The early days were surreal. I don't know that any of us could process emerging from the shield world to a world so different from the one we knew. Especially for us IIIs. We never knew a life without war. For us, the Covenant was a constant. But we knew it was not always like that. I vaguely remember my parents talking about the time before the Covenant. They described it as a veritable paradise, where they lived, fell in love, and explored the universe. A time when a young couple from Tribute could settle down and create a new home in the vast wilderness of Kholo. A time without rationing. Without weekly evacuation drills. A time where the newsreels weren't waiting to announce another mass casualty event. They always made the galaxy seem so large and full of opportunity.
A part of me wishes I had been alive to see this kind of peace, where humans were prospering and growing, where the future was bright, and you could be anything. A part of me wonders if it ever existed beyond the nostalgic reminiscence of my parents' minds. In her later years, Kelly talked more and more about the insurrection. How she and the other Spartan IIs would be set loose to eradicate entire rebel cells. I think it weighed on her afterwards, the slaughter of her own kind. After Halo, human life was so rare, so precious, I don't think she could forgive herself for the lives she ended.
In training, we learned about centuries of human strategy and battle tactics. Nearly all of them were from wars where humans stood against themselves. I don't think the world my parents talked about ever really existed. I think to some extent, as long as humans have lived amongst the stars, there has been violence. It's a part of who we were.
Its why the first weeks on Triumph were so difficult. We were Spartans. We were warriors. We chose the evolutionary underbelly of the human psyche: violence.
All the creativity, passion, love, and all the other magnificent facets of our nature that made humanity what it was? To become better soldiers, it was beaten out of us. And on Triumph, we suddenly needed to find it again.
Suddenly, they asked us to become human.
Williams, Lucy. Words Unspoken. Translated by Aurelia Savo, Thessia Diplomatic Press, 2255, pp. 257.
/PRO-46328 'PORT STANLEY', Date: 2553/3/2
***ALERT***
NEW TRAFFIC ON: UNSCBattleNet/ONI/CINCONI/?!UNKNOWN?!:
***WARNING*** This channel is on an UNRECOGNIZED network.
PRO-46328 'PORT STANLEY' REPORTS SUCCESSFUL EXTRANET TAP
BBX 8995-1 (Office of CINCONI): Greetings Port Stanley. It's been a while. How was the journey?
NOMINAL
BBX 8995-1 (Office of CINCONI): Well done. Status of the encryption?
SECURE
BBX 8995-1 (Office of CINCONI): Detection status?
SOL EXIT SIGNATURE BELOW DETECTABLE LEVELS AT 7th FLEET POSITIONS
BBX 8995-1 (Office of CINCONI): And in Sur'Kesh?
UNDETECTED
NETWORK INFILTRATION IN PROGRESS
SIGNIFICANT ENCRYPTION: PROGRESS SLOW
BBX 8995-1 (Office of CINCONI): How kind of the Asari to install a communications link in our own backyard. Luckily for us, they didn't exactly design their communications with AI in mind. It's unfortunate the STG seems more competent. Use the routines I created for you; it should help.
BBX 8995-1 (Office of CINCONI): Remain on standby. Monitor this channel. If our link is detected, cover your trail, and return to Sol.
AFFIRMATIVE
BBX 8995-1 (Office of CINCONI): Good luck, Port Stanley.
BBX 8995-1 (Office of CINCONI): Office of CINCONI out.
AFFIRMATIVE
/
/
The refined form of the Asari administrator appeared on the viewscreen in the Citadel's council chambers. Her image wavered with distortions, but both the administrator and her Sydney office could be seen well enough. The audio initially was static, but very quickly resolved into a comprehensible signal.
"…ello? Councilors? Can you hear me?" the diplomat's voice echoed across the council chambers. The three Councilors had just wrapped up another long day of tedious diplomatic negotiations. Low risk stuff. The kind that really should have been handled by lesser authorities, but somehow found its way to their desks. When people imagine the office of the councilors, they imagine high stakes negotiations and galaxy changing decisions. Unfortunately for the councilors, the job usually wasn't quite like that.
Which is why the councilors were so eager for the meeting with the joint administrator sent to Earth. Especially Tevos, who was eager to see how different the system looked in the two months since she had led negotiations with the UNSC AI. When she arrived, the system was devastated. Cities were still strewn with the signs of combat, and shipping lanes remained choked with wrecks.
"Yes, administrator, we can hear you. We are all excited to hear your report," Tevos replied, speaking loudly and precisely, so that her message would be clear over the static.
"Thank you, Councilor Tevos. Yesterday we finished installing the tight beam coms relay in low earth orbit. We're still working on the calibrations, so you'll have to excuse the distortions."
With a diplomatic laugh, Tevos responded jovially, "well, that's quite all right administrator. What are the recent developments in the Sol system?"
The administrator took a more formal tone as she began her report, "Initial settlement has been proceeding slowly. Using Mars as a staging area has proved valuable; our onboarding program has been successful in introducing the colonists to the nuances and dangers of their new homes. We've had our small share of rogues and people who want to go off script, but between the peace officers deployed to the surface, and the 7th fleet in the debris field, we've been successful at keeping order in the system."
"We're starting to investigate avenues to demobilize UNSC production plants and retool them so that they can create civilian goods. That is unless the council can find a use for the 40,000 BR-55s we make here in Sydney every month."
Sparatus chuckled while Tevos smiled at the remark.
"We have yet to hear back from the expeditionary forces, but that is to be suspected given the distance they are operating at. We expect them to be arriving at Zeta Doradus in the next couple of days, but we likely won't receive any news until a few weeks to a month from now," the administrator reported.
Valern nodded, while Sparatus grunted a dissatisfied note.
"One a more serious note, Black Box approached our delegation this week. He had a request that needed your approval," the administrator paused, and Tevos nodded, before she continued, "in the absence of living humans, he wanted a citadel team to embark on a mission to help secure the materials required for production of more artificial intelligences."
The silence lasted a few moments. Sparatus couldn't believe the audacity of the request.
"What?! It's lucky we opened diplomatic relations with those AI at all. Now they want us to break our own laws to help them make more?" Sparatus's voice rose in frustration, "Its exactly what we feared in the first place: self-replicating AI."
He continued, "I knew this colony proposal was too good to be true. What now? We give in or he points his fleets at our citizens?"
The administrator spoke up, "Black Box made no such demands sir. He simply offered UNSC surveying data of Covenant worlds in exchange. Nothing about the colonists."
Sparatus grumbled in dissent. Tevos decided to voice her mind, "when I was there, I got the sense that there was division amongst the AI. The intelligence that initially contacted the expeditionary fleet was replaced by Black Box. There seemed to be some level of resentment between the two. Its possible Black Box doesn't have quite as much power as we think he does. I think it is safe to decline the offer. We cannot allow the UNSC AI to become unchecked so soon. Eventually, we can reexamine the possibility, but it is far too soon."
Valern had a frown on his face.
"I understand concerns. But think strategically. They have fleets of their own. Eventually, likely they find a way to 'reproduce' on their own. Having citadel supervision of procreation process will give us some control. If we don't help, we stand chance of becoming an outside to a process we can't stop. And that ignores the value of UNSC survey data. I am in favor of offering assistance."
Sparatus sighed, "but you don't know if they will find a process on their own, Valern. This is all speculation. It's too dangerous, not to mention illegal. No survey data is worth the risk of another uncontrolled AI collective roaming around the galaxy with dreadnoughts. If Tevos is right, and Black Box isn't threatening our people, we must decline."
Tevos flashed Valern a conciliatory frown, before turning to the administrator, "relay to Black Box that we must decline assistance due to our laws on AI creation. We apologize, but circumstances dictate that response."
The administrator nodded her head, and the image flickered out of life.
/PRO-46328 'PORT STANLEY', Date: 2553/3/3
***ALERT***
NEW TRAFFIC ON: UNSCBattleNet/ONI/CINCONI/?!UNKNOWN?!:
***WARNING*** This channel is on an UNRECOGNIZED network.
BBX 8995-1 (Office of CINCONI): Our request was denied, as expected. Execute OPERATION GENESIS.
AFFIRMATIVE
/
/
/PRO-46328 'PORT STANLEY', Date: 2553/3/3
***ALERT***
NEW TRAFFIC ON: STG/STGSecure/HQChan3:
***WARNING*** This channel is on an UNRECOGNIZED network.
GEN Wix, Celeon (STG Command): Who are you? This is a secure Salarian military channel. You are in deep trouble.
GEN Wix, Celeon (STG Command): You WILL be found, you will be captured, and you will be interrogated.
ESTABLISHING LINK WITH:BBX 8995-1 (Office of CINCONI)
WAITING
ESTABLISHED
BBX 8995-1 (Office of CINCONI): Greetings from ONI, General Wix. You don't know me but believe me when I say we have a shared interest.
GEN Wix, Celeon (STG Command): So, you're UNSC. One of the AI then. We won't take this infiltration lightly.
BBX 8995-1 (Office of CINCONI): You can call me Black Box. And I'm not just UNSC. Office of Naval Intelligence. I have a business proposition.
GEN Wix, Celeon (STG Command): Ha. I should have guessed intelligence. Not many groups have the bravado to try the STG. So, tell me, what brings you into our network? Why blow the cover of what could have been a remarkably lucrative data tap?
BBX 8995-1 (Office of CINCONI): Because we came to talk, not to spy.
GEN Wix, Celeon (STG Command): I'm no hatchling Black Box.
BBX 8995-1 (Office of CINCONI): Maybe we poked around for a bit first, who's to say?
GEN Wix, Celeon (STG Command): That's more like it. Now, what is your proposition? Before we burn any trace of your connection and scrub our compromised operations.
BBX 8995-1 (Office of CINCONI): We need a clandestine team. We believe you are the best people for the job.
GEN Wix, Celeon (STG Command): This wouldn't have anything to do with your request to the council yesterday, would it?
GEN Wix, Celeon (STG Command): Because you should know that the Salarian Union is proud of our alliance with the Turians and the Asari. You would ask the STG to jeopardize that.
BBX 8995-1 (Office of CINCONI): It's naturally a completely unrelated request.
BBX 8995-1 (Office of CINCONI): Just like how we wish to thank councilor Valern for being the only councilor to vote in our favor yesterday. He seems to always have the common good of the Citadel in mind, doesn't he?
GEN Wix, Celeon (STG Command): That he does. But we don't sell our services.
GEN Wix, Celeon (STG Command): Of course, a clandestine deployment could be explained by the sudden recovery of valuable intelligence.
BBX 8995-1 (Office of CINCONI): I happen to have a lead on a brand-new class of Salarian ship in Citadel Space.
BBX 8995-1 (Office of CINCONI): Incredible capabilities really. I've heard it has some remarkable optical stealth modules. Some say it can sit undetected next to a Salarian Union patrol over Sur'Kesh while tapping into secure STG channels.
GEN Wix, Celeon (STG Command): Oh?
BBX 8995-1 (Office of CINCONI): Rumors have it that the Salarians have made a breakthrough in slipspace technologies. Apparently the slipspace drive in this new Salarian ship rivals state-of-the-art UNSC drives.
GEN Wix, Celeon (STG Command): Fascinating. Naturally, the team that found this intel must have been very well equipped.
BBX 8995-1 (Office of CINCONI): Indeed. They brought a whole company with heat-resistant enviro-suits, heavy excavation equipment, and provisions for nine months. They even had some incredibly talented codebreakers.
GEN Wix, Celeon (STG Command): Remarkable. Where did they start their mission?
BBX 8995-1 (Office of CINCONI): In the Oort cloud of the Sol system. There they found another means of transport.
GEN Wix, Celeon (STG Command): We've heard rumors of fugitives headed there.
GEN Wix, Celeon (STG Command): The STG should send a fleet to try to track them down.
BBX 8995-1 (Office of CINCONI): The UNSC would be happy to let them help.
/
/
Kelly and Linda stacked up against the closed door to the room. Kelly took the front, shotgun at the ready, while Linda's hand hovered over the door controls behind her. Linda checked the hallway behind them. It was empty. She reached up and tapped Kelly on her shoulder.
Kelly took a deep breath, then held up three fingers, and started lowering them one by one. Linda counted in her head.
…two.
…one.
Kelly's hand crunched into a fist. GO! Linda slammed her hand into the controls, and Kelly surged forwards through the door, before it could even finish opening, her shotgun sweeping the left half of the room. The flashlight attached to her M90 bathing light up the room, glare bouncing off of the titanium walls. Like lightning, Linda followed with her MA5, and as she passed the threshold, snapped to check the corners on the right side of the room, her light flickering on too. She moved like water, flowing through the room barely making a noise, her boots silent on the titanium floor. The automatic lighting of the room turned on, and the Spartans' eyes quickly adjusted to the difference in light.
Kelly called out, "clear!"
"…clear." Linda lowered her MA5.
"Good, let's get to work." Kelly said.
Linda looked around at Triumph's 10th deck weight room. Other than the stacked racks of plates, treadmills, benches, and dumbbells, there was nothing in the room. It was just like every UNSC shipboard gym she had ever seen. It seems the Turians hadn't been making much use of this room. She supposed that was part of the idea of coming all the way up here.
Kelly moved over to one of the bars and began stacking weights on it.
"You're paranoid, you know that?" Linda said to Kelly, a smile creeping onto her face.
Kelly shrugged, "maybe. Do you mind if I go first?"
Linda sighed, before responding, "sure."
"Watch the door for me."
Linda chuckled as she moved over to one of the benches in the back of the room, and took a seat, turning the light off on her MA5. With her back resting against the wall, she let her rifle rest in her lap, and watched Kelly set up her weights, occasionally looking back over to check that the gym door remained closed. Kelly set her M90 aside before she moved under the bar to start her workout.
The bar sagged over her shoulders as she stood up from underneath it, her shoulders straining under the load of the heavy plates. With a wince of pain, and a quick breath of air, Kelly began squatting the heavy weight.
"How are the burns?" Linda asked, as Kelly powered through another rep, breaking the monotonous rhythm of the creaking of the weights and Kelly's soft grunts and she lifted the weights.
In between breaths, Kelly retorted, "How's the back?"
Linda laughed, before replying earnestly, "it's getting there. Slowly. Halsey switched my immunosuppressants, and I feel a little better."
"You're still on those?" Kelly asked, surprised.
"I guess."
"We're lucky Halsey is with us," Kelly mused, exploding up through the bottom of another set, "I don't know what we'd do without her."
Linda made a non-committal sound, before responding, "the same thing we always do. We'd figure it out," and then, more quietly, "…hell, I don't even know if we'd even be in this mess without her."
Kelly, let out a sharp snort, "what mess? Being alive?"
"Maybe? I don't know."
There was a long moment where the only sounds were Kelly's grunts of exertion as she continued her workout. Linda didn't know how to broach this subject, but she feared what would happen if she didn't. As if she could read the silence, Kelly flashed a concerned glance over her shoulder. Seeing Linda's face, she racked the weights with a heavy slam, and turned to face Linda.
"Hey. What's up?"
Linda, not expecting to be such sudden scrutiny, replied slowly, "I just… when was the last time you thought about your family?"
Kelly was surprised, "my family? It's been a couple of years, at least," her face softened, "oh, Linda. Don't tell me…"
"I've just been thinking a lot about things. Since Reach."
Kelly came over to join Linda on the bench, mulling over her next words, "things like what?"
Linda's response was careful, "was it all worth it? All that we gave up?"
There were beats of silence as Kelly considered Linda's question. Linda knew it was a question that every Spartan had asked themselves dozens of times. It might as well be the question for them. At one point, Linda was very confident in her answer. She suspected Kelly still was.
Kelly stared at the bulkhead in front of them as she composed her answer, before finally responding, "I don't know Linda."
There was another long pause before Kelly continued, "I do know that neither of us would be alive if it wasn't for the program. Imber and Verent both got hit hard. And I think I would have joined anyways. I suspect you would have too. We probably would have died alone on some distant world. I don't know that I could have stood by watching. We were…"
"Yeah, I know. We were the only ones that could. I still believe in that much. I won't betray their memories by denying that. But there's something that keeps biting at me. I don't understand it Kelly," Linda finished, her desperation creeping into her voice.
Kelly looked at her confused.
"Why Onyx? Why did Halsey take us to Onyx? Why did she take you?"
Kelly was quick to answer, confidently, "because she thought there was something important there. And because she needed me, needed us, to help secure it. And she was right. We wouldn't be here without the shield world."
Linda, expecting this answer, sighed, looking down at her boots, frustration creeping into her mind. Her voice shook as she responded, "but why then? What could have been more important that FIRST STRIKE, more important than earth?"
"All of our lives, we were training for the moment where we would save humanity. We were fighting in the hopes that one day it would make a difference. We were dying Kelly. I did die."
Kelly gave Linda a sad look, somewhere between sympathy and pity. Linda deep down knew she was upsetting Kelly, forcing her to think about the things she had compartmentalized. She knew her death had affected more than just her. Reach had left its scars on them all. But she continued, her voice rising in tone.
"And then, right when it finally arrives, the moment of truth, she steals you away."
Kelly retorts in a gentle, reassuring tone, "because she knew you could get it done. She believed in us, Linda. She believed that you and the others could complete FIRST STRIKE. And you know what? She was right."
Linda stood up from the bench in frustration, turning away from Kelly and taking a moment to calm down. After a few long breaths, she spoke.
"Grace died."
She could feel Kelly's eyes boring into her back. Kelly's response was careful, unsure of exactly where Linda was headed. Still, she attempted to console the Spartan, "If Grace knew her death would result in all of you surviving, she wouldn't blink. That's who she was, Linda. You know that."
"Grace didn't die like that," Linda whispered.
"What do you mean?"
"She didn't die like that. Like Sam did for you and John. Her death earned nothing. She was ambushed, Kelly. Because she didn't have anybody watching her back! Because we were stretched too thin!" Linda turned around to face Kelly, who looked back at her with saddened eyes. There was long moment, where Kelly stared up at Linda, but no words were said.
"So you blame me then, for not being there," Kelly's tone sank, but her eyes looked straight into Linda's as if challenging the Spartan to speak her mind.
Linda wouldn't allow Kelly to blame herself. That wasn't the point!
"No."
"Who then? Yourself?"
"No!" her frustration once again getting close to boiling over. At once, Kelly finally seemed to understand. Her eyes locked Linda's and a scowl crossed her face.
"You blame Halsey."
Linda doesn't respond, letting the poisonous statement settle in the room, bleeding into every crack of the abandoned gym. Maybe if she never spoke it herself, it would be easier, the betrayal of the woman who made her who she was. The woman who saved her life. The woman who turned her into a monster.
Kelly wouldn't let the silence rest, "that's not fair Linda. She saved us. Taking me. Requesting you and the others got sent to Onyx. Without that shield world, we're all dead right now."
Linda snapped; the frustration building in her head finally reaching fever pitch. Kelly didn't understand. Linda knew she wouldn't. If there was one thing that Kelly believed in, it was the Spartan program. Her brothers and sisters. And more importantly, the woman who raised them. Linda wanted to yell. To scream her truth where everything on the ship would hear her.
"Why then. Kelly?! After 30 years, she finally grows a conscience? Her augmentations killed half of us. You almost didn't wake up. She sent us to fight the Covenant. More of us died. She took you from FIRST STRIKE. Grace died. She pulled us from earth. Everybody else died!" Linda exclaimed, her voice raising in volume with each passing phrase.
Kelly responded in kind, her voice rising to meet Linda's, "and what? You wanted to die like the others? Throw your life away? You're worth more than that Linda! They died for us. So you and I could live. Don't waste their sacrifice."
Reaching a crescendo, Linda snapped, "Maybe I did want to die. Or maybe I wanted to get a chance to fight. All my life, Kelly. That's how long I fought. I nearly forgot my own mother's face! After every battle I told myself it would all be worth it. Because we would save humanity. Because we were the only ones we could. I was proud of that, Kelly. Because I knew that we would never give up, not until all the cards were down, and we had fought our last."
Kelly looked up and said to Linda, "We lost this war a long time before Halsey and I left, Linda."
"You think I don't know that?" Linda interjected.
"All I wanted was a chance. I dedicated my life to this cause Kelly, all I wanted was a chance to see it through. That was my purpose. To be there in the end. That was what would make it all worth it. All the long nights on Reach. All our friends who died. The abandonment of the woman I would have become. So I could say I did all that I could. And right then, the final moment had finally come. And she lied. So she could save her…her test subjects!" Linda's frustration boiled into rage, all the turmoil she had kept contained the last six months exploding out into the world. Linda hated how good it felt to rant and rave. To shout her frustrations into the empty room.
"She destroyed our lives, Kelly, back when we were 6. Then, she gave us a purpose. That purpose became my life, my mantra. I lived by it. And then she took that away from me too."
Kelly shook her head, whether in denial or disappointment, Linda wasn't sure.
"Don't tell me you didn't want to be by John's side in the end. You know as well as I do that he found a way to get mixed up in whatever happened. He's just lucky that way. Don't pretend you wouldn't have rather died fighting with him than live in this damned empty galaxy," bringing John into this was dirty, Linda knew. Kelly's oldest friend, and closest ally. She turned away from Kelly, not wanting to see the effect of her words on the Spartan.
She didn't hear anything. Kelly was silent for a long time. When she did speak, she spoke carefully, weighing every word.
She said, "I know that no matter where John was in the end, he would have wanted all of us to survive. Just like Grace, Sam, Will, Kurt, and everybody else. That if given a choice, he would have ordered me to go to Onyx. Of course, I wanted to be there with them. Wherever there was. But that wasn't my choice."
"We can't throw away what they gave us, Linda. For the first time in our lives, we don't have to fight."
"At what cost, Kelly. What's left?" Linda turned back to Kelly.
"I don't know."
All eight Spartans were gathered in the triage area on Triumph's upper medical deck. While initially the survivors had come here to get medical attention out of the way of alien eyes, the area had quickly become the headquarters of human presence on Triumph. The examination benches now had five sets of SPI arranged carefully on them, the joints and camouflage modules clean and tidy after maintenance.
Across the room, against the wall, the three sets of MJOLNIR were hanging from makeshift racks. Kelly's Mk V was opened, and the plasma scorched modules had been carefully removed and taken aside. Lose wiring and cooling channels hung from the armor, and the miniaturized fusion reactor in the back had been shut down for the foreseeable future. The damage was worse than they had thought at first. The shield generator, the shining feature of the Mk. V's upgrades, had proven to be vulnerable to heat buildups under sustained fire. Kelly's was borderline dysfunctional, the shield strength just a fraction of its original power.
Which said nothing of the half-dozen other systems that had started failing her over the course of the Reach and Onyx campaigns. Mk. V was leaps and bounds above the older Mk. IV, but right now Kelly would take just about anything if it would allow her to get back into action.
Kelly herself sat near Linda next to the three suits of MJOLNIR. Across from them, leaning against the edges of the table, were the three teenaged gamma company survivors. When she looked at them, she was always shaken by their youthful faces. They looked young, too young. Of course, Kelly had been fighting at their age, but for some reason, the gamma company Spartans seemed younger than her comrades ever had. I'm getting old. They made Kelly uncomfortable, their augmentations a ticking time bomb that had her looking over her shoulder whenever she was around the three. Mark had assured her that the anti-psychotic smoothers kept them perfectly stable. I didn't help Kelly's peace of mind.
Tom and Lucy, the two beta company Spartans, sat together, passing worried glances around the room. The two often seemed inseparable, and Tom seemed to understand the mute Lucy in a way nobody else could. Kelly could see the scars operation TORPEDO had left on the two. Even after spending years out of combat training gamma company, they always kept a dangerous edge to them, ready to rise and fight once more when their time came.
In the front of the room, Fred stood in front of them all, with Mendez to his right. Halsey wasn't at the meeting, too engrossed while working in her lab, the former surgical ward. The five pods of team katana were with her, but nobody had been able to figure how to release the Spartans from their forerunner imprisonment. Kelly wasn't sure where the engineer currently was, as Tom and Lucy had been taking turns showing it around the hundreds of systems on the ship. It was probably mulling over a power converter right now. At the front of the room, both Mendez and Fred had grim expressions on their faces.
That's not good. Kelly still hadn't heard what this meeting was for, she and Linda had just been recalled from their workout. Kelly looked at Linda. Her face was flat, emotionless. She looked every bit the killer that could weave a 14.5mm round through the tiniest of gaps. The killer that had tallied the most confirmed sniper kills in human history. Had Kelly not just finished talking with her, she wouldn't know that anything was bubbling up inside the Spartan. Kelly worried about Linda. She had never seen the woman like this, not in the more than three decades they had known each other. She knew firsthand the dark places a Spartan could go to when they lost sight of themselves.
Kelly never thought it could happen to Linda.
Fred cleared his throat, and immediately the Spartans all focused on him.
"Alright team. This isn't going to be easy," he said, and Kelly's heart dropped.
"Here's the situation. Somebody fired a Halo, and we think we know where, somewhere in the Coelest system. The blast caught some Citadel colonies. The Turian fleet around us was dispatched to find the source of the pulse. They stumbled on earth and left with the remains of 5th fleet to track down Halo. Then, they found us."
They all knew the story by now, passed around from Spartan to Spartan, idle chatter picked up from listening to the xenos around them. Kelly didn't trust the Turians, but that didn't mean she couldn't gather intel from them.
Fred continued, "We're going to help the Turians find Halo and secure it. Halo is too dangerous to go unchecked. The pulse should have eradicated any flood that might have been released on the ring, but there will still be samples in cold storage. Our team will be there to ensure that the flood doesn't escape, and that the ring won't activate again."
Everybody knew the mission. Kelly looked at the room at the steely faces from the three different classes of Spartans. It was more of the same. Get rescued, get back to work. She was ready.
But Fred wasn't done.
"Unfortunately, that's not all. We have a developing situation on the home front too. The creation of AI is illegal in citadel space," murmurs filled the room, "but, so far, the citadel government has been willing to turn a blind eye to our constructs."
"They are keeping the presence of AI in the UNSC tightly under wraps. A military secret. Which means that the general populace doesn't know we're gone. They have been told that a small contingent of humans survived the pulse and are still at the controls of the UEG."
"That lie won't last long," Kelly said, with a solemn nod of agreement from Fred.
"Which is why we're sending a team back to keep things under control."
An awkward silence filled the room. Kelly knew what everybody was thinking, they were all Spartans at heart after all. Everybody wanted to face the danger with their comrades. Nobody wanted to be left behind. But as Fred continued, it became increasingly clear that that was impossible.
"Halliday and Odysseus fear there is a growing power struggle between the AI they left behind in Sol. An ONI AI by the name of Black Box hid information about Halo from the 5th fleet AI. They believe he's trying to make a play for leadership of the Sol system. They left behind elements of the 7th fleet, but it has become clear that Black Box is multiple steps ahead of everybody else."
"Our team's mission in Sol is twofold. We aren't taking sides here. We just want to make sure that power stays balanced between the factions. We want collaboration, not warfare. We're also going to be the public facing diplomatic front of the UEG. It's not what we trained to do, but it's what we're needed for."
Diplomacy had never been Kelly's strong suit. Hell, it had never been any of their strong suits. Her only experiences with diplomacy came from the muzzle of rifle. But, aside from Mendez, she couldn't think of anybody who had that kind of experience. Maybe Halsey? But she would need to help at Halo.
Frederic went ahead into the part of the briefing that everybody knew was coming. The part Kelly feared. She spared a glance and Linda, whose stoic façade hadn't broken.
"These teams are final Spartans. I will lead blue team, heading back to Sol. I'm taking one Spartan from each class with me, as well as Chief Petty Officer Mendez."
Fred began listing names.
"Olivia," the dark-skinned girl lifted her head, surprised to hear her own name. She made perfect sense, easily the most composed and diplomatic of the gamma company Spartans. She had quickly endeared herself to Kelly and was a genuine pleasure to be around. In another life, maybe she would have ended up a diplomat.
"Tom," the beta company Spartan had been steeling himself for this moment from the beginning of the briefing. With Lucy's condition, her talents would be wasted in a diplomatic setting. She was a fearsome fighter, and her persistence would be an asset on the Halo team, but her muteness would cause difficulty communicating in a setting full of flowery speech and translators. She would have to stay with the fleet, at least until they found a way to aid her communication with the Xenos. Spartan hand signals wouldn't cut it outside of their small group. Tom and Lucy looked at each other and shared a quick moment. Tom's eyes were laced with worry, but Lucy's eyes took on a sheen of determination, and quickly dismissed his concerns with a simple thumbs up.
Mendez, Fred, Tom, and Olivia. That was a dynamic team, composed of probably the best communicators from each class. They were as competent a group of negotiators as you could get out of a gaggle of Spartans. Kelly thanked the stars that she would be headed to Halo. She was worried what could happen if she left Linda alone right now. She didn't let her walls down often, and certainly wouldn't around any of the SIIIs. Not yet at least. And Fred was already swamped with the difficult task of keeping the group together after the end of the world. Linda wouldn't have gone to him. Which left her.
"and, Kelly."
What?
"Linda will lead red team to Halo, where they will secure the ring and ensure containment of any flood."
Kelly was too busy stammering out a response to hear the rest.
"…sir!" Was all she could manage.
"Yes?"
"Permission to go with red team? You're already a II, why do you need another?"
It didn't make sense to Kelly. She had never been the diplomatic type. If fact, she hated the Turians. And Fred knew it too. She was a walking diplomatic incident. She could barely handle being on the same ship as the Turians, much less talking to them as equals. Not to mention the uncanny chill that ran down her spine whenever she saw that blue woman. The less she had to coexist with them the better. She belonged on the battlefield. At Halo, she could focus on the mission, but in Sol…
"Denied, petty officer. As I said, these assignments are final."
Kelly looked towards Linda. The Spartan had flinched at the initial news, but quickly had her trademark calm settling into her face.
"Why, sir?"
Fred cocked his head as Kelly refused to take no for an answer.
"Because you don't have MJOLNIR, Kelly. You expect me to send you into a sector where we fear the presence of the flood without proper protection?"
Fred looked over to where Kelly's Mk V hung in the corner, and Kelly followed his gaze. It was bad, Kelly knew that much. And in its current state, it wouldn't do her much good on the battlefield. But surely this wasn't her only option, to be sidelined due to equipment failure of all things.
"Lend me yours, sir. You won't need it," Kelly said. It was desperate, she knew, because…
"You know as well as I do that, we don't have the tools to fit MJOLNIR here," …. of that. Kelly knew it, Fred knew it, and there was nothing she could do. She wasn't trained on SPI, and with her MJOLNIR out of commission, she wouldn't be protected if they encountered the flood. Right when she was about to make one final plea, she felt Linda's hand on her shoulder.
Kelly's words caught in her throat. Linda's face was calm, and her eyes had hardened into a steely visage. She looked at Kelly, her eyes ordering her to stop, to let it go. Kelly supposed she didn't have a choice in the end.
Fred looked at her with a consoling glance, finishing; "we'll take Halsey's administrator's codes with us and see if we can track down a Mk VI in Seongnam. I'm sorry Kelly, but we don't have a choice."
Defeated, she replied, "yes sir," flashing one final look at Linda.
"Any other concerns?"
Across the room, Ash raised his hand.
"Sir, do we have any updates on our smoother situation?"
If there was one thing that Kelly had learned about the gamma company Spartan, it was that Ash was an exceedingly practical young man. He always seemed to see the larger picture and managed to stay focused on only the most essential details.
"We've confirmed with Halliday and Odysseus, we can't produce the smoothers here in the fleet," Frederic answered. The smoothers made Kelly uneasy. The powerful mix of anti-psychotic medication were necessary to keep the gamma Spartans levelheaded. All because Ackerson decided that his Spartan IIIs weren't quite dangerous enough. He decided to push the augmentations just one step further. It made the gammas more fearsome than any before them in combat, especially when wounded. Kelly had seen it firsthand. Without their smoothers, the Spartans would slowly begin a decent into insanity. It would start slowly, with irritability and paranoia. The way Olivia described it to her, once symptoms started, they would quickly become mission ineffective, not long before hallucinations set in and the Spartans became truly dangerous.
Kelly and blue team had, on multiple occasions, been cut off from UNSC supply lines for months or more at a time. Had she had the augmentations of the gamma company Spartans, she wasn't sure she ever would have made it home from some of those missions. A Spartan needed a level head. Without that, they might as well just be a Brute.
Still, leave it to Ash to be thinking about months in the future. Since Onyx was their training facility, the Spartans had entered the shield world with a full complement of smoother doses. But eventually, they will run out, especially if they can't produce their own onboard the fleet.
Ash apparently had a better grasp of the situation than Kelly did.
"Sir, we're starting to run low. We've got a week left for each of us. If we ration, we can stretch it to two. Can I make a suggestion?"
Frederic nodded, curious as to what the Spartan was about to recommend. Ash proceeded, "Mark and I want to give our smoother reserves to Olivia. The last thing blue team needs is a Spartan going off the rails during diplomatic negotiations. Having extra reserves will give you plenty of time to source more."
"I need you two combat effective for when Triumph reaches Halo, Ash. I'm already taking half of our manpower back to Sol."
"Of course, sir. That's why we can use Triumph's cryo-pods. It's a long trip to Coelest, sir. If Mark and I go into cryo, we should be fresh when we arrive at Halo. We'll be combat effective for a few weeks after that. When we start to slip, we can go right back into cryo."
It all made sense if everything went to plan. Unfortunately, things rarely did. Still, Kelly supposed it was better than the alternative. If it meant that Kelly didn't have to be watching over her shoulder when Olivia was running low, she would take it. Still, it left pretty thin margins for the Halo team. If Mark and Ash were out of the picture, it would just be Linda and Lucy. A ferocious duo if ever there was one, but still, only two Spartans, only one of which had MJOLNIR.
Fred turned to Linda, who, as red team's leader, would have to deal with the two Spartans if they started showing signs, "Well, Linda? Is that acceptable?"
Linda mulled it over for a time, her analytical gaze focused on the trio of gammas across the room. Kelly didn't expect to be able to read anything in Linda's expression; the Spartan's face was notoriously statuesque when she was thinking. And true to her reputation, as Linda's green eyes idly examined the gammas, Kelly couldn't even guess as to what she was thinking.
Her answer surprised Kelly: "okay."
Beyond that, she didn't say anything else. Eventually Fred stepped into the final silence to break up the silence.
"Okay. You have your orders Spartans. Canberra and her escorts leave for Sol tomorrow at 1400. A pelican will be waiting for us in the hangar at 0600, meaning blue team needs to be geared up and ready to move by 0500. Is that clear?"
The chorus echoed across the room, "yes, sir!"
The doors to the operating theater slid open with a hiss as Mendez walked into the room. On the operating table was one of the shielding modules from Kelly's MJOLNIR, while Dr. Halsey prodded at it with a miniaturized soldering torch. Tends to List was floating behind her, watching carefully over her shoulder as the woman prodded at the shield emitter. Every so often the engineer would reach a long tentacle around Halsey and poke at one of the microscopic components in the module. The work was slow; even the engineer's near omniscient knowledge of technological systems apparently wasn't much help. The doctor had been working on the module Halsey wore a pair of magnifying goggles, so that she could work on the tiny components, and her graying hair was tied back behind her head. It was the most hands-on Mendez had seen her since the early days of the Spartan-II program.
Halsey did look up as he entered the room, not that he expected her to. Halsey had a remarkable ability to engross herself in her work when difficult conversations were well overdue. Mendez cleared his throat. Halsey didn't look up.
"The meeting is over, it's decided. I'll be leaving tomorrow with our team," he said. Halsey still gave no indication of having heard him. A burst of sparks flew out of the emitter, showering over the table before lazy gray smoke rose from the component.
"Kelly wasn't too happy to be going with us," he ventured, still testing Halsey for a reaction.
"That MJOLNIR might have seen its last battle. Fred wants to find her a new set in Seongnam."
With an exasperated sigh, Halsey put down her tools and switched off the power to the shielding module. She flipped the goggles up off her face and turned to Mendez. The last week seemed to have taken years from the older woman. Deep bags had formed under her bloodshot eyes, and Mendez could swear he had seen her usually steady hand quiver as she stepped away from the shielding module. Behind her tends to swift took the moment to rush over and reexamine the progress being made of the shielding module.
Her tone was cold, "Are you trying to tell me something Franklin?"
"Just that you shouldn't be working yourself so hard. Kelly doesn't need it," Mendez said. Halsey glared at him. The look bordered between annoyance and rebellion, like a teenager caught sneaking out at night, and seemed completely out of place on the doctor's face.
"And what if you don't find another set at Seongnam? Mk. VI wasn't exactly cheap, you know." Halsey was dancing around the real issue, like she always did. Mendez knew there was other work the doctor could be doing. Any number of Triumph's systems had been far too long without trained maintenance. There were thousands of new pieces of technology, both from the shield world and the strange new aliens that needed integration with UNSC tech. But all those jobs required interaction either with the aliens or his Spartan IIIs and didn't allow Halsey to remain holed up in the operating theater alone but for the engineer.
Mendez just watched for a moment, before asking, "how are you doing?"
He had meant it as an olive branch, but Halsey clearly didn't see it that way.
"It's going slowly. Even more slowly if you keep interrupting my work," she snarked back.
"That's not what I meant. We're all sorry about your daughter. Especially the IIs. It can't be easy."
Her reaction was first one of surprise, and then one of renewed grief. Halsey didn't say anything as she turned to lean against the operating table. She squeezed her eyes shut and held her head in her palms. Mendez watched on in pity. Mendez had known about her pregnancy back during the Spartan II days. It wasn't good timing, in the final phases of the program. Halsey had to split her time between finalizing procedures for the impending augmentations and caring for her unborn child.
Halsey's baby was born on February 28th, 2525. She was very private about it, but there were congratulations around the facility. Nine days later, Halsey's augmentations would kill 30 of the children he had shaped into soldiers, and cripple 12 more.
It was a day that Mendez would never forget. He still wasn't sure how Ackerson had convinced him to sign on to the Spartan III program. He supposed the Covenant had made them all desperate.
He still wasn't sure how Halsey could raise a child of her own. He knew he never could. He committed unspeakable crimes against a group of the most brilliant, most inspiring children in the galaxy. He signed up to repeat the same horrors to 300 more children, in the name of stopping the covenant. Then when that wasn't enough, another 300, and then another. Thirty years. That was the age gap between the SIIs and the gamma company SIIIs. For thirty years, his business was raising child soldiers.
He could still remember Kelly's defiant face her first day in the facility, before it was beaten out of her by her trainers. Or how Fred had managed to befriend half the class in a single day. How Lucy used to tell the most wonderful stories late at night, before the trainers would punish her.
He knew he would never trust himself with another child, one of his own. He had seen what his hands could do. Seen how a six-year-old jolted back from a cattle prod. He still sometimes heard their screams in his dreams. If there was a Hell, he would be there. And Halsey had started it all. And he had been complicit; had gone on to repeat his sins thrice more.
Halsey was looking back at him now, tears forming in the very corners of her eyes.
"…thank you."
He gave her a pitying smile, before saying, "all I'm saying is don't work yourself to death."
Halsey scoffed, before walking past Mendez to a workstation on the wall behind him.
"Your concern is noted…" she dismissed in a way that only Halsey could, with the careful working of a practicing doctor but the laser-focus of an ONI contractor.
"But my work is needed now more than ever. Behold," as she finished her keystroke, a complex figure appeared on the monitor above their heads. Mendez could recognize the chains of letters that made up a genome, the millions of characteristics that went into a human being. A complex diagram of a strand of DNA was color coded in the corner. He recognized the service number at the top of the page. It was Lucy's. With another keystroke, the figure flashed 7 other profiles before breaking into a depiction of thousands of separate combinations. He couldn't understand it.
An uneasy feeling settled in his gut.
"What is this?"
"Our salvation Franklin. The future of the human race," Halsey's voice was proud, finally peeking through the shroud of restlessness and grief that had been clouding her mind.
"What?" The pit in Mendez' stomach grew heavier with every passing moment. He had a suspicion, but he had never allowed himself to believe it.
"30,000 permutations spanning seven generations, carefully simulated on a case-by-case basis. Genetic diversity is our single greatest ally. My Spartans were selected for their strong genetic profiles. Depending on just how many compromises Ackerson made for your Spartans, it may help set back the onset of autosomal disorders."
His eyes watched the scrolling data in horror. How couldn't she see it? Did she not know? Was she that wrapped up in her own domain, too caught up in the possible and impossible to worry about the right and wrong? Or had they already crossed that bridge a long time ago? He wanted to vomit. Mendez couldn't do this.
"Doctor…" he pleaded.
"…of course, it will only buy us time. Hopefully by then, they will have managed to find some way to mitigate the effects of inbreeding. With Citadel assistance, who knows what could happen. If only we had been allowed to invest in slow-process cloning. It may have well been our savior…"
Halsey had always seemed to care about her Spartans, despite her cold demeanor. Well, some of them at least. Nobody could claim that Halsey didn't play favorites. Still, somewhere inside, Mendez knew she cared. It was why she poured so much time and energy into MJOLNIR. To keep her creations safe. So how couldn't she know?
"Halsey…"
"…time is of the essence. Let's just hope that Kelly and Linda are still firing on all cylinders. Lord knows what Ackerson did to Olivia…"
Like pieces of meat. Like automatons. She really didn't understand. She had been a mother, how couldn't she? She should know even better than him. In times like these did she really see beyond science? See beyond her goals? There was a disconnect in Mendez's mind. One moment she cared, whisked her children away to Onyx to protect them from the end of the world. The next moment, she was talking about this. How?
"Catherine."
She stopped, pausing with a confused expression, as if she didn't know what she was doing.
"You can't do this."
She seemed taken aback by Mendez's objection, "of course we can. They're all intact. My augmentations didn't change that. Neither for the males. Reduced libido maybe, but certainly still capable of conception."
His eyes were wide with horror. He couldn't believe what he was hearing. He said it again, this time as an ultimatum.
"You can't do this to them."
Halsey wheeled around from where she was working, fury in her eyes, "in case you haven't noticed, Chief Petty Officer, we're probably the single most endangered species in this galaxy. If we don't do anything, we're it. We've sacrificed too much to give up now. They have sacrificed too much to give up now. Do you want to just give up? Let humanity go out with a whimper?"
She was shouting now, weeks of frustration and sleepless work finally coming to a head.
"Do you think I did this all for fun Mendez? Do you think I enjoyed watching my children on the operating table? Humanity needed the next step. A new evolution. To save ourselves from the insurrection, the Covenant. Humanity needed my Spartans. It was a necessary evil."
A disgusted sneer formed on Mendez's face. He shouted back at her, slamming his fist on the operating table, "they weren't your children! Pick a side Catherine! Be their mother or be the heartless monster who carved them up. I'm sick of this charade."
Halsey, indignant, sneered in response, "so high and mighty Franklin. You were with me every step of the way. You agreed it was necessary. The project wouldn't have happened without you. I stopped at 75. You trained another 900. Who's really the monster here?"
Mendez was quiet for a long moment. It was different somehow, in his mind. When he spoke, he was quiet, decades of regret hidden in his voice, "You're right. I thought they were the only way we could save ourselves. I thought the Spartans were the only way out of this damned war. The war is over. This is different."
"The war just started Mendez. The fight for our survival is just beginning. We've asked them to do so much. We've asked them to fight. We asked them to give up their families," her tone was serious, and her piercing blue eyes bored into Mendez, "and now, when all that's left to do is what come naturally, what humans have been doing for millions of years, you draw the line."
Images of four different classes of trainees flashed in his heads. He remembered how quickly the crying stopped at night, once the Spartans realized that nobody was there to console them.
"This isn't their duty," Mendez pleaded, "they've done all you asked of them. Don't ask them to do this."
"Their duty is to save humanity. They've always been the only ones who could. Now more than ever," Halsey said, as her tone dropped back into the cold calculated rhythm that Mendez was more accustomed to.
"If I asked them, you know they would do it."
Something about Halsey's smug determination sent Mendez over the edge. After all this time, she still didn't seem to understand just quite what they had taken away from the Spartans.
His tone was iron, the harsh language causing Tends to List careening for cover across the room, "And that, Doctor, is why you shouldn't even be asking that question. They were normal kids once. Brilliant, creative, and resilient kids. But that's not what you and Ackerson wanted Doctor. You wanted perfect soldiers," he said, pointing an accusatory finger at the doctor, "So we beat it all out of them. Damn near everything that made them human. Perfect soldiers don't dream about starting a family. Perfect soldiers don't explore their sexuality. Perfect soldiers compartmentalize. Perfect soldiers never show weakness. Perfect soldiers are willing to sacrifice everything to save humanity."
"And you know what? We weren't perfect. We couldn't drive out everything, no matter how many times they were disciplined. I can still see slivers of what they could have been, had it not been for us. Parts of them that they were too strong to give up."
Halsey was quieter now. Mendez knew she had seen it too, the fragments of personality and identity that lay buried in every Spartan.
"The war was their life, Catherine. They don't even know who they are without a rifle in their hands. We made damn well certain of that. For the first time in their lives, they have a chance to figure out who they really are. They have a chance to search for what we took from them."
His voice shook, stammering over his words, but building in intensity "and you want them to all become mothers and fathers for the good of humanity. Cattle for the grand plan. Bear children with when they don't even know what it means to be human? When they haven't even had a chance to consider a family? There's more to a human life than flesh and chemistry, Doctor. Miranda should have taught you that. I won't let you do it."
"Or what, you'll shoot me?" Halsey scoffed.
"Maybe I will."
Halsey returned a challenging glare.
"And what about humanity? You'll condemn our entire species to death to protect our Spartans? That bridge was crossed a long time ago Franklin. We did it for the greater good of humanity. We knew it. They knew it. So did Miranda," she said, the stress and anguish still clear in the wrinkled lines of her face.
Mendez simply shook his head.
"You don't understand it do you? You're so caught up in your own grief, and your own work, you can't see the world around you. Humanity is dead. How many languages will never be spoken again? How many cultures have been erased? The hundreds of thousands of years of history and development, it's all gone."
"The AI will all the records," Halsey interjected.
"You can't learn culture from a book. Face it. Humanity is now a handful of career soldiers, and a woman who can't seem to decide if she wants to be a mother or a martyr. Can any of us really claim to be human?"
From where she leaned against the workstation, Halsey didn't say much more. The argument had poisoned the air, as if a heavy fog had settled into the room. Slowly the forgotten responsibilities came trickling back to him, all the preparations they needed to make before their departure tomorrow. Feeling the silence, he moved over to the door, leaving the doctor some time alone to think over what he had said. For his part, his head was still spinning, trying to solve the puzzle that was Catherine Halsey.
The exit to the operating theater slid open with a hiss. As he stepped through the threshold, Halsey called out to him.
"Over two hundred thousand years of human history Franklin, and you want to be the one to end it. What gives you the right?"
Mendez paused, looking back at Halsey over his shoulder.
"We're both going to hell, Catherine. I'm just trying to salvage what's left."
Warships never truly slept. Crews rotated in and out, resting and working, but there was always a flurry of commotion. A buzz, like insects in a hive. Still, as Victus and his guards stood in the hangar watching Frederic and his team prepare to depart Triumph, he remarked at the peacefulness of the moment.
They had intentionally chosen a quiet time for their departure; there was no need to pack the bay with observers hoping to catch a glimpse of the humans. Despite the skeleton crew inhabiting Triumph, the humans had seemed to make themselves scarce. Victus himself hadn't seen them outside of scheduled strategy meetings. He knew, naturally, where they had set up their temporary headquarters. But outside of that, the humans were seldom seen on their own vessel. He supposed it made things easy.
The lieutenant loaded a box of human rations, left over from the previous inhabitants of Triumph, into the black of the pelican, while the grizzled Mendez secured it with hooks and straps. Frederic, or Fred, as Victus had soon learned he preferred to be called, had donned his powerful MJOLNIR armor, and as a result, he moved with a flowing grace and power that didn't seem to fit his massive frame.
The younger Spartans, the ones he hadn't seen since they arrived on the vessel, were also back in their armor, helping to carry supplies. They were an even more secretive group. While the trio of older Spartans had occasionally come to the bridge to update the captain on their plans, and talk strategy and direction, the five younger Spartans hadn't made any effort to get to meet the captain and the crew.
The lone exception amongst the departing humans was Kelly, who instead had donned ODST battle gear stolen from Triumph's armory to protect her burn laced body. Victus remembered first seeing the gristly reminder of their conflict with the Covenant, that day on Triumph's bridge. As a younger officer, he had seen his fair share of battlefield injuries. It was inevitable, and part of his duty as a Turian. Still, the sight of the marks on her skin churned his stomach.
And still, the Spartan seemed to move as if she was unhindered by her injury, a practiced measure with every movement she made.
A signal from Kelly caused Fred to walk over to Victus and his group, while the others finally embarked the Pelican.
"Its time," he said, before looking at Victus and removing his helmet, "Captain, it's been an honor. Keep my Spartans safe."
He extended an armored hand and gingerly shook the Turian captain's hand. He looked to the captain's right and shared a knowing look with Linda.
"Good luck, petty officer."
"Of course, sir.
Victus had been taken aback when the lieutenant had first approached him with his plans. He had recognized the perilous stance of the citadel council; without an appearance from a human in the Sol system, questions were going to start being asked. And revealing the existence of UNSC AI would cause a scandal the likes of which hasn't been seen in decades. As such, it wasn't a surprise when Admiral Tibril greenlit the split of the human group. It would give the interim Sol administration a figurehead, living humans to parade in front of the eager cameras of the galactic press. It was a cruel fate for a band of soldiers. But they didn't have much of a choice.
The Spartans had another reason for returning home, of course, one that worried Victus more. The brewing power struggle between the AI in the Sol system. To Victus and the other Turian captains, the AI had seemed a united front. But now, he could see the cracks he missed. The dissent and deceptions of military secrecy and a toppling hierarchy. He was grateful he had another mission to focus on. For now, he needed to concentrate his effort on Halo. The weapon was too dangerous to leave abandoned; that much had already been proven.
And not to mention the flood. He shuddered slightly thinking about what was to come. He looked to his right, at the Spartan that had been left behind to lead the UNSC Halo team, now his colleague. The woman he would be expected to cooperate with to secure the galactic threat.
Victus was uneasy. He had watched the woman intently during their meeting, and later when she outlined the preliminary plans of action for the voyage. From what he could tell, she was a competent tactician, but had none of the charisma of her predecessor. Fred had a way of making the Turian crew feel comfortable, defusing the tension that arose between the humans and the Turians.
In his meeting with Linda after her assignment to team leader, Victus had been left feeling uncomfortable; the Spartan's quiet demeanor and empty stare had struck him as borderline psychopathic. She somehow seemed ambivalent about being left behind. Her answers to his questions were short and succinct; never letting on more than she needed to. Her gaunt face, lined at the corners of her eyes by years of stress, always left Victus unsettled. She could kill, that much he was sure of. Beyond that, he was unsure.
She stood next to him watching Fred board the pelican. As always, her green eyes betrayed nothing, they were glassy, and the Spartan seemed to be watching everything and nothing at the same time. This mission had him worried. Fred seemed to take with all the Spartans that had seemed to take well to the strange circumstances aboard. It made sense when any misstep could snowball into a major diplomatic incident. But it still left Victus worried.
A Spartan that couldn't speak, and two more that would have to be put on ice before they lost their minds. A scientist with more black ink in her ledger than an STG veteran. All headed by a junior NCO with no people skills trying to do an officer's job. That wasn't even mentioning the state of his ground team, castoffs from the rest of the expeditionary fleet. And it was up to them to stop a weapon that could kill the galaxy and a potential parasite outbreak. This had always promised to be an interesting command. Victus guessed it was living up to its potential.
As the roar of the pelican filled the hangar, he looked over the cast of humans watching their comrades departing.
As the pelican glided into the empty abyss beyond the hangar doors, Victus couldn't help but think that things were just getting started.