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A voice in my ear: "You are my everything..."

The weight and warmth of his body pulse against mine, held together beneath the covers, where the air is laden with our combined scent. I turn my head and find his eyes easily, seeming to glow bright amid the night, and I murmur:

"...and you are my all."

His lips, sweet on mine; an arm around my body, tugging me closer to him. All I feel, all I breathe, all I want is him; and, oh, he gives himself fully to me.

Words are such petty, weak things, aren't they? His paws move up and down my body, sending shivers through me as his claws trace lightly through fur and along the sensitive skin underneath. There's simply nothing more to say - so, I say nothing, and let my body tell him how I feel, what I want.

His scent in my nose, his breath, hot on my neck - a paw moves down, finds the fly of my pants, opens the button and starts at the zipper -

• and a bump jerks me awake, quite rudely. The sweet warmth of my mate's body changes into the sickly heat of the ship's belly; his breath in my fur becomes the mockery of a modern-day air conditioning system sucking the stale air out of the troop bay only to pump it back in, pretending it's been processed and purified; and the gentle caresses of his claws along my arms turn out to be loose straps and hanging chains from the Pelican's seat and my uniform.

That's right. A Pelican - I remember now. We're en route to Reach in response to whispers of a Covenant invasion, me and my unit. Nobody here believes it, but hey. Can never be too careful, what with everything our entire civilization has to lose based on this planet. To my left, practically sitting on top of me, is Alex, a black cat; on my right is Kutya, the sergeant of this squad, a big German shepherd. After a quick glance around, I find my mate smiling softly at me from the other side of the bay, a short eight feet apart that seems a lot longer than it really is. He lifts one paw from his rifle and waves. I smile back at him.

"Prepare for landing," drones the voice on the intercom, all business, unfamiliar to me. I can't being to guess how many Pelicans are in the UNSC fleet; double whatever that number is for the pilots. Never once have I ridden with a pilot I've had before. "LZ is clear and all surrounding area is calm."

Kutya nudges me with a big elbow, clad in metal-alloy armor. We may not be Spartans, but at least our armor is... well, at least it's the same color sometimes. "How many Covenant kurvák do you think I'll take down, eh?"

Having been born on Reach and raised between here and various other colonies and stations, Kutya tends to speak in the Hungarian-laced dialect expected of those like him. "If I had to guess, I'd say not many." Kurvák means 'whores'.

"Ha." He gives me this big, stupid g-shep grin and shifts one of his assault rifles to rest against his other shoulder. His choice in weaponry matches his personality; it truly is a wonder his rank is so high. My first deployment, I thought him introducing himself as my sergeant was a joke. "You just keep count."

The bump of the Pelican landing sends a jolt through all of us, and my heart speeds up a little the way t always does at the start of each new mission. Lives will be lost by my paws today, whether it's by a bullet or from dire incompetence. That's something that's taken me a long, long time to accept. Some mark notches on their gun to remember. I try to forget.

Even the Covenant can be hauntingly... human when they die.

Reach greets us with hard earth and cool air, tinged with a faint taste of rust and old metal. The rest of the squad piles out, adjusts their gear, looks around at the surroundings. It's at least nice to stand up after the ride from the frigate Black Moon Rising further out in the system. We really have no right to complain, though; if our technology had remained the same since the start of space travel, we'd all be a hundred years late and likely dead. I had spent a brief few months here for training after joining the UNSC, but those had me confined to a subterranean building system, like the tunnels beneath ONI that are rumored to exist (and that soldiers of my status aren't supposed to know about).

Due to that underground restriction, I've never actually seen the surface of the planet itself. And seeing it for the first time has the same effect on me as with every other planet I've been to: I can't believe such a beautiful place exists so far from home. I can't believe that so many beautiful places exist everywhere, actually. Twenty-first century scientists found hundreds of inhabitable extrasolar planets before the second decade of that century, and that's only 'inhabitable' in regards to known life at that time.

Growing up teaches you that everything is wonderful; joining the army teaches you to shoot at anything that isn't our idea of wonderful. Not to say that the UNSC goes out of its way to destroy. We don't attack: we defend. And we're good at it, too. I've seen Kutya defend Alex with a powerful fist to the right side of an Elite's face, enough to break the thing's energy shield and send it sprawling long enough for the sergeant to draw his pistol and drop one shot into its face.

A warm paw takes mine, startling me out of thought, and a moment later my mate's gentle scent tickles at my nose. A fleeting memory of the dream from earlier zips through my head. Then, his voice, somewhere between 'smooth' and 'silky': "What's on your mind?"

"Several things." The sergeant talks into the receiver built into the side of his helmet, while the rest of the squad talks among themselves and continues looking around. Brutus knelt down by a rock earlier and now peers across the canyon - this planet is covered with them; we were put down on a plateau just big enough for the Pelican - with his sniper rifle. Visible from here are low structures built into the rock face on the other side, and with his modified zoom on that thing, I have no doubt he can see the thoughts of the people inside.

"Am I one of them?"

"Of course." Sometimes I wonder what drew me to this life and what keeps me here. Plasma burns hurt just the same in small quantities as they do in large - I have withstood enough to die at least fifty deaths. One more, all at once, wouldn't be so bad... but, then, I remember my mate, Vari, and it's these thoughts of him that keep my eye open, my aim steady, my heart beating. "Although, I -"

"Hey." Kutya straightens up and faces all of us, taking the pose he does when we're about to be briefed. He wears a magnum on each hip and has two assault rifles slung across his back, along with a few knives in various places; I've seen him use three in a few different occasions, and I still can't say where he puts them amid all his spare clips and loose ammunition. He waits for the nine of us to face him, and then nods. "We've only got bits of reports of Covenant, and they're all unrelated and from the settlers here. These people are superstitious - I should know - so it might be something, or it might now. However, that doesn't mean we're permitted to dedicate any less than our full to the task. Yes?"

"Yes, sir!"

"We don't know what we're up against - whether there really is Covenant here or not. I want you guys to recon some areas, talk to the civilians, ask around. You're armed as a caution. Alex, Ramin, Marcus, head back that way -" - he points behind us - "and follow the road heading east. Fenton, Duncan, and Samuel, keep on north. If I remember correctly, there's a town a bit of a way that way. Should be good information." His eyes fall upon me and my mate, and he gives an encouraging smile. "Brutus, you and Vari stay here, scope out anything you can see. And you -" - my heart skips a beat when he says this and points to me, after years of associating being singled out with soon to follow punishment - "come with me. We're gonna check out west. Alright, everyone?"

"Sir, yes sir!"

"Well," Vari says, and again squeezes my paw. "I'll see you at the end of this."

"Yeah. I love you."

"Love you too." He lifts his rifle, a highly-customized DMR that shows its age, and nudges Brutus with his shoulder before getting down next to him. The coyote gives him a playful snarl in return and then continues tinkering with his scope.

Brutus has his sniper; Kutya has his dual assault rifles and a thousand other hidden weapons, implements, defenses, and otherwise; my mate has his DMR, which he uses to effectively halt any Covenant forces that manage to evade Brutus's shots; and I just take whatever I can find, usually a single assault rifle or a very normal DMR. I am rather partial towards the Covenant plasma pistols, though. Can cut through shields like a hot knife through scrib jelly, so to speak.

"Ah..." Kutya inhales the cool midmorning air. "Smell that?"

"It smells like dirt and rust, sir."

"It smells like home! Wonderful! I wonder how my testvér is doing."

"Sir... aren't you worried? News of a Covenant invasion, even if there really is nothing, is still serious - especially on this planet..."

The big German shepherd slows his pace a little, turns one ear to me, breathes out a sigh. "Tell me," he says, voice low, "how long have you been in the UNSC?"

God. It feels like an eternity. However, it's not something I regret. "A few years?"

"Then you should know that hope and happiness are in short supply in the back of a Pelican. Yes, I'm worried. Do not doubt that. However, I would rather maintain a clear mind than one clouded with worry."

"But - in the event that something has happened -"

"Shush."

He crouches behind a sad excuse for a shrub and pats around a few of his pockets. His sudden change in body language - ears perked, eyes focused, tail still - startles me. "What? What is it?"

"Do you see?" After another moment, he finds what he was looking for, a little pair of binoculars, and lifts them to his eyes. For a few seconds, he adjusts the focus. "Something down there... movement."

The pathway cuts steely down maybe fifty or sixty feet, and then does so again past there to a low plateau studded with boulders and tall shrubs, or maybe they're small trees. The DMR I chose at the beginning of this unhooks easily from my back, and I sweep the area with it. Nothing out of the ordinary catches my attention. "I don't..."

"There." A shimmer of light, a slight skewing of shape. The effect on the surroundings of an Elite's active camouflage module.

"Permission to shoot." The key is to not blink, to track the movement and the shadows. I'm not nearly as good a shot with a scoped weapon as Brutus or my Vari, but -

"Denied." Kutya sits back on a booted foot and slips the binoculars back into his pocket. "Spec-ops class are usually the only Elites that are equipped with camo, but we can't take the risk if it's something higher, and that's not too out of the ordinary. That's at least three, four shots - headshots - and we can't risk that." His paw turns my weapon's barrel down. I look at him. "Besides. We don't yet know their intention. If a squad of, say, five was sent purely for recon, and only four come back..."

"Yeah." The shimmer of light disturbs the air once more, and then I lose it. "So what now?"

"Now? You wait. I tell command." Kutya straightens up a little, but does not rise to his feet. "I did not expect to find them after a two-minute walk..."

Just as he lifted a paw to his helmet to open a comm.-link, Brutus's voice rings out over the squad-wide channel: "Grunts, moving around in the settlement across the valley. Don't know how many. No sign of human life."

Kutya's sharp "Szar" cuts through the air before he opens the link. "Visual contact of a cloaked Elite and a number of Grunts. The Covenant is on Reach."

The silence afterward weighs down on us, as heavy as the words just spoken. This war had been going on for quite a while, and we had always maintained some semblance of... well, not exactly 'winning', but we've never really been losing, either. The Covenant are not foolish strategists; they'd only mount an assault if they know they can win, or at least bring most of their opposition down with them. For them to attack Reach...

"Maybe they're survivors from an escape pod," I offer, drawing on the reserves of hope that my sergeant calls 'scarce'. "Many Phantoms have been destroyed further out in the system, and a few larger carriers, too."

Kutya looks up at me from massaging one of his temples, and, with a single question, shatters that hope I had managed to find: "Have you ever seen a Covenant escape pod?"

"Reached a few houses." That was Ramin, one of the squad sent east, over the channel. "All the settlers are dead. Not pretty."

"More than a rumor, then." The sergeant's shadow falls over me when he stands. He casts a glance over at the rocks below. "Come on. We're heading back." And then, into the radio: "Everyone regroup at the LZ. Prepare for anything; we don't know the extent of what we're up against."

Somehow, I knew at the start of this day that this mission wouldn't be as easy as it first seemed. The Covenant is one hell of a sneaky opponent - I remember a rumor circulated the ranks at the beginning of this war, saying that they had invaded and conquered a planet relatively close by a large base in the system. We didn't know of their presence there until the planet sheared in two, followed by a shockwave that knocked out the station's power for a good week or so. By the time everything was back up and a force prepared for retaliation, they jumped into slipsace - still in what used to be the planet's atmosphere - and took a large chunk of what remained with them.

I don't know. I've never much been one for overt pessimism, but... in my knowledge of their past appearances and attacks, they've always been prepared.

And we haven't. Even a team of Spartans have trouble with the same number of Elites.

The pathway lurches into a shallow incline, which we had descended upon coming down here; at the top is Vari's shadow. He waves a paw, looks as if he's about to call something out, then changes his mind and says it into the radio: "You might want to see this."

"Come on." Everything in Kutya's pockets and hanging off his uniform shifts in a cacophony of sound when he further picks up his pace to a slow jog. That's another difference between us and the enemy: we're hindered by metal, projectile weapons, 'simple' technology in their eyes, the best of the best - as funding allows - in ours. A tribe of Neanderthals facing a 22nd century military squad. The Elites can move soundlessly, and even without the added dampening effect of active camo, like we have to.

Trepidation is palpable in the air, weighing down on us almost like a thick, cloying humidity. Brutus sits back against a large rock, one leg drawn up close to his chest and the other out, sniper discarded off to his side.

"Rumors," he says, and shakes his head. I look over at Kutya, who steps forward and peers into the valley below.

Binoculars aren't even needed. The distant silhouettes of Covenant forms, ranging from the easily recognizable stout figures of Grunts to the tall, swift Elites, and even some kinds I have never seen before, flow over the rolling scape of the dry lakebed, a giant amorphous bacterium crawling forward. The glint of fuchsia and purple metal, of flowing, rounded edges in the sun. Small, fast Ghosts; their much larger, much deadlier Wraiths, like our Mongoose to Warthog; the towers out of which Skirmishers shoot their beam and focus rifles with inhuman precision, borne on the backs of similar vehicles for which I have no name.

"Uram Isten," breathes Kutya, fists clenched. He looks back and forth between Brutus and Vari. "Did you see any ship? Any Phantom, any Specter, any... szar, anything?"

The answer rings out in unison, each of the two voices having a different degree of resignation. "No."

"Don't tell me you just... blinked, and they were there. We thought this was just one recon squad - but, no, it's a whole damn army. What happened?"

"They..." My mate fiddles idly with the scope of his rifle. Kutya mutters something into his comm.-link with command while Vari gathers his thoughts; I catch the words emergency' and 'opposition', 'firepower' and 'outnumbered'. And, then: 'hopeless'. "...I don't know. They just started coming from over the ridge."

"Alex, Marcus, Ramin - where are you?" Kutya looks in the direction they set off in, one paw to the side of his helmet to keep the link open.

My heartbeat thrums a little heavier for every second they don't respond. And, then, Alex's voice this time: "Reporting in. Everything okay?"

"Start evacuating the citizens in the town. Now."

"...Evacuate? To where?"

"Anywhere that isn't near here. We've got big trouble." Our sergeant pulls one of his rifles from off his back and motions east. "You other three - Fenton, Duncan, Sam. Get over here. We're heading in to start evacuating. I need all of you."

We all know what we'd seen. We know, but we can't quite... contemplate it. A Grunt can take out... oh, maybe one, two lives if it's lucky; a Skirmisher quite a few more, especially if its opponents are unarmed - otherwise, a well-placed headshot can easily dispatch them; but an Elite, of any rank...

For the army in the valley below, I don't think there are enough lives available to take.

"Eyes out." Kutya swings his rifle around us as he walks, pointing it at anything along the way that moves. "I requested backup from command - and I expect we'll get it. This planet is too important to lose." The first shape of a building comes into sight over the crest of a shallow hill. "And I'm not saying that only because I'm from here."

This town is nothing at all like the cityscape of New Alexandria elsewhere on Reach. By far, no. This is hardly a town - by today's standards, it's more of a village with a few extra houses. The building style of the settlers of Reach favor a natural sort of motif, digging rooms into the inclines of hills for good insulation and a sleek appearance - as well as being hard to see from afar. I find myself hoping that the Covenant will glide right by this village, and that the backup the sergeant called will intercept and take care of them.

...There's that word again. 'Hope'. Hoping that the Covenant don't see this village, or won't deem it important enough; hoping that, if they do, we'll have finished our evacuation.

"Brutus, watch their movements from here. I want you strictly on lookout; don't take any shots without clearing them first with me."

"Yes sir."

"Everyone else, keep your weapons down, but still ready in case anything happens. Do not threaten the civilians with force. Get them out by any means, but do not point the barrel of a gun at them, or hit them, or anything. We are soldiers, not brutes. Understand?" He looks around at all of us, and then glances back down to where we came from. The valley and all it contains is visible from here, although a little diminished by the distance. For some reason, I'm reminded of the games I used to play with my friends, where we'd command huge virtual armies and pit them against one another, using our own strategies as well as the follies of those of our opponents to gain any advantage...

The people are slow to respond to our knocking, and look at us with confusion when we try to speak to them; however, on the other side of the central swathe of bare land separating the houses, Kutya has about half as much trouble, saying only a fraction of what we do and then pointing down to the valley below. Fear can easily pierce the language barrier, we soon realize, and simply start doing the same as him when the citizens do answer the door. This being a largely military-based colony, none are at all fazed by the sight of an armed soldier in full uniform standing at the entrance to their house - but, waves of Covenant are a different story.

I remember how I viewed war as a child, before I had even begun on the path that would eventually lead me to the UNSC. It was something distant and unfamiliar, something about which I knew nothing other than what had been chosen to be taught to me in childhood. The way these people must feel about the Covenant can't really be much different, can it?

They don't know where they're going. This much is clear on their faces, in their hesitant movements, in the half-muttered questions they ask of us, knowing they won't be answered. I don't think Kutya knows, either. He just knows they have to be somewhere, anywhere, that isn't here.

And then, the thunderclap of a sniper shot rings out, startling the poor villagers. A near-silence follows, tinged by the lasting echoes, in which the clang of a discarded shell on hard earth sings. We all look down at the central path, half-idly shooing away any civilians we'd had with us; Brutus, prone behind a convenient jut of rock, swings his rifle a few degrees to the right. From here, I can just barely make out the fallen form of Skirmisher in the area where we had regrouped just earlier.

Kutya's gruff voice sizzles across the radio link. "Brutus..."

"With all due respect, sir, I had no time to request permission. He shot first - it's lucky he missed. Needle went into this damn fine boulder and half-shattered. Would you like a souvenir, sir? Put it on a necklace or something."

"Fasz-"

Another sniper shot rings out, and this time, the rogue needle in response cracks against the doorway right behind me, scattering packed earth across all of us, and I think almost giving an elderly cat a heart attack. Then, Brutus again: "We need to move these civilians, sir."

Kutya shouts something - excuse me; when he introduced himself to us, he said 'I don't yell or shout. I just project well', which, by God, he does - in smooth Hungarian, something probably along the lines of 'follow me', based on how the people react. "All of you, stay here and keep an eye out - don't just watch this area. We've fought the Covenant before, and we know that they're a craft opponent. Send any civilian you find back up this ridge."

Vari moves forward and kneels down beside Brutus, rifle lifted and ready, scanning all possible points of attack. The cold fingers of apprehension work their way against my body, sharpening my reflexes as well as heightening my nervousness; it's only by sheer luck that I haven't shot someone in my squad on accident before. On one of the few nights that we have together anymore, my dear Vari told me that he has an itch to shoot at anything that moves within the field of his sights... and he has the reflexes to do it, too. When someone gets ridiculously good at something, whether it's shooting or playing a game in their quarters back on the station, they usually develop a tendency to trivialize its difficulty, I've noticed. Vari, for example, sometimes says things like -

"- pop!" perfectly in unison with the bang of his shot, much less jarring than that of Brutus's much higher caliber weapon. Down along the pathway, another body falls. "That's, what, one to two, your favor?"

"I didn't realize we were counting."

That's how those two handle situations like this. They've been friends for a long time, advancing through the lower ranks of the military and even camp before that; back then, they competed for who can get the most kills in a game, and now, they still do the same. They're always playing a game, it seems. IT softens the moral blow of taking a life and dulls the shock that they can lose their own at any moment.

I, however, can't figure out how to feel. Each beast of the Covenant is a living creature, with blood and breath and thought, so shouldn't they have the same right to live as anyone else? I shoot at what shoots at me. On the battlefield, a corpse to trod over is just another obstacle.

With the sergeant gone and gunshots increasing in closeness to each other, this little village has turned from containing houses into an array of cover, walls behind which I can stand, furniture that may or may not do well to stifle a burst of plasma. The other members of the team spread out and set up in various areas supporting their weapon of choice; in a defense tactic like this, we know that we should stay close together, but still far enough apart to eliminate the possibility of being taken out all at once.

Of course, with the Covenant, that possiblity's always there. Given the opportunity and necessity, and maybe even without that, they won't hesitate to open a slipsace rift inside a highly-populated city.

"Men." Kutya's voice is stern and unyielding over the radio. Our snipers' gunshots carry on; I hear Vari's snide chuckle, and then Brutus's protest that a DMR is better suited for this distance. "This looks back. We've got an army coming up that ridge; take on what you can and retreat before you're overwhelmed. Before. We're no longer on recon; now, we're defending."

"Here they come," Vari says, and loads a fresh clip into his rifle. He elbows his friend. "Hope you've had enough target practice, 'cause now's the real deal."

I don't even know what happens. There's silence one moment, and then, gunfire: the loud bangs of our projectile weapons amid the oddly organic noises produced by their plasma. At the start of every battle, both sides are fairly evenly matched, as projectiles wreak the same havoc on exposed flesh as plasma, which has to melt through armor before it does any real damage, so long as they don't get a lucky hit - unlikely, considering how the first waves are almost always just Grunts and Jackals - but when the Elites come out...

Bullets bounce off energy shields - only occasionally will a 50 caliber high-velocity armor-piercing do something, and even then, the shield will absorb two or three before it breaks or the force of impact of the projectiles shatter the Elite's skull, or whatever they have up there. Sometimes you're hit with your own bullets. When the Elites come out, we retreat. That's a job for Spartans.

The butt of my own DMR nestles comfortably against my shoulder as I prop it on an overturned barrel. I'm trying to remain calm, but every shot I take - usually at the exposed hand of a Jackal, to open them up for the others to take care of - reverberates jarringly throughout my body. Something feels wrong. A stray shot from a plasma pistol slams into the side of the barrel and melts the wood - it doesn't burn; plasma melts - from one side through the other, stopping at my upper thigh. It only hurts for a short moment, and even then, it's not pain I haven't experienced.

"This is bad," Ramin says. I can hear the short bursts of his assault rifle somewhere behind me. "They've never attacked with such force before."

A needle shot from a needle rifle whizzes past my head and breaks against the wall behind me; I move to take down the Skirmisher that shot it, but just before I can pull the trigger, its body falls, head pierced by someone else's bullet. There's no time to bother figuring out whose.

"Sir -" Marcus this time. He holds cover in a door way across the - clearing? Path? Street? - like me, although wields a magnum. At this distance? "Fallback may be earlier than expected - they're -"

As if struck with an extremely powerful wall of air, his head snaps to one side and he falls to the ground. Little spatters of blood trickle down the mud wall and soak into the grayish fur around his mouth - and then, a bright burst of plasma fire, right into his chest. His entire body arches, and then remains still. The air, the space, above him shimmers and ripples, like disturbed water... the active camo module of an Elite, like the one we saw earlier. That's why he had a magnum. The camouflage, weakened slightly by however many shots he managed to get off, shows a hint at the creature it conceals before melding back into the background. Minor class, blue armor. The lowest of the low.

Minor. Full shield, and camouflaged. The - what, seven, now six, after the two that went with Kutya and now Marcus - of us here will have a hell of a time taking it down. Oh, if only we had a Spartan.

"Back!" I shout. The Elite turns to me, belied by another flicker in its camo, and then after a short delay starts running. That feeling of dread from before still persists; I push off against the wall, but know I won't be able to evade. Between five-foot eight me and seven-foot-ten that, there's quite a difference in the ground each of us can cover in the same amount of time. Part of me considers giving over to the inevitable, considers stopping, turning around, and raising my head, for an easy strangulation.

And then my mate, my Vari, finds his way into my thoughts. My paw easily finds the button to open the radio comm. "An Elite -"

• is all I can manage before that Elite focuses all of its weight into a single large foot on my upper back and sends me to the ground, skidding a good four or five inches before coming to a painful stop. A cacophony of voices rings in one ear: I can hear Kutya yelling - no, projecting well - about the Elite, about where's Marcus, and then everyone else in the same vein.

I can't breathe. The taste of blood pervades my mouth; when I open my eyes against the cloud of dust, Marcus's empty gaze meets mine. Blood has begun to pool at the end of the trickle from the corner of his mouth; his chest does not move, and he does not blink. A dull ringing pulses in the back of my head.

The Elite shifts its weight back to its one foot and leans in until I can feel the hot, disgusting breath in the fur of my neck. Their growls aren't quite like anything I've ever heard before: it's a frightening, feral noise, simultaneously hostile and ravenous, audibly slavering. My gun skidded off out of my reach when I hit the ground, and I know not to reach for that or my sidearm anyway. Elites don't carry any sort of bladed weapon with them, because they simply don't need one. They can just as easily remove a finger, or a paw, or a whole arm, with their hands as they can with a blade. I've seen it happen.

It moves the end of its plasma rifle into the field of my vision, just to show me what it has - as if I don't already know. The cloth of Marcus's uniform and his fur underneath smolders bright green, visible from here. It feels like more time has passed since I hit the ground than what's really gone by, based on how the others are just barely within my vision when I look as far their way as I can. The Elite takes its time because it knows it can. After many encounters and many victories (on their end) they've learned what chance one Minor has against a full team of lowly Marines.

Just as quickly as the Elite dropped me to the ground does its weight lift from my back, and a moment later, it hits the ground beside me. I look over, still a bit shocked and disoriented, to see the equally disoriented Elite underneath a young villager, a wolf. With clenched fists he pummels the thing's face, although we all know his attacks aren't doing much: energy shields work by dispersing the energy of the impact along the entire surface area of the shield, which encloses most of the body in a sort of second skin. Plasma weapons are so effective because, along with that velocity, all the heat must disperse as well. Particularly focused and forceful collisions can partially get through, though, explaining why a sniper shot will still do actual damage to the Elite within the shield, even if the shield itself isn't broken.

The Elite reaches for its plasma rifle, grabs it, swings it up. Further up the path, where the other civilians fled, an older woman screams. There's a sickening noise, like an overripe pomegranate thrown against a wall, and the young wolf falls.

"András!" says the woman. "András!"

The Elite tries to stand up, but is staggered by a shot from Brutus's rifle. The wolf - András - doesn't move; like Marcus, his body rests in a growing pool of his own blood, except the whole right side of his face is... caved in, almost, thanks to the Elite's impossible strength. The woman's screaming continues, and out of the corner of my eye, Brutus prepares for another shot.

Galvanized by the sudden chaos, I lunge forward to grab my own gun and being shooting at the damned Elite, tracing the patterns of bullet dispersion up to its head. The shield glows, ripples, breaks; another sniper shot rips right through its skull and heads off to the distance, trailing turquoise blood behind it.

Shakily, I get to my feet, and wipe the dust off my uniform and out of my fur. Vari is soon behind me, one arm around me while he asks gentle questions of concern. I'm fine, I tell him, I'm fine -

And then, sobbing. We look up to see the woman who screamed earlier ran down the path and then fall to her knees before the body of the wolf, of András - her son/ his blood soaks into the fabric of her dress, and she leans down to inspect what remains of his face. Delicate fingers hovering over split flesh, showing bone, oozing mass.

She lifts her paws to her muzzle, stifling her sobs but not covering her eyes. I know how it is. It's a terrible sight, the death of a loved one; the gruesomeness makes it worse. It's an image that haunts your dreams for years after, a heavy burden that never completely lifts itself from your shoulders. You can't look away because you can't quite believe it to start with.

Vari steps forward and kneels down beside her; she turns to him and sobs into his shoulder. The scent of sweat and gunpowder can't promise to bring much comfort.

"Bocsánat," he says, over and over again - it's one phrase most of us have learned. I'm sorry. I'm sorry.

Brutus comes up behind me, startling me with a paw on my shoulder. "You alright?"

"Yeah." With some effort, Vari persuades the mother to stand. She lingers a little and reaches for her son, but my mate pulls her away. His mouth forms that word again and again, but like András's punches, it's totally ineffective - how can anything allay that kind of shock, that kind of grief? "Yeah. I think so. If he hadn't intervened..."

"I..." Brutus shakes his head. "It was my fault. Mine and Vari's. We didn't even notice it slip by us -"

"It was nobody's fault."

He tugs on my elbow. Such a shame it is, I realize, that the end of a life can be summed up in just that: it was nobody's fault.

"Report, men." Kutya's rough voice in my ear brings me back. I look down at the little village, pocked with bullet holes and plasma burns. Two bodies rest, to be retrieve when all this is over, or if time permits. By then, the blood will have turned as brown as the earth. "What's happened?"

Unconsciously, my fingers find the button to speak. "They're coming quickly. We were attacked by some Skirmishers, a couple of Grunts... one Elite. Minor class, camouflaged. We've dealt with them."

"Casualties?"

"Two. A citizen..." I don't even try to justify it by saying he saved me. That doesn't matter. He's still dead. "...and Marcus."

The sergeant is silent for a moment. Then: "...Ah. I'm sorry. We can at least be thankful it was only two. Evac birds are arriving in ten, twenty minutes. The path out of town leads to a plateau; the rest of you, get up here. Pray we didn't make enough noise to draw their attention, and we can get out of this without losing anyone else."

As if it's that easy. What sets actual war apart from simulation games is that your enemies don't have a set of strategies they're guaranteed to take, however complex. Their actions and movements are like predicting the weather of a neighboring planet when viewing it through a pair of binoculars: it's doable, yes, but very likely to turn out different than what you expected. And, on top of that, the Covenant is a hell of an opponent, adapting and molding their strategies to the situation, to the surroundings and environment, to their opposition if they know what we have to offer. Years of studying plasma burns and captured technology have not taught us how to deal with these beasts.

I'm reminded of one rather mindless game in particular I used to play with a good friend. We playfully described the basis of the whole thing as 'shoot them until they die'. Things can change, but it seems to me like a losing war when that's the best that military strategists can come up with.

The steady climb of the terrain offers no difficulty at all to me, as it might have before I joined the UNSC. If anything, it has improved my body - that and things like my reaction time, my capability to make quick judgments... my aim. Which then brings up the question that we are silently urged not to ask:

Does a soldier fight for his own life, for the lives of everyone else, or for whatever his commander tells him to fight for? Ask one of those commanders, he'll say it's for the good of mankind. Ask an off-duty soldier, he'll say he doesn't know. Ask a soldier when he's fighting a losing battle, and he'll tell you he's fighting because he wants to live to see another day.

Let the civilians believe we fight for them - I look up at them a bit ahead of myself and Brutus on the path - because, in a way, we do. Preserving their lives rather than ours is our original goal and intent, but no matter what, as long as we fight, we save someone. Isn't that what matters?

"Hey." An armored elbow bumps against my arm. "You sure you're alright? You look like you're trying to extract some life lesson from this."

"Yeah. I'm just... thinking."

"I can tell."

"I just want to survive this, and get back to the station, and... and I don't know."

He's quiet for a moment, apart from the crunching of gravel beneath his boots. "Do you regret joining?"

There's another heavy question, the kind that deserves only the truth as an answer:

"Sometimes."

Again, one thing - probably the only thing - keeping that 'sometimes' from waxing to 'often' or 'always' is my mate, my Vari. When the coyote and I come over the crest of the path to the plateau, I can see him still beside that poor old she-wolf, speaking to our sergeant. His ears are down and tail still. Their words are inaudible beneath the concerned conversation of the other villagers.

Kutya sees me and waves me over with a shouted "hey". I look again to Brutus, who gives me a careful smile, and then head over.

"Is it true, what Vari says?" the shepherd asks when I get close enough; then, with a few murmured words in the language, he sends the grieving (ex-)mother off. "About the wolf?"

"I don't know what he said, but if it wasn't for that wolf, my head would be a mass of flesh. I am very grateful that he intervened, but..." Bocsánat. I'm sorry.

"...Yes."

"It could not be avoided, sir. Could I have saved him, I would've."

"I know, soldier. I know. For now, we have to make sure the same doesn't happen to anyone else here." The military dulls your sympathy, I've noticed. Before I joined, I might've not slept for days, plagued by images of András's face - or at least, what used to be his face - and thoughts of 'what if that happened to someone I know, to someone I love - or to myself?', while now, I find I pay it no more mind than hearing a friend lost a pent. Oh, that's a shame, oh, I'm sorry... "I'm having Vari and Brutus stay up here to pick off those you can, while everyone else will be coming with me. Unless the bastards can climb vertical rock walls, there's only one way up here, and we'll be guarding that way. If half of you can hold out a small village long enough to escape, all of us will have no trouble keeping the village alive until evacuation. Yes?"

"Yes, sir!"

Ramin, Brutus, Alex, Fenton, Duncan, Samuel, Kutya, Vari, myself. Ten minus one. How many more will be lost before this is over? We are only men - one squad against an entire army. Yes, we have fought the Covenant before. Maybe two, three times, and even then, our assignment was to clean up what Spartans had left behind - a handful of Grunts, maybe a Jackal and its Skirmisher cousin, an Elite that hadn't quite bled out yet. Our confidences and egos are magnified a thousand times over when a gun is in our paws.

The weight of several pairs of innocent eyes on me chills my already-numbed system, but there's nothing I can do to allay their hope in us, their dreadfully misguided hope. We are only men.

Gunshots have filled the air even before I've made it back to the path; the sound of hot plasma impacting exposed flesh, a cry of sharp pain, a dropped weapon's clatter on hard earth. Fenton and Alex stop shooting and dodge behind a boulder to help the wounded Samuel, who looks down at the smoldering mass of charred fur, blackened flesh, molten innards that used to be his lower chest. From here, I can hear how his short breaths are accentuated with groans of pain, and Fenton's soft "No, no, it's bad - it's pretty bad, Sam".

Automata. My DMR nestles into my shoulder, lifts to my eye, send a jolt through my body with a trigger pull. One body falls in a puff of bluish blood; a Grunt is jerked back from the force of a bullet slamming into its shoulder, then its knocked back over itself in a tumble with another shot to its head. There's screaming from the civilians behind and slightly above me, the screams of shock and panic - not the dulled groans of pain, of the short bark from a needle rifle shot piercing into the joint of a shoulder. Another gun falls; Ramin, paws shaky, tries to tug the vile pink shard from his flesh. I bring my crosshair over his assailant, but my finger is a fraction of a millisecond too late. The Skirmisher drops just after Ramin, another needle protruding crookedly out from his right temple.

Ten minus one minus two. Thoughts and worries are smothered beneath the increasing pulse of blood in my ear and the sensation of adrenaline tingling along my fingers. How are Brutus and Vari doing...? I fear the Covenant's beam rifles - one good headshot can and will pierce through a Spartan's fully charged shield and kill him. I have had a few close calls; it singes your whiskers from a foot away. Totally silent unless you are less than twenty feet from the gun, or if the beam ricochets -

An Elite, further down the path, red armor, still a Minor - but still nothing to dismiss - with one of those beam rifles, that metallic silvery-lavender, pointed up to the top of the plateau. It is back quite a bit beyond other lesser opponents, enemies continually advancing forward; I see Fenton, out of the cover of the boulder, stagger as one shot from a Grunt's plasma pistol blasts off his helmet and then fall with another to his muzzle. Alex yelps and falls backwards, suddenly bordered on either side by bodies that used to belong to friends.

Plasma pistol. The Elite lifts the rifle. Without thinking, I do the same, and loose a shot at its head - but miss. The bullet bounces off the butt of the beam rifle, causing it to jerk in its hands; I can see the growl in the brief parting of its four mouth-pieces, of its mandibles, when it turns to look at me.

"Back!" Kutya shouts. I ignore him and roll forward, then peer over a rock to drop a shot into the head of the Grunt that killed Fenton. It enters its skull just above its mouth, where the tubes from its environment suit end in a breather mask. "Back up, men! We have to-"

The rest of what he says is blocked by an extremely hot beam flying by my head as I duck behind another boulder, just barely managing to roll the dropped plasma pistol my way. A strange, hot pressure lingers in that ear, and after my head clears of the shock, I find a dull ache to accompany it - like the sensation following a too-loud explosion at too close of a distance - and, when I lift my paw to it to rub at the sore ear, it comes back with thick blood dripping from the pad of a finger. Gradually, steadier pain works its way into my awareness, and another probe brings me to realize that the fur and flesh is burnt, scalded from the intense heat of the beam.

Oh well. I just need one paw and my eyes.

The form of the pistol is odd in my grip before I recall the curves and contours after so long without handling one. It is still warm, either from its previous owner or from the wasted energy given off by its last shots, heat not yet fully dispersed. Were this still a simple recon mission - and had the Covenant not dropped an entire army on us - I could determine the Elite's location without risking a look. However, neither of these hold true, so I have to peer over the boulder amid the flying bullets and blasts of plasma. The Elite advances slowly, though distracted; a sniper shot rings out from above, and the path of the bullet towards its head remains in smoke for a second or so after the noise. It staggers, takes a step back. I ignore the growing ache in the side of my skull and hold the pistol's trigger down until the familiar glow, the familiar rumble, of a charged blast beings, and then more, until I take the chance of a good opening-

Everything happens at once. The released overcharge, homing in on its target; the Elite's rifle letting off another beam; and another bang from the sniper overhead. the glare of a broken shield, the cloud of blood from a projectile half the length of my forearm entering and then leaving the thing's skull...

...Vari's shout of pain.

My body acts before my mind can properly process what might have happened - and, when it tries, I push those thoughts down. If I expect something much worse than what actually happened, the follies caused by irrational worry will still plague my actions... which, admittedly, is slightly better than if the truth is worse than the expectation.

How many of us have fallen...? A shot from a plasma pistol bites into my shoulder, only barely getting through the armor, but the pain reminds me that I left my weapons behind that other boulder. Marcus lies dead in a doorway in the village, his body probably vandalized by the heartless Covenant; Samuel, his lower chest a churned mass of flesh and blood and char; Ramin beside him, the front half of a needle about as wide around as my finger and also about as long as half my forearm lodged in his brain with Fenton beside him; and then, Alex in the middle of the pathway, who I hadn't even heard go down. He watches me with distant eyes, the eyes of a man who has accepted death but has not yet had death accept him.

His mouth forms my name. I continue on.

"Hey!" Kutya's voice catches my ears - or rather, just the one - and I dodge behind another boulder. "Where do you think you're going? I need all of you I can get down here."

"I-" I point up at the cliff, breathless. The pain of my ear and my shoulder blend together into one uniform sharp ache across that side of my body. "Vari. Beam rifle. I have to-"

His eyes tell me his answer before he does. Once - and only once - he told us about how he had been sent here to put down a civilian rebellion, something that happens disturbingly often on Reach. The rebellion was centered in his hometown, where his wife lived; on downtime he visited her, if only to restore his faith in his people and make the long deployment a little less so. When he approached the door, the flash from a gunshot lit up the windows. He never found her body - only a spatter of blood across the headboard of the bed. He told us that love is more important than anything else, that he'd understand if we had to directly disobey his orders for its sake.

"Okay," he says after a moment, and unhooks his other assault rifle from his back. "I'll cover you. God knows I've been trying with the others, but... well."

I more feel than hear his short bursts of fire when I turn my now-bad ear to him. The path seems to stretch on and on, my fitness further hampered by my wounds, not necessarily crippling but still bad enough to make a difference.

I knew something bad was going to happen on this deployment. I knew something would happen from the start, and yet, I ignored that feeling. But, then, what could I have done?

Finally at the plateau. The civilians are huddled together in little bubbles, children crying, mothers jumping at every new burst of fire. There's something... haunting about seeing an older child try to maintain a straight face, try not to cry, when his eyes tell all his fears and feelings.

Vari. My Vari. He lies on his back propped up on one elbow, cradling that arm with his other paw. After a moment, he falls back to the ground, and my heart catches in my throat - but his heavy breaths still force his chest up and down.

He jumps a little when my shadow falls over him, and then breathes an unsteady sigh of relief. His mouth makes to form words, beginning with my name, but then pain molds his lips into a bitter scowl.

"Oh God..." One would think that, theoretically, plasma weapons are not a good choice against flesh, as they will cut right through and cauterize the wound. This is not true. Organic matter only burns up to a certain temperature threshold, and then past that, it simply melts. Exceedingly painful - my shoulder burns again, though I don't think that wound is too deep - because... well, think about the pain when oil splashes on your arm while cooking. "Are you okay?"

"I'm - ah." He moves his paw from his arm. About halfway along his forearm, right in the middle, is a hole about the size of my thumb, with a ring of burnt flesh and fur around it. It is an oblong hole, as beam rifle shots are essentially flat, and I know it went all the way through, even slicing straight through the bone itself. With plasma weapons, there is no projectile velocity or stopping power: the shot stops when it runs out of energy. "I've been better, yeah..."

I reach for his paw and grab it, ignoring the slick blood that has soaked into the fur. In front of us a bit, Brutus fires off another shot, and then loads a new clip into his gun. Several lay discarded by his side. "Can you move your fingers?"

One twitches, accompanied by a similar twitch in the corner of his mouth. "A little. I don't like to right now, but I can..." He lifts his head a little and then drops it back down. "How... how're things - down there? ...y'know, it doesn't hurt as much if I just don't move. I mean, it still hurts - like hell - but... not as much..."

"It's not good. We've..." ...do I tell him about Sam and Fenton and Ramin and Alex? "...lost some."

"I - I know. I saw. Would've been..." He swallows. "...one more if not for you."

I know he means well, but... that statement tightens a clamp around my heart. Had I been a half-second, a quarter second, not even that much later, the beam would've pierced his head instead of his arm, and it would've been my fault.

"God. Fuck, this hurts. Evac better be here soon-"

"Any minute now," I reassure him, even though I'm not sure myself. A quick scan of the sky tells me no such thing is coming soon.

Behind me, the shooting and shouting gets closer; I look over my shoulder to see Kutya backing up, bursts of blue and green plasma flying by his head. A scream comes from further down the path, but it is so twisted by pain that I can't identify whose it is. The voices of the civilians all rise in uniform panic.

"Help!" the sergeant calls. "I can't do this alone!"

...Alone. I look down to my mate.

"I'll be fine," he assures me, and once again rests his head against the earth. "Besides, ah - nnno point protecting me if nobody's watching your back, right? You dying w - would just be... counterproductive..."

He's right. Too late, though, do I realize that I left my rifle back down along the path, and I'd really rather not get close enough to the line to use my pistol... but Vari is ahead of me. A bit breathlessly, he says, "use my gun," and waves his good arm vaguely in its direction.

"Are you sure?" There's really no time to bother, but... being with him, so close, makes me feel like we're isolated from the hell of the world.

Which might as well be a fatal mistake. Just as I turn back around, I see a plasma burst sam into Kutya's leg. He screams, falls to his knee, drops an assault rifle but continues shooting his other one. I try to focus the scope of my mate's rifle on at least something, but my damn paws are shaking-

"Brutus!" I shout. Kutya takes a shot to his other knee and then one to his chest, but keeps on shooting. He fumbles for the pistol at his side; from around the bend steps an Elite, with a plasma pistol in one hand and rifle in the other. It places the end of the pistol to Kutya's forehead and holds down the trigger.

I shoot at it, but it doesn't even flinch. Its shield glows faintly brighter with each bullet it eats.

"Menj a Pokolba," Kutya growls. I look away when the shot is released. It's all over, I tell myself.

Behind me, I can hear Brutus's shots, extremely loud - but he starts missing, probably from nerves, and ceases firing altogether. "Out of ammo," he calls; magnum shots then fire. Still the Elite's shield devours every projectile.

Vari doesn't move. I nudge him, look for signs of life; thank God, though, his chest still moves. "C'mon, hon," I murmur. In the distance can be heard the distant whirr of a Pelican. "Just a little longer..."

I don't even wait for it to land. My mate has to get out of here. I throw his gun to the ground and lift his unconscious body in my arms, ignoring the protests of my shoulder. The civilians seem to understand, and at least allow some room for us amid their panic. But, there's too much - too many people. Only half of them can fit on the Pelican.

"Vari - Vari."

He looks at me through half-closed eyes, fading in and out of consciousness as he leans back against the seat. Blood seeps through his fingers clutching his arm. One, two, three, four civilians fall to the Elite.

"I'm... here-"

"I love you." I don't know how long until it turns on me. Brutus shouts something. "You are my everything."

"...and you are my all," he drawls, and then: "...get in. Pelase. You're actin' like... like we're leaving you."

I can't. I can't, I want to tell him, but don't. I am sworn to protect these civilians; five, six, seven more. Another Pelican comes in and lands beside this one.

"I'll be with you," I tell him. "Soon. Soon, dear."

Just as I step into the bay, a strong hand grips my ankle and pulls me out; Vari only reaches his good arm to me, then rests back against the seat. The civilians scream, and the Pelican starts to take off.

I kick at the Elite, find its shield down, and reach for my pistol. Behind it, Skirmishers and Grunts crest the plateau.

The heat of the Pelicans' thrusters lifts from my back. At least he's safe. At least -

~ ~ ~

He awoke in a white room smelling of disinfectant, with a vile pain in one of his arms. What happened? he wondered. Where am I?

...and then, it all came back. Reach. An attack. His mate brought him to the Pelican while he stayed behind.

"Fuck-"

A nurse, startled, bumped against a table. "Oh - are you okay? Is everything alright, Vari?"

She wore standard military nurse fare, and looked as though she'd seen more than her share of injuries. A lasered arm, he thought, was likely nothing. "Where's my mate?"

"Your... mate?"

"Yes. Soldier. Was in my squad - please, he was there, too, he saved me-"

Brief concern clouded her gaze. "I'm... sorry-"

Bocsanát.

"...as I heard it, you're the only one of the squad to make it out. Everyone else is listed as MIA until evidence proves otherwise..."

Vari leaned his head back against the pillow.

"You were my everything..." he murmured to himself.

The only thing to answer him was silence.