Chapter 11 – Vita Nova
June 3rd, 2535 - (09:00 Hours - Military Calendar)
Sol System, Earth
Australia, Old South Wales
Topkapi Training Grounds
(17 Years Ago)
:********:
The auditorium was a lot smaller than how she remembered it. The high vaulted ceiling wasn't so high anymore. The rows of chairs weren't as daunting either, more like a normal setup in any permanent base of operations. Looking up, Carisa spotted the exact same seat she sat in when the class was first rushed into the building for their introduction. She remembered the fear and the confusion. Strange then to think of how she felt now in comparison. Confident, strong, fairly composed with a general direction in mind for the future. She could never had thought of these things for herself just three years ago, let alone a decade. It amazed her how much things had changed, and it wasn't only her.
A person was sitting in that same seat. An adult no less, an auburn-haired man dressed in the white and gray ceremonial uniform of the Office of Naval Intelligence. She didn't know his name and was barely familiar with his identification number, though she remembered running into him a few times in the simulated firefights between Teams 4 and 5. He had grown since last she saw him, as did the hundreds of other members of her class that occupied the auditorium.
There were no longer the frightened baby faces of boys and girls wondering why they were here. Instead, there were highly skilled individuals that sat uniformed and ready, sharing the single determination of putting the last ten years to good use.
Every seated member of Class-IV sported a variety of medals marking their accomplishments. A range of gold, bronze and silver marked out those who had distinguished themselves in their specialties: from demolitions and emergency medical engineering to civil affairs and cryptanalysis. The one they all shared was a silvery medal of an eagle, wings spread, talons bearing a pair of crossed swords and four stars hovering over its head. Four for what was today officially the fourth graduating class of the Janissary Program.
However, there were a handful of Janissaries that remained on the front stage. Two dozen of them stood at attention while their just deserts were prepared. Carisa was one of them. Standing at the far-left side gave her a wide view of the stage. She saw Andy and Brett a few persons down on her row. They weren't the same kids she remembered joining up with when they first formed Team 4, still bright-eyed but far bushier tailed. The beginnings of a long career in manhood were sprouting on their faces, Andy having barbered up his goatee for the occasion while Brett settled for a stubbled mane.
She noticed Giana near the end of the line. Her older half-sister was steadfast, eyes upfront as always. While the twins paid more attention to facials, she concentrated her efforts on the hair on her head which had outgrown the regulation lengths for the program. But the instructors had loosened up on those standards in the final year as they had for everyone else. The regulations be damned if the ones who carried them out could care less. Giana got her nape-long hair pulled into a neat bun courtesy of her familial stylist. In exchange, she had helped Carisa get hers into short-cut bangs, not too short to make herself bald but not too long as to limit her visibility. She preferred being able to see her surroundings and her place in it in order to keep an eye out for suspicious behaviors. Thus far, the most suspicious behavior under her surveillance was her own.
The entire fact that she was standing on the stage was suspect. More specifically, that she was standing with the top performers in the class. The circumstance itself made her ask herself the question: how?
There were no uncomplicated answers to it. Following the events of three years ago, the instructors had lived up to their promise of putting the attempted escapees under greater scrutiny. They held them to a much higher standard than those in the rest of Team 4; a necessary 'punishment' for their actions that placed them at the forefront of any criticism aimed at the whole team. Lutgens paid closer attention to any fowl-ups during combat sims and was just as ready to call out Giana for anything that was amiss. Patstone, one of the more hands-off type of instructors, shaped medical intervention trainings along a more delicate line of surgeries and procedures. It made even the slightest mistake come to light right away, prompting them to get their act together before he got a word in.
Some of the hardest instruction came from Mahmud. He primarily taught them how to stay tight-lipped when under intense interrogation. But if Mahmud was the teacher, Dimitri was his brightest pupil, and in the worst-case scenario, his teaching assistant. The Head Drill Instructor used 1-Actual more than once to execute survival and evasion training. As it turned out, instructors did not innately understand the fear that drove candidates to surrender in the face of torture. The pain itself of sleep deprivation, deprivation of food and even waterboarding were what made most give up for a time. What the instructors failed to do was to break their will entirely. The age gap was too great to figure it out. Soon they understood what needed to be done to push their trainees to their limits. Who understood the fear of candidates better than other candidates?
They singled out Dimitri because of his unique skill set: the ability to get to know someone as a friend only to use that knowledge against them as an enemy. He had his own unique formulas on how to get under someone's skin. While instructors knew how to send plenty of candidates back to the drawing boards, Dimitri and Team 1 sent more than a few to the psych ward. Carisa was happy not to count herself among them but instead to be part of a handful that made it through.
She, Giana as well as the twins were in the batch of those that Dimitri failed to break. The happenings of those two days in the outback had reinforced something silent yet strong within the four of them. Not many could say they escaped Topkapi, were brought back and lived to tell the tale. The experience itself gave each of them a taste of freedom. Since those days they never forgot that taste. They savored it through the lightless hours and days that Team 1 forced them to endure. It stopped them from falling apart in the face of madness itself and brought them back from the brink. The end of their torment found them unbroken. Observing instructors looked pleased with them while Dimitri's slow clap wrung in their ears, a glint of respect in his eyes.
The days turned to weeks. Weeks to months. Months to years. Three to be exact. Three wherein Class IV were pushed to their breaking point in a different way. The instructors gradually introduced them to exercises that took them away from Topkapi to other training facilities on Earth and in the Sol system. They conducted real world land navigations in the tropics of the amazon and the dunes of the Sudan. They practiced extensively in the more dangerous combinations of martial arts such as Krav Maga and Jiu-Jitsu at NAVSPECWAR centers on Luna. Taking it up a notch, they learned how to handle themselves in microgravity environments at the UNSC's extreme conditions facility on the Chiron station orbiting Mars. Their toil on Chiron culminated in a weeks-long debris navigation bonanza in the asteroid belt 140-million miles away. They reconnoitered lost UEG satellites and abandoned signal outposts from centuries past. They set up listening equipment on the clay-silicate surface of the asteroids. There they learned how to interdict encrypted UNSC communications between Mars and the Jovian Moons.
Then came the last six months of their training and the single operation that would comprise it. The op that Mahmud coined their 'Graduation Exercise' was to be the hardest Carisa ever encountered.
The candidates who remained in the program were sent out into the world on their own. Each was assigned to infiltrate a designated entity outside of ONI. Their goal was to gather important intel on the organization they were sent to infiltrate including the going's on in their environment, its accomplishments, objectives, resources and personnel of note. What they had already achieved, what they planned to achieve in the future, how they planned to achieve it and who planned to do the achieving.
Their targets ranged from private and public corporations for those whose abilities were deemed 'average' to branches of the United Nations Space Command for those categorized as 'highly skilled'. A minority categorized as 'elite' were seen as so proficient that they were given assignments in the halls of power; the United Earth Government and its colonial administrative branches.
Carisa was placed in the middle category, not too warm but not too cold. She was dispatched to the UNSC, to a special forces detachment operating out of United Korea. The group was registered under official records as the 340th ODST Combat Training Unit or 'Adversaries' as they were known to those they worked with. A nice name but how nice was the posting? She'd received a good deal of training in espionage and subterfuge to know how to handle herself in almost any setting. That said, the ODSTs were another story.
Orbital Drop Shock Troopers were a kind of strange species to her. They weren't alien enough to think of as Covenant but their behavior wasn't normal enough to think of as human. They were something else entirely. They had to be. No healthy, sane, rational mind would willingly sign up for one of the toughest special selections in the armed forces only to ride a metal coffin with their name on it through a planet's atmosphere. That was her first thought when she stepped off the Navy shuttle and onto the grounds of the Special Warfare Center in Seongnam. It would not be her last.
ONI sent her to the SWC under the guise of a personnel transfer. She was to pose as an administrative support specialist. Her job ultimately boiled down to scheduling meetings, making travel arrangements and organizing other work-related events for the 340th's assistant personnel teams and support staff. All from the peace and quiet of an office building.
Life was good in a plentitude of ways that she had expected. The work wasn't so strenuous. She had an easy time coordinating the actions of the grunts that got paid to give recruits a bad day and the admins that got paid to tell them how to do it. The Adversaries were a hot commodity with ODST recruits and other elite forces in training so she travelled often. From Brazil on Earth to Mare Erythraeum on Mars, the various sub-branches of NAVSPECWAR shipped them in to have them prepare their broods for the frontlines. She got to see a few special weapons programs too like the first field tests conducted on the H-165 Forward Observer Module, one of the newest targeting locators deployed into combat.
Her position itself was her greatest advantage. As part of her administrational duties she was given a front row ticket to all the information she needed for her weekly reports to Topkapi. Espionage was hardly that difficult when no one had a reason to suspect her or realize they were giving her exactly what she wanted. She guessed she also had ONI's solid career judgement to thank for that. As a result, her main challenge for those last six months came from elsewhere.
Despite enjoying her time with them, she could never fully trust the people she worked with. The problem was not that they were untrustworthy. The Adversaries were generally friendly people. She regularly made friends with them and they were usually open books compared to her. Still, she kept a wary eye on everyone. There was little chance they could deduce her true identity. ONI had made sure of that. And yet that was the source of her distrust, that she wasn't the only person to infiltrate the 340th.
In addition to her own presence, there was a second agent working alongside the staff. The goal for the folks at Topkapi was to add a tinge of difficulty to the task of intel gathering in the form of counter-espionage. An actual ONI agent was assigned to the work place of each Janissary with the priority task of sniffing out the candidates. Neither would know who the other was, leaving plenty of room for both parties to be on their guard around everyone. The candidates that got caught would be shipped back to Topkapi. Following their failure, they would need to wait another six months before being given a second chance at the assignment, meaning their own graduation would fall well after that of their operational brothers and sisters. Such a separation was the last thing anyone wanted so the intent was present in everyone to stay undetected. Moreover, there was no guarantee of a third chance if the second was also failed. Being dropped from the program and into the void was still a possibility.
Carisa took on the tact of an 'ONI spook' as she wagered that was the whole purpose of giving them competition in the field. She watched everyone, talked with everyone, trusted no one.
She never found her own adversary among the Adversaries. Her six months spent in the ranks of the 340th yielded scant evidence that there even was another agent on the job. No matter how hard she tried, whoever they were they maintained their anonymity throughout her time there. The notion unnerved her that they could have crossed paths multiple times without her knowing. Whether they had or not, she never knew for certain and if she were to guess, her opponent never did either. She wrapped up her six months without issue and transferred out once she was finished.
Her return to Topkapi coincided with that of Class IV's greater host. Little discussion was had between the candidates of what they did over the past half-year. The distrust inculcated in them during that time was drilled in. There was always the possibility, some surmised, that their fellow candidates were themselves the agents waiting to report them. It would require a slight slip of the tongue at a time of reprieve for them to fail this close to success.
Loose lips sink ships.
Carisa suspected the instructors noticed the behavior but did nothing about it in order to further foster their inner-spooks. Her opinion about the rest of the class was arguably in the minority. She immediately got to chatting up her inner clique about what she did on her part and what they had done on theirs.
Everyone had succeeded on their first try.
Andy was initially sent to the city of Katreus on Europa to observe the activities of the HuCiv car-manufacturing giant. He targeted, and subsequently transferred over to a branch in Luna's Tranquility City that ONI had tagged for suspicious practices well beforehand. He ended up finding that last part out after the fact. During his stay there as a sale's rep he learned much about the local branch. Too much. His observations and logical deductions gave him a hunch that led to the discovery of several money laundering schemes being run by the management. A domino effect of private investigations and tie-ins with the Tranquility City Police Department brought about the unraveling of an Insurrectionist car-bomb operation. A long story short, the high-rankers in the branch were arrested and Andy was to be given top honors for his performance.
Brett's activities were less adventurous but more impactful. He landed a job as a record keeper for the Reyes-McLeese Shipyards facility in orbit over Mars. Though not the most exciting post, it gave him a bird's eye view of the industrial mechanisms that ran the vital production of ships used for the war. He used that same perspective to perform a deep-dive of the archives, digging through years of buried ship records and manufacturing contracts to help out the business' upper echelon. His knowledge of accounting and ship serviceability came in handy. It enabled the company to make a cohesive argument before the UNSC Navy for the refitting of the McLeese's famously expensive Halcyon-class light cruisers. Having quit on the initiative shortly after the late 2520s, Brett's findings on the Halcyon-class reinvigorated their efforts to sponsor the rearmament of those that were retired to cold storage. The way his actions directly affected the future of UNSC resources automatically shot him up into the top performers of Class-IV.
Giana's situation was the closest to Carisa's in that she was dispatched directly to a department of the UNSC. Procurement turned out to be an interesting post indeed. Giana learned firsthand how the department's responsibilities were far from limited to ration production. They also took care of other asset acquisitions such as vehicles, weapons and other assorted armaments. Moreover, they managed the distributary channels that got those materials where they were sorely needed. Giana called them a glorified delivery service. Her placement in human resources gave her her own personal place in the war: typically overseeing military reservists that needed to be transported to the frontlines. Her work was simple albeit helpful. She organized the organizers in her own division, shifting certain personnel to positions better suited to their capabilities. The change-ups were like grease to rusted gears and proved beneficial to getting rid of a good-deal of the bureaucracy...before establishing one of her own from a list of newfound admirers. 'Long term contacts' she called them along with terms like 'useful friends for the future'. Her work became so advantageous that by the end of her service her superiors were locked in a heated argument over whether she should receive one promotion or several.
Carisa had no idea how they accomplished all that without being caught by the agents hired to shadow them. Her best claim to fame was aiding the training of various special forces. However, the instructors did not see things the same way. Neither did her superior at the 340th who wrote a glowing review of her capacities as an administrative specialist to those he presumed to be her old bosses. It was enough to convince the Topkapi royalty but not enough to convince her that she was worthy to stand among her squadmates. That went doubly for the others currently on the auditorium stage, although it went triply for one of them.
Her eyes darted to the center of the stage, to the man standing at attention in the middle of the front line. She still wasn't exactly sure how the instructors thought it was a good idea to send a candidate on that kind of assignment, the kind where the risk wasn't reserved to one person alone but to the entire agency. She was far less sure how Dimitri was able to pull it off anyway.
She learned the details from the looser-lipped members of Team 1. Their leader was one of a literal handful of the class that were categorized as 'elite'. They were those sent to infiltrate the government itself.
As the rumors went, Dimitri slipped into the heart of the reigning UEG Administration on Earth. Through a series of assorted back-channels he gained access to the highest human governing body in existence aside from the temporarily greater United Nations Space Command. He wound up in Sydney, Australia, working as a staffer on the Senate committee of an obscure UEG Senator named Ruth Charet.
Despite the difficulty of his mission, Dimitri was never caught. The same could not be said for the ONI agent tracking him.
The man that the Office sent to give their trainee a hard time ultimately ended up doing the opposite. Purportedly, Dimitri discovered his identity early on. He didn't stop there. He went on to subtly reveal his true identity to his coworkers as well as to Charet herself using well-placed evidence. He exposed him for who he really was: a saboteur sent from a failed senatorial rival to disrupt Charet's duties.
He exposed him with a lie, thereby protecting ONI from any greater scrutiny along with himself for the duration of his stay in Sydney. The agent was kicked off of Charet's committee but not before Dimitri got some use out of him. Prior to the big reveal, he manipulated the agent into aiding him with his own intelligence gathering. Legislative analysis, demographic research, policy propositions and the works were handed over to him on a silver platter. Extracting them under the guise of a committee member was something the ONI agent could not avoid and that Dimitri gladly accepted. He waited until he had everything he needed then severed the agent's political lifeline at the end of the first month. His tracker having been eliminated; Dimitri must have felt freer to do what he really wanted to. He went above and beyond with the information he acquired and utilized it to make recommendations, policy tweaks and the likes. Someway, somehow, his ideas caught Charet's ear ahead of election time. Perhaps wary of the actions of the 'rivals' vying for her spot she decided to take the bait. It worked. She kept her seat in the legislature in the wake of the senatorial elections. And not only that, the residing president nominated her for the position of Minister of the Treasury, putting her by proxy within range of the presidency.
Why?
Future favors perhaps?
The real answer was unclear as was the true intent of most things Dimitri did.
He made himself an indispensable member of Charet's committee staff in under half a year, causing her to beg for him not to leave when he handed her his resignation. He extricated his pursuer in less than a sixth of that time...without exposing ONI. More reasons why Carisa wasn't sure how she was standing on the same stage as him.
The graduation was proceeding as planned. The rest of the class had received their commendations. It fell now to the top performers to receive their due. Head Drill Instructor Mahmud took it upon himself to handle them.
Carisa watched Mahmud move from one candidate to the next, taking medals from a table carried around by Instructor White. These medals bore the same sword-wielding eagle insignia of the program as those given to everyone else. The main difference came from the golden fashion of the medal compared to the standard silver. Top-performers deserved to stand out.
Mahmud started from the end of the front line and worked his way down. The receiving candidate would get the medal draped around his neck for all to see. She couldn't exactly see Dimitri's face when it was his turn but as the medal came to rest on his chest, she was certain that he wore his accustomed self-satisfied grin.
Mahmud came to the next row. She saw Andy take his medal with unchained pride. Brett smirked at receiving his. Giana's was met without any visible reaction. Carisa's turn came and she held her breath while Mahmud took the last medal from the table. White stood ceremonially poker faced, never letting on how he felt about the occasion. Funny, she thought, since it was the one time she really wanted to see his reaction. What did the man who supported her removal and then given her a chance to escape think now that she'd made it this far?
Carisa bowed her head to let them place the ribbon around her neck. The medal fell on her chest like a dumbbell and threatened to pull her down to the floor. She felt her knees ready to buckle from the weight of the years they embodied. The reward for her performance felt more like compensation for a lost decade of her life. In comparison, its golden sheen was hardly worth a day of it.
The momentary lapse in her mental armor diminished. The excitement kicked in and she basked in the glory of the feat itself. Her long memory of the many others that came before it amplified the instant of joy into pure euphoria. For that second, Carisa enjoyed her personal slice of heaven on earth.
Mahmud and White walked off and the afterglow slowly faded. As White left the stage, the Head Drill Instructor strode back to the front. The rest of the class immediately arose across the auditorium. Mahmud's comm-unit activated and his voice resonated through the PA like it had all those years ago.
"Attention, Janissaries of Class-IV. On behalf of the Topkapi assistant personnel, the instructors and myself, I would like to impart to you all the respect we have gained for you in your time spent here. The very first day you were brought to this facility I sized you up. What I saw was a sad batch of orphans the likes of which I felt sorry for, that a set of miserable circumstances brought your lives here to be molded by me."
He paused. "But look at you now. I don't see any of the scared children I found on that first day. The ones looking at me now are not boys and girls but men and women. What I am looking at now are agents who've spent the better part of a decade trying to be where they are today. Many tried to do the same and failed. Remember that. They had talents like you, hopes and dreams. They're not here, you are. The reason is obvious. Your hard work and your tenacity were the determining factors in reaching the finish line of this program. It's that determination that we've come to honor."
He paused again, allowing the gravity of his next words to deepen. "With this, I am deactivating Directive 37176-A of the Naval Security Initiative and enacting Directive 37176-B. Under its stipulations, you are now sanctioned security assets and active operatives for the United Nations Space Command's Office of Naval Intelligence. You are no longer candidates. You will no longer call this place your home. Your home is elsewhere, wherever your duties may take you. I now declare you, Class-IV, as officially functional Janissaries and agents of ONI. Well done."
:********:
Renni couldn't remember clearly what happened after Mahmud's speech. Things were a little hazy there. What she could recall were the celebrations that followed which blurred together into a singular memory. The cheers, handshakes and pats on the back that the graduates gave each other as they streamed out of the auditorium and onto the streets of Topkapi.
She remembered the new names they were given inside their new documentation for the outside world. Everyone received one, an alias that separated them from their previous names and prior lives. The smokescreen was set to give them a long career in ONI.
Andy was renamed 'Liam Walker'.
Brett was turned into 'Oliver Harris'.
Giana became someone new as well, though it took Renni a while to get used to it. Years of habit die hard. For operational necessity she forced herself to learn how to call her sister 'Riat Cordova'.
Harder than the change for her sister was that which was given to her. She could no longer call herself 'Carisa Falton', not officially. The little girl that lived by that name, for all intents and purposes, had died on Andesia. Carisa Falton was dead. The woman that lived in her place now went by the name 'Renni Mahonis'.
Again, Dimitri was an exception.
For reasons not made clear to her or anyone else, Dimitri was among the very few Janissaries that were allowed to keep their original names. Their full names. Renni learned of it through word of mouth and was intrigued to find out what his full name was, not what she would have expected during the first time they met on that prowler. Still, 'Dimitri Tarkovsky' was a believable identity.
The Janissaries' days together were ended following their graduation. They went their separate ways within the agency as the entire class was shipped out to different sections of the Office.
Andy and Brett, or Liam Walker and Oliver Harris, were assigned to Section I, to the heart of the agency's espionage and intelligence gathering apparatus.
Carisa and Giana, or Renni Mahonis and Riat Cordova, were given to Section II, to handle psychological operations meant to 'direct' the interests and concerns of the general public.
Of Dimitri there were merely more rumors, the soft currency of intelligence-hungry entities when hard facts, or hard currency, were impossible to come by. There were well-founded suspicions that the minority-prone Dimitri Tarkovsky was sent alongside a proficient few that joined Section III, ONI's most secretive branch. They were the group responsible for the projects that others would prefer not to know existed. Renni had a solid hunch that the Janissaries, a program that trained children to become life-long operatives, fell under their jurisdiction. That and God only knew what else. A section that prided itself on the darker corners of Office activities was a fitting place for a person like Dimitri.
Section II treated her well.
She found a suitable post on outer colonies like Meridian in unofficially recognized 'white sites', locations where operatives conducted their affairs under the guise of legitimate business or charity organizations. The bulk of her attention revolved around intel-mitigation operations which fell under what was collectively known as the 'Charybdis Initiative'.
The initiative focused on keeping the general public aware of the situation on the frontlines. However, it would stop them from becoming fully aware of how badly the Covenant were beating the UNSC, both in the inner-colonies and the remaining outer colonies. Its guiding notion was that letting people stay in the dark on the full extent of humanity's condition would help put a stop to plummeting morale, perhaps reversing it with time. Hope was their main objective. Maintaining it was a priority if civilians were to continue enlisting into the armed forces and contribute to the fight.
The initiative was pursued by the Office following the events that led to the loss of the outer colony of Charybdis IX. The corporate-run industrial world was long troubled with Insurrectionist activity in earlier years. This came to a boiling point in 2535 when all attempts at continuing UNSC control were figuratively and literally overrun. That failure to hold fast, combined with limited naval resources, culminated in the one-sided slaughter that accompanied the arrival of a Covenant fleet into the system.
ONI's running theory was that the public were too well-informed of the wider goings on among the colonies. They were well aware that UNSC resources and manpower were stretched thin in the Charybdis system. While this gave most a reason to panic and riot, it gave some in the more rebellious camp the inkling of the right moment to strike. Their target was what they saw as a weakening colonial oppressor. Both approaches by the colonists were damning in their end result. Whether it was panic for panic's sake or that of independence, their reaction undermined whatever protection they had left against the Covenant and accelerated their own demise.
The agency vowed that such a disaster would never be allowed to repeat itself. That kind of panic on a wider scale could wreak havoc on the Homefront and reinvigorate the ailing Insurrection. Colonial defense forces should not need to worry themselves with threats from within as well as without during a Covenant invasion. Thus, the former became the focal point of actions taken by the intel-savvy Section II.
Renni thought of their modus operandi along the lines of 'what you don't know can't hurt you...until it does'. Better to keep people looking at the crowds cheering them on than to let them see the basket lying out in front of them or the guillotine hanging over their necks.
She worked frequently with broadcasting companies. Contractual obligations to their government sponsors left the back door open to fireside chats with those representing the 'public interest'. Much of her time was spent working with news crews as an unofficial editor of transcripts, info reels along with anything and everything that disseminated information. Cordova often worked with her in the same circles to investigate and apprehend dissenting journalists and whistleblowers who were unaligned with the public interest. A threat or two was normally all it took to keep them quiet. If not, those holding out risked getting roughed up by paid off street-hands. They could even be stopped by police officers that identified their once clean records with those of a criminal. Those that remained stiff-necked were few, usually the veteran war reporters intent on delivering a 'moving' scoop about the latest defeat. They often found out too late that their brakes stopped working as they sped down a highway, that their food special at that obscure corner-side café they liked suddenly tasted funny, that their colleague they were attracted to became a tad too friendly. Those that persisted beyond this point were deemed unwilling to take the hint and simply disappeared. Their coworkers forgot them, their friends forgot them, and if Renni's team did its job well enough, even their families forgot them.
A minority of cases ever reached that point. Renni could count the number on one hand who forced her hand against them. She learned quickly that it was best to not look at the faces of those that EMTs zipped away into body bags at crime scenes. Guilt was an unproductive emotion she needed to ignore when circumstances called for it. Little by little, she was able to get by on not thinking too hard about the darker side of her job. Soon she wasn't thinking on it at all.
Two years into her work and she learned from an official report that the initiative had helped delay the war's ending in certain defeat by an estimated 15 years. The one thing she hated was that it never gave an estimate of how many lives were saved. Time alone was treated as the main objective. She considered it; 15 years for 12 committed journalists. Without anything more solid to balance it off of, the mental images refused to leave her alone. A dozen body bags, a dozen funerals in the middle of nowhere, a dozen names stricken off her watch list. To her, those 15 years were only useful in seeing the children grow up to be the same age as their parents were when she ended them. And how long before they took after the art of truth-telling at any and all cost, just like their parents?
The apple doesn't fall far from the tree, unless that tree is on a hill. Then that apple can roll away to somewhere where it can do nothing besides wait patiently for the light of an energy projector to finish it off. Renni maintained a wary eye on those children, intent on being the hill they needed to roll away from danger. Manipulated health records, report cards and other assorted schemes ensured they never got close to the profession of their elders. The Charybdis Initiative was good for delaying the inevitable, not for stopping it. If she could not save the children of those she removed then she convinced herself not to be the one to end their lives.
She saw herself in them. She would have wanted someone to keep her out of trouble back on Andesia. In a way, White tried to be that way of escape for her and many others. She wanted to do the same. The honorableness of her empathy was hollow, however, coming from a problem she herself created.
The passage of more years left fewer worlds to protect and greater webs of lies to expound to those she suspected would suffer the same fate. The losses added up far faster than Section II could pump out stories to obscure or deny them. A rising wave of questions on the authenticity of war reporting arose on online forums as the fighting stopped being a distant news-story and moved closer to home. The censor teams could hardly keep up. Gradually, the same distrust of authority became common place among the colonies that were the staunchest UNSC-strongholds during the height of the Insurrection.
Doubt settled in not long after. Were they really achieving an end that justified their means? She never could tell because the ends were never met in any concrete sense. Information was stopped for a few months then spewed out like a breaking dam later. 'Delay' did not mean 'solve'.
After the doubt came the despair that coincided with knowledge of the true problem. Humanity was a sinking ship. Was it smarter to deny they were sinking so that they didn't panic as they went down, or to start bailing out the water? Or to abandon ship altogether?
She hated the idea of running away from a fight that was half-finished. She also grew to hate the argument that the best thing she could do was tell everyone to stay calm while they all drowned.
Then she started to think of her assignment at the SWC. Her time as an administrative specialist gave her a bird's eye view of how the 340th handled their affairs. They trained the people who fought the Covenant directly, the insane asylum escapees and troublemakers that leapt into the heart of hell itself. Going toe to toe with the problem sounded better than silencing everyone for noticing it. Compared to her line of work, the ODSTs were doing humanity a greater service on their worst days than she could possibly do on her best.
The considerations thereafter were predictable yet unsurmountable.
Transfer.
Reassignment.
Misalignment with the priorities of the Office and realignment with those they should have held from the very beginning.
Her next consideration: how?
There was a clear path forward. She had no qualifications for the Air Force. The Marines and the Army did not appeal to her either. They weren't the first ones in or the last ones out. Life on a Navy frigate was an unideal scenario to her as well. Being potentially blasted into the endless void was an unappetizing proposition, as was the fate of far too many naval servicemen for her to count. Other special forces aside, she eventually came to the conclusion that her sojourn with the 340th was well worth it.
:********:
Renni was transferred, albeit not to the ODSTs. Her higher-ups must have noticed her mood change because they decided to promote her to the rank of lieutenant. Their stated reason for this was that it was for her excellent service. Right after that, they reassigned her to another intelligence unit in Section II.
She left Meridian for a post on Reach. Her next station was another white site running a clandestine info-mitigation op in the city of Esztergom. The most noteworthy change from her experience on Meridian was the identity of the person in charge, none other than her older sister.
The two of them had tried to stay in contact over the years, a difficult task due to the deep-cover nature of their lives. Communications became strained without either of them intending it to be. Nevertheless, they reconnected the first day of her arrival on Reach. They got caught up with the happenings in each other's lives over a few cups of coffee. Of course, the parts reserved for classified reports and inked out explanations were overlooked at worst, insinuated at best.
So much later and the love was still there. The sisterly bond was still taut. The main difference came with the excitement that they were finally working together again, now on the same team. But on the ride back to their white site, Cordova decided to provide a smidge of extra info.
As Renni looked out the passenger window at the passing city, she heard her say calmly; "How do you feel about being part of the last Janissary class?"
She swiveled around to face her, wondering if she was joking. There wasn't a hint of a smile or a frown on Cordova's face, just a look of curiosity verging on indifference.
"What're you talking about?"
"I meant exactly what I said. How do you feel about it?"
Renni edged closer. "Hey, mind explaining that a little better for me please? I don't really get your joke."
Cordova cracked a smile and shook her head sympathetically. She fished out a datapad from her pocket and switched it on. "I found out about it two days ago. My contacts sent this to me." A wordy report appeared on the screen and she handed it over. "It's a memorandum."
Renni zipped through the lines of formal text. Words and terms popped out to her such as 'outdated', 'resource reallocation' and 'dissolution approved'. One sentence pinned her firmly in her seat; 'Funding to be transferred to Naval Special Weapons Program - [Redacted]'.
"It's an update." Cordova said nonplussed. "The Janissary Program is being decommissioned, at least until the Office sees fit to bring it back. But that seems unlikely. Like you're reading there, its resources and finances are being rerouted elsewhere."
"Elsewhere?"
Cordova shrugged. "Some other Section III project. I don't know much more details than that. They say it's way more important than whatever it is we're doing so...it is what it is, I guess."
Renni finished reading the memorandum in silence. She stopped at the date of its publication: 'June 20th, 2535.'.
"This-" She peered up at her sister. "This is six years old."
"Yeah." Cordova sighed. "That's how long it took to make it past the censors and find its way to me."
"No, that's not what I'm getting at. This means the program got shut down just a week or two after we left."
Cordova slowly turned to her and nodded. "Which is why I asked you how it feels to be part of the last Janissary class. So?"
Renni bit her lip. Her relationship with the program, hell, everyone's relationship with the program held a love-hate dynamic. They hated it because they could never leave it but loved it because it was all they knew, and hated it for that exact same reason. Everyone, except maybe Dimitri and his band of dark horses in Team 1, could laugh and cry on it together during their training days. While she had no affinity for it herself, the news seemed to invalidate those 10 years of her life along with those of the hundreds of kids she got to know. No one else would have to endure what she did. However, no one else would know the same comradery that they did.
"I'm mixed." She said. "I can't say for sure what I feel."
"That's understandable." Cordova replied. "I can recognize the need for it but I can't in good conscience say anyone else should have to go through it. Either way, what's done is done."
Renni thought on it for a moment longer then nodded in agreement. "What's done is done."
Cordova was in overall charge of the situation in Esztergom. As the veteran lieutenant of the group, the press corps informants and squads of hitman, or 'Interdiction Cells' as they were called, came to her for their daily bread. She called the shots and those like Renni listened in. The younger of the two Falton sisters quickly melded into the fold of the organization and resumed duties similar to those she oversaw on Meridian.
Things could have gone smoothly. They did for several more years. All the same, that nagging feeling she first discovered on Meridian followed her over to Reach. It haunted the corners of her mind, pouncing on her conscience whenever she managed to get it clear of the latest questionable act. It took away her excuse that this was the best she could do. She knew better than that but hated to acknowledge it. To do so would cause a domino effect of hard questions.
Why not do it now?
Don't you think you'll save more lives than the ones you're keeping in the dark here?
Will she really mind if you leave?
They continued to lurk in her subconscious, burning in her chest on occasions where she was in the best position to answer them. The honest solution, she discerned, was the kind that would threaten the way she viewed her own life from its beginnings to now. What if it wasn't as planned out for her as she had grown to believe it was. Telling those inner voices that she had no choice, they rebutted her, not with arguments but with memory: the image of a little girl sitting on the hilly outskirts of a city and deciding not to run for it.
It was a double-edged sword. If her being where she was happened by choice then how avoidable were the fates that she decided for those who crossed ONI? On the other hand, if her life up to now was her choice then could she still choose something else? Each thought on the matter unsheathed the truth she held restrained behind her everyday thoughts. Soon its edges were unavoidable as was the clarity of its logic and where it was pointing her.
:********:
If revenge is a dish best served cold, mercy is a dessert best served piping hot. Mercy was the principal thing Renni searched for in Cordova's steaming expression. Yes, she was mad, but was she still sober-minded enough to understand her point? She figured she had thought things through well enough before coming to meet her sister, her superior, in her personal office room. The proposal was sound, wasn't it?
Cordova's visible disagreement told her otherwise.
Sitting behind her cherry wood desk, framed against the radiance of Epsilon Eridani that shone through the glass walls at her back, Cordova seemed to absorb the light itself. She became a shadowy presence that denied the arrival of evening as well as the reasonability of Renni's argument. Her brow furrowed to ally itself with her scowl, completing the axis of silent disapproval.
After letting the silence speak for her, she finally opened her mouth. "You do realize there's no chance the higher-ups will ever let you do that, right?"
Renni stood firm. "There's a chance. Other agents transfer out of the Office all the time. I know a couple from Sec II who left for other parts of the UNSC. It shouldn't be any big deal for me. Sure, there's the mountains of paperwork and non-disclosure agreements I'd have to sign but-"
"I don't think you heard me clearly." Cordova said. "I'll shoot this to you a little straighter. You and I are the end products of a highly classified program that not only recruited minors, it also taught them how to conduct espionage, sabotage, psychological warfare and high-profile assassinations among other things. Add to that the fact that we're the last generation of that same program, meaning we are therefore likely to be seen as limited commodities in the eyes of those who you want to ask...what was it again?"
Renni cleared her throat. "To join the ODSTs."
Cordova stared at her as if to test how much she believed in what had just come out of her mouth. "Right. That."
"Okay, I know what it is I'm asking for here. I've had plenty of time to think on it. We've done too much, right? That's what you're saying?"
"And too much has been done to us."
Renni thought back to her time in front of Topkapi's review board as Mahmud told her how they didn't want to waste their investment this far into her training. The logic lined up in a way that left a bad taste in her mouth.
"I get that. But I can say this, that if they invested this much into us then it just makes more sense for them to let me go."
Cordova raised a brow. "Come again?"
"It's like you said. They taught us enough to make us the dangerous operatives we are. And look how they're making use of us: monitoring newscasts, forums, people's private communications. What of that sounds like a good use for the training we received? It's like trying to tighten a screw with a sword. You can get it done but you're bothered by the fact that you could've done a whole lot more than that."
Cordova clasped her hands together on the table in the posture of patience. Her deepening frown betrayed the annoyance lurking beneath the surface. "Are you saying that our work here is useless? You think it has no purpose in the grander scheme of things? I can assure you it does when recruitment offices are still able to beat their quotas right after a neighboring system just got wiped out. It matters what we do here."
"I'm not saying that it doesn't." Renni protested. "It does, a-"
"Indeed it does." Cordova agreed. "A lot more than hurtling to your death in a pod, burning up before you see the action that you already spent months training for. Which is why I recommend you drop that dream before it drops you."
Renni stiffened up. Despite the rage threatening to bubble up, she held it back and smiled. "That's why they're called Helljumpers. It's in the job description."
"You know that and you're still asking for it anyway?"
She nodded. "That's right."
Cordova shook her head. "You're wrong. Whatever it is you've assumed about them, as well as your job here, you're wrong."
"Respectfully, lieutenant, I'd like to find that out for myself."
The room passed into an unnatural quiet as Cordova stared her down. Renni refused to waver under the sharpness of her gaze, only to notice when the intensity behind it began to diminish. Cordova relaxed into her chair and pinched the bridge of her nose like she was intent on breaking the bone.
After a while, Renni relaxed as well. "I'm not asking you to let me die, lieutenant."
Cordova turned to her. "Then what are you asking me?"
"I'm asking you to let me live."
Breathing in, Cordova let out a long sigh as she shifted in her chair, looking out to the cityscape beyond the glass walls of her office. Renni joined her. They watched the busy streets bustling with evening traffic. Passerby moved from sidewalk to crossing to sidewalk in a constant clockwork of movement.
"You know, sometimes I wonder what it'll be like when I don't have this view anymore." Cordova said to no one in particular.
"You'll always have it." Renni assured her, leaving the rest unsaid: 'without me'.
"Hmph." Cordova rotated back to her again, the light in her eyes dimmed. "Why'd you come back, Caris?"
Renni hadn't heard someone use her real name or something close to it in years. Getting over the shock of it, she asked "What do you mean why'd I come back? Come back when?"
"That time we were running to Broken Hill. Andy and Brett gave up. I did too after I got captured. I'd hoped maybe you still had a shot. You did. Later, I decided to have some of my contacts dig through the records of the incident report. The trackers found you waiting in the outskirts. You had a good deal of time to run. You could've made it to the starport and lived out that old dream of ours for yourself. That's not what you did though. You sat down and waited for them to pick you up. Why?"
Renni saw herself in the same spot. She was sitting on the hill, asking herself the same question as the turbulent air of turbojets whipped her hair around her face. Above her, the engines of the pursuit Hornet morphed into the mild movements of the ceiling fan. The outskirts became an office, her view of Broken Hill becoming that of Esztergom's downtown area and Cordova's expectant countenance.
"It's not that I missed Topkapi." Renni said. "You can be sure of that. Truth be told, I actually didn't want to leave without you guys. Forgive me for saying it but I could care less for what you three did for me if none of you were there afterwards. On my own out there in the world? I didn't want to think of what kind of life that would've been."
"And now you want a second go at it? A life with you on your own is what you want?"
"I won't be. ODSTs don't work alone. I should know, I watched them learn how to operate in teams. I'll have people to watch my back and I'll watch there's...like how you watched mine for all those years."
"You think so?"
"I don't think. I know."
Cordova scrutinized her. At length, she mustered a weak smile. "Listen, this is for your eyes and ears only."
"Clearance level?"
"Level 'Sister'."
Renni eased up. "Shoot."
"Back then, after I tossed you off the summit, two things worried me. The first was if I'd just tossed you to your death or not."
Renni stifled a laugh. "And the second?"
"Whether I'd lost my entire family a second time"
"You-...you never told me that."
"Which is why I'm telling you now, because I might be about to lose that family a third time."
Renni's lax air vanished and she stood a bit straighter. "Mam?"
"Clearance level, remember?"
"Sorry. Gia, I-...I'm sorry to put things on you like this but I honestly didn't know who else to talk to."
"You're asking me to finish the separation I've been trying to avoid for quite some time already. As you might imagine, it's not a fun feeling."
"I didn't think it would be. However, I knew if there's someone out there tough enough to take it, it's you. What do you say?"
Cordova fell into a contemplative silence.
"Well?"
Renni watched her operational and familial superior dawn a look of mild disagreement, albeit augmented by traces of acceptance.
"What I say is that the Office is unlikely to accept it. This is something you're dead set on?"
"It sure is."
"And I'm guessing I can't change your mind."
Renni politely shook her head.
"Great." Cordova sighed. "You're putting me between a rock and a hard place here, you know that?"
"I do."
"Hmph, alright then. Again, I can't promise ONI will be kind to your way of seeing things."
"Yup." Renni grinned. "Which is why I'm glad to have a superior who can explain my way of seeing things better than I can."
:********:
The taxi pulled into the parking spot on the edge of the terminal and slotted itself into place among a deluge of vehicles. The doors opened and Renni and Cordova stepped out.
The sidewalk was alive with soon-to-be passengers who wheeled suitcases behind them on their way to the doors of Esztergom's starport terminal. A short walk after that, a few security checks here and there, and they would be on a flight off of Reach. The process was that straightforward.
Renni believed it would be that much easier once she received the two approvals she needed. The first from the Office permitting her departure from their service, of course under conditions of maintaining extreme secrecy under pain of punishment. The second from naval special operations to permit her to join the next class of ODST recruits, specifically those heading to Camp Lincoln somewhere in the United Republic of North America's old District of Columbia. While she would have preferred a training group on Reach, the ODST recruiting staff had the opposite problem of those in other branches; prospective recruits sought them out in droves, not the other way around. The high demand for acceptance meant she needed to take any avenue she could get. Yet standing directly in front of the starport entrance made her realize she had a much larger hurdle ahead of her.
The struggle not to see Broken Hill on the other side of the glass doors was immense. She glanced at the cars coming and going from the parkway, expecting a tracker team to come rushing out of them guns blazing.
A hand settled on her shoulder and pulled her out of her imagination. Cordova came beside her carrying her suitcase.
"Think you're going to be okay?" Renni quipped.
"I was just about to ask you the same thing." Cordova replied. "You look like you've seen a ghost."
"Ghosts, really. I always see them at times like these. I hate it."
"You can hate them or you can learn to live with them."
"Can't those be the same thing?"
Cordova laughed and slapped her on the shoulder. "Here." She handed over her suitcase. "A word to the wise, and I hope to God that's you, watch your head out there. ODSTs are not ONI. They don't rely on the same standards we do, more guts and glory than slow and steady. Adapt how you can and be careful not to stick out. People like them tend to be able to sniff out spooks better than personnel from other branches."
"Okay, mom."
At first the joke missed its target. An uneasy silence passed between them. Then it finally landed and the two of them broke out laughing.
"I trained with them, remember?"
"No, get it right. You worked with the people that trained them. You ran administration affairs."
"Yeah-yeah, that's as close as close can get and they still didn't figure me out. For six months I might add. I'll be fine."
"Mhm. Say, if you're so confident then why don't you hurry up and get going? Your flight will be landing any second."
"Is that a request from my big sister or an order from my superior officer?"
Cordova smirked. "An order."
Renni put her suitcase aside and saluted. "Alright then."
Cordova likewise moved to salute but Renni stopped her halfway, reaching out and wrapping her in a tight embrace. "Copy that, Big Sis. I'll be in touch."
Without needing to see her face, she could sense Cordova rolling her eyes as she returned the hug and squeezed her just as tight. "You better. I'd rather you do it too much and I get annoyed than you do it too little and I get worried."
"Aww."
The two pulled away.
"No worries, I'll be consistent." Renni said. She grabbed her suitcase and made for the doors. Nearly there, she peered back. Cordova was still standing there watching her with a familiar soberness. Renni waved at her and she waved back. Renni returned to what's she was doing and made it to the doors. There she stopped again and turned around.
Cordova was gone along with the taxi.
As discreet as ever, Renni thought, and passed through the doors. She reached a discrete hand into her pocket and felt the data chip inside. She would need a securer place for it later. The counter-intrusion software stored on it might be invaluable in the future. As would be keeping ONI ignorant of the fact that she had stolen a copy of it. She disappeared into the crisscrossing flow of passengers, aiming for the nearest set of counters.
:********:
The flight to Earth was peaceful. Renni considered it the most relaxing experience of her life compared to what came next. Nothing she knew before quite helped to explain the newest part of her service. It was as if the grueling moments of her decade spent at Topkapi were all smashed together into the span of several months. Not stopping there, the devil himself decided to add a couple extra toppings to her agony, stuff that neither her nor any of the other 400 recruits of Class 209 had thought to expect. What it created was a daily meal plan of stress fractures, muscle tears, mental breakdowns and a barrage of creative curses from every language under the sun courtesy of the drill instructors.
They were called Helljumpers for a reason. They were as likely to end up there from training as they were to get there on the battlefield. Plus the devil's very own ministers were constantly at work to keep them in a state of suffering.
Each day the instructors pulled them out of bed at 0400 to start the day. Anything from their extensive catalogue of torture methods they disguised as training could be used with or without warning. The recruits' regular diet of extensive PT runs, occasionally life-threatening obstacle courses and a buffet of strenuous physical assessments were their bread and butter for First Selection.
Second Selection saw their numbers cut down by a quarter. There the competitive side of her fellow recruits became manifest. The newest trouble came from tactical training rounds finding their mark in the most mind numbingly painful places possible. Still, advanced reconnaissance tactics and land navigation were right up her alley.
Final Selection separated the boys and girls from the men and women worthy of the Helljumper brand. In the case of Class 209 it resulted in their numbers being cut down to slightly less than half of what they started with. HEV-training was the main culprit. Its complexities of aerodynamic navigation put many to shame. Falling down to earth at the hypersonic speed of Mach 25, 30,000 kilometers per hour or 8 kilometers per second, could make cowards of the most hardened recruit. The simulations made it realistic enough that quite a few of those she never thought would quit decided to do so en masse.
Search and Destroy, Direct Assault, Unconventional Warfare and more came to her in a manner that made her old Instructor Lutgens' words about the program seem misguided. The ODSTs were tough in their own right. Tough training. Tough love. Tough life.
The best part for her were the times when the 340th came into town to assist as pseudo-opposition. More than once, she ran into someone she knew. She would proceed to gun them down before catching up with them later over drinks. It did her good to see those familiar faces in such an unfamiliar setting.
Never taking the easy route, she decided to run a qualification course for squad medic which ran the duration of Final Selection. Her basic corpsmen skills were drilled into her alongside those that taught her how to kill the proper ODST way, loudly and with as much pain for the other guy as possible.
Her endurance ultimately won out against the wear and tear of months of hard work. Graduation rolled in and she, alongside 190 others, were called to the stage in the atrium of the orbital defense platform 'Cairo Station'. While the majority of the cheers from the crowd weren't for her, she liked to think they were. A later congratulatory call from Cordova herself helped seal the deal on what became one of the best days of her life.
She was free from ONI in one sense, bound to the ODSTs in another. Her assignment to her first unit came shortly before her designated frigate departed from Cairo. Then things began to change, namely the ship's stellar direction. Asking questions about the sudden alteration in their intended destination gave her a surprising answer.
Recent Covenant action in the Aquilla system was drawing UNSC forces to the colony world of Actium. The fighting there was well underway. Apparently, her assignment, the 7th Shock Troops Battalion, was already deployed to the same location. To say she was wary of jumping into combat right off the bat would have been an understatement. Nevertheless, a mission was a mission. She knew exactly what she'd signed up for and mentally prepared herself for her first time in the field.
The ride to the planet was short in inter-system travel standards as was the Pelican ride down to the surface. Like the others riding with her, she received direct instructions via her comm-unit that her unit accommodations would be handed out by officers waiting on the ground.
Upon their arrival in atmosphere, she was informed that the 7th had recently repelled the newest Covenant assault on the shipyards they were defending. That put a knot in her stomach and made her hold her M7 submachine gun tighter. Her first thought was that if worse came to worse then she could always pull out her canister of biofoam to patch up any wounds. Second and third degree burns from plasma fire were no joke so she would need to work fast. The ODST side of her brain kicked in, however, and squelched her concerns. Better to focus on never giving the enemy a chance to shoot back than to worry on what they could do to her.
The worst-case scenario appeared to have unfolded on the ground. The Pelican's rear bay door opened, the greenies streamed out and immediately made way for stretcher-bound casualties to be loaded onboard. They landed extremely close to a casualty collection point. The sights and smells of the wounded threatened the security of her stomach and she upped the ante on her air filters to keep from throwing up in her helmet.
She considered lending the medical personnel a helping hand when a trooper singled her out from the greenies by name.
"Mahonis?" He called as he jogged over.
"That's me, sir."
He nodded. "Neptune-Actual wants to see you. Follow me."
She didn't get a better explanation than that nor did she get to ask exactly who 'Neptune-Actual' was as the trooper turned and headed off. She jogged after him to the nearest building, a towering structure that served as a dockmaster.
A short elevator ride and a few encrypted doors later, she stepped into the presence of the most important man in the battalion. She forced herself not to think of him as Santa Claus meets the military. His snow-white hair in addition to his strong build and discerning disposition made this next to impossible.
He had established a small command center in one of the building's conference rooms. He welcomed her to his strategic planner and gave her a talk she never expected.
He knew.
Her connections to ONI were not a mystery to him. Whether he had access to some of Cordova's extensive network of contacts or just extremely good intuition, he never made it clear. Her best guess was that his rank gave him access to more of the background information of those coming into his battalion. That he was interested in her being ex-ONI was one thing, but why he asked for her presence personally was still a complete unknown.
Then he explained himself.
The 105th Shock Troops Division, 7th Battalion, Bravo Company, 1st Platoon, Squad Epsilon. They were the crew he used for his special purposes aside from the basic ground pounding trademarked by the rest of the battalion. They were his pride and joy and they needed a medic.
She made the connections fast and felt a sense of pride that the colonel believed she was worthy of joining one of his most elite units.
"Can I count on you to use wisdom regarding what you disclose about yourself, or would you rather an easier assignment?" He asked.
Renni understood. From what he told her regarding their run-ins with her former branch, she figured it best to keep her ties on the downlow. "I can manage with the first option, sir. I'll stay on a need-to-know basis."
"And if they need to know?"
"Then I'll tell them and let the chips fall where they may. I knew what I was asking for when I transferred, sir. I can take whatever comes." She beamed with confidence. "So, do I make the team sir?"
The colonel smiled and nodded. "Get your gear and link-up with them at the Alexander Building. You'll be leaving from Pad 3."
She saluted and began to walk off but stopped halfway to the doors and turned back. "Do you always interview your troopers, sir, or is it only for when it's your favorite team?"
"I have no favorites." Garrison said. "Just top-performers."
Tomato-tomato, she thought, and left. She jogged her way to the 20-story tall Alexander Building, stopped at the doors of the ground floor and waited. Close to 10 minutes passed before ODSTs coagulated towards the building. All were intent on getting out of the shipyards as fast as possible and few paid her any heed as she asked around for Squad Epsilon. For the sake of being heard over the clamor, she removed her helmet to get her voice out.
Eventually an ODST gunnery sergeant got her attention. He jabbed a thumb at a group of ODSTs trailing to the rear of the gathering. Something about them seemed oddly set apart, altogether sharing the air of the inland taipans she saw back in Australia, snakes ready to lash out at the first sign of a threat. She got that feeling doubly from one of them in particular that, though she wasn't sure how or why, carried what looked like a Japanese katana.
She took in a deep breath and strode over to the trooper with the red-accented armor, assumedly the Staff Sergeant she was supposed to report to. "Excuse me, sir. Are you Staff Sergeant Atell?"
"Yeah." He said and looked her over, stopping at the biofoam injector on her thigh bracer. "And who might you be, trooper?"
She breathed easier now that she knew she'd caught them. She saluted. "Private Renni Mahonis, sir. I've been assigned to Epsilon by the colonel. He said for me to join up with you before you left."
A brief second of silence passed. Epsilon's visors were depolarized, giving her a decent idea of how surprised they were to hear what she had to say. She hoped that was a good thing.
One of them, a man with shaggy hair, stood out to her because of the SRS-99 sniper rifle on his back and what looked like a meat cleaver strapped to his shoulder pad. He grinned at her. For reasons beyond her understanding, it made her deeply uneasy.
"It just gets better and better around here, doesn't it?" He said.
The only other woman in the squad, a redhead, elbowed him in the stomach and he wheezed from the blow.
"What? I'm not wrong." He argued. "First Mito, now…what was it again?"
"Renni." She said, doing her best to impress. "Renni Mahonis. I guess I'm your new medic."
Vita Nova – New Life