how do you assign a value to a short from a buffer. like in c++ its:
shortSomevalue = *(unsigned short*)(buffer+2)
Use the BitConverter class. I remark about it briefly in this post (http://forum.valhallalegends.com/phpbbs/index.php?topic=6860.0) (in other words, you could have searched).
Information on the BitConverter class can be found at MSDN (http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/cpref/html/frlrfsystembitconverterclasstopic.asp).