Part III

One week later, the valley's become a soggy, running indentation—everything unremarkably grey and melting. It's the water that runs through everything, unremitting, chewing up the riverbank and taking it down with it wherever it's going. It runs a poisoned, frothy white and it's not Shield company Hill 449 yielded to, in the end. The white river passed through here and from below ate the roots that were dug into the hill until that tall, swaying grass fell down and died and the rain and the wind washed it all away. The dirt followed too, and so Hill 449 that stood black and tall became a cowering, knee-capped pit.

Nobody knows if the Covies hiding there stayed for the end and were swallowed up into the earth when the bedrock became spongy and porous and brittle like an old man who was giving up. One soldier from Shield looked out upon the hill one day as it sank under the rain and muttered "Fuckin' beautiful" and Reed overheard him. A few others nodded and said fuck 'em but most just stared at the evil-beautiful destruction and kept on waiting until there was nothing left.

The first time Reed fired a rifle, he cried. He was nine and the slippery stock kicked him in the face and although it made him woozy and fat-lipped, that wasn't the reason why. In that moment he remembers, the poltergeist blast still wavered in the air, haunting it, and it was that first, initial sound the rifle gave that shocked him so bad. It was a snapping sound like something breaking or something wrong; it was like glass shattering and the sneaking feeling of getting in trouble. The gunshot was a loud, destructive noise in the tranquility that came before and returned after—a strong-armed ripple in the way things ought to be—and he was let down by tall expectations that it should have been cathartic, a rite of passage into manhood so that he could be one of them now, those tough burly men he'd grown up around all his life who sweated, toiled and, on occasion, killed. But firing that weapon wasn't a celebration, though. It was an ordeal to be suffered through; something inflicted on him and something unpleasant to be subjected to, leaving its own kind of scar.

He was introduced to manhood then, truthfully, because that powerful, breaking sound was honest and raw and warned him about what was to come—the killers that were coming and the war. The gunshot was timeless and had a regretful inevitability to it like a miserable announcement of bad news but it did not coddle him. It did not lie.

Boadicea told him that long night a week ago that the only thing consistent and true was wild chaos. It's what she promised Reed, before he tossed the mundane-looking canister into the river in the cave, and she was not a liar. Covies crawled out of the jungle for days on all fours sometimes, leaking blood and falling apart in places. The infected water peeled through their bumpy skin; it made their teeth and claws come loose and drop off. Those who hadn't drunk from the river helped drag their dying comrades right to the edge of the frontline and then frantically surrendered to the 906th, arms outstretched—big-eyed like shin-splintered big game lying shocked and glistening on a country road, breathing in and out. These were skirmishers and jackals who came, but not their elite officers; patrols still return to HQ every day having suffered through fanatical, last-ditch charges urged on by the squids who'd rather stand in front of shrieking, red machinegun fire than quietly give up the fight. Boadicea and her men go hunting every night, looking for these headstrong Covies who hold a line they have already lost and are getting decimated in swarms because the Helljumpers don't take any prisoners. The Covies come out to surrender during the day, when they are not howling savages with cruel, sneaky eyes and it is okay for them to be pitied—during the day, when Boadicea's men are sleeping because at night they come out swiftly and leave, and nobody stops them from leaving. Nobody knows what they do out there except for Reed—he has a pretty good idea because he joined along once. Now, though, this week later, Reed's face is smashed and swollen shut. He's doped up and paralyzed when he thinks about them (and then tries not to) when he hears them shuffle by in the dark like the leathery flutter of bats' wings, all of them wordless, driven because they are thirsty and need to drink. They're an unnatural ripple in the way things ought to be.

#

Private Wardell Reilly from Shield company has shared a cigarette with some men from the 112th once or twice before. They've asked for a light, and he's asked for a light. That second time, they stood around and talked, and they asked him what his story was. Well, he told them, I'm in Shield 1st platoon—3rd squad. Volunteered from Charlie, he said.

You were out there with us, they said to him, that night?

—that night, when the Covies came crashing down like a disastrous, plummeting wreck. And that night, when the 112th came streaking out of their cave like they were possessed and drunk on believing, and everyone (Shield too) fought hard and died and pushed the bastards back—

Fuck yes I was, Reilly said, proud. Fuck yes I was.

How many did you folks lose out there, they asked him.

His cigarette went hot in his hand, perturbed by the sneering flame that was foreign and invaded it, and he thought they were mocking him. What right did he have, he thought, to stand beside these two, these brazen gods—destroyers of things—when he was so insignificant. He admired them so completely, the way they strode like bronze champions, the way they hurt the Covies so completely. There was an order to it all, though, and these people weren't your friends. They were your jackbooted betters. Shrinking back, Reilly sought to save himself any more embarrassment because he knew he'd overstepped. But—

You were good out there, he heard them say, suddenly. There's a hundred marine units who wouldn't have lasted anywhere near as long. They'd a broke and started running the moment the Covies come clanking 'round the bend. You were good out there. You were hard.

We did our part, Reilly said with a smile, but man, y'all were incredible. Man, you killed those fuckin' Covies.

The Helljumpers gave shy grins. Modest, little grins.

Then Reilly told them about his folks back home who were glassed along with everybody and everything else; and his brothers who went one by one over the years, lost to this long war—this drawn-out war. He's got reasons to hate. He feels old.

How's it feel to get so close to them? Reilly asked.

Feels good, they said. Like it makes up for everything they've done back, they said. Anybody can shoot 'em and watch 'em fall, but it's not the same. Doesn't feel the same. Because you forget. Never forget.

Man if I got my hands on one of 'em, Reilly said.

What would you do?

Reilly had given this some thought long before. Without reserve now, he said, Do it slow. Fuck 'em up so bad they couldn't walk. They didn't give us a fair fight, did they? Break his arms, so he couldn't hit back. It's what they deserve, right? Every one of 'em. I'd do it myself.

The Helljumpers nodded and said right on. Devilish smoke came out of their nostrils.

Tonight, Reilly walks along the edge of the ODST camp, meandering with purpose. He hears an engine creep up behind him the deliberate way a jungle cat crawls, and he sees the two Helljumpers from before sitting together inside a warthog. Although he's got a lighter tucked inside his breast pocket, he waves at them through the spiky antlers of headlights that shoot up and sting his eyes and says, Hey, you fellas got fire?

Without saying hey, without smiling, just—get in the back, the driver says.

Reilly looks caught off-balance standing upright with an unlit cigarette sticking out of his mouth—he's been taken by surprise. He didn't know what to expect, but it wasn't this. He mumbles a bit and decides half-heartedly to say, Don't think I'm here too long, boys. Sergeant wants me sleeping soon. Early patrol tomorrow.

The Helljumper in the passenger seat swings a leg over the side. He's much bigger standing up. He tells Reilly to get in the fucking truck.

Reilly climbs on and hangs on while the warthog tears out of there and no sentry bothers stopping it to ask if anyone's being kidnapped. They take a muddy back-road out into the dripping trees that cower like children. Everything is dark all over. It's just them now, and the whole time no one says a fucking thing. Reilly almost doesn't breathe, stuck at the mercy of the cold-blooded, fag-drag silence; he can't do anything but feel the breathless feeling of driving towards a crime.

They come to a chain-link enclosure with flaps of tarp peeling off but it's all just shadows inside, and the warthog squeaks as it drifts to a stop. The thing's been constructed quietly here off this beaten path, tucked away with ten tonnes of sickening hush-hush. The Helljumpers slip a padlock off the gate and hold it open for Reilly to pass through. He doesn't venture too far but the Helljumpers know this space—they move to separate corners unabated by the dark, unafraid. One switches a work light on, its wire hook hung from the ceiling, and the dim illumination trickles down garage-like; it's a faithful, shining enabler of any weeknight hobby. This feels no different.

The other Helljumper pulls a menacing hood off a Covie elite who is chained up with monster-truck chains in the corner, who is shot and cut and bruised and who barely breathes. It's been tortured for a long time. Reilly doesn't budge from his spot near the door.

Come on, they tell Reilly. Get in there. Make 'em pay.

They slap a used claw hammer into his hand that was lying around and give him a little push forward. Like he's on two wheels for the first time, he is wobbly and reluctant. The elite opens its yellow eyes as much as it can and stares at him through folds of swollen skin. Reilly could imagine incredible violence—has imagined it before. He imagined how good it'd feel. He remembered how the Helljumpers promised that, too. The weight of the hammer is the only thing keeping him stuck to reality—he doesn't let go of it because it is how a hammer in his hand should feel. It's the most ordinary feeling in all of this. With just one swing, that is a sensation he knows he will remember as well and it'll no longer be just an imagined weight. It'll be so much heavier. He tells himself he wants this. He tells himself it's what he is owed. So just do it, just do it, just do it.

The elite is waiting for the hit, too. It keeps its lizard eyes on Reilly's the whole time. It's not menacing anymore. There's nobody who'd be frightened of the bastard, looking like this. It can't hit back and it can't run away. Reilly tells himself he wants this. They started it. They made it a crime to exist and killed us for simply being. Why are you deserving of compassion? What is it you're owed? Are you wanting for death, like the rest of your kind?

Do you have redemption in you? Would you accept mercy, if I gave it?

Or am I your deliverer?

#

Lieutenant Briar of Shield company, 2nd platoon, is waiting for a ride off-world. He sits on a pile of supply crates that is his drizzling bus stop and watches pelicans take off and land. He put in his transfer request a week ago and didn't tell anyone except those who needed to know. Captain Stern, when he told him, stared at him a while then said I'm sorry to hear that but these were just words. Briar didn't really believe him anyway. He knows he is replaceable to Stern. He is like all of them, replaceable. He looked at the faces of his men one day when it was quiet and got all their names wrong and they didn't care. They laughed and said it was all right. They didn't know him either. That's why he's leaving. It was a terrible failing and he's the only one who seems to notice.

He hasn't stopped thinking about what happened on Hill 449, that glorious, gutsy charge he stood at the front of while the Covies gunned them down. He won't ever forget what he did. What he did without thinking twice—did simply because Pelton wouldn't and he had thought he was a coward at the time (Lake, too, a disloyal coward). Well Briar listened. Briar was faithful, but that means nothing to him now, and it meant nothing to Stern. Briar looked up to their goddamned captain, like most of them. He listened to him talk about bravery and honour and never letting up, and he admired his stubborn ferocity then. He was a man of action, their captain, and Briar chose to believe everything that came out of his mesmerizing mouth. That was another failing that can be blamed on nobody but Briar himself. It's up to him to leave for good. This unit is as poisoned as this dying planet that's eating itself.

Briar's got everything he owns next to him bundled up in a rucksack. It's not much. It's mostly a crumpled uniform packed with the hasty carelessness of an evacuation. It's motel night luggage because he's been kicked out of his house. Nobody forced him, really, but he knows he has to go. He's done too much wrong to stay.

A few men walk by and Briar doesn't make eye contact, suddenly interested in his blackened palms. They stop in front of him and say, "Hey L.T."

"Hey," Briar says back. "Bartlett, Hayes." He waits for them to tell him he fucked up again but they don't and he's secretly relieved. "How are you two?'

"Fine, sir," Bartlett says.

"This fucking weather, eh?" Briar says.

"Worst of the storm's past, though," Hayes says.

Briar nods. "We survived it, I guess. Lucky us."

Then they all nod. When Briar doesn't say anything else, Bartlett says, "Heard you're out of here, sir."

"I am."

"I'm sorry you're leaving."

Briar squints at Bartlett for a bit. He doesn't know if those words are genuine or a simple formality. Still he says, "I appreciate that."

"I know what the other guys are saying," Bartlett says. "About you. About 449."

Briar bows his head—hearing this is like a shameful shame being dredged up by a scorned someone. A vengeful someone who might never forgive and who might never forget. But Bartlett is not that someone.

"There was no way out of it," Bartlett says. "Either we went forward or somebody else did. You volunteered us 'cause it was your duty. And it's ours to follow you. We did that, sir. You led, we followed. Not once did you let us get ahead of you. When 2nd platoon went down, you went down with 'em at the head. For that I am grateful. You saw what we saw. You're one of us, Lieutenant."

Briar wants to slap Bartlett's stupid, rosy face but he forces a painful smile, like his epic reassurances have lifted him up out of this. Don't be okay with what I've done, Briar wants to tell them. Don't be okay that I killed you. Don't justify it, boys, because I can't, and I've tried. Led you up that hill all for what? Hill's gone now.

"You boys ever think of leaving the unit—if you could?" Briar asks them.

Bartlett and Hayes shrug. "Tell me one better," Bartlett says.

Briar can't. He doesn't even know where he's going next.

"Is the captain making you leave, sir?" Hayes asks.

"No he ain't," Briar says with a chuckle. "No he ain't, but I can't stay. Stern wouldn't lay a finger on me."

"You just remember what I said, sir," Bartlett says.

"I'll do that," Briar tells him. He looks at his watch and relaxes his shoulders finally. "Now I don't know who's taking over for me, but you boys got anyone in mind from the platoon?" They shrug again. Briar thinks for a minute. "I say Ricardo should. He's been long overdue to make Lieutenant. If I know him, he'll take care of you all right."

"Judging by the shit Stern pulled, might even be somebody from Charlie," Hayes says.

"Then maybe I'll leave," Bartlett says. "If that happens."

"Charlie ain't no one who should be scoffed at. There's more of them than there are us, boys," Briar warns. "They're who Shield is now."

"Well you see who's in charge of 1st platoon now? Atwal? Jesus," Hayes says. "Ain't nobody happy there. Don't expect her to last too long."

The thought of someone taking over and running things differently, running things like a stranger would, scares Briar worse than going into combat again. He fears for his people, even those who spit his name like a bogeyman swear and turn their backs to him when he comes by. He wants to know who's coming into this house, who's going to lead his boys into the storm. Shelter 'em. He wants to ask of who's coming, are you kind? Loving? Will you treat them like your own? Like I ought to've?

But Briar knows he's not the man up to the task anymore. When Bartlett and Hayes say goodbye one more time, Briar sticks around and watches the pelicans take off and land and feels the creeping drizzle he is alone in. He steals a last glance at the two soldiers and suddenly he's the divorcee father trapped in the rearview window of a leaving taxicab as it pulls away from the curb, who sees his boys there watching him go. They're young and they don't understand why it is he's got to go. Maybe they'll realize it for themselves, later. Maybe they'll resent him for it, for running out like this.

You're one of us, Bartlett said to him. You made us. His words already sound soaked with omnipotent blame when Briar remembers them and that's the way he'll remember them forever. It'll weigh him down and tire him out and he'll find a way to drown.

Stern said before that Briar wasn't a coward and it made him so proud, so that's why he led that charge up 449—to live up to that brash flattery he was after. But those were just words and Briar didn't dare have it in him to tell Bartlett and Hayes and everyone else (because these are just words too): I'll do better, next time. For all of you I left and all of you I'm leaving. I'm sorry.

#

Captain Stern's sitting on a rolling chair he's rolled outside under a gently breathing awning when Sergeant Lake comes up to him. He peels an orange like a pinhole surgery, meticulously and deliberately, and ignores Lake until she says, "I need to talk to you."

"What do you want from me?"

"I hear Lieutenant Briar's not long for this unit."

"So he isn't."

"I'd like to lead 2nd platoon."

Stern looks like he's about to laugh. He looks mean and like he's about to tell Lake to fuck off. "Why?" he just says.

The question's a test and Lake can go right into it if she was forced to. She's got a lot to say. It's about him, and about herself, and the men she believes she can look after. They're in need of protection, and she's the one to do it because there've been too many before her who have come and gone already who said yessir like a goddamn reflex when prodded. It's too dangerous a quality to possess. It's the wrong kind of devotion. She can go right into it forever but she doesn't; Stern acts like he's playing along with some kind of joke, being a good sport because somebody paid her to go up and ask. She'd probably have done it, too, if that was the story—she is that kind of person, and Stern fucking knows it. She's wasting his time and she hasn't said anything yet.

"I can be a good officer," she tells him. Lake is testing Stern right back.

"You think so, or you know so?"

"Better than Briar was, for sure," Lake says. It's a declaration she's kept inside for a while. It feels good to say it and she feels like she's finally allowed. He is leaving for a reason.

Stern is pinched by the remark. He says to her, "You don't have a clue what you're saying, Lake. You will shut your fuckin' mouth, and I'm not telling you as your CO."

"I won't take it back." Lake doesn't back down, stung. She's in this now with everything she has to throw. She'll deal with the fallout after. "Briar fucked up. That's why he's out."

"Briar was exemplary. He did everything asked of him. His name doesn't deserve to be dragged through the mud by you. Especially you."

"I didn't say the fuck up was his alone."

"Goddamn you, Lake," Stern hisses. "Goddamn you, don't you dare think that I've done something shameful, or something wrong."

"I'll think what I think. You don't get a say in that."

"I expect you're sore about Ted Moyer, aren't you?"

Lake doesn't even think Stern should be able to say his name anymore. Even if she doesn't know for sure, she knows that Stern's to blame—she knows where to put all her anger because it doesn't make sense anywhere else. Moyer was seduced away from her. After this one, Cassandra, she expects more and more 906th men will start seeing what Moyer saw, blinded by Stern's whispering and promising. And Moyer, Stern will say, Moyer found glory. His was a good death (but neither Stern or anyone will know how he died) and everyone would just be lying.

Stern says, "Everything I did for a reason. I'm sorry you don't see it my way."

"I know your reason better than you know it yourself," Lake says. "You're a hound. You've got exactly one purpose for being and that's for the hunt. You're attuned to the smell so much that you can't think of anything else. Wherever there's killing you come running but you don't come to lend a hand or mop up. You're not worth calling even what you hate so bad—a vulture. You're not in it for the taste of blood. You don't want a meal of it. You want to smear it all over and make a mess. Somebody comes and says what the hell happened, and you finally get the chance to tell them a story. So you talk about the beastliness of the fuckers who came like painted savages over the hill and you want so much to be a cowboy Caesar who held the line until he could no longer; you talk about the hero souls who offered their lives and were decimated, who should be so honoured to die in this righteous reckoning because—all because—we are holy and we are good."

"Well aren't we?"

With this Stern has stumped Lake.

"Aren't we supposed to be?" Stern says.

She thinks of a slithery way out but Stern moves in on this silence, muscling her out with his own weight. He stands wearily to meet her at eye level.

"Who are we if not bedraggled defenders?" he says. "If not survivors of a meteoric holocaust? If not the ones left with the most cause for retribution? We're cornered animals—got our claws out. And you, Lake, you're not going to disagree with anything I've said because you know I'm right. You know it. Because if you don't think so, why the hell are you even here? Why'd you sign on to fight? If the Covenant aren't evil, what are they? Misguided? Just following orders?" He shakes his head. "It still takes a deep-rooted wickedness in them to kill the way they have—on the scale that they have—an inherent cruelty that pervades every sense of their being. If they've done good I've not bore witness to it. I refuse to believe that it might be the other way around, that this is our punishment—that this is wrath. No, I think it's a trial and we're failing."

"Because we're not as devout as they are?" Lake says.

"Because we're not good enough to survive as we are. I don't know if we're holy or good, but we ought to be. We should want to be. You ever meet a Spartan? They're cold and unfeeling. They're survivors. People say they're not human and they're not wrong about that. They're the best humanity's got to offer, but we can't even agree about what's under the suit—might as well be alien themselves. They say that they're just people who went under the knife, who've evolved and who possess the greatest traits a human being could possibly have all through the miracle of science. You could say they got an upgrade, but I don't see it that way. They're the ones lacking. Yes, they're good soldiers—and yes, they're miraculous killers."

"They protect us."

"You see a difference?" Stern asks. "They're a reminder, at the end of everything. God, they're the ugliest part of humanity—they're the apex of our ability to hate and descend to the terriblest depths and thrive there when by all rights it should destroy us. It does, though, most of us. Until we're just hollow. And it strikes me to say that if that's all that's left, what've we toiled for? Nothing worth saving survived."

Lake says, "Isn't existence enough?"

"This is existence," Stern replies, glancing over her shoulder. He means everything else but Lake still looks at the land. This dying planet, Cassandra, is an assaulted sight. It is suffering. "We are existing. We're right on the brink. We aren't getting out of this until we kill them all, or they kill us all. There is no great reward at the end of this. Otherworldly or otherwise. I can say this to you, Lake. My words don't inspire you like they do the men. I think you're as cynical as I am."

"I see right through you. I always have."

Stern nods and says, "You don't deserve to be a lieutenant, Lake. Not because you're no good at killing Covenant, nothing like that. You're a thinker. Idealist. You got big ideas but you're not one to do what it takes to see them through. Not in the way it needs to be done. No, you're no lieutenant. For you, Lake, a colonel, or a brigadier general. Somewhere tucked away so you don't have to see the gears working; how messy they all get. How they break often, and how they need to be replaced. You can be grand architect on the blueprint and dazzle me with your kindness and cunning. But you can't be a lieutenant—not in my company. We're gnashing teeth. Until we're worn down to scared nubs, you and me."

"A captain can look after his people, too."

"What would you do if you were in my place?"

"Try not to slaughter everyone under me, to start."

"You think I'm villainous, right? Lake? Or maybe incompetent? I can live with that one—I'm not infallible I know—but I never want you to think of me as evil. Everything I did for a reason."

"You keep saying that. You never proved me wrong."

"Because you're right," Stern admits. "In part. You're right, I'm looking for heroes. You're right, I'm looking for heroics. But it isn't for my sake. I'm not selfish, despite what you think."

"Then what?"

"Merciful," Stern says. He's thought about this conversation before. "This is my crusade, Lake. Yeah I say let's go boys, let's beat the bastards back; I say we've got the grace of god on our side and I rile you up from my pulpit—make you want for blood—but I know—and maybe you do too—the war's already over. Or it's nearing the end. We are not the secret weapon. We're the comforting hand to hold during the bleed-out and I don't see a happy ending except for the one we create here ourselves. We're here to show them that the Covenant can be tripped up. That it'll take lives and blood and guts to do it and this kind of loss is what's needed, but that it can be done. But never that they can be stopped. That's not our job. They're looking for a turning point we'll never deliver. The Highwayman's supposed to be the last line of defense so hold on, we'll tell them, we'll be along so just hold on, but it's a cozy fiction. We won't save all of them—it's impossible, Lake. Only thing we can do is lie to them and tell them they're doing god's work, dying with honour. Because soon it won't matter. Best we make them feel like it does."

"So you're a liar," Lake says. "A fraud. You're not a man of faith but you pretend to be."

"What we're doing is selling hope," Stern says. "That's the only thing that's worth something these days. There's demand for it. We're clamouring for it. I am a liar. I might be the greatest fuckin' one you'll ever know." He crosses his arms and leans against one of the awning poles dug into the ground, anchoring himself. "When my father was dying, he wanted to see my sister before he went. Soon, I kept telling him. I made every kind of excuse every day she wasn't there. I said she was cutting a path straight home, but the road was long and rocky—it'll be a wait. So he waited, but when he couldn't wait anymore, he said to tell her that he tried his best. And he had. He was so happy to know she was on her way—every morning he'd gotten up, shaved, dressed in his best suit and for a while he was taking on the world when it was set on kicking him down. It made his last days bearable." Stern pauses a moment. Lake took a seat on a pile of sandbags as he talked, and now she is quiet. She allows him this moment free of judgment and her usual scorn. He says, "The Covenant had killed my sister two years before that. Don't ask me how I know, I just do. I got word from a friend the whole unit had gone missing, and I squelched the news before my father could find out. I kept it from him until he passed. She was nothing over eighteen. Her name was Brittany—she joined the marines on the frontline because she wanted to turn the tide and she believed she could. To her it was all a fairytale. She'd write to tell me every night what she'd learned in training—who she was making friends with. She'd been excited to ship out. She wasn't afraid. I was working a bullshit marketing job then—shot commercials for the UNSCDF. I used to go to schools with recruiters and say to kids you better hurry—the Covies might be dead before you get there."

Stern and Lake ponder mud puddles for a while. They listen to the rain they're protected from. It hasn't been sunny for some time now.

"I shamed them into it. Doesn't matter who. The youngest die like any of us. Tumble like bodies that quit, indiscriminate," Stern says. "This war's not about protecting them anymore. We're past that now. We're burning the crops, filling the trenches with old men and children. Nothing's precious."

Lake remains hidden in the crushing, meditative silence like she's holding her breath underwater, invisible, and Stern, barelegged in a way she could never imagine before—boyish, maybe even—sits on a jetty nearby.

"Why do you want to make lieutenant, Lake?" he asks.

"I just do," she says, resurfacing. She takes in sweet air. "I can't stomach the thought of another officer like Briar. Or a stranger like Atwal. I'd take Pelton back—if I were his first sergeant. But I prefer somebody we know—somebody who's one of us."

"You look after your men as a non-com. I hear you're good at it. Why throw that away?"

"Shield company's my home," Lake says. "It's mine to protect. All of it."

"Still, I'm not going to make you lieutenant, Lake. It's my decision and you're gonna have to live with that. You say you don't want somebody like Briar taking over, but he was exactly what we needed. Not everyone makes the best officer. Filling that position with the right man or woman is critical to this outfit, more than any other. Taking that hill was critical. No matter how it was done. We need somebody who believes in what we're doing. Who really thinks they're going to stop the Covenant dead."

"You want a fanatic."

"You—you can't follow a damned order. You can't keep your opinions to yourself. You'd kick the ankle of the forward foot whenever we took a step. If you didn't want to see death, this unit's the last place you should be," Stern says. "We're all going to die sometime, someday and soon. But Shield'll live on, just like there'll be a new Sword. This company isn't just a bunch of soldiers anymore—this company ain't people. It's beyond that now. People'll remember the name long before they remember you or me and whatever hell we've skirted, whoever we lost along the way. They're not people anymore—they're pieces of a story. We'll all be washed away and buried like that hill up there, forgotten but for the validation that we won and the Covenant didn't, once upon a time, owing all to the actions and sacrifices of brave men. Extraordinary men. We need to make the biggest splash, leave the longest ripples; we need people to remember. Because the only thing with any kind of permanency to it is death. Don't kid yourself. Death's what we leave, Lake. Death's all we're here for."

#

Wardell Reilly's hands are red when he gets outside again and he feels sick when he sees there's someone waiting outside. SFC Reed gets up from his casual lean against the hood of his warthog. There are three other men with him from Recon.

Where are they? Reed says. Reilly can't stop his head from jerking back over to where he left, giving the Helljumpers up without reservation. He looks ashamed to Reed, which is fine.

Wait by the truck, Reed says. Now.

When the Helljumpers appear, a Recon man suckerpunches one and they jump them like it's a turfwar back alleyway. They all swing fists and clubs they found, they all kick them in the teeth. Reed stomps on them until they make animal noises, just delirious sobs like pleas because they are so fucked up they can't do anything else but bleed. Reed doesn't care if it's not a fair fight. It wasn't a fight. He took a wild backhand that has him dribbling blood down his chin but he knew otherwise exactly what he was in for.

They leave the Helljumpers lying in the dark when they drive away, everyone hushed. Reed doesn't care to know if they were still breathing or not.

He says to Reilly during the ride back, you see anyone from the 112th tonight, you tell them there's two of them out here. You tell them it was me who did it.

Sure enough a half day later at night, Reilly finds Reed and says, uneasy, she wants to see you.

She said that? Reed asks.

I've been told, Reilly says. Then he says, don't go. You don't need to.

Reed stands and says, she wants to see me.

It's dark all throughout the camp, and unbearably black and empty in the 112th's quarter. Reed marches through it because up ahead he sees a light coming through tent flaps, opened up—he knows—for him. He navigates by this, reaching for the end of this tunnel.

There she is waiting for him. In the distance, she's just a tall, black shape possessing the light behind her that was luring him close and summoning her flickered shadow Reed has seen before—that grows from the ground and everything. It is a permanent creature, unkillable and ancient, extending long before her to meet Reed and he feels it on him. He feels her on him like ice cubes bonding to sticky skin, her knifepoint nails that teased him breathless once before.

She said he was hers to hurt. If he crossed her again.

There she is waiting with her cronies who look impish around her. Reed doesn't know what he's in for, but he has some idea. It's a long walk. His muddy sounding footsteps trudge with a lonely confidence. He has all the time to turn and run but he doesn't. There's a tempest up ahead and he will stand still while she flays him, if she does. He won't fight back.

Boadicea told him the only thing she promised him was wild and true chaos. Like nothing mattered, and that's how things were going to be. It was a time for killers and she owned the night. She said that Reed was no different from her. He might protest, think himself above her and them, but Bo was confident she'd bring him—she'd make him see things her way, she said. And when they killed together, didn't she see even a glimpse of contentment in him? He relinquished control for a time, let her lead the dance, and he didn't have to pretend like he didn't belong for once. Among the 906th, he is an outlier. Some call him protector, but they all mean killer and still nobody judges him for it.

This never sat right with him. It's not how things should be. There's nobody who should get this kind of free reign because it hints at something uglier—at what's already lost.

Reed is looking for reassurance, affirmation that things are not really how Bo says they are, that order does exist; that everything comes with their painful costs. Consequences. He's seeking boundaries that Bo insists have collapsed—and good riddance. He's seeking definition and distinction, and he goes with his cowboy goodness to draw that line, and make sure there's still something to fight against—for a reason, of course. He goes looking for justice in Bo's tent. He can't get away with what he's done, and he goes to get punished because in this way he feels it will prove her wrong.

The Covenant, none of that matters. This here is the test that could mean everything, really everything. Tonight Bo and her men will kick the shit out of Reed or worse but, for once, he will feel clean.

#

Everyone's getting ready to leave Cassandra. They're sick of this used ruin, this cloudy place. It's lost its dangerous beauty, that seductive, hide-and-seek grandeur that empowered it and threatened. It's no longer exotic, but worn. They're bored of it. They've forgotten the terror the way somebody gets used to breathing near a ravaged corpse.

There are these here too, stacked in high piles, rotting. They had time to bury them but they chose not to and left them in the sun so they became mushy and falling-apart. The war photographers have been flown in and they travel in a touristy pack, pointing, snapping, smiling. They pinch their noses. War is hell, they laugh, and the 906th men surrender to the contagious mood that's contaminating everything, a funny feeling like the war's coming to an end—just look at the evidence. They're high on their own vandalism, the breaking of everything. One soldier, when he feels like he's being watched—quietly urged to perform—kicks a bloated corpse and fat maggots pop out and get all over his boot like pulpy watermelon flesh.

When the sun slips away, everyone gets together and they burn the carcasses and choke with watery eyed, asphyxiated grins. To the reporters, some men show off Rooster's crown that they grave-robbed. It's still shiny and everybody wants to touch it. It's a tangible piece of victory more powerful than Stern's hill—it's gold; bedazzling. It is a hoisted flag and like a muddy Roman standard it means everything to the triumphant those who resisted an empire. Rooster himself is hung from a tree, bloated, limbs outstretched. Someone plucks a feather from its scalp and tucks it into his helmet band, and someone else paws at it. Hercules wore the skin of the lion he clubbed, sure, but these men weren't anywhere near where Rooster went down. The creature means nothing to them except for stories they heard. They all want a slice of mythology they can only imagine, because more than anything else they want to believe they were part of something great.

The battle itself went fine or spectacular. They held the line outside the cave, Jackpot, until Bo and the 112th returned from the mouth, bloodied up and feral and high. They charged the Covie line, confusing them long enough for 10th Air Cav and eager men from Charlie and Dog companies to arrive and blow apart the jungle. Wyatt, Reed's man from Recon, had done his job, running back with Reed's message. He deserves all the credit he can get—he saved Shield company. But when the Covenant broke off their attack, the 112th, invincible and fearless, ran after them and killed them and that's all anyone wants to talk about. That was winning. It looked and felt like winning. There'll be nothing precious here soon but this, too, feels like winning. The breeze stinks of burnt hair. It's exciting like vandalism, like breaking glass.

On the last day, before they start pulling out of there, the heads gather up all of 906th, 1st Battalion because the commander from ONI, LeFae or whatever, wants to say something. Moving alongside the 906th head, Mattis, he struts up the rows of troops, shaking hands, slapping men on their shoulders whoever's within arms-reach, muttering, "Outstanding boys, just outstanding." He's youngish and handsome and smooth.

He takes his place up in front, above the men, looking down with a stately grin and says about what you'd expect from someone like him. Hell of a job—Jesus what a show—God bless you. The men clap and revel in praise like little kisses. They want to hear how great they are, all the tiredness and horror they felt now worth it and forgotten.

Reed sits up in his cot in the medic tent—where he's been for two days—with a struggle to do it and stands near the exit, watching through what his fucked up face allows him to see. He doesn't breathe so good, now that his nose is smashed in, and he doesn't think he'll be able to stand long enough to stick through the whole thing (if he can stomach it as well). The worst of his pain is neutered by medication, though.

"I can't properly tell you how important this campaign was to the war effort," LeFae says, excitedly. "Your mission, and the role the 112th ODST played... paramount. All just paramount. It was a tough struggle we faced, but the worthiest came through it in the end. If that doesn't show our place in this universe—dominant—it's not a universe worth surviving. Call it divine right, because I sure will. That we're still here means something. We've been given the gift to continue the fight, so we must. Just look at what we accomplished here today." LeFae gestures behind and all around him. Look at Cassandra, still falling apart. "This victory," he says. "And others more like it."

The men still whoop for nothing. The nothing they gained. That hill, 449, belonged to the Covenant only briefly. It was always ours even if it wasn't for the moment, and it was ours to reclaim. It's nothing now, and look at us, look at how we lord over it. Look at us lords of nothing.

Look, this is the mark we'll leave. This is our story, our flayed skin. It was never about saving Cassandra, a heroic liberation-rescue it was supposed to be. She was ours to destroy and we'll kill it before we'll let you take it from us. It's ours to fuck up if we want to. Cassandra, and everything else we own, and we'll do it, too. (We're wired with a dead man's switch state of mind.) But the thought of that freedom quickly vanishing nauseates us, the Covenant having that kind of hold over us. Them, oppressive in our thoughts, creeping in always, making everything else trivial—making us less of a person for thinking of anything different. So devote yourself to the cause of causing hurt. This is what we stand for. You'll see things our way, by the end of this war.

LeFae turns and points out proudly whoever he can of the 112th who stand gargoyles over the 906th men, chiselled and elevated endlessly. In a corner Bo is there watching LeFae with her wickedly proud eyes. In his directed spotlight, she and them, her fucking scourge, are saintly and everyone believes it. They control this place of worship.

It hurts to look at her. But Reed can't look away or let her out of his sight so she lingers just at the edge. LeFae applauds the 112th for holding on, being the model everyone should aspire to be like. True warriors, he says at one point. His words make Reed feel like lying back down because he is overcome with a shuddery sick. He can't distract himself from his thoughts, of which they've been the same for two days now—they're previous scenes that ram their way back into his consciousness and crowd him like uncontainable noise with nowhere else to go. His mouth tastes like blood. It's a spiral of things he thinks about: him, pounding a man into the dirt—the Helljumper, the two they snuck up on—because he is inwardly angry. He thinks he heard them beg while they could still talk, but there was no mercy or second thoughts about it from him. It was the cool killer doing this. Every landed blow he feels again, the weight of it real and tactile—this is what it feels like to beat someone to death or close to it. He felt then, above all, they deserved it and he'd deserve what came next.

In Bo's tent, there wasn't much talking going on that night. There seemed to be a mutual understanding of why Reed showed up. He was an ODST, for one and Bo never doubted that he would appear. Bo knew Reed had something to prove, but really, that was for him to come to terms with, not her. He was never going to sway her or whatever. That wasn't in her nature. She's too far gone and stuck in her ways. She's wild and sadistic, and he was hers that night because there was a score to settle they both knew.

She whipped him with the steely butt of her Helljumper knife until he couldn't take anymore and fell down, cut up. Her gang took their revenge on him for two of their own, repaying Reed for what he did, fists and boots, clubs they found, and then Bo wanted to make sure he knew he was hers while he was still conscious. They stomped him flat and they pulled down his pants. Bo descended on him, and that's all he really remembers but he knows the night lasted longer than that. They dumped his ragged body outside the 112th quarter of the bivouac and someone found him the next morning.

Everyone knows he got like that from a fight, maybe a boxing match gone too far, but the army doctors who looked over Reed all know it was much more—much worse. But Reed never told them who did it to him. They patched him up, sewing him back together in some places, and didn't force the issue. He lay around for two days, mostly listening or staring at the canvas roof whenever he could force apart his eyelids.

Thompson and Lake came to visit him when they heard the news, but they didn't really know how things were between him and the 112th. He pretended to be asleep until Lake left, but Thompson, he had a cot in the medic tent already so he sat nearby the sergeant first class, his own arm in a sling, until Reed had to open his eyes and say hey.

Thompson's a smart person, and Reed has a feeling he knows just about everything but he knows it's not his place to say, if Reed won't. Thompson has seen Boadicea for herself, in the mineshaft in the jungle, and while he came out from the battle just fine, there was a real chance he might not have. Reed knows now what Bo asked Thompson to do that night—Thompson told him afterwards, and he wasn't ashamed to. If it weren't for Lake... he said. Reed understood.

When Reed could sit up by himself, Thompson remarked to him, you remember when you said I had a death wish? Reed told him to drop it, and so he did. But Thompson's a smart person—he knows Reed isn't so sure about everything anymore. Thompson was wrong, but maybe Reed was too, and maybe there was something to Thompson's readiness to die, that acceptance of coming fate all for reasons that only make sense to you, powerful because they make you who you are. Thompson, ready to die for age-old samurai-honour, Reed for, what, the search for righteousness? He had a death wish, all right. Something to prove, all right. Boadicea, he's still trying to figure out. Best he can manage is that there are those beyond reason, exempt from this struggle of uncertainty that plague men like him and Thompson. People like Bo, they've already picked a side, and they are saintly in their own way. This institution, the military, is a cult of death. It will bring humanity through its darkest days and emerge, for these are the times. It is what's needed, as much as Reed loathes to admit it.

Boadicea will survive this war, Reed is certain. She will mother those who may newly emerge with her stories, and the ones who survived as well, who could survive because of her and killers like her—because of the things she will do to the Covenant. Terrible, unspeakable, evil things. Necessary things. But they will hate as she has hated. This is the tragic outcome she can only bring. She is an angel of death for a time of death.

But on the other side of it—Thompson's talk with Reed makes him realize—Boadicea doesn't stand unchallenged. There is the struggle, the line Reed has tried to hop back over to escape Boadicea's festering presence. There is still reason to hope.

Reed sees Thompson somewhere in the crowd of 906th men, listening to LeFae speak. Beside him is tall upright Sergeant Lake, and Reed suddenly feels a soothing calm from just seeing her. He doesn't hurt so bad anymore, doesn't feel pain of being directionless.

Lake pulled Thompson from the hopeless edge. How? Her strong-headedness, Reed supposes. She plucked the grenade, that gift of death he wanted so much, from his palm he was given to by devilish, alluring Boadicea. But something else, too, drives her: she carries a love for others. She cried for a taken man, Moyer, and did not swear revenge and lose herself. She cried because she felt like crying, allowed herself to when she said she wouldn't. There is power in this, and beauty, because she has retained a quality that quickly dies off all too often. Throughout all this, she carried a flame Boadicea has long smothered. Throughout all this, Lake never tossed aside what makes her incredible—what makes us incredible. She is the unbreakable spirit of humanity that is too easily broken, too easily snuffed out like a cigarette burning down—this nicotine war that hurries the end—and may become extinct when she is gone. She is Thompson's guardian. She is a protector. Where there should not exist a place for killers like Boadicea (and maybe Reed) at the end of a war, with Lake there is still hope in life that continues, even after the dark.

He worries for her for a moment when he catches himself thinking about Boadicea again, the depths of that woman and what she is capable of. There will be a struggle, and one side will win out as always, and Boadicea is a fucking fighter.

But Reed notices from his place behind the crowd that Boadicea stands isolated, always on the edge, and on the other side Lake is doing what she's wanted to do for a while now—she doesn't care what others might say if they saw anymore—she's holding Thompson's hand.

This is enough; despair will not win. Blessed lady of sorrows, to you I surrender myself whole. I am yours always.