CHAPTER XIII

0002 HOURS, 20 JUNE 2555 (UNSC MILITARY CALENDAR)

UNDERNEATH ONI CASTLE BASE, PLANET REACH, EPSILON ERIDANI SYSTEM

"How- how- I mean… how did you- survive?" Kurt spluttered. Despite his utter bemusement, he was genuinely happy to see his squad leader again. The part of him that was Pyro was growing larger every minute, and showed no signs of slowing.

"The Innie-" Brakes paused a moment to spit- "who fired that laser was a real idiot. Sent most of the floor down around five or six stories, by my guess. Sent about a dozen of his friends down too. A couple of them broke my fall." He chuckled darkly. "Wasn't completely unscathed, though- impact knocked out my helmet com and squashed the TEAMBIO sensors. Sorry if I scared you kids."

Pyro nodded, remembering the awful hollow sensation he'd felt when he saw the Sergeant's readings simply being absent from his heads-up display. Another thought occurred to him at that moment. "Sarge," he said, "what about the El-Tee?"

Brakes shook his head. "Don't know what happened to her. If she has any sense, she'll have kept her IFF tag inactive- this place is crawling with hostiles. Don't know much about spooks, but if she wasn't good enough ONI wouldn't have sent her." The Master Sergeant slipped his helmet back onto his close-shaven head and sealed his collar. "So… enough about me. What's up with you, Pyro? You look like a Spartan threw up on you- well, half of you."

Momentarily thrown off, Pyro glanced back down at himself. "Oh," he replied lamely, before his brain cranked out another response. "An explosion compromised my armor, and I thought it appropriate to- um- appropriate armor components to replace the damaged sections." As soon was he was finished, Pyro silently berated himself. Why now, of all times, did he have to go all formal? Where was this when the Lieutenant had been all business?

He could have sworn that he saw Brakes blink several times even through his opaque visor, but then the Master Sergeant spoke.

"Well, we got reinforcements on their way, and an angry rebel-" another globule of spit hit the stone floor of the tunnel- "welcoming committee waitin' for us downstairs. So we're going topside."

Sketch straightened and faced Brakes. "Sir, the rebs are on the run- we should pursue them and deny them any chances to regroup."

"And you think that four Helljumpers are gonna scare 'em? I admire your spunk, Sketch, but I was there when we fought at Reach the first time." A shadow came over Brakes, showing even through his polarized faceplate. "If you're going to do something, do it fully, or don't do it. That's the only way you have a chance of success, and even then it's not a guarantee."

"Well, I'm sorry sir, but this isn't the Covenant we're fighting."

"It is that attitude that will get you killed, trooper! We are headed topside to meet with backup before proceeding, no arguments or exceptions. Am I clear?"

Sketch balled his free left hand into a fist, but otherwise did not move. Brakes inched in on the younger- and shorter- ODST.

"I don't think I heard your answer, trooper. Am I clear?"

"Understood, sir."

Brakes backed away, but the two Helljumpers continued their silent staredown. Pyro half-expected his breath to fog his visor- the place suddenly began to feel like a frozen-over tomb. But just as suddenly as it began, the confrontation ended. Brakes was checking the magazine in his M6 pistol, and Sketch was checking his Oracle scope's uplink to his helmet.

Pyro looked at his squadmates. Their prospects had certainly changed since the drop- two fleets were now mixing it up in the upper atmosphere, the rebels were on the run in the ruins of an old UNSC base, and hundreds of their fellow Helljumpers were now headed groundside. From what Captain Weller had just told them, he had cause for both optimism and concern. Their original mission was quite likely FUBAR by now. So what was their new objective? Why did they even need reinforcements?

He looked over to Sergeant Brakes. "Hey, boss-man, what's the plan?"

Brakes shook his grizzled head. "One step at a time, Pyro. First we get topside and load up. Then we'll see about getting back down. I've heard about Paxton, and she's all right."

Pyro frowned. Close as the ODSTs of the various Helljumper units often were, he'd never heard of Major Paxton before- and he hadn't known she was a woman. He looked over at Brakes as Squad Seven set off towards the destroyed upper levels of Castle Base. He wasn't quite sure of his Master Sergeant's enlistment date, but most of Sarge's war stories dated from around the time of Jericho VII- Pyro had just been eight years old, and Brakes was already in the war. He wondered just how many people he'd run into. That- and the silence was becoming deafening. He cleared his throat.

"So Sarge," he said, "how do you know Major Paxton?"

He heard Brakes chuckle a low, deep chuckle, which sounded a little grating through TEAMCOM. All the same, he listened.

"She was just First Lieutenant Paxton when I met her," the Master Sergeant said, a hint of nostalgia creeping into his voice. "On the way to Biko. Four years younger than I was, and she'd gotten through the Academy and everything. She was with the 105th Division, and it may not seem like it now, but back then serving in that outfit was a big deal." He paused. "The 105th was a veteran unit," he said, and Pyro noticed a little steel in his tone, "best of the best, even for Helljumpers. The 105th DJP- the one that got torn up on Jericho- some of them were reassigned troopers from the 105th Division. Hell of a bunch."

He seemed to regain awareness of his audience, and his tone seemed friendlier, but Kurt wasn't quite so sure. "Anyway- we weren't fighting long- all the Covenant had to do was shake a leg in space and next thing we know, the evac order's in every ear louder than the Rapture. I was just a regular jarhead back then- she actually convinced me to join the ODSTs- asked if I knew what it all meant, that they needed more of the damn guys… then she asked."

"What'd you say?" Pyro asked, leaning in to hear his Sergeant almost in spite of himself. Etch had long devoted her attention to Brakes, and even Sketch had abandoned his steely silence and gave Brakes an open ear. Brakes chuckled.

"I said yes- didn't even hesitate. And before I can blink, I'm in the 19th Battalion, riding in a pod on my way down to Cepheus, and I think to myself, 'Why the hell did I do this?'." He laughed, mostly to himself. Pyro was almost surprised to find a puzzled look on his face. He wiped it off, and resumed the attack.

"So did you see her again?"

Brakes turned his way so quickly that Pyro half-expected his neck to snap. But when he spoke, it was with a well-controlled tone.

"No… only chance we got was about five minutes on Cairo Station before the uglies came to Earth. The 105th hopped onto In Amber Clad, and- you should remember this, Pyro- we…" Kurt could almost taste the bitterness in his voice, "we got the Seven of Spades."

"Seven of Spades?" Sketch asked, incredulously. "My god, who named that ship?"

Brakes shrugged. "Got me," he replied, "but I happen to know someone who served on UNSC Say My Name."

Pyro tried hard to suppress a laugh, disguising what came out as a cough. Brakes was quick to comment. "You should really get a check-up before going on a cold op, Pyro- it's freezin' outside."

"Oh, haha, Sarge."

Lieutenant Fehling coughed, and blood spattered the inside of her visor. She took relief in the fact that the spatter was only light, but all the same- it was not something she could just shake off. She wasn't a Spartan.

She stood, wincing as pain lanced through her left leg. From her training, she could pinpoint the injury. Strained ankle joint- she was going to feel that later. Then again, she was feeling it now. But she wouldn't need it now. She carefully lowered herself to the floor, injected a local aenesthetic into the injury, and then forced the joint back into its proper position, cursing as her nerves screamed bloody murder at her. As the sedative kicked in, she reveled in the non-feeling, and took the opportunity to get up. She stumbled slightly- without full nervous control of her left leg, standing would be difficult. But after several seconds, she rose.

Fehling concentrated on moving, putting one foot in front of the other and slowly walking through the wreckage that was probably once a tunnel- but she couldn't quite tell. She had to continually blink spots out of her vision, and her breathing was strangely shallow.

Lieutenant Fehling slowed down for a moment to catch her breath. She may have had field training for ONI, but she had NOT been trained for heavy combat. The scope of this was almost beyond her. She'd never been in an actual firefight, much less in a situation of receiving injuries from battle. That was- until now.

She heard movement up front, and reached for her rifle, and then realized with a horrible pang in her stomach that it wasn't there. She cursed her inattentiveness, but cleared that aside and focused. Now was not the time for an ONI agent- a Section Three Operative, no less- to lose her head.

She activated the panels on her SPI armor, and those that worked hummed ever so slightly as they mimicked the visual patterns around her. She smiled- after the destruction of Onyx, the SPI suits that ONI still had in the pipeline were funneled into Section Three field ops units. She sighed when she considered the intended wearers of the armor, but then saw what caused the movement.

An Insurrectionist trooper came into the passageway from a junction, his rifle raised, and his back to Lieutenant Fehling. Sloppy, she thought, before launching herself along the passageway as quickly as she could move.

The man must have heard the footsteps, because he turned with his rifle raised- and did a double take. Fehling knew she must have looked odd, being a half-invisible reddish-silver stain in midair, but she didn't give it a moment's consideration. She wrapped her arm around the man's head and, as he fired his MA5C randomly in panic, wrenched it right around with a pop. The Insurrectionist fell to the floor limply.

Fehling retrieved the rebel's rifle and ammunition. As she inspected the clips, she glanced down at the body, and felt- repulsed, for some reason. Until now, she'd never had to kill anyone either. In the heat of battle alongside the ODST squad and with a mission to accomplish, she'd quickly and ruthlessly put down anyone in their way, but now…

The silence loomed long before her as she stood still in front of the corpse.

"I must be out of my mind," she muttered to herself, as she sank to a crouch.

Gently, she twisted the man's head so that his face was pointed the same way as the front of his body, wincing when a series of soft crack-crack-cracks sounded as the dislocated vertebrae protested being moved from their location twice in such short succession. She then looked into the man's eyes- they were simply blank. He might have just seen a surprisingly beautiful moon and gazed reverently at it. A lump crawled into the Lieutenant's throat, and she placed her fingers over the man's eyelids, drawing them shut.

She turned from the dead body and headed down the passageway, rifle pointed in front of her, and ears peeled for the first sound of trouble. She wasn't sure that she'd be able to hear anything, though. She wasn't really sure of anything now.