Chapter 6 - Moralis
December 17th, 2544 (06:30 Hours – Military Calendar)
Zeta Doradus System, Onyx
Camp Curahee
:********:
Three Pelicans arrived not long after. Red Platoon allowed the squads of unarmored DIs to disembark on the top of the hill and revive their armored counterparts with TTR batons. Once they could walk, the Spartans helped them into the dropships while ammo crates were dropped off to resupply the hill's new defenders. Thirty instructors departed for Curahee, leaving the platoon to manage its own affairs.
Minutes later Blue Platoon's pods burst through the clouds above and descended on the Agular Plains. They came under fire immediately upon landing. Red Platoon proved unrelenting, using their higher elevation and superior positions to dish out several different kinds of hell: mortars, sniper and machine gun fire that filled the intervening landscape.
The enemy platoon managed to reorganize, circumventing their sectors to rush into a four-sided pincer maneuver aimed at dissecting the hill from both the east and west. But by then they had already lost a sixth of their fighting force. Worse yet, the four-way pincer formations converging on them like the number '8' were obviously meant to split their attention. The only thing it did was condense it. The defenders brought their machineguns from bunkers not under attack to those that were. Mortar rounds started landing on the converging forces. Even their camo did them little good.
Five minutes after they'd landed the last Spartan of Blue Platoon fell to a three-round burst from Lucy's carbine as he crawled up the western slopes. The defenders lost no one in turn, making it a clear victory.
Hector, Blue Platoon's Jumpmaster, watched the situation unfold from a far-off observation tower alongside the Staff. Both had decided to keep their distance, and both simply shook their heads at the massacre.
Another Pelican squadron picked up the defeated in exchange of more ammo crates. As the dropships extracted their foes, Tom and the others reloaded in preparation for the next wave.
Then it was Green Platoon's turn.
This time the pods rained down in clusters. Blowing open their pods the Spartans leaped out, each armed with an M312 Grenade Launcher. With Mendez' advisory blessing, the Spartan IIIs launched smoke grenades on their own positions, keeping enemy snipers from pinpointing them.
On Tom's order the snipers switched to infrared in an attempt to spot their heat signatures. Yet the Greens had prepared for that as well by deploying flares amidst the white smoke, skewing their signatures by proxy.
What happened next was something reminiscent of a game of leapfrog. The Greens pushed up towards the hill by shooting smoke grenades to cover their advance, shifting from one cloud to the next with the Reds proving unable to track them with mortars or automatic fire.
Once they were close enough, the green-accented Spartans deployed smoke over the hillsides. Eventually the world beyond the perimeter wall was sealed off behind a vaporous barrier.
At Tom's orders the Spartans of Red Platoon fell back to the catwalks lining the interior of the sewage plants. They now found themselves crouching behind the very same sandbags that had done the instructors little good.
The silence was finally shattered as projectile grenades sailed through the haze from every direction. They bounced into Red Platoon's positions, wreaking havoc once they detonated. In less than a few seconds a third of their number had succumbed to blasts of polymer.
Thirty shimmers broke through the smoke like multilayered reflections of the same figure. The Greens resorted to shock and awe, hitting their enemies from all fronts. Fighting raged over the interconnected catwalks and platforms as both groups traded fire at long range. But the fog from the profuse amounts of smoke gradually rolled in with the morning breeze and overtook the hill. Long range fights became moot ventures. Close range encounters became the new norm as Spartans gunned down foes at arm's length, grappling and tackling each other above the stagnant waters.
Uniform grenade launches into the center of the treatment plants proved to be the most effective method for the Greens. More and more Reds fell to the explosions until they were whittled down to only a handful.
Tom dragged a paralyzed Min behind a filtration tank then prepared for a final stand with Lucy and Adam. They watched for any signs of a Green. It was nearly impossible to identify any of the shadows that moved within the artificial clouds. What was easy to identify was the grenade that bounced into their ranks.
Tom pushed Lucy away and leaped on top of it right before it detonated, throwing him a full meter into the air. He landed prone next to his teammate, 'dead' but successful in having saved them. Then a hailstorm of TTRs pierced through the smoke and Adam and Lucy were summarily cut down.
It was a defeat Team Foxtrot likely wasn't soon to forget, especially thanks to enduring the humiliation of needing to be carried to the exfil Pelicans a few minutes later.
Duncan watched the other platoons follow a similar fate. Yellow Platoon was able to knock out the Greens using well-coordinated hit and run tactics against the hill. Gray Platoon kicked out the Yellows by landing in overwhelming force at the base then using pure brute force to muscle their way to the top.
Orange repeated the pattern, only for White Platoon to break it by unexpectedly pulling off what the Reds had done earlier in the day. They batted away the Oranges then, in a work of unexpected genius by White-Actual, and perhaps a bit of advice from Deaks, decided to subsequently abandon their objective. They instead opted for taking up stealthed positions across the plains. After arriving on the ground, Silver platoon was lured in by the lack of any resistance from the hill. They made a move for it, allowing White to spring the trap by firing on them from hidden positions across the flatlands. They isolated the enemy Spartans into three distinct pockets. From there they had their cornered opponents shelled into defeat with coordinated mortar strikes, wiping out the whole platoon.
Yet Spartan B320 was not one to fall for the same trick twice.
Duncan surmised as much from watching her feed. The moment Nova gave her control over the rest of the descending Gold Platoon she began issuing orders. They were all to land in the same place: 200 meters south of the hill.
Then with little more than 30 seconds to hitting the ground she unexpectedly changed their landing coordinates, this time to the north of the hill. The fleet of pods were forced to veer north, coming within a few dozen meters of colliding with the treatment plant to land less than a hundred meters away.
It was a fake-out, Duncan knew. He could tell by the way the platoon assembled on the opposite sector that they'd initially planned for. It meant Kat had something up her sleeve.
The platoon was met with silence at their landing. On Gold-Actual's HUD, it showed her staying put inside her pod. She linked her TACPAD to an access port via a duel-link cord. On her heads-up display appeared the readouts from every LRSOIP currently on the ground. The hundreds of predecessor pods pockmarking the surface would make for good cover. However, she seemed to have something else in mind.
Another feed showed one of her Spartans, Samson-B041 stopping to knock on the side of her pod. "You almost done in there Kat?"
"Is the rocket team in place?" She asked back.
"Owen's working with Tango to get them ready."
"Everyone else?"
"Gino's already got them establishing a perimeter around your pod, 20-meter spread. They're holding until you give us the greenlight."
"Alright, one sec." Using her TACPAD she typed her way through several software terminals until she arrived at a communication's suite dedicated solely to the LRSOIPs' comm network. The pods were mostly online and giving regular system updates back to Curahee C&C. She hijacked a part of that signal and changed the communication frequency on nearly 30 pods to match that used by every SPI's TACMAP, the same one that linked them with the observation satellites providing real-time geographical updates. Then, after uploading an audio file, she pressed play.
Back on the Pioneer the displays' speakers blared with a kind of slam-bam drumbeat.
"Is that elevator music?" Jonah hissed.
"No." Harris noted. "Sounds like…"
"Flip music." Duncan finished the thought as he slowly caught on to what she was doing, shaking his head at how much operational freedom the Lieutenant Commander was willing to afford his Spartans on these exercises.
Gold Platoon's helmet feeds showed them standing unphased as they kept their eyes forward. Some checked their tactical maps. The topographic view of the area was distorted as lines marking elevation and distance shifted and fizzed out of any solid definition to the beat of heavy metal.
The same could be said for the Spartans of White Platoon. While nearly two thirds of them were already running across the plains towards the north, having been duped by Kat's earlier maneuver, the other third were stealthed around Gold's positions. Both groups found their tactical maps distorted beyond use.
This way they wouldn't know the enemy's exact location, or each other's.
Kat used the system to link her pad to it remotely then blew open her hatch and leaped out.
Spaced twenty meters around her pod were two rows of ten translucent Spartans each, the front line laying prone while the second crouched behind them, using their pods and trees for individual cover. The four elements of team Tango and Owen-B096 were standing in the rear armed with SPANKRs. Owen looked back at her. She nodded.
"On my mark." Owen began. "Three…two…mark."
Ten projectiles thumped from the SPANKRs. However, flying out in the place of rockets were non-flammable flares whose crimson luminescence washed over the landscape from the southwest all the way over to the southeast.
Active camouflage was at its best in daytime conditions when its user was relatively motionless and there was a moderate amount of light exposure. That last condition was compromised the moment the flares passed by the SPI-wearers lying in wait for Gold Platoon, the additional burst of light causing their systems to work overtime to blend in, creating something to the effect of multiple distorted refractions in the shape of human beings.
By the time the flares whistled past it was already too late for the Whites to take cover as patient gunsights locked onto them and opened fire. The northern plains quickly became the sight of a staccato firefight. Defending forces faltered under the rapid salvos of concentrated TTR from twice as many guns as theirs. No longer having the cover they needed, they fell one and two at a time. Within ten seconds the last rounds found their mark in the back of a white-accented straggler that had tried his hand at retreat.
"How many?" Kat asked, reloading her carbine.
Gino swept the scope of his sniper across the battlefield. "We nailed 10 by my count."
"And we didn't lose anyone ourselves." Samson proudly remarked, slapping a fresh magazine into his BR. "That's a good start."
"But we're not finished yet." Kat planted a NAV marker on the top of the hill. "Let's move before their reinforcements arrive."
The platoon winked their acknowledgement lights and sprinted for the hill, spreading out just in case. But no return fire came to meet them as they ascended the slopes and vaulted over the defensive wall.
The plant was relatively empty save for the three members of White Platoon manning the central platform, two at the mortars and one standing guard that quickly grew alarmed at seeing 30 shimmers surrounding her on all sides. All three succumbed to a red baptism before they got off a single shot.
"Secure all approaches." Kat ordered. "I want teams of two manning the bunkers. Papa-2 and 4, you're on mortar duty. Gino, you and Papa-1 and 3 setup an overwatch on those filtration tanks. Owen, I want you and Tango to split up between the east and west with those flares. Teams Victor and Golf, you're running patrols on the eastern and western sectors. White Platoon isn't likely to make a move on the hill since we've got the bigger guns now. We'll have to force their hand."
The Spartans got to work. As the machineguns in the bunkers were put under new management, Gino and the two other snipers clambered up ladders onto the top of the filtration tanks to get a better view of the area. B307's feed showed Teams Golf and Victor making their way down opposite sides of the hill. They carefully fanned out under the guardianship of the two bunkers stationed over those sides of the plants.
There was no action for several minutes while the two teams scoured the plains for the enemy, purposefully remaining visible to attract attention. Then all hell broke loose.
Victor and Golf suddenly found themselves the focus of a new firefight, this one coming from all directions. They quickly hunkered down behind pods left behind from previous matches and went on the defensive.
Gino, Papa-1 and Pape-3 traced the TTR tracers back to their origin and called out targets on both approaches.
Owen and team Tango fired flares over the areas where the two teams were pinned down, briefly illuminating the invisible ambushers. Mortars soared over to them, dispatching some of the unwary enemy Spartans before they could react. Most of the dozen survivors broke their assault to try and disperse. Samson coordinated the efforts of the machineguns in focusing on the stubborn holdouts laying down covering fire for their escaping comrades. Meanwhile Gino and his snipers picked off the ones that tried getting away.
The whole occasion went rather smoothly. Minutes after their arrival they had wiped out White Platoon, suffering only two casualties from Team Golf in exchange.
Duncan had to admit it was a great showing on Gold's part. As the Pelicans started arriving to pick up the massacred Spartans, he turned on Team Zeta and the rest of Black Platoon who'd been standing with him inside the Pioneer's drop bay. The group were too busy talking amongst themselves to watch the final results of the battle, possibly revising their strategy.
"We're up next." Duncan said. "Let's get a move on."
The Spartans silently nodded off to each other and scattered along the two levels of the bay. Duncan noted the way they strode confidently into their stealth pods. It was a good sign, likely meaning they weren't intimidated by Gold.
Duncan walked over to his pod and slipped inside. The door closed as he felt the jarring motion of the ship returning to slipspace for the tenth and final time.
The pods rotated to face each other. Ten seconds later the bay doors opened beneath them.
"Go!" Duncan said, disregarding any need for countdowns.
He rocketed out of his tube first and into the increasingly familiar dark of slipspace. Black Platoon trailed close behind.
They fell into the customary helical formation, keeping in place using tightly calculated rocket bursts.
At 30 seconds into the void Duncan gave the order. "Alright, we're bugging out. Hit the exit." He entered his transition sequence one-handed and pressed enter. His visor automatically polarized at the flash of light marking the exit transition.
The next moment he was staring down at the rapidly approaching western hemisphere of Onyx. It was nearing evening on this side of the planet.
Black Platoon exited slipspace in his wake. He quickly made sure everyone was accounted for then gave them their new orders. "Diamond Formation for 5 kilometers. Let's go."
They fell into place with practiced accuracy, using Duncan's pod as an origin point to form a diamond.
Jonah sighed over comms. "I feel like I'm getting cooked in here."
"It's more like a tanning booth honestly." Harris stated calmly.
"You've never even used a tanning booth before."
"Nah, but I figure it'd be something like this."
"Oh yeah? Okay freak."
"Says the guy that just learned how to sow teeth together into a necklace." Roland butted in.
"Hey-hey, don't knock it just cause you're jealous. If you want to learn how to do it you've got to go to instructor Deaks same as I did."
"Okay freak."
Duncan waited until they'd plunged into the stratosphere then spoke up. "Alright Roland, you've got the reigns."
"Solid copy." Roland replied and started issuing new orders. He repositioned the platoon according to the details he'd shared about their plan. Duncan decided early on that it wouldn't do them any harm to try something new and give them the experience of leading their own drop, that is as long as they were already outside the slipstream.
Roland set everyone into a new arrowhead formation, everyone except his own team.
Jonah, Six and Harris, the three most prone to going rogue broke away from the formation…on Roland's orders. The trio split off together, slowly disappearing from sight as they plunged through the atmosphere.
At 2 kilometers to the ground the Agular Plains became discernable beneath the thinning clouds.
Duncan kept track of everyone's trajectory. He reached sufficient altitude to deploy his drag-chute and watched the platoon do the same in quick succession. Their breaking rockets slowed them down right before they hit the surface.
Blowing his hatch, Duncan slid out behind his pod and looked around. Black Platoon's pods were landing in an oblong circle with Roland hitting the center like a bullseye.
Gunfire picked up the moment they were all out. Sniper rounds glanced off the side of Roland's pod, forcing him and everyone else to take cover.
Duncan checked the skies. There was no sign of the rest of Zeta to be found anywhere.
"Hey Irish, over here."
It was Zack. Duncan looked left and spotted the guard tower standing at the edge of the surrounding tree-line. The rest of Epsilon stood watching from its wide platform alongside Mendez and one of the ONI APs. They had stayed there after escorting their platoons to the ground.
Zack was waving at him. "You comin or not?"
"Not." Duncan replied. "I want to keep an eye on these guys. Watch my back for me so nobody shoots it will you?"
Zack gave him a thumbs up. Duncan returned the gesture. He sprinted over to a nearby tree for a better view of the situation.
There was a growing forest of stealth pods across the Agular Plains that was quickly outnumbering the number of resident trees like some invasive species.
Black Platoon traded fire with Gold from their northerly position. Over the course of the next ten minutes that was about all they did. No one made any moves to advance, only to spread out when the occasional mortar round came crashing down. Thanks to the empty pods there was ample room to maneuver. Even so, Roland ordered everyone to maintain their positions relative to where they'd landed.
At 11 minutes Duncan wondered if Gold Platoon had caught on to what was secretly unfolding in the background. If they had, they didn't seem to show it as was made clear by the undiminishing rate of TTR fire actively coming from the treatment plants. He checked in on the 'seeds' being planted out of sight to see if they were taking root.
Sure enough, Jonah's helmet feed showed him moving through a dark location. The numerous particles floating past suggested it was somewhere submerged. His helmet lights shone a path through what was a lengthy tunnel lined with handholds. Six was on his left and Harris on his right, either one climbing up the ladder-system built into the sewage pipe. A slight, artificial current was helping to pull them along.
With their suits' 20 minutes of air reserves they were able to move through the mirky water with ease.
The plan had been to have an insertion team split off from the main group so the former could use the sewer entrance 2 kilometers to the south, barely within the operational boundaries of the location. Meanwhile the main force of Black Platoon would keep Gold's attention fixed on them in the north.
Soon the exit came within sight. It was blocked off by a protective grating. Light shone through the surface of the water on the other side. Harris angled up from his ladder and let the current pull him onto the grating. He whipped out a blowtorch and got to work burning a circle through the metal.
The other two covered him until he'd cut through the last bars and kicked the grating loose. It floated away, allowing them to approach the edge.
The interior of Plant B's clarifier was less mirky but perhaps dark enough to keep their movements hidden. Shadows moved across the surface as Spartans from Gold made their rounds over the crisscrossing catwalks and bridges. There was, however, a second level of lower, grated platforms just on the surface.
All three Spartans moved independently, crawling up handholds along the interior walls of the clarifier like spiders over their webs.
Jonah was the first to breach the surface. He kept his weapon raised at the movement on the upper level as he quietly swam to the nearest platform.
All three pulled themselves onto the lower level, moving swiftly to their tasks. They shimmied up support poles until they were directly beneath several catwalks. Members of Gold regularly ran over to new positions to attack the enemy in the distance, none the wiser to the ones lurking right beneath them.
The trio planted Composition-7 charges loaded with polymer to the undersides of the walkways, doing the same to the three main bridges. They slipped back onto the lower platforms once the job was done and set their sights on targets of interest. In unison they held their detonators, not saying anything to each other since Roland had told them to stay radio silent. A reasonable proposition given the hacking skills of someone like Gold-Actual.
Jonah and Six thumbed their triggers in unison. The charges beeped then went off in bursts of red polymer that shot up through the gratings to smear the Spartans above. Golds fell in droves under the surprise attack and went limp under the overdose of explosive anesthetic. The smoke cleared away to reveal a third of their number had been instantly taken out of action.
Harris was the only one that didn't trigger his charges. He looked like he was waiting for something.
Six and Jonah got to work targeting the dazed Spartans with three-round bursts to the back. Six dropped the two manning the mortars on the central platform with a few well-placed headshots.
The machinegun and sniper fire focused on the bulk of Black Platoon abruptly stopped as the Golds were forced to face the growing chaos at their backs.
The distraction gave Roland the chance he needed to get a bead on the snipers that had been giving him hell since they first landed. He zoomed in on the moving shimmer on the western tank probably trying to get a shot on the insertion team and beat him to the draw. He quickly switched to the northern tank to dispatch the translucent sniper there as well, then scored a headshot on the one manning the eastern tank. Their camouflage dissipated under the kill shots.
He ran out from cover and sprinted forward. "Move up."
The rest of the platoon followed his lead, spreading out in a loose phalanx to give them room to serpentine maneuver once the bunkers opened up again. They shot back yet kept pressing forward.
Meanwhile, Six and Jonah moved up a stairwell onto the upper level, gunning down anyone and everyone in sight. On the opposite side of Plant B, a team of four Golds got into position on a platform to flank them. It was then that Harris thumbed his detonator, triggering the explosives directly beneath them. The blast threw the Spartans aside and they collapsed in heaps.
Gold's defenses were quickly falling apart.
That much became obvious as the rest of Black Platoon crested the hill. They went to work cutting down anyone left standing. Binaries cleared the bunkers by tossing frags into the doorways while other two-man teams swept the catwalks clear. An attempt to clear a northern bunker was foiled when Owen-B096 fired a flare through the entrance to blind the binary about to toss in a grenade, allowing Samson-B041 to finish them off with one of his own.
Six didn't let them enjoy the victory as he tossed a flashbang through the door, blinding them in return. He leaped past the threshold and swiveled around to put two in the visor of both Spartans. They slumped to the ground, 'dead'.
In the end there were three holdouts left using dismounted M247Hs to hold the central platform. One of them was Gold-Actual who fired defiantly at her encroaching defeat. The three shot ceaselessly in all directions and understandably so as the members of Black Platoon shot back. Still the intensity kept most of the platoon hunkered down for cover.
Roland slid behind the guardrails near the entrance to the northern bridge. "Whose got a shot?"
"I've got the one manning the west." Six replied.
"East is mine, I'm going for a ball shot." Jonah said.
"And I've got Kat." Roland said.
Jonah laughed under his breath. "That was never in doubt pal."
Roland ignored him and slipped a fresh magazine into his sniper. "On three…one…two…"
The Spartans sidestepped onto the bridges simultaneously, granting them a direct line of sight to their targets. Jonah and Six downed the other two with coordinated fire.
Roland squeezed off a shot at Kat but she unexpectedly dropped to a knee right before he fired, tipping her gun back so the upturned barrel caught the shot instead. She pulled out her M6 with her freehand while holding the larger weapon as cover with the other.
In a split second they had each other dead to rights. They fired.
Both flew back as a high-caliber TTR round and its magnum-equivalent scored headshots. They collapsed where they'd been standing, utterly paralyzed.
There was no movement for a while.
Then the Lieutenant Commander's voice came in over the local PA system. "That's it for today, Spartans. Black Platoon is taking home the victory for this final match. Pelican exfil will arrive in ten minutes." He paused then added. "Well done everyone."
Jonah walked over and crouched down beside his fallen leader. He took his helmet off for him. His friend stared back, half-conscious.
"Well old pal, you took each other out. You know what that means."
"We both call it even." Roland said, his voice raspy.
"Wrong. Since I'm the last man left standing in our wager, you guys both owe me 50 cred." He took Roland's limp right hand and shook it. "Nice doing business with you, Role."
Duncan lightly laughed as he turned off the feed. He would have to reserve his judgements for the final report on Black's performance today. He was still somewhat concerned however at the fact that Black-Actual seemed like he was trying to manage the three troublemakers of his team by sending them off on their own and making the most of it rather than incorporating them into the full unit. Sure, it worked out in the end. But would it work in real combat was the better question.
For now, at least he was relieved that everything turned out okay. Then his eyes grew heavy as he remembered there was something else that he needed to do before the day was out. He needed to speak with someone about what had been weighing on his mind for long enough.
He noticed Mendez and the others descending from the guard tower to head towards the hill for pick-up. He decided to go on ahead of them, hoping the walk across the plains would help him gather his thoughts.
:********:
Lieutenant Commander Ambrose' outer office was deathly quiet. Duncan noticed that much along with the relief he felt at having said his peace after months spent holding it in.
It was night outside. Not long after their return to Curahee, Duncan had quietly split off from the rest of Epsilon and headed for the C&C. He came across the LC and respectfully asked to speak with him about an important matter.
Now he was sitting at a seat in front of the latter's desk, waiting for his reply. The lone lamp on the desk cast long shadows across the LC's poker face. Slowly it changed to one bordering on concern. "You want to leave the program?"
Duncan swallowed, but nodded.
Kurt rubbed his chin in thought. "I would presume you've put some thought into this."
"I have." Duncan admitted. "Not just for myself, for the rest of my squad."
"Staff Sergeant Atell doesn't strike me as the sort to want to leave a job half finished."
"No sir, he's not. It's me. I-…I don't want to work here, sir." Duncan stopped to consider his next words carefully. "I can't bring myself to keep doing what I'm doing here, and I don't know how long the others can either. We're tough because we need to be. It doesn't mean we don't have a problem with it. Please understand sir, I'm not knocking the Spartans. They're…fine soldiers, all of them…"
"But the Spartans are the problem, aren't they?" Kurt asked, noting the way he was fading off in thought.
Duncan hesitated. He gave a tentative nod of his head, earning an exhale from the LC. The larger man sat back, folding his arms over his chest. "I knew something like this would eventually happen given the fact that unlike the other DIs, you and your squad were never given a real choice about the matter. You weren't really able to make peace with what you were about to do here well in advance. To be honest, I thought Matthews would be the one speak-up first."
"They'll never say it sir." Duncan admitted.
"I can imagine." Ambrose said. He stopped to eye the Greek urn depicting ancient wrestlers that stood in an alcove of the office, then the paperwork laid out on his desk: Beta Company's examination profiles. He took in a deep breath and sighed at length then refocused on the ODST. "I looked at your files; yours and your squad's. You have a family back home, a wife and child. Is that correct?"
Duncan froze in his seat. The LC had always struck him as an unusually unorthodox CO in the way that he engaged in casual conversation with anyone and everyone, from the DIs to the Spartans and even the ODSTs currently on loan to him. However, he'd mentioned his family in such a strange way, as if the idea itself were an unfamiliar concept to him. Worse yet, he wasn't sure whether he was implying a threat to his family, not that he gave off that impression. Still he couldn't bring himself to forget who he was working for.
"Why-…why do you ask sir?"
Ambrose fixed him with an honest look. "Because I'd rather that you got to see them again. The same goes for the rest of your squad."
To avoid any confusion, he went on. "Don't misinterpret what I'm saying. I don't threaten my subordinates or my comrades. That said, I need you to understand something."
"What would that be sir?"
"You know who you're working for, yes?"
"The Office of Naval Intelligence."
Ambrose nodded. "ONI is not one to give up on unpaid debts. You're expected to work here with the Spartans for another four months. However, I can understand your…reluctance to stay. Were it up to me, I would have allowed for you and your team to leave. In fact, I am. I'm no fan of forcing anyone to do anything against their own freewill, which is why the Spartan IIIs are so adamant to finish their training here. It's their own choice to do so. That said, I am not the rest of ONI. If I let you go, they will likely ship you off to some new project until your debt is paid." He leaned forward. "You and I both have a general idea of what that entails."
Duncan suppressed the urge to shiver. He did have a general idea. He only wished he had considered that before coming here. "Is there really no way to work around that sir?"
"If there was, I would have notified you." Ambrose leaned back in his chair. "I don't like that we have you here under the conditions that brought you. Truthfully, you were pressganged into our service."
For one reason or another, Duncan felt that he wasn't talking only to him when he said that last part. He seemed to momentarily lose himself in some distant thought, then came back. "Rest assured private, if you can finish your service here then you earn the right to leave this place with no strings attached. You'll be in the clear. That's your best option."
"It's our only option." Duncan said under his breath.
Perhaps sensing that he was starting to lose hope, Ambrose reached across the table and rest a hand on his shoulder, an easy feat given his size. "You have a choice, private. So does your team, and I imagine they're making it again and again every time they set foot outside. Can I expect you to do the same?"
The words brought up a memory in Duncan. He thought back to how the Staff had pulled him aside back aboard the Juno to ask him how he was reacting to the Molnar. He remembered learning how the rest of Epsilon handled situations like that, by harnessing it. But how could they handle something like this? Never before now could he have imagined himself being here, asking 'how' and not being able to find an answer.
Duncan closed his eyes and swallowed down the panging in his conscience. "…I'll do what I can sir."
"I know you will." Ambrose said.
The ODST got to his feet, saluted and thanked him for the meeting. He walked over to the door, opened it yet stopped at the threshold. The last question his beleaguered mind had to ask forced him to look back.
"They're children, sir, kids...just like mine. Why? Why them?"
Ambrose' gaze never wavered. He looked him straight on as he spoke calmly and straightforward. "Because their parents were killed and their homeworlds burned by the Covenant. Because they were left with nothing but ashes and wanted revenge. Because we asked them and they said yes."
Duncan felt a weight settle on his mind to in place of the old one. He took a shaky breath but shook his head in some sense of understanding at what had just been laid out to him.
He stepped out of the Commandant's personal residence and closed the door behind him.
:********:
The moment the door closed Kurt breathed out his inwardly held fears. He glanced around his office at the various pictures on the walls. They were all of Spartans, not the IIIs but those of his generation. The pictures showed them carrying wounded UNSC personnel off the battlefield, engaging with Covenant and defeating them overwhelmingly. Maybe it was nostalgia that made him put them up there. Still the fact remained that there were no pictures of his Spartan IIIs on the wall.
Though ONI hadn't officially announced the existence of his generation of Spartans as it was rumored to be planning to for some time, it couldn't stop the waves of rumors that swelled within the ranks of the UNSC whenever anyone encountered them.
Yet there were little if any rumors about the IIIs. Save for the handful of occasions where they worked alongside other forces, they took on missions that no one would ever hear about. With Alpha Company, they were expected to do the impossible to buy humanity more time. They did just that and paid an impossible price for it. And only those who trained them would ever be allowed to know what their names were. The same would probably be expected of Beta.
Kurt finally realized why he'd been so nervous about the ODSTs. The visit by private Iris had cleared his mind enough to see it for what it was.
The DIs were ONI personnel prepared well in advance for what they would both see and do here. The ODSTs weren't ONI. They were UNSC personnel fresh off the frontlines. They were the grunts, the regular enlisted that were fighting and dying in this war every day. They were the ones that John and the others were battling alongside in facing the Covenant, and he'd secretly hoped that his Spartans would be able to do the same.
Beta Company deserved just as much a chance to face the enemy on the frontlines as well, not to go out saving humanity with no one ever knowing about it.
He'd hoped that his Spartans' sacrifices would be known by all, that they would be remembered for their courage by more people than himself and a handful of others in Section III. Some part of him wished it could happen.
Then that idea came crashing down once he'd seen Iris' reaction. The ODST had been on the verge of breaking after finding out the truth, at least in part since he still didn't know about their augmentations but probably had a good guess about them. He almost seemed willing to tempt the fates with ONI and try his luck elsewhere. Thankfully, he chose not to. It still did nothing to take away from the fact that knowing who and what the Spartans truly were proved to be too much, even for a Helljumper.
Kurt's generation were old enough now for no one to be bothered by seeing their faces, though perhaps by their stories if they were ever told. But while Beta Company were soldiers, there was no escaping the fact that they were still teenagers. He had watched them grow up from the teary-eyed kids that had arrived on Onyx that first day into a company of lethal elements easily worth a full battalion of ODSTs. However, they could never be seen for what they really were. If regular people found out that the UNSC were training child soldiers then morale would plummet across what few forces they had left. And now he knew that that was a certainty, not just a warning that Ackerson had given him once when he walked out of a heated meeting with the Colonel.
That couldn't be allowed to happen. So, the Spartan IIIs would be a closely guarded secret, and for the sake of humanity's survival, he would do all within his power to ensure they stayed that way.
Moralis - Moral