The cityscape soared by as the M831 zoomed across the freeway. This road more or less spanned the entire planet. It was massive, with four lanes on either side, and created with a few lessons from long ago. Rather being a long, straight road that spanned forever, it would occasionally have a few curves and turns so as to keep drivers on their toes, keep them from drifting off. This prevented many accidents, which would be almost certainly fatal on a road such as this.

Rommel sat rigidly in the seat of the troop transport. He was riding in the rear troop compartment to accommodate his gear. He had to remove the fuel tank of the flamethrower in order to even sit down. He gripped his MA2B tightly in one hand, cleaning its various components with a rag with his other. He was trying to keep himself calm while deciding what they'd do once they got to Kovcheg.

The main hangar was underground, which meant that unless the blasted runway gates had been left open by some miracle, they'd have to travel through the inside of the base to get to the hangar sublevel. To save time and effort, they would most likely head up to the command center, as well as the flight deck. They'd have to make sure there was a ship there that was space-worthy and prepped for lift-off, and then open up the gates.

Of course, if they couldn't find one, then that meant bad things.

/"Hey, Rommel! Guess what?"/

Rommel shook his head violently as the voice raked through his eardrums, loud and electronic. He'd been so absorbed in thought that he had forgotten about everything else. "Yeah, what? What is it?" he asked Miller.

/"You still ain't figured it out? The comms're up again!"/

Rommel blinked twice. He was receiving through his helmet's radio, which was where Miller's voice was coming from. He looked up, seeing him in the second transport in the adjacent lane. They had agreed it would be safest to split into two different vehicles to increase their odds of survival, in the event that one went down for whatever reason. Rommel and Dom had jumped into one of them, Miller and several of the other Army and Marines in the other.

/"When the Hell did that happen?"/

This time it was Almec's voice.

/"No idea, I was just scanning through and realized I was receiving another broadcast, loud and clear. This is great, we can finally keep coordinated easier."/

Rommel thought about it. "What's the message saying?"

/"Same ol' shit. ONI Kovcheg, no infection, safe haven, blah, blah, blah."/

Rommel let out a loud grunt in frustration. "Just means we got another temporary window, or they're fucking with us again. I don't like it, but I'll take it at face value for now. If they're gonna play games, they'll play games. Either way they got the advantage right now, so if they're listening in on our comms, then fuck it. Let 'em, ain't gonna make a huge difference anyhow."

There was some frustrated grumbling over the comms.

/"Y'know, even fer a Spook, ya ain't got much positive to say there, Fullmetal."/

Rommel recognized the voice of Captain Lager over the radio. "Been in the war almost fifty years, sir. Started off in the Marine Corps, upgraded to Special Forces shortly after. Black ops shit, policy was to stay dark. Only became a Spook when that fell apart, been that way the majority of my time as a member of our Glorious-Government-of-Outer-Space Military. Time tends to give you... Perspective on how many things could happen."

/"Fifty years? Hell, you don't look it, ya pessimist sunuvabitch."/

This talk was relatively standard in Rommel's experience. Once anybody revealed their role as an Office of Naval Intelligence Operative, they generally lost the trust and respect of anyone they spoke to. Spooks knew things other people didn't, were always out for their own well-being, were almost always paranoid, and were widely regarded as sell-outs. Rommel himself had traded his Special Operations experience for the ONI life- Though he damn well made a habit out of making it harder on himself than he needed to.

Rommel liked work in the field. He'd been a Naval Lieutenant once before, and to get that rank he'd had to go through a lot of time in the OCS back on Luna. During the few years he had spent there, he realized just how boring paperwork was, how dull having a desk job would be, and how utterly pointless it all felt in comparison to doing real work.

Not to say he hadn't worked his ass off. He could've been a Captain, if it weren't for the fact that the UNSC didn't need more of them- Due in part to a lack of ships- and the fact that Rommel had a bad tendency to work very independently of his superiors. He did not appreciate orders very well, and had been known to voice his opinions a little too verbally on many occasions. On many more occasions, if he didn't like his orders, he'd twist them to suit him and his squad better.

If he had an objective of his own, he'd twist his agenda to fit it in, regardless of his orders.

Overall, he wasn't the typical Spook. He wasn't overly paranoid, he didn't obsess over the chain of command, he didn't obsess over orders, and he sure as Hell didn't want some cushy desk job that put him out of the line of fire. Because that was a boring life that he had no desire for.

"Cryo's even better than those creams they say'll make you look younger, Cap'n," Rommel replied dryly. He was always amused with people's reactions to his statement, but today was different. Today he didn't care. "Might call me sort of a Winter soldier. On ice when I got free time, thawed out when I'm needed." Glancing around at the ice and snow packed roads, he quickly added: "No pun intended."

There was a decidedly long, drawn-out silence. Rommel settled into the uncomfortable bench of the vehicle, deciding that he had most likely heard the end of that discussion. He closed his eyes slowly, half-tempted to doze off and try to relax. But then they snapped open, and he shook his head violently. If he let himself do that, he'd be a dead man.

Stay alert, stay focused. Eyes on environment.

/"Senior?"/

It was the Captain's voice again. Rommel rolled his eyes. "What is it, Cap'n?"

/"That was the corniest bullshit I ever heard."/

He could hear roaring laughter coming from a few of the men, who had apparently tuned in their communications devices at some point. When it faded, Rommel shrugged, chuckling a bit himself. "Aye, Cap'n. But it's a classic. 'Sides, ONI told me to say it 'cause it sounded cool," he said, his voice good natured, as though he had no idea what he had said.

There were a few snorts at that.

/"Yeah, well. Long as we're tellin' people to say what to who, you can tell ONI to sit on a fireplace poker."/

Rommel was not familiar with that voice. One of the other troopers, he supposed. "I'll be sure to take that under advisement."

He became vaguely aware of something behind him, and turned his head to glance. He caught a glimpse of Almec shaking his head at him. Suddenly the man's head snapped up, and looked out toward the buildings. "The fuck's your problem?" he asked briefly, witnessing the man's sudden reach for the M247 that he had been insistent they brought with them before having left the weapon cache.

"Saw movement. But it wasn't... I don't know," he said, not bothering to have said so over the comms. He shook his head again, this time at himself. He relinquished his grip on the GPMG, but stroked the XM510 that he held in his lap instead. "Think I just imagined it. I hope to God I did. Because it was big... And airborne."

Big.

So far today Rommel had seen a hulking behemoth that essentially amounted to a wall charging at him with lethal intent, and a towering giant that was all but bulletproof and had razor whips for arms. He had seen a Covenant Supercarrier crash. Hell, he could still see the Supercarrier from where he was sitting.

Therefore, to him something under the classification of "big" was not saying much, though generally it meant "bigger than what we've seen so far." That was a terrifying prospect.

Flying.

Rommel had admittedly not seen any flying hostiles today, not counting the Falcon or the stupid little spores that had crashed said Falcon. In either event, he dismissed these things quickly, because they were not true flying hostiles. The Falcon might be capable of flight, but it was very identifiable as well.

The thought conjured up a mental image of an excavation-type Scarab that the Covenant had mounted repulsorlift systems onto, causing it to soar through the sky like something out of a Biblical curse. Not something he wanted to run into armed with only a few rifles, a General Purpose Machine Gun with limited munitions available, a flamethrower, and a pair of grenade launchers.

Rommel took a moment to pull his boots out of the snow that was accumulating around his ankles. "Wonderfully descriptive. The observational powers are strong in this one," Rommel said sarcastically. He flicked on the comms again. "Alright, everyone. Dom thinks he saw movement, so we may have company. Look out for something big and airborne."

"Rommel..."

"Fullmetal," Rommel corrected, scraping a large collection of snow from off his shoulders. He was also acutely aware that his visor was beginning to frost over around the corners, and so he began to see if he could manage to scrape it off with his combat knife. Normally he didn't care much for what people called him, but at the moment he wasn't in the mood for niceties.

"Whatever, Desert Space-Fox," Almec said briefly. "I know you're frustrated with all this, but-"

"Frustrated? I'm not frustrated," Rommel interrupted, sheathing his knife. The frost had come off easily. "Space zombies created from space barnacles that come from somewhere in space, bringing my men back from the dead to try and kill me? Why should I be?"

"Anyway," Almec continued. "But just try to keep a grip on it. You and I both know how well you work with limited resources and time in situations that don't suit you."

"Damn fine, that's how I work."

"Last time you were frustrated by a situation, you solved it by throwing a package of highly volatile explosives into a nuclear reactor," Almec chided, turning to face Rommel as much as he could when they had their backs to each other and the benches dividing them.

"It made a beautiful blue explosion that reminded me of a butterfly," Rommel recalled, as if the statement completely dismissed the accusation. When Dom stayed silent, he decided to continue. "And hey, it blew up the whole Spire structure the Covenant had set up on the ground. Cleared the way for a lotta troops."

"A month before that you got tired of an Innie not giving answers to questions, threatened to shove a knife up his ass, twist it, and then put biofoam into it and keep going 'til he would talk. And that was before you jammed a thermite grenade in his mouth and said you'd pop it."

"He had valuable information on the cell from back in '45. Too good to pass up. He wasn't talking, so I started to play rough. Nothing is too much when it comes to the '45 case. Fuckers callin' themselves the Human League had so many incidents of crimes against Humanity that if the words were solid they coulda used 'em as blocks n' built their fuckin' rat nest out of 'em. 'Sides, when he didn't speak, you shot him in the head."

The Human League was a group of extremists who thought they knew what was best for the Human race. They thought that UNSC rule was unjust, imposing too many new laws and policies on civilians due to the war. They'd been known since 2535, but hadn't been actively violent for ten years, so the UNSC classified them as malcontents and moved on- Ignoring them, like it ignored many problems it didn't need to immediately deal with.

Like many of those other problems, this was a big mistake.

Turned out the Human League had people on the inside. Not just inside the military, but inside the Office of Naval Intelligence. They were given information on troop movements, UNSC's plans, and plenty of supplies. Most of the supplies were outdated, but lethal. HMG-38s, MA37s, M202s, things that wouldn't usually be noticed or missed. A few of their more "elite" units were issued M19s, and their best snipers were equipped with M99 SASR units.

Those fuckers had been a real pain in Ion Team's ass.

They'd also been issued a pair of Longsword starfighters. These starfighters had no weaponry equipped, but instead had a few megatons' worth of payload carried in the form of two HAVOK nuclear warheads, one per fighter. Their plan was to send in the Longswords to key locations on a suicide run, arming the nuclear warhead and slamming into whatever target they had chosen. This had ensured detonation, and the complete annihilation of any surrounding landscape.

In case that plan didn't work out for them, they'd also stolen seven MFDDs, of FURY nukes. Those things were about the size of a football. They intended to place them in the heart of several cities across the planet, capitol cities, and blow them all at the same time. It didn't matter what the repercussions were, because they were striking out against the UNSC.

Nor did it matter whose lives they were fucking with.

Ion had been the primary team sent in to take care of the threat.

The Human League had gotten clumsy. A few of its members decided they didn't believe in the League's ideals anymore, and tipped off the UNSC. Unfortunately, as noble as this action was, the word got around to the people who had infiltrated ONI. They hadn't transported the materials to their designated locations yet, instead having holed them up in their makeshift base. To buy time, they started kidnapping people. Men, women, children. Politicians, military, civilians. The exact numbers weren't known- But they made it clear they wanted the UNSC to back off.

By the end of the conflict, there were only five civilian casualties, most of them having been killed before Ion's arrival, and a twice that number injured out of about a hundred captured. All of the nuclear weapons had been secured, and all of the located stolen ordnance was taken back. Unfortunately, many of the scumbags had run off during the fighting.

The turncoats within ONI were never identified. Whoever it was had decided to lay low- Or no longer had access to their usual methods.

Every opportunity he received, Rommel pursued leads on Human League survivors, and moreover, the identity of the double-crossers.

Nothing was too much when it came to hunting them down.

"Oh my God..." Dom muttered. "Oh my God, over there!"

Rommel looked up briefly, and felt his jaw drop instantly as he saw a massive form moving across the cityscape. It was shapeless, like a cloud, moving at its own will and nothing more. The massive shape began to split into separate pieces, each darting off in its own direction. At that moment Rommel recognized what he was looking at: A swarm.

"Can't you make this thing go any faster?" Rommel shouted, banging on the metal frame of the vehicle rapidly. Without any form of shielding, he felt extremely exposed. Especially now, with this swarm of... Whatever-the-fucks flying around. He didn't know what the Hell they were or how they acted, but he didn't trust it. Not one bit.

Suddenly there was a loud screech, so loud that the sound dampeners in Rommel's helmet could not fully block it out. It was like a thousand bats all sounding off at once, but yet it had a somewhat unnatural quality to it.

Rommel understood, and while he wished that this was an APC rather than a troop transport, he now had a new-found appreciation for the lack of any shielding.

The vehicle veered sharply, and Rommel cleared his throat. "Gentlemen, we have a problem to the East..." he said calmly into his radio. At least, he thought it sounded calm. He hoped it did, because he felt like spouting blasphemies.

/"Oh, shit. Please don't tell me that-"/

"It- They- are."

/"The fuck are we gonna do, Fullmetal? There ain't any way to kill 'em all."/

He pulled himself into a crouch, and strapped the fuel canister for the flamethrower onto his back. He attached the fuel line to the weapon itself, and adjusted the unit to its greatest distance and width settings possible in combination with one another. He stood up fully, and clipped himself to the roll cage of the vehicle. He predicted things were going to get bumpy, and that he'd need as much balance as possible.

If all else failed they could drag him along like a fucking car being towed.

He considered the statement briefly, shaking his head. "Probably not, no. Where's the nearest exit ramp?" Normally he would've suggested to just drive the damn vehicles off the freeway, but the fact that it was an elevated freeway meant the idea did not bring much hope. If they toppled over the side, they'd suffer heavy injuries. Death wasn't necessarily guaranteed, the Warthog was the tank of the four-wheeled vehicle Kingdom.

At least, it wasn't guaranteed for people in the front seats. For the people in the roll cage, they'd be red streaks across the pavement.

The people in the front, on the other hand, would simply have their necks snapped at impossible angles, their backs broken, and their internal organs ruptured from the sheer force. Or something like that. Rommel wasn't an expert on ground vehicles and the way crashes might affect its passengers, his vehicle specialty was in flying things. Even then he seemed to have a great piloting record, he crashed more vehicles than he landed.

In his defense, when he was flying, it was usually because they needed an emergency entrance or get-away, or their usual pilot was incapacitated. In any case it was in enemy-occupied, fire-heavy zones. He could proudly report that no friendlies had ever died in a crash with him at the helm, which was quite a statement- There had been a lot of crashes with him at the helm.

Hostiles, on the other hand, were not so fortunate.

Ironic, given that his parents were piloting geniuses, their entire businesses revolving around aircraft.

They hadn't wanted him to join the UNSC.

Inwardly, he frequently wondered if he subconsciously purposely crashed ships in spite of them.

"You fucking deaf? Where's the nearest Goddamn exit ramp?" he shouted more loudly, not caring who answered him at this point. The swarm of things visibly ripped through a building- Shattering windows, carving walls, demolishing structures. This did not inspire hope for their non-APC vehicle, with its open front seats and troop carriage.

The swarm was starting to change direction toward the road.

/"Twenty miles at least, sir. What's the plan?"/

The voice of the driver did not inspire hope either.

"Floor it. All units, prepare for an engagement. This ain't gonna be easy. Maybe if we pick enough of 'em off we can show 'em why nobody fucks with the Helljumpers, oorah?"

/"Oorah!"/

Rommel shifted his feet so as to stand in the fashion of Captain Morgan on the transport 'Hog's bench. He gave the line that secured him to the vehicle a good strum, and was met with a loud twang that confirmed the line was not very slack. He wouldn't fall out the side, at least.

Rommel ignited the pilot light for the flamethrower, and let a grin cross his face. He wasn't enjoying this in the least, no; He just liked watching stuff burn.

The swarm was closing in. The massive shape was beginning to become identifiable as many, many smaller forms that composed the whole group. Monstrous little creatures, with clear, fleshy wings, beady black eyes, and legs like the blades of scythes.

As the swarm came within range, close enough to where he was practically nose to nose with the lead Bat-Outta-Hell, there was only one thing on his mind about them that stood about above the rest. One reason why he felt truly threatened, even as he pulled the trigger and began to ignite as many members of the swarm as possible to turn them into falling piles of ash, even as their loud screech began to echo through his skull:

Teeth. Huge fucking teeth, like stalagmites and stalactites in a dark, foreboding cave.

They frenzied.