1515 Hours, July 16, 2557 (Military Calendar) /

[LOCATION REDACTED]

Spartan Anneli-G059 was good at her job. Combat, infiltration, assassination . . . she had seen and done most things a Spartan-III could be asked to do, and she excelled. She was one of the top performers of her generation of super soldiers, and she was very proud of that.

But even the best had hiccups.

She didn't know how long she'd been wandering through this forsaken desert, searching for radio signal to call for extraction. It felt like it had been days. She paused in her trek, scanning the dusty horizon for any sliver of shade that might provide her a respite from the beating sun.

Nothing. She was just going to have to sweat it out.

"Tämä on naurettavaa," she muttered as she continued her slow pace through the sand. Of all of the possible ways for her to finally be overcome, she never imagined that it would be something so simple as the general climate of a planet.

It took only a few minutes for her to realize that she wasn't cut out for such temperatures. She was warm–blooded by nature; she needed cold, not hot. And yet, there was little to do. She couldn't sit on her thumbs - if the entourage of her most recent mission's target ever managed to unscramble their navigation computers, they would chase her down in a blood-thirsty haste.

Still, the heat sapped her energy. She tried to look for anything positive to draw her attention - the rare life found in the desert, beautiful formations of rocks, or anything to distract her from the feeling of being baked inside her armor. Instead, all she found was sand.

She didn't know how long she had been walking before she finally lost her strength. Finally, she fell to her knees in the sand. She rested her head in her hands, feeling the sweat drip down her face and through her hair. "Lucas . . ." she muttered weakly, feeling the last of her strength slip away, "anna anteeksi."

Then she collapsed.

When she next opened her eyes, she found herself in the troop bay of a Pelican. A cool breeze washed over her from the climate-controlled interior of the gunship, and a familiar gold-domed helmet looked down on her.

"What happened?" she asked, propping herself up on her shoulders.

The Spartan above her removed his helmet, revealing the face of her closest friend, Lucas. He was grinning, which seemed odd in face of the mortal peril she had somehow just survived.

"We were ten minutes late, and we found you asleep in the dirt," Lucas said with a laugh. He held out a hand, hauling Anneli to her feet when she took it. "You're lucky we got to you when we did. It would have been embarrassing to get caught sleeping on the job by some Storm Covenant faction.

Anneli felt her face burn bright in embarrassment. Lucas only snickered some more.

"Shut up," she said defensively. She turned away from her teammate and locked her helmet down over her head. "En pärjää kuumuuden kanssa."