IX
"An indecisive man ain't a balanced man, boy. You either make a decision or you don't; ain't no straddling the fence."
Rey estimated it may've been forty years since his father told him that. He was surprised he even remembered it. Come to think of it, the older he got, the more he had seemed to morph into his old man. Life was a doggone circle. There was no going back now, telling everyone to head back to square one for a safer option. That didn't exist now. This would either work or not. At the end of the day, it was Rey's decision and the aftermath fell on his shoulders.
"Thank y'all for comin'."
Rey stood in the center of the situation room, a mid-sized office set off to the side from the command center. It was cold and impersonal; no windows, barely enough light, desks and tables shoved against the walls with dingy sheets draped over them. A perfect little nook away from prying eyes and listening ears.
DEV circled the perimeter, his micro cameras scanning the various faces of the people that were within the closed doors. "Everyone is accounted for, Captain Anderton."
"What are we doing in your lair, Rey?" Aaron sat atop one of the desks in the corner. "I was busy doing nothing… kinda enjoyed that."
Rey scanned the room, found Astrid and Damon standing behind him with less-than-thrilled expressions on their faces. He imagined they were thinking this would go nowhere but south, and in a hurry. The people in the room came from various backgrounds, worlds, and circumstances. All meshed together in a melting pot of uncertainty.
"I called you here because, more or less, you're the best people I have… and I have a job for us. DEV, show 'em, please."
A quartet of miniscule shutters blossomed open on DEV's body. Streams of sapphire light beamed out into a projection, forming an exterior view of the entire complex. It rotated slowly, with certain regions highlighted in colors ranging from yellow to orange to red.
Rey pointed up to the projection. "This is our home. Not very glamorous, no curb appeal, but it is keeping us sheltered and alive. That won't last forever, and it hasn't. These colored areas here, here, and here measures the functionality of the engineering systems that controls everything. As you can see, these systems are failing. Heating, water reserves, power, oxygen-all of that is redlining "
There was a certain mood shift Rey could feel; the way their eyes bounced around the room, the way they motioned uncomfortably, and the numerous characteristics that favored the nervous. It was the same mannerisms his mother used to display when she received troubling news. She never quite knew what to do with her hands when she was upset.
"You're saying we're all dead soon?" Naomi was by the door with Jacen next to her, arms tightly folded and hands clinched.
"Sure sounds that way." That was Aiden Northe, settled to the right of Aaron. His hard brown eyes cut away from Naomi and landed on Rey. The Brit scratched the greying stubble on his face before clasping his dark brown hands together. "If they're in the red, that means we don't have much time. How long, Rey?"
"A little over two years," Rey answered.
A rise of commotion occurred between them: murmuring, flashes of mild shock, pacing, and mounting fear. Jacen tugged at the brim of his cap with a wince. Two years. He knew they wouldn't be sustained forever, but maybe a part of him just got lazy and figured nothing of merit would change. His mind swung like a pendulum, swaying against the hemispheres of concern and acceptance. There was no middle ground; it was either black or white without a tint of grey. He knew the times would degrade, and it wasn't a case of matters worsening before they improved. He glanced down at Naomi, her light brown eyes already trained on him.
Rey raised his arms, trying to reel them back in. He had to get out in front of their emotions, calm them down. If not, they'd get to the point where they would no longer listen, giving in and drowning in their own fears. "Hey, listen!"
The group settled down almost instantaneously at the volcanic nature of Rey's voice.
"I wouldn't have called you in here if we couldn't rectify this."
Kipp Brody came to the fore, lean and devoid of body fat. His pointed nose gave him a rodent appearance, along with his large eyes that seemed to take up most of his face. "Rectify this how? DEV and I have been running maintenance those machines for years and neither of you told me it was this bad. I may not have DEV's extensive knowledge, but I am a competent engineer. Why didn't you let me in on this one, Rey? I could've done something to prevent this."
Rey shook his head, holding his hand palm out to Kipp. "There's nothing you could've done. You and DEV have done excellent work, but you of all people know that machines can only be repaired so many times before they stop functioning. And no, I shouldn't have kept you in the dark, but I needed time to figure something out."
"And did you?" Aaron asked next. "I mean, I'm assuming that's the job you recruited us for, right?"
"That's right," acknowledged Rey. "And it might just work."
"Crap. Here we go," Damon whispered just inside of Astrid's earshot.
Astrid braced, fingertips massaging the center of her forehead.
"This is what we're after." Rey nodded to DEV, and the A.I. switched out the projection of the camp to a full 360 view of the Huragok.
Heads snapped up. Anyone's attention that may've been waning was sharply reversed. Some of them got on their feet, stepping closer for an inspection of the creature. For Jacen and Naomi, it was an all-too-familiar flashback. Any suspicious that they once had were confirmed in that instant. That alien wasn't random; it had a purpose there, and Rey knew it. There was subtle amount of relief that settled in Jacen's gut. Maybe leaving it alive was the right call… or did it just open the door to something worse?
"Rey, what the hell is that?" Aiden pointed.
Rey swallowed. Ain't no straddling the fence. "This is a Huragok of the Covenant. We call 'em engineers. I came across a few of 'em when I was in specials ops. They're some sort of bio-computers, I don't know. ONI never gave us the nitty gritty. The point, however, is what they do. These aliens can repair or improve almost any piece of tech they encounter. It doesn't matter what it is; they can fix it. I remember some years back, one of these things was introduced to a dismantled Warthog engine. Without prior knowledge, this alien constructed the engine to perfection, dismantled it, and rebuilt it with improvements…"
Naomi pinched Jacen. He looked at her telling eyes, already knew.
"This alien is the reason the Grunts are still alive, using our abandoned tech infused with their own. I believe our best course of action, in light of the failing integrity of our home, is that we capture this engineer from the Grunts and utilize its talents here."
Kipp immediately stood up with furrowed brows and pursed lips. He climbed atop one of the desks, holding his right arm above his hand to feel the air come down from the ventilation ducts. "Is there a hallucinogen being pumped in here? No, doesn't seem like it." He jumped down from the desk. "I must be something, 'cause I don't think I heard that properly."
"I have to agree with Kipp on this one, Captain," Naomi piggybacked. "Going full assault on the Grunt stronghold for this Japanese porn-looking alien… it's loca. We'd need more people, soldiers even."
"No, we'd need a priest," Aiden scoffed. "You're talking about storming that place with a pissload of enemies and expect to make it out alive. I admit, if this engineer can do what you say it can, then it may be worth the risk; but it won't matter if we're all dead."
"We also have to take into consideration the rest of the camp," Aaron noticed. "Everyone here, in one way or another, has been a victim of the Covenant. It won't sit well with people knowing there's a member of Covenant inside our walls. Might breed conflict. People can be dangerous when they're scared."
Aaron's seemed to strike a collective chord in them all. At the base of it all, the Covenant either destroyed their worlds or displaced them to the point where they were now. You never saw the insurrectionists having a blissful relationship with the UNSC, not after all the bad blood between them. It was the same now. A Covenant ally? It just didn't seem logical. Then again, why not keep your enemy close and learn from them? There was benefit in that.
"I'm not saying it's going to be easy," Rey pitched, " but we gain the advantage. For one, and most importantly, we ensure our survival. We'll potentially give ourselves more time, something we're rapidly running out of."
"More time for what?" Kipp hissed.
Rey looked at him. "A way out. Look, I'm open to suggestions; but this is the only way I see us maintaining. We can either go ahead with this or head back to square one. I want all of you to be honest with me: by a show of hands, who believes the UNSC will come for us within the next two years… or ever?"
No one raised their hand.
"Then we agree on something," Rey validated.
"We get that, Rey; it's just too many unknowns we're up against here." Aiden ran his hands down his face. "It's a nightmare, really. We have to get in there, find the thing, and extract it. All the while fighting off these bloaks. Not an easy task, mate."
"Not easy, but it can be done," Damon stepped up. The corporal would've rather remained silent on the issue, wait until the others made enough fuss until Rey backed down and called this whole thing off. He wouldn't, though. At the end of the day, Rey was Captain Anderton of the UNSC Armed Forces, Damon's superior. He was a fellow soldier, and soldiers didn't abandon their leader and leave them for the wolves.
"None of you are soldiers, not really," Damon continued. "But you're all fighters, good ones. You wouldn't have made it this far if you weren't. If we pull this off, we can concentrate on getting off this moon and back to whatever we call home. Who knows what this engineer could do for us, pending its attitude on being captured. Trying is better than doing nothing. We can't accomplish this without any of you."
Everyone went silent, but the absence of their voices couldn't mask the obvious disapproval on their faces. They still weren't buying it, and maybe they never would. Damon didn't agree with every deployment the UNSC assigned him. When he thought he should've been fighting on the frontlines, he was helping civilians on freighters off neighboring worlds. Instead of falling back in firefights, he was urged to push forward and take the enemy. He was still alive, still fighting. So sometimes, what you think is right wasn't necessarily the right thing to do, but it was the opposite. It was a hard sell, especially in this case.
Damon switched his focus to Jacen. "Pearce…"
Jacen raised his head and eyed Damon.
"You've haven't said anything yet. What's your take?"
All eyes naturally gravitated to the man. What did he need to say, really? Valid points were already made. There was nothing more he could add without further widening the gap of opinions. In two years' time, this place would degrade with them still inside. With that future in mind, anyone would become desperate to find a solution. Was the captain desperate, grasping for anything he could reach for? Possibly. Then again, maybe not. Jacen was hard pressed to believe Rey made a snap decision without forethought, but had he considered everything?
"It's a smart plan," Jacen started off. "Logical, almost. Use what's working for the Grunts and take it for ourselves. We win. But what about contingencies? We have them in place, so we should only assume the Grunts do as well. Just a stab in the dark here, but what if they have a failsafe? We're a threat to them, a big one. If I were them, I'd have plans in place.
"Think about prisoners of war. When UNSC soldiers were captured by the insurgents or the Covenant, they were told not to cooperate or do everything in their power to somehow sabotage the enemy. Say we capture the engineer, bring it back here. How do we know it doesn't have orders from the Grunts? We think it's fixing our systems, but it could be shutting them down. Our two year window turns into one year, or a few months, or it cuts everything at once and we're dead on the spot. That's what I would do if I were captured. Sabotage. I don't know; it's just a thought."
The look on Rey's face was one that Jacen couldn't read right off. It was a toss up between I may've missed that or you just torpedoed my entire plan what crap you just said. If the latter, then the fear of no one participating was a real possibility. It wasn't Jacen's intention; he just spoke his mind and left it at that. The looks on everyone else's faces told Jacen that just making it out alive was only the short game. It appeared the aftermath would be just as challenging and just as enigmatic.
Kipp waved his hand at chest height, wearing an expression of confusion. "Is that even realistic? Grunts don't think that far ahead, right?"
"They sure knew how to use that engineer," Aaron commented. "They can obviously communicate with it, so we they landed on this moon, they knew they wouldn't be able to survive very long. Think about it: they found one of our old complexes, informed the engineer of what they needed, and eureka-they're flourishing." Aaron paced his hand on the end of his chin. "You may be onto something, Pearce. Before you and Diaz conducted that raid, we had no way of knowing there was an engineer there. Which means… now the Grunts know that we know that they have something we may want. That may encourage them to bolster their defenses, add more protection around their prized procession."
"That's gonna make getting it a real cluster shag, eh?" Aiden sighed. "We'll need a bloody good strategy to make this work."
Astrid broke her silence. "I have a few scenarios in place. They're not 100% complete. It requires your input, your individual expertise. If we formulate a tactically sound operation, our success won't be left up to random chance."
"Which brings me to my next point," Rey added. "Ms. Schäfer would be running point on this one. She and DEV would stay behind, acting as overwatch. Eyes and ears. The rest of us would be on the ground."
"That would mean you would be on the ground with us?" Naomi caught on.
"Correct," Rey confirmed.
"Wait a second, Captain, that is a horrible idea," Aaron differed. "If we go through with this, we can't risk you-"
"Risk me of what, dying?" Rey interceded. "No. There is too much riding on this for me to be sitting and hoping everything goes well. If anything goes wrong, I need to be there. Any one of you could've been killed during these raids; hell, some have been killed. We're all that's left to keep this place safe and running. It's our responsibility whether we accept it or not. You best believe the Grunts aren't gonna take this lying down. They'll fight us down to the very last man or alien standing. And I'm confident that we'll all be standing when this is done. So let's put it to a vote. All in favor will raise their hands; all who oppose… well, there's the door. But if you oppose, remember what you're walking out on. You're walking out on our future, the people of this camp, and the people in this room. What do you say?"
Rey raised his hand, accompanied by Damon and Astrid behind him. Aaron looked around the room, half expecting someone to walk out without looking back. He certainly felt like it. Rey's guilt trip wasn't helping, either. He doubted his conscience would be largely troubled if he declined to participate, but it wasn't about his conscience as much as it was about his overall obligation to the group. What if one of their deaths could be prevented if he was there, and how would it look if he-a vetted fighter-stayed behind?
Aaron shook his head with his eyes shut. "I'm in."
Jacen and Naomi each held up one finger. What the hell, right? The facts spoke for themselves. Unless some miracle transpired, which it wouldn't, then they were out of options. Neither of them were thrilled to head back to the Grunt settlement. You could only piss your enemy off so much before they went nuclear. It would be a rough fight, brutal even.
As for Aiden and Kipp, they weren't fence straddlers; they were in direct opposition. But to say no was borderline insubordination in the captain's mind. Refusing to fight, even when the plan was straight lunacy, was still no excuse to turn tail. If there was even the slimmest chance to get off Titan, to find a way back home, then why not put your life on the line for that? Wasn't that what the war was being fought for anyway?
"If we do this, we need to do it right," Aiden declared. "Not muck it up with silly mistakes that get us leveled. Agree to that, then I'm for it."
"The right was is the only way, Aiden," Rey firmly stated. "We cut corners, we die." He shifted his stare over to Kipp. "And you?"
Kipp's face twisted into a grimace like he ingested something putrid. He clicked his teeth together, tapping his right foot against the hard, cold flooring. "I don't like it, Rey. I really don't. All of this is uncertain. None of us knows if any of this could go our way. It doesn't matter how experienced we may be. We're not equipped to carry this out, and we'll lose people if we try." Kipp laughed nervously, hands instinctively finding their way in his pockets. "I've only been on one raid before, and I didn't even go inside. Why am I even here?"
Rey walked up to Kipp, leaving just a few centimeters of space between their bodies. "Because I need your mind, not your body. Help us out, Kipp, so we can carry this out. You're the last piece of the puzzle here."
"Y'know, the weird shaped ones," Aaron poked.
Kipp cut his eyes over to Aaron and shot up his middle finger in reply. He took a step away from Rey, rubbing his palm across his shaven chin. His gut churned like a restless sea during a hurricane. Just say no and walk out of here. No one would blame you. Don't be responsible for this massacre. Kipp opened his mouth to speak, the words almost having a mind of their own. "Just tell me what you need me to do."