This time, the light of Greg's consciousness merely flickered, it didn't die.

When the Pelican stopped moving and the interior of the cabin stilled and the dust settled, he blinked several times, groaned at the several fresh pains that assaulted his already battered body, and groped for the release on the straps holding him in place.

He tasted blood, and his vision was not tracking properly, but he'd dealt with all this crap before. Greg finally hit the release and fell right out of his chair, on the hard, slightly slanted deckplates of the cabin's floor.

"Who's not dead? Sound off," he said after clearing his throat. He hawked and spat, trying to get the blood out of his mouth.

"Present," Izzy groaned.

"Here," Coretti said distractedly.

"I'm here," Laney said.

"Nothing broken, for once," Breaker said from the cockpit.

"This is turning out to be quite the rescue mission, Sergeant," Turner said dourly.

"What an observation," Greg replied as he struggled to his feet. "Glad to see those years of no doubt prestigious education are going to excellent use, Doctor."

She actually laughed quietly.

Greg hesitated. "Larsen?"

He looked around and his eyes settled on an unmoving form near the back of the Pelican. His heart skipped a beat and his guts flooded with cold fear.

"Crap," Izzy muttered.

He staggered across the slanted interior of the Pelican and carefully knelt next to the man. Most of his fear drained away as he saw that Larsen was still alive, just unconscious, but he winced in sympathetic pain when he saw that his right leg was bent at an unnatural angle.

"Good thing he's out," Izzy said as she came up next to him and then knelt by him. "Resetting this bone and getting a split in place is gonna be painful."

"Do it fast and hit him with some painkillers so he doesn't wake up into total agony. And make sure he doesn't have any other wounds," Greg replied, standing.

"On it. Coretti or Laney, find me something to make a split with," she said.

Greg left them to it and moved to the cockpit where he saw Breaker angrily trying to reactivate the consoles and screens around him.

"What are we looking at?" he asked, peering out the front window. It seemed that the impact hadn't been too terrible.

"Nothing good," Breaker muttered. "It's shot. They warned this could happen. The effect of the aurora or lights or whatever the hell that green glow in the sky is is ongoing. So it finally caught up to us, it seems. Or...something. I'll be honest, I'm not one hundred percent sure what the engineers actually did to make this thing fly, but I do know that this thing isn't getting back up. So wherever you want us to go, we're walking there."

"That's just perfect," Greg muttered. "Do we have anything? Navigation? Radio?"

"No, it's all dead, and all I know is that we're about thirty miles short of the base. So...yeah, it's gonna be a long walk," he said.

"Oh come on!" Greg snapped. He sighed, shook his head, then turned and walked back into the cabin. Laney was searching through some of the emergency compartments. Izzy and Coretti were dealing with Larsen's broken leg. That was going to complicate things. He studied it all for a moment longer, then, after considering things, he returned to the cockpit and opened the hatch in the roof. Climbing up the rungs mounted on the wall, he poked his head up and out of the opening. He half-expected to find Flood crawling all over the hull, but there was nothing. He saw no hostile entities as he climbed carefully up onto the roof of the downed ship and looked around. What he did see was a lot of snow, a lot of open space, a lot of trees.

He spent a moment looking around for something, something useful. Something that gave him more direction than: towards the outpost. After a moment, he found it: right at where the edge of a massive forest met the large open field they had crashed into, he saw a Warthog. It didn't look to be in good shape, but maybe they could patch it up. That was it, that was their goal. At the very least, it was a sign of life.

Maybe there were friendly forces in the region.

Greg dropped back down into the cockpit. Breaker had joined the others. Greg saw that Laney had managed to track down a broken-down stretcher and was in the process of putting it together. Well, that was lucky at least.

"All right, I've got a plan," he said, and they all looked at him. "Breaker, Turner, the two of you get stretcher duty. Coretti, you're sticking back with them and covering them. Laney and Izzy will be up front with me. There's a Warthog maybe five hundred meters away, by a forest. It looks abandoned and maybe broken, but it's better than nothing. Any questions?"

There were none.

"Then let's get to it."


Progress was slower than Greg would have liked, but at this point he was counting his blessings. After a check of them all, besides Larsen's leg and a handful of scrapes, bruises, and cuts, and several headaches, they were fine and still in fighting condition. The snow was an omnipresent problem, slowing them down, and the way the skies were darkening rapidly as they crossed the field made him nervous. If they ran into a blizzard out here they might well be screwed. But it wasn't like they had a lot of options at the moment.

None of them could get anything over their radios. In a way, he was reminded of his time on Polaris Island. Although he was a hell of a lot less screwed this time around. Probably. Hopefully. He kept focused on the wrecked Warthog by the treeline, keeping an eye out for any sign of Flood or hostile wildlife. So far, he saw nothing. Though he could easily envision Flood or varg lurking among the trees.

Or infected varg.

This infection was getting way out of hand. He felt bad that they wouldn't be able to get the infected volar back to Yamazaki, because it was now smeared over about half a mile of the landscape, but given how quickly this infection was spreading, Greg had no doubt there would be many, many more opportunities to grab more corpses. He was honestly just dreading the moment when one of them asked for a live specimen.

That wasn't going to be fun.

"How's Larsen?" Greg asked when they reached about the halfway mark.

"Still out," Turner replied.

He sighed softly and wondered how hard of a hit he'd taken on his head. Certainly it was a blessing to the kid that he was unconscious, given the amount of pain he would be in if he were up, but they were at a disadvantage having to carry a stretcher. Not that they'd be a whole lot better if he was up, but at least conscious he'd have more mobility than a log. Greg glanced off in the distance to his left. The frozen lake and snow-capped trees beyond it, and the mountains beyond them, stood in silent winter splendor.

In a way, some part of him really appreciated the beauty of the snowscape, and he lamented that they couldn't enjoy it. What he wouldn't give to be able to sit in a log cabin or something, just hang out with Izzy all day, chopping firewood, reading, screwing, relaxing in bed with a fire crackling nearby. It would be great.

Maybe after this was over.

He resisted the urge to laugh.

Yeah, maybe after the whole war was over and they somehow came out the other side alive, intact, and sane.

They finally reached the Warthog, and as they did, it became obvious that it wasn't going anywhere. The front end was smashed against a sturdy tree and a few wisps of smoke still escaped from the crumpled hood. One tire was basically completely detached from the vehicle, the windshield was shattered, and he would be surprised if the thing would be worth recovering even for the scrap. With a sigh, he pointed at it, "Izzy, see if you can get anything."

"Yep," she replied, slipping into the seat. The whole thing groaned and shifted, but otherwise held. Greg had them take up defensive positions and they set Larsen down near the back of the Warthog. He set Coretti on searching the back, (it was another Carrier model), and took a look himself around the perimeter. It was obvious there'd been a firefight here. There were about half a dozen dead Combat Forms within the forest and a few more half-buried in the snow beyond the forest. He also saw a single dead Marine, stripped of supplies.

"Got something," Izzy said.

He walked over to her. She was staring at the screen mounted in the dashboard, the inner light of which looked pallid behind a pair of cracks in the glass. "What is it?"

"They left a little message. Fireteam Delta Nine. They were on their way to a ranger's station apparently, about two miles into the forest south of here. I guess it was supposed to be a rally point for local forces," she murmured.

"Timestamp?" he asked.

She sighed. "Three days ago."

"Well...better than nothing," he replied. "Set a navpoint and let's go."

"Yep."

"All right, let's pack it up people, we've got a destination. Ranger station serving as a rally point two miles from here."

Breaker and Turner picked Larsen's stretcher back up as Izzy got out of the vehicle and the others roused themselves to continue the journey.

Greg looked into the forest, then glanced up at the darkening skies.

Honing his focus as he had done a hundred thousand times before, he took the lead and led his band of survivors into the woods.


It started to snow before they'd barely gone a hundred meters.

Greg tried not to let it bother him. They had a navpoint now, a little upside-down green triangle superimposed onto his head's up display, pointing them the rough direction they needed to go, and even without it they had compasses. They also had military-grade, cold weather survival gear. They should be fine. Of course, the cold wasn't the only thing that was out there. As they delved deeper into the woods, he began to see contacts to either side of him, though they were too far away to be clear, and he still wasn't sure whether they were just tricks of light and snow. He shivered inside of his suit and kept on going.

The temperature was dropping fast and the gauge on his HUD gave it as negative five now. The survival gear would keep them alive for hours all the way down to negative sixty...ideally. These suits had been through a lot and although he'd done his best to perform maintenance on his during the downtime, it wasn't like he had a lot to work with. By the time they had made it half a mile, the snow had gone from little tiny flakes to big fat ones and the winds were starting to pick up. He just kept going. Putting one foot in front of the other, listening to the winds and the snow crunching beneath his boots, to the others walking along with him.

As he kicked his way through the snow, he kept finding his mind wanting to wander, something that was a bad sign that he had been going for too long or been doing too much intense stuff recently. Although he'd definitely had breaks, more than reasonable ones, recently, and he'd dealt with worse in terms of sheer length of time he'd been fighting, Wintermute was starting to get to him. It felt different here. It wasn't the cold weather and it wasn't the wildlife or the fact that he was fighting a lot or seeing a lot of people die.

At least some of it was the Flood. They were so much more stressful than any other enemy he'd had to fight. They were horrifying on a smaller and larger scale. What were they? Where had they come from? What would a whole planet infested with Flood look like? One that wasn't mostly snow? God, what if they got to Earth?

What if-

All his theorizing and complaining was violently halted when he caught definite sight of something up ahead.

"Contact!" he snapped, raising his battle rifle.

"Contact three o'clock!" Izzy said.

"Contact nine o'clock!" Laney reported.

"Crap, vargs! Everyone get ready! Do not let them bite you!" Greg called out.

He aimed at the one dead in front of him, a dark figure moving faster through the snow now, navigating between trees with ease. He took a deep breath and let it out slowly, trusting the others to watch the perimeter. Aiming at the varg, he waited until it was within a reasonable distance, between two trees, then fired. The three-round burst hit dead on, nailing it in the skull and spraying the snow with its brains. It flopped like a ragdoll, kicking up snow as it skidded to a halt. He heard the others open fire at about the same time. Damn this pack was well-coordinated. He had hoped the initial volley would scare them off, but it didn't look like that was going to happen. There were already two more of them coming at him.

Cursing softly, he fired again, and missed. The bullets kicked up snow just past one of the lean figures as it came towards him with an increasing pace. And he saw even more of them closing in. The others were firing rapidly all around him. Good lord, how many of these wolf bastards were there?! As he shot the second one, first blowing a leg off and then putting it quickly out of its misery with another three-round burst to the head, he saw now half a dozen of them closing in on him from the front. This wasn't looking good.

Greg finished off the magazine, managing to put down another one, but the other five were within about twenty meters now and closing fast. He watched that distance really start to disappear as he slapped the new magazine in and took aim. But the second he lined up another shot, the vargs all suddenly skidded to a halt. They began sniffing the air and he hesitated. One of them let out an eerie wailing howl and abruptly they all turned tail and ran, some of them looping around the group and reconnecting to the far left.

"What's going on?" Izzy asked uncertainly. "I don't like this."

"I don't either," Greg muttered, looking around, scanning to the front, behind, and to the right. "They caught wind of something they don't like."

"Like what?" Coretti asked.

Greg opened his mouth to respond as the answer became obvious to him immediately, but then he heard a growl somewhere not too far off to his right and snapped his battle rifle in that direction. Maybe fifty meters away, he saw a trio of Combat Forms making their way towards the group between the trees.

And then he lowered the scope and saw a few dozen more.

"Grab Larsen and run," he growled. "Now! Go! Go!"

"Coretti, take point! Turner, Breaker, get up there with him and move as fast as you can! Izzy, Laney, right side, I'll bring up the rear, let's go people!" he screamed.

There had to be fifty of them, and he saw even more behind them. God, how many were there? Why were they all here, now?! Coretti hurried off, moving towards the navpoint. Turner led the way and Breaker followed. He could tell they were trying to keep him as level and steady as they could, and now he was glad that Larsen was out. Honestly this was faster than him trying to hobble along. Laney and Izzy stuck to their right side, hurrying off, and Greg brought up the rear as he planned, hurrying after them.

Immediately, he could tell they weren't going to make it at this speed. Hell, they would be lucky to hit the halfway mark. The Flood, he noticed as he kept tossing glances at them, seemed a bit sluggish, like they were having trouble navigating the snowbound forest. Why? He had no idea but he'd take it. He began firing off rounds, picking off the nearest ones as often as he could, and got through a magazine before realizing he was lagging behind. He'd managed to down half a dozen, but he gave it up and kept going.

Greg ran. He rushed after them and then forced himself to slow down once he had caught up to them. Periodically, he threw glances back over his shoulder. As he had done dozens of times before, perhaps over a hundred times since he had joined up with the grand old United Nations Marine Corps, he watched a little digital number gradually grow smaller and smaller, decreasing the closer he got to the destination. Only this time around it was just a very rough destination. They just had a direction and a distance.

And hell, the place could be destroyed by now.

"Let's pick up the pace!" he yelled when he looked back again and saw that the nearest Combat Form was now within about twenty meters.

"We're going as fast as we can," Turner replied.

They made it to the one mile mark and kept going, so apparently luck was with them at least. Greg looked back again as they pressed through another fifty meters. The nearest Combat Form was now within five meters. He could hear its growling even over his own heavy breathing. This wasn't going to work.

"Coretti, Breaker, Turner, keep going and do not stop. That is a direct order. Go as fast as you can. Izzy, Laney, stop. We're going to hold them off and slow them down," Greg said, skidding to a halt and whirling around.

"I'm with you," Izzy said, doing the same and hurrying over to him.

"Yes, Sergeant," Laney replied.

Greg shot the nearest Combat Form as Izzy and Laney formed up to either side of him. "How many grenades you got?!" he yelled as he kept firing.

"Three!" Izzy called.

"Two!" Laney replied.

"Okay, on my mark, throw all your grenades in a spread ahead of us for maximum damage, got it?!"

"Understood!" they both replied.

They fired. They stood their ground and fired their battle rifles. Combat Forms withered and died under the direct barrage of bullets, but there had to be a good hundred of them by now. Why were there so many of them!? As usual, no time for questions. Only death. He emptied his magazine and reloaded in a blur of motion, then kept up the rate of fire. He didn't have all that much ammo left on him. Greg emptied the second magazine, blowing out chests, blowing off tentacled limbs, putting down Combat Forms here, there, and everywhere.

He had to have downed twenty of them before he reached for his second to last magazine. As he slapped it in, he let the battle hang by its sling.

"Mark!" he shouted, grabbing one of his grenades.

Izzy threw her three, Laney his two, and he threw two of his own three grenades. They spread out in a line twenty meters in front of them, about where they had managed to push the encroaching horde of Flood back to, and then they were off and running again as fast as they could manage. The explosions went off when they had made it hardly more than a few steps. Greg felt small rocks and other bits of debris smacking into the back of his armor and helmet as the explosions ripped through the Combat Forms chasing after them.

As soon as the dust settled and he'd put some more distance between them, Greg stopped again, turned, and looked.

Through the haze of snow that had been kicked up and was falling from the skies, he saw a handful of figures stumbling about, but it seemed as if they'd wiped out the worst of the threat. With a deep sigh, he turned back around and started following after the others.