The Walkaway Girl

"There! There, damn it! Behind those boxes!" Kevin fires a shot, barely missing the hulking beast lurking behind the pile of medical boxes. Benji ducks as a plasma blast arches through where his head would have been. He returns fire, his M6C sounding like thunder in the enclosed space. The Jackal tumbles sideways, a bullet hole in its head.

"Nice shooting!" Jan takes down a fleeing Grunt with half a clip and reloads. "Benji! Next time we raid a ship, make sure it's abandoned before we go in!" It had just been floating there when their ship had passed by. And Benji, being the genius that he was, suggested they raid it for supplies. Kevin had agreed.

"Jan! On your six!" She whirled to see several Jackals pouring through a door. And behind them... "What the hell is that thing?!" It wasn't an Elite, that was for sure. Compared to an Elite, the Covie towered in the middle of the corridor. It even made Derek Neil (the tallest 1.1 of them all) look like an ant. And whatever that thing was, it had a big hammer and it didn't look too happy with having humans onboard.

"Retreat! Haul ass, guys!" Jan backed away, firing shots at the big brute of a Covenant alien. Kevin ran past, followed by Benji and everyone else. "Come on," she heard him call. She backed through the door...

...And wound up in the Nexus again.

"...That was Coral, wasn't it?"

"Yeah." Kevin looks at the navigation screen, not meeting Jan's eyes.

Jan looks out the window at the dead planet. At the glass where there once were people.

"I have a friend who had family there."

Kevin and Benji look up from the front of the cruiser. Tammy Reed, reassembling a pistol, looks up, too. Benji's the one who speaks. "I'm sorry." The others nod.

Jan shrugs, but it's obvious that she's thinking about Kamal and Rani and Jersey... and her own family. "You think they'll be okay? Th-the guys back home, I mean."

Kevin shrugs. "All the more reason to keep going. Right?"

"Yeah. One point one, Jan." Tammy.

"One point one."

She hopes that that'll be enough to save who they can.