I saw more than my fair share of dead aliens and dead comrades.

Eventually I stopped making friends.

Mason died in my arms on Asmara after one of the snake-headed Covenant Elites speared him

along with ten other ODSTs with his energy sword before I got off a near point-blank shot with a missile launcher.

I found Mason lying among the debris; I could smell his seared flesh.

He looked up at me with glassy eyes and asked for his mother, then coughed up blood and just . . .

stopped being.

Kiko was stabbed in the face by the apelike Brutes on another world, the name of which I‘ve since forgotten. Large, muscular, hairy aliens, they could snap a neck with their bare hands. Rahud died from energy artillery.

I was promoted to team leader, then a squad leader. I had long since stopped learning names; I didn‘t want to form any attachments.

Maybe that‘s why I never rose above squad leader.

I had become a shadow of myself. A robot. Hitting my mark and killing the enemy, and waiting for the one day a stray flash of energy would kill me.

I was waiting for the day I could be buried. In the dirt.

The steady stream of defeats led to the creation of the Cole Protocol. No ship was to return directly to any of our worlds, particularly Earth, but instead execute random jumps in slip-space to throw off any potential Covenant shadowers.

―Where was that order for all the glassed Outer Colonies!" I‘d shouted, standing up in the middle of a mess hall.

I remember once I woke from the bitter cold of cryogenic storage, staggering around and vomiting suspension fluid, and realized something was really, really wrong. This wasn‘t the usual slow routine of getting unfrozen and waking up fully as we were briefed for our next assignment. This time emergency lighting kept everything shadowy in the dim red. Everyone on deck hurried around nervously, and I could hear the unmistakable sound of the ship‘s MAC gun firing.

―We‘ve been ambushed by a Covenant cruiser. You‘ve all been flash unfrozen," the officer on deck said. ―Just in case."

Keeping us on ice let us all go through the long slipspace routes without eating up supplies and sucking down oxygen. Or getting bored out of our minds.

Flash unfreezing was dangerous, and only for emergencies. I think the ship‘s captain was worried about being boarded. Either way, someone up the chain had given the order for the risky decanting, maybe out of panic. A third of the unfrozen ODSTs on deck died.

Clearidas managed to escape. But my men didn‘t.

A waste.

AFTER ALLthese years of combat, I slowly began to feel myself peeling apart. But I had no home, nowhere I really wanted to be, no one to see.

So I soldiered on, battle after battle.

I almost saw my end in a hastily dug out trench on Skopje, an Inner Colony world. Unlike most of the wilder Outer Colonies, this world had highly built up urban areas, roads, and railways. It was an entire civilization sprawled across its island continents.

From the trench, if I turned to look behind me, I could see a skyline glinting and blazing in the sun over a red marbled museum. But back in front: mud.

We were sent in to protect the headquarters of a shipbuilding corporation during the evacuation of their shipyards. The machines, tools, and personnel that could be saved would be relocated to Reach, to continue building parts for the war effort.

Our headquarters were the halls of a nearby city museum, the grounds of which served as our landing zone and held all the quickly placed antiaircraft batteries.

―This is the fallback point, there is nowhere else to go," we were told. ―So you hold the perimeter at all costs ."

Covenant air support dared not attack us directly, not for several blocks. So they threw Grunts at us. Thousands of them in brutal house-to-house warfare, their numbers overwhelming our loose perimeter. We fell back and regrouped, drawing them in until we were foxholed on the edges of the vast museum gardens. We let the Grunts charge us across the muddy field.

They‘d pushed us back, but we still simply thought of them as cannon fodder, waiting until they got close enough to hit their methane tanks and watch them explode. Now that we had our open ground and dug in positions, we slaughtered them.

But they kept coming. And after waves of screaming Grunts came the races higher up in the

Covenant food chain: Jackal snipers, Brutes rushing the line, and then finally Elites, flashing their energy swords as they got in close enough to the melee.

The trenches got cut off, communication lost, and I found myself crouched in between two walls of mud with another ODST, waiting for the Covenant to leap in with us.

This would be it. We‘d go down fighting in the mud, I thought.

But instead, in an explosion of mud, a two-ton powered suit of gray-green armor landed between us. ―Follow me!" the powerful baritone voice behind the gold visor ordered.

Then it leaped over the edge into the fray, plasma discharges slapping the powered armor.

We followed.

The armored human was like a tank, clearing the way for us. It shrugged off Grunts like they were annoying mosquitoes, tackled Brutes face on, and was an equal match for any Elite.

We were led to a giant castle, like something out of a picture book, with large antiaircraft guns mounted along the walls and AIE-486H heavy machine guns on the parapets pointed down.

Inside we were left by the giant armored man.

―What the hell was that?" I asked the Marine in the courtyard.

―Special ONI project. They call them Spartans. Engineered to be the best, armored with the best.

Haven‘t you heard the ONI announcements? They‘ll be ending the war with these sons of bitches running through the Covenant soon enough!"

The ODSTs weren‘t the cutting edge hard-asses anymore.

I‘d just seen the future of warfare. I wasn‘t in it.

I didn‘t have time to dwell on this, because suddenly an all-too-familiar voice said, ―Gage? Gage Yevgenny? Is that really you?"

And I turned to see Felicia standing with a BR55 slung under one arm and a canteen in the other.

―Felicia?" There were wrinkles in her tanned, leathery face. But all these years would do that. We‘d just been kids the last time we saw each other, really.

She ran over and hugged me, a strong clench, and then she shoved me back. ―I can‘t frigging believe you‘re alive!"

I was just as stunned. ―What are you doing here?"

―Holed up, same as you. The castle was my call. Some CEO had it made using actual quarried rock from outside the city. Covenant low-level energy weapons don‘t vaporize the rock; they just melt it a bit more, making it even stronger. We‘re waiting for some Pelicans to get us the hell out now that they took the museum off your grubby hands."

She had a jagged scar across her cheek, and a nasty burn on the back of her neck from a near miss.

But I caught a glimpse of her bars: She‘d risen up to colonel.

We compared notes and found that we‘d been in a couple of the same theaters together, separated only by thirty or so miles.

―I can get you aboard my detail, if you want," she said. ―And I promise I won‘t flake out on you again."

―Crap, Felicia, that was a long, long time ago. A lot‘s happened since then."

―I know. You actually saved my life, you know."

―How‘s that?"

―I would have gone back. I would have been sitting on Harvest in my lame-ass Colonial uniform when those goddamn aliens dropped the hammer the second time around."

I didn‘t say anything to that. I didn‘t want to think about Harvest.

―There were some survivors from the first attack," Felicia said. ―Did you ever look to see . . ."

―My father wasn‘t on the rolls, no."

Felicia nodded. ―Mine, either." Then she leaned in. ―Look, I‘ll get you a transfer to the Chares, the cruiser I‘m aboard. And once up there, there‘s someone you need to meet."

I was intrigued. I hadn‘t felt this energized in years, so busy with keeping my head down and focusing on one task at a time. And now here was Felicia, with her energy and friendship.

You know, to tell you the truth, I was scared. Did I dare reach out to her again?

Or would she be dead soon enough, ripping another part of me away with her?

Because how much of that can a person ever truly handle?

I wasn‘t sure.

―If we get back to orbit," Felicia said, ―I have a surprise for you."

An explosion shattered molten rock up in the air, which drizzled back down and reformed.

Eventually this castle was going to look like a version of itself that had been placed inside an oven, and half metal.

―If we get back up!" she said, slapping my shoulder. ―Get more ammo and get up on the walls.

Pelicans should be down here soon."

Off in the distance a sharklike Covenant Cruiser began to descend from the clouds. From its belly, fierce energy descended upon the land, glassing it into oblivion.

So we hightailed it out of there.

I‘d stopped expecting to live, right before I saw her again. After that, I suddenly felt real again. A human being again, with a past, and a life.

ABOARD THE Chares the wounded and battered Marines and ODSTs tended their injuries as we retreated into slipspace. I couldn‘t put a figure to the numbers who would have died down there on that planet, but given the cities I saw in the distance, I‘d imagine millions.

Despite the glum atmosphere, Felicia hunted me down with an air of excitement.

―Come on," she said. She led me down through several bays until we came to a smaller bay

crammed with Pelicans.

We rounded a corner, and sitting on a chair with a small cooler was Eric.

Freaking Eric was alive.

He stood up and grabbed my hand. ―Gage . . ."

―When?" I could barely find the words. ―How?"

Felicia looked over at us. ―Bastard woke up after five years in a coma and joined the Navy. Became a right flyboy." She grabbed a beer and studied it. ―Rank has its privileges, and Eric has his ways."

It was almost too much.

I wanted to know everything that had happened. Twenty-two years, more or less.

Twenty-two years, and we were strangers to each other.

And yet we fell right back into the same friendships, like chatting in the back of the empty Pelican, our voices echoing in the chamber of the launch bay.

Felicia was a colonel, Eric flying his way in and out of hell. And I was not much more than a grunt that had been more of a zombie for the last couple decades than anything else.

I may have lost the Outer Colonies, but I suddenly had my friends again.

WHEN THEYtold me about the plan, I remember that we were crowded in the back of Eric‘s

Pelican getting drunk after a particularly messy ground operation. As Eric summed it up: people had died, Covenant had been killed, and we‘d once again had to fall back.

―But at least it‘s happening less frequently," I said. ―With the Cole Protocol they‘re only finding our worlds when they stumble over them."

Maybe this would give humanity time to build more ships, time to ramp up for a big fight. Time, I thought, to create more super-soldier Spartans.

―Spartans," Eric spat. ―They‘re not even human. Freaks are what they are."

It was not an uncommon ODST outlook: a suspicion of the faceless, armored men who‘d started to show up on the battlefield.

I didn‘t argue with him.

―Besides," Felicia said, ―it took them a long time to enact the Protocol. Almost like they wanted the Outer Colonies out of the picture."

―That‘s . . ." Ludicrous, I started to say. But I halted, remembering my own rage when it was first announced. ―. . . hard to believe. But it still looks bad. And the result is . . . what it is."

―We put in our years, and we‘ve been used up. We‘re getting tired. And there‘s nowhere to go home to," Felicia said.

―And because we‘re Colonial Military transfers, our pensions are still technically CMA, not UNSC.

Since the CMA doesn‘t exist anymore, the pension funds were raided to build destroyers. No one is sure if the politicians will be able to find anything when we all start coming out of the system. If we live that long."

I felt the weariness in their voices. It was there in mine, too. Deep into my bones. I‘d used up almost two-thirds of my life fighting.

And all I‘d seen were losses.

Despite ONI propaganda films, and shore leave, and binges, I still felt that emptiness.

I realized Felicia and Eric were staring at me. Studying me. Feeling me out.

―We‘re going on some sort of snatch-and-run operation," Felicia said. ―I just got word from the brass. We‘ve found something the Covenant is squatting on."

―What is it?"

―Some sort of artifact in the ground. Who the hell cares? What in the past is going to save us now?

What‘s important is that this is going to be our last mission," Felicia said. ―We‘ve given our service.

We‘ve fought hard. The only thing stopping the Covenant is our being able to keep the location of Earth secret. The UNSC‘s just using us up on the ground like throwaway pawns."

―All that matters to the UNSC is Reach and Earth anyway," Eric said. He sounded so bitter. I‘d gotten the sense that the explosion had changed him even more, despite his role in the UNSC; it was something he‘d taken out of necessity, not human patriotism.

Felicia continued. ―The artifact the aliens have dug up this time is near a small city, which I‘ve done some research on.

―There‘s a major bank in the center, with vaults. They‘ve got gold and platinum ingots buried down there, and the Covenant invasion happened quickly enough that it‘s all sitting down there. Right now."

I looked back and forth. ―What, you want to steal it?"

―Steal it?" Eric spat the words. ―It doesn‘t exist anymore, Gage. It‘s about to be glassed. The UNSC wants us to snatch the alien artifact or destroy it. No one gives a crap about the gold."

―We could retire," Felicia said. ―Go back to Earth, and lay back comfortably. Something the UNSC

could never offer us."

I took a deep breath and looked down at the scuffed floor of the Pelican.

Eric chimed in. ―We‘re still going to attack the Covenant and bring back the artifact. We‘ll be following orders. But we‘ll be coming down with one extra Pelican. We blow the vaults, load the gold into ammunition chests, load the Pelican, and come back to the ship."

―And then what?" I asked.

―Then . . . anything you want," Felicia said leaning closer, more aware of the scar on her face and the intensity in her eyes than ever. ―I know a transport headed back to Earth. I figure, I might as well see the mother planet before I die. Where you guys go, that‘s up to you, but I was hoping we could all go together. One last hurrah."

One last hurrah.

―We‘ve put in our years, Gage. How much longer before it‘s some random Jackal sniper that takes us down? We‘ve been putting our damn lives on the line since we were just kids. Kids. It‘s time to grow up. When was the last time you talked to a civilian?"

Too long, I thought. Too long. ―How many more are involved?"