Halo_ Evolutions - Essential Tales of the Halo Universe - Eric Nylund [42]
The three of us had been deployed to Eridanus, where the action was. Our angry words for the UNSC were partly attempts to hide our nervousness. Talking big to keep our minds off the big issue.
Operation TREBUCHET had been the UNSC’s answer to Insurrectionists, and we’d just been folded into the far-ranging series of operations aimed to “pacify” the Outer Colonies.
I was just excited to be leaving Harvest for the first time, no matter how, or to where.
As we lifted off, I could see one of the seven space elevators that Harvest used to move its goods off the planet’s surface. Just like me, each piece of cargo would be flying through slip-space to other planets, like seeds being dispersed from a pod.
It was the last time I saw Harvest with my own eyes.
I often regretted leaving my father the way I did. We never had another chance to see each other, and now that I look back on it, I know he was just a hardworking man who’d lost his wife and did his best to raise one hell of an angry kid. I doubt I could have done better.
I often wonder what the expression had been on his face when I left that day. Sadness? Relief? Or just weariness?
What would we have said, or done, had we known what would happen to Harvest?
“YOU WANTED action . . .” Felicia slapped my back. We were in an old Pelican dropship, shuddering its way down to Teribus Island on Eridanus II, and I was throwing up because of the turbulence.
Older CMA Marines just stared blankly at us. They looked bored, and Eric, sitting next to me, knew why. “No action, Felicia. You can thank the sympathizers. Someone, probably in this unit, has already called ahead. There won’t be anything on the ground by the time we arrive.” He said this loud enough for everyone to hear. No big secret, and none of the other soldiers bothered to contradict him.
Harvest was relatively removed from the heat of the battle over the Outer Colonies’ destinies. Eridanus was at the heart of it.
Every day, more and more Insurrectionists set off bombs in major cities, targeting UNSC troops, ships, and Colonial Administration buildings.
The UNSC, in response, was cracking down harder with each passing month, seeking to instill order. And even though the Colonial Military had been increasingly sidelined to smaller and smaller operations since the discovery of elements inside our organization sympathetic to the cause, our brass never stopped pointing out that Robert Watts, the leader of the Insurrectionists in Eridanus and the mastermind behind most of the activity in the Outer Colonies, was actually a former UNSC colonel.
That was always a quick way to a bar fight with UNSC Marines.
It rankled me that the UNSC viewed the Colonial Military as suspect, but they were right to do so.
“So this is all a waste?” I asked.
Eric nodded. “So it goes.”
“Not exactly helping the UNSC break their assumptions about us, are we?”
“Screw the UNSC.” Eric leaned back against his restraints. “They gutted us. They sidelined us. They give us crap; barely functioning equipment. Then they want to whine about our lack of effectiveness? At least give me a uniform that’s not threadbare and then we’ll talk.”
A few grunts from nearby indicated that Eric’s point of view was commonly held.
“Then what are we doing here?” I asked.
Felicia, sitting across from me, grinned. “You want to go back to the golden grains of Harvest, Gage?”
“Hell no.” I grinned.
The thing about soldiers: We were usually there for the guy next to us. The Felicias, the Erics; boot camp, barracks; the tiny little world that was the unit and only the unit, particularly now that we were away from past friends or any family connections.
Everyone in that Pelican was family, no matter what disagreements we had. We still had to back each other up come crunch time. And we had each other’s backs when we piled out of that Pelican, weapons hot.
Felicia took point, her preference, while Eric and I had her