over me. I overbalanced and would have face planted if Davis hadn't caught my arm from behind.

"Nice shot," he said, grinning uncontrollably.

"Not exactly what I thought I'd be using my pitching skills for," I responded.

The two of us laughed. It had been a long time since we'd laughed like that.