FOUR; LOTTA PEOPLE UNDERGROUND.
Haven wasn't much more than a blackened ball of glass, from orbit. It was still re-gathering atmosphere from its glassing in 2548. It was the cities and highways beneath the surface that were truly amazing.
John walked at Halsey's left side, and the Four-series the Doctor had chosen was on her other side. John wasn't sure whether he could rely on Spartan Vance after what he had seen in Halsey's office on the Infinity. Vance was a good soldier, but he let his emotions get the better of him too much. John didn't like the idea that at any moment, he might find himself Halsey's only useful bodyguard.
Vance seemed ok, for now, and was staring about in wonder. John would have reprimanded one of his Spartans, but he had come to expect different things from the Fours. He expected any Spartan to be observant enough to notice anything awry even if distracted, but he expected it more from a Four.
Besides… this city was impressive. It had a kind of beauty that had nothing to do with the harsh, almost ugly architecture of the buildings and streets and everything to do with the resilience and persistence of the people who lived in it. Many of the residences were luxurious and most of the people they passed were dressed opulently. John was familiar with the history of the underground cities – once the ugly, violent underbelly of a proud surface society – and was not surprised that most of the residents were wealthy. Those who had survived the glassing were either already residents of the underground, thus gang members, or had managed to pay their way into the tunnels, thus surface-dwellers of considerable wealth.
He kept an especially sharp eye on a small group of large, muscular men. They had the look of troublemakers about them despite their sharp attire and classy collective demeanor. One of them shifted his weight and John spotted the faint shape of a very well concealed pistol. He quickly informed both Halsey and Vance of the potential threat with a subtle tilt of his head and the twitch of a finger.
"Razorwire men," Halsey said. "They're on the wrong turf. If Glass Storm sees them, there will be a shootout. Mark my words, this is about to get bloody."
"I thought Razorwire and Glass Storm had a ceasefire?" Vance asked. John glanced at him in surprise. Either the Fours were more familiar with current events than they were supposed to be, or Vance had a connection to this place beyond it having been where Spartan Slover had died. John had a strong feeling that it was the latter.
"They did," Halsey said, completely ignoring John's rare gesture of surprise. "The deal was that Razorwire and Glass Storm stayed off one another's turf and they would stop killing each other and concentrate on the other gangs. Now there's Razorwires on Glass Storm territory. The ceasefire is broken. I can't say I'm surprised – except to say that I'm surprised it lasted as long as it did. Five years is a long time in a gang war."
"Long as the Leads don't weigh in." Vance shrugged. "Razors and Storms fighting each other won't last long, they're not big enough, but if Lead to Blood back up Razorwire, PlasmaScar will help Glass Storm out, and then we'll have all out war again. Right now the gang war is hidden, beneath the surface, and the civvies don't know it's going on, but if things go south, we'll have random people murdered to 'make a point'. Then the civvies will turn to us for help getting the gangs back under control."
"Something we can't afford," Halsey said, voicing what was plain on Vance's face. "With the Storm Covenant still gaining momentum we need as many soldiers fighting that war as we can manage. We don't have the men to spend on solving Haven's problems."
The sooner we get off this hunk of junk, the better, John thought. As if it wasn't irritating enough that the Pelican wouldn't fit through the passage to get to the shaft Halsey wanted to 'explore', and they had to wait for three more days for transport. If the gangs got openly violent, Halsey was in danger, and that would make his job that much harder. Two Spartans simply were not enough to defend her in the middle of an overt gang war. Even if the gangs didn't put out a hit on the Doctor. A bullet was just as lethal whether it hit its intended target, or someone who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.
And then there was the somewhat frightening feeling he had that Vance had a deeper familiarity with the gangs than he was letting on. John wasn't sure if his issue with the younger Spartan was to do with the fact that he found it difficult to let people close enough to gain his trust, or actually a well-founded doubt. He wasn't used to not knowing whether to even trust himself. It bothered him deeply.
"Master Chief, would you care to weigh in on the conversation?" Halsey asked him. John appreciated the effort she was making to keep his name private. The knowledge of his name was a privilege he did not allow many people. The Arbiter, Thel 'Vadam, knew, and the last of his Spartans knew, and he had told Cortana, and Halsey knew, but that was it.
"I have too little experience with these gangs," he eventually said. "I cannot say I can predict what will happen. It would be best for us to be done here as soon as possible."
"Agreed," Halsey replied, with a knowing smile. She knew why he was reluctant to converse with anybody, especially in public. John wasn't sure why that bothered him.
Vance wished the Master Chief would be a little less reclusive. It was easier to read the older Spartan if his face was visible, which was only possible if the man would remove his helmet – which he didn't do often. It wasn't that Haydn Vance didn't trust the Chief; he did. It was just that he would prefer to be able to guess at what his allies were thinking. Easy with Halsey, but impossible with the Chief.
"Eh, it's Vancey," one of the Razors said. "So what we heard was true, eh mate? Ya made it."
Haydn smiled at the young gangster, a genuine friendly smile that he knew would have the Master Chief instantly suspicious. "Made it alright. So did Martha – did you hear what happened? It was less than a klick from here…"
"No, what happened to my big sister?"
"It was here on Haven," Vance said, then paused, swallowed the lump in his throat, and continued, "when the Storm Covenant attacked. We were sent here to help repel them. Fireteam Grimm. The team I was assigned to, the team Martha was assigned to. We ran into trouble at the edge of one of the deep shafts."
"Not Abyssal? Please tell me it wasn't Abyssal!"
Vance glanced at the sidewalk beneath his boots. "It was. We got ourselves backed into the tunnel that connects to it, on this level, and then we had to keep on falling back until there was nowhere else to fall back to. So the team leader Spartan Cross ordered us to hide in the only place there was to hide, in the hopes that the enemy would think we had fallen down the shaft to our deaths… we slipped off the edge, but there were twelve of us and not enough solid handholds so we ended up with Cross hanging onto the strongest handhold and then each of us connected at the wrists hanging below her… and the handhold started to give way."
"Abyssal Chute is miles deep! How did anyone survive?"
Haydn was aware of the Chief's eyes locked onto his face, and knew that no matter how hard he tried to hide it, the older Spartan would know his every thought. He sighed, looked at his boots, and swallowed again. "Martha… let go. I tried to hang onto her but she slipped right out of my grasp. It was just enough that the handhold held, and the enemy never found us either."
Owen Slover closed his eyes and took a deep breath, clearly fighting back tears. "Then she… she sacrificed herself. That's so Martha. Ma and Pa will be shattered, of course, but we're so proud of her... Eh, listen, if y'ever want the word on what's going on with the gangs… talk to me… I owe you."
"Yeah, sure thing, buddy. Can't believe they didn't tell you guys she was gone." Vance was quite disappointed in the UNSC for that oversight. The Slover family was proud of Martha, always had been, always would be, and deserved to know what she had sacrificed. And what Vance had failed to do to save her.
"Ye're the first UNSC anything anyone on Haven's seen in years, mate. Eh, I gotta go, got work to do… drop by the Razors clubhouse if y'get a spare minute, wontcha?"
"Will do, Ow." Vance paused, watching his friend leave, then turned to Halsey. "Owen's an old friend… our fathers were the founding members of Razorwire. Ow followed in his father's footsteps. Martha and I decided there was more to life than joining a gang, but I still have contacts."
"Good," Halsey said. "Use them."
"Yes, ma'am," Haydn responded automatically. He glanced at the sidewalk again. "The Storms don't like me much… had I joined a gang it would have been the Razors, by right of birth. But they won't be a threat, they're too small to be able to survive a UNSC crackdown and too smart to risk it. The Leads and the Plasmas are like small private armies and have a huge covert membership, and they hate any kind of authority, so we should try to stay off their turf if we can. They're strong, and they've gotten arrogant with that power."
"Will they harm Doctor Halsey?" John asked, a faint note of personal concern in his voice. Vance forgot too often that Halsey was almost like a mother to the Twos. Her role in their creation was so significant that they considered her a family member.
"If they get the chance, possibly. Best not to risk it. I don't like spending too much time on Storms turf either, but they won't be dangerous. It just won't be a comfortable encounter if we run into them." Vance unconsciously and subtly touched the pistol at his hip, a weapon so heavily modified it no longer qualified as an M6D. It wasn't loaded but John expected it would take an extended clip, given that it could be used fully automatic, semi-automatic, or for burst fire. It also had a non-standard extended barrel. It barely qualified as a pistol.
John's own pistol was standard issue with a standard 2x scope and a twelve-round clip. And it was loaded, but then, it had a safety catch, which was at that moment on. Vance had, illegally, removed the safety on his weapon.
"Who controls the shaft?" he asked, after a brief silence.
"Nobody," Halsey and Vance replied in unison. Vance elaborated. "Abyssal Chute has always been no-man's-land. It and the tunnels that connect to it are supposed to be haunted, and the gangs are so superstitious they won't go anywhere near the place."
John didn't really understand the fuss people made about ghosts. They didn't exist in the first place, but even if they had been real, he doubted they would have been actually dangerous. Every 'haunted' place he had ever been had turned out to have perfectly sane explanations for the supposed haunting. And Haven was a Forerunner shield world – not that the people who lived there knew that – so a 'haunting' could actually be Sentinels. Or possibly a Monitor.
Plenty of perfectly sane explanations.
So why do I have this odd sense of foreboding, like something bad will happen? Trust that feeling, Mendez always used to say… trust it.
"Doctor," he said carefully, "are you sure it's a good idea to go down that shaft?"
"Good idea or not, I need that data." Halsey shot him a sharp look, but John didn't back down.
"All I'm saying is I would like to have a little more backup." That's right, dig yourself even deeper… "Always better to have too many men than not enough."
"Where's this coming from, J- Master Chief?"
"I have a bad feeling about this mission," he finally admitted, unsure why it was so difficult for him to say as much. It was a statement of fact, and Halsey would be receptive.
Much to John's chagrin, Halsey laughed. "Don't tell me you're buying into that ghost nonsense!"
"Ghosts don't exist," he growled. "Sentinels do. Never trust a Sentinel. Or a Monitor. That never ends well."
"I saw one of the so-called ghosts once," Vance said quietly, so quietly that for a moment John wasn't sure he had actually spoken. "That shaft is so dark, you can't see anything inside it. Not even with night vision. But if you stick around long enough you'll see lights. Most of the time they're blue, but I've seen white, yellow, and red, too. Up and down the shaft like they're on a mission. The lights are all you can see but they don't seem like ghosts to me… they seem like machines."
"Sentinels," John hissed, his right hand moving to hover near his pistol.
"Whatever they are, they aren't hostile. I used to spend hours at a time near Abyssal Chute. I'm still alive."
Halsey nodded. "The 'ghosts' of the shaft and surrounding tunnels have never been observed to be hostile. The stories I've heard make me think more of Sentinels than spirits, but these ones seem quite content to have humans living inside their installation. Spark was not operating correctly, and you didn't exactly give him much reason to like you."
John frowned deeply, glad for his faceplate. "He didn't give me much reason to like him."
"That's true too. And on Requiem, unless you lied to me, you weren't attacked by the Sentinels you saw there."
"No…" John admitted, seeing where this was going. Halsey was nothing if not predictable.
"Have you ever been attacked by a Sentinel except on the word of a Monitor?"
"No. But there's no guarantee that there isn't a Monitor on Haven directing those Sentinels."
Halsey smiled. It was a smug expression and John didn't like it. "I have seen footage that proves there was a Monitor on this planet, and it has been destroyed."
"Helmet footage?" John was instantly curious. "Who?"
"You don't know them," Halsey said, her tone cautious. That just made John even more curious.
"A Spartan?"
"Not one you know…"
She was so easy to read. John could see in her eyes, from her subtle tells, that the footage was filmed in 2538, which meant that if it was a Spartan, it had to be someone he knew. Except she wasn't lying. "Who was deployed here when that footage was taken, Doctor?"
Halsey shot him a look. It was the look that said 'not here'. Behind it was the look she was trying to hide – 'I'm not allowed to tell you'. John let himself shrug and wrote it off. No use worrying about details he wasn't allowed to know.
"We're in Razors territory now," Vance said. "The map is wrong, by the way. The big building marked 'science center' doesn't exist. It burned the year before I joined the UNSC, and Razorwire demolished what was left. I don't know what they built there, if anything."
"Probably a clubhouse," Halsey surmised.
"No, they don't meet at any specific place. If they did they'd be too vulnerable to PlasmaScar attack. The Plasmas pay no attention to the ceasefires of small gangs, and believe in destroying the competition no matter the size."
"Then why haven't they destroyed Glass Storm?" John wondered.
"They're in the process. They destroy by assimilation nearly as often as they destroy by elimination."
Halsey glanced at her tablet. "You're more familiar with this area than I am, Vance. What's our best route to the garage?"
"Take a left at the next junction, then the second right. There's an alley we can duck down. It's not very well lit and I would not advise anybody go near it alone, because there's a lot of non-gang crime in that neighborhood, but you have Spartans as your bodyguards, and one of them is the son of a prominent Razor. Nobody will touch us." Vance seemed confident enough, but John couldn't shake that feeling that something was going to go wrong here on Haven. He wasn't completely sure what or when but something would go wrong.
"Master Chief, your thoughts?"
"It is the most direct route," he hedged. "And Spartan Vance is familiar with the area. All the same I advise caution."
"Then it's settled," Halsey said. "We take Vance's route, but carefully."
Fantastic, John thought. Now I have to trust him. What I wouldn't give to have just one of my Spartans at my back…
AN: a little more detail about Vance's childhood for you. The upcoming drama is quite predictable I think but inevitable given Vance's luck.
I have had some lovely reviews, which I greatly appreciate, and a big shoutout to KimJel for being awesome! This turns out to be a lot more AU than I originally intended for it to be so I decided it can be in the same AU as my other stories, hopefully the things I have changed added or invented make sense with Legacy as a standalone but if not let me know and I'll point you to the stories I have that explain it more in-depth. Yes, Haven is a planet of my own invention, as are the gangs and the resultant gang warfare.
So this chapter feels very much Chief-centric with only a little bit of Vance. I blame that on the fact that I understand John better. Note that John's quite animated when it's just him and Halsey, but very quiet and reserved when Vance is about. That is important.
As always please review, and remember that I only own my OCs and this story.