Shadows

by UNSCShadow-105

AUTHOR'S NOTE: You know (or should) what belongs to the official Halo peeps (that's 343 these days, right?). The Shadows and at least the names of the 21 Gamma Company Spartan-III's belong to me, as do the Shadows. I write until the Muses release me from their headlock. Sometimes that means one thousand words, and sometimes it means a hundred thousand words. I am but the Muses mouthpiece. If you think having Cortana in your head can be interesting … that's nothing compared to my reality!

Prologue

Mental Journal Entries

September 2517 through March 2553

September 30, 2517

I've been gone a week or so now. One minute I'm falling asleep in my bed and the next I'm on a ship.

They say I am going to be a soldier. Be the UNSC's best chance. And that I cannot return to my family. None of us can. Some of the kids have tried to run. Not me.

I'll write like this a long as I have to. Where they can't see.

Here they don't use our last name. I have a number. Sorta neat, actually.

104

July 14, 2523

Today we played a game of Capture The Flag. Seems I am considered the team's second best sniper and the best spotter. Very cool!

Sometimes I wonder if I should run away. There's something important there, but I can't think of the name of the place that used to be home or what is so important there. I'm only twelve. I tell myself it's okay because maybe with me gone, things will be easier. Half the stress. Then I wonder what that even means. I don't even look like I am twelve. I think that's why we never get R&R or anything like that. We are the UNSC's best kept secret.

I miss something. I have all these brother and sisters that are the same age as me. But different. None of them has my eyes, and sometimes that bothers me, and I don't know why. I should tell someone. Chief Mendez or Dr Halsey, but if I do that, I don't know if they will think I am crazy, and if I am crazy I can't be a Spartan.

I'm not afraid of anything anymore. Well maybe one thing. I just can't remember what. Whenever I get five minutes to just rest and think, I try to remember. But those times are so few. Every time I do it's like a little less is there.

Fred-104

March 2525

So many of the Spartans have washed out. More died. This mission cost us so much. I won't list the names. Maybe I can forget them if I don't think of their names. I forgot every other name I knew before, so why not theirs? No. That won't work. I'll never forget them. Ever.

We've been augmented. It's hard to move. My head hurts. My eyes hurt. Everything hurts. Silver in my hair.

I need to rest. Soon I will compose another entry or exercise or whatever these things I do in my head are called. I wish I could write and send, but I know I can't. I don't even know who I would sent it to. Something … someone I have tried not to forget since the moment I woke up and realized that I wasn't in my room. When they took me in the night. And made me a Spartan.

All that is left are eyes. But maybe that's just the pain.

Fred-104

September 14, 2525

I'm on my way back from our first mission, and we won! We got Colonel Watts. Yes, I killed people. That's what I have been trained to do. Insurrectionists have to be stopped. We had to breach an airlock to get away. That killed a lot of civilians. We were in sealed suits, so we were alright.

Now we're in the Pelican and on our way back. John was shot, but he'll be alright. He always is.

Fred-104

March 31, 2526

The strangest thing happened a couple of days ago. We were sent to Arcadia to stop insurrectionist activity. They have some incredible jungles there and that makes a good planet side hideout for rebels. Apparently they had some old fashioned paper files that Section Three wanted bad enough to call us in to collect them.

Well, we went in at 23:58 and found the base by 01:15. It was very small and for a minute we all thought that we had made a mistake, or that our intel was bad. We took out the outer guards, and were heading into the base itself when we were gassed. Best way to take out Spartans.

First thing I noticed when I woke up is that we were immobilized. Collars used by prisons. Very effective against Spartans. We'll have to watch out for that, but it won't be easy. If we miss the gas … not a lot we can do after that.

Me, John, Kelly and Linda were all sat up far away from each other that we couldn't touch. And we couldn't communicate. We could see through our visors, and talk aloud to each other, even though we didn't, but that was about it. Somehow they had deactivated our helmets. We weren't recording.

There were ten men in this cabin they held us in. The only thing around us were them, eight crates of contraband guns and ammunition, our guns and ammunition, and a file cabinet, which was what we had been sent there to go through for the files, I bet.

But we were neutralized. All we could do is listen to the leader brag about having captured four Spartans. He told us he hadn't expected them to send us, which made me wonder who he had been expecting.

Some of my questions were answered when a sudden commotion broke out outside the building. General Coffee, or at least that's the name he gave us, sent a man to see what was happening, and through the open door I saw at least five men and a few women laying on the ground as if they'd been hit by sniper fire. I was in a good position to see … I don't know exactly what it was I saw, but the man was thrown back in with a thick crossbow bolt in his chest.

Another man ran to close the door but was kicked back inside. We all saw the man hit him square with two feet to his sternum. He used the body to right himself, and he landed lightly beside the body, then slammed his black boot into the fallen mans throat while he turned and slashed the throat of a third man who stepped forward to stop him.

By the time the remaining seven men began to react there were three antagonists in the room. Another man and a woman, judging by their shapes. They were wearing a form fitting black armor, a lot like what we used to wear before we got our MJOLNIR armor. But they had no guns. As we sat there paralyzed and unable to move, they took out every man in the room except the General using only bladed weapons.

One of the men was of average height. I think the tallest among them was a less than a quarter of a meter under my own two meters tall. Big for a human that isn't augmented. The woman was short. Maybe a meter and three quarters at most. She took out three of the men by herself, and was the one to neutralize the General. With a nod, she ordered the men to restrain him, and they dragged him to his feet while he struggled. She was the one in charge, that much was obvious.

A silence had fallen then, and I realized that these people must have neutralized the entire camp. I saw a few out of the open door, kicking bodies to see if they moved and using their knives to make sure they were all dead.

Very thorough. Deadly. Almost like Spartans, but they weren't Spartans, and I knew it.

The woman ignored the General struggling between the two men, and turned to us. She stared at us each individually, but it seems she stared at me for the longest. I could see then that she and her team were wearing four blades; two on their thighs and two on their calves. As they turned I saw another just above the generators at the bases of their spines, but I couldn't identify it. Just the blades; two combat knives and two stilettos. While they were functional, as I had seen, they were also beautiful. I appreciate good blades. But I was confused because the UNSC doesn't use stilettos. Not for centuries, if ever.

"Are any of you injured?" she asked, again looking at our faceplates. She couldn't see our faces inside, but we couldn't see theirs either. They didn't wear helmets. Their form fitting armor extended to a tight cowl that covered every bit of their faces, except their eyes, I assumed. Those were covered with goggles. Their noses and mouths were covered by something almost like old fashioned gas masks, but different. Matte black, just like the rest of them. Lightly armored and almost no bulk on them. Some kind of stealth team.

"We're fine." John replied, and she turned her head to look at him. "You can release us now." he all but ordered.

I don't know if she smiled, but the fabric around her mouth wrinkled a little bit. "No rush, John-117." she stood and looked at each of us. "You, Linda-058, Kelly-087 and," she again looked at me the longest. "Fred-104 are all fine and will be released in due time."

"How do you know who we are?" Linda demanded.

The woman turned, and headed for the file cabinet. "Who doesn't know a Spartan when they see one?" she answered the question with one of her own.

Her men snorted slightly as they held General Coffee. "They aren't as famous as they probably will be." one spoke up and I don't know if his tone was resentful or respectful. "I doubt they will be secret for too long, the way things are going." his goggles turned to us. "But they will never be what we are."

Without looking at the man, she rifled through the files. Then she took out an entire drawer and brought it to the General. "No, they are the best chance for the UNSC and humanity." she seemed to agree with him. She set the drawer down, and looked at the General. "You were going to expose us." she seemed to be chiding him. With her back to me, I could see the cylinder over her generators. But I still didn't know what it was.

He sneered at her. "I don't know whose worse." he growled. He looked for a minute like he was going to say more, but she gently reached up and touched his bottom lip and he fell silent at once.

"That depends on your viewpoint." she replied conversationally, and reached for the cylinder at the small of her back. "Spartans will be the heroes of this war. They will be placed in the history books, and mankind will forgive the sins that created them." she removed the cylinder, and held it slightly away from her back. "History will never know about us. As it should be. To quote Horace, 'Pulvis et umbra sumus.'." she looked up into his confused face. "We are dust and shadow, General Coffee." she translated a second after I had done it in my head.

Behind her, I saw her thumb move and a short arch of energy appeared. It looked to me like an Elite's energy dagger, except it was not mounted on her wrist like theirs are. The men holding him released him and backed off just as she stood, swinging the plasma blade gracefully in a narrow arc and very neatly decapitating the General. His head landed with a thud and rolled a little bit away.

"Alexander, take the General's head and the rest of the squad to the extraction point. Ralf and I will finish the mission, tend to the Spartans, and be ready for extraction in ten." she turned the blade off and returned it to its place at the base of her spine.

The taller of the two men nodded and collected the General's head. He tucked it under his arm. For a second he looked at me, John, Linda and Kelly, and then he nodded and left. Through the door I could see him joined by four others. They talked among themselves, and then moved off to the north. It had been a seven man team, and had taken out fifty at least. Not bad.

"Ralf, go get that can of fuel we saw." she nodded to the remaining man, and he turned and vanished as she turned back to us. She took a step away from the file cabinet drawer and knelt in front of us, still stuck sitting on the damn floor. "To answer your question, Linda-058." she canted her head. "We know who you are because that is why we were created. To know."

"You said you were dust and shadows." John replied instead of Linda, being the highest ranked among us. "You're ONI."

This time there was no doubt that she smiled and it was accompanied by a small laugh. "No, we are not ONI. Not Section Three. We are …." she paused and I could see Ralf return with a large can of fuel, as ordered. She didn't move. "What are we Ralf-131?"

He straightened. "We are ..." even he paused, as if considering. "ONI's greatest fear? Section Threes wet dream? What they would do if they were not held back by military ethics?"

She nodded. "All of that, and more." she agreed. She looked at John. "We are a …. branch of the UNSC that the UNSC does not even know exits. And that you four would be well advised not to report to your superiors. If they don't order psych exams for the bunch of you then they will kill you for being even more paranoid than that which created you." she straightened, and turned back to the drawer moving to pick it up. "Which reminds me, Ralf. Double check that their helmets did not record anything they shouldn't have."

While he did that, she found a match and lit the contents of the drawer on fire.

"Hold on a minute! That's important information!" John protested, but there was nothing he could do. There was nothing any of us could do.

The woman was poking at the papers to make sure it was all burned to ash. "It's dust and shadows now." she dumped the drawer to make absolutely sure there was nothing left, going so far as to crumble the charred paper between her lightly armored fingers. The slight breeze coming from the door increased as the wash from some kind of ship that looked like a Prowler, but definitely wasn't. The wash blew the ashes everywhere.

Ralf-131 finished checking our helmets. "Which one do we release to release the others once we're gone?" he spoke from behind Linda. "Can any of them be trusted? How deep is their indoctrination?"

She didn't even pause to think. "Release Fredrick-104 first." she ordered, and stepped forward as he moved behind me. "All of you remember this." she told us all. "If you speak of us to your superiors, they will probably call for a psych exam, which will be placed forever in your record. Your brother and sister Spartan's will forever worry that you have cracked, being spooked by shadows. It will effect your ability to be an effective Spartan. None of us wants that, least of all you." she looked from one of us to the other. "Tell them that by the time you got here, General Coffee had burned the papers they sent you to collect. There are no computers here, so there are no computer records. All was lost, Spartans. You will never know the service you have done for the UNSC, and humanity today. But we thank you." and she nodded to Ralf.

He released my collar, but did not remove it. "You're free, cousin." he spoke softly even as he moved like the wind with the woman out the door and on to the exfiltration craft.

Since the craft was lifting off by the time I was on my feet, I didn't pursue. I released John, Linda and Kelly, and we checked the cabin for our weapons, which we found easily, and any scrap of paper remaining.

Nothing.

We had nothing left to do but return without the papers. Our helmet cameras had apparently malfunctioned just as we were being gassed.

In the debriefing that followed, I know that we all gave them the story that the woman had given us. She had made sense and we could not explain it at all. In this case, truth really was stranger than fiction. Fear that her words would come true kept us silent.

But when we were out of armor, we talked about it with some of the other Spartans. None of us know who these people were, or who they reported to. Kurt nicknamed them Shadows. It fits. I bet if he had been there, he could have gotten them to tall us something. He has a way with people.

Fred-104

April 27, 2526

The Corbulo Academy of Military Science is gone. And the Covenant glassed Circinius IV. Kelly and I didn't do much, but after we dusted off, I took off my helmet. So did Kelly. The cadets stared at us, and one asked how old we were. "That's classified." was Kelly's reply.

I doubt they would have really believed that we were so many years younger than them, even if we had told them.

Fred-104

November 8, 2531

Kurt is gone. Floating someplace in all that black. As many times as he saved my life, and I couldn't do anything to save him. It's no death for a Spartan.

I don't even know what day it is. I'm so … I don't even know the right word to use.

Fred

February 13, 2535

We've been extracted from Jericho VII. A little disappointing, as we were winning on the ground. But we always do. From orbit, they glassed the planet. In space, Spartans don't do so good.

I'm twenty-four now. I forgot my own birthday until it was over. Maybe it's a sign of old age? I've been doing this for almost twenty years now. Doesn't matter. Spartans don't retire, I don't think.

Fred-104

August 30, 2552

I've stowed my gear, and have half a second. Our mission got scrubbed. That's never happened before. Makes me nervous.

F

September 7, 2552

I pulled groundside duty. Wanted the space op, but Kelly beat me to it. I'm heading up Red Team instead. Our landing was hard. Twenty-seven of us jumped. Four Spartans died just landing. We had to abandon our landing craft, so 'hard' is probably an understatement.

My suit got damaged, and I had to take from Malcolm in order to fix it. He would have wanted me to, but I didn't like having to take a part from a fallen brother.

The Covenant started glassing Reach with us still on it. We're dug in here. Now they're digging us out. Or trying to.

But we're here. Me, Kelly, Vinh, Isacc, and Will. And Dr Halsey too. I don't know why we treat her like military sometimes. Maybe she is like a mother figure. Whatever that means.

We're trapped in some kind of cave with Dr Halsey under the mountain. She taught us to play a game called Twenty Questions, but she stopped. I think we beat her too often. She hates to lose.

Back to examining this damn wall.

F-104

November 3, 2552

I don't even know where to begin. So many dead Spartans. Dr Halsey … stole? Took? Kelly. We're back on Earth now. Been here a week, at least.

Just so busy. But it keeps my mind occupied.

Fred-104

November 8? 2552

I'm not even completely sure of the date. But I think I got it right. We're in some kind of bubble. More science than I can understand. Most of us are dead, I think. Kelly and Linda are here with me. Chief Mendez too. And some of a new kind of Spartan. The III's. Kids. They're kids. The oldest two, Tom and Lucy, are a little more than half my age. The youngest are maybe fourteen. But they're Spartans. I was twenty once. And fourteen. And younger. But those memories are old. Like most everything else, they fade with time.

Seeing their armor made me think of the Shadows. Over the years we have run into them no more than half a dozen times, but it was always when we were sent to retrieve some kind of information that ONI wanted. It was always paper, and the Shadows always beat us to it. Twice they even beat us to the place, and we would arrive to find nothing but bodies and charred, unreadable paper.

For a couple of years we thought they might be that next generation of Spartans Chief Mendez was supposed to be training, but now that I see the Spartan-III's, I know they are not. Whatever those men and women are, they are not fighters. At last not like we are. I think their whole reason for being is to stop certain things from reaching the wrong eyes. And those eyes always seem to be ONI Section Three. They get in and out without being seen or heard, and avoid engaging the enemy. Over the years their armor hasn't changed much. Still light, but now they have active camo that is almost second to none but the Covenant.

Lucy would love them.

I have only encountered them twice. Both times that woman was heading the team. She has been reported on four of the six missions where they have been encountered by Spartans. Of all the names we have gotten among ourselves, hers was never one. I wonder if she even has one.

And I wish she and her team were here now. I bet they could get us out of here. Seems like this is what they were created for.

Fred-104

March 4, 2553

John dead. Dr Halsey arrested. Serin back from the dead. Maybe that means there's hope for John. Our records are now open to us, if we want to see them. I might remember the eyes that I dream about sometimes. Like mine. Maybe they are mine. The eyes are the window to the soul. Who said that? I can't remember, but in here I will have an eternity to figure it out.

As far as the records go, I declined to look. For now. Maybe whatever I forgot was meant to be forgotten. For my own good.

Fred-104