"The enemy diversion you're ignoring is their main attack."
-excerpt from Murphy's Laws of Combat Operations
Hello all! Thanks again for your continued support of my story. For those of you following I'm sorry about the length of time between updates, especially with the last chapter, but I've had a bit of trouble recently, and suffice it to say it was pretty difficult to focus on writing. I promise, however, that I will try my best to keep updating on a regular basis, and that is part of the reason this chapter is so short. I meant to upload a significantly longer one, but that would have taken me a lot longer. It's already mostly written just needs some editing and touching up and it will be ready to publish. More serious plot and Brandon/Alison next chapter. Please review, it helps immensely to hear from you guys. Enjoy!
Location: insurrectionist controlled planet Taurus VI, Taurus system, 05:30 standard military time, January 6th, 2558
Alison woke with a start when her alarm went off. She turned to wake Brandon before jumping out of bed and slipping on her clothes and an old fabric holster containing the grossly ill maintained M6G Osman had given her. She dropped to the floor and started doing push ups to bring herself to a more alert state of mind. She had finished almost 200 before Brandon was even out of bed, and he wasn't lazy by any standard.
He opened his laptop at the room's small desk and Alison walked up behind him, looking over his shoulder as he pulled up a communique from the Admiral.
"What's that?" She asked as she pointed to a picture of a steel and blue colored cylindrical object displayed in the middle of the screen.
"Apparently it's some kind of forerunner device that the innies have been pulling off of X50. Osman's not sure what it does, but she wants us to check it out," he responded, zooming in to pan over and examine the image.
She nodded but couldn't help but be a little disappointed. Yesterday had been fantastically relaxing for her, and she wasn't looking forward to it ending anytime soon. She felt a familiar stab of guilt for wanting to neglect her duties, and moved forward.
She looked over to Brandon. Her opinion of him had drastically changed in the past two days. The way he treated her was different from how anyone she had ever known had. It was probably just him trying to make up for chewing her out, but still, it felt odd to have someone be so, cordial to her.
She reached into her pocket and pulled out the chocolate bar wrapper. She had never expected a thing like chocolate could cause such a reaction. The memories it had brought back had been incredible to say the least, and It felt even more odd to be given something without anything expected of her. It didn't line up with how most of her life had worked. Complete a training exercise or you don't get food, don't screw up this drop or you won't have a pod next time, that's how most officers and NCOs had treated her, but here he was, giving her chocolate simply because he wanted her to be happy. For her it was almost as hard to believe as the fact she had woken up well rested for the last two days.
She could almost hear CPO Mendez's voice ringing in her ears, 'a good soldier doesn't care about their own happiness, a good soldier doesn't take handouts, all a good soldier is concerned with is completion of the mission.' She didn't care now. She felt something when she was around him. She didn't know what to call it, but at least it was something.
She smiled at him briefly before walking over to the door to retrieve her back pack. His face seemed to light upon seeing her smile, and she gave her a smile of his own before grabbing his pack and following her out the door.
When they arrived at the airfield across town their pelican was just landing. It set down on the landing pad and the rear door swung open. The Pelican's load master leaned stood and made a revolving motion with his hand, indicating they should run to get onboard.
Both he and Alison ducked their heads as they ran through the Pelican's jet wash and up to the ramp. Alison walked up the slippery ramp with ease and looked back to see Brandon running after her.
He slipped on the ramp and landed on his face, cracking his head against the metal floor of the pelican. His double left foot had returned.
The load master was laughing his ass off rather than helping Brandon, who had clearly been dazed by the impact. Alison was already fully strapped in, so the best she could do was pull him upright into the seat next to her.
The load master was still dying of laughter by time the pelican took off. His name tape read Collins. Alison decided to take note of the name incase she got the opportunity to kick his ass latter.
"You ok?" She asked him.
"Fine, I think," he said before blinking hard to clear his vision. Just in case she preformed a quick check on Brandon to see if he had a concussion, but he appeared to be fine after he got his senses back.
"They recruited you from the UNSC right? Now I see why they got their asses kicked so bad in the war," chuckled the load master, who was still trying to control his laughter.
Brandon was seething with rage, and looked about ready to take his head off for that comment.
Alison placed a gentle hand on his shoulder to restrain him. Brandon was clearly surprised by the gesture, and the anger slowly drained out of him, but the smugness didn't drain out of the loadmaster.
Alison chose to ignore him, and look out the front window of the pelican at the refit station they were approaching, the UNSC mechanical advantage.
It looked less like a ship and more like a large slab of titanium with several openings cut in it for ships to dock with. Alison only saw one ship docked on the entire station despite the fact that it could easily hold two dozen. It was a frigate whose UNSC logo was in the process of being painted over by URF graffiti. It must be one of the ships they had seen above X50.
Alison made a mental note of the name, UNSC Give Me Liberty.
Brandon calmed down enough to keep himself from killing the man siting across from him, and began asking the pilot some questions.
"So how did you guys get a hold of a refit station and frigate?" Brandon asked him, attempting to seem surprised that such a station was in the URF's possession.
Alison could tell his surprised tone was fabricated, but evidently, the pilot couldn't.
"You'd be surprised what the UNSC left behind when they pulled out of the outer colonies. That station has been floating here since it was ditched in 2531 when they left us to die at the hands of the covenant. As for the frigate, that's on a need to know basis, and you don't need to know."
Brandon nodded. It didn't put them any closer to knowing how the URF had acquired the frigate but it at least reassured Alison that they were getting closer to the truth.
When the pelican pulled into the refit station's hangar the load master stood up and waved them out of the pelican. He slapped Brandon on the back on the way out in an attempt to get him to fall on his face again, causing him to stumble, but he quickly recovered.
Alison shot Collins a look like if she had a weapon she'd make him pay. Oh wait, she did.
She brought her handgun into battery without drawing it and gave him a threatening look.
He quickly decided that messing with a six foot eight armed woman was not a good course of action to take if he wanted to keep his life, and ran quickly up to the cockpit of the pelican, shutting the troop bay door behind him.
Goddamn URF, she thought as the pelican took off.
Brandon smiled gratefully at her and she gave him a don't mention it thumbs up.
Alison looked across the hangar to the only other craft docked in the hangar, a condor being loaded with supplies, and noticed a familiar face walking out of its cargo bay. It was Captain Lassiter.
"Captain," called Brandon from across the room.
He almost reflexively saluted him, but stopped himself, as he realized the old habit probably didn't fit the character of a deserter turned soldier of fortune. Alison decided to let Brandon do the talking, he seemed a lot better at it anyway.
"Ah, David and Alison, good to see you made it. How was the flight?"
"Your load master is a dick, but other than that it was ok."
"Don't worry about him, he'll stop messing with you when he gets to know you better."
Or when I shoot him in the foot, thought Alison.
"Besides, I'll be riding with you today. Come aboard, I'm sure you don't need any introduction to this kind of work."
Truth be told, they did. In the short time they had had to fabricate their cover stories neither of them had had any time for logistics training. Luckily it wasn't rocket science, and they were able to figure out the basics of stacking boxes and operating a forklift pretty quickly, dismissing any lack of knowledge they had as part of the fact they had never worked on this model of aircraft before.
Once they had helped load the rest of the supplies they made a short, two hour slipspace jump to a rebel controlled planet Alison didn't recognize somewhere in the outer colonies. The base there was rather small and nondescript, and more importantly, wasn't X50. Brandon discreetly threw down a tiny slipspace beacon near the base, that hopefully would tell Osman it's location, as they helped unload supplies, but it didn't appear that there was any intelligence to be gathered here. Once they had unloaded the supplies, they made a couple more short jumps to various small outposts before heading back to Taurus VI and landing in the refit station's hangar once again.
"We don't have any more runs today that require your assistance," called Lassiter as they exited the condor, "the next pelican out should be here in twenty minutes, see you planet side."
The condor took off into space, leaving brandon and Alison alone in the hangar.
Alison scanned the hangar, making sure that no one was with them. This might be the best chance they would ever get to gather intelligence about what exactly the URF was doing aboard this station.
When she was sure no one was near, Alison motioned for Brandon to follow her, and after cautiously peaking out into the corridor beyond the hangar, took off at a run towards where she figured the frigate they had seen was docked. From what she could tell from the external view she got of the station, the hangar they were located in was two hangars over from the one the where supplies were arriving for the frigate, and considering how large this station was and how little crew it had, sneaking around was child's play.
They wound through a maze of corridors towards the hangar, taking various detours to avoid any voices they heard on the way. Eventually the hallways dead ended into a large, open blast door leading to the hangar. Alison leaned around the corner to look inside while brandon watched their backs.
It was cavernous, easily big enough to fit a cruiser, even though it only held a frigate. It was chocked full of refit supplies for the frigate docked above it; armor plating, fuel, MAC slugs, even a spare slipspace drive, but one particular piece of equipment stuck out at her. In the middle of the room was a large, cylindrical, cannon barrel shaped object covered completely by a tarp, a soft blue glow emanating from the underside of it.
One look and Alison was certain this was one of the devices Brandon had shown her.
Several techs were scattered about the room, all performing various various on the docked frigate, one was even using a Hrunting cyclops armor suit to weld on large chunks of titanium A plate. They were all preoccupied and hopefully wouldn't notice if she and Brandon snuck in for a moment.
She looked at brandon and he nodded, indicating the coast was clear, and they dashed in together, ducking behind the forerunner device. Alison pulled up the tarp and brandon removed a camera from his jacket pocket, quickly snapping pictures of the various glyphs and symbols that covered the object.
When brandon had finished taking pictures, Alison ducked out from behind the tarp and scanned the room. The refit crew was still to busy to notice them and they dashed out of the hangar, taking cover behind the hangars door frame.
Brandon held up the camera and smile triumphantly before stuffing it into his jacket pocket.
Alison nodded and turned to walk back the way they came, only to see a man approaching them in a URF and uniform wearing an MP brassard.
"Hey, this a restricted area!" Called the MP.
Shit, cursed Alison.
She was about to bring her weapon to bear on him, but Brandon discreetly put a hand out to stop her.
"Sorry, we're new around here, and kinda lost. We were just trying to get acquainted with the place," said Brandon in a calmer voice than Alison could have ever managed.
The MP sighed, "are you the UNSC guys they just picked up?"
Brandon looked at Alison for advice as to what to say. She shrugged.
"Yeah," he said flatly.
The MP just shook his head and murmured something about UNSC stupidity under his breath.
"What was that?" asked Brandon.
"I said get acquainted somewhere else," he shot back instantly, "no one is allowed back here."
Brandon let out a sigh of relief as soon as the he turned his back to them.
The MP led motioned for them to follow him back to the pelican bay. When they arrived back at the hangar the he told them to wait for their pelican here, and locked the door behind himself as he left.
When their pelican finally arrived the load master did not look excited to see Alison. She gave him a threatening look that even made Brandon wonder what she intend to do to him, causing him to run into the cockpit as quickly as possible, leaving them alone in the troop bay.
Alison smirked at Brandon who couldn't help but laugh.
"When did you get so protective of me?"
She shrugged, not really having an answer beyond the fact that she always protected those that were good to her.
He nodded a silent thank you to her as the pelican took off.
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