"…We shall fight them in Tokyo, we shall fight them on the streets, on the beaches, and on the landing grounds. We shall fight them in the city, and we shall fight them in the country, to defend the dream, no matter what the cost may be…"
- Jean-Claude D'Amphile, mirroring the famed speech by Winston Churchill

Prologue:

The Cost

April 19, 2013
Forests on the Outskirts of Tatsumiya Shrine, Mahora, Japan
2018 hours, Japan Standard Time

"Sergeant Akashi, I remind you that you are not to directly involve yourself in this conflict. Your mission is containment, not combat," the voice of Colonel Ruiz buzzed in her ear.

"Christ, they're fuckin' tearin' 'em to pieces," the voice of the newest member of the squad whispered over the squad frequency. Aisha Maruyama was only three weeks into her time in the squad, a position underscored by the requisite white rookie stripe running down the center of her helmet. The tone of her voice made it obvious she was fighting not to become ill in her enclosed helmet.

It was a sentiment shared by the rest of the squad. Over a hundred drug-enhanced voodoo-style zombies that had been turned into vampires and whipped into a bloodlust frenzy were currently tearing apart forty mixed humans and vampires, all badly wounded from the initial attack against them. It wouldn't have been as bad to watch were it not for the night-enhancing threat-assessment vision mode, the VISR, built into the helmets of the squad. The enhanced view allowed them to see each spray of blood, each dismembered limb, as though the scene were in broad daylight. And that said nothing about the sound, the guttural slurping and sucking of the frenzied things, the perennially-weaker moans of the dying, the shredding sound of flesh ripped from bone. Over half the squad had shut off their external audio.

"Let me repeat myself, Cleric Team. You are not to enter this conflict unless it threatens to spill out of the designated area." There came a click across the command link, sign of the frequency closing.

Colonel Ruiz was three miles away in the command center at the university. Though he could see what they were seeing from their uplinked mission recorders, there was something of a difference between seeing these horrors in video and seeing them less than a hundred yards from your position.

"Sarge, are you letting this happen?" asked the armored warrior with the orange-painted chestplate across the clearing, Bravo Squad spotter Miko Yamazaki.

The sergeant, her torso plate emblazoned with the shield and emblem of Mahora Academy, clenched her left hand into a fist and stared down at the black glove. The unarmored, sword-carrying brunette standing beside her spotted this familiar sign of deep thought, and spoke into her headset, "Quiet down, she's thinking."

Under normal circumstances, the sharp-tongued Sean Hartley, squad sniper and second-in-command, would have quipped something along the lines of "So that explains the burning smell." The fact that he was steadfastly silent spoke volumes of the situation.

For her part, Yuuna Akashi thought about that last transmission from Colonel Ruiz, narrowing her blue eyes behind the polarized visor of her helmet. She knew that he was under operational orders from over his head to keep them out of the fight, because Mahora Academy could not, under any circumstances, be seen to be assisting vampires, regardless of their magnanimous intentions.

But she had also served under him for five years as the leader of his most trusted and effective squad, and thought she had a handle on him as a man who wouldn't just stand by and watch something like this happen. He didn't even sound like he wanted to even try to buck orders and send them in to smash heads.

Their mission was to encircle the clearing, along with Grammaton Team, and kill anything of the opposition forces that left the clearing; opposition forces here having the meaning of any of the vampire zombies, the bokor sorcerers, or that queen vampire bitch with them—Yuuna idly wondered why Mahora's own über-vamp, Evangeline McDowell, hadn't noticed the she-bitch vamp and come in to handle her on her own, then remembered that Eva, as a member of Kuro Arashi, was holding down the home fort, along with Ala Alba and the rest of Fireteam Charlie, should her squad and Grammaton fail at containment. The Kuro crew had a reputation for making messes that they should have been cleaning up even bigger, after all. Mana Tatsumiya, gunslinger extraordinaire, was supposed to be the only Mahoran killing force in the actual fighting due to her mercenary nature, but she was protecting the shrine itself, unconcerned with the clearing or the casualties being sustained by her temporary 'employers.'

Across the clearing, near where Cleric Team's members ended and Grammaton Team's began, Leon Wolfram, a veteran Fireteam Charlie man who had been upgraded to Cleric Team after demonstrating the necessary skills to join the elite 'Helljumper' division, calmly watched a dismembered arm fly out of the frenzy and sail into the forest. He leaned his head marginally to the left to avoid getting smacked by the flying limb, which left a streak of blood across his shoulder plate, obscuring the A- of his blood type. Idly, he wondered if the victim's blood type had matched his, even as he spoke into the command frequency shared by the two squads, "Hey, Sarge, that one left the designated area."

Yuuna wondered for a moment what the hell he was on about, then the proverbial light bulb went on over her head. She had to hand it to Colonel Ruiz, tacitly approving the two squads to engage if the enemy left the designated area. And sure enough, one of the zombies was moving in the direction the limb had gone. Doubtless it had six suppressed submachine guns, two suppressed pistols, and at least one of the three sniper rifles in play aimed at its head.

"You know, these SMGs are supposed to be suppressed, but they sure make a hell of a lot of noise if you ask me. The SOCOMs, too." This from one of the Grammaton Helljumpers.

"Yeah, no way they're not going to notice if we open up on this guy," answered Cleric's Alpha medic, Yasuhiro Nishiyama. "Guess we'd just have to hose 'em all, huh?"

The other Helljumpers were starting to understand. A few chuckles ran across the comm static. The crescendo of fire selectors switching from 'safe' to 'semi' or 'auto,' depending on weapon, was almost audible. If at all possible, the atmosphere grew even heavier.

"Waiting for your cue, Cleric Leader," Katerine Bayischerwald, Grammaton's leader and the closest thing to a Spartan that Fireteam Charlie had, said over the net.

Yuuna couldn't help but grin as she drew the MFAR-12 SOCOM in her right hip holster, turned its right side to face up, and flipped the fire selector mode from 'safe' to 'semi.' Her pistols were modified with match-grade triggers, however, and could fire fast enough to seem like they were set to automatic. She turned the weapon to face its left side up, glancing at the stylized 'I' for the weapon's name, Ivory, engraved beside the magazine ejection switch.

She watched the vampire she-bitch taunting a tall Westerner with dirty blond hair, a shorter-statured magenta-haired woman of mixed Western and Eastern appearance, and a tall Japanese man with styled orange hair and a scary-looking pair of eyes. For fun, she engaged the HUD-linked optical scope of the pistol and set the crosshairs over the she-bitch's head, watching the blue reticule turn red and a dot appear in the center. "Hold steady," she ordered. "That's a high elder vampire out there. We don't stand a chance. Wait until she leaves."

While waiting, Yuuna considered the weight of the suppressed submachine gun on her back magnetic plate that she kept as a backup weapon, and wondered if they had the stopping power necessary, whether they should have brought along the assault or battle rifles, with their higher-caliber rounds. Their weapons were certainly of better quality than they had been when Fireteam Charlie was just a civilian cosplay group; back then, their Halo weapons had been simple visual modifications of existing weapons, such as Steyr AUGs, without concern for modifying the weapon caliber. After their participation at the Mages vs. Mars event, they had learned of a weapon manufacturer on a Pacific island called MolMol that was producing weapons to the exact UNSC spec, and had brokered an arms deal, thus bringing the MFAR-series weapons into their armory.

Hartley, his x10 optical magnification scope zoomed to maximum and centered on the vampire she-bitch's head, could not hear what was being said, but knew how to read lips. "Sarge, she's just told some of her goons to dump these three into the swamp."

"That's our opening," Katerine said. "We'll trail them, take out the goons, and assist if we can. We'll leave this lot to you, Cleric."

"Copy," Yuuna answered. "Good hunting, Grammaton."

"You as well, Cleric."

Yuuna watched on her VISR display the IFF tags of Grammaton Team slipping back from the treeline and disappearing into the woods. More words were exchanged between the vampire leader and the leader of the bokor sorcerers, and they headed in the direction of the small shrine that had been set as the target location for the trap. Kouya Adachi and Sou Matsunaga dispersed to allow them to pass without incident, without needing to be ordered.

"Heads up, Tatsumiya, you have incoming," Matsunaga warned as he settled beside a toppled tree.

"Understood, Cleric. I'll handle them."

Yuuna drew her second pistol in her left hand and switched the selector to semi, her finger brushing the engraved 'E' for 'Ebony' as she calmly and sedately waited for the enemy leaders to get out of range. Beside her, Regan Hiryuu, her ministra magi, drew her European longsword and waited. "Cleric Team, report ready."

No words came back over the radio. One-by-one, the eleven IFF tags flashed status green. Yuuna looked toward Regan, who nodded and gave a thumbs up. In response, the squad leader freed the first two fingers of her left hand and traced them in a curve across the lower edge of her helmet where her mouth would be; fully-helmeted pantomime of a smile.

"Cast the die."

The thunderous clatter of a dozen weapons unleashing pure hell simultaneously exploded the heavy night air. Muzzle flashes rippled out of the darkness of the treeline, momentary flashes of brilliant illumination backlighting the twelve black-armored warriors. Shrieks of surprise and pain from the enemies roared out in the night, drowning the reduced noise of the suppressed weapons.

Yuuna was the first to emerge from the trees, Regan by her side, her pistols tracking individual targets with the help of the advanced optics of her HUD VISR. After a short volley of shots, two vampire zombies dropped, and she reckoned that they took two shots to the head to drop; no mean feat considering she was firing 12.7mm—.50-caliber—high-explosive rounds. That didn't exactly bode well for the rest of Cleric Team, whose MFAR-20/S submachine guns fired much-less-powerful 5.3mm full-metal-jacket rounds.

An ear-splitting crack rang out, a vapor trail drawing an instant line between Hartley and one of the vampire zombies, which was now flailing to the ground with its entire head missing. Yuuna revised her opinion; the sniper's 14.5mm anti-materiel rounds were guaranteed to drop these guys in one.

But the enemy was nothing if not quick on the uptake, turning away from whatever was left of their previous victims to face the new threat. Yuuna watched as one set its sights on her and did the last thing she expected: the vampire zombie spread its feet wide, leaned its weight forward, threw its arms out to the side, and let out a bellowing roar of challenge.

"Holy shit, check this out, Sato," Hatsu Uno, a younger member of the squad who seemed to always have one eye on Yuuna, said as he spotted the raging enemy challenging her. "That thing's hulking out like a fuckin' bravo-kilo."

Yuuna calmly aimed her left-hand pistol and put two shots into the roaring foe's head before it even started to move. "They'll die like bravo-kilos, too. Focus." Neither she nor Regan liked Uno's constant attention on her. She turned her black-visored gaze to Regan and said, "Do it."

Nodding, Regan took off like a shot directly into a cluster of a dozen vampire zombies moving in the direction of Hartley. They remained unaware of the danger they were in until Regan's first downward stroke literally disarmed a foe in the center of the pack. Amped up as they were on various drugs, the wound was only a minor detriment, and they quickly spun to confront the new threat in their midst.

The swordswoman did not pause to taunt or attempt to intimidate her foes, flowing the down stroke into a spinning, rising sweep, catching the next hulker beneath the left armpit, the force of her strike lifting the enemy from its feet and throwing it back into three of its fellows. A tingle ran up her spine, and she ducked as a sword cut through the air where her head had been. She twisted her sword in her hand to hold it inverted, then drove it backwards into the face of her attacker without looking. She flipped her grip on her sword again, then ripped it out of the enemy's face, wasting not a single motion to behead the next enemy coming straight at her.

Matsunaga, Alpha Squad's leader, stepped over the fallen tree he was using for cover and fired a burst of shots into the face of a leaping zombie-vamp, dropping the creature. He continued to advance forward out of the treeline as he tripped the magazine release switch, dropping the expended clip to the ground and reloading. "Adachi, Nishiyama, up! Check those casualties! Alpha, sweep up and cover!"

"Bravo, keep up the suppressing fire!"

Five black-armored soldiers emerged from the trees, weapons spitting red-hot fire as they moved in a delta formation toward the fallen forces. Matsunaga moved to join them as he locked in the new magazine and looked up to find a roaring vampire-zombie charging right at him. He stepped into its advance and leaned into it, slamming his left shoulder into its hip and using its own momentum to flip it over onto his back, where he turned, kicked it in the side of the head, and then reduced its face to mush with a seven-round burst of his submachine gun.

Two of the soldiers, both with red crosses on their shoulder plates, slung their weapons to the magnetic plates on their backs and dropped to their knees amidst the blood and gore in the center of the clearing. Adachi rolled over the woman nearest her, neither knowing or caring if she was human or vampire, and grimaced when she saw the gaping hole where the woman's throat should have been. The next several bodies featured similar injuries, as did those checked by Nishiyama.

"Shit, how many were left behind here?" Nishiyama asked.

"Thirty or forty," Adachi answered, pressing her fingers to the throat of one young man who looked mostly intact. After a moment, she frowned beneath her helmet and shook her head. "Did any of 'em make it?"

"You saw how bad these damn things were rippin' into 'em," Katsuki Nishihara said as he emptied the last several rounds into a zombie-vamp moving to blindside Matsunaga. Nishihara's job was radio operator, and though he didn't carry a backpack radio since all communications equipment was internalized in the helmets, it was his job to call in air or artillery support to prevent an excessive number of fire missions being called on a single target. He hit the magazine release switch. "Reloading."

"This is fuckin' ridiculous," Uno swore as she dropped another empty mag and searched his pouches for a fresh one. "We should have fuckin' ARs and shit out here, not these shitty little turkey guns."

"Stow it and cover that back line, Uno," Matsunaga ordered. "Keep bitching like that and we'll drop you back into the regular service."

Uno grumbled something inarticulate as he gripped a fresh mag between the tips of his fingers and pulled it free. "Shit!" he swore as the magazine slipped from his fingers and fell into the blood-splattered ground. "No-slip gloves my fucking ass! Hey Sarge, you think blood'll fuck up the mag?"

"Just wipe the damn thing off and plug it in!" Leon shouted, answering before Yuuna could. "I can't hold this line by myself!"

Uno grabbed the dropped clip and proceeded to wipe it off on the unarmored part of his right arm fatigues. Leon's weapon ran dry before he finished, and for a brief few seconds, no fire was being put out from the rear of Alpha's position. The zombie-vampires took advantage of this opportunity to rush Bravo's position in the treelines.

"Damn it, they're charging!" Reiko swore as she fired the last shot in the current clip of her sniper rifle, of the same design that Hartley was using. The heavy anti-materiel round over penetrated her target's head, pretty much exploding it in the process, and did the same to the two directly behind. "Stand your ground!"

At this close range, volume of fire was more useful than precision fire, as the three other Helljumpers still in the treeline stood, leveled their submachine guns, and poured fire into the advancing crowd. They discovered that it wasn't just propaganda when it was said that the M7S, of which their MFAR-20/S was an exact replica, could "turn bad guys into chum."

But even though three steadfast Helljumpers with sixty rounds each per magazine of 5.3mm full-metal-jacket was nothing to chortle at, a crowd of doped-up, vamped-up zombies charging balls-out for them was still enough to put the four Helljumpers in the trees in a bad place.

Kazuhide Sato, in the center of the lines, swung his weapon horizontally as the first one reached him, cracking the stock against the creature's jaw, stunning it long enough for him to bring the weapon forward again, a second blow to the face knocking it down, allowing him to drop the empty SMG, pull his pistol from a tactical holster over his stomach, and put two rounds in its head.

Yamazaki met her first opponent, armed with a sword, by tackling it just before it swung at her, going down to the ground on top of it. As it brought up its sword arm to either slash or bludgeon her, she leaned over and slammed both hands down on it, pinning it in place, then backhanded the zombie, momentarily stunning it. That gave her time to draw her pistol as well, firing into its sword hand until it really didn't have a hand left, exactly performing a move she'd seen Yuuna perform five years earlier against a similarly-more-powerful foe armed with a sword. She got a grip around the creature's head and then twisted, snapping its neck.

One broke from the crowd and lunged at Reiko, but she dropped her sniper rifle and calmly stepped aside as it did so, taking the time to draw her submachine gun from her hip magnetic plate and thumb the fire selector to automatic. As the zombie-vampire rolled over to come back up at her, she aimed her weapon down at the creature and emptied the full magazine into its head and upper body.

At the far end of the line, Aisha was not as quick to react as her more-experienced comrades. A zombie struck her on the chin with a powerful backhand, launching her backwards to the ground, her submachine gun and helmet flying off to either side as she landed. Her hand immediately snapped down to her pistol, pulling the weapon and snapping the safety off as she leveled it at the zombie and fired as fast as her finger could pull the trigger, panic making her aim for center mass rather than head.

She got through five of the eight rounds in the magazine before the zombie seized her weapon wrist, crushing the bones therein. She cried out as her grip on the weapon vanished, barely heard over the melee, and the pistol fell into her foe's hand. Despite the massive hand that the zombie sported, the pistol was still not ungainly to grip as it turned the weapon and fired the last three rounds into her.

The tactical armor of the Helljumpers was built to stop bullets, but mostly small-arms and rifle rounds. The pistol fired heavy .50-caliber rounds, and had no problem penetrating the armor.

Aisha didn't scream the way she thought she would if she ever got shot, letting out an agonized groan as a sensation akin to liquid fire tore into her body from the wounds. Writhing on the ground, she turned her head, looking for her helmet, for her weapon, neither of which were within her line of sight no matter how she turned. She didn't hear Leon scream her name, didn't see his IFF tag break from the four-corners formation he was part of around the medics. All she saw was the head of her attacker suddenly burst open under sustained submachine gun fire, raining gore down on her.

Leon elbowed aside the stumbling, headless corpse and dropped to his knees by Aisha's side, unclipping the shoulder straps holding her torso plate in place. He pulled the plate off and leaned down to get a better look at the injuries, then swore and dug into his field aid kit, pulling a packaged field syringe with an 'M' label and ripping off the package, then jabbing the needle into the side of her neck and administering the morphine dose.

The sudden entry of painkillers into her system cleared her head enough to realize that the looming figure behind Leon was not wearing black armor or sporting a dark blue visor. "Behind you!"

His head snapped around and he was in the middle of a turn when the enemy she had seen drove a sword partially into his side, depth of penetration stopped by his left hand snapping over and gripping the blade just above the hilt. He grit his teeth against the pain, and as the vampire-zombie roared in anger at being stopped, he stuck the barrel of his submachine gun into its open mouth and emptied the rest of the magazine directly into its head.

The foe dropped, a grapefruit-sized hole in the back of its head that resembled the affects of a mining drill, losing its grip on its weapon in the process. Swearing virulently in German, he ripped the sword out of his side by his grip on the blade while tripping the magazine release switch with the thumb of his right hand. He loaded a new magazine and moved to place himself between the enemies and Aisha.

Yuuna kept pace with Regan as the swordswoman rushed directly into the fray. "Goddammit, Cleric Team get in there! We gotta get them out of there!"

The entire squad was moving in to try and reach their besieged comrades, except for Hartley, who was worth more as a sniper, dropping at least one enemy with every shot, every second. However, despite the furious assault by the other ten soldiers, the remaining forty to fifty enemies seemed to be forming a solid wall blocking them from reaching their comrades.

"I can't get through!" Sato shouted as he ducked under a sword swing, then raised his submachine gun up underneath the jaw of his attacker and ripped its face off with a ten-round burst. "They're too bunched together!"

"Suck on this, fuckin' shitheads!" Uno roared as he produced a catalyst grenade, a staple weapon of the Mahora Mage Knights-of which Fireteam Charlie was part-that was essentially a blue-colored spherical vial that resembled a plasma grenade with a stoppered neck. Uno smashed the neck of the vial against his weapon, then hurled it left-handed into the mass of enemies.

The vial burst against a club-armed zombie-vampire and released the liquid within, which reacted to the sudden impact and air mixture by igniting into magical fire that incinerated what was covered with the liquid, but did not burn anything else.

Yuuna slammed the butt of Ebony against another enemy's jaw, feeling the strange sensation of a jaw shattering as the creature reeled back. Her right hand came around and placed Ivory against its eye and pulled the trigger. Gore exploded back out of the ventilated skull, splattering the front of Yuuna's helmet. Turning, she barely managed to catch a sword stroke along the underside of Ebony and deflect it away from her body, raising Ivory again and double-tapping her enemy.

A club struck her in the right side and she fell away, rolling to get out from underneath a downward strike that would have crushed her head like a melon, helmet or no helmet. She rolled onto her back and leveled both pistols at the club-wielding foe, utilizing the match-grade triggers to make it appear like she was firing fully automatic, a selection mode that the weapons didn't have. Her heavy fire staggered the zombie, keeping it at bay long enough for Regan, reacting to Yuuna's distress across their telepathic link as magistra and ministra, to step in and behead it.

Due to the nature of the situation, Regan immediately turned to parry a sword strike from another enemy that wished to harm the supposedly-disadvantaged Yuuna, rather than help her get to her feet. Yuuna rolled up onto her shoulders, then twisted her legs to provide momentum to roll back up onto her feet, a shot from both pistols passing to the right side of Regan's head and dispatching her foe.

Leon, now out of magazines for his submachine gun and standing in a pile of five new dead enemies, drew his pistol and continued to fire. As he turned to his left to drop a zombie trying to dive at Aisha, another came around to his right side and slammed a heavy club into his right arm, crushing the armor plate and the humerus bone of the upper arm in a single blow.

He couldn't stop the shout of pain as he managed to catch his fumbled pistol in his left hand, bring it up, and fire two shots into the offending zombie's head. Another came in as he was distracted, slicing a blade across the weak point between his shoulder and upper arm plates, a painful but not debilitating wound. This enemy, too, was swiftly dispatched.

Two came from the rear, one stabbing its sword through the strap over his left shoulder and into his back as the other grabbed Aisha by the disconnected straps of her harness and started pulling her back into the trees. Leon screamed and stumbled forward, catching himself on his knees before he fell into the dirt. With the little remaining strength in his right hand, he grabbed a catalyst grenade, turned, and slammed it directly into the zombie's chest, setting the creature on fire and burning his hand beyond usefulness in the process. As he was turned away, a final zombie rushed in, driving another sword past the side of his stomach armor, almost completely through his body.

Yuuna watched in horror as Leon's IFF tag in her visor changed to a red 'X' indicating death. A raw, wordless scream of loss, fury, and regret tore out of her throat, loud enough to be heard even through her soundproofed helmet. She cast her pistols to the ground and snatched up her own suppressed submachine gun, thumbing the magazine release lever.

Regan, seeing this, shouted into her headset, "Get back, get clear! She's torching it!"

As the rest of the soldiers broke contact with the enemy, Yuuna calmly, coldly began to incant, "Seigi, te wo. Chikara, ai wo." Red wisps of energy erupted from the ground and air around her, spiraling around her form, directed by her will into the empty weapon in her hands. "Omne Flammāns Flammā Purgātūs, Domine Extinctiōnis et Signum Regenerātiōnis, in Meā Manū Ēns Inimīcum Edat! Flāgrantia Rubicāns!"

The last two words came in a raw, pained shout as she jammed down the trigger of the submachine gun. A gout of magical fire roared out of the barrel of the weapon, sweeping out and engulfing the remaining vampire-zombies standing before her, the spell turning her submachine gun into a bona fide flamethrower. The harsh red glare of the magical flames backlit onto her helmet, lending her the appearance of a hellish demon exacting revenge for her fallen comrades. Behind the visor, Yuuna scowled as she listened to the dying shrieks of the burning enemies, many of them now fleeing in a futile attempt to extinguish the flames, which were magically immune to water, and not dependent on oxygen to survive.

"Hahah, yeah!" Uno shouted, pumping a fist into the air. "Burn, motherfuckers!"

For a full minute, Yuuna continued to direct her stream of fire against any enemy that she perceived to still be moving, until finally Regan stepped in and grabbed the submachine gun, ignoring the heat of the slowly-melting weapon and pulling it out of her partner and lover's grip. "Yuuna, stop! They're dead!" She glanced up, looking for the familiar red crosses of the squad's two medics. "Kouya-san, Yasu-san, get over here!"

The two medics rushed up, Kouya dropping beside Leon and Yasuhiro running into the woods after Aisha's locator tag. He found her with a blackened zombie collapsed over her, and nudged it off with his boot, drawing up short as he gazed down at the shredded state of her throat. Slowly, with a shaking hand, he placed the submachine gun back on the magnetic plate on his left hip, pulled his pistol from the right hip plate, and racked the slide.

Reiko was at his side before he completed the action, her visor depolarized as she laid a restraining hand on the weapon. "What are you doing?"

"Isn't she-" His voice cracked. He cleared his throat. "Isn't she going to turn into one of them now?"

Reiko shook her head, guided his weapon back to the magnetic plate. "These zombies were voodoo zombies, using drugs and stuff to keep them in a narcoleptic state. It's not a contagious disease. She's gone, Yasu-kun."

Back at Leon, Kouya briefly checked him, then shook her head. The life-monitoring equipment of their armor was almost never wrong. Throat thick with grief, she reached up her left hand and brushed her fingers over his eyes, coaxing them shut. "It's too late," she announced. "I can't do anything."

Yuuna didn't respond, her helmeted head buried in Regan's chest, the swordswoman's arms holding her tightly. No one had ever died in Yuuna's command, and though she was an exceptional field commander, grief was not something she had ever learned to deal with. Her radio was currently muted, so as to prevent her squad from hearing her openly sobbing. Regan glanced back toward Kouya and nodded to the medic. "It's okay, you did the best you could. Gather all their gear. Nothing and no one gets left behind."

Even Hatsu Uno was suitably downed by the drastic turn of events. He watched as Kouya, Yasuhiro, Reiko, and Miko moved Leon and Aisha out of the pile of dead enemies and laid them out peacefully side-by-side, their weapons stacked beside them. Nishihara, Hartley, and Matsunaga watched the perimeter in the event more of the vampire-zombies showed up.

That wouldn't be a very wise move on their part, at this point.

Kouya spoke into her radio, "Control, we're all wrapped up here. We've killed everything we can see, requesting Black Hawk extraction and casualty removal. We lost Wolfram and Maruyama. KIA."

Even Colonel Ruiz' voice was somber, as he'd seen everything from the command headquarters. "Understood. Caster Seven-Four and Seven-Five are inbound your position."

Everyone had gathered around the bodies by this point, helmets held loosely in off-hands. Yuuna, tear tracts clearly evident through the sweat and grime on her face, stared unblinking down at them, almost unaware of Regan's arm holding her comfortingly. She wasn't looking forward to what she had to do next.

Finally, after a few moments, she handed her helmet to Regan, then moved to the heads of the bodies and knelt down. She first reached beneath Leon's chest plate and fatigues, pulling free his dog tags and snapping off the one on the shorter chain. Turning to Aisha's body, she grimaced as she gingerly peeled back her black fatigues from the blood soaking her upper body, pulling her identification tag as well. Staring down at the two pieces of stamped steel and electronics in her hand, she mindlessly brushed excess blood from Aisha's tag with her thumb, then placed them both in a pouch on her armor.

A heavy silence descended on the clearing as Regan came to kneel beside Yuuna, setting the shorter woman's helmet on the ground and pulling her into an embrace. No one was sure what to say or do, now that standard operating procedure concerning gathering and preparing the dead for extraction was complete.

Then Hartley's voice broke the silence, quietly singing, "When they come, I will stand my ground… Stand my ground, I'll nae be afraid…"

Most of the squad recognized the lyrics from the movie We Were Soldiers that they had all seen at one point or another. Uno nodded quietly and continued the next verse, "Thoughts of home, take away my fear… Sweat and blood, hide my veil of tears…"

"Once a year," Matsunaga joined in, "say a prayer for me… Close your eyes, and remember me…"

"Ne'er more," Kouya sang, "shall I see the sun… For I fell, t'a German's gun…"

As one, their voices unified, the entire squad and Regan intoned, "Lay me down, in the cold cold ground… Where a'fore, many m'er have gone…"

Regan, her hearing sharper than that of the rest of the squad, looked up as she heard the distinctive whump-whump-whump of helicopter rotors, seeing the flashing running lights of the Black Hawks as they descended into the clearing. She stood up and moved out of the way as the remaining ten soldiers donned their helmets, then lifted their fallen comrades from the ground, five each per body, and carried them toward the closest helicopter. They very carefully and reverently laid the bodies on the deck of the helicopter, then Hartley, Kouya, Uno, Nishihara, and Matsunaga boarded it.

Yasuhiro, Reiko, Kazuhide, Miko, and Regan turned and climbed into the second helicopter as the first lifted off to return to their base. Yuuna stepped up to the second helicopter and paused for a moment, turning to complete the commanding officer's symbolic look back over the battlefield, the enemy corpses and patches of grass still burning in the night. Then she leaned backwards, seating herself on the deck of the Black Hawk, and held onto the interior wall as the helicopter rose into the air, the ground falling away beneath them.

April 23, 2013
Viertel Am See Memorial Gardens, Mahora Residential District
1327 hours, Japan Standard Time

"…And so we commend into the arms of the Lord the souls of Leon Wolfram and Aisha Maruyama, where for them, there will be no more bleeding, no more fight, only the divine embrace of Our Heavenly Father. Amen."

Between the families of the two fallen Helljumpers, and those in Fireteam Charlie and Mahora University that had been friends, nearly a hundred mourners had turned out for the joint funeral. Elder Konoemon Konoe, Takamichi Takahata, and Mana Tatsumiya stood in the crowd, as did Katerine and several of the soldiers of her team.

This was only the third time that any member of Fireteam Charlie had ever had reason to wear their Class A uniforms, and both those present among the mourners and those on honor guard duty looked sharp in the dark blue, white-trimmed uniforms. At the head of Aisha's flag-draped casket stood Matsunaga, her squad leader, Yuuna across from him at the foot; Reiko and Hartley stood in the mirroring positions of Leon's casket. The emblem on the flags was the traditional shield insignia of Mahora, across which in a line were ten graphical representations of the single-occupant exo-atmospheric insertion vehicle drop pods used by the Orbital Drop Shock Troopers of the Halo games, and a banner labeled 'FIRETEAM CHARLIE.'

The two pairs of leaders each took one step inward, grasping the flags draped over the caskets by their edges and raising them smartly, then taking two outward steps away from the caskets, each movement perfectly synchronized between the two pairs, despite the team having been fortunate enough to never have opportunity to perform this duty before. Yuuna and Hartley folded the flags into tight triangles with expert precision and steady hands, then when completed, held them up for their opposite numbers to inspect. It was all highly-theatrical, but each soldier took their duty seriously, Matsunaga and Reiko inspecting the sharp corners, crisp folds, and clean tucks of the flags, before returning them to Yuuna and Hartley, and saluting.

The leader and second-in-command of Cleric Team turned simultaneously toward the crowd of mourners. Hartley marched solemnly toward the gathering, and when he had lined up with Yuuna, the leader of the group smoothly and smartly fell into step with him, and both proceeded to march up to the next of kin of their fallen comrades, in this case their mothers. At once, they went to a knee before the mothers, and presented the flags toward them between their hands. At the same time, in the same cadence, they said, "As a representative of the Mahora Mage Knights Defense Brigade, it is my high privilege to present you this flag. Let it be a symbol of the grateful appreciation this city and nation feels for the distinguished service rendered to our country and our flag by your loved one."

As the grieving mothers accepted the flags, Yuuna and Hartley stood and saluted, holding the gesture for five beats before lowering their arms, turning, and marching back to their places opposite Matsunaga and Reiko. Once they were both in place, the two pairs turned a half-face inward to face the caskets.

Attention now turned to the other six Helljumpers, plus Regan, standing in line at arms, MFAR-42 reproductions of the iconic BR55 battle rifle held unwaveringly in hand. Lorenzo waited a beat, then called, "Honor Guard, present arms."

The seven riflemen snapped the weapons down to a forty-five degree left angle in perfect synchronization. At the same time, the four leaders on flag detail saluted sharply. At the command, "Fire," the seven rifles barked out a single shot each, followed by the manual cycling of the bolts. A second command preceded another volley of shots, followed moments later by the third and final volley.

Once the volley salute was complete, Lorenzo himself raised a bugle from beneath his arm, and proceeded to play Taps. Upon finishing, he tucked the bugle back underneath his left arm, then slowly and solemnly saluted the fallen soldiers under his command. As he lowered his salute, the soldiers of Cleric Team, both armed and unarmed, followed suit in synchronization without needing a verbal command. The seven riflemen turned an about-face and marched away from the procession, and the four leaders formed up into a box formation and marched in the opposite direction.

It took all of Yuuna's discipline to maintain her military bearing until she was out of sight and hearing of the mourners.

UH-60J Black Hawk 'Caster Seven-Four'
Mahoran Airspace Above Battlefield, Altitude 3,000 feet
1418 hours, Japan Standard Time

From three thousand feet, it was almost impossible to tell what had taken place in that clearing the previous night. Certain patches of grass remained blackened by the fire magic she'd cast to end the fighting, but all the bodies had been removed and, likely, burned by cleanup teams. Those same cleanup teams had likely removed all the shell casings and empty magazines, leaving behind only the small handful of shell casings scattered about that slipped through their efforts.

Aside from the helicopter's crew and Regan, Yuuna was alone in the vehicle, sitting on the edge of the deck, her feet hanging out over one hell of a drop. As the helicopter hovered in place, waiting for her to do whatever it was she'd come to do, she mused on what exactly they had fought for, what Leon and Aisha had died for. A unification of the human and vampire worlds. While that was all well and good and a noble ideal, Yuuna found the likelihood of its success to be about the same as the unification of the magic and mundane worlds.

So no one outside Cleric and Grammaton Teams, and the personnel staffing the command center the previous night, would know exactly what the two Helljumpers had died for. Official, public records would indicate that, while out on a standard exercise, the team happened upon a group of terrorists plotting an attack against the city-academy, and engaged and defeated an enemy force nearly ten times their number. Bitterly, she wondered if even those humans and vampires, that 'Clan' that they had fought on behalf of, would ever be aware of the sacrifice that the team had made on their behalf. Somehow, she doubted it.

When she felt Regan squeeze her shoulder, possible because she was still wearing her service dress uniform, she sighed softly and said, "No one's ever going to raise a memorial for what they died for here. We're the only ones who will ever know what happened here or why."

The swordswoman smiled sadly and massaged the back of Yuuna's neck with her thumb and index finger, a motion she knew well relaxed the gunslinger girl. "But we do know, and we can honor and cherish their memory, and if this 'Clan' ever succeeds at what they're doing, we'll know that it couldn't have happened without Leon and Aisha, and we'll have the solemn pride of having laid so costly a sacrifice on the altar of freedom."

A faint smile tugged at the corner of Yuuna's lips at the quotation from a famous American Civil War letter. She nodded, then slowly reached into a pocket on her dress jacket and removed the dog tags she had snapped from their lost comrades the previous night. Their purpose in identifying the dead completed, they no longer had any value, and Colonel Ruiz had allowed her to keep them, suggesting that she do with them something that would allow her to come to terms with the loss of her soldiers.

She brushed her thumb across the bloodstained metal of Aisha's tag, then idly spread them out in her palm so that she could see both tags clearly. There really was nothing more to say, so she simply closed her hand around the tags and brought them close to her chest, then closed her eyes for several moments.

Then she opened her eyes and extended her closed fist out of the troop bay of the Black Hawk, slowly opening her hand and letting the small bits of steel and electronics fall free, plummeting through the open skies toward the field where their owners had given their lives.

One final drop.