Roger's Tales by UNSC Trooper
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Roger's Tales - Part I
Date: 8 May 2009, 6:19 pm
"So how long's it been? You must've gotten some kind of a merit badge or something, right?"
"Yeah… well, I did run up for a Bronze Star once. Sigma Octanus, summer."
"Rob, turn off the camera."
"What?"
"Turn it off."
"Okay…"
"That red light's still staring me in the face. Turn it off, now!"
"Hey, what's up? We not doing the Q and A anymore or…"
"Quit babbling."
"Excuse me?"
"You're babbling yourself out of your senses. This isn't the Navy or the Corps anymore. Get a hold of yourself."
"Well look at the little snotty goal-getter telling me what to do!"
"Watch your tongue, sir. That live signal can light up any moment—"
"Since when do journalists fresh out of a low-attendance class tell people what to do on the public feed?"
"Your arm folding doesn't scare me, sir."
"I'm not trying to scare you, son. If I wanted to scare you, I'd show you the back of my neck."
"Back of your neck?"
"You really want to see it?"
"Jesus Christ!"
"Yup—plasma bolt shot me right in the neck on a scouting mission near Kilimanjaro. Elites came in from all directions. Five of us. I managed to play dead and the jawed bastards let two of us go. Five months later it started spreading. Chemotherapy doesn't help your family, pal."
"Jesus…"
"There were thousands of cases just like mine reported a few years afterwards. Turned out hot plasma messes with your skin like a virgin messes with your pissing schedule. Rashes, bleeding, shedding… couldn't get a decent night's sleep in months."
"What about the other guys?"
"Three of them died. I'd never seen Elites shoot those plasma rifles at someone's head before! The other guy I was with, Tango, hid in the mud."
"The one who survived?"
"Survived's not the word I'd use. Haha—you know what happened to him? Haha; one of the bastards took him for a log and stood on his back for like, half an hour while he ordered his other bastards to collect the dead bodies and pile them together behind some bushes. The guy's back ached for weeks!"
"Sounds like an… interesting story."
"Interesting? I've seen those four-jawed assholes take those bodies and pull their limbs apart, leg by leg, arm by arm, even pulled their eyeballs out. You know what they did afterwards? They hung them to a string of some weird rope they probably found on some colony of theirs, and made a pretty neat necklace from those bleeding body parts."
"You really saw that?"
"Hey, I'm standing before you today, ain't I?"
"Where were you?"
"Hiding."
"Hiding? Where? How'd you see all those things if you were hiding?"
"I told you: I was technically dead, lying a few meters from that weird orgy."
"Jesus! Weren't you afraid they'd do the same thing to you?"
"No, well… yeah. But I remembered a hint a retired Colonel passed along to the division in the early days. Elites don't like naked asses."
"Asses? What does that have to do with—"
"Well, scientists back in the day wrote all sorts of theories about alien behavior. From what they'd seen, Elites never took naked bodies hostage. They followed some sort of a protocol in the Covenant Writ of Union that prohibited them from touching heretic nakedness. Something to do with a homophobic stage in their history, I don't know."
"So you…?"
"So I took my clothes off and stood there butt-naked."
"There are so many things wrong with that…"
"That's what I thought when I did it. Frankly, I wasn't sure that Writ of Union thing was really true. I thought it was some sick joke a retired fatass Colonel devised to make us continue our sex lives. Always take a bald-headed old man for his word."
"This isn't quite what I wanted to discuss with you. I mean, the agency wants to know as many things as possible about the war, but what you've just told me is…"
"Sick?"
"Unprecedented."
"That's the problem with you kids. You always look in the wrong places for the wrong information. This is what the war was about. Us. The men literally putting their asses in harm's way. Huh—I don't know how much you've understood from what I told you, but I hope I've made you think twice about talking to a Marine like that."
"Broadcast team: standby for—"
"Hey, that camera was on this whole time?"
"What?"
"Oooh, looks like your agency just got a ticket to potty-mouth land."
"Fine, sir. You've had your way… we'll probably have to send you to the military asylum."
"What'd you say, kid?"
"Nothing, nothing. We're on in three, two, one…"
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