Chapter CXXIV: Late to the Party

September 16, 2544 (UNSC Calendar)/

UNSC Inconvenience, en route to Asilon, Omicron Ebur System

"Of course we were scared, it was like the beginning of every bad horror movie."- Private Hugh Moffat

"Ok," I boomed. "We're on standby. I don't know what the situation is down there, but I want standard gear ready to go. Load your M7s as well."

"Aye, aye, Sarge," Angel said merrily. The man quickly set to packing belts of ammunition inside box magazines for his SAW. He seemed pretty happy to do so. Everyone else started getting their weapons ready with mechanical precision. For some reason it was Grass who seemed to have the most experience at this. I knew that she could disassemble and put together a rifle with her eyes closed, that's probably why she felt so at ease when loading magazines and cleaning her weapon.

"Gunnery Sergeant Castillo, you are requested at the bridge."

"Damn," I grunted. "Stay put, I'll be right back. Pavel?"

"Yeah?"

"Keep an eye on them."

Pavel chuckled an evil laugh and then shook his head to himself. He turned to fixing something or other on his machine gun and turned his back to me. I immediately departed towards the bridge, grabbing my sidearm and helmet on the way. I secured my pistol in its holster. The magnetic plate seemed to be in fine working order when I tried it, but I preferred a good old-fashioned holster. I could've gone with dark brown leather, but synthetic weave was more practical. I felt weird with bright and shiny new armor on.

"I was called up here," I informed the marine standing guard.

"Of course, right this way Gunny."

I rolled my eyes as soon as he turned his back to me. I had been on this ship for longer than he had been in the military. I could've shown my own way in with no trouble whatsoever.

"Captain," the guard called out. "Gunnery Sergeant Castillo is here."

"Thanks Private, dismissed."

"Sir," the private saluted before leaving.

"Captain," I said calmly. Brooks was sitting in his command chair, back turned to me. The holographic displays in front of him showed our position in relation to Asilon as well as a map of the planet. It was about equal parts water and land. The planet itself was about half as small as Reach, but it had similar gravity and the atmosphere was virtually identical, all thanks to terraforming. The display also showed the last known position of other UNSC ships in nearby systems. That information was obsolete, radio moved as fast as the speed of light did, and with the translight engines information could only move so fast. We did have very accurate locations of Covenant ships. There was a single enemy corvette orbiting the north pole of the planet. It seemed weird that only a single ship was there, but we had to try.

"Castillo," Brooks called out. "It's been a while."

"Too long for my taste, Captain," I said with a smile.

"Claire says hi," he informed me. "Told me to thank you and Klaus for saving her life again."

"I'm glad to know that you two are talking again."

"Rocky relationship," he dismissed, "but I do what I can."

"Sir, why exactly was I called up here?"

"You know Castillo, you always did get straight for the point. Granted, you usually did it in the most insubordinate and selfish way that you could possibly think of, but you always did know what you want. I'm glad to see that you're making an improvement."

"Two compliments in as many sentences? Sir, I'm flattered."

Brooks actually laughed and turned his chair to face me. It had been very long since I had seen the captain. I was shocked to see that he seemed to have aged two decades since I last talked to him. There were lines on his face that hadn't been there before and his entire hair was graying. He still carried himself with an air of royalty, but I could see that this was taking a toll on him. "I called you up here to explain the situation to you."

"Why me specifically, sir?"

"We can't contact the planet."

"What?"

"It's like that, for some reason, the planet is undergoing a complete communications blackout."

"That's…that's unheard of. It is nearly impossible to completely knock off communications on a planet. Last I heard Asilon was a large colony, plenty of relays and comm stations."

"Exactly, that's what worries me."

"So, what do we do?"

Brooks looked pensive as he rocked side to side on his command chair. He directed quick glances to each of the bridge crewmembers, the men and women were all staring intently at their screens. I let my sight linger on the chair that had once belonged to Layla. I looked away and back to the captain, trying to suppress the bad memories. "Well," he started. "From this position we can only scan so much of the planet. Unfortunately for us, most of the settlements are on the other side of the planet. However, UEG intel shows that there is a large communications relay here. It should come over the horizon in about an hour. By that time we'll be in position for a combat drop."

"Sir, if there's an important relay on that area," I said, pointing at the red dot in the holographic map, "then there should be a settlement, at the very least a town."

"Yes, there should be."

"And?"

"It's dark. No signs of live, the only heat signatures come from what seems to be a couple of minor fires and plasma bombardment."

"Orbital?"

Brooks nodded slowly. "Radiation levels indicate low-altitude bombardment. Half the town is burned down by the looks of it, the other half is probably deserted or in ruins."

I stared at the floor as ideas started flooding through my mind. Asilon was by no means a small colony, it had a large local militia as well as decently-sized Army and Marines. I knew that it also possessed an air wing, nuclear weaponry, and ground-to-space defense systems. A single corvette couldn't have caused that much damage under any situation. There was something here that we didn't know.

"Very well sir. I assume that my team will go in and see what we can do to put that relay back into service."

"You are correct Castillo," Brooks confirmed. "We lack any intel whatsoever, the most we can do is download a map of the area and blueprints of the relay."

I nodded. "We've jumped with less. I'll tell my team."

"Excellent. Dismissed."

I saluted. "Sir."

Back in the drop bay I gathered my team around the holo-table. They had already suited up and had their weapons ready. The only things that they were missing was the helmets. "Liz, maps up, if you will." A topographical display of the area surrounding the relay and the relay itself occupied one half of the holo-table, the other half was divided with a set of 2-D maps and a hologram of Eliza. "You take it Liz," I told her. "My head hurts."

"Thanks Francisco," Liz nodded. "Well, here's the situation…"

My mind drifted off as Eliza explained what Brooks had just told me. I traced the carving on my helmet, examining the phrase carefully and smiling to myself. Eliza's voice just became minor droning in the background as I remembered the first time that my uncle had gone all Latin on my ass. It had been when I hadn't been able to fight off a kid that had been bullying me. I had only just arrived on Jericho VII. I was the loner, the new kid, the outcast. Believe it or not, I wasn't always my usual, popular self. I didn't integrate into my new school as well as I could've. Ten year olds can be mean sometimes, and I was on the receiving end of some rather nasty teasing. Of course I decided to fight back, me being my stupid assholeish self, decided to fight a kid twice as big as I was.

Of course I ended up sitting on my ass, crying.

When I told my uncle about what happened he seemed to be angry at me, not because I had gotten into a fight, but because I couldn't solve my own problem. I can remember it clear as day, he yelled at me for not being the bigger man and then yelled at me for trying the stupid way to solve a problem. It had been a rather unorthodox lesson in thinking outside the box. Next day I beat that kid up with a metal tube. He ended up with a couple of broken fingers and my uncle just about ripped my head off.

Apparently that's not exactly what he meant by making my own way. I almost got kicked out of school and lost any chance of making friends. My uncle decided that a little bit of discipline would do me good. And so my childhood bootcamp started. I began alienating myself from school and started doing drills. My uncle seemed to think that he was doing a fine job, but truth be told, he wasn't really father material. Hey, it's the thought that counts.

"Oi Sarge, what's that on your helmet?"

"Hmm? Oh, I carved some Latin onto the jaw," I told Bee.

He put his hands up and I tossed him the helmet. "Laser carving thingy?"

"I called it that too," I smiled. "In fact, it's right there."

"Ah, so you're in good terms with your ex now?" Pavel asked. He smiled at my confused expression. "Please, where else would you get a carving thingy like that?"

"He's right Sarge," Angel said. "We might not exactly be the brightest here-"

"Hey!" Grass exclaimed.

"-but we're cunning."

"Yeah, yeah," I groaned. "For some reason you all think that you're smarter than you actually are. Except Grass, she's probably as smart as she thinks she is."

"Huh, I thought we were supposed to suck up to you," Snark mused out loud.

"Keep being a wise ass and you'll need to," I warned.

"Hey, let me see that," Grass asked Bumblebee. She caught the helmet with one hand and turned it to look at the carving. "Aut viam inveniam aut faciam…fancy." Grass traced her fingers through the carving. "I shall either find a way or make one."

"Ah, I've heard that one, Hannibal," Pavel said.

"Commonly attributed to Hannibal," Grass corrected. "Unknown author. Still, it's a nice quote. One of the best."

"Goes hand in hand with me," I smiled.

"And us," Snark added. "Cause we're the best."

"Don't explain the joke," Bee told him, rubbing his temples. "Just…don't."

We spent one hour just talking and messing around much like a group of good friends would in a restaurant or pub. I couldn't help but notice that Caboose kept apart from the group, resting his back against his pod, keeping his cap on his head as he usually did. The rest of the team didn't even bother with as much as a glance. I didn't blame them, they were probably still going over the fact that they were working with a turn cloak. I don't think that Caboose would ever be integrated into the team as before, but I knew my team, and they would work with him professionally, if only for their own benefit.

"Castillo, we're in position, you can drop any moment now, although I'd recommend making it quick."

"Of course Captain," I replied. "What are you going to be doing?"

"We've let out drones to scan the planet, we'll hide behind a moon until we get your signal."

"Understood, Reaper out."

"Good luck, Brooks out."

"All right men and woman, you heard the Captain, you all know what we're getting into. We jump with packs, grab some combat rations and water. Grass, purification pills."

"I can one up you Sarge, got myself a purification kit."

"Good, take it. We don't know what happened down there, we might be down for longer than expected." While I gave out orders my squad grabbed their weapons and secured them in the compartments on their pods. I took the time to grab grenades and my rucksack. It was the new one that came with my armor. Like the rest of it, it seemed too shiny. I sighed and shoved it into my pod. Once it was secure I placed my battle rifle in its designated space and looked to my team. They were all staring at me expectantly.

I loved this part. "Not only do we go in first, we go in without intel, without backup, without support, but that's all part of the job, ain't it? But that's not the only way we go in, is it" I put on my helmet and depolarized it, allowing Reaper Squad to see my face. "How exactly do we go?"

"We go feet first Gunnery Sergeant!"

"That's right, into your pods! We drop in twenty seconds."

I climbed inside my SOEIV and rolled my neck to see if I could relieve some tension. Immediately after that I cracked my knuckles as I usually did. The door closed and the pod sealed shut with a familiar hiss.

"Francisco, it is highly likely that you will lose all contact with the ship as soon as you drop," Eliza informed me. "You'll only have drones for surveillance, you'll be on your own."

"Thanks," I told her. "We've been on our own before. Wish me luck."

"Good luck."

The pod lurched and left the gravity of the ship, allowing me to feel the familiar sensation of free fall for a few brief seconds before we entered the planet proper. Even with my suit regulating my body temperature I could feel myself growing hotter and hotter, sweat coming out of my armpits, brows, and palms. The drag chute deployed and we cleared through the cloud cover. The land below me showed nothing unusual, it was the typical mix of brown and green. The only thing that caught my attention was the cloud of smoke coming from a settlement down below, well, what was left of it, a large portion of it was nothing but a glass crater.

"See that road over there." I pointed even though nobody could see it. "We land there, the relay is just half a click from that point."

My pod shook as I redirected myself to that position. I saw my squad's pods redirect themselves, all of them but one.

"Bee, what's going on?"

"Rudder's damaged, I can't risk it. I'll land in the town and catch up with you."

"Roger, Caboose, join him, nobody stays alone."

"Sure thing."

Another of the pods turned sharply to try and catch up with Bee's damaged entry vehicle. The ground came closer and closer, my booster rockets kicked into action, further halting the speed of my pod. I instinctively closed my eyes as the pod slammed down on the polycrete pavement. The landing was pretty hard, that's what happens when you hit reinforced polycrete. Still, nothing wrong with me or any of my squad mates, we've had yet another successful jump.

"On me," I ordered lazily. "Caboose, Bee, you good?"

"Yeah, I'm meeting up with Caboose. This town was hit bad."

"This end of it looks better, there are a couple of intact cars, want me to commandeer one?"

"Go ahead," I agreed. "We'll get a move on then." The rest of my squad was standing in front of me, examining their weapons while waiting for orders. "Ok, we start climbing, single file." I looked around and was kind of creeped out by the complete lack of human or alien presence, the only noise that I could hear was that of our pods' hulls hissing form the heat. Far up I couldn't see anything but a cloudy sky and down the hill I just saw the burning town.

"Come on," Pavel urged as he started the climb towards the communication relay.

I hung back a little bit and turned on my helmet's radio. "This is Reaper Actual, Delta-Charlie-Victor on board the UNSC frigate Inconvenience. Does anyone copy?"

There was nothing but static on all bandwidths. I sighed and started walking up hill.

Halfway up the road I heard a car behind. We already knew that it was Bee and Caboose, but we still took a knee and aimed down the road.

"At least they picked a nice ride," Snark pointed out.

Let me explain, they had picked the ugliest possible vehicle that anyone could think off. It was a pickup truck, so at least it got bonus points for usefulness. It was an ugly mauve color and had a sleek design, the designers probably thought it looked futuristic, to me it looked like someone had thrown up and tried bunching their food bits one on top another. Slap a couple of wheels on that and you've got our fancy commandeered vehicle.

"I didn't know you were into purple," Angel muttered. "Especially that purple."

"Believe me or not, this was the best looking car."

"He's right," Bee admitted begrudgingly. "Even I would've picked this one."

"Ok, everyone hop on board," I ordered. "Pavel, I want you to mount your gun on top, Angel, you take shotgun and Grass drives, everyone else try and fit themselves on the rear." I waited for everyone to climb up the truck and took a couple of steps back, it wasn't every day that you saw a squad of veteran killers on top of a girly pickup truck. I took yet another step back and took a capture of the moment with my helmet's camera. It would do.

"Ok," I said as soon as I climbed up. "Let's go."

My feet dangled a few inches from the road. I could tell that there had been some minor skirmishes in this place, there were scorch marks on the ground and bullet casings littered about. So far I had yet to see a corpse, human or otherwise. Instead I kept my eyes on the burning town below us. The fires had been going on for a long time, I'm not sure what was fueling them, but it was probably energy cells or something similar.

"Sarge, we've got a body."

"Human?"

"Jackal," Angel told me. "Riddled with holes, I'd say an assault rifle."

"Keep going," I ordered, "we're not coroners."

"We're here." There was something in Grass' tone that I didn't like. I jumped off the car, went around, and saw just exactly what it was. The relay was of standard design, a rather large facility with several dishes around a large main one in the middle. From this point I could tell that several of the smaller dishes were damaged, but some were intact. That was not what drew my attention. What I noticed the most was the multitude of bodies around the entrance. For every Covenant body there were three dead humans.

"Shit," Angel said, elongating the word.

"Bee and Pavel place the human bodies to the side of the entrance. Please be respectful. Caboose you're on point, Angel, you go behind him. Everyone else stay here."

Pavel shrugged to himself and moved toward the closest human body. He grabbed it by the arms while Bee grabbed the legs, both of them carried it and placed it out of our way, gently putting it down. They repeated the process until there were thirty bodies placed in two neat lines. While they did that I examined the enemy corpses. All of the dead aliens were grunts and jackals, no elites or brutes. What did call my attention was the red brute blood near the entrance. There was enough blood there to have guaranteed a kill.

"What do you think Sarge?" Grass asked from next to me.

"They took the body, that much blood ensures that there was a body, a dead one."

"Hmm, you're probably right. Brutes it is then?"

"Certainly looks like it."

"Sarge," Angel came in. "It's clear, we're in the control room."

"Ok, we're moving in."

Everybody dropped what they were doing and went inside the relay proper. Most of the lights were out, and the few that were still on were flickering at irregular intervals. There were more human bodies inside, most of them had been mauled to death. It wasn't until later that I saw the first evidence of brute presence on the planet. One of the dead soldiers had been impaled to a wall with four spikes, they had all gone through his chest. Death had probably been pretty quick.

"Sarge, over here," Caboose said.

We walked inside the control room and saw Angel tapping furiously at a console, trying to get it to work.

"What's the problem?" I asked him.

"They're running on backup. On backup's backup, I could barely use this to play Galaga."

"Gal- never mind, can you get power running?"

"Probably," Angel said, but that's not my forte, you'd be looking at Caboose and Grass for that."

I looked at them. "See what you can do."

"We could probably rig one of the generators to work," Grass muttered, mostly to herself. "If we had an energy source we could potentially get this whole place powered up, even if it was just for a couple of weeks."

"The smaller dishes have power cells, for when they need to rotate," Caboose stated. "We can scavenge a few of them and use them for the generator."

Everyone looked at the former insurrectionist, none of us had any doubt as to how he had acquired that knowledge. None of us chose to make a comment about it.

"Grass, you go check on the generators, tell me if they're serviceable. Caboose, take Snark with you to the roof, snag a couple of power cells. Snark, I want you to stay up there and tell us if anything comes at us. Angel, what's the status on the terminals?"

"Most of them are in working order, if a little bit scorched, what worries me is the room, they came in and blasted away at everything, had it been elites I have no doubt that this would be a futile attempt, but the brutes weren't as precise. Still, they caused a helluva lot of damage."

"Can we fix it?"

"Probably, Caboose is good with electronics and all that shit, and Grass, the goddamned know-it-all, could probably help a little bit too."

"Ok, you keep trying to redirect the remaining power sources to the main dish."

"How'd you know that's what I was doing?" Angel asked me.

"Because it's probably the only thing that you could do," Pavel informed him in a mocking tone. "Or download porn, I wouldn't put it above you in a situation like this."

"Ha-ha, very funny Staff."

"Just keep at it," I ordered. "Bee, I want you to stand guard at the entrance." The man nodded and took off.

Pavel and I sat down, leaning against the walls. I took my helmet off and stretched my neck, there was something bothering me, I tried rubbing at it, but the knot stayed there. I sighed and just leaned my head backwards, producing a loud clang as I hit the hollow metal wall.

"Black visor?" Pavel asked me. "Gotta admit, looks pretty good."

"Thanks," I said. "Cost me extra."

"Really?"

"Yup."

Angel kept tapping at the console while muttering to himself in Italian. Pavel produced a ball from his rucksack and started tossing it into the wall, he caught it and repeated the motion. I just sat there doing nothing while everyone else worked. Granted, I couldn't have helped much, but I still felt like a useless sack of meat. I sighed and put my helmet back on. "I'm going to check on Grass."

I found Grass working on one of the generators. She had taken off her helmet and had yanked out a piece of metal covering the generator so that she could work properly. She was pulling at the wires and chips while trying to connect them. Or something, honestly, I had no idea what she was doing.

"Everything ok?"

"This thing's not too damaged," she informed me without even turning to face me, "but it's a real bitch to fix."

"How long?"

"I'll probably have it fixed in half an hour or so, Caboose could probably speed up the process."

"I'll tell him to get down here immediately."

"Thanks."

"What about energy?"

"If he's got those fuel cells from the dishes then we should have this puppy running in forty five minutes or so. Maybe improvise an adaptor. This generator runs on hydrogen cells. I don't know what kind of fuel cells the dishes have, but let's hope they're the same kind."

"Understood, keep it up."

"Not like I've got anything else to do," she mumbled.

A few minutes later I found myself on the roof. I looked around and spotted Caboose yanking open the base of one of the smaller dishes. Snark was nowhere to be seen. I sighed and walked towards Caboose. "Grass needs help fixing the generator," I told him. "Better take the fuel cells."

"Fine," he grunted. "We still need more of these."

"How do I get them?"

"Just open the panels on the sides and yank them, not a terribly difficult task."

"Half a dozen fine?"

"It should do," he replied.

I sighed. Again. Then I set myself to finding the undamaged dishes. After getting five fuel cells I finally spotted Snark. He was prone near the edge of the building, he didn't seem to notice me. Then I noticed that he was staring through his scope intently. I placed the fuel cells on the floor and took a knee next to him before drawing my BR55 and aiming down the scope. I didn't see anything down the plains beyond the relay, but I still looked.

"I thought I saw something," Snark told me. "I know better than to raise an alarm over some movement three clicks from here."

"Where'd you see it?" I asked.

"There." He produced a waypoint.

"I can't see anything," I murmured. "Not even shimmering."

"Distance is too great for thermal, at least for reliable thermal."

"The drone is out of range, should come by in about eight minutes, tell it to do a pass over the area, seek for hostiles or friendlies."

"Done deal."

I grabbed the salvaged fuel cells and holstered my rifle over my back. I yanked one extra cell and climbed all the way down to the generator room. When I arrived I saw Caboose slapping his hands clean and Grass looking at him with her arms crossed over her chest. Caboose picked up his rucksack and shouldered it. None of them noticed me until after I cleared my throat.

"Oh, hey Sarge," Grass said. "We're done here, now we just need the fuel cells."

I let the metal casings fall to the floor. "Knock yourselves out."

"I'll handle this," Caboose grunted.

"Thanks," Grass replied. I could tell that she wished Caboose hadn't been nice to her, that way she could still ignore him whenever she felt like it. I had a feeling that she wasn't the only one that felt that way. I shook my head to myself and returned to the control room. Angel was finally done with his work.

"Sarge, we're good to go, as soon as that generator is on this relay is going to be working."

"How long will it be up?"

"These things are supposed to be semi-automated," Grass explained. "This model should be able to function properly for at least two months as soon as it's turned on. They recycle energy you see."

"Ok, thanks for the lesson," Pavel grunted. "Please shut up."

Grass was about to say something when Snark came in through the radio. "Got a swarm of drones, a big one too."

"Roger, where are they headed?"

"Here."

"Pavel, Angel," I said. "You're with me. You know what, we could all use some target practice, everyone, to the roof."

I could see the smiles even behind polarized visors. Human kinetic weapons had a definitive advantage in range over plasma weaponry, needles and beams not so much, but a bullet could travel a whole lot farther than a plasma round. In addition to that, plasma tended to become unstable, damaging its trajectory as it went on and on. This was bound to be fun.

"There," Snark pointed. "Can't really count, but they seem to be about a hundred."

"Oh, this is going to be fun," Angel chuckled.

"I'll fire first, draw them here," Snark said. "Well, or at least get them to come here faster."

"I give the orders here," I snapped. "But yeah, you do that."

We all went prone and propped our weapons on the ledge. I got myself comfortable and waited for Snark to let out his first shot. Instead of one, he let out four straight shots, all of them collided with at least one drone, one round even punched through a drone and hit another one behind it. After I saw the four corpses falling from the air I opened up.

Now, I wasn't nearly as good as Snark was and didn't have a sniper rifle in my hands. I fired in single shots, leading the targets and accounting for drop and distance. Out of ten shots I only managed to score one hit. I groaned inwardly but otherwise didn't stop firing. Once I had burned through the thirty six rounds on my magazine I managed four hits. Four dead drones with an equal amount of bullets, the rest of them were wasted, but I was till firing at extreme range.

"That certainly got their attention," Pavel quipped.

It was true, the swarm had now spread apart and had adjusted its course ever so slightly so that they were facing Snark and me.

"Target the red ones," I ordered Snark. "Everyone else…start firing."

Seven different weapons opened up. The clattering of machine guns was mixed with the characteristic snapping that MA5 rifles made and the booming of the SRS that Snark had. We didn't exactly manage an excellent hit percentage, but we did manage to thin out their numbers. By the time the swarm entered my weapon's range I had packed a dozen kills. Snark had burned through his ammo, hitting a single target with every round. Eventually he just stopped firing to conserve ammunition.

My time to shine.

"Oh, oh, that one! No, no, no, no, that one!" Schitzo was having more fun than I was. That hardly seemed fair.

I fired at a rate of one round every five seconds, taking my time to acquire a target and make sure that I was going to hit it. Pavel and Angel were simply burning through their ammunition, keeping their fingers on the trigger and only letting up when the recoil became too much. The rest of the squad was firing in short bursts, trying to hit the drones on the corners and pack the swarm up close.

By the time they were within a hundred yards less than half of them remained. I stopped firing and let my squad finish the job. The drones fired a few shots, but they were quickly cut down by the automatic fire. It took all of twenty seconds to kill the fifty or so remaining bugs. Not one of us was hit, nicked, or even had a close call.

"Good job," I said approvingly. "Bee, make a run to our pods for the extra ammo stacked in them. Angel, time to turn on this thing."

As soon as we were back in the control room Angel started tapping at the consoles. The Italian muttered to himself in his native language, my own knowledge of Spanish allowed me to catch maybe one word in ten, most of the words weren't necessarily ones that you would use when talking to your parents. After thirty minutes of furiously showing a holographic keyboard who was the boss he finally leaned back. "Done, as soon as the generator is on we can communicate with the Inconvenience and its drones."

"And the whole planet," Bee added.

"C'mon, let's do this," I urged. "Let's make it quick."

A single tap of a button was all it took. There was some whirring audible as the main radio dish positioned itself before actually launching radio waves. I turned on all the channels on my radio so that I would catch anything, I also emitted a broadcast through all available channels, probably not a good idea, but the Inconvenience would be here soon and this was a pretty defensible place.

"This is Reaper Actual, Delta-Charlie-Victor, from the UNSC frigate Inconvenience, does anyone copy?"

I had feared that this planet would be completely dead when we arrived, the dead soldiers had only served to reaffirm my fears. Thankfully, that was not the case, the moment the broadcast went out I received at least a hundred different communications.

"Reaper, wha-"

"-nce, this is Arm-"

"What is your-"

"Enemy forces a-"

"This is Reaper Actual," I said again, drowning out the hundred voices inside my helmet. "I need the ranking officer on the planet to communicate directly with me on…" I picked a channel. "On this channel, everyone else, please refrain from using it. The Inconvenience is on the way to provide reinforcements and strategic support, more ships are inbound."

I sat down and looked at Pavel. "What the fuck was that?"

"Looks like all hell broke loose on this planet," Caboose muttered. "Some of the signals are looped, others are just desperate, I'm getting civilians and military alike. It doesn't sound good."

"Doesn't matter," I grunted while I waited. "We're going to fix this fucking mess."

Thanks to Sniper Fodder for proof-reading this chapter.

Hey! Moffat got a quote, first and last probably, but for some reason I like this character.

This is kind of a weak chapter in my opinion, but it sets the stage for the epicness to come. And trust me when I say epicness.