"Ugh! God, it stinks down here!" complained Shawn.

The tunnel they were in was completely dark except for the light cast by the lights on their ODST helmets. It smelled of rotting fish and other things that they didn't care to identify. They were walking in filthy water, too. It clung to their boots and clothing like a parasite.

"You'll get used to it," declared Shane.

"How long do we follow this tunnel here?" asked Coop.

"Well, we could follow it all the way to the edge of the city," said the sniper.

"No. We need to follow the elevator wreckage. We need to get topside as soon as it's safe," said the captain.

"Oh God! It sucks down here!" said Rook.

"I didn't sign on for this!" said Rascal.

Shane laughed. The rookies always stuck together. "You signed on to fight. If you wanna just run in there shooting everything that moves, be my guest. But you'll be meeting God a little sooner than me."

"How do you know? Maybe I'm really a SPARTAN-II in disguise!"

"If you were a SPARTAN-II…" A shotgun then fired in the tunnel, echoing loudly off the piping. Rascal jumped and yelped as he turned in a circle, ready to shoot. Coop laughed. "then that wouldn't have scared you." The laughing marine then turned to face a glare from his captain.

"You try that again, Coop, and I'll give you something to be scared of."

The other men laughed quietly as they walked on.

Shane thought to himself as they walked. They had to go topside at some point, but they had no idea how far they'd come or where they were. If they got turned around in here they could very possible end up right where they'd started. And they had to make sure they were careful. It wouldn't surprise him if they found Covenant in there.

What was he going to do after they found the ship? There was no doubt that many Covenant were there, already attacking the ship and its survivors. The thought made him walk a little faster. But what was his squad going to do? Unless they found some heave weapons, they were just eight more guns firing into hundreds of Covenant. If they stayed long near the ship, they would get trapped in it and possibly killed. They might be able to hold out inside. But then again, the Covenant might just get tired of fighting them and abandon the idea of taking prisoners and simply destroy the whole ship and everyone in it. They couldn't run anywhere. It was two miles from the city and by then Covenant air could wipe them all out, as well as wraiths firing at them from a distance. They had nothing to fight such enemies with.

The whole thing was like a nightmare.

He shook his head and kept walking in the darkness. If any Covenant did show, it'd be like a shooting gallery. There was no cover anywhere. He'd just have to pray nothing showed.


Hours later, the group stopped beneath an open manhole. Shane looked up at it curiously. Warm light was shining through it, meaning they'd walked all through the night.

The captain looked at them. "Let's see if we can go topside," he said as he started to climb the rusty ladder.

He slowly poked his head out of the manhole and looked around at the abandoned streets. No brute patrols were in sight or any turret emplacements. But, Shane couldn't tell where they were. The elevator was further away than it was before, but there was no sign of the wreckage anywhere. For all he knew, they'd backtracked. He shook his head and looked down into the hole again.

"Come on," he whispered fiercely.

He then gripped the edge of the hole and jumped out onto the dusty road. Still, no Covenant. The captain smiled to himself as he ran into one of the buildings near the hole. The rest of the men started climbing out and followed him into the building. A minute later, they were all huddled together on the floor of a nearly empty building.

"What now?" asked Shawn.

Shane looked at the space elevator base in the distance. "We need to find the wreckage. But I don't know how."

"Maybe a brute would know," said Snipe.

"So…what? We're just gonna waltz up to a brute and say, 'Oh, hello. We were looking for the wreckage left by the space elevator when you guys knocked it over, so we can follow it to a ship with a whole bunch of people inside. Can you give us directions?'" said Coop in a mocking voice.

Snipe growled but ignored him other than that. "No. If we could ambush a brute patrol or turret emplacement, we could interrogate the captain and get him to tell us directions or something!"

The captain stroked his chin as he thought to himself. "That could work… but we don't want to attract attention to ourselves. We'll have to disappear after that."

"There's tons of destruction here, sir. We could duck inside some buildings and hide easily."

Shane looked at the sniper and considered it. It could work, but there were risks… well, there were plenty of risks in this job. Finally, he looked up and nodded. "Okay. We'll wait here for a brute patrol, and then get directions. Alright?" The men nodded. "Great. So, we get to wait."

The men groaned loudly as he said this, making him laugh. "Sir, seriously, all we do is sit and wait for these frickin' brutes! Let's get out there and fight!" said Coop, standing up with his shotgun ready.

"You wanna tackle every brute in New Mombasa? Go ahead. Ask one of them for directions while you're at so the rest of us can get somewhere," said Shane.

The rest of the men chuckled as Coop sat down. His captain sure knew how to put someone in their place, but at the same time make it funny for everyone else. He hated. Mostly 'because he was the one getting put in his place. He shook his head. It didn't matter. The only thing that mattered was the mission.

So, the group waited…