“Yeah.” Jonah paused as he gave the area one last visual sweep—Covenant carcasses and discarded weapons littered the campsite. “This place is dead anyway—”
	As the last syllable escaped Jonah’s lips a sudden crackle of energy sparked in the cool night air.
	Roland’s body quaked—a violent, sudden spasm erupting from his torso and pulsing through his limbs in a series of aftershocks—then he seized as the muscles along his spinal column clinched and froze.
	Jonah sprang back, instinctively taking up a defensive stance—pistol instantly off his hip and in firing position, the events before him slowing to a crawl.
	For less than a second Roland stood perfectly upright and motionless before his body jerked with another forceful, involuntary start as the dual-pronged tips of a Covenant energy sword pierced his chest, sliding through his body and armor like wet paper. Jonah’s eye caught on the flicker of the blade’s plasma sizzling red with blood—the weapon’s dual blades protruded farther from his partner’s chest.
	...
	Roland’s muscles relaxed and he let out a gurgled, raspy cough, and a single, whispered word . . . “Clear . . .”
	Everything—the blade, Roland, Jonah, the evening breeze—stopped for a handful of seconds—still and eerily serene; the only sound the pop and sizzle of the energy sword as it seared the flesh around and between the wounds.
	Then, just as suddenly as it had appeared, the floating sword pushed forward with a quick, deliberate thrust before viciously being ripped up and away, exiting through the Spartan’s right shoulder, just below the neck. Upon reaching the apex of its arc, the energy sword shimmered then blinked out. Gone—but not gone.
	The force of the swipe nearly cleaved Roland’s upper body in two, a thick geyser of blood spraying upward as the mortally wounded soldier slumped to the dirt, lifeless. As Roland fell, the spray of his blood coated a cloaked shape looming directly over his broken body.