Chapter 1: Bright Green

If there was one word that people commonly used to describe Lieutenant Kelly Martin of the Office of Naval Intelligence, it was green. The young lieutenant had no ground experience, had been in zero engagements with Insurrectionists, and, while she could fire a gun to save her life, her aim was no good and she was not strong enough to use more than the standard-issue pistol. She commonly misunderstood what tactics would be used in the field, instead offering up classroom procedures when asked—and she rarely was. The only reason she was a part of ONI at all was because of her textbook intelligence. She'd been top of her graduating class of nearly one thousand, and out of so many, had still managed to stand out for the very reason ONI wanted her—her computer skills. While Kelly may not have had the field skills looked for in most recruits, she could hack into any computer, break any code she was given, and could speak almost every language recognized by the UNSC. While this may have secured her position years ago and made her an invaluable member of any team, now there were AIs for her job that worked faster than she could. Kelly was a genius born twenty years too late. She was more suited for menial desk work translating and decrypting intercepted Insurrectionist transmissions than being anywhere in the field. So what was she, Kelly Martin, ONI's greenest lieutenant, doing in the briefing room with half a dozen of the highest ranked officials in the UNSC—including two whom she knew specialized in coordinating field operations—and ONI's infamous AI?

The room was big and not very well lit. The officers were seated at desks on a raised dais in an almost half-circle formation. Kelly fought the urge to fiddle with her class ring while she waited, feeling uncomfortable. She didn't understand why she was here. Above her, heated arguments were whispered until finally someone deigned to notice her.

"Thank you for joining us today, Lieutenant Martin," a man said, rifling through some papers held close to his desk light.

A woman took over. "I assume you don't know why you're here."

"That is correct, ma'am," Kelly replied politely.

The man spoke again. "We've found an anomaly in your file, Lieutenant. It seems as though you have no real-world experience to back your training. Is this true?"

Crap. Kelly had a feeling she knew where this was going. "Yes sir."

"Excellent," another man spoke up. "We have an opening for you in the field. It is time for you to put your skills and training to good use."

Yet another officer took over. "You are to report to the Commonwealth tomorrow at 0700. You are then to accompany the crew and assist in any way necessary. Should the, uh…" she hesitated, "troops aboard need your skills, you are to assist them and accompany them into battle if need be. You will report their progress back to ONI Section 3. You will answer to Captain Wallace, and you will be returned to us as he sees fit. Good luck."

"Thank you, ma'am," Kelly replied, masking her dread.

"Dismissed," the first man said.

Kelly snapped off a salute and, after it was returned, she vanished from the room.

As she headed back to her bunk to miserably pack and wonder what she'd done to deserve this, the argument that had halted before resumed. "It won't work," Dr. Halsey, the only civilian in the room, said firmly. "She's too young, too inexperienced-."

"Too green," someone else cut in.

Halsey nodded. "Exactly. She's too green. He won't even give her the time of the day. None of them will. They'll just see her as a 'snag' in the plan. Just another way to slow them down."

"It will work," Colonel Ackerson argued heatedly, eager to oppose anything Halsey said. "He won't ignore her or look down on her. Beowulf ran all the simulations. It's not going to happen. You saw his conclusions." The AI nodded and Ackerson continued. "We're merely trying to improve your creations, make them better than you ever could. You just don't want us tampering with what you made."

"And you just want to continue your silly vendetta with me and will stoop to any means necessary!"

"Both of you, stop," Admiral Stanforth ordered. "I should have known it was a bad idea to put the two of you in the same room. Let's not forget who the real enemy is here. Now, we obviously won't know for a while rather or not this will work as intended, but I think that with the current situation, we need to act on this now more than ever. Until we find out if we have succeeded, however, there is nothing else we can do. In the meantime, Doctor, I believe you have some packing to do as well, and all of you have other places where you can be more useful. Dismissed."

One by one, they filed quietly from the rom. Dr. Halsey exited last, slowly gathering her papers and leaving her final words to echo softly. "She's just too green."