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Gloucester, 'tis true that we are in great danger;
The greater therefore should our courage be.
Good morrow, brother Bedford. God Almighty!
There is some soul of goodness in things evil,
Would men observingly distil it out.
For our bad neighbour makes us early stirrers,
Which is both healthful and good husbandry:
Besides, they are our outward consciences,
And preachers to us all, admonishing
That we should dress us fairly for our end.
Thus may we gather honey from the weed,
And make a moral of the devil himself

"Well Major, looks like we're about to risk our lives for the cause again."

Vasily snorted,

"Oh how glorious it is to be fighting for freedom and justice, if the Dominion wasn't an atheist regime I'm sure that we'd be rewarded in paradise."

"Cheer up Vasily, think of all the great things the army has done for us."

"Name one, o wise colonel." David scratched his chin and peered into the sky for a brief moment, then wrinkled his nose.

"Good point." Vasily gave a sanctimonious little nod, then leaned his head back against the trench wall and closed his eyes.

"Now wait just a minute, if it wasn't for the army we would never have met," A rangy, brown haired woman slid into the trench next to David. "That's a good thing isn't it ?"

David and Vasily exchanged an arch expression, then giggled like schoolboys as they tried unsuccessfully to avoid the sharp smack upside the head that Tara delivered to each in turn. She was preparing to deal another when David grabbed her from behind, dragged her to the trench floor and started tickling her furiously. She tried in vain to keep from laughing, then gave David a sharp jab in the ribs, and used the opportunity to roll on top of him. He gave a game smile and pulled her down by her neck to kiss her. She protested feebly at first but soon surrendered and wrapped her arms around him.

Vasily clucked disapprovingly,

"Isn't their something in the field manual about public displays of affection between a colonel and a lieutenant??"

David broke for air, then gave an exaggerated circumspection of the darkened trenches and bunkers.

"There's no public here."

"There's me!"

"Well you don't count." Said David dismissively.

"Why not?"

"Because you're on-"

But Vasily never did find out why he was irrelevant, as Tara dragged David down again.

'Tis good for men to love their present pains
Upon example; so the spirit is eased:
And when the mind is quicken'd, out of doubt,
The organs, though defunct and dead before,
Break up their drowsy grave and newly move,
With casted slough and fresh legerity.

Screeeeeeeek! Vasily jerked up from his position against the wall and grabbed his rifle, while David and Tara went for their NV goggles. Vasily kept his rifle up as David and Tara, all business now, scanned the land in front of the trenches.

"See anything?" Tara shook her head, never taking her eyes from the goggles.

"Damn it!" she hissed "I wish we had our suits, they haven't even shipped us any fucking thermals! It'd be a lot easier to keep a lookout if we had just four of those babies." Vasily nodded from behind his rifle, he yearned for his suit of power armor, with its four different view options ranging from NV to infrared and exponentially greater protection, all they had were jumpsuits with a few fibers of high grade metal woven in, hardly enough to do anything against zergling claws or lisk spikes. He cursed the fact that Leboron IV had a singularly pleasant climate, else they would have been sent power suits to deal with a harsh environment. He wondered if the planet had resources the Dominion wanted to exploit or if they planned to turn it into a tourist center.

"I'd say that was an ultra, big fucker too," said David tersely, "I'm gonna check on the men."

"Gonna cheer them up with cute literary references to Henry V?" remarked Tara dryly, David was famous for quoting Shakespeare and other great writers from old earth. He grinned sheepishly,

"Well one cannot deny the similarities to Agincourt," he said lightly. Tara chuckled,

"Well the numbers are a bit more lopsided, and our foe is quite a stretch away from the flower of French chivalry," she pointed out. David shrugged,

"True, but the analogy holds." Tara slung the goggles over her neck and dropped down from the parapet.

"I'll come with you." He shrugged airily,

"Don't know what the men will think…"

"You know perfectly well that the men won't think a thing, if they don't know by now they're probably pointing their rifles the wrong way," David sighed and held his arm out, and they strolled down the trench as if they were moving to the center of a dance floor. As David scanned the defenses yet again, more out of reflex than anything else, he reflected on how incredibly lucky he was to have this woman. If she hadn't been there he would have gone insane long ago.

He remembered vividly the day he met her. Like most important events in his life, it had happened on the battlefield, knee deep in gore. He was a squad leader then, must have been around seventeen. He had been trapped on a ridge, half his men were dead and the confederates were moving in for the kill. He had just cut down a charging marine and was slamming another clip into his rifle, when he heard a quick burst from a gauss, and looked up to see a headless marine falling to the ground to his front, then an attractive, serious looking woman vaulted into the trench next to him. "Who are you!?" he had screamed over the din.

"Private Wabash sir!" She had replied in a harsh, businesslike bark.

"Where the fuck is our backup!?"

"I'm it!"

They had survived that battle, the reinforcements had come, and the confederates were wiped out. He had been a cold, bitter youth by then, two years of endless carnage having taken their toll on his youthful soul, a killer since fifteen, when he had joined the Sons of Korhal after a confederate massacre of whom he was one of the sole survivors. She had been much the same, the child of a prostitute at a confederate army base, where she learned to hate the cruel and vindictive soldiers who abused her shattered mother, while being groomed for the same fate. She had run away at thirteen, a year before she would reach the proper age to begin "work" and scraped and stole for food on the streets of Tarsonis for a year or so, before running into a recruiter for the Sons.

With every last one of her squad dead in that battle, she had been transferred to David's squad as a replacement, where, despite both of their best efforts not to, they were drawn together. Slowly, and painfully, they began an emotional healing process, drawing on each other for strength and sanity, becoming human beings once more.

David chuckled softly as they drew near the first bunker,

"What?" said Tara, a look of amusement on her face. David stopped and answered, still chuckling,

"Do you remember that bunker, the one on Cartishna?" She looked puzzled for a second or so, then she too began laughing softly. They had been on the front lines of a deserted rock, alone, in a bunker, engaged in a rather heated embrace, when a thoroughly alarmed marine had charged in, convinced that he had heard the Zerg approaching, and they were forced to roll into a dark corner and hide, listening to him mutter to himself until he left.

O God of battles! steel my soldiers' hearts;
Possess them not with fear; take from them now
The sense of reckoning, if the opposed numbers
Pluck their hearts from them

They released their linked arms as they entered the bunker. They were a couple, and made no attempt to hide it, but they did not broadcast it either. There were twenty men crammed into the bunker, with four on duty, ready to rouse the rest and send them to their positions along the trench, one man for every five yards, an ideal defense line was one every half yard. The sixteen men who were sleeping lay huddled together for warmth, the nights were cold for these green recruits, but they would learn to deal with it, if they lived.

"How you boys doing?" queried David in a gruff whisper. The young sergeant on duty licked his lips nervously,

"We're okay sir." The others nodded. David patted the sergeant on the shoulder, and turned to leave, when one of the green privates spoke up,

"Sir, how many zerg are we up against?" David scratched his chin,

"Honestly?" the recruit nodded dumbly, his mouth hanging open.

"I'd say about thirty to one odds." The kid's eyes went wide. David smiled slightly, "Private Roland," he said, looking at the name sewn over his breast pocket, "are you a Catholic?" another nod, "Do remember what tomorrow is?" he shook his head, "It's Saint Crispin's day." One of the other privates eyes brightened, and his gaze became distant, as he relived some unknown memory, but the questioner did not seem convinced. David tried again, "How old are you Roland?"

"Nineteen sir."

"How old you think I am?" Roland gulped and eyed David nervously,

"th- thirty five?" Tara turned around quickly, but not quickly enough to keep David from seeing her face go scarlet with suppressed laughter. David raised an eyebrow at her, then turned back to the private,

"Nineteen." Now it was the private who went crimson. "Not such an untouchable am I? Same age as you," at his Roland smiled slightly, David gave him a pat on the shoulder, and left the bunker, followed by Tara, who was clearly waiting until they were out of the earshot of the bunker before laughing. When the bunker erupted with mirth however, she could hold it in no longer, and laughed till tears ran down her face.

They completed their inspection of the defenses and returned to Vasily, who was taking shots of vodka and inhaling into his sleeve, to prolong the taste of the liquor as it burned down his throat. Vasily, the little Russian had been with him since before his unit was formed, and was his closest friend after Tara.

Moody, passionate, a romantic, in other words, Russian to the core.

What an odd life he had, reflected David, as his eyes wandering over the command center inside the perimeter, his eyes tracing its gleaming contours absently. His business was war, which encompassed just about every negative trait of every species, "War is hell" as Sherman had said so many thousands of years ago, and yet, he was not unhappy, he had the love of his life and the most loyal of friends at his side, and even though they could be taken from him taken at any time, he accepted that, and lived with it. He didn't know what he would do if there were peace, he would marry Tara first of all, but he didn't even know how to make a living, he would have to remain in the military, an institution that he hated with a passion, despite all it had done for him.

But even if the war with other species ended he would not stop, he would work against the Dominion, as corrupt and evil a government as any in the war torn Koprulu sector.

He heaved a tired sigh, Tara gave his shoulder a squeeze.

"What's wrong?"

"I'm tired." She took a long look across the base, then gave a sigh of her own.

"Yeah. Me too." David slumped down against the side of the trench and closed his eyes, Tara snuggled up under his arm.

"Wake me up when it's my watch." muttered David sleepily.

"Will do David" said Vasily as he peered balefully in the direction of the unseen zerg.

Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more!
Or close the wall up with our English dead.
In peace there's nothing so becomes a man
As modest stillness and humility:
But when the blast of war blows in our ears,
Then imitate the action of the tiger;
Stiffen the sinews, summon up the blood,
Disguise fair nature with hard-favour'd rage!

"Everybody to your posts, the zerg are sounding our reveille!"

"Check your equipment, rig for combat!"

Combat. It had formed the constant, pounding refrain of his life, a fallback point after he experienced anything else, like a child coming back to their own bed after their first sleepover. He felt the familiar feelings come over him, adrenaline, excitement, tenseness, and a feeling of heightened alertness, everything seemed to function faster, more efficiently and with better results. David never felt more alive than when he was in combat, an inch away from death. The fear had gone long ago, it sapped strength and decreased efficiency, David wished his men were not hindered by it.

He palmed the small computer that Tara had jury-rigged to show the overhead strategic map on the screen inside the command center. The zerg were just probing with this first one, eighty zerglings, twice his force, but nothing he couldn't handle, this one was coming from the direction of the zerg base to the north, but David was sure they had other forces circling around the base beyond his sight.

He sprinted to the large depression in the middle of the base where the force's sole arclite rested, only half of its cannon showing above the ground. A small, greasy man with a large blond, handlebar mustache was wrapped around the cannon, jamming some nameless instrument into it.

"Is that thing ready?" The man looked up from what he was doing, then swung off the cannon and onto the ground.

"Well the cannon will work fine, just don't count on anything else to function worth a damn." He spoke with a heavy accent, rolling the words around in his mouth, David resisted the temptation to smile, he'd always wondered how he'd managed to hang onto that outrageous Scottish burr.

"How ya' fixed for ammo?"

"Oh, give it two hundred rounds sir."

"Okay that's not bad, just don't waste it, we'll need every round to count."

"Aye sir." David nodded and sprinted back into the trenches.

The first wave of zerglings could just be seen, silhouetted against the dawn horizon. They raged forward with savage abandon, ripping great tufts from the beautiful wavy green grass, an ugly blemish on the perfect sunrise horizon.

David checked his overhead pad again, the zerglings were spread far apart, so as to probe the maximum amount of the defensive line, looking for weak points. Well if they want to find weaknesses, then they'd better find them. He barged into the first bunker he saw.

"Sergeant, clear out this bunker and the surrounding trenches, move the men down the line to the left."

"But sir this is a vital point on the line! it'll be-"

"I know what I'm doing sergeant, now do as you're told!" The sergeant gathered his, troops and, still looking perplexed, sprinted out the bunker door. David waited until he was out of earshot, then thumbed on his comlink.

"Den, I don't want you to fire the cannon for this attack," He heard the beginnings of an angry outburst on the other end but spoke again before it had a chance to burst into full flower, "Just do it Den," he heard a few mutterings and thought he might have picked up a Gaelic curse or two, but Den knew better than to argue. David grinned faintly and switched frequencies. "Tara, Vasily, I hope you remember how to shoot."

The zerglings charged forward, twenty of them, all screeching and flashing their murderous red eyes at their target, the silent menace of the metal bunker ahead. There were no soldiers in the trenches surrounding it, just the watchful empty eyes of the bunker. The zerglings bounded toward it, drawing ever closer, but still it remained silent. All along the line the trenches erupted with gunfire and the sounds of battle, but this bunker remained silent.

The zerglings rolled towards it, fifty yards… forty yards… thirty yards… twenty yards… In a lightning fast motion, two gun barrels appeared in the viewports and began spitting long tongues of orange flame. Within half a second two zerglings had gone down in sprays of blood and ichor, and more fell by the moment, three, four five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten eleven, twelve fell before the guns fell silent, four of the zerglings charged over the trenches and began heading towards the inner perimeter while the other quartet moved in towards the bunker. Two of them began to hack their way into the bunker to slaughter its occupants while the other two circled back to cut off any escape.

And then something completely unexpected happened, two humans burst out the back door of the bunker, screaming battle cries that put the zerglings' screeching to shame, and wielding twin, wicked looking curved blades.

They burst upon the dumbfounded zerglings in dual whirlwinds of cold steel, David charged the first one he saw and head on, then vaulted overtop of it, slashing its spine open on his way down. Tara used the side of the bunker to launch herself onto one of them, driving her weapon into its brain. David ducked the third zergling's high slash and spitted it on his blade, then turned to see Tara behead the last one.

Vasily emerged from behind the embankment to the back of the bunker, his gun still smoking from dealing with the other four. He raised an eyebrow.

"You didn't have to do that you know," he said dryly. Tara spat out some blood,

"No," she said, "but there are two reasons why we did. One," she gave a fierce, predator's grin, "because that felt so damn good,"

"And the other one?" She wordlessly pointed towards the soldiers down the trench to the left. They were grinning and shaking their heads, slapping each other's backs. Occasional yells of, "Did you see that!?" and "Fucking crazy!" could be heard. Vasily burst out laughing and began shaking his head,

"I have to hand it to you colonel, you certainly know how to raise the troop's morale." He chuckled.