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Garrett took a seat farthest from the entrance for himself, looking rather relaxed in the middle of battle. He knew he should be standing -- something in the back of his mind said that it wasn't proper military tradition to take a seat in the midst of a combat operation -- but his easygoing personality refused to pass up the opportunity.

Stepping into the room, Arcadia managed just fine and was even able to act naturally so long as she kept her gaze away from the corpse in the middle of the room; she was able to do so easily enough. "Yes sir. Private Langdon, sir." She snapped a quick salute, preferring a gesture of respect over a gesture of equality, and then joined Sol by the computer terminal. "Just for your information Private Sol, I fly fighters, not frigates, so there might be just a few intuitive leaps between the two. Don't expect me to be filling in all the gaps."

Dante Walked over to the computer and sat down. As Dante was working he listened to the conversation between Captain Hendlow and the new girl. I'm not in this group for even a day and we got someone else and she is such a b***h.Dante sighed when the captain set her straight. When she arrived he set the recorded straight for her: “Hey, I won't need you unless a giant winds come and blow all this sand off. After I get in, I'm going to remain here and give backup here by controlling all aspects of the ship. I'll be locking up the doors so when that happens either say here or go fight with them. Now...almost...There!” All of a sudden several screens popped up. “Sir, I have the info here."
((I hate english class))

[[ I can tell. EDIT: dammit, Kai ninja'd me. : / Just pretend this happened first, and Jack's name is omitted from your post. ]]

Jack grunted in antipathy at Kai's attempt at compassion. He may have been an officer, but he was nowhere near old enough to understand the non-tactical nuances of how to lead in combat. The last thing Jack wanted was to be taken by the arm and told he needed a medic. What was ailing him was nothing that could be treated by any medic. Jack couldn't hold any animosity towards him, however. He was just a kid, after all. The innocence of his youth had disappeared with war in much the same way that Jack had lost his at that age. If anything, he felt a nostalgic sense of empathy for all the soldiers around him. The only other one who was old enough to throw their life away was Garrett, and even he was younger than Jack. He looked at the faces of the youths: Kai's, calm and cool despite the overwhelming responsibility for a boy of eighteen; Thomas', flecked with blood and grimly enthusiastic, hinted at something tender inside that was taken from him far too young; and Dante's, perhaps the least disturbing in its candor, still pale and anxious from experiencing something too far beyond his emotional scope.

He sighed wistfully at the disappointments of the present and the pains of the past, and turned for the door. Jack left the bridge, muttering something about keeping an eye on the hall. The ailments of the body, only a symptom of those of the mind, had subsided. The mental storm still roared in his brain, trying to process an answer to a question that didn't want to be asked. Jack proceeded down the hall, back to where their previous battle had taken place. The air was stagnant with the smell of burnt flesh, and the scene was somehow grotesquely serene in the stillness and finality of it all - as if this chapter of the story had already been closed and forgotten. The muffled clamor of distant combat sounded so completely separate from this scene, it felt to Jack that there was more between them than just layers of ship plating.

Jack walked to the end of the hall, and stood before the remains of the dead marine. There wasn't much left: his head was spread halfway down the hall, a leg lay several feet away, and what was left in one piece looked like a charred, fleshy hunk of swiss cheese. Jack contemplated the corpse for several long moments with respectful sympathy for the deceased. After coming to a hesitant crouch, Jack pressed his hand beneath the armor, beneath the space that the head had formerly occupied. Groping around decisively yet uncomfortably, Jack quickly found what was left of a chain. Gingerly pulling it out from the roasted skin it had been melted to at the edges, Jack removed the remains of the dog tag chain. He gazed at the writing, reading the name aloud. "P2C Daniel Jenkins." He rubbed the dog tag thoughtfully between his fingers for a moment, then reached down to the fairly protected backside of Jenkins' hip, and stuck his hand into the pouch that most marines kept cigarettes in, retrieving a box. He pulled one out, stuck it in his mouth, then dropped the box on Jenkins' chest. He then slid a dog tag off the broken chain, and dropped the other onto his chest as well. He held the tag out to contemplate between two fingers as he took out his lighter and lit the cigarette. "Well, Jenkins," Jack sighed as he fell back on his butt and leaned against the wall, "Wish I could say I'm sorry, but we're all jealous that you get to be in the one place where there's no lizards around to ruin everything." Jack only took a few drags before placing the cigarette down on the dead man's chest, as a kind of offering. He sat back and watched the smoke wind out from the cigarette. He felt like he was at the funeral of a person he had never actually met, and yet was the only one that had bothered to even come. Sitting there in the relative quiet got him thinking about other people who had died hopelessly alone. Silently, Jack sat in the ruined hallway, keeping the dead company.

((sorry bout my fail...<.<))

Sehene stood near the entrance, peeking out in case any lizards decided to enter the stupid way. The crashing from the roof alerted her, and, startled, she turned around to see three marines captured by the special Drathonian soldiers. Her eyes widened, and she stiffened, but then quickly swallowed back the emotion with a hiss. Her whole body was stiff, her chest rising and falling with the effort to not shoot the lizards in the throat.

"So hostile," Arcadia had muttered in response to Sol's snappy retort. Despite this she had still taken a step away and looked around the room at the other soldiers. She jumped when the ambush occurred and her first reaction was to aim her pistol at the Drathonian holding Thomas. This was not her field of expertise, this wasn't even something she was remotely good at; Private Langdon belonged in the cockpit of a scimitar, several thousand feet off the ground. Today was such a shitty day.

Garrett's instincts almost had him reacting immediately, but he merely tensed, holding himself back from potentially committing suicide. He looked around at his captured teammates, and noticed Thomas trying to communicate by sight. Definitely better to wait. When he looked over to the leader of Oscar, though...

Corporal Logan stood there, stunned for a moment and dropped his S/GUR rifle. Standing there, with a knife to his throat, he looked around. All of his true blue Marines were dead except for Hardin. The pilot he'd found had opted to leave the protection of his squad for another's. Both his techies and the remaining soldier were wounded and down; he could tell that Arkasian wasn't even capable of walking with all those bullets stuffed in his thighs. He wasn't even capable of performing an operation as simple as covering two doorways. "I'm a horrible leader," he whispered to himself, solidifying the idea in his mind. He couldn't take living like this, being an upset and a failure to so many people. He had to do something, and do it now.

So he did. He simultaneously pulled the Drathonian's right hand (that which held the knife to his throat) away from his body and swung his right elbow into the lizard's face. The knife was dropped and the lizard went for his pistol while the Corporal lunged at him. A bullet drained Logan's brainpan and a scaled fist knocked him to the floor abruptly. And that was the end of Jackal Squadron's leader.

At the sight, Arcadia cringed and took a step back, trying to divert her eyes. The world seemed to be going to Hell in a flaming handbasket, and she just happened to be on the ground when it decided to do so. Oh what she would give to be in the flagship or a fighter's cockpit.

[[ oscar element, not jackal squadron xD also, we don't use bullets... sorry for the corrections BB >_> ]]

Jack wasn't all emotion right then. He heard the shot ring out and immediately knew there was a situation. That was no EV, and definitely not a sugar rifle. It wouldn't be so suspicious if there was return fire, but there wasn't. Standing up abruptly, he realized he still didn't have a weapon. Looking down, he saw Jenkins' rifle laying on the ground several feet away, discarded in a trail of blood. He grabbed it, checking the ammo and safety, then nodded in thanks to Jenkins before quietly jogging up the hall. He got up to the control room door and peered around the corner.

The situation was pretty obvious from what he could see: the idiot Drathonians had hostages and put themselves in a Mexican standoff. One of the Oscar Element guys seemed to have already had his face blown off. That left three Drathonians, two of which had Garrett and Thomas hostage. He looked back and forth between the three targets, sizing it up. He could definitely hit one with a hostage then quick shoot down the one that didn't, but by that time the third would have reacted. From where he stood, he could only see Kai, the pilot, and Dante. None seemed to be in any hurry to end the situation. Jack glanced back over to the Drathonians. They definitely had already proven they weren't smart enough to keep their hostages alive.

With little regard for the consequences, Jack brought his rifle to bear, aiming it carefully at the head of the Drathonian behind Garrett. He didn't much mind leaving Thomas to his own fate... he wasn't exactly the rosiest face in the litter. Besides, Jack had always wondered if that story about the surgeons in the med bay being able reattach a severed had was true. With a quick glance at his second target, Jack pulled the trigger. The second one had a hole through its belly before the first had even tumbled forward onto Garrett.

Quite casually, Clarissa reassembled her hand gun, raised it up to look it over, and aimed. With a small squeeze of her trigger finger the gun fired, and the round struck the last remaining drathonian square in the temple and it fell lifelessly to the ground. Holding her pose for a few moments more she slid the gun back in its holster and stood up to lean against the wall.

"Hey, you might want a Band-Aid or something," Thomas chuckled, standing and ensuring his foe was dead with a quick strike to the spinal column and one to the temple - nothing anyone, human or lizard to survive. "So rifles up? And can we like set some explosives or something up there?" Thomas suggested, grabbing his Bro and setting himself up in the trench the lizards had been holding before they had entered. He checked the battery, replaced it anyway, and checked the sights on the doorway - then shifted them to the ceiling. The doorway he'd see first, he didn't want a repetition of what had just happened.