The bulkhead of the stealth transport shuttle shuddered against Dorian’s back. He sat very still, staring straight ahead at the empty seats across from him. The ship was clearly designed to carry an entire platoon, but today it only carried the four of them, the heavy engines taking them away from the safety of Tuomi Base and across enemy lines into Meridian.

Evie sat to his right and Saskia to his left; both were quiet, had been quiet all morning. Evie had her doubts about all this, Dorian knew—they had talked about it a few times, in vague, circular conversations. But for all her doubts, she thought this was the right thing to do. Dorian agreed, but the real reason he was sitting on this shuttle was because he couldn’t bear the thought of any more people dying. For Evie, the moral rightness was an abstract. For him—he still had nightmares about the high-pitched whine of the Drones, the cries of the people aboard Tomas’s boat, the wide eyes of his friends the last time he’d seen them—

At least Remy and Uncle Max had survived. He wanted to make sure it stayed that way.

The shuttle jolted, flinging all four of them sideways against their jump seat restraints. Dorian braced himself on the seat’s thinly cushioned back.

“Have we crossed over into the fighting?” Saskia asked, peering down toward the cockpit. The door was shut tight. “Already?”

“I don’t know.” The shuttle jerked again, then dropped suddenly. The g-forces tugged on Dorian’s skull, and he choked back a swelling of vomit. Red emergency lights flashed along the floor, a line pointing toward the exit hatch. A reminder that they’d be jumping out of here soon enough.

“I’d say that’s a yes!” Evie shouted as the shuttle jerked sideways again. Victor let out a whoop of excitement; Dorian had to suppress the urge to tell him to shut up. Ever since they’d escaped from Meridian he’d started buying into this military stuff completely.

“You kids are strapped in, right?” The pilot’s voice pierced through the hold’s communication system. “We’re about to take evasive maneuvers.”

And then the shuttle tilted into a free fall. The hull shook violently. Impact, Dorian thought, remembering the flight out of Meridian, how the ancient Insurrection ship he’d flown had jolted in his hands every time the Covenant hit them.

“We’re hit,” the pilot said. “Stay in place—”

Suddenly, the shuttle swooped up, forcing Dorian sideways against the seat. Another impact slammed through the hull, and the emergency lights began blinking wildly. A siren wailed up from inside the cockpit. He thought he smelled the acrid tang of burning fuel.

The cockpit door flung open and the copilot burst out, her face shining with sweat, her eyes bright with panic. For a half second, Dorian saw something burning around the shuttle’s viewscreen before the cockpit door slammed shut again.

“You’re deploying early.”

“What?” Evie jerked herself straight up. “What do you mean?”

“The Covenant have augmented their defense lines since our last pass. There’s no way we’re getting through. So you’re deploying early.”

“How can we possibly—” Saskia started. Then her eyes went wide.

“What?” Dorian demanded. “What are you thinking?”

The copilot made her way to the far end of the shuttle, her hands bracing against the ceiling. “Drop pods,” she said. “We weren’t supposed to use them on this run, but we don’t have any other opt—”

The shuttle careened sideways, throwing the copilot against the far wall. She caught herself like nothing had happened.

“Drop pods?” Victor said. “You mean like an SOEIV?”

“Yeah.” The copilot slapped her palm against a sensor and the wall split open, revealing a dark, narrow walkway. The drop pods hung like ugly, metallic ornaments from the branches of a Christmas tree, and Dorian felt the weight of what was about to happen sink deep in his belly.

“We haven’t been fully trained in this!” Evie protested. “We can’t—”

“This shuttle will not survive full pass, the way these Covenant weapons are stripping through it,” the copilot snapped back. “My job is to get you groundside at any cost. You need to get out now.”

Fear seized Dorian’s chest. He pressed his ear to the shuttle wall, listened to the engines shrieking up through the hot metal.

The copilot looked at him, her eyes dark. “I know you can hear it,” she said.

Dorian closed his eyes. What he heard was not a good sound. He knew that much.

“Well?” said Evie.

“All right,” the copilot said, clapping her hands together. “We don’t have time to sit around debating this. The drop pods are programmed for this scenario. They’ll get you down to the rendezvous coordinates. There’s no other choice. We need to abandon ship, and we need to do it now.”

Abandon ship. Dorian undid his buckle and stood up, blood rushing to his head. He moved forward without thinking, his heart pounding fast. The narrow hallway seemed to tighten as he crept toward it, lengthening in a dark hole that would drop them out into the black of space.

Another blast. This time Dorian felt the heat sweep up from the floor.

“Now!” the copilot screamed. “I’ve got to get you four out first before the crew can evacuate. Go, go!”

The others were jumping to their feet, making their way toward the drop pods. Dorian got there first. They’d done a few drop simulations while at Tuomi, a what-if scenario that Dorian never thought would actually come to pass. The drop pods were mainly operated by the UNSC’s Orbital Drop Shock Troopers, soldiers who had been specially trained to deploy from high orbit. And that’s what the drop pods did: jettison you from orbit through the atmosphere and down to the surface of a war-torn planet.

It was awkward clambering into the drop pod, situating his body into a casket-shaped object that would be launched out into real space, instead of virtual space.

“Face the hatch and strap in!” the copilot was shouting at Victor. “That’s right. I’m going to walk you through the safety protocols—”

Another shudder. The siren wailed louder.

“—as fast as we can. Okay, hit the button on your right-hand side—that will run the systems check. Say clear when it’s done.”

Dorian watched the green light spiral through the drop pod’s system, looking for flaws. Sweat dripped down his face. It’ll just be like flying that old scud-rider, he told himself. That thing was way more rickety.

It also never left atmosphere.

The systems check finished. Dorian shouted, “Clear,” joining a chorus of the others.

“Now we remove the safeties,” the copilot called out. “First one is near your feet—”

Dorian moved by rote, pressing his thumb against one button, flipping another switch. The drop pod lit up. The shuttle siren screamed.

“We’re ready!” The copilot’s voice seemed far away. “Initiating countdown now.”

A holographic light flicked on, right in Dorian’s line of vision. Thirty. Twenty-nine. Twenty-eight …

He sucked in a deep breath of air. His heart hummed with panic.

Twenty-five. Twenty-four. Twenty-three …

Everything was silent inside the drop pod except for his own panicked breathing. Silent and dark. He knew on the outside there was red light, the wail of a siren, the threat of plasma breach.

Fifteen. Fourteen. Thirteen …

Dorian closed his eyes. He was aware of the weight of the drop pod closing in around him, the tight squeeze of metal and ceramic and whatever else was supposed to keep him from burning alive as he fell through Meridian’s atmosphere.

Five.

Four.

Dorian took one last long breath and thought about the music he had been creating the night the Covenant first attacked.

His bandmates. Xavier and Alex and Hugo. All of them had died.

Then he thought about Remy, frightened and dirty but safe as he emerged from the shelter beneath Brume-sur-Mer.

He was doing this for them.

Two.

One.

There was a breathless pause. Dorian thought the pod had malfunctioned.

Then the floor ripped out from under him.

He was falling.

It was all he was aware of, that sensation of falling. He closed his eyes against the force yanking him down toward the moon and tried not to think about the battle raging in the atmosphere around him. Even if the Covenant didn’t fire on the pods specifically, one stray shot would be enough. After all, they had learned in training that was why the UNSC used these things—because it was better to lose one man than an entire team.

Dorian ground his teeth together. The temperature in the drop pod rose, a choking, enveloping heat that threatened to strangle him. He heard the shriek of ceramic as the outer layers of the pod stripped away.

Atmosphere. He’d made it to the atmosphere.

Relief swept over him as fast and sudden as the heat had. He sank back into his pod and let the memories of his brief training take over. The copilot had said the shuttle programmed their drop pods with the destination. He should land in the forest outside Brume-sur-Mer, where the shuttle had been taking them originally. Deep in the thicket of trees and underbrush, far away from the Covenant scavenging under the soil for some magical artifact.

Dorian could feel the pod slowing, the braking chutes kicking into action the way they were programmed. He let out a long, shuddering breath.

Prepare for Impact flashed in red letters in his line of vision, right where the countdown had been.

Dorian heard what he later realized was the scraping of tree branches against the side of the pod as it bounced back and forth. He fought against the dizziness in his head, the reminder that he was plummeting from the atmosphere.

Prepare for Impact flashed one more time. And then—

Impact.

Even with the restraints strapped across his chest, Dorian was flung forward into the hatch. He cursed and fumbled for the release. The hatch hissed open and exploded outward with a flash of light as he unstrapped himself and tumbled out onto the wet soft soil of the forest. His entire body ached. He lay in the damp underbrush, breathing in the smoke from the pod’s entry, listening to the familiar rustle of the forest. He had gotten so used to that noise during his days fighting back against the Covenant. Hearing it now was like a jolt to his heart.

Eventually, he sat up, blinking. The pod lay discarded, the outer shell scorched black from atmosphere entry. Smoke twisted up from the charred, broken trees he had hit on his way in, shimmering in the dim sunlight. He stood up, legs shaking, trying to remember the training. There were supposed to be weapons inside those things. Supplies. Would this one be the same? The pods weren’t intended for them, which meant they’d probably been intended for actual ODSTs—or Helljumpers as he’d heard them called at the base. He understood the nickname now.

That was when Dorian realized the rifle he’d been issued before deployment was still on the shuttle—in the rush to the drop pods, he must have left it strapped to the shuttle hull. Yet another reason why he wasn’t cut out to be a soldier.

Dorian dragged himself over to the pod and tried to remember from the training holo how to dismantle it for the secondary weapon. He was in enemy territory; he would need to arm himself as well as he could before he went looking for the others.

His stomach twisted at the thought of them. With any SOEIV drop, there was the chance of failure, the possibility not only that they would be hit by enemy fire but that the pod would malfunction on reentry, or that it wouldn’t slow enough for impact. He couldn’t remember the exact percentages. But there had only been four of them. Six, if you included the two pilots.

Dorian crouched next to the pod. It was still giving off waves of heat from its reentry. That detail had been left out of the holo simulation, but there was just a latch to press—there. He fumbled around in the underbrush for a stick and then used it to pop the latch open. The outer shell of the pod slid away, revealing an MA5 rifle and a supply bag. Dorian grabbed the rifle and checked the ammo—two hundred rounds. The supply bag had a few days’ worth of food rations, more ammo, a military comm pad. He shouldered it and stood up, cradling the rifle in front of his chest.

Then he started forward through the woods, keeping to the underbrush. The motions came back to him instantly. How many times had he done this in those weeks before the escape, trudging miserably damp through the rain? At least it wasn’t raining now, although it would probably pick up again soon. Dorian calculated in his head—there were about another two weeks left of the rainy season. Then the storms would stop and they’d have to find some other cover to help them fight against the Covenant.

The wind gusted; Dorian caught a whiff of burning wood up ahead of him. He moved faster, ducking low-hanging vines and flat, glossy tree leaves. He wanted to call out, make it easier to find whoever it was, but he knew better. They were supposed to have landed deep in the woods, but he didn’t know how deep they actually were.

He ducked around a feathery palm tree and found the smoldering wreckage of another drop pod. The hatch had been released. Dorian let out a long sigh of relief. Two definite survivors.

A branch cracked behind him; he whirled and found himself pointing his rifle at Saskia, who lifted her hands sheepishly.

“Sorry,” she said. “I was trying not to sneak up on you.”

Dorian let out a nervous laugh and lifted his gun. “You’re fine. I’m glad to see you. Have you found the others?”

“Not yet. I just got out.” She shook her head, her hair flying loose into her face. “That was … not something I ever want to do again.”

“Yeah,” Dorian said. “Me neither.”

Saskia crouched down beside the pod and pulled her rifle out from its slot beside her seat. Figures she wouldn’t leave it behind. “Did you notice where we landed?”

Dorian shook his head. “I was a little too worried about dying to remember to check out exact coordinates.”

Saskia leaned into the pod’s hatch and tapped at the holo display. “So was I,” she said. “Fortunately, these things can tell us our coordinates after we’ve landed.”

Dorian didn’t remember that from the simulation, but then, Saskia always knew more things about weaponry and military material than the others did. That was what happened when your parents worked for Chalybs Defense Solutions. Their prototypes had come in handy during the escape from Meridian three months ago. Wouldn’t have them now, though.

Saskia straightened up. “Good news is we landed pretty close to the original drop point. We just need to head”—she whirled around and pointed—“that way.”

“Where are we exactly?” Dorian fell into step beside her.

“About five kilometers north of Brume-sur-Mer,” she said. “Deep in the protected part of the forest.”

Dorian snorted. “Not so protected now.” Inside, though, he felt a tremor of nervousness. He’d known the area around town extremely well, thanks to the handyman work he’d done with his uncle. He’d never had any reason to go this far into the protected woodland that surrounded the town. Which left him wary. Uncertain. He liked knowing where he was.

Especially here. This close to the Covenant.

The woods were damp and thick and overgrown, and Saskia and Dorian had to stomp a path through the brush, slicing away vines with the butts of their rifles. Dorian had gotten used to the dry air at Tuomi, and the once-familiar humidity of Brume-sur-Mer choked him. It wasn’t long before he was sore and sweating, as if he hadn’t spent the last ten weeks undergoing accelerated UNSC training.

“I’d forgotten how much this sucks,” he announced.

Saskia smiled at him. But then her smile evaporated and her expression went dark. She lifted her rifle. Dorian immediately forgot the thick air and his sore legs. He whipped his body around, peering into the brush where she looked, rifle ready.

“What’d you see?” he said as softly as he could.

She shook her head. “Something big,” she breathed.

Dorian tightened the grip on his rifle and peered into the dark tangle of the forest. There—a shimmer of light. A shadow, moving toward them.

“Put your weapons down,” said a familiar voice.

Dorian blinked. “Owen?” he said.

The figure emerged from the trees, two meters tall and enormous in Mjolnir armor, its photoreactive coating shining softly in the damp light, mirroring the tangle of vegetation around them. That’s new, Dorian thought. Indeed, the armor in general looked different from what Dorian remembered—it must have gotten an upgrade in the last nine weeks.

The Spartan tapped the side of his helmet and his visor depolarized, and there was Owen, his young face dark with scars and a grim determination.

“You’re fine,” Owen said. “We have the area secured. I’ve already picked up Evie and Victor. Let’s get you to camp.”

“What about the pilots?” Dorian asked. “Didn’t they make it?”

Owen looked up at the sky. “Haven’t heard from them. They weren’t coming here, though.” He tilted his head toward the twist of vines and glossy leaves. “Let’s get you situated. Welcome to the Brume-sur-Mer Militia.”