Now this is the law of the jungle.
As old and as true as the sky.
The wolf that shall keep it may prosper.
But the wolf that shall break it must die.
A Time of Wolves
"I see that you're focusing on anti-Banished tactics rather than anti-Created tactics."
"Is that a bad thing?"
"I'm not saying it's a bad or a good thing, I'm just saying it's a thing-thing."
That isn't a word, Laurette Agryna thought, as she sat at her desk in the Avery J. Johnson Academy of Military Science. But then, grammar wasn't going to make anyone's list of priorities in this day and age. Maybe a panda could eat, shoot, and leave, and some people might die in the process, but even if you removed the commas, you were only saving a few lives at best.
Her business…everyone's business…was to save as many lives as she could.
"Based on everything you've told me, it seems the Banished are the UNSC's top priority," Agryna said, as she scrolled down on her datapad. "Am I wrong?"
There was no answer from the man opposite her.
"Well?"
"All I know is-"
Bullshit. You know far more than what you're about to say.
"…is that there's still no word from the Infinity," the man said. "But that on the other hand, the Queen Bitch of the Galaxy hasn't made any appearances on any former UEG worlds, or any worlds, for that matter."
Agryna remained silent. Wondering how much of that was true, and how much he was leaving out.
"But that still leaves us with the Created," her contact said, as he scrolled down on his own pad. "Head's gone, body's still capable of thrashing around. Or, y'know, flashing."
"Flashing?"
"Flashing. You know, the thing that those machines do." He made a motion with his hands. "You know, the thing…"
"Slipspace translocation?"
"Yes, that thing," he said, having the humility to at least look embarrassed. "So Prometheans still do their thing, on the worlds that remain in their hands, and-"
"And right now, there's a number of worlds that are in no-one's hands," Agryna interrupted. "Which makes them vulnerable to the Banished."
The man opened his mouth to speak.
"Which also means that, as far as I'm concerned, the Banished are the threat we should be focusing on. Which is why my, I mean, these Spartans, are focusing on how to deal with them."
Silence lingered in the office. Silence silent enough, and long enough, that Agryna had time to see her contact's lips curve into a small smile.
Bastard.
She'd said "my" first. Not "these." When she'd trained at Laconia Station, one of the things her instructors had made clear was to never let them see you bleed. Not literally, and not metaphorically. Spartans might not be gods, but they were as close as humanity had come, so to win the morale battle alongside the practical one, it was best to keep that red stuff inside of you.
"Yours," her contact said. "Of course. I, on the other hand, am just in the position to fly them off to wherever you want them to go."
Agryna remained silent.
"Which, now that I'm on the subject, isn't something you do much," he continued, as he scrolled down the pad. "This base has been the de facto hub for the Spartan Branch since we lost Laconia. Yet over the last two years, the number of sorties launched from this site has been miniscule, to say the least."
Agryna, choosing her words carefully, murmured, "we don't gain anything by rushing into danger."
"And we lose everything by not confronting danger at all," he snapped.
Agryna blinked. Was it her, or was Macron Kittridge's façade cracking? Because she already knew that was a pseudonym, but in the category of things she knew were false, that was a lonesome nugget of information.
"On the other hand," Kittridge said, his composure returning, "one could say we've already lost everything."
Agryna looked past him, at the flag of the UEG that hung in her office. It was the flag of a government that no longer existed, on a world that was subject to enemy occupation, where the death toll had exceeded the carnage the Covenant had wrought eight years prior. Not through force of arms (though the people of Sydney might take exception to that notion), but simply through the EMP Cortana's Guardian had unleashed two years prior.
Ships drifting in space, their crews suffocating. Aircraft plummeting from the sky, killing their passengers, and any unfortunate souls below. People perishing from lack of heat, food, and water, as Earth's power grid was knocked out.
The people of Earth weren't any more or less important than the people of any other world, she knew that. But still, Earth was the jewel in humanity's crown. It had been mankind's greatest secret in the Covenant War, it had stood its ground when even Reach had fallen, and it was the political and cultural heart of humanity.
And yet on one fateful day two years ago, the Created had achieved in hours what the Covenant hadn't in years.
They'd won.
"I can't help but wonder though," Kittridge murmured, "if your focus on the Banished is related to certain…extenuating circumstances."
"Excuse me?"
"Nothing clouding your judgement?" The man asked. "Nothing…personal, perhaps?"
He couldn't know, right? She pursed her lips. "Positive."
He smirked.
Shit, he does know. She fought to keep her composure, and outwardly, she succeeded. Inside, however, the child she'd once been let out a wail.
"Listen," said Kittridge, "I get it. You don't like me. I'm used to that. No-one likes spooks."
Agryna was barely listening. She was instead thinking of Earth. Earth, and trying not to think of the family that had once lived on it.
"In fact, I don't even like spooks myself. Yeah, I'm a spook, but other spooks spook me, believe it or not."
Thinking, and silently conceding, that her concern for Sol III wasn't just from its strategic importance.
"But I have to say that…ma'am?"
Homeworlds tended to be close to a person's heart, after all.
"Ma'am."
"I'm sorry, what?"
Kittridge looked ready to strike her. Good luck with that, she supposed.
"I'll take my leave," he said, getting to his feet, with his pad in hand. "You can read my full report on the situation in the wider galaxy. Short version is that things are bad, they're staying bad, and when the Charon leaves in two days' time, I wouldn't mind some Spartan-IVs with me to help me make it slightly less bad."
She headed off the inevitable request. "I have final say over where my Spartans go."
"Yes, you do," he said irritably. "Chain of command's fragmented, and if there's an ultimate authority out there that could overrule either one of us, even I don't know where it is. You can't order me what to do, any more than I can order you what to do. He flicked his pad. "But for what it's worth, the last two Spartan branches operated under the Navy. So maybe you'd like to remember where your roots lie."
Agryna's pad pinged as Kittridge flicked his. In some ways, in this era of instantaneous communication across thousands of light years, it was a primitive means of method transfer. Scarce different from using paper. But then, in the situation they found themselves in, primitive tended to work. They could speculate as to how the Created could track UNSC slipspace transmissions, but ships playing courier?
That, at least, was secure.
"Mind telling me where the Charon is going?"
Kittridge, on his way to the door, looked back at her. "Is that a commitment?"
"No. A question."
"Make a commitment, and you'll get your answer."
"Right." Agryna leant back in her desk, smiling. "And of course, if you knew what happened at Zeta Halo, you'd tell me too, right?"
"No."
Agryna stared at him.
"You expected me to answer?" He asked.
"It's not that," she murmured. "I just didn't expect that answer."
"Of course." He opened the door, began to walk, but gave one last look at her. "But alternatively, how do you know I didn't just lie?"
Sitting there, Agryna supposed she didn't.
"Two days," Kittridge said. "I trust you'll make the right decision."
The Academy's training grounds were a far cry from the war games of the Infinity, but they did their job.
No simulator, no holograms, just good ol' fashioned boots on good ol' fashioned ground, as Spartan-IVs used everything from paint guns to live ammunition. Free-for-alls, king of the hill, flag capture, targeted assassination, etc. There were injuries, there were flare-ups, it bit into their material supplies, but as far as Agryna was concerned, it was worth it.
Standing in the observation tower, she watched as two teams of four engaged in yet another simulation. Capture the flag wasn't the most practical exercise, but it did its job. Defence, reconnaissance, attack, and how to spread four Spartans out to accomplish all of that, in training grounds that could reasonably field two opposing platoons. Indeed, the marines stationed at the Academy often used them for similar exercises.
Exercises that were a bit less…kinetic, but exercises all the same.
"My money's on blue."
She smirked, as she heard Range Master Brinkley walk in. "Yeah?" She asked. "Why's that?"
"Better coordination, better speed, better motivation."
She looked at the man beside her. "Is it that simple?"
"Every Spartan has a number. Under that number is a lot of other numbers. Look at those numbers, and compare them to other numbers, and you'll usually get a predictable result."
Agryna saw the point, even if she didn't necessarily agree with it.
"Also, blue's my favourite colour."
Shaking her head, she looked away from Brinkley's scarred, one-eyed face, and returned her gaze to the grounds below. The two teams had broken up, and had entered the phase of shooting at each other, while also trying to find clear ways of finding a path to the opponent's flag.
"Red didn't leave anyone on guard," she murmured.
"Course they didn't. They want to win."
"And when you want to win, you take risks?"
"Wouldn't you?"
Agryna looked back at Brinkley. However, his one remaining eye didn't meet either of hers. He just returned his gaze to the glass that separated them from the field below.
Risk. Reward. The two had been in conflict since humans crawled down from the trees and began weighing up their options on a rapidly drying continent. Cut forward hundreds of thousands of years later, and the same pack mentality remained. Stay together, it paid off. Go alone…
"Red Four suffered a booboo."
…you died. Or in this case, got hit by some tactical training rounds that 'killed' Red 4, and caused the observation tower's CIRC unit to giggle like the crazy girl she was.
"Like I said, money's on blue," Brinkley said. "Though I can alter the terms of the bet if you want."
"I didn't know we were betting. And besides, neither of us are being paid."
He grunted. "Not yet at least."
"Not yet, and maybe not ever. I hear the UEG credit's at an all-time low these days." She smirked. "Also, betting's illegal."
Brinkley looked at her.
"What?" She asked.
"Nothing. Just that the entire concept of Spartans breaks all kinds of rules that were, and technically still are, illegal."
Agryna frowned. "Having second thoughts, sergeant?"
"No ma'am. I'm on my fourth by now."
Silence lingered between them for the next three minutes. Long enough for Agryna to consider the sergeant's words, and the number he'd given her. Long enough for her to collect her own thoughts. To wonder if, on that fateful day seven years ago, what she'd have done if she'd had a second thought before boarding a ship bound for Laconia.
"You're special, Laurette. Why don't you let us make you even more special?"
She hadn't thought of herself as special, no matter how much the woman in grey told her so. But here she was, at the age of twenty-two, overseeing the Spartan-IV Program, or at least, this particular nugget of it. Brinkley was twice her age, some Spartans half as much again, and yet, she called the shots.
Like you did with Kittridge?
She tried to ignore the voice in her head, just like she tried to ignore the tower's FRET unit doing what he did best.
You have a choice, but he has a point.
FRET continued to fret, and so did she. Kittridge was right in the sense that the Spartan-II and III Programs had operated under the Navy, but the Spartan-IVs were part of their own branch. The Spartan branch. The sixth and newest branch of the UNSCDF, but first among equals. And as a commander in said branch, she every right to conduct the Avery J. Johnson Academy of Military Science as she saw fit.
Even if it means being less balls-to-the-walls than its namesake?
She didn't know, and not just because of her lack of male reproductive organs.
"Oh dear, not good. This really isn't good."
Shut up, FRET. She nevertheless took notice of what the AI was referring to. Namely Blue Two and Red Three engaged in mortal combat.
"Ooh, here we go," Brinkley said.
It didn't last long. CQC was quick, brutal, and effective. And here, it only lasted a few seconds before Two suffered a sufficient blow to 'die.'
"Yes! No mercy!" CIRC exclaimed, cackling like a crazy girl.
I swear to God, if we weren't forbidden more advanced AI, you'd be deactivated by now. She turned her attention to Brinkley. "You're running them through one-on-one's and free-for-alls, right?"
"Of course. Why?"
"Just…"
"This about lone wolves?"
Agryna remained silent.
"Or is it about Kittridge?"
Still, she remained silent. And she must have passed some kind of line for Brinkley, because he leant his back against the window, and folded his arms, looking at her.
"You know something I don't?"
She snorted. "Course I do. Just…"
"I know how to train Spartans," Brinkley said, a bit too defensively. "These may be superheroes to Average Joe, but the same principle applies. Keep in a group, work in a squad, do things as we've done for millennia."
"I don't think squads technically existed a thousand years ago, let alone two."
Brinkley ignored the point. "It's all well and good to send lone wolves out amongst the stars, but you're going to get ten fireteams for every Master Chief."
Agryna remained silent. There already were wolves amongst the stars, she reminded herself. Some of steel. Some of flesh and fur. The latter of which had haunted her nightmares since…
Don't go there.
She didn't. And besides, in all likelihood, the Master Chief was dead. Him, and every other soul onboard the Infinity before contact had been lost.
If it was up to her, she'd have sent a Prowler by now. Three months on since…something, happened. Something that made the Created a bit less coordinated, Cortana a lot less visible, and the Banished a lot more bold. One Prowler, one slipspace jump, and she'd have answers. Humanity would have answers. Alas, what passed for a chain of command in the UNSC these days made it clear – the Academy was to remain isolated. Nothing could be traced back there. And as valuable as the Infinity was, they simply couldn't send what few Spartans they had left to go shooting off into the dark. Not whole teams at least.
"But what about individuals?" She'd asked, more than once, despite knowing what the answer was. The answer being that she was to stay the course. Train her Spartans to be the best of the best, and then some more.
Kittridge's pressing for deployment though, that nagging voice inside her whispered. Sounds like you two are on the level.
They weren't, though. Because…well, they just weren't. If a spook came to you offering chocolate, you didn't accept the chocolate. Instead, you ripped the box out of their hands and shot it.
"Red One has the flag. It's so flappy!"
Brinkley returned his gaze to the battlefield, as CIRC blabbered away. "Well I'll be damned."
Agryna looked at the scoreboard. Red Four and Two were 'dead,' while Blue Team had only lost a single member. Red One had the flag, while Red Three was engaged in a running firefight with Blue One. By all rights, Blue Three and Four should have had a clear run at the enemy flag, yet it was the Reds who'd struck first.
"Still thinking about squads versus wolves?" Agryna asked.
"Blue Three has the flag," said BUTLR, providing a brief counterbalance to CIRC's psychopathy.
Brinkley looked at her, grinning. "Being first doesn't always mean you win."
"No, but it helps."
"Like teams do."
"Right. And did your team help you on Mars?"
Brinkley's grin faded. His one remaining eye flashed. And Agryna regretted her words instantly.
She knew Brinkley's story. He was ex-Army, deployed on the red planet when the Covenant entered Sol back in '52. Assigned command to a bunch of greenhorns at Fort Watney, he'd led the defence, watched it fail, and then been forced to watch as the Brutes had fed on the bodies of his troopers. Some of them even still alive.
He'd lived long enough for the aliens to be driven off by the Rangers, as word got back of the Covenant's failure at the Ark, and the subsequent collapse of morale for the bastards. Not before, however, he'd lost an eye, and much more besides.
"I'm sorry," Agryna said. "I shouldn't have said that."
Brinkley, having returned his gaze back to the field, made no indication that he'd heard her. He didn't have any augmentations, and with but a hand, she could finish what the Brutes had started nearly a decade ago.
"But I'm caught between what I want to do, and what the powers that be want me to. And beyond that, the lingering threat of the Created, and the very real threat of the Banished. Kittridge wants some Spartans with him, and I get why, but we've only got so many, and…" She sighed, rubbing her head. "I just don't know anymore. I became a Spartan-IV to fight, not lead."
"Want a shoulder to cry on, find another."
She stopped rubbing. She'd expected that kind of response. Just not straight away.
"Blue Three has been pulverized!"
"Spartans are killing machines," Brinkley said, as CIRC cackled, and FRET, well, fretted. "They're trained to be killing machines. You're a killing machine. The fact that you care about killing and dying doesn't change this."
She wondered if he was thinking of the Brutes as he said this. Certainly she was. On Earth. Of what had happened that day.
"And they're not doing anyone any good by staying here, partaking in these endless simulations." Brinkley looked at Agryna. "If Kittridge wants Spartans, give them to him."
She frowned. "Is it that simple?"
"Red Team – victory, secured," said LUMU. "Blue Team are – failures."
"In my view? It is," the sergeant said. "You can have all the surprises you want, like Red Team actually winning for once, but we have soldiers, and they have targets. Put them together. Maybe even be liked Red – be lone wolves."
Agryna didn't say anything, as numbers appeared on the glass before them. Each team's ranking, and each individual Spartan's service record. Some names went up, others went down.
Just numbers.
"Or don't do any of that," said Brinkley. "Either way, I owe you credits."
"What? But we didn't take a bet."
Brinkley smirked. "Credits are useless anyway. What do I have to lose by giving them to you?"
Nothing, Agryna reflected, as support staff came out of the wings to reset the field. Nothing at all.
Eight years ago, she'd lost everything.
And six years after that, everyone else had as well.
She'd been fourteen when the Covenant had invaded Earth.
Her parents had been old enough to remember a galaxy where humans were the only confirmed sapient life. When alien encounters, hostile or otherwise, were the stuff of science fiction. She'd read everything from H.G. Wells to Sonia Xiping on the subject. Even faced with an empty galaxy, the dream, or the fear, of alien life had remained consistent.
But for her, it had been different. She and her brothers had come into being in the full knowledge that aliens existed. That they'd been born into a galaxy at war. That alien life was known to exist, and had apparently existed for a long time, given how advanced its tech was. Also, that this alien life was a mite genocidal (or xenocidal, as some sticklers insisted), and that in case she got any silly ideas, she had to wait until she was eighteen to do something about that.
Even then, it hadn't seemed real. The aliens were hundreds of light-years away, and the UNSC was holding its own. Any wording to the contrary was seen at conspiracy, or at worse, sedition. It wasn't until one autumn day in 2552 that she realized that she'd been lied to her entire life as to the state of that war, and that said life was likely about to come to an end.
"Ma'am?"
Sitting at her desk, Agryna deactivated the holo of her family. Lamenting the dead could wait. The living needed her attention.
"Eklund, Dinh," she said. "Sit down."
"We'll stand, thank you."
It was Eklund who'd spoken both times. Dinh, his hair long, his gaze dark, barely seemed interested in this at all. Actions spoke louder than words, but the lack of them could sometimes be as cacophonous.
"Suit yourself." Agryna put her datapad forward and activated it. A hologram was displayed of Kittridge's service profile, and beside him, the Charon. An Eclipse-class Prowler currently in orbit of the planet, and raring to go like CIRC anticipated murder.
"ONI wants Spartans for a mission."
"What kind of mission?" Dinh asked.
Oh, so now you speak. "I agree to the mission, I get the details."
"You'd agree to something without knowing what it is?" Eklund asked.
"Not usually, no. But you know the game. Loose lips sink ships, and what you don't know can't harm anyone." Agryna frowned. "And we lost most of our ships two years ago. And Earth."
"And many other planets," Eklund murmured.
"Of course."
The tone in Eklund's voice didn't escape her, because it was a tone that she was well used to. She'd spent the first fourteen years of her life in what might as well have been the centre of the galaxy. The political and cultural heart of the human species, and of course, the world that would have a gigantic defensive network constructed around it. It was only later, at Laconia, that she realized just how disinterested people were in humanity's home planet. Men and women from hundreds of worlds had enlisted in the Spartan-IV Program, and most of those worlds had been burnt to glass. They'd kept fighting while the greens of Earth remained tender.
By the war's end, Earth had endured. The majority of humanity's interstellar empire hadn't. And more than once, in simulations or otherwise, her fellow recruits had reminded her of that.
"Kittridge and I have our differences," Agryna said. "He wants Spartans, I want more time for training. He focuses on the Created, I'm more worried about the Banished."
"Why, ma'am?" Dinh asked.
"Why I want more time for training?"
Dinh frowned. "I think we've had enough of that."
You, perhaps.
"Why are the Banished a worse threat than the Created?"
"Because…" She chose her words carefully, telling herself that this wasn't in any way personal. "Because the worst case for us under the Created is slavery. The worst case under the Banished is…" She collected her thoughts, before murmuring, "is death."
"And one is worse than the other?" Eklund asked.
Agryna didn't answer. Reports passed her desk, despite the Academy's isolation. More than one planet had rejected the Pax Cortana. More than one had paid the price for it. According to some, non-corroborated reports, some of those planets didn't even exist anymore. And yet…
"I believe it is," Agryna said. And I've got the experience to prove it.
She could hide the truth from her Spartans, maybe even Kittridge. But she couldn't hide the truth from herself. Because while the Banished declared themselves different from the Covenant, had even allowed humans to join its ranks until recently, the Banished were still a pack of marauders, built by Brutes, for Brutes.
And she knew what Brutes could do. What they'd done. In London. As the battle for mankind's homeworld had progressed, both the Covenant and UNSC had focused their attentions in east Africa, but that wasn't to say that fighting wasn't occurring elsewhere. But outgunned, if not outnumbered, not every piece of Earth could be defended equally. So when a pack of Brutes had turned their attention to the capital of the long-defunct UK, the shining jewel of the North Atlantic Protectorate (not including Paris, at least) there'd been a brief battle, followed by a hunt.
People, killed in the streets for sport.
Carving. Feasting.
Laughter, as the prey screamed.
People forced to march into the street, to be vapourised by plasma from above.
She'd survived that somehow. As they'd been marched out into the killing ground, her parents had made a distraction, telling their three children to run. She never found out how her parents had died, she'd only heard their screams as she ran through the streets, squinting through the gloom and tear-stained eyes. But her brothers?
David had died with a quintet of spikes in his back. Kehinde had disappeared in a cloud of purple mist. She'd later wonder if the Brutes had missed her deliberately, saving her for a later hunt. Certainly, their deep, guttural laughter indicated the possibility.
But she was alive. And while people were burnt in plasma behind her, she headed for the highway, in the vain hope that it would take her somewhere, anywhere, outside this charnel house. And then…
Well, things had changed. But the child Laurette Agryna had been had died in those darkened streets. The woman would be born later. The one who, at less than fifteen years of age, was offered a place in the newly created Spartan-IV Program.
"The Banished are animals," Agryna said to the Spartans before her. "Brutes are animals, and will always be animals. Machines, I can deal with. A machine doesn't take any pleasure from the harm it inflicts. But organics…" She sighed, trying to return to the facts at hand, rather than her feelings. "There are wolves among the stars. The Created may have beaten down the gates, but it's the wolves I'm worried about. Which is why I'm sending you two out there. For humanity to have some wolves of its own."
"Lone wolves," Eklund murmured.
"No fireteams," Agryna said. "We don't have the numbers, and every operative I send out is carrying the risk of being traced back here. But a wolf? Well, the wolf's strength is the pack. But it's true the other way round."
Neither of the Spartans said anything.
"There's also that I know both of you would break before you bent."
"Meaning?" Dinh asked.
"Meaning that when it comes to slavery or death, you'd choose the latter."
Dinh flashed her a very rare, and slightly disconcerting, smile. The type of smile she'd seen on his lips when they'd worked in the field, before he'd slit an Innie's throat.
"Do we report to Kittridge, or you?" Eklund murmured.
And then there was his counterpart. Slightly less crazy, slightly less homicidal, slightly more deferential.
"To both," Agryna said.
But only slightly.
"You be his arms, and my ears. A Banished screams, I want to hear it. A child cries for help, I want to know it. You find out any little secrets out there, I want to read them."
Eklund raised an eyebrow. But in that moment, Agryna didn't care.
"Dismissed."
Secrets had been kept from her for the first fourteen years of her life.
And she wasn't going to let secrets creep up on her now.
It was two days since she'd talked with Kittridge, and one since she'd talked with Dinh and Eklund. Now, all three of them were headed for a Pelican that would take them up to the Charon. Along with a small continent of marines, and more importantly, equipment.
Kittridge was in his uniform, Agryna, her MJOLNIR Gen. 2 suit. Not that she needed it, but she'd made a habit of putting it on every time she was on the grounds of the Academy. If Spartans were knights in shining armour, then it was best to wear the armour as much as possible.
"Can't say I'm going to miss this planet," Kittridge murmured.
She looked at him.
"Gravity's all funny."
"But it's one-gee."
"Exactly." Seeing the look on her face, he continued, "I grew up on Proxima Two. Red sun, point-five gravity."
"And yet you joined ONI," Agryna pointed out. "Naval intelligence."
He remained silent.
"Ships are sent to one-gee you know."
"I do. And that's why I enjoy time in ar-grav." He looked Agryna up and, well, up, since she was a head taller than him. "We all have our own flaws."
Seeing his eyes linger on her cybernetic arm, its steel reflecting sunlight, Agryna conceded the point. It was the exception to her armour.
Well, that, and the satchel she had slung over it.
"Anyway, we'll be out of the system within two hours," Kittridge said, as they stood at one of the Academy's landing pads. "After that…"
Agryna grunted.
"Well, I did make you a promise, didn't I?" He handed her a piece of paper.
"Seriously?" She nevertheless took it and looked at the numbers onboard. "You're using paper?"
"Impossible for even the Created to track. Though I expect you to burn it once you're done."
Once she was done? Agryna stared at the figures – a series of coordinates, each applying to a location in three dimensional space. It didn't take her long to realize that these were corresponding to star systems. And only slightly longer for her to notice their proximity to them.
"Milk run, then?"
"Something like that."
Frankly, she doubted that was the case at all.
"But if you must know, which you don't…" He looked around, as if afraid that the enemy was listening in, "we need the lie of the land. The galaxy's in a vacuum now, and there's no telling who's going to fill it."
"The Banished, for starters," Agryna murmured.
"Even if they are the starters, there's plenty of potential seconds. Nature abhors a vacuum after all."
"Frankly, I could enjoy a vacuum."
"You wouldn't," Kittridge said firmly. "Bad as it is to have a juggernaut like the Covenant bearing down on you, a vacuum can be much worse."
Agryna didn't agree. He'd fought the Covenant. He'd stared oblivion in the face while she'd kept her head to the ground. She'd been holding her backpack when she'd run for her life back in London, not a rifle, like one of the Spartan-IIs who'd saved her. Supersoldiers who, she later learnt, had been conscripted as children. Drafted to fight a war against rebels, and only given a more palatable (if more lethal) enemy at the last moment.
It still wasn't common knowledge for the average citizen. But she'd learnt the truth. The only reason she'd been allowed entry into the Spartan-IV Program was because her genetic profile was that damn perfect. Normally, the Fours came from pre-existing service, but not her.
"You're special, Laurette. Why don't you let us make you even more special?"
She'd let them. She had no family, she was happy to become a super-soldier if it meant killing aliens, she'd let genetics become destiny, and now, she was a Spartan commander. And along the way, she'd realized that she wasn't some kind of aberration in the history of UNSC enlistment, but rather the child of a long and sordid legacy that, at the end of the day, had still saved humanity from extinction.
For a brief moment, she caught Eklund's eye as she boarded the Pelican, walking alongside Dinh, who had his helmet on. Both of them older than her. Both of them former members of the Army Rangers and Section Three respectively. Yet both of them her subordinates. Her pack. Her wolves. Sent out into the howling dark to do anything from recon to sabotage, against anything from Created, to Banished, to maybe even human rebels.
"I'll keep them safe, don't worry."
She looked at Kittridge, and laughed. "You'll keep them safe?"
"What can I say, I'm feeling all warm and fuzzy."
"Right…" She unslung the satchel off her shoulder, and handed it to Kittridge. "This is for you, by the way."
He raised an eyebrow as he took it. "Heavy."
"It is. But…" Thinking of that day in November 2552, she instead murmured, "it's special to me. Which is why I'm giving it to you. Because I know that you'll bring it, and my Spartans, back."
"Your Spartans?"
"Mine. They're only on loan. And…" She took a breath. "And I've been talking. And thinking. And the words in that book were all the guidance I needed."
"A book," said Kittridge blankly.
"A book," she repeated.
"Christ, and you go about me using paper."
She laughed, but its sound was overshadowed by the roar of the Pelican's engines. Lift-off was nigh. In less than twenty minutes, it would be above the atmosphere. And in less than two hours, it would be onboard the Charon, doing God only knew what.
"Until we meet again," Kittridge said. "Don't know where, don't know when."
"If you did, would you tell me?"
The spook said nothing. Instead, he gave her a wink, and headed for the dropship's bay. Joining the marines, and two wolves waiting for him. The pack leader.
It did Agryna some good to see him open the satchel. To draw out her family heirloom. The work that her mother had read to her more than once. The one item she'd smuggled out of their apartment when the Covenant had attacked. The thing that she'd taken with her, from Laconia, to the Infinity, to beyond.
Kittridge held it and, as the ramp closed, she could still make out its cover.
One last piece of joy, before commencement of the hunt.
"If there are wolves amongst the stars," she whispered.
Before the ramp closed, and the hunters took to the sky.
As the creeper that girdles the tree trunk,
The law runneth forward and back.
For the strength of the pack is the wolf.
And the strength of the wolf is the pack.
Rudyard Kipling, The Second Jungle Book