Thirty-six: Winter Takes All

August 30th, 2552

Her back slammed against the crates, DMR nestled against her chest like some small creature she was supposed to protect. As drop-ships hummed like massive insects above her head, Jennifer reached around with her free hand to brush her fingers against the cylinder at her back. It was almost subconscious, this recurring impulse to check up on the package, but contact steadied her breath and soothed her spine. It was there. It had her back. Jennifer was there. Jennifer had its back. It was going to be worth it. Whatever it was. She was going to be worth it. Whatever Jennifer was.

Heartbeats thrumming together, Jennifer released her unnecessary grip on the package and returned it to her rifle. Waiting for the next round of mortar fire from Emile on the mass driver.

Waiting for the next drop that would get past him anyway. Waiting for the next thud of heavy boots against the metal platforming, come to kill her. Her fingers tightened around the gun. DMRs were Carter's favorite, like sniper rifles had been hers.

"Are you going to make a habit of handing me my favorite weapons?"

"As long as you don't use them against me. Then I'm happy to keep you armed."

She could hear Emile firing in short, staccato bursts: the better for accuracy, the better for ammo consumption, the better to give a time window to tell the difference between friend and foe in the battle-swirling skies above. It was so hard for her sometimes. Even here, even now, she had to stop and wait and listen and hope that she stood still long enough, that she heard the right footsteps, that she made the right calls, the right shots, that she wasn't asking for too much to be able to save some of the infantry descending from pelicans to the platform to back her up, just some of them, not all, didn't have to be all, just some…

She couldn't save them all. In fact, so far she couldn't save just about anybody. And that, as she had realized before, was another future she was going to have to face. At least, she considered with sad, sharp, sorry relief, with the way things were looking now, it wouldn't be a painful past for her to look back upon. In a few standard hours, she would probably have no past at all and no future either.

"Come on!" Emile was shouting to the enemy drop-ships circling like raptors. "Come on! Come on down, Covvies! Just try and land! I dare you!"

Cannon fire shot like a bullet from the mass driver and collided with a Phantom who, apparently, did dare. Its metal hull combusted mid-air like a supernova in the sky with a scream of plasma and a howl of alien voices buried at sea only to come tumbling back down to earth.

Not Earth. Reach. Not Earth. They weren't there yet. The whole point of this was so that they would never get there, that drop pods would never hit the homeland, that Banshees would never streak that blue sky. Not Earth. Reach. They would tumble back down to Reach, just like Jennifer had.

Buried at sea. She just didn't die. She wouldn't die now either. Not yet.

"You see that?" Emile was crowing to the alien birds swooping down from the skies. "You see that?"

Yes, I see.

Brutes dropped from the sky like frightening fruit, like rotten apples taking advantage of gravity. Like hell she was Snow White, so she resisted temptation and stayed put when two pairs of ugly, two-toed feet rattled the platform above. She could almost feel the way they tried to sniff her out, like little strings tied to the most unexpected of places -the hooks of her elbows, the backs of her knees, even her collarbones -and drawn tight to the predators' claws, every soft, sharp tug drawing them a little closer. But she wasn't Snow White and this wasn't a game of hide and seek. It was her job to clear this platform for that Pelican to pick up this all-important package and she would be damned if she didn't do it. So that made her the predator, the big bad wolf, and she was gonna play that part to perfection even if it killed her.

Which it probably would. Carter had told her this was no place for lone wolves, even if they were big and bad. But she was still the predator. That meant that, like it or not, she had to get out of cover and get it done, get it over with, get it all over with.

"You see that?"

Yes, I see.

Avoiding the lower platforms where troopers tangled with grunts -if she even tried to intervene, it wouldn't be helpful, would get too messy, if she were to drag her own fight down there -she skirted the perimeter, boots slopping wetly through the mud. Thinking that there must be some kind of way out of here, some way to make the Banshees scatter and the pods stop falling like broken bits of ultraviolet sky, but she just couldn't find it yet. She just couldn't find it yet.

A jackal darted out of a dead tree like some damn parasite, mouth snarling, talons slashing at empty air. For a second, just a brief blip, Jennifer saw the excitement flash into its eyes, the almost-human anticipation. She saw the moment when the alien thought it was going to be the hero, the lowly foot-soldier champion that was going to pull a miracle out of its scuffed-up boot and take down the big bad Spartan. She saw the way the needler trembled in its grasp, the way it planted its feet, the way the corners of its mouth curled upward for a second, just one, final second.

That was before her body slammed into its like a bullet and knocked the jackal, needler, heroic complex, and all off of the cliff. It wasn't gonna be the hero here. She wasn't the hero either, but that didn't mean she was gonna let some Covvie take the title.

That's what she was going to tell herself later. That was it. It wasn't the way that that brief glimpse of an almost-humanity had rattled her in her own boots, just for a second, just for a blip. That wasn't it at all.

Up the rain-slick stairs, heavy steps were shaking the metal ground. She took the steps two at a time, racing up to meet their gravity with her own. Couldn't match brutes for weight or sheer strength, but she hadn't survived a tumble from an exploding supercarrier, a desert march, and Dr. Catherine Halsey to get killed off at the last minute by a couple of dumb hulks. And that wasn't counting what came before. Whatever came before. Emile had been right. Winter Contingency had wiped the slate clean. She wondered if the glass would do the same for whoever was left when Reach went under.

The glassing was already underway. They weren't waiting for the walls to come crashing down anymore. Now they were all caught in the grey space in between losing and lost.

Catching the first brute between her crosshairs, now she just had to catch it with a bullet to the brain. Squeezing the trigger smoothly the way she had been trained long, so long, ago, that little bit of hyper-lethal metal shot out of the barrel and hit the ungainly alien between the eyes. But DMRs weren't sniper rifles and this one was no exception. The lead hit true but didn't have the punch behind it to make a killing blow. Now instead of keeling over all dying and then dead, the brute pawed at the tattooed ridge of its forehead and howled its annoyance before it turned and charged.

She was ready for that. Brutes were many deadly things, but they weren't unpredictable. That didn't stop the adrenaline from roaring up into her ears as she darted sideways in a dangerous dance. Not three feet away, the brute crashed solo into the railing behind her, claws grasping at escaped prey. Resisting the impulse to try and just kick it over the edge -too dicey, too risky, it might grab her too and, while she wouldn't mind taking a fall in the name of humanity, she had that extra passenger -she was took more care with the second flight of stairs. The brute behind her was quickly shaking off its hazy confusion at the collision with something that wasn't squishy and soft; a mistake now could be endgame.

Not that she was squishy or soft either. Jennifer wasn't so different from that railing: hard, cold, metal, and teetering so precariously off of a knife's edge.

Sounding its separation with a metallic squeal, the metal latticework plummeted down from the platform and that was when she knew. Part of Six had exploded up in that supercarrier with Jorge. Now she realized that part of Jennifer had crashed into that scarab and gone tumbling down into the canyon with Carter. She just didn't know which part yet.

No time for thinking, no time for brooding, for wondering, for theorizing. No time for doubt, no time for regret, for questions, for anything other than total confidence. Especially not when a brute was rushing her up the stairs, each one of its steps equal to two of hers. She had the weapons, the armor. She had the training, the conditioning. She was a Spartan. She was going to see this through to the bitter end.

Tactically breathing in oxygen from an ozone-filled atmosphere, she lifted her rifle and caught all of the soft squishy bits between her crosshairs. Three rounds squeezed out from her trigger caught the fleshy underside of the right -her right, not its right if it had a right, if she had a right, if there was a right -underarm; the alien's shoulder cracked backward with the impact and the shock, pelvis thrusting forward to compensate, head snapping back. What looked like the cousin to an Adam's apple encased in a sinewy neck pulsed; she squinted and tried not to remember, tried not to think, no time for memory either but she tried…

Tried not to remember how Carter's tags had dangled above her, between them, caught the light, tangled with her own when she flipped them around, more like a sparring match or a power play than anything else but then when had it been anything else? Tried not to remember but tried not to forget, so tricky, so damn difficult, trying not to forget the way the beaded chains had trembled with their breathing…

Carter was dead. He would never breathe again. Neither would this bastard when she was through with it, Jennifer decided grimly, raised her rifle, and beaded the brute's neck with a different kind of metal.

With a terribly satisfying groan, the alien keeled over bass ackwards and bell-up, tumbling down one step, then two, two at a time like she had taken them. She didn't stop, didn't nudge the body toppled like an ugly tree trunk with her foot, didn't check a pulse. Nobody was gonna check its vitals. Nobody was gonna mourn its death. Not while she was around, not when nobody got a single damn moment to mourn—

Emile was still studding the sky with fire - "Almost," he was saying, "almost" -when she climbed up onto the railing and looked down onto the lower level below, perched like a panther on the precipice. The treads in her boats slotted into the metal bar, rocking slightly as she pulled her knife from its berth. It had been sleeping too long; they both had been sleeping too long. Time to wake up, she decided and that new, infinitesimal yet critical turning point launched her off of the railing and onto the second brute's back.

It reared and bucked beneath her like an unbroken beast, but she was going to break it, break it like she couldn't break the glass, break it like she felt she couldn't break anything. She wondered sometimes, if that was the reason why she kept her hair long. She couldn't cut herself out of the suit, out of the Spartan, so she refused to cut her hair either. A quick death, she ruled for the alien whose back she rode, a quick death that you didn't give Reach. That you didn't give us. That you don't deserve. But we don't get what we deserve like in the old vids. The bad guys are winning. The bad guys are winning

"Almost."

She wanted to win. She wanted to win so bad. So maybe that was why she jammed her blade into the soft skin at the nape of the brute's neck, gave it a quick, clean death, drove the tip upward into gray matter so that just for a moment there would be no gray areas, so that she could be the good girl again who slays the monster, gets the guy, saves the planet, goes home.

No home. Planet doomed. Guy dead. Good girl killing other sentient beings. But the landing pad was clear when corpse and killer hit the platform and that was something.

"Noble to Keyes," Emile was saying, out of breath, out of enemies, same as Jennifer as she rolled off of the dead brute's back, belly-up against the sky, "Noble to Keyes, pad is clear. Repeat: pad is clear."

Static. Static. More static. She scanned the skies, waiting, hoping, terrified. The package hummed at her back a mantra that was quickly becoming old and tired: Don't despair.

A click. Static. Another click. Then: "On the way." Garbled. Disjointed. But there. "On the way."

Which meant that soon she'd be on her way too. If Emile had his way. Which he usually did. Even now: "Six," he was saying over the comm. "It's time for you to leave."

The words simultaneously numbed her bones and made her sit up. "Like hell it is," she retorted weakly. "Plenty of unfinished business around here." Yet here she was, planting the sole of one boot and then the other against the platform. Here she was, levering herself back onto her feet. Here she was, getting ready to go.

"Like hell it's not." She didn't even know what that meant but it made her turn and look. In the fading light and the dripping atmosphere, Emile's skull was smudged and sorry. "It's time for you to go," he said and it sounded like he was already hundreds, thousands, millions of miles away. "Get the package to the pad, and get your ass off the planet. I got your back."

Yeah, she thought, squinting and sad as she surveyed the storm-grey figure in the mass driver, all of that ammo strung around his shoulders and that one blood-red arm. The little lights on his legs just waiting to wink out. Sure you do. But then who's going to have yours?

All she could say about this -and she couldn't even say it out loud -was that she hoped that the thing humming against her back would be worth what she was giving up. What they all were giving up. The fact that they were giving up. Surrendering Reach to save Earth. Sacrificing a team to save tens of thousands. She hoped it would be worth it as she slid down the stairs to Platform Delta.

She watched the birds descend as the lightning struck the mountain. She watched the wings turn and the hull creep closer as the rain speckled her visor. And as the bay doors hissed on the closer craft, steam creeping up from where insulated air met the elements, Jennifer felt her fingers find the latches that kept the package close to her armor -just another piece of metal to protect her -and flick them apart one after another. Magnetic locks released with a cool hiss and Jennifer's gloved hand closed around the cylinder for the second time ever. And probably the last.

Huh, she thought, turning the case around between her hands as the ramp lowered and soldiers rushed out in a gale force around her to secure what had already been secured. So here we are. Here it is. Now what am I going to do with you?

And just like that she didn't want it anymore. Didn't want to hold it, didn't want to touch it. She didn't want, couldn't take, the weight, the responsibility, the sheer amount of hopes and desperation and denial that would be loaded down on the back of whoever was carrying this thing around. I can't do this, she thought, head turning, eyes darting, trying to find someone, anyone to take this burden, this… this damn thing away from her. I just barely got myself back. How am I supposed to take back human civilization? I just want it over.

Out of nowhere a hand reached out into her sightline and she caught a man's bare face in the dimensions of her visor. It had been so many hours, days, since she had seen somebody, anybody, out of armor, the last time it had been Halsey and Carter had been there and Oh, God, his hair is cut like Carter's. Oh, God, Jennifer, are you seriously going to run around for the rest of your life looking for Carter's ghost in everything you see? Because that's pathetic.

Least it was shaping up to be a short 'rest of your life'.

Captain Keyes was shorter than she expected and he wasn't wearing armor. Idiot. Not like those fancy ribbons were bulletproof. Maybe they were.

"Good to see you, Spartan," he said and for whatever reason it made her angrier. Not for whatever reason; she knew damn well the reason. Where did he get off saying 'Hi' like this was some garden party? But there were more important things at hand, racing through her mind like an adrenaline-shot bullet, things like: Take it, just take it already, God, would you just take the damn thing—

And just like that, it was gone. Somewhere in the middle of her angry and desperate little mental mantra, the captain and taken the package from her and now her hands were suspended and empty. Jennifer flexed her fingers, and all her hands closed around was empty air and spotty rain. Gone. Over. Just like that. Mission complete. She could almost laugh with relief. And anger. A whole lot of anger burning up her throat, burning up her eyes. And there was a lot more where that came from, as she would soon discover.

"Halsey assured me I could count on you."

The words were a spark to gasoline. They made her chin lift and her eyes flare red hot behind the helmet. They made her arm move so fast she didn't remember making it move, made her take a step she didn't remember initiating, made her fingers curling back around that damn package one more time -she had thought she was done with the damn thing, but no, he had to go on and—

"Not just me," Jennifer bit out. "Not just me. Sir," she added as an afterthought but, really, what was he going to do? Court-martial her? Brig was probably already blown to bits; what was anyone going to do to stop her from saying the things she wanted to say?

One of Keyes' hands moved from the package to rest on her forearm, the one with the fingers locked around their salvation: a gentle threat. "They'll be remembered," he told her, soothed her, talked down to her, like she was some war orphan about to go under the needle all over again and that was it.

Her wrist jerked, snapped his comforting gesture away. "Excuse me?" She took two steps forward, got in his face, almost, not quite, close enough. "Excuse me?" Jennifer repeated scathingly. "They'll be remembered? You think that's what they wanted? You think that's what we want? I've got news for you."

"Captain?" one of the soldiers was saying, uncertain, concerned, but Jennifer was laughing now, low and dangerous. "Is that what you've been telling yourself?" she asked Keyes -not a captain, not her captain, not her commander. "That's rich. That's rich. We don't want to be remembered. We want to be the ones that are doing the remembering. At least for a little while. A few decades. War over. Go back to Earth or wherever. Get a normal job. Pop out a few kids, maybe, or at least have a little more romance than a one night stand. We want a life, a real life, and, God, don't we earn one. We earn lots of lives, hundreds and thousands of them. But none of us get to keep a single one for ourselves. Don't you get that?

"We didn't choose this," said Jennifer, lifting her arms to pick up the war-torn sky, the war-torn planet, that glass coffin that so many damn people were going to sleep under forever. "We didn't choose this," she said, pointing violently at Emile up in the mass driver, that final sacrifice. "And nobody gives a damn."

And then, out of breath, out of time, out of enemies to shoot at with bullets or words, she waited. The cold wind rushed up and ruffled that stupid, familiar haircut that wrung pathetic, self-pitiful things out from her chest, pulled them struggling and squirming out into the twilight for everyone to see, and Jennifer thought she saw Keyes' mouth open to answer just before the shadow passed over the pad.

Hovering engines drowned out anything Keyes might have said to her, any word of rebuke or, worse, pity. All for the best. She could feel herself start to unravel, start to snap apart like unbuckled armor, like a shelled creature caught between pliers and a chisel, and she didn't want to do that. Wasn't going do do that. Not with a CCS-class battlecruiser cutting its way between storm clouds and lightning strikes, swallowing up the thunder itself with the roar of its generator.

The soldiers were scattered but steady; not like anything they were holding would put a pockmark on that monster's hull. Jennifer looked up through the falling water at a sky turned purple by a threat they could not match, saw the ghost of a supercarrier in the clouds, and thought distantly, dismally, Not again.

"Cruiser, adjusting heading for the Autumn!" Keyes was shouting into his comm, hands clapped over his ears against the sound of imminent destruction. "Noble Four, I need fire on that cruiser or we're not getting out of here! Do you copy?"

"You'll have your window, sir," was the reply and Jennifer realized that Emile had heard everything, known everything, and stayed mute, stayed silent, sharp tongue cut out by tragedy. A sense of betrayal tugged at her like small hands at her kneecaps, but there wasn't time. There was never time.

"Bridge, this is the Captain," the man in question continued, walking backward toward the Pelican, flanked by his troopers. "We have the package. Returning to the Autumn, over."

The answering, "Copy," was all but indecipherable. Keyes was walking, Keyes was moving, his boots were echoing hollow against the bay floor and Jennifer didn't know what she was going to do next. She could go; she could make good on everything she said, everything she had wanted… or everything Carter had wanted for her anyway. What she wanted…

Her fingers found the rifle again. But before she could decide, before she could make up her mind, for once and for all, make the call that she should have made such a long time ago, the world changed and the slate went blank all over again, washed down clean with more damn plasma.

Happened so damn quick; her mind went into overtime seconds late to make sense of it all. A Phantom swooped down from nowhere like its ghostly namesake. She saw the plasma bolts hover, suspended in the sky, just before they hit their targets and the escort Pelican -wrong bird, dumbass Covvies -that had just taken to the sky came crashing back down to earth -not Earth, Reach -before it had even really spread its wings. Plasma slugged the ship and—

It's coming for me, she thought, caught in the headlights with her death rolling in toward her in a ball of burning hull and burning troopers, voices and metal all screeching together. It's coming for me. Gotta—

Move. She moved. Jennifer threw herself away from the burning wreck, rolling out of the fire's path, just another fall, just another tumble that she could get back up from. And she would get back up from, lifting her head just in time to watch Keyes' Pelican flee in the opposite direction. Figures. She snatched up her rifle and came up to her hands and knees, to her feet and fingers, and then the rest of the way, ready, ready, ready. But it wasn't her turn. Not yet.

The ghost ship turned around in the sky, found another, more critical target in the mass driver…and the Spartan manning it. Fingers bone-white beneath her gloves, she started running, thinking all over again, not Emile, please let me save Emile, just please please let me save Emile, just this one, this one, please—

The starboard gunner hadn't forgotten about her, didn't conveniently believe her dead the way Keyes did, the way Keyes must, or maybe just chose to; he left me. Figures. I would have left me too. The deadly light buried at the other end of the cannon forced Jennifer to dive down again, duck and cover behind another of those friendly crates and she didn't see, she didn't know, not until she raised her head as soon as the engines were muted and saw. And it was fast. It was so fast, too fast, and he was so far, too far…

She heard it and it was the hearing that did her in. The crackle of energy over the comm that made her neck snap in the driver's direction, Emile's half-smothered grunt like he was still playing badass even now. Hearing it made her see it: see the elite -hell, it was a damn zealot -flare white with broken shields, see it leap backward and cut the empty air with its energy sword, flip like a rag doll and maybe, just maybe, fall on its own sword. Heh. If they would be so lucky.

Emile wasn't taking any chances on luck. Climbing out of the gunner's seat, he took his two-shot shotgun advantage in stride, shells scattering to roll across the platform in tiny victory laps. Jennifer's breath caught in her throat, but there was no time to swallow down the relief. No time at all, not when Emile was steadying himself on the scaffolding, shouting for the next one, and there was a shadow creeping up on him, the next one swallowing up his own shadow and there was nothing she could do, nothing she could do to stop that crimson leer, that blinding-white swing. The way the second energy blade picked Emile up with it, shields dying instantly with a gold flare, the way the Spartan's legs swung like a hanged man's as his exoskeleton-skull turned downward to stare at the sword skewered through his armor and everything in between.

No, no, no, no, not again, not one more, I said please, God damn it, I said please, why are you—

The way the zealot pulled her friend, Jennifer's friend not teammate, friend, from its blade like a bug from its shoe and held him squirming by the throat like an animal ready to feast on its not-dead-yet prey. Who the hell did they think they were, playing with their food before—

Because Emile wasn't dead. He didn't go down easy. None of them did. "I'm ready!" he was shouting into his killer's face, panting, defiant, one hand grappling at something Jennifer couldn't see. "I'm ready! How 'bout you?"

Blade pulled free from its shoulder sheath, Emile's beloved kukri found its final home in the soft skin of the zealot's exposed neck. One final flare of shattered shields, one final strangled gasp of shock and post-fatal vengeance, and then they were falling, they were falling together, just like Carter's Pelican and the Scarab, falling and all that was left again was the sound, what she heard over the comm. And what Jennifer heard didn't inspire much hope. If there was any hope left.

He's with the rest of them now, she thought grimly. Wherever that is. Maybe he is the lucky one after all. They didn't leave him behind and he didn't let them go on ahead. Just one lone wolf left here. Figures.

"Lieutenant!" someone was shouting at her. "Spartan!"

She turned with the titles and was blinded with blue engine light and the gaping black maw of a Pelican's bay. Not all dark. There was Keyes; there was Keyes again with the package -her package, whether she wanted it or not -cradled in his arms and glowing. There was Captain Keyes and his Pelican and her package come back to Platform Delta and Noble Six and all she had said to him and Jennifer could not quite believe it.

"Get on board!" a marine was yelling at her. "We gotta get the hell out of here!"

True. And yet she could feel her lips curling upward at the corners in the smallest, most bitter, yet most content of smiles. "Negative," said Jennifer, remembering how much Kat hated that word, hated being told something wasn't going to happen, was impossible. Too bad. "I have the gun."

"I have it," she had said to Dr. Halsey in the blue-lit lab with her fingers curled around alleged salvation. And she did, even if it was in Keyes' hands where it was supposed to end up. Jennifer had it. Now she was going to make sure that they kept it.

"Good luck, sir," she tossed over one shoulder in just the nonchalant way that used to make Carter so angry and… something else. She remembered that. She probably had been doing it on purpose. "You're going to need it."

And Keyes didn't correct her, or challenge her insubordination. Guess there was no time left for that either. He probably just thought she was an angry little girl who had thrown an angry little tantrum; she smirked at the image. He didn't need to know what she was. She knew. Jun, Emile, and Kat knew. Carter knew. Jorge had probably always known, the sentimental big man.

Be seeing them soon.

"Good luck to you, Spartan," she thought he heard him call after her but she wasn't sure. Didn't need luck. Didn't need to be a Spartan. Just needed to blow one last Covenant trump card to hell and back. And then she was walking and then walking turned into running and, God, she loved to run. Running up the stairs, running up that hill, running into the building, through its gutted hallways and pillaged corridors, tracing Emile's bloody footsteps and following his trail of carnage. Running past the crimson on the walls, the corpses in the corners, until the rain was speckling her visor again in little beaded lines like half-healed cat scratches, never had a cat, no cat to save but she'd like to think she would try to save a cat. She was trying all of the time.

Kicking the first zealot's corpse to the side, surveying what little remained of its torso with satisfaction, she thought about looking for Emile, she thought about wanting to look for Emile, for all of them and put them all to rest, but she didn't. It was the living that counted now and the living were currently circling the skies, desperately evading that damn cruiser.

She climbed into the gunner's seat, settling into the pod like the cockpit of her Sabre. She missed her Sabre. She missed a lot of things, but the things that were here now were what counted and there were plenty of Banshees and Phantoms in the sky, just waiting to be shot down. Hands on the controls and eyes on the sky, she searched the crosshairs for a silver lining and found a damn good few.

A slug struck a Phantom's port side, detonating plasma rounds within their bays and Jennifer thought of the trooper with the primed plasma grenade in the corridor on the way to the Autumn. She shot down a dropped pod mid-flight and remembered the troopers on that recon mission with Jun in the dark, the one whose grandad had built the plant, who wanted to take his family's legacy back. Another Banshee went careening into the cliff-face, struck by lightning or maybe just her fire and she thought of the way Jorge had pushed her out of the supercarrier like he was divine intervention and he had chosen her to save. That's for you. When I get there, we'll talk again. Play cards. Promise.

That one's for Kat, she decided, thinking of the way the lieutenant commander had thrown the knife down into the cavern floor and painted a vivid picture of a victory that always seemed just out of reach when one of her slugs clipped a Banshee's wing and sent it screaming tailspinning into a lonely Phantom.

"That's for you, Jun," she muttered aloud as another Covenant craft spiraled out of control, "wherever you are. Hope Halsey's not giving you too much hell."

Banshee husks dropped down into the canyon with each squeeze of the trigger to join their fallen comrade and the Spartan who took him down from beyond the grave. "Don't cut yourself." She'd try not to, even if the words hadn't been meant for her. Trying.

"Carter," she whispered as the cruiser, finally solo in the sky, opened its energy projector and took aim, turning from green to blue like the Scarab's beam, like his eyes in a lightning-struck sky, in the outer blue of Halsey's lab. "This one's for you. And me. This one's for me too. I think we've earned it, don't you?"

One final slug dead-eyed the projector before it could dead-eye the Autumn and for a moment Jennifer was worried that it would not be enough. But the magnetic fields were crackling and the plasma was bubbling with destabilization and she had done that, she had finally done something and it was enough. It was enough to fizzle out the cruiser's shields, to rock its bays with its own deadly weaponry. And the Pillar of Autumn, the Autumn was going nowhere but up.

Her fingers reached for something, someone, to hold as the Autumn's atmospheric rocket pods ignited, but all she found were the rungs of a ladder she didn't remember climbing. One rung, then the next, down and down and down. Slowly. There was plenty of time now, now that the cruiser was falling into lightning-struck mountain and Captain Keyes' voice was crackling over her comm:

"This is the Pillar of Autumn. We're away. And the package is with us."

Away. Away to the fleet. Away to Earth. Jennifer skipped the last few rungs of the ladder and hit the dust with both feet, thinking that all that was remained was Reach. And Jennifer. And the waiting. She wasn't Snow White, but glass would be her coffin all the same.

Summer was over. The Autumn was fading fast into the distance. The cold hard truth thudded between Jennifer's ribs with each step she took across the empty platform, toward the battle-scorched, graveyard canyon. Winter was winning. Winter was winning.

Winter had won.

'Alien' movie reference in there. Points to whoever sees it.

Thank you to all readers and reviewers. No, we aren't done here yet.