Chapter 41 – Nihil

June 23rd, 2537 - (04:49 Hours - Military Calendar)

Thompson System, Estuary

Isla de Cortegada, 120 Kilometers Southwest of New Majorca

(15 Years Ago)

:********:

Rico missed home.

It wasn't so easy to admit to it either, mostly because the problem in and of itself wasn't an easy one to solve. In truth, it couldn't be solved at all. Once upon a time, he could say that to his mom, and she would've obliged him. She would've picked him up from school and driven him to their little apartment that they shared in the slums of Nueva Lima. There they would sit down for another dinner of defrosted quesadillas for the millionth time in a row.

He liked quesadillas.

But he couldn't do that anymore, mainly because he no longer had a mother, and Madrigal was no longer a place. The second the Covenant had come across the 23 Librae System; the outer colony's fate was sealed. The second he and his mom had reached one of the outgoing freighters with only enough credits for one of them, her own fate was sealed.

He could no longer go home because home wasn't home anymore. It was a planet-sized ash tray among the stars and all he had left to show that it ever meant anything to him was the memory of everything that died there. In the back of his mind he wished he could've died there as well, and ever since that day, a part of him had done just that.

All he had left to himself now was a shovel, a detonator, some explosives and a grudge. It wasn't much, but at 16, that was all he needed to finally get back at his uncle.

Why would a 16-year-old have explosives? It was a good question; one he had struggled to answer even as a 7-year-old in the scant months after arriving at his new home. The one person for whom that question had the most weight was the same one for whom it never seemed to register. He was the same man who gave them to him.

Where Rico had thought his last good relative would see family, his tío had only seen a new workhand. His weeks old grief at his newfound orphaning was set aside for real world lessons in mining. That as well as good old, backhanded discipline for complaints. Any complaints. It was as if the man didn't know his own sister was dead and thought her flesh and blood was on loan to him. But he knew. Rico was sure he did when he picked him up outside the terminal of Estuary's primary starport. That just made it all the worse when the only acknowledgement he gave him was an inconvenienced look and a nod to his car.

Without so much as a word, they flew back to his home which Rico quickly found not to be a home at all. More like a prison in every sense of the word. Three layers of fenced perimeter walls topped with thorny palisades of concertina wire surrounded a scattered compound, a makeshift mining operation posing as if it were official.

Most within Estuary's southern island chain of the Grenadenes who knew of Mateo Corkeva knew him as a respectable neighbor, a self-employed entrepreneur, a 'pull yourself up by your own bootstraps' kind of guy.

Rico simply knew him as 'that bastard'.

The reason he was so well respected on the islands was because many of the islanders themselves were of the same mind as him, both socially and politically. Most of the Grenadene settlers were the descendants of generations prior, of colonial rogues who'd broken away from the more officious types on the main continent, hoping to carve out an independent living for themselves in the wilderness. The result was that the archipelago was long considered the tropical boondocks of the planet's southern hemisphere. Those who lived there were in equal measure the inheritors of their forefathers' beliefs and ideals. The same could be said of their language. Their predecessors had long since abandoned UNSC customs. One of the major consequences was that millennia-old Spanish was the more commonly spoken tongue among the isles than UNSC Standard English. Coming from Madrigal, a world where it was more common to say "Buenos días" than "Good morning", that worked out just fine for Rico. Incidentally, it also made him much more aware of his surroundings than he otherwise would have wished.

The Insurrectionist influences weren't hard to spot. He had seen them enough times on Madrigal, had watched his mother pay enough back-alley taxes to men who weren't police to know what to look for. First was the fact that many of the Grenadenes were Innie sympathizers or had been rebels-in-arms themselves. He could overhear as much when he got the chance to visit nearby towns and islands, usually when his uncle was there on 'business'. The pubs were his usual haunt when it came to his connections, allowing his nephew to overhear drunken conversations and stories from men who fancied themselves self-made revolutionaries. Some of them-, no, most of them were local law enforcement, chiefs and detectives in whatever counted as police work among the islands. After a few years, he came to understand that the majority of the Grenadene population was a mixed diaspora of persons on the run, B-list fugitives from the law. The bulk of them were either men who had been a part of the local insurrection during its heyday or those who had escaped to Estuary from abroad when their own rebellions were stomped out by the UNSC.

They were the dregs, leftovers of an age long gone, resisted by the UNSC and now utterly quelled by an even greater threat, the same one that had destroyed Madrigal.

Another sign of the Insurrection was the kind that hit closer to home, or what passed as a home for him. The persons his uncle tended to hire as security guards typically wore their sentiments about intersystem governance on their sleeves, often literally for those who bore tattoos of different rebel flags or dead UNSC eagles. Rico wasn't so sure why his tío seemed to have a particular soft spot for those kinds of people. At least he didn't until he began catching occasional slip-ups from some of the guards. Sometimes, a few of those who were more familiar with Mateo would accidentally call him "Comandante" instead of "Jefe". He could tell they weren't joking either, especially when his uncle gave them a sharp look and told them not to call him that, all while Rico himself would have to pretend like he hadn't heard a thing.

He didn't know much about his tío.

In all honesty, he didn't want to know much.

But all the signs were so clear that he had a hard time ignoring them. Like the bullet holes in the walls of his bedroom that he would stare at whenever he went to sleep, the facts stared right back at him with vivid clarity: the compound hadn't always been his uncle's. Equally glaring was the reality that his tío had more in common with the men who had threatened to kidnap him if his mom didn't pay for their 'protection' than he did with his own family.

He had no love for Innies himself. He had no love for his uncle either. With that last one, however, he at least wanted to try. In a universe as screwed up and screwed over as the one he lived in; beggars couldn't be choosers. At most, he wanted to try the hand that life had dealt him, even if it was a bad, tobacco smelling hand like Mateo Corkeva.

"Familia es familia" His mother once told him, "No matter what."

It sounded good. He only wished his uncle thought the same.

He tried. He really did.

Something drove him on. He wasn't sure if it was because of the father he never knew or the uncle who tried his best to keep himself that way, but he wanted to earn his attention, to keep it for longer than it took for him to give his next instruction. He wanted to show him that he was wrong, wrong for ignoring him, wrong for treating the last scrap of family he had left like some indentured servant.

He put in extra hours with the work gangs in the mines. Rather than being a part of one six-hour shift, he would take two. The extraction site beyond the fence were rich enough in iron ore to put Mateo's little operation on many a shady industrialist's radar. Rico did his best to keep the production chain rolling, spending most of his waking day with a pickaxe in one hand and a shovel in the other. Without the equipment of a mainstream operation, most of the work came down to old-fashioned spit and grit. Most of his time was devoted to the large, manmade ravine that lay a short distance from the main gate, hacking away at entrenched iron deposits or pushing minecarts along miniature maglev rails that no longer worked.

The hardest part, of course, was the blast mining.

The hefty orders put in by Mateo's clientele created ever-increasing quotas. Distant explosions became more of a natural ambiance to Rico as he worked, slowly getting used to the muffled THUMP that would reverberate through the ground as dust rained down on his head. Explosives, often military grade, were routinely implored in order to expand the mines and extract more ore. Specialists who knew how to deal with them, however, were almost always in short supply.

Yet another demand Rico thought he could meet.

If he could take the lead in the expansion of the business, then he was sure his uncle would notice him.

He hadn't been wrong.

One bright evening, under the blazing sun, he approached his work chief and volunteered for the next demolition. The older man didn't even bat an eye. His only words before he brought him to the site to show him what to do were short and to the point.

"No explotes".

'Don't explode'.

It was good advice and he followed it down to the very last fuse wire and radial measurement.

It didn't take long for him to show that he had a knack for it, and it took an even shorter time for him to be put in charge of demolitions. Better still, it was his uncle himself who handed him the promotion. Him, a teenage orphan who he'd barely ever given the time of day.

The short time they spent together every morning at his main residence became a lot less awkward. He would even give him a nod whenever he headed out for the mines.

Just a nod. Still, it was better than years of silence.

For what it was worth, it was great while it lasted, and it didn't last long.

The accident came a month after his promotion. He had thought a particular area that was being planned for the next expansion would require more explosives than usual. He added a few more packs of C12 for good measure. He was sure he had it all figured out. At least he did until the blast.

It carved a fresh extension into the ravine like a creeping crack in a wall, but as the smoke settled, it ballooned out the entrance of another part of the mine. Screams and shouts came from outside as work crews rushed towards the entrance and from within as those inside were buried alive.

The explosion was strong. Too strong. The vibrations caused the supports of an entire section of the mine to give way and collapse. The fact that those same supports were made of old wood and rusted metal was completely overlooked.

Outside the entrance, at the edge of the haze, as the handful of dust-soaked miners who'd been trapped inside were pulled to safety, Mateo called up his sobrino.

"Hijo de Puta!" rolled off his tongue as easy as a curse. But it was worse than a curse. So too was the backhanded slap that knocked Rico to the ground.

He knew his uncle would've put his hand to his throat if he weren't already crying and a few dusty workers weren't holding him back.

"Do you know how much ore was in there!?" He fumed. "Do you have any idea what you just did, kid!? Do you have any idea how much this is going to cost!?"

Mateo wrangled himself free of the grasping hands and kicked him in the ribs as hard as he could. Rico gasped at the pain and folded in on himself like a bug.

"That's for the bill, cabrón!"

Mateo spat on the ground. Then he turned his back on him and marched off, barking orders, yelling at the others to never let his nephew near another batch of explosives.

With a few words, his promotion was gone.

With a kick, so was his pride.

One mistake. One little mistake. That was all it took.

He hated that he'd almost gotten a few of his fellow miners killed. That was never the intent. But he hated his uncle more. In the evening afterward as he laid in his bed, denied any dinner, he found himself wishing that he hadn't made a mistake, that he had tried to kill those miners. Maybe his conscience wouldn't have tortured him about it as much if it meant pissing off his uncle even more.

It was the only time the man had ever mentioned his mom, as an insult no less.

Worse yet, he'd called him out in English. English, like he was some UNSC outsider.

He wasn't allowed to work for a few days after the incident and was left to stew inside his room. He guessed Mateo wanted him to learn a lesson. He did, two actually. The first was that he knew exactly what would tick his uncle off the most. The second was that he knew for certain what he wanted now.

The plan didn't take long to form. He realized it was always there really, festering behind his thoughts about showing off how good he was at his job. Old grievances and vengeful scenarios carved out a manifesto of action that became more and more believable.

He was going to leave Isla de Cortegada, and he was going to leave it with a bang.

Over the years, he had smuggled a sizable cache of C12 under his bed. He always kept it there in case he ever decided to follow through on his ideas. The motivation to use them hadn't quite gotten ahold of him until after the incident. In similar fashion, he kept a backpack of emergency supplies in his closet, carrying a mixed assortment of containerized water, pre-packaged food and some medical items. It had gathered dust beneath his clothes while he waited for the right moment. That moment came about a week later.

The night was cool.

The wind was passing in whispering bursts, rustling the fronds of the palm trees that surrounded the compound so that the entire island seemed to rattle.

The sound was usually soothing enough to help Rico off to sleep, but tonight it was just annoying. He was forced to listen that much harder, pressing his ear to his bedroom door. There was no movement on the other side. He waited another minute to be sure, then slipping his bag on his back, he opened the door and put a foot out into the hallway. His boot caused the wooden flooring to creak. He slowly shifted more of his weight from one foot to the next until the creaking stopped. Looking down the passageway, he saw the moonlight passing through the glass paneling of the front door, illuminating the living room as well as another door. Across the way from a holo-screen where an old Gravball game was on replay, the door to his uncle's room was partly open. He could see him sleeping in his bed.

For a split second, he spotted the resemblance between him and his mother, even with himself, but he also spotted the difference. A square chin like his own but covered in scars, deep set eyes that had been wrinkled by time, tan skin blackened in places by exposure to hazardous chemicals and a messy head of black hair streaked with gray. A woman laid next to him. His girlfriend Angelica was much younger, maybe in her mid 20s. She had her arms wrapped around him, resting her head on his bare chest with a smile on her face. He didn't have anything against her, but he was positive that what he was about to do would put an end to all that.

He carefully put one foot in front of the other. Sneaking into the living room, he stopped dead in his tracks when he checked his uncle again. He wasn't sure if it was just the angle, but Mateo looked like he was awake, peering back at him from under his eyelids. He didn't dare breathe. His gaze shifted to the nightstand next to him, to the smoldering end of a cigar and the loaded pistol lying beside it.

His uncle didn't move.

Rico steadied himself. Then he continued putting one foot in front of the other, not stopping again until he was at the front door. He patted his pocket to make sure the credit chip he'd stolen from Mateo earlier in the day was still there. Taking a deep breath, he unlocked the door, stepped outside and slowly closed it shut behind him.

The compound stretched out in front of him. Several rows of interconnected, containerized housing units lay in one corner. The pump-like structures of the magnetic separators that pulled the proverbial chaff from the wheat lay in another. A dirt road ran down the middle, running straight from the front steps of Mateo's house all the way to the entrance at the front gates. Floodlights were scattered in haphazard locations around the compound, illuminating a few areas but otherwise leaving everything else dark. A few guards were on duty. Rifles out and cigars lit, they were even more scattered than the floodlights, going about their duties over card games and idle chats.

None of them saw him yet.

He moved down the stairs and slipped into the dark. He kept away from bright areas and the noise of unwary passersby, using the shadows for cover.

He neared the gate without trouble but didn't go through it. It was too obvious an escape route. Instead, he turned off to the right and headed for the storage area. He passed through a long aisle of cargo containers that had years before been stolen from interstellar shipping corporations. He stopped at one where the logo was half smudged by rain and ware. It was his marker. He turned around the next corner and came to the perimeter fence. Here there was a hole in the wire where the puppy-sized rats that inhabited the isle had carved out an entrance for themselves. He'd staked it out for a while to see if anyone would take notice. No one had and the small hole beneath the fence remained.

He snuck his bag out first. He went next, slithering under the wire with his shoulders. Once he was clear, he threw his backpack on and, looking left and right, ran off into the forest.

The rustling of the fronds that he'd heard before became a constant rattling overhead. The chirping underbrush went quiet as he snuck through the ferns. He followed the road a short way to the manmade ravine near the compound.

If the compound was sparsely guarded, the ravine was practically abandoned. A single guard stood, or rather sat at watch in the driver's seat of an old Warthog that had been parked atop one of the cliffs. The entire site was basically defenseless otherwise. Just as planned. Rico knew the guard to be one of the newest and least attentive of the crew. At barely a few years older than himself, he watched him sit with arms folded behind his head and boots planted on the dashboard. He crept just close enough to confirm that the noise he was hearing from the inside was snoring. The sharp scent of alcohol hit his nostrils and he smiled.

He snuck past the guard and navigated a path that led down into the ravine. The entrances to the different passageways of the mines stretched on in front of him and behind him, their interiors lit by stringed up lights. It felt a lot like being in an active graveyard, one where spirits both ancient and recent went about their day as if their lives hadn't ended. For a moment, he thought it a shame that Estuary didn't celebrate El Día de Muertos like they used to on Madrigal. He was about to put these spirits to rest, however, hopefully for good.

He took turns slipping into each passageway. There he would plant several small shape charges of C12, placing them at strategic intervals along the walls. That way the impending cave-in would be much more in depth. At the end of half an hour, his work was done and over a dozen entrances to the mine were rigged to blow.

As the stars wheeled overhead, he made his way back towards the lone guard. He found him just as he'd left him. He kept a shovel close at hand while he carried out the next phase of his plan.

He snuck one arm under the guard's shoulder. When that didn't interrupt his snoring, he hooked another under him. He lifted him slightly. With cautious steps, he pulled him out of his seat. His feet hit the ground and the snoring stopped abruptly. Rico checked him again. The man's eyes were still shut and he showed no signs of waking. Even more cautious, he dragged him into a nearby bush and laid him down. Sliding the pistol out of his holster, he went back to the Hog and found the engine still running.

He was no chauffeur. All the same, he had a pretty good handle on driving for his age. He hit the accelerator and peeled away from the mine. He kept one hand on the wheel, one hand on the detonator and both eyes on the rearview mirror.

He squeezed the trigger.

What he saw next in the rearview was better than any movie his uncle had ever let him watch. Over a hundred succinct explosions pounded the ravine, causing the ground itself to shudder. In an instant, the blasts belched a dozen intermingling columns of dust and debris into the air.

The clamor lasted for several seconds. However, the signature of his newest work was written on the midnight sky and was unlikely to blow away any time soon.

He smirked.

Whoever had said 'revenge is a dish best served cold' had obviously never used explosives.

The satisfaction was immediate. However, it left him faster than he was ready for. There was still more to do if he was going to carry out his plan: making his life one giant middle finger to everything his uncle believed in.

He sped off from the ruined ravine towards another dirt road, one that would soon take him to the local starport.

:********:

Estuary's planetary capital of New Majorca was a busy place, a bustling amalgamation of buildings and skyscrapers that rose as high as the lowest clouds. Coming from years spent in an isolated island life, loud noises and clogged streets, beeping cars and chattering pedestrians, everything left him in a daze. A bad case of culture shock made him feel like a lost stray, a country bumpkin on the wrong side of the equator.

He had caught a not-so-official private charter flight to the main continent of Segovia. New Majorca lay within a crescent-shaped bay on its eastern coast. It was at least twice the size of any city he'd seen on Madrigal. The highways here were actual highways and not a hodgepodge of centuries old backroads. The bus stops were real and not long forgotten, overgrown slabs of pavement smack in the middle of nowhere. In the place of trees and mines were rich-looking apartments and towering corporate centers.

Rico, however, hadn't come to sightsee. He knew exactly why he was here. He'd made sure to take a shower before he left 'home', washing off anything that could make him less presentable.

He got the directions he needed to catch the right taxi and had it drive him down to where he needed to go. Eventually, he felt the vehicle slow down and watched the arrival light in front of his seat wink on. He showed his thanks to the driver by tapping his uncle's credit chip against the payment portal, adding an extra tip. Then he opened the door and stepped out onto the sidewalk.

He was on the edge of a beach. Hundreds of people were out and about, swimming and bobbing in the gentle waves of the greenish blue sea that lapped at the coasts or sunbathing on the powdery white sands that descended to the waterline. A planked promenade ran the miles-long length of the beachfront. Rico followed it, ignoring the sights of families strolling leisurely down the beach or enjoying themselves in the water. He wasn't here for comfort. He wasn't even here to enjoy himself. He was here because there was something he needed to do, and it lay on the ground floor of the large building that stood at the very end of the beach.

The glass door to the Marine Corps recruiting office was sparkling clean, as was the man sitting on the other side of it. Rico spotted the nametag on his uniform before the door slid open for him: 'WO J. Morientes'.

He stepped inside. Stopping in front of the officer's desk, he immediately took in the sights. The spread-eagle banner of the UNSC was set on the wall behind his desk, wafting in the cool air conditioning coming from the ceiling vents. On either side of it, two more banners did the same, portraying the raised, crescent mounted star of the UNSC Marine Corps. The smell of freshly made coffee was strong and emanated from a mug that the officer gingerly set down on his desk. He was reading something from the datapad in his hand. He didn't even seem to notice Rico's arrival.

"And what do we have here?" Morientes placed the datapad down on his desk but didn't seem to stop reading. "What's your name, son?"

"Rico," He replied. "Rico Corkeva."

He straightened his posture and stuck out his chest a little. "I'm here to enlist, sir."

"And what makes you think you're fit for the service?"

Rico hesitated. It wasn't a question he'd been expecting. "S-, sir?"

"First, hold off on calling me 'sir' for a sec. I don't want you assuming you're going to get in just because you showed up. Second, recruiting has been pretty good this year. I've already hit my quota for the month, two months in fact. I'm exhausted. I don't feel like lying to another person half my age about what benefits they can expect from the service. Third, you look a little too young to be putting your life on the line."

"What? When did you-"

"I saw you before you even stepped through that door, kid." Morientes finally looked up at him and for the first time Rico saw the bags under his eyes. "You're sixteen?"

"I...turn seventeen next month."

The officer's eyes narrowed.

Rico relented. "Three months."

"Uhuh. Got any ID?"

He shook his head. "No, I'm not from here."

"Which world?"

The question by itself pulled up old memories that he never liked to revisit, not wanting that homesick feeling to come back like it did every time.

"Madrigal, sir-, I mean...yeah, Madrigal, 23 Librae."

The reply had an immediate reaction, a furrowing of the brows, a few creases in his shirt as Morientes leaned forward.

"You have refugee status?"

"Yessir, I-, yes, I do."

Morientes sized him up again. "Tell me something. Madrigal fell almost ten years ago. I doubt you've been living on your own this whole time. Don't you have a guardian who can vouch for you, a relative maybe?"

Mateo's face as he backhanded him to the ground careened back into his thoughts.

"No." He said firmly. "I haven't been living on my own though. I got a place in a homeless shelter in the city."

It was a cover story he had crafted well ahead of the meeting, anticipating more than a few questions about where he came from. He didn't want to tell a recruiting officer of the UNSC that his newest add-on was from the Grenadenes, from Innie country.

"Which shelter?" Morientes asked.

"The Emanuela Center for Charity."

"The ECC. Alright, you wouldn't mind if I called them to ask if they know you there, would you?"

Rico stiffened. He hadn't anticipated that. "I-..."

Morientes stared at him for a moment. When he didn't offer up an answer, he leaned back in his chair and folded his arms, giving him a no-nonsense look.

"They don't know you there, do they?"

Sheer nerves zipped Rico's mouth shut.

Morientes let out a sigh. "You're from the Grenadenes."

He stiffened even more, almost a statue. The man wasn't asking him that. He was telling him.

"H-, how?" He stammered. "How did you-, how could you-"

"Your accent." Morientes said. "It's a lot thicker than other folks' around here. I've heard it enough times to be able to tell the difference."

For another few seconds Rico sat small, completely unsure what to say next.

The officer spoke again in a voice that was as chilling as it was calm. "What are your real intentions here, Mr. Corkeva?"

The cat was out of the bag now.

If that was the case, then he figured he might as well kick it the rest of the way.

With a rising ire that had only grown since the last time he saw his mother, he spoke. "I want to screw over everyone who ever screwed me over, sir, and I want to be so good at it that they can't even get me back for it."

A glint of interest caught alight in Morientes' cold stare. "Go on."

Deep down, Rico realized that there had been more than just one cat in the bag, so he decided to rip the whole thing open.

"I didn't grow up around money, sir. We were so poor that by the time the Covenant showed up to Madrigal my mom could only afford to pay just enough to get me on a ship. She had to fork it up to the only bozos who were getting people off the planet and hoping to make a quick buck off of it. Those bozos, sir, they were Innies. And I wound up here with my Innie uncle in some dumb backwater where people think because they talk different, because they have some stake on a piece of land in the middle of nowhere, that that's what makes them better than everyone else. And nobody could care less. No one would care if the Grenadenes disappeared tomorrow, sir. If the Covenant showed up just to glass the islands and leave, only a handful of people would even bat an eye...and I wouldn't be one of them."

He stopped to catch himself.

The officer continued to look on with curiosity and distant caution, but Rico sensed the latter slowly diminishing.

"That still doesn't tell me your intentions, Corkeva."

"Oh, it does." Rico said, ready to spill whatever guts he had left. "The Covenant are the reason I'm here, but the Innies are the reason my mom isn't. I want to pay them both back, and from what I hear, the Marine Corps is the best way to get face to face with the two things I hate the most."

There was a fire in him now that he couldn't put out, pushing down the timid part of him that told him to watch his tone, a part his mom would have echoed. But that was the whole point. She wasn't here. He was all alone with nothing to keep him company but a grudge and a blood debt, both of which he planned to collect on.

His words seemed to possess a power of their own, thawing the cold face of the recruitment officer so that a new expression tugged at his lips. At first Rico thought it was a wry smile, like he was mocking him. Then he saw it for what it was: agreement.

"Alright, Corkeva. You had my attention before but now you have my interest. Do you have any skills?"

"Skills?"

"Yeah, I'm sure the shoddy militias those Innie lovers in the Grenadenes call their defense forces would've conscripted you in a heartbeat. Did they teach you anything, gunnery, marksmanship, communications?"

"I'm no rebel, sir." Rico reaffirmed. "But after the stunt I just pulled to get here, maybe to them I am."

"Stunt?"

"I blew up my uncle's mine. He taught me how to use explosives. He's probably regretting that right about now."

Morientes cocked his head and suddenly made Rico feel a lot more conscious of what he'd said.

"No, wait, please don't get the wrong idea. He taught me how to use it for blast mining. I waited until no one was there. No one got hurt, trust me."

Again, the smile returned in a more friendly, kidding gesture. "No, you trust me, Corkeva, you possibly having a body count and a criminal record isn't a concern. In fact, with the concessions we make for some of the guys that come through here, skimming the fine print of the law is almost a requirement."

Rico bit his lip. "Is it?"

"My concern was what your uncle taught it to you for." Morientes said, changing the subject as he typed something one-handed into his datapad. "You don't strike me as the infiltrator type. Not to mention everyone's trying to do their part when it comes to the Covenant. It might surprise you, but you're far from the first ex-Innie affiliated person to walk through that door and get accepted into boot."

"Sir, I'm not an Innie, I-" He paused. "Wait...does that mean-"

Morientes nodded. "Just entered you into the system. I still need a bit of basic background information but..." He looked back up at Rico. "You, Mr. Corkeva are on your way to becoming a part of the United Nations Space Command Marine Corps. If you play your cards right, you could end up using your skillset against the enemy, mano y mano."

For several long seconds, Rico stood stunned. He wasn't sure what to think. He was happy, excited and terrified all at once.

Morintes smirked at him. "Well, how does that make you feel, recruit?"

:********:

Nervous.

That was exactly the word Rico would've used to describe how he felt if he had the wherewithal to open his mouth.

The Grenadenes hadn't changed much since he'd left. That went double for Isla de Cortegada. The island was no less insular and suspect. The temperature of the climate was as constant as the standoffishness of the residents.

Then again, he guessed two years meant little against centuries of stagnation.

The Marine Corps was almost the exact opposite. Each day of boot camp brought some new horror show and some new adventure, some new test of strength, endurance and intelligence. It hadn't been that hard for him in the end. As it turned out, working for years in mine tunnels that could collapse at any moment had done wonders for him in both mind and body. Never too close to the front of the class nor too far to the rear, he had carved out a niche for himself as a solid recruit.

Keeping his background on the downlow as much as he could also turned out to be advantageous. The Insurrection might've been more or less done and gone, but many of his fellow recruits were the sons and daughters of UNSC veterans. Many of them chose to sign up to honor parents who had either come home from fighting the insurgency or hadn't come back at all. There was little love lost between Rico and the rebels. However, he wasn't about to tell his hot-blooded comrades who had just as much to prove as he did that he came from a rebel enclave, yet alone that he hailed from a world with strong ties to the old cause.

The graduation ceremony for his class was an experience in and of itself, and maybe that was why he was here now, on the island. Friends and family had flocked to his classmates in droves as they wrapped up their ceremony. No one was there for him, not directly. The most he could look forward to was a pat on the back from the families of those classmates that he'd gotten to know. That was it. It wasn't nothing. He appreciated it for what it was. However, it served as another reminder of the situation he was in.

He knew his uncle wouldn't have been caught dead within 100-kilometers of a Marine Corps graduation, whether he had blown his business to kingdom come or not. The man probably wouldn't want to see him anyway. It still didn't take away from the feeling that someone should have been there. Someone should have known that he had made it this far in his life. He didn't like the thought of possibly biting the dust in the line of duty one day and the Corps having a hard time figuring out who to notify. He wasn't the only one in that position either. He met plenty of other recruits who came from dead worlds like him. Even then, he wasn't entirely in the same camp as them. In his case, he still had someone left, even if that someone probably hated his guts.

Being garrisoned with the planetary defense forces on Estuary in the years after graduating had worked out in his favor. Considering what he had planned, he had plenty of time to do what others might've considered unthinkable. He put in the request for a short leave once he got the chance. Experience taught him exactly where to go to find a commercial pilot, a smuggler in his private time, that he could do business with. A few hundred credits for a seat on a rust bucket of a freighter and he was off for the Grenadenes.

The trip was a silent one and shorter than he remembered. In a matter of a few hours, he was looking out a window to the archipelago itself. At the end of a seemingly endless bread-crumb trail of tectonic upwelling, isolated cays and stray sandbars, he spotted his destination. Isla de Cortegada's open lobster claw shape was just as he'd remembered, its coppice forests dotted with the same small settlements that had stood for centuries. The freighter made for the eastern side of the isle, heading for the larger of the two pincer-like ends.

They touched down in the tall grass of a small clearing. From there, it was a two-mile long hike through old access roads and overgrown forest trails. He still knew the way and followed it until he could see his uncle's property from a distance.

He sat in the undergrowth for a while, watching.

Traffic moved along the main road between the fenced gate and the way to the ravine. Storage ladened flatbed trucks drove through the former at regular intervals while sounds of machinery flowed continually from the latter direction.

Hidden under the shade of a tall fern, he wore a bitter smile. It seemed Mateo had saved his business after all. He wondered how long it took for him to do that, how many strings he had to pull, how many hairs had to turn gray. He figured he was about to find out. He always took the man for many things, but a quitter was never one of them. Not when it came to money.

Familia on the other hand?

He watched the detachment of armed guards standing at the front gate. Among a number of new faces, there was one he recognized. A good sign. They would be less likely to shoot him straight away. Whether they ultimately would or not, he couldn't tell. Not that he cared. He was here for one thing and one thing only: a family reunion. If the reaper was waiting for him there too then so be it.

If actions spoke louder than words then he was screaming when he blew up the mines. Mateo probably wouldn't have seen it that way. He would have seen a kick to the balls in his finances. He wouldn't catch on, so Rico was going to make sure he knew exactly why he did it.

He waited for a lull in the traffic coming from the mines before walking out into the open. It didn't take long for the guards to notice him marching up to them.

One of the new faces was the first to raise his rifle. "¡Eh, tú! ¡Detener!"

The others whirled towards him as well, but he didn't stop.

"¡Detente ahí ahora!" Another shouted.

He didn't listen.

"¡Espera, no dispares!" The oldest of them shouted, pushing their rifles away. "¡No dispares!"

Seeing this, the other guards backed down, their weapons lowered but still held at the ready. They looked between Rico and the older guard hesitantly as the two walked up to each other, stopping just a few strides short of being face-to-face.

The man looked him over, eyeing the jacket and jeans on the new stranger.

"...Rico?"

Rico offered a ghost of a smile at the only guard whose name he had ever bothered to remember.

"Hugo."

He watched Hugo's face as tentative wariness darkened into a bitter resignation.

"You shouldn't have come back, cabrón. If you were smart, you would've stayed abroad."

There was the English again.

Rico snuck a glance at the sidearm holstered on his belt. "Is Mateo here?"

Hugo's answer was a hard stare before he closed the distance and started patting him down from head to foot. "Escúchame, idiota. If you try anything, I'll put you in the ground."

Rico grinned. "How's the mine doing?"

Hugo snorted. "Good. No thanks to you. Took us half a year to get things back to normal."

Out the corner of his eye, Rico saw another convoy of flatbed trucks emerging from the forest, coming towards them from the direction of the ravine. "Looks like it's better than normal."

"Shut up." Hugo came around and pried his jacket open. His eyes went wide and he took a step back, letting him go with a slack-jawed look of disbelief.

Rico zipped his jacket shut. "Don't spoil the surprise, Hugo. It's not for you."

Hugo's shock dampened into a divided mask, split between pure disgust and unbridled hatred. "You're not expecting to walk out of this alive, are you?"

Rico shoved his hands in his pockets. "Think I'd be here right now if I cared?"

Hugo gave a slow shake of his head before roughly grabbing him by the shoulder and steering him towards the gate. He had two of the guards follow him past the entrance while he radioed in a status report.

To Rico's quiet surprise, the compound had changed quite a bit. In the place of aisles of stolen starport containers were legitimate container units, metal storage holds the size of public transports. The housing units themselves had been built up into something resembling small neighborhoods of apartments. They were far better than what had come before but nowhere near on the scale of those he'd seen in New Majorca.

The one thing that hadn't changed at all was his uncle's house. Standing tall atop a small hill at the other end of the main road, it possessed the same two-story plaster walls and wooden veranda that he remembered. It was nearly the exact same building he recalled leaving that night.

Dozens of miners and perimeter guards were sitting around or moving about their day. More than a few eyes turned his way in kind, some of them wincing as they recognized him. He didn't turn to meet any of them. His sights were firmly set on the house. There a small crowd was already gathering at the bottom of the steps.

"Think this is what Christ saw when they led him up to Calvary?" He asked half-jokingly.

Hugo tightened his grasp on his shoulder until Rico felt the pain of his fingers digging into his skin. "Keep talking and I'll punch those teeth right out of that crooked mouth of yours."

"They said worse in boot." Rico sighed as they neared the steps. "And unlike you, they actually delivered."

"You won't shut up until someone shuts you up, will you?"

"Think you're up for it?"

"You little-"

Hugo pulled at his jacket, wheeling him around for a punch to the gut that he already saw coming, palming it with ease. Rico watched the air explode from the guard's lungs as his knee shot up into his groin. Hugo dropped to his knees to the sound of surprised shouts. As he reached for his aching privates, Rico seized the opening with a mean right hook, smacking his whole head at an angle. He spun to the ground in a puff of dust.

Instantly, a dozen guards rushed from the crowd to flock around him, rifles raised. Each of them barked at him to stop and surrender. He ignored them all and started walking towards the stairs. The shouting increased as did the threats. He kept going.

Two shots rang out, striking the ground at his feet.

He stopped, eying the pair of dust clouds that had kicked up in front of his boots. Then he craned his head and looked up.

Mateo was standing out on the front veranda. Though dressed in a bathrobe, he was every inch as serious as the two shots he'd fired from his M6. Smoke still wafting from the barrel, he watched Rico through the sights like an enemy unlooked for, brows furrowed, eyes locked in a glare that promised death to any wrong moves.

Rico matched his stare with his own.

There was silence for several heartbeats as the mild afternoon wind whistled past.

Then Rico slowly smiled. It wasn't fake.

"Tío Teo."

It was the nickname his mother had always told him to call his uncle by. It was cutesy and held a certain kind of affection that Rico later found too one-sided to use.

Mateo didn't respond, simply taking in the sight of his nephew.

"How've you been?" Rico asked.

That was too much.

Mateo let off another shot that whizzed past his ear, smacking the ground behind him.

He didn't flinch. His smile never even wavered.

Mateo shifted his arm purposefully so that the next round wouldn't be a warning shot. "¿Qué haces aquí, sobrino?"

"I came to see you." Rico replied honestly.

He was quietly caught off guard to hear his uncle talking to him like he wasn't an outsider again. He almost wondered if he wasn't as mad at him as he expected. But he glanced at the three newly made holes in the ground around him and quickly threw out the idea.

"And you've seen me." Mateo replied. "But I never wanted to see you. Not after what you-"

"TEO!"

Rico watched as a young woman came bursting out of the front door of the house. She didn't look much older than himself. Like his uncle, she was also dressed in bathrobes. She ran over to him, stopping halfway at the sight of the gun in his hand and the man he was aiming at.

"¿Qué es esto?"

"Nothing." Mateo barked. "Go back inside."

"Where's Angelica?" Rico dared.

He watched his uncle's expression harden with disdain.

"Listen here, bastardo. After your little stunt, I lost most of my business. Almost all of my clients pulled out of their agreements with me. I could've ended up on the streets because of you!"

Rico noticed he hadn't answered his question. In a way, however, he had. Angelica had never struck him as the 'in sickness and in health' sort.

He cocked his head, exposing his smile for the condescension that it was. "But you're not on the streets, are you?"

Mateo went off in a stream of rapid-fire Spanish, working himself up into a red-eyed frenzy. Rico just stood there and watched, understanding everything and caring for nothing.

"You!" Mateo said, finally catching himself. "You almost ruined me! I had to work twice as hard because of you! I just barely managed to pull this operation back up out of the gutter! I even made it better than it was, and now you show up at my door! And for what, to ruin it again!? Let me guess. You're working with the police now, right? That's it. That's what this is. You've led them straight to me, cabrón!"

Rico shook his head. "I didn't bring anyone here besides myself."

"THEN WHY-"

"To see you, like I said."

"FOR WHAT!?" Mateo yelled, jabbing his gun at him with each syllable. "WHAT DO YOU WANT, DIABLO! SAY IT!"

"Isn't it a good thing to share your success with family?" He asked calmly.

A flash of confusion crossed his uncle's face. "What?"

"You managed to bounce back. I'm happy for you, proud even. So now it's my turn to show you what I was up to while I was gone."

Rico reached for his jacket. His uncle and the guards immediately aimed at him anew, ordering him to keep his hands where they could see them. He didn't listen, pulling down the zipper on his jacket with theatrical slowness.

The show was over the second his jacket hit the ground. Everything after that was a one-man encore.

He watched his uncle's eyes widen at the sight of his Marine Corps fatigues. His attention appeared to linger longest on the nametag above his right breast: 'PFC R. Corkeva'.

It wasn't a secret anymore. It was out in the open, just as he'd wanted.

The shocked silence that ensued was soon broken by whispering murmurs and shouts of rage.

"SCUMBAG!"

"TRAIDOR!"

"¡SOLO DISPÁRALO!"

Rico delighted in all of them, waiting patiently as Mateo fired a round into the air, causing the crowd as well as his new girlfriend to flinch. With everyone quiet, he raised his voice, a note of disgust seared into every word.

"So, you decided to go make yourself even more worthless and become a traitor to the only people who ever cared for you!? The only ones who took you in after you came crawling here like some lost beggar!?"

"Traitor?" Rico's smile died off at the sour taste the word left in his mouth. "Tío, you couldn't even remember what my name was until months after I came here."

Mateo scowled. "And I wish I never did. It's not even worth knowing anymore, traitor."

He spat on the ground.

"...Tío-"

"Don't call me that!" He hissed. "You are no longer my nephew! You are no longer my family!"

At this, Rico's smile returned, albeit with a shadow of bitterness. "Was I ever?"

It was a question that, instead of setting Mateo off, left him without words as he stared daggers into him.

Rico knew better than to expect an answer. He reached down, picked up his jacket and threw it over his shoulder.

"I'm a Marine now, uncle, for the United Nations Space Command," He said, enjoying the feel of it as he pronounced every part of the English acronym. "But that's not the only reason I'm here. I also came to tell you that I'll be going off-world soon. I'll be leaving Estuary, heading to the front."

"And good riddance."

"And every time I find the Covenant in front of me, you know what I'll say?"

Mateo didn't answer.

"I'll say, 'for my uncle' every time I kill the alien bastards that got me sent here in the first place. 'Para mi tio', that's what I'll shout, and I'll do it with this same shirt on." Rico put his hands to his hips, standing proudly as his uncle's expression decayed with indignation. "I'll do it for you, Mateo. I'll do it so you and everyone else like you who wants to hide in their own little corner of the galaxy will have someone fighting for them. You always said you hated the UNSC, but at least they're trying to stick their necks out for everyone. You? You only fight for yourself and your little hole in the ground. And I think that's all you want. But that's fine. Do what you will. I'll just want more for the both of us."

Barely restrained rage emanated from Mateo. If looks could kill, Rico would have been long dead. All he did was stare back, maintaining eye contact for ten long seconds of frigid silence.

At length, it was Rico who relented first. Sighing, he slid his hands back into his pockets and let his gaze fall to the floor.

"I don't think I'll ever see you again. I don't think I'll ever want to see you again. I'd like to think the feeling's mutual." He looked up at him one last time and offered one last, subtle smile, now lacking any condescension. "Goodbye Mateo. Hopefully, if you're lucky, we'll get to see each other again at the family reunion. I'm sure my mom's already planning one in El Paraíso. Maybe...we'll actually like each other then..."

A speechless, white-hot rage answered him.

He had nothing else left to say either. He turned and started to walk back towards the crowd, back in the direction of the gate. Hugo was on his feet now. He was holding his bloodied nose and keeping at a distance from him.

A pair of fast footsteps caught his ear.

"ESPERATE!" Mateo shouted. "ESPERATE PENDEJO!"

Rico stopped and turned to see his uncle bounding off the steps. Mateo slowed, coming towards him with a brisk stride that had all the hospitality of a retired murderer.

He watched the man flick the gun into his face, so close that he could see the hatred written on Mateo's mug with one eye and the 7.62 he had waiting in the chamber with the other.

They stood like that for a while, Rico keeping an eye on his trigger finger, watching for any tightening of the grip.

"Listen to me, chico." Mateo said with slow deliberateness. "Listen and listen well. You saved yourself when you said you'd be going to the front. At least that means I don't have to be the one to kill you. So go and do me, yourself and your hoar of a mother a favor and die. And do it knowing everyone who ever cared a lick about you is dead and gone. Heaven or no heaven, only hell lies in front of you and I hope to God you burn."

There was no trace of a smile left in Rico's soul by the time his uncle was finished. He was almost tempted to say, 'love you too, uncle', but that would have been too much, or rather too little. Much too little.

He didn't say a word while Mateo turned his back on him. But as he spoke to a guard, telling him to make sure he didn't stick around, Rico let his actions speak for him.

Hugo was still close enough for him to reach over, yank the pistol out of his belt and draw it before anyone could react.

The response from the guards was lackluster. A full-second had elapsed before they got their rifles up and by then he had already closed the distance, stopping just short of pressing the gun into his uncle's forehead. Mateo couldn't even get his own weapon up, caught off guard as he was.

"You're nothing, Mateo." He said, nearly growling as he tuned out the shouts from the others to drop the gun. "You'll always be nothing...and maybe that runs in the family..."

He paused and shook his head. "But not my mom. All she ever did was speak highly of you. All she ever did was say how good you were, and you couldn't even live up to the stuff that I believed. Why? Why did you hate her? Why did you hate me?"

"...I-"

Rico pressed the gun fully to his head. "Don't you lie to me. You hated me from the start because you hated her, and I could never tell why. So, let's have it then."

Mateo clenched his jaw, shifting it around with words that Rico sensed were far older than himself. Old and ugly.

"She was a hoar, chico." He replied as simply as if he were talking about the weather. "She chose to leave the family business, to not be a rebel, to not fight the good fight. She was a coward. She chose to prostitute herself to strangers to survive instead of fighting for liberation. She sold herself for the price of a cold beer. That's why you don't know your padre, because you have more of them than there are stars in the sky. I tried to spare you that. I tried to teach you something that would last. Now you're just following in her footsteps. Hopefully you'll end up the same way too."

With that, he spat at Rico's feet. "Nothing, just like the rest of us."

Rico glared at him for a while in utter disbelief. He never knew what his mom did for a living, but the idea that the smile she gave him whenever she picked him up from school every day was a commodity for strangers to buy on the cheap felt too much like an insult. No, it was an insult. It had to be. He pressed the gun harder into his forehead, but Mateo didn't back down, returning his look with one of unrelenting scorn. Rico wanted to obliterate it, to see it cave in on itself even if that meant he would never get to serve on the front. It would be more than worth it, he thought, his finger tensing around the trigger.

"DON'T!" Someone shouted.

It was the girlfriend.

Rico saw her running down the steps. She crossed over to them and wrapped herself around Mateo.

"Please, please don't hurt him, por favor!" She said, holding out a pleading hand towards Rico. "He's-...he's all I have left. Please."

Rico examined the thing in front of him and wondered if it really had the ability to love. He couldn't do it for long, an oncoming wave of hot tears stinging his eyes and blurring his vision. He refused to give in to the weight that had threatened to crush him since the day he left his mother behind.

His hand trembled, not out of fear but restraint. It was a fight. He struggled to keep himself from turning the gun from him to her, wondering if it would make his uncle finally understand what it felt like.

A small voice, perhaps more of a suggestion than a voice, eased onto him.

'He's not worth it', it said.

Rico, despite his trembling, agreed.

He shut his eyes for a moment. Then, gathering himself, he lowered his pistol and tossed it aside.

The blinding fire that burned on the inside of him gradually diminished. As Hugo reached in cautiously to collect his gun, Rico stared at his own boots. He felt hollow, like he'd finally thrown a burden off his shoulders, but not before it had ripped off a piece of himself with it.

"If he's all you have left then you have nothing at all."

He wasn't sure who he was speaking to. He didn't even look up into his uncle's eyes again. He didn't care to. He knew what he would find there. Nothing.

Instead, he turned around and left without another word. The guards left him alone. The crowd parted for him as he walked down the road. He never looked back, never pried his eyes from the ground. He saw the shadow of the gate as he passed over the threshold. He thought he would feel relief when he did. He didn't.

He felt nothing at all.

Nihil - Nothing