Though Hell Should Bar The Way

by Mr. 125

"I am not alone; they are here as well. I am frightened, but they are frightened, too."

2. Part II

Part II

The news spreads through the line like a cancerous secret when Reed radios in. There's not a man in the grass staring up Hill 449 who doesn't feel the lack—the missing limb. They trained alongside Sword, lived together for two years. Anyone who says they're not bothered by the news is putting up a brave face, staggered inside; or a hateful son of a bitch who had it in for someone in Sword. Reed's comm. report is cruelly short and to the point, and Lake doesn't ask for any elaborate details. They're "gone," but are all of them? She doesn't want to know right now. Doesn't want to ask and really make true what she already thinks, just in case. That's a fear she has because there's still that sliver she holds onto, and she'll wait for it to get taken away rather than toss it herself.

That shade gun's still up, spitting. She despises the sound it makes. It's arrogant and gaudy and sounds like reckless laughter.

"Where the hell are we going, Sergeant?" her men behind her shout. "Where the hell are we going?"

She doesn't know. She looks at Lieutenant Pelton but he's got his hands wrapped tight around his helmet because he thinks he's going to die in this trench. He wasn't fit to take over Shield—has probably never seen combat up close, the way he trembles now. But Lake doesn't hate him for it. Everybody's scared.

"What does Stern say?" Lake asks Pelton.

Pelton looks like he's about to throw up. "He says we keep moving."

"We just lost our flank and he wants us moving?"

"Sergeant, I want..." Pelton can't even finish his sentence; he swallows back something and looks helplessly over the lip of the trench. "Sergeant, I want you to..."

"I know, LT." Lake looks at her squad and the rest of the stragglers from 2nd. A private first class named Huck and his assistant lugged a Jackhammer launcher and a few cases of rockets between them up the hill this far. She says, "Need to knock out that emplacement. Think you can make the shot from here or close by?"

Huck shares a squinty look with his assistant like he's pulling on a cigarette and holding in a smoky breath. "Closer."

"All right. All right," Lake says, glancing around. Huck won't venture out there by himself, and Lake suspects there's many who won't. One wrong move and that shade will rip you apart.

Thompson of course doesn't care, though. He slides on over and says, "I'll take 'em, Lake. I'll head up that way."

Nobody else in Shield wants to volunteer; their eyes are downcast when Lake rakes through them with her own, her gaze searing. "Yeah, Pup, okay," she finally says. "Okay. Wait 'til I give the signal, then you move up."

Thompson beckons to Huck. "You know where we need to get to?"

"Can probably see it from here. 'Bout two hundred metres that way."

"All right, let's get going. Take only what you need. If we miss the first shot, don't think we'll be getting that second one off," Thompson says. They unstrap and unbuckle, dropping things into a pile they plan on coming back to. Huck carries only a sidearm and his Jackhammer, his assistant gunner a rifle and a spare rocket slung around his neck.

Huck tells the Shield men near the item pile he'll fucking kill them if he comes back and anything's missing. Nobody wishes him good luck out there.

Lake tells her squad to get to the opposite end of the trench and make a lot of noise on her go. Thompson gives her a thumbs-up. She tells him, "Stay low. Be safe."

"Yeah, Lake."

"All right, do it!" Lake jabs a hand towards her squad, and they stand a bit and fire their rifles at the shade gun or all around it. Just as quickly they dive back down into the trench as screaming plasma tears by overhead and sets fire to the grass; the tall weeds smoke like lazy sticks of incense. Thompson and Huck and his assistant scramble over the edge of the lip and into the grass so low to the ground they're nearly on their hands and knees. They make it through unseen so far and Lake waits about fifteen minutes, their cautious drop-crawl pace halting every time they hear plasma fire.

Thompson and the other two reach their vaunted position and Huck makes sure his Jackhammer is good to go. Huck's only got less than a second to pop his head out and loose a rocket so he mentally marks the shade's position based on whatever he can hear.

"Whenever you're ready," Thompson tells him.

Huck takes a deep breath. Then he leaps up, sights, and fires his Jackhammer. The rocket whooshes through the air, but Huck's already down in the grass. They all wait three seconds but it should have hit by now. A distant explosion rumbles nearly six seconds later but that's completely wrong.

They hear the shade's stubborn whine and Thompson yells, "Get the fuck out!"

All three men scatter through the grass and keep low but the way they're so disjointed and all over the place, it's not hard to watch them go. Plasma strafes the dirt all around them, and they just keep crawling back to the line, each man hoping that Covie gun isn't following him.

Lake, back at the trench, bit her lip as she watched the rocket barely graze the shade. It turned and plastered the patch of grass the rocket originated from. Her breath caught when she saw this.

She screams to her people, "Pack of smokes for whoever knocks out that fucking gunner!"

Shield company rises and fires their rifles over the lip; everyone expends their magazines. The shade's still blasting in the distance, but its fire smacks around the trench instead, freeing Huck at least from its dogged pursuit. With a clenched jaw, Lake sees another rocket spit out from the grass, and she tracks it through her scope. There's a closer boom, and Lake is relieved when the crown of the shade gun (what she can see through the grass) erupts in a swirl of blue and orange fire.

"They did it!" Lake howls. "They fucking did it! Let's go, Shield! Move move move!"

As one, Shield goes over the top. They fire at the hill that rises ever over them, but for once they're unimpeded. Covie carbine fire goes wide, forcing some of them to hit dirt, but spurred on by the short, victorious charge, they get up and keep moving up.

They hit the first ridge where they see the ruins of the shade gun close up. It's split in a few pieces, and its jackal gunner is a mess of steaming meat. The Shield men who pass by take a moment to kick or spit at it before getting into cover. The Covies take pot-shots at the ridge they lost and the men do their best to fire back.

Here Lieutenant Pelton's platoon meets Shield 2nd platoon led by Lieutenant Briar. They come streaking out of the grass, no longer pinned by the damned shade. They exchange pleasantries and take up positions. Thompson and Huck return too, and the warthogs also sneak their way on up and roll to a stop behind the men, their tri-barrelled guns all pointed up the hill.

"Good stuff, Huck," Lake says. "This was all you."

Huck just grunts in reply. He affords himself a cigarette and sits quietly smoking.

"Pinned down," Lieutenant Briar tells Pelton and Lake. He points back that way. "Shade got a few of my people. Ran into a couple of snipers too, but they ain't shooting now. Not the way we all hauled ass getting up here. Couldn't shoot all of us."

"What's the plan now?" Pelton asks.

"I'm still waiting on air-cav," Lake says.

"We dealt with that gun without 'em," Briar says back.

"My people. My people did. I'm not making them go back out there unsupported."

Briar looks at Lake, then at Pelton. "You ain't in charge, girlie. You have Stern on the line, Pelton?"

"He says we go," Pelton says, a little hesitant. He ignores Lake who spins around with a murderous glare.

"Put me on with the captain," Lake says.

Briar mutters, "Ain't your place, Sergeant."

She hears Stern's voice through her helmet comm. system: "Why aren't these men moving, Lieutenant?"

"Captain Stern, this is Sergeant Lake."

Silence, then, "This line's reserved for officers, Lake."

"I'm requesting orders."

"You have your orders. They haven't changed from the start. Get up that hill, Sergeant. Take 449 so 2nd battalion can follow."

"Sword's gone, sir," Lake says. "There isn't going to be pressure from the other side. If the Covenant are waiting for us, they're going to be waiting with all the manpower and firepower they've got. All guns are facing us."

"We got rapidity!" Stern thunders. "We hit them fast and keep hitting them—never give 'em a second to breathe."

"We haven't even winded them once."

In the way that Stern takes in air so deeply like a whiskey-soaked gasp, Lake knows he's done talking to her. Stern turns his attention to Pelton. His voice becomes crackly with static when he yells, "Lieutenant Pelton, if I say you go, god dammit that's what you do! You're in Shield company now! 1st platoon, to boot! It's up to us to set an example, you understand? We go where others can't! Now maybe you're used to sitting around in Charlie company, sitting around like vultures and waiting for better, braver men to die first so you can swoop in and say you helped, but not in my company, Lieutenant! Not in my company! No way!"

Lake covers her mic with her hand. Her voice is a seething rasp. "Don't let him bully you, sir."

Briar spits in the dirt. He hits his radio and says, "I'll do it, sir. I'll lead the way."

"That Briar? God bless you, Lieutenant! God bless you!"

"I've got four warthogs standing by, sir," Pelton says. His face is flushed. Lake looks disappointed.

"Are they going to move, Lieutenant?"

"Yes sir."

"You drive them forward, then! I want to hear all four guns from where I am, Lieutenant! Not one goes silent! You protect Briar's people; 1st platoon goes in next!" Stern says. "Don't radio back until you hit that second ridge! Is that understood? Out!"

Pelton gulps; the exchange has left him weak-kneed. Briar on the other hand is calm. He slaps a full magazine into his rifle and looks coolly at the sergeant.

"Expect to see 1st squad out there in the thick of things, Sergeant Lake."

"Worry about your own people."

Briar grins a repulsive grin, the kind you can feel even after you turn away. It's a stare-down grin, and he's won.

The mortar fire from the bottom of the hill picks up with more intensity now. When Pelton radios his lead warthog and tells them to get moving, the drivers thrum their engines in a guttural battle cry. They roll into the grass, creaking and growling. Briar sticks two fingers in his mouth and lets out a strident whistle. He mounts the trench lip and 2nd platoon clambers after him. Pelton also motions for 1st platoon to go.

Lake says to her squad, "Keep low. The moment there's shooting, hug dirt."

It starts soon after, and they do drop down—a man up front takes a beam-burst through the gut and he collapses, screaming and tearing at the grass. Briar yells "Shut that man up!" but the tormented crying continues. As if to just get away from the awful sound, the rest of the troops keep forging ahead, sharing panicky looks with each other. The warthogs' chain guns fire over their heads out of beat, stopping and going. Breaking into a run, they last maybe a minute.

A few more slugs punch through the air, hissing, and drill into the mob of advancing men. Bodies fall, and right after, there's a frightening snarl and the vegetation shears in half all around them—streams of plasma come ripping out of the grass, low. As if they are tripped up, the ones who are caught by this tumble and clutch their legs in shock, feeling for limbs that have become jumbles of bloody cloth and tattered flesh.

Bunched up so tightly, Shield begins to lose its cohesion. They're confused when in front and all around they start dropping out of view and screaming—when blood that's not their own kicks up on their uniforms and faces. They feel the unbearable, shark teeth heat that they can't see overtop the waves of grass but still engulfs their skin, gnawing. They hear Briar's wild, shrill voice over the din urging them forward and they are cattle escaping the confines of their pen, their sides groaning with an electric sting. They trample forward and onward.

The crest of the disorderly formation erupts in a turbulent white flash and the men closest to it get knocked around, their clothes set on fire and melting. While they roll around in the dirt and scratch at themselves, the men behind them leap over and keep running while Covie machinegun fire chatters away and doesn't shut up. Another big blast, and a man flies sideways into a group of soldiers; his flailing, windmill form hauls them all down. The men of 2nd platoon are in complete disarray now, charging forwards, sideways, backwards—towards Lake's people and 1st platoon. From her place in the rear, Lake sees the moment where the attack finally stalls: a warthog takes a direct, screeching hit to the hood and the entire vehicle burns up in direct view of the two platoons.

Losing their nerves, the other warthogs begin to take off like frantic horses, dragging their foot-snagged riders to death—the gunner flies out of one and smacks his head on the ground and doesn't move. The Shield men disperse to try and get out of the way and from the grass Lake hears a terrified squeal that is cut short—the succumbing sound of gazing upon oncoming tow-hooks and radiating, white bull's eyes, and knowing you're about to die.

She can't even see the 2nd platoon men who kept going forward, stampeding and confused. They're lying in the dirt now either dead or hanging onto their withered lives vise-like. As one they all cower in the grass while Covenant mortars go up everywhere, boxing them in, shaking them. They see the fiery green blobs shoot upwards, fired by hands unseen from the grass on the hill, and they count the lingering seconds it takes for them to hit the ground. They're pinned, and Lake thinks now for good.

Then, a familiar and welcome sound carries over the trees they hear coming miles away. It makes them whoop and holler as they turn their heads. Falcons rush on by, one high one low. The breeze that that one kicks up is bliss, warm and giving, and some men raise both hands to the sky and throw their heads back like they are relishing a blessed rain. The ones who don't, they keep down and prostrate in the grass, heads bowed in their own way of reverence. Grenades sown from above cut up the second ridge before them, every magnificent shudder absolution to their suffering ears and bruised bones. The falcons plough the rocky earth, turning everything to healthy, blossoming mush.

And just as quickly, it's all taken away. It was a fleeting glimpse of something unearned, and punishment for their hubris follows; the lower falcon is plucked out of the air when one of its rotors suddenly becomes slag. Bits both hard and liquid shower the men, burning—an Armageddon rain for the deserving and they wonder why they are. Somebody screams "fall back!" and everyone decides that's the best plan. Most of whatever's left of 2nd platoon rushes back past Lake but she stays and watches the falcon spin dizzily and then dive into the grass just over the second ridge.

Thompson's watching too. He looks back at Lake and she knows. The column of smoke rises over his shoulder, twisting in the wind like a question mark—a plea. The actual distress call comes a moment later over the radio, but Thompson and Lake and 1st squad are already making their way over to the wreck.

The Covenant on the hill have either fled from the second falcon flying overwatch, its door gunner still randomly peppering 449, or they simply don't see the squad moving up beneath the grass. 1st squad hangs back watching the rear while Lake gets low and approaches the falcon with Thompson, their rifles up and ready. A rotor still whirs, the blades passing near her face as she carefully ducks by and into the battered and twisted troop compartment. It's stuffy and hot, and she finds a wounded crewman still strapped to his seat, unconscious and bleeding. His co-pilot is completely missing from the chopper, but the peacefully empty seat tells Lake a darker story: the man must have bailed in mid-crash, or got out after and made a run for it.

From the grass, Thompson calls out, "Got a man out here!"

"Here too," Lake says back. She unbuckles the harness and drags him out of the wreck.

Thompson has his draped around his shoulder because one leg is badly broken. He's still conscious, though, and he says, "Fell out of the fucker, just about. Thought I'd try to get as far as I could away on this—probably never would have made it." From his uniform, the surviving man isn't the co-pilot Lake is kind of looking for (Lake is still thinking about where he could have gone but he has probably vanished in the grass like so many others)—he's the falcon's crew chief. He says, "Thanks for coming. I'm Harris, by the way."

"Could've stayed put. It's unfriendly out there," Lake says to him.

"Had to take my chances."

Thompson asks, "What were you running from?"

Lake shoots him an impatient look, but Thompson means it in earnest. Then, they hear the grass move—there's something heavier than the wind pushing through. Harris' eyes go big and he begins to slur his speech, talking fast: "We gotta get out of here, Sergeant. I'm not staying here. Before we spun out, I had a look on thermal. All right there is crawling with Covies, like you wouldn't fuckin' believe. Foxholes, dugouts. Like burrows. Hundreds of 'em, probably more farther up the hill. These Covies don't fight like regular Covies, that's for damn sure."

Lake gets her rifle into her hands again while Thompson sets Harris down against the side of the falcon with his sidearm drawn. She crouches low and hisses, "Josiah! That you? 1st?"

Thompson pitches a grenade into the grass without waiting for a reply and there's a chirruping caw. Lake fires, and skirmishers explode from their hiding places right before the grenade goes off, jaws and beaks snapping open and shut. Thompson and Harris pick their targets and shoot them down at nearly point blank range, close enough to feel their throaty breaths against their skin as they stumble forward and die. One skirmisher leaps out at Lake and she wrestles it to the ground with a muffled yell. She has one hand wrapped around its neck, keeping it from yanking out her eyes with its barbarian intensity. Thompson runs up and kicks it off, his boot driving as hard as he can into the side of its head. He stumbles, off balance, and he awkwardly splays on top of it with a grunt of discomfort while Lake jumps up. Thompson throws his full weight on the squawking alien; he pins it down and Lake puts three rapid rounds into it wherever she can—she misses a couple times, the way it struggles and thrashes under Thompson, but she tallies three and that's enough. Finally it spasms and jerks around a bit, gurgling, until its wicked claws biting into Thompson's fleshy bicep gradually release like he's ripping free of a snagging thorn bush.

"Come on! We gotta go!" Harris screams at them. He's still firing into the grass, trying to keep his pistol as steady as possible—it jerks his whole arm with every shot.

Thompson nods in agreement and bends to grab hold of the unconscious falcon crewman—he lets out a hoarse moan and nearly falls over, black spots rippling his vision, when his left arm gives away. The muscles have been impaled pretty seriously and he idly wonders if he'll lose the arm because of it. Lake has seen everything; she tells Thompson, "Don't worry about him, I'll take him! You dismantle that door gun!" Plasma bolts sneeze across the falcon's crumpled body and Lake empties her magazine in the direction they came from.

"How?"

"Get creative!"

Thompson, clutching his wound, crawls into the smoky falcon. Coughing, he yells to Harris, "You got a toolkit around here?"

"Check the aft, in the netting—" Whatever else Harris says is drowned out by Lake's rifle popping off more manic shots.

Thompson rummages and finds a canvas bag. He undoes the strap and rips free a Phillip's head. He clambers back to the door of the troop bay and kneels down beside the bracing of the mounted grenade launcher, taking a moment to look over the design. He sticks the screwdriver where he thinks it goes and twists but there's no purchase—the inside of the falcon is making his eyes water. He sticks a pinky inside the groove and feels a fucking industrially-welded bolt.

He shrinks back into the troop compartment and desperately looks around for something else to use when he catches a sickly green glint in the grass through the opposite bay door, the outline of a passing jackal slinking around the falcon. Thompson gets out of sight and holds his fucking breath—tells himself to quiet the fuck down. The Phillip's head is still in his slippery hand and he brings it up by his chest.

In between a burst of fire, Lake yells "Pup! What's taking so goddamn long!" and then Thompson hears his heartbeat giving away his position. There is a crunch of hooves on trodden grass and a curious snuffling. Then both of these recede.

Thompson gulps down some air with determination and then he charges outside, screwdriver raised. He planned to plunge the spiky tip through the jackal's skull, but instead he jams it into Sergeant First Class Reed's tough, leathery combat vest. Reed reels back, screwdriver sticking halfway out of his shoulder and wagging around, and Shield Recon nearly guns Thompson down except for Reed stepping in front of the marine sergeant and shouting "Jesus Christ, friendly! All friendly here!" He grabs Thompson by his bandolier to steady him and pushes him against the falcon. A few metres away, Thompson's sought-after jackal lies crumpled on the ground close by the rest of Recon—he never sees or finds out what got it in the end.

Reed motions for his men to circle around and engage the Covenant there. He says to Thompson, "Lake's okay?"

"Think so. We can't stay here."

"Wounded?"

"Two."

"Was talking about you."

"Guess that's three."

Reed tells him, "Head back to the line—leave the falcon to me. Just concentrate on getting yourself out of here, Pup."

"You know what to do?" Thompson jerks a thumb toward the bird. With its one chopping rotor still in dazed motion, it looks like it's struggling to get back on its feet, back into the air. The way it's cracked and burning, though, it doesn't know that it'll rest here forever. "Lake says dismantle it."

"That's what I meant—I'll send her off," Reed says. "Now go."

Thompson gathers up his rifle, heads back to Lake and tells her, "Pulling back."

Lake nods, does a final sweep, and finally gets the still-unconscious crewman away from the falcon. Meanwhile Shield Recon, fanned out around the crash site, puts more controlled shots into the surrounding grass. A man from the outfit helps Harris to his feet and they both drag-stumble after Thompson and Lake. Taking turns, keeping their eyes on their six, Reed's men file out of there; Reed is the last one to leave, cantankerously hauling his open, flapping rucksack and rifle down by his sides. Behind the hobbling, snaking line, the falcon violently splits in half and the cockpit window is blown outwards to unleash a baleful fire that shrieks and goes everywhere. They hear but don't see through the smoky pall the screech of alien mortars above, an ugly, sneering noise that sounds that way only because they are in full retreat. Creeping thuds like menacing footsteps hound them all the way back to the first ridge where the men of Shield company bleed and tremble, wide-eyed or with their eyes shut tight.

#

Captain Stern disembarks from a warthog that pulls up to the first ridge where Shield rests, withered and stalled. While everyone hunkers down in the mire, he walks down the line with a carefree step, helmet under one arm. The men watch the grass, flinching with every windy shake, and cast catatonic stares over their shoulders while Stern passes by; he grunts with muted disapproval like he's hearing the languid mention of inadequate offspring he disowned, and continues walking until he reaches SFC Reed, Lake, and his two lieutenants. The marine Thompson lingers nearby, not privy to this meeting. Arm bandaged, he sits in the grass and twists a weed around his thumb, looking blank.

"Hill's un-takeable, sir," Reed tells Stern. "That's the truth."

"I'd advise against speaking out of turn, Sergeant."

"You'll hear the same story from the others," Lake says. "Ask any man."

Stern looks over lieutenants Pelton and Briar, but they too kick at the dirt and agree with the most diplomatic of head nods. Stern's glare falls directly on Briar, but he's as quiet as the rest of them, sucking on a cigarette. There's a smear of 2nd platoon blood across his cheek and a trampled dullness in his eyes that didn't used to be there.

"It's un-takeable with what we got now," Reed says. "The area's too wide for one company. Mortars aren't hitting shit, and that's not Charlie's fault. Not totally. There's too much we can't see."

"Crew chief we pulled out of the falcon told us beyond that second ridge, Covies are hiding in foxholes all the way up 449," Lake says. "We'll be surrounded, even if we manage to break through."

"Short of carpet bombing the entire hill, there's not much we can do on the offense," Reed adds.

"Set fire to it—watch 'em burn, I say," Briar says, mumbling through his cigarette. He looks up to the washed-out sky that's getting darker and darker. "Rain'll clean up the mess, douse the flames when we're done."

"And you?" Stern asks Pelton. "What's your take on all this?"

Pelton glances at Lake before telling Stern, "1st platoon won't make it to the second ridge if something doesn't change. I won't order them across this time."

That so? Stern says only with his damp, wrung-out looking face. He turns from the lieutenant, who lets out a silent breath, and says, "It'd make our job easier, wouldn't it? Letting our boys in the sky blow 'em all up, and we can keep our dainty toes out of the mud. Only there's a problem with that, and it's that our friends 10th Air-Cav are unhappy with how things are going. Losing one falcon is grounds to give up the fight, according to the 10th OIC. He made one thing clear, and that's his people don't fly until we clear 449 of ack-ack. That too is gonna be an issue because we can't knock out emplacements if we can't see 'em—especially if these Covies are using small-arms. Thing is he says Shield needs to go in first, while the rest of you are saying it's Air-Cav that needs to. So we're at a standstill, folks." Lake doesn't think Stern looks displeased with 10th's reluctance to fly—she thinks he never wanted them along anyway, that Stern couldn't be happier that the Covies killed a falcon. "449 needs to be taken—in spite of insistence that it can't be done—and soon. I am open to suggestions because it's getting late; Shield's gotta move somewhere, if not forward."

"And not backwards?" Reed says.

"No way. We've made it this far, we're not giving up this ground. It's not a bad position to hold—better if it were the second ridge, but not a bad position. We'll make it work. You'll see."

"So that leaves the left and right flanks," Reed says.

Briar says, "Ain't keen on heading on through the jungle. Not where Sword bought it."

"How bad was it?" Stern asks Reed.

"Massacre, sir. Can't be too sure there aren't any survivors, but it sure doesn't look that way. Whatever happened happened quick. Some tried to run—didn't make it far. Most of the boys were still on the road, they never got a chance to get to cover," Reed says. "Best as I could tell, grenades knocked out the warthogs, trapping 'em in place, then Sword took it from sniper fire coming from all directions. It was coordinated if I ever saw coordination before."

There's a sickening light Lake sees that comes into Stern's eyes when Reed shrinks into his story. He doesn't look ecstatic that the Covies slaughtered 906th men, but there's something greedy in the way he gorges on the details Reed dredges up. Something more than rapt attention—there's too much damn thinking all over Stern's face. Planning ahead like how a murderer thinks it through days before the deed, fantasizing.

"So you won't lead the assault up 449, Briar?" Stern asks.

"Not like this. Not without air support," he replies.

"Then I suppose the only options we got left are this way and that." Stern points left and right of the hill. "And Shield is not sitting still."

"Both ways could wipe us out, sir," Reed says. "And for what?"

"Already went over this, Sergeant. 112th's still waiting."

"Maybe. Think I know how they think, the 112th. A crack outfit like that—and trust that I been alongside a few of them—if they can't be found it's a good possibility they don't want to be."

"So, what, LeFae's sending us on a goose chase?"

"Could be they were out here once. A week's a long time, though."

"You think they're dead."

"Or they aren't. Might even be another reason why the spook wants them found."

Stern ponders this a moment—they all do. It's preposterous but not unheard of, bands of rogues or deserters. Stern says anyway, "Either we find them or we don't. That comes later. All that I care about is beating that storm up the hill. We do it for those who couldn't or can't continue the struggle. They got us this far; it's only right."

His words rub against the nape of Lake's neck. They're hollow words that sound electric and probably crackle because the others nod their heads solemnly or twitch, but Lake doesn't. Stern gave that order to charge—they can't turn back now because it'd be for nothing, that ritual sacrifice; blood fed to the yearning grass a tithe to traverse the tolling passage that spit them back out. He's a preacher.

"We're going through the jungle," Stern continues. He has his folded-over map in his hands, a holy tool he uses—abides by. He's so wrapped up in topographical lines like verse, it's all he sees. "We'll forge through the left flank. We'll go extra wide, try to get around any ambush that might be waiting for us."

"We're at less strength than Sword was going in," Reed says. "Recon will go in first. Make sure the route's clear."

"We go in with everybody. Shield doesn't sit around."

"It's suicide," Lake says. Reed bites his tongue for her.

"As for reinforcements, I've spoken to Captain Alley—I'm pulling men from Charlie. They'll assist in the manoeuvre," Stern says, unimpeded. "Elements from Dog company are coming up from HQ bearing supplies and equipment. They'll stay until the hill's ours. Any questions?"

Everybody has some. Nobody asks them. They stare at the mud, steal looks at each other underneath Stern's nose-up glare.

"Then we move in one hour. Dismissed." Before they all walk in separate directions, Stern reaches out towards Pelton and says, "A minute, Lieutenant."

They move to the rear of the line, away from the rest of the men, and Stern tells him, "You performed fine out there, Ben."

Pelton says nothing.

"I'm relieving you of your command of 1st platoon."

"I understand, sir."

"You like Charlie company, don't you? Those are your boys. You'll stay on the line with them here. Back with your people again."

"Thank you, sir."

"Through no fault of your own, Ben—you didn't do anything wrong. It was a tough order to carry out, I know that. Shield company just needs a different kind of soul than yours. A man like Briar, you see, he's got zeal! That's what I need in this unit. What we're fighting, Ben, is a crusade of wills. We've got to be able to go all in because they are—by God they are! They've got no qualms with that sort of thing. It's in their culture; in their blood, that drive. You've seen it. I have too. If they weren't killing us with it, you almost have to admire it, that readiness to die for what they believe, and man, they are some goddamned believers! And even now, even so, it's something you can't take from them as hard as you try. You'd never know they're demoralized, the way they keep coming. Maybe we show that kind of fortitude too but I don't know—hard to tell from here sometimes. If we don't, we should. Because what are we without spirit, Ben? Nothing."

"Of course, sir," Pelton says. "I'm sorry, sir."

This makes Stern pause, and in a rare admission to Pelton that makes the lieutenant feel like he's suddenly trespassing, he tells him, "No, I'm sorry, Ben. You're a fine soldier, I'm sure. It was me. I dug myself a hole. Filled it up behind me, I was that confident. So deep and so dark, only way out is to hit China. That's the only way out. We'll keep going. We'll break through soon. Soon."

"Who'll replace me?" Pelton asks after a while.

"I don't know yet."

"If you'll have it, I'll put in a recommendation for Sergeant Lake. She's a good man, Captain."

"I'll take it into consideration," Stern says. "Thanks, Ben."

"Good luck, sir."

They shake hands, and Pelton heads back towards the line. Stern stands around for a bit, staring all the way up Hill 449 as if he's reaffirming his devotion to the path he dictated himself. They are grim, nervous eyes he can pop out and keep hidden in his pocket when he wants—he will again when he returns to the men on the ridge but for now he allows them to remain seeing and seen. Nobody notices, though. He's always alone.

Sergeant Lake sits in the grass beside Thompson who's smoking and still garrotting his fingertip with a weed. She left without saying anything to Reed but she can't avoid him forever inside this tiny bubble of hushed men and the sergeant first class eventually approaches the two. He does it like he doesn't want to and both Lake and Thompson know why.

"How are you two doing?" Reed asks.

"Still alive, aren't we?" Lake says.

"Yeah."

"So who isn't?" she asks. "That's why you're here, right?"

The utilitarian swipe of his hand is mechanical and without any more delay because he's done it lots before: Reed reaches into his mag pouch, something clinks against something else, and he withdraws a fist with three tags. He has to sort them out and untangle them before giving one to Lake and two to Thompson; they belonged to Captain Moyer (his tags still say Lieutenant) and the marines Putnam and Meagre. They stare at them in their hands.

"Sorry," Reed says.

Thompson tells him, "Thanks, Reed. For doing this."

Lake also nods her thanks, but then she gets to her feet. For a minute she looks like she's lost, like she wandered into the wilderness for a moment and only now realizes she took a wrong turn someplace back there. Thompson and Reed don't know whether to leave her alone or get her to sit back down, if she's about to fall over or not. She takes off soon after and just walks in a muddled line away, thankfully, from the front.

"That's rough—about your pals," Reed says to Thompson after lighting a cigarette. He takes a seat too while they stare at the sky slipping into indigo above the wafting grass. "They weren't part of your squad, were they?"

"My squad's headed home," Thompson says. "Those boys were from George company. Maybe some of the last surviving few. Don't know what the number's like now."

"God dammit." Reed feels like it's respectful to shake his head while saying this. They share smoke and loathing for a moment. "Did you know them well?"

"Probably the same as how you knew Sword company." Thompson holds up the marines' tags. "Reed, this is two. Nobody's brought up the hundred on your side of things to your face. Isn't right for me to be moping when I'm a passenger in this."

"We're all damn passengers in this."

"Well I've had my time to grieve, at any rate. Mourned for Fifth well enough."

"Hell did you have time to grieve? You been fighting for your life ever since you got here. Covie's been hounding you day and night," Reed says. "You haven't grieved for shit."

"Fifth will be strong again, and the idea of that pleases me more than you know. If that's it, if it ends with them, the only thing left to do is rebuild."

Neither of them say, but that's not it—Putnam and Meagre were not it—Thompson's still around and for how much longer Reed doesn't even want to tempt by thinking about. Man talks like he's disembodied, like it's already over for him. He's among those left behind in the valley; he's already buried himself. Probably eulogized and grieved for himself while he was grieving for Fifth, getting all of it out of the way, all at once. Reed's talking to a ghost who's whittled down and already laid to rest. He's indistinguishable from the Sword company men that Reed remembers lying in piles, and for a moment Reed is jealous.

"Still think this fight isn't yours?" he hears Thompson say, like he's testing him. "Got a reason clearer than any other now? Do you find you believe?"

Reed doesn't say anything or look over. He doesn't know if Thompson really said all that.

There's this stiff opening where there's no sound and Reed tromps in after much contemplation, the kind of firm march that brings his knees to his chest: "You still thinkin' about dying?" he asks.

"When it's convenient," Thompson says.

"You comforted by it? By what's after?"

"Haven't thought about that much."

"I don't think I believe you."

"I don't need an after to get what I want."

"What's in the first part that's so great?" Reed says. "That makes everybody go crazy for it? It's a disease—contagious and airborne. You been around it two weeks, probably longer. I have too. What is it you want? Peace?"

"No such thing as a peaceful exit out here," Thompson says. "A good death doesn't mean peaceful, not to people like you and me. You know that. —Why're you asking, Reed? What's got itself into your head?"

"I told you I never wanted to get too invested, too caught up," Reed says. "When I was out there, I sat with those dead boys in Sword."

"You want the Covenant to answer for that."

"Good enough reason to want some kind of retribution, I guess. Make 'em hurt. But also I found myself thinkin', fuckin' waste. Them who died. Played kind of a part," Reed says to Thompson. "Think I see you feel the emptiness in death. It's a dour fuckin' thing and you're okay with that. You bleed, you're bleeding for a reason and it isn't absolution, 'least not the universal sense of it. You die, that's it for you."

"Yeah."

"Amazes me."

Thompson doesn't reply, just listens.

"Didn't see beauty in it, Sword, not like how they want you to. Didn't see beauty and I tried. Lying there, they were lost—wandering. Feel like I want them to get to the place they're going, even if I don't know where that is. But I want it to exist—something at least, waiting. Might give this whole thing purpose for being the way it is, so terrible. I mean not for myself, that place, but for them's who need it. Everybody's got their reason, right? I'm hoping for the best for 'em, hoping maybe they're right. Hope they got what they wanted."

Thompson finally says, "If I die, it'd be for them." He gestures spaceward and Reed imagines he's thinking about the strong-chinned ships carrying his marine unit safely home, his battered, bleeding boys. "And it'd be for you—your people here on the line. That is a worthy sacrifice, isn't it? It'd be right, I think. Proper."

"Pup, don't you dare do it for us 'cause you think we'd look to it fondly," Reed snaps. "Already got enough people getting killed for no good goddamn reason."

Thompson says nothing for a while. Then he rises and starts in the direction Lake stumbled off to. He says, "I'm gonna check on the sergeant."

"Should probably give her space," Reed warns.

Lake didn't walk far, just ducked into the trees farther down the hill where she thought they couldn't hear her. Here she stooped, hands on her gut and across her mouth, and let out something worse than irrepressible vomit—a sob, feral and forbidden. She said she wouldn't. She said it over and over and over she wouldn't.

When Thompson finds her, he doesn't intrude because she shouldn't be intruded upon. She's mourning the loss of Moyer, he knows. He slides down a few respectful metres away and forces himself to hear. It's a terrible sound that's coming from Lake, her grief barbed with a deeper kind of anguish because she's bearing it all by herself—because she feels the need to. She can't share it with the people under her command, she especially. She doesn't have that privilege, she's been told over and over and over.

This is loss, Thompson determines. Loss not perverted by utility. Lake isn't crying because the unit is missing an officer; she isn't crying because she is expected to show outrage at the goddamned Covenant for taking him; she's crying because she simply feels the lack. Of Moyer, the things that made him real to her: the movement of his fingertips, his summertime eyes that glowed a sunburn orange and said yes, I lived—she could feel his life then, wonderful and glorious and pulsing. No more. This is loss. It is stripped of layers of feeble justification (he died a soldierly death); it is the raw, painful way someone misses another.

Thompson wishes he could stay here with Lake but he feels Putnam and Meagre, restless, tugging at his sleeves, urging him to get back to the line. He doesn't deserve this respite. He deserves to die, like them.

#

Stern decides on 1st platoon's new CO: Nehrada Atwal from Charlie company. She's already a lieutenant, so someone in her old platoon will be getting a promotion. When she transfers, she nearly dismantles her company because Stern asked her to take with her any willing men to serve as replacements in Shield. It's a calculated move on the captain's part; for the chance to be a part of Stern's fighting unit—the illustrious Shield company, by God!—there are more than enough volunteers and some disappointed men are even turned away. The original Shield members treat these newcomers icily, as if they are a different breed, these bastard adoptees, but now the company is full up again and it's as if they never lost a single man.

Elements from Dog company arrive in pelicans and start working on the ridge, digging in with shovels and pickaxes—a forward trench for machinegun emplacements and infantry, then support trenches and mortar pits. They bring up new warthogs for Shield company to hop into, fresh water, and fresh supplies. Headed back, the pelicans load up the wounded and dead Shield soldiers together—the wounded men put up with the dead smell, anything to get off the line and back to HQ.

Stern watches them go with what looks like a sneer like they wasted his time and this is what they get, the goddamn slackers. He's got a rifle underneath his arm and it looks so odd there, like he's holding it for someone else. But he's leading from the front this time—he's no coward. He's no coward.

While Lake secures her things inside her warthog, she looks out at Thompson who's staring up at the top of Hill 449. It towers above him, insurmountable and black, sucking up the last of the light behind it. There's a groan of thunder that seems to shoot up from the dirt, something trying to thrash its way out of a tomb under this desecrated ground and vibrations grip her ankles. She smells the warm, rising smell of rain about to descend on them, Stern's warning like prophesy. But she also doesn't forget Thompson's warning, his urging and his worry, that this hill—and all that it should bring—is just death. He turns his head and sees Lake, gives her a look of skeletal longing—she knows what he's longing for. He would climb that black hill if she wasn't there to stop him. She doesn't break her stare because she thinks he'll slip away if she does. But it chills her when she doesn't see somebody lost in his eyes, but instead a man more determined to be set free and you, his gaze stabs, you are my shackler. You, his gaze stabs again, are the one in a stupor and can't see. What do you know? What is it you think you know? She knows what he wants. She doesn't know what she wants. It is just him watching her now, but he is one of them, maybe. She knows they watch her and they wait for her to fuck up. They have hungry eyes like Stern's.

Dog company waves goodbye to Shield a second time when they head off the line towards the jungle. There aren't enough warthogs so most of them move on foot with the vehicles bringing up the front and the rear of the convoy. They march for what seems like an hour, all following a pair of taillights that bounce up and down in the dark. Branches snag their uniforms and whip across their faces. Weeds and roots do their best to trip them up, they're unruly and troublesome—this valley is troublesome.

The first plasma bolt streaks across the trail high and stray like a territorial warning shot, a rocking-chair snarl from some hick shotgun. The leaves are so bushy some men don't even see it shining in the night but it's there and gone, and those who did see it instantly run for cover. The rest of the company imitate them more out of confusion; they leap to either side of the trail and lie down. There are fallen trees or natural depressions that some soldiers crawl behind and into. Stern jumps from his warthog and stomps up and down the trail, shouting at his people to stand the hell up. The next shot is from a carbine that just misses Stern but give him some credit, he stays resiliently cool under fire. He faces where the shot came from and he thrusts a hand towards there and howls out to Shield, "Shoot back, god dammit!"

The warthog gunners spray down the jungle they can't really see; their tracers rocket through the dark at all angles, crisscrossing, bouncing viciously off the dirt ground and wide trees. Someone swears he sees a green glow up above and turns his gun on the tangled treetops—the canopy rips apart and frosty moonlight breathes through the gash like a relieved sigh. The company non-coms scramble onto the trail and wave their men to come forward and fire their weapons. The men don't know what they're shooting at so they shoot where the LAAG gunners shoot.

One man, a replacement from Charlie, gets hit; he made a dash for cover behind one of the warthogs and partway there they get him twice. Carbine rounds spurt through the back of his vest, knocking him over into the ditch behind the trail. He lies there, gasping; it's too dark where he is and some men have to forage through the bushes on their hands and knees to find him.

When a gunner's head whips back and he falls across the roll bar and starts to bleed all down the windshield in front of everyone, Stern points at the man nearest to him and tells him to get up onto that gun there. The soldier hesitates and looks at his squad mates but everyone looks down or into the jungle and keeps on firing and then Stern yells "Get fuckin' moving!" so he does. He's shaking so bad somebody needs to help him climb into the truck bed, shoving his useless legs up and over one at a time, and once he's behind the gun he throws up a little down the front of his collar. He starts shooting but stops a few seconds later because plasma hits the warthog and a brilliant, smouldering glob smears across his arm—he drops the grips of the gun like he's been stung. He screams and thrashes and when his squad mates tug him from the truck bed and help him down to the ground he says over and over, "I did what he said, didn't I? Can't nobody say I didn't do it!"

Stern crouches down and pats him on the shoulder while medics trot over and he tells him he was no coward. SFC Reed taps one of his own men on the back of his helmet and orders him to get on the vacant gun. Better nerves, this Recon man has, and he hops behind the LAAG without question, gets low and puts rounds downrange.

Reed sidles over and says to Stern, "This is a bad spot, sir. Completely out in the open—they'll try to get around us if they don't just pick us off from there."

"You see where those shots are coming from, Reed? Well I do! I see 'em!" Stern says back. "Flanking move worked! They're wild shots, Reed! They're wild animals, got their claws out at us! We'll take a few scratches but we got them on the defensive now! Only a matter of time before they fold!"

"And how long will that be?" This is all Reed says before he purses his lips. Despite what you think, Stern, we are finite—this company of ours. We can be wiped out. I know that now.

Stern calls lieutenants Atwal and Briar to where he is and they get down behind the warthog. He tells them, "Covies are putting on a lightshow for us. Look out there. Where are those shots going? Maybe we got them suppressed—can't let that go to waste. We'll surround 'em and wipe them out. I need about twelve men to head around—anyone you choose. Briar? Atwal?"

Lieutenant Briar is still quiet. He moves with a downtrodden shabbiness about him like he's drunk, the life sucked from him. He's moved this way since the failed charge earlier. When Stern looks at him now, he stares at the ground and refuses to give up any names—like he's being interrogated. Like he's got something to hold onto that Stern wants to take. Briar was there from the start of Shield company. He knew the men he led today, heard their betrayed cries all around him as he lay in the wet, red sorghum grass that seeped into his uniform and stained it. He drowned in it.

Atwal, the newcomer, looks to her people like they are playing cards. Theirs are plastic faces and numbers; they have a system of comparative worth and it is a strategic gamble, this manoeuvre, so she chooses a safe choice from her hand: "I'll send 1st squad, sir. They'll be more than enough to get the job done." There is no real malice in her watery brown eyes, she has just heard the stories of Shield—she has bought into Stern's version of Shield: accomplishers of incredible things during training. Oh, the stories she heard! They are why she is here, leading the platoon. 1st squad, Lake's squad, has had zero casualties so far in this fight, and that's what she heard before taking over the platoon. That's why she's sending them through the darkened jungle—they are battle-tested now. She wants to please Stern.

At the mention of 1st squad, Reed says quickly to Stern, "I volunteer to take Recon around, sir. Leave 1st squad on the line. We're more useful out there than stuck here."

Lieutenant Atwal frowns. She doesn't like being second-guessed. Neither does Stern, so in his way he sticks up for her; he tells Reed, "Lieutenant's made her decision, Sergeant. Lake's fully capable of leading 1st squad in this."

"I don't mind, Reed—I'll do it." Lake is nearby; she's heard everything.

"Lake..."

"I don't mind."

"We'll cover you with smoke," Stern says. "You move into position and the moment I hear you shooting, we'll all press in. That clear? We don't give the Covies a moment to breathe."

Reed just looks at Lake but she doesn't look at him. He doesn't know what's changed. Briar, Lake, Thompson, they're all just husks walking around. Reed doesn't want her out there how she is but Lake moves past him and begins to gather up her squad and Stern stands in his way, indomitable. So Reed heads down the column of troops and warthogs still putting sporadic return fire into the trees and finds Thompson. He says to him, "Lake's been called up. She isn't taking Moyer's death so well."

"I know," Thompson says.

"I'm worried."

Thompson looks down the trail. "Did I miss 'em?"

"You keep her head down out there," Reed says. "Keep her safe, Pup. I mean that."

"I'm not sure that I can, Reed."

Reed grabs Thompson's arm. "This isn't about you. If you die before she does—" In the glare of some headlights, Reed sees the bandage he tugged on—it's dripping. "Jesus! Pup! You shoulda gotten the fuck out of here."

"You might be right about that."

Reed looks back over at Lake and Stern, unsure of what to do now. Thompson starts off, struggling a little to pull his rifle from his shoulder. Reed walks a step ahead of him and mutters, "Just drop the damn thing. You shouldn't be going. Should be me."

But it's not his decision to make. Soon Stern says go, and a handful of men chuck smoke grenades as far as they can. The thick clouds boil over and spill through the jungle, shimmering, almost blinding, where there are beams of direct light, and on Stern's order, Shield company hastily opens fire all down the line for a brief mad minute. The incoming plasma fire falls away, and there's a hush that's so complete after Stern orders them to stop, it's like they killed them all already. They watch the bulging smoke, rifles poised.

"Sergeant Lake, get moving, please," Lieutenant Atwal says.

There's a sound like wind nudging past foliage that only Reed is sure he heard. He says urgently, "Wait. Stop." Lake does, and Atwal shoots Reed with an impatient glare, but he remains still, listening.

Then the splash of a puddle strikes the entire company and it sounds like glass shattering, it's so jagged they all feel it.

Reed shouts for everyone to take cover and a volley of plasma bolts and carbine fire slams into the column of warthogs or whizzes past overhead. Some men cry out from the agonizing heat or the burns they suffer when plasma kicks up all around them. Then the Covies come out from the smoke screaming, all of them just screaming. They unleash their throaty wails and screeches and thunder forward, firing right up close only metres away.

Recon, at Reed's say so, all hurl grenades into the smoke at staggered distances. They snatch up their rifles and hold the line as the detonations tear through the jungle. So full of hate, they come with claws and teeth and Covie rifle-butts.

Shield company fires in desperate bursts but half of them need to reload. The others switch to full-auto and rend the oncoming force for about a second before the weight of it crashes into the armoured column and the positions before it. Lake and Thompson get low and unload on whatever; the skirmishers who bound on top of the warthogs—they're shot down and they roll off, claws grabbing for and slashing at nothing. One takes a gunner out with him, tackling him off the truck bed and they both crash into the ditch behind the trail. They hear the soldier choking out and screaming "Help me! Help me! He's fucking killing me!" and some men jump in after him and begin to kick and pound the jabbering skirmisher with the butts of their rifles until it crawls off shakily and tries to scramble on out of the ditch, but they pull it back down with them and break its bones. They're so frenzied and caught up in the chaotic beating, they're all shouting and sobbing. They can't help it.

There's an elite officer in the middle of the charge, holding his sword high above his head and howling as he rushes towards them doggedly. With one huge swing, he hews the head off a soldier caught out in the open, running back to the warthogs. The elite, so full of hate that it came to kill them with its monster hands, keeps racing towards Reed's men—keeps screaming. The red blood on its moonlit helmet trickles down its awful, flapping squid jaw.

Its plating crackles and sparks as rifle fire flits off its shield. Reed keeps shooting until all he thinks about is the round that's finally going to take it down, but the way the crazed squid is soaking up his ammunition, Reed worries that that bullet won't be found in one of his mag pouches. The elite ignores the men ducked down in the low bushes before the trail and charges right up to the warthogs. It doesn't get any farther because a stream of gleaming needles sputters out from the line, sticks into its chest, and magenta fire a moment later gushes from its split ribcage. Reed doesn't see him, but he knows it was Horowitz who killed the elite—he found the kid a couple full magazines of the stuff earlier, taken from the cut down jackal troops on the riverbed.

Even though the Covie officer is gone, the skirmishers and jackals continue to stumble forward out of the smoke until there's a mounting, dead pile of them all the way up to the trail and the warthogs there. Every so often another will appear, dragging its feet, and almost wait to be killed by Shield—they've just stopped firing altogether now, given up. All that's left are the rifle cracks from the line but even these are beginning to peter out when no more show up, and then there is just silence except for those buzzing and chirping jungle noises, continuing as if tonight was a calm, breezy evening like any other.

Shield dazedly regroups and the men breathe in and out together, the short, fierce Covie charge having shaken them all. They ask each other if they are doing okay, and they reply they are a few times, as if they don't quite believe it themselves. The medics work on the groaning wounded and grimace quietly. One man kind of walks around mumbling "Jesus... Jesus... Jesus..." to himself and anyone nearby who'll listen. Captain Stern speaks with his lieutenants, clutching his rifle underneath his arm. He was right up there with the men, putting down Covies. Everyone saw him.

Reed, meanwhile, approaches the deflated body of the Covie officer and shoves it with a toe. It's limp, of course, but Reed stares down at it, at its face and squid jaw that has gone restfully slack and he asks it, "What'd you get out of that, you son of a bitch?"

Then from the smoke comes, carried on belaboured night gusts, the rhythmic sound of impact—the sound of something heavy hitting the ground. They come at unpredictable intervals, the silence unperturbed by anyone from Shield listening. There's a metallic ringing sometimes that accompanies the blow. Shield company gets back into cover and readies its weapons, their hearts all thumping too fast.

A rifle shot barks out and Stern roars, "Hold your fire!" Everyone looks at each other and repeats the order down the line, but Reed comes over to Stern, keeping low, and tells him the shot didn't come from us. It was in there. He motions into the smoke. There is another blast, then another. This time they see muzzle flash for a second. Stern seems confused, but there is nothing Shield can do but wait—the smoke is already beginning to curl and dilute, the night winning through again in patches.

There is a flutter of movement and everyone sees what is definitely a person strolling towards them. They understand what the noise they heard earlier was when this stranger stands over a quivering, bleeding jackal, raises a sledgehammer high in the air and brings it down on its face. It lands, but the first blow doesn't always kill (just shatters teeth and skin)—it takes another to pulverize the skull and the moment before is achingly long and painful to watch. Everyone jumps at the shocking sound. Nobody seems to breathe after this.

It's a woman who comes near, dragging her pulpy hammer; they see her yellow hair pulled back behind an impromptu, olive headband and they are surprised. She's imposingly tall, the kind of build that makes her lumber instead of walk. When she heads right into the line and passes by the Shield men who stand aside to let her through, Reed can see why she looks so bulky. Overtop her combat vest, there are steel plates welded together that form a sort of heavy cuirass across her torso and Reed can recognize markings that usually go on the outside of an HEV pod.

The first thing she says is: "You're not marines. A lot of dead marines we found." She has a brogue that's both coarse and cursive; she talks in languorous, deliberate sentences, and everyone clings to each word that seems to hum at the end. She stops in front of Reed and asks suspiciously, "Who are you?"

Stern walks over and says to her "We're with the 906th. The Highwayman. I'm Captain Stern."

She doesn't even turn to look at him. "Never heard of you."

"What's your name, trooper?"

"Boadicea," she replies, savouring the husky word like she's releasing it into the air in a thick, wafting puff. "That's what m' mates have taken to calling me, over the years. I am captain of these Rifles here."

Reed doesn't take his eyes from hers (they're big and cloudy eyes that can abduct you if you're not careful) but everyone else turns to see about a platoon of men emerging from the dying wisps of smoke. Dressed similarly to their CO, they look like thick mountain people with unshaven faces and ratty uniforms and mismatched gear. Some wear full-faced helmets, others berets, their leering faces black with dark grease so only their teeth show. Rifle blasts still go off intermittently towards the rear of their very incoherent formation, and these shots ring and waver and sound deathly.

"We are the 112th, Captain Stern," Bo tells him. "We are ODST."

At the mention of the lost 112th, some exhausted grins break out among the men of Shield company. They clap each other on the shoulders. Found them, they smile.

"Well thank god," Stern says. "We've been lookin' for you—all of you. We got orders to get your people back to HQ, so whenever you're ready—"

"We are not leaving, Captain," Bo says slowly, amused, like she just heard a stale joke.

"What do you mean?"

"Nobody is leaving. Not you, not me, not any of our people. We've had a few setbacks, and we are fewer, yes, but everything is working in our favour once more, Captain. We've been tracking these Covenant for hours—this was a scouting party you beat up. The rest are on the move through this jungle, marching south-east from here. Hundreds strong in a column that's miles long, with light armour and weapons crews toting big, big guns as well. I assume you've got men posted south-east from here. Is that correct?"

With a start, Reed speaks up. "They're headed around Hill 449—sir, they're going to encircle Dog and Charlie. We have to get back and help."

"You willnae do such a thing, Sergeant," Bo snaps. "As I said, nobody is leaving."

"They'll be overrun. Slaughtered."

Stern says to the woman captain, "All right, you listen up—"

"T'is our deaths, or theirs," she says. She looks at both of them, shifting her sticky gaze from man to man. "You will help me, Sergeant, Captain, because our mission is vital—the cause more than just. Such a duty demands blood be shed, but we are already anemic, we few. If we're to face a veteran battalion of Covenant on this, they will decimate us, cut us down to the last man. But if we succeed, do what needs be done—without hindrance—we will them. We will devastate them. This is my promise."

The way her wild-looking men march up to Shield, pressing in and suffocating with their statures and slightly raised rifles, Reed doesn't believe this wild-looking woman, Boadicea, would let any of them go if they wanted.

#

They follow Boadicea (her men call her Bo) and the 112th Helljumpers through the jungle, all of Shield and its replacements, and she leads them to an abandoned mineshaft that was probably out of use long before the war. There's a dusty gift shop near the entrance and everything is boarded or gated up. Before the hike, she and her men made each Shield soldier surrender their radio equipment and she sliced the transmitters off their helmets with her Helljumper knife. Stern was the only one who was allowed to keep his intact—he and Boadicea walked at the head of the group and spoke to each other, and by the end of it he told her he wouldn't raise anyone on the radio and he meant it. That worried Reed.

Some of the men from the 112th stand guard around a thick gate that seals off the shaft but Bo takes them right through and they file down the musty tunnel. She tells the men to get comfortable anywhere they'd like, then she, Stern, and Reed (she requested the sergeant to join her specifically) all enter an antechamber off to the side.

She lights a tired kerosene lamp and wordlessly orders both men to sit at a scratched up, museum-piece picnic bench that's also here and they do—they take a seat and tuck in their legs meekly while she circles the antechamber. With a click and a pull of a strap, her armour plates fall to the cavern floor and clatter like a juggling accident of pots and pans. Freed of this weight, she stretches out and joins the two Shield men at the bench. The lamp rattles and nearly goes out when she plunks down.

"This one has doubts," Bo says to Stern while motioning towards Reed. "I can see it in that dour little face."

"He just needs to hear the reasoning. He needs convincing—like I did," Stern says. "Go on, though. He's listening."

"The mission," Bo says, "is not a complicated one. It'll be considerably less difficult, now that you're all here. We could've done it two weeks ago with the strength we had then, one whole company of ODSTs—my company. They were tough, hard boys, but a week of this fighting weeded the weak from the tough; and the second cut the tough from the unbreakable. We're still standing, 's you can see. All that's left from two-hundred pairs of boots that rained from that starry, starry night."

"What went wrong?" Reed asks.

"Someone had misjudged the troop deployments of the Covenant underneath the canopy—was blind like us, pretending he wasn't. But it wasn't him shooting towards the surface. The moment we landed, when the doors blew open, they threw themselves upon us. There were boys who died still buckled into their seats, died with their rifles' safeties still on. We were supposed to land quiet, hit hard, and make it back to friendly territory—all before dawn. We could do none of those things, the way it was so completely fucked from the start. We were cut off from the marine division, so we set out to find this rusty old haunt we knew was here." Her eyes graze the low ceiling. "The Covenant haven't come knocking—down here they cannot track us. We are ghosts."

"5th Armoured lost a lot of people looking for you," Reed says.

"They bungled through the bush, the marines. Big tanks, loud guns. They had all the Covenant come down on them and us, so much so that I lost half my Rifles trying to link up with those boys in green. They were never there when they were supposed to be—always fell a little short while we waited so patiently. And then there was just Covenant all over, and we fought and died getting back here to the mine—four times this happened. We were weary of it, coming back to these tunnels lesser and lesser each time. The toll it takes on you I'm sure you have an understanding of the same as I do, Sergeant."

Reed just stares at her.

She continues, "We believe in the mission and we do not fear death, any of us. Even if we fail, there is no greater way to pass on through than how we're choosing to."

"And the mission?"

"Is what it's always been about, this war," Bo says. "Killing Covenant. Taking from those sons of bitches a thousand times over what was taken from us."

"If you're out to kill Covie, not much we can do crawling around in the dark, jumping at shadows. We should've pushed backwards. Could've beaten 'em back to the hill—failing that, HQ," Reed says. "Think we could've. Then regrouped. Set out again with a force much larger, more armoured, than what we've got now—we're a damn raggedy group. If this really does mean as much to you as you say."

"They will surround us and crush us when they catch up. You're not making it back to your people until I say we're done here, and I swear it's for the benefit of the men we're sheltering right now. Your Shield company."

"Sir," Reed says to Stern, "you realize once 449 falls—what's left of Charlie and Dog on the ridge, a hundred men between 'em maybe—we'll be cut off from HQ. All Covie's got to do is push down and remove us from Cassandra for good. We're too fragmented already. But if we all rally at HQ, we can weather an attack like the one Bo described that's comin'. It's a big, open space Covie light armour needs to cross halfway to even get into killing range and God help those jack soldiers who're supposed to follow along—sharpshooters and rocket batteries'll put 'em down so fast and so far away me and you won't even need to fire off a round before it's all over."

"I understand that, but this is more important," Stern says.

"The least you could do is radio Colonel Mattis."

"I'm not gonna to do that, Reed."

"Why the hell not?"

"I said, this is—"

"Don't you fuckin' throw Charlie and Dog away like 2nd platoon," Reed says. "Don't you dare."

Bo says, "Sergeant, what you propose is a gamble with much, much more to be lost. The fact of the matter is, the Covenant march swiftly. T'also means there's a bit of distance between them and where we're trying to get to. It's an advantage we must make the most of. If we finish this mission, there'll be no more battles for Cassandra. No more human losses because of this world."

"How can you possibly think that's true?"

"It could be a turning point in this war, what we're about to do."

Reed puts on a face that is impassive and defiant, but his silence is something he's been forced into because he can't think of anything else to say to Stern in protest. So he waits for Bo to continue and she smiles at him, a kind of laborious tug of her upper lip that teeters on a sneer depending on the angle you look at it.

"We have a weapon," Bo says, "given to us by Naval Intelligence. They said you hit that objective and you don't leave Cassandra until you do. They said you hit Jackpot or you die getting there—doesn't matter who you lose or how many, they said, you get that package there. They'll be watching so you better do it, they said. Doesn't matter who I've lost—how many—I've got t' get that package there. I just do."

"They gave you a bomb."

"More cruel." Bo says this with that smile. "There's a cavern about an hour from here, and inside it there's a natural spring. This is where we've got to go. We fight our way there, fight our way inside, deliver the thing, and then get out. Should not be too heavily guarded because I don't think the Covenant know what they're sitting on, themselves."

"It's a spring? Flowing? Not a still cesspool?" Reed says. "'Cause if you're planning on poisoning Covie, it won't work."

"Take me at my word. I'll make you a believer, Sergeant. You'll see things my way, before this war ends."

"Do you even know what it is you got with you? What it does?"

"It's chemistry. I know what to expect."

"Devastation, you said."

"Ye."

Reed says, "And my people are gonna die for you. All for you."

"You care about your men—your brothers-in-arms—I know. But what about your people back home? Who d'you care more about, Sergeant? When all's said."

"I won't answer that."

"These are fighting men. If they die, they'll have died fighting. Your actions today will make it all worth something. Their sacrifice, all worth something."

"But it's not up to you," Reed says. "It shouldn't be up to you."

"Why not me?" Bo asks. "D'you not think me worthy to lead? Make decisions? Or d'you think me not qualified enough? That I haven't suffered enough?" Reed says nothing, so Bo says, "Me, I am one woman, but I do my part, equal to what's been done back—shooting 'em. Stabbing 'em. Skinning 'em. Burning 'em. Inflicting as much hurt on them as they have on us, and it's a tall order. They are many—and they have taken so much."

Reed says, "Everyone's suffered by Covie."

"Have they like me? Have they lost everything that makes a person whole?"

Many, Reed suspects. But he chooses not to interrupt.

"Then they'll look like me. Be like me," Bo says. "A woman so deeply scorned all that I am is resolve. The Covenant, they are not animals—they do not deserve pardon for having simple natures like lesser beings. They are monsters who come from some hell and I give myself whole—for I am resolve—to the cause of causing the bleed. The little wound that rots or reopens again and again because I am there and I am alive to pick at and pry apart the flesh and I'll keep on doing this until I am needed no more—until I am no more."

"So why do you need us?" Reed asks. Stern looks like he could kick him in the shin.

"It's still your job to kill Covenant. It's not everyone's, but it's yours. You've got your rifle, boy, and your boots to tromp around in." Bo's fingertips swagger across the tabletop left right left right and her nails click like an old cavalryman with a limp. "And you call yourself a soldier, don't you? Some do, yeah, they call it their profession; but others cry duty—say a soldier's what they must become because it is noble and good and honourable. So which one are you, Sergeant? What kind of man are you? What kind of man d'you think yourself to be?" The way Bo looks at Reed now, he has the urge to get up and start running but she has him pinned with that stare of hers. She gets up and ambles around the side of the table so that she's behind him, and she tells Stern, "Captain, you'll want to inform your men we march in four hours—dead of night. Tell them to sleep. It'll do them good."

Stern nods, shoots Reed a look as if to say don't fuck this up for me, and leaves the room. Reed also shifts to move but he half-expects what's coming and doesn't cry out when Bo's big hand covers half his face and she sets her knife on the table clenched in her fist, blade pointed up, poised to enter through his cheek from below. Her body presses against his and the edge of the table juts into his ribs.

"Not you," Bo says directly into his skull, her bristly, steel-wool voice forcing its way in and keel-hauling his ear canal. "You're staying here with me, boy—I know what you've done. I know it. I've known it the second you walked into m' home missing a man from your section but saying right to m' face you were full up when you weren't, y' sly fuck." Her sooty shadow scored into the wall is a long limbed alien devouring him.

Reed wishes he could say he doesn't know what she's talking about, but she'll probably cut his throat out if he does because he's not stupid and she's crazy. On the walk to the mine, as they moved deeper and deeper into the bush where it was only possible to keep on going by reaching out and touching the man in front of you, Reed fell behind. He slowed his pace to share murmurs with his Recon man, Wyatt, and when it was so thick and so dark around them, Wyatt slipped away into the foliage like a pencil-drop dive into a frigid green lake. Reed hopes he's made it back to the line at 449 safely, because that's what he told him to do. He said to tell them all to run—drop everything and leg it back to HQ while they still could. Reed hopes that Covie didn't get Wyatt on the way there, and he hopes even more that Bo's Helljumpers didn't either. They're wild men who would do anything their wild captain told them to.

"You've killed us," Bo says.

"It was right," Reed rasps, muffled through her finger muzzle.

"It was them or us, and you chose them. You're condemned now. That frightens you. You're just shaking all over." Reed feels the tip of her nose brush by his temple so close he can hear the scrape of her tongue against her front teeth when she speaks the way she does. "I've not met an ODST who was afraid of comin' death."

"Everyone's scared. Just everyone denies it."

"I'm not. My boys aren't. So why are you?" Bo asks. "It puzzles me. You puzzle me."

"Because I'm not like you—not like your people?"

"Because you should be. You've suffered too. This I know." Bo lays down her knife and then her hand slips down the front of his shirt. His combat vest can't protect him from this. He jerks away but she's wrapped around him too tightly, and she's confident she'll find what she knows is there. Her fingernails mount and conquer the jagged ridges that tear across his chest, the craters of glassy skin that sometimes hurt and exist all over his body (in places too where Reed hopes Bo won't discover). Then her sharp, dragging instrument becomes a suffusing warmth as it turns back into a hand and she leaves it in place for a moment, as if to cup his blabbering heart that's spilling out through his ribcage. She croons, "I will not injure you, Sergeant Reed. Not like this, I won't. Just be still for me now."

She closes her eyes and she reads his scars like Braille and she smiles. In her way, she's feeling his life. Not the vibrancy of it or the joyful moments you might remember that proclaimed this was living, but everything else—what the war did to him like it did to her, ravaging every inch as it passed through like a sensational hurricane. They had storm warnings all their lives—had their chance to lose their nerve and run long before it hit—but they faced it down while it flayed them because they were ODSTs. They are both broken in the same way.

"Can't be pain you're scared of," she says. "You're scared of a loss that's greater than this flesh, something you won't even know's missing when it's one day gone."

Reed says, admitting to her, "I got doubts" and Bo understands. She's still holding him in a stiff clinch, but now she puts her hand across his waist where he can see it, and Reed thinks, unsettled, this is a hug.

"Turn around. Look at me," Bo says. Reed does, and she peers down at him. "I won't kill you, Sergeant, for what you did. The Covenant might, but they might not. You're coming with us, that's for certain. You're a survivor. You'll protest and fight against the idea of death 'til the moment comes, and if that gets us to Jackpot, there's hope we'll get this done. We're not heading back to your HQ, so get it out of your head this minute. Focus; listen to what I say. And understand if you cross me again, you are mine to hurt."

Reed nods obediently.

"Get yourself straightened out. I don't care how, just do it," Bo says. "Myself, there's a whole different kind of power I worship. T'won't protect me, but I don't need it to. To it I give myself whole. For I am resolve." The way she says this like it's a reflex, that scratchy whisper, Reed can tell she's said it so much she fully believes it. "Whatever happens, we'll bleed 'em savage. That I promise."

Reed says, "Most of your men are dead. What good's your promise?"

"I did not promise t' bring them home."

When Bo turns away and leaves the room, Reed pulls back his own Helljumper knife from under the table where it was hidden and slips it into its sheath. The blood returns to his trembling knuckles and he watches the flickering kerosene lamp, wary of the monstrous shadow that could return at any moment, growing from the floor.

#

Boadicea's scouts return to where Shield company lies in wait, bounding through the shrubs out of breath. The way they ran through the trees, it took the utmost discipline not to shoot them down as they approached in the dark, they looked ghastly. They find Bo and tell her there's about a platoon's worth of Covenant troops milling around the area between them and the cave, Jackpot. They're random patrols and Bo's confident they can eliminate each one quickly without getting overwhelmed.

Reed sticks close to the 112th ODSTs because Bo told him she wants him by her side at all times. She gave him the canister he has slung across his back now and said he's not to lose it under any circumstances—this is the miracle weapon Bo's counting on to make a difference. He's left Shield Recon under Lake's command and she said she'd do Reed proud but he's not sure what that was supposed to mean. Also perplexing was how Thompson, looking more pasty and ill than the last time he saw him, shook Reed's hand with his sweaty good one and said thanks and so long. Reed said I'll see you later and Thompson said nothing.

When Bo gazes through the trees at the moon, she decides now's a good time and motions to her troops. But the ODSTs don't shoulder their rifles and start off, instead they scrounge around in their rucksacks and Reed witnesses a crazy, practiced ritual that makes him stop and stare. They dig into little baggies with their knives and pass them down the line, snorting the brown, powdery mixture from the tips of their blades or fingernails and the night fills with simpering moans of both pain and satisfaction, whispers that begin to amplify in volume; somebody belts out a high-pitched cackle. Then Bo is upon Reed, her knife to his nostril and she says relax—take it all. He shuts his eyes and does, and with one bump, the upper shoots through his entire body. He grunts and shudders while Bo brushes off his nose with her dusty thumb then sticks it in her mouth into her gums, grinning, shaking too.

She moves down the line and gets to a knee to help out a man with spotted, blackened forearms, his rolled up sleeves revealing a network of deadened veins. She gets Reed to hold up a flashlight while the man undoes his belt and pulls down his pants, and with two unsteady hands Bo steers a hypo needle to the base of his penis. The man's leg flies out from under him and twitches and Bo puts her weight on her elbow, pinning him down until she is finished and the thick needle is out and lying a few feet away in the dirt. Once everyone is finally ready, Bo runs into the jungle with her people right behind her.

They hit the first patrol they come across with such ferocity and violence, the shocked Covies barely get off a shot. Bo's Helljumpers charge right into the disoriented file, firing off their rifles as they move, swinging them like clubs—some have machetes or hatchets they've found and they hack them apart once their magazines are empty. Two men drag a squealing jackal into some bushes and destroy it. Reed thinks he hears their laughter; they are gnarled hoots of amusement. While he clutches his rifle and sweats, somebody walks alongside him and explains how he fucked his way through London for a year after dropping out of college, starting with this sweet and fresh chick Suzie and finishing with an old bow-legged sow called Christine who was actually kind of fantastic. At the end Reed says what's your point man and the Helljumper says listen better fucker and lopes off. No Covie escapes the attack.

Moving on, they similarly butcher a second patrol, and the Helljumpers reach the cave soon after. It's dug into a rock face overgrown with moss and vines, and Bo sends a runner back to inform Stern to move Shield company up to defend the entrance. They start heading down and Reed casts a long look over his shoulder but he doesn't know what it is he is looking for out there. He doesn't know if there is something he has to lose—if he'll even know that it's gone if it goes. Maybe that's why he's squinting at the moonlit jungle, searching so hard. He is trying to remember things he feels like he's forgotten and should be trying to cling to, but Bo hooks her arm through the crook of his, her bad touch nudging him along, and they leisurely descend into the depths together.

The ODSTs split off into groups and each one takes a tunnel, searching for the spring. After walking ten minutes, Bo's group hears the roar of water coming from down the passage and they begin to hurry. They find where the cavern opens up and see the white, frenzied river that runs past, as if to escape the black place it ventured into. Then flashlight beams fall on the alien standing at the far end of the cavern but nobody shoots because they're surprised to see it here. It's alone, this skirmisher, and Reed realizes they're staring at the one Thompson called Rooster and it's staring back. With its naked, scarred body and red feathers that are still fierce in the dim light, the golden cowl that rests on its head gives it a regal look that you wouldn't expect. It waits for the Helljumpers to approach and surround it, not moving an inch, and Bo steps forward into the ring when one of her men hands her her sledgehammer she ordered to be brought along. She says to the skirmisher you remember me? The skirmisher, Rooster, looks from man to man, accepting things as they are and although Reed can't discern Covie expressions one from another except for anger or pain, he thinks he sees for once a look of resolve—a decision just made, reflected in its stoic, noble features. The Helljumpers jeer and howl, urging it to fight.

Then in a fervent dash, Rooster takes a run at Boadicea, wrapped shivs in both of its clenched hands but Bo just brings her big hammer down at the right moment and splits apart that golden cowl, driving Rooster into the rocky ground and it's pretty well over. While it twists on the ground, woozy, Bo works quickly and precisely: she breaks both of its legs with some savage downwards chops, then she tosses aside her hammer and bends over Rooster's contorted face and slashes its throat with her knife.

Outside, in the area surrounding the cave, Shield only had moments to dig in before the Covies came. A smaller, third patrol at first, and the company gunned them all down like any other firefight, their rifles and light machineguns stuttering through the jungle. But like Bo had warned, the next group that arrived was the armoured battalion that had rushed back, turning from Hill 449, and they set upon Shield with unfettered strength, chipping away at the line or outright demolishing parts of it and forcing the overwhelmed men to recede toward the cave. The veteran jackals and skirmishers moved through the jungle with such speed and vigour, it took all of you to stand them down and not run. Behind them followed light-armour: roving carriages with Covie machinegun turrets mounted in the back, and these guns ripped through the Shield line with astonishing ease. Now at nearly the mouth of the cave, the Shield men stay low and fire at the battalion. Stern shouts to his company, singling out targets, but the battle is getting away from him, and he knows it's getting away from him. When the Covies call up fuel rod gunners to flush Shield from their defensive positions, they just about cleave the line in two and set fire to the jungle. It's in that first volley that Sergeant Lake and the marine Thompson become separated from their platoon while the vegetation burns all around them. Lake doesn't know how many men from 1st squad have been hit, but she knows they haven't gotten out of this without some kind of loss. Plasma fire plasters their position and they can clearly hear the rapid, efficient barks of alien tongue just through the foliage; they sound devious and plotting.

Lake orders 1st squad to retreat to the cave and gets one of her men to lay down some suppressive fire, so he stands and almost immediately vanishes in a raucous green flash that chews up the tree next to him and singes everyone else. She stares at the spot he was a moment ago, mouth a little open and she's so shocked she can't even admit her nerves have failed her. Turret fire follows and nearly chokes them with heat as it roughly cuts by overhead. The Covie vehicle, the spectre, has them zeroed and continues to pelt the whole area. Lake looks back and catches Thompson's eye—he's got a nervous look about him, like he's got a secret that's burning through his gut. He peers over their scanty defilade and doesn't look away from the spectre that's pummeling them. His is the same look Stern had on his face earlier, before all of this, full of plotting and fantasizing, and it scares Lake so much she shouts at him to come over to her.

She starts screaming, though, when she sees what he's clutching tightly against his chest with his good right hand. His bony fingers curl around a fragmentation grenade and he's got a look of majestic resolve around his features (a decision that he's made, reflected), and when he looks at Erica Lake for what he believes will be the last time, he doesn't need to say "So long, Sergeant." He jumps up and starts running, ducking through the foliage on some kind of bee-line towards the Covie spectre that hasn't seen him yet. The weighty grenade he's afraid of letting go and dropping because it's sodden with sweat—he's been holding onto it tirelessly all night—was given to him by Boadicea, back in the mineshaft. While Lake slept, Bo came over and sat beside him and they spoke for a while. He said he was sorry they couldn't reach them, the 112th, and Bo said she was sorry about his marines. They told each other tales and grimaced appropriately, finding a comforting unity through a brief, shared history of adversity. She looked at him and he at her because they understood each other, and she asked him what he wanted, so he made his confession to her, and she touched both his eyes and told him it was all right. She had a look at his arm and said it wouldn't be getting better, would it, and Thompson said he didn't think so and Bo agreed. She placed the contoured, steel grenade into his palm and Thompson looked at her knowingly. She said 5th would be proud, and that she was proud of 5th. Thompson said he was, too.

He's in the shit now—he loops his thumb through the pin but it's a struggle doing all of this one-handed. He slows down just a little bit, but Lake doesn't—she tackles him from behind with all of her momentum and body weight and they drop into a little depression just off the battlefield. The grenade flies into some tall grass and three seconds go by and there's no explosive crack. There's just the rumble of fuel rod rounds flattening the jungle all around them. Lake pulls Thompson down and they lie together in this depression. She's saying over and over again although his ears are ringing and can't hear her, choose me. Choose me.

#

Boadicea's Helljumpers stand gathered around a fire they built inside the cave. They've strung up Rooster's bled-out body to the cave wall, pinned upright by rope and climbing picks, a bloody offering that Bo said was perfect. Bo cut out its eyes and threw them into the fire. She stands next to it now, her knife in her hands while alien blood continues to drain from the ragged crevasse she tore. Solemnly, she cups both hands underneath the metered drip until her skin is good and wet and dark, then she smears it across her cheeks and across her nose and forehead. It gets into her yellow hair. She beckons for Reed to come to her and she does the same to his face, and he doesn't breathe through his nose anymore. She does this to each ODST under her command until they all shuffle around the fire, their necks and collars stained. When wind funnels through and kicks around the fire, their shadows whip into a frenzy behind them and the cave seems alive with primal energy, flickering and hopping as if to some long-ago animal skin drumbeat that careened throughout those tunnels they'll swear they heard. Taken by the pulsing dirge, Reed begins to move, and soon he can see his shadow up there with the others as they dance and flicker and sway all throughout this blue night.