Chapter XXXI: War Stories

March 25, 2540 (UNSC Calendar)/

MA Series Pub, New Alexandria, Reach

"So I'm doing overwatch right?" the lieutenant said. "And nothing's happening, we have been watching this street for hours and nothing fucking happens."

We all laughed. What he said wasn't particularly funny, but the way he said it and the fact that he would get to it was what made us laugh. The strong Eposz brew that we were drinking also helped a bit.

"We've been there for hours," he repeats. "Nothing has happened. I am starting to sweat under my helmet and my spotter starts rambling about some restaurant back on Eden that he loved. So now I am not only frustrated and bored, I am also hungry."

We laughed again, that was a bit funnier.

"So I distract myself by checking out the racks of some broads that walk by with my scope. I mean, what's the harm? It's not like they ever found out," he waited for us to stop laughing before went on. "Ok, so I finally set my sight on this woman right, she's got the largest rack I have ever seen you know? It's obscene, just huge." He paused for breath. "I am checking this woman out, and she's looking all nervous, I don't know why, but right now I don't care, I just want to look at those melons going up and down, up and down. I've been staring at her gigantic boobs for hours, and all of a sudden I remember we're supposed to be watching out for innies. Then, the most unexpected thing happens, this woman's breasts blow up," he paused for effect. "Yes, she had had some sort of bomb implanted to make it look like she had a large rack, I never did find out if the timer malfunctioned or something, because the only person that died was her."
It wasn't a particularly funny story, but it was highly unusual, besides, most of the spectators to this man's narration were so drunk that pretty much anything he said sounded like the best joke ever invented. We all laughed hard for five minutes before we managed to calm down a bit.

"Ok, ok, my turn," said another Marine.

"Go for it."

"Ok, see, me and my buddy are on the eleventh floor of this building in Harvest right, we just managed to take a couple of city blocks from the covvies and are feeling great about ourselves. Admiral Cole is kicking ass in space and we are kicking ass down here. I'm relaxing with my spotter and decide that a couple of beers would be a good reward for the excellent sniping that we had just done in service of our troops."

We all nodded at the marine to resume his story.

"So I pull out this bottle of beer I've been saving, and just as I'm about to open it a phantom dropship flies by. We scramble for cover, but it already spotted us we are behind a couple of columns with plasma raining all around us. I switch cover just in time to see a rocket strike the phantom. It starts spewing smoke, and a hunter decides to jump of the ship before it goes down. The hunter looked like something straight out of an action movie. The ship going down behind it and the alien actually did a flip as it went through the windows."

We all laughed again, a hunter doing a front flip? That's hilarious.

"Just as I am about to shoot it with my SRS, the floor below it collapses. I run to the hole in the floor and see the hunter getting up on the floor below. Just as it stands up, the floor breaks again, but this time the hunter actually falls to the ground through ten floors."

"And?" was the unanimous response.

"That's it."

"That's it? That's no fun," Pavel complained.

"Well, that's because you weren't there," the storytelling marine shot back. Pavel grumbled something before deciding against a confrontation.

"Your turn buddy," the second marine told an army trooper.

"Me?"

"No, your sister."

"Fine, you don't have to whine about it," the army soldier responded as he cleared his throat.

"So we're in New Constantinople…" he starts.

"You were in New Constantinople?" I ask.

"Shhhh!"

"Ok, sorry,"

"Don't apologize, just shut up," I'm told.

"Ok, as I was saying. We were in New Constantinople, in the third week of fighting. My unit has decided that the best way to fight the covvies is to dig down and make a trench. So we dig a trench, and we stay there for a while, holding the enemy advance," he paused for us to quiet down. "And this one soldier, Reynolds, decides that he has to take a shit. He is very vocal about it, I think that he wanted someone to go with him or somethin', cause he kept telling everyone that he had to take a shit."

We all laughed at the thought of asking someone to come with us to the bathroom.

"Finally, he decides to go on his own or his bowels are going to explode, so he hops away from the trench and hides behind a pile of debris to do the deed. Suddenly, all this talking about going to the bathroom has made me want to go too! I follow my friend, and I see him squatting, shit falling out of his ass."

Thanks for the mental image.

"But I am not disgusted, all I can think of is that this man forgot the basic rule of pooping. When you go number two, it is because you have to go number one," he took a moment to let that sink in.

"So Reynolds starts peeing, but he is in a position that would wet his pants, so he shifts his body so that he can pee properly, but the movement causes his latest log to swing from his ass and into his pants."

Ok, now that's hilarious.

"And just that moment a wraith strikes about twenty yards away from him, Reynolds jumps a little and then falls down, right on the shit that fell inside his pants."

The entire bar is now laughing like idiots at the story of this man, I am too.

"You can tell that it was an awkward couple of weeks for him, without extra clothing and no place to wash the shit out of his underwear. People called him Shitty Pants for months."
"What do they call him now?" asked some girl that had been listening to the story.

"Dead," said the army trooper. We all stopped laughing and stared at our glasses, remembering people that had died. Every single soldier knew someone that had died, every single soldier had a friend that was no longer with us.

"Let's not worry about that, shall we?" said the bartender, God bless his heart. "Next round's on the house."

We all thanked the man and got something strong to dull away the feeling of guilt or pain for surviving. I had to dull away both, pain for not being able to get Layla from getting shot and guilt for choosing to save the captain first. Layla had probably requested a transfer to some other fleet. Don't blame her.

"Ok," said Pavel after swallowing his tequila. Imported all the way from Mexico. Or so the bottle claimed. I had been to young when I lived in Mexico to know anything about alcohol. "What's the weirdest way that you have killed a covvie?" he asked.

"What kind of covvie?"

"Any covvie."

Everyone started spinning up their brains to remember what kill would cause the most laughter or get them the highest chance to go home with one of the girls listening in on us. I dunno if the female soldiers were shooting for the same goal, but I'm going to assume they were.

"Ok, I got one," said one marine.

"Please, do tell."

"We were falling back, as usual," that got some bitter laughter out. "When all of a sudden we find a lance of elites. They were surprised, because we got most of them quickly, but a couple of them managed to shoot back. Long story short, after I find myself alone and unarmed, I kill it with an axe."

"An axe?"

"Yeah, an axe."
"Where the hell would you get an ask from?" I asked.

"We met those elites in a museum of ancient weapons, the exposition was from some sort of Earth-based museum and had been borrowing some medieval weaponry for a temporary exposition."

"An axe?" I asked, still incredulous.

"Yes, I fell backward on a suit of armor and threw the first thing that I made contact with, which happened to be a pretty nice axe that decided to land blade-first in the elite's chest."

"No way," one marine said.

"I swear, I got it recorded and everything. I even got a segment in the fleet's webpage."

"Nah, you're shitting us."

"Oh, so you don't believe me?" he asked, even as he said that he grabbed a knife from his waist and threw it to a wooden post, embedding it in the thick wood.

"That's how good I throw, and that thing with the axe was the best I ever did."

"Well, Frank here can show you up any time he wants, isn't that right Frankie?" Pavel said.

"Nah, I couldn't," I said, but I was already lifting my pants and grabbing my ever-present knife. "Ok, what do you want me to hit?"

Everyone said a bunch of different things, but a pretty redheaded girl got the winning bid. "Why don't you shoot this apple," she said as she grabbed a large red apple from a basket, "off of my head."

The entire bar went quiet before they started going "Oooo" and "Aaaa" and "no way you can do that man."

"You trust me?" I asked, spinning my knife in my hand.

"Completely," she said as she placed the apple on top of her head.

"All this sounds strangely familiar," Pavel said as he scratched his head. He was right, I had some weird feeling of déjà vu. I threw the knife in the air, giving it a couple of spins.

"You sure you know what you're doing?" a man asked.

I was, and the girl must've been more than a little tipsy to decide to use herself as a quasi-target. Or maybe she was one of those girls with daddy issues that needed attention desperately.

"I'm sure," I said as the knife fell on my hand.

Five meters, two spins.

The knife flew beautifully, the wave pattern of the blade shinning against the light of the room. It spun twice before its tip buried itself into the apple. The redhead had positioned herself a few inches away from the wall, the knife flew through the apple and buried itself in the wall, apple halfway through the blade. There was a moment of shocked silence before I turned around.

"Think I could've made the axe throw?" I asked.

The bar erupted with laughter and a bunch of people started buying me drinks and patting me in the back. The girl came to me and handed me my knife while she took a large bite from the apple. I decided that I'd take her to a motel. A part of me would feel terrible for rebounding so fast, but the rest of me would feel rather satisfied. Physically, of course.

"Ok, ok, back to funny covvie kills," said the marine with the story about the axe as he picked up his knife. No doubt feeling he was feeling grumpy about my superb knife throwing skills. We all calmed down a bit and decided to resume the storytelling session.

"My turn," yet another soldier stated. We nodded at him so that he could tell his story. "Very well. This is a grunt kill, not particularly impressive, but what happened afterwards is what's so special about it."

"Just tell the freaking story!" someone yelled.

"I'll get to it!" he shot back. "Anyways, as I was saying before I was so rudely interrupted, we were in the Clover Campaign, we were pushing back a group of covvies and had killed all the big ones. Three grunts were running away, you know how, hands in the air and squealing."

We all nodded in agreement, that's the way Grunts ran away.

"So I stop chasing after them, switch to my M6 and take careful aim at the closest grunt. I sight it right in between its shoulders and fired. It must've been a terrible shot, because I didn't hit it anywhere near the shoulders. I hit some sort of hose that transported methane from their backpacks to their masks. The explosive round ignited the methane. Nothing out of the usual right? Wrong. The methane acted as a rocket for this poor grunt. It started flying and crashed into the next grunt, they both fell to the ground and then they blew up, the blast killed the last grunt."

The bar started laughing once again. I had seen that happen, it wasn't really that unusual, especially in big battles, but the alcohol and the atmosphere in the bar made everything feel a whole lot better or funnier than it normally would've been. I liked it, I'm not gonna lie to you.

"Now it's my turn!" Pavel proclaimed as he stood up from his stool. No one contradicted him, so he started telling a story I was familiar with.

"This happened in '37 if I'm not mistaken," he said.

"'36," I corrected him.

"Regardless, it is an interesting story. Really shows how the squid-faces are better than Brutes."

"Agreed!" someone shouted and within seconds we were all toasting to that.

"Lemme finish!" Pavel complained. "It was after a hot drop, we managed to form an effective perimeter and hold the covvies back, there was only this one wraith, it had no gunner, so it kept its distance. We were just careful to look at the sky to avoid its shots. Frankie here, decides that we have to take it out, make things easier for the rest of the troops, so we grab a pack of C10 and move towards the tank. Now, the driver kept shooting at us and backing up, it was so desperate not to be destroyed that…"

"That what?" someone asked.

"Guess," I said.

They said things that went from suicide to leaving the wraith and running away, there was even a guy that said something about turning the tank around and leaving.

"None of the above," Pavel said. "It actually backed away into a cliff."

"You're kidding me."

"It did, the gorilla wasn't even looking, so it backed up into a cliff, falling down a couple hundred meters before crashing down on the ground.

"To the Brutes and their tiny brains," someone offered.

"Agreed," and we toasted again.

"I've got one," said yet another army trooper.

"Hear, hear!"

"Ok, I was in a sniper's position, it consisted of me, two other marksmen, and a sniper. First thing that happens when we reach our position is the sniper gets shot in the arm and the two marksmen are killed."

"That's not funny," slurred a drunken marine.

"I'll get to it. Well, we can't snipe anymore, so I have to help the sniper back down the building. So far so good, no incidents. It's not until we reach the ground floor that we find ourselves facing a lone skirmisher. We stood there for a couple of seconds before anyone reacted. The sniper told me to aim his rifle and he'd shoot, I tried to do it, but the idiot shoots early, so the round flies straight to the floor."

"And?"

"It bounces, then it hits the wall, then the roof, then the other wall, and ends its trajectory in the skirmisher's chest."

"Nah, sniper rounds don't bounce," someone said.

"They do, I can testify to that," I said.

"Well, no way you did that," the same man said again.

"You don't have to believe me," the soldier said.

Two men calmed down the quarreling soldiers before they started a brawl, something which I would've objected to, for a change. We stopped with the war stories for a while and started chatting around about different stuff. I kept telling myself that I'd check the UNSC records to confirm that Layla was done with me. If I knew her at all (and I did) she would've already requested a transfer to an entirely different fleet. Technically speaking we were part of the Epsilon Eridani Fleet, but we rarely operated with them. We usually operated attached as a Special Forces frigate, but we've been doing more regular jobs lately. Guess that there aren't that many things you can do to the Covenant that require careful infiltration and undercover ops.

The conversation drifted off into memories of lost battles and friends, I did my best to get to know the redheaded girl, who seemed surprisingly lucid for a person that had volunteered to have a knife thrown at her. The only relevant thing I learned about her after half an hour of talking was that she liked apple pie and flip music. Didn't have much personality, but she was a stunner, so she would help me in my quest to have sex. The guilty part of my brain had all but given up, so I'd have to ask her to come to the motel with me soon. Pavel had gotten all touchy-feely with an Army PFC. Army chicks had a reputation for being easy, but that was probably a rumor seeded by the Army to increase recruitment numbers. Not that it was necessary anymore, with the fancy gadgets and all that a bunch of teenagers were willing to volunteer. There is something that feels quite adventurous in joining the UNSCDF to fight aliens. It does sound pretty badass.

It was getting late, so most people were starting to leave. It was a shame really, I'd had a very good time in the bar. The bartender must've liked the business, because he stood up and offered us another round on the house. That got us going again, this time it was a navy officer who started talking.

"We were in a skirmish in some backwater system, don't really remember the name of it, but there was only a small mining colony there, so it wasn't really that important. The planet had been discovered by a single corvette, one of the small ones."

That comment was received by a huff from about every single member of the audience who was part of the military. A small corvette was about a kilometer long, give or take a couple of dozen meters. They were incredibly deadly in ground-support ops, but were considered easy meat in space battles. Meaning that it only took two frigates to take one down instead of three. Or one Marathon or Halcyon cruiser.

"Anyways, we had a small fleet of three ships, two of which happened to be Marathon-class cruisers. I was on board the other ship, a frigate. This corvette's captain is incredibly badass right, it can't directly engage us, but it has been avoiding us for a couple of hours without leaving the system. Finally, we manage to trap it. One of the cruisers is about to fire its MAC when all of a sudden there is a small explosion on the barrel of the gun. Turns out the corvette had sent some sort of drones or EVA teams to disarm the cannons of all three ships, so now we're left there, with nothing but Archer missile pods."

Not impressive, it wasn't that unusual, it had happened to the Inconvenience more than a couple of times.

"Not that unusual I know," the sailor continued.

Hey, what do you know?

"The elite manning this ship must've thought itself pretty smart, because it just let its ship stay in between all of us, deflecting most of our missile volleys and absorbing the ones that did make contact with its shields. Finally enough missiles slam into it to take down its shields. The captain must've gotten the gist of the situation because he started running away, unfortunately, the two cruisers' respective captains had the exact same idea."

"RAM THE SHIP!" we all chorused. It was an old phrase from the Insurrection days, when innie ships were mostly civilian yachts and shuttles outfitted with weak missile pods. The UNSC ships would simply boost towards the smaller craft to save ammunition. It wasn't common during the war we were fighting right now, but it still had happened a couple of times when tactical options were exhausted.

"Exactly, one cruiser rams it in the bow and the other in the stern, the covvie ship literally broke in two."

"I wish I could've seen that," Pavel murmured.

"I've got the footage, if you care to see it," the sailor said. "Just give me your number and I'll send it to you."

"I want that too!" someone else called. Within seconds there was a line of people forming up to write their numbers on a napkin, I stayed on my stool, Pavel would show me the video later. I took that time to talk a little bit more with the redhead, but was unsurprised to find her as hollow as the first time I had a conversation with her that lasted longer than two phrases. I just hoped her bedroom skills were fuller than her head was. I guess I would find out soon enough.

"Anyone got a good ol' fashioned kill 'em all story?" the bartender asked. He probably lost someone in the war, because kill 'em all stories were things that soldiers did to covvies whenever they had the chance to play with them, mostly to grunts and jackals, but I'd heard some pretty nasty stories about groups of marines torturing elites after capturing them. Whenever we did get large numbers of prisoners we usually executed them all save for one or two to give to ONI, but I never toyed with them for the fun of it.

"Nah, marines that do that are considered psychos," someone explained.

"I guess you're entitled to your opinion," another soldier answered.

"You mean you've tortured covvies?"
"Not tortured, but I've toyed with them when I have the chance," the second man said. "They do the same and worse to us, so when I get the chance to end an elite's life through blood loss and amputation, I think I'd take it."

It made sense, I had been to colonies that had been completely been rid of any human life, with us arriving just a little to late. The faces of innocent men, women, and children dead on the streets, the body of a father protecting the rest of his family, only for him to met a swift end at the hands of a fanatical alien and his family to join him instants later. I'd also never forget the times that the elites decided to let the jackals and grunts kill unarmed civilians, or the times that brutes had joined the carnage. The Covenant deserved to die a slow painful death. Unfortunately, it just wasn't practical. We'd simply have to kill them all quickly instead of slowly.

"But the ethics…" a marine said.

"Screw the ethics!" another soldier interrupted. This is what happened when you tried to have soldiers engage in intellectual conversations.

"Listen up!" I interrupted. I raised my half-empty (or half-full) glass of beer. "A toast, to those that are no longer with us, to those that died protecting Earth and all its colonies."

Soldiers do love a good toast and mine had been exemplary, considering the circumstances of course. Every single person in the bar at the moment, whether they were in the military or not, raised their glasses and drank silently. My immediate next thought was that it was time to find out if the redhead was as good in the sack as she was empty up there.