Chapter XXXVII: Easy Out

September 2, 2540 (UNSC Calendar)/

Creek, Dawson's World, Beta 415 system

Of course the covvies wasted no time in using their lovely-looking drop pods to pepper the area, it would've been fine had those drop pods not contained a bunch of enemy combatants inside of them.

Unfortunately for them we had already made our way to the innie warthog. It truly had been a blessing when that convoy arrived, otherwise we would've been picked up and shot out of the air on our way back to out ship. Unless of course, the five-kilometer-long assault carrier deemed our small craft as an insignificant threat and decided not to waste a plasma torpedo on us. But seriously, who would think that?

Yes, I am saying the fucking convoy was a fucking nut-buster.

"Wanna drive?" Pavel asked even as he hopped on the turret.

"No."

"Oh," he said, I could almost see his mouth opening and closing without forming words.

"Nah, just kidding, if I let you drive we would be dead by the time we crossed the corner," I said while securing Paradiso to the passenger's sit and flooring the accelerator.

In reality, we were almost killed once we turned around the corner of the warehouse, two pods landed right next to us, couldn't have been more than two meters away on each side. Luckily, Pavel wasted all the occupants before they even knew what was happening.

"Ha," Pavel said.

"You've got your wheelman to thank for that, driver assisted kills count for me too," I told him.

"They do not, that doesn't make sense," he complained.

"My game, my rules."

"It's not fair," he said.

"Well, technically speaking none of us is getting ahead of each other on the scoreboard."

"But I am killing covvies,"

"Pavel, I'll literally stop driving if you do not agree to my rules," I outright stated.

"Shhh, it's Titan-2, TITAN-2!"
"Do you agree to my terms?"
"Why the fuck are you even talking like that?"
"Do you agree?"
"Fine. Fuck."

"Why thank you Mr. Titan-2."

Having cleared up that little business I floored the accelerator and headed towards downtown, the place where the bulk of the UNSC forces were supposed to be located. Right now I presume it was being used as an evacuation staging point. Whenever an assault carrier appears on your rear it's never a good sign. Pun intended. Ouch.

Anyways, this side of town was relatively undamaged save for the occasional crashed car or looted store there was no battle damage to the area. Of course, the landing pods were bound to change that pretty soon. In fact, a couple of them landed about ten yards behind us and wrecked the street, not that I saw them, cause you know, eyes on the street.

"Where to now?" Pavel asked.

"Downtown."
"No I know that, where in downtown?"
"I dunno, guess we'll just drive around for a while," I answered after veering to the left to avoid hitting an abandoned truck.

"Great."
Wasn't actually great. In fact, it was starting to get just a little bit fucked up in here. You know, with the assault carrier and all. I had to take a turn when we came face to face with a small covvie squad, Pavel managed to waste a couple of them, but I preferred to avoid confrontation for as long as possible, which wouldn't be that long if things continued shaping up like this.

"Can't this thing go faster?" Pavel asked.

"We're doing 90 miles per hour. How much faster do you want it to go?" I replied.

"Just faster!"

"A reason in particular Mr. Klaus?" I asked, doing my best English accent impersonation.

"That!"

I turned to see what looked like a patrol consisting of three banshees pursuing us. If it looked like that, it mean that it was very likely a banshee patrol chasing after us. The plasma bolts that burned the air a couple of inches from my arm solved any doubt I had left.

"Faster I said," Pavel called out as he spun the massive gun on the warthog, already taking aim at the lead banshee.

I floored the accelerator and the hog lurched forward. Didn't seem to affect the banshees though, they just kept on right behind us. I was forced to drive in zigzags to avoid the superheated plasma from striking any point of the vehicle. Succeeded mostly, although the rear lights were blasted away.

"One down!" Pavel called out shortly after an explosion. I barely had time to congratulate him on that before he warned me of an incoming fuel rod.

"When?" I asked.

"….NOW!" he yelled.

I used the E-brake and turned to the right, giving the car an incredibly awesome-looking stop. The front wheels locked in place while the rear of the car did a 180º turn. The green bolt of energy flew above us, missing Pavel's head by only a few inches. And only then because he ducked. Immediately after it exploded Pavel managed to bring down another of the fliers. He clipped it maybe four times in a wing, the massive bullets of the gun tearing the wing from the rest of the craft, forcing it to crash land.

Instants after it crashed, a bloodied elite left the smoking banshee and stumbled a little. I shot it one handed with my pistol. Right between the eyes. Moments later the banshee behind it exploded.

"Kill's mine!" I said.

"You stole it you asshole!"

"Still mine!"

This time I took a side street to emerge into a four-lane avenue. Normally that would've been great, since four-lane avenues usually have large buildings to the side. This one only had one story small businesses on each side. Those provided absolutely no visual cover from covvie fliers. Not that it really mattered anyways, the battleship hovering above us was bound to be filled with banshee patrols, which meant that soon enough we would be found again by them. I floored the accelerator after placing my rifle beside me. Paradiso was still unconscious, which meant that I didn't have to expect any trouble from her.

The further I drove the more destroyed the town was. It wasn't very apparent here because all the buildings were so short, but there were glassy patches in the street, where high amounts of plasma had hit. Probably wraiths.

"Ghosts!" Pavel warned.

Aw fuck.

Ghosts weren't fast enough to keep up with us and shoot us at the same time, but you don't need to be fast enough when your cannons are rather accurate and have a significantly long range. There were two ghosts behind us, which meant that one would fire at us and the other one would use its boost to chase, then they'd switch, never letting us go. At least that's the covvie theory on that strategy, which is highly stupid. The sniper-sized rounds that the M41 was spewing out promptly wrecked the boosting ghost. The other one was stupid enough to decide to give us chase and met the same fate. It was to be expected, they were driven by grunts, not elites.

Around a corner I spotted a covvie patrol. Well, it was larger than a patrol, it was about twenty enemy soldiers, accompanied by a hunter pair. I (correctly) decided that the wisest thing to do was to turn of the engine and wait them out. Pavel and I both hopped off the hog and trained our sights in the passing patrol. Seemed like they would cross the intersection without coming through our street. Damn lucky we were.

"You said we were doing ninety?" Pavel asked.

"Yeah."

"How?"

"Must be a civilian variant outfitted with an M41," I said.

"Nah, it has armor and shit."

"Well, then it probably is one of those fast-strike versions. They could've even modified the engine Pavel, don't dwell on it for long."

He simply shrugged and trained his assault rifle on an elite. The patrol/platoon was about to finish crossing the intersection when the rearmost hunter burst up in flames. Well, actually it was hit by two Molotov cocktails thrown by teenagers from the top of a nearby building, but the expression 'burst up in flames' is pretty damn awesome.

Burst up in flames.

Of course the hunter took five seconds to realize it was on fire, that's how insignificant the injuries had been to it. I'm pretty sure that the broken glass from the bottles hurt it more than the fire. A second later five grunts and an elite fell to gunfire. It sounded weak, almost like bb guns, so it must've been civilian weaponry. Good for the civvies. The enemy soldiers took cover behind a couple of wrecked cars and the hunters before they returned fire. When they did, it was a majestic display of power. Five civilians instantly fell to the ground, smoke and vapor coming from their bodies, six more followed soon after. I had no idea how large this group was, but that couldn't have been to good for them.

"Should we help?" I asked.

Pavel was already on top of the hog and aiming the chaingun at a hunter. The M41 started roaring as soon as I hopped in on the driver's seat, Paradiso only moaned in annoyance. I turned the hog around while Pavel hit the hunter, only a couple of rounds bounced of the armor, the rest went deep inside its wormy body. Even as I closed in on the rest of the group, a couple of elites were hit by molotovs, one of them was burnt completely and the other simply had its shields removed. The 'tusks' of my warthog, paired up with mass and acceleration, promptly fixed that. Thank God for Newton.

I kept on going, speeding up with every moment I could. A jackal and a grunt fell victim to the size of my warthog, but my real target was ten meters away, close to the walls of a clothing store. The full weight of the warthog pushed back the still-burning hunter towards the wall, cracking it. The hunter roared and raised its cannon towards me, but it was brought down by the M41 Pavel was manning. As it took those rounds to the face, it put its hands under the hog and completely spun it around sideways. I'm sure that it expected a different result, because it came face to face with Pavel's M41. It barely had time to raise its shield before I hit reverse. Then forward and Pavel fired at it. Then reverse. Then forward just a little again. Then reverse. Finally the hunter fell to the ground, the only thing that would've signaled it as a hunter was the shield, everything else was just a orange and blue mess.

I accelerated to dodge the delayed reactions of a couple of elites, Pavel fired at the split-chins as we fell back, knocking down one of them and several grunts. The civvies were doing rather a good job, because there were only three grunts and an ultra left by the time we turned around to charge once more. The ultra was killed by Pavel and the grunts by the other civilians.

"Helljumper, over here!" someone called.

I hopped off the car while telling Pavel to 'stay frosty.' Old military term, ignore it.

"Helljumper, what's your name."

"John Smith," I replied. Even though it had ceased to be the most common Anglophone name over three centuries ago, it still had that reputation.

"Sure," the civilian said, not believing me, but making nothing of it.

"Where's the evacuation port?" I asked. "Or where can we get a decent evac?"

"Downtown, near the town hall, on the city's main plaza."

"OK, thanks, I recommend you make your way there as well."
"No," he said as he chuckled. "We're going to kill as many of those bastards as we can," he said as he gestured to his ragtag group. There were about forty people that I could see, some of them didn't even have guns, while some of them had baseball bats.

"Pick up the covvie weapons," I told him, and then: "No, forget that, go to the evacuation point, don't waste your lives."
"They're killing our friends, destroying our homes, we'll make them pay!" said the leader.

"Yeah!" they called out in response.

"No you wont, they'll burn you all," I said, exasperated.

"Let's leave John," Pavel said.

"If we burn, they burn with us," the leader proclaimed.

"No they wont," I said. "You see that thing?" I asked, pointing to the assault carrier hovering above us. "They'll burn you from up there, and there'll be absolutely nothing good you can do about it. Join the military, or something, just don't go around killing yourselves."

The leader shook his head sadly. "Afraid we can't do that."
"Well, suit yourselves," I said as I hopped on the driver's seat and sped off towards the city's main plaza. Well, theoretically that would've been the plan, had not a Locust decided to climb over a couple of buildings and stop us.

"Walker!" some of the civilians yelled.

I had already put reverse on this thing and was going backwards as fast as possible, Pavel's rounds bounced harmlessly off the vehicle's shields. A Locust is like a baby scarab. It has four legs and a cockpit which looks just like that of a banshee. Probably around the same size too. In between the legs and cockpit there was a large section, which carried the shield generators and its weaponry. Its weaponry consisted of a single focus beam, which was very similar to the focus rifle some jackal snipers used, only that tank sized.

The beam singed of our hog and cut in half a large number of civilian combatants before we could even reach protection. We could hear small arms fire from all around us, it was intermingled with the occasional noise the cannon of the locust made.

"Pipe bombs! Use the bombs!" someone ordered. Instants later three explosions were audible over the building that separated us from the locust.

"Frankie, got some C10?" Pavel asked.

"Never leave home without them," I said as I patted my butt-pouch.

"Storm it."

I drove the warthog back so that only the turret was devoid of cover. Pavel aimed at the vehicle, but didn't fire. I hopped off after checking on our prisoner. Locusts were anti-building equipment, sure, they could work perfectly fine as anti-personnel, or even do an ok job at killing tanks, but they were certainly not in their zone whenever they did that. That is the only thing that saved us. Well, the civilians, we could've simply left them alone, but we weren't that cold.

"Shoot it when I say!" I yelled as I sprinted in front of the civilians. This time I didn't bother slowing down, I was going as fast as I could. Fortunately the locust wasn't supported by infantry, otherwise we would've been forced to leave the civvies behind to their deaths. I hopped over a flaming car and found myself right underneath the enemy vehicle, which coincidentally, was the safest place right now. It tried to squish me by shuffling sideways and in random directions, but it wasn't fast enough.

"Fire!" I yelled.

Of course, civilians don't listen because they aren't trained, but a M41 machine gun manned by a veteran ODST can cause a lot of damage. A lot. The shields of the vehicle were stripped in about five seconds and I was able to stick the explosives to the bottom of the locust's cockpit. Then I ran.

Seconds later the walker exploded and toppled to the side. The civilians took care of finishing off the elite pilot. They were very thorough, I must give them that.

"That was impressive!" someone said.

"Nah, they are weak against infantry," I said. "Their turret doesn't move fast enough to target a running human."

It was true, Pavel and I had both done this kind of things before. Granted, with military support instead of civilians with crappy guns, but it was the same. He could've done it just as good as me, but this time it was my turn. It was the second locust I had wasted personally. Pretty impressive huh?"

"Ok Mr. Hero, let's go," Pavel said.

"Already on it."

The warthog lurched forward towards downtown and towards our apparent salvation. We left the shadow of the enemy carrier soon enough and within minutes we were inside of the UNSC cordon. We only found a small patrol that was dispatched in a combination of lead and steel. That means that I rammed the grunts and Pavel shot the elite and jackal. Then we moved on.

"Are we there yet?" Pavel asked.

"Yes Pavel, in fact this landscape that surrounds you is actually an optical illusion in the pattern of the pelican's cargo bay, in fact, they even got fans and fancy special effects equipment to make it seem like we are still driving through the town."

"You don't have to be an ass about it."

"Well don't ask stupid questions!"

Pavel simply grumbled as I avoided some cars and debris. We were around five minutes out from the town hall, according to the GPS system on my helmet. We would then hitch a ride or call for Marina and Mister Recruit-with-a-surprisingly-high-rank.

Of course, how could I forget?

"Marina, this is Titan-1, do you copy?"

There was some static before she answered. "If you're going to call yourself by your codename, then you might as well use mine."

"Marina, this is Titan-1, I am glad you copy, we need an evac. Two soldiers and a prisoner. We're heading towards the town hall, you can pick us up there."

"Roger that," she said.

"You see buddy, that's what she means by mixed signals," Pavel said.

"What are you talking about?"

"You know, being an asshole to her."

"I was not an asshole," I exclaimed.

"Yes you were," Pavel said.

"I was being funny, that's what."

"Don't you two ever shut up?" groaned a semi-conscious Paradiso.

I punched her in the jaw and knocked her out.

"See, you're an asshole that punches women."

"Fuck you, you killed a couple of those back in the warehouse."

Pavel realized that I was getting wounded up and decided it was a proper time to shut the hell up and stop screaming horseshit at me.

Soon enough we crossed the first UNSC checkpoint, then we headed towards the town hall. The plaza was right in front of it. It had a large statue of one of the colony's founders right in the middle. Pelicans were all over the place, some landing, and some taking off.

"There." Pavel said. I turned the warthog towards the only pelican that wasn't uniformly green.

"Commander Albaf?" I asked as I opened a line to her.

"Just a minute," Eliza said.

"What do you want sergeant?" asked Albaf a second later.

"We got the prisoner, she's unconscious but alive."

"Impressive, unfortunately we have neither the resources nor the will to take her alive."

"Ma'am?" I asked.

"You understand don't you? Kill her."

"Yes ma'am," I said as I cut the line.

"Fuck her," I said, then I glanced at Pavel. He simply shrugged at me.

"She told you man."

"I know."

I might've been a fan of shooting covvies cold-blooded. Maybe even scare them a little bit (not torture, that's just meanish), but I was certainly not going to enjoy executing a human prisoner of war. The fact that said prisoner of war was in fact a woman only made me feel worse about it. I hopped off the hog and went to the other side. The unconscious woman was quickly pulled down from the vehicle and aid on the floor, her back facing up. I pulled out my pistol and fired twice to the back of her head, attracting a few curious looks from the marines around.

I walked towards the pelican and hopped on inside, leaving a dead woman and a wide-eyed Sheppard behind me.

"You ok man?" asked Pavel.

"I'm fine," I answered.

I am too far gone.

Hey guys, just letting you know that I just entered school again, which means the I probably won't be able to update as often as I have been for the last weeks. Anyways, enjoy.

-casquis