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.

185. Battle of Reach - Chapter 58 (Vetus Ami)

Chapter 58 – Vetus Amici

May 23rd, 2526 - (06:20 Hours - Military Calendar)

Epsilon Indi System, Harvest

Edda, In orbit over planetary capital of Utgard

Aboard Valiant-class Super-Heavy Cruiser UNSC Everest

(26 Years Ago)

:********:

Don was about ready to throw up.

His stomach burned. His nerves refused to calm down no matter what he tried.

It kept him from lifting his spoon to his mouth even as the savory smell of chicken broth tugged at his nose. The combination of his hunger and something even more troublesome almost made him queasy.

He needed to eat. He knew that. He just didn't like the thought of it being his last meal.

The notion had crossed his mind before, but this was the first time in a long while that he had given it any serious thought. All that confidence he'd worked so hard to build was gone, confidence he had gained in himself and in his squadmates. But that was from a very different time, a very different war, and for all its horrors, he still found it hard to believe that something so much worse had been right around the corner.

Rebels he could handle.

They were tough but they were predictable.

They were predictable because they were human.

The UNSC's newest enemy was not.

Quite the opposite.

He had to correct himself. They weren't the UNSC's enemy.

They were humanity's enemy, as much as it floored him in every possible sense to think that something out there in the void could be a threat to their entire species. Mankind had driven its own fair share of organisms to the brink of extinction - elephants, rhinos, tigers, lions. It was jarring to suddenly be on the receiving end of that kind of existential threat, dehumanizing even.

No one was completely sure if it would actually come to that of course.

So far it seemed that their latest foe had only found one of their worlds. He couldn't tell if that was a fortunate thing or not. Sure, they had found just one colony, but one look at it could make anyone of sound mind question if all the others stood much of a chance either.

It was perhaps both a kindhearted mercy and a shame that neither his mom, his dad nor his younger sisters were about to see what he was heading into. The same went for any other civilians across UNSC-controlled space save for those poor, unfortunate souls that had once called the hell hole they were about to drop into home. The Department of Colonial Security or DCS were sure to suppress any and all Waypoint broadcasts even remotely related to it. They were also guaranteed to search through every syllable of every intersystem communication between UNSC personnel and their families abroad, if any were permitted to begin with.

He would have called the DCS spooks paranoid for that kind of stuff once upon a time, especially whenever the Special Applications Groups tried to send anything back home. Now, after the losses the Navy had suffered by just entering the system, who could blame them?

Admiral Cole was one of the best and brightest the UNSC had to offer.

The man was said to be some kind of genius, having given the Insurrection a run for their money in space on more than one occasion.

Barely a few weeks ago, all that genius had amounted to a victory against their new adversaries, one that could barely be called a victory at all as far as statistics were concerned.

The strange alliance of alien entities that called themselves 'The Covenant' were not the Insurrection. The casualties of their first major naval engagement against them had more than gotten that point across, 13 UNSC ships to their one.

Don closed his eyes, struggling to imagine what kind of one-sided slaughter the Navy had walked into when they first entered Epsilon Indi. Making matters that much worse, he had heard that the Colonial Military Authority had dispatched a small, three-ship battlegroup to the system the year prior when its only inhabited world stopped responding to the rest of the UNSC. Incidentally, they ended up being the next victims of that lone ship. Only one of them was able to limp back to safety, surviving to tell the tale to everyone else of how they were no longer alone in the galaxy.

There was a horrible irony there that he could see as plain as day.

Mankind finds out it actually has a near pier neighbor and the first thing said neighbor tries to do is kill them. He wasn't much of a history student, but he knew enough. If there was one lesson that wars of the past and his own experience with the Insurrection had taught him, it was that the stranger was someone to be kept at arm's length at best, gunned down at worst, reason being that the other guy was probably thinking the same thing. From there it was simply a matter of who had the better armies and the better weapons.

Somehow, for whatever reason, the Covenant had defaulted to that last potential outcome. There was no Mayflower-style feast, no honeymoon period of good relations, at least none that he knew of. If there had been one, only the colonists would have witnessed it, and if it really had happened then it apparently hadn't lasted very long. It left the reinforcing response force that had just recently arrived at the world of Harvest with an uncannily good idea of how the English felt when they returned to Roanoke, only to find no one there.

This time, however, it wasn't some town or out of the way settlement.

It was a planet.

It was a colony world a third of the size of Earth with a population of 300,000 who initially couldn't be accounted for.

He had heard rumors that the Navy had found the colonists floating on the edge of a neighboring system, packed up like tuna inside of hundreds of cargo freighters.

That was somewhere around 230,000 people that could be accounted for, which was still about 75% of the population.

Don couldn't guess as to how many more might have escaped otherwise. Even then, the numbers weren't adding up, and he was slowly coming to the painful conclusion that they never would.

He could still remember the image that he saw months ago, that stolen footage that he was shown back in the Bravo Company barracks at Falchion. He could still see the rings upon rings of molten everything that marred the planet's surface in octagonal patterns, as if some vengeful deity couldn't quite find their way to Earth and decided to settle for the nearest alternative.

"Gary, I swear to God, if you keep daydreaming like that, I'm going to shove a piece of this mystery meat in your mouth and make you chew it for me."

Don snapped out of it, an unwanted mental image shaking him free of the quagmire.

He looked up in time to see Chris aiming a nefarious grin back at him. Even under the illumination of overhead lights, the man looked as pale as ever. The composite of dragon scales and death's head tattoos that ran down from the base of his jaw and up to the edge of his sleeves were just barely hidden by his ODST T-shirt. Only partly hidden, however, was the Gothic style print that curved around his throat in a line of silver lettering: 'Waste of life wasting lives.'

For the non-regulation amounts of illustrations on his skin, his hair was kept at a surprisingly modest buzzcut. It only just distracted from the small number '95' similarly stenciled in Gothic print on either of his temples, each one representing the planet with the second most moons in Sol.

Don swore that he would have gotten his eyeballs tattooed as well if there wasn't a good chance that he would go blind. He'd learned that people from Sol-side colonies tended to want to stand out however they could, to distinguish themselves and their homeworlds whenever possible, a consequence of living under Earth's shadow. He had met plenty of people like that, but Chris wasn't one of them. If he liked how something looked, he would add it to his collection. There was no amount of reasoning or peer pressure in the world that could convince him to do any more or any less.

Chris held a hand to his mouth as he laughed, exposing the scale accurate phalanges tatted onto the back of it. His other hand held up a piece of browned meat that looked too slimy to be edible. He even jiggled it around, letting it slap against itself like a dead fish.

"How about it?"

Don held back the urge to gag. He shook his head. "I'll pass."

"Pass out?" Chris grinned. "Probably."

He slapped the piece of meat back onto his tray alongside the arrangement of green beans, steaming mashed potatoes and barbecue sauce.

"I don't know why you even picked that stand to be honest."

Don turned to the woman sitting next to Chris. Her curly hair had been cut short so that it stopped just after her ears, not quite hiding the flaming Helljumper death's head staring out from the base of her neck. It also couldn't disguise the two finger-long scars that cut across her left cheek, either one acting as a more natural tattoo left by the artistic work of grenade shrapnel. Compared to Chris, she was much more tanned and looked a lot less like a four-year-old's scrapbook come to life. She leaned over the table with her face in her hand, aiming a pair of eyes his way that were as gray as they were amused.

"You keep making bad decisions, Chris, just like that one right..." She reached out a finger as if to point, merely to gesture at his face with her whole hand. "There."

"Oh shut up, who asked you anyway?"

"I did, and the answer is yes, you do look like a work of art."

"Really?" Chris snarked.

"Yeah, street art, you know, like the spray paint you find in an abandoned building?"

"Izz, from the bottom of my heart, I want you to know how much I hate you."

"I know." Izzy took a second look at his platter, glancing between the colorful omelet on her own and the strange meat on his. "What is that supposed to be anyway?"

"Steak." Chris replied, sticking a fork into it with enough force to break it into two uneven halves. "At least I think it's steak. What do you think?"

She shrugged. "Ask Doc Foss, he's a chef in his spare time."

"Which I have little of, so leave me out of it."

Don turned to his left, side-eying the person that sat right next to him.

A pair of long sideburns fed into a five o'clock shadow, framing a face that appeared pensive even when it didn't mean to. In sharp contrast, a ruffle of brown hair stood guard atop his head, overshadowing a pair of thick eyebrows that hemmed in a wary gaze. With faint dark circles around his eyes, he had the bearing of a meditating racoon.

Somehow, the Doc always managed to look both exhausted and focused all at the same time. He was almost never tired, probably because his job never allowed him to be. However, instead of an ODST choking and begging for someone to plug a hole in his artery, Foss was looking over something more technical. The whirring, titanium prosthetics that had replaced his middle and forefinger worked in tandem with the remaining digits on his right hand, guiding one spoonful of chicken broth soup after the next from bowl to mouth. All the while, his other hand scrolled slowly, scrutinizingly across the screen of a datapad that Don couldn't see.

"What you got there, Doc?" Chris asked, daring to take a bite out of a piece of his 'steak' and appearing to almost immediately regret it.

"Something important."

Izzy leaned in. "Aren't we important too?"

"You already know the answer to that."

"A resounding no."

Foss kept his eye on the datapad as he shoveled another round of soup into his mouth. Swallowing, he left the spoon between his lips like a father with a cigar trying to shew away his kids while he read the newspaper. "You better believe it. Until one of you either says you're feeling an itch in a weird place or starts shouting 'medic', my priorities are elsewhere. You know that."

"What a saint." Chris jeered.

Foss shrugged. "I try. Besides, if the word coming down the grapevine these days is true..." He paused to look more closely at something on his pad. "I'm about to be real popular today."

More rumors.

Don felt the need to ask what they were, but he suspected that he already knew and that the crowds around them did as well.

The mess hall of the Everest was one of the largest he had ever had the pleasure of dining in. It was due in no small part, of course, to the ship being one of the largest and most powerful capital ships in the Navy. Everest represented over a kilometer and a half's worth of reinforced decking, Titanium-A armor and weapons platforms that still left more than enough room for the everyday essentials. The designers at Sinoviet Heavy Machinery had obviously put a lot of thought, love and care into their craft and it showed. Despite being a relic of the 2490s that almost didn't get to see action, the Valiant class turned out to be every sailor's dream with their wide corridors, navigable concourses and crew accommodations. That last part was where the mess hall truly shined.

Deep in the belly of the ship, the mess was a three-story enclave of dining spaces, buffet tables, sidebars and distillery machines. The setup resembled more of a triple-layered food court than anything. Two upper decks overlooked the main area, a labyrinth of over a thousand dining tables.

It was breakfast and both the crew and the Marine expeditionary elements attached to the fleet were out in force. Thousands of men and women in the gray jumpsuits of the Navy and the camouflaged fatigues of the Marines were either moving about with full food trays or had already found seating for themselves at the host of stainless-steel tables. Having so many people together in one place filled the air with a buzz of conversation. The discordant choir of voices, many of various tones and diverse temperaments made it so that there was never a moment of quiet. In that regard it truly was more like a giant food court than a regular mess hall.

Every now and again Don noticed the black shirt and white print of other ODSTs moving about, carrying trays full of sausages, hash browns and all other matter of breakfast items from the surrounding food stalls. They were nowhere near as numerous as everyone else. Nevertheless, just like Foxtrot, they were clustered together, reserving tables for themselves squad by squad so that there were pockets of Helljumpers scattered across the length and breadth of the hall. It was an old habit but one that anyone who had ever served aboard a UNSC vessel of any type would find familiar. Whereas the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marines were more likely to mingle with one another, albeit some more likely than others, the ODSTs simply weren't known for it. They were rather insular when it came to social settings. It wasn't because of any prejudice. However, in a unit such as theirs, one tended to cling closer to those who could understand them best. They were a tight-knit community of people who had spent their lives gambling on atmospheric reentries and all-or-nothing insertions behind enemy lines. Compared to that, outside of combat, there was little room to be had for those who entered the fray of a conflict behind the console of a ship station, in the bay of a Pelican or at the controls of a Longsword. Playing chicken with the reaper every time they deployed tended to do that to a person blessed with the fortune of living long enough to notice it.

Don looked around, spotting a few of his buddies from other companies sitting with their squads as well. Some were near, some were far but across the board they were either wrapped up with their own meals or with chats that slipped below the radar of the noisy ambiance. There was space enough for all of them and it made him wonder if he shouldn't take the chance to hang out with them while he still could. It wasn't like they got the chance to sit in the same ship on the regular.

Unlike the average Stalwart or Charon-class frigates that could only carry half a company's worth of ODSTs on their best day, the Everest was so large that it could accommodate the whole of the 7th Shock Troops Battalion. In fact, it was doing just that, making the 7th one of several full ODST battalions that had accompanied the Third Fleet for the months-long ride to Harvest.

"I'd say you're already pretty popular, Doc." Izzy continued. "In fact, a little birdy told me that Diane's still interested in the Fox of Foxtrot."

Foss shot her a long glare. "Yeah?"

"Yeah."

"Then somebody better shoot that little birdy. Izz, anybody ever tell you you're the best gas-lighter in Bravo? I told you, I already tried barking up that tree and it ended about as well as National Holiday's last cruise."

Chris snapped his fingers as the realization came to him. "Hey, isn't that the one that burned up over Reach two years ago?"

"I rest my case."

Izzy shook her head. "Oh, come on. She's not that bad. I'm just trying to hook you up."

"Gas-lighter, wingman, sheesh Izzy, you're the real package." Chris hissed. "Give you a couple wires, maybe even a pressure plate and you're good to go."

Izzy rolled her eyes. "Just trying to help. Don, what do you think? Aren't I a good person?"

Don deadpanned as a memory caught up to him of her dropping a stick bug into his rucksack during a jungle op, leaving it there for him to find a few hours later. "Define good."

She sighed. "Well, that answers that. Looks like I'm not appreciated around here at all."

"I appreciate you, Izz." Foss said, having returned to his device.

"Really?" She edged closer, blinking the most forced set of puppy dog eyes at him that Don had ever seen. "What do you appreciate about me?"

Foss continued to scroll on his pad. "...I'll let you know once I've figured that out."

"Hmph." Izzy sat back, pretending to be put out, only to start laughing, an infection that quickly spread to the rest of the table.

Even Foss laughed as he continued to read.

That got Don's attention.

He carefully leaned over to try and catch a glimpse of the screen.

A swift side-eye from Foss told him he wasn't careful enough.

Don backed off, offering up a pleading shrug.

Foss answered the wordless request with a long exhalation as he picked up the datapad and set it down between them.

"Since you're so nosy."

Don would never admit to the contrary. Still, he wasn't expecting to find what he did.

It was a list, a catalogue of sorts.

What it was displaying, however, was no ordinary portrayal of objects or animals.

At the top of the document was the encircled, black and white pyramid of the Office of Naval Intelligence. To the everyday soldier, the emblem in and of itself was spooky enough, but it was virtually nothing compared to the freaks of nature on display.

Don had seen them before.

Prior to arriving in Epsilon Indi, the colonel had gathered the entire battalion together for a confidential meeting inside one of the ship's operational prep chambers. It was there that he began the presentation on the viewing screens. For the first time in a long while, the whole of the battalion went deathly quiet as they were shown what was essentially a slideshow of their newest enemy. For those who'd seen the video leaks from Battle Group 4 as well as for those who didn't, the introduction came as a shock. For one group, it was because it was their first time confirming that there was an actual threat outside of hearsay. For the other, it was because they hadn't had a face to attach to the carnage they'd seen on Harvest's surface until that moment.

Those same faces were here now on Foss' datapad.

The five different species of the Covenant encountered during their first contact with Harvest's colonial militia were laid out by size and estimated lethality. Each had a categorizing title next to a matching picture taken either from bodycam and helmet footage or from recovered security camera data. In the case of the former, the attached names and ranks of the individuals involved were blurred out of legibility.

Don edged closer to take it all in.

The first on the list was easily the strangest. Its title as well as the corresponding danger level and green highlight of the priority icon were even stranger.

'Type 1- Cephalopod, a.k.a. 'Technician'.

Priority Level: Capture'

The attached security cam footage captured a freeze-frame of a jellyfish-like organism. Multiple tentacles dangled leisurely after a bulbous amalgamation of fleshy sacks that seemed to not only allow it to float, but also granted it a kind of bioluminescence. A snaking head that reminded him of an armadillo guided its flight. It was in the middle of passing through some sort of dark structure, visibly human. The silhouettes of overhanging beams up above suggested as much.

'Type 2 – Amphibious Primate, a.k.a. 'Gasser'.

Priority Level: Kill/Capture.'

The next one was a still taken from the bodycam footage of what he assumed was a member of the colonial militia. They were in some kind of lush garden judging by the surrounding sprawl of trees and well-manicured lawns, all of which were arrayed in a three-tiered allotment of land. Unless he was mistaken, he thought he saw something resembling a greenhouse standing off in the upper left corner of the area. The militiaman was in the middle of aiming an MA5B assault rifle at a creature that was stepping out from behind a nearby hedge, possibly having been caught just as it was about to leap at the man. The two things Don took notice of right away were the gas mask in its mouth as well as the conical tank strapped to its back. The alien's squat form was strange to look at. As for its skin and overall appearance, he struggled not to think of an overgrown tortoise with oversized limbs and a vaguely humanoid physiology. The G-shaped weapon in its hand was about to be raised. The weapon itself as well as the orange armor on its torso suggested a kind of light infantry role.

'Type 3 – Avian Reptile, a.k.a. 'Buzzard'.

Priority Level: Kill/Capture.'

The third image displayed the helmet footage of a soldier carrying some kind of experimental battle rifle Don had never seen before. They were in a space that, though dark, was illuminated enough by the burst the soldier was in the middle of firing off to show that it was a cargo bay. The soldier was shooting down from an elevated position at a figure that was lunging up towards him. Don could swear that they were both flying, or perhaps more accurately floating. The creature, though armored, was visibly on the slimmer side with digitigrade legs and three fingered hands, one of which bore a blade of crimson energy that looked an awful lot like someone had turned an everyday saw into a red-hot sword. The most noteworthy detail was the face behind the visored helmet, a snarl frozen on a mouth that presented a strange blend between an avian beak and a reptilian jaw. The eyes leaned more towards the latter while the mohawk of spiny quills that ran down the back of its head leaned more towards the former.

'Type 4 – Insectoid, a.k.a. 'Wasp'.

Priority Level: Kill/Capture'

The fourth image came from municipal camera footage. The rightward half of the view was looking out over a small town that had smoke billowing up across much of its expanse. The leftward half showed a corner of the building that the camera was attached to. It had also captured an unusual presence. To Don, it was like looking at one of those uncomfortable closeups of creepy looking insects that his biology teachers used to make him study as a kid. The only problem was that it wasn't a closeup. The thing was just that big. He normally wasn't one to be afraid of bugs, except for the ones that Izzy occasionally hid in his rucksack, but this wasn't an insect. Insects weren't the size of a full-grown man if not larger. What he was seeing possessed a natural armor posing as a segmented carapace with two pairs of arms, two pairs of wings and compound eyes that held an amber glow. The thing was perched on the wall of the building like a tiger waiting to pounce. It took him a second to realize that the image wasn't captured from an upside-down angle but from a right-side-up orientation, meaning that the creature was basically crouching on the building while also resisting the pull of gravity. He couldn't tell which was worse, the fact that it held the same weapon as the 'Gasser', meaning that it was dangerously intelligent, or the fact that two more of its kind were flying down the street in the background, meaning that their wings actually worked.

Trying to spray a flying roach was bad enough, he thought, but here now was one that could spray him right back.

'Type 5 – Ursine Mammal, a.k.a. 'Mauler'.

Priority Level: Kill.'

The last one on the list was by far the most worrisome, one whose threat level was the most obviously earned.

The image came from another helmet cam. It showed the perspective of a militiaman within the interior of what looked like an orbital station. They were firing at a creature wearing ornate blue armor. The scariest part was that the person taking the footage was a little less than half its size. Moreover, they were trying to fall back as the beast returned fire, doing so with a weapon that had such a long pair of blades attached to the barrel that they were closer to tusks than bayonets. Even worse, it was charging after him. It was physically powerful, more built than any part-time bodybuilder that Don could find in Bravo. The face behind the almost medieval style helmet was like that of a gorilla but far harrier and baring the sharp canines of a bear. Killing something like that was akin to killing a full-grown Grizzly with two layers of armor, the metal on its skin as well as the inherent protection of its own mass. That of course excluded the fact that Grizzlies can't use weapons. They were weapons. Whatever this other type of being was, it was clearly able to fall into either category, a problem Don wasn't sure how they would solve once they ran into one in combat.

There were other images as well, pictures of their vehicular assets. One was of a seated chassis attached to a pair of oversized wheels. Another was an aircraft whose frozen flight left the impression of a manta-ray gliding underwater. Another aircraft had a forked shape with opening bays that made its purpose clear as a dropship.

The last thing on the list, however, was by far the most terrifying.

The satellite image captured the frame of an enemy ship taken from orbit. Its curvature and bulbous sections were unique, not even remotely human. He didn't know if there were still more of them in the system. If one of them was able to take the entire planet then he sorely hoped not.

"I'm not liking what I'm seeing." Don said after several long seconds spent perusing through the catalogue.

"You're not supposed to." Foss replied. "If you did, there'd be no reason for us to be here."

Don looked at him. "Why are you studying this stuff again?"

Foss grimaced, not at him but at the question. "I'm studying them because I want to know what they can do." He stopped to peer at the masses sitting around them, the clamor of their many conversations briefly filling the silence. "I want to know what to expect."

Don locked in on that.

The Doc hadn't quite finished his sentence. He didn't just want to know what they could do. He wanted to know what they could do to them.

From Don's experience, the worst kinds of monsters weren't the people that could butcher children without a second thought, but those that could do so by whatever means they saw fit, whether it was writing them off as collateral during a roadside bombing or torturing them to death for having the grave misfortune of being the child of an informant, only to then return to their own families as if nothing had ever happened.

Those were the ones that kept him up at night.

But what they were soon to face was something above that, a different kind of malice. The people he'd fought at times were hardly human, wolves in sheep's clothing. But these threats, these Covenant weren't even bothering with a disguise. They weren't human, not in any way that mattered. At least the occasional war criminal among the rebels had something he cared about. He could be reasoned with, convinced or coerced.

What could be done to connect with creatures that looked nothing like them, that had no shared history, culture or even biology?

There was no convincing that.

The Covenant weren't monsters.

They were something else, something worse, a natural disaster given sentience, hatred, and worst of all, direction.

The Doc was simply trying to be proactive by battening down the hatches while there was still time.

"Huh," Chris chimed. "I think I could make a nice coat out of that one."

Don didn't even notice when he and Izzy had gotten behind them. Both were looking over their shoulders at the threat categorizations on the pad.

"Which?" Izzy asked.

"That Type 5, ugh, 'Mauler' is it? That one's got some hair on'em. I'll take it."

"I don't know." Izzy pointed down to the Type 2. "Gasser, right? That one's kinda cute, like a little pet turtle I used to have as a kid."

Don looked up at her. "You have problems."

She nodded agreeingly. "And that right there is the solution. How about it, Don, want to help me catch one of these once we hit dirtside?"

"For the second time, I'll pass."

"The threat assessment says capture is optional with those things." Foss said. "Unlike Type 5. They look like they'll be the biggest headache down there. They're at least twice our size."

Chris whistled. "That's one big coat."

"And they're noted as being 'likely carnivorous and highly volatile'."

"A coat with teeth is still a coat, Doc."

"God bless you for wanting to try, but unless you want one of these," Foss held up the hand with the prosthetics, wiggling the two false digits for him to see. "I'd advise against it."

"The rebs did that one, Doc. This right here is a bear with a big gun and an even bigger attitude. It's nothing a rocket or two can't solve."

"And your coat?"

Chris thought about it. "It'll be a little burnt, but I can fix that. What I can't fix are some of these names. 'Gasser', really? Listen, the specs at ONI really need to figure this out 'cause that's not going to work. Technician and Buzzard, I can understand. Mauler makes sense too for something that looks like it pulls people apart for a living. Gasser, Wasp? Nah, it's not doing it for me."

Izzy folded her arms across her chest, flashing a prodding grin at Foxtrot's tattooist. "Oh? And what would you suggest for the first one?"

"...Turtle."

Her grin soured. "...You stole my idea."

"Not my fault you left it out there to be stolen. Anyways, if folks back home ever find out what we're killing out here, they should at least be told that they have cool names. My point is the spooks could do better than this."

"I have a hunch that they had the brass help them come up with these to make it easier for us to understand them." Izzy considered. "Maybe, but yeah, they could definitely do better."

"Better than what?"

Don and the others looked up.

Two persons were walking towards them.

Though both sported the same ODST T-shirt as them, the pair were not even remotely the same size. One was at least a full head taller than them while the other was a full head shorter.

It seemed that no amount of distance would ever make the taller of the two anything less than what he was, a wall, a human wall. Like every other ODST he was well built but his size made him stand out that much more. His dark skin was contrasted by the white glow of the ceiling lights bouncing off the smooth dome of his head. Between strong brows and a rectangular jaw was a face that could have come straight out of a new recruit's nightmare.

Don was almost certain that Gad had been a drill sergeant in a past life thanks to the resting face he always wore, a perpetual look of mild intrigue and subdued aggression.

Walking beside him was the closest thing to a leprechaun that existed in the ODSTs.

Ray had always been short for a Helljumper, but he always carried himself as if he were someone Gad's size. A crop of orange hair sat above a mug that was as freckled as it was rugged. Even so, his broad, toothy smile didn't help the fact that he was deceptively baby faced. Don always found that aspect about him to be the funniest since he was actually the older one out of the two of them. It was odd how he could somehow appear both young and worn, like a boy who'd spent his whole life living in the woods. The tally mark of the number seven that resided under his right eye was a design choice made with some encouragement from Chris, a mark of respect within the battalion. Each mark represented a long distance kill he had made beyond the kilometer threshold. Few if anyone outside of the ODSTs would have recognized it for what it was. They would have instead seen it as little more than a tattoo on a curious, teenage face, never knowing that it was only there because of the poor souls that hadn't seen him.

"Hasta luego, corporal." Chris said.

Gad raised a brow. "That means goodbye."

"I know what it means."

Gad held back a laugh as he and Ray set their trays down on the table. The latter had brought a platter full of chicken and waffles with a bowl full of oatmeal while the former sat down to the most beautiful slab of steak and eggs Don had ever seen.

"What're vous guys up to over here?" Ray asked, the marriage of English and old French slipping out in his native Cajun dialect. Even after years spent away from his home in the southern URNA, it still managed to rear its head every so often.

With two mechanical fingers, Foss picked up his datapad and twirled it around like a card.

Ray grimaced. "Oh...those guys..."

"I wouldn't call them guys." Foss advised. "More like 'things'."

"They're smart though, we know that much." Gad said as he took his utensils in hand and began cutting into his food. "They've gotta be if they've already figured out how to kill a planet with a single ship. Last time I heard about anything like that was Far Isle, and I'm pretty sure that was a whole task group. There's something rattling around up there in that...well, whatever passes for a head on their side of the gene pool."

"Yeah, and that's the worrying part. Obviously, it wasn't enough to keep them from trying what they have. You'd think that if you just met an intelligent species like yourself out in the void, your first move would be to try to, oh, I don't know, talk to them maybe, open up diplomatic channels? At least see what the other side is all about before you start blasting."

"I can hardly say we always did the same." Gad stuck his fork through an egg and shoved it into his mouth, chewing as he spoke. "Think about it. Back in the day, it was your tribe versus mine. Whoever had their spear up first was the one with the best chance of survival once things went south. I mean, once the east learned about the west, anybody on the other side of the Atlantic who didn't know what a gun was had a pretty rough time of it."

Foss shook his head. "That's different. We at least had that whole situation with Thanksgiving. It didn't start with us taking pot shots right off the bat."

Gad bit off another piece of egg and pointed his fork at the Doc like an accusatory finger. "Just a honeymoon period. Like all honeymoons, it didn't last."

"Well, where was ours this time?"

Gad shrugged. "Maybe there was one, but it was just between the Covenant and the Harvest colonists. Whatever they did...or whatever we did, if anything at all, we'll probably never hear about it. In any case, it looks like they made the whole planet pay for whatever it was that went down between them. My point is, if we could do that to each other, what do you think they're going to do to us? We're not even the same species. Sure, we got two legs, we got two arms, but even that doesn't seem to apply across the board when it comes to these things."

"So, then the real question is," Izzy said, more to herself than to everyone else. "Who's wiping out who?"

A sudden quiet fell over the table, crashing into the conversation with the weight of a boulder and the subtlety of a knife.

"...It's a little too early in the game to say if that's what it's all going to come down to." Gad replied. "Sure, they destroyed one of our worlds, but it could've been a mistake, a bad idea from a few bad apples."

"If one bad apple can kill a colony then I say we burn the whole tree." Don said, voicing the answer that he could sense on everyone's mind. "Why take the risk?"

Gad slowly leaned towards him, locking eyes with him. "Because what if it's not just one tree? What if it's a forest?"

Don paid him back with a confused squint.

"Listen, these guys are packing some serious firepower. I'm sure you all heard about that ship that Cole ran into when he brought his fleet here. I don't know about you but for me personally, I want to believe they made a mistake. I want to think they didn't get it right the first time, that they might maybe come to their senses. They don't know our full numbers yet or what we're capable of, which is why we managed to take care of that ship that was hanging over Harvest. Chances are that both sides are still just as blind about the other as they were before things got hot. Sure, maybe they know how to kill us now, but they might not know how many of us they have to kill. That could make them think twice about whether they want this war or not."

"'Your destruction is the will of the Gods'." Foss quoted, an underlying argument already dripping from his tone. "'And we are their instrument.' That's the first transmission we got from the bastards, the first thing they ever said. Gad, you're either lying or in denial because, for God's sake, they don't even know us and they already want us dead. As if that wasn't already bad enough, they're also super religious about it. High level technology, xenophobic tendencies and a penchant for slaughter. Run that through your little history class and tell me how well that works out for the side on the receiving end of that."

"Who says that's from their leadership?" Gad shot back as he cut into the heart of his steak. "They could be more like us than we think. It could be a splinter faction we're dealing with, a cult that went rogue and split off from the rest of the herd. A bunch of exiles. It could happen. Until I'm certain of anything, I'm trying not to paint with broad strokes here."

"I think you're a lot more open-minded about this than you should be."

"I think you're a lot less optimistic about this than you could be."

"Guys, guys, don't worry about it." Ray said, swallowing down a mouthful of oatmeal. "Look, the way I see it, if they've got good tech then that means they can think. If they can think, that means they have a brain. If they have a brain, that means they can negotiate. And if that doesn't work out," He pointed two fingers and cocked his thumb like a pistol before firing off an imaginary shot. "Boom, no brain. No brain, no problem. Simple."

Foss huffed but couldn't quite hide the smile of secondhand embarrassment sneaking out onto his face. "Ray, I swear you always know how to make my day, even when I really don't want you to."

"I do what I can."

Foss folded his arms. "Anyways, corporal, I think you're wrong."

"Let's just see what happens." Gad replied. "I could be. Wouldn't be the first time. At any rate, we'll be the ones to find out for ourselves."

"Sooner than you think." Foss closed his eyes in grim exasperation. "More news came down the grapevine this morning. The word on the deck is that Command is prepping to drop us in sometime today."

If they hadn't been paying attention before, the whole squad was now fully focused on their medic.

"What'd you say?" Chris asked.

"It's not confirmed, but I talked with some of the corpsmen over in the expeditionary force. They say their officers were called in for a meeting just like ours were, NCOs included. There's a good chance they're getting briefed on the details of some operation before they let everyone else in on the know."

"That would explain why Sarge isn't here." Izzy said. "It's not like him to miss out on breakfast and not tell us why."

"But today?" Don shook his head, not yet convinced. "That doesn't sound right. They wouldn't just give us a summary of what we're about to run into then bring us out here only to throw us in the ring after a quick mission brief. That's too much too fast."

"Wouldn't be the first time they dropped us in before they told us what they dropped us on." Ray pointed out. "They're extra secretive this time. It would kinda make sense."

"But for something this important?"

"They're playing their cards real close to the chest. Too bad we're the cards."

"Wait, but if that's true then how come Gad didn't get called in?" Chris questioned. "He counts as a non-com too. Why'd he get left out?"

"Because the most he'd be leading is a fireteam." Foss explained. "Not a squad or platoon at full strength. Corporals were probably their cut-off point for this one."

Chris' brow furrowed. He was about to say something when he spotted a group of Marines strolling down a nearby walkway, trays in hand as they talked among themselves. He waited for them to get closer before reaching out to slap one of them on the arm. Don recognized him the moment he turned around thanks to the four-sided compass tattooed onto the side of his jaw, marking him out as one of Chris' clients.

"Hey, Crawford, you got a sec?"

Crawford gestured for the others to go on without him. "Yeah man, what's up?"

"Okay, quick question. Have you seen any of the officers in your company this morning?"

"Yeah, a little bit earlier, but they up and left before we came to the mess. Same with my platoon commander." He looked around the hall for a moment as if to see who else was listening. "We're pretty sure something big is coming up. We might be getting sent in sometime soon."

"Huh." Chris gave a speculative nod. "Alright, thanks."

"Hey, if we are going in, best of luck man." Crawford said as he walked off. "Make sure to stay alive down there. For my next one, I'm thinking of getting my girl's name on my arm."

"You mean the third one?"

"I like to keep track."

Chris laughed, waving him off as he turned back to everyone else. "Looks like we're not the only ones."

"Like I said," Foss continued. "We're probably going in today."

"About time." Ray set aside his empty bowl. "And here I was thinking they were going to let us sit around doing nothing but eating good and cracking jokes. Now we get to actually have a good time."

"Ray, what you just described is a good time." Izzy said. "At least in my book."

"That's one boring book."

Gad began to laugh but paused, a chunk of meat on his fork having almost made it to his mouth. He noticed the shadow hanging over him and looked up. An intent-looking Chris stared right back down, not at him but at his steak.

"Hey, feel like sharing?" He asked, pointing a finger at the meat as he scratched at his neck with an addicted fervor. "I mean, if we're heading in and all, it'd be nice to-"

"No."

"Sharing is caring."

"Good thing I don't care."

"You really think you can finish that whole thing by yourself, big guy?"

"Watch me." Gad stuffed the piece into his mouth and chewed mockingly.

Chris sighed. "Come on, man, seriously."

He pinched the piece of raw-looking steak off his own tray and wiggled it in front of him like a dying worm. "See what they gave me? This is crazy. I can't get the good stuff around here even when it's available. Could you at least tell me where you got yours?"

Gad pointed somewhere off to the far right of the mess hall. "Red meat stall number four, the one next to the salad bar. Why don't you go get yourself something healthy while you're at it?"

"You're asking for too much there, pal." Chris said, walking away at a speed just shy of a jog.

Don looked back down at the datapad. Almost without any conscious intention, his eye fell on the picture of the Type 5, 'Mauler'.

He paid attention to the teeth, the height, the weapon in its hands. He wondered how well he would stack up against what was essentially a two-and-a-half-meter tall giant of armor and muscle. Their obviously aggressive nature was another factor that made him doubt his odds. It wasn't lost on him that the militia member from whose helmet footage the image was taken had been trying to run away from it.

"I wouldn't worry about it, Don."

Don met Gad's eyes again. "Why not? Seems like a pretty good idea to think of a strategy while we still have some peace and quiet."

"Yeah." Gad agreed. "So, think about a way to kill it, not about how it could kill you."

"How-"

"I know you too well by now."

"...Hmph." Don picked up one of the last hash browns off his tray and took a bite out of it, trying to enjoy the taste despite the creeping coldness. "Maybe."

Without warning, the lights suddenly dimmed across the entire mess hall. Within the deepening darkness a wash of murmurs rose to meet it as servicemen stood up at their tables, looking around for an explanation.

"What's going on?" Izzy asked.

"This is it." Foss answered.

Not even a second later, the mess hall was flooded with light, not from above but from all around.

Each of the dozen house-sized screens mounted to the walls around the first floor flicked on. On the upper levels, more displays did the same.

Each one showed the exact same thing, or rather the exact same person.

A distinctly rectangular head was covered at its top by a recession of dark brown hair that arrowed down towards a furrowed brow. Beneath were a pair of sunken eyes that shared a similar hue, set within a face that somehow managed to look 20 years younger than it actually was.

Standing with arms folded officiously behind his back, the man was dressed in his full naval officer's uniform, shoulder pads and active-duty security vest included. Behind him spanned the bridge of the Everest with a cornucopia of busy console stations, scrolling data displays and attending bridge crew.

Don spotted the tag on the right side of his chest. There, the text printed in white confirmed all of his suspicions, the solitary name promptly earning the officer both his and everyone else's undivided attention:

'Cole'.

Don had to consciously suppress the urge to stand at attention.

The admiral wasn't here. He was on the bridge.

Years of ingrained behavioral customs and military protocols grated against his will. It was hard not to stand to his feet for him, the first man in the UNSC to go toe to toe with the Covenant and win.

He sized him up.

The Insurrection hadn't been too kind to him from what he'd heard about his old record. That didn't change the fact that the admiral had pulled off more than a few miracles against the enemy then as he had done now. There were still rumors that he had retired after some sort of scandal back in the day, only for the upper rungs of the UNSC to take him off the bench for the mission to Harvest. No one was saying it out loud, but he was probably trotted out as an operational scapegoat. Whatever the case, he had proved them wrong, if not in Command's eyes then at least in the eyes of every soul in Battle Group X-Ray that saw it firsthand. Them as well as those in the Third Fleet that had gotten to hear about it. Losing 13 ships against a single adversary was one thing, but when that same adversary was capable of killing a planet wholesale, it was an appreciable victory.

On a different note, Don couldn't help wondering if he would look that good in his 50s, that is if this latest war wasn't too rough on him or even let him live that long to begin with.

"All hands, heed and stand to." He said, his voice carrying with it a natural authority girded by a rustic undertone, not quite as thick as Ray's but hinting at somewhere in the southern URNA. "As of 06:30 Hours, we are now officially maneuvering under the context of Operation THUNDERBOLT. All naval personnel are to report to their stations no later than 06:35 Hours. All Marine and ODST compliments are to move to their designated compartments for mission briefs and final preparations."

His posture changed, his back straightening, his chin rising ever so slightly. "Today is the day, ladies and gentlemen. We're taking back Harvest. We already have the sky. Now all we need is the land. It's ours, from the last drop of rain down to the last bit of dust. All that's left is to remind those squatters on the surface where it is they're sitting. Give'em hell, people. Cole out."

The feed of the admiral cut out. The rotating emblem of the UNSC eagle took his place as the mess hall lights brightened back to normal.

Before the admiral's message had even ended, there was already a myriad of responses, the most widespread of which was a general cheer. Men and women across the mess pumped their fists into the air, goading each other on in cascades of whooping and hollering, jeers and dares. For them, for everyone, weeks of waiting were finally over.

There were plenty of exceptions, however. There were more than a few who sat quiet and pensive as they shared worried looks with friends across the aisles. In fact, Don noticed a distinction. Those who were cheering were almost overwhelmingly Marines. Those who weren't were almost overwhelmingly Navy. One was raring to go for their first round with an enemy they had never fought before on the ground. The other seemed much more wary. The memory of the mauling the response fleet had taken in orbit was probably still fresh. In any case, it didn't seem to damper the Marines' spirits one bit. Neither did it seem to bother those ODSTs that cheered with them.

The shock troopers were somewhere in between. Don saw some amping each other up while others remained silent or shared whispers among themselves.

Even amongst his own he noticed a distinction.

It was mostly the new faces who were the ones cheering, the ones who had either barely dipped their toes into the Insurrection or that had arrived fresh from selection just prior to the battalion's departure from Reach.

Foxtrot's table was quiet.

Don listened to the chatter coming from a table of nearby Marines. More than a few of them were egging each other on, betting no small amount of credits on who would be the first to 'bag a Buzzard' or 'nail a Mauler'.

"God bless'em." Izzy said, easing back in her seat with a deep sigh. "Think you guys are up for it?"

"Nailing a Mauler?" Ray bit a good chunk out of the drumstick in his hand, inspecting the bite mark as he chewed. "Sure, but what do you think Buzzard tastes like?"

Don shot him a look.

"What? You telling me vous haven't thought about it too? Quit lying. The Mauler types look like they'd take a crack at us the first chance they get. It's only fair if we pay them the same courtesy."

"What do you think we taste like?" Izzy asked, more as a troubling question to herself that everyone else happened to hear.

Ray took another satisfied bite out of his drumstick and smiled. "Chicken."

"Okay, this conversation is over." Gad said as he got up. "Let's go. Sarge is probably already waiting for us in the briefing chamber."

"Roger that." Foss replied.

The others got up as well, stooping a little to pick over the last pieces of whatever they'd been eating before abandoning their trays. Ray went so far as to grab his last two drumsticks and shove them into his pants pocket with the subtlety of a drug dealer.

Don saw the wisdom in that. He wrapped his last few strips of bacon in a napkin and stuffed them in his pocket. There was no telling when they would have good food again. He wasn't about to risk what was looking like another hard slog of a campaign without having something on hand that hadn't spent the better part of a decade in a warehouse. If he was careful, perhaps he could even make some half-decent jerky out of it.

The foot traffic quickly picked up all around them, turning their table into a steel island within a crisscrossing tide of people. Everyone, Marines, Navy and ODSTs alike were getting up and heading for the surrounding exits, both on the ground floor and on the decks above. The Navy personnel went with the greater haste. They excused themselves past laughing jarheads, many of them having only a few minutes left to cover the half a kilometer distance or more between them and their duty stations.

Gad was the first to leave. The others jumped into the tides after him, making for the nearest exit as fast as the ambling, jogging masses would allow.

Don was about to get up when Chris reappeared, shouldering his way through passersby to reach him. When he arrived at the table, Don saw the steaming cut of steak lying on his new tray as well as the disappointed look on his face.

"The admiral really couldn't wait one more minute with that announcement?"

"Not for you." Don snarked.

"...Doesn't matter." Chris rested the tray on the table and quickly set about wrapping his steak in the spare napkins left hanging about. He had practically mummified it in a matter of seconds before raising his leg to plant a boot on the table.

Don watched in awe as he rolled up his pant leg to reveal a well-tatted calve...and a small roll of EB Green duct tape. Chris pulled the latter out of his boot and yanked off a few lengthy strips. Then he took the cut of steak and pressed it against his bare leg. He quickly began wrapping the tape around the meat like a tourniquet, fastening it to the side of his shin.

Don kept staring.

Chris noticed.

"Come on, Gary." He smirked. "This is hardly the strangest thing you've seen me do...today."

Don blinked slowly. He wasn't wrong.

"Don, Chris, hurry up!" Gad shouted, waving to them from the closest exit.

Don left the table without another word. A second later, he heard Foxtrot's resident artisan walking after him, all without a single indication of anything out of the usual.

:********:

Briefing Chamber 4 was a veritable amphitheater within a ship.

Buried in the portside of the Everest, sandwiched between E and J Deck, the square, coliseum-esque space was comprised of six rows of seats, each over two hundred strong. The seating itself descended in a step-like orientation towards an open floor at the very center of the chamber. Above it all, attached to the ceiling was a semi-spherical projection device that would serve as the main eye-catcher for the briefing to come.

The 7th Battalion was in full attendance.

Alpha, Bravo, Delta and Echo Companies were gathered, their respective platoons lining row upon row of seating. Still, some of them meandered about. Small groups conversed across the chamber floor or talked amongst one another in strolling pairs along the upper walkways leading to the doors.

Foxtrot were among the stragglers, the last wave of ODSTs to come trickling into the meeting. Gad led the charge down a walkway towards one of the uppermost rows.

Don was trailing behind Chris, asking him how the steak in his pants was holding up, when he saw two ODSTs ahead of them.

The pair were standing together at the top of one of the stairs leading down to the main floor, quietly conversing about what Don suspected would be anything other than a normal operation.

One of them was an officer.

A large burn scar on his cheek marked the spot where an improvised explosive device had come awfully close to taking off half of his face. A crooked nose showed where the surgeons had struggled to reconstruct it. However, his eyes were as keen as ever. The low shorn hair and shortened biker's goatee were also there by choice.

Despite not having a hook or an eyepatch, to Don, Teague always reminded him of a pirate. His rank as the captain of 1st Platoon certainly didn't help. His features made sure that he always looked like he had a few 17th century Dutch or English ancestors of dubious reputation.

The ODST beside him was a non-comm.

By contrast, he appeared much more personally intact. An encompassing black mane connected a stubble beard to a freshly delivered crew cut. In the middle of it was a face that looked something like a Greek statue come to life, old and weathered but also timeless and toughened. He was always among the better looking of the men of 1st Platoon, so much so that Chris was reasonably sure he soaked up all the attention whenever they got to enjoy their downtime at off-duty bars. Don counted it a blessing for his chances with the ladies that he was already a taken man, and with a kid of his own to boot.

He looked concerned.

Concerned for who, Don couldn't tell, at least until he turned towards Foxtrot and a pair of deep blue eyes locked onto the squad, prompting the captain to turn as well.

Gad stopped to stand at attention. "Sarge, Cap."

Teague nodded. "Corporal."

The Sarge sized him up then looked past him to the others. "What took you guys so long?"

"Had to stock up, sir." Ray replied. "Once we're down there, we're down there."

"Can't let anything go to waste." Chris agreed.

Foss caught the sergeant's eye and shrugged back. "Can you blame us? After that last op in Eridanus, I don't think anyone wants to take the risk of Procurement giving us the run-around again, especially now."

The Sarge nodded reluctantly. "Alright. Let's pack it in. The colonel is going to be walking through those doors any minute."

"Listen close, Foxtrot." Teague advised. "The next five minutes are going to be the most important of our lives."

"Aye, sir." They all said as Gad started them down the stairs. He didn't get far before taking a left, skirting his way down the empty seats of one of the upper rows.

Don was at the tail end of the group, coming down behind Izzy when the Sarge caught her by the shoulder.

"Is that really all you were up to?"

Izzy didn't answer right away, but the sergeant's investigative glare made her sigh at length.

She shook her head. "Can't say the anxiety has gone anywhere. We're all still a little on edge." She glanced over at Foss and Ray as they ambled towards their seats. "Some more than others."

The Sarge clenched his jaw in thought. He let her go and shot a similar look over at Don. "How about it, Gary?"

Don put a nervous hand to the back of his neck. "I wouldn't say I'm too confident about how we're going to wind up down there, sir. We've never fought these guys before."

"...Copy that." He tipped his chin down the row.

Don slipped along the small walkway to the nearest seat, settling himself down into the cushioned padding. He let his back sink into it. He briefly closed his eyes to savor the feeling of resting on something soft. Comfortable surfaces were always hard to come by out in a combat zone, being almost as rare as hot food or cold water. He had the hope at least that where they were going, there would be enough decimated homes or blown open apartments for him to find a sofa or bed lying in a street somewhere. He made a mental note not to let Chris call dibs on anything they found like he had last time.

He heard the Sarge sit down in the seat beside him, taking the last one in the row.

He opened his eyes but was momentarily surprised to find that he still couldn't see anything.

A few blinks assured him that his vision was working just fine. The lights were out.

Conversations across the chamber were dying down.

Then a large pale light switched on. It didn't come from a series of sources but instead from the ground floor itself.

The glow silhouetted a single solitary figure standing at the center of it, arms stowed behind his back.

Immediately the entire chamber became a coordinated rush of movement as hundreds rose to their feet to assume the same stance.

A voice emanated across the space from the in-built PA system. "At ease. You can take your seats."

The chamber was briefly alive with motion once again as the whole of the 7th relaxed and sat back down.

Several large screens activated on the surrounding walls simultaneously, exposing a closeup of the individual below.

For the face of a man that had seen the battalion through the darkest days of the Insurrection, the dark hair on his head was only just beginning to recede. Shaded beneath narrow brows, a pair of gray pupils drifted from place to place like stray storm clouds. No, not drifting, not exactly. That was to imply that he was lazy or inattentive, and anyone who'd been in the 7th long enough knew that Colonel Heath was anything but.

A salt and pepper beard shrouded a jaw that shifted thoughtfully, purposefully from left to right, as if holding back a flood of new orders and newer intel. The tell-tale signs of unusual longevity registered as a wrinkled forehead that wrinkled even further with words that needed to be said, merely held at bay for the right time. The way he carried himself, however, made it seem as if being older was an aesthetic choice rather than a consequence of a life spent keeping bodies in bags and hell in business.

To a normal civilian, he was just a man who happened to be up in age, but for an ODST, he was ancient.

Where most of the battalion's veterans were flying on borrowed time, the colonel had seemingly taken out loan after loan while saddling any rebels he fought with the bill.

He was gauging the room, searching the sea of silent faces that were staring back at him.

Don had no way of knowing what was going on behind that aged mug, but it was for that same reason that he and most of his pals in Bravo had long joked about never wanting to try him in a poker game. He gave off a look that couldn't fully be described, the kind of brief but intense glance that an apex predator would share with its packmates to make sure they were all on the same page.

They were all on the same page, all 1,000 of them.

There were things on Harvest that needed killing, and who was better suited for the job than the best killers in the 105th?

Soon the colonel took his arms from behind his back and folded them expectantly across his chest. "Good morning."

"Good morning, sir." The room replied in unison.

"I'd tell you that you're all looking beautiful today, but I doubt you guys need me to lie to you to get you on task."

He paused to share a small grin as more than a few laughs passed through the battalion.

"This is it, troopers. Listen up. As we speak, the Everest is lining us up for a drop on the capital. Like the admiral said earlier, it's going to be our job to serve an eviction notice to the squatters on the ground. At the moment, they're currently deprived of any orbital support. However, satellite surveillance confirmed that hostile airpower is still in play. The fly boys have assured me that they will be able to provide anti-air support for the ride in. Once we're on the ground, it'll boil down to a typical shock op with objectives ranging from company level all the way down to the platoons."

The large, semi-spherical device on the ceiling warmed until a dull glow began to emanate from it. A second later, four massive holographs winked on across the chamber.

The four of them were spherical projections, each of which was meant for one side of the chamber to see. Their finer details eventually resolved into the depictions of a world. They were all the same planet, the one directly below them.

From a topographical standpoint, Harvest had never been much to look at. Over 67% or two thirds of its surface was covered by the supercontinent Edda. There were only two major seas on the planet, one to the north of Edda and one to the south. Aside from that, the planet was swaddled in what appeared to be vast tracts of grasslands, forests, fields and hills with an appreciable number of lakes scattered here and there. The surface looked relatively uniform in terms of elevation. There was, however, a long line that sliced across the whole of the continent in an almost artificial manner. What looked like an escarpment began at the plains just south of Harvest's northern sea. From there, it carved a diagonal path southwest across the entirety of Edda before stopping thousands of kilometers later on the coast of Harvest's southern sea.

Don knew better than to think everything still looked exactly like what they were being shown. They were just using the Colonial Administration Authority's last recorded orbital observation of the planet. Heath had probably chosen it instead of the real deal for good reason. Some things were better left unsaid and unshown.

Several dozen small contacts blinked into existence above the plant's central latitudes. The shapes of UNSC battleships, cruisers, carriers and frigates were highlighted in a friendly green. The Third Fleet was assembled in a two layered formation. A staggered ring of frigates and battleships pointed their MAC cannons and weapon systems outwards into the depths of local space. The area within their established perimeter was roughly several hundred kilometers squared, affording enough room for the carriers and heavy cruisers like Everest to order themselves into a preplanned arrangement. They were getting ready to launch the expeditionary forces to the surface with the 7th Shock acting as the tip of the spear.

As for Everest, Admiral Cole's flagship had received primacy of place at the heart of the formation. It made Don feel that much more important. He hardly ever deployed with fleets anywhere close to this size outside of Operation TREBUCHET. He never would have guessed that there would be something arguably even more critical like Operation THUNDERBOLT waiting just up the road.

The planetary displays then simultaneously zoomed in at rapid speed towards the planet's equator. The wide and lush landscape of Edda expanded and flew past in a simulated descent that was orders of magnitude faster than any orbital insertion the ODSTs could pull off safely. It was also far more peaceful, unrealistically so.

In a matter of moments, the view slowed down and came to a stop, focusing on a spot of land perhaps less than 200 kilometers north of the south sea. The land resolved again into a patchwork of pastoral fields. They were segregated from one another by long hedgerows that turned them into mosaics of diverging grids and lattices. The escarpment also came into clearer definition as the endless behemoth that it was, the layers of stratification that lined its cliff faces hinting at some form of ancient tectonic activity on the planet. The whole of the formation continued to cross at a diagonal slant, giving Don a solid bearing on everything else thanks to its northeast-southwest orientation.

To the north of the escarpment, amidst an expanse of grassy fields and small hills was a diamond-shaped plot of civilization. The view was close enough to make out individual buildings. There were hundreds, most of which were relatively small, most likely apartment complexes. Around several dozen skyscrapers stood at various points throughout Utgard proper with most of them clustering near the city center. Nearly all of them followed a modern, glass shrouded design which spoke to a dream by the CAA's civil engineers to expand further. That dream appeared for all the world to be dead in the water.

A region of mountainous terrain rose up perhaps 20 kilometers north of the city. The maze of jutting landforms tilted into the ground like sinking ships or curved down into wide valleys. The serpentine shape of a single river slithered down from the region, crossing the stretch of open plains until it finally met and passed through the city. It divided Utgard into two halves before forging on well into the plains south of the city limits. Its journey took it a considerable distance away before it finally reached the base of the ever-lengthening escarpment. From there, its passage curved onto a parallel course with the elevated terrain and continued to do so until the end of its sedimentary delta flowed into the south sea.

On a majority of outer colonies, Utgard would have counted as something of a minor municipality. It would have ranked as little better than a small town among the more densely populated inner colonies and would have proved nothing more than a geographic footnote somewhere like Earth. But Harvest was none of those. It was its own thing, an agricultural juggernaut posing as a mote of life on the very edge of colonized space. The small population would have ensured a more close-knit farming community where everyone knew everyone, where friends and loved ones remained in lifelong contact and where a more unified, perhaps even independent ethos could stand strong.

The forefathers of the colonists were likely 25th century pioneers of the more historically recent rounds of human expansion, seeking a world to themselves far from Sol's light. If their descendants ever declared their own sovereignty, they would have had every capability to do so, all without anyone of consequence even hearing about it for months or responding to it for years on end. Perhaps that was why the Insurrection hadn't really taken root here like it had in places like Eridanus. There were hardly any CMA or UEG bureaucrats to cause them any hassle. There was no need to fight for independence when they were already independent in everything but name.

Being so far from Earth, however, meant that they were also far closer than anyone else to things that were best left unencountered.

Out in the void, no one can hear you scream, Don thought. It was uniquely chilling to realize that that logic applied to planets too, hence why it had taken almost a full year for the UNSC to discover the truth behind the sudden silence of Epsilon Indi.

"This is our target." Colonel Heath declared. "As I'm sure you've pieced together, when we get down there, the city is going to look nothing like what we're seeing right now. I'll let you use your imagination. In any case, the capital will be the primary focus of the ground operation. The Marines have been tasked with securing the place from block to block, but that's not our goal."

The projections changed again, causing four structures in different parts of the city to flicker and stabilize with the yellow light of objective markers.

"Our job is to capture these strategic points and see to the end of any hostile activity in their immediate vicinity. Alpha, Bravo, Delta, Echo, you'll each have your own areas of operation."

The four highlights switched off, then one of them cut back on, illuminating the building that sat near the southernmost corner of the city's general layout. In truth it was actually a series of small facilities, hangars, crisscrossing runways and taxiways. Everything surrounded a core building that resembled a stick figure with arms and legs outstretched and a head whose upper half was missing.

"The Utgard Spaceport goes to Alpha Company. You'll be inserting directly into the yard. The main building is the priority. Any resistance is expected to come from the terminal areas which will have the best view of your landing zones. Try not to get bogged down. Move fast and use whatever cover you can to close the distance. Just getting to the building itself is expected to be a fight."

A wave of muted chatter broke out across the chamber, coalescing around Alpha's side of the space. Then the spaceport dimmed and another building was set aglow. The elongated crucifix of a structure sat closer to the western corner of the city. Its shape gave some hint as to its purpose before the colonel offered his own explanation.

"The Utgard Memorial Hospital will go to Echo Company. You'll be hitting it from the parking lot which will give any unfriendly residents inside as little time to take a crack at you as possible. Contact here is expected to be minimum at best, mild at worst."

"Leave it to Echo to get the easy gigs!" A man shouted, the voice coming from Alpha Company.

"Easy Echo!" Another jeered, using one of the well-established taunts that the 7th's companies reserved for one other.

It prompted a quick retaliation of rebuttals and jibes from Echo's side of the chamber.

The back and forth lasted only a few more seconds, dying nearly as suddenly as it came as the colonel laid a heavy stare at one company and then at the other. It was another one of those aspects about the colonel that Don and everyone else couldn't help but respect. The man could engage in a staring contest with hundreds of people at a time and still pull out a win. There was something in his glare that always worked its magic. Whenever he chose to, his blank gaze gave off the same air as creatures that lacked eyelids, allowing them to stare back at someone with a subdued intensity that could easily unnerve them the longer they looked at it.

Don heard Izzy cup a hand to her mouth to whisper over to him. "When you want to quit but remember you're government property."

He held down a slight chuckle as the colonel continued undeterred.

"Don't get it twisted, troopers. Make no mistake, this isn't going to be easy. None of it. Alpha, you've got more ground to cover, but Echo, you've got more floors to clear. You already have some idea of what to expect from our previous briefings on the Covenant. However, looking at some other poor bastard trying to fight these things isn't the same as one of us going head-to-head with them. There'll be variables at play that we can't possibly account for regardless of how much surveillance we perform or how much recon we run. Don't forget that. Call it what you will, but I'll be damned before I'll let anyone here call what we're about to do 'easy'."

He paused to let his words settle over the chamber, ensuring that the resulting silence was solidified.

The hospital dimmed and a third highlight followed. It wasn't a building like the previous two. Instead, it was a large, organized area of fields and forests embedded within the midwestern heart of the city. The municipal park presented a sharp contrast to its citified surroundings. Its boundaries were rounded, bending inward and bulging outward in a format not too dissimilar from the handful of lakes that occupied its interior. The park sat on the west side of the body of water dividing the city which an attached land-marker identified as the 'Mimir River'.

"Delta Company, you have the Utgard Mall. You're looking at pockets of resistance scattered across the forests with one or two concentrations near the central lake. We've spotted what appear to be light anti-air batteries in this particular AO, so it'll be your job to clear them when you see them."

The mall area dimmed and the last structure on the battalion's list of objectives was highlighted. It wasn't that far away, standing on the east side of the Mimir River so that it was just across from the mall. The final target was an I-shaped building of a relatively simpler but still notably modern design. It was encompassed roundabout by a fence. A diverse range of officious looking courtyards, gardens and promenades inhabited the space between the surrounding streets and the structure itself. All the while, a long, curved driveway led through an entrance in the fence to the front of the building's east wing.

"This is the Harvest Parliament Building, formerly the seat of power for the entire planet. Out of our four target buildings, resistance here is expected to be the heaviest. We believe the Covenant have been using it as a groundside command post for their operations in the city. There's at least one significant concentration of enemy activity centered on this location. Bravo, it'll be your job to break it."

It was Bravo Company's turn to indulge in a round of murmurs and mumbling conversations. Don felt his stomach tie itself into an uncomfortable knot. The company was being assigned the toughest fight out of the whole battalion, and by proxy, the toughest fight in the city. The news incidentally earned their side of the chamber more than a few concerned looks from the rest of the assembly, especially from those in Alpha Company who thought they would be the ones to have it the worst.

"Sounds like fun." Ray said.

"I think you need a therapist." Chris replied. "Scratch that, I think I need a therapist."

"Think it took you long enough to figure that out?" Izzy chided.

Don cast a sidelong glance to his right.

The Sarge was somehow still sitting quietly, his eyes, though hardened with an emotion that was difficult to read, never leaving the colonel.

Possibly out of deference for their plight, Heath allowed Bravo to converse among themselves for a few seconds longer before resuming his brief.

"I understand that a lot of you are worried, which is why, Delta Company, once your own objective is secured, you are to send backup across to the parliament building if it is either requested by Bravo or if it stands in line with your company commander's better judgement. Bravo, the same applies vice versa if Delta is in need and you find yourselves able to assist. Your proximity to each other's respective AOs will be crucial in ensuring mission success. Is that clear?"

The personnel of Bravo and Delta Company replied in unison. "Sir, yessir!"

"Good. When we've gotten our areas under control, we will hunker down and fortify our positions. The 31st MEF is expected to come in about 45 minutes after we make landfall. They want to use our turf as landing zones for their battalions to push out across the rest of the city. Until the Marines pull in, we are to hold our ground and repel all counterattacks. But the buck doesn't stop there either."

The images of Utgard quickly zoomed out to a much wider view of the surrounding area. There were suddenly a lot more labels on the various landmarks.

The largest of them, the continent-crossing escarpment was shown as 'The Bifrost'.

The mountainous region to the north was shown as 'The Vigrond Highlands'.

There was a plenteous collection of towns sprinkled around the city as well as isolated yet distinct compounds marked as 'Tiara Space Elevator'. That last part stuck out to Don, primarily because this 'Tiara', what he assumed was the planet's designated space station for off-world deliveries, was likely long gone.

Another sight that caught his attention was the length of a long thoroughfare that extended westward from Utgard, the 'Gladsheim Highway'. It forged a path across the 'Plains of Ida', branching off along a number of exits before terminating at the eastern edge of the town that was its namesake. Though there were already scores of other small towns dispersed around the periphery of the capital, Gladsheim was visibly the second largest settlement on Harvest, coming in just behind the capital itself.

Multiple crimson contacts appeared as dots that flickered on at different points around the region. There were two in the depths of the Vigrond Highlands to the north, three on the outskirts of Gladsheim to the west, one just on the southern city limits beside a site marked 'Tiara Space Elevator-4 (Central)' and four more at a site that was easily over a hundred kilometers further south of Utgard. Set along the east side of the Mimir river, the last location was much closer to the Bifrost, marked out as the 'Harvest Botanical Gardens'.

"These are hostile AA." Heath said. "They're not like anything Delta will be running into at the mall. No, these things are heavy weights, ship killers. Command would've tried to neutralize them with missile strikes from orbit but there are concerns that the lighter AA units stationed around them will act as a defensive network, catching anything too small for the larger pieces to shoot down. After their last tango with one of their ships, the Navy isn't too keen on wasting fissile material on targets that can knock them out of the sky, so they're sending us. With Utgard retaken, the battalion will rest up for a short while then head off after each of these guns with the 31st MEF running support.

Alpha, you'll take the two in the Highlands. Delta, you'll take the site at the base of the old space elevator. Echo, the Botanical Gardens are yours. Bravo, you'll handle the trio near the town of Gladsheim. Maintain lines of communication the whole way through. If anyone finds an easier way to take these things offline, it'll be important that everyone else knows about it. We're looking at 10 major anti-aircraft installations. If you find that you can successfully capture one of them then do so. The spooks at naval intelligence are going to need something to study if we're to figure out how to beat them later down the line. If not, then you have both my blessing and my permission to blow everything you see that isn't human to kingdom come. Is that clear?"

This time the whole battalion replied together. "Sir, yessir!"

"Glad to hear it. With them knocked out, it'll pave the way for our ships to get in close and really start owning the planet. But chances are it will only be the start of a general security operation for the whole of Harvest. Keep that in mind as you go."

Heath stopped again. Unlike before, however, it was not to reinforce a point. He took a few moments to look around at the hundreds of faces in attendance. Don saw a new glint in his eye. He picked up on a hint of something that was the closest to somber that he had ever seen the colonel. He couldn't quite shake the feeling that he was using the opportunity to remember them, to take stock of those who were here now so that when the time came, when all was said and done and they were back aboard the Everest, he would know exactly who they had lost.

"Listen, Helljumpers, we've been through some of the worst war zones the colonies have to offer. But this won't be easy, this won't be quick, and it won't be painless. The full scale of their capabilities is still unknown. Not even Command is sure of what all we'll find down there. To be perfectly frank, we're the ones who'll be finding out for everyone else. The colonists put up a pretty good fight before they left, but before we go, I need you to understand that, in no uncertain terms, what we're about to participate in will be the first real ground engagement between the UNSC and the Covenant on Harvest. This is where they first met us, and this is where we'll end them. You, me, everyone on this ship and everyone outside of it are standing on the edge of history, and no matter what happens from hereon, one thing is clear: it will not be our last fight. Far from it.

It is imperative that we learn everything we can about our new enemy. What we come away with may very well determine the course of future battles. This won't be some one-off assault against an army of a would-be dictator. We're not fighting our own anymore. We are at war. Humanity is at war. I know this might be a lot to ask for those of you who've been in the trenches for years now, but I need you to forget what you've learned from the Insurrection. We're not dealing with bombmakers, terror cells or illegal confederacies. We're dealing with an adversary whose entire intent is to destroy anyone and anything that either looks like us or reminds them of us. United Nations Space Command, Innies, none of that matters anymore. The stakes are different now. They're higher, much higher than what we're typically used to. That doesn't mean we won't win this. The brass have asked me to remain adaptable to the situation on the surface, and now I'm asking you to do the same."

He stopped once again before getting to the question on everyone's mind.

"Our rules of engagement are straightforward. Because the Covenant either killed or chased away the vast majority of the population, no civilians are believed to remain in the region."

Don felt an immediate change in the atmosphere. Though no one moved to say anything, across the chamber tense expressions and rigid postures relaxed.

"That's right, Helljumpers. No more pulling punches. With no civvies in the area, we are authorized to use whatever methods we deem necessary to get the job done. High explosive ordnance, Longsword gun runs and Archer missile strikes are back on the table. Command wants us to do anything and everything in our power to make sure we retake Harvest and, just as importantly, that we send a message while doing so. We're here to let the Covenant know that we won't just let them waltz over and torch one of our worlds, that no matter how small or how far off, we will defend it. And if we can't defend it then we will avenge it. The days for counterinsurgency operations are over. Today it is world for world, ship for ship, blood for blood. Rest assured, troopers, we will beat them here on Harvest, and once we do, if fortune so favors us then we will find one of their worlds, and when we do, God help them."

The fervor of the colonel's voice suddenly rose, and Don felt the heat in his blood begin to rise along with it, causing his skin to prickle with a building bravado that bordered more and more on the edge of rage. Rage and hope.

"The first thing they told us after burning Harvest was that our destruction is the will of their Gods! Their Gods! So, Helljumpers, our job is simple! We will kill every last Covenant soldier, every last warrior they sent to do the same to us! Then we will pass on our own message, one they can't miss, the kind they'll remember every time they come across our species from now until this war is over! What we do here today will ensure that the life of every man, every woman and every child is a message they can't ignore, one that will ring in their ears every time they see us and every time they face us in battle: screw you and your Gods!"

The chamber suddenly erupted in an explosion of shouts and cheers that had already been building up. Hundreds upon hundreds of ODSTs rose to their feet, pumping fists into the air as they added their voices to the defiant ensemble. Even Foxtrot wasn't exempt. They were all on their feet, all joining in the general uproar of the moment.

"How about it, troopers!?" Heath asked, the subtle bloodthirstiness in his grin being reflected back at him a thousand times over. "Think that's clear enough!?"

Another wave of agreeing shouts followed on the heels of the first, rolling down towards the ground floor as a wall of sound that rattled Don's eardrums. He didn't care. Though it was starting to hurt his throat, he cheered as loud and for as long as his lungs would allow.

But then as he stood there, he realized that not all of Foxtrot was on its feet.

Out the corner of his eye he saw the Sarge sitting in his seat. He was still staring out at the ground floor, watching, though Don wasn't so sure if the colonel was his focus anymore.

Even so, the shouting went on unabated until Heath finally raised a hand, causing the tumult to subside but not entirely abate.

"Troopers!" He called. "When you leave this ship, how will you leave!?"

The multitudinous voices of the 7th Battalion rose up in a chest-rattling unison. "Feet first, sir!"

"And when you drop, how will you drop!?"

"Feet first, sir!"

"And when you land, HOW WILL YOU LAND!?"

"FEET FIRST, SIR!"

The colonel crossed his arms again as he took another moment to look from company to company, fixing each of the standing crowds with a firm glance. Then, in a manner that spoke to an inner conversation that none of them had been made privy to, he nodded to himself, briefly shutting his eyes. When he opened them again, there was a blinding intensity behind them, a conviction that told Don for a fact that the man had meant every word that came out of his mouth.

"Battalion, you're dismissed. We drop in two hours. Get your gear and get ready to move out."

:********:

Don looked over the long list of names on the screen of the Bravo Company personnel board. It was a collection of both individual names and their associated callsigns, meant to act as a guide for those new faces in the battalion who weren't as familiar with their comrades' designations. Don knew he didn't need to see it for himself. He was already well versed in the knowledge of who was who over the radio. He was here for his own reasons.

He looked for his own platoon first and foremost. Eventually finding them under 'Bravo - 1st Platoon', he worked his way down the column of squads and names until he eventually came across 'Foxtrot':

Sgt. Noah Iris – Fox-1

Cpl. Jonathan Gadston – Fox-3

Spc. Ryan Foster – Fox-4

Spc. Christopher Sasso – Fox-6

Pfc. Izabella Montez – Fox-7

Pfc. Raymond Fontenot – Fox-8

Pfc. Don Garrison – Fox-9

It was a sobering sight.

Three names were missing, and to his quiet grief, purposefully so.

Time had an interesting way of making one deal with loss. They either learned how to work through it or how to deny it, and Don wasn't sure which category he fell into. Having Foxtrot here in its entirety would have done a lot more for his personal morale, not that the colonel hadn't fired him up already. That was just the spark, however. Having everyone he wanted by his side would have sustained that flame. But life just hadn't panned out that way.

After a minute or so, he was able to pull himself away from the roster. He took one last involuntary look before he was on his way, walking down the ensuing lineup of personnel boards that fringed the third floor of Everest's armory.

The four-tiered space occupied a large compartment between H and K Deck. A rectangular atrium served as its heart, being framed on each level by corresponding layers of catwalks and seated inspection tables. A metal library of weapon racks ran the full length of every wall on every level, filled to bursting with a tasteful gallery of rifles, SMGs, launchers and grenades. Explosives were housed in specialized lockers while ammunition cabinets formed small aisles leading up to their accompanying weapon systems. The only gaps in the endless displays of guns and ammo came in the form of doors, whether it was the doors of the offices belonging to the resident supply sergeants or the doors of the ship's elevators that transited through each deck of the armory. Every so often the former opened to allow an armorer to emerge with datapad in hand, struggling to keep track of the staggering number of weapons currently being repossessed. The latter was far more common as the elevators opened to deliver whole squads to each of the four decks, adding more troopers to the deluge of armored ODSTs that had already flooded the armory.

Since the 7th was heading in first, the battalion was given the right of way for first pickings from the ship's arsenal. The commanders of the 31st Marine Expeditionary Force were keen on making sure that the shock troops who were soon to clear the way for them were well stocked. Everyone from Alpha to Echo had already reported to their quarters to throw on their BDUs. A quick trip to the UNSC Procurement Center saw them showered in emergency rations of water, MREs and other necessities of life on the battlefield. Then they had gone on to invade the armory.

Don had taken time out of his pre-mission prep to take a look at the personnel boards on I Deck. With that finished, with his quiet vigil long overdue for friends long gone, he made his way down the catwalk, heading in the direction of the closest stairwell.

As he went, he passed a platoon of troopers from Alpha. They, like many others, had busied themselves either making their own selections from the weapon racks or sitting to talk while they slotted fresh ammo into their magazines at the inspection tables. One of them, a buddy of his, hailed him as he went by.

He waved back, wishing him luck while he moved past another squad and turned in towards the exit door. A quick trek down brought him out onto J Deck.

Coming onto the next catwalk, he spotted Foxtrot sitting at an inspection table a few rows down, conversing over a splayed-out collection of rifles, grenades, helmets and ammunition. The only ones missing were Ray and the Sarge.

Don strolled over and plopped down into the seat next to Gad.

The corporal was guiding a special sanitation wipe through the barrels of a SPNKR rocket launcher. He took one look at Don and went back to what he was doing.

"So?"

Don fished the two cans of orange soda from his ammo pouches and planted them next to one of the many boxes of 7.62 sitting across the table. "Sorry, that's all they had in the machine."

Gad raised a brow. "No cola?"

Don shook his head. "The guys from 2nd Platoon got to it first. By the time I showed up, it was either this or sparkling water."

"Perfect."

"And now for your side of the deal?"

With a sigh, Gad grabbed his launcher by one of its twin-barrels and lifted it up one-handed, using the other to push six magazines over to Don, each carrying a whopping 60 rounds of 7.62-millimeter bullets.

Don smiled. "Gracias."

"You sure you still want to stick with the '5B?"

"Yup, at least for this ride. I get more bang for my buck with it than I do with the '37. The intelligence reports they gave us say these aliens use some kind of plasma-based munitions for the most part, third degree burns and such. I'm not trying to get hit with something like that so right now all I want is to be able to throw as much lead back in the other direction as possible. Being a little slower is fine. Besides, you already packed it for me."

"True enough." Gad set his launcher back down and patted its frame. "A little extra stopping power never hurt nobody."

"Except the people getting shot at." Foss replied from the other side of the table, slotting 5-millimeter ammo into a slim, 48-round magazine. "It hurts them pretty good I'd say, but I guess that's the whole point."

Finishing, he set it down next to four others resting beside his M7S Submachine Gun.

"You say that while bringing a peashooter to a free for all." Gad huffed. "That might work in the back alleys on Vestige, but I would advise against it for an op like this."

"Well, unlike you guys I actually need to travel light. Chances are I'll be on my feet from the second we land to the second we leave."

Don tried not to think about the probable reality that the Doc was painting. Thankfully, something quickly took his mind off it. He noticed the muted sheen of the stainless-steel suppressor still attached to the front of the barrel and pointed at it. "Don't think you'll be needing that. They already know we're coming."

"Yeah, but they won't know I'm coming. Word is this parliament building we're hitting is made of granite. That'll at least offer some level of sound absorption when the shooting starts. As for me, I don't even want them to know I'm just around the corner until I'm well past it, so a little extra padding for the acoustics will work in my favor."

"You scared, Doc?"

The question came from Chris. He was busy eyeing the pair of pistols in his hands, but not too busy to pay the squad's medic a malicious look.

"Who, me? Scared?" Foss picked up his SMG, slid in a magazine and worked the charging handle in one fluid motion, letting it spring the first round into place with a sharp CLACK. "About what, the giant three-meter-tall bear things? The only ones on the threat catalogue ONI says we should kill on sight?" He aimed the weapon down at the floor and checked the sights before flicking on the safety, shooting an overly enthusiastic grin at Chris. "Nah. You?"

Chris grinned back as he shook his head, much more relaxed. "Like I said, that's one big coat."

"You know that cuts both ways, right?"

"The only thing that's going to be cutting any kind of way is going to be my knife when I'm taking my winter clothes off one of those big guys. I hear Harvest gets awful chilly at night, you know, nuclear winter and all."

Chris sized up the pistols in his grip, one of them a regular M6G2 magnum, the other a darker, long-barreled M6C/SOCOM, the staple Helljumper sidearm. "What do you guys think?"

"If I were you, I'd stick with the '6C." Foss replied as he began stowing frag grenades on his person. "With the Automag, you're looking at an integrated suppressor, four more shots and twice the optical range of your typical 'G2. But hey, that's just my opinion."

In the seat beside him, Izzy shook her head. "Your best bet is to stick with the basics. Once the ammo runs out and we start having to pickpocket from the Marines, you're probably only going to find the regular stuff."

"Says the girl with the carbine." Chris remarked, bringing attention to the weapon resting in front of her as she worked to add the last fully loaded magazine to a domino-like row on the table. The MA5K Carbine was a cutdown version of the standard MA5. The weapon engineers at Misriah Armory had seen fit to trade its electronic housing with a removable carrying handle, giving it a more distinctive look for the boys and girls in the UNSC's special operations community. Don had hardly ever used it, but he had hardly ever seen Izzy without it.

"I'm a '37 kind of guy myself." Chris chided, laying down his pistols to wave a hand over his MA37 assault rifle with an exaggerated flourish. "I have good taste like that."

Izzy didn't even meet his gaze. "When it comes to tattoos maybe. When it comes to women and guns, I've seen better."

Chris' eye twitched. "Hey, leave my girl out of this."

"Well, she's not your girl anymore, is she?"

Though still grinning, a flash of irritation turned his expression into something closer to a grimace. "I said leave her out of it."

"Then leave my carbine out of it." Izzy leveled an amused smile at him like one would at a precocious child before returning to what she was doing.

"You're no fun, you know that?"

"Oh, I'm tons of fun, right Don?"

Don raised his hands in mock surrender. "Hey, leave me out of this too, please."

"You know what, just 'cause you said pick the 'G2, I'm going with the 6C." Chris rebutted, resting the former on the table and sliding it away from him.

Izzy shrugged as she took a sanitation wipe to the stock of her carbine. "Just don't come running to me once your secondary runs dry because I'm not giving you mine."

"I won't ask either. I'll just-"

"Hey guys, check this out."

Don didn't see where Ray came from, his brain only registering the fact that he was suddenly standing at the other end of the table. By then he'd already planted something on it with enough force to startle Chris.

The object was clearly a rifle, but one Don didn't recognize. Except he did, faintly. He'd seen it being fired by one of the unidentified personnel whose helmet footage was used to identify the 'Buzzard' variant of Covenant. It was a bullpup by design. It had a long barrel with a telescopic sight atop a long, elevated mount.

"What am I looking at here?" Chris asked.

Ray spoke with the excitable tones of a kid with a new toy. "They call this beaut the XBR55 Battle Rifle. It's a prototype. The supply sergeants just put'em out there. One of them even told me about it. We're looking at four times the magazine capacity of the DMR and twice the range."

Gad took a peek. "Range?"

Ray nodded. "About 100 shy of a full klick."

Foss whistled. "So, I guess you're leaving '99-duty to Ferret-4 for this one?"

"Yup. I'll take over the big gun if something happens to him. Otherwise, I'm sticking with this bad boy right here."

"You even know how to use that thing?" Izzy asked.

"I've handled plenty of BRs before. This isn't too different." He picked up the rifle and proudly hefted it over his shoulder. "See? Easy."

His attention shifted to the other end of the table. "Oi, Don, you look a little naked over there mon ami. Where's your piece that makes peace?"

Don winced, remembering that he hadn't picked up his own weapon yet. "Oh yeah, one sec."

"I'd hurry if I were you." Ray prodded. "Those 5Bs are selling like candy."

Don glanced at the thousands upon thousands of assault rifles racked and shelved around the armory, smiling at the obvious lie. "Right."

He was about to get up when a voice stopped him.

"Incoming."

He saw it out the corner of his eye, coming fast from his right. He caught it on reflex, but not before the frame of the MA5B had come awfully close to his face.

Flipping around his newfound weapon to get a better grip, he saw the Sarge striding around to his end of the table. He hadn't seen him coming either. Just like everyone else, he was dressed in his full BDU save for his helmet which he kept cradled in the crook of his arm. Don instantly knew by the commingled look of concern and mild amusement that something was on his mind.

Ray sighted the DMR on his back harness.

"That's yesterday's model you got there, sir." He held up his battle rifle. "How about a new one?"

The Sarge's eyes widened a bit at the sight of the weapon system. Even so, he shook his head. "Thanks, but no thanks. I'll stick with what I know."

"You sure? She fits like a glove." Ray nestled his cheek lovingly against the side of the stock. "I think I'm going to name her Aimee."

Chris and Izzy briefly shared a look of disbelief, both of them stifling a laugh.

"That's alright." The Sarge said, humoring him with an envious smirk. "They don't call'em old reliable for nothing."

"Well, let me know if you ever want to ditch old reliable for young and beautiful over here."

"Will do." The Sarge gestured for him to take a seat.

As soon as the two of them settled down, the mood of the previous conversation disappeared. Something else took its place almost immediately.

Don felt it coming from his squad leader as an almost indiscernible shift in his demeanor. The way it seemed to spread across the table told him that he would need to take whatever he was about to say seriously. From the quiet that ensued, it was clear that the others thought the same. Even Ray's happy-go-lucky attitude mellowed into a stony solemnity that might have seemed uncharacteristic to anyone who didn't know him.

The Sarge set his arms on the table and leaned closer, his gaze shifting from one face to the next. "Before we jump in, I need to do a gut check. I want to know how we're feeling about this one."

There was no immediate answer.

A few seconds passed before Foss spoke up. "I'm a little worried...more than worried, but its manageable."

"Honest to God I haven't been this jittery in a minute, sarge." Chris relented. "It's like if somebody slipped something in your drink but then you remember you didn't drink anything."

On the edge of his periphery, Don could see his right leg bouncing ever so slightly under the table. He looked down and saw that he was doing the same with one of his own legs. He wasn't sure how he'd missed it until now. He had no idea how long they had both been doing it for or whether there was something that had made him copy it subconsciously.

"Same." Izzy said, taking a breath. "Remember when we pulled that Zero G op on that frigate? It's like that but worse. I'll live but...God, I just want to get this over with."

"The nerves are there." Gad echoed. He grabbed one of the sodas Don had brought him and held it up. "Like always though, I have my means."

Ray looked around. Then, focusing on the sergeant, a trace of a wry smile broke through his once dour mug. He shrugged. "I'm just happy to be here, Sarge."

A shadow of a laugh escaped from their squad leader as he nodded back. "Happy to hear it."

All eyes turned to the last member of the squad.

"How about it, Don?" The Sarge asked.

After thinking about it for a moment, Don shrugged as well though not as confidently. "They say we're making history, sir. They never really said that about what we were doing before, and...I think they mean it this time. I mean, how couldn't they, am I right? It's aliens."

He began to trail off. "It's-..."

In truth, Don still wasn't sure how he felt about the whole thing. His emotions ever since he saw that first video of Harvest were stuck in a three-way tug of war between fear, rage and doubt.

The Sarge seemed to pick up on that as well. He stared hard at him a second longer before responding with a slow, understanding dip of his head. "Sergeant Major Eversman says he's got some Sweet Williams waiting for us once all this is over. He means all of us this time, even those of us who don't smoke. I get the feeling you holdouts will be a lot more open to it before we leave."

Don tried not to show his shock.

Sergeant Major Eversman was the platoon sergeant for the 1st. He wasn't a man known to share his cigars with anyone except on the rarest of occasions, rare and exceptionally bloody occasions.

It wasn't a good sign.

In a way, the Sarge had used it to say what needed to be said.

"Listen, the colonel only hinted at it, but we all know this isn't going to be easy. In fact, if I'm being honest, I don't know how this is going to play out, so I'll tell you what I usually tell you and we'll do what we usually do. Expect a hard landing and an even harder resistance. Watch each other's backs down there. Call out anything you see that's even remotely suspicious to you. We're heading into another urban jungle. The only blessing is that we'll be in free fire mode this go-around. Anything that doesn't meet the description of either a Marine or an ODST needs to meet the description of a corpse ASAP. Those worries you have; I can't say I don't have them too. Don't ignore them. Use them to keep you grounded, use them to keep you focused. Remember, y-"

"You're either on your toes or in your grave." The whole table said, finishing the quote.

"Yeah," Chris laughed, his grin making a comeback. "We know."

The Sarge's smile also made a return. "I guess I've said it enough times by now, haven't I?"

"Definitely." Izzy kidded.

"...So, we're all on the same page?"

Silence met his question. It was different from the last, however. There were a few more tentative smiles and unspoken jibes that managed to break through the tension.

"Yeah." Gad replied, taking in the sense of a general agreement. "I'd say so."

A weight seemed to lift off the sergeant. He sighed as he sat up straighter, allowing himself a split-second reprieve to take it all in.

Don knew there was a decent chance that this might be the last time they were all together like this. It was another one of those things that he purposefully kept at the back of his thoughts, namely the thought that told him to 'shut up, pull your own weight and watch out for everyone'. It hadn't led him wrong just yet and it probably wasn't about to now.

The sharp blare of a siren rang through the space, drawing eyes across the four decks of the armory towards the ceiling.

The first indication that it wasn't an emergency was a lack of change in the lighting. The siren blared two more times to ensure that it had the full attention of the 1,000 ODSTs below. A calm and collected female voice sounded across the compartment, one Don had come to recognize over the course of their long journey as belonging to Sekmet, the ship's onboard AI.

"Attention, attention, all ODSTs are to report immediately to O Deck for orbital insertion protocols. Attention, attention, all ODSTs are to report immediately to O Deck for orbital insertion protocols."

Sekmet's message repeated itself in a continuous loop that betrayed none of the genuine personality behind the smart AI.

Activity around the armory rapidly increased as hundreds of troopers set about loading their last magazines and performing their final weapon checks.

Don felt a fire set off in his gut.

This was it.

"That's our cue." The Sarge said, rising to his feet. "Alright Fox, stow whatever gear you haven't packed up and let's get rolling. Next stop, Utgard."

Foxtrot quickly began grabbing whatever they had left on the table. Stepping back to let Gad load the first two rockets into his launcher, Don reached over and started stashing the magazines for his MA5B into his ammo pouches. The second he was done; he fixed a close eye on the ammo counter in the bottom right corner of his HUD. The number sat at a comfortable '360'. He hoped it would be enough as he left the table, following the squad and a growing number of ODSTs towards the nearest exit.

Vetus Amici - Old Friends