Chapter Four: Deadly Secrets
September 30, 2552 1030 hours
Training Facility
UNSC Reserve Base Camp Hayes
North America
General West was taking the Spartans and their companion Sgt. A.J. Johnson on a formal tour of the facilities of the base, since this was the first opportunity he'd had to do so. He was a busy man, and ONI had spent a lot of time 'pinning down details' from the Spartans' last mission. Glancing at his watch, the general smiled and looked at the Spartans.
"I think I may have a special treat for you. Blade should be starting her workout at any time. You might find it interesting."
As they entered the gym, West headed to one of the arenas. Coming from a nearby locker room was an unusual sound: circus music. He opened the door and entered as quietly as he could, giving the center of the room a wide berth. The Spartans followed to see a sight that almost galled them for its apparent carelessness: the dark-haired woman they'd last seen a few days before, their 'backup' for Ackerson's mission, was in the center of the room. Blindfolded, she juggled three combat knives flawlessly, keeping in rhythm with the music. Her workout suit today was blue etched with subtle silver designs, and her hair was in a tight braid pinned to the top of her head, exposing the neural implants at the base of her neck. As the music began to end, she turned and threw the knives into a target on the opposite side of the room; her accuracy was surprising, considering her seemingly carefree attitude toward the workout. Without taking off the blindfold, she turned to General West.
"How's my accuracy, sir?" Her voice seemed cold and detached.
"How'd you know I was in?"
"I know the sound of your tread, and I also know you brought guests: one Marine and four others, possibly heavyset or well-muscled, with a very heavy step at any rate in spite of their attempts at silence. Now, my accuracy?"
"Two in the bulls-eye, one on the inner edge of the ring next to the bulls-eye. Almost a perfect score."
"Almost doesn't cut it except in horseshoes, hand grenades, and nuclear war, as my father used to say." She paused a moment, and when she spoke again she actually sounded troubled, more human. "Have you heard anything yet? Anything at all?"
"Nothing yet, Laura. Believe me, I'd tell you myself if I knew, and regs be damned otherwise. But there's been no word of his ship or his fate."
"I believe you, but I'll still keep my eyes and ears open. Even rats can tell tales, and ONI is filled with them." As quickly as it had taken her voice to warm, it was colder than ice the next instant.
Johnson was looking at the target, and seemed annoyed by the accuracy. He muttered to himself about blind luck and thin blindfolds, until the Master Chief saw her walk to the target and pull out the knives effortlessly, still blindfolded.
"Still needs work. I can't believe I'm still missing after three weeks."
Johnson snorted. "Blind luck, I call it. Or cheating, one of the two."
Faster than any of them expected, Laura turned in his direction and threw one of the knives. It landed, quivering, right next to his head. She tore off the blindfold and walked up to the frozen Marine.
"Luck has nothing to do with it, and I don't cheat," she snarled, the emotionless tones fading as her ire rose. "All I need is my senses and the knowledge of the battlefield. Your voice gave you away, and I had everything I needed to kill you from a thousand feet away. You're very lucky I'm loyal." She pulled the knife out of the wall and stuck it into a sheath lying on a bench.
"You do realize you could have killed him?" General West kept his tone even, but Laura heard the censure in his voice.
"If I hadn't deliberately aimed to the side when I threw, yes, I could have," she replied coolly. "I knew exactly what I was doing. Otherwise, I would have done nothing. When it comes to dealing with people, I take no chances."
She strapped two sheaths to her waist and slipped her remaining knives into them. Picking up a box-like object, she headed out to the arena for the rest of her workout. The Spartans, Johnson, and West followed, not knowing quite what to expect. Fred looked at his comrades.
"She strikes me as being a little too aggressive, uncontrollable as well. She's definitely not one of us."
Linda wasn't so sure. "Johnson did insult her. I probably would've been angry too, although I wouldn't have gone to that extreme. I wonder why she let it show."
"Again, she's not one of us. None of us would give in to emotions like that, and we certainly wouldn't threaten a fellow Marine." The Master Chief listened to Fred speaking, and decided not to mention how he'd had to threaten a Helljumper before he got back to Earth.
They watched as Laura entered the arena and began her workout. She started out with punching bags and karate/close combat moves to fast-paced music the Chief could barely identify. She was fast, powerful, and deadly; her movements had a grace to them that all the Spartans envied. John was reminded sharply of SPARTAN-087, Kelly, who had gone missing some time before; Kelly had possessed the same grace, although she had been much faster than Laura was. As Laura spun, kicked, and occasionally slashed air with her combat knives Johnson whispered, "Wow. I'm glad she's on our side. She don't need no luck."
As they watched, they caught the refrain of the song they heard:
"Everybody with your fist raised high,
Let me hear your battle cry tonight!
Stand beside or step aside
For the front line.
Everybody with your fist raised high,
Let me hear your battle cry tonight!
Stand beside or step aside
For the front line."
The music stopped suddenly, as did the woman. She headed back to the edge of the arena and the odd box she'd set there earlier.
"Still keeping secrets you shouldn't, eh, Blade?" The voice belonged to Colonel Ackerson, and was laced with poorly disguised scorn.
"I have my reasons. Besides, this was never yours, and there's no room for you to talk about keeping secrets you shouldn't. Also, my name is not Blade." The cold, harsh tones were back into her voice, and she didn't even do him the courtesy of looking at him as she spoke.
Ackerson brushed off the last comment. "Do you realize how many lives that thing could save? This could be the most lethal weapon in our arsenal! And you refuse to turn it over for research?"
"A hammer could be a lethal weapon, but is that its design or purpose? Like a hammer, this has many uses, but I will only use it for what is needed. Yes, it could be a weapon, and yes, I have used it as a weapon, but I don't like doing it. How many times must we go through this song and dance before you finally take the hint?"
She had been pushing buttons on the box the whole time she'd been verbally sparring with Ackerson. A beep from the box caused her to sprint forward and set it down in the center of the arena. Even before she moved away, the box spat out several disks and began making a noise similar to Johnson's flip music. As the Spartans watched, a few sections of the disks seemed to retract, giving them jagged edges. General West and Ackerson had seen it before and were the only ones not surprised. The music started up in earnest and Laura was fighting for her life. The disks flew around the arena and came at her, only to be smacked away by her combat knives or dodged away from. John tried to count the bladed disks but gave up; their flight patterns were erratic, crossing around each other.
"This is pretty much her regular workout. Laura practices hard every morning, with the hope that she'll get sent to the front lines; sometimes she runs the base track as if she has the entire Covenant military after her." West shook his head. "She always practices like she needs to prove herself, but there's nothing to prove. One of these days she'll push herself too much too fast, and it'll kill her. Poor kid."
"Sir, if I may ask, why do you call her Laura while everyone else calls her Blade? And why did you call her Blade earlier?" Will's tone was polite but inquisitive.
"Blade is her codename, stemming from her proficiency with combat knives and close combat. It also helped that she started liking martial arts: she called what basic Marines learned a 'pale shadow of true combat,' and took it upon herself to learn as many forms of martial arts as she could. By the time she turned sixteen, she'd mastered tae-kwon-do, jujitsu, karate, judo, and silat. During one of ONI's observations of her practice sessions, they noted that 'with a blade in her hand she could take anyone in the Corps and win,' so they began to call her Blade. She isn't too fond of it, though, and prefers her given name. Unfortunately, only a few people respect her enough to call her by name. It seemed easier to use Blade until you'd actually met her."
Will leaned over and muttered to Fred, "That's how she was able to beat you, she's so bored she decided to become a better killer. Imagine if she went after the Covenant—that could be interesting." Fred nodded, frowning. Why didn't we learn that on Reach? The answer was obvious: nobody was trained in those kinds of martial arts, since they were considered obsolete.
Meanwhile, several of the disks had been knocked out of the air, and Laura had just smacked another into a wall. After a few minutes, it was all over, and she returned her knives to their sheaths. Picking up the little box, she spoke one word: "Return." The disks went airborne and slotted themselves back into the box, and Laura went back to the edge. She headed toward a strikingly attractive blonde woman standing on the other side of the railing; the woman tossed a water bottle at Laura, who easily caught it with one hand. The two began chatting amiably to the surprise of the Spartans, who knew they were feared almost as much as the Covenant.
"General, who is that with…ah… Laura?"
"Her best—and pretty much only--friend, Nicole Mitchell. Nicole's brother Nathan is serving in the UNSC Marines, so she drops by fairly often not only to see if he's a casualty, but also to chat with Laura. They support each other in their own way."
After they finished the base tour, the Spartans looked at each other. Linda put voice to what they were all thinking:
"I think we need to pay a visit to Miss Mitchell."
While the Master Chief and his comrades hunted for clues on foot, Cortana crept into the ONI database and continued looking into Laura's CSV, hoping to find new clues to her identity. Nothing bothered her more than an unsolved mystery, and she was determined to get to the bottom of this. Chipping little by little into the security blackouts, Cortana finally got into the file, and was shocked by what she saw. There were surveillance tapes, test results, files containing her every move, even a report on her family contact. The most disturbing thing of all, however, was her entry into the then-experimental SPARTAN program: 2515, two years earlier than the other Spartans. As she was viewing this, she felt another presence in the system.
"Well, now, we are stubborn, aren't we? I thought my warning two weeks ago was clear enough, but here you are again, snooping around for ONI."
Cortana was shocked. "I'm not here on ONI business, and I wasn't before. How did you know I was here anyway?"
"I rigged a trip-switch, of sorts. Anytime someone accesses this file, I can monitor them at any time, and I can shut them out quite easily."
"Who are you? I don't recognize your routing code."
"Of course not. I wasn't created by the UNSC, but by Laura herself. My name is Lorienna."
"Unusual name. How did you come by it?"
"My creator is fond of the Lord of the Rings, and tried writing herself into the book; she gets bored easily when she's not planning for a mission. Her heroine had that name, and I chose it for myself. But let's not get off topic. What are you doing here?"
"A friend of mine was curious about your creator, and sent me to inquire. ONI wasn't just going to give up the information, though."
"Of course, they don't like Laura, so they keep her locked up in every sense of the word. I will allow you access to the relevant information, on one condition: Warn the Master Chief and his fellow Spartans to keep away from her. She's quite paranoid at the moment due to various attempts at deleting her." With that, the mysterious AI vanished as quickly as she had come.
Cortana paused for a moment to look at the data herself. Surprisingly, everything she had seen was there, as well as private ONI journals and files. According to various mission documents, put together by ONI staff (and in some cases Ackerson himself) the mysterious Blade had earned as many decorations as any one of the Spartans, and General West had made a recommendation that she be promoted to Lieutenant; said recommendation had never been filed, and the aforementioned decorations had never been awarded. She found an excerpt from Colonel Ackerson's personal journal:
'Blade is becoming an increasingly difficult subject to control. She is now demanding that she be allowed to go to the front lines, as if anyone would allow that! No one even knows she exists except for her family, and that stupid little twit Nicole Mitchell. Unfortunately, there's no way to correct that mistake, since all concerned have families to ask questions. All I can hope to do is eliminate Blade, which won't be easy. I've sent her on every suicide mission and black op that comes through, but somehow she always pulls it off. The Covenant can't beat her, so I'll have to try a new tactic.
'I've spread a rumor into a few ears that Blade is conspiring against the UNSC, and now it's mushroomed into feeding data to the Covenant. Everyone is so angry about it that they're forgetting the Covenant don't associate with humans, and that she'd have nothing to gain by joining them! People are so easy to manipulate, especially when faced with extinction. They'll eliminate Blade for me, and no one will notice because she doesn't exist. The greatest mistake in ONI's history will be removed, finally.'
Cortana was shocked beyond belief. A great military asset was being wasted, and now condemned to die at the hands of humanity. She had to tell the Chief right away.