Rasq Writes: Perks In Filwoha

== Perks In Filwoha ==
=== Weekly 208: Shower Thoughts ===
:1850 Hours, December 2, 2552 (Military Calendar)
:Filwoha Grand Hotel, Ethiopian Protectorate
:Earth
These days, jobs rarely came with perks. You had to take them whenever the opportunity presented itself.
Take, for example, the sheer amount of Covenant hardware and scrap left in Africa. The UNSC wanted all of it. The Separatists, who were apparently going to honor the terms of their truce, also wanted the salvage. The salvage had to be collected and warehoused in central locations like Ethiopia or Egypt while it was haggled over, and the negotiators needed roofs over their heads.
This led to the last hotel standing in Addis Ababa to be commandeered by the UNSC, a three-hundred-year-old neo-classical building that was dwarfed by the smoking ruins of high-rise offices. Negotiators couldn't meet with the aliens alone, so two squads of Marines had been dispatched to show the flag and keep the peace.
The Marines had promptly learned that the hotel still had water in its reservoir, and power from a backup generator. Seeing the looks on his jarheads' faces, Sergeant Torres remarked that he didn't need twenty two Marines to secure a building. If someone needed to slip away and freshen up, he wouldn't notice.
And now, Corporal Tara Kennedy thought as she eagerly dropped her trousers, it was her turn.
Her first shower in nearly four weeks felt like shucking off this mortal coil and ascending into heaven. Hot water washed through her too-short hair, ran in rivers down her back, trickled down her arms and dripped off her fingers. The shower was still warm from the last few jarheads, so the humid air fogged into steam almost immediately. Tara cranked up the heat and the warmth of the water worked its way through her skin. Every cut, every ache and stiff muscle just melted away.
Tara had been counting down the minutes until she had to hop out and make way for the next guy, but the warmth made her mind wander.
It was weird. After ten years of training to fight the Covenant, making them pay bitter blood for every meter of ground they took, it was downright surreal to see them sitting across the table from each other, pointing to spots on a map and bargaining through a translator.
The same went for the mingled vehicles. Mules and Clydesdale trucks shared the road with Shadows as Albatrosses and Spirit dropships circled round in the sky.
The alliance was going to take a lot to get used to.
Tara cracked open one of those tiny complementary bottles of shampoo open, emptied it into her palms, and worked it into her hair. She'd nicked the shampoo out of a supply cabinet, just in case her squadmates used up all the supplies in this room. She'd also filled her bag with a little bit of everything that cabinet had to offer.
The funniest thing she'd seen that day was when a pedantic lieutenant tried to correct an Elite's terminology. Struggling to breach the language barrier, he explained that the eighteen-wheelers were Mules, not Pelicans, because a pelican is a bird and a mule is a pack animal. As if a chuckhead knew what a pelican or a pack animal was! The thought still made her grin.
After the conditioner, Tara soaped up her arms and worked her way down... and then she stopped.
On her homeworld, Arcadia, there had been a beast called a hippogriff, because the more accurate name of grizzlypotamus hadn't caught on. Arcadia was glassed five years ago, but the hippogriff lived on in some zoos, and there was a wild herd in Australia.
But there was no vehicle in the UNSC inventory called a Hippogriff. Warthogs, Albatrosses, Scorpions, Darters, but no Hippogriffs or Ceithresciathans. All from Earth.
Was that intentional? The UNSC maintained that Earth was the cradle of civilization, and the primary aim of the war was to protect her. Did that mission really trickle down into something as mundane as the names that the procurement system chose for the UNSC's vehicles?
Her train of thought was derailed by furious pounding on the bathroom door. With a yelp, Tara stumbled out of the shower and ripped a towel off the rack.
Category:The Weekly