This is the Ortega - MF-417, the largest mining compound on the planet and the largest retriever of mine-ables. This place is nothing but necessity and lacks any kind of bells or whistles, other then the ones required. Its dirty, rusty, and just plain wore out from the long exposure to the harsh weather the planet has. However, the compound's ugly look seems to work well with the planet's ugly look.

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Tavish sniffed as the compound came into view, standing up slightly so he could get a better look while practically standing on the accelerator. "I've dated worse" he said with a sniff, bouncing back into his seat and almost splitting the warthog in two. They'd be at the base soon, it could all go downhill from there.

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"Then you have my deepest sympathies." Aaron said as he stared long and hard at the facility. It was possibly dirty and more rusted then the shipping facility, but thankfully they probably wouldnt be spending too much time here.

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Tavish did a 180 turn before pulling up in reverse outside the entrance of the facility. He got out, leaving the massive hole in the rust bucket of a car behind as a little momento to show just how annoyed he was. "Lets head in then" he said into his mike the moment Aaron's car pulled up.

Aaron's Warthog pulled in next to Tavish's and he jumped out. He trotted a bit to catch up with Tavish at the gate as they were stopped by two men with worse for wear looking weapons.

"Hold on a second!" one of the guards said as the two Spartans and ODST's approached. "What do you think your trying to pull, coming in here with all those weapons?"

"You've got to be kidding me." Aaron muttered under his breath. "We're here to solve your little disappearing convoy problem."

Tavish stared at them from behind his helmet, then reach forward and took one of their guns in his hand. The barrel bent. A cough of dust coming from its gnarled barrel before weathering and sheer pressure from his fingers made the metal give in. "What do you think your trying to pull, coming in here with all this crap?" he asked, removing his hand from the bent weapon; even he knew he should have needed a LOT more force to do that. Hell he might not have been able to do it if it was fresh and shiny off the manufcaturing line. "We've been sent on a mission to take out whatever is taking your convoys. And now I can see WHY you need us here."

The man with the now bent gun just stared down at it as his fellow guard pulled him away to a less hostile part of the entrance.

"Still making friends." Aaron said as he walked past into the facility proper. "Doesnt look like the convoy has even been assembled yet so we have some time. Lets see if we cant find the person in charge here."

"I have no interest in making any friends" Tavish said plainly. The last time he did she wound up bleeding out in his arms... "I wouldn't be surprised if they ask us to assemble it ourselves so we can get out of this place."

"Oh dont worry, I draw the line at taking orders from miners." Aaron said as he waved over a man pushing a wheel-barrel. "Where's the mine's foreman?"

"Little trailer over by the secondary mine shaft." Was the man's hurried response as he kept on walking, pushing the gemstone loaded wheel-barrel.

"Well, now all we have to do is locate the secondary mine shaft." Aaron said as the started walking towards the mine shafts to try to find the trailer.

"Ok, while we're HERE call me by my actual name. All these shafts around the place I won't know what you're talking about" Tavish muttered as he walked along. Eventually he raised a hand, a finger pointed down the row, three isles in and off to the left "Down there." It was amazing he;d spotted the sign.

"Good eyes Tavish." Aaron said as he started off in the indicated direction. "If you werent here I would probably end up spending most my time walking in circles." He added as he continued his search for the trailer. "How hard is it to find a damn trailer in all this?"

"What a wonderful and useful facility we answer to. Maybe they should have told us to walk here from our planet, it might have been slightly less tedious than searching for a trailer in a mine shaft" Tavish knew his fuse was getting shorter and shorter lately, and this was making his temper his away like nothing else.

Aaron just shook his head and kept on looking. One of the ODST that he come with them pointed out the trailer they were looking for. "Right, finally we have our trailer." He walked up to and and knocked on the door, firmly.

Shortly after Aaron knocked there was a decent amount of cursing and crashing noise from inside the trailer before the door opened and a pudgy balding man with a bulbous nose answered. "Bout time ya got here. I cant afford to lose anymore shipments or they'll can my ass." He waved the two Spartans into the trailer as he returned to his desk.

Aaron had to duck to keep from hitting the ceiling. "I see they spared no expense in housing you." He moved over to allow Tavish in. "So when does the convoy set out?"

Great, five minutes into the mission Tavish already fancied punching people through walls, and they weren't even the enemies. When Tavish entered the room there was an immediate soft crunch as a paper cup with a sticky remnant of week old coffee was destroyed beneath an armour boot. It was dangerous, two Spartans standing too close to the edge of the trailer, as it looked as if they might topple the entire thing onto one side. He moved over towards the middle of the trailer, standing there instead so there was less chance of sudden falling.

The foreman plopped down in his seat and downed a cup of coffee in one gulp. "Your fancy smancy armored car thingy arrived yesterday along with the new Warthogs that y'all's Marines are gonna be driving. Been hell trying to keep the boys from playing with 'em."

"Well, I'm sure that if they mess with something it will kill them so that may be a good enough reason for them to leave it alone." Aaron said, glad that his helmet hid the eye roll he gave. "Any clue what so ever as to what is behind these disappearances?"

"Screw it'll kill them, I'd kill them. It's for my use only, and I don't want some guys hairy ass sitting in the drivers seat before I've had a chance to test it out." Tavish was liking this mission less and less, soon that would be impossible and he'd just quit it while he had the chance. Seriously, the only thing keeping him here right now was the fact he might be shot for deserting, and right now THAT wasn't feeling too much of a threat.

"Oh dont get your panties in a knot, none of them have touched your precious hardware." The man said with a tone of sarcasm. "And we havent found or seen a damn thing. All we know is that the convoys leave here fine, but never make it to the shipping station. When we look back over the route they were 'sposed to take, we find nothing. Not even tracks of them going off road or nothing."

"Well thats a damn lot to go on." Aaron said with a frown. "Unless its some sort of Bermuda Triangle thing. Which I pray to God it isnt."

"Lets go" Tavish said, his voice was sounded as if he'd smoked every day of his life and chewed metal shavings as a obey "Maybe we can find something on the way up their route." He really hated this mission, down to its obviously quite rotten core.

"It'll be an hour or so before we get the convoy ready to go, so in the mean time you boys should go check out your rides." The man said as he went back to his paper work.

"Rude ass." Aaron said as he walked out the trailer and looked around. "Have you found our vehicles?" He asked the ODST over the comm.

"Yea, scared off some gawkers too." The ODST said. "They are on the other side of the compound from where we came in at."

"Wonderful. More bleeding walking" Tavish groaned as he started a slow trudge across towards the other side of the compound. Damn things better be shiny and new, if they were just any old ones they could spare he was going to rip a foreman in half. Or at least that guy's trailer.

The two Spartans made their long trek across the rocky filthy expanse of the compound. When they arrived it was a thing from a auto-nut's dream. There were two Guass Warthogs and one Missile Warthog sitting before them with no more dirt on them then it took to get here. Sitting along side them was the D-car, as Aaron had started calling it, in all its prototype glory.

"No THAT, is worthy of a photograph, or a monument of some kind." Aaron said as he ran his hand gently along the cannon, after climbing on top of it.

Tavish would have popped the lid right now, but it seemed like decay from all around it would then attack the exposed belly of the great beasts. "I've got to admit" he said, running a hand over the undented bonnet "If there's one thing to cheer me up... it's these babies."

"Oh, get a room." Aaron said with a laugh as he hopped down. "Hopefully this thing runs as well as it looks."

"It should do" Tavish said, going over to the gunner seat and jumping on the back, feeling the suspension keeping him up "At least these are tried and tested. I trust these more than anything else we're getting." Including the ODSTs, but he wouldn't tell them that.

"Well, the bad news for you then is that we wont be getting in these unless the mission goes awry." Aaron reminded Tavish.

"Yeah.... and when was the last time anything didn't decide to blow up in our face... honestly" Tavish tutted, as if he was talking to his boss not his superior officer.

"You do make a point, but there is a first time for everything." Aaron commented as he leaned up against the DC-AR near the hatch. "Wanna take a look inside?"

"There's a first time for everything bad to happen to decide to happen" Tavish pointed out blandly "Fear is hope turned inside out. And yes, I'll take a look around the new craft." He got off the vehicle, glad at how much it bounced when he stepped off it, and moved towards the new craft. He hoped it wasn't all designed by commitee inside, right now what he didn't need was people working on a budget.

Aaron smiled and popped the hatch, quickly going inside. It was larger then most enclosed vehicles, but there was still only room enough for them to move, crouched, to their seats and then exit again. He plopped down in his gunners seat that also housed half of the data collection displays. "This is nice. He said as he activated the controls to swing the turret about and up and down. It made a satisfying lack of noise as it swiveled. "I wonder how much panic would be cause if I fired a few rounds, or if they would even slow production."

"I'd advise against it... even if we did wipe that damn trailer off the earth, these don't seem the type of people who are used to gunfire" Tavish muttered, crouch walking into his driver's seat. "Looks like I'll even fit" he muttered as he slid down into place, his backside resting comfortably on the driver's seat "Huh... designed for everyone, not just marines."

"They did have the built in Spartan uplink." Aaron said as he pressed a few buttons to test out different features at his command. "Usually non-Spartan vehicles have to have one of those crammed in somewhere if we're even lucky enough to get one."

"Ok, so we have the vehicle. Now what do we do with it? Seriously, so far I've been pointed here, told it's shiny and new and to go after these practically invisible guys. What the hell do I do now?" Tavish was going to be difficult, it was easy to see that. Maybe when he pointed it at the enemy it would be of more use.

"Well, now you sit there in your seat inside the shiny, new vehicle till the convoy assembles." Aaron said as he opened a little hatch next to him to look at the auto-loader feature for his turret. "Pretty soon these vehicles are going to be remote controlled and we wont even have to leave the base."

"And that day I stick my hand up the backside of the joy stick waggling nerd controlling the thing and pull his spine out his rectum. Ok, something like the convoys maybe, something that goes one place to another with no actual skill needed. But put the fighters in the hands of a bunch of guys in a room millions of miles away and you know what'll happen? Lack of control, lack of skill, lack of responsibility and if one stray bomb clips one building every fighter is USELESS" Tavish seemed touchy on this subject, like a landmine. "computers can not truly beat well trained humans. It'll only take one guy to beat them all. And people have LUCK."

"Im not saying im for it. Believe me, your preaching to the choir now." Aaron said as he closed the hatch and to the auto-loader and set the turret on standby. He swiveled his chair around to face the front and looked out the thin viewport in the front. "For all their advanced sensors and what-not they sure gave you a small viewport."

"Ah, I can manage" Tavish said, squinting towards the viewport and hoping that he had some fancy sensors to help him in that point. "Still" he said with a smile back to Aaron "I can handle this. So... a waiting game it is then." He relaxed back, staring at the ceiling and wishing that the action would start soon. He had a nice new ship to use, some anger issues to work out and hopefully an enemy to run over.

"Nothing like waitin' on the civilians to make ya miss military efficiency." Aaron said, putting his dirty boot up on one of the consoles before quickly thinking twice. He ended up trying to gently brush off the dirt he could see.

"Eh, it's not them I mind, civilians... I mean if it weren't for us then they'd probably have to be strong, quick, on time and greatful" Tavish muttered softly "It's command I don't like, because they're too much like civilians than is good for them. Where are out ODSTs?" Tavish flicked a moniter on, looking outside and inside for their backup.

The ODST were lounging around the Warthogs next to the DC-AR. Seemed they were just as excited about brand new equipment as Tavish was. They also seemed to be taking a small amount of enjoyment tormenting the local workers, tracking them with the mounted weaponry as they walked past.

"You just have to get used to 'em." Aaron said with a shrug. "If you ever have to run your own squad you'll be dealin' with 'em a lot."

"I don't want my own squad" Tavish said to Aaron, frowning as he spotted the ODSTs on the warthogs "Cause then I have to deal with pillocks like this." He hit the button for the intercom, coughed into it so it didn't come as a surprise and cause an ODST to misfire, then yelled "QUIT POINTING THOSE AT PEOPLE YOU PILLOCKS! You'll get to shoot them later!"

The ODSTs stopped what they were doing and tried to appear nonchalant as if nothing was going on.

"You have lost all your people skills." Aaron said with a chuckle. "Gotta give 'em credit for trying to have some fun while we wait."

"By pointing large automatic weapons at innocent civilians?" the words dripped from Tavish's mouth with enough sarcasm to floor a small town with. He didn't mind having fun, he didn't mind laughing and telling stories, but pointing weapons at innocent wasn't the best way to do this.

"Hm, you've got a point." Aaron said as the sound of engines could be heard and breaks squealing on axles. He peeked his head out of the hatch to see a few cars had pulled up alongside their parking spot. "Looks like a bit of the convoy has showed up. Shouldnt be too much longer."

"here hoping, knowing this lot it's possibly that pillock in the trailer coming to tell us we'll be three days late and small children want to climb all over us like a freaking carnival ride" Tavish was honestly being rather inventive with his bitterness now, as if just yelling "bah-humbug" wasn't enough and he had to find new and interesting ways to be an ass.

"Let's go ahead and get ourselves lined up and ready to go." Aaron said as he hopped out of the hatch. "Go ahead and put 'er in line while I get the ODST situated then I will join you again." With that he shut the hatch and walked over to the ODST and their Warthogs. "Go ahead and put the Guass in the front and once the convoy assembles put the Missle in the back. We are gonna to put the D-car in the middle to get full coverage."

The ship started up smoothly, Tavish had to admit that, and it was rather quiet from within. Outside however it was probably roaring like a tiger and a lion being savaged by a v-8 powered lawnmower. He lined up his own part of the convoy, casting a watchful eye on the other ships here. It wouldn't do them much good if it turned out the other ships were just falling apart in mid-atmosphere.

Aaron pulled the hatch open and crawled in, plopping himself into the gunner seat and made himself as comfortable as possible. "Well, now all we got left to do is wait for the rest of 'em."

The ODST pulled themselves into position as the rest of the convoy pulled up into a decent representation of a line. The radio then came alive as all the other drivers and "guards" talked to one another, not necessarily about the convoy either.

It was obvious when Tavish cut into the radio because it sounded like a fist had just been waved in the other driver's face. "I do hope" he said gruffly "I am dealing with professionals who realise the less unnecessary chatter going on the more likely I will be able to save people's lives?" He was certain that would shut up most chatter, some would continue, it was impossible to stop it all, but he didn't want to come in a second too late because someone was talking about their children while someone else was blown across several planets.

The shatter was cut significantly after Tavish's reprimand, and the left over conversation turned to that of work and the convoy.

Aaron was flipping a few toggles and turning dials to try and reach a perfect level of everything. The simulators taught them what everything did, but wouldnt remember settings so he could never adjust anything. "Looks like the last of the convoy is here and we should be gettin' outta here."

"Alright people, if you see anything strange, scream. I don't care if it's a false alarm, I'd rather twitchy than dead out here" Tavish said into his speaker as he began to fire up the engines. This baby would be looking over everyone else, with him at the helm. This better not bug out on him.

Aaron kicked all his systems on and started his sensor sweeps right now. "Lets get this under way."

The convoy moved out, slowly at first, as it passed through the gates and out of the compound. A few minutes later they are at their top speed and moving down the road at a decent rate. The DC-AR's sensors were living up to their reputation and were picking up a lot of neutral signatures. Aaron and the ODST kept in close radio contact and was using them as his eyes outside the vehicle as they traveled down Ortega -The Road Between.