Halo: New Blood by Matt Forbeck

Author:Matt Forbeck
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Pocket Star Books

TWELVE

* * *

We buried the Rookie at sea the following week. The UNSC is great at a lot of things, but they don’t usually handle the repatriation of remains back to the deceased’s home planet. For one, it’s too busy sending living troops into war zones to spare the resources to ship the dead ones in the opposite direction. And two, it’s not always easy to find enough remains to send home. No disrespect intended, but it’s foolish and bittersweet to risk living soldiers to gather their fallen comrades.

Romeo, Dutch, and Mickey were there for the ceremony, of course; all of us in our dress blues at just after the crack of dawn. An honor guard loaded the Rookie’s black coffin into an old Albatross dropship and draped both UEG and ODST flags over his remains with all the respect the man deserved. Then the three of us climbed into the bird, sat in the seats closest to the Rookie, and settled in for the ride.

We didn’t say much to each other. It was a warm, beautiful day, and we left the dropship’s side doors open. The honor guard had secured the flags to the coffin so they wouldn’t go sailing away. We’d been on countless missions with the Rookie just like that, staring out the panoramic doors as the thrumming winds battered us.

We took off from the main port in New Albany and flew low out over the city. I’d gotten a high-altitude view of it as we’d come in for the assault on the captured capitol building, but it had looked a lot like an aerial photograph. Even from there, the vastness of the damage the Covenant had inflicted on the city had been easy to see, but it had been like looking at a distant mountain range.

Now, scudding barely over the rooftops, the destruction seemed far more personal. You could pick out the individual streets that had been destroyed, houses that had been bombed out, even places where the corpses had been burned.

It was a relief when we reached the shore. The ocean’s waves hadn’t changed one bit. This part, at least, still felt like home.

The pilot kept going straight out to sea until we couldn’t see land on any side. We could have been on any of a number of watery planets, maybe even back on Earth.

I knew Draco’s oceans too well to fool myself that way though. The color of the water, the way the sun glinted off the waves, the scent of the breeze.

It felt right.

I stood up to show that we’d gotten to the burial spot, and the pilot hauled the dropship’s engines back until we came to a gentle stop, hovering over some random point.

We gathered around the Rookie’s coffin and stared down at it.

“Why we got to do this?” Romeo said.

I backhanded him across the shoulder. “Show some respect.”

“He don’t mean nothing by it, Gunny,” Dutch said.

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