The Multi-Faith Prayer Room of the Achilles was a sterile affair. White washed walls and gleaming metal benches attested to the UNSC's attempts to favour no one religion over the other; and considering half of the room was dedicated to prayer mats, Brian believed their sincerity. Truth be told, when he thought about it - which was often - he was surprised such facilities even existed in this day and age. 

After so many ground breaking revelations of man's origins far out in space, the Bible, Torah and Quran were starting to lose the last of their credibility. The Faithful were dropping in droves to the allure of secularism, and now it seemed to the ageing warrior, that people were more likely to answer to their worldly superiors than to any divine being. This would not bother him so much, but a man with power was exactly that - a man with power, fallible and flawed. The Human-Covenant War had entrenched such men; their words were absolute in the name of Total War and Survival. In many ways, they had become Gods in their own right.

Sure, democracy had been restored along with civilian rule, but some people felt that not everything had been handed back. Terrorism was their sword on the political battlefield, and their anger threatened the ruptured UEG at every turn. Brian was often at the forefront of these violent surges, and he could testify before Saint Peter that he had truly seen the Folly of Man. There was no glory, let alone sport, in vaporising several hundred angry farmers with a plasma battery from space. There was no honour, nor holiness, in shooting defeated men in the back of the head on the orders of some black-ops ass hole. 

And still here he was, fast approaching his fiftieth year, stationed aboard yet another warship, and destined to reap yet more souls of the misguided and the hate-filled. What his missions would be, he did not particularly care, because he knew where ever he was sent, it was with God's blessing. 

"Watch not over me, Father in Heaven," Brian mumbled above clasped hands. "But over the widows I have made, and the children who will never know their fathers because of me. Amen."