Chapter CC: Man of War and Medicine
August 19, 2552 (UNSC Calendar)/
New Alexandria Hospital, New Alexandria, Eposz, Reach, Epsilon Eridani Territory
Corporal Aaron "Payat" Eidelberg
"As military surgeon you get to see the aftermath of battles, the worst injuries and mutilations that you can imagine... At least you don't have to witness whatever caused them."
"We've got shrapnel in the chest and abdominal cavities," the nurse said tiredly "Medics managed to pull out the larger pieces before bringing him here?"
I nodded, putting my rifle against the corner. "Thanks," I said, avoiding calling her by her name because I didn't know what it was "What's the prognosis?"
"Positive," she said.
At this point positive meant half and half. The man had probably been stabilized for long enough, but if the operation didn't save him we would start moving him down to the lower floors for a quick trip to the morgue.
The man's torso was a mess, his vest had already been taken off, but his top was a bloody tatter. I pressed my eyes against the machine's eyepiece and took a deep breath, getting my hands on the controls. The machine immediately detected three separate layers of clothing and automatically began removing them. I drew a few bright green lines right above the shrapnel wounds and let the machine's pliers punch through on automatic. Once there I had to be extremely careful not to cause additional damage. A little bit of tissue tear here wasn't bad, but many veins and arteries had been nicked when the shrapnel flew in, if I wasn't careful when I pulled it out I could finish the job.
"Nice and easy," I muttered "Be ready to apply biofoam."
"Yes, doctor," the nurse said.
I smiled at that. I had been called doctor several times now and had to admit that I was loving it.
"First one's out," I said "Go."
A little blood bubbled out, but nothing too bad. The other pieces would be trickier. I had to make one of the cuts larger to avoid hitting an artery. I pulled out three more pieces of shrapnel, leaving me with only three dozen more to go. The man's heartbeat was slowly going down. He didn't have much longer.
"Start stitching him up," I ordered "I'll work around you."
The visual display showed a pair of hands stitching closed the empty wounds. The nurse was good at this, stitching inside and out faster than the machine could work.
Suddenly the machine stopped responding to my movements before the lights went out.
"Shit," she said.
"What's the time for the generators to kick in?" I asked.
"Ten seconds doctor," she replied "But I don't know if they can handle what this hospital is going through."
"It'll have to do for now," I said as the lights came back on.
I removed most of the shrapnel before the man flatlined. I tried to revive him three times before giving up. The trauma damage had been too much for his body to bear, and even with the assistance we gave him he hadn't managed to pull through.
"Time of death is… 23:59 Viery Eastern," she said "Private Miguel Darter."
"Move him out," I said "Get the next critical in here."
"Yes, doctor."
I sat back down and took a sip of water. I had been at this for eight hours now. Not exactly the longest shift a doctor had ever pulled, not even close to the longest operation, but seeing most men die even with this impressive piece of technology I had in my hands was not something I could enjoy.
"Aaron," I heard "Aaron!"
"Yeah?" I asked, looking at the source of the voice "Doctor Vinter, how are you?"
"How do you think?" the beautiful blonde replied scathingly "Maintenance tells me that energy consumption will run the generators dry in two hours."
"Two hours?" I exclaimed "That's bullshit Doctor Vinter."
"Tell me about it," she said "We were replacing half of our generators due to age and wear when this shit happened. The half we have consists of antiquated technology."
"Can we get anything here?"
She shook her head "Generators are sent to frontline military units. I'm trying to get some generators from adjoining buildings, but our power grid is supposed to be so good that very few private buildings bother with them."
"What about other public buildings?" I asked, beginning to evaluate our next patient. She had been badly burnt by a plasma explosion, both her legs and right arm would need to be amputated and most of the skin on her chest would be removed as well
"Police stations are all being commandeered by military," she replied, looking over the operation with vague interest. "Firefighters are as busy as it gets for them, and they do need their generators to keep going. Public offices are mostly abandoned, but those generators have already been hogged by the military."
"What then?"
"I'm being stonewalled," Vinter said simply "I'm arranging for transport to Esztergom for the most critical patients. NAPD has agreed to lend us two dozen Pelicans and an Albatross. I'm having a couple of commandeered yachts flown here as well. Army boys are loving that one."
"Piloting a yacht?" I asked rhetorically, confirming that the patient was properly sedated "What's not to like."
"Careful," the nurse urged as I began removing the left leg "We need to get rid of all damaged tissue."
"I know," I replied.
The laser cauterized the wound as it went. I deftly adjusted intensity and angle in order to get rid of the charred and dead skin without cutting too much off. It took maybe about a minute to get the leg off, after which the nurse tightened a bandage over it. I frowned at that sight, we were running out of high-tech medicine fast.
"When are the yachts due?" I asked, moving on to the next leg "We could fit at least a hundred men into each of those."
"I estimated it at two hundred and ten per yacht," Vinter replied, pulling a stool and taking a seat. Her eyes were red and weary, even worse than mine looked
"They should be here in about an hour. They're moving them from the northern suburbs."
"Alright then," I said "If there's anything else that you need me to do, I'm here."
"Right now I need you to be a doctor," she said "Not a soldier."
"Marine," I corrected "Technically I'm a trooper, but I never really did become a real ODST."
"Sorry," she apologized "I don't usually make that mistake."
"You should get some sleep," I told her.
"I can't," she replied.
"Doctor Eidelberg is right," the nurse said "You should get a quick nap, Doctor."
"Maybe fifteen minutes," she said "That won't hurt, will it?"
I shook my head and smiled slightly even as I finished amputating the second leg "It won't."
It did. For every moment that she slept another wounded man perished because there was no doctor to help stop the bleeding or pull out the shrapnel. But even if she was helping, she couldn't keep this pace forever. If she tried to stay awake then she would start making mistakes, and those would kill more wounded.
"Does the coffee machine work?" I asked the nurse "Get her a coffee and bring it here."
"Yes, doctor."
I lasered off the arm by the time she was back.
"Put it here," I ordered, reaching into my butt pouch. I found the little tube that I was looking for and popped a combat stim into the coffee cup. When the nurse raised her eyebrows at me questioningly I just gestured for her to go back to work.
This next part was not something that I would enjoy. Her whole chest had been badly burnt and her breasts were all but gone. It gave me a weird feeling. I didn't know what it would feel like to lose my breasts seeing I didn't have any, but a woman losing them felt to me like she would be losing part of what made her a woman. She would get UNSC paid-for breast implants if she made it out of here along with three artificial limbs, but I don't know if it would feel like the real thing.
Maybe I'm wrong. The only comparison I have to her boobs is my dick, and losing my dick would certainly be a traumatic experience, no matter how big or well-circumcised the replacement was.
That was a weird sentence.
"She should be fine," I told the nurse "Get me the next patient now, we don't have much time left."
"Yes, doctor!"
I smiled once more despite myself. I loved being called that.
"Please stop!" he shouted. "Stop!"
I ignored the screams and kept on going. The poor man was in pain but his brain just wouldn't let him pass out. I made sure that the pliers were firmly gripping the spike and then yanked violently just as Doctor Vinter pushed down on his chest. A spurt of blood landed on her face, covering the dried blood on her cheek. I tossed the spike aside and opened the wound with two fingers. The man screamed loud enough to scare the souls in Gehenna itself. I ignored it as best I could and spread the wound wide enough for Astrid to crudely stitch the man's torn heart. It took her a little bit longer than it might have done otherwise on account of the shaking and struggling, but as soon as she was finished I pulled my fingers out and poured biofoam in the open wound. I was prepared for the screaming that followed, but it didn't mean that I didn't close my eyes at the intensity of the man's pain. As soon as the biofoam attached itself to the tissue and stemmed the blood pouring out of his heart Astrid pulled out another needle and stitched the wound closed.
"You're good," I told the man "You're good."
The man stopped screaming, but instead he began whimpering and sobbing in pain. It was a shame to see brave men like this. I moved on to the next injured soldier in the row, but the poor bastard was already dead, his eyes wide open. I closed them in passing and then worked my way to the next injured man. The roaring of Pelicans barely distracted me now, even the shouts and instructions didn't affect my efficiency much. I was having an increasingly harder time handling the moans and screams of pain though, it had been what seemed like an eternity since I had arrived here and the wounded just kept coming.
"How are we doing?" I asked.
"We've still got three more floors to move up here!" Astrid shouted over "They've started targeting the Pelicans!"
The situation was so bad that she didn't even care if the wounded heard her.
A Wraith mortar shell landed just shy of the edge of the terrace, crushing some glass and scaring the shit out of the doctors. I ignored it as best I could and began stitching up another woman. She was trying to stay calm, but the laceration on her arm was deep and bloody. She looked very pale. I gave her a small smile and began stitching. She wouldn't have been classified as anything close enough to a dangerous condition had she showed up an hour earlier, but all our equipment was out of juice and the generators had been either damaged or destroyed by Covenant scout groups. The Army boys had killed all the perpetrators, but not after they had achieved their goal.
"Payat, Payat, do you copy?!"
The voice in my helmet seemed like something out of a dream at first. I didn't stop stitching as I replied.
"Copy that."
"Payat," Gunny Klaus went on "I'm getting chatter that points to an assault on NA Hospital. Be on the lookout."
"Thanks, Gunny," I replied.
Just like that, he hung up. I raised an eyebrow at the short warning and then had my other one join it when I realized that I had received the word from Gunny and not from the El-tee. It could mean anything, but it could also mean that Castillo had been killed and shit here was even more fucked up than this monumentally fucked up situation would've indicated. I finished stitching up the woman and stood up, looking for Astrid.
"Doctor Vinter!" I shouted loudly "Astrid!"
"What!?" I heard her shout back.
"We gotta get this people out of here!"
"I'm trying!"
"No! We really have to get them out of here!"
There was a short moment of relative silence as the artillery strikes stopped and the gunfire in the streets was subdued for a bit. I don't know whether it was a coincidence or just God's way of fucking with us mere mortals, but it only gave the following event that additional shock factor. I looked up to see one of the freshly arrived Pelicans blow up. It had just been loaded up with as many as fifteen injured soldiers. I couldn't hear the screaming over the sound of the Pelican's sputtering engines. I ducked over a soldier, but the Pelican's pilot managed to get the craft to land away from the terrace. I didn't see it slam into an adjoining building, but I heard it and the secondary explosion well enough.
But that wasn't it. A flight of five Banshees had made it through our AA defenses and mercilessly strafed the wounded soldiers and assisting doctors. I stood up, completely abandoning the wounded men below me, and running perpendicular to the strafing banshees. I ducked behind a big ornamental step and waited for the plasma bolts to pass. The screaming Banshees rocked the whole rooftop terrace as they passed overhead. Two of them were hit by missiles fired from the street, but the rest of them just scattered and disappeared.
"I need anti-air up here!" I shouted loudly, addressing the soldiers helping up here "Come on, get the order!"
I was about to get back to work when the building shook again. On second thought, it wasn't the building that shook, it was only the rooftop. It took me longer than I care to admit to notice exactly what happened. It wasn't until I turned around and analyzed the situation that I realized just exactly how fucked up this was. My inner Jew surfaced for a moment there, wondering why the terrible stuff always happened to my people.
"Pods!" some soldier shouted.
It wasn't until a brute kicked down the hatch on the pod that everyone's screaming intensified. The brutes went for the easy kills first, shooting at the nurses or the wounded men and women that couldn't fight back. I watched for a second as plasma burned through the ranks of wounded before I brought my rifle to bear and squeezed a well-placed burst into the brute's temple. The alien collapsed, but not before it had killed at least five defenseless men and women.
It wasn't the only alien on the rooftop. Other brutes had dropped down in insertion pods oddly reminiscent of ODST HEVs. Most of the brutes had focused on the easy targets, strafing the rows of wounded and aiming for the doctors and nurses in bloody scrubs. A few, however, were more professional than their idiotic brethren. One of them was a hammer-wielding chieftain and the other two were bodyguards with bright red armor.
"Hit the chieftain!" I shouted, firing at the brute in question "Move the wounded down!"
A few doctors were quick to react, dragging injured men and women towards the elevators. The soldiers were scared, but they were still highly-effective professional killers. They quickly took out most of the brutes and forced the others to stop their rampage. At least sixty men and women had been killed in the span of ten seconds, but an equal number were still alive and could be moved to the lower floors within two minutes. Once again we faced the problem of holding the enemy back for the required period of time.
"Eyes on the chieftain!" I shouted, giving out orders "Get men around, keep them pinned on all sides!"
The soldiers slowly started shuffling sideways, covering each other and strafing the brute positions with their assault rifles. I stayed where I was, keeping my rifle firmly trained on the place where the chieftain was taking cover. The brute began moving, but a trio of snapping rifles kept it back down. I remained nearly immobile, half my body out of cover.
"Twenty seconds," Astrid shouted "Cover for us!"
"You heard the lady!" I shouted "Twenty for them and we're out!"
"I'm calling in a strafing run on the rooftop," a soldier said "As soon as we're safe we can-"
The chieftain leapt out of cover. Its whole body covered in streams of golden energy. Everyone who had earned the right to call himself a veteran knew what that meant. It meant that the massive fucker was nearly invulnerable for a short amount of time. It wouldn't need that much to smash us all into a pulp with its invincibility shields on. It swung its hammer over its head and circled it twice before catching up with a running soldier. The poor man's back was nearly shattered as the hammer hit him in the side. The gravity burst sent him flying to the side and falling out of the building.
"Fall back!" someone shouted the obvious "Cover the elevators!"
A grenade detonated right next to the brute chieftain, making it stumble but otherwise leaving him unharmed. I fired a couple of wild bursts at one of its bodyguards and slid into cover behind one of the elevator pylons. There were still a few wounded men here and the doctors with them looked like they were about to piss their pants.
The doors dinged.
"Hurry!" I shouted.
The chieftain was too fast. It landed amongst the wounded after a powerful leap and swung its hammer in a circle around itself. The gravity bursts sent bodies around like rag dolls, both soldiers and medical personnel were caught in the slaughter. I forced myself to turn around and ignore the carnage behind me even as blood sprayed all around me. Instead I brought down a brute bodyguard, stalling the advance of the others.
I tossed my grenades out and jumped into the elevator. Another soldier made it inside before the chieftain could kill her, but the brute was in the middle of a blood frenzy and wasn't about to let us go so easily. It jumped inside just as the doors closed, leaving us trapped with 600 kilograms of death. I fired my rifle point blank into the brute's face. It still had its shields on, but the kinetic force was enough to send it reeling into a wall. Once it fell down its invincibility shields disappeared, leaving it considerably less well-defended, but still shielded and armored.
I reloaded.
The woman with me fired her pistol twice at the brute before it batted her aside with its hand. I aimed at it after pulling the bolt only to be kicked into the opposite side of the elevator. I struggled to get some air into my lungs as the brute stood up, its headdress touching the ceiling. It gripped its hammer and tried to swing, but there wasn't enough space in the elevator, and half the wall was torn off with the gravity burst, stopping the elevator abruptly.
"Aim for the gaps!" I shouted at the woman "Knee!"
She was in a considerably better angle than I was. She fired the rest of her pistol's magazine into the brute's knee, forcing it down slightly. I managed to raise my rifle once again and squeeze off a sustained burst, but the regular shields held and the brute batted my rifle away from me before bringing its meaty fist overhead for a haymaker. I rolled to the side, but the impact of its fist on the floor shook the elevator and made me jump up slightly. I reached for my MA5 and turned just in time to see the brute backhand the soldier across the shoulder. I heard a crack and saw her slam into the partially destroyed wall. I took advantage of the brute giving me its back and jumped on top of it.
Once there I grabbed onto the ledge of the elevator and pull myself up. The brute held on to my leg, pulling me back down. I turned around and fired another long burst of my rifle before it could use its full strength. The brute let go and I grabbed onto one of the cables that kept the elevator going. I aimed at the base of the cables and fired what was left of my magazine. The box fell down a few meters before the emergency brakes kicked in.
There were a couple of gunshots before the chieftain quelled them with a sickly crunch. I closed my eyes and held on, my legs swinging below me. I put my rifle on my back and grabbed one of my grenades, activating it. It was a simple matter of letting it fall into the elevator and watching as the explosion tore the metal box apart. The chieftain roared as it fell, but hit after hit drained its shields and then broke its bones. It was a long fall before it would hit the bottom. By the time the chieftain reached the base of the building then it would be very much dead.
That still left me, hanging by a cable inside an elevator shaft.
"Ah shit," I muttered much like El-tee did when something went to hell "Astrid, do you copy? Astrid?"
She had been wearing an earpiece to communicate with everybody and coordinate the evacuation. I'm not entirely sure why Astrid had become the de facto leader of the hospital. She was way too young for that role, but everybody had been deferring to her opinion even before we got here. I waited for her reply.
"Aaron, you're alive?"
I sighed with relief "Very much so. I'm in the elevator shafts. Could you get someone to open the doors on floor 49, please?"
She sighed "How'd– I'm sending someone up. Just hold on."
I looked up at my hands tightly gripping the cable "Oh, believe me, I am."
It took four minutes for the doors to open and then another minute for me to swing perfectly into the frame of the elevator doors. My feet landed on the edge and my arms swung desperately as I tried to regain my balance. The two soldiers reached out and grabbed me by my shoulders, pulling me back inside the safety of the building. I fell forward and took a couple of deep breaths. My arms were burning.
"Thanks," I heaved, my body shaking.
"No problem," one of them said, helping me back up "Doctor Vinter told us to bring you down to the MagLev station."
"Are we evacuating?"
They nodded "We can't go through at ground level and the park terrace is no longer an option."
"So we're sending everybody to a different building, then?" I asked, moving with them at a brisk jog.
"Correct," one of them said.
"Where are we going?" I asked.
"We're not sure yet. It's either Vyrant Telecom or Olympic."
"Huh," I muttered to myself ONI Central?
My thoughts were interrupted as a Phantom appeared on the windows of the hallway bridge. This bridge was the only way to cross to the main tower of the hospital and we were already too far in to simply turn around. The Phantom's door gunner began firing at us, shattering the windows on either side. We moved our fast jog into a full-on dead man's sprint, as El-tee liked to call it. Plasma flew all around me and I thanked Adonai for the grunt's incredibly bad aim. It was still a long way to go and I refused to let myself become overconfident. In the end all those speed and endurance exercises that El-tee made us go through paid off. I made it to the other side and turned around just in time to see one of the soldiers struck in the side of the head by a bolt. I saw exactly what happened as the superheated plasma burned his skin and melted his brains inside his skull. He fell right in front of me, smoke coming out of his eye sockets.
I felt like throwing up.
"Come on," I said, urging the other soldier to keep moving.
"Wait," he said, kneeling down and grabbing the man's dogtags, pocketing them.
"I'm sorry," I said awkwardly.
"It's war," he replied "Let's go."
The rest of the journey was made in silence, with only our boots hitting the floor. We began hearing the sounds of the dead and the dying once we closed in on the MagLev station. I had been expecting waves of wounded men and women to be waiting, but I hadn't prepared myself for the sheer volume of bodies covered in blood and bandages. Burns, lacerations, and amputations were all equally common. Some men had the advantage of a stretcher or a wheelchair, but most had to deal with their injuries in the cold floor. Doctors moved from one place to another, either in lab coats or in bloodied scrubs. A few nurses here and there were quite evidently shellshocked, looking off into the distance with a dead look in their eyes. The moans of pain were accompanied by the sounds of prayer.
"Aaron, you made it," Astrid said, standing up from next to a recently deceased Marine "Good."
I smiled slightly. That was more concern than Castillo had ever shown for me.
"Before you ask," she went on "Medically there's nothing that you can do to help. We ran out."
"What?" I asked, confused.
"We ran out. There's no more stitching cord, no more tissue webs, no more biofoam cans, no more blood, no more nothing. We're burning through the last of our bandages Aaron."
I looked at the wounded. All of them looked like they were shaking hands with the devil. Some looked calm in the face of death, some others were crying at their untimely decease, while some others looked like they were daring Death to try and pry their souls from this world. You couldn't tell the veterans from the green-faced rookies here. Some rookies found the spirit to fight their injuries and try to keep on living while other stone-faced veterans simply seemed content to let death take them and finally be free from this madness.
"Astrid," I said, looking at the young doctor "You should sit down."
She looked at me and complied without a word. The surviving soldiers had taken charge of the situation. They were yelling orders for the more seriously wounded to be moved nearer to the train stop while the wounded that could walk unassisted had to stay back and wait. At this point not a lot of men could walk by themselves. It was a sorry spectacle, seeing those that wanted out dragging themselves towards the train, leaving bloody stains behind them. Some of these men wouldn't ever be the same even if they made it out.
The MagLev arrived, stopping sharply with a screech. It wobbled slightly before the doors opened. Nurses and doctors jumped in, dragging and carrying wounded soldiers and Marines. To my surprise, they jumped back out and repeated the process with help from some of the able-bodied soldiers. The train filled up way too fast for my liking, but by the time it was full we had made the waiting room considerably less crowded.
Astrid was still sitting down cross-legged looking at the ground. I frowned at the sight of the once-strong woman, but a trio of soldiers appeared from the hallway.
"Sergeant!" one of them shouted "Sergeant!"
Another soldier hopped over the wounded and made her way towards us. She looked at her men and gestured for them to give their report.
"We've sealed the elevator shafts," the one that had spoken said "They can't be opened by anyone without UEG identification chips now. A little bit extreme, but it should keep the covvies from using the elevators."
"What about the stairwells?" the sergeant asked.
"We did our best, ma'am. We set a couple of charges two floors above, but it's not a big jump even then."
"Sergeant," I said "We're going to need to barricade these hallways if we want to evacuate everybody."
The soldier seemed to notice my fancy armor and me for the first time. She gave me a once-over and then frowned "We both know that all these men are as good as dead. Half of them will bleed out on the way to Olympic Tower and the rest will put one on their brains as soon as they realize that their families are dead."
I growled at the words, but she was right "Still, we can't abandon them."
"Of course not," she said "I just want to feel like I'm dying for something important."
I chuckled. "You'd get along with my CO."
"Sergeant Clarke," she introduced herself "These are my men. Wait, where's Pierce?"
"Dead," the surviving soldier of the pair that had rescued me said.
"Ah," Clarke said "Well then… we need this hallway secured. If the attack on the rooftop is anything to go by the covvies are going to try and kill us all. We've still got a decent enough perimeter in the ground, but there are reports of enemy squads punching through. Things are falling apart, soon enough this will be urban warfare of the worst kind. No defined fronts, no decent communication or support."
I nodded "Command is cutting off support to those units that they deem lost causes; it's in our best interest to be seen as important or relevant."
"Mr. Fancy Armor is right," Clarke said in a firm voice "We're in a hospital right now, and that gives us an advantage."
"Eidelberg," I introduced myself.
"Corporal Eidelberg here," she went on "Looks like he might know what he's doing."
That was as clear as she was gonna get that she would be deferring to my better judgment. I nodded in acknowledgement and made no big fuss about the symbolic exchange of power.
"We're gonna have to trust the guys on the ground to keep our asses covered," I said "Remain in communication with them as constantly as possible. If it was up to me I'd start sending a few of the soldiers up here. Evacuating to Olympic through MagLev is gonna be easier than going through at ground level."
"That's a no go," Clarke said with a shake of her head "The trains are filled to the brim with wounded and we can't afford to abandon all the materiel down there. A Scorpion is one thing, but seven is another matter entirely. And that's not counting the Armadillos."
I nodded. "Alright, they stay down, then. We've got at least three more trains to go before we can leave ourselves. Ammunition boxes?"
"There are half a dozen right there," Clarke said. "Full."
"Empty them," I ordered "And set them in that corner over there. They ought to be enough to stop plasma or spikes. Do we have any kind of spare explosives?"
"A little bit of C-10," one of the men said "Not enough to be useful."
"I'm going to doing a little something that I once heard," I said "Make a hole in the ceiling right here, climb onto the next floor and make another hole that we can fire from."
The men nodded.
"Grenades should be a wonder here, shrapnel bouncing all over the place."
"Their spike grenades also use shrapnel," Clarke pointed out.
"No matter," I replied "We should be good on ammunition, at least for a while. The important thing right now is to remain of relevance. Command won't usually abandon entire squads, but this isn't your typical situation."
The men nodded at me.
"Start setting up the barricade," I said "Once you have that one done I want additional ones further down the hallway."
"Can't the covvies use those for cover once we fall back?" a soldier asked, pointing out the obvious.
"Yes," I said simply. "But by that point there should be enough dead bodies in the ground that they don't have to worry about cover, you hear me?"
"Hooah!" they shouted.
"It's oorah," I replied with a good-natured smile "I'll try to communicate with my unit. My El-tee might be able to pull some strings and get us some help."
The soldiers set themselves to comply with my suggestions and I opened a link to AAG-7. The little sign that determined whether my helmet had signal or not flickered before going dark and disappearing from my HUD. I clenched my jaw when I realized that we were being actively jammed. We hadn't been actively jammed a few seconds ago. The covvies must've just set up a jammer nearby.
"Damn," Sergeant Clarke said a second later "Not good."
"Short range still works," I said "I can't contact HIGHCOM…"
"Medium to long range jammer," she summarized "Not good."
"We just became irrelevant," I replied "Can we pinpoint the position of the jammer?"
"Probably," Clarke said "We can always try one of the landlines while I get Cortez to try and extrapolate or triangulate or whatever."
"Is he good with computers?" I asked the obvious.
"Better than you'd expect," she replied "Looks like he could wrestle a brute."
"Get him here," I told her "I'll get Doctor Vinter to begin working on a landline."
Astrid looked up at the mention of her name. Her eyes were red, not from crying, but from an overuse of stimulants. I was partially to blame for that, but I'm certain that the good doctor took her own fair share of stims to try and keep going.
"I can't fall asleep," she said.
"I pumped you up," I told her, helping her up "You should be good to go for about three more hours assuming you weight hundred and ten or so."
"What's that in kilos?" she asked.
I shrugged "Fiftyish? Doesn't matter. You need to get the landlines up and running. UNSC has contingency plans for situations like this. Landlines all link up to emergency services which in turn should link to the nearest UNSC military base. And all those are linked together."
"You don't have to use that voice to explain," Astrid said, sounding more like the confident doctor that she was "I can get emergency services shortly. Last I heard there was still UNSC presence in there, right?"
"Last I heard," I confirmed.
She collected herself and moved towards the waiting desk that received people coming from the train. The desk itself was occupied by two men that in all likelihood were already dead, their blood colored the waist high walls. Astrid deftly moved past the dead and dying bodies before getting behind the desk. She disappeared as she picked up an incredibly oversized phone and sat down.
"Sir?"
"Corporal," I replied "I'm a corporal."
"My name's Cortez," the massive soldier said "Sergeant Clarke said you needed my help?"
"Yeah, I need to see if you can pinpoint the location of the jammer."
"Why is that important?" he asked "If we're jammed we're jammed."
I nodded in understanding "If the jammer is in this building, then we're taking it down."
Cortez looked at me and scoffed slightly "You know, we usually aren't that proactive in the military. Picking our own missions and shit."
"Well, desperate times," I replied "Do you need a computer?"
"I can link up with a terminal. Should get more processing power that way."
"Do what you have to," I told him "And try and make it quick."
Suddenly I realized that every single member of Sergeant Clarke's unit had left to do something that I had personally ordered them to do. Not exactly what I had expected, but a feeling of power and authority remained, giving me a slightly awkward urge to smile. With the two hundred or so injured men and women here, laughing would've been taken as a sure sign of insanity. Now that I had ordered everyone to work, the only thing left to do was to wait. While I waited I could formulate defensive plans, and to do that I needed the building's blueprints.
Access to those was easy enough and soon I was trying to memorize the layout of the floors above and below this one. I studied the blueprints in my HUD until the next train arrived. At this point the screaming intensified as men and women began begging to get a seat on the train. Anybody ranging from a recent amputee to a third-degree burn victim tried to get on board, but only the most immediately deadly cases were admitted. The doctors didn't have to work hard to contain the wounded soldiers and Marines, but a few soldiers had to stand there with their rifles half-raised in order to discourage any acts of desperation from the wounded.
I helped various men and women hop inside the train and couldn't help but consider what the consequences would be if I stayed inside it. As soon as El-tee found out I most certainly would be returned to my original unit, even if it was in the middle of the war. Castillo wasn't one to take mission abandonment likely. Then I'd be shunned by every single member of AAG-7 and I'd probably end up dead.
For a moment I thought that it would be worth it.
"Ten seconds," the driver broadcast over the intercom "Clear the doors!"
"All non-wounded out!" I shouted "Out, out!"
I stepped outside and back into the hospital just as the doors slid shut. The train started gaining speed, but just as it left the station a pair of fast-flying Banshees appeared overhead. I watched in complete and utter powerlessness as the attack craft dove in for the kill. The plasma bolts seemed to do little to no damage, but I knew that they were burning through the thin metal sheets faster than one would think possible. The rear of the train detonated in a shower of sparks and metal before it derailed. After that the MagLev's own momentum forced the rest of it down. A hundred men careened to their deaths in a massive metal coffin.
My first thought was of anger. My second thought was the realization that all of the wounded men and women here were as good as dead. I sure as hell didn't plan on keeping them safe at the cost of my own life. Three fourths of the wounded here wouldn't make it anyways. I looked around the emptier station. There was crying and there was screaming.
I could just walk out. I was certain that El-tee wouldn't fault me for that at this point. I'd get bonus points if I took all able-bodied men and women with me and saved the doctors as well. He'd be pissed, but he'd understand. At least I hope that he would. Then there was the fact that I wasn't a psychopath and could hardly live with the death of a hundred men and women in my conscience. Clarke might've been the highest ranking person here, but I was the de facto leader right now by right of experience.
"Aaron, I have a direct line to UNSC Command!" Astrid shouted from across the room.
I nodded and gestured for her to wait a moment "Cortez, how are you on your research?"
"Moving," he replied "I've gotten the area down to a block. It seems like we're going on that mission of yours."
"We might not have to after all," I said "But don't get excited."
He chuckled humorlessly and I walked over to Astrid. She offered me the phone as I removed my helmet and sat down in a bloodied chair.
"Corporal Aaron Eidelberg," I said "AAG-7."
"Where's the rest of your unit?" the voice on the other end asked. Straight to business.
"Sea District," I replied "I was left here because of my medical expertise."
I could almost see the person on the other end nod slowly.
"I'm running out of options here," I went on "MagLev is out of the question now and we no longer have air superiority around this area. I need twenty Pelicans sent my way ASAP in order to evacuate the hospital."
"You know that can't happen."
I nodded. It was a ludicrous "I need ships if I want to get the wounded out."
"I know how the situation is there, half those men won't survive even with medical assistance."
"Be that as it may," I said, not correcting him on his optimistic estimate "We can't just abandon them to their fate."
"What do you suggest?" he asked.
It was always like this with the El-tee. He'd start out by asking something ridiculous and then move his offer down.
"Four Pelicans and pilots willing to do repeat trips," I stated calmly.
"I can't allow that," he said "All Pelicans are being used to carry men that assist the war effort, not hamper it."
Ouch. That was one way of putting things. Very… cold. Even if it was true.
"If aircraft are out of the way I'm going to need ground transport. Do you have any available Elephants?"
"Listen Corporal, I can spare you two Olifants for transport."
"Two?" I exclaimed "Olifants? You've gotta be shitting me. We've held this hospital for a day without any reinforcements or replacements of any kind. If you're going to be giving me shit for transport then you might as well offer me some air support."
The man sighed "I can redirect two Shortswords for a bombing run."
I frowned. "It could work. I believe that the Covenant may have placed a jammer on this building. Taking that out would just be a bonus."
"Two Shortswords and two Falcons," the man said "That's because you helped us find it."
"Any time," I replied.
"You have eight minutes."
He hung up.
Eight minutes to move a hundred dead and dying men fifty floors down when the elevator shafts weren't working in our current floor? Not to mention the high probability of a Covenant attack in the stairwell.
"Clarke! Tell your men to move that explosive into the ground. We're making a hole to the floor below! Everybody listen up!" I waited a few seconds. "Listen up! I secured evacuation for us. I need everybody to move to the ground floor. This is how its gonna go. I'm gonna blow a hole in the floor right over there. From there we can move to the elevators below us and take them down with no problem."
I turned around and got to work before anybody could complain. I studiously ignored the doctors and nurses asking questions and let the insults from the wounded bounce off. After I got Clarke to detonate a beautifully shaped hole in our floor everything seemed to go in a blur. A couple of stretchers were rigged to become a ramp of sorts and the wounded slid down, often crying in pain as they stopped at the bottom. From there they were moved in stretchers two or three at a time. That is five stretchers at a time with three wounded each. We could get two runs before the elevators came back empty.
We were the last, us fighters and a couple of the doctors. The elevator felt cramped even despite its' ridiculous hospital size. Astrid's arm was brushing against mine. That was important for two reasons. One: it made me feel like I was back in high school. Two: it meant that my undersuit wasn't separating her skin from mine. I looked down to realize that I had a massive laceration in arm. Well, maybe massive is overselling it, but there was a huge scratch all over my left arm. It went from below the elbow to my mid upper arm. Once I realized I actually started feeling the burn. I tried remembering where I got it and failed to come up with a definitive moment. Perhaps it had been during the altercation with the brute, although I hadn't noticed anything.
"Out, out," I said as soon as the doors opened "Move!"
The journey from the elevators to the main entrance was a short one. There was a more sizeable contingent of Army soldiers standing guard outside the entrance. The two Olifant garbage trucks were there, both of them full to the brim with wounded
"Doctors first!" I ordered the obvious "Go!"
Astrid stayed back to wait for all the nurses and doctors to go. Just as she began moving forward I stopped her. Something in my gut told me to. Immediately I assumed that it was my Jewish sixth sense. My people had been through so much in the last millennium for me not to have developed some self-defense mechanism of sorts. A few minutes later I realized that I stopped her because I wanted to kiss her.
How stupid of me. I barely knew the woman and I had my helmet on. How utterly unromantic would it be for me to flip her around only to break her nose against my ballistic visor? Very, that's how.
One of the Olifants was hit with what I recognized to be plasma torpedoes. It detonated in an explosion exponentially deadlier than anything a Banshee could come up with. A fraction of a second later two teardrop-shaped objects screamed by, shattering reinforced windows and sending infantry flying away in their shockwave. The Seraphs had taken their time to bomb irrelevant targets. In fact, I have no doubt that they actually helped us in the long run. Demoralizing as it might've been, everybody that witnessed the destruction of one of the Olifants would fight for revenge and we wouldn't need to take care of those men, saving up valuable manpower for other causes.
The horror wasn't done there. A secondary explosion rocked the wrecked Olifant, sending shrapnel the size of a desk flying everywhere. A few men were cleanly bisected and the doctors were all but atomized by the two explosions. One of the jagged pieces of metal flew up and got stuck in one of the Falcon's rotors. The craft that we had been promised stumbled slightly before its right rotor detonated in a fiery explosion. The pilot attempted to keep the bird under her control, but she only bought enough time for the gunners to jump down and break their legs or their spines as opposed to their necks. I watched as the Falcon slowly came towards me and started running backwards, dragging Astrid by the arm.
Short story shorter, by the time I came to I couldn't move and the entrance lobby to the hospital looked a lot more different. I took a moment to collect myself, expecting the pain to hit me like Snark's beloved Sledgehammer. I waited until I realized that it wouldn't come. I still couldn't move, but the pain was there.
My first thought was that I was paralyzed, but my hands felt like they were there, and after further experimentation I realized that I could also wiggle my toes. Not paraplegic and not quadriplegic. I was in relatively good condition seeing as there wasn't that much pain.
"Aaron! Aaron!"
I stepped outside of my own body and my eyes slowly focused on my surroundings. The outer wall of the lobby had been brought down along with a section of the top floor. The debris had fallen mostly inside. The once aesthetically beautiful entrance was now a mess of grey rocks. It wasn't until a second later that I saw the remains of the Falcon gunship on top of me. It was a quasi-literal interpretation of the word literally, seeing as the top of the craft had been torn off and the base of it was pressing my boot against the floor. The only reason why I hadn't lost my leg was because two little rocks had kept the Falcon propped up.
"Aaron!"
"What!" I shouted, annoyed "What the hell do you want?"
"Are you ok?"
I turned my head to see Astrid kneeling next to me, her hand on my wrist and her other one holding what I was certain was my sidearm. A quick look down confirmed that suspicion and also told me that my legs had received additional injuries other than the Falcon coming on top of it. The space in between my armor was leaking some blood while the armor itself had held pretty decently against the shrapnel.
"Get me out of here," I mumbled, still shaken up "Get me out!"
"I can't move the VTOL," she said, sounding desperate.
"Clarke! Cortez!" I shouted "Anybody, help me out here!"
The first two names I called were the first two people that came to my aid. Along with Sergeant Clarke and Cortez came a couple of other soldiers from her squad. I didn't have to ask them for help again. They immediately tackled the Falcon and set it back on its bottom. I cried out at the point that the weight was mostly on my toe, but it didn't feel like it cracked. Those two little rocks turned out to be a huge lifesaver. Once the Falcon was back upright Cortez jumped inside and manned the still-intact machine gun.
I was dragged backwards, pain throbbing through my ankle. It took a few seconds for me to get safely behind cover. Once there Clarke left with her reduced squad, leaving Astrid behind to do her doctor thing with me.
"I don't have a scanner," she said, beginning to remove the armored boot "It doesn't look broken, but there's gonna be some damage to the muscles and tendons."
"I know," I replied "I'm a fucking doctor."
"Well, excuse me Mr. Fucking Doctor," she muttered, removing the boot completely. "But I'm a fucking doctor too. And I'm actually a real doctor."
"Fair enough," I grunted "Where's my rifle?"
"I don't know," she replied "Here's your handgun. I panicked and took it."
I received the weapon as she began poking and prodding at my red and swollen ankle. It was too early for bruises, but those would begin popping up sooner rather than later. My guess was muscular damage as well as bone contusions. About two weeks of taking it easy if you didn't want any kind of medical help. To me it basically meant that I was fine and would be limping around for a while until I got some painkillers.
"Any numbing agents?" I asked her "Little something for emergencies?"
"We're all out," she said sadly "Your boots have built-in braces, right?"
"Yeah, you can set them to become casts. Comes standard with most current armor in the UNSC."
"It was a yes or no question," she noted "Anyways, set it to no movement. You should be able to move fast enough even then."
"Alright," I said. "Sounds about right."
I probably would've allowed for some minor movement, but she was the doctor and she was gorgeous. It had been some time since I had last gotten myself any tail. Most of the guys barely went out to party anymore. Usually I just stayed in my apartment and caught up with my films and television series while spending my salary on high-end alcohol. It wasn't healthy physically or mentally, but at least I compensated with long hours at the gym and the range. Sometimes I couldn't help but wonder how I would cope after the war. If I even made it.
Something exploded nearby.
I probably wouldn't make it out of this one. I was sure that El-tee and Marv might have a good shot at surviving everything thrown at them. Maybe Staff Konstantinov too, but those two just had a way of always coming out on top.
"Done," I told Astrid "Now what?"
"I'm looking at you," she said "You're the Marine here."
"I am indeed," I replied with a well-practiced chuckle "But I'm just human."
"As are we all," she said with a small sigh "Aaron, I need a way out of here. I don't want to die."
"Not a lot of people do," I said, grunting as I pulled myself upright "Give me a moment."
I looked outside. The second Olifant was already disappearing in the distance, a Falcon close above it. Several unmoving bodies littered the area directly outside the hospital entrance. The once-massive contingent of troops defending the perimeter of the hospital had been reduced to a mere contingent the size of a platoon or so. Most of the Armadillos were nothing but scrap heaps. Two Scorpions remained, but both were immobile and heavily damaged. From here I could count one Gauss Warthog as well as two regular models. The ammunition supply for both probably wasn't too good, but those vehicles alone ought to be enough to defend this lobby for an extended period of time.
"Clarke!" I called out "Who's ranking officer?"
"Me!" she shouted back "So basically you!"
"Get the tanks to pull back! Use the Warthogs to drag them out if you need to. We can't hold the entire hospital anymore. We're bunkering down in the lobby!"
"Understood. You heard him everybody! Get to it!"
The army had an exceptional talent for fortifying things. Soldiers not directly involved in combat piled up rocks and debris to form barricades. Others moved the pre-existing sandbags and metal slabs inside. If we only protected the lobby then it meant that we would be vulnerable to attacks from behind. I wanted the elevators available to us if possible, so I gave the word for the fortifications to include them and the adjoining corridors. Some of those could simply be blocked off completely, others would have to be actively manned.
"What's the status on those guns?" I asked one of the tankers as his Scorpion was dragged backwards by two Warthogs.
"Main gun can still fire," he replied "Coaxial is fine but low on ammo."
"Ring mounted?"
"Plasma bolts hit it," he informed me "Killed my gunner and made the thing useless."
"I'm taking the ammunition," I told him, climbing on top We need all the help we can get."
"Feel free," he said.
The side guns on the Falcon were still useful. One of them was perfectly positioned to cover anything that came through the door while the other one was detached and positioned independently next to it. Sooner than I could've imagined we had three different rings of defense. One was marked by the two Scorpions and the debris piled just outside of the place where there had once been a wall. The next one had the crashed Falcon at its middle while the final one had the reception desk and assorted barricades making it up. The setup was complete just when the Covenant dropships arrived to capitalize on our retreats and losses here.
"All non combat personnel move to the elevators!" I shouted "Brutes are priority targets. Handle heavy weapons and marksmen first when possible. Conserve your fucking ammo!"
I only realized that I was sounding exactly like El-tee about halfway through my barking of orders. It made me feel somewhat cheap, but even if everybody mentally rolled their eyes I did manage to put the thought into their heads. I never considered the fact that the El-tee might've done that for just that reason. It certainly felt empowering. Lately I had began feeling more and more… well, like I had authority. As a corporal I was only supposed to lead fire teams, or maybe even squads into action. Corporals had a fair degree of authority, but in AAG-7 rank was basically meaningless. You had El-tee sitting on top of the pyramid like a god. Below him you had his two seconds. Gunny was infinitely more influential than Konstantinov when it came to issues less directly related to combat, but once the fight began both of their opinions had nearly the same pull. After those two demigods came the more human fireteam leader. We had Sergeant Mata, a man as deadly as they came, short and bulky and strong as he was fast. His ugly face and large musculature often deceived those that thought he had no brains, but he was a capable tactician and a fast thinker. Normally we'd have those four men lead us all. A bit of an unorthodox arrangement, seeing as Castillo personally led a fireteam more often than not. That's where it got weird, we had two other men of Mata's rank in the unit, but none of them behaved even remotely like a sergeant. Sure, Marv was the guy that you would call a leader in a sports team, but not the captain. Snark was just plain childish, but he had been in the game so long that he had climbed to the rank of sergeant through sheer time spent in the Corps.
In a normal unit I would've had Mata's role. I had never really wanted the authority, but at this point it was practically shoved into my face and I had no practice with it whatsoever.
"I need a rifle!" I shouted "Get some from the dead!"
"Already done!" a soldier replied, tossing me a battered MA37. The weapon looked old and used, but the slide was in perfect condition and it would fire bullets just as good as the next gun.
I thanked the soldier for his help and began looking for targets. All I could see was wave after wave of grunts and jackals being gunned down pretty darn fast. I joined the assault, hitting targets as fast as I could. They went down relatively quickly, these grunts seemed vastly inferior to those that served under the elites, and that's saying a lot. The jackals were competent, but only just. It wasn't anything out of the ordinary. They tried to overwhelm us through superior numbers and firepower before sending in the big guns. It was ugly and inelegant, but it rarely failed to work. A few brutes here and there, taking cover and giving orders, but nothing too bad. Their numbers were getting close to overwhelming quickly, the brutes were wasting no time in taking this place.
"I've got movement in the back!"
"I'm on my way," I replied, pointing at two soldiers to follow me.
I ran past the few doctors that remained here. All of them had a pistol and looked more annoyed than scared. At this point all of them had seen enough death to guarantee that they'd receive a healthy dose of PTSD if they made it. A few of the docs had vests from soldiers. They looked awkward and oversized without the rest of the armor or fatigues, but it was better than nothing.
A burst of plasma received us once we got to the barricaded hallway. It missed, but it was close enough to me that I felt the heat. I dropped and rolled as spikes filled the air above me, narrowly missing my recently acquired subordinates. There were three additional soldiers manning the barricade, firing with SAWs at the enemy. I heard grunts of pain as the brutes were hit and got back on my feet, taking cover behind a corner. I fired a couple of short bursts as the gunners reloaded. The bullets ricocheted off the walls and failed to hit anything, but the brutes pulled their heads back behind cover. We promptly began going back and forth. They couldn't go the length of the corridor without dying, but they could saturate it with enough fire to have us duck down.
"How are we on grenades?" I asked.
"I have two," a soldier said.
"On my three," I told him "One, two, three!"
We suppressed the brutes as the man threw his first grenade and then the second. The detonations came almost simultaneously. I heard the explosions and peeked over. The gore that sprayed the back wall was a testament to the effectiveness of the fragmentation devices. I don't know whether all the brutes were taken out, but certainly one of them would no longer see the light of day.
"Shit!"
I almost turned around before I realized that the voice was coming from my helmet.
"What?"
"Payat, what's your status?" Staff Konstantinov asked.
"Pretty darn bad," I replied. "I've got a platoon to defend the hospital."
"You're in charge? Doesn't matter. Things are bad down here. Can you get out?"
"I'm hardly in any position to help."
"No, get out of the city," Konstantinov said. I paled at those words. So casually mentioning surrender.
"Negative, sir."
"We can arrange for evacuation," he went on. "I'll contact someone. There should be three Pelicans headed your way and on the rooftop of the main building in exactly fifteen minutes."
"Wait, what's the situation down there?" I asked, but he had already cut the line. I cursed and looked at the men. "Small miracle. We have evacuation provided, but we need to reach the rooftop in fifteen minutes."
"Elevators still work," one of them said "We can easily reach the top floor."
"Arrange it," I told him "As soon as we hit the ten minute mark we move out."
The man looked back at me with a huge smile on his face "Yes, sir!"
I'm a corporal…
I briefly wondered if people called doctors sir sometimes, but the surviving brutes decided to attack once again and kept my thoughts occupied. I could hear the other end of the firefight behind me, but I put that in the back of my head as best I could and focused on suppressing the attackers. Brute after brute tried to come through, some of them died when they refused to go back, but most realized that they couldn't move forward. They began throwing deployable covers and slowly moving closer towards us.
"Bring the covers down!" I shouted "Grenades!"
Two deployable shields were shattered when an equal number of grenades detonated. A further three pulsed red when the shrapnel hit them. Only one brute was killed during the explosions, but two others had to pull back due to bleeding injuries. I fired at one of the wounded brutes as it tried to squeeze behind another deployable cover. My bullets hit it in the back, right above the waist. The alien slammed into the weakened cover, finishing it off. The other injured brute fell prey to a barrage of bullets before it could jump back further into cover. I smiled at the sight of the two dead aliens and ducked back behind cover in anticipation of the retaliation by the brutes.
As expected, spikes, needles, and more flew in our direction. Nobody was hit, but the barrage was a lot more intense than I had expected. I fired blindly, trying to discourage any brute from closing in on us. I had barely any warning when not one, but three brutes burst through our barricade. One soldier was trampled under the legs of the brutes, one of the brutes collapsed down, dead. The other two brutes were still able to fight, but they were both hurt. One of them turned around and sprayed the area with two spikers. It managed to miss every single shot, but sent us all diving down for cover.
I stumbled backwards, tripping over my own feet. I got a decent vantage point on the brute's belly from where I was and didn't waste a single instant. I emptied my rifle at it. The brute was unshielded and unarmored. Even with its thick skin and hard muscle, it couldn't stand up to that amount of bullets. One by one they pierced it, leaving behind an almost minuscule hole behind. The hole slowly expanded as the bullet traveled further in. Blood sprayed out the few exit wounds and dripped out the entry wounds.
It all happened in painstakingly slow motion for me, but the brute died well enough.
"Hit it, hit it!"
The other brute had a brute shot. It brought the massive bayonet around in a practiced swing and sliced through a soldier's neck. A follow-up move almost killed a second one, but the man was luck enough to avoid it. The brute was no slouch though, it fired at the soldier, blowing him apart with the grenade. A third soldier fired at it, but his magazine was emptied on the third bullet. The brute kicked him, breaking his femur with a crunch and then proceeding to fire two grenades into his chest.
The three of us still alive were slow to react, but the brute had just come from connecting three kills in half as many seconds and wasn't able to keep the pace. It stumbled slightly as it turned. That hiccup was enough for us to fire first. The brute was pierced at least three dozen times as we all hit it with full automatic fire. It didn't take long for it to collapse, but we didn't stop firing even then.
"Fall back," I said, realizing I was wasting time and ammunition "We're due to go up in ninety seconds."
More brutes were rushing through the now unprotected hallways, but we were already on the move. The secondary defensive barricades were all being manned already. We jumped over the barricade and stepped into cover behind. From there on out we quickly began moving closer and closer to the elevators. There were about forty people still in the building, a quarter of those being doctors. The civilians went in first, but they needed a military escort. We sent most of the doctors in the first two groups, but a few remained behind for the last trip.
"Ready!" I shouted.
A plasma grenade landed four feet away from me as the elevator doors opened. I didn't see any reasonable source for it, but it was still a plasma grenade. I started moving sideways, but I knew that the explosion would kill half a dozen people in this confined space. One lone soldier moved towards the grenade instead of away from it. He jumped on top of the incendiary device and let out a cry of defiance that was only cut short when the explosive detonated. Blood and gore splattered everywhere, knocking me back on my ass.
Something in my head clicked.
"Everybody stay on the floor!" I shouted.
I stood up as the men and women began dropping. My rifle had only a third of the magazine full, but it should be enough. I held it at my hip and spun as I pulled the trigger. For the most part nothing happened, but a single bullet bounced off thin air instead of hitting the walls. A silhouette shimmered, giving four soldiers the target they needed. The brute stalker died quickly, but not before two others appeared, firing their spikers. This time they threw incendiary bombs, catching most of the remaining doctors in the fire. I immediately made an assessment and deemed the situation a lost cause. I barely took a step away from my route to grab Astrid's arm and throw her into the elevator. Another soldier ran inside with me, but as he turned around to fire a stalker impaled him with the bayonets on its spiker. The soldier still had enough presence of mind to fire his weapon at the brute's face, killing it.
The doors closed behind the dead brute, knocking Astrid and me backwards. I got up and dragged the soldier from underneath the heavy brute. He had two huge puncture wounds right below the chest. They looked deep. I did my best with what I had. I applied as much pressure as I could and ordered Astrid to tear a sleeve from her shirt. She had long since cut up her coat to use as bandages.
The man died a few seconds later, just as the elevator opened.
"Ten seconds!" I heard.
"Astrid, hurry!" I urged.
The Pelicans were already beginning to take off, letting out storms of chaff and flares in an attempt to have the plasma bolts and bombs collide with something before they hit them. A few stray bolts hit the lead Pelicans, but nothing too serious. The door gunners were firing at an enemy that I couldn't see, but that was only a sure sign that making the run wouldn't be simple. Things seemed to move slowly then. Astrid had a head start and was certainly no slouch in the speed department, especially with all the adrenaline in her system. I was an ODST, I basically had the running beat into me. I was also an AAG operator, which meant that I was better than all other ODSTs. It became hard for me not to overtake her, but I couldn't allow myself to let her become a target. Too many people had already died while I was in charge.
A brute in a jetpack jumped up from behind a ventilation system. I brought it down, but had to stop for a second in order to get a good shot on it. The brute died and fell to the ground. Just as its' body hit the rooftop with a sickly squelch I felt a piercing pain in the back of my leg. I took another step, but the pain became too great. Astrid turned around and put my arm over her shoulders. Another step in I felt two more impacts on my back.
"Run!" I shouted, feeling the blood come out of my mouth "Run!"
Astrid didn't hesitate. It was kind of depressing, really. I propped myself back to a knee. My left leg throbbed and shook, but I managed to lock my knee into place. With my rifle I pushed my body up until I was half standing. I reached for my sidearm weakly with my other hand.
Astrid jumped inside the Pelican and the door gunner shredded two brutes that were trying to kill me with their bare hands. Blood splattered on my visor as the brutes were pierced by the hail of bullets. I took a step forward and stopped. My leg wasn't going to hold and I couldn't pull my own weight up even using the MA5 as a crutch, not with two spikes on my back.
"Hurry up, sir!" the pilot shouted through the radio.
"Go!" I gurgled back "Go!"
The door gunner didn't stop trying to cover me from all the berserking brutes, but the pilot understood the situation well enough. The Pelican slowly took off. Just as it disappeared I could see Astrid screaming for the pilot to turn back. That gave me a smile, she cared a little bit, at least. The Pelican flew off and disappeared behind the buildings. The brutes reacted with low growls of apprehension, not wanting it to be a trap. I fired at the nearest one that I could see with my pistol, hitting it in the back of the head twice. The brute's metal helmet flew off and was quickly followed by bits of skull and brain. I winced as the shock from the recoil shook my body. It took a few seconds for me to regain my composure and balance, but the covvies here in the rooftop had come out of cover and were slowly approaching.
A grunt raised its plasma pistol and fired. I prepared for the inevitable, but the bolt went wide. I opened my eyes just in time to see a brute chieftain finish a backswing with its right arm and a grunt slam into the ventilation systems. The metal was bent by the impact and the grunt left a sizeable blood splatter behind. The other grunts cowered and moved away from the brute chieftain while the jackals and brutes snickered.
I raised my pistol at the chieftain, but all the bullets in the magazine bounced off its shields. The hammer it was carrying was not the standard gravity hammer. It looked ancient, like a crudely carved rock that had had pieces of metal embedded into it to make it more deadly. The grips on the handle seemed to be made of very pale leather. I wondered if it was human skin.
I sighed slowly and tried to look up defiantly, but the pain didn't allow me to lift my chin as high as I needed to. The brute stood in front of me, massive and imposing. The grey-haired behemoth with a mohawk-like crest of hair on its head looked at me with complete and utter satisfaction on its face. It seemed to be waiting for me to say something. In fact, it seemed to be granting me time for my last words. A million thoughts raced through my head. An insult would be fitting, even if it was vastly unoriginal. Pleading for my life would be both humiliating and useless. Those two were basically the only options.
The brute growled and grabbed its hammer with both hands, preparing for the crushing swing.
I let go of my rifle and managed to stay afoot without its support. I slowly removed my helmet, shaking with pain. My leg was about to give, but I wanted to die on my feet. I let go of the helmet and barely heard its clattering as I struggled to raise my head as much as possible. Waves of pain surged through my back, but even with my eyes tearing up from the effort and agony I succeeded in my goal. I snarled in pain, anger, and a lame attempt at defiance.
The chieftain echoed the snarl. "Pitiful," it said in perfect English.
Then it brought its hammer down.
Thanks to Colonel-Commissar2468 for proofreading this chapter. This by no means signifies that General TheDyingTitan will no longer be proofreading, but he couldn't make it until tomorrow and it has been a while since my last update (something that I apologize for).
Ah... here it is. Chapter Two Hundred. I hit One Hundred about a year and three months ago maybe? I'm not really sure, I just know that Sniper-Fodder was still proofreading my chapters. A hundred chaps later we find ourselves here. It's kind of weird that I didn't give the honor of being the protagonist to our actual story protagonist, but life works in mysterious ways. I know that Payat is by no means Frank, but he is (or was) an interesting character to me. He disliked his job but was simply too good at it. I enjoyed writing this chapter, it gave us quite a lot of insight into the kind of man that Payat was and wanted to become. You all know that you can't have character development in this story without the risk of certain death, and this time it seems our milestone protagonist went down the 'Death in the Limelight' road (you should look that up).
Well, Chapter 200 of The Life. I have to say that I'm happy with myself. I know that this chapter isn't the best one in this fic, but I like to think that it comes pretty damn close even with the removal of most combat elements and scenes. It was an idea that I had been holding inside my head for a while and the timing just felt right considering the shitstorm that Frank went through at the end of last chapter. I'm happy with myself, but I still want you to be happy with me, I am an author after all.
To those of you who care. Homecoming went petty decently, I'm probably gonna have a girlfriend before two months. For those of you who don't care, that might also mean slightly longer update times. I hate myself for taking so long already, but this is Reach, it has to be every bit as awesome as the books and the games and the entire Halo universe makes it out to be. Most chapters from this point on will be in the 10,000 word range, and I can't spit those out no matter how hard I try. You're gonna have to bear with me. Also, take note that I said I might get myself a girlfriend. Be proud. Now.
Maxxy989, Nato556 Yes. It was on purpose. My proofreader wanted to have some fun and I thought it was a pretty funny letter switch.
TheUltraGrand: It's been a few chapters, hasn't it? Well, glad to have you review again. I'm working on the one-on-one stuff. I love writing those, but due to plot and other stuffs I can't have a CCB scene every single chapter. I think the ones in this chapter were pretty decent. Would you agree?
rakushun: I tried translating that phrase, but sometimes it's just not good enough. Bilingual bonus for sure, I'm glad someone caught it!
fantasydelver: I agree with you on the ranges, but we have to remember two things: this is five hundred years in the future and both Frank and Preacher were using marksmen rifles.
outcasts's redeemer: I am a Roman Catholic much like Frank is (I thought it would be a lot easier that way). I am well aware of how it works. I don't mean to sound agressive or anything like that, but I want to clarify that I was taught to differentiate between the testaments at an early age and Catholics usually use the New Testament more in our dogma. That being said, I agree with you, I don't usually go into religion because let's face it, nobody wants to read about that in a Halo fanfic and I can get some small details wrong. Having cleared that up, when you look at it from an outside perspective, God was very much a dick in the Old Testament. *crosses himself and prays lighting doesn't strike*
guest: I try to appeal to everybody and will do my best to have a perfect balance when it comes to descriptions. Spartans and Johnson will show up, rest assured.
electric2097: Glad to have you with us buddy.
This chapter is special, so I decided to address those special readers of mine more extensively than I usually do. I'm actually pretty open when it comes to interacting with my readers.
Well, let me know, was this all you expected it to be? Was it better, was it worse, was it worthy? Be the case it be, I hope that you enjoyed reading this chapter.
Stay strong.
-casquis