Free Halo: Glasslands by Traviss Karen Page A

anything. It was all about the right attitude—a commando’s state of mind.
    “Hi, BB,” Mal said. “Take us to Hinge-head World, then.”

CHAPTER
    THREE
     
    IT’S BEEN ANNOUNCED TODAY THAT ADMIRAL LORD HOOD, CHIEF OF NAVAL OPERATIONS, IS TO HEAD A DIPLOMATIC MISSION TO THE SURVIVING EARTH COLONIES TO DISCUSS RECONSTRUCTION. UEG SOURCES SAY THAT SOME COLONIES HAVE REBUFFED THE OFFER AND WON’T NEGOTIATE WITH THE ADMINISTRATION THEY FEEL ABANDONED THEM. IN OTHER NEWS, UEG PRESIDENT CHARET HAS UNVEILED HER NEW CABINET. AMONG THE CASUALTIES IS COLONIES MINISTER DAVID AGNOLI, WHO’S BEEN REPLACED BY AKEYO ODUYA.
(WAYPOINT NINE NEWS UPDATE, JANUARY 2553)
     
FORERUNNER DYSON SPHERE, ONYX: FOUR HOURS INTO RECONNAISSANCE PATROL.
     
    Mendez did the calculations in his head again as he waded through long grass that left burrs on his pants. Three thousand times three, divided by five hundred, equaled eighteen. They could eke out their emergency rations for eighteen days if they scraped by on a rock-bottom five hundred calories a day.
    Eighteen days eating that crap. It’s going to seem like a hell of a lot longer. How bad can lizard be? I ate a lot worse in escape-and-evasion training.
    As far as he knew, Halsey didn’t carry an escape belt, which meant she didn’t have a survival pack that included three bars of the most foul-tasting but nutritionally dense substance known to man. Anyone who’d had to survive on special forces emergency bars found regular MREs to be a damn five-star restaurant experience by comparison. It was just as well the escape belt included an animal snare plus a hook and line. Mendez was up for cooking anything that moved.
    But he and the Spartans would have to pool their supplies to feed Halsey if push came to shove. He wasn’t sure if he resented that or not.
    Okay, stay hydrated, and hope the Forerunners thought of everything.
    The two structures looked more like old-fashioned cooling towers the closer he got to them. Their walls seemed to be either tiled or decorated with ashlars. It was hard to tell with Forerunner structures because they had a habit of shifting and changing moment to moment, but he could definitely see a grid of indented lines at regular intervals. The grass gave way to scattered trees. Mendez kept a wary eye above him, expecting more flying cylinders to buzz them.
    Tom caught up with him as if he was going to ask a question but he didn’t say anything. They walked side by side in silence for a while, picking their way through the trees, dividing their attention between scanning for possible threats in the branches and checking the ground beneath for anything edible. Mendez couldn’t see Tom’s expression. He knew him well enough by now to pick up on his mood, though.
    “You okay, son?” Mendez asked.
    “Yes, Chief.”
    “You know you did all you could.”
    “Yeah. It’s just the first time someone’s sacrificed their life for me. Deliberately, I mean.”
    Mendez knew that was hard and that it would only get harder until Tom made peace with himself about it. But it was way too soon. Kurt, William, Dante, and Holly weren’t cold in their graves yet, and everyone—himself included—was still at that stage where the deaths hadn’t become an integral part of the new reality. Mendez found himself thinking and acting as if nothing much had happened, and then suddenly remembering who he’d lost. He hadn’t forgotten about it; it was just that grief was set aside out of habit because that was the only way to cope, and every so often it would come crashing back on him, triggered by a dumb thought like needing to tell Kurt something and then remembering that he was dead.
    They didn’t have a war to fight any longer. Terrible as it was, combat could be a blessing. It didn’t give you time to think until much later. Now they all had plenty of quiet time on their hands to brood about the people they’d lost.
    “We don’t know he’s dead,” Tom said. “Only that