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Ekim's arms ached with each movement as he lifted the last of the group's equipment onto the hovering pelican.

"This it?" another Marine asked, taking the crate of ammunition from Ekim's hands.

"Yeah, but give us a few more minutes. I gotta wrap one more thing up." Ekim said, not realizing that there was a hint of sadness in his voice. He turned around, avoiding the gaze coming from behind the Marine's visor, and looked towards Wandling and Taber who stood around the badly damaged warthog.

Ekim dashed to the pair and saw Taber tossing a red can casually away behind him as he arrived. He slowed his pace when he saw that the hog was glistening with a clear liquid of some sort and that Frickie wasn't moving.

"How's he doing?" Ekim asked, turning to Wandling. But before he heard a response he noticed three clean holes in Frickie's chest and a couple others on his limbs.

"He isn't." Wandling said keeping his vision focused on the body. "These shots were made by the dropship but… he didn't bleed when he was shot. So we do know is that he was dead sometime while we were escaping the camp. It's a shame, really. He said something about his kid just entering kindergarten. That and we've been trying to ferry a dead body around for a couple of hours."

"Grab his tags" he said, finally turning to Ekim

Ekim bent over the body, reached for the chain on its neck, and pulled it off in one movement. Pulling the shiny metal away from the corpse and putting it in his pocket, a particular small filled his nose: Gasoline.

"Let's go" Taber said, ushering the group to the awaiting ship. He turned as the other two began to jog towards the Pelican and pulled something out of his pocket. Ekim sat on the edge of the pelican floor with his legs hanging off the edge when he caught sight of Taber standing alone in the street. Taber continued to fiddle with something that was too small to see from the distance Ekim was at, as the engines revved to begin the accent.

Taber threw a glint of flame at the 'hog. It was just a flame on the end of a match. but in the blink of an eye the top of the warthog was ignited with a whoosh. The intense red fire obscured any view of the body that rested in it.

As Taber rushed to the ship Wandling looked at Ekim and said in a depressed tone "There are worse things then death, you know. Like those things. That Flood. I don't know if you can feel when they're controlling you but I'm sure as hell wouldn't Frickie want to find out. Anyway there's no sense in leaving a body around for when they come here."

Taber hopped onto the Pelican and it without hesitance lifted off. Ekim watched as the flames grew farther and farther from his eyes as a bigger view of the city filled in around it. Then suddenly, the flames jumped outward and doubled in size as smoke billowed out of it even faster. Over the groaning of the engines, half a second later, a distant, quiet boom reached Ekim's ears. The 'hog had exploded when the flames reached the gas tank.

"Now that's what I call cremation" Taber said laughing, suddenly with a smile on his face. Ekim grudgingly joined the waves of laughter with a sick feeling boiling in his stomach: that he actually had the dog tags of a man, a friend, their former leader, that had died in combat, and been blown up, sitting in his pocket.

The craft flew on over an ever more dark and apocalyptic landscape that was formerly the city of Old Mombassa as the passengers began a debriefing.

"Privates Taber, Ekim, and Wandling, is it?" Ed Graves began. The trio nodded as he continued "I'm afraid I've got some bad news. As you know this is the second invasion of Earth, by the covenant, however they came in full force this time. After the flag ship left New Mombassa and destroyed most of the city, we found something. Something massive was unearthed right under the city. Our best scientists were trying to figure it out when the covenant came back. We didn't stand a chance—"

Another Marine cut him off, Ekim could clearly see a dog tag with the name "Mohr" gleaming in the sun hanging down from his neck. "They blasted our ships out of the sky in less than a day. Once they had every last one of our men in the sky--" he hesitated and gulped, Ekim could see he was sweating "slaughtered they started a partial glass of America. I can still taste the ashes."

Mohr closed his eyes tight and began to let a few difficultly suppressed sobs. The sound of the groaning engines once again overtook the air.

"Let me say this" another Marine chimed in; minutes later "You were lucky to survive at all. The planet was overrun before that flood thing came into play. The commander who planned the defense of the New Mombassa area called for the first wave, that'd be you, to be bullet fodder. Apparently it was to exhaust the covie's recourses, so the three of you were already wrote into the causality list before they made landfall. Nobody could stop it, and anyone that could called it a part of the bigger battle plan."

"Be that as it may, Stone" Graves continued "what's done is done. We're planning to regroup to a safe zone under Paris. We are to rendezvous with a shortsword fighter to help transport this squad as well as all the survivors that we've found. The latter accounts for the three of you."

"Also there seems to have been a switch in the covenant ground troops since the last invasion." Graves said, now looking down at a small handheld device that he occasionally had hit a button on. "The elites have been moved down in rank and have been replaced with the brutes. So many of the Elites are fighting against the rest of the covies but are getting gunned down pretty quick."

"Yeah. We know." Wandling said shoving a clip into his Battle Rifle and avoiding any glances that happened by his way.

"Ok" a voice called from the pilot's section of the craft "We're approaching rendezvous. Twenty kilos and count—"boom.

The ground on which Ekim stood shook like there was an earthquake as an explosion sounded. He saw everything swerve as he fell down in unison with a few other boxes and cans. For a part of an instant Ekim's eyes caught a fleeting glance out of the open back of the Pelican, of a machine with shields in the front of it flying by. A grinding noise of the engines rang in everyone's ears making it hard to hear the screams of confusion.

More explosions sounded from the top and left sides of the compartment as smoke finally poured out from the machine's engine, filling the air around the Marines in a black shroud. Everything else was a series of sounds.

A few more explosions led to the grinding noise overtaking the air once more. In seconds even that ended and there was a few seconds of a shocked silence as no one knew what was coming next. Then an obtrusive smash coupled with the stop from eighty miles an hour brought a silence as quiet as death and darkness thicker than the smoke could ever get.

Ekim shuttered to life with a harsh series of coughs. He opened his eyes to see yet another concrete floor of a building. There were no signs of life, save the embers and the occasional flame. Every muscle in his body ached and something in his head started yelling "Not Again!" as he threw himself to a sitting position, glancing around.

Two small holes in the wall to his right showed him that, indeed, he was in another building, stories up. A glance to his left showed the tip of the Pelican half-sunk in the now cracked concrete. He flipped around, being caught by surprise that the steel behemoth that he was sitting in for the last two hours was sitting in the same floor as he was. Then it occurred to him: how is he outside the wreck? This train of thought was caught mid-rail as a few sudden beeps sounded right behind his head.

A peculiar floating machine with a glowing dot in the middle sped at Ekim as he caught sight of it. His hand reached for a pistol but to no avail. He had lost it in the crash.

The robot stopped for a moment as if examining the Marine as its eye lit more brightly. Then a thin beam of red light shot out from the center of the machine to Ekim's left and began a sweep across Ekim.

As Ekim saw the heated red beam fly across near him he put all his strength into a jump backwards. He closed his eyes and clenched his teeth and felt nothing for a second. Then, like a cut from a sword, the pain hit him in his left arm. He looked up and saw the rest of the beam burn the air place where he once stood.

Ekim looked around desperately and saw nothing of any aid. He turned his attention back to the machine that once again lit up his center eye for another assault. Then an angel's call was revealed with the sound of AR fire and sparks from behind even the robot.

Chunks of metal and wire fell from the robot as more rounds hit it sending more sparks from the newly punched holes. The barrage of rounds was wrapped up in a finale of a small explosion as the machine began to fall out of the sky. It landed with another boom and left only a few small chunks of metal and a stream of smoke.

He looked through the thin layer smoke as a figure in a Marine outfit sprinted to him. Ekim started to stand up as a blow from a standard issue Marine's boot hit him squarely in the chest. The AR clicked off it's safety as Ekim looked around the leg that pinned him to the ground and the gun pointed at his head, into the face of Private Mohr.

"Mohr!" Ekim choked out at gun point.

"Is that you Ekim? I thought you were dead in the crash."

"In the flesh. Was the kick really necessary?"

"It was if you were flood. I didn't think anyone else made it out. Then these things attacked." He motioned his head towards the hunk of metal behind him. "The handheld I swiped off of Graves calls them the Sentinels."

Ekim attention was slightly divided between Mohr and his face. It wasn't oddly shaped or proportioned but just resembled the Private Mohr in his own squad. It wasn't a popular name and the resemblance was uncanny.

"Alright, we have to check for survivors and get some ammunition from the ship. We're walking." Ekim said, pretending like everything that was just said had sunk in.

"Yeah, whatever. But I'm not going into that thing. It bound to fall any second." Mohr said sharply.

"Really? What about 'Leave No Man Behind?'" Ekim replied, desperate for some help as his muscled still screamed from the crash.

"I saved your ass by myself and you'd better be thankful!" Mohr yelled rising right to Ekim's face." Then he added with a dark tone "I'm not in this war to save people."

"Then why? I thought every person here was fighting for survival. What's your story?"

Mohr sighed sat down, beginning to speak "My little had girl just turned four the week America was glassed. My wife was with her in Chicago and I was off in England wishing my brother luck before he shipped out. Then the Covenant came out of slipspace and all non-military transport was shut down. So asked my bro's commander if they had some extra body armor and a gun and they sent me off in a transport with Graves and some other men. I think my brother went somewhere in the Old Mombassa sector."

"About your brother…" Ekim said, digging in his pocket for the right dog tag.

"Just before we went our separate ways my brother told me to see him after the war to buy me a beer." Mohr continued without pause. "He never was a pessimist."

Ekim peered down his pocket where he saw the gleaming piece of metal with the name Hunter Mohr engraved in it resting in his hand. He decided not to say anything and tossed it to the kin as he turned to the drop ship without looking back. Mohr was silent for what can only be described as the process by which one looses his heart in depression and anger.

As Ekim fell out of Morh's sight he leaned against a wall and pulled out a small, red cloth. Be began to tighten it around his arm and winced with pain as he tightened it over the wound.

Minutes later, Ekim stooped to enter the burned and smashed Pelican. Looking around with the dim rays that came from his small entryway, tracing in the dust, he saw the meaning of death. Everyone that had been in the rear of the pelican, except Ekim and Mohr was sitting in front of him, dead. Many were thrown to the rear of the end of the compartment and were crushed. There were three unrecognizable, charred bodies that still sat, trapped by the straps of their seats, in place.

Ekim put his hand over his nose as the small the burned flesh invaded his nostrils. He proceeded to walk foreword to a crate that lay, smashing the body of a Marine. Click… click. Ekim opened the crate and saw the most calming sight of his military career. Inside were a few MA5B Assault Rifles and two M90 Shotguns. He grabbed one of each and as much ammo as he could stuff in his pockets and on his ammo belt.

He kept his walk through the ship going as he stood back up and stepped over one or two mangled corpses towards the cockpit. He gripped the handle tightly and jiggled it. The handle wouldn't move and the door held firm. Ekim wasn't feeling patient.

Bang. He blasted he lock out of the door with a single shotgun shell and kicked it open in two smooth movements. Ekim peered around expecting to see no movement but saw a man in green pilot's uniform squirming like a worm in the left seat. His leg was pinned to the floor with a piece of a console that had fallen from overhead.

Twenty minutes later Ekim emerged from the craft with a wounded pilot named Rob clinging to him.

"Finally." Mohr said taking a puff of his cigarette when he saw movement from the craft. "Let's get moving—my god, who is that?"

"Mohr, Rob. Rob, Mohr. Let's go."

Mohr sighed and a noticeable growl could be heard from his throat. He scowled and followed the limping pilot and battered Marine.

"You got a gun?" Mohr said to Rob as the group began descend from the first staircase.

"I've never had any combat training or experience." Rob said avoiding saying it in a tone that would sound like he was just making excuses.

"How are you in the military then?" Mohr said, getting mad that there were only two men with guns here.

"Well I was just a civilian pilot before the war and I was kind of grabbed up to run Pelicans when the Covenant came the first time." Rob explained "I decided to keep doing it since the company had shut down when the owner freaked as the Covenant found Earth. I was only assigned to do some cleanup with this squad this time the Covies came around."

"Heh" Mohr said. Something about the way he said it seemed odd. It was like he said in a more violent tone.

For the rest of the five-story decent the only sound was that of the boots against concrete and rubble. Provisions were low and there was twenty kilometers to trek in hostile territory.

God I wish this was just a video game, Ekim thought to himself.

As the three reached the second floor an odd sound echoed through the window. Ekim turned to look but by the time he glanced at it, Mohr was already there. Ekim squatted and moved to the window cautiously as if it might explode at any moment. He poked his head just far enough in to see the cause of the noise. A Brute's Chopper had just stopped and three Brutes were standing, backs to each other, in the middle of the street. Two were standard ground troops and one of them was a Captain and each one of them had some type of armor blown off and battle damaged.

Flood started leaping from in and beside buildings and from virtually anywhere they could hide. Spikers fired wildly and tore bodies of both Human and Covenant flood to pieces. A Brute Shot fired periodically from the Captain, making hit after hit. At least the Flood were occupied.

"Okay, we can sidestep this whole mess and in a matter of minutes it'll be over." Ekim whispered turning to the group. "Just follow my lead and— what are you doing!?"

Mohr was near the window and pulling his arm back with something in it. As he tossed it at the Brutes, Ekim realized what it was. Mohr started running down the remaining stairs before the brutes could look to the source of the item. Boom. The item was a UNSC frag and it exploded at the side of the Brute's circle opposite of the chopper.

Mohr leaped through the window facing the scene on the first floor head first, firing his AR. Ekim and Rob struggled to keep pace and landed just on the ground level just as Mohr reached the outside. One Brute lay dead from the grenade and AR fire as the other two were still trying to grasp what just attacked them while killing any flood that jumped in their way.

Mohr scooped up a plasma grenade and tossed it in one move at the feet of the other common brute. With a boom the grenade knocked his helmet off and him off his feet. Mohr turned and squeezed the trigger pf his AR, pumping rounds into a pair of combat forms that sprinted his way as he caught sight of the second fallen Brute moving slightly. Once the two fell to their knees, he pressed a button to drop the clip from his AR with his left hand and whipped his Combat Knife out in his right.

He started sprinting to the Brute that still lay flat on the ground as he flipped the knife around in his hand, with a toss, to an upside down stabbing grip. As Mohr fell upon it the Brute's eyes snapped open and he raised his fur covered head with a roar. Mohr fell downwards and stabbed downwards on it in a single move. Mohr stood up as the roar went silent. The knife pinned the Brute's head to the ground through its mouth and throat. A purple blood covered the brute's head and neck as well as Mohr's hands.

Mohr turned his eyes to the Captain who looked straight into his. Ekim dared not move. Not from cowardice but from the heat of the battle. It was a surefire but that if anyone walked out on that street they were as good as dead by both fighters.

Mohr gripped a chip from his belt and shoved it into his Assault Rifle with a click. The Brute raised his Brute Shot and fired one round. It skimmed across the air the air beside Mohr's right ear blasting a flood just behind him in a rain of shrapnel and green dust. He didn't do so much as flinch, but instead reach into his pocket with his left hand for something that he just left there when he pulled it out.

Mohr started in a sprint. He didn't fire his gun the whole time he was running and the Brute dropped his to the ground pulling his huge clenched right fist backwards down by his waist. Mohr ran until there were only feet between him and the Brute. The brute let his fist fly in an uppercut which caught Mohr in the gut and lifted him off the ground on top of the massive fist. He was suspended there as he lowered his AR in one hand and began to fire into the brute's chest and face.

More purple blood came from the holes that were punched in the armor. BRRRRRRTTTTTTT. The gun kept firing until a single quiet, damning, click sounded and Mohr dropped the gun. The Brute pulled his left fist back and threw it foreword as fast as the previous one, straight to the Marine's face. Mohr fell off his right fist to the ground like a rag doll. The brute was covered with his own blood and his helmet and breastplate had fallen off. Where they had once been was now a patch of purple, blood soaked fur and bullet holes. He too fell lifelessly backwards and landed with a crash.

Ekim snapped back to the reality of the situation as Mohr lay still a few yards in front of him. He popped up from where he was crouched behind the first floor window and ran to the body of the Marine, determined to outrun the flood. Mohr's neck was twisted too far to his side for life but Ekim could swear he was seeing a smile on the face of the dead Marine.

He hurriedly swiped the tag off the marine's neck but as he started to stand Ekim saw another glint in Mohr's left hand. He knelt down quickly and opened the Marine's hand to have the sight of the engraved words "Hunter Mohr" staring back at him from another dog tag. He grabbed that tag as well and started running to the chopper trying to shake the thoughts of what he had just seen.

Ekim caught up to the limping Marine that was a few feet ahead of him as flood reemerged from all directions, pursuing them. In seconds of the flood's emergence a group of minor Sentinels began to hover in the sky raining beams down on the crowd of flood.

"Keep moving! Don't slow down for me!" Rob cried as he bent down to grip the handle of an energy sword from a flood's body. He whipped out the white blade and spun around with his arm straight out and cut a perusing combat form in half.

Ekim reached the chopper as the Flood began to close in from every direction but there was no sign of Rob anywhere in the crowd. As Ekim jumped into the driver's seat he looked around once more only to see sprinting combat forms closing around from all sides.He squeezed his eyes tightly together, hating what he was about to do, as he activated what he assumed was an alien ignition system and sped through the crowd as fast as the engine could go.

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