V: Better Angels of Our Nature
"We're Eating Their Fish"
UNSC Nighthawk
The interior of the prowler could not be adequately compared to any ship that the former Covenant had ever constructed. Furan slowly plodded through the ship, her hands folded behind her back, as she sought to absorb each and every singular detail about the ship that was now spiriting her halfway across the galaxy. Her consensus about the ship as a whole boiled down to one word: crude. There were simply too many right angles and directions painted on walls to give the Elite any reassurance that the ship was spaceworthy.
Her opinion made sense, considering Furan had only known a lifetime in which she had spent on refined metal vessels where the decks arced and merged like water, where pillars of anti-grav energy effortlessly offered avenues from all points on a ship, and where every switch or line of text had a definite purpose to justify its existence. The prowler simply seemed haphazardly thought out in comparison.
The Nighthawk had three levels, linked via a cargo lift and two thin staircases. Traversing the stairs was rather difficult for the Elite—she had to awkwardly squeeze her way through the thin passageways in order to get to the different decks. The interior was dim upon every corner of the ship. The diode lighting threw a harsh blue tint over everything that was reminiscent of the electric sparking from shorn wires. Furan's footsteps reverberated hollowly as she tramped upon the grated floor, the Elite cutting a massive profile within the diminutively-sized corridor.
Furan had not been confined to her quarters, and seeing as there had been no official duties assigned to her, she had taken the initiative to give the ship a once-over for her own reference. Methodically, she had gone from hallway to hallway, checking out the layout of the prowler, filing away details to the ever-expanding map she was constructing in her head.
Most of the rooms she had come across were crew quarters, many of them designed to house at least four to a room barely large enough to cram a whole Hunter into. Still, despite the cramped conditions, Furan felt a little bite of resentment—the old Covenant ships would have doubled the number of soldiers to a room of such similar size. The humans did not realize that they were operating on a premium of space. That was also not taking into account how Grunts had been quartered in the past—if the humans truly knew the scale of such inhumane living arrangements, they would most likely feel very fortunate at being allocated their own bed to sleep in, for Furan knew that such measures of privacy could be whittled down to almost nothing, given the right circumstances.
She now reached the bottom level, which consisted of a bare corridor that led to a thick door that was tightly shut. Furan struggled to read the hieroglyphics that adorned the face of the threshold. Her understanding of the human language was shaky at best, but the syntax rules eventually locked into place.
"Engine Core," the Elite read aloud as she approached the door, but soon a warning alarm blared once and the embedded lights within the door immediately flicked over from green to red.
Furan took a cautious step back, her first thought was that she had activated a booby trap on board the prowler, but the voice from the ship's AI quickly assured her that was not the case, though it failed to bring her much comfort.
"I'm afraid you won't be able to access this part of the ship," Armitage's voice dripped from the speakers. He certainly did not sound contrite—in fact, the Elite could easily imagine that the AI sounded smug.
"The lack of confidence has spread," Furan noted dryly. "Concerned that I would access a sensitive system, I take it?"
"Would you be so trusting if the roles had been reversed?" Armitage countered.
"A fair point."
Turning back around the way she had just come, the Elite resumed her sojourn without further protest. She moved through a series of cross-braces into the next of the three honeycombed sections of the prowler, now arriving at the lift. She reached out with a large knuckle and depressed the button to go up. Furan grunted. What a primitive system of transport—she was amazed that the humans had not yet incorporated grav lift technology into their ships yet, despite the obvious advantages.
She took the lift up one floor and headed for the room marked "Life Support." However, when she got within a few feet of the door, the same siren as before resounded once and the doors immediately locked themselves, barring the entrance.
Now Furan narrowed her eyes towards the door in frustration. No doubt Armitage was enjoying playing shepherd in his little digital haven.
"Is this going to be a common occurrence every time I wander somewhere I'm not supposed to?" she asked out loud.
"Hopefully not," Armitage said mildly. "The experience is meant to discourage you from making any future attempts."
"It would be less annoying if I knew which areas I was prohibited from accessing right at the outset."
"Perhaps you should have asked beforehand?" the AI suggested in a tone that sounded like it was meant to be aggravating.
Furan gave a huff. Obviously, she would have asked the AI had she known that she had not been completely given free reign on this ship. But she did not feel compelled to argue with a construct right now. There were other things that demanded her concern.
Instead, she just asked Armitage for a list of the areas that were off-limits to her, which the AI was more than happy to provide. After maneuvering her way up another level, she found herself in the galley, which was yet another congested room with countertops of stainless steel. A food/drink vending machine was embedded into the wall, along with an industrial-sized fridge next to it. In the background, Furan was keenly aware of a quick series of clanging sounds from elsewhere on the ship—she ignored those noises for now.
Armitage's avatar appeared on one of the holoprojectors in the room. His diminutive size notwithstanding, he looked up at the Elite with interest.
"Examining the provisions? There are Sangheili-based rations in the refrigerator."
"It would have been unwise to have set off without ensuring that there was something on board this ship that I could consume," Furan said. She reached out to the fridge and tugged upon the brushed steel handle. There were several rectangular tins stuffed into one of the shelves marked "Elite" or "Sangheili." There were other flimsy boxes that dominated the interior of the fridge, though these ones read "MRE Menu", followed by a seemingly random number.
The packages of Sangheili food had a clear top so that Furan could easily peer inside. They looked like they contained small canisters of protein-based paste. Furan was unimpressed with the presentation. The humans most likely did not see the value in trying to replicate the type of food that Elites like Furan preferred, so they had most likely gone the easy route by whipping up an analogue into an unappetizing victual in the form of a mucilage and called it a day. At least it was something, but Furan was not exactly chomping at the bit to try out the rations that had been provided specifically for her.
On the other hand, the Elite was miffed that Kelly's food had actual consistency, though she did have to admit there was an obvious bias regarding such a distinction. Furan had taken out one of the MRE boxes and had flipped the top open—this particular meal contained baked snack crackers, a packet of nuts, rounded balls of meat in a red sauce, drink powder packs, and a thick soft bar that was apparently a cake of some kind. A kingly meal, in comparison to what Furan had, but the Elite had to admit that, even when she had been serving with the Covenant regulars, her usual rations had never been as varied, nor as colorful, for that matter. Despite all that, human food still looked particular unappetizing to the Elite. She closed the box and set it back inside the fridge. It seemed the Spartan would not have to worry about her food being swiped if the only other living party on this ship had a natural aversion to it.
Seeing as there was nothing in the galley that commanded Furan's interest further, she stepped back into the tight corridors, where the echoing clanging noises were now more pronounced. The Elite swung her head in the direction of the disturbance—it sounded like it was coming from the cargo bay. Her interest piqued, she headed in that direction.
Upon arriving, the Elite quickly descended another small ladder and walked around a set of large containers. There, Kelly was still encased in full armor, going through the rigors of an intensely disciplined routine that she had perfected after decades. Furan quietly watched from the corner, keen on observing.
A tall stack of crates a meter high had been set before the Spartan. Making it seem effortless, Kelly repeated crouch-jump routines from the ground up to the top of the stack—box jumps. She seemed to defy gravity, for a half-ton of human and armor combined moving such a distance would most likely boggle the mind of any civilian, though Furan already knew better as to what the capabilities of a Spartan entailed.
When Kelly's feet crashed back down after leaping from the box stack, she would embark into a series of jump squats. She was fast. Faster than any human had the right to be. Once she had finished with that routine, she turned to another set of crates that she had affixed with a bar between them—a crude approximation of a weight station. Even though a set of free weights sat to the side from the prior crew that had captained this ship, Kelly left them untouched for her own natural strength was far greater than the heaviest weight in that particular set. Making do with what she had in this bay was the only recourse at this point in time.
Furan leaned against one of the crates as she watched Kelly go through her drills. The Spartan hefted heavy containers as if they were made out of styrofoam. She rapidly did plyometrics to focus on specific muscle groups. And, in between some of her routines, she would stand still, her feet shoulder-width, and become a statue for so long that Furan wondered if the Spartan was trying to fall asleep standing up. But the self-imposed trances never lasted for very long and Kelly would very quickly resume her self-dictated program, no noises of effort escaping from her.
Finally, the Spartan quickly slowed herself down and finally scraped to a halt. She then turned, spotting Furan where she was standing, but made no motion that indicated any surprise. It was highly unlikely that Kelly had not noticed Furan's presence—more like she had just not chosen to acknowledge the Elite until now.
"Prowlers typically don't carry a Spartan complement," Kelly said as she brushed past Furan while hefting a crate to put it back where she had found it. "I expected there to be a lack of equipment to sustain a modest regimen. Fortunately, I'm able to make do with what we have."
It was a statement designed to ward off any incoming questions regarding what Furan had just seen. Regardless, the Elite shrugged at Kelly's words.
"Skills are not altogether inborn," Furan agreed as she slowly ambled after Kelly. "The discipline to build and maintain them is a trait worthy of respect."
Kelly set the crate down next to a larger container. "Indeed."
"The speed at which you act is… humbling," Furan admitted. "Every move a calculation, not a millimeter out of place. All designed to keep your skills sharp?"
"Exactly. Twitch-response drills, they're called. Helps with reactivity. The moments of stillness are called Zen "no-thought" practices. They're to improve concentration."
Kelly was moving back to her workout station, looking to clean the rest of it up. Furan stepped to the side so that the Spartan might pass before she followed again.
"I was wondering what those trances were. I had the thought that you trying to deliberately put yourself to sleep." She watched as Kelly turned and heavily sat down upon one of the crates, keeping her hands clenched in front of her. The Spartan made no motion to remove her helmet—Furan could clearly see her own elongated expression stretched within the dome of gold. She gave a short cough. "Do you believe that your training is to prepare you for the task you have been bidden to perform?"
Kelly affixed Furan with a stare by quickly rotating her head away from the Elite. "It's to ensure that I am able to complete the mission—to trust that I would not be the weakest link in the upcoming sequence of events."
"Yet you act almost without abandon. That you are striving to ward off a frenzied violence that threatens to overwhelm your impulses. Tell me, Spartan, does it discourage you to have been given this task to kill one of your own?"
The Elite's insight was good, Kelly considered. More than she had expected, honestly. It was difficult to resist anthromorphizing the Elite race as a whole, but it seemed that Furan's upbringing as a female of her species gave her the positioning to be acutely aware of inward shifts in emotions. Whether the Elites experienced the same range of moods as humans was yet to be scientifically concluded, but no doubt there was an implicit understanding of one's disposition that transcended such paltry bonds like language or appearance.
Her lips fumbled at an answer to deliver to Furan, but nothing but empty air passed between them in a pathetic hiss. Slowly, she turned her head so that she was now facing forward again, into nothingness. Slowly, she stood from the crate, her movements slow and oiled like she was a machine or a gladiator.
"It doesn't matter," Kelly said, fighting to keep her body stiff. "They're my orders. I will follow through on them."
She walked past Furan, heading towards the small set of stairs that led back to the upper deck. Furan followed her out of the cargo bay.
"Would that be the same answer you would give under any circumstance?" Furan asked. "Or do you consider yourself to have a moral limit?"
Kelly almost looked back. The Elite was obviously testing her, trying to get her veneer to slip. A waste of time—if Furan was going to intimate that Kelly would be coerced into something stupid like killing a town full of civilians for no reason, like Phaedra, then that would be an easy line to mark in the sand. But it was the openness of the question that irked Kelly so. It was the fact that the Spartan herself did not know where that line was truly set.
"I would trust that my directives would be in line with what is constituted as 'moral,'" she just said.
"Is that so? You would be that naïve? Must be a simple life, to have it be directed in the moment, one 'order' at a time."
Kelly stopped in the middle of the hallway. She rolled her neck and gave a wan sigh before turning.
"If you wish to say something, by all means, say it."
Furan's expression changed not a whit. She simply splayed her hands out at a slight angle in a vague shrug. "I'm simply trying to determine who it is I'm going to be trapped inside this ship with."
"The answer is simple," Kelly almost snarled before she proceeded to stomp back towards the bridge, perhaps a little harder than she intended. "You're going to be with a soldier."
The conversation proceeded no further once the two of them had set upon the bridge. Kelly set to absorbing herself in topographic maps of the zone they were set to land in while Furan aimlessly browsed non-classified files that Armitage courteously let her access.
Kelly's fingers were a blur as they pinched and dragged grids of the world of Vona upon her screen. Behind her helmet, she relaxed into a demeanor more becoming of a Spartan. Had she not been wearing her helmet over in the cargo bay, she might have betrayed a few too many facial tics that the Elite would have exploited. She had never quite mastered concealing her emotions—not like how John or Linda could. MJOLNIR armor made it easy for her to seem distant and alien to the average UNSC grunt, but her fellow Spartans had always been able to read her like an open book, though she never minded that sort of scrutiny. She could stand for her friends to slip inside her head.
For an Elite to do so was out of the question.
Armitage soon announced that they would be making their approach to Vona within five minutes. Kelly clicked out of the digital maps and pushed the glass screen aside as she settled in the copilot's chair. She wanted to watch what would happen next.
Very soon, the hurricane of distorted spacetime rippled and fizzled in an instant, parting to let the prowler waft out like it was passing through a rift in a gored battleship. A planet of gold and green continents raked by long and narrow seas shone before them, a magnificent pearl that possessed its own secret beauty. The Spartan leaned back in her chair. Even though she had been on hundreds of worlds in her career, there was always something humbling about seeing each of those worlds in person, knowing how fragile they all were. She had seen wonderous orbs like Vona become turned to landscapes of lava and glass, melted from the bombardment of Covenant battleships, the precious atmosphere boiling away as all life—macro and micro—died in waves of heat and fire. Almost too many times to count.
Kelly studied Vona before her. She had read up on the planet hours earlier—it may still have been considered a colony, but it was probably one of the most successful examples of colonization in the UNSC's history. Its atmosphere was Earth-like and it boasted a young biosphere. There was also enough natural beauty to attract tourists from across the galaxy. Apparently, there were several cities that had been built along the coastline that offered robust views of the oceans and mountains all at once. Skiing in the morning, surfing in the evening. Best of both worlds.
Vona had not found its own equilibrium, however, as Kelly had found out in her briefing. Apparently, a few skirmishes had been going on for the past few months on the planet—between the UNSC and a few Insurrectionist cells that had been embedded here. Fighting on the planet had reached particularly fierce levels in some parts, though that did little to stem the flow of tourism. Though, it did explain the military presence—the Nighthawk's sensors were detecting a few UNSC frigates in geosynchronous orbit above the world.
Kelly wondered how much of this fighting was going to put a snag in her objectives. If the clashes had resulted in the destruction of Furan's Phantom, she would be back to square one. That would not be a despondent loss, but it would certainly be a major setback in finding Phaedra and the rest of the Phoenix Unit.
"Approaching Vona," Armitage said with a self-satisfied smirk. "The local comm network is reporting skirmishes roughly seven kilometers from our LZ. Engagements with Insurrectionist forces, no doubt."
"And the Phantom?" Furan asked from where she stood near the holotable. "Is it still functional?"
"Wait one," Armitage crossed his arms. He then nodded to the Elite. "We're in luck. Logged reports indicate that custody of an empty Covenant Phantom had been performed in our AO. The report makes no mention of its destruction—simply its housing and operation. Sounds like they were planning on dismantling it for parts or intel."
"We may be too late," Furan grumbled.
"We may not," Kelly said as she rose from her chair. "Only one way to find out. Take us in, Armitage. Haste would be preferable."
"Already on it," the AI dipped his head. He then gave a frown as he appraised Kelly.
The Spartan looked down at Armitage's avatar. "Problem?"
"Only a recommendation. Seeing as we may be entering a live-fire environment, it may be prudent for you to take me along with—"
"Absolutely not," Kelly gruffly interrupted. She then headed over to her room and came out two minutes later armed to the teeth. She slipped a shell into her shotgun and gently pumped the weapon once. To the air, she said, "Let me know when we're a minute out from landing."
She descended the small ladder and positioned herself in front of the bay doors. A few seconds later, Furan joined her at her side. The vibrations on the deck emitted a steady rumble as the prowler invaded Vona's atmosphere. They were now in the grip of planetary gravity. If there was a window on this level, they would be able to see their oddly-shaped vessel punching its way through the clouded purple sky.
Furan glanced over at Kelly. "You treat your construct quite strangely," she noted aloud.
"They tend to have too much of an interest in getting into people's heads," she responded.
"Worried they might not like what they see?" Furan tilted her head, curious.
Kelly looked up at the Elite, the gesture lasting a bare moment before she appraised the titanic doors again. "I don't know what they'll see. And I don't plan on giving them a chance."
"One minute out," Armitage then interrupted, sounding like the voice of god.
Kelly gripped her shotgun carefully and Furan kept her hand close to her underpowered plasma pistol from where it was strapped at her hip. The two warriors entered their own battle rhythm, not speaking to one another, breathing carefully, and shutting everything else out. For when entering the unpredictable hive of war, control of one's environment was essential.
A few minutes later, the ramp doors to the Nighthawk finally opened, cutting a slit of yellow light across Kelly's visor. Waves of heat rippled in, and the atmospheric pressure differential caused a brief gust of wind to suck into the ship.
Without pausing for another moment, the Spartan stepped forward towards the opening, the sounds of her boots upon the deck like a giant treading across no-man's-land.
Vona
Outpost Tar Omega
The Spartan had encountered her share of every biome imaginable throughout her long career. She had visited rugged taigas, blistering hot deserts, places where it stormed most days of the year, planets where it rained carbon, not including all the zero-g ops she had participated in in the midst of wild space. And the places that were usually the most scenic had either been gouged to hell from orbital bombardments or turned into quagmire from being subjugated to personnel and heavy armor cutting their way across the acreage.
Vona was, without a doubt, among the most hospitable worlds she had ever come across.
The sky was a brilliant blue, almost a royal shade. The boundary next to the landing pad was a ridge of dunes, but just a few dozen meters beyond that she could hear the steady crash of waves. In the distance, several miles down the line, Kelly could see the glimmering rises of condominiums and hotels, trapped in the heat-shimmer of the day. There was just the barest haze of sand and sea spray that corkscrewed into the air. The sun beat down mercilessly, baking the ground beneath her feet.
Two steps later and Kelly was out into the open-air craziness that was Outpost Tar Omega. Initially a hastily thrown-together waystation at the turn of the century, the UNSC had quickly outfitted the outpost with one of the largest VTOL stations in the sector after the planet had been discovered to be prime for Insurrectionist activity. Kelly could see an endless line of Pelicans down the runway, along with a huge forest of UH-144 Falcon helicopters that each proudly sat upon their own landing pad, while masses of engineers and soldiers ran between them, ferrying hoses from fueling trucks parked nearby.
"Keep close," Kelly had to speak loudly to the Elite over the whine of rotors.
"Right," Furan murmured as she side-eyed a group of staring Marines.
Purposefully, the Spartan marched between a row of Falcons, ignoring the answering looks she was receiving from some of the outpost staff. Many of the soldiers here had seen Spartans only on the feeds, never in person. Kelly's visit was probably akin to an in-person appearance by the UEG President to these men and women, for all they knew.
Furan closed the gap between them, her gaze ever-shifting out of caution. If Kelly was receiving an undue amount of attention, then Furan was receiving nearly double that. No surprise, considering the obvious circumstances. Consciously, the Elite tried to make her presence seem expected by adopting a blasé stride and keeping her head held high to project confidence, that she somehow belonged here. Regardless, she remained nearly in lock-step with Kelly—not wanting to somehow throw out a signal that she was to be confronted by some of the personnel here. The closer she got to Kelly, the safer she was from any malcontent or misplaced reprisals.
The control tower to the base was half a mile away. Kelly and Furan reached it in seven minutes from where they had parked the Nighthawk. They were now on a stretch of the runway that was separated from where the rest of the flying units were located. If one looked back, they could see rows of at least seventy craft parked in sequence. Massive hangars that housed F-41s loomed large to their left, the dark doors providing a respite from the unceasing sun. The roar from jump jets was now resounding—Kelly looked over to her right to see a pair of Shortsword bombers lift off past the assembled lines of helicopters, fire and heat streaming from their engines as they heavily rose into the air and banked away from the runway.
"Seems like they're preparing for something over here," Furan noted aloud. "The mobilization is too concentrated to comprise regular taskwork."
"Agreed," Kelly said. "It's not on the account of our arrival, though. We would have received an official greeting at our LZ had that been the case."
"Something to be said for our incognito voyage. No doubt the commander of the base would know."
"That's who we're trying to find right now."
The commander of the base turned out to be a colonel who was wearing an unbuttoned vest with no undershirt—practically barechested. He had a wide-brimmed hat on that looked like he was trying to emulate classic cavalrymen from supposed chivalrous times. He also was wearing aviators. Kelly's HUD ID'd him as Scheben, Sullivan V. He was busy yelling to his subordinates as he exited the building, a tube of suntan lotion clenched in a fist. Kelly strode over to meet him.
"You'd better make sure the beachhead gets secured on all sides!" Scheben was barking at a lieutenant who was fearfully trailing at his rear. "I want my men to get all the downtime they deserve by the time this evening rolls around. After that, we'll raid the Ritz, send the bill to—whoa!"
He had just spotted the approaching Kelly, who was now feet away from him and cut a more dominant profile than any of the aircraft on the runway nearby.
"Help you, Petty Officer?" The colonel must have had retinal optics installed if he was able to tell Kelly's rank right off the bat.
"Colonel Scheben," Kelly said by way of greeting. "Spartan-087. You in command of this outpost?"
Scheben shrugged, the Spartan reflected in his dark sunglasses. He then turned to his subordinate that he had been in the middle of yanking around before his train of thought had been interrupted. "O'Brien?!"
"Yessir?" the lieutenant snapped to, a fearful look upon him like he had unknowingly broken some rule.
"Who's in charge, here?"
"You are, sir!"
The colonel faced Kelly again, a gleaming smile etched upon his leathery face. "Damn, I love hearing that." He then patted himself down, as if he was searching for something, but eventually ceased in his motions. It occurred to Kelly that the colonel was putting on a show, some sort of strange macho act that she had seen some people try to pull in front of her. It hadn't impressed her before and it wasn't impressing her now.
"Colonel," Kelly tried again, "I'm going to need your assistance in helping to locate—"
"Holy mother of god!" Scheben reared back as he finally spotted Furan behind Kelly, whose heart immediately began to sink in response to the exclamation. The colonel whipped his head in all directions, but he didn't make a move for the pistol at his waist. "You Spartans really are all crazy. The hell are you thinking, bringing a hinge-head here?"
Furan grunted irritably. "The 'hinge-head' is named—"
Kelly quickly lifted a hand to the Elite, cutting Furan off. The Elite was understandably taking umbrage at the slur, but she didn't need this, especially now. Not breaking her stare with the colonel, she made sure to take a careful inhalation.
"The Elite is with me, colonel. She's cooperating with me on an important mission."
The colonel moved his sunglasses down with a deliberate finger, showing steel-gray eyes. "Cooperating? Weird way of saying that you let that thing off its leash."
Kelly disregarded the casual racism. "Colonel, I have Iota-level authorization from ONI to ensure that the objectives of my mission are reached. You should have received an encrypted communique in the last 12 hours alerting you to my interest in a Covenant Phantom in your possession."
That was not a lie. Armitage had seen fit to deliver a tightbeam message to Vona prior to liftoff on the Infinity. The contents of the message had been sparse, but they contained enough keywords to clearly indicate what the outpost's incoming visitor was going to inquire about.
But the colonel didn't seem to be listening. He was screaming for the lieutenant again. The younger man trotted up, wearing a look like he was expecting to be chewed out. "Yessir?" he asked.
"Give me one of them V-cards you're slumming," Scheben ordered. "I know you got a bunch."
The lieutenant fumbled around in his rear pocket until he came up with what looked like a thick plastic keycard upon a chain. Faint metal lines were etched upon its face. Scheben grabbed the keycard out of the lieutenant's hand, hefted it, then tossed it to Furan.
"Put the damn V-card around your neck," Scheben told the Elite. "If your head gets blown off by one of the trigger-happy reservists on this beach I'll be drowning in paperwork for the next month."
Furan dangled the keycard, the chain wrapped around a finger. She looked to Kelly for help.
"FOF tag," the Spartan explained. "Friend-or-Foe. They're usually given to civilians so that they show up as friendly on radar."
"And… why call it a 'V-card'?" Furan asked, genuinely puzzled.
Kelly was silent for a moment. "I'll explain later," she simply said.
The Elite appeared unconvinced, but soon silently slipped the tag over her neck. Her constant adjustments and fiddling with the chain indicated to Kelly that Furan found the new adornment uncomfortable.
"Colonel," Kelly tried again. "The Covenant Phantom—"
"Ah, right. That whole business," Scheben waved off, as if he now had some recognition flicker through him. He was walking to one of the Pelicans a quarter-mile off, in the direction that several assembled airmen were now marching. Kelly and Furan followed dutifully. "Bit of some sorry news on that, Petty Officer. The timing of your arrival's a little inconvenient. The Phantom's currently behind enemy lines, unreachable in its current state."
"Is it intact?"
"It was when we pulled back," Scheben shrugged. "Can't speak to its status right now, but it's in a pretty shaky location. Innies have spotty coverage in its current area—which are the grounds of a resort usually populated by geriatrics. Special forces found the thing parked in a secluded garage and relocated it near the resort's generator before we had to pull back."
The group walked underneath the wing of one of the Falcons. Kelly and Furan ducked while Scheben made no adjustment.
"And the local situation?" Kelly asked. "Give me the rundown."
"An annoying couple of months, I'll put it that way. Innies made a push to take over the local sector—tried to strongarm the local population and make a statement to the UNSC by taking over this tourist trap. Started killing civvies when they got bored, so they're a more fanatical cell than we're used to."
"UNSC casualties?"
"Minimal," Scheben said. "Though, more than I'd care to admit. Bastards shot down a couple of our choppers and holed themselves up in the hotels. But they've gotten sloppy, consolidated themselves too much. The bulk of their forces is concentrated close to the outpost—these guys aren't tactical, otherwise we would've seen them split their troops. But hey, one man's hidey-hole is another man's shooting gallery. You're in for a treat, Petty Officer. Talk about opportune."
A forest-green Pelican was now before them, its engines idling. Marines in dark camo waited near the ramp, stiffening to attention when they saw the colonel.
Kelly tilted her head as she followed the man. "I thought you said the timing was 'inconvenient?'"
"For the timetable of your mission, maybe." Scheben turned so that he was now walking backward towards the Pelican, his arms spread. "But on mine, it couldn't be better!"
The colonel turned back around and reached into his rear pocket, unfurling a pair of gloves. He began to slip them on as he crossed the blistering tarmac towards the rear of the Pelican. He climbed into the craft and motioned for Kelly and Furan to follow.
"Grab a seat, we'll be taking off shortly," Scheben pointed to the opposite bench.
The Spartan and the Elite did so, leaving a seat in between them. Scheben was now gesturing for the Marines stationed outside the Pelican to begin filing in, which they did in earnest. The soldiers were well-equipped and Scheben was hooting and hollering Marine lingo at every other one that ascended the ramp. Some of them were hefting large duffel bags—those were placed near the cockpit door, at the front.
"Goddamn fantastic!" Scheben beamed as he continued to stand. Kelly could now hear the engines start to spool up faster. The colonel was grasping at the ceiling handholds, a smile showing nothing but blinding white teeth. "You're in luck, Spartan! Our raid's going to take you to within a mile of your Phantom, if the Innies haven't stripped it, yet. My boys will get quite the morale boost, knowing that you're shipping with us."
Kelly fidgeted in her seat. Sitting down, she was almost as tall as the colonel, so she resented the fact that she had to look upward at him.
"I appreciate the support, colonel," she said. "But I have to inform you: my mission will take precedent against anything else. I'll be able to provide assistance as it serves my objectives, but unfortunately, your command will have to remain independent from my jurisdiction."
Scheben's face was unreadable, his eyes invisible behind his dark shades. He chewed the inside of his cheek for a moment, and Kelly wondered if the man was going to make an explosive outburst at any second. She had known and witnessed officers who had lost their temper in the field—she could deal with them, but it was never a pleasant experience.
Fortunately, Scheben seemed to realize that this was a battle he couldn't win and just shrugged. "Regardless," he said, his smile frosting a couple of degrees, "it'll be good to have you with us."
He then moved to the cockpit door and banged upon it several times with a weathered fist. Why he didn't bother using his radio was a mystery that Kelly would never solve.
"All right, boys!" the colonel shouted towards the pilots on the other side of the door. "Fire 'em up!"
Aircraft marshallers with oversized ear protectors fixed over their helmets rushed through the grove of helicopters and jets. Orange beacons glowed in their hands, looking like torches in the blistering sun, and they all raised them all at once from a cue in their earpieces. In sequence, turbines flared pale gas, rotors spun up to a blistering whine, and jet pipes belched fire as the morass of Pelicans and Falcons all lifted off, one after another. The heavy craft rotated just feet above the pavement almost laboriously, belying their actual maneuverability. Sand, dust, and spray soared across the jetway, brushed up from the wash of rotors. The ships then moved into sequence—Falcons first, followed by Pelicans—and moved through the shimmering air with a delicateness akin to a dance of dragonflies.
In the lead Pelican, Kelly shifted her body so that she could look out the open rear hatch. A gunner with a rotating .50 caliber tripod emplacement stood with his feet shoulder-width apart mere feet away from the open air. Past the man, Kelly could see the raised lines that were the barrier islands of the Vona seas—thick shifting bars of white sand cutting angrily against savage curls of black volcanic beach on the opposite sides of the islands. The distant peninsulas and atolls of the archipelago ridged low and blue in the haze of the day, which was barely punctuated by the faintest wisp of clouds.
Glimpses out the hatch revealed the various troop ships moving by. Kelly could imagine that the sight of the hundred-odd ships in their columns must have cut an intimidating and massive silhouette against the bright day. Broadsword jets came in low, from the sea. The Pelican barely rattled from the atmospheric backwash as they screamed past.
Five minutes later, Kelly's ears picked up the faint three-burst rattle of 20mm autocannons. The Falcons ahead of them were firing at something. Very quickly after that, the Pelicans passed over a climbing column of smoke—fire wisped down on the beach. It looked like a vehicle was burning.
The Pelicans dropped down several dozen feet. They were now flying quite low over the beach, almost at the height of the tallest condo buildings that had been positioned nearly at the water's edge. The Falcons had all broken off already, moving further inland. There were more jet passes now and more sounds of detonating fissile material. The Marines in the Pelican all shifted in place, trying their best not to look nervous. Kelly simply was leaning forward in passive interest, her hands clasped together as she watched the sight outside, trying to absorb as much as she could.
There was movement to her left. Scheben was standing up again. His macho grin had returned, back to genuine.
"Scuttlebutt on the enemy force is that the poor bastards down there are running short of ammo and guns," he told Kelly and Furan, having to shout above the roar of the whipping wind. He then gave a long wave in his direction and two Marines dragged over the duffel bags they had brought on board. Scheben knelt next to one of them. "Lucky for them," he smirked, "we brought extra armaments!"
With a flourish, he unzipped the first bag.
Kelly remained completely still as she saw the hideous sight inside. In the corner of her eye, she could see Furan freeze in what she could not yet approximate, but it seemed like the Elite was doing her damnedest to mask her horror.
Scheben, still grinning, and another Marine now shuttled the unzipped duffel bags closer to the open hatch. The tangle of bloodied and empty hands and arms, smeared with crimson, skin of all shades, looked like the coveted prizes that hunters in Texas and Mexico sought out to secure bounties. Flies buzzed about the hacked limbs. The eerie part that Kelly noticed was that none of the Marines in the shuttle seemed particularly disturbed by the contents of the bags.
Clearing her throat, Furan made to speak. Kelly shot the Elite a look with her helmet. Shut up.
But Furan did not heed the warning. "Who are the limbs from?"
Scheben turned, the look on his face bright, like he had been hoping this whole time to answer the until-now unasked question. "Innies, of course! We're just going to help redistribute them back to their comrades below. Well… parts of them, at least."
They waited until the Pelicans had gone inland a bit. Kelly could then see the faux-terracotta-style buildings of a resort down below—that was apparently the cue for what Scheben was going to do next.
Grabbing the first duffel, the colonel waited a beat before he stepped right at the edge of the Pelican and upended the bag. The severed limbs tumbled out from the bloodstained case, the hacked ends a murky red and brown color. They rained out of sight—Scheben gestured to the closest soldier, who tossed him the second duffel. Same as the first one, he carpet-bombed the Insurrectionist position below with the trophies his men had taken. He then tossed the emptied bags back toward the front, and gave a comical shrug to his guests like this was no big deal. The rest of the Marines were similarly grinning like idiots, energized at the show their colonel was putting on.
Kelly could only imagine the screams of horror from the humans down below who had unfortunately been dusted with the rotting limbs. To be hunkering down in relative cover only to have dozens of ownerless hands and arms splattering against the roasting concrete before them. Perhaps they might have known who those limbs had belonged to, once.
The UNSC didn't instill this behavior, Kelly knew. This was something different. Terror tactics were not a valid method of fighting. The enemy could be unnerved by guerilla encounters and violent shows of force, but there was always a risk. This pointless taunting could easily backfire, inflame the occupying force at worst. Someone had taught them this. Behavior like this had to come from somewhere—the discipline in these Marines was still in play, so they had to have been trained on these tactics. They didn't just develop overnight.
She heard Furan take a sharp inhale next to her. The Spartan glanced over. The Elite was trying to hide the uncertainty that was dancing in her eyes. Kelly was willing to bet the same light resided in her own eyes, too.
Surreptitiously, she keyed in a secure message on her TACPAD to Furan's loaned model. RELAX.
She waited for a few seconds for the Elite to notice that she had received a message. A few seconds more for her to figure out how to work her TACPAD—the controls were not designed to be intuitive to aliens.
THIS IS MADNESS, was all Furan that managed to type back to her.
Kelly found that she was nodding. I KNOW, she typed, and closed her texting application before someone noticed.
There was nothing else that either of them could do except to watch the scenery dizzyingly bank outside. Occasional glimpses of Falcons in strafing runs flickered by, accompanied by the swift bellow of jet engines made by passing Shortsword bombers as pressure waves of fire rippled in their wake. A missile lazily streaked by and hit one of the taller condo buildings, punching a hole into it after there was a puff of fire followed by a long plume of dust and smoke.
The resort that the Insurrections were using was in shambles. Kelly could see on her radar that Marines were already offloading from the landing Pelicans in the fields around the complex. The staccato chatter of small-arms fire popped and registered, amplified by the audio receptors in Kelly's helmet. The gunner in their Pelican had let off a few hundred rounds from time to time, his barrel rotating wildly as far as it could go without striking the sides of the craft. There was no other jubilation from the men in the shuttle—they wore their anticipation with a controlled silence, the stares of killers emblazoned upon their faces.
The pilot made the announcement over the speaker that they were approaching their LZ. All of the Marines stood. So did Kelly and Furan. The Pelican gently angled itself down into the reedy grass fields, the hot waves of gas belching from its engines scorching the ground below.
Scheben was the first out the gate, holding a battle rifle. Kelly unslung her own assault rifle and slowly stepped off the ramp, the long grass almost reaching her knees. Scheben's forces quickly billowed past the Spartan, heading towards the resort—Kelly proceeded at a casual walk, for this fight was not essential to her mission and to involve herself further would only invite more risk towards an already volatile situation. Behind her, Furan gripped her tampered pistol in a hand, her head constantly on a swivel.
The field that they had been practically dumped in was a vacant lot that was to be zoned for urbanized housing—construction stakes wrapped with colorful plastic streamers were all over the place. Tall white apartment buildings had been erected around the large lot—some of them continued to smoke from where they had been struck by errant missiles. The unkempt grass rippled from the engine wash, nearly overwhelming the Marines as they continued to stream from the multitude of landing craft.
Kelly watched as the soldiers started to go door to door. They burst into nearby houses and barged into alleys and garages. Already they were swarming the front of the resort—sharp bursts from that area and flashes of movement beyond the clay wall and entrance gate indicated that the bulk of the battle had now been confined to the hotel. She could see irregularly dressed humans attempt to shoot the rushing troopers. Answering fire cut them all down in an instant.
Scheben jogged up to the Spartan and gestured near the beach. "Your Phantom's there! Intact, from the looks of it. You might be in luck, Petty Officer!"
Tracking the motion of the colonel's arm, Kelly could see a trapezoidal awning off near a scraggle of palm trees. Shadowed by the canopy, a bulbous craft colored a deep purple patiently sat, its engines permanently darkened. It didn't appear that the battle had yet encroached anywhere near the makeshift hangar yet.
"We'll see," Kelly said, but she now proceeded in that direction after politely giving the colonel a nod. No sense in any further antagonization.
Cautiously, they moved towards the Phantom in single file. Kelly tilted her head towards the resort in casual intervals, assessing how the battle was going and if her intervention was going to be necessary. They were out in the open, with no viable cover other than the long grass. The Spartan kept an eye on her radar—only Furan's yellow dot shone at her back.
There were a few short hisses off in the distance. Near a couple of the Falcons about a quarter mile away, a small contingent of special forces dropped to the ground.
"Sniper," Furan observed.
One of the Falcons that was providing close-air support overhead rotated in place. There was a puff of smoke from one of its launchers and one of the resort suites vanished behind a superheated fireball.
"Not anymore," Kelly said.
The team of two moved on, their target dead in their sights. The grass was starting to thin as they approached the concrete roads. They could move a little faster on this terrain.
Suddenly, there was a harsh yell and red contacts immediately lit up on Kelly's motion detector. She whirled in time to see three humans in crude military surplus gear and bandanas rise from the grass, having been hidden the whole time. One of them yelled a war cry in their language. Another had a mohawk. They all wore some kind of tribal face paint that they apparently felt was intimidating.
The Insurrectionists all ripped apart their vests in unison. Underneath their clothes were packets of C4 that were all strapped to their waists with wires trailing up to devices that they held in their hands. Suicide bombers.
Kelly's rifle was up before the makeshift bombers could take a single step and she automatically targeted the rightmost one. Her assault rifle barked and the first Insurrectionist stumbled backwards, as if stunned, blood flinging from his chest. With a surprised gasp, he pitched backwards and immediately exploded as he must have accidentally triggered his bomb without thinking. The detonation turned the wearer into particles of airborne blood and flesh—he had a definite form one moment, and in the next he was nothing but a fine red cloud. The fellow next to him, the one with the mohawk, was caught in the blast zone but not close enough to be vaporized. The pressure wave was violent enough that he practically folded forward, shunted from the blast, and broke into pieces along the way. The explosion had ripped him apart into stringy chunks. His remains flopped into the grass, mercifully swallowed from sight.
The last bomber stumbled forward a couple of steps before he tripped and went down. He was still alive and barely coherent. Blood bubbled from his ears and he was looking around in a daze. Kelly figured he had just gained a concussion from being too close to the blast. She was about to turn on him and put him down before he regained any semblance of wherewithal, but Furan beat her to it.
The Elite had her arm up, the end of her plasma pistol simmering a sickly green, and pulled the trigger. The first bolt smashed into the bomber's hand, which melted the electronics of the detonator in a fizzle of sparks, blowing apart the man's hand in the process. The Elite's next shots smashed into her target's torso and the man fell to his knees again with a wheeze. Furan kept on shooting the man the head until his face finally melted. The ravage corpse then fell forward after the final breath slithered from his lungs, a foul cloud of smoke seeping from the body.
Furan then turned to Kelly, holding up the pistol in a delicate grip and wearing a particularly annoyed expression.
"Now, if your people had not tampered with the power settings, I would have been able to down that pathetic creature far less painfully than—"
Another red contact blipped on Kelly's HUD. Behind the Elite. Furan was continuing her sharp castigation towards Kelly—she had no idea the Insurrectionist was there.
"Move," Kelly growled and brusquely shoved the Elite out of the way. The Insurrectionist was rushing forward, a tattoo of a tire mark running down one eye. He was holding only a machete and screaming as he charged the Spartan, the look of a devil emblazoned upon his face.
Kelly wasn't impressed. She raised her weapon and shot the onrushing man in the head. There was only a brief second of watching the Insurrectionist's skull fly apart before his body finally stopped running and he pitched forward into the grass.
Furan finally spun around in time to have watched the immediate aftermath once the danger had passed. She blinked, looking from where the body had fallen back to the stoic soldier next to her.
"If you had been paying attention," Kelly countered, her weapon still up, "you would have been able to down that one, too."
The Elite had no response to that and she gave a conciliatory grunt.
They were about to resume their jaunt to the Phantom when Kelly picked up yet another high-pitched scream. Her motion tracker wasn't showing anything and the faintness of the sound meant that it was coming from far away, but the warrior didn't so much as relax a bit.
She spotted the source of the commotion a second later. A female Insurrectionist had risen from the grass like her fellows and was charging a group of Marines near one of the Pelicans, where Colonel Scheben was. The woman was carrying a pistol in one hand and a knife in the other. Distant popping noises indicated that she was firing her weapon erratically as she rushed the group.
Kelly was about to key the comm to warn Scheben, but the concern was unnecessary. Whether he saw or heard the woman coming didn't matter, for Scheben rapidly turned, appearing unfazed despite the pistol rounds buzzing past his head. Smoothly, he drew his own sidearm and fired twice, hitting the woman in the stomach. Kelly saw the female Insurrectionist jolt twice—two for each bullet hit—and her arms splayed wide and her hands opened of their own accord, her weapons slipping from her grip. The Spartan also saw that one of the rounds had gone straight through the woman when it had hit, for there had been a grisly burst of gore that had coughed from the woman's back, where her spine was. In the throes of uncontrollable shakes, she went down.
The other Marines whooped at the show of marksmanship and ice-cold nerves. Scheben didn't participate in the revelry. Instead, he stepped towards the woman he had just shot, unsheathing his M1 combat knife at the same time.
Suspecting that something was amiss, Kelly jogged over to where the colonel was now kneeling over the Insurrectionist. The man had his knife out, positioned towards the woman's cheek. He was leaning low, whispering something to his victim. The rest of the soldiers were now crowding around the sight, each one of them looking particularly eager, not a word of protest shared amongst the group.
I need to stop this, Kelly thought.
As soon as she was within earshot of the colonel, Kelly quickly brought her shotgun out and racked the slide once. An unspent round sailed from the ejection port, but she didn't care. The sound was ubiquitous and loud enough that the entire battle seemed to dampen in response to the Spartan's sudden punctuation.
Theatrically, Scheben lifted his head, his face showcasing an I've done nothing wrong expression.
"Something the matter, Petty Officer?"
Scheben then looked down at the woman he was now kneeling upon—her face was flushed as she struggled to draw breath. Her limbs were already turning white. All the while, the colonel had angled the point of the knife to the fluttering barrier of skin at the Insurrectionist's neck, the cold swipe of black metal burning a fine point upon radiant flesh.
"She's no longer a combatant," Kelly said as she dipped her helmet down to the woman for a brief moment. "She's wounded, possibly dying. Under Article 12 of the First Geneva Convention, all wounded soldiers who are no longer combat-capable are to be humanely—"
The colonel barked a laugh. "You think some words written centuries ago on a piece of paper upon another world mean something to these bastards?" He cocked his head in the direction of the resort, where gunfire was popping off again.
"It's what separates us from them," Kelly's words were as even as she could muster.
Scheben's face turned dark. He then whipped the knife away from his captive's neck and stood. One of the Marines stepped closer to the still-prone captive, training his weapon upon her head just in case. Scheben walked over to Kelly until he was within arm's reach. If the Spartan wished, she could knock the colonel's head off with one clean stroke without moving a foot.
"Let me tell you about them," Scheben's whisper came out in a hiss. "You aren't naïve, Spartan, so don't assume I am, either. You know as well as I do what humans are capable of in our worst moments. But you've been off fighting aliens for so long that you've forgotten our history in how we've treated our own kind. Or maybe you've just refused to accept that history has a tendency of repeating itself."
Kelly did not move a muscle. "I haven't forgotten."
Scheben gave a look of mock surprise. "Then you haven't forgotten the reports that came out of Jericho VII—the photos of all those mutilated civvies? That two hundred 'noncombatants' had suffered such wounds like having their ears cut off or their teeth removed before being shot in the head? Or how about what we found on the colony of Harmony? Women and children were locked in the basement of a high-rise, where they were tortured repeatedly before the entire building was set on fire. And on Terceria, where the Insurrectionists had left the beheaded corpses of their so-called political prisoners hanging from streetlights along every major avenue? Do you believe, at any point for all of those incidents, did they stop to think about what the so-called Geneva Convention allowed or did not allow?"
They looked at each other. The colonel may have had to crane his head upward to speak, but he was fueled by a rageful fire that made him feel twice as tall as he was.
"What I'm doing," he said as he took a single step back, "merely pales in comparison to what they've done. Us and them. We aren't equals at all. We aren't the ones who escalate. Who animalize their tactics the longer that things refuse to go their way. No, Petty Officer, we're in the retaliation business. We simply respond with the same vitriol that has been shown against us. Nothing immoral about that. Even better—it's fair. In the end, that's what separates us, Spartan. We're just the better-behaved animal."
The Spartan regarded the man before her with a simmering indignation. In all her years spent fighting, she had never once considered tactics as barbarous as the colonel was now about to demonstrate. She had never tortured anyone for information or for sport. The very thought of doing so was like a syntax error in her mind—there was just no inclination for such behavior. Her training had taught her that while the classical rules of combat could indeed be broken, there were still some rules that were to be taken as sacrosanct, no matter what.
The knowledge of what these men had done and planned to do was so obscene that Kelly nearly lifted her weapon and turned it upon the colonel. Her arms even started the motion to do just that, but she stopped herself only after moving a few millimeters. She chastised herself for even thinking such a rash course of action. If she had done exactly what she had fantasized about—shooting the colonel—what would happen then? The colonel's men would turn on her, obviously. And if she managed to take them out too, wouldn't the rest of the regiment suddenly look on her as a threat? And even if she managed to survive all that and beat the odds, what would the retribution be for her afterward? It was just a constant downward spiral from an action presumed to have been made as a gesture of honor, yet its dire consequences would extend far beyond the momentary reprieve that Kelly could imagine for this prisoner before her, who probably did not even know that the last few seconds of her life was being argued over like she was a prize at an auction.
Finally, with options expended, Kelly slowly looked away.
Scheben, absorbing his victory, flashed that damnable smile again and knelt back down to attend to his work. He flipped his knife in a backhand motion and slowly brought his arm down.
Kelly was already working away when she heard the woman's gasps turn deep and wet. A liquid sound, trickling and hollow, rasped over the faint cries as steel parted skin, muscle, and cartilage. The soldier embarked into a bitter march, her audio receptors now picking up the sawing of a knife across bone, as she walked towards the building that remained lit from the brilliance of the day, away from the now-distant pandemonium and into the patient unknown of her own task.
Behind her, the cries of the woman faded into a throaty gurgle, before finally falling silent. Kelly unknowingly loosed a breath of some raw emotion she could not pinpoint, the effort feeling like the inside of her throat was being scraped raw and bloody. She told herself not to look back, for if she did and saw what the colonel had done, she knew she wouldn't be able to stop herself.
The better-behaved animal. Is that what you think you are, Phaedra?
The interior of the Phantom was shrouded with the low luminescence the Covenant races tended to favor. Kelly and Furan looked like wraiths of the night as they slid among the shadows—the Spartan kept looking around the dropship with unease, for she never quite trusted the safety of alien craft.
When Kelly and Furan had finally arrived where the ship had been parked, they had found that whoever had been at the Phantom last certainly had done a number on it. The ship had been half-gutted, either by the UNSC or the Insurrection. Most of the flight systems had been ripped out—the ship was sitting on reinforced scaffolding. This included the grav lift, so a makeshift bridge had been erected next to it that slid through one of the open side hatches.
"Fortuitous that the battle has not reached this ship yet," Furan said as she pried open a panel close to the cockpit door. A hologram in a circular pattern glowed. At the bottom were lines of code in a strange language repeating in sequence.
"Would there have been a contingency if this Phantom had been destroyed?" Kelly asked as she watched the Elite work.
"Perhaps. Though, such chances of success would have dwindled at an exponential level."
Kelly saw that Furan had to input a bevy of passcodes into the console so that she could access the navigational data within. The ident scans of Furan's person seemed to be taken passively from hidden lens in the ship's interior. A digital tag in the corner of the holographic display popped up, emphasizing a good link.
"Even more luck," Furan said as she dug through a legion of subfolders until she found a series of files. "The nav data has not been erased. Seems your UNSC had not cracked the Phantom's database yet, as well."
Kelly nodded in satisfaction. "Something tells me they had other things on their mind," she murmured. "Do you have the drive core signature?"
Furan's fingers flicked upward and the files spun downward like they were looking at a roulette wheel. The Elite then seemed to pick one of the filenames at random before she transferred it to her personal wrist tool. An image of the galaxy popped up on the mini-screen for a quick second before it zoomed in to one of the systems in the Outer Territories. There, Kelly could glimpse erratic reception zones between the planets and moons which were indicated as bright yellow clouds—areas where the computer extrapolated the signature had been detected.
"You had other ships in the sector piggybacking your data parameters?" Kelly asked.
"A few satellites in many of the civilized sectors can be reprogrammed to disperse specific long-range scans," Furan explained. "It seems our target ship got detected somewhere in this system—at this planet here."
The Elite tapped on the screen on her wrist. There, one of the planets in the system had been completely saturated with the false color clouds that the computer had defined.
Kelly cross-checked the data with her own galaxy map on her TACPAD. "The planet's name is Wichita. A colony world that survived the war but faced an economic starvation when contact with the UNSC was severed for its own safety. Apparently, that's where your computer is telling us to search next."
"So, the Spartans have ventured onto a backwater colony… for what purpose?"
"One possibility," Kelly shrugged as she flipped her own tool off. "They know that someone's tracking them and they're attempting to set a trap."
"Would they truly be so paranoid?"
"Wouldn't blame them. After all, you found them once, remember?"
Furan conceded that point with a nod.
"Second possibility," Kelly continued, "is that the Phoenix Unit has traveled to Wichita to repeat the process of attacking distant colonies that the UNSC cannot realistically defend. That does not mean that we possess the advantage of surprise, though. We'll need to proceed with caution—Spartans aren't prone to letting their guard down. Anticipation of ambush is instilled in all of us. All contingencies are to be accounted for, otherwise failure is guaranteed."
"And I assume that you have such contingencies in place for me?" Furan rasped as she shut down the Phantom's computer, dousing the interior in several shades of gray.
Kelly tilted her head in response to the Elite's query. "You're asking if I would consider disposing of you once the mission is complete?"
"Rather conservative way of putting it. Do you think the suspicion is not warranted?"
The Spartan looked to the side for a quick second before shaking her head like this discussion was not even worth it. She then stowed her shotgun that she had been carrying aloft this whole time and made a point of turning towards the door.
"You have given me no reason to even consider such a course of action," she said.
Furan gave a huff. "The words may be easy for you to conjure, but today I saw evidence of the sort of degraded conduct that I know you also saw as unbecoming for your species. For such a leader to abandon his principles, is your word—the word of a mere soldier—worth nearly as much?"
Kelly abruptly stepped towards the Elite, so close that her faceplate was nearly touching the alien. To her credit, Furan did not reel back in shock, but there was a new uncertainty that was brimming in her slit eyes, perhaps a new veil of shock at the Spartan's sudden perceived aggressiveness.
"You'll just have to accept your situation," Kelly said. "For I won't be able to convince you otherwise."
She could have done a lot worse. Underneath, Kelly was bursting at the seams to throw all that the Elites had done back into her face: Harvest, Reach, Halo, Earth, to name a few examples. She could have demonstrated that the Elite's inherent sense of honor did not dissuade them from performing brutal acts of war upon not just soldiers, but innocents of the populace that were caught in the crossfire. When Reach had been glassed, the Covenant had bombed the transport centers, destroying ships filled with men, women, and children. Their screams had gone across every open channel as they had burned. Furan may have not participated in any of that brutality, but neither were the hands of her people clean.
She stepped back, out of Furan's bubble. The Elite looked at the Spartan sagely, that somehow all of Kelly's thoughts and inclinations had been interpreted perfectly between them.
Furan straightened and gave a deliberate blink. "You think you know the line that cannot be crossed, Spartan. The line that separates us from the rest of the stock. It's admirable for you to stick to your imposed doctrine, but make no mistake, neither you nor I are invulnerable to the call that prevents us from stepping across that line. Your compatriots out there… they have succumbed to that call. You… not yet, but neither can you assume that you will never become like them. I have seen war consume my people, just as you have seen it consume yours. It might not even take you at all, but we have no way of knowing that, don't we? You might be more resistant, but even Spartans cannot have their natures completely eradicated. The very prey we hunt is evidence of that. You ask me to accept my situation—perhaps you should accept yours, knowing that this Phaedra had managed to cross that line, and that your position to that line may in fact be closer than you think."
Kelly stepped back, her thoughts grim. "You sounded a lot like the colonel just now."
Furan did not seem proud to have made the connection, even unconsciously, but gave a bare nod in response.
"He was right about one thing," the Elite said. "Retaliation, no matter how violent, is always seen as a sanctified response. Ask any Sangheili. Or your own command. It doesn't matter the atrocities you fulfill in such an action—rightful vengeance is always considered the justified path."
A/N: Well, after two years, COVID finally tapped me on the shoulder when I was least expecting it. Fortunately, it was a mild dosage so I wasn't wiped out all that badly and I'm nearly back to normal. What's the secret to a swift recovery? Hookers and cocaine. Only kidding - it's vaccines and being hydrated. That, and the extended editions of the Lord of the Rings trilogy. No better way to kill time if you're stuck at home, right?
Playlist:
Birds of a Feather (Airborne Assault) / Grassy Landing
"It's Your Ship Now"
Steve Jablonsky
Battleship (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)
Kelly v. Scheben
"Distance"
Lorn
Killzone: Shadowfall (Original Video Game Soundtrack)
