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“Wha’ do we got down there, anyway?” Roland swabbed the chamber of his M6C suppressed sidearm with a cleaning solution. These long excursions were hell on weaponry, and if a soldier neglected to keep up with the proper maintenance procedures, there was good chance he would be stuck in a firefight with an inoperable firearm, or worse yet, the damn thing could jam and explode in his hand, doing the other side’s job for them.

“The spooks weren’t messin’ ’round with this one, Rolle. The Covies got quite a little picnic setup out here.”

“How’s alpha-target lookin’?” Roland inquired, nodding at the base camp nearest their location.

“Pretty much as expected. Don’t think we’ll need much more than a day or two to scout their movements versus what we’ve been briefed.”

“What about infantry?”

“Moderate.” Jonah scanned the Covenant enclave. “In the high twenties, maybe lower thirties. Definitely not gonna be a cakewalk, but we’ve had worse—”

“Apes or alligators?”

“Huh?”

“We got apes or alligators running the show?” Roland clarified.

Jonah slunk back down into the crevice they would be occupying for the remainder of the night and the next day. “ ’Gators. Saw quite a few, but no sign of Brutes. Usually when one’s around the other’s not—don’t think they like each other much.”

“Fine by me.”

Jonah easily detected the relief in Roland’s voice. “The Elites may be a bitch to deal with,” Roland continued, “but at least they’re smart, right? Smart we can predict—we can plan for.” Jonah nodded his agreement. “The damn Brutes, though,” Roland said, “they’re just a buncha overly aggressive troglodytes. Start shootin’ at ’em and they slip a gasket, go all aggro.”

“They do operate on a shorter fuse. I think it makes ’em fun—like pickin’ on an emotionally stunted twelve-year-old.”

“You were a bully as a kid, weren’t you?”

“Me? No. I was the twelve-year-old,” Jonah corrected.

“Ha. You’d think that’d teach you to have some sympathy for—”

“Sympathy? Shit. If getting my ass bruised every other week taught me anything it was the simple truth that it’s better to be the bully than the bullied.”

“You are one enlightened individual, my friend.”

“Hey, I tend to think I turned out okay.”

“Jay? Yer essentially a government-sanctioned sociopath. That’s not normal, and some would say far from okay.”

“Like yer a fuckin’ saint.”

“Never said I was,” Roland replied, before adding, “but you seem to take a bit more . . . let’s just call it ‘pride’ in our work.”

“Just ’cause I’m good at what I do—” Jonah retorted, a confident swagger in his voice.

“There’s no denyin’ that.”

“Right, so? What’s the issue?”

“I think the issue was: Elites are smart, Brutes are dumb.”

“On which we both agree.”

“And my point—the point I was trying to make—was the Elites’ strategic intelligence makes ’em more of an ideal opponent in direct combat, because we can make educated guesses as to how they’ll react. Whereas Brutes—”

“Ya give ’em the stink-eye,” Jonah interrupted, “and they get pissy—makes ’em lose their head; intellect goes completely out the goddamn window.”

“Right.”

“Right.”

“And that difference in composure—in the way they handle their shit—makes the Brutes tougher to deal with in spur-of-the-moment situations, ’cause who knows what the hell they’ll do.”

“No—I get you,” Jonah corrected. “And this is, what? The nine hundredth time we’ve had this conversation—”

“That’s a bit of a stretch.”

“Well, it’s not the second—” Jonah chuckled, cutting Roland off. “You been tryin’ ta sell me on yer theory of smart-equals-easy, dumb-equals-tough since training. I just ain’t buyin’ it . . . er . . . I guess, really, it’s that I just don’t care much one way or the other.”

Jonah paused to give Roland a chance to respond. When he didn’t, Jonah continued, “I mean . . . I really do get it. And there’s some weird kinda backwards logic to yer thinking, but at the end of the day, Rolle—”

“You just never pay much attention to the tactical side of—” Roland interrupted.

“Tactical what?” Jonah shot back. The