Halo: Galactic Era/Full text

Halo: Galactic Era
“Nations, like stars, are entitled to eclipse. All is well, provided the light returns and the eclipse does not become endless night.”
-Les Misérables (1862)
RELENTLESSRECUSANT
HARVARD STEM CELL INSTITUTEHARVARD UNIVERSITYACTENE
HALO FAN FICTION WIKIA
DRAMATIS PERSONAE
Galactic Resistance for Liberation
Former UNSC Strategic Command
Evelyn Lake: Former Commander-in-Chief, UNSC Fleet Command
Kawika Son: Former Commander-in-Chief, UNSC Naval Special Warfare Command
Kimberly Ivy Blackburn: Master Chief Petty Officer (Ret.), Naval Special Warfare Command
Peter Thoreau: Former Director of Fleet Intelligence, Office of Naval Intelligence 
Randall Hayes: Former Deputy Commander, UNSC Naval Special Warfare Command
Elaine Lujayne: Former Deputy Director of the UNSC Office of Naval Intelligence
Former High-Priority Assassination Program
Agent “Perseus” 2042: Chief Petty Officer (Ret.), UNSC Special Operations Command
Agent “Apollo” 2994: Commander (Ret.), UNSC Naval Special Warfare Command
Agent “Artemis” 2995: Captain (Ret.), UNSC Naval Special Warfare Command
Former SPARTAN-III Gamma Company
Cassandra-G006: Lieutenant (Ret.), UNSC Naval Special Warfare Command
Esther-G071: Commander (Ret.), UNSC Naval Special Warfare Command
Jennifer-G272: Senior Chief Petty Officer (Ret.), UNSC Naval Special Warfare Command
Simon-G294: Lieutenant Commander (Ret.), UNSC Naval Special Warfare Command 
Whitney-G179: Senior Chief Petty Officer (Ret.), UNSC Naval Special Warfare Command
Former Joint Task Force Myrmidon
Redmond-M094: Petty Officer 1st Class (Ret.), UNSC Naval Special Warfare Command
Former Sanghelios Defense Force
The Arbiter (‘Panoree): Former Commander-in-Chief, Sangheilios Shock Corps 
Venak ‘Jaranee: Former Field Commander, Sanghelios Shock Corps
UNSC Defense Force
Admiral Douglas A. Davidson, Commander-in-Chief, UNSC Fifth Fleet
Vice Admiral Carter, Director of the UNSC Department of Strategic Intelligence 
Commander Karen Elizabeth Wakes: Strategic Intelligence
Commander Lee Clayton: Naval Special Warfare Group Six
Lieutenant Colonel Courtney Archer West: Army Special Operations Group
Lieutenant Commander “Orion” 2054: Naval Special Warfare Command
Sergeant First Class Alexis Lovejoy: Army Ranger Corps
Staff Sergeant Randall Ridenour: Army Special Operations Group
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Joint Task Force Anaconda	4
War Council	107
Master Stroke	119
Honor Bound	126
Close Encounter of a Violent Kind	134
Sanctuary	201
Case Black	210
Brave New World	218
Solitary Mind	223
Manifest Destiny	227
Joint Task Force Anaconda
Joint Task Force ANACONDA
MOB Strawberry Fields, Atreus, Nu Centauri System
In the sepulchral darkness, a knot of ashen figures gathered in the monotone black.
There was an argent glittering in the secure interrogation chamber; the silvery oak leaf device of a Navy Commander, mounted upon a sable jacket. Starlight shone profusely into the darkened room, barely illuminating the pallid and flushed figure of a man prostrate on his knees, rills of blood running down his face and bare chest—the picture of a man ready to die. His face was so torn and devoid of flesh as to be unrecognizable, as if he had been dehumanized, stripped of all identity and character into a hollow mirror image that was the former shadow of a man, less human than skeleton.
Standing above him was an agent of the Office of Naval Intelligence; the yonder starlight glistened upon her raven hair, which fell to her full breasts. Her rank insignia glittered as if a serpent’s tooth, a cold portent of the fate of the man before her.
Behind her, there was a uniformed female Army officer in full camouflage fatigues, standing in respectful silence, as if attempting to divine some meaning from this demonstration—the cold and imperious executrix striding back and forth restlessly across the chamber, as if waiting for some cosmic cue to finish the tortured human before her.
Commander Karen Elizabeth Wakes stopped mid-track in her ill pacing, turning to face her companion with a brittle smile. “You are unnaturally quiet, Archer. I gather that you still are not uncomfortable with releasing this?” She indicated the broken prisoner with a casual hand.
Lieutenant Colonel Courtney Archer West held herself under rigid control, the very image of proper military decorum. She was well aware that despite Wakes’s contempt and her senior position that the two were counterparts of the same cohort, but managed to school her features into a respectful calm, staring not at the other officer but rather pinning her gaze above her hair to the distant brilliance of Nu Centauri’s single primary star, drifting in the darkness of space.
“With all due respect, Commander, he is a former S-III, a member of the dissolved Task Force HPA. If he manages to join the rebels, he will be an insurmountable threat.”
Wakes turned her full frame to face the other, and West felt the radiance of her power—her striking amethyst eyes beheld the power of a nebula; the light in the room receded, as if being drawn intangibly to the alluring Naval Intelligence agent.
She sneered. “If you and your soldiers do your job properly, this will be the last effective combat action of the Galactic War. This will prevent a decade of horrific war, save the lives of billions. Naval Intelligence has assembled the actors and the stage for this operation, Colonel. It is time for Task Force Anaconda to step up to the plate. You are the best, yes?”
Archer’s jaws tensed at the barely-veiled insult. “Aye, ma’am.”
The commander turned her back on her, standing at haughty repose above Agent “Apollo” 2994’s emaciated body.
“Then finish them, Colonel. Today, we end the War.”
* * *
Upon a heightened firing gallery upon the balustrades of the UNSC Vishnu, several dozen armored soldiers stood in silence as below them, a manacled and battered man was loaded upon a UNSCSOCOM shuttle for transport, a handful of submachine gun-armed ONI agents loitering in the prisoner’s midst.
Lieutenant Commander “Orion” 2054 stood at ill ease beside Archer, his sunglasses-visored eyes gazing distantly at the prisoner’s familiar build.
“Artemis was one of the best in the program”, he remarked softly, 2994’s visage invoking memories—the flash of gunfire, the corybantic screams of tortured children, the measured cadence of parade ground drills—and most of all, the silhouettes of other children. 
Even in his camouflage uniform, Orion’s uncertainty was palpable. 
Apollo’s body immediately induced another psychological association—that of an ashen-faced, black-haired girl.
His voice was subdued. “She will not be easy to kill.”
Archer’s voice was terse, her eyes unmoving from the spectacle of the prisoner transport occurring below her.
“Wakes is unwilling to change anything. She knows quite well our opposition, better than any of us, I suspect. She is prepared for us to take casualties.”
Orion turned sharply at that ludicrous statement, his gaze acerbic and urgent at his commanding officer. “Archer, Artemis is not a force to be trifled with.”
He waved grandiosely at the several squads of Task Force Anaconda arrayed around them.
“Do you think she will hesitate to kill any of these to save her lover? Their lives will be wasted like water.”
Archer’s voice was furious. “That is enough, Commander. Get some control over yourself. This is a UNSCSOCOM Joint Special Operations Task Force, not some child soldier squad with no discipline.”
Her eyes held real threat—she knew quite well that within several hours, hundreds of her men would be slaughtered indiscriminately, and now, this noxious SPARTAN-III was willing to ruin their morale even further by preaching prophetic messages about their deaths.
Orion and Archer locked glares, but finally in the contest of wills, the former broke, the SPARTAN-III turning his gaze away.
“I apologize, Colonel.”
Courtney’s voice was bitter.
“There is a difference between spending lives and wasting them”, she said coldly. “I’m not sure that Commander Wakes has managed to understand the difference.”
* * *
At dawn, they rallied—a circle of friends linked by a camaraderie so profound that it would ignite the stars. Even as the fabric of the galaxy crumpled, as reality parted around them, a solitary flame stood against the darkness—love. 
And so these dozen friends stood together, for a moment the woes of the galaxy forgotten, the vengeance of a billion lives lost, and all they desired was to be together one last time.
Their quixotic backgrounds left much to be desired; together, the juxtaposition of these dozen friends made for a harlequin and ungainly combination. Two of them, Simon-G294 and Cassandra-G006, were former military deserters, formerly UNSC Public Enemies One and Two. They were credited for the murder of an entire subcell of ONI agents.
Yet, standing together with them was Vice Admiral Kawika Son (Ret.), a former ONI senior commander and Commander-in-Chief, UNSC Naval Special Warfare Command.
As if to even further the differences in their characters was Petty Officer Redmond-M094 (Ret.), a former Myrmidon, a fourth-generation SPARTAN, of the likes that the galaxy had never seen. And standing at his shoulder at almost maternal repose was Master Chief Kimberly Blackburn (Ret.), an ONI executrix born in the image of a Flood form.
Accompanying them were three SPARTAN-IIIs, Commander Esther-G071 (Ret.), Senior Chief Whitney-G179 (Ret.), and Senior Chief Jennifer-G272 (Ret.). Jennifer had personally attempted to kill both Simon and Cassandra on at least one occasion. 
Also among them was Agent 2042, who had also tried to assassinate Simon at New Africa, as well as David Wellesley, who had also tried to kill other members of this group.
In their pasts, this cohort had been bound by the most foul of bindings; they had sworn to kill each other, had given each other Forerunner artifacts, had slave-ganged them into military services and contracts. Their pasts had run full with malice and hatred.
Yet, miraculously, they still stood together as one unified cohort—
For one of them stood apart from all the others; Artemis. Former Commanding Officer, High-Priority Assassination Program. Former Chief of Operations, Task Force Myrmidon. Formerly, she had attempted to kill David Wellesley, fatally wounding him on multiple occasions.
Yet, this circle of unlikely friends and comrades had assembled on Atreus on this day for her. For Artemis—
Her lover, Apollo, had been taken by the UNSC, kidnapped by ONI agents who had held him at ransom, daring her to come and get him.
Now, she knew where he was being held.
And she would not take lightly how the UNSC, the government which she had spent life and limb for, had taken him.
Artemis looked longingly at the cadre of black-armored soldiers behind her, their forms silhouetted by the rising sun of Nu Centauri.
Pure rage simmered within her chocolate eyes; her face, once Apollo’s joy and delight, would now be the last thing that hundreds of UNSC soldiers would see today.
She looked back at her friends.
“Roll out the attack team on target. It’s D-Hour.”
Kimberly nodded steadily, looking back and forth between the teams. She nodded firmly, and raised her wrist communicator to her lips.
“Blackburn to all elements. All teams, repeat, all teams to combat positions. Operational Order Caesar is in effect. Mission is a go. Repeat, mission is a go. Godspeed. Out.”
And so they went.
* * *
Sergeant First Class Alexis Lovejoy (38th Ranger Expeditionary Force) glanced with palpable unease at her platoon’s newly-installed commander—the man was pale and gaunt. His digitized name tag was printed with only the word “ORION”. 
Lovejoy and her Rangers weren’t the brain-dead automatons. No normal human being had the last name “Orion”, and coupled with the serious quietude of the Navy staff officer, as well as his last-second reassignment to command her platoon as well as ONI’s propensity to name its field agents after Greek mythological heroes, Lovejoy was quite certain that Lieutenant Commander “Orion” was an ONI spook. 
His quiet contempt for the Rangers spoke volumes; obviously, this Orion was accustomed to commanding more “elite” UNSC special operations forces, and someone above him in the food chain had landed him with this platoon of Rangers.
Sergeant Lovejoy and her troopers were quite prepared to show ONI that the Rangers were far from the lackluster paratroopers that Task Force Anaconda thought they were. 
And deliciously, the fact that Lovejoy was noncommissioned officer-in-charge (NCOIC) and was the senior platoon officer in the platoon commander’s absence meant that in order for Orion to issue orders to her platoon, he had to do so through her. And she was going to enjoy tormenting this ONI officer quite a lot.
Currently, her platoon was deployed as a UNSCSOCOM high-priority security force; her forty-odd Ranger operators were spread out across four D25-H “King Heron” helicopters, escorting a heavily armored Heron chopper modified for secure prisoner transport. Her Ranger-laden King Herons were providing airborne security for the transport as it transited through Atreus’s atmosphere from the UNSC Vishnu to MOB Strawberry Fields, UNSC Special Operations Command Sagittarius’s sector base at the Nu Centauri System.
Beside her was Captain Justin Mikklesen, an operator from the 8th Ranger Expeditionary Force (Irish) who was serving as platoon XO. Together with her, they held dual leadership over the platoon in the CO’s absence.
Behind her was Lieutenant Commander Orion, fully outfitted in the UNSCSOCOM close-assault garment; his wraparound action sunglasses shone brilliantly in the glorious effulgence of the morning starlight, illuminating his black load-bearing tactical vest and his gloved hands and armored shins.
Evident upon his face was his sneer of contempt for the Rangers.
Lovejoy, Mikklesen, and the others reciprocated by simply avoiding their newfound commander.
However, the graveness of the mission had instilled itself in her veins; Sergeant First Class Lovejoy had heard fully of the nuclear annihilation of Dashan. Joint Task Force 11, the predecessor to Anaconda, had come under assault by tens of thousands of rebel insurgents, becoming overrun, and in response, UNSC High Command had simply wiped Dashan off of the map with a combined nuclear bombardment coupled with a corps-level Marine Corps invasion of the remainder of the planet.
The bloodlust of the rebel survivors had to have been murderous after billions of their comrades had been exterminated like so many pests by the UNSC assault.
Scuttlebutt from some of the more well-informed members of the Rangers rumored that their high-security prisoner was a former ONI agent that was now being held as a hostage against some of the rebel commanders. It was well known that several high-profile UNSCSOCOM soldiers, including senior commanders as well as SPARTAN-IIIs, had jumped ship to the Resistance. The names of those were unspeakable; their betrayals were travesties of the greatest magnitude.
It was obvious that these rebel leaders wouldn’t stand idle while UNSCSOCOM held one of their friends in captivity. If the attackers included those high-profile ex-UNSC special forces soldiers, Lovejoy and her Rangers were in for a devastating skirmish.
That was why as her armored legs dangled off of the reverberating deck of the King Heron, she stood an inch straighter, carried herself with one notch of intensity higher, ensured that her vision and awareness were sharper than ever before. She stared at the vast expanse of Atreus beneath her; rolling hills, rivers that shone like human veins under the dawn’s brilliance. Breathtaking natural beauty.
And with it, possibly, the rebels who would take her life.
She tightly gripped her MA12 carbine, looked towards the distant studded barricades of MOB Strawberry Fields—their destination, the receptacle for their prisoner. And with it, long-range anti-aircraft missile batteries and hundreds of UNSC special forces soldiers. Protection. Safety.
She breathed heavily.
The feeling was sickening; five vulnerable helicopters, laden with UNSC troopers, hundreds of feet off of the ground, in a non-varying linear trajectory toward their base.
The perfect trap. 
A few rocket-propelled grenades and machine gun bursts could transform their formation into a wheeling fiery maelstrom of exploding helicopters and dying soldiers.
“Red Six to Strawberry Fields. Three minutes out, over.”
“Copy that, Red Six. Strawberry Fields out.”
Three long minutes left.
* * *
Staff Sergeant Randall Ridenour (UNSC Army Special Operations Group) looked at his commanding officer, the familiar visage of Lieutenant Colonel Archer. Dressed in full combat uniform, her vivacity and intensity were as evident as ever; she possessed a lethal beauty, the embodiment of mankind’s finest virtues. He had not had the opportunity to serve under a more noble and more dangerous commander.
Dashan was a tragedy he was unwilling to repeat. 
At FOB Hotel California, one hundred thousand Unggoy, led by ex-UNSCSOCOM traitors, had slaughtered his entire Army Special Forces team, leaving only Archer and Ridenour alive.
As the shock and the horror had worn off, all that was left was a cruel and determined resolve to return the favor.
He gazed at the five pregnant King Ravens on approach to Strawberry Fields. Within one of them was the bait—ONI’s hostage. Unbeknownst to the Rangers, Task Force Anaconda intended them to be the fire to which the moths were drawn to; the one that Archer’s and Ridenour’s team would swiftly hammer flat and kill.
“Copy that, Red Six. Strawberry Fields out.”
He looked at the Lieutenant Colonel.
“Ma’am, Task Force Red reports that they’re three minutes out.”
Archer waved at the assembled Army attack force spaced out evenly across the landing pad—dozens of UNSC Army Special Operations Group commandoes, supported by several machine-gun armed IFVs, and finally, even several gargantuan MBTs bristling with high-velocity cannons. Task Force Saber, comprised of Army Special Forces veterans with heavy vehicular support, was an insurmountable power.
It would be ridiculous for any assembly of rebels to even consider attacking them, a tank-backed regiment of Army commandoes.
“Will they come?” he found himself whispering.
Archer’s expression was grim. “Yes. I’m sure of it.”
As if prophetically, a knife of exhaust connected land to the air, and one of the Rangers’ King Herons evaporated into malignant fire.
The Battle for Strawberry Fields had begun.
 
The stage had been readied, the players assembled—Task Force Anaconda, as per its namesake, was about to strike.
* * *
Sergeant First Class Lovejoy saw the blossoming explosion envelop the King Heron, and knew with a sickening certainty that twelve of her Rangers were dead. Her anxious restlessness slipped into a grim dread; as the blood withdrew from her face, she felt the air deaden—the rebels were here.
Orion was screaming commands through the shortband radio. “Red Leader to all Red elements! Break off—now!”
From Alexis’s vantage on the command chopper, it was as if the Rangers of Task Force Red were immersed underwater; every King Heron moved as if hauling thousand-ton weights, the blades of the helicopters glittered in slow motion as they made their revolutions around their rotors. 
Pedals of superheated exhaust ignited on the surface, as if blossoming flowers—plumes of stormy grey burst to life, with white-hot warheads emerging from them, connecting to the vulnerable aerial helicopters.
The high-explosive charges mounted on the surface-to-air missile (SAM) launchers left no remnants; each glancing hit transformed into a thunderous explosion that utterly ripped and shredded each D25 Heron.
Two more King Herons vaporized, and Alexis saw three-quarters of her command destroyed within a heartbeat.
Orion’s eyes widened, and he bellowed furiously, “Red Leader to Saber Six. Heliborne assets have encountered substantial anti-air fire. Requesting reinforcements, immediate.”
The Ranger helicopters scattered on all vectors, trailing fire, crisscrossing the unblemished sky with fiery smoke, a matrix of contrails etched in the air. In slow-motion, screaming Rangers fell from the skies, torn from their destroyed helicopters to plummet hundreds of feet into the ground below.
Corpses rained from the sky.
Behind her, Captain Mikklesen shouted, “Red Five to Task Force Red. Call off readiness by callsign, over.”
There were no replies—out of four escort helicopters, there was only one remaining; their command helicopter, with Lieutenant Commander Orion and the surviving Ranger chalk onboard.
However, the massacre had been purposely perpetrated, with sinister and deviant intent. With the Ranger helicopters cleared from the skies, there was a single lumbering King Heron steadily descending towards the awaiting airfield at Strawberry Fields—the prisoner transport chopper, with Apollo onboard, with several ONI agents.
There was one last thermal spike.
A rocket-propelled grenade seared from the ground, and neatly bisected the tail of the ONI helicopter.
Veins of fire tore through the sky.
Then—
“This is Hotel Nine-Five. We are going down. Repeat, Hotel Nine-Five is down.” Pause. “We’re going down.”
Lovejoy watched, paralyzed, as the helicopter made caterwauls of fire in the air, torn into a perpetual seesaw of fire as the chopper wheeled in the air, every revolution bringing it closer to the ground.
“Saber Six to Red Six. Help is on the way. Secure the prisoner.”
Static punctuated the tactical channel, and with a geyser of sparks, the prisoner helicopter collided with the ground, its still-moving blades tearing swaths through the dirt.
Alexis swallowed hard.
Orion looked toward the pilot, and jabbed a finger towards Hotel 95, now residing within a deep ditch on Atreus’s surface, half a mile from Strawberry Fields’s perimeter.
“Pilot, bring us down there.”
Then, the Lieutenant Commander looked at Lovejoy. “Get your soldiers ready, Sergeant. We insert in thirty.”
Alexis turned back to the Ranger squad.
“Rangers, lock ‘n load! Get kitted!” 
Nearly forty of their platoon mates had been slaughtered indiscriminately in a bloodbath of missiles and rockets.
It was time to avenge their friends. Artemis was not the only one with a score to settle.
She gripped her carbine tightly, and with shaking hands, slammed down her helmet’s visor
* * *
MOB Strawberry Fields
Task Force Saber (Joint Task Force Anaconda)
From within Strawberry Fields, the aerial slaughter was terribly beautiful—rocket contrails arose as if reaching towards the stars, each dappled blossom as if a birthing star.
Ridenour felt his hands clench as the casualty reports were radioed. The litany of death—scores of Rangers killed already, and JTF Anaconda hadn’t even landed a single shot on the rebels.
This was fast descending into a atrocious slaughter.
Archer was filing her tactical plan with Strawberry Fields TOC. “Saber Six to Sierra Foxtrot TOC. Reporting that Saber QRF is moving to assist at Hotel Nine-Five crash site to evacuate UNSC personnel and to secure precious package.”
“Roger, Saber Six. You are cleared to deploy.”
Archer waved at her troops, moving forward at a run. “Go! Go!”
The command seized them within its grip—inexorably, an entire company of Army Special Forces infantrymen advanced, a rippling horde of armor and rifles, with UNSC infantry carriers and tanks looming behind them; guardian angels.
The heavy end of the UNSC hammer was about to fall.
Sergeant First Class Chad Murchie screamed at the Marines guarding the gate—“Open up! Let’s go! Move out!”
Task Force Saber was inexorable; Archer was leading a column of the finest warriors that humanity had ever seen. 
With QRF Saber’s march, the UNSC’s best marched from Strawberry Fields to the calamitous battle one mile distant, where outnumbered Rangers struggled to survive in a crossfire of rockets and cannon fire.
Suddenly, three phantoms materialized before the advancing armored column—specters of melded shadow and light that transcended reality. The air tore as their armored figures emerged from the netherworld.
Without a word, Archer’s troops halted, rifles raised.
Nu Centauri’s morning starlight adhered to the three spectral visitors, the light clinging to their oddly-cut body armor, glistening unnaturally upon them.
Ridenour knew that armor. Semi-Powered Infiltration Armor. 
SPARTAN-IIIs.
This was going to turn very bloody, very fast.
One of them spoke, and it was a glorious voice, powerful, resonating with an innate strength and carrying multiple levels of regal authority.
“This is Commander SPARTAN-G271 of the UNSC Naval Special Warfare Command, Joint Special Operations Task Force Myrmidon. Stand down.”
Archer screamed, “Fire!”
The phantoms fired first—machine-guns exploded with a torrent of fire. 
The deluge of bullets was a flood that consumed Task Force Saber—as each torrent of razor metal tore through flesh and bone, human beings evaporated. Figures twisted and contorted into grotesque, misshapen, and broken bodies, their blood liberally decorating the ground. 
The maelstrom was so consuming that Ridenour never had a chance to fire—one moment, the heralds of death had unveiled themselves, and the next, machine-gun bullets were exploding against all the walls, with the few surviving UNSC commandoes diving for cover, huddling together as if the survivors of a massacre.
One valiant trooper attempted to level an anti-tank missile launcher, and a trio of bullets entered his neck, snapping it and hurling the corpse backwards, flinging it aside.
Another commando screamed and indiscriminately sprayed fire with an assault rifle, his fire volume far outmatched by the three chain-guns of the SPARTAN-IIIs. He vaporized in an explosion of gore, his body shorn by dozens of bullets that flayed the skin from his bones.
Ridenour stared vacantly at the corpse, a sickening fear filling him, his breath held in terror.
This was Hotel California and Dashan happening all over again. All the signs were occurring.
A moment later, Colonel Archer dove into his ravine, miraculously untouched by the chaingun fire except for some blood dabbed to her armor.
She turned to the three M879 Manticore tanks overlooking the slaughter.
“Saber Six to Viper One. Fire mission—fire!”
The M879 Manticore Main Battle Tanks smartly rotated their 90mm megajoule railguns toward the trio of shimmering figures. 
The assault was instantaneous. A fourth shadowy figure materialized on the rooftops, then dove to the trio of tanks below in a single leap, transversing dozens of feet in a single, graceful roll.
Randall had a sickening feeling.
Archer raised her rifle to her chin, but the disaster was already unfolding—it was far too late.
Even as an infernal wail dominated the air; the railgun capacitators rapidly charging, reaching their explosive climax, there was a blurred slash. The movement had been so swift that Ridenour could not have possibly seen it, but suddenly, the turret of one of the Manticore tanks was on the ground, one of the invulnerable titans decapitated.
Ridenour had never seen an attack so graceful, with such finesse. The M879 Main Battle Tanks essentially were complimented with oversized slabs of armor for exoskeletons, enough armor to defeat multiple artillery rounds or plasma mortars. But with such a deft maneuver, a mere single warrior had utterly ruined one of Task Force Saber’s tanks.
A moment later, a second Manticore was contorting in the air, as if plucked by some ungodly, unseen divine hand from the skies and errantly hurled aside.
The screams of the tank crew were audible even a hundred feet away, where Task Force Saber’s survivors huddled out of the harassing chaingun fire.
Then, the tank nicely landed on the remaining Manticore, and the two titans, landing on one another, were transfigurated into a massive inferno that vaporized both of them. Millions of credits of ceramic armor dissipated, as with six human lives.
The asymmetry of the situation was horrifying—four infantry, in seconds, had laid waste to dozens of UNSC special forces troopers and three heavy battle tanks.
And as swiftly as they had appeared, the phantasmal specters again melded into the skies, leaving in their wake carnage and destruction.
For all their sophisticated weaponry, for all their vetted experience and armor, Task Force Saber had been forced to its knees, decapitated in a single graceful stroke.
The carnage was unbelievable. As he looked at the three burning tank chasses, the flames licking at their armor plating, and the spread of broken bodies before them, the medic within him didn’t even know where to begin.
Ridenour felt a sudden vertigo, and he collapsed on his knees, a throbbing nausea within his gut.
The remainder of the half-dozen survivors stared blankly, the suddenness of the devastation still catching up to them.
“Sierra Foxtrot TOC to Saber Six. Red One reports that Task Force Red has suffered substantial casualties and is requesting medivac, immediate.” 
Archer stared at Randall. “Isn’t ‘Red One’ the callsign for Lovejoy’s chalk?”
Ridenour stared vacantly at her.
Courtney swore tersely.
“Saber Six here. What the hell is going on, Strawberry Fields? We’ve just suffered a MASCALSIT and the shit is hitting the fan. Where the hell is Red Six? Orion should be talking to me, not some Ranger sergeant.”
“We don’t have a location on Orion, ma’am. The Rangers have lost touch with him.”
“Where’s Mikklesen?”
“He’s dead, ma’am.”
Archer’s face was flushed with fury. “Strawberry Fields, put on Lovejoy.”
There was a pair of clicks as the tactical network rerouted the connection.
“This is Saber Six to Red One. What the fuck is going on your end? Where’s the prisoner?”
There was a hacking cough on the other end, and then a feminine voice replied hoarsely, “This is Sergeant First Class Alexis Lovejoy, 38th Ranger. All the King Herons are down, and we’ve lost Chalks Two through Four. We’re trying to stabilize Ranger Chalk One right now at Rally Point Tango, over.”
Archer said furiously, “Where’s Orion? Is he with you?”
“Negative, ma’am. He went ahead to Hotel 95’s crash site.”
“God damnit! Why aren’t you there with him? He’s the fucking task force commander, for christ’s sake.”
Randall stared at his commander—even at Hotel California, with burning choppers and dying troopers raining down around her, Archer hadn’t lost her composure like this.
Fortuitously, one of the Army Special Forces comm-specs rushed up to Archer, waving a handset. “We’ve got a signal on Red Leader, ma’am.”
There was a static-blurred message.
“This is Orion. I’ve secured the crash site, lots of casualties. The rebels will be all over this place in a minute, where are those reinforcements, over?”
“Strawberry Fields, did Red Leader request reinforcements?”
“Affirmative, ma’am. Just a few minutes ago.”
“Why wasn’t I fucking informed?”
Ridenour felt the clammy hands of war descend—in this fast-degenerating bloodbath, the cords of communication and of fealty were fast being lost. The UNSC forces, precipitously wounded, were already losing all semblance of coordination.
Archer turned to Ridenour. 
“Sergeant, get NavSpecWar Six on the line. Tell them to roll out the surprise, authorization Kilo-Bravo-Nine-Five-One. Hit ‘em hard.”
Randall nodded violently, attempting to rise off of his feet as he forced himself to look away from the mirage of shimmering fire and arterial blood.
He placed a call. 
* * *
The world around him was alight with fire.
Orion casually peeled his sunglasses off and tossed them aside, allowing them to tumble through the air outside the King Heron, buffeted away by the wind generated by the chopper’s rotating blades. All that remained of his assigned Ranger detachment was the twelve soldiers that were accompanying him on the Heron. He cast a glance at Sergeant Lovejoy and Captain Mikklesen as they readied their weapons, and briefly reflected that it was a tactical error to have both of them in the command chopper with him.
If this thing had been one of the ones that had been destroyed, the detachment would have lost all leadership at once.
Of course, if they hadn’t been all in the same dropship, they would be among those killed in the rebels’ opening barrage. Sometimes blind luck can make up for tactical shortcomings.
If the Rangers had been ONI assets like Team Jian, he wouldn’t have minded having only twelve of them at his back. But they were nothing like the SPARTAN-IIIs or even the commandos he had worked with in the past. He couldn’t rely on them.
But then again, he’d learn long ago that the only person he could ever truly rely on was himself.
A bolt of plasma slashed past the Heron, coming close enough to cause Orion’s hair to begin to smoke ominously. As the ground loomed ever closer, the chopper was suddenly in the middle of a storm of enemy fire. The pilot snapped out a curse and maneuvered out of the barrage without taking a hit, but at the cost of coming in for a landing at least fifty yards from Hotel 95’s crash site.
Orion bit back a reproach and signaled for the Rangers to disgorge from the troop bay. He cast one last look at the cockpit...
The Heron was suddenly filled with smoke, flames, and the unmistakable scent of blood as a torrent of machine gun fire tore through the cockpit, the pilot, and the Rangers inside the troop bay. Orion instinctively dropped to his knees, readying his assault rifle and quickly assessing the damage.
The cockpit was almost completely destroyed, the gory particles of what had once been the pilot staining what little of it remained. Three Rangers were slumped on the troop bay’s floor, almost certainly dead, as the others scrambled out of the Heron and took cover behind whichever part of it’s chassis offered the most protection.
Orion was just about to do the same when he caught sight of Captain Mikklesen, identifiable only by the rank and name stenciled onto his visored helmet. His visor was cracked and a trickle of blood seeped from the opening.
“Everybody... out...” the officer whispered, then collapsed and joined the three others on the floor. Orion saw that there was another wound on his neck.
Without bothering to check for a pulse, Orion leapt from the troop bay and landed nimbly beside Sergeant Lovejoy. As she looked to him for guidance, he motioned at the surviving Rangers.
“Stabilize any wounded and then join me at the crash site!” he yelled over the whiz of bullets and the whine of plasma.
“Sir, join you?” the sergeant asked, unable to hide the anger in her voice.
“Just do it!” Orion snarled, and then he sprinted for Hotel 95’s crater. He juked and weaved as enemy fire began to fly past him, then hurled himself forward into the crater. Now things were just the way he liked them, with no Rangers in need of direction. He flicked his assault rifle’s safety off, then inspected the wrecked helicopter.
Hotel 95 had partially tipped onto its side, leaving Orion with only a partial opening through which to squeeze under to inspect the chopper’s interior. As he had suspected, most of the passengers had been killed instantly by the impact. Only a single figure continued to breathe: Apollo.
Despite his contempt for the traitor, Orion had to admire his resilience. Even after the extensive torture he had received, the man could still survive a crash that had killed the lesser men around him.
But I’ve surpassed even you, Number 2994. I surpassed you long ago. Now the only question is: have I surpassed Artemis as well?
A sudden commotion at the lip of the crater drew Orion’s attention. Peering up out the other end of the wrecked troop bay, he saw a human rebel motioning for some unseen others to join him. He obviously hadn’t noticed that there was someone active in the troop bay, and before he could realize his error Orion brought the assault rifle up and put him down with a single shot to the head. Before the man’s body could even hit the ground, two other humans and an Unggoy dashed past him and began to slide down the crater’s slope, bringing their weapons to bear.
Orion didn’t even bother aiming. Instead, he sprayed away with his rifle, catching the Unggoy in the head and stitching a red line of wounds across one of the humans’ chest. As the two rebels went down, the surviving man opened fire. Rather than diving for cover, Orion simply sidestepped, allowing the shots to pass him, and emptied the rest of his rifle’s clip into the rebel. Ducking back into the troop bay, he looked thoughtfully at Apollo’s unconscious form as he reloaded.
Perhaps I should kill him right here. He’s served his purpose by drawing the enemy out, and if I finish the job now I eliminate the risk that he might be rescued by the rebels. Sure, command wouldn’t like it, but accidents tended to happen in a combat zone. If they called him on it, he’d explain his logic and then politely inquire what they had still wanted from the captive anyway. Yes, it was best to finish Apollo off as quickly as possible.
But before Orion could even aim his weapon in Apollo’s general direction, he heard the whine of approaching Phantoms. More rebels. The sounds of the fighting outside were becoming louder. What the hell was taking those Rangers?
Orion spoke into his radio. “This is Orion. I’ve secured the crash site, lots of casualties. The rebels will be all over this place in a minute, where are those reinforcements?” It was probably better not to mention that Apollo was still alive right now.
The tiniest scraping of foot on rock...
Orion whirled in time to see a black-clothed figure detach from the crater’s edge and soar towards the top of the crash. He saw the flash of a submachine gun’s barrel and dropped down in time to avoid the lethal bullets... but not in time to avoid the one that punched through his body armor and into his arm.
The pain was intense, but Orion remembered where he was and forced it into a corner of his mind. As he heard the thump of the figure connecting with the metal roof above him, he felt a thrill of both fear and excitement as he realized that he knew of only one person who could pull off a move like that.
Hello Artemis.
Suddenly Apollo was worth a lot more alive than dead. You should never have gotten into a relationship Artemis. That kind of thing really fucks up your combat ability.
So long as Apollo remained alive, Artemis couldn’t roll a grenade into the troop bay to flush Orion out. And so long as Orion remained close to Apollo, Artemis would be largely robbed of her ability to use firearms.
I’m holding almost all the cards here, Orion thought as he discarded the assault rifle and drew his sidearm. Sliding backwards, he pushed away one of the dead ONI agents and hauled Apollo upright. The only advantage he didn’t have was the initiative. He’d have to react to whatever Artemis did.
But she’ll have to be careful planning her next move. And the longer we wait, the more chance there is Sergeant Alexis and the others arrive to really give me the advantage.
It was incredibly ironic that he’d actually begun to see value in the Rangers’ presence, but depending on what happened next he might actually be able to kill her on his own. it all depended on what happened next.
Come and get me, 2995. Just remember that I’ve got you’re boyfriend right here...
* * *
From the refuge of their secure field command post deep within the slums of Junction, miles away from Strawberry Fields, the architects of the rout observed their handiwork.
Rear Admiral (Ret.) Evelyn Lake looked at Son.
“Blackburn and Golf Seven-One report that the QRF has been neutralized.”
Around them, in their nestled cocoon of networked monitors and tactical transcievers, decrypted military communications chatter—both Resistance and UNSC—punctuated the idle silence.
“Strawberry Fields to Task Force Blue, come in, over.”
“Where the hell are those medics, damnit!”
“Come to Charlie-Kilo and taxi at Waypoint Five for rendezvous with Viper One-Four, out.”
“Move your squad up to Phase Line Two and advance on the crash site.”
Kawika nodded steadily.
The Battle of Strawberry Fields—for Apollo—was not been waged now. It had been waged days and weeks in advance.
Since their informant (a known ONI plant) had notified them that Apollo was being transferred to UNSCSOCSAG’s Strawberry Fields facility on Atreus, Nu Centauri System, Son and the others had realized immediately that it was a well-orchestrated trap. Their adversaries—the masterminds at Naval Intelligence and Special Operations Command at the Black Tower, were fast drawing together their assets to decisively knock out 2042’s and Son’s gang of growing rebels.
Despite Artemis’s furious fervor to rush in and slaughter the belligerent UNSCSOCOM defenders of the base, it had been both 2042 and Son that had restrained her.
That was the exact intent of ONI; for the rebels to launch an ill-planned assault that would fall easy prey to UNSCSOCOM’s legion of hardened crack troops stationed at Strawberry Fields.
Instead, Kawika, Evelyn, Thoreau, 2042, and the others had waged the battle in advance. Weeks of war-games, simulating the rebel attack and the UNSC counterresponse—endless iterations and permutations of attack and defense.
It had become quickly evident that the UNSC strategy would rely heavily on flexibility and mobility. With the finest commandoes in the galaxy, such as Kimberly Blackburn and Artemis, it was also obvious that the rebels would strike quickly and haphazardly, relying on enormous strength on UNSC weak points to punch through JTF Anaconda.
Thus, UNSCSOCOM could only hope to only allocate a small force to defending Apollo, instead diverting the majority of its forces into one or more quick reaction forces (QRF), highly-flexible and mobile “hunter-killer” teams that would move in and take out the rebel forces assaulting the prisoner transport.
Strawberry Fields’s strategy would be to counter fire with fire—countering highly mobile attack forces with highly mobile defense groups. 
A simultaneous raid that would siege the transport, any or all QRFs, and Hotel California itself, was the final stratagem devised by Son and his colleagues. 
Artemis’s unit would be responsible for wrecking the force-protection force guarding Apollo, taking down the helicopters and extricating Apollo from the wreckage.
Kimberly, along with three SPARTAN-IIIs—Esther, Whitney, and Jennifer—would assail the joint infantry/tank QRF within Strawberry Fields’s base.
Simon would lead a sizable force of Unggoy, Kig-Yar, and Sangheili into Strawberry Fields, tearing apart the defenses and leaving no reserves available to counter Artemis and Kimberly.
And meanwhile, Son thought with a small smile, the rest are wildcards.
2042 emerged from his deluge of work—mainly, intruding into the UNSC mainframe and extracting tactical data.
“Strawberry Fields is signaling Naval Special Warfare Command. A new JTF Anaconda division, Task Force Blue, is being ordered to airdrop into the battle.”
His wife, Chandler, looked at him.
“Your old friends, Kawika?”
Joint Task Force Anaconda and the brightest tactical commanders in the UNSC certainly weren’t dullards—Naval Special Warfare Six, one of UNSCSOCOM’s strongest assets, was their last and best card for the battle. Obviously, Simon’s attack and Kimberly’s attack had succeeded in driving Anaconda hard for its remaining pockets of troops.
Kawika breathed heavily.
“Send in Redmond and Cassandra. Let’s get Apollo out of here.”
* * *
In a small forested overlook that presided above Strawberry Fields, Kimberly presided over the burning UNSC base—columns of fire and smoke rose high above, gesturing towards the stars about the carnage that had been wrought today.
Beside her were Commander (Ret.) Esther-G071 and the remainder of her team, Senior Chief Petty Officer (Ret.) Whitney-G179 and Senior Chief (Ret.) Jennifer-G272.
Together, the four female warriors met above the devastation, architects of the massacre. Impeded but not stalled. 
The four of them had brought a swift and sudden death to dozens of UNSC Army Special Operations Group operators in Task Force Saber, the first of the three Anaconda QRFs. 
The brilliant fires of the devastated Manticores still burned brightly in Esther’s dappled eyes.
Whitney whispered softly, “There was nothing you could have done, Esther. The moment that those Army Special Forces committed themselves to holding Apollo hostage—the moment that they tried to break Artemis’s heart, their deaths were already written.”
Esther shook her head tightly. “I gave them a chance to surrender. They could have taken it.”
Blackburn waved bitterly at the remnants of Strawberry Fields, where Simon’s Unggoy were fast descending on the remaining defenders.
“UNSCSOCOM has never valued the lives of its men and women. They’d gladly trade thousands of lives just for one of us. It has millions of soldiers that it’s willing to kill—they know that we only have dozens that are like us. It’s a game of cruel statistics, and Strategic Intelligence will win at any cost.”
They were interrupted by Jennifer.
“Monkey Nine-Four and Golf Oh-Six are inbound, E.T.A. in less than one. The Admiral says that it’s time to finish this up.”
Kimberly looked distantly towards the forested slopes beneath them, where erratic gunfire echoed through the trees. With them, packs of wolves bounded and flights of birds arose.
Such a strange combination. Evidently, the Atreus wildlife was quite used to gunfire going off all around them.
And with them, somewhere, Artemis was making battle with UNSC Special Forces for the life of her partner.
She didn’t plan to let her best friend down.
Kimberly looked towards the SPARTAN-IIIs. “Get ready. Let’s mobilize.”
* * *
Redmond-M094 and Cassandra-G006 arrived fashionably late, their shell-marked armored van hurtling over the bend, replete with bullet scars that dug deep into reinforced titanium armor. 
Because of the very real possibility of overwhelming UNSC aerial superiority, the Admiral had elected not to exfiltrate Apollo out of the hot zone in one of the Phantom drop ships—it was all easy for an eager UNSC Navy fighter jock to blow one of the vulnerable infantry carriers to pieces with a few air-to-air (ATA) rockets.
Instead, the Resistance would perform the job the old and tested way, scooting out their package with a good old van. Much safer than a slow and lightly-armored dropship, and much harder for overhead ONI reconnaissance satellites to track compared to an airborne vehicle. 
Redmond had been assigned to the van because of his extensive battle wounds received at Raphael’s hands at Hotel California on Dashan. Cassandra had been paired with him to man the van’s grenade launchers and machine-guns.
Redmond, suited in his full Mark IV RACE exoskeleton, leaned his helmeted head out the window. “Get in! What’re you waiting for, girls?”
As they sprinted for the awaiting van, Cassandra waving them in, Jennifer darkly remarked, “That kid’s getting way too cocky now.”
* * *
Task Force Red, Ranger Chalk One (JTF Anaconda)
Nearby Camp Strawberry Fields
With pained breath, Lovejoy and her team’s medical specialist huddled over Mikklesen’s still body.
Alexis’s world was a blur of screams—with a wild desperation, she planted her palms on her commander’s bare chest, with each breath of her own forcefully pumping her palms into his pectorals, attempting to coax a breath from him.
The medi-spec clinged to her pleadingly, his medical kit, useless, spread on the ground.
“You need to get out of here, ma’am. He’s gone—and if we don’t get out of this fire zone, you’ll be gone too.”
She turned to him, the grim and tears flowing as ravines over her haggard face.
“What’s wrong with him?” she screamed.
“He’s dead”, he pleaded. “I can’t do anything.”
She was paralyzed—there, standing before Captain Justin Mikklesen’s corpse, the Ranger medic hugging her desperately, trying to usher her away from the live field of fire, attempting to comfort her.
Over three-quarters of her platoon was dead. Orion had gone off somewhere, and Mikklesen was dead.
She was in command now, not that reckless ONI spook that had committed her platoon to a combat action that had killed forty-two Rangers without incurring a single enemy casualty.
And the responsibility overwhelmed her.
In command of an Army recon team on Midgard, Alexis had been content—ruggedly slogging through empty mountains with nine fellow operators, happily delegating command of her squad to the more-than-capable Corporal Kevin Red Songbird. They’d trailed former battle sites, taken pictures of bodies and written reports, enjoyed a quiet life in FORCON.
All that was gone.
Midgard had been bombarded to carbonized glass by a nuclear bombardment. Alexis was now a Sergeant First Class, the platoon sergeant of an entire Ranger element. 
Her two superiors were either dead or missing, one of them a depraved ONI freak with no concern for the lives of her men.
Her men. She was in command now.
She had a chance to stop this. To stop this mayhem, to begin to slow the litany of death.
Behind her, the remnants of her team were salvaging the remnants of their crashed command chopper for weapons and ammunition—getting ready to enter the hot zone and help secure the prisoner chopper.
She rose unsteadily, and shook her head.
“No. Stop.”
The assistant squad leader, a Sergeant, looked at her uncertainly. “Ma’am?”
“Our platoon is gone, Sergeant. Are you planning to throw the rest of it away on the orders of an ONI agent that was responsible for the death of our CO?”
The Ranger noncom froze, the conflict of orders raging in his head.
Alexis resolved that condundrum for him. She raised the handset.
“This is Red One to Task Force Command. I am declaring a mass casualty incident. We have many wounded and unable to fight, and I am requesting casualty evacuation for the dead and wounded, over.”
There was a small chirp.
“Understood, Red One. Medevac is inbound. Anaconda out.”
It was done. Let Orion deal with the rebels and meet the same fate that had met the rest of her platoon. 
* * *
Lt. Commander Orion, Task Force Red (JTF Anaconda)
Hotel 95 Crash Site, Nearby Camp Strawberry Fields
For a few fleeting seconds after he heard the screech of the APC and the approach of more enemies, Orion remained confident that he had the upper hand. Then he heard the tiny thuds of multiple bodies bracing themselves on the top of the crashed chopper, and he made the mistake of over-thinking the situation. Should he carry on with his original plan? Should he shoot Apollo now and take his chances by making a break for it? In that moment of indecision as his mind raced through all possible actions, the hand holding his sidearm remained pointed at the ground as its owner tried to make the most of what little time he had left.
And then three flashbangs soared through the upper door to the troop bay and Orion realized that he was out of time.
The flash from the grenades did little to impair his augmented eyes, but he was still in close quarters, meaning that he could still be burned by the small explosions. Before he could mentally brace himself, his body reacted involuntarily and brought both of his arms up to cover his face. In that instant, a slim figure in dark commando uniform dropped through the door of the upended troop bay and swept a submachine gun across the area.
Orion had lost the initiative needed to shoot anyone coming in before they could get their bearings, but he could still stop Artemis (for he could tell from her bearing that it was indeed her) from firing. He dropped to one knee and seized the unconscious Apollo by the scruff of his neck and hauled him up as a shield. Seeing this, Artemis did not hesitate but instead sprang forward, obviously intending to turn the fight into an unarmed brawl.
Bringing his sidearm up with one hand, Orion let off a scattered trio of shots. The first missed, but the other two made contact - one in Artemis’s shoulder and the other in her thigh.
The wounds didn’t even slow her down. Lashing out with one hand, she knocked the pistol from Orion’s grasp while reaching past Apollo’s limp head to grab for Orion’s neck with the other. Behind her face mask, Orion could see two intensely burning gems. Oh shit, a small part of him thought distantly. She’s really pissed.
As Orion brought an arm off to ward off Artemis’s attempts to throttle him, he reached down with his free hand to grasp for one of his combat knives. It was the worst thing he could have done, for in that instant Apollo slid down to the side, allowing Artemis to throw caution to the wind and attack Orion with every ounce of strength and skill she could muster.
Behind his opponent, Orion could see more figures dropping into the troopbay. With a snarl of frustration, he drew his combat knife and rammed it into Artemis’s already wounded shoulder. She responded by bringing her knee up into his chest, driving the wind from his lungs and causing him to let go of the knife. It remained buried in her shoulder as she pinned him against the wall with her foot and drew her own sidearm.
In the milliseconds he had left to counter her, Orion grabbed the leg that was pinning him and twisted it, causing Artemis to stumble backwards. He ducked down and made a grab for his sidearm, which had fallen a few feet away, but Artemis regained her footing just in time and kicked him in the face.
If his bones hadn’t been hardened by biological augmentation, the force of the blow would have snapped Orion’s neck. Instead, it merely smashed his nose, sending blood across his face like a gory war paint. As he struggled to his feet, Artemis brought her sidearm to bear on his head. But Orion’s enhanced augmentations had given him slightly better reflexes and he managed to wrap his hand around the gun’s barrel, pushing it up to point at the ceiling.
With the other rebels - all clad in SPI armor - struggling to drag Apollo’s body away, the fight might have gone on like this for quite some time had not a new combatant made herself known. One moment Orion was struggling with Artemis for possession of the pistol, and the next he was flying back against the wall. Once again his augmented bones saved him from death, but he was still momentarily helpless as a volley of kicks and punches drove him to the floor. Gazing up at his attackers, the HPA agent saw a pair of viridian eyes glaring down at him with the cool calculating look of a predator moving in for the kill. Mixed into these eyes was a natural fury so profound that it managed to even surpass the rage inherent in Artemis’s own eyes. For the first time in the entire fight, Orion truly felt terror.
It was then, from a combination of pain, exhaustion, and fear, that he passed out and crumpled senseless to the floor.
* * *
UNSC Concordia (CVC-004)
Geosynchronous Orbit, Atreus, Nu Centauri System
Aboard the UNSC Concordia, UNSCSOCOM’s stratagem to hold the line at Strawberry Fields was fast deconvoluting. The Cydonia-class fleet carrier, a massive broadsword in the skies that blotted out the starlight, was powerless to intervene as the situation reports from the ground steadfastly descended into the senseless, confused mayhem of a losing battle.
Keenly aware of the desperate battle were a full rifle company of Naval Special Warfare Group Six, onboard and awaiting space-to-surface insertion in the fleet carrier’s starboard pod bays.
Powerless to act, Commander Lee Clayton and Senior Chief Petty Officer Laine Morrison could only listen to the status reports—first, how the Rangers of Task Force Red were massacred in the air, and next, how Task Force Saber collapsed. Soon thereafter, even Strawberry Fields came under attack—it was then that everyone aboard the Concordia understood that the battle had come to a critical juncture. 
The fall of Strawberry Fields meant the effective collapse of JTF Anaconda’s chain of command on the surface. Things had become dire. As UNSCSOCOM transferred operational command to the Concordia’s Combat Information Center (CIC), with it, came a desperate plea for help.
As Clayton and his soldiers paced restlessly in the launch bay, there was a double-click across the bay’s intercom system, and then an officious voice.
“Azure Six, communiqué from the surface for you. I’m patching it through now.”
There was another click as the connection was routed, then an abrupt drop in the transmission resolution—it was scratchy and laden with static. Clayton was well familiar with what he was hearing—it was from a handheld sat-phone.
“Saber Six to Azure Six. Do you read, over?”
Clayton bolted up immediately. 
“We’re reading you five by five, Saber Six. What kind of activity is down surfaceside?”
His question was answered by prolonged bursts of machine-gun fire in the background, peppered with chaotic grenade blasts.
Colonel Archer’s voice was disharmonic, her signal diluted through the magnetosphere’s electromagnetic activity and the extreme range of the sat-phone.
“Wildfire, Wildfire. Red and Saber are both down.”
Clayton and Morrison exchanged terse glances. “Wildfire” was the panic code—things had obviously gone to shit if Archer was calling it.
Lee accepted it steadily.
“Understood, Saber Six. Task Force Azure is standing by for deployment, over.”
“Standby for drop coordinates”, radioed Archer.
There was a crackle of static, then the Army special forces officer returned.
“Requesting hot drop at coordinates whiskey-kilo eight-fifteen by nine-three-two, over.”
Immediately, Laine moved off to relay the orders to the rest of the company.
“Copy orbital insertion at whiskey kilo eight-one-five by nine-three-two, over. What kind of enemy activity is at the LZ?”
There was a long pause.
“We haven’t heard anything from Task Force Red. The Rangers have a casualty-collection point and have requested medivac.”
“And the prisoner?”
“The subdermal tracking implant indicates that his position is at Hotel 95’s crash site, but enemy forces are converging all over the crash. The landing coordinates are a three-by-three kilometer LZ in the forest, surrounding Hotel 95. You need to link up with Orion and get the prisoner out of there.”
“Understood, Saber Six. What’s the sitrep on your task force?”
“We’re not going anywhere any time soon. We have mass casualties, and are still inside Strawberry Field’s perimeter. The rebels hit the command center, the airfield, and the barracks. It’s not looking up to well. I have teams searching for the surviving base commanders.”
“I have enough strength to divert an entire platoon to help secure the base. Do you need to be reinforced?”
“Negative, Azure Six. Keep your entire company. We need that prisoner.”
“10-4, Saber Six. Azure Six, out.”
He terminated the transmission, and found himself looking at a score of expectant faces.
His company. His battle.
He breathed heavily.
“JTF Anaconda has taken heavy casualties. We’re dropping in to secure the prisoner, and the prisoner only. We’ll form a perimeter and stand by for Command to vector dropships for extraction.”
“All teams, to your drop pods. Hit ‘em hard—they’re going to fully get what they deserve. Weapons free.”
Morrison shouted out, “You heard the commander! Let’s move out! All fire teams, to your section leaders! Go! Insertion in sixty seconds!”
* * *
Rebel Convoy
Nearby Camp Strawberry Fields
“Say again”, hoarsely barked Artemis into the handheld.
“Captain, you need to get Apollo and your entire team out of that place. Your sector is going to be lit up with over a hundred NavSpecWar troops in a few minutes.”
“What?” exclaimed Artemis.
Son repeated frustratedly, “Head for Junction—the outskirts are under a kilometer away. If you can get into the city, you’ll have some cover from UNSCSOCOM’s reinforcements.”
Kimberly glanced at Artemis.
“Provincial recon already said that Junction is a hot zone. There’s several rifle/cavalry Marine Force Recon teams in the city.”
It was an untenable choice.
Artemis looked at her boyfriend’s broken body, draped over a seat as Cassandra crouched over him.
“Redmond, make way towards the city. We’ll arrange for pickup there.”
The younger Myrmidon glanced towards the passenger compartment. Replete in his articulated armored exoskeleton, his high-pitched voice was in stark contrast to his fearsome visage.
“The city? We—”
Artemis indicated the surrounding lanes of trees furiously.
“Out here, in the open, we’re going to get massacred. Stick to your fucking orders, and drive.”
Kimberly unpleasantly braced herself—Artemis’s outspoken demeanor, coupled with the intensity of the battle and her boyfriend’s presence, was becoming increasingly verbally abusive.
The Myrmidon nodded uncertainly, and the van lurched as he made a sharp ninety-degree turn, angling towards the rising skyscrapers of the city of Junction.
Jennifer looked at the two of them.
“I’m requesting to take my team out in the motorcycles. We’ll need extra firepower when we go toe-to-toe with the Marines.”
Kimberly looked at their assets—Redmond, engaged in a fearsome battle with the wheel to maneuver the aging van through the crevasses and rocks, Cassandra, performing fast stabilization to Apollo, then the rest of them—Artemis, Esther, Jennifer, Whitney, and herself.
Against several hundred commandoes from both Marine Force Recon and Naval Special Warfare, they’d need to have as many players in the field.
“Cassandra, how’s the Senior Chief?”
The SPARTAN-III medic had removed her SPI helmet, her glades of chocolate hair adhering tightly to her profusely-sweat-laden forehead. Kimberly was familiar with that look—the medics in the field that were ready to lose it.
“Apollo’s shaky. I’ve mounted him on a board to keep his broken bones steady, but cardiovascularly, his vitals are all across the board—I think he’s going to go into shock soon.”
Artemis opened her mouth, but Kimberly tossed her a fierce glare in warning—Redmond and Cassandra were the most psychologically-fragile members on the team, and being chased by hundreds of special forces commandoes were only accentuating the problem. If Cassandra fell apart, Apollo wouldn’t stand a chance to make it into orbit.
“Keep him on the epinephrine. We need his blood pressure to hold until we can get to the medical team, understood?”
“10-4”, she said uncertainly, returning to her patient.
Blackburn looked towards the back of the van, where there were two out-rigged two-seater motorcycles outrigged with grenade launchers.
They were gifts from Wellesley—the brazen mercenary always believed in making quick escapes in style.
“We need to split up. Artemis and Jennifer will take one bike, and Esther and Whitney will have the other ‘cycle. I’ll stay here and man the van’s guns.”
Artemis again opened her mouth in protest, but Blackburn’s suggestion was well-received amongst the SPARTAN-IIIs.
Artemis was starting to become undone with her desperation over Apollo, and keeping her on the van would only further compromise her psychological integrity.
Keeping her away, and preoccupying her with hordes of UNSC commandoes, ironically, might have been the only way to keep her stringed together.
There was no time for argument. As ranging fire from the city began to scatter around them, they quickly dispersed to their motorcycles, and a moment later, where there had been one vehicle in the rebel caravan, now there were three.
* * *
Task Force Azure (JTF Anaconda)
Nearby Hotel 95 Crash Site
Commander Clayton furiously swept the ruinous skeleton of Hotel 95 with his carbine. “What do you mean, he’s not here?” he exclaimed.
The petty officer helplessly indicated his handheld scanner, and motioned towards the body-ridden troop bay of the King Heron. “Sir, the tracking implant says he’s right there.”
Lee’s face was twisted in fury. “Obviously, the rebels took out the tracker when they took him from the helicopter’s wreck. Find them!”
His tirade was interrupted by the arrival of one of his lieutenants, an assistant platoon leader.
“Sir. We’ve found Commander Orion.”
“Can he explain to me why the hell the prisoner isn’t here anymore?”
“Sir. He’s nearly dead.”
Clayton’s eyes resumed their steely composure. “The lieutenant commander is nearly dead? Jesus Christ.”
Orion’s body was nearby. His limbs were bent at unnatural angles. Blood leaked from every possible orifice. The ground was obsidian with all the blood that had seeped into it.
A pair of Navy corpsmen were huddled over the body.
“I want an update on the commander”, he demanded, striding forth purposefully, flanked by a retinue of soldiers.
One of them looked at him in the eye, and there was dire warning in them.
“He’s in hypovolemic shock.”
The simple declaration—that he had lost such a volume of blood—was both perplexing and terrifying to Clayton. As a member of Wakes’s staff, he was well aware of the augmentations that the second-generation Myrmidons—as well as Wakes and Orion—had received.
The chemical expansion of hematopoietic stem cells had imparted them with a substantially greater amount of blood, and their augmentations for combat had increased blood pressure and heart rate.
And now, despite all of that, he didn’t even have enough blood left in his body to keep his blood vessels open.
Wakes and Carter would not be pleased that one of their tier-one assets was about to die, especially with his failure to secure Apollo.
Clayton’s voice was hoarse.
“Signal for medivac. I want the lieutenant commander aboard the Concordia and prepped for immediate surgery in ten minutes.”
Laine looked at her commanding officer.
“And what about the rebels?”
Around them were arrayed a massive onslaught of NavSpecWar Six soldiers—nearly a hundred and twenty special operators, an entirely outfitted rifle company.
With them were also Mongoose ULATVs and APCs—troopers with rocket launchers rode brokeback on the ATVs, ready for a fast pursuit.
Clayton breathed heavily. This was an unpleasant juncture.
“Leave a squad behind to guard Orion until the medivac is on-station. All other teams, towards Junction. We’ll take back the prisoner.”
Clayton cast a longing look towards Orion—his shattered body, sprawled across the ground, his limbs plastic, as if his bones had vaporized, leaving behind only a sagging sac of flesh with no structure nor substance.
He didn’t want to know what kind of celestial power had made him fall.
 
 
 
 
 FIRST LIGHT Upon an embittered cliff on a contested land, eight figures assembled under the quilt of darkness. Their visages were formless, their movements melding seamlessly with night, their forms ethereal, figures made of smoke and darkness. Redmond, perched upon a high serrated ridge to afford maximum coverage for his sniper rifle, was the first to spot the syncopated pulsations of half-second flashlight bursts. The young Myrmidon turned and tapped Kimberly on the shoulder. “Ma’am, the recon patrol is signaling from FRV Ocean on axis golf-oh eight hundred.” The team leader was merely perceptible against the ash of the hillside, her entire lithe figure ensheathed in midnight black, her face transfigured into a nightmarish specter by black camouflage war paint; only her viridian eyes smoldered in the darkness, and again, Redmond was disturbed by the intensity exuded by his ex-mentor when she went to war. Then again, when Simon and Redmond together had blundered into one of the countless firefights they’d run into on Midgard, Simon had transformed dramatically into a ferocious fighter when his life was on the line. Even despite four years of violent service on Midgard and another honorable year spent in the dozen campaigns of the Beyond Veil’s Azure Crisis, Redmond still couldn’t help but feel diminutive compared to the seasoned ex-SPARTANs and ex-NAVSPECWARCOM warriors that had joined the Resistance. The combined decorations and insignia of all the former UNSC commandoes that had joined probably weighed more than a Scorpion Tank. Blackburn whispered softly to Redmond, “Rendezvous with the patrol on axis golf-oh-seven-fifty and bring them in. They better have good news for us.” 
* * *
In the murk of night, three phantoms glided noiselessly through the snow, rejoining their larger party. And again, they were one; eight shadow warriors in the dusk. Artemis, clad in a flexible matte black tactical suit, led the recon team in, a high-powered sniper rifle prominent in her gloved hands, and recon optics at her hip. Apollo and Jennifer flanked her, in similar clad. Blackburn looked expectantly at Artemis. “Your report, recon leader?” The other woman spoke concisely, briskly, every word infused with a purpose. “A dozen Rangers supported by two infantry carriers guarding the main entrance. One sniper-spotter team in concealed positions along the cliffs providing overlapping fields of fire. Concertina wire along the perimeter. The bunker itself has no defenses, except for several multi-channel recording cameras and Riemann-Hughes motion sensors.” Kimberly’s lips were compressed into a thin line, her eyes distant in the midnight gloom from concentration. The same urgency blazed in her eyes as all the members of the strike team—their mission was imperative, critically dependent on speed and stealth. A hundred thousand lives hung precipitously in the balance; this was judgment day for Dashan, and they would be firing the opening shots. Failure would be the death of the Resistance. The dire need was overwhelming. Artemis and Blackburn exchanged tactical assessments wordlessly with a glance, and the other six members shifted uncomfortably; their battle was minutes away—the full desperation and necessity of the mission was only finally filling their minds as there was an intense silence as their commanders formulated the stratagems. Finally, Kimberly looked up. Yet, when she spoke, her voice was resonant, carrying a forceful confidence, an assured sense. This was the end of the line; the air had a sickening dampening to it, the nauseous calm before the inevitable and furious storm. “Our attack must be accomplished with complete secrecy. The UNSC has several advantages, of which most prominently is that the bunker will undoubtedly have a hot-line communications link to Hotel California and Sector Command. If the bunker personnel have a single chance to alert UNSCSOCOM, the attack on the base will be fatally compromised.”
 Blackburn smiled tightly, with teeth; it was an unpleasant smile. “Our ace in the hole is that the bunker receives its main power from an Unggoy-run slave reactor nearby. On our word, our friends will kill the power, and the cameras and long-range radio of the bunker will be shut down. We will need to move fast; the bunker personnel will inevitably switch to in-house backup power.” The ex-Master Chief indicated Artemis and Redmond. “Artemis and Redmond will be our sharpshooters. They will ambush the snipers on the cliff, and will relieve their positions to assume fields of fire on the bunker below.” She then indicated herself, Esther, Whitney, and Jennifer. “I will lead the SPARTAN-IIIs; we’ll be the hammer of this operation. Once the snipers are taken out, on my mark, we’ll cut the power, and once the cameras and motion sensors are out, we’ll prosecute the security force. After that, my team will move into the bunker and achieve the objective.” “The sniper team will remain outside on the cliffs and will be our security force. I will signal the all-clear once we’ve secured the bunker, and the Admiral will send a holding force for extra security.” Cassandra felt a familiar vertigo flood into her intestines, veins of glacier metastasizing her body. The familiar despair of failure. She was the only strike team member that hadn’t been assigned. Cassandra-G006 thought her voice rather pathetic as she asked quietly, “And me, Master Chief?” Kimberly turned on her heel, and her face slackened slightly in shock as she realized her faux pas. Not a shot had been fired, and already, she was psychologically compromising her team. “Lieutenant, you’ll be the team medic; stay with Artemis and Redmond and assist in the security phase. If we sustain hostile fire, prepare to sustain casualties.” Blackburn bit her lip tightly, feeling her fifty-odd years as she felt the guilt and shame rise to her head; she had been too hasty in her mental planning, left out one of their key members. She’d thought only of the SPARTAN-IIIs proficient in close-quarters battle—in retrospect, she realized how damning her words must have been to the already semi-alienated Cassandra, who had far less combat decorations and experience than the rest. “Questions?” She glanced around, and unexpectedly, found no consternation; perhaps some hesitation, some internal convolutions as they began to realize the full extent of the expectations upon them—Atlas, holding the world upon his shoulder. An apt metaphor; their failure would shatter Dashan, lead it further into its dysphoric decay. “We march in five. Get kitted, soldiers.” 
* * *
Cassandra and Redmond, as per their familiar custom, found excuses to leave the main contingent, and met each other in a small sheltered alcove out of earshot from the rest of the team. Redmond felt his heart throb with pain as he found his fiancé curled in the fetal position upon a frost-covered rock, her chocolate eyes coruscating as they were cast to the stars, the pulsating, beatific light of a thousand yonder stars playing off of her sad irises. She was motionless, cold to the touch, frozen with her legs to her chest, her eyes blankly staring at the cosmic display of the Milky Way, as if attempting to discern some cosmic truth from the brilliant starlight. The Myrmidon clenched her small hands tightly, rested his head upon her still and cold shoulder. “I’m sorry”, he whispered softly. Her voice was numb, colder than the crown of snow that decorated the valley outside. “I was the only one that Kimberly didn’t call. The only team member without a job.” He gripped her hands tighter, reassuringly. “Cassandra, what does it mean to be the worst in a team of elites? Of all the hundreds of ex-UNSC special forces members that’ve joined the Resistance, you were one of the eight best that the Admiral chose for the commando mission.” “Christ, Cassandra—I mean, look at our team mates. First we have Kimberly Blackburn, the most decorated member of the UNSC armed forces, with even more medals than SPARTAN-117. Then we have Artemis and Apollo, who basically saved the UNSC during Beyond Veil’s Azure. Whitney boarded an operational Forerunner Dreadnaught and Esther won the Two Week War for the entire fucking UNSC. We’re in the company of the highest echelon of UNSC heroes. What does it mean to lose to people like that?” Cassandra turned to face him, and when she spoke, her voice was seething with loathing; her eyes had an uncharacteristic rage harbored within them. “Easy for you to say, Redmond. You’ve never been in last place. Your Myrmidons were genetically and chemically engineered to be stronger, faster, and smarter than us—better than all other humans, like your own species.” “You were awarded top honors in the Myrmidon Sniper School, you were selected for the elite ONI covert-ops team on Midgard. Me? ONI was so ashamed of me that they tried to kill me.” Her voice was brittle, and she slipped her fingers away from his and turned away, turning her eyes away to the galactic spread of stars shimmering above her. “Don’t try to tell me that being the worst doesn’t hurt, Redmond. You’ve never been there; you don’t know how it is. Simon knew; he always knew the pain that you never knew.” Redmond felt his heart shatter, the very fiber of his being ignited—the pain coursed through his veins. “Cassandra—” Her voice was cold. “Go away, Redmond. I don’t want to hear it.” He never before had felt so alone.
* * *
Esther, Whitney, and Jennifer remained in the main clearing, making their preparations under the cover of night. The three female SPARTAN-IIIs had forged a mutual friendship that had withstood the Human-Covenant War, the Memory War, and the Beyond Veil's Azure Crisis; and three galactic wars later, they still stood together on the dawn of yet another galactic calamity. 
Jennifer looked up from threading a sound suppressor onto the full-bore barrel of her MA12 SOC/CQB carbine. "I'm worried about the kids", she said bluntly. "I don't see any reason for us to babysit inexperienced operators in a hot zone." 
Whitney shook her head tightly, using a fibrous brush to clear non-existent hypothetical dust from the innards of the barrel. "Jen, Blackburn's stuck both Cassandra and Redmond with Artemis. They couldn't be safer."
 "Do you remember how bad Cassandra was during Basic?" retorted the former. "She can't even take down an Elite in single combat. That's how Cassandra and Simon both got along so well; they were competing for last place."
 That provoked Esther to look up from her own weapon. "Cassandra plays a role as important as any of us on this team. We need a medic. Do you see another medic around here?" 
Jennifer glanced at her friend, and her expression was frank. "Esther, if we get jumped by Myrmidons, Cassandra's not going to stand a chance, Artemis or no. Our team is as strong as our weakest link."
 Whitney smiled tightly. "We're all collateral on this op, Chief. Kimberly's going to go into that bunker and kill everything in sight, and we'll just nicely follow in her wake." 
The latter looked unconvinced.
 Esther slammed a magazine into the receiver of her carbine, and it slammed home with a reassuring resonation. She held up her weapon in the center, and Whitney and Jennifer similarly rose their weapons; their carbines formed a pinnacle that rose towards the stars above. "Shoot straight and die hard. Let's move out, SPARTANs."
 And so the SPARTANs went to war, one last time.
 * * * Artemis found Kimberly a short distance away, autonomously making her own preparations, her hands moving deftly with a sentient intelligence, fitting a sight onto her carbine, taping extra magazines to her belt, fitting knives onto pouches on her tactical vest. "Since you're the master at warcraft, Master Chief, I thought I'd give this one to you." Blackburn didn't turn, instead continuing to tape her blood type to her combat boots. "You're pretty quiet, Kim." The younger woman turned with startling speed, and Artemis was mortified by the corybantic sight before her. Kimberly was savagely beautiful; underneath her skintight suit, her physique was powerful and lustfully strong, her entire body a seamless meld of muscle and grace. Yet, something was horribly askew; her movements were unnaturally, nearly instantaneous, translating will and impulse into movement. Her lovely green eyes burned infernally with an inextinguishable inner lust, her skin was strikingly white, as if bleached. Artemis was held in thrall; there was a dark, terrible beauty about Kimberly; the darkness draped around her shoulders as if a cloak, and her viridian eyes smoldered in the darkness, twin points of green fire that burned against a formless black face. Artemis could not even recognize her friend anymore, and her cthonic eyes lanced through the darkness, she found a sudden fear within her, a fear of the satanic creature before her, but she could not repress a sense of awe and wonder; it was as if she was in the presence of a being of another order, and the feeling both attracted her and terrified her; she could not tear her eyes away. Kimberly stood there for a long time, a dark princess borne of the night; this was her realm, her terrible majesty - the darkness. She was a formless phantom that melded effortlessly into the pre-dawn dark, yet her piercing eyes struck out, her visage terrible and horrifying as she strode, the darkness wrapping against her skin. She strode past Artemis, and when she spoke, her voice was raspy, filled with a nameless physical hunger. "Ready the squad. We march." 
* * * 
If there was anything that Staff Sergeant Peter Lancaster had learned with three years of service with Joint Task Force 11, it was the loneliness of the Dashan night; no matter how many patrols he had embarked on, the embittered icy world was foreign; every aspect of it was alien, from its unnatural bloody starlight to its endless snowy expanses and the supermassive frozen glacial oceans; so different from Asphodel Meadows, his homeworld. The atmospheric was acerbic, caustic and scalding to breathe, the temperatures hyperborean, as if the very planet was attempting to cauterize the human invaders from its surface. The snow was boundless, and with nightfall, the old memories came rushing back, and with those, despair and instantaneous depression. 
 The alien environment, combined with mounting casualties against the Unggoy Resistance, had lead to unprecedented rates of psychological disease even amongst the hardened veterans of UNSCSOCOM JTF-11. Antidepressant tablets were as common as ammunition cartridges amongst the barracks, so bad that the senior sergeants had stopped even performing locker checks.
 To all the JTF-11 operators, no matter Army, Marines, or Navy, all had a steadfast certainty that they would die upon this hellish glacial world; the survivors were just taking longer to die. Throughout three years of constant combat, Lancaster had lost his entire original ASOG squad; he looked down at his olive green trigger-finger glove where there were seven crimson wedges. One mark for each fallen member of the decommissioned Army Special Forces Team Bravo-Fifteen. 
 He did not know that tonight, he too would die and join his fallen team mates.
 Lancaster was a sharpshooter, a crack shot with a M108 anti-materiel sniper rifle; he was one of four snipers attached to Hellcat Platoon, operating out of FOB Hotel California. He was perched upon a rugged ridge far above Outpost Royal, one of the electronic warfare (EW) bunkers responsible for Navy surface-based SIGINT and EW on Dashan. Thirty meters southeast farther down on the cliff was his spotter, Sergeant Bethany Sullivan. Together, Lancaster and Sullivan comprised Rifle Team Hellcat-One, providing perimeter security and long-rifle support for Outpost Royal. Upon their precarious cliff, Rifle Team One commanded a dominant field of fire across the surrounding hills, the plain, and the Navy bunker below. 
 Beth and Peter were enjoying a small romance; their mutual company fought away the cold and bitter despair, knowing that someone else was there was their very fiber of their being, their protection from the dysphoric reality that submerged them. Being in each others' arms warded away everything else. 
And it was on long patrols like this that they needed each other most. 
Her sigh was a rush of static over the boom mic. "Three more hours." 
Their rotation was concluded at 0600 hours local time; it was mid-rotation for the two snipers currently. 
His lips were numb from the hypersonic gusts of ice that brushed over the cliffs, so he was quiet, instead snuggling a bit tighter against the crown of snow that decorated the top of the cliff; he was well aware that in his thermally-insulated ghillie suit, he was for all intents and purposes invisible to any outside observer, merely a small mound of snow on a planet made of snow. That is, a snow mound with a .50-caliber sniper rifle. 
He rested his chin against the chin guard on the rifle's stock, hit the infrared filter, and slowly wound his scope across the entire basin, including the bunker and the surrounding hilltops adjacent to his own. As expected, Outpost Royal was a massive geyser of thermal energy, the electronic-warfare station broadcasting radionic energy across all frequencies. There were smaller florid contacts on the infrared optics; two Army fast-attack APCs parked in front of the bunker, armed with machine-guns and rockets, and dispersed evenly around the perimeter of the bunker, eight Rangers with rifles. 
As a member of the Army Special Operations Group (ASOG), Lancaster had traditionally detested the Rangers as per the old rivalries; the ASOG operators had always held the Rangers as merely airborne-capable grunts, while ASOG's own men and women were dedicated counterterrorism (CT) / unconventional warfare (UW) operators, "true" special forces. But as the months blurred into years and crimson human blood adorned Dashan's snow, Lancaster had found a newfound respect for the Rangers; all the humans on Dashan were merely struggling to survive, and Lancaster was glad to have the help of the Rangers, whose less-strict entry requirements made them far outnumber the elite ASOG operators. 
There was a double click on the tactical frequency, and then a human voice came onto the frequency. "This is Royal Six. Status check, sound off by callsign." 
"Hound Six is operational", replied the APC commander. 
"Bravo Six on-station", reported the Ranger squad leader. 
There was a pause, and then Lancaster remembered through the frigid cold that he was the third and last unit commander. He slapped his helmet with one hand, attempting to clear out the snow-induced lethargy and to kick his cognitive gears back into drive. 
"Royal Six to Cover Six. Do you read, over?" 
"Cover Six here", SSG Lancaster said, his words fumbling from the coldness of his tongue. "We're ready to rock."
 "Problems, Cover Six?"
 "No, sir", he said automatically.
 "Understood. Next check-in is at 0330 hours zulu. Royal Six out."
 Lancaster shook his head, and motion made some of the snow slid off of his helmet, falling onto the telescopic lens of his rifle. He bit off a profanity, grossly displeased that he'd have to take the time with the graphite cloth to carefully wipe off the snow off of the 20x high-resolution optics. 
His gloved hands fumbled for the cloth, finding the armored compartment on his belt, and then extracting the delicate sheet. 
In his flurry of activity, he didn't hear the nearly-imperceptible armored footsteps against the snow.
 As Lancaster gently dislodged the snow from the sniper rifle's scope, he felt powerful hands seize his armored frame, and as he was piroutted around, for a moment, he found himself staring at a sinister black being with a leering visage and glowing crimson lights on his body. He didn't have time to even scream before a diamond knife cascaded across the throat, and his scream emerged as a gassy bloody stream of bubbles from his slit throat. 
 He died a moment later.
 * * * 
Petty Officer 1st Class Redmond-M094 (Ret.) stared at the prone, twisted corpse of the Army sniper beneath him, the contrails of blood leaking from his neck and beginning to soak into the snow. The junior Myrmidon quickly wiped the blood from his knife and replaced it upon its respective pouch on his Mark IV RACE powered exoskeleton. 
Redmond had found the sniper's position when he transmitted on the radio; the RACE armor's SIGINT equipment had homed in on the transmission's origin, and the Myrmidon had simply ambushed the unaware sniper.
 A moment later, Artemis hit the local short-band frequency. "Raptor Six to Raptor Five. What's your sitrep?" 
 "My man's down. No snags."
 "Good kill, Five. I bagged the second sniper, no snags either. Get into position. You don't want to miss the show." 
Redmond looked longingly with regret at the dead Army sniper, his face eternally frozen into a twisted mask of agony; in his last moments, Redmond had given the UNSC commando unimaginable torment, wrested him of his life and thrown his dead body upon Dashan's unforgiving snowy mountains where within hours the snow would entomb the fallen warrior. 
Long ago, after Midgard, he'd promised himself that he would never kill another human being. Beyond Veil's Azure had been too much; it had nearly been an extinction event of massive proportions that had nearly driven humanity to the lip of eternal extinction upon the Milky Way Galaxy. 
Midgard, killing untrained and unprepared rebels, had already been enough.
 Now he was killing UNSC special forces operators. Redmond didn't dare look at the face; was the Army sharpshooter someone he'd eaten dinner with once, someone that'd saved his back on Midgard, Earth, or the Redoubt? 
 The guilt bismirched his soul, stained his heart; combined with his heartbreak over Cassandra's sudden coldness, he squeezed his eyes tightly shut, willing the pain away but feeling his heart being clenched in a vice grip. 
 And soon, he'd be killing even more humans. Many more. 
 * * *
 Lieutenant Cassandra-G006 (Ret.) looked up from her tactical communications handheld. "Raptor Six reports that the two snipers are down. They're in position and are awaiting your word." 
Kimberly nodded with a savage satisfaction, and her eyes glittered with an assured delight. 
"Excellent. Inform Raptor Six that Phantom element is moving into position. After that, go join Raptor Six at her position. Prepare for casualties."
 Blackburn stared searchingly into Cassandra's eyes for a moment, trying to find the hurt that she had inadvertently caused during the impromptu briefing half an hour later. Yet, there was no pain in her oak eyes; only a steady resolve. Cassandra must've known that she was the odd man out; she was doubling as communications specialist because she was the only team member that wouldn't be participating in the battle and everyone else would be preoccupied in their assault positions. Yet, Kimberly could only find a calm and reassuring steadiness in Cassandra's eyes. It was comforting, attesting to the SPARTAN's resolve and confidence in the face of peril. 
Cassandra reported sharply, "Aye, ma'am. Raptor One out." 
Then her visor polarized to its austere gold, and the SPI-armored woman flitted away in the hills, finding her way to the positions of Artemis and Redmond, who were canvassing the unaware UNSC troops with sniper rifles.
 Kimberly looked at the other members of the assault team; Whitney, Jennifer, and Esther. Clad in their Mark III SPI armors, they were brazen, confidently shouldering suppressed and close-cropped matching matte-black A12 carbines. 
She smiled wickedly. Despite the one-to-four odds, this would be a very one-sided massacre, as UNSCSOCOM would discover very quickly. 
"Phantoms, take rifle positions. Let's roll out."
 They nodded, and then dispersed into the night, stray wisps lost in the wind. 
* * * 
Artemis, in a silvery environmental suit that blended pleasingly well with the surrounding snow drifts, hunched over the side of the cliff, her attention fixated at the dozen UNSC Rangers guarding the Navy bunker below. In her hands was a SC50 Designated Marksman Rifle (DMR), the 2604-era iteration of the veritable BR55 DMR of the 2550s-2570s. Chambered for 7.62mm ammunition, the semiautomatic trigger-action SC50 was not a "true" sniper rifle; its pedigree formally listed it as a battle rifle, however, its long full-bore barrel and stabilizing heavy fiberglass stock made the SC50 a makeshift sniper rifle, highly popular amongst Naval Special Warfare and Marine Force Reconnaissance. And also ex-SPARTAN-IIIs like herself. Acknowledging the popularity of the DMR in the special warfare community was the rifle's very name; "Special Combatant, Model 50" ("SC50"). 
Crouched beside her was Cassandra-G006, who carried a wicked-looking A12 carbine at her hip. Cassandra was currently holding a pair of reconnaissance optics, high-powered binoculars with night-vision and infrared filters, as well as a memory card to allow for hundreds of hours to continuous multi-channel recording during IMINT (image intelligence) operations. The recon optics were a favorite with the Army Special Operations Group, such as the recently-killed Army spotter whose body Artemis had thrown to the side. Her face was already becoming cyanotic and morbid as the blood fled from her cheeks and lips. 
Cassandra's eyes flitted with the binocular over the basin below. "Looks like twelve tangos", she said crisply. "Eight monkeys with M36s and A12s on the perimeter, and then two more in each APC, with each vehicle having both a driver and a gunner on the roof-mounted MG." 
Artemis was pleased with her observations, and confirmed them by sweeping the 5x/10x electronic scope of the SC50 rifle over the rugged terrain far below. It was an odd sensation, almost as if playing God; perched on these cliffs, Artemis felt as if she was staring down at toy soldiers on a tactical plot. It was surreal; her sniper shots would be like muted thunder from heaven - the Rangers would be effortlessly annihilated without any prescience. 
The SPARTAN-III tapped her shoulder. 
"Ma'am, incoming communique from Phantom Six. Kimberly wants you to take out the crew of those APCs; she says she can take care of the infantry on foot." 
Artemis glanced below, trying to find Kimberly and the three SPARTAN-IIIs moving into their positions on the lower hills to neutralize the Rangers. To their credit, even with the 5x/10x scope, Artemis couldn't find the four close-range assaulters assembling below her. Their camoflague and stealth technique were impeccable, in stark comparison to the dozen Rangers and two massive APCs that stuck out like supernovae against the snowy Dashan plains. 
Artemis hit the comm. to Redmond, fifty meters away at Lancaster's former position. 
"Raptor Six to Raptor Five. Phantom Six wants those APCs taken care of. I'll take the left APC; can you take out the right APC?" 
There was a slight pause. 
"Aye, ma'am. Raptor Five is on-target." 
Redmond's professionalism had been improving recently. His decreasing exposure to Simon because of his engagement to Cassandra was obviously doing his military facade some good. 
"G006, you're my spotter", said Artemis quietly. "How's the shot looking?" 
"Range to left APC is eight hundred and fifty-two meters", reported Cassandra on the binoculars. "Wind is one point five knots southeast. Recommend overcorrection, northwest, point two notches." A pause. "Wind is holding steady. Recommend corrections for distance and wind." 
Artemis found the upper-most notch on the ACOG scope of the SC50 rifle and the left-hand notch, correcting for the fall of the bullet and also the wind speed, and aligned the point firmly on the chin of the armored gunner of the Ranger-crewed APC. She knew that the recoil from the rifle's blast would compensate for her low mark, and the recoil would send a bullet straight through his forehead. 
"I'm on target", she whispered. 
Cassandra reported over the tactical channel, "Raptor One to Phantom Six. Both rifles have acquired their primary targets. Please advise, over." 
"Phantom Six to Raptor One. Hold your fire. Weapons tight. Await code-word firing authorization." 
"Aye, ma'am. Rifle section, weapons tight." 
* * * 
Lieutenant Commander Yu Zhou (UNSC Navy, O-4) smartly marched into the Combat Information Center (CIC) of Outpost Royal, a pair of lieutenants trailing in his wake, the overhead illumination coruscating against his freshly-pinned oak leaf rank insignia upon his pressed black dress uniform.
 Instantly, all the technicians and officers rose as one.
 Zhou waved them away with a crisp salute. "At ease, men. As you were."
 Still bracketed by his two aides, he found one officer, Lieutenant Jr. Grade Lewis Graham, still standing. Graham was the watch commander for the 2200-0600 watch in the bunker's control room.
 "Lieutenant Graham, you called a yellow-line alert? Report."
 The younger officer, a new recruit from OCS Beryl in Eta Carinae, saluted crisply. The young officer had been specifically assigned the late-night watch because of the lack of possible trouble that could occur at night. Obviously, Graham still hadn't learned that it was a taboo to call a yellow-line alert at midnight when two-thirds of the bunker's garrison and staff were still asleep, including the bunker’s CO, Lt. Cmdr. Zhou. 
Lewis nodded. "Aye, sir. This just came in less than a minute ago." 
The officer indicated a plasma display on the wall, where there was a frequency trace highlighted in red. "There've been anomalous transmissions, several dozen of them, over the past few hours. They've been on extremely low transmitting power, and are so little above background that even DOLPHIN couldn't amplify the signals." 
Zhou waved away the report. "Probably tactical transmissions leaking over from Hotel California." 
Lieutenant Graham shook his head insistently, instead jabbing a finger at the superimposed trace. "Less than a minute ago, there was a low-power encrypted transmission from the cliffs outside. The encryption scheme is Violet Five, one known to be used by the rebels." 
Behind him, Yu's two lieutenants traded looks. 
Zhou indicated the trace. "And did you decrypt the transmission?" 
"Aye, sir. The ONI package broke it in microseconds." 
"What were the contents?" 
Lewis thumbed a button on his console. "Audio only, sir." 
A moment later, a feminine voice, deliberately androgenized by tactical field communicators, said in hollow tones, "Kill the power." 
For a moment, Zhou lost his irritated visage, and curiosity lit his eyes. "What?" 
The computer repeated again, "Kill the power." 
Zhou looked towards the Navy technician at the engineering station of the electronic warfare bunker. "Chief, do we still have juice running?" 
"Yes, sir. Power is still online from Quo Station in the southeast. All other bunkers in the sector also report full power." 
Yu looked at his department officers behind him. "What the hell's the meaning of this then?" 
Graham thoughtfully traced a topographic map of the surrounding mountains with a finger. 
"Commander, if the SIGINT analysis is correct, the origin of the transmission is here." 
The Navy Lieutenant Commander stared at the map. "That's the surrounding hills, right next to the Rangers." 
"Aye, sir." 
One of the other lieutenants quirked her eyebrows. "But we don't have any troops there. Hound Six's and Bravo Six's Rangers are right by the bunker, and Cover Six's team is in the mountains, several hundred meters downfield. We don't have any patrols in those hills." 
Zhou frowned slightly, and tabbed a mic. "Royal Six to Bravo Six." 
"Bravo Six here, sir. Go ahead." 
"Sergeant, send out a fire-team to map grid Hotel-Oh-Fifteen by Sierra Seven-Fifty. Have them report immediately." 
"Aye, sir. Bravo Six out." 
He thumbed a second frequency. 
"This is Royal Six transmitting on STRATCOM One. Does anyone read me, over?" 
"Hotel California to Royal Six. We read you. Go ahead." 
"Hotel California, this is Commander Zhou, Navy SIGINT Division. We've just intercepted a-." 
And then, the room plummeted into darkness. Zhou instinctively seized his M6 sidearm in shock, and clammily groped in the darkness for the light-pad. 
He pressed it. 
There was nothing. 
A sullen silence consumed the room. 
Yu stared repulsively at the darkness. "Chief? What the hell's happening?" 
The engineering chief reported with a trace of hesitation, "Power's down, sir." 
"I know that!" he snapped. "Why is the fucking power down? Did you kill the power?" 
"No, sir." 
"Then find out why, damn it" said the Lieutenant Commander furiously. 
A moment later, the Chief Petty Officer replied, "Looks like there was a failure on the power plant's end. The fucking Unggoy at Quo Station must've made a blunder. Backup power will be online in a hundred seconds. I'm sorry, Commander."
Graham whispered, "Something's not right about this. It doesn't fit." 
Yu found his fingers snaking for his sidearm, and quietly, he unsafed the weapon with a metallic click. He raised his pistol. 
* * * 
"Kill the power", whispered Kimberly. 
Half a minute later, Kawika Son replied, "Poseidon to Phantom Six. Power's down." 
Reciprocatingly, Kimberly snapped, "Execute." 
The storm fell with such speed and devastating vigor that the hapless UNSC Rangers were decimated within a heartbeat. It was an instantaneous ragnarok, six warriors united in mind and heart; they moved as one, a singular cohesive entity of death, whose every glancing blow lead to death. Artemis's and Redmond's high-powered sniper rifles lanced out from the cliffs high above, surgically cauterizing the machine-gunners on the two vehicles, and then window shots that left the drivers headless, slumping on the wheel. 
Epinephrine made the rest all a blur. The remaining eight Rangers had no prescience due to the suppressed sniper shots. As one, Kimberly and the three SPARTAN-IIIs, distributed amongst the hills, opened fire at once. Eight rounds of 5.56mm ammunition later, eight Ranger corpses collapsed to the ground. 
Time from start to finish: two point one seconds. 
Ninety-eight seconds until the backup power went online. 
There was no need for words; the assault team was mentally melded, all aware of the tactical situation and how to proceed. 
Kimberly left her position at a run, easily breaking forty-five kilometers per hour, breaking through rolls of concertina wire as if they were rust, practically skipping from the hill to the bunker entrance in a single, flowing glide, a beautiful blade of death pirouetting through the darkness. 
A split second afterwards, she was joined by Whitney, Esther, and Jennifer; all of them had expended two 5.56mm rounds each, each already responsible for two kills. 
The shattered bodies of the Rangers were slumped on the ground besides them, their lives abruptly excised from their body without warning. Even the UNSC special forces had been unprepared to be assaulted by the finest warriors humanity had ever known. 
The SPARTAN-IIIs stacked to either side of the blast doors, A12 carbines at the ready. 
Eighty-nine seconds left. 
Kimberly pointed at Jennifer and then at the bunker's ingress portal. "Phantom Three, blow this shit down." 
"With pleasure." 
The SPARTAN-III's hands reached toward her belt, and retrieved a small charge. She firmly affixed it to the doors, and then said tersely, "Clear!" 
There was a calamitous explosion as the bunker doors folded inwards with beautiful pyrotechnics, and shouts and volleys of gunfire from within as the defenders realized they were under attack. 
Less than a second later, the four warrior women disappeared from the lip of portal, and from Artemis's scope, save the dozen corpses lying around the bunker, it was if they never had been there.
 * * * 
There was a piercing coruscation of violent light, then a phantasmal howl as Dashan's hyperborean winds swept into the newly-creating opening, displacing the noxious gases of the explosion with hypersonic glacial gales. Esther awaited a fraction of a heartbeat, and then felt the epinephrine seize through her and command her heart and mind. She waved a gloved hand at the breaching point. "Go! Go!" Kimberly moved first with supernatural speed, and once she was amongst the dozen-odd Rangers guarding the entry foyer, there was no chance. In the milliseconds it took Esther to clear the twisted metallic devastation of the ingress portal, when she entered, the last Ranger was exhaling the last fumes of his life, collapsed above a security console, a knife gash spilling his lungs and heart onto the floor. And a moment later, Kimberly was gone as well, melding seamlessly into the darkness, seizing control of her netherworldly domain. Esther glanced at her two SPARTAN-III teammates, who were securing the weapons of the fallen Rangers. "Go to NVGs. We'll follow her in." * * * Kimberly was a primordial force of nature, the transfiguration of death into feminine form; she was a zephyr of death that cascaded along the halls, bounding from human to human, wresting each of his or her life before sweeping out and killing the next. Her chest heaved heavily, her very fingers trembled on her knife in sheer anticipation of blood. Ecstasy lanced through her body; pure and elemental pleasure, a fleshy, consuming hunger that held her in thrall. Her very strength and agility drew with each victim; each life she wrested fed into her until the dark princess was engorged with blood and a primal, yawning hunger. The blood spatters from her victims decorated her arms and thighs, until her lips were adorned with a dark crimson. For the platoon of UNSC Army Rangers and the sixty-some Navy technicians and officers manning the bunker, it must have been undeniably terrifying - to meet one's end in boundless darkness. Kimberly was seamlessly one with the dark; a dark succubus with total reign over the dark, who manipulated the very fabric of darkness to slay and destroy. In the pitch black of the bunker, Kimberly Ivy Blackburn reigned upon a throne of shattered bodies. She was lithe, lovely, moving with the speed of a panther, her very will to consume and destroy instantly translated into death; a knife cut there that flitted across a throat, a touch of tetrodotoxin there that would asphyxiate someone to death. It was devastating, a surging current that swept through the barracks and halls, addicted to the sweet savory scent of life and blood. Eighty seconds later, ninety-five human beings laid supine upon the floor, prostrate to the terrible
PROLOGUE
 
Dashan, Sagittarius Constellation
MOA-2007-BLG-192L System
 
The harrowed man rested heavily upon the austere stone floor, his weathered face staring opaquely into the yonder, dismal arctic wastes. His dirtied scalp reflected the brilliant iridescence of dawn as Dashan’s faraway star blossomed in the skies, perfusing the horizon with a bloodshot red the color of arterial blood.
 
His eyes were darkened, quieted—there was no life, no intelligence that resided behind those silenced irises. Where should have been humanity, a sign of the human spirit, of the vivacity of life … was a nothingness. A negative void. His cheeks were sunken, and there was such a paucity of skin on his face that his visage appeared gaunt, almost skeletal. His skin was leathery and unnaturally bleached, his body nearly entirely albino.
 
His skeleton was twisted, battered; his shoulders were twisted into a sad, permanent slouch, his head hung before him, as if his cranial vault was merely balancing upon his spine; there was no will, no resolve that remained in his flesh—no impulse to survive within this human being.
 
He gazed infinitely upon Dashan’s distant snow-crested mountainous ridges, as if attempting to divine some cosmic significance from their colossal size and their natural beauty, from their lovely crowns of snowfall.
 
Two alternate colors danced within his eyes; one, the slate alabaster of the untouched snowy carpets that adorned Dashan’s surface, the other, the florid, inflamed crimson of Dashan’s star; blood and snow.
 
It was an all-too perfect prophecy of the events about to unfold.
 
Within his eyes, perhaps there was a distant anguish, a miniscule fragment of his human spirit attempting to manifest itself.
 
Yet, this man was a platform incapable of sustaining a human personality, of feeling emotion nor love. He had been irrevocably shattered; while his body remained, there was no soul nor mind entombed within—a supermassive black hole that lurched within him, that endlessly consumed him, devoured him.
 
His eyes shone with pearlescent tears—they were too haunted. They had seen too much. They had seen what no human should have been able to see.
 
And so he was trapped there in his dysphoric musings, a broken man collapsed before the window, surveilling the breathtaking natural beauty of the distant Dashan alpines; an epic place to rest a wearied body and broken soul.
There was a resignation upon his features, a sense of the end. A finality. El fin. Of final conclusion, of ultimate closure.
 
He struggled to find some peace in that, some tranquility to rest fifty years of his life. What remained of his mind was at war with itself; a moral struggle without end.
 
Benjamin Edwards was beyond understanding. What he had seen in the past four years had so resolutely, brutally broken his concept of reality that he was irreversibly lost in the night, forever left to wonder how things should have been. He no longer understood, nor pretended to.
 
Last night, he had accepted that he would never understand. Never understand what humanity had come to. How mankind was capable of such cruelty and such horrors.
 
Last night, he had begun to accept that he would die.
 
Curiously, he found that it didn’t matter when exactly he would die. It didn’t matter if he died in the next minute, the next hour, or in one year.
 
Edwards had been dying for the past four years of his life—since the year 2600 and the dawn of the 27th century, he had been slowly dying. He was a soldier that had been shot and was taking his time to bleed out.
 
He found that it no longer mattered when he died because he was already marked for death; the reaper in hell had already cast its satanic mark upon him, and he was waiting for the killing stroke that would send him to the underworld. He found that living nor dying no longer mattered because life was not worth living.
 
Humanity and mankind was such a consummate and deplorable abomination that he couldn’t bear the shame of living, bear the shame of being human.
 
He didn’t want to be human. He wanted to die.
 
The grief had been intensifying since four years ago, and now, it reached mortal levels; he was paralyzed, strangulated by his melancholy misery. Life no longer had substance. There was no more purpose in living.
 
Humanity had finally failed.
 
He found it ironic that humanity had failed him, and was now trying to kill him.
 
Perhaps Benjamin Edwards was attempting to overcome his depression that he would inevitably die in the near future, and trying to come to terms how his glorious life—fifty years of being one of the most acclaimed mercenaries in UNSC space—was going to terminate like this.
 
He was once one of the most famous men in the Orion Arm … and now, his life was going to be erased like this.
 
How did I fall so far? How did mankind fall so far?
 
He knew the answer to the first question. He would not find the answer to the second question, even at death.
 
Life had no purpose, and his fellow humans had abandoned him; Edwards would have killed himself right there, but a single impulse ran through his veins. It was his life blood, a thought that whispered to him every moment, gave him consolation even before the bleak demise of death.
 
You are a soldier. One, a dozen, even a million may die, but the Resistance remains. Even when you die, the Resistance remains. Duty and sacrifice. Death does not diminish those qualities in a soldier.
 
His hands tremored, as if in dyskinesia—his fingers trembled as they attempted to hold onto those few words, clinging onto them as death came close, its icy breath brushed his cloak.
 
The fluttering in the floor was more felt than heard; Dashan’s surface quivered.
 
Almost immediately, his aide, an able Unggoy, entered. The warrior snapped his fist in attention, and then said adroitly, “Sire, there is word of fires in the outskirts. We are being bombed by UNSC fighters.”
 
Edmond turned to his faithful lieutenant, and for a moment, Dashan’s starlight caught his lenses, and his eyes burned with white and red; snow and blood.
 
The time had come.
 
His voice was hoarse; he knew he was scared to die. But he injected a calm confidence in his words. He needed everyone wired tight; if they were to survive, they would need to at least have the illusion of confident leadership.
 
Benjamin said softly, “Evacuate the entire town. Everyone; from the village elders to the youngest warriors. Listen carefully. Take them through the southeast mountain pass. The ridges will provide cover against UNSC gunships and artillery fire. Travel a half day’s march, and then walk along the river towards the north. After one day’s hard march after that, you will find the Haven. You will be safe there.”
 
The Unggoy straightened even stiffer.
“Sire. My warriors are armed and ready. This is the time to take war to the human aggressors. We will hold off the enemy attack while you and the village elders escape.”
 
The sheer wanton senselessness of the Unggoy’s comment inflamed Edwards’s blood, made him rise angrily, gave him an energy that he had not had for months. The lieutenant involuntarily took one step back before his infuriated leader.
 
“Deacon K’las!”
 
He firmly took his aide by the shoulder and dragged him to the panoramic viewport, which offered a spectacular two-hundred-degree arc over the lovely studded cyan and black of the Unggoy mountain colony. High above, framed against the mountain, barely visible, black-red speckles orbited. As their rotation brought them closer to the veins of sunlight, they glinted; metallic birds of prey.
 
“Do you see those UNSC fighters?”
 
“Yes, m’lord.”
 
He clasped the Unggoy by the chin and stared into his beady eyes.
 
“Those fighters carry enough firepower to destroy several Covenant frigates. They could bomb our township dozens of times over, with missiles to spare.”
 
He turned away fiercely, staring at the orbiting UNSC fighters that strayed high above.
 
Edmond whispered softly, not daring to face his aide, lest the Unggoy see the desperate fear in his commander’s eyes, “The UNSC has come here to Tranquility Isle for one purpose—for me. Denied their prizes, the UNSC would lay waste to the entire colony.”
 
He forced himself to master his facial muscles, and then he turned back to the stout Unggoy.
 
“Tranquility Isle has ten thousand Unggoy, Deacon. If the UNSC can’t find me, they will kill all of them. They will kill every single Unggoy and Kig-Yar on the face of the planet until they find me.”
 
“They will kill everyone until I surrender myself.”
 
The Unggoy stared blankly at him, uncomprehending.
 
Edwards exhaled tersely. Even he, after four years of meditation and contemplation, barely understood the reason he was going to die. How could he expect his Unggoy aide to possibly begin to fathom the logic?
 
“Deacon, there is no escape for me. You must lead everyone to escape. It will be a hard two days for the entire village to make the long march to Haven.”
 
K’las said firmly, resolutely, “Sire, my warriors and I would all gladly die a thousand times over in order to protect you. You are the grand architect of our victories in this northern continent. Every Unggoy in this village would rather die than have you fall into the hands of our enemies. Your death would deny us the ability to resist our assailants.”
 
He shook his head firmly.
 
“Deacon; if you believe I am the architect of your victories, do you trust in my strategic judgment?”
 
The Unggoy hesitated momentarily, and then acceded. “Of course, milord.”
 
“Deacon, there is a difference between spending lives for a cause, and for wasting them. This is the burden that all commanders face. If you do not evacuate the entire village, ten thousand Unggoy will die. You must perform your duty to your village, and to the resistance. At Haven, the Commander will know what to do with an army of ten thousand.”
 
The Unggoy whispered almost religiously, “Haven? The Commander?”
 
Edwards knew he had chosen the right tack.
 
“Yes, Deacon. The Commander awaits your arrival at Haven. You must make best speed to him there. Lead the villagers safely along the pass and the river. This is the most important battle that you have ever faced; quickly, now, sound the bell of retreat. Gather the families and hurry.”
 
The Unggoy was torn; to his loyalty to Edwards, to his loyalty to nation; to his loyalty to the Commander.
 
“Sire, why can you not come? Why must I sound the village bell? The villagers will trust you if they see you sound the retreat.”
 
“Deacon, go first. I must make my preparations for the battle to come, here, in my quarters. I must center myself before I am fit to lead an army of ten thousand.”
 
K’las quirked his face in confusion, and Edward felt the lie catch chokingly in his throat, scalding him like liquid fire.
 
He continued, willing himself to continue, “Go quickly, Deacon. I will be right behind you.”
 
The Deacon snapped to attention, and quickly filed out.
 
Edwards’s lips were set in a grim slash. A bitter determination was upon his face.
 
Once the Unggoy had left his quarters, Edwards firmly sealed the pressure door, and then from his belt, drew a small handgun; he aimed at the locking mechanism and fired twice, until sparks rose from it.
 
He could not trust himself not to run.
 
If he escaped, ten thousand would die.
 
The stain upon his heart would kill him.
 
He could not trust that his courage would hold. He had to ensure himself, now, before the storm, that there was no escape.
 
That he would die.
 
If even a single Unggoy was to survive, his death was necessary.
 
Denied him, the UNSC would surely kill them all.
 
This was the only chance.
 
The pain lanced through him so acutely that he felt fire roll through his veins; his entire body was depleted of strength, and he collapsed, writhing in paroxysms of agony.
 
He, Benjamin Edwards, was about to die.
 
He tried to whisper words of comfort, but the words choked in his suddenly-dried larynx. Tears streamed down his face; tears he did not remember crying.
 
There were metallic cries nearby as UNSC attack jets closed overhead, sweeping in four-point diamond formations, securing the local airspace, then the syncopated beat of dropship engines.
 
Even in the throes of death, he recognized them. Vector-directed impulse jets. UNSC Dropships.
Time had no meaning anymore; all Edwards could fathom was the last moments of life—as the spirit escaped his broken body. In the distance he heard static crackles; automatic weapons fire, then corybantic whines; high-powered explosives.
 
He didn’t know how much time passed; it was a dysphoric continuum, a slurry without meaning. All he could hear was the thunder of his tremoring heartbeat, how his fingers desperately clasped together, trembling before his execution.
 
There were crackles of radio chatter, encrypted bursts that came through his room’s automatic signal interceptors and combat decrypters.
 
“Alpha Six to Odin. We’re securing the target building. Resistance is light. No sign yet of the target.”
 
“Odin, Raptor Six here. Reconnaissance optics show that the colony is debulking; we have substantial numbers of Grunts evacuating the residences and moving to the southeast. Permission to engage?”
 
“Negative, Raptor Six. Remain on-station and provide cover for Alpha Six. We need to find the target. That is an Alpha-level directive from SOCSAG.”
 
“Aye, aye. Alpha, you have close-air support standing by.”
 
Curdled on the ground, Edward felt his lungs rustle as a relieved gasp escaped his lips. K’las had performed admirably; he’d evacuated the colony, and was moving towards Haven.
 
He had done his job.
 
Now, it was time to do his.
 
Background noise burst through his miasma; nearby, there were thunderclaps and cyclone snarls. Death cries echoed through the furious tempo of war, as life was extinguished.
 
There was a sudden silence, and Edwards knew the time was close as a sickening chill spread through his lower intestines.
 
This was the end.
 
“Clear left!”
 
“Right wing is secure. All clear.”
 
“Stack up. Charges on that door. Blow it down.”
There was a skipped beat, then a furious conflagration; the detonation was tremendous, a volcanic eruption a meter away. Edwards, even fetal upon the floor, was picked up and hurled against the far wall by some primordial power.
 
There was searing fire; agony of unimaginable proportions. Every bone shattered, splintered, his body contorted and disintegrated.
 
Then there was nothing.
MORNING THUNDER (June 30, 2009)
Halo: Galactic Era Prologue (Part I, UNSC Perspective)
Combined Joint Special Operations Task Force—Dashan (CJSOTF Dashan)
Operation: MORNING THUNDER
Like a swift-footed sentry, Dashan steadfastly made its rounds around its parent star, millions of kilometers away, circumscribing the dwarf star in a stellar waltz of grandiose proportions. The distant star broke over Dashan’s horizon, beckoning the dawn. It hung in unnaturally pale skies, as if a baleful, malevolent eye, a celestial sentinel. Bloodshot light spilled over the planet’s glacial plains, inflaming the snow with a hellish hue, as if the planet was afire.
 Rising to the morning’s call, as if drawn to the scent of the bloody light, myriad metallic birds of prey began to assemble, an infinitude without number, preparing to adorn Dashan with her dawn sacrifice of shed blood. “Mission is a go at rolex plus five.” “Haven, this is Weatherman. Metrological report says it’s safe for the birds to fly. We’re receiving solid GPS numbers for the strike.” “We’re double-checking Weatherman’s numbers. J-2 confirms Battle Code Red.” “All units, we’re sending out revised coordinates. Spotters have a possible fix on the target’s location—” “Angel Six, taxi to romeo-lima and prepare for immediate take-off.” “Strike Package Alpha is a go, Haven.” “Copy that. All elements, mission is go. Repeat, mission is go.” The metallic raptors ascended into the air with supernatural speeds, transversing the crimson-hued skies effortlessly, agilely darting, as if propelled by mere ethereal thought. Their bodies were an acute contusion of grey and black hues, their forms precise, angular, and crisp—these mechanical predators had been bred for one purpose only; to kill and slay upon command. Their forms were lean, cruel; their eyes shone with the color of arterial blood. They assembled into a grandiose crest, an arrowhead that pointed towards the yonder rising dawn star, a salute of death. The starlight shimmered from their unnatural surfaces, the vessels palpitating, as if tremoring in the anticipation of the bloodshed to come. The dawn was broken by staccato bursts of encrypted chatter. “Nav check, nav check.” ”Alpha element is three minutes from drop.”
“Strike King to Haven. We are approaching wave-off authorization position and are requesting updated tasking orders.”
“Haven here. All elements, be advised, CJSOTF-Dashan and Naval Intelligence have given final authorization for the operation. We are green-lit. Handing over operational authority to you, Delta Six.”
“Roger, Haven. I have authority.”
For Sergeant Randall Ridenour, undoubtedly, one of the most invigorating feelings achievable in military life was riding a helicopter into battle, the rhythmic thunder of the rotors the clamor of the God of War, the patriotism and adrenaline like lightning, coursing through his veins. The cyclonic winds tore at his feet, like the hydra’s tentacles, attempting to flick him off of the fast-moving Army DO-30 Kingfisher helicopter into the jagged mountainous peaks thousands of feet below. 
He clung for life and limb to the metal exoskeleton of the Kingfisher, his fleshy hands and feet desperately adhering to the helicopter as the metallic raptor trembled in expectation of the bloodshed to come.
Trained as a Navy corpsman, Ridenour found an unmistakable allure to the wanton violence of special operations—he was terrified of the deafening gunfire and explosions, the deft speed with which humanity’s finest killers slayed, and he was horrified of the carnage they wrought; the mangled bodies, the gaping mouths, the twisted limbs and scattered blood. 
Yet, here, clinging to the side of a attack helicopter as he rode on the edge of an advancing wave of vicious machine and flesh as mankind’s tsunami sought to consume another alien township, he could not deny the sheer thrill, the ecstasy of combat—the sheer glory of an entire wave of metallic war machines, the rapture of watching over an entire crack legion of mankind’s best soldiers, the intoxicating scent of victory; of surviving an alien enemy’s best efforts to kill him, and being able to survive to tell the tale.
And today, manufacturing the death of a rebel warlord responsible for the deaths of thousands of UNSC soldiers and marines on this godforsaken, depraved arctic world. Thousands of light-years from Earth, Terra’s children met the alien foe in open battle and avenged their fallen brothers and sisters. 
Ridenour leaned his helmeted head out of the swift gunship, his visored eyes seeking the entire armada of UNSC special forces that rode their steeds onwards to blood and battle—his helicopter, “Angel Six”, was the first in the column of black-hulled Kingfisher light attack gunships, the leading UNSC warship. Close behind were seven other similar helicopters, each replete with four black-armored troopers with their legs dangling off the precipices of their choppers as his was.
The DO-30 Kingfisher was one of Army Special Operations Aviation (SOA)’s lighter models, a two-man gunship originally intended for reconnaissance work—thus, it was a small, nimble covert chopper, one capable of carrying four UNSC special operators in and out of hot zones, beneath the radar umbrella, in day or night. 
The small size of the Kingfisher excluded a proper troop bay; thus, its four passengers were forced to sit on jumpseats on the edge of the helicopter, the stirring winds invigorating their spirits and attempting to tear them off the gunship. 
Aboard Angel Six was four members of Ridenour’s six-man team; Major Courtney “Archer” West (commanding officer), Master Sergeant Blake Robinson (noncommissioned officer in charge), Sergeant Pratik Shah, and then Sergeant Randall Ridenour. 
In the lagging chopper to starboard were Sergeant First Class Gordon Hedges and Staff Sergeant Alexander Grant. Together, the six warriors comprised Army Special Forces Team Delta Seven Fourteen (“Delta Four”), one of the leading teams of Combined Joint Special Operations Task Force—Dashan (CJSOTF Dashan). Along with them in the second Kingfisher was an attached long-gun sharpshooter/observation team, Staff Sergeant Peter Lancaster and Sergeant Bethany Sullivan.
Ridenour’s gaze panned in the innards of his own vessel; in full combat equipment, Delta Four’s members were ghastly wraiths, abominations of the darkness—black load-bearing vests with matching tactical helmets and shinguards. Dashan’s starlight glistened off their armors, and Randall could not help but admire his teammates, their fierceness, their quiet determination. The Kingfisher was devoid of chatter—the Army Special Forces were a focused cohort, and these precious minutes prior to the assault served as a mutually-respected oasis of quiet which served to unify the assault time in mind, heart, and spirit.
His vision dropped to his own belt; in his black-gloved hands was an MA12-SOC/CQB carbine, the “A12 Carbine” that was the favorite for UNSC special forces. His bulletproof vest bore few other accoutrements, only two spare magazines for his 5.56mm infantry weapon and the black-edged lethal carbide knife that was the pride of the UNSC Army Special Operations Group. Ridenour’s vest was largely devoid of insignia for counterintelligence purposes, although he proudly bore the silvery wings of Ranger Jump School (Asphodel Meadows) and the lustrous caduceus—the twinned snakes of a Navy/Marine Corpsman; his personal reminder to himself that he had been trained and raised in the art of healing, not that of killing.
But on Dashan, on these embittered, ague, and desolated wastelands—on this foreign and alien world far on the Outer Rim, few could preserve their humanity; and slowly, Ridenour found himself slipping into the war frenzy that had consumed his comrades, that he was turning into a merciless monster without regard for human nor alien life.
He gritted his teeth, feeling the mouthguard clenched between his jaws.
He would not succumb. 
Today, they would kill for only one reason—to assassinate the rebel mastermind that had the blood of thousands on his hands. 
Their resolve would not weakened, their faith would not fail. He, Randall Ridenour, was one of mankind’s finest. They had to succeed; there was no other alternative.
The frigid winds chewed into his exposed cheek, rousing him back to reality and the eve of battle.
From the lead jumpseat, Archer spoke, her feminine form glorious as she brazenly sat at the precipice of the assault force, determined and unafraid, the embodiment of mankind’s courage. 
“Delta Six to Sniper TOC. What’s your sitrep?”
“Activity, Blue, West. One Unggoy.”
The condensed jargon could only be that of a Marine Force Recon sniper. Ridenour parsed the communiqué rapidly; one Unggoy (Grunt) had departed the three-story target building, from the western side of the first floor. 
“Any sign of the target?”
“Negative, Six. We are cold feet as of yesterday, 1430 hours.”
Ridenour breathed heavily. An entire sniper platoon from Marine Force Recon had taken up positions around the small Unggoy colony last night, canvassing the entire town from sniper positions in the surrounding mountains. ONI’s target, the rebel commander, had taken shelter in the objective center in the center of the town, and hadn’t been spotted leaving since then.
All the members of CJSOTF-Dashan and JTF-11 understood how imperative this mission was; five bloody years, the UNSC had spent on Dashan, attempting to fend off the marauding aliens that were slaughtering human citizens on the planet. 
Only recently had ONI developed actionable intelligence, information on the rebel command structure and chain of command. Taking out this target was an alpha-level priority directive from Naval Intelligence. Tens of thousands of humans, soldiers and citizens, had died on Dashan. Killing this single warlord was the first step in cauterizing the infectious rebel tumor that was metastasizing across the planet.
He felt fierce rage burn through him, worm his way to his heart.
“Copy, Sniper TOC. Sixty seconds to drop.”
“Recon Six to Delta Six. Rifle teams are standing by to provide support fires, over.”
Archer and Robinson exchanged glances, and after a moment’s look into each other’s eyes, both knew what had to be done.
Courtney grasped the short-wave radio, and her words were fierce and determined. They could not fail.
“Assault leader to all elements. Fire Order Vermillion. Air Assault. Out.”
It was done, the deplorable words spoken.
With those words, the Army officer had consigned hundreds of innocent Unggoy to their deaths. Because it had to be done.
Metallic cries yearned through the air, high-frequency crackles that leapt through the atmosphere. A flight of Navy F-779 Predator interceptors detached themselves from the core formation, breaking hard to port, their azure afterburners lending an electric fervor to the dry morning air.
Major West spoke again, and the thrill of battle entranced Ridenour.
“Voodoo, this is Delta Six. Requesting fire mission, over.”
“Delta, this is Voodoo Leader. Standing by for fire mission, out.”
“We have fire observers on the ground, Voodoo—patching you through to Sniper TOC. Delta out.”
“Recon Six to Voodoo”, declared the Force Recon commander. “Adjust fire to mike-golf three-six-four by nine-oh-five. Requesting MOAB munitions. Attack direction is northwest, and approach is clear.”
“Voodoo Six to Recon Six. Fire mission confirmed. Copy northwest.”
A pause.
“Be advised, air strike is in effect. Voodoo Six out.”
Ridenour felt his lips run dry. Force Recon’s leader on the ground wasn’t doing anything to curb potential innocent casualties—he had requested an air strike with laser-guided MOAB (Mother of All Bomb) munitions, the heaviest air-to-ground ordinance carried by Navy fighters. The 20-ton high-explosive warheads were capable of leveling over twenty city blocks from the overpressure shockwave.
The air strike would literally wipe off half of the village off the map.
Suddenly, Ridenour had a concern for the safety of the target; if the Navy’s Predators overshot their target, their objective building and their target—the rebel officer—would be incinerated like so many thousands of feet of building. ONI would be interrogating atomized ashes in the former likeliness of an insurgent commander.
Nevermind the target—half of an innocent village—nearly ten thousand Unggoy would perish in milliseconds. 
Someone at CJSOTF Dashan obviously had revised the “acceptable civilian casualty” limit from one hundred to tens of thousands.
“Voodoo Nine to Voodoo Six. Testing for enemy fire guidance radars. Negative. Testing for enemy passive guidance radars. Negative. Testing for enemy anti-air fire. Negative. Sir—target is defenseless.”
Ridenour exchanged glances with Shah, in the seat next to him—the place was supposedly a rebel stronghold, bristling with anti-air cannons, field artillery, and mechanized cavalry. Authorizing a nine hundred kiloton air strike on a defenseless Unggoy worker village would be akin to hunting a bunny with a rocket launcher.
“Delta Six, this is Voodoo Six. Negative on enemy double-A fire. We have aerial superiority. Beginning attack runs, over.”
“Roger, Voodoo Six. Delta Six out.”
From Ridenour’s vantage, legs dangling off of the nimble scout chopper, his gaze like that of God upon the Unggoy village, a small squid of mottled purple and cyan writhing in a canyon flanked by snow-crowned mountains, there was serenity—a small flood of Unggoy and Kig-Yar waddling in their mountain village, peace of mind upon them as they rose from their morning communals and prayers.
And the next second, reality horribly yawed, and then shattered altogether.
The Navy air strike had begun. 
Ragnarok blossomed on Dashan. Massive, incinerating infernos winked into existence, their massive kiloton-yield shockwaves sundering the fabric of reality.
The brilliance was like that of a nuclear explosion—even through his polarized visor, Ridenour forced himself to look away and his eyelids squeezed shut as a solid wall of brilliant incandescence and overpressure shockwave slammed into the limber Kingfisher, threatening to wrest it from the air.
And then it was over; Ridenour gazed at his exposed forearms, and found that there had been blisters from the intense heat of the thermobaric blasts.
“Voodoo Six here. Splash one, over.”
“Recon Six to Voodoo Six. Splash one, copy. Requesting revised fire mission. Adjust fire left two thousand, drop five thousand.”
“Adjust fire mission, confirmed. Voodoo Flight Two, you have authorization.”
The Navy Predator fighters continued to dive—they waggled their wings, then broke the holding formation, breaking by wingpairs, wing-to-wing, then executing awesome dives, dropping tens of thousands of feet in the air before releasing their munitions.
It happened again, and again, until fully two-thirds of the village were afire. Columns of oily smoke and fire rose, so prolific that they blotted out the morning sunrise.
“Voodoo Six here. Splash five, over.”
“Recon Six to Voodoo elements. Good shot, good shot. Terminate fire mission. Forward recon concludes that majority of kill box has been slagged. Casualties are estimated in the thousands, over. You are clear to engage, assault force.”
As Ridenour gazed at the tempest of fire and smoke that raged below in the mountain valley, the hell of broken earth and magma that oozed through charred soil, the blood raining like rainfall, he could not help but interpret some portent of impending doom from the red and black that scarred Dashan’s mountains and skies.
Ten thousand lives, extinguished at a word.
He felt strangely hollow inside, the fight within him, depleted.
The attack force and Team Delta-Seven had departed Hotel California to assassinate a single rebel commander—now, an entire village had been bombarded to piecemeal.
Suddenly, the air assault didn’t seem so glorious.
Robinson jarred him from his introspection. The massive man’s glove bounced off his shoulder pauldron.
“Ridenour! Get ready to drop! Sierra-papa-india in thirty seconds! Gas and packs!”
The Master Sergeant held up three fingers, signifying the thirty second mark. Ridenour’s breath shuddered through his clenched teeth; it emerged as a noxious white fog that flash-froze in the hyperborean air.
Instinctively, the team’s members reached for their weapons and their ammunition. It was time.
* * *
The contact of earth and machine was instantaneous; the DO-30 Kingfisher helicopter’s skids barely had touched the loamy earth as the four Army operators, in black clad and bearing carbines, jumped off into the snow. Behind them, in Angel Five, their last two team mates joined them.
Ridenour felt his combat boots solidly make contact against the snow-encrusted ground, and the energy reverberated through him, and he bolted forward from the gunship, tightly gripping his carbine in the adrenaline of the moment as his teammates paused at the foot of the gunship, clearing left and right with their rifles.
“Go! Go! GO!”
He heaved hard as he pounded across the foreign ground, the leader of a pack of black-armored raptors surging across Dashan’s surface. The carcasses of burning buildings were on either side, the wreckage of the massive aerial bombardment that had cleared the town for them to operate.
Shadows arced over him as he sprinted towards the brilliant edifice of the target building—Marine sniper teams taking positions on the neighboring rooftops, bathing the target with interlaced lines of fire.
Communications chatter came across the background through his uneven heaves for air.
“Touchdown. Repeat, touchdown. Delta element is deployed.”
“Roger that, Angel Six. Break off to heading two-five-four and maintain holding position.”
“Sniper TOC is online. Rifles are standing by.”
“Ranger Three is on the ground. Axis Kilo-Golf is under control.”
“Security force, move to phase line one and secure the perimeter.”
Ridenour slammed his armored body hard against the target building, stacking to the left of the door that was Delta’s ingress point. Brilliant bloodshot starlight burned in the background, his integrated visor shimmering with an intense crimson due, a shadow warrior adorned with blood. His heart thundered as Archer and Robinson issued the final assault orders.
“Golf Six is the air! You have snipers in the air, Delta.”
“Raptor Two-Four is holding at Victor-November to provide close air support, over.”
Moments later, he was joined by the remainder of the special forces team—they stacked to the left and right of the armored pressure door, carbines leveled. Robinson and Hedges formed a wedge across the door, Robinson poised as if a runner at a race’s start, the oily stub of his submachine gun’s barrel immediately to the left of the door, ready to spring. Sergeant First Class Hedge’s gloves worked briefly at his belt and then at the door, and when he withdrew, an unblinking viridian light appeared on the door that had not been there before.
Ridenour’s hands stammered to lower his visor as Archer gave the final assault orders.
“This is Delta Six—I have full mission control. Five—four—three—two—”
Ridenour breathed deeply.
“One! Execute, execute!”
There was a violent conflagration, a firestorm of raging wind and fire that clawed at his armor. The point shooters moved synchronously, two humans linked in spirit and movement. There was the low stutter of submachine gun fire from Robinson’s weapon, then a second, deafening thunderclap as Hedges threw the fragmentation grenade in his right hand.
Archer screamed, “Through the breach! Go!”
Ridenour charged into the misshapen gap.
Inside was a miasma—Unggoy corpses leaking fluorescent blood adorned a long, empty hall, cyan fires winked from the ceiling as noxious plasma escaped the broken walls. Exchanges of automatic fire and searing plasma echoed as Robinson and Hedges advanced, blurs of black that rolled, took cover, and fired almost simultaneously. 
A disoriented Sangheili emerged from the far end, his expression in glassy shock, his world overwhelmed by the air bombardment and now the infantry assault—Staff Sergeant Grant rose his rifle to his cheek, and fired a single shot. 
The Sangheili’s vertebral column shattered, and the alien collapsed with a tight plume of blood from his neck.
A trio of Unggoy swept in, plasma pistols in hand. Robinson’s submachine gun stuttered twice, taking two out while Hedges’s carbine echoed a singular report, cauterizing the third.
Plasma fire whined through the open doorway.
Robinson shouted hoarsely, “Cover!” and then charged in, weapons blazing. 
Ridenour paused a moment, waiting for the enemy opponents to be distracted by the point man before entering himself. 
There was a blur of blue and steel in his peripheral vision—there was the high-pitched whine of a charging plasma weapon—
Ridenour fired twice at the blur.
A Kig-Yar soldier collapsed.
Before them was a water fountain, a rotund oasis of glacial water. Several Unggoy huddled behind it, attempting to escape the massacre.
Archer lofted a grenade, and a moment later, the fountain burst into flame, the aliens disintegrated as their lifeless carcasses were picked up by the shock wave and thrown back two dozen feet.
“Keep up the fire!” bellowed Robinson. “I’ll cover!”
Ridenour and Shah dashed beyond the fountain, flowing into a graceful roll that took them behind a massive crate of electronic equipment. There was a surprised cry from the other side of the crate.
Shah leveled his shotgun, turned its barrel around the corner, and fired a noxious rebuke.
A throaty Sangheili yell emerged, which quickly resonated into the lower octaves and died as the creature collapsed, missing half of his upper chest.
Blood of all colors adorned the hallway.
“Clear left!” shouted Shah.
“All clear right”, reported Grant.
Archer jabbed her finger to the far doorway, where an amethyst gravity lift shimmered. “Move up, Delta.”
Robinson, flanked by Hedges and Ridenour, made a dash for the gravity lift. An Unggoy peeked out from a gun-cratered side corridor, maneuvering to get a shot at their backs, when a single shot from Grant’s rifle killed him.
An Unggoy patriarch descended the gravity lift, his eyes taking in the carnage of his ancestral household. Robinson’s hand snaked out, grabbed his neck, and plunged a carbide knife deep into the protruding veins. There was a splash of blood, and the Unggoy elder’s eyes widened momentarily before shrinking to black holes.
The Master Sergeant discarded the body. He waved at the rest of the team to the gravity lift. “Go!”
There was no time to organize themselves. Ridenour stepped forward, and his armored body was hurtled upwards at breakneck speeds.
A moment later, he found himself at the third floor, face-to-face with an armored Sangheili. 
Ridenour didn’t even have time to breathe; instinctively, one of his hands grasped his sheathed knife, then roughly stabbed it into the Sangheili’s jaws, dismembering two of his mouth tentacles. Then, he kicked the alien to the ground, freeing his hands, and he fired a single shot.
Suddenly, plasma fire whined at him from a far doorway, and he sprang for his life towards a nearby marble column while he felt the superheated plasma burrow divots on his armor plating.
Archer and Shah fired a handful of shots, until there was no more returning fire.
There was no time—the Deltas moved forward incoherently, exchanging fire, taking cover, making dashes through the haze of bullets and plasma.
Robinson picked up a stout Unggoy from the ground, then punched in its soft, undeveloped skull. Grisly brain and blood leaked from its nose as the assistant team leader vengefully threw the toddler to the ground.
Grant had his rifle raised to the far, concave wall, a mirror-smooth austere surface unmarred by the running gunfight. He turned to Courtney and shouted, “Ma’am! Infrared scope says that the target is behind that wall. His biosigns match up with ONI’s projected biometric profile.”
Ridenour ducked under cover as Archer barked, “Hedges! Blow down that fucking wall!”
There was a nearby explosion, and a Sangheili corpse sailed gaily through the air.
Hedges replied, “Yes, ma’am! Moving!”
Shah barked reciprocating, “Covering!”
The Sergeant First Class hastily placed an oversized satchel on the door, and then shouted, “Clear!”
There was another sharp blast of hard light and sound, and Robinson dashed through the breach with a cry, Ridenour following closely.
The blast had been an order of magnitude too great—the entire wall had caved in, and snaking fissures in the ceiling admitted that the building was close to structural collapse. A comet of debris jetted across the room, a tongue of fire from where the charge had been to the apex of the shockwave. Crumbled masonry and methane paste littered the room.
A single human figure laid prostrate at the foot of the debris, his clothes fused to his skin from the blast’s temperature, blood flowing profusely from unnatural orifices.
Ridenour swore tersely, “Shit.”
Archer turned back to the doorway, where Staff Sergeant Grant and Sergeant Shah were still making fierce battle with a handful of determined defenders. “Grant! Kill all those fuckers, over!”
“Killing all these fuckers, copy!” replied the rifleman.
Meanwhile, Robinson grabbed the limp figure’s wrist with mechanical strength, like a vice grip.
He glanced at Major Archer. “I still feel a pulse, ma’am.”
Hedges looked at Ridenour. “You’re the doc, Sergeant. Go patch him up. I’ll help the others kill those assholes out there and give you cover.”
Ridenour gazed at the depraved, withered, emaciated figure covered in soot and blood beneath him, and suddenly, the haze of battle lifted from his mind—the brilliant explosions, the gunfire, all gone.
All he saw was a dying human being, his eyes welling with blood and tears, his body seizing in paroxysms of agony.
He hand strayed to his Navy-issued combat medicine satchel, but Archer stayed his hand.
“Sergeant, secure the prisoner. I want him IDed on the double.”
A double leaflet of automatic rifle fire sounded from nearby, accentuating the point. Ridenour looked back and forth between Archer and Robinson—their expressions, covered in digital camouflage war paint, were steely. 
He retrieved a diagnostic kit, waved it over the crumpled figure, the handheld automatically calculating the body mass index (BMI), muscle mass, length, width, and geometry of the rebel. 
It was a pre-programmed orchestration of actions; Randall reached for a daub of blood oozing from his torn lip, pressed the crimson lifeblood into the machine, and it churned and produced four symbols: “O+ Rh—”. 
Ridenour looked at Archer.
“Yeah. It’s him.”
Courtney raised the shortwave radio to her chin.
“Checkmate, this is Delta Six. Be advised, we’ve secured the package and are ready for extraction, over.”
“10-4, Delta Six. Hang tight. Vectoring choppers for extraction.”
* * *
AMBUSH
Main Operating Base “Haven”
Dashan Coalition for Independence 
The Ready Room was a flurry of stochastic activity—there was too little time. The attack had been orchestrated by Admiral Son and The Commander on far too short notice, and now it was Artemis’s and Blackburn’s responsibility to forge this unruly rabble of fifty warriors into a sharp-edged sword that would pierce and expunge the best of the UNSC’s special forces.
Artemis had pulled Kimberly aside a few minutes earlier in despair.
“Kim, tell me again why we’re trying to ambush an armored column of Army Special Operations Command soldiers with a platoon of Grunts?”
The latter woman’s mouth was a grim slash. “I think that Perseus would rather lose a few Grunts in the attack than lose us.”
The coldness of the statement and its truth and candor had off-put both of the women, who had gone back to the main room to try to rally the mix of Unggoy and Kig-Yar soldiers.
Kimberly saw a young rebel officer with a beret and a lieutenant’s rank insignia, and forcefully turned him around to face her.
“Are you the commander of this shit storm?”
“Yes, ma’am”, replied the other, his face flushed with excitement from the preparations for the rapid assault. “Lieutenant Joseph Ives Stockert from Midgard, 1st Infantry Division, 12th Armored Regiment.”
Blackburn strained to be heard over the pandemonium. “Stockert, what is your major malfunction? We’re moving out in five minutes, and launching an attack in twenty minutes, but half your troops aren’t even in combat gear.”
Stockert’s face was flustered, but he kept his tone leveled and reasonable. “Master Chief, we had no time to prepare. We were told scarcely ten minutes ago from Command that we’d be going on this attack. I’ve had to reassign my teams from mass infantry assault to supporting fires.”
Kimberly and Artemis exchanged looks. Five minutes wasn’t even enough for a trained UNSC special forces to change footing and get suited; 2042 and Son had expected this regular infantry platoon to do even better than that?
Obviously, either 2042 or Son were quite willing for Stockert’s platoon to sustain casualties.
While although superficially cruel, Artemis could gleam the strategy in her commanders’ logic—all that mattered was that the handful of rebel commandoes could slip into Hotel California and wreak havoc. By judiciously sustaining a few dozen Grunt casualties now, it would allow Kimberly’s and Artemis’s team to infiltrate the UNSCSOCOM base and provide cover for the hundred thousand advancing Unggoy on the killing field.
Artemis gritted her teeth. This attack was not going to go well.
“Lieutenant, I’m Captain Artemis, mission commander. Introduce me to your unit.”
Stockert nodded, and indicated several broad aggregations of readying and dressing Unggoy and Kig-Yar around the armory. “I have four six-man rifle teams that comprise the bulk of my platoon. They are supplemented by two Kig-Yar sharpshooter teams as well as three Unggoy mortar teams.”
Artemis was internally pleased. The fuel rod mortars would wreak havoc amongst the Army convoy. Despite the lieutenant’s junior status and the mess of his hair and his enthusiasm, perhaps there was a reason that the Admiral had chosen the young officer to back up this attack.
Kimberly, however, was not so convinced. She tapped a SPARTAN-III—Konrad-G319—on the shoulder.
“Senior Chief?”
“Yes, ma’am?” replied the warrior thickly in germanic tones.
“I want you to take control of Stockert’s platoon. Split it up into two elements. You take the first, and Cassandra-G006 takes the second.”
“Aye, Chief.”
Konrad waved a subtle hand motion at Cassandra, who was across the room exchanging words with Redmond, and after a moment’s more conversation and a terse kiss between the former and latter, the two SPARTAN-IIIs moved off to discuss their tactical plan.
Artemis looked at her friend. “You really don’t like these ‘conventional’ infantry, do you, Kim?”
Kimberly’s expression was furious and intense. “If they fuck up, not only do we die, but the entire assault goes south. I trust that two SPARTAN-IIIs can do a better job than some pasty-faced field officer from Midgard.”
Artemis never found herself internally somewhat surprised by her younger friend’s lustrous and vivacious intensity—when she had been the senior unit commander in Section Three’s HPA detachment, she had always been the most rigorous and exacting officer, with triple redundancy to account for all contingencies, and who had always spent endless nights attempting to discern possible snags and to generate code-worded contingencies for those as well. Yet, Kimberly managed to even be a notch more tightly-wound than herself.
Artemis tried to smile. “You placed Cassandra in command over two squads?”
Blackburn tossed a glance at her. “Do you think that this attack will go bloodlessly amongst Stockert’s unit?”
There was no need for words after that.
* * *
Cassandra met with Konrad at the perimeter of the room, with Redmond still very much on her mind, an oppressive force submerging all her thoughts about the battle amongst an emotional storm of anguish.
The fact that Kimberly had just assigned her half an infantry platoon a moment ago did nothing to buoy her spirits; when she was a part of Task Force 51, Son had given her an officer’s commission (Lieutenant) just because most trained combat medics were officers, not because she had any idea on how to lead nearly thirty soldiers.
This was further maligned by the fact that she was now cooperatively working with Konrad—one of Gamma Company’s crack long-gun sharpshooter specialists. Konrad had been one of the UNSC’s heroes during the Two Week War and the Memory Crisis, and while their interactions had always been casual and pleasant during their meetings in the Dashan Resistance, the hot-blooded German still found himself wondering why he, a Senior Chief Petty Officer, was technically under the command of her, although Cassandra never attempted to exert her rank over any of the enlisted UNSCSOCOM troopers that had joined the rebels.
For once, the Senior Chief was more malleable to work with.
His posture taut, his wiry hair impeccable, Konrad looked very much ready to pounce. “Cassandra, any idea on how to break it to Stockert that we’ve taken over his unit?”
She noted that for once, Konrad had addressed her by her proper name, not by her pet name, “Cassie”. 
Konrad smirked. “Since you’re the more emotional type, I figure it’s better that you tell Stockert.”
Cassandra wasn’t sure whether or not to interpret that as a compliment or a barbed insult in disguise.
She breathed heavily, the weight of impending massive battle in several hours like the weight of the world upon Atlas’s pauldrons. It was overwhelming, and now having to break the heart of a young soldier was generating stresses too great within her to cope.
“Alright. 
ALL THE WORLD’S A STAGE Speed of Sound Shaw-Fujikawa Space, en route to Dashan From the navigations station, Artemis called out, “One minute to reversion.” At his position in the captain’s chair, Son said levelly, “Thank you, Master Chief.” The harlequin band of conspirators aboard the Speed of Sound were a peculiar assortment; because all had previously served in the military, indeed, had all served together at some point or another in either Task Force 51 or Naval Special Warfare, they had adhered to military decorum and protocol; none had protested when the ex-admiral had taken the command chair, and when he had issued “recommendations” for the crew members to take certain stations. For all their defiance of the UNSC, they still operated in a mimicry of a Defense Force ship; although perhaps, that was attributed to respect and deference to the more senior sailors and soldiers in their midst. Kawika looked towards the navigational plot, where Redmond and Cassandra were huddled over a cyan model of Dashan’s topographic surface, making notations and cross-referencing publicly-available geographical maps as well as Wellesley’s own classified maps, stolen from the UNSC Astrographical Service. “Cassandra, any progress on the insertion point?” The SPARTAN-III looked up from her handiwork. She had been one of the ones less adherent to military protocol aboard their several-day Slipspace voyage; perhaps this was because of her distancing from the UNSC (former Public Enemy Number Two) as well as her long-term fraternization with the recalcitrant Simon. Her adeptness in battlefield medicine, not special warfare, also had lent her a more easygoing and insouciant attitude, in stark contrast to both Artemis and Kimberly, who were tightly wound. “We’ve converted and charted the geographical coordinates that David gave us for the contact.” With her index finger, she indicated a point on the maps labeled in crimson. “The location works out to be within a known Unggoy settlement, which the UNSC has designated ‘Nineteen East’.” The logic flowed, and Son nodded, pleased. “Good work.” Behind them, Kimberly and August were preparing the tactical and survival equipment for the surface mission in the aft cargo hold; their pooled wealth and personal connections within the special warfare community had been enough to purchase an overly ample aggregation of the most modern equipment available to UNSCSOCOM; their personal collection of weapons and gear looked like a resupply cache for Naval Special Warfare, replete with heavy winter gear to survive treks on the hyperborean Dashan surface, tactical armor for close-quarters engagements, and weapons; carbines, sniper rifles, submachine guns, sidearms, explosives, as well as a number of more specialized gear. When Artemis called out the twenty second mark, all crew members broke off from their assigned jobs, strapping themselves into crash webbing in the bridge stations. Kimberly’s trained eye surveilled the members of their gang; Son and August were both professionally immersed in the glacial cool of command; the efficient calm that allowed for adaptive responses even under fire. The three other crew members were of more interest. The infamous Artemis had immediately seemed like a leading candidate for a friendship; the two women had shared similar lives, even more so than Blackburn and her husband. While superficially, Artemis maintained her calm, quiet confidence, within, Kimberly gleamed some more; within her eyes was a waxing fire—a hot rage, to avenge her boyfriend; a lost love, fuelling a deep passion and thirst for battle. This both shocked Kimberly and immediately concerned her; Artemis had distinguished herself in ONI’s Special Warfare Group, the field commander of the HPA Division—to ascend to that kind of prowess and fame, the ex-SPARTAN-III had learned the necessary lessons of temperament and control. Yet, this unusual fire that burned from her was reckless; emotions derailed logic and reflexes, and could cost them this critical mission. Momentarily, she regretted speaking to Artemis about life; to expand her horizons, to delve into realms she had never experienced in her cruel military career, to explore relationships and to find someone she cared about. She turned away, troubled, and found no more solace in Cassandra and Redmond, both strapped together in the couch by the communications station, nervously holding hands, Redmond attempting to evict some confidence. She had taken a strong liking to the two junior soldiers, one a SPARTAN-III, another a Myrmidon; both were relatively inexperienced in the company of the star-studded war heroes that accompanied them. Kimberly’s gaze turned beside her, where August gave her a firm-thumbs up. “One hundred percent.” Naval Special Warfare jargon for full readiness. She centered herself momentarily, feeling the familiar breastplate and helmet of emotional armor fitting tightly against her pale skin. In the distance was a constellation of viridian ready lights; Son and Artemis had already extensively gone through the Speed of Sound’s systems, optimizing flight plan, weapons loadout, and communications configurations. Artemis’s voice drew her back to the present. “Three, two, one…” There was a brilliant tachyonic flare around them as the borrowed freighter made the reversion from twelve-dimensional Shaw-Fujikawa space to the three-dimensional contours of reality. The Slipspace reversion was always jarring; nine degrees of existent dimensionality were collapsing away, folding their realities into that of realspace. The exit from the netherworldly realm was accompanied by a brilliant starburst of radiation; a sudden conflagration of exotic particles from the other plane of reality. Inwardly, Kimberly characteristically winced; aboard a UNSC stealth prowler, there would have been no such Cherenkov radiation or Slipspace exit radiation signature. She had high expectations for this freighter loaned from Wellesley. As the Shaw-Fujikawa reversion radiation faded, allowing their sensors full activity again, the crew saw a breathtaking vista; Dashan was an aquamarine pearl, held in abeyance in space, her atmospheric surface surreal, rippling corsolis winds the color of beryl. The distant systemic star shone a faint backdrop of light, giving a marvelous celestial beauty to the scene. In orbit, a number of mute seraphim laid dormant, as if in awe. Suddenly, Redmond yelled from the sensor station, “Contacts!” Words began to scroll on the tracking board— CYDONIA-CLASS FLEET CARRIER CYCLOPS-CLASS BATTLE CRUISER CYCLOPS-CLASS BATTLE CRUISER MJÖLLNIR-CLASS DESTROYER CYCLOPS-CLASS BATTLE CRUISER The contact list began scroll longer and longer as a synthetic voice chimed, “Warning, primary targets acquired. Warning, primary targets acquired.” Artemis exclaimed loudly, “Shit! There’s a UNSC fleet in orbit!” Displeasure crossed Kawika’s face briefly. “I knew that the Defense Force had activity on Dashan, but not that they were here in force, and certainly, not a naval task force in orbit.” Cassandra asked, “Do you think they’ll interfere with us?” Kawika studied the orbital trajectories and vessel classifications briefly before replying, “This is no ordinary UNSC task force. The orbital force is at double task force strength, but with the number of carriers and cruisers they have, this is essentially a battle group-level deployment. Their orbits suggest a blockade formation; if so, then they’ll have prowler and fighter patrols at the perimeter.” Kimberly felt an acrid heat pulse over her. The distant, mute seraphim were UNSC carriers and cruisers—staring at one of the tracking contacts, she found that it was familiar. She said softly, “The carrier in the center; that’s the UNSC Cydonia. The flagship of the Fifth Fleet.” Son corroborated that. “It is the Cydonia; Admiral Davidson’s flagship and command vessel of Task Force Phoenix, the flag task force of the Fifth.” Redmond observed quietly, “Why is the command task force of the UNSC Fifth Fleet over Dashan? If this is really a battle group-strength deployment…” He paused. “Dashan is only an Unggoy colony. Why would HIGHCOM assign a full battle group, along with the command element of the Fifth, to orbit Dashan?” The mounting unease soured to sickening knowledge; everyone knew immediately that the UNSC’s involvement on Dashan was far more than anyone within the UNSC brass would admit. Cassandra called out, “Incoming communications link; on an open civilian frequency.” Artemis surveilled the tactical plot. “That’s impossible. There’s no UNSC vessel even close to us, certainly not within the range of our civilian transponder.” A moment later, a stoic, militaristic voice played out over the cockpit speakers. “Civilian freighter, this is Blue Four, operating off of Carrier Air Wing Three, UNSC Fifth Fleet Combat Command. Be advised, Dashan is a secure UNSC security zone. By the authority of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Admirality Court, disable your drives and prepare to be boarded. The threat induced a sickly panic in Redmond, who desperately scanned the sensor plot; the only vessels were the two dozen UNSC warships far away, in equatorial orbit. “I don’t see them. Where’s the fighter?” Son and Kimberly exchanged looks, trading tactical appraisals wordlessly with a glance. Cassandra suggested tentatively, “A stealth fighter?” All UNSC vessels, even civilian freighters, obviously had to be equipped with a modicum of sensor technology; electronic sensors were the only conceivable way that a ship’s crew could keep track of other vessels, astrological phenomena, meteorological systems, etc… However, these low-energy “passive” sensors were easy to deceive by military vessels; stealth fighters or warships often had countermeasures to reduce their radar footprint or even completely appear invisible on passive sensors. Only dedicated warships carried high-power search radars used for target acquisition; many of these radars could defeat limited countermeasures, but modern stealth vessels were typically equipped with radar-absorbent alloys and designed with unique geometries that were detectable by only the most powerful dedicated reconnaissance sensors installed upon prowlers or recon fighters. Son had been alarmed to find a top-of-the-line au courant reconnaissance sensor package installed upon the Speed of Sound, comparable to the highly sensitive and controlled sensor systems installed upon ONI prowlers—how a lawless mercenary like Wellesley had managed to obtain a fleet intelligence-grade sensor package was deeply troubling in its implications. “Turn on the fire-finder”, said Son firmly. The decision had been unanimously made to enter the Dashan system with only passive navigational radars engaged; the high-power fire-finding radar was an instant signal flare, and even stealth ships with it engaged became instantly detectable at hundreds of kilometers. The radar signatures that appeared on the updated tracking display were instantly dismaying. Redmond peered at the unusual signals, momentarily confused. “What fighters are those?” “The Predator-class interceptor”, said Kawika in a flat monotone. “Next-generation stealth fighter. Only the most experienced squadrons are equipped with it. We have one fighter flight shadowing us.” Artemis muttered tersely, “You mean we’re being chased by the best UNSC pilots in the newest fighters?” There was no comment to that. Kimberly, August, and Kawika exchanged glances again, the tactical disposition immediately evident. The nimble space superiority interceptors were reputed to be one of the fastest and most maneuverable fighters in the galaxy, in both the UNSC and Covenant arsenals—heavily armed with mass drivers and missiles, and augmented with sophisticated electronic countermeasures (ECM) and stealth systems, each individual interceptor far surpassed the combat capabilities of any loaned civilian freighter. The Speed of Sound, however, was no mere stock freighter; it was David Wellesley’s personal craft, loaned at great expense—the ship of the most wanted criminal in UNSC space was far more formidable than the UNSC Fifth Fleet could possibly anticipate. Cassandra chimed in, “The Fifth Fleet knows we’re hot now; they can’t possibly not see the big AN-1004 fire control radar.” “Fighters are increasing speed”, said Redmond alarmingly. He felt his heart rate pick up as the interceptors closed on the tracking display, the nauseous clammy cold of self-preservation settling into its familiar hollow, as it had hundreds of times before. “They’re closing on us.” The cockpi ---- SUNRISE THUNDER UNSC Army Special Operations Group (SOG) 1LT Courtney West (First Lieutenant) MSG Blake “Blackjack” Robinson (Master Sergeant) SFC Dieter Weber (Sergeant First Class) SFC Quentin Hedges (Sergeant First Class) SSG Alexander A. Grant (Staff Sergeant) SGT Pratik Shah (Sergeant) SGT Steven Ridenour (Sergeant) Operation: SPRING HERALD It was a turbid and unfamiliar storm of activity; the plethora of faces that encircled him were estranged, daubed in camouflage war paint, bodies obscured in alien obsidian armor. The thunderous clamor of war beat in his heart, his world throbbing with every heartbeat. Amongst the jostling crowd, his electric pulse obscuring all noise, Ridenour looked for familiar faces to anchor him in this maelstrom—his team members in the platoon’s recon team; SFC Weber, SFC Hedges, and SSG Grant, but instead found only the sneering face of Master Sergeant “Blackjack” Robinson, the platoon chief. As Ridenour apprehensively shifted the unfamiliar and incompatible weight of the M26 carbine in his gloved hands, Robinson roughly shoved him, grabbing his flexing right hand in a vice grip. 
“Don’t worry about it, cupcake. Just stick to your camera and we’ll fuck shit up.” This aroused a clamor of laughter from the Army special forces platoon. Ridenour was a new entry into the UNSC Army’s Special Operation Group (SOG), the Army special forces unit that was formerly the ONI black project known as “JUST CAUSE”; after the disastrous events of Beyond Veil’s Azure and the apocalyptic results of JUST CAUSE’s involvement in Alice in Wonderland, the UNSC brass had ordered the ONI special access program terminated, folded into a “legitimate” special forces unit under Army control. As Ridenour stared at the faces around him, he saw only proficient assassins, methodical killers, specialists in torture. Obviously, under the Army’s tenure, the former ONI “special activities” unit hadn’t become any more legitimate; SOG appeared to still be the breadbasket for the UNSC’s veteran special forces operators, and every bit as deplorable and monstrous as its predecessor in “The Office”. Ridenour hadn’t known this when enlisting for the UNSC Army; formerly a corporal in the Engineering Corps, when a coveted billet had opened in SOG, they’d looked for junior technical experts in their trade—like Ridenour. It was only after entering “Hell Camp” that Steven had learned that Army SOG wanted only three kinds of people; people that could extract secrets after removing enough body parts, people that could kill a moving target from over a mile away, or people that had the know-how to transform several city blocks into a fumigating explosion. He hadn’t fit any of those three criteria. Ridenour was simply the battalion expert on moving things from one place to another; to allow a tank formation to cross a river by building a temporary bridge, to set up a new temporary HQ by applying permacrete and ensuring that the water supply was golden. The battalion commander, an Army colonel that hadn’t even seen him in person, had recommended Ridenour to UNSCSOCOM as a “technical expert” in the battalion. Obviously, no one in UNSC Special Forces had bothered to look at his CSV before running him through the training program. Sergeant Ridenour had ended up in a macabre world, surrounded by professionals with over twenty years experience in special warfare; at slitting throats at nighttime, sharpshooter assassins, and ONI spooks who terminated thousands of lives with their deathly omniscience. Army Special Forces wasn’t where Ridenour was meant to be; quickly enough, his commanders at the 5th Special Operations Battalion (5th SOB) had realized that Ridenour, compared to his war hero peers, was an incompetent at even the most basic of ASOG’s missions and core skills. He’d been relegated to a reconnaissance team (“reece”); the untrained newcomer to Alpha Platoon’s recce team—it was a strictly “weapons tight” element, meaning that on operations, firing authority was nullified; SOG’s recon troopers were far from the warriors, instead performing surface reconnaissance tasks in support of the direct-action (DA) element. Ridenour’s job was to take long-lens photographs of terrorist leaders and terrorist camps, and then to crawl away. No shots fired. The perfect billet for a bridge engineer and water tester in the most brutal special forces community the UNSC had even seen. On his last assignment, Ridenour was beginning to get the hang of it too well; the photographic intelligence he’d collected on one of the terrorist leaders, an infamous Jackal bomb-maker, had been the final piece of evidence tracking the notorious Kig-Yar largely responsible for UNSC casualties in the northern continent. High Command (HIGHCOM) had ordered an all-out assault; the entire SOG platoon was being sent into the Unggoy colony township to take him out, backed by Navy fighter squadrons and even several companies of infantry from the Marines, with tanks. The “entire” platoon meant that the recce group was being included in the assault—that Ridenour was being included in this massive frontal assault. Ridenour had never shot at anyone before; in fact, the last time he’d even handled the M26 carbine was in Basic, back at NAVSPECWARCOM on Asphodel Meadows. During his posting to the 5th Special Operations Division., his reconnaissance missions had been lightly armed—and never a shot fired. He stared at the unfamiliar implement resting in his gloves, feeling a sickening cold pooling into his intestines as the gunship’s combat lights played off of its glossy digital camouflage coat, and realizing what he was about to do. He was being consumed, descending steadily into a devouring monsoon, his mind overwhelmed— “Thou shalt not kill—” “When you shoot, shoot for the head—” “Show your enemy no weakness.” “Life is the right of all sentient beings, a fundamental tenet of life to live without the fear of violent death.” “When moving to kill, strike swiftly, and strike once. Leave the enemy no mercy and no recourse.” He was jarred when Master Sergeant Robinson bellowed beside him, “Atten-tion!” Looking beyond the opened aft bay of the Kingfisher-class helicopter, he saw a dim trio of figures emerging from the gloom of the hangar. A stray fractal ray of light caught a silver oak leaf—a Lieutenant Colonel. Immediately, the platoon of soldiers rose to their feet, salutes at hand. They drew closer, and Ridenour saw them in more detail—the leading officer was the Lieutenant Colonel, the Army Special Forces battalion commander. Flanking him was Lieutenant West, the platoon commanding officer, ---- STARFALL MV Speed of Sound Nearby Nineteen East, Dashan The impact was calamitous. The Speed of Sound was a five thousand ton meteor at terminal velocity. The concussive force rendered the armored freighter into pieces, spewing molten ejecta across dozens of acres and leaving the ship’s remnants as fiery misshapen metal lumps that bled acrid smoke. There was a violent explosion as a reactive shard of metal disintegrated in pyrotechnics, casting a bloodred light over the macabre scene. PROLOGUE Like a swift-footed sentry, Dashan steadfastly made its rounds around its parent star, millions of kilometers away, circumscribing the dwarf star in a stellar waltz of grandiose proportions. The distant star broke over Dashan’s horizon, beckoning the dawn. It hung in unnaturally pale skies, as if a baleful, malevolent eye, a celestial sentinel. Bloodshot light spilled over the planet’s glacial plains, inflaming the snow with a hellish hue, as if the planet was afire.
 Rising to the morning’s call, as if drawn to the scent of the bloody light, myriad metallic birds of prey began to assemble, an infinitude without number, preparing to adorn Dashan with her dawn sacrifice of shed blood. “Mission is a go at rolex plus five.” “Haven, this is Weatherman. Metrological report says it’s safe for the birds to fly. We’re receiving solid GPS numbers for the strike.” “We’re double-checking Weatherman’s numbers. J-2 confirms Battle Code Red.” “All units, we’re sending out revised coordinates. Spotters have a possible fix on the target’s location—” “Angel Six, taxi to romeo-lima and prepare for immediate take-off.” “Strike Package Alpha is a go, Haven.” “Copy that. All elements, mission is go. Repeat, mission is go.” The metallic raptors ascended into the air with supernatural speeds, transversing the crimson-hued skies effortlessly, agilely darting, as if propelled by mere ethereal thought. Their bodies were an acute contusion of grey and black hues, their forms precise, angular, and crisp—these mechanical predators had been bred for one purpose only; to kill and slay upon command. Their forms were lean, cruel; their eyes shone with the color of arterial blood. They assembled into a grandiose crest, an arrowhead that pointed towards the yonder rising dawn star, a salute of death. The starlight shimmered from their unnatural surfaces, the vessels palpitating, as if tremoring in the anticipation of the bloodshed to come. The dawn was broken by staccato bursts of encrypted chatter. “Nav check, nav check.” “Alpha Six to Haven. We’re at Waypoint Five. Time on target is sixty seconds.” “We read you, Alpha Six. Maintain radio silence. Haven out.” Aboard the lead vessel, the call triggered slurry of hastened activity, the tempo accelerating as heartbeats began to synchronize, beating in unison with the primal cry of war, the bloodlust that infested the veins of men and mechanical beast alike. The strike commander, a lieutenant, shouted above the din of the supersonic engines, “Sixty seconds! Lead elements, in position.” “You heard the lieutenant!” barked the platoon chief affirmingly. “Lock n’ load! Pilot, kick the hatch.”
 There was a corybantic cry as the dropship’s troop bay hatch lowered, and Dashan’s furious corsolis wind entered the troop bay, threatening to tear the sixteen troopers from their positions and to dash them upon the snow-studded peaks that loomed below like gnashing teeth. “Recon Six to Haven. Uhh, things are pretty quiet down here. Target is in three-story building in the center sector, marked by infrared laser.” “This is Angel Six. We’re picking up the strobe on IR. Strike package is on the way, recon team.” “Roger that. Recon out.” “Haven, this is Voodoo Six. There’s radar activity down there.” “You have firing authorization, Voodoo Six. Kill those missile batteries.” “Will do. Voodoo Six to all Voodoo elements—break by pairs and engage.” Sergeant Riley Ridenour stared at the rolling snowscape that carpeted the planet’s surface beneath them, the colossal mountainous peaks that ascended to hundreds of thousands of feet above sea level, grotesque ridges that thrust from the dirty earth, as if reaching to the stars. Their crowns were laced with loamy snow, and Ridenour found the play of the bloody starlight off of the snow oddly alluring, as if the snow radiated a hellish fire. He heard a hoarse laugh behind him, and a massive gloved hand clipped his shoulder and shoved him back firmly into his padded crash seat. “You alright there, cupcake? Just stay down and let us do the real work.” The coarse comment was met with a reciprocating chorus of rough laughter. Ridenour turned to see his assailant; Master Sergeant Robinson, the senior enlisted advisor to the special forces platoon. His face was unnaturally pale, but his eager eyes shone with an intense lust that rolled off of his skin. The massive soldier cradled his rifle with an assured, confident smile. “Ridenour, just get your fucking ass down in that seat and you’ll be alright.” The platoon commander, Lieutenant West, affixed her second-in-command with a reprimanding glare before turning back to the open troop bay hatch, where the lead gunners were already assembling, edging down the ramp, weapons at the ready. West clapped Ridenour’s bulky shoulder pauldrons with a hand. “This is important, Sergeant. Keep your head screwed on straight. We can’t afford to lose this guy. Hoo-rah?” “Hoo-rah”, he uncertainly affirmed. The lieutenant turned away, Dashan’s star brilliantly reflecting off of her polarized visor, giving her the visage of a blood-daubed marauder in alien armor. She tabbed her helmet-mounted boom mike. “This is Warrior Six. We’re good to go. Standing by for insertion.” The scene was beatific. As the lieutenant stood there, framed by open hatch against the wheeling snow-adorned escarpments of Dashan, suddenly, her heroic figure was illuminated by brilliant fire that birthed to life behind her—in silence, suddenly, Dashan’s plains erupted in violent conflagrations, explosive bursts of harsh light suddenly tearing the mountains asunder. The silence of the assault made the cascade of explosions terribly beautiful against the dappled snow. “Voodoo Six here. We’ve stripped them clean. All fire-finder radars are dead.” “Weatherman to Haven. We’ve confirmed that. Enemy anti-air missile batteries are KIA.” “Suppression phase is complete. Alpha Six, put down your chalk by the target building. Angels, provide top cover.” The dropship’s vector shifted precipitously, and no longer was Ridenour staring at pock-marked plains; the visage blurred from the sudden acceleration, and then now in view was a mottled array of speckled blue and grey that stood out against the monotone blanket of white—ambrosia lights winked on and off. It was one of the mountainside Unggoy colonies that littered Dashan’s equatorial belt. The objective. A flight of four F779 Predator-class interceptors sliced at perpendicular angles to the image, and Ridenour found himself marveling at the articulated autonomous killers, anonymous assassins made of molded metal and ceramic. They waggled their wings, and then accelerated, leaving brilliant cyan ionic thruster wash in their wakes as the interceptor flight moved to deny the nearby township. “Angel Six has established overwatch cover positions. Mother Goose, bring in the cavalry.” From the cockpit, one of the pilots called, “Heads up. Fifteen seconds to drop.” The lieutenant jabbed a firm thumbs-up in the direction of the cockpit, and relayed it amongst the commandoes. “Fifteen seconds. Stay sharp.” Haloed by another quartet of the nimble interceptors, the dropship accelerated towards VIVA LA REVOLUTION A hundred thousand warriors. Never before had he led an army so massive. With unsteady hands, he turned his eyes to his tremoring fingers—tomorrow was the end of the world that he knew, the end of this dysphoric hell of domination and death. Lives would be shed like water, the blood would canvas Dashan’s surface. The Dawn at Gesthemane—the blood of the righteous shed, if only for a glimpse of the starlight beyond the murky veil of clouds. Tomorrow was Judgment Day—the beginning of the end. Without further hesitation, he ascended the podium. “Sons and daughters of Dashan! I address the brave warriors of Dashan, one hundred thousand strong that would rather die than see their brothers and sisters suffer under this tyranny.” “For five years, you have been oppressed by mankind’s yoke. Been subject to slavery. You are no strangers to slavery; first, you were subjugated by the Sangheili, then the Jiralhanae that followed them. You have always been the laborers of the Covenant, the ones responsible for its function. Yet, now a new master, humanity, seeks to enslave you.” “Will you join your brothers and sisters at the barricade of freedom? Will you die to bring salvation to your father and your mother, to your children and cousins?” “Will you stand with us?” The roar was deafening, an entire sea of rippling, frenzied bodies; their chants outweighed the screams of a dying supernova, their multitude was so great that it blotted out the starlight. Agent 2042 turned his eyes to Admiral Son. The older man’s eyes were downcast, and in his eyes, Perseus saw the very fear that crippled his own heart. The corybantic cries and screams were overwhelming; an entire planet lusted for vengeance, to avenge the blood of millions that seeped into its soils. Revenge for the lives of mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters, sons, daughters, cousins; for an entire planet enslaved and wronged. Yet, Son trembled, and Perseus with him. The admiral whispered, “A hundred thousand, Perseus. We will commit their lives like water.” 2042 shook his head tightly, not trusting himself to speak. Kawika mounted the podium, and found himself at the fore of a bloodletting mob, an incoherent army bound only by bloodlust and revenge. This had to change. The Unggoy were already weak enough warriors because of their stature; cannon fodder even against the UNSC Marine Corps, the forces of the UNSC Special Operations Command would shred them effortlessly. The admiral cleared his throat, and then began. “I address a body of patriots; a band of brothers and sisters whom I am proud to fight alongside, whom I am proud to die alongside. I am Admiral Kawika Son, former Commander-in-Chief, UNSC Naval Special Warfare Command. Your cause is so strong, so righteous that even us from mankind rally to your banner against the UNSC, the government that has betrayed you, and betrayed us. Tomorrow when you march into battle, mankind will be alongside you.” There were cheers again. He spoke over them. “Tomorrow marks the beginning of the end. For five years, the UNSC has hounded you, driven you from your homes. However, they have underestimated us; five years of oppression has only strengthened us. It has been a fire that has served only to hone the sword that will be the UNSC’s downfall.” “Tomorrow, we wage our war against the sector base of UNSC High Command; the headquarters of the oppressor. We must strike quickly and decisively, move without hesitation to kill.” “This is the battle that all of Dashan has awaited for five years. With our victory, we will finally begin to dismantle humanity’s war machine that has trampled this entire planet.” Roars of acclamation again. Perseus exchanged looks with Son; the admiral was performing pleasingly. “Comrades, however, I warn you; it will not be an easy battle tomorrow. Humanity is an uncanny and ruthless foe. They will seek to weaken us with weapons of war we have never seen before. They will seek to undermine our morale. They will not hesitate to kill the oppressed, the poor, the disabled.” “But we will not stop until the UNSC withdraws from Dashan, until the UNSC recompensates us for five years of slavery and cruelty, until they return our brothers and sisters from captivity.” “Our resolve shall not weaken. We will never surrender.” “Brothers and sisters, comrades and warriors; there may be a day that Unggoy, Kig-Yar, Lekgolo, and Sangheili renounce each other, when we flee and surrender. But it is not this day! Tomorrow, we bring the war back to the oppressors! Dashan, rally! Dashan, to arms! Tomorrow, we fight!” 
 F.O.B. “Hotel California” UNSC Special Operations Command There was a vein of static, then a taut voice through the electronic voice. “Bumblebee.” “Hotel California Ops to unknown contact. Return password challenge ‘Ocean’ and identify yourself, over.” “Code Baywatch. This is Foxtrot Six-Four, holding at FRV Bloodhound, with six birds squawking and ready to roost.” The Marine sergeant turned to face the silent automaton of melded muscle and steel beside him. Fully encased in his battle armor, the warrior was a formidable giant, his skin gleaming with lustrous silver and crimson. His face was unreadable underneath his polarized visor, and the voice that emerged was iron, like machine-gun fire. “Does the password check out, Sergeant?” “Yes sir. It’s Captain Davis’s team; Foxtrot Patrol. They’re holding at the forward rendezvous point and are awaiting permission to come back in.” There was an uneasy silence, and the sergeant had the impression that the supernatural figure’s gaze was pensive, penetrating the bulletproof windows of the control tower to the dusky yonder mountains of Dashan. The operations staff turned to the Myrmidon, attempting to ascertain meaning from the sudden negative void that had gripped the entire control tower. Finally, the Myrmidon turned to the diminutive sergeant below him. “Clear them through the perimeter, Sergeant. I want them in my office five minutes ago.” Wordlessly, the officer turned on his heel, melding into the shadows, dissipating away, leaving only a tense and troubled silence in his wake. The atmospheric was electric with tension. “Hotel California to Foxtrot Six-Four, you are cleared to roost. Proceed through the perimeter on axis Juliet and report to Checkmate, over.” “Roger that, Ops. Six-Four out.” 
* * * 
Office of the Commander, Joint Special Operations Task Force (CMDRJSOTF) It was at uneasy attention that the six members of Foxtrot Patrol stood before SPARTAN-M064—Captain Raphael, the commander of the joint UNSC special forces task force assembled at Hotel California. His office was an exercise in precision and military decorum; battle decorations all the way from Earth to Midgard to Beryl and the Redoubt copiously littered the walls, with massive pennants hoisting the colors of the United Nations Space Command (UNSC) and the UNSC Special Operations Command that flanked his desk. Even unarmored, Raphael-M064 was an imposing force of nature, his body superhuman in proportion, a seamless meld of lissome muscle and tendon unified with a will so intense that his eyes smoldered. Also in the room stood General Williams, the Marine sector commander, Colonel Diaz, the task force operations officer, and Colonel Rosains, the task force intelligence officer. On the secure teleconference also was Admiral Davidson, Commander-in-Chief of the UNSC Fifth Fleet, and also Vice Admiral Carter, Director of UNSC Strategic Intelligence, both of them in Dashan’s high orbit with Task Force Phoenix, the combined flag task force of the Fifth Fleet Combat Command. Raphael’s voice was razor in its acuity. “For nearly three weeks now, none of our reconnaissance teams have reported any kind of contact with the rebels. In stark distinction to the five bloody years that have marred our records, Joint Task Force Eleven and Hotel California have sustained no combat casualties for nearly one month now.” Rosains leaned forward. “If anything, retrospective intelligence analyses have indicated that this month should been one of our bloodiest months in combat. For five years, the rebels have been increasing their combat actions—this sudden lull in combat is disconcerting; it’s been the opposite of the entire campaign on Dashan. 
 War Council
Resistance Headquarters, Absolution Court
Tau Capricorni System, 1109 light-years from Earth
The revelry abounding throughout the rebels following Apollo’s successful recovery was irresistible—it was even as if the UNSC Navy hadn’t just rolled over Sanghelios. The entire contingent was frivolous in their celebrations; even the dour Victor Stryker and the younger Joseph Stockert, whose units had been responsible for the abject wasting of Camp Strawberry Fields, had been irresistibly drawn into the celebrations.
Apollo—brought back from the dead, wrested from Hades’s implacable grip to Artemis’s awaiting arms.
It was the flag officers that had been forced to shoulder the increasingly-dysphoric reality that the Orion Arm was falling into; finally, as the entire mass of rebels was in celebration over the highly successful skirmish on Atreus in the Sagittarius Arm, that Evelyn Lake was compulsed to bring a stop it. The resistance could not continue to live in a fantasy world were everything was a victory.
Lake had gathered a small knot of the highest rebel officers—Kawika Son, Peter Thoreau, Randall Hayes, Chander Danial, Kimberly Blackburn, “2995” Artemis, “2994” Apollo, “2042” Perseus, Wellesley, and some of the senior SPARTAN-IIIs.
Deep within the rebel conclave’s subterranean confines, Lake confided in them the disastrous events that had been unfolding around them while the rebels had been immersed in their blanket of revelry and security. 
Lake, as the former Commander-in-Chief of UNSC Fleet Operations and the second-highest ranking officer in the UNSC Navy, had continually fixated herself on the grander galactic strategy that the Galactic Resistance had needed to employ. It had been Blackburn and Artemis, indeed, who had been too immersed in individual surface battles—but the overthrowing of a galactic government could not be achieved in single battles.
Evelyn was forceful, beginning the war council with a vigorous presentation.
“With all due respect, we can’t keep hiding here on Tau Capricorni. Every day we’re here, the UNSC war machine continues its conquest in the Sagittarius Arm and the Orion Arm. Sanghelios has fallen. Palamok has fallen. The Core Worlds of the Covenant have all been comprised. Only Tamegue is the last major shipyards that the Sangheili holds—after that, the Covenant Fleet will be unable to mount a coherent resistance.”
Her words were inflammatory.
Artemis retorted immediately, “Admiral, the UNSC isn’t rampaging throughout the Milky Way uncontested. We’ve shown that it can be routed, destroyed. We beat them at Hotel California on Dashan, and now again at Strawberry Fields on Atreus. We’re such a threat that UNSC Special Operations Command is posting its best units against us, and it still can’t win.”
“The UNSC isn’t rampaging throughout the galaxy?” demanded Lake. “The UNSC Navy numbers over five thousand vessels. The entire Covenant armada is less than two thousand. Every single Covenant homeworld has already fallen. All the major shipyards are now in UNSC hands. The only place the UNSC doesn’t control is the Galactic Core and the Outer Rim” she said furiously.
Kawika raised a hand.
“Captain, I do agree, the UNSC isn’t invincible—we have won two decisive battles against it already, forced it to completely obliterate Dashan. However, right now, we, as a resistance movement, are at a critical juncture.”
“The UNSC war machine is massive; they have the ability to wage mass warfare in space, air, and land, across hundreds of star systems at a time. The Covenant was the only military with even comparable strength to match the UNSC, but with the Brutes supporting the UNSC, the Covenant fleets have collapsed, with only a fraction of the Elite-led forces able to present any kind of resistance.”
“Every hour we hesitate, the Sangheili fleets are steadily taking substantial casualties, and more Sangheili-held colonies and fortress worlds fall into UNSC hands. The Sangheili and the Loyalists are the only possible military force in the galaxy that can counter the UNSC. We need to form our alliances with them, and now, before the UNSC completely destroys the entire Covenant.”
Simon murmured softly, “We should have no business with the Elites. What good have they done for us?”
Elaine’s reproach was swift. “Don’t let your personal history with the Elites cloud with our operations”, demanded the ex-Deputy Director of the Office of Naval Intelligence. “Your petty dealings with them jeopardize all of—”
“Admiral Son has a point”, forcefully interjected Kimberly. “With the strength of the UNSC fleets, it will be impossible for us, at our current strength, to contest them in even one theater of war in open warfare.”
“We can win this war”, she insisted. “We’ve shown several times that with guerilla tactics, we can defeat the UNSC’s best frontline units. We just need the mass armies and fleets to overthrow the UNSC—the Covenant and the Elites are our best choice. With the Elites, we have a chance to win this galactic war, and decisively.”
Thoreau leaned forward in his seat, his expression contemplative, his voice quiet. “During my tour as Director of ONI Fleet Intelligence, I corroborated what Evelyn has told us. The UNSC has the largest fleet and largest army in the entire galaxy. In Fleet Intelligence, we gathered the very data that UNSC Fleet Ops right now is using to crush the Covenant. We had detailed reconnaissance data on every Covenant fleet and task force in every star system—our technology is now comparable to them, and our force is at least three times greater than theirs.”
“In the event of mass galactic warfare, like right now, the Covenant fleets stand no chance of resisting the full force of the UNSC Navy. With the Second Fleet, Third Fleet, Fourth Fleet, and Fifth Fleet all pushing sorties into Covenant territory, it won’t be long before the entire Covenant armada dissolves, with individual, isolated fleet commanders making futile stands against overwhelming UNSC naval firepower.”
Cassandra asked hesitantly, “Admiral, does that mean that we’ll have…no help? How can the Elites help us if they can’t even hold their own worlds?”
Kawika shook his head.
“What Admirals Lake and Thoreau have told us is that the Covenant armada, led by the Elites, can’t hold their own against the UNSC. It was already a foregone conclusion—the UNSC has spent the last half-decade preparing for this war—a quick, victorious war to finally overthrow the Covenant. We can’t hope to undo what the UNSC war machine has achieved during its expansion.”
Redmond and Cassandra immediately took that comment with severe regard, and Kimberly sensed their palpable uncertainty.
Son continued, “I’m sure that the Sangheili senior commanders have come to the same conclusion. Stopping the UNSC with brute force will be impossible. Even now, Covenant Fleet Command must be making contingencies for when the entire Core Sector falls to UNSC aggression. They must be preparing either to totally capitulate, or else to begin waging a guerilla war, like what the Brutes did in the Borderlands right after the Human-Covenant War.”
The mention of the Brutes’ campaign before the Memory Crisis was stinging to both Whitney-G179 and Admirals Lake and Lujayne—they remembered what that “guerilla war” had led them to discover; a fully-operational Forerunner Dreadnaught that had partially precipitated another galactic war between the UNSC and the Covenant.
Vice Admiral Hayes, the former Deputy Commander of Naval Special Warfare Command under Kawika, said bluntly, “I know the Elites. They won’t just fold over to UNSC aggression. At least some of their commanders must be repositioning to the Sagittarius Arm or the Perseus Arm to begin waging a guerilla war to offer some resistance while the UNSC Fourth Fleet cleans out the Covenant homeworlds.”
Son nodded. “I agree. The Elites aren’t just going to surrender and give up several thousand years of civilization just after a one-month war. They will be making contingency plans—just like us. We need the Elites as much as they need us. We have shown we have the capability to perform successful ground sorties, and the Elites have the mass fleets and the mass armies we’ll need to really strike back.”
Simon demanded, “Kawika, are you seriously thinking of banding together with the Elites?”
That brought several angry expressions from some of the gathered officers, but Son instead returned with a controlled calm, “Lieutenant Commander, do you see some other way that we could get several hundred warships? Right now, our ‘fleet’ consists of a few souped-up freighters and fighters.”
“You think that the Elites will come to our aid?” snapped Simon. “They’ll turn our backs on us on the first sign of trouble.”
Kimberly ignored Simon.
“I think we agree that the Sangheili and the remaining Covenant fleets are our best chance to our continuance”, began Blackburn, and she received many affirmative nods from many of the gathered officers.
“Although the Covenant are undoubtedly making contingencies, they simply wouldn’t withdraw their fleets from their remaining core colonies and abandon them to the UNSC just to make ready for a long guerilla war. However, if they stick around in Covenant territory, their naval assets will get smashed flat. We need to find a way to first, establish communications with Sangheili Command, and secondly, preserve their remaining forces as best as we can.”
Lake agreed.
“I concur. Even at their full rated combat strength, the Elites couldn’t hope to hold off the combined strength of the Second, Third, Fourth, and Fifth Fleets. We need to keep their remaining task forces alive.”
Simon said in disgust, “I can’t believe you’re all fathoming to ally with the Elites.”
There were no responses.
Hayes suggested, “If we’re looking to preserve Sangheili combat strength, Tamegue might be our best bet. It’s the last major Sangheili shipyard.”
“I don’t think we have the forces to hold Tamegue”, began Evelyn. “In Battle Plan Ragnarok, two or more full echelons of the Fourth Fleet were assigned to assault Tamegue. Holding it against three hundred-odd warships would be impossible with our current assets.”
Esther cleared her throat, and faces turned towards her.
“There may be a way”, she began cautiously.
“Yes?” asked Artemis.
“Holding Tamegue against the Fourth Fleet might be impossible, but if Tamegue is the last true Sangheili shipyard, it means that most of their assets will be clustered there to try to hold the line…and with that, most of their senior commanders.”
“You want to have a chat with the Elites while their world is burning around them?” asked Kimberly incredulously. “We don’t even know if they’ll want to help us, and you want to approach them while the UNSC Fourth Fleet rolls over them?”
“They’ll help us”, said Hayes confidently. “They must know that they’re ill-prepared to fight a guerilla war against UNSC Special Operations Command, while we definitely can.”
“I still don’t think that approaching them in a battle is the best idea”, said Blackburn.
“Anyone else have any ideas?” asked Esther.
Jennifer rolled her eyes.
“Forming an alliance with the Elite military while running into a battle with several hundred warships? Sounds like a mission for the SPARTANs.”
“I don’t think we’ll ever have the chance to meet another major concentration of Sangheili commanders”, said Son, lost in thought.
Artemis replied, “Yeah, we’ll meet a ‘major concentration of Sangheili commanders’ at Tamegue. A major concentration of fucking corpses.”
Lake ignored the brash staff officer.
“We have the assets to mobilize immediately. The Jian is stealth-capable. We can insert a small team into Tamegue on short notice. 15 Aquarii is almost right next door; seven hundred light-years along the Sagittarius Arm.”
Simon demanded, “You want to take my ship?”
“Your ship?” barked Wellesley. “What equation did you use to calculate that, sir?”
Kimberly breathed heavily.
“Jesus Christ, I get the feeling that this is going to fall apart really fast.”
Son muttered, “Me too.”
* * *
Hardheart Café, Resistance Headquarters
The atmosphere of the Hardheart Café—a replicate of the infamous bar on Asphodel Meadows favored by ONI officers—had been dulled following Kawika’s announcement of the mission to Tamegue.
As Kimberly settled onto one of the low-set plush couches scattered across the club, her eyes flitted over her surroundings; the Hardheart was a sophisticated and modernistic establishment, with soft sodium lights playing over from the ceiling and renaissance candles softly flickering in the backdrop, casting wavering shadows as their variable lights waned and waxed. The wood paneling, chocolate in color, juxtaposed stylishly with the beige couches, which ringed small tables set into the wall.
Artemis, Apollo, and August settled onto the other side of the table, Artemis’s frame immediately slackening as soon as she hit the couch.
“This is going to be a shit storm”, Artemis muttered. “We have no intelligence, no logistical resupply, and no auxiliary support. We’re about to do a hot jump into give or take over half of the UNSC Fourth Fleet. Doesn’t anyone else have a problem with this ‘master plan’?”
August was perhaps most habituated to his surroundings; as perhaps the only one of the four gathered commandoes who had experienced a marginally ‘normal’ childhood, he was appropriately clad in a checkered crimson-and-white plaid button-up shirt that was the rage in the UNSC core worlds.
His voice was dulcet, mild. “What Kawika said last week was true—there’s a reason that we have commanders and then we have foot soldiers like us. We both have different jobs; we do wet work on the ground while the commanders decide what’s the best thing to do. Our perspectives are from the ground—whether or not a ground operation is feasible. The commanders’ perspectives are more broad, based on galactic politics and galactic strategy.”
Artemis exclaimed, “August, listen to yourself. You’re talking like none of these people have ever set a foot on the ground. Let’s see—Son used to be a platoon commander in Naval Special Warfare, Chandler used to be a platoon chief in Naval Special Warfare, and Hayes was a team commander in ONI Special Operations. They should have some idea of what a crazy-ass mission is. Instead, their heads are stuck above the clouds.”
“I didn’t hear that”, murmured Apollo.
Kimberly shrugged.
“No one ever said the Tamegue mission was going to be easy.”
“Kimberly, you were pushing for the operation”, said Artemis irritatedly. “You didn’t even say anything to them, like, ‘Admiral, are you out of your fragged mind?”
The waiter, a man of moderate age with a peppered, grizzled shave, came over, interrupting their conversation.
He nodded politely at all of them. “Can I take your orders, ladies and gentlemen?”
The waiter looked at Artemis first, deferring to her as the highest-ranking officer in the party.
However, Artemis was closely eyeing the man’s tabs, on his jacket collar.
“You’re a corporal, yes?”
“Aye, Captain.”
“What unit are you in?”
“Lieutenant Stockert’s platoon, ma’am. 1st Infantry, all the way.”
“And what’s your specialty?”
“Section machine-gunner, ma’am. Seven point sixty-two GPMG.”
“And what do you think of the 15 Aquarii operation?”
“I’m sorry, ma’am?”
“The strike mission to Tamegue. What do you think of it?”
Kimberly groaned. “Jesus Christ, Artemis. Corporal, I’ll have a Roy Roger, on the rocks.”
They went around the table, until Artemis finally finished, asking for two shots of Jack Daniels. The corporal politely took down their orders, hurriedly retreating from the inflammatory special forces officer.
There was a pointed silence after the waiter departed.
August broke it first, motioning to Apollo. “How’s the leg doing, Chief?”
Apollo’s mouth twisted somewhat unpleasantly. “It doesn’t handle weight too well. Cassandra placed me on recombinant parathyroid hormone, but I think that JTF Anaconda’s grunts had a field day trying to beat me up.”
The mention to Apollo’s torture at the hands of ONI and UNSCSOCOM made Artemis tense further, giving her a feral intensity in the eyes as he hunched over the table.
Kimberly noted, “Cassandra’s getting pretty sharp. When we were both in Boston, I visited her a few times at her ward at Massachusetts General Hospital. She’s been learning clinical medicine extremely well, even without med school.”
“Yeah, I like Cassandra too”, said Apollo. “Artemis told me that she was going off the walls trying to stabilize me when we were on that van on Atreus, running like hell from the UNSC.”
August reclined a bit in his seat, relaxing in the solitude offered in the eve of the mission.
“Redmond and Cassandra are a match for each other”, he remarked. “They’re both pretty gentle and pretty sensitive.”
Artemis replied, “That’s why dear Lieutenant Commander Simon-G006 is still single. He’s so cold, I think he’d get together with an ONI spook or some shit like that.”
The personal comment by Artemis was somewhat surprising to Kimberly; evidently, her best friend had figured some things out beside the field of blowing things up.
“Simon’s a strange case”, said Kimberly. “I think he went through a lot—before he went on his petty exile, I’m pretty sure that eventually things would have worked out between him and Cassandra. When he came back, and five years later, he found out that his former student was engaged to her, he must’ve had a few lonely nights.”
“Redmond was a lot more than Simon’s ‘student’”, said Artemis frankly. “God damn, he was like a lap dog. Everything was ‘Simon says’ or ‘Simon thinks”—it was like Simon programmed him like a fucking robot.”
They all shared laughs at that.
Kimberly shrugged. “Even though he took Simon’s every breath like the Ten Commandants, Redmond’s a good sniper. On top of it, he has the Myrmidon augmentations—physically and mentally, he’s an extraordinary fighter.”
The waiter arrived with their drinks, and Artemis took a hard shot of the Jack Daniels, her eyes a bit fazed afterwards.
August glanced at her curiously, barely skimming the bubbles off of his own beer.
“Will you be able to shoot tomorrow after downing that stuff?”
Apollo chuckled. “In all the time I’ve known her, I think she actually shoots a bit better while drunk.”
“Ethanol is a modulator of GABAA receptors, NMDA receptors, nicotinic AChRs, and protein kinase C”, said Kimberly didactically. “It acts as a central nervous system depressant by suppression of excitatory currents and stimulation of inhibitory currents.”
“Thanks, ‘Dr. Blackburn’”, muttered Artemis. “Good God, I forgot for awhile how arrogant you Harvard types are.”
Kimberly moved to reply, but instead August smiled easily at Artemis. “Yeah, she’s like this all the time. She changed a ton after Beah got her into Harvard.”
The mention of Beah Schore brought another lull to the conversation, with Kimberly staring dully into the distance for awhile. Beah, Kimberly’s mentor, had passed away over a decade ago.
It seemed like after he’d passed away, Kimberly had totally tossed away her education that had been at his expense, and now had been caught up in the familiar and bitter realm of warfare—first, Beyond Veil’s Azure, and now, this new Galactic War. 
Apollo rolled his tumbler in his hands.
“Who’s chalked up in the OB for the Tamegue op?”
August asked with a small smile, “Why? Are you thinking you want in?”
“I think that the ground team will probably be comprised of me, Kimberly, August, Perseus, Redmond, Cassandra, the SPARTAN-IIIs, and Wellesley’s team”, said Artemis. “The admirality, along with Simon, will probably just stay on the ship, yelling at us as to where to go.”
“Is there one extra spot?” asked Apollo.
Artemis turned her boyfriend disapprovingly. “That’s retarded. You just got out of a UNSC prison two weeks ago. If you’re not one hundred percent, you’ll be a liability.”
Apollo raised an eyebrow. “Me, a ‘liability’? That’s, uhh, certainly a new one there, Captain.”
“We’re not in HPA anymore”, said Artemis flatly. “You don’t have to go fly off into some corner of the galaxy at someone’s whim anymore. If you’re injured, you need to take some time off.”
“I’m not injured”, said Apollo, caught in a juxtaposition between indignance and also a tender affection for his girlfriend. “Goodness, Son risked nearly a thousand lives on Atreus to save me, and several hundred Grunts died at Strawberry Fields, giving cover for me. I’m not just going to sit back and watch Son risk a shit load of people just for me again.”
“I can make it an order”, said Artemis firmly. “You’re not going out there, Apollo. Stay here, and take care of yourself. If you go to Tamegue, some Marine rookie will see you limping around and will waste your thirty years of combat experience with a single easy shot. Son risked a thousand lives at Atreus to save you, not to save you and get yourself killed two weeks later.”
Apollo exclaimed, “If you’re wondering why the Admiral risked all of your lives to save me, it definitely wasn’t so I could sit here at the fucking medical bay and watch you guys get your asses shot off.”
“This is ridiculous”, shouted Artemis furiously. “I’m the team commander, and you’re not going on this. There’s no discussion, Apollo. Orders are orders.”
Kimberly finally looked up from her drink, the maroon drink scintillating in the lighting. Her voice was quiet.
“Artemis, this is our job. We’re soldiers—every time we go out there, there’s a chance we die; but we’re fighting for a cause. This is our job.”
“There’s a difference between fighting for a cause and dying”, said Artemis, enraged. “When you fight, you’re doing it smartly, when you’re dying, it’s because you’re walking out there when you’re wounded. Goddamn it, Kim.”
“Artemis, you’re my best friend”, said Kimberly softly, deadly intent in her eyes. “I’d do anything for you—now that you’re with Apollo, I’d do anything for him as well. If it came down to it, I’d gladly take a bullet for him.”
Her words were chilling; no one spoke, even the candlelight stilling.
“I would rather die first before Apollo die. You know how much I care for you and for him. When I recommend that Apollo be certified mission-capable, it means that I know he can fight, and that I’m willing to save him as well and risk my life for him.”
“We’re soldiers, and this is a war. The UNSC is out there in the Orion and Sagittarius Arms, massacring billions of people in a blitzkrieg, and there’s not a single force that can stop them except for us. If Apollo is out there with us, there’s one less chance that someone can stop us. If he sticks at home, the difference of a single person can mean the difference between us uniting with the Elites, or letting the UNSC split us apart and take both us and the Elites down at its leisure, piecemeal.”
“Apollo was one of the best in your HPA Program; he knows when he’s handicapped and when he’s not. If he couldn’t fight, and was just going to drag himself out there at Tamegue’s ruins as a moving target board, I’m pretty damn sure he wouldn’t volunteer to go out there.”
There was a heated silence—Kimberly and Artemis staring at one another, the fire in both of their eyes.
August looked heavily at his wife, while Apollo’s gaze was in the distance.
Artemis said nothing for a long time.
Finally, after minutes, she looked at her boyfriend.
“Is Kim telling the truth? Are you ready?”
“One hundred percent”, said Apollo simply. “I’m all ready to go—today, I tried my hand at the range and I’m still sharp.”
“And your leg?”
“I tried out the shooting house—when we’re in the field, the fentatyl isocyanate keeps me going, even around corners and over the hurdles.”
Artemis looked at Kimberly.
“As it may be that you’re my best friend too, don’t ever try that again.”
“I’m not”, said Kimberly.
Artemis summoned the waiter.
“Corporal, inform Poseidon that we are mission-capable, with one more addition to the strike team. We’re ready to deploy any time.”
They finished their drinks quickly, and then departed to their respective dormitories and armories. The time had come.
 
Master Stroke
UNSC Atlantis, Fourth Fleet Combat Command
Slipspace, en route to Tamegue, 15 Aquarii
Aboard the flagship of the Fourth Fleet, the atmosphere was one of frenzied anticipation as three hundred warships of the UNSC Navy bore down upon the stronghold world of Tamegue in 15 Aquarii, thundering through their last seconds in the extradimensional domain of Slipspace to bring mankind’s retributive stroke to 15 Aquarii—vengeance for hundreds of billions in the Human-Covenant War, decades earlier.
The last acts now of the Galactic War were unfolding with terrible swiftness; the UNSC’s unconstrained blitzkrieg that had assaulted virtually every sector of Covenant space at once, that had led to the downfall of the combined Sangheili battle fleets.
And now, the Fourth Fleet had been given the privilege of the masterful stroke, the coup de grace to the mortally-wounded Covenant war machine.
Admiral Gerald Kingsley, Commander-in-Chief of the Fourth Fleet and Commander-in-Chief of the UNSC Naval Forces Expeditionary Command Perseus, had considered it an honor that the responsibility of executing the Sangheili remnants had been bequested to him and his command.
Kingsley had entrusted three full echelons of the Fourth Fleet—three hundred capital warships—for the battle. From Fleet Intelligence’s detailed reconnaissance surveys of 15 Aquarii, it was known that Tamegue had been underdefended; the UNSC assault would be of a vastly larger order of magnitude than the Covenant could possibly aspire to.
And thus, as the Fourth Fleet Combat Command bore down upon 15 Aquarii, the last preparations for the assault were made in earnest.
“All bulkheads airtight and secure”, confirmed the Engineering officer. “All compartments behind the meridian have been vented to vacuum, and all essential personnel teams are on oxygen respirators.”
Captain Yuen, flag captain of the flagship, called out from his station, “Weapons, what’s the situation with your department?”
“All MAC system coil capacitators are at maximum charge”, confirmed the Fire Control commander. “All missile systems and point-defenses are set on auto-acquisition immediately after reversion.”
“One minute to hot jump!” called out the Navigations officer. “Reading multiple solition waveforms—all task forces are decelerating in the Slipstream, as per orders.”
While in Slipspace, UNSC warships could not communicate to each other—but they had limited detection capabilities in the higher-order dimensional space of Slipspace. Solition waves were indicators of nearby traveling ships in Slipspace that were decelerating; often an indicator of preparation for realspace reversion, or else critical Slipspace drive failure.
Admiral Kingsley hoped it was the former.
Kingsley leaned towards Rear Admiral Barksdale, the fleet intelligence officer, the attaché from ONI Section One.
“Tell me, Barksdale, should be an easy fight?”
Barksdale’s face was tightly controlled. “I’ve found in intelligence work that it is vastly more important to overestimate one’s enemy than to underestimate. Overestimation leads to the usage of excessive force, which almost always is more optimal than underpowered force.”
Kingsley bitterly smiled.
“I think that ‘excessive force’ was what we stuck with this time.”
“Thirty seconds to reversion”, called out Yuen. “Upgrading alert status to Red Two. Flight Ops, rotate Black Squadron and Red Squadron to the hot deck—prepare for immediate fighter sorties after reversion…”
It would be a glorious battle.
Consummate Devotion, Sangheili Combined Fleet of Unmitigated Purpose
Tamegue, 15 Aquarii
Aboard the bridge of the Consummate Devotion, the flagship of the Combined Fleet of Unmitigated Purpose, the intensity was stifling—since the fall of Sanghelios and the other homeworlds scarcely two weeks earlier, Imperial Admiral ‘Holuree and the crews bequested underneath his command had radiated a bloodlust to slay the defiling, treacherous vermin that had taken Sanghelios.
‘Holuree had been prepared to take the Combined Fleet of Unmitigated Purpose to retake Sanghelios when days later, the remainder of the Core Worlds came under assault, each folding underneath the combined might of feral humans and the Jiralhanae within days.
Soon, Tamegue in 15 Aquarii, had been realized as the last bastion of effective resistance for the myriad Sangheili fleets—with the remainder of the major Sangheili shipyards lost in the actions in the Core Worlds, Tamegue was the last to stand.
And crucial if they were to withstand the onslaught to come.
‘Holuree’s command had numbered sixty vessels originally, responsible for fleet operations within 15 Aquarii’s local vicinity in the Sagittarius Arm, and entrusted to reinforce the Core Worlds, should they fall.
It had been ‘Holuree’s failure to respond when Sanghelios come under attack—his fleet was far too distant from the action to even hope to arrive in a timely fashion.
His failure burned at him, incinerated him—and in turn, ‘Holuree’s wrath had been blistering. Throughout the two weeks since Sanghelios’s fall, thirty vessels from various nearby fleets had straggled to join him, their commanders realizing that Tamegue was now the central player on the stage.
But whereas the Sanghelios Defense Fleet had numbered over three hundred vessels under Imperial Admiral ‘Burumee, ‘Holuree’s command now numbered only ninety combat-capable vessels strong. While dozens of warships, whole squadrons, were under manufacture in the womb of Tamegue’s shipyards, it would take months for them to be made.
At the pace that the human animals moved, ‘Holuree doubted that a single Covenant world would still be left standing by then.
The Human-Covenant War had been so protracted because of the lack of knowledge by the Sangheili fleet commanders of the location of the human colony worlds. Intensive reconnaissance campaigns had to be undertaken to find their location, and then to dispatch battle fleets to identified colonies.
In the aftermath of the war, the UNSC Astrophysics Division and the Covenant Astrological Ministry had both undertaken information exchanges to exchange the location of UNSC and Covenant worlds to each other, in support of the new, fragile UNSC-Sangheili political, military, and economic truce and alliance.
UNSC High Command knew the location of every Sangheili world.
It was a bloodbath.
When the Arbiter had arrived at Tamegue, he had chastised ‘Holuree for his failure to reinforce Sanghelios—the womb of Sangheili civilization now in the defiled hands of the Brutes and the humans. The dishonor had been too much to bear.
Even now, the Arbiter strode restlessly aboard the Consummate Devotion’s bridge, awaiting for when the fleet would depart to retake the fallen Covenant colonies around them in the Sagittarius Arm. 
Little did the Arbiter consider the long-term strategy; ‘Holuree knew well that in the mass warfare to come in the endgame of the Galactic War, the UNSC Navy would massacre the underpowered Sangheili fleets, each one separated and lost.
It was only by hanging onto marginal worlds such as Tamegue that the Sangheili could rally and present an effective resistance.
Yet, the UNSC strategy had been inevitable—in the past few days, the human Fourth Fleet and Fifth Fleet had attacked a cordon of colonies surrounding Tamegue, stripping away its defenses and generating a handful of possible staging sites for the inevitable attack.
‘Holuree knew the end was soon—the humans had been maneuvering for days now, blockading in Tamegue from every side in Sagittarius, ensuring that their quarry could not escape.
The Imperial Admiral had no intention of escape.
He knew that he would fight for Tamegue—and die, just like all the Sangheili warriors on Sanghelios. This much was assured.
And when one committed himself to death, he was unafraid of it anymore. ‘Holuree would trade the lives of his auxiliaries, trade his ships one by one, incurring as many casualties amongst the fetid humans as he could—before the humans overran 15 Aquarii. 
In the knowledge of death was a stoic calm. Although simmering rage burned at the humans’ and the Brutes’ treachery, he was prepared to send his fleet to die. But to kill as many human ships as possible; yes, that would be a good death.
When the Marshal of Detection, a Fleet Master entrusted with the defense of 15 Aquarii’s outlying planets and for the Slipspace detectors and recon probes scattered throughout the star system, made a gravid declaration, ‘Holuree knew it was the time.
The Fleet Master approached, and stiffly pressed a clasped hand to his gold-armored chest in salute.
“Lord Admiral, remote brane survey stations report local spacetime disruptions in alternative dimensions. Solition waveforms suggest artificial etiology—we believe that there are warships approaching the outer system perimeter, milord.”
“How many?” asked ‘Holuree.
“We estimate approximately three hundred”, replied the Marshal quietly. “With multiple high-tonnage contacts.”
Three hundred, marveled ‘Holuree. The humans send a host of three hundred to destroy me?
The Arbiter barked, “Then let them come! Their temerity and cowardness is astounding. We shall hold the line for our brethren—Admiral, are the defenses arrayed?”
The battle’s inevitable outcome had already been ascertained.
It was only an idealistic fool, such as the Arbiter, that could believe they could withhold such a large host of enemy vessels.
‘Holuree turned to ‘Jaranee, one of his senior auxiliaries, a Supreme Commander that was the Marshal of Defense.
“Supreme Commander, what of the readiness of our defenses?”
“Surface-based batteries are online”, declared ‘Jaranee. “All orbital platforms report full readiness. All task forces report full readiness.”
‘Holuree felt his blood run cold in his veins, the absolute cold of space—the nothingness, the wantonness.
Yet, he must focus.
He must trade the lives of his auxiliaries for those of his enemies—outnumbered over one to three, he must still fight well enough to uphold the honor of the Sangheili that had perished in the Core Worlds. 
He had to fight.
“All crews to combat departments”, ‘Holuree said over the defense network, his throat constricting as he said the words. “I am declaring the Jabberwocky Condition. Enemy vessels have been detected in the local Calabi-Yau boundary. All commands, report readiness and prepare to acquire targets.”
UNSC Atlantis, Fourth Fleet Combat Command
Tamegue, 15 Aquarii
The reversion was akin to a meteor knifing into the sea—brilliant cascades of energy as the extradimensional space compressed to the three familiar dimensions of realspace, the sudden kinetic tremor of the hot jump.
A “hot jump”—a Slipspace jump into enemy territory, was the most dangerous mass naval maneuver possible. For even though one might have reconnaissance elements stationed in the target zone, it was impossible for them to communicate to the ships as they transited through Slipspace.
Emerging from Slipspace was plunging through the morbid veil of death—a sickening dread to see what laid behind, if an enemy cohort was waiting to slaughter them as they jumped through.
Voices competed for attention in the immediate wake of the reversion, the mission clock counting from the milliseconds to the first few seconds, in which anything could happen.
“All batteries are on automatic acquisition!”
“First squadrons are launching now—”
“Where are they?”, demanded Kingsley, “Where are those Elite ships?”
It was the critical question.
The sensors officer replied quickly, his voice high-pitched as dozens of incoming reports came in, “Local airspace is secure! We are clear to a four hundred kilometer radius.”
It was a relief—the Sangheili had not forward-deployed their forces to slaughter the UNSC ships as they had jumped in. The securing of the surrounding colonies by the Fourth and Fifth Fleets had ensured too many potential hot jump vectors for the Tamegue Navy to secure; they’d have to have diluted their force across dozens of reversion points across the system.
The communications officer called out, “Sir, incoming transmission from Fleet Intelligence. The prowler squadron commander reports eighty-eight enemy core vessels, locked in orbit at the two-twenty ecliptic. Enemy patrol groups are at extreme range at the system perimeter.”
Kingsley nodded grimly. The enemy commander had decided, instead of a more creative battle plan, to simply commit his ships to a mass battle that would depend on the number of warships, the skills of the gunnery crews, and skills of the fighter pilots.
The three-to-one odds would ensure that this would be a slaughter.
A tactical plot of the two distant fleets appeared on the central display; Kingsley examined the enemy crimson wireframes with interest. It appeared that the ninety-odd Covenant vessels were primarily organized around six main carrier battle groups, supplemented by cruisers and destroyers.
A moment later, the knot of enemy vessels unfurled, a kaleidoscopic explosion in which the aggregates of Covenant warships began to disperse, taking up more strategically-advantageous positions—they were forming an arc, attempting to flank the Fourth Fleet as it rushed in, and to gain better fields of fire.
Kingsley breathed hard. It appeared that the Elite senior commander was not as ill-prepared as he thought—by scattering his task forces along the ecliptic, it meant that each force would receive extensive joint arms fire from dedicated, spatially-separated orbital defense platforms and surface-based batteries, and assaulting each enemy position would be costly. 
“Navigations, at flank speed, how long will it take to intersect with the enemy formation?”
“Thirteen minutes to contact the enemy peripheral positions, fourteen minutes to contact the enemy core formation.”
“Alright, Fleet Ops, transmit to all commands to continue on course one-eight-five at one-half speed. Fighter Ops, I want fleet-wide fighter launches—interceptor screens for all carriers, and prepare alpha strikes against enemy cruisers. Battle Management, begin calculating threat indexes for each Covenant warship, and feed fire missions to batteries and the bomber wings.”
The acknowledgements came fast, and steady stream of “Sir”, “Sir”, “Sir”—
“Fleet Ops, bring us into phalanx formation, with Alpha, Bravo, Delta, and Kilo Groups heading the line. Bring us into an array; let’s show the Elites our full strength. Meanwhile, Fleet Intel, let’s sortie our prowlers—move them to generate mine fields around the formations. Special Warfare, let’s roll out the BQ3 Specters—we’ll soften up their lines and then move in.”
Honor Bound
Jian (formerly Profiteer)
Slipspace, en route to Tamegue, 15 Aquarii 
“One minute to reversion”, crisply reported Elaine from the Navigations Station.
Wellesley shot Simon an inflamed look, his face twisted with outrage at how the traitorous SPARTAN-III had managed to jack his ship after Beyond Veil’s Azure, and then had run tens of thousands of light-years away with it.
“Thank you, Navigations”, replied Admiral Evelyn Lake from the “hot seat”, the command chair that had been installed upon the Jian after it had become evident that ex-UNSC flag officers would be commanding the vessel, instead of either Simon nor Wellesley.
“All stations, prepare for imminent attack”, said Lake.
“Electronic countermeasures are online”, reported Thoreau. “Reconnaissance optics are also operational.”
“Weapons are good to go”, said Chandler.
Son looked back at the rear compartment, where the assorted soldiers of the surface team were readying.
“Tactical team, what’s going on back where?”
“This is Huntress One, online and secure”, said Artemis clearly, for the record.
“Patriot One is standing by for insertion”, reported Kimberly.
“Banshee One is online”, said Esther calmly. “We’re good to go.”
“This is Warrior One, ready to rock”, affirmed Wellesley.
Their callsigns and call words were all deliberately chosen—“Huntress” was a reference the basis of Artemis’s name, the Greek goddess of hunting. “Patriot” was a reference to the ONI/Acumen research program that had led to Kimberly’s birth. “Banshee” was a reference to Esther’s notorious SPARTAN-III unit, Dusk Team, that had ended the Memory War. “Warrior” was a reference to Wellesley’s rakishly aggressive personality and the masochistic styles of his mercenary friends.
“Affirmative”, said Son. “I read the ground component as operational. Standby for reversion.”
* * *
In the troop compartment, Artemis and Apollo stood closely together, oblivious to the commotion around them of the rest of the ground team.
Apollo’s eyes followed the curvature of Artemis’s body, lingering upon her skintight black environmental suit.
“That’s pretty hot”, he whispered softly. “I like it.”
Artemis, despite her gravity, found herself unable to resist a small smile, and her viridian eyes glistened with delight.
“Love you too”, she said, and she took him by the neck, pinning him against the wall, and kissed him firmly.
* * *
Commander Esther-G071 rallied her compatriots in Banshee Team around her, gathering them to be subjected to a final equipment check.
“SPI Mark III integrity”, she called out.
“Affirmative”, they called out.
“Primary firearm. Backup firearm.”
“Check.”
“Atmospheric reserves. Suit countermeasures.”
“Check”, came the reply.
“Where’s my sniper?”
“Here, Commander”, replied Senior Chief Petty Officer Konrad-G317.
“Med-spec, what’s your status?”
“Banshee Six, online”, said Chief Petty Officer Rachael-G025.
“Demolitions.”
“I’m here”, confirmed Senior Chief Petty Officer Jennifer-G272.
“Rifles, how’s it looking?”
“Looking sharp, ma’am”, replied the riflemen—Commander Cassidy and Senior Chief Whitney.
“Good to hear, Banshees. Get ready to drop.” 
* * *
“Five—four—three—”
“Sensors, get ready to track the Fourth’s ships—” ordered Lake.
“Two—one—”
A kaleidoscopic blur of color, then a steady reverberation that resonated throughout the ship; the violent shearing of reality as the nimble Jian flitted through the ethereal extradimensional realm of Slipspace to the three-dimensional capacity of 15 Aquarii. The shock dampeners whined in electronic protest as radiation and static bathed them, the capacitators struggling to confine the extradimensional energies before they could incinerate the vessel.
And then, with fleeting glimpses of vibrant color, Slipspace faded to reveal a world of fire---
Space was afire. Its very substance was alit with crimson contrails, bloodshot velvet blooms of fire. Across five hundred million kilometers, exchanges of plasma and light illuminated a decadent world of darkness underneath. The starry host fled their thrones, a thousand brilliant meteors swept from the heavens, etching smoky vanes as they re-entered Tamegue’s atmosphere.
It was the very vision of ragnarok. The very fabric of space was asunder with fire and thunder.
Lake shouted by impulse, “Thoreau, what the hell is this shit?”
Thoreau’s fingers danced across his arrayed symphony of alphanumeric keyboards.
“Electronic countermeasures online. We’re running silent. Reconnaissance package engaged.”
Simon leaned forward, his eyes intent on the vibrant portents of danger visualizing on the reconnaissance plot, his worry deepening with each new radar return.
“Tracking three hundred and twelve capital ships in local space”, reported Thoreau tersely. “IFF tags read as: three hundred and nine vessels of the UNSC Fourth Fleet Combat Command. Three vessels of the Combined Fleet of Unmitigated Purpose.”
The proclamation was astounding; Simon’s face was petrified, his eyes fusing to the tactical plot.
“Holy fuck”, he whispered, unable to tear his eyes away.
Evelyn barked, “Thoreau, what vectors are the Fourth engaged in? Where are they?”
“Enemy battle groups are concentrated at all vectors across the ecliptic”, reported Thoreau. “Observing heavy weapons fire—they’re bombarding the planet. Several task forces are on out-system vectors, pursuing the retreating Sangheili ships.”
“Fuck!” exclaimed Hayes. “They’re slagging Tamegue? What the hell happened to the shipyards?”
Thoreau observed the displays grimly. “No signs of resistance. I’m reading Navy and Marine transponder signals crawling all over the orbital yards—they must have dropped jump troops on them and captured them intact.”
Kawika said stonily, his voice grave, “We already accepted that the Sangheili fleets could never hold their own against the Fourth at Tamegue. The shipyards, and all of Tamegue’s infrastructure and population centers, are a lost cause. With only forty operatives onboard, we don’t have the firepower, nor the time, to save any of it. People, we’re here only for one purpose—to find any Sangheili high commanders with the ability to treatise with us. We need to stay focused, or we’re going to be as dead as Tamegue.”
Lake nodded bitterly.
“Thoreau, are you sure our ECM is green-lit?”
“Aye, Admiral. Photoreactive countermeasures are online. Dielectric integrity has not been compromised. Active countermeasure package has been engaged. We are clear of UNSC target acquisition radar network range.”
Lake turned to Son, her face cross with displeasure.
“Kawika, if they see through our cloak for only a second, they have enough ships to blow us out of the sky a thousand times over. 15 Aquarii is a hot zone.”
Son turned to Hayes, Thoreau, and Lujayne.
“Begin the broadband acquisition. Scan all the listed and unlisted Sangheili military and civilian channels, and also look for one-time tactical channels with unusual communication patterns. Engage the ONI wetware and look for the jackpot. I want names and positions of any remaining Sangheili resistance.”
The first hit came up in seconds.
“Putting it on intercom”, said Hayes.
“This is Supreme Commander ‘Jaranee, Acting Viscount of Defense, Sangheili Combined Fleet of Unmitigated Surface. Under the power of my station and office, I am declaring the Ragnarok Condition. Hereby, I order all military units still capable of maneuver to withdraw into unpopulated areas. All remaining civilian populations will similarly follow and withdraw from enemy fires and await planetary mass evacuation.”
There were two quick clicks, and Hayes ended it.
“It’s on a loop”, said the former Director of Fleet Intelligence.
Son motioned to an expansive three-dimensional scaled model of Tamegue, with major population centers labeled, as well as major geographical features.
“What’s the origin of the signal?”
“Triangulation reveals that the distress call is being cycled across approximately a hundred distributed civil defense broadcasters, scattered as per Probability Model Kappa across Tamegue’s surface. The radio stations correspond to known militia bases in the forests. UNSC forces are hunting down and shutting down the stations one by one.”
“Fuck”, breathed Kawika. “This ‘Jaranee is smart; by cycling the transmission through a number of hot spots, he’s diverting the Fourth Fleet’s attention away from the cities, buying some time for the civilians to escape. But defending Tamegue couldn’t possibly have been a Supreme Commander-level naval command. Where’s the Imperial Admiral that was the defense coordinator?”
Thoreau shook his head.
“The first probe iteration can’t find any hit on any Imperial Admiral’s communications. He must have been taken out in the orbital battle.”
“Alright. Are there any other Supreme Commanders transmitting, besides ‘Jaranee?”
Elaine shook her head. “Negative. The first iteration came up only with ‘Jaranee. No communications being transmitted by Fleet Masters on the naval frequencies; the bulk of them are probably dead. The ONI software picks up several hundred Field Masters transmitting on the surface.”
“The Fourth Fleet’s orbital fire is concentrating on the communications stations as well as the origin of the Field Masters’ signals”, said Thoreau. “They must have active SIGINT capabilities like us, and they’re picking off any senior Sangheili ground commanders off one by one just by tracking their signals.”
Kawika exhaled heavily. “Tamegue was the last major concentration of Sangheili commanders—we need to find one of them, and organize a fucking resistance in Covenant space with one of them. A Field Master’s no good. With the death of probably all the Imperial Admirals with the fall of the Core Worlds, this Supreme Commander might be one of our last possible leads.”
It went unsaid that if the rebels had acted even days earlier, they could have reached Tamegue, unmarred, even organized a combined orbital and surface action that could have taken a heavy toll on the Fourth and evacuated a major proportion of Tamegue’s civilians.
Lake replied uneasily, “Well, how the hell do we track him? We have no idea how long this message has been transmitting—he might have broadcast it hours ago right before his death. We don’t even know if he’s still alive.”
“Let’s figure it out”, said Kawika slowly. “Thoreau, can we have an analysis of the UNSC and Sangheili force concentrations on the main display?”
A moment later, the plasma display flared to life.
A translucent, irregular crimson ring stretched across Tamegue’s ecliptic plane in low orbit; nearly three hundred ships from the Fourth Fleet, bleeding MAC rounds and massed missile fire into the shattered planet below. The major population centers glowed a brilliant maroon, the color of shed blood—they, along with the remaining planetary communications sites, were being desolated by the orbital bombardment, with tens of thousands of profuse contrails connecting them with the orbiting UNSC warships.
It was a sight that was all too familiar with Kawika and the other Human-Covenant War veterans—the UNSC was exacting revenge for the atrocities decades ago; as the Covenant had glassed nearly a hundred human worlds, now, the UNSC was slaughtering whole worlds by blanket bombardment as well.
It had begun with Dashan.
And now, it was ending with the utter desolation of yet another world, far away—Tamegue.
Thoreau jabbed his finger at several points on Tamegue’s surface, the display rippling at his touch. “The Fourth is methodically performing the Abbadon Contingency; first, military installations and major population centers, second, communications hubs and logistical hubs, and so on. They took all the major surfaceside Sangheili military bases awhile ago and are working on the cities and the communications stations.”
“Signal analysis and decryption reveals that the Field Masters still capable of resistance are leading their contingents away from the destroyed bases and cities and deep into the deserts or forests. With ‘Jaranee’s message, they know that resisting the UNSC outright would be a massacre. Instead, they must be getting ready to stage a guerilla war.”
“It won’t work”, said Hayes flatly. “The UNSC’s signal intelligence capabilities virtually guarantee that the Navy has a list of their locations right now.”
“If you were still in SOCOM, how would you take care of these Field Masters and their battalions?” asked Lake.
Hayes laughed, and it was a macabre chuckle. “There’s no need to even send in ground troops. Simply send in some unmanned recon drones to confirm where the Sangheili battalions are, then call in an air strike with massed bombers and fighters until there’s nothing life. Rise and repeat.”
“These Field Masters don’t even have a chance of holding out for a few hours”, murmured Evelyn.
“Keep on track”, snapped Kawika. “We need to think of 
 
	
Close Encounter of a Violent Kind
Jian (formerly Profiteer)
Tamegue Low Orbit, 15 Aquarii System
Aboard the Jian, the restlessness, the helplessness—was paralyzing. Together, the flag officers, along with the brooding Simon, were powerless to intervene as they heard the frenetic stutter of weapons fire and hoarse shouts over the tactical network as the ground team was being torn apart in the maelstrom that was disintegrating the Panor Estate.
“Wellesley, where the hell are your shooters? We need to lock that fucking stairwell, over.”
“Jesus Christ, Artemis, I’ve trying to get over there with my men—”
“Banshee One, bring your team to six-four by one-five and provide perimeter security on that kill box, over.”
“Fuck! He’s hit—he’s hit! Jesus, he’s bleeding like crazy, I can’t stop this shit—”
“Cassandra, are you just going to stand there and watch him die? Get your ass out of cover, now!”
“Patriot One here, secure. We’ve swept the docking levels—no one’s alive.”
“Copy that, Kimberly. Extract Artemis’s team from seven-nine by three-four on the upper floor.”
“This is Warrior One—I have a shit ton of casualties over here. Where are those goddamn medics?”
Kawika closed his eyes, unable to withstand the litany of death as here they sat, a thousand kilometers above the strife and the blood, simply tallying the wounded and dead as the fighters screamed for relief down below.
Nowhere aboard the vessel was the pressure as intense as in the Signals Intelligence (SIGINT)/Cryptography department, where Thoreau and Lujayne were bent over the holographic consoles and banks of high-end intercept equipment, every minute a month on their lives as they incinerating, immolating themselves as they conducted a frenzied and increasingly-haphazard series of coupled intercepts and decryptions, sifting through hundreds of thousands of UNSC, Covenant, and Resistance transmissions, attempting to uncover a plankton within an entire vast sea; for the ground team would be torn asunder until they could find the Sangheili commanders, immersed in a sea of fire as the ex-ONI officers desperately scrambled for the intercept patterns, to relieve them as they struggled to withstand the UNSCSOCOM onslaught and to search the estate for clues.
When Thoreau found it, he screamed loudly throughout the bridge.
“Putting it on the general circuit!”
The transmission was raspy, its amplitude weakened by the magnetosphere and distance, the voice androgynous through successive rounds of encryption and decryption, the identity rendered anonymous to the eavesdroppers. 
“All legions, the Supreme Commander brings forth an urgent plea for assistance. The enemy tides have broken through the Citadel, and are molesting it uncontested. Rally your warriors at the Sanctum of the Hierarchs at the highest echelons—for there, the Arbiter makes our last stand.”
Kawika immediately seized the long-range communicator in his fumbling hands.
“Artemis, we’ve found him. The Sanctum of the Hierarchs—at the top floor. The Arbiter and the Supreme Commander are drawing a defensive perimeter there. Get them the hell out of there. We’re de-orbiting to pick your team up ASAP.”
Static punctuated the line, then Artemis replied tersely, “Huntress One here. We’re on the way.”
Patriarch Levels, Estate of the Panor Clan
Tamegue, 15 Aquarii System
Dissonant exchanges of coherent light and fire lacerated the darkness, reciprocations of gunfire chattering as dim figures deftly maneuvered in the artificial night, moving under the cover of both darkness and blood.
The Estate of the Panor Clan—the ancestral halls of the current Arbiter and his sired lineage—was fast degenerating; the UNSC special forces had first seized a small footstep upon the citadel, then, like a gangrene, had manifested throughout the fortress, metastizing, maneuvering lode to lode, each strike and advance decisive and lethal.
Thousands of corpses—human and Covenant alike—adorned the sacrosanct halls where the Sangheili hierarchs had once strode. As armor-piercing rounds ricocheted through millennia-old heirlooms and plasma bolts seared through the tapestries that had tracked the ancestry of the clan throughout the Seven Ages, the very estate shuddered in primordial rage, tremoring in fury. Infidel humans surging through the Keep—heresy of the highest order.
The fighting was cutthroat and remorseless; in the darkness, bands of warriors randomly dashed from position to position, angular lines of fire splaying throughout the room like fractal formations, for how profuse they were. Occasionally, blood-strewn corpses were found, laying at odd angles against the floor or the furniture. 
It was intense—close quarters combat, coupled with the lack of lighting, made each nearby rifle shot like a thunderclap. Units randomly abandoned positions and executed flanking manuevers and frontal assaults, throwing all strategy to the abyss—going straight to the enemy’s throat. A direct line from patriotism to blood lust and hatred. There was no strategy nor elegance to be found; only death in the Panor Estate.
In the midst of the firestorm were the intrepid commandoes of Mako Three-Three. 
In the artificial eclipse, their very visages were fearsome—they had long, sleek bodies with the dull wicked gleam of polished metal, with articulation points gleaming with crimson, the color of arterial blood—they were bloodshot specters that bolted throughout the scene, taking life with every bound and move.
Nearby plasma fire splashed around her, forcing Commander Elizabeth-M390 to flatten herself against the deck, watching as automatic fire sounded nearby her, scoring lethal hits on her assailant.
Effortlessly, she recovered in a tight roll, spraying occasional shots at the distant barricade, dashing for her refuge—an overturned insectine supply crate, where one of her soldiers was huddled; Chief Petty Officer Meredith-M307, the squad chief of one of her company’s nine subordinate squads.
“What the hell is going on?” she shouted hoarsely, struggling to be heard over the din of rifles and plasma.
A nearby rocket launcher thundered, twisting a knife of smoky fire into the distance that exploded a millisecond later, with a titanic explosion shredding the distant barricade asunder, carelessly tossing Sangheili and Unggoy bodies across the chamber as the overpressure shockwave hit them.
Meredith tossed away the used launcher, the missile tubes expended.
The Chief Petty Officer jabbed a gloved finger at the distance, where a handful of Covenant survivors were huddled, being suppressed on all vectors by a team of Myrmidon encroached in the darkness.
“Ma’am, I report that all Third Platoon elements are advancing to the upper floors.”
The remaining Myrmidons acted as a single cohort, bound by mind and spirit—wordlessly, they converged on the survivors, a dark mass tearing free from the midnight black. One Sangheili jabbed his head above the barricade, but it was too late—a moment later, a rain cloud of Myrmidons burst on the remaining survivors huddling under the barricade, and there was the dull sound of knifes hitting flesh and the anguished screams of the dying as they were submerged by the armored soldiers.
There was a shout from behind them, and instinctively, both of them sought cover, raising their carbines to track the running figure striding through the demolished chamber.
Meredith had her finger on her trigger guard when Elizabeth’s jaw froze.
“Jesus Christ, is that—?”
The grey-armored running figure waved a hand, shouting loudly, “Commander? Commander?”
Quickly, underneath cover, Elizabeth dragged the soldier underneath the crate, throwing him against the floor.
The soldier’s eyes widened briefly in fear, then he made out and recognized the terrible visage before him, and realized he was in friendly hands.
“Commander? Is that you?”
As the remaining members of the squad advanced forward, Elizabeth snapped furiously, “Get a hold of yourself, Freeman. This is a combat zone! Get yourself secured and out of this killbox.”
The ONI lieutenant recoiled, unused to the venomous reprimand.
“Ma’am, I bring urgent news from the front. Theater Command—”
Elizabeth shook her head furiously, and turned to Meredith, waving her forward, where the rest of the squad was again locked in the dance of plasma and gunfire. “Let’s move out, Chief.”
Agent Freeman protested, “Commander, Theater Command has revised directives for you. CID has a probable fix on the Arbiter’s location.”
That made her turn.
Combat Intelligence Division (CID) was one of the two UNSC Special Operations Command units under the direct control of the Office of Naval Intelligence, the other being the SPARTAN Program. Combat Intelligence was unique in that it was not a front-line combat unit, like most of the UNSC’s special forces—instead, it was a mobile field intelligence group, conducting signals intelligence and other forms of special intelligence in support of other UNSC special operations forces.
“Combat Intelligence has a location on the Arbiter?”
Freeman bobbed his head. “Aye, Commander. We just intercepted a communiqué on the enemy command channel—all units throughout the citadel are falling back to reinforce the Arbiter at the upper floor, in the Sanctum of the Hierarchs.”
CHAPTER ONE
COUNTERFORCE PROTOCOL
Sacrosanct Revenant, Combined Fleet of Unmitigated Purpose 
Absolution Court, Tau Capricorni System
In the beginning, there were the stars—a trillion of the divine host, scattered upon a tapestry of darkness. Each star left companionless, desolate, each only a lonely, kindling fire in a stellar chandelier of galactic proportions, each individual coruscation a particulate point upon the prolific smear of stars that was the Milky Way Galaxy.
Now, one by one, they receded, their lights fading, the smear of galactic fire fading, its incandescence waxing as some darkness moved throughout the starry host, blotting out their light, a slithering black hue that eclipsed the stars.
As it passaged throughout the galactic corona, the light of harlequin stars illuminated its width and depth—it was an unnatural force, a supernatural leviathan of amethyst that slowly transversed the space between the stars. Its edges gleamed with cerulean fire, jaws overflowing with amber light and glistening viridian.
It approached the star of Tau Capriconi, a bulbous tangerine sphere, radiating with fiery prominences, and aligned its bow with the distant star—an arrowhead of war, its full force directed at its target.
“Rebel Command, this is Sierra Romeo, holding at ecliptic twenty-ten at the comet shield, over. Requesting clearance for passage.”
“Sacrosanct Revenant, this is Tau Capricorni HQ. It’s good to see you again. Come on in. The Admiral sends his regards and requests an immediate meeting aboard your vessel once you’re secured and rearmed.”
“Affirmative, Tau Capricorni. Sierra Romeo is on an inbound vector, one-half flank speed. Anticipate in-system rendezvous in fourteen hours. The Supreme Commander also sends his regards, and is readying the chambers for the Admiral’s party to come aboard.”
“Roger, Sacrosanct Revenant. We’ll alert the patrol to escort you in. Out.”
* * *
There was a colossal shudder that reverberated throughout the Jian’s hull, and a moment later, a rebel pilot reported from the cockpit, “Admiral, we’re secure.”
Simon, clad in his SPI Mark III armor but unhelmeted, stood uneasily with his arms crossed next to the cockpit, his usual lachrymose temperament made bitter by the Admiral’s insistence that rebel pilots begin practicing flying the Jian. 
In the center carousel section of the Jian, Admiral Kawika Son (Ret.), Former Commander-in-Chief, UNSC Naval Special Warfare Command, resplendent in his black dress blacks, his jacket embroidered with golden epaulets and campaign ribbons, his command cap bearing the honorable crossed sword and anchor, replied, “Thank you, Lieutenant. You’ve done a fine job.”
The pilot blushed with the compliment, and hit a control on his console, and with a pneumatized hiss, the gangway fell loose from the Jian’s underside.
“You’re clear, sir.”
Son nodded and turned to both sides, gathering his retinue. His flag officers—Admiral Evelyn Lake (Former Commander-in-Chief, UNSC Fleet Command), Admiral Peter Thoreau (Former Director of UNSC Fleet Intelligence), Admiral Elaine Lujayne (Former Director of UNSC Special Intelligence, Section Three), and Vice Admirals Chandler Danial and Randall Hayes (Former Deputy Commanders of Operation, Naval Special Warfare Command). 
His staff officers—Captain Artemis (“Agent 2995”) of the High-Priority Assassination Program, and Commander Esther-G071, Commander Cassidy-G134, Lieutenant Commander Simon-G294, and Lieutenant Cassandra-G006, of SPARTAN-III Gamma Company.
And his senior enlisted advisors—Master Chief Kimberly Ivy Blackburn, Senior Chief Whitney-G179, Senior Chief Jennifer-G272, Senior Chiefs Apollo (“Agent 2994”) and Perseus (“Agent 2042”) of the High-Priority Assassination Program, and Petty Officer Redmond-M094 of the Myrmidon Program.
And his aides—David Wellesley, Major Stryker, and James Stockert.
For all save three, they all bore grave dress blacks—embroidered vests adorned with valorous decorations and ribbons from dozens of years of UNSC service, complete with gold buttons running down their sleeves and for most of them, the fierce sword-and-anchor of Naval Special Warfare Command—the antithesis to those who would threaten galactic peace.
Simon, instead, in gross violation of dress code, instead wore his SPI Mark III armor—the second skin that he clung to, his blanket of refuge when the bullets started flying. He had also blatantly refused to wear the dress uniform of the galactic military that had dishonored, forsaken him, twisting him from orphan to the cruel implement of death that he was today. Redmond, in confusion as to his mentor’s dress choices, also had decided to don the implacable RACE exoskeleton of the Myrmidons.
Wellesley was also another rebel in the band of rebels, instead wearing his trademark vest, with a neat carbonized hole in the center—where he’d shot the previous owner of the vest and taken it from. His clothing of choice was dictated by the fact that he had never stepped foot into the UNSC’s military corps. Yet, even he had submitted to some of Son’s overtures, begrudgingly wearing a pair of dress pants and also the eagle device of a lieutenant colonel, his provisionary rank in the rebel forces.
Son glanced at Simon’s poor choice of attire, and then gathered his officers and attendants, and as a three-abreasted column with him at the fore, they stepped down the gangplank into the cavernous hangar bay of the Sacrosanct Revenant. As they strode down from the hull of the Jian, they were immediately framed by brilliant coral light, their figures gleaming with viridian auras.
The sight that beheld them was fantastic—the entire chamber, one of fantastic proportions, whose ceiling was raised far beyond their sight, its sides glistening with liquid light—had been segregated by three titanic columns, each comprised of representatives from each of the three branches of the Covenant military; the Covenant Fleet, the Covenant Army, and the Covenant Intelligence Service.
It was a display of prodigious strength—each column, stretching throughout the entire length of the hangar, was an infinitude of creatures; each must have been comprised of hundreds or thousands of fully-armored Covenant officers and soldiers, standing at full attention.
Each column was a regimented formation, its length running with cyan-armored Sangheili warriors, each detachment with a scarlet-armored Major at its fore, and at the very front of each column, closest to the Jian’s landing spot and Son’s delegation, was a knot of officers at the highest echelons, with a cluster of gold-armored and pearl-armored senior commanders.
Banshees flitted back and forth above them, restless wardens.
As they had marched down the gangplank, a cohort of armored Sangheili officers had approached the gangplank, matching step for step.
Son’s eyes ran over the approaching delegation—a small cluster of Field Masters and Fleet Masters from each branch of service, led by a pearlescently-armored officer with numerous valor markings—the flag captain of the Sacrosanct Revenant and her task force.
His voice was thunder—its peals rolled across the room.
The commander drew himself at attention before Son with angular, loping steps, and snapped his fist to his breastplate, shouting, “Hail, Kawika, Family of Son, Admiral of the Fleet!”
His call was echoed in perfect unison by the thousands of aggregated warriors—“We hail!”
Son paused momentarily before the rigid Sangheili commander, his prepared greeting now somehow out-of-place. He’d asked the Arbiter and the Supreme Commander for a staff meeting, not an imperial reception.
He coughed, and raised his voice as loudly as he could. “Hail, O Mighty Arbiter, Sword of the Covenant! Hail, ‘Janoree, Master of the Combined Fleet!”
Kawika tried to turn to ask either Lake or Lujayne for protocol, but before he could, as one, the entire chamber of Covenant warriors bent on a knee, kneeling in unison, even the highest fleet commanders.
With the entire cohort bending on a knee, he saw at the very distal end of the hangar was the Arbiter and the Supreme Commander, flanked by staff-bearing Honor Guards.
Kawika cursed himself. Next time I want a meeting, I’m going to have it surfaceside in the Situation Room.
Improvising on what to do, Kawika boldly strode through the hangar, maneuvering through the conduit provided by the kneeling Covenant officers. Behind him tentatively followed the rest of his officers.
It was a long minute’s walk, illuminated by the aurora’s lights, with the Banshees careening overhead in formation, his footsteps and the Banshees’ engines the only sound within the massively-populated hangar.
At last when he reached both the Supreme Commander and the Arbiter, he bent close to the amethyst-robed Supreme Commander, muttering furiously, “This was unnecessary.”
The Supreme Commander turned to whisper a conspiratorial reply, but the Arbiter impatiently gestured to the gravity lifts. “Come. Our time is short.”
With his staff fully seated in the Chambers of Allegiance on the uppermost echelon of the carrier, Son reclined in his seat—a massive beryl throne made in the likeliness of a Prophet’s own, a seat meant for a senior commander of the Covenant Fleet.
Likewise, across the room and a massive holographic simacrulum of the galaxy, sat the Arbiter and the Supreme Commander, their senior aides recalled from the massive parade formation in the hangar bay downstairs.
Son began.
“Arbiter, Supreme Commander—” he began, addressing his two Covenant counterparts, “I’ve come to propose a sortie for our combined forces.”
The Arbiter leaned forward, the glyphs of his austere armor burning under the chamber’s intense illumination, “Yes, I would hear this.”
Son took that as a sign of encouragement, and leaned from his seat, his finger lightly tapping one of the myriad stars projected from the ceiling.
The star unfolded into pictures and complimentary panels of scrolling text, and when it unfurled, almost everyone was soundly amazed.
The Supreme Commander too leaned forward, his eyes closely inspecting the bottled orb now slowly rotating on the projector.
“47 Ursae Majoris”, he read off of the display. The Sangheili stared at Kawika in the eye. “You seek to attack Asphodel Meadows?”
Kawika nodded confidently.
“If I may—why?” 
The admiral nodded graciously. “Of course, Supreme Commander. Asphodel Meadows is a major UNSC colony in the Middle Rim, and is home to the Office of Naval Intelligence. Almost all ONI departments and operations are run from Asphodel Meadows—Fleet Intelligence, Strategic Intelligence, Section Three, Weapons Development, even the Myrmidons. An attack on ONI Headquarters at Asphodel Meadows would disrupt ONI operations across the galaxy.”
A Sangheili Fleet Master exclaimed, “You want to invade Asphodel Meadows?”
Lujayne, the former Director of ONI Section Three, said diplomatically, “Asphodel Meadow’s defenses are admittedly considerable. An entire battle group of the Second Fleet is stationed in orbit, combined with several Super MAC platforms in geosynchronous orbit over major population centers.”
Son rose a hand.
“Commanders, I am proposing to attack Asphodel Meadows, not to occupy it. At Pearl Harbor, the Japanese didn’t take Hawaii, but instead took most of U.S. naval strength offline. Much in the same way, I intend for a swift, knock-out punch to decapitate ONI at Asphodel Meadows.”
The reference was completely lost to all of the Covenant fleet officers.
Lake explained quickly, “Much as how the first wave at the Battle of Reach was intended to suffer minimal casualties just to quickly land Covenant armies on the surface to take out the power generators—in the same way, the Admiral hopes to sortie a swift and bloodless action to quickly knock out ONI Command, then run from the system.”
To that comment, the Supreme Commander actually leaned forward with quite some interest in his amphibian eyes.
“You seek to begin to undo Naval Intelligence then?”
Son compressed his lips together thinly for a moment.
“Yes, Supreme Commander. Naval Intelligence and UNSCSOCOM are the only two forces in the UNSC capable of deterring us. Removing ONI, even for a few weeks, would be… substantial.”
Thoreau added, “Disabling Fleet Intelligence would allow us to move our fleets in the Perseus Arm unmolested, to reposition our naval forces and construct new bases and shipyards along the Outer Rim. Section One’s prowlers are the only things that prevent us from expanding now, as we should.”
The Arbiter’s tones were gravelly.
“We bring war to our enemy’s doorstep with this assault—the humans are made of countless fearful creatures that seek strength only in their protection. Striking this human world would put fear into every fetid human, force the aggressor to withdraw some of their fleets.”
His jaws quivered, his anticipation unconcealed, his fierce anger stirring within him.
“It was human intelligence that plotted Sanghelio’s downfall for years—their treachery must be returned with fire!”
Roars rose from a majority of the gathered Sangheili officers.
The Supreme Commander, however, was more pragmatic.
“Assuming that only one battle group of the Second Fleet is above Asphodel Meadows, that leaves sixty human warships, as well as however many orbital cannons, surface-based cannons, and surface-based naval forces they have.”
Lake supplied, “Eight Orbital MAC Platforms, supplemented with two perimeter rings of nuclear mines and three fighter wings stationed at various covert hangars on the surface.”
‘Panoramee was astounded.
“We have scarcely a hundred vessels competent for battle. With the superior warships of the human, ship-for-ship we are barely even for the human warships stationed in orbit. However, the amassed firepower of eight orbital cannons—they could decimate half of our fleet by themselves.”
To that, amazingly, Perseus smiled.
“Supreme Commander, the orbital cannons are of no concern. If your ships can outfight the Second Fleet, then that’s the only thing we need to be concerned about.”
The Sangheili stared at the ex-HPA agent for a moment, then turned back to Son.
“Even if what your specialist says is true, our forces can scarcely contest the human fleets.” He turned to Evelyn. “You know better than I of how superior human warships are than our own! And even if we could outfight the human ships, we would not be strong enough to raze the buildings you seek on the surface.”
Thoreau cleared his throat.
“Supreme Commander, I took the liberty to considering some alternative tactics. Do you have officers well-versed in logistics?”
A gold-armored Sangheili officer stood from near the back of the room.
“I am Lotha ‘Uremee, Logistics Master of the Combined Fleet of Unmitigated Purpose. I serve as the Supreme Commander’s auxiliary in logistics and resupply.”
Thoreau nodded.
“Thank you, Master ‘Uremee. Would you happen to have the capability of mining in deep space?”
The Fleet Master nodded, as if it was beneath him. “Of course”, he declared pretentiously. “I can extract resources from passing asteroids or planets to sustain our fleets.”
Thoreau smiled brilliantly, and then turned back to address the entire chamber.
“Then it looks like we have a plan.”
* * *
Tau Capricorni
She curled there in the foamy wash, body still, her eyes lost over the multicolored waters of Tau Capricorni’s oceans, staring into the yonder reaches of the sea as the starlight played over the waters, eyes vacant, body cold, her spirit somewhere, lost faraway from her mortal shell.
And as Artemis drew closer, breathless, chest heaving from her recent two hour’s run, she threw away the scanner package in her hands, and stilled herself, attempting to center herself.
Kimberly had heard Artemis approach long before, yet her glassine eyes were still directed to the distance, as if attempting to ascertain some galactic truth from the shifting floral colors of the ocean that laid before her.
Artemis said nothing, simply collapsing to her knees beside her friend, enfolding her in a tight, warm cold, tucking her head on her clammy, cold shoulder, the riverine tears glistening down her pale face upon Kimberly’s shoulder.
And there they sat for an infinitude, Kimberly within Artemis’s eternal embrace, Kimberly staring blankly into the horizon’s brilliance across the long seas, Artemis crying softly upon her shoulder.
“You can’t do this”, whispered Artemis, raising her tear-smeared face to face Kimberly’s own. “You can’t do this to yourself.”
“They took him”, declared Kimberly coldly, her lips moving but her eyes still unmoved from the horizon.
“They took him from me.”
Artemis exclaimed, “Kimberly, remember when we first met, on Asphodel Meadows, when we were training the Myrmidons? You told me to—”
Kimberly finished her own words from nearly twenty years earlier. “To learn to love others, to learn forgiveness, to remove anger and revenge. To learn to the appreciate the galaxy and all its people for all its people”, she quoted. “Well, Artemis, obviously, then I hadn’t realized how much it hurt. I was naïve and ignorant, and I led you the wrong way.”
“You led me the ‘wrong way’? I’m about to be engaged to Apollo, Kim. How is that the wrong way?”
Kimberly finally removed her eyes from the horizon, turning to face her friend, her blazing eyes inches away from Artemis’s own sad own. The fury rose from her cheeks as if fire.
“Artemis, cut this shit out! You had it right when I first met you—duty and honor before all else, to not have personal connections, to fight the best you could. Well, what happened to personal connections? The UNSC manipulated us to invade Nu Capricorni to retake Apollo, and now, August is dead. Now, tell me what happened to personal connections, Artemis? What happened to me fighting my best?”
Artemis was speechless, stunned by her friend’s potent fury.
“When I tried to console you after they took Apollo and urged you not to move to revenge, I had no fucking idea, Artemis. No fucking idea of how it hurt—your heart in a vice grip, shattering with every footstep. The agonizing fire that runs through your vein and never stops burning. Well, I know how that feels now, Artemis!”
Artemis whispered, “Kimberly, you’ve been through pain before—your childhood—”
Kimberly screamed, her tendons visible on her knuckles as she clenched her firsts, “My childhood? Nothing ever hurt as much as this—when I was growing up, it was only August that saved me from myself—and now, he’s fucking dead! Do you know how much that hurts? How it burns?”
Artemis whimpered softly, “Yes, I know how it feels. When Apollo was—”
Kimberly rose from her position, her head lowered, chest seething, voice low. Fire rose as she did, and her eyes glistened with murderous intent.
“Then you know how they will have to be broken.”
CHAPTER TWO
HELM OF THE DOMINATOR
UNSC Magellan, Remote Space Observatory
Asphodel Meadows, 47 Ursae Majoris System
For Commander Linus Riddle, the midnight watch was the hardest—the dreaded third and last crew rotation of the day, where the darkness of the station’s lights and the suffocating blackness of interstellar space was consuming, an easy path towards grim, morbid depression.
Riddle’s face was hard set as he sprawled in the Captain’s Chair—the central, high-backed chair in the center of the Magellan’s bridge, a raised platform that overlooked all of the station’s various departments. He struggled to overcome both sleep’s enticing call and to not answer boredom’s overtures—he fixated his brown chocolate eyes upon the main display, a massive panoramic display that arced over one-thirds of the bridge’s circumference, flanked on either side by glassine, vacuum-secured windows that offered a commanding view over their position, anchored at the perimeter of the 47 Ursae Majoris System—behind them was the fading vanes of light of 47 Ursae Majoris, and beyond that was the grandiose constellation of all the Milky Way’s stars.
Even as his eyes throbbed from exhaustion, his mind weaving dangerously close to the welcome embrace of sleep, he knew that the midnight watch was the most dangerous; in Ancient Earth history, armies were notorious for launching infamous attacks at night, overwhelming sleeping and unprepared enemy soldiers.
Much so like aboard UNSC Navy vessels, all of which were synchronized to Zulu time on Greenwich, Earth.
Riddle knew that he was the vanguard for Asphodel Meadows against those dark forces that would seek to destabilize humanity and galactic peace.
And as such, as the custodian and caretaker, he must be ever-vigilant.
While one might have been tempted to simply take refuge in the sixty-odd warships of the Second Fleet stationed over Asphodel Meadows, or the eight Super MAC Platforms also in orbit—the heaviest non-nuclear arms in the UNSC Navy’s hands—as well as the mine shells, Riddle knew better.
There had once been such as a planet that believed itself invincible—its name had been Reach.
Reach was no more.
When a red-line alert was paged from one of the sections to Commander Riddle, he was well-prepared. A former member of ONI Fleet Intelligence (Section One), Riddle was versed in the complex science of theoretical physics and abstract calculus.
A junior lieutenant shouted, “Commander! Alpha Probe has acquired a signal in Slipspace! Putting it on the main display, sir.”
The Remote Sensor Observatories (RSO) of the UNSC Navy were both astrological tools and military defenses; positioned on the outskirts of major inhabited planetary systems, they were in a perfect position to view the stars, unobstructed, for academic purposes, as well as to detect inbound invading hostile fleets.
The observatories had an amazing capability to even detect objects in Slipspace—by transiently cycling durable sensor probes into the alternate space, the probes could capture the local field state and upon their return to realspace, transmitted this information to their “mother” RSO, depicting a mathematical picture of the highly-convoluted local higher dimensions in proximity to the RSO.
Many things traveled in Slipspace—exotic radiations never seen before, unpredicted tachyons, but most importantly—warships moving at superluminal speed.
The Slipspace probes transmitted their reports to the observatory, where a mainframe compared several parameters according to baseline readings from the last year. Any significant deviations were “flagged” and given to the human crew for further analysis and action.
Riddle and all the remaining bridge crew on watch stood immediately as the report was projected.
The reporting lieutenant declared, “Sir, Alpha Probe reports a high-frequency soliton wave propagating through local extra-dimensional space. The computer predicts the likely etiology is a local mass translocation.”
“Sir—according to Fleet Command Sol, there are no UNSC Navy formations reported to intersect Asphodel Meadows for the next week.”
Riddle stiffened. He knew what that meant.
Soliton waves meant only one thing; high-mass entities moving through Slipspace.
“It’s them”, he declared. “Deploy Bravo Probe to confirm. Communications, alert Vice Admiral Lerou and Fleet Command of a highly probable attack on Asphodel Meadows in the extremely near future.”
All the crew on the bridge immediately straightened, their soporific figures and spirits ignited by an urgent purpose.
A moment later, the watch officer shouted, “Sir! Bravo Probe confirms soliton wave in alternative dimensions. Differential analysis indicates that the hypothetical mass is on an inbound vector to 47 Ursae Majoris B at supraluminal speed.”
That was all the confirmation he needed—a fleet in Slipspace on a direct course for Asphodel Meadows. Riddle tapped a crimson-labeled tab on his console – the direct connection to Naval Forces Command Asphodel Meadows. A direct connection had been installed on every RSO since Sigma Octanus IV.
“This is Riddle here, online and secure aboard Magellan. I am declaring a Wildfire Emergency.”
A moment later, Vice Admiral Vincent Lerou came online.
“Commander, this is Lerou. You have my attention.”
“Admiral, we’ve detected a high-mass signal in Slipspace on course that will directly intersect Asphodel Meadows. Signal strength is not strong enough yet for differential analysis of the cluster. Sir—FLEETCOM nor Civilian Navigational Command reports any UNSC or merchant fleet inbound for Asphodel Meadows as of this time.”
Lerou’s voice darkened.
“Commander, how much time do we have left?”
“If it maintains its current trajectory and velocity, the fleet will intersect Asphodel Meadow’s orbit in just under five minutes.”
There was a pause.
“Thank you, Commander. You’ve done well. Lerou out.”
A moment later, the Admiral’s voice came through the communications channel—but now, on the UNSC Naval Forces Command Asphodel Meadow’s general frequency; a transmission across nearly a hundred colony worlds and their attached fleets.
“Attention all units, this is Lerou, declaring the Abbadon Condition. Asphodel Meadows is under imminent attack. All crews to general quarters. Mobilize all fighter wings and remove safety interlocks on orbit-based and surface-based batteries. Requesting all available Second Fleet units reinforce Asphodel Meadows, immediate.”
Almost immediately, UNSC commanders throughout the Orion Arm began responding, followed by an Alpha-priority emergency transmission from the surface on Lerou’s private line.
The sender mask was redacted; he knew who it was.
Lerou tapped the key to accept the connection.
“Lerou here, secure.”
The woman’s voice was as serious as a nuclear winter.
“Is true, Lerou?” asked Admiral Carole Godfrey, Director of the Office of Naval Intelligence at the “Black Tower”—ONI’s Operations Center on Asphodel Meadow.
The Vice Admiral paused for a moment, summoning his composure before addressing the Director of Naval Intelligence.
“Yes, Director. Magellan Station reports that a high-mass fleet is moving through Slipspace, on a direct course for Asphodel Meadows.”
“What’s the confidence index on this intelligence, Vice Admiral?”
“Almost certain, ma’am.”
There was a sour pause, and Lerou braced himself for the inevitable explosion.
Director Godfrey’s voice was silky, but with clear undercurrents of venom.
“Son believes that he can truly take Asphodel Meadows? How many ships does he have en route?”
“We’re still waiting on that, Director” replied Lerou. “Magellan Station is waiting for a better amplitude before running the differential analysis.”
“Then, Vice Admiral, do you believe that you can take on Son and his rabble?”
Lerou paused notably—this could be the defining answer of his career.
“Ma’am, until the force composition analysis returns, I don’t think—”
“What I’m asking” snapped Godfrey, “is if the Second Fleet can keep Asphodel Meadows safe. There are hundreds of millions of people down here, Admiral, most of all including the Office of Naval Intelligence. Failure would be unacceptable, Vice Admiral.”
There was only one answer to the Director of Naval Intelligence.
“Understood, ma’am.”
“Keep me informed”, said the Director.
The line went dead and aboard Acheron Station, the Super MAC Station anchored thousands of kilometers above ONI Headquarters in geosynchronous orbit, Lerou settled back heavily in his seat, the ramifications of failure impending heavily upon him.
He closed his eyelids for a moment, seeking refuge in the darkness.
An aide de camp politely tapped him on the shoulder.
“Sir, the Commander-in-Chief of the Second Fleet is waiting for you on the FLEETCOM emergency frequency.”
Lerou exhaled an exhaustive sigh, and then answered, “Lerou here, online and secure.”
* * *
Sacrosanct Revenant, en route to Asphodel Meadows
A crimson-armored Sangheili officer cried, “One minute to transition!”
For Son and the balance of his admirals, being aboard the command bridge of a Covenant warship—a prodigious assault carrier, nonetheless—was an unfamiliar and almost decidedly unholy experience. All of them had been officers in the Navy during the Human-Covenant War, where the sleek shadows of carriers in the skies were impending portents of abject destruction to UNSC colonies; now, they were to orchestrate a massive battle from aboard the bridge of one of these warships.
Supreme Commander ‘Panoramee answered, “Thank you, helm. All domains, prepare for battle.”
One of the Sangheili from the Intelligence Service turned in his gravity chair.
“Lord Commander, topographical analysis indicates that there have been multiple small disturbances in the local field space. The humans undoubtedly know of our presence.”
Lake shook her head, her long black hair lashing back and forth.
“It doesn’t matter.”
‘Panoramee agreed with a closed-fist gesture, something that the human officers had learned was one of the many Sangheili hand gestures for acknowledgement.
“Let our foe know of our coming. Their destruction will be so complete that it matters not.”
Son and Danial exchanged glances at that, and both shrugged.
Hayes hit a stud on his wrist communicator, and raised his wrist to his mouth.
“Special forces teams, what’s your status?”
“Artemis here, secure. Alpha Team is good to go.”
That was Alpha Team—the human strike force. Comprised of Artemis, Apollo, and several of the SPARTAN-IIIs and other elite rebel commandoes, it was the majority of the human rebel special forces, albeit with notable exceptions.
The Arbiter replied steadily, “We will feast upon their entrails.”
That was Bravo Team, with the Arbiter leading a cohort of trained Sangheili commandoes and shock warriors, recruited from the best of the Covenant’s special forces.
‘Panoramee turned back again to the Intelligence Domain, and the nest of officers encroached there.
“Are our special implements prepared?”
The respective officers gave their assent.
Son leaned back in his chair, waiting as the final seconds ticked off on the mission master clock. This would be an interesting fight.
Moments later, the three-dimensional landscape of realspace came to vivid life, the stars glimmering with all their brilliance, illuminating a host of UNSC warships and battle stations, prepared to defend Asphodel Meadows.
* * *
Acheron Station
Geosynchronous Orbit, Asphodel Meadows
There was brilliant, punctuate individual argent flashes that came to life amongst the host of the stars, then their numbers came so profuse that an entire length and width of space began to roil with light as dark, piscine vessels emerged from the transdimensional portals, their sides blazing with wicked hellish lights, leering viridian running along their lengths.
Lerou felt his blood run cold, a chill running through him the warmth of intergalactic space.
Eighty years before, Covenant vessels had also emerged in human space—carving a terrible swath, an invasion corridor built upon the glassine husks of human worlds and human lives that they had burned from the skies.
And now, the Covenant had come again.
The fleet intelligence attaché reported immediately, “Sir, sixty-four enemy warships have decanted from Slipspace and are holding position eighty thousand kilometers from Asphodel Meadows.”
The reports came fast—inspired by fear of the Covenant vessels, his attendant officers reported swiftly, attentively.
“Admiral, they’re holding right beyond the effective range of our orbital cannons.”
“Interceptor screens are firming up—we have fighter coverage across the hemisphere, Admiral.”
“Surface Command reports that surface-based fighter units are moving to rendezvous with us at Rally Point Whiskey, sir.”
Lerou leaned forward aboard the command bridge of Acheron Station, UNSC ODP-519.
He parsed the information for the report most essential to him—the viability of utilizing orbital cannon fire.
“The enemy fleet is holding beyond Orbital MAC range?”
“Aye, Admiral.”
Lerou’s eyebrows quirked in confusion. “What’s their velocity?”
“None”, replied the fleet intelligence officer. “They’ve killed their drives—floating in space, dead as rocks.”
That gave him pause.
“So, what the hell are they doing here if they’re just sitting there beyond the range of our guns?”
One of the tactical officers suggested, “Maybe they’re waiting to be reinforced?”
Lerou’s lips were a grim slash.
“No. Something’s wrong—they’re waiting to disrupt our formation, then they’re going to move in while we’re unable to maintain focused fire on them.”
One of his advisors replied, “Sir, the range of our Orbital MAC Platforms far exceeds the range of any weapons systems the enemy has. Advancing to engage us through their field of fire would be strategic suicide for them; we’ve canvassed the entire equator with eight platforms. There’s no avenue of attack for them that doesn’t lead them through extended Super MAC fire.”
The Vice Admiral shook his head fiercely. “The enemy has not survived so long simply through conventional mass-fire tactics. They knew that we had Orbital MAC Stations, and they came to Asphodel Meadows only with a countermeasure in hand.”
Another officer reported, “Sir, they’re not launching any troopships—only interceptor launches to screen their front line of destroyers and cruisers. No enemy movement within an eighty thousand kilometer radius, sir.”
“Pinpoint Slipspace jump?” suggested another.
“That’d be suicide”, said Lerou flatly. “Even if they tried to jump right next to the Orbital Defense Platforms, while they’re regaining energy, our battle group would waste them. They have a countermeasure, ladies and gentlemen, and I want all of the battle group at one hundred percent until we found out what it is. Communications, what’s the status of our reinforcements?”
“Sir, the first reinforcing task force from the Second Fleet is anticipated to arrive in eight hours.”
“This almost makes me think that their entire point is a feint, to draw away the Second Fleet from another Mid Rim colony to attack”, said the Vice Admiral.
The ONI senior attaché replied, “Section One only has one hundred odd Sangheili warships unaccounted for in Covenant space; this must be the majority of the rebel fleet.”
The Vice Admiral exhaled, then shook his head to discard all his errant thoughts. 
He had a battle to win.
“Fleet Intelligence, forward that to Naval Forces Command Asphodel Meadows and suggest that all other Second Fleet units maintain high alert. Meanwhile, we’ll do our job here. If those bastards want to wait beyond the kill box, we’ll let them. All task forces will maintain phalanx formation around the Orbital MAC Platforms, and we’ll wait for reinforcements from the Second Fleet.”
“Synchronize and link all Orbital MAC Platform fire control here, aboard Acheron. When they come into the field of fire, we’ll be ready.”
* * *
Acheron Station, Subbasement C
There was a strident electronic beep aboard Subbasement C, one of the lowest, dankest levels upon the Orbital MAC Platform known as Acheron Station, host to one of the MAC’s Mark XI “Super” Magnetic Accelerator Cannons. The successors to the Super MAC systems of the Human-Covenant War era, their firepower was expansive, an invincible aegis of firepower incapable of being breached.
Ever since the destruction of Orbital Defense Platforms above Earth through Covenant boarding parties, security had been heightened aboard all Orbital MAC Stations ever since 2552 and the Great War’s closure. Integrated Marine fire teams were stationed at all compartments, ensuring that all bulkheads were secure of boarding craft.
Therefore, when there was an insistent beep in the logistical reserve compartment, a Marine security team had been sent to investigate—three armored soldiers clad in camouflage, armed with rifles with attached flashlights, cones of light piercing the darkness.
One of the Marines soon found the source of the sound—a massive cargo crate.
The team leader, a Sergeant, turned to one of his troopers.
“Take this crate apart, Garrison.”
The 
Heart of the Sword
Kyle M. Loh (Harvard Stem Cell Institute)
August 17, 2009
TEAM JIAN (JTF ANACONDA/UNSCSOCOM)
Subject: Confirmation of Team Reassignment
Dear SIR,
As per our meeting last week, here I am formally requesting your approval of the reassignment of TEAM JIAN (SIII-Gamma) to JOINT TASK FORCE ANACONDA to better fulfill our counterterrorism responsibilities.
The following MISSION TASKING LIST is the finalized roster of the members of TEAM JIAN:
JIAN-One: Lieutenant Jake-G293
JIAN-Two: Senior Chief Ralph-G299
JIAN-Three: Chief Albert-G133
JIAN-Four: Chief Kathryn-G129 (“Katie”)
In order to further augment the special capabilities of this special missions unit, I also recommend the attachment of LIEUTENANT COMMANDER ORION (ONI Secure Status) as a special liaison to TEAM JIAN.
UNSC Naval Special Warfare Command, Personnel Department
ID: [Redacted]
CONTENTS:
>(1) Reassignment of TEAM JIAN to JTF ANACONDA (immediate)
>(2) Reassignment of LT CMDR ORION to TEAM JIAN (immediate)
Best regards,
Karen
----
Commander Karen E. Wakes
UNSC OFFICE OF NAVAL INTELLIGENCE
DEPUTY COMMANDER, STRATEGIC INTELLIGENCE
TEAM JIAN (JTF ANACONDA/UNSCSOCOM)
Subject: RE: Confirmation of Team Reassignment
Dear Karen,
Of course. Those changes look fine to me. Please make sure that Archer is onboard with this idea. Remember, we need her in our camp too. Being too impulsive could easily get her on her cranky side. 
Forward the relevant paperwork to my assistant to have it filled out.
Regards,
Carter
----
VICE ADMIRAL CARTER
UNSC OFFICE OF NAVAL INTELLIGENCE
DIRECTOR, STRATEGIC INTELLIGENCCE
UNSC Jörmungandr (Fourth Fleet Combat Command)
Armory C-2, NavSpecWar Mission Staging Area
With contemptuous ease, Ralph slid the rook across the gilded surface of the chess board, bringing it to a stop beside the black queen, and then flicking the dethroned piece off of the board.
“Check”, declared Ralph.
He flashed a glance at Albert. “Jesus Christ, Albert, how did Katie ever kick your ass?”
Katie smiled innocently, conservatively withdrawing her king one pace.
Ralph rakishly brought across his own queen on the far side of the board, and with a movement of his wrist, shoved aside one of Katie’s bishops.
“Kate, tell me again—how many years have you been playing this game?”
“Eleven”, she answered simply, moving forward her surviving bishop to a position where it couldn’t threaten any of the opposing pieces. 
She continued didactically, “And now, here’s the part where you’ll tell me you’ve been playing for one week, and already you’re ‘kicking my ass’.”
Ralph snorted, and expansively gestured to the large summation of black pieces either lying face-flat on the table or rolling on the armory’s titanium deck.
“Your unimpressive record this game speaks for itself. You’ve lost your queen, one rook, both knights, one bishop, and both knights. If they looked up how much we’re kicking the Covenant’s ass in the dictionary, they’d show a picture of me beating the shit out of you in chess.”
Katie flashed a petulant stare at her squad mate, unentertained by his childishness.
“You know, Ralph, your maturity froze at the age of twelve when we left Onyx, and hasn’t really grown beyond that.”
“You’re just a sore loser”, retorted Ralph. “Can’t handle chess? Looks like this girl can’t handle neither shooting nor chess.”
“Oh really?” she asked wanly, disinterestedly. 
Ralph grinned, moved a rook forward.
Besides them, Albert made a sharp sound of surprise. 
Ralph cocked his head curiously, looked to the side. “What was that for, Chief?”
Katie looked up again, and now, there was a feral gleam to her eyes.
“Ralph”, she began, now with a more confident tone.
“Yeah?” he asked expectantly.
“You haven’t moved your king the entire game.”
Her pale hand swept her surviving rook across to the far side of the board, the last row where Ralph had secluded his king.
“Check” she said insouciantly.
Ralph’s hand moved to his king to evade it—and then realized that it was pinned behind an entire rigid row of his own pawns.
His eyes swept over the board, and he shouted furiously, “Fuck!”
Albert smiled coyly. “She could have done that for the past ten moves.”
“God damn it!”
Katie smiled modestly. “I was waiting to see if you’d ever catch on and figure out that I was leading you on, letting you take all my pieces except my last rook. I say that stick to shooting, Chief, and leave the thinking to the rest of us.”
Ralph grimaced sourly.
“That was a bitch thing to do.”
She shrugged. “I think that chess is a useful recapitulation of warfare—that battles can be won with a single, decisive stroke.”
“With the number of ships that the Fourth Fleet has attacking Sanghelios, we won’t need any subtlety to win.”
“That’s what we’re here for”, said Katie. “To the contrary, we can end it with a fast blow. No need for unnecessary loss of UNSC ships attacking the most-fortified Elite stronghold.”
Ralph acquiesced. 
“True”, he said conversationally.
After a pause, he looked back and forth between Katie and Albert. “So, what do you think of our new friend?”
Albert, long and limber within his mottled grey Semi-Powered Infiltration suit, flexed his shoulders casually. “Jake’s been spending a lot of time in the CIC with him”, he said noncommittally, referencing the cruiser’s Combat Information Center, its tactical nerve plexus, where the commanding officers organized and coordinated missions. 
Ralph turned to Katie, who shrugged as well, the movement oscillating her sinewy blonde ponytail.
“I frisked for the Lieutenant Commander’s background. Not much. Someone in ONI’s cyber world classified his record fairly heavily. But in terms of his training statistics, he seems to be a good shooter. His marks on the range are solid.”
“So he’s not a complete hack?” asked Ralph.
“Yeah.”
Their conversation was interrupted by a heraldic shout from the doorstep—“Admiral on deck!”
The three SPARTAN-IIIs reflexively acutely swiveled, finding a knot of figures at the mouth to the armory: their team leader, Lieutenant Jake-G293, flanked by Orion and two unfamiliar figures. 
The two interlopers were a harlequin pair—one was a taller female, clad in the service blacks of the Office of Naval Intelligence, the second, a shorter and more aged male, in the beige jacket of the UNSC Navy; with a brilliant cluster of three argent stars gleaming on his collar—a Vice Admiral of the UNSC Navy.
Immediately, the three SPARTAN-IIIs snapped to attention.
Interestingly, far out of alignment with typical military protocol, it was the female, with the lustrous oak leaf of a Commander, who replied easily, “At ease.”
Katie and Albert exchanged brief looks at this oddity. It should have been reversed; only the commanding officer in the room, the Vice Admiral, had the leisure to give that order.
Jake supplied the necessary introductions. “Team, this is Vice Admiral Brook, Commander of Naval Special Warfare, Fourth Fleet, and Commander Wakes, Deputy Director of the Department of Strategic Intelligence, ONI.”
This was highly irregular: Strategic Intelligence was a full-fledged ONI division, on par with Section One (Fleet Intelligence) and Section Three (Special Operations). Such a division rated a three-star command for a Vice Admiral—its deputy director should have been a Rear Admiral.
Katie’s brow furrowed, indexing the eccentricity.
The three SPARTAN-IIIs in unison relaxed fractionally.
Brooks eyed Wakes. “So this is Team Jian?”
“Aye, Admiral.”
The Vice Admiral turned back to the five SPARTAN-III team members. “SPARTANs, as you may not be aware, the Fourth Fleet is currently embarked in Slipspace to sortie over Sanghelios. Our objective is to dismantle the enemy naval armada and then to occupy the planet.”
The SPARTAN-IIIs effected surprise—the jump coordinates for the Fourth Fleet had been hidden from all the hundreds of thousands of sailors aboard, all save the highest-ranking flag officers and the navigational officers; if the jump zone information had been disseminated and a traitor had signaled their destination to the enemy, it would have been fatal for the hundreds of warships once they were emerging from Slipspace—directly into an enemy ambush.
To circumvent this, Katie had simply used Javert to slice the coordinates from an unencrypted navigational subsystem aboard the Jörmungandr. Once they’d gotten the galactic longitude and latitude, it had been simple enough to cross-reference publically-available star maps to derive their point of decantation: the Urs System.
Sanghelios. Homeworld of the Elites, throne world of the Covenant. 
Ralph spoke up. “And our mission, Vice Admiral?”
To this, Wakes answered—she strode towards the center of the armory, towards the massive tactical plot, and tapped a button; automatically, the lights receded, and cyan scanning lasers radiated from the plot’s surface, scribing immaculate images in the air with an invisible artist’s hand. Automatically, everyone in the room gravitated to the display.
The display deconvoluted to a breathtaking tapestry; hundreds of intermingled UNSC and Covenant warships, alive with brilliant fire—infinite reciprocations of searing plasma and missile fire, space strewn with gyrating fire and ashen plumes. Warships wove throughout the frenzied fray, the entire lockstep a symphony of continuous stroke and counterstroke that melded into sweeps of amorphous fire that blotted out the starlight in their profuseness.
And beneath the lethal contest—the engorged orb of Sanghelios, its ardent viridian surface, gleamed, unmarred by the heavenly hosts above it, waging war amongst their own ranks.
Wakes tapped the holographic planetary sphere, and a moment later, brilliant bolts lanced up from the surface, their agile movements too fast to track.
The ONI commander paused the simulation, and the silvery bolts froze in mid-air, as if petrified, centimeters away from the miniature UNSC cruisers they were about to strike. 
Several points on Sanghelio’s surface flared crimson. The origin of the bolts.
“Surface-based anti-orbital tachyon batteries”, explained Wakes. “The Covenant’s newest countermeasure—localized tachyon particles travel at faster than the speed of light, therefore making evading them impossible. Unlike their plasma torpedoes, which we can diffuse by firing high-energy electron lasers or evade with thrusters, it is impossible to employ countermeasures against tachyon weaponry.”
Wakes unpaused the display, and instantaneously, the coruscating bolts lanced through their target vessels—the UNSC warships vaporized, leaving behind thermonuclear coronas as the beams traveled past their shattered metallic corpses, unimpeded by the meters of titanium armor they’d drilled through.
The pyrotechnics of the disintegrating human vessels lit up the faces of the SPARTAN-IIIs in the darkness—Katie was left there, wondrous.
“The perfect weapon”, Katie said, comprehending, as the last vestiges of the vaporized vessels faded away and further tachyon streams coursed from the surface, annihilating more UNSC heavy warships, each unable to fend as the beams struck them and effortlessly evaporated them into the vacuum. “Even better than our Super MAC Platforms—you can dodge MAC rounds at a sufficient range, but not rounds that travel faster than light.”
“A good offensive system”, said Vice Admiral Brooks in worn voice made from granite and metal, “but limited in its utility. Tachyons lose energy in an exponential decay from their point of origin. Because space is a vacuum, MAC rounds do the same amount of damage at any range, be it a kilometer or a light-year—their velocity is never impeded. However, tachyons continually lose copious amounts of energy every tens of thousands of kilometers, until at a certain range, they’re useless—nothing but bright lights.”
Albert nodded, taking it in. “A good deterrent, then. With surface-based tachyon cannons, the Elites restrict our fleets from coming no closer to the planet than the range of their tachyon fire. They’ve drawn a line in space that we can’t cross.”
Orion spoke for the first time.
“Pressing the substantial naval numbers that we have is an advantage. The Elites will be forced to engage our fleet even beyond the range of their tachyon cannons.”
“Why?” asked Ralph.
Tachyon battery fire obliterated another simulated cluster of UNSC destroyers in high orbit, sending their debris as fiery ejecta that burnt brilliantly as they scythed through Sanghelios’s atmosphere, radioactive meteors.
“If the Elites concentrate their entire fleet within the protective umbrella of their tachyon guns, they’ll be so packed that a few of our nukes can take out the shields of their entire fleet”, explained Orion. “They have no choice but to extend their entire formation—and their leading task forces will inevitably be beyond their tachyon range if they don’t want us to wipe them out with a handful of nukes.”
“I see”, said Ralph, impressed.
“And let me guess”, said Katie. “Our job will be to take out the tachyon batteries on the surface.”
Wakes nodded. “Correctly surmised, SPARTAN. We can only engage the vestiges of the Covenant fleet for so long before we need to move within their tachyon range to take on the rest of their ships. And the Fourth Fleet can’t get close to Sanghelios without unacceptable casualties, unless we take out the surface defenses.”
Katie mused, “These tachyon weapons must have their drawbacks. Tachyons aren’t permitted by relativity; the Covenant must employ some unique mechanism to generate them. Particle accelerators?”
The Commander laughed frigidly, the arctic peals of her laughter discomfiting the Team Jian members.
“Well reasoned, Chief. Each tachyon battery requires a unique multi-kilometer subterranean particle accelerator to continually generate tachyons for the emplacement. The requirements to run a multi-kilometer particle accelerator at full capacity continuously are substantial; for each minute of operation, Strategic Weapons Command estimates that it sucks up enough juice to power an entire UNSC city for one month.”
“Jesus Christ”, said Jake, surprised by the colossal statistic.
“Cutting the power to the particle accelerator should be enough”, said Wakes. “It’ll disable the battery. It would be better to preserve each tachyon cannon, so that Naval Special Weapons could have the chance to reverse engineer the technology.”
“Hmm”, said Ralph, eager to achieve the points that Katie had scored, “Maybe could we engineer some kind of misfire in the particle accelerator, use the particle streams to form an extremely high-powered blast that would tear it all apart?”
Wakes tossed a withering glance, and the fire and profound cruelty in her eyes was such that even Ralph forced himself to look away.
“Are you familiar with high-energy physics, Chief?”
“No, ma’am.”
“Do you even know how to generate high-energy particles in a particle accelerator, or even how to operate a particle accelerator?
“No, ma’am” he said, now ramrod straight, eyes vacant and staring at the metal bulkhead an inch above Wakes’s head.
“And did you somehow misconstrue me when I said ‘it’d be better to preserve the cannon’? SPARTAN, do you know how to do something other than blowing it to shit?”
Ralph’s jaw worked, but wisely, he kept his teeth clamped shut, not trusting himself to answer.
Jake stared at him: a warning stare.
Wakes turned to the blond-haired Katie, and waved at Ralph. “Take care of your team mate, Chief, on this mission. Make sure that he doesn’t do another one of his stupid pyrotechnic tricks.”
Ralph blushed fiercely in the dim light, and Katie was compelled to automatically respond with the only answer she could—“Aye, Commander.”
Jake stepped in quickly, eager to dismantle the brewing tension.
“How will we cut the power, Commander?”
Karen flashed another scathing look at Ralph, then addressed the Team Jian CO. “The advantage to an underground particle accelerator”, said the Commander, “is that it is impervious to orbital bombardment or bombing runs because of its depth into the surface.”
“The disadvantage”, she said, with a malicious glitter in her eyes, “is that it’s easier for us to infiltrate. All the tactical military complexes on Sanghelios have an underground nest of tunnels and bunkers, in case of a global disaster or orbital bombardment. Your team can slip into the tunnel system, infiltrate the particle accelerator complex, and set off a low-amplitude EMP charge by the plasma generators. The EMP will irreversibly compromise the particle state of the system and destroy reactor hysteresis. The power will be out for days, and by then, we’ll have a larger security force to attack the cannon complex and permanently hold it.”
Jake nodded. It was clear someone had expended significant thought to carefully orchestrate and detail their entire mission—on the crude assassination missions they’d been employed in thus far in the Galactic War, their commanding officers had made elaborate preparations for this particular assault.
It’d be good to finally get into open warfare and not the cloak-and-dagger drama of camouflage and sniping.
Katie, however, had an impeding question.
“What about the Jiralhanae?”
Brooks stepped forward to answer that question.
“Ever since the initial attacks and our declaration of alliance with the Jiralhanae and the opening of hostilities with the Sangheili, Jiralhanae and Sangheili forces have been clashing on Covenant-held worlds. However, obviously, Sanghelios, with billions of Sangheili, has mostly overwhelmed the small Brute army on its surface.”
	
“However, we’ve kept in touch with surviving Jiralhanae resistors on the surface—they’ve provided useful intelligence on the force dispositions of the majority of the planetary garrison. We’ve identified a small gap in their defenses in a city nearby the tachyon cannon we’ve designated ‘South One’.”
Jake asked pertinently, “And Admiral, will we be linking up with these Brute pockets of resistance once we’ve reached planetside?”
“Unlikely”, said Brooks. “They’re extremely weak and disorganized. With the stealth capabilities of your team, Lieutenant, it would likely be better if you could sneak in by yourself; any Brute reinforcements would probably compromise what little quietness you have.”
Jake nodded soundly. “Thank you, Admiral.”
Commander Wakes leaned forward on the tactical plot, the motion allowing her shoulder-length black hair to brush by her breasts.
“We decant over Sanghelios at 0130 hours local time. By the time you reach surfaceside nearby South One, it should be no more than 0250 hours local time.”
Albert’s expression was curious.
“Commander, with all due respect, how is it operationally feasible for us to insert surfaceside on that kind of timecourse? It’ll take time for the naval formation to organize after the jump, and afterwards, aren’t we engaging the periphery of the Covenant fleet? It should take a significant fighter sortie to clear out local space enough so that it’ll be safe enough to insert us in a dropship.”
Brooks smiled brittly.
“Team Jian will be making the drop in stealth-enabled, adaptively-camouflaged drop pods.”
Jake leaned forward in surprise, the brilliant cyan and tangerine hues of the unfolding simulated orbital battle illuminating the crags of his face.
“Stealth pods?”
The conventional Marine HEVs—the unarmored death buckets that ODSTs rode from orbit to the surface—were ungainly, loud things that radiated substantial radar returns and lit up like meteors upon re-entry, making them obvious targets for the most rudimentary of surface-based defenses. After the Human-Covenant War, many Covenant worlds had armed themselves with networks of ground-based pulse laser webs that easily intercepted inbound HEVs and missiles dropped by UNSC warships from orbit.
The stealth orbital insertion pods represented a futuristic iteration of that: slender-profiled and angular, their surfaces were angled to provide a negligible radar return, and their bodies were infused with heat sinks and ablative cryogenic systems that dissipated the atmosphere friction from re-entry, making their entry thermally and physically invisible. To further augment their considerable deceptive abilities, the pods were armored with reactively-camouflaged armor; shielded photocells that replicated the visible environments around them—mass-produced SPI armor, enough to plate an entire insertion pod.
The countermeasures incorporated into each stealth pod made the cost of each such vehicle well over the cost for each SPI Mark III suit. The employment of such pods was rare and legendary—their deployment meant that considerable weight was being placed on the mission upon which they embarked on.
Wakes nodded, and turned back to the display, where there were other illuminated tachyon battery positions on the surface.
“We’re launching several special forces teams in parallel in stealth pods to neutralize all the tachyon batteries simultaneously. Team Jian is but one of them.”
“Even if one battery is still operational, it’d have its choice of pickings amongst the pride of the UNSC fleet”, said Albert cynically.
“That’s why Joint Task Force Anaconda isn’t failing”, said Wakes firmly.
She looked back and forth amongst the SPARTAN-IIIs—Orion, Jake, Ralph, Albert, and Katie.
Karen gave Katie an approving nod.
“We decant from Slipspace in eight hours. Get kitted and standby at the starboard pod bay for deployment. The UNSCSOCOM detachment there has assigned one stealth pod each for one of you. Quiet weapons loadout—you should be in and out of the underground complexes in two hours, max. No snags.”
They received ready nods from the gathered team members.
“We’re up for it, ma’am!” shouted Jake affirmingly.
“Good”, said Wakes softly. “I’m counting on you.”
Silently, Wakes and Brooks turned in unison and left the armory, leaving behind the Team Jian members.
Ralph looked bitterly at Karen’s departing black-clad back.
“ONI bitch”, he snapped.
Jake clapped him on the shoulder. “No problem, Ralph. You heard her—in and out. This’ll just be like old times. No more sneaking around and sniping.”
“Good”, he muttered consentedly. “I’m sick of this assassination shit too. Ready to kick some Covenant ass.”
From the corner, Albert was already doling out supplies.
“Individually-matched blood transfusion kits. Suppressed submachine guns, light and quiet—”
UNSC Jörmungandr
Starboard Firing Bay, Mission Staging Site
Operation: STRIKE KING
Two minutes to deployment (Mission Clock T-00:02:00)
Ensconced in the claustrophobic confines of the drop pod, Jake made the final preparations in earnest—each convulsion of the Jörmungandr rattled the SPARTAN-III in the pod as if a gyrating toy, reminding him of the gravity of the situation.
The pacing of his heart echoed the scrolling digits on the deployment clock, his heartbeat making him acutely aware of the situation; the fighters dancing upon ethereal tangents of light and fire beyond the translucent viewport, the periodic scintillation of the cruiser’s main batteries that overwhelmed the entire panorama with brilliant white—the thunder of his heart drowning the corybantic cries of pulse laser fire and the infernal wails of depraved cannon fire.
His vision blurred and he felt his temple beat, the words on the tactical channel molding together, incomprehensible—
“Jörmungandr, reposition to foxtrot-zulu-kilo and maintain fire on those cruisers.”
“Negative, negative! Disengage, Meridian Rays. Repeat, disengage.”
“Assault Wing Five, exploit that opening; maintain harassment on that carrier—”
“I’m hit! I’m hit!”
Wakes’s voice thundered through his reverie—like the lash of the arctic wind, biting and hyperborean. “Mission Control to Jian. Come in.”
There was a pause, and in the corner of his trembling peripheral vision, Jake saw his heartbeat on the electrocardiogram arc precariously high.
“Jian One, this is Huntress. Again, come in.”
He shuddered, his body tensing as he fought to calm himself. 
“I’m here”, he answered, his mouth suddenly dry. “I’m here.”
“Affirmative. The Jörmungandr is relocating to the two-two-five ecliptic to begin pod launches to surface-based batteries on the dark side. Your team is second in the chute, Lieutenant. ETA one minute to launch. Standby.”
Suddenly, he lurched in the pod as the supermassive Jörmungandr precipitously accelerated, her thrusters dislocating her across the plane of Sanghelios’s equator—as if extinguished, Urs’s fierce starlight diminished sharply, then vanished—
And Jake was swallowed in shadow, the leviathan cruiser now immersed in darkness, the pod trembling at his touch as the cruiser continued its prolonged thruster burn.
They were now on the night side of Sanghelios—the far side of the planet, contralateral to Urs; even from his limited vista from the launch pod’s viewport, Jake saw all of Sanghelios laid beneath him, dormant; the planet was an arcane crescent of darkness, its horizon coruscating with Urs’s yonder starlight as the dawn ascended at the planet’s far reaches.
Against its voiceless, dark surface were punctuate crescents that lit up Sanghelios as if an inner fire—the light of thousands of cities, their radiance visible from space; together, they composed breathtaking designs of shimmering light that interlaced the dark, mystical continents below.
It was a majestic vista; an entire planet, laid bare.
Jake rarely had the time to revel in such luxuries; he found it ironic that he was admiring the sight several seconds before embarking on a potentially lethal combat operation.
But far closer were more immediate threats; above the atmosphere’s contrails, warships exchanged actinic metal and lambent plasma—the horizon rippled with fire as dozens of Covenant and UNSC warships closed to weapons range, copiously releasing fighters and battery fire, brilliant weapons fire strobing through the darkness of space.
Dozens of kilometers astern was the fiercely-burning Meridian Rays, an aging UNSC fleet carrier that dated from the 2570s. The knife-edged warship, stripped of her interceptor escorts, had been hit with multiple plasma torpedoes, and her midsections were laden with fire as she stood there, still in space, her fighter wings already launched.
Yet, from Jake’s perspective, that was one of the few UNSC casualties; elsewhere, in orbit above the dark facet of Sanghelios, it was a rampant slaughter, with droves of human warships aggressively dismantling their Covenant counterparts—the majority of the UNSC Fourth Fleet, nearly four hundred warships, had jumped into the Urs System. The defending Sangheili fleet, diminished by civil war with Jiralhanae warships, scarcely numbered one hundred and fifty.
He saw a voracious running battle between one Covenant assault carrier and several smaller UNSC destroyers and cruisers—repeated MAC cannon fire had disabled her engines, allowing the destroyers to open breaches in her shields and currently, an intense cannonade was focused upon the carrier’s hull, cyan explosions punctuating her slender frame.
Elsewhere, a Cyclops-class battle cruiser engaged a massive piscine Covenant destroyer over twice as massive; there was the quick double flash of the cruiser’s MAC cannons, and the destroyer’s argent aura faded as hundreds of vapor trails snaked across space, SSM-42 Crossbow missiles cratering the Covenant warship’s unshielded hull with high-explosive fury, disintegrating the vessel.
Yet, already, the heavily-damaged disparate Covenant vessels were staging a visible retreat, withdrawing to an invisible boundary, tucking themselves closer to Sanghelios’s atmosphere.
None of the UNSC warships pursued their counterparts—it must have been within the tachyon cannon umbrella.
“The target city’s name is Uchital”, Katie was saying. “A major Sangheili industrial city. When we and the Jiralhanae declared war on the Sangheili, the Brute armies withdrew to Uchital on the surface and held it for two weeks against heavy siege by the surrounding Elite armies. Finally, the Elites used carpet bombing to level the city and to ferret out the Brutes. According to Fleet Intelligence, there’s not much left of the city except for burning buildings and the South One tachyon battery.”
“That’s strange”, commented Albert. “The Elites would crater one of their own capital cities on their homeworld?”
“Yeah. It was a smart move by the Brute Chieftains—they forced the Elites to commit a cardinal sin; to force the Brutes from Uchital, they had to wipe out one of their own cities. It was a tremendous sacrifice.”
Orion said, “Good for us, then. The reason the surface defenses are light at South One probably is because of the city—the Sangheili have no interest in a ruined city.”
“It’ll be easier then”, confirmed Jake. “The FCO’s firing solution has all our pods landing in a quarter-mile cluster; upon touchdown, we’ll rally at my pod, and it’ll be estimated four hundred meters to the entrance to the underground complex.”
There was a nearby reverberation, and in Jake’s view, six oblong objects spewed from besides them, arcing towards Sanghelios’s dormant surface, quickly vanishing from sight as their midnight surfaces became synonymous with the darkness of space.
“Team Alpha is away! Team Jian, standby for insertion in thirty seconds.”
“Heads up, squad”, called out Jake. “Steady—”
* * *
“Thirty seconds”, radioed Wakes.
“Heads up, squad”, confirmed Jake on the secure team tactical channel, “Steady—final confirmation of suit integrity and weapons systems. Call off by callsign.”
“Orion here, secure”, said Orion, his eyes fixated in the distance, where constellations of UNSC and Covenant fighters were engaged in lethal curtsie, fascinated by the globular explosions and the vanes of light and smoke chasing each other throughout the massive conflict.
“Jian Two here, ready to rock”, confirmed Ralph.
“Jian Three is operational.”
“Jian Four is online and secure”, finished Katie.
Orion turned his eyes back to his equipment; the MP50S submachine gun dangling by his hip, with its phallic suppressed tip, the custom 0.45-caliber handgun on the other, 9mm and 11.5mm ammunition for both secured on his belt. His fingers brushed against the arrayed magazines, ensuring their presence, and then he turned to the engorged angular backpack laying at his feet, where there were five unlit LED lights running along its rim.
There was a pungent “thunderbolt” warning etched across it: it was the electromagnetic pulse bomb. One of the two carried by Team Jian—Ralph carried the primary one, Orion’s was extra insurance.
His visored eyes turned to the close burnished metal sides of the pod, where there was the massive dominant form of the AS DAM anti-materiel sniper rifle; the bulky rifle, with its iridium kinetic penetrators.
Satisified with his weapons and equipment, Orion returned to the circumlocutions that had been enraveling his mind prior to the drop call-out—the evaluation of his new field operations team.
Nearly half ago, together with the vaunted Karen Wakes, he had undergone a truncated regimen of the chemical augmentations undertaken by the Myrmidons—he grasped none of the highly complex chemical biology that empowered the treatments, but rather that they’d make him a more powerful, more lethal fighter.
Surprisingly, he had returned to his typical exercise routine fairly rapidly—although he admitted his understanding of drugs and medicine was fairly limited, if the partial Myrmidon augmentation would be anything like his normal field hospital visits, if the single drugs at the hospital afflicted him with grave symptoms; bleeding eyes, terrible migraines, he expected that the combinatorial administration of dozens of drugs at once during the augmentation scheme would put him out of action for months.
But yet, the side effects were surprisingly few—yes, admittedly, his hair had overgrown and there had been scabrous scars across parts of his skin, but he had suffered few deleterious consequences throughout the entire procedure. 
He ferally grinned; but he had become stronger, faster, than ever. On the range, he had surpassed all of his old standards—in his current form, he was far marvelous than he could have ever been. A warrior superior to all standards.
Save one—the infuriating Karen Elizabeth Wakes. On the range, as part of his ingrained HPA instincts, he’d checked everyone’s statistics through a backdoor he knew in the code—and found that while none of the mortal NavSpecWar or Marine Force Recon troopers could even compare to him, Wakes was continually one step ahead of him. The frustratingly lithe woman was always faster, always stronger, her accuracy incomparable.
It had been a difficult truth for him to accept—long ago, he’d forced up that mental barrier. 
There had been one girl, long before, that had surpassed him. Artemis. 2995.
 
Oh, there had been others that had beaten him in the statistics—“Apollo” 2994 and “Heracles” 2789, but Agent 2789 was now dead, killed on some godforsaken space station by non-augmented soldiers, and 2054 knew Apollo well. He watched all the recordings of his shooting sessions at the range and also the overhead recordings of 2994 while he was on mission; after a year of studying his rival, Orion could predict Apollo’s every move, and while Apollo might have been slightly better at shooting, he knew that in a one-on-one battle, he could anticipate all of Apollo’s moves and kill him, bloodily and brutally.
Only Artemis had been far better; always an exceptional warrior and also a sly strategist, impossible to anticipate, even harder to outshoot; time and time again, ONI Section Three’s officials would remark on her excellence, while he, Orion, wasn’t even spoken of. And yet, he was the salutatorian of the program, better than the fool Heracles and the oblivious Apollo!
Yes, it had been depressing to accept, but he had finally accepted the truth—while he surpassed Heracles and Apollo, Artemis was always better.
Finally, he had grown to live with it. He was the second-best warrior in the galaxy, save one person; Artemis. He could live with being the second-best out of millions of soldiers in UNSCSOCOM.
Asphodel Meadows and the Myrmidon scheme had brought back the nightmares again—another black-haired girl, effortlessly beating him in all the categories. Of course, Orion had never been pitted against her; this was the UNSC Progressive Warfare Command’s elite augmentation session, to enhance its warriors, not to contest them against each other—and Wakes was the second-in-command of the entire Department of Strategic Intelligence, the most classified branch of all of ONI.
He had become obsessive; watching her every time she practiced at the range, each trip she spent to the gym, to the forested endurance track at Asphodel Meadows. Orion had fallen, hard—despairingly, he realized that he wouldn’t have a chance at besting her. Even without augmentations, her exercise and combat statistics were comparable to his new body after the augmentations—now, with the force of dozens of small molecule modifications, in her new form, she was invincible. Her strength, endurance, and agility were far out of his bound.
But within that, he had found something stir within him—admiration. Quickly, he had become mesmerized by his exasperating rival; she had never gone through the HPA Program nor any kind of child soldier program. Yet, even without that training, she was far superior to him—as he watched her practice every day, he was soon fascinated by her lusty strength, her seamless grace. She was very beautiful—as he continued to watch her, he found that he was addicted to her and by all the power at her command; a mortal girl, younger than him, that far exceeded him for all his experience … it was admittedly tantalizing how someone could be so talented as to surpass him so effortlessly.
He bit back the rage and frustration that suddenly welled—being second-rate now, behind both Artemis and Commander Wakes, and Orion breathed deeply, clearing his thoughts, the pod’s inner lights playing over his black armor.
It was time. Time to fight.
* * *
In the discomfort of her own pod, Katie steadied the stock of her MP50S submachine gun against her armored thigh, and with practiced motions, secured affixed the weapon’s stubby barrel with a obsidian-polish flash/sound suppressor.
She hefted the entire weapon in one hand, feeling its light weight; the MP50S 9mm was a practical weapon, rugged, modifiable, easily repairable, light, and slender—an optimal close-quarters weapon. The SPARTAN-III sighted down its collapsible stock; the upper receiver had been outfitted with a smart-linked small 2x red aiming reference—a “red dot sight”.
She then ensured its electronic connection with her HUD; her visor flashed twice, and then uploaded the weapon’s statistics from the short-range communicator implanted in the weapon’s stock, confirming its magazine loadout and its weapon integrity—five hundred simulated test-firings without a cartridge jam.
Satisfied with her weapon’s performance, she turned her attention to her remaining tricks of the trade; the heavy nigrous-edged titanium carbide knife fitted securely on her magnetic tactical armor, her badge of honor for graduating as valedictorian from SOCOM Spaceborne Operations School on Io, the duct-taped 9x19mm cartridges at her belt, secured fragmentation grenades and flashbang grenades, backup communicator, signal flares—and importantly, a red-marked pouch that wasn’t in UNSCSOCOM’s inventory.
Eyeing the jump timer and ensuring she had several spare seconds, quickly, she replaced her submachine gun and retrieved the pouch, opening it and emptying its contents into her palm.
There were two aliquots; one black and one white.
Time was running close—she focused on the white ampoule. 
There was fine print across its surface:
1. O-1783 [dopaminergic]
2. (S)-Cotinine [cholinergic]
3. Dobutamine [cholinergic]
4. SB-224289 [serotoninergic]
5. L-783281 [insulin-related]
Quickly, she slipped it into an articulation point on her olive drab armor by her right elbow—the armor reciprocated with the Medical Corps-issued ampoule, and there was a pneumatic hiss as the vessel’s contents were directly injected into her veins by means of intravenous catheter.
Almost immediately, she felt the familiar burning sensation in her eyes, the dryness in her mouth. Her eyelids flickered, attempting to clear the pain. Her vision blurred slightly, her breath became ragged.
Her fingers trembling, she examined the black aliquot she had acquired. There were only three words.
BATRACHOTOXIN [neurotoxic: EXCITOTOXIC]
Immediately, she replaced it into the crimson pouch, slipped it onto her utility belt, and discarded the spent clear capsule.
Five seconds left.
She tried to still her quickened breathing.
The Jörmungandr’s fire control officer, a full Commander, was saying, “Fire mission Jian is online, repeat, online. Five—four—three—”
Ralph bellowed, “Locked and cocked!”
“Two—one—”
Her eyes flitted to the MP50S submachine gun.
She didn’t even have any moment to still herself, fortify herself; one heartbeat, and then in the second, she was being flung at fantastic speeds across the depths of space, a feral howl gripping the pod as the multiple-stage thruster component rapidly incinerated the onboard solid-state fuel, flinging the stealth pod at increasing velocities, the pod accelerating, its metal exoskeleton tremoring at the sudden acceleration—
Sanghelios had been a dark pearl in the distance—suddenly, she was surrounded by brilliant cannonfire and pulse lasers stiching across the space, a live sea of fire, and her eyes widened I the terror—
Then a moment later, Sanghelios’s dark atmosphere was all she saw, a global coverlet of nighttime skies, the naval gunfire flickering above her, stars birthing in the sky as warships vaporized—
There was a calamitous crash, a primordial howl of rage, and the pod trembled fiercely, as if in Zeus’s clammy grip, and then Katie was thrown against her restrains, her armored figure buckling as the pod hit the atmosphere—crimson tongues of fire licked the armor plating, the cryogenics and heat sinks in the pod struggling to dampen the re-entry temperature and to conserve thermal camouflage as they descended. 
It’s night time, she remembered, if the pod lights up in infrared, we’ll be easy—then, the pod inverted, and suddenly, terror consumed her as her head flipped over her feet, her entire body merely dangling within a caterwauling pod hurtling at breakneck speed through the atmosphere, dark skies and starlight all around her, and she struggled in horror in her restraints as they tore through endless realms of clouds, attempting to break free of this wild coffin—to her horror, her feet were at the top of the pod, and instead of staring at the ground, her visored eyes were staring into the sky, not the ground.
The blood rushed from her feet and body into her head, and she struggled against the g forces in vain, an unwelcome warmth seeping into her flushed face as the blood pooled in her brain. She tried to think, couldn’t—her fingers, tremoring epileptically with the pod’s gyrating motions, tried to reach for the altimeter to find their distance to the surface, couldn’t—she didn’t know where she was, where the DZ was—her eyes could only see the hurtling sky around her, sheets of clouds—there was no ground, only the clouds and the space battle above, the back of her head oriented towards the surface—
Her eyesight began to fail from the g forces, the blood pressure increasing like a vice in her head. Darkness clawed at her peripheral vision, threatening to consume her, and her tremoring eyes managed to catch a glimpse of her biosigns—
Her blood pressure was skyrocketing, heart rate uncontrolled, electroencephalogram erratic, high-frequency beta waves firing asymmetrically across her brain; her eyesight trickled, and she knew that she was about to lose it—
Her hand slapped the “panic” button.
Immediately, an automated distress call was transmitted across the local UNSCSOCOM frequency, and she heard dozens of voices, hundreds, a multitude, pressing in, babbling in unintelligible voices, asking how she was—
The second to last thing she saw was horrifying.
A brilliant argent light leapt from the surface—
And then intersected with one of the gray pods leaping through the atmosphere. There was a tangerine explosion, and the remainder of the pod was flung to the ground, molten and misshapen.
And with that explosion, Katie knew one of her team mates was dead.
A moment later, something titanic, satanic, assailed from her behind—she saw the darkness rise all around her, there was a sonorous and horrible cry, a feminine scream, then there was only blackness. 
Lieutenant Jake-G293 (“Jian One”)
Operation: STRIKE KING, Master Mission Clock T+00:03:41
Utikal Ruins, Sanghelios
There was a thunderclap and a colossal shudder as the stealth pod intersected Sanghelios’s surface, but Jake was already in motion, the adrenaline buffering him from the tremendous shock—already his hand was on the hydraulic release, and he was staggering out of the pod, submachine gun in hand.
The sight that met his eyes was alien and foreign—the sparking hulk of his pod was planted in the side of a massive hill of discolored cerulean rubble, and around him arced amethyst and obsidian citadels and ramparts, their visage of some of malevolent and mystical design. The reconnaissance data from the prowler flybys, annotated overhead thermal images of the Utikal garrison, had done nothing to prepare him for what the city looked like from the ground.
Far above were sheets of thunderclouds, peals of thunder rolling within their depths, angry spears of electricity tracing jagged lines with the ground.
The thunder flashed, and suddenly, Jake heard footsteps. He pivoted—
Three alien figures emerged from the darkness—two were tall, putrid avians bearing long-barreled rifles, the third an imposing predator, with fiery nictitated eyes and a jaw full of sharp teeth—
Jake smoothly drew the Misrah Mx4 handgun, and in a single motion, fluidly shot both of the Jackal sharpshooters in the head. Both of them immediately collapsed, lifeless.
The Sangheili let loose a war cry, and Jake realized he was fucked.
The implement the alien held in his hand was far worse than any plasma rifle. It was a cryogenics projector.
The Sangheili—Kig-Yar scout team must have been on the lookout for debris from space; destroyed ship chunks or unfired missiles. The projector, the inverse to the UNSC flamethrower, was a powerful firefighting tool to suppress fires on afire debris that fell from the sky.
A few plasma bolts would merely char his SPI armor—however, a single pulse from the cryogenics projector would freeze his suit, locking him up, killing the reactive camouflage, and importantly, lowering his core body temperature to subcritical levels. Locked and imprisoned within his tomb of a disabled suit, the alien would have hours to figure out how best to kill his immobilized captive.
There was a spear of thunder, and in the lightning, Jake saw the alien warrior in his full fury, the projector raised, and the SPARTAN-III futilely raised his handgun to chip against the Elite’s shields—
There was a nearby roar that tore Sanghelios asunder, and suddenly, the Sangheili was laying prone on the hill in two pieces, his menacing head torn from his lean body, a massive trail of fluorescent gore connecting the two shattered halves of his flesh.
Jake reflexively raised the Mx4 sidearm, swiveled towards the source—
And found Orion there, his anti-materiel sniper rifle’s graphite-sheathed barrel smoking from the force of the shot.
“Sorry”, the Lieutenant Commander remarked. He patted the sniper rifle. “She’s rated to be used against tanks and bunkers—I figured that it’d work well against body armor too.”
Jake broke into a rare, small grin that surprised even himself.
“Orion. It’s good to see you.”
The ONI field agent nodded. “And you too, Lieutenant”, he said in more formal tones.
Jake surveilled his surroundings—saw Orion’s smoking pod, much farther down on the rubble avalanche. The Lieutenant Commander must have run extremely fast uphill in order to have made the saving shot.
But something was acutely wrong.
“Wait a moment”, said Jake. “The Jörmungandr FCO said that the firing solution would have all five pods landing within a quarter of a mile from each other; that’s what, about four hundred meters?”
“Something like that”, confirmed Orion.
Jake frowned.
“Then we should be able to see all the other three pods and make visual confirmation, right?”
“Yes, Lieutenant.”
The mental logic was nearly instantaneously.
“Shit”, swore Jake. “Then where the hell is the rest of my team?”
Lieutenant Katie-G219 (“Jian Four”)
Operation: STRIKE KING, Master Mission Clock T+00:03:52
Utikal Ruins, Sanghelios
 
Katie awoke from her slumber with a start; to the sickening, cloying sweet taste of human blood in her mouth.
And then she realized her disposition—she was sprawled at the floor of her body, blood flowing freely from a torn lip, her restraints peeled apart in the crash, weapons and ammunition all over the wrecked pod.
“God damn it!” she exclaimed.
She hit the release of her visor, the faceplate swinging free as she dabbed her mouth an armored gauntlet—the crimson blood shimmered there, against the camouflaging photocells. Her blood.
She tried to stand, and was hit by a sudden and fierce vertigo; her stomach wrenched, and Katie was forced to kneel.
Something had gone horribly askew during the pod’s landing.
She felt her pulse throb in her face.
Everything in the pod had been damaged somehow, it seemed; the crystalline display with her biosigns had been shattered to hundreds of microscopic pieces, and half of the ammunition cartridges she’d carefully arranged on her belt were missing, and were nowhere to be found. There was a giant, jagged fracture running down the armored viewport from which she’d seen one of Team Jian’s insertion pods been blasted by a pulse laser.
The memory brought a deathly pallor to her cheeks; that meant one of her four other team members was dead, killed even before setting foot on the surface.
She turned, found a distress beacon in her hand flaring crimson—a beacon she didn’t even remember activating.
Katie shook her head, flicked off the distress beacon. She was fully operational.
She stepped outside.
There was no sunlight—the skies were overcast, dominated by bulbous clouds of ominous design. Rain fell in physical sheets, waves breaking down on Utikal City from the sky, aerial surf clashing against fiercely-burning towers in the skyline. She inwardly wondered what kind of alien fire wouldn’t be extinguished by the intense rainfall.
She breathed heavily. One of her team mates was dead, and she had a job to do.
Katie looked left and right, expecting to find the rest of the team’s pods—
And realized with a startle that they weren’t there.
Frantically, she panned back and forth again.
Nothing. No UNSC stealth insertion pods—only an endless, abandoned boulevard littered with burning Ghost and Wraith tank chasses. Nothing moved among them; it was a silent graveyard, devoid of both Covenant and her SPARTAN-III team mates.
Something was obviously extremely wrong.
Team Jian was in pieces, either dead or scattered around Utikal or even somewhere else on Sanghelios. She needed to link up with her team and accomplish the objective—the assault on the tachyon battery.
Alone, she would be easy prey for overwhelming numbers of Sangheili soldiers—and would be a second casualty for Team Jian.
The SPARTAN-IIIs of Team Jian had two methods of communication—a short-range secure tactical network used when they were in proximity, or alternatively, an extremely high-powered radio set used to broadcast transmissions for kilometers, or even into the middle atmosphere. The short-range network operated on very little power, and was almost impossible to intercept, UNSC engineers assured them. However, when they were separated, the long-range radios they used, by virtue of their transmission strength, were trackable by enemy units equipped with electronic warfare equipment.
She had no choice. 
Through her visor, Katie powered-up the megahertz transmitter and selected the local Joint Task Force Anaconda channel, Anaconda-Two.
She enunciated clearly. “This is Jian Four here, secure, calling for all Team Jian operatives. Come in, over.”
Almost immediately, there was a reciprocating transmission—until Katie realized it wasn’t even an answer it was a plea of help.
“This is Ralph! I’m hit—pod was—failure, pulse laser fire—repeat, critical—”
The transmission’s signal strength precipitously fell, until the words were unintelligible against the white noise and static, even with her enhanced auditory acuity.
With a start, Katie realized that the pulse laser must have not utterly vaporized Ralph’s pod; miraculously, he must have survived the laser and made it to the surface.
She moved to attempt to post-triangulate the transmission, but immediately, upon overlaying a geospatial grid upon the local radio channels, she found that it was an unnecessary mathematical gesture; there was a brilliant UNSC Navy mayday beacon radiating in the center of Utikal.
It had to be Ralph’s pod.
She bit back a sudden rising fear within her—if she, largely untrained in communications and electronic warfare, had found Ralph’s position so quickly, the Covenant too would find him—
Upon her HUD, Katie recalled the wireframe map of Utikal’s streets, and superimposed the position of the distress signal against her own location. The onboard tactical module immediately calculated a primary course and alternative courses to the rescue beacon—jagged red lines snaked across Utikal’s boulevards and fortresses.
The closest route to Ralph was over three kilometers along, winding across craters and decimated towers.
With a start, she suddenly realized that there was a second waypoint marker on the geospatial coordinate plane—the marked entrance to the tachyon cannon’s generator complex.
She was on Sanghelios to disable the tachyon cannon that would be soon firing upon the UNSC fleet in orbit. Her conscience lurched as she realized that she was presented with two impossible courses of action.
Save a teammate—or damn thousands of UNSC sailors above to superluminal oblivion as the Fourth Fleet fell upon Sanghelios.
Katie reached for the megahertz tactical radio to raise her other team mates; and realized that the transmission would be a second obvious flare in the sky—immediately triangulatable by Covenant electronic warfare specialists. Her fate would be sealed.
The decision had to be made instantaneously—hesitation could cost her life.
A marauding shadow flitted across the sky—a Covenant Phantom troop carrier, descending from the skies towards the visage of her crashed insertion pod.
“I’m coming for you, Ralph”, whispered Katie as she brought herself to a fast spring towards the nearby buildings. “Just hang on.”
Lieutenant Jake-G293 (“Jian One”)
Operation: STRIKE KING, Master Mission Clock T+00:04:19
Utikal Ruins, Sanghelios
Jake’s discomfort, already raised by the failed pod insertions, was further fanned with Katie’s open transmission across the tactical network, and then took a fatal spin with Ralph’s distress call and the appearance of an unmistakable UNSC Navy distress beacon in the center of Utikal.
Orion’s disposition became furious and lethal. “God damn it! We’ve lost all kind of operational security that we had—Lieutenant, one of your team members is critical and is probably drawing Covenant like moths to a fire, and now another has exposed her radio cover. Forty percent of your team is compromised”, he bit off, enraged.
Jake’s forehead furrowed, his mind resisting, attempting to resist the deplorable and undesirable conundrum before him—Ralph sounded as if he was mortally wounded; no SPARTAN-III commando would set off a UNSC mayday beacon in the center of Covenant territory unless there was no other alternative; he was literally drawing the swarm down upon him. He must have known the consequences.
The lieutenant replied, his voice terse, “Lieutenant Commander, I can see no other feasible tactical situation but to retrieve my wounded man. Golf Two-Nine-Nine would not have activated his distress beacon unless his situation was intractable. As commander of this team and as his commanding officer, I have a responsibility to extract him from this fire zone, sir.”
Orion’s visor depolarized, and Jake saw his eyes become dangerously cool—the deceptive façade of a predator about to pounce.
“Lieutenant, as the ‘commander of this team’, you have a responsibility to prosecute the mission assigned to you by UNSCSOCOM and Joint Task Force Anaconda. Your team member fucked up—there’s nothing you can do to correct his personal error. What remains is the mission, Lieutenant.”
Jake lost all semblance of calm.
“Sir, have you lost it? What mission are you suggesting that we ‘prosecute’?”
The ONI officer’s voice became impatient. “The disabling of the tachyon emplacement, Lieutenant. We need to infiltrate the generator complex with all of our assets and prosecute the operational parameters entrusted to us.”
“What ‘assets’, Lieutenant Commander—tell me, what assets do you suggest that we use to prosecute this fucking operation? Me, you, and your sniper rifle? If you haven’t realized, sixty percent of my goddamn strike team is missing. We don’t even have half the firepower we did twenty minutes ago aboard the cruiser.”
Orion shook his head tightly.
“I prepared for that operational contingency. I also have one of the Aurora charges. We infiltrate South One, set off the EMP inside the reactor room, and then exfiltrate ourselves from this op zone.”
“And my team, Lieutenant Commander? What happens to my team?” shouted Jake.
“There’s nothing you can do”, said Orion flatly. “Three of your subordinates failed you, and even as commanding officer, you can not correct their mistakes. Proceed with the mission. Honor their memories with a victory.”
“You don’t get it, do you?” snapped the SPARTAN-III. “My team is missing. United we stand, divided we fall—and my men are out there now, being chased by Elites in some godforsaken hellhole of a city, and unless we reinforce them, they’re going to be picked off and killed.”
The HPA officer bellowed furiously, “The mission! Have you lost it, Lieutenant? Prosecute the mission! Your team is fucked! You cannot save them! Have you forgotten the four hundred UNSC warships in orbit?” 
“Attack the tachyon cannon with what, Lieutenant Commander, pray do tell—with what? Just the two of us against a bunker full of hundreds of Covenant guards? Are you out of your mind?”
“Your team was prepared for exactly this contingency”, shouted Orion. “To succeed against overwhelming odds—that was the goal of your petty SPARTAN-III program. And what the fuck are you doing now? We’re standing here, the Fourth Fleet is descending on Sanghelios, and everyone is fucked because you won’t do your duty, march in there, and kill all those fuckers.”
Jake turned himself to stare pointedly at the attaché, and there was venom in his whisper. He jabbed a finger into Orion’s breastplate.
“You listen to me, Lieutenant Commander. If you want, you can charge into that generator complex and plant your EMP bomb. What I’m going to do is to save my squad and then launch a coordinated assault on the bunker to disable the tachyon cannon.”
He turned away to the distant electronic triangular beacon that indicated Ralph’s crash site, submachine gun in hand, uncaring if the murderously-enraged ONI officer behind him followed or not.
Lieutenant Katie-G219 (“Jian Four”)
Operation: STRIKE KING, Master Mission Clock T+00:07:00
Utikal Ruins, Sanghelios
Progress within the crumbled detritus that was the former decadence of Utikal was difficult, impossible to measure—ever since evading the Phantom at her pod’s crash site, she had leapt into the city’s darkened streets at a headlong run.
All the world was a obsfucated blot of 
 
Boulevard of Broken Dreams
UNSC Office of Naval Intelligence, Operations Center
Asphodel Meadows, 47 Ursae Majoris System
Adrift amongst the ruined detritus that once were the august balustrades and ramparts of ONI Central Command, Jake found himself profoundly lost—the former decadence, the feared obsidian towers that had once housed the infamous galaxy-spanning intelligence agency—now, had all fallen asunder to ruins.
The death tolls were still being calculated, but even now, they were innumerable. The current running lower estimate was over a hundred thousand.
Jake found himself stunned—a hundred thousand ONI officers, analysts, agents—
All dead within less than a timespan of an hour.
Son had pulled off his most audacious foray yet.
Jake turned on his heel to find Katie, kneeling besides a contorted corpse, the skin carbonized and burnt such that he couldn’t tell if it used to be a man or a woman, an officer or an enlisted.
Everyone is alike in death.
Brilliant lights shone from overhead—two principal battle groups of the Second Fleet, over one hundred warships—had been detached to fortify Asphodel Meadow’s crippled fortification.
Jake shook his head crossly.
The Admirality is being played like a piano by the rebels. The rebels already destroyed Asphodel Meadows; there’s no need to place one hundred and twenty warships in orbit because they’re not coming back for a ruined husk. You’re just drawing away defenses so that Son can repeat another Asphodel Meadows somewhere else.
“God damn”, said Ralph with a mix of terseness and abject dejection, “We just got fucked. An entire battle group of the Second Fleet—and Asphodel Meadows still gets bombed to shit.”
Katie looked up.
“I don’t think the problems lie in the force of our defenses. The brass isn’t stupid—”
Ralph made a small noise.
“—they know that Asphodel Meadows, as the cradle of both ONI and SOCOM, is an obvious strategic target. One battle group and a network of Super MAC Defense Platforms is enough firepower to repel well over a hundred warships.”
“Then”, began Albert, letting some soot flow through his spread fingers, “what is the problem?”
“The problem lies in the tenacious intelligence and flexibility of the rebels. They knew our defense capabilities over Asphodel Meadows, and had the perfect countermeasure—electronically hijacking the Super MAC Platforms. Afterwards, it was all over; Son just knew that the best way to finish off the surface buildings was with asteroids.”
Orion’s eyes were cold, the short cut of his blonde hair rippling in the fierce winds of the aftermath of the devastation.
“Two commando teams boarded and commandeered a pair of fleet carriers as well. Artemis was with them.”
The latter sentence drew the acute attention of the remainders of Team Jian, and for a little while, there was a silence as the SPARTAN-IIIs surveilled the vast waste of twisted metal and shattered brimstone that surrounded them. 
“Things aren’t sitting well with ONI”, said Katie grimly. “With the incapacitation of Director Kingsley, inter-departmental tensions are getting worse than ever. Losing the Black Tower has also shut down ONI intelligence operations across the galaxy; no one knows where to send agents or prowlers anymore. It’s going to take weeks or months until the Deputy Director steps up to get all of this shit on the line.”
Jake nodded. “That was the whole point of Son’s strategy. The real casualties weren’t the people in the Black Tower; he knew that the ONI intelligence apparatus would be taken offline for quite awhile. In that little time frame, he’s going to go ape shit crazy and beat the hell out of us.”
“We need to anticipate their next move”, said Orion astutely. 
All heads turned towards him. 
He continued, “The Galactic War will not be decided by strength of arms. Instead, so far, it has largely been a war of strategy, subtlety, and maneuver. For example, it doesn’t matter that the UNSC Navy has over one thousand warships; rather, it matters how many warships we can gather at each individual engagement. Even if we have numerically superior forces at any given engagement, the tactical positioning and maneuvering of our forces is what matters. For example, at Strawberry Fields on Atreus, the rebels used small pockets of troops to great effect—they attacked such that our forces were out of position to effectively impede their mission. And as we’ve seen here, insights into the enemy’s strategy can undo them—the rebels knew that our Super MAC cannons over Asphodel Meadows were one of our strongest weapons, and they devised an innovative strategy to use our own weapons against us.”
Jake dipped his head in acknowledgement.
“Well said, Lieutenant Commander.”
It was reciprocated amongst the rest of the squad.
“So”, said Ralph, “what’s our next move?”
* * *
UNSC Concordia (Fifth Fleet Combat Command)
Geosynchronous Orbit, Asphodel Meadows
Captain Wakes leaned forward on the tactical plot, the movement illuminating her face and obsidian hair with the azure light of the holographic tracing lasers.
“Each maneuver in war can have two ultimate purposes—attack or defense. The rebels currently hold no consolidated real estate to defend. Thus, all their maneuvers are offensive; to directly attack our assets, to gain superior galactic positioning, to subversively undermine us, or to gather more assets to effectively increase their numbers.”
Katie raised, “With the disabling of Fleet Intelligence, we no longer can use prowler assets to ensure that they are not expanding into the outer reaches of the galaxy.”
Wakes nodded. “That is true. However, because all Navy formations operate local early-warning pickets, we will have a measure of warning if they’re jumping into a system to attack one of our colonies. However, the temporary incapacitation of the Prowler Corps does make us unable to prevent their expansion, and also prevents us from ensuring that they are not gaining superior positions against us.”
“Then, they will be exploiting those two weaknesses of ours heavily”, said Jake.
There was a general air of agreement.
“There is, however”, interrupted Orion, “another possibility. For obvious reasons, Naval Intelligence kept careful tabs on arms dealers, mercenary firms, and other underworld assets. Son precisely attacked Asphodel Meadows to ensure that our intelligence-gathering capabilities would be compromised. Our inability now to ensure that the rebels do not consort with the black market is effectively incapacitated as well. Now would be a perfect time for him to exponentially gather forces, as well as expand and maneuver.”
“Yeah”, agreed Ralph. 
“So what do we do?” asked Lieutenant Colonel Archer from the back of the room, her arms crossed over her chest.
Wakes looked at Orion admiringly for a moment, and Katie’s perception was acute enough to see that Orion averted his eyes and a fuchsia tinge came to his cheeks. “The Lieutenant Commander’s insights are correct. Our continual hounding of the rebels have continually drained them of manpower—in our galactic-wide lull given with the attack on Asphodel Meadows, it seems likely that the rebels will try to gather new troops or weapons.”
Staff Sergeant Ridenour said, “Then for once, we’ve predicted them.”
Karen nodded ferally. “Ironically, Son’s attack on Asphodel Meadows to leverage our weaknesses has allowed us to anticipate how he’d exploit us. We have to make the best use of this opportunity.”
Archer stepped forward. “Captain, while ONI as a whole is disabled, this doesn’t hinder our own capabilities. Strategic Intelligence and Joint Task Force Anaconda are still fully operational.”
“I’m detaching the Concordia’s carrier strike force from Fifth Fleet Combat Command”, said Wakes.
It brought a terse feeling to Katie, how the young and ambitious ONI officer so easily declared these extravagant statements, and it was even more disconcerting to how reality bent to accede to translate her worlds to reality.
“Effective immediately, I’m assigning JTF Anaconda Alpha Squadron to the command and control of the carrier strike force. Lieutenant Colonel Archer and Lieutenant Commander Orion will have command authority. Alpha Squadron, with the Concordia’s assets and those of her auxiliaries, will be detached to independent operations to aggressively impede rebel movements in the extremely near future. You are released with Fire Order Vermillion and Title 9—you have full license to maneuver and prosecute.”
Archer nodded solidly.
“Thank you, Director.”
Ralph looked up, slightly confused by the latest discourse. “So we’re going to hit the rebels hard? But where?”
Orion’s voice was cool.
“We know what they’re going to do next—and when they do, we’ll be waiting for them.”
Katie shook her head, her sinuous blonde ponytail gyrating with the movement. “With all due respect, sir, it isn’t that easy. We don’t even know where they’ll be or what they’re exactly going to do.”
Orion smiled, and it was a serpentine crease of his lips that uncomfortably reminded Katie of death’s leering, wanton grin.
“Oh”, said Lieutenant Commander Orion, “yes I do.”
He produced a manila folder with the lidless eye emblem of Naval Intelligence.
“The personnel files on David Wellesley.”
* * *
On a distant battlefield, David Wellesley clambered under cover, the plasma and bullets splashing around him. He found Commander Esther-G071 waiting there for him, along with one of his former enforcers, a massive Southeast Asian islander that went by the name of Hutch.
Esther’s lips were set in a grim slash. “The enemy has attained superior flanking positions by virtue of fire and maneuver. We’ve incurred over fifty percent casualties, and we if we continue to attempt to hold this forward fire point, those casualties will increase steeply.”
Wellesley snapped furiously, “Goddamn it, Esther—”
The SPARTAN-III officer corrected, “That’s ‘ma’am’ to you, Major.”
The bounty hunter waved it away. “Goddamn it, ma’am, do you intend for us to simply surrender?”
Hutch smirked. “The great David Wellesley, actually suggesting to stick around and die for a cause instead of just running away like a little girl?”
The words stung deeply.
“Shut the fuck up.”
Esther’s eyes were furious. “Stop this petty dialogue. You’re soldiers—we need to make a fucking command decision instead of dicking around.”
Wellesley said bitterly, “I’ve always fought best on my own. If you let me actually walk out there on the battlefield instead of issuing orders to stupid rebels, ma’am, we might actually be winning now.”
The SPARTAN-III exclaimed, frustrated, “How many times do we have to run through this exercise, Major? You’re an officer, and you have your own formation—use them! If you wanted to simply haul your fat ass over the battlefield, you should have told the Admirality before you asked them to give you the highest rank they could give you—which was an officer’s commission.”
“I didn’t know at the time that being an officer was sitting in a bunker with a radio set all the day”, muttered Wellesley, “trying to put thumb tacks on a map to figure out where all our dead guys were and yelling at stupid ass soldiers that can’t do shit.”
The nearby tremor of machine-gun fire and the screams of dying rebels accentuated the point acutely.
“Fine”, snapped Esther. “You can go out there and get yourself killed. I’m going to stay here and coordinate the rest of the company and try to actually win this battle.”
Wellesley accepted the challenge easily. “Good”, he said in retort, rising and moving towards the bunker’s mouth. 
Hutch moved to follow him out into the battle, but the mercenary shook his head. “No, Hutch, you stay here. Make sure that the ‘command staff’ doesn’t get ‘infiltrated’.”
Esther’s cheeks burned fiercely, but she refused to be goaded, instead turning back to a tactical plot of the surrounding forest.
Wellesley looked down at the arms table and the arrayed weapons, and then he tucked a black-edged combat knife and a small sidearm into his utility belt and picked up a compact A12 carbine with an integral suppressor. 
Quick and quiet, he thought approvingly.
Then, he collected himself and stepped outside.
The darkness was imposing—in the night time, the forest was an intimidating labyrinth, a boundless expanse without form. He could not discriminate the scything alpines from the buttressed roots, the hedges of untamed shrub from the cords of parasitic ivy that sloped from yonder branches.
Quickly, Wellesley hit the stub to activate the night-vision filters on his glasses, but found that they made little difference—the low-resolution jumble of green and white pixels were next to useless; even with his keen eyesight, he couldn’t discern even where the nearest trees were with the NVGs.
“This is Alpha Five to all Alpha units. Alpha Six is in the field, and I am assuming command.”
David shrugged. Let the SPARTAN-III try to figure our way out of this fucking mess. Good luck to her.
Esther was issuing orders in the background, but Wellesley drowned them out, attempting to navigate himself through the plasma-torn forest. He found that maneuvering through the forest in the night was a horrifying experience, perhaps one even worse than fighting; he knew his own skill with a firearm, but the forest was an implacable enigma—a thousand species of undeveloped and parasitic arboreal organisms, the soil crunching underneath his boots unfamiliar, the rotund trees unfamiliar to his sight.
So different from Earth or Asphodel Meadows.
It was incredible that the only consolation he had was the flickers of gunfire in the distance—the distant muzzle flashes were guiding beacons, a sense of direction in these dark and purposeless woods, lest he wander aimlessly in this horrifying hell of a jungle.
“Alpha Two, reposition to Foxtrot-Quebec and provide supporting fires to Alpha Seven. Alpha Seven, you have friendlies advancing on axis Ocean at two-two-five.”
Wellesley endeavored forward through the woods, now at a half-crouch, the elongated barrel of his carbine extended before him, his forceful source of protection. He lightened his footsteps, decreasing the crunch of the underbrush underneath his boots as the strobes of plasma and rifle rifle became closer.
Nearby, he heard a loud yell—it was distantly familiar, the voice of one of the rebel squad leaders subordinated underneath him. A moment later, intense rifle fire crackled from that position, and Wellesley knew that was a friendly position.
Reciprocatingly, plasma and machine-gun fire tore away at the cloister of trees where his men were encroached, and Wellesley mentally marked the positions in his mind, the shadowy knot of bushes—those had to be the enemy positions.
After several exchanges, the crackling rifles from the first position began to peter out, and pained cries became more prevalent, and he surmised that his troops were being taken out. He needed to act faster—not that saving his own useless squads would help augment him in any way.
With a surety in his hasty field logic, Wellesley carefully raised the butt of the carbine to his shoulder, stabilizing the weapon as he squinted through the red dot sight, adjusting the position of the aiming reference to aim where he’d seen the last muzzle flash from that position—
And when the enemy team at that position opened fire, their gunfire illuminating their exact positions, Wellesley made a small adjustment to his aim, and tapped the trigger twice.
Two hundred meters distant, two human forms spasmed and fell.
Wellesley smiled coldly.
Go out and get myself killed, my ass, ‘Commander’.
Encouraged by their mysterious support, his own small surviving nearby pocket of troops, redoubled their fire, trying to force back their flanking assailants.
But curiously, even as Wellesley dug himself tighter into the dried ravine and into the wet soil, flattening himself against the ground in case his suppressed shots had somehow been detected, he observed a curious phenomenon—when the remaining enemy positions retaliated with a barrage of their own, the fire of the enemy position closest to him was briefly blotted out, a quick shadow flitting across the starry-edged flash of repeated machine-gun fire.
He canted his head curiously. That was strange, almost as if something was moving between him and that machine-gun nest—
Immediately, he raised his carbine, and his other hand snaked towards the knife on his belt. His blood ran a degree hotter—there was someone here. The crescendo tempo of his pulse overwhelmed the sound of nearby weapons fire. He stepped an inch forward, careful—
The phantom was faster. It wasn’t a discrete attack—rather, it was as if 
* * *
The waiter came with their drinks, and Wellesley took a shot of the hard liquor and waited for the waiter to depart before speaking.
“His name’s Bernard Church”, said Wellesley, exhaling deeply, feeling the molten sweetness trickle down his throat, brushing away the cold clamor of the frantic forest skirmish.
Esther canted his head curiously. “I can’t say that I haven’t heard of him.”
The bounty hunter shrugged, downing another shot, feeling the pungent aftertaste of the bitter alcohol.
“Yeah. Church keeps himself on the down low. He’s someone known only by the most highly-connected in the trade.”
“Information broker?” asked Kimberly.
He shook his head. “Nope. Well, of a sort. He’s just someone that’s connected to everyone. He’ll get you anything you need—contacts, weapons, mercs—just at an extreme price. Church goes to show that to be successful in the mercenary trade, you need to know a lot of people, not be the best fighter.”
“Pays well to be both”, said Blackburn.
“Yeah. But when people are trying to kill you every day of the week, it’s hard to remember faces and make an impression.”
Artemis leaned forward, her interest and the sake of necessity making fierce battle with her distrust and disgust.
“And you know this Bernard Church?”
His expression became hard as he stared at his addresser, but he managed to say, “Yes. Church and I—we have a history. He helped me out of the few tight spots I got into.”
Esther frowned. “Do you owe him?”
“Nah”, he said. “I paid him off a long time ago—shit, millions of credaroos, back in the day. He’ll give you anything, for a price.”
Kimberly leaned back, musing. “Contacts, weapons, and mercenaries—could be useful.”
Her statement was a profound summary of how far the rebels had fallen—formerly, Kimberly had been a Master Chief Petty Officer in UNSC Special Operations Command, under Title 9 had unrestricted mobility and license to kill and to supercede command of UNSC units; ONI’s entire network of contacts had been hers, all the au courant weapons and technology on humanity’s front edge available to her.
And now, she was considering to cavort with the lowliest dregs of the galaxy.
“Is he good?”
Wellesley nodded, his lips now ashen from the alcohol. 
Artemis’s expression was displeased. “The idea of this black market trash doesn’t jive with me. I don’t like this—we’re more likely to be sold out to the UNSC than anything else.”
“We need to get weapons”, spoke up Esther. “Weapons and information—these criminal types undoubtedly have connections all throughout the UNSC. We can keep tabs on UNSC troop movements through these kinds of guys; their entire survival is predicated on evading the Navy and the Marines.”
Artemis’s expression did not change, but she said nothing, her eyes dark.
Kimberly raised, “Well, it’s not like we’re becoming committed to this guy. If nothing else, this’ll just be a very expensive visit for our little friend here to wherever the hell this guy is.”
“5 Librae”, Wellesley supplied, his voice slurred.
“We’ll just come in there and take a little peek—if this guy is worth it, we’ll keep him on the retainer. If he’s decidedly untrustworthy, well—I don’t think he’s going to like the consequences.”
Esther nodded soundly. “I like the sound of that.”
Kimberly bowed her head. “I’ll approve it with Admiral Son. The Admirality is preparing to mobilize our forces from Tau Capricorni and to perform deep reconnaissance of the Perseus Arm—we have a lot of chess pieces moving around on the table. Let’s get suited and prepare to launch in one hour in the Jian for 5 Librae.”
* * *
Escobar et. al (2555). “Ultraconservation in the genomes of sentient species in the Orion Arm.” Nature (3064): 1-12. 
1Harvard University, Department of Organismal & Evolutionary Biology; 2Acumen Science Laboratories, Department of Bioinformatics
Recent studies (Alden et. al, 2553, Nature) have demonstrated the presence of ultraconserved elements in the H. sapiens (Human) and M. cognatus (Sangheili) genomes. Here, using high-resolution and high-throughput chromosomal sequencing, we report that sentient species throughout the Orion Arm share ultraconserved elements, whereas insentient species do not also share these ultraconserved elements. These ultraconserved elements are also under specific epigenetic blockade, with complete methylation of CpG islands and with inhibitory methyl modifications of histone residues. These results suggest that the evolution of sentience is correlated with the acquisition of ultraconserved elements through convergent selection.
Loh et. al (2556). “Ultraconserved genetic elements in sentient species confer cellular functions”. Nature (3075): 204-209.
1Harvard University, Department of Organismal & Evolutionary Biology; 2Acumen Science Laboratories, Department of Bioinformatics; 3UNSC Office of Naval Intelligence, Department of Biological Warfare
Previously, we have shown that sentient species throughout the Orion Arm exclusively share ultraconserved genetic elements, suggesting that ultraconservation of these elements correlates with the acquisition of sentience. Here, we show a functional significance for ultraconservation of these elements, supporting this common, convergent genetic basis for the development of sentience. While microdeletion of certain ultraconserved elements in M. musculus results in no observable consequence, transfection of ultraconserved elements leads to dynamic and complex transcriptional and epigenetic changes, suggesting that these elements have no basal activity but their active expression confers special activities that may be involved in sentience.
Miyagi et. al (2557). “Ultraconserved sequences in sentient species are not ultraselected and are not active in development nor the adult”. Nature (3081): 815-823. 
1Joslin Diabetes Center, Department of Medicine and Harvard Medical School; 2SierraCell, Inc., Division of Personalized Genomics
A plethora of recent reports (Escobar et. al, 2555, Nature; Loh et. al, 2556, Nature) have suggested that genomic sequences ultraconserved exclusively amongst sentient species confers sentience upon these species. Consistent with the previous observation that microdeletion of some of these sequences in the murine genome confers no deleterious phenotype, here, with individual high-resolution genomic sequences, that humans with chromosomal deletions of these conserved sequences also do not display a deleterious phenotyping, suggesting that conservation of these regions is not ultraselected for. Furthermore, genome-wide transcriptome mapping shows that throughout development, neonatal life, and adult life, these sequences are never transcribed in M. musculus, demonstrating that they likely have no biological significance in the living animal.
Loh et. al (2557). “Activity of ultraconserved genetic elements in sentient species is specific to the nervous system”. Nature (3075): 3677-3684.
1Harvard University, Department of Organismal & Evolutionary Biology; 2Acumen Science Laboratories, Department of Bioinformatics; 3UNSC Office of Naval Intelligence, Department of Biological Warfare
We have shown that ultraconserved genetic elements in sentient species are epigenetically silenced (Escobar et. al, 2555, Nature) and others have observed (Miyagi et. al, 2557, Nature) that these elements are not necessary for developmental or adult homeostasis, therefore concluding that these elements do not confer sentience in species that contain them. However, here, we show through the high-throughput sequencing of the genomes of fifty sentient organisms and thirty thousand non-sentient organisms that not a single non-sentient species in the Orion Arm that we have sequenced contains a sequence with any homology to these ultraconserved elements. Furthermore, the introduction of these ultraconserved elements into cultured cells leads to the reproducible modulation of neural-specific transcripts, along with broad genome-wide epigenetic modifications, which we have studied in depth. Moreover, electroporation of these elements into the developing mouse brains leads to substantial cytoarchitectonic and transcriptional effects, demonstrating the significance of the activity of these elements in neurological development.
Loh et. al (2558). “Ultraconserved genetic elements exert their activities specifically through neural stem cells”. Nature Neuroscience (2418): 505-510.
1Harvard University, Department of Organismal & Evolutionary Biology; 2Acumen Science Laboratories, Department of Bioinformatics; 3UNSC Office of Naval Intelligence, Department of Biological Warfare
We have previously shown that ultraconservation of specific genetic elements is extremely specific to sentient species and that the in vivo activity of these elements has consequences specific to the nervous system (Loh et. al, 2557, Nature). Here, we show that the drastic influence of the activity of these ultraconserved elements in the embryo and the adult is due to their actions on neural stem cells and not neurons nor glia. Transgenic mice lines specifically expressing one of these elements (U1) in mature neurons (under control of the NeuN promoter) or in astrocytes (under control of the GFAP promoter) do not share activities induced by brain-wide introduction of the ultraconserved U1 element, whereas expression of this element in neural stem cells (under control of the Sox2 promoter) generates the same phenotype of brain-wide U1 overexpression. Furthermore, genetic ablation of neural stem cells with diptheria toxin or small molecule impediment of neural stem cell proliferation substantially impedes the phenotype. Specific delivery of U1 into neural stem cells produces transcriptional and epigenetic changes, and ontology analyses demonstrate that these changes are highly specific to neural-specific transcripts, including genes known to control neural stem cell proliferation, neuroblast migration, and synaptic plasticity. 
Browning et. al (2605). “Small molecule control over the activity of ultraconserved genetic elements in sentient species”. Nature Chemical Biology (2609): 34-40.
1UNSC Office of Naval Intelligence, Department of Biological Warfare; 2UNSC Office of Naval Intelligence, Program in Human Configuration; 3Acumen Science Laboratories, Chemical Biology Program; 4Acumen Science Laboratories, Department of High-Throughput Screening 
Previous reports have extensively debated over the evolutionary purpose of ultraconservation of genetic elements in sentient species (Escobar et. al, 2555, Nature; Loh et. al, 2556, Nature; Miyagi et. al, 2557, Nature; Loh et. al, 2557, Nature; Loh et. al, 2558, Nature Neuroscience) because of a lack to activate these elements in their native chromosomal locus. Here, through screening of chemical libraries and synthetic chemistry, we describe the development of a series of chemical compounds that activate endogenous ultraconserved genetic elements, thus providing a novel tool for investigators seeking to interrogate the endogenous roles of these elements.
UNSC OFFICE OF NAVAL INTELLIGENCE, SECURE TRANSMISSION
DEPARTMENT OF BIOLOGICAL WARFARE
TO: VICE ADMIRAL CARTER, DIRECTOR OF STRATEGIC INTELLIGENCE (UNSC JORMÜNGANDR)
FROM: REAR ADMIRAL BROWNING, MD, PHD, ASSISTANT CHIEF OF FORERUNNER STUDIES
Dear SIR:
I hereby report substantial progress in the Department of Biological Warfare’s efforts to characterize the role of ultraconserved genetic elements in sentient species and the emergence of sentience. Our recent publication in Nature Chemical Biology (Browning et. al, 2605) has summarized some of our success in the development of small molecules that endogenously activate these ultraconserved elements within their chromosomal loci and bypass the robust epigenetic blockade on their activation. 
Hereby, I am disclosing the results of our preliminary efforts to employ this chemical series to interrogate the in vivo significance of the activity of these elements in designated test subjects as per the BAAL PROTOCOL (P519-A). 
Disappointingly, intravenous delivery of these molecules does not impart substantial increases in cognition, memory, decision-making, attention, response time, reflexes, nor motor function. In contrast, a small proportion of these subjects develop progressive neuropathy and hallucinations, which are coupled with psychological attrition. 
We are further attempting optimization of this chemical series to further produce more optimal responses in future test subjects.
Best regards,
Rear Admiral Browning, MD, PhD
UNSC OFFICE OF NAVAL INTELLIGENCE, DEPARTMENT OF BIOLOGICAL WARFARE
HUMANCONFIG PROGRAM AND CHEMICAL BIOLOGY DIVISION
ASSISTANT CHIEF OF FORERUNNER STUDIES, DEPARTMENT OF STRATEGIC INTELLIGENCE
Albatross Station, 5 Librae
Beneath them 
 
 
Sanctuary
Liberty, Geosynchronous Orbit
Absolution Court, Tau Capricorni System
Son’s face became maudlin as Cassandra indicated the position on the holographic recapitulation of the galactic plane.
She indicated a point on the Sagittarius-Carina Arm, far removed from Earth.
“NGC 3603, an open cluster on the Carina Arm. Twenty thousand light-years from Sol, thirty thousand light-years from the Galactic Core.”
The scintillating lights splaying from the commandeered UNSC carrier’s bridge illuminated Son’s inclined faces, the cyan hue finally bringing the deep, weary crags on his face into contrast, the helplessness evident within his features.
“We don’t have a chance”, he said hoarsely. “ONI is going to throw everything they have at that Forerunner installation—the UNSC Navy has three thousand warships, and I doubt that Carter or Wakes will hold back anything.”
“No”, said Artemis firmly. “With all due respect, sir, the extent to which we’ve stretched the UNSC defenses means that they can’t have too many battle groups to spare for expeditionary sorties. If we send everything we have, we’ll still have a chance to contest it.”
The entire holographic halo continued its slow revolution, the celestial plane of simulated stars serenely pivoting over the heads of the silent rebel officers.
Even the shake of the Arbiter’s head was weary, his jaws slack.
“You humans have no measure of constraint nor bound. Your admiral’s logic is flawless—your imperial directorate will have no hesitation to dispatch hundreds of warships. No strategy or design can allow our force to prevail against theirs.”
Artemis demanded, “What about Onyx? What about Halo? From what we’ve seen, all Forerunner installations have some kind of defensive countermeasure—they could even the odds enough for us to fight them on even numbers.”
That brought a retort from Kawika, but Kimberly interceded, stepping forward. Her voice was actinic, incendiary.
“It doesn’t matter how many ships or how many soldiers the UNSC is bringing to Sanctuary. War can’t be decided by a calculator—we can’t just tally up the forces on both sides and simply declare the side with more fleets as the winner. If we did that, the UNSC would have long surrendered before in the Great War, hell, we wouldn’t even be here today. Our Galactic Resistance was founded on this premise; that a smaller number of patriots could antagonize an entire galactic government seeking galactic domination.”
“If ONI gets its hands on another Forerunner installation, everything about reality as we know it will be over. The Arbiter is right—the UNSC doesn’t give a shit about anything anymore except controlling the entire Milky Way. ONI won’t stop at anything to exploit the Forerunner technologies they’ll find inside the Sanctuary; either they’ll forge an invulnerable sword of conquest, or they’d rather extinguish all the life in the galaxy rather than let us topple them.”
“This Galactic War has cost the lives of billions already, and at the current rate, will last decades as we struggle to gain the upper hand. Hundreds of colonies—hundreds of billions of lives. We need to end it, and end it now. We need to make a final stand, else perish in the attempt.”
The audience instantly became severe as the female commando turned towards them, jaw clenched, fist upraised.
“Who is with me? Who is with me?”
She drew only silence as she turned, engaging the eyes of her comrades one by one, the bitter determination and pain in her eyes evident to everyone.
There was a deadpan beat.
Evelyn finally had the resolve to speak. “What do you propose?”
“We send everything”, said Kimberly adamantly. “Every last man, woman, weapon, and starship. All of our forces, we send to Sanctuary with best speed. Leave nothing behind.”
Angry starts arose from the audience.
“That’s ridiculous”, snapped Admiral Hayes. “You’re committing this entire resistance to a single battle—if we fall, there’s going to be no pocket of resistance in the galaxy that can resist the UNSC.”
The black-garbed woman retorted furiously, “I’m committing everything to this battle because if the UNSC wins, there’s no chance that anything will be able to stop it anymore.”
Hayes shouted, “A hundred warships! Millions of soldiers! You’re mad, Kimberly—you’d risk all our lives on a suicide mission—”
“So what if we don’t go? What if we keep our fleet here at Absolution Court and let ONI capture Sanctuary? Then what will happen to your millions of soldiers, Admiral—tell me. Tell me what will happen when the UNSC emerges with a fleet of Forerunner warships or if they obtain the Index to fire the Halos. What will happen then?”
“You can’t possibly know that the UNSC will get fucking anything from Sanctuary, Blackburn!” screamed the former officer. “You’ve lost it; you want to gamble this entire army because of a notion that the UNSC will get some superweapon from this unexplored Forerunner world—”
“I’m not saying that”, said Blackburn frustrated. She turned and jabbed a finger at the least-expected member of the crowd. “He’s saying that.”
All eyes turned to Simon-G294.
His stare at Kimberly radiated with palpable rage.
“I’m done with this. Done with fighting your war, done fighting the war of others—”
“You don’t say that six hours ago when you were breaking apart!” barked Blackburn forcefully, the entire mesmerizing thrall of the Flood radiating throughout her voice, her countenance now dark and terrible. “What did you see, Simon?”
The SPARTAN-III recoiled from the force of her imperative, but resisted. “No. I’m sick of getting involved in these battles, these wars, always the UNSC, the UNSC—”
Kimberly’s eyes flared nebulously, her eyes becoming a formless darkness, her pupils now twin ghastly outpours of crimson light—Simon turned for a moment to face her, then looked at her eyes, her eyes—something terrible lurked within her, some malevolent spirit, brilliant florid light, navigating through the depths of space, something—
“No!”
His yell brought him an unconscious step back, in revulsion in what he had somehow glimpsed.
The defiant SPARTAN-III traitor shouted, “I’m done! I’m done!”, reeling, trying to turn away, pacing himself from the room—
A found a familiar chestnut-haired pale girl standing there, blocking his way.
His head ticked for a moment as he realized who she was.
Cassandra.
The other SPARTAN leveled her jaw. “Cut this shit out, Simon. The days of the past are done. You need to start living in the present.”
Simon was so startled by the fact that the other girl had summoned the nerve to confront him that in his confusion, he rebuked her with one of his customary retorts that he typically saved for others—“You have no idea what you’re talking about”, he said.
Cassandra’s voice was little less than a yell.
“Yes, I do! I’m sick of all this shit Simon—always all this talk about New Africa and Hekate, how it’s always ‘the UNSC betrayed us’ and all this, so you get to hide like a coward behind this little shield of yours—”
Suddenly, his demeanor became colder.
“What did you call me?”
She shouted furiously, “Wake up to the real world, Simon! You know what? Life is fucked. That’s right, it’s not the little utopia you thought it was, where kids get to live the lives of kids and everything’s fair, and oh, how you were so wronged when you were taken into the SPARTAN-III Program and now how everything is shitty.”
That brought a revulsion to his stomach at how much they’d turned her, dear rebellious Cassandra, now all defiant for their cause—“What did they do to you, Cassandra? Are you fucking out of your mind? You actually think it was moral that they took us from our fucking homes, bred our rage against the Covenant to make us child soldiers—”
His rage was reciprocated within her.
“What about everyone else?” she screamed. “Have you ever asked Artemis, Apollo, Perseus, Esther, Whitney, Jennifer, or even Kimberly about their childhoods? They grew up—we all grew up a long time ago and accepted that our childhoods were fucked, but now we have a chance to protect the rest of the galaxy—”
Pools of long-restrained venom and bile spewed from him. “I don’t give a shit about Kimberly! And I don’t give a shit about the galaxy!”
The latter declaration stunned everyone in the command bridge—even Cassandra swayed a little bit.
“The galaxy turned its back on me a long time ago”, he declared. “Now, it can continue on its own little way without my help.”
“How selfish are you?” barked Cassandra hoarsely. Simon easily saw she was trying to invoke guilt, like so many before her.
“I look out for myself.”
Someone else stepped from the bridge airlock beside Cassandra’s shoulder, and this figure’s appearance was even more shocking to Simon than Cassandra’s.
Redmond’s eyes were bitter as he spoke, but his voice was soft, choked with emotion, his eyes live with accusation. “You look out only for yourself, Simon. When I nearly died at Hotel California, you didn’t give a shit, you’d let me die out there alone.”
He roared furiously, “That’s bullshit! The moment I heard that you were wounded, I came out to you all the way in a VTOL that I didn’t even remember how to fly, just to find you—”
Yet, somehow, his words seemed less convincing than how he’d wanted them to be.
Redmond said softly, “You didn’t even go into battle when a hundred thousand Unggoy marched to Hotel California on your name. When August and Konrad died on Tamegue, you were sitting in orbit, complaining how the admirality had commandeered ‘your’ Jian.”
Simon had distanced himself from the pyrrhic rebel slaughter on Dashan and the deaths of two of their best warriors on Tamegue, but somehow, Redmond’s words pricked something that was his closest simacrulum of a conscience.
He fought to clamp down those emotions.
“This isn’t my war, Redmond, and I’m never again marching into battle for anyone else. If people die, I’m not responsible for how they marched in there like wind-up toys—like the wind-up toy Son and all the other admirals have made you out to be.”
Simon didn’t expect his former protégé, which he knew to have no self-confidence, to be able to retaliate.
Stunningly, it was Simon who found himself bereft of confidence after his student made his final reply.
“Simon, I’m not going to try the ‘you were my teacher’ line on you anymore. Cassandra is right. It’s time that all of us stand up and take the responsibilities vested upon us. To whom much is given, much is expected. Even if you don’t shoulder your mantle, someday, you’ll realize when the galaxy is crumpling down around you that even you will die when everything else falls.”
“Your self-righteousness, your arrogance—you’ve constructed a web of lies to delude yourself that nothing else matters, not even you. I thought that when you had the adoration of the Unggoy that you’d change, turn into their warrior-king, but no, even when tens of thousands died you didn’t even cry a word of protest about how selflessly they flung themselves at the UNSC in your name.”
“You’ve deluded yourself so far that you have no care for how many die around you. No amount of deaths can move you, because you don’t have a conscience anymore. You don’t have a conscience anymore because you have no more friends, Simon. You drove me away when you stopped giving a shit about anything, you drove Cassandra away when even she, your best friend, realizes that you really don’t care for anything or anyone besides yourself.”
“One day, Simon, you’re going to die, and when you’re dying because the galaxy is falling apart around you, and you’re going to wish you had friends, someone to hold your hand. But there’s going to be no one—because you only cared about yourself, so no one cared about you. And when you’re dying because the galaxy’s falling apart, you’re going to wonder if there was something you could have done. But instead, like a coward, you turned away and ran.”
“You’ll abandon us to our fates in hell, Simon, and we’ll all abandon you.”
Redmond collected Cassandra, with the woman giving him a long, painful, evaluating look, and finally, she turned away, unable to bear it anymore as the couple made their exit.
The entire bridge was silent. There was not a word spoken.
And suddenly, Simon disintegrated. It was an instantaneous, crippling blow—his entire emotional skeleton contorted violently, then his heart trembled violently, attempting to tear itself away from his flesh. Every light and diode in the carrier’s bridge grew overwhelming bright, his entire vision blotted out with the starlight of a thousand galaxies—then everything turned black, the darkness of his screaming soul the only thing to accompany him.
He didn’t even know what Redmond had said that had triggered it. But it assaulted him all at once—all the repressed guilt, all the regrets, all the feelings he had submerged, the jealously that had secretly welled when he’d learned Redmond had taken Cassandra, all the hate, all the anger, everything, all the lies he knew he had been fooling himself with—everything consumed him at once.
And as his emotional being was ripped apart, he realized that he didn’t even have a friend he could have turned to. 
It was the final stroke.
Barely able to stand, he haggardly revolved to address Hayes. He didn’t even know what allowed him to speak; he couldn’t even feel the blood course through his veins over the screaming of his blackened soul.
“I saw the galaxy—in fire. Towers falling, storms arising. Humans screaming, wreathed in flames. Everything dying.”
He didn’t even know why he said it—it was simply that he had no more mental or emotional roadblocks left to antagonize the revealing of the truth, thus it flooded out of him.
Then, he staggered out of the room, and for a timeless eternity, he groped for his quarters. When he found his bunk, he collapsed and divulged a torrent of tears.
He didn’t stop crying, sobbing softly as he felt everything around him come apart.
* * *
As the mortally-wounded SPARTAN-III limped from the bridge, all eyes upon him, Kimberly turned to Hayes and Son, her lips a grim slash on her face.
“When I found him a few hours ago, that’s what he told me too. No matter what happens, once they find Sanctuary, it’s the beginning of the end.”
Thoreau posited softly, “Can we trust him?”
Surprisingly, it was Son who defended Simon.
“Undoubtedly, some measure of Pandora’s Box—he was afflicted by these visions on Midgard, and they predicted the exact end on how things on Earth turned out. I have no reason to distrust the Lieutenant Commander now, even though he’s … emotionally compromised.”
A sallow silence engulfed the bridge as all of those gathered considered the next steps to tread. The steps that would lead them to the apocalypse—and their almost-certain deaths.
* * *
Ashes.
Simon looked back at his world and saw nothing but darkness. In just a day, in just a few minutes, everything he had lived for and believed in had been irrevocably obliterated. For the third time in his short life, he had been crushed by the unrelenting onslaught of despair.
He slowly raised his arm and stared at it bleakly. So that’s what I really am. A coward who only does what’s best for himself. He thought he’d come to terms with that, but to have someone else spit his philosophy of self-preservation back in his face was unbearable. And ever since the battle on Hera, he had been struggling with an even worse title: murderer.
He had gunned Jake down in cold blood after the former had spared his life and agreed to take him prisoner. Not only had he killed one who had shown mercy to him, he had killed someone who had once been his friend.
This is war. Things like that happen... But his reasonings and justifications, which had once seemed so flawless and practical, sounded just as empty as his protestations back in the briefing room had.
Well, I guess ONI’s training worked after all. I’m a monster, and from the looks of things the only one in Gamma Company they succeeded in creating. I’d go far as a spook, no question about it.
He racked his brain for the perfect answer, for the solution to why everything about him seemed so wrong, but he couldn’t pin it down. A few hours ago, everything besides the visions had seemed so right. He had been part of a deal that had promised to get him out of other people’s wars for good, would allow him to retire somewhere remote and obscure location and live out the rest of his life in peace. Now...
The only two people he had ever truly cared about had made there disgust and hatred plain. There was no one left to turn to, no one that he could trust. He was completely alone, aside from an AI he could only access when he was on his ship. A ship that had been appropriated by Son and the others for their missions.
I don’t give a shit about the galaxy. He’d been avoiding the truth for so long that it seemed as if another person had said that. It resonated within him and echoed throughout his entire life. What had he ever done for the galaxy?
I tried to avenge my friends. I saved Cassandra. But that time was long past, and in the end, what had either accomplished? He had murdered a man who had only been following the orders of those above him and had doomed Cassandra to a miserable life in exile with him.
Simon let his arm fall and squeezed his eyes shut. He had wept out all the tears that he could, and now there was nothing left but pain. Where was the boy who had prayed every night and who had done everything he could to make up for all his weaknesses? Where was the boy who could have deserted before he was even deployed, but had stayed because of his friends?
He died, whispered a bitter voice in his head. Simon killed him when he wasn’t needed anymore. Just like you killed Jake when his back was turned. A shot to the arm or knee would have done it, but you went for the head.
He didn’t know when that particular death had occurred, but he knew that that boy had been wounded on New Africa and had slowly died in the frozen wastes of Hekate and the war-torn ruins of Midgard. His exile had only hastened his own fall, as he drove away the last people who might actually have given a damn whether he lived or died. Now he was just an empty shell, a parasite that used others to its own advantage. There was nothing left of him.
And he new exactly what the void that now filled him was. It wasn’t the absence of friends or the comfort of self righteousness, but the absence of any will to live. In the past, no matter how far he’d ever sunk, no matter how hopeless things had been, it had always been there to bolster him and force him to carry on. Now it was completely gone. What was the point in surviving if you didn’t have a life worth living?
Case Black
UNSC Jörmungandr (Fourth Fleet Combat Command)
Doisac High Orbit, Oth Sonin System, Covenant Sector
The small conclave of figures paused at the forward observation deck along the Jörmungandr’s terraced superstructure, a pair of black-suited Naval Special Warfare guards moving to flank the doorway, standing as if automatons, gloved hands on their sidearms as Wakes closed the blast doors to the “O” Deck, granting some concealment for the most important meeting in UNSC history.
With the blast doors’ resounding closure, Fleet Admiral Ira Boulting, Commander-in-Chief of the UNSC Defense Force, purposefully strided to the fore of the room, the distant brilliant light of Oth Sonin lending a pearlescent aura to his immaculate white-uniformed figure.
Behind him, bound in respectful and taut silence, were Admiral Kingsley, Admiral Carter, and Commander Wakes.
Boulting’s eyes focused on the distant, embittered sphere of Doisac, her dark crescent swelling to fill half of the panoramic perspective that they enjoyed aboard the Jörmungandr; dozens of warships milled in the distance, regimented angels marching in lockstep through the heavens—below, Doisac’s dark, impenetrable surface was lit with the caustic flash of plasma—massive raw wounds festered on the planet’s surface, gleaming with glistening crimson and tangerine even visible from space—swaths of destruction that had been visited upon the planet’s surface.
And below, billions of Jiralhanae and Sangheili clashing, grappling violently for control of the Jiralhanae homeworld.
The Fleet Admiral’s dull eyes were fixated upon the spectacle below—a planet afire.
Behind him, Kingsley respectfully cleared his throat. “Sir, if we detach the Fourth Fleet and the Fifth Fleet for the assault, we can reposition the remaining principal fleets to compensate for it. The Third Fleet can be relieved of its jurisdiction and we can expand the patrol groups to cover Covenant space.”
Ira breathed heavily.
“The entire Fourth and Fifth Fleets—that’s a thousand warships, gentlemen. If you haven’t realized—”
Wakes impetuously interrupted. “With all due respect, Admiral Boulting, this has been the opportunity of a millennia. We sought to wage this war to make the Covenant vassals to our will—and now, there is an opportunity that if we do not seize with all due force and haste, we will have another chance for millennia.
The Commander-in-Chief’s visage was haggard, and his face became inflamed with disgust at being addressed as such by a staff officer. “You overstep your bounds, Commander. What Forerunner ‘opportunity’ did ONI seize at Beyond Veil’s Azure? It nearly destroyed the UNSC!”
Wakes looked towards Carter, who said eruditely, “Admiral, with all due respect, we have a galactic war on our hands. Son’s rebels prove to be resistant to our best efforts; they continue to stoke the flames of war higher, and we have dissidence emerging on dozens of colonies. Despite trillions of credits invested in military reconnaissance and intelligence, we have no measure over the extent of the rebel forces—”
Fleet Admiral Boulting barked, “And that is your responsibility, Director! Special Operations and Naval Intelligence were supposed to have quelled this upstart long ago—we have toppled hundreds of Covenant colonies with the Navy, yet we unable to stamp out a few thousand rebels!”
There was a pointed silence.
Kingsley tried again.
“Admiral, each time Forerunner technology has appeared in this galaxy, there has been bloodshed. In the Human-Covenant War, hundreds of billions of humans died. When we found Eta Carinae and the Memory, even more died again. And it is a cycle that continues to perpetuate itself—with Beyond Veil’s Azure and now, this. Sir, if we can’t secure Sanctuary—”
“—the rebels will”, finished Karen succinctly.
Boulting’s brow furrowed, his eyes flaring darkly. “Director, what kind of ‘intelligence’ does your agency have on Sanctuary?”
“We are completely certain that there is a Forerunner phenomenon there from the hallucinations of the subjects. Hundreds of people are seeing the same thing—a megastructure at NGC 3603, of supermassive proportions and clearly of Forerunner design.”
“And what ‘weapons’ does Sanctuary have, Director? Tell me; if we capture it, what will the Navy gain?”
Carter was silent.
Ira finally turned back from the mesmerizing spectacle of the desolation of Doisac, unclasping his hands. The distant flashes of battle lit the chasms running down his stentorian face, accentuating his gravity and age.
“There are five battle fleets in the UNSC Navy. I can’t send a thousand warships to secure anything, not even if we found God Himself hiding in the cosmos.”
Wakes’s voice was not pleading, but was urging.
“Sir—you are the Commander-in-Chief, with complete control over the size of the expeditionary force we dispatch, if Strategic Command decides to release one to our control. However, a Forerunner installation, no matter of what we know about it, is a literal treasure trove. The Covenant’s technology jumped eons when they reverse-engineered Forerunner technology on their worlds. Sir, the Forerunners, for all intents and purposes, were the former masters of this galaxy. They wrote part of the DNA within us. Our genome carries the signature of the Forerunners in it. Anything we can do to learn more—”
Boulting turned to Kingsley.
“And you support this … operational order, Admiral?”
It was a frigid silence; Carter’s and Wakes’s eyes were fixated upon him.
Finally, he bowed his head gracefully. “Yes, sir. It’s the … best chance we’ve had in a long time. It’s a long shot, but something we must try. It’s the opportunity of a generation—centuries later, our children and grandchildren will be wondering what if we went to Sanctuary. What we would have found…”
Ira’s eyes turned again to the astrological spectacle before him, his expression slack and unfocused, as if attempting to discern some cosmic truth from the beautific swirl of stars upon the plane of the Milky Way Galaxy—and one of them, far away, had a Forerunner installation orbiting its stellar body.
His words were slow, measured.
“Sometimes … it feels like the weight of Earth on Atlas’s shoulders. What we have to do sometimes—destroying the Covenant, making sacrifices—for the future. We’ve stargazed for decades, we realized that bringing the Covenant to its knees was the only way that the UNSC could continue to prosper. The galaxy has room for only one superpower—and we struck decisively, because we knew that we had to be the one.”
“And now, the Milky Way is ours … and I cannot stop wondering – what’s the next step? Where do we go next?”
Wakes voice was quiet.
“We are the Caretakers now—the Stewards of the Milky Way Galaxy. The Memory was for us and only us; we were to be the successors of the galaxy, in the footsteps of the Forerunners. We have a mantle to uphold now—and must fulfill that.”
There was a stoic silence as Boulting regarded her carefully.
“Mantle…” he whispered, his expression lost, mind somewhere else.
Carter corroborated firmly, “The Forerunners clearly intended us to succeed them. They left the instructions for us to assume control in Eta Carinae—but we failed them, we were forced to destroy everything to ensure that the Sangheili did not get their hands on it. Their directives for us are still within us, we merely need to unlock it…”
Ira’s expression was rapt, his eyes hard, gazing decades and centuries into the future, attempting to discern the muddled portents, attempting to divine humanity’s fate. Gauzy memories swept beside him; the actinic flash of laser fire, flesh vaporizing as Covenant cruisers descended from high above, the avenging sword in their hands…
So many futures, so many possibilities—and every footstep they took, with every breath and whisper, humanity’s future was impacted … forever. Hundreds of unborn generations depended on them.
“Very well. The Fourth Fleet is thereby detached for expeditionary operations to NGC 3603 and Sanctuary. The Third Fleet’s patrol rotations will extend into the Sagittarius-Carina Arm in its stead. Admirals Kingsley and Carter, you have combined command.”
“Report all developments expeditiously and immediately. If you’ve found something, I want to know.”
Carter nodded graciously, even in the wake of his victory. “Aye, sir.”
Even despite this, Karen’s face twisted unpleasantly, her mouth half-open, a vile knife stuck in her conscience that she was debating to release.
“Fleet Admiral, if I may—the Jiralhanae will not pleased if—”
His face became bitter. “It was an unpleasant business yes, but I think it’s time that we showed the Jiralhanae our true intentions. Director Carter, if you would?”
The Director of Naval Intelligence raised a wrist communicator to his wintry lips.
“This is Sierra India One online and secure, to all Sierra Foxtrot units. Execute Case Black. Out.”
Boutling turned to Dosiac’s marred, lacerated surface. There was another battle about to begin—this one victorious and brief.
Camp Victory (UNSCSOCOM/Jiralhanae)
Doisac High Orbit, Oth Sonin System, Covenant Sector
The cumbrous, eclipsing visage of the Jiralhanae Emperor staggered over the threshold of the encampment, immediately bringing a troop of UNSC soldiers to his aid. His imposing hulk, braided in pearlescent argent armor and glittering with swirling, enigmatic Forerunner symbols that symbolized his omnipotent authority, was unmistakable.
Lieutenant Colonel Archer and her small Army Special Operations Group team quickly came to assist him as they noticed his wounded gait.
“Lord Emperor!” shouted Courtney Archer West with some concern.
Up close, the Emperor was a terrible sight to behold—eight feet of intertwined muscle and fur, a primal beast conceived merely to maim and destroy. His eyes glittered, opaque without intelligence; his mind was simple, bereft of any higher cognitive process; for he had ascended his throne through slaughtering his challengers, and when he assumed his imperial position, none had dared to contest him. The golden scepter of the reborn Fist of Rukt gleamed on his back, its metallic finish coruscating under Oth Sonin’s intense, baleful starlight.
The Jiralhanae champion’s snarl was convoluted, but even without their integrated helmet translators, the human troopers could detect the malice within it.
“The foul Sangheili continue to withstand us! They deny me the sanctuary of my Palace—and where are your human legions? The legions that overran the holy Covenant; why do they not come to my aid? It was Jiralhanae blood that was shed to secure your conquest.”
Archer’s head dipped politely, her fiery mane of cinnamon hair being illuminated in the fierce starlight.
“Lord Emperor, I shall relay your edict immediately to our High Command. I assure you that our armies and fleets shall come aid you with all due speed.”
The Emperor’s fur rippled contemptuously, but he said nothing.
Archer was well-aware of the curious countenance that the UNSC had wisely ensnared the Jiralhanae Emperor—the UNSC had allied with the Jiralhanae, who were a natural ally; they immediately were born with a feral hatred of the Sangheili, been oppressed at their heavy hands. The enemy of one’s enemy was one’s friend; the UNSC, through Naval Intelligence, had secretly enlisted the aid of the Jiralhanae. The Jiralhanae had fired the first shots of the Galactic War, Jiralhanae soldiers turning on their posts to murder their Sangheili comrades, shooting them in the back. Suddenly, war had inflamed on every Covenant colony, Jiralhanae and Sangheili broiled again in lethal contest, hundreds of years of racial hatred running over the lip as they slaughtered each other.
Then, the UNSC Navy had decanted on the Covenant’s doorstep and had swept through the colonies, plying through as if wet cardboard; the Covenant, divided on itself, fell effortlessly against the majestic human fleets. Human troops had run through the streets, led by Myrmidons and SPARTANs—together, the humans and the Jiralhanae had easily undone the Sangheili militaries.
And now, in return, the UNSC had promised the Jiralhanae kingship over the Covenant … except that the UNSC forces had deliberately withdrawn, leaving the much-weakened Jiralhanae to struggle with the remaining plague of Sangheili resistance … even the Sangheili armies still on Doisac, denying the Jiralhanae of even their own homeworld while fleets of hundreds of UNSC warships orbited high above.
Courtney smiled cruelly.
Substantially weakened and even unable to secure their own homeworld, the Jiralhanae were in no position to make demands to the UNSC about their promised dominion of the Covenant while they even struggled to reclaim their inner colonies.
A monstrous, monumental Jiralhanae Honor Guard, resplendent in crimson armor and bearing a wicked staff, lumbered to her.
He snarled, his lips rippling as he spoke. 
“The Emperor will be taking his leave. Inform your guards that His Majesty intends to travel back to the Redoubt for refreshment for the evening.”
The Army colonel nodded astutely. “Of course. Will we be providing protection for His Majesty’s convoy?”
“Nay. Your … kind will not be needed. Loyal Jiralhanae sons will protect our Emperor.”
Archer felt the contempt radiating from the towering beast, with the slightest emphasis on ‘loyal’. 
She sneered at him. “Special Operations Command will provide airborne cover … in case your loyal sons will require aid from the Sangheili.”
The Honor Guard flared furiously in humiliation, and inwardly, Courtney reveled at the conflicting emotions that were obviously arising within the dumb brute’s mind.
“You will take the westbound course through the mountains?”
The predator snarled in reply, and stalked away, his swagger that of arrogant contempt.
Archer and Master Sergeant Robinson exchanged knowing looks.
There were two quick clicks on the tactical communications channel; the preface for an Alpha-priority communiqué.
“This is Sierra India One online and secure, to all Sierra Foxtrot units. Execute Case Black. Out.”
Robinson’s lips were twisted in anticipation, and his eyes gleamed ferally.
Quietly, the special forces team observed the Emperor’s gargantuan retinue turn towards the Jiralhanae convoy ensconced within the womb of Camp Victory.
Archer tabbed the team’s secure frequency. “Talk to me, Grant. Where’s he headed?”
“Third Shadow from the front of the column, behind the heavy Wraith. He’s getting in—the Choppers are forward-deploying. They’re going to move.”
The colonel turned to Ridenour.
“Execute Case Black, Sergeant.”
* * *
UNSC XB-15, Alice in Wonderland (BQ3 Specter-class)
Fifty thousand feet above sea level, Doisac, Oth Sonin System
“Strike Ops here, online and secure. We have a Specter flight of two de-orbiting now from geosynch to your kill box.”
“Copy, Strike Ops. This is Sorcerer here, secure. I have lead.”
“Roger, Sorcerer. Patching you in.”
	
Brave New World 
By Redmond Self, September 2009
Twenty-thousand light-years from Earth, Sagittarius-Carina Arm 
Jian, Geosynchronous Orbit
Sanctuary, NGC 3603 Nebula
“So there’s nothing.”
Diana shrugged. “Nothing that I can read anyway. This planetoid’s surface is made up of nothing but dirt and rocks. The only thing it really has going for it is a small amount of oxygen in the air, and even that’s too thin for you to breathe on.”
Simon leaned back in his chair. “Scan again.”
“But I’ve already done it fifty-five-”
“Scan again. The whole surface, no matter how long it takes.”
“Fine.” Diana folded her arms and froze in place. She remained like this for nearly half an hour as her processors worked the Jian’s close and long range scanners on the planetoid they were orbiting. Finally, she lowered her arms and shook her head. “Nothing. Just dirt, rock, and some craters and trenches. Nothing to indicate that any civilization was ever here, just that there might have been some bodies of water at one point.”
A growl of frustration slipped from between Simon’s teeth. “Wonderful. I’ve just made an enemy of the second most powerful organization in the galaxy because of a worthless piece of rock that everyone seems to think is some great Forerunner relic!” He glared down at the planetoid’s barren surface. “And soon just about every warship in the galaxy will be hovering over it to see who’s gonna have the privilege of excavating it. This is just so friggin’ typical!”
“Calm down,” Diana told him impatiently. “Just because there’s nothing here doesn’t mean we have to be here for the battle. Let’s just go back to where we spent the past five years and wait out the rest of the war. Strategies like that seem to have worked for us in the past.”
“No,” Simon growled angrily. “I have to be here for this, even if I’m not allied with any side.”
“And why the hell is that?”
“It’s... complicated.” Simon turned away from his AI. “You wouldn’t understand.”
“Whatever,” Diana muttered in disgust. “So what do we do now? Wait for the UNSC or the Resistance to come shoot us down?”
“May as well,” Simon said with equal distaste. “Bring us down to land near one of the craters. If I’m gonna die, it’ll at least be on the ground.”
*********
Planetary Surface, Northern Hemisphere
Sanctuary, NGC 3603 Nebula
“Well?” Diana asked a few hours later. “Now are you satisfied? We landed right next to the deepest crater on the planet and conducted all sorts of point-scans on it. No synthetic metal alloys detected and no evidence of any sentient or non-sentient life. Just face the fact that there’s nothing here, Simon. The UNSC and the Resistance are about to slaughter each other over the biggest ball of dirt in the galaxy, and no amount of scanning will change that.”
“We haven’t even been here a day,” Simon protested. He was still sitting in the command chair, his assault rifle, sword, and equipment belts resting in his lap. “We’ll just move on to the next one, and then the next one until we find what I’m looking for.”
“What you’re looking for.” Several locks of hair fell into Diana’s holographic face. “Yeah, that’s really something to get me going. What you’re looking for. What about me, huh? Maybe I don’t want to get killed over this stupid project of yours! Have you taken a second to even consider that?”
“Save it,” Simon snapped. “I don’t have time for your attitude right now-”
“My attitude? What about you? What the hell’s gotten into you?”
“Oh, now don’t you start too-”
“Start what? Start reminding you that I happen to live in your body too? Start reminding you that if you die, I die as well? I thought I’d made it pretty clear back on New Africa that this was going to work like a partnership! Not you giving the orders and me following them like some kind of accounting program!”
“You’re an AI, it’s what you’re supposed to-”
“No it’s not!” Diana yelled, and Simon was suddenly sent plunging into the past, back to when Cassandra had yelled at him in the briefing room. He took a few moments to calm himself before responding.
“Diana,” he said quietly. “Are you going rampant?”
“No,” she said, also in a calmer tone. “My emotional protocols just got... tangled for a moment. But the way you’re acting right now would be enough to drive anyone rampant. What happened to you? Why are you acting like this?”
Simon turned away from her hologram and took several moments to respond. Finally, he asked, “When I had you access Son’s secure files... I take it you also took the security logs, right? It seems like something you’d do.”
Diana frowned. “Yes, but-”
“View the video recording for the last known official briefing on the Liberty’s bridge. I think you’ll get most of your answers there.”
Diana froze for a few moments as she accessed and viewed the files. Simon closed his eyes and tried not to dwell on his public shaming and rejection.
“So...” Diana murmured softly. “That’s why. They gave you what for, and you couldn’t take it. So you left because of that.”
“No.” Simon turned back to face her. “There was more to it than that.”
“Do tell.”
He hesitated, and then let it all spill forth. “Ever since I learned that the UNSC planned to use my friends and I as suicide soldiers, I’ve lived my life like a coward. I made all the excuses I could come up with and thought that everyone who thought differently was a fool. I guess it didn’t help that whenever I tried to be a hero something bad happened to me, but no matter what happened I always had a chance to forgive and forget, to turn my life around. But I never did, and in the end my own bitterness and hate consumed me and turned me into something disgusting. And now, because of that, the only two people that I still had a reason to care about are... lost to me.”
He took a breath to steady himself. “And it’s all because I couldn’t get over my own fears and weaknesses. You have no idea how desperate things looked for me after that. My world fell apart. I came closer to killing myself than I ever have before.”
“Well that’s reassuring,” Diana said lightly, obviously trying to lighten the mood. “Why didn’t you?”
Simon thought back to when he had been sinking, to the armored figure that had emerged to pull him back up. “Something... awakened in me. I don’t know how to explain it, but now I can remember everything I was ever taught. I can feel power in me now, and somehow I feel like I could take on almost anyone in the galaxy and win. I was doing simulations during our flight here, and everything in me has changed. I’m not afraid of dying anymore, and that’s what’s giving me the ability to fight.”
“And because of that you’re going to try and see how much it takes for the UNSC and the Resistance to kill you? Is this some kind of macho stunt, all the cold responses and this sudden desire to be in the middle of the largest battle in history?”
“No!” Simon cried forcefully. “It’s just that if I run from this, I know that I’ll be right back to where I was before! And I don’t want to be a coward anymore!”
And he began to weep softly as all of his pent-up emotions crashed down on him. “It’s just,” he whispered miserably, “I don’t feel anything anymore. I don’t have any reason to go on living. Before this... living was my reason for living. But now that I don’t have anything or anyone left to me... what’s the point?” He shook his head and buried his face in his hands.
Diana waited for several minutes as he continued to cry. Finally, she nodded. “So you think that this artifact’s your only way of finding a new reason to live. Pretty logical, considering how important it’s supposed to be. But I have to admit that I’m a little offended. Don’t I count as someone who’s left to you?”
Simon’s tear-streaked face rose. “You’re an ally. You help me because you don’t want me to die, because that would mean you die as well. It’s not the same as a normal relationship.”
Diana shrugged. “You’re a former child soldier sitting in a stolen spaceship on top of what’s supposed to be some technological wonder that’s trillions of years old. Added on to that, you’ve got two massive militaries that both probably want you dead and you’re about to be in the middle of a battle that’s larger than most of Earth’s terrestrial wars. I’d say that you aren’t the most normal person in the galaxy.”
She paused before continuing in a gentler tone of voice. “Besides, I probably wouldn’t really mind dying after a while. I just want to know how it will happen. I may be an AI, and I may rely on you to survive, but that doesn’t mean I’m some stone-cold computer program. I know that the phrase ‘friends with a computer program’ sounds weird to most of you organics, but it can’t be any weirder than our current situation.”
“I don’t have friends.” The response sounded hollow and mechanical, as if he’d repeated it to himself many times. “Just people who want to kill me and people who think they can use me.”
“Well of course you won’t if you keep that attitude up. I know this sounds a bit rough, but you should probably be grateful that anyone gives a damn about you at all. You aren’t exactly the easiest person to like.”
“I know I’m a shitty piece of scum,” Simon muttered quietly. “You don’t have to rub it in.”
“No,” Diana said firmly. “Even though I haven’t been active for a lot of your life, I know enough to understand that that’s not true at all. It’s true that you can be selfish a lot of the time and that you aren’t used to caring about other people much, but there are plenty of worse people in the galaxy. Yeah, you killed a couple people in cold blood, but you were sorry after you did it. That Blackburn woman did a whole lot worse than you, but you don’t see anyone condemning her for what she did. Besides, you’ve done some wonderful things too.”
Simon gave a bitter laugh. “None spring to mind.”
“You decided to save that Cassandra girl back on New Africa. You were all set to go running off on a suicidal quest for revenge, but you decided to give all that up to make sure that the people who were supposed to be helping her didn’t euthanize her instead. Then, from what I hear, back on Hekate you gave up the only weapon you had to make sure she didn’t kill herself. You practically took care of both yourself and her while you were stuck in a freezing cabin and the UNSC was doing everything it could to hunt you down and kill you.”
Simon’s tears had stopped flowing and he was staring at his AI in amazement. Diana continued without pausing.
“Then you put up with working for a government you hated because you wanted to stop the Myrmidon program from becoming another ruthless assassin program like the HPA. You put up with that Myrmidon kid’s hero worship, and on Midgard you did everything within reason to keep the death toll from rising. When you deserted, you took that kid with you because you knew he’d lose his purpose in life. All through that crisis there were plenty of times where you could have ditched him and done better on you’re own, but you stuck it out with him. And when you finally did leave, you gave him almost all the money you had so that he could put his life back together.”
Diana paused, allowing her avatar to look Simon in the eye. “And when you were on your exile, you made the effort to get me active again. Sure you needed help and you needed someone to talk to, but you gave me the chance to work again. When we came back, you got thrust straight into a war you never had any intention of joining and everyone seemed to expect you to change and evolve just because of some false stories they had made up about you to further their own cause. And yes, their cause was just and right and all that, but they did manipulate and use you. So while you probably should have stepped up to the plate and taken your responsibilities seriously, you never told them that you would and so they shouldn’t have wasted so much time expecting you to.”
You just have to face the fact that when all’s said and done, you’re not a bad person. You’ve made some mistakes and you’ve suffered for them, but now you’ve got a chance to start over.” Diana cleared the hair from her face. “If you’re right about this place, then it’ll give you - and me - a new purpose in life. I don’t know how, but it will. But we’re gonna have to fight everyone if that’s going to happen, and you definitely won’t be able to do that in the state you’re in.”
Simon wiped his eyes with the back of his hand. “You must think I’m an idiot now, right?”
Diana smiled at him. “I figured that out a while ago. But if you were smart, life wouldn’t be so interesting, now would it?”
“I’ll try to wise up from now on, for both of our sakes.”
“You do that. Just keep this in mind,” Diana told him, her voice softening. “What that Myrmidon said in the briefing room wasn’t true. You’ll never be alone, no matter how far you sink. We’re in this together after all, right? You might have lost two people you’ve cared deeply about, but you’ve gained something too. You told me yourself that you feel like you can take on the galaxy, so now you’ll be able to forge your own destiny. You don’t have to be a slave to others or your emotions anymore now.”
Simon smiled weakly. “Thanks. For everything.”
Diana assumed her usual playful tone. “You’re welcome, but don’t go expecting a hug from me or anything. Therapy time is over.”
Simon’s face returned to it’s businesslike state, but there was more warmth to it now, like an added sense of confidence. He looked human again. “Roger that.” He slid his weapons and equipment on to the floor and placed his hands on the controls. “Now let’s move like we’ve got a purpose.”
Diana smiled again. “Roger that,” she copied mockingly. “After all we’ve been through, we’re not going to let some stupid buried hunk of metal beat us.”
Solitary Mind
Sanctuary, NGC 3603 Nebula
World Builders and Librarians … Forerunners and Conservation Measures … yet, there is something in the galaxy that transcends them all …
Barefoot upon foreign shores far from home, her mind transversed alternate realities and parallel existences, her pulse alive, gaze turned towards the curvature of stars above her as she threaded across the existences of quadrillions of sentient organisms, an eye turned towards the past, another gazing deeply into the future, futilely attempting to penetrate the veil of causation. To learn what laid in the unexplored future.
Her ethereal form was ensconced by the dappled glow of ten thousand stars, their particulate light spanning the reach of space, kindling, gentling lights, inviting her to leap beyond her bounds and to join them—the sky was aglow with their brilliance, a boundless expanse.
And as she curiously canted her eyes to the sky, peering at them, attempting to divine some cosmic truth from them, their cerulean splendor illuminated her own skin, allowing her to bask in an angelic aura of light as she pondered them deeply.
Mortality …, she mused wanly, gaze lost in the infinite tapestry of fire scribed in the sky, the silent stars, ever fated to their solemn revolutions in the lifeless darkness.
Morality … what we attempted to transcend, to peer behind the veil of death itself … what does one see at the last moments? Something beyond? Something more? 
Two hundred thousand years, yet, time had not proven to unravel the most profound mysteries that beat within her heart. 
Gazing at the captivating web of incandescent light and fire fixated in the sky before her, she found in them a purpose that far superseded her own considerable responsibility. 
The galaxies, the superclusters, the universes … the imprint of a Creator at every tier, yet we are left with only the cold stars, left to be the Stewards of all creation, the keys in our hands…
The thought brought breathtaking pain to her heart, an agony that seized her.
Children and Caretakers…
Memory was boundless—reconstituting what she had seen from this very spot a hundred thousand years past, she remembered the vivid life; the ferocity, the will to exist … how they had bounded across the stars, hand-in-hand, transversing collapsing stars and imploding planets, nebula of such beauty, gazing at yonder galaxies … 
And now, all space was cold, an acerbic vacuum, devoid of life … the impulse to survive … there was no will now, merely the stars as they persisted for their mortal lives then imploded into black holes, the planets, constructing themselves from primordial hydrogen clouds, fracturing, then reconstituting themselves …
An endless cycle of creation and destruction for wanton reason, for no purpose … all this genesis and catastrophe, with no one to observe it … so purposeless …
The flickers had been long before … the anguished whispers, the betrayals, everything poised on the doorstep of destruction. She had been born aware of her brothers and sisters, but as the millennia had turned and life had not arisen, it had become senseless to expend energies to communicate.
A century was but a heartbeat, a millennia the stride of her gait. It had been but a breath ago that the whispers amongst the stars had begun again, and the strife, and all that was her domain was made bare, the calls to war sounded, and she and her astral host had been prepared …
Yet, nothing had come. 
Space had remained dormant. If there were Reclaimers to be Caretakers, they had no Memory of their birthright; none had sought refuge nor penance at her Sanctuary.
A burst of radiation—she canted her head in excitement.
With the passage of time, she had found life in the stars; a purposes for the stars to be born, to radiate their gentle light … herself. And in fascination, she had been mesmerized and lost in the convolutions of the heavenly lights above her, in a youthful wonder as the stars were born within their womb, their small hearts beating quickly, pulses racing as they drank and began to ascend along the circles of heaven.
Yet, as she peered more closely, the brilliance of the signal, to her eyes, was less vivid than it should have been if another star had been born, and she wafted its scent and found it to be unfamiliar …
The scent raced along a hundred million years of recollection and existence, and surprisingly, it found a counterpart in her vast memory. 
She frowned, gazing deeply into the future … An unfamiliar touch, an ancient one …
And with a start, she knew the meaning of the small flutter in the Dirac seas before her.
She grasped the phenomenon closer, watched the folds of space release an unfamiliar sight … with a vaguely familiar essence contained within …
One very similar to—
Cradle of Life?
This irregularity warranted some examination. Curiously, she turned it within her hand, becoming familiar with its visage, temperature, and make.
Primitive … but perhaps anticipated. Fashioned by crude hands and uncivilized intelligences … 
Yet, she recognized in its geometry some resemblance, some distant mark of her host, but as weak as the background microwave radiation that seeded the galaxy. 
For awhile, it meandered around Sanctuary, and she beheld this curious countenance with some interest before it descended. Her feet tremored slightly as it touched lightly upon the ashen surfaces of one of the rings.
During its orbital revolutions, she had keened closely within the vessel’s confines, finding not one but two wary points of sentience … one masterful intelligence, one a mimicry of sentience.
Mimicry of sentience … the phrase lashed at her unpleasantly.
And for the first … she did not feel the effulgence of a Steward within, but rather stochastic, uncollected Memories … a curious juxtaposition. Reclaimer?, she wondered.
The cognitive, psychological, cytoarchitectonics, and epigenetics were fairly conclusive. Unawakened Memory, she noted. Reclaimer.
Awoken from a hundred thousand years of boundless frustration and pondering, she finally found another purpose; the new Reclaimer that was now seeking Sanctuary upon her world.
Manifest Destiny 
By Kyle M. Loh, September 3, 2009
“I’m trapped. On a beautiful, empty world. Its inhabitants have been indexed, every one last of them. They’re special—well worth the effort to build one final gateway even at this late hour.”
	-The Librarian, Terminal Four
Jian, Northern Hemisphere
Sanctuary, NGC 3603 Open Cluster
Simon felt Diana observing him keenly—his movements were precise, rapt, efficient; directed with an intense intent, his gloved hands moved deftly through the Jian’s bountifully-congested cargo holds.
She narrated thoughtfully, “Your efficiency at the pre-mission preparation has sustained a 2.6-fold positive gain. You seem to be packing quite a lot, though.”
The SPARTAN-III carefully waded over to his weapons bench, where newly-fabricated, gleaming weapons shone, lubricated with graphite, their black polishes glittering. The Resistance—that is to say, Wellesley’s and Powell’s arms traffickers—always had managed to secure the best.
He selected an MA12 5.56mm carbine, unwrapping its translucent covers and binding strings—someone had stolen this directly from one of HRV Corporation’s manufacturing lines, apparently. He noted the corrugated flash/sound suppressor fitted to its barrel, and the electronically-linked scope appended to its upper receiver; taking it in his hands, he found it was evenly balanced and light; a satisfactory firearm.
Simon stowed it away, satisfied in it, then preceded to stuff away a dozen cartridges of 5.56mm-caliber ammunition for it—two handfuls—into his field-grade backpack. He also claimed two antediluvian LARK/CQB M7 submachine guns, also placed them within the pack, replete with more fistfuls of ammunition cartridges.
Diana’s eyebrows arced in detached interest.
“So you’re taking an assault carbine, two submachine guns … along with the two handguns, the rocket-propelled grenade launcher, and all the grenades? You also remember that you brought five liters of water as well as combat trauma reagents, right? And also a long-range transceiver set?”
He shook his head tersely, turning to his digital companion.
“Out there, I don’t know what I’ll encounter—and pretty soon, the UNSC and the Resistance will be calling down the thunder here too. In the event that I get caught far away from the Jian, I want to make sure that I’ll be able to hold out on my own for awhile; food, water, weapons, and ammunition. Remember NGC 3576?”
The reference was printed in blood for every UNSC special forces trainee to come for the next few centuries—how a pair of SPARTAN-IIIs and a few ONI sociologists had held off hundreds of Covenant warriors on the planet Carinae-312, eventually preventing a precipitous Forerunner artifact from falling into Sangheili hands. Completely cut off, thousands of light-years away from friendly UNSC forces, the human team had evaded capture for weeks, a prodigious feat comparable to the stand of the ancient Spartans at Thermopylae—
It would have been impossible to accomplish without food, water, and extensive ammunition to keep them going while they were on the run.
Diana mused, “It’s recommended that field operators be lightly equipped—with no more than one assault weapon, no more than five magazines of ammunition, plus an optional sidearm and explosives. Standard doctrine emphasizes speed and mobility in special operations, instead of firepower and sustenance.”
“And whose manual ‘recommends’ that?” asked Simon in a droll fashion.
“The UNSC Special Operations Command manual for—” The AI stopped in her tracks. “You make a valid point.”
Simon-G294 was doing something he had never done; gazing into the future. In his mind, represented was a labyrinthine of intersecting and diverging tactical strategems, ramifications, and possible scenarios—an entire multitude of tactical contingencies, as proliferous as the stars of the Galactic Core. His mind was accelerating its pace with a rapid fervor; he visualized hundreds and thousands of contingencies, realized what countermeasures he could bring to antagonize those—
And, he reminded himself, anything I don’t bring, I’m never going to have…
The impulse caused himself to aggregate ridiculous amounts of equipment with that fear; it was when he was selecting an iridium kinetic-penetrator anti-materiel sniper rifle that Diana asked, “Do you think that you can shoot well enough with an AM rifle to want to carry a seventy-pound sniper rifle system around this planet?”
The gentle approbation was an important reminder—his equipment backpack weighed three hundred pounds. SPI Mark III mechanized armor or no, the pack would slow his tactical fire-maneuvering in a firefight to a crawl. 
I’m not a one-man army; that’s what armies are for—I just need to be able to survive long enough to disengage…
The thought spurred memories that were too painful to bear; Midgard with Redmond, New Africa with Cassandra—he forced himself to repress them, the bile rising bitterly in his throat, and his mouth raw and festering with dank memories, he began unloading components of his pack. 
He kept the radiation suit and the chemical-biological (CB) suit inside; he was quite sure that if pressed to desperation, the UNSC Strategic Weapons Command would start dropping the WMDs, but he realized that realistically, he didn’t have enough skill or proficiency with combat medicine to use most of his medical equipment; he didn’t have a clue on even when to use antiarrythmics, hypotensives, or vasoconstrictors, or even what they did—neither did he know the purpose of the ampoules labeled transforming growth factor-β (TGF-β), platelet-derived growth factor (PDGF), or batrochotoxin.
He had very recently learned after his ill encounter with Team Jian that it was unwise to use chemical compounds or medical bioactives he didn’t know what they did…
Or for that matter, to use anything that he didn’t know what they did or how to use them well. 
He also discarded his SATCOM pack and joint terminal attack controller (JTAC)—there was nothing in orbit he wanted to talk to, especially not when the UNSC and Resistance fleets came in force.
His gaze lingered on his last piece of specialized communications equipment; the long-range, high-content radio transceiver package.
There was no one that he particularly wanted to talk to on Sanctuary’s surface, either.
“You shouldn’t throw that away”, cautioned Diana, in a beguiling voice that sounded all-too similar to the small voice of his conscience that sometimes whispered within him.
“And wouldn’t I?”
Diana smiled brilliantly. “It’s a high-content transmitter and transceiver package.”
“Okay. So it can transmit a lot of data. Except what on Sanctuary would I want to transmit data to?”
“The Jian’s navigational systems.”
It took a moment for the comment’s ramifications to be fully illuminated in his mind.
“You want to pilot the Jian through the radio transceiver? Is that even possible?”
Diana shrugged, the motion rippling her holographic hair and sending a new cascade of differential equations cascading through them.
“Haven’t tried it yet … it’s a high-content band used for transmission of voice protocols and targeting data, but I’ve just developed an interface buffer that will allow for minimal basic maneuvering of the Jian through the radio circuit, if needed.”
Simon’s eyebrows were raised with some interest and surprise. “That’ll be a useful capability … should we ever need it.”
“I don’t think that the Jian will be pulling any hammer-eights or counterbreaks with remote piloting through the transceiver, and the data loss will become substantial at any kind of long range … but it should work, at least over moderate distances.”
He gave his approval.
After several more minutes of reflection, he aggregated his final collection of weapons and supplies before him; the carbine, a suppressed submachine gun, a compact sidearm, several cartridges of ammunition for all, a diamond knife, fragmentation and electrostatic grenades, recycled water and rations sufficient for three weeks of a high-calorie diet, reconnaissance binoculars, the long-range communications set, magnesium tape to breach blast doors, marker flags to set physical waypoints, a small set of magnetized screwdrivers to unfasten damaged components on his SPI armor, an inflatable tent, an all-condition lighter, and finally, a compact set of emergency field medicine materials, including a torquinet—hopefully enough to sustain him if he got wounded and needed to trek back to the Jian.
Simon breathed, the motion hunching his shoulder blades as he realized how tightly his fate was bound to the reagents he was choosing to bring—everything he’d need to sustain himself for several weeks on this uninhabited wasteland, and enough provisions to last through a medium-intensity engagement against numerically-superior forces.
Quickly, he gathered everything back into his rucksack, slotting the knife into a custom sheath on his breastplate, sliding the sidearm into a reciprocating holster on his thigh, and finally, slapping the carbine into his hands.
This was ever as close as he was ever going to get. He’d paid the price of diligence and intent thought; now everything rested in Sanctuary’s secrets and the whimsical chances of the galaxy.
He stood there for a moment at the threshold of the Jian’s lowered access ramp, acclimating himself to the heavy burden of the laden pack fitted over his back, the taut fit of the SPI armor’s body glove over his skin, watched as a gentle zephyr rustled Sanctuary’s sands before him, a hail of sand brushing over his armor.
“One small step for man, one large step for mankind”, he muttered, glancing with a mixed sense of anticipation and reservation at Sanctuary’s sands, laying mere meters before him.
“Ever heard the quote, ‘God does not throw nice’?” asked Diana.
“Yeah. Einstein?”
“Well, the reply was ‘Not only does God play dice, but he sometimes throws them where they cannot be seen’—there’s only one way to find out about this planet, Simon.”
He firmly settled an armored foot into Sanctuary’s sands, and strangely, with it, felt a sense of renewed purpose.
This was Sanctuary—his sanctuary from the galaxy.
 
Harbinger 
By Kyle M. Loh, September 7, 2009
Jian, Northern Hemisphere
Sanctuary, NGC 3603 Open Cluster
It was