The battles were not going well. My militias were entrenched in an old archeological dig in an ancient landfill outside the remnants of what had been a primitive city. Our assignment was to repulse the advancing insurgents, but our outmoded photon weapons were no match for the enemy.

I was on a huge mound, crunching through piles of ancient corroded metal box-like antiquities that I assumed were valuable artifacts, perhaps machines from a much earlier civilization uncovered during previous excavations. I felt like an invader myself, crushing through priceless old relics that looked as if they had been scavenged for parts eons ago.

I noticed some markings, inscriptions on a few of the remains of the more deeply buried boxes. Hard-to-make-out letters of an ancient language that I thought I recognized from my youth. Yes. English letters. There was an "m", followed by an "a," "t," another "a" and what looked like a "g." Another metal box had an "s, "e," "a" "r" and another "s."

Moving through the rubble my boot crashed through one of the decayed boxes and I saw what appeared to be an ancient paper booklet inside. Shocked and awed, I whispered, "Wow. What a find." Amid the cacophony of enemy grenades, I reached into the rust with reverence and retrieved the text as pain shot through my shoulder and down my arm. Melted bone and missing muscle, reminders an old wound and how long I'd been fighting.

I sat on the rubble, put my battered weapon at my side and stared at my treasure. It had strange antique lettering all over it organized in neat lines. I realized it was an ancient book of some kind with English letters similar to the letters on the metal boxes. The stained, brown crumbly edges of the ancient text fell like powder from my hands.

I turned pages as if they were gold leaf. "What a treasure." I eased down from the mountainous heap of rusted scrap amid the acrid stench of corroded metal fumes, put my pulse gun beside me and continued to examine my find. The mist-laden atmosphere of gray and brown gusting dust clouds from nearby explosions made the faint print hard to make out. R-e-a-d-e-r-s d-i-g and the rest was gone.

I remembered my great grand dad, the old general, used to tell us stories about old tribes on this planet that spoke and wrote English just like this. He had several rare books in that old tongue hidden and preserved in nitrogen that he used to teach many in our family to read whenever he could, in between skirmishes with these damned insurgents. I thought it was a beautiful language.

I needed more light so I picked up my weapon, sneaked around the crumbling rust heap to where the dim light from the sun was a little stronger. I began to sound out words when bursts of enemy electromagnetic wave blasts stole my attention. I ducked, slid my prize underneath my armored shirt, crept among the corroding scrap piles littered with decayed biohazard warning signs, beyond the many shattered, eroded radiation warning placards crumpled on their sides and flaking onto the grime.

I wondered if I'll get to read anything from that little book before it disintegrated. Damn. There were some stories written by those ancient earthlings and I noticed a page of what look like limericks, some one liners, too. Strange, that old English language. Life must have been pretty keen way back then, before all these damn terrorist wars.