New Blood

by Matt Forbeck

  He was tall enough as a Helljumper that I could have mistaken him for a Spartan before the transformation, except he was far too lanky. When the docs were through with him, he towered over me, and I’d grown an aching, fair bit myself.

  Despite all the pain, I had never felt better in my entire life. My body became stronger and more resilient. My senses sharpened so much I could read the fine print on the bottom of the releases they made me sign, even from across the room. I could hear nurses coming from several rooms away.

  It took some getting used to, but I gotta admit, I really liked it.

  Veronica came to visit me at the Mars base while I was in my final round of recovery—just before I shipped out for training—and she tried to reassure me about my concerns regarding mortality as we relaxed in my private quarters. I was used to bunking on warships, and by comparison, my three rooms and a private shower seemed luxurious. In my rebuilt body, though, it somehow felt cramped, like I might accidentally knock a hole in a wall every time I turned around, and she sensed my unease.

  “You’re not already thinking about retirement, are you?” she joked with a wry smile. “Just focus on the job, and you’ll do fine. Distractions like that can get your head shot off.”

  “Just wondering if I might someday start wearing out like an old warship.”

  “It’s not like you run on batteries. And even if you did, we’d just replace them.”

  “Might be cheaper to just replace me with a brand-new Spartan at that point. Once a ship’s too old to be any use on the battlefield, they sell it for scrap.”

  She punched me in the shoulder, and I pretended like it hurt. The docs had treated me like I was made of glass during the entire enhancement procedure, and that was the first time anyone had done anything aggressive toward me. I barely felt it.

  Then she caressed my arm where she’d hit me, and that felt just as good as it always had. “Don’t tempt me,” she said.

  I allowed myself a smile. That seemed to work fine, too.

  “So, I assume you came by to kick my tires and see if the chassis can still handle you?”

  She raised her hand to punch me again, and I flinched so hard she couldn’t help laughing at me. “Maybe some other time,” she said. “When you’re fully healed and the docs have signed off on you. I wouldn’t want to break you.”

  “Likewise.”

  She hesitated, and I realized she had something more to say. I put a gentle hand on hers. “I take it this isn’t just a social call.”

  “I wanted to see you.”

  “Go ahead,” I said. “You can’t break my heart. Not after what the docs did to it. Just—let me down gently.”

  She rolled her eyes at me, but in a loving way. “I’m going to talk to the doctors about adjusting your meds. They need to cut down on whatever goofy-juice they’re feeding you.”

  I grinned at her. “I’m sorry. I just can’t help it. I feel so—”

  I rolled my hands around in front of me as I grasped for the right word.

  “Stupid?” Veronica offered.

  I ignored her jibe. “Alive! Like everything’s more real than before. It’s all so sharp, I’m surprised it doesn’t slice me open—except that I’m so tough now I don’t know what could get through my skin.”

  Veronica fidgeted in her chair. “That’s wonderful—for you. But like I said, I’m not here on a social call.”

  “I’m not even fully finished with recovery yet. I thought maybe we’d have a little time for some R&R before I had to report for training.”

  “The Spartans don’t mess around,” she said. “And you all heal damn fast. By the time you’re ready to handle me, they’ll send you straight off to training camp.”

  “Spoilsport.”

  “You volunteered for this big metamorphosis.”

  “And yet, for the things that really matter, nothing’s changed at all. What do you need?”

  The amusement faded from her face. “It’s nothing official yet, but our spies among the Front hear that there may be a mole among the most recent class of Spartans.

  “What?” I had a hard time imagining anyone going through all of this with the intention of turning on the UNSC the moment it was finished.

  “Listen to me. One of the new Spartans may secretly be a member of the Front.” She shrugged.

  Up until that point, I thought maybe she’d been joking with me because I was still healing up. “You’re kidding. What the hell am I saying? Of course you’re not kidding. And you have no idea who?”

  “We’re pretty sure it’s not you.”

  “Great news. At least that narrows it down a bit.”

  “And I vouched for Romeo and Mickey, too.”

  “Aha. And you’re sure about them, too?” I joked.

  “It could be just about anyone else. Every member of this class passed a thorough background check and psych evaluation, and we’re going through communications records and lists of past associations. So far, nothing firm has turned up, but it might just mean the mole’s buried that deep.”

  “So how do you know there’s a traitor?”

  “We picked up some Front chatter with them effectively howling with glee about getting one of their own into the program.”

  “And you haven’t been able to track down who they meant?”

  “These things take time.”

  “And you don’t have enough of it.”

  “Not at the moment. Not only do we not know who the traitor is, but we also don’t know when or where they’ll strike. Hell, we’re not even sure the Front’s not just playing with us to get us to waste our resources chasing ghosts.”

  “Assuming they’re not, you think this mole will go after the SPARTAN program?”

  Veronica frowned. “It’s one thing for the Front to wind up with a Spartan of its own. It would be an entirely new level of bad for them to compromise the program.”

  “But we can’t depend on whoever it is outing themselves that way. They might just lay low until training is over.”

  “It all depends on how patient they—or the Front leadership, such as it is—want to be.”

  I rubbed my eyes. “You don’t think this has anything to do with the revolt we stopped on Draco III, do you?”

  She shook her head. “This infiltration attempt has been in the works for a long time. Despite the fact the United Rebel Front has the word “united” right in its name, they’re really only that together with respect to their ideals, and just barely. They rarely show such a level of coordination.”

  I thought about this for a moment. “Doesn’t ONI have some kind of fail-safe on people like me?”

  “You mean a kill switch we can use to disable you by remote?”

  I nodded, not sure I wanted to hear an honest answer.

  “While I’m sure someone above me would love to have that option on hand, it doesn’t exist. It’s just too much of a security risk. If there was a way to just shut a Spartan down, it might fall into the wrong hands.”

  “So you just trust us?”

  “Given that we’re talking about ONI, ‘trust’ probably isn’t the right word, but okay, sure. Spartans find themselves in all sorts of insane situations. We don’t see the wisdom in building any kind of artificial limits. Spartans need every edge they can get.”

  “Right up until one of them betrays us all, or so you say.”

  “That’s where Alpha-Nine comes in.” She still called us by our old squad name even though we officially were no longer part of the Corps. That was fine by me. I didn’t have any plans to retire it. “You and Romeo and Mickey have an impeccable reputation. After the work you did in New Mombasa, I’m telling you that no one at ONI questions your loyalty. Just about everyone else, though, is under suspicion.”

  I blew out a long breath. “You can’t narrow it down any furt
her? We have to investigate everyone else in the program one by one?”

  “If it was as simple as lining them all up and interrogating them, believe me, we’d do that,” Veronica said. “ONI has no qualms about locking people up and asking them lots of questions. But that’s not likely to work here.”

  “You spooks don’t know how to ask the right questions anymore?”

  “Back during the war, the sides were a lot clearer. Now that we’re fighting other humans again as well, things get muddy real fast. Many soldiers who were fantastic against the Covenant have now balked at battling the Front or any of the other dozens of homegrown terrorist groups across our worlds.”

  “That sounds like any of us might fit the bill. So how do you know that doesn’t include me? Obviously, proving myself against the Covenant doesn’t mean anything. You just said so.”

  Veronica winced at that. “True, but when you and I became involved . . .”

  She let my imagination fill in the rest.

  “Seriously?” I held my head in both hands. I gave thanks that the docs had reinforced my skull, otherwise, my brain felt like it might have burst out of it. “Wow. ONI knows about us—and they’re treating me like they were your dad.”

  “My dad’s dead.”

  “Dammit, you know what I mean.”

  She put a hand on my shoulder. “Buck. After New Mombasa, ONI put you through the same kind of investigation they do with their own agents. You passed with flying colors. The whole team did. That’s why I’ve been able to use Alpha-Nine when it’s mattered over the years.”

  I considered yelling about it, getting upset, and carrying on. I don’t know who would have blamed me. After all, when you start a relationship with someone, you like to think it’s not with the entire organization they work for.

  On the other hand, it wasn’t like I didn’t know who Veronica was. I had long suspected something like this, but we’d always danced around the subject. Now the music had finally ended.

  “I, ah, suppose that’s good news.” I took my hands off my head and held her hands instead.

  Her fingers looked smaller than ever. I was several centimeters taller and twenty kilos heavier than I’d been before, and Veronica seemed tiny now. I’d never thought of her as fragile, but compared to the new me, I suppose she was. The doctors had really worked over every centimeter of me.

  “Of course it is.” She smiled up at me, relieved.

  She stood up and stroked my forehead as she gazed into my eyes. Then she gave me a long, loving kiss.

  “Just get through your training, Buck, and keep your eyes open. I don’t know if they’ll make a move now or wait till later, but you’re in a unique position to get to know the rest of your class far better than any ONI agent could.”

  “I’ll do my duty and spy on my fellow Spartans. For justice.”

  She gave me a smile. “As for that R&R, I already have us booked for a week at a resort in Acidalia when your training’s through.”

  “You know just what to say to cheer me up.”

  In that regard, I would soon find that Captain O’Day was the direct opposite of Veronica Dare.

  FIFTEEN

  * * *

  “Dammit, Gunny!” Captain O’Day shouted in my face. “Spartans don’t cry!”

  “I ain’t crying, Captain,” I said as I winced again in agony. “I just got some nanotech in my eye.”

  There was more than a bit of truth in what she said. I’ll admit that I had something salty flowing out of my eyes, but it had more to do with the fact that I couldn’t stop the pain. The medical alterations had sent my hormones into a crazed spiral. I hadn’t felt this raw and vulnerable since I’d hit puberty.

  When the docs had certified me fit for release, I could have whooped with joy. I’d been cooped up for weeks and couldn’t wait to take my new bones out for a spin. If I’d known what lay waiting for me in the secret SPARTAN training camp facility orbiting a barely remembered dwarf planet, I’d have whimpered for mercy instead.

  It had been over twenty-five years since I’d been through basic training, and since then I’d worked my way up to the rank of gunnery sergeant and become an ONI on-demand soldier with my own fireteam under my command. I wasn’t used to having someone else not only tell me what to do on the field of battle, but holler that I was doing it wrong, too.

  The worst part is that Captain O’Day was right. I’d built up all sorts of bad habits over the years, and layered in lots of different excuses for that behavior to quiet any qualms I might have had about it. Now O’Day and the rest of the ONI trainers stripped all those excuses away and made me feel about as sharp and experienced as a six-year-old child.

  Which is the age at which they allegedly started out the Master Chief, I guess, but that’s not my point.

  When it came to discipline, I’d gotten sloppy. Thankfully, Captain O’Day wasn’t having any of that. She stood a quarter meter shorter than me, but she was sharp and lean as a stiletto. Any one of us could have torn her to pieces without breaking a sweat if so inclined, but she was such a fierce force of determination and will that none of us would have dared try.

  She was committed to whipping me and the rest of my Spartan class into shape, whether we were ready for it or not. With a face as angular and unassuming as a hatchet, she glared into my watery eyes and gave it to me straight. “The United Nations Space Command did not just transform you worthless sacks of shit into the finest fighting men and women the galaxy has to offer just to have you collapse there and whine about it!”

  “I think they chose poorly,” Romeo muttered. He’d fallen to a knee, supposedly to check on me. “But don’t think I’m above taking advantage of it.”

  O’Day lanced him with a glare that could have stripped off the paint still left on Romeo’s armor. If he’d had even a bit of shame in him.

  “Tell her she can have it all back, Gunny,” Mickey said much more quietly as he leaned against a nearby wall, gasping for air. “Just as long as we don’t have to go through that again.”

  “That” in this case was a combat training mission held in the space station’s largest war games chamber, which was saying something, considering the entire place was the size of a sprawling starship. I’d played football on smaller fields.

  That day’s exercise pitted us against an endless onslaught of the best automated weaponry ONI’s black budget could buy, guided by a dozen of the UNSC’s sharpest combat veterans. They used non-lethal rounds, which I’m sure they only downgraded to so they could protect their investments in us, but they didn’t hold back in any other way. Every one of us fresh Spartans had taken several slugs in uncomfortable spots. Fake or not, the damn things hurt.

  I’d decided to make the most of the elaborate terrain they’d mocked up for the place, which was apparently generated by fancy holographics and risers. The environment was startlingly life-like, including not only a lush jungle above, but also a warren of twisting and turning tunnels below. Many of the tunnels cut low enough that you had to crawl through them, but they’d included a number of taller areas where you could sit or even stand if you needed a breather.

  The best part about the tunnels was they didn’t have any cameras on them. When the chamber had been carved out of the station, they’d installed cameras in the walls and ceiling, but they didn’t have any pointing down below. That supposedly gave us a sporting chance to be able to sneak around and slip up behind our automated foes, but I sometimes just went that way so I could rest my aching, elongated bones.

  At one point during that day’s exercise, I moved out of what I had thought was an excellent hiding spot and stumbled straight across an automatic shotgun I could have sworn hadn’t been there before. Damn thing spat non-lethal—but extremely painful—buckshot right into my chest.

  None of it pierced my armor, but the blast knocked me back off my feet and bruised my ribs. It
felt like a Hunter had been stomping up and down on my chest, trying to squeeze my heart out through my mouth. For a long moment, I couldn’t breathe, and I briefly wondered if, despite Veronica’s assertions, the doctors hadn’t somehow installed a buckshot-activated kill-switch under my solar plexus.

  “This isn’t fair,” said Kovsky, one of our fellow fresh faces, an ink-skinned woman with stubby black braids framing her wide, angry eyes. “You send us into this hellhole of a training camp, outnumbered and outgunned, without even our Mjolnir armor?”

  O’Day marched straight up to Kovsky and kicked her in the crotch. I realize it’s not the same for women as it is for men, but poor Kovsky folded over like someone had cut her in half.

  “You think we just hand you that armor?” O’Day hissed. “You have to earn those rags!”

  “Yeah, but haven’t we already done that?” Schein said, his pale, stubbly face glistening with an unhealthy sweat. “We got admitted to the program. We went through the procedures. We’re already Spartans, Captain.”

  One look at O’Day told me that Schein was either the bravest or the dumbest man I’d ever known. The two things weren’t mutually exclusive. He had to know he was going to piss off the captain, though, and he looked ready to protect his nether regions, at least, if it came to that.

  “You are Spartans when you graduate this program,” she said in a way that sounded like she was stomping the ground for emphasis with every word, even though her legs never twitched a centimeter. “And you graduate this program when I say so. Do you know what that means?”

  Schein glanced around at the rest of us as if asking for help. No one seemed ready to step between him and the captain. I might have considered if I hadn’t still been too busy wondering if I would ever be able to fill my lungs with sweet, sweet air again.