"If you can see the enemy, the enemy can see you,"
-excerpt from Murphy's Laws of Combat operations
AN: hello all! I've changed the rating on this story from M to T. Honestly, the only reason I rated it M in the first place was because I was new to this site and wasn't sure how the ratings worked, but honestly I'm confident nothing I've writen for this story, up to here and beyond, would be beyond a T rating. I hope you all enjoy this story and please review. It really helps.
Location: URF planet side security office, insurrectionist controlled world Taurus VI, 17:00 hours standard military time, January 6th 2558
Captain Lassiter and officer Ramirez stood in front of a large screen that was currently configured as an evidence board. On it were two familiar faces, David Brandon and Alison Lawson, or so they thought.
When they had brought them aboard the refit station yesterday, they had used a scanner to pull information from the data chips in the ID cards they carried with them. The sensors had picked up two ID cards on each of them, one a UNSC military ID and the other a forged civilian ID, pretty standard fare for deserters. The interesting part was the information the IDs had contained.
Brandon checked out mostly. Upon running the serial number they had pulled from his card through a standard UNSC database they had found his story checked out, but Lassiter rarely trusted standard UNSC information. Luckily for him, Ramirez had long ago granted him access to the full UNSC database using some of his old ONI contacts, and allowed him to make regular backups of it so they could check to see if information had been recently modified. In this case, it had paid off.
Brandon's file had been modified approximately two days ago. The file from the backup marked him as a Lieutenant in the Army Airborne, and a veteran of the battle of Reach. He had never worked logistics and had never deserted as far as records showed.
Alison's story was even more strange. When they ran her serial number they came up with a profile that fit her backstory to the letter, except for one discrepancy, until two days ago her file hadn't existed.
Ramirez stood beneath the screen, which displayed a side by side comparison of the their official ID's and the ones from the backup, and scowled.
"Why would they lie to us if they weren't spies? They have no reason to," he said as he continued to swipe through several side by side comparisons of original and modified UNSC information.
Lassiter frowned. "You make a good point."
He was getting antsy. He wanted these UNSC assholes out of his town before they caused any damage.
"I'll get a team together. They'll be gone by tomorrow morning."
Ramirez shook his head. "That's not wise."
"And why not? We can't just let them sit around in our town and collect intelligence. Who knows what they'll have given away by tomorrow?"
Lassiter was already reaching for his compad to call up a team of officers, but Ramirez's hand shot out like a bullet to stop him.
"Lassiter, we need to wait," he said with a dead serious expression.
"And what would we have to gain from that? I can't stand the thought of these bastards having free roam of my town while we sit around and wait for what exactly? What are you afraid of?"
"That woman," said Ramirez, pointing at Alison's picture. His expression was icy, and full of hatred and fear.
Lassiter stopped dead. It was rare that he ever said anything that showed emotion, much less fear.
"The moment I laid eyes on her I knew she was a Spartan."
Lassiter nearly laughed out loud. "A Spartan? Even the UNSC isn't dumb enough to send something that obvious our way. Granted, she's stronger than most, and those scars definite aren't from logistics work, but a Spartan? I don't think so."
Ramirez locked his eyes with Lassiter like a pair of orbital lasers. He was serious, and he wouldn't joke about things like this with Lassiter. He knew about Lassiter's history with Spartans, and the amount of stigma that came attached to them in his mind.
"Captain, if you wish to treat this as a game I won't stop you. You pay me to give you intelligence, not to tell you what to do with it, but if you want to get back at the UNSC for what the Spartans did to you, you will do exactly as I say. These Spartans are very dangerous, and you cannot take their presence lightly. As I remember you had some close contact with Spartans at one point. A team of them was assigned to extract UNSC civilians from Eridanus II, and left you and your family behind. Too bad your family isn't still here today, they died at the hands of the covenant didn't they? That could have all been avoided had those Spartans comes to your aid..."
Lassiter cut off Ramirez by throwing a hard punch strait at his jaw. He saw it coming and ducked, catching Lassiter's fist as he swung.
"Don't you ever speak of my family again!" He barked.
Ramirez smiled. "You're angry. Good. Now use it for something useful, and I've got all the knowledge you need to find that use."
Lassiter stared at Ramirez with an intense glare for another couple seconds. Then dropped his fist and relaxed.
"What kind of knowledge are you talking about?" Inquired Lassiter after a moment.
Ramirez cracked a sly grin. "The woman you are dealing with is Spartan Alison-065, and I know everything about her."
Lassiter raised an eyebrow. "Oh really? How can you be completely sure?"
He shrugged. "I can't, I haven't seen her in many years. I was her instructor when she was first inducted into the spartan program, assign to her by the CPO in charge. I trained her to be the best, and that makes her presence here an immediate threat, and one we need to take care of swiftly."
Lassiter looked at him slightly angrily. "You trained Spartans? Why didn't you tell me?"
Ramirez looked at him scoldingly. "Please Lassiter, don't be so dramatic. You've know I've seen the worst ONI has to offer, the Spartans are certainly part of that."
Lassiter looked at him, no less angry, before finally sighing in defeat. "Fine. I couldn't just go and arrest the both of them anyway. If you're wrong, which you could be as you haven't seen her in thirty something years, and they aren't spies, we could end up scaring away any real UNSC moles before we get a chance to interrogate them. I assume you do have a way to prove she is who you think she is?"
Ramirez nodded and smiled. He reached under his desk and pulled out a locked box. Inside was a Spartan III's helmet.
"This is a relic from my ONI days," he said, placing it in front of Lassiter, "I kept it to remind me of the past, but I don't need it anymore. Take it to the range, shoot it full of holes, make up some tragic story about how we killed a lone spartan III and show it to her, see how she reacts. If Alison has one weakness, it's that she's quick to anger when other soldiers, and especially other Spartans get hurt, and if this woman really is just another deserter like you believe, why would she care if a spartan was killed?"
Location: insurrectionist controlled planet Taurus VI, Taurus system, 04:00 standard military time, January 7th, 2558
Brandon woke slowly and stretched, yawning slightly before opening his eyes.
Wow, a full night of sleep. How long had it been for him? A month? He rolled over and checked the clock, it was 5AM.
He sighed, guess old habits die hard.
Oh well, at least he had three hours to do nothing. He never expected a military outfit to feel like a nine to five job, but a URF militia sure seemed to pull off that feeling perfectly, and he wasn't necessarily opposed to it.
He turned to face Alison, and paused to look at her for a moment. He was throughly embaresed with himself when the first thought that came to his mind was, God she is beautiful.
Alison was enlisted, and therefore, his subordinate, even if it seemed so odd to be able to give orders to someone who's physical presence alone gave them more command authority than any battle hardened leader, and he could cite a number reasons why that thought should not have been going through his head, but there it was.
He tried to push that out of his head, as he doubted Alison would appreciate the way he felt for her, but he couldn't.
He almost found it kind of funny, for a number of reasons, chiefly among them, was that he, lieutenant David Brandon, felt anything but hatred for a spartan. He had blamed Spartans for so long for causing the deaths of his teammates, or rather not preventing them, and he guessed it really had taken meeting one to realize that it had never been their fault, and that he had been simply too angry and bitter to see that.
The other thing that was so incredibly out of place about himself was how suddenly he seemed to start tripping over his words around her. He had always been good with words, and sometimes had overused that, talking too much for his good when people simply wanted him to shut up, but around Alison he found it even harder to find the right words to say.
Great, he thought, looks like you've pulled yourself into a story of forbidden love Brandon, great job.
He pulled himself out of his thoughts, and noticed for the first time that while he had been looking at her, Alison had woken up. She looked curiously at him with her crystal blue eyes, clearing wondering why he was looking at her the way he was.
He blushed Crimson red and turned away from her gaze quickly, almost ashamed of himself. He expected her to tell him something to the extent of "don't look at me like that, it's creepy," but instead he saw her smile at him out of the corner of his eye.
"Good morning lieutenant," she said as she sat up and stretched.
He fumbled through his mind, trying to think up something to say and wishing to God the tightness in his chest he felt when he saw her smile would go away.
"Hey Alison, what are you doing up so early?"
"Same as you I imagine," she said flatly, "I don't get much time to relax like this."
He pulled up a chair next to the window and looked out at the brilliant sun rise.
"Care to join me?" She asked with a smile.
He nodded, and and took a moment to make each of them a cup of coffee before pulling up a chair next to her. He sipped it and felt himself slowly become a tad bit more alert. He looked down into the dark liquid, and then forward at the sunrise, and couldn't help but think about how odd this all felt. The war had been over for what? three years now? Yet he still found himself trying to get used to the lack of war with each passing day. Here he was, running an op, and even this was so oddly peaceful.
"What's on your mind Lieutenant?" Asked Alison, probably having picked up on his pensive gaze.
He shrugged. "It's nothing really, it's just, it's nice being here with you."
He nearly slapped himself at how stupid that had sounded. He had always had a double left foot, and now he supposed he could ad his mouth to that.
"No, I mean, it's nice being here, because it's a really nice morning," he stammered, trying to recover from his blunder.
Alison smiled almost knowingly and said nothing, taking another sip of her coffee before turning back to the window.
Brandon sat there in silence for a good long while, kicking himself for having said something stupid like that again.
Jesus Brandon, you can't feel that way about her.
He tried hard to drill that into his head, but it didn't work, not in slightest.
He grabbed his laptop off a nearby table and checked for new messages from the Murphy's law, if for no other reason than to give his mind something to think about. Only one had come through, it was from Osman, detailing how they had captured the crew of a URF condor and we're going to attempt to use them to gain some useful information from them, and it contained only an image of two men in URF uniforms, restrained in pelican crash seats with Mal and Vaz triumphantly holding the ODST flag behind them.
ODSTs, thought Brandon, only they could find being taken prisoner by ONI funny.
He looked a bit closer at the two URF soldiers, and found he recognized the both of them. It was the crew that flown them to the station yesterday. He laughed slightly, and Alison glanced over at the screen to see what was so funny. She looked at the message and picture and put it together pretty quickly.
"Guess that loadmaster is getting what he deserved after all," she said with a smile.
He nodded and checked the time. They had to head for the landing pad in couple minutes or risk being late.
"We need to get going," he said, grabbing his backpack off the floor and heading for the door.
He looked back at her and for a moment he could have sworn she looked disappointed, which was odd. Someone as professional as Alison surely wouldn't feel remorse for having to do her job, would she?
Alison stood slowly and stretched, looking out the window only a moment longer.
"I wish I could do this more often," she said absentmindedly. The way she said it made Brandon wonder if she had ever had any time to herself at all.
She grabbed her backpack and followed Brandon to the landing pad quickly. Lassiter was waiting for them when they arrived.
"Sorry but looks like your gonna have ride with me today. The crew that normally does this run jumped into slipspace with a load of cargo and never ended up where they were supposed to take it. We figure they stole it and sold it to the kigyar," he said as they approached.
Brandon thought back to the message Osman sent them and barely managed to stop a smile.
"Gee, that sucks," he said, hopefully successfully hiding his sarcasm.
They arrived at refit station ten minutes latter to find a hangar alive with activity. Three condors where positioned in a row while the cargo onboard was being offloaded. Brandon began to sort through the crates that, unsurprisingly, were loaded down with stolen UNSC weapons and gear.
Alison kept close behind him and observed the mountains of gear that they had acquired. All this stolen gear began to make him wonder who exactly was watching his back and who was going to steal his helmet and sell it to the enemy.
He looked back at Alison. If she was concerned by any of it, she didn't show it. They continued walking past the condors until a crewman in ODST armor repainted to match the Multicam like camouflage of all the URF uniforms approached him.
"Hey UNSC guy. Guess you picked the right side. Get a load of this."
He reached into a nearby crate and pulled out something that brandon never expected to see. It was a spartan III helmet, with a bullet hole directly through the visor.
"We found the bastard reconing one of our outposts. One of our guys saw his active camo shimmer and we opened up on him with an M41. We caught him in the open and he didn't make it a hundred yards before his shields failed. Some special forces they turned out to be. Guess Spartans really do die, huh?"
Brandon turned to look at Alison. She could tell by her piercing glare that she was barely holding back from killing the man in front of her.
"Yeah, good job. We gotta go," said Brandon to the oblivious crew member.
Alison continued to stare at the crew member in front of her, her hand hovering just above her weapon.
Brandon grabbed her arm and motioned for her to follow her to a small room next to the hangar. At one time it had been one of the station's many machine shops before the URF gutted it, and as such was sound proofed to stop noise from spilling over into the rest of the ship.
No one would hear them in here. Brandon figured that was a good thing, as Alison certainly seemed to have some words to say.
"Alison, are you ok?" He asked as soon as they entered.
She shot him a piercing glare. "I'm fine, that Spartan is not. Damnit, how the hell did I end up here? I shouldn't be playing nice with the damn insurrectionist cowards! I should be killing them."
Her hand once again absentmindedly tapped her pistol her eyes looked as though they were going to bore a whole through Brandon's head with a lance of pure anger.
"Alison this isn't the way to get back at them for this," he said, trying to reassure her, "If we shut down whatever they're doing on X50 it'll be a bigger blow to them than shooting up a hangar."
Alison jabbed a finger towards him. "If that was a member of your unit, what would you do?"
Brandon sighed and looked at the ground.
What would I do? He thought in despair.
"Alison, if that was my teammate I'd kill every one of those bastards, but just because that's what I would do doesn't make it right. Wether you know it or not I do know what you're going through right now, so please, take my word for it. Killing them won't help."
Her hand hovered above her holstered pistol for a moment longer, and then fell to her side.
"Fine," she spat, "I'll play nice with killers until the mission is over."
She threw open the door to the hangar and stormed out.
Brandon waited for a moment and watched her walk away. He had done the same thing all to many times, and he knew how awful and helpless a feeling the need for revenge was.
Location: insurrectionist controlled planet Taurus VI, Taurus system, 04:00 standard military time, January 7th, 2558
Lassiter watched the feed from the hangar security camera as the trooper handed the helmet to the Spartans.
Sure enough Ramirez was dead on. Even through the camera feed he could tell the "Spartan," if that was what she was, was furious. For a second he thought she might actually shoot the man right there. He watched as David, or Lieutenant Brandon as he should be calling him yank the woman into a nearby room, no doubt in an effort to calm her down.
"Well, looks like you were right," he said, flipping off the monitor, "ready to fill me in on the rest of the plan? Because if she is a spartan and you don't want me to kill her, I'm not sure all my men could take her down."
He shrugged, "it's either that, or we let them stay. Your call."
Lassiter looked at him frustratedly. "Or we could just kill her and get it over with. What do you think you'll possibly get out of her anyway? This is a spartan we're talking about, not some scared Army private."
"You won't lay one finger on her," he said, his expression dead serious, "I don't care whether you think she's an asset or not. Her and that lieutenant somehow managed to arrive without any of my contacts in ONI alerting me to their presence, that means that whoever is running this op has incredibly high clearance, and we'll need her to tell us why they're here and how much they've already figured out. You know there is only one reason why ONI would be in this system, and if they figure out about what we're planning on X50, they'll bring the wrath of God on us."
The look Lassiter gave him contained no small amount of mistrust, but he relented.
"Fine, I'll get a team together. Time to see if this Spartan is as good as you think she is."
Ramirez laughed, "for your sake, I hope she isn't."
Ooooh, snap! Look out for next chapter. I've been waiting for a chance to show off how badass Alison is and next chapter should be my chance.
please review. It really helps.