Section IV: Blood


Chapter Forty-Eight: Initium Finis

July 16, 2552 (Military Calendar, approximated) \
Unknown Location, Slipspace

Old man.

In the past, people have called me many names. Junior, Shiteface, Maggot, Sarge, Scar, Gunny...but the one I was getting the most of lately was old man. And the worst part was that I was okay with it. I was an old man.

Had we not been fighting a war against genocidal aliens, I would have been discharged well over a decade ago. Still...when I had the chance to actually think about this whole thing, I would realize that I've been fighting for nearly two-thirds of my life. War was all I really knew; it was in my blood, my flesh, my bones, my mind, my heart, and my soul. And probably my alcohol-riddled liver, too. I am War.

Even so...every now and then, I find myself aching in places I've never ached before. I end up straining muscles I never knew I had. I've started to tire faster than used to. Many things I used to take for granted over a decade ago were beginning to nip at me every time I dropped into combat. However, these shortcomings were very minor. They were only big enough for me to notice their existence; they still posed no inhibition to my fighting ability. My marksmanship was better than ever.

If this war went on any longer, though...I'll probably end up getting killed or discharged because I'll be senile.

At this moment, I found myself in our main briefing room on Deck Thirteen of the Breath of Winter; the UNSC cruiser my unit had transferred to after the Kronos's Scythe was gutted by a Covenant energy projector beam during the fighting at Skopje.

My squad had been running black ops all over UNSC-held space for the past few years. None of us have died yet…somehow. Probably because our missions are unconventional warfare; sniping an occasional Prophet, taking out a high-ranking Elite, disabling Covenant communications or supply hubs, supporting regulars in small battles—what was so ironic about being part of ONI's black ops unit is that, though the missions we are sent on are higher risk and much more dangerous than a normal battle, they were easier to survive. We drop in, do our job, then get the hell out. We don't hang around in trenches for weeks on end.

Not to say that we've been skimping; far from it. If a team of regulars tried to complete one of our usual missions, they would get ground up and shat out by the Covies before they had the chance to blink. Regulars were at home in the trenches and foxholes…the thing was simply that their kind of warfare always had a higher body count.

And besides, my squad ended up having to fight on Paris IV, anyway. We supported infantry stationed there and held the Covenant attack force back for three weeks—long enough to get most of the civilians off-planet. That was a messy fight…not as bad as Verus III or Harvest, mind you, but it certainly wasn't a stroll through a meadow in the spring.

It was because of our extremely high success rate as a unit that we had managed to stay together for so long. Usually, squads were dissolved over time and distributed to other units…but then again, when the Covies started burning our planets, things changed in the military real quick. My squad wasn't the only veteran unit in the force.

Hell, even my old unit, the 9th Force Recon Battalion, was still alive and kicking—that speaks for itself. Now that servicemen and women were being allowed to remain in the armed forces until they practically keeled over from being senile, there were many more veteran units that had been in existence for many years.

In fact, I think the division that the 9th was attached to might have been stationed in one of the bases in the area…but even if they were, the chances of my making a visit to my old brothers and sisters-in-arms was very slim at best, so I put the thought out of my mind.

"Gunnery Sergeant Garris?" the sound of Captain Delucci's voice snapped me out of my deep thoughts. I looked around and saw the Captain at the head of the table to my left, raising an eyebrow at me. The rest of my squad sat around the round table, also looking in my direction, their expressions hidden by the reflective silver faceplates of their helmets.

Not for the first time, I was glad to be wearing my face-obscuring helmet as well.

"Sir?" I asked, already thinking of ways to get out of the hot water. Zoning out was a big no-no during the Captain's briefings.

"Would you care to repeat what I just said?"

"Er..." I quickly raced back through what I remembered the Captain saying during my little vacation inside my mind. I remembered bits and pieces; some part of me had still been listening to what was being said. It was all a matter putting those pieces and fragments together into something workable. "We are to provide part of the security for Rear Admiral Rich's meeting of ONI Covert Ops brass."

Captain Delucci arched an eyebrow as he regarded me, clearly a tad bit surprised that I was able to put that much of an answer together. I knew that he could have me by the balls if he wanted to…but thankfully, he wasn't as highly-strung as many other members of the ONI brass. My squad was basically a combination of eccentricities—eccentricities which Delucci had learned to deal with a long time ago.

"That is correct, Scar," Delucci reverted back to calling me by my squad callsign. A wry ghost of a grin tugged at the corners of his mouth as he went on. "I'm glad you were listening. Compared to the hells I've sent you men into these past couple years, this assignment should be a welcome change of pace. You will accompany me to Admiral Rich's meeting and provide security at the doors. You boys are one of six squads which were specifically requested by the top brass to be the ones to lock the Olympic Tower down while the meeting is in session."

"May I ask why they want an entire section of a building locked down just for a meeting?" Virgin ventured. "That seems a little excessive, even for ONI."

Captain Delucci turned his impassive gaze to our technical specialist. "We will be discussing extremely…sensitive material. Material we wouldn't exactly want anyone to catch wind of. And locking down the building is only for show; the real meeting will be taking place underground. We would never discuss such material in an open room."

Virgin gave a nod in reply, seeing the logic in Delucci's explanation.

"And I really should not have told you any of that. Anyone blabs, then I send you boys back to the front in nothing but your skivvies. If you keep quiet and do your job well…then you'll have a week of R&R before you join the rest of the 7th Shock Troops Battalion in the Aszod Province."

That earned a round of murmurs and surprised grunts.

"The entire 7th in one place?" the Master Sergeant remarked. "That's never happened, before."

"We've lost contact with Sigma Octanus IV. Your entire battalion is being sent in with two Expeditionary Forces to reinforce the Army forces stationed around Côte d'Azur, Saint Claire, and Nouveau Redon."

"Sigma Octanus IV…" Pyro murmured in a pensive tone, contemplating the pros and cons of being sent to such a place. "That's where all the Frenchies live, ain't it?"

"Hey, I hear it ain't so bad there," Cajun shrugged. "Got lotsa forest 'n trees, 'n shit...an' it's got nice, warm weather…"

"When it's not havin' one of its month-long monsoons," Celt muttered.

"Heh…rain…" Virgin—I really don't know why we still call him Virgin—chuckled quietly to himself. "I hate rain…"

Captain Delucci cleared his throat loudly, giving us a quick glare. That was more than enough to shut us up. "Discussion of this topic is closed. In fact, it has never been opened. I tell you this only because I believe it is better that you are at least partially informed as to what is expected of you in the near future. Now, as for the specifics of what you will have to do when you arrive at the Olympic Tower…"

The Captain went on to describe what we would be doing at the site of the ONI conclave. Somewhere towards the beginning of the rest of the briefing, the room vibrated ever so slightly, and there was a familiar omnipresent rushing sound. It was a difficult sound to describe…it was similar what it sounded like when a blast goes off next to your ear, and then your hearing slowly returns.

It was the sound a ship always made when it entered or dropped out of slipspace. We had arrived in-system, so we had probably an hour or so before we reached our destination.

Delucci continued to outline our assignment. All in all, there really wasn't much to say. The only reason the Captain had to go through the whole thing in great detail was because it was high-ranking ONI brass that we were dealing with. Had it been a combat op, he would have given us the where, the what, and sometimes the why—the rest, we were able to handle on our own. But when top brass were involved…

Finally, Delucci finished the briefing and rose from his chair. "And that just about covers it… This is not a combat op, so there will be no need to go in feet-first. We'll go down by pelican directly to the Olympic Tower. Report to the armory and get your weapons; I'll see you in Hangar Bay One in half an hour. Dismissed."

"Sir," all seven of us rose to our feet as well, saluting the Captain in unison. When he returned the salute, we dropped our hands and filed out of the briefing room.

The Breath of Winter was larger than the Kronos's Scythe. It was a marathon-class cruiser, just like the Kronos, but it was still of a heavier tonnage. It was probably made more recently; recent ships had thicker armor and heavier MAC cannons. Heavier armor still didn't do much to stop plasma torpedoes…but what else could the shipyards do? Until we got energy shielding technology, nothing would stop plasma torpedoes.

I picked up my sniper rifle and sidearm at the armory before heading into the nearest lift. The descent to the lower decks of the Winter took about a minute.

"Well, nothing like playing guard for a day, I suppose," Virgin said as we stepped out of the lift and into the corridor.

"Waste of our talents, says I," Celt sighed. "Either send us ta kill split-chin bastards, or let us go an' relax for R don't be usin' us for bloody rent-a-cop detail…"

"Hey, I don' know about you, but I'm jus' glad to get a little break is all," Pyro shrugged, adjusting the shotgun he had attached to his armor's weapons strip.

Captain Delucci was waiting for us in the hangar bay, just as he had said earlier. "Step aboard," he gestured for us to climb into the troop bay of the pelican that he was standing next to. As we traversed the vast, vehicle-filled space that was the Winter's hangar bay towards Delucci's pelican, the dropship's engines fired up and it hovered several feet off the ground.

The Master Sergeant stood to the side and allowed the rest of us to climb into the troop bay before he boarded the dropship himself. Captain Delucci entered the bay last. He input a command into the console on the bulkhead and the blood tray rose up and connected with the ceiling, sealing the aft deployment opening—making the dropship spaceworthy.

There was a slight lurch as the pilot engaged the thrusters, sending us forward. We maneuvered through the rows of dropships and tanks until we reached an airlock unit. After exchanging clearance codes with the officer on watch, the external doors were opened and the pelican shot forward into space.

I didn't sit down on the troop benches. Instead, I stood in the aisle, holding onto a grip that hung from the ceiling. I wanted to watch through the cockpit viewscreen as we approached the planet below. Gradually, the pitch black of outer space lightened to a navy blue—I noticed this subtle change in color every time I went in feet-first through an atmosphere, and I noticed it here as well.

The dropship rattled and shook a tad bit as we punched through the friction and heat of reentry. There weren't any flames licking at the edges of the dropship, though. Probably because it wasn't coming in as fast or at as sharp of an angle as an HEV pod would during a jump.

It wasn't long before we were dropping through a cloud bank. The blank mass of white broke suddenly, revealing a wide, green, mountainous expanse of land. Nestled in a vast caldera-like gap in the mountains was a large urban sprawl. At this altitude, it just looked like a large, hazy mass of gray. However, as we got closer and closer to the ground, the shapes of individual buildings, structures, houses, streets, monorails, and shuttlecraft lanes became apparent. The bustling city of New Alexandria was certainly a sight to behold from above.

We dropped into a secluded area north of the center of town—a good-sized compound of tall buildings and low-lying, flat structures; all surrounded by a wide area of open grounds, an electrified wall, and a contingent of M1-Delta heavy battle tanks. FLEETCOM HQ was the name of the whole place—this was the central nervous system of the entire UNSC Navy; probably the second most important site in the UNSC, second only to the HIGHCOM site in Australia on Earth.

We lighted on a landing pad on the upper tiers of a tall, angular, silver building. I could easily see the all-seeing eye symbol of ONI, complete with their motto—Semper Vigilans—emblazoned on the sides of the building. I knew at once that it was the Olympic Building—the central headquarters for the top brass of the Office of Naval Intelligence. Not many soldiers ever got the opportunity to even look at it, let alone go inside it as we were about to do.

Delucci unsealed the troop bay. The ramp swung down towards the ground, allowing the Captain to step down onto the landing pad. A dry, warm breeze whistled its way into the dropship's interior. At least it wasn't winter in this neck of the woods.

"Gentlemen," Captain Delucci motioned for us to follow him off the landing pad and into the building. "Welcome to Reach."