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Changes
Date: 11 February 2003, 3:30 am

Earlier in the war, before the epic destruction above, on, and of Halo, the Covenant came to a small Human farming settlement on a mining planet. On their way from one smoking Human city to another Human city, the Covenant Grunts, Jackals, and Elites came. They came to the tiny village, a tiny green spot among miles and miles of twisted hills between deep ravines made by the eroding of sand, out of which grew and lived naught but small, scraggly trees with long roots, reaching through the air sometimes across a ravine to another hill where they hoped to find water. By day the sun beat without pity on the parched dust, and at night the stars shone overhead.

There were new stars this night. They were Covenant cruisers and destroyers, cutting down, one after another, the Human ships with their heroic-or was it suicidal?-crews. The new stars were the explosions: plasma, and fire.

The Covenant came in the night, destroying the homes of the villagers, slaughtering the women and children with their screams of terror and the men with their screams of defiance and valiant, yet hopeless-pathetic-, defense. One Human escaped. He was an old boy, some would have said a young man, and he fled the battle into the ravines, while the hills echoed with the dying screams of his family and the plasma lightning flashes danced in the night. The Covenant did not follow him. Till morning he wandered the ravines aimlessly knowing only one thing: they were all dead; all he had ever known, his entire life, was dead.

When dawn came, hope came with it. For all hope was gone now, and the only thing left was war, blood red war. With the blood red dawn came duty and a will to fight. He could hear the Covenant legions tramping through the ravines and up the hills...calling out in their strange languages to each other...somewhere...on the left. The boy rushed to find them.

The boy clambered up one of the higher hills and saw them: hundreds of them were visible. There were probably thousands. The turtle-like ones were crawling on their stubby little hands and feet up and down the hills; the lizard things with their shields walked more nimbly; the tall blue ones that looked the most like men except for the hideous heads seemed to walk effortlessly over the hills. Their lines stretched far back into the north.

Now the boy proved the meaning of insanity: the use of reason and only reason, the possession of an incomparable intellect and the possession of nothing else: no heart, no soul, no love, and no life. Only the mind. He was in touch with reality, this young madman-supremely in touch with reality, this madman-and only in touch with that small part of reality that he could see. There was only war: blood red war.

And strategy. The sun was just peeking over the hills behind the boy. There was no hope for reinforcements, and since his life now consisted only of war, death would be the fitting conclusion to it if only he was not the only one dead. If only he could take some enemies with him. The front lines of the Covenant were approaching the highest hill in the system of ravines, a few hundred yards to the south, a hill the boy had known well in another world, another life. It was also the steepest hill, the one most likely to crumble with new erosion. One large tree root-several inches thick-protruded from a point dead in the lateral center of the upper reaches of the hill. The front lines of the Covenant would soon be passing underneath that hill: probably ten minutes. They could not see the boy clearly, if at all, because of the morning sun.

He had always been good at climbing, able to shinny up a tree in seconds or flit up, down, around the ravines with incomparable ease. Now he raced down the side of his hill-about 65 degrees-and across one valley and up the next hill. And down the next hill and eastwards along the valley and up the next hill-the biggest, steepest hill-from the narrow ridge that was the only accessible way to the top. Then he crouched, knowing that the rising sun was directly behind him in relation to the evil eyes of the enemy. He waited.

The Covenant in the lead began to walk in the valley underneath the hill. It was time. He sprinted. Speed was what counted. His feet hit the root running, and he moved like a bullet across the root, suspended a hundred yards above the enemy, his speed maintaining his balance. About halfway across to the next hill, the root began to quiver violently. The Covenant had noticed him by now, and some of the Grunts gave out little yelps of warning. At three-quarters the root was no longer possible to navigate. In fact, it was sinking behind him; the plan was working. Red and green streaks flew through the air around him, needles and plasma bolts. There was only about ten feet left. He jumped, but the root failed to provide any sort of solid ground to push off of. He grasped wildly at it as it sank to a lower and lower angle, and he grabbed it as it was almost completely vertical, and with one hand he held the root while his body slammed into the hard dirt of the side of next hill. He bounced backwards by inertia, being sure to do two things: to keep holding onto the root, and to turn around and look.

Just in time. About a quarter of the entire mass of the largest hill for miles cascaded down onto the Covenant, crushing and burying anywhere from twenty to fifty of them. The cloud of dust hid him from the eyes of the rest. The root, pulled by his own body weight, had brought down the mountain on his enemies.

The Covenant army moved on, but left a small contingent behind to destroy the obnoxious Human. There was one Elite commanding them, and twenty Grunts and about ten Jackals. But the Human warrior was hard to kill. They hunted him through the ravines for sixty-five hours, and he continued to dodge them. They would see him running by moonlight or starlight, like a shadow. A shadow that killed. By the twenty-fifth hour the warrior had found one of their plasma pistols, and the numbers of the Covenant party began to dwindle: three Grunts and two Jackals were shot dead, one by one, by a phantom enemy that never stopped, never needed new strength or seemed to sleep as normal Humans did.

The warrior lived on, in a state of complete madness, having full possession of a superb intellect and using it to do only one thing: to kill anything that moved, the only conscious thought in his mind. In his subconscious, beneath the reach of his mental observance, his intellect worked flawlessly, telling him when to run and when to shoot and when it was best to lie still. He hid in shadows and out of sight and struck from shadows or in broad daylight if it suited him: when the terrain was fit for quick and deadly movement that was impossible for even the darting eyes of the Covenant to track with enough efficiency to fire and kill. Time and again he marked where the Covenant would make their base of operations, and time and again plot a way to attack it: sometimes with plasma, sometimes with rocks or avalanches, and sometimes with his own body. Somehow he survived.

By the sixty-sixth hour, suddenly he realized that something had changed. Human voices had begun to echo back and forth through the valleys. His subconscious, where his mind still worked flawlessly, suddenly rose to the conscious level. He thought and recognized it as thought, and he realized that he knew their voices. They were from another world, one he had once been part of: the Human world. He remembered it, but like a dream. This war amongst the sandy hills and valleys was much more real than that dream. But the dream was real, and getting realer by the second. Something was going to alter the entire word of war that was his only knowledge.

He realized they were talking about him. About the Covenant and the signs of someone who was capable of killing them. The voices were getting closer. He leaned on the sandy wall of the valley, and waited for them.

Soon they came into view, nine of them, green and shiny in their suits, like the spectral half-human monsters of Human nightmares. But their voices were entirely Human. Some bit of sanity took hold in the young man's brain, and he felt once again something other than the blood-red war.

"There he is!"..."Is it just you here?"..."Who are you?" they said to him. To each other they whispered, "That one should have been a Spartan."

The young man, his eyes vacant and staring but kindled with flame, spoke to them and said slowly, "Everything's changed. Now that I see you again, I can feel myself again...I've never felt so tired." He faltered, then stammered and said, "I thought I would have lived like a normal person, but now that everything's changed..."

One of the newcomers took off his helmet and the young man saw his face: a powerful face. "Who are you?" the young man asked.

"John...my name is John. We've come to destroy the Covenant. Can you tell us where they are? We'll also help you and bring you somewhere safe."

The young man replied, "I will show you." But they tried to stop him; they told him it was over, they would take care of the Covenant now; he needed to rest. "No," he said; "I will finish what I've started."

The young man looked into the eyes of the soldier, and each beheld that the other was a warrior, and for a flicker of a moment they understood each other. "Lead the way," said John. And the greatest battle of the young man's life began: finishing what he had started.

He walked, and every step was agony. But he held his head up high and kept going. One more step was all that duty required of him. It was all a man could do. The next step was all that a warrior could do.

He led the way to his last valley of this twisted dead land of sandy ravines and hills, the valley where the Covenant were waiting for him: they knew he would come again to fight them soon. The young man reached the crest of the hill, John by his side, and he stopped. John took two more steps forward. The other soldiers knelt down on either side and raised their assault rifles. John threw a grenade. It exploded in the midst of them, sending two Jackals and a Grunt flying and wounding the Elite. The soldiers opened fire, and the Covenant attacked. Firing plasma rifles and pistols and needlers, they ran up the slope the hill. Forty yards. Thirty yards. Twenty yards. The wave broke upon the shining bullets from the assault rifles like water on stone. All the Covenant Jackals and Grunts lay dead. The Elite sank to ground, letting out a long, guttural scream-his dying breath.

The soldiers and the young man ascended a hill to await the coming Pelican dropship. Minutes before the dropship arrived, the first star of evening appeared in the sky. The young man, the warrior, became a boy again. Where a horde of powerful enemies could not stop him, a single star brought him to his knees in intense pain. He cried bitterly until the dropship came. He wept for life lost and for the death of innocence. For the death of his heart he sobbed. Everything had changed. A new life had begun. Now there was only war: blood red war. But a single star shone overhead, and that unutterable beauty pierced him to his very soul.

Changes Two: Categorical Imperative
Date: 28 February 2003, 3:33 am

“I wake up in the morning and I ask myself is life getting better, should I blast myself?”
--from “Changes,” by Tupac Shakur.



Kai ehn nuktos. “And it was night.” The scholar raised his eyes from the ancient Greek text and felt again the force of that simple phrase. Those words always got him, and often gave him shivers. For a moment he wondered who had written those words: a man, or a Spirit, as some of the old stories said.

The scholar looked out the window. It was, indeed, night. And if the news stories were any less than badly exaggerated, night had likely come for all humanity. “Darkness,” as Faramir had said to Eowyn during the last battle for Middle-Earth, “inescapable.” The scholar thought about the ancient Greek text. It was the story of a man who had come to save men from themselves. If ever a man was needed to save men from something other than themselves, now was that time.

And 6:00 was time to go to the pub. He picked up his cane, left his house, and then walked two blocks west and one block north. He arrived at “The Red Dog” and went in. Tuesday evening the local rugby club was always in the pub after their afternoon training session. The scholar was too old for rugby, and hadn’t played for several years, but there was a fond camaraderie shared by all rugby players, both practicing and non-practicing.

The scholar also observed several UNSC Marines sitting at the next table. Warriors were sitting at the next table. Warriors were sitting at the rugby player’s table also, mused the scholar as he sat down with them. But it was not quite the same.

These rugby players played the metaphor of war. On a grassy field they did battle and one man’s strength was thrown up against another’s; and beneath a wide open sky, whether it contained a beating sun or a drenching rain, the rugby players would do their job and would fight and struggle and match strength for strength and endurance for endurance; it would go on for every day of training and every game until each player had overcome first, not the enemy, but himself, and then, if all went well for him, the enemy.

But it was only a metaphor. These men at the next table, these UNSC Marines, these men knew the meaning of war, real war, real blood-red war. Not like rugby. Rugby players played for fun, or for health, or for themselves. These men fought for life and death. After a rugby game the opposing teams would join each other at the pub in the great tradition of rugby and drink beer together while singing songs about naked women. Well, not always about naked women. There were other rugby songs heard in the pub after a game; really only a few were about women; most were about battle.

But these Marines played for keeps. Their manner, from their voices to their movements to the looks in their eyes, indicated that they were battle-hardened. That meant that these men had probably seen their fellow warriors fall in the field and never get up again. It was not like rugby. I wonder if rugby players would make good marines thought the old scholar as he sat down at the rugby player’s table and ordered his usual pint.

The conversation strayed from talk of last Saturday’s game to the usual “hooker” jokes that only those who knew rugby understood. Suddenly the old scholar realized that he was no longer listening: the conversation from the Marine’s table had been holding his attention for several minutes. They were talking about someone...special...someone who had survived some ordeal that no human should have been able to survive. Intrigued, the scholar began to scrutinize the Marines and listen closely to their words.

“How did they find him” said a deep-voiced Marine.

“They were following the Covenant army through the hills because they didn’t any air support for quicker transport. Just as soon as they heard from a Pelican, they noticed some Covenant blood in the dirt. They had the Pelican wait so they could take a look 'round” responded a skinny Marine.

A third one interjected, “How many Covenant again?”

“Five in combat, twenty or thirty or more in an avalanche, and maybe ten or twelve when the Spartans showed up.”

Someone commented about the person’s family. Someone asked what he was going to do next. Someone answered that it had barely been two weeks since he’d been rescued by the Spartans, and since he was a hero he could pretty much do anything he wanted to. Someone asked where they had taken him now.

“There, in the corner” was the answer. The scholar had lost interest with the rugby players’ conversation entirely and, observing that the young man in the corner looked extremely...simply lost, the scholar stood up and walked to the young man’s table in the corner and asked if he might join him. The young man paused for a minute then, as if realizing for the first time that he had been spoken to, answered “yes.”

The scholar asked him if he drank. He said that he had never tasted alcohol in his life. He randomly commented that the people at that table over there—he indicated the Marines’ table—had brought him here because they didn’t know what to do with him. The scholar summoned a waiter and ordered a wine cooler for the boy.

The “boy’s” eyes flashed with fierce anger and he looked the scholar in the eye for the first time and quietly but very firmly said “I am not a boy.”

The scholar was used to such attitudes in the young, but he had never seen it displayed with such intensity. He begged the lad’s forgiveness, pointing out that he still addressed his own son, now in his forties, as “boy.”

Needing to change the subject, the scholar told the young man that he had overheard the Marines telling his story, and asked if the young man would mind telling him his plans for the future.

“There is nothing left to live for. I’m thinking about killing myself” said the young man simply and, judging by his eyes, honestly.

“Look,” the scholar said after a long pause, “I don’t know if there is a God or if we’re going to survive this war...but I do know that there is always a call to something higher than I am...call it duty.”

There was another pause. Then he said to the young man, “Don’t kill yourself. If you have nothing else to hold onto in life...you always have duty.”

The young man cussed at him and asked him who he was to tell him what to do. “Have you seen what I’ve seen?” he said. “Do you know what it’s like...” he began to mutter but the wine cooler was affecting him slightly, and his lack of sleep was affecting him, and he didn’t see much point in arguing with the old man.

“I am Proffessor Allen from New Oxford University’s branch in the Sigma...never mind that.”

The young man interrupted in a voice that suggested maybe he was only trying to appear interested: “What do you teach?”

The scholar was quick to grab onto the mere possibility of interest in the young man. “Philosophy right now, but I study a little history too, and a little literature, and the old religious writers...most of the liberal arts. I like mathematics and science too, but I never seem to find the time to study them.”

The young man remembered the plasma lightning and the purple needles. “We need science,” he said.

The scholar noticed that the young man was thinking of something else and tried to get the conversation back on track: “Do you know the story of the Alamo?”

“Sounds familiar.”

“Look,” said the scholar, “the Alamo was where several hundred Texans died defending their new country against the Mexican dictator Santa Anna. They all died, but they killed untold numbers of the enemy. Most estimates are in the thousands.”

“Wow. That’s just great” said the young man sarcastically.

“Look,” said that scholar, “those men had no hope. But they still had duty. Now, you tell me, was it worth it what they did? They bought freedom for their people, and added another state to the USA. Yes or no, was it worth it?”

The young man could see that the scholar was too stubborn to be deterred by anything less than an honest response. “Yes” came the answer after several seconds.

“They only had duty. There was a philosopher a long time ago, Immanuel Kant. He said that duty was the only true form of right and wrong, the only ethic to live by. He elevated duty almost to a religious state. Look...I don’t know what you’ve been through, I shudder to imagine...but I know that life is never over until your duty is done. Don’t stop. You have your duty to live for. Don’t kill yourself.”

He’d said what he wanted to say, and it was 6:45. Time to go. “Good-bye,” said the scholar, “and may God be with you.”

He was halfway to the door when the young man stood and said loudly, “And if there is no God?”

Loudly the scholar replied, “Then may you and your own strength be with you, and perhaps it will be enough.” He sighed, turned around, and walked home.

The young man finished the last gulp of wine cooler and thought. His duty to live for...

Duty hurt. The man who was young in years but old in mind, now a Marine, a Lieutenant in fact, several months later was found on a battleground fighting to recover his senses after being thrown to the ground by a frag grenade’s powerful blast. As he was struggling to return to full consciousness, as if in a dream a memory of an ancient film floated to his mind across the darkness. What brought this remembrance to him now, he did not know, but he beheld a mighty lord of men, a king, a warrior, handing a sword to a boy and saying “This is a good sword...there is always hope...”

Lies. There was not always hope. He forced his eyes open and saw the dirt of the trenches. He forced himself to his feet, muscles straining and the load on his back forcing him to exert the full extent of his willpower. There was not always hope. Not on this side of the grave. Perhaps on the other side of the grave. On this side there was only duty. Only duty kept him on his feet.

Another grenade—plasma—went off nearby, and the ground shook. Good. That meant the enemy was not aware of their precise location. The battle was over, the ground lost, and the warrior was engaged in the task of leading what was left of the men under his command back to safety. What was left of the men under his command was a broken, bleeding, probably dying body of a UNSC Marine—a Sergeant—draped across his back. Hell had it been in the field that afternoon, and now the retreat was one agonizing step, through smoke and between little flames on the ground and among human body parts, after another—all carrying the weight of the last breathing member of his command.

The warrior reached the Warthog. The last one on the planet, most likely. The battle had gone very badly. But the warrior had personally broken the neck of a Jackal a few minutes ago, so for him it almost seemed worthwhile.

He strapped his dying Marine into the passenger seat and began to drive towards the rendezvous point, thinking about what he had read two days ago, just before the battle. The categorical imperative, said Immanuel Kant, was to act in such a way that you can will that the maxim of your action be taken as a universal law for all mankind. That was simple in this universe. In Kant’s universe, there would have needed to be deliberation sometimes. Now the only relevant categorical imperative was mere survival: the survival of the human race. If it ever came to a choice between different human lives, he would choose whichever one would eventually keep the most humans alive for the longest amount of time. If that meant that the warrior sacrifice himself, so be it. Death would surely be restful, and the warrior now knew how badly duty hurt. So far, however, duty had not yet called him to lay down his life. But duty still called, and very waking moment was an agony. And yet, knowing that he was doing his duty, he was almost happy. At least he was content: all he could do was all he could do. That was enough.

Out of the corner of his eye he saw a blue streak come from out of the tall grass on the right side of the road. It landed on the windshield and sparkled. With movements as swift as human bodies are capable of, the warrior abandoned the Warthog. He fell on the packed earth, and it would have hurt if his terror hadn’t been so distracting. There had not been a chance to save the other man in the vehicle, and the categorical imperative decreed that the warrior at least save himself. When the plasma grenade went off two seconds later the warrior saw his dead comrade fly into a tree, his ruined body plastered against the trunk. The Warthog landed on a screaming Grunt. Ah, that was always nice. Egad, there were at least three more up ahead. It was dusk, however, and in the failing daylight his dusty clothes were fairly well hidden, though the smoke on the wind certainly helped. His fall had also carried him partially behind a small bush. He probably had a few seconds to crawl into the grass before they spotted him. The wind was knocked out of him, but duty forced him to move. He lost consciousness by the time he collapsed several feet into the grass, all of the oxygen gone from his brain.

The warrior came to seconds, maybe a minute, later, and heard the Grunts barking at each other. His prostrate body was perpendicular to the dirt road. There was one at...6:00...one at 3:00...two or three at 12:00. They were looking for him, and the 3:00 Grunt was heading in the right direction.

How far could a man go? Broken ribs, certainly; no sleep for more than 36 hours, no food for at least 24, no water since noon, and now it was dusk. But a man could go as far as duty called him. Especially with Grunts. The 3:00 one would go first, and then he would see to the rest if he still had anything left in him. The 3:00 Grunt was definitely going down. It was wenty feet away, he estimated.

Crawl forward, now, about five feet, and slowly get up on knees. Move mostly when they speak. Good. It was ten feet from the warrior’s original position; the 3:00 Grunt was now...his mind raced through the Pythagorean theorem...between eleven and twelve feet away. Now to watch the silhouette of the creature’s head as it swiveled back and forth looking for him. When it was about 1 foot from his original position, the warrior moved with lightning speed, as the 3:00 Grunt’s head was just beginning its swivel in the counterclockwise direction.

The combat knife plunged deep into its brain and reached the thing’s vocal cords. Only a gurgling sound escaped its dying lips: how useful to have studied alien anatomy for the past several months! He ducked beneath the grass again. He had no more strength left for fighting; what he had was a pistol. The Grunt who had originally been at 6:00 was approaching, having heard the gurgling sound. Pistol cocked...two times magnification...ready, aim, fire: the Grunt was down with one shot to the head and one that must have hit the methane tank he breathed out of.

The last two had heard, and were coming towards him. He summoned some endurance, and crawled through the tall grass. Grunts were not very smart, so he picked up a rock, aimed at a random spot on the road twenty or so yards away, and threw it. The two Grunts ran into the open. He took aim and squeezed the trigger. Blast! No more strength, and now no more bullets. The gun was cast aside. The Grunts had realized that they had been fooled, and were now scanning the grass for him. The warrior lay low.

Then he remembered something. Was it just sheer luck that he was between them and the Warthog? If only he could get closer to it, maybe he could escape with his life. No more strength, no more bullets. Nothing left but mind. Intellect might serve. The Grunts were slowly walking into the grass again and heading more or less in his direction. The warrior tried to remember what he had seen in the past few minutes as he lay in the grass. There was a cliff on one side. He could be seen scaling it, so the Grunts would certainly know that he wasn’t there. The dirt road was opposite the cliff. They would see him there, too, and they knew it. There was a muddy trickle of water coming down the cliff and running across the road up ahead, just a few feet from where the warthog had landed. If he splashed across it, they would hear him. Surely they now suspected that he was crawling in the opposite direction, back the way the Warthog had come, through the grass between the cliff and the road. Let them keep thinking that.

War is a mind-game. They had fallen for the oldest trick in the book, chasing a noise that was in the opposite direction of where he was. They would not fall for the same trick twice in a row. That could be turned to his advantage. If he made a noise a second time, for a split second they would look at it, and then they would proceed in the opposite direction. So he hoped. It was a bit of a gamble, but it was all he had left, and he took it. He slammed his hand down into the dust right where he was, and was pleased to see that it sounded rather like a large rock landing.

A viewer from the air would have seen the two Grunts instantly look in the direction of where the warrior lay, then as if they were very sneaky turn around and run in the opposite direction randomly firing needlers into the night.

The warrior crawled to the Warthog, which was still good, and crawled in and drove away. Seven Marines waited for him at the Pelican, the only survivors of yet another failed defensive campaign. Hours later in space the warrior watched as the planet they had lost that day was glassed by the Covenant.

Changes Three: Gods and Monsters
Date: 9 November 2004, 10:14 PM

CHANGES THREE: GODS AND MONSTERS

The admiral was notorious for mispronouncing the word "strategy." Everyone called into his office, rumor had it, eventually would hear it. Some even said it would be one of the first thirty words out of the admiral's mouth.

"You seem to have a knack for staying alive, Lieutenant. How do you do it: is it luck, or are you the strongest Marine in the Core?"

"I think it's a little bit of both, sir. And some intellectual superiority over the Grunts, too."

"Ah " said the admiral, "It's strategery then But still . . . it's like you're invincible, you've met the Covenant so many times and walked away. I mean, is it possible that you're the strongest man in the UNSC armed forces?"

"It's not such an anomalous hypothetical, Sir. Someone had to be the strongest. Why not me?"

The admiral didn't answer that question. But he did say, "Lieutenant, I'm sending you to reinforce a town on Lambda Seven until the Covenant overrun it. Your mission will be to kill more of them than can be counted, and to protect some scientists until they can finish packing up their equipment for evac."

"Which one is the primary objective, sir?"

"Whichever you like. It'll probably come to the same thing in the end," the admiral mumbled glumly.

"Sir?"

"Pick your own men for the job. You and sixty Marines under your command will ship out at 1800 hours today." There was a long pause while the lieutenant stood waiting calmly. The admiral looked out the window at the blue sky, and then he said, "We all have a part to play in this war, Lieutenant. You, me, the scientists you'll be protecting, our political leaders. Everyone has their own unique job to do, Lieutenant. I picked you because you're the best I know of, and I want this job done right."

Everyone had their part to play, mused the lieutenant. That meant he was expected to die on this mission. Was there any point in letting the admiral know he understood him? Not really: if he did die, it would make no difference. If he survived, the admiral would be wrong and it would still make no difference. "How many Marines do we have in the town now?"

"There were about seventy when they made their last transmission, and God knows how many are left now."

"Estimates on the enemy force?"

"Oh, hundreds, thousands . . . the usual."

The lieutenant, whose popularity alone was enough to make this method work, called an assembly in room E32 of all Marines who were available at 1500 hours and were willing to give up a few minutes of their time. When they arrived, he instructed the ones with families to leave. After they did, he told the ones who had nothing to fight for to leave. They did.

Gee, what were these guys fighting for if they had no families? Oh well. How to get rid of twenty more? Some general had had to do something like this in some old book. Ah, of course: anyone who is afraid leave.

There were probably ninety or so left. How to get rid of thirty more? The guy in the book had tested their alertness. Hmmmm...Everyone carrying their assault rifle, step forward, and everyone else go back to your card games. He counted them: fifty-three. Close enough. Later he would round up seven more guys whom he'd been with on other missions. All seven of the survivors of the last horrible mission were here, and only two of them were out of action with wounds: that was a start.

"Gentlemen," said the lieutenant, "If you accept this mission you will all die. But we will die together, we will die as men, with honor, and we will slaughter untold masses of our despicable enemy We will die defending our race with the last drop of our blood How does that make you feel?"

"All gonna die, huh?" quipped a guy with a cigar. "What else is new?"

"What's new is you know that you will die within seventy-two hours, or maybe even forty-eight."

"I'm in" said the man with the cigar.

All fifty-seven were nodding their heads or making signs of agreement, or just standing alertly. Too easy. "Your skin will melt in plasma, and the needler shots will explode in your capillaries, and Covenant Elites will snap your necks like twigs We will be crushed beneath the stinking feet of the Grunts, and the Jackals will drink our blood "

"Bring it on, baby" said the man with the cigar, a true Marine.

The next day beads of sweat were rolling off the lieutenant's chin as he stepped off the Pelican dropship onto Lambda Seven. He had already been briefed on this planet, but he was surprised nevertheless at how hot it was just two hundred miles closer to the sun than the normal planetary average.

Apparently the scientists in this town were working on a special weapon that would help the Humans in this war. An embattled sergeant was running up to him, his clothes torn, his skin scratched and burnt in places, and his expression alternately changing from one of delightedness to one of mystification. But he obeyed the laws of military discipline and properly stood at attention saluting. The men behind the sergeant did the same. "At ease, Sergeant."

"Welcome to Lambda Seven, Sir" the sergeant stammered. "Are you all they're sending us?"

"That's right, Sergeant" answered the lieutenant. "Expecting more?"

"I was hoping for it, Sir."

"Why is that, Sergeant? Speak freely."

"Well, we're being overrun here, Sir, and frankly . . . I don't want to die."
The Lieutenant walked a few steps past where the sergeant and surveyed the cityscape. "Sergeant, all you can do is all you can do. There is nothing to fear if you do your duty; only fear not to do your duty."

The Lieutenant reminded him, "Speak freely, sergeant." The sergeant said, "Yes, sir . . . but what about death?"

"There is nothing to fear in death if you die honorably. Some of the religious weirdos say there's something else, but they've never convinced me. Until they do, I'd rather die well and in a good cause than live like a wuss, or like . . . like a man who's never fought . . . fought these . . ." he lapsed into obscenities, then barked: "Follow me, Sergeant." The lieutenant began to look around the town, heading for the defenses in the front gate. The town was built on a hill, one that had cliffs on three sides. In front of the gate was the one side from which an army could effectively approach the town. It was pretty much a gentle slope for many hundred yards out, and the ground dipped out of sight at that distance. Those hundreds of yards were covered with vultures. The vultures covered the dead bodies of both Humans and aliens. "How many Marines do we have Sergeant, and is there any officer here higher up than you?"

"We've got thirty left alive and twenty wounded, and I'm the highest ranking . . . living officer here."

Ninety total functioning soldiers. "How many of those wounded can be moved?" asked the lieutenant. "About half of them" was the reply. The wounded who could move and hold weapons could be placed on the inside of the walls. If the enemy pierced the gate, those guys could shoot a few of them before everyone was killed. "Sergeant, why was a town built with walls?" The sergeant answered that there were wild animals on this planet that hunted at night.

"Why are the Covenant so slow in taking this town? What are they waiting for?"

"Well, Sir, they have much more than us as it is, but I think this is just a preliminary force for this planet. I don't think they're in any kind of hurry. They'd rather wait for reinforcements and take us out with even more superior numbers than they've already got. Why? Haven't the Covenant ever tried a siege before?"

"Not that I know of" said the lieutenant. He sighed. "In the old days, you could usually get one out of two options in a defense like this. You could die and bring down twice as much of the enemy as your own men: die with honor. That happened at the Alamo and with the Spartans in Thermopylae. Or you could wind up with the other option: you could survive and make an unprecedented victory. But with the Covenant . . . you can only die. You can't take out twice as many of them, and you can't win a victory. There's nothing. They don't have any air support, do they? No Banshees?"

"Nothing."

"Thank God. Oh, well, thank . . . whomever I don't know if I believe in, anyways. Did you have any sniper rifles?" The sergeant shook his head no. "We've brought a few. Are there any good snipers among you?"

"I know of some."

"Bring them." The Sergeant ran to follow his orders. The lieutenant remained in the gate looking out over the war-torn wasteland. The Covenant were not far off. Probably just on the other side of where the ground got a little bit steeper. Outside this gate was death. Outside the city was death. Inside was . . . mankind, with all his glory and all his strengths and weaknesses. Outside the city were . . . Aristotle had said . . . outside the city were only gods and monsters.

Gods and monsters. In the old days, gods had walked among mortals. Caesar. Alexander: gods among men. In tale and song there were Aragorn, Gilgamesh, and Odysseus. Now a new thing had entered human history: the Covenant. The monsters had come, and all who would be gods, including the lieutenant, were now only men: men, noble and strong enough to do their duty and die with honor. But in the end they were only men: naked and exposed to the ravages of a superior power that left them either cringing in terror or possessing an ultimately futile defiance, the last thing they owned before their bodies were blasted and their souls swept away into nothingness (or eternity?). In the end all would die. All would only die. And death was all.

Now the lieutenant was thinking about going outside the city. If he survived, he would be a god: only gods and monsters were outside the city. The lieutenant turned and went back to his men, who all jumped to attention when he came into sight. He ordered the ones who had special skill with a sniper rifle to follow him. Thirteen out of sixty of the reinforcements he had brought came forward. The sergeant had arrived with three more. The lieutenant picked two of his own men to go back to whatever they were doing before, as there were only fifteen sniper rifles. After picking up their weapons, the lieutenant led them towards the gate. The three were placed on the wall to wait and to provide covering fire for the inevitable retreat of the lieutenant with the eleven.

One of the few exceptions to the general rule that Covenant technology was immensely superior to Human technology was that the UNSC had managed to develop improved silencers for their sniper rifles, ones that made their original booming thunder about as loud as a footstep in sand. This was one of the first missions to be equipped with the new silencers.

The lieutenant and his eleven warriors walked boldly outside of the city and went about a hundred yards before the lieutenant ordered them all to start crawling. They had each taken a good, long drink of water before going out, but the lieutenant wondered how long it would be before they were all in need of more. Well, as soon as the shooting began it would only be a few minutes before they either fell as men or returned to the city as gods.

Half an hour of crawling. The ridge. Camouflaged and moving an inch every three seconds. Ah, there were the devils. There must have been at least four hundred of them down there. A little too close for comfort: probably three hundred and fifty yards. They had not set up any stationary plasma weapons, and there were neither any heavy armor nor any machines. Thank God for that: a ghost would have been the death of the twelve would-be gods.
"Alpha" said the Lieutenant in whisper as he squeezed his trigger. A yellow Elite fell with a bullet through his hideous brain..

"Beta." The man on the Lieutenant's right fired, and a Grunt died.

"Gamma." A Jackal with a bullet through its neck.

"Delta." Another Grunt.

"Epsilon." An Elite dropped to its ugly knees, stunned. "Zeta." Another bullet put the ugly monstrosity out of its misery. And on through "Eta," "Theta," "Iota," "Kappa," "Lambda," and "Mu" and back to "Alpha." The camouflage and heat waves were doing their job. Eleven Covenant shot dead and the creeps still didn't know from whence the shots were coming. It had only been twenty-five seconds since they had started. After ten more Greek letters a Jackal hissed and pointed at them, and the bombardment began. "Omicron" said the Lieutenant, signaling his men to fire at will. At this distance the only ones with enough skill to hit them were the Elites. The twelve would-be gods concentrated on the Elites but the things dodged too well, and few of them were hit. Meanwhile Grunts were running forward, plasma was starting to burn the shriveled grass at the lieutenant's elbow, and he thought he smelled burning human flesh. "Omega," he said: retreat!

They crawled backwards and turned around so they could crawl faster. One of them had had some plasma touch him in the face, and could no longer see. Two were not with them. It could have been Delta and Epsilon. The others helped the blind one by telling him that he was going in the right direction, and to keep moving. At about three hundred yards from the city the Lieutenant gave the word and they all jumped to their feet, a man supporting the blind Marine on either side. At about two hundred yards left the three snipers on the wall started firing. The Covenant had crested the ridge, and it was only a matter of split seconds till the needles started exploding in their backs.

Duty and the categorical imperative were calling. The Lieutenant, in one swift motion, turned around and dropped to his knees, calling out as he did so, "Beta Gamma " The two other Marines joined him on the ground, each a couple of yards behind him: one to the right and one to the left.

They were in a V shape facing the enemy, and three snipers on the wall behind were lending aid. The seven more Marines, one wounded, were beating a hasty retreat, the V giving them maybe half a chance. The three on their knees tried to fire on the Covenant who were closest.

The lieutenant felt himself moving his hands to reload once or twice, and felt himself pulling the trigger, and saw himself seeing the enemy through the scope, and he moved with flawless rhythm, his movements quick and smooth, exemplifying the art of killing. He was the essence of perfection, and he never thought about what he was doing, he only noticed that he was doing it. It was as if his mind were disattatched from his body. Time and again he killed an alien, and each time he moved methodically to the next one, never hesitating, never missing, and never making the slightest mistake. He didn't think about how to do it, he only did it. In the back of his mind he asked himself why he was doing so well. Still in the back of his mind, he answered himself that it couldn't last for much longer. He told himself that something was different. Yes, something was different, he realized: they were getting closer.

To his left the lieutenant heard Beta cry out a last scream of pain. In the corner of his eye Gamma crumpled to the ground. In a daze the lieutenant tried to break free of himself. One more alien down, and then the trance was broken. He dropped his weapon and began to run, but it was impossible that he could make the distance without dying.

Then one last chance for survival came when the enemy got a little bit closer, just close enough for scores of Marines on the walls to open fire with their assault rifles. The bullets kicked up enough of a thick enough curtain of dust to partially blind the enemy. Running madly, the lieutenant raced for safety. The seven were just entering the gate. Terrible pain shot through his leg: a needler shot. His running limp brought him a little bit closer, though each step on that leg felt like the leg was being crushed. Welcoming hands pulled the lieutenant inside the city gate, and inside the city walls he collapsed into unconsciousness as a god.

Coming back to life he pondered what had just happened. He had been outside the city and survived: therefore, a god. At least for now. But what a miserable god was this man whose frail body had only been saved by luck.

"Whoa," said someone through the haze—it could have been the embattled sergeant—"that was a miracle. Maybe some of us will survive after all."

"Luck, soldier. Never trust it twice, and never expect a miracle." The lieutenant lifted up his head and was able to make out, indeed, the sergeant, kneeling over him and pouring a little bit of water down his throat. The lieutenant swallowed and said, "Unless you know any religious folks that aren't weirdos."

After the lieutenant had reached the gates and was no longer within reach of the Covenant weapons, the Elites had begun to command the smaller aliens to leave the battlefield. Many aliens had been slaughtered, but the great benefit of the skirmish was the boost in the Humans' morale.

Changes Four: The Second Star
Date: 9 November 2004, 10:20 PM

CHANGES FOUR: THE SECOND STAR

The lieutenant had been itching to get right to work as soon as he had arrived. Some good work had been done, but now it was time to take full stock of the situation. Most of the women and all of the children had been airlifted out in the Pelican that had brought the lieutenant with his reinforcements. It was time to meet the head of the scientists and see how much more time they would need to finish their experiments or store their equipment in boxes or whatever the heck they were doing. The lieutenant therefore confirmed the location of the scientists' headquarters and began to walk slowly in that direction. On this journey two incidents of note took place.

The lieutenant was already engaged in a particularly intense battle defending the town. The first incident began when, hobbling around with a wooden cane because of his wounded leg, he rounded a corner and immediately began another battle: with himself and with his own demons. It was as if he were drawn back again to the cruel hills of sand and saw once more, in the midst of utter darkness, a single star shining brightly with hope. What he saw was something of which he had seen few or none in a long, long time, or if he had seen one, had at least not noticed it in its fullness for a long time.

It was the essence of loveliness, the very form of beauty, the epitome of graceful magnificence. It was an angel descended on a cloud from heaven to bless the hearts of men, the incarnate expression of wonderful transcendent things, and mysteries too high for the mind of man to comprehend. It was walking reminder that life is beautiful. In short, it was a woman, a fair flower of a maiden. As she went about her work—she was carrying a water jar towards the town's walls—she exuded a glorious beauty strong and beyond apprehension. It was a radiant loveliness that came from inside—one could tell by looking at her—but was physically visible to the Human eye.

Deep inside the battle-hardened warrior, a heart of stone felt life in it again and began to feebly beat once more.

All the while as he was speaking to the scientists whom he had been sent to protect, in the back of his head a terrifying thought assailed his self-confidence. For months he had focused all his energies on one single end: to destroy the Covenant and preserve Humanity, all for the sake of duty. Now he briefly recalled the humanoid figures that had rescued him from the nightmare of the sandy ravines, and what from what they had at first rescued him.

He remembered madness and insanity. It occurred to him that perhaps it was still with him, only in another form. Deeper.

The scientists needed twenty-four hours more at least, and possibly forty-eight, before they were finished. Their eyes were bloodshot and they looked to be long past the point of exhaustion from their arduous work. The lieutenant left them in peace and walked back towards the town walls. Now the second incident took place. The lieutenant suddenly paused to watch three Marines—two of whom had not been among the group who came with the lieutenant—who were discussing some recent news from the war: Planet Reach had fallen.

"What were they called again?"

" 'Spartans'."

"And they're all dead?"

"As far as I know."

The lieutenant interrupted and said, "How long does it take to cook that with that thing?"One of the Marines pointed to that around which they were gathered: a concave mirror propped up towards the afternoon sun. "A piece of meat this size hardly takes two minutes on this planet, Sir. We're two hundred . . ."

". . . miles closer to Lambda Seven's sun than most planets inhabited by Humans, yes I know..." interrupted the lieutenant. He thought for a moment and asked, "Who made this thing?"
The Marines answered that since the war had destroyed all power in the town, the townspeople had manufactured many such solar cookers. The lieutenant summoned a local man who was hovering nearby, apparently without anything much to do. "Do you know how to make one of these?"

"Yes, it's a pretty simple technique using some of the alloys found in the soil here."

"Can you make me a big one? With a diameter as long as I am tall?"

"I suppose it's possible."

"I want three by morning. I want the light more concentrated than in this one. Maximum possible concentration. Something that will set fire to wood."

The Humans labored throughout the night to construct three of the lasers. Their enemies were busy, as well: from 23:00 hours till first light Covenant dropships continuously flew over the town and briefly dipped beneath the ridge before flying off again the way they had come. Over and over again the flying monster-carriers came and went, incessantly and unstoppably. Frustrated Marines fired defiant assault rifle blasts at the dropships, but were helpless to do any damage. The dropships' plasma weapons continually-but, blessedly, randomly-bombarded the town for hours unceasing. The soldiers on guard hunkered down beneath boxes or camouflage, and any Human caught in the open was roasted alive.

The Covenant attacked at dawn.

The coming of the goldfired morning's first rays found the lieutenant scrutinizing one of the two lasers that had just been finished. They had given up on the third laser about an hour and half before dawn. The lieutenant fingered the smooth surface, muttering to himself: "In what distant deeps or skies burnt the fire of thine eyes . . . on what wings dare he aspire . . . what the hand dare seize the fire?"

When the Covenant attacked, the lieutenant heard the alert and promptly grabbed the edge of the large rim—the laser was six feet and two point five inches in diameter—while barking out orders that the lasers be moved immediately to their destinations: one to each corner of the walls. In less than forty seconds the lasers were mounted on their wooden bases. All the Marines who could fit had already taken their defensive positions on the wall. The snipers were hard at work, and a few scattered plasma bolts were already flying towards the town. It would take several minutes before the wounded who were capable of holding a weapon were placed just inside the gates: either to the side so they could fire diagonally at the intruders, or behind boxes for protection. They would be an important line of defense if the gate were breached. Till then, they were ordered to hold their weapons at the ready and say their prayers.

The lieutenant surveyed the scene: Hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of Grunts, hundreds of Jackals, scores of Elites, and even a few Hunters. There would be no point in using the laser on the Hunters or the Elites; shields would get in the way. It could be useful for pinning down the Jackals, but the lasers would best be focused on the innumerable Grunts. Luckily the morning sun, two hundred miles closer, was directly behind the Covenant, a perfect position for the laser, as flat mirrors to redirect the sun's energy in case of an afternoon attack had not yet been readied. The lieutenant gripped the wooden control rod and swung his laser into position. The sun's light struck it and, as fast as light travels, bounced back the way it had come. The drifting motes of dust in the air reflected the light in all directions and made it evident that the sun's energy was concentrated a hundredfold inside the thin beam.

"What the hand . . ." whispered the lieutenant as he adjusted the beam and watched distant trees burst into flame. He aimed downwards and pointed the beam into the oncoming army's teeming masses. He heard Grunts screaming as he did so.

". . . dare seize . . ."

The aliens were now less than a hundred yards away, and a shower of lead was raining down on them. A much thicker shower of plasma, intermingled with a few scattered purple needles, was flying in the other direction. The laser, however, was the all-important trump card. Grunts screamed beneath its fierce beam and withered and died, died by the dozens.

"Concentrate on the Elites " some officer shouted at the men.

"THE FIRE "

Jackals were shrunk behind their shields. Elites were being cut down by assault rifle bullets ripping through their energy shields and into their flesh from various angles. The Grunts were either fleeing or being cooked. The morning air was utterly devoid of any breath of wind, and the stench of burning flesh was sickening and overwhelming. Some Marines were dying, but few enough that, at this rate, the enemy stood a high chance of being driven off of the field. Then the lieutenant spotted a Hunter's weapon warming up. Time slowed to a snail's crawl. The huge bolt of superheated plasma was in the air before he was able to react. There was barely enough time, though it seemed like a very long time indeed, to react before the bolt hit the laser. The lieutenant threw himself backwards, off the wall and towards the ground.

The ground was ten feet down. The bolt hit the laser when there were five feet left. The heat was less than searing, but the blast stunned him, jarring his every bone. Then he struck the ground and went out like a light.

Behind him on the ground some people saw him fall and rushed to help him. Above him on the walls a few good men took out the Hunter, one providing the others with covering fire from an assault rifle, one distracting the Hunter with a pistol, and one loading a rocket launcher and blowing the devilish beast to kingdom come. The embattled sergeant who had first greeted the lieutenant when his dropship had arrived was the one with the pistol. He yelled at the man with the rocket launcher to follow him. They dropped down to the ground level, casting hardly a glance at the fallen lieutenant, and ran to the far corner of the walls. The embattled sergeant ascended the steps and found a sniper already trying to pick off another Hunter. Without hesitating, the man with the rocket launcher aimed and fired. The rocket hit the ground at the Hunter's feet, and a sniper rifle's bullet punched a knockout hole through its head.

So far so good on this side: the second laser was intact and its man was picking off the few Grunts who were left on the field. Across the wall, the Marines were more than holding their own against the Elites. Rockets and grenades, along with some sniper rifle action, would dispose of the Jackals. The embattled sergeant would see to that in a moment. For now, he had to find another Hunter and take it out before it had a chance to damage the laser: those things always worked in pairs, and the other one had to be nearby. He scanned the area where the latest one had been killed, found the other one, the large blue horror, and fired his pistol at it to alert the rocket launcher man to its position: much easier than talking to him through all this racket. The Hunter's dead body soon flopped back onto the ground, having been blasted into the air by the explosion of the rocket. Beautiful.

The embattled sergeant checked his belt and found he still had two grenades. It was time to take out some Jackals.

"The Grunts have fled in terror, Sir" said an enlisted man just a few minutes later to the lieutenant, who was now resting in some shade with a canteen in his hands. "That is, the ones who didn't get toasted."

"And the rest?" queried the lieutenant.

"We can handle 'em" said someone.

The lieutenant took one last gulp from the canteen and forced himself to his feet. His whole body ached. In the exhausted condition of his battered body, it was all a man could to do to stand up straight and hold his head up with the pride of being free, unconquered, and alive. He leaned on his cane and looked around. Things were going well. This could well be the very first time that Marines unaided had driven the Covenant back with such losses. Splendid. Any other time such a thing had happened, as far as the lieutenant knew at least, it had taken help from the humanoid people who had rescued the lieutenant from the madness of the barren gullies where he had first fought Covenant. What had that madness been back in the sandy gullies? Had it not been an obsession coupled with . . . reality? Was that any different from the lieutenant's current way of life?

His train of thought was interrupted when then things began to go wrong. First someone on the wall called down, "The Grunts are coming back, Sir " Then the gate exploded inward in myriad flaming bits of wood. Then, to top it all off, the second laser's wooden base fell, and it quickly fell—burning—with the laser and a dead Marine—over the edge of the wall in molten ruin.
The lieutenant's mind raced and in brief seconds pondered what to do and his own course of action: three things had gone wrong at once. The Grunts were up to the men on the wall now, and the loss of the second laser presented the same difficulty to the same men. Those on the ground now, and inside, had to take action concerning the breach in the gate.

Every step was torment, but the lieutenant had realized that the battle was come to a point right now, and whether it was in line with the odds or not, fate had dictated his position for the necessary defense of the town. A drumbeat as of war played in the lieutenant's blood and echoed through his ears as he stood in the center of the gate, leaning on a cane in his left hand. The sounds of battle faded to a distant, muffled roar. An entire battle had come to a single point here at this one bit of dust and this one moment of time. The lieutenant was ready to meet his fate, whatever it might be. The world faded, leaving nothing but the gate, the lieutenant, the aliens close before him, and the lead flying through the air.

He ordered the other men back, on their knees inside the safety of the walls. He would ask no one else to join him in this suicidal folly. Yet he stood there in the opened gate and waited. An Elite was coming for him, an Elite and three Grunts. One Grunt was shot dead, then another. Then a bullet hit the Elite's hand and it dropped its plasma rifle. Excellent. The Elite stood at thirty yards. It came on without its weapon, the Grunt behind it.

"And battle and war " cried the lieutenant, "Death rides a wild wind Just a warrior and his sword, truth wins in the end."

The sword was the standard-issue Marine-core assault rifle, the little green numbers telling the lieutenant that sixty bullets were ready to be emptied into his foe. The final Grunt collapsed, and the Elite's shields glittered as random bullets struck it from various angles. The lieutenant raised the rifle in his right hand, his left hand still leaning on the cane.

"You don't understand," he whispered as if his enemy could hear him, "you don't stand a chance. I am swifter than light as it shines off of glass."

He squeezed the trigger. A random plasma shot unexpectedly struck the assault rifle, and the heat instantaneously scorched his hand up to the wrist. Through the heat he felt the gun firing as a faint sensation of vibrating metal, but could not control his fingers. The Elite came on at about ten yards. The heat vanished, and the lieutenant, remembering for a moment how much he abhorred the never-ending and excruciating pain of this relentless war, nevertheless steeled his mind for the last stand.

"Here I stand" he cried decisively, "and here I will dance" as he took a step forward, "and here I shall fight, and you shall not pass "

If the aliens had understood Humans, or if the Elite had been able to read the fire of the lieutenant's resolve burning in his eyes, perhaps it would have quailed. But that was not to be, and the assault rifle was thrust up against its mouth. Five bullets ripped into its shields, and four bullets lodged in its ugly brain. One bullet exited the back of its head, and the lieutenant watched as it bounced off a grey shield.

Hunter

It was right up against him and its shield was about to come down and crush his skull and break his neck. The lieutenant aimed at its groin and pulled the trigger for the last time. The rifle kicked up, the lieutenant's hands no longer possessing enough strength to control it, and the final bullet hit the Hunter's orange soft spot in the neck. The beast lurched forward and crashed down on the lieutenant, stone dead.

And like a stone the lieutenant lay still. He flitted back and forth between consciousness and unconsciousness. The sounds of the battle were far away. The lieutenant wondered for the first time since he had first incorporated the term "categorical imperative" into his thought processes just why he had done so. Why was it his duty to protect Humanity?

The answer came fuzzily as if in a dream, and the warrior viewed with his mind's eye the supreme motivation and goal of any warrior—a woman—and for the first time he began to understand. He remembered the beautiful girl inside the town. The warrior realized that Humanity was, also a thing of beauty, worth protecting. Worth fighting for. Humanity, like a beautiful woman, was worth dying for.

He realized that the sounds of battle had all but disappeared. Voices were nearby him, and then he heard someone say, "Hey, Sarge Is that the Lieutenant's foot?" And then the blackness was chased away by blinding sunlight, and cool air breathed on the lieutenant from a sudden wind upon his skin, and he knew that he would live to fight another day.

Changes Five: Darkness Descending
Date: 9 November 2004, 10:22 PM

Sundry thoughts rolled around in the Lieutenant's head while just two thoughts stayed in the background. Battle damage: defenses secure, but for the gate. Survivors: Thirty-nine walking. Twenty wounded. Time to dustoff: nineteen hours, at eight AM the next day. Time to the next dawn, when a certain premonition told the Lieutenant the Covenant would again crest the hill in a wave of destruction: seventeen hours. A smaller thought in the background of his head was the continuous dull pain: every muscle in his body ached. The final thought was a nagging question that his entire motivation for everything that he had done had been wrong.

No, not wrong: incomplete.

There she was; there was the girl; no, the woman. No matter.

An overwhelming urge suddenly consumed him. It obliterated any other thoughts in his mind and its potency threatened to tear him apart; that, at least, was how it felt. This creature was a thing of beauty, and he wanted to protect it. It was strong in its own way, able to take care of itself. But its glory was not its strength; its glory was in its beauty. And strength it had; but strength to defend itself against the Covenant hordes, it had not. Perhaps no one had, but at least the Lieutenant had a little bit more than she, and at least he would use it toward that end, that the thing of beauty would be preserved at the cost of his own blood, and that should any foul thing mar its loveliness, the Lieutenant would be dead before that end came to be.

But that was all a given, old news. What else could he do to protect her? The Lieutenant's fingers wandered across the smooth surface of the metal object attached to his belt. That was one thing he could do. "Excuse me, miss."

Her eyes leapt up and he clearly saw them with his own in all their mysterious wonder. A weaker mind would have faltered, but the Lieutenant did not waver, though he felt instinctively that he was speaking to a being whose worth was greater than his own for being innocent and for being the end and purpose of his own struggles. "What is your name?"

She replied, "Maria."

"Do you know how to use this?" The pistol lay flat in his palm, fully loaded.

"Show me" she said.

He demonstrated the cocking mechanism and the safety; then he removed the clip and put it back in again. "Now you do it." She did, a little slowly and clumsily but without any mistakes.

The embattled sergeant was nearby. The Lieutenant ordered, "Sergeant, bring me a dead Grunt."

"Yes, Sir " barked the sergeant. The Lieutenant and the girl watched as the embattled sergeant with the help of a private dragged up the corpse of one of the slaughtered Covenant Grunts. The Lieutenant addressed the girl: "Fill it with lead, Maria."

She acquiesced without a word. She seemed a little bit frightened of the power in her own hands, but it was as if she knew it was necessary. At the first shot she let out a tiny cry, but then her eyes hardened with determination, and she gave it three more shots. She looked up at the Lieutenant, who almost smiled but stopped himself. "Keep going" he said without emotion.

The girl emptied the pistol and stopped only after twice hearing the click of an empty chamber. "That was very good" said the Lieutenant.

"Why do they have blue blood?" she asked.

"Hemoglobin," said the Lieutenant. "It carries oxygen in our own human blood, and it's what makes our blood red. These things breathe methane, so they don't have any hemoglobin."


"So they have some blue thing in their blood that carries the other stuff?"

"Beats me. I'm sure somebody knows that little detail. I just know why their blood isn't red." There was a pause in the conversation, and then the Lieutenant handed Maria three more clips and told her to keep the gun. Women were scary things, and the Lieutenant had other things to contemplate.

And time passed. Time to dustoff: sixteen hours.

"Resources...we have some resources left . . . I was thinking that after the third laser, we can still make some mirrors just to blind them . . . if they attack during the morning that is. I suppose we could rig up some elaborate system to redirect the light for another time of day. And we have . . . horses . . . twenty-four. I was going to check with you and the leading civilians left in the town, since they're their horses and all, and then eat them if that's ok with everyone. You know, the condemned man always gets a good last meal. None of us have had any fresh meat since we got here, and some of us in weeks and months."

"Don't kill them yet, Sarge" said the Lieutenant. Creativity had probably won many a battle in history, and certainly it had served well this morning. But a cavalry charge . . . bordered on lunacy. But what the heck; when you're already doomed, you might as well make your death a crazy one. "Can anyone ride them, Sergeant? Some of the men from around here, maybe?"

"Far's I know."

"I want to speak to the men of the town. See who can ride . . . and who might be interested in certain death for the sake of their wives and children. Ok, the wives and children are mostly gone already. For the ones that are left . . . or just to give the rest of us a bigger chance. And if any of our own men might be able to learn to ride in a few hours." The Lieutenant was pacing back and forth, partially to consider how such a crazy idea might be accomplished and partially to wonder at his own stupidity at considering it.

"Lieutenant . . . are you thinking what I think you're thinking?"

"Yes Sergeant I am: at dawn. With mirrors. It will be useless, of course, against Elites and Hunters."

"But Grunts. And . . . Jackals . . . squashed "

"Bingo."

At ten hours to dustoff, it was night. The Lieutenant looked at the stars—brilliantly bright. Lamba Seven's sky was a new arrangement of stars to him as he had never been in this sector, but some of the constellations looked a little bit familiar.

He was likely to die in the morning. They all were. But as long as they were still alive, they might as well live. So the Lieutenant looked at the stars.

But his eyes were drawn down when a slender shadow slipped from a nearby building, merged with the night, and then turned to look towards him. A cool wind blew across her face, making her hair to dance in its breeze. He looked at her and her bright eyes within the pitch black of her hair as it merged with the night seemed to him as were the bright stars overhead.

Then she turned and vanished into the shadows.

Suddenly two lines of though in his head came together and completely linked for the first time. Before they had only very nearly come together. He had sworn silently to himself to, above all, protect Maria. His body was almost broken, and it was weak, hurting all over. Well, that was because Maria's body was unhurt. When he had first written his battle poem, months ago, it had taken him hours to find the right words. This time the words came quickly and easily.

"And battle and war . . ." was his only reality. "The children breathe a cool wind," was the state of reality behind the lines of battle, where those who were children to the ways of pain breathed clean air without the taste of blood in it. "Just a warrior and his sword" spoke of the battle once more. "Behind him peace wins" spoke of the objective of any just war.

He thought of what he had been through, from the first storm of plasma lightning over his shoulder as he had fled into the hills . . . to the monsters he had cut down in their tracks that morning. "I alone understand. I'll give them a chance. I'll show them the light. By my blood they will last." And again he thought of Maria. "For them I stand, For them I here dance, For them I fight, And this test I will pass..." for her, for them, for the children, said the Lieutenant beneath the stars.

And he gathered his strength for the final stand.

Goldfired morning. Two hours to dustoff. The mirrors were in place. The certain premonition was more certain than ever. It was time.

The Covenant crested the ridge for the third and final time. They had been reinforced in the night; some of the men on guard duty had counted: one hundred and thirty-one enemy dropships.

The defenses were arrayed thus: the first line was of course, the wall, bristling with assault rifles, sniper rifles, pistols, and rocket launchers. Thirty-four Marines were there. The second line was the wall of boxes, bricks, and sandbags within the walls. Just five Marines had been placed there, at the center facing the gate, which was the definitive weak spot, having only the weakest
makeshift wooden doors. For half a mile behind that wall along the town's main road were various boxes, buildings with windows, three smaller sandbag fortifications, and several bunkers.
They were all currently empty; things to be used in a retreat. The last bit of ground to hold was the clearing in the center of the town where the dropships would arrive at 800 hours. It was surrounded by a four foot wall. The eighteen Marines who were wounded and able to sit up were
already arrayed there, ready to pull assault rifle triggers. Their most significant task would be to cover the retreat of whoever came back from the outer lines of defense. The handful of women helped the two most badly wounded Marines, and did whatever they could for the scientists and other Marines: all in the buildings on the back side of the clearing, where it seemed a little bit safer. The women, too, were carrying assault rifles. A few of the men of the town were stationed on the outer and inner walls.

The Lieutenant had a few special cards to play, but the effectiveness of any of them was debatable. The first special card was two out of the three new reflective lasers. As the light first peeked over the horizon and intensified to its full fury in virtually no time at all, the humans observed it and—at the right moment—swung the mechanisms into position. The light further intensified within the beam, and the oncoming Covenant began to feel its wrath: the wrath of humans defending their homes and families, and everything that was human to them.

But the first special card was a disaster, for the enemy's lesson had been well learnt. In only a matter of seconds the lasers and their operators were brutally melted and incinerated in the vast wave of plasma that caught them almost before they could react. The only weapon now capable of slowing the onslaught was the sniper rifle. There were seven rifles left, and the bullets had been evenly distributed: no one had more than four. In seconds the snipers had cast the useless weapons aside and begun aiming the assault rifles. They had destroyed three Elites, ten Grunts, and two Jackals: fifteen drops in an immeasurable sea.

The Lieutenant's rocket launcher was the first to fire. The rocket streaked towards a certain clot of monsters, leaving its characteristic smoke-line behind it, and the next objects to be launched through the air were screaming aliens. A few more launchers fired, taking out Jackals and Hunters by the ones, Grunts by the fives. Elites and Jackals were slowly succumbing to the pistols. The Lieutenant fired his second rocket, eliminating a Hunter, and then realized that the things were already within fifty yards of the walls. Assault rifles were now in action. With the bullets distributed among so many enemies, most of the Grunts were only wounded, and the Elites' shields were probably not even broken. The Lieutenant decided he would give the signal for the other mirrors in sixty seconds.

Forty-five seconds and two more rockets launched. The Lieutenant was now crouching below the fortifications. To stand up would mean almost certain scalding burns from the plasma that filled the air. It wouldn't take very many of those to kill a man. The Lieutenant raised his assault rifle above his head and blindly emptied the sixty bits of lead into the hellfire. Then he caught the eye of the embattled sergeant down on the ground, and gave him the hand signal to prepare the second special card's ground-side component. The embattled sergeant, always reliable, obeyed orders quickly and flawlessly. The Lieutenant dropped to ground-level, picked up the special package that was the third card, and screamed into his walkie-talkie the signal for the second card's wall-side component.

Now began the most beautifully heroic moment on Lambda Seven's final saga. First the mirrors swung up: more than twenty of them, directing the sun's light into the eyes of the enemy's massed forces before the gate.


Then the gate was removed, blown outward from the inside with plastic explosives, its remains driving into the enemy and breaking the flesh, surely, of at least a dozen.

The horses charged forward into the light. Well-trained animals, they were driven by their heroic riders to their doom. A renewed blast of assault rifle fire broke out from above, and the twenty-four horses darted into the flaming whiteness. The only cavalry charge of this horrendous war saw them die, trampling their enemies, some. Cutting down a few with their assault rifles, some. Dying, all: all the men of this little town on Lambda Seven, kamikazes, into the burning whiteness rode, and in the whiteness died, and in the brightness and light bought a few more minutes of precious life for their still-breathing comrades behind the walls. Maybe it would be enough.

And some of the enemy fled. Victory

Yet there were too few left inside the blasted, blackened walls. Twenty-four fewer with the heroes gone to their death on the horses. No, twenty-five.

The Lieutenant would have delegated this mission to no one else. He would also have seen to it that no one but himself volunteered. It was better that the others be given a chance to survive; let his own blood be the price of that.

He was in the dust, in the lingering wake of that heroic charge. Jogging now, slowing to a walk. His finger was poised on the button, lightly brushing the button that would set off the special package he was delivering to the Covenant.

One thousand ton's worth of TNT. Reduced to the size of an apple and the weight of one hundredth of its explosive power. The apple carried in the left hand, the detonator in the right. There was only one of these weapons on Lambda Seven; the factories back on Reach had manufactured as many as they could, but they were fairly expensive and hard to make. The Lieutenant had been lucky to be given just one before he came to Lambda Seven.

The objective was to get as far away from the town as possible and set it off. The charge had carried the horses several hundred yards. They may have almost even reached the ridge. The Lieutenant was surely near the ridge now, and the dust was still there. He began to see flitting shadows of living enemies in the drifting brownness. Some fired their plasma rifles at objects on the ground.

He was among the ghosts. The blessed ghosts of the heroes whose bodies lay strewn on this cursed field. And the ghosts of the evil enemy. The lieutenant felt that he too was a ghost in this light, and prepared to go on to the other side and join the heroes. He knelt down, crouching behind a dead horse, and placed the bomb beneath its body. It seemed good to hide it, but he was not sure just why. He was ready to die, and the slightest mistaken move in his right hand would bring about his instantaneous incineration. Or, the slightest intentional movement: if they neared him in the drifting dust (there was no wind) and saw him, he would set it off. He was ready to die.

But what if living were possible? Well, he was resigned to his fate, but if there were the slightest millionth of a chance it was duty's decree to try it. He was laying down with the dead horse, watching and looking. Well, it was time to go back to the town. Maybe it would be possible to make it back inside the gates. He had done it last time he had left the city. He began to jog backwards, his back parallel to the ground as he crouched as low as he could. Then he stopped at the edge of the dust: there were no enemies in this drifting dust firing weapons or charging the town, but there were sounds of battle: Human and Covenant weapons shouting, and Humans screaming out hatred and pain.

He stood frozen amongst the drifting dust, and thought. Ah, of course: the cavalry charge had gone straight out from the gate, and the Covenant had been massed all along the walls. The ones to the sides of the gate would not have been swept away in the charge. They would be attacking the town. In other words, there was no going back.

Changes Six: Redemption
Date: 9 November 2004, 10:23 PM

CHANGES SIX: REDEMPTION

If he was to live, he would have to get away from the bomb; he could go sideways and try to disappear; he might be seen but might not be met by a monster. He could go back, back to the aliens, where he might not be seen but he would be found. He waited, lingering on the edge of the drifting cloud, and plunged back into the swirling dust; he didn't know why. He only felt that it was necessary, as if the call of fate were driving him back into that murkiness.

Thank God the dust was drifting straight away from the town; he counted his paces and estimated when he was about where he had left the bomb. He counted thirty more paces. There were aliens everywhere, but for reasons incomprehensible they were not killing him. Perhaps in the dust he was indistinguishable from the Elites. They were barking, growling, communicating and . . . planning something. At least it sounded like they were. How many paces past the bomb? The creatures were everywhere; one brushed against his side. He shivered, shuddered for a moment; then his body danced and waved in spasms of terror and a scream caught in his throat, stifling him. With infinite courage he forced himself to move, to move at all costs . . . and found that he was running.

There were sounds of alien voices around him; they knew he was there now, and they knew he was not one of them. Fear consumed him and he fled faster, but, catching himself and his mind, realized he must do something, and dove for cover behind a large rock, lying still there. Now he was barely on the far side of the dust-cloud. But then a gust of wind came, and the dust at last rolled away entirely.

He shuddered again, realizing that he had no idea where the detonator was. He felt nothing in his hands. The chill of ultimate failure ran down his spine, and in despair he looked at his hand.

The detonator was there, by a miracle—his fingers still poised above the button. Why hadn't he felt it?

The aliens were just over the rock, scarcely four feet away: Three Elites, talking in their deep voices. They were looking away for the moment: towards the town, where plasma continued to bombard but there was hardly any answering fire. That meant that they were waiting for him to set off the bomb; they didn't dare to show their faces above the walls or the plasma would destroy them.

Infinite courage was realized again. He knew what he wanted to do. Few men had ever looked terror and fate full in the face. Fewer still lived. But to stare at death and defy it, to look in the eyes of a monster that hated Man, and spit in its mouth and watch it die an instant before oneself: that was strength. Or if nothing else, it was the call of fate: and defiance of infinite terror and hate . . . well, at least it would be a manly death.

And so he stood, and leapt over the rock, the detonator high in his hand above his head, and planted his feet behind the nearest Elite and cried out in Human tongue that he defied them. It turned around in a flash and raised its arm, a limb with quite enough power to crack his skull or break his frail Human neck. At the final moment he adjusted his legs so they would be, as near as he could figure, behind the monster's legs. Its arm was in the air falling, but it never fully fell. The Lieutenant's fingers closed on the detonator's button . . . .

A powerful radio signal radiated out in all directions, quickly as light piercing the rocks and bodies and finding its target. The receiver inside the apple caught the beam and relayed a signal to the firing mechanism. The mechanism sparked and the spark caught the fuel, and a sun erupted among the aliens. The ground within a three hundred-yard radius was cleared, and hundreds of Covenant roasted in the fire. The blast caught the Elite in full swing of his mighty arm, hurling its body away, forward, away from ground zero. The killing machine became a protective shield that absorbed all of the shrapnel and flying rocks, and most of the fire, and saved the Lieutenant from the devastating explosion.

The Lieutenant was seeing intense hate in the thing's eyes; if they could hate, did that mean that they were creatures capable of love? Didn't love come first? But even more intense was the terror in its small eyes. Small, the lieutenant felt, was his courage, but it was enough to stand firm. Then the blue mass lurched towards him. The whole word shivered, and all things leapt in that direction, all things but the solid earth. The vibration-wave caught him, too, and his body moved several inches backwards and then back. It was a sickening sensation, and very painful; but it didn't last. It must have been the shrapnel and rocks that drove the Elite to move more than the wave carried it, several feet and into the Lieutenant. The world of red fire faded into darkest black.

He came to and found himself alive and some distance from the town. He forced himself up and began to move. At first he was in too much pain, shock, and weariness to move but a few paces in half a minute, but then he was able to accelerate. He passed the gates after twenty minutes, just as the Covenant massed at the tip of the ridge for an enraged final assault. He was greeted with a deafening cheer by the Marines, and could not help but grin so widely that he felt that the skin on his face must surely split.

Enough was enough. It was time to abandon the walls: they were broken where they were still up, and cracked where they weren't broken. He tried to pick five volunteers to die with him behind the second wall. Every Marine volunteered, and the embattled sergeant threatened mutiny if the Lieutenant did not retreat now to the final line of defense to await the dropship. The Lieutenant was adamant, but so were the Marines. Finally ten Marines were picked out of the much larger number of volunteers to man the second wall. Two were assigned to each bunker, and the rest of the tiny handful of survivors retreated further back.

The Lieutenant joined them, but could only walk very slowly. He would not consent to be carried. But there were sounds of war nearby, and growing nearer steadily. Suddenly they knew that the gate was breached. Behind them the third and final laser held its ground for a moment, and the assault wavered, but the wave was too strong: the tide rolled in over the helpless defense. Last grenades were dropped by dying hands, and more aliens were sent screaming through the air: more drops in a sea . . . .

The Lieutenant and the four men with him were caught by the first scattered plasma shots near a bunker. With no other choice, the Lieutenant went in and readied his weapon, pausing for a moment to order the other three to run for their lives. His eyes were powerful, his glance like fire, and his words were not easily resisted. Two of them ran for survival, and two showed a strength of will strong enough to withstand even the Lieutenant's demand.

They gathered at the bunker's window and watched: five of them. A second bunker was destroyed in green fire; it was scarcely fifty yards nearer to the enemy than they were. The aliens turned their fire on the Lieutenant's bunker. First came the purple needles, dancing randomly above and beneath the window. Then came the blue plasma, just far away enough to not kill the Humans immediately. Then came the green plasma bolts, some small and some larger. The larger ones would have caught onto the humans and tracked them slightly—though not nearly so well as a needle—until it hit them, but the opening was too small for them to lock on. But there were so many of the larger green plasma bolts. The Grunts and Jackals were just outside, the Elites were in the doorway.

One man cried out "Hunters " and another man covered his beloved Lieutenant with his body, and then all disappeared in green fire.

For the second time that day, the Lieutenant came back from the dead. He groped around and found a human hand. Slick and sticky with blood, but a warm, living human hand. He squeezed it for the comfort of them both.

When his strength returned he pushed himself to his feet, looked out the bunker window, and saw one Hunter coming onwards. It was the only Covenant visible. No, no, there were more behind it; but the Hunter was close, and rapidly advancing.

Then the Lieutenant realized that he was carrying the human hand, and that it was no longer attached to a body. He cast it aside in repulsion and then in wonderment that it was probably his last human contact, and he felt that perhaps he should not detest it so.

This place was hell. He had lived in hell for days now, or was it forever? Was it since...since the before-time, in the arid hills? Or was it only since he had stepped off the Pelican onto Lambda Seven? Why was he still alive? It was impossible for a Human to survive as long as he had in this war. No one could survive this long in hell. What superpowers were keeping him alive? Had he called it luck? Strategy? Strength? Yes, they were all true, but now he realized another reason: a fiery spirit and a fierce will to live that could not, would not be conquered. A final reason to fight one last time entered his head: if he survived, he would see beauty again. Deciding beforehand not to allow any considerations of despair, he began to move: walking towards the door, jogging out the door, darting underneath the Hunter's shield.

He began to run.

There are many different kinds of running. First, there is the simple, basic jog where one runs as if for fun, energy being expended until the energy diminishes. Then there is the running hard, the running with a purpose. This is the running that takes up all of the runner's concentration. It requires determination and endurance. This is the running employed by many people who run both for joy and for health. Then there is the running that takes one to the limit. It is employed when strength wells up out of the depths of a man's soul and drives him to move against all odds: against all weariness and all physical pain. It is the running of those who are truly committed to war games, the running of those in the final stages of a marathon, and especially the running of soldiers fleeing from the battlefield.

The Lieutenant had reached his limit. He pushed the pain back inside his head; it was something to be ignored. He felt the fear but focused on the will to live. A man had many false limits, and one's true limits are never found until one goes much, much farther than he thinks he can go. This he had learned well in recent years.

The pain throbbed deep inside his bones, and his skin was burning with the need for more sweat. The Lieutenant had reached his true limit, and he had no more strength. He was about to fall in the dust, to be burned and his body torn to pieces and lie dead in the dust.

He used his last strength of will. He pushed himself just an touch beyond the limit. The pain was now like a roaring waterfall screaming in his brain. The Lieutenant remembered duty and the will to live because he was a human, and there was something beautiful about being human. He pushed himself just a little bit farther. He was now running like a whirlwind, and the pursuing foe was falling behind. Like a hurricane he swept past the objects of the burned-out town, and passed swiftly across the dust like the shadow he had been in the twisted hills of sand when all had changed and his life had become this hell.

He remembered a word: beauty. In his exhaustion he could not think what it was: there was only running in this world. Running and its pain. Running, and running was his glory. He was free, unconquered, wild and strong, a man, and running was his glory. And somewhere else there was another world (before things had changed) and somewhere ahead, perhaps, lay another change beyond which beauty would be visible and freedom could actually be enjoyed.

Beyond the limit he ran. Beyond human endurance. A brownish shape loomed before him and his subconscious whispered to his conscious that it was his destination.

And then, for some reason, the Lieutenant fell. One last tearing spasm of pain ripped through his body and he felt nothing. Behind him the Hunter came on, roaring with rage, its shield raised to crush.

The Lieutenant was dimly—barely—aware of the final pistol shot fired on Lambda Seven.

Behind him the Hunter collapsed.

The Lieutenant was dimly aware of something soft but strong on his hand—another hand—and hands on his waist, his back, moving him. He felt his muscles straining futilely to lift his own body up, and was unaware that his nerves had relayed a message from his brain telling them to do so.

He came to, and the world felt like a dream. There was immense pain, but it was all inside him. Outside it was soft. Warm but not hot: quite cool, actually, compared to hell.

But hell had been called "Lambda Seven." It came back to him: the disattached human hand, the dust, the blood, the innumerable corpses, the flying plasma.

And he also remembered that he had been drinking fresh water a moment ago. He had not known it at the time—at least, not that he knew of—but now he somehow remembered it.

Beside him was a lovely face. He remembered what the face was called . . . Maria. He found he could slowly move. He rotated his head and looked around. At Maria's feet was a pistol. He closed his eyes, and went back to the nightmare, driven back to hell by curiosity.

Yes . . . yes . . . there had been one pistol shot. It might have been hers.

There were more people. A few feet away on the other side of the ship was an old friend, a brother, a blood-brother, someone he must have known since he was born. Wasn't this the dearest friend he had ever had . . . but what was his name?

Oh yes . . . it was the embattled sergeant across the way, one with whom the Lieutenant had shed his blood, now become his brother.

People were talking. Someone said that a Spartan had survived, whatever that meant. The Lieutenant wondered what calamity it was that the Spartan had survived. Suddenly the Lieutenant realized that he had been asleep and had just woken up. Now they were talking about a ring. A huge ring floating somewhere in space. They had been repeating the word "halo" for some time. Someone said, "The MC is being sent to Earth now."

The Lieutenant tried to speak for the first time. He tried to ask where they were going, but the words were slurred and incomprehensible. He cleared his throat, let someone pour water between his lips, and again asked, "Where are we headed?" He was barely able to croak out the words.


"To Earth" someone said. "For the end. The end of . . ."

". . . of hell or humanity" finished the Lieutenant, his voice raspy and full of weariness. "It's one or the other."

After a pause the embattled sergeant said, "Say, Lieutenant, what's your name?"

"Adams. Jeremiah Adams. What's yours?"

"David."

"Who all survived that, David?"

"Five Marines, ten more civilians counting Maria here. All the scientists."

The Lieutenant wept for his fallen brothers, but knew that he could not cry for very long. He would have to rest, and most likely get back to the bloodred war after a time, though maybe he could take some vacation time even after he left sick bay. Sick bay: thank God, if there was one, for a few days in sick bay to do nothing but sleep and maybe read books. Egads, the way he felt, it might be weeks in sick bay. Later when he didn't feel so tired he would have to check himself and make sure there were no body parts missing.

This time in hospital he would pay strict attention to the books to see if he could find a final answer. If there were any philosophical system, any God, any religion, anything at all, that commanded duty and adored beauty without any contradiction between the two, that belief must be truth, and the Lieutenant would have to find it. If there were any system, any God, any religion, that explained just what is so beautiful about being human, that said why humanity is worth fighting for . . .

He was still barely more than a child in his years. Once again he wept for the death of innocence and for the loss of good lives. He wept for his comrades in arms. But then he looked at Maria and wept that her beauty had emerged from the battle unscathed. Her eyes betrayed deep sorrow at the loss of her home and—who knows—maybe some of her relatives had died—maybe he would ask her—but her beauty seemed all the brighter for the sorrow.

And so finally the boy warrior and Lieutenant wept that, through his own scars, someone else might be preserved. And, bearing scars, he would live on. If he had a chance, he would find something better than what he had now.

"But that is the beginning of a new story—the story of the gradual renewal of a man, the story of his gradual regeneration, of his passing from one world into another, of his initiation into a new unknown life. That might be the subject of a new story, but our present story is ended."

-The final words of Fyodor Dostoyevsky's "Crime and Punishment."

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