Tinker, Tailor, Spartan, Spy Chapter 2

"Come on, man, let us see, let us see!"

"Quiet! I don't want the Matron finding out and taking it away, okay!"

I opened my eyes a fraction to see a couple of fellow orphan boys barge quietly into the room, three crowding around one more, surrounding and circling him like snapping dogs. The central boy held a bundle of rags, barely visible in the evening gloom that filtered through the skylight. From the sound of it, he had contraband. Nobody tended to come up here in the evening, being busy with chores, or just having gone out to escape the crushing atmosphere of the orphanage. Evidently he wanted to show it off, whatever it was, to his friends in secrecy.

I kept my eyes shut, pretending to be asleep. They hadn't seemed to have noticed me yet, and when or if they did, they'd be less inclined to threaten me into silence. I concentrated on their voices, the shuffle of their boots. I could barely recall their names, but their voices were enough to get their faces. They were a variety of ages, all a few years older than me, on the back end of their teens, hailing from all over the outer colonies. Their footsteps grew louder, then fainter as they walked past me. The distinct creak of the bunk across and to the left of me's springs sounded three times, and one of them spoke again, still hushed.

"Alright man, we're up here, now show it!"

"Alright, but shut it!" There was a faint flop as a piece of cloth was discarded, and a small intake of breath from the posse.

"Man, that is cool."

"No shit. Where'd you get it, Jason?"

"That's a secret. But I'm telling you, this is the real deal." My curiosity got the better of me, and I opened my eyes a sliver. In the dark, I could see the shapes of the boys, and in one of their hands, a gleam of silver. "Military issue M6E handgun, and ten 12.7x40mm rounds to go with it." He slid the magazine out, and popped a single brass bullet out. "One of these could blow your head clean off." One of the boys gave a low whistle.

"What're you gonna do with it?"

"Probably take it out into the woods, do some target practice. Might have to get a silencer."

"I don't know if you can get silencers for guns like that..."

"Yeah, you can. They're not easy to find though, might have to call in a favour or two." One of the other boys gave the gun-toting one a little shove.

"Come off it. Since when were you in with the shady underworld arms dealer crowd?"

"Nothing shady about it. My guy's ex-UNSC. He used to be a quartermaster, still got a bunch of stuff left over."

"Nothing shady, huh? How's about selling guns to minors? How old are you, Jason, like fifteen?"

"I'm seventeen, shitface. And believe me, the practice I'm going to get done with this thing is going to good use."

"Why?"

"In three months, when my birthday rolls around, I'm outta this dump, hopping on a freighter to the nearest big city, and signing up for the corps."

"Why the hell would you wanna do that?"

"Are you stupid? Why am I here? Why are any of us here? The Covenant killed my family, and I want back at them. UNSC's the only thing that can do anything about them, and they need everybody they can get."

Hearing that, I felt a small fire light in my gut. After digging up the old news reports on the glassing of my home, I'd found out that the UNSC had withdrawn just before my town was hit. They'd been destroyed, and had run off, limping, tail between their legs. They couldn't protect anyone.

I did understand how Jason felt, though. I was itching to spill Covvie blood myself, though I still had three more years to go until I could leave. But I sure as hell wasn't going to the UNSC. They had the best resources available to all of humanity, and they couldn't protect anyone. They just pulled back, over and over, leaving a trail of burning worlds behind them.

I wanted to help, in a way that would really matter. Working behind enemy lines, taking out key targets, the kind of stealth ops the UNSC was too bloated and bureaucratic to do itself. A few bullets in the right places, and suddenly the next colony on the alien's list had two more months to evacuate.

But that was just my pipe dream. I was fifteen. I had nothing. No training, no weapons, no plans. Jason here... He had one out of three.

I settled down and waited for them to leave. The next day was going to be an eventful one.

XXXXXXXXXXXX

It wasn't hard to persuade Jason to give up his friend's name and location once I said I'd tell the matron he had a gun under his bed. One oath of secrecy later, I had someone to see downtown. After school, or really just a place the orphanage kids went to keep them off the streets for five hours a day, I headed out to see the guy. At the address Jason had given me, I found a mildewed white cottage sitting at the edge of our ramshackle town, wedged between us and the local wood, paint peeling off it in big, fragile curls.

Inside was a big hunk of flesh that called itself Moe. He stomped around his house with a cigarette butt glued to his fingers, cleaning his stock of guns, shirtless. Apparently he hadn't noticed his glory days in the army were over, so his belly now hung over the belt of his battered military fatigue trousers like a great pink precipice. I told him Jason sent me, and he said he was hesitant about becoming the cause of some kind of armed gang war.

"I don't want to buy anything." I told him. "Not yet."

"Eh? Then why are you here?"

"I want to see what you've got. At some point, I want to buy a pistol and a sniper rifle."

"Why? Want to join up with the UNSC too? They give you what you need when you ship out, kid."

"No. I want to go freelance." He laughed at me for a good two minutes, a whooping, hacking laugh, but opened his eyes and saw I was dead serious. He basically gave up after that, and showed me two things he said he'd keep on the side for me. A M6E pistol, like Jason's, and a SRS99C-S2 AMB sniper rifle. He said if I was planning on going freelancing, they'd be the easiest to sustain.

I thanked him and was ready to leave, and start saving up, but he stopped me.

"You serious about this, kid? You ready to kill people for money? I mean, I've seen a few stone-cold killers pass through that orphanage of yours, but you don't seem the type."

"I'm not planning on killing people." He fixed me with a beady stare, and took a drag on his cigarette.

"Ah, revenge story. Well, if you ain't going to the UNSC, feel free to swing by and do some target practice. I've got a target range out back. If you're gonna throw your life away, might as well make sure you're gonna take as many of them alien bastards with you as possible."

"Thank you."

"Pleasures all mine, kid. Hey, what's your name?"

"Jameson Locke." He grinned.

"Now, that's a merc's name if ever I heard one. You're gonna go far, kid."

I don't think he'll ever know how right he was.