2325 hours, 10th May, 2545 (Military Calendar)
Tau Ceti System, Atheos City
Planet Diogenes
A hand reached across the bar and gingerly picked up a bottle of hard liquor. The hand then raised the bottle in an unsteady grip to parched lips greedy for the liquid salve. Then that same hand set the bottle down, a trickle of piss amber rolling down the side and soaking into the wooden table.
It wasn't Major William's first bottle, nor was it the only mind altering substance he'd indulged in tonight. Things needed to be forgotten and memories needed to be dulled, no matter what it did to his liver.
War is Hell. Plain and simple, no other saying could come as close to the truth as that did. If the plasma and the glassing or the fog of war didn't kill you, the politics and the war bonds drives would make you sick to your stomach.
The heavy Wraiths could glass an area with a diameter of ten meters, and do that from over five klicks away. When one blob of plasma hit the firebase's landing pad, everything within eight meters was vaporized. A Pelican, six men, asphalt, munitions crates; everything became a roiling cloud of superheated gasses, leaving behind a sizable crater filling with a puddle of pyroclastic glass.
Major Williams never knew why the other four blobs never hit the firebase. Maybe the Covenant's advanced equipment was deficient of such base necessities like proper ranging equipment. Or maybe the gunners hadn't been trained well enough. But he knew why they never got off a second volley, and he'd personally thanked the Sparrowhawk crewmen who'd dusted the enemy mortars with volleys of cluster rockets, adding five more Wraith silhouettes to their aircraft.
Inside the Firebase, Williams was fighting a battle of a different sort; a war against a deskbound officer overseeing the evacuation of the Cumberland Basin. Williams' argument was simple: the more Marines the officer sent over, the longer Williams could hold Nashville Ridge. The longer Williams held the ridge in the north, the longer the officer had to evacuate the populace to the south. The faster the officer sent the Marines, the fewer of Williams' current force who would die.
Williams' fight had many fronts: it was also with the intelligence types who couldn't even get him surveillance satellite coverage (to be fair, they were fighting multiple fronts too) He was also fighting the Navy liaison, who was uncertain of the disposition of the Covenant carrier orbiting above them, or the whereabouts of the UNSC support frigates in orbit.
One minute, he was fighting like a madman, expertly marshaling his remaining forces and while dealing with the other branches of the military.
The next minute, the Covenant landing site was obliterated, and the alien armored column floating towards the ridge was thrown into chaos.
Major Williams frowned. He couldn't quite remember ordering two bottle of liquor. He groped for one, felt nothing, and reached for the other. In his inebriated state, he knocked over the bottle, spilling alcohol across the table.
Some bean counter with too much time on his hands had calculated that each of his Marines had given the UNSC an extra seventy-five seconds to evacuate the Cumberland basin. The UNSC had evacuated ten civilians every minute. Another bean counter (of which there were too many in this military) figured that each Marine cost the UNSC 959,000 Cr during his service and afterwards (Training, food, armor, college, benefits) but only 241,000 Cr if he died in the line of duty. Each enemy killed required an estimated average of 850 Cr in MA5B bullets, or 25 Cr in grenades. The cost of support, transportation, and other such important factors had been too complicated for the guy to solve, but he said he was working on it.
One death is a tragedy, a madman once said. A million deaths is a statistic. One you kept hidden from the public as you went out and redoubled your recruiting efforts, but a statistic nonetheless.
Major Williams was experienced enough to know a desperate situation when he saw it. Nashville Ridge hadn't been a desperate struggle; it had been made desperate. The faulty intelligence made it desperate. The shortsighted pencil-pusher who refused to commit more troops made it desperate. The civilians who refused to be evacuated to a different port via maglev train had made it desperate. Hence they'd required guarding, and took longer to evacuate since they had to use the local space elevator.
Only the direst of circumstances required silver bullets. Desperate situations could be mended with spit and elbow grease, and Major Williams was perfectly capable of fighting his way back.
When he met the Spartans who saved him, an hour after the battle, he'd been politely confused. While shaking their hands and congratulating them, he'd remarked that they hadn't been necessary, in the same way you would inform a waiter that you'd ordered the chef salad, not the chicken teriyaki. Ordinary Marines had been fighting this battle, and ordinary Marines could have finished the fight. But thanks all the same.
Using the Spartans for this job had been like lighting a cigarette with a plasma cutter. A waste of expensive resources when lighters did just fine. No malice intended; Major Williams was grateful for what they'd done.
Unfortunately, a civilian embed had been watching, writing up the battle for Reuters, and got a decent snapshot of the Major and the Spartan shaking hands. And as one wise man had said, a lie will get halfway around the world before Truth can get its pants on.
"Maybe it's time to go home."
The thought had only begun to contemplate crossing his mind. But as it looked out across the foggy, alcohol-ridden expanse through which it would have to trek, it decided that it was better off staying home with a good book.
Williams didn't even have a home to go to, just a barracks holed up behind concrete walls and a guard station. They wouldn't miss him there; his company was still down to half strength. Of that, twenty (Few of whom actually believed that the Spartans did something heroic on Nashville Ridge. Williams knew a certain individual in that group who would take any excuse to get off active duty) were off touring with the Department of Public Information, rubbing elbows with talk show hosts and ghost writers.
They were off selling War Bonds. Selling the story of how the Spartans won the day at Nashville Ridge. How the Spartan Program is winning this war.
Except the Covenant had glassed the planet when they were done. Not even the Spartans could have stopped that.
The Spartans actually earned medals of valor for Nashville Ridge; Williams had objected on the grounds that "Above and Beyond the Call of Duty" meant something entirely different to a Spartan. Nevertheless, Williams had been requested (in no uncertain terms) to speak at the televised ceremony. The speech was not his own, but written by a PR flak with a degree in advertisement. As such, it was included the phrases "The UNSC's Finest," "Giving their all for the Citizens of the UNSC," and "The Pride of our Armed Forces."
It wouldn't have hurt so much if he hadn't watched the news for the past month. All of the mainstream (and much of the sideline) articles focused solely on the Spartans. The only front-page mention of his company was a blurb on the strategic situation, with the phrase "After the defeat and routing of the 410th company, when all seemed hopeless."
It hadn't been close to defeat. It hadn't been hopeless. But everyone who heard him say this assumed that he was prideful, covering up his mistakes and inabilities.
Even so, he'd had to read the speech, shake the armored hands of the Spartans, and award them the Medal of Valor. It wasn't their first, and if the DPI had anything to say about it, it wouldn't be their last.
"When I called for reinforcements," he'd told the last one while the cameras were clicking. "I didn't think they'd send a Spartan." Scripted, written by somebody else, but the most truthful thing he'd said that night, up till then.
His only satisfaction was that any soldier who watched this video would know why this ceremony was going on. Political awards were always televised, and visa-versa.
Major Williams staggered from his seat to the door of the bar; having decided that it was time to call it quits. The RFID chip in his chatter was instantly billed for his night of drinking, as well as clean up costs.
As he stumbled down the street, some part of his mind wandered, deliberately trying to find cheerier thoughts to brood upon. After a swig from the bottle he'd taken with him, Williams remembered that letter to the editors of Leatherneck Magazine. It concerned a recent article on the jobs of civilian embeds; specifically, it refuted the alleged 'pros' of having them around, and just what Williams would like to shove up their collective a-
-No, think of something cheerier.
A car sped past him, running through a puddle of water and splashing him. His lower legs were pelted with cold water and pebbles that stung like bullets.
Bullets…
Another article in Leatherneck concerned the BR-55, just a blurb on how small development problems and production costs delayed their deployment… again.
Violently, compulsively, Williams swung the whiskey bottle back and threw it as hard as he could at the fading taillights. How much did that fancy armor cost? How much did it cost to train them? For the absence of one Spartan, how many armies of Marines could be formed, armed, and supplied? How many armored cavalry companies could be bought?
It just didn't make sense!
He grabbed a lamppost to keep himself from stumbling. He had to find someplace to rest, to get cleaned up before he went back to base. Seeing their major like this wouldn't do much for the Marines' morale.
But first, he had to take a piss.
He looked around, trying to get his bearings and hopefully find a public restroom. He'd traveled a few blocks, and now he was surrounded by shops and strip malls, a few of which were open.
But the building in front of him was a recruiting station, locked down for the night. Its windows were large, shatterproof, and covered with posters. Besides the usual "Buy War Bonds" posters, there was a large poster emblazoned with "Stand. Fight. Serve." It was almost as tall as Williams, and featured a large Spartan backdropped with a burning city, dual wielding SMGs.
Another sin of the DPI: Spartans were too cool to use the standard Marine armaments. They were always dual-wielding SMGs (And never reloaded) or chain guns (Yeah frikkin' right.) or occasionally some sort of laser-blasting BFG derisively referred to as the Spartan Laser. Common knowledge in the Marines held that the thing referred to as the Spartan Laser was really just a repainted prop from a 2515 budget action flick.
Williams ambled over and stood in front of the poster. Observant bystanders, if there were any at this time of night, would have hear a zipping and then a trickling sound before the Spartan's armor was stained a different shade of green.
The door slammed shut. Williams was away from the cold electronic eyes. He'd escaped the pigs in business suits and the wolves with microphones. And he was about to give one of those Spartans a piece of his mind.
"Hey, coldface!" Only now did the Spartan turn around and acknowledge him. If Williams wasn't so angry and bitter, he'd realize that this was because of training, not arrogance.
A lot of thought had gone into the Spartans' attire. Would they wear the imposing armor, or would they wear dress whites and drive the point home that they were a part of the UNSC military? The powers that be decided on the former, sans helmets. They were as bad as the worst rumors dame them out to be: All cold face and bleached skin, mechanical automatons down to the smallest movement.
Williams glared at those distant, calculating eyes. Calculating was the wrong word to use; those eyes were neither cunning nor shady, but they were always analyzing everything, surely missed nothing.
But then Williams realized he was stumbling over his words. Here was the cause of his misery, and he didn't know what to say.
"You know what I owe you? Nothing. I don't owe you anything." He paused. His words were like water on a rock. If they did anything, the rock didn't show it. This made him furious.
"Two hundred and fifty eight soldiers died on that ridge. You and your lot sacrificed nothing. That doesn't make you a hero; that makes the fallen soldiers heroes. You haven't done anything that a cruise missile or a gunship or a platoon of well-trained ODSTs couldn't do. You haven't justified your existence. You are a waste of resources."
There! A flicker of something in the Spartan's expression. Galvanized for drawing blood, Williams amped up the bitterness in his voice as he stalked off.
"You're useful," he shouted over his shoulder. "But so is my rifle! So is a Scorpion! And they probably cost less!"
If the Spartan ever said anything, it was drowned out by the exit door slamming shut behind Williams.
Major Williams leaned against the "Stand. Fight. Serve!" part of the poster, the area that wasn't soaked with urine. His forearm braced against the cheap plastic and his head rested in the crook of his arm.
Every time he revisited that scenario, he thought of new things to say. Grander phrases, more vicious attacks. Each time, he imagined himself chipping a larger scar into that slab of granite.
But he was outnumbered; the Spartans were everywhere. Calendars, posters, war movies, news stories, kindergarten backpacks. He couldn't fight them all, nor the millions of bureaucrats in the Department of Public Information. Even if he could, there was no way the UNSC would dig up a months-old story and talk about the Sacrifice of the 410th, because Sacrifice meant loss, and loss in a war was loss in public morale, support, and War Bond sales.
No way would he get a memorial to his lost men either. If the 410th got a monument or a plaque, then every significant battle during this war would get a memorial. There simply wasn't enough material or space available for remembrance.
As Major Williams slid off the poster and fell into the spreading puddle of his own piss, one last crazy thought entered his head. When the historians of the future wrote about this war, would they look at the public records and decide that Spartans had fought in every battle, instead of a few key engagements? As his body hit the sidewalk and he felt himself drifting away, he imagined a class of students staring in puzzlement as their teacher tried to explain what a Marine was.
When the recruiting station opened up the next day, he was carried inside and written up on drunk and disorderly charges. It wasn't the first time, and it wouldn't be the last.
A/N: Pardon me for the extremely cynical and bitter oneshot, but I've noticed a disturbing trend in the Haloverse:
Too many Spartans!
Arguably, this fic all started out when Ensemble Studios released news about the Spartan unit in their game. Instead of keeping the Spartans cool but in the background, the Spartans are kingmaker units that are above the RPS balancing, and are acquired soon enough to be usable in every game.
Then Bungie announced The Cole Protocol, which means that we have 5 books out of six focusing on the Spartans, and three and a half games out of four focusing on the Spartans, when the Marines and Covenant have just as much of a story to tell, if not more.
Finally, some idiot on the HWF justified the implementation of the Cyclops by saying "You won't always have Spartans around to do the job." It seems that there is a mindset among Halo fans that the UNSC can't do anything without the Spartans around to do the job for them. But with only 33 Spartans around to fight, the Spartans couldn't have possibly fought in every major engagement.
But hey, at least Bungie announced Halo 3: Recon. That looks like it will be worth playing.
In other news, the first chapter of Nightmare will be up soon. Hopefully.