Tinker, Tailor, Spartan, Spy Chapter 3
Taking the pair of polarised binoculars from my eyes, I began to wonder if I'd bitten off more than I could chew.
In the darkness of the night, I was perched atop a rocky cliff, dressed in full black, my skin smeared with mud and dark paint. Below me was a fifty-strong Covenant camp, holed up in the ruins of a town. A cluster of Covenant cruisers loomed in the sky far away, squatting over a mountain range like hermits. The planet had been all but evacuated now, with only a few thousand people on the other main continent remaining. The UNSC was maintaining a minimal presence in the system, positioned in such a way that they could pressure the comparatively smaller Covenant fleet into staying hidden on this side of the planet, without risking anything by approaching.
In other words, they were letting the Covenant slowly close their ground forces in towards the last populated areas, leaving the civilians to hope for another fleet of evac ships that might never come. As soon as the Covenant had what they wanted, the glassing would begin, and there was no telling when that would happen.
I was in deep. Very, very deep. In order to get this position above the camp, I'd had to kill over sixty grunts, a dozen jackals and two elites. I was dangerously low on ammo, and two miles away from my ship, a modified exoatmospheric-capable Owl. It was a miracle I wasn't dead yet. But my prize was almost within reach. I'd been tracking him for months, and here he was.
I didn't have to wait long for him to show himself. Out of one of the broken buildings he walked, light from the planet's two yellow moons shining on his crimson armour. Tal Panomee. A very senior commander in the Fleet of Righteous Vigilance. Though the Elite's custom of high-ranking officers regularly doing field duty probably had many benefits when it came to tactical consideration and morale, in this case, it was simply making my job a whole lot easier.
He walked somewhat uncomfortably into the centre of the road. The slightly lower gravity was probably not what he was used to. He looked around, seemingly just taking a moment to enjoy the night. I made my preparations as fast as I could. I might not get a chance like this for hours.
I slung my sniper rifle off my back, slid back a little and set up the bipod. Even after ten years, I still had the gun Moe had sold me. I felt around on my hip for the bandolier that held my specialised ammunition, and slid a single bullet out. A high-velocity, custom-tooled, armour piercing disruptor round. Designed with questionable intent by an inner colony engineer to pierce energy shields, body armour, and anything else that might be between it and the target's brain. Unfortunately, not silencer-compatible. It was my last one. I just hoped that Tal hadn't upgraded his shield generator recently. The bullet couldn't quite pierce the newest models, a lesson I'd learned the hard way. If I needed to follow up with a regular shot, then I was bound to be caught. It had to be perfect, or I was done for. Of course, it was still a very real possibility I was already done for, but that was of no concern for now.
I hastily loaded the round, crushed the stock to my shoulder, took a deep breath, and synced up the scope with my smart-link contact lens. The monster's face leapt into view, mandibles twitching.
The shot was clear. There was no wind. The rest of his troops were nowhere to be seen.
I centred the reticule over his head. My grip tightened on the gun. For a split second, he turned, and it seemed as though he was looking right at me, and then he had a hole in his head. The boom of my rifle, the flash as his shields flared and broke, and the far-off slap of his armoured body hitting the ground. A sudden barrage of sensory information, and I was off haring through the brush in the direction of my ship. I was already twenty metres away by the time I managed to sling my rifle back over my shoulder, the timing roughly coinciding with the rapidly receding shouts of Fal's subordinates.
My blood thumped in my ears, my breath burned in my lungs. But alongside the welling exhaustion, came a bursting elation. It was done. I'd pulled it off. The leadership of this entire continent's operation was down, all thanks to me.
I caught my breath as I was forced to hide from a squad of grunts, heading in the direction of the camp, probably returning from patrol, trying to catch me in a net before I slipped away. Before long, I was back on board my Owl, and had burst up into the sky. I had some rudimentary stealth systems, really no more than a decrepit baffler and some heat sinks, so I engaged them, and set the autopilot to take me across the expanse of the planet's great ocean to the largest remaining city on the planet. I wasn't in the mood for flying. The post-adrenaline rush exhaustion was setting in.
I stumbled back into the cramped troop transport area of the Owl, a space I had turned into a rudimentary bedroom. A dirty mattress sat on the floor, next to a few books and a toolbox. I slumped down onto the simple bed, wriggled to get a jutting spring out of my kidney, and just lay there a moment. I soon fished a rag out to half-heartedly clean the camo from my face, but for just a little while, I let myself bask in the satisfaction of a job well done. I slept well that night. Very well.
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Arriving back at the stone, metropolitan hub of any soul unlucky enough to still be on the planet, I was beginning to wonder how long the place was going to last, even if the Covenant never arrived. Landing permission wasn't even a problem, the parking bays were mostly empty and the city services had been among the first to leave, so one could just touch down and let the AI's lock up. With a lack of any civic authority, sooner or later there were good to be riots. The people were on edge as it was, waiting anxiously for a rescue fleet. At this point, I was in as much need as they were. Slipspace-capable dropships weren't entirely unheard of, but they were extremely rare, expensive, and pretty much entirely UNSC property, used for their special ops. My Owl was a good ship, but not capable of getting me anywhere near the next system.
I drowned my concerns with tedium. I needed resupply. Wandering through the streets, it was all I could do not to make eye contact. These people were desperate, many scraping as much money together as possible, just in case their ticket off-world had to be bought. The place was ready to blow.
By the time I'd bought fuel, ammo and supplies at an exhaustive markup, it was nearly noon. I hadn't eaten since the previous evening. Rather than eating cheap recycled protein slop back at my own ship, I decided a little celebration was in order. I slipped out of the sun into the most reputable place I could find, a small, boxy cantina. Never did low-quality synthetic meat and watered-down beer taste so good.
Halfway through my meal, I heard a crackly local news report coming from an ancient radio on the bar. Retreating civilians were reporting a stall in Covenant advances, glimpses of abandoned camps, even retreats. From the sound of it, Tal's death had set them back quite a bit. The news then switched to the usual fare about the off-world negotiations for an evacuation flotilla, which were apparently going well. The UNSC had offered loans of a considerable sum to a private corporation to manage the extraction. It seemed they wanted their pressure fleet back. This system was of no strategic importance, so it was surprising they'd stayed this long. Rescue would be a couple of months, at best a few weeks away.
All good news. I got back to my meal.
Then came the big interruption.
A man came and sat down at my table, opposite me. I'd been careful to sit away from the locals, tucked away in the corner. He was either looking for a fight, or looking for a merc. I perused him out of the corner of my eye for a second, as he shuffled into place. Caucasian male, mid-to-late thirties. Brown, thinning hair. Dressed a little too practically. He was an off-worlder. Here for a reason, and if he had even half a brain, it would have to be a good one.
"Can I help you?" He looked up, and I got my first full look at his face. Snakelike blue-green eyes, thin mouth, and skin that, although roughened, was free of the ingrained grime and tiredness of a resource-starved outer colonist. He smiled at me.
"Yes, I think you can." He gestured to the radio, eyes still fixed on me. "You hear that just now about the Covenant? Pulling back?"
"Yeah. What about it?"
"Well, some... Colleagues of mine happen to have the equipment necessary to decipher the Covenant battlenet feeds, and we just overheard that one of their leaders was assassinated last night. Apparently by a human."
Whoever he was, whether he knew it or not, he was feeding me his identity in spades. 'Colleagues' implied corporate or special military. But an interest in Covenant movements, and the means to tap and translate them? This screamed secret service. This screamed ONI. But I couldn't be certain. Not yet.
"That's odd." I played the monosyllabic merc for the time being, concentrating on something else entirely. My pistol sat in its holster on my thigh, and remotely, I activated its smart-link scope. Immediately, one eye was presented with an image of my companion's legs. I shifted slightly, scanning him. I managed to glimpse his own weapon, and there was suddenly very little doubt in my mind. A black polymer silenced pistol. Silencers on M6 models were as rare as they come. This guy was ONI, through and through.
"It is, isn't it? You know, with this new breathing room, I think my associates may have a job for you."
"Me?"
"Yes. You were noted by the docking AIs to be arriving at the approach vector, time and place concurring almost exactly with the assassinated Covenant leader's projected location and time of death. This makes you the ideal candidate for a specific retrieval mission." So it was work. It was always work.
"You know, if you'd done your homework properly, you would know I'm not the type who'd throw in with ONI at a moment's notice." I coupled the reveal with a withering look. He just grinned.
"Not bad, but to be fair, I was making it pretty easy. What sort of payment are we looking at, then?"
"You can keep your payment. I'm not helping the UNSC." I gave him a hard stare. He looked disappointed.
"You know, your file said you were unreasonable... But I don't think that's true. I think you just don't like the government."
"Hole in one."
"Well, allow me to rephrase it. Base fee is fifteen thousand credits. On top of that, you get to save thousands of lives." That caught me.
"What?"
"That private rescue fleet is only throwing in enough ships to evac eighty percent of the population here. That's a lot of people left behind. With the right leverage, the cover fleet stationed in this system could be persuaded to assist in the evacuation, but that's a considerable risk to them. Saving lives is all well and good, but when you're fighting a war, you have to make sacrifices."
"Make your point." Measured terseness made its way into my tone.
"My point is, help me retrieve a high-level asset from an abandoned military base here, and ONI will pull the strings necessary to get you, me, the asset, and everybody else on this planet off-world before the end of the month."
I didn't like the idea of working with ONI. They represented everything I hated about the UNSC. Secrecy. Hunger for power. A calculating approach to the value of human life. But I didn't have much of a choice.
"Why me? You could have a strike team, hell, even some ODSTs on this job if you wanted. You've got to have some kind of advanced stealth tech." He grimaced.
"Circumstances are... Difficult. The guys at HQ have to live by the math, there's no other way. In my case, the risk is apparently not worth it. They did, however, give me you." He straightened, rolling his head back a bit and crossing his arms. "So. You in?"
"Any enemy presence?"
"Other than me? Heh..." He dropped the joke quickly. "Covenant are after the asset too, probably the only reason this place isn't a ball of glass yet. You set them back a bit, but the sooner we get there the less of a risk we're taking, you get it? Now, can I get an answer?" I pondered the offer for a moment. There was a high chance I'd not be getting off the planet in time if I didn't help.
"...Alright. You've got a deal."
"Excellent. I'll be round by your ship to give you details tonight. See you later, Mr Locke."
He got up and left without looking back. I looked down at the remains of my meal. I'd lost my appetite.
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As soon as I got back to my ship I did a bug check. A solid hour later, I had found nothing solid, but a few suspect nuts and bolts lying around did soon find themselves nestled in the thruster exhaust pipes. When I left, they'd be burned or left to rot here.
True to his word, the ONI agent arrived at eight o'clock planetary mean time. I was waiting with the loading door down. I wasn't planning on letting him on it.
"You ready?" I shouldered my already triple-checked pack and nodded. "This way."
He lead me to another hangar bay, this one sealed up tight. Inside was a short black dropship, of a designation I didn't recognise. He popped it open and climbed aboard, gesturing me to do the same.
We took off and quickly reached a blinding speed. I couldn't see any readouts on the dashboard, presumably only available to my benefactor via neural link to prevent me knowing too much, so I could only guess at our actual velocity, but we were tearing over the clouds at an alarming rate.
After some time, we began our descent. The air was thick with falling snow, a veritable blizzard, and the ground didn't look much better. This was somewhere in the southern tundras. What sort of base needed this level of isolation?
"Don't worry about the cold, base is just over that hill." The agent said to me. "We get in, grab the asset, and get out."
"Exactly what are we looking for?"
"That's classified." He grunted.
"What does it look like, then?"
"Depends. If they packed it up before the evac call came, then it's just gonna be a black case, bout thirty by thirty by forty big. Artefact code X2-034. If not... Well, you'll know it when you see it."
He cracked the cockpit open, and the freezing cold hit us. He tossed me a pair of googles, and leapt out into the snow. Pulling them on, I followed, the door sliding shut and sealing behind me.
We struggled up the hill, the chilling wind whipping at us, trying to cast us down, out of its wake. My legs pumped beneath me. In and out, as quick as possible, grab the crate and run. One simple job and the whole planet gets a happy ending...
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But of course, it was never that easy.
"Move, move! Come on, get your ass in gear!" I dashed through the door, empty sniper rifle loosely bashing against my back as it swung on its strap. I kept running, every breath a frenzied, burning gasp for life, and the spook behind me slashed a plastic card through a scanner, locking the door behind us. From the other side came an enraged bestial roar, and the telltale hiss of an energy sword being unsheathed.
Zealots.
We'd managed to get in and find the artefact easily enough. The case was locked up tight, so no sneak peek for me, but just as we were about to leave, we turned and saw a single grunt ultra. Of course, we shot him dead immediately, but he'd already screamed, bringing the full force of a Covenant retrieval squad down on our heads. Three Zealots had rushed in, chasing us down as we fled through the corridors. My friend's access card had served us well, having closed off several doors before now, but it was no longer looking quite as good. We'd managed to outrun the grunts and kill a single Zealot, plus another I managed to incapacitate with a shot to the leg, but the last was still coming, and we were in no position to reload.
The hissing of plasma cutting through the door like a hot knife through butter filled us with dread. My friend, lagging behind me by a small distance, clutched the case like it was his last hope in life. We rounded a corner, and the exterior door appeared before us. My friend fumbled for his key card.
"Toss me the case! Just get that door open!" He looked at me in shock, and did so. I almost stumbled as I caught the thing; it was heavier than I expected. The agent pulled ahead and slashed the card through its scanner, allowing the bigger, heavier doors to slide open, agonisingly slowly. By the time I reached them, there was just enough room to vault through, so I did.
The cold hit me like a brick wall, rushing on in one heavy wave, breaking like the tide over my face. The weather had worsened, now a rushing swirl of cutting snowflakes.
It did little to soothe my burning lungs, but we were nearly there. Stealing a glance backward, I saw the Zealot round the previous corner. Mandibles splayed, sword brandished, he was gaining on us.
Too fast. Far too fast.
For a terrible moment, I thought that this might be my end. I would be cut to pieces, and either left to freeze in the snow, or fed to the troop's Jackals.
We began our struggle up the hill, the ship's engines' whining as they warmed up for departure barely audible over the buffeting of the icy winds, but a beacon of disparate hope nonetheless. Behind us, the heavy thumps of alien feet echoed, spurring us on.
Halfway up, the agent slipped.
He attempted to scramble to his feet, but the slippery patch on which he'd lost his purchase held him tight. He slid on the spot, getting more and more frantic, panic evident on his face. Without a thought, I dropped the case and ran to him, clutching at his clothes and pulling with my full weight. All I succeeded in doing was unsteadying myself, the loose snow under my feet growing unstable.
The Elite was now outside. He took a few steps forward, only to sink deep into the snow, his body too heavy to effectively chase us any further. What relief I felt was short-lived, as he merely swapped his sword for an automatic plasma rifle on his thigh. He sprayed a few shots at us, one splashing but a metre away from us, the snow it hit erupting into a tiny geyser of spitting, bubbling water. The alien continued to wade closer.
We scrabbled at the ground for purchase, throwing ourselves in each direction to avoid fire. Neither of us was armoured. We both knew what even a single, glancing shot would do to our bodies. The projectiles' heat was so great that even a near miss could be the end for us. We had nought but the blizzard for a shield.
As we darted up the hill, the Elite behind us raining cerulean death, I passed the dropped crate, already partially covered in snow. I threw my arms at it and heaved, wrenching it into my grip. Spinning to check the Elite, I saw him pointing his weapon at me hesitantly, as if reluctant to shoot. I began to back-pedal, and he still held his fire. The artefact. He needed it intact.
The agent was a few metres away, but well within stumbling distance. I stepped in front of him, yelling for him to stay behind me. The Elite redoubled his efforts to chase after us, but he couldn't move fast enough. Soon, we were over the hill, tumbling down and bundling into the already fired dropship. All it took was one push of a button, and the ONI vessel took us away into the sky.
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"That was some fine thinking there."
Cold, breathless and once again coming down from an adrenaline high, we sat in the cargo hold of the dropship, the crate between us. The autopilot whirred away inside the cockpit, scanning for Covenant patrol craft and plotting the safest route back to the city.
"...Thanks." I panted out, not fully recovered.
"I mean it. Not only did you save the package, but you went back for me too, and probably saved both our hides from all that plasma. I never thought I'd see it, but looks like this merc has honour." I chuckled exhaustedly, not really in a state to do anything else.
We sat in silence for a while, him pulling out a tablet and tapping away at it. After a while, he put it away. "There, your payment's processed. I tagged on a little extra for going the extra mile, too. Ah, don't protest, you deserve it."
"I wasn't about to say anything..."
"Oh well, then. Just take it." He blinked and got up, quickly entering the cockpit. A second later he was back, with something in his hand. "Hey, uh... This is strictly off the record, but you can have this, too if you want it." He held out the object. A memory chip, matt black with an ONI insignia. "It's a copy of our file of you. You might want it for... Ah... Personal security." Naturally, I was suspicious.
"Why would you give me this?"
"Hey, I respect you. Just saying, this thing's got some good data. Quite a few small-time crime lords want you dead, plus one pretty big one. You might need it." I didn't immediately reach out for it. He sighed. "Look, AI know you don't like us guys. I get that. We're secretive, cold, and generally just a load of crooks when it comes to getting what we want. But you gotta understand that we're not all assholes. What we want is for humanity to get through this, by any means necessary. This-" he tapped the crate. "Is gonna help a hell of a lot. You see anyone getting popped in the head by a black suit, you know we're doing it for the greater good."
"You'll forgive me for not taking that at face value."
"Take it however you want. Wars require sacrifices. Thanks to you, these people don't have to be one. You want the data or not?"
I reached out and took the chip. He nodded and went back into the cockpit. I sat and pondered what he said for a moment, as I carefully disassembled the chip. Inside was a memory core, and another module. That went out straight away, and quickly met the heel of my boot. Tracking device.
Whether they're working for the greater good or not, you should never trust an ONI spook.
To this day, I stand by those words.