Chapter XCV: Relieved

July 2, 2543 (UNSC Calendar)/

UNSC Inconvenience, inter-stellar space

"It reminded me a little bit of a series back in the twenty first, you probably never heard about it." –PFC Robert Agnarsson

The alarms started blaring. Again.

"All personnel to battle stations," Eliza ordered through the intercom system. "I repeat, all personnel to battle stations."

I groaned and sat back up. The bridge was in complete disarray as everyone got back up from their respective power naps. Half the bridge crew started hitting buttons at what seemed like random intervals and the other half shook their heads to wake themselves up. The only person that seemed to be fully awake and alert was Captain Brooks. He started giving out orders the moment the alarms started blaring.

"Captain, am I required elsewhere?" I asked.

"No, stay here. I don't plan on having this ship boarded again."

"Roger that," I nodded as I got into position behind the captain's chair. I noticed how several of the bridge crew gave each other sidelong glances at the mention of the ship being boarded. Most of them hadn't been here back in Delta Tyranus, three years ago.

At the thought of that incident my eyes moved towards the location of the communication's officer's chair. I could still see Layla slumped over, her head on the dashboard and the rest of her body completely immobile. I could remember the moment perfectly. I wished I didn't. I wished I could forget.

"Sensors detect three enemy corvettes. The Godzilla is moving in to engage," Eliza reported.

"All Archer missile pods are ready," one crewmember informed Brooks.

"MAC cannon is powered up," another one said.

"Eliza, give me a firing solution on the closest corvette, deploy the longswords and get them in defensive formation."

"Right away, sir," the AI acknowledged. "Done."

"Fire away."

The entire ship rumbled as the slug left the MAC. I couldn't see absolutely anything, but the holotable in front of Captain Brooks displayed everything. The MAC slug flew through the hologram in a couple of seconds and impacted a small model of a corvette. The other UNSC ship with us beat the ship it was fighting against and sent the third one running away. A bunch of Archer missiles detonated against the corvette but it still managed to jump into slipspace.

"Eliza, do you have a jumping solution?"

"Yes, three random jumps prepared, Captain."

"Good, send the coordinates to the Godzilla and tell them to jump a second after we do. I want to be out of here before we have a fleet on our ass."

"Jumping."

I felt my stomach lurch and was forced to lean against a column due to the jump. Going into slipspace usually felt bad, but lately these jumps had been making me feel worse and worse. I steadied myself and allowed myself to feel safe once again. While we were in slipspace we were completely untouchable, but if this kept on going for much longer everyone would die of exhaustion.

All of us had been surviving on ten-minute naps for the last week. At least twelve times we had left slipspace only to find ourselves looking right at Covenant ships. Thankfully those times had only been the first or second of three-jump chains, allowing us to jump again before having to engage the enemy. The rest of the fleet had scattered to do their jumps. They had probably had more luck than us, I never had to live through more than a hundred consecutive jumps in compliance with the Cole Protocol, it usually just took half a dozen at most. If we were found and faced inevitable destruction, we would wipe out all of our hard drives, delete Eliza and maybe even blow up the reactors. That way the Covenant couldn't salvage anything and find out the location of other colonies or Earth. That's also why we didn't jump directly to Reach.

"Let's hope this is the last one," I muttered under my breath. This got annoying fifty jumps ago.

"This one's going to be a longer jump, Staff Sergeant," Brooks informed me. "Feel free to go back to your room and rest."

"Are you sure? Because I can crash on the floor again, just like the last twelve times."

"Don't push it."

"Got it, thank you Captain."

I saluted and left the bridge. The survivors of B and Echo companies had been placed in cryo. Well, most of them. A few of the surviving soldiers and marines had been ordered to stay as a security complement while the injured ones were still being taken care of in the medical wing. That left half the crew outside of cryo to keep running the ship. The ship felt surprisingly empty.

I bumped into a couple of navy noncoms on my way to my room, they saluted respectfully but didn't say anything. I was wearing only my casual uniform, but it was still enough to intimidate most people into fearing me. I couldn't help but wonder if I'd get the same amount of respect dressed up in regular BDU's. I'd have to experiment with that sometime.

My room felt a lot emptier than the ship. Pavel was probably enjoying an extended leave back in Reach. In fact, he was probably borrowing some of my war stories right now to impress a couple of cute girls. I missed the big guy, he made for good company. I kicked my helmet as I walked inside the room, sending it rolling away. I sighed as the armored helmet hit the wall.

I sat down on my bed and let my head fall to my hands. I rubbed my face, I probably looked like hell right now, I had failed to get a good night's sleep the past week.

"Fuck man, you do look like hell."

My room was sound-proof and Eliza was aware of my mental problems. "Fuck off," I told the hallucination. "I don't have time for this."

I stood up and reached into one of the closets. I opened several drawers before finding what I was looking for. My small orange bottle full of magic pills. It had been a while since I had last taken one, instead simply choosing to get used to a wise-cracking alter-ego appearing every couple of days to piss me off. It was actually a lot easier than it sounded, it helped me with my patience.

I swallowed one of the last pills and Schitzo took the opportunity to disappear as soon as I turned around to close the doors again. It never ceased to impress me how he was simply gone whenever I stopped looking at him. Or it. Whatever.

I sighed once again and jumped onto my bed. The nice comfy mattress and the sheets seemed to have some sort of alluring presence, they dragged me towards what I hoped would be a good nap. If everything went well, that nap would turn into a nice solid eight hours of uninterrupted sleep. I guess only time would tell.

Eight hours turned into fifteen.

Fuck yeah.

I woke up and thought that my clock was damaged as soon as I saw it. I looked around as if that would tell me if I was wrong or right before I stopped myself. I went to my clock and tapped a few commands. The device told me that it was in full working order and that no mistakes had been made in the last thirty thousand hours. That was like four years. Or something. I shrugged and decided to ask Eliza just for confirmation. The AI confirmed that I had slept little over fifteen hours and I smiled.

"I assume we're safe?"

"Yes, we did several more jumps after you took a nap, we waited a couple of minutes after each one to see if we were being chased, but no enemy ships jumped after us. We are now en route to Lambari right now." Eliza hadn't deigned to talk to me in person, instead simply sending one of her subroutines.

"Lambari?" I asked. "That's in… Campo Sorrisco System, right?"

"That is correct."

"As in not Epsilon Eridani."

"Once again you are correct."

"Fuck," I cursed. "What happened to them?"

"They're under attack by a small Covenant scout force, no doubt they can handle the three corvettes on their own, but soon enough they will have a whole invasion fleet on their hands."

"Fine, fine, how long?"

"A month."

"How long do I have."

"Just today."

The gym it is.

"Thank you Eliza," I said almost reluctantly.

I changed from my all blacks into a pair of camouflage fatigues and a t-shirt. I grabbed a small towel on my way out and made my way to the gym. The ship's corridors were even emptier than before, most people were probably taking long naps or had opted to go directly to cryo. I didn't like the idea of being frozen so I usually delayed it as long as possible.

The gym was empty. No surprise there. I took off my shirt and checked myself in one of the mirrors after making sure that the gym was in fact empty. I was satisfied with the way my body looked, but I had been slacking on exercising the past few months so there were a few areas that needed improvement. They say that vanity is a sin, but I find nothing wrong in trying to look your best.

So I grabbed a yoga mat and started doing bicycle crunches. They were killing me. For some reason that kind of exercise was ten times as tiring as doing regular crunches. I set myself to do four fifty-crunch series before moving on to something else. I took thirty-second breaks in between the series, mostly because otherwise I got too tired.

"One ninety-nine," I managed out while wincing. "Two hundddd…" I said, letting out all my breath. I used to be able to that same amount of exercise with a lot less effort last time I came here. I really needed to get back in shape, no matter what you might think, combat isn't really an adequate workout. Sure, it's tiring and exhausting, but mostly because you're running away from plasma fire or because you're waiting hours to ambush someone.

Regular exercise, it's different. A whole lot more enjoyable. I grunted as I tried taking in more air and reached for a water dispenser, taking two long drinks before finally stopping myself, I didn't plan on stopping right now and I didn't want to be getting cramps or anything like that.

What now?

I could keep working on my abs, but to really develop them I needed to give them some time to rest and heal. Whatever that means. Instead I decided that I should probably work on my legs. I liked the way that my chest, shoulders, and muscles looked. Toned, but not overly big, I didn't really like the bodybuilder look, besides, I hear that most girls didn't like it either. If they did, I would've thought about it.

I went to one of those fancy machines that had like a billion different functions and sat on it. I set a decent amount of weight to lift with my leg and started lifting. I didn't really have a set number in my head, but I guess that two series of twenty-five for each leg would work. If I wasn't tired by the end I would probably do some more. I rarely exercised my legs, the running away usually did it.

I sighed after doing twenty-five with my left leg. I started shuffling sideways to work on my right leg when I saw someone walk into the gym. Excuse me, I saw someone skipping into the gym.

"What are you so happy about?" I asked Lockley.

She stopped dead in her tracks and looked at me. Unsurprisingly, she blushed like a tomato.

"No need to be embarrassed," I laughed.

"I am not embarrassed," she snapped, quickly controlling herself and doing her best to look indignant. "You just surprised me, that's all."

"Sure," I said. "What's with the skipping."

"I don't believe that's any of your business."

"I'm still your superior," I reminded her.

"Sir," she added in between her teeth.

I don't think I actually was her superior, and in most circumstances I wouldn't have any kind of command over her, but she didn't need to know that. The chain of command was complicated enough as it is without adding other military branches to the mix. You could have a corporal leading a squad just as you could have a staff sergeant. Don't even get me started on who lead a company, sometimes a captain, sometimes a major. Hell I had even seen light colonels leading company-sized units.

"Relax, I was kidding."

She huffed and I resumed doing my workout, keeping an eye on her without any worries about what she might think. She probably had me pegged for an asshole already, so what's the loss in being one to her?

I couldn't help but notice her prettiness. I know, I know, I have described her to you incessantly before. If I am not mistaken I did include one or two paragraphs related solely to her eyes, but it was justified, they were lovely. She had a nice figure, not supermodel measurements of course, but if she wore the right clothes she would turn heads wherever she went.

Right now she was wearing the right clothes.

She wasn't wearing fatigues, instead she had opted to wear a nice pair of those tight shorts that were called volleyball shorts for some reason, even though volleyball was played with a full-body suit. I couldn't help but notice the way that they showed of her derriere. On top she was wearing a gray UNSC t-shirt. It was tight as hell. I suddenly realized that it was a possibility that they made the shirts they issued to us tight not to piss us men off, but to show the girl's bodies more.

By the looks of it, she wasn't wearing a sports bra.

I had to stop myself before I started grinning like an idiot.

Hanna Lockley was (at least by my observations) a girly girl kind of girl. Did I say girl too many times in the same sentence? Probably, but that doesn't matter. If I was any good at reading people (which I don't think I am) I could see that the fact that she wore such tight and form-fitting clothes meant that she liked her body and would show it off more often if she wasn't so decent. Not that there's anything wrong with decency, but some people ought to loosen up a little. Just a little.

"Can you stop staring?" she suddenly snapped.

Can you wear a sports bra?

"What?"

"Nothing," I said, looking away to hide my expression.

"What did you say?" she insisted.

"Nothing," I lied once more.

"Yes you did."

"No I didn't."

"You did."

"Did not."

"Did do."

"Nah-ah."

"You did."

It went on for longer than I am willing to admit. "I'm not telling you," I finally told her.

"Fine."

It wasn't more than five seconds of silence.

"You're still staring at me," she informed me.

"I am aware of that."

"Why?" She was as irritated as it could get.

I think you know why.

"All right, I'll stop," I finally relented. I gave her a small smile to get across the message that I was just messing with her, even when I wasn't.

"Finally."

I stopped doing lifts with my right leg and started doing them with my left leg again. I could already feel the strain in my muscles. I really didn't care about having toned leg muscles, but it never hurts to be a little bit stronger, it might just save your life. Once I was done with my left leg I started with my right leg again, wincing with pain as I reached the last lifts. I heaved out air with relief as I finished. Who would've thought that this would get so tiring after not doing it in a couple of months.

Once I got a minute or so of rest I faced another dilemma. I still had a lot more time to kill. I had worked on my legs and abs, so the only logical answer was to work on my arms. Or my chest, or shoulders. I placed myself by the mirror and flexed my arms backwards to examine them. My shoulders seemed to be nicely toned and looking as awesome as the rest of me, so no problem there. Biceps looked nice and both left and right arms were the same size. Triceps weren't so bad either.

I know, I know, I sound like an arrogant asshole that is in love with himself, but I am just telling you this for the sake of narrative people.

Chest it is.

I sighed and dropped to the floor. I hated pushups like nothing else in the world, Gabuka had seen to that. I had done more pushups than anyone else would do in their entire life in the first two months of boot camp alone.

Four series of fifty. I told myself. It wasn't really that much, the problem was that knowing myself (which I actually did) I knew that I would try to get them done as quickly as possible and would only succeed in tiring myself.

One… two… three… four…

I made a point to keep my arms relatively close to my body so that I could work on different muscle groups and not just on my chest. The closer my arms were to my body the more I worked on my triceps and less on my chest. I opted for a relatively standard distance and started pumping away. As I let myself fall down and push myself up again and again I kept my core tightened, supposedly it helped muscles develop more.

Forty-nine… Fifty.

I let myself fall to the floor, landing on my chest. I didn't think I could take another three series of this without at least ten minutes of rest in between each other.

But then again, I am nothing if not perseverant. I wouldn't be alive if that wasn't the case.

Fifty. I thought for the second time. My arms and chest were burning.

Fifty. My arms were in horrible, horrible pain.

Forty-nine… come on fucker, you can do this. Fiiiiiiiiifty.

"Thank God!" I praised as I rolled on my back and took in as much air as possible.

Don't mock me. You try doing fifty straight pushups without stopping. Proper pushups. Now do that four times in a row. Yeah, didn't think so.

Someone splashed water on me.

"Puta madre!" I cursed. "The fuck?"

"You looked like you needed it," Lockley shrugged. "Need help?"

My first thought was something along the lines of "I'm gonna kill this bitch." The second one was "Wow, the water is actually quite nice. My third thought was "Whoa, she looks great all sweaty, I wonder if…"

And then I stopped myself. I know, regrettable, but I didn't want any accidents while in the gym, especially in front of a woman. You know what I mean by accidents.

"I'm good," I said, getting up with great effort.

"Doesn't look like that," she said with a raised eyebrow.

"Stick to fixing up people that are actually wounded, doc, anything else is probably hard for you to understand."

Shit.

She shot nuclear bombs at me through her eyes. Apparently that's a side effect of being beautiful. Every single girl I knew had the power to do that. Lockley had obviously been offended by my comment. If she hadn't been offended she had at least disliked it. I didn't blame her, it was more an insult than a comeback. Sometimes you screw up, nothing you can do about it, just try to fix it if you want.

Dumbbells. I though, distracting myself from my screw-up. Or barbells?

You see, dumbbells are usually better for working on the arms, while barbells are best used for anything related to the chest. I could also use dumbbells and do presses with them, but it was awfully uncomfortable. The pushups had left my arms hurting. Everything from my elbow to my shoulder was burning and the same could be said for the outer sections of my chest. Doing presses would be just like doing pushups but with more weight and less control over it.

So the question was, where should I torture myself?

I sighed in surrender and grabbed a pair of dumbbells, putting on a meager seven kilos on each. Well, meager for my routine at least. I usually did three series of fifteen curls with both hands. I could do them with as much as fifteen kilos with relative ease, but I had no doubt that most of that was my superhuman muscles and strength. I actually panicked a little at the thought of doing all my routine without any sort of augmentation. Suddenly I started feeling a little bit more respect for Sutton, to keep a body like that was something of an achievement.

The dumbbell curls left my arms burning some more. A lot more, in fact, but nothing that I couldn't handle. I had been shot, beaten, stabbed, slashed, pounded, stepped on, and blown up more times than I could count or care to remember and I had made it out of those just fine before I fainted. Those higher pain tolerance implant thingies that I had been given when I graduated from Camp Mars IX were really a small miracle.

I went for the water dispenser and drank some more before splashing some of the cold water on my face. I usually would be doing my routine with Pavel, it would turn into a semi-friendly competition that would keep us going throughout the hour and a half or so that we exercised. I actually looked forward to that. This, this was just self-torture. Why would anyone go to the gym alone when they could have pleasant company?

After five minutes of standing around like an idiot and getting my breath back I decided that I had had just about enough. I drank some more water and dried myself with my small towel. My legs were awfully hot, I should've brought shorts instead of the cargo pants that I had decided to put on, but I had been too much of a lazy slob to look for a pair in the garbage dump that I liked to call my quarters.

Had I been a regular noncom I would be taking my showers in the gym, sharing them with the rest of the regular infantry. I would also share the same amount of foot germs and athlete's foot that they all did. Instead, I had my own shower. It was the little things, but they made my life easier.

The cold water hit my face and I immediately felt better. I kept the water cold for a few seconds and let it run all over my body, washing off the sweat. As soon as it actually started feeling cold I turned it to hot. It took a while to find the desired temperature, but eventually I nailed it. We should have those showers with screens for handles instead these relics of the last century that we still had. Still, it was better than nothing. This was probably the last shower that I would take in a while.

As soon as I left the shower and dried myself I got dressed again to go to the mess hall. Some of the Navy personnel were already being put to sleep, I still had a few hours left, that meant that I could catch a nice meal and a few hours worth of sleep.

I wasn't the only one who had that idea. Even a rookie with just one tour of duty under his belt would've thought of the same thing that I did. The mess hall actually looked slightly crowded when I arrived. Most of the people having their last meal here were Navy, Reaper Squad was probably the only unit belonging to the UNSC Marines on this ship that were still outside of the freezers.

The line was relatively short, but I still managed to get a group of young sailors to let me ahead of them through sheer presence alone. It probably helped that I had decided to pick up combat boots in addition to black pants and a black t-shirt with the letters ODST printed in white. Just to make sure everybody knew who I was.

"Lasagna for you buddy," the person serving me said.

"Thanks," I nodded as I moved to the side and got my serving of asparagus.

It wasn't very hard to find someone from my squad, everyone else wore either gray or blue to mark them as UNSC Navy. I quickly spotted Sutton and Grigori at a table by the edge of the mess hall. To be fair, Sutton wasn't all that hard to spot. He was easily the tallest man in the room and the most muscular as well. Konstantinov was just sitting opposite him.

I sat next to Sutton, urging him to shuffle sideways on the bench. "Can't believe we actually got some decent chow," I said, eyeing my lasagna.

"Agreed," Sutton nodded. "It's actually pretty good."

I took a bite and hummed happily. The crappy lasagna was pretty good by any standards. It was probably one of those insta-cook types, but that didn't take any of the taste away from it.

"Do you ever take off your cap?" I asked Konstantinov, who had been quiet since I sat down.

"This?"

"No, that," Sutton snarked.

"What? Where?" Konstantinov asked, looking to the side and pretending to be searching for whatever Sutton had pointed out.

"Are you going to answer?" I asked.

"Yes. I take it off when I go to sleep and when I put on my helmet."

Not an answer that left my curiosity satisfied, but an answer nevertheless.

"Why don't you take it off?" Sutton inquired.

"That," Grigori said, "I will not answer."

Sutton and me shrugged and dug into our meals. I had gotten a large serving that I was very thankful for, but I had just gone through some tiring exercising and wanted to replenish anything that I had lost. At least my body wanted to. I ate through my meal like lightning and got up to get another serving. It was a smaller serving, but it did the job and filled me up quite nicely.

While I ate we discussed several things, mostly we joked around about things that had happened back in Ninive. Konstantinov was actually a pretty nice guy, someone that was easy to be around with, but I had a very hard time actually liking him when I knew that ONI had sent him here to inform them on how my augmentations performed. We probably would've gotten along well under different circumstances.

I guess it was not to be.

"Well, I gotta go catch some zees," Grigori announced as he stood up in exaggerated motions.

"See ya bro," Sutton said.

I simply nodded at him.

"So, Sutton," I said, turning to the huge man. "Anything you think that we could fix? In our squad, I mean."

Sutton hummed and thought for a few seconds. "Not really, I mean, it's probably because all of us survived without complications, but I think that we might want to have more than one guy stand guard."

"Sounds reasonable," I agreed. "How many?"

"Three men was the norm in my training camp, it always worked. Even if the rest of us were still sleepy and disoriented the rest could fight properly."

I thought about it. "That's gonna piss some people off."

"Until it saves their lives."

"Until it saves their lives," I agreed. I leaned backwards, stretching my arms and my back, still hurting from my workout in the gym. I suddenly thought that I probably could've done a whole lot other things to make a decent length routine.

"Well Sarge, I'm going to have to catch some sleep as well, we'll probably be defrozen to drop into combat, and I'll feel just as tired as I do right now."

"Go ahead," I said, motioning with my hand.

Sutton left and I finished my meal. I went back to my room after I was done and caught some hours of sleep before Eliza woke me up. I forced myself to get up and walk all the way to my assigned cryo-bay. I cursed and mumbled as I walked to the pod-filled room. My squad was already there and the rest of the assigned personnel were already sleeping.

I said some quick goodbyes to Reaper Squad before climbing into my pod. I was half asleep by the time the door closed. I could feel the anti-freeze fluid that I had swallowed. It tasted like shit and bothered me to no end. I took a deep breath and hoped that I wouldn't have any dreams. I couldn't take one month of nightmares.

As per usual, thanks to Sniper Fodder for proof-reading this chapter.

Only a couple of things to say now. The series that Agnarsson was talking about in the chapter quote is Battlestar Galactica (the most recent one). I'm not really talking about the series as a whole, but I based the first part of the chapter on the pilot episode of the series. They're in quite similar predicaments.

The second thing is mostly useless and you'd do well to stop reading past this point. Oooh, could it be that Frankie is getting yet another love interest? Yes? No? Maybe she just wants to be friends with benefits. Maybe she doesn't want anything at all. But it seems like Frank still loves Layla, or at least cares about her, could it be that he broke up with his previous girlfriend for that reason?

Ok, you can start reading again now that I stopped acting like a twelve year-old Twilight fangirl. And no, you shouldn't take anything in the last paragraph as true.

Stay Strong

-casquis