Chapter XCVII: First Line

August 3, 2543 (UNSC Calendar)/

Uppergap Seaport, Uppergap, Lambari, Campo Sorrisco System

"You'd think that they'd have another squad full of competent badasses that could do things just as well as we could." -Corporal Naveen Avninder

"Dammit Eliza!" I complained. "You said less than a day."

"It had been less than a day," she helpfully informed me.

"Well no shit, but you're telling me that it will take them at least a few more hours to arrive."

"Correct," the AI replied.

"Don't get all robotey on me, what the hell seems to be the problem, just give it to me straight."

"The UNSC forces nearby have given up on controlling the seaport for now."

"What?"

The AI interceded quickly. "Just for now Frank, they'll probably send a unit tomorrow or the day after tomorrow."

"Probably isn't good enough."

"I'm sorry, there's nothing I can do."

"Come on! You're telling me you can't divert a couple of platoons to our position? How about you send us half of B Company?"

Eliza was silent for a moment. "I'll see what I can do."

"Let me know," I said, cutting the channel. I looked round and sighed in annoyance. "Ok, you heard the lady, start setting up defensive positions."

The team looked at me in annoyance before they complied with my orders. We had already activated the AA emplacement that the UNSC had mounted in the port to discourage any insurrectionist attacks. I had to thank ONI for their paranoia on this one. As soon as the gun went online I felt a little bit safer. Having a flack cannon active meant that we could shoot down any Phantom dropship that tried to drop off troops behind us, allowing us to focus on turning the entrance into a killzone.

"Sarge," Scarecrow said. "Are they sending drones?" he asked me.

"Yeah, there's one already on its way, no one's coming behind us without our knowledge."

He nodded, apparently satisfied. "How about the watchtowers? Shouldn't we send Snark to one of them?"

"All in due time, with two people we can cover the entire perimeter, save for the sea of course, but that one isn't really a concern."

"Fair enough." Scarecrow looked slightly worried even behind all that armor. "Don't you think a squad is not enough to hold this place?" He paused to get clear as to what he wanted to say. "I mean, the covvies are sure to send a retaliation force as soon as they find out we killed a whole platoon's worth of soldiers here."

"Yeah, they're vengeful like that." I placed my hand on his shoulder reassuringly. "Nothing we can do about it man, we'll do our job and wait for B Company."

"Eliza said that-"

They'll be here, or I'm no Helljumper." I looked at Scarecrow and the smile faded from my face. "Let me rephrase that. Eliza will convince them to try to get here, or I'm no Helljumper."

"Better," Scarecrow said.

Scarecrow looked around and left, his helmet under his arm. I followed him with my eyes until he disappeared and then let myself fall down on one of the more comfortable-looking chairs in the customs office. I took off my helmet and let it fall down on the floor. I swung from side to side in the chair while rubbing my temples; my head was hurting pretty bad. From where I was sitting I could still see the bodies of the dead elites and of several grunts, the sight of them actually helped alleviate my headache.

"Take some painkillers," Schitzo recommended. "You never know when you need a clear head."

Think it'll be bad for me if I mix them with my anti-psychotics?

"Only one way to find out," Schitzo shrugged.

I grabbed a bottle of aspirin from one of my several pockets and put it in one hand, then I did the same thing with one of my anti-psychotics. I looked at each pill in turn, both of them looked almost the same to me. I tried measuring their weight before taking them, but quickly realized the sheer stupidity of my action and opted for throwing both the meds in the air and attempting to catch them. That was a mistake. I caught them both, but one of them went all the way down to my throat, making it feel like I was choking and the other one landed in my tongue, giving me an awful taste.

"Blah," I spat out, trying to get the taste out of my mouth. "Yeah, old fashioned way is better."

"Sarge, you talking to yourself?" Snark asked.

"Yeah," I admitted. "How about you start climbing the northwest tower, will ya?"

"Fine, I'll let you know if anything comes up."

"You do that."

I stood up from the chair, the pain in my head already receding. I went into a small staff room in the back of the building and looked around. There weren't any sofas or even cushion seats, the room's furniture consisted expressively of folding chairs. Working here must've been really uncomfortable. I know that I'd surely end up with lower back problems if I didn't sit down in comfortable chairs.

The only other thing present in the staff room was a relatively large fridge. It looked like something out of the last century, I mean, it wasn't even built into the wall, instead simply being connected to a power output. Hell, I didn't even know they still had power outputs, those things were supposedly illegal or something. Hazard to kids and whatnot. Well, I got lucky that this port decided not to comply with some legal requirements.

The fridge still had some of the lunches that the workers brought before the planet was invaded. There were at least eight different sandwiches, all of them marked with someone's initials to differentiate them from the others. Some of the sandwiches looked noticeably thicker than the others, and a couple of them were at least foot-longs. In this department I thought that thickness was better than length. You could fit a whole lot of ingredients in a thick sandwich.

Now please just ignore all the phallic parallels in the previous paragraph.

I picked the thickest sandwich and grabbed a beer. Corona, go figure. I might be half a galaxy away from home, but I still managed to find a local beer. I could remember the commercials for the pale lager clearly. They would show a stereotype of some other country or colony followed by said stereotyped character suddenly something that was traditionally Mexican.

"En México y el mundo…"

"La cerveza es…" Grass joined.

"Corona!" everyone else finished.

Yeah, we have lots of free time.

"Ok, back to work."

"Yes, Sarge," Angel replied.

I sighed and sat down on the more comfortable chairs that overlooked the ocean. I unwrapped my stolen sandwich and opened it. It had salami, lettuce, three different cheeses, mayo, mustard, and two types of ham. To top it all off I noticed that there were no fungi growing in the sandwich. This man certainly had a wife that loved him. The sandwich was pure gold, I swear.

"Sarge, you ok?" I heard Grass ask from my helmet.

I picked it up and put it in front of me so that I could hear whatever she was saying. "What?"

"Yeah Sarge, it sounds like you're having an orgasm in there."

"Huh?"

"Yeah, are you-"

"Ima stop you right there Angel…" Grass interrupted.

"Relax people, I am just eating a sandwich," I explained. "And it freaks me out that you all think about me having orgasms." That certainly shut them all up.

I ate my sandwich and drank the beer while my team started barricading the entrance and setting up on their assigned positions in case of an attack. While they checked their different positions they each confirmed their own fields of fire and designated targets while I kept drinking my beer. I even had Caboose assign me my own field of fire. Leadership certainly has its benefits.

"Done Sarge," Scarecrow told me.

"Good," I replied. "Now everyone just stay at their positions while we wait for something interesting to happen, got it?"

"Oh, oh! This is my favorite part," Snark giddily informed us.

Bumblebee sighed. "Yeah, no."

"And now we play the quiet game," I said. "That's an order."

I saw the six green acknowledgement lights and nodded to myself before putting on my helmet. Snark climbed one of the watchtowers while the rest of Reaper Squad set themselves up in different positions inside the seaport. If anything walked through the door they would be cut down in a matter of instants. If anything hovered through the door it would be cut down in a few seconds. If many things hovered through the door we were seriously in trouble. But you know, nothing we couldn't get out of in the last second.

I made my way through the entrance area of the seaport. I could see the sturdy yet obviously improvised barricades that everyone without a scope on their weapons had set up. Grass and Caboose had gotten themselves nice positions on top of containers, giving them a high vantage point. The rest had taken different positions at ground level. They had the metal door covered from several different angles. As I said, anything coming through would have an extremely tough time getting through.

I climbed to the watchtower. I am not entirely sure why the port had watchtowers here, but since it was a federal facility it had to be protected. If they wanted to make it a fortress it was fine by me, hell, as long as I didn't have to assault this place I was completely in debt with the architects of the place. Even more so with the person that had authorized an anti-aircraft gun inside the port. Sure, it was only a flak cannon, but being only a flack cannon is like being only a .45 caliber pistol.

The southwest tower was pretty simple, a floor with walls and yet another folding chair. There was a metal floor and some railing on the edge of the top floor, but I had no immediate plans to leave the relative safety of the four walls and roof. At least not after combat started. I hopped out into the balcony and looked around. From over here I could see Uppergap in the distance. The space between the city and the port was nothing but flat fields. If anyone came at us we would see them coming from a couple of clicks away.

So now we waited.

"Sarge…"

"Shhh," I said. "I'm trying to catch a nap."

By the time I woke up it was nighttime. The sky looked incredible from here. There were millions of stars and you could clearly see the different constellations. Well, I guess you could, because everything is different here than from Jericho VII. My point is that the sky was something of a sight. Unfortunately, this planet had no moons, so I didn't get the pleasure of seeing an orbiting satellite in an alien night sky.

"Sarge!" Grass insisted.

"I'm up, I'm up!" I shouted. "Why is it always you that wakes me up?"

"Because you're less likely to hit a girl." Angel explained.

"Fair enough," I admitted while standing up. "Sitrep."

"We've got two Armadillos AFVs coming to our position," Snark said.

"B Company?"

"Yah, they got the fancy war paint and everything."

I sighed. "Told you, Scarecrow, Bumblebee, open up the doors, I'll be right there."

I climbed all the way down the stairs, while I did that I kept thanking the architect that decided to give the watchtowers stairs instead of ladders. Whoever designed this place was a genius or could see the future. Or both.

By the time I got down the door was already open and the armored fighting vehicles were rolling through, lifting lots of dust as they did. The Armadillos stopped once they were both inside and did a half-turn so that their rear hatches were facing me. Scarecrow took position by my right and Bumblebee by my left as we waited for the dust to settle down. The rear hatches of the armored vehicles opened to reveal ten troopers in each cargo bay.

The troopers dismounted from their vehicles and surrounded them in a standard defensive formation. At least they didn't aim at nothing, instead choosing to stand around the Armadillos while examining our improvised defenses. I have to admit, the scene alone was quite intimidating. Or it would've been had I not been able to kick their asses with no trouble whatsoever.

"Staff Sergeant."

"Evening lieutenant," I said, saluting Chloe Delacroix.

She looked me over. "Cut the crap Frank."

"Fine Chlo," I shrugged. "Can I just say that I'm sorry for calling you a cheating slut? I was pissed, I almost died fifteen minutes before I said that."

"Yeah, whatever," she dismissed me, purposely ignoring me. "You eight-"

"Seven now," Scarecrow corrected.

"You seven planned on defending this place?"

"That was the idea," I said.

"By yourselves."

"As I said, that was the idea."

Chloe looked at me and shook her head. "Your fields of fire are completely off, you could hit them from different sides alright, but they could shoot back at you with no trouble. If you moved your men more to the sides-"

"They would hit each other."

"No need to move them all the way to the sides, but a couple more degrees wouldn't hurt."

I nodded, seeing her point. "Luckily, we've got twenty troopers working for us now." I looked at the members of B Company. "Working with us now."

"That's better."

Chloe started walking away from her Armadillo while inspecting the area and barking orders with frightening efficiency. She was completely different from the Chloe that I knew. Here she was Lieutenant Delacroix. I rolled my eyes and walked behind her. She was taking long and quick steps, forcing me to jog a little to catch up with her. Officers favored this technique, it was a psychological thing. Having someone chase after you gave you an air of superiority.

As I walked with Chloe I noticed that her men were giving me death glares. It had probably been a bad idea to let them all know that I had insulted their beloved XO. The fact that Chloe was a good-looking woman probably made them all the more protective of her. I sighed once again and forced her to stop.

"What are you doing?"

"What do you-"

"I mean, just post your men on the door or something and keep an Armadillo for backup."

"Really?"

The way that she asked that and raised her eyebrow at me made me cringe a little bit. She had a thing that made it seem like she was my mother and was completely disappointed with what I had achieved in my life. Sure, Pavel was usually the one on the receiving end, but I knew the look well enough.

"Really?"

"Is that a question?" I asked.

"Depends, are you gonna hit me if it is?"

She turned around. "I'm not going to hit you."

I couldn't resist it. "Are you gonna whip me?"

So she hit me.

Not really hard or anything, but I had taken off my helmet to talk with her, and a soft punch to the jaw is usually something unpleasant.

"Ouch."

"Sorry."

"Whatever. Just tell me what you're going to do, I don't want my men shooting at yours or the other way around."

I left Chloe to do her own thing while I returned to my watchtower. I mean, why the hell had she punched me. I made a joke, granted, an un-tasteful joke, but a joke nonetheless. You don't just punch a person because of that, especially someone that you're going to be working with and that will probably end up saving your life. That's like asking God to strike you down. I mean, I wouldn't punch Snark just before a firefight, the guy might get so pissed that he'd purposely miss at a jackal aiming for my crotch.

Not that the thought crossed my head or anything.

"What a bitch," Bumblebee mentioned once we were out of earshot.

"She's really nice once you get to know her," I said.

"Unless she cheats on you with three different guys," Snark chimed in.

"Which would make her not nice," Angel added.

"So we're back to her being a bitch then?" Bumblebee asked eagerly.

"Apparently so," Caboose confirmed with an almost resigned tone.

I chuckled a little bit but didn't fail to notice that neither Scarecrow nor Grass joined the little roast. Grass was probably annoyed that a bunch of guys would say things like that behind a girl's back. With her being a girl and all she probably wanted to speak out but didn't really want to get in an argument. Scarecrow… Scarecrow was simply too much of a nice person to say what he really thought. Unless he really disliked someone, in that case he'd simply go apeshit.

"Now that we've got that little bit of business cleared up," I said through the several conversations. "How about we return to our posts and keep alert."

"Got it," Angel nodded, holding back a fit of giggles.

"On it," Bumblebee said, having little success at doing the same thing that Angel tried.

"Oh, just shut up," Grass complained.

I ordered them to do just that before climbing the watchtower for the second time. Everything felt a lot heavier than last time. It was probably some psychological effect of it being nighttime. My eyelids were feeling heavy and I just felt like taking another nap even though I had just woken up. I probably shouldn't have eaten that sandwich. Or the beer for that matter.

I did my best to keep from falling asleep. I ignored the folding chair and tried walking around, but eventually I gave up and sank into the uncomfortable metal chair. I slouched myself into a comfortable position and waited for sleep to take over. I know I could've taken a caffeine pill or combat stims, but we weren't really in a desperate situation, I needed to save the drugs for when I really needed them.

An explosion made me snap back to full-alertness state.

"What the hell was that?" some trooper yelled in alarm.

"You heard it too?"

"Well no shit, Sherlock."

"Quiet!" another one said.

"What do we need to be quiet for? It's not like that was-"

"Shut up," Chloe interceded.

I stood up from the chair and looked at the city. From the looks of it twenty blocks or more had gone up in flames. The entire night sky was lit up by the huge explosion. The fireball was still there and slowly fading away.

"Get ready for the-" Snark started.

I had a moments warning before the shockwave hit. It wasn't particularly bad at this distance, but it could still be felt, which spoke volumes about the force of the explosion. The shockwave rocked me slightly backwards and rocked the windows of the buildings in the seaport. For a moment the watchtower seemed to sway under my feet, but then the sensation went away just as quickly.

"Blast radius is about… shit, like seven or eight hundred meters," Snark said.

Angel choked. "They dropping thermobarics?"

"What?" Chloe asked. "They can't do that, not in the middle of a city!"

"They just did," Snark told her.

I looked at the city, the explosion was just starting to fade away, but it left a large portion of Uppergap aflame. The newly-created fires started giving out black smoke that could be seen clearly even in the darkness of night. I looked at the spectacle for several seconds, trying to fathom the reason that UNSC would drop its highest yield non-nuclear explosive on a city with friendly military forces and civilians present. It was half a step down from nuking your own army.

"Did you hear a shortsword?" Scarecrow asked.

"Not me," Grass replied. "Maybe it was dropped from orbit?"

"Probably, shortsword are loud."

"It's pretty far away," I told them. "A shortsword could've done it."

"I guess so." Grass sounded like she was a bit skeptic about the idea. "Whichever way they dropped it, why?"

I pondered on the question for a second before opening a channel to the Inconvenience. "Eliza, what the hell just happened?"

I got nothing in return.

"Eliza? Answer me."

Still nothing.

"Shit." I opted for leaving a message asking her to tell me why they dropped a thermobaric device in the middle of a city. I told her to answer me as quickly as possible, if something terrible had happened in the city, I wanted to know what, why, how, and who was to blame.

"Chlo," I called out, going to the edge of the watchtower and looking for the Army lieutenant. "Chlo!"

"I'm here!" she yelled.

"I think we might be getting some refuges pretty soon," I said. "Or a wave of enemies."

She looked at me and I held her eyes. "Fine," she finally said. "I'll order my men to stay alert. All of them are awake now."

"Good," I nodded. "Reaper, be ready for trouble."

They came at dawn. Thousands of them, if not more. At first it was only a few, the ones that weren't in the blast radius or anywhere nearby, the first groups consisted of only a few people, the ones that came later of more and more. Eventually we had a caravan walking into the port, looking for a way out of the city, off of the planet. Out of the war.

It wasn't only civilians though. Occasionally we would get a squad of marines or troopers coming by foot or by warthog. The story was all the same, they were pinned down, their platoon wiped out, the explosion got them separated and they decided to head here because it seemed like a good idea at the time. Most of the marines and troopers that came here were regular soldiers, not one officer walked through those gates. When I asked one private why he only shrugged at me and kept walking.

"Something went terribly wrong down there," Scarecrow whispered to me. "They're frightened."

"Yes, but why?"

I had a feeling that I did not want to find out.

Eventually I stopped watching the caravan of refugees and went up to Chloe, who now seemed to be in command of a couple hundred soldiers. I, on the other hand, happened to have thirty-something marines serving under me, with that number growing ever so steadily. Lieutenant Delacroix was barking orders at some shell shocked troopers, trying to get them to work appropriately and coordinate with helping the civilians.

"Chlo! Chlo!"

"What?"

Easy there… "Have you made contact with command yet?"

"Yeah, they're sending Albatross and Pelicans to pick up the civilians, there are still a couple of… evacuation ships available."

"And us?"

"They didn't say anything, but the city is lost."

"Shit."

"Indeed."

"So we'll be spearheading the counter-attack then?"

"What?"

"Oh, sorry, I forget that you're not elites. Simply armored cavalry."

"Ok, just because you're a Helljumper doesn't mean you have to be a pretentious asshole."

I smiled. "Oh, but it does. In fact, it's part of the job description." I smiled again.

"You know, up yours."

Yup, certainly a long way from the shy, blushing girl I met three years ago.

"You've changed," I told her with a different kind of smile. No one should be changed that much in so little time. War has a way of doing just that.

"Scarecrow, how many?" I asked after Chloe left me standing by myself.

"By the latest count we've got just shy of ten thousand civvies in here. Many of them are wounded Sarge. Some of them bad…"

"Nothing we can do about them," I said coldly.

I made my way through the crowd, elbowing some of the people that got in my way and pushing out some others. The rest moved out of my way in account to my ODST armor. Most people knew what an ODST was, and everyone thought we were half-insane psychopaths. Too be fair to them, you have to be a bit off to jump from orbit in a coffin with boosters.

"Shit Sarge!" Snark yelled from over his watchtower. "You gotta see this!"

"Give me a feed!" I shouted back, putting on my helmet.

My HUD activated and all the usual gadgets popped up before I got a screen showing me exactly what Snark's helmet cam could see. It showed me the fields in between the city and us as well as the column of escaping civilians. Uppergap was in the background, flames all over the place and smoke drifting up to the sky. None of that caught my attention though, I had seen the sight for hours now. What did catch my eye was the movement near the city's outskirts. It looked awfully close to banshees strafing the road that led here.

"Snark, can you zoom in?"

The Indian sharpshooter complied with my order and showed me up close what was happening. It wasn't just banshees, it seemed like the entire Covenant ground forces that had been in the city were starting to attack in our direction. I could see banshees, wraiths, specters, and phantoms slowly hovering towards us. I even caught sight of some choppers. Accompanying the vehicles was a very large enemy force. By very large I mean fucking huge. As in more than five hundred of them with air support against our two-thirty with two Armadillo AFVs and six warthogs.

"Shit's about to get real," I cursed. "People will start panicking."

"A lot," Caboose added.

"Shit."

I thought about what I was seeing while climbing to the top of my watchtower once again. I was now sharing with two other shaprshooters. One of them belonged to B Company and the other one had arrived all by himself. The second one was a marine sniper, he had a nice SRS with plenty of ammunition to go around. By the looks of it he could handle the stress of combat.

"Hey Sarge," he greeted. "What do you think?"

"I think that you shouldn't be smiling."

"Maybe you're right," the sniper agreed.

"You," I told the trooper marksman. "You informed Ch- Lieutenant Delacroix?"

"Yes, Staff Sergeant."

"Good, what she say?"

"Push the civilians back to the docks."

I nodded, it wasn't like we had much of an option. If we were overrun they could at least try swimming away. Yeah right.

"Grass, Scarecrow, hop on one of those hogs, we're gonna stall the covvies."

"On it Sarge."

"Chlo?"

"Stop calling me that," she ordered me through the radio.

"Fine, Lieutenant Delacroix, we're taking a 'hog to stall the enemy and provide some support to any civilians still coming at us."

"Good, two of my men can take another one, I'll order my AFVs to start shelling as soon as the Covenant is within range."

I hopped down the last couple of steps and left the rectangular building before answering. "Just warn us before you do, wouldn't want to hit us."

"Don't tempt me."

The civilians were now starting to panic. I could see people from all shapes, sizes, and ages running around, screaming and crying. Little kids with no parents or guardians that were evidently not their father or mother were seen all over the place. Women supporting their wounded husbands or men carrying hurt people in improvised stretchers. One in every four was bleeding from one place or another. One in every ten looked like he or she was seriously wounded. One in fifty was missing a limb.

I didn't understand what had happened. The last reports we got told us that the battle was going relatively well, the civilian population had been herded into safe areas and the Army was holding out pretty well against every attack that the Covenant mounted. Reports were almost optimistic about the situation. And now this? Shit, I know that the tide can change, but I never knew it could happen this fast.

"Sarge? Hop in."

"Yeah, sorry, on it."

"I got shotgun then?" Scarecrow asked.

"You've got the grenade launcher."

I knew that the big man was smiling behind his full-face helmet.

Personally I wasn't the shotgun kind of guy, it felt like there was nothing that you could really do. Well, granted, it only feels like that because the guy in the LAAG was ripping through infantry at some six hundred rounds per minute. You also felt more useless because whoever was driving was looking like a badass half the time and the rest of the time they were splattering grunts and jackals under the warthog's hood.

That's just my opinion.

Our battered warthog lurched forward as Grass floored the pedal, the troopers from B Company a dozen meters behind us.

"Grass, where did you learn to drive?" I asked suddenly.

"You don't want to know," she replied cryptically.

"No, actually, I do. That's why I asked,"

She sighed. "Fine, I don't want you to know."

"If you don't tell me I'll find out either way."

"Alright, alright. I'll tell you." Grass swerved to avoid some shrubs and floored the pedal again. "When I was a kid I was kind of a tomboy."

"Huh," Scarecrow mused.

"You wouldn't know that by looking at you."

"What's that supposed to mean?" she asked.

"Grass, you wear makeup for combat."

"Fine, whatever. As I said, I was kind of a tomboy."

"Wait," Scarecrow interrupted, "what kind of tomboy? Like the one that does guys things and hangs out with boys or the one that wants to be a boy?"

"Does it matter?"

"I guess not."

"Just go on," I prompted.

"I would, if you'd just let me." She avoided another bunch of shrubs before barreling through a wooden fence. "I used to drive go-karts."

"I think go-karts hardly qualify for this level of skill."

"And then I did some street racing."

Had I been driving, I would've stopped abruptly. In fact, I almost let go of the LAAG before snapping back to my senses. "What?"

"What?"

"Street racing. As in racing in the street, you know how th-"

"Yeah, I know, I know. But tell me…"

"What?" she asked.

"Were you the driver or the hot girl that did the countdown?"

"Sarge, I will crash this hog."

I laughed at her. "Come on, you know I'm just joking."

"Yeah, yeah, you're an asshole."

The conversation stopped short as blue-white orbs started shooting into the sky. The morning sun made them difficult to spot, but once they reached the top of their arch one could guess where they were going to fall. Now the only problem with that is that it wasn't one or two mortar shots, it was at least twenty different ones from half as many wraiths. Grass now started swerving like crazy to avoid being roasted alive.

I had to hold on for dear life as the wraiths tried to kill me and as Grass tried to throw me out of the car. Whenever a mortar hit too close I could feel the pieces of superheated dirt bang on my armor and the car. I managed to make out the other warthog avoiding the mortars with some luck as well.

"Enough!" I cried, trying to stop Grass from swerving, "We're inside their range."

"They can always shoot straight at us!" she yelled back.

"Not even they are that stupid."

They weren't, instead we suddenly found ourselves being pelted with plasma and brute chopper machine guns. The covvies were starting to fire at us instead of the civilians, the few that were left anyways.

"Weren't we dealing with elites?" Scarecrow asked.

"Hey, shut up and fire!" I ordered.

The entire warthog shook as I depressed the trigger-buttons. The LAAG started firing, slowly at first, but gaining speed as the battery got into gear. The 12.7x99mm rounds started lifting plumes of dirt all over the Covenant line. They were still too far away for me to fire accurately, but enough firepower will make anyone, or anything, think twice.

"Grass, you see that refueling station?"

"No."

"Get to it."

"On it."

"Wait doesn't hydrogen explode?" Scarecrow asked.

"It does, but nothing will hit the hydrogen fuel unless they drop a bunker buster," Grass said.

"You heard the lady, don't be a wimp."

"Never have been Sarge," Scarecrow said while loading his grenade launcher. "Never have been."

"That's what I like to hear," I told him with a smile.

From over here I could see dozens of bodies strewn along the road. All of them presented the characteristic burns of plasma weaponry. Some of the people were still trying to crawl away from the Covenant and towards safety. The refueling station was not different from many of the millions of identical UNSC-sanctioned refueling stations all over human space. It had a bunch of pumps covered by an extended roof and a small store that sold drinks and snacks. The design had held for the past couple of hundred years. It was simple, efficient, and completely unsuited for holding an enemy force.

So why not give it a shot?

Thanks to Sniper Fodder for proof-reading this chapter.

So what do you think? Would you take cover in a gas station when faced by a whole enemy battalion? I know I wouldn't, but then again, I'd have a hard time doing orbital jumps as well. So yes, this chapter is just buildup for what's coming next. Next chapter's just buildup for what's coming after that and so on. Chapter 101 is going to be one hell of a shitstorm, I promise you that. It's also going to feature dalmatians.

Hope you enjoyed and hope you review.

-casquis