Chapter CCII: Sleep and Breach

August 20, 2552 (UNSC Calendar)/

FLEETCOM HQ, New Alexandria, Viery, Reach, Epsilon Eridani System

"There's no time like the present for someone to tell you that you should've done something five hours ago. Fucking assholes."– Lance Corporal Sasha Dotsenko

The Spartans were all moving out from Olympic Tower and towards the landing pads. They were clustered in small teams of five, all of them clad in the same stealth armor that the members of Falcata were wearing. Most of the IIIs had MA5K rifles with suppressors, but some of the bigger Spartans were carrying M247Ls much like Pavel's, adding ballistic shields or an ammo backpack.

"Pavel, I need you to get in touch with Captain Flatt, get us supplies and–"

"On it," he said. "She says they're on their way."

I nodded and waited. The five Spartans jumped out of the two Pelicans and clustered together, talking amongst themselves. I looked at them before moving towards my own team. Pavel and Caboose were already talking to each other, with Mata leaning back against the Pelican, his eyes droopy and looking confused. They turned to look at me as I joined them, stepping aside to let me talk.

"What's next?" Pavel asked me.

"For now? Nothing," I said. "I'm gonna try and set up a line to Esztergom and see if we can contact Amber and Katie. Caboose, anybody you want to talk to?"

He shook his head.

"Alright. A lot of the guys have friends and family here and in Esztergom, we can see about giving them contact numbers. After that we're probably gonna be sent on a counter-op. If that's not the case we'll probably just stay here and defend this location while evacuation goes on. Either way, we might get a couple of hours rest."

Caboose nodded thoughtfully while Pavel sighed with relief.

"You need to get that helmet radio fixed," Pavel said. "Being a platoon leader is such a hassle."

I chuckled. "Tell me about it. I'll just get the module replaced."

"We also need to stock up on ammunition and supplies," Caboose added. "Most of us are out of rifle ammo and low on both stims and medical supplies."
I nodded. "Flatt will take care of that, I need to talk to her as soon as she shows up."

A little golf cart approached our landing pads, towing behind it a small trailer with what appeared to be like crates. The golf cart had only two people on it, but none of them appeared to be Captain Flatt. However, one of them was someone I knew.

"Well, what do you know?" Pavel asked, chuckling.

"Grass!" Bee exclaimed. "Grass, great to see you!"

Camilla stepped out of the small cart with a smile on her face and hugged Bee. They exchanged a few quick pleasantries before Cam told him that she had to talk business with me.

"Cam," Pavel said, giving her a quick hug as well. "It's good to see you."

"Same," she replied. "How are you, Grigori?"

"Just peachy," he replied, giving her one of his rare smiles.

"Hey Grass," I greeted her, also giving her a small half-hug. "What are you still doing here?"

"They killed my boss in the opening blitz," she said with a small sigh. "He was moving to Castle Mountain, covvie air assets caught up to him. I was lucky I wasn't there. Anyways, that's not important. Propaganda and public relations isn't really important at the moment, so they paired me up with Captain Flatt. You know, prior SpecOps experience."

I nodded, taking in her quick explanation. "Well, glad to be working with you again. Are you working logistics?"

"For the moment," she said. "I'm switching to mission control once we get some ops for you."

I smiled. "Alright then."

"What do you need then?" Grass asked, leaning back and crossing her arms.

"Full ammunition loads for everybody. We usually go a little heavier than we did back in Reaper," I told her. "Medical supplies, water, stimulants, energy bars, and all that stuff would help too."

"Rucksack loads?" she asked.

"We're not gonna be moving too much," I said after some thought, at least not for long distances. "Rucksack loads."

"Ok, I don't think we can supply Spartan Laser batteries, those are rare enough as it is. We do count with SPANKr ammunition."

I shrugged. "It'll do. If you could arrange for the two Pelicans to be refueled and have a full load out, that'd be great."

"I'll see what I can do."

"Marina would love it too," I added cheekily.

"Marina?" Grass asked after awkwardly clearing her throat. "I have no idea how you always manage to find yourself back together with your friends."

I chuckled lightly. She had a point. More often than not I ended up working together with people that I had known beforehand. It was an unusual thing in a military so large. Grass smiled as well, looking awkwardly at Marina's Pelican. She would be hard-pressed to forget her little drunken foray into kissing a person of her same sex. To her it would forever be a source of discomfort when it was brought up. To everyone else it would be an excellent story to tell whenever we met for a few drinks.

"Cam, if you could get us a working phone?" Pavel said. "I want to talk to my family and I'm sure that the guys here want to talk to their friends as well."

Grass nodded and smiled. "I can do that. I'll be back in about half an hour, ok? Meanwhile just try and rest. Take a nap. I know you're good at that."

I smiled. "Thanks Grass. We owe you one."

She smiled back rubbing her good arm with her artificial one before hopping back inside the small cart, all the crates now on the ground.

"Time for a nap ladies and gents!" I shouted to my men and the few survivors of A Company. "We'll get our orders soon, meanwhile, just get some rest."

There was a universal sigh of relief.

I was woken up precisely forty minutes later by Grass. She gently shook me, careful not to startle me unnecessarily. I looked around confused before remembering just exactly what was going on. My head was still killing me and my leg was beginning to get stiff. I had already solved the problem of ammunition I should see about securing some medical assistance. There had to be at least some sort of machinery here that could speed up the healing process in my leg.

"Here's a phone," Grass said.

"Thanks," I replied, grabbing it and dialing Katie. "Can you give me a sitrep?"

"The covvies have been contained, but they dropped so many infantry here that they have secured areas of the city all to themselves. Most of those places hadn't been evacuated yet."

I nodded and waited for the phone to get through to my girlfriend. "Some of the guys need medical assistance."

"I was wondering when you'd ask about that," she said. "Your leg looks like a bloody mess."

"It is," I admitted. "But I'm not the only one."

"We have an infirmary in the tower. It's not being used currently, too small for any serious use."

"Sounds good," I replied, slowly getting up.

"I'll take you there," she told me, helping me to my feet. "Pavel's got working phones for everybody, he said that he's gonna let everybody get another hour of sleep before waking them."

"Is he talking to his wife?"

Grass nodded. "Yes. He sounds worried."

I sighed and moved with Grass towards her little cart. The phone pressed against my ear was now beeping, waiting for Katie to pick up her own device.

"My helmet radio is not working," I told her.

"Already working on that," she said. "Pavel told me."

"What would I do without him," I wondered.

Grass rolled her eyes and scoffed, driving through the ever-increasing number of troops. FLEETCOM HQ was slowly becoming one of our most vital positions in the city, especially considering the losses we were going through. I noticed that most of the troops here were elite soldiers. I saw Ranger and Airborne patches on the Army soldiers as well as the iconic ODST armor here and there. Most importantly, there were still a few Spartan teams within sight, slowly and methodically field stripping their weapons.

"Hello?" Katie's voice came in through the phone.

"Katie, Katie, can you hear me?"

"Frank? Is that you?"

"Yes," I said, heaving a huge sigh of relief. "How are you?"

"I'm fine," she replied, sounding every bit as relieved as I was feeling. "Eliza is sleeping and Amber is talking to Pavel right now."

"Yeah, we managed to get a good line to you. How are you? Is everything fine?"

"We're fine, Frank. We're still in the spaceport. They're not letting anybody move inside the transports yet. People are beginning to get angry."

"Are they still keeping order there?"

"Yes," she confirmed. "We have the police and the Eposz Regional Force keeping civil order. Frank, people are leaving the city."

"You stay there," I told her. "Katie, if there's any chance to get out of the planet, that's the best one you have."

"Frank… are you sure?"

"Yes," I affirmed. "I need you to trust me on this one."

"I do. I trust you."

I nodded to myself, following Grass down into the infirmary, limping slightly. "Ok. Good. Where are you right now? Are you in the terminal?"

"Yeah, we're in line for the third transport out of here. They keep telling us that they're waiting for a window to evacuate."

I frowned. If they needed a window to move the evacuation transports then it meant that the covvies had a pretty good chance of shooting them down in space. That in turn meant that the UNSC Navy was about to lose up there, condemning the planet to a fate that countless other colonies had suffered.

"Frank?" Katie asked.

"Sorry," I said. "I'm a little tired. Are you ok? Do you have food, water?"

"I'm fine," she said. "You keep asking."

"That's because I care," I said, chuckling.

Katie chuckled a little bit. "And you're tired. Frank, have you been getting enough sleep?"

I laughed, drawing a startled look from Grass as she motioned for me to sit in a plastic chair in front of a giant medical apparatus.

"Come on Katie, I'm in the middle of fighting a war. The only sleep I've had is unconsciousness and a short nap."

"Frank…"

"I'm kidding," I lied, drawing a disapproving look from Grass as she turned on the machine.

"Leg armor off," Grass told me.

I complied, pressing the big military phone against my ear with my shoulder.

"Are they giving you food?" I asked again.

"Yeah, they're giving rations to everybody in the terminal. It doesn't seem to be a big problem right now."

"Good," I said. "Have you heard anything about troop movements?"

"I know that they moved the battalions quartered here," Katie said. "All I hear is rumors Frank, we don't have any communication with anybody. Phones aren't working, neither is email, or messaging. We're cut off."

"That's the whole world right now," I said, trying to calm her down.

"And you?" she asked me. "How are you?"

"I'm alright," I said, following the robot arm as it approached my bandaged leg. I winced slightly as it cut the bandages with micrometric precision, but gave no voice to my complaints.

"I'm administering anesthetics," Grass said.

I nodded.

"How is Pavel?" Katie asked.

"Fine, it's gonna take more than a bit of plasma to get through that thick head of his."

Katie laughed. "That's what Amber said about you."

"She's a smart woman," I admitted. "How about Lavvie? Is she ok?"

"She's nervous," Katie sighed. "She doesn't really know what's going on. She's only eight years old."

"Figures. Poor girl."

"She misses her dog, too. She kept crying over Gunny all through yesterday. It took a lot of effort to convince her that he would be fine until we came back."

I frowned and rubbed the bridge of my nose. The battle was in that point where it could go either way, if we lost then Gunny would die trapped in an apartment building, scared and alone. If we won then Gunny would probably starve to death before anybody could get to it and open up the door. It would take a long time to kick the covvies out of this planet, but it could still be done.

I was gonna miss that dog.

"Frank?"

"Yeah?" I asked, feeling a bit drowsy form the anesthetic in my leg.

"Are you sure you're fine? Have you been having any nightmares?"

"No," I lied. "Not at all. I can't be distracted right now, and my body knows that."

Katie's sigh of relief was clearly heard through the telephone's speaker. "I'm glad. That's the last thing you need."

"Tell me about it," I said, chuckling and trying not to feel guilty about the lies.

Katie was silent for a second. "And your boys? Are they fine?"

I was dreading that question. Katie knew most of the men in AAG-7 personally. She wasn't close friends with most of them, but whenever we went out for drinks or a meal some of the guys would bring whoever they were dating or trying to impress. It only made sense that she would want to know who was hurt.

My pause was long enough that she noticed.

"Who?" she asked.

"Hipólito," I told her. "Chang."

"Anybody else?"

"No," I said. "Some of the guys are wounded, but they'll pull through."

"Good," she said softly. "Good. As long as you're fine."

"Yeah. Same goes for you, eh?"

I could see her nodding on the other end of the line.

"Frank… I love you."

"I love you too," I replied. "Katie, promise me that you're going to be careful and stay there until the ships evacuate. Please, please don't leave the spaceport."

"I won't," she said. "I promise. Can you promise me you'll do your best to stay safe?"

"I'll do my best," I assured her. "I know it doesn't mean much, but it should be something."

"Thanks. When am I going to see you?"

I sighed. "I don't know. I really don't. Hopefully you'll evacuate before I get a chance to be there. It might be a few months…"

"Will you call again?" she asked, sensing that the call was about to finish.

"I'll try to call tomorrow," I said. "I can't guarantee that I'll have a good uplink, but I'll try."

"I love you," she said again.

"Me too," I replied.

"Be safe," Katie said before hanging up.

I groaned both at the slight pain on my leg and at the impotence that I felt. Katie was fending for herself. She had gone through this once before and she had almost died. She knew what to expect this time, but that wasn't necessarily a good thing. I trusted her to cope with the stress and to keep Amber and Lavvie going strong. She had her cousin to lean on, so the five of them should be fine. For now.

"Is she fine?" Grass asked.

"Yeah," I replied, smiling a bit. "I asked her like five times."

She smiled. "You know, most people opt to look away from the operation."

I looked up from my butchered leg and gave her a big grin. The robotic arm had reopened the wound and was cleaning out the biofoam that hadn't already melded with the muscles. I knew that after that was finished I would be injected with some fluid or other that would both glue the muscles together and act as a conductor for blood and nervous impulses while also speeding up the healing process exponentially. It was basically biofoam on steroids. A shitload of steroids. Even as the machine injected the new fluid it would be stitching the wound closed with a degradable wire of some sort that would keep the muscle together, facilitating the healing process.

"I wasn't really paying attention," I admitted. The sight of my leg cut open and gradually being healed was one that made my stomach churn slightly.

"That's not surprising," Grass said. "It's just like you."

I shrugged slightly.

"How'd you get that injury anyways?" she asked. "It looks horrible."

"A building came down on top of me," I said. "I was lucky I guess. All I got was a headache and a piece of rebar through my leg."

"Could you move?"

"Not really," I told her. "I could hop a little bit, but Pavel and Bee carried me downstairs."

"No, I mean after they applied the biofoam."

"Yeah, I could move."

Grass scoffed. "Seriously?"

I nodded.

"Frank, you do realize that you had a piece of grooved metal about an inch thick going through your leg. You're not supposed to be fine after that. Not even with biofoam."

I smiled weakly, I was beginning to feel the fatigue. "I don't know Grass. Adrenaline?"

"Nope," she said. "Adrenaline can do a lot of things, but you were standing up when I saw you when your leg should've been in agonizing pain."

"I took a few painkillers," I said.

"Agonizing pain," she asserted.

I shrugged. "Well, I don't know what to say."

"You never cease to surprise me Frank. Even when I'm not in your unit you find ways."

"Well, you know me, I aim–"

"To please, yeah," she said, smiling. "I know. I think we all do. Even if you do your best to prove otherwise."

I raised an eyebrow questioningly.

"You're an ass, Frank. A complete asshole."

I laughed. "I'll give you that one, Grass. You know-it-all."

"I'm far from knowing it all," she replied. "Did you know that the Germans use the word besserwisser, which means better knower?"

"Know-it-all," I replied.

Grass laughed. "Come on Frank, darling. We're just about done. It looks like you're gonna get about four hours of sleep."

"I love you, Grass, but don't tell anybody I said that."

"I wouldn't dream of it," the striking blonde said with a small, satisfied chuckle. "Come on. You should be off your leg for at least one hour. After that it should be back to 90%."

"Alright then," I said, letting her help me sit down on a wheelchair. "Can you get the rest of my wounded men here?"

She nodded. "None of them had injuries quite as bad as yours, but if there's anything that needs treating I'll see to it."

"Thanks, Cam," I said, calling her by her name.

"Frank, I know that you have five wounded men in Esztergom, but where are the other ones?"

I sighed. "Polly Gibson and Preacher… Chang Sun-Hoyt, are gone."

"We're still one short."

"Payat," I said. "Aaron Eidelberg. You know him, right?"

"A bit," she shrugged.

"I left him at New Alexandria to do doctor work. He's with Astrid. You remember Astrid Vinter, don't you? Good girl, that one– What's wrong?"

"Frank, NA Hospital was lost to the Covenant five hours ago. We lost all contact with UNSC forces."

"Are you sure?"

"Frank…"

"Sorry. Did anybody make it out?"

"They were evacuating the wounded on the MagLev when the Covenant hit them hard. Less than a third of the soldiers receiving attention made it out. Even less survived."

"What about the doctors?"

"A few doctors made it out along with some soldiers. There's no word on an ODST or SpecOps type."

"Can you find out?"

"Not for sure," she admitted. "The Pelicans left the city for Esztergom."

I sighed. "I'll talk to Pavel or Caboose. One of them had to talk with him at some point."

"Do that," she said. "Frank… Don't be optimistic."

"You can never stop hoping, Grass," I said quietly. "These days hope is the only thing we have."

She nodded slowly and stopped the little cart, allowing me to hop off and sit back down in the wheelchair.

I woke up a few hours later, still in my wheelchair. I rubbed my right eye and rolled my head, cracking my neck. An explosion had woken me up, not one that had happened particularly close, but it had still been loud enough to get me to stop sleeping. After I cracked my neck I shook my head a bit, feeling my growing hair shake as I did so. Strangely enough, I felt like I had had more than enough sleep. I couldn't have possible slept for more than four hours, but I felt incredibly well-rested. At first I wondered if my Spartan augmentations had anything to do with it, but then I remembered that I had also been pumped of all types of medicine and stimulants, so it was probably a combination of both.

I looked down at my leg and saw that the wound looked almost healed. The synthetic flesh had already melded with the muscle and skin on my leg, it had healed at an incredibly fast pace, leaving only a small pink mark about an inch in width where the rebar had gone through. I stretched my leg carefully to test for pain and limitations. While the movement didn't hurt, there was still a certain tightness in my leg that might prove troublesome if I overused it.

A quick look around showed me that the members of my team had clustered in or around Marina's Pelican. Most, if not all, were enjoying their napping sessions, using their helmets as pillows and propping up their feet on crates of ammunition. The few survivors of A Company had done the same thing in the other Pelican. They looked like they were ready to walk through the gates of death even in sleep. I frowned at the sight of the soldiers, I didn't know any of them other than Private Parker, who had managed once again to survive through the shitstorm that this battle was quickly becoming.

I propped myself up and grabbed my helmet from the ground next to me. A section on the side was metallic gray and looked to be fresh from the manufacturing plant. A quick inspection showed that the damaged cover protecting the radio on my helmet had been replaced along with the useless radio system. A quick check showed that I was now able to communicate without trouble. Three large tables had also been set up in the edge of the landing pad, providing with pre-loaded magazines for us as well as boxes of ammunition and other equipment. A quick glance at my team showed that they had already stocked up on supplies, leaving me as the only member of AAG-7 not mission ready.

I got up and walked towards the table, carefully examining the sensations in my right leg. I began grabbing magazines of 9.5mm ammunition and pocketing in their respective pouches.

"How long have you been awake?" Pavel asked, leaning on the table next to me.

"Just woke up," I replied. "You?"

"Same. Did you get to talk to Katie?"

I nodded. "She's fine. Worried, but fine."

"The same goes for Amber," he said. "You know, I'm more worried about Lavanya than anything else now."

"She's got her mother to rely on," I said with a small shrug. "She'll be fine."

"She misses her friends," Pavel went on. "And her dog."

"Yeah. It's a shame."

Pavel sighed. "If it comes down to it I think we could manage to get Snark or Tank or some other guy to pick Gunny up and evacuate him with them."

"I hadn't thought about that," I admitted. "Have you heard anything about them?"

"Nothing," Pavel said, stretching his back. "I checked in with Esztergom and they confirmed that our guys reached the city's military hospital safely, although they had no additional information."

"They're fine then," I surmised. "At least for now."

"Grass said that she'd let us keep a couple of her fancy phones. Apparently they can communicate with any working device in the entire planet."

"Good," I said. "You have one?"

He nodded.

"Then I'll keep mine… How are you, man?"

"I'm good," he said. "Now that I know my family is still safe I can breathe easy."

"Injuries?"

"Nothing serious," he replied. "Scrapes and bruises. That graze to my knee was just a graze."

I looked down at his leg and saw that he wasn't wearing kneepads, instead there was a white bandage wrapped tightly around his knee. A little bit of blood had made it through, but it looked like something minor. The pad contained agents that would heal and harden the burnt skin on the outside, preventing chafing and pain when there was contact with material.

"As I said," Pavel went on. "I'm good."

I smiled and clapped him in the shoulder. "Good to know, Pavs. Are we ready to kick some ass now?"

"Hell yeah," he replied in a gruff tone. "That and more."

"That's what I like to hear!"

"I'm packing heavy on AP rounds," he let me know. "Grass supplied us with a pair of one-shot grenade launchers."

"M319s?" I asked, referring to the one-shots commonly fielded by the UNSC Army.

He shook his head. "Something fancier than that. They're a bit smaller than that, about the size of your shortened shotgun. Well, point is, they fire some sort of experimental superheated grenade designed to burrow through armor before detonating."

I raised an eyebrow. "Are they HEAT rounds?"

He shrugged with those massive shoulders of his. "Something analogous to it, I'd say. Either way, field testing shows that they can punch through ten centimeters of Titanium-A armor."

I raised my other eyebrow. Titanium-A was usually used in ships only; it was nearly impervious to impacts and conventional explosives, only suffering drawbacks against the heat-based plasma weaponry that Covenant capital ships fielded. If this little puppy could punch through Titanium-A, then it would certainly go through a Ghost or Wraith without too much trouble.

"It's designed to produce as much shrapnel as possible," he went on. "So that if it blows up inside a Wraith it will do as much damage as possible."

"I like it," I said. "Who has them?"

"Marv has one," Pavel told me. "And the other one went to Andy."

I nodded in approval, they were good choices. Trusty.

We talked for a little while, mostly discussing the way things were looking. Pavel had asked a lot of questions while Grass was tending to my wounds. The battle was at a stalemate, but with the majority of the Covenant forces still locked in orbit with the UNSC Navy, we would certainly win if it came down to attrition. It wasn't a pretty outlook regardless, the Covenant had managed to land thousands of troops with tanks, scout vehicles, air and ground transports, and enough supplies to last them a good long time. Pavel had heard reports about Scarabs here and there, but we still counted with substantial air support from Shortsword bombers and SkyHawk gunships. The tall buildings would ensure that the Scarabs wouldn't see our aircraft coming until it was too late.

"You packed on shells?" Pavel asked me.

I nodded and patted my shortened shotgun. "This little puppy is ready for action."

"Good, 'cause it looks like our expertise is going to be required."

Pavel's head was looking away from me. I followed his eyes and quickly stopped myself from raising my eyebrows in surprise. Even with my helmet I would've felt a little more than uncomfortable. Pavel was looking at a trio of people. If you could call two of those shapes people. Captain Flatt was walking with people that could only be described accurately with the word big. They weren't tall and disproportionate like most tall people were. They simply seemed like someone had messed up and added a little bit of extra size to the whole body. With that size went an astounding level of muscle mass and other things I could only begin to guess at.

But that wasn't all. These two Spartans I knew.

"Captain," I nodded at Flatt, addressing my direct superior first as a sign of respect. "Commander. Noble Two."

"Kat will do," Noble Two replied, leaving me wondering whether I should consider her accent sexy, intimidating, or both.

I knew those two Spartans from their early days when they were just kids and now they were both practically gods among us humans. I had witnessed Carter-A259 fighting in New Constantinople and saw the prominent scar on his left cheek when it was just a bleeding mess. Kat I had met some time later, back in '43, during a little engagement in New Moskva. Her team had been directly responsible for saving mine. Pavel and Bee would certainly remember. Grass, too. Back then I vaguely remembered her as an angry kid not ready for fighting. To think I had dismissed her as a child soldier with little future before she went nuts.

Time had served to prove me wrong.

"Nothing like a reunion," Schitzo said with a smile.

"Good to see you well, Lieutenant," Carter said in a neutral tone.

"Likewise Commander," I replied, shaking his hand and doing the same with Kat's robotic right arm. "I never properly thanked you and your team for taking down that cruiser back in Fumirole."

"No thanks are necessary," Carter said dismissively. "It was a joint operation."

"One that your man finished all by himself," Pavel said. "Thank you."

I remembered that other Spartan. Thom, I think it was. Hadn't really caused much of an impression the first time I saw him, not when you put him next to Carter, Kat, the knife guy, and a II like Jorge. He had quickly proved me wrong by sacrificing himself to save a whole city. He was the stuff of legends indeed.

"I'm sure he would appreciate your gratitude," Carter said somewhat awkwardly, "but right now we have an important matter at hand."

"Understatement of the century," Kat said in a playful tone before quickly settling into business mode. I had seen her like this once before when she was outlining the plan for that operation in Fumirole. "City's in trouble, we all know that. Covenant presence is heaviest in the southwest and northwest regions of the city. The proximity to the main body of their ground force complicates matters."

"Sexy, definitely sexy," Schitzo decided on her accent.

"A counter-op?" I asked.

She nodded. "We have limited information on the extent of their forces, but we do have some visual confirmation of leadership in this position."
I looked down at a small holographic projector she put on the table as it showed a rough map of the city and its surroundings. A red dot pulsed right outside of the main area of the city. Very few buildings, small or large, were outside of what you could consider downtown New Alexandria. This city was basically all downtown. The area in question was one of the more developed areas outside, meaning it had a grand total of fourteen mansions which had been modified to become defensive positions by the Army and were now serving the same purpose by the occupying covvie forces.

"What's the plan?"

Carter took over. "The Navy has the UNSC Stalwart Dawn orbiting overhead. The plan is simple. We need you and your men to come down hard and loud on the southern end. You hit these two mansions simultaneously. They're the least protected and are the best defensive positions."
I nodded slowly, guessing at the rest of the plan.

"We need the noise," Kat said. "Once you land and we confirm enemy troops moving towards you we'll come in from the rear, take out our target."

"So you want us to land, blow shit up, and give you a window to take out a chieftain?" I asked.

"In layman's terms. Yes," Carter said with a brief nod.

I smiled. "Sounds like my kind of plan."

Carter nodded and switched his helmet from his right to his left arm. "Very well, Lieutenant. Captain Flatt has arranged for evacuation and limited air support for you. I'm afraid time is of the essence, though…"

"We'll discuss it on the way up," I said dismissively. "We owe you one, after all."

"Thanks," Carter said.

We both knew that I couldn't refuse a Spartan and even if I did Flatt would simply order me to do the mission. Thing is, I wanted to do this mission for them. Noble Team I liked. They weren't like other Spartans, they actually had personalities and faces. Whenever they weren't in active combat they would remove their helmet to talk to each other. Just like regular combatants would do.

Within a minute Pavel had roused my team and had them ready for action at a moment's notice. Marina asked me a pair of quick questions about the operation before hopping on the cockpit. She had worked with Reaper often enough to know that we usually had to take part in missions that had been hastily planned and sometimes even conceived while she took us to the target. She was happy that she wouldn't have to brave AA fire to drop us off, but the fact that we were doing a HEV drop worried her a bit.

My team was good to go in under a minute. We still had pretty much all of the fancy gear we had picked up at Mendez and our ammunition had just been completely replenished and then some. We found ourselves leaving Reach's atmosphere less than three minutes after that and boarding the UNSC Stalwart Dawn just a few moments later. The frigate appeared to be in relatively good condition, but we didn't get a walking tour.

"I'm gonna be your evac," Marina shouted as we jogged towards the drop bay. "I don't want to make the trip for nothing, alright!"

I turned and waved at her. "I'll be waiting for you!"

Marina was a tough woman and she knew damn well just how tough my men were, but this situation was completely out of the norm, even for this fucked-up war.

A junior officer welcomed us to the ship and led us into the drop bay. The man seemed to be high on stims if the wide open eyes and incredibly dry face was anything to go by. He dropped us off and told us to welcome ourselves to any gear that we deemed necessary to grab. Everybody double-checked everything, with just Pitcher grabbing an extra magazine for his pistol. Once I was sure that nobody was going to grab anything else I positioned myself at the head of the holo-table and waited for my men to stand around it. The target area immediately appeared, accompanied by a flickering AI.

"Hello," it said. "I'm Newton in case anyone was wondering. I've been fully briefed on your mission."

"Go for it," I told the construct, waving my hands to gesture for it to go.

"There are fourteen mansions," Newton began calmly. "All of them were made into veritable fortresses by the Army, but they were smart enough to leave the side facing the city relatively unprotected in case something like this happened. They were also careful enough to make it easy for them to fire on one another in case they had to provide support to their neighbors or if the Covenant made it through one of the mansions."

As Newton spoke the hologram changed to display the mansions and highlighted the walls that the UNSC Army had erected around it.

"The houses are arranged in two curved lines, they're all technically on the same street, but the mansions are so massive that it would take a good jog to get from one end to the other. For your purposes, you'll just need to land in one of these three mansions and make some very loud noises."
The three mansions were precisely in the middle. They were all sorts of all fashioned buildings with lots of right angles and glass walls, but one of the houses in the middle looked like a miniature castle. It had been pummeled by enemy artillery fire and large sections of it had collapsed, but its walls still stood strong.

"My recommendation," Newton said, "is go for this spot. It's high ground and close enough to two of the mansions. I would discourage you from attempting to land directly overhead of one of the buildings, they are massive houses and have countless hallways and small rooms that could house all number of surprises. If you're going to clear one, do it the old-fashioned way."

I considered its recommendation. Landing in the middle of the stone mansions would make a shitload of noise, but it wouldn't be any help if we all died in just a few minutes. The area that Newton had pointed at was a small raise on the hill that housed the stone mansion and another mansion. There was a small path there if the photographs were anything to go by; a few lumps here and there marked the presence of covvie soldiers patrolling the area. Upon further examination it became clear that the stone mansion was on the base of the small hill, while the other one was about halfway up and had a direct line of sight.

"We could break up," Caboose said. "Provide fire support while we clear the stone mansion."

"I was thinking the same thing," I said. "Two teams of six?"

"One of four and one of eight," Pavel said. "Ramirez, Dotsenko, Miri, and myself."

He would keep all our gunners and our marksman up in high ground while I took the rest of the team and cleared the stone mansion bit by bit.

"Let's do five and seven," I said finally. "Mata, you're with them. How's the head?"

"They cleared me for action," he replied with a small nod. "I'm just seeing double now."

His comment drew some chuckles.

I smiled and nodded. "Very well then, Pavel, I leave the details up to you. Everybody else, are we clear on what we're doing?"

I got a few nods.

"I said: are we clear?"

"Sir, yes, sir!"

"Damn right we are," I replied, gesturing for everybody to get inside the pods. "Noble asked us to do them a small favor, a favor that I think we owe them! They want us to be a distraction, they want us to draw as many motherfuckers to our position as we can before they kill the motherfucker in charge. Well, if the motherfucker in charge comes to us first, I say we try and beat them to the punch. I want those houses completely drenched in alien blood by the time we're picked up. Do you hear me? Drenched!"

"Yes, sir!"

I could see Newton's avatar rolling its eyes on the holo-table.

"Will you be joining us?" I asked the AI in a more subdued tone.

"No. I'm busy with running the ship, sorry. We're the only UNSC vessel able to provide ground support at the moment."

I nodded. "Alright. Good luck."

"Likewise, Lieutenant."

I walked towards my pod; it seemed to be a brand new one, with the name on the hatch freshly painted on. I couldn't help but notice that it wasn't my name and began wondering what had happened to the ODSTs that were supposed to be in this ship. In all likelihood they had been groundside when this all happened. Now they were either dead or fighting with the rest of the UNSC.

"Team-7!" I boomed. "How. Do. We. Go?"

"We go feet first, lieutenant!"

"Damn right," I whispered, cracking my knuckles.

Red. Yellow. Green.

Lurch followed by loss of gravity followed by the most beautiful view you could ever imagine. Reach was truly a beautiful planet, the aurora phenomena that surrounded it only increased the effect that it had. It seemed almost like an aura of… well, beauty. At this altitude I couldn't see anything clearly if I looked down at the surface, but the sun still wasn't hitting New Alexandria at quite the right angle, and the darkness showed patches of destruction here and there where fires raged. It was, however, bright enough to see the incredible amount of smoke coming from various places in Viery. I think that I could even make out the front section of the supercarrier that had been destroyed.

Reach got closer and closer at a steady pace. The temperature increased exponentially, so much that I could see the heat permeating through the transparent door right before it automatically polarized. Instead the door displayed everything that I would've been able to see through a fairly simple set of heat proof cameras positioned at various points on the outside. The door tagged the target landing area, just a small red dot.

New Alexandria soon appeared, majestic even as it burned. I could make out tiny little dots here and there, flying through the buildings and presumably firing on enemies. Directing my attention to the ground at my feet I could see that rows of massive mansions. They had backyards big enough to build several football fields in each one. I don't think I would've minded one bit living there.

The pods split off slightly right before the drag chutes deployed, jerking me downwards and making me experience several Gs in an unpleasant, lurching sensation. The rockets slowed down the pod even more, but the adrenaline was already pumping through my blood, everything became clearer and brighter just as the pod slammed into the ground.

I grunted, it had been a pretty hard landing.

"Contact, contact!"

For the first few seconds the vast majority of the noise that came through my helmet and into my ears was exclusively gunfire. A few grunts of surprise were followed by growls and some low-level return fire, but within a minute we had cleared a nice swath of space in the small hill. It was enough space for Pavel's team to start moving towards one of the mansions, climbing up the gentle incline at a very decent pace, keeping their guns trained on the walls and windows of the mansion.

"Start moving!" I shouted. "Don't hold back!"

We had the element of surprise and had just taken a pretty good break from battle. We were eager to kill and the mission parameters provided for the perfect way for us to do it. My team began burning through ammunition as fast as they could, firing at every little thing that moved. Jackals and grunts were the first ones to go. I myself stuck to jackals, trying to deny the marksmen any opportunity to fire. Grunts tried to run towards the stone mansion, dropping their guns in a panic. A couple of brutes here and there roared for the grunts to turn and fight, but they didn't get more than a few roars out before they were gunned down themselves. We were basically running downhill now, firing wildly at anything that moved.

"Play us some music, Bee," I ordered.

"That's why I like you, sir," he said, immediately playing one of his epic songs. The name quickly appeared in my HUD, just long enough for me to read it. Brotherhood by John Dreamer.

I might have heard it before, but at the moment I wasn't sure.

The stone mansion had a short wall surrounding it. By short I mean that it was only twelve feet tall. A few sections of this outer wall had been brought down by artillery fire, both human and alien, but most of it still stood. At least it still stood on this side. I slid to a stop and slammed into the wall with my shoulder, turning around just in time for Marv to jump into my clasped hands and over the wall. Caboose went right after, his shotgun in one hand and his carbine in the other. I knew that he would stop using the MA5K that he favored, switching it for the shotgun. He couldn't exactly cock a shotgun one handed, could he?

Bee and I were the ones helping everybody hop over, and in the end I propped him up and then jumped up. I pulled myself up, preparing my battle rifle exactly as Pavel's team secured their position. Tracer rounds flew a few feet above me, drilling into the mass of grunts that had only just woken up.

I jumped down and saw Caboose firing one-handed with his carbine while he cocked the M90 shotgun with his left hand. I guess that he could fire one-handed after all. My amusement was quickly replaced by surprise. There were at least a hundred grunts in this small courtyard, most of them looked to be unarmed and had little armor on, but they were still threats. I wondered why the covvies would place all of their grunts in one place and then take their guns from them.

It took me only a moment to realize that these grunts were the wounded ones. The realization brought a smile to my face. If they could gun down and tear through our wounded with impunity then we could very much do the exact same thing. The song playing on the speakers brought a sense of grandiose to our actions, even if what we were doing would be considered an abomination if the enemy were humans. I felt empowered.

"Clear!" Marv called after the grunts had all stopped trying to run or crawl away.

"Move in!" I shouted. "We want the ground floor in disarray, move upstairs as soon as possible!"

We wanted confusion. We wanted to leave enough aliens alive that the word could get out. I had no doubt that we were already on the right track, but the more we made the occupants of this massive mansion panic the quicker the reinforcements would get here and the more they would be. Noble Team would get their stupid window and we would get in one hell of a mess.

Fun.

The mansion was a bit darker than I expected. There were no windows and the electric power had been cut off, but the lighting system that the covvies seemed to favor was almost dull. The purple lighting gave more than enough light to see, but nothing close to what an average human house would've had. The first thing we came across was a brute, rushing towards us before it realized we were running at it. Caboose met it with a faceload of buckshot and we poured into a large room that could've fit a hundred people comfortable. It seemed almost like a dance hall.

A dance hall full of brutes trying to scramble themselves into their armor and a pair of hunters barreling through the ones that couldn't get out of their way.

"Bee!" I shouted, spraying the closest brute.

The hunters fired, splashing the stone wall behind us with superheated plasma and lighting up an old painting that had escaped the battle. Bee returned fire with a missile. The hunter had opened up in order to fire, and the explosive payload on the missile was enough to take it out. In fact, the explosion tore the hunter in half, sending the top flying backwards and slamming against a small brute.

The second hunter roared. The vibrations made my bones shake violently, but Bee quickly hit it with another rocket. The hunter was thrown backwards by the explosion and against a wall. As its body slid down it left behind a viscous orange fluid. Two grenades landed on the wounded hunter, finally reducing it to a pile of gore and bits of armor.

The brutes had used the time to grab their weapons, even if they had forsaken the use of armor or any kind of shields.

A few spikes and bolts flew our way, but they quickly fell silent as the brutes were hit from all directions. I moved sideways, crouched, as I fired. The brutes had those weird helmets that only seemed to cover a section of their skulls, but their faces were free for anybody who cared to aim. The mouth was a good place to go. Even if it didn't guarantee an immediate kill it was an immediate neutralization. The brutes would either suffer from unbearable pain or the spine would be severed as the AP bullet punched through the trachea.

It was a good sound, the sound of brutes choking on their own blood.

Marv and Pitcher were serving the role of gunners here, firing their assault rifles automatically, expending the sixty rounds in the magazine as fast as possible. The brutes fell a lot more quickly than I had any reason to expect them to. I noticed that my team didn't miss. They just kept firing, but they didn't miss. I raised an eyebrow in surprise, none of them were augmented, but they all appeared to be fighting the best they ever had. Perhaps we had luck on our side this time. I had never been able to say that for the whole team before.

"Stairs!" I shouted. "Contact right!"

Four jackals poured down the stairs, firing wildly with their needlers. The jackals tripped as Andy cut their legs down from underneath them. They stumbled down, where they proved easy kills for Pitcher. I instead directed my attention to the single brute that had all of its armor on. The brute tossed out a bubble shield, sending our bullets ricocheting in every direction, breaking whatever hadn't been broken yet. Caboose and I moved towards the brute. It appeared to be a chieftain, but it didn't have its helmet on so it was hard to tell.

The chieftain rushed towards a plasma turret. With that and the complete and utter lack of cover it could keep us from going any farther at best or cut us down at worst. Caboose saw it too and immediately tossed a flashbang. I turned around as I entered the bubble shield. The noise left my ears ringing, but the flash didn't hurt me. I turned back around to face the chieftain and saw that it was grabbing its turret and bringing it to bear.

Caboose dove for the turret, knocking it sideways and almost yanking it from the brute's hands. The brute stumbled slightly, but it managed to bring its left foot up in a stomp that would've killed Caboose. I slammed into the brute and climbed onto its' back, dropping my rifle and drawing one of my knives. The brute attempted to shake me off even as it turned to fire on my men, but I stabbed into its' neck before it got the chance.

Amazingly enough, the brute didn't stop fighting. I yanked the knife and stabbed again, this time only half as deep, from that point I violently yanked sideways, opening a nice hole on the brute's neck. I could feel liquid pouring on my hands, but still the brute refused to go down.

Caboose had already gotten back up. A powerful kick tore the turret from the brute's grip. He then drew his pistol and pressed it against the brute's jaw, facing up. He fired six times, prompting me to jerk my head back. A little bit of blood sprayed my visor, but mostly the bits of brains and skull missed me.

I faced my team, expecting at least one compliment or noise of amusement, but they were already climbing to the second floor, having caused enough mayhem here in the ground floor.

"Did you record that?" I asked Caboose.

He shook his head. "Maybe next time."

I chuckled. "Let's move."

Caboose and I ran over the mangled brute corpses and bits of gore, the roars and growls from other brutes were getting louder and louder, but we hopped up inside the spiral stairwell before any of them entered the large hall. The sounds of gunfire were magnified by the confined space of the stairwell, but not that much. My men had already left and were presumably creating some chaos in the second floor.

"Wait," I said, switching from my battle rifle to my short shotgun. "Let's wait for someone to get here."

Caboose nodded and turned around, aiming his shotgun down the stairs. The rounded walls would be an excellent asset to us in this situation, helping the buckshot ricochet and smash into whatever alien tried to climb up the stairs. I knew that we couldn't exactly stay in here for long, but we'd get a couple of kills at the very least.

I fired first, hitting what sounded like a brute. Caboose then followed up with two blasts that tore a bit of the wall off before bouncing out of our sight and slamming into more flesh. This time the cries of pain clearly belonged to a grunt. We moved a bit down and fired twice before hopping back almost all the way to the second floor. A brute tossed a plasma grenade in soon after, but the explosion couldn't even begin to go through the thick rock and the lack of shrapnel meant we only felt a little bit of the heat.

We fired more shells into the stairwell, hearing the sound of bodies falling down with each blast. The brutes were sending grunts up first to try and overwhelm us, but they could only send one or two at a time. The stairwell was narrow enough for us humans, the brutes would have a bit of trouble climbing up.

"Throw a frag," I ordered. "And let's keep moving."

He complied and tossed the little explosive metal sphere down the stairwell. We jumped out to the second floor right before it detonated, sending shrapnel flying in every direction and then bouncing back again. Any covvies that were in the shaft probably took a pounding.

Looking up I saw a dozen or so jackal corpses, most of them were half-armored and weaponless. Gunfire was coming from my left, so I headed in that direction, switching back to my battle rifle. Caboose kept his shotgun out, aiming back at the stairwell in case the brutes decided to rush us again. I was about to open a massive wooden door that was slightly ajar when four blue bolts punched through it right above my head, lighting it up and sending me reeling backwards.

"Oh-kay…" I grunted, waiting for Caboose to position himself next to me. We kicked the door in and came into a large hallway with big windows on our left and a series of doors on the right. Also inside the hallway were five of my men and a wall of brutes with plasma repeaters.

We started firing as we ran towards the nearest door. There wasn't much cover in this hallway to begin with, and my men had already taken all of the available ones. I hit one brute in the chest and belly before Caboose and I had to tackle through a heavy door and inside a room for cover.

I grunted and rubbed my shoulder. Those doors were solid oak or at least something equally heavy and hard.

"Damn," I muttered, climbing back to my feet. The room was simply lavish in its decorations, a bed with four posts, paintings on all the walls and furniture that looked hand-carved and overall very expensive. It was a shame that most of it had been damaged one way or another.

"Sir," Marv checked in. "We don't have a way to punch through them and our rear is unprotected."

"Use your frags," I said. "No sense in conserving anything. Don't be picky."

"Yes, sir," Marv replied quickly.

His reply was followed by a series of explosions that quieted down the firefight for a few seconds. A few clinking pieces of glass fell to the floor, but after the five grenades were thrown there was simply nothing left to fight us in this hallway.

I walked out and saw that the deep end of the hallway had been painted with blood and gore. It was certainly a disgusting thing to look at, but also strangely satisfying. I wondered what exactly the grunts and jackals that were following our tracks would think when they came upon corpse after corpse with no sign that we had been hurt.

"Move up!" I ordered. "If we can make it to the rooftop all the better!"

The mansion had five stories, all of them incredibly large and spacious, but the roof only had two ways in according to satellite imagery and other specs, if we could bust through it would be relatively easy to secure it for ourselves. The shape of the roof meant that we could only be attacked by aircraft and jump jet troops from one side. It was perfect for making noise and drawing attention.

A wide open staircase welcomed us as soon as we left the hallways. Judging from the expensive marble it was made of I could only assume that it was the main set of stairs for the house. It should lead us to the rooftop easily enough. My men followed the same line of thought, because they started jogging up, hitting three brutes that were doing the exact opposite. Marv and Pitcher took the lead, with Andy and Caboose up behind them. Bee and me were close behind, leaving Serge to guard our rear with his shotgun and deadly aim. At this moment we were the very model of efficiency. We didn't have to clear out everything, so we didn't bother. We moved fast and killed only a couple of enemies each before moving on. Soon enough we were on the top floor.

"Stairs to the roof are over there!" I pointed. "Move!"

Caboose switched to the back, bolstering our rearguard with his own shotgun. He and Serge were now blasting at the berserk brutes with almost continuous fire. I kept my sight on the doors, firing as soon as they opened to discourage anybody from entering. If we had to move across the bullet-riddled doors I would kick them closed and fire a good burst through just for good measure, leaving them for Serge and Caboose.

Marv kicked down the door that led to the rooftop and bashed in a grunt's head before moving up with Andy right next to him.

"Go! Go!" I shouted. "Serge, once on top you're guarding this entrance. Caboose, you'll get the other one.

"Yes, sir," Caboose replied, running up the stairs behind me.

"Pavel, can you see the rooftop?" I asked.

"Miranda can," he replied.

"Miri?"

"Three sharpshooters at least," she said. "I'm keeping them down, should be enough for you to surprise them."

"You catch that, Marv?" I asked him.

"Yes, sir!"

He kicked the second door and came out guns blazing, Andy doing the exact same. The three sharpshooters turned out to be five, but the jackals didn't seem to realize that we were already this close to the rooftop. They squawked in fright before they were dispatched with short bursts. One of them managed to squeeze of a shot with a needle rifle, grazing Andy's armor on the shoulder.

"Magnet does it again," Bee said jokingly. "Damn if you don't attract all the gunfire."

"Shut up," she replied, examining her armor until she was satisfied that her own skin hadn't been pierced.

Caboose dashed to the opposite side of the rooftop where the other door was and opened it. He cleared the stairwell and then remained there, waiting for anybody to show up.

"Bee, you've got AA duty," I said. "Andy, Marv, left side. Pitcher, you're with me to the right."

They all nodded and started moving to their respective positions. The mansion was already pure chaos, but we needed to make this whole place erupt before Noble could come in. We had some sort of drones up in the air, and the faster the brute commander was spotted moving towards us the faster Noble would put a bullet in its brain.

From the rooftop I could see all the other mansions very clearly. The tall glass walls had been fortified by the Army, but the other side that was facing us hadn't. A few covvies had set up something here and there, but they hadn't been nearly as effective as our guys. I could see grunts, jackals, and brutes moving around, carrying spare pieces of armor or weaponry. They had been sleeping.

"Man, their discipline just sucks," Pitcher mentioned, propping his rifle on the wall. "Weapons free?"

"Weapons free," I replied. "Kill as much as you can."

"I'd make a wager with you, boss," he said. "But… yeah."

I smiled despite myself. "Smart man."

I noticed that Bee's song had ended only to give way to another one. Now that I considered it, Brotherhood had ended some time when I was in the first spiral stairwell, but the song that was now playing was very obviously not one that belonged to Bee's so-called epic genre. It was… well, it was hard to describe, I guess. It was like rap of a sort, but there was emphasis on the instruments.

"What is this?" I asked Bee. "The song."

"Three-hundred violin collapse," he said. "I think it might be a remix of some sort. Like it?"

I did, very much so. Uplifting shit right there.

Not long after I found myself firing at the targets in rhythm to the song, firing every fourth beat or so. The violins in the background gave the lyrics a certain additional power. The sight of brutes and grunts tumbling down dead only helped. I was already full of adrenaline, but a little more didn't hurt my focus. Things already moved slow enough as it was, making things easier than they had ever been. Now it was only better.

A brute was dashing through the road, carrying two brute shots. It threw one to another brute taking cover behind a luxury SUV. The two brutes dashed away from cover and moved towards us. I simple squeeze of the trigger sent three bullets through one of the brute's skulls. The next burst knocked the second alien down, where its legs twitched once before its brain realized that it had died. Five jackals that had been following them stopped to form a phalanx and fired on my position with pistols, proving that their eyesight was annoyingly good.

They sent me down for cover, prompting Pitcher to pick up the slack.

"You're good!" he said.

I popped back up and hit two of the birds in the legs, breaching their shield wall and allowing for Pitcher's automatic fire to take out the rest with ease. I then switched to the windows and rooftops on the other mansions. The sharpshooters were our first priority, but killing them didn't cause nearly as much mayhem as killing grunts and brutes in plain view did. I kept the sharpshooters down, leaving Pitcher to practice his marksmanship. His gun roared as he fired, bursts of blood came out of grunts and brutes. It was something of beauty, this combat thing. When things went right and everyone was in sync you could compare a firefight to an orchestra. Except an orchestra can't kick your ass.

"Frank, how's it going?" Grass suddenly asked.

"Good to hear your voice, Grass," I said. "You're Mission Control?"

"For now, yes," she replied. "You good?"

"Very much so," I assured her. "You should be here."

"Oh, I'm seeing it alright. I'm impressed."

"Thanks," I said. "Any news?"

"We've pinpointed the exact location of the enemy commander, but he doesn't seem to be leaving his position."

"What do you want us to do?"

"Nothing, we know where he is, it's enough for Noble to go in and dispatch it."

"Good."

"They should be there in ten minutes or so. The enemy's already riding your ass, Frank. I recommend you conserve ammo and lower your risks a bit," she advised.

"Understood," I said. "Thanks."

"Anytime," Grass replied.

"Priority targets only," I broadcast to my team. "Noble's on the way. Pavel, keep making noise."

"Got it," he replied. "Exfil still happening in our landing area?"

"Negative," I said. "Too exposed. Marina won't be happy if I ask her to do two separate pickups."

"We're gonna need to meet on the street level," Pavel grunted. "It's gonna be a dash."

"You'll love it," I told him. "Sprinting's our thing. Remember Aztlan?"

"How could I forget," he muttered. "My quads still hurt sometimes just by thinking about it."

"What happened in Aztlan?" Pitcher asked from next to me.

"A lot of things," I replied. "Good and bad. Mostly bad."

"You know, sir. You've got to tell us more of these stories of yours."

I shook my head. "No use. The only reason why anybody would revisit past battles is if it got him laid."

Pitcher paused for a second before replying. "You have a good point, sir."

"I usually do," I reminded him, killing a brute.

The pace of battle slowed down considerably, at least for us. Instead of hitting everything that twitched, we decided to conserve our ammunition and fire only at brutes and jackal sharpshooters. There weren't any hunters that we had to take care of yet, but that was bound to change. The skies were relatively clear too, which was good. Bee had only needed to fire once to take out a Banshee that was trying to strafe our position.

"Be ready to rappel down," I said. "We might need to make an unconventional exit."

My men all had some climbing wire on them at all times. Tie it to something and that thing could hold a Warthog up. If the thing you had tied it to didn't break, the cable was nearly unbreakable. It was used in space to tow damaged Pelicans and debris out of the way and it was used here as climbing rope or anything else that you could think of.

"We've got a squad of Majors moving our way," Pitcher said. "Engaging."

"I see 'em," I replied.

The five brutes were all more experienced, making liberal use of cover and strafing us with plasma repeater fire. We could barely get a good shot at them until they crossed the street. Pitcher and I took one out with combined fire, sending the rest going for cover. I killed another of the brutes with a shot to the throat, but the other three moved inside the mansion before we could take them out.

"Well, that'll bite us in the ass," Pitcher grunted. "What's Noble's ETA?"

"Grass?"

"One minute," she replied. "Marina is already on the way, she needs to know where you want to be picked up."
I tagged a position halfway in between Pavel and myself. It was in the middle of the street and exposed, but it should work if Marina made use of her rockets and guns.

"I hear something," Marv said. "Falcon gunship."

I turned around to see one lone gunship speeding through towards one of the mansions. The grenade launchers on the side were firing nonstop along with the main cannon on the nose. A few bolts of plasma hit it, but they weren't receiving too much fire. They were flying too low for AA to pick em up properly. I saw four Spartans hop off as soon as the gunship was close to their target mansion and disappear through a door in the rooftop. The pilot escaped by the skin of his teeth, smoke coming from one of the rotors.

"Noble is on the ground," Noble-One said. "We're on the move."

I tried to follow Noble with my scope, but even with the massive outer walls made out of glass, the owners had chosen to have regular opaque walls on the inside. Here and there I would catch a flash of gunfire or a fast-moving silhouette, but Noble didn't really move into the outside of the house. I resumed my shooting a few seconds later, tuning out the chatter on my helmet. Ramirez and Dotsenko were by far the most vocal members of my team, but they countered that with brutal efficiency when it came down to laying suppressive fire. Ironically, they carried smaller weapons than Pavel, but it was my friend who could claim the most accuracy with his heavier machine gun. Not to say that the two younger men were inaccurate by any account, but Pavel was one of those guys that could group fifty shots in a space of ten inches at a hundred yards.

"We've got squads climbing fast on our side," Marv told me.

"Caboose, Serge, what's your status."

"Holding," Caboose said, "but the intrusions are becoming more frequent."

"Same," Serge replied calmly.

"Pavel, how's your ass?"

"Still tight, but I'm feeling like puckering up."

"Well, that's a weird metaphor," I noted. "Grass, what's Marina's ETA?"

"She's in position right now, but we need Noble to secure that kill first. The commander they're going for is in charge of–"

"Shit!"

I ducked right before a fuel rod took my head off. The explosion sent me backwards and Pitcher sideways. I groaned as pieces of molten rock landed on my armor, sticking to it as they rapidly cooled. Pitcher cursed loudly as he rolled his head, trying to confirm that his neck hadn't been broken by the impact.

"What the hell was that?"

"A fuel rod," I told him.

"Where'd it come from?" he asked after a brief pause to look at me.

"Beats me," I grunted. "Pavel, you got eyes?"

"Negative. Miri?"

"Nope," she said. "Can't help you."

I sighed.

Another blast hit the wall below us and I could hear the rocks shifting. I violently backpedaled as three more explosions rocked this part of the rooftop. Pitcher was only a second slower than I was and soon we had put a solid five meters between us and the edge of the rooftop. Excellent timing on our part, because a chunk of mansion suddenly dislodged itself and started falling down.

"We gotta take him out if we want to move out," I told Pitcher.

"Agreed," he replied, moving back towards the edge.

I popped out and started looking, it didn't take long to spot what I was gunning for. A single brute chieftain standing imposingly in the middle of the road. It was reloading its cannon when Pitcher and I hit it. The brute dropped the shells and jumped out of the way behind a small sports car. The tiny speedster was barely enough to cover the hulking alien, let alone allow it to reload without exposing itself. It was an extremely long thrown, but I could make it with a grenade.

"Frag out," I warned Pitcher as I reached for a grenade.

"That's a long toss," he mentioned calmly as he kept squeezing the trigger to pin down the brute.

By the time he finished talking my grenade was arcing through the air. My stronger muscles allowed me to make the throw with relative ease and I watched as the sphere traveled the hundred and eighty four meters to the car, punched through the windshield, and detonated in a fiery explosion.

The hydrogen cells ignited, turning the car itself into a much larger fragmentation device. The shrapnel and concussive force sent the brute sliding out of cover, blood pouring out of a hundred little wounds. Pitcher put in a burst in the back of its head for good measure, but the chieftain was already dead.

"Lieutenant, we got the kill, call your evac!" Carter came in.

Things must've been hairy from the way he was talking, no doubt the brute commander had surrounded itself with a few chieftains.

"Marina, we need you."

"I'll be there in a minute," her voice said. "Don't be late."

"Move out!" I shouted. "Smokescreens up!"

We always kept a few smoke grenades on us, but this time we only had three. Pavel's team had one and my team had the other two. We threw them down and waited a few seconds before jumping down the side of the five-story mansion with our rappel cables. I squeezed the cable to slow myself down and stopped a few feet above ground before letting go. A couple of jackals were still firing at the rooftop when they saw me through the smoke. They were dead before I could even aim for them. I turned to look at Marv holding his smoking rifle, who just shrugged slightly.

"Forty seconds," I said. "Two hundred meters."

I chose my words carefully, because my pack of alpha males and females would obviously take it as a challenge.

The mansion's courtyard had been vacated when the covvie troops had been sent up to the rooftop to try and overwhelm us. A simple hop over the stone walls had us outside the grounds and in the hillside. It was a long, exposed run until the road itself and then some more before we got to the highlighted area where Marina would pick us up.

"Enemies left!" Andrea warned, firing her rifle in their direction.

"Sniper!"

I crouched instinctively and some of the guys on my team actually dropped. The beam sliced through thin air, barely missing Pitcher's chest. I fired two bursts at the source of the rifle, but missed all of them in my rush to kill the jackal. I did, however, keep the bird pinned behind cover while we started moving once again, firing in all directions to suppress enemy forces.

I could see Pavel's smaller team moving from the other mansion, firing at the covvies chasing them. The intense song playing on my helmet only made things more… well, intense. I could hear every single shell as it clinked against the ground and then louder as I stepped into the road itself. Pavel was leading his team, barely turning around to fire, instead clearing the ground in front of them. Dotsenko and Ramirez were laying suppressing fire with all the accuracy that they could manage while running and firing backwards with SAWs. That is to say, not a lot. Mata and Miri were considerably more accurate, but they could only fire so many bullets at a time.

"I see you!" Marina shouted. "What have you gotten yourself into?"

Her Pelican roared overhead, its main gun blazing as it strafed Covenant positions. A couple of missiles flew out of the pods, hitting emplacements and sending covvie troops flying in every direction. I barely spared a glance at the spectacle though, because the covvies were still professional soldiers when it came down to it, and they were now beginning to get a coherent response organized. Normally it wouldn't be a particular worrisome thing, but we were basically surrounded in the headquarters of the enemy.

"Go! Go! Go!" I urged my men as Marina's Pelican touched down. "Faster!"

"Fucking hell!" Pitcher complained as he jumped over an expensive sports car, narrowly avoiding a burst from plasma rifles.

"Noble, what's your status?" I asked.

"We're making our own way out," Carter replied, "but thanks for the concern."

"Sure you don't need a hand?" I asked.

"You're already drawing all the fire to your position. Noble Four isn't terrible happy about it."

"Well, maybe next time he can play the rabbit," I replied, rushing inside the Pelican's blood tray. "Marina, get us out of here!"

Pavel had already settled into position behind the rear gun and was gunning down everything that moved, sending pieces of rock flying as the large bullets pounded the mansions.

"Are we all good?" I asked.

I patiently waited for all my men to reply verbally before nodding to myself and allowing me a degree of relaxation. The mission had gone well all things considered. I was more than happy with my men's role and they more than exceeded any expectations I had of them. Between the bunch of us we had killed over a hundred enemy soldiers. Most of them were grunts, but the brutes hadn't exactly been scarce either.

"We're outside of their SAM range," Marina announced with relief. "Heading back home."

"Good work," I told my team. "I'm proud of you."

There was a solid five second silence.

"Did he really say that?" Ramirez asked.

"I wasn't recording it!" Dotsenko replied. "Shit!"

There was some laughter. It was the good kind of laughter. It was too early to dare to hope, but things were looking to Colonel-Commissar2468 and General TheDyingTitan for proofreading this chapter.

Well, let it be known that this was basically a double chapter welded together, which means that I expect double the number of reviews. The main reason it took so long to update was because I was off doing college visits. Apparently college is a pretty big deal here in the US, who would've thought? That was a joke, it's a pretty big deal everywhere, they just make it an incredibly stressful process here for the sake of being assholes to young, innocent, bright-eyed high-schoolers. Not that I'm angry or even annoyed. That was also a joke. I'd also like to point out that writing four consecutive chapters of 10k+ words isn't exactly a small thing, especially when you post them so close to one another. Sorry, I needed to pat myself on the back for that, but feel free to join.

So what happened? Grass is back! She's going to be mission control for a while! She didn't have any of her 'did you know...' moments. Goddamit! I forgot about that! Really? Yes. I apologize.

What else? Holy fucking shit! It's Noble Team, and they kinda get along and sorta maybe respect Frank, holy crap, that's awesome!

Anything else? Oh, that's right. Everybody was a fucking badass in this chapter. And I really need to cut back on the swearing a little bit. I'm sorry, my college visits also meant that I missed a grand total of four tests, which I now have to take along with the tests that I had to take this week, so I'm a bit swamped right now.

Reception to the last chapter was fairly positive, for which I am glad. Thanks for that by the way. Most of you complimented my writing, which makes my ego swell to dangerous levels. Not that I want you to stop, if anything I don't think you're doing it enough.

Doubledgeking: I wouldn't know man. Frank started out as the identity I would adopt if I was dropped into the Halo universe, but within a short amount of time he morphed into his own person. I can barely say that he has any traits that I actually do have when I write him. If I had to answer your question without giving it serious thought I'd say that he is a mix of Zaeed from Mass Effect with and a little bit of Frank Martin from The Transformer thrown in there.

Chapter 202. Wow, sometimes those chapter numbers just look unreal to me. I'm proud of myself, but I owe all of this to you guys, so thanks for that.

Stay strong.

-casquis