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“We’ve been eyeing stuff like this on every op. Almost pulled the trigger on the mission we met you on,” Felicia said. “But there was too much going on and the bank was too far away from the action.”

“But now that we found you, it’s like it was meant to be,” Eric said, looking into my eyes. “This is the one. It’s perfect.”

Under the haze of alcohol, the team back together again, I felt like I’d refound my family.

It was us against everyone.

I was scared, but I didn’t want to let them down. I’d fought beside them. Hell, I’d been created beside them. We were a team. And I wasn’t going to let them down. No matter what misgivings I had about this crazy scheme.

We had nothing left to lose.

War had stripped us of many things; made us hard, unflinching, dangerous. But it had forced us into a close bond at the beginning, and reinforced it when we’d found each other again after all these years.

I didn’t want to lose them again.

WE DIDN’T come in by SOEIVs for this mission, but by Pelicans. They came out of orbit far from Covenant detection and then flew for hours until we reached the edge of our new combat zone.

The small city was in the center of a horseshoe-shaped range of small mountains. Its center plaza sat on top of where four mountain streams joined up to become the head of a strong river that trickled out the valley.

Our Pelicans came in low through a valley, just barely missing a rock ravine on either side as they flew up, over, and then back down, just feet over the ground. Risky, but again, the Covenant were none the wiser.

So far.

A hundred ODSTs fanned out through the city, clumping up temporarily to double-check weapons and strategy.

I stood in the middle of the plaza road and watched it all with Felicia and Eric.

Downriver the Covenant had thrown together a dam and dug in with a bustle of activity. Organic ships zoomed around overhead, and thousands of Grunts operated a constant hum of machinery that dissolved the ground.

We could hear the operations in the distance of the evacuated, eerily quiet city.

“Do you know what the city’s called?” I asked.

“Mount Haven,” Felicia said.

Two heavy machine guns had been mounted up on top of strategically located buildings in the city’s center. Manned by two ODSTs, Amey and Charleston, both were picked out by Felicia, and there in case the Covenant decided to come sniffing. They also had rocket launchers at their feet for an extra punch if needed.

The other two members of that team, Orrin and Dale, stood with rocket launchers down the street.

Sita stood with Felicia, holding a BR55 battle rifle slung under her arm, and Teller, a pale, gray-haired colonel, lounged by a doorway with a pair of SMGs.

The eight of us were the base team, along with Eric in the Pelican with the Gatling gun in the nose making the ninth. This was base camp.

The other Pelicans were scattered around the edges of the city, ostensibly to reduce the chance of their getting hit by Covenant fire if things got hot; but it was really just an order by Felicia to keep them out of view of the city center.

Teams of ODSTs moved off downriver, and within ten minutes the city fell quiet.

Just the buildings around the river plaza and us, left behind to keep Mount Haven “secure.”

There was an empty Jim Dandy’s restaurant nearby. City Hall stood quiet with its facade of marble in the shadows.

The stately, two-story bank stood there, waiting for us.

“Okay, let’s go!” Felicia shouted.

Orrin and Dale set their launchers up against the side of the bank and rigged explosives on the bank’s thick front doors.

They blew off with a surprisingly muted thump. Precise shaped charges. The duo was good at this. They would be old CMA professionals that Felicia dug up.

“We have twenty minutes before the Pelicans will be getting ready to come back for the pickup,” Felicia said as she led us into the bank. “So everybody move, move, move.”

Sita, Teller, Orrin, and Dale all ran with her. The next obstacle was getting