Chapter 12 – Memoria

May 8th, 2545 (16:38 Hours – Military Calendar)

Aquilla System, Actium

High Mediolanum, Republic of Pavia

Near Heraklion Block

:********:

The HMPD HQ's tactical positioning at the center of two highways was coming in handy by allowing UNSC forces to head for their rallying points a kilometer outside the Covenant territories.

Both Juno and Golf Companies of the 27th Marines' 2nd Battalion were joining Garrison's Bravo Company in streaming down one such highway. They either jogged alongside or hopped aboard the two dozen Warthogs and Scorpion tanks of their convoy driven by 53rd Armored personnel. According to Mentieth, the latter were the greener elements of his division's 18th Tank Battalion with the Warthogs being a detachment from the Light Assault Group, a part of his personal Combat Command A.

Above them, several squadrons of Hornets from the 24th Air Reconnaissance Group kept pace 200 meters above the convoy. At a certain point they banked off to establish their holding patterns. Their purpose was not to immediately run into the fray with everyone else but to remain on standby. There was still a concern among the 24th's COs regarding the northeastern sector, specifically reports of AA Shades in the Lamia and Veria Blocks further northeast of Heraklion as well as some in southeast Eleusis.

The reports came from the strike teams Garrison had sent after the insertion teams. While they still could, they radioed back their findings behind enemy lines, detailing the existence of AA positions and enemy armor convoys.

The recon teams accompanying them gave similar reports. But they had stopped far shorter of the strike teams' progress to act as advanced observation scouts, providing the main force with active updates on the developing situation in the occupied zones. It was ultimately through them that the invasion would know when to advance.

Personnel in Garrison's convoy, including ground and air forces, numbered close to 1,000. It was one of 10 similarly sized convoys headed east as well as northeast and southeast. They were unified under the command of Colonel Mentieth who, out of strategic consideration, kept another 10 convoys back in reserve.

Alpha Company was assigned to Convoy-1 through 3 which worked under the designation Column A. Lieutenant Colonel Serakovich was the one taking the reins in leading them southeast for the Jackal territories. Delta and Echo Companies were assigned to Convoy-4 through 6 whose designation was Column B. They were under Colonel Mentieth's direct leadership and bound for a section of the eastern district known as Eden Square. The area lay at the junction of the Grunt, Jackal and Drone territories where the fighting would be its fiercest.

Then there was Bravo assigned to its current post in Convoy-7 through 9 under Garrison's personal direction in Column C. They were moving northeast for the edges of the Grunt territories.

The three columns would stop just a kilometer short of the fringes of the occupation zones, A at Eleusis, B at Ano Liosia and C at Heraklion. They would wait until the internal fighting had flared up then died down in the areas where they planned to push inward, then take back those weakened territories by storm.

Garrison thought a good symbolic representation of the overall situation would be a phalanx of classical sword and shield wielding warriors cutting down their foes one push at a time. Greek Spartans were the best idealization of that general idea.

Only there were no Spartans to be seen, not since the last one that saved his life earlier in the day. They had less than an hour before things kicked off and he couldn't help hoping that they would repeat their actions at the De Gaulle Starport, now on the offensive.

Whether they came or not the plan would move ahead. It was merely that UNSC combat operations tended to run smoother where the two-meter-tall demigods encased in expensive-looking green armor were involved.

Garrison had found himself a spot on the upper left passenger seat of Convoy-7's lead tank. The driver, a ruddy looking AP named Corporal Richard Marty, had told him it would give him the best spot from which to join the fight right away, something for which he had ultimately selected his tank for. Marty knew how to handle his craft that he referred to as 'Natasha II' with an expert hand. It showed in how he maneuvered to gently push empty cars, trucks and even the larger garbage transports out of the way, clearing a path forward for everyone else.

The Colonel watched him nudge aside a silver Überchassis like one would a rock with their boot, all without breaking their rate of speed. That level of finesse brought a smile to his face. "You a Family Man, Marty?" He asked, looking back at the driver.

Marty shrugged. "Well, kinda sir. How'd you figure?"

"You drive like a man with kids, quick but cautious, like you're taking me to a soccer game."

Marty's lightly freckled face flushed red with slight embarrassment. "Yeah, my wife caused that. After my first newborn she went out of her way to tame this stallion whenever driving got involved."

"When you say tame, do you mean your driving or you yourself?"

"Both." Marty shrugged again and laughed, earning a round of mirth from the rest of the tank crew.

The turret gunner, PFC Ryan Shugart, leaned over his M247T machine gun. "Hey Colonel, you sure you don't want to take my seat?" He patted his weapon. "You'd be safer in a close-up firefight with this bad boy, and trust me, reloading won't even be a problem."

Reloading. Garrison's mind shifted to the pulsing ache in his left shoulder. While the earlier attempt on his life was no longer fresh on his mind, it was still fresh on his body. Sadly, one thing his will power couldn't erase was the feeling of pain or the fact that he couldn't move his left arm too much without potentially unsettling the regenerative polymer sizzling in his flesh. He could block out the pain easily enough. In any case he would have a hard time trying to reload with his left hand, unless he simply sat down in the middle of slaughting an Elite so he could take the 30 seconds required to reload his MA5B one-handed, that is if his face wasn't blown off before then.

"No." He decided. "Thanks for the offer but you're better suited for that weapon classification, and we'll definitely need a good gunner more than a rifleman where we're going."

Shugart only replied with a respectful nod. Perhaps he understood the pride that was also driving the man. One couldn't simply call themselves the leader of one of the 105th's battalions and not go out of their way to get right into harm's way. His battalion's motto, 'Feet First into Hell' was one he took seriously as his own life philosophy. No one could ever say that he didn't practice what he preached, which was exactly why he was on the lead tank in the convoy, the one that would be the first to drive straight into that hell.

Before it did, however, he came up with an idea.

"Hey, PFC, you still want to help me out?"

"Y-, yessir."

"Then give me half your M6 ammo."

A look flashed over Shugart's face that suggested he wasn't too sure what he planned on doing. Regardless, he tossed over four clips of 12.7-millimeter rounds. Garrison slipped them into his BDU and smiled at the 80 rounds that appeared in the upper left corner of his HUD. Thankfully the M6 was a more controllable weapon with one hand than his AR would be and he just so happened to know a trick to change its magazines using only three fingers. Considering how long they had until the big showdown, he began practicing it out of the small chance that his mastery of the technique had grown rusty over the years.

:********:

The 2nd Premiere Wall's Gatehouse-9 was located at the outer boundary of the Sycion Block. To get there, the ODSTs of Squad Griffin moved again into the sewers to avoid Grunt patrols and their increasingly large encampments.

It took half an hour for them to arrive, and a few minutes longer for Deaks to find a good overwatch position as Captain Asana had directed. He'd found his most ideal perch atop the roof of a four-story liquor store with a conjoined distillery. He set his rifle beside a large brown bottle sign at the middle of the two buildings that read 'Bourbon's Best' and setup his bipod near the parapet.

He checked around to make sure his immediate vicinity was clear. So far nothing had popped out over the alleyway ladder he'd used to reach his position or the rooftops of the adjacent buildings. It paid to be certain. He turned back to his scope and did a slow, preliminary sweep over the area.

Gatehouse-9 resided at the exit of a lengthy boulevard, more specifically at the four-way intersection at the end. While the first two perpendicular streetways ran north to south, the last two led from the boulevard straight to the gatehouse's lift platform. The roadways were, as was custom in High Mediolanum, crowded with dead lanes of abandoned traffic along with the cadavers of former passengers. It was a mirror reflection of the two crowded underpasses, elevated highways that ran adjacent to the wall and cast the intersection below in their shadow. The farthest vehicular bridge diverted from its parallel course to enter into the tunnel in the wall before angling up towards an entry point somewhere on the surface of the Scenic District. The bodies continued up that route as well.

Deaks tried to ignore them. It wasn't because he had any partiality for the dead. They were gone and, by order of reason, the dead had no concern for themselves either, so why should he? The living were his sole concern here, that is if the commander of the 22nd Battalion really was alive and present. Still, as he scanned the streets below, he couldn't help occasionally coming across a man and a woman lying prone beside one or more children. He would immediately shift his scope elsewhere. He felt nothing, is what he would tell himself. He felt nothing because there was nothing left to feel for these people that no longer were. But was it really that, he wondered, or was it because there was so much here to feel that he knew it would overwhelm him if he looked for too long? Though he wasn't one for tears, he felt his stomach tighten when it came to sights like this, sights he wished he would've grown numb to by now. A numb trooper was more effective in this situation than one who understood the sheer tragedy that had actually occurred here. But just seeing the conditions of some of the bodies made him sick.

It was only when he saw Covenant dead that his sickness subsided. The dozens of deceased Grunts, Jackals and Elites littering the area were a welcomed change. The dead Marines and even a few fallen ODSTs among them had taken some of the alien uglies out. That fact gave him a sensation that he always got under such circumstances:

Satisfaction.

In a war where the enemy gloried in the wholesale genocide of one's own people, it shouldn't come as a surprise that they would similarly retaliate and keep trophies for others to both see and know that they could do the same. The Covenant took homes away from humanity by glassing planets, so he had his own way of paying them back.

Still, there were admittedly more human bodies than aliens. He watched the number of the former increase as Squad Griffin quietly entered the intersection from the northside off to his left. They filtered through the lanes of traffic, staying low while they searched for their quarry .

Deaks scanned around while also keeping an eye on the two overpasses since they were the only real superior positions to his.

Captain Asana radioed in. "How are we looking, Ep-3?"

Deaks examined Gatehouse-9, scouring the windows of its three levels along with the conduction center and its encircling balcony. His attention settled on the two Shade turrets on the center's rooftop that had apparently been abandoned after whatever assault had taken place here. "Those Shades are clear. The overpass is…also still unoccupied. You're green, sir."

Asana grunted, sounding like he was lifting something then laying it back down. "What about the southern and northern roads. Any patrols?"

Deaks sighted down both roadways. "Nothing sir, no patr-"

:********:

With an upward arch of his furry head, Archoneus sniffed at the air. It greeted his flaring nostrils with the foul odor of decay. But there was something else there, something alive. It made both his jaws and ambitions salivate with anticipation. He had to mentally force himself to remember that he came to satisfy the last one and not the first, although he was not one to rule out making an exception.

His grip tightened around the long handle of the Gravity Hammer that he held across his shoulder as he passed human vehicles on his left and right. The light of this planet's fading evening was absorbed by his ornate black and bronze-red armor, making his more than two-and-a-half-meter tall visage appear like a walking black hole. He believed that was what his foes last witnessed in the heartbeat that they normally had between seeing him and seeing no more. The pride of his own combat prowess, his large horned head piece was inspired by a species of giant predatory beasts that resided on his homeworld whose nature he wished to emulate. He marched with the full glory of his rank down a street towards the intersection at the base of the city's second wall. There he hoped to find his prize.

His rank and authority was one that he felt was respected by himself and his pack alone. It would explain why they were not allowed to participate in the fighting taking place further west. Unlike the throngs of libido-happy Unggoy, the irreverent Kig-Yar, the single-minded Yanme'e or even the despicable Sangheili, his kind had been singled out to be kept away from the battle. Instead, they did auxiliary work overseeing the emplacement of the fuel transfusion pipes by the Unggoy and Kig-Yar. The order had come from the very mouth of the leader of Covenant forces in the city, one Field Marshal Kozon Duracomee.

It was an unjust order, prompted in all likelihood by Duracomee's…distaste for his kind, the Jirilhanae. He had to be careful not to voice his full thoughts to any of his pack, even though they all undoubtedly thought the same. It was to avoid sparking an uncoordinated rebellion. The Sangheili were never above putting a proverbial and not-so-proverbial boot to the neck of his species. It was an innate jealousy brought on by the bipedal ingrates' overly bloated sense of 'honor'. They saw the Jirilhanae as a threat to that honor. While he hated that indisputable fact, he always kept his opinion private that the Sangheili actually feared them and rightfully so.

His kind were exceptional in their own ways, more deserving of the blessing of the Prophets than the Sangheili could ever be. While the Jirilhanae were relatively recent additions to the Covenant, they were more than willing to step out and display their dedication to the cause of the Great Journey. Archoneus' current actions were proof of that.

He decided to leave his post as overseer for crews of pipelaying Unggoy to attend to another matter. He wanted his chance for glory and he had come here to find that opportunity. Earlier in the day he had been forced to watch the human shock troopers land across the area in droves and push for the second wall, only to be driven back. For hours, their survivors had been in hiding. Yet there was a sneaking suspicion in his gut that told him to search here.

There was a chance that someone of value to the humans lay at this intersection. During the battle around dawn, the black-armored shock troopers and some of their lesser Marines were fighting fiercely for control of one of the structures known as a gatehouse. When they retreated, he noted that they withdrew from this position first before they dispersed in a cowardly manner from every other engagement along the wall. What he wanted to know was why.

If there truly happened to have been a leader figure here directing the entire effort, and if they were still present, it would do both himself and his search for glory a much-needed service if he found them.

So he had left and taken 9 of the Unggoy crew with him.

The smaller creatures grumbled amongst themselves with what he guessed was curiosity as to where he could be leading them. He hadn't told them where yet, and he wouldn't until they reached their destination. Then his purposes for them would become clear.

He stopped to smell the air again. There was a pheromonal pungency of living humans on the air. Interestingly he counted more than just one, but multiple. That was promising. Judging by the scents, he knew that he had brought just the right amount of Unggoy for the job.

:********:

Deaks lay frozen.

He stared down his scope at the face of the Brute Chieftain on the other side. The creature, with its light-brown fur and muscular frame, sported a Gravity Hammer and a trajectory bound for the intersection. At its current stride it would reach it in under a minute. He had to warn the others. However, he felt his tongue become glued to the top of his mouth and his hands become paralyzed in place, just like they were on that day.

:********:

Gladsheim was hailed as the most remote town on the most remote human colony world of Harvest. Its buildings were organized in a gridwork of wide streets that extended out into the Plains of Ida, an expanse of arable farmland lying between the settlement and the planetary capital of Utgard.

Corry Deaks didn't like his life there. At school he was bullied a lot and had once even gotten a tooth knocked clean out of his mouth by a neighborhood bully named Sammy. He had chosen to confront the bigger kid directly to tell him to stop his antics back at their school, only to leave the bully's front yard with a missing incisor and a deflated sense of pride. While his parents had done their best to speak with Sammy's parents about the matter, they didn't realize that he actually blamed them for most of his troubles.

The Deaks family, namely his mother and father had made the decision to leave Utgard when he was four years old. Their choice came because of the growing number of opportunities being created in newer settlements popping up across the supercontinent of Edda. They bought one of the homesteads on the outskirts of Gladsheim and settled in for a life in the countryside. Even though he didn't like the town much, his parents had made a good life for them here so he tried his best to do the same.

It was that same attempt to cope with life as it was that had made everyone blind to the threat that came to their skies.

He remembered that no one, not his parents or even himself had believed Governor Thune, the head of the colony's parliamentary government, when he made the planetwide statement that aliens had arrived at Harvest. He had declared a state of emergency and called for all the world's citizens to evacuate to Utgard. But the denizens of Gladsheim had decided not to go. They believed because the town was so isolated from everywhere else that these 'aliens' wouldn't bother coming here.

They never got the chance to lament over how woefully incorrect they were, because Gladsheim became the first settlement that the aliens visited.

Visited was the wrong word. It was more like a siege.

It was a one-sided affair, with one side overwhelmingly killing the other. The most the planet had at the time was the local police and a recently trained colonial militia garrisoned some ways outside the town. But there was no force that could possibly face a ship like the one Corry saw come to hover in the sky just over Dry Creek Road. Its oblong, curving shape and dark purple color reminded him of the creatures he'd seen on a deep-sea documentary that his science teacher had shown his class once. Most of the creatures lurking at those depths were dangerous, nightmarish even. His classmate and best friend Shane liked to torment him from time to time by showing him pictures of the cryptids on his study-pad, often earning a surprised shriek followed by a punch to the shoulder for his efforts. Corry would often check under his bed or his closet to see if the monsters were there. His parents had always told him that there weren't any, that he was just being silly and not wanting to go to sleep. He realized very quickly that they were right. The monsters weren't under his bed or in his closet. They were in fact in space, and now, in the air above his hometown as well as in the streets of his neighborhood. And they weren't hiding either, but looking for humans that hid from them, looking for him.

When the alien ship came, it sent out smaller, fork-like ships that released swarms of creatures with the terrifying appearance of flying cockroaches. They scattered across the homesteads on the outskirts, shooting people in their yards and in their cars with blasts of green fire.

They weren't even the scariest ones. Not by any means.

His neighbors had made a desperate bid to escape, packing belongings and family members into their cars. His dad was wrestling suitcases into their car parked in the driveway while Corry and his mother were grabbing their last things.

Then one of those fork-like ships zoomed in over their neighborhood.

Corry was at the living room window when he saw it come in over the rooftop of Sammy's house. Its underside cannon began firing down on everyone, destroying the cars and the people in them. His mother had to pull him away from the window right as a pillar of blue-white flame fell from the larger ship onto the Jenkins family homestead just two houses down.

He still managed to get back to the window as the smaller ship swooped down to the burning street outside, opening its passenger bays to drop off two giant aliens. They were covered with fur and blue armor and reminded Corry of gorillas mixed with bears. At their sides they carried shortcut weapons with crescent blades elongated along their stocky barrels. One that was helmetless sniffed at the air then charged towards his house with the other following suit.

He watched his father get dragged out from under their car by his arms to be dangled in front of the helmeted alien. It observed his panicked face as it tore open his clothes with the blades of its weapon, exposing his bare chest. Then it reeled back and thrust the two blades in deep, so deep that it forced his body high into the air.

Corry was about to scream when his mother grabbed his mouth just in time.

She turned him to herself, telling him they needed to run. He ran for the backdoor while she'd gone to lock the front, hoping to delay the creatures long enough for them to get away.

But Corry stopped at the threshold when he heard the front door burst open followed by his mother's scream. He went back, turned a corner and saw her.

She was off the floor, her neck and much of her upper body lying in the jaws of the helmetless alien that stood beyond the destroyed and charred front door. Its eyes watched the life fading from hers, then shifted to his.

The creature that he would later learn was called a Brute stared him down with a ravenousness in its gaze that paralyzed him. It took a step forward. His mother summoned the last of her strength, not to tell him 'I love you', only to say in a choking voice "RU-"

The Brute bit down on her neck before she could finish. He watched her eyes roll into the back of her head. Then he was gone, bursting through the backdoor and dashing into the wheat fields of Ida.

There was a howl then the sound of heavy footfalls following after him. He tried to disappear into the heads of wheat that rose well above his own. Even so, somehow the creature kept coming, stopping to sniff around then continue its chase. Its determined growls kept him running for what felt like hours.

Soon he spotted a sewer entrance, a concrete slot in a more open space in the fields. It was just large enough for him to fit. Hearing the incoming alien well on its way he got down, slipped inside and fell into a shallow gathering of water. There was no light, merely the sound of rushing liquids. The smell almost knocked him unconscious.

He sat in silence as the Brute reached the spot. It sniffed the air aggressively, scouring around. After a few seconds it howled in anger and left.

Corry stayed in the sewer for so long that he lost track of time. When he was sure the monster was gone, he came out. Whimpering, crying and drenched in sewer water, he began his slow trot back to Gladsheim.

But the smoke wafting from the town tricked him. The wind had carried it in a more easterly direction, making him think he was much closer than he actually was.

It was a while before he reached a road that ran parallel to the town. It was there that he realized how distant he really was. He knew by looking at the nearest buildings that it would take about half an hour before he made it back. By then there weren't very many structures left standing on this part of Gladsheim at all. More pillars of smoke rose from burning homes, places he had known and grew up around. The alien ship lurked above everything, pouring down even more streams of fire onto the settlement below.

He made several stumbling steps yet never made it to the town itself.

Two men were speeding along the road in one of those special vehicles he'd rarely seen called a Warthog. They wore Marine battle-armor, the man at the wheel having gold-tinted shades around his neck and a darker skin tone than the much huskier one manning the turret in the back.

The first Marine spotted him on the roadside and brought the warthog to a screeching halt beside him. "Hey kid, hop on!"

For a moment Corry wasn't sure who he was talking to. The husky man on the turret helped him figure it out. "Come on ya culchie, either you get a move on or we move on!" He shouted in an Irish accent, swiveling his equally massive turret from left to right across the skies.

"Anything look on the verge of following us yet, Byrne?" The first Marine asked.

"Negative, the buggers and apes are staying back." The other growled, more in anger at something else than the one who'd asked the question. "That ship's moving for the rest of Gladsheim. If you want, we can come back later to see if any other survivors come in, but don't count on these freaks ignoring us for long."

"Alright, tell Ponder we're on our way back to protect the evac site." The first Marine held out a hand to Corry. "Come on kid, we've got to go now."

Corry looked towards Gladsheim, remembering his parents. He hesitantly reached out, then stopped to glance at the town once more, hoping to see his mom and dad come running after him. But by then he was close enough for the man to grab his hand and pull him into the vehicle. He secured him in the passenger's seat and hit the accelerator.

The two Marines kept talking as they zoomed along the route that would take them over to the town's MagLev station.

Corry, meanwhile, kept glancing between the passing wheat fields and the rear-view mirror. He watched the smoking remains of his neighborhood disappear. However, the alien ship hovering over it remained in sight as it continued to burn everything below.

At one point he peeked over at the Marine that had grabbed him. He saw the name written on his combat fatigues: 'SSgt A J. Johnson.' He accidentally locked gazes with the Staff Sergeant who had been switching between watching him and the road ahead.

"What's your name, kid?"

"…Corry…"

He felt the Marine's gauntleted freehand rest on his shoulder with a gentleness that he hadn't expected. "It's alright Corry. We'll make it, we'll get you out of here."

Corry turned back towards Gladsheim. "What about mom? Dad?"

The Staff Sergeant he figured to be named Johnson shared a look with the man he called Byrne on the gun. They both had a kind of steely face that still showed a level of concern.

Instead of a direct answer, Johnson picked up something from the glass on the dashboard left from the Warthog's partially cracked windshield and placed it in his palms. Corry recognized it as a bloody tooth belonging to one of the Brutes, a canine three times the size of his own thumb. Maybe it was from the same one that had…

"They took something from you so we took something from them for you." Johnson said.

Corry's racing mind went blank at seeing the tooth and hearing those words. For some reason what the Marine said sounded right, true even. Something had been taken from him, much in fact, and now, something was taken back in return. His hand slowly closed around it.

"We'll take you to the Tiara." Johnson said. "Then we'll all go home."

Home.

The memories of the day flashed through his mind: his Father on the end of the monster's blade, his Mother in the jaws of the other, her eyes rolling back in her head.

He said something under his breath in a shaky voice that made the Staff Sergeant ask "What?"

"I d-, don't want to go…back. Take me some-, where else. Don't take me back. Somewhere else…"

He kept saying it until his voice became an inaudible whisper.

Johnson eyed him a little longer but said nothing. He squeezed his shoulder firmly again, then let the rest of the journey continue in silence.

Corry went on to survive what later became known as the First Battle of Harvest. He never got to see the second. At first, he was glad about that. But then he felt a rage within that made him wish he had. He had lost so much there. Even his best friend Shane whose family had been one of the few to leave Gladsheim early on had disappeared from his life. He never got to know what happened to him or many of his other friends. He often found them in his dreams, but more often in his nightmares.

At an orphanage that parentless refugee kids like himself were sent to it was hard for him to relate to anyone. Most of the other children were only separated from their parents. They never saw them die like he had or saw the aliens like he did. It made him harder to relate to than anyone else. They asked a lot of questions, and he didn't know how to tell them that the monsters their parents always said weren't under their beds were actually real, that he had seen them literally disembowel and eat his own parents then try to do the same to him.

So he became standoffish and isolated.

He remembered being brought to a private room once by one of the caretakers. Two men in weird uniforms were already sitting in the other couch, waiting for him. They asked if he wanted to fight against the aliens that called themselves the Covenant, explaining to him that they were the very same ones that killed his mother and father.

In his rage he told them yes. However, when they asked him if he wanted to join up with other kids like himself who also wanted revenge, he remembered his life at the orphanage, how he kept at a distance from everyone else, and said no. He vehemently declined any offers they made thereafter.

In the end they left him alone and instead managed to convince several other kids at the orphanage to join them.

That was fine, he decided. He didn't mind missing out because he would find his own way of getting payback against the aliens, and no grownup was going to get to decide how he went about it. The word of that Marine always rang constant in his mind.

"They took something from you so we took something from them for you."

:********:

In the five seconds that it took Deaks to remember it all, he also recalled that he still had that tooth in his pocket, the one that Marine had given him. He always kept it on him as a memento, like Irish did with his rock, the same one that he'd gotten to hold at the magma vent pool on Mount Csaba. That moment was the closest he had come to seeing his homeworld one last time. And here he was defending someone else's to make sure they didn't have to put a rock in their hands just to feel at home again.

He had connected the dots about those two men that had visited him at the orphanage to his time on Onyx where he learned what happened to and got to train those who took their offer. He knew that he might've become one of them had he said yes all those years ago. He had kept that fact to himself regardless and admitted inwardly that he didn't want to be one. That was for his own reasons, Epsilon being one of them.

Right now, he wished he were stronger than he was, to have the premeditated calculation of Harris, the mercilessness of Jonah, the honed focus of Roland and the unflinching determination of someone like Six.

But he didn't.

He was still frozen.

Deaks only had the strength to watch the Brute walk to the edge of the intersection. It didn't seem to notice the ODSTs scattered about on the opposite side. They were thankfully still protected from view via the larger vehicles and transit buses near the middle.

"Griffin-1 to Ep-3, say again? Is something on its way?"

The sniper snapped back to reality. "We've got a Brute, sir, a Chieftain along with 9 Grunts less than 50 meters southwest of your location. I recommend you pull back."

There was silence for a moment before the Captain's answer came. "Alright, we'll-"

"Found him!" Someone shouted ecstatically over the comm. "On my position!"

A Nav point appeared and Deaks used his scope to follow it to an alleyway on the northside of the intersection. It was Griffin-7. She stood in the entrance with another ODST's arm braced over her shoulder. The trooper she carried had to limp along to keep pace and bore the same recognizable shoulder pauldron Garrison used. The only difference was that its death's head emblem was red rather than white.

The rest of the squad quietly jogged back to her position in the alleyway. They sounded briefly excited to see that the man she was holding was alive and well. The hopeful atmosphere ended when Colonel Taylors' exasperated voice came in over TEAMCOM. "Get…Baccara…he's still…out there. He's the only reason…I'm still alive…went out to get…more survivors… f-, find him."

Deaks knew the name. Company Commander Baccara was the leader of the 22nd Battalion's Delta Company. If he was present then it meant their job here wasn't done.

Asana took a deep breath as he turned back to the intersection, weighing their options. "…Understood sir. Griffin-2 through 4, on me. Everyone else stay and guard Red-Actual."

"Do what you can." Taylors said through deliberately slow breaths. "If not then…we'll need to move."

Deaks watched half the squad filter back into the street while the other half stayed behind at the alleyway. Then he flinched at realizing his own observational failure and shifted back to where he'd seen the Brute. It wasn't there. He scanned further up along the southwestern sidewalk until he spotted it. It was closer than before. However, it seemed to be standing in place while its entourage of Grunts diffused into the lanes of traffic.

"The Grunts are moving in, sir. The Brute's staying back for now."

"Copy that." Asana said. "Keep your sights on that Chieftain. Don't open fire unless we're compromised. Everyone keep an eye out, we've got company."

Deaks kept his sights on the waiting Brute. Once his circular targeting reticle had turned red over the creature's right eye socket, he hooked his index finger comfortably around the trigger, steadied himself and waited.

Every 10 seconds he leaned out of his scope to check how things were going throughout the intersection. The ODSTs kept moving, searching under cars and delicately pulling the helmets off the bodies of fallen troopers to examine their faces.

Meanwhile, the Grunts kept moving. The conical backpack wearing aliens waddled about the outer section of the streets. For the first 40 seconds they did nothing except tentatively skim the exterior lanes. Then they began taking hesitant steps deeper into the vehicular maze. To Deaks' worry, the Brute was beginning to look more on edge with each failure on the part of the Grunts to find anything. Its brown fur began to bristle and the scowl on its face parted to show clenched teeth. He fought to focus on his eyes and not its massive canines. But as time drew on, fear made him look at them, to wonder what this alien might have killed with those teeth. He also wondered deep down if there was a chance, even a slim possibility, that he could walk away from this situation with those teeth hanging from a string around his neck.

His reticle gradually drifted down to its increasingly exposed jaws.

A full minute passed where neither the ODSTs nor the Grunts made contact. Nevertheless, the distance between them steadily decreased.

Griffin-4 broke the silent deadlock with good news. "I've found him, Baccara's on my position."

A Nav point appeared at a transit bus lying in the middle of the intersection. Deaks glanced over there to see three squadmates gathering around Griffin-4 and another ODST. The trooper he assumed to be Company Commander Baccara lay against the bus. Fortunately, he was still moving his head to look at them despite two blackened scorch marks on his torso.

Asana may have been about to give an order to carry him back to the alleyway when the first Grunt rounded the other side of the bus. Griffin-4 quickly mowed it down with a suppressed burst to the chest. Two more came around the other side as their downed comrade toppled back and opened fire.

The troopers returned the favor, cutting them down with overwhelming firepower.

Asana suddenly grabbed Baccara and hoisted him over his shoulders. "Fall back, mo-"

Deaks realized his mistake too late. He pivoted his scope back to the Chieftain in time to see it bound into the intersection to reach the source of the shooting. In less than three seconds it landed with a resonant boom atop the roof of the bus, crumpling it.

The squad were left momentarily frozen in place at the towering sight of the Chieftain, its black armor silhouetted against the evening sky like a humanoid eclipse.

The Brute glowered at them and released a throaty roar. The troopers broke off at a sprint as it hefted its hammer, preparing to jump.

Deaks shifted his sniper in a desperate bid to retarget. His first shot went wide, zipping past its helmeted head.

The hulking alien leaped.

It landed only a few meters short of the escaping ODSTs. It charged forward, covering three steps of theirs in a single bound.

Griffin-2 and 3 suddenly turned to fire in coordinated bursts.

If their efforts hurt their target it made no show of it. The Chieftain reached them in three giant leaps.

It twisted the hammer around and lashed out at Griffin-3 in a wide, lateral swipe. The weapon's rear-mounted blade tore through battle armor and flesh in a blink, rending the man's upper body clean from his legs and sending both halves flying away in bloody spirals.

The Brute reversed its momentum and swung back at Griffin-2. The hammer slammed into her stomach to crush her between its metal head and the hood of a nearby car. A violent wave of displaced gravity released on impact, instantly turning the PFC into a mishmash of gore that mixed with the succinct explosion of the car.

The Chieftain was unphased by the fiery shrapnel and red mist that raced across its path and caused its energy shields to flare a lightening silver, instead dashing through the flames after the rest.

Griffin-4 was the next to turn in a bid to buy time. His bullets pinged off the alien's arm-mounted shield as it raised it up, then used the same shield to sweep his legs out from under him. While the trooper was still airborne the Chieftain lunged like a shark and bit down on his exposed arm, breaking the bones within and eliciting a pained shriek from its newest captive.

Captain Asana turned back, stood stunned at seeing his trooper being rag-dolled and aimed his SMG. He didn't fire. He couldn't.

The alien seemed to have counted on that and used its 'human shield' to rush closer.

Asana tried backing up for a clearer shot while balancing the company commander on his shoulders.

At 4 meters distance the Brute used a freehand to grab its captive's neck and snapped it with a simple flick of its wrist, bringing an abrupt end to Griffin-4's screams. Still running forward, it reeled back and threw the sergeant's limp body like a baseball.

The dead trooper crashed into his living counterparts and Asana tumbled forward along with Baccara.

The two barely had a chance to react before the Brute's shadow enveloped them. Asana spun around, stopping a devastating overhanded blow by putting half a magazine in its face. The 23-milimeter rounds slashed at its visage, breaking its already weakened energy shields.

It maneuvered the massive hammer to ram the weapon's shaft into his stomach, knocking him back down beside Baccara.

Right as it leveled the hammer for another swing the captain rolled away underneath a nearby Überchassis. He took the chance to reload while the infuriated Brute approached the vehicle. It grabbed hold of the front rim and tossed the entire thing roughly aside.

But Asana wasn't there.

Gunfire caught it in the back. It rounded on the Captain who had grabbed hold of the sportscar's undercarriage. He rushed off to the side, capitalizing on the renewed distance between them by firing at his foe's vulnerable figure.

His bursts of accurate fire broke off parts of the Chieftain's upper armor in vents of blue gas and spurts of electric energy.

It shielded itself once more with the barrier on its arm then bounded after him again, pushing a van clear out of its way. That only gave Asana the opening he needed to toss in a frag.

The grenade bounced off the ground between them then angled up directly into the Brute's path. Its momentum was too much to stop and it had to have known that in the split-second before it raised its arm-mounted shield.

The resulting blast blew out the windows of several close cars with a resonant WHAM.

The Brute rushed through the smoke cloud unaffected.

A sniper round flashed by, causing the alien to reel back in a hopeful kill-shot. But the furry behemoth rose back up with only a bloody gash running along the right side of its face. It roared in audible fury.

Asana saw the gravity hammer arcing down on him and hurled himself out of the way, barely avoiding the concussive follow-up that threw him against another car. On his stomach, he raised his SMG to fire only for a consecutive hammer swing to knock it out of his hands, slicing open an unfortunate sedan at the climax of its swing.

He crawled back in an attempt to reach safety. But the Brute manipulated its weapon's momentum to bring it back around and jumped for the kill. At the pinnacle of its leap, it raised the hammer for another overhead swing.

The Captain's upper half briefly disappeared beneath the hammer's mighty girth as it came down hard. The ensuing blast of displaced gravity was momentarily condensed then dispelled in an eruption of dust and gore, sending out a miniature pressure wave that cracked the surrounding asphalt and propelled several nearby cars a full meter off the ground.

Deaks finally caught up to the smoke.

His target had proved too fast to track. The four bullet icons on his HUD blinked red yet only one of them hadn't been a miss.

He focused on the clearing haze, hoping that the silhouette within was somehow Captain Asana. He soon realized it was too large to be human.

The smoke steadily cleared to reveal the engagement's victor. The Chieftain stood over a crackling crater where what remained of the bout's loser were two legs connected to a pulpy mush of gore, protruding bones and pieces of BDU that had once been Captain Asana.

He willed himself to reload. The sound of a beam rifle forced him to think twice as he grabbed his rifle and rolled behind the distillery's bottle sign. There was a sizzling point on the rooftop a centimeter short of where he had lay. He crouched along the sign to slip in another magazine and came to the opposite side to look around.

Sure enough there were two purple dots glowing on the nearest overpass. He maxed out his optical zoom to get a more refined view.

The glows came from the helmeted optical attachments of two beam rifle-wielding Jackal snipers. The duo must have arrived after hearing the shots. They were posted on the edge of the elevated highway. From there, no matter where he went along the roof, they could always spot him and act accordingly.

He ducked back when a second particle round struck the ground at his boots. He shuffled to the other side and peeked out again, albeit it without taking out his sniper to avoid being spotted right away.

By then the Brute already had Company Commander Baccara's neck in its grip. It pulled him up into the air, yanked off his helmet and cocked its head at his struggling, tan face.

The trooper suddenly unsheathed a combat knife and rammed the blade into its upper arm. Though not prepared, it didn't seem to care. It eyed the blade as well as the one that had put it there then mercilessly slammed his head against the hood of a truck. Several repeated bashes were sufficient to cause the soldier's grip to slip away. Now that its charge went limp, the Brute saw fit to begin walking off with him in hand.

Deaks wondered what had happened to the rest of Griffin. He spotted them shooting out of the northside alleyway at the six Grunts approaching them from the intersection. The Grunts fired their plasma pistols from behind good cover, their greater firepower eventually pushing the ODSTs further back into the alleyway.

"Ep-3 to Griffin-7, break contact! Take Taylors and get out of here!"

Griffin-7's shaky reply came back. "The Captain! Baccara! We can't leave without them!"

"It's too late! Get moving before we lose Taylors too!"

Several uncertain seconds of silence passed that were permeated by gunfire. "…Squad break contact! Take Taylors and go! Ep-3 you make sure to do the same!"

"Copy!"

He watched the gunfire in the alleyway cease as the troopers got moving. However, he noticed that they were not running to the exit. From what he could tell via the Grunts' decision to go forward, the ODSTs had run in even further in…away from the route that would take them back to the water tower.

He understood why. No one wanted to chance leading the enemy back there and risk ruining the entire plan. He wished them a quiet "good luck" then sprinted out across the roof.

Particle rounds wisped past. The near misses made him move faster. He finally reached the opposite side, jumped over the edge, grabbed the rails of the access ladder and slid down four stories.

Still, the image of that Brute stayed with him. He'd had it in his crosshairs only to let the chance slip right through his fingers, and others had paid the price for it. He went on his way to the sewer entrance wondering how he would explain what had happened once he got back.

:********:

Archoneus left the Unggoy to pursue the last humans that had survived his assault. They had proven to be a worthy challenge, mainly their leader along with some unknown sniper that the Kig-Yar overhead were currently showing interest in. The worthiness of that challenge left his face bleeding with his most notable wound being the gash running across the right side of his face. That bullet had come close to striking out his right eye. But not close enough. Soon it would become his battle scar, paying testament to his willingness to face the enemies of the Gods undauntingly.

There was another sign of his fervency and piety, a gift for his superiors which he now held against its will. The miserable creature in his grip was not protesting that he was dragging it across the road. How could it? He had knocked it unconscious for its own sake after it had attempted one last show of bravery in stabbing him with the blade that was still in his arm. He would take it out later.

The slumbering vermin should've been thankful. He could have simply bit off its head and devoured the meat along its dislodged vertebrae, a treatment his kind customarily reserved for cowards of any species that made others carry their weight for them. Yet he had avoided doing so because he was 'honorable' and decided that he would indeed spare it when the wounded beast at least tried to put up a final fight.

Another reason for his mercy was because he needed this human. He knew once he saw the others gathered around it, risking their lives in vain just to rescue it, that it had to be an officer or some other high-ranking authority.

With a little persuasion by himself and the rest of his pack, he would learn the secrets of the human's overall strategy here. That knowledge would then be used for the beneficence of the Covenant, of the Gods and of himself.

He gave a toothy smile.

"I have many questions for you, human." He said to the unconscious infidel being dragged in his grip. "And you shall answer them all."

Memoria - Memory