Chapter 24
It was an unpleasant dream. Maggie had tried so hard to connect with me and never once gave up. Even up to the day of the invasion, she stubbornly put herself in my way as my life unravelled itself and I dragged myself down a path of self-destruction.
Right now, though, I wished I was still dreaming.
"It's very simple. You tell us what you saw in your dream, and the pain stops."
"With my death, right?"
The Prophet shook his head.
"The dream was meaningless. I haven't been visited by the Forerunner's since you took me captive."
"Perhaps..." the Prophet wondered, looking about for Erun, who operated the machinery that suspended me in place, " perhaps these other dreams are signs? Messages from the Didact, coded in her memories?"
"Your holiness..." Erun glowered at me, "surely you do not mean to suggest that she is a conduit, a prophet, like yourself?"
The San'shyuum snorted. "I shall forgive that heresy, but watch your tongue, Erun, I will not always be so lenient." Erun bowed and opened his split-jawed face to apologise but the Prophet had already moved on.
"In any case, it is I who will disseminate the girls' dream. Me who will reveal the path. So, child, what did you see?"
I paused, waiting to see if he had any more to say, silence hung like a waterlogged cloth over the dark room.
"I saw a lot. All of it bad."
"During your last dream, or all of them?"
"All of them, since I touched the device. I feel cursed, your holiness, not blessed."
I was tired and beaten. There was no hiding that, so the half-truths and harmless admissions ramped up. The reverence was faked, naturally, but in my state, it would probably come off as genuine to a self-absorbed prophet who believed his own nonsense.
"Cursed?" the Prophet said, circling in his little chair.
"Yes. I see the moments that tore my family further from me. I saw my oldest brother leave to fight your warriors. I saw the last time my Grandfather visited my family and when my other brother decided to join the Marines. I saw my sister try to save me from myself."
"Interesting." the Prophet mused. "A comment on Human nature, perhaps. A sign that the sacred rings reject you? Revealing such distressing memories to you must be a part of the process of judgement."
"I didn't impress the God's" I agreed. "They show me my errors, my weaknesses, my failings, all in excruciating detail."
"That explains why she resists us so, Erun. The pain of her visions is greater than the physical torture that we inflict."
"Do not underestimate her, your Holiness. This one is clever. She may be manipulating us. She has already told us of the Sacred Rings, and of the Didact. What more could she offer us?"
"She may be able to manipulate you, Erun. I, however, am cut from the cloth of the God's. A mouthpiece for their holy dictata!"
I smiled at that. Erun was held back by his masters, so often he came close, so often he was rebuked. A part of me hoped the scale of their hubris would be enough for our survival.
It's not impossible.
"Look at me" I said, weakly, "do you think there's much left? No one is coming for me, I'm alone, untrained, and inexperienced, how could I take on an entire army, let alone a prophet of the God's?"
The Prophet of Redemption smiled as if he had been vindicated and once more Erun shrunk into the shadows.
"You have wisdom. I truly do wish to see more of your kind, for study. If only we had the time..." he extended a finger and ran it along my cheek.
All three of my captors were strange, and not what I believed the majority of their species to be like. They were curious, dogmatic and bound by that, yes, but all of them seemed to be on the cusp of discovery. The discovery that their religion was fraudulent.
I could never say. They'd never buy it. Never believe me. They'd do whatever they could to bury the truth of my words, starting with killing me.
"I wish you had given us the chance you gave the others," I sighed.
"It was not my choice but I see the burden you carry, child, the knowledge you possess. Let us relieve you of it and we may even let you live."
Erun reeled.
I would have too, were I not suspended from this machine-like drying tarp.
"Live?" I asked
"For study."
Now I was curious.
"W-what kind of study?"
"Whatever I choose, obviously. It will be pleasant enough for you if you cooperate. Perhaps you will even give insight into the development of a demon."
"You mean the SPARTANs? How could I help with that?"
"They're mutilated as children." Erun said nonchalantly.
"T-they are?"
They didn't reply but they didn't need to, my whole opinion of the legendary SPARTANs just cracked and split.
Children!? They're born? Or created? Augmented? From how young? It had to be young, like, really young.
My mind turned to Nicola and the chances that she had torn from her by the covenant.
And it turns out that we are no fucking better?
My mind raced, what did that mean for Naomi? How long had she been fighting?
Longer than I had been alive, that was for sure.
"My last dream was about my first love." I said, quietly contemplating how Naomi would never have known what that was, or what it meant.
"Adolescent relationships are common in humans?" The Prophet, asked, quizzically.
"It depends, for me and my friends, yeah, but for my sister it was different."
"Variation" he half whispered, scratching at the burn on his putrid chin.
"It was not long after he moved away, I… struggled to adapt without him."
Erun had enough of this and stormed up to the Prophet.
"Holy Prophet, this has gone on long enough, she is a manipulator, a liar. Her kind are well versed in deceit and betrayal."
"You have sat in on this session for too long, Erun. She is under your skin, go and kill that demon in the city and let's be done here. I shall decide what happens with the child next.
Naomi is alive?
Erun looked at me dejectedly, he had been keeping that from me as part of his interrogation. Jack had said they would give me false hope, so I wasn't sure.
This confirms it though!
A commotion outside stirred Erun and he took leave, stalking outside to take a look.
"What do you think it means?" I asked the Prophet as he studied my suspended form with a keen and quizzical eye. "The dreams, I mean…"
He pursed his lips and furrowed his brow, circling me in his chair.
"Truly, the God's fascination with you is perplexing."
I was surprised by that admission, although I suspected that much of it was a result of being left alone with him.
"It doesn't make sense to me either." I said, watching him. "At least… not if you see them as God's."
The Prophet stopped and cocked an eye.
How many times can I get burned and still play with fire?
"What are you saying, child?"
"That the Forerunner's are custodians, not God's. That caring for those below them was cultural, not divine. I mean, you already know that they were like us, right? Who's to say that the Forerunners didn't begin the journey to pass on their role as custodians to something new?"
"That is very heretical."
"Well, I am a heretic, aren't I? What I say doesn't matter."
The Prophet scratched its chin.
"There is truth in every lie" he said, sagely.
"The Prophet of Truth himself parted that wisdom to me."
"So, where's the truth in the Forerunner's obsession with us?"
The Prophet considered this for a long time, ruminating on my species properly for the first time.
"Perhaps…" he said at last, "you are to be subjugated, conquered as a final test of our will."
Fortune favours the bold.
"Or maybe they chose us to assume their position" I said, with a big satisfied grin.
Redemption recoiled. He hadn't even considered it a possibility, judging by the look of horror and terror on his face. He shook his head violently and the floor shuddered, making us both look to the door.
Suddenly, Ketarus burst into the room, followed by an intense streak of blue and green light.
"Your holiness!" he panted, as several elites followed him into the room
The Prophet almost jumped out of his skin.
"It's the Grunts." He growled, cocking his Carbine, "They're rebelling."
"G-get me away from her. And away from here!" He cried, hovering away from me.
"What should we do with her?"
"Leave her for the Grunts, I'm sure they're hungry."
My mouth dried up, and my smile fell.
Did Miplap tell the others?
The Elites systematically retreated from the room, firing and moving backwards, leaving me suspended from the contraption.
It wasn't Miplap that rounded the corner, or at least I was pretty sure that it wasn't. It spoke gruffly, and levelled a meaty paw at me.
It grunted some babble at me and my heart raced in a few tense seconds wherein I shook my head violently, trying to tell the little beast to stop.
His grip tightened and I frowned, seeing white light flashing in my mind, my brain reflexively ready to die.
But nothing happened.
Only a shout from around the corridor, a twangy and eager guffaw, broke the silence as a stream of grunts filed in. They tampered with the device as Jack stumbled around the corner with Miplap, grinning like a gurning teenager.
"They are industrious little bastards, ain't they?"
There was a click and I slammed unceremoniously to the floor.
"A little lacking when it comes to sleight of hand" I groaned, trying to get up from the floor.
Miplap waddled over and picked me up with a little effort.
"You need to leave; they will hunt you if they know you live. Head out of the city, there is a gate nearby, our rebellion may not succeed, you must be gone soon."
Jack's expression was grim as I stood up and stretched properly for the first time in days. My whole body ached as though I'd just spent the last four hours at the gym but I willed myself to the corner as an explosion sounded from outside.
The ODST helmet and the pack were the only kit worth taking. I placed it on my head as a grunt waddled up to me and thrust an ODST handgun into my palms and a few scrounged clips. The helmet read a message to me: USER DETECTED, DISENGAGING LOW POWER MODE. I smiled inside the helmet, it still worked!
So lucky. So so lucky.
"Thank you, Miplap" I said, genuinely, "thank you, so much."
"Your thanks are not necessary. I just want to hurt the masters. This achieves it."
I nodded.
"Will you help us escape?"
The grunt doctor nodded and motioned for him to follow, Jack hobbled beside me as we made our way down the twisting and winding corridors of the covenant temple. The Elites barely stood a chance inside the camp, with most of them called to evacuate the Prophet of Redemption from the camp. Rather, the corridors were filled with the corpses of Brutes and Elites that had rallied for the evacuation.
We roared down the hallway, Jack was grimacing from the effort, barely healed from the various battering's and beatings and bullet wounds that had peppered the poor guy's body in the last few weeks. I put an arm out to him and he took it, nodding.
Finally, we reached the atrium where the prophet's throne had been located, now the smouldering site of a great firefight with bodies strewn everywhere.
They're almost all Grunts…
"Jack, where do we go?" I asked as the column of Grunts stacked up by the entrance.
"Back through the gate we passed through on your way into the city. There's an impound lot we converted into a garage nearby, there's probably something in there we can use to escape."
"Is it far?"
"No, it's about 10 minutes to the depot, I think." he was almost out of breath and we both knew it, "you'll have to do most of the heavy-lifting, kid." he sighed, "I'm sorry."
"It's okay, I think I'm more than used to it at this point." I whispered back.
The Grunts began to pour out onto the balcony, engaging the elites in the pitched battle going on around the camp. It was a sobering sight, a mass of movement and a cataclysmic dance of destruction. Despite the surprise it was clear that the numbers, and the initiative was not enough. The grunts were dying in droves and not necessarily winning.
"Come on, kid, let's get out of here, yeah?" Jack said, pointing to a canopy running along the side of the camp. "Hug the wall and shoot anything that looks like it's gonna kill us."
I nodded, and began down the path, cocking the pistol as a blue explosion detonated overhead, spattering the column of grunts behind us with glass. Miplap turned to help them but paused, diving for cover as a wraith dropped a plasma round on top of the grunts still in the area. It was sad, watching him stare at his fallen brothers, oozing and glassed on the pavement.
Poor guy…
Jack tugged my arm, "Move, kid, now!"
Without further hesitation I crouched low and darted across the street, through two grunts stabbing a brute to death in front of us and up onto the canopy that formed the edge of the camp. The Grunts didn't bother us too much as we moved quickly along the side of the camp, Jack's training was apparent as he half jogged despite all the wounds he'd sustained over the last few days.
In fact, it was I who began to slow first as we came to the first holdout of brutes about fifty metres away from us.
"Hold up, kid, we need to be smart. Mip, you think you can distract them?"
The Grunt nodded.
"Good, Maddie, take this." he handed me a purple rifle, "I need you to take the Brutes out, while they're distracted."
I lined up the sights and my helmet adjusted, placing a strange sight in the middle of my HUD. Jack gave the signal and the grunts swarmed the brutes. It took a moment to slow my breathing but instinct took over and I pulled the trigger, slotting two brutes in quick time. The Grunts swarmed the remaining two as Jack nodded.
"Good, let's move up past them, 'fire and move' is the name of the game, okay kid?"
"Okay" I replied, helping him up.
We jogged by the Grunts busy manically eviscerating the Brutes, screaming in pain on the ground and I found myself feeling nothing but contempt for them. The brutes lived up to their names.
They deserve to die like wild dogs.
The sky was darkening as the battle reached its peak, with the canopy finally petering out before us, the view below us was one of carnage and horror.
"We can't go down there," Jack said, pulling me up.
"Why not?" I replied, "the depot is just over there" I replied, pointing to a sign that showed the name of the impound lot, "we can't be more than a few hundred metres away."
"Look" he said, panting, "there..." he said lightly.
I followed his finger and spotted the problem. The battlefield was a mindless melee, with brutes fighting brutes, Elites fighting Brutes, and Grunts fighting Grunts.
"What do we do?" I asked, searching the area from behind the little barrier we were hiding behind.
Jack chewed his lip. "We cut through that building."
He pointed to a small convenience store and a bridal boutique about ten metres away from the bottom of the ramp that led out into the melee.
"Miplap?" I said, nodding at Jack, "we need you guys to get us to that door there, can you do it?"
Miplap looked over the cover and then back at the rapidly thinning band of brothers behind him and finally to the melee below.
"We will die doing it." he said, losing his nerve.
I shook my head, "not if you're smart about it, that's your biggest advantage, right? They underestimate you."
The little grunt thought for a second and then nodded before bouncing away. We hid, conserving ammo as the Grunts around us jittered and organised themselves around us. Miplap organised his brethren into lines, the front wielded plasma pistols, the back, needlers. He barked a few orders and the front line rose from cover; their guns charged. A few grunts fell instantly, spotted by the brutes below us and slain by their spikers. The rest fired all at once, culling their defensive shielding and rallying those below us to push their lines.
Grunts began to surge their positions as the second row emerged, pumping round after round of pink needles into the brutes as they buckled under the pressure. I watched it all unfold as I pulled Jack to his feet with a groan and moved quickly down the ramp and towards the door to the bridal shop, slipping inside the boutique with Miplap and three of his brothers in tow.
"This is where I leave you human, my brothers need me." he said, striking an almost gallant pose.
"Again, Miplap, thank you." I said, gripping his meaty hand within my own.
The Grunt simply nodded one final time and left with his brothers, unceremoniously, merging in with the chaos outside.
"I never expected to thank a Grunt like that." I said, looking to Jack for answers.
"Kid, this whole planet is FUBAR, quicker we're gone the better. Now let's get going before we lose the initiative."
I frowned, "the initiative? You think they will recover from this?"
"I know they will, it's happened before." he said, tumbling passed mannequins holding bouquets of dead flowers and wearing faded dresses.
"They're so dysfunctional. How are they beating us?"
"Their navy, it's just… well, let's just say we would be better off taking on tanks with horses" he said, grimly. " Those navy boys might as well be canned meat in most engagements.
"And on the ground? Is it all like this?" I asked, gesturing to the trashed and torn city outside.
"Naw, we go to them pretty much toe to toe. Casualties are high, of course, but the moment they own the skies, us boys on the ground get yanked out before we can eke out a win."
We neared the back door and he signalled for me to push it open. The door was heavy but luckily, the sound of fighting drowned out most of the noise. We filed out into the alleyway and walked along the far wall, bathed in shade.
"Is it far, kid?"
"No, the lot is just around the corner, follow me"
The street was dead, save for a cat that stalked a rat feasting on garbage, unaware of its would-be killer. Jack picked the lock to the garage and it rolled open, revealing a plethora of discarded UNSC equipment and a row of pristine Warthogs, twinkling against the rays of sun that burst into the garage.
Jack and I slipped inside and pulled the shutter back down before switching on my helmets flashlight and heading for the rations and ammo.
I went straight for a DMR perched against the wall and cocked it, gathering clips of ammunition into my rucksack.
Jack went for the food, and froze.
"It's warm." He said.
My skin crawled and my cheeks drained. I looked about.
Nothing.
And then Jack yelped.
I spun in his direction. Trying to level the gun at him, only for my light to reflect off of the steely face plate of a SPARTAN.
Naomi?
And then, I was knocked to the floor from behind, pushed to my knees with frightening speed.
I felt a barrel push against the helmet.
"Stand down, Private." The SPARTAN demanded; her voice filled with that icy grace.
"Shit, Jack, is that you?" Came a female voice from behind me.
"Ellen?"
"Wait, Maddie?"
"Yeah!"
"No way you lived?"
"Uh yeah, obviously"
She came around to my front and offered me a hand.
"We saw the crash, the pilot was mangled, spent hours tracking debris across the city until the next day when the entire city went nuts and we were forced into the tunnels."
I stood and coughed, keeling over and groaning in pain.
"You look like you didn't fare any better" she said jokingly, a pained smile on her face.
"Yeah well the covenant got riled up because I tried to play assassin"
"We heard the broadcast but you were gone by then, taken by them."
"What happened", Naomi asked, "did you tell them anything?"
I removed the helmet and handed it to her, "it's all in here, every beating, interrogation and soiling" I said, laughing nervously.
Ellen shot Jack a look and he shrugged.
"It wasn't no picnic, put it that way." He said, quietly.
"But it's okay, right? Now there's four of us, and there's a way out of the city, we could actually survive this." I said, hopefully, nervously twiddling with my thumbs as the pair of them shared awkward glances.
"Yeah, sure, we were going to ride a hog out of here, reconnoitre with Captain Drake on the other side of the highway." Naomi spoke awkwardly, as though my overly emotive mannerisms were making her feel uncomfortable.
"So, he survived!" I said, feeling my heart flutter, "a-and the others? James? Akron? Albert?"
"All alive as far as I know." Ellen interjected, saving Naomi from having to emote.
I let out a long sigh. Naomi took a chip from the helmet and handed it back to me, her hesitation seemed less mysterious now. She wasn't a god; she was a child that never learned how to play. She had been grown to fight from a young age and had her future taken from her just like Nicola.
And someone in ONI was to blame.
It enraged me that someone in ONI had thought this a good idea, that denying Naomi the choice of a childhood or a normal life was somehow acceptable? For me, it felt different. I lived; I get to make the choice. A six-year-old can't consent to a life of military service. There was a feeling of hypocrisy about it though, ONI was a shady organisation that almost definitely abducted children. Who else had the resources to create the SPARTANs? I certainly didn't figure it to be the wider UNSC, my grandfather could wax lyrical about the lack of funding for the Navy for years on end.
"What's the plan?" Jack asked, wiping sweat from his brow. "Got any wheels?"
Naomi nodded and pushed her giant mechanical thumb over her shoulder. Behind her stood a Warthog with a massive cannon on the back.
"Nice…" he grinned, "Gauss hog. One problem though, ladies." He said looking up at the hulking turret of the 4x4. "It only seats three."
Naomi bristled with anticipation.
"What do you have in mind, Gnomes?" Ellen asked, grinning.
"You three take the Hog, I'll grab a banshee."
Ellen nodded and I smiled, "better get to it, the sooner I'm off of this planet the better"
Ellen and Jack shared another glance and Naomi nodded, unclipping a plasma pistol from her thigh.
"Give me five, park outside and keep in radio contact, be ready to gun it because I don't know how long we will have before the Elite's regain control."
"Yes, Ma'am" Jack said, snapping off a short salute.
Naomi lifted the door and slipped outside with little fanfare and I felt a hand on my shoulder.
"Ah, f-" I yelped.
Ellen recoiled, "I-I'm sorry!" she said, reeling.
"It's okay. They… marked me." I said, quietly.
"Has it been treated?" she asked as I turned to face her.
I shook my head, unsure as to whether I felt shame or pride. Cautiously, she rounded me and pulled back the tattered BDU's I had been wearing for weeks.
She gasped.
"What?" I asked, my stomach felt like a bottomless pit.
"I don't know..."
"Is it medically fine?"
"Uh… yeah, Maddie, it's fine medically but, what is this?"
"A heretic brand."
Ellen's silence was telling.
"It's beautiful," she said, "in a way" she added, awkwardly. "It's so intricate and detailed, it looks like it took a lot of time..."
"It hurt like nothing I've ever felt," I replied, my mouth dry.
"I can't believe you're even standing, that looks like plasma damage."
I nodded, "yeah, Erun used some kind of ceremonial blade. Ancestral, I think."
"Jesus" she whispered. "You're a hard ass, you know that?"
A smile creeped across my face, "You know what?" I said, finally glad to be back among friends, "I think I do."
A grunt sounded from behind us and we turned to see Jack groan in pain as he slid out of the Warthog's driving seat.
"Girls, I'm out for the count. I can't drive and I can barely stand, so I'll have to ride shotgun."
"Is it harder to shoot or to drive?" I asked, before Ellen could say anything.
"Drive, if you can't do it, it's stick by the way..."
"I'm a better shot than I am a driver," I said, grinning as I strode to the back of the Warthog.
Jack smiled at Ellen who grinned, "looks like it's settled, Private." he said, moving across the passenger's seat. Jack easily relayed the controls to the gauss cannon to me and we rolled out of the garage and into the street. The fighting was intense and we could hear it becoming less frenzied and more organised with each passing moment. Grunt corpses lined the street behind us as Jack radioed for Naomi.
"On your six" she said, calmly, a damaged banshee swooped elegantly over us and out into the fray. "Go now, left and right straight after. Quickly." she added smoothly.
"Roger" Ellen said, gunning the throttle and powering down the alley.
An Elite strayed into the mouth of the street and became a smear on the front grill as Ellen slid into the street and followed Naomi's directions closely.
"Prioritise Ghosts, Heavy weapons, and Emplacements, alright Maddie?" Jack said as we powered along the street, swerving and darting through carnage.
I spotted a grunt firing a giant yellow cannon and fired, the bolt loosed and spattered the little animal into dust.
"Great shot! Just like that, kid!" Jack shouted, levelling a well-placed burst from his assault rifle into the gut of a brute.
"It's a straight run to the city gates, about half a mile. I need to clear the gate area so watch yourselves" Naomi said, blasting across the sky towards the looming gate.
"Yes ma'am" I replied into the comms, "Look! We have Brutes on the right!"
I swivelled the turret and fired it directly at a small plasma turret that was harassing a pack of grunts. Then again at a brute dressed in ornate armour. With each grunt of the giant cannon, another enemy fell and Ellen whooped as a ghost exploded into a pack of brutes emerging from a side street.
"Remind me not to screw with Mads!" Ellen shouted to Jack as he suppressed a Jackal sniper that was tracking our range.
Only adrenaline was keeping me standing upright, if I was being honest. I was firing on autopilot, barely thinking as I mowed down grunts as well as Brutes and Elites.
Hopefully Miplap will understand.
In the distance, the city gates exploded as Naomi's banshee collided with the wall, the SPARTAN, leaped from the fuselage onto a passing ghost and kicked the grunt clean off of the driving seat before covering us as a fleet of vehicles began to pursue us.
Apparently, my survival had been reported, or maybe it was just Naomi's presence, but the surge of ghosts and revenants, as Jack called them, sped towards us as we zoomed along the main road towards the old Marine checkpoint. The sides of the road began to fill with UNSC gun emplacements and trashed tanks, left to rust since the attack on the mall almost a month ago.
I moved the gun to the rear.
"Maddie, they can't fire while boosting, but they will catch us if you don't take them out." Naomi said, spooling the Ghosts cannons and covering us as we sped towards her.
"I got us, Gnomes," I said, not thinking about rank as I took aim at the encroaching fleet.
Boom. One round flew into the head of a brute and it popped, careening through his corpse and slamming into the engine behind him, detonating the vehicle in a bright blue light. I fired again, this time at an Elite, it was impossible to miss with the mass of them and it exploded too.
Each shot that rang out resulted in the same story until we reached Naomi and she spun the Ghost and engaged the boost, powering out ahead of us. With the number of Ghosts thinned, the next immediate threat was the passengers in the revenant, who spattered our hog with plasma fire.
I ducked as a long green blob flew close and exploded wide of the hog before returning fire, putting the revenant out of action and smearing the Brute that fired the shot across the asphalt. It was then that we burst out onto the highway. I ignored my memories of my last crossing, thinning the covenant numbers efficiently and without mercy.
Then, as we got further out onto the highway, we passed it. On the other side of the road, there was a ghost and a mangled corpse.
McAdams…
The plucky soldier had reminded me of Ellen. The two of them would have gotten on well, I thought as a Ghost came close enough to fire on us. The shots rattled the rear bumper and the car lost grip, swerving for a moment as Ellen fought to save it.
"Maddie, are you alright?!" was Ellen's first reaction.
I answered by systematically gunning three more of our pursuers apart.
"That answers that." Jack said, sighing as he turned to look at me.
"Don't lose focus, Maddie" Naomi added, my face searing a deep red as I fired another shot, destroying the penultimate revenant.
I took out a Ghost and they fell away, letting us cruise off into the sun. We slowed, allowing Naomi to recharge the boost on her Ghost.
"Sorry, guys" I said into the comms, "it's just that..." I trailed off; my throat seized up.
"This is where we were left to die" Jack said, matter-of-factly as we passed the burned-out hog of the Lieutenant and the Gas station, we all fled from.
Ellen nodded as I scanned the horizon, remembering the banshees filing out of the sun to kill our convoy. The silence was comforting and my thoughts turned to my family as we began to close on the overturned buses.
"What's this?" Ellen asked, as we neared the carnage.
"The driver of that bus panicked and trapped themself, that overturned bus, and a platoon of Marines on the other side of it all." Jack replied, tersely.
"Were you there Maddie?" she asked softly.
I didn't hear her; I had spotted the Militia Captain as we passed the Gas station and I realised I couldn't remember his name.
Something about that didn't seem right to me.
"She was, it was our first engagement together, right kid?"
"Yeah" I said, pushing the nameless Captain from my mind. The pair shared yet another look as we continued on in silence.
It stayed silent for a while as we passed the twisted and molten frames of the buses. It seemed like a lifetime ago now, but it may have only been a few weeks. When I crossed this bridge the first time, I was a girl, entitled and naive. Now though? Well, I wouldn't say I was a woman but I felt less naive, that was for sure. Time would tell as to whether I was the sort of person to run away from this war.
I hope I'm not.
The sky was dulling now. The height of the day had passed and although it was also the height of summer, it already seemed as though the sun fought a losing battle against the darkness of space.
"Check right." Naomi said, solemnly.
In the Sky, a Covenant fleet arrived ship-by-ship, emerging from bright purple circles to reinforce the now chaotic covenant ground forces.
"That's it for Miplap, then" I said, sighing.
"What's a Miplap?" Ellen asked.
"Long story," Jack replied, relaxing in the chair.
"And probably classified" I added, winking at Ellen from behind my helmet.
"Well in any case, the Grunt rebellion here isn't going to last." she said, watching the road ahead as it opened up again. "That fleet will have arrived to put an end to it."
"Or to rescue the Prophet" Naomi added, "Covies don't tend to care about reclaiming rebellious troops."
"No way would their people accept them all as casualties though." Ellen replied incredulously, watching the fleet converge on the city as we got further and further away. They hovered around the camp with legions of Phantom dropships and there was not a single response from any UNSC ship at all.
"Honestly, I kind of think they would." I said.
Then the Covenant glassed the Camp.