Nobody ever fucking told Mav and Evie about the stupid ass shin splints that come along with the growing pains of being a special operations Orbital Drop Shock Trooper. On drops, it only becomes more painful after that impact from 100 klicks in the sky. The augmentations only make sure it doesn't fracture every bone below the femur, they don't help with the pain. Suck it up suck it up suck it up… Mav was a kick-ass trigger puller for Army special warfare with deployments but he didn't mean shit to this battalion of former 0311s and 0321s who always thought he and his were inferior product with less experience.

Evie, however, wasn't like this. As they climbed this foresty mountain ridge for a good vantage point on the objective, he watched this six foot woman haul a 14.5 anti-materiél rifle like fucking magic without so much as an audible pant. Evie bemoaned marine slogan, jargons, and thought one in every three ODSTs needed either a cunt punt or a kick to the fucking balls. She ate alone as she could be in mess halls, though liked to make an exception for Mav occasionally.

She halted the patrol and called a quick perimeter, called Mav over. He bounced to a halt, his black Modular Assault Pack shuffling on his back with the weight of all of Evie's extra batteries for the various optics systems she used to get eyes on target.

Sergeant Evie Tamar tapped an insurgent with her foot. The insurgent looked well equipped - wore a chestrig over her camouflage combat shirt and jeans and the UNSC Marine typical CH252, probably URF. And where'd she get this fucking MA37 without the ammo counter…?

She tapped the girl's face again with her combat boot to point out that a softly glowing crystal-like projectile had embedded through the insurgent's eye and out the back of her skull.

Fun. "Covvies?"

"Likely, also possible in-fighting with Covenant weapons." Evie said with her washed out London accent. There was no one that sounded like her on Mav's home planet. "It is not unlike insurgents and aliens to trade intelligence for weapons."

"Hey we'll find out soon enough." Mav shrugged. Covenant didn't know how to cover their alien footprints on human worlds, and they didn't bother. Some of their species couldn't effectively bend over, some were too arrogant to really care… Then again, it was easy to mistake the footprints of extraterrestrial fauna for that of more sapient beasts roaming this part of the stars.

They continued the hike at a decent pace, trees and starlight passing overhead as they went. Evie nodded to more and more bodies, one had been decapitated by a spiker, and another had been reduced to two pieces with a fuel rod cannon. And there was one who had just been clean decapitated and it looked like the wound had cauterized. Mav didn't really like sharing a forest with two of the more elite alien species of the Covenant, but the idea that this was insurgent was starting to go out the window with more and more three-toed footprints on the dirt…

"What's at the target site again? Kinda fucky to march a LRRP so far past our AOR." They'd passed the borders of their Area of Responsibility about fifteen kilometers ago. There was little outside of the city outskirts they were supposed to rule except mountains and terraces. They got this mission about most of the way through their patrol.

"An ONI Research unit dug out the fuselage of a Forerunner dreadnought three months ago, the ship was crashed and largely buried but not completely. ONI cordoned it off and started excavating, this, of course, is what I heard - not what I know."

"I'm not gonna be disappointed when I don't have to fight covvies that can fuckin' teleport lady."

"I'm not a lady, I'm your section sergeant." Evie reminded gently.

But when they got to a ridgeline overlooking the target site, they only found what was left. The hundreds of tons of weight that made up the cargo trucks filled with alien artifacts and all the dirt-mouthed construction equipment and holotable filled GP tents were burning away into the night. And the only thing left of the Forerunner spaceship was the dirt print that would have been there had they been done digging it out.

"God damn dude..." Mav muttered. He glanced at Evie, as if for approval, she just nodded.

Corporal Milly Thomas, leading the attached fireteam, waltzed up to them and whistled sharply as she took her MA5DSOPMOD (the bullpup rifle equipped with a boxy threaded on suppressor, and a holographic sight) off safety. "Heya. You two lovers enjoying the view?"

Sergeant Evie Tamar acted like this remark had not been said. "Get on the radio with the TOC and call it in. Mav?"

Mav knew. He triggered the camera on the optics package above his HUD visor on the recon variant of the ODST Enclosed Combat Helmet he wore and started a video feed to their Tactical Operations Center.

"You got it miss broody 9000." Corporal Milly Thomas said before returning to her spread out fireteam and pressing down on the push-to-talk button on her manpack radio. "Pegasus X-Ray, this is Pegasus 1-1 Alpha…"

The fuel rod was only visible in a half second blur as it bisected the tree with a colorful explosion over one of Milly's scrawnier lower enlisted that Mav didn't recognize. To his credit, he dove the fuck out of the way and got on line with everyone else as they started squeezing on the trigger of their suppressed bullpup rifles and lighting up the general direction of the enemy with tracers. Shell casings were vaguely visible collecting on the dirt as rifles cycled through magazine with the staccato hiss of suppressed blasts.

The incoming traces of bright plasma that lit up the night caught vegetation and cover all around the ODSTs, catching the forest aflame around them as they accompanied the supersonic crack of glowing crystalline spike projectiles that tore up dirt and embedded in the trees they used as cover.

"-Fuck me." Milly muttered, halting her transmission to get behind the cover of a toppled tree.

"Contact, front, one hundred meters!" One of the ODSTs shouted. Mav wasn't sure which one. He got up in time to watch the silhouette of a reptilian alien fade out of existence with its invisibility cloak. He ducked down in time to avoid being decapitated by a burst of plasma that cut over his head at subsonic speed.

"Gators-" Mav said to Evie before being interrupted by a long burst from the SAW Gunner. "-invisible."

Evie nodded. "Gimme some cover fire. Corporal Thomas you have an element flank around, I'll give you guys support by fire and we'll B-D-1 them."

"Roger." She waved to two of her marines to collapse onto her and waited.

Evie reached down into her smoke grenade collection and tossed before bounding to the next nearby tree as Milly sprinted off to regroup with two of her guys. In the meantime, Mav braced his MA5DSOPMOD off this collapsed tree and put suppressive fire downrange until he clicked dry. He heard Evie's anti-materiél rifle sound off as he twisted into a quick reload, tossing the magazine aside and looking up in time to see a tracer from Evie's SRS99C rifle cut through the smoke with a High Explosive Incendiary Tracer round and send the body of a Kig-yar tumbling down-slope. He watched Milly and two of her ODSTs take off in a column along the cover and concealment of screening smoke and vegetation while the remaining one laid hate with suppressed shots ringing.

Mav tracked a Kig-yar's silhouette about ninety meters away move for better concealment through the holographic sight of his MA5DSOPMOD and was about to depress the trigger when he noticed - next to it - a Sangheili alien materialize out of its invisibility cloak with a Type 50 concussion rifle. He pivoted and didn't realize he'd already depressed the trigger about fifteen times before the blast of the explosive plasma round cratered the ground next to him, knocking him to the dirt.

When he came to, he noticed the Modular Assault Pack full of solid state batteries for Evie's various optics on his back had caught flame, and barely had time to wring the strap off one arm when it exploded, turning Mav's world white.

Halo: Starmap

The last, and first thing, Corporal Maverick Pratt heard, was the ring of Evie's voice. He took it slow, he didn't want to put anyone in a chokehold and definitely not a Non-Commissioned Officer in what he assumed was a hospital ship - or at least the patient room of one. Honestly, though, Evie probably would have put him on the floor real quick - new status as a cripple or not. He opened his eyes slow, and watched her gently tug on the strings of a unit hoodie with an emblem on the breast.

Getting a visit from Evie Tamar is kinda like getting a visit from a ghost; a century ago, Evie Tamar probably wouldn't have physically existed - the genetically modified straight white hair for the light ebony skin, and the golden irises that definitely were never a real natural pigment. But, being here, this six foot warrior cocked her head at Maverick like a curious animal as he returned her glance. You got something to say?

Nope.

Maverick didn't want to fill the air with awkward dialogue so he just let Evie's eyes linger on him in the hospital bed before she allowed herself the slightest of smiles at the curl of the lips.

Okay.

Evie started away, turning smoothly on her heel as she exited to show the ODST Emblem embedded across the back of her hoodie. Whatever was she going to do with this puppy from the Army? Well, she wouldn't mind too much if he stuck around for next deployment. Maybe, just maybe, she might let him shoot the gun… But, that was a discussion for when he was done healing from the electrical explosion.

For now, she wrote a recommendation to the command that Maverick go to the Reconnaissance Sniper Course, and she'd do all the mentoring once he came back. She wondered, perhaps, if Captain Yrsa was about to be surprised as Evie was. She didn't even believe she'd typed it by the time she submitted it.

Evie stared at the text on the holotable that took up most of her berthing, leaning on her forearms on her bed and being bathed in the orange glow of the holographic touchscreen - the only light in this world of darkness.

"...though unusual, I recommend Corporal Pratt, Maverick for induction into the Marine Corps Reconnaissance Sniper Course. Though I am comfortable in his credentials and experience as an Army Special Warfare sniper I believe it would be an opportunity for Corporal Pratt, Maverick to better internalize the doctrine of the Orbital Drop Shock Troopers sniper sections. At the risk of sounding arrogant, I understand that the billet I in particular fill is one with a significant history in the battalion. I believe Corporal Pratt, Maverick is slated to be the next one in my position, and I would like him to be more equipped than any other given the wars to come..."

Evie was getting real corny. When she was first getting shoveled into this slot she held her tongue for every condescending conversation from her instructors - a stony bitch of a scout sniper and the kid of a UNSC Marshal on the outer colonies who beat the fundamentals of marksmanship into him in the little time they had - maybe physically a little. This little sadomasochistic couple was no longer around to teach Mav, but Evie was glad they weren't.

Because she thought, as she shut down the holotable, had they been competing for the position instead, she probably would have been too much of a stoic at his age… or coward... to stop them from hazing Maverick until he bled. Until he dropped the badass act and let the tears fall while the blood sputtered from his nose and mouth and…

… and the holotable shut off, Evie rolled over in bed, and went to sleep.