Hey guys, I wish I could say that this delay was caused by me writing a life-changing chapter of immense quality. No, that is not the case, a combination of semestral exams, having to leave the dark confines of my room, and overall business didn't allow me to publish earlier.

Anyways, enjoy this chapter.

-casquis

Chapter LXV: A Day in the Limelight

March 13, 2542

UNSC Inconvenience, Eta Cassopie System

Sergeant Pavel Klaus

"Frank!" she shouted. "Is he fine?"

"Focus on landing the damn pelican lady!" the pretty corpsman yelled as she shoved a needle into my friend.

"I'm not a lady," she said, taken aback. "You can't be more than two years younger than I-"

"Shut up and pilot the damn ship Marina!" I yelled at her.

The pelican was spinning around violently, trying desperately to avoid all the flak from below and the missiles from above while trying to lose those pesky banshees on our tail. Marina sure was one hell of a pilot, but I didn't want her to get too sentimental while I was on the goddamned ship. Her boyfriend could wait just enough for us to get to safety.

I looked at Frank, physically, he looked almost the same as he did back in Jericho VII, the first time I saw him in that training base. Well, sure he looked a little bit older, but what really changed his appearance were his eyes, there was some sort of haunted look to them. If you looked at the guy for a few moments and he didn't smile at you, you'd actually feel a little scared. Hell, I've been his friend for seven years and he sometimes gave me looks that forced me to avoid his eyes. Oh, and also all the blood pouring from an ugly gash on his head, that sure made him look different.

"Shit," the medic yelled.

"What?" Marina called from the cockpit.

"Piss off!"

"What's wrong?" I asked, standing up. "Fuck." My legs turned to jelly under me and I slammed to the floor. Obviously, the explosion hadn't been too good for my legs. Explosions tend to have a negative effect on people who are close to them.

"He's crashing!"

A couple of marines pulled out a small defibrillator machine from one of the compartments above the seats and tossed it to the corpsman. She placed it on the floor as another marine undressed Frank from waist up, pulling armor pieces away as fast as he could and then cutting through Frank's shirt with his combat knife. By the time his chest was exposed I could see the extent of his damage. His chest and belly were surprisingly intact, but there was a large bruise on his left side that I knew could only mean severe internal bleeding. It looked like someone had painted him dark red on the side. I couldn't make out any broken ribs or lacerations, but I saw the explosion toss him like a rag doll, so I knew how bad it was.

"Clear!"

My friend's entire buddy jerked upward, his back bending so much it looked like it would break. He fell back down with a sickly noise and then his face turned to the side. His eyes were half open and half closed, and it seemed like he was staring straight at me.

"Clear!"

Frank once more jerked backwards and slammed back down on the floor of the pelican. The blood leaking from his head and some wound in his back that I couldn't see gave me total clarity on the reason why the pelican's troop bay was nicknamed the blood tray. The red sloppy liquid was forming a small pool around Frank's body, and things weren't looking to good for him.

"I've got a pulse!"

I'm not sure why the corpsman yelled everything out, but I think it might've been that it was because she wanted Marina to know that Frank was fine. Sort of.

"Zero gee in five!"

The corpsman was now sticking a big ugly plastic thing into Frank's chest, probably a collapsed lung, judging from the way his entire chest went up and then down rapidly, as if he had been holding his breath for a very long time. She then turned Frank around and revealed a tree branch sticking out of his lower back, right next to the two scars from spiker rounds. It was bleeding profusely, and in a few seconds when she yanked the branch it wou-.

She yanked the branch.

I winced involuntarily.

A couple of marines made noises expressing the repulsiveness that the act caused them.

"What happened?"

"We were shot down because our pilot didn't fucking focus!" I yelled.

"Fuck you Pavel!"

"Drive," I yelled. I was that close to adding a 'bitch' in there, but she was a friend and I would've regretted it later. That close.

Now that Francisco was visibly breathing and the pretty blonde taking care of him looked to be calmer I struggled up and leaned in on the wall. The marines in here were all pretty nervous and just gave me weird looks as they held on to their guns and prayed not to be shot out by some Seraph. I entered the cockpit and slammed into Sheppard's seat as I lost my balance.

"Hey, watch it there tipsy," he said.

"You're getting way to much comfortable with our relationship kid."

"Yeah, yeah, shut up."

I was about to call his mother a fat whore when I decided that his aggressiveness showed that he was finally turning into a real man. Or at the very least into a real military man. That was a good thing, considering the size of the stuff you needed to have between your legs to survive this insanity.

"Vince, watch out for enemy fliers, our radar dish got nicked, it's not working right."

"Yes ma'am," the young Petty Officer said as he pressed a couple of shiny buttons in his console.

I looked out of the cockpit and all I saw was the absolute blackness of space. The sun dead ahead of our ship pretty much blacked out all the other stars from sight and hurt my eyes a little bit even through the cockpit's light-reacting glass. Space is big, and even though I knew that there was a pretty large concentration of ships (both friendly and otherwise) in the area, the only one I could make out was the familiar outline of the UNSC Inconvenience.

"Home," I said.

"Hold on, we're not there just yet," Marina said. "Inconvenience, this is Little Red Riding Hood, please come in."

"We copy Riding Hood, you really need a shorter callsign."

Marina chuckled humorlessly. "Roger that, we've go injured on board and are requesting permission to land on hangar bay number two."

"Roger, we're opening the doors and sending a medical team to help out. You're just in time Riding Hood, we were about to leave, Warrant Officer."

"Well that just wouldn't do, would it?" Marina said. "Little Red Riding Hood out."

The Pelican must've been going pretty fast, because soon we were below the Inconvenience. A couple of doors opened up and a crane-like hand descended from the ship. Marina activated a couple of thrusters and the ship shook violently. The change in speed was enough to bring me to the floor and to send several marines sideways on their seats. I could only wince thinking about Frank's limp and unconscious body sliding forward.

"Oops, sorry about that," Marina apologized.

"Yeah, it's not like we have a dying guy in here," the corpsman, who I was really starting to like, said. "Oh, and you also don't care about him at all, so don't bother about him at all."

"Listen up you little-," Marina started.

"Wait, stop!" Sheppard called out.

"What?" Ten different marines, me included, complained.

"Can you girls save this for later, I don't have my camcorder on me right now." Everyone on the ship except for the two girls laughed loudly. Marina had the decency to at least blush, her cheeks turned redder than Chloe's hair. Chloe yes, right then I didn't want to think about her. That ungrateful cheat.

The craft shook some more when the claw attached to the roof. The space slowly disappeared as we entered the hangar bay of the ship. The two large blast door closed below us and the pelican opened up its rear hatch, letting the marines out and the doctors in.

"He's stabilized, I inflated one collapsed lung and there is some serious internal bleeding as well as some probably organ damage. He was in an explosion," the corpsman explained. "Also, I biofoamed a wound in his back, but you might want to stitch that up, also-"

"Thank you miss, now, if you let me do my job," an authoritative voice boomed.

"Yessir," she replied through clenched teeth.

I turned back and patted Marina's shoulder to reassure her a little bit. I then punched Sheppard's arm hard before letting myself fall on one of the seats, right in front of the doctors that were working on Frank. The one that seemed to be the leader ordered two of the others to put my friend in a hospital cart and gave me a long look before deciding my injuries weren't worth his time. For once, I was inclined to agree.

"Take him to the medbay and start him on morphine, prepare his DNA samples for a backup left lung and kidney. Also, we might need some laser cauterizing equipment as well as several blood transfusions."

The doctor kept talking even as the nurses took Frank's bed away at a speed that many would've deemed unsafe for someone injured so seriously. The doctor was barking orders while jogging away, chasing after his patient.

That left me alone in the pelican's troop bay with the blonde corpsman. She looked at me grumpily before she sighed and shook her head as if I had disappointed her in some way. She turned and walked away, leaving me wondering what I had done wrong.

"Close your mouth or it's gonna hit the floor," Vince said from behind me.

"What?"

"You were staring at her ass man," he said with a poke to my ribs.

"Was not!" I protested. "And don't say it so loudly," I whispered.

"Hey, she heard it and she's probably flattered by it, so what's the point in hiding it? Like my mother always used to say-"
"I don't give a fuck about your mother unless she's willing to give me a nice, long, wet, b-"

Marina half tackling me to get me out of her way interrupted me just in time. She was running as fast as possible to catch up with Frank. She pushed the blonde corpsman out of the way and was inside an elevator and gone before I managed to get back up from the floor. Sheppard decided not to help me stand up, but he did let me lean on his shoulder all the way to the elevator. It was just the three of us in the elevator, Sheppard, the cocky pilot, and Corpswoman, the pretty corpswoman, and me, the wounded ODST. I climbed in the elevator and winced as I leaned on the wall.

Sheppard tried smiling at the blonde girl and her glare wiped the cockiness from his face very effectively. I simply tried to keep my footing as the elevator went up. The fact that we had a corny Muzak arrangement playing in the elevator only served to make the ride more awkward.

"Eliza," I called out. "Turn this shit off."

Unsurprisingly, the only reply that I got was an increase in the volume of the music, earning me a death glare as well. Sheppard looked at me like I was the devil and walked out on me as soon as the doors opened. That just left pretty damn angry blondie and me in the elevator. It was surprising that the elevator was almost empty considering that this was an emergency evacuation and there should be Navy personnel running around like ants.

"Help me out here," I said just as she was about to leave.

"What?"

"Please, you're supposed to be a doctor."

"I'm a corpsman, not a doctor."

"Same thing, you took a vow didn't you?"

She groaned and decided that she had to help me out. I tried not to lean too much on her but ended failing miserably. I limped after her and my entire body hurt with each step, maybe I should've insisted on some medical attention while on the pelican. Just as we were about to arrive to the medical bay I noticed something strange.

"You smell nice," I said.

"Do you want me to drop you right here?" She was evidently annoyed and took my comment the wrong way. That never seemed to happen to Frank, girls seemed to like him as soon as they saw him, but he wasn't all that smooth and sometimes said stuff that would horrify a girl if anyone else said it. Some guys had taken to calling him ECM, enlisted chick magnet, can you believe that? He was lucky as hell in some aspects.

"No, I mean it's weird for you to smell nice considering that you're a combat medic."

"Why?"

"Combat," I said.

The girl actually blushed for a second. "Last time I checked there wasn't anything wrong with being clean," she spat out through the effort of carrying my sizeable frame.

"Of course not," I said, smiling to myself. "So, do you carry perfume on you or is it some sort of surgical implant?"

"Look, I don't have to take this."

"What?" I asked. "I just want to know, I'm not doing this to piss you off or anything."

"Well, you're doing a pretty damn good job at it."

Bitch.

As soon as we arrived inside the small ship hospital she slammed me into a bed and started asking rapid-fire questions on what was wrong with me. Medically, wrong. Her mood changed from bitchy to caring professional in just a few instants. She could've been a good pediatrician if she wanted to, but only for young kids, teenagers being her patients would surely lead to some uncomfortable moments when their hormones started doing their thinking for them.

As soon as she was done she called for a real doctor to come assist me and then they were sticking something in my arm and the world went black.

"Aw shit," I said, rubbing my head. "Where-" I stopped myself right there. Don't ask stupid questions or you'll get a stupid answer was my motto, then I remembered that Frank was either dead or unconscious so I stopped worrying about the humiliation and then started worrying about him. My eyes had a hard time adjusting to the light, but suddenly I was feeling a lot better. High morphine doses tend to numb the pain just a little bit.

"Morning."

The person who had greeted me was none other than Ms. Pretty Blonde Corpsman. There was a large bandage covering her head, and there was a small red spot on the side. Looks like she had hit something pretty hard.

"Ouch," I said. "What happened?"

"Breaking through the covvie blockade was harder than expected, but nowadays, what isn't?" I could only nod in agreement. My question wasn't asked out loud, but it was evident that I wanted to know. "Seventy percent casualties, most of those civilians, we only got some eight million out, military included," she said.

"Damn…"

It always hit me pretty hard when I heard how many people had died. It was never below the millions, never. I knew that this engagement hadn't been a particularly big one, but loosing over thirty million people to the Covenant was still a big loss. Sometimes I could feel millions of souls screaming as they burned in plasma fire. My shrink kept telling me that it wasn't my fault, and I knew that, but that didn't stop the nightmares.

"Hey, you in there?"

"Yeah, yeah, I'm here," I said. "What happened to you?"

"Plasma torpedo hit starboard, ship shook, I fell, hit myself in the head."

"Clumsy you," I said, trying to playfully tease.

It didn't work.

Half an hour later of uncomfortable silence and several morphine hits that failed to make me fall asleep another familiar face that wasn't sporting a white lab coat entered the medical bay. She was looking as good as ever, even with her eyes red, her hair messed up, and a bulky flight suit covering her lower half. The tight tanktop she had covering her upper half probably helped with the illusion. She stopped dead on her tracks when she saw Blondie on the bed next to mine. They eyed each other carefully and then Marina went to the bed next to Blondie's to see how Frank was doing.

I looked around the small hospital ICU and was surprised that it wasn't filled up with dead and dying. We must've been quite lucky to only have half a dozen patients after loosing a goddamned war and having been hit with a plasma torpedo. Unless, of course, there had been lots of instant deaths and no one had survived enough to get to the medical bay. I tried to push the thought away and craned my head to see what Marina was doing.

"How is he?" she asked.

"I dunno," I replied. "I was knocked out for the last…"

"Three hours," Blondie helpfully said. "Doctors said he'd be stable," she added, "that was about the last thing I heard before I bumped my head."

Queue the awkward silence.

"I never thanked you," Marina said quietly. "For saving him."

"Yeah, don't worry about it," Blondie said, blushing a little bit, obviously not wanting to dwell on the topic.

There was another short awkward silence that eventually turned into a more comfortable kind of silence before the morphine really started hitting me and I finally dozed off, perhaps it came a little late, but I was grateful for the rest.

When I woke up, approximately five hours later of drug-induced sleep later I woke up again. This time the morphine had me feeling like I was ready to throw up and keep throwing up for the rest of my life. I started regretting dosing myself so high the instant I tried to sit up on the hospital bed.

Marina was still playing the concerned girlfriend part quite sweetly, with her head resting on Frankie's bed and Blondie was busy reading what looked like one of those romance novels that my aunt used to read, which was both creepy and strangely arousing at the same time. I looked over at Marina and felt some jealousy at Frank. He had a nice, uncheating girlfriend that cared for him and didn't sleep around when he was deployed. Sorry I'm getting carried away here. But Chloe's a whore.

"Ok now, I believe that you're ready to leave," a doctor said. It looked like he came out of nowhere, but then I realized that my head was simply turned the other way and I felt stupid for a second.

"So soon?" I asked. "But the beds in here are soft."

"Yes, and so are you," he said.

"Are you insulting me?" I asked. No one in his right mind insults an ODST. Seriously, no one.

"No, I am ordering you to leave this bed immediately."

"It's not like you need it, there are at least fifty other empty beds all over the place."

"Get out."

"Very well doc," I said. "Just be careful not to find yourself in a difficult situation where I'm in a position to help you. Cause I won't."

That being said I gave the doctor one hard look that was enough to make him shuffle nervously and then bid my farewell to Marina and thanked Blondie before I left. I was dizzy and had bad balance, but a steady hand and considerably less pain went a long way when it came to helping me walk without falling down and breaking my nose against the floor. I was careful to check my corners before I went around them, wouldn't want to be meeting Chloe in there, I fear that I'd be unable to complete my vengeance.

"Pavie?" I heard. "Is that you."

I turned around to find myself face to face with a certain perky brunette that I had some unfinished business with. Marina had seen to that when I had gone inside my room. She had scolded me so bad without even knowing the complete story. The girl in question, Tracy, was Navy, I'm not entirely sure what she did in the ship, but she always seemed to be around and she had taken a liking to me and I to her. She'd serve beautifully for the first step in my vengeance.

"It is you," she said after she saw my face. "I do recall you owe me a certain… favor." She even bit her lower lip and looked into the floor as she said that last word. Such a tease.

"Do I now?" I said with a smile on my face. "Maybe you can freshen my memory?"

"Sex, I am talking about sex," Tracy said bluntly.

"Oh," I was stupefied, "ok then, follow me."

Phase one of my vengeance plan in progress.

Phase one of my vengeance plan is complete.

Twenty-five glorious minutes later my best friends girlfriend ruined my happiness once again.

"Don't you ever knock?" I yelled startled.

"Ok, you can't run away now," she said. Warrant Officer Bogdanovic planted her feet firmly on the ground and placed her hands on her hips, a decisive look on her face.

"I am naked," I protested.

"Shut up," she ordered so violently I could only comply. "Good, now tell me who the hell is that slut?"

"Her name's Tracy, and she's not a slut."

"Whatever, can you explain what she was doing here?"

"Engaging in sexual intercourse with me," I said, deadpan.

"Jeez, you spend way to much time with Frank," she murmured. I wasn't sure whether it was a compliment or an insult so I simply smiled and nodded at the comment as to annoy her. "What I meant is," she started, "why were you having intercourse with her and not your girlfriend."

"None of your business," I snapped.

"Of course it's my damned business, I'm your unofficial shrink in addition to the one you're forced to see every time we dock somewhere, it's like I am-"

"Hey, shut the hell up, that has nothing to do with-"

"Don't shut me up, you think you can-"

"-this discussion, you are nothing but a nosy brat that-"

"-order me around? And I am not a brat, if you-"

"-wants to know everything that happens around in-"

"-call me that again, I swear to God-"

"What?" What'll you do?" I asked loudly. "You'll tell Chloe?"

"If I have to I must," Marina asserted.

"I'll tell her myself when the time comes."

"You asshole, how can you-"

"You don't know the half of it!" I yelled at her. "Or more accurately, you only now half." I yelled that so loudly that Marina took a step back. "Now get the hell out of my room, you have no right to be here."

She mumbled something under her breath, but I think that my aggressiveness took her by surprise, because she didn't try to pin this on me and instead left while trying to look dignified and disgusted at me. it really made me happy to see her leave. And for once it wasn't because I would be able to sneak a peek at that lovely rear of hers. I genuinely wanted her gone.

Now, for phase two of the plan, if I could just get Blondie there to like me…