Chapter CLXXXIV: Noli Nothis Permittere Te Terere

December 1, 2549 (UNSC Calendar)/five months later

Esztergom (Ezhtergom), Viery Territory, Reach, Epsilon Eridani System

"Keep on going."

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Ten numbers, ten names, ten friends. The service numbers looked bloated and awkward on my right forearm. They reached from right above my wrist to halfway up my forearm. The sting was still fresh, and it wasn't just from the inking needle. It seemed weird that I had more tattoos than most people and I had gotten them using an antiquated method that only Helljumpers and the occasional tattoo parlors that wanted to be known for being different.

Stefánia Stark was only just finishing putting the funny little machine away. She closed the drawer and turned back to me with a gauze patch. She wordlessly wrapped it over my newly acquired tattoos and then let her shoulders slump slightly.

"I don't see you in two years and then you bring me ten in a row… I'm sorry, Frank."

I shrugged. "I wish it was only ten."

She raised an eyebrow before quickly regaining control of her facial muscles. I noticed that she had a few additional tattoos on her. "How many more?"

"Just one," I told her. "Well, that's a lie. There's thirty-two plus one."

"Thirty-two, huh?" she asked before whistling.

"It's the one that bothers me," I confessed. "She was… she was someone I cared about."

"Are you going to get inked?" she asked. "Because that one's on the house."

I shook my head. "I don't know yet," I admitted. "I try to come up with something but nothing ever seems good enough."

"Angel wings are a favorite," Stefánia said. "But then again, a big, manly, ODST such as yourself might not like that one."

"True," I said with a light chuckle. "In any case, you might see me again soon and many more times after that."

She shook her head. "I hope that you decide on something, pay me for giving you the best service in this planet and then never see you again."

"I wish you well too," I told her, shaking her hand. "Three days?"

"Two," she corrected, "then you can take off the gauze. The skin will be tender for a while, but then again…"

"I know the drill."

"That you do. See you soon."

"And then I won't see you ever again," I finished. "Gotcha."

My car stopped and honked me awake. I had bought a smaller model the moment I got back to Reach. Like most civilian cars it could drive itself and the fuel cells could last for about twenty something years before you had to refuel. The entertainment system and comfortable seats were pretty sweet too, but apparently it hadn't sold well because the average Joe would fall asleep on the way to work. Seeing as I didn't have a job in between deployments it turned out to be a decent purchase for me.

I groaned, not because I was particularly comfortable or sleepy, but because I didn't want to actually go inside the ONI office.

I had to so I got myself together and climbed out of the car. I felt slightly ridiculous without my Hog, but the comfort really was something.

"I'm here to see Bruce Jones," I told the receptionist. As per usual, she was a pretty blonde with perfect makeup.

She smiled up at me. Her smile was so perfect that it had to be fake and practiced. "Of course. Your name?"

"Francisco Castillo."

She tapped something into her console and waited a second. "Of course. Fourth floor and to the right. The building's AI will guide you."

"You have an actual AI for the building?" I asked.

"Not really," she admitted with a shrug. "It's more like a glorified computer program, it can only tell you where to find something, someone, or make small talk."

I nodded and went up to the elevator without any further ceremony. One short walk later I was walking inside Jones' office. He was not alone, standing near a window and with his back faced to me.

"Should I have worn my fatigues?" I asked tiredly, gesturing to my jeans and shirt. "Maybe dressed a little bit more formally."

"Francisco, shut up," Jones commanded sharply. He was typically calm, collected, and most importantly, friendly. Ever since I had returned from Paris IV he had been anything but. "Are you drunk?"

"Not today," I said. "Shall we begin?"

"Yes we shall," Jones said. "Let's do a recap."

"I really don't think it's necessary…"

"Oh, but it is," he said. "After all, it wouldn't be polite to our guest here to jump into this without really knowing the whole story."

"Please, Bruce…"

"Paris IV, the biggest battle in the war so far. Right up there with Harvest. UNSC puts up a commendable defense but in the end is overwhelmed by superior numbers. You keeping up?"

"Yes. I was there."

"Damn right you were," he said. "You've got the scars to prove it. Then when all things go to hell you, your men, and a few of your friends find yourselves stranded and cut off. Thirty-three ODSTs and Marines, low on ammunition, tired, and severely demoralized. In fact, I heard that they had to witness one of their own friends blow himself up with six pounds of C-12 to help them make it."

"And we're damn proud of him for that," I said. "Ryan was a fine man and sacrificed his life for the people he loved."

"And you let him do it?"

"Yes," I replied, no hesitation. "It was the right thing to do."

"And why was that?"

"We went over this," I said loudly, banging my hand on the table for emphasis. "Ryan saw his family die, lost all his will to live. That's the only reason why I acceded to his request."

"You didn't order him to sacrifice himself?"

"No, you can check the mission video feed."

"We did. Several times actually. Who knew that the microphones on the helmets had such a crappy quality."

"I don't buy them," I shrugged.

"No you don't. But that's not really what matters, is it. Suicide missions have become a part of life, and while we don't like them much–"

"Bad for PR?"

"Most of the time, but don't interrupt me again. We don't like suicide missions, but they have become more common lately and in turn we've been forced to accept them as a part of life. What troubles me and my colleague here is what came after that. You managed to get your men as well as Lieutenant Maya's and Lieutenant Dajani's through enemy-occupied ground without a single casualty and then made it all the way to Fountain Square."

"Yes," I said, letting annoyance drip into my voice.

"You carried a Marine that you were romantically involved with the whole way, didn't you?"

"Yes, she was my girlfriend."

"What happened to her?"

"She was shot, several times. The she died."

"Don't get ahead of yourself," he chided. "You then asked a friend of yours a favor. Samuel Fightmaster is it? Lovely name."

"He gets that a lot."

Bruce actually chuckled slightly. "Well, it actually impressed me enough to look him up. Turns out the name is his birth name."

"Go figure," I scoffed. "Never did believe that it was his actual name."

"I can relate to that. Do you know what his actual mission was that day?"

"To evacuate civilians," I said through clenched teeth.

"But still you asked him to go against direct orders coming from none other than Admiral Bogart in order to come meet you and your men. Then he asked a personal favor from his friend, Blair Woodrow, in order to carry all of you back to the UNSC Honorable and to safety."

"Yes."

Jones scoffed and dropped the file he was holding. "You do realize that you got two pilots to disobey orders to save a bunch of strategically insignificant soldiers."

"And got thirty-two civilians killed, yeah."

He stood up abruptly. "I couldn't care less about those civilians Frank. Thirty-two people, do you know how little that is in the grand scheme of things. That battle alone cost us almost a billion people. And that's not counting military casualties! A billion deaths Frank, and you think that thirty-two bother us?"

I was taken aback by the sudden outburst. "I caused those deaths."

"And your conscience is none of my concern," he said. "You know very well that the nature of your… nature means that you have to keep a low profile."

"Is this what this is about?" I asked. "I have the deaths of those people in my head and all you care about is exposing some crappy program that has exactly one participant in it?!"

The room went deathly quiet. It went so quiet that the tension was palpable. The man facing the window even turned his head slightly before returning his attention to the nice view.

"Colonel?" Jones asked the man.

"Go ahead."

"The Spartan-IV program was greenlit," he informed me drily. "The augmentation process hasn't quite been perfected yet," he gestured to my head, "obviously. Despite that, we've already started screening for potential candidates and will begin training them early next year."

"I'll take it from here," the colonel said, turning around to reveal a face severely scarred by a blade of some sort. "Listen son, someone very far up the chain of command decided that you were apparently the perfect compromise between the Spartan-IIs and the IIIs and the rest of us lowly humans. In fact, a certain colonel from the Army came up with you. Augmentations similar to those that the Spartan-IIIs possess, high-quality power armor, and the best training that humanity has to offer."

I frowned slightly. "This sounds great, sir. It does, believe me, but is it feasible? I mean, I don't know all the details about the Spartans, but I know that they aren't cheap, even the disposable ones."

He growled. "You certainly know a lot of things you shouldn't."

"I've had a long career," I shrugged in reply.

The colonel glanced at Jones, who just shrugged.

"Anyways, you can understand why we'd be… irritated if word got out that we were making more super soldiers. Especially considering the implications. If word of S-IV got out then people would start asking questions about the second and third generations."

"Ok, I can get that, but how exactly does me doing this endanger the program?"

"The problem with that is," Jones began, "that we had to cover up what you did. Do you have any idea how hard it is to cover something like that up? There were hundreds of witnesses that saw the two Pelicans keep flying straight instead of touching down to pick them up. Fightmaster and Woodrow shut down their radios from all the hails they got from their colleagues, the Honorable's computer and AI picked the Pelican's movements and logged them. Word got out, people were pretty pissed about it."

"Yeah, I figured," I shrugged. "I had to beat the shit out of some guys that wanted to do the same to Sam."

"We had to send several hundred different messages making it very clear that anybody who spoke about the incident would find themselves stabbed in a back alley in the middle of Queson's red district. Then we had to access the ship logs on the Honorable and delete the specific movements of those two Pelicans and then replace them with fake ones. Then we had to lie. Do you know how bad that is?"

"I thought that's what you guys did for a living," I said.

"No Frank, we hide the truth, we don't lie unless we absolutely have to. If we get caught in a lie a lot of bad things could happen. Do you have any idea how bad our reputation is amongst civilians? It is even worse than it is with you Marines. You know that we're what you might call a necessary evil. To the rest of the population we're just evil."

"One out of two isn't bad," I joked.

Jones glared at me.

"Sorry," I apologized.

"Now you understand the position we find ourselves in. If anybody looks into this even a little bit the whole thing is bound to come down. You know, when the big guys up there met to discuss this situation they proposed to have you killed out of spite and it almost passed."

"Well, at least there are more reasonable people up there."

"No, most of them voted to take you out, but they were overridden when someone pointed out that short of using explosives or a sniper the attempt would end up with dead ONI operatives."

"At least they respect me."

Jones rubbed his temples. "Frank… it might all be a game to you, but if this comes out it could mean anarchy, humanity's very affected after Paris IV was finally declared lost. The prowlers we sent caught some footage of the glassing process and somehow that of all things managed to worm its way into the media's hands. People are on edge here, and if this were to happen now then God knows what."

"Ok, I understand. Anarchy, chaos, and rebellion." I took a deep breath. "What comes next?"

"You're the first domino," the colonel spoke. "So we hide you."

"There were other men involved," I said. "If you're going to cover my ass the least you can do is cover theirs."

"The Marines won't talk," Jones assured me. "It seems that a few of them have fallen into depression and alcoholism… they blame themselves for those deaths."

"Well, they shouldn't," I muttered. "What about the my men? What about Yassir, Fightmaster, and the other pilot girl?"

"They'll be taken care off," Jones assured me. "And I actually mean that, no need to kill a bunch of people."

Believe it or not, actually hearing those words made me feel incredibly relieved. It finally took a weight from my chest.

"So?" I asked. "Where are you sending me?"

"The Asymmetrical Action Group," the colonel said.

"The AAG?" I asked. "Seriously, those douchebags?"

"Wow, a Helljumper saying that the men in another unit are bigger assholes than you are," Jones said.

"But more importantly, how do you know about the AAG?" the colonel asked me.

I almost blushed. "The Special Forces community isn't all that big. The Very Special Forces is even smaller."

"Very Special Forces is not a thing, son."

"Trust me, sir. It is."

Jones rolled his eyes.

"Truth be told," I sighed, "the AAG was only a rumor. I honestly didn't believe it was a real thing until now. I figured that with the Spartans you wouldn't need regular super special forces."

"Son, believe me when I say that they're anything but regular."

The colonel gave a curt nod to Jones and turned back towards the window before Jones started going into detail about what the new assignment implied. I leaned forward and listened closely. It sounded very interesting…

Twenty minutes later I found myself back on my car as First Lieutenant Francisco Castillo. I forced two men to disobey direct orders, endangered a Top Secret program before it even launched, killed thirty-two innocent people, and contributed to the depression of several good men and women. What did ONI have to say about this? They gave me a promotion and transferred me to the single most elite unit that your average human could get into while allowing me to pick my own team.

"They really should work on their punishment methods," Schitzo said.

"Agreed," I replied, turning on the music. "Next time I fuck up I probably will find myself blown to a million pieces by a car bomb."

"Probably," he agreed. "You know, I'm happy that we can talk now."

"You're the only one who talks to me," I reminded him. "Ever since…"

"I know. I miss her too," he said. "She was–"

"Don't even start," I cut him off. "Hanna didn't know you."

"She knew both of us," Schitzo said. "A little bit better than anybody should have. It hurts that she's no longer here, but you'll have to pull out of this soon. You can't go outside and put a decent face and then go back inside to drown yourself in alcohol. I'm surprised that Jones and the colonel didn't smell your breath from across the room."

"Shut up," I ordered. "Please shut up."

Schitzo bowed and disappeared.

"Car, take me to the Grenadier."

Montgomery greeted me in his usual way, with a glass of whiskey and a slight frown that seemed etched into his face. Lys the waitress was still there, she smiled at me as I walked in and then went straight back to work. I expected to see the trio of Irishmen sitting in their usual position, but I knew that they had been drafted back into the Corps and were off fighting covvies someplace or other. Their pictures weren't in the memorial wall of the bar, but the news could come in any time soon.

"You look like shit," he toted. "What happened to your arm, kid?"

"Tattoos to honor the fallen," I said, downing my drink.

"Ah, I see," he replied, filling up my glass again. "We have the wall, you have your skin."

"Soon enough I'll be more black than white," I grumbled.

Montgomery looked at me and raised his eyebrow slightly. I couldn't help but chuckling. He was as black as they came, complete with a thick little mustache and everything. He was the kind of man that would look the part in police officer blues and a big-ass revolver on his side. Not that anybody still used revolvers, but he certainly had that police officer look.

"I thought you'd be flattered," I joked, taking another drink from the mid-quality whiskey. "But having ten names etched into my skin…"

"Is worse than having the pictures hanging on the wall. I am reminded of those that died every time I turn around, but not every waking moment."

I shrugged. "It's my way of honoring and remembering them."

Now he shrugged. "Have another drink Frank. And try and relax a little bit."

Montgomery cut me off after the sixth drink, but those six stiff whiskey drink coupled with the gallon and a half of beer that I had drunk earlier in the morning I started feeling pretty tipsy. Most people drink to forget, but when I drank all I could think about was Hanna, slowly bleeding out over my shoulder, her eyes open and an expression of pain permanently fixed on her beautiful face. Not only that, but it also brought back ell the good memories. I half expected to be wrung over guilt for having cheated on her, but I was just sad. Five months should've been enough, but I still saw her face every time I closed my eyes.

Even worse was that Katie still occupied my mind from time to time. I hadn't checked to see if she had made it out. A lot of civilians hadn't made it out even with hundreds of military personnel willingly sacrificing themselves to save them. Remembering that only made me feel more guilt. The worst thing I could've found out was that Katie was one of those that had died because of me, but there wasn't a list of definitive victims, but the number was the maximum amount of people that would've fit in those two birds. The odds were actually good for me if you thought about it, but knowing my luck… if Katie was dead I could never know if it had been because of me.

"Son."

"What?" I asked. "Did I fall asleep?"

"Yeah," Montgomery said. "Wanna go home?"

"Not really," I said. "Has Pavel showed up?"

"No," he said. "You two still not talking?"

I nodded. "He's pissed at me."

"Are you going to tell me why?"

I shook my head. "Let's just say that he has a good reason to be angry at me."

"No reason is good enough when you've fought side by side for the last ten years."

I looked up from my empty glass. "You might have a point there Captain," I told him. "In any case, I should at least talk to him."

"First time I hear any sense coming out of you in the last three months Frank," Montgomery said. "Have some water and I'll send you off."

"I'm feeling sober already," I told him. "I'll be on my way."

"Frank, have some water," he said, slamming a massive glass in front of me. "I won't let you leave until you take a piss."

"I'll make sure he doesn't cheat," Lys said as she walked by.

I swiveled around on my stool. "Something wrong? You haven't flirted with anyone since like forever."

"She got a divorce early this year," Montgomery explained.

"Ah," I hummed. "Did she take half his money in the process?"

"Nah," she said. "It was pretty amicable."

"Good," I said. "I guess… In any way, at least it wasn't a huge mess."

"Yeah," she replied. "Now drink your water and get that bladder of yours filled up."

"When you say it like that," I told her with a shrug. "I don't think I can refuse you."

"…and that's pretty much it," I finished.

Pavel grunted. "Only you would get rewarded so grandly for killing thirty people."

"My life does tend to be like that sometimes," I admitted, "but I think that Hanna's death is enough punishment…"

"Frank, her death wasn't karmic, it wasn't your fault…"

I chuckled humorlessly. "I know, but that doesn't make it any better."

There were a few awkward seconds of silence. Pavel was very obviously still angry with me, but five months was a very long time for anger to boil down somewhat.

"They'll let me pick my own men," I told him.

"Really? Who are you thinking about?"

"You, for starters," I told him. "I was thinking about getting the old squad back together, a few of my men from Five and maybe snag a couple of guys from the other platoons."

"Well, let me know when you decide," he said. "I'll be seeing you."

"Oh! Just tell him to come in already!" Amber called out through the door. "You two are worse than girls."

"Hi Amber," I greeted. "I was just leaving."

Pavel looked back at me with an irritated look on his face. I would've felt the same if my wife or anybody else had made that sort of annoying comment. "I'll see you later," he said.

I nodded and offered him my hand. "Pavel, for what it's worth… I'm sorry."

He shook my hand and grunted something in Polish before disappearing through the door.

"Say hi to Lavvie for me!" I called out.

"I'm surprised you called," Grigori said. "You never do."

"Don't take it personal."

"I never do," he said, taking a big gulp from his drink. "I never do."

I raised an eyebrow and mimicked him. "Drinking heavily?"

"With thirty deaths in my conscience… Yes."

I shrugged and took another big swig. "Sorry about that."

"I don't blame you," he said. "People are selfish by nature, but you did what you did to give Hanna a chance."

"Lotta good that did, eh?"

"If it's any consolation El-tee, the reason that everybody's feeling bad is that nobody did anything to stop you. Nobody wanted to. Other than Ryan anyways."

I took another drink. "How's Miri?"

Grigori sighed. "You know, things were going pretty good, but she felt like a break would be a good thing for us right now."

"Can you still work together?"

"What do you mean?" he asked. "Did we already get reassigned to another unit? Because if we had we would've all gotten a message from Hayes."

I leaned in close to him. "ONI stuff."

He groaned. "Damn. I'll need a few extra drinks to handle that."

"I never pegged you for an alcoholic Grigori," I said. "I always thought that you'd be the guy that wasn't affected by anything."

"Flattering… and I always thought the same thing myself. Back when I was with the Insurrection–"

I looked around, making sure that nobody was within hearing range. Even then it wasn't good enough, the various police departments and intelligence organizations had bugs placed all over. It would be at least a few uncomfortable hours before somebody realized that ONI's most recent pet project had gotten himself arrested and came to get me out. With the amount of trouble that I had caused ONI lately I'm not even sure that they would actually come and get me.

"Relax," he said. "Back in the day I saw some horrible stuff. I even did some horrible things. Torture, mutilation, kidnapping, and more. I saw friends die, I saw men blow themselves up in the middle of a crowd to advance their ideals. It didn't start affecting me in a psychological level, I just decided that what I was fighting for was wrong if these were the methods we were using."

"And ONI caught you."

"Yeah, that too. Then I became an operative and saw more of the same. Then the war started and the horror was amped up."

"Grigori, not to seem like an insensitive jerk, but get to the point."

"Of course," he said. "Paris IV was pretty bad. Losing half my squad early on wasn't good for me, losing all those other people from Five wasn't exactly good, and Zepeda was just the cherry on top. Seeing all those refugees, living amongst them… It was all piling up El-tee, those thirty deaths just sent us over the top."

"How many are bad?"

"That's Pavel's job," he said. "He's the one that gets along with pretty much everybody that meets him."

"That's a skill he has," I agreed. "But have you heard anything?"

"Lizzo was very close to Carver, he's been taking it pretty badly. Ramirez has a surprisingly good outlook despite missing his left leg."

"Dotsenko?" I asked. "I know he's good friends with Ramirez."

"He's ok. I guess that having his best friend happy and alive can be somewhat contagious."

"How's Abri?" I asked. "You two are the only ones that made it from Recon."

"She's kept in touch," Grigori confirmed. "I don't think she'll ever be able to fight again. She's been seeing a military shrink and has been trying pretty hard to get over everything, but last I heard…"

"I had no idea it was that bad," I said. "Poor girl. She must've gone through a lot."

He nodded. "And wasn't prepared for it."

"As for VSF Squad," I began. "Miri…"

"Just needs to work it out," he finished. "How about Mobuto?"

"Not sure. I've only spoken to him twice and both times he was with friends and family. He can't be too bad then. Andy seems to be in fine working order I guess, but she's changed. She hasn't been her usual snappy self. She's apparently something of a shut in now."

"I'd talk to her if I was you."

"I will," I said. "But right now I need to talk to you."

"Right, I'm pretty sure you didn't call me here only to talk about your unit's mental state."

"Ouch," I said.

"You are an asshole, sir," he said, not making any apologies. "What did you want to talk about anyways?"

"Top Secret," I told him. "I'm being reassigned."

"Figures," Grigori sighed. "You have to stay hidden."

"Yes. I'm being sent to some fancy new joint whatever unit."

"Which one?"

"AAG."

He raised an eyebrow, as much expression as I had ever seen on his face. "That's actually a thing?"

"Apparently so," I said. "They're giving me command of a small unit. I don't know all the details, but I can bring around twenty men with me."

"All right then," he said. "Have you spoken to Klaus?"

"Yeah, Pavel's still somewhat pissed, but he's definitely coming. There's one thing though. When I was talking to him I got the feeling that he didn't exactly want the responsibility of commanding his own unit again."

"He still outranks me, sir."

"I know, I just wanted to know if you'd have a problem commanding your own squad if Pavel doesn't want to do it."

He shrugged. "Sure, I guess. I follow orders."

"Good."

"Have you thought about who you want on the team?"

I nodded. "I was thinking about getting Reaper back together."

"You do realize that Lamberti is still MIA, do you?"

"Still no word from him? An unidentified body or something?"

"No," he said. "I did have some of my friends look into it a few years ago, but he's good with computers, sir. He wiped every record of himself pretty thoroughly. Well, everything save for his military career."

"Well, what about Cam?"

"She's going places in her new desk job, I hear she made officer and everything."

I sighed. "So she won't be coming back to the field?"

He shook his head. "I don't think so, but you should at least talk to her, ask her what she thinks."

"I will," I assured him. "In the meantime, I'll contact Snark and Bee. Maybe I'll get Serge to come join us."

"I always did like the guy," Grigori said.

"Yeah, he's like a carbon copy of yourself."

He shrugged. "Might be."

"Api's dead, so that's a no go," I muttered almost angrily. "You think Beckel will want to come?"

"Don't know," he admitted. "Axel might not exactly like being pulled from his platoon. I can have Serge test the ground."

"Do that," I told him. "I'm also not sure that Jen will be happy with you dragging them away from her unit without bothering to ask for her permission."

"Yeah, I think you should do that."

I nodded. "When did you start talking so much?"

He shrugged. "I don't know. I don't like it."

I had to laugh at that. The eternally brooding and mysterious squad mate had become talkative and opinionated in a matter of minutes. I still didn't exactly like him as I would a friend, but at least I could have a conversation and listen to his opinions. That could certainly improve relations outside of work hours. I talked with him a bit longer while we finished our beers until it became obvious that neither of us wanted to keep talking about things that weren't work related. He paid for his drink and left me by myself.

New unit, old team…

"You can't fill the twenty places with the people you have in mind," Schitzo reminded me. "Who are you going to get for the other spots?"

New team as well… I thought to myself. This is going to be fun.

"Check please," I requested.

"Can you put the knife away?"

"Why?" I asked. "Am I making you nervous?"

"No," Stefánia Stark said. "You're making the clients nervous."

I looked up to see six or seven large men with long hair and the look of gang members staring at me as I twirled my knife back and forth. I did a couple of spins with the Damascus steel while staring at the hypnotic patterns that the colorful blade made before putting it away.

"So, you haven't come up with anything yet?" she asked.

I shrugged. "I want something to honor her, but I'm just not the kind of guy that would write down someone's name in their skin."

"But numbers and birds are fine?" she asked. "And I thought that women were supposed to be the ones full of contradictions."

"Hey," I complained. "That's rude."

She looked up at me. "What are you? Ten?"

I ignored her. "Numbers aren't so bad… I always hated mathematics though…"

"Dates then?" she asked. "Birth and death? Date you met her?"

"Too corny," she agreed. "A simple birth and death should do it. Maybe surrounded by a heart?"

"Really Stef? Really?"

"Nobody ever calls me Stef anymore. Or Fran for that matter."

"Yeah, I keep your middle name is the feminine version of mine," I said. "Fran… your life must've sucked during high-school."

"Shut up," she said, rolling her eyes.

"Your bad childhood would explain all your tattoos," I went on.

"And yours?"

"I had a pretty bad childhood… and my teenage years were basically a boot camp by my uncle."

"In that case you should get more ink then. I get paid, you get to show just how many issues you have… we all win."

"Not to imply that everybody with a tattoo has issues," I said.

"Of course not," she agreed. "I'd be out of business otherwise."

I laughed quietly for a few seconds before stopping. "You know, I still can't come up with anything…"

"You don't have to get anything," she said. "If you don't think anything is good enough maybe you're right."

"No, it's not that," I said. "Whenever someone I care about died I got a tattoo. I'm not sure why I do it, but it seems to give me closure and that's something that I really need right now."

She nodded. "Tribal inking?"

"I know that they're supposed to have meaning, but I'm not sure she would've appreciated a mess of lines on my shoulder."

"You should keep it simple then," she half-suggested. "Don't corpsmen have their own insignia?"

"Yes," I said, "what are you thinking about?"

"I can give you the insignia and then birth date on one side and death date on the other."

I shrugged. "Sounds good. Just make the tattoo more angular, so that it fits in with the rest of them."

"Of course," she said, reaching for her datapad and inking gun. She made her pad pop up a holographic image of the corpsman insignia, a baton with two snakes spiraling around it and topped off with a pair of wings. Hanna hadn't been simply a medic, she had been a hospital battlefield corpsman, trained to keep people from dying while she herself was under fire.

"Where do you want it?" Stef asked.

I pulled up my left sleeve. "Right above Almers."

"What?"

"Above the cross," I told her. "Come on, let's do this."

An hour later Stef leaned back and examined her handiwork. The outline had taken longer than usual because she had been so careful, but once that was done she quickly filled it in.

"Almost done," she said. "What are the dates?"

"February 20… Twenty-five twenty. And July 4, twenty-five forty-nine."

"Twenty-nine years," she said. "Alright then, don't twitch."

The two dates took a lot less time and were done in a minute. Stef was very practiced at her craft. I waited for her to finally lean back again and then turned my forearm so that I could look at it. The tattoo was inverted, but if I ignored the swollen skin around it you could easily tell that it was incredible work.

"It looks great," I said quietly. "How much do I owe you?"

"I'll round it up to one hour, so it's gonna be two hundred credits."

I nodded and handed her my card. "Thanks."

"Any time," she said with a similar nod as she charged my card and reached for the gauze. "Same deal, keep this for a couple of days and I hope never to see you again."

"Same here. Thanks for everything Stef."

I walked outside as in a daze. The clerk on the shop wished me a good afternoon and I half-mindedly replied to it. When I walked outside it was a lot darker than it had been when I walked in. The difference in lighting wasn't what affected me though. There was a weird feeling that inside me that made me want to fall to the ground and curl up into fetal position. I had only felt like this two times in my whole life. That one time when my uncle told me that my dad was dead and five months ago when Hanna's vitals went flat on my HUD. It finally hit me that I would never see her smile, never hear her laugh, never fight with her, or even hold her hand ever again. She was gone for good. She was a thing of the past now.

"I'm gonna miss her," Schitzo said, placing his hand on my shoulder and squeezing gently.

Me too…

Thanks for reading this chapter.

Frank is just the kind of guy that would get rewarded for having been directly responsible for over thirty civilian deaths. However, we still don't know which civilians in particular are the ones that perished in that eventful day, but we do know that Hanna is most definitely dead. I'm glad that the reception for last chapter was positive, I had been writing it for a pretty long time and was a little bit nervous about what the outcome would be. Of course, by positive I mean that you're all highly offended that I finally decided to actually start killing off characters. A lot of you mentioned that Zepeda was one of your favorite characters. Which others do you like? So I can make their deaths more violent and painful.

In any case, this chapter is pretty much an aftermath chapter. Note that five months have been skipped as well as most of the raging alcoholism and self-destructive behavior on Frank's part. The only actual characters that participated in this chapter were Caboose and Pavel, both of which had relatively minor roles. The recurring characters were also given some of the spotlight, seeing as they hadn't appeared for ten chapters or so.

One last thing, the next two or three chapters are going to set the ground for the big events to come. I'm giving you a warning that I'm going to "rush" through the two and a half year period in between december of 2549 and the infamous Fall of Reach. After that... who knows? Anyhow, old characters will return to the squad and new ones will be added to it as well.

Thank you all for your reviews and opinions and, as always, stay strong.

-casquis