Halo: Feet First

by MikeDice

Halo: Feet First covers the story of a team of UNSC Orbital Drop Shock Troopers of the 7th Battalion, 105th Shock Troops Division. The main character, Duncan Iris, faces the full horror of the covenant war effort against humanity as well as the brave retaliation of outnumbered and outgunned UNSC forces. However, he also witnesses the turning of the tides as the war progresses.

180. Battle of Reach - Chapter 53 (Dicessum)

Chapter 53 – Dicessum

August 26th, 2552 - (12:30 Hours - Military Calendar)

Epsilon Eridani System, Reach

Viery Territory, New Alexandria

:********:

Three days.

Duncan felt every second of each one. That was despite having his hands more than full with everything else that had gone wrong in that time.

Everything had gone wrong, horribly wrong. At least it seemed that way to him as he endured his own personal hell, a bucket in one hand and his canteen in the other.

Like it had an hour ago, his stomach balled itself into a knot that forced him to throw up. It was merely the latest in a cycle of retching fits. He hadn't eaten much. He could barely muster up the strength to do so. Even with what few MRE crackers he had left, chewing had become a harsh labor that bordered on a torment of its own, his jaws having grown so taught from being wrenched open whenever he had to vomit. It was on an hourly basis, and after the second day of the torture, he'd learned how to time it.

The nausea came in waves.

He would be alright for a while, at least in so much as not being able to stand straight for longer than five seconds could be called alright. Like a sailor lost in heavy seas, he would have to sit down to catch himself. Then after a bout of unbalanced peace he would get a tightness in his chest. What followed close on its heels was a prickling sensation that would crawl up his arms and legs like a swarm of electrified ants hellbent on making him their new nest. His limbs would go numb. His fingers would curl in on themselves like claws as the muscles in his wrists stiffened. A weight akin to a dumbbell would form on top of his airways, making it harder to breathe.

Then he'd flinch at the quick mosquito bite of a needle stabbing into his arm. The pen-sized auto-injector would give a mechanical sigh as its contents hissed into his veins. Once Renni pulled out the needle, it was a five-minute wait for the symptoms to calm down. When they inevitably did, he would wish his deepest gratitude to whatever 19th century scientist had stumbled across potassium iodide.

Then his stomach would cramp up as the chemical compound went to war in his bloodstream. Next came the rising heat in his gut. The bucket was never far behind, and neither was whatever he'd eaten last.

That was another minute or so of his life that he would spend in agony.

Now that his latest round of spill-your-guts had wrapped up, he poured water from his canteen into his mouth to wash away the rancid, acidic taste gnawing on his tongue. He spat it out in the bucket, wiped his lips on his sleeve and shakily handed it back to Renni. She'd been stooping at his side to make sure he got it all out.

She patted him on the shoulder like an amused pediatrician. "Better?"

He glared up at her groggily, squinting against the harsh ceiling lights. "Do I look better?"

Without her helmet on, he could read the trepidation on her face as clear as day.

She shrugged. "You've looked worse."

"Oh yeah? When?"

"About an hour ago." She smirked down at him before the sounds of a pained grunt drew her elsewhere. "Remember to take that next pill. It's almost been 24 hours since your last. You'll need it."

"Yeah-yeah." He waved her off as she took a few steps over to Zack. She reached down with the bucket. He snatched it out of her hands in time to catch his own throw-up.

The Staff was right next to him, and Mito a few steps away.

And Dalton.

And Reznik.

And finally, Hector.

They were all sitting down, all either lying back in a twilight zone between sleep and consciousness or doubled over as they held their stomachs. None of them had on their BDUs. As their last feat of personal independence, they'd been able to strip themselves of their armor shortly after their arrival in order to settle in for the long wait. Their autonomy ended about an hour later with a spell of lightheadedness that started with Dalton. From there, it spread to the others like a plague. However, it seemed to be a particularly picky plague as it only went after the members of Team 1.

Nova, Lang, Daz, Mackley, Yuri and Renni were in reasonably good condition for people who had survived being glassed. Except they were lucky in that they had gotten into the ROTC Building before everything went south.

They hadn't been up on the roof, out in the open.

Lucky them, Duncan thought.

Team 1 hadn't been so fortunate.

After Zack finished bringing up what little of his lunch he had left, he sat back and passed the bucket to Renni.

She swished around its sloshing contents with a grimace. "I think I need a raise."

"I'll be sure to get you one as soon as we're out of here." The Staff said wearily, though he was easily the most cognizant of Team 1. "I think we've all more than earned it."

"Yeah, but it'll probably only be enough to cover our hospital bills." Zack exhaled. "I doubt the UNSC's pockets are as deep as they used to be if all we have to keep us running is a bunch of-..." He blinked up at Renni. "Hey Nova, what's that thing called again?"

"That's Renni." Mito corrected without looking, still busy massaging his temples.

"Oh yeah...what's that thing called?"

"Potassium Iodide." Renni replied. "And you shouldn't knock it 'till you try it."

"I did try it," Zack argued. "And I don't like it."

"This thing has been curing syphilis and mercury poisoning since the early 1800s. That's about 700 years' worth of reliability. Radiation poisoning is right up its alley."

"How can you tell?" Hector groaned.

"Are any of you coughing up or crying blood?"

Dalton raised a brow. He looked around at the others and shook his head. "Not yet."

"Then it's working." She swished around the contents of the bucket again and Duncan felt a twinge of nausea at the sound of it. "There's none in here either. If it wasn't working, there'd be ulcers in your respiratory and digestive symptoms by now. Your BDUs probably helped mitigate your exposure. They build those things with scenarios like this in mind."

"So, you're saying if we didn't have those on, we'd be cooked?" Zack asked.

Renni nodded. "Inside and out."

"Which is why it's a good thing you got down here when you did." Nova said, staring at them from where she sat on the other side of the room. The worry hadn't left her eyes in the last few days, or anyone else's from the rest of the platoon seated around the fallout bunker. Just like Team 1, they were also in their basic fatigues and had left their armor components in individual piles nearby. No one wanted to stay in them once it became clear that they would be down here for longer than a day, low orbital bombardment or not.

The rectangular chamber offered a space 20-meters long by 5-meters wide. More of an oversized living room with gray, lead-lined walls, it was nevertheless enough to keep them comfortable. The white-tiled floor was smooth and far more soothing than the muddy grounds around the starport. The overhead ceiling lights lit everything and everyone in a pale-silver illumination, including the handful of metal doors scattered around the chamber wall. There was a storage room where they had sufficient supplies inside to last twice as many people half a year. There was a bathroom with several stalls and showers. There was even a small closet space with several communication stations housed within. However, thanks to the massive amounts of signal disruption coming from above they were no better than scrap.

Duncan only wished he could've enjoyed any of it.

However, the one thing he would have preferred the most wasn't here.

Somehow, the military brass in charge of the building had thought of everything else except the furniture. There were no couches or chairs or beds or anything that could possibly be considered a substitute. The main chamber was completely barren. The ones responsible for it had probably been so focused on long-term essentials that they had forgotten the bare-bone basics. He would have taken his complaints up with said people were they not already lying dead outside.

For the first two days, they had listened to the commotion coming from the surface. It was the same thing over and over again, the sound of skyscrapers crashing down into their own foundations and energy projectors ripping into the ground itself. Both were distinct. The first one sounded close to a rumbling stampede of herds of elephants. The second was more akin to the crash of a thunderbolt followed by the roaring hum of a massive oven. Each impact drowned out every other sound and caused the bunker to tremble around them.

Duncan had never been glassed before.

He had also never been underground while being glassed.

It was a series of firsts that he could have gladly gone without.

Those firsts, however, appeared to have come to some kind of conclusion on the third day.

The sound of crumbling buildings hadn't gone away. But that was it.

The glassing had stopped.

Now it was quiet, or whatever counted for quiet in a place that probably resembled hell more than it did an actual city.

"Don't know if I'd call it a good thing if I'm being honest." Hector said, lifting his head to get a better look at Nova. "It's not as bad as day one but it still sucks. Most we can say is we're not shooting out of both ends right now."

"Which is why, again, you're lucky you came when you did." Renni said, strolling off towards the bathroom with the bucket in hand. The door's motion sensor caused it to slide open at her approach. She slipped inside, disappearing into one of the stalls. "You've got some internal inflammation but otherwise you should be back on your feet in a little while. Anyway, I still think you'll need to get checked out once we get out of here, all of you."

Duncan winced at hearing her pour the bucket's contents into one of the toilets.

" If we get out of here." Reznik huffed.

There was a long pause in the conversation where, without meaning to, they had all gone quiet to listen to a growing rumble in the distance. The miniature earthquake was already too familiar to ignore. Somewhere on the surface another piece of New Alexandria was caving in on itself. The ceiling shook overhead, and another drizzle of old dust rained down over their heads. Duncan had learned to gauge the distance by the intensity of the sound and knew that the structure had to be over a kilometer away. He had also learned to judge what kind of building it was, or had been, by the duration of the sound. He discerned that the latest one was a skyscraper. The skyscrapers on average took seven or eight seconds longer to collapse completely to the ground when compared to shorter buildings like small offices and apartments. The greater the mass, the longer the descent.

"The bigger they are, the harder they fall." Yuri said.

Duncan held back a half-hearted laugh at having unintentionally had his mind read. "And they just keep falling."

"And to think we were just fighting to keep this place." Mackley commented, watching his foot tap out a pensive rhythm on the floor as though he were giving serious thought to an idea that he couldn't keep to himself. "You guys want to know something?"

Lang peered over at him; his face palmed soberly in his hands. "What?"

Mackley kept staring at his tapping foot. "My dad was a Marine. He's also a Quaker, a devout one too. Aliens or not, they're all just devils to him, and this war is some kind of judgement. Back when I was shipping out, my mom was a wreck. But him?" He shook his head. "Not a tear."

Duncan didn't think he was mistaken, but he wasn't sure if the sniper's tapping had sped up ever so slightly.

"He didn't even look like he was bothered, not like he didn't care, but more like he'd already made peace with it before I did. And you know what he said to me? He puts his hand on my shoulder like I just got a bad report card or something, and he looks me in the eye, and he says, 'Son, if it's God's will that you live, then you'll live." He paused. "'But if it's His will that you die, die well.'"

Yuri whistled. "Talk about tough love."

Mito leaned forward into the conversation. "...And now?"

"Now?" The tapping stopped. "Now I'm just trying to figure out what the Big Man's plan is. If it's here and now, I'd rather do it guns blazing, not sitting around waiting to get cooked in some bunker. Not my idea of 'dying well' if you catch what I'm saying."

On the opposite wall, Dalton was pushing against his own back to hoist himself into a leaning stance. When he was settled, he shot a grin over at Mackley. "Your old man was definitely a Marine. Regardless of what they believe, that do-or-die attitude never changes. Mines was in the Corps too, fought in the early days of the insurrection."

He suddenly grimaced, though it wasn't obvious whether it was from a newfound pain or an unwanted memory.

"It messed him up, and it made him mess us up. See, he was the type of man to beat the crap out of his kids for doing a fraction of the kind of stuff he did, a real do as I say, not as I do type. I was the oldest, so I got it the worst. One day I got so tired of it that I got in his face about it. He then gets right back in my face and gives me the same kind of speech your father gave you, only he says it more like a threat than a word of advice. He meant it too, decked me so hard it took the police and a few neighbors to pull him off me. He kicks me out of the house, and I end up going to the Marines to keep from going homeless. I make it through training and come back to take another swing at him, but the best I can do is a stalemate. Piece of crap managed to keep himself in shape over the years, who would've thought. So, what do I do?"

"You turn into a hobo again, sir?" Daz prodded.

"Close. I start thinking, 'well, what's tougher than a Marine'?"

"A Spartan?" Mackley posited.

"You're jumping too far ahead." The Staff replied. "Think about it."

A glimmer of realization flicked on in Mackley's eyes. He stifled a chuckle. "Sarge, you serious?"

Dalton nodded. "Yup."

"You're telling me you joined the ODSTs just to win a punchout with your old man?" Lang asked.

Dalton nodded again, sporting a proud smile on his face. "Cracked his skull the third time around. Sure, it landed me in a cell for a few days until they found out he threw the first punch, not that I wasn't the one that goaded him into it. When I got out, I visited him at the hospital." His smile mellowed and thinned. "It was the first time he ever said he was proud of me."

Nova cocked her head at him. "After you...beat him black and blue?"

"Never said he was sane. Guess I had to punch the trauma out of him to find the man he used to be. Years later, I put him in a retirement home. He was a lot happier after that, even wished me luck before I left for Reach. I heard he passed a few months ago. His caretakers told me the last words he had for me. Want to hear'em?"

"Why not?" Hector said.

"If you ever run out of ammo, just imagine the enemy with my face. It should buy you a few more seconds."

As he finished his story, there was silence.

Then laughter.

The whole platoon broke into cackles and chuckles.

"I think I'll take the Quaker dad any day." Mito said.

"Mack, forget what I said about tough love." Yuri added. "Because that right there, that's something else."

Dalton laughed in agreement. "Yeah, he was a real piece of work alright."

Duncan joined in as well. While doing so, something came to mind. He remembered the birthday gift in his pants pocket, the old rock from Harvest. The handheld memorial to days gone by was a reminder by itself. His own dad hadn't been anything like the sergeant's. Even if one had lived longer, he was far gladder if anything that they never came to blows. But when he thought about it more closely, he remembered that Dalton and his own dad were of the same generation, the last of the men and women who'd joined the UNSC to fight their fellow man. That all sounded like a much better time to be alive, especially as the laughter around the room died down and the far-off rumble of another collapsing building echoed through the bunker.

The brief mirth granted Duncan a sudden surge of strength that had been missing for the past three days. He braced his back against the wall and started copying Dalton, pushing himself up to a near standing position. He was grateful to see that he wasn't wheezing by the time he'd gotten himself upright. His senses were slowly coming back to him.

"Anybody else ready to get out of here?" He asked. "I mean, not saying we can, but it's good to get the conversation going."

"As soon as we're ready to move." The Staff replied.

"But it sounds like the Covenant have called it a day. I doubt they'll be sending search teams to check out the rubble. If they've already burned the place and moved on, shouldn't we do the same?"

The Staff thought about it, then turned to Renni as she came back from the bathroom, carrying her newly cleaned bucket out with her. "Ep-10, I need a professional opinion."

She rested her charge down next to Hector. "In terms of your conditions, personally, I'd give it another day to be sure you're in the clear with respect to the primary symptoms. However, I'd also say the sooner we leave, the sooner we can get you guys to a med facility to get ahead of any long-term effects. As for the conditions we'll run into outside, well, it's been three days. That should be more than enough time for most of the residual radiation to have subsided in our neck of the woods."

Zack squinted at her. "Can I get that last part in English?"

"We won't drop dead if we go outside but we definitely shouldn't stick around, not in the open at least. It'd be best if we know what we're going to do out there well ahead of time and that we do it quickly once we've figured that out."

"Hmm." The Staff tipped his head in agreement. "Better late than never."

"Better sooner than later." Dalton quipped.

"Seems so. Alright, I think I'm ready to stretch my legs anyway." The Staff held up a hand to the sergeant who grabbed it and helped him pull himself to his feet. "I'll run recon. I need one more to tag along."

Nova leaned over to grab her rifle and stood up. "Sir, I'd advise against that. You haven't taken more than a handful of steps since we got here. Let me run recon. I'll take Yuri and scout ahead for a way out into the open. Hopefully we can find a spot with good connection, or better yet, maybe we'll find some friendly search teams out and about."

Yuri peered around at her. "I don't remember signing on to that."

"I signed you on." Nova said. "You're welcome."

"If you think you're up for it." The Staff said.

Yuri scowled. "I-"

"Yes." Nova cut in. "We'll let you know what we find."

Duncan watched the two of them get their armor on, one of them reluctantly. He wished he could do the same. He probably could but not without some help.

After a few minutes, the pair had slipped on their helmets and moved towards the exit. They stopped at the bunker doors which had remained sealed since the first day. He was hesitant to think of what they would find beyond it.

Nova punched the red button on the panel to the left of it. The same ensemble of hissing, clamoring mechanisms played out within the twin slabs of titanium, a seam distinguishing itself between them as they parted. The doors slid open at a cautious pace. Even while they did, a meter-tall wave of dust rolled in.

There was no light.

The space beyond the threshold was dark, a void that sounded alive with metallic groans and crumbling rumbles. It was almost as if they'd been eaten alive by some dying giant whose bowels were still at work. It was every bit as unnerving as he would've guessed.

Yuri glanced at Nova. "Did you really need me for this?"

Nova paid him no heed and took off at a careful stride into the void.

Yuri let out an explosive sigh as he followed. "Ty na samom dele otstoy."

"So do you." She shot back.

They slipped into the dark. The sound of their footsteps slowly drifted off into the cacophonous innards of the ROTC Building. Renni was the one to press the button again, prompting the doors to seal shut behind them.

"How long should we give them?" Dalton asked.

The Staff pinched the bridge of his nose, either in contemplation or to stave off another round of headaches. "Half an hour, 45-minutes tops."

Duncan allowed himself to slide back down into a sitting position. He pulled his knees up to his chest to support his arms as he laid his face in his palms. A new wave of exhaustion was taking hold. He let his eyes shut and faded off into something approaching sleep.

He didn't know how long he rested for before the tumultuous racket of the bunker doors yanked him into consciousness.

He raised his head right as the doorway reopened. Some of the others raised their heads as well, recovering from deep thoughts or an even deeper sleep. A moment later, Nova and Yuri stepped through. Their armor was completely different from how it was when they left. They were covered from head to toe in dust. Small waves of airborne debris wafted in after them like ghostly capes as Renni shut the door.

"What's the report?" The Staff asked.

Nova took off her helmet and shook off more of the dust. "You guys were right. Looks like the Covenant bailed out. The skies are clear, or as clear as they'll ever be after everything else. We didn't spot any search teams though."

The Staff nodded. "The interior?"

"The heat is mostly gone. The sub-floors are fine and so are the first five floors. The problems start around level six. The building is reasonably intact but by that point it's basically leaning. We're looking at major structural damage. Going up the stairwell we'll have to switch between climbing and crawling. As for the roof, well, there is no roof. The whole thing collapsed down to the 19th floor.

"What about our ride?"

"We paid Vulture-5-2 a visit." Yuri explained while he pulled off his own helmet and wiped away the dust from his visor. "Our pilots are dead, both of them." He stopped. "Perhaps one a little more than other..."

"That's a given." The Staff said. "I mean the Pelican. Is it still usable?"

Yuri shrugged. "It's in one piece, at least looks in good shape, but can't say for sure. We didn't go inside. The main problem from what I saw is that that thing is jammed in there real good. If it still works, we could maybe back it out of here but..."

"But?" Hector pressed.

"It might cause more collapse. With how the ROTC is looking right now, that might bring down this whole building. So, if we can switch it on, we better be sure to get out of here quick."

Mito folded his arms over his chest. "So, what you're both saying is that right now we're all sitting under one big death trap?"

"I didn't say that, but I also think it goes without saying."

"And the only way out is through a crashed dropship that may or may not work?"

Yuri shrugged again. "Basically."

Dalton shut his eyes in a deep exhale. "Lovely."

Duncan decided to try the question lingering on his mind. "And NA?"

Nova turned in his direction but said nothing.

He figured she hadn't heard him and tried again. "What about the city? How's it looking?"

Again, nothing. She only stared at him for a while, long enough for Duncan to realize she had heard him the first time.

As her eyes fell to the floor, Yuri raised a tired hand to the back of his neck, shaking his head. "...What city?"

What smidge of hope Duncan had unknowingly clung to came to the forefront of his attention. It was, in sudden retrospect, an inexplicable belief that a place as large as New Alexandria might still be standing in some facet or another. He hadn't noticed it until now. Reality was quickly settling in to give him a gut-check. Despite sitting down, it still managed to knock the bottom out from under him.

"We'll cross that bridge when we come to it." The Staff said, this time picking himself up without the extra help. "Right now, we need to get going. Let's pack it up, 1st Platoon. Get your gear, we're moving out."

The word was out and the move to follow the order commenced in a series of shambling, uncertain movements. The platoon got to work pulling on their armor and resecuring their equipment. Duncan, for his part, was left only with his BDU. His grenade launcher was gone and so was his rifle. He was completely unarmed save for his combat knife. If they ran into trouble, he wondered just how much he could do with that.

Not much.

As he slipped on his utility belt, he peeked down the lineup of Team 1. None of them had a secondary weapon except for one.

"Hey Heck."

Fastening his right shoulder pad into place, Hector gave him a glance. "Yah?"

He pointed to his sidearm. "You mind?"

Hector picked the M6 out of its holster and slipped out two additional magazines from his belt. He tossed them down the line one after the other, giving Duncan enough time to catch each in turn.

Duncan stowed away the magazines with gracious care. "Grazie."

"De nada."

He worked the slide on the pistol, reassured at the sight of the round in the chamber. "That was Italian."

"Potato, tomato."

Duncan smirked as he let the slide slip back into place and he quickly set to putting on the rest of his upper body armor. He'd worked his way up to his helmet by the time the others were grabbing their rifles off the floor. A short spell of nausea tugged at his throat. He steadied his breathing for a few seconds to get it to go away. He pulled on his helmet and let the information from his HUD resettle his focus on the mission ahead:

Survival.

The Staff rolled his shoulders, seemingly shaking himself loose of any remaining debilitation. As the others closed in around him, he hefted his shotgun at the ready. "Ep-10, do the honors."

Renni punched the button on the access panel. The doors gave their usual orchestra of hisses and thumps before sliding open again, allowing another gasp of dust to wash inside.

Now Duncan got a good look at the other side. There wasn't much to see either way, nothing except a long corridor that eventually faded into a horizontal pit. Sparks from the busted overhead lights spastically lit up parts of the void in a scene straight out of his nightmares.

The Staff nodded them forward and began the charge with a wary stride, leading the rest of them into a matching pace.

The platoon fell into a single file line that disappeared into the darkness one after the other. With only a sidearm, Duncan saddled himself with rear security duty a short step ahead of Mito, allowing the latter and his assault rifle to cover the very back. He took one last look at the safe, temperature-regulated refuge of the fallout bunker before moving into the hot, stuffy confines of their escape route.

:********:

It somehow got even hotter.

The building itself was slowly dying around them. Just as Nova had said, by the sixth floor they had been reduced to an actual climb. The stairwell was falling apart in multiple places. On either side of them, sections of the walls had collapsed, covering some of the steps and landings in hard to navigate debris fields. Pieces of staircases further up had broken off or were in the process of doing so, contributing to a continuous, albeit random rainfall of dust and chunks of concrete. The latter were the greater concern. Gravity had turned detritus from the upper floors into fist-sized mortars that barreled down the stairwell. They occasionally smashed off nearby railings which themselves were either warped and bent by previous impacts or had been torn completely free. The damage had even left gaps in the stairs themselves. Some were two or three steps wide, forcing them to perform an increasing number of jumps and leaps.

In the midst of everything else, the old bodies Team 1 had come across on their way down hadn't gone anywhere. Many of them lay crushed beneath the ruins of their own surroundings, pale legs and smashed faces peeking out from under jagged slabs of cement. A few of the more exposed ones were bloated and ready to burst. Having spent three days stewing in the massive temperature spike wrought by the glassing, the smell that wafted from them was almost ungodly. The disgustingly sweet stench of human decomposition was gone. Left in its place was an abominable perversion of freshly cooked steak and burning garbage.

Duncan kept looking out the passing windows as well as the holes in the walls. No matter how far up they journeyed, the view outside only got worse.

The skies were somehow both dark and bright. A carpet of storm clouds had come to cover the area in a deep darkness. At least he thought they were storm clouds. Flashes of lightning would randomly illuminate their depths. However, swaths of smoke had intermingled with the skyline from vaporous upwellings far below, giving the weather a brackish hue. Despite being overcast, there were breaks in the cloud cover, spots where the pinkish-orange glow of evening became more visible beneath the oppressive shade of the thunderstorm.

It wasn't evening.

The nearest buildings took up the bulk of what he could see on the ground.

They weren't quite right.

It took him awhile to realize that most of them were slanted.

It took him a while longer to realize that the building they were in was no better off.

The lean was slight, but it was there, and it was noticeable.

Unlike before, the windows of the neighboring structures were all black and lightless except for portions of individual floors where fires raged like detonated furnaces. That pattern changed the further down he looked. There, the windows gained a shimmering glow that didn't come from within but from without, reflections of streetside infernos that he couldn't see directly.

Reaching the landing between the 10th and 11th floors, he caught a glimpse out of another window. Just west of the ROTC was a wall of vapor that curved and curled skyward like an aerosolized glacier. It was steam. Moving on to the landing between the 11th and 12th floors, he saw where it slowly rose up from between the retaining walls that surrounded what was once the Hornád's nearest tributary. It had become little more than a hissing trench, a chasm that bled its evaporated contents into the sky, incidentally curtaining off everything that lay beyond it.

"They really did a number on this place." Hector said.

"This is nothing." Nova replied. "Just wait until we reach the top, or what's left of it."

They were approaching the 13th floor, striding up the steps when a sudden fissure snaked along the wall, hitting Lang with a belch of dust at the heart of the line. Daz stopped to give him a hand in wiping off his visor. Otherwise, all eyes were on the fissure which continued to lunge up the height of the stairwell with jutting movements, each yielding a puff of dust and a crackle of crumbling architecture.

It stopped after several long seconds. By then its terminus was well out of sight.

No one moved.

Then Dalton slowly turned his head from the crack. He looked up the line towards the Staff who, after a few uneasy heartbeats, waved them forward. The platoon resumed their advance but at a more careful trod, working their way up like mice around a slumbering cat.

As Duncan got close to the crack, he dared to hold a hand out to it and saw with a good deal of apprehension that it was twice as wide as his palm. He tried not to think about that as he moved on. He tried even harder not to think about something far more worrisome. How far up it went wasn't really the problem. It was how far down. The further down it went, the more likely it was to have already torn through the foundation. He could hear faint but similar sounds coming from distant parts of the building. If there were more cracks as big as the last one, then the chances that the foundation had been reduced to Swiss cheese were high. If that was the case, then the ROTC Building didn't have long to live.

"We got this far," Lang began as they clambered through a particularly debris-strewn section of staircase. "How-, if everything is this busy falling apart, I-, I just don't get how we're still alive right now. Even with the bunker, we might've gotten buried if we stayed there a couple hours longer."

"We could still be buried out here." Yuri pointed out. "Don't jinx us."

"You know, I'm really starting to come around to the idea that the Almighty is doing us a solid." Mackley said.

"A solid?" Lang questioned.

"Yeah, you know, a solid. Who knows, man, maybe my old man was right. Maybe the big guy saved us back there."

"You think so?"

"Yeah," Mito agreed. "For later."

Mackley grinned back at him. "I'll take later over now any day."

Just as the words left his mouth, a crumbling noise came from below. Daz leapt forward as the step beneath her suddenly gave out. So did the one that Mackley was about to make, causing him to step out over open air.

His scream got caught in his throat as Yuri caught him by the shoulder, yanking him back.

They watched the debris crash onto the staircase below, smashing a handful of corpses beneath the weight.

Yuri glowered at him. "I said don't jinx us, didn't I?"

"...Thanks."

The Staff came ambling down the other end of the staircase, stopping to survey the damage for himself. He looked up to the others that were cut off. "Can you make it?"

"We'll try." Mackley waited for everyone behind him to back up before he took a running start. Kicking off from the last step, he sailed over the gap and landed just on the edge of the upper stairs. He caught ahold of the railing and drew himself the rest of the way to safety. The Staff waved to the rest of them. One by one, they also made the jump, landing on the edge and grabbing the rails just in time to pull themselves forward. Each time, however, more and more pieces of it broke off or crumbled away.

Duncan watched Mito land on the other side, causing another foot-sized piece of step to give out behind him. He tracked its fall into the depths of the stairwell until it was absorbed into the dark, the echo of its impact reaching him several seconds later. What it left behind was a gap nearly twice as wide as it had been when it opened.

Duncan swallowed but still found the wherewithal to holster his pistol and take a few steps back.

"Think he'll need some help?" Mackley asked.

The Staff answered by taking another step closer to the edge. He slapped his shotgun on his harness and brought his hands out in front of him in a catcher's stance.

Duncan understood. He braced himself, waited for his heart rate to relax and took off at a run.

His last stride launched him from the final step and over the gap. His foot caught the edge and slipped.

Hands lunged out and grabbed his arms, arresting his fall. The Staff used his left leg as an anchor while he leaned back on his right, heaving Duncan forward for the split-second he needed to plant his foot back on the edge. He quickly stumbled past the Staff who had practically tossed him into the staircase.

A series of deep breaths and hammering heartbeats later, Duncan was calm enough to talk. "Thanks...for that..."

"Don't thank me yet. You might have to do the same for me before we're done here. Come on."

The Staff trudged towards the front of the line, leaving everyone else looking down at Duncan.

Mito reached over and brushed off some of the dust from his shoulder pad. "You alright?"

"I'm alive. I'll settle for that." He peered up at Mackley. "Didn't we say stop jinxing us?"

Mackley shook his head. "I'll just stop talking at this point."

"It's for the best." Mito advised as the upward march began anew.

For Duncan, the 13 and 14th floors went by fast enough for him to feel like he was getting somewhere but slow enough for him to notice a few things. The building's general lean was becoming more pronounced. There were windows in the adjacent hallways that were slanting forward. Small piles of refuse had rolled to the more level parts of certain rooms. Even a few bodies had rolled off into piles as well. There were more cracks running up the walls. He couldn't gauge how long they had been there for, but some appeared fresher than others. The ensuing trek past the 15th and 16th floors was no better, though the increasing tilt caused them to rely more and more on railings that weren't always there.

Then they reached the 17th floor.

The Staff stopped at the door on the landing. He grabbed the handle and pushed, not having to do much before gravity swung it the rest of the way open. Nova went in first with weapon raised while the rest of the platoon filed out after her.

The 17th floor was half-folded in on itself. While the ground was relatively even, the ceiling was at a tilt just like the rest of the building. Coming out, they emerged into the northwestern corner of a sprawling office space. Row after row of walled cubicles stretched out from one end to the next.

All eyes shifted to the west wing, landing almost immediately on Vulture-5-2.

The Pelican lay buried up to its bay door in the west wing's glass wall. Its tail was still sticking out from the building. The smoke that had wafted from its rear a few days ago was gone, as were any fires left from the crash. The entire aircraft almost seemed in good condition...except for the steel girder that had speared straight through the cockpit.

As they filtered through the labyrinthine network of cubicles towards the dropship, it became obvious that the aircraft hadn't flown clear into the 17th floor. It had actually crashed directly into the flooring between their level and the one above. The resulting damage had left a spiderweb of cracks running across the ceiling. They all stemmed from the point of impact: a large hole from which uprooted wires still sparked and metal pipes jutted out. A host of rubble had fallen in from the ruin of the upper floor onto Vulture-5-2, leaving a debris field scattered both on and around the crash site.

That was the least of their concerns for the time being.

While the ceiling tiles might have given out, the steel girders forming its skeleton hadn't. The one currently stabbing into the cockpit was partly bending as its other end struggled to remain rooted overhead.

The platoon dispersed around the dropship.

Duncan tagged along with Renni, Yuri, Nova and the Staff towards the rear. The fuselage and its cargo bay had just barely made it through the glass, the shards of which crackled beneath their boots like a thick layer of snow.

They came around the back to find the door to the bay lying open between the outstretched landing struts. It was a clear sign that Vulture-5-2 had been aiming for an immediate dust-off from the roof. The darkened interior of the bay was an unwelcoming sight. Like the rest of the aircraft, the space within was somewhat tilted to port.

They strode up the ramp. Trotting towards the door to the cockpit, they were careful to watch their step as a variety of leftover equipment had been flung free from their overhead compartments. The smell of burnt flesh made an unlooked-for return.

The Staff was the first to reach the door. He stopped and stared.

"How are they?" Renni asked as they came up behind him.

Still quiet, the Staff stepped forward down the short walkway to the right of the co-pilot's seat, making space for them to take a look.

Duncan wasn't sure what to expect, but he hadn't expected this.

The steel girder that had stabbed through the window had also gone through the pilot's seat...and the pilot. Vulture-5-2 sat back in what remained of his chair, impaled on a 10-meter-long piece of metal that his own velocity and ill-fortune had turned into a pike. Though much of his torso was caved in, his head rested against his seat as if he were only asleep. On the other end of the spectrum, the head of the co-pilot was laying on his own shoulder at an unnatural angle, indicative of a broken neck.

For a moment, the group looked on at the bodies of their would-be rescuers in a respectful silence.

"Think it was quick?" Yuri asked.

The Staff looked down and Duncan saw what had caught his attention.

Vulture-5-2's hands lay in his lap. Lying loosely between a few of the fingers on his right was a small picture. On it, a little girl with long blonde hair smiled, exposing her missing teeth while she hugged the side of a content looking German Shepherd.

The Staff slowly shook his head. "No."

Nova did likewise upon noticing it. "...How do we move them?"

"I think you mean how do we move him." Renni replied, gesturing towards the pilot. "His co-pilot isn't the problem right now."

"First, let's see if any of this still works." The Staff said. "Ep-5, what's your assessment?"

Yuri was looking around the cockpit, eyeing the arrangement of buttons and interfaces lining the walls. Despite the circumstances, some of them still shone with active indicator lights.

"She has some life left in her. I can try co-pilot's seat to run diagnostics. It will give us a better idea of what we're working with."

"Think you can steer her from there if she stays afloat?"

"Shouldn't be a problem, but don't hold me to that. Flying a broken bird requires a bit more finesse, and I'll need some help moving the other guy."

"Ep-8, help him out."

Duncan nodded back.

Nova pointed a thumb at Vulture-5-2. "And him?"

The Staff came closer to the pilot's body and reached into the collar of his flight suit. "Still have your blowtorch on you?"

She whipped out the blue canister on her belt. "Yessir."

The Staff yanked at something. There was a pop. Then he pulled out his hand, unfurling his fingers to examine the dog tags resting in his palm. He slipped them into his pocket and pointed at the front of the cockpit. "Cut a hole in the glass. Make it big enough to fit him through. Then head out onto the nose and cut through the girder. Once that's done, we'll pull him out."

"Roger."

Duncan waited as Yuri pulled at the arms of the co-pilot, dragging him out until his legs fell to the ground with the rest of him. He grabbed the corpse by the boots and helped Yuri carry him into the bay. They ferried him down the ramp and out into the open, placing the cadaver off to the side. Duncan reached into his uniform to collect his dog tags. Just as he was about to pop them free his fingers brushed against something sharp and wet. His hand came up bloody. It wasn't his blood. He spotted the bit of gore-soaked bone sticking out of the co-pilot's neck. It left him a bit more disturbed than he already was, especially knowing that neither of the men would have been in harm's way if they hadn't tried to save them.

He returned inside with Yuri. He stood off to the side while he watched him clamber up into the co-pilot's seat and start manipulating the various displays and interfaces.

All the while, sparks flew from the front of the cockpit as Nova started cutting through the glass, gently maneuvering the torch into a circle around the point where the girder had pierced through.

A low hum surged throughout the entire aircraft from front to back. The lights on many of the displays flickered online around the cockpit.

"Got power back on." Yuri said. "Wings are mostly intact; landing gear is a little shot, but it could be worse. No serious hull damage either. Warming up the drives now."

Duncan heard a whirring commotion as a slight rumble shook the ground beneath his feet, gradually growing into a subdued whine.

"Keep her grounded for now." The Staff said. "Ep-2?"

Just then, both the bright glow and buzzing hiss of Nova's blowtorch petered out. "Good to go on this side."

She turned and jogged through the cockpit door. Reappearing outside a few seconds later, she planted a boot on the top of the autocannon and another on the nose of the Pelican, using them to stabilize herself. She restarted the blowtorch and began cutting through the steel girder still lodged in the dropship and its pilot.

Behind her, Duncan spotted a drizzle of debris raining down further in the room. Parts of the ceiling were buckling and giving way. The latest tumble of structural wreckage brought with it small but continuous streams of water that flowed from busted pipes in the floor above. His jaw clenched tight at the idea that at any moment the whole thing could come crashing down on their heads.

The rest of the platoon glanced nervously at the work on the girder while keeping watch on the surrounding area. As Nova cut halfway through, the girder gave a sharp groan as the metal began yielding to the strain. Duncan and the Staff reached out and grabbed Vulture-5-2, barely stopping the severed shaft from seesawing him into the air. It took a good deal of struggle to hold him in place.

"Get the window." The Staff said. "Ep-4, help her out.

Nova shimmied along the barrel of the autocannon until she had made room for Hector who came hopping onto the weapon for support. Together they pulled at the two-meter-long rod of metal. Simultaneously, Duncan and the Staff lifted the pilot. Together the first group pulled while the other pushed, forcing the section of carved glass to dislodge from the cockpit window. The move created a sizable hole through which they began drawing Vulture-5-2 outside. They kept going until he was clear of the cockpit and out in the open. Dalton and Zack ran in to assist. The four of them hoisted the body along like a human spit roast before setting him down off to the side.

"Alright, we're clear." The Staff declared. "Ep-5, get us up. We're going to back out of here, nice and easy. Everyone else, pile in. We're leaving."

The others who weren't aboard abandoned their positions at the front of the Pelican and dashed around to either side of it. Nova lingered behind. She paused only to pick up the small picture that had fallen to the ground. She put it back in the pilot's hand, closing his fingers around it before turning and running after the others. They rushed up the ramp and slid into whatever seats were available, kicking aside any junk that got in their way while they secured their harnesses.

Duncan was going for a place to sit but was caught off guard as the Pelican rose beneath him. He looked to the mangled pilot's chair where Renni was strapping herself in. Just beyond her, he saw the space outside the window lowering away. The dropship was making a slow ascent marked in inches rather than meters.

Suddenly, a crack exploded through the ground below them. By the time Duncan became aware of it, it had already shot to the other end of the floor. Another immediately zipped across the wall of the south wing and curved up into the ceiling. Several holes opened up above to vomit more debris both great and small across their level. In seconds, twice as many abscesses crumbled into being, unleashing a greater windfall of rubble and revealing more of the flaming ruins of the 18th floor.

As a worrying number of chairs and office furnishings bounced off the cockpit, something like a detonation sounded behind them. A blast of glass shards swirled past in a glimmering whirlwind, pinging off the fuselage and whipping across the rest of the floor...a floor that was now tilting towards them.

"It's coming down!" Renni shouted.

"Ep-5, forget reversing!" The Staff yelled. "Forward, full speed!"

"On it!" Yuri pulled hard on the throttle. The drives responded in kind, their whine rushing into a dull roar. The nose dipped into a forward acceleration that increased with each second as they flew through the ever-inclining confines of the 17th floor. Cubicles and chairs shattered against the hull as they ploughed on ahead through the aisles of office spaces. A powerful gust of wind bellowed through the hole in the window and battered the cockpit with growing force. Regardless, Yuri kept a steady hand on the controls while he pushed on, keeping them on a straight course to avoid the support columns flashing by on either side.

Duncan was holding onto an emergency handle attached to the co-pilot's seat while the Staff held onto another near the pilot's. Both of them were struggling to keep their feet on the ground, an act that became more difficult with time and speed. As the Pelican gained more acceleration, so too did the rain of furnishings that came tumbling against the dropship as the floor tilted to an even-steeper angle.

Nearly to the other end, the building's descent swung a support column into their path that forced Yuri to cut to the right. His starboard wing scythed clear through another column. The impact knocked Duncan's feet out from under him. His other hand snapped to the emergency handle. He grasped on tight to keep from being flung back into the cargo bay. Ahead of him, the Staff was dangling, holding on for dear life.

The Pelican was nearly vertical when they cleared the last of the supports. Duncan glimpsed the bright world beyond the glass walls hurtling towards them a moment before they smashed through, rocketing out into the open air. Through the viewport in the cargo bay door, he saw an explosion of dust and debris spewing out from the building, erupting outwards along their turbulent wake.

The ROTC continued its leaning fall for a second longer before smashing into the ground with the force of a bombardment. On impact, its crumbling mass flew apart into a maelstrom of smoke, rushing out in every direction along gales of displaced air. The destruction of all 20 stories reached them as a thunderclap. The encompassing haze quickly folded in on the devastation and began engulfing it from view.

"Level out!" The Staff barked.

Yuri eased off the throttle and gradually pulled down on the nose. Bit by bit, the Pelican's ascent slowly ebbed until it had equalized itself.

Duncan returned his boots to the floor, his ragged breathing eventually permitting a sigh of relief. Nevertheless, his fingers clutched at the emergency handle with a death grip.

"I'm not reading any Covie ships in the area, sir." Yuri said. "We're clear. What now?"

The Staff leaned onto the pilot's chair to steady his feet. He gave a long exhale as he allowed himself a second to relax. At length, he looked up and peered out into the darkened expanse of the surrounding city. "...We'll take a look around, nice and slow."

:********:

Duncan wasn't religious, or at least he wasn't sure if he was. But he was questioning that now, because reality was slowly but surely making him a believer.

New Alexandria was both burning and burnt.

It reminded him of the stories he'd heard of the bible's lake of fire, except it was less a lake and more of a never-ending sea. The mist from three days prior had been reduced to a light covering of steam clouds. The streets of the city were completely visible again, except there were no streets. They were submerged beneath a layer of a tar-like substance that simultaneously glowed with an inner heat. Millions of small flames burned across the region, licking away at the shallow waves, valleys and plains that had formed in the black crust of the landscape.

Then he thought again and realized how wrong he was.

The streets themselves weren't submerged. He was looking right at them.

In the place of billions of damned souls were hundreds of giant silhouettes, darkened buildings whose foundations had been burned out from under them, causing many of them to lean. Most appeared as sinking ships that hadn't managed to go down before the waters froze over, trapping them as they were. Individual infernos resided at their bases. Hellish geysers fountained up around the skeletal remains of their lower floors, infesting their collapsing infrastructure with uncontrolled fires.

Had he not seen the glassing beam, he could have mistaken everything around him for the aftermath of a volcanic eruption. It was easier to think that. It wasn't as hard to think that a force of nature had changed New Alexandria into this, a volcano and not a battlegroup of enemy cruisers.

He'd seen glassed planets before. He had even stayed on one.

The scenery alone held a striking resemblance to what he'd seen on Kholo, or perhaps what it would have looked like had he arrived there in its last days. He'd missed that one, but he was here for this one, and he was equally unprepared for it.

No matter where he turned, no matter how far west or east or north or south he looked, he couldn't escape it. The destruction was total and all encompassing. The sky itself was all wrong. Like he had seen from the ROTC, the skyline was full of black clouds that flickered with lightning, the lowest of which were set aglow by the larger fires that blazed across the length and breadth of the city.

Yuri brought the Pelican into a gliding descent through a low-lying smoke cloud. Breaking to the other side, they settled into a watchful patrol. The molten remains of the streets panned by less than a hundred meters below, causing a panoply of light refractions to glimmer off the cockpit window. Unlike regular sunlight, the radiance continued to shine on them even while they passed beneath the leaning shadows of the cityscape.

The heat was immense. Being at such low altitudes caused the high temperatures from below to cast everything near and far in a vacillating mirage. What it created was a natural illusion wrought by unnatural processes. The double-reflective surfaces made it seem as if the melted earth sunk away into an expansive lake off in the distance, surrounding them in all directions. The 'lake', however, never got any closer or further away.

Upon closer inspection of their new surroundings, Duncan sighted objects locked within the tides of devastation that had been transformed into incidental time capsules. There were the scorched wrecks of cars, crooked street lights and half submerged road signs for streets long gone. There were even mangled corpses of UNSC and Covenant vehicles sprinkled here and there, an upturned Warthog forced against a building, a disemboweled Wraith stranded on an intersection, and others besides.

Further into the cockpit, the Staff turned from his vigil behind the pilot seat. "Ep-7?"

Sitting in the nearest seat in the bay, Zack shook his head as he worked his radio equipment. "No stable contact yet, sir. From the bits and pieces I'm getting, there seems to be a few search and rescue operations going on around the city, but I can't raise them either."

"Anyone need help?"

"If there are, we can't hear them."

"Try the E-BAND."

"Tried it. There's still a lot of interference. Those glassing beams, Ep-2 says they have some kind of EMP effect, a big one. It only lasts about one-billionth of a second. Doesn't do anything to us, but it packs one heck of a punch on our communications. It might be awhile before it's all cleared up."

"I don't get it." Yuri grumbled. "If there are more flyboys out and about then why haven't we at least seen them yet?"

"I can only tell you what I hear, and right now it's not a lot."

"Well, listen again, because we've been at this for 10 minutes now and there's not even speck of life out here. Either you're wrong or my eyes are wro-"

"Hey." Renni pointed off to their left. "Isn't that..."

The Staff looked out the cockpit window and Duncan edged closer to do the same.

He saw it.

It had to be almost three kilometers away or more, but he could make it out regardless.

Far off to the west, past a dense forestry of tilting buildings, stood the Csillagos éj.

The hotel was perfectly upright.

It hadn't fallen like so many others around the city. Its elevated height caused it to stand out even more, a monolith in its own right that, though battered, had somehow survived the glassing intact.

"The hotel." Duncan said under his breath.

"Guess it made it." Yuri noted. "Now we just need to do same."

"No." The Staff replied.

Duncan wasn't sure which he was saying no to until he noticed that the Csillagos was getting smaller, but not because they were getting further away.

Without warning, a plume of dust and debris exploded out from its lowest floors.

He watched with his heart in his stomach as the hotel suddenly began collapsing in on itself. It was descending into the ground with the observable speed of an ant and all the power of a supercarrier, the sound of its fall thundering across the region. Its remaining windows were blasted out by roiling clouds, each a cascade of pulverized rubble that spewed from the innards of the structure in split-second detonations. The self-demolition traveled up the building as entire floors vanished into the obscuring miasma below, adding more height to the rolling curtains of dust as the very heights of the hotel locomoted into the ground.

By the tenth second, the roof dipped out of view. Its shadow vanished into the smoke which swelled high into the air like seawater rising from an impact.

The deep reverberations of disintegrating infrastructure continued for a while longer, long enough for Duncan to finally take in what his eyes had just seen.

A sense of loss tore at him, biting at thoughts that until that moment had been put on hold. It was a familiar sensation. While it was far more distant than he was typically used to, it was there all the same.

The Csillagos hadn't survived.

He had known that.

He was there to witness the aftermath of the massacres, one of many that had unfolded throughout the city.

The hotel wasn't a part of his life, but it was a part of Erica's and Noah's.

And that mattered.

It mattered to him, if not to anyone else, even if most of everyone who might have cared more than he did had died long before they went down with the building.

It mattered to those two, so it mattered to him, and for a brief while he felt as though he was saying goodbye to them all over again.

Nevertheless, it still struck an unsettled chord in him that those who should have been here to see what he'd seen weren't even around to do so. He considered all the death he had experienced there, the corpse-filled hallways of the upper floors, the mutilated lieutenant in the kitchen, the pale-looking chef in the safe room.

It was their tomb now, one of hundreds scattered across New Alexandria. The city itself was no longer a city. It was a graveyard where dead buildings served no better purpose than as the headstones they were, tombs to tens of thousands.

It had almost been the platoon's as well.

That fact alone echoed in the depths of Duncan's mind even while the rumbling death of the Csillagos finally came to an end.

The cockpit was utterly quiet when it returned to his awareness.

Of those who could see outside, none of them broke the silence.

Zack, who had leaned into the cockpit to see for himself, was also quiet for a moment before straightening up. Duncan picked up on the importance of whatever he was hearing by his posture alone. He knew him too well not to be able to tell when something had caught him off guard. He observed him cocking his head in what was either confusion or hesitance.

Eventually with the smoking remains of the Csillagos falling away behind them, Zack rounded on the Staff who had already noticed him out the corner of his visor.

"Found something?"

He dipped his head in a low nod.

A moment later, Duncan heard his comms come to life with a voice half-drowned in static. It belonged to no one aboard and yet he still recognized it from the few times he remembered receiving orders from its owner.

"This is Noble-1 of Spartan Noble Team to any UNSC search and rescue detachments in the area, requesting immediate extraction outside Olympic Tower. Repeat, requesting immediate extraction outside Olympic. Ident confirmation is as follows: Charlie-Alpha-Romeo-Tango-Echo-Romeo-Alpha-Two-Five-Nine. I need assistance exfiltrating my team and several civilians from the city. We'll mark our position with a blue flare on your approach. I say again, this is Noble-1 of Spartan Noble Team to any UNSC search and rescue detachments in the area, requesting immediate extraction outside Olympic Tower."

The Staff slowly turned again to Zack. "...Frequency?"

Zack, like everyone else, stared back in quiet disbelief. "E-BAND."

The Staff considered it without a word, then looked up at their pilot.

Yuri nodded back as he eased the controls to the left. Duncan gripped the nearest emergency handle and held on. The port wing dipped as the Pelican banked into a turn, changing course onto a northwesterly heading.

:********:

Their flight was marked by an uninterrupted quiet punctuated by the steady drone of the Pelican's drives. Duncan stayed in the cockpit for the five-minute journey from their last search area. He had seen everything in that time, or believed he'd seen everything.

There were buildings that leaned at impossibly steep, 35-degree angles where the viscous consistency of the ground allowed them to keep from falling flat. A constant shower of furnishings and broken glass fell out of them and into the conflagrations of the streets. Yuri was always careful to fly well above the structures in case they gave way.

There were a handful of points where the ground itself dipped into stadium-sized craters that oozed steam like apocalyptic hot springs. The hydrothermal quagmires were few and far between. They were often surrounded by kilometer-wide swaths of destruction, structural ruins more thoroughly pulverized than others, marking them out as the various ground zeros of the Covenant's final bombardment. These were much harder to avoid. Passing through the jungles of mist, there was often a dull but all-encompassing glow from far below that washed over the dropship and brightened the cockpit. He could never see or place the light source because of how vast it was, but he imagined it would be a lot like looking down at the sun.

Yuri was taking them through the aftermath of another impact site when the last of the steam parted from in front of the window.

The immediate area felt both familiar and unfamiliar.

There was a substantial clearing around it that Duncan didn't remember. A mountain range of intermingling rubble rimmed the nearby crater, showing where several buildings had succumbed to a direct blast from an energy projector. There were a number of surviving buildings just beyond the epicenter. Their nonetheless crooked shapes reminded him of the bare trees of a long winter. They were partly obscured by a forest of fumes that wafted over the site. However, their lower levels were cast in a red illumination that seemed almost unholy. It came from the stories-tall firestorms that raged over the mounds of molten material that appeared to have seeped from their bases. Duncan recognized some of the buildings if only faintly, which was why he knew that they used to be a lot taller. The damage didn't stop there either as the mounds of coagulated matter joined a veritable gulf of shadow and flame.

If New Alexandria was a lake of fire then they had reached one of its outer shores.

The 'gulf' was a massive blackout lit in hundreds of places by burning pits and fiery objects too far gone to tell what they used to be. What little light they provided was chaotic at best, but it revealed a strange landscape. It wasn't quite solid or liquid or even gaseous. Instead, it was an odd and inconsistent amalgamation of all three. Layers of smog drifted over the harsh glow of semi-basaltic flows that encased an archipelago of solidified surfaces.

It was in the middle of that brightened darkness that he found what they were looking for.

He remembered the first time he came to New Alexandria, and by extension, he remembered the first time he laid eyes on the Olympic Tower. It was a dark megalith of architecture, a sword-shaped edifice so imposing in stature that he could hardly think of anything bigger. For that reason, it had stood out to him then just as much as it did now.

Olympic Tower wasn't far from the closest impact site. It still stood tall, though braids of smoke ebbed from a dozen places along its frame, rising out in slow spirals that twirled skyward. Otherwise, its dark walls remained intact...for the most part.

As they drew closer, Duncan made out the crumpled remains of its lowest floors. There was no molten mound beneath it like the others. What he did see, however, were cave-like holes and abscesses that dotted the bottom of the tower, places where pieces of the building had broken off or yielded to the strain wrought by the glassing. They looked small from a distance, but they must have been relatively large up close.

"They should be here." Renni said, sizing up the tower.

"Maybe someone already reached them?" Yuri asked.

The Staff set a hand on the pilot's seat and leaned towards the window for a closer look. "Give it a sec."

Duncan gave it a second, then two and eventually five.

By the seventh, he spotted something.

Just below the south wing of the tower, a small mote of blue light appeared at the mouth of one of the caves. But it wasn't a light. It took a few more seconds for the luminescent vapor trail to expand and lengthen across the air before he identified it as a flare. It was becoming easier to see amidst the general mayhem the closer they came to the tower.

"There's our flare." The Staff said. "Ep-5, take us down."

"Where am I putting her?"

"Just get us close. Anywhere that's solid and intact is an LZ."

"Copy." Yuri edged down the nose and again tilted to port, bringing them into a gentle descent.

The Staff turned and strode past Duncan into the cargo bay, catching ahold of a ceiling handle to stabilize himself. "Alright platoon, get set to land. We'll provide perimeter security for Noble Team while they come aboard. Once they're in, we'll pull back to Lochaber."

Duncan tuned out the responses of the others, having already homed in on the anxious confusion of the moment.

Noble Team's presence in the city was to him just as much of a pleasant surprise as it was disturbing, deeply so. It was no small relief to know that someone else had survived the glassing, yet alone Spartans. Especially these Spartans. But that begged an unnerving question.

Why were they still here?

He wondered if they had gotten trapped in the city the same way they had. Even so, the platoon was different. They were ODSTs. Noble Team was an entirely different level of asset. The upper rungs of the UNSC leadership were much more obliged to extract their Spartans before the bombardment began than they were a bunch of stranded Helljumpers.

So, why were they still here?

It begged another question by proxy, one he wasn't prepared to answer, and then another, and another.

Where was UNSC High Command?

Where was FLEETCOM?

Where was CENTCOM?

Where was anyone?

Without warning, a deep pit opened up at the back of his conscious awareness, tugging on his focus, begging him to ask more questions that made his heart race and his stomach burn.

The Staff's words in the starport about the city only being a part of the Covenant's overall efforts on Reach suddenly came back to him in full, haunting clarity.

It took two seconds for those thoughts to race through his head and by the end of it, he was struggling to keep himself fixed on the new task at hand.

"Think we'll get to catch up with the LC, sir?" Hector asked as he ran an inspecting hand over his SMG. "It's a long ride to Lochaber."

"We'll see." The Staff replied.

Zack clutched his rifle close. "Just like old times, hey Ep-8?"

The question snapped Duncan out of one headspace and into another. He thought of the lieutenant commander. She would be right there with the rest of Noble. If she was in a chatty mood then it would at least give them a chance to sit back and talk, to reminisce on 'old times', even if they couldn't bring it up directly.

And maybe even 'he' would be there.

"Old times?" Lang interrupted. "You're really getting up in age there, gramps. We just saw her a few days ago."

"A few days is an eternity when you're fighting every second of it...kid." Zack shot back, eliciting another snarky remark from Lang.

Duncan pretended not to notice his attempt to play off what he'd said. Zack needed to be more careful. The whole of Epsilon would need to be more careful once Noble arrived. They would have to watch what they said around Whiskey for the ride back. Duncan was reasonably sure, however, that once they reached safety, they would be able to get a few minutes alone with the lieutenant commander before they parted ways. If she had time for it, they could make those minutes feel like days for what it was worth.

He felt their descent slow. He glanced again at the cockpit window and saw that the Pelican was turning around, swinging the cargo bay towards the tower.

Once the rotation was complete, Yuri leveled them off. "Touch down in 10."

The platoon pulled off their security harnesses and stood up, grabbing the ceiling handles for the next few seconds. Duncan grabbed one for himself and slipped his M6 from his belt.

Yuri started the countdown. "Five, four, three, two..."

A light tremor traveled through the floor. A moment later, the rear door opened. Bit by bit, the baleful light of the outside world peeled back the darkness of the bay.

They were on the move the second the ramp hit the ground. Hector took the lead, jumping out into the open. The others moved at a sprint and fanned out across a blackened hellscape. The sound of their boots running over the rugged surface was like fingernails scratching over rock.

The platoon fell into a two-column formation, creating a guarded path to the Pelican's open cargo bay.

Duncan stopped at the very end of the leftmost line. The position put him a few meters shy of a glowing pit wide enough to swallow a Warthog. He ignored it and made a quick scan of the area.

Briefly, the thought crossed his mind that he had died without knowing it, that he'd been damned that very same second. Seeing the fire-lit darkness from above was different from being in the middle of it. The hundreds of flames blazing in scattered isolation across the whole of the vicinity were a troubling sight. So were the rivers and lakes of molten everything that streamed past smoldering patches of rocky land. Pieces of twisted wreckage stuck out all across the location like the flotsam of a sunken ship.

Aside from that, there was nothing to see. There was no movement, no contacts, no threats to be discerned for kilometers around.

He figured it was safe enough and turned away towards Olympic Tower.

Its heights had persisted, its sharp rooftop knifing through a passing cloud like the bow of a vessel cruising through a mild sea. Still, he was nervous. If the whole thing suddenly came crumbling down like they had seen with the Csillagos then they would have virtually no chance of getting back to the Pelican in time. He peered all the way down to the caves in the lower floors. His gaze settled on the one where the flare continued to send up a trail of blue smoke into the air.

Less than 50-meters away, figures were already emerging from the shadows of the abscess.

They weren't Spartans.

They were civilians, about seven of them that came out into the open. They were a mix of haggard looking men and women whose clothes were torn and whose faces were powdered with soot. They came with wide eyes and relieved smiles, closing the distance between them and the Pelican either at a run or at a shuffling trot.

One of them, a bald man with dirty jeans and a tattered jacket ran up to him and took his free hand in his, shaking it with a near violent enthusiasm. "Thank you! Thank you so much! God bless you!"

The man patted him gratefully on the shoulder and ran on towards the safety of the Pelican.

Duncan hadn't paid any attention to him.

He'd barely registered what was said or how quickly some of the civilians moved past.

He usually did care about those sorts of things.

Not now.

Now, all his focus was given instead to the group coming behind them.

All four of them.

He recognized Warrant Officer Emile by his skull-scribed visor, his shotgun and the full bandoliers that had inspired his last loadout.

He recognized Warrant Officer Jun by his narrow visor, the tactical scarf around his neck and the SRS-99 in his hands.

He recognized the Spartan in the steel gray that had rejoined the team more recently, doing so with a special regard. He was the same man he had to thank for keeping both him and his family alive. He knew what he wanted to say in that moment, something he'd hoped to get off his chest in the off chance that they finally crossed paths again.

But right then, that seemed too long ago to matter, because he recognized the last two, the two that were leading the team down the rubble-strewn incline coming from the mouth of the cave.

He recognized Commander Carter by his large shoulder pauldron, by his general bearing and by his place at the forefront of the team. He was the last of the four.

'Four', Duncan thought before his body stopped responding to his mind.

Four...and not five.

But there were five, and to his sudden horror, he recognized the fifth.

He recognized Kat by her armor whose light blue tint had been dimmed by dust and grime.

He recognized her by her prosthetic arm that, like her legs, dangled freely from the rest of her body.

He recognized her by her gray visor, though the last time he'd seen her, she hadn't had a hole in it.

She did now, or at least her body did.

He stopped breathing once the facts had caught up with him. He stopped blinking or moving anything aside from his eyes which tracked the team's approach without any input on his part. At the edge of his vision, he could perceive that the rest of the platoon was just as silent and unmoving, standing statuesque as they watched the Spartans.

Despite her being his subordinate, Carter carried Kat in his arms with the carefulness of an old friend. Even so, she shifted slightly with each step. Each unintentional bob of her head and sway of her limbs was a knife that cut at Duncan in places his BDU could never hope to shield.

Noble closed the gap between them and the platoon. There was no real hint of it in their stride, and yet they arrived with the air of a funeral procession. They came down through the formation without a word. The platoon didn't offer any conversation either. All was quiet while the team made their way along. The scratching impact of their heavier boots changed to the clunking of metal on metal as the Spartans walked up the ramp and into the bay.

Jun was the only one to stop at the ramp, turning and crouching on its edge to survey their surroundings with his sniper rifle.

"Rear security in place." He said over their comms. "ODSTs, you can fall back. Let's get out of here."

"You heard him." The Staff said. "...Pull away, back to front. Let's go."

Duncan listened while the others started withdrawing, going two at a time. Soon it was his and Hector's turn. At first, he found it hard to move. His legs didn't respond until he used the full force of his will, not to move them but to shut off the thing in his head clogging up his ability to think. He went numb, focusing solely on getting back to the dropship.

That was all he needed to do.

Leave.

The change finally thawed his legs free of their paralysis. He was the last to pivot around. He jogged right behind Hector to the Pelican.

Passing Noble's sniper on their way inside, he found the bay much less spacious than when they first touched down. Most of the seats had been turned over to the civilians. Renni was in the process of going back and forth, helping them to secure themselves into their harnesses.

Then there was Noble.

The Spartans had mostly taken to using the ceiling handles to maintain their balance for the upcoming takeoff. Only Carter had yet to do so.

Like the rest of the platoon, Duncan took one of the overhanging handles for himself. Like everyone else, he looked on as the commander crouched in the middle of the bay, easing Kat down so that her back came to rest on the floor. He gently laid her head on the decking, pulling his fingers from behind it with care.

Up ahead, Yuri leaned out from his seat to peer through the cockpit door. "Hey, do you guys need more time or are we clear to-..."

Jun strode into the bay and grabbed a handle. "Pilot, we're good to go."

Yuri didn't reply.

Despite his visor being polarized, Duncan could tell he was staring at the body.

"Ep-5." The Staff called.

Yuri looked up at him. The faceless stare of the Staff's own visor soon brought him back to his senses. He gave a sluggish, reluctant nod as he pulled himself back behind the controls.

With a metallic groan, the ramp rose off the ground, shutting and locking itself in a resumption of its place as the bay door. The thrum of the drives rose again to a roar. Slowly then all at once, the Pelican commenced liftoff. All the extra weight put a barely noticeable damper on its speed as it accelerated up and away into a progressive ascent.

All was quiet again except for the turbulent sounds and subtle shakes of the dropship's fuselage.

Once they were in the air, the painful questions Duncan had pushed away resurged to the fore of his mind. They urged him to move, to find the answers less their absence begin to torment him. He grabbed one overhanging handle and then another, using them to slip by and squeeze past the others on his way to the middle of the bay. Eventually he reached a starboard handle that set him between Emile and the Staff.

It gave him a front row seat to one of the last things he ever wanted to see.

Up close, Kat seemed to be asleep. It was easy to fool himself into believing that so long as he didn't look too hard. In truth, there was no sign of either breath or life, and it didn't take him long to find the cause.

There were two holes, one in the back of her helmet and another through her visor: entry and exit. Both were dark and partly carbonized but too narrow and neat to be the work of an energy weapon.

As Yuri evened them out onto their new flight course, Carter kneeled again beside the body. He reached one hand to the chin of her helmet and another to the release at the very back. Pressing the latter, there was a muted hiss and a click.

With delicateness, he pulled the helmet off her head. As he laid it at her side, Duncan felt a cold shiver course through his being.

He'd seen her face before on Onyx.

It was a few days after she'd first humiliated him during the hostage rescue exercise. Epsilon was on their downtime, passing through the inspection yard at Camp Currahee when they ran into her and the rest of Team India. She was much like the others, short-cropped hair and assorted facial scars being the norm among the Beta Company Spartans. Yet she carried herself with a demeanor that said she knew more than she was letting on and wouldn't mind pulling someone's strings with just a few choice words. She'd pulled a few of his own that day once she singled him out as the DI hacker that she had outplayed earlier in the week. He remembered her doing so even though he was reasonably certain she had never seen his face up to that point.

That was Kat, but the face he now saw was somehow both familiar and unfamiliar.

It was her. That was to be sure. She had grown since the last he'd seen of her as a candidate. Unlike her hair or her scars, the dark circles under her eyes were new. So was the paleness of her skin. She was almost snow white. Her face was utterly drained of color save for the faintest traces that alluded to a life long gone.

She had been dead for a few days already.

The latest and most gruesome change, however, was the hole in her forehead. It was just above her right eye. He could see where whatever killed her had bored a path through her skull and the soft meat of her brain.

What made it that much worse was that her eyes were still open. The blue pupils, nearly shuttered beneath half-closed lids, were fully dilated. And even then, she had that same look of determined disagreement that he remembered from before but diluted by a hint of surprised shock. It was almost as if she'd been debating something right before she died.

Carter put a hand above her brow and brought it down, closing her eyes for her. Then he reached into the base of her neck seal. He hesitated. Before long, he pulled. There was a pop, and his hand came up, two dog tags draped over his fingers.

Duncan no longer thought about it often. However, the sight of the tags dangling in the Spartan's grasp reminded him of a time not so long ago when he had done the same for one of his own. It made that woefully familiar feeling of sinking into himself that much more unbearable.

He wanted to speak. His throat tightened up in response. He managed to croak out a single word.

"How?"

Carter turned to him then slowly back to Kat.

Duncan couldn't see past his visor, but his voice, while concise and direct, couldn't fully hide a shadow of pain.

"...A high-ranking Elite got the drop on us. It got away before we could return the favor." He paused. It was a long pause. "...She was down before we even knew what happened..."

Duncan stood in shock.

Ever since he'd first seen them, Spartans to him were more manmade demigod than human. They weren't invincible. That illusion had been utterly shattered after hearing about Beta Company.

But he wasn't there.

He wasn't there to see them die.

He would've figured that it took a great deal of both manpower and firepower to take down even a single one. He was so sure of it that he had contented himself with the belief that the Beta Company Spartans had gone down swinging, taking several times as many Covenant with them.

Now he wasn't so sure.

All it took for Kat was an ambushing Elite and something else, something so distinctly human that even he was wary of it. From what he was gathering, she, like countless other normal soldiers, Marines and Navy personnel, was a victim of being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

The idea that Spartans weren't exempt from the simple rule of random chance struck him in a moment of nauseating revelation. He had suspected as much, but believing was not the same as seeing.

Here, he could see it for himself, staring into the closed eyes of a supersoldier that he in some small part had helped to train, to make her into who she was.

To know that all that training, all those augmentations and experience had died right along with her from just a shot to the back of the head...

Regardless of his armor or the walls of the bay, in that instant he felt truly vulnerable, and in a way that nearly being incinerated hadn't quite gotten across.

If Kat could die so easily-, no, if Spartans could die so easily then how was someone like him still alive? How were any of them still alive?

Chance, he thought, and found that the answer terrified him more than the question.

He picked up on the feeling that his personal revelation wasn't so personal. He saw the rest of the platoon looking on at the same lieutenant commander that barely a few days prior had led them behind enemy lines. He saw them coming to terms with the fact that she was gone, each in their own quiet way. He saw the same in Kat's own teammates. The Spartans of Noble Team stood in an unmoving silence that seemed heavier than their own. They had known her for longer by virtue of having fought alongside her. Their connection was more profound, and they showed it in the same fashion as the platoon. The air was mournful without a sound being made; a wordless wake held for a soul that none of them had expected to lose.

After a long while, the Staff kneeled on the other side of Kat. His hand came to rest on her shoulder pauldron, his voice low but focused. "You saved us back on that tram. We still owe you one, Noble-2...and we'll make good on it..."

Carter turned to him. "Thanks."

"For what, sir?"

"For responding to my call. I get the feeling we would've been left for dead down there if you weren't around."

The Staff pondered his words. "Don't thank me." He nodded down at Kat. "She's the reason we were still around long enough to stick around. It was pretty rough on us, but it looks like something at least worked out in the end."

"Sounds like her to think three steps ahead." Emile said. "Even if she didn't always know where she was headed."

"I think she would've appreciated that." Jun added.

"Yeah," Carter nodded in agreement, seemingly more to himself than to anyone else. "She would've."

Duncan didn't see much of the New Alexandrian skyline passing by beyond the cockpit. He only caught glimpses of their approach through the smog-filled skies to the encircling mountains. Otherwise, he set his eye on two things and two things alone:

Kat and Six.

While the former lay in front of him, the latter stood on the other side of her, holding on to a handle while he watched over her body.

Duncan wanted to speak. A simple 'thank you' would have been enough. However, the situation wouldn't let him. He couldn't bring himself to say how thankful he was or ask the questions he really wanted to ask. It was neither the time nor place. And still, the Spartan's presence on the opposite side of the bay jarred loose so many memories. He recalled the numbing pain of TTR rounds, the surprise at seeing the young faces of Team Zeta, even the tactical callouts he'd made for their performance in Curahee's training facilities. He reminisced on the risk he took colliding their insertion pods together to pry them both out of slipspace, the heartfelt conversation they had after their landing, and their encounter with that strange light in the depths of Zone 67, a thing that his much stranger, more recent experience on Ballast had put into a new perspective.

With Beta Company gone, it was as if one of their number had returned from the dead, and just in time to see off another of his classmates.

Six was no longer dressed in SPI-armor, and yet Duncan could tell he was the same as he remembered. He wasn't a boy anymore. That was obvious, but he was still himself, simply residing in his natural environment: silence.

He briefly questioned if the Spartan would even recognize him after all these years. Probably not with his BDU on, but perhaps if he took off his helmet it would jog his memory.

He decided he would leave things as they were for the time being, at least until he found a chance to talk, if there was one to be had in the first place.

His concerns shifted to their location and what little remained of it.

He wasn't sure what the days to come would hold for Reach, but for as far as he was concerned, he swore to himself and to whatever god would listen that he would never come back here again. If even his own ashes were to somehow be brought to the city limits, it would be too soon. Much too soon.

He turned again to the cockpit and saw the last few buildings of New Alexandria's southeastern skyline finally beginning to pass out of sight. He spotted the very last skyscraper as it came up, a tall white structure crowned in light by the fires that continued to consume its uppermost floors. For whatever reason he gave it his full attention, taking in the sight of the stories-tall pyre that had once served as either an apartment complex or a law firm or an office space for some company. Its purpose, whatsoever it might have been, was no longer consequential in the face of its new role as kindling for a city-sized bonfire.

Then it was gone, and New Alexandria along with it.

Dicessum - Departure