TITLE: Bow Down Before No Man
CHAPTER: 3
"He who fights monsters should see to it that he himself does not become a monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you." —Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil
The Lieutenant gazed down his scope and allowed himself a moment to gloat over his perfect shot. Satisfied the man he was sufficiently sedated for safe pickup by other agents, he begins to dismantle his sniper rifle. Before he could stand, hands grabbed him by ankles and yanked him away from the ledge. Booted feet kicked the gun from his hands, snapping the small bones of his wrist in the process. He didn't cry out. No, he'd learned to sublimate pain as a teenager. The struggling to rise and face his attacker earned him a kick in the chest. The blow left him flat on his back, gasping for air like a fish out of the water.
How many men are attacking him? He couldn't tell, and they were very careful about letting him see their faces. Their strength gave them away because now he was almost certain they were Spartans. He'd gotten a sense of their size and strength, evident in his throbbing wrist and cracked ribs. Cursing himself for staying in one spot too long, he wondered what they'd done to his spotter. Then someone grabbed him, pulling his arms together until his shoulders cracked and jerked him to his feet.
"The next time I see you I will slowly kill you with my bare hands." The hands shook him hard enough to make stars appear before his eyes. Close to losing consciousness, pain built on pain and he managed to get enough breath into his lungs to speak.
"Fuck you, Spartan freak," he managed before the large hands tossed him over the edge of the cliff.
An hour ago, his spotter informed him it was thirty feet to the bottom. He wondered if he'd survive the impact. Lucky for him there were no boulders or hard scrub in his path. Rolling painfully to a stop in the mud, he knew better than to move. If they'd meant to kill, they could have, so he would stay right here for as long as it took to make sure they were gone.
On the other side of the cemetery, deep inside the small forest of conifers, Randall Akin watched John come around, dust the grass off himself and toss the little bundle he'd carried into the trees.
"You weren't out very long, just a minute or two."
"They must have guessed at the dosage." John shook his head to clear it. "Lucky for us." Then he lifted Natalie from her hiding place and assisted Randall to strap the baby sling over his body.
"John, I…"
The Spartan shook his head and continued, "You understand now, that ONI means to find you? That could only have been them trying to capture you." John gestured up the narrow trail.
"Aye, I understand now. I… suppose I should thank you and Jun."
John held up his hand, "Unnecessary. Just up this hill, you'll find an aircraft. Take it and get out of this System."
"Will you shake my hand?"
John impatiently returned the handshake and then pointed at the infant sleeping peacefully in a sling against her father's chest. "You know what they'll do to you? What do you think they'll do to your daughter? You're the only one of us who's fathered a child, Randall. Don't let them get their hands on her."
"I won't, I swear it. Goodbye, John."
He wouldn't miss these two men. They'd trained since childhood against that sort of attachment. But no amount of training or indoctrination could remove the fierce protectiveness he felt for the small heartbeat thumping against his chest or that he would never see this group of people he'd learned to call family again. He was taking away the only link they had with the woman named Lara. He thought they would agree with his choice to get them both to safety. If ONI knew he was gone, they would leave these people alone and so he ran.
Ten minutes later, he stood under the belly of a UNSC Broadsword. Inside the aircraft, he found a pressurized container with thermal blankets. Had John or Jun thought of this? They'd planned for his daughter's safety. Their thoughtfulness touched him deeply.
He'd been a Spartan, and then learned to be a member of a community; he'd learned to love and fathered a child. Now, he was a widower and a single parent.
Next to the container, he found a bag full of infant formula, diapers, and disposable bottles. Deep inside the bag, he found a change of clothes and an envelope full of cash and credit chits.
There was no time for sentiment. Randall strapped his daughter in and closed the lid. His actions earned him a toothless grin. He yearned to hold her again. He wanted to go back and thank them. But he knew better. The best thank you he could give them was to get off this planet safely. Maybe, if he were lucky he could come back some day so Natalie could meet her family.
Quick footsteps clattered up the ramp. He reached for the switch, but it was too late. Three men covered head to toe in black tried to jump him. With is daughter's safety in mind, Randall swung his fist into the face of the first assailant. These fucking ONI, he thought as his fist splintered bone. Who trained them? The force of the blow spun the first man around and snapped his neck.
And Randall-037 counted one.
The second man aimed a dart pistol at him and fired. The Spartan was only a few feet from him, but he threw himself to the side and managed to roll away far enough that the dart clattered harmlessly to the deck.
His daughter screamed.
Randal threw a roundhouse kick into the man's chest and dropped him like a felled tree. Pumping straight from the man's shattered heart blood pooled on the deck. Just as he turned, toward the sound of his daughter's cries, he managed to snag a pistol off a weapons rack.
That's two.
The third man held his daughter as if she were a sack of trash. His other hand held not a dart gun but a magnum pistol.
"Capturing both of you is a bonus. But I will kill her, so you'd better think twice about what you're about to try."
"This will not end well for you," Randall said gazing deeply into the man's eyes.
"I'm not stupid enough to end up like those two and I think they just tossed Loc… the sniper off the cliff."
Randal blocked the sounds of his daughter's cries and focused on the pistol pointed at his chest. With at least six feet between them, the Spartan couldn't simply rush him without being shot and certainly not with his daughter's life in the balance.
The Spartan took an experimental step toward the ONI agent. The idiot obliged him by move backward, which ideally framed him in the open hatchway. If he could count on his Spartan brothers just one more time.
Randall put his hands out palm up, altering his the tone of his voice. "Please don't hurt my daughter. Take me, but let me give her back to her family."
The agent held the infant out in front of him and raised his weapon, "She's nothing more than a rat to me. My team is on their way, you'll come with us the easy way or the hard way. I don't give a fuck which you chose."
"Please. Let me hold her one more time. Please."
The agent pulled back on the trigger mechanism.
His beautiful daughter.
It was the moment when a bullet from a sniper's rifle entered the right side of the ONI Agent's skull that Randall made up his mind he would die before he let them take him down. It would be very nice if he could hold her just one more time.
The agent's head snapped up, his eyes wide with surprise. Randall watched the gun waver and the barrel drop toward the deck.
He dove into the man knocking him off his feet. Dead before he even knew it, the agent lay still.
Randall curled around his daughter and let them roll across the deck. Sitting up he opened his shirt and placed her inside. Slowly, she calmed down and began to whimper. Her small hiccups gentle against his chest helped him calm down and take action.
More feet pounding up the ramp. John-117 pulled Randall to his feet while Jun raced for the cockpit.
The ramp screeched to life and began to close.
"Strap in! The filthy bastards are everywhere."
John shoved Randall into a seat and strapped him in; with a few seconds to spare, he secured the infant. The Broadsword's engines thundered to life, flattening the brush around them in all directions. Once they were above the tree line, Jun set the aircraft on a trajectory into space. John shook his head and hung on to a strut, just managing to stay on his feet. Damn Spartan IIIs, he thought. Out of control just about all of the time.
Craning his neck to see that his daughter is safe, Randall noticed something interfering with his vision. Was it condensation or smoke? The aircraft showed green across the board, so he simply scrubbed his sleeve across his eyes.
"Did we get an ID on that sniper and his spotter?" John shouted over the din of the engine noise."
Jun shrugged his shoulders, "Some wanna be named Jameson Locke and a petty officer, some fancy boy named Alistair Bov Estrinmade. Took a couple of the civilians with me to his location," Jun's dark chuckle echoed across the bay, "bastard'll never be sure just how many Spartans it took to break his wrist, kick his chest in and toss him off the cliff."
John took advantage of the Jun's talking to strap himself into the seat next to Randall.
"Didn't expect you two to come along for the ride."
"Too many of them to remain undercover," John remarked quietly. Mission parameters were met; success achieved."
That was not lost on Randall, "Yeah, you caught me."
Jun interrupted whatever else Randal might have said, "John! I need some coordinates!"
