Chapter 13
A/N: After a long hiatus and some critiques from readers who are adamant Halo fans, I'm ready to pick up the story a little more, enjoy.
Clan Wolverine Training Grounds, Circe, June 2823
John sat hovering over various datapads full of status updates, performance reports, and combat exercises along with schedules detailing upcoming combat maneuvers for his elemental Star. A lone overhead light provided him with the necessary illumination, the sun having set hours ago, his dinner stone cold and untouched sat to his side, and there was no end in sight to the mounds of paperwork that came with a commission.
"Tell me, Cortana, what did I ever do to deserve this?" John spoke aloud to Cortana's shimmering form on the small holoprojector that occupied the space next to his desk although his eyes never left the datapad he held in his hands.
The blue avatar shifted her form and raised a condescending finger, waving it in a fashion that Doctor Halsey had done so many times when making a point. "Deserve what, being made an officer? Quit complaining, I'd say you got it pretty good compared to floating in a cryo pod in deep space." John merely shook his head and tried to focus on the mundane work in front of him.
It had been more than two months since John had passed his Trial of Position with Clan Wolverine, and life had gone from high-paced to lightspeed almost instantly, along with many drastic changes. As a Star Commander, he had found himself back in the command role again, although unlike his NCO status with the UNSC he was a fully commissioned officer in the Clan.
John didn't so much mind being in command, in fact since the day CPO Mendez and Dr. Halsey had entered his life, he was by all accounts a natural leader, able to inspire anyone and everyone around him. If anything his new station was as close to his old posting as he could ever get. Commanding a Star put him in charge of twenty five elementals, five elementals to a Point, five points to a Star with John making twenty six as the Star Commander.
Meghan Buckler was now officially his superior as the Star Captain, and John reported to her directly. Secretly he desired no more command authority than he already had since the higher up one typically got in the commissioned chain of command, the more managerial a role one assumed and the more detached one became from those below oneself. She still retained her own personal Command Star where Yelena, Franco, Galen and Miles remained, but for the three Stars that composed her Trinary of which John commanded one of, she left more or less to function independently to their own devices. Having over a hundred and twenty five warriors plus support and logistical crew, Meghan essentially commanded what to the UNSC would either have been an over-strength company or under-strength battalion, it simply wasn't feasible to be close to everyone all at once. She had her Command Star, Star Commanders and that was about it. This was one of several reasons why John had never ever desired commissioned authority in the UNSC, he would have been moved further towards managing his unit rather than doing what he was trained to do, fight. Sure he would still see his share of action but as anyone in the UNSC knew, the NCO's and enlisted grunts were the ones who always got the job done.
For now though John was right in his element, he had a tight-knit Star that for the past two months he had been pushing harder and harder and worked extraordinarily well together and personnel-wise was almost identical in size to his post-augmented SPARTAN-II Blue team. Privately he disliked the concept that at some point in time he may be asked to take further command and lose the closely knit connection that he felt was so necessary in a unit to function well, and even then he knew that there were leaps and bounds of improvements needed to get a unit that could even hope to hold a candle to Blue Team. He also doubted that Cortana would be none too happy either to be reduced to secretary, a point that he made to her once and for the first time in recent memory, she failed to deliver any sort of retort.
Cortana had been quietly tolerant of Meghan surprisingly. She still didn't trust the Star Captain fully, and John felt that somewhere deep down she was even a bit envious. Long before John had found himself dumped on this end of the multiverse, John and Cortana had to what some circles felt was a relationship going, or at least as close as an AI construct and a super-soldier with a reduced libido could get. She still treated the Star Captain fairly and with courtesy knowing full well that Meghan had been a driving force in getting John integrated with the Clan, but she never could fully trust someone who's loyalties were not with the UNSC, even though there was no UNSC in this universe. It was quite simply in her programming that loyalty came to the UNSC first, and anyone how lacked that loyalty was suspect, no matter how pure their motives.
John had faced somewhat similar struggles as well in trying to figure things out. His interpersonal skills extended to military and battlefield command only, the UNSC having failed to issue him training on how to manage personal relationships. Truthfully for Spartans it was a non-issue in most cases, at least among themselves. Having grown up and lived together and being trained so tightly bound, for almost any Spartan they had essentially two sets of social skills, skills for Spartan and nothing at all. This was one reason why almost all other personnel in the UNSC gave the Spartans such a wide berth when Spartans were not on a mission.
Certainly there was the fear and awe factor, but for a Spartan idle chatter was an almost unknown quantity since it was viewed as inefficient and distracting, and therefore it was practically nonexistent within the unit. Sure, sometimes they would retell old stories and banter among each other, but the stories and themes to anyone except a Spartan were completely unrelatable, and this made them almost as alien as the Covenant to anyone who knew them. The few that did truly understand the Spartans as they were, such as Sergeant Johnson respected and understood that the camaraderie for Spartans simply ran so deep it would be impossible for anyone but a Spartan to understand or appreciate it, and trying to impose or enter the private world of a Spartan's psyche would be an unwelcome visit. Even being a SPARTAN-I he had respected their unique camp enough to not try and invite himself in (although in his case John doubted anyone would have minded) and as the old saying went, "you can't explain it from the inside, you can't understand it from the outside, you simply have to experience it." Spartans quite simply had their own world that worked well for them and the Spartan mission, any other concerns were secondary. Hurt feelings and misunderstandings of ignorant associates didn't even register on any level of concern. The mission always came first, and while Elementals were as close to Spartans as John had ever met, they ultimately didn't have the established history or understanding to fit as seamlessly as John would have had he been back with Blue Team.
What this translated to insofar as a real-world result of this insular social living was that John was the Lone Wolf in a group where being the Lone Wolf was usually equivalent to the person who caught the first round in combat. His relationships with his five Point Commanders was not as close as he would have liked, and while they executed and followed his orders to the utmost of their abilities along with the rest of his Star, and as professional soldiers they were the pride of the Cluster and looked upon as an example by many other Star Commanders and Star Captains, deep down he knew they obeyed not out of any personal sense of loyalty, but more out of a sense of obligation for the post that John currently occupied. He was confident that in time through hard training and establishing a common ground that loyalty could be established, but for now he felt that it was a fatal flaw that could result in casualties in combat.
Whatever relationship John had with Meghan had cooled drastically. Partly because John felt getting too close to his CO was bad for business, not that he ever would let whatever personal feelings he had for the woman interfere but more that it would set a bad example and precedence, but also that the more she tried to understand John, the more of an enigma he proved to be.
While both Spartan and Elemental had been groomed since a very young age for combat, they had drastically different approaches and mentalities to battle. Spartans were trained to be inventive in tactics, always looking for a way to defeat the enemy creatively be it overwhelming force or subversion. Standup fights where armies lined up and called each other out were for bad action films as far as Spartans were concerned. Elementals were almost the exact opposite in every respect. They fought for the honor and glory for themselves and their Clan. They always fought in stand-up fights, one on one preferably and even went so far as to actually "bid" with their opponents over battles in regards to committed troops, battle zones and objectives. The idea being to conserve forces and reduce not only the potential loss of life on either side but also collateral civilian damage. Decades of total war that had pushed the human race into a second dark age was all too fresh in Clanner doctrine, and their fighting style reflected it.
While John could understand the attempt at trying to avoid the horrors of total warfare, to him it seemed a completely ludicrous way to wage war by giving the enemy the opportunity to prepare for your attack and to try and meet them with an even force and base battles strictly on luck and chance with two forces pitted against each other as equally as possible. As good as his luck was, luck was still luck and like any resource eventually it could run out. He far preferred overwhelming and dominating force that came with the certainty that he would win the fight. He felt that by always playing fair it not only increased the odds of him or someone on his team from not returning alive, but also it reduced his odds of being able to win and complete his mission. John hated losing, every fiber of his being told him that if there was a way to win, do it.
This combined with his already insular social attitude had been enough to make things cool down drastically with Meghan, and the two dominant personalities had simply refused to budge or even compromise on who was right. Both were so strongly conditioned to fight and win and ultimately it was that sheer stubbornness that had been the turning point. They still maintained a professional working relationship and a friendship to be valued, and while the two coupled on occasion, sex was just sex in the Clan and John was content to let things drop down a notch somewhat. Cortana hadn't complained at all and had been both openly and privately supportive of John.
John refocused his eyes on the datapad, feeling the edge of sleepiness creep in, and with the practiced experience that only a Spartan possessed, pushed his weariness from his mind and forced himself to keep on the task at hand. Things were looking more and more grim for Wolverine and he had to be at his best.
From up on high at the Wolverine Golden Keshik, things were looking to go from bad to FUBAR back on Strana Mechty. The Clans were on the verge out outright revolt against ilKhan Kerensky's authoritarian grip. He had created a warrior nation bred to fight, but with no enemies to battle things were becoming restless and unruly. John knew it was only a matter of time before the entire situation imploded, and he intended to be ready. He only hoped it would be enough.