Chapter LIV: Patrol

January 1, 2542 (UNSC Calendar)/four months later

UNSC Inconvenience, Eta Cassopie System

There was a wave of heat all over my skin for a few instants. That was one of the many things that woke me up form my deep slumber. I was instantly pissed. I had been in the same mood a month ago when I was told that we were going to be leaving Reach before New Year's and had entered my fridge in that same mood. Now, I was pissed as hell at having missed the countdown. Don't get me wrong, I had missed it a couple of times before, but it was usually because I was getting shot at or something. This time we were just being sent to bolster the defense fleet of Eta Cassopie. Yeah, one of the ships that was in the small fleet that defended the system had managed to overheat their reactors and melt half the ship or something like that. Half of the crew died instantly and the rest would die soon after due to radiation poisoning.

As I recalled the reason I was here for my anger subsided and was instead replaced with frustration, a couple hundred brave men and women had died in a freaking accident. An accident. They could've died fighting against the enemy, they could've been heroes, legends almost, now they were simply victims of a stupid accident. Life isn't fair.

I groaned as I pushed myself up from the cryo tube and tested my limbs experimentally. Theoretically, my body felt like it had only been out for a couple of seconds, but I knew that I had been in cryo for about a month, so my natural reaction was to test myself, much like you do when you're playing a sport that you haven't played in a couple of years. You take it easy. I put my shirt on fist just to piss off the girls in the cryo bay with me. They liked to pretend that they weren't bothered with us guys being naked, and we liked to pretend that we weren't enjoying every second of the sexual tension, but oh well.

What can I say? It actually gets boring after a while, besides, most of the girls here I saw as fellow soldiers, as comrades, as sisters-in-arms if you will. It's very hard to think of them in a sexual way when you've been through hell and back with some of them. Well, for most of us.

"It sure is cold in here? Isn't it Collins?" one marine asked.

"Oh fuck off," one of the female marines replied while turning around to put on her bra and shirt. I swear that I could see a smile on her face, but couldn't confirm it. You see, us guys have an easier time in this type of situations because most of them have lived them before in the locker room or someplace similar. We're comfortable being naked around each other as long as we're all naked and it's only for a brief period of time. Ok, perhaps this is a poor choice of words, but it's the truth. Again, could've picked a better way of saying this, but I think you understand me.

On the other hand, girls are not as comfortable around each other in the same context (much to us men's chagrin), so they find this situation awkward. The fact that there are men with them doesn't really help them either.

Now feel free not to take any of this seriously, I'm pretty sure I have no idea what I'm talking about, but Marina probably does, I'll have to ask her sometimes. Ok, back to the story.

I finally put on my (black) underwear and my (black) camouflage pants. They were the standard outfit that I used whenever I was on duty but not on combat. They were surprisingly comfortable and the uniform actually remembered people of what I was. A Helljumper. And a pretty damn good one at that. Sometimes I thought that the all-blacks were kind of getting old, but then I saw myself in a mirror and had to admit that they were pretty damn intimidating. The whole ODST armor and equipment had been designed to function superbly and to look intimidating to other human beings. A lot of good it did us.

I stretched for one last time and left the cryo bay. Pavel was on another of the large rooms filled with sleeper pods, so I'd catch up with him later, it would be difficult to do so while there were a few hundreds of people moving out of the same general area and to their positions or whatever place they had to go to.

"Frank!"
Or not.

"Pavel, how was your nap?" I asked my friend as he elbowed his way to me.

"Ok, I guess," he said.

I smiled at the big guy and shook his hand as if I hadn't seen him for a long time. Well, technically, I hadn't, but my memory told me that he had been patting me in the back and wishing me a good nap about fifteen minutes ago. Yeah, technology can be funny like that sometimes. I looked around to see if I spotted someone else that was familiar, say, Marina for example. Truth be told, my only friend in the world, sorry, universe, was Pavel, perhaps Nezarian could be considered a friend as well, but I think that would be stretching it a little bit.

Funny huh? Being almost twenty-seven years old, having lived through hell with most of the men around here, having saved their lives more times that they could count, having received the same treatment from them. It was really saying something to that I was a seven-year veteran and only had one friend and a girlfriend. Sad, but that's the way life is. Cruel and unusual.

"So, why did you elbow your way here when our room is that way?" I asked.

"You make a fine point young Mr. Castillo."
"I'm older than you Pavel," I reminded him.

"Sometimes I forget."

I punched him lightly on the shoulder. Well, lightly made him wince and put his arm to sleep for a while. Don't worry, I had intended to do that, it wasn't me being unable to control my strength.

We walked to our room while making our way through sheer use of force and intimidating our fellow comrades-in-arms to make our way through. While we did so we resumed our month-old conversation regarding the pleasures of watching someone getting the crap being beaten out of them. Pavel argued that it was fun to watch anyone who wasn't a friend get beat up, I said that it was only funny if the guy was either a friend or a douche. It was actually a very civilized discussion with both of us taking out time to expose our points and listen carefully to the other.

Yeah right.

"… so you're saying that if this guy in a bar is getting the crap beat out of him, you wouldn't think it was funny?"
"Not unless he was s douche! I said that already. Why would you…"
"Oh come on, you can't seriously think that…"
"You keep making the same point, and it's stupid."
"You're stupid."

"You're mom's stupid," I said, sinking to a new low but only succeeding in angering Pavel, which made my winning more likely.

"Ok, first of all, my mother is a brilliant woman, second, you have no idea of what the concept of fun is, you are very narrow minded when it comes to bein-"
"Oh, for god's sake, now you're using the same expressions I was using a couple of minutes ago!"
"Oh, I didn't know that they were trademarked," he stated.

"Well they are," I said. "Anyways, you say I'm narrow-minded, I say you're a psychopath."
"Who's a psychopath?" Pavel asked angrily.

"Who's a psychopath?" another voice asked.

We both turned to look at a smiling Lieutenant Chloe Delacroix. She was surprised by our angry scowls and went from smiling to shocked to intimidated to blushing to looking at the floor in just a couple of seconds. Yes, that's the XO of a very prestigious army company of a very prestigious army unit that was well known in a rather large military. That's leadership in the UNSC for you folks.

"Well, Pavel thinks that it is fun to get to see random people being beat up, no matter if they're nice or not," I said. "Or if you know them or not."
Chloe, who was a girly girl outwardly, except for that leather boots incident back in that empty tent, switched from looking intimidated to angry shocked. "How can you even think that?" she asked my friend.

"See you around," I whispered in his ear as I patted him on the back. Delacroix was already getting wounded up and releasing a speech on integrity and ethics. Or something along those lines.

I smiled to myself at the little mischief that I had caused and was tempted to put my hands on the back on my head before I reminded myself that only anime characters did that. I did that anyway, but promptly put them down as I turned a corner and a group of cute marines were walking in my direction. They were obviously also having a very girly conversation, as they stopped their giggling and did their best to look professional as they walked next to me. I even pushed my chest out a little as well. Humans are weird.

"Staff Sergeant," a dreaded voice said.

"Yes lieutenant?" I asked as I turned to face Krikor Darbinian. The man looked like he had just been to a hair saloon, his hair looked rather awesome for a guy that had it cropped so short and had just spent some time sleeping to boot.

"Were the hell do you think you're headed?" he asked.

"Over there," I pointed in the direction I was walking.

"Are you being a smartass now." It wasn't a question.

"Well, sir, you asked and I answered."
Might as well have yelled 'yes' in his mysteriously tanned face.

"Listen Castillo, if you think for just a moment that you can be all…"
"Lieutenant Darbinian, you are requested in Company HQ," Eliza said through the intercom. She just loved to do that instead of simply telling the man directly.

"This isn't over," Darbinian growled at me.

I saluted professionally as he left, only angering him even more.

The lieutenant left after some appropriate fuming and muttering about my parenthood and heritage. You know, usual leadership stuff. I turned around and decided that I wasn't in the mood for anything physical so I decided against going to Marina's room or the ever-present time killer, the ship's gymnasium. I finally settled on going to my room and accessing the basics of our mission here through the room datapad. I used to have my very own, but I lost it back when we were boarded, hadn't found the time to get a new one, besides, I could use Pavel's for the dirty stuff, not like he would mind. Or realize that some of the search items weren't his. You should've seen the browser history of this guy, I didn't know whether to feel proud or disgusted at him. Well, whatever right?

There were still a few marines and soldiers here and there. B Company would be deployed groundside like the usual, Echo company would remain here, ready to jump into the pelicans at moment's notice. By pelicans I mean escape pods. No one is ready to go to combat at moment's notice unless you are in a combat situation. Why would you feel the need to be prepared to face death? I think its easier to enjoy your free time while you can and get used to the idea of combat as soon as it comes up, no sense in being jittery all the time, I've seen soldiers like that, not pretty, they usually end up killing themselves.

I arrived to my room and found it exactly like I had left it. Bed was still undone, the door to the bathroom was slightly open, the closet with all the booze and stolen goods was secured with an expensive Titanium-A combination lock. Pavel's favorite white-with-hearts undies were still on top of his desk. Had I not known that this room hadn't been touched by anyone or anything for little over a month. In a way it was creepy, but it felt like home. A dusty home. After I was done shaking my bed sheets and checking that everything was still in place I went for the datapad. Pavel's was on top of his desk, but the UNSC-issue datapad that came with the room was placed on a small shelf designed specifically for it. Navy architects/engineers thought of absolutely everything. There was even a couple of robots that could help with rehabilitation and even give massages to marines, soldiers, and squabbies that had a legitimate medical excuse for it.

I grabbed the screen and jumped on my bed. Well, I didn't really jump because then I would've hit my head, but you surely know what I mean. The mattress was what you'd expect from a military-issue mattress, but with time and some vigorous beatings (not that kind, you perverts) the thing had been molded and softened enough to feel like you were sleeping on dirt instead of concrete. It was durable, I'll give it that, I'd once used one of the spare ones to do some punching practice without bandages or gloves, got bruised knuckles for my trouble.

I opened up my datapad, it's transparent glass screen turning opaque and showing the UNSC Inconvenience official page. The datapad showed a very nicely designed webpage of the ship. It contained an image of our frigate along with its name and designation. Then there was a rectangle for placing your thumb on, that way you would be able to log in and access the more vital or confidential information. It was actually weird how the military took the time to design an elaborate webpage with lots of flashy colors and animations. I respect them for that.

I rolled my eyes at the history and past assignments sections of the webpage, while I simply ignored the commendations section completely. I went directly to the one that said 'current assignment.' I lightly tapped the datapad and it immediately took me to a different page. It had our mission parameters written out on it in plain text, it only made it look more boring.

The UNSC Inconvenience has been temporarily assigned to reinforce the Eta Cassopie Defense Fleet after the loss of one of their own ships (see file ECSDF-927493/12). The ship will participate in regular defense duties including patrols and if needed, defense duties…

Yeah, it was all so very dull, a ship had blown itself up and we would have to fill in for it. Don't get me wrong, I appreciated the rest period that came along with it, but soon I would be picking at my eyes in order to have something to do. I hadn't bought any new sim games last time I was on Reach or any major port. Now I would be reduced to bulking myself up to bodybuilder levels and look like a freak or simply have to find something interesting to do.

Then just like that, a light bulb lit on top of my head.

"Aha!" I said triumphantly. "Reading."
Yes, it's a little sad that it wasn't one of my first thoughts for killing time. I grabbed the datapad again and went to the entertainment page that the UNSC provided to its soldiers. There were different sections for films, series, and books or comics. I clicked on the last one. Normally, I would've clicked on the movies section, but those things discount some cash from your salary. The UNSC writes that part in small print. Small font, that is.

For some reason, books were free. I wasn't entirely sure why, but it was a good thing. Besides, they took about a second to download while a movie took a couple of minutes. I wish that we had better connection from the ship's HD to our pads. Having to wait a whole minute for something that you paid for (without knowing) is frustrating, to say the least.

I skimmed through the list of books, finally settling on the war thrillers. I skipped right through the sci-fi section. I did it mostly because I had read some old books, like half a millennium old, and found out that we were technically living in their idea of a sci-fi world. Can you imagine? They didn't even have bases on Mars back then. Hell, even Luna was uninhabited. Back then we were just like cavemen. Technology is wonderful, thank God for that.

Once I read a few of the titles of the war books I decided to go for the highest-rated novels. I had read three out of the five books in the Top-5 list, so I only had two more of those to go. I clicked on them and downloaded the entire volumes into my little screen. I relaxed a little and leaned back on my bed. I used Pavel's pillow to prop myself slightly up and started reading my first book. I hoped it would be enjoyable, otherwise, it could shape up to be an incredibly dull assignment until we were replaced by a new, non-specialized vessel.

The book started out nice enough for me to burn through about two hours. I stopped when I realized I was already about a tenth into it. Not that there was anything wrong with finishing a book quickly, but there is a certain issue about finishing it too quickly and then having nothing else to read. The gigantic catalog of written fiction seemingly did aboslutely nothing to stir my brain to keep reading, so I decided for a shower. Nothing bad with a good long shower right?

I got three minutes of hot water before the ship's AI cut off my suply and let me wash away the shampoo with Pavel's towel. He'd get mad at me if he arrived before it dried of or evaporated or did whatever shampoo was supposed to do. I finished drying myself off with my own towel and puto n the same clothes that I had been wearing. Now I was out of stuff to do. I wondered if it would be better to grab my knife and do some juggling practice or if I should do pushups. I immediatelly eliminated the latter because I wasn't in the mood for excercise, as I previously mentioned.

I juggled for a while before I got bored and changed activities. Soon enough I was immersed in the adventures of Mikah Welsh, ONI spook as he tried his best to stop a war between a fictional UNSC and an even more fictional URF that rivaled the covenant in terms of manpower, technology, and weaponry. It was depressing t oread, but at least it was better than reading about utopian societies ruled by superpowerful AIs with benign tendencies and stuff like that. The concept of a utopia was even more depressing, probably more than I could handle.

I sighed deeply and shook my head as I willed myself to keep reading.

Life is shit, life is boring, life is dull.

Hey guys, hope you enjoyed it. Sorry for the short chapter.

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-casquis