Chapter 1

Alan sat on a cargo crate and took out his combat knife. Trying not to vomit from the rancid odor, he scraped a thick, gooey layer off of the bottom of his boot. As he thought about the look on the Jackal’s face right before he crushed the alien’s head under his shoe, he threw up in his mouth a little bit - just enough to leave the acrid taste of gastric juice in his mouth. Walking on the hot sand had baked the bird’s brains into a layer of dark purple muck. Alan’s knife made a small “plink” when it ran into the tread on the underside of his armored foot. This simple job was finished; now he had to find something else to do to keep his mind from wandering.

He made his rounds through their makeshift camp, checking on the men wounded during the last engagement - the one where he crushed the Jackal’s skull. As Alan made his way over to SPARTAN -O109’s cot, he checked his vital signs on a datapad. He was leveling off; his wound was instantly cauterized by the heat of the explosion that caused it, and for now, the only worry was that he would go into shock.

“Are you feeling at all better, Demitri?” The wounded Spartan ran a gloved hand through his short, brown hair. “Well, chief, since the medics gave me morphine, I’ve been doing great.”

“That’s good,” Alan responded. He immediately thought back to that last fight. It was the third engagement of that morning, and the most recent one as well. He could remember the entire thing very vividly. In fact, Alan’s exceptional memory was often the cause of a lot of his stress; he remembered, with an incredible level of detail, smells, sounds, and emotions. He remembered perfectly seeing the small blue glob of plasma arc through the air and land three feet from Demitri’s right side. He remembered even more perfectly watching his comrade dive to avoid the explosion of the grenade. And most chillingly, he remembered the scream that Demitri issued as his right leg was vaporized up to the knee.

Alan blinked, and it was all gone. He opened his eyes to find himself standing back in front of Demitri’s cot, datapad still in hand. He looked down to the device to find that the screen was cracked and blank. While reminiscing the terror, he had crushed the instrument with his hands.

“Well, I’m glad that you’re feeling better, Demitri,” Alan said awkwardly. “When we get you to a real hospital, we’ll set you up with the guys from cybernetics. They’ll get you back out here in no time.” Demitri gave him a mischievous smirk. He loved to fight - killing Covenant forces seemed to be what he lived for. Alan tossed the broken datapad over his shoulder and into a pile of junk, and continued his walk around the improvised base.

Although he wasn’t the commanding officer of the battalion, SPARTAN - O34 Alan couldn’t help but feel like everything in the conflicts they weathered was his responsibility. He felt each and every wound received by each of the Spartans of Omega Company, their fears, their triumphs, and their pains. And there were his own problems, plentiful and deep.

Alan was terrified. He had been scared of this whole thing from the beginning; from volunteering for the SPARTAN-III program as a child, to basic training, to the day he went into surgery for his physical enhancements. Even though his bones had been grafted with carbide ceramic composite and he was wearing the legendary MJOLNIR Mark VI Armor, of which each suit cost more than an entire UNSC frigate, Alan couldn’t bring himself to be brave. Nothing could make him not fear battle, or the onslaught of the Covenant war machine - and yet his cowardice seemed to be paying off. In every engagement that Omega Company had been in, he had seen comrades exhibit valor. He had seen men run at the enemy, screaming, pouring hot lead from their weapons - in the name of honor, of family and friends lost, and in the name of humanity itself.

And every one of them had met the same fate. Each one of the soldiers he had seen rush into battle courageously had been slaughtered mercilessly by the Covenant. He had seen one man kill seven SpecOps elites before a plasma grenade - the downfall of Demitri’s leg - landed on his helmet and exploded, vaporizing his entire body to atoms.

That was what he feared. Alan wasn’t a coward, per se, but he most certainly did have an immense fear of pain. He feared feeling the boiling plasma corrode his armor and eating his skin away. He feared waiting to die while an Elite commander stood over him, blazing energy sword in hand. But most of all, he feared the consequences of his failure. He was appalled each time he imagined what would happen if Omega Company didn’t live up to its mission parameters - to defend the colony of human refugees from Earth on Chi Ceti IV.

The fact that the commanding officer of Omega Company, SPARTAN - O255 Leo was a touch less than sympathetic only bolstered Alan’s fears of failure. Once, in a discussion that may have been influenced by liquor, Leo explained the nomenclature of their company.

“Do you know the Greek alphabet, three-four?” Alan had put down the book that he was inspecting. “Of course, sir. Alpha, beta, gamma…”

“Yeah, yeah. You know what letter comes last?” Alan tried to think back to his education during training. He struggled for a moment to picture it in his mind, and then it popped into his head.

“Omega?” Alan half-questioned. “Damn right,” Leo replied. “But do you know why they call us Omega?”

“No, Sir.” Alan was at a loss for words. “Because, three-four, we’re the last hope for these people – they have lost everything, and we’re all that stands in the way of them losing their lives.”