Spartans Never Die

It's a difficult thing to describe, the feeling that you've lived longer than you were meant to.

I've fought on the losing side of a war of annihilation for over twenty-five years, and after losing so much over those long years despite, whenever possible, taking action and recommending tactics that overcame obstacles with a minimum expenditure of lives and resources, I decided to push my luck to the fullest. I'd take on risks so others wouldn't have to, and my luck's held out farther than I'd ever thought it could.

But it had to end eventually. One day, onboard a starship in orbit above the planet Reach, I find myself in a position where I, at long last, run out of luck and need to spend my life to save my homeworld.

It never crossed my mind that my story might not end there, that I'd find something else beyond the devastation that I was about to unleash; some new, innocent world untouched by the vast, bloody war I'd fought so long. A world normally as far removed from mine as heaven is from hell. Do I even want yet another reprieve from fate? In fact, perhaps getting another chance wouldn't be a gift, but a curse.

Because if I get a second chance... so do they.