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Mohave Viper, twenty-nine Palms, West American Protectorate; the Earth local Orbital Drop Shock Troop training grounds.

ODST Academy - unofficially known as 'Helljumper Academy,' or in some cases 'Drop School' or even 'Drop-out School' considering the general influx of high-school dropout meat-heads that ended up there - was where volunteer armed forces who passed the gruelling selection boot-camp learned the bread and butter of being a 'helljumper.' It was a school of infantry tailored especially for the ODST. They learned and practiced everything they would face in the field, from hard-landings in orbital drop pods, simulated botched landings and pod-ditching, to field-craft, recon, escape, evasion and assault tactics.

One of the many important lessons learned was threat assessment and avoidance. Case and example, a unit of twelve ODST trainees stood in rank and file before a drill instructor who - without shouting, berating or poking knife-hands into chests - calmly explained the threats they may or may not face on any given road they could be assigned to patrol or reconnoitre.

"The trick is to keep your wits about you," the drill instructor had explained. "Make sure you stay alert for anything suspicious on the roads. Trash, craters, dead animals... any one of these items could be an improvised explosive device in disguise."

James Trent was an academic. He'd been that way in school, during reserve training and deployment. Even during Drop School. He'd always been that way. Do things according to the manual. Absorb every word his teachers uttered. Take every lesson seriously.

So fast forward a couple of years. Graduated ODST Academy and deployed half a galaxy away. When he first laid eyes upon the putrid 'Grey Mile' of Augustine, littered with trash, debris and a few dead animals like a carpet of garbage, his reaction was only natural.

"Hey, Sera."

Beside the human, the armoured pantheress with midnight black fur and an operator cap that blended quite well with the charcoal colours of her armour hummed absently, keen yellow eyes scanning the wasteland before them. "Hmmm?"

"I think we're fucked."

//The Grey Mile, Augustine, Turius System. // 2553 [UNSC Calendar], post-Earth-Sanghelios peace treaty, at the height of the Sangheili Civil War.

If he could see her face through the shemagh pulled up over the bottom half of her feline face he'd catch her smiling. Something Lieutenant Sera Irrasi didn't do often. But standing at the top of that putrid, cratered death-trap of a road, she couldn't help herself.

She knew Corporal Trent from before the ODST. Back then he'd been a wimpy little reservist who was too much of a nerd and couldn't shoot straight... okay he was still a huge nerd.

James had volunteered to the ODST by Sera's request along with her recommendations. She'd even requested a temporary assignment as DI during selection process so she could keep her eye on him. And make his life hell for three months of course.

He'd made it through selection alive at least and graduated to the ODST School of Infantry. That was where Trent really shined. He was at his very best in the classroom or controlled simulated environments. He may have been a bottom feeder at boot camp, but he was top of his class by the end of the academy run.

James was still recognisable for the old army reservist he was. But he was definitely different. He no longer balked at the concept of doing what needed to be done to complete the mission. He'd always pulled his weight of course, but now he pulled his weight and then some.

James Trent had become all he could be. And Sera was very proud... of course she would never show it!

"We'll be fine, soldier-boy," Sera assured in her usual snippy tone.

Augustine was an oddity in the galaxy. Trapped in the no-man's-land between the borders of UNSC and sangheili space, this colony was kind of a shared planet. Most of the northern hemisphere was sangheili territory, home to alien colonies - or 'family keeps' as they called them - struggling to stay afloat after the fall of the Covenant.

The sangheili as a species were a race of warriors. They fought. It was all they were good at it seemed. While the Covenant was still running in top form the hierarchs provided everything the sangheili needed to function. Food and supplies were imported. Engineers were brought in to build and maintain machinery, weapons and ships. All the sangheili had to do was fight.

After the fall of the Covenant all that changed. Centuries of dependence turned into forced indolence like the turn of a switch. The sangheili were forced to re-learn everything, from simple things like building and farming to engineering and repair of their equipment.

On Augustine it seemed that was easier for the sangheili keeps to do than on their homeworld of Sanghelios. Because the southern hemisphere was home to humans. Not necessary UNSC civilians or supporters, but independent colonists with their own government and militia. They traded with the UNSC sure enough, the same way they traded with and supported their northern sangheili neighbours.

Old wounds and grudges did not last out here. Prosperity on Augustine was mutually beneficial.

The 'grey mile' wasn't literally a mile. Sera figured it may have stretched on for a thousand miles in fact. Augustine was mostly a rural world, very Reach-like with ranges of mountains, endless rolling hills of grass and shrubbery and vast pine forests hazed by highland mist. The grey mile was the name for the main asphalted road that connected the dirt-tracks interconnecting the southern human colonies and the northern sangheili keeps. It was the main route of trade between the species, no checkpoints, no borders, just an invisible line of understanding.

Understanding' between humans and sangheili was rare to say the least. But the galaxy had its little miracles.

Take James for example. As far as Sera was still aware James' girlfriend was a sangheili under the UNSC's employ.

"How's Kali?" Sera asked as she led the way along the road northbound.

As he was moving, James shrugged while checking debris through his helmet visor. The grey tinted curtain gave nothing away of his expression, but his body language told the lieutenant that the young human was uneasy with the conversation already.

"Eh. I think she's fine. I wouldn't really know," James admitted.

"You guys hitting a rough patch?"

James cleared his throat uneasily. "We, uh... we broke up."

"What!? What happened?" Sera demanded like she was demanding a sit-rep in the midst of a firefight.

"Her dad doesn't like helljumpers much."

"Her dad is an ODST."

"Exactly," James said pointedly, tipping his head to Sera. "Aside from that she's constantly deployed to study and dismantle ring-worlds, and I'm always on some classified mission half a galaxy away that I can't call from or talk about... your doing I think," he added with a chuckle. "Sometimes I wonder if you're purposely sabotaging my social life."

"I am hurt that you would even suggest that," Sera dead-panned. Her diplomacy mode quickly kicked in and she changed the subject. "By the way, have you seen the Spartan fours yet?"

"Not yet," James breathed, seemingly relieved at the change of conversation topics.

"I was checking one of them out on the Infinity last week. He was a really nice guy. Hot too."

James chortled. "The fours are barely ready for deployment and you're already out trapping them?"

"Don't sound so jealous, soldier-boy. You know I've always got space in my busy diary for you."

"Yeah, I bet you'll free up more space when I finish levelling up these biceps." He flexed his skinny arms jokingly.

Sera wasn't just changing the subject away from James' break up just to take his mind off it. There was an ulterior motive there too. She really wanted to know what he thought of the Spartan four programme.

James wasn't quite ready to share though, it seemed. Sera waited, but the corporal didn't have anything to say about the new Spartans.

Now employed by ONI's special warfare recon division, James was privy to information he hadn't been assessable to before. As such he had detailed files on the Spartan programmes, mainly generations two and three. And he'd already been vocal about his disdain for the programmes.

The second generation Spartans had been kidnapped as children, their families provided with a dying clone to grieve and bury. The children had been indoctrinated, trained to mental limits and transformed into full-blown angels of death.

Though successful, the morality of the Spartan two programme was highly questionable.

The questionable ethics didn't end at generation two though, as the Spartan threes had their moral kinks too. Though the third generation of the Spartan programme used child volunteers who had lost family and loved ones to the Covenant onslaught, they were trained, augmented and outfitted.

James still couldn't condone it though.

The Spartan threes were used as cannon fodder. Every Spartan three mission on file had a one-hundred-percent success rate, sure. But every mission had the same percentage mortality rate. ONI built them, deployed them and in the same breath discarded them.

_"Acceptable losses,"_the classified report had called it.

Shit like that kept James up most of the night. And he had to wonder why Sera saw it necessary to drag him into her world. He may have earned his stripes. He may be clad in the armour. He may carry the rifle; but was he really up for this?

"So what are we doing now?" James inquired, shifting the conversation again.

"Looking for leads." Turning on the spot, Sera looked southbound the way they had come and squinted at the horizon.

The smoke stacks of what had used to be human farms still choked the sky, leaning sideways slightly in the wind. It was the reason they'd touched down a few hours ago. They'd been inserted via orbital drop from a corvette in stealth mode orbiting the planet. All contact had been lost from Augustine's human population, and with them sharing the planet with a bunch of hinge-heads, it made the Office of Naval Intelligence very nervous.

Not quite nervous enough to deploy Spartan-IVs, but nervous enough to drop in NavSpecWar operators.

NavSpecWar operators, James thought to himself. That makes me sound so fucking badass. Truth was, were it not for Sera he wouldn't be here. She'd been the one to request he go through Drop School. She'd been the one who insisted he be placed under her command. She want him to back her up in the field. Not a Spartan-IV, not a fully trained ODST and not some ONI spook agent who made a living covering and un-covering secrets.

She wanted James.

Maybe it was because he was good with forerunner and alien tech. Maybe it was because he reminded her how vulnerable and human she was - or anthro, whatever. He never really got a straight answer out of her whenever he asked why she'd pushed so hard to get him to partner up with her.

He didn't mind. It was just that not knowing made him uncomfortable... that could be a reason too. ONI operators weren't welcome in ONI unless not knowing made them remotely uneasy. Knowing was ONI's business.

Shifting his attention off Sera, James too looked the way they had come. Shortly after landing they'd regrouped and humped it straight to the nearest human settlement. It had been a farm, a reasonably large place too. And the whole thing had been burned to the ground.

The three other settlements they checked was the same scene. Smouldering, smoking ruins, the very same spitting those smoke stacks into the horizon, with collapsed rooves and blackened, crusty bodies within.

"Those settlements didn't burn themselves down," Sera said.

"And we're accusing the sangheili?"

"We are."

James shook his head. "It doesn't fit. These people have been living side by side in peace for a good year now. The sangheili need humans to help them recuperate from their Covenant dependency, and the humans needed the sangheili to bolster the militia."

"Trusting a hinge-head is bound to bite you in the ass someday."

"Like with Kali?"

Sera stopped abruptly and slowly shifted her gaze to James. Her gaze softened as she realised what she'd said. "You know that's not..."

"You meant it," James interrupted knowing Sera better than that. She wasn't the kind of woman to hide her discontent. If something upset or annoyed her, she vocalised it without holding back. James was used to it. It was partly the reason he was able to tolerate her. There were very few secrets between them, and what secrets she did keep were to protect him. "But I don't fault you for it."

He nodded his head northbound. "It makes sense. It doesn't fit, but it makes sense. Either way, the sangheili ought to know what's going on."

It was Sera's turn to shift uncomfortably. She watched him stare off into the distance, probably looking at something on his HUD. She could tell by the way his head twitched a little from side to side. He'd never fully gotten the hang of the HUD's retina activated features, and always tried to move his head to look at a pop up instead of merely shifting his eyes.

She wondered if he was upset with her. James' voice had gone a little cold and professional there. The kind of chilly Sera usually employed when they were running an op. She'd only heard him use that tone of voice a few times, and those were times they'd been in dire straits under fire. And it didn't suit him.

The pantheress was suddenly relieved when James' usual boyish tone returned as he said, "tac-map shows a sangheili keep only a few clicks north-north-east from here." He turned his grey gaze to her properly, probably having swiped away the clutter on his heads-up-display. "They're the closest of the keeps. If anyone's had dealings with the humans, it'd be them."

Sera was pretty good with masks. When she didn't have a visor or a shemagh to hide her face, she did a pretty damn good poker-face that was the bane of games all throughout UNSC space. She hid her unease behind a mask of professionalism. She'd always managed to hide her pride, concern and affection for James behind that mask. Today was no different.

She nodded, then pointed in a north-easterly direction that took them off the grey mile and through some even, sloping terrain. "On you, corporal."

~~~~

//Unidentified Sangheili Keep, Augustine, Turius System.

James sighed with a little frustration at the antics of his HUD. He really needed to practice more with the ocular-recognition system. Give him his old tablet back and he'd be fine. But tell him to look at specific icons to activate specific heads-up-display features and he was as helpless as an arm-less baby. He tried to pull up the image enhancement feature of his VISR, to little avail. Instead of getting a blown up view of the structure ahead, he got an aerial view of a circling spy-drone.

It was good enough it seemed as he got a good idea of the layout and the situation boiling over.

It was a sangheili keep, in essence it was a compacted family village surrounded by defensive walls to protect the sangheili that lived there from danger and the livestock from predators at night. It was a large circular structure, the external stone walls re-enforced by mighty pillars of wood. The stables and the homes were stuck along the inside of the perimeter walls leaving a large arena-like square in the midst of the keep.

The grand wooden doors like the portcullis of a castle lay in smoking ruin in the midst of that square as a bright exchange of weapons fire zipped between the tall grass in the farmland surrounding the keep and the murder-holes hewn into the eastern defensive walls.

Judging by the conical shape of the out-going fire, the sangheili defenders only had a single gun defending their keep whereas the spread of fire coming from the long grass indicated the attackers had plenty of arms and numbers. Despite the superior defensive position of the sangheili within their keep, the battle was one sided in the attacker's favour.

Closing down the drone-view of the battle just over the rise where James and Sera lay concealed, the corporal accidentally dropped a virtual waypoint. Sighing frustrated again, he swiped away the aerial view and saw an orange arrow labelled waypoint 'delta' over the top of the keep. There was nothing he could do about that, shifting his submachine gun up to his side.

Beside him Sera lay on top of the MA5D assault rifle cradled under her armoured chest. She was squinting through her own HUD projected by a small piece of transparent plastic hung over her right eye. Likely her own image of the battle was blown up like she was peering through binoculars.

"Looks dicey," she muttered. "But whoever's assaulting that keep must be the ones that burned down those human settlements."

"You're suggesting we go lend a hand?"

"No, I'm suggesting we ride it out. Let whoever wins bunker down and lick their wounds while we infiltrate and hit 'em while we're down."

James blinked, glancing to the pantheress. "Sure that could work. But wouldn't you rather go down there and help our alien allies?"

Sera didn't say anything. Not until James added, "there could be human survivors down there who ran to the sangheili for support."

Sera let out a breath then nodded. Damn James and his high morals and his logic. "Fine, let's go have a looksee."

Propping herself up on one knee, she rolled over the brow of the hill and slid down the steep end on the other side. James did the same, keeping low so not to telegraph his silhouette to the fighters below and slid down the steep dirt slope that led right down to the tall stalks of grain growing in the field below.

Sera had already vaulted over a hedgerow and plunged into the tall stalks by the time James reached the bottom. Carefully he hopped over the hedge surrounding the field of grain and edged his way into the tall stalks.

Irukan was a sangheili grain commonly used on the homeworld, and being a hardy crop could be grown just about anywhere. Perfect for colony settlements. And perfect for hiding in. Kali had told James she remembered when she was a little girl on a sangheili colony world she and her sisters used to play a variation of hide-and-seek in the irukan fields. Though on that cold swampy world the fields were more like paddies, but as mentioned before irukan could grow pretty much anywhere.

James thanked whatever powers on high looking out for him that these irukan fields were reasonably dry. The last thing he wanted was for his boots to flood with muddy water, or his feet get stuck in mud and completely throw a stealthy approach.

Twisting from side to side, the duo carefully stepped between the widely spaced thick stalks of grain. The bushy flowering tops swayed in the breeze a few feet above their heads, the sounds of fighting growing more intense the close they caught. A few high pitched cries sounded on the wind, along with a very familiar _dakka-dakka_roar.

"That sounds like MA5 fire," James whispered as he knelt next to where Sera sat at the edge of the field.

Directly in front of them was a straight dirt track running to the gaping hole in the keep's perimeter wall where the doors had stood once upon a time. Beyond the road they could see stalks snapping, swaying and drop to the ground as bodies thrashed through the irukan beyond.

Sera pointed at the tracers slicing through the air from the fields to the keep walls. Some of them were vibrant pulses of light, the tell-tale sign of energy weapons once upon a time popular among troops of the Covenant. But between them several projectile tracers ignited in the air confirming the

"Attackers have a mix of plasma and projectile weapons." Sera suddenly ducked down and grabbed James by the neck, pulling him down to do the same.

Looking, James saw four figures break from the irukan fields ahead and dash straight for the keep's gate. A few bolts of bright blue plasma scythed down from the slit-shaped window in the eastern wall, but the plasma splashed harmlessly to the ground at the heels of the attackers.

The figures were short, gangly with hateful saurian features. As Sera had indicated, they indeed carried a mixture of weapons. Two of them hefted plasma rifles, while two of them carried the tell-tale grey metal MA5 assault rifles. Thanks to range, James couldn't tell exactly what configuration of MA5 if was, but commons sense told him it was either the antique MA3's, B's or the C's that were used during the battle of Earth during the war.

War had a habit of throwing plenty of military hardware out into the black market. And who else would pick all that leftover gear up other than kig-yar pirates?

"Jackals," James murmured as the four alien bandits cleared the open ground and slipped into the keep. "Looks like they got some UNSC toys," he added having noted the armoured tac-vest designed for human use one of the kig-yar had been wearing. "Hateful little scavengers can't leave well enough alone."

Popping off the safety of her rifle, Sera shouldered the weapon. "Well we'd better get in there to kill motherfuckers and break their shit, or there won't be anyone left to explain what the hell is going on."

James silently agreed with a nod. He jumped up the same time Sera did and in single file sprinted across the clearing towards the keep entrance. Whoever was still taking shots at the kig-yar moving around the fields from that murder-hole cut high in the perimeter wall didn't seem to pay them any mind, and the duo slammed into cover beside the towering keep doorway.

James fell in behind Sera just as she reached back and patted him on the leg. The human recognised her body language. She was switched on, so everything was going to be moving fast from here on out. James had two choices. Try to keep up or hang on and try to survive the ride.

Clamping a hand over Sera's armoured shoulder he chose the latter.

Weapon held level the pantheress swooped into the keep, aim shifting from right to left as she checked ground level doors and windows. Keeping his lighter gun gripped in one hand, James took watch on upper gantries, balconies and windows. It wasn't easy. The Augustine midday sun burned brightly above their heads and the interior parts of the keep's dwellings were unlit. Each window and doorway was just a puddle of void-like darkness.

Thankfully though, the kig-yar hadn't moved much faster than them. Snapping her tunnelled vision to the right, Sera sighted the back end of a kig-yar disappear into a wooden construction hat looked like some sort of long stable following the curve of the perimeter walls. Changing direction mid-step, Sera broke into a run, still ready to fire as she pursued.

Pausing by the stable door she glanced back to make sure James was keeping up.

The corporal's eyes were elsewhere. Even through his helmet's scrubbers he caught the customary battlefield smell of soot and fire. That wasn't what distressed him though. It was the pungent odour of burned hair and singed flesh that activated an instinctual alarm beacon in the Neanderthal recesses of his brain.

His eyes were turned further in to the central courtyard of the keep. He hadn't seen it through the low-res readout of the orbiting drone, but now he was in the thick of it he could see the local reaper had its work cut out for it.

Bodies littered the courtyard and the buildings on the opposite end of the keep. Some of them human, anthro and unmodified alike. Others were sangheili. They lay still, mangled and sprawled into odd shapes, the steam and foul smoke still rising from the burns and bullet-holes riddling their bodies.

James had seen bodies before. He'd generated his own fair share as well. But what threw him this time was the size of them. A couple of them were male, big muscular colonial farmers and powerful looking sangheili warriors clad in tunics that looked like chainmail. But between them lay others. Women and children. Some of them were fixed into the positions they had been curled into seconds before death. One female sangheili lay on her front in a pool of bloody mud, the still bodies of a human and a sangheili child held protectively under her.

Battlefields were things James had seen often enough. Btu this wasn't a battlefield. This was better described as an abattoir floor. There had been no discrimination to the killing. Anything that entered the kig-yar path simply died. No mercy. No pity.

"Jesus," he breathed, bile burning in the back of his throat.

"Pssst," Sera hissed, drawing James out of his trance. "Stay with me, James. I need you."

Blinking, James realised she'd used his name rather than the mocking nickname she'd used to refer to him since the first time they'd ever met. That didn't happen often, and when it did it usually meant Sera was 'trying' to be comforting.

James nodded vigorously and moved his hand from her shoulder to the vertical fore-grip of his own weapon. Seeing he was ready, Sera slipped around the doorpost and James piled into the stables after her.

The livestock had been similarly slaughtered by the kig-yar, the colo beasts lay dead in their pens riddled with holes and burns. The smell was stronger in the enclosed space than it had been outside, making it all the more dizzying.

Adrenaline helped James focus as he sighted contact at the far end of the stables. The lead two aliens had already slipped through the connecting door leading from the animal pens into one of the buildings, the other two following briskly.

Sera didn't give them time to follow, her assault rifle letting out a dakka-dakka-dakka, each muzzle flash like a blinding strobe in the poorly lit stables. The first jackal took a volley of armour piercing rounds to the back and flopped forward spread eagle.

The other clad in a UNSC plate carrier and carrying a plasma rifle whipped around, eyes widened with surprise. James slid to a halt in the mucky straw beneath his boots and from a stable firing stance immediately whipped out three shots, the first two cracking into the jackal's chest-plate.

Compared to the guttural roar of Sera's MA5D, the shots projected from James' modified M7 SMG came out like a light pop-pop-pop.

The M7-HB was the bridge over the gap of assault rifle and submachine gun. With an extended, heavier barrel, the weapon sported a smartscope much like the OSDST's signature M7S, and the increased calibre of the ammunition meant a smaller thirty-round magazine. On the up-side, accuracy and stopping power were dramatically improved from the standard M7 series SMG.

Whether the first double-tap penetrated the plate-carrier the kig-yar was wearing, James couldn't tell. But the third hit definitely put the bastard down. Recoil had carried James' aim higher and the third round to leave the SMG's barrel hit the kig-yar in the face, his head snapping back and painting the stable wall behind him with bright purple blood.

Moving forward to hut the other two jackals, James and Sera were interrupted by the twin roars of MA5 assault rifle fire and rounds tearing through the wooden structure all around them. Holes ripped out of the end of the stables, each with a puff of plaster and dust. James and Sera immediately flopped sideways and hit the deck as 7.62x51mm NATO rounds tore out of the building ahead and shredded the stables. Splinters and grit rained from above, plinking audibly against James' helmet.

The shots coming from the building ahead were sprayed wild and high above where the two ODST lay on the ground. The jackals who disappeared ahead of the other two were likely firing from the hip.

"Move-move-move!" Sera screamed through her shemagh, waving James to get crawling.

SMG gripped in one hand, crawl he did. Faster than he had in boot camp with drill instructors breathing down his neck and telling in his ear. As fearsome as his DIs had been, they didn't hold a candle to the intimidation of live rounds fired in your general direction.

It was a half froggy-scramble, half leopard-crawl, his hands clawing at the straw carpeted floor and boots kicking wildly for purchase. He just about found it, sliding the front of his armour across the floor, just about grating the concrete floor beneath the layers of dirty livestock bedding. He'd worry about showering later. For now just suck it up and stay alive.

By the time he reached the wooden step by the door leading into the house beyond the stables the shooting suddenly stopped. Both kig-yar were dry and probably either fumbling for sidearms or magazines. Sera wouldn't let them though, pushing off the ground and launching herself headlong into the next room.

James scrambled after her, weapon aimed as if he were ready to fire in full sprint.

Through the door was like stepping into another world. Outside was death, smoke and destruction. Behind James was a smelly animal pen. But inside was a cosy home with high ceilings suited to the sangheili stature. The furniture was all wooden, hand-crafted and sported dark stain finish. It was quite Covenant-like, and James had to remember the sangheili culture had swayed much of Covenant aesthetics back during the war. Everything was sized up compared to human furniture and flowing, almost bulbous in design. There were very few right edges apart from the few bits of art on the walls meant to imitate forerunner design.

Much of the dwelling had been shattered though, chairs and tables up turned. A pantry lay in splintered ruins to James' left as he charged in after Sera, the heavy cupboard victim to the kig-yar trying to nail the troopers through the walls.

Sera snapped off a shot to her left as she charged over the threshold full sprint and careened headlong into one of the kig-yar. Her shot on the move had struck true, piercing the first kig-yar's shoulder with a splash of purple. The pirate reeled back, MA5 falling from his grip before he clumsily fumbled for the plasma pistol on his hip.

James didn't let him get a hold of it, firing full automatic as he moved forward. Several shots went wide, splintering the environment behind the kig-yar. But at this extreme range there was hardly any space to miss. The majority of the rounds tore through the alien's soft mid-section and with a short panicked gargle of bodily fluids filling lungs, the bandit collapsed in a heap beside his black market rifle.

Standing over the jackal, James put another burst into the centre mass, just to be sure before covering Sera's blind side.

Turning only his head to look over his shoulder, James saw Sera straddling the other pirate and almost felt a pang of envy for the alien pinned to the ground under the armoured gymnast. That pang combusted spontaneously though when the lieutenant slammed the mid-section of her rifle right into the kig-yar's equivalent of the larynx. The jackal gaped and choked grasping for his own throat, giving Sera time to reach up and draw one of the two slender daggers riveted to the front of her armour.

The blade came down with a distinct thud of metal on wood, the point having pierced the kig-yar's eye-socket, brain cavity, the back of the skull and embedded itself into the floor.

With some jimmying and wrenching, Sera yanked the blade free, gave it a one handed spin as she stood then sheathed the weapon in one smooth action.

"You're scary, you know that?"

As they crossed the chamber it became suddenly aware to them they were in some sort of common room. The keep was a family home shared by families of sometimes up to ten siblings in a generation, up to at least three generations at a time. Generally only the kaidon_or _master and his wife had their own private home within the keep. The rest of the family shared space in the common areas, much the way a garrisoned battlegroup of marines would share a mess, barracks, etcetera.

But as spartan as it seemed, it was quite lavish. All the plasma burns and bullet holes aside, of course.

Sera led James towards the eastern wall and up a set of stairs into what looked like a shattered sleeping area. Best described as bunk beds lay about the room, many splintered and broken with the stuffing torn out of many of the pillows and mattresses.

And there, huddled about halfway down the long room stood three figures. The first two were barely of any concern. They were humans, one-middle aged man, a farmer at the looks of him, likely from the southern settlements. He had dirty blonde hair, a scruffy beard and was clad in civilian fatigues. Beside him was a younger human, about sixteen years old and the man's son if James read the resemblance right. Short fair hair, green eyes and a sturdy jaw like his fathers. He had an athletic musculature going on, probably from farm labour he was younger than James but already working up some much more impressive muscles than the ODST sported.

The third figure caused old habits to show themselves in James. At the sight of the sangheili female towering over the man and his son, James was torn between lowering his weapon and firing full-automatic.

She was a good head taller than the man, all the familiar features of a female with a bright sky plume flowing from her scalp to her shoulders. Her tunic wasn't the mail variety James had seen on the male corpses down in the courtyard, a simple brightly coloured cotton ensemble that left her arms and legs bare.

Clutched in her right hand was a plasma pistol - the ODST couldn't see how many shots she had left. Begin the lone gun against an unknown number of hostiles out in the fields she couldn't have had much ammo left.

James had been close to a sangheili female before. But he'd been shot at by his fair share too. And in all honestly, this female was unreadable. She was armed, but she was protecting a pair of humans. That had to bode well.

Even as James convinced himself she'd be civil and lowered his weapon, Sera kept her own rifle trained on the sangheili, even as the human man stood to put himself between the ODST and his guardian.

"Please, wait." The man said calmly with wide, terror filled eyes as he saw the two ODST approach. "Wait. My name is Samuel. Samuel Artimek. This" - he reached down and wrapped an arm around the neck of the young boy - "is my son, Kojo. We're from the southern settlements."

James glanced to his side to see Sera was still training her weapon on them. Reaching out he planted a hand over the top of the MA5D and pushed the muzzle downward. Sera didn't lift it again, but maintained a fire-ready posture in case the sangheili pulled any funny business.

Satisfied they were all being civil, James decided to keep this short and quick. There was no beating about the bush, the kig-yar outside were still firing at the keep walls to keep the windows suppressed, and it would only be a matter of time before they realised there was no return fire and they made another charge for the door.

"I'm Corporal James Trent. We were sent to investigate why the southern settlements stopped communicating with the UNSC."

"Then I'd say your investigation has bared fruit, Corporal James Trent," the sangheili said, clenching her mandibles together to pronounce the human's name as best she could. "The _nishum_pirates have been working their way from settlement to settlement, killing and destroying all in their path."

She spat out the word nishum- for which James' helmet translator couldn't find the right English word - with a dose of venom. It was an un-ladylike outburst, and judging by the subtle flexing of the muscles in her mandibles she seemed to regret it, looking to Samuel and Kojo with a little shame.

So being proper in front of the two humans meant something to her. They obviously knew each other well enough, likely they'd traded before. And she was protecting them in her home. It wasn't too steep to assume they were friends.

"Elar and her family took us in when we fled the kig-yar attacks," Samuel explained fidgeting nervously.

"I sent word to my neighbours," the sangheili, Elar, added. "But I fear their support may reach us too late. Did you meet my brothers and sisters down in the courtyard?"

James and Sera looked at each other knowingly for a moment before the corporal shook his head sorrowfully. "Sorry, Elar. We didn't see any survivors down there."

Elar did well putting on a brave face, but James somehow knew she was hurting. Her whole family had just been wiped out. James didn't care what kind of sangheili 'die in honour' bullshit speech she could come out with; he knew it had to hurt.

Burying it, she merely sighed. "Very well. We must hold out as best we can. Warriors from the Nar Keep are on their way."

As James moved to the nearest slit-shaped window to get a view of what the kig-yar were doing outside, he heard Sera give a huff.

"You'll have to forgive me if I don't take your word for that, Miss Split-Face."

"My name is Elar! You'll show me the proper respect in my home! I could kill you!"

James whipped around, more so to make sure Sera wouldn't do anything stupid. It seemed silly that a corporal needed to tell a lieutenant to cool off. Not that it mattered anyway, because as usual he was far too slow to keep up with the lightning fast pantheress. If she were any faster she'd be a damn Spartan.

Sera had closed the gap between her and the sangheili already and had levelled her sidearm in the alien's face. "You could. But I'm awfully quick," the pantheress sneered.

The sangheili merely seethed back, hissing softly as she stared down the barrel of the pistol. Samuel and Kojo were caught somewhere in the middle, partially surprised at how the pantheress had out manoeuvred the sangheili, but mostly just lost on how to defuse the situation.

James opened his mouth to tell Sera to calm down. But he was stopped by a number of explosions. The bangs were more like whooshes of energy, but they kicked in James' automated hearing protection and muted external sound for a moment as the very foundations of the keep vibrated.

"They're on the east and the main door!" Sera reported, obviously pulling up drone images on her HUD.

As she was reporting she turned away from Elar and ran to one of the windows overlooking the courtyard. From there spotted a few bright blue blasts glass the dirt where kig-yar were lobbing grenades through the keep's main entrance.

James quickly moved to pick a window and help suppress the east with Elar. "I got east!"

"There's more on the main door!"

"Good to know I picked the right side!"

As Sera moved out to get a position to cover the courtyard, Elar stopped her with a hand on her arm. James' heart skipped a beat, thinking for a second the pantheress was going to deck the alien. Thankfully Sera didn't seem to react.

"What do I call you?"

Sera yanked her arm from Elar's grip and shouldered past. "Don't."

Elar looked confusedly to James who merely shrugged. "Don't mind her. She banged out the wrong side of her drop-pod."

In the background James could hear the roar of Sera's assault rifle as she suppressed and threw profanities at the jackals by the main doors. The kig-yar in the fields were out there somewhere, James caught a few glimpses of alien heads popping up over the stalks before bobbing down again. The flowering grain swayed and shook as they took up formations and manoeuvred through the fields. But they were only taking a few pot shots in the keep's general direction. They weren't assaulting as they had before just yet.

As he was watching his sector, he glanced to his side to see Elar hunched over where Samuel was holding his son on the floor.

"I'm scared," Kojo said softly, tears glistening in his eyes. He was sixteen, sure. But he wasn't a trained fighter. Teenagers often talked a big game to impress their fellows, James knew that well enough. But throw them into a firefight and they'd wet themselves like any other person.

Kojo's reaction was perfectly normal, and James didn't fault him for it. But neither did Elar it seemed.

"I know." She smiled, then glancing from side to side she leaned in close to whisper sneakily, "I'll tell you a secret. I am too."

That made the boy give a small chuckle. Satisfied with the meek smile on his face, Elar nodded, then lifted her gaze to Samuel. He was smiling, and Elar's own expression seemed to brighten even further. Gently she reached out with a hand that could crush a man's skull, and with genuine tenderness stroked the man's cheek.

"It will be all right. I promise," she whispered, and Samuel nodded with a look of trust.

She stood upright very suddenly, as if she had to tear herself from their company. Like band-aid removal, it was best done swiftly and suddenly, or the agony would be drawn out. Without looking back Elar strode over to James and took position at the window beside his.

James made a point of pretending he was looking out over the_irukan_ fields instead of watching her curiously from the corner of his eye. He even had to disable many of his HUD features so he didn't accidentally pull up his tac-map.

Elar suddenly said, "You must think me strange, Corporal James Trent."

"Interesting is the word I would have used." James blinked as blue filled his field of view. Looking down he saw the fire rising up from the fields to hit the keep walls double up. Figures broke from the cover of the tall stalks and kig-yar made a desperate dash across open ground to reach the walls out of their arcs of fire.

James immediately snapped up his weapon.

"Here we go."

A mixture of plasma and bullets rained down on the unwitting kig-yar. It was a good thing they had no idea the number of fighters within the keep had been reduced to three or the bastards might assault in force. They were being careful and that worked in James' favour.

He fired short controlled bursts, focusing on individual targets. He predicted their path, aimed ahead a little and alternated between three and five-round bursts. Satisfied a kig-yar that toppled into the dirt wasn't getting up again he quickly switched to the next and repeated the process.

All the while he was watching the ammo-counter on his HUD. As shells sprang out the side of his weapon, the number of pips under his weapon readout dwindled. When they all vanished he didn't even pull the trigger to check if the chamber was cleared.

Lowering the weapon he flicked the SMG sideways while reaching into his tac-vest for the next mag. The spent magazine fell free to the dusty floor before the next one was slotted into place along the side of the M7-HB. Then returning a stable grip to the weapon he was aiming through the bright red circle in his smartscope and firing again.

They completely lost track of time until Sera pinged James on comms and he sat back to survey the carpet of bodies lying between the keep walls and the irukan fields.

"Sit-rep!"

"East is good!" James reported over a few more bursts of his SMG to put down stragglers.

"The gates are shit!"_Sera complained. _"Some of the bastards got past me. They're making for the kitchen!"

"I'm on it!" James cried into his comms as he lowered his gun and turned away from the window.

As he ran, Samuel sat up from where he was holding Kojo and pointed down a staircase about halfway down the room. Clearly the man was pretty familiar with the layout of the keep, all the more reason to believe he was quite close with Elar and her family. He'd obviously spent quite a lot of time here.

As he was moving, the corporal pulled a small object from one of his belt compartments. It was about the size of a credit card, just as flat too. With a flick he threw the compact comms-unit like a frisbee to Samuel.

"Stay in contact," he ordered before disappearing into the stairwell.

As he was pounding down the steps three, sometimes four, at a time, Sera pinged him again. "Here they come! Soldier-Boy, you got the kitchen yet?"

"I'll need a plus-three stamina buff if you want me to get there quicker," James panted breathlessly.

"What?"

"Never mind."

James followed the narrow spiralling stairs downward, one hand sliding over the rough stone wall for support while the other kept his gun shouldered. It was light, so firing one handed, so long as the butt was firmly planted against his shoulder, wouldn't be a problem at extreme close range. And with the stairs spiralling out of sight less than a metre ahead of him it couldn't get any more extreme close range than that.

Thankfully there were no heart-stopping moments of kig-yar charging up the stairs to meet him and the human rushed out onto the ground floor.

The kitchen formed a slender U-shape and connected without partition to a dining room littered with individual pantries, cupboards and dining tables. One of the arms of the kitchen-U separated the dining room and the kitchen almost like a chest height bar.

The blown out door leading out into the courtyard was about mid-way down the dining room to James' right. With the sun shining into the keep but barely trickling into the buildings the doorway as just a tall rectangle of blinding light, with hazy silhouettes shifting around just out of sight outside.

Shadows shifted into the dining area, kig-yar already streaming in to secure a beachhead within the buildings. They were firing wildly into their surroundings, energy and armour-piercing projectiles striking furniture, ceiling, walls and floor and kicking up immense screens of dust and grit. Despite all the wild suppressing fire, James had no intention of letting the bandits keep their position.

Dropped to a knee, the human slid forward through the clouds of debris, firing past the kitchen counter as he did. By the time his shoulder slammed into hard cover he'd put eight rounds down-range, five of them tearing through soft kig-yar bodies.

MA5 tracers ignited the air, tearing around above the human's head and thudding into the ceiling as the other pirates scrambled for cover while firing wildly. They didn't account for human weaponry having recoil as opposed to the energy-based weapons they were used to, and their one-handed suppression fire crawled their aim high extremely quickly.

Enemy rounds pinging harmlessly into the ceiling, James twisted around and transferred the handle of his M7 to his left hand and the fore-grip to his right. Popping up with the SMG shouldered he zipped off shots while moving to his left.

Three rounds embedded into the dining room furniture that was being propped up by the kig-yar for cover. The fourth penetrated and James was rewarded with a fountain of alien blood spurting into the air. He immediately shifted his aim and put two more rounds into the doorpost as he noted the pool of vibrant light was darkened by a gangly silhouette. The bullets thudded into the woodwork, and reconsidering his charge into the building the kig-yar outside dove to the ground.

That was James' queue to capture a better angle. Diving headlong across the kitchen counter, James hit the deck flat out on the dining room side, weapon still trained on the doorway and snapping off shots. At the same time he uncoiled and kicked the nearest wall, sliding across the rough wooden floor and behind a pile of discarded furniture.

A break in the line of sight between him and the doorway, James switched hands again and laying on his back shifted his aim towards the upturned furniture providing cover for the rest of the jackals already in the room.

They had popped up to return fire, but hadn't realised the human had moved. Switching to full-automatic, James mowed them down starting on one side and sweeping systematically to the other. As he moved the kig-yar danced to the ­pop-pop-pop beat of his M7-HB before collapsing to the ground.

Reloading as quickly as his trembling hands would let him; James ignored his short breath and rapid-fire heartbeat so he could bravely sit up and train his weapon on the door. The noise of gunfire was still hurting his ears along with the screech of dying kig-yar at the gates and on the east fields.

But in the dining room it was quiet.

Gritting his teeth, James rolled to his feet and moved to the door to check it. As he did though he saw the pool of light darken and a silhouette slide into view. James moved his finger to the trigger, but he was too slow.

A kig-yar came crashing into the room and with a swipe of a taloned hand whipped the SMG right out of James' hand. He was on the human a split second after, clawing at his armour and helmet, howling like a banshee.

James tipped backwards, watching the whole world tip backwards before the ground punched him hard. The jackal landed on top of him and went for the throat. James immediately lifted up his armoured forearm to block the wild grab while his free hand darted down for the sidearm locked in the mag-holster on his thigh.

The weapon was freed with a sharp click and came up. James didn't care about aiming. Anywhere would do. A leg. The gut. Whatever.

The kig-yar seemed to care very much though and grabbed the gun by the barrel, forcefully trying to yank it from the ODST's grip while directing it away from himself.

As they were scuffling on the ground, Sera's sudden ping on the comms was nearly deafening, even with the kig-yar screeching in his face. "James, I've called in for gunship support. Valkyrie is moving into position now."

"Copy!" James yelled louder than he'd intended to as he struggled with the alien going for his gun.

"Are you okay down there?"

James levered his armoured elbow into the kig-yar's face. "Oh yeah! Good times!"

Catching the alien off-guard he managed to pull him to one side and slammed the beak-like muzzle into the ground beside him. At the same time his gun moved over and he pressed the muzzle against the pirate's head.

Bang! The kig-yar's head snapped to one side and the force of the shot caused the body to slide sideways a few feet before he flopped to the ground and lay still.

Sitting up, James quickly trained the pistol in a two handed grip at the door. And not a moment too soon. Two silhouettes sharpened as two more kig-yar piled into the room. Before they even thought of looking down, James was firing.

Three rounds hit the belly of the first and doubled over the bandit crumpled. Two more shots took out the knees of the second before a finisher cracked the last kig-yar's skull.

Sitting there with his pistol aimed at the door, James caught his breath. He must have been frozen like that for a good minute before he was satisfied there wasn't anything moving around out there anymore. Sera seemed to have the gates locked down pretty tight.

"Kitchen, clear!" he reported as he scrambled to his feet and holstered his sidearm.

Picking up his M7 again he took a breather by the doorpost. Releasing the grip of his gun he looked down at his own gauntlet to note his hand was shaking uncontrollably from side to side. Swallowing and closing his hand into a fist James took a few breaths. That was probably the closest shave he'd been in so far. And he'd never get used to it.

James didn't have any more time to ponder his mortality as another explosion rocked the keep, dust falling between the ceiling boards and drizzling to the ground. There was a cry on the radio followed by what sounded like a dog coughing.

"Corporal James Trent! The east wall has been breached! They're streaming in!" came Elar's voice on the radio.

Turning to the stairway James broke into a mad dash to get back upstairs. "I'm on my way! Stay down!"

Elar let out a cry that sounded like a cry of pain. The radio sounded like it clattered forgotten to the ground and kept broadcasting the whine and chatter of gunfire exchange. "Come then, nishum_!"_ Elar cried. "Come and meet your end!"

Huffing for air as he made it halfway up the stairs, James quickly battled with his helmet's ocular-recognition device to reset the communicator he'd left Elar and Samuel. "Elar! Situation!?"

There was no reply. James double checked his readout as he ran. Diagnostics indicated he was sending just fine, and his radio had no problem connecting to Elar's communicator.

"Elar!" the human tried again, voice growing more desperate as he reached the top of the steps. "Samuel! Kojo!"

Bursting out into the upstairs dorms where he'd left the trio, James took in the sights in an instant. He couldn't see the humans or Elar. But he did see three kig-yar, armed to the teeth.

Pop-pop, there was barely any pause between the two shots. The first scythed left, the second to the right with a snappy target switch that would give firing range instructors a raging erection.

The jackal on James' immediate left twisted and dropped to the ground. He didn't see where the alien had been hit, but the fact the pirate went down was good enough or now. On the second he saw the head snap back sharply. James counted his blessings for scoring that head-shot on the move and keeping his weapon level, grabbed the dead kig-yar by the shoulder and shoved it to his side as he sprinted.

Almost immediately the third bandit across the room whipped around and fired an MA5 in full automatic. The shots went high though as James dropped into a slide-tackle and moved to a halt behind one of the more intact beds.

As he slid to a halt he aimed flush with the floor between the bed's legs, smartscoping the kig-yar's feet down-range. The human fired, pausing only to aim carefully. A single round tore through the fragile avian bone and sinew in the ankle and with a screech the pirate was thrown from his feet, face down into the wooden floor.

Another shot rang out and James put the jackal down permanently.

Sucking in a breath, the corporal rolled to his floor and rotated on the spot, double checking his surrounds. The room was clear. He noted Sera was still firing out in the courtyard, but the sounds echoed differently. She'd probably shifted position to deal with contacts elsewhere on the east.

He'd have room to breathe for a bit. Time to find Samuel, Elar and Kojo.

Unfortunately he found them almost immediately. Samuel first, curled up on the ground, a pool of darkness surrounding him. Bullet holes mottled his back where the kig-yar had shot him while he'd been running away.

He wasn't moving, and James' VISR sensors picked up no pulse. The HUD outlined Samuel's still body in yellow. Another part of the scenery. KIA.

James threw a panicked glance around the rest of the room as he moved forward. Elar was found soon after. She was huddled in a ball, smoke rising from the dozen or so bloody craters torn across her spine. He saw her chest move, drawing a ragged breath before she keeled sideways and clattered to the ground.

In her place James saw Kojo. The teenager was catatonic, drawing short panicked breaths and staring with saucer sized eyes at Elar as she fell to the ground. The sangheili woman's grip on her pistol loosened as she gazed up at the young human with wet eyes.

She choked for a moment, then slowly her eyelids drooped halfway down. She was gone before James could even reach them.

Kneeling, the ODST quickly checked Kojo over. No injuries to detect. In her final act of defiance Elar had denied her enemy the chance to harm the teenager. James had no idea whether he should have been glad or depressed.

Then he remembered the kig-yar who had caused all this and directed his fury aptly in their direction. A firm grip returned to his weapon, James rose to his feet and turned at the sound of talons scraping on the stone steps at the end of the dorm. More targets were coming in hot.

James was about to tell Kojo to stay down but an unfamiliar voice on the radio caught his attention.

"Valkyrie to double-trouble. The cavalry has arrived. We see your IFF but we can't tell the cowboys from the Indians down there. How about a little help, over?"

"Double-trouble reads you five-by-five!" Sera replied. "Welcome to the party, Valkyrie. We are holed up in the keep designated waypoint delta. The fields surrounding the keep are free game. Drop the hammer!"

"Solid copy. Patching you into live comm-feed. Plug your ears, double-trouble. It's gonna be danger close."

Danger close. No kidding. James felt his teeth rattle in his skull as something struck the earth just outside the keep. It shook the whole structure down to its very core causing furniture to fall over and the dust on the ground to bounce into the air. James nearly lost his footing as the first of several large calibre explosive shells struck the fields.

Two more explosions were followed by a fourth and fifth... and then with his external audio constantly being cut out by the hearing protection feature of his helmet he lost count. It was like the fading firefight was cursing at the top of its lungs.

Already the scrape of talons in the stairwell _skritch_ed to a halt and James heard the sound of footsteps retreat in the opposite direction.

Moving to a window he looked outside to see a pillar of dirt and smoke rise from the middle of a crater riddled irukan field. What had once been lush fields of crop had turned to a war-torn wasteland in less than a minute.

The geysers of dirt barely had time to settle before more touched down, blowing apart the kig-yar mid-retreat.

"Splash! That's got 'em running!" the gunner aboard Valkyrie whooped. "You mess with the best, you die like the rest, motherfuckers!"

"Switch to the fifty and mop up those squirters," the spotter ordered.

"Copy! Guns-guns-guns."

The sound came before the splashdown, a powerful brrrrrrrrrrpp rumbled from the heavens followed by the glow of tracers raining from above to decimate everything they touched. Lines of death traced in zig-zag patterns across the remnants of the fields in short bursts. Or at least, the gunship standard for short bursts.

The kig-yar were retreating to whatever hovel they'd come from, and nobody could blame them. They had survived. They'd won.

James looked down to Kojo crying on the floor between his father and his surrogate sangheili mother; two more corpses to add to the morgue the keep had become.

Unfortunately victory had come too little too late.

~~~~

//Urofa Keep, Augustine, Turius System.

'Urofa. This place was called Urofa keep, home to the 'Urofa family and led by Elar 'Urofa.

Standing in the shattered remains of the dorm, James wondered if a keep being led by a female was a common thing among sangheili, or whether this was a special case. It didn't seem to matter now that Elar was being carried out in a body bag by several sangheili from the Nar Keep.

The 'Nar warriors had arrived late, but rather late than never. They'd killed their way through a rank of kig-yar in the fields on their way over. And they were helping clean up. That was good enough for James.

The young men carrying Elar's body out to be buried with the others, sangheili and human alike, paid James no mind. If they were xenophobic or upset with the human standing there they didn't show it.

James figured they were too deep in silent mourning for their fallen neighbours to care about James and Sera wandering around the ruins of Urofa Keep.

Valkyrie had done their best to keep things rather intact, but the sangheili keep was still but a shell of what it had used to be. In the persistent bombing to keep the kig-yar from doubling back some of the walls and settlements had collapsed. The dorm roof had caved in right beside James earlier. Just a step in the wrong direction and he'd be waiting for extraction in a stretcher rather than standing there in the dorm.

As he was left alone, the corporal absently shuffled across the room to where one of the dead kig-yar lay. It was riddled with plasma burns. Elar had shot the bandit to pieces before she'd turned to protect Kojo.

None of this made much sense. What were kig-yar doing on Augustine? And what benefit could be in it for them to slaughter farmers and families? There didn't seem to be much of a motive for the violence.

They could have been training. Maybe one of the settlements on Augustine had a shipment of gear or resources they were after?

Aw, hell, James thought with a sigh, realising he was justifying this for the hateful little bastards.

Kneeling over the dead alien, James scraped up the UNSC weapon still held in a dead grip. He had to bend over the stiff fingers to free the rifle. But as he did, he immediately regretted it. It was the first kig-yar MA5 he'd inspected properly, and when he saw the subtle design configurations, serial numbers and features his mind raced.

A million questions for which there were probably no answers popped up as he stared down at the MA5D assault rifle. He found the 2553 commissioned 'bread and butter' of the UNSC armed forces in the clutches of the kig-yar pirate. It was identical to Sera's rifle. A brand new MA5D, fresh off the factory line.

This wasn't some grubby left over weapon from the Human-Covenant War. This wasn't some antique ol' reliable MA3 from before the war. It was a full blown 'future warfare' piece of high-tech kit.

And that could only mean one thing. The supplier for these pirates had to be on UNSC payroll. Maybe these guns had come from the UNSC. Were they stolen? Was there a black ops division James didn't know about that was supplying kig-yar pirates?

James sighed, trying to rub his eyes but his hand batted his visor. Of course there was an ONI black ops division he didn't know about. There always was. He just didn't feel smart enough to put all the pieces together and figure out why someone in the UNSC would supply pirates.

Shaking it off he stared at the rifle's serial number for a moment, checked his mission recording had picked it up then dropped the rifle in the rubble with the kig-yar corpses. He didn't have all the pieces of the puzzle just yet, and didn't want to risk big scary Office of Naval Intelligence men barging into his debrief to confiscate his evidence and arrest him. He partitioned the serial number section of his mission recording onto a personal data-unit and wiped it from his recording.

His official debrief would say kig-yar had projectile weapons and that it was the opinion of this trooper they acquired the weapons from black markets raiding war surplus. James may have been a boy scout, but that didn't mean he was a lousy liar.

Leaving the rifle for whatever cleanup-crew that would swing by, James left the dorm room and descended the steps into the courtyard. Rubble and dead kig-yar littered the dirt. Pools of blood had coagulated. Sheets of glassed earth crackled loudly under James' boots as he crossed them to the door. The bodies of the humans and sangheili had been removed for burial. The jackals on the other hand would be left to rot.

Outside of the keep the sangheili of the Nar Keep were gathered. But off down the dirt track Sera stood alone watching them carefully from a far. Her rifle was held across her chest, not quite relaxed but not quite offence either.

Moving over, James heard a report ping the comms.

"Patrol complete, double-trouble. Area is clear of hostiles, over."

Sera instinctively lifted a hand to one of her pointed feline ears as she replied. "Thanks, Valkyrie. Maintain cover until the extraction pelican gets here, over."

"Solid copy, double-trouble. Over and out."

As he approached James hooked one hand under the chin of his helmet and lifted it smoothly off his head. As he did, Sera looked his way. He figured he must have had a sad expression on his face, because Sera frowned.

Well, she did what passed as a frown among her strict, taught expressions. Her right brow twitched a little.

"Is everything okay?" she asked, all business.

The corporal wasn't sure how to answer, looking to where the bodies of the fallen were being gathered on a cart for transport to the Nar Keep. Standing with the sanghieli gathered was a single human.

It wasn't your typical scene like at home. They didn't gather around to comfort the boy. They didn't swaddle Kojo in a blanket or make a fuss over him. The only one who didn't leave his side was a single female with a sincere expression. She kept a hand clamped on his shoulder as if reminding him she was there, looking over him.

The sangheili were a hard race. But Kojo was an incredibly tough kid. Even as the bodies of his father and Elar were carried out, he didn't break down anymore. He'd had his little cry. Now it seemed he was ready to get on with burying his loved ones and moving on with his life.

James honestly had no idea whether that was healthy or not.

"Elar's sister married into the 'Nar family," James explained. "She's going to take care of Kojo. Better this way than send him to Earth to go through the system."

Sera looked as though she didn't actually care about any of that. Clearly that was not what she meant when she asked. "Let me rephrase. Are_you_ okay?"

That was an equally difficult question to answer actually.

"I... I dunno. I should have gotten to them faster," James admitted, doing mental loop-de-loops, tying his best to remember every detail of the firefight as if searching for something he'd overlooked or could have changed. "Maybe if I cleared the kitchen faster... maybe if I didn't stop to catch my breath... maybe I could have..."

Sera steppe forward and grabbed James by the shoulder, shaking him out of his thoughts. Looking up, he looked into her bright yellow eyes. He honestly didn't know what he was looking at.

Pity? Concern? Honestly, James didn't know what those things looked like in Sera's eyes.

"Stop! Just stop," the pantheress ordered, giving him another little shake just for good measure. "You did everything right. You can't save 'em all, James."

Kojo turned his head and spotted James, slowly lifting a hand to wave.

"I know..." James lifted his hand and waved back. "I know."

Whoever had briefed the extraction pelican pilot had obviously done so thoroughly, because the drop ship came in nervously. As James let his arms fall limply to his sides, the DC-77 drop ship shot in with a near-suicidal flair. It pulled itself out of a steep dive at nearly the last second, switching to VTOL thrusters and banking sideways over the top of the keep to circle the landing zone.

As it moved, the chin mounted chain-gun did a sweep of the area, pausing as it sighted the sangheili gathered just outside the Urofa Keep. To James' glee, the pilot had enough self-control not to open up. Instead the vehicle shot forward and hit the deck hard just down the road. It wasn't a particularly text-book situation, an attribute to nerves thanks to sangheili in the area no doubt. No sooner had the pelican finished bouncing in its own landing gear, the crew-hatch fell open and dug into the dirt.

Standing at the top of the ramp, the crew chief was armed for an assault with an MA5D pointed threateningly out of the gaping crew-hatch.

"C'mon, soldier-boy. We're banging out." Sera turned and marched to the extraction pelican, waving the crew chief to stand down.

James watched as Kojo was led behind the carriage of bodies drawn by two colo beast onto the muddy track that led off to the Nar Keep. The female, Elar's sister presumably, never left his side. Kojo never once looked back.

Lowering his gaze sadly, James slid his helmet back over his head and walked to the waiting pelican.

~~~~

//UNSC Sharkbait, Classified Vector.

Sera shut her eyes, breathing heavily in an attempt to catch up on air intake. She was shaking slightly from exertion, her thigh muscles in particular tingling a little as he found a wall to support herself on.

Swallowing, she gasped and stretched before looking up and down the empty corridor of the UNSC Sharkbait. A few years ago she'd have been able to run the full tour of the frigate in full gear and barely break a sweat. It seemed since the war ended she was going soft, and fast.

Puffing up her cheeks in a sigh, the pantheress rested her hands on her hips and took another moment to recover. Her jogging pace was more of a sprint anyway, so it was no surprise she was completely out of breath. She hadn't even meant to push herself so hard. She was supposed to be relaxing. The_Sharkbait_ was rotating back to Earth for R&R. she had intended to just go for a calming jog.

Shaking off whatever sub-conscious reason for possibly punishing herself she could fathom Sera stretched. Her upper body and arms first, folding her arms around her back and flexing out her muscles before she set to work on her legs. Decades of active military service, combat and taking care of herself had made the lieutenant extremely limber. After some standard stretches she stood balanced on one foot while her other leg was stretched straight up so she was nearly touching the ceiling of the corridor.

As she stood there for a moment in contemplation, her inner thighs completely exposed to the empty corridor, Sera wondered where James was, and what he might be doing. He wasn't the type to consider a PT run relaxing, so she figured he was somewhere on board with his eyes glued to a computer terminal.

Her flexible thigh muscles stretched, Sera walked down the corridor just as a figure came around the corner to meet her. For a split second she dared hope it was James. Though to her disappointment, it was only the captain.

Captain Jason Reynolds was, as per usual, pretty relaxed looking. His hair unkempt, his uniform ruffled and his stride was slouched - he was quite unsightly for an officer. And his posture alone was often the scrutiny of a few other officers who served under him. Sera often wondered how he got away without reprimand from higher ups. Then she had to remember the captain's ties to ONI's Signal Corps and section-zero black ops. He was very well connected in the intelligence community; and having survived a great many encounters with ONI's commander-in-chief spoke in volumes of his experience and influence.

"Good morning, captain," Sera stood to one side and saluted briskly as the captain walked past.

Reynolds returned the salute casually as he walked by. "Mornin', lieutenant."

"Oh, captain? Have you seen Corporal Trent, sir?"

A few paces down the corridor, the captain turned to face Sera, still walking backwards to his intended destination. As he caught her eye, he merely shrugged. "If I know Mister Trent as well as I like to think I do, your best bet is to check the server room."

Sera nodded, waving a 'thank you' to the captain before she turned to an engineering deck access ladder. She was sure she should have seen that coming. Ask most grunts on board the _Sharkbait_where the ship's server room was and they'd look at you stupidly. Sera would have worn the same expression a few years ago before she'd moved Trent under her command. Ever since meeting James she's spent quite a lot of time in the server room.

Not that she minded. It had its human interfaces, but most of the maintenance on the software side was done by the ship's resident AI. Engineers only ever visited if there was a hardware issue, which with modern computing miracles hardly ever happened. So the server room was a quiet little getaway from the galaxy.

Finding the right door, Sera swiped the ID-chip embedded under the skin of her right hand and stepped inside. When the door swished shut behind her, the sounds of the world were cut out. Instead of the hustle and bustle of engineers walking the corridors or talking loudly in the hall, there was a soft hum of server fans. A little more high pitched than the gentle hum of the slip-space engines throbbing a few decks below, but bearable all the same. Within moments the hum of the fans was familiar again and Sera barely heard them anymore.

Ahead of her was James. He had his back to the door, and either didn't hear it open or didn't care, because he didn't look up from what he was doing. The corporal was still young, but if he sat hunched over a terminal like that for too long his posture would get more crooked than the commander in chief of ONI herself.

Walking closer, quiet as a ninja, Sera looked over the human's shoulder to see what he was doing. She was a little disappointed that he wasn't playing video games or downloading port. Especially the latter, actually. No, instead of doing what most marines did in downtime between keeping their gear squared away and their bodies sharp, James sat alone in the server room paddling back and forth between his mission recordings and post mission reports like a workaholic.

"Don't you ever rest?" Sera asked, not bothering to lower her volume in case James hadn't heard her come in and would be startled. He didn't seem to twitch though, so he must have known she was there.

"I'll rest when we hit shore-leave, ell-tee. Which is like" - James ripped his eyes from the screen to glance at his watch - "in in thirteen hours anyway."

"Are you still fretting over the MA5s the jackals were carrying?"

"Yeah. It doesn't make sense. I can't find the weapons we found on Augustine in any known database. It's like they don't exist."

As much as Sera didn't want to fuel James' forming obsession, she had to admit she was just a little curious and asked, "did you check with the manufacturer?"

"I did. Misriah Armoury officially stated that the UNSC does not have an exclusivity contract. If they're selling to a third party that's their business. They're not doing anything illegal."

"So it's just leftovers they found from the war."

"Yeah... yeah, I guess it's gotta be." James sighed, rubbing his neck.

Sera hadn't stopped to investigate, more concerned with getting them off Augustine than anything else. There was nothing wrong with it. She just didn't know how seriously shady things were getting. James decided to play this one pretty close to the chest. He hadn't even told her those MA5s in kig-yar clutches were the new D-variant assault rifles.

If they had the revenue for that kind of expensive kit, God only knew what other surprises they had up their slimy little sleeves.

When he finally turned around to look at her, James suddenly completely forgot what he'd been talking about. Dumbstruck by what she was wearing, James gaped like a gold-fish, his memory taking on similar animalistic properties. Somewhere in the deep dark recesses of his brain the seemingly forgotten animalistic urge to mate was re-awakened.

"... uhh..."

Sera was clad in a very form-fitting under-armour vest that left very little cleavage to the imagination. And she wasn't exactly a wiry tomboy either. In armour she almost looked like any other athletically built male marine. But having discarded her armour all of her shapely curves became very apparent.

Besides her vest she wore just a pair of olive-green silkies, the standard armed forces undergarments worn under battle dress and sometimes worn as PT shorts. The name 'silkies' said it all. They were very light, almost silky in texture, and extremely short to the point the hems literally rode up to reveal Sera's sleek hips.

Her gym shoes indicated she had likely been out for a run. It was the only thing that explained why she'd be so scantily dressed. James could only imagine the glances and wolf-whistles she got from junior enlisted personnel in the halls. Only the _junior_enlisted mind you. They'd be the only ones who didn't know her well enough to realise the error of their sleazy glances.

Sera cocked an eyebrow as she cocked a hip upon which one hand elegantly rested when she noticed James gulping down what he was about to say.

"What's wrong?"

"You look... err... nice?"

Sera cocked an eyebrow and glanced down at herself. Realising what was going on, she flashed a little smirk, swaying her hips as she exaggerated the motions of shifting her weight onto her other leg.

"You like what you see, soldier-boy?"

"W-what's to see? You're out for a PT run. No point running around in full gear." James managed to swivel around in his chair again, tearing his eyes from her body. "I'd better get back to this."

"You work way too hard, James. You should take some time to relax."

"Relax. Right! That's funny coming from you. How would you like me to relax? And don't say; join me for a PT run." He had to remember, she was his drill instructor at ODST boot camp for a good while. He knew exactly how fast she could run.

That was when Sera's voice when uncharacteristically husky. "Why don't you join me for something else?"

"Whuh...?"

The change was so sudden James' brain took a full second to register her tone and the subtle double-entendre the statement held. But by then it was too late.

No sooner did James feel her hand on his shoulder, the human was lifted from his seat and thrown backwards. It was like gravity had suddenly failed in the server room. Though not technically accurate, because his chair clattered to the deck only moments before James landed hard with a thud, and a weight falling on top of him hard enough to drive the wind out of his lungs.

When Sera tackled the corporal to the ground and threw herself on top of him, she felt a pang of worry. Not for what she was doing barely dressed straddling a fellow ODST's waist with a fire of lust blazing in her eyes. She was worried she'd been too rough and maybe hurt James. It didn't show, but she was always protective. She hated putting him in the line of fire. And whenever something threatened to hurt him, physically or mentally, she did everything in her power to steer him away from it.

The same way she'd steered conversation away from Kali when she heard they'd broken up.

But at the same time Sera wanted to be a little rough. After all, this was a controlled setting. And not only did she like having things a little rough, she liked using a little physical force to put him in his place.

Her rank, age and position over James made her feel in charge. In control of the situation, more so now than ever. She was older than he was. Not grotesquely older, but just older. Old enough to feel like a college-girl jumping the bones of a senior high-schooler.

It was exciting to say the least.

With a tingling in her crotch where she was grinding him ever so slightly, Sera leaned in over the prone human and locked her lips fiercely against his. Whereas the young man's eyes widened with surprise at finding himself flat on his back with the lieutenant's tongue down his throat, Sera had her eyes closed as she explored the inside of her corporal's mouth for the second time since they'd met.

She'd kissed him once before, but back then it was just to freak out Kali and fluster poor James. A tasteless manoeuvre, sure, but Sera was an ODST after all. She was trained to operate with dirty-terror tactics behind enemy lines.

Though unlike the first time, this kiss made Sera's heart rush with excitement. She felt like she was on fire, tingling in all her extremities. She was breathing hard, tilting her head from side to side for better access as she fought for control with his tongue.

Even half naked and straddling him with intention of having her merry way with him Sera was a trained angel of death. Her version of "hi, James. Let's have sex," was a military grade tackle! Her kisses were aggressive assaults. Her grabs for his belt were methodical and purposeful.

James recognised the body language. She was switched on, and James could either try his best to keep up or just hold on and try to survive the ride.

As per usual, James picked the latter.

His hands worked up over her thighs, exploring the curve of her wide hips. His fingers raked through her fur against the flow as he worked his way up her waist. Her fur was surprisingly soft, like she'd taken a long shower and used a whole bottle of conditioner. He could smell it too, considering their proximity. A typical enough soapy smell, the usual plain scented stuff the PX sold to all UNSC forces. Cheap and functional. But effective.

She smelled familiar and safe, like the showers in the barracks after a long mission.

Still, it seemed a little strange on Sera - she was too clean and soft. She was a war tempered veteran. He'd expect her to be hard and coarse all over.

She certainly had the scars though. On some places on her body there were pink breaks in the black fur, narrow little slits and valleys to reveal the fades scars and burns that came from a lifetime of facing the Covenant in battle. There were stab wounds, gashes, spiderweb shaped impact burns drawing patterns along her back, chest and mid riff. There were more along her arms, even a few on her legs.

Many of them the fur just brushed over and James only noticed them when she ran his fingers through her fur. Others were plainly visible, a recognisable part of her appearance. James was pretty sure he wouldn't even recognise Sera were it not for that subtle but visible scar across her cheek.

He didn't pause as his hands moved higher. Scars didn't faze James. He'd seen plenty of them. He even had his fair share. To James, Sera's scars made her who she was. He might go as far as to say she'd be less attractive without them.

The human's hands met Sera's first few ribs before his fingers flattened out and he ran the full surface of his palms over her body, under her vest. The thin cloth pulled up instantly as he moved, revealing she wore nothing underneath. Within moments the hem of her tight vest hooked up over her perky breasts.

Fumbling with his belt at that moment of contact, Sera seemed to abandon the clothing and ripped open his shirt with a determined tug, like it took more effort than she would dare admit. It was almost a spiteful move considering that sly little glint in her eye, like she though James was getting a little too familiar and she needed to teach him a lesson.

James didn't seem to catch on though.

He squeezed the delectable furry handfuls of softness tenderly, gently rubbing the soft palms of his hands against her bare nipples. She might have expected him to have calloused hands after his training with the ODST, but James seemed to be a computer geek at heart. Even with his combat training and experience he still spent most of his time operating computers and field equipment.

Sera didn't exactly mind, purring softly as his smooth palms caused an electric tingling in her chest. She was biting her lip, savouring every brush of his flesh against her bare, rigid nipples. She could feel them tightening, trapped between James' warm hands and the cool server room air.

His hands circling her breast and cupping along the bottom with the intent of following the flow of her fur down to the smooth curves of her narrow waist, James had a thought. His brain raced, catching up with what his body was going through. A single lucid thought knifed through the horny murk clouding the young man's senses and burned like a halogen light versus night vision optics.

She's a superior officer.

She was. Despite how they behaved on the ground with James being the more reserved, diplomatic one and Sera acting as 'bad-cop,' she was still his commander. He looked to her for leadership, and she looked to him for... well... she was looking to him right now.

Pulling his hands from her chest with lightning speed he immediately grasped her shoulders, pushing her back with some effort to break volley of kisses.

"W-wait. We shouldn-..." James started to blurt out but he was cut short by the pantheress' terse tone.

"Shut up."

In her usual tone it sounded more like an order than a request. That alone was enough grounds for James to shut up. Because when Lieutenant Sera Irrasi gave an order, you do not say no. This was happening. And nothing short of the firing of a Halo instillation was going to stop it.

James' chest bare for Sera's eyes to greedily observe, she turned her efforts to his belt, tearing the buckle loose and pulling open the button and zipper as quickly as she could. Her hands were a blur of motion, and as if carefully but swiftly disassembling her sidearm for maintenance she slipped her digits under the elastic of his silkies.

The human swallowed a breath as he felt Sera find her prize. The pantheress smirked and reached down with her free hand, forcefully jerking his pants down past his hips to get a good look at what she was doing.

Her hand was gripped around his shaft like she'd hold a dagger in a standard 'forward-striking- fashion. And the way she moved up and down the length of it, it'd almost be mistaken for a slow, sensual stabbing motion.

James shuddered involuntarily as Sera's hands - hands trained to maim and murder - worked their way along the most sensitive parts of the human's body. Pleasure unlike anything he'd ever felt tingled just skin deep, spluttering and flaring like a chain of firecrackers set off in quick succession. Deep in the back of his mind he was ashamed to realise he was pining for more, secretly wanting to just pin his lieutenant down and rut her like a beast possessed. His higher brain function overrode animalistic instinct though and somehow he was able to restrain himself and sit there, letting Sera bask in the enjoyment of setting the pace.

A pace - by the way - that wasn't exactly sluggish anyway.

Admiring her own 'handy' work, Sera gave a small smile. A genuine smile, not one of those pandering smiles girls usually gave when seeing their partner naked for the first time.

Either her hands were small, or he was rather big; either way didn't really matter to her. Sera had always figured size was relative. If she were a mountain of a woman and his dick barely took up any space between her two fingers, then yeah; she might have been a little disappointed. But they were both the same height. As far as build went, Sera was probably a little lighter than James was.

And judging by his rapidly growing arousal, Sera figured he'd be big enough to give her an enjoyable stretch. She wasn't going to leave him hanging though as she was starting to feel the sticky heat of her own arousal in the crotch of her own shorts.

In her panic to get things moving again as quickly as possible, she barely even took them off, the silkies still dangling from her right thigh like a baggy olive-green garter.

She was on him in seconds, straddling his waist one hand resting on his chest for support, the other still firmly grasping his erection as if it would initiate an escape and evasion plan if she were to let it go. Poised for the kill with her opening pressing firmly against his head, Sera swallowed a nervous breath as she quaked with anticipation.

She'd wanted this for a very long time. It wasn't too far-fetched to think her recommendation for him to join the ODST and be transferred under her command was secretly a method of sabotaging his other social ties. Sera had always been extremely jealous of James' sangheili girlfriend whenever he talked about the times they were together. She honestly never intended to drag him away from her with work. But maybe she was doing it sub-consciously because she wanted him all to herself.

Sera had an inkling of why she might be jealous of any girl who got close to James, Earthling or otherwise. A fly on the wall might look at them and think they were polar opposites. That they had nothing in common. That they were incompatible.

She didn't much care about that though. Sera had her reasons for liking James. And that was it. Her reasons were hers. She wasn't one of those girls to settle down and flaunt her 'perfectly matched' boyfriend or husband to her friends just to show off. She didn't much care what others thought about their relationship. She didn't have to justify anything to anyone.

That fly on the wall just had to accept Sera wanted him because she wanted him. And in truth, with the show he was getting, that fly on the wall didn't mind so much.

James felt Sera quake as she paused and wondered what was up. She had been for a run before she 'sexually assaulted' him, perhaps it was a tremble of exertion. He'd never have guessed this was what she'd wanted to do to him the day they'd met - to hold him down while she rocked back and slipped his cock deep inside her snatch.

And that was exactly what she did, settling down and sighing in time with the human held down beneath her.

He didn't have a humungous girth, and she wasn't tight as a funnel, but entering still took some doing. Sera's tunnel hugged him snugly, the wet flesh parting and heat rippling all the way down his shaft until the pantheress could lower herself no more, and he was sheathed entirely within her.

Light headed, Sera felt him twitch inside her. As he did, electric little sparks of pleasure rippled down her loins. She smiled as the realisation suddenly hit her. She had James under her - inside her! Finally...

And she wasn't going to waste another second just sitting idle.

Digging her nails into the humans shoulders, Sera curled her toes and started to move. Pleasure raced through her as her brain turned to the kind of muck left by a mass invasion of marines. Thick, messy and out of mind. She'd never given the muck under her boots any through whenever she was part of an assaulting force. The same way she'd left all higher brain function behind. All that mattered was riding her prize.

James in the meantime was almost hypnotised by Sera's rhythmic dance, staring at the back and forth sway of her bare breasts. She was violent with every rocking motion she made with her hips. She'd pitch and pivot her hips as she leaned forward onto her knees and slid up until just his head held open her tight hole. And then with determination to bury him all the way inside her again she'd ride him all the way down to the hilt in ferocious crashing of their hips.

"This, uh..." James stuttered between heavy breaths for air. "This ain't exactly... ah... re-relaxing."

"Oh, shut up," Sera breathed out heavily, her voice caught somewhere between a hazy moan and her usual terse, authorative tone.

James' hands were exploring once more. Reaching out he touched Sera's breasts again, ejoying the taut firmness. Sera continued bouncing up and down unhindered as he slowly followed the curvature of her body down past her waist until he settled onto her hips and slid back a bit.

A few years ago when the two of them were avoiding Covenant patrols and crawling around through forerunner ruins he'd turned red as beet when he accidentally found himself behind her and staring at the pantheress' tight buttocks. Never in a million years would he have thought he'd eventually find himself squeezing those furry cheeks and spreading them apart for better access.

Sera felt her opening stretch out a little more as James gently pulled. She felt exposed. Entirely vulnerable at her rear.

She loved it. She only wished she had some sort of toy she could use to plug her rear. Though she quickly perished the thought, thinking she would prefer to have James plug her rear instead. A giddy, silly little thought of flash-cloning James so she could have him fill every one of her holes at once dominated Sera's mind for a moment.

As quickly as it came, it vanished though as she felt little explosions of pleasure rip through her as she felt James' head smack a wall somewhere inside her. Every time she came down, James thrusted up a little. Sera went tipsy, unable to tell up and down anymore. It felt like the gravity generators of the Sharkbait were going haywire. The deck was tilting and spinning like a top. The fire burning in her snatch intensified as her pooling desire slobbered all down James' crotch, the scent of it mingling with the human's sweat.

And then the tight, slippery ride came to a sudden, abrupt halt.

James clenched, tightening his grip on her rear as she thrust down hard one more time. Hilted deep inside Sera with a slight thrust of his own hips, James was entirely trapped underneath he lighter, but stronger pantheress. Sera cried out unable to contain her voice anymore as he reached all the way inside her, his head just about reaching the opening of his cervix. And in that moment she could feel a heavenly expansion. It rippled all the way up the human's shaft, and with an explosion of stars glittering in Sera's brain she felt a hot, wet gushing unload inside her.

It pulsed up through her cervix and pooled somewhere inside, warm and sticky. Sera twitched, not sure what had happened at first. She had no idea who had just cum. Had she just squirted all over James?

No. Sera's mind slowly turned sober in those brief seconds and she realised James had come deep inside her. Not that she'd given him much choice. He probably sub-consciously known that if he'd pulled out she'd have killed him.

Still basking in the bliss of being filled to the brim, Sera slowly leaned forward and rested herself on top of her lover, panting for air with a mix of exertion and joy.

James' rapid breaths interrupted for a second as he swallowed hard, then doubled up to catch up on what air he'd lost. His eyes remained shut as if shutting down his retinas would help him recharge faster.

Lifting her head, Sera smiled as she looked him over. She felt quite proud having drained every ounce of energy from him. It hadn't taken much doing. And though itching for more, she wasn't entirely unsatisfied, so she saved him from the customary heart-stopper quip of being ready for 'round two' already.

Instead she merely kissed him with uncharacteristic tenderness on the cheek, before nuzzling up beside her lover.

... They had all of shore leave to work on rounds two and up.