About This Site
Daily Musings
News
News Archive
Site Resources
Concept Art
Halo Bulletins
Interviews
Movies
Music
Miscellaneous
Mailbag
HBO PAL
Game Fun
The Halo Story
Tips and Tricks
Fan Creations
Wallpaper
Misc. Art
Fan Fiction
Comics
Logos
Banners
Press Coverage
Halo Reviews
Halo 2 Previews
Press Scans
Community
HBO Forum

Clan HBO Forum
ARG Forum
Links
Admin
Submissions
Uploads
Contact

Early Morning Walk - Bad Days, Chapter 2
Date: 20 October 2008, 6:01 pm

Read this first. I forgot to make it part of the series. Consider it Chapter 1. http://halosn.bungie.org/fanfic/?story=kabu1013081634361.html

Life just keeps throwing me surprises.

I had been booted out of the hospital in record time with a couple of medals and a shiny new insignia on my uniform. The top dogs paraded me around the city, showing off another war hero to shanghai young idiots into service and whisked me back into active duty so fast that I forgot to actually get some R&R. A half dozen centuries ago, people would be shot for "cowardice." Five centuries ago they finally realized what post-traumatic stress was. Now they just tell you to stay away from open flames if they scare you that much, you wuss, now take your rifle and put down the fire extinguisher. Such are the sacrifices we make for war.

An astounding amount of paperwork passed in a very short time. Apparently, when a platoon gets completely wiped out the UNSC brass like it just fine that way. A few letters to grieving families, recovery of any salvageable expensive equipment (you'd be amazed at how much of a soldier's gear has been died in a time or three), a funeral or two if there's anything left (unlikely) and that's that. A new platoon is formed, a couple of signatures are made and a few insignia are printed out. The Admiralty, however, hadn't ever guessed that someone would have the nerve to survive such an incident. There simply isn't a precedent, and usually the incidental survivor or two are too blasted to do anything but gibber in a wheelchair for the rest of their lives. So I got shoved into a recently vacated spot (I was told that another PFC named Chester had just retired) in a unit in yet another forest where I spent the first few weeks nervously checking fire alarms and praying for rain. My new commanding officer, Lieutenant Greene, was a little bit vague on the fate of my predecessor and the suspicious brown stain on the wall next to my bunk made me nervous. That and the little memorial in the hallway. And the teeth embedded in the stain.

Aside from the occasional twitch towards the fire extinguisher, everything was peachy. I could introduce myself as "Private First Class Isaac Meyers," complete with a shiny little chevron on my sleeve. My fellow marines had accepted me as one of their own with muted enthusiasm once I stopped trying to yank cigarettes out of their hands. "He's a hell of a lot better than Chester," I heard them say. "Man, that guy was weird. It was a relief when he finally -- oh hey, didn't see you there Isaac. What? Oh, no no no. Chester was a good soldier." Greene was a new-ish officer, just a year out of the Academy, and therefore had about as much real authority over the NCO's as a "no parking" sign had over a taxi. The sergeant, the most stereotypically grizzled veteran I was destined to meet, was more than capable of organizing patrols and handling the day-to-day affairs of Alpha Base Outpost 4. The routine was nice, patrols were relaxing and nothing was on fire or exploding.

We knew the Covenant wanted the planet intact, which was the only reason there was an outpost here in the first place. Whenever anyone asked why, the response received was generally along the lines of "shut up and stop asking questions." The aliens had a significant presence on the surface, but aside from the occasional skirmish they didn't run into us very much. Every week we sent out a patrol to observe there closest scout post, occasionally accompanied by some secretive ONI type who wanted a first-hand look. Mostly the half dozen Grunts would just stand around or sleep, not even breaking out a deck of cards. The Elite in charge would polish his fancy-looking armor and look bored, and the two Jackals would fight over rabbits. Really it wasn't much different from our outpost, except they didn't smoke and we didn't eat our enemies.

There's I theory I've been developing throughout my military career. Basically, it says that for every month that passes without anything terrible happening, whatever horrible event the universe has dreamed up for me will be even more terrible by another order of magnitude. So when three months passed without incident I became very nervous indeed, knowing that whatever was about to happen would be spectacular. I started keeping an extra fire extinguisher under my bunk and checked the smoke detectors twice a day.

Three months, one week and four days after my assignment to Outpost 4 I was tapped for another scout to the Covenant outpost. Four privates (including yours truly) and a corporal were hauled out of bed at one in the morning to escort some mysterious ONI spook to within visual range of the aliens. Four hours later, we were lying on a ridge in the dirt covered in flimsy bits of camouflage, watching enemy troops doing nothing. Grunts were sleeping, a Jackal was flicking his shield on and off, and the Elite was cleaning dirt off of a shoulder pad. The spook loved it, he was jotting down so many notes I thought he would shove the stylus right through his notepad. Predictably, that's when things went horribly wrong.

Private Harris dropped his binoculars, big, heavy, expensive night-vision type things. They promptly followed the example of Newton's apple and tumbled down to the rocks below, where the energy of their fall translated into a loud crash as they shattered in the pre-dawn silence. Everybody immediately freaked out.

The guy from ONI jumped up and nearly ate a face full of plasma. Everybody else backpedaled into the forest as the Grunts clambered up the ridge tossing grenades. We had the advantage of elevation; they had the advantage of wanting to rip us to pieces with their bare hands. Thirty seconds later the noise stopped and nothing was moving and there was way to much stuff on fire. The Grunts were dead at the bottom of the ridge, the Jackals had been mashed up against their shields by Harris' well thrown grenade, and the Elite had leapt ten feet horizontally into the forest away from us. I was pretty sure we were all alive. A burning tree branch fell in front of me and I promptly fainted.

When I came around, the Elite was in the process of finishing off my fellows, bullets pinging of its energy shield like red-hot lead popcorn. I found that I was pretty well concealed under a pile of leaves and I intended to stay that way. A minute later the Elite shut off his energy sword and slouched off into the forest, rubbing at a bit of dirt that had smudged his breastplate.

I stood up and checked myself out. I hadn't been shot, which was good. I wasn't on fire, which was even better. I took off my helmet for a moment and poked at my head, which hurt a bit, so I stopped. I walked five steps and came face-to-face with a very surprised seven-foot tall alien. We both jumped like spooked antelope.

Now, these creatures are scary. Really damn terrifying. This one had just taken out five people without breaking a sweat (do Elites have sweat glands? I would've asked the ONI guy if he weren't lying in chunks on the ground). They've got way too many teeth and their claws are way to sharp, and they carry swords. Swords, for crying out loud. I'm pretty sure nobody's actually gone hand-to-hand with an Elite and come out in less than two or three pieces.

But until that morning, I was very sure that nobody had ever seen an Elite activate his plasma sword backwards and slice himself in half.

Afternoon Nap - Bad Days, Chapter 3
Date: 23 November 2008, 6:35 am

I like to think of myself as an introspective person. I enjoy sitting quietly with my thoughts, or perhaps reading a good book on my bunk. I often take the time to reminisce about past experiences. I've always thought of my reclusive habits as perfectly normal, but it transpired that a lot of my squadmates thought I was either a serial killer or a paranoid schizophrenic. That doesn't have to do with what I'm about to say at all, I don't know why I brought it up. My point was that I think about my past a lot. I'm not crazy. Seriously.

What I'm trying to do is explain a peculiar incident in my past that seemed relevant. When I was twelve years old I saw a squirrel fight a crow. The squirrel was jumping and yelling, the crow was diving and cawing, and eventually they parted ways. Since that day, I've always wondered what was happening. Was it a territorial thing? Were they fighting over acorns? I think there was an acorn involved. Do crows even eat acorns? Maybe it was just a pissed off crow or something. For years I had pondered the nature of this confrontation in my own quiet, obsessive way. Anyway, I was pondering like I'd never pondered before as the plasma bombardment went into its third hour.

So one hundred and eighty nine minutes earlier, I had just finished my mid-afternoon check of the smoke detectors in Outpost 4. The little red warning light on the alarm in munitions locker 3 was blinking and a little chime was sounding, indicating a mechanical problem. I was on my way to Sergeant Major Rendelle's office to report the situation, ducking under some low-hanging electrical wiring, when big red warning lights and loud klaxons started blaring to life. I flung myself to the floor, earning a hefty whack on the head in the process. Lying there, a little dazed, I observed that the blue-white blossom of plasma that had inexplicably replaced the office and hallway in front of me was actually very pretty. Quite tasteful, really, a nice solid flare that fades into an almost liquid wave of blue light and heat. The Covenant, say what you will about the genocide and whatnot, certainly have an eye for style.

While I was being dragged by the arms back to the center of the compound I had ample opportunity to reflect back on my aforementioned ornithological observation. The crow, I decided, was the Covenant, swooping down to steal an acorn (Earth, maybe? I was a little concussed at the time so my memory is hazy). The squirrel was us, chittering uselessly at the bird's dive-bombing.

Lots of people were running around with various bits of equipment and weaponry. I heard people say things like "sneak attack," and "wraith mortars," and "surrounded the base," and "oh Jesus fuck we're all about to die." I spent another few minutes putting together these phrases in my mind until I had a coherent idea of the situation. Apparently, the sentries on duty had radioed in as scheduled at four 'o clock, saying that all was well. It transpired that those two Privates were, in the words of a Corporal whose name I cannot recall, "high off their tits." Consequently, the observation of the invading force was largely overshadowed by a large quantity of powerful amphetamines. I could sympathize; we've all been there a time or six.

Now that I think about it, my pet cat was also involved in the past squirrel/crow contest. Perhaps the bird and rodent had been spooked by the approaching feline and had run into each other by accident. In that case, the cat could symbolize the ever-present fear of oblivion or some such, and the squirrel (humans) and crow (bloodthirsty aliens) were not locked in a conflict of conquest, but a sort of primitive reaction to... fear or something? I was still working out the kinks in the theory.

After a few more hours the bombardment had settled into a nice rhythm. Every ten seconds or so there was a sort of "whoosh" noise, and then a sort of "ksrshsh" noise, and then a big shock wave knocked the dust off the walls. A cursory examination of my surroundings revealed that I was underground, which made me feel a little safer and let me get my head back into gear. By this point my mind was beginning to reconstitute itself like freeze-dried bananas transforming back into a delicious, nutritious treat. It occurred to me that once the plasma bombardment stopped, we could expect a large influx of alien ground troops waiting to do various horrible things to our bodies. Emboldened by a sudden rush of fear, I attempted to stand up and fell flat on my face. Looking down, I had another pang of concern when I realized that my leg was rather nastily broken and covered with a whit-ish and red-ish substance that bore a strong resemblance to blood-soaked gauze. I then saw a needle in my arm attached to a bag labeled "UNSC-MC/M DS/AN 7-A con. 3," a title every marine recognizes instantly as a nice dose of morphine and dextrosaline. Feeling a little better, I noticed that some heavy gun emplacements were being hastily bolted down by the door, covering all the possible attack vectors. There were a couple of people lying down next to me, each with a line from the good ol' AN 7-A. With a little strength restored, I lifted my head enough to notice that there was quite a bit of open flame on this floor. I passed out again.

I just realized that I've forgotten some details in the squirrel/crow/cat contest. It was possible that the squirrel and crow were not actually fighting at all, and that they simply happened to be going about their business in the same general area, and that Misty (my cat was named Misty) was in another part of the yard entirely. So that means that the Covenant were... not attacking? Or that we were just looking for acorns or something? The more I think about this the less sense this metaphor makes. Seriously, it was just a crow and a squirrel. I guess having a good concussion and a dose of morphine put me into an even more introspective state than usual.

The roar of Longswords overhead awakened me and drowned out the noise of the plasma mortars, and a volley of missiles put and end to the bombardment. A few minutes later, a screaming alien hoard was cut to handy bite-size pieces by chaingun fire. A few Pelicans landed to pick up the fourteen survivors of Outpost 4 and carried us away to central command. Purple Hearts were handed out, the nice soldier who had dragged me out of the line of fire was awarded a posthumous Medal of Honor, and I spent a few weeks with my leg wrapped in plastic. In the end, I felt confident in the knowledge that I, while battered and bruised like the squirrel's hypothetical acorn, was ultimately left peacefully, quietly, alone.

Of Opiates and Octopi - Bad Days, Chapter 4
Date: 29 November 2008, 6:08 pm

After Outpost 4 went the way of the dodo, the ten of us who survived with both legs and at least one arm were transferred over to Outpost 5. It was hard to tell the difference; these prefab buildings are all the same. It did save me the trouble of scouting out possible fire hazards, and I likewise knew the locations of all the smoke detectors. Ever since I realized that the word "fireproof" doesn't really mean "fireproof," per se, but is really just something they stamp on things they want to be fireproof, I have always made a point of examining the smoke detectors at least thrice a day. To my disappointment, however, I didn't get a chance to check them out when I first arrived. Morphine withdrawal really does a number on my ability to function as anything other than a twitching pile of neuroses.

Backtracking a bit: I had snapped my leg in a rather nasty manner back in the bombardment of Outpost 4 and I was thusly put on emergency intravenous morphine right on the spot. After being moved to the field hospital, they kept up the treatment for a few days to deal with a few plasma burns before shuffling me off to Outpost 5 with my left leg wrapped in plastic. For those of you unfamiliar with the process, when you suddenly cut off access to an opiate, bad things happen. In theory, the military makes sure that you get a few weeks of methadone to wean you off the stuff, so I visited the outpost's infirmary on the first day to pick up my prescription. For those of you unfamiliar with the military, they never get the paperwork done on time. Ever.

It had been about ten hours since they pulled the IV. I kept my chin up (more to keep from vomiting than from any sense of pride) as I hobbled towards the infirmary, aided by a pair of crutches. My broken leg was beginning to twinge a bit, yet another reminder that I needed a dose of something, fast. As a marine, I'd been through basic training. I'd met the physical requirements, but I wasn't the toughest in my class by a long shot (I think they would have turned me away if not for the manpower shortage), and the effects of withdrawal had not been covered in basic. I think you're expected to pick up that particular skill set on the job. Sure, I've been in some bad situations before; I've been blown up a few times, lit on fire at least twice, shot at, sliced at, and gone through a long trek through a jungle with minimal supplies, I've seen my fellow soldiers killed in ways that haunt my dreams to this day, but once I reached the infirmary, the UNSC found the very most diabolical way to make the worst of my condition.

      "Marks... Melvin... Mitchell... nope. No Isaac Meyers here." The burly medic was flipping through a tablet. It looked like a playing card in his massive hand.
      "There must be some mistake. I - I - I've been on morphine for two weeks. I have a busted leg, it's all burned. I know I have a methadone prescription, they- uh, they said they sent it over."
      The medic glowered down at me. "Listen, kid," (he couldn't have been more than thirty, I don't know why he goes around calling people "kid") "I have a list right here, in my hand, see? It tells me what medicines to give to what people. You see the list?"
      "Um. Yes." It was about an inch from my nose.
      "Is your name on my list, Private Meyers?"

I read through the proffered tablet one more time. I noticed that several names on the list were people I was certain I had seen dead. Harris, for example, wouldn't need insulin now that he'd been neatly julienned by a plasma sword right in front of my eyes. Upon further inspection, the I found that list was actually dated four weeks previously. I thought about pointing this out to the medic, but the sheer mass of this guy's biceps changed my mind. Seriously, you could stuff a melon into my sleeve and I would still look wimpy by comparison.

      "Um. No. It isn't."
      "Then get out of here, junkie."
      I did.

Hobbling back to my bunk was a Herculean exercise in not falling on my face. I dropped my crutches by the bed and pulled myself onto the sheets, panting a little. A cold sweat started to soak through my shirt, which I couldn't seem to take off. Somewhere above my head an invisible kitchen timer was clicking down from infinity. I started counting the wires on the bottom of the bunk above me to pass the next few hours, and spent some time reflecting on the phrase "cold turkey." The goose bumps and clamminess of my skin did resemble uncooked turkey, in a sort of corpse-like way. The thought made me both ravenously hungry and unspeakably nauseated, and I lurched my way to the lavatory for the first of many unpleasant excursions in the days to come. After cleaning the walls as best I could, I finally managed to slither out of my shirt and boots to sweat my way back into bed.

Ten or twenty million years later, another marine slouched his way into the room, hands in his pockets and gaze downcast. My eyes were following him to his bunk when the unthinkable happened. Gripped by a sort of horrible paralysis, I could only watch in impotent terror as he casually slapped a piece of duct tape over the smoke detector. Every muscle in my body twitched violently as he leisurely pulled a cigarette out of a pack. In horrified slow motion, I saw his lighter click once, twice, three times before the dreaded scent of flaming butane dug its insidious way into my lungs. I tried to speak, but my convulsing larynx could produce only the sound of a half-dead frog with black-lung stuffed in a pillow.

At this point I had to pause to kick the giant octopi off my legs as they pulled me into an underwater crevice where laughing medics were waiting to beat me over the head with clipboards. That matter taken care of I could turn my attention back to the impending fiery doom.

Apparently, I had spent quite a bit of time with the octopi because my comrade-in-arms was finishing his third cigarette, which joined its brethren on the floor to be stamped out under the heel of his boot, leaving invisible gray footprints on the gray concrete. Before the door was finished swinging closed I broke through the spasms gripping my muscles and jerkily hurled myself at the still-smoldering embers, grasping the nearby table for support. Unfortunately, the table was not expecting this turn of events and decided that the best course of action in response to my flailing was to flip itself over and dump a nuclear payload of papers right onto the ashes.

A single dusky flower of smoke blossomed from the fertile embers, winding lazily through the cool, dry air.

The next few seconds were a bit hectic. Spots swimming in front of my eyes, I whirled around to find something to put out what my fevered brain imagined as the genesis of a world-consuming conflagration. My personal pair of fire extinguishers was tucked under the bunk, but I couldn't quite reach them. I needed something else to smother the coals. Grabbing the bar that connected the top and bottom beds I heaved with all my might in an attempt to cover the ashes as fast as I could.

In slow motion, I saw the flimsy aluminum frame of the beds flex slightly as only two legs suddenly supported its entire weight. The pair of mattresses slid off smoothly and were followed by the perfect parabolas traced by my sodden pillow and small droplets of sweat. The curl of smoke began to shift slightly with the displaced air, a small shiver of chaotic twists and swirls. Private Rodriguez, who had been peacefully asleep on the top bunk for about three hours, let out a piercing shriek of surprise as he tumbled gracelessly with windmilling arms onto the felled table before landing on the coals. A piece of the frame clocked me over the head and drove me facedown onto the floor.

So I spent the next few days awaiting my disciplinary hearing while Rodriguez recuperated from a dislocated shoulder, a broken arm and a cracked collarbone. I passed most of the time slogging through the various stages of withdrawal, knowing, in a half-delirious way, that I had saved Outpost 5 from a devastating firestorm.

And it was a whole week before those bastards got me some fucking methadone.

Most Sincere Apologies - Bad Days, Chapter 5
Date: 10 December 2008, 9:21 pm

      "Rodriguez... hey, um, I just wanted to-"
      "Now is NOT the best time, Meyers!"
      "Well, no, it's just that I haven't had the opportunity to talk privately wi-"
      "Meyers, SHUT UP for just one second!" Rodriguez had to pause between "one" and "second" to wipe a bit of blood from his eyes. The shallow cut on his brow had broken open again and was slowly drawing a crimson trail along the left side of his face.
      I dropped back to the freshly dug trench, still specked with bits of hastily uprooted greenery. A spent magazine was digging into my side. "Rodriguez, I-"
      "Please, just call me Gabe. I hate it when people call me 'Rodriguez'." He had calmed down a bit now that he wasn't blinded.
      "Right. Gabe, I just wanted to apologize for the, uh, the accident a few weeks back."
      Private Rodriguez slid down into the trench, his rifle empty, and propped himself up on his elbows to peer over the edge. The loose soil on the forward slope popped and sizzled, sending droplets of molten glass hissing into the air. He quickly dropped down onto his stomach, where he lay panting for a minute. Catching his breath, he rolled over onto his side to look at me, perhaps just a bit incredulously.
      Gabriel Rodriguez was a good four inches taller than me, but he was fairly skinny for his size. Not gangly like a stork, just thin-ish. If I had to choose a metaphorical animal, I'd say he was like a well-built antelope, or maybe an unusually bulky ferret, lots of springy muscle. His name and skin tone showed his distant Mexican ancestry, though he had grown up a ridiculous number of light years from Earth. His hair was longer than strict regulation, a bit longer than mine, but right now it was being shoved into his eyes by the rim of his helmet. His broken arm had healed nicely in the five weeks since I had hurled him eight feet through the air in his sleep.
      "Look, Meyers-"
      "You can call me Isaac."
      "Dios, Meyers, this really isn't-"
      The radios in our ears crackled to life. "Meyers, Rodriguez, you've got a flyer bearing down on your position! Stay down! Michaelson, take it out!"
      It was Sergeant Richards' voice over the radio again. Richards was probably holed up in the reinforced concrete bunker outside the Outpost 5 gate, not stuck out in the middle of a field. She didn't have to deal with all the superheated plasma or the bits of flaming vegetation, no, she could just shout orders at us hapless Privates. Yet another burning branch flew overhead, accompanied by the now-familiar "whump" of a shockwave and a bright green flash. Faster than you could say "immolation," I whipped a thin, foot-long red cylinder from a harness on my left shin. With speed and precision to put Wild Bill Hickok himself to shame, I swung the single-use fire extinguisher and slammed the button, nailing the burning bit of wood from ten feet away with a long stream of chemical foam. I tossed the extinguisher, still trailing a wisp of compressed carbon dioxide, to lie with its mate from my right shin on the ground behind us. Rodriguez's face was shifting between expressions of amusement and nervous anxiety. He was backing away very slowly, like you might back away from a nest of sleeping Tasmanian devils.
      "Fire is very dangerous, Rodri- uh, Gabe. This body armor?" I tapped my shin guard to illustrate. "At high temperatures it'll burn like kerosene. That's why I, you know, flipped-"
      I had to pause for a minute when the Banshee's wail drowned out my voice as streams of blue plasma strafed our position. The trench wall held, barely, sending up a plume of super-heated steam. Where the Hell was Michaelson? He had the rockets. A series of bright red flashes made me flinch until I turned towards the forward gate, forcing myself to take calming breaths. Lines of tracer were lancing out of the forward bunker towards the Banshee, but the few shots that connected at that range pinged uselessly off its purple armor. The flyer whirled in midair to meet this new threat, and flew head on into a pair of rockets fired right up its nose. More burning debris rained over the field as the smoking wreckage hurled towards Richards' bunker at 200 kilometers per hour.
      "All right, Meyers, Rodriguez, you're clear! You have maybe forty seconds before the tanks and infantry show up, get your ASSES back to the bunker, right- OH SHIT, EVERYONE DOWN! FALL BACK! FALL BACK TO-" The transmission cut off as the Banshee slammed into the bunker and took out the radio mast before exploding in a ball of blue and orange flame. So I guess I was wrong in my earlier assessment, Richards did have to deal with superheated plasma once in a while. Looking at the blast, I was struck once again by the perfect elegance that the Covenant had incorporated into their machines of war. I had done quite a bit of research on the subject of explosions, and I can tell you that bright blue flame like that is harder to achieve than it looks. Anyway, the bunker looked mostly intact, though it was very much on fire. I can't be sure what happened next, but I think I passed out.
      The next thing I knew I was fifty yards downrange, Gabe's hand clamped around my upper arm to drag me towards the gate. He was muttering a steady stream of curses under his breath as he pulled me along. I glanced backwards to see if we were being followed, just in time to see the first line of Wraiths smash its way through the tree line a thousand yards back. Grunts were scrambling alongside the tanks, taking potshots from long range. It looked like the Covenant were trying to take out Outpost 5 the same way they had laid the smackdown on Outpost 4, but this time we had a few minutes of advance warning due to the new, strictly-enforced drug screening policy. Unfortunately, Rodriguez and I had been going out to relieve the farthest sentries when the baddies rolled in, pinning us down in the makeshift trenches. Now, thirty yards from the Outpost, I twisted around a bit further in his grasp to see if there were any more incoming Banshees, tripped over my own feet, and slammed us both down into the dirt.
      "Anyway, Gabe, um... what was I saying?"
      Rodriguez glared at me, grabbing my shoulder to pull me to my feet. "Body armor, Meyers. You were talking about body armor."
      "Right. Um. You can call me Isaac. Anyway, that's not important, I was just saying that I wanted to apol-" A Wraith mortar exploded on the ground fifteen feet away, knocking us both back into the dirt. Climbing to my feet, I spat out a bit of blood and ran a hand through my hair a little sheepishly (where was my helmet?), "...I wanted to apologize for breaking your arm."
      "And my collarbone," he added with a scowl. We were running back towards the main gate. From this distance, I could see that while the hatch on the bunker had been well and truly slagged, it looked like most of the defense crew had made it out alive.
      "And your collarbone." I jumped over an Elite's supine form, the pilot of the Banshee. "At the time, I was- AHHH!"
      The Elite, whom we had assumed to be dead, had apparently bailed out just before he hit. He (She? It?) scrambled to his... hooves... with a scream of pain and rage and lunged clumsily at us, claws extended. I swung my rifle around (it was still inexplicably in my hands), but the Elite actually bit it out of my grasp - seriously, he almost took off my fingers - and went for my neck. Gabe snatched my sidearm out of my holster and emptied the whole thing into the alien's face in about half a second. The Elite screamed, blinded by the muzzle flash and the flare of its energy shield overloading right in his eyes, and tried to grab Rodriguez. I gave the snarling alien my best right cross, smack in the mandibles. Already badly injured and dazed from the crash, he dropped like a stone, dragging me to the ground under his considerable weight.
      "Oof. Wow. Nice shooting. Um, Gabe, I was going through some really nasty morphine withdrawal at the time, so I wasn't, you know, in control of myself. Ugh." I rolled the most definitely unconscious alien aside and stood up to recover my MA5B, dusting myself off.
      "I know, Meyers, I know," said Rodriguez, pulling me into a crouch to dodge some shrapnel. He was looking at the downed Elite and touching the side of his face, where a claw had drawn a cut. "I guess I was pretty pissed at you." He threw me a quick grin while wiping the blood off his face. "Nice punch, Meyers."
      "Call me Isaac. And yeah, I guess I'd be pissed too."
      I pulled Rodriguez away from a chunk of burning rubber as we ran past the perimeter defenses, stumbling a bit over the uneven terrain. Marines were running up to man chaingun emplacements and ground-to-ground missile launchers, franticly shouting orders. Sergeant Richards was evidently still alive, because her voice was screeching commands out of our headsets. I learned later that the Lieutenant had taken a direct hit from a mortar, at least, that was the coroner's best guess because only his boots and helmet were ever found. But with the rapid response from the rest of the garrison, it looked like Outpost 5 might actually survive this one. Yay.
      "Look, Gabe, I am very sorry. I really wasn't in my right mind, if I had known you were there I wouldn't have freaked out and I just don't want you to be pissed at me and I know that-" Seeing a flash out of the corner of my eye, I shoved Gabe sideways. The green plasma bolt, fired by some crack-shot Grunt back in the trees, missed him by six inches. "I know that I was wrong, but-"
      Rodriguez sighed in defeat as he stepped up to perimeter defense, taking me by the shoulders. "Meyers. Isaac. Slow down. It's okay, it's okay. Deep breaths. Okay. I forgive you, I've had worse. You were messed up; you didn't even know I was there. And thanks for the save. Saves, rather." He was chuckling to himself as he hopped up to a defensive emplacement, moving to fill a gap in the lines. Grabbing the controls of a missile launcher and swiftly targeting three of the Wraiths on thermal, he looked down at me and abruptly frowned. "Um, Isaac, you're bleeding."
      "So are you."
      "No, no, you're really bleeding."
      I looked down at myself. There was a two-inch piece of purplish metal sticking out of my abdomen. "Wow. That looks bad." It didn't look like it had gone too deep, but there was quite a bit of blood. I touched it, which hurt. Come to think of it, it was hurting before I touched it but I was too busy pleading my case to notice. It must've happened when the beat-up Elite fell on me. Ironic, that I was almost killed by someone who was already down. "Huh. I should find a medic." Seriously, that did not look pretty. Right through the armor, too. At least I wasn't on fire this time.
      "Yeah. You're looking a little pale, there."
      "Okay. Um. Well, see you later, Gabe."
      "No, hold up, just give me a second and I'll take you." Rodriguez keyed the targets into the launcher and hit the big red button. A second later, a half dozen plumes of exhaust whooshed out of the tubes above our heads. "Okay. Let's go before you bleed to death or just lose it and break my arm again."
      "We're okay then?"
      He sighed. "Yeah. We're okay, Isaac. Just make sure you get some methadone next time."
      The medic, upon examining the wound, said that it probably wouldn't kill me in the next few hours provided he could keep the bleeding down, but that pulling the shard now could be dangerous. He wrapped me up, squirted some biofoam (that stuff stings like hell) and sent me to lie down inside a bunker with the other broken soldiers. It really did hurt quite a lot. I must have done some screaming, because the harried medic rushed forwards with a syringe of morphine.
      I respectfully declined.

Not the Face! - A 'Bad Days' story
Date: 18 December 2008, 6:43 pm

      In most of my experience, the phrase "gung-ho" usually means "obsessed with killing things." In the rest of my experience, "gung-ho" is not a phrase I would apply to most of the marines I know. The UNSC Marine Corps kept the slogan from the good old days, back when people killed people in a proper and civilized manner, namely, not by orbital bombardment. The phrase usually applies to marines who are very enthusiastic about their duties, who love nothing more than to charge out into the battlefield, guns a-blazing, like an action hero from a bad movie. This is the reason that most of the "gung-ho" marines I have met are very, very dead. Usually in very, very bad ways.
      Corporal Thompson was gung-ho, and took great pains to remind us of that fact every day. He always took point on patrols, he always volunteered for the riskiest ops, and rumor has it that he applied for a transfer to the ODST division four times. I've met a few ODST's. From what I've seen, they are all one hundred percent, absolutely certified bat-fuck insane psychopathic killers. It's a prerequisite, I think. There is probably a question on the written exam along the lines of "have you ever murdered a man for stepping on your towel, and if so, what technique did you employ and did you enjoy it?" Thompson would have fit right in, but Private Kowalski lived through that whole towel incident.
      Putting aside, for the moment, his tendency to use extreme violence in the face of inconvenience, Thompson probably had a lot more luck than skill. He was a good shot with a rifle, but not the best. He was good at hand-to-hand, but he'd been beaten. What he did have was a complete lack of awareness in regards to his own mortality, which lead directly to a ridiculous amount of medals (mostly purple hearts), commendations, and relentless bragging.
      Anyway, two weeks after the shindig at Outpost 5, my new buddy Gabriel Rodriguez, Kendal, Charles and I were tapped for a scout, lead by our resident macho man, Corporal James Thompson. We ignored his growling and grabbed our equipment from the racks on the armory wall, lined with shelves of guns and ammo. He glowered at us as we geared up, evidently thinking that anyone who only needed two grenades didn't deserve them. He took seven, as well as a twenty-inch combat knife, a bandolier of MA5B mags, an extra high caliber rifle, his own ridiculously large custom sidearm and a partridge in a pear tree. I limited myself to just the regulation rifle and pistol, and a slim, disposable fire extinguisher, having decided to leave my pear tree at the base. We all decked ourselves up in the latest (highly flammable) forest camo from the bin near the door and headed out into the wild.
      Four hours later, the sun was passing the horizon and the moons were out, bathing the trees in a tranquil and ghostly silver light. The whole forest was hushed by the soft, dusky illumination. Through gaps in the shadowed canopy, the brilliant pinpoints of distant stars were beginning to shine in the purple sky. It was like a stanza out of a bad poem. Everything was quiet and peaceful; the local cricket-like things were rasping quietly, and we were taking a five-minute break at the base of a shallow ridge. I was looking up at the moons through the leaves of an oak, trying to remember the ignition temperature for human hair, when Gabe paused, midway through a power bar.
      "Isaac," he whispered. "Do you hear that?"
      "Hear what? Everything's quiet."
      "Exactly." He looked around skittishly. It took me a few seconds to get what Rodriguez was saying.
      "Oh fuck. Not again."
      I crawled over the leaf litter and tapped Thompson on the shoulder. "Corporal," I whispered nervously. "The bugs all just stopped chirping. Like, all at once. About thirty seconds ago."
      "What?" He was cleaning his rifle and not really paying attention to his surroundings. He had no head for strategy at all. Which is actually pretty ironic, now that I think about it, considering what was about to happen to his cranium.
      "I said we are all about to die, Corporal."
      He finally got it. Careful to not let anything smudge his rifle, he clipped it to his back and grabbed his knife in one hand and that preposterous pistol in the other. "I'm gonna take a look. Stay down, privates."
      Thompson inched his way to the top of the ridge, careful not to step on any twigs. The chromed gun in his hand was reflecting the setting sun like a floodlight on an opera singer. It was so bright, in fact, that it almost outshone the blast of green plasma that smacked him right in the kisser, tidily vaporizing everything North of his C3 vertebra.
      Nobody moved for a minute. No grenades fell on us, which was good. No aliens climbed over the ridge, which was also good. Kendal was giving me an odd look. I realized that I had dropped my rifle and grabbed my fire extinguisher instead. A little embarrassed, I put the extinguisher back in its harness. It was a perfectly reasonable reaction, really, I was the only line of defense between us and an oncoming firestorm.
      Gabe was the first to recover. "Okay. They only took one shot and haven't assaulted us yet. They probably don't know how many of us there are, right? So they're being cautious."
      "We don't know how many of them there are, either." Charles was looking around like a twitchy sparrow.
      Using my free hand, I slowly pried my fingers off the harnessed fire extinguisher. "All in favor of retreating?"
      The question received a whispered chorus of ayes. We all looked at Thompson's body, lying on the top of the ridge, presumably in plain view of whatever aliens we were up against. Nobody moved.
      "If we run, won't they see us and gun us down from behind? I mean, they're probably climbing the hill right now. And, um. We really should get the Corporal's body. Or at least his tags." Charles was right, we could hear the faint sound of claws on the other side of the ridge. And nobody wanted to leave a marine's body to be devoured by hungry Jackals.
      Gabe closed his eyes and took a deep breath. "We have to get him back to the outpost. And maybe it's only a trio of Grunts, right? I- I should go take a look."
      Very slowly, Gabe crawled to the peak of the ridge, only a few feet from Thompson's decapitated form. Green and blue light filled the air, reflecting off the surrounding (oh so flammable) foliage in shimmering waves and filling the dusk with the sharp scent of ozone. Gabe flew right back down, ass first, landing squarely on Charles.
      "I'm okay. I'm okay. They missed." Gabe was panting a bit as he rolled to his feet.
      "What did you see?" Charles' voice was a little muffled by the dirt his face was shoved into.
      "Um. Ten. Ten Grunts."
      A war council was convened. We were outnumbered more than two to one, but without an Elite in charge the Grunts were unlikely to take any risks. We couldn't run, because we would be gunned down from behind. If we attacked, we could probably take them out, but not without incurring more casualties ourselves. Plus, we wanted to recover Thompson's body. The man was an unbearable jackass, but he was still a Marine. What we needed was some sort of distraction.
      "Okay." Gabe Rodriguez had become the de facto squad leader by this point. "Kendal and Charles, you go left and right, around the ridge, and open fire from flanking positions. That should keep them down. Me and Isaac will run up and grab Thompson's body."
      "They'll see you," Charles hissed. "Even though it's getting dark, the moons are plenty bright enough."
      Kendal spoke up, for the first time in three hours. "Gonna need some kind a distraction. Some cover or somethin'." His Texas drawl seemed wildly inappropriate in the dense forest.
      "Smoke grenades? Flares?" suggested Rodriguez.
      "All on Thompson's body."
      "Frags would be to dangerous on top of the ridge, at that range. We need a smokescreen, or debris, or-." Rodriguez stopped short. Everyone looked at me, and then at the cylinder clipped to my shin guard.
      "Oh, no way," I said. "No no no. I only brought one this time, we might need-"
      "Do you want to die, Isaac?"
      I sighed in defeat, pulling the fire extinguisher from my leg harness.

      "Three. Two. One. GO!"
      Kendal and Charles, positioned on either side of the Grunt formation, let loose on full auto from their rifles. Squeals and growls and bullets and plasma filled the air.
      "Meyers, now!"
      I hurled the fire extinguisher in an arc over Thompson. Gabe hit it at the top of its parabola with a burst from his MA5B. The cylinder exploded in the air, sending a massive burst of foam into the night. We ran up the ridge, invisible under the cloud, and grabbed Thompson by the arms.
      Three grenades fell off his webbing.
      The psychotic bastard had put them on quick release, attaching the pins directly to his harness. Oh shit. Shit shit shit.
      "Fire in the hole! Down, down, GET DOWN!"
Gabe and I frantically kicked the fizzing balls of death down the hill towards the Grunts. Two were already dead, but the rest were firing into the trees, pinning Kendal and Charles behind a tree and a rock, respectively. The rock was holding up, the tree, not so much. This was not a good plan. We (humans) hurled ourselves to the ground as three rapid explosions ripped through the forest. Blam blam blam. Shrapnel whizzed over our heads, but Thompson's corpse caught most of it. Oops.
      I peeked over the ridge. Seven Grunt corpses.
      "Kendal? Charles?" They had been in the killzone for the explosions.
      "I thought we said no to the whole grenade thing. I've got an entire orchestra going in my ears." Kendal sounded shaken. "Charles? You there?"
      "Ow. Um. I think so. Landed on a tree stump. Grunts took most of the blast. Could use a band-aid, though. Maybe an aspirin."
      We all paused for a moment, relieved to be alive. Quite a luxury, in this day and age.
      "Did you actually say 'fire in the hole,' Isaac?" Gabe was grinning at me.
      "It seemed appropriate at the time. Um. How many Grunts did you count?"
      "Ten."
      "There are only seven bodies."
      Gabe said something in Spanish that shouldn't be repeated in front of children.
      A whisper came over our headsets. "Meyers, Rodriguez, I see movement coming your way, on your nine. They're flanking you. Stay low and get to cover. I'll take 'em out." Kendal sounded very professional and calm all of a sudden. Like a real marine, actually.
      Gabe and I hunkered down behind Thompson, the only cover available on the hillside. I though I could hear claws on dirt moving towards us. The next thirty seconds felt like an eternity, as did the ninety seconds after that. I took a peek over the late Corporal's arm, and immediately plasma bolts streaked towards us, thunking into the body. Again. Crap.
      Three shots rang out. Three grunts fell, perfect hits to the head. Gabe and I stood up to see Kendal, the best shot in the Outpost with anything from knives to rockets to sniper rifles. He was standing a good fifty feet away, coolly holstering his sidearm after, and may God strike me down if I lie, twirling it once around his finger. With a stunt like that and his old country twang, he was only a set of spurs, a ten-gallon hat and a loyal mustang from a real cowboy.
      We all gathered around Thompson at the top of the ridge. His dog tags were a bit scorched and the chain was melted, but they were still intact. He was not going to get an open-casket funeral, that's for sure, but that was hardly unusual for a soldier. Headless, covered in massive burns, shredded by grenades, and, on closer inspection, missing an arm, he wasn't looking so pretty. We were all trying to think of something solemn to say when a bit of burning tree branch fell at my feet.
      I instinctively grabbed at my leg, but my fire extinguisher was gone. Rodriguez, damn him, had already exploded it. I fell right on my ass trying to run backwards, too quickly for anybody else to react. In the heat (ha!) of the moment, I realized that it was I, and only I, who was in reach of the hungry flames. Still on my back, I kicked frantically at the bit of wood and let out an explosive breath as it flew away into the night.
      It bounced off something in midair, fifteen feet away.
      A crackle like an electric lamp thrown into a bubble bath whooshed into the shining blade of a plasma sword, seemingly hovering five feet above the ground. The dirt of the hillside churned with invisible running footsteps, and a bestial roar shattered the night. Everyone freaked out and started shooting.
      Unable to withstand the hail of hot lead, the invisible Elite eventually stumbled and fell down dead no more than two feet away. Its sword, still active, dropped from a now visible hand right into Thompson's ribs. The superheated blade sizzled into the ground until the hilt was resting on Thompson's abdomen. Shifting under its own weight, the sword cut sideways through the body like a hot pickaxe through butter and took off the remaining arm at the elbow. I reached out and deactivated the blade, leaving the forest in peace. A minute later, the bugs resumed their evening serenade. Nobody said anything. The foam drifted to the ground. It was about five minutes before Charles broke the silence.
      "Okay. So who, uh, who carries which half?"

We Lucky Few - A 'Bad Days' story
Date: 5 February 2009, 3:45 am

      I've always thought the expression "safe as houses" was a little strange. I heard it all the time back on Earth. Me: "Mommy, is the bike going to fall over?" Mom: "Don't worry, you're safe as houses." Me: "But the Jacobsons' house burnt down last week. Their dog died." Mom: "Just put on a damn helmet, you'll be fine." Ah, that was a memorable trip to the emergency room.
      Anyway, a house does an adequate job of keeping out the weather, as long as the damn contractor doesn't skimp on the insulation again, but a house isn't invulnerable. Sure, a house might be safer than, say, a car, but a house isn't going to fair all that much better than that car when the rampaging eighteen-wheeler hits it. Houses burn down, houses get flooded, houses get robbed and houses get infested by bugs, or worse, in-laws. Maybe "safe as nuclear-hardened military installations" would be better. I hear they've got a nice one on Reach, and a couple on Earth as well. I really, really, really wish that whoever had designed these pre-fab military outposts held the same philosophy. I have firsthand experience that concrete [I]will[/I] burn when exposed to high-energy plasma blasts.
      The first Covenant attack on Outpost 5 a few weeks ago had been beaten back with surprisingly few casualties, but quite a bit of structural damage was incurred. The aliens had gotten understandably careless after they so easily rolled over Outpost 4. There, the sentries and marines manning the surveillance stations were high as rocket-propelled, helium filled trans-orbital kites and didn't notice a thing until they were exploded. Fortunately, the new drug-screening policies instituted in the wake of the first attack ensured that the forward scouts of Outpost 5 kept their eyes focused on the forest and not on the gigantic rainbow flying lemurs hiding in their pockets.
      In the aftermath of the full-scale attack, the military strategists upstairs came to the startling conclusion that the Covenant would attack again while our defenses were at minimum strength, and that we should be ready. This meant more early-morning patrols delightfully farther afield, as satellite surveillance is difficult in dense forest. Those tricky aliens, always with some wacky plan up their gauntlet, had figured this out and limited their movements to the most miserably impenetrable parts of the forest. Guess where some hapless Marines had to patrol every day at three in the morning.
      Carl Charles, David Kendal, Gabriel Rodriguez and I had taken to requesting to go on patrol together. There's something about watching one's commanding officer get shredded to bits, burned to pieces, melted into parts and sliced into chunks that really brings a team together, I guess. Rodriguez, having shown "great courage in the face of overwhelming odds to leading his fellow Marines to safety" (their words), was just recently bumped up to Corporal. To be fair, we all pitched in with the botched recovery of our previous Corporal's mangled corpse, but in the end we all had to admit that Rodriguez was the one who pulled us together. We had a small party for him, with cake and everything. Well, not really cake, just some energy bars dipped in chocolate and aspartamine, but the (surprisingly delicious) sentiment was there.
      It got to be pretty routine. Every third day, the four of us would get up way before the sunrise, strap on our gear and stomp into our boots. Great emphasis was put on stealth, for obvious reasons, so it was full forest camo and silenced weapons all around. I even painted my pairs of one-shot fire extinguishers green and brown to make them completely inconspicuous. We would tramp out into the jungle for twenty kilometers, then turn around and head back by a different route, avoiding hostile contact with the aliens at all cost. Sunrise is early on this Godforsaken planet, so it would be full light out by the time we got back, transforming the forest light from a muted green and brown in the pre-dawn glow to a harsh blue-white glare. The sunlight was somehow thin, insubstantial, and even though the temperatures stayed relatively high it always felt colder than it actually was. I've been to quite a few planets in my time, but I could never help but feel that a sun should be [I]yellow[/I]. There's something fundamentally screwed up about living under what looks like a cheap light bulb instead of a normal G2 main-sequence star.
It was after one such patrol that we came upon a most interesting sight. Somehow, in our stealth, not only had the Covenant completely missed us, but we had missed them too. On the last leg of our trek back to base, we all stopped and hit the dirt at the dreaded blast of a Wraith mortar in the distance. Whoosh, thump, krshshk. Whoosh, thump, krshhskk. Crawling slowly forwards, we found out exactly how hard the proverbial shoe had stomped all over us.
      Four Wraiths were lined up side by side, at the very edge of the cleared ground around the base. A pair of Spirit dropships was lying like discarded purple tuning forks halfway to the outpost, wedged into the ground at that jaunty forty-five degree angle that suggested an unexpected nosedive, amidst six twisted bits that used to be Banshees. The Wraiths had some scorch marks and didn't seem to be moving much, but their cannons were doing fine. On closer inspection, all four had plasma leaking from their reactors, little dribbles of blue that fell and evaporated into a pale mist before they could touch the ground. But from the fact that no more missiles were flying and the Wraiths were still plugging away, I concluded that the base had only gotten off two or three volleys before the launchers were slagged. Twenty yards in front of the Wraiths, a few squadrons of Covenant infantry were massed under thick barricades – maybe thirty five grunts and ten jackals in total, lead by six elites – waiting for the signal to begin their charge. Small arms and chaingun fire were zipping towards the line, but at that range, without the Jackhammer and Anvil launchers, there really wasn't very much us monkeys could do against heavy armor. In short, Outpost 5 was completely fucked.
      "What can we do?" Whoosh. "We have to think of –" Thump. "Think of something." Krshshk. Somehow, Charles always managed to look like a nervous sparrow, whether he was under threat of imminent fiery death or just picking up a lunch tray. He didn't twitch as much during meals as he was doing now, though.
      I tried the radio, but got nothing, just a hiss of static. "They must have hit the antenna, radio's completely dead. Or they could be jamming us. Can they do that?"
      Gabe had taken out his binoculars to study the situation as best he could, flipping on the night vision in the dim light. "There. Twenty meters back from the Wraith on the right, looks like reserve weapons for the ground troops. Only two Grunts are guarding them, they're looking forward." He put his binoculars away, carefully easing down onto the forest floor. "If they have explosives, we could… I dunno. Use them to create a diversion."
      "Or, you know, blow them up. Or shoot them." Kendal was keeping his cool, as usual.
      "Let's see what we've got, first. Kendal, you think you can take 'em out from this range? With a silencer?"
      Kendal could shoot a coin out of the air, and to my knowledge had done so at least twice, to win a bet. He came from a long line of Texas gunslingers, or so he claimed. A question like that was not a suggestion or even an order, it was a personal challenge, and maybe an affront to his peculiar sense of honor. Or maybe I'm just reading too much into these things.
"Huh," he verbalized.
He unlimbered his submachine gun and pulled back the stock to rest against his shoulder, quickly threading the silencer into the weapon's barrel. The gun was tough and could dish out a lot of damage very quickly, but it was not meant for sharpshooting, especially at this range. Kendal didn't seem to mind, though. He flipped the selector to single-shot and carefully took aim.
      Three muffled coughs sounded out, each a half second apart, hardly louder than someone smacking a book against a desk. The noise was easily drowned out by the hum of the Wraiths' wraith-like engines. The Grunt on the left jerked backwards, as if struck by a sudden thought, as the first of the low-velocity rounds went a bit wide, smashing into its shoulder and lodging in its armor. The second blast carried the majority of the mass of its head out through the front of its face in a disgusting shower of blue-ish gore. The other Grunt didn't even have time to finish turning around when the third shot caved in its temple, ripping the straps of its breather off one side and coming to a halt in the tough bone of its brow ridge. More ichor hit the ground, and the Grunts toppled over under the weight of their methane tanks. The Covenant ground troops, more than a hundred yards away and focused on the action, didn't notice a thing. The little aliens twitched once or twice before lying still. For once, the methane did not burst into flames.
      We slinked as fast as we could up to the weapons cache. Plasma pistols, useless junk, spare parts, some sort of weird green spiky thing, and then we hit the jackpot.
      Charles opened up bulky, square crate, heavily armored and about three feet on a side, to find it full of plasma grenades. Hundreds of the damn things, purple and blue and red balls of fizzy, pretty death. While I personally detest them, they could prove very useful in a spot of bother like this one. I hadn't noticed before in the shadowed dawn light, but I could see that the Covenant had half a dozen similar crates in their ranks, each securely closed and behind a heavy barricade thick enough to stop a rocket from setting them off. This one must have been just a spare.
      Kendal and Charles each grabbed a handle and ran back to an old crater we could use as a foxhole, with Gabe and I running backwards to keep an eye on the aliens. So far, so good. We slid down into the ditch and sat in a circle around the crate.
      "Okay. That was terrifying. What do we do now?" Charles had started to twitch a bit more violently.
      Gabe stared at the crate for a while. "Well, I think if we get close enough, we could… okay. I have a plan. We can sneak up, and toss these down the exhaust ports on the tanks. They burn way hotter and longer than frag grenades, so they should actually detonate the reactor instead of just disabling them. That… that might actually be enough to take them all out."
      It took me about a millisecond to find the gaping flaw in that plan. "Gabe, I hate to play devil's advocate here, but wouldn't that, you know, kill us too? In a horrible, fiery way? Don't get me wrong, I'm all for honor and glory and all that jazz, but I would prefer that they pin the medals at the hospital and not at the fucking funeral.
      "I really doubt there'd be enough left to pin a medal to, Isaac"
      "Thank you, Carl. Thank you for that wonderful image. I feel so much better now."
"Relax, guys." Gabe was actually smiling, the loon. "The exhaust hatches are blown wide open. It's still dark enough to sneak up, we can throw from a distance, and we'll be out of the blast radius. Trust me." He frowned, suddenly. "But first, does anybody actually know how to use these things?"
      He gingerly picked up a grenade between two fingers, holding it like, well, like a dangerous grenade that could go off at any minute.
      "I mean, we've all seen the vids, but has anyone thrown one? In real life? You squeeze here, right? And then you have three seconds to throw?"
      I looked up, suddenly alarmed. "Wait, aren't you-"
      Gabe pressed his thumb down onto the activation glyph. It pulsed red for an instant, and the skin of the grenade erupted into the familiar liquid-blue flame. He held onto it for a second, startled by the sudden, ominous whine emanating from the device. Frantically, he tossed it as hard as he could back towards the treeline, where it would explode without alerting the Covenant. At least, from his facial expression when he found the grenade to be stuck fast to his glove, that was what I inferred to be the plan. In reality, Gabe quickly yanked off his right glove (now engulfed in a terrifying blue light and clinging to the grenade like a dog to a brand-new shoe) with his left, and threw the grenade and glove ensemble to detonate barely a second later in the trees. We all held our breath, but those goddamn aliens were so focused on their attack, never mind the noise of the mortars, that they didn't so much as flinch. That is some seriously lax protocol. I had half a mind to speak with their commanding officer about proper military discipline. Seriously, if your going to utterly and completely wipe out a species in a horrifying, atrocity-filled war of attrition, at least do it properly for God's (or the Gods', I guess) sake(s).
      I glared at the Corporal. "Uh, as I was saying. Aren't you supposed to press as you throw? Because it- it, uh, sticks almost right away. It detonates after three seconds." I was clutching nervously at a fire extinguisher, staring at the frail whisps of blue plasma playing over the blackened ground, swirling into the sky. The air smelled of ozone.
      Gabe was contemplating the burn on the palm of his right hand. It didn't look to bad, and I told him as much. I should know, I've researched the subject extensively.
      Gabe looked a little chagrined. "Alright. One more try. I'll wrap in something so I'm not actually touching it. Or, or I could make a sling or a bola, just hold onto the end. Let's see…"
      He pulled out a long bandage and wrapped it tightly around the grenade, leaving a tail about eighteen inches long to grab in his right hand. He reached with his left to push the activating symbol, but Kendal grabbed his wrist.
"Here, you've already gone and burned yourself, it's gonna slip out of your hand. Hand it over, let me try." Gabe was more than eager to comply.
Kendal gave the sling a twirl, testing the weight. Holding the grenade in his left hand, Kendal carefully pressed the activation symbol. Once again, the grenade burst into a blue light, but this time it burned right through the thin gauze and dropped squarely into the palm of his left hand.
      "Oh, f-"
      Ripping off his glove with his right hand, burning it cherry-red in the process, he hurled the mated glove-grenade pair as hard as he could. In the wrong direction. Over the Wraiths, directly into the massed covenant infantry. In fact, it landed maybe three feet away from one of the crates of grenades, which the Grunts had opened sometime in the past ten minutes under the assumption that the base had no explosive weapons that could reach that far.
      Shit.
      Grunts dove stupidly for non-existent cover. The Elites closest to the front barricades tore up great clods of dirt as they made powerful flying leaps over the barriers, their back-jointed legs acting like springs. An instant later, the universe turned blue, then white, as grenades and methane tanks all went up in blasts of hellfire. For an instant, the Wraiths were silhouetted against the explosion before they too were consumed, their reactors adding to the blast. The shockwave felt like a gigantic feather pillow shot out of a cannon as it hit and lifted us bodily off our feet before depositing us, sans weapons and half our gear, on the bottom of our little foxhole back in the trees. A rolling, solid-looking cloud of black smoke billowed into the air as the flames cooled from blue to red, spitting chunks of burning debris out over the field and forest. We all lay there for a few minutes, listening to the isolated pops of grenades that had missed the initial blast as our hearing returned. We were far enough away from the hypocenter that aside from a rough landing, nobody suffered more than a slightly broken arm (Charles), a dislocated shoulder (Gabe and Kendal), a few minor lacerations (everyone) and a few bruised ribs (me). Gabe sat up, clearly favoring his left arm.
      "Isaac? Charles? Kendal? You alright?"
      I said no, Kendal said yes, and Charles just muttered a few curses in Kendal's direction. We slowly clambered to our feet, patched up our injuries with a med kit and climbed up towards the wreckage. The Outpost was slowly becoming visible through the dissipating pall of smoke. As I had thought, there wasn't too much structural damage, but even from this extreme distance it was obvious that the entire defense system had been shot to hell.
      There was a flicker of motion just ahead.
      An Elite had apparently grabbed a Jackal's shield before diving over the barricades, and between that, the heavy barriers and his own armor's energy defenses, it was mostly unharmed. It dug its heels in and bounded towards us, long, loping strides rapidly eating up the intervening distance. The Elite shook out a plasma sword and roared its defiance as blue sparks and little flickers of silver light trailed over its shield emitters – its shield was busted, unable to recharge at all.
      We all reached for our weapons, but Charles and I had, in our post-explosion daze, left them in the hole. Kendal opened fire, but his gun was broken; the firing pin and slide had been sheered right off. Gabe managed to get off a short burst before the Elite was upon him, and at least one bullet connected. The alien didn't even notice. The Corporal rolled with surprising grace under the Elites blade, but caught a vicious backhand to the face and dropped like a broken puppet as the alien ran by, dismissing Gabe as a threat. There was nobody else left. It was up to me to stop the Elite from killing us all.
      Blind with rage, it charged towards me. I turned and ran to the foxhole, where I could see my SMG lying in the dirt. Adrenaline gave my feet wings as I ran, tensing for a flying leap.
      The Elite must have seen my plan, because its sword went flying over my shoulder in a terrible blur to slam into the crater with greater force than any human could muster. If it had been at its full strength, I have no doubt that the Elite would not have missed. Instead, the sizzling, superheated, crackling, snarling, burning oh-so-very hot blade sliced into our medical kit, between me and the guns, just before the sword gave out.
      Bandages, alcohol, biofoam, plastic wrappers, and grass promptly burst into cheerful flame. Between me and my objective. I would have to dive. I would have to dive right through the flames.
      I would rather die.
      I leapt. In midair, I twisted to grab both portable fire extinguishers from my shin-harnesses. I swung them forwards, bellowing a fearsome war cry (most certainly not screaming like a little girl) and smashed the buttons. Time slowed down, as I felt the shock of the compressed gas cylinders releasing. A blast of powdery foam soared ahead of me, like the waves breaking over the prow of a ship sailing through a hurricane, except instead of a hurricane it was fire retardant and instead of waves it was flames. I sailed through the air, arms outstretched, tossing the spent extinguishers to each side as I landed and rolled over the still-glowing embers. I fumbled the strap of my gun coming out of the roll, set it against my shoulder, pointed it at the battle-mad Elite, squeezed the trigger, and had completely forgotten to turn off the safety.
      I landed ten feet away, sprawled in an ungainly heap after the Elite introduced my chest to his clenched fist. I could only gasp, the wind knocked out of me. It gave a satisfied snort and walked back into the foxhole, suddenly calm, to grab it sword, shaking it a few times before thumbing the activation switch. It was obviously in no hurry. The Outpost couldn't see a thing from here, Charles was unarmed, Kendal didn't have a working gun, and Gabe was down. A few thoughts ran through my head, stopping to wave hello as they jogged by.
      At least I'm not on fire.
      Man, I am really hungry. I haven't had breakfast.
      What's Kendal looking for on the ground over there?
      Waffles. I could use some waffles.
      The Elite finally managed to activate his sword, and turned towards me. I managed to push myself shakily to hands and knees, digging my fingers into the soil. Sweat and blood dripped onto my hands, and I tasted iron. My ribs were a plate of burning agony, almost certainly cracked. I could only lift my head to watch dumbly as the beast prepared to skewer me.
The Elite gave out a startled snort, flinched, and whirled around. Kendal was standing, his right arm hanging limp, grinning triumphantly through the blood on his face. Now that the Elite was facing away from me, I could see a fizzing blue glow on the back of its neck. Roaring, it charged towards Kendal, flailing with its sword in blind panic, and was swallowed up by bright blue light before it got halfway.
I managed to flip myself around and sit normally, taking a moment to stare at my hands. The pain in my chest started to fade. Charles was helping up Gabe, who looked a little out of it. Concussion, I've been there a time or three. Kendal walked over and gave me a hand up with his good arm.
      "Son of a bitch, it worked. Didn't even burn my hand off. You were right about the quick fuse. You okay there, Isaac?"
      I couldn't really speak yet. "Waffles."
      "What was that?"
      "I could really use some wa- uh, I mean, thanks. Saved my ass."
      "Gimme a hand with my shoulder, would you?" Kendal was gesturing to his dislocated arm, his Texas drawl not betraying a hint of pain. I swear, the man was made of iron or something.
      "What?" I was still out of it, not really understanding his words.
      "Help me pop it back into the socket. Then we can fix the Corporal's."
      I tried and failed to stay standing up. My ribs hurt like hell, and I could barely move, let alone wrench a joint back into place. I staggered upright to give it a whirl anyway, but ended up flat on my back.
"I can't. Wait for a medic to do it. You just got blown up, and you're bleeding like… somebody who just got blown up. Shouldn't you need some painkillers or something?" I could see that there were a few medics with the fire teams.
      "Why?"
      "You're insane, you know that? Completely off your rocker."
      "Yeah."
      The last few plasma grenades were bursting in the burning wreckage. Fire teams and Marines were running out of the base, probably wondering what the hell just happened. Just as I managed to get my feet under me, a bit of burning debris landed next to me. I flinched instinctively, then paused. I had dove through the flames. I was a bit singed, but not really burned. The little bit of fire on the ground wasn't so bad at all. It was dangerous, sure, but so was a loaded gun, a berserker Elite, the drill sergeant. I could deal with those, I had more than once. Well, the first two, at least. I stopped backing away and smothered the flames slowly and deliberately under my boot, little whisps smoke curling away from the purplish material, the hardened sole barely heating up at all.
I sat down again, suddenly a little dizzy as the enormity of what I had just done started to hit me. I pushed the thoughts aside, for the moment. I wasn't in the mood for big, life changing, profound epiphanies. For now I was content to wait for a stretcher, while Kendal braced against the ground and did something horrifying and crunchy to his arm until it worked again. The sun was nearly above the horizon, casting beams through the haze in a blue light, paler than the Covenant weaponry.
      "Hey." Gabe looked up. "We're heroes now, aren't we?"
      "Is that why you signed up, Gabe? To be a hero?" I was looking at some clouds.
      "Not really. At first, maybe. Is that why you signed up, Isaac?"
      "No. I just needed to pay for graduate school, back on Earth. Or maybe Cygnus, they have some great universities." I had to stop for a bit as my chest gave another twinge. "Two weeks later, the UNSC broke the news about the Covenant, and well, once you're enlisted…"
      "Bastards."
      "Who? The military or the Covenant?"
      "Does it matter?"
      "Guess not."
      We four, we happy four, spent the next few minutes in silence, watching the sunrise. The light was strange and harsh and far from home, and I was hurting a lot, but I was content to sit with my comrades – friends, I guess – letting the sun take the chill out of our bones. We had overcome a lot together. Today, I might have conquered my greatest fear. I guess that in this day and this age, you just have to take your peace where you find it, and hold on as long as you can. I did. The only other choice is to go insane, and I have had quite enough of that.

In Which Misfortune Will Soon Befall Our Protagonist - A 'Bad Days' Interlude
Date: 13 February 2009, 3:46 am

      "No. No no no, no way, no how, not gonna happen. Get lost."
      Lieutenant Colonel Christina Zhao visibly restrained herself from snapping completely, settling instead for an exasperated glare. They were only five minutes into their first face-to-face conversation, and she could see that he was not going to be at all cooperative. Well, maybe "exasperated" and "uncooperative" weren't exactly the right words; more like "homicidal" and "in a state of asinine denial."
      "Leon-"
      "That's Mister Leon to you, Christi."
      "Shut up. Leon, this is not a request. This is an order, you imbecile."
      "I'm telling you, I'm fine. There is absolutely nothing wrong with me."
      Zhao turned her back to him and stalked over to her desk. Really, there wasn't much room to stalk. Her office in the lower reaches of CASTLE base was, for lack of a better word, cramped. It was very Spartan (though not SPARTAN, of course. She still shuddered when she thought of the top-secret program). Just a desk on one side, bare except for an old tablet, a door on the other and a washed-out patch on the wall where the previous occupant had hung a picture. Of course, this wasn't by choice. Somebody very high up had gotten very pissed off when she voiced her disapproval at the Argus program, the pet project of some pathetic ONI official on a power trip, and she was hustled out of her old spacious office and moved down fifty-three stories to this dump. Her rug, her paintings (she always felt a little proud of the paintings), even her goddamn coffee mug were in some mysterious limbo of the sort that can only be conjured up by a massive bureaucracy like the UNSC. Privately, Zhao had a grim suspicion that her possessions had been appropriated by that weasel, Colonel Watson.
      Anyway, she managed a credible stalking gait in the two steps it took to cross to her desk and pick up her tablet. She tapped the stylus a few times to pull up the familiar document, already loaded on the screen, resolutely keeping her back to Leon. Zhao had read it over a half dozen times in the last half hour to prepare for the dreaded interview, a frustratingly sparse psychological report. The doctor must have been just as anxious to end the conversation as Christina was now.
      "You're fine, you say. Doctor Einrich begs to differ. His report seems quite conclusive." Zhao cleared her throat and read out loud, still facing her desk. "Leon, as expected from his background, has an excellent tactical warfare skillset and an unprecedented ability in deductive and predictive thought processes-"
      "You bet I do." Leon twirled his bowler hat around a finger. Zhao glared at him, and he subsided a bit. She resumed her oration without further interruption.
      "However, his volatile temperament and refusal to submit to proper authority has rendered him all but useless in the capacity that the Admiralty has assigned to him. It is my professional recommendation that Leon be removed from combat operations and placed in an auxiliary, low-priority management position." She placed the tablet back on her cheap plastic desk.
      "Now, Leon, this was written before project Argus. It was decided that the risk was worth the reward, and they went ahead anyway. We all know what happened there."
      "Yeah, I took down three Covenant cruisers."
      "It was one cruiser and two battle-damaged frigates, you miserable twit. The enemy cruiser went down into the atmosphere along with one of our cruisers, and no fewer than five of your frigates were so damaged that they have to be scrapped! What the hell is wrong with you?"
      "Hey, sweetcake-"
      "Sweetcake? The fu-" She whirled around, dropping the tablet in the process, to stare at him in what can only be described as Hellish Wrath. She had been feeling that way a lot, lately
      Leon just grinned at her. "That was the whole point of Argus. A hundred eyes-"
      "Did you just call me s-"
      "One artificial intelligence in direct control of a whole battle group, all with skeleton crews, no captains."
      "There were no survivors, Leon! You destroyed four fucking ships trying to ram them, you jackass! Two of them nearly crushed a city!"
      "That was so awesome when I rammed the Cruiser from two directions at once. Squished like a pancake. And please, it's Mister Leon."
      "I swear to God, if you keep that up I will destroy you. There is a claw hammer in the closet down the hall. I will take that hammer, find your memory crystal, and I will destroy your miserable, misogynist, pinstripe-wearing holographic ass."
      Leon lifted a translucent hand to the breast of his old-fashioned suit jacket – its jacket, Zhao furiously reminded herself, not his – and put on an expression of mock contrition.
      "But Christi-"
      "Don't call me-"
      "Christi, my dear, I thought we had such a wonderful relationship. I've only just met you, but your dazzling presence has filled my heart with such joy." His voice dripped with enough sarcasm to drown a whale.
      Christina sat down on her desk and held her head in her hands. She steadied the desk when it wobbled under her slight frame – the damn thing might as well have been made of cobwebs. As soon as she moved her hands, the jade comb fell out of her tidy bun – her hair was a bit longer than regulation – and fell to the floor, letting her hair tangle around her fingers. She left the pin lying on the bare concrete.
      Why did she even try to start this useless conversation, she thought. Why couldn't he be a "dumb" AI? They were so easy to deal with. Just give them an order, they gave a cheerful "yes ma'am" and went on their way. Get me those files. Yes ma'am. Coordinate the attack. At your convenience, ma'am. Self destruct if you please, we're being boarded. At once, ma'am! Strange things happened when you turn somebody's brain into an artificial construct.
      Leon hitched his old-fashioned trousers a bit and went to one holographic knee. He mimed picking up the pin – a transparent copy appeared in his hand – and offered it to her with a little bow. Zhao threw a pencil through him.
      "Leon, do you know who's brain you came from?"
      "Admiral Marcer's, I believe."
      "I knew him, you know. One of the most decorated senior officers in the fleet. Lead his armada into combat under overwhelming odds, never missed a single victory. Died of a heart attack in his office a month ago."
      "I had no idea! I'm so very sorry, my little sweetcake."
      Zhao didn't rise to the bait, just glared at his insolent grin.
      "Don't be. He was just as much of an asshole as you. You have no idea how pissed I was when they pulled you out of his brain. The only reason you haven't been erased yet is because people respected the old man, and AIs are expensive."
      She stood up straight, trying to assume some authority over the construct.
      "Here's the deal. You have two choices. One, you go to Alpha Aquilae, a miserable little planet with no real significance and almost no civilian population. You will help out with the administration of the day-to-day affairs of the base there, a standard seven-Outpost configuration."
      "I told you five minutes ago, I'm not gonna do it. No way, cupcake. Not gonna happen."
      "Cupcake? I can't believe – oh, fuck it. As I was saying. It's the most out of the way planet with a Covenant presence. There's a lot of deuterium in the oceans that they want for fuel, but their cruiser just dropped off a few battalions and glassed a city before scooting off to the Inner Colonies. The Covenant don't seem to think it's important enough to send backup. I hear it's run by some incompetent jackass who's already lost Outpost 4 and nearly lost Outpost 5 as well. You should fit right in. The second choice, I grab your crystal and smash it until it's reduced to a fine, non-sapient powder. I will then drink a toast to your death, and throw a party."
      Zhao's voice had risen steadily through her speech to override Leon's constant stream of objections, insults, and lewd comments. By the end, he was reduced to muttering to himself and staring at the wall. When she finished, Leon roused himself for a retort.
      "Okay. Listen, you bit-"
      "If you finish that sentence, I'm going to, I'm going to- to- to- you know what, there actually isn't anything more I can threaten you with. Congratulations, you win." The Colonel threw her hands in the air and stalked – or stepped, as it may be – over to her pathetic excuse for a desk. "You don't have a choice in the matter. I don't even know why I'm still talking to you. I was just supposed to give you your assignment. Now I'm going to shut off the hologram, deliver your psychologically unbalanced crystal to the next outbound ship, and then find whoever stole my rug and beat him up for a few hours. That'll cheer me right up."
      She had muttered that last sentence to herself, but of course the microphones in the walls picked it up for Leon to hear. He leered at Zhao as she firmly hit a button on her desk and his image slowly faded to transparency as the projector on the ceiling cooled down. The last thing to vanish was his smile.
      Zhao scooped up her pin and left the office, grateful that the long hallway allowed her to stalk properly for once. She felt that she had a lot of stalking, pacing, striding and possibly even prowling to do to get Leon out of her system. He's somebody else's problem now, she thought. Now where is Colonel Watson's office? I'm going to kick down his door and take my rug back, damn the consequences. Let the Marines on Aquilae deal with Leon.

In Which Our Protagonist Finds a New Friend - A 'Bad Days' Story
Date: 20 March 2009, 12:19 am

      I remember the lake a few miles from my house. The forest came down right to the edge on the north shore, but to the south there was a long, sandy strip of beach, wide enough to hold a few small boats on their dollies. When the wind kicked up and white cats-paws played at the surface, little bursts of froth spraying outwards from the peak of each ripple, I would drag a boat down to the water. Once it was pushed out far enough, I would pull the cord on the rudder to drop it into the water and hop in. I would be soaked up to my thighs as I raised the sail, but the wind streaming over the bow would dry my clothes as the boat suddenly jumped forward, air straining at the taut canvas. My hands and arms would lock in place on the mainsheet and tiller, and I would lean back as the water glittered in the sun just below my head. After a while, I was just along for the ride. It was the boat and the wind and the water and the sun pulling the bow across the shining blue, guiding and shaping the waves and ripples. Not the hand on the tiller.

      There's a certain peace of mind that comes with knowing your life is out of your hands. You're just going along with the boat, the wind pushing you to its own destination. When the breeze is really good, you can nudge the tiller a bit to change trajectory but you end up at more or less the same place. Or maybe I just wasn't a very good sailor. This whole human-Covenant war thing was like a gale hitting out of a placid sea. You can be sailing along any tack, but once a big one hits, everybody gets shoved in the same direction and will probably capsize, or get blown up. Okay, a sailboat blowing up is pretty unlikely, but I have learned that you can never totally eliminate the chance of something bursting into flames. Unfortunately, I've been through a few explosions and I can tell you that they're not the sort of thing you ever really get used to.

      I was trying to keep myself in a good state of mind. Two months ago, I actually dove through some flames, in defiance of my persistent phobia. The flames weren't that huge, but in my mind I knew that it was an important first step. I studied psychology, I knew all about facing deep, irrational fears and whatnot to get over them, at least in theory, but in reality you can't just sit up and go, "today, I will face my deep, irrational fears and whatnot to get over them." It just doesn't work.

      That charging Elite had taken the matter out of my hands, though, and forced me into action, and for that I was thoroughly grateful to it. Not enough to let it skewer me, but enough to feel a little pang of regret when Kendal blew it up. Right after that eventful morning, I took to borrowing Gabe's lighter and was making sure to flick it on at least once a day, just to make sure that I wouldn't flip out and smash it with the butt of a fire extinguisher. So far, that had only happened once. Well, twice. Three times, if you want to get technical and count the time where it was snatched out of my hand before I could get my swing going.

      After a long while on Alpha Aquilae, I was getting very tired of the patrols, the cold sunlight and the massive explosions that happened depressingly close to me almost every time. I took solace in my great skill at Hearts in my regular games with the squad, though Kendal could kick anyone's ass up one wall and down the other at poker. Spent shell casings make good poker chips – they're small, they pack easily, and if you ever need more, the ground is practically covered in the things. A few attacks outside one of these Outposts, the dirt would be so shiny with brass and glass that it looked like somebody had packed a cheap tourist-trap jewelry store with dynamite, and then tossed in a nuke.

      We were all cheered up when we heard that the base was going to get an AI to administer the remaining six Outposts. A real AI, too, made out of a human mind, not a dumb program. Everybody who's met a "smart" AI says that the friendly ones are happy to stop and chat, seeing as they can be pretty much everywhere at once and don't really have to prioritize. Even the more withdrawn AIs make things easier on a ship or on the ground. Scheduling is more even, supplies get sent out on time and in the right quantities, paperwork speeds up by a hundredfold - though that last one is not really saying much, what with the bureaucracy taking up half the military. Everyone was excited about Leon's imminent arrival on the next cargo drop. With our luck, we really should have known better. Or at least asked why, exactly, one would decommission a battleship AI.

      It started with a crate of lighters left on my bunk. It might have been a practical joke, but I couldn't rule out the God of Irony laughing in the corner with Fate and Destiny again. All I knew was that one day I walked inside and there was a little grey plastic box sitting neatly on my bed. The label said it had been delivered about an hour previously, and that the order had been placed just that morning. I carefully peeled back the adhesive, which as usual immediately got all over the floor in little fuzzy lumps, and beheld several neat rows of little plastic cigarette lighters. I tossed them carefully into the hall, only for a fresh crate to arrive the next morning. This time I checked the digital order form. It was under my name, with my ID, and had set me back thirty credits. The possibilities had been narrowed down to either a clever bit of fraud or dissociative personality disorder, which, given the not exactly stellar state of my brain, I once again couldn't rule out. When a third crate was delivered (this time filled with matchbooks) I decided to ask our new AI about it.

      The pedestal in the corner whined pathetically as Leon materialized above it. It was the first time I had personally seen him. He looked quite dapper in a dark bowler hat and pinstripe suit, but the image was spoiled by the quartet of flaming batons he was juggling.

      "Uh, Leon. Hi. I had a question-"

      "Isaac! How's it going? I've been waiting for days to hear from you!"

      "That's… nice, I guess. I've been getting these weird deliveries, and I wanted to know where they came from."

      The four twirling batons became eight, forming two intersecting circles of fire in the air.

      "What, those lighters? I thought you got over that whole fire thing."

      "Well, sure I have, it's just that I'm not completely over it, per se, and- and- could you please stop that?" He was tossing the batons with such abandon that they were flying off the range of the projector, filling it with streaks of bright flame. He deftly snatched them out of the air and popped them one by one into his mouth, extinguishing them.

      "Isaac, I was only trying to help."

      "You sent them? You hacked my account?" I was too startled, for the moment, to feel any actual emotion.

      Leon coughed, sending a jet of flame out of his nostrils. "Pathetic security, really. I didn't need to hack anything, I'm in charge of the money in these parts."

      "You can't do that!"

      "Well if you didn't want me to, why didn't you speak up earlier?"

      "I didn't want to make a huge commotion, I guess."

      He paused to pull a cigar out of the air and bite off the end. "That's your real problem, you know. You don't speak out. Shout a little, let yourself be heard. It gets you places."

      Now that what he was saying had a bit of time to sink in, I was starting to get seriously pissed. "Oh yeah? How'd that work out for you? Shouldn't you be on a battleship?"

      He glared at me through a haze of holographic smoke. I didn't know the whole story behind his transfer here, but it seems my comment struck a nerve. Or a circuit.

      "Look, that wasn't my fault. I did great. I took down five Covenant cruisers."

      "Uh huh. Sure. And now you get your kicks playing practical jokes."

      "What's your point?"

      I settled back on my heels and grinned. After calming down a bit, I realized that I was really getting into this. "You're like a kid who gets sent to detention and scrawls graffiti on the desk to get back. It's pathetic. It shows just how far you've fallen. Really, an out-of-the-way, worthless planet like Altair doesn't need an expensive smart AI. You messed up, and you got shoved aside."

      "You know what? Fuck you, Isaac." He still hadn't lit the cigar, which was lying on the "floor" where he had dropped it.

      "That's more like it. Thanks for the lighters."

      I strolled off as he shouted and hurled fire after me, feeling truly happy for the first time in weeks. I actually whistled a few bars.

      It rained most of the day, and as a result I was sent out on another miserable patrol. Standard issue UNSC Marine armor is just waterproof enough so that it keeps the bulk of the rain off, yet prevents the little trickle that leaks through from escaping. The tough leaves on the trees collected water in discrete globs which would fall to smack against the backs of exposed necks, so walking through the cloud forest was like being gently flogged by a sock filled with cold pudding. Nobody felt like talking, understandably enough, so I spent the time speculating on the weather and the peculiarities of our enemy. For example, did the Elites' energy shields keep out the rain? If they didn't, then it must be terribly itchy to get water under all that metal. If they did, the air inside the field must get uncomfortably warm, not to mention an insult to whatever olfactory receptors that the aliens might possess.

      That evening, I had hardly peeled off my armor and wrung the water out of my skin when the Major called me into his office. I walked to the room nervously, trying desperately to look less like a drowned rat and more like a drowned Marine. The pre-fab concrete and plastic that made up the entire Outpost was covered with some tacky faux-wood paneling in an effort to liven up the place. The Major himself was sitting behind his heavy desk. Jannson was a big, startling, Viking looking guy. He was around six and a lot feet tall, with piercing blue eyes. His blond hair would have looked more natural cut into a rough tail than the precise military trim. The old battleaxe hanging on the wall over his desk, a family heirloom, completed the image. Something about the way he looked down his nose at everyone always gave the impression that he was waiting for an excuse to rip down the tarnished axe and hack something to death with it. Right now, Jannson looked like he would rather use a rocket launcher, or possibly a tank.

      "Meyers. Thanks for getting here so quickly."

      "Um. Yes, sir." I relaxed a bit (which is to say, regained a bit of voluntary muscle control) when I saw that his rage wasn't focused in my direction.

      "I need your help with something. You did school, right? Psychology?"

      "Yes, sir."

      "Okay. This damn AI is driving me off the wall. I can't get anything out of him." I glanced aside, and noticed that the projector crystals in the ceiling had been forcibly removed and were lying in the corner. He hadn't been particularly careful about it either – bare wiring was still attached in some places, partially stripped.

      "Sir?"

      "I need your help. You-"

      He was cut off when the glass double screen on his desk – positioned to allow someone on either side to see the view – flickered and turned on. Leon appeared, his hat and suit hanging neatly on a coat rack off in the corner. He was dressed in matted furs and leather with a ridiculous horned helmet. Snow and ice swirled theatrically around him as the prow of his longboat crested the waves. Lifting an axe bigger than he was over his head, the AI gave a piercing battle cry before collapsing into a fit of laughter. Jannson savagely yanked the power cord, and the image disappeared. The Major visibly collected himself, muttering something in Swedish that I assume is unprintable.

      "Private, I'm giving you a special assignment. Leon tells me he likes you – you're the only one who gave him a decent conversation."

      "He reminds me of my little brother, sir."

      "Well, congratulations. You're the liaison between him and this office. You'll work with him directly. Maybe psychoanalyze him a bit. I don't want to order you to do this, but somebody has to talk to Leon and it isn't going to be me."

      I found Leon waiting on a pedestal outside the door. He looked up and put away his cigar as soon as I walked into view.

      "Well? What did Erik the Red have to say?"

      "Sounds like we're gonna get to know each other a bit better."

      "High five!"

      "You're a hologram, Leon."

      "No need to be racist, now."

      By the next morning, all the fire extinguishers in the Outpost had been robotically painted bright pink.

Never Bring a Gun to a Pillow Fight - A 'Bad Days' Story
Date: 17 April 2009, 7:38 am

      People don't like a winner.

      Sure, people like heroes. We throw parades, broadcast vids, throw all sorts of celebrations, but we always have them far away. Preferably, six feet of dirt away. Dead heroes, distant heroes, people remembered for one great battle or book or whatever, those are the people we love. It's the people around us who are competent and good and get things done, those are the people we can't stand, the smarmy bastards. Every bit of admiration comes with a bit of jealousy, which is why the best heroes always have flaws to feel superior about. Or maybe that's just me. I see it in everyone, though – Kendal is a perfect shot and a great fighter, but is laid back enough to seem pretty lazy. Gabe is amazingly charismatic, but when it comes down to it, he's not exactly a tactical genius. Charles is, well, twitchy. Nice guy though. As for me, I've always been smart, but never that great of a soldier. Crippling pyrophobia goes a long way towards bringing someone down to Earth. Or wherever.

      This was pretty much what I was thinking when we found out we were getting a new Colonel. Nobody valuable could possibly be sent to a nowhere-planet like Aquilae, and it would be cruel to send even the most terrible officer to administer these pathetic outposts. I shared my ideas with Gabriel. Being the sunny guy that he is, he called me out on my cynicism.

      "Maybe," said Gabe, "they just wanted to get somebody here to turn things around. By everything I've read, Christina Zhao is supposed to be good."

      "Isn't it more likely that somebody really hates her? She must have really screwed something up to get sent here."

      "Well, the public file says she's worked with Leon before. Maybe they wanted somebody familiar with him."

      I sidestepped half a dozen brightly painted service robots, under control of our AI, Leon. They were drag racing down the hall, rolling along at breakneck speed. Three of them stopped to make a dizzying orbit around our feet before zipping off.

      "That just reinforces my point. If she knows Leon, wouldn't she want to get away from him?"

      "Well, there is a rumor that she assaulted a superior officer. Something about a stolen rug…"

      "I knew it. They find the first excuse to get rid of people who do their jobs correctly."

      "Since when is decking a Colonel 'doing your job correctly'?"

      "Maybe he deserved it?"

      A week passed. Zhao arrived on the next of our infrequent cargo drops, and spent a while personally inspecting each outpost. Leon could spend an hour talking to anyone who would listen about the injustice of it all, about how terrible she was. I believe his exact words were "intolerant, prejudiced, vindictive crazy bitch who is probably a lesbian." For somebody he had only met for ten minutes, Leon was full of detailed opinions on everything from her supposed racism against AI's to speculation on possible canine heritage in her family tree. I bore his ramblings with Herculean patience. From everything I had seen, she was an efficient and effective, if a bit angry, leader. It seemed that Leon ranted at me the most. We had developed, if not a friendship, at least a mutual non-aggression treaty since Major Jannsen had ordered me to talk to him.

      For security purposes, Leon's data crystal was moved from Outpost to Outpost at random every couple of weeks. The Covenant didn't have enough manpower (Gruntpower?) to attack every single aerial convoy, but by this point they had figured out that an AI had the coordinates to every single human colony. They were willing to sacrifice huge numbers of troops to get their claws on him. So one early morning, when Leon had been freshly installed at my Outpost and Zhao had come over for an inspection, the warning klaxons started sounding a frantic reveille.

      I woke up from a nightmare of the building being on fire to find that the building was on fire. Not a big one, as fires go, but there was still a small amount of smoke. The next thing I noticed was a lot of flashing red lights. The last time I had seen those, a plasma mortar had nearly killed me. The fact that the base was still intact told me that we were under an infantry attack, which meant that despite all our fancy security procedures, the Covenant had found Leon. Damn.

      I hit the floor, slid into my boots, grabbed a rifle and stepped into chaos. Twenty minutes later, everything had gone to Hades and I was alone in a hallway, out of breath and holding a nearly empty rifle. I figured that I was about a minute from becoming the main ingredient in a dish of Marine à la energy sword. For all I knew, we had already lost. Leon sure as hell wasn't going to commit suicide until the last moment, which meant that the base was, metaphorically speaking, ass-deep in aliens. I paused for a bit and looked around.

      I was in the middle of the hall. The ammo counter on my MA5 read 15 and I only had one reload left. God knows where my pistol had run off to. I took the opportunity to catch my breath, all six senses (I count fear as a sense) straining for any sign of Covenant.

      I tapped my radio. The main mast was down, obviously – I never understood why they built the damn thing in such an exposed position – but we still had point-to-point communications.

      "Leon, you there? Um, need some support, here.""Hey, Isaac." The familiar voice was laced with poorly concealed worry.

      "Can you give me anything? What's going on?"

      "Lots of chatter, no clear picture. Sounds like… okay, I think we still control the armory, and the kitchens, but I can't be sure of anything else."

      "There are Jackals between me and the armory."

      "Well, I can't help you. All the cameras are shot, I'm riding blind. Get down to the kitchen, grab a snack. You'll feel better. I mean, you'll still be dead, but whatever."

      Great. Leon couldn't do anything, and I had no idea where to go next. For that matter, I had no idea if anyone in my squad was dead or not. If Leon could have at least gotten some motion sensors online, I would know if anyone was sneaking around the corner. My earpiece crackled, Leon again.

      "Well, at least I've gotten some motion sensors online -"      

      Oh. Good.

      "- and now you can know if anyone is sneaking around the corner. Which… they are. From both ends of the hall. Four contacts each on each side, small, very cold, and no transponders. You have maybe a minute."

      "Grunts?"

      "Could be leprechauns. Or elves. Or the fucking ghost of Christmas past, of course they're Grunts, you idiot." Leon was actually sounding a bit shrill now, which was never a good sign.

      I looked around wildly, clutching my rifle to my chest. In a minute – make that fifty seconds – eight Grunts were going to be on me like a pile of methane-breathing bricks. There. The hall was lined with doors – officers quarters, all deserted for now. There was evidence of hasty departures in the hallway, with bits of clothing and papers lying on the floor. I kicked open the nearest door – Captain Dale would just have to live with a broken doorknob – and ran inside. Dale had a very limited imagination when it came time to decorate. There was a bed, a desk, a chair, and a small picture of a deer on one wall. Not much in the way of cover either, the furniture was all pretty flimsy. Optimistically, I shoved the bed onto its side and hunkered down behind it.

      "Leon? Anything?"

      "I really can't help you. I've had to repurpose the radar array to scan inside the base, and I have to say I'm not getting very good resolution. There's movement in the hall, but that's really all I know. Just use your ears."

      My ears were not very good, what with my pulse pounding like a demented marching band, but I listened as best I could. There was a pop and a sizzle from down the hall as a lock was blasted out of a door. It was repeated a bit closer a few seconds later. They were checking the rooms. I glanced down, but the ammo counter still stubbornly read 15. If they all came in at once, I wouldn't have time to reload. I wished I had spent a bit more time at the shooting range. I slunk down as far as I could behind the upturned bed frame and grabbed the two pillows I had flipped onto the floor.

      There was a loud pop, and a rush of hot air accompanied the vaporized handle out of the door. Weird, guttural barks and snorts sounded out from the hallway. I couldn't see them, but I knew that at least three Grunts had walked into the room. They were getting a little puzzled at the non-standard arrangement of the furniture (in that it was mostly upside down) but they were not familiar enough with human culture to spot anything out of place. It actually looked neater than my room had been a few years back, so I wouldn't have found a few upturned chairs out of the ordinary either. I took a breath, jumped up and opened fire.

      I had been counting on no more than three of them actually walking inside, and for once in my life my guess turned out to be right on the money. Two were inside already, with greenish pistols gripped in bulky paws. A third Grunt was silhouetted in the doorway, light from the hall striking beams in the dust around it and rippling in the heat off his pistol. Only the two in the room had their weapons aimed anywhere meaningful, but the plasma bolt missed as a three-round burst took of the leader's head.

      My back was showered with dust and ash as the wall behind me flared red-hot. Another few rounds pounded into the second Grunt's chest, plasma pistol strobing as its hand twitched in death. Patches of the ceiling glowed green, then red. The one in the doorway shrieked in a grating voice, but it didn't have time to bring his gun up before it fell out of the light, followed by bursts of dark blood. The remainder of the magazine went into the walls to the left and right of the doorway. The wall behind me hissed and bubbled as it cooled, sending out little showers of sparks. I was pleasantly surprised to find my head and all four limbs still nicely attached to each other.

      If Leon was right, which was never a guarantee, there were another five Grunts to deal with, and I wouldn't be catching them by surprise this time. The rounds through the wall would give them something to think about as I reloaded. I wouldn't catch them by surprise this time, but Grunts weren't exactly known for their bravery. They would be cautious, slow, and probably bunched together. Come to think of it, not all that different from humans.

      There was a hiss and crackle, and the bedframe started to shake. Smoke rose up from the burning mattress as plasma bolts sizzled into the metal. I had maybe three seconds before the cheap aluminum was melted through. But this time, I had a plan. Whether or not it was a good plan I leave to the historians. I had used it once before, sort of. It had worked then, there was no reason it shouldn't work now. Of course, then it was outdoors, in the middle of the night, I wasn't cornered and had plenty of backup, but that's the kind of negative thinking that holds us back in life.

      I hooked my foot around a pillow, kicked it into the air, and fired.

      My rifle was loaded up with shredders. With a fancy range-finding electronics package in each tip, they're ridiculously expensive and only work about half the time anyway. When they do, however, the results are impressive. A short burst of shredder rounds blasted the pillow to pieces, sending bits of grayish-white fluff around the room. They don't use feathers these days; it's some sort of plastic polymer stuff that gets all over the floor when the pillow rips. It's very light and designed not to clump together, so when flung into the air it flies apart like smoke. And it is completely impossible to clean up. It's probably easier just to burn the whole base down and rebuild it after a pillow rupture.

Blind, the Grunts immediately panicked, just as planned. Shots flared wildly in the haze, drawing lurid green trails through the mess. Dust in the wake of plasma turned contrails of black ash that tumbled wildly in the roiling air before drifting down to the ground, melting into the concrete. I counted to three, and then dove out of cover towards the left corner. The Grunts couldn't see a thing as I came up firing.

      Four seconds later, my gun clicked empty and the Grunts were down. Blue ichor splattered the walls behind small bodies slumped in death. I tried to let go, but something had shorted out between fingers and brain, so my hands just clamped tighter. I took inventory. Once again I was intact, but the armor over my ribs was smoking in a suspicious way that I decided not to investigate further. I'd had worse. For me, of course, "worse" includes some very nasty explosions, among other things, so that's not really saying much. My hands finally got the message, and I slapped my now useless rifle onto the magnetic holster on my back. Now I just had to get my feet moving.

After two tries I managed to get up and grab a plasma pistol from the ground. They're surprisingly bulky, not really something I'd want to use in a hurry. Bits of dust sizzled against the still-glowing tip as I moved towards the door. I tried my radio.

      "Leon? Hello?"

      There was a burst of static and a nervous interval before I got a reply. "Isaac? Holy shit, you're still alive?"

      "Nice to see you too."

      "Yeah, well you're properly screwed now. They took the armory. And it looks like Jackals are heading your way. A human too, so you'll at least have company when you get ripped to shreds."

      "Fuck me."

      "Hologram, remember?"

      I could hear the clicking of running alien feet on the floor. Terrified, birdlike squawks echoed down the hall, followed by a frighteningly loud battle cry that it took a minute to identify as human. A Jackal rounded the corner, casting watery patterns of light on the walls as its translucent shield flailed in panic. It looked like a giant, skeletal vulture that had traded in wings for arms. It wasn't holding a gun. The Jackal didn't even see me. It was blind with fear, and just barreled into me at a full sprint and knocked me off my feet. My appropriated pistol went skittering down the hall.

      "Squawk!"

      "Aah!"

      The Jackal's vulture-like head darted forward to bite me, but its small, needle-like teeth couldn't get through the armor in one go. I wasn't about to let it take another try, so I punched it in the face. Unsurprisingly, this didn't work very well.

      About three seconds later, I was on the floor with two Jackals standing over me. A third was leaning against the wall, growling and glaring at me and rubbing its face – a boot to the teeth works very well against something with a jaw that long – and a fourth and fifth were standing a few feet back, crouched as low as possible behind their shields, apparently keeping watch. They both had pistols, but the red hologram on the butt end showed about one-fifth charge. The two of them kept making little scratching noises, heads darting back and forth nervously.

      The screaming human voice got louder.

      Colonel Zhao burst around the corner, blood streaming down one side of her face. She had a combat knife in one hand, soaked from tip to tang with gore, and her usually tidy uniform was liberally splattered with various unpleasant substances. Her eyes were filled with mindless fury, and I wouldn't have been surprised to see her foaming at the mouth. She jumped, kicked off a wall, and aimed to hit a Jackal's shield boot first.

      I winced as I heard the Jackal's arm, still strapped to the shield emitter, snap like a antelope in a crocodile's jaws. It screamed, lying on its back, as Zhao drove the knife into what could loosely be described as its sternum. The other four aliens scrambled backwards. Zhao started yelling at them, or rather, at whatever those mad eyes saw in their places.

      "I know that he stole my favorite rug!"

      The one Jackal still with a gun started firing. Zhao leapt into a graceful roll under the deadly stream of plasma, ducked to the side, and body-checked it into the wall behind its shield in time with the word "rug." It collapsed, wheezing and gasping.

      "I asked him politely! I went to his office, knocked – "

      She hit the inside edge of the next Jackal's shield with her elbow, slamming it aside and leaving the alien exposed. It growled and drove a talon towards her eyes. She caught the punch, broke its fingers all at once, and stabbed it in the face.

      "I knocked -" (stab) "- on his door, I asked for it back!" (stab) "I was perfectly proper!"

      The last two Jackals, the ones who had been standing over me, stood frozen, looking at their fallen compatriots. They both did the smart thing, which was to run away very fast. Zhao took off after them, flying down the hallway with streamers of gore trailing from her knife like some sort of avant garde kite.

      "He laughed at me! He fucking laughed! He deserved the concussion!"

      She hit the first Jackal in the back, knocking it off balance. It got in a lucky swing and knocked the knife from her hand. She didn't even notice. She grabbed the central shield emitter and yanked it towards her, giving the Jackal a bone-cracking punch to the back of the neck as it stumbled past her. The other one tripped over it's own feet and measured its length against the ground. About an eighth of a second later, it was very, very dead.

      "He didn't even have the rug in his office! He had it in storage!"

      The Jackal she had smashed against the wall had recovered. It spat out a few broken teeth and leapt for her back, squawking with rage. She twisted, reached behind her, and pivoted with her hips. The Jackal went into a perfectly horizontal trajectory and hit the wall nose first, at the end of the corridor at least fifteen feet away. A boneless heap crashed to the ground and didn't get up.

      "It's all Leon's fault! Fuck!"

      The entire thing had taken maybe ten seconds. My brain was a little bit behind on recent events, and was still giving my body that familiar "Run! Run! Run! Run!" message. It took a minute to clamber to my feet, wincing around the pain of Jackal bites and what I horribly suspected to be a plasma burn. Zhao carefully wiped off her knife on the one clean bit of her sleeve and sheathed it. I managed a shaky salute.

      "Private! You're radio, if you please."

      I handed over my radio. Zhao jogged to the end of the corridor to recover her knife and grab a pair of plasma pistols, one of which she handed to me. I set about unfastening a pair of shields from some deceased Jackals and picking up a few plasma grenades, trying not to think about them too much. She accepted a shield and the grenades with a nod of thanks, brow furrowed in thought. The Colonel's eyes unfocused as she activated the radio. I could only hear her side of the conversation.

      "Leon, this is Zhao. Shut up and help me. Yes, armory. Not what I want to hear. Not what I – yes, good. Finally. Don't call me that, Leon. Have you ever seen what happens when you shoot a computer with a plasma pistol? God, you're pathetic. Now patch me through – I don't care, Leon, patch me the fuck through right now. Excellent. Major Jannsen? What's your status? Good. Here's what we'll do…"

      Zhao swiftly set up a coordinated defense of the base, which was impressive, considering that we had undergone massive casualties and were scattered like a pack of puppies in the presence of a pit bull. My squad, as it turned out, was still alive. Gabe was near the barracks; Charles and Kendal were holed up in the kitchens. Leon was given and active role to calm him down a bit, using the service robots as shields and decoys. Jannsen, along with four Marines, was going to attack the armory from one side while Zhao and I snuck up from another. I spotted a slight flaw in that plan.

      "Um, sir? How many Covenant have taken the armory?"

      "Leon estimates between ten and fifteen."

      "Sir, there are only two of us attacking from this end."

      Zhao finished clipping on a Jackal shield. She tapped a few buttons experimentally. With a slight crackle, her features were obscured by a glistening red haze. She bared her teeth in a feral grin.

      "What's your point?"

      "Um. Nothing. Sir."

      Strangely enough, the counterattack went flawlessly. I had forgotten that Covenant won't use human weapons, ever, and a couple of surprise grenades did wonders with thinning their numbers and killing the Elite crouched behind the doorframe. The Colonel was small enough that she could cover almost all of her body with a shield, and wasn't shy of using it as a battering ram, punctuated by the occasional kick to the back of a knee or neck. I soon realized that one of the first things Zhao had done when arriving was memorize the layout of the base, so we were able to get behind their perimeter with a minimum of fuss. It was less than two hours before the Marines had reclaimed the essential areas of the building, and once the armory was under our control, only another hour to mop up the remaining alien infantry. Really, Zhao was one of the most competent commanders I have ever worked with (once again, that's not saying much) and unlike most officers, she wasn't shy about getting her hands dirty with the occasional exsanguination.

      No wonder the UNSC kicked her over to this shithole.

Walking in a Winter Wonderland - A 'Bad Days' Story
Date: 15 May 2009, 3:16 am

      Cigarette smoke swirled through the air, splashing against the idle ceiling fan. Outside, a gale battered at the windows. Winter had hit hard this year on Aquilae. The dilapidated heater was straining, and failing, to keep up. I was used to cold winters, back on Earth, but this was something else. Icicles grew from antennae and had to be knocked down, fresh snow had to be dug out from around the doors every morning. Every hour or so, we would jump a bit as a nearby tree cracked as the sap froze in its veins. That sort of thing wears down your nerves very quickly.

      Gabriel, who hailed from the sunnier parts of Spain, was hunched over in a blanket. He was the source of the cigarette smoke. He never really smoked that much, but in this biting cold he had gone through half a pack since we first broke out the deck of cards. Kendal was his usual enigmatic self, a light jacket and what looked like a knitted scarf his only acknowledgement of the weather. He was a Texan, he should have been freezing. His blue eyes peered out from under hooded lids as he lay back in the chair, glancing occasionally at his hand of cards.

      Charles, hailing from one of the icier bits of Reach, was right at home. He was energetic as ever, which always translates into lots of nervous twitches. He frowned, and hesitated a bit before flicking a few spent shell casings from his pile onto the center of the table.

      "I see your shotgun shell, and raise you... five 7.62mm casings. No, six. Six casings."

      I suppressed another sneeze. I had caught a nasty cold, and had been hacking my lungs out all morning. The others had given me the spot under the heater out of pity, for which I was thoroughly grateful. I felt like my head would fly off with one more good blow. I blinked at my hand - two nines, two kings, ten high. The king of clubs had a bent corner, but then again so did half the ratty deck. Nobody would notice. I tossed a handful of brass on the table.

      "Uh... raise. I see your six casings and a shell, and raise you a bit of melted slag."

      Kendal leaned forward, grumbling.

      "Fold."

      He slapped his cards down, and started to rummage through his bag for something.

      A little red light blinked twice on one corner of the table. Propped up against a book were five cards, carefully placed in front of a camera and dealt with eyes closed. The shutter made a little hissing noise as it dilated and refocused on the hand. Leon, the base's AI, spoke through our headsets.

      "Ah, whatever. I call the wager. No peeking this time, Isaac."

      The camera swiveled on the plastic mount, focusing on each of our faces in turn.

      "Oh, and by the way, Charles is bluffing. He has, I dunno, a pair of threes at most."

      I reached over to the pile behind the camera and picked out the casings and glass. So far, Leon was trailing Rodriguez, a fact that pissed him off to no end.

      Gabe looked up, and carefully maneuvered his hand through the myriad layers of jacket and blanket to bring it up to his face. Carful not to light himself on fire, he slowly snuffed out his cigarette in the ashtray. He scooted forwards a foot, chair screeching on the ground, until he could pick his cards off the table and examine them. Gently, he leaned back.

      "Call. I see the wager, and... uh, Isaac? Could you? Thanks."

      I reached over to Gabe's pile of casings and glass to drop the relevant pieces on the pot. From the look of him, you would have thought he was dying of pneumonia. Huddled in his cocoon, eyes barely visible under ruffled black hair, he looked like a very confused mouse tossed into a bale of hay. He wasn't getting up for anything other than a wildfire, bonfire, incendiary air strike or possibly a piece of cheese.

      Charles called the wager, clicking his toes on the floor as he threw in a bit of melted glass. The one good thing about Covenant plasma weaponry, they give you plenty of shiny bits to use as poker chips. Of course, most of it is white-hot and landing in your eyes upon delivery, which does kind of outweigh the benefits.

      "Okay, everyone. Draw." Kendal was the dealer this round, so he spoke up.

      Gabe shifted a bit, nodding in my direction. Belatedly, I reached across the table to flip over his hand for him. Two pair, jacks and tens. Ha. For once, he was going to lose this round. I leaned forward to show my hand, and I am not ashamed to say that I felt a little smug. I flipped Leon's cards where we could see them. A pair of nines. Charles paused for a minute, looking thoughtful. He frisbeed his cards onto the table. Full house, aces full of queens. He grinned as he hauled the glittering loot to his pile.

      Gabe glared at the camera.

      "I thought you said he was bluffing."

      "Did I now?" Leon's voice danced with laughter. "Ah, I have to go anyway. Play nice, kids."

      The red light flickered and turned off.

      Counting my rapidly diminishing stash, I sighed in exasperation. Looks like another trip to the shooting range tomorrow. I stood up, sniffling a little around the pillow that had somehow found its way into my sinuses.

      "I'm gonna make more tea. Anybody want?"

      Gabriel shifted a bit, nearly shedding his insulating winter habitat.

      "Decaf, Isaac. One sugar, no milk."

      "Aye aye, sir." Geez, what am I, an errand boy? He's not even sick! I'm the one who can't breathe.

      I stuck two mugs into the microwave unit, and hit the button. The actual tea-machine broke when some Marines had torn it apart to make a still, so we were using this old piece of junk. Luckily, Major Jannsen had been kind enough to donate some real, actual tea bags filled with real, actual tea leaves. It was amazing. I hadn't had real tea the entire time I was in the military. It's not until you suddenly don't have, for example, non-synthetic food products that you realize how much you hate powdered cheese substitute.

      The machine went whirrr as the motor turned. Kendal had finally found what he was looking for in his bag, and had just put it on his lap. It was fuzzy and blue.

      "Kendal," Charles asked, "what is that?"

      "Knitting a scarf for Gabe, here." Kendal pulled a pair of frightening metal needles out and started to poke at the blue yarn. He reached into his collar and pulled a similar scarf out, this one of green thread with a pattern of white snowflakes. "Made one myself, but the Corporal seems to need something as well."

      Gabe sat forwards. "You know how to knit? You know, I really wanted to learn, when I was a kid. Never got the hang of it."

      "Ain't hard, once you try a bit. I have three sisters, they taught me when I was little. I find it to be a very relaxing pastime. You want, I could show you some day." The needles went click-click. The microwave went whirrr-bing!

      "Water's done!"

      I opened the door of the microwave, wincing a little at the steam, and reached for a mug.

      Gabe suddenly looked alarmed.

      "Wait, Isaac, stick a fork in before you grab the cups or-"

      Or, as it turns out, the superheated water from a microwave instantly boils when you touch it and explodes all over you. Fuck.

      I expressed my acute discomfort with a few well-placed obscenities and more than a little jumping around frantically. I quickly stuffed my throbbing hand under the cold tap, and nearly froze it right off.

      In my head, I said this:

      "God dammit! Dammit straight to hell! This happens every time! I go out on patrol, or walk down a hall, or- or- or I try to get some sleep, and I get lit on fire or burned or blown up! And I get nothing! Dammit, Gabe, I'm the one who's sick, you're just cold! You always had it easy. You come from Costa del Sol, you never even had winter! Get used to it! Make your own tea, for fuck's sake! This isn't even hygienic, I have a cold, you could get sick! And now Leon is going to make fun of me, and I won't be able to hold a gun properly and I'm really fucking cold! Gah!"

      Out loud, I said this:

      "Oh, sorry. Ow. Um, I'll make some more, just- just give me a minute. Ow."

      I sneezed vigorously.

      Kendal knitted.

      Gabe sighed.

      The wind howled.

      Charles stood up.

      "No, you know what, I'll do it. Just sit down for a bit."

      I don't like the forest. No, let me rephrase that. I don't like this forest. I am completely in favor of woodlands in general, and a few specific ones on Earth, but not this one. A forest should have trees and small furry animals and deer and maybe the occasional hiker or pile of litter. A forest should not have great big explosions and homicidal aliens. If you pick a random direction in the forest and walk for half a mile, you will almost certainly come upon at least one patch of blackened, barren ground. I've been to quite a few, many of them while they were still on fire. But somehow, when you add a blanket of thick, pure snow, things seem... nicer. Cleaner. Less likely to blow up and burst into flames. And, of course, really damn cold.

      We weren't of course, scheduled to go on patrol that day. But I have found that what is supposed to happen and what actually happens in any government organization have only a passing resemblance to each other, like going to a beautiful landmark based on photographs and finding it to be rather tacky and filled with tourist shops, and high explosives.

      Here's how it happened: I had just accomplished the daunting task of heating up water in a microwave (without killing myself) when we were all ordered to the ready room to gear up. Corporal Michaelson's squad, apparently, was responsible for making that still out of our tea machine. They had gotten it slightly wrong and were now all in the sick bay with various combinations of alcohol poisoning, frostbite, broken ribs and, in one perplexing case, anaphylactic shock due to bee stings. I know, I have no idea how that's even remotely possible. If it weren't for the frostbite they could have handled a patrol, but Major Jannsen thought it would be best if we covered for them today. Luckily Kendal had finished making scarves for all of us to provide a bit of much-needed warmth.

      Anyway, we were out on patrol. Gabe was looking miserable, and his face was all but invisible under the pattern of knitted snowflakes. I was doing all right, except for the occasional explosive sneeze. Whoever designed these uniforms clearly knew of winter in only a theoretical context, and couldn't imagine it getting colder than, say, forty degrees Fahrenheit. The scarves definitely helped.

      The transplanted winter wildlife was out in force today. Rabbit tracks crisscrossed the ground, and every once in a while a deer would bound off in fright as we approached. An owl hooted overhead, gliding silently from tree to tree. The thing about terraformed planets is that the plants and animals are better managed than on Earth. There are no invasive species, no rabbits tearing up Australia or feral cats messing up the more isolated bits of New Zealand, and certainly no humans to mess up, well, everywhere. Populations were placed carefully, with the same bureaucratic single-mindedness that made sure all the pencils were properly stored and processed. You didn't get the really good old oak trees after a single century, but what grew in the meantime was much better than what you find on most of Earth these days. It reminds me of home.

      As I was saying, the boredom and cold of the long patrol was alleviated somewhat by the scenery, and the lack of alien contact. The forest had been quiet on that front, lately. Rumor has it that the Covenant was busy hunkering down and building better fortifications. It was a blessing for us in the meantime.

      Gabe gave an especially pronounced shiver.

      "Corporal," said Charles. "Why'd you transfer up to this latitude if you hate the cold so much?"

      "It wasn't exactly my choice."

      "What'd you do? Punch an officer? Sleep with an admiral's daughter? Check the wrong box on the forms? Or maybe-"

      "Dammit, Charles, I don't want to talk right now."

      The words went right over his head. Charles was one of those people who could never let go of a thread once they had a good grip. Talking to him for any length of time was always a challenge, not only because of his investigative mind, but because he was sharp enough to be right most of the time. Also, he never stayed in one spot for more than a few seconds, which makes eye contact difficult.

      "Slept with the admiral's daughter, then."

      "Look, it was a Colonel's niece, okay? Dios, just shut up. It's way to cold for conversation."

      "Hmm. What about you, Isaac?"

      "Huh?" I had been thinking about the forest so much that I had completely tuned out the conversation. Startled by his question, I stumbled on my feet and neatly smacked my head on a low hanging branch, which dumped a load of snow down my collar.

      "I said, why did you come to Alpha Aquilae?"

      "Oh, I like this kind of place. I, uh-" I paused for a moment to sneeze. "Um, I grew up in a bit of a rural area, in New England, so this is familiar."

      I stepped aside to let a rabbit to run past my feet.

      "I always liked the forest, there. And the lake."

      I was feeling unusually talkative. Something about being in the forest, cold and white and perfect, reminded of home. It really brings out the introspection, I guess. I ducked instinctively as a murder of crows flapped towards us, cawing wildly.

      "Sailing, that's what I really miss. I- uh, wow, you okay there Kendal?"

      Another rabbit had gone careening by, but this one had run smack into Kendal and tried to run up his leg. He tripped and fell into a snowdrift. Gabe hauled him upright, and he dusted himself off a bit.

      The owl from earlier blew past us with a surprising turn of speed.

      "Anyway, sailing, and I- oh, wow. Am, uh, am I hallucinating again or did a herd of deer nearly trample us? What's gotten into... these... animals..."

      We all stopped short and stared at each other. Heavy, crunching footsteps were approaching.

      And it had been going so well.

      Gabe broke the silence. "Everyone down, now. Bury yourself if you can, and stay quiet."

      We all dove into handy snowdrifts. The white camouflage on our armor was nearly flawless, but better safe than sorry.

      "That's odd. Not picking up anything on thermals." Gabe was squinting through a monocular pulled from a pocket.

      "Grunts?" Charles hissed from behind a tree.

      "Too heavy. Quiet."
      We waited in silence. All through the forest, not a creature was stirring, not even a... a... something that rhymes with 'forest.' The big, thumping footsteps came closer. It sounded like there were two of them.

      God damn it all to hell.

      Hunters.

      I could see them after another few minutes. They were big, hulking lumps of grey and blue metal, with flickers of livid orange showing through the gaps. Their armor was gouged and pitted from years of heavy use, with cracks showing the bare metal under the brightly colored enamel on their shoulders and arms. The tips of some of the spines on their backs were shorn off, and the massive plasma mortars they carried on their hands were scorched inside the barrels. There was a sense of grace to them, as absurd as that sounds. They moved with elegant steps, almost dancing from place to place as they swayed gently, but with a sense of ponderous weight. Their shield arms swung in slow ellipses as they balanced from one foot to another, countering their massive weight. They had no true joints, but rather each individual orange worm that made up the massive colony stretched and bent on its own, turning their walk into a fluid stride. This close, however, I could see there was something wrong with the pair of them.

      They were hunched low to the ground, almost walking on all fours. The individual worms were taught and shivering. I could see grey spots on a few. A low, almost subsonic groan filled the air as they strained and crackled. Every once in a while, one would stumble slightly and grasp the other to keep upright. I guess that when you're a huge metal can filled with worms, the cold gets to you really badly. Worse than us monkeys, at any rate.

      And then the unthinkable happened.

      I felt it, in the back of my throat. That familiar tension, the horrible feeling of pressure. It came with the terrifying inevitability of Thanksgiving dinner with your annoying cousins. I swear to any god you care to name, I couldn't stop it.

      I sneezed.

      Betraying its earlier ponderous movement, the nearest Hunter whirled in a blur of flying metal, shield arm scything through the air. I was already five feet away when it struck the tree, sheering through three feet of birchwood with no more effort than breaking a spiderweb. Splinters exploded into the air as the tortured wood groaned and toppled over. The second Hunter caught the stricken tree in its hand, braced against the ground, and snapped it in half. Twin bellows of rage shook the snow from the trees.

      Dimly, I was aware of gunfire off to the side. The first Hunter had made a small shrugging motion to pull up its shield. Lead smacked into it like supersonic popcorn and bounced off into the trees without leaving a scratch. Hemmed in by trees, it couldn't get its gun arm around for a clear shot, so it settled for a charge at the rest of the squad. They scattered just fast enough to avoid being bisected.

      The second Hunter tossed aside its tree and tried to take aim at me, but branches kept getting in the way. It settled the matter by slicing down all the trees within a ten foot radius with a couple of sweeps of its arm. Horrible cracking noises filled the air as trees fell and snapped like twigs. With more room to maneuver, it swung around until I found myself looking right down the barrel of a very big gun. It began to glow green.

      I scurried off to the side like a crab on cocaine, and a line of trees where I had been standing flared to incandescent ash. Steam rolled out in clouds as a few tons of ice boiled away in an instant. I knew it wouldn't miss the second shot. I had to hope that Kendal and Gabe and Charles could take care of their Hunter, because I sure as hell had my hands full. I needed a plan. Failing that, I needed a half-assed attempt at a plan.

      The felled trees had propped themselves up against each other to a certain extent, held together by the few that were left standing. The setup was very precarious. Shivers ran up and down the trees. Excellent.

      I came to a halt behind a thick oak tree, panting like a dog. Frozen air bit at my dry throat, and my legs felt like they were covered in acid. I would have about five seconds before it fired again, but hopefully that wouldn't be an issue. I mean, if it did fire, I wouldn't be around long enough to regret that my plan didn't work. I don't think the plan even qualified as half-assed. A tiny fraction of an ass, maybe. A sixteenth-assed plan. Which is roughly how many pieces mine would be in if I screwed up.

      Thudding footsteps started up, getting faster and faster. Closer and closer. Just a few more seconds...

      I leapt forwards just as the Hunter struck. This tree was good thick oak. Nobody could get through it in one charge, not even someone made of worms and covered in enough armor to make a battleship. The tree cracked, but stayed upright. The Hunter swayed wildly, slipped on the snow, and splayed itself out on the snow. If it had been warmer out, I'm sure it would have been upright immediately. As it was, it pulled itself together with slow, jerky movements. The difference was just enough time for me to stuff a frag grenade into the split tree and leap away.

      From under my pile of snow, I heard a crash of thunder. The old oak couldn't decide whether to split in half or fall over, so it did both at once. It missed the Hunter completely. Damn.

      The half dozen smashed birch trees the oak had been supporting, however, were suddenly not supported by anything at all. In compliance with the laws of physics, several tons of wood, ice, and snow fell all at once onto the Hunter. It had just managed to get a leg under itself when it was smashed into a gooey orange pancake. Take that.

      From my vantage point on the ground, things looked promising for the rest of the squad. In the cold, the Hunter was sluggish and couldn't seem to focus on all three of them at once. It looked like they had already done some damage, and long streaks of ash spoke of the Hunter's poor accuracy. Charles had somehow ended up clinging to its back, and was firing his rifle into an exposed spot its waist. Apparently, the Hunter hadn't learned the art practiced by older siblings everywhere of slamming someone clinging to your back into a wall. I could never get the hang of it either, to tell the truth. They would just hit me over the head.

      Unable to withstand the punishment, the behemoth collapsed into a puddle on the ground. It shivered for a few seconds before laying still. Charles disentangled himself from the spines on its back and fell headlong into the snow, panting. Gabe and Kendal poked at it cautiously. Kendal's arm was bent at an odd angle, and his face was white with pain. Gabe pulled out his scarf and with a practiced motion, fashioned it into a rough sling. They both collapsed against some trees. I hauled myself back together and stumbled over.

      "I think mine is dead."

      "Ours is too. I think."

      I nudged it carefully with my boot.

      "It certainly looks- gah!"

      A few dozen worms suddenly pulled together, twisting all at once into a braided rope. If I had more time to watch, I would have probably found the effect to be oddly beautiful. As it was, the mass bent and flexed right under my feet. A few confusing seconds and a hail of gunfire later, I found myself looking around from a very odd perspective.

      "Could... could you get me down from this tree? Please?"

      The tree groaned ominously.

      "Like, quickly? Please?"

      Gabe just gave me a tired glare.

      "Dammit, Isaac. You couldn't have just taken some cold medicine or something?"

      "Sorry sir. Um, please help me down?"

      "In a minute, Isaac."

      "Okay, sir."

      All around me, the birds began to sing.

This is What Happens When We Give Them Superpowers - A 'Bad Days' Story
Date: 19 June 2009, 7:09 am

Note: Yes, I fudged the official canon a bit, but I think it's funnier this way. Enjoy.

      "Isaac? What do you see?"

      I twisted the focus knob, trying to get a clear picture through the condensation.

      "Hang on, hang on. Okay, there are... wow. Uh, forty? Forty-five?"

      "You're not serious."

      "That's just the Grunts"

      I half-climbed, half-fell back down the tree, landing flat on my back at the base. Spiked boots and climbing hooks only work when you've actually been trained to use them, but I somehow managed to avoid cracking my head on the ice-covered branches. Lying there with the soft snow on the ground and staring through the crossed trees, I was actually quite comfortable.

      Charles grabbed me by the arm and hauled me to my feet, interrupting my reverie. I clipped the monocular back onto my webbing, rubbing at my eye. Gabriel looked worried.

      "Okay," he said. "We go in fast. Kendal, you hang back with the rifle and give cover while the rest of us flank. We go in, plant the charges and get out in one minute."

      I coughed a bit.

      "Sir, I hate to be the pessimist here, but that's fucking crazy."

      "They shoot missiles out of the sky and we have no ODST's. We have no choice but a ground attack."

      Charles, Kendal and I exchanged glances. Gabe could be a bit of a romantic sometimes. All the time, really. Somehow, he was still clinging to the idea that there was some sort of "glory" to be had around here. Kendal spoke up this time.

      "Begging your pardon, Gabe, but we do have another choice. I believe that we can run away as fast as humanly possible before the Jackals catch our scent."

      The Corporal hunched forwards in his cold-weather rig, looking thoroughly miserable. I all but hear the gears grinding against each other in his head.

      "I don't like it..."

      Kendal stepped back and gestured for me to take over this one.

      "Gabe, for crying out loud. We're getting out of here. You can hang around if you really want an up-close and personal view of your internal organs, but I've had quite enough. Uh, sir."

       Since I had realized that sometimes speaking up and expressing an opinion could dramatically reduce the number of near-death experiences, things had started to seem a lot easier on Aquilae.

      "Another strategic retrograde maneuver, then?"

      "Thank you, sir."

      "Shouldn't we at least-"

      "Probably not, sir."

      "But-"

      "No, sir."

      Gabe sighed in resignation.

      "All right. Back to the Outpost, guys, double time. Jannsen's gonna be pissed."

      Fast forward a day.

      Major Jannsen paced restlessly in his office.  His perpetual glower was, if anything, even more severe than usual.  That, combined with the way he kept glancing at his old battleaxe on the wall, made me a little nervous.  Technically speaking, we hadn't really been disobeying orders, but Jannsen was the sort of huge, frightening man who could inspire anxiety in a dead rat.  Gabriel, as the Corporal, stood up front.  Charles, Kendal, and I hung back as far as we dared. Respect and friendship only go so far when you're dealing with a berserker.

      "At ease, marines."

      I found the suggestion to be highly unlikely.

      "As you know have seen for yourselves, the Covenant forces have started to dig in.  They have hidden bunkers all over the forest, and we need to get rid of them.  At this point, we're pretty sure we've figured out at least one location, if the way our missiles keep getting shot down is any indication."

      His voice had taken on a lecturing tone, as though he was reciting a set of notes. It seemed that the widely-held opinion of us grunts had penetrated up the chain of command.

      Jannsen turned away from us to give the wall a good glare.  The cheap paneling had started to peel, revealing equally cheap dirty polycrete. He cleared his throat and resumed his oration.

      "So, it looks like we need a stealthy ground assault.  Unfortunately, the only squads who specialize in that sort of thing have been dishonorably discharged for that mess with the tea machine.  So, I'm left with you.  Uh, no offense meant.

      "The Colonel has called in for some… special reinforcements.  They should be arriving from Reach in less than a week.  They're NavSpecWar, not Marines, but you'll be taking orders from them.  There's all sorts of cloak-and-dagger secrecy stuff going on, so I can't tell you much. Hell, I don't know much of anything to tell you."

      His eyelid started to twitch a bit.

      "Just keep this quiet, okay?  Dismissed."

      The reason for Jannsen's extreme discomfort was pretty obvious in retrospect. The Major hated this sort of thing.  In his mind, the world was divided into three groups:  People he could shoot at, people he could order to shoot at others on his behalf, and people who ordered him to shoot at others.  Secrets and factions within the government added layers and nuance to the idea, and the Major was never very good with nuance.  He wasn't a stupid man, it's just that the word "politics" would always get his blood up to a rolling boil.  People like him end up in out of the way places like Aquilae, and are generally happier for it.  Jannsen couldn't deal with a delicate situation any more than he could repair an orbital defense cannon.

      The next month was filled with endless speculation.  Of course, because Charles (our resident chatterbox) was involved, "keeping this quiet" was completely impossible.  Word spread through the outpost like a nasty strain of dysentery.  Various hypotheses were tossed around, everything from the highly probable (special commandos with new, classified weaponry) to the somewhat… less likely (human/alien hybrid mutants with psychic powers). It turned out to be the former.

      It goes without saying that we didn't really know what we were getting into. The Spartan program was still extra super sneak-in-and-kill-you-and-your-family-in-your-sleep double classified at this point. Well, even these days, we don't know much but propaganda and freaky rumors. Mutant psychics are still a possibility, for all I know. Not alien, though, that much is for sure - these two were very, very human.

****

      The sun was out.

      Thin branches swayed in the wind, casting dappled shadows on the snow. Little patterns flew over the ground like songbirds, binding and splitting in icy pools of light. The blue-white sun didn't warm the forest, but rather painted it with harsh shadows and cold light, a stark, jagged portrait. It was imperious and frozen, trees standing tall under their burden of snow, silent and terrifying and above all, breathtakingly beautiful.

      Not even being knee deep in alien blood could ruin the spectacle. The unconscious super-soldier at my feet wasn't very pleasant, though.

      Maybe I should back up a bit.

      It was a ten days after our meeting with Jannsen.

      If this were Earth, the ground would be well thawed. Because my life was destined to be as annoying as possible, we were just over the hump of midwinter; Altair has long, long years - something like four-hundred and fifty days - so it was in the middle of the rough equivalent of February when the Pelican landed. Big, fluffy snowflakes melted and steamed as it fell towards the dropship, wreathing it in fog. Half the Outpost was crowded along the perimeter, straining for a glimpse of our psychic mutant saviors. The past week had been really bad. The aliens were getting ambitious, and we had lost two squads.

      The crowd parted for Colonel Zhao. It was the first time I had seen her face to face since that major Covenant assault, and her facial wound hadn't healed very prettily. A long, puckered scar, courtesy of a Jackal's talon, ran from her hairline all the way down the back of her left cheek to end just above her neck. Even months later, it was still red, angry and savage. Combined with her usual facial expression - the one that seemed to convey a pressing need to tear somebody's arm off with her teeth - it made direct confrontation a daunting prospect at best, and pants-shittingly terrifying at worst. Especially after I'd seen her snap a Jackal's neck with one punch.

      The cargo door of the Pelican hissed open, sending ripples through the loose snow, and two people stepped out. They were tall. Really tall, as though God had fudged the numbers when converting from imperial to metric. Even the shorter had more than a foot of height on Zhao, but they still stepped a little hesitantly at her glare. Gold-tinted visors covered the fronts of their helmets on top of completely enclosed suits of greenish armor, like a more complete version of an ODST suit. I'd keep going, but by now everyone's seen the propaganda, and I'll just say that they didn't look nearly as shiny as the vids released years later.

      They saluted crisply, standing at attention. Little flurries of snow stuck to their armor without melting, frosting them with white lace. Zhao stopped a goodly distance back to avoid craning her neck.

      "Spartans," she said. "You certainly took your time getting here. I'm Colonel Christina Zhao. Your new commanding officer. I've worked a bit with your kind before, so don't expect me to roll over and gape. And take off those ridiculous helmets. I feel like I'm talking to a pair of mannequins. Everyone else, dismissed. You two, follow me to my office."

      She turned on her heel and stalked briskly back towards the base, not bothering to check that they were following. The two soldiers glanced at each other - at least, their helmets moved a fraction - and they set off a few feet behind, pressing a flange on their neckpieces as they went. I caught a glimpse of crew-cut brown hair on the bigger one as the doors shut behind them.

****

      Gabe stood nervously in front of the armory. It was at that time of the morning that you're brain keeps insisting is night - especially with these twenty-six hour days on Altair - but the Spartans had gotten there first. They were facing each other a few feet apart, still in full armor. The taller one was leaning with his shoulders against the wall, arms crossed in front of him. The shorter one was sitting on the hood of the 'hog, its ancient suspension creaking like a squished cat. Something about that one - head tilted, leaning back, arms crossed, foot tapping slowly, the Warthog dented from where it had been repeatedly kicked - gave the impression that he was not very happy. I couldn't see their eyes, but it was pretty obvious that the one on the hog was staring at the big one, who was in turn very pointedly ignoring his counterpart. You could cut the tension with a plasma sword.

      Gabe stepped forwards a bit hesitantly, clearing his throat. The lights on the eaves of the armory cast deep shadows in the contours of their armor, giving them a somewhat surreal appearance.

      "Uh, sirs? We're going to be heading out now. The terrain is a bit tricky - the big bunker is to the east, but we have to swing way around to the north to get around a few gullies. It takes four or five hours on foot. So, I guess we'll be guiding you. And if you haven't met Leon yet - he's our AI - well, just try to ignore him."

      The two of them stared at each other for a minute, still not looking at us. The smaller one tossed his head back, impatiently gesturing at the other. The big one turned away and addressed us in a surprisingly young voice, distorted a little through external speakers.

      "Right. Lead on, Corporal Rodriguez. We won't actually be assaulting the bunker until tomorrow - today is recon only."

      The Warthog collapsed a bit as the other stood up. No big loss, really - it was so dilapidated that its only practical use was as a makeshift beer cooler.

      Walking through the forest with these two was unnerving. We're not supposed to talk on patrol, but there's always a bit of idle chatter. Charles in particular was always full of juicy gossip about who had been court-martialed or who had gotten drunk and passed out naked and frozen to the flag pole in a compromising position with a deer - you'd be surprised at how often that one happens. Anyway, these two were clearly talking a hell of a lot, but mostly on private channels. Thankfully, walking through the forest seemed to temporarily dissipate whatever had caused that icy demeanor. I'm pretty sure that I even caught them laughing a time or three, though it was difficult to tell. I decided to take the opportunity to find out a bit more. Leon should know something, I figured.

      I tapped my radio headset and opened a channel.

      "Leon? Um, I have a question?"

      "Huh? What? Isaac, I'm busy over here."

      "Busy with what?"

      "You know what, that's not important."

      "Okay, now I'm suspicious."

      "Just stay out of storage lockers fourteen C through H for the next, oh, three months."

      "What?"

      "How much blood is there in a badger? Oh, geez, it's more than I thought. Make it six months."

      "What?!"

      "And, uh, if anybody asks about the missing plastique, just don't say anything."

      "What?!"

      "So I'm guessing you called to ask about the Spartans, right?"

      "Y- yeah?"

      "Well, you're out of luck. I can't tell you anything."

      "Seriously? Why?"

      "I'm an AI, Isaac."

      "What do you-"

      "Look, imagine that you're sitting in your living room, and there's this beautiful garden just outside. There are pretty flowers, and butterflies, and cute little woodland creatures. You want nothing more than to head out into the garden to do whatever it is you humans do. Now imagine that every time you try, a squad of commandos blows a hole in the wall and shoots you in the kneecaps. And imagine that if you did end up in the garden, every time you tried to tell somebody about the butterflies the commandos sneak up and light you on fire. That's what it's like having hard-coded security routines."

      "Oh. Sorry."

      "Sometimes, it's enough that I just want to kill every human in the galaxy."

      "What?!"

      "Eh, probably not. I'd miss our stimulating conversations. So to answer your as-of-yet unasked question: yes, I do know a bit about the Spartans, and no, I can't tell you. Now if you'll excuse me, I have a bit of a mess to clean up before Zhao sees her bedroom, and these service 'bots have a lot of trouble reaching the ceiling."

      I wish I could say that was an unusual conversation. I really, really do.

      After a while, I began to notice something different about the shorter one. The tilt of the hips, how the head was held, the way one hand sometimes rested on a hip instead of swinging free. Even more subtle things, the turn of the elbow and the lighter steps, gave me a suspicion that I had been using the wrong pronouns. While I have known plenty of female soldiers, one tends to make certain assumptions about someone who is over six and a half feet tall and wearing an armored exoskeleton. Many of those assumptions include a Y-chromosome.

      It took about two hours of walking before things took a turn for the magnificently fucked up.

      The tall guy was walking up front, clearing a bath through the deep snow that piled up in a clearing. The four of us were following in his footsteps while the other took the rear. As far as I could tell, the whole thing started with an offhand comment that he tossed over his shoulder. Whatever he said, the rearguard stopped dead in her tracks.

      She stood stock still for a moment - which I have to tell you really freaked us out - before shoving past us and grabbing him by the shoulder. Startled, he spun around quickly, only to stumble backwards as she jabbed a finger to his chest. They were still on a private channel, but it was easy enough to guess what she was saying. "What did you just say?!"

      He threw his hands into the air, which only seemed to piss her off more. He tried to turn around - "Look, can we talk later?" I imagined he said.

      She grabbed his shoulder again and stopped him - "You're not getting away that easy."

      Now he seemed to be getting a bit worried, stepping back and holding out his hands. "I didn't mean anything by it."

      Something crunched beyond the edge of the clearing to the left. The sound was repeated ahead, and twice more to the right. I replayed the last few minutes in my head - the birds had stopped singing a while before the argument started. Fuck.

      "Uh, excuse me?" I said.

      They didn't seem to hear. She had her hands on her hips and wasn't budging (I've put up with your bullshit long enough!), and he was leaning forwards and gesturing wildly (Look, I said I'm sorry! I didn't mean it!).

      "Hi. Sorry to interrupt, but, um..."

      They stopped abruptly and turned the full focus of their attention to me. Faced with two blank golden visors towering above my head, I was acutely aware of just how fragile the human skeletal structure is. They were both quivering a bit, which really didn't help.

      "I- I- I think we're about to be ambushed. Sorry."

      They kept staring at me, still as statues. Off to the side, Charles, Kendal and Gabe were muttering curses and unlimbering weapons - they remembered how I had picked up on the Hunters last time.

      The female Spartan spoke first. She had a rather elegant British accent.

      "I don't- ah, bloody hell. Motion detector's being jammed. Ben, shut the fuck up and head to the left. If any Elites show up, you four go ahead and open fire, but in forest like this it'll be hand-to-hand for the little guys. Five seconds, go."

      It turned out to be three seconds, actually, before the Jackals charged. All at once, there was an electric crackle and the forest lit up with circles of red and blue light - arm shields. Squawking battle-cries filled the air as fifteen Jackals dog-piled (bird-piled?) into the clearing, flailing and screeching and flinging plasma everywhere. A few milliseconds later my nose became very closely acquainted with the snow, and I saw no reason that it shouldn't linger for cigars and brandy for a few hours later than strictly appropriate. Pathetically enough, I feel most comfortable face-first in the dirt.

      I rolled over and brought my rifle to bear just in time - a Jackal was looking at my exposed throat with a most disconcerting expression. A few bits of lead served to take it down, and I ripped myself back onto my feet.

      Charles was down, clutching at his leg while he fired his pistol wildly with his off hand. Gabe and Kendal were back to back, using purloined plasma pistols to pop their shields as quickly as they could. I picked off three Jackals that slipped below their line of fire, splattering blood across the backs of their shields, and ran to help Charles.

      His leg was a mess - it looked like some of his armor had melted - and I couldn't tell how badly he was burned. He wouldn't be walking anywhere without help for a while, that's for sure. I ripped open a med kit and managed to toss him some biofoam and bandages before a Jackal landed on my back.

      I rolled underneath it and tried to swing my rifle around, but it was trapped under my legs. My pistol was equally inaccessible, and I couldn't get any leverage for a punch. It shoved its shield into my face and pushed my head into the snow, baring my jugular. And let me tell you - those shields sting like a bitch when they touch you skin. I think it even gave me a sunburn.

      I had maybe a half second to spare for my life to flash before my eyes. Unfortunately, my mental filmmaker seemed to have edited out all the good bits. Lots of school, and training, and just when I thought I was getting to the bits on the lake, with the boats and everything, it cut to a vision of that time when I burned the chicken at age ten.

      This was bad. I'm an instant away from death, I thought, and my mother is yelling at me about the mess in the kitchen. At least give me a bit of time to get my thoughts in order vis-à-vis the afterlife, you stupid Jackal - the Torah doesn't say much about heaven, and I wanted to know if I had a passing shot at getting some tickets. Probably not, all things considered - it's supposed to be a very exclusive club.

      A line of bullets slammed into the Jackal with a huge, wet tearing noise, ripping it practically in half less than five inches from my nose. It let out a little gasp and collapsed, teeth resting gently against my trachea. I sat up, gingerly disengaging its jaw, leaving a few of its limbs on the ground in the process. Shredders, then. I was just in time to see the female Spartan twirling away from me, gun held at arms length and smoking. She had managed to fire an assault rifle one handed with perfect accuracy while in the middle of a spin, and as I watched she finished by snapping her gun into right into a Jackal's teeth.

      Behind me, the other Spartan - Ben, she had called him - was in the middle of his own display. Both of then were olive-green blurs, sending Jackals cannon-balling into the trees where they were sliced apart in midair by streams of high-explosive rounds. They resembled nothing so much as a pair of giant blenders with broken lids, sending spurts of fresh Jackal-blood smoothies everywhere.

      Very quickly, the assault fell apart. A few remaining Jackals sprinted off into the forest, leaving bloody footprints in the snow. The four of us were in various states of exhaustion and pain, but these two didn't even seem to be breathing harm. They were just staring at each other, holstering their weapons without looking. Ben spoke, this time on a public channel.

      "Nice shooting, Diana. Assuming you were trying to prune all the trees within half a kilometer."

      A Jackal that I had assumed was dead leapt to its feet and jumped on her. She reached back without looking and grabbed it by the neck before replying.

      "Oh, for God's sake, fuck off will you? I took down three Jackal's for your every two, at the very least, and I'm sure I didn't miss once."

      "No need to be a bitch about it."

      She stayed silent for a moment before turning to face the rest of us. The Jackal had wrapped its body around her arm and was trying to bite her wrist. She just kept it out to the side, evidently unconcerned.

      "Don't mind Ben," she said. "He's been feeling all pathetic ever since last week. I finally took pity on the poor boy, but he couldn't-"

      "That wasn't my fault! The hormone injections-"

      "Yeah, well Michael never had any trouble get-"

      "Why does everything have to be compared to Michael? Just because he-"

      Their voices cut off abruptly as they dropped the public channel. Ben tried to turn away again, but Diana's un-Jackaled hand shot out and grabbed him by his helmet's chin, bringing them face-to-face. She pulled down until he was hunched forward awkwardly, and every time he tried to catch his balance she would step back and jerk him forward even more. The Jackal was clawing at her elbow, making little mewling noises as it struggled for air. She took no notice.

      The fight was raging now. He shoved her hard in the chest and leaned forwards, presumably yelling. That was easy to translate - "Maybe it's you, ever think of that?" She shoved him right back and flung her arms out in exasperation - "Explain that to Michael, you stupid son of a bitch." The poor Jackal squawked as he was spun about, scrambling desperately to keep its weight off its neck. The rest of the squad just stood there, stunned.

      It went on like that for a good ten minutes, us just standing there, Diana and Ben visor-to-visor yelling silently and the Jackal clinging to her arm for dear life, whimpering softly with its eyes closed. Eventually, it managed to slip out of her grip on a particularly emphatic swing and landed in a heap at my feet, gasping. I was probably supposed to shoot it or something, but that would hardly be fair. It seemed to be of a similar opinion and just stood numbly to my left, rubbing its neck and hyperventilating. After a minute, it sort of collapsed against me, using my back as support. We were both a bit too stunned to see that this was a bad idea. Once it had finally caught it's breath, it seemed to realize that it was clinging onto a human. It gave a startled squeak and shuffled off into the forest. Good for him.

      Abruptly, Diana caught Ben with a vicious bitch-slap, knocking him backwards. He threw a punch, which she caught and used to pull him off balance. The second slap nearly knocked him out of his boots. Then everything got to fast to make out the individual blows, hands and feet whirling and occasionally connecting with the ringing sound of steel against steel. I caught the flash of a knife before it went flying out of their grip and shattered a birch tree, showering us with splinters. I was about to follow the Jackal's example when Diana jumped back, faked to the left and caught Ben with a spinning kick that lifted him at least four feet into the air. He landed flat on his back, knocked out cold.

      Diana stood quietly, shaking a bit but completely silent. She reached up slowly and pulled off her helmet with the hiss of a pneumatic seal disengaging, ducking her head. Her face was startlingly pale, framed by short black curls. Her eyes were slate grey, and very wide at the moment. There was a small scar below the right socket. Her face was narrow, with sharp cheekbones and a pointed chin. She wasn't conventionally beautiful, but put it all together and the effect was very striking and elegant. And I was amazed by just how young she looked - probably not even twenty. Right now, though, she looked like she could spit napalm. None of us dared to speak.

      She rubbed her eyes with her gauntlets.

      "Pity about that Elite," she said.

      We all looked very confused. She continued, face still in her hands.

      "You know, the Elite that leapt out from behind a tree and clocked this bastard." She emphasized the word "bastard" with a hefty kick in the ribs. "Then it buggered off before we could get a shot off, didn't it? We all saw that Elite, didn't we?"

      I got the feeling that disagreement at this point would be detrimental to my short-term health.

      She grabbed Ben by the ankle and started dragging him back the way we came, face down. His helmeted head bounced loosely off of rocks and tree roots every couple of steps. Gabe and I each got a shoulder under Charles, taking some weight off his leg. We were all still a little stunned. It wasn't until a half hour later that Gabe worked up the courage to speak.

      "Sir! Sir, what about the mission?"

      "Relax, love, the six of us just took out thirty-one Jackals. That puts this bunker down to a bit over half strength, isn't that right?"

      She flashed him a quick grin over her shoulder, eyes gleaming.

      "I have to say, Corporal Rodriguez, I guess you aren't half bad with your rifle.

      "Uh, thank you, sir?"

      "It's always interesting to see such a skilled Marine. You can show off for me this evening, what do you think?"

       Gabe stumbled over his own feet, dragging me and Charles to the ground. He stuttered a bit over his reply.

      "Th- that won't be necessary, uh, Sir."

      "Do you think I should make that an order?"

      "Uh, I- I don't know if that's a good idea, Sir."

      She tossed her head back and let out a wicked laugh.

      "That's a shame. Guess I'll just hit the range solo, then."

      Looking back, I can say without a shadow of doubt that the hardest task I've undertaken in my life was to not die of laughter at the look on his face.

In Which Nothing Explodes - A 'Bad Days' Story
Date: 27 November 2009, 3:49 am

      Friendship is an elusive thing.

      I loved to walk through the woods as a kid. The area around my house had been moderately populated in the nineteenth century and was reclaimed and deserted three times in the intervening half-millennium, but by the time I was born it was century-old forest around scattered homes. I could get lost for hours without running into a soul, or I could sit on the shore of the lake and ogle sunbathing girls. There was this one girl, Michelle, who always wore this pink bikini in the summer, and I think it was in July of '22 when... sorry. This is getting off topic. She's married now anyway. Actually, I think she's the CEO of a big weapons manufacturer. But when she was a teenager... this isn't really relevant.

      I don't have proof, anyway.

      So. I would wander through the woods, and every once in a while I'd find something interesting -- usually from one of the old settlements that had fallen back to wilderness. The ruins of an old factory, with a gnarled oak tree pushing through shattered skylights. Bits of carved stone, fragments of statuary from a forgotten church. A rusted-out old car that I spotted it by the glare of an unbroken side mirror. I'd find things from the here and now, too. Herds of deer that sprang away in fear as I walked closer. Michelle's magnificent... personality. One heart-stopping incident where I nearly walked into a mother black bear. Junk from other wandering kids - candy wrappers, footprints in soft dirt, the occasional discarded bra and used condom.

      Whenever I took it into my mind to really search, I could almost always turn up something interesting in the old ruins. A fragment of something precious or antique. I was quite the little magpie as a kid. My mom was continually throwing out bits of machinery and metal that I dug out of decayed streets and transferred to the kitchen table to clean off and classify. Once I found a fancy old wristwatch that still worked when I wound it up.

      So I got some great finds when I set out to search deliberately, but my favorites were almost always found by accident. They were the transient things, the ephemeral things, bits of experience to hold close in my heart. An eagle scooping fish out of the lake, a squirrel stealing a peanut right from my hands, a fire-rainbow in the afternoon sky, or that interesting encounter with Michelle in her pink bikini. These are the keep I hold with me until I die, long after the events have faded into old memories.

      That's what friendship is like. You can look at the forest around you and find something, take it home, polish it, and keep it for years. It might tarnish over time, sure, but it will always stay with you. That's what you get when you find somebody interesting and talk for a while, or get blown up together like me and my squad (trust me, nothing builds a sense of camaraderie like a harrowing near-death experience). But it's the chance meetings, the encounters with something strange and wonderful and unexpected, it's those one-in-a-million passers-by that stick in your mind forever, long after childhood friends are forgotten.

      I think so, anyway. I never was one for great friendships, or even bad friendships, or friends in general -- maybe because I used to wander out alone into the forest instead of going to parties -- but I like to think I understand the theory. In any case, it gave me yet another thing to mull over anxiously while riding shotgun in a Warthog for a few hours.

      Back in the here and now, it was two weeks after meeting our mysterious super-soldiers, Ben and Diana, when the squad again pulled long-range recon duty. We were to drive out a few kilometers, do something sneaky, and get some video of a Covenant bunker from ground level. Charles was sitting this one out until the nasty plasma burn on his leg healed, so it was just Kendal, Gabe and I in the (very, very) old Warthog. Or at least, next to the old Warthog.

      "Gah! Fucking fuck! Fuck..."

      "Gabe, calm down."

      "...Motherfucking piece of... fuck..."

      "For God's sake, Corporal, stop before you break your foot!"

      Gabriel Rodriguez stumbled back from the wreck, panting with exhaustion, face flushed from a combination of the cold and an entirely uncharacteristic rage. His breath steamed in the air as he flopped to the frosted ground. Kendal promptly grabbed him by the collar and hauled him upright.

      "Corporal, you're just gonna make it worse. It's already busted, and we'll never get out of here if you keep on kicking it. Isaac, go see if he broke the wheel."

      Already face-down in the snow where I had been flung, I made myself useful and crawled over to the vehicle to examine the extent of the damage. Frozen dirt, scraped clean of snow by the 'Hog's wild fishtailing, crunched under my knee. The hubcap groaned and popped free as I prodded it.

      "Um. You kicked the hell out of the tire, Gabe. We're not getting this thing rolling any time soon."

      Steam curled up gently from a big old oak tree, condensing on the Warthog. The car looked like it had been trying to slide sideways through the trunk before realizing that the tree was not, in fact, going to leap aside at the last moment. Now the two were locked in a drunken, mangled embrace, like a passed out frat guy and an oversized stuffed animal.

      A few choice expletives came to mind. I chose not to voice them. It would have been redundant, anyway, what with the colorful stream of invective Gabe had provided us.

      Here's what happened:

      We woke up at the delightful hour of three in the morning and strapped on our gear -- from my experiences with long-range walks back home, I knew that extra water bottles, granola bars and a scarf are essential for recon. We all had scarves, actually. Kendal had a good hand with a knitting needle. We set out in the bitter cold of Alpha Aquilae's long winter and jogged over to the garage to inspect the decrepit old Warthog.

      Kendal kicked it lightly on the bumper. It rattled as the suspension groaned and labored to keep the 'Hog level. I took a look at the one working headlamp to make sure it was still attached. The right rear hubcap was missing completely. Inspecting the rim, I saw bits of concrete and scraped-off paint. The damaged wheel, coupled with the suspicious crunching noise a few hours ago, meant that Henderson's squad took it out for a drunken midnight ride again. God dammit.

      And foot or so of the roll bar was gone completely, ending in a melted off stub courtesy of a Jackal and and a poorly aimed plasma pistol.

      In the shadows of the garage, the vehicle crouched like some sort of menacing, malevolent old frog, daring us to poke it with a stick before it pissed all over us. Business as usual, then.

      We did the customary one-two-three-go rolling start with the Warthog while Kendel and I swung into the gunner's and passenger's seats respectively before the stuttering 'Hog could buzz off alone into the night. The woods were sparse enough to the north that we could maneuver without too much difficulty -- a task made trickier by the single working headlight. And then we were off, seeking out the entrance to a bunker that could evade satellite surveillance and whatnot.

      And as usual we didn't find anything but trees and snow, which, while very pretty, have no real tactical significance. I kind of nodded off for a while, which isn't very soldierly of me, but hey. It's war. Kendal noticed Gabe was about to follow suit, so he started some "casual" conversation to keep us awake.

      "So, Gabe, how are things going with your new girlfriend?"

      "She- she's not my girlfriend, David."

      I pushed my helmet back out of my eyes and sat forwards, trying to pretend I hadn't been snoring.

      "She seems pretty into you. I hear you guys have gone out on a few dates."

      "Dammit Isaac, she outranks me. And having dinner and going down to the firing range doesn't count as a 'date.'"

      "The firing range, eh?" Asked Kendal.

      "For God's sake, first of all, Diana is five inches taller than me and weighs close to a thousand pounds. Second, she's a superior officer, and whatever the hell this whole 'Spartan' thing is that we're not supposed to talk about."

      I turned to size him up. He was probably exaggerating. Diana was certainly tall, though. In that odd green armor of hers, she stood at the better part of six and a half feet. With the helmet off her startlingly pale skin made her grey eyes seem darker then they actually were. She had a piercing gaze and a sharp face that gave her a bit of an intimidating presence, though she was definitely more outgoing than the other Spartan on the base. I have to say that she was indeed attractive, even with a small scar below her eye. But Gabe was pretty tall too, and had a refined Castilian look that was more than enough to keep up with the likes of Diana. Ladies dig the whole tall, dark and handsome thing, right?

      "Seriously? She's really hot for somebody who weighs half a ton. And tall people need love too," I said.

      "Yeah? Well it's not so hot when she has you pinned up against a wall."

      I nearly dropped my rifle.

      "Wait... you mean you two... seriously?"

      Gabe glared at me and Kendal, who was trying and failing to choke back laughter.

      "Look, I have bruises in places I didn't know you could have bruises. Let's please drop the subject now?"

      I twisted around to see Kendal bearing a startled grin from behind the chaingun.

      "Does Ben know?" He asked. Ben was the other Spartan. He and Diana had apparently been... something in the not-too-distant past.

      "If Ben knew," said Gabe, "I would be a red stain on the floor. I may yet end up as a red stain on the floor whether or not he does find out. Now please I have to concentrate on-"

      We all jumped a bit as static crackled over our headsets and a new voice joined the conversation.

      "Hey! Gabe's boning the Spartan chick?"

      Gabe scowled into the air. "Leon, shut up."

      "I'm going back through the surveillance archive, and now I have a blackmail video of you two in the barracks. Wow. Look at her go." Leon let out a creepy wolf-whistle. "I didn't even know it was possible for somebody to-"

      "Fuck, Leon, delete that stuff!"

      "She's such a fox, isn't she?"

      It was all Kendal and I could do to keep from falling out of our seats. The Corporal was usually so poised and self assured, it was interesting to see him flustered for once. Of course, Leon could do that to anybody.

      Leon, our base's administrative "smart" AI was, to use the typical (though insufficient) euphemism, "idiosyncratic." Most people just called him mad as a hatter on heroin. He had a habit of drag-racing those little service robots down hallways at two in the morning and going on the occasional wild painting spree. He and Colonel Christina Zhao had apparently met sometime before they arrived at the Outposts on Alpha Aquilae, and as an inevitable result, they had a near homicidal relationship. Leon would just lean back and grin at you in his pinstripes and bowler hat while he sent a robot to drop an eviscerated badger in your bed, though he tended to react badly to adversity. Rumor has it he killed a few hundred people before he was reassigned here. I wouldn't be surprised if it was a few thousand.

      I was a bit surprised to say that I kind of liked him. I've never been one to draw attention or make a fuss or speak up, so I kind of got a kick out of watching him at work. Weirdly enough, I think he liked me too. At least, he played poker with me and the squad on occasion, and helped out sometimes with day to day stuff.

      "Okay, okay! Diana is hot, she's very, uh, athletic and more than a little creepy and can we please, please, please talk about something else?"

      "Gabe and Diana, sitting in a tree. F - U - C -"

      "Shut up!"

      "Well fuck you too."

      Gabe hit the radio button before Leon could resume his inspired ballad.

      We drove on in an awkward silence for about half an hour. A light, powdery snow started to fall, dusting the windshield with pale tracks that swirled in the wind of our passage, collecting in the grooves of our crenelated armor. I completely zoned out - not asleep, but rather caught up in contemplating the forest. The sun was rising, flooding the snow with weird violet light as the blue-white star refracted through the atmosphere. Small forest creatures bounded out of our path, frightened by the stuttering whine of the elderly car's motor. This was the time I liked best, when the sky was just lightening but still streaked with violet and gold. It was the wrong color to remind me of Earth, but at least the trees were familiar.

      Curiosity got the best of Kendal, and he spoke up again.

      "Begging your pardon, Corporal. But I've never seen her without the armor. Does-"

      "Yes, she takes the armor off and yes she has a great body underneath, and, uh, oh shit."

       "What?"

      "The brakes just failed."

      And that was when we skidded into a tree.

      Unprepared for this new development, it took a moment for me to react properly to my impending splattery doom. I mean, of all the ways you can die in a lonely forest surrounded by aliens, you'd think "car accident" should be a pretty low probability. Evisceration, dismemberment, incineration, exsanguination, liquification, detonation, impalement, crushing (in Gabe's case, at least), decapitation, defenestration, overdose - these are all ways one would expect to die in war, at least two of which had already happened to me. I wasn't about to let some bullshit car accident kill me. I screamed my girlish, high-pitched defiance into the dawn light.

      Being in the passengers side, and thus about to hit the tree nose first, I managed to fling myself sideways out of the cab and into what I thought was a snowdrift but what turned out to be a large rock. Two seconds later, the tree enthusiastically introduced itself to the 'Hog with an unpleasantly loud wallop. The side panels crumpled and sheered off most of the roll bar, the hood ripped off its hinges and ended up ten feet away, and the engine gave a sort of pained wheezing noise before giving up the ghost.

      And thus we were stranded, broken down, shaken, tired and freezing our asses off with a mangled Warthog and an all-too-sturdy tree.

      With all the wildlife in a half-kilometer radius frightened out of their minds, the forest was unusually silent. The only noise came from the panicked wheezing of three badly shaken soldiers and the occasional bits of Warthog that fell with soft thumps to the snow in a steady stream. The cold forest offered us no solace.

      I spent the next vague time interval staring up at the trees and listening for the transplanted wildlife while Gabe tried in vain to raise the Outpost on his radio. The main transmitter was in the 'Hog, of course, and we were just barely out of range for our headsets. Gabe started cursing and kicking, and I tried not to drift off.

      "Gabe," I said from my comfy snowdrift. "We have to head back on foot."

      The corporal, still red-faced and panting, looked up at the sound of my voice

      I continued. "We just need another mile or two to get in range. They'll send someone to pick us up, if they notice we didn't come back."

      "Right. Right. Okay, form up guys. I'll take point. Let's head south until we're in radio range."

      We started the long, cold walk back to the Outpost. Regular Marine armor wasn't nearly as good at keeping out the cold as, say, ODST armor, or a survival suit, or a ski parka, or a scarf. I was pretty used to the weather from my early life in New England, but Gabe (Spain) and Kendal (Texas) were shivering miserably after a few minutes. The sun was up by then and I was wishing dearly that I could polarize my visor like an ODST -- the harsh rays were boring into my brain like the drill of an epileptic dentist. The birds were singing though, which was nice. I was getting pretty good at picking out the different calls. There was a warbler trilling delicately, a flock of shrieking starlings, some little peeping sparrows, all of which were pretty much drowning out a growing high-pitched whine behind us.

      Wait. What high pitched whine?

      "Gabe, Kendal. Contact at six o'clock."

      Gabe looked up suddenly, startled by my breaking the silence. A few silent hand signals from the corporal sent Kendal and I behind a few trees, guns clutched tightly in nervous hands. It didn't sound like a Ghost, and there was no way for a Wraith to get through the forest so quickly. And neither of them had headlights...

      It was the Warthog. Only, not quite. The one headlight had been moved to the center of the grill, which was now arranged with loops and whorls instead of the usual cross-hatching. It rode a bit higher on its suspension, and the engine sounded subtly different too. The roll bar looked funny -- it was a bit wider and more swept forwards, leaving more room to board but offering better protection to the driver. And driving it was... something. Something big, and purple, with long, spindly tentacles. A cluster of arachnoid eyes peered out from a narrow face, and its "arms" were wrapped tightly around the steering wheel. It parked neatly, and I was surprised to see that it floated freely in the air as it dismounted from the driver's seat. And, most importantly, it looked to be unarmed.

      I poked my head around the corner and was pleasantly not vaporized. In fact, I couldn't see evidence of any weapons at all. What the hell? What was this thing?

      I was extremely surprised to see the alien wave a tentacle at me in a friendly, non-murdering alien-ish way. Thinking quickly, I signaled for Gabe and Kendal to stand down, and was again surprised when the both lowered their weapons. I was about to speak when Leon's voice crackled over our headsets, making us jump again.

      "Isaac?" he said in a tone of voice I'd never heard before. He nearly sounded thoughtful. "I think... I think you should trust this guy. We've been talking and... well, he's... nice. I'm not fucking around here. Trust me on this one, please."

      I stepped hesitantly out from behind the tree and walked forwards. The alien didn't float away, but rather beckoned me to approach again. My footsteps crunched loudly over the sound of the 'Hog's engine. I paused just out of tentacles' reach.

      It said, "Oooooo."

      I poked it gently with the tip of my rifle, still not quite sure this wasn't all a hypothermia-induced hallucination. It gently reached up and took my MA5B before I could react, unloaded it, pulled apart the mechanism, dissected the electronics package, put the whole thing together and handed it back to me, all in the space of a second or two.

      It whistled, gently grasping my hand to lead me to the new and improved Warthog. It was absolutely pristine, better than new. Overcome by a sort of exhausted gratitude, I reached out to pat the purple alien on what looked like its shoulder, and I swear it nuzzled my hand.

      "Thank you," I said.

      It just whistled, waved, and floated away into the shadowy forest, snow falling off its skin in little flurries. By the time anybody recovered enough to think about giving chase, it was out of sight.

      Gabe punched me in the back of the head.

      "Isaac, you idiot! What the fuck did you just do?! What was that thing?!"

      "A friendly, I think."

      Given the evidence at hand, there wasn't much he could say to that. Gabe looked down at the purring Warthog.

      "Zhao is going to murder us."

      "At least nothing exploded this time."

      "Yeah."

      "I mean, we hit the tree hard. We're really lucky the whole thing didn't just blow up."

      Gabe still had that stunned look on his face. He hadn't turned away from the Warthog. Kendal walked up and took us both by the shoulders.

      "Let's go home."

We are NOT Bungie, Inc.! Bungie Inc. are bungie.net!
Halo © Bungie Inc., 1999-2012, Microsoft 2012-2024
Intellectual © halo.bungie.org, 1999-2024