Chapter CLXXII: Snow Cones

March 1, 2549 (UNSC Calendar)/two days later

UNSC FOB 'Fountain', Udinia, Paris IV, Paris System

"The blood the little ones leave behind always gets me in the mood for a blueberry snow cone."– Lance Corporal Takacs Sandor

My right side was in what I could only describe as a raging pain. It had been that way ever since I had woken up a day ago. It had been a long time since I had been unconscious for more than one day, but I could count on waking up in pain every time something like that happened. The painkillers were doing their job pretty damn well already, but with medical supplies being pretty scarce, I had been treated as I would've been a couple hundred years ago.

Vinter was in a bloody white coat with his sleeves rolled up to his elbow. If he had to operate while wearing his lab coat then it meant that the victims had been too many for him to change into proper scrubs. He looked tired and he had bags under his eyes.

"Frank, this was all very unusual," he said. "I want to make sure that you understand why you can strain yourself too hard."

I nodded and groaned. "Ok, shoot."

"All right. The spike that hit you in the chest, the lower one, didn't do much damage. Your armor did its job right and stopped the spike, just half an inch went through. Painful, but not life-threatening or serious at all. I used some spare biofoam for that and patched it up. The gash in between your ribs… well, that one was a funny one. Not to you perhaps, but you get my point." Vinter chuckled weakly and shook his head to himself. "If your ribs had been your natural ones the spike would've punctured the lung and you would've likely drowned in your own blood, but the titanium implants deflected the spike. It went in between two ribs and carved out skin and flesh in between."

"Yeah, yeah, but it barely scratched the titanium," I said. "Next."

"This is the good one," Vinter said, looking down at his datapad. "The spike went through the armor and completely shattered your collarbone. Collarbones are supposed to be easy to heal, but given the circumstances ONI wanted you back on your feet and had me get you an implant. Same material as your ribs, armor-grade titanium. Sounds fancy, right? Well, the implant is just three inches long, but if you have any trouble with movement I'll fix it."

"But later," I said. "Doc, thanks for everything, even the butchering that you did on the gash on the ribs."

"Yeah, that'll leave a scar."

"But I'm leaving tomorrow and I honestly just want some rest."

"Very well. Oh, before I forget, that patient you asked about…"

"Eliza," I said. "Atkins."

He tapped a few buttons on his datapad. "She's fine. Just a concussion. She'll be out in a few hours."

I smiled. "Good, good."

"That's all then, sorry to bother you."

"No problem Doc."

"Oh, and there's someone here to see you."

I nodded and leaned my head back on my pillow. If someone wanted to visit me, then they could deal with me having my eyes closed while I talked.

"Frank?"

I jerked my eyes open. "Katie?"

She was standing right over the door, looking meek and uncomfortable. She was wearing a pair of old and dirty jeans and a thick jacket that looked scavengedfrom a corpse. It had been scavengedfrom a corpse, by me.

"Is this a bad time?"

Not at the time, but if Hanna walked through that door then it would be a pretty bad time.

"No, no. Of course not. What are you doing here?"

She smiled and looked away nervously. "I don't know. I just wanted to make sure that you were ok. You did save me."

"I save a lot of people, but I haven't saved you yet."

"Yet?"

"Let's hope I don't have to save you at all," I said. "Ever."

Katie smiled and walked up to my bed, pulling a chair with her and sitting next to me. I smiled back, it felt good to know that people cared about you, knowing that your funeral would be at least partially crowded. Katie made it a point to look like this was awkward and straightened her back, crossing her hands on her lap.

"How are you?"

"I'll be fine," I told her. "I just heard about Eliza, send her my regards."

"I will." She smiled again. "She'll be happy to hear from you." Katie immediatelylooked like she regretted saying that.

My smile turned into a grin. "Really, why?"

Katie made a face, pursing her lips and moving them to the side. "Who doesn't like getting good wishes?"

My mind started machinating different reasons why Eliza would be happy, but the most popular one by far was the one where she was incredibly attracted to my rugged good looks.

"Really?"

Katie laughed. "No." She paused. "She's young and stupid."

"Unlike her older cousin," I said. "I like her. Seems pretty level-headed to me."

"Just don't flatter yourself," she warned. "With half the guys she knows dead she'll settle for anything."

I couldn't stop smiling. It felt like I was back in middle school and I got a little note saying that someone liked me. It was flattering and… well, it was flattering. "I take it you settled for me too?"

Katie patted my hand. "You seemed like you hadn't gotten some in a while. I kind of pitied you."
To be honest I didn't have a good Comeback to that. Before I got together with Katie I hadn't had sex for six months. Coming from a guy that had been in a steady relationship for a while and constantly had sex, it was a pretty long time.

"Well?" she asked.

"I was on a completely different planet," I reminded her. "So it doesn't count."

"Excuses, excuses."

Then it was quiet for a while. We could talk some, but things were still incredibly awkward between the two of us. I couldn't blame her for it, I still had a hard time holding her stare sometimes, and it had been me who fucked things up here. I leaned back down and closed my eyes for a moment while Katie examined the entire room twice. At least that's what I assume she did, because my eyes were closed.

"How long until you are ok?" Katie finally asked. "I mean walking around."

"Tomorrow morning. They gave me some weird thing to accelerate the healing process, but I'm going to be hopped up on meds for a while until the wounds scar."

"Tomorrow?"

I nodded slowly. "Yeah, we're leaving tomorrow morning."

"You're leaving?!" she exclaimed. "Why didn't you–"

"Tell you? I was unconscious, remember?"

Katie looked away. "And it's not like you have to tell me anyways."

"No," I agreed. "No it's not."

She squeezed my hand lightly and then moved a little bit closer than should've been appropriate.I found myself lifting my head towards her a little bit as well, stopping just shy of it becoming really inappropriate.

"Where are you going?"

I could feel her breath.

"You know I can't tell you," I replied in a whisper.

Then things became a little blurry. Her lips met mine or maybe it was the other way around, but we started kissing. I felt her hands leave my hand and up to my face. I grabbed the back of her neck and pulled her towards me. There was a throbbing in my side, but I ignored it, kissing her harder as she responded in kind. The room's door had a big window on it and anybody that cared to look could see us.

Katie shifted her weight and half-climbed on the bed so that she didn't have to twist so much to kiss me. The momentshe did that I spasmed and let out a small cry of pain. She pulled back from me and took a deep breath, a look of surprise and worry on her face.

"Are you ok?"

"Yeah," I groaned in pain. "Just great."

"Did I–"

"No," I cut in. "It wasn't your fault. I shouldn't have kissed you."

She shook her head. "I kissed you."

"Kind of felt like I kissed back." I looked away. "I can't do this, you know. I have a girlfriend."

Katie looked exasperated. "Then why do you keep… encouraging me?" she asked. "You have no idea how much you hurt me Frank, but I can't…" she looked away.

"You can't what?"

"I love you Frank, God knows you don't deserve it, but I can't help it." She looked away from me and leaned back in her chair, an angry expression in her face.

"You used me and–"

"I didn't use you."

"And then just left me like a rag," she finished. "And now you're back and I can't bring myself to hate you... quite the opposite."

I remained quiet for a second. "What do you want me to do Katie? I have a girlfriend and I love her."

"What about me then?" she asked. "Someone's got to end up alone here Frank."

"That's not what I want."

"You dug yourself into this mess," Katie said, standing up and walking towards the door. "Now dig yourself out."

"Wait. Stop!" I took a deep breath. "I do love you."

For a moment her expression became one of happiness and relief, but then it changed back into a mask. "You love me and you love her?"

I nodded. "Well, you do whatever you think is right Frank."

"Wait–"

"I'll tell Eliza you said hi."

And with that she stepped outside and left me alone.

"Damn Francisco," Schitzo said, squeezing my good shoulder. "I wouldn't mind leaving your girlfriend of six years for that hot piece of ass. I think she tried to pressure you into choosingher." He laughed and I closed my eyes again, trying desperately to fall asleep.

Pavel had a grim expressionon his face that I had only seen on him during Scarecrow's funeral and other similar occasions. It wasn't only his frown or look of pensiveness; it was his whole body language. If a man saw Pavel with that expression then they would know better than to disturb him. Even I felt a little bit uncomfortable when facing that gaze, and I had had to stand up to the legendary glares of Marina and Layla more than once.

"That's the whole story?" he asked.

I nodded.

"Well, you didn't paint yourself in a good light so I know it's true. It's better than I expected," Pavel rolled his helmet in between his hands. "You really do love this girl, don't you?"

"Yes. If you'd met her you would understand."

"No, until you solve this debacle I don't want to go anywhere near it."

I shrugged, it was understandable. "All right. Suggestions?"

Pavel thought about it for a moment and then stopped spinning his helmet so that the visor was facing me. His helmet was a standard version of the ODST helmet with the addition of a small piece of plating on the forehead. It wasn't his first helmet and probably wouldn't be his last. My own helmet had lasted a pretty long time already, I liked the dull black visor on it. It gave the armor an even more menacing appearance.

"Frank. You fucked this up. You fucked this up real good. The only piece of advise that I can give you is to try and not hurt any of these girls, especially Hanna."

"Easier said than done," I grunted.

"Yup, but that's not my problem." Having said that he spun his helmet onto his head and secured it to the rest of his suit before walking back towards Fightmaster's Pelican. There were four Pelicans tightly packed together. Two were for my platoon and two were for Jen's platoon. I just knew that we were going to be redeployed to a different part of the planet. I wasn't terribly happy about it, but at least I would be away from both Hanna and Katie, have some time to think by myself.

"Nothing gets you focused like plasma fire," Schitzo said in agreement.

But all of this was very hush-hush. I didn't expect anything too surprising to come out of this, ONI liked to keep absolutely everything in wraps, even if everybody knew about it. Take for example the Spartan program. Pretty much every veteran Marine knew that they were real before ONI revealed it to the public officially and it had been that way for years already. Or the Orbital Defense Grid they were building back on Earth. They didn't talk about it very much even if you could just look up at the sky and see the hundreds of platforms being constructed. ONI was paranoid, sometimes ridiculously so, but they had a job and they did it better than anybody else, I had to at least give them that.

"Wow, I was surprised when you stopped hating Spartans," Schitzo said. "Now you're going to start respecting ONI?"

I respect Spartans. And I hate ONI, I just think they are necessary.

"What was that?"

"Ah, Jen, glad to have you here. You're late."

"Yup," she agreed, scratching the scar on her cheek. "But now I'm here and we're waiting on you."

Her whole platoon jogged past me and threw their duffels into the Pelicans as she said that. That left me feeling quite like an idiot.

"Bitch," I muttered under my breath. "Race you to the finish line?"

"For all I know we might have different finish lines," she called out from the hatch of her Pelican. "Good luck!"

"You too," I cried as the hatch closed. "You too…"

It was a long flight, just over four hours long. The Pelican had to go at subsonic speeds in order to go unnoticed by covvie drones or sensors. High speed usually meant urgency. Wind currents occasionally shook the Pelican, but I had no trouble falling asleep. I was slouched and Sandor was leaning on my shoulder when an alarm woke me up. I snapped my head up and shook Sandor off my shoulder.

"Hey," he muttered, still half-asleep.

My eyes hurt when I opened them, but they quickly adapted to the dim lighting in the Pelican. My HUD was turned off, but as soon as I opened my eyes it flickered back on and a small screen appeared on the top left corner. Al's avatar greeted me with a smile that was way too big considering the planet was under siege.

"Good morning Frank," he said. "Looks like you're still in some pain. Will you be able to fight effectively?"

"You know the doctor cleared me Al," I said.

He nodded. "Yeah, just being polite. You're half an hour away from your destination so I'm authorized to give you your mission specs now."

"Are you talking to Jen right now?"

"Of course," Al said. "But I need to make this quick."

"Go on," I said.

"You know about the ODPs? Of course you do, they're the only thing keeping this planet alive. The defense platforms aren't large enough to support their own power sources, so they have energy transmitted to them from orbital defense generators down on the planet surface. These babies are powerful enough to power up three generators each. These past few days there have been some attacks, their intensity has increased with time. So far we don't know where the Covenant are staging their attacks from, but ONI suspects that the Covenant have stealth pylons cloaking their movements."

"Uh-huh," I grunted.

"Yesterday the plant was almost shut down by a small Stalker team while a larger enemy force attacked. There's already two companies defending them, doing a rather good job at it too, but they are stretched out thin along the perimeter and probably won't be able to repel another attack."

"So we're going to be there for backup?" I asked.

"Mostly," Al agreed. "Your sharpshooters can provide direct support and you can have some of HW Squad in the watchtowers as well, but you need to have a decent-sized force in case of an eventuality."

I groaned. "We got moved halfway around the world for this?"

"The generators are vital to defense of this planet, but there aren't enough men to defend them. This is a very important job, Francisco."

"All right, all right. I promise I'll take it seriously mom."

"Good. I'm sending all the specs to your helmet right now. Your platoon will cover the east side of the complex. Lieutenant Weller and her platoon will do the same for the western end."

"Very well then," I said. "What about the rest of the company?"

"Sorry, I'm not authorized to say, someone made a mistake when informing me. My programming won't let me. You can ask them later."

I shrugged. "I hate that you're not a smart AI."

"Thanks, Frank. Really, appreciate it."

Before I could apologize Al logged off.

"Geez, so moody." I shook my head and stood back up, grabbing onto one of the handholds on the ceiling. "All right, wake up, wake up. Everybody wake up!"

The Pelican was filled with groans and stretching men as everybody woke up. I gave them a good ten seconds to become fully alert before I started reciting what Al had just told me. I displayed a hologram of the power plant and complex. The place was a pretty massive building two or three floors high that went deep into the ground, that's where the power plant itself actually was.

The important parts of the complex were two massive satellitedishes that transmitted the energy directly to the orbital defense platforms. They were sturdy enough to withstand anything short of a concentrated artillery strike.

"El-tee, why is the picture grainy?" Sandor asked.

"It's not," I replied. "That's the snow."

"Great, we're in the North Pole…" Hoff moaned. "My leg's gonna start aching."

"I didn't know you were eighty," Andy told him. "Next thing you know you're going to have to use a cane."

Marv leaned forward and examined the hologram. "How cold is it out there?"

"Sam?" I called out.

"Uhhh, instruments show that we're at minus eighty-one degrees Celsius," Sam told me. "But that's just up here. Temperature in the power plant is at… well, I hope you guys brought your coats. The temperature is at holding at minus fifty-eight."

I made a quick calculation in my mind. "That's like negative seventy in Fahrenheit."

"Seventy-two point something," Sandor said. "Point… four."

"Easy there Rain Man," I said, unable to stop myself from making a referencethat nobody would catch. Damn Bumblebee. "It's going to be cold, our undersuits are vacuum rated, but we're going to be out there for a pretty long time. Odds are that we won't get to be inside much, so expect to get cold eventually. Oh, and the helmets can't heat up the air fast enough. My recommendation is that you fill up your oxygen tanks and then use that air and repeat. Got it?"

"Yeah," Pavel said. "Cold as fuck, lots of angry brutes."

"That's the gist of it," I said. "Sam?"

"We're here," Fightmaster replied. "Good luck."

The cold hit me like a punch, but my suit immediatelystarted adjusting the temperature so that I would be comfortable. Within a couple of seconds I was already back to normal, but this looked like it would suck for anybody without a climate controlling undersuit. Oh well. I jumped down and my boots crunched down the snow. I could barely see more than a couple of meters away from me, there was a snowstorm going on and it looked like it was going to last for a while.

"Lieutenant? Lieutenant Castillo?" a voice shouted over the snowstorm.

"That would be me," I replied, establishing radio contact. "Captain…"

"Lieutenant," he corrected. "Flint. The captain got ganked a couple of days ago." A human shape made its way through the gale with a hand raised to protect his face and a rifle firmly held in the other arm. "Pleasure making your acquaintance."

"Lovely little place you got here," I said. "What did you do wrong?"

The man guffawed. "Me? Nothing. My wife, on the other hand, decided to have an affair with my superior, got me assigned here." He paused. "Is it bad if I hope she died when the covvies attacked Valern?"

"Not at all," Pavel said. "Your superior?"

Lieutenant Flint shrugged. "Don't know, don't care. I'm going to need you to follow me, all right?"

"Got it," I said. "Five, let's go!"

There were still nineteen of us. Bamber's corpse had been frozen and was ready to depart back to her home as soon as we kicked the Covenant bastards out of the system with their tails between their legs. Or she would just burn like the rest of us. I still had to talk to Pavel to see how his squad was doing. For that matter, I still had to wait until things were a little quieter to actually come to terms with her death. She was a good soldier and a good person, it would fully hit me later, but I didn't have the time for it right now.

Flint led us through the courtyard with precision that could've only come from someone that had done the trip several times. The lack of anything to guide himself by didn't seem to affect him. We ended up underneath a set of tarps linked together with pieces of plywood. The snow still got inside from the sides, but it wasn't as much as outsider. In fact, there were a couple of butanetanks with hot flames on top.

Flint turned around to greet me while my team spread out around the tarp. "Nice to have you here," he said, shaking my hand. "Ever since the captain died morale's been pretty low. Can't blame them, the captain was a good man."

"I'm sorry," I said.

He shrugged again. I noticed that he was wearing an old version of the Army Winter Armor. In addition to the special clothes he had a balaclava that he pulled down to reveal his mouth He also had a pair of particularly heavy gloves and a scarf tightly wrapped around his neck. There was frost on his goggles, but he didn't take those off.

"Well, nothing we can do about it. I was told you'd defend the west side of the complex?"

I nodded.

"Excellent." He produced a holodisk and promptly displayed the complex on it. "The defense generators are underground, UNSC placed them here so that nobody would go through the trouble of attacking them."

"Well, that didn't work out too well."

"The covvies are more miserablethan we are, moving enough equipment to provide hot rooms and food for their numbers would be pretty hard to do without us noticing."

"That's good, have they targetedthe dishes?"

"Nah, they know they can't damage them without heavy gear. At first they only attempted small raids, to probe us and get us on edge. Then they really started stepping up their game. They've broken through the perimeter several times. These brutes are crafty bastards, I'll give them that."

I nodded in agreement. "Where can we help the most?"

"I noticed that some of your men had heavy machine guns?"

"Yes."

"Well, I could use one of the heavy machine guns and two SAWs."

"Done," I replied. "I've got a sniper. Do you have a good perch for him?"

Flint nodded. "I know just the place. As for the rest of your men, how many are you willing to let me have?"

"Recon Squad can help you hold the line," I told him. "Staff Sergeant Konstantinov will stay here along with Lizzo, Ramirez, and Dotsenko."

"Thanks Lieutenant, we need all the help we can get. The storm stopped the attacks, but it won't be long before the brutes run out of patience and decide that they want us dead. I'd recommend moving your men to their positions as soon as possible."

"Will do, thanks Lieutenant."

He nodded and pulled his balaclava back up to cover his mouth and nose, promptly raising his scarf all the way to his goggles as well. "I'll be here if you need me."

"Ok. Come on, let's move!"

I used waypoints and my HUD's map in order to find my way through the low-visibility weather. We made our way to one of the outer buildings and climbed up a ladder to the rooftop. From there we spread out so that we could cover most of this side of the plant. It really was pretty large, I didn't feel comfortable being so far apart from the rest of my platoon.

Caboose sent Zepeda away towards the nearest satellitedish. From there he would have a pretty decent vantage point to cover the western side of the orbital defense generator plant. I ordered most of my men to stay close to the outer perimeter, but had Hoff and Miri hang further back along with me. All three of us had long range weapons and could afford to be further away from danger. Of course, only as long as the blizzard didn't completely block our sight, which it was doing right now.

"When is this going to stop?" Hoff muttered. "I can't see more than ten meters."

"It'll stop when it stops," Andy said. "Just be happy that you're not–"

"Missing a leg?" he finished. "Well, I kind of am."

"Mommy says that whenever a girlbothers a boy it's because she likes him," Sandor said in a baby voice. "But seriously, you two…"

I rolled my eyes. Why was it that I could never get myself a decent and professional squad? Ever since my very first squad had died in Eden all my following units had consisted of rather skilled men and women who happened to have the minds of precocious ten year-olds. It was annoying, sometimes I just wanted to sit around while waiting to ambush a Covenant unit with no talking whatsoever.

"Shut up," I ordered.

The cool thing about being a platoon leader is that I could just order my men to do what I wanted.

The chatter slowly died down and I took the opportunity to mark every one of my platoon members with green waypoints. Flint's men I marked with blue. My HUD outlined them, marking their positions relative to me even through the blizzard was still going strong, frost was already beginning to gather on the edges of my visor. I had to periodically shake my head to get the snow off.

"I think the snowstorm is beginning to let up," Pavel said. It had been almost two hours and already I felt the cold beginning to seep through my undersuit. Fortunately I had brought my long-fingered gloves, otherwise I would've lost my fingers by now.

"It does look that way," Sandor agreed. "Yup, it's beginning to let up."

The snowstorm gradually waned out until I could actually see the chain link fence surrounding the complex. The surroundings looked beautiful, completely white with absolutely no sign of battle, I knew that there had to be a few craters here and there, but the snow covered them completely. A few minutes later I could see clearly. The snow stopped completely and the sky cleared. The base was right in the middle of a pretty large valley. In fact, we were completely surrounded by jagged peaks that gently sloped down towards the base.

"Wow, the place is pretty," Miri noted. "Or it would be if it wasn't so cold."

"Yeah, it is kind of nice, a perfectly round valley covered in white snow," Andy agreed. "I'm taking some pictures."

"Christ," Hoff let out. "You are seriously going–"

Several green explosions rocked one of the outer watchtowers and left several big craters on the snow. I expected to see some rock, but instead just saw more snow. Looks like this snowstorm had been going on for quite a while. Steam started coming out of the impact craters just as Recon began firing back. Flint's men immediatelybunkered down, digging themselves down into the snow. A moment later I realized why. Brutes and grunts emerged from the snow, a lot closer to the outer fence than I would've imagined, and strafed the towers and fence. I saw several of Recon's members dive down as they were almost hit.

"Yeah, they've been doing that for a while," Flint came in. "Start big in order to draw a counter attack and then hit us as soon as we leave cover."

"Understood," Caboose said. "Any other tips?"

"Watch the sides."

Little black shapes started emerging from the snow, some were wearing some weird cloaks that presumable held the cold back, but most were wearing regular armor. I watched the exchange, using the zoom capability on my visor to close up on the battle. The brutes were as nimble as ever, wading through the deep snow while the grunts struggled to get through it. I tried spotting some jackals, but didn't see any. The birds would have had a pretty hard time surviving in these conditions.

"Some help here," Caboose suggested.

"Uh, right," I said. "Pavel, light 'em up."

"You just love saying that, don't you?"

I chuckled. "You wanted to say it?"

"Yeah," he grumbled. "Firing."

Pavel and the rest of his squad started firing their machine guns. I loved the sound that they made. Some of the brutes tried to redirect their fire before HW cut them down. I kept my rifle aimed at the aliens, but didn't fire. Instead I just enjoyed the way that their blood colored up the snow.

Wow, I just felt a little psychopathicright now.

The brutes took some losses and started falling back, disappearing into trenches that they had dug before the snowstorm. Recon stopped firing, but Flint's men kept their gunfire up for a while before they finally let up.

"Sometimes they fake retreats," he explained. "We should expect a bigger attack a few minutes from now."

"Hey, how deep's the snow?" I asked him.

"Hmmm, don't know," he replied. "Sometimes you can't tell because of the ice."

"Ice?" I asked.

"Yeah, the base is built on a lake."

"A lake?" I asked, realizing how stupid I sounded. "They built this on a lake?"

"That's the same thing I asked when I found out. It gets worse, see those mountain peaks? They're actually the edge of a volcano crater."

"This is a crater lake? So we're in the middle of a volcano?"

"An active one too," he replied. "How do you think they get all the power? Besides, why else would anybody build anything this far north?"

I looked directly down, picturing the raging inferno ragingunderneath us. "A super-volcano. Well that's not foreboding whatsoever."

Flint laughed. "Agreed, but we've got some sort of early warning things in case this thing actually decides to ever go up."

"Well I feel better already."

"Kind of takes your mind off the army surrounding us, eh?"

"Almost," I deadpanned. "Wait… I'm seeing movement. Over there."

"Uhhh, I see it," he replied. "Get ready."

This time the attack was for real. The brutes started with strafing attacks on the towers closest to them. The ones with carbines hung out back, constantly firing at my men to keep their heads down. The rest of them started moving up, firing as they went. I noticed that it was the brutes that moved up first and not the grunts. Either they were lo won numbers or they ate the grunts. Maybe both. A few of the brutes fell down, but they could just drop and hide underneath the snow any time. When they were halfway through another group emerged, this one had grunts and even some jackals amongst them.

"Oh shit," I muttered. "They are going to reach the fence."

"And knock it down," Flint added. "Could sure use the help right now."

"Li–"

"Light 'em up," Pavel violently cut in.

I started firing, aiming for the head with the brutes. It was pretty long range, but I still managed some hits. I hated the way those fancy helmets actually served to stop bullets instead of just making for bigger targets. Some of the brutes fell down, but most of them just got back up and kept on running, ignoring the gunfire that rose up to meet them. They were doing an incredibly good job at suppressingFlint's and Caboose's men. They were acting surprisingly not like brutes.

When the first brutes reached the fence they tackled it. I noticed that some of them jerked violently and started smoking. The fence was electrified, nice going. When the brutes didn't get up the rest just moved forward, jumping over the gate carefully. The few that didn't make it well enough jumped up and down as the gate shocked them, but most of them landed on the other side of the knocked-down gate. Half of them started firing at our positions and the rest of them began digging through the snow.

"Making a snow-fort," Schitzo said. "How manly."

I switched to full-auto and began hammering at the brutes. One of them flew sideways as Zepeda nailed it with his sniper. The rest of the brutes took a knee and scattered buying some time for the rest of the men down there to start returning fire. My men on the towers were still pinned down, but it looked like Caboose and Flint's men could handle it right now. I switched back to semi and started taking careful, measured shots at brutes that had been weakened. I smiled as five brutes went down in quick succession. Coupled with Miri and Hoff firing with me, we reduced their numbers by a third by the time the second wave got there.

"Fuel rods," Zepeda suddenly came in. "Watch out!"

Six green blobs flew out of nowhere and headed directly towards the watchtowers. I saw men jump out of them and land in the snow just as the tops blew up in green explosions. I quickly confirmed that my men were alive and started shooting again.

"Zepeda, I want you to scan for those fuel rods and take them out," I ordered.

Steam was beginning to raise form the snow, blocking my sight. My shots became less and less accurate as I started using movement to guide myself and eventually I had to stop. Miri and Hoff also stopped not long after that, even with linked up HUDs not many of us could see the brutes moving around.

"What's that?" Hoff asked after a few seconds of relative silence.

I looked at the place that he had marked and cursed. Several black silhouettes flashed through the steam, gaining altitude before coming back down in a steep arc. At least twenty brutes with jump jets flew over the fence and the defenders, throwing down grenades as they went.

I winced as three of Flint's men were torn apart by the spike grenades. The jumpers kept going and landed right in front of the outer walls. I lost eye contact with them and started frantically ordering Pavel to get them from getting inside the building. He and the restof my men started firing at the brutes, but about twenty seconds later they stopped.

"They got in Frank," Pavel said. "At least ten of them."

"Oh shit," I muttered, standing up and running down the emergency stairwell on the side of my building. I jerked a window open and jumped inside, ordering Hoff and Miri to make their way inside.

"Al? Al?" I tried communicating with the AI. "Al… shit."

I started pulling up the base's blueprints and tried to connect my helmet with the security network on the complex. All the camera's on the place were still active, and at least a few of them must've captured the brutes coming inside. I stopped so that my helmet could synchronize with the cameras. I got a feed, there were exactly eleven brutes inside of the building. My HUD marked them on the minimap with red dots, they weren't too far away.

"Miri, Hoff, where the hell are you?"

"Right behind you El-tee," Hoff replied.

I turned and saw them running across the hallway, leaving snow behind them. I waited for them to catch up to me and we ran perpendicular to the path the brutes were taking. They were headed directly for the satellitedish control room. I have no idea how they figured out where they were.

"Three against eleven?" Miri asked. "Not good odds."

"For them," Hoff replied.

"No, she's right," I said. "Not in tight quarters. Pavel, I want you to send Andy and Sandor behind the brutes. Carver too."

"Got it," he replied.

"Come on, double time it," I shouted. "We need to get there ahead of them!"

We managed to get to our destination before the brutes. I had aimed for a small room that was right before the control room. There was scarcely any cover for us, but there was absolutely no cover whatsoever for anybody that came in barging through the door.

"We kill three or four, keep the rest from coming through and then wait for Andy and the rest to arrive, ok? Carver's MGL will do the job."

They both nodded and pressed themselves tighter to the wall, aiming at the door. The brutes would have a hard time coming through the door considering their size.

"Grenades?" Miri asked.

"We'll probably need to use a lot of them," Hoff muttered.

"They're around the corner," I warned. "Ready."

The door was dented as the lead brute slammed into it. I adjusted my aim slightly and waited for them to knock the door down. The moment the metal door clattered down to the floor we lit them up. The first brute to come through the door was dead before it could react. The second and third one attempted to bull through the narrow (for them) opening and had to pull back. One of those was killed when it fell to the floor and the other one was dragged back by its partners.

"Frags," I ordered. "Now!"

All three of us threw grenades through the opening and waited for them to detonate. The brutes replied in kind, tossing two baseball bat-sized spike grenades through the door and sticking them to the ceiling. I already had jagged spikes embedded in one of my shoulder plates, I didn't need any more ornaments in my armor.

I jumped back as the grenades detonated, sending spikes flying n every direction. A few of them whistled dangerously close past my head, but the lack of explosive force in the grenades saved us.

"I'm good," Miri said, panting.

"Same here," Hoff grunted after a moment.

"Watch the door," I ordered.

Already a brute was through, having used the grenades for distraction. We took it down with concentrated fire, but by the time it was dead two more had made their way through the door. They fired their spikers wildly and sent us wheeling backwards. Miri opened the door on the back of the room while Hoff and I covered her and took off down the hallway. I emptied my magazine on the brutes coming in through the door and threw a grenade just to be sure before leaving the room myself. The hallway was the last line of defense before the control room. If they got there the entire covvie fleet would have an open door for the planet.

"Andy, where the hell are you guys?"

"Sorry El-tee, they left two brutes behind, guarding the entrance. Tough to handle."

"Did you get shot again?"

"Not this time," she said. "Carver got nicked on the elbow, but he's fine."

"Well move it, we don't have much time left."

"Almost there, sir."

The brutes ignored their casualties and moved forward, firing spikes and using those red plasma rifles of theirs. The hallway didn't have any cover, but we had the advantage of corners while they didn't. Two more brutes died before the rest could reach us, but once they did it was pretty much game over. Hoff and Miri took out the first one and then jumped out of the way as the survivors overwhelmed our position. One went straight for the control room while the others focused their attention on us. I was beginning to think that only I would get alive out of this one when the brutes suddenly exploded, missing a limb or torn in half. The one banging on the door was hit in the back, Andy and Sandor walking towards it as they fired full-auto.

"Done, and done," Sandor said. "Hey El-tee."

"Thanks for the help," I said. "Carver, nice aiming."

The man raised his grenade launcher in greeting and muttered a quick thank you. Andy helped Miri and Hoff back to their feet and examined the dead brutes for a moment.

"Everybody ok?" she asked.

"Looks that way," I said. "Carver, you might want to bandage that cut, the cold can go through your suit there."

He glanced down at his bleeding elbow. "Goddamnit."

"Yeah," Andy agreed. "Here, I'll help you out."

We waited for a minute while Andy pulled out a bandage and wrapped it around Carver's arm. Sandor used the moment to shoot one bullet into each of the dead brutes' skulls to make sure that one of the beasts didn't turn out to be only mostly dead. A couple of the brutes jerked when they were shot, but none appeared to have been faking.

"They look bigger than usual," Sandor said. "Certainly craftier than the usual beasts we work with."

I nodded. "Seems like the brutes here are better trained."

"Certainly a far shot from the conscripts we get to face," Andy said. "Well, I don't know if they're conscripts, but they sure act like they are."

"On that we can agree," Hoff said. "But this worries me."

"The last thing we need is brutes starting to behave like elites. All professional and shit," Carver muttered while examining his arm and bending his elbow experimentally. "All good. Thanks Andy."

"All right, let's go," I said.

We raced back outside, breaking off in groups to exit near our previous positions. I climbed back out the window and ran towards the place that I had been in. The gunfire and screams were audible all the way over here, and the number of corpses had doubled in the minutes that we had been inside. The cold hit me pretty hard again, but my suit quickly adjusted accordingly.

"Caboose, report!" I shouted, quickly firing on a pair of brutes attempting to flank some of Flint's men. "Flint, what's going on?"

"A bunch of them were hiding under the snow right outside the gates, they surprised us just as the third wave hit us," Lieutenant Flint replied. "They killed four of my men and pushed us back beyond the second fence."

"I see that, what do you need?"

"Just keep shooting, we stopped them with help from your men," he grunted. "We took out the leader, the advance lost steam after that."

"All right, I'll keep shooting."

Hoff and Miri got back on their perches a few moments later and started firing. They worked with me to take out the brutes closest to our men. Zepeda joined us, hitting them in the head with every shot. Six dead brutes and several grunts later the attack started to slacken. Half the brutes were already dead and the grunts were beginning to panic. If we kept this on for a little bit longer the brutes would go berserk and the grunts would retreat.

"Come on, come on," I muttered, aiming at the corner of a watchtower. A brute looked around the corner and popped back behind cover. I waited a few seconds longer and then the brute decided that this was beginning to turn bad for them and ran away from the complex. I fired a burst that connected right between its shoulder blades. My next two bursts raised plumes of snow when they missed, but the next three all landed on the back of its head. The brute fell, twitched, and died.

By the time I redirected my attention back to the chain link fences most of the covvies were dead or dying. A few managed to make their way out and jump inside holes or trenches, but by the time this was over eighty percent of them were dead. Not terribly bad numbers for us, but Flint's company had suffered pretty bad, their section of the line had been hit the hardest. A few soldiers were still twitching and crawling on the ground, but most of the men on the ground weren't moving. A few of them were most definitely missing a limb or two. Damn brutes.

"Looks like it's the last of them," Pavel said. "Goddamn."

"Flint, your unit ok?"

"Shit," he grunted. "We can't take another pounding like that. I lost two– no, two and a half squads. We're about at sixty percent capacity."

"I understand," I replied. "Shit, do we have an estimate on their numbers?"

"Nothing accurate," he replied. "They have a stealth pylon or something similar, we can't pin them down." He paused. "Listen Castillo, I need to take care of my men right now, if you'll excuse me."

"Of course," I said. Iswitched to a line with Caboose. "Grigori, why the hell didn't you answer?"

"Uh, sorry Lieutenant," Corporal Han came in. "Sergeant Konstantinov was hit. Wait, let me rephrase that, a brute hit him, with his hand. The blow knocked him unconscious."

"Was he using his shotgun again?" I asked.

"Yup," Han replied. "Killed two big ass brutes with it before the third knocked him out."

"Who killed that one?"

"O'Malley and Montri drove it off, but I think it might've been you who killed it when it was running away."

I smiled to myself. "Tell him he owes me one when he wakes up. Is he fine?"

"Yeah, nothing to indicate otherwise."

"Good, good…" I stared thoughtfully. Having Caboose die and then Han become squad leader right now wouldn't be the best thing. "Anybody else hurt?"

"I got grazed by a carbine and Atkins got a couple of scratches, I think it's shrapnel, but it's too soon to tell. Nothing serious."

"Excellent," I said. "Flint's men?"

"Army guys got hit hammered pretty bad. The ones that are still struggling will die, no way going around that." Han sighed. "Next attack like that is going to be the last."

I could see Han crouching over Caboose's unconscious body through my scope. He looked up at me and shrugged before gently poking Caboose awake.

"Yeah, he's fine," Han assured me. "El-tee, we can't–"

"Shit, get down!" I yelled.

My eyes traced the trajectory of a giant blue ball of plasma appear in the distance. Men scattered in every possible direction even as another shot appeared. The explosives were flying in too straight a line to be from a Wraith. If the covvies had artillery, they could take out at least one of the dishes with sustained fire. The first three plasma shells landed just short of the outer fence and the next four hit the area in between the second fence and the outer buildings. My men and Flint's soldiers ran around, looking for places to take cover in as the shells landed. The barrage stopped after the twelfth shell and no one was hurt, but we couldn't afford to have an enemy artillery piece in the field.

"Why'd they stop?" Sandor asked.

"They were calibrating the cannon," Pavel explained, now they know just where to shoot."

"We need to take that out," I said.

"They'll see us coming a mile away," Marv muttered. "Either we get another snowstorm or we just lay down and die."

I stood up and looked around in a circle. Clouds were beginning to slide past one of the edges of the crater, I wasn't terribly good when it came to reading weather, but clouds usually meant rain, or in this case, snow.

"Zepeda, can you see the artillery piece?" I asked.

I got a negative light. "It's somewhere between there and there," he spoke, delimitating a rather large area between two peaks.

"That looks like a snowstorm to me," Sandor said. "We might get our chance."

I quickly contacted Jen and Flint and explained what we planned. Flint told me that the base had a few snow-enabled Mongooses that could help us cover some of the distance. I quickly started working on a plan and borrowedsome explosives from HW and Recon squads. By the time we were ready and geared up the visibility was almost zero and the temperature had dropped back to ludicrous levels. My squad was ready to go and I was eager to get this over with.

"Let's go," I ordered as I started jogging towards the garage. "We don't know when this storm will end and we need to take advantage of it. Everybody ready?"

"Yes, sir!"

"All right, let's do this."

Thanks to SilasWhitfield for proofreading this chapter.

As some of you may know, Silas won't be proofreading for much longer in account to his moving to a different state and into military barracks as opposed to his own place. Yeah, that guy can kick your ass, so don't criticize his proofreading... I kid you. Anyways, I already sent out a couple of different requests to betas registered in the site, but if anyone here would be interested in proofreading AND HAS THE SKILL AND TALENT FOR IT I'm willing to consider you.

That being said, I love ending a chapter with that phrase. I don't think I've ever done it before, but it's certainly better than a cliffhanger. Maybe like you're about to jump off a cliff voluntarily... Oh well, the point is that it comes off as pretty badass.

What else, what else? Oh right, there was that little debacle with Katie, no biggie. Frank's got a shitload of time to think it over. He can consider his options while in between battles and skirmishes. Well, maybe he doesn't have that much time. Sucks for him. And Hanna. And Katie.

You asked for arctic warfare. I give you warfare in the snow. Maybe later we'll get a full-on battle, but as for now you'll have to settle for this. Good for those of you that noticed Tartarus, the guy's pretty damn badass even if he's kind of a dick. No wonder the brutes on Paris IV are so fucking awesome.

Thanks for all your reviews and don't forget to stay strong.

-casquis