[en] Current x-ray lasers operate in the 35 to 500 Angstrom wavelength regimes with 21.5 A being the limit for the successful collisional excitation approach using Nickel-like ions. In this paper, we discuss an x-ray laser scheme in the 5 to 15 Angstrom regime. The scheme uses an ultra-short (100 fsec FWHM) intense (10¹⁷ Watts/cm²) laser pulse to produce a hot plasma at a laser line focus. This plasma serves as an x-ray source that photo-ionizes the K shell of a nearby concentration of lasant atoms. This produces a population inversion, and resulting positive gain for an allowed 2p-1s radiative transition in the singly charged ion. This x-ray laser scheme has been studied for a number of years with some recent work by Kapteyn. There are three major differences between this work and that of Kapteyn. First, a two temperature black body is used in the kinetic calculation to model the ionizing s as compared to a single temperature model Second, the modeled s is obtained directly from simulations of the x-ray source using a target material with x-ray spectra matched to the particular lasant material. Third, the effect of excitation in Hydrogen, which is added to the lasant material to slow down energetic electrons, is included in addition to the effect of ionization of Hydrogen discussed by Kapteyn