Saskia had gotten very familiar with the forest around her parents’ house in the time before the invasion. She had been able to navigate through the tangled copses of trees, the heavy underbrush. After the invasion, when she and the others had found themselves stranded outside the town shelter, she had led them through the woods with a confidence she didn’t always feel but could always, at least, fake. Sometimes they had to clear a path, but there was always the start of one, a thin area where people had walked before.

On their way to Desmarais, there were no such trails.

They were nineteen troops in total, a number that seemed so small when she had finally counted it but which seemed enormous now that they were wading through waist-high ferns, hacking away at vines as thick around as a man’s forearm. The old-growth trees towered over them, their trunks covered with parasitic plants that created a second canopy that caught what little rain made its way through the treetops. The militia walked single file, Owen at the front, Local Team behind him, and then what remained of the four squads, with Commander Marechal bringing up the rear. Saskia walked right behind Owen, untangling the felled branches he sliced away with a Covenant energy sword he had somehow acquired during the earlier battle. The branches fell Saskia’s way with blackened edges, smoke sizzling on the damp air.

“How much longer?” Dorian mumbled behind her.

“I have no idea,” she said, flinging a wad of vines into the undergrowth. “I don’t even know how long we’ve been walking.”

He didn’t try to talk to her further, thank god. She was too exhausted to navigate such a deeply wooded area and speak with someone at the same time. Her leg muscles burned, and her feet sent shooting pains up her splints every time she pressed them into the ground. Her vision blurred; her mouth was dry. She wanted to curl up in a bed—a real bed, not a cot, not a pile of rain-soaked palm leaves—and sleep.

But she couldn’t. So she walked.

She had no sense of how long they had been walking. When Owen halted and threw up a fist to indicate that the others do the same, she thought they had arrived. Except they were still deep in the woods. There were no signs of civilization, just the greenery crushing in around them and the constant shriek of insects.

“Something’s coming,” Owen muttered.

Saskia’s chest seized up.

“You four, get close,” he said, holding out one hand, as if he could sweep Saskia and the others into the safety of his armor. “Victor, give the signal.”

Victor nodded, then stuck two fingers into his mouth and let out a loud, piercing whistle. Saskia huddled close to Owen with the others, her rifle out. She peered through the scope and saw only green. A rustle as the rest of the militia formed two tight concentric circles, weaving as best they could through the dense growth.

Saskia held her breath, one eye squeezed shut, the other watering as she stared through the scope.

“Careful, careful,” Owen said softly. “They’re close.”

“How can you tell?” Saskia whispered.

Owen didn’t take his eyes off the woods. “I hear them. I hear—”

And then Saskia heard it too, a deeper pitch to the rustling. Leaves scraping against armor. The guttural whisper of an alien tongue.

“Get down,” Owen hissed, and opened fire.

The plasma fire was returned immediately, purple streaks that scorched the underbrush. Saskia hit the ground, her elbows sinking into the mud. The militia fired out in their ring, the gun blasts erupting like fireworks in the forest.

With a piercing, unison cry, the Covenant charged.

Saskia fired furiously at them between the spaces of the militia’s legs, the recoil from her gun shuddering up her arm. These were not Grunts coming after them, but the imposing, leathery-skinned reptilian creatures the UNSC called Elites. When Saskia had first learned about them in school, they were called Sangheili.

And she had fought one before.

And survived, she thought, sliding another magazine into her rifle. From her vantage point, she counted ten figures total: Four of them were definitely Elites, but the rest look liked massive bears walking on their hind legs, firing heavy iron weapons toward the militia. The others are Jiralhanae. Brutes, she thought, remembering the holos from school and from her training at Tuomi Base.

Ten to nineteen. And she had the nineteen on her side. It was a strange feeling, to be the one doing the outnumbering for once. Though she knew from her parents that the odds still weren’t in their favor in this fight.

Owen had broken away from the crowd and charged straight into the remaining pair of Brutes, who swung their large weapons up and out, attempting to slice him open with the jagged, serrated edges affixed to their stocks. He caught their blows with his energy sword, drawing forth great sprays of sparks. The militia moved in tighter, giving him cover fire as the Elites directed their attention toward him.

And, like that, Saskia understood what Owen was doing. He was making himself into a distraction.

“He’s giving us an opening to run,” Saskia said, her voice trembling.

“No way.” Victor gritted his teeth, his gun firing off at a tremendous, earth-shattering speed. “I’m not running.”

“He’s trying to protect us,” she said, feeling hopeless. “He knows we can’t take them with these weapons, and we can’t just stay here to die.” She swung her head around, looking for Dorian. But Dorian crouched beside Evie and Farhi, the muzzles of their rifles blazing with white light. At least the Brutes had been beaten back. And it didn’t seem like a single member of the militia was missing.

Yet.

Saskia grabbed her rifle and leapt to her feet, finger squeezing tight against the trigger. She joined in with the rest of the militia, firing into the knot of Elites swarming toward Owen. Two of them peeled off and strode toward the militia. They both wore armor that flared with energy shielding as it deflected the bullets, sending them careening dangerously out into the forest. And one of them had the same kind of energy sword that Owen wielded.

“We won’t be able to defeat them!” Saskia hollered. “They’re too powerful!”

The one with the energy sword roared something in the clicking Sangheili tongue and raced toward her. She had a sudden flashback to the day when she had led all the Brume-sur-Mer survivors to the forest, only to be confronted by an Elite. She had only survived that fight with luck, really. She doubted she could manage a trick like that again.

The Elite swung its energy sword at her as the other fired into the rest of the militia, who returned a wall of bullets that sent the Elite slamming back into a net of vines. The Elite with the energy sword twisted around and barked something in its language, which the second Elite returned. It was strange, but it sounded like the same combative tone Saskia used to use when her parents asked her to stay in her room during weapons demonstrations. The same tone that frequently meant she was planning on ignoring them completely.

Commander Marechal shoved his way through the crowd, urging the soldiers forward.

“Run!” the commander barked, blocking their view of Owen, who was engaging the crowd of Elites. “Get to the rendezvous point!”

“We’re not leaving him behind!” shouted Saskia.

“Go!” Owen roared.

Saskia fired once more into the melee of Spartan soldier and Covenant Elites. Then she did exactly as Owen asked. Her bare feet pounded against the ground, and as she passed Evie and Dorian firing into the Elites, she grabbed hold of Evie’s arm and pulled her forward with her.

“What are you doing?” Evie squawked.

“Getting us out of here, like Owen ordered!”

“We can’t leave him!”

Owen picked up the limp body of one of the Elites and hurled it into the crowd that had massed around him.

“He can take care of himself,” Saskia said. “Let’s go.” She pulled harder on Evie’s arm, and this time Evie relented.

“Dorian!” Evie called. “Victor!”

“They’re over there,” said Mousseau. “Good luck getting them separated.”

And that was when Saskia saw. The two of them were in the middle of the brawl with the Elites, throwing their guns sideways at Elite heads, getting dragged down to the forest floor by powerful, muscle-corded arms. Owen sprang into action with a spray of bullets, and Victor and Dorian scrambled to their feet. Victor had a bloody streak across his forehead. Mousseau grabbed him and pulled him forward, dragging them away from the fight.

“Let’s go,” Caird said. “I’m getting us out of here.”

“We can help!” Victor said, shrugging out of his grasp.

“None of us can help,” Caird hissed, pushing them forward. “Blue squadron will be right behind you.” She shoved Victor toward Saskia, and she caught him. The blood pulsed out of a wound across his temple. Did they have MediGel? She couldn’t think about that, not until they got to the rendezvous, not until they were safely in the air.

She grabbed Victor and yanked him forward. Dorian had already caught up with Evie, and the two of them weaved through the woods, ducking away from blasts of wayward plasma fire. The Elites were too focused on Owen to notice them or the other militia members who had managed to peel themselves away from the fighting. And so they took advantage of the break and ran, pushing themselves as far as they could through the thick, murky tangle of the forest. Saskia could hear the plasma fire behind them, ringing out through the woods. Was it getting closer? She could only hope it wasn’t.

“How much farther?” Evie gasped.

Saskia shook her head. Glanced over at Dorian, who was running with a grim, fatalistic determination.

“No idea,” he said, not looking at her.

“It’s just a couple of kilometers,” said Commander Marechal, approaching behind her as he led the militia toward Desmarais. “We were close before. Now we’ve just go to—”

A dark mass plunged down from the trees, growling and carrying a fat, heavy-looking weapon equipped with a curved, vicious blade. The last Brute. In one lunging movement, the blade arced through the air and sliced across Commander Marechal’s midsection. He crumpled, disappearing into the tall grasses.

Dorian screamed, stumbling to a stop and then ducking to avoid the trajectory of the Brute’s weapon, still red with blood. The creature lunged forward, growling in its unfamiliar language, bringing its weapon to bear, moving to make Dorian its next victim. Saskia stumbled backward, unloading her rifle directly into the exposed base of the alien’s neck. The others nearby joined her attack, pumping rounds into the massive beast. It felt like they fired forever, and with every jerk of her rifle, Saskia thought of Commander Marechal falling beneath the Brute’s heavy blade.

And then, finally, the Brute collapsed like a falling tree.

“Run!” she screamed, jumping around its body. “Let’s go!”

She held her rifle tight as the militia streamed past her. The pat pat pat from Owen’s rifle continued to ring out in the forest. At least they hadn’t lost him too.

As soon as the last militia member had passed, Saskia followed behind them, sweeping around her gun, looking for more deadly surprises to drop out of the woods. The trees seemed to press tight together, as if they were hemming her in. She whirled around and stumbled her way up to the rest of the militia. The sound of Owen’s gunshots grew fainter. The forest closed tight around them. The air was so thick with humidity it felt unbreathable, and Saskia’s lungs ached as she surged forward. She wondered if Owen was still fighting the Elites. She couldn’t hear his gun at all now, but they were so insulated by leaves and vines, the quiet meant nothing.

And then the forest ended.

It was as if an enormous knife had come down and carved out a blank space among the trees. Houses dotted the grass, little metal cubes of the type used by early settlers. Most of them had been sealed shut.

“Is this it?” Saskia jogged over to Dorian. “Desmarais?”

“It’s the outskirts,” he said. “That pilot should be here somewhere.”

As if in response, the door to one of the houses slid open with a creak and out stepped a woman in old military fatigues, a rifle strapped to her back. She squinted at the militia with an appraising look.

“Where’s Commander Marechal?” she said. “And the Spartan?”

Farhi stepped forward. The de facto leader, Saskia thought, now that Owen was still fighting and the commander was dead. She still couldn’t quite grasp the reality of what she’d seen. How suddenly he’d gone down. How lucky the rest of them had been to escape.

“We got attacked by a lance of Elites on the hike here,” Farhi said. “Spartan Owen stayed behind to fight them off. As for the commander—” She took a deep breath. “A Brute got him. Surprise attack.”

The woman pressed her hand to her heart, a small gesture of grief. Then she swept away a piece of hair that had fallen out of her braid. “We’ve got a small window for takeoff. The Covies run a regular perimeter sweep, and we’ll be pushing you out in the five minutes while they’re looking the other way.”

Saskia slunk closer to the edge of the woods, her head cocked. She thought she’d heard something beyond the trilling of insects. Some kind of … snap. Not a rifle shot, at least. But the sound of something breaking—

And then someone shouted, “Get down!” just as a massive figure erupted out of the woods in a spray of tree leaves and broken branches. Owen.

In one liquid movement, Owen twisted in midair, shooting a wall of bullets into the dark shadows lurking behind the boundary.

“Guess we won’t be waiting after all,” the pilot hollered before swinging her rifle around and firing off into the woods. The rest of the militia followed, just as a trio of Elites burst out shooting at Owen. Saskia squeezed the trigger on her rifle, although it seemed the bullets just dissolved into the woods without touching anything.

“Get them to the freighter!” Owen bellowed, firing over his shoulder. “I’ll be there!”

“You heard the man!” said Farhi. She yanked out her pistol and fired several shots toward the Elites. “Lead the way!”

The pilot responded by letting loose a cloud of gunfire. “This way!” she screamed. “Got it set up behind the houses!”

A stream of people stampeded toward the untouched neighborhood. Saskia got swept up in the group as they surged forward, and she struggled to get her footing on the damp, slick grass. Plasma fire streaked overhead, leaving trails of smoke in the air. Behind her, the Elites shrieked in their native tongue.

A bolt whizzed past her head and struck Mousseau square in the back, sending him tumbling forward. Saskia screamed and stumbled down beside him. Blood oozed out of a charred hole in his shirt. In his skin.

“Get up,” growled a familiar voice. A huge hand grabbed the back of her shirt and jerked her to her feet. She went limp, imagining the Elite’s sharp claws shredding deeper into her flesh. “We have to clear out of here now. That means leaving him.”

Behind her, Owen nodded grimly, fired off a couple of shots. The Elites were still coming. And there were more than three of them now too. Saskia counted at least six scrambling over the grass as she jumped to her feet. Owen gave her a shove forward and then resumed firing. Through the haze of plasma smoke and fleeing bodies, she spotted a flash of metal. The freighter. People were already cramming aboard. She pumped her legs and arms even faster, her lungs screaming.

“Right behind you!” Owen shouted.

The freighter’s engine ignited. Farhi hung out of the hatchway, arm outstretched toward Saskia, her eyes on a point behind her. On the Elites, she was sure.

“Jump!” she yelled, eyes flicking back to her for just a second.

She jumped, caught her hand, slammed her feet against the hatch stairs. Farhi pulled her into the freighter, and she pressed up against the cool metal wall and closed her eyes. Gunfire outside. The freighter lifted, the pilot’s voice crackling over the speaker—Saskia couldn’t make out what she was saying.

Owen. Were they leaving Owen behind?

But then there was a clank, and the freighter tilted, canting to the side. Saskia grabbed hold of the wall to keep from tumbling sideways.

“Clear,” Owen said.

“Let’s get the hell out of here,” the pilot said, and this time Saskia understood every word.