I’ve hated
Skip for as long as I’ve known him.
Which
hasn’t been that long, if I’m being honest.
A little less than four months. But
I hate him nonetheless. Big, loud and as
arrogant as the day is long, Corporal Wayne ‘Skip’ Alders was the kind of guy
that would just ride your ass for no good reason. Always bitching that my weapon wasn’t quite
clean enough, or that I carried my medpack in a different place than he’d told
us.
Whatever. He’s not my father.
Nope, my
father died when the Covenant glassed our homeworld. My mother and I had been away visiting family
and were lucky enough to have missed the festivities. But my father refused to leave the farm for a
few days. We had workers who could have
run things while he was gone. But my old
man just had to have his hands in things.
Had to oversee his little domain.
Couldn’t risk that things might not go perfectly if he was absent for a
while. Anyway, his stubbornness left me
without a father at the age of fifteen.
Over my
mother’s protests, I joined the UNSC Marine Corps as soon as I turned
eighteen. I was determined to do my part
to make sure that the Covies got what was coming to them. For all the countless millions who died in
the Covenant’s rampage through our solar systems. For my father. For me... and the anger that burned in my
belly. I flew through training and was
assigned to UNSC Security Forces Reach.
Everybody knew that the Covies would never find Reach, so my assignment
there was disappointing. I wanted to get
into the fight, so I worked my ass off and in June of 2552, I earned myself a
transfer to a frontline infantry unit. Unfortunately,
that unit turned out to be the 405th Division, who were based out of Diego
Garcia. Yeah, that’s right. On Earth.
I hated
the 405th from the moment I arrived.
Skip was my squad leader and for some reason, he seemed to take a
special interest in breaking my chops.
Always on me about something. The
real kicker was when the Covenant found Reach.
For all my efforts to get into the fight, I’d just barely missed
it. Skip told me that I was lucky, but
just felt cheated.
On October
20th, 2552, a small Covenant fleet arrived at Earth and it seemed that my
prayers had been answered. More than a
few Marines were scared. I couldn’t wait
to get my hands dirty. But there was
Skip, in the middle of my moment, telling me to check and re-check my
gear. Make sure my magazines were topped
off. And to make sure my goddamned
medpack in the proper location.
One of the
Covenant ships breached the atmospheric defenses and settled over New
Mombasa. Our company was deployed to reinforce
the 17th Marines, who were fighting a losing battle to hold the ONI Alpha
Site. The Adrenaline ran through me like
a drug. This was it! And in my moment of glory, as I ran down the
Pelican’s ramp, there was Skip, directing me to take cover. Screw that.
I didn’t come here to take cover.
Even
now, Skip
is berating me. Bitching again about the
placement of my medpack, as he works.
For a guy that clearly doesn’t like me, he’s trying awfully damned hard
to save my life. The three glowing pink
spikes protruding from my chest plate seem as though they ought to
hurt. But they don’t. I can’t feel them. It’s hard to breathe,
though. Kinda feels like something heavy is sitting
on me.
As my
vision grows fuzzy, I can see that Skip has stopped working, his eyes
filled with tears and resignation. What the Hell is that
about?
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