By the time the Hierarchs' barges had completed their separate ascents up the Dreadnought's legs and the three San'Shyuum had come together on a balustrade just above the entrance to the vessel's hangar, the crowd was riveted. As the acolytes' chorus faded, and Fortitude cleared his throat to speak, it seemed that every creature in the Covenant held its breath in anticipation of his words.
"We are, all three of us, humbled by your approval—your faith in our appointment."
Fortitude could hear his voice reverberate around the towers, rattling stones that were the literal foundation of the Covenant. He raised a hand to the Vice Minister and the Philologist, identifying each in turn. "This is the Prophet of Regret, and this the Prophet of Mercy." Then, sweeping his hands up beneath his wattle: "And I, the least worthy of us all, am the Prophet of Truth."
The three Hierarchs leaned forward in their thrones, as low as they could go without toppling their mantles. At that moment, each of the holographic Halo rings blazed even brighter as immense Reclamation glyphs manifested inside them.
The crowd roared its approval.
Before he straightened in his throne, the Prophet of Truth took a moment to consider the irony of his announcement. According to tradition, he could have picked any name he wished from a long list of former Hierarchs'. Most of the names would have been quite flattering. But ultimately the name he chose was the one that carried the greatest burden—the one that would always remind him of the lies he must tell for the good of the Covenant and the truths he must never speak.
Jenkins hadn't moved in the hours since they'd left the Tiara. Not as the container flung free of its strand and hurtled toward a waiting propulsion pod. Not as the two vehicles came together with a jolt, the pod's NAV computer struggling to match the container's spin. Even the temporary nausea of a too-rapid entrance into Slipspace had failed to interrupt Jenkins' silent watch over Forsell, lying before him on the container floor.
"He's stable." Healy closed his med kit. The Corpsman had worked furiously to seal Forsell's shoulder with biofoam—to wrap tight the alien's ragged bite. But Forsell had lost a lot of blood. "He'll be OK," Healy concluded, his breath blowing white in the container's frigid air.
Before they'd entered Slipspace, Lt. Commander al-Cygni had thought it wise to keep their power signature as low as possible to keep from being tracked by the alien warship. Now the heating units suspended from the container's upper beams were going full blast. But the cavernous space would take hours to warm.
"How do you know?" Jenkins' voice was soft and hoarse.
Healy reached for a nearby stack of folded blankets—began rolling the woolen squares and packing them tight against Forsell's body to keep him immobile. "Tell him, Johnson."
Avery had held Forsell steady while the Corpsman worked. He grabbed one of the blankets and used it to wipe flecks of the recruit's blood and bits of biofoam from his hands. "Because I've seen a lot worse." Avery's voice was gentle. But his answer didn't seem to give Jenkins any comfort; the recruit continued staring at Forsell's wan face, eyes brimming with tears.
"Staff Sergeant. He's all I got left."
Avery knew how Jenkins felt. It was the same unfathomable sadness he'd experienced sitting in his aunt's icy apartment, waiting for someone to come and take her away—a numbing realization that his home and all he held dear was gone. Captain Ponder, more than half the militia, and many thousands of Harvest's residents were dead. Knowledge of these losses was a heavy burden, and the only reason Avery wasn't as crushed as Jenkins was because he had learned to pack his feelings up and keep them hidden.
But he didn't want to do that anymore.
"No. He's not," Avery said.
Jenkins looked up, a question knitted in his brow.
"You're a soldier," Avery explained. "Part of a team."
"Not anymore." Jenkins glanced at Dass, Andersen, and the handful of other recruits sitting or sleeping inside the container. "We're just colonial militia. And we just lost our colony."
"FLEETCOM's going to take Harvest back. And they're gonna need all the grunts they can get."
"Me? A marine?"
"If you want, I'll have you transferred to my unit."
The recruit's eyes narrowed with suspicion.
"Let's just say the Corps owes me a favor. You're militia. But you're also one of the few people in the entire UNSC who knows how to fight these sons-of-bitches."
"They'll want us to stick together?" Jenkins said.
"Lead the charge." Avery nodded. "I know I would."
Jenkins thought about that for a moment: the possibility that he might not only take back his planet, but do his part to keep other colonies—other families—safe as well. His parents never wanted him to be a soldier. But now he couldn't think of a better way to honor their memory.
"OK," Jenkins said. "I'm in."
Avery reached into his assault vest and removed his Sweet William cigar. He handed it to Jenkins. "For you and Forsell. When he wakes up."
"In the meantime," Healy said, rising to his feet, "you can help me check the rest."
Avery watched Jenkins and Healy head off toward Staff Sergeant Byrne and the other wounded recruits closer to the center of the container. Byrne was awake and lucid when Avery had boarded the container at the Tiara, but now the Irishman was fast asleep—full of painkillers to keep him relaxed and dreaming.
Avery looked down at Forsell's chest, rising and falling beneath his bandages. Then he gathered a stack of blankets and walked to the elevator platform that would take him to the propulsion pod. Inside the pod's cabin, Avery found Jilan.
"Blankets," he grunted. "Thought you might need them."
Jilan didn't move. She had her back to Avery and her hands spread wide on the cabin's main control panel. Faint green light from the panel's display created an emerald halo around her deep black hair. Some of the strands had come free of her pins and curled down the nape of her neck.
"I'll leave them here."
But as Avery dropped the blankets to the floor and turned to exit the cabin, Jilan whispered: "Two hundred fifteen."
"Ma'am?"
"Containers. That's all that made it through." Jilan tapped her finger against the display, rechecking her calculations. "At capacity, that's between two hundred fifty, two hundred sixty thousand survivors. But that's only if they all reached their rendezvous."
"They did."
"How can you be sure?"
"I just am."
"Semper fi."
"Yeah. Something like that." Avery shook his head. He was getting tired of talking to Jilan's back. "Look. You need anything, you let me know." But just as he was about to leave the cabin, Jilan turned. She looked tired, and she swallowed hard before she spoke.
"We left so many of them behind."
"It could have been all of them." Avery's tone was harsher than he'd intended. Rubbing the back of his neck, he tried a different tactic. "Your plan worked, ma'am. Better than I ever thought it would."
Jilan laughed bitterly. "That's quite a compliment."
Avery folded his arms across his chest. He was trying to make nice. But Jilan wasn't making it easy. "What do you want me to say?"
"I don't want you to say anything."
"No?"
"No."
Avery glowered at Jilan. Her green eyes shone with the same intensity as when they'd first met on the breezy balcony of Harvest's parliament. But now Avery noticed something more.
Every woman offered permission differently. At least that had been Avery's experience.
Some obvious, most so subtle Avery was sure he'd missed many more opportunities for intimacy than he'd enjoyed. But Jilan's signals—a deepened gaze, set shoulders, and pursed lower lip—were less articles of consent than a unified demand: now or never.
This time, Avery didn't miss a beat. He paced forward as Jilan pushed off the controls to meet him. They came together and kissed as their arms fought past each other for purchase on bodies neither knew but both were desperate to explore. But just as Avery was about to draw Jilan in tight, she shoved him away and leaned back against the freighter's controls.
Avery felt his heart hammering in his chest. For an instant he wondered if she'd changed her mind. Then Jilan reached for the pins that kept her hair coiled and shook it loose. She had already tossed the pins to the floor and leaned over to start on her boots before Avery realized he'd been left in the blocks of a race where winning meant finishing at the same time. He did his best to catch up.
Avery tore off his duty cap and pulled his fatigue shirt over his head. He didn't bother with the buttons, and by the time his head popped free of his collar, Jilan was already on her second boot. Avery kneeled to unlace his own as she ran the zipper of her coveralls, from neck to navel. He'd barely gotten both feet free before Jilan was stepping toward him, wearing nothing but a determined stare.
She put her hands on Avery's shoulders and pushed him onto his back. Sitting astride his ankles, Jilan helped him with his pants. Then she crept upward, planted her hands on either side of Avery's head, and began to move.
Avery was instantly entranced by the back-and-forth sway of her bosom. He cupped the weight of her in his hands and knew at once he'd made a tactical error. The heavy roundness of Jilan's skin started an ache that crept up his legs and settled in the small of his back. All she had to do was squeeze, and a moment later he was spent.
Jilan fell heavily onto Avery's chest. For some time they lay still, assessing the amalgam of their sweat. Slowly, Jilan brushed her fingers across Avery's collarbone, up his neck, and onto his lips. There she stopped to test the beginnings of a stout moustache.
"I've been meaning to take care of that," Avery said.
"Don't. I like it."
Avery let his head relax into the rubberized flooring. He could feel the dull hum of the propulsion pod's Shaw-Fujikawa drive. It was idling now, coasting through the Slipstream.
Usually, this would be the time Avery's mind veered into a familiar rut: the dread period of second-guessing that always followed a difficult mission. But now he found it impossible to focus on the past. The civil war that had sapped so much of humanity's spirit was irrelevant— replaced by an external threat of unimaginable proportion.
"But this?" Jilan rubbed a fingertip against Avery's newly furrowed brow. "Not as much."
"Oh, I will take care of that."
Avery rose at the waist and eased Jilan back onto her shoulders. He cradled her head in one hand and steadied her hips with another. Eyes locked, they began again.
This time Avery set the pace—buried his fingers deep in her unwashed hair. He let her neck slide freely against his palm, but he would not release her hips. And soon Jilan's face flushed and her eyes shut with a pained smile Avery would remember long after he had forgotten the worst of his failures.
Their exertions had warmed the floor, and though they knew the heat wouldn't last, neither was eager to move. When they did eventually come apart and rolled onto their sides, Jilan slid back into the bend of Avery's waist. He grasped a blanket and cast it loosely over them. But the blanket was too short to cover their feet, and Jilan drew hers up to Avery's knees. Then they both stared out the cabin's thick windows.
Blackness pressed in from all sides, but it was the faint streaks of warping starlight that focused Avery's gaze. There was hope there and comfort. And while it was easy to feel a certain manly satisfaction as Jilan twitched in his arms, fighting off exhaustion, this soon gave way to something much more satisfying: a renewed sense of purpose.
The UNSC didn't know it yet, but all its ships and soldiers were suddenly no better off than Harvest's militia had been: capable but untested, brave but unaware. Humanity had no idea what it was about to face, and Avery knew it was doomed unless he and countless others rose quickly to the challenge.
Jilan shivered. Avery nuzzled his chin behind her ear and exhaled warmly against her neck —in through his nose and out his mouth—until her shoulders stopped shaking.
"Don't let me sleep too long," she said softly.
"No, ma'am."
"Johnson. As long as this lasts?" Jilan grabbed his hand and wrapped it tight across her chest. "At ease."
In a few hours Avery would rise and dress. In a few months he would be back in action. But in the dark years of the war to come, he would often think of this moment, light a cigar, and smile. For now Avery knew he had changed course, and at last felt proud to be the soldier so many would need him to be.