After a while he'd stopped saying much of anything. The words that had poured out of his mouth, half whispered, sometimes jokes and sometimes little rhymes, they stopped.
He figured that Concord didn't like him much anymore. But what did it matter? Concord had never liked him too much
The forest had trees, that was why it was called a forest.
Bismarck regretted throwing his helmet. From inside a helmet, the world seemed so much farther away. Anything you did to other people or Covenant or animals didn't seem real. It was like watching a movie on a gold tinted screen. It washed the reality out of so many things. It made it so while you were doing something, it didn't seem real until later. He stood there and stared down at his feet.
Shards of the Equinox stuck out of the ground. The director was dead. A lot more people were dead.
Those facts made something in his chest prickle.
Before the Project there had been a feeling like he was slipping into invisibility. Like he was growing dim and not really there more and more until someday he'd wake up and be nothing at all.
He looked at the trees and how they all looked the same and blotted out the sun. It was still hot. Bismarck grunted and sat on the ground. The padding of dead leaves and other foresty things made it soft.
The last time he had been in a forest was with Pyxis. Now he was dead. Everything was booty backwards.
There was a heavy lump in his throat and with his green armor in the shady forest he felt like he could just disappear. And he probably could. How long would it take them to find the body if he just curled up and died like an old dog?
Half of the Equinox was close.
He spread out his legs and leaned back on an elbow. In places where there were no trees shafts of sunlight fell.
Bad things tended to happen in forests. He'd never been deployed to the big city planets that the Covenant were attacking. It was always the forest planets, the desert planets, the planets with the big animals that wanted to end a whole squad before they even had a chance to say boo to their real enemies. Funny how that worked.
There were probably animals here. Big ones with sharp teeth and a bone to pick. If he waited long enough once might come and want a nice bite of Ex-Marine Ex-Mercenary Ex-Agent Bismarck.
He laughed at that but the sound seemed squashed and empty.
There was a gray something pocking out between the trees far off. Maybe a mountain. He strained his eyes and still couldn't see and leaned on his other arm because his hand was starting to get numb.
He was very, very aware of the sidearm and extra clip on his hip.
Concord had called him pathetic more than once and Concord wasn't the first.
He itched the side of his face. Someone had told him once that dead people's hair and fingernails kept growing. That was a load of bull though. Maybe if the bodies were embalmed they did. Real bodies just went runny and swelled up and then dried and became a sweet almond treat.
The lump in his throat got bigger. He heard voices coming from the Equinox so he got up and walked farther away.
His armor felt so heavy. He felt it weighing on his back and shoulders. He thought about tearing it off. In this heat being nude wouldn't be a problem. But sometimes hot planets turned very cold at night.
Would that be the worst thing to happen to him? Freezing to death in a forest, naked? Hypothermia was supposed to be calming, you got all warm and fuzzy in the end. Sometimes too warm. People ripped off their clothes when they froze to death. But he would already be naked to begin with.
He rubbed his eye with the side of his hand. He was so tired and the armor was so heavy. Funny how it didn't seem heavy until there was no reason for him to be wearing it anymore. It hadn't seemed heavy when he had the right to wear it.
Bismarck's thoughts had slowed from a high pitched buzz to a soupy syrup floating past.
The sidearm was in his hand. In the woods with the sunlight beaming through the waxy leaves of the tree, everything almost looked nice. It wouldn't be that bad.
The lump in his throat softened and he swallowed it down. He blinked down at the magnum. He had dispatched people with it. Insurrectionists. Covenant too. Not that particular one, no. But one like it, and that's what mattered. I'd be a shame. He saw what they did to heads. Nash had called him gorgeous.
The gun was worn in some places, dented. He'd never been careful with his weapons. He'd never formed an attachment to any at all. The barrel was scarred and dinged, the bluing scraped away. He experimentally touched it to his face, the side of the firing chamber squishing up his cheek, which was already beginning to gain stubble. It was cold. He stayed there for a few moments, the gun smushed against his cheek, the business end pointing up to the sky.
"Mmm," he grunted.
If they found him dead they wouldn't be particularly sad, he figured. They might even take the time to bury him under a bed of rocks so animals would pick at his corpse, at least the sort that lived above ground.
The gun was warming, his body heat flowing into the cold metal.
His thoughts had been so frantic, then they were slow, and after they were almost non-existent.
There was a rustling in the leaves. Bismarck put the warm gun back in the holster at his hip.
There'd be another time to die, for a better cause. There was no honor in freezing to death naked. No one would give his legacy a pat on the back for that.
He wiped the sweat he hadn't realized was there off his brow, and started back towards the wreckage.
