Chapter CCVIII: Solo

August 25, 2552 (UNSC Calendar)/

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

"Dei Einsamkeit ist Noth; doch sei nur nicht gemein; so kannst du überall in einer Wüste sein."– Angelus Silesius

Why am I still alive?

"Are you really bitching about that?"

"Yes…"

I rolled from my side so that I was belly-down and groaned as the pain became marginally less incapacitating. I opened my eyes and saw cold grey rooftop greeting me. I hadn't hit my head particularly hard, even if the throbbing in my skull argued otherwise. I could clearly remember crashing hard into the building two times before being knocked unconscious.

I groaned.

"Come on Frank."

The Hornet pilot was certainly dead. Pitcher, however…

"Shit," I said, pushing myself up slightly and then locking my elbows. I felt like I wanted to throw up.

I couldn't hold my own weight for too long so I rolled and sat down, leaning against the short protective wall that I had slammed into some time ago. I looked at the mission clock on my helmet before looking at the one in my wrist tacpad. I had been out for at least eight hours. No one had tried to contact me for that time, which could mean one of several things. The Banshees could've gotten to all of them, something that I didn't want to consider right now or my helmet's radio wasn't working. A few quick tests revealed that it was the latter.

I breathed with relief. At least there was a chance that they were still alive.

Banshees screamed overhead and an explosion rocked the small building.

"Come on, Frank. Where are we?" Schitzo asked, helping me up to my feet.

I turned around, looking over the edge of the rooftop as my back screamed with pain.

"Residential area…" I began, willing the black spots in my vision to go away. "Looks familiar. Shit, I'm just a few blocks away from the Grenadier."

"Pavel's place is not too far off either," Schizo reminded me.

"Yes, that's right," I agreed.

I saw two Sprits disappear below the short residential buildings about a kilometer in front of me and ducked. My rifle was completely and utterly gone. I reached behind my back and pulled out the small shotgun. I winced as I realized that the weapon had been cutting into my skin. The impact must've been hard if the shotgun had bent the armor in my back through the undersuit. I sighed as I looked at the ruined weapon. It would be all but useless. A brick would be more lethal than the short weapon. I then drew the pistol-shaped grenade launcher and smiled when I saw it was in fine working order. I had only three shots for the weapon, but it would be a world of help if I had to get past light or armored vehicles.

"A grenade launcher and your pistol," Schitzo sighed. "If this was a videogame it would probably be the worst possible combination of weapons."

"Shut up," I said.

I slowly moved around the rooftop until I found the spot where the Hornet had crashed. The craft was embedded into a building. Well, what was left of the Hornet, at least. I could tell that the fuel cells had detonated some time ago, sending pieces of metal flying far away from the main wreck. I carefully calculated the trajectory that Pitcher would've followed if he had jumped a few moments before impact. I didn't have to look too hard to find him.

"Shit."

"He might still be alive," Schitzo said. "We have to move now, you might as well check."

A few painful minutes later I knelt next to Pitcher's unmoving body. It didn't take an expert to tell that he was dead. His left leg was bent completely in the wrong side and his right arm had been broken under his body. I looked up and tried to see if I could find the place where he had first hit the building, but the polycrete façade showed no signs of damage. I shook my head slowly and flipped his body around. Thankfully, his visor was polarized. I lifted the helmet slightly and reached into his neck, jerking the dogtags free from it.

PFC Oscar Almasi, Pitcher. 67435-10007 OA.

Another one to add to the list…

I pocketed the dogtags and flipped Pitcher again. His rifle was nowhere to be found and he didn't have anything of value on him. I briefly wondered where all his grenades had gone before I stood back up, my back complaining all the way. I had my pistol with just two spare magazines, a single fragmentation grenade, and three high-tech AP launcher grenades. It was really the worst combination of weapons I could've asked for.

"Gotta keep moving, Francisco," Schitzo reminded me. "Just a few blocks."

"Right," I agreed. "The Grenadier is the first stop."

I started moving, slowly at first. My back was in horrible pain, but thankfully my legs were well enough to walk. I kept wondering why exactly I had survived. I knew I hit the rooftop at a steep angle that dispersed most of the force in a way that didn't burst my insides. The second impact had been harder. In the movies you always see the guy being punched through the wall only to come back up through the hole. I admit that it's a very entertaining image, but in real life if you're thrown that hard against a wall the wall will always win. Polycrete is one of the hardest materials known to man, strong enough to build several miles up if need be and to take Covenant artillery with little complaining.

My back armor was made of a material that was certainly harder than polycrete, even if the modified titanium did have a slightly lower boiling point, but that's not the point. My armor and undersuit were designed to absorb impacts and they did a fine job of it, but no self-respecting human being would claim that it could absorb the impact of a high-speed collision caused by jumping off a moving Hornet.

"Maybe we were moving a bit slower than we think," Schitzo said.

"Yeah," I agreed, stopping near a corner, "but so was Pitcher."

"He fell eight stories after hitting the polycrete head on, we bounced off the roof."

"How many times am I gonna have to owe my survival to those fucking labcoats?"

"As many as it takes," Schitzo grunted, sharing my distaste for the scientists that had changed me, and by extension, created him.

I walked two blocks without further incident and took cover behind a small car, drawing my pistol as I heard the familiar screeching of jackals.

"What do you think happened to your back?" Schitzo asked.

"Not sure. I know I hit the wall hard enough to get some fractures. Probably a small one if I can walk."

"It's always small fractures with you," Schitzo noted.

"You can thank my bones for that. Anyways, I don't think any nerves were compressed, otherwise… well. I would be writhing in agony back in that rooftop."

"You do realize that the treatment for spinal fractures without nerve compression still requires immobilization of the patient?"

"Yes, I know everything you do."

Schitzo laughed, it was so loud that I feared the jackals would hear it. "Right. You'd be surprised at the amount of knowledge I posses that you don't."

"What?"

Schitzo was gone.

I shook my head and waited for a small patrol of jackals and grunts to move in front of me. They seemed jumpy. I wondered if they had originally had an elite with them. If they did, it would probably explain their jumpiness. As they crossed the street not twenty meters from my hiding spot I prepared for the worst. In the end none of them spotted me and they disappeared on the other side of the street. I gave them five seconds before I moved on.

The neighborhood was not in terribly bad shape. It looked abandoned, which it had been for a long time, and like it had experienced small-scale urban warfare. Occasionally I would come across something more telling, like a massive crater that had taken out a whole intersection or half a building. I ignored the sight of familiar buildings plagued by gunfire and instead soldiered on, every step making my whole body shake and my back burn with pain.

"Just a bit more," I told myself.

Two more blocks was all I needed. Once I was inside the Grenadier I could grab Montgomery's shotgun and maybe see if he kept other stuff in there. Knowing the guy, it was probably the case. What I needed the most was painkillers, I had already taken a few myself, but my supply was low and wouldn't last forever.

I stopped when I remembered something.

"Med station," I muttered.

It was a small detour. Only a block. The station would scan me, tell me what was wrong with me, recommend a course of action, and medicate me as best as it could. I sighed as I began moving to the small station. It looked like one of those old ATMs that they had in some of the outer colonies and older neighborhoods, except bigger.

"Welcome," the station said as soon as I stepped close to it. "First Lieutenant Francisco Castillo."

"Scan," I said.

"You appear to have a hairline fracture in your lumbar vertebrae," it said almost immediately. "The recommended course of action is to go to the neares-"

"Just medicate me," I told it. I groaned, the city's AI was probably busy with other matters and hadn't been able to update the stations on the situation in the city.

"Superintendent, if you can hear me, I need something to keep going."

"Please stay still," the station said.

It extended two robotic arms, one of which clamped my arm and injected something into it through the undersuit and the other simply went around and pierced the skin covering my spine before injecting something into the bone itself. I stiffened with pain, but a third arm clamped my waist, keeping me from falling down. I went through five seconds of silent agony before the needle left my back.

"Puta madre," I breathed deeply. "Fuck."

The first arm came back out again and injected something else.

"Thank you for your patience," the station said. "The nearest hospital is-"

"Thanks," I dismissed it, moving back in the direction I had been headed.

The Grenadier was pretty much intact, with the only damage to it being a small crack in the front wall. I examined the crack from a distance before I saw a brute's corpse in the entrance. I frowned and raised my pistol, keeping it trained on the brute for a few moments before I began looking for other threats. I slowly approached the dead brute with no sign of other covvies before I reached the door.

I looked down at the brute, it had a massive hole through its chest, as if someone had punched through it. I wondered what could've caused the injury, it was way too big to be from a shotgun and a Spartan would've just shot the brute. On the opposite side of the grenadier was a broken display window, but that was about it.

I shrugged it off and walked inside.

"Get on the fucking ground!"

I aimed at the voice and almost found myself shooting Montgomery through the eyes.

"Captain, it's me," I told him. "Frank."

"Frank? Goddamn, what the hell are you doing here?"

"Hornet accident," I replied, closing the door behind me and moving towards him. "What the hell happened to that brute?"

Montgomery put down his shotgun and gestured at an empty metal tube with wooden parts. I recognized it as one of the incredibly old RPG-7s that hung over the wall behind the bar. I raised an eyebrow as I took that little piece of information in, I wouldn't have thought that the relic of times past would be in working order. Sure, it looked pretty handy back there, but you wouldn't expect an ornamental sword to be sharp enough to cleave a limb.

"Damn, must've been an interesting sight."

"Gory, more like," Montgomery corrected. "Um… Frank, you wouldn't happen to have any biofoam on you?"

"What happened?" I asked, my face immediately growing into one of concern.

"Well, let's say that the brute managed to get the first shot off. I got nicked."

I approached him and saw that the floor behind his little barricade of tables and stools was covered with blood. He had bandaged his leg with what appeared to be an apron, but the blood was still coming through. It seemed like a spike or needle had gone completely through the leg.

"Shit. Don't you have a first aid kit?"

He shook his head. "We used it on Lys."

I cursed. She was my favorite waitress and one of my only friends outside the military. "What happened?"

"She came here with her husband to find temporary shelter, some of the regulars were here already. The covvies didn't like that, so they tried to storm the place."

"I didn't see any bodies," I noted.

"We didn't get any, none of us had any real weaponry. Still, we pushed them back."

"Where's the rest?"

"Three guys didn't make it," Montgomery said. "They're in the back."

"Anyone I know?"

"Not anybody you were close with," he told me. "We were preparing to leave, move our wounded. One of the guys opened the door and a brute is standing right there. It shot at me, but rocket beats needle every time."

"And you told them to leave you here."

"Damn right."

I smiled despite myself. Montgomery was one tough son of a bitch.

"There's a med station just a block away," I told him. "They could stop the bleeding there."

"Alright," Montgomery nodded. He'd obviously thought about it before. "Can you carry me?"

"Of course," I told him. "Do you have any weapons here?"

"Not anymore. The guys took all the good ones and the bad ones. They even got the…"

"Cap, you there?"

"Sorry, I'm a bit tired…"

"It's the blood loss," I said, putting him on his feet. "I'm going to sling you over my shoulder, ok?"

"Ok," he said. "Want me to carry the shotgun?"

"Sure," I said. "I can hardly aim and fire a long barreled weapon with your fat ass over my head."

Montgomery chuckled half heartedly, but I could tell that the life was draining out of him and fast.

"Come on," I urged, walking out the door. "Try to hold on a bit more."

"I'm fine, Frank," he assured me.

I jogged in silence, but his weight was killing my back, even with the strong painkillers and the injections I could feel every step right in the vertebrae that had been fractured. I moved as fast as I could, but I had to stop once to regain my breath.

"You're hurt, aren't you?" Montgomery asked lazily. "I saw it the moment you limped through my door."

"I'm alright," I told him. "I'll survive."

"Son, I can tell you're hurting."

I laughed. "You always could."

"I own a bar, it's my job."

"Come on Cap, just a little bit more."

"Alright."

I slowly walked towards the station with Montgomery on my back. At first I feared that he wouldn't even make it there, but the blood loss wasn't that severe yet. He had certainly lost more than most people would be willing to give under any circumstances, but he could still survive a bit longer. The station would administer biofoam and perhaps even provide him with a pint of blood.

"Here we are," I said, setting him down. "Station, scan."

"Scanning."

I waited a second for the station to extend its arms towards Montgomery.

"Captain Roy Montgomery, Retired. You have a-"

The machine went quiet when two plasma bolts hit it, making the screen go dark and producing some smoke from it. I cursed and ducked, turning around to see two brutes with red plasma rifles. I aimed at the closest one and hit it two times in the head, both in the piece of metal that passed for a helmet. The other brute turned its attention towards me as I put as much distance between Montgomery and myself as possible.

The Captain propped his shotgun up on his good leg and blasted it into the brute I had dazed, drawing the ire of the other one. He got a bolt in the gut for his trouble, but managed to fire a second blast that knocked the brute to the ground, where a few bullets from my pistol finished it off. I aimed at the alley that they came from and started moving across the street.

"Stay there!"

"I'm in no hurry," Montgomery replied weakly.

I ran across the street and fired as I saw grunts try to scurry away. There was no cover for them in the confined alley. Three grunts fell before I had to reload. By the time I was ready to fire again the fourth grunt had turned the corner.

"Fuck."

I ran back to Montgomery and cursed when I saw that he could no longer hold himself up.

"Shit, Cap. Can you hear me?"

He moaned.

"Captain, stay up!"

I jumped to my feet and grabbed one of the arms of the station. I started pulling, trying to tear the arm off and get to the biofoam inside so that I could administer to Montgomery. I pulled and pulled, but the stations had been designed with this in mind, not any common criminal could smash it and steal pricy meds. I cursed at the designers, but there was nothing I could do.

"There should be another one just a few blocks-"

Montgomery dismissed me lazily with a wave of his hand.

"I'm dead, son. They killed me."

"Not yet, Cap."

"It's too late, son. I can feel it. I can hear them calling to me."

"Well, tell them to wait, cause I sure as hell won't let you die, not after everything you did for me."

Montgomery chuckled. "It's bright."

"That's just chemical reactions, Cap."

"Maybe, maybe not," he said. "I never thought I would go to heaven… not after all I did."

His words were getting softer by the second.

"Cap… shit… Your bar was always my favorite."

"I thought it had something to do with Lys."

I smiled. "It was all you, Cap."

"Maybe I'll see her there… I hope not. Anyone you want me to say hello to?"

"A whole lot of people, Cap," I said, but he was already dead.

"Shit," Schitzo spat.

I sighed and got up before punching the station's screen as hard as I could. The glass broke and smoke came out. My knuckles felt like they had burst, it was enough to numb the non-physical pain somewhat. I looked down at Montgomery and confirmed that he was dead before looking at his shotgun. It wasn't a military model and didn't use the same shells that the M90 or my small shotgun used, so it was useless for me.

"Ah fuck," I grunted as I saw him.

I closed his eyes and fixed him a little bit, straightening him up against the wall next to the med station and crossing the shotgun across his chest. He looked almost peaceful in that position, especially with the shotgun covering most of the blood in his stomach. His leg would remain bloody no matter what, but at least he didn't look like just another dead man.

"It was a pleasure, Cap."

Schitzo shook his head. "We have to keep moving. Pavel's is the next stop."

I nodded, saluting Montgomery's corpse before moving on.

It was hard leaving him behind like that. Montgomery had been there for me almost as often as Pavel. He was a great man, helping out anybody that walked through his doors. I don't know why he had taken a liking to me, we both knew damn well that I was an asshole. Lys had also been there more times than I could count and now she could be dead as well. I shook my head slightly as I moved. Her dead wasn't something that I wanted to picture. Montgomery's dead eyes were seared into my memory forever, but I could avoid having her pretty face etched into my head. There were already too many faces there, most of which didn't have names that I could attach to.

"Come on," Schitzo said calmly. "Focus."

I nodded and kept on walking. I now had just two magazines for my pistol. It might be enough to take two brutes, three if I got enough headshots through. I made sure to keep my eyes peeled and my head moving. Anything could pop out of a window or a door and bite me in the ass.

A familiar humming droned on my ears and I stifled a curse as I felt more than heard the swarm of drones approaching. The humming became louder and louder, but before I saw the first of the bugs come I jumped inside a large trash can, coming down on cans and leftovers. It smelt like shit.

"Oh well," Schitzo said with a shrug.

The buzzing was magnified by the metal encasing me, but it got quieter and quieter soon enough. I gave it a minute before coming out and then carefully opened the lid. Since I saw nothing I finally climbed out, keeping my gun out. It wasn't until I had one of my legs hanging out that a brute and two jackals walked around the alley corner, less than ten feet away from me. I raised my pistol just as the jackals activated their shields.

Something caught my other leg as I tried to climb out, making me fall on my face and saving my life. Spikes and plasma embedded themselves behind me. From my position in the floor I emptied my magazine on the brute and then the shields when it ducked. The barrage kept them from firing back and bought me enough time to start running. I slid my last magazine into the pistol just as they began firing back, but by that point I was already safely behind another similar trash container.

"Suppressing fire!" I shouted, hoping for the aliens to understand what I was saying.

Their fire did diminish a little bit, by coincidence or not. I popped from cover and drilled the lead jackal with five shots. Two to the exposed arm and three to the chest to finish it off. The other bird quickly crouched behind its shield as the brute tossed a spike grenade my way.

I grabbed the bat-sized explosive and threw it back, aiming at the space above the two aliens. The spike grenade detonated above the jackal, but the angle sent all the shrapnel directly into its raised shield. I emptied what I had left on my pistol trying to take it out, but it got its shield back down before I could go for a center mass shot. I did manage to hit it twice in the right leg and once in the left, effectively removing it from the equation.

That left the brute.

I ran.

The brute ran after me.

It was faster than I was, even with my bursts of speed. I managed to stay in front of it for a few seconds before I heard its heavy footsteps right behind me. Its own biological need for violence gave me the chance to fight it in close quarters, giving me an opportunity to survive. For most humans fighting a brute up close was as good as a dead sentence unless you had it outnumbered four to one, but for me it was just another Friday. The brute didn't realize what it had walked into until it was too late.

I stabbed it twice before I realized what I had gotten myself into.

The Covenant consists of several races and sometimes it is easy to generalize them. Grunts are cannon fodder, jackals are crafty scouts and sharpshooters, elites are excellent fighters if a bit too "honorable," brutes are powerful and violent, drones are an annoyance, and hunters are… well, hunters.

This brute didn't look any different. It was half again as tall as I was and twice as thick. It's arms were perhaps as thick around as my torso was and it could crush my skull with relatively little effort. Again, nothing out of the usual.

It wasn't until the alien punched me into a car with speed that seemed to betray its size that I realized this particular specimen was what you would call versed in martial arts.

"Ah shit."

I rolled out of the car before the brute could bring down its ham-sized fists over my head. The car's hood bent inwards from the impact, angering the brute. I took as deep a breath as I could manage, but the alien had hit me hard enough to knock the wind out of me. I gripped my knife tightly and reversed the grip as I took four quick steps backward, escaping the brute's range.

The alien appeared a bit thicker around the shoulders and neck than most other brutes, even if that seemed like a physiological impossibility. I groaned in annoyance as it adopted the closest thing to a stance I had ever seen a brute take. It wasted no time, however, because a moment later it was moving towards me, dishing out incredibly fast punches that I could only duck or bob underneath. With every chance I got I slashed at its arms, but the brute was too fast for me to do any serious damage. I kept trying to draw my grenade launcher, but the brute's assault was too violent. A single moment could cost me my life.

So I moved with it, slowly shuffling my feet as it punched and punched. I was thankful the brute didn't kick, because avoiding those would've been way harder and impossible to block. It went on for perhaps twenty seconds before I found my opening. The brute threw a particularly powerful punch. Its arm was overextended for the briefest of instants, but it was enough for me to punch my knife almost completely through, embedding it all the way to the hilt.

The brute roared, but it was already dead.

I kicked at its knee, buckling it enough for a follow-up kick stomp to bring the brute down to its knees. I drew my smaller knife from my chest and brought it down on its neck. I growled angrily when the wounded alien managed to grab my hands and block the attack. I used my considerable strength to wrestle the knife closer and then added my second hand, forcing the brute to do the same. It growled at me and its jaws snapped violently, echoing my own contorted face. I huffed and used my whole upper body to get the knife through.

I was stronger than any human being not a Spartan, but the brute was still a brute. In a contest of strength I had no chance, and this time was no different. I held my ground briefly, but the brute simply threw me backwards after a few tense moments. I was counting on this, however, and rolled backwards as I landed, reaching for the grenade launcher slung across my torso. With one swift motion I drew the weapon and aimed at the brute as it clumsily jumped at me. The sound of the rocket-assisted grenade was drowned by the sickly squelch of the device entering the brute's body. The grenade was designed to punch through tank armor. Brute flesh, muscular or otherwise, was no contest. The brute suddenly found itself missing a sizeable piece of stomach and the grenade flew on, slamming into a building at the end of the street, some ninety meters from our position.

The brute looked down at the gaping hole in its belly and then at me before it fell, its guts already spilling out.

"Close, but no cigar," I told it before I stomped its face against the curb five times in quick succession.

"I would've said something else," Schitzo interjected. "Perhaps something relating to its lack of belly. You didn't have the guts!"

I rolled my eyes, but I had to admit that a corny one-liner like that would've been pretty funny.

I managed to make it the rest of the way to Pavel's without any further inconvenience. I hopped over the small fence surrounding the short building and walked through the open door. It didn't look like any covvies had been here, more like someone had forgotten to close the door behind them. That seemed unusual, Pavel had been here a couple of times after this neighborhood was evacuated, to feed his dog and sleep. Maybe he had been the one to forget the door.

Maybe he left it open to give Gunny a chance to escape…

Yeah, that was a possibility.

Still, I kept my left hand on my knife and held the grenade launcher on my right. I didn't want to have to fire indoors. Well, technically the device wouldn't explode unless it had gone more than five meters, but it would pierce the first couple of walls and then detonate against the outer polycrete façade, collapsing a sizeable portion of the building.

I climbed to Pavel's floor and reached his door. It was closed. I slowly opened it after tapping in the security code.

"Gunny?"

Soon enough I heard the sound of dog paws on hardwood floors and saw the Australian Sheppard jogging towards me with its tongue hanging out and its tail waggling behind it. The whole world was collapsing and this dog was happy to see somebody. It sniffed around at the blood on my boot before looking up at me and sitting back down in an almost comical fashion before tilting its head.

"It's me, Gunny," I told the dog, taking off my helmet. "You wouldn't happen to know where Pavel keeps that incredibly expensive shotgun I got him?"

There was no answer.

Of course there wasn't an answer, it's a fucking dog.

I sighed and threw the helmet on the couch before walking inside. Pavel's bedroom was the obvious answer. The bed was unmade, something which caught my attention. Pavel usually made his bunk whenever we were in the Inconvenience, Flawless, and lately in the Camerone. I certainly didn't make him do it, but still he did. Maybe he had just wanted a break from the military way of life, I sure did feel like one.

I opened the drawers on both sides of the bed to no avail, but I was surprised that no dildos or fuzzy handcuffs came out. After that I trashed the closet, paying no mind to where the things landed. Behind me I could feel Gunny's eyes peering into me, but paid the dog no mind. It knew I was a friend. I eventually came into a small safe. It was a bit small, but big enough to fit Pavel's shotgun in its collapsible mode. I sighed as I looked at the keypad. I knew for sure that my DNA or thumbprints hadn't been programmed into this thing.

"Lavanya's birthday?" I asked the dog.

I shrugged and clicked the numbers 08/06/44. The light beeped red. I then switched to the more unconventional month-day-year method, but got no result. I wondered whether he had bought this safe before or after he had his kid. The next obvious combination was the date of his wedding, but that drew red lights too. I tried his birthday and then Amber's, but that got me nowhere.

My own birthday got flashing red lights.

I paced from one end of the room to the other, ignoring Gunny's piercing eyes.

"Eleven…" I muttered. "Oh-two… thirty-five." Seventeen years ago, the day I found him dying on the ground of Camp Afghan, where I had lived for so many years.

The lights beeped green and the safe door opened.

"Pavel, you'll never hear the end of this," I said to myself, sporting a big grin.

Sure enough, the safe had the ACS I got him in its collapsible form. I grabbed the weapon and extended it, watching with small wonderment as its pieces folded and moved to reveal a moderately long weapon. Its stock consisted of a small shock pad that was connected to the main body of the gun by two narrow tubes. Everything else was simply skeletal looking, but the body itself was pretty angular and the top came down on the bottom, encasing it almost completely when in its portable form.

I smiled at the weight of the gun.

"Bingo, am I right, Gunny?"

The dog was no longer in the room.

I shrugged. "Oh well."

The safe also contained three circular magazines, all of them full of very expensive shells. I examined one of them and shook my head when I saw that the pellets themselves were explosive, designed to detonate upon impact but only when they had gone more than fifteen meters. This feature would allow me to ricochet the pellets off floors and walls before they started exploding and killing stuff. Very useful indeed.

I slapped one of the magazines into the front of the ACS, trying to get a feel for the unusual magazine-in-the-front configuration that the shotgun had. The only other weapon I knew that was designed like that was the SRS and the machine guns. All other small arms were usually in the bullpup configuration.

"Alright then," I said, hefting the shotgun. "I feel better already."

Gunny was back in the room, looking at me with one of those ropes that you're supposed to try and yank from them. I smiled and played tug-of-war with it for a while before letting it win. Instead I moved to the kitchen, sighing when I saw all the cabinets were empty. The tap still produced some water, enough to fill my canteen. I looked in vain for something that could help me contact my team, but the phones were dead and Amber had taken all the radios at Pavel's instruction. Good for her and her daughter, but not so good for me.

"You've got enough food, Gunny?"

I walked with the dog to its designated sleeping place and saw that it did indeed have enough food. A dozen bags of dog food were all piled up in neat rows with small tears in them. Small enough that the food wouldn't pile out but big enough that Gunny could tear them to get to the nutritious and tasty meal advertised in the bags.

"I'll take that as a yes," I said, petting the dog's ears.

I wondered what I should do about it. If I left the door closed it would survive for a couple of months on the dog food alone. Pavel had made sure to fill the bathtub with water and left the door open so that Gunny could access it. Most of the dog shit was neatly piled in the corner of the kitchen, but the rest of the apartment was beginning to smell like piss.

The dog would survive for a couple of months, but I was no longer so confident that we were winning this fight. New Alexandria had proved otherwise.

If I opened the door it would escape, but it would escape to a warzone that could potentially become glasslands soon.

I moved towards the door and frowned.

"I'm going to leave this open for you, alright?" I told him. "Don't leave until you run out of food, do you understand me?"
It barked.

"Of course you don't you're a dog."

It barked again.

I frowned.

It barked again and kept on doing it.

"What's got you all-"

I ducked instinctively as the building shook. Something had exploded pretty close to us. From the sound of the explosion I figured it had been plasma from the particular hiss that followed immediately after. Gunny started whining quietly and only stopped after I petted it between the ears. I shushed it and moved towards my helmet, grabbing Pavel's ACS and extending it once again. I could hear the humming of Covenant dropships nearby. I began moving towards the door when another explosion sent me to the ground. This one tore a large chunk of the outer walls off, exposing the apartment to the exterior. I turned around to see the rear end of a Spirit and began moving towards the door.

Gunny raced past me, climbing down the stairs and disappearing as the Spirit fired follow-up blasts. I cursed at my impotence, but there wasn't much I could do, especially considering my limited weaponry and complete and utter lack of allies in the area. I ran down the stairs as fast as possible, trying to get Gunny's fate to go away from my mind. Once I left I managed to catch sight of the dog's tail disappear right around the corner. I allowed me a small sigh of relief.

The Spirit hovered overhead and opened its right side hatch doors. Three brutes jumped out before a missile hit the ship, tearing the three main sections apart and sending it to the ground. I found myself running away from the wreck, only narrowly avoiding being crushed to death by a pile of alien metal.

"Fuck!"

The three brutes in question heard my curse and immediately began giving chase over the remains of their dropship, but they weren't counting on the ACS-37. I aimed and fired. The brutes could've survived one shotgun shell each, buying each other time to fire at me and maybe wound me, but I didn't let go of the trigger as I burned through nearly half the drum magazine's ammo, leaving the torsos of the brutes unrecognizable messes.

"Pavel, why the hell don't you use this?" I asked myself.

I didn't have time to ponder that more, because more Spirits hummed overhead, heading towards the airport, a few miles away. I began giving chase to them, settling into a quick trot, but I hadn't gone more than a block when the dropships began exploding. I hollered, but then I realized that the rest of the Spirits were slowing down to set their troops down here instead of exposing themselves to the UNSC's formidable air defenses.

I looked behind me to see more dropships setting whole platoons down behind me. I ducked into a side street as the closest squad opened fire on me and then threw myself to the ground as a rain of artillery fire began coming down on me. Some of the shells hit the dropships, but the whole neighborhood was just about leveled in a matter of minutes. I crawled into a crater in the middle of the street and hugged my legs tightly, hoping that nothing explosive would land inside the crater. The barrage went on for just another minute or so, but the shrapnel and high-explosive shells tore through everything. I was almost crushed when a car was sent up into the air and came down on the crater, only stopping when the edges prevented it from going any further.

Then, on top of everything, it began to rain.

It never rains, but it pours…

The bottom of the crater turned into a nice muddy pile by the time I climbed out. When I popped over the edge of the hole I was shocked. This neighborhood had been the epicenter of my activities in Esztergom for years. Pavel's house was here, the Grenadier was here, my various temporary apartments had usually been in this area. Now the whole thing was reduced to giant piles of rubble and a few skeletal remains of the shorter buildings.

Before I could give it further thought I heard Pelican engines. I tried to catch a glimpse of the ship in question, but before I could see it I heard the sound of fuel rod cannons fire and a large explosion.

There were still Covenant in the area. If I had made it through an artillery barrage like that then others could do the same.

I ran towards the sound of the fuel rods and climbed a ten-foot high pile of rubble before coming into a small hollow with a brute and four grunts, all of them unharmed. I promptly changed that and fired two shells at each of them. The second one was largely unnecessary, but this shotgun had a light trigger. With four dead covvies, any additional survivors would know that they weren't alone either. The ACS was effective, but it was also what you would call loud as fuck.

Roars started coming from my left and I tumbled down the debris before running up the other end of the small hollow. I was cutting through a series of buildings and would soon end up back near the Grenadier if I kept going. I cut back near an alley, or at least what had once been an alley, and through the remains of a small apartment building. I had to climb up a pile of debris and out through a window before I came out the other side, rolling into a ball as the rubble gave way under my feet.

I groaned as pain shot up my spine again. I just knew a doctor would yell at me sooner rather than later. Some corner of my mind hoped that it would be Astrid Vinter, if only to confirm that she had survived.

I climbed back to my feet and crossed the street. It was littered with small craters and the remains of two Phantoms as well as several dozen Covenant corpses. I turned around and fired at two jackals giving chase, killing one of them and sending the other one scurrying for cover. The other side of the street was comparably less damaged and I could enter a building at ground level before I had to start climbing through debris once again.

Halfway up I heard growls and shrieks from my right. Another group knew where I was. I cursed and turned away from them, dreading the next street. When I came down from the debris and into the furrow that had once been a street so did the other Covenant squad. I had to duck behind a debris-covered truck and then jump out of the way of a plasma grenade before I was in any position to return fire. The ACS had excellent range, allowing me to score a kill and a hit with three shells. It bought me enough time to bunker down where the buildings had fallen down in a relatively defensible position.

"Ah, funny place to die in, isn't it?" Schitzo asked.

"I'm not going to die here," I told it. Him. Whatever. "Got a nice little field of fire and can fall back to funnel them into my kill range."

"I'm just busting your chops," Schitzo confessed.

"Fuck off."

The hallucination promptly complied and disappeared.

Now it was just me and a couple of angry squads trying to kill me.

I let them approach first. My shotgun could fire faster than a machine gun and the closer they got the deadlier it became. I opened up on the nearest squad when they were twenty meters away, killing the lead brute and two jackals before return fire caused me to dive for cover. I popped up and fired a couple of shots, trying to discourage them from coming to close. I mostly missed, but after about a minute I had tallied two grunt kills. Their numbers were down by a third and I still had two drum magazines to burn through in addition to my grenade launcher.

Things were going according to plan, for once. The brutes sent the grunts forward, making for easy kills. After I had killed a few grunts and a jackal they tried flushing me out with grenades, but the only one that they managed to land behind my cover I easily returned before it detonated. The grunts weren't strong enough to toss the plasma grenades without coming too close.

I was just thankful that they didn't have any sharpshooters amongst them.

"Come on, come on…" I urged one of the brutes.

It read my mind and charged as its compatriot provided the sloppiest covering fire I had had the fortune to witness. I popped up and fired one shot and then ducked for good measure. The brute howled when I hit it, but it didn't die, not immediately at least. I left it there and shifted my position a couple of meters to throw off the other brute squad leader. I looked over cover and saw that the two surviving jackals were moving forward, shields up. Four grunts complemented them, walking behind them with their weapons shaking in their ugly hands. I waited for them to get close and then tossed my only grenade in a perfect arc. The shrapnel took out two of the jackals and one grunt. The other aliens were wounded but quickly fell prey to the automatic shotgun.

That left only a dying brute and one intact specimen.

The last brute got smart. It had seen two squads disappear in a little less than ten minutes. Instead of letting its base urges dominate it and rush me in an attack doomed to fail it instead slinked back behind cover and disappeared. I kept aiming at the portion of wall where it had been firing from, but it never popped back up. After five minutes of no further developments I decided that I had to move. I slowly walked across the street, making as little noise as possible. Once I reached the brute's hiding spot I quickly pivoted and aimed.

The brute was gone.

I immediately turned around, fearing one of those cliché attacks from the back that had no plausible way of actually happening.

There was nothing there.

I sighed and decided that I could afford to let one brute leave. The way things were looking for me I needed to move and do it fast.

The spaceport was far away and hijacking a car was literally impossible. Unless I had Angel's hacking skills I wouldn't be able to get one of the abandoned vehicles to work for me. I could make the distance before the day was over, but it would be dark by the time I got there. Hell, it was already getting darker than I would've liked. I groaned. I had woken up extra early this morning and then spent a large portion of the day crawling around in the highlands. Hell, I don't think I even got the minimum three hours of sleep.

I bitched internally as I moved as stealthily as possible. In truth, the darkness would hide me from prying eyes, but it also meant that Covenant activity would be increased and I would be at a disadvantage, even with my VISR.

The neighborhood had been completely plowed by the artillery barrage, but interestingly enough, the shells had landed mostly amongst the houses. It was easy to forget just how precise artillery was nowadays, but I couldn't help but wonder why they'd bring down only the buildings. I occupied my mind with that question as I weaved through the piles of debris, occasionally going inside the gutted skeleton of what had once been a residential building. I nodded to myself when I realized that the only reason why the UNSC would want to keep the roads intact was if they thought we would get the chance to use them again.

Maybe a counter-attack wasn't coming up right now, but at least it was still a viable option.

On that same vein, the fact that they decided to firebomb a large portion of the city wasn't exactly promising. We might've blown at least a third of our artillery shells in that barrage alone. I, however, kept spotting shredded bits of Covenant bodies and dropships that had been completely wrecked by one or two shots. If we had fired all that metal, then it sure looked like it had been worth it.

I heard rock hitting rocked and ducked, twisting around to aim at the source of the noise. I slowed down my breathing even as my heartbeat raced. The sound came again, this time louder and closer. I tightened the grip on the ACS and exhaled slowly, expecting to see a dazed jackal or a dumb brute climbing out of a small pile of rubble.

I almost shot Gunny as it came out and up to me.

"Shit, dog," I sighed. "You've been following me?"

Once again, I found myself feeling like an idiot for talking to a dog and expecting an answer. Gunny was covered in dust, making him look almost completely grey. I rubbed some of it off its face, holding it by the collar so it wouldn't scurry away. I disliked the idea of having the dog here, if I hadn't seen it after Pavel's place was attacked it would've been a simple matter of convincing myself that it had gotten away. Now that it was here with me I would either make it with it or I would see it die.

I didn't like it when dogs died. I especially didn't like it when a dog I had bought for my best friend died.

"Come on, Gunny. Stay with me."

Pavel had trained this dog exceedingly well. Scratch that, Amber had trained the dog exceedingly well. It stayed by my side and didn't run forward or lag behind. It most certainly didn't dart around and start sniffing at corpses. By no means did I expect the doggy to be a killing machine and save my life, but it was comforting to know that it wouldn't go running into plasma fire because it got over excited.

"Stay," I muttered when I heard plasma fire.

Gunfire was heard in response, but it was only a single MA5 against what had to be three or more plasma rifles. It was too far away for me to do anything about it and I would've had to move away from my route. I was already a third of the way there and already the buildings were less and less damaged. Instead of being piles of rubble with an occasional upright wall they were mostly upright walls with no floors of ceilings.

Talk about improvement.

The gunfire died out.

"Let's move up," I told the dog. "Come."

I realized that I was talking to it much like I did with my actual real men.

"They're not that smart either," I told Gunny, who just raised its head to look at me before going back to its walk.

Gunny and I had a couple of close calls, but I managed to keep the dog quiet as soon as I spotted movement. It made for slow going, but we weren't getting shot at. The more I advanced the more dangerous it got. There were some firefights going on, if you could call them that. Basically they consisted of an unlucky soldier or two getting caught by a larger Covenant squad in the open. This was no-man's-land, everybody was out to get each other, but for some reason they had more survivors here than we did. My guess is that they gave the word for everybody to fall back and regroup.

"So far it's not looking too good," I told the dog.

Gunny sniffed a little before making a sound that seemed close to a sneeze.

"Let's go."

Four blocks and I would stop, I decided. There was a large Walmart up ahead, but what interested me was a small store in front of it that sold what they claimed to be genuine Spanish aged meat. I don't know whether it was genuinely Spanish, but it was sure as hell delicious. It also happened to be owned by an actual Spaniard that had fought in the Catalan secession conflicts. There was bound to be a gun here or there. Those kind of people never failed to be paranoid. It was the reason that I had eight separate pistols in my own house. Katie always hated that. Marina thought it was unnecessary, and Hanna just accepted it.

"Damn," I muttered to myself.

The Walmart was just a hundred meters away and the little Spanish boutique butchery was half that distance away. I tried sniffing, only to slap my visor when I realized that the helmet would dull the smell, especially at this distance. I could usually smell the well-aged meat from blocks away. The guy liked hanging the big-ass legs on the shop front.

Loved the place.

Just one more thing that I would never get to experience ever again.

I sighed and crossed the street with Gunny on my right side.

I heard a whistle.

"Get down!"

The shout was instinctive, but it got the meaning across. Gunny went prone as I ducked. Whatever flew above us sounded like a UNSC shell, but the explosion was more way too big. Either it had been a Daemon or there had been something big where it hit. I twisted my head and saw the bright blue that denoted plasma explosions.

Probably a human shell targeting a known Covenant plasma storage house.

I don't know why I needed to know what was going on, but I had to solve that little mystery before I could react. The explosion sent some debris around me, but it didn't hit me. Gunny whined but stayed where he was. Three brutes appeared from the Spanish meat store, one of them carrying a hammer.

"Shit, go, go!"

The dog got up and all too happily ran with me hot on its tail. The bodyguards fired their spikes at me, but missed by a nice little berth. I followed Gunny into the remains of the destroyed house and hopped over what remained of the walls and into cover. Gunny tried running, but I grabbed its hind leg and pulled it towards me. It would've been a suicide run. The dog was fast, but it couldn't outrun spikes.

"Stay!" I shouted. "Stay!"

The dog yelped and complained, but it curled into a ball.

A stick grenade landed right next to me and beeped once. I cursed and grabbed it by the bottom. I spun once and released it at one of the bodyguards. The explosive slammed into its chest and exploded just as a second grenade landed an inch from Gunny's tail.

"Go!" I urged the dog. "Go, go!"

This time I would make myself a bigger target and hope they didn't hit the dog. I grabbed the grenade and sent it rolling up in the air, where it detonated and sent the sharp spikes into the brutes. The chieftain stopped briefly and the surviving bodyguard covered its head from the high-velocity fragmentation. I raised the ACS and fired all that was left in my magazine into the chieftain, bringing it down to its knees. I hit the magazine release and threw my only grenade at the bodyguard. The explosion tore its right leg completely off and launched jagged pieces of metal into its torso.

I reloaded and moved up towards the chieftain. The brute got itself back to its feet as I raised my shotgun again. It swung its hammer, grabbing it by the very bottom. I had to duck underneath it, surprised by the incredible range the brute managed. Despite the minor setback I did get three quick shots off, hitting the massive alien in the chest and knocking it back down. I moved towards it and fired twice at each wrist before aiming at its head.

Another brute appeared right in front of me, head covered by a helmet with a single eyepiece and dark-colored armor protecting it. I tried raising my shotgun, but the brute stalker kicked it back down and then grabbed me by the chest piece before tossing me at least ten meters back to the wrecked house that I had just used for cover.

I grunted, first in surprise and then in pain. I had seen brutes break men in half and tear arms from bodies without much effort. Those beasts could take a shotgun blast to the face and then punch you hard enough to break your ribs. I don't know why I was that surprised at being tossed a complete football down and into polycrete.

I opened my eyes and looked down at my feet. I had miraculously managed to hang onto my ACS even as the rebar had gone through my torso in between the fourth and fifth ribs from the top.

I breathed in and almost passed out from the pain, but at least my left lung was functional.

I raised my shotgun as much as I could and fired as soon as I saw the stalker's silhouette approach over the top of the short wall. The brute growled but stayed back. I half expected it to try to cloak itself and vault over, only to be exposed to my gunfire as soon as my VISR identified it and outlined it.

No, this brute was at least moderately smart. I had been coming across too many of those recently. I coughed a little bit and almost shat myself when Gunny came up to me and settled down on my left side, putting its nuzzle on my shoulder.

"Come on," I muttered, shifting my body slightly to the side in order to get Gunny to move.

The dog growled lightly and then fixed its position a little bit. For being one of the smartest dogs in existence, I was starting to think it was pretty damn stupid. It was also incredibly sweet.

"You're going to die," I told it. "Run."

Gunny said nothing.

A spike grenade landed to my right, just out of arms reach.

I sighed.

Thanks to Colonel-Commissar2468 and General TheDyingTitan for proofreading this chapter.

I'm back bitches. Sorry for the long delay, but life's been hitting me pretty hard. By that I mean that I left all my college applications until the last second and had to write my essays instead of giving you your fix. Again, apologies for the suffering and angst that I may have suffered, but if it makes you feel better, I did have one hell of a kickass vacation.

Thanks to all of you for your reviews. Keep 'em coming.

Nice cliffhanger by the way, right? Right? Of course it is. Kind of a dick move to come back after almost a month's absence and decide to give you this shit ending. Worry not, next update will probably be a lot quicker than this one.

Stay strong.

-casquis