And so I, Senior Adjudicator Tenk Nhurm, set my [pen to paper] on the sixteenth cycle [Covenant Holy Calendar] of this hollow new age, full of great joy for my corporeal salvation, and full of infinite sorrow for the unspeakable tragedy that has claimed so many of the faithful. High Charity has fallen, but may the [light of her wisdom] never fade from the Holy Ecumune!

The high courts of our [meta-civilization] are not as they were. Like all the other Ministries, they were crippled by the ravages of the [Parasite]. So few officials from all of the various juridical courts survived the first day of the Great Schism. And as we rebuild, I fear that the most intractable problem we face shall be what to do with the other refugees.

Of the billions who lived upon High Charity, mere millions escaped the [maw] of the Parasite. And let me be clear, there are no heroes among that number. The heroes stood, and they fought, and they were consumed so that the rest may have a chance to flee. But many didn't. What should we do, then, with the deserters and the cowards?

Many of the refugees, to be sure, were helpless civilians. But that does not mean they are innocent. There were many who saw the [great calamity] coming, and took that as a license to loot and plunder, or to 'rescue' holy relics with an eye for personal gain. There were charlatans who cheated the truly innocent of their material wealth, and then left them to the [Great Enemy]. Indeed, what shall be done with them?

-Extract from a legal opinion written by Adjudicator Tenk Nhurm, published January 2553. Roughly translated from the original Liturgical Tongue.

Midday, Near the Nape of the Unbreakable Spine

For the third time, Captain-Major Alcyonius watched the Forerunner Dreadnought abandon High Charity.

The hololithic record played in his cupped hands. He could see the skyways fade and the static pylons fall to the ground. Then fire was kindled in the immortal engines, and the great ship slipped free of the moorings that had cradled it for thousands of years. The Dreadnought ascended to the sky above, leaving behind the faithful to their fates.

It was abandonment. It was preservation, both of the most important artefact the Covenant had ever recovered, and of the two Hierarchs who still lived. And it was the final, ultimate confirmation of what Alcyonius already knew. High Charity could not be saved. The Parasite could not be driven back from the territory it had claimed, only denied from expanding one step further.

Clenching his hands into fists, Alcyonius dismissed the hologram and gazed up at the Firebreak. It glowed like the sunset, and yet Scarabs still poured their terrible energies into it. From his perch on the steps of his headquarters, he could see the span of the Firebreak from one horizon to the other. He could see slopes of slag that glowed like coals, and rivers of molten metal that flowed toward the Spine.

The principle was familiar to anyone who had seen a world glassed. Plasma burned hot enough to turn flesh into ash and steam, hot enough to burn away the taint of Human settlement and the corruption of the Parasite. Blocked by a wall of molten slag, the Parasite couldn't possibly push into the Unbreakable Spine.

And yet Alcyonius knew it would come.

He had walked the perimeter and examined the defenses, but his heart wasn't in it. Runners came for him, and he sent them back with orders he'd forgotten moments later. His mind was elsewhere.

If his own warriors wouldn't follow, why should he lead them into battle? If the Hierarchs fled, why should he stay?

It was there that Lehe 'Osodnee found Alcyonius. The envoy of the Quincunx Guards clasped a fist to his chest in salutation and announced "Captain-Major, I stand before you an improved man. Field Master Aritham 'Kandonomee has seen fit to promote me to a Major of the first order, so that I may properly represent him."

Alcyonius said nothing.

"Emblems of my new rank will have to wait until the action has concluded," Lehe said. "In the hours ahead, I shall have to prove myself worthy of my new status, but he wishes you to know that when I speak, I truly speak for him."

"Why?" Alcyonius rumbled. "Because he has granted you a paper promotion? Does he expect that to keep me happy, even though he refuses to meet me face-to-face?"

"He is busy, just as you are!" Lehe protested.

"Where is he?" the Captain-Major asked.

Lehe hesitated.

"Where is he? I'll go see him myself!"

Lehe pointed out over the terrace toward the Firebreak, which Alcyonius knew for a fact was nowhere close to the Fieldmaster's true position. But in spite of himself, he turned to look.

There was a flaw in the Firebreak, a patch where the orange-hot slag dimmed to a dull red, and ceased to glow altogether. This cold spot spread and swelled, rising up from the slopes around it like a festering boil.

Before his eyes, another cold spot appeared, and then another, and then a fourth one over on the horizon.

Alcyonius was reminded of a phenomenon he had seen when he bore witness to the cleansing of a Human colony. In the wake of an excavation beam, spots in the sea of molten glass had suddenly cooled and swelled.

A minor Prophet from the Ministry of Preservation had explained the cold spot as the result of local hydrology. Water from an aquifer had been forced upward by hydraulic pressure. When it reached the surface, it cooled the glass into rock. The trapped water would boil, quickly building pressure until rock and glass alike were suddenly blown away, leaving only a steaming crater.

He opened his mouth to shout a warning, but there was nobody to warn, and a Scarab was already dragging its incandescent beam across that first cold spot.

The cold spot erupted like a geyser, and a torrent of water and steam poured through. One after another, all of the cold spots ruptured. Water flowed down the face of the Firebreak in great rivers and boiled away.

"How?" Alcyonius breathed, not quite believing what his eyes beheld.

"There are great reservoirs deep within High Charity!" Lehe cried. "The Parasite must have drained them and channeled their waters here!"

No sooner had the Sangheili spoken than the torrent suddenly slowed. Things tumbled out of the wells of the cold spots. They were walls of flesh that looked like heart valves, but they must have been the size of canal locks. As soon as they were clear, the torrents redoubled. Now the water that poured down the slopes of the Firebreak was filthy and full of things that looked like polyps and maggots.

Alcyonius had the eye of a trained artilleryman. He realized that, to be seen at this distance, the things that swarmed in the water must be the size of houses.

Sirens rang all across the terrace, calling warriors to their stations to make ready. Artillery cannons opened up. In the last few moments before the clouds of steam completely obscured the Firebreak, Alcyonius saw explosions rip across those hot slopes, and he saw excavation walkers pour their terrible heat directly into the wells. It wasn't enough.

"It's over," Lehe said. "We could have turned back a trickle, but this? How are we to fight this?"

"Hold your tongue! That smacks of defeatism!" one of Alcyonius's officers cried. Alcyonius hadn't even heard the man walk up. "We have the high ground, and the artillery to blunt their offense! We only have to buy time-"

More sirens called out, and dozens of batteries of anti-aircraft weapons opened fire. Needles and actinic plasma bolts from Draugr emplacements and Mantis turrets lanced into the steam clouds, seeking out targets that could not be seen with the naked eye.

At long last, the Parasite revealed itself. Airships and skycars flew out of the clouds by the thousands. Even as their numbers were savaged by the incoming fire, they moved together like a school of fish. The aircraft swarm wheeled about and sped down the Unbreakable Spine, racing for the terrace and the Spires beyond.

A point of pride for Alcyonius was that he always knew what to say before the battle was joined, but now words failed him. He stood at the steps of his headquarters with his comm unit in hand, waiting for inspiration to strike so that he could pass that inspiration on to his warriors.

But there simply were no words.

He gestured for Lehe and the others to follow him, and marched into his headquarters.

Evening Period, Warehouse District of the 'Umtalla docks

"Why are we here?" P'thon asked as his arm was submitted for identification. "We should flee to the interior hives. My family has estates up there."

"Can't," Quatch replied as the man door unlocked. "Your clan elder told me to get you and any other survivors far away from here. For that, we need a ship, and for that, we need supplies. Now move."

The young Sangheili resisted, but he was outnumbered and hurting badly. It only took a gentle shove to get him through the warehouse's man door. Quatch followed him in and opened the bay door to let the cargo sleds in.

"Supplies and a ship!" P'thon hissed. "You're no better than the Brutes!"

"Stow that!" Quatch said. "I struck a bargain with Kuota-"

An emerald plasma bolt splashed against the doorsill by Quatch's shoulder. Three more sailed into the warehouse, and more riddled the side of Nak's cargo sled.

"Shit!" Quatch snarled. "Get to cover!"

He'd left his longarm spiker in the cab. All he had was the plasma pistol that the late Jiral chieftain had given him. He fell to his knees and snapped off shots one-handed, but he was far out of practice, and all his shots went wild.

Nak and Kess raced their sleds into the warehouse, and Quatch could see a whole lance of Unggoy outside across the street. Some had broken cover and were racing across the yard.

Heik stepped up, raised his plasma repeater, and laid down a long burst of blue energy. He was hardly more accurate than Quatch, but he had the volume of fire to make up for it. Blue plasma bolts swept the yard, sending the enemy scrambling back into cover. The apprentice signalman kept his finger on the trigger for as long as it took both cargo sleds to back into the warehouse. By the time the door clanked shut, waves of heat were rising from the gun, and its fire rate had slowed to a crawl.

"Are they going to force their way inside?" Quatch asked.

"No, they'll set up firing positions and wait for us to leave," the Kig-Yar soldier replied.

"I didn't break this gun, did I?" Heik asked. He was drumming his fingers on the foregrip, the plasma repeater was so hot to hold.

"No, here," the soldier said. "Watch your arm."

She pressed something, and panels on the repeater opened up to vent air hot enough to cook someone's arm to the bone.

"You slide that switch up to vent heat," she said. "Push that flap up to check the vitals. That's seventy six points left on the dial, so you have just over half of the battery left."

"I never got your name," Quatch said. "Who are you?"

"Call me Tur. I'm a Hoplon, junior rating," she replied.

"Alright. Tur. Why are you helping us?"

"Well, shipmaster, you're getting ready to take a ship and leave. I want off this station as soon as possible."

"Oh? Is the fight not going well for the Jirals, then?"

"It's not going well for anybody," she said. "It all started going sour when the High Prophet of Truth announced the recovery of the Sacred Icon. A Demon appeared out of thin air to attack the Hierarchs!"

"A Demon. Like the ones that fight for the Humans?"

"Yes."

"Here?"

"Yes! I saw the broadcast with my own eyes! And then a Human ship bearing a plague from the bowels of the Halo crashed into the Golden City! It's spreading through the station, corrupting everything in its path! And then the Arbiter-"

"Fine," Quatch said. "Heik, get the Sangheili loaded up. Tur, watch the door, scream if they try to break through. Everyone else, hurry up and pick those shelves clean! We're moving out as soon as we can!"

His mind buzzed as he strode over to the racks of hard goods. Plague. A plague was spreading through High Charity? What had the aristocrat said? Something about a Lamesai Unesh Nok? How could a plague-

Nak was coming the other way, pushing a dolly loaded with a sidestack reactor and a pile of fuel cells. Quatch stepped out of the way, but Nak caught his arm and dragged him along.

"Well, why is she helping us?"

"I don't know. She babbled a load of nonsense about plagues and demons. I don't think she's leveling with me."

"And you trust her?"

"Trust her? Of course I don't trust her. I just know that she knows what the Jirals will do to her for helping us."

Nak stared at him, unimpressed.

"If she betrays me, I'll shoot her. If not, I'll hand her off to you to make an engine crewer of her. She'll be your problem then."

With that, Quatch shrugged Nak off and went to help the others. They found everything from amalgam to protein feedstock, and every kind of reactor coolant he could think of. He would have taken the whole warehouse if he could, but there wasn't enough room in the cargo sleds. And there wasn't enough time to decide what they needed most.

They had to grab what they could and trust their luck.

Evening Period, Offices of Harbormaster Jarl ur 'Umtalla

With a heave-ho, Taol and Dith threw the last corpse into the back of the cargo sled. There were only thirty Umtalla officers or so, not as many as she'd hoped for, but it was hard and exhausting work digging the Sangheili out from under the pile of bodies and dragging them over to the sled.

"Let's call it quits," said Sap, who was perched on his haunches as if he were about to lose his lunch.

"Yes. Let's," Taol replied. "You two climb in back and make yourselves comfortable. Dith, get the door."

"Comfortable as shit in a colon," Sap groused as he and Don climbed into the back. "I'm going to have nightmares about this."

"Don't worry," Taol said. "The nightmares lose their sting after the second year."

It wasn't far from the truth. This place was stirring up all kinds of bad memories. She remembered stumbling into streets of Bath'tet where a fight had gone one way or another, leaving scores of her fellow Covenant warriors dead, or piles of Humans in armor or civilian attire. That memory had once filled her with dread if not outright terror. Now, they barely evoked a sense of urgency.

The worst came when she climbed into the driver's seat and Dith opened the double-doors of the Harbormaster's office. She saw lightning flash outside, and the distant thunder of plasma weapons.

For a moment, she was back there. On Bath'tet. Sitting in the gunner seat of a Phantom dropship, staring out across a night sky thick with cannon fire and corkscrewing missiles. There were Humans in the buildings below, fiendishly clever Humans who crept through the shadows with rockets, waiting for her attention to be diverted for just one moment.

Old memories, bad memories. And yet she felt nothing at all about them.

When Dith climbed into the cab, she mistook him for her old pilot, Yis. But only for a moment. She reasserted herself and reminded herself that she was on High Charity, and if fortune favored her, she wouldn't be here much longer.

"Let's go already," Dith said. "The smell is starting to get to me."

"Starting to smell like food, isn't it?" Taol asked.

Dith gave her a pained look.

She threw the sled into gear and pulled into the street outside.

Evening Period, Warehouse 25 of the Umtalla Warehouse District

"That's it, let's go!" Quatch called as the last drum of reactor coolant was loaded into the sled. "Everyone climb in back and keep your heads down, there will be shooting! Kess, you follow Nak. Do not slow down, and do not stop for anything! If we get separated, meet us at dock three-twenty two."

He climbed into the cab with Nak and readied the longarm spiker. Seated on Nak's other side, Pem readied a holdout pistol he'd scrounged from the Harbormaster's Offices.

Quatch had no idea what was waiting for them outside the warehouse. Their pursuers had time enough to set up barricades, or they could be waiting in the wings with grenades. He told Pem to lay down suppressive fire as soon as the door opened, and he saw Heik climbing into Kess's cab to do the same.

Tur opened the man door long enough to throw a pair of grenades, and then she hit the door release and sprinted for the cargo sleds. Status lights on the warehouse doors flashed blue, and then they slowly began to open.

Thunder and lightning clashed in the skies outside. It took a long moment before Quatch realized it wasn't the grenades going off. He was hearing gunfire and seeing the light of plasma bursts reflected off the bulkhead-sky and filtered through the smoky haze.

There was fighting in the streets. War had come back to the feifdom port of the Umtalla clan.

Then came a hailstorm of spikes and plasma fire. Quatch picked out a Brute half-hidden in cover and fired twice. He didn't see if he hit, but the longarm spiker clicked empty on the third pull. He threw the weapon behind the driver's seat and screamed for Nak to get moving, but the old man was already shifting gears and funneling energy into the sled's drive.

The cargo sled shot from the warehouse like an arrow from a bow and plowed through the crates the Unggoy had stacked there to block the way. There was a moment of terror where the sled felt like it was going to stall. Plasma bolts flew wild in every direction.

And then the sled pushed the last of the crates aside. Nak turned onto Kaisan Dai street and sped for the piers. In every direction came the boom of thunder and the flash of lightning.

Midday, Near the Nape of the Unbreakable Spine

The Parasite lived up to its name. It washed over Alcyonius's lines like the tide, and it was all that his Legion could do to hold their ground.

The principal problem was that the enemy dominated the airspace. There were simply too many for the air defenses to handle, and for every aircraft that was shot down, another would crash deliberately, or fly low enough to vomit a cargo of corrupted thralls. There was no rear line, no spot of territory that couldn't suddenly be contested.

Alcyonius turned his back to the map table almost as soon as the battle began. Territory was changing hands faster than the sensors and forward observers could update it, and so the picture it painted was dangerously deceptive.

Instead, he prowled the comm deck, listening to the reports as they rolled in. He listened to the signalmen coordinate artillery strikes. He heard Captain-Minor Lanthasmus's death cries as something crashed into his troop carrier, and immediately promoted the second officer to command of the Third Maniple. He then ordered Captain-Minor Pheristus to launch a counterattack to give the Third Maniple time to consolidate.

In his mind's eye, he could see the Legion being pushed back. It would not be long before they were broken apart and isolated, where they would surely be overrun.

"Raise Captain-Major Ostollus," Alcyonius commanded his adjutant. "I want to know what his Legion is doing on my flank."

"Doing so," Leleb replied. "There's a lot of weird stuff echoing in the channels. Not sure if I can get through."

"Do it anyway. And see if you can raise Fourth Maniple, tell them to send a runner and scout. If that bastard is pulling out without us, that flank will be overrun before we know what's going on."

"Captain-Major," said Captain Brochus, in a clear voice that everyone present could hear. "Pheristus reports that the Sangheili have fired upon the Second Maniple."

The whole room went quiet. The grey-furred Captain carefully studied his commander for a long time before his gaze dropped back down to the comm console before him, and he continued to read the message.

"He humbly requests that you, as his Alpha, give him leave to return fire, and either force them back to their post, or perhaps seize their vehicles altogether."

The eye of every officer in the room fell upon Alcyonius. They waited with bated breath for him to give the order. So too were the eyes of Lehe 'Osodnee and the assassins purported to be his bodyguards. It was the crucial call of the most important battle of his life, but he couldn't bring himself to care.

"Leleb, send the order to fall back, just as was planned. Fourth, Third, and Second Maniples are to-"

"Liar!" Brochus bellowed. "You swore we would defend ourselves if the clawfaced bastards betrayed us, and now-"

"That was a promise, not a suicide pact," Alcyonius replied.

Someone drew their gun, but not before Alcyonius drew Jhetus's mauler and leveled it at him. It was too late. One of the Sangheili bodyguards already had his blade drawn, and even though he was moving to shield Lehe, the guards at the front door were going for their weapons. The whole room was one wrong word from bloodshed.

"Leleb, order the damned retreat!" Alcyonius snarled, but the Unggoy just looked from him to Brochus.

"Don't you see what's happening?" Brochus demanded. "Have you, our sworn Alpha, gone blind?"

"I ordered every one of you to keep the peace, and not to attack first," Alcyonius replied. "If Pheristus has kept true to that order, then he shall keep true to this one, and retreat as I command. But if he has broken that order, he will ignore this one, and I'll gladly leave him behind for the Parasite. In the meantime, you arrogant ass, we have to retreat because there is a gaping hole in our air defen-"

The whole building shook as if struck by the wrath of the gods. The floor rolled like the deck of a storm-tossed ship, toppling men and consoles alike. Alcyonius himself was thrown against the map table, from where he saw the entire spinward wall collapse onto the men who stood guard at the front door.

There was an awful racket, so loud it was a physical presence. It was a grinding and cracking sound, combined with the scream of girders twisting and tearing free of each other. It sounded as if the whole auction house was falling in on itself. But at long last, there came a merciful silence.

Alcyonius rose and blinked the dust from his eyes. The building's power had failed, and now was now illuminated only by the light from the consoles and the map table. It made the smoke-filled room feel like a tomb.

It smelled like a tomb too. For that reason, Alcyonius unholstered his spike rifle and shot the first thing that moved.

It was a little thing that scurried like a vermin, and the spikes burst its body open like a rotten melon.

In the brief illumination of his muzzle flash, he saw other things moving through the rubble, so he shouted an alarm and kept firing. More warriors joined the fight, and someone had the good sense to set off a flare. That was the first time that Alcyonius got a look at the Enemy.

The battered, blackened prow of an airship jutted through the pile of rubble that had once been the receiving hall of the auction house. Things stumbled through the rubble, vile things that had once been subjects of the Covenant Empire. Many had been Sangheili, but the Parasite had burrowed into their hearts and built a nest of hardened flesh and bone. From there, the corruption had spread, rotting away the skin or subsuming it into the muscle beneath. Their limbs were twisted and malformed, and they walked like puppets on strings.

They looked less like corpses than demons from half-forgotten myths.

"Fall back!" Alcyonius bellowed. "Suppress with grenades and fall back!"

The abominations surged over the rubble, heedless of the hail of plasma and spikes. At their feet swarmed Parasites like sacks of flesh that skittered about on rootlike tentacles.

They closed the distance before many of Alcyonius's warriors could react. Claws cut into armor and tentacle whips bit into flesh. Warriors died screaming.

A thing that had once been a Sangheili landed on a console beside Alcyonius and regarded him for an instant. Not with eyes, for it no longer had eyes. The eyes had shriveled up in their sockets, and the head flopped uselessly at the end of an atrophied neck. No, it watched him with feelers that sprouted from the nest of hardened flesh in its breast. Through those strange sensory organs, Alcyonius could feel the gaze of a guiding intelligence. One that was unfathomably alien and infinitely malevolent.

It lunged, but he already had the gun up, and was dumping the magazine into its center mass. It fell short and crashed into the ground like a sack of grain.

"Retreat!" he bellowed over the din of battle. "I said suppress with grenades and fall back!"

Grenades were already going off, and the surviving headquarters staff were fleeing. All was chaos. Warriors were dying, or shooting each other in the confusion. The thralls were already in their midst, and so were the Parasites. Alcyonius witnessed one of his favorite junior officers die, blood seeping from rents in his armor, feebly clawing at the Parasite that was forcing its way into his mouth. The Captain-Major emptied his magazine into the officer's head, and uttered a brief prayer for the man's soul.

Lehe and his bodyguards were making a stand at the rear of the room with plasma rifles and swords. Alcyonius shouted one last time for them to retreat as he passed by.

"You would abandon your headquarters?" Lehe shouted. "How will you lead your troops?"

"That aircraft could have plowed clear through this building!" Alcyonius shouted. "It didn't. The Parasite came here for us!"

At first, Alcyonius thought his words had struck horror in to the envoy's heart, but the envoy continued to stare, and so Alcyonius spared a look over his shoulder.

Through the gloom, he saw a thing that he could have mistaken for a tree if he didn't see it walking. It stood twice as tall as the thralls around it, and two long whip-like arms sprouted from its shoulders.

"You can't fight that!" Alcyonius bellowed, shoving Lehe toward the door. "Run!"

They fled into the next gallery over, and were greeted by a firing line. Captain Beringus had rallied his pack, and a pair of red-armored Mgalekgolo stood in their midst. As soon as the Captain-Major and the envoy were clear, the troops opened fire. A cascade of plasma poured through the doorway, or ripped into the walls where the thralls were tearing their way through. A warrior with a needler in each hand fired streams of Subanite shards that homed in on thrall and parasite alike.

But the Parasite kept coming.

Plasma weapons overheated and spike rifles ran dry. At a critical moment when many warriors were reloading or otherwise distracted, the tree-thing struck. With its long limbs, it tore the wall asunder like a grief-stricken man might tear his cloak, and then it stormed through the wall in an explosion of laminate and veneer.

It advanced upon the Covenant warriors with the speed of a war chariot, each step thundering like an artillery cannon. It crossed its arms before it, warding off the gunfire that flew its way.

One of the Mgalekgolo stomped out in front of the line and raised its weapon. Instead of an assault cannon, it bore a heavy multifoliate. Rows of petals on the muzzle of the gun unfolded and spread, and then the whole room was bathed in furious light.

For all of its resemblance to a Wraith's mortar or a Scarab's excavation beam, the multifoliate functioned like neither. Rather than a bolide or an incandescent beam, the multifoliate launched spears of plasma, each one hot enough to incinerate a body. And it could launch volleys of these spears in rapid succession.

The tree-thing caught the brunt of the first two salvos, and all but ceased to exist. The third salvo of plasma spears splashed against the remains of the wall or flew into the headquarters proper. Whatever they struck burst into flames.

A fire now stretched across the gallery and into the next room, a fire that would soon be an inferno.

"Everyone out!" Alcyonius shouted, but his words were lost as the whole building shook again. Another aircraft had struck the building. Any more and the rafters would come crashing down. "Everyone out! Rally at the courtyard in the rear!"

Most of the men were Captain Beringus's Pack, the same warriors that had stormed the temple with him this morning. They fought now as they did then, following his lead and covering each other's backs. Dozens of thralls rushed them, each dying to a flurry of plasma and hot metal.

This was the way it ought to be. The men anticipated his orders, and he knew where to direct them. They fought as Alpha and Pack. If he could start all over, with these warriors as the core of a new unit, and keep out the self-obsessed saboteurs like Pheristus and Brochus and Jhetus, he could build a Legion that he would be proud to lead.

All they had to do was survive.

"Call your shuttle!" Alcyonius ordered Lehe during a lull in the fighting.

"Are you sending me away?" the envoy asked incredulously.

"I don't know if your lot attacked us or not. Either way, you need to talk your Fieldmaster down. You can't do that here."

Lehe complied and pulled out his communicator.

At long last, they stumbled out of the building and into the courtyard that his men had, briefly, turned into a motor pool. And there, gliding over the far wall, was the envoy's shuttle. Alcyonius was disheartened to see that it was a Wisp dropship, a small craft that could carry four passengers. If only it had been a Phantom or a Spirit, he could have worked with that.

"Secure the landing zone! Give the Sangheili time to leave!"

For one terrifying moment, his own warriors refused to move. Then Beringus repeated that order, and they sullenly took up positions around the Wisp, facing outward.

"Go to the rendezvous point, get your commander back into the fight," Alcyonius repeated as he led Lehe to the Wisp. "If Captain-Minor Pheristus attacked first, I'll rip his head off and stake him out for the Parasite."

"Yes, Captain-Major," Lehe replied. "I'm sure that this has all been a grave misunderstanding. I will clear it up at once."

"And take Leleb with you."

Alcyonius's adjutant huffed in surprise, and failed to keep the relief out of his voice. "You're sending me away too?"

"You will coordinate the retreat. Second, Third, and Fourth Maniple are to fall back. First Maniple will bring up the rear."

"And you?"

"I will be with the First Maniple as they cover your retreat. Should anything happen to me, Captain-Minor Sternachus is in charge."

The little Unggoy stared up at Alcyonius in wonderment.

"For years, I have led from the front. It is time for me to lead from behind," the Captain-Major said.

Leleb snapped out of his stupor and bowed deeply. "It has been an honor to serve you, my Alpha!"

With that, he turned tail and ran to catch up with the envoy. The Wisp lifted off as soon as Leleb scrambled aboard, and soon disappeared over the far wall.

"'Today, I lead from behind,'" Captain Beringus quoted. "You always did have a way with fancy speeches."

"Tell the men to form up and file out. We're going to steal a dropship and get off this wretched station."

Beringus barked out a sharp laugh. "That's the best one yet!"

With a heavy heart, Alcyonius turned to him. "The time for jokes is long past."

"But what of the Legion? The men need you!"

"Then they should have listened to me!" Alcyonius snarled. "Time and time again, I've pulled them out of the fire, and each time they spat in my face. No more. Let them fend for themselves!"

Beringus's men were staring at him. Some with hope, but most with barely concealed scorn. He had said the wrong words. The unity of the Jiralhanae was a lie. So too was the notion that the leadership rose to the top only by strength and wisdom. But those were lies that the men fervently believed, as surely as they believed in the Great Journey.

Most of them would follow him off High Charity, if only to escape the Flood. But never again would any of them hail him as their Alpha. They would be deserters, and they would all be shamed for it.

Well then. If it shamed them so much, they could stay here and fight it out to the end. He'd lost their respect, and at the same time he'd lost all respect for them. Alcyonius was tired of living up to the standard they professed, a standard that even Tartarus doubtlessly fell short of. Had he failed? Perhaps, but he'd failed down to the level of Pheristus and Jhetus and a dozen others, and he hadn't seen them cast out until he'd done it himself.

Beringus, his longtime friend, perhaps the only one he had left, barked orders to his Pack to get moving. Some of the others, the guards and the communication technicians who had somehow survived the flight from the headquarters, fell in line.

Alcyonius climbed atop the remains of a troop carrier and surveyed the battlefield. Behind him, the burning edifice of the auction hall crumpled and collapsed in on itself, sending a cloud of sparks rising. The inferno that was consuming the auction hall was one of many that had been set in the district, lending a hellish glow to the city. Dark shapes of excavation walkers roamed about, striking aircraft from the sky with fore and aft cannon.

Above the sound of raging fires and the crumps of distant battle, there was the moan of a great wind, like the cyclone-storms of his homeland. Through the smoke that clouded the sky above, he could see rents in the bulkhead-sky. Stray shots from the defenders had breached the bulkhead-sky, and the atmosphere was slowly venting into the void.

He had won glory in the war against the sacrilegious Humans. He had conquered territory when the fight came to High Charity, wealth and territory he might have called his own after the heretic Sangheili were put in their place. All that fortune, all that fame… Right now, Alcyonius would have traded it for a dropship without a shred of regret.

A/N: Thanks go out to Xeno Major and Dovahkiin for some sage advice that tied this chapter together, and apologies go out to my readers for taking so long to write it.

This is one of the longest chapters in the story so far. Even so, there's a lot of worldbuilding details that had to get axed for the sake of time and the flow of the narrative. I'm going to try filling the gaps between chapters with snippets and historical notes.