Author's note: I haven't read the books, unfortunately, so my setting here may diverge from the accepted timeline. The political setting is based off one of my games, and should I continue this, it will be explained in time.
The girl couldn't have been more than fourteen.
She was thin, though whether this was due to malnourishment or genetics, Sergeant Oliver Thorne could never quite tell. He had only been a child when the Chairman's army marched the streets of Ironholm, but the soldiers all looked similar to the girl. Then, as now, they all seemed to be much too thin to portray the arrogance and aggression they did, much too fragile to carry the weapons they wielded. The girl, too, looked as though the rifle she held would break both her skinny arms, and the sweat on her brow seemed a hint towards that direction. The sleek braid that tied her straight black hair was coming loose at the edges, sticking to the pallor of her face in clumps. The trail of nervous sweat blotched unevenly in patches on the front of her top and under her arms, sullying what would otherwise be a fine robe of nearly-sheer silk. The robe was not the only finery she wore - her slender neck and thin wrists were wrapped in fine silver chain, and a matching circlet hung glittering strands across her forehead. Her black eyes widened, and paired with the black stone that hung from it's chain in the center of her forehead, created a rather disturbing visage of a pale girl with three eyes.
Which forced him to briefly wonder exactly what the Chairman's other perversions included.
His weapon was already pointed at her; a reaction that was as automatic as blinking, to him. Spartan military training was everything that the whispers held it to be. He wasn't certain if the girl knew him for a Spartan at first glance, but the quickness and ease with which his weapon was raised was more than enough to give her pause. Her rifle had barely twitched from its position, held pointed down at her hip, before his was leveled with her face. The plan wasn't to shoot her, and he could already hear the groan of disapproval from the two behind him, but offense was the best defense and all that. He didn't need to have clear intent to be ready, and he certainly didn't need to answer to the two figures behind him.
The closest was Demeter, a Gaian empath, and she was the first to move. She came forward to speak, as she often did, in a low pitched but otherwise pleasant voice. Her words had barely escaped her lips before the girl spoke, suddenly, overriding the end of the Gaian's sentence.
"It's alright," The empath began, holding out her hands, "We're not going to hurt you."
"Who are you!" The girl's words, in comparison, were harsh and loud. Barked outwards as her too-weak arms lifted the rifle she held. Her black eyes went from face to face in uncertainty, in calculation. She didn't point the gun to him; instead the muzzle aligned with the empath. He'd have admitted the girl must have been smarter than she looked, but that wasn't altogether saying too much.
"Drop the weapon." His own voice added to the tensity of the situation, a contrast to both by being nearly devoid of emotion. Even and measured, it seemed to cut through the conflicting feminine voices with its low baritone. He noted this for a simple reason; it meant the girl had heard him, and was ignoring him. His jaw tightened.
"St-stop it," Dem's voice came weakly, uncertain, not near strong enough to make a difference in the conflict. He had been around her enough to know it wasn't fear that caused the tremble to her hands, or the quiver in her words. He knew what the Gaian was capable of, and knew that girl wouldn't be allowed to pull the trigger on her rifle. He knew the empath held no fear for herself.
She was, however, a mind reader. She wasn't afraid of what the girl might do.
She was afraid of what he was prepared to do.
She had told him before, that she could feel them; the absence of those echoes of self doubt, of conscience. The inner workings of his mind was filled only with duty, with certainty. Second-guessing oneself on the battlefield was a surefire way to get you or someone in your unit killed. There was no room for doubt in his mind, there was no room for hesitation. He didn't care how far they had gone for this skinny child that now stood before him. If it came to it, his trigger finger would pull taut and he would obliterate her face from existence. Even if he hadn't been given a choice about his participation or his role in this mission, he was going to fulfill his duty to the letter. The talkative empath would live through this.
Even if the frightened, half starved girl-child had to die.
"Lower." He spelled it out more slowly, his cold eyes never leaving the girl, "Your. Weapon."
"You lower yours!" The girl's accent was thick, words rough around the edges of her English. He didn't know why she didn't just use the language she was most familiar with - didn't everyone use translator software these days? She was frantic, half panicked and more than half starved. Just how long had the Chairman kept her in that hole? Just how little of the world did she know?
Such thoughts could have been misconstrued as having traces of sympathy to them, were they to originate with anyone else. The girl was terrified and desperate, weak and tired, misunderstanding their intent. The qualities his mind blithely ticked off, however, were not going to jerk his emotions enough to dissuade his actions. She was lost on this bright world she had suddenly emerged into, and his mind coldly noted and accepted that fact. The empath, no doubt, could find sympathy in that; pity, and mercy. He was certain the girl deserved no less.
It may have seemed cold, from an outside perspective. It may have seemed heartless to one who had no previous knowledge of confrontation, of warfare. But all sense of compassion wilted and died the moment she held a gun to his team. Him being sympathetic to her situation wouldn't stop the plasma charge from firing into the empath's chest.
So he didn't care.
His finger flicked the charge on the fusion pack of his rifle. Energy whirred to life at his fingertips, setting the gun to a low hum as the coils inside it fired up. The girl was going to die if she didn't lower her weapon, or if the Gaian didn't crawl into her head and force her to do so. It was a cold, simple solution in his mind that needed no further justification. The Gaian, in essence, was stoking the danger of the situation simply through her inaction. Through her diplomacy; another Gaian concept that rarely worked, but one that mattered little, in the end. The Gaian could be idealistic and hopeful and hug the trees when they left, for all he cared. What was real at that moment wasn't her prayers for world peace - it was that gun. If Demeter didn't act, he certainly would.
The girl's eyes widened in fright, her voice becoming more tense, "I will shoot her! I will-"
"No one's shooting anyone!" Demeter's voice was becoming more shrill, a scowl in her brown eyes as she looked back to the Spartan. The situation was spiraling out of her control, and the tone of her voice meant that she knew it. "No one-"
The girl interrupted again, both hands gripping her dated rifle so tightly the shaking of her hands caused her already imperfect aim to waver further. She didn't seem to be listening to Demeter's insistence. Her eyes stayed on him, but her gun on Dem, her voice teetering ever closer to outright, frantic panic, "Now! Lower it! I'll shoot her!"
The Sergeant's hands hadn't budged, hadn't quaked once. Cold blue eyes held his intended target and refused to release her. Underneath his grasp, his rifle thrummed softly, his voice just high enough to be heard over it, "This is your final warning."
"That's enough!" Dem's voice was a screech now, her voice teetering on panic, "Everyone just calm down!"
Again, by contrast, his words were even, controlled, "I am calm."
Demeter's eyes moved to him, and widened incrementally as they found him. Brushing his mind again, he suspected, but lent no voice or blame to it. Her 'weapons' weren't like his. She couldn't flick off the energy generator or pull the fusion battery out. The woman before him hadn't the absolute control over her mind, as a soldier did his gun. His very thoughts betrayed him to her, though he wasn't entirely clear if she always meant to read them - certainly there were some things in life better left unheard. It must have disturbed her, though, whatever she felt there, hidden within his mind. Something unspoken and unknown passed between their consciousnesses, and Dem paled a shade whiter and staggered a step back.
The girl hadn't dropped her weapon. Her movements were becoming more jerky, more panicked. The sweat on her brow had gone from sheen to beads in a matter of seconds, and her demeanor alone was enough to tell him she was close to making a mistake. A mistake he wasn't willing to allow her to make.
His finger tensed. The girl's hand flinched.
And then there was a pop and a fizzle, a sound like static fleeing across glass. His finger pulled back the trigger and created a hollow click, just as the energy contained within the casing of his gun shut off instantaneously. The girl let out a yelp, dropping her gun as it, too, powered off, though the aged rifle took the discharge less docilely than his had. Her eyes fell to the gun, to the little arcs of fading electricity that sparked at it's capacitor chamber, and her body froze to the spot. The girl was confused, still frightened, and caught off guard. She hesitated, and even though he felt a very real anger boil up in the back of his mind, he did not.
He pressed forward in a sudden lunge, dropping his gun outright and kicking the girl's to the side. He grabbed her by the throat before she had even the time to glance back up from her broken gun, pulling her upwards just enough to force her to straighten. She let out a weak cry, her body still frozen, as though a kitten held by the nape. Learned helplessness, the words came to him more easily than mercy would have. His eyes stayed cold and held no bitter anger or smug superiority; this was not about winning, after all. He looked down at her as though considering.
"I do apologize, Sergeant." The voice was quiet, lightly accented, and infuriatingly condescending. Thorne's eyes moved away from the girl's, that familiar anger found once more in the recesses of his mind. Tsarkov. "But if you were so intent on killing the girl we have been looking for, we very well could have just bombed the bunker, yes?" He couldn't see it,but he knew the bastard was adjusting that lens he wore over his left eye, laughing quietly to himself.
"EMP burst, Professor?" Thorne kept his tone noncommittal; he had learned better than to give the bastard an emotional reaction he could capitalize on. The University born Andrevich only seemed to find more ways to annoy him, the more ammunition the Sergeant supplied him with.
"Nyet, my daring comrade." Came the reply, his words chosen slow and delicately as they ever were. It was as though he thought each sentence to be such a gift to those around him he had to take his time to wrap it properly. "I bypassed the network on the GPS in your weapons to cause localized shut-downs of their primary power sources." The short, humorless laugh that punctuated the sentence was quiet; just loud enough to grate on the nerves. The crunch of footsteps behind him pulled his eyes further from the girl. His grasp loosened on her throat to ensure she could still breath; the mission, after all, was not to kill her. Thorne's eyes flicked back to the empath and the scientist, the expressions worn by the two complete opposite; one amused, and one horrified.
Amusement lined Andrevich's features, his stance casual, though even it seemed to exude perceived superiority. His features were tanned and slightly weathered, his brown hair showing just the first scant signs of greying. Thorne knew him to be a part of the Longevity program, and so wouldn't be able to accurately determine his real age. His figure was still able and strong - for a scientist - and his face was just beginning to show the first wrinkled signs of age. That said, the man could have been anywhere between thirty and one-hundred. His eyes were a rusty, unnatural color, like blood had leaked into brown irises and tinted them a shade more disturbing. Over his left eye was a rectangular lens, connected to a small, hook-shaped bit of metal that hung over his ear. It was some sort of data integration device, Thorne knew that much, but to what extent or use it was he couldn't tell. Andre rarely told anyone what he was viewing on that slide, let alone allow one of them to touch it. Perhaps even then, data was streaming across that lens and alerting the Professor to the odds of a Spartan not beating someone who caused a malfunction in their weapon.
Thorne wasn't sure how the University educated their Professors, but he sometimes wondered if they could only attain that rank by acting like an asshole and laughing at their own jokes. He had never exactly liked any of the so-called educated that had come from the University's colleges, but Professor Tsarkov seemed to strive to prove every negative stereotype associated with his faction. The man's snide smile and relaxed stance only served to frustrate the Sergeant the longer he looked at the man. Every time he opened his mouth and delivered some parcel of information that he assumed was some great and enlightening secret to those around him, it took all that Thorne had to not punch him.
To his left stood Demeter Lovelock, a Gaian prodigy in the field of Psionics, her features frozen somewhere between horror and shock. Demeter looked as most Spartans assumed Gaian women looked - pretty, willowy, skin a creamy white and hair a fiery red. Months ago when he had still been with his unit, he had made more than one promise that were Miss Lovelock to suddenly decide perform naked pagan dancing amongst the fungus, he was to record it and upload it onto the Planetary Connectivity Network immediately. Such a ritual had yet to occur, and Thorne himself thought it to be a ridiculous notion, but he was not one to spoil morale - no matter where it was found. Demeter herself had remained just as clothed every time he saw her; usually wearing the loose, wavy dresses and colored beads that Gaian acolytes preferred, though that notion was somewhat derailed by the large, military-esque boots that took up where the dress left off at he knees. She almost looked like one of those silly civillians, storming the streets en masse to march for drone rights or whatever current issue descended upon the idle minds of the idealists that filled Gaian cities. One glance to the silver band around her forehead, however, would mark her for what she was. The psychic amplifier there said more than her silly dress or womanly features did. It said she was, in some ways, more dangerous than a fully armed and armored soldier.
Though it didn't seem she was interested in the least in ever using that power. For the first few weeks he had known her, he had been convinced all the scary rumors of Gaian psychics were little more than talk. When he did finally see her abilities in action, he found the only disappointment he felt was that he hadn't seen them sooner.
If he were able to make a man piss himself and start crying, he'd sure the hell be doing it more often than she did.
And even though he was almost certain that Demeter possessed the ability to force the situation into her control, she opted, instead, to talk. She loved to talk - especially to people who didn't like her. Or who had previously intended to kill her. Perhaps she found it fulfilling, to waste their time with words when, with a thought, they could be away from that awful hole and on their way back across the fungus she liked so much. She moved forward then, slowly, her word chosen carefully as she tried to defuse the conflict before her. The girl's eyes went to her, but her stiffened body refused to move. Some measure of thought flickered there, dimly, before the gaze was sent back to his and steeled itself against him. She met his cold indifference with a smaller, meeker version of her own, a facade that could not hide the terror he still saw recoiling within her eyes.
"That's enough, Sergeant, there's no need to take this any further. I'm sure the Professor can fix your ... Your weapon," Her stumbling over the word betrayed her inexperience with the subject; she never quite knew what to call his gun. She shifted, the light green folds of her dress fluttering gently around her legs, "But we did not come here to fight, and we did not come here to threaten." Demeter's golden-brown eyes moved from the soldier to the girl, her tone becoming more gentle, "I apologize for the misunderstanding, we weren't sent to ..." She trailed off, her eyes dropping away. She seemed to consider something, subsequently drop it, and begin anew as her eyes rose back up, "We were sent here to save you."
As though waiting for that moment to demonstrate this, Dem's hand lowered on his arm. A simple touch that would have been much too weak to remove him were he not amenable to the suggestion. His hand did drop, however, and the girl stumbled a step away, eyes wide and confused, breath coming in labored gasps. Her eyes went from the empath to the soldier, and indignance boiled up to eclipse the fear.
"This is your-" She took a breath, and her black eyes once more locked on his. Her diminutive form stalked forward a single, annoyed step - looking more like a stomp, and almost comical when paired with her small stature and sweat stained robe. She was angry, but strove to keep her tone calm, "Your idea of a rescue?"
Demeter looked apologetic enough for the both of them, which was fortunate, since he didn't appear sorry - nor was he, really. He simply folded his arms and waited in silence as the Gaian strove to make amends, "I ... I know, and I'm sorry, but you should have put your weapon-"
The girl let out a list of expletives that were no longer in English. She stumbled another step back, back towards the closed tunnel access behind her. The tunnel that she had, presumably, emerged from. "Is this some kind of joke!" She cried out, and waved her arm around to their surroundings. As though the trio hadn't realized where they stood.
Thorne knew exactly where they were. And knowing that, the gesture spoke meaning when the girl didn't.
The wide dome that surrounded them sealed out the Planet surface beyond, keeping the group safe from both fungus and lowered oxygen levels. The dome wasn't temperature treated and only barely ventilated - there was little need, after all. The Human Hive, true to their name, kept their cities below the surface, clustered together in tight halls and low-ceiling dormitories. They stood at the entrance of the tunnels, the bare bones facility that rested above ground and permitted access to the facilities below. Through the door the girl stood before would be a collection of elevator shafts, each of varying size for their different uses, and each of which would lead to the various sectors of the city.
Thorne imagined there would be security at each elevator pass-check. That there would be cameras colony wide, and a strict police force composed of both human and machine to keep the harsh order Yang demanded. On their way to the colony, he hadn't been able to contrive a way they would make it to the level where the girl was held. He hadn't been able to formulate any way around both man and machination that would permit them access into the depths of the huge city, into the infamous private vaults of the Chairman.
Demeter was to get them around the people, and Andre was to have gotten them around the machine. He had remained, from what he could discern, the contingency plan. Namely, if something went awry, when neither the technology of the Professor nor the mysticism of the empath could save them, guns would do the trick. For all their clever tricks and subversion techniques, apparently the only alternative plan anyone could come up with was to send one man and allow him to blow shit up.
One day he was going to find out exactly who was running military intelligence.
That being said, the fact that this single girl had somehow managed to claw her way out of a colony that had mechanical eyes in every corridor seemed nothing short of a miracle. He couldn't say how she had done it, and he wasn't about to argue the fact that they no longer had to embark on a suicide mission, but something alerted his paranoia about the situation almost immediately. The Hive's colonies had eyes everywhere, yet somehow this girl stood now before them. He couldn't deny the fact that she was there, but he couldn't say in good faith that no one knew she was there.
Which meant, very shortly, they'd know they were there.
Thorne no longer had the patience for Gaian diplomancy.
"You're coming with us." His words were calm and measured once more, just a bit more tinged with ice than they had been previously. Dem looked over to him, her brows pressing upwards to the circlet around her forehead. She didn't argue the point; her eyes moved back to the girl.
The girl's features were smooth and yet stern, obstinate and insistant, "I'm not going anywhere with you. Who areyou people, and what do you want?" She winced, her eyes flicking down to the gun at her feet, which still showed no signs of life. She seemed to consider her options silently, then, seeing no weapon and no quick path to freedom. "Are you ... Do you work for the Chairman?"
"No!" Demeter was quick to answer that, but she was only wasting more time. Thorne felt irritation building in the back of his mind. They need to move, not debate whether or not something was going to happen. Before he could speak, however, Demeter continued, "No, we're here to help you. We're here to get you away from him."
As humane a goal as that sounded, the girl remained unconvinced. She folded her skinny arms, her youthful features pulling into an ugly frown, "Why."
"We don't have time for this." He hissed to the empath, trying to spell out his meaning with his eyes, which seemed a little pointless when dealing with a psychic. She didn't catch it, regardless; she wasn't even looking at him, though considering the psychic bit, perhaps it was better to assume she was ignoring him. She moved foward, her voice filled with compassion and mercy and all those other pretty, idealistic things that showed she was utterly oblivious to the immediate danger they were in.
Gaians.
"Because you are important, Fa Zhu Que-" The girl's eyes narrowed at hearing her name, "-much more important that you know. Do you ... Have they ever told you? What you really are?" Demeter looked bashful for a moment, and Thorne didn't attempt to hide the roll of his eyes, "Rather, I suppose I should say ... Who you really are."
"Eloquent, Ms. Lovelock, but unfortunately such conversation will need to resume on a later date," Thorne felt a sudden surge of renewed annoyance; first at the fact that Andre had articulated the Sergeant's point, and second that he was agreeing with the Professor. "I am detecting multiple energy signatures associated with cybernetic enhancements. It appears Ms. Fa has alerted the police force to her escape." The brightest mind this side of the Monsoon had needed a computer to tell him what the Sergeant had figured out on his own. Again Thorne found himself wondering why Andre was even with them.
The girl looked frightened, but remained unmoved. She took another step back, her words barking out, "I am not going anywhere with you people!" Her eyes were darting, her motions once more becoming panicked. She seemed likely to just run out of the dome without an oxygen mask and pass out somewhere in the fungal fields beyond. Her eyes didn't meet any of theirs as she continued, "What will you do? Shoot me? I'm not leaving with you, you are just going to have to-"
"No." Demeter's voice had lost some of it's pleasantness, eclipsed suddenly by a quiet melancholy that didn't stay just to her tone. it spilled across her features and a sad smile perked the corner of her lips, "The Council didn't send soldiers after you, Zhu Que. We do not wish you to die." Her eyes finally came up, a darkness to them that hadn't been present before. Her words were quiet, serious, and held meaning that he wasn't sure the girl would follow. "One way or another, you are coming with us. The only question that remains is whether or not you'll be aware of it."
The girl fell silent under the weight of those words. Silence that was only allowed to stretch for a moment before the wail of klaxons alerted them to the nearing of elevators below. Andre cursed, holding his left hand palm up, lasers tracing the lines of transparent, glowing green keys; a keyboard of pinpoint light conjured in empty space, seeming to originate from a device on his wrist. His right hand lowered to them, typing at barely-visible keys that shined brighter when his fingers came in contact with them. "I am stalling the elevators, but it will not be for long. This colony has back up systems and security protocols that I-"
"It doesn't matter!" Thorne finally snapped; his words breaking his usual monotone with the edged spark of anger. Blue eyes lowered on the girl once more, and she seemed to recoil away from his gaze. He hoped that she understood it wasn't his hand that she need to fear, though the look in her eyes still spoke of her uncertainty. She didn't move any further away, however; setting her jaw, she nodded once, stiffly, and then lowered her head.
Thorne bent to collect both weapons, and Demeter released a sigh of relief. He straightened and turned, moving for the door without another word. Andre fell in step with him, quickly, typing away still at his luminescent keypad.
Demeter was the last, smiling gently to the girl and holding out an oxygen mask. The girl took it wordlessly, marching past her and struggling to put on the mask. Demeter followed with a sullen expression replacing her smile, reaching to her own mask that hung around her neck.
"I am to follow someone who almost shot me," Zhu snapped bitterly, under her breath, but still loud enough for the Spartan to catch it.
Sergeant Thorne smiled in a mock pleasant way, half turning his head to reply dryly, "Technically, I did shoot you." He said, his eyes finding hers before he turned away again, "Someone just turned off my gun."
Unknown to him, Demeter's eyes found the back of the Sergeant's head, her lips forming a dissatisfied frown.
That a girl could have been dead, in the blink of an eye.
That nothing deeper than acknowledgement echoed within him.
She wondered, not for the first time, how Lady Deirdre ever took pity on the Spartans.