35 – RED BASE

"…IIIIIIIIIIIIT!" The loudness of his voice almost rivaled in magnitude the combined battle cry of the attacking Blues, Greens, and Yellows. Through the shouting, he could kind of hear one of the Yellows, the one carrying a rocket launcher, shouting "FUUUUCK YOOOOUUUUUUU!"

But none of this improved John's situation any, so he promptly made for the secret entrance before the assault party reached him. He opened his COM to warn Steve. "Sir! This is Romeo Sierra Zero Two at the gate! We have inbound tango's!"

Steve sounded shocked as he responded: "What? Already? Fuck! We're not ready yet! How many?"

"Twenty. No, thirty. More like thirty. Scratch that, thirty plus! Fuck, just let me in! Now!"

"ID?" Steve inquired.

"Bravos, Golfs and Yankees, sir. Like, twenty or so of the first, and four of each of the other two. They seem to be working together. We might have a UNSC and Covenant Separatist situation here."

"That's it? Two platoons worth of them, and most of them are Blues? Well, this isn't quite such a bad situation, then. Sitrep?"

"They're charging us, sir!" John looked back over his shoulder to see that the attackers were almost upon him. A couple of the Blues fired wildly, their shots hitting close enough to John to pepper his armor with dust and pulverized rock. "Dammit, just open the passage, already! I need in!"

"Opening. Once you're back in the base, come find me. We need to prepare the RFBFRG."

"Yes sir! Romeo Sierra Zero Two out!"

An entrance appeared next to John, rock sliding aside to allow him entrance. He hurried inside, and it slid shut behind him. Just in time too, because he heard the attackers pull up outside only a second later.

On the other side of the wall, the Green's and Yellow's vehicles came to a sudden stop as they neared a giant wall that stretched along a circumference surrounding what could only be Red Base. If they hadn't already guessed its occupants, they would have been informed by the large amount of red paint that had been used to decorate the structure.

The group looked up at the building in awe.

"Nice digs." Kenny commented, whistling.

"Yeah. But it would look better with a bunch of dead Reds all over it." Ryan noted.

"Something does not feel right here," Nome postulated aloud as the group exited their vehicles and neared the building on foot.

"Oh, come on, Medic!" Patton chided. "All we have to do is get past this wall, and then the killing starts! Stick that bad feeling somewhere unimportant and get moving!"

Nome shook his head. "Indeed, you are probably correct. It is just some strange feeling. Must be nothing."

Skope moved forward to investigate the wall. "The passage that one Red went into closed up." He called, feeling for the hidden door with his fingers. It wasn't, however, called a hidden door for nothing. He had no luck finding anything. He traced the wall a little further. "Aha! Over here, guys!"

The Yellows and the rest of the Greens walked over to where he was standing. He had found a small tunnel that seemed to lead straight into the base. Hung over the tunnel's entrance was a sign reading "Just STEP right in!" and a welcome mat with a friendly smiley face on it was placed at the opening.

"Now that's an odd way of keeping security."Ryan commented. "Leaving a giant hole in the wall for anyone to walk into."

"Yeah, everything Nome told us made it sound like these guys were professionals." Amber agreed.

"It's gotta be booby trapped," responded Patton. "I've seen this kind of thing before. No way they'd leave an entrance like that just wide open."

"Or maybe, it isn't a hole at all!" Kenny shouted loudly without warning. "Maybe they have psychics that are making us imagine it and when we try to go in we will instead hit our heads on the real wall and fall unconscious and then they eat our brains!" Everyone turned to stare at the hyperactive Green. In response, he shrugged his shoulders. "What, it's just a theory!"

Patton shook his head. "Amazing. And here I thought Hobar was the lowest form of intelligence in the galaxy. But now, our Green friend here just proved me wrong. That certainly doesn't happen every day."

Ryan loudly cleared his throat, though not quite as unhealthily as he had in Avalanche Base. "Um, actually, sir-"

"Hobar, if you dare give me some crappy Star Wars reference, we'll test that hole with your corpse!"

"Actually, that's a good idea." Clair suggested. "Well, I mean we should probably throw something in there to test it. Just not Ryan."

One of the Blue soldiers stepped up and asked her: "Why is it that we can't just go into the hole right now?"

Clair turned to face the Blue and struggled to find an answer to such a stupid question. Eventually, she came up with: "It's probably booby trapped. Just like Patton said a minute ago."

The Blue clapped his hands together. "Well, then! That's no problem. Booby traps are my middle name!"

"Really?" another Blue asked him. "I never knew that!"

He shook his head. "No, it just sounds good. Now shut up, I'm trying to impress this lady!"

"Ah. I'll have to remember that line!"

"Hey, hands off my medic!" Patton growled, glaring at the two offending Blues.

Clair scoffed in disgust and turned away shaking her head. Of all the people who could fall for me, it's a Blue! She responded to the Blue's comment: "Look, you don't have to impress me. You know what, just go away! Let my team handle this."

But the Blue shook his head. "No, we can do this! It will take more than a stupid tunnel to stop us! C'mon, guys!" He motioned with his hand, and three other Blues came up to join him, whooping and shouting. Then, they made for the tunnel.

"Um, what're you doing?" Skope asked them as they passed him.

"You guys are such pussies!" the lead Blue shouted. "We can take this tunnel four on one! Just you watch!"

The instant they passed the "Just STEP on in!" sign, the tunnel interior exploded in several fireballs consistent in size with the detonation of a couple standard issue anti-personnel mines. The Greens and Yellows nearest the holes hit the deck, Skope and Nome on their own and Clair and Ryan dragged down by Patton. The body parts of the Blues that went in were thrown back out by the force of the explosion.

"I knew it was booby trapped." Patton muttered, rising to his knees and dusting his armor off.

"Serves them right, I suppose," Nome commented. "Stupidity of that magnitude cannot be excused."

"A case for evolution if I ever saw one," Clair commented as she rolled out from under Patton's arm.

Brian sighed in slight anguish, but turned around to find four more Blues heading for the tunnel. "Um, guys?" Brian asked them. "Why are you going in? Didn't you see what happened to those other guys who went in?"

"We figure all the mines were set off by the other team," one of the Blues in the party told him. "So now we can take on the tunnel!"

"Um, what possible reasoning could you have for believing that?" Nome asked them as they neared him. "The tunnel was designed to defend long term, and therefore would be designed so that only a small fraction of explosives would be set off with each encounter."

"They might even be multi-use mines." Ryan added.

"Hah, pussy!" the Blue shot back at Nome.

The oblivious Blues entered the tunnel, and the exact same thing happened as had the first team that entered: explosions and flying body parts. Except this time the blast was much larger, and it happened a second later than the first one.

Clair looked to her side and realized that her commander had been stifling a laugh for some time now, probably just after he knocked her and Ryan to the ground. But finally, he could hold it no longer. He burst out in laughter and doubled over. "Okay, I stand corrected again; Blues are the lowest forms of life in the galaxy, not the Green! I've seen mold in our supply cupboard with more smart traits then those guys combined! Hahahahah!" He felt something bump into him, and turned to find the rest of the Blue platoon making for the tunnel. "No, no, this is too stupid. This isn't happening," he mumbled to himself over fits of laughter. "This is too fucking stupid to be happening!"

Nome stepped in front of the sixteen Blues attempting to enter the tunnel. "Lemmings!" he shouted at them. "You are all lemmings! Stop this! Stop immediately!" But his shouting had no effect, except to make one of the Blues ask "What's a lemming?"

Nome just threw up his hands and moved out of the way. All sixteen Blues soldiers entered the tunnel single file, and seconds later all of them were in pieces, following a much bigger explosion than all the last.

Brain stared at the tunnel in horror. "I don't want to be a Blue anymore," he said quietly. "I wanna belong to another army! Any other!"

"How 'bout ours?" Ryan asked him, whacking the side of his helmet to remove some sand that had gotten into the filtration system when Patton knocked him over. "I mean, you kind of already do belong to us. You're our prisoner, remember?"

"Oh, right!" Brain shouted gleefully. "And I'd get to be Amber Stone's teammate! Count me in!"

Meanwhile, Patton was rolling on the ground in an uncontrollable siege of laughter, shotgun forgotten on the ground a couple feet away. "They all went in. Hahahahaha! Every single one of them! I can't believe it! Hahahahahah!" He rolled onto his chest and slammed his fist on the ground in hysterics.

Clair reached down and pulled him up. "Get a hold of yourself, boss. You're hyperventilating. You need to stop soon, or you could pass out. And I'd rather not have to give you a stimulant after what happened last time."

"Wait, what happened last time?" Ryan asked. "I don't remember this."

"It was before you joined." Clair explained. "Patton's metabolism burned through the stim too fast. His heart went into overdrive and almost exploded."

"Ew." Ryan decided.

Slowly, Patton reduced his breathing to normal levels, though this was not easy as he constantly had to battle the urge to laugh over what he had just seen. But finally, he was able to stop laughing altogether. He grabbed Lucy from her resting place on the ground and forced himself to his feet, using her as a crutch.

"All of the Blues are gone," Skope said to himself out loud. "Twenty four soldiers, gone just like that. There ought to be some law of the universe or something preventing this kind of thing from happening. This is too much." He turned to look at the sun, which was now at about a sixty degree angle in the sky from overhead. But something else caught his eye: forty eight more Blue soldiers were coming up the bridge at full speed, raising a cloud of sound and dust behind them as they moved. Reinforcements!

Then Skope noticed that all of them were making a beeline for the tunnel.

Everyone else saw it too. "Hey, reinforcements!" Ryan exclaimed. "The Blue commander was right, they were coming! But, whoa, they're going for the tunnel. Shit, we have to stop them!"

Nome climbed into a Warthog and drove straight into the Blues' paths. "NO further!" he shouted, holding his hand out. "Just stay where you are!" The Blues actually seemed to listen this time. Perhaps it was the near angry insistence of Nome's voice. Or, perhaps, they just wanted to try actually listening for once. Or, if nothing else, the fact that they couldn't enter the tunnel with an LRV parked in front of it. Nome left the Warthog where it was and went back to join Green and Yellow team.

"So, now what?" Kenny asked. "The tunnel really is booby trapped, so how do we get past it?"

"We could try triggering everything with grenades, maybe?" Ryan suggested.

"That would take, like, a lot of grenades, wouldn't it?" Jess asked. "Twenty four total soldiers went in there, and didn't make a dent in the number of charges!"

"How about rockets then?" Ryan replied. "Or some shaped charges."

"We don't have any." said Clair. "Unless the Greens brought any..."

"Nope." Kenny said sadly. "And this would be the perfect place to test out that new C-18 charge I got!"

"Ah man, you got C-18? Damn, you're lucky! I want some of-"

Without warning, a loud rumbling sound emanated from overhead, cutting Ryan off.

"What's that sound?" Clair asked.

Patton searched the sky for what it could be. Then he spotted something. Or rather, of lot of somethings: several dozen fusion coils were coming down on their position from the sky. "Incoming!" he shouted.

"Oh, Sith!" Ryan shouted as he saw what Patton was looking at.

Everyone else soon did as well, and they dived out of the way and into cover as a rain of fusion coils fell upon the places where they had been standing and let off explosions greater than any seen in the tunnel, throwing chunks of earth, rock, and other random debris into the air.