Halo: Beta Red

August 30th, 2552, 0631 Hours

Epsilon Eridanus System, Reach, Viery Territory

Unidentified Reach Airspace

There was scary, and then there was really, truly, terrifying. Laymen always thought it odd that someone like her--a two meter tall, genetically enhanced, armored supersoldier--could get scared, but the truth was that it happened all the time. She got scared at all the regular things that would make a soldier’s bowels clench; artillery, enemy fire, ambushes, comrades in danger, along with more specific things like a charging Elite with an Energy Sword or a burly, massive hunter. Being scared was something that was just part of the job, another monotonous element of the same grind she had gone through since she was six years old. She had training to deal with being scared, and experience to know how to push through fear and do what was necessary.

But terror--that was something else entirely. She never hesitated when she was afraid, never froze up or missed her mark, but terror stopped her in her tracks. It wasn’t common like fear, and it didn’t even have the courtesy to be easily explainable. It was always something strange, mysterious, inexplicable. It was things like a flash of memory, or a sense of déjà vu. Fear might have made her heart pound, but true terror was heart stopping, paralyzing.

And at that moment, as her pulse thudded in her ears and her helmet screamed warning of over pressurized hydrostatic gel, that feeling of terror was something she was intimately, breathlessly, familiar with.

The tree below rushed up to meet her, green and lush, at odds with the smoking, acrid fires in the distance and far to peaceful looking to fit in with the hammer of radio traffic and alarms. She had no time to reconcile the contrasting images, as she slammed through the trunk of the first tree in her path, smashing it apart as she barreled through like an armored cannon ball. The world exploded in light and suddenly she’d been there before, body flailing as she ditched a burning aircraft over a strange, half-remembered world of mottled browns and screeching monsters. The flash of memory threatened to overcome her, before training and experience forced their way in overpowering her distracted conscious mind and driving the memories away. Her vision returned, taking in a golden flash of her dissipating energy shields and the mottled green of another layer of canopy, splintering to pieces under the impact of her half ton form.

Then one instant dissolved into the next and the pain and shock vanished. She found herself embedded in a furrowed crater, crushed branches flanking the edges and her armor whining, as the shield generators struggled to recharge. Angry red lines of text scrawled across her HUD, warning signals and diagnostics that buried her visor in a sea of updating information. Her eyes found themselves drawn, however, to a pair of green acknowledgment lights blinking slowly on her screen, two rows down and third and forth from the left. Abbreviated numerical designations designated them, but she knew their identities without a hint of searching, without the constant, blank confusion that drowned out all of her other thoughts these days. Her Leader, and her Comrade; her Two. Their bio signs were shaky, but they were alive. It was all that mattered to her.

Radio chatter came poring in through the speakers in her helmet, and she picked herself up from the ground with a wince, as she took in her surroundings. The forest was quiet, calm, peaceful--at odds with the booming report of fighting in the distance. The entire planet was under attack, burning before the might of an enemy as unstoppable and ferocious as they were inscrutable and implacable, but this stretch of forest, this small pocket of green, was serene. It was surreal.

She had a mission, however, and no amount of fuzzy, confused thoughts or hauntingly beautiful forests could be allowed to impede her. Just as she had put her memories--or memory flashes, as they were--out of her mind before, she now moved past her detached state and focused on the mission at hand. The leader of the Others, 104, had laid a waypoint mid free-fall, and she set off across the forest towards it. The MA5B she had brought with her was gone, lost in the fall, but nature had it’s own weapons available for those who needed them. She snatched a rock from the ground, hefting it in one arm. She would make do.

She had landed well away from the others, but their locations manifested themselves as pulsating blue lights on her HUD’s tactical map. Contacts lit up red on the map, as the Others highlighted Covenant positions and sentries--then faded to a cool, semi-translucent black as they were neutralized. She kept her eyes up, searching for signs of the enemy, but the forest remained silent and impassive. Another memory suddenly gripped her, as she anxiously looked about--a flicker of dark rooms, shadowed faces, confusion, anxiety, and then blank emptiness. She reached for the rest of the memory--the context, the people, the rest of the story--but it was a fragment, a shattered piece of something greater that remained stubbornly out of reach. It slipped ever farther away the more she grappled with it, dissolving like a thin layer of mist and disappearing somewhere dark and untouchable.

The forest ahead thinned, as the ground dropped beneath from her, and the hellish landscape that presented itself banished her last hope of finding the meaning of the cryptic flash. A concrete sentry stood before her, looming half a kilometer in the distance; an armored complex of gun turrets, razor wire, sandbags, and charred bodies. The ground between her and it was a scene of the devil’s fancy; shattered corpses, scorched earth, glassy soil, and the mangled remains of vehicles and aircraft. Fires raged among a sea of bodies, both alien and human, silhouetting the ambling figures of a handful of shell shocked survivors, struggling about the rubble. She felt a grimace cross her face, recognizing the desperate state of what she knew they had been sent to defend.

Her body moved independently of her mind as she dropped from the ridge overlooking the generator complex, towards where the rest of the Others were gathering. Glass and shattered metal crunched beneath her boots; a spare rifle caught her eye, and she lifted it from the ground, feeling the comforting weight of the familiar weapon.

The radio clicked, and his voice came over, strong and firm and confident. He was checking her status, but she knew he was asking how she was doing. 104 might have been in charge of the operation, but he was an Other; he was her real Leader, and she knew it. She answered him, confirming her position and status before signing off. She was at the rendezvous before she knew it, suddenly standing among the rest of her faceless, armor plated squad members. They were silent and inscrutable; her mind fought back against her, but she succumbed. She suddenly felt cold.

The giants around her, the people she had lived and trained with since she was a child, were strangers. Their minds were not disappearing before their eyes; their thoughts did not end halfway through their course, dissolving into confusing strands of inexplicable mystery. They had no strange flashes, no nightmares of a dead world and an exploding sun. None of them understood; they were all Others, except for her two. They understood. They didn’t sneak suspicious, uncomprehending looks at her, didn’t draw silent when she approached. Her Two knew she wasn’t crazy--or, at very least, were going crazy alongside her.

104 was giving orders, and she felt almost surprised to hear her own name. She followed her Two as they set out across the field, gathering weapons from the fallen. The world spun beneath her and stabilized, and she was on the colony again, picking her way across the marble plaza around the bodies of mothers and fathers and sons and daughters, looking for survivors to bring to the waiting transports. The shattered bunkers became elegant fountains, the glassy ground became long stretches of manicured green grass, the distant mountains drew closer and became shimmering skyscrapers, and the assault rifles she scooped up suddenly became bleeding bodies of children, wailing for their parents. Her pulse thundered inside her without warning and the urge to dive for cover almost overwhelmed her, as the image of a burning, overeager transports filled her eyes. To the side, her Leader turned, understanding; she knew that beneath his mirrored faceplate, he was seeing the same things. It made it suddenly bearable.

Time wound on, more memories flashing before her, and darting away just as quickly. She immersed herself in the scavenging, gathering ammunition and supplies from the shattered corpses. The radio was a buzz in the back of her head, a cascade of status reports, positions, requests for orders, and cries for help. It was a soothing cacophony of routine; assuring in it’s familiar and painful sameness. In the corner of her mind, the words all had clear meaning and the world was understandable; in the back of her conscious, she understood how the battle in orbit was turning and that half of the planet was already lost. But she could not focus on these things now, even if she wanted too. Her thoughts failed to coalesce; she remained dazed, running on routine and instinct.

The minutes passed by, blissfully empty of thought. Her team finished it’s sweep, and distributed what they had recovered between the remainder of the Others. The Others had fortified the generator, ringing it with gun turrets, barricades, and minefields. The wounded from the drop had been placed in defensive positions, while the rest of the Others paced back and forth, patrolling.

The radio suddenly cut out, flooded by a single voice. An admiral. She struggled to wrap her mind around the conversation she could hear taking place, but she was suddenly in a fog, desperately trying to simply stand up. The voice of 104 brought her back, snapping out orders. Highlighting parts of the roster. Selecting teams. She automatically checked her placement, making sure she was with her Two. She sighed a breath of relief, seeing that they were still with her. One of the functioning elements of her mind took stock of the rest of her psyche, and recognized that she had not had a day this bad in months. She barely felt conscious, lost in the darkness of confusion and halting thoughts.

She struggled to comprehend as 104 gave more orders. She captured part of the meaning, the clarity filling her with elation. She was working through it; she would not be beaten by her own fractured mind. The memory flashes would not control her. 104 was assigning positions, she understood now. The wounded were gamma; they were heading to shelter. Three of the Others were Delta; they were recovering that Admiral. Another three were Alpha; they were going to attack the Covenant. She and her Two were part of the eleven in Beta; they were holding their position. 104 was leaving with Alpha, and giving control to 010. Another one of the Others. She would have to do.

The Others were moving now, scurrying across the gray generator slab like ants on a nest. An unconnected part of her brain recognized it as adjusting positions to tactically superior placements. That was a fragment of her old mind, the one she remembered from training and the early war. It was the mind that had almost disappeared, the mind where every thought stopped abruptly along it’s tracks. It was the mind she knew was still buried deep within her; the mind that, try as she might, she could not remember how it was lost.

Her Leader started moving as well, and she and her Comrade followed him wordlessly. She felt her fragmented mind struggling to think and reason, but her body ran through the necessary motions regardless, ignoring the dumbstruck state of her consciousness. Her hand swapped magazines in her rifle, assorted grenades along her belt, secured her M6D sidearm. Her muscles tensed, warming in preparation for whatever was to come next. The world illuminated as adrenaline flooded her system, sharpening the contrast of her vision and hearing, preparing her body to take in only what was necessary to survive.

She was suddenly ambushed by the awareness of three retreating purple shapes--the insect-like, pronged wings and cylindrical fuselages of a trio of captured Banshees, carrying 104 and Alpha. The voice of 010 came over her radio, barking orders just as 104 had done. Again they past over her like a wave, meaning lost. She looked to her Leader, and followed him into position. The radio caught her attention again, as an unfamiliar voice echoed through the channel. Scared, shaken, anxious, dripping with fear. Not the voice of one of the Others, but instead, the voice of another soldier. A marine. Gamma-1. Chapman, her brain told her, the fact springing from some previous knowledge, inaccessible to the rest of her.

Her mind made sense of the words slowly; his voice felt muffled, as though through a glass wall, or after a close explosion. He was reporting an incoming Covenant force, a large one. 010 was talking to him, ordering him to prepare to retreat. He was with another marine, Buckman. One of the troopers who had been sent with Gamma to CASTLE? No, someone new. The details escaped her, but the rest sprang to mind, revolving information that came to her as she needed it, from where she could not discern. The radio? She wasn’t certain. Nothing felt solid. She recalled something a psychiatrist had told her; this was a spell. The worst one in a long time. The worst that she could remember. It was a paradox, remembering when she could not remember.

She stood still for what felt like an eternity, letting the radio chatter bash against her like waves against a cliff side, like rain pattering on a window. She had no concept of time; even the world around her seemed to fluctuate. The stillness, the emptiness of action, was driving her to the brink. Her Two gave her the briefest of concerned glances, speaking volumes with just their casual tilt of the head. She waved them off, still conscious enough to know to be discreet. They knew anyway, she could tell. The Others all knew. There was no way to hide what had happened to her, whatever it was.

The glint of something purple suddenly reflected in the distance, shining in the morning sun. She turned towards the glint, eyes scanning. The glint became a shape, and then the shape was joined by another, and another, and another. Dozens, resolving out of the smoke and over the ridge. Radio chatter suddenly had no meaning to her, as the world compressed and her senses tightened. Her fragmented conscious took the backseat, thankful for the reprieve, as instinct took it’s place. It was unfocused focus, impossible to describe and incomprehensible even to her; especially to her. But it had worked well enough for the last few months, and it would have to be enough now.

The rifle in her hands was aimed downrange, and she was all of a sudden a stranger in her own body. She was no more than an observer, a bystander. Something greater than her had wrestled control, and now it refused to let go. The Covenant forces were half a kilometer away, but closing fast. They were a sea of shifting, multicolored armor and flesh. She could pick out the figures of infantry now, running along sides the larger shapes of armored tanks and hover sleds. There were dozens.

No, hundreds.

Now that she had relinquished control of her body, the rest of the world seemed simpler. Some of the confusion had gone, now that she did not have to cope with controlling herself. She could hear the marine, Chapman, protesting the futility of their defenses. She heard the complaints, and realized he had obviously never seen a Spartan fight. There were hundreds of Covenant, and only 11 them. The marine must have thought it was suicide, she realized. He was about to learn a quick lesson; even a scarred and tortured soul like her was capable of teaching him it. She could feel her own body readying itself to teach that lesson.

Her head scanned the walls of the generator, tearing her gaze away from the oncoming alien horde. A handful of green armored figures, weapons trained downrange. Cylindrical, gray auto turrets with long barrels extruding towards the tanks. Sandbags and instacrete bunkers, ready to serve as quick cover. A few frightened and shell shocked marines, already in Warthogs, awaiting the order to flee. This was their fortress, the best defensive position that they could manage. For anyone else, suicide. A death sentence; impossible.

But just as there was a difference between fear and terror, so to was there a difference between impossible, and impossible for Spartans. There was enough supersoldier left in her, enough vague memories and instinctive impulses, to seize on her former self’s supreme confidence and positive mindset. Even the gaping black hole in her memory from months before couldn’t take away that sense of inherent sureness.

The first of the Covenant crossed into range, and it was as if a plug had been pulled from a dam of thunderous noise. The still silence of the world shattered into a hellish symphony of destruction. 010’s voice filled the radio again, firm and soft despite the booming report of the auto-turrets and the whoosh of rockets and the crackle of plasma. A dozen explosions rocked the front of the Covenant line as Antillon mines detonated on 010’s command. Gutted, burning husks of tanks collapsed and crashed to the ground. Bloody, shattered alien corpses sailed through the air, limbless and literally torn apart. Through the haze of smoke and dust, their brethren carried on, clambering over the hills and valleys of their dead. They cried out for blood in screeching, alien tongues. The collective whine of their charging weapons filled the air, like a drowning of a cloud of Locusts. Deep wails filled the air as the remaining tanks fired, plasma mortars sailing through the air in glowing azure arcs.

The rifle in her hands was suddenly bucking and slamming against her shoulder with recoil. Harsh, booming noise filled her helmet as her magazine emptied into the crowd. She could hear the noise of the others firing around her; the column of onrushing monsters met a hail of lead and dropped to the ground en masse. For every one that fell, dozens more seemed to take it’s place. Another line of detonations rocked the horde, as more mines were triggered. Gold and crimson flame filled the horizon for a brief instant; another cloud of dark, acrid smoke filled the air. 010’s voice came over the radio again, and before her mind could catch up to the word’s, her body was moving. Her feet left the security of the concrete bunker and she dropped, landing with a thud on the dirt beneath the generator.

Around her, green blurs of the Others and her Two shot forward, racing towards the mass of snarling aliens. She was suddenly alongside them, legs pumping and heart racing, shooting like a bullet towards her foes. Her rifle moved of it’s own accord, barking and belching flames. Smoke, fire, and glowing alien blood filled her vision. The two hundred meters between them disappeared and she was in the midst of the Covenant, weaving away from plasma fire as the world around her turned blue and green with blurs of heat and energy. Instinct took over completely; a lifetime of training took control.

The bulk of a Covenant tank filled her vision, looming and menacing. A half dozen infantry stood in her way, bellowing Elites and screeching Jackals and chattering Grunts. She dodged in close, draining her rifle’s magazine in a long, extended burst. The glowing energy shield of the Elite hissed and popped; it roared and swung at her with it’s rifle like a club. She slipped to the side with reflexes the towering alien warrior couldn’t hope to match, cracking her rifle against it’s open mandibles. The alien dropped, slumping to the ground, it’s face a contorted mess of distorted bone and crushed flesh. She spun, slinging her rifle and drawing her sidearm in one deft motion; it cracked a dozen times, and the Grunts and Jackals before her fell with whistling holes in their skulls. A second Elite bellowed a curse and ran at her, drawing an energy sword from it’s hip.

The blade ignited with a blue-white flash and a hiss of crackling energy. The alien swung, a low blow aimed at her midsection. She leapt above, twirling through the air. Her hands found a second magazine in her belt; the pistol cracked again and the Elite fell, shields overloaded and body riddled with entrance wounds. In her mind, another memory flashed; a charging Elite with a staff, strange burnished metal, and utter confidence as she sailed above an Elite, submachine guns burbling rounds. Her body took no note of the distraction, landing in a crouch behind the dead Elite. She grabbed the corpse by the shoulders as it began to slump, spinning it around as a shield. Something else in her mind told he she had done this before, but for the moment, the déjà vu was unimportant.

The gunner on the tank leveled it’s plasma cannon at her, and bolts of ionized energy screeched and hissed through the air; the body of the dead Elite crumpled and burned as the gunner fired on her impromptu shield. She threw the charred and melted corpse aside as the gun turret hissed and overheated, and leapt through the air yet again. Her boots thudded against the chassis of the tank, denting it inward. The Grunt gunner shrieked and tried to scramble away from the turret; she reached out with an armored gauntlet, ripping the methane mask from it’s face and tossing it off the side like a cheap toy. The diminutive creature landed in the dirt, squirming on the ground as it struggled for breath and slowly asphyxiated.

A dozen Covenant surrounded her, but stood transfixed as she brought a fist down on the hatch of the tank. The intricately patterned metal cracked, crumpled, and twisted inward. A final hammer blow cracked the hatch plate clean in two, and the face of the angry pilot greeted her with a roar. She drew a grenade from her hip as the pilot struggled for it’s personal weapon, tossed it into the hatch, and flipped backwards off the tank. For a moment, she seemed to hang in the air, her internal clock struggled to keep track of the fuse on the grenade. A second later, the tank erupted from the inside, interior belching flame and shrapnel. Her shields crackled a glowing orange, deflecting sharpened debris as it whizzed past her. The Covenant surrounding her recovered from their shock, shaken into action, and charged her.

Instinct took control and she wove between them, dodging blows, avoiding fire, and crushing resistance with lightning speed. Her mind struggled to keep up with the rapid fire actions of her physical self; snapshots of color and light appeared before her, devoid of meaning and impossible to correlate. A burning flash of muzzle flare, the brilliant streak of a plasma bolt, the earth shaking roar of an exploding grenade, the broken and shattered body of an alien dropping in a hail of fire.

Time stretched without meaning and collapsed in on itself. Her awareness scratched meekly at the barrier surrounding it, reaching feebly for the barest morsels of extra information, desperately trying to orient itself. The bio meter in her HUD suddenly appeared before her, flashing urgently. A handful of status lights had gone dark, indicating casualties among the Others. Her Two still registered as green: active, among the living. Her mind correlated their positions on her tactical map as farther towards the interior of the Covenant position than her, locating them even as her body continued fighting on it’s own accord. It would have been remarkable, if her conscious was stable enough to think about it. As it was, she could barely handle counting the status readings of her unit. There were three dark, five green, and three amber.

Then one flashed red, burning itself into her retina. The number imprinted itself into her brain, cutting through the layers of confusion and memories and reaching something deep and untouched.

010.

It was a simple number, but it brought her back with a start. For a fleeting moment, she felt whole again, solid. Her surroundings were crisp and clear; a trio of burning tanks, dozens of dead Covenant, and a sea of spent shell casings and magazines. Her rifle was dented and scorched, and her armor was covered with alien gore that looked like gaudy, poorly spread paint. The ground felt sticky beneath her boots, and she glanced down to find it literally soaked with the blood of her fallen assailants. Patches of earth were scorched or glassy from explosions or stray plasma bolts, marking the areas of the heaviest combat out with remarkable clarity. She could smell the sweat of her own body through her helmet, could taste blood in her mouth from a concussive blast, and could feel the thumping of her heart with stress. It was a clarity like which she had not felt for months, much less the past few hours. No pull of hidden memories dragged her mind from the present, and no disorientation of thoughts that ended halfway along their chain of thinking befuddled her.

And then she turned, and the clarity vanished. The world became compressed once more, pure focus, gray details and blurs. Her mind felt crushed by the sudden change.

Fifty meters away, sprawled in the dirt, was 010. Her helmet was off, and even from the distance, there was a clear crack visible in her visor. 010 was struggling with a golden armored Elite, dodging slashes from a plasma sword as it scythed through the air. She stood transfixed, watching 010 dodge between the dual arcs of energy, slipping out of the way each time just as the glowing blade left a trail of blue light in it’s wake, illuminating where 010 had been mere moments before. But every blow drew closer and closer, and with every swing, the Elite gained ground on 010. 010 was losing her advantage, dropping behind slowly. The Elite was catching up, winning the deadly game one slow step at a time.

She had no time to reload her rifle, but she suddenly knew what to do. She ran towards the dueling pair, arms pumping, knowing she was already too late. One moment, 010 was just quick enough, cart wheeling out of the way of a backhanded slash, and the next, she was a half second too slow. The blade connected with the joint of her shoulder and arm, and 010 fell to the ground, shields vanished and armor smoking. The Elite leered, reaching down and picking her up by the neck. The sword in it’s hand hissed and demanded blood. 010 stared into the alien’s eyes with cold resolve, unflinching. The Elite bellowed, spittle tumbling from it’s four pronged jaws, and struggled through a barely understandable curse in English.

And as it raised it’s blade for a final strike, 010 grabbed the knife from her chest plate and stabbed it deep into the Elite’s neck.

The world recoiled around her as her mind was caught in another flash. Her brain strained against the invisible chains, shrieking silently and bashing against the restraints holding it back. 010 suddenly became someone new, a marine in outdated armor and a shaved head, brandishing a sword and plunging it deep into the body of a massive, ornately armored Elite. Her mind--her self, her soul, her very existence--smashed against the restraints of the dark spot in her memory, again and again and again and again--

And it shattered, the barriers collapsing as if they had never existed, as if they had never stopped her in the first place. Months of thoughts disappearing as she thought them, months of confusion and disorientation and terror of not knowing--all erased in an instant.

She remembered. She remembered everything.

A torrent of memories cascaded down on her; an avalanche of lost thoughts engulfed her. Everything that she had tried in vain to remember, all the context of her flashes of memory, all the thoughts that had disappeared once they had followed her chain of thinking--they all came rushing back. The Spirit of Fire. The parasite and the alien world. Captain Cutter, Professor Anders, and Sergeant Forge. The sacrifices and the narrow escape; the homecoming greeting of an ONI Prowler and interrogation team. The intensive argument, the demands they made to speak to Doctor Halsey--and being led to the operating room for the mysterious “implant”. The darkness lifted, and she was suddenly her old self.

She wasn’t an anonymous, blank Spartan anymore. She knew who she was again. Her Comrade was Douglas-042, her Leader was Jerome-092, and she…she was Alice-130. The Others were not strangers--they were her brothers and sisters. Comrades in arms; family of circumstance; her link to the past.

And one of them was named Naomi-010, and needed her help.

Alice ran at Naomi and tackled the Elite she had stabbed before it could retaliate. It bellowed a curse and slashed at her, but she was inside it’s reach and already too close. The two of them sprawled to the ground, tumbling in the dirt. Alice found herself pinned under the alien; she cocked her fist back, and slammed it into the alien’s jaw. Hammer blow after hammer blow pounded through shields, armor, and bone. Her gauntlet embedded deep into the crushed skull of the Elite, and came away bloody with brain matter and purple gore. The creature tumbled off of her, writhing in the dirt, remarkably still alive. Alice drew her assault rifle and stepped away from the squirming creature, emptying a burst into it’s face. The Elite gurgled and finally collapsed, almost unrecognizable.

Heavy footsteps thudded next to her, and Alice glanced over her shoulder to see Naomi, helmet back on, jogging up to her. No, she realized, past her--towards what was left of the battle. The Spartans had made short work of the Covenant force; the few hundred infantry and tanks had done damage, but were still no match for eleven of humanity’s ultra elite. The sound of rifle fire still punctuated the distance, as the others--now without the emphasis in her mind--pursued the fleeing remains of the alien strike force. Naomi was clearly itching to do her part--but nevertheless, she stopped, breathless, and gave Alice a quick glance.

“Thanks for the save.” she said as she jogged past.

The shock of hearing words, and understanding them--not just listening to the sound and groggily struggling for the meaning--was profound. It felt natural and easy, like a crushing burden had been lifted, and she was suddenly free to move. The clarity that others took for granted, the ease of interpretation, was novel. Freeing.

“Don’t mention it.” Alice replied. Her voice no longer sounded like a stranger. It sounded like her. “Nice work with the knife.”

Despite the urgency of the battle, the sound of the fighting, and the demands placed on a leader--especially an impromptu one--Naomi turned, and stopped. The polarized gold visor did nothing to hide the look of shock on the other Spartan’s face. Alice hadn’t talked to anyone besides Jerome or Douglas since she had returned from her “operation”. It must have shocked the other woman. It was shocking enough to Alice herself. The moment of silence hung in the air between them, a long pause of tension.

“Beta-Red Actual, this is Pelican dropship Iron Fist.” The radio crackled, and the moment vanished. “We are en route to your position, heading over the Highlands, ETA six minutes. Lot of traffic on the comm about you, over.”

“Copy that Iron Fist, we read,” Naomi was Beta-Red Actual, as the leader of the generator defense force. Alice noted with elation that small details such as that no longer filled her with a foggy sense of confusion. “Still cleaning up down here. LZ might be a little hot, pilot.”

“Copy that Beta, but we’ve got orders to extract you. Orbital guns can’t cope with the influx and we got Covie incursions across the surface. HIGHCOMM is pulling up stakes across the entire planet.”

“Understood.” Naomi had a way of calming her voice when talking to others, making the situation seem less serious than it was. “We’ll clear you a parking space here. Beta-Red Actual out.”

The tactical map on Alice’s HUD indicated that the remaining Spartans of Beta were badly scattered, many still pursuing Covenant troops. Another four, including three injured, had pulled back to the generator. The remaining four included only herself, Naomi, Jerome, and Douglas. They were still deep in what had been the Covenant lines, before the handful of super commandoes had decimated the alien group. From where she was standing, the battle seemed largely over. A quick check of an orbiting aerial drone, however, revealed another force heading there way. It seemed the previous group had been little more than a scouting force to test the waters before the main assault. This time there were thousands, not hundreds: Banshees intermixed with a variety of Wraiths, Ghosts, and Revenants, alongside teeming swarms of infantry. It was indeed time to leave.

Naomi turned to Alice, and beckoned towards the generator. She knew it was time to leave, too.

“Beta-Red, fall back to the generator.” It took Alice a moment to realize Naomi was on an open comm channel, talking to the rest of the team. She suspected that five minutes ago she never would have grasped it at all. “Extraction is inbound people--move!”

Alice followed her back, as they made their way through the remains of the Covenant force. Shattered Wraith tanks and fallen Covenant surrounded them; the bleak scene from before they arrived, with fallen marines matching that of the aliens, had been flipped on it’s head. There was indeed a difference between impossible, and impossible for Spartans. It dawned on Alice just how thoroughly her mind had degraded, just how much she had lost it, as she attempted to recall the fight. The fear that had gripped her before now seemed like it belonged to a different person.

Alice and Naomi reached the generator at the same time as Jerome and Douglas. She had no time for a long discussion, and she suddenly felt sorry for them. She could tell by the way they acted--the slow, hesitant steps, the way they avoided the others--that they were still not fixed. She would have to explain everything to them later. She could hardly wait; their struggle was finally over. Despite the trauma of the day--the casualties, the destruction of the planet, the crushing heartbreaks and gut wrenching devastation--she felt hope stir within her. She finally could look to the future.

In the distance, a burning streak of red descended from the clouds, shedding re-entry fire. Alice felt a shiver of concern, afraid that the Iron Fist was making to steep of a reentry and would lose control.

Then the streak of fire resolved into an elongated teardrop, and she remembered the Iron Fist had already been in atmosphere when it contacted them. A cold chill settled in her stomach, and the clouds above her broke…spilling three bulbous Covenant Cruisers from the heavens.

“Shit.” Naomi saw the plasma torpedo, and her voice filled the comm channel. The serene calm was gone. “Take cover, now!”

It was too late, and not even the enhanced reflexes of a Spartan could save them in time. A boiling lance of glowing plasma streaked overhead, striking the concrete generator housing behind them. Alice watched her shield bar drop to a hair as heat washed over her body; the armor plates of her suit singed and blackened. Overpressure lifted her from her feet like an invisible fist and swept her to the ground; molten droplets of stone spattered against the ground and dotted her armor, sizzling and bubbling.

Alice found herself landing in a heap, crumpling to the ground with a clatter of alloy plates. The world spun, turned dark, and for a terrifying second, a dull blankness settled on her mind. She willed it away, the memory of her past struggle still fresh. The thought of returning to that state--that blank, empty, confused existence--froze her heart solid. More than fear; true terror. The terror she had felt falling from the sky returned to her, and damn near stopped her in her tracks. It was paralyzing.

But that was the old her, and Alice wasn’t about to let that fake back in without one hell of a fight.

With a grunt, Alice rose, clinging to her assault rifle like a drowning man to a life preserver. Around her, shattered concrete littered the ground, and sprawled Spartans struggled to their feet amidst a haze of smoke and pulverized dust. The generator behind them boasted a titanic hole in it’s superstructure; fires raged along the electric wiring and rebar cross beams dripped molten beads of Titanium-A. If the generator was still intact, then it would not be for long. But even with their objective destroyed, Alice doubted the Covenant were done with them yet. Their ground forces had undoubtedly reported that there were Spartans present; the honor craving Elite warriors would not pass up the chance to personally kill some of the human “demons”.

Alice watched with horror, as above, the hangar doors on the Covenant cruisers slid open. Dropships spilled from the cruisers en masse, too many to count, dropping towards them with increasing speed. A shaft of purple light descended from the belly of the cruiser, and thousands of Covenant soldiers drifted towards the ground, hissing and screeching. Even a kilometer away, the sound was deafening.

“Beta-Red Actual, this is Iron Fist, inbound on your position!” Alice turned, and the matte gray shape of a Pelican appeared over the horizon, dodging stray plasma fire and skimming low over the trees. “Things are getting noisy upstairs. Mind getting the hell out of here, over?”

“Copy Iron Fist, we read you, five by five.” Alice watched Naomi struggle to her feet, still looking shaken. “Affirmative on the pickup. Be advised, we have multiple heavy Covenant craft in our vicinity and large numbers of infantry closing on our position.”

“Shit, you Spartans must like stating the obvious.” The pilot did not sound remotely amused. “We saw those three earlier, Beta-Red. Apologies for the negative heads up. Comms are rat shit.”

The conversation took a backseat as in the distance, the Covenant dropships open fired. Glowing plasma rounds singed the air; concussion thudded through the ground as several shots landed to close for comfort. Douglas and another Spartan lifted rocket launchers, letting loose a counter salvo. A pair of dropships fell burning from the sky, followed by another, and another. Then the rockets ran dry, and all hell broke loose.

Streaks of burning light filled the air, and Alice felt time slow and simultaneously race. She finally remembered the name of the experience; Kelly-087 had termed it, “Spartan time”. The cognitive part of her mind recognized the experience and assigned a name to it, while the rest of her body got on with the job at hand. This time, however, she didn’t fall behind or lose control. She felt calm, detached, and ready to fight. This was how the world was supposed to be; this was natural.

Her rifle snapped to her shoulder and in a second she was firing, tracking dropships and picking off the occupants who weren’t smart enough to seal their hatches. The Grunt gunners on the plasma turrets fell with squeals and shrieks; bodies tumbled from the air as she rapidly switched from target to target. Rumbles rippled through the ground as the main guns on the dropships open fired, blasting away. The Spartans backpedaled, firing outward. Their only hope of survival lay in the cover of the cloud of dust ballooning outward from the destroyed generator; even with energy shields and armor, they would be dead if they tried to hold open ground. They dropped back into the haze of smoke and grime, as gun smoke and the hazy afterimage of spent plasma contorted the air around them.

Streaks of tracers and burning energy bolts illuminated the murky haze, making the air glow like a sunset on a foggy morning. The world transformed into a confusing mix of noise and heat and light, inscrutable darkness mixed with blinding light. Even in a suit of armor teeming with teammate waypoints, tactical maps, image filters, biometric readouts, visor compensators, and status update lights, it was impossible to keep her bearings.

Above, commando Elites leapt from the hatches of the phantoms, roaring abuse. They ignited energy swords, hoping for an ‘honorable’ kill. Alice dodged backwards as one landed in front of her, roaring. It swung a clumsy overhand blow, and Alice ducked as it scorched the air above her. Her hand shot forward, cobra-quick, and grappled the alien’s wrist. She twisted, snapping bone, and brought her assault rifle up one handed into it’s face. Recoil compensators in her wrist engaged as she unloaded an extended burst into it’s gaping max of jaws; blood splattered against her visor, as she shoved the corpse to the ground.

All around her, more Elites landed. The other Spartans dodged, truck, and fought back with speed and expertise that even these veteran Elites could not match. Alice snatched an energy sword from a fallen commando, igniting it and charging into the fray. In her peripheral vision, she watched as Jerome and Douglas stood back to back, firing on Elites; one lucky creature made it through their cone of fire, only to be swiftly repulsed by the crack of a rifle against it’s neck. A snarling Elite landed in front of Alice, and she leapt over it, skidding on it’s shoulder plate as she twisted, stabbing her captured sword into it’s back.

On her map, Alice spotted the Iron Fist’s identification icon, now almost on top of them. Her HUD pinged a visual feed from the drop ship’s external camera, as the pilot banked the Pelican wide over the smoky carnage, avoiding fire from the dropships and searching for a place to land. Meanwhile, more Covenant infantry descended from the dropships now, mixed races as Elites abandoned their suicidal lone assaults. Dozens of Covenant descended, dropping into the smoke like devils in the mist. Spartans or no Spartans, Alice knew that they would soon be overrun.

“Spartans, shift it!” Iron Fist circled one last time and settled, a hundred meters to their rear, well clear of the smoke and chaos. A fire team of marines spilled off the “blood tray”, brandishing rocket launchers and firing on the handful of Phantoms that abandoned the fray to attack the Pelican. “We’ve got four minutes before orbital assets bring those goddamn cruisers down on our heads!”

For all the chaos and confusion of the brawl in the smoke, the world suddenly presented itself to Alice with remarkable clarity. Four minutes might have been long enough for the entire group to make it to the dropship--but time was not the issue. If the entire group moved as one, the Covenant would bring the hammer down. The battle in the smoke had sown confusion and disorder--they were scattered throughout the haze and already separated. If they tried to rendezvous together at the dropship, they would either be impeded and delayed too much to make it, or Iron Fist would simply be bombarded with plasma and destroyed. Time seemed not only to slow, but to stop, as cold logic took control of her frozen mind, clear and objective.

Of the eight Spartans, there were perhaps four close enough to make it. She evaluated the situation like she would a triage; clear, precisely drawn lines of who was capable of being saved and who was not. Alice, Jerome, Douglas, and another Spartan named Mike--they were too far away. Another four, including Naomi--they were close enough to make it…provided that someone else kept the Covenant’s attention. In the cold clarity of the moment, what she had to do to help save her team--her whole team--was obvious.

“Red Sixteen to Beta-Red Actual,” Alice dodged a fuel rod projectile, depleted her plasma sword, and switched to her MA5B. “Get the four closest onto that dropship. We’ll keep the Covenant busy.”

“Beta-Red Actual to Red Sixteen.” There was pause, the sound of a rifle firing, and a series of heavy breaths. “I…I copy. Forwarding det codes for generator charges and self destruct mechanism. If you can make it, head for Complex Three. Generator is buried deep and you might be able to hold them off from inside. Good…good luck.”

There was no time for an emotional chat. Alice emptied her rifle and reloaded, pushing her way towards Jerome and Douglas. She tossed the remainder of her fragmentation grenades, swept a fallen fuel rod gun from the ground, and let rip. The more noise she made, the more the Covenant would focus on her, and the less likely they were to slag the Iron Fist. Covenant troops swarmed around her, blocking her path; she emptied the fuel rod gun, blowing a hole in the line, and drew her sidearm with her off hand. She lifted it simultaneously with her rifle, firing in tandem, battering down shields and squeezing off headshots. Covenant Grunts panicked, turning tail to run; the confusion gave her time to reload and smash through, mowing through them like the armored tank she resembled. Alien bodies crumpled to the ground in heaps, riddled with bullets or faces smashed or torsos mutilated. Plasma fire deflected off her shield, illuminating the haze of smoke and dust a dirty orange. Droning, beeping warnings blared in her helmet as Alice’s shields dropped to dangerous levels, straining under the weight of the oncoming fire.

“Situation on the ground is bad.” In the background, Alice could hear Jerome, opening a channel to the Pillar of Autumn in space. He sounded different; Alice had a moment of suspicion to wonder if he had remembered as well. “Reactor complex seven has been compromised. We’re falling back. Might be able to save number three. Set off those charges now!”

Thunder filled the air as Alice keyed the explosives, instinctively following the order of her usual leader. Her bones shook as a series of detonations rattled in her gut. From the roar of the Covenant around her, it seemed that the blow only redoubled their bloodlust. Above, the sky grew red as the cruisers prepared their energy projectors, ready in case the Demons on the ground bested their infantry.

Crushing a pair of Jackals, she returned to the immediate objective. She spotted Douglas and Jerome, shrouded in a dark haze, firing into a sea of enemies; she had to rendezvous with them, now more than ever. They seemed to glow permanently gold, their shield generators nearing the point of collapse. A cluster of chattering Grunts blocked Alice’s path to them; she tossed a captured plasma grenade, scattering the miniscule aliens. The device detonated with a thundering roar and a cloud of blue fire, tossing Grunts aside like toys. The survivors, bloody and dazed, fell to the ground under a fully automatic landslide of bullets. Jerome and Douglas both turned for a half second, registering her presence, before they returned their attention back to the Covenant, dodging plasma blasts and returning fire with lethal accuracy.

In a tiny window in the corner of her HUD, Alice watched the helmet feed of Naomi as she and the others reached the dropship and clambered aboard, weapons flashing. Half of the marine fire team lay dead at their feat, armor smoking and flesh boiled away. The survivors hastily clambered aboard, taking cover behind the shielded bulk of the Spartans. In the corner of her HUD, Alice watched the Pelican lift off, thrusters flaring, hull pockmarked and scorched. It engaged afterburners and shot away like a speeding bullet, dodging more plasma fire from the cruisers.

Side by side with Jerome and Douglas, Alice listened as the battlefield went suddenly, unnaturally, silent. The Covenant held their fire, encircling them, mere fleeting shadows in the thick, black smoke. Their distraction had succeeded, and the others were safe, but the Covenant now knew their plan. And now that they had let some of the Spartans slip through their grasp, Alice knew they would stop at nothing to kill the remainder of them.

In the distance, the crack of a rifle filled the air, followed by a bellowing roar, a hiss of discharged plasma…and a shrill, echoing scream. The acknowledgment light for Mike faded to black, heart rate flat lined. In spite of herself, Alice felt a single bead of sweat form on the back of her neck. This was it. The shifting, murky shapes of the Covenant soldiers prowled at the edge of her vision, as the sky glowed blood red with the charged plasma of the Covenant Cruiser’s energy projector. Alice held her rifle in a death grip, and found her attention split between the activation signal for the charges in her HUD and the countdown to the orbital strike Iron Fist had informed her of. The clock was ticking.

Alice chanced a glance at Jerome, and noticed he deliberately depolarized his visor to catch her eye. In that moment she knew for sure--knew that he knew, that he remembered too. She wished she had the chance to ask him what had sparked his memory, but she resigned herself to some sort of peace, knowing she was not alone. Even Spartans wanted to be understood.

Alice gave Jerome a questioning look, and he nodded. Yes, he remembered, and he was back in charge. Unspoken communication sometime said more than words. It was time.

She keyed the detonation code, the three of them split, and the world, for the briefest instant, turned white. The ground shook, as thousands of feet below, the nuclear generator of the power complex destabilized and detonated. On the surface, billowing white fire shot through the generator entrances, incinerating everything in it’s path. A man made wind billowed through like a raging hurricane, scattering the thick smoke, illuminating the scarred terrain, and leaving the three Spartans defenseless. There was nowhere left to run, nowhere left to go except straight at the enemy.

Alice shot forward as a moment of confusion made its way through the Covenant troops, immersed in the heat of the moment. The world around her flashed and sparked with each burst of fire, each tracer and each muzzle flash. She emptied her rifle, a dozen Covenant falling lifeless at her feet, and dropped the empty weapon, drawing her sidearm. Again, more Covenant fell--but not enough. The slide clicked back as her magazine ran dry, and as Alice reached for another, she found her ammunition belt empty. She dropped the spent pistol, lashing out with her fists against anything she could see.

Her motion tracker overloaded and filled with random contacts, but Alice ignored it. Her only role now was to keep the Covenant engaged here, keep them in the blast zone of the orbital strike, and perhaps give Jerome or Douglas the chance to slip away. She crunched through a trio of Jackals, crushing their birdlike bodies like no more than toothpicks. An Elite tried to swipe at her with it’s needle rifle, missing almost laughably badly--

Something hot and sharp pierced her back, stopping her where she stood. Alice felt cold in spite of the burning pain in her gut, and looked down to see the dual pronged blades of an energy sword, jutting out of her abdomen. She realized she was being held aloft in the air, a massive hand holding a vice grip around her neck. The Elite who had missed the blow with it’s needle rifle laughed at her, and knocked the helmet from her head. Alice gasped, as the reality suddenly sank into her. There was something about the blow that echoed within her, something final, a fitting bit of closure.

The Elite who had stabbed her withdrew the blade and dropped her to the ground, leaving her in the dirt. It stalked off, maroon armor glinting in the sunlight, perhaps in search of Douglas or Jerome. Alice coughed, blood foaming in her mouth, and listened. In the distance, the crackle of rifle fire still held strong; her friends would not fall before the aliens without a fight. In that moment, something broke in her; with nothing to distract her, dark thoughts crept in. Disgust suddenly swelled in her, nothing to block it now that injury had robbed her of her previous inhibitions. Her friends were fighting, killing, dying for people who had destroyed them. Taken their memory, stripped them of the very basic essence of their souls. Somewhere, out in the galaxy, she thought bitterly, an ONI agent would be going unpunished, his actions against her and her friends never to see the light of day. No one would ever know; no one would ever be held accountable. She choked on the bitterness of her own thoughts like bile.

Above her, the looming figure of another Elite appeared, looking her over with an air of inquisitive caution. She stared into the cold, black eyes of the creature, searching for something that could answer her questions. She did not find it difficult to hate the creature, could still easily summon up the reserves of bitter vehemence against it--but this hate did not answer her questions. Her team had not been harmed in the name of fighting these creatures, but rather in the name of preserving the secrecy of ONI. She found herself gripped by the chilling realization that the people whose rules she had followed, whose orders she had undertaken, whose actions she had let control and eventually use her life--were deep down, just as deplorable as the enemy she was fighting.

Alice finally looked away, and her fallen helmet caught her eye, glinting in the dirt five meters away. The corner of the HUD was just visible, still blinking dutifully. Alice tried to crawl towards it, but she suddenly felt enormously heavy, like a slab of concrete had fallen on her. Each inch felt like kilometers; the space between her and the helmet stretched into infinity.

The Elite above her glanced down, watching her struggle towards the battered helmet. He reached down and snatched it up, looking curious. Dark, calculating eyes swept over it’s surface, searching for some threat. Then, to Alice’s surprise, he dropped it, letting it tumble to the ground well within her reach. She stretched out her arm, gripping the rim of the neck seal, anticipating a final plasma bolt any second that would end her existence, but no shot came. She feebly lifted the helmet, and found the Elite staring at her, weapon pointed vaguely in her direction, but not aimed. It seemed almost…respectful. Something recoiled inside her at the thought, and an overpowering sense of guilt washed over her. Here she was, dying, and she was sympathizing for the enemy--for an Elite, even. It was wrong--no other word could describe it.

Her HUD was still working, and she slipped the helmet on one last time, soaking in the reassuring familiarity. She scanned the team status lights, and found both Jerome and Douglas flickering between Green and Black. The uncertainty overwhelmed her for a moment, but she had already indulged too many dark thoughts, and she would not let more in. She might be dying, but she was a Spartan. She would not give in.

The countdown timer in the corner of her HUD suddenly flashed, and Alice realized it had reached zero. The helmet seemingly suffocating her, Alice tossed it aside at looked to the sky. The smoke had cleared, and the morning sun was rising, glittering brilliant against the hull of the Covenant Cruisers. The sky brightened, and a roar like thunder filled the air. Above, the cruisers shattered, snapped in half under the force of what could only have been a MAC round. Blue white flames billowed outward in slow motion; the fragmented remains of the cruisers fell from the sky, growing closer and closer. Panic seized the Covenant troops who surrounded her, and they scattered, running for any cover they could find. The dusty, war-torn battlefield offered no shelter, however, and grim smile crossed her face.

The destroyed pieces of the Cruisers traced a lazy path in their descent, slowed perhaps by the last fading vestiges of their anti-gravity fields. Alice watched them descend, and as shadow covered the world around her, she spotted the Elite who had retrieved her helmet for her, standing calmly and watching the wreckage fall towards them. He closed his strange, black eyes, as if waiting for the end. Alice followed suit, squeezing her lids shut and waiting for the end.

She wished somewhat whimsically that she might have had some deep realization come to her as she waited, but the world was not that romantic. Taking stock of everything that had been done to her, the people she had known, the friends she had lost, and the time she knew had been stolen, Alice realized that she did not want her end to be bitter. She wanted to feel some measure of worth, some feeling that her sacrifice had been for a greater cause. Her thoughts drifted to the small group aboard the Iron Fist, rocketing away to safety to fight another day, and she contemplated taking solace in the fact that she would be remembered, at least, by them. But given the last few hours, she realized that being remembered was a hell of a lot less important than people thought it was.

People could have a great life, do amazing things, and be forgotten by history, but that didn’t change the fact that they had lived a great life. It just meant that the world was blind and ignorant for not knowing it. In the humble part of her mind, it struck her as selfish, but to her true self, it rang inexplicably true. Life was not only as important as others made it--it was only as important as you made it.

In the end, she smiled sadly and took consolation that she could finally remember.