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By Root 1203 0

The other part was calm, cold. Why worry, Soren? that second part was asking, as the plane around him caught fire and, screeching and falling apart, gouged a half-kilometer-long channel along the ground. You’ve lived through much worse, it was telling him. You should be able to live through this. Partch, he saw from the corner of his eye, was dead, his neck broken, his eyes glazed over. Soren’s arm seemed to be on fire. He could see the ground and the sky through cracks in the craft as what was left of the fuselage turned over and over again. Metal burning and grinding around him, he waited for whatever god that controlled the farce that was his life to flip some charred and malformed cosmic coin and decide his fate.

EPILOGUE

___________

There was a knocking on the door. Or rather a rapping on the doorframe: The door had already slid open, revealing Chief Petty Officer Mendez, still in fatigues, an unlit Sweet William jutting from one corner of his mouth.

Dr. Halsey looked up from her desk. “Well?” she said.

“I’ve been to the site,” said Mendez, taking the chair at the other side of the desk. She could still smell the smoke in his clothing. “I’ve looked at the wreckage. Not much left. Most of the fuselage is gone and what’s left is mangled, hardly worth much even as scrap. There was a fire as well. There’s a body, charred pretty much beyond recognizing, but it doesn’t belong to Soren-66.”

“How can you be sure?”

Mendez gave her a look. “Wasn’t deformed,” he said. “And no evidence of augmentation. Not to mention he was barely six feet, even when you account for fire damage. Must have been the missing technician, Partch—running DNA now. We don’t know how that one got in here in the first place—take one look at his background and he has all the earmarks of a rebel. We’ve got some sort of problem with somebody higher up in security.”

“I’ll look into it,” said Dr. Halsey.

“You do that, ma’am,” said Mendez. “If I were you I’d run the check again on everybody.”

He took out his lighter and held it near the end of his cigar. Before lighting it, he raised his eyebrows inquisitively. She shook her head. A faint look of disgust crossing his mouth, he put the lighter away, leaving the cigar unlit.

“Anything else, Mendez?” she asked.

“We looked at the parts torn free as well, what we could find of them in the woods. No evidence of him there either. Could be he was thrown out early on. If that’s the case, we’ll never find the body. Or could be he made it out in one piece.”

“You think he’s still alive?” Dr. Halsey asked.

Mendez shrugged. “No way to tell,” he said. “All I’ll say is that it’s strange that we didn’t find any trace of him. Could be alive, I suppose, but it’s not likely, even for a Spartan. Considering the kind of luck that Soren-66 had to this point, it’s hard to imagine things working out well for him.” He paused, meditative. “Then again,” he said, “maybe his luck was about due for a change.”

Dr. Halsey nodded curtly. “How’s Randall doing?” she asked.

Mendez snorted, lips curling back into an almost predatory smile. “He’s fine. Kicking himself for letting his guard down a little, but there was nothing he could have done and as far as I can tell, he didn’t let down much. He might have taken Soren-66, but couldn’t take both him and somebody armed with a tranquilizer. He did what he could. It’s good for him to go through something like this. In the long run, he’ll be a better soldier because of it.”

Halsey nodded. Sink or swim, she couldn’t help but think. And what was it Soren had said, a few years back now? That he didn’t want to be left behind? An incident like this would make Randall less cocky, would get him scrambling to make sure that he was up to snuff.

“I’ve inserted ground troops. Set them combing the woods for the body,” said Mendez.

“They won’t find him,” Dr. Halsey said.

“Maybe not,” he said. “Still it’d be nice to be able to wrap things up, to have some closure.”

“You won’t get it. Pull your men back in and file him MIA,” said Dr. Halsey.

“Not KIA?”

She shook her head. “Not without a body.