CHAPTER ONE
0439 HOURS, DECEMBER 9, 2554 (MILITARY CALENDAR) \
FACILITY BRAVO-SIX, SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA
SUB-LEVEL 3, ONI SECTION-III HEADQUARTERS
Admiral Parangosky entered her office with the same air of dedication she'd done for the last several decades. She was pushing eighty years old, well past the age required for a forced resignation from the United Nations Space Command-which testified to how powerful she was within the organization. Her role as the commander of the Office of Naval Intelligence's Section-Three department, the hub of all the UNSCs special operations, was all the more important now that the war with the Covenant was over. There was plenty of dissent and confusion on the planet brought on by the aftermath of the Covenant invasion, and UNSC and the United Earth Government were all worried that any dormant cells of the old Insurrectionist movement would take advantage of the current situation to bring more chaos and death upon the civilian and military populations of Earth.
Her department, along with the Navy Special Warfare department were working on a top secret project codenamed SHADOW to battle this threat. It involved members of the UNSC Army, Navy, Air Force and its various intelligence agencies, each selected by the artificial intelligence programs in the basements of the ONI buildings. If things went well this new program it could be very beneficial to her own plans down the line.
But she had other things to worry about at the current moment. She was awaiting an important message from one of her field agents concerning another pressing matter. She moved to her personal station and a data-screen popped up, after going through the various security protocols and defensive measures put in place by ONI during the start of the war she opened her message folder looking for any new messages from her field agents, one agent in particular.
There it was, the fourth one from the top of the list, labeled STREETSWEEPER. She tapped the screen once and read
/file is protected by optical scan and voice identification procedures/
/please recite your name and rank and stare at the indicated location on the screen/
She did as the screen indicated "Vice Admiral Margaret Parangosky." she said clearly while staring at a single red dot that had appeared on the screen in front of her. Ten seconds went by while the data was verified and then the file unraveled before her.
/to codename: headhunter/
/from codename: phantom/
/subject: streetsweeper/
/classification: november-black (bgx directive)/
/begin file/
Good morning, I'm sure that you're reading this first thing ma'am considering the subject matter. Everything is in place for the first operation to be carried out, the selection process is nearing completion pending your approval (the service records are in the attachment as are the possible replacement candidates for STREETSWEEPER) once you approve the final roster I'll have them all brought to the Hive for their debrief and introduction to SHADOW. I await your next set of orders.
/end file/
Satisfied she closed the file and opened it's attachment. Service records of over sixty soldiers scrolled across her screen, seasoned in the ways of picking soldiers to lead elite strike teams for special operations she quickly determined that all of the men and women in the list were qualified soldiers for the SHADOW program, but not as field commanders. They were all men and women who'd served in the Marines and the Army, but hardly any had experience in black-ops.
"Lauren," She said to her personal AI "Bring up the CSVs of special-ops personnel who fit the qualifications for SHADOW and give me percentage values indicating performance in a command capacity based on their backgrounds."
The center of her desk turned a dark evergreen color and a small willow tree appeared from nowhere. Parangosky had always like the appearance of her personal AI, she'd dealt with several over the years but none had such a calming effect.
"Conducting..." the AI said and a millisecond later "Done, placing the results on you're screen Admiral."
She watched a total of seven service records appear in front of her, each one had served a minimum of six years in the special forces, the majority of them conducting high-risk operations behind enemy lines with little or no support. The list was made up of four major's, two captains and one first lieutenant. She thumbed through the CSVs looking for the perfect candidate, the percentages put up by the AI were a statistical figure, merely numbers that meant nothing in the real world, almost all of the selected profiles had been working desk jobs for ONI as of late, only two seemed to fit the criteria for what she needed. She needed someone who was on the active roster.
She made her selection and forwarded the information to her field agent in an encrypted message that simply read: Get me this man.
She included the datalink to her selections' CSV as an attachment to her message, sent it and then deleted every trace of it every existing, having her personal AI follow it to it's destination to plant an erasure protocol into the recipients computer dedicated to removing that sole file after reading in case the field agent didn't, which was a slim chance.
SHADOW looked like it would be a great asset indeed.
0430 HOURS, NOVEMBER 3, 2554 (MILITARY CALENDAR) \
UNSC MILITARY BASE ALPHA-EIGHT-ZERO [CODENAME: AURORA]
SPECIAL OPERATIONS TRAINING CENTER NINE [LANDING PLATFORM OSCAR
First Lieutenant Evan Spade was still getting used to his new routine.
He was used to dodging enemy fire, an uneven sleep schedule and dealing with the fact that Humanity as a whole might be nearing its end. Dead bodies and screams were what he was used to seeing and hearing, not the sounds of birds chirping early in the morning. He'd spent plenty of time around the SO barracks of Aurora Base in his time in the 105th Orbital Drop Shock Troopers Regiment, but he'd never been confined to its premise for this long. Then again, his last mission had been the most harrowing and maybe even most traumatic of his entire career, which was filled with high-stakes missions with marginally high casualties. It seemed that he was a favorite of the ONI spooks, they put him in situations where death was more likely than survival and he always seemed to come out alive with the mission goal intact.
He was liking his new routine much better, even though it was much more foreign to him, he spent his days in the gym working out his frustrations, even a few sparring matches with fellow ODSTs who'd survived the war. But his biggest joy was the fact that he got to spend the majority of his time terrorizing the new recruits for the ODST program, he was the lead Drill Instructor in U.A.O.D.O [Urban Area Offensive/Defensive Operations] Training. He got to run his troops ragged, he ran them through counter-sniping drills, advanced room-to-room clearing techniques and advanced hand-to-hand combat skills not taught to your basic Marine recruits. There was also advanced weapons training and the ever popular Scrambler which was the nickname given to the simulation pods of the standard ODST Single Occupant Exoatmospheric Insertion Vehicle, the egg shaped pod that ODSTs used to land on a planets surface within hostile territory.
The Scrambler simulated all the effects and G-Forces that one could expect from being jettisoned from the belly of a UNSC ship in a low planetary orbit...needless to say it was an easy tool to weed out the weak from the herd, if you somehow made it through the intense physical training the Scrambler would surely show you what you were made of, mostly due to the fact that most of what you were made of ended up vomited all over the floor of the simulator. Today was one of the good days Spade so rarely had back during the war.
He was breaking in a new group of recruits.
It amazed him that people still wanted to join the military after the war with the Covenant. It must have been the uniform that attracted people to the UNSCDF, either that or people just wanted to be like those they emulated. Surviving soldiers from the UNSC, ODSTs especially, were looked at as heroes by the civilian population.
Indeed they were.
Spade had seen several of his fellow ODSTs throw their bodies between the plasma weaponry of the Covenant and a civilian. It took a special kind of man, or woman, to allow yourself to be burned alive rather than let a civilian be killed. Spade himself had done that very thing, though his wounds hadn't killed him, he'd taken over a dozen rounds from a Brute Spiker along his back. That was a mission he wouldn't soon forget either, he'd earned a nickname that got him free beers at any bar he frequented due to that battle with the Covenant.
Evan Spade: Hero of Sian.
That was the battle that had brought him to the attention of the ONI spooks, after that day he'd performed more high-stake operations than he thought he'd ever participate in. If only he knew how much he would end up loosing.
It didn't take him too long to reach the hangar bay where the D77 Pelican Dropship carrying his new class of Orbital Drop Shock Troopers would soon arrive. The air outside was cool, like it always was in the morning. No matter what planet he was on, the smell of an impending rain was always the same, something that Spade felt funny.
There were five other ODSTs standing around the outdoor landing pad, each one a good friend of Spade's, some he'd known for years and some he'd known for days. Sergeant Major Derek Rodriguez was one of the men he'd known for years. He found it funny that Rodriguez was an ODST, back when the two had been young Marine recruits, which was about twenty or so years into the war with the Covenant, Rodriguez had said that ODSTs were pretty boys with fancy toys. When it came time to either join the ODSTs or remain a Marine, Rodriguez and Spade had gone their separate ways, the former remained a Marine and the later became a member of the One-Oh-Five.
The instructors were all wearing matte-gray battle fatigues, whereas Spade was wearing the full ODST UEF-II combat rig.
"Morning Lieutenant," Rodriguez said "Got some fresh meat for you today. Planning on giving them a hard time first day out?"
"Maybe." Spade replied "ETA on our batch of potentials?"
"Within the next ten minutes."
"Glad you got here early then." Spade turned to face the other ODST instructors "I want everyone in full combat gear before these recruits get here. I want them to see what they're getting themselves into."
The instructors all filed out of the room without question, except for Rodriguez.
"You to sergeant major." Spade said.
Rodriguez nodded "Yes sir."
By the time the trainers had outfitted themselves with their UEF-II rig, the roar of the D77s engines could be heard off in the distance, along with the first rays of today's sunlight.
Every soldier could pick out the sound of a D77, those engines meant hope of being evacuated, being moved to your next target location or the holy grail of a UNSC Marine...heading home.
"Delta-Two, confirm inbound status with Oscar-Lima-Paris-Six-One." the flight attendant of the outdoor landing pad transmitted over the open SQUADCOM.
"Affirmative Oscar-Lima. Delta-Two on approach with a batch of fresh ones for you."
Spade grinned.
"We'll see how fresh they are once we get them in The Pit." one of the other trainers said.
"How many other UEFs do we have in store?" Spade asked.
"Five sir, one for a small squad. Why?" Gunnery Sergeant St. Claire said.
"I want to see what they can do, the last batch was a bunch of recruits straight from Marine basic. This group has a couple of Marines who've seen active combat during the war."
"How do you know that?" Rodriguez said.
"I served with them on Bastion-III." Spade said "First Sergeant Darrell Weathers and Staff Sergeant Sarah Parks, check the CSVs if you want, they've been forwarded to your databank."
Rodriguez slipped on his helmet and opened the UNSCDF personnel database, accessible only to training staff, and pulled up their records.
"St. Claire, Romero get those Mark-II rigs onto gurneys and roll them out here when I give you the signal."
"Got a plan for them already boss?" Gunnery Sergeant Harris asked as the two other trainers walked back into the armory to sort out the suits of armor.
"Yeah," Spade said "We'll run them through the HR simulation after we get them suited up. You, Rodriguez and St. Claire are going to play hostage takers. The rest of us are going to be in observation. Don't take it easy on them."
"Sir," Harris said with a wounded look "Have we ever taken it easy on any trainees when they arrive?"
"No." Spade said with a short laugh "No I guess not. We'll put them through a few hours of PT after this, then hit them with the Scrambler tomorrow."
"Already, don't you think that's a bit early sir?"
"Judging by their CSVs I think that Parks and McGregor could handle it right off the bat." Rodriguez said pulling off his helmet. "Solid soldiers, Green to the bone."
"We'll see." Harris said.
0521 HOURS, NOVEMBER 3, 2554, SYDNEY AUSTRALIA (MILITARY CALENDAR)\
MILITARY BASE BRAVO-SIX [CODENAME: THE HIVE]
ONI SECTION-I MILINT DATABASE, LEVEL C9 [CODENAME: CIPHER]
Captain Marcus Burns loved his post, he just sat in a large comfortable chair with a cup of coffee while the latest group of intelligence officers to graduate from the Office of Naval Intelligence training academy sorted through the various intelligence reports flowing in from the beaten and bruised planet of Earth. It seemed a lot of people were gathering outside UEG facilities and the higher-ups were getting nervous. The last thing anyone of them wanted was for mass riots to breakout across the planet when their was so much rebuilding to be done.
Then there was that alien construct out in Africa. Who knew what the S3 spooks were doing out there with that thing.
"Sir Alpha-Niner is reporting in, looks like they located the missing weapons cache. They say that there is a problem." the young intelligence officer said to his superior.
Burns walked over to the young IOs station and looked at the screen.
"Looks like the missing weapons cache is in the hands of a street gang in downtown Atlanta. Looks like Section-III flagged this particular group off limits to the rest of us."
Burns stroked his chin "If they're watching that gang they must be something special. Flag it ares-six and pass it on to S3, HIGHCOMM wants those weapons caches back in our hands, direct action may be necessary for this one."
"Special forces sir?" the young officer asked.
"You're better off not knowing kid, trust me."
The IO just nodded his head and did as he was told, while Burns returned to his post and the lukewarm cup of coffee waiting for him.
0530 HOURS, NOVEMBER 3, 2554, SYDNEY AUSTRALIA (MILITARY CALENDAR)\
UNSC MILITARY BASE BRAVO-SIX [CODENAME: THE HIVE] / ONI SECTION-III HQ
OFFICE OF MAJOR GENERAL KYLE FORD, SECTION-III DIRECTOR OF OPERATIONS
"Good morning sir, you're first appointment of the day will be arriving in just a few hours." the 'smart' AI that Major General Kyle Ford uses as his assistant said upon his entering of the .office Section-III had given him deep inside the bowels of The Hive.
"Refresh my memory Julius." Ford said taking a sip of his fresh brewed coffee "Who am I meeting at this godforsaken hour and what are we talking about?"
"SHADOW sir," Julius said appearing on the ONI spooks left "Admiral Parangosky has sent one of her associates to go over the finer details of the project."
"SHADOW huh, have we gotten the final roster approval from HIGHCOMM yet?"
"The Admiral sent a message to you earlier on, it simply stated that she had selected a team leader and that the roster, CSVs for all participants included, should be here when her associate arrives."
"What is this associates' name Julius?"
"He is a general sir who worked closely with Colonel Ackerson before his death and the vacating of the Section-III Director of Operations post. His name is Arthur Prewitt, I suspect he'll be sizing you up to see if you're going to be able to handle the job sir."
"How am I doing so far?"
"There is no statistical change in the way you run Section-III compared to Colonel Ackerson and his methods."
"Thats not what I meant Julius I was asking-"
"Pardon sir, but there is an alert flagged ares-six. Just arrived from the MILINT intake team in S1."
"Bring it up on my neural lace if you'd be so kind."
The AI bowed once and letters began to scroll across Fords' field of vision.
"Julius, can you locate the S3 operative who flagged this street gang off limits? I did not authorize this action."
"Give me a moment." the AI said, not even a tenth of a second later "Sorry sir but I have not been able to find any records of that action being carried out."
"What?" Ford said.
"There is no record, as far as I can tell Section-III never had knowledge of this particular criminal organization."
"Well somebody did Julius," He said pinching the bridge of his nose "I need a list of S3 Operators in Atlanta, pick out two operatives and have orders transmitted to them. I want that weapons cache secured and that gang neutralized."
"Neutralized sir?"
"Wiped out, that way nothing like this ever happens again."
"As you wish sir," Julius said "You're appointment has arrived."
"Let him in."
Five seconds after the AI faded away, a tall man with a somewhat muscular body and thinning red hair entered Fords' office, wearing the gray drab tunic of a high ranking ONI officer.
Ford stood and extended his hand "General Prewitt I presume?"
"Yes, nice to finally meet you Major General Ford."
"Just Major if you don't mind sir, takes too long to say in formal settings."Ford said sitting down and indicating Prewitt to do the same. "Now, to turn to SHADOW."
"Yes, I have the final roster choices here. There have been some last minute additions to the original list. It seems some of the command staff was not up to Margarets' standards and they had to be reselected."
"How did they not meet her standards?"
"The majority of the choices have been working desk jobs for a while and havent spent much time working with the rest of special-ops personnel. She wants someone who's still an active soldier."
"Active isnt something most soldiers are today," Ford said "They spend their time working with police units across the planet acting as surplus units to keep the peace."
"Something that is proving harder and harder with each passing moment." Prewitt said "It's come to my attention that you have a black-flagged gang in Atlanta. Sounds like a good time to send out the SHADOW Team."
"It hasnt been assembled yet." Ford said.
"Dispatch the orders as an ONI/ODST operation. The majority of the roster is from the One-Oh-Five correct?"
"Well yes but-"
"But nothing, deploy a team of ODST Operatives along with the two ONI field agents assigned to SHADOW to deal with the problem, if you need it I can have Admiral Parangosky transmit the orders herself."
Ford let out a sigh "That wont be necessary sir, I'll have my AI select a group of soldiers and have them deployed under the cover of a Police unit engaging a criminal organization."
"Very good," Prewitt said standing "We want this man to lead the strike team, he is the man Admiral Parangosky believes will be best suited as the Field Commander for SHADOW."
Prewitt slid a file across the desk and Ford picked it up. After noting the name of the man on the file Ford leaned back in his chair and stared Prewitt dead in the face. "You can't be serious."
A smile creeped across Prewitt's face.
"Of course we are. The admiral said she wanted the best."