Chapter 4: Band Aids would be Nice
Karla knew she barely had seconds to act. She managed to parry the Elite's thrusting attack, but it wasn't good enough. Karla was only able to deflect the blade enough to miss her heart, but not her body. The Elite's blade cut into her arm, just between her shoulder and tricep. Karla winced in pain and tried to ignore the smell of burning fabric and meat and swung her sword out at the Elite, forcing it to back off. Karla knew that in a fight like this, the Elite had the upper hand. Even though she knew how to use the plasma sword, in terms of technique or fighting style, the Elite would pretty much have her beat to dust in that category, not to mention the Elite's super strength.
The Elite flinched as something struck its chest like a hammer. The Elite staggered back, glowing blue as its shields tried to absorb the sudden attack.
"Damnit!" Sam cursed as she ejected her spent clip. Of all the times for her to miss her mark, NOW had to be the time. Instead of the headshot she was hoping for, the round went low and was deflected off the Elite's torso shielding. "Leo, cover me!"
Leo got up and started firing at the approaching mass of Covenant. He kept up the steady rate of fire until his rifle jammed. In horror, Leo stood there trying to eject the jammed round. Paccone reached up and yanked Leo down just as a volley of plasma rounds passed through the spot Leo had been standing just seconds before.
"Carter! When your gun jams in a firefight, don't stand in the open and play around with it!" Paccone yelled as he lobbed a grenade down the hall.
"Sorry sir!" Leo cried as he took out the jammed round and reloaded.
"I like you better alive, Carter." Paccone yelled back.
Leo hesitated, "I- I do too sir."
"Good, keep it that way!" Paccone shredded a pack of Jackals apart with his machine gun. "What were you trying to do anyways?"
"It's the Captain!" Leo pointed down the hall. "She's in trouble!"
Paccone took a quick glance down the hall and saw Karla, injured by the looks of it, squaring off with a full sized and armed Elite. He cursed and leapt over the makeshift barricade of crates.
"Sir?" Leo started to climb over as well.
"No!" Paccone waved Leo back down. "Stay back here and keep the fire rate up! I'll take care of this!"
Leo climbed back down and started firing again. Scohar ran up next to him and said, "I'll take care of it Leo, you go and make sure Samantha is safe."
"What?" Leo stared blankly at Scohar for a second. "What're you talking about?"
"There." Scohar pointed down the hall. "She's moving down with the sergeant."
Leo looked and saw Sam slowly moving down, trying to get a clear line of fire at the Elite her sister was dueling. Unfortunately, she was moving farther down the hall, leaving her more vulnerable to the charging Covenant. Like Paccone before him, Leo cursed and leapt over the barricade.
Meanwhile, the fight between Karla and Tazin wasn't going so well. Karla was already covered in cuts and burns from near misses from the Elite's attacks, while Tazin himself didn't even have a scratch on him. Karla barely had time to parry or block the Elite's savage strikes, and her strength was quickly waning. There was no way she would be able to outfight an Elite like this, especially since it was so much stronger. Finally, Karla just couldn't keep up anymore. With one brutal blow, Tazin knocked Karla's sword out of line and cut in across her abdomen. Karla couldn't remember if she screamed or not, but she did remember blacking out for a second from the pain. Looking down, she saw that only the very tip of the plasma sword had actually touched her, but it left a long, shallow, and seared cut across her stomach and ending just beneath her right breast. The next thing Karla could remember was the Elite grabbing her head and slamming it against the wall of the hallway. Karla could hear an earth shattering crack, though she couldn't tell whether it was the helmet or her skull that was doing the cracking. She could also feel the heat of the plasma sword hovering just behind her neck as the Elite prepared to execute her.
"You shall burn for your crimes, witch." Tazin snarled. This was the creature that had slaughtered so many of his comrades. "By all that is sacred-"
Before he even had a chance to finish, something large and heavy landed on him. Tazin yelped in surprise and dropped his plasma sword, inadvertently sparing Karla's life. The blow also sent him off balance, losing his grip on Karla. Dazed and confused, Karla spun around and saw Paccone wrestling with the Elite. The sergeant was on top of the surprised Elite, bashing away at its helmet with the butt end of his machine gun. The blows from the heavy weapon were so powerful, that Tazin's shields failed, and he took several of the hits in the face. Enraged, the Elite grabbed Paccone and threw him aside like a rag doll. Paccone hit the wall and slumped down the ground, stunned. Satisfied, Tazin turned to finish off Karla, but was caught off guard when he felt something spear through his belly. Karla had used the distraction to pick up fallen sword and skewer Tazin. Using the last reserves of her strength, Karla turned her thrust into a brutal uppercut swing that cut Tazin open from waist to chin. The burned corpse slumped down the blood soaked decking, and Karla, energy spent, collapsed with it.
Sam saw Karla kill the Elite, and nearly cheered out loud, but seeing her sister collapse on the floor like that destroyed any relief she might have felt. If only she could reach her-
"Sam! Watch out!" Leo cried.
Strangely enough, Sam knew the attack was coming long before Leo warned her. Sam stopped and slid on the floor, and saw an Elite's fist pass by just inches above her head, but seemed to be moving slower than she thought it would be. Sam then fluidly turned her dodging move into an attack, knocking the Elite's feet out from under it. The alien roared in surprise and fell flat on its face. Before it even had a chance to blink, Sam was already on her feet, and had her rifle aimed point blank at its head.
Sam gave a sickeningly innocent smile as she pulled the trigger. "Bang, you're dead."
"Sam." Leo gaped, "How the hell did you do that?"
"Do what?" Sam asked as she ducked down behind a supply crate.
Leo popped off a three round burst that stopped two Grunts in their tracks. 'That move you pulled off that Elite. I've never seen you move that fast. Actually, now that I think about it, I don't think I've ever seen anybody move that fast."
Sam shrugged and fired her rifle again, blowing off the head of another Elite.
By then, the fight was already over. Reinforcement Marines from the other UNSC ships had finally arrived, slaughtering the invading Covenant from the rear. It took only a few minutes for the surviving raiders to either be killed off or captured. Sam and Leo sighed in relief and let the incoming Marines pass them by. A medic took a quick cursory check on them, but seeing that they weren't injured, followed his comrades further into the ship. Other Marines however were toeing dead Covenant bodies, picking up fallen weapons, and collecting other souvenirs. Sam looked curiously at Scohar, who had picked up one of her spent shell casings and pocketed it. Before she could even say anything, Scohar smiled.
"For luck." He replied.
Paccone meanwhile had finally regained his senses and rushed over to where Karla's body was laying. Afraid that she was dead, Paccone reached down to check for a pulse.
"If you think this will be a good excuse for you to sleep with me." Karla coughed, "You're out of luck."
Paccone grinned and picked Karla up, slinging her undamaged arm around his shoulder. "You'll be all right, you've taken worse hits."
"Mostly because of you." Karla scowled, more so in pain rather than agitation.
"Those are some pretty nasty cuts. You'll probably need a band-aid or something."
"It's a wonder why they haven't made you head of the medics." Karla winced as a medic sprayed some biofoam on her wounds. "Why is it that whenever I end up in a battle with you, you never get a scratch, yet I'm always the one that almost ends up dead?"
"Oh come on." Paccone scoffed. "You can't possibly think that I'm responsible for all this. Besides, it's not like your wounds are that life-threatening anyway."
The medic momentarily stopped treating Karla. "Actually sir-"
"Hey, did I give you permission to speak?" Paccone pointed menacingly at the medic. "Just do whatever you do, slap on band-aids or whatever, and I'll not make any degrading jokes about your mother."
"Ignore him, he's just a total ass." Karla said.
"I've noticed, ma'am."
"Well, I'll leave you in the care of this fine, upstanding doctor." Paccone gingerly set Karla down on the ground, and turned around. "Hey! Lovebirds! You two still alive?"
"Yes sir!" Sam and Leo replied in unison.
"And what about you, newbie?"
"Still in one piece, sir." Scohar said.
"That's great." Paccone smiled and marched down the hall. "Now lets find what sorry excuse this ship has for a bar and take it before these wannabes do."
"What about the Captain?" Sam asked, careful not to use Karla's actual name.
"Don't worry about me." Karla's voice was thin and weak, but still audible from across the hall. "Like whatyour sorry excuse for a sergeant said before, I've taken worse hits."
Once she said those words, Karla felt a sharp prick as the medic injected a dose of painkiller in her arm. She suddenly began to feel very drowsy and her vision began to fade...
Bridge
"I'm grateful for the help you've provided us, Captain." Rogers looked at Mahoney's cheerful face on the comm screen. "It's a pity that three of your ships aren't here to celebrate our success."
"They'll be well remembered." Mahoney nodded in silent reverence, "They died for a cause they believed in."
Rogers was silent for moment, and then continued, "I understand you received a maximum priority recall order from FLEETCOM as well."
"That's right. Wasn't too happy about it though. We had to abandon a perfectly goodAI production facility. We had to dismantle the equipment and salvage as many AIs as we could. We're now on our final jump, as per the Cole Protocol."
"Mind if we hitch a ride with you then, Captain Mahoney?"
Mahoney chuckled. "By all means, the more the merrier."
Suddenly, Joshua chimed in. "Captain Mahoney, you mentioned that you have extra AIs?"
"That's right." Mahoney frowned, trying to figure out where the AI as going with this.
"I believe they may yet have a use." Joshua hesitated for a moment, and then continued glumly, "Though my abilities as an AI are great, I must admit that managing the systems on this ship myself are proving... difficult. My processor speed has slowed by 20 percent and memory usage is 60 percent larger than I have expected. I would need extra... assistance in order to keep this ship running at maximum efficiency."
Rogers couldn't believe what he was hearing. In all his years of Navy service, he had never heard an AI ask for help, much less admit that it wasn't up the job. He suspected that the engineers who built this ship sold their souls to the devil to create such a ghoulish operating system.
"By all means." Mahoney shrugged. "We've got a cargo bay full of them. Might as well use a few. How many do you need?"
Joshua paused for a moment as he crunched numbers. "Three would suffice. I'm sending over specifications right now."
Mahoney nodded. "I'll see to it that they are sent and installed right away."
The image then flickered and went black as they cut the connection. Rogers looked up and said, "So all this time, while you were looking so cool, you were in fact up to your neck running this hellhole?"
"I thought I could handle the extra capacity." Joshua said glumly. "But the fact is that the energy calculations and maneuvers required to keep the reactors and systems in check require at least 3 modified class-C AIs to handle the strain. I could easily do the job myself, but it would sacrifice many milliseconds of precious processing time."
Efficiency down to the microsecond. That's what AIs were all about. Rogers sighed. "Joshua, contact the AIs on the other ships and make sure that our jump coordinates are synchronized. I don't want to exit Slipspace right on top of our fellow shippmates."
"Right away Captain."
"Oh, and thaw out our Marines before we jump. I have an ugly feeling that we'll need them when we reach the other side."
"Consider it done."
Cryo Bay, Cryo Tube #536
Tarin Richards, like so many other Marines, never particularly liked cryo hibernation. Many Marines were usually unnerved at the fact of being frozen, others being enclosed in such a tight space. Still others were afraid that once they went to sleep, they would never wake up. Valid arguments all, but what Tarin really didn't like was because of the dreams.
They were always the same. Every time she closed her eyes, she could see the forests of her homeworld burning, the fires surrounding her. No matter what she did, no matter where she ran, the malevolent fires followed her, destroying everything touched, everything she ever cared about, and then something powerful grabbed the back of her neck and began pulling her away...
Tarin's eyes snapped open, and in reflex, grabbed the dark figure in front of her by the throat and tackled it to the ground.
"Son of a bitch!" She heard the figure cry. "Tarin, it's me!"
Tarin's vision finally cleared, and she realized that the figure she had tackled was Williams. She quickly recoiled away from him, and remembered that she was completely nude because of the cryo hibernation. She turned away so Williams wouldn't see her blushing.
"Wow, not much of a morning person, huh?" Williams joked nervously. He was wearing his Marine uniform. Obviously, he was revived well before her.
"Shutup and get me some clothes." Tarin growled, mentally adding another reason why she hated cryo-hibernation.
Williams gave a quick, casual salute and made his retreat before Tarin could abuse him any further. Tarin reached over and grabbed a towel to cover herself and to rub off the frost that still stubbornly held onto her skin. As she did so, she thought she heard a familiar voice echo from the hall outside.
"Private Wellings, you may very well be the best shot I've ever had the pleasure of working with, as well as being the cutest looking one."
Tarin then heard a groan that she suspected was from the Captain's sister, "Sarge..."
She quickly opened the door and glanced up and down the hall, but nothing was there.
"Paccone..." She muttered to herself before closing the door.