by Eric Nylund
“Stay here and watch me, Lieutenant,” she said, and passed him the data pad. “I’m going to have a closer look.”
The Lieutenant started to say something, but Dr. Halsey walked away, then half jogged across the painted lines of hopscotch squares on the playground. A breeze caught her sundress and she had to clutch the hem with one hand, grabbing the brim of her straw hat with the other. She slowed to a trot and halted four meters from the base of the hill.
The children stopped and turned.
“You’re in trouble,” one boy said, and pushed Number 117.
He shoved the boy back and then looked Dr. Halsey squarely in the eyes. The other children looked away; some wore embarrassed smirks, and a few slowly backed off.
Her subject, however, stood there defiantly. He was either confident she wasn’t going to punish him—or he simply wasn’t afraid. She saw that he had a bruise on his cheek, the knees of his pants were torn, and his lip was cracked.
Dr. Halsey took three steps closer. Several of the children took three involuntary steps backward.
“Can I speak with you, please?” she asked, and continued to stare at her subject.
He finally broke eye contact, shrugged, and then lumbered down the hill. The other children giggled and made tsking sounds; one tossed a pebble at him. Number 117 ignored them.
Dr. Halsey led him to the edge of the nearby sandpit and stopped.
“What’s your name?” she asked.
“I’m John,” he said. The boy held out his hand.
Dr. Halsey didn’t expect physical contact. The subject’s father must have taught him the ritual, or the boy was highly imitative.
She shook his hand and was surprised by the strength in his miniscule grip. “It’s very nice to meet you.” She knelt so she was at his level. “I wanted to ask you what you were doing?”
“Winning,” he said.
Dr. Halsey smiled. He was unafraid of her... and she doubted that he’d have any trouble pushing her off the hill, either.
“You like games,” she said. “So do I.”
He sighed. “Yeah, but they made me play chess last week. That got boring. It’s too easy to win.” He took a quick breath. “Or—can we play gravball? They don’t let me play gravball anymore, but maybe if you tell them it’s okay?”
“I have a different game I want you to try,” she told him. “Look.” She reached into her purse and brought out a metal disk. She turned it over and it gleamed in the sun. “People used coins like this for currency a long time ago, when Earth was the only planet we lived on.”
His eyes fixed on the object. He reached for it.
Dr. Halsey moved it away, continuing to flip it between her thumb and index finger. “Each side is different. Do you see? One has the face of a man with long hair. The other side has a bird, called an eagle, and it’s holding—”
“Arrows,” John said.
“Yes. Good.” His eyesight must be exceptional to see such detail so far away. “We’ll use this coin in our game. If you win you can keep it.”
John tore his gaze from the coin and looked at her again, squinted, then said, “Okay. I always win, though. That’s why they won’t let me play gravball anymore.”
“I’m sure you do.”
“What’s the game?”
“It’s very simple. I toss the coin like this.” She flicked her wrist, snapped her thumb, and the coin arced, spinning into the air, and landed in the sand. “Next time, though, before it lands, I want you to tell me if it will fall with the face of the man showing or with the eagle holding the arrows.”
“I got it.” John tensed, bent his knees, and then his eyes seemed to lose their focus on her and the coin.
Dr. Halsey picked up the quarter. “Ready?”
John gave a slight nod.
She tossed it, making sure there was plenty of spin.
John’s eyes watched it with that strange distant gaze. He tracked it as it went up, and then down toward the ground—his hand snapped out and snatched the quarter out of the air.
He held up his closed hand. “Eagle!” he shouted.
She tentatively reached for his hand and peeled open the tiny fist.
The quarter lay in his palm: the eagle shining in the orange sun.
Was it possible that he saw which side was up when he grabbed it... or more improbably, could have picked which side he wanted? She hoped the Lieutenant had recorded that. She should have told him to keep the data pad trained on her.
John retracted his hand. “I get to keep it, right? That’s what you said.”
“Yes, you can keep it, John.” She smiled at him—then stopped.
She shouldn’t have used his name. That was a bad sign. She couldn’t afford the luxury of liking her test subjects. She mentally stepped away from her feelings. She had to maintain a professional distance. She had to... because in a few months Number 117 might not be alive.
“Can we play again?”
Dr. Halsey stood and took a step back. “That was the only one I had, I’m afraid. I have to leave now,” she told him. “Go back and play with your friends.”
“Thanks.” He ran back, shouting to the other boys, “Look!”
Dr. Halsey strode to the Lieutenant. The sun reflecting off the asphalt felt too hot, and she suddenly didn’t want to be outside. She wanted to be back in the ship, where it was cool and dark. She wanted to get off this planet.
She stepped under the canvas awning and said to the Lieutenant, “Tell me you recorded that.”
He handed her the data pad and looked puzzled. “Yes. What was it all about?’
Dr. Halsey checked the recording and then sent a copy ahead to Toran on the Han for safekeeping.
“We screen these subjects for certain genetic markers,” she said. “Strength, agility, even predispositions for aggression and intellect. But we couldn’t remote test for everything. We don’t test for luck.”
“Luck?” Lieutenant Keyes asked. “You believe in luck, Doctor?”
“Of course not,” she said with a dismissive wave of her hand. “But we have one hundred and fifty test subjects to consider, and facilities and funding for only half that number. It’s a simple mathematical elimination, Lieutenant. That child was one of the lucky ones—either that or he is extraordinarily fast. Either way, he’s in.”
“I don’t understand,” Lieutenant Keyes said, and he started fiddling with the pipe he carried in his pocket.
“I hope that continues, Lieutenant, ” Dr. Halsey replied quietly. “For your sake, I hope you never understand what we’re doing.”
She looked one last time at Number 117—at John. He was having so much fun, running and laughing. For a moment she envied the boy’s innocence; hers was long dead. Life or death, lucky or not, she was condemning this boy to a great deal of pain and suffering.
But it had to be done.
CHAPTER THREE
2300 Hours September 23, 2517 (Military Calendar)
Epsilon Eridani System, Reach Military Complex, planet Reach
Dr. Halsey stood on a platform in the center of the amphitheater. Concentric rings of slate-gray risers surrounded her—empty for now. Overhead spotlights focused and reflected off her white lab coat, but she still was cold.
She should feel safe here. Reach was one of the UNSC’s largest industrial bases, ringed with high-orbit gun batteries, space docks, and a fleet of heavily-armed capital ships. On the planet’s surface were Marine and Navy Special Warfare training grounds, OCS schools, and between her underground facilities and the surface were three hundred meters of hardened steel and concrete. The room where she now stood could withstand a direct hit from an 80-megaton nuke.
So why did she feel so vulnerable?
Dr. Halsey knew what she had to do. Her duty. It was for the greater good. All humanity would be served... even if a tiny handful of them had to suffer for it. Still, when she turned inward and faced her complicity in this—she was revolted by what she saw.
She wished she still had Lieutenant Keyes. He had proven himself a capable assistant during the last month. But he had begun to understand the nature of the project—at least seen the edges of the truth. Dr. Halsey had him reassigned to the Magellan with a commission to full Lieutenant for his troubles.
“Are you ready, Doctor?” a disembodied woman’s voice asked.
“Almost, Déjà.” Dr. Halsey sighed. “Please summon Chief Petty Officer Mendez. I’d like you both present when I address them.”
Déjà’s hologram flicked on next to Dr. Halsey. The AI had been specifically created for Dr. Halsey’s SPARTAN project. She took the appearance of a Greek goddess: barefoot, wrapped in the toga, motes of light dancing about her luminous white hair. She held a clay tablet in her left hand. Binary cuneiform markings scrolled across the tablet. Dr. Halsey couldn’t help but marvel at the AI’s chosen form; each AI “self-assigned” a holographic appearance, and each was unique.
One of the doors at the top of the amphitheater opened and Chief Petty Officer Mendez strode down the stairs. He wore a black dress uniform, his chest awash with silver and gold stars and a rainbow of campaign ribbons. His close-shorn hair had a touch of gray at the temples. He was neither tall nor muscular; he looked so ordinary for a man who had seen so much combat... except for his stride. The man moved with a slow grace as if he were walking in half gravity. He paused before Dr. Halsey, awaiting further instructions.
“Up here, please,” she told him, gesturing to the stairs on her right.
Mendez mounted the steps of the platform and then stood at ease next to her.
“You have read my psychological evaluations?” Déjà asked Dr. Halsey.
“Yes. They were quite thorough,” she said. “Thank you.”
“And?”
“I’m forgoing your recommendations, Déjà. I’m going to tell them the truth.”
Mendez gave a nearly inaudible grunt of approval—one of the most verbose acknowledgments Dr. Halsey had heard from him. As a hand-to-hand combat and physical-training DI, Mendez was the best in the Navy. As a conversationalist, however, he left a great deal to be desired.
“The truth has risks,” Déjà cautioned.
“So do lies,” Dr. Halsey replied. “Any story fabricated to motivate the children—claiming their parents were taken and killed by pirates, or by a plague that devastated their planet—if they learned the truth later, they would turn against us.”
“It is a legitimate concern,” conceded Déjà, and then she consulted her tablet. “May I suggest selective neural paralysis? It produces a targeted amnesia—”
“A memory loss that may leak into other parts of the brain. No,” Dr. Halsey said, “this will be dangerous enough for them even with intact minds.”
Dr. Halsey clicked on her microphone. “Bring them in now.”
“Aye aye,” a voice replied from the speakers in the ceiling.
“They’ll adapt,” Dr. Halsey told Déjà. “Or they won’t, and they will be untrainable and unsuitable for the project. Either way I just want to get this over with.”
Four sets of double doors at the top tier of the amphitheater swung open. Seventy-five children marched in—each accompanied by a handler, a Naval drill instructor in camouflage pattern fatigues.
The children had circles of fatigue around their eyes. They had all been collected, rushed here through Slipstream space, and only recently brought out of cryo sleep. The shock of their ordeal must be hitting them hard, Halsey realized. She stifled a pang of regret.
When they had been seated in the risers, Dr. Halsey cleared her throat and spoke: “As per Naval Code 45812, you are hereby conscripted into the UNSC Special Project, codenamed SPARTAN II.”
She paused; the words stuck in her windpipe. How could they possibly understand this? She barely understood the justifications and ethics behind this program.
They looked so confused. A few tried to stand and leave, but their handlers placed firm hands on their shoulders and pushed them back down.
Six years old... this was too much for them to digest. But she had to make them understand, explain it in simple terms that they could grasp.
Dr. Halsey took a tentative step forward. “You have been called upon to serve,” she explained. “You will be trained... and you will become the best we can make of you. You will be the protectors of Earth and all her colonies.”
A handful of the children sat up straighter, no longer entirely frightened, but now interested.
Dr. Halsey spotted John, subject Number 117, the first boy she had confirmed as a viable candidate. He wrinkled his forehead, confused, but he listened with rapt attention.
“This will be hard to understand, but you cannot return to your parents.”
The children stirred. Their handlers kept a firm grip on their shoulders.
“This place will become your home,” Dr. Halsey said in as soothing a voice as she could muster. “Your fellow trainees will be your family now. The training will be difficult. There will be a great deal of hardship on the road ahead, but I know you will all make it.”
Patriotic words, but they rang hollow in her ears. She had wanted to tell them the truth—but how could she?
Not all of them would make it. “Acceptable losses,” the Office of Naval Intelligence representative had assured her. None of it was acceptable.
“Rest now,” Dr. Halsey said to them. “We begin tomorrow.”
She turned to Mendez. “Have the children... the trainees escorted to their barracks. Feed them and put them to bed.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Mendez said. “Fall out!” he shouted.
The children rose—at the urging of their handlers. John 117 stood, but he kept his gaze on Dr. Halsey and remained stoic. Many of the subjects seemed stunned, a few had trembling lips—but none of them cried.
These were indeed the right children for the project. Dr. Halsey only hoped that she had half their courage when the time came.
“Keep them busy tomorrow,” she told Mendez and Déjà. “Keep them from thinking about what we’ve just done to them.”
SECTION II
BOOT
CHAPTER FOUR
0530 Hours, September 24, 2517 (Military Calendar)
Epsilon Eridani System, Reach Military Complex, planet Reach
“Wake up, trainee!”
John rolled over in his cot and went back to sleep. He was dimly aware that this wasn’t his room, and that there were other people here.
A shock jolted him—from his bare feet to the base of his spine. He yelled in surprise and fell off the cot. He shook off the disorientation from being nearly asleep and got up.
“I said up, boot! You know which way up is?”
A man in a camouflage uniform stood over John. His hair was shorn and gray at his temples. His dark eyes didn’t look human—too big and black and they didn’t blink. He held a silver baton in one hand; he flicked it toward John and it sparked.
John backed away. He wasn’t afraid of anything. Only little kids were afraid... but his body instinctively moved as far away from the instrument as possible.
Dozens of other men roused the rest of the children. Seventy-four boys and girls screamed and jumped out of their cots.
“I am Chief Petty Officer Mendez,” the uniformed man next to John shouted. “The rest of these men are your instructors. You will do exactly as we tell you at all times.”
Mendez pointed to the far end of the cinderblock barracks. “Showers are aft. You will all wash and then return here to dress.” He opened a trunk at the foot of John’s cot and pulled out a matching set of gray sweats.
John leaned closer and saw his name stenciled on the chest: JOHN-117.
“No slacking. On the double!” Mendez tapped John between his shoulder blades with the baton.
Lightning surged across John’s chest. He sprawled on the cot and gasped for breath.
“I mean it! Go Go GO!”
John moved. He couldn’t inhale—but he ran anyway, cl
utching his chest. He managed a ragged breath by the time he got to the showers. The other kids looked scared and disoriented. They all stripped off their nightshirts and stepped onto the conveyor, washed themselves in lukewarm soapy water, then rinsed in an icy cold spray.
He ran back to his bunk, got into underwear, thick socks, pulled on the sweats and a pair of combat boots that fit his feet perfectly.
“Outside, trainees,” Mendez announced. “Triple time... march!”
John and the others stampeded out of the barracks onto a strip of grass.
The sun hadn’t risen yet, and the edge of the sky was indigo. The grass was wet with dew. There were dozens of rows of barracks, but no one else was up and outside. A pair of jets roared overhead and arced up into the sky. Far away, John heard a metallic crackle.
Chief Petty Officer Mendez barked, “You will make five equal-length rows. Fifteen trainees in each.” He waited a few seconds as they milled about. “Straighten those rows. You know how to count to fifteen, trainee? Take three steps back.”
John stepped into the second row.
As he breathed the cold air he began to wake up. He started to remember. They had taken him in the middle of the night. They injected him with something and he slept for a long time. Then the woman who had given him the coin told him he couldn’t go back. That he wouldn’t see his mother or father—
“Jumping jacks!” Mendez shouted. “Count off to one hundred. Ready, go.” The officer started the exercise and John followed his lead.
One boy refused—for a split-second. An instructor was on him instantly. The baton whipped into the boy’s stomach. The kid doubled over. “Get with the program, boot,” the trainer snarled. The boy uncurled and started jumping.
John had never done so many jumping jacks in his life. His arms and stomach and legs burned. Sweat trickled down his back.
“Ninety-eight—99—100.” Mendez paused. He drew in a deep breath. “Sit-ups!” He dropped onto the grass. “Count off to one hundred. No slacking.”