Read Halo: Contact Harvest for Free Online Page B

crowded sidewalks, his dress uniform now as filthy as a set of battlefield fatigues, Avery fled from the paranoia of accusing glances to a dirty crawlspace beneath a riveted riser for the local maglev line—a repurposed brace from Chicago’s old elevated railway, still recognizable despite centuries of shoring. Avery stuffed a green plastic trash bag between himself and the riser and settled into a fitful stupor.
Make me proud, do what’s right. This had been his Aunt’s instruction on the day of his enlistment, her small but strong fingers reaching up to cup his nineteen-year-old chin. Become the man I know you can be.
And Avery had tried. He’d left Earth ready to fight for her and those like her—innocents whose lives the UNSC had convinced him were threatened by men inimical but otherwise identical to him. Killers. Innies. The enemy. But where was the pride? And what had he become?
Avery dreamed of a boy choking in the arms of a woman with a detonator—imagined the perfect shot that would have saved all in the restaurant and his fellow marines. But deep down he knew there was no perfect shot. No magic bullet that could stop the Insurrection.
Avery felt a chill that jerked him awake. But the near-silent rumble of a maglev passenger train overhead had only shifted the bag of trash, setting Avery’s back against the perspiring metal of the old brace. He leaned forward and put his head between his knees. “I’m sorry,” Avery croaked, wishing his aunt were alive to hear it.
Then his mind collapsed under the multiplicative weight of loss and guilt and rage.

Lieutenant Downs slammed the door of his dark blue sedan with enough force to rock the low-swept vehicle on its four thick tires. He’d had the kid hooked, ready to enlist. But then the parents got wind of his efforts, and the whole thing fell apart. If it weren’t for Downs’ uniform, the father might have taken a swing at him. Though he was no longer field-fit, in his dress blues, the UNSC Marine Corps recruiter was still an imposing presence.
As the Lieutenant reordered his mental list of prospects—the small group of primarily young men who’d shown any interest in his cold calls and street-corner pitches—he reminded himself it wasn’t easy recruiting soldiers during wartime. With a war as brutal and unpopular as the Insurrection, his job was damn near impossible. Not that his CO cared. Downs’ quota was five new marines per month. With less than a week to go he hadn’t landed even one.
“You gotta be kidding me…” The Lieutenant grimaced as he rounded the back of his sedan. Someone had used a can of red spray-paint to scrawl INNIES OUT on the vehicle’s thick bumper.
Downs smoothed his close-cropped hair. It was an increasingly popular slogan—a rallying cry for the more liberal core-world citizens who believed the best way to end the killing in Epsilon Eridanus was simply to let the system go—have the military pull out and give the Insurrectionists the autonomy they desired.
The Lieutenant wasn’t a politician. And while he doubted the UN leadership would ever appease the Innies, he knew a few things for sure: The war was still on, the Marine Corps was an all-volunteer force, and he only had a few days to fill his quota before someone with a lot more brass than him took another bite out of his already well-chewed ass.
The Lieutenant popped the sedan’s trunk, and removed his dress cap and briefcase. As the trunk closed automatically behind him, he strode toward the recruitment center, a converted storefront in a strip mall on Chicago’s old, near-north side. As Downs neared the door, he noticed a man slumped against it.
“48789-20114-AJ,” Avery mumbled.
“Say again?” Downs asked. He knew a UNSC serial number when he heard it. But the Lieutenant still hadn’t quite accepted the drunk outside his office was the Marine Corps Staff Sergeant indicated by the four gold chevrons on his filthy dress-coat’s sleeve.
“It’s valid,”