by Eric Nylund
The man with the iron bar swung a vicious blow at John’s ribs; John sidestepped, grabbed the man’s hand, and clamped it to the bar. He twisted the bar and crushed the bones of his attacker’s wrist.
John snapped a side kick toward the second man, caught him in the groin, crushing the soft organs and breaking his target’s pelvis.
John pulled the bar free—whipped around and caught the third man in the neck, hitting him so hard the ODST was propelled over the ropes.
“At ease, Number 117,” Chief Petty Officer Mendez barked.
John obeyed and dropped the bar. Like the pin, it seemed to take too long for the impromptu weapon to hit the deck.
The ODSTs lay crumpled on the ground, either unconscious or dead.
Mendez, at the far end of the gym, strode toward the boxing ring.
The Sergeant stood with his mouth open. “Chief Mendez, sir!” He snapped a crisp salute. “What are you—” He turned to John, his eyes widened, and he murmured, “He’s one of them, isn’t he?”
“Medics are on their way,” Mendez said calmly. He stepped closer to the Sergeant. “There are two intel officers waiting for you in Ops. They’ll debrief you ... ” He stepped back. “I suggest you report to them immediately.”
“Yes, sir,” the Sergeant said. He almost ran out of the gym. He looked once over his shoulder at John; then he moved even faster.
“Your workout is over for today,” Mendez told John.
John saluted and left the ring.
A team of medics entered with stretchers and rushed toward the boxing ring.
“Permission to speak, sir?” John said.
Mendez nodded.
“Were those men part of a mission? Were they targets or teammates?”
John knew that this had to be some sort of mission. The Chief had been too close for it to be a coincidence.
“You engaged and neutralized a threat,” Mendez replied. “That action seems to have answered your question, Squad Leader.”
John wrinkled his forehead as he thought it through. “I followed the chain of command,” he said. “The Sergeant told me to fight. I was threatened and in imminent danger. But they were still UNSC Special Forces. Fellow soldiers.”
Mendez lowered his voice. “Not every mission has simple objectives or comes to a logical conclusion. Your priorities are to follow the orders in your chain of command, and then to preserve your life and the lives of your team. Is that clear?”
“Sir,” John said. “Yes, sir.” He glanced back at the ring. Blood was seeping into the canvas mat. John had an odd feeling in the pit of his stomach.
He hit the showers and let the blood rinse off him. He felt strangely sorry for the men he had killed.
But he knew his duty—the Chief had even been unusually verbose in order to clarify the matter. Follow orders and keep himself and his team safe. That’s all he had to focus on. John didn’t give the incident in the gym another thought.
CHAPTER EIGHT
0930 Hours, September 11, 2525 (Military Calendar)
Epsilon Eridani System, Reach UNSC Military Complex, planet Reach
Dr. Halsey reclined in Mendez’s padded chair. She considered pilfering one of the Sweet William cigars from the box on his desk—see why he considered them such a treat. The stench wafting from the box, however, was too overwhelming. How did he stand them?
The door opened and CPO Mendez halted in the doorway. “Ma’am,” he said, and stood straighter. “I wasn’t informed that you would be visiting today. In fact, I had understood that you were out of the system for another week. I would have made arrangements.”
“I’m sure you would have.” She folded her hands in her lap. “Our situation has changed. Where are my Spartans? They are not in their barracks, nor on any of the ranges.”
Mendez hesitated. “They can no longer train here, ma’am. We had to find them... other facilities.”
Dr. Halsey stood and smoothed the pleats in her gray skirt. “Maybe you should explain that statement, Chief.”
“I could,” he replied, “but it will be easier to show you.”
“Very well,” Dr. Halsey said, her curiosity piqued. Mendez escorted her to his personal Warthog parked outside his office. The all-terrain combat vehicle had been refitted; the heavy chain-gun on the back had been removed and replaced with a rack of Argent V missiles.
Mendez drove them off the base and onto winding mountain roads. “Reach was first colonized for its rich titanium deposits,” Mendez told her. “There are mines in these mountains thousands of meters deep. The UNSC uses them for storage.”
“I presume you do not have my Spartans taking inventory today, Chief?”
“No, ma’am. We just need the privacy.”
Mendez drove the Warthog past a manned guardhouse and into a large tunnel that sloped steeply underground.
The road wound down in a spiral, deeper into sold granite. Mendez said, “Do you remember the Navy’s first experiments with powered exoskeletons?”
“I’m not sure I see the connection between this place, my Spartans, and the exoskeleton projects,” Dr. Halsey replied, frowning, “but I’ll play along a bit further. Yes, I know all about the Mark I prototypes. We had to scrap the concept and redesign battle armor from the ground up for the MJOLNIR project. The Mark Is consumed enormous energy. Either they had to be plugged into a generator or use inefficient broadcast power—neither option is practical on a battlefield.”
Mendez decelerated slightly as he approached a speed bump. The Warthog’s massive tires thudded over the obstacle.
“They used the units that weren’t scrapped,” Dr. Halsey continued, “as dock loaders to move heavy equipment.” She cocked one eyebrow. “Or might they have been dumped in a place like this?”
“There are dozens of the suits here.”
“You haven’t put my Spartans in some of those antiques?”
“No. Their trainers are using them for their own safety,” Mendez replied. “When the Spartans recovered from microgravity therapy, they were eager to get back to their routine. However, we experienced some—” He paused, searching for the right word. “... difficulties.”
He glanced at his passenger. His face was grim. “Their first day back, three trainers were accidentally killed during hand-to-hand combat exercises.”
Dr. Halsey cocked an eyebrow. “Then they are faster and stronger than we anticipated?”
“That,” Mendez replied, “would be understating the situation.”
The tunnel opened into a large cavern. There were lights scattered on the walls, overhead a hundred meters up on the ceiling, and along the floor, but they did little to dissipate the overwhelming darkness.
Mendez parked the Warthog next to a small, prefabricated building. He jumped out and helped Dr. Halsey step from the vehicle. “This way, please.” Mendez gestured to the room. “We’ll have a better view from inside.”
The building had three glass walls and several monitors marked MOTION, INFRARED, DOPPLER, and PASSIVE. Mendez pushed a button and the room climbed a track along the wall until they were twenty meters off the floor.
Mendez keyed a microphone and spoke: “Lights.”
Floodlights snapped on and illuminated a section of the cavern the size of a football field. In the center stood a concrete bunker. Three men in the primitive Mark I power armor stood on top. Six more stood evenly spaced around the perimeter. A red banner had been planted in the center of the bunker.
“Capture the flag?” Dr. Halsey asked. “Past all that heavy armor?”
“Yes. The trainers in those exoskeletons can run at thirty-two KPH, lift two tons, and have a thirty-millimeter minigun mounted on self-targeting armatures—stun rounds, of course. They’re also equipped with the latest motion sensors and IR scopes. And needless to say, their armor is impervious to standard light weapons. It would take two or three platoons of conventional Marines to take that bunker.”
Mendez spoke again in the microphone, and his voice e
choed off the cavern walls: “Start the drill.”
Sixty seconds ticked by. Nothing happened. One hundred twenty seconds. “Where are the Spartans?” Dr. Halsey asked.
“They’re here,” Mendez replied. Dr. Halsey caught a glimpse of motion in the dark: a shadow against shadows, a familiar silhouette.
“Kelly?” she whispered.
The trainers turned and fired at the shadow, but it moved with almost supernatural quickness. Even the self-targeting systems couldn’t track it.
From above, a man free-rappelled down from the girders and gantries overhead. The newcomer landed behind one of the perimeter guards, quiet as a cat. He punched the guard’s armor twice, denting the heavy plates, then dropped low and swept the target’s legs out from under him. The guard sprawled on the ground.
The Spartan attached his rappelling line to the trainer. A moment later the writhing guard shot upward, into the darkness.
Two other guards turned to attack.
The Spartan dodged, rolled, and melted into the shadows.
Dr. Halsey realized the trainer’s exoskeleton wasn’t being pulled up—it was being used as a counterweight.
Two more Spartans, dangling from the other end of that rope, dropped unnoticed into the center of the bunker. Dr. Halsey immediately recognized one of them, although he was dressed entirely in black, save his open eye slits—Number 117. John.
John landed, braced, and kicked one guard. The man landed in a heap... eight meters away.
The other Spartan jumped off the bunker; he flipped end over end, evading the stun rounds that filled the air. He threw himself at the farthest guard and they skidded together into the shadows. The guard’s gun strobed once, and then it was dark again.
On top of the bunker, John was a blur of slashing motions. A second guard’s exosuit erupted in a fountain of hydraulic fluid and then collapsed under the armor’s weight.
The last guard on the bunker turned to fire at John. Halsey gripped the edge of her chair. “He’s at point blank range! Even stun rounds can kill at that distance!”
As the guard’s gun fired, John sidestepped. The stun rounds slashed through the air, a clean miss. John grabbed the weapon’s armature—twisted—and with a screech of stressed metal, wrenched it free of the exoskeleton. He fired directly into the man’s chest and sent him tumbling off the bunker.
The remaining quartet of perimeter guards turned and sprayed the area with suppression fire.
A heartbeat later, the lights went out.
Mendez cursed and keyed the mike. “Backups. Hit the backup lights now!”
A dozen amber floods flickered to life.
Not a Spartan was in sight, but the nine trainers were either unconscious or lay immobile in inert battle armor.
The red flag was gone.
“Show me that again,” Dr. Halsey said unbelievingly. “You recorded all that, didn’t you?”
“Of course.” Mendez tapped a button but the monitors played back—static. “Damn it. They got to the cameras, too,” he muttered, impressed. “Every time we find a new place to hide them, they disable the recording devices.”
Dr. Halsey leaned against the glass wall staring at the carnage below. “Very well, Chief Mendez, what else do I need to know?”
“Your Spartans can run at bursts of up to fifty-five KPH,” he explained. “Kelly can run a little faster, I think. They will only get quicker as they adjust to the ‘alterations’ we’ve made to their bodies. They can lift three times their body weight—which, I might add, is almost double the norm due to their increased muscle density. And they can virtually see in the dark.”
Dr. Halsey pondered this new data. “They should not be performing so well. There must be unexplained synergistic effects brought on by the combined modifications. What are their reaction times?”
“Almost impossible to chart. We estimate it at twenty milliseconds,” Mendez replied. He shook his head, then added, “I believe it’s significantly faster in combat situations, when their adrenaline is pumping.”
“Any physiological or mental instabilities?”
“None. They work like no team I’ve ever seen before. Damn near telepathic, if you ask me. They were dropped in these caves yesterday, and I don’t know where they got black suits or the rope that for that maneuver, but I can guarantee they haven’t left this room. They improvise and improve and adapt.
“And,” he added, “they like it. The tougher the challenge, the harder the fight... the better their morale becomes.”
Dr. Halsey watched as the first trainer stirred and struggled to get out of his inert armor. “They might as well have been killed,” she murmured. “But can the Spartans kill, Chief? Kill on purpose? Are they ready for real combat?”
Mendez looked away and paused before he spoke. “Yes. If we ordered them to, they would kill quite efficiently.” His body stiffened. “May I ask what ‘real combat’ you mean, ma’am?”
She clasped her hands and wrung them nervously. “Something has happened, Chief. Something ONI and the Admiralty never expected. The brass wants to deploy the Spartans. They want to test them in a real combat mission.”
“They’re as ready for that as I can make them,” Mendez said. He narrowed his dark eyes. “But this is far ahead of your schedule. What happened? I’ve heard rumors there was some heavy action near Harvest colony.”
“Your rumors are out-of-date, Chief,” she said, and a chill crept into her voice. “There’s no more fighting at Harvest. There is no more Harvest.”
Dr. Halsey punched the descent button, and the observation room slowly lowered to the floor.
“Get them out of this hole,” she said crisply. “I want them ready to muster at 0400. We have a briefing at 0600 tomorrow aboard the Pioneer. We’re taking them on a mission ONI has been saving for the right crew and the right time. This is it.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Mendez replied.
“Tomorrow we see if all the pain they’ve been through has been worth it.”
CHAPTER NINE
0605 Hours, September 12, 2525 (Military Calendar)
UNSC Destroyer Pioneer, en route to Eridanus System
John and the other Spartans stood at ease.
The briefing room aboard the UNSC Destroyer Pioneer made him uncomfortable. The holographic projectors at the fore end of the triangular room showed the field of stars visible off the bow of the ship. John wasn’t used to seeing so much space; he kept expecting the room to decompress explosively.
The stars flickered and faded and the overhead lights warmed. Chief Petty Officer Mendez and Dr. Halsey entered the room.
The Spartans snapped to attention.
“At ease,” Mendez said. He clasped his hands behind his back and clenched his jaw muscles. The Chief looked almost... nervous.
That made John nervous, too.
Dr. Halsey walked to the podium. The overhead light reflected off her glasses. “Good morning, Spartans. I have good news for you. The word has come down. Command has decided to test your unique abilities. You have a new mission: an insurgent base in the Eridanus System.”
A star map appeared on the wall and zoomed in to show a warm orange sun ringed with twelve planets. “In 2513, an armed insurrection in this system was suppressed by the UNSC force—Operation: TREBUCHET.”
An intersystem tactical map appeared, and tiny icons representing destroyers and carriers winked on. They engaged a force of a hundred smaller ships. Pinpoints of fire appeared against the dark.
“The insurrection was put down,” Dr. Halsey continued. “However, elements of the rebel forces escaped and regrouped in the local asteroid belt.”
The map tilted and moved into the circle of debris around the star.
“Billions of rocks,” Dr. Halsey said, “where they hid from our forces... and continue to hide to this day. For some time ONI believed that the rebels were disorganized, and were lacking in leadership. That appears to have changed.
“We believe that one of these aster
oids has been hollowed out, and that a formidable base has been constructed within. UNSC explorations into the belt have met either with no contact or with an ambush by superior forces.”
She paused, pushed up her glasses, and added, “The Office of Naval Intelligence has also confirmed that FLEETCOM has discovered a security breach within their organization—a rebel sympathizer leaking information to these forces.”
John and the other Spartans shifted uneasily. A leak? It was possible. Déjà had shown them many historical battles that had been won and lost because of traitors or informants. But it never occurred to him that it could happen in the UNSC.
A flat picture flashed over the star map: a middle-aged man with thinning hair, a neatly trimmed beard, and watery gray eyes.
“This is their leader,” Dr. Halsey said. “Colonel Robert Watts. The original photo was taken after Operation: TREBUCHET and has been computer aged.
“Your mission is to infiltrate the rebel base, capture Watts, and return him—alive and unharmed—to UNSC-controlled space. This will deprive the rebels of their new leadership. And it will provide ONI a chance to interrogate Watts and root out traitors within FLEETCOM.”
Dr. Halsey stepped aside. “Chief Mendez?”
Mendez exhaled and unclasped his hands. He strode to the podium and cleared his throat. “This operation will be different from your previous missions. You will be engaging the enemy using live rounds and lethal force. They will be returning the favor. If there is any doubt, any confusion—and make no mistake: in combat, there will be confusion—take no chances. Kill first, ask questions later.
“Support on this mission will be limited to the resources and firepower of this destroyer,” Mendez continued. “This is to minimize the chance of a leak in the command structure.”
Mendez walked to the star map. The face of Colonel Watts snapped off and blueprints for a Parabola-class freighter appeared.
“Although we don’t know the location of the rebel base, we believe they receive periodic shipments from Eridanus Two. The independent freighter Laden is due to leave space dock in six hours for a routine recertification of her engines. She is being loaded with enough food and water to supply a small city. Additionally, her captain has been identified as a rebel officer thought to have been killed during Operation: TREBUCHET.