When the armor freed itself up hours later, I milled about with my fellow soldiers. All fifty of us, scattered around the base of the mountain, spent a chilly night around hand-built fires, hungry, until we were picked up the next morning.

We were then assembled into fireteams after and given tactical training. Felicia led our small team: Mason, gangly and blond, hailed from Reach. Kiko from Eridanus II. We fell into a tight team that managed to hold its own.

The next time on the mountain, Kiko and Mason laid down suppressing fire into the forest that Felicia and I dashed for. Once behind cover there we laid a stream of TTR rounds ahead so that Kiko and Mason could follow.

Leapfrogging and keeping an arc ahead of us constantly under fire, we were able to get halfway up the mountain before a trainer moved around behind us and got Kiko.

We stalled out then, crouched in the brush with our backs to each other for a full field of range until a TTR grenade bounced into our midst and scattered us.

Another hungry, cold night on the mountain.

Then they taught us squad tactics, pairing us up with another fireteam.

With each fireteam leapfrogging the other, we got most of the way up the mountain. But leaving the forest as it petered out high in the mountain‘s crag, we fell under ambush by snipers dug in at the top.

We lost most of the other fireteam, who‘d been on point, to TTR fire. Felicia, Kiko, Mason, and I had hit the snow and mud and opened fire back. We were the only team that had gotten that far.

―Any ideas?" Felicia asked. With enemy behind us in the woods, and in front of us buried in, and most of our ammo gone, we had seconds to make a decision.

―We‘ll never be able to charge them. We need sniper rifles," I said.

―Trainers have those."

―Exactly. And they‘re coming for us." I pointed back down the slope.

We backed down the muddy snow into the tree line. ―Play dead," Kiko whispered. ―Get down in the mud right on the edge of the tree line with all the others who got hit."

It would only ever work once, but we sprawled ourselves stiffly out in the mud.

As our pursuers broke cautiously out into the open we ambushed them. I took special glee in hitting O‘Reilly almost point-blank in the chest as he approached me.

We relieved them of their sniper rifles.

Mason got hit in the leg while we moved about, trying to get a bead on the trainers at the top, but Kiko and Felicia got off two good shots.

I ran ahead and threw TTR grenades into the areas from which we‘d been fired on, flushing out the instructors, and Kilo and Felicia got two of the three.

The last trainer shot me in the arm, a stunning shot done on the run with his sniper rifle, but I gunned him down with the MA5B before he could try it again.

And just like that, we‘d taken the top of the mountain.

―Nice." Felicia slapped my shoulder. We‘d all been hit by TTR rounds, but we limped our way to the very top and shouted loud enough to hear our echoes return from the mountain over; our hot, exhausted breath steaming from our mouths into the cold air.

A Pelican appeared, flaring out to land in the clearing at the top of the mountain. Snow swirled out from under the backwash of its engines, and a craggy-faced gunnery sergeant stepped out, as well as a number of corporals.

He didn‘t even look at us. ―Get everyone up, now!" he ordered the corporals.

They were off, tapping armor with electronic wands to unfreeze it.

Something wasn‘t right. There was a strangeness to the hurry they did it with. And what the hell was a gunnery sergeant doing talking to us in the middle of a training session?

We all gathered around the gunny, lining up as we‘d been trained. He nodded. ―Is this everyone?"

A quick head count confirmed that this was everyone.

―Good. At ease. You‘ve all been out here in the wilderness training hard, but I‘ve been sent to let you know your training is going to be accelerated."

The instructors frowned, and we all shifted.

―Much of this information has been classified, and between the ONI and the Navy types, this is what we can tell you: We have made first contact with an intelligent alien civilization."

A gasp rose at hearing those words. Some of us reflexively looked up into the sky. First contact!

The gunnery sergeant continued, cool as ice. ―We know that standard protocols were followed. And that things didn‘t go well. Our ships were attacked by alien beings referred to as the Covenant.

Before destroying our ships they claimed our destruction was the will of their gods, and that they were the instrument. It seems to be an act of war. As of today the UNSC is on full alert. The Colonial Military has been officially disbanded, all remaining units are officially being pulled in and reassigned and retrained. And we‘re ramping up training here, because we have a feeling we‘re going to need all the recruits we can get.

―These aliens are for real. They‘ve already taken, or possibly destroyed, one Outer Colony.

Admiral Preston Cole is being tasked with creating a force to get it back."

We were stunned.

Private Rodriquez from Madrigal was the one who asked, ―What colony fell to them, sir?"

―Harvest," the gunnery sergeant said, and my knees buckled.

Someone grabbed my shoulder. I staggered around and found Felicia sitting in the mud. She looked up at me, tears in her eyes. ―Dirt?" she asked. ―Do you still think that now?"

I didn‘t have anything to say back. I stood in front of her, struck mute.

Harvest was gone.

I‘d tried to find the last nice thing I said to my dad before I‘d left; the last time we laughed, smiled even? I couldn‘t find one.

I‘d always figured he‘d keep on farming. That maybe I‘d go back, one day, when I‘d traveled worlds and seen so much, and maybe talk to him again. Maybe.

But there were no maybes now. He was gone now.

Harvest was gone.

Felicia grabbed a fistful of mud and leaped up at me. ―Dirt! I have your dirt, you son of a bitch!"

She hit me, mud from her clenched first spattering my face, but I didn‘t feel it. I felt like a part of my soul had been ripped away, and even after she was pulled off me, I just stood there, numb.

Dirt.

Just dirt.

FOR THErest of training they moved Felicia to another fireteam. Our new team leader, Rahud, took his annoyance about the swap out on me. He was an experienced UNSC veteran who‘d joined the ODSTs after years of service.

He didn‘t take too kindly to the fact that just because I‘d been given rank in the old Colonial Military, it had given me the ability to apply to the ODST program. He certainly didn‘t like the fact that some falling out between two backwater planet recruits like Felicia and me had caused him to get moved away from the team he‘d trained with.

Any screwup, the slightest mistake, and he was in my face, calling me a detriment to the team and a liability.

But it didn‘t faze me. My bonds with Kiko and Mason were tight, and the three of us held our own.

Every day, as the months of training passed, there was some new rumor floating around about the aliens. Ships they‘d attacked. Their invincibility.

A lot of it was bull. Back then we didn‘t know anything.

We certainly didn‘t realize what we were up against. Kiko and Mason would joke about getting out there to kick alien ass, and with a few beers in me, I‘d join them.

Certainly after ODST training, we figured a bunch of religious fanatic aliens would be no match for the atmosphere-jumping, hard-as-nails brutality that a raw ODST-trained human could bring to the table.

But when the first leaked photos of the Outer Colonies attacks came out, I wondered if we might be wrong. Some of them had been turned into glass balls by Covenant energy weapons.

What the hell were we going to be able to do against that kind of firepower?

YOU KNOWthat sound inside a single-occupant exoatmospheric insertion vehicle? That

combination of a howling wind, a dull roar, and the crackle and creak of the SOEIV‘s skin flexing and burning. No matter how many times I jumped, hearing it always scared the crap out of me.

Feet First into Hell. That was the ODST motto. Feet first with a two-thousand-degree fireball burning around the pod as it flames its way down through the atmosphere.

It‘s a hot ride.

A bumpy ride.

And not everyone survives it.

My first combat SOEIV insertion had me coming in hot with a hundred other ODSTs over the main continent of Hat Yai, three years after I finished training. We‘d been mainly stuck in naval battles, waiting in our bays, just itching for a chance to be thrown against this new enemy. Everyone was pumped about Admiral Cole‘s triumphant recapture of Harvest earlier that year.

What isn‘t, perhaps, often recounted, but is a fact that quickly became well-known amongst the rank and file, was that Cole lost three ships for every one Covenant ship destroyed.

It was a Pyrrhic victory that left Cole‘s fleet severely damaged.

Now Cole had been jumping his fleet around from engagement to engagement throughout the

Outer Colonies, wherever the Covenant showed up.

So far, there‘d been no repeat of the retaking of Harvest. Outer Colonies had been glassed or taken.

World by world, we were falling back.

Covenant ships in low orbit picked off ten of us, and when landing ate another pair of SOEIVs that failed and cratered into the lush rain forest of our landing zone.

It took half an hour for Rahud to get us grouped up; our pods had dodged enough fire that we‘d gotten fairly well separated.

―Where‘s the rest of the squad?" Mason asked.

Rahud shrugged. ―I can‘t raise them. Assume the worst."

We trudged through thick mud and rain forest, vines and creepers holding us back as we got

bogged down farther and farther in.

―There‘s no way a Pelican‘s coming in through that kind of foliage," Kiko commented. ―How do we get out?"

Rahud ignored us. ―Covenant forces established a base of some sort up ahead. We‘re all converging on it." This is why we‘d been sent down: an exploratory and reconnoitering force.

Mason leaned in. ―That‘s if our ship can even get back to drop in recovery vehicles."

The destroyer Clearidas had dropped us in, ducking and weaving in between Covenant forces in low orbit, bouncing itself off the upper atmosphere as it vomited its cargo of a hundred SOEIVs.

As I ran through tropical jungle, sweating under my black ODST armor, I wondered if there were enough ships high overhead to hold off the Covenant.

―Hold," Rahud hissed. We were getting close.

Other ODSTs materialized out of the forest. Hand signals were exchanged, and information rippled throughout the forest.

Ten ODST squads grouped up and began to ooze through the brush, weapons at the ready.

Rahud led us carefully down the lip of a dirt road that had been hastily carved into what was fast becoming rock.

We paused at the lip of a giant sinkhole.

―Holy . . . ," someone began.

In just days the aliens had excavated a massive pit that bored deep into the ground. Bluish-gray metal spars soared up from the bottom into the air from what looked like a freakish cross between a city and a hive at the bottom, including bubblelike structures that studded the sidewalls of the giant pit.

―They‘re building a small city down there," Mason said. ―Now that they‘ve cleaned out the

colonists."

―They‘re Grunts," a private suggested. ―Those big buildings are methane tanks."

―Methane?" someone else asked.

―Didn‘t you listen to the damn briefings . . ."

―Movement!" Kiko pointed, and Rahud turned.

I saw my first Covenant aliens standing on the other side of the lip: Ten Grunts and a pair of Jackals were staring right back at us.

The Jackals stood tall, with weird back-jointed legs, and had Mohawk-like feathers and birdlike faces.

The dwarfish Grunts—with their doglike faces behind breathing equipment, squat legs, and weird triangular methane tanks—started shooting at us.

Balls of plasma energy sizzled and spat as they hit the trees behind us.

As the closest team, we fanned out, falling into our usual routines. Kiko and Mason laid down cover fire, and Rahud and I skirted the lip clockwise toward the aliens.

ODST snipers hit the Grunts, splashes of blue blood blossoming in the air as the aliens dropped to the ground. The Jackals held up energy shields attached to their forearms to ward off the gunfire, and returned it tenfold.

We sprinted around the rim. ―Their feet!" Rahud shouted.

The shields didn‘t cover their feet. I aimed low, chewing up mud and vines, walking the shots along until I hit my first Jackal.

It screeched and pitched forward, shield bobbling, and Rahud shot it in the head. Purple blood oozed down the side of the corpse.

The other Jackal turned to face us, opening itself up for a sniper shot by an ODST. It grabbed its chest, moaning, and then stumbled off the edge of the lip and fell down. It bounced off one of the struts, then continued all the way down to the ground of the pit below.

I pushed the dead Jackal‘s body with a boot. Here was the enemy. Flesh and blood. Killable.

Now that we had the lip surrounded a command hierarchy had been established. Major Sedavian had landed at the very rear of the group, and had finally caught up to us.

―Figure we‘re going down there?" Mason asked, peering over the edge. We could see more

Covenant at the bottom, with hundreds of Grunts and a handful of Jackals that seemed to be

overseeing them. They were mustering near elevators, getting ready to come up to join the fight. An energy bolt sizzled and blew up a piece of rock near my face, and I ducked back to the safety of cover.

―Negative," Rahud said, coming up from behind us suddenly. ―Covenant Cruisers just arrived.

We‘re outgunned. We‘re getting out of here and dropping a Shiva into this mess."

That was it. The fight was over, we‘d already lost.

I could sense the frustration in the air as word spread. But orders were orders.

The Pelicans could barely land on the lip, and the Covenant at the bottom of the pit opened antiaircraft fire, but we all bugged out easily enough.

As we headed for orbit, the Shiva nuclear warheads left on the lip detonated.

Once we were aboard, the Clearidas entered slipspace, leaving the system.

Another retreat.

___________

THAT WASthe pattern for the next few years. The Covenant ate us up, system by system, with

very few victories on our side.

Most of the worlds I‘d come to know well were all destroyed. No one cared about Insurrectionists, Outer Colonies versus the UNSC, or the Colonial Military ten years after Harvest fell.

There was only humanity versus the Covenant.