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Chapter Text

Finally, I was free.

I had suffered much along the way: a tumultuous childhood, a difficult education, and a long period of job-searching. My dedication to intellectual pursuits had gained me awards, but no steady employment, merely a string of ‘guest’ lecturer positions.

Yet now, I had finally achieved the greatest of all things: 

A government-secured job with a pension.

Do not think me some traitor to the ideals of a free market. It would, admittedly, be much better to own my business, rather than serve as an employee in another – much less the Government. It is better to have a direct financial incentive to grow the corporation and thus enrich myself, the business, and civilization. To lack such a thing is to incentivize mediocrity, with employees performing only well enough to not be fired. 

But ideals work best in an ideal situation. When the rubber hits the road, pragmatism triumphs over principle, and I was nothing if not pragmatic.

The simple truth is, my third life had been terrifying thus far, and I was relieved to have finally escaped the terror. 

My childhood home in Outer Colonies was not just geographically distant. They were culturally, socially, and worst of all, politically distant. A pattern that has repeated throughout history, and which bodes poorly for a government’s unity.

I was born in 2492, two years before the official start of the Insurrection… at least, according to the Inner Colonies. To the Outer Colonies, the Insurrection had been ongoing for at least a decade. Resistance to the central government had increasing for years, changing from lone individual nutjobs to more organized, coordinated protests. 

What was the Insurrection? Fundamentally, it was people who didn’t like other people. A tale as old as time. 

To the average layperson in this advanced age, it was, perhaps, inevitable that such a conflict would occur. Outer Colony yokels were lambasted as dumb hicks by the Inner Colonies, and Inner Colony worlds were detested as nepotistic elites. 

Slobs versus snobs, essentially. 

But from my own perspective, both sides had forgotten their history, and were idiots for it. 

They both insisted on a simplistic viewpoint that cast all Outer Colony residents as one group, and all Inner Colony residents as one group. If you asked one of them, they might say that the peoples of Japan, China, Korea, Vietnam, and Indonesia were all the same, because they were all on Earth, and close together. A belief that is obviously foolish and incorrect, but which, like all collectivist ideology, appealed to people due to simplicity. 

Factually speaking, many Insurrectionists were born and raised in the Inner Colonies, and many government’s ‘jack-booted enforcers’ were born and raised in the Outer Colonies. 

I myself could be regarded as a defector who had sold her soul to the evil government because I wanted to see babies strangled in their cribs… 

…rather than the actual truth, which is that academia had been a safe harbor for a child wanting to escape violence. When the universities themselves started to get bombed, the next safest place had been inside a military base as far away from the Insurrection as possible.

Granted, my desire to become a government think-tank flunky was not purely pragmatic. 

I was, above all else, a rational thinker. Seeking out short-term benefits at the cost of long-term survivability was not rational. No, I had no delusions that this Insurrection would merely ‘blow over’. Violence is easy, and admitting fault is hard. The more bodies were stacked by either side, the more reasons they would have to fight. 

But as I said before, this was hardly a new problem to human civilization. From tribal skirmishes to religious conquests to world wars, humanity had long feared the “other”. Differences of any kind – racial, religious, social, political – thrived on two things: distance and lack of familiarity.

The solution to such problems was very evident throughout history. How does one mix cultures without conflict? How does one end wars without weapons? The answer: reduce the distance, increase the familiarity. Talk to other cultures, reduce tensions, and seek common ground. The fastest pathway to violence was to insist that cohabitation was impossible.

The greatest advancements in peace had always come from advances in the twin fields of communications and transportation. The horse courier (or ‘Pony Express’ in American parlance) had been replaced by the telegraph, the radio, the telephone, the television, and eventually, the Internet. Travel by horse had been replaced by faster ships, trains, and eventually the airplane. Exotic locations that required months of travelling now required a day at most.

Why had the Insurrection cropped up, after three centuries of relative peace? Because people in the Outer Colonies feared the far-off overseers of Earth, separated by months of travel. Faceless and voiceless figures that they had never met, had never shared a coffee with, and had never realized were just as human as them.

The real fuel behind the Insurrection wasn’t charismatic leaders, violent deaths, or grand political ideas. 

It was the vastness of space, and the slow speed of the Shaw-Fujikawa drive. 

If you wanted to communicate with someone on a different world, you wrote a letter and sent it on board a ship. It might get there in as ‘little’ as a few weeks. If you wanted face-to-face communication, your only option was to go there yourself, an expensive proposition that was even slower. From the furthest colony of Harvest to the homeworld of Earth, it could take more than six months.

Distance and lack of familiarity. 

For all the technological innovations of the 2500’s, our relative capabilities in communication and transportation had regressed back to the metaphorical Pony Express. Entire generations had grown up on but a single world, and feared the ‘outsiders’ on other worlds, never realizing that the outsiders might think the same.

And still, people wondered how the Insurrection had started. 

I had known of this problem for a long time. I had feared it, and my fears had come true – the flames of civil war rising higher and higher, until the greatest civilization that Humanity had ever seen was poised to collapse to the same illogical psychology that had doomed vastly smaller, poorer, and dumber civilizations. 

Thusly, I had dedicated my life to the study of communication and transportation. I had finished Highschool at the age of twelve, my Bachelors at fourteen, and was putting the final touches on my first Doctorate on Slipspace Physics at eighteen. Along the way, I’d picked up a few lesser degrees, and focused myself purely on solving the Great Challenge of Our Time.

If our Slipspace drives were faster, if we had FTL communications, or if I could wrangle both, then the root cause of this Insurrection would wither away. Alienation would dissipate. Tourism would increase. 

The UNSC would witness an economic boom not seen since the dawn of the Internet, as its people remembered that they were all human, all brothers and sisters. 

I was no traitor to the principles of the free market. I still held those views strongly. But to have a free market, one must first have easy communication and transportation.

I had long dreamed of bringing about a revolution of my own. Of guaranteeing the rest of the UNSC the chance to be free and prosperous. Of a universe where luxury foods could be shipped from any world to any other. Where people could vacation without losing months in cryosleep. Where the economy grew so large that a niche hobby could have a market big enough to support its obsessive creators. 

A nation so advanced that anyone could live anywhere, visit any planet, and work in any way possible.

And now, at the age of twenty-five, I’d finally get my chance.

The journey went by quickly. 

It seemed that my work had attracted some very high-ranking attention. The United Nations Space Command had detached a Vancouver-class courier ship for me. The Commander aboard had offered to transport anything I needed, including furniture. I’d politely declined, of course. I was used to travelling light, and had no wish to give a bad first impression as a prima donna. 

Still, a UNSC officer did not casually ‘offer’ to house excess cargo aboard a serving warship. Obviously, my employment by the UNSC was already assured. Clearly, I had it made.

Our arrival to the Epsilon Eridani II system was swift, but not entirely to my taste. Cryogenically freezing your passengers was a logical way to prevent aging out your spacefaring population, but it made interstellar travel a disorienting, confusing mess. Rushed into the cryopods, dipped into an ice-cold lake, and then pulled out like a popsicle a mere second later with several months having disappeared. Unlike the old days of travelling the oceans, it removed the possibility of gradually acclimating to the travel. Still, it was better than a bumpy train to the frontlines, and I was not ‘flying commercial’. 

The distances involved in space often made visual sights bland or boring, but as we moved inwards into the system to dock at an orbital station, I watched our destination rapidly grow from a grey dot to an imposing castle, bristling with gun turrets. Its design was crisscrossed with support beams and empty spaces for docking berths, making it look like an enormous letter H, or a particularly gargantuan picket fence.

The nearby frigates were nearly five hundred meters of silvery steel. I could not help but stare at them through my cabin terminal’s display, as we passed them on their patrol. Their angular form was marred by a boxy mid-section, making it look decidedly utilitarian… if not for the sleek twin engine-booms that powered the ships. My eyes lingered as they continued on their way, and I felt, once again, a lingering pang.

As we made our final approach, I gazed at an enormous cruiser undergoing some form of servicing. It was a strange design, one that I had not seen before, and was well over a kilometer long. It was relatively ‘skinny’ at the prow, but widened outwards as the keel expanded out to the stern. It was like a mountain had been hollowed out, removed from the planet’s crust, and laid sideways. 

Our deceleration was pushing g-forces against us, but I ignored it with a wealth of experience, and instead focused on zooming the courier’s cameras this way, and that, inspecting the glittering sparks that were dockworkers in EVA suits, buzzing around the cruiser like worker-bees around a hive.

This was my life now, I realized abruptly. 

Ten years of rural upbringing in a family that didn’t understand how to deal with my attitude, barricading myself in self-study. Eight years of dorm housing and the halls of academia. Seven years of rented housing for guest lecturers as I crammed out two more Doctorates. 

And here I was, back in the military again. 

No. 

I was a scientist. I was a civilian researcher who was merely being paid by the Government to pursue my research. I would create faster Shaw-Fujikawa Engines. I would advance our Artificial Intelligences. I would invent a Faster-Than-Light communications device.

I would not be condemned to the grinding wastes of the front lines. I would not be choked by the chain of military command.

I was going to have a nice apartment. I was going to adopt a cat. I was going to save our civilization from the wrathful actions of paranoid dissidents and tight-fisted bureaucrats.

I looked down on the blue-green marble below me. It would be my home for the next many years of my life. It was a rugged, harsh wilderness, yet was also the beating heart of the UNSC military. It would suit me well. 

“Now docking at Anchor 9,” the Commander called out over the ship’s intercom. “Welcome to Reach, Doctor Halsey.”

It seemed that the UNSC had carefully balanced their approach to hiring me. The pampering that I had received thus far had come to an abrupt end. I had been hustled from the tight spaces of Anchor 9 onto a Pelican dropship with no refinements, no luxuries, and brought down to the surface in a screaming re-entry procedure.

Logical of them. If they had kept flattering me, it would only convey that I was important, and that therefore, I could demand more of them in the upcoming negotiation. Instead, they had given me an initial wooing, and then ripped away the pretenses at the last possible chance, mere hours before I would be interviewed. The UNSC was a military organization as well as a civilian one, and this approach would remind people of it. The military does not change to fit an employee. The employee must change to fit the military.

On a normal interviewee, it would be undoubtedly effective. Unfortunately for them, I had been in the military before, in an environment of such disciplinary rigor that I was undaunted. So what if I had to sit on a cold metal seat, strapped into a harness as the dropship crashed through the atmosphere, shaking and howling the whole time? What luxury it was, to give me a harness in the first place!

I knew full well how important the UNSC’s patronage was for me. I knew deeply how many lives my work would save, if only I had their backing. 

Yet now, as the Pelican opened its back hatch, spilling in cold air and revealing the gorgeous landscape… I wondered if the UNSC was just as aware of the stakes as I was. If they knew how vital I was to them.

Why else would they feel the need to temper me in this way? To remind me of their own power and might? One does not show off in front of a potential hire for the janitor’s position.

And this was definitely showing off.

Nestled in the cedar-filled valleys, watched over by snow-covered granite mountains lay my destination: the Highland Military Complex. 

Dense clusters of barracks. Firing ranges. Parade grounds. Rows upon rows of airfields. Towering administrative buildings. Thick walls with missile launchers and AAA. They had created a military wonderland amongst the alpine heights. It was a vital training ground, an irreplaceable administrative center, and a natural winter resort for FLEETCOM’s admirals, all wrapped up into one present.

We came in for a landing, and jet-wash rippled across clean concrete as the Pelican touched down. A junior officer was already waiting for me as I stepped off the Pelican and set foot on the planet’s surface.

“Doctor Halsey,” he shouted over the roar of fusion-powered jet turbines. “Welcome to Reach! This way, please.”

I nodded, and stepped forward with a firm expression. 

The young officer lead me inside, out of the elements, and towards an elevator. Once inside, I brushed my hair back into its regular utilitarian style in a nearby mirror. The elevator did not rise, but instead dropped. There was no instrument panel to indicate how many floors, nor where we were. 

After an abnormally long wait, the doors opened, and the officer lead me out into a carefully nondescript corridor. There were no numbers or placards on the doors, no signs of life or information that could be exploited. 

Finally, at the end of the corridor, the young officer stopped and gestured for me to continue onwards. 

What lay beyond was an enormous amphitheater. A dozen rows of seats arced around a central stage, easily capable of seating hundreds. It contained a mere five people, four of whom were seated, and one of whom rose to greet me. The standing man wore a grey service uniform, and had two golden stars at his collar. The other four wore black service uniforms, and to my discomfort, none of them had any rank insignia at all. 

“Doctor Halsey,” the gray-garbed man said, nodding respectfully as I descended the steps towards them. “Welcome. I am Vice Admiral Keeler.”

“A pleasure, Admiral,” I replied. 

“As you already know, we’ve invited you here to discuss your research,” Keeler said, as he gestured for me to step up onto the stage, and returned to his own seat.

“Of course,” I replied, taking my place at the small podium. “I am at your service.”

“We are specifically interested in how your research relates to the Carver Findings,” one of the black-uniformed men said, looking at me with cold eyes and neglecting to introduce himself. 

Carver Findings? What on Earth were those?

“I’m afraid that I’m not familiar with that name,” I admitted, glancing at each of the assembled men in turn.

“You shouldn’t be,” the man said. “It’s very fringe, but we here at ONI believe that Dr. Carver was quite prescient.”

My stomach tightened, and I was unable to stop my lips from pressing together in a visible sign of my discomfort. 

No introductions. No rank insignia. No name cards. Reach was the largest UNSC naval base in existence, and where the Navy went, so too did their intelligence service. 

The Office of Naval Intelligence. Such a simple name for such a vast and powerful organization. ONI was the boogeyman of the Insurrection, and Innie propaganda was quick to label them as the worst moral abusers of a decaying system.

A thought flashed through my head. The Commander of the courier ship had offered to take everything I needed, including furniture. I had believed the UNSC was trying to appeal to me. But now it occurred to me that I had no lingering ties to the outside world. After all, my housing had been provided by the Universities I worked for. My family was long dead. What if it had not been the UNSC’s kindness, but ONI’s desire to remove any sign that I had ever existed?

I realized, abruptly, that if the UNSC wanted me to disappear, I would never leave this room. 

No! I scolded myself, taking care not to give any sign of my inner turmoil. No, the UNSC was not that kind of government. ONI may hypothetically be as dirty as any intelligence organization, but they were held in check by laws, regulations, and their overseers in the regular Navy.

“You will find on the podium an abstract of the Carver Findings,” the ONI officer continued. “Please, take a minute and read it through. You won’t need more than a basic grounding to understand how your research is related.”

I smiled thinly, and nodded to the man, noting how Vice Admiral Keeler stayed silent through that entire exchange. Was Keeler in charge of this interview? Was the ONI officer? Perhaps one of the others, none of whom had spoken? 

Lingering worries were unimportant, I reminded myself. This was my chance to make a difference in the world, and I refused to allow human hesitations to ruin it.

I looked down at the podium’s holographic screen, and began to read.

Less than a minute later, I wanted to curse, and damn my composure in front of the officers.

The Carver Findings. What a ridiculous name for this… pseudo-scientific claptrap! 

A nihilistic one-way rachet to oblivion, with the only escape route being horrific and immoral actions. Clearly, the product of a fool too obsessed with their own glory or too deluded to realize how their depression had tainted their work. 

This was not scientific research. It was garbage. It belonged in a scandal-rag, not here, in a room dedicated to briefing High Command. 

I wanted to look up from the page that held my gaze and ask how on earth my research could possibly be related to this abomination of science, when it hit me. 

Of course my research was related. 

No, more than that: my research was the obvious solution.

The ‘Carver Findings’ – as if this was fact, some discovery of a natural law of physics, or some lost archaeologic treasure – was the life’s work of an Elias Carver, a dual PhD in Political Science and Sociology. He’d published it in 2491, just a year before my birth, and he’d spent the rest of his life trying to convince the UNSC of his work’s importance… up until his suicide in 2509, just eight years ago.

The abstract briefing on the Findings was clearly intended for internal use by the Office of Naval Intelligence, and included a high certainty assumption that Carver’s suicide was caused by his guilt over failing to stop the prediction from coming true.

Yes, that’s right. His prediction. 

The Carver Findings, boiled down to simplicity, was a prediction that the protests in the Outer Colonies would soon intensify, and that a firm use of authoritarian military force was the only way to prevent a vast and destructive civil war. 

And that wasn’t even the worst of it.

Carver hadn’t merely predicated this belief based on a socio-political analysis of the past, and speculating a potential future scenario. Instead, Carver had written a prediction algorithm, and insisted that his algorithm proved – proved! – that said civil war was completely inevitable.

The only solution, according to Carver’s model, was a strict and firm hand. The United Nations Space Command should immediately usurp all colonial legislatures and governors, replace them with trustworthy military officers, create permanent military garrisons, and declare martial law. 

On every Outer Colony world. 

The more rebellious the world, the more brutal the proposed response. Suspension of rights would start with habeas corpus and private ownership of weaponry, quickly progress into freedom of travel, and in the worst cases, allow outright summary execution based on mere suspicion of collaboration with rebels.

If I had not been standing in front of a very serious Vice Admiral, then I would have been convinced that this ‘theory’ was Insurrectionist propaganda. Another use of the ever-common scare tactic of fabricating lies about your enemy’s proposed policies and tactics to make them look like monsters.

The biggest flaw in this supposed work of science was the claim of inevitability. The claim that without oppression, the resistance would only grow. As if oppression was not the most vigorous fuel to throw on the fires of rebellion.

Which is where my research came in. 

The Outer Colonies were not universally rebellious. Even the most rebellious colony likely had less than ten percent political support for the Insurrection. The actual die-hards who signed up to bomb cafes and take hostages were undoubtedly even less than that.

But neither were the Colonies universally condemning the Insurrectionists. Most people were not Innies or UNSC patriots. They were worried, fearful, and unaware. 

The sad truth is that an appreciable fraction of humanity can be convinced of pretty much anything if they’re approached in the right way. You can’t fix this by making humanity less naïve or more skeptical, because you can’t fundamentally change human psychology. Collectivist philosophies have tried for centuries to achieve that, with everything from bribery to genocide, and it simply doesn’t work. 

What you can fix is their specific knowledge of a situation. Not via lectures or education, because that is so easily propaganda. But via transportation and communication. 

Fear of the faceless people on another planet is remedied by increasing transportation to that planet. Allowing businesses to trade between those planets more easily. Allowing regular people to visit and see that other people are just like them. Allowing growth that binds communities together, making it harder for those communities to despise and attack each other.

Lies are so easily spread when communication is limited, intentionally or unintentionally. This is the most sacred task of journalists – and, of course, one of the reasons why they are both so feared and so coveted by liars. Propaganda is nothing more than a corruption of that sacred task. Whoever controls a limited source of communication has power over ‘the truth’. But when communication is increased, then that control becomes worthless. 

Would my research stop the current Insurrection? 

Yes, it would. Not instantly, but methodically. More notably, permanently. 

Any political movement is essentially a fire. That fire might linger for years, decades, even centuries by carefully managing how much fuel you feed it. Oppression is more fuel to that fire, as obviously no one likes to be oppressed. More grievances that can be weaponized by propagandists.

The only way to fight a fire is to starve it of fuel. The last embers of the Insurrection might fight on till their deaths, but they would have no more supplies coming from smugglers, no more recruits from angry victims, no more intelligence leaked from sympathetic insiders.

“Fascinating,” I said, looking up from the holo-screen. “While, of course, I cannot verify the legitimacy of Dr. Carver’s mathematical model, I can certainly believe it from my own personal experience of growing up in the Outer Colonies.”

Utter lies, of course. Still, one does not tell a prospective employer that they are an idiot for believing in pseudoscience. 

“I also see how my own research ties into this dilemma,” I continued, making sure to meet everyone’s eyes individually. “If I might briefly explain my own work, I can explain how funding it would-”

“Thank you, Doctor Halsey,” Vice Admiral Keeler interrupted. “We’ve already reviewed your work, and we agree with you wholeheartedly.”

I blinked, and despite my best effort, was unable to completely hide my surprise.

“Oh!” I replied, instinctively. “Thank you.”

“We’ve already started on your project,” Keller continued. “You will have a dedicated compound here inside the Highland Military Complex, with several facilities. Funding will be approved by ONI oversight, but will be extensive. Obviously, we are very interested in your success.”

I worked my jaw, clamping it shut lest it fall open. I was a professional, and if the UNSC wanted to spend generously on my behalf, this could only be a positive! I would not gape like some shocked student.

“A military staff has already been assembled,” the ONI spook added, nodding solemnly to me. “You’ll have roughly a hundred personnel within your project. We’ve also gathered together the co-authors from your paper, and the necessary scientific support staff for yourself and them. You will, of course, direct the project as its head.”

Co-authors? I opened my mouth for a moment to ask, then reflexively closed it again.

I had not co-written any of my research papers. Works cited, yes. Building on other people’s work, naturally. That was the nature of scientific authorship. But I’d never had a single co-author on any of my papers. Every single one had been solely written by myself.

What the hell?

“We’ll have your contract delivered to you shortly, not that there’s any concern about you,” Keeler said, smiling in a strange way. “You’ll soon learn that the paper-pushers love to dot all their i’s.” 

“Yes, well, bureaucrats will be bureaucrats,” I managed to reply, still frantically trying to figure out which paper they could possibly be referring to. 

“Indeed,” Keeler agreed, as he stood up, the ONI officers promptly following him. “Thank you, Doctor Halsey. Your work here will ensure the future of our species.” 

The ONI officers started filing out, up the stairs, as Keeler approached the stage and stuck out his hand. Muscle memory alone guided my hand into his – my higher brain functions certainly weren’t up to the task, as focused as they were on the vital task of discerning which paper, precisely, had landed me the offer of a lifetime.

“Don’t worry about the initial stages,” Keeler said, shaking my hand firmly. “We’ve already gathered the test subjects.”

Test subjects? I thought to myself, eyes widening involuntarily. 

My mind recoiled from the concept, and instead reminded me of something Keeler had said earlier. 

Co-authors. He had mentioned co-authors. I'd never co-authored a paper. 

Well, not a serious paper… but that one was a joke. We were drunk. Laughing about what we'd do with unlimited funding. Like wasting government money on a frivolous super-soldier project with every possible bell-and-whistle imaginable.

My blood ran cold. Oh. Oh no.

Chapter Text

The blaring of an unfamiliar alarm woke me. 

I rolled over in bed and drowsily smacked the offending device. I cracked a yawn as I slowly roused myself, rubbing at one eye. 

Some might believe that years of combat experience would make a person jumpy, scared, and easily awakened by alarms. They weren’t wrong, but I’d had many years of life since my days in the trenches. My instincts had dulled, yet the soldier’s desire for sleep had remained strong.

Still, I mused, as I set my feet down on the carpet, there was something odd about this. 

Had I bought a new alarm? No, I hadn’t, but I had been traveling, and it wasn’t unusual for university provided housing to come with such things. 

That would explain the unfamiliar bedroom around me – I was at another university! Somewhere closer to Earth, I vaguely remembered.

I stumbled through my morning routine in the attached en suite bathroom. A facewash, towel dry, a cleansing toothbrushing, some minor hair care, and I was well on my way to mental clarity, and prepared to get on with my day!

At least, once I fixed these bags under my eyes. Ugh. Whatever had I done last night, to earn such unsightly signs of stress? 

I reached for my makeup case, still looking at myself in the mirror with a frown. Some concealer, so that no one would see my ugliness. 

My fingers had barely touched the tube when yesterday’s memories returned, blasting off a naval salute in my hindbrain. The case slipped from my suddenly frozen fingers and crashed into the ground, spilling open with a clatter. 

My eyes slowly crawled upwards from my terrified reflection, to the emblazoned sigil etched in the corner of the mirror. A monochrome pyramid split in twain, with a black dot in the center, and bold lettering beneath.

USNC Office of Naval Intelligence. 

“Oh…” I whispered, sibilantly. 

I almost swore, but something about that sinister logo made me hold off. Call it paranoia, but if I see the logo of an intelligence service on a bathroom mirror, I assume it’s a one-way mirror.

Epsilon Eridani II. That’s where I was. The beating heart of the UNSC, and the home of its secretive, silent intelligence service. 

And, for the next ten years, my new home. 

I stepped out of the bathroom numbly, bare feet gliding over the regulation carpet. At a side desk was the employment contract – already signed, of course – and there, in black and white ink of old-school, formal hardcopy, was the death knell of my career and the doom of all my ideals. 

Ten years of service to the UNSC. Ten years of cutting edge research. Ten years of child abuse. 

Was this Being X’s revenge, I wondered, my cold fingers flipping through pages. 

He had tested me deeply in my last life. A life of senseless violence. He’d been convinced that I would cry out to him if I drowned in blood and gore. Instead, I had spit in his face, and learned to swim. When the world had sought to crush my spirit and kill my body, I’d responded by crushing and killing theirs first. In that dog eat dog world, I’d been a prize fighter, obedient to the leash of my earthly masters, all to survive the trials of the false divine.

But in this life, I had thought I was free. I’d believed, naively, that I had once again pre-empted that lying daemon by my swift action to escape his intended life. My assessment that he had desired for me to grow into a struggling terrorist had been wrong. 

How could I be so blind? I’d once berated that incompetent monster for its failure to understand the basics of Human Resources. I’d proven his incompetence in that last life. 

Yet for the past twenty-five years, I’d not considered the possibility that Being X could have learned from its mistake, and dedicated more effort to my damnation. 

And so that demonic spirit had. 

I’d planned my life so carefully, pursued my goals with alacrity, and sought to help the people of my new universe with what meager gifts I had.

To think that two decades of hard labor and clever plans could be unraveled by a single night’s bad decision and a few drinks. 

I stared down at the thirteenth page of my devil’s deal, and there, in plain English, was my sin. In exchange for the above listed terms, pay, and conditions, I was to see to the execution of the experimental program detailed in the following research paper: 

Enhancing Humanity: A Multidisciplinary Approach to the Development of Genetically Modified Super Soldiers with Integrated AI Neural Systems and Advanced Power Armor Technology, by Dr.’s Halsey, Meyer, Wu, and Sullivan.

It was, by technicality, the first research paper that any of us had written as a full PhD. How could it not be – we’d written the damn thing the same day we’d gained the title, while drunkenly celebrating.

A joke. That’s all it was, originally. I’d been happy over both gaining my doctorate, and achieving the drinking age. My colleagues, some of the few PhD candidates at the University of Circumstance that had been friendly towards a teenage prodigy like me, had been similarly exuberant.

It was a wonderful night of chatting and drinking in Steve Sullivan’s rented house. We’d imagined our future lives, speculated on the ways that we could advance humanity. Debated, good-naturedly, about which of our diverse fields would prove the greatest. 

Then one of us – I didn’t remember who – had sparked the conversation.

“When we’re all famous researchers, we’ll be rolling in grant money,” he’d said, giggling a bit over his cider. “What would we even do with it all? With unlimited money?”

We’d all had our ideas. 

David Meyer had talked at length about the psychological understanding that could revolutionize every aspect of human life, if only we could fund his project to fully understand the mysteries and neuroses of the human mind, combining the two halves of psychology, both social and biological.

Steve Sullivan had detailed his plans to usher in a world of exoskeletons and power armor, capable of re-entry skydiving for recreation, lifting tanks, and enhancing the human body beyond the greatest Olympic athletes, sketching a world of sleek plates and strengthened bodies.

Paul Wu had dreamed even further, disdaining the need for powered assistance at all, and sketched an image of humanity itself rising beyond its furthest limits, of genetic augmentation of every human, eradicating disease, and making the average human as smart and as strong as the greatest athletes and scientists.

And I had scoffed at my three friends, and loudly demanded to know why they were so pitifully lacking in imagination.

They’d asked for my answer, all good cheer and smiles. What great achievements could I work, with an unlimited budget for such boring fields as Shaw-Fujikawa physics and ‘mere’ artificial intelligence. 

“Why limit ourselves to just one field?” I had replied, planting one foot on the coffee table and milking the giant cow, as I spoke the fateful words that had doomed us all. “When we could combine our fields, and waste even more of that unlimited budget?!”

They were interested, of course. Arguing about the superior field of study was a long exhausted vein. Planning out the most optimal way to waste government funding was a new topic, laced with a hint of sacrilege and exotic zest. 

How great could power armor be, if even the base human wearing it was genetically augmented? How much more effective, if they’d had the greatest education in the world, carefully sculpted to inculcate them into the optimum mindset? What if they had an ongoing neural link with an artificial intelligence solely dedicated to helping them pilot said power armor? 

Foremost on our minds: how to waste as much money as possible.

Why dedicate this masterpiece to mere soldiers? What if they were also officers, engineers, doctors, pilots, scientists? Think of the training budget spent to have multi-disciplinary super-solders clad in exoskeleton armor. We loudly speculated that perhaps, if we insisted on enough ‘necessary qualifications’, we could make a single soldier cost more than a starship! We even floated such insane hypotheticals as non-existent technologies unsupported by current science, such as energy shielding.

And as we’d theorized and planned, late into the night, we discarded more of our moralistic qualms and replaced them with sweet alcohol. 

Human beings, David had explained near midnight, with a giddy hysteria, were stubbornly defiant animals that deluded themselves into egotistical delusions of grandeur. Adult humans were the product of thousands of psychological stressors and shapers, almost all of which could be randomized by vagaries of childhood environment and upbringing. Meritocracy was nothing more than selecting adults with the ‘correct’ experiences so that one could hopefully get the right mindset. 

But children, on the other hand, were much more malleable than adults. 

Take a child, and inculcate in them the correct attitudes and mindsets. Train them to be a soldier, an engineer, a doctor, a scientist. Dutiful but creative, aggressive yet calculating, intelligent yet subservient. Train them for the decades needed, and you could potentially shape them into a masterpiece, like Michelangelo sculpting his David. 

Paul had leapt onto the possibility. Genetic augmentation might be more stable with a grown adult, but it also meant dealing with the aftermath of their pubescent growth. Risks of malnutrition, vitamin deficiencies, potential allergies, and more. 

What if you could select your augmentation subjects from the entirety of the USNC’s population, using the genetic databases created to prevent disease outbreaks in the Colonies? The bell curve of humanity already led to so many exceptional individuals on the extreme edges, just from the combination of statistical outliers, and the sheer size of our population. 

Start the augmentation procedures during their puberty cycle, and co-opt their natural growth. Bones laced with carbide ceramics for nearly unbreakable limbs. Protein-cocktails for intramuscular injections to stimulate growth and achieve optimal musculature. Thyroid enhancements, retinal augmentations, even enhancing transmission speed of the nervous system!

Steve Sullivan had been dismissive, citing the lack of usability for children in power armor, before we’d reminded his drunken ass that they were children in training, and that one day, they’d be trained, grown adults. 

Imagine, we’d coaxed him, what kind of amazing suits could be designed for soldiers who stood seven feet tall, with reaction times under twenty milliseconds, whose bones could not be broken by the extreme stresses of the artificial muscles surrounding them. Capable of harnessing the full potential of his most sensitive power armor designs, with no reduction in capability required for ill-trained or ill-suited pilots.

And for myself, the integration of artificial intelligences. We were all well familiar with the massive utility and efficiency of dedicated ‘dumb’ AI’s, but what of vastly more capable, and vastly more expensive, ‘smart’ AI’s? If the goal was to waste money, then demanding a smart AI for each super-soldier would easily double the price per unit. Just one was nearly the cost of a small warship. What about dozens of them? 

The price of integrating such advanced technology into such a small package as a set of power armor would similarly be catastrophic. Much less the medical challenges of integrating the hyper-quick calculations of a smart AI into a compatible neural implant without frying the user’s brain.

We’d been nearly gloating by 1 a.m., when I’d realized how stupid we were. 

In an instant, my jubilant mood turned, and I’d berated them all, angrily switching between English and German as I castigated each of them in turn, and then, with the fury of a guilty conscience, criticized myself most of all.

We’d fleshed out a hundred details of our theoretical program to kidnap children, indoctrinate them into super soldiers, torture their bodies into the perfect building blocks for radical transhumanistic exploratory surgery, equip them with exoskeletons of powered armor barely dreamed of by current standards, and combine their minds with advanced self-aware computers.

But, I’d angrily barked at their amused faces, we hadn’t considered a tactical doctrine! 

How would the government utilize such super soldiers? What missions bore the greatest efficiency increases from deploying such masterworks? Where would they be trained? How would they be trained? What weapons would they carry? What tactics would they utilize? How could we squeeze every last ounce of value out of decades of economic investment into a soldier that might die in their first combat engagement from an unlucky missile or artillery shell, and waste all our efforts?!

I had descended into such a manic state that my colleagues and friends had assumed I was joking, and they responded by swearing that they had not dared impugn on my expertise by suggesting such things, when clearly it was my job. 

Who else, they’d laughed, could create that manner of military framework for our hypothetical billion-dollar experiments?

At the time, in my stupor, I had thought that the joke was on them. They did not know – could not know – that I had prior experience.

And so, we set to writing out our work, like mad scientists in the worst of pulp fiction novellas.

We’d whipped ourselves into such a frenzy, and fed on the energy of each other. When one of us had flagged at their workstation, dictating or diagramming notes, the others had pounced on the laggard, and motivated them with a combination of insults, compliments, alcohol, and caffeine.

When the morning came, our unholy combination of alcoholic frenzy and intellectual minds unshackled by morality had churned out a hypothetical academic paper.

I’d even insisted, solemnly holding a last toast as the sun’s rays filtered in through the rental house’s windows, on submitting the paper to the University.  

And now…. Being X had his revenge: the joke was on me. 

No longer was I an individual fighting for my own survival. No longer was I the leashed dog, voluntarily signing up for the military. No longer was I the master of my fate, captain of my soul.

Now, I was the monster looming above the suffering. I was holding the dog’s leash, forcing them to fight. I was trapped between the wheels of ONI and the children I would be forced to brainwash and send to die.

No. 

No!

I felt like snarling, and brutally crushed the urge under an iron fist. I would not give ONI the pleasure of seeing me in a weak moment. I refused to have a weak moment. 

I was damned. I had been damned from the moment I stepped foot on that courier ship, to come to Reach. 

It was not a new sensation; I had been damned before. I had once been trapped between the jaws of two animals; the inhuman savagery of trench warfare, and the soulless cogs of bureaucracy. I was familiar with such things. I could still operate in such places.

Yet even though I could survive in such a place, what of the children?

ONI, in their monstrous machinations, had already procured the test subjects. They had even discussed expanding the class size, potentially doubling it or quadrupling it, before settling on my original plan. They had only abducted seventy-five children. Seventy-five ruined families, destined to be broken by the loss of their intelligent, spirited, amazing children.

I was under no illusions that such children would manage to handle this situation. I myself had barely managed to keep my sanity in the military, and I’d entered at a later age, and with an adult mind. None of them would have any such advantages. They would be trained by harsh veterans of ONI special forces, the coldest killers in the galaxy. They would be nurtured at the breast of black operations. 

It was barbaric. Inhumane. It would break them all, leaving them as small, unmarked graves, or as shattered remnants of their former selves, reforged into alien beings. I’d brought this down upon those children, and I was doomed to be the maestro to their symphony of suffering. 

It was the work of Being X. It was too ironic, too pointed to my personal experience, for it to be anything but. 

But something twisted in me, as I cast the blame upon that monster. 

Being X had not inspired the idea of this program in me and my colleagues; that had been our choice to drink heavily and our emotional fervor.

Being X had not forced us to set aside morality in the pursuit of wasting money; that had been my own excitement at hypotheticals and dislike of government spending.

Being X had not forced us to write our horrific thoughts down, nor to publish it; that had been my pride, my hubris, my desire to see such quality work remembered, and not forgotten with the hangover.

I could not blame my own failings on that monster. I was so proud of being free from his grip, and I had not heard his voice once in this new life. It had been my own hand behind those evils. 

And even without knowing, I felt that I could not blame that demon for ONI’s decisions, either. How could I, when I’d seen so many generals make decisions they believed logical, yet only propagated the suffering of their soldiers? How could I, when I’d bemoaned the failure of both the UNSC and the Insurrection to understand that their biases and beliefs were coming from the fear of the distant unknown?

It would be hypocritical of me to decry such human weakness for most of my life, and then, the moment I fell victim to the same weakness, shift the blame to otherworldly influence, and hold men blameless for their horrific decisions.

If I was weak enough to say that, then I might as well blame Being X for forcing that damn ex-employee to throw me onto the train tracks. Or blame him for influencing my decision to fire that slacker, after all the time I’d invested in trying to help him improve his performance. I knew both to be completely wrong, given how utterly incompetent the false god had been when I had met him.

No. I refused to follow that winding, twisting road. I was free. I was the master of my fate. I was the captain of my soul.

And so too were the agents and masters of ONI, the men who’d looked at my utterly immoral idea, and decided to implement it.

Clearly, those decisionmakers at ONI were incompetent. Just as much as Being X had been. And yet they were now in charge of raising seventy-five children.

I was nodding, as the logical conclusion presented itself. 

If ONI could not be trusted to raise these children, then I would have to. Their parents were no longer an option, and I was both trapped in this situation, and bore a share of the responsibility for it existing in the first place.

After all, I had experience with such things. I had trained super-soldiers before. I had often been given suicidal orders and reinterpreted them to ensure survival.

And all it would cost… would be willing, eager participation in this. I must pretend to be an immoral monster, uncaring of the suffering of children. I would have to rub shoulders with sharks. I would have to operate within their system, their culture, their belief in necessary evils.

So be it.

I returned to the bathroom, and started doing my daily ablutions. I showered, washed my face, brushed my teeth. I picked up my dropped makeup kit, and carefully concealed the signs of my stress. I moved to the bland, government-issue dresser, and pulled out clothes. I clothed myself quickly, dressing in a neat, severe style. I needed to be distinct from the military uniforms, while still showing personal discipline.

The routine consumed my focus. When I emerged from this fugue, ready to start the first day of the rest of my life, I caught sight of myself in the corner of the mirror, and paused.

Apparently, it didn’t matter how I dressed. My back was stiff, my bearing proud. I may be wearing the garb of a civilian consultant, but I stood as I was wearing a uniform once again, ready to stand before a panel of Generals and defend my tactical decision. 

I held back a sigh. The return of my last life’s habits was inevitable. Perhaps, in time, I could view it as the asset it undoubtedly would be.

Now that I was fully awake, I could remember more from yesterday, including the local layout, and more troublingly, the schedule of events.

My new home was a separate compound deep in the FLEETCOM Military Complex, sequestered from other UNSC facilities by the rising spines of the Highland Mountains. We were situated near the bottom end of a low-rising canyon, shielded from casual observance by millions of cedar trees, and the peaks of the mountains themselves. More determined attempts to spy would be deterred by thousands of miles of restricted airspace, with any number of concealed, AI-controlled SAM sites, and dozens of UNSC Air Force fighter wings. On another world, perhaps we might have still been observable to spy satellites, but this was Epsilon Eridani II, and no satellites flew over Reach without the UNSC’s total awareness and approval.

It truly was a picturesque location, but it was also very remote. The only access into our training valley was via dropship, or a fifty mile hike through soaring mountain passes and narrow canyon descents. The latter option was entirely theoretical; no human had ever done it, and from the towering heights I’d seen on my flight in, I didn’t expect anyone to achieve it soon. I wasn’t convinced that even mountain goats could do it. The UNSC had settled the canyon from the air, deploying assets from above like they were colonizing a distant frontier instead of their private backyard.

Despite the rugged remoteness, the UNSC had wasted no expense in preparing this compound. The training compound was comprised of a dozen above-ground buildings, and an enormous underground labyrinth connecting them, carved out of the granite with high explosives and equipment from the titanium mines in the lower reaches of the Highlands. In the event of the biggest blizzard in a century, a hostile incursion, or even unrestricted nuclear warfare, the compound’s inhabitants could safely reside inside the underground tunnels for years.

The list of actual facilities was extensive. There were three barracks, a separate officer’s quarters, two mess halls capable of housing the entire population of the compound, five auditoriums for varying audience sizes, ten ‘classroom’ settings, four armories, a half-dozen gymnasiums for every kind of physical exercise, two pools, a fully equipped field hospital, several deep silos with extensive storage for every kind of supply, a motor pool, two separate hangars, one for our own assigned dropships, and one for visitors. 

The scientists associated with the project would not be residing here, save for myself and the psychology staff. The UNSC could easily direct a few daily dropship runs to keep the low-hundreds of human inhabitants supplied, but only so long as we weren’t consuming much in the way of actual materials, just food. As the research teams would be trying to break ground in half a dozen fields at the same time, they were going to use vastly more resources than that, and would require much more specialized facilities. 

This did mean that I would have to split my time between three different locations, and I was not looking forward to the constant VTOL commutes required for such activities. The first, obviously, would be this training compound. The second would be the research facilities that my project had taken over from their previous occupants, located two hundred miles away, near the edge of the Highland range, with actual railyards and transportation facilities. The third, to my anger and horror, would be FLEETCOM HQ itself, and the ONI sub-annex beneath it, to keep the shadowy intelligence organization apprised of our progress.

Today was the official start of my still un-named super-soldier project. All the required resources had been assembled, all facilities were secured and prepared, but there was still some pre-production steps to manage before the curtain came up.

To start, I had to meet with my military staff, and dictate the start of the training programs. The original paper had been quite specific as to the training of the test subjects, but only after they reached the age where they could actually build muscle and skills. The earliest ages were useless for the former, and had reduced effectiveness for the latter. The only reason to start training someone at six years old was for the psychological aspects – inculcating a belief system in them, training mental obedience, things like that. Demanding that a six year old do hundreds of push-ups every day was of limited use for anything other than sadism.

As a result, we hadn’t written much on the day-to-day training of six year olds. Just what kind of mindset we wanted to teach, what mental traits would be encouraged or discouraged. Apparently, I’d written at least some of it last night, before I crashed in a dismal haze. I didn’t recall much of it, but what was written here seemed to be good. I could explain further on the particulars to my staff in the meeting.

This was the foremost meeting on my schedule for a simple reason: the test subjects were to be woken from cryosleep today. Their training started tomorrow. They would spend the next ten years training, every single day, preparing them for cybernetic augmentation surgery that didn’t yet exist. They’d been gathered over the past few months, at the best possible times, and simply left in cryosleep until ONI was good and ready to open their pods. 

As one might imagine, despite the optimism of the ONI higher ups, the actual training staff were anxious to know how they were supposed to train these children, given that they would have at most twelve hours to familiarize themselves with said training plan before executing it.

After that, later tonight I would be giving a speech to the children and introducing them to the program. According to the notes written by some anonymous ONI expert, this way the children would learn the full truth late in the day, after the physically stressful process of defrosting from cryosleep, reducing the chance of abundant morning energy being directed at resistance. That allowed ONI to satisfy the barest moral qualms by telling the children bluntly that they had been conscripted, before giving them a filling dinner and sending them off to sleep. When they awoke tomorrow, they would already have some familiarity with their circumstances, and be less inclined to resist. 

As I walked through the halls of my new prison, I wondered idly if that was a standard procedure for ONI. They had done the exact same thing to me just yesterday, and had now handed me a detailed explanation behind the tactic. Was it honesty that compelled them to tell me, or was it simply the result of so much compartmentalization that they didn’t even realize they were admitting it to me?

What was incompetence, and what was deliberate malice? It seemed so hard to tell with ONI, and I was unimpressed by the organization thus far. I could spend days ruminating on the precise nature of their failures, but such behavior was unproductive and satisfied nothing but the shallowest of egos. Far better to focus on production and creativity. What could I do with the limited time available to me, that provide the most concrete, physical benefit?

It was a reaffirmation of my decision to work ‘willingly’ for ONI on this monstrous project, but it also applied to the supersoldiers I would be training. 

I was not so arrogant as to dismiss the value of the common soldiery, either in the sacrifice of their labor and lives, or in the intelligence of their creativity and productivity. But it was nonetheless true that they provided much less overall productivity to a military. From a purely utilitarian perspective, a skilled technician was more ‘useful’ to a military in many situations, until the actual shooting started, and the infantry grunt was once more needed. It was a dilemma as old as soldiering itself, and it was one that I intended to crush under the greatest military power in existence – an unlimited budget. 

I didn’t want to spend ten years educating these children, so that they would understand what horrors had been done to them, and be left with no other skills, no other options than to continue working for the same military that had enslaved them. Both ONI and I had robbed these children of their childhood, but I refused to also steal their adulthood from them. 

No, these children would have options. They would be more than enlisted or officers. They would have a grounding in useful subjects that could provide a career outside of the military. The only twist was that I couldn’t possibly be obvious about it. I could not teach them masonry, or accounting, or medicine. But I could teach them battlefield engineering, logistics, and first aid. Those rudimentary first steps would have to be enough.

I hid these thoughts behind a cold mask as I approached the private conference room attached to my office. The schedule was so hectic that I hadn’t even had the chance to see my office before I was thrust into bureaucratic meetings. I’d say it was an ill omen for the future of this project, but honestly, at this point we were collecting death flags like spare change on the streets.

The conference room was only intended for meetings of my command staff, and so it was cozy, tight, able to seat eight people and no more. When I entered, I was encouraged to see that the four figures had already entered. One of them, a Captain Wilson judging by his rank insignia and name tag, had already decided to take a seat at the head of the table, taking my spot. The three others appeared to be non-commissioned officers. 

Wonderful. I was back in the military for two days, and the power plays had already started. 

Perhaps this Captain Wilson believed that he was in charge of the project. Perhaps he’d even been told as much by Vice Admiral Keeler. Unfortunately for him, no matter how legitimate that perception was, I could not allow him that power. If I was to try to raise this children properly, as the closest parental substitute that they would ever have, then I could not be countermanded or overridden in my daily work by a figure above that. Disputed authority would achieve nothing but confusion and disobedience, making children more prone to negative behavior. 

It would be an uphill battle to dislodge this man from the project, but it was achievable. After all, he could be replaced far more easily than me. Exceptional military officers were rare, but a scientist capable of running four separate research projects and combining them together was borderline impossible to find. 

“Dr. Halsey,” Captain Wilson greeted me, his tone courteous, but in a perfunctory, token manner. “So glad you could join us.”

Ah, hostility. I smiled back at the officer, my expression just as fake as his. I had arrived precisely on time for the meeting, despite it being scheduled for 0700. Perhaps Wilson believed that I would be irritated by the early schedule. I doubted that he knew my own habits were to rise at 0500, and only the travel lag had reduced me to sleeping in to 0600.

“But of course,” I replied, walking in and sitting at the clear ‘foot’ of the table. “However can this project proceed without coordination between the training and research sections? Thank you, gentlemen, for your prompt arrivals.”

I nodded in turn to each of the non-coms in the room. Two of them had the bearing and appearance of elite soldiers, but the third one was plainly uncomfortable, and his uniform had a particular stiffness that suggested it had either just been issued, or it was rarely ever worn. The nametags read Mendez, Wentworth, and Swanson.

“So, shall we get started?” I asked, turning my gaze at Captain Wilson as I laid a datapad out on the table. A tap of the screen hooked it into the table’s projector system – a standard feature at my old lecturing positions, in this new technological age.

“Yes, let’s,” Captain Wilson replied, his words clipped and tight. His eyes narrowed as he gazed back at me, and my smile widened in turn. He did not bother to hide his animosity for me, and I did not care to hide mine for him either.

“The first item on our agenda is the training schedule,” Wilson said. “As of this morning, no training regimen has been provided. Given that the subjects are being defrosted as we speak, could you enlighten us as to why that has not been provided, Doctor?”

I was tempted, quite heavily, to tell him that it was because I had only been hired by ONI yesterday, but that would have been a mistake. Not because I would be pleading ignorance, but because I would be giving an excuse, apologizing, and submitting implicitly to his authority as a newcomer.

“Gladly,” I replied, showing no signs of hesitation at his baited question. “That is because you are being provided with it now.”

I tapped a key on my datapad, and the schedule flashed up on the projector.

The two grizzled non-coms looked at the data and started reading. Wilson didn’t bother, merely keeping his glare locked on me. Swanson looked uncomfortable, and barely glanced at either of us.

What was such a timid person doing in this situation? I glanced at his rank insignia, and saw that he was a Staff Sergeant from the Marines. Not the highest of NCO’s, but an E-6 was nothing to sneer at. It was the highest that many might reach by the end of their service. 

In comparison, both the other non-coms were E-7’s. Wentworth was a Gunnery Sergeant, also from the Marines, while Mendez was a Chief Petty Officer from the Navy. There had to be a reason for this, but I couldn’t tell what it was yet.

“Why the delay?” Wilson demanded from me, leaning forward. “And why is this schedule only for the first week of training?”

“Because the rest of the schedule is still being refined,” I answered calmly. “It will be issued before the end of the week.”

“And why not sooner?” Wilson pressed. 

Again, I was tempted to tell him that was because it hadn’t yet been written. Frankly, I was lucky enough to have written down the first weeks’ worth of training last night! But that would be a mistake.

“If you have an objection to how I run this program,” I said instead, addressing the man directly, “then you may take it up with Vice Admiral Keeler at your leisure.”

Mendez and Wentworth stopped reading the projection, and stiffened. Swanson tried to freeze in place, but I could see slight movements under the table as he clenched his hands together. I didn’t know what thoughts were running through the heads of those men, but I could handle those potential issues later. For now, I had to nip this problem in the bud as swiftly as possible.

Wilson didn’t reply immediately, and instead locked eyes with me, initiating a stare down. His gaze was intense, and I could see in it the well-earned confidence of a man that had achieved nigh-impossible tasks with focused application of force. He was an elite among elites, a man of towering pride and capability. He had no hesitations about killing, and I could see now that he was weighing how much of a problem I would be.

I didn’t look away. I looked straight back at the Captain, my own gaze firm, and let my smile widen slowly, remembering all the times I had met men like him on the battlefield, and left their corpses strewn across the landscape. Men like him were chaff to me. No, more than that. They were lacking. I had faced down mad scientists, crazed zealots, and God himself. A mere man like Wilson was nothing compared to that.

The Captain broke off from the stare down first, and grunted in reply to my previous sentence.

I started explaining the details of the next week’s training program to the tense table, and spared no more thoughts on Captain Wilson.

Chapter Text

There was no more time for self-pity and waffling. The die had been cast, the Rubicon crossed, the bell rung. I was now an active participant in this crime against humanity.

I needed all the keys to success that I had cultivated in my prior life. I needed three things to win. The first was an understanding of my situation. The second was a plan to improve this situation. The third was an evaluation of how others will try to stop that plan.

I knew my situation well, at this point. Both in large scale and in small. What I needed was a plan of action, consisting of firm goals, with metrics for success and measurable failure states. 

What did I want to achieve, I mused at my desk, paging absently through a list of personnel allocated to my program.

Above all else, I wanted this travesty to never occur again. 

The best pathway to that was… difficult. It was tempting to think that acquiring personal power would allow me the influence to prevent such a thing, but that would be in stark contrast to the economic laws that ruled reality.

This supersoldier program had been born of desperation for an effective answer one of the stickier pickle jars in military doctrine – how to handle dispersed infantry in dense locations you could not afford to bomb. No amount of personal power would change the fact that expensive, highly trained, elite trigger-pullers were still the least bad solution to that problem. Sooner or later, the incentives would entice some individual into the same horrible place as ONI. 

If I only had FTL communications, then I could go for a cultural victory and successfully convince the wider culture that such things were unacceptable. Alas, no such FTL communications existed, or the Insurrection would have never been born. 

Similarly, inventing some kind of superior option to the tactical question of dislodging infantry would simply provide militaries with a more effective and horrific tool of murder – another step on the perpetual arms race of existence, rather than an end to a disgraceful and disgusting methodology of child soldiers.

No, the only way that I could solve this problem would be a partial cultural victory: changing the minds of the select few who would have power to influence a wider area. 

For example, convincing HIGHCOM of the sheer evil of child soldier programs would require me to convince no more than twenty individuals, which was vastly easier than convincing twenty billion. Of course, HIGHCOM was composed of the highest ranking individuals in the UNSC, which made influencing them both difficult, and expected. They were wise to manipulation, given how much of it was directed at them. 

But… what of the children themselves?

The original paper had hinged on inculcating the children into loyal soldiers. I’d written several paragraphs dedicated to the unavoidable fact that enhancing an individual to such a high level of physical, intellectual, and psychological performance would be utterly suicidal if you could not guarantee their loyalty. 

Potential rogue supersoldiers would not be so stupid as to open fire on their comrades on a battlefield, and be gunned down in turn. They would have been educated on insurgency and counter-insurgency tactics, and would be the greatest potential spies and saboteurs – fully trained and equipped with everything they needed to perform grievous damage, and implicitly trusted enough by dint of the UNSC’s commitment of resources to them. They would be clever, hiding their actions, casting doubt upon others, worming their way through the chain of command to gain even more power.

David Meyer had advocated for using children in our drunken research paper because of the potential heights that they could reach. I’d cautioned for the need to ensure loyalty because those same heights could easily be negative rather than positive.

Now, obviously, I didn’t want to make super-Insurrectionists. Their ideology was united only in opposing the UNSC, and in nothing else. If they had been the dominant force in the galaxy, they would have been even worse rulers and created even more problems than the UNSC’s occasionally harsh grip.

But the same tools used for sabotage could also be used for influence. Knowing which targets to focus on, which to avoid. Training for specific missions with the appropriate tactics, regardless of their nature. Gathering as much intelligence as possible to effectively leverage into desired results. 

I’d had already planned, in the original paper, for these children to become officers, leaders, champions, and not just replaceable grunts. This was a simple extension of that idea. Great officers rise higher and higher, meaning more and more influence. Given that I was starting with children that were easily in the highest percentile of humanity in various metrics, it was inevitable that they would be great officers, if they were given the chance.

And who better to pursue a policy of opposition to child soldiers than people who had, themselves, been child soldiers? 

Granted, there was an incredibly high chance of perception bias that would have to be rooted out and purged before it could set it. The logic of “I was a child soldier, it wasn’t so bad”, when they had been treated as valuable cadets to be educated, rather than replaceable meat shields as was historically common for child soldiers. 

Of course, we’d already intended to educate the children about many things, including psychology, so it wouldn’t be out of the ordinary to educate them in that exact perception bias, and ‘forget’ that they could apply it to their own situation and realize how unnatural it was.

Yes, I decided, as I stood from my desk, shut down my workstation, and prepared to face the literal representatives of my sins. That would be an excellent plan.

ONI and I had stolen these children from their parents. I was supposed to be their distant overseer, but that did not rule out a more… maternal role. After all, what mother did not want to see their children grow, improve, and become better than they, the parents, were? 

My shoes clicked in the hallway, and I nodded to the occasional UNSC military personnel I crossed on my journey to the auditorium.

It could be argued that this was my weregild, my repayment to the children. It would be their inheritance. I would turn them into generals and admirals, lords and ladies. I would crown them with laurels, if only so that the next time someone proposed an idea like mine, the deciding voice would be theirs.

I entered the auditorium. It was still empty. I walked down the staircase, my eyes lingering on the seats. It was a smaller room than the HIGHCOM briefing amphitheater that I had stood in with Vice Admiral Keeler, but it was the largest of the five auditoriums within my new compound. It would seat perhaps a hundred people, which made it perfect for the seventy-five children that were the candidates for Project Orion-II. I’ve got to do something about that name, I thought, scowling internally. It just didn’t have the right ring to it.

I ascended to the stage, and set my tablet down on the podium where I could read from it. 

There were others present, though I had ignored them on my walk inside, so consumed with my thoughts. Gunnery Sergeant Wentworth, the quartermaster for the project, stood at the top of the auditorium with several of his men, awaiting my signal to bring in the children. Chief Petty Officer Mendez, the head trainer for the children, was with them right now, along with his seventy-five handpicked men, one for each child.

I sucked up my courage, and nodded to Wentworth. It was time.

The children entered the auditorium slowly. 

I watched, furious but helpless, as they were nudged along by the stern-faced soldiers looming over them. They stumbled their way down the auditorium’s stairs, down to the very bottom, lower than the stage’s floor. They would be forced to look up at me, in the harsh contrast of the illuminated stage against the darkened rows of seating.

They were so young. 

I’d been that young three times in my lives. The most recent one, in this life, had been consumed by a firm work-ethic to improve my lot in life. I’d acted like a salaryman from the start, grinding away at the millstone without complaint or comment, piece by piece. The middle one, perhaps the most influential of them all, had been consumed by the terror of knowing what a hellish world I had been born into. I’d been born a victim, and had desperately chosen a path away from victimhood, towards agency, but instead, my decision had doomed me.

But my first life? In my first life, I’d been consumed by the simple joy of being a child. I’d been born a child, an innocent being that experienced each new day as if it were the first touch of a cuddly animal, the first glimpse of a new landscape, the first smell of freshly laundered clothes. I had delighted in the sights and sensations of the world. I had been fascinated by the smallest of details. I had been so overwhelmingly happy.

These children had likely been the same, experiencing the world anew each day, playing with their friends and family. Now they were locked into a pre-ordained life. They would spend ten years in the same valley, only seeing the same dozen buildings, only interacting with the same hundred people. Their free will, their freedom to choose, was forever robbed from them.

They weren’t even allowed the individualism of whatever clothes they’d been abducted in. Every child had been stuffed into a dark blue uniform jumpsuit, and barely visible across their chests was a number. No names, no other identification.

They had numbered the children.

I fought down my fury, and clenched one hand in my pocket, around a thin, rectangular keepsake. I could not lose control. Not here, not now. Not because ONI would see, but because this was the first impression that the children would have of me. This was the most important time to establish a relationship with them, and I’d have to do it with seventy-five children, without the ability to deal with them one on one.

The last of the children were gently pushed into seats in the first few rows, and I found myself staring at the painfully confused faces staring up at me. They were sleepy, some rubbing at their eyes, and some still yawning. Behind them stood the military trainers that would mold these children into supersoldiers. They were cold men, special operations veterans. The rare kind of man that would be comfortable with this barbarity.

I looked down at my podium. I had notes written, the paltry efforts of my attempts. It didn’t seem adequate, but I had little else. At the very least, I could be honest with them. They deserved so much, and honesty was the smallest of those things, but it was, for now, the only thing I could give them.

“As per Naval Code 45812, you are hereby conscripted into UNSC Special Project Orion-II,” I read from my notes, looking up at the children. I swallowed, hoping that the movement was not noticed by the staring eyes. “You have been called upon to serve. 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.”

I couldn’t stand the eyes. I stopped speaking. My notes paused on the autoscroller, hanging on the next line about the good they would do, the lives they would save. My throat was stiff. Perhaps, if I was less honest with myself, I’d say I had a lump in it, or that I was dehydrated, but I refused to lie to myself. I was afraid. I was regretful. My body was merely in tune with my mind’s hesitation.

My shoes clicked on the stage as I stepped away from the podium. The children watched me as I moved to the edge of the stage. I descended the steps, coming closer to their level. I paused for moment, as the smart-lights adjusted, a spotlight following me.

“You can never go home,” I said, directly to the nearest child, a brown haired boy with bright blue eyes. His head had been cut short, military-short, and his forehead was wrinkled with confusion, but he listened with careful attention. I turned my gaze, and addressed the next child in the row. “You can never see your families again.”

I shifted my gaze again. A slim young girl, with an identical military haircut, who looked shifty, anxious, agitated. Then a taller boy with sandy-blond hair, who was struggling with his trainer’s oppressive hand. Another, with blood-red hair and emerald-green eyes, nearly motionless, her eyes tracking every motion I made.

Finally, my gaze settled on a girl in the second row, who was staring back at me with an intense gaze. She, alone of all the children, seemed to understand the barest hint of the situation. There was a tremor to her hand, but her expression was rock solid. She sat at attention, back stiffened and straight.

“You will work for the United Nations Space Command,” I said. “You will be soldiers. The training will be hard, but you will endure. You will be trained by the best that the UNSC has to offer, and you will become better than them.”

I looked around, trying to meet their eyes. The children didn’t meet my eyes back, shying away as I looked at them in turn, save for the first boy, and the final girl. 

The trainers didn’t move. Their hands were on the children’s shoulders, keeping them from standing up. I spent a moment looking at them as well. It felt like there was nothing I could say to make this right, not without revealing my true feelings in front of the UNSC’s trainers, hardened men that would not hesitate to report me to their superiors. 

“Your training starts tomorrow,” I told them, stepping back. “Your trainers will take you to the mess hall, and after you eat, show you to the barracks.”

I nodded to the head trainer, Chief Petty Officer Mendez. 

“Cadets! Fall out!” Mendez barked out. 

Naturally, most of the children didn’t respond. Some of them stood slowly, and only one or two managed to stand up in enough time for Mendez. The first boy and the final girl that I’d looked at. Mendez’s mustache twitched, and visible distaste crossed his face. He made a gesture to his training staff, and then took a deep inhale.

“Cadets, when I say ‘fall out’, you stand up!” Mendez roared, as the trainers grabbed the remaining cadets by their armpits and hauled them up. 

I wanted to turn away, but I couldn’t. The Chief Petty Officer snapped out more orders, and the trainers frog-marched their captive children up the stairs and out of the auditorium. They left the light of the stage and marched off, into the dim dusk, off to their new lives.

I should leave, the logical side of my brain whispered. I had work to do, preparing a similar speech to the scientists tomorrow. I had a training plan to organize. 

My feet stepped forward, guided by some unknowing hand, and I followed the children out. A few of the trainers noticed, and glanced at me, but my face was stern and still, and they redirected their attention to their charges. 

The line of children and trainers streamed ahead of me, a train of humanity, with myself as the caboose and Mendez as the engine. The Chief Petty officer led the procession up the emergency stairs, avoiding the elevators. It was a long walk, up five flights of stairs, and out an emergency door, into the darkness of the late evening. The trainers kept tight grips on their assigned individuals, and the children were too confused, too tired, and too awed by the sights to make the most of this opportunity to escape.

This far up the Highland Mountains, it was brisk and chilly, but the children showed little awareness of the temperature. They gasped, oohing and aahing as they witnessed the outside world again. Their heads turned wildly, gazing all around at the cedar trees, the mountain peaks both near and far, and the regulation gray buildings of the compound illuminated from below, rendering them mysterious and grand rather than bland and boring. 

Most of all, they stared up at the stars. I didn’t know their origins, their backgrounds – such things had never been a part of my paper – but I imagined that almost all of them had lived in cities, statistically home to most of the population. Few if any would have lived in the more remote areas of their colony worlds, where light pollution was nonexistent. For all that Reach was the private military playground of the UNSC, a well-populated world of industry, this mountainous region was sparsely populated. The stars were out in force, and they glimmered like jewels in a dragon’s hoard. 

At the head of the procession, Mendez threw open the doors to the children’s mess hall, and bright light spilled out into the pathway like liquid gold. It was welcoming, and the enticing aroma of delicious food wafted out, across the grounds. The children were drawn to it, and I followed them inside. 

The mess hall was filled with low tables and benches, enough to house everyone in the compound. For now, barely half were needed. Trays of prepared food lay in wait for the children on the tables, each accompanied by a tall bottle of water. They’d pulled out all the stops – the food was steak, grilled to a fine sear, accompanied by twice-baked potatoes slathered in butter, sour cream, and chives. Roasted baby carrots and small mounds of peas rounded out the meal. 

Already, the children were setting themselves upon the food with ravenous hunger, the combination of their young bodies need for nutrition and the after-effects of a long period in cryo-sleep. The clatter of cutlery filled the air, and the trainers stepped back, leaving the children alone to eat. One of them shut the mess hall door behind me, and many stationed themselves around the children in a loose circle, while others peeled away to eat their own meals. 

What an extravagant meal, I mused to myself. I walked to a bench situated at the outskirts of both groups, inside the quarantining circle of trainers, but which had been left alone. I sat down, and started eating. The food was, quite honestly, some of the most delicious that I’d ever had, and it was hard to recriminate myself for enjoying the fruits of my crimes when it tasted so good. 

I’d discovered in my briefing packet that Staff Sergeant Swanson, the uncomfortable non-com from my earlier meeting, was to be the head of our human services section – meals, laundry, cleaning, and other necessary requirements for human habitation – but I’d not expected him to be quite so good at it. Perhaps this was why he had been so uncomfortable; an excellent chef, but not a veteran, blooded special forces operator like the rest of the personnel here? It was a fine dinner, and I ate it swiftly. 

Still, there was an undeniable tension in the air. The children ate greedily, but they did not talk to each other. Why should they? They were surrounded by total strangers, and they had just had their world irrevocably altered. Perhaps a boisterous, stupid child would power through that by dint of arrogance and youthful ignorance, but none of these children were stupid. The selection criteria had been incredibly specific. The cream of humanity’s crop, the statistical outliers at the extreme edge of the bell curve. 

The sound of footsteps came from behind me. I turned my head and saw CPO Mendez standing there, looking down at me.

I met his gaze, and raised an eyebrow inquisitively. He said nothing, but joined at me at the table, sitting down across from me, taking one of the untouched trays of steak, potatoes, carrots, and peas. He ate with precise motions, and said nothing. 

We sat there and ate together. I finished before him, and wiped my mouth with a napkin, before looking to him.

“Do you need something, Chief Mendez?” I asked. 

“Tomorrow’s schedule is light,” he said quietly, as if making an idle observation. It was not, of course.

“It is,” I agreed, waiting for him to say more. 

He had spoken very softly, such that no one could hear us speak. Was this some kind of private doubt? Perhaps, but I thought it unlikely. Mendez was an experienced non-commissioned officer, and he knew that trainers would be watching him talk to me, even if they didn’t know what about. 

Was this a test, of some kind? Asking me to justify my decisions to see if I really knew what I was doing? To see what kind of leader I would be? I found that more likely, but I couldn’t know for sure.

Mendez frowned, his mustache wrinkling and unwrinkling as he chewed a bite of food.

“A gradual ramp up,” Mendez said. “That’s the plan? With these… games mixed in?”

“Physically, yes,” I confirmed, patiently. “We have ten years to train their bodies, and I have full confidence in your ability to do so. Most of that work will wait until they are more grown. The more difficult task is to train their minds and spirits. They must be a cohesive, coordinated unit. We must drill that concept into them from day one. They will win as a team, or they will lose alone.”

“You’ll be teaching them?” Mendez asked.

“Some days, but not tomorrow,” I said shaking my head. “The educational A.I. will handle their first lessons. I will be busy with the science teams.”

Mendez took the final bite of his meal, and nodded. 

To the side, the trainers started hustling the children up from their tables, and off to their beds. 

I wished to follow, to reassure them, to ensure the trainers were not too harsh with them, but I could not. I had already deviated from my plan, lured by the emotions within me, and I could not risk sabotaging the future salvation of these children for such things. 

I stood, nodded to Mendez, and headed back to my office. I had more work to do.

Chapter Text

Steve fought to keep his grin from racing across his face. 

It was hard, because he was nearly bursting at the seams with happiness at this very moment. It probably wouldn’t look very good if the new hire was grinning like a maniac. But he couldn’t help it. He’d finally done it. He’d finally made the leap to the greatest R&D program in the universe. 

He’d finally been hired by ONI. And even better, he would be in charge of a team. He would have his own dedicated group of like-minded researchers, forging the bleeding edge of advanced technology.

People liked to talk bad about the Office of Naval Intelligence, but most of that was just because the guy doing the most work always gets the most attention and the most criticism. Since the UNSC Navy was the backbone of the interstellar government, the only thing capable of policing the space-lanes, that meant the Navy’s intelligence service got blamed for everything sketchy in space. As if Army Intelligence never did anything wrong.

Because the UNSC Navy handled the most problems and the widest variety of environments and situations, it also had the biggest research and development budget out of any department, organized through ONI. 

Which meant, at long last, that he’d be able to build power armor. 

ONI had been very upfront with him, something he was reliably informed was rare for the organization. They’d hired him because of his work on both materials science, and on the gradually advancing field of exoskeleton frames. 

Exoskeletons were an old idea, but they were crippled by several issues, including strength-to-weight ratios, control mechanisms, and most importantly, power. Advancing beyond human limits was relatively easy, but doing it on anything more than a testbed or an industrial loader was much more difficult, and worse, much more expensive. 

If they could solve those issues, then the uses for exoskeletons were vast. Heavy lifting in tight confines like starship cargo bays. Emergency services like firefighters. Powered armor for the military, finally providing a better solution than sending some poor bastard through a door into a hail of bullets. 

ONI told him that the budget would be nigh unlimited. They told him that they’d been working on micro-fusion packs that, while expensive, would be able to power an exoskeleton for weeks of non-stop use. They even told him that they had a way of cracking the control issues. 

With one job, he could improve so many facets of human society, get paid incredibly well for it, and make his childhood dreams come true. How could he not sign on?

Steve Sullivan, double PhD, walked eagerly into the next room. He’d been told that his team would be awaiting him inside, and that they’d receive a briefing inside. 

The doors opened to a large boxy room, larger than some convention centers. Rows of chairs in front of a podium. The room was already filled with people talking quietly. A buffet table was off to the side, with bottles of water, light snacks, and plastic-wrapped sandwiches. 

This was his team? Steve suppressed the urge to giggle, and entered with a small skip in his step. 

He shook hands and introduced himself to many of the others, when he hit a snag. Everyone in the room was a researcher, but they were from a bewildering array of specialties. For each materials science, mechanical engineering, or exoskeleton researcher he found, there were at least two with wildly different specialties.

There were dozens of people present. Maybe fifty, maybe more. He recognized some of them – some of the top names in his own field, for instance. He shook hands with people whose work he’d studied for years at college, or who were some of the rising stars, like him. 

Some of the smartest people in the UNSC were gathered in this very room, and the very notion that he belonged here was making him giddy… but there was a slight edge to that knowledge. He was smart, yes, but ONI had told him that he was going to be in charge of a research team. Surely, that team couldn’t be in here. He was peers to some here, but others were far beyond him.

“Steve?” a voice called.

Steve turned, and out of the crowd emerged a familiar face, nearly unchanged from a decade ago, save for the addition of a neatly trimmed goatee. 

“Paul!” he called back, his grin splitting his face, as he moved towards Paul. “God, how long has it been, man? A year?” 

“Two years,” Paul Wu answered sourly, his mood dour. He jerked his chin at the room around them. “What’s going on?”

“ONI’s decided to hire the best and brightest, that’s what!” Steve laughed, grabbing Paul’s hand and shaking it furiously. “This is gonna be great!”

Paul didn’t reply, instead turning his head and glancing around at the crowd. 

“Why would they put us all in the same room?” Paul asked, scowling. “We’re in different fields. Shouldn’t this be compartmentalized?”

“Well, they just hired me,” Steve said, shrugging as he slung an arm over Paul’s shoulder. “Maybe we’re all new hires, and this is just the introductory briefing. You know, going over the NDA’s, giving us access cards, stuff that doesn’t involve the lab work?”

“Maybe,” Paul muttered, still looking furtively around the room. “Is that…”

Steve followed Paul’s gaze, and nearly beamed again. Near the front edge of the crowd of milling scientists was another familiar figure. His head was shaved, but other than that, the man still looked like a bodybuilder that had wandered into the wrong seminar. 

“Hey, Dave!” he cried over the crowd, waving an arm. “Over here!” 

The tall, well-muscled figure turned, and squinted at them.

“I must be getting cataracts,” he said wryly as he approached. “I can’t believe ONI hired this joker.”

“I know, right?” Steve replied, chuckling. “Biochem’s worthless; doesn’t have nearly the applications as exoskeletons.”

“He meant you, jackass,” Paul shot back, his unhappy expression fading and a slight smile coming to his lips. “Good to see you again, David.”

David Meyer smiled back, then pried Steve’s arm off Paul’s shoulder with a practiced grip. Steve fought back playfully, but he was no match for his old friend. He never had been – David had wrestled for the University of Circumstance while pursuing his MD, in the good old days when they’d all roomed together at Steve’s rented house.

“All we’re missing is Catherine,” Steve said, smiling. “Then we’d have the whole gang together again. Any of you guys heard from her?”

“Not since Uni,” Paul replied with a shrug. “Knowing her, she’s staring into a computer simulation right about now, still trying to crack FTL comms.”

“Or working on better engines,” David added with a nod, before gesturing to the crowd around them. “You know what this is about?” 

A chime rang through the room, cutting through the conversation. 

“Please, take your seats,” a man’s voice said over some speakers. 

“Nope,” Steve said, a careless smile on his lips. “But I think we’re about to find out.”

David pushed him lightly, and Paul rolled his eyes as they moved towards the seats. The crowd dispersed quickly, settling into chairs within a few minutes, some still clutching unwrapped sandwiches or polishing off cookies. Steve briefly regretted not grabbing something, but frankly, the experience had been worth a little hunger. And there’s still more to come, he thought to himself, a little giddy even now.

A woman stepped into the room and approached the podium. She moved quickly, her shoes clicked on the polished flooring, and her clothing was severe – a tightly fitted set of dark pants and gray uniform tunic that looked like the ONI officers he’d seen over the last day or two, with the only visual relief coming from a white lab coat worn as an over-layer. 

Steve frowned, some of that earlier unease trickling back into his mind. He could only see the woman from the side, but she looked familiar, too. She reached the podium and turned, and Steve blinked, his conscious thoughts coming to a full stop.

It was Catherine Halsey, the last member of their four-man band from the University of Circumstance. But something was wrong with her. She was acting like a machine, like something made of cold iron and electric logic.

It had been seven years since they’d all lived together in the party house, as Steve had dubbed it. She was the youngest, and had only lived with them because the university’s housing supply had been stretched to the breaking point. It had been a great time, the younger woman’s initial unease at living with three older men swiftly fading as they’d all done their best to be as respectful as possible. It hadn’t taken long for her to join in on their weekly poker nights. They’d all become great friends by the end of it, and it had seemed like fate when they’d all achieved their first PhD’s together.

Catherine looked very different now, Steve could see clearly. Oh, she was still young and pretty, but her face was carved out of marble, and her eyes were hard, cold things. The lab coat was the only indicator of her scientific profession, and without it, dressed in an unmarked ONI uniform with all rank insignia removed, she seemed like an entirely different person. 

Steve glanced at Paul, his eyes widening. Paul glanced back, his own expression stiff, lips pressed tight. 

He knew that kind of expression, that cold focus. He’d seen it on the nameless ONI officer that had explained, in detail, what would happen to him if he ever talked about classified documents. 

Steve looked back to his old friend, at how she gave no signs of recognition to her three old roommates sitting in the front row. At her military bearing and emotionless expression.

How long had she worked for them, he wondered. How long had she been drowning in the dark, secretive world of ONI?

“Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to ONI,” Halsey said, looking out over the seated crowd with a cold gaze. Behind her, the back wall flickered to life, revealing an enormous presentation screen. ONI’s logo flashed for a few moments, and then faded out.

“My name is Doctor Halsey,” she continued, as the screen changed to a bold CLASSIFIED stamp. “For the next decade, you work for me. You will live on-site in this base for the duration of that time. You will not be allowed to leave the base without a security detail. After our work is over, you will be accompanied by that security detail for the rest of your lives. Any attempt to violate these measures will be met with either lifetime imprisonment or summary execution.”

A chill went down Steve’s spine. Murmurs came from some of the other scientists. 

“You will now be briefed on Project Orion,” Halsey told them, her voice flat and mechanical as the screen behind her changed once more, to a stylized emblem of a roaring lion, with a drawn sword behind it. “Project Orion started twenty-six years ago, in 2491, and continued until eleven years ago, in 2506.”

The screen flashed, and a still image of a training camp appeared. More images appeared, changing every few seconds. Soldiers were climbing rope-walls, jumping across wooden pillars, and using exercise equipment. But something looked off to Steve. Maybe it was just bad timing on the photo, but the feats didn’t seem physically possible. One of the men was benching more weight than he’d ever seen. A woman was hanging six feet in the air, reaching out for the start of the rope-wall as if she had jumped for it, higher than anyone could jump.

“The project’s goal was biological augmentation for increased military performance,” Halsey said, as the images continued. “The result was faster reactions, enhanced strength and stamina, increased mental capacity. The side-effects were hormonal imbalances, a sharp rise in mental illnesses, and numerous physical ailments, many lethal.”

The next image was a man stripped to the waist, strapped to a medical gurney, screaming. His veins were bulging, and it wasn’t hard to see why – there was a discoloration around his arms, like he’d been dipped in paint. A vivid yellow smear across both biceps, standing out in stark contrast to his charcoal skin. Someone gasped behind him at the sight. 

This was starting to sound familiar. He’d heard speculation on human augmentation before – the Insurrection liked to insist that the UNSC was sending out chemically altered supersoldiers to kill protesters. It was a natural hit for conspiracy theorists; just plausible enough to be possible, just fantastical enough to capture the imagination, and just terrifying enough to be afraid of.

But he’d also heard of human augmentation from a more educated source. Someone that considered it possible; even potentially preferable. Something that, if done properly, could be an enormous benefit to individual people and humanity as a whole. Steve turned his head and shot a look at Paul Wu. 

Paul was staring up at the image, his mouth open, and his eyes blank. Paul probably knew exactly what had gone wrong with the man in the image, and whatever it was, it was visibly terrifying him.

“The project was a short-term success, and a long-term failure” Halsey continued, completely unaffected by the suffering of the image. “Due to a scattershot of augmentations, a wide range of military volunteers, and tailored procedures to each individual, the surgeries had an immediate success rate of nearly 80%, and a long-term health complication rate of nearly 70%.”

Halsey paused there, and cast her imperious gaze over the crowd. The screen changed, mercifully, and the Project Orion logo returned, with an enormous red word, CANCELED, emblazoned over it.

“This result was unacceptable,” she stated, firmly. “The volunteer subjects were all highly trained, veteran soldiers. Their increased performance was highly valuable, but it cut their careers short by decades, robbing the UNSC of their value. The cost-benefit ratio was intolerable, and the project was closed before more would be wasted.”

God, these were people she was talking about, Steve thought numbly. Yet she talked about them like they were… stocks, or some other kind of investment. Numbers on a spreadsheet, to be analyzed without emotion. 

A new image appeared, showing paper documents. Much of the pages were blacked out, censored, but a few passages were left, and specific phrases were highlighted. 

“The post-project analysis highlighted several flaws with the methodology,” Halsey continued. “Most important among them were rushed development cycles, non-uniform augmentations, and loose selection criteria. ONI has no wish to repeat these specific mistakes.”

Halsey’s eyes flickered down, and she looked at them. At Steve, Paul, and David. At her old roommates. There was a flash of something unreadable in her eyes, something uncaring, something alien. Then she looked away, and there was no other sign that she knew them.

Something clicked in Steve’s brain. Something about the phrasing. The project itself hadn’t been deemed a mistake. It wasn’t that ONI didn’t want to repeat the project as a whole. It was that ONI didn’t want to repeat those specific mistakes within the project.

Steve felt his eyes widen, and he looked to Paul, then to David. They seemed to have made the same realization as him, the same horrifying conclusion. 

The screen changed. Now it bore a new logo: an eagle with wings stretched above it, clutching a thunderbolt in one talon, and a bundle of arrows in the other. The murmurs in the crowd fell silent. Steve didn’t dare look away. He already knew what Catherine Halsey was about to say.

“You are here to work on Project Orion II,” Halsey told the crowd.

“Oh God,” Steve whispered, the words distant in his ears.

“Orion II will not make the same mistakes as its predecessor,” Halsey said, speaking over him without knowing. “We will be spending the next seven years perfecting a set of augmentation procedures. They will be uniformly applied to the candidates. The candidates themselves have been selected specifically for compatibility with the augmentations, and will be augmented at a time of maximum effectiveness.”

The screen flashed again, and showed a timeline. At the start was this very year, 2517. At the end, in seven years’ time in 2524, there was a label that read Augmentation. Each year in between had more labels. Development cycles, testing simulations, refinements. 

Halsey’s eyes stared forward, drilling holes into everyone she looked at. The labcoat she was wearing could barely hide the sinister presence of the ONI uniform beneath it. 

The logo disappeared, and was replaced by an organizational chart. Four separate boxes, one in each corner of the screen, all feeding into a central circle. They were labeled Augmentation, Surgery, Exoskeleton, and Artificial Intelligence. Beneath the main labels were names, one for each box. 

Underneath Augmentation, it said Dr. Paul Wu.

Surgery, Dr. David Meyer.

Exoskeleton, Dr. Steve Sullivan.

Artificial Intelligence, Dr. Catherine Halsey.

“The project will have four separate design teams,” Halsey recited. “The first is the Augmentation, which will develop seven specific human enhancement procedures.”

Paul looked ill. His face was pale, and one of his hands was shaking at his side.

“The second is Surgery, which will aid in developing those procedures, as well as creating an improved neural lace, and which will perform the augmentation surgeries,” Halsey continued. David looked furious. His arms were tense, his fists clenched, and his brow furrowed.

“The third is Exoskeleton, which will develop a cybernetically integrated suit of powered armor that will be utilized by the augmented candidates,” Halsey said, and Steve’s eyes nearly popped out of his skull.

Cybernetically integrated exoskeletons. Was Catherine insane? 

Sure, the UNSC had made great strides with neural implants, but they were fundamentally basic devices. The standard UNSC neural implant was the equivalent of wireless dog tags, used to verify identity and respond with pings to a locator device. Even the advanced ones they shoved into high-ranking officers added nothing more than an encrypted storage device.

Using a neural implant for anything more than that was theoretical at best – and Halsey wanted them to hook into a goddamn exoskeleton? Something weighing a literal ton at minimum? What kind of feedback would that give to a person’s brain? What kind of augmentation could make a person able to withstand that?

This wasn’t a research project. This was a golden lamp, and Halsey was rubbing it, praying for a genie to come out and make her impossible wish come true.

Steve glanced at David. On top of being a great friend, David was one of the most medically gifted people in the entire UNSC – perhaps the best young neurosurgeon, and a PhD in psychology on top of that. If this was right, then he and Steve would have to figure out some way of making and installing this device. Surely, he would be just as confused as Steve was feeling right now. 

But David Meyer wasn’t looking back at Steve, sharing his confusion. Instead, he was glaring at Halsey, his entire body tensed, as if he was about to leap up and attack her. 

Steve stared. Yes, this was bad. Yes, this was a horrifying concept. But none of that should have made David so angry, so furiously mad. Dave was caring, generous, and always had a smile on his face. This kind of reaction was extreme. He looked like if they weren’t in the heart of an ONI base, he might have done something drastic.

Paul’s hand reached out and grabbed Steve’s. 

Steve jerked in place, looking over to his other friend. Paul looked even worse now, like he’d seen a ghost. 

“Do you remember our research paper?” Paul hissed, as Halsey continued, talking about what the fourth team would do.

“What?” Steve asked in a low voice, baffled. They were in completely different fields. They’d never done a research paper together.

“When we got our PhD’s,” Paul whispered, his voice urgent. “When we all got drunk that night?”

“I don’t…” Steve started to say, before pausing as a thought struck him. In a split-second, he realized exactly why Paul’s face was nearly corpse-like, why David looked like he wanted to murder Halsey with his bare hands. It felt like Atlas had dropped the world onto his shoulders.

The research paper. The joke research paper they’d all worked on, on the best way to make genetically augmented supersoldiers, with artificial intelligences hooked into neural implants, and wearing cybernetically interfaced exoskeleton power armor.

The research paper that involved kidnapping children. 

Steve looked up, all the blood draining from his face, as the next slide came onto the screen, and Halsey began to speak about the candidates.

“Seventy-five candidates have already begun their training,” she was saying, her voice washed out, like Steve had ruptured both eardrums. “In seven years, as their bodies undergo puberty, they will undergo the augmentation.”

Someone else in the crowd was speaking. Someone had stood up, behind him, and was shouting at Halsey. He couldn’t make out the words, but they were objecting. Their old friend, who Steve hadn’t seen in years, glared back at the man. The force of her gaze was a laser, cutting over his head.

“You have all signed the contracts,” Halsey declared, her voice finally gaining an emotion – anger. Her face melted, and the heat of a sun burned from it, washing over the crowd like a coronal ejection. “You will perform the assigned duties for the Office of Naval Intelligence, or you will be subject to lifelong imprisonment or summary execution.”

The man behind Steve abruptly stopped talking. 

“You will perform these duties to the absolute best of your abilities,” Halsey continued, her mouth hammering out words like nails into their collective coffins. “If you don’t, if you shirk, if you refuse, then everyone in this room will be forced to labor without you, and the augmentations are more likely to fail.”

She glared at them, her expression ugly and harsh.

“The choice is yours,” she spat. “Do your jobs and live with the stain on your conscience, or hold tight to your moral superiority and let the children die.”

Chapter Text

Franklin Mendez was a soldier above all.

Honor, courage, and duty were the three guiding principles of his life. He followed orders and trusted that his superiors knew their jobs. It was an attitude that had caused some friction early in his career with the Navy, but had been well-rewarded after his transfer to NavSpecWep. 

He’d served on nearly a dozen worlds, and clocked at least two years in cryosleep, being shuttled from planet to planet chasing the wildfires of Insurrection. In that time, he’d seen many of his comrades question themselves. 

In the field, complications meant failures. Complications meant an increase in doubt and hesitation. Their doubts slowed them down. It got some of them killed. It was a luxury that Mendez could not afford, and neither could the UNSC. 

Was the UNSC perfect? No. Was the Insurrection a superior option? No. 

Was it any more complicated than that?

No.

In the last ten years of his career, he’d focused every aspect of his soul to the job. Where others drank with wild abandon, he kept his consumption light, kept a cool buzz and nothing more. Where others lazed and slacked off, he took double-shifts and spent his spare hours on the mats, the ranges, or the yards. Where others laced their bodies with all manner of chemicals, he smoked the occasional Sweet William cigar, and nothing more.

That attitude would have won him few friends, but he was in NavSpecWep, and they were twenty years into a fight against an Insurrection that had already bled lives during counter-terror operations. They were the tip of the spear, the first into the fight, and they couldn’t afford anything but the best, or they would die. The stereotypical view of special operators was a band of gung-ho, ultra macho men that pumped iron, shot steroids, and drank wildly, but that was pure Hollywood. Most special forces were like him – calm, quiet, focused men who were dedicated to the job first, and everything else second.

He'd earned a reputation very quickly in NavSpecWep, and it meant that ONI didn’t really know what to do with him. 

There were essentially two kinds of UNSC special forces: the shooters, and the trainers. The UNSC was an enormous organization, constantly undergoing the churn of recruiting, training, and retiring. Even recruiting ‘just’ the best 1% for special forces, that meant that the combined Army, Air Force, Navy, and Marine special forces was a million strong at its lowest ebb. 

It also made it hard for civilians and bureaucrats to understand if they were talking to one of the best killers in the galaxy, or merely someone that had passed the entry-level training course and got his Ranger tab before returning to his Army unit of grunts. Narrow it down, sift through the huge population of “special forces” to get the real elite, the kind of people that were invited to join ONI and other special projects, and you were looking at about ten thousand people.

From that limited pool of ten thousand, add in that some ‘operators’ spent their entire careers without firing a single shot in anger. Likewise, some door-kickers could never teach their special edge. That was just as a non-commissioned officer. If you wanted a strategic mind on top of that, a tactical leader who could run a unit larger than a platoon, it dropped even lower; so low that you could count those people on a single hand. Two of the people on that hand had defected to the Insurrection. It had been a real loss. 

In that hallowed realm populated by the best of the best, Mendez was a dual threat. He was both one of the best shooters and one of the best trainers in the galaxy, capable of handling any mission, or training men to do the same. It made him a rarity. If you asked him a year ago, he might had said there were fifty men as capable of that as him, just off the top of his head.

Apparently, there were at least seventy-five of them. ONI had grabbed them from duty-assignments all over the Inner and Outer Colonies, pulling them from training camps, wet-works squads, and things so clandestine that Mendez hadn’t even heard their names before he met some of them.

ONI had put them in charge of training children. One trainer per candidate, to ensure absolutely nothing hindered their training. Mendez had been placed in charge of the trainers. The others thought that the children would be trained to be like them. Mendez alone knew that the children had a different fate; in seven years, they would be surgically enhanced, made even better than a mere human.

That was the thing about the military. Every time you thought you understood it, you would be told to do something incredibly stupid, for reasons that were beyond you. Bad soldiers complained about these moments. Good soldiers sucked it up, and did their best.

Mendez and his men were accustomed to dealing with adult soldiers, who’d already been through Basic Training and Ranger selection. They were tools of refinement, the equivalent of a sandpaper finish over an almost finished statue – not hammers and chisels to be applied to an untouched stone block.

Children. Really. 

None of this showed on Mendez’s face. Not a twitch of muscle as he ordered the uncoordinated six-year olds through their new morning PT routine. Not a gram of emotion as some struggled and were aided by their trainers, or protested and were berated or jolted with stun prods.

How, exactly, does one train a six year old? 

Can you give them a filled rucksack and order them on a twenty-mile march? Of course not, you’d damn near kill them. 

Can you give them a loaded weapon, and put them on a firing range? Of course not, the recoil would be far too much for them. 

Can you train them in hand-to-hand combat, and beat them into the ground? Of course you can, but that was a great way to kill their morale and any willingness to participate in this already dubious training. 

So for now, Mendez was left with the most basic training, like a Maestro from the Sigma Octanus Planetary Orchestra trying to conduct a grade-school concert band. Pushups, sit-ups, squats, lunges, jumping jacks, in increments of no more than twenty. Then a slow-paced jog, followed by dropping them off at the schoolhouse for some lessons.

Then, while the children spent an hour learning about the concept of teamwork through holo-vids of wolf packs and being given snacks of protein-crackers and nutritional cocktails, the trainers would run a mile to the nearby ‘playground’ that Gunnery Sergeant Wentworth had been working on, erecting a bizarre jungle-gym of poles, ladders, ropewalks, and other training equipment over a pool of water. Above it all, at the highest point and above the singular exit pole, was a bell. 

The idea, per Doctor Halsey, was to sort the children into twenty-five teams of three and sent them into the jungle-gym all at once. It sought to accomplish multiple goals. Most importantly, fostering teamwork in the candidates by directly telling them to cooperate, and by punishing anyone who violated that teamwork directive. After that, it would encourage them to compete against each other as a fairer metric of success than trying to contest fully grown, elite spec ops units.

After they had a good little bit of team-building fun, the candidates would be run through another set of PT, followed by another lesson, this time in normal educational areas like math, writing, and science. Then another set of PT, followed by another team-building exercise in the once-again reconfigured ‘playground’. 

It promised to be mind-numbingly boring until the candidates could actually start learning useful skills. Mendez had already improved the process by having each trainer perform the exercises with the candidates, since six year olds wouldn’t know the proper techniques. The side-benefits included keeping his men from losing their minds at the inanity of watching kids struggle with basic PT.

By the end of these seven years, Mendez believed that his trainers would be in the best shape of their lives, if only from the boredom driving them into more exercise, like inmates at a prison.

Mendez didn’t know what to think about the program as a whole. 

Yes, he trusted his superiors, and he trusted the UNSC, but he was metaphorically a lone soldier in a foxhole, his information highly limited. Even in NavSpecWep, even working for ONI Section Three, he had possessed the invisible luxury of not knowing how the sausage was made. 

The motivation, science, and logic might be beyond him, but what little Mendez knew did not paint a pretty picture of the UNSC’s true success with the Insurrection. Generally speaking, a nation doesn’t turn to wild science projects when they’re winning the war handily. A nation turns to them when they’re concerned, when they’ve got a reason to worry. Personally, he couldn’t see the bigger picture. Couldn’t even guess. From what he knew, the Insurrection was doing a great job fighting a doomed war. There was no need for a project like this, to his eyes. 

But he was only the bleeding edge of the knife. Every time he fought the enemy, they had lost. It made him feel great, but it meant nothing about the overall success of the war. You could win battle after battle, and still lose the war by neglecting important things, as many ancient kingdoms had learned. His own biases did not reflect reality.

He was caught between two emotional positions; his trust in the UNSC’s capabilities, and his awareness that the UNSC itself seemed afraid. Neither was a logically consistent position that could be defended objectively. 

All he could do was his best, as he had in other difficult times. Some problems were insurmountable as singular items, but quite possible when tackled as separate smaller parts. 

The first part of this problem: ONI wanted him to train six year olds, in order to make genetically augmented super soldiers. This implied that there would be a desperate need for such super soldiers. Worrying, but it wasn’t the worst sign. It was still a desire to solve whatever issue they saw approaching in the future, even if they thought it would require abilities far beyond that of a normal elite operator.

The second part of this problem: split command chains. Captain Wilson was his nominal superior, but he was clashing with Doctor Halsey, the program’s creator, designer, and chief scientist. Easily resolved, if there was a clear chain of command. Unfortunately, even on his third check of what little documentation he had been provided, there simply wasn’t a clear chain of command written out. It was nearly unheard of for ONI, but it made an odd sense for this project, which was unquestionably military focused, yet also relied so much on as-yet un-invented science.

The third part of this problem: keeping his trainers focused for the duration. The normal training cycles meant that they were accustomed to training a class for, at most, three months. Any issues with a given trainee, a fellow instructor, or the nature of the training itself, could be shelved by professionalism until the class was over, and then a reassignment requested. But here, this was simply not possible. There were only so many people with their specific skillset, and the classification requirements made easy reassignment impossible.

The fourth part of this problem: Adjusting their teaching methods to six year olds. So many of their techniques would be invalid for years. They would be hard-pressed to retain their edge for those same years. Not to mention the keeping up the necessary professional detachment to apply the right mix of encouragement and motivational stimulation to children that they had literally watched grow up. 

Together, impossible to overcome. Tackled in sections, fairly easy. 

The first part could be ignored until more information was gathered. At this level, if there were warning signs of whatever the higher-ups saw coming, he would be the first to know. Doctor Halsey was going to be giving regular briefings to HIGHCOM on the project’s progress, and from what he saw of the Doctor thus far, she wasn’t the greatest at hiding her true feelings. If she had been, she wouldn’t have objected so harshly to Captain Wilson. Especially not for reasonable questions about why the training schedule was so delayed, when this project had clearly had years already invested into it. 

The second part was much more concerning. Split chains of command were a nightmare that would cause plenty of problems, if they weren’t resolved. For now, he’d have to keep a close eye on it; if it worsened, he might have to take action. ONI wouldn’t be happy to get a quiet word from an NCO that their two project leads were in a bitter feud, but they would appreciate the chance to fix the project at an early stage, before the project was ruined. At the moment, Mendez simply didn’t know enough to tell who was right, and who was wrong here. For all he knew, their initial clash had been an irregularly aggressive set of posturing, and they would both settle into polite professionalism over time.

The third and fourth parts were… frankly, looking like the hardest part of the problem. They would take the longest time to manifest, but they would be the biggest problem for the men under his command. HIGHCOM could worry about whatever future problem they saw coming, and ONI could worry about the officers and scientists infighting, but Mendez alone had the responsibility of caring for the wellbeing and success of his men. 

He was the highest ranking NCO on the project, and the head trainer. Gunny Wentworth, though a capable man with good combat scores, had left the world of shooting behind after a bad deployment years ago, and was a Quartermaster now. Wentworth would care about his technical staff, the state of all equipment in their compound, and nothing more. The wellbeing of the combined Navy and Marine trainers, all seventy-five of them, belonged to Mendez, and Mendez alone.

None of his trainers had said anything yet. This early, that wasn’t a bad thing, as he himself was still adjusting to this strange new program. He knew most of his men; they were professionals like him, who buried their feelings behind their work effort. But some of the men were new to him, and as time passed, sooner or later those feelings would start to affect their performance. 

The best he could do was keep an eye on both the candidates and his trainers. Watch them for the tell-tale signs of stress, and step in when it got to be too much. 

Frankly, Mendez would have done that normally. It was part and parcel of being an NCO or a trainer. The only difference was that now he would have to perform those same tasks at a higher level, with higher stakes, for both his men and the candidates he was now in charge of.

And the same applied to the unexpected task of training young children. There was no magic solution to this problem. It was a bad situation, but he would handle it as best he could. It was a harder challenge than training adults, and he would have to live up to the trial. They all would.

The third day of Orion-II training was emblematic of the norm. 

The children rose before the dawn, his trainers barging into the candidate barracks and shouting, dragging children from the bunks, overturning the beds of the slowest risers. It was blunt, cruel, and heavy-handed. It was, per Doctor Halsey’s notes, a necessary evil to teach the children to… how did it go? ‘Respond swiftly and promptly to the rigors of military discipline.’

It was one thing to do that to adults who had been lazy. It was another to do it to children, especially when the same orders had emphasized that the children be in bed by the early hours of the night, to ensure sleep deprivation would not affect their growth. 

Even without Doctor Halsey’s full plan, Mendez could predict the broad strokes based on what little info he had. The gradual increase in physical workouts. The weapon training with air rifles on a bi-weekly basis. The skill lessons starting with basic camping, and ramping up to month-long expeditions with no equipment. 

It was like smoking a brisket – the proper way involved reduced heat over an incredibly long time frame compared to more conventional meats. ONI was investing a decade into these children, and they were cutting no corners in the process.

Mendez led the children through their normal morning PT, then dropped them off with the A.I. for lessons on history, tactics, warfare, all glamorized to draw their attention. 

When he picked them up, they did not return to the playground. Doctor Halsey had been correct about the harsh measures used on the candidates that shirked teamwork, and on only the second day of training, every candidate had learned to cooperate. As a result, they were getting a reward: a lighter, softer training that offered a break from physical exertion or mental memorization.

Today was their first introduction to weaponry. It was little more than air rifles, but it was still a weapon. Only once the candidates were more trained, mature, and responsible would they be upgraded to the smallest of vermin rifles. 

Mendez had spent thirty minutes preparing both the range and his trainers. They would teach these children as if they were holding live weapons, with deadly seriousness. They would correct technique, explain principles, and instruct the candidates as if they were their very own children. 

It was yet another of what Mendez was growing to identify as Doctor Halsey’s signature training methodology – a knife edge balance between punishment and rewards. The candidates would always shoot alone, with the instructors stepping in during their reloads. If they failed to perform – as they would, because they were children – then they would be firmly instructed and manhandled into proper form. If they performed well, then the trainers would step back and leave them to continue their practice, resulting in the most time the candidates would have in relative solitude since their training program had started.

It was an incredibly stupid way to teach children, in Mendez’s personal opinion. Children were inconsistent at the best of times, ruled by emotions and whims that they themselves didn’t understand. Sure, punishment and incentivization had worked on children for millennia, but that commonly included a huge amount of forgiveness, leniency, and acceptance of their failures. Repeated explanation of why their failure was being punished.

Halsey was treating the children like adults, cutting the tolerance for failures to the bare bones. They had one chance to get something right on their first time, and then they would be punished for every failure afterwards. 

It was also, to his professional amazement, working. The standout failure of the playground, Candidate 117, had been ostracized by his fellow candidates for his selfishness and abandonment of his teammates, who themselves were furious at him. The very next day, he had worked with the same teammates, created a plan that relied on each of their strengths, and come in third. The three of them were becoming fast friends, bonded by their shared experience. 

They halted the collection of jogging six-year olds outside the wide doors of the large indoor range. It was overbuilt, easily capable of holding a hundred shooters simultaneously. In the next ten years, it would see plenty of use, both as an optimal training environment, and as a substitute when the Highland Mountain’s weather forced them inside.

“This is a rifle!” Mendez barked to the assembled candidates, holding up an air rifle in his hands. “With this rifle, you will learn the skills of a soldier. You will learn discipline, precision, and focus. You will listen to your trainers as they attempt to teach you a mere ounce of their accumulated skills! You will treat this duty as if it is your very life!”

He cast his gaze out over the crowd. By now, most of the candidates had started to get with the program, at least outwardly. A few were still sullen, still suspicious, like Candidate 023. 

“There will be no laughter in the firing range,” he told them, lowering his volume and projecting his words, so that they would still hear him, but listen all the harder. “There will be no yelling. There will be no running. In this place, you are always calm, methodical, and in control. The moment that you are not in control of a weapon is the moment that weapon will kill you. You will treat every weapon you touch with the same respect, regardless of its power. And if you do not respect these weapons, then your trainers will not have to teach you – the weapons themselves will teach you with pain, and death.”

He waited a few moments, making sure to meet the eyes of as many of the candidates as he could. A personal touch was always important in training, but with seventy-five candidates, Mendez himself could not ensure that personal relationship with all of them.

The candidates filtered into the firing range slowly, each one escorted by their dedicated trainer at their right shoulder. Seventy-five stations were already set up for them, with targets at an easy ten meters, rifles already waiting on each station, the tables lowered for their short heights, and the targets themselves being coated in high-visibility reactive paint.  

The trainers would instruct, observe, and question their candidates about what they did wrong, and only after the candidate had answered would they correct the children. ONI wanted intelligent supersoldiers, capable of initiative, not unthinking grunts. Instilling that initiative would have to start immediately, but only ever under controlled circumstances, lest it lead to rebellion.

Mendez himself did not have a candidate to focus on. This early in the Orion-II program, there was no point in singling out any one of them for attention, and gauging the overall situation was a far more important task. 

They stayed at the firing range for just under an hour. Mendez walked patrols behind the stations, standing well back from the thick red border painted into the concrete floor that marked the firing line. Plenty of the candidates made mistakes. For almost all of them, it was their first time shooting anything. But they learned quick – much quicker than he’d anticipated.

Perhaps there was something to the selection criteria, Mendez mused as he walked. When he’d read the briefing, he’d been unimpressed with the logic of choosing individuals based on their genetics. In his opinion, individual choices and discipline resulted in far more performance than hereditary advantages. But in Doctor Halsey’s opinion, the best performance combined the two. 

Three of the candidates stood out already. 

Candidate 058 had been unfamiliar with the air rifle, but when she was questioned on her performance, she identified the mistakes without needing to retract her target, before the trainer had retracted it. Her trainer had almost believed that she was lying, trying to inflate her scores or fool him, but each time he pulled the target close, she was right. The trainer started leaving the target down-range, and used a small scope to evaluate her accuracy, in an eerie sight that almost resembled a sniper and her spotter, were it not for the minuscule size of both the sniper and the rifle.

Candidate 104 was less gifted in eyesight, but made up for it with a prodigious memory, and was easily the highest performer among the group. Others edged him out in some small way, but Candidate 104 was always in top contention, regardless of the specific category. Every one of the many small metrics that their trainers were watching out for – safety awareness, wasted time, kinesthesia, he was right in the top, while all of the top performers were unequal, suffering in another area to make up for their excellence.

And Candidate 016 had clearly already done this before. She was the least compatible candidate from a genetic standpoint, but she was quickly demonstrating that genetics weren’t everything. Of the candidates, she had taken his lecture the best, and even with clear evidence of already knowing some of these skills, she didn’t showboat to others or ignore her trainer. She listened attentively, incorporated advice even when she didn’t need it, and never once acted out. In many ways, she was already a little soldier, and Mendez paid close attention to that. 

Would all of the candidates become like 016? Miniature soldiers, cold in temperament and automatons in discipline?

Mendez didn’t know, and it disturbed him. The children were doing what many their age would, playing around with air rifles, but the underlying difference in reason was nearly insurmountable. 

He could only do what he had always done. Trust in the UNSC’s overall competence. Trust in his superior’s leadership. Trust in Doctor Halsey’s vision.

Chapter Text

The conference room had a very beautiful view. The rows of snowcapped mountains in the distance, the carpet of evergreen trees along the slopes, the rushing rivers in between. It was a shame that as the meeting began, the privacy screens came down, blocking out the windows as the room sealed itself so tightly that not even air would escape it. They would see black walls in their cube, and nothing more.

The table was pristine mahogany from Earth, and large enough to seat a dozen, but today it held only three people. Himself and his boss, both in plain, black dress uniforms, and a young, brunette scientist wrapped up in a puffy parka.

Benefits and drawbacks to working for ONI. You got more power than the rest of the galaxy, but you were too busy working to enjoy it. It wasn’t a huge imposition to him, he’d always been austere, but even the simplest pleasure of a good view was robbed from him.

Lieutenant Commander Hieronymus Michael Stanforth was still unsure about his stint in ONI. Oh, he wasn’t foolish enough to admit it publicly, but the longer he served as a gloried personal aid to Vice Admiral Keeler, the more he felt like this deployment had been a mistake. He was one step up from running coffee, and nothing he’d seen had convinced him that this was doing any actual good.

His father was pleased, because of course he was. The Stanforth family had contributed many officers to the UNSC over the years, and Admiral Harold Stanforth was one of the Navy’s best. His father’s political mind saw the future of the USNC not in fleet maneuvers, but in the back alleys of Intelligence, and he’d encouraged Michael to take the posting. 

Certainly, that political influence had been a huge benefit to Michael’s career already. He was already a Lieutenant Commander at 31, and he’d been trusted with a Top Secret classification on his first ever stint in ONI. Michael knew that if he wanted it, he could climb the ranks in ONI as easily as he could in the Navy.

But Michael Stanforth wasn’t chasing a rank. He was chasing service. He wanted to make a real difference in the galaxy.

He just didn’t think that ONI was the place to do it.

Today’s meeting was a good example. He was to sit quietly behind Admiral Keeler, listen like a human robot, and let Keeler know his thoughts after the meeting was over. He was a glorified shadow, completely unnecessary. And for what? A monthly report on some scientist’s R&D project. Yes, it was likely something that would help the UNSC more than any naval patrol, but someone else could have handled the bureaucracy vastly better than him. It wasn’t the best use of his talents.

“Doctor Halsey,” his boss acknowledged. “How’s the first month going?” 

“Well enough,” the brunette scientist replied, with a clipped tone. “Training is proceeding excellently. The research projects are starting more slowly, but initial prognosis is excellent on all of them. The only hiccups are small, inconsequential ones.”

“Small problems grow, Doctor,” Keeler said, his hands clasped in front of his chin. “Tell me more about these problems.”

“The first problem is administrative,” Halsey said, shrugging. “It appears that at least part of the budget for this program is being routed through HIGHCOM’s discretionary funding, and that has led to a curious incident. It is amusing, but we should correct it quickly.”

“That’s a very serious statement,” Keeler noted, his eyes narrowing. “The budget for your project is classified at the highest levels, and I’m very interested in how you were able to discern that much.”

Michael stiffened a little in his seat. Yes, budgeting was hardly the most interesting topic, but Keeler clearly wasn’t happy that this scientist had managed to uncover anything. Was she disloyal, to go digging into unrelated topics like that? Or an idiot, to admit it to her superior? 

“Our daily meal shipments, Admiral,” Halsey said, looking unruffled by the Admiral’s gaze. “I was wondering every dinner was steak and calamari. I took a look at the crates, and found them still stamped HIGHCOM.”

Keeler stared at her for a long moment, and then released a long, slow exhale through his nose. Michael bit down on his cheek, and tried not to show any emotion. He knew his poker face couldn’t hold a candle to Keeler’s, but at the least, he should do better than Halsey, who already made it plainly obvious that she was a focused woman who didn’t want distractions. 

He couldn’t imagine getting HIGHCOM’s food and reporting it to his superiors. If that had happened to his ship, those crates would have vanished into deep storage faster than a sailor’s sobriety on shore week. What a cold fish this Doctor Halsey was.

“Yes,” the Vice Admiral said, his voice betraying no emotion. “We should correct that quickly. Next?”

“A simple list of logistical requirements,” Halsey said, passing over a datapad. “The initial stocking of the compound was decent, but with the year’s training schedule finalized, we need a large supply of several items. Rifles of several calibers, starting from the smallest and gradually working upwards. Standard UNSC Marine kit for familiarization and standardization training. Several dozen sets of clothing for each candidate for the winter months, as well as projected growth patterns, so that we don’t need to keep receiving children’s clothing every year, which would obviously be suspicious, whereas a single bulk order is more easily hidden. All in all, the list is minor items, but even supply orders can reveal much, so I did not trust it to remote communications.”

Children’s clothes? The odd request stuck in Michael’s head. Why would an ONI researcher need children’s clothes? There wasn’t many potential reasons for that, and very few of them were good. Still, Michael crammed that thought into the back of his mind, trusting on his father’s lessons on compartmentalization. He was here to listen and learn, and he had no doubt that Keeler had intended this meeting to be a lesson for him. 

“I’ll ensure you receive the entire list,” Keeler replied, taking the datapad and setting it aside. “Anything else?”

“No further issues at this time,” Halsey said with a shake of her head, her shoulder-length brunette hair flicking about her ears. “Overall, the science teams have settled into their new quarters well. In terms of space requirements, we have prioritized Exoskeleton, then Augmentation, then Surgery, and finally Artificial Intelligence, in descending order.”

“And the progress of each team?” Keeler asked, laying his hands down on the table and folding them together, as he listened.

“We are already seeing great strides in both Artificial Intelligence and Augmentation,” Halsey told them. “Both topics have been traditionally limited by extreme expense and moral issues. With both set aside, there are clearly pathways to improvement and refinement. Still, we are in the hypothetical stages for each, deciding which avenues to pursue, and which can be set aside for later experiments.”

The doctor took a breath, and her expression twisted into a small frown. 

“Unfortunately, both the Exoskeleton and Surgery teams are progressing more slowly,” she continued. “We knew this was inevitable, as both of their works are dependent upon the Augmentation team’s creations. Without a clearer picture of the future pathways for each, their work thus far has been… less focused.”

“We’ve given you some of the greatest minds in the UNSC, Doctor,” Keeler said, with a measured calm. “If you’re having trouble keeping them busy, then we can redeploy them.”

“For now, I’ve kept them plenty busy,” Halsey replied, something flashing in her eyes – probably at the thought of losing assets, Michael thought. “True, the Exoskeleton team will need to tailor their final products to the precise augmentations of the cadets to fully achieve the performance we desire. Yet our exoskeleton research is still very primitive, and I’ve tasked Doctor Sullivan’s team with solving that issue. We’re currently calculating a need for at least three prototype generations of powered armor before we can hit a field-deployable suit, but there is no need for those prototypes to be limited purely to a laboratory.”

“And how will they achieve that?” Keeler asked. “Exoskeleton research is expensive, as you know. Even if your team manages a successful one, why should it take precedence over a simpler, cheaper vehicle?”

“The main expense in exoskeletons are the control mechanism,” Doctor Halsey said, leaning forward slightly as she began to explain, her expression growing more dynamic, more excited. “Thus far, the mistake has been focusing on an excellent performing unit, without developing the underlying methodologies. Instead, Doctor Sullivan’s team will be upsizing their exoskeleton prototypes, to create suits that can be used as testbeds by unaugmented individuals. Once we have the first generation suits, we will be able to quickly reconfigure them between experiments to gauge the relative effectiveness of each new innovation. After we identify the ideal methods, Doctor Sullivan can then focus on refining those specific avenues of research, but the original testbeds would still remain useful. The advantages for lifting capacity in improvised locations, such as colonization efforts, tight cargo bays, and danger close logistics would be immeasurable.”

“An industrial method,” Keeler observed. “Expensive.”

“To any other project, yes,” Halsey answered, daringly. “To this one… only the Surgery team has a smaller budget. You knew this already, Admiral.”

Keeler said nothing in reply. Michael watched silently, as the scientist challenged the head of Section Three, apparently oblivious to the relative difference between them. 

My God, Michael thought to himself, amazed. She has no idea that she’s tugging on the tiger’s tail.

“And the Surgery team?” Vice Admiral Keeler asked, moving on without replying to Halsey’s last statement.

“Doctor Meyer’s team has two tasks, and only two tasks,” Halsey stated, holding up fingers as she explained. “The first is to aid the Sullivan’s team in the augmentations, and the second is to perform the augmentations themselves. However, until the Augmentation team narrows down their approach, they have no work to perform, and they’ll inevitably suffer skill decay, and grow rusty. Given the value of these surgeons, I’m raising the issue to propose a solution: cross utilization. I believe that until the current state of our research changes, the Surgery team should be on whatever rotation or availability list that ONI uses. My only request is that their official position remains the Orion-II program, so that they are not ‘poached’ from under me.”

Keeler mused on it for a few moments. Michael didn’t bother looking at his boss – he already knew that Keeler’s expressions wouldn’t have changed an iota. Instead, he considered the request himself. What did it gain Halsey, what did it lose her?

The obvious thought was the Halsey was cutting her losses. If she’d tried to lie about her surgery team still being busy, then it would have been discovered anyway, and those resources removed from her control. By admitting the problem early, and offering a partial solution, Halsey could be trying to minimize the damage. In some ways, that was an admirable trait. If a crewman had come to Michael aboard the Trieste, admitted some fault and offered a partial solution like this, Michael might have praised the man.

But that obvious thought was… too obvious, in Michael’s opinion. This wasn’t the Navy proper, and Doctor Halsey was a cold woman who was running some kind of Top Secret program revolving around surgical augmentation for the Office of Naval Intelligence. She couldn’t be this simple and straightforward. There had to be another reason, a deeper reason behind it. Honest people didn’t wind up in ONI, himself as the exception, and it made logical sense that the brunette civilian was far more devious and cunning than she might first appear.

Perhaps, Michael considered, it was an influence play. The trick there would be how Halsey was offering the team’s services, while making sure that they were still associated with her program. The team’s actions would reflect well on her, and other ONI personnel would know that Doctor Halsey was a team leader who had improved their lives. Yes, that seemed most likely, Michael thought to himself. 

A thought struck him. Halsey had just a minute ago admitted to figuring out that some of her budget was routing through HIGHCOM, and acted as if she didn’t care. Hell, she’d even convinced him that she was a focused, direct woman who didn’t care for distractions in the process. Oblivious, even. 

But that didn’t mesh with his current thought on her. Had even that been a clever maneuver on her part? A way of showing that she was reliable or trustworthy, so that her request to seed her team’s surgeons around ONI would appear to be similarly innocuous? Or had it been an overt maneuver?

Like that jab about the budget… Michael realized now that that wasn’t an oblivious scientist blindly walking into a minefield. That was Halsey laying a card down on the table. A semi-polite way of reminding Keeler that she was well aware of her bargaining position, that she wasn’t some unimportant flunky to be set aside.

But which assumption was correct? They couldn’t both be true. Doctor Halsey could not simultaneously be a devious planner, laying out secret snares to grow her web of influence, and a frank politician openly playing the game of favors, matching wits with Admirals, and making no secret of her ambitions. You simply couldn’t swap between those two leadership styles, for lack of a better term.

Perhaps Vice Admiral Keeler was aware of this. He had far more experience with the murky backrooms of ONI than Michael did, after all. Still, Michael resolved to bring the topic up with Keeler when he had a chance, if only to be sure.

Unaware of Michael’s thoughts, his boss nodded, and gestured silently for Doctor Halsey to continue her presentation, forcing the young officer to direct his attention back to the doctor. Keeler hadn’t agreed, Michael noticed. He’d moved the conversation onwards without making a commitment to Halsey’s proposal.

“Does that conclude your report?” Keeler asked.

“It does,” Halsey said. “I left some time on the meeting schedule for any questions you may have.”

Another open political move, Michael noted. Anticipation of a superior’s questions wasn’t a big thing normally, but the subtler implication was that Halsey had prepared for any of Keeler’s questions. A devious planner would have allowed Keeler to ask his questions as a surprise, to potentially lull him into a false sense of security by ceding the conversational initiative.

“Do you predict any potential problems with the program’s future?” Keeler asked, his steady voice betraying no emotion in the loaded question. 

Because boy, what a loaded question. Michael was supposed to be learning from Keeler here at ONI, and the Vice Admiral’s move was so good that Michael was hard-pressed to not whistle. Asking an open-ended question like that was an old trick for a leadership position, giving your subordinate just enough rope to hang himself with, and Michael himself had done it often enough. But this time, the question wasn’t testing Halsey’s basic competence – it was a wedge, forcing her to pick an answer that would reveal more about her personality.

If Halsey truly was an open and frank politician, then just as she’d admitted the HIGHCOM budget trick, she’d point out some of the obvious things with any research program, like it potentially not panning out, or the need for potentially increased budgets in the future. It was honest, and would demonstrate that Keeler could trust her to be a straight shooter even when it hurt her. That approach worked for the long game, where her reputation would be an invaluable tool for her future advancement.

But if she was the devious planner type, trying to weave a web of influence in ONI, then she wouldn’t admit to any problems. Those kinds of people knew that they couldn’t rely on their reputation, and that sooner or later, they’d make enemies, which meant that they needed to appear as bulletproof as possible. Admitting to fault was admitting to weakness, and sooner or later, they’d make an enemy with a grudge, and any admitted weakness would be remembered and used against them.

“No,” Doctor Halsey said, matching Keeler’s steady tone perfectly, her eyes matching his gaze. “There will be no problems with this project.”

Keeler held her gaze for a few moments, and then nodded. 

“Thank you Doctor Halsey,” he said, rising to his feet, as Michael quickly followed suit. “I look forward to your next report.”

“As do I,” the brunette replied, standing up with a datapad clutched to her chest.

With a press of Vice Admiral Keeler’s thumb, the security bubble retracted, breaking the Faraday cage. The window covers retracted, and light from the Highland Mountains poured into the room from behind Doctor Halsey. The light spread through her shoulder-length brunette hair, like a halo around her, and Michael instinctively half-squinted at the sudden glare. Keeler showed no such reaction, and Halsey didn’t even appear to notice the sudden jump in light levels.

Keeler walked out of the room, Michael following immediately behind. They headed straight for a double-sided elevator in the hallway. Keeler didn’t look back, but Michael did. His quick glance showed him Doctor Halsey already hard at work, jotting a note down on her datapad as she walked down the hallway towards the elevator bank. 

In that split second, Doctor Halsey glanced up, and for the first time, Michael met her gaze directly. Her eyes were like lasers, like a target lock. Michael couldn’t suppress a slight flinch at her intensity, and he instantly knew that Halsey had seem him flinch. 

The elevator doors closed, cutting off Halsey’s eyes. The elevator gave the smallest jolt as it began moving – down, always down, towards the sub-basements where Keeler’s real office was, safely buried under twenty meters of concrete and Titanium-A.

“Enjoying the work, Michael?” Vice Admiral Keeler asked him, the sudden words startling him. Michael turned forward, and saw Keeler watching him in the reflection of the opposing elevator doors. He’d watched the entire time, without giving away that he had been.

“I’m starting to see the difficulty,” Michael Stanforth admitted, knowing that it was useless to lie to Keeler.

“Mm, I thought you would,” the Vice Admiral replied, with a low hum. “It’s time I fill you in on the good doctor’s project.”

The elevator doors opened, and they walked out, heading directly for the small annex of rooms dedicated to the head of ONI Section Three.

Michael’s uniform shoes clicked on the brushed concrete of the hallway. Like many places in the labyrinthine underground bunkers, there were few signs or indicators on the doorways.

This wasn’t Syndey, where politicians intermingled with admirals, tour groups visited the unclassified sections, and the food court had a dozen luxury restaurants contracted in. This was Reach, and to set foot within a hundred kilometers of this base, you had to have a Secret clearance, no exceptions.

He and Vice Admiral Keeler walked through the tunnels unaccompanied by guards, because guards themselves were a security risk. It was much safer to use the automated defenses run by the most capable Smart A.I.’s in the galaxy, and harshly partition the access zones. They didn’t speak again until they’d entered Keeler’s personal sub-annex in the building – a five room conglomeration that was designed to allow a busy head of Section Three to stay the night if needed. Keeler, having no outside attachments, had made it his primary residence. 

The door hissed shut behind them. Keeler walked over to the perpetually empty secretary’s desk and laid his hand on the scanner. A blue hologram lit up on its surface through embedded emitters. It was a hulking creature with an arched back, double-jointed legs, and a flared muzzle. Coarse hairs covered its body, and its small eyes were alight with animalistic, brutal cunning.

“Seal the room,” Keeler said, enunciating loudly and clearly to the artificial intelligence. Unlike the briefing room above, there was no obvious signs of the Faraday cage going into effect. There were no windows to cover up, no gaps to seal. The cage was always ready to deploy. 

“The room is sealed, sir,” rumbled the voice of Lucian, the holographic werewolf nodding his head in obedience. 

The UNSC ballparked the rough cost of a Smart A.I. as the equivalent of a Navy Frigate. Given that such an A.I. could live only seven years maximum, some called it a ferociously bad waste of money compared to a Frigate that could last upwards of a hundred years. Michael himself used to think the same thing, up until his stint as gunnery officer aboard the UNSC Atlas, where he’d finally interacted with one regularly. Keeler, as head of Section Three, had Lucian as his personal Smart A.I. butler, handling all the tasks that a secretary would have done with more vastly more efficiency and ironclad loyalty.

“Thank you,” Keeler said, nodding back. He was always polite to the artificial intelligences, a standard of conduct that Michael himself tried to live up to. He turned back to Michael, and waved him further in.

Beyond the entry room was a living room with a few comfortable couches in black leather and an unused drinks cabinet in the corner. Smart screens were on each wall, but the low coffee table still held physical documents in pure hardcopy. 

“Orion-II is the most important project I will ever oversee,” Keeler said, undoing a single button from his uniform tunic as he sat down on one of the couches. He leaned over and picked up a file folder near the top and held it out for Michael to take. “This is for one single reason. Defections.”

“Defections?” Michael repeated, opening the file folder as he sat down on the couch across from Keeler.

“We’ve always had rebels,” Keeler said slowly, leaning back into his couch and folding his hands over his stomach. “The UNSC was created because of two groups of nuts trying to impose their views on the rest of humanity, back in the Interplanetary War in the 2100’s. After we got the Slipspace drive, we started having the Inner Colony Wars in the 2300’s. And now, five decades of peace have been shattered by two decades of Insurrection. There are many causes for rebellions, but many of those causes can be addressed non-violently. There is only one major cause that we cannot effectively address non-violently.”

Michael chewed on that for a moment. He could see a few potential causes for rebellions – history was replete with examples – but for each one, he could see a non-violent solution.

“Leadership, sir?” Michael guessed. 

“Leadership,” Keeler agreed. “Famines get fed. Environments get terraformed. Angry workers get high-paying jobs. But once you get a truly radical, charismatic leader, they can drum up support to get past any of that. Rebellions are a fire, Commander, and the best way to fight a fire is early and often, dousing the embers before it can spread. There’s no information control that can silence a firebrand. Not with how many freighters are smuggling data, knowing it’s impossible for us to catch. But not all radical, charismatic leaders are competent at administration, tactics, or anything beyond pumping up a crowd, so even that isn’t the real problem, compared to defections.”

Keeler fell silent, and gestured towards the file in Michael’s hands. He looked down and started reading, at least the first page summary. The title seemed to be straightforward, but as he read it, Michael felt a slowly growing feeling of unease in his gut.

Enhancing Humanity: A Multidisciplinary Approach to the Development of Genetically Modified Super Soldiers with Integrated AI Neural Systems and Advanced Power Armor Technology, by Doctors Halsey, Meyer, Wu, and Sullivan.

A few minutes later, Michael put the file down, and swallowed. 

“Children?” he asked, not bothering to hide the tension in his voice.

“Unfortunately,” Keeler replied, an unusual trace of sympathy in his voice. “We tried with adult volunteers first, in Orion-I. It had some successes, but not enough. Worst of all, they had reliability issues, both for performance and for loyalty. Not a single one defected, but they suffered numerous stress casualties, and we pulled the plug before that stress could become something worse.”

“How does that lead to children?” Michael asked, feeling lost. “Reliability issues, that I understand, but there are plenty of loyal soldiers; far more than you’d need for this.”

“Because of chained requirements,” Keeler said. “Reliable soldiers are possible. Augmented soldiers are possible. But no matter how reliable or augmented, a soldier eats a bullet from a confetti-maker, and he goes down. ONI has experimented with powered armor before, for this exact reason, but we could never get it working effectively. Halsey thinks she can crack it with integrated augmentations. But to get the power armor working, you need the augmentations. To get the augmentations, children work better. To ensure absolute loyalty, children are best.”

“Better than adults?” Michael frowned, still not understanding. “But… why?”

“There are numerous physical reasons related to the augmentations themselves, but that’s not why we’re doing it,” Keeler said. “Because what if an adult, highly trained supersoldier goes rogue, in a suit of power armor? Not in terms of physical damage, but in terms of messaging. What happens if they defect, and tell every Insurrectionist exactly what kind of things the UNSC is doing?”

“Doing to volunteers,” Michael pointed out. “That’s harder to spin than doing it to children.”

“On Eridanus II, the Colonial Authority rolled out a major infrastructure project,” Keeler said, his voice almost nostalgic, like he was recounting a nostalgic story. “The plan was a new major city, with a full-sized spaceport. A huge expansion in jobs, with substantial pay raises and benefits offered to existing colonists to help get the new city started. It was an unmitigated economic boom, at the Colonial Authority’s paycheck. But instead, a man named Jeremy Jiles starting spreading rumors that the Colonial Authority was sending them to die, and would hand over the new city to a fresh batch of colonists who weren’t from Eridanus II.”

“The rebellion in ‘94,” Michael identified. 

“Correct,” Keeler acknowledged. “One of the first rebellions in what we now call the Insurrection. It took us two years to retake the system, and it cost four Destroyers. All because one charismatic leader couldn’t understand basic economics, and whipped up a crowd. That’s what he could do with completely innocuous information, Commander. Imagine what a man like that could do with admissions from a human experiment from ONI’s black sites.”

Keeler sighed. 

“We had no idea how they’d graduated from letter bombs to hijacking enough ships to form a small fleet,” he continued. “Then, just four years ago, the Insurrectionists seized control of the planet again, and we discovered how they’d grown so capable.”

Keeler nudged the coffee table with his foot. 

“Lucian,” he said, looking up at the ceiling. “Pull up the file on Colonel Robert Watts, please.”

The coffee table’s surface glittered like a starfield for a moment as the hologram projectors came to life, and then an image of a UNSC officer sprang into existence. To the side of the floating head was a brief resume detailing his accomplishments. Two Silver Stars, four Military Stars, a Purple Heart, and more. Colonel of the 21st Marine Division in the 2480’s, before retiring. A harsh red stamp blinked at the bottom: DECEASED.

Michael knew of the man. His face had been plastered across the holoscreens four years ago. It was hard to miss the anger in his recorded speeches, when they’d been played in the Atlas’s wardroom as a clear identification of their enemy.

“Watts was behind the first rebellion as well,” Michael asked rhetorically, already knowing the answer. 

“ONI has reluctantly concluded that the vast majority of the Insurrection leadership is run by UNSC defectors,” Keeler explained, his tone bitingly harsh on the word ‘reluctantly’. “They’re effective not only because we’ve spent decades training them to be so, but also because they know our playbook inside and out. Watts in particular had a distinguished public career, and a very quietly infamous ONI one. He used to run an intervention battalion for Section Three in the ‘70’s. He was one of the best officers that ONI’s had in the last half-century. One of five, specifically.”

“We need soldiers capable of finding and eliminating these leaders, who can stir up trouble ,” Michael summarized. “And we need them to be completely loyal, or else we’re just making the Insurrection even more deadly, because they’ll learn our exact tactics and know how to counter them. Which means Halsey.”

“Doctor Halsey is a very interesting individual,” Keeler said, slowly. “We’ve have many proposals from scientists before about supersoldiers. It’s an attractive notion. But those papers universally demanded funding for research, not for deployable forces. Few had a specific end goal in mind, and none proposed an effective change to our military doctrine that could utilize their innovations. Toys without an instruction manual. Until Halsey.”

Michael frowned. He had been sure that Doctor Halsey was a straightforward, honest scientist, and then quickly discovered that she wasn’t. At the moment, he was convinced that Halsey was either a devious planner, or an open and honest politician. 

But a capable military mind on top of that, without having any training? That seemed too much of a stretch. No person could contain such multitudes.

“Her doctrine was that good?” Michael asked, still unsure. “That seems unlikely.”

“Not just tactical doctrine,” Keeler said, shaking his head. “Halsey wrote down exactly how she would train children into supersoldiers, even without any of the advanced technology. Then she explained how the technology would augment specific attributes, interlace with the power armor. Then she explained how those children would use her tactical doctrine to exploit those advantages. We’d seen any one of those ideas before, and Halsey’s were the best of them all, even before she tied them together into a single package wrapped up with a bow on top.”

Keeler paused, and his eyes grew distant for a moment.

“Even so, tactical doctrine for special forces is much more demanding and specific than any other area,” he explained. “It’s beyond me. The human psychology, the necessary trainings, the almost supernatural instinct you have to possess for when an operation goes bad. Split-second decision making that has to be razor-sharp the entire time. It’s hard enough to learn it. It’s harder to teach it. It is very, very rare for someone to be good at both. So I took the paper to one of our best minds. He asked me if Frank wrote it.”

“Frank?” Michael repeated, furrowing his brow in confusion.

“I told him no,” Keeler continued, ignoring Michael’s interruption. “Then he said it must have be David. I told him no. And then the man got very quiet. He told me he knew a few dozen people who could have written either the training or tactical doctrines. But there were only five people, including him, in the entire galaxy who could have written that proposal. Three of them work for ONI. Robert Watts, before his defection and death, was the fourth. The fifth, Howard Graves, retired in the 80’s, and we suspect he’s working for the Insurrection now.”

Keeler leaned forward, and laid his hands on the coffee table as he stared at Michael. 

“Doctor Halsey has no military background,” he told Michael. “She wrote this paper at the age of eighteen, and showed a better understanding of soldiering than all but five people in the galaxy. Our best guess, unconfirmed as of now, is that one of her more distant relations was a member of the Insurrection, trained by either Watts or Graves, and that she learned it from childhood. But instead of following that career path, she dedicated her life to academia, covered her tracks, and spoke out in favor of the UNSC repeatedly… and she only slipped up once.” 

Keeler paused, his expression making it clear that he was doing so to give Michael’s whirling mind a moment to digest that information, to consider the implications.

“And in that one single mistake,” Keeler said softly, “Catherine Halsey might have given the UNSC the solution to this war.”

Chapter Text

Captain Arnold Wilson sat at his desk, his tightly controlled expression giving no hints as to his true feelings. 

In front of his desk stood Chief Petty Officer Mendez, his second-in-command, and head trainer of the Orion-II project. The native of Sigma Octanus IV had been summarizing the previous day’s training, if you could call it that. The children were allowed to play with air rifles. Toy soldiers with toy weapons, passively encouraged to think of the military as ‘fun’ or ‘cool.’

“Thank you, Chief Mendez,” he said, acknowledging the head trainer. “That report was very enlightening.”

“Sir,” Mendez replied politely, still standing firmly at attention. 

The NCO held that pose as Wilson thought to himself, like a good soldier; not because he was a robot, but because he understood that it allowed them both to pretend things were normal. Mendez’s unflinching adherence to protocol let Wilson pretend that he wasn’t off his game, that this wasn’t a deeply terrifying situation. Wilson’s refusal to show emotion allowed the NCO to pretend the same, even when they were both planning for how to fix that situation.

Enlightening. Yes, that was a word for it. It shed light on exactly how much Doctor Halsey had allowed her ambition to run wild, and how far she was willing to go to see it achieved.

Halsey was a snake, and Wilson despised her for it. She had charmed HIGHCOM somehow, but Wilson wasn’t one of the high-bred politicos that strode through Sydney in white Mess Dress. He’d climbed through the mud and blood of the Marine ranks until he’d reached his current position, and he knew exactly what kind of problems the Orion-II program was breeding for itself. 

She cast loving attention on the children when she was around them, Wilson had seen that. The Doctor was splitting her time between the Orion-II compound and the nearby research base at the foothills of Menachite Mountain, but she’d still somehow found the time to teach a few of the children’s lessons personally. 

Someone else might have assumed it was affection, but Wilson had seen Halsey’s true face when she wasn’t around the children. He knew that she was wearing a mask to hide her true feelings, her true goals. He’d seen her grin at him with a bloodthirsty, devilish hunger, completely removed from human kindness. 

The worst predators pretended to be kind. They abused your trust, fostered good will, and then twisted that relationship into a collar, a leash, a noose. Halsey was clearly trying to coerce the children into thinking of her as a mother figure – a replacement for the families that she had willingly ripped them from. 

And why? Because as Machiavelli wrote, it is best for a ruler to be both loved and feared, not merely feared alone. Fear could entice obedience, but always hesitant and lacking. Love could entice willing service, but sometimes careless and wild. Only when tempered together could a ruler extract the most performance from their slaves.

It gave him a sick feeling in his stomach. All these games, all these toys, they would be used like a surgeon’s scalpel by the Doctor for exactly as long as they were useful, and then they would be discarded. A gentle acclimation to increasingly harsh privations, stretched out so gradually ten years that the children would never realize it. Already, their high quality food was being replaced with more mundane options, as if Halsey had wanted to entice feelings of luxury early enough that they could have an effect on the children, and then phased them out as soon as that feeling was embedded. 

Better to be honest. Better to be cruel, if needed. This was not a ski chalet or a boarding school, this was a goddamn military program, and these children needed to know that. They needed to learn exactly what they were, and what job they were going to learn. The children might hate it, but it would be honest, and they would know the truth.

“The training mission tomorrow,” Wilson said, after the long silence of his musings. “Summarize it.”

Mendez obliged instantly. He knew that Wilson had already read the training program, that Wilson was fully aware of the mission, but he also knew that Wilson had a likely reason for asking for this, that he had a reason for asking. That why basic social tricks like this existed, and they worked even if both parties knew about the trick.

“First, we will split the candidates into twenty-five separate three-man teams,” Mendez explained. “Randomized selection, with a round of review to make sure no candidates are paired with any previous teammates. Once the teams are ready, we will drop them in the valley between Hill 421 and Hill 430. They’ll be provided fragments of a map of the valley, with every five teams being able to form a complete map.”

A basic land-nav training exercise. That Halsey was trusting children with it was arrogant, as even grown adults frequently got lost in training even with a compass and a full map.

“Once gathered, the map will indicate the location of their rendezvous with a Pelican,” Mendez continued. “The first four complete maps to arrive – meaning a five-team group – will be returned to the compound. The fifth team will have to wait for the return ride, and will not be informed of their guaranteed pickup. Security measures will include trackers in their jumpsuits, with two separate Pelicans loaded with armed trainers, ready to intervene as necessary. The valley has been scouted in advance, and is clear of both hostile wildlife and dangerous terrain.”

“The primary goals of the training,” Wilson asked, not bothering to make it a question.

“The continuing focus on encouraging teamwork, while increasing independence, critical thinking, and confidence in the candidates,” Mendez recited.

Wilson nodded, and thought about reaching for a cigarette. He suppressed the urge. It could wait until Mendez had left. No signs of weakness, no signs of lax discipline, not even with his second-in-command.

“The exercise will be altered,” Wilson said, his voice steady. “I have alternate orders for the pickup team.”

Mendez didn’t move a muscle, and instead listened attentively.

“Thus far, this program has striven to ensure that the children are sheltered from excessive hardship,” Wilson continued, choosing his words carefully. “This is an excellent idea for physical conditioning and long term health of the children, but we must begin to consider their emotional conditioning. The first steps will be demonstrating to them the importance of prompt, immediate adherence to commands from their trainers.”

Wilson stood from his desk, and turned to look out the window of his office, towards the mountains in the background.

“Many of the children have been resistant to the trainers,” Wilson said. “This is not a criticism of you or your men. You’ve performed very capably. It is a reflection of the children who have been selected. The same potential that they possess for the later stages of this program has made them difficult to handle. They were selected as some of the most exceptional individuals of their generation, and we are seeing that. I’ll send you a report on the black-bag team that brought in Candidate 087, and the difficulties she caused them.”

His eyes traced the children from behind his office window as they emerged from their current activity – another classroom session with Déjà, their A.I. trainer. The trainers surrounded them as they left, haranguing them into two even lines. It took a remarkably short time, but Wilson could see some of the looks that the children shot at the trainers when they thought they could get away with it. He saw two of the children swap places, which made no difference save for the petty rebellion of it.

Halsey’s campaign of enticing love wasn’t working. How could it, in this situation? Kidnap children from their parents, and try to replace them blatantly? Of course the children would resist. 

“The pickup team is to act as follows,” Wilson instructed, turning back to Mendez, his hands still folded behind his back. “When arriving at the pickup zone, candidates are to be firmly instructed to present themselves for inspection, the same as here on base. To promote teamwork, any teams with missing members or incomplete maps will be questioned. If they deliberately abandoned any of their teammates, they will be punished immediately by the pickup team, and sent to retrieve their teammate. If they come upon the Pelican by chance, they will be detained without punishment. If they do not immediately present themselves or answer questions, they will be punished. Punishment will be the use of stun batons. Is this understood, Chief?”

“Yes sir,” Chief Mendez replied, his face still locked in professional detachment. “I will convey those orders to the training staff immediately.” 

“That’ll be all, Chief,” Wilson said. 

Mendez saluted, turned on his heel, and swiftly left the room. The door clicked shut behind him.

Wilson sighed, and dug into his desk for a cigarette. 

The sad part of all this, Wilson reflected, was that he could almost see the logic if he squinted. It was cold, emotionless, devoid of any morality, but once you made that presumption, it all clicked. It was a cascade of simple, logical answers to problems.

Got a problem with defectors to the Innies? Just indoctrinate your troops, so they won’t defect.

Indoctrinating adults is too hard? Just do it to children, so they won’t know any better.

The children might not be good enough? Just grab the extremely high outliers with the UNSC’s healthcare database. 

Losing too many men to bombs? Just design a suit of bomb-proof armor, so you don’t lose that investment.

The suit’s too heavy? Just make it powered armor, so it carries its own weight.

The suit’s hard to control? Just genetically augment your troops, so they can react fast enough anyway.

What if the augmentations fail? Just increase the batch size, so at least some of them survive.

Wilson could understand it all, because any good military officer knew how to detach themselves from the emotion of a situation, so they could make the correct call. Sending in a thousand men to die, to save a hundred thousand. Use a terrifyingly dangerous weapon so that the deterrent ended a much more deadly war that might have continued for years. 

How to conduct warfare in a way that arms limitations were not due to moral qualms, but due to being less efficient than more moral tactics. A sliding scale of if-then statements designed to achieve the minimal death toll via the most brutal methods – something that could easily describe the Orion-II program. 

Wilson lit his cigarette with a battered old lighter that he’d carried since his first deployment. He stared out at the jogging backs of the children as they disappeared into the woods, going on a gentle two kilometer jog before they returned for another set of exercises.

If Doctor Halsey had been someone else, then perhaps he could believe that was her goal, Wilson mused. But she wasn’t. She had already revealed to him, and he didn’t think for a moment that Halsey’s real goal was the greater good.

She might argue that. She might even convince HIGHCOM of that. He could see it now – taking whatever successes that Orion-II achieved, she would argue for a third program, and a fourth program. She’d argue for the lives it would save, the good it would do, but she wouldn’t really care about it.

Wilson didn’t envy HIGHCOM, or the higher ups in Section Three. They were so busy with the major problems of the galaxy that they didn’t have the grounded perspective of the common man. They couldn’t see Halsey’s two-faced nature, because they were so worried about the Insurrection that they were reaching out, desperately, for any solution. A solution that Halsey promised to provide. 

But what did Halsey herself want? Wilson didn’t know for sure, but if he had to guess, it was the science itself. Not power, not connections. If that was her goal, she could have promised huge strides in any one of ONI’s favored topics of research. Instead, she’d promised to advance four at the same time, and mix them all together. It was insanity. It was like trying to dig for gold by flattening mountains with nukes. 

Oh, he could see her arguing for an Orion-III, and an Orion-IV program, even if the Insurrection had been crushed, just so she could continue pushing the bleeding edge of science even further. Just so she could keep the unlimited budget, the supply of test subjects, the best minds in the galaxy. 

He'd done evil things. He wasn’t some moralizing little prick, trying to pretend he was better than Halsey. They were both monsters. The difference, Wilson considered, was that he did evil for good reasons. He was willing to be a hypocrite about it, for the cause of keeping people safe. Halsey did evil because it was the best way she could wrestle with the universe itself, butting her brain against the unknown. She did it because she wanted to fight God. The arrogance of it, that pissed him off.

That was why she smiled at him, Wilson realized. It had bothered him for some time – Halsey had given away the game to him instantly, at their first ever meeting. He’d wondered why she’d done it, how she’d been so incompetent as to reveal her hand that fast.

She’d been too happy to conceal her true feelings. She simply hadn’t cared that she gave it away, because she had just gotten everything she wanted. Ten years of the Orion-II program.

These children… Wilson shook his head, tapping his cigarette on a tray to shake loose the lingering ash at the end. If Halsey had her way, they would grow up believing that Halsey genuinely loved them, when they were nothing more than lab rats to her. He doubted that she would actually manage to achieve that loving affection with her current behavior, but that was what she was aiming for.

So yes, he was going to be cruel to the children. Yes, using stun prods on them was a crime. Yes, he’d just ordered the trainers to use those prods at the slightest excuse tomorrow.

He was a monster, but he knew that, and he knew how to use it. Better for those children to learn from him exactly what kind of program they were in. Better that they learn the nightmare that was their lives now. Better to wake up now, and know the truth.

Wilson took another drag on his smoke, and thought briefly about the blank resignation letter on his computer. He hadn’t gotten further than opening it and staring at the blank page, because he didn’t have any good reason to resign. 

Yes, he hated Halsey. So what? He’d hated a lot of his superior officers, and he didn’t even have to listen to Halsey’s orders. He didn’t have any real objection to the morality of the program. He simply thought the program could be run more efficiently. If he quit, then the program would be bogged down by Halsey’s idiotic handling. She was probably one of the smartest scientists in the UNSC, but she clearly didn’t have a clue how to handle the children, the trainers, or anything outside of the science itself.

The cigarette had burned low. It was a cheap brand, one of Wilson’s little protests against the system itself. He didn’t smoke Sweet Williams, like so many other UNSC officers did. Instead, he’d picked up a crappy local brand on some world a couple years ago – Asphodel, he thought – and he’d smoked them over anything else as a little rebellion of his own, a way of showing that it didn’t matter what brand you smoked, just like it didn’t matter how you got the job done, so long as it got done.

He might need to place an order, Wilson mused. He’d be stuck here on Reach for the next ten years, and there’s no way his supply would last that long.

Chapter Text

“They did what?” I asked, my eyes widening in stunned surprise.

“They attacked the trainers,” Mendez said, standing perfectly at attention before my desk, “Incapacitating them and leaving them behind as they stole the Pelican. Candidate 117 recognized the AI interface symbol and requested Déjà’s aid in flying it back.”

I stood up from my desk, glaring at the man as I did. I grabbed the edge of the desk, so that I’d have something to squeeze, to hold onto, to keep myself from doing something I’d regret.

“Chief Petty Officer Mendez,” I growled out. “I don’t care about the cadets right now. Tell me again what the trainers did.”

The Navy NCO’s eyes flicked over to look at me for an instant, before returning to their previous position, and focus on the wall above my head, in the tiniest crack in his self-control. He did not hesitate to respond, which was perhaps the only good thing he had done since entering my office and informing me of the near disaster that had unfolded on a routine training trip in the wilderness.

“The candidates were ordered to present themselves immediately for inspection. When they did not, the trainers followed their orders and moved to detain them with stun batons,” Mendez recited, stone-faced.

He said nothing further, but he’d already said far, far too much.

“I gave no such instructions,” I said, barely restraining my voice from an ugly hiss. “I specifically ordered a minimal use of physical punishment. I even recall ordering your trainers to cease the use of those stun batons. Are your men insubordinate, Mendez?”

“No, Doctor,” Mendez replied with a steady tone. “They were following the training orders given by Captain Wilson.”

“Captain Wilson countermanded my training instructions?” I asked, as white-hot fury crawled through my body, like napalm across a hillside. “Is that correct?”

“Yes, Doctor,” Mendez said.

I had no idea how the man was so calm. He was like a machine, lacking any emotion whatsoever. Was it the height of discipline, or was he truly emotionless? I did not know, and at this moment, I did not care.

My jaw clamped shut, and I squeezed my desk with both hands, holding myself back.

“Bring Wilson here,” I ordered. “We are going to sort this out right now.”

“Doctor?” Mendez asked, with a fractional turn of his head towards me.

“Now!” I barked, the whip-crack of my voice ringing in the small office. I hadn’t spoken like that since my last life, but the voice of command was not a thing that you forgot – not when it had been honed in combat, not when lives depended on me communicating efficiently and effectively.

The NCO snapped a salute at the tone, like he was on a parade ground. He held it for a moment, then abruptly turned about face and marched out of the office. The door shut behind him.

I reached into the pocket of my labcoat and seized the small, rectangular keepsake that I carried within. My fist tightened, and my flesh ached as the harsh metal frame bit into it. It was so tempting, but I fought it off. Rage was an emotional response. It would not achieve my goals, it would not remedy this situation.

“Déjà,” I called out.

The holographic interface on my desk lit up, and the blue image of a woman stood atop the desk, wrapped in a toga and carrying a clay tablet.

“How may I serve, Doctor Halsey?” the Dumb A.I. responded, her voice polite. If she’d heard anything of the previous few minutes, she gave no indication.

“Inform Vice Admiral Keeler that I need a meeting with him,” I told her, keeping a firm grasp of my tone. “Tomorrow, ideally. If not, as soon as possible.”

“Of course,” Déjà said, the little motes of light orbiting her head tilting as she nodded. “Shall I tell him why?”

“No,” I said, perfectly aware that giving the ONI spook a heads-up would only allow him time to prepare against it.

I didn’t care if that was violating a social rule, if it was presumptuous. The man had given me a blank check, he’d damn well better accept a meeting with me when I needed one. Perhaps he’d put Wilson up to this, or perhaps the sniveling little shit had come up with it on his own, but I would not tolerate this behavior against the cadets. Was it not harsh enough that they had been kidnapped? Did they need to be physical tortured by the authority figures above them, as well?

Damn me for ever thinking of this evil program. Damn those bastards at ONI for accepting it.

“Do you have video footage of the incident at the Pelican today?” I asked Déjà.

“I do,” Déjà replied, briefly gesturing with a hand.

The desk’s holoprojector retracted her avatar, and up shot a video screen. An internal camera from the dropship’s bay, looking outwards, the walls of the dropship forming an artificial border around the video’s edges. Three trainers stood loosely at the lip of the bay, keeping a loose watch over the tree line in the background of the shot.

There was no audio. I stood there and watched as the trainers chatted loosely in silence, and then, as one, stiffened up and turned to look at something.

It was one of the cadets. A girl, I thought, though it was hard to tell even with the high resolution, thanks to the uniform haircuts that every single cadet had been forcibly given, shaving them down to the scalp. Even now, nearly two months later, their hair was still short enough to make discerning their gender difficult. She was saying something, gesturing behind her with a frantic hand, her expression worried.

One of the trainers yelled something at the cadet, pointing a hand at her, and then down at the ground by his feet. The cadet replied wordlessly, pointing behind her into the woods repeatedly. The trainer pulled a baton, and after a moment, so did the other two. The batons lit up with the hazy glow of an active stun prod.

The cadet ran, turning on her heel and darting into the woods swiftly. The first trainer said something to the other two, gesturing for them to stay behind, and followed after her at a quick walk, the baton raised to strike, as he too walked into the woods.

I watched, eyes glued to the screen, as the other two trainers waited by the Pelican’s bay, stun prods glowing as they waited for their comrade to return.

But he didn’t. After a minute, the female cadet returned, running back into the edge of the clearing. She called out soundlessly, and gestured behind her.

This time, her expression was not so worried – instead, it was mocking.

The two trainers took off instantly, charging into the woods after the cadet. They could not catch her. The moment they had started moving, she turned and ran yet again. The trainers chased, but barely had they reached the edge of the clearing, where the camera would lose them, when a hail of rocks smashed into them. Some came from in front of them, some came from the sides.

The woods that had appeared so empty to the camera were suddenly full of yelling cadets in dirty jumpsuits, hurling rocks. They jumped out of their concealment, and the trainers fell back, tackled bodily by several cadets with rocks in their fists. They tried to strike out, but they were swarmed and dropped in less than few seconds.

This was a disaster. In one single exercise, Wilson’s orders had prompted the cadets to physically attack their own trainers, in justified self-defense. What the hell was the man thinking? Did he have any idea what this would do to morale, to cohesion, to the willing participation of the cadets? Did he have any idea how morally horrific such an action was, how abusive?

We’d done so many horrible things already, but I’d tried by hardest to ensure that these cadets would be given no reason to doubt their authority figures. No reason to grow up full of fear and suspicion, never trusting. Yes, we’d already damaged them, but that was no reason to double down and start carving scars into their psyches! This kind of action would make them into feral animals, ensuring that they were always distrustful and paranoid.

One of the cadets stepped closer. Another girl, I think, though the shaven head made it hard to tell. She carried a rock in her hand, and her expression was determined. She stood next to the unconscious trainers, and raised the rock as if to strike them, as if to finish them off.

Before she could, another cadet stepped up to her, and laid a hand on her shoulder. He said something to her, and she listened, before dropping the rock to the side. I could see the numbers emblazoned on the shoulders of their jumpsuits. Cadet 016 had held the rock, and Cadet 117 – the one that Mendez had identified as the ringleader – had talked her down.

The sound of a metallic grinding met my ears. I glanced down, and saw that my off-hand was still squeezing the edge of the UNSC standard issue desk. I didn’t feel anything, but the desk was crumpling ever-so-slightly under my grip. I worked the muscles in that hand, and released it, each finger like prying open the jaws of an animal locked on its prey. What a pitiful loss of control, I mused, staring down at the desk. Now I will need to replace it.

I looked up again. The cadets had knocked the trainers unconscious, and some had even dragged back the first trainer by his shoulders. As I watched, some of them started unlacing the trainer’s boots, and tying the laces around their wrists as improvised bonds.

“End playback,” I said, the words dropping from my tongue like lead weights on my soul.

It took a few minutes for Mendez to return with the Captain. It shouldn’t have. We worked in the same building in this compound, and his office was barely a few doors down from mine. I stood the entire time.

Finally, the door hissed open, and Captain Wilson entered my office in a clean day uniform, his face already formed into a studiously disinterested expression. Chief Petty Officer Mendez did not enter with him, and instead stayed outside, closing the door as he did.

“Explain,” I said to him, my tone like steel.

“Explain what, Doctor Halsey?” Wilson asked in reply, his expression not changing.

“Why you disregarded my training plan and overrode my instructions,” I said.

“In what ways?” Wilson asked again, folding his hands behind his back. Perhaps he thought it made him look commanding, like an officer on the bridge of a starship. Yet all it did was draw my ire even more. Perhaps that was his real goal. If so, the fool didn’t realize how close he was to death.

“Ordering the instructors to beat the children for anything less than instant obedience,” I told him, the vivid images of the stun prods returning to my mind.

“This may have escaped you, Doctor,” Wilson said, his façade of calm shifting as he looked at me. “But this is a military operation. That means military discipline. With how insubordinate these children have been, it’s time that they learn how to follow the chain of command.”

The chain of command. The same thing that he had so flagrantly violated. The same principle that required that commands only go from one rank to the immediately next, to prevent conflicts.

If Wilson considered himself my superior, as I suspected he did, then he had violated it by bypassing me. If he considered himself my equal, then he had no legitimacy, as training was my remit. The only way that Wilson hadn’t violated it would be if he believed that I was outside the chain, and thus irrelevant.

It was true that the org chart for the Orion-II program was rather loose at the highest level, but one thing that had been nailed down was that Doctor Catherine Halsey was in charge of the training program.

What a foolish thing to stake your career on, I reflected, the tiniest tinge of pity trickling through my burning anger.

“You have just made three mistakes,” I told him, with an icy voice. “The first was thinking that beating the cadets would improve their morale, rather than emboldening their resistance. The second was bypassing the chain of command by countermanding my instructions. The third was failing to understand the cadets.”

Wilson’s face tightened, and he opened his mouth to reply. I didn’t give him a chance.

“Déjà,” I said, tapping the desk. “Play the Pelican’s video, starting at the cadet’s first appearance. Fast-forward through the gap between the first and second.”

“Of course, Doctor,” Déjà’s calm voice answered, and the holoprojector flared to life again. The Dumb A.I. had even turned the screen so that it was facing Captain Wilson, already recognizing that I had seen the video before.

“Doctor,” Wilson started to say, irritation in his voice.

“Shut up!” I snapped at the man, glaring at him and raising my voice over his. “If you haven’t already watched this, you’re even more of a failure of an officer than you have already demonstrated. If you have watched it, then you can bear to watch it a second time!”

Wilson’s mouth clacked shut, and the remnants of his calm façade shattered at my reprimand, and a contemptuous expression replaced it. For a moment, he tensed, and I waited to see if the idiot would compound his mistake by attempting to turn this into a shouting match. He didn’t, but it looked like a close thing. Doubtless, Wilson had been in these kinds of tense situations before, because they accumulated in a military like honey attracted flies… perhaps the difference was that this time, he wasn’t being chewed out by someone that he personally regarded as a superior.

Yes, it wasn’t officially clear who was in charge of the program, and yes, Wilson had clearly believed he had more authority than he did. Now that belief was crashing on the rocky shores of reality, and as I watched, Wilson swallowed his next words with visible distaste.
 
The Captain watched the video in silence. I stepped to the side so I could watch his reactions. I hoped to see regret, disappointment, maybe even guilt. Something, anything, that would indicate that Wilson had genuinely believed that the cadets would respond with obedience or with mild resistance at most. If he believed that, then he was still an idiot, but at least he would not have planned these instructions with the expectation that they’d actually be used.

No such emotions came across his face. Instead, his expression tightened even more, in clear anger. I locked my own expression back into a mask, and lashed my disgust for the man deep within, where it could not influence my actions.

“Do you understand now why this was a failure?” I asked him, giving the man one more chance to explain. To save himself. To throw himself on my mercy, little though I felt like giving it. Wilson glared at me, and worked his jaw for a moment, before spitting out a reply.

“Yes, because I should have assigned more men,” he replied, his teeth grit. “I underestimated the level of insubordination present in the children, and that is a mistake I will not be make again.”

So be it, then, I thought to myself, as Wilson threw away the last lifeline I could offer him.

“No, you won’t,” I agree with him, meeting his glare with a steady stare of my own. “Your alterations to the training schedule are revoked. You will give no further orders to the trainers until I have cleared this incident with Vice Admiral Keeler.”

Wilson’s eyes widened.

“You’re going to run to the Admiral?” he demanded, face twisting into a scowl. “Waste his time for some kids in need of discipline? Do you understand who Keeler is, Doctor? He runs all of Section Three. He is one step from God in ONI.”

“I am going straight to the only person with authority over this program, yes,” I shot back. “You should think about what that fact means for this program’s importance, Captain. Perhaps you’ll realize how large of a mistake you just made, drawing that man’s attention.”

“And do you think you’ll be immune to his attention, Doctor?” Wilson asked me, baring his teeth like an animal. “Do you think he’ll move past your mistaken decisions so easily? Do you think he’s got any room for mercy in that job?

“Which of us is replaceable, Captain?” I asked him back. “Will it be the black-ops officer garrisoned in an oversight role? Or will it be the only scientist in the UNSC capable of running four different bleeding edge research projects, in areas that punish failures with grisly, painful deaths? Which do you think, Captain?”

Wilson snarled at me, but didn’t respond.

“I know very well who I am working for,” I told him coldly, speaking before he could muster up a reply. “I fear the same cannot be said for you.”

The Captain said nothing more, and with a final furious look, he stormed out of my office, leaving the door open behind him as he did. I said nothing as he did – there was nothing more childish in this situation than to chase a retreating man with statements. It demonstrated nothing but insecurity in yourself.

I sighed quietly, and moved to shut the door. As I approached the threshold, I spotted someone standing outside.

Chief Mendez, of course, I thought to myself. He hadn’t come into the office with Captain Wilson, showing either an excellent grasp of discretion, or perhaps merely the same adamantine level of professionalism that he’d sustained thus far in the program.

I stepped out of the office and turned to look at the Chief, opening my mouth to ask him if he would like to come in and discuss the situation. Instead, however, the moment I stepped outside, my mouth snapped shut.

The Navy NCO was not alone. Standing next to him with wide eyes and an unmasked expression was one of the cadets, a young boy. The number 117 was emblazoned on his chest. The same cadet that had, per Mendez’s debrief, been the last to climb aboard the Pelican, and had shouldered the blame for the rest of the cadets, stating that if anyone was to be left behind, it was him.

He must have been standing outside the entire time, I realized. There was no way that Mendez would have gone to summon him while I talked to Wilson, as he couldn’t know how that discussion would end.

Mendez must have intended to frog-march Cadet 117 into my office, after the stunt the cadets had pulled. An immediate response, bringing him to the equivalent of the principal’s office.

“Come in,” I said, my voice soft with emotional exhaustion. “Both of you.”

I walked back around my desk and sat down, as Mendez ushered Cadet 117 into my office. I pushed past my lethargy and wiped my face clean of feelings.

By a more militaristic point of view, there was only one way to play this situation – distinguish Cadet 117’s actions from Captain Wilson’s, and judge them separately, as isolated instances. I should pretend that my meeting with Wilson had been completely unrelated. I should punish Cadet 117 for disobeying the rules that had governed that individual incident, rather than obeying all instructions, no matter how unusual they were.

By a more rational point of view, that was an imbecilic way to handle things. Even the most emotionless, sociopathic individual could understand that it was far more beneficial in the long run to maintain a consistent enforcement of rules and culture. If a person believed that their situation was truly random, that there was no gain in being consistently cooperative to a set of standards, then they would revert to the law of the jungle. That was the death-knell of civilizations, and I refused to allow it any purchase in my program.

This situation had altered the normal expectations, and I could not blame Cadet 117 for keeping to the old expectations without teaching him that rules were to be followed only when convenient, and broken as soon as you had enough personal power.

Yes, the children had been punished before, because I could not unilaterally change the program’s original hypotheticals without risking my own removal, no matter what I wished. I had to shift things gradually, a millimeter at a time. But never had the program punished the children for ordinary, understandable hesitation! The trainers had waved the stun prods around as visible threats a few times, but they pulled the recalcitrant children from their beds with their bare hands. Refusal was consistently met with explanations and encouragement, not with pain!

They were children, nothing more. We’d just started on military commands like standing at attention, and every trainer had been told to be patient with failures or mistakes. Evidently, not all of them had listened. Those three trainers had demonstrated far too much willingness to obey Wilson’s foolhardy orders, and could no longer be trusted in my program.

I watched Cadet 117 enter with my hands folded on top of the desk, and frowned internally as Chief Mendez nudged him forward when he hesitated.

With a flash of shame, I realized that I didn’t even know his name. I needed to show him that I was a responsible, reliable authority figure, and I’d have to start by either asking his name, or referring to him only by a dehumanizing number.

My hands unlaced, and I quickly accessed my keyboard, flipping through windows and pulling up a list of the cadets. I scrolled through the list until I reached his number, and I scanned his classified dossier quickly, noting his name before shutting off the computer with another key-press.

“Hello, John,” I said, looking at the six year old.

“Doctor Halsey,” the cadet responded, throwing up a salute. It was sloppy, and I saw Mendez’s eyes inspect his form, but neither of us mentioned it.

“Trainee 117,” Mendez said, with a growling tone. “Tell the Doctor what you told me. Tell her why you stole UNSC property and attacked the men guarding it.”

“Sir!” John barked out, stiffening up in a childish imitation of standing at attention. “The guards were out of uniform. No insignia. They failed to identify themselves, sir!”

I blinked in surprise, and glanced at Mendez. The Chief raised a single eyebrow, but said nothing.
 
Out of uniform. I squashed an uncharacteristic burst of amusement at the Cadet’s technical, legalistic defense.

What an interpretation! John hadn’t done anything wrong because the men weren’t wearing their proper uniforms, therefore they were not his trainers, and were acceptable targets. From the narrow point of view that military law took – for there could be no other way when it came to warfare – he was entirely correct.

I know that children are supposed to imitate their caregivers, but I hadn’t expected them to imitate me so quickly.

My amusement turned darker. John was not completely wrong. Those men were not his trainers – no longer. I would never trust them on this base again. They would be gone by tomorrow, if I had my way with Keeler.

“Is that correct?” I asked him, leveling the lightest stare on the boy that I could personally stomach. “You attacked them because they were out of uniform?”

John hesitated in responding. I saw his eyes flicker around my office, looking at the dark wood, at the bare walls. He was searching for an excuse, for an out, but in the empty office that I hadn’t bothered to decorate, there was nothing.

“Would you attack another person if they were out of uniform?” I asked him. “Can I trust you on my base, cadet?”

“Sir, yes sir!” John replied, hurriedly. “You can trust me, sir!”

“I am not military,” I told him, keeping my voice gentle. “The correct term is Doctor. Nothing else. I am no ‘sir’.”

“Yes, uh… Doctor,” he repeated, turning his head just enough to look at Chief Mendez from the corner of his eye. He was probably checking for a reaction, a hint, something that would let him know how to proceed. Mendez didn’t show any signs of noticing the obvious movement, and neither did I.

“John,” I said softly, leaning forward slightly as I spoke. “Why did you attack them?”

He bit his lip, and his expression grew panicked. I could see the glimmer of something in his eyes. The start of tears, perhaps.

“You have done nothing wrong, John,” I told him, before he could start crying. “You did the right thing, but I need to know why you did it.”

“They were going to attack us!” he blurted out, before stopping, eyes wide. “I – I mean…”

“They were going to attack you,” I repeated softly. “That is correct. You defended yourself and your team. That is why you were right.”

“But…” John let slip, before cutting himself off.

“Listen to me, cadet,” I murmured, standing up and walking around the desk. I kneeled down and put myself at his eye level. “You are never wrong to defend yourself and your teammates. No matter what happens, your life is still important. Anyone who disagrees with that is your enemy.”

I didn’t dare look at Mendez as I spoke. I was saying too much, too quickly. There was no way to square that statement with the knowledge that sometimes, sacrifices were needed to save lives. I was being blatantly hypocritical from his perspective, because I’d been the same one to condemn the children to this hell in the first place.

Perhaps he would consider me a hypocrite. Perhaps he would view it as just another lie for the sake of the greater good, like any other ONI flunky. I didn’t particularly care what the Chief Petty Officer thought at the moment. I had a more important person standing right in front of me.

John’s red-rimmed eyes latched onto me, and I refused to look away. I tried to show him the compassion that I felt, the guilt, all of my true feelings, no matter how unlikely it was that the six-year old would understand.

“What should I do with him, Doctor?” Mendez asked, interrupting our staring match.

“Do?” I repeated, standing up and giving the man a fierce look once I was well past John’s height, where he couldn’t see.

Mendez didn’t say anything more, and his raised eyebrow was all I needed to know that he wanted an actual answer. For good reason, too. As much as I’d justified the cadet’s actions to John, he had still been hauled in front of my office.

If I sent the boy away with nothing but a pat on the back, then he would inevitably wonder why he’d been brought there in the first place. With time, that wondering could become a realization that this training exercise had not gone exactly as planned, and with that, the realization that his trainers were not infallible, were not trustworthy.

I couldn’t possibly allow that realization to form, no matter that it was the truth, no matter that it was an excellent summary of my own feelings regarding the matter. I needed to do something with the boy to justify why Mendez had hauled him in front of me. My mind spun for a moment, and a loose, stray thought caught my attention.

One of my intended goals, later on in the program’s lifespan, was to teach the cadets to be virtuous. To reward actions that supported those virtues, to punish actions that went against them. What was this, if not the first chance to do exactly that?

“I think that’s obvious, Chief,” I said, smiling as I realized the perfect solution. “Make him a squad leader.”

Chapter Text

Mealtimes were quickly becoming Sam’s favorite time of the day, mostly because he could ignore the rest of the training and just focus on eating.

He was usually hungry, and eating at the cafeteria – the mess hall, he reminded himself – was one of the few times he could get enough food, though not enough to make him vomit. He wasn’t gonna make that mistake again.

The lessons with the computer lady, Déjà, had covered this a little. Food was fuel to people, like electricity to machines, or gas to cars, and the more a person moved and exercised, the more fuel they needed.

That made sense, because Sam was moving a lot these days. He’d always enjoyed recess, always enjoyed running around the farm. He’d been looking forward to doing some of the harder chores, the ones that older boys had complained about, but he wasn’t on Harvest any more. He was on Reach.

And yeah, that was a hard thing to deal with. The Chief had told them about duty, courage, and honor. Déjà had explained what a cost-benefit ratio was, and how sometimes you needed to sacrifice little things to save big things. Doctor Halsey had told them all how important their mission was on that first night.

It didn’t make things any easier, thinking about the big picture. It was just… too big. How was he, a kid, supposed to be important to the future of everyone?

It was much better to look at the small stuff, Sam was finding out.  Linda might have had better eyesight, but Sam still saw more things. He paid attention, and it came in handy dozens of times. He knew things that the others didn’t. What they would be eating that day. What the next exercises were. What the next lessons in the classrooms would be. Which of the other kids were the most homesick.

That last one was the most important. All the others were stuck in place, and nothing he could do would change them. But he could help the homesick kids. He could distract them when they needed to pretend nothing was wrong, or listen to them when they had to cry. James had trouble getting up in time, so Sam got up early to wake him before the trainers came in. Li ate slow and got stomach pains if he ate too fast, so Sam made sure he was always first to get his food, so he had the most time to eat. Vinh was hesitant to team up, so Sam asked her to join him, John, and Kelly for some teamwork assignments.

Small things, but they added up, and Sam knew that his actions here, right now, would matter.

But sometimes, being the kid who saw everything was a problem.

“What happened?” Kelly whispered, hissing out the words in between breaths as their feet pounded the dirt, and they turned for the next lap.

“I don’t know,” Sam admitted quietly.

They were out jogging around the compound, and for the first time since they’d started the program, each and every child was not accompanied by a trainer hanging by their shoulder with watchful eyes and ears.

The Chief hadn’t said anything about it. No explanation, no excuses. He just ordered them into line, and took off on his usual jog. Instead of seventy-five trainers accompanying them, today there were barely ten, jogging around the edges of the formation as they went for their usual PT.

“Hey, you know what’s going on?” another kid muttered as they rounded a corner.

“No,” Sam said, for what felt like the tenth time.

Everyone noticed, and most of the kids had the same solution – go bug Sam about it, see what he knew. But this time, Sam didn’t know anything beyond what they did.

He tried figuring it out. The Chief was like the mountains, stone cold and unreadable. He hadn’t seen Doctor Halsey today. He hadn’t had a chance to ask Déjà yet, and he didn’t think she’d give him a straight answer either, because this was way more important than what they were having for dinner.

The only way he could possibly figure out what was going on was to look at the other trainers. That was something Sam tried to avoid when he could. They spotted him watching sometimes, and that meant they might decide to do something.

Plus, he never knew what he’d get with the trainers. Some were like the Chief, impossible to read. Some were easier, but they just focused so hard on something else that you still didn’t learn anything. And some of them were a little less focused, and Sam could tell that they were mean.

Those kinds of trainers were the ones that Sam tried to keep the others safe from. Some of them had been at the Pelican yesterday, and had been waiting to beat them up. John spotted it a little after Sam did, but he hadn’t thought to speak out about it, and John did – and John had probably saved some of the kids a beating.

Sam had worried about what the Chief would think of that, but the Chief had come out this morning and told them all that John was now a squad leader, whatever that meant.

He tried to glance at the closest trainer with a sideways glance as they kept jogging. The trainer didn’t spot him, too busy looking up and down the line of jogging kids. He looked… tired? No, that wasn’t it. Worried, maybe.

That bothered Sam more than not knowing, honestly. The trainers were grown men who’d gone through the same kind of things that they had, and so this should all be normal to them, right? Why would they be worried, unless things weren’t normal? Unless something had gone wrong, that something was bad?

Sam glanced to his other side, at the kid running by his side now.

“Hey,” he muttered. “I think something’s wrong with the trainers. They’re worried.”

John glanced at him, and frowned, his head still bobbing up and down as they kept jogging around the beaten dirt track that went around the entire compound.

“The Doctor,” John whispered back.

“They’re worried about the Doctor?” Sam asked softly, confused. “But…”

“No,” John shook his head a little bit. “I think they’re scared of her.”

Sam didn’t understand. How could they be scared of Doctor Halsey? She was smaller than all of the trainers. She wasn’t even military.

Sam’s heart lifted a bit as he saw that they were approaching the playground. Every single day it was changed into a new shape, a new layout of pipes and beams and slides and ropes, stretched out over a large pool of water – the penalty zone, where you’d wind up if you weren’t careful.

It was a challenge like nothing else he’d ever done before. He’d enjoyed the playgrounds at home, but they were boring after a while, when he could remember every foothold, every grab bar, every place where he could swing and jump when all the other kids couldn’t. The playground here was always challenging because he’d have to learn those things new.

And of course, the other cadets were much better competition than the kids back home. Nobody was as strong as him, but plenty were faster, more daring, more flexible, more slippery. It was the best kind of exercise – the fun kind, where you were having such a great time that you didn’t notice any kind of tiredness until hours later. It was like how the hills blurred when they were in the Pelican flying around; a magical kind of feeling where the less important stuff stopped mattering for a little while.

Today, the playground was split into two bulkier sections, separated not by walkways or rope bridges, but by a two foot gap running down the middle. Each section had three or four different levels, with larger, wider platforms than the playground usually had. There were gaps and ladders all over the place, and a person could have climbed or dropped between the levels really quickly if they knew how. A pair of wooden planks with little raised steps led up from the ground to each section of the base.

At the highest point, like usual, was a special object: this time is was a flag. The flag was at the furthest edge of the sections, as far as possible from that diving line in the middle. There were two flags, one red and one blue. Even parts of the two sections were painted red and blue, matching their flags colors.

“The game is capture the flag,” Mendez called out, as the cadets gathered around. A few of the trainers were pulling out two boxes with jerseys, matching the flags. “You will be divided into two teams, and your goal is to capture the other team’s flag. Winning team gets dessert, ice cream sundaes. Losing team does the dishes.”

Some of the kids hissed. Ever since they’d started doing better at the exercises, the Chief had gotten nasty with the punishments. After the first week, nobody had their dinner taken away again, even the kids who came in last. They were all ‘putting in enough effort’, as one of the trainers had said. But now, instead of it just being a few kids who got punished, it was larger and larger groups of them. It didn’t feel fair, but it was still better than going without a meal.

“The rules are simple,” Mendez told them, holding out a hand as if to split the cadets in half, and gesturing at everyone on one side of his arm. “You are Blue Team. The rest of you are Red Team. You can tag any member of the other team in any location. If you are tagged on your base, then you sit down where you were tagged. While you are down, you cannot tag anyone. Any other member of your team can revive you by tagging you. If you are tagged while on the enemy’s base, you must go to their prison.”

Mendez pointed to the lowest level of the two sections, near the back.

“The prison is marked out by tape, and you will stay inside that prison until one of your teammates frees you with a tag,” Mendez continued. “Once you’ve been freed from a prison, you are immediately active, and can tag or be tagged. To win, capture the enemy’s flag and return it to your base. Put your jerseys on, and form into ranks.”

Sam fell into line with the other kids from Red Team, and looked around. John was on the Blue Team, but Kelly was with him, so that was good. He saw Fred, Joshua, Vinh, Jerome, and Douglas, which was a pretty solid team around him. The rest were probably fine, but he was still getting to know them. The other team… he glanced over, and saw John talking to Linda, Alice, Daisy, James, Li, and Will.

The trainers walked around, counting as the kids formed into ranks. With seventy-five kids, it looked like John’s team would have a one kid advantage, but that wasn’t too bad.

They were hustled off to their side of the playground, away from the other kids. Some of the trainers were climbing up into little towers and observation posts, while a single trainer went to each of the prisons and each of the flags. Their stark black jumpsuits stood out from the gray of Sam’s own jumpsuit, and the colored jerseys they wore, which should make it easy to tell them apart.

He licked his lips, and shared a grin with Kelly. This was gonna be good. A real competition. The kind of thing that he wished he could do every day, instead of sitting in the classroom with Déjà’s lessons, no matter how important those things probably were.

“Okay, what’s the plan?” he asked, looking around. The rest of the kids looked back at him, unsure, hesitant to respond.

“I can take a few people and go up that far side,” Jerome volunteered. “It looks like it goes straight to the flag.”

“Yeah, but it’s narrow,” Fred pointed out. “They’ll only need to put one person on it, and they can keep it guarded.”

“Not if we tag them first,” Vinh murmured. “I’ll go with him.”

“I’ll go up the middle,” Kelly announced, bouncing lightly on her feet. “I think I could outrun them, grab that flag, and get away.”

“They’ll see you coming,” Jerome said. “It’s what John would have had you do anyway, so he’ll know.”

“Yeah? So what?” Kelly asked, jutting her chin out at the boy.

“So wait until I go up that side first,” Jerome said, pointing with his hand. “We’ll make a bunch of noise and draw their attention, and then you go, while they’re distracted.”

Kelly squinted at him, tilting her head from side to side.

“I guess that works,” she said, shrugging. “I don’t think it’s really needed, though.”

“I’ll run the defense,” Sam said. “Let’s hold at least half of our team back for defense.”

“Isn’t that too much?” someone asked – a boy that had 059 stamped on his jumpsuit. “What if we don’t send enough people on the attack?”

“Then we’ll have a reserve we can use to free them,” Sam argued, remembering the idea of a ‘mobile reserve’ from something that Doctor Halsey had been teaching them. “If we send too many of us on the attack and they get tagged, they’re stuck in the prison. But if we get tagged here, we’ll just tag our own guys back up, which is a lot easier.”

Cadet 059 frowned, but didn’t say anything else.

“Why can’t we just guard the prison and the flag, and stay put?” another kid that Sam didn’t know asked – a girl marked 016. “They’re far apart, but we’ve got thirty people, we could easily guard both.”

“Didn’t you hear the Chief?” another kid asked from the back of the crowd. “We can’t win without taking their flag.”

“But if we tag most of them out first, then we’ll have superior numbers, and then–” Cadet 016 tried to argue, before a sudden shout cut her off.

“Begin!” the Chief roared, blowing a whistle.

Sam jumped, and ran for the planks. He was one of the first ones up, and wobbled a bit on the board, because there were no handrails, but it was wide enough that he didn’t fall. As soon as he got to the top, he jumped to the side and started climbing up to the top level, so he could see what was around him. The girl who’d spoken up – Cadet 016 – was following him.

Jerome had gathered up five other kids, including Vinh, and was already racing for the left side of the playground. They jumped over as a group, clearing the gap and charging headfirst into the enemy base. Half of them had a nice flat section to run on, but some of the others had to climb up a rope ladder to go one level higher, with Jerome taking the first group and Vinh taking the second group.

Blue Team was already moving. Kelly had been standing by the center of the second level, ready to jump over and gun it for the flag, when a group of kids leapt right over and charged her. She was fast, but there was at least seven other kids. She got two of them with lightning fast hands, but then got tagged, and with an angry scowl, plopped down on the ground.

Sam looked out, and saw that Jerome’s team wasn’t doing too well. Vinh and her entire group were already tagged, with James having jumped down from the top level behind them and tagging them all quickly, before they’d noticed.

Li was doing even better – he’d go partway up a ladder and reach out with a hand to smack one of Jerome’s team, before dropping back down to avoid getting tagged. He’d already gotten one of Jerome’s group, and now it was a two-on-five matchup, as three more kids from Blue Team came running straight at Jerome.

“You do the defense thing,” Sam told Cadet 016. “I’m gonna tag Kelly!”

“Okay!” the girl nodded back, a serious look on her face, as Sam took off, hopping over a ladder and racing towards the dividing line.

A swarm of Red Team kids charged at the invading Blue Team. Sam was one level too high to join in, and he wasn’t sure it was the best move anyway, so he kept running, moving past the confrontation. If you fought someone else, you could tag or get tagged, and either win it all or lose it all. But if you went to revive your buddies, then you added to your team’s numbers while risking much less.

He stopped near the diving line between the based and slid down a small pole, dropping right next to Kelly.

“Bad luck,” he said as he tagged her outstretched hand.

“Good luck from John,” Kelly muttered. “He sent them, I know it.”

“Can you blame him?” Sam asked. “It worked.”

Kelly grumbled under her breath, while Sam quickly glanced at both bases. The initial surge had slowed down, and now there was maybe a dozen kids trying to tease the other side into jumping across the line. The prisons were filling with early aggressors, making it all pointless. His Red Team had lost maybe fifteen kids, and Blue Team had lost maybe ten.

“She’s right,” Sam realized.

“Who?” Kelly asked, eyeing a kid from Blue Team that was walking towards the diving line, ready to tag him if he jumped over.

“That girl, Cadet 016,” Sam told her. “If we’d played all defense, even just for the first wave, we’d outnumber them right now, four to three. Instead, they outnumber us.”

“Can’t win a fight with all defense,” Kelly objected.

“No, but you don’t have to stay on defense the whole time,” Sam pointed out. “They would’ve stopped coming, and then we’d jump them with overwhelming numbers.”

“Too late now,” Kelly said with a shrug. “We’ll have to just keep pushing for the flag.”

Sam inspected the route to the flag, and frowned. The bases had four levels, with the flag on the highest, but that top level didn’t extend out to the boundary line. They’d have to jump across on the second-highest level, then charge through the narrow pathways like Jerome had tried. It was just too open – Li and James had taken out three times their numbers without getting downed.

Maybe if they charged with enough kids… but that didn’t seem right either. Déjà had been telling them about the differences between good commanders and bad commanders, and throwing away lives in a frontal charge was a bad commander’s move. Plus, even if they did, and they took out a bunch of Blue Team, then they’d just be revived instantly anyway.

Sam glanced down towards the Blue Team prison. He could see Jerome standing there, scowling in frustration, along with the other fourteen kids. Around a third of their total numbers, just stuck in prison unable to do anything, whereas Blue Team had only lost… a quarter of theirs? That seemed about right.

He kept looking, and then paused as he saw something. Way at the back of the prison was a couple knotted ropes that hung down from above, clearly intended for climbing. He followed them up, and his jaw fell open as he saw that they went all the way from the bottom level to the top – next to the flag.

The prison had looked like a good place to hit because it would free their teammates and make it easier to defend… but what if they didn’t defend? The Chief had said that the prisoners would be active immediately after being freed. So if Sam and Kelly freed them, then they’d had seventeen kids right there. It’d be a fast climb up to the top, but the other levels didn’t even come close to the rope ladders, so it’d be hard to tag them until they were back on their feet, and were even behind the defenders.

Of course, if he messed it up, then he’d be adding himself and Kelly to the prison without any real gain. They needed more people. And if they took too many, then they might make their defenses too weak, and John could attack with a group of his own while they were busy at the prison.

“Come on, I’ve got an idea,” he said to Kelly, pointing back up towards the back of the base, where more kids were congregating, safely back from the midpoint.

They jogged back up towards the flag, where Cadet 016 was shouting at kids, waving her hands and trying to direct them. It was slow, but some of the kids were already moving towards chokepoints and narrow paths, so it was coming along.

“Hey, I think I know how we can win!” he burst out as soon as he got up the ladder. “I’m gonna take five kids and go hit their prison. You keep everyone else here and defend.”

“Not the flag?” Kelly asked, bewildered. “Why?”

“Once we free the prisoners, they can join us as we move immediately to the flag,” Sam explained, glancing between her and Cadet 016. “Then we won’t have six kids, we’ll have twenty-one. More than half our team, all at once! There’s a couple ropes that go right up to the top, and I think we can get up those fast enough to surprise them.”

“A shock troop infiltration,” Cadet 016 murmured, tilting her head. “Not a bad idea. But you’d have to be fast. Surprise is your best tool, and once that’s gone, you’ll be swarmed.”

“If we go to the bottom floor before we attack, then they’ll have a harder time seeing us,” another kid pointed out, a boy with the number 051 on his jumpsuit. “All that other stuff gets in the way. I think it’ll work! I’m with you.”

“I’m Sam,” he identified himself, extending a hand like adults did.

“Kurt,” the other boy replied with a smile, grabbing Sam’s hand and shaking it excitedly. “Six total, yeah? With us, that’s three. I’ll grab three more, and meet you down by our prison.”

“Don’t slow us down,” Kelly cut in, nudging the boy with a small grin of her own. “Pick fast kids.”

“Right!” Kurt nodded, as he turned away and waved at a gaggle of kids that was watching over one of the narrow paths to the flag. “Hey, listen up!”

Sam moved over to the back of the top floor, and sure enough, their base had the same set of knotted climbing ropes and slick poles at the back, right next to the flag.

“Make sure they don’t come up these,” Cadet 016 barked at a couple kids near her, pointing at the ropes. She sounded fierce, almost as much as the Chief. “If we can spot this, then so can they! And you three, go down to the prison and reinforce the guard there! We can’t have them getting loose!”

Sam grabbed onto one of the poles, glanced down quickly to make sure nobody else was in his way, and jumped, his body swinging around the pole as he slid quickly all the way down to the bottom. Kelly was right beside him on the other pole. Kurt and the other three kids followed shortly after, and they all gathered up by the prison, nodding to the couple of kids that had voluntarily come down to guard it.

“Alright, everyone ready?” Kurt asked, glancing at each of them in turn. Everyone nodded back, and Kelly started to bounce on her feet again.

“We can’t just run in blind,” Sam cautioned them. “And no splitting up, that’s just a good way to get picked off.”

“Once we jump the gap, go right on that suspended bridge,” a girl said, pointing to it. “They can’t reach us while we’re on it. Then it’s a straight shot to the prison. Looks like four kids guarding it.”

“That’s okay,” Sam said. “Even if we trade tags, we’ve got two more people, and we’ll all wind up at the prison being freed anyway.”

“Let’s do it!” Kelly cheered. “I’ll go first, and try to get some quick tags!”

Sam held his hand out in the middle of the group. Kurt and the others looked at it, unsure what he was doing, but Kelly instantly got it, and put her hand on top of his.

“Come on, Red Team on three!” she said, gesturing at the others. They put their hands in as well, and Kelly counted down. “One, two, three!”

“Red Team!” they all chanted, and Sam felt a surge of pride as they all turned and started running for the midpoint.

Kelly got there five steps before Sam, already flying ahead. She took a short hop over the gap, sailing over the water below, and hit the ground running. Sam, Kurt, and the others followed behind, with Sam closest behind.

Their feet pounded across the planks of the suspension bridge, bouncing it up and down as they rushed.

“Incoming!” the Blue Team prison guard yelled. “I need help down here!”

“Faster!” Kurt called, as they left the bridge.

There was only a short ways left until the prison, and the guard came charging out, probably figuring out that if they got too close, they’d just ignore him and go for the prisoners. He was right, but he tried to lunge too early, and Kelly abruptly stopped just short of his reaching hand, leaning to the side and slapping him right across the chest.

Someone shouted above them, and Li swung down from the floor above, with just his upper body dangling upside down as he tagged one of the other Red Team kids. Sam didn’t know how he was doing it – maybe he’d tangled his legs on something, and was holding himself in place?

Another couple Blue Team kids jumped down, with James at their head, dropping out of a small hole in the ceiling off to their left, near one of the side-routes to the prison.

“Charge!” Kurt barked, turning on his heel and running straight at the enemy team. Two of the other Red Team kids followed him, hands outstretched like lances.

“Get the prisoners, we’ll hold them off!” shouted their last teammate, as he jumped up to try to swat at Li, just as Li shot back upwards, like he was on a fishing line and had just been hauled back.

Kelly and Sam raced forward, reaching out to smack Jerome’s extended arm.

“Oly oly oxen free!” Kelly cried out happily, as she ran down the line of tape that marked the prison, tagging every single kid she could. “All out in the open! We’re all free!”

Sam didn’t know what that meant, but Kelly’s cheer was so giddy that he couldn’t keep a smile from his face as he went down the other side of the prison, freeing teammates.

“Go up the ropes!” Sam told them, pointing over their heads, to the back of the Blue Team base, where the floor ended and the climbing ropes dangled.

There was no back wall, no handrail, because the base had so very few of those. If a kid wasn’t careful, he could easily fall right off, into the water below. After the first few times they’d each had to swim out of the water, soaking and embarrassed, few of the kids made that mistake any more.

“Come on! Straight to the flag!” Kelly encouraged them, as Sam grabbed the first rope and started climbing. He was stronger than almost everyone else, and this was all about strength. He practically flew up the rope, barely using his legs as his arms pull him further and further upwards. Other kids followed him.

There were more shouts coming from Blue Team now. Sam focused on the rope above him, but he could still hear them.

“They’re coming for the flag!”

“Hey, get back here! We need help!”

“No, don’t attack now, get back here!”

Then he was almost to the top. He paused just as he crossed onto the top level, and locked eyes with the Blue Team guard by the flag. The cadet couldn’t reach him, they were just a hair too far apart. Even if he’d jumped on the pole and slid down, stretching out a hand to tag all the kids on the ropes, he couldn’t have done it.

“You know I’m gonna tag you instantly, right?” the kid tried to argue with him.

Sam thought about replying, about saying something back – but he could see other kids from Blue Team trying to get back to the flag. They were slowed by the tight walkways that approached the top level, hampering them as much as it would have helped them against attackers who tried a frontal assault. Arguing would only delay him, and aid the other team.

He tensed his legs, and jumped. The Blue Team kid lashed out instantly, and Sam felt a hand smack his shoulder as he landed.

“You’re out!” barked an adult voice – the trainer, standing there in a black jumpsuit, pointing at him. “Go to prison, don’t interfere with active players!”

Sam looked up, and realized he was blocking the Blue Team kid from play. He stepped aside quickly, and two more of his teammates jumped from the ropes the moment he did. One of them got tagged instantly by the panicked guard, but the second one tagged him, and the guard was done.

“Come on!” Sam said, tugging on the other tagged kid. “If we hurry, they’ll free us fast, and we can still get up here!”

They grabbed onto the poles and slid down, dropping three levels in seconds, much faster than climbing the ropes. The poles came to a stop, and they hopped off.

“You’re out already?” Kelly teased, as they walked over into the prison, and were instantly free as she tagged them again. “Go on, get out of here!”

Sam looked around. Of the fifteen kids that had been imprisoned, maybe five had jumped into help Kurt and his team. Even when they were tagged, they were so close to the prison that it didn’t matter, and the frantic slap-battle as the two forces tried to tag their opponents and revive their allies was coming to a close as Red Team overwhelmed them with numbers. The other kids had all gone up the ropes.

“We’ve got this, go!” Kurt said, noticing Sam’s hesitation. “Get the flag, and win it!”

Sam took a breath, and jumped back up onto the climbing rope, his arms burning as he started his second journey upwards.

At the top, the surge of Blue Team kids were stumbling against the overwhelming numbers of Sam’s Red Team. Some of the tagged kids were getting revived quick, but they were still blocking the narrow passages, and they couldn’t spread out and start tagging everyone.

“We can’t get out this way,” one of the Red Team kids said to Sam as he hauled himself up.

“Then we go back down!” someone else said, pointing at the poles. “The bottom floor’s easier to get out of anyway!”

Sam shook his head. Up and down, up and down. He just wanted to get the flag already.

“Red Team, retreat!” he shouted over the cries of the other kids as they tagged back and forth. “Back down the poles!”

A girl grabbed the flag and fled down swiftly, wrapping her legs around the pole with wide eyes as she held the flag with her off hand. A tide of red jerseys followed her, and Sam took a moment to wave at the approaching Blue Team kids with a wide smile before he too grabbed onto the pole and slid down.

“Go, go, go!” someone shouted.

“Push to the midpoint!” he heard Kurt yelling in the middle of the kids. “Don’t stop, just keep pushing!”

By the time Sam hit the bottom floor, the tagging battle was over, and plenty of blue jersey wearing cadets were glaring up from the floor as a mob from Red Team surged away, the flag somewhere in the middle.

Sam took off after them, and he was barely halfway across the bridge when an air-horn blew, and the Chief was roaring out for them to all fall in. They fell in, forming up quickly, and the Chief spent a few minutes inspecting them before ordering them back up.

“Again!” the Chief barked.

Red Team won three out of five games, and went back to the mess hall to ice cream sundaes. It took Sam about an hour after the last game to realize that he was still smiling.

Chapter Text

Doctor David Meyer was furious.

It was not a feeling he was accustomed to. He’d made a point of it, in fact. He knew exactly how hot his rage would burn, and he’d tried to get through life without encountering too much aggravation for that exact reason. Anger was a fire that consumed everything in its path, and he had no desire to be burned up in the inferno of his own emotions.

Normally, he was a kind, gentle man. It was why he’d gone into medicine and psychology. There were so many ways that people could hurt, so many things that could ruin lives, and he wanted to help them all. Yet that kindness was a double-edged sword. He cared so much, so deeply, that it was easy to become furious on someone else’s behalf.

He’d thought that Catherine agreed with him in that. But it had been years since he’d seen her, and now, she was unrecognizable. Someone else might assume that she’d changed, that she was hardened by time or experience. David knew better. He’d spent years living with the young Catherine Halsey, and he’d had many fierce debates with her on a wide range of topics.

Catherine Halsey was passionate, driven, and almost obsessive about her beliefs. She held them so strongly that Earth would split in half before she gave up a single one of her ideals.

David’s anger burned hot, but his mind was a steel trap, and he refused to let emotional bias convince him of anything so absurd as Catherine Halsey agreeing to kidnap children, brainwash them, and use them in experimental human augmentations. It simply was not possible.

Yet here he stood, sitting inside USNC laboratory in Menachite Mountain, reading over the same staff report over and over again, his eyes glazed over and unable to pick up the words. It was yet another report from one of his doctors in the Surgery Team.

The Surgery Team. What a horrible thing. When this sick project finally got put the children under the knife, it would be him and his fellow doctors to cut them open, fill their bones with grafted ceramics, carve into their brain, implant metal pellets in their thyroids, inject a witches brew of proteins and growth hormones into their muscles, and even more untested procedures.

ONI was forcing him to be a monster. To share in this immoral abomination, or to stand back with his conscience clear while children died on the table.

It was the kind of thing that made David want to burn the entire lab to the ground – and seven years ago, he would have known that Catherine Halsey would be standing right next to him, throwing bombs, screaming in outrage at the injustice of it, the crime of robbing these children of their childhoods, their lives, and even worse: their free will.

Of their four man band, only he and Catherine had shared that painful certainty. He should know – he was the shrink among them, the crazy bastard who’d sought to understand the human brain from every possible aspect, both physical and not. He’d grown to love the party house and his three roommates like siblings, and he’d learned their psychologies inside and out.

Steve Sullivan was a happy man who enjoyed life. He had never seen the horrors that people inflicted on each other. He’d grown up in a happy family, he’d known very little suffering. He longed to bring his dreams to life for the betterment of all mankind, because he believed, fundamentally, that everyone should be helped.

Paul Wu was a morose man who desired control. His family life, what little he spoke of it, was cold and distant, with the expectations of a harsh mother mollified by the attempts of a kind-hearted but meek father. His college rebellion was choosing to study biochemistry, and he’d found a love for the discipline’s unholy combination of rigid precision and random chaos. It let Paul imagine a perfect system, while accepting the inevitable downfall of that system; a neat balm to his love of detail and his underlying fears of failure.

David Meyer, himself, was one of the two Outer Colony kids in their group. He’d gone into psychology after watching his own family break apart… and then, when he’d seen how bad medicine could be, he’d gone right back to university to fix that as well. It was directly driven by his own history, and David acknowledged that. He’d seen a broken world, and he wanted to fix it, no matter the cost to himself. It burned at him. It drove him forward.

Catherine Halsey was the other Outer Colony kid. She’d rarely ever spoken about her childhood, which said plenty. She was formal in a way that did not fit her age, and when she finally relaxed, she displayed a dark, biting wit that was a better fit for a crippled veteran than a teenage prodigy. Throughout it all, she’d also possessed an ironclad devotion to the ideals of personal liberty, and it had burned in her heart as strongly as his own conviction – perhaps more.

It was not a passing interest, a fleeting whim. To Catherine Halsey, people were free, or they were dead, and she would fight the Devil himself to keep them free. David had privately hypothesized that Catherine had suffered in that exact way, and that motivated her. He’d never spoken of it to her, there was no need. They were in sync, and they could never disagree on this.

Which meant that right now, Catherine Halsey was still fighting for that ideal, even in the deepest darkness of ONI Section Three. The alternative was impossible.

David sighed, and shut down the computer with a button-press. He couldn’t stand to read another page of hypotheticals and computer simulations on the best way to perform such intense surgeries on pubescent teenagers.

It would have been so easy to extend his disgust to the paper’s author, but he knew that the man was just as horrified by this situation as he was. His entire Surgery Team shared his beliefs on it. That was why they were all so focused on the procedures, running test after test, simulation after simulation, in a relentless effort to reduce the potential failures.

Right now, their estimated success rate was ten percent, and every single person in the Surgery Team agreed that was unacceptable. They would not allow sixty-eight children to die under their care.

And Catherine Halsey probably agreed with him, David knew. Which only made this next appointment even harder to deal with.

It was time for a progress report. A one-on-one meeting with his boss on his team’s contribution to Project Orion-II. A meeting where neither of them could speak openly on their feelings, misgivings, or anger about this atrocity. Not in an ONI base. That would be beyond arrogance.

From now on, David would have to rely on the unspoken bond that he’d shared with Catherine back at the University of Circumstance – the silent knowledge that on this topic, on their shared ideals, he had her back, and that she had his. Something that they’d never once discussed, but always known.

The door hissed as it opened, and David stood politely, his face molded into an emotionless mask, as Doctor Catherine Halsey entered the room.

Catherine Halsey walked forward to the desk, and David begrudgingly admitted to himself that she truly looked like an ONI spook. It was a masterful display of lying. It wasn’t just wearing the right clothes, or saying the right things. It was how a person behaved consistently. It was their expressions, their reactions, their attitudes towards every little detail. If they didn’t all add up, then they were faking.

None of the party house had ever been inclined towards theater, but apparently Halsey had picked up the taste somewhere, because she was doing the best job of acting that David had ever seen. Her face was cold and distant, just the right touch of disdain and contempt without overacting through scowls or screams. Her body language was stiff and precise, like she was a UNSC veteran still following military discipline.

She looked like a killer. She looked like she had ordered cities burned. It was a magnificent false front, presenting Catherine as the monster that she couldn’t be. If David hadn’t known her, and hadn’t been aware that Catherine Halsey was above all else a nerd, he might have believed it.

“Doctor Meyer,” she greeted him, as she sat down in front of his desk.

“Doctor Halsey,” David replied, joining her. “Our initial simulations have proceeded without much success, but they have helped us eliminate many of the Orion-I augmentations from consideration, due to the difficulty of the required surgeries, and the need for the subjects to continue development afterwards. Our current goal is to narrow that field down to only the procedures that can safely be performed on all subjects.”

“Excellent,” Catherine said, her cold expression unchanging. “Admiral Keeler has high expectations of this program. Nevertheless, he has expressed faith in our abilities, both in determining the full scope of the augmentations, and in implementing them. I trust I do not need to explain the responsibility we possess.”

David nodded grimly. The responsibility to the lives of the young candidates. He knew full well what she really meant, behind the double-speak. They were doing this for the children, not for ONI… but to keep the children alive, they would have to satisfy Keeler’s demands. If they tried to call the program off, tried to pretend that it was impossible, then they would be removed and replaced with someone else.

In other words, there was no hope of killing the project. Not with the head of ONI Section Three keeping a personal eye on them, and expecting results.

Damn.

He had known the odds of that outcome were low. At the very least, now he knew that they were truly stuck with this job for the next ten years.

“What shall be the primary focus for the augmentations?” David asked. “Your initial briefing mentioned seven specific enhancement procedures, but did not clarify which.”

“The close-out on Project Orion-I included post-op evaluations of each test subject,” Catherine told him. “I have just secured the appropriate permissions to share those evaluations with both Doctor Wu’s Augmentation Team, and your Surgery Team. While I am certain that there will be redundancies in the data, you will of course perform your own thorough examination to confirm their conclusions.”

David’s eyes widened slightly. This was the first time that he’d heard of any post-op evaluations. ONI had been infuriating tight-lipped about the predecessor to Orion-II, and his ‘liaison’ was constantly slamming the door in David’s face every time he tried to request access to data. It had taken nearly the entire first month just to get the details on the augmentations alone, without any performance metrics for the individual procedures.

“Not Doctor Sullivan’s team?” he pointed out softly.

“The Exoskeleton Team has no need for that data,” Catherine said firmly, her eyes narrowing. “Focus on your tasks, and Doctor Sullivan will focus on his.”

Another quiet message. She really was quite good at pretending to be a bitch, David thought to himself.

They both knew that Steve Sullivan was the naïve one in their friend group. Steve was barely hanging on at the moment. Even with the promise of unlimited budget for his personal dreams, the vague, non-specific knowledge that his equipment was destined for cybernetically enhanced teenagers had been a massive blow to his confidence. Providing the cold, hard data on the many adults that had suffered from the same augmentations would have wrecked Steve completely.

“I presume that the specific procedures were the recommendation of the previous project?” David asked rhetorically.

Catherine nodded, and flicked a finger down towards her tablet. After a moment, David’s desk chimed with a confirmation that the file transfer had gone through. A hologram display came to life, and a model of a Vitruvian Man floated on the side of his desk, just far enough away to not block their vision of each other.

“The goal is to enhance the cadet’s performance,” Catherine explained, her fingers flying across the tablet as different body-parts began to glow. “We will avoid all additions of an extra capability. No total limb replacements with artificial prosthetics. No gimmicks, no toys. Some of the procedures were undoubtedly useful to an operative in the field, but this program will not include them due to their extreme incompatibility issues.”

David frowned as he inspected the floating hologram. There were little glowing nuggets over various parts. A node in the throat near the thyroid gland, a second in the left hemisphere of the brain, a third located over the heart, the fourth over the lungs. Three more notes were floating along the sides of the hologram, each labeled. They read: Carbide Ceramic Ossification, Muscular Enhancement Injections, and Superconducting Fibrification of Neural Dendrites.

He'd seen some of these before. He’d been reviewing four of them just prior to this meeting… and he knew that some of them were very much incompatible.

“The bone grafts and muscular enhancements compliment each other,” David said slowly. “But altering the nervous system is a much riskier endeavor, particularly when combined with those two procedures. The optimal outcome is obvious: enhanced reflexes. But that’s just another phrase for increased sensitivity, and that sensitivity could easily cause complications with the other two. Erroneous signals creating constant pain signals. Muscle cramps triggering and crushing their own skeleton system.”

“A risk that Doctor Wu is already working on,” Catherine cut in. “He identified the same problem, though he is much more concerned with the platinum pellet in the thyroid, releasing growth hormones.”

“With good reason,” David said, biting the inside of his cheek to keep himself from saying too much, too aggressively. “The endocrine system is the messenger system for the entire body. Too much growth hormones could easily spiral into gigantism, with all the associated side-effects. Unfortunately, that’s more Doctor Wu’s area than mine. I can put the pellet in just fine, but what happens afterwards…”

Frankly, it was easier to list the human body’s systems that they weren’t modifying. By his count, these procedures would alter the circulatory, endocrine, immune, muscular, skeletal, nervous, and respiratory systems. That left only the digestive, exocrine, integumentary, reproductive, and renal systems untouched.

While no system of the human body was truly unimportant or redundant enough to be missed, they were easily aiming for the most important, and most dangerous parts of the human body. In medical terms, it was like doing blind anesthesia on an unconscious drug-addict in anaphylactic shock, with breathing difficulties and a gusher on both legs. In layman’s terms, it was like juggling with nitroglycerin, while other people kept throwing more at you.

Sure, if you messed up your renal system and couldn’t get a cloned kidney, you’d need constant dialysis, or you’ll die painfully over the course of days to a month, depending on severity. Even with dialysis, you were in for a lifetime of suffering as your body couldn’t filter your blood.

But fuck up your lungs or your heart, and you’d be lucky if you lasted longer than a few minutes. Even the ‘minor’ issues like the bone grafts could easily lead to blood clots that could lead to a stroke or heart attack; almost invisible until it was too late.

“Doctor Wu had already noted the potential risk,” Catherine said, a flash of something in her eyes as she locked gazes with him.

David fought the urge to wince, and kept up his poker face. He’d been saying too much, and she was unhappy. The project had to succeed, after all, and too much of this could sound like defeatism. He schooled his expression, and forced his voice to be flat, emotionless.

“We’ll continue to refine the procedures, of course,” he said, nodding to her.

“Of course,” Catherine said. “If that is all, then I will leave you to it.”

“I have one more thing,” David said before she could stand up from her seat.

“Very well,” she replied, folding her hands over her knee.

David took a quick breath, making sure to keep his motion as still as possible. Catherine would see, since she was right across from him, but the cameras and the microphones shouldn’t notice.

“When will the psychology team begin their work with the children?” he asked, keeping his gaze firmly on her.

Catherine stared at him. She blinked slowly. Despite her unchanging, stone cold expression, David could see that he’d taken her aback. For several long moments, she said nothing, before finally responding.

“There is no psychology team,” Catherine said, her voice flat. “You run the Surgery Team. Do not forget that, Doctor Meyer.”

“I remember our paper, Doctor Halsey,” David countered, doing his best to keep his mannerisms professional. “Out of all of us, I was the one who proposed the age requirement. I did that for the specific reason of inculcating the ideal mental traits and mindset into the candidates.”

Frankly, the age requirement was the single most horrifying part of all of this, and it was his eternal shame that he had proposed it. In some ways, he was the guiltiest of them all, no matter that ONI had picked Catherine Halsey to run the entire program for some reason known only to them.

“Yes, and it is a valid reason,” Catherine interrupted, the tiniest cracks in her expression showing. Her eyes were narrowing, her chin was tensing. “But at this early stage, it is not appropriate.”

David leaned back in his seat, and tried not to show his irritation. Catherine wasn’t wrong, per say, but she wasn’t thinking clearly about this.

It was clear to him that she was holding back from the psychology team because she was worried about the moral problems. Catherine had always been a fierce proponent of free will and the free market, and this was perhaps the single biggest affront that she could offer to those principles.

But at the same time, their paper was the guiding document behind the Orion-II project, and ONI was well aware of it. They knew that the psychology team was important. Not just because they’d read the paper, but because of his ONI-recruited ‘Surgery Team’, several of them were psychologists, not surgeons. They had already recruited, explicitly, for those responsibilities... and those experts had been sitting around, bored, since the start of the project.

Catherine might not understand that. The military was a vast and confusing machine, and she’d never had any experience with it. David didn’t know for sure, but he was starting to wonder if she was deliberately avoiding those topics because she didn’t know how to handle the military interactions.

If that was true, then she needed his help. Avoidance of the topic would not work. ONI wasn’t interested in him, Paul, or Steve. They didn’t have ONI handlers, they hadn’t had special briefings. Their oversight was Catherine alone, and whatever questions ONI had about the Augmentation, Exoskeleton, or Surgery Teams, they would ask Catherine.

He had to keep pressing. Catherine might not like the idea, but she probably didn’t understand the military culture. For better or worse, they had to start involving the psychology team with the children. Especially in these early stages. This was the most vital time, before behaviors became codified and calcified.

“Doctor Halsey, at this stage it is imperative,” David told her firmly. “No other time makes sense, or will have as much impact on the candidates.”

Catherine didn’t respond verbally. She didn’t need to. Her face was a clear enough indication of how she felt. She was gritting her teeth and glaring at him.

David stared right back at her. As hard as it might be to aggravate his old friend, it was the best way to keep the children safe right now. Hell, it was probably the best way to make sure that the children grew up as well-adjusted as they could be, in this monstrous situation. Catherine’s resistance to the idea would only make things worse.

Like any psychologist treating a patient, the real difficulty was explaining that to her. Catherine was stubborn and fiercely independent, which made that hard. On the other hand, she’d already compromised her independence by going along with Orion-II in the first place. David suspected that was purely due to fear of the UNSC, and he had no desire to follow that same approach.

“I will take your recommendations into consideration, Doctor Meyer,” Catherine finally spoke, her words slow and precisely enunciated. “However, that determination will be made by me, and no one else.”

It took a lot of effort for David to not let out a sigh of frustration at that. Instead, he closed his eyes for a moment, and nodded back to Catherine.

“That is all I can ask,” he told her.

He hoped that Catherine understood what he was getting at. This was incredibly important, and if she was avoiding the topic due to her own personal misgivings, then it could ruin the children’s lives. Both by not giving them vital psychological support when they most needed it, and by potentially causing ONI to pull her from the project and put a more sadistic researcher in charge, who wouldn’t care about the children at all.

“Good day, Doctor Meyer,” she said as she stood up, expression once more formed into a cold, emotionless mask.

“Good day, Doctor Halsey,” he replied, standing in politeness as she walked out of his office.

As soon as the door clicked, David sat down again, and let out a long slow sigh. He knew that ONI could see that, that they could hear him. He was too tired to care. The entire situation was stressful on the easiest moments, and this had not been one of them.

Perhaps they’d believe that he had only been reminding Catherine of the paper, and trying his best to follow it. Perhaps they’d think that he had been trying to undercut her, and that he was a risk. Perhaps, they’d wonder if he was planning something, and trying to communicate with Catherine about it – which he was.

Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps. That was the worst thing about this, David knew. There were so many potential concerns to be paranoid about. Many psychologists disdained paranoia, and he had been one of them… but when you were working for the Office of Naval Intelligence, was it really paranoia?

Chapter Text

It had been nearly three months since I was introduced to Project Orion-II.

From the first moment, it had been a hellish nightmare. I had done my best to present an image of professional competence, but behind that mask, I was a pitiful wreck, screaming as I ran from fire to fire, doing my best to douse the flames before they were fanned ever higher by the numerous iniquities that I was surrounded by at the Office of Naval Intelligence.

I did not need trainers who did not care for their trainees. I did not need a military liaison who believed the ideal solution to child-rearing was to beat them into obedience. I did not need a scientific staff that believed they were plumbing hypotheticals, unaware that the slightest laxity would lead to the death of children.

Ideally, this pruning and shaping of the program would have taken place before it was ever initiated. I could have taken my time, ensuring that every precaution was taken, every variable accounted for. Like a bonsai tree, perfection would have required diligence and foresight.

Alas, we were doing it live. Instead of clipping a bonsai tree with precise shears, I was battling kudzu with a chainsaw. The silver lining of ONI being a military intelligence organization was that I could use military tactics on it without any remorse or guilt. Precision, speed, and force, the three loanwords of any blitz attack, and I’d used all of them on the roadblocks that stood in my way, just like I had once used them on trenches in the Rhine.

Yet now, after three months of little sleep and frantic work, I was finally starting to think that I had a good handle on Project Orion-II.

My trainers now understood the specific requirements that I had for them. Chief Petty Officer Mendez had demonstrated himself to be an excellent instructor and manager, and was adapting well to my methodologies. The four research teams were making steady progress on their associated tasks, and understood the gravity of the situation.

That was not to say that my life was perfect, or that I was ‘happy’ about being in this abominable situation. Even if these deeds stayed locked behind the iron bars of ONI’s classification until long after my death, it did not change how much of my life had been carved from me, without my ever knowing.

Unlike the other researchers, who would have a permanent security detail following them around for the rest of their lives, I knew full well that I was now shackled to ONI forever. There was no adequate security detail for a person like me. My guards did not have to protect me from stalkers or random violence. The only men who would come after me would be the darkest of black ops, the most experienced killers in the galaxy – and you could not protect a person from those men if the target had anything resembling a normal life. No security route could handle every road that you would cross, on any random day that an assassin might strike.

The only way that I could ever be safe was to stay inside UNSC perimeters for the remainder of my life. A situation that ONI had no doubt considered a benefit to this unholy situation. Yes, my contract was only for Project Orion-II, given that it would take the next ten years, but they’d known full well that it was essentially a lifetime of service to their secretive ways.

There was still hope, of course. If I performed this task well, I could barter my way into a cushy, relaxing position researching Shaw-Fujikawa drives, FTL communications, and better municipal Artificial Intelligences. But even then, I would be locked into a life of research and little else – never able to go for a relaxing beach holiday, never free to travel as I saw fit. I would be made comfortable, like an exotic animal in a city zoo, never able to flee my cage.

Worse still was the death of any normal life, even within ONI. In the halls of power, the only friends you can trust are the ones that you made before you ever became powerful – and this project had ruined those friends for me. I had only ever been close to my three old roommates from the University of Circumstance, and they all despised me now, demonstrating their disgust with denial, depression, and anger: three of the five stages of grief.

Steve Sullivan was secluding himself and trying to pretend that he was exclusively developing exoskeletons for normal people – a tactic that would work for the next few years, but eventually, he would have to confront the truth.

Paul Wu had become nearly silent in his interactions with me, exchanging the bare minimum words needed to communicate in our staff meetings. His terror had rendered him taciturn.

David Meyer was furious at me, and were it not for ONI’s security and my own private assurance, I would have genuinely feared for my life in his presence. He’d always had the biggest heart, and I knew that he among them had the most anger. In our last meeting, he had bullied me into bringing the psychology team up to the training camp, threatening me in the process.

It was a shame. I had truly respected and admired all of them. I still did! But it was clear that this project had irrevocably severed all ties of our relationships, and they all considered me to be a monster. It was just one more thing that ONI had stolen from me.

But for all my morose fears of the distant future, the immediate present was… tolerable.

The cadets were beginning to get ‘with the program’, as the phrase went. For all that we were pushing them as hard as we could, they were responding positively to the challenges. Truly, the competitive instincts of human nature were a wonder. They slept, learned, ate, and struggled as one team, one family, and yet they still pushed each other ever higher. When one of them slowed, the trainers were hardly needed; the others would help and encourage the laggard back up to the standard of the rest.

The trainers were obedient and thoughtful to my revisions for the training program. They’d even reacted well to the sudden presence of a half dozen psychology experts that had their own rooms, lecture halls, and offices in our little compound. They’d accepted the comments, questions, and concerns of the psychology team, adapting as necessary to refine the program for even greater efficiency. I had expected at least some degree of professionalism, but I’d worried about the risk of conflict between the men of action and the isolated thinkers, and none had emerged.

I’d even had time for leisure activities. I was now getting up to eight hours of sleep a night, a true luxury for any retired soldier. I had hours available to plan for the next five years, rather than the next five days. So much time that I’d even had thoughts on topics as frivolous as renaming ‘Orion-II’ to something more fitting.

I was enjoying the view of the natural landscapes around me. The stars at night were breathtaking, the mountain vistas around us were gorgeous, and I’m sure if I mustered up the time to climb one of the mountains, I would behold a scenic vista so immaculate that it deserved a portrait.

These days, my mornings were available for physical training, which I had decided to take alongside the cadets. The children’s first reactions to me joining them on their daily PT was murmurs of surprise, and quiet glances. The trainers were more professional, but I could see their distant disapproval at both my interruption, and my miserable physical state.

Of course, it was good that the children’s PT was aimed at their pre-pubescent musculature, because had I thrown myself straight into the PT regimen of the trainers themselves, I’m pretty sure that I would have crashed out in exhaustion within the first twenty minutes. Still, what mattered with personal fitness was not how fast you learned or how capable you became, but the fact that you were keeping yourself healthy, in whatever way you could.

Today was no exception to my new routine – indeed, if I had my way, I would attend morning PT with the cadets for as long as I could. The potential benefits were not limited to my own health and fitness, but the strengthening of bonds of trust between myself and the cadets.

It was hard to trust in an invisible system over your head, and it was much easier to trust in an individual that you knew (or at least believed you did). That was one of the primary reasons why politicians were public figures, nearly celebrities in their own way – without such a focus, it was harder for the common man to form the essential bonds of trust that were the building blocks of civilization.

And so, I donned the standard issue physical training clothing, tightened my running shoes, and left my office before the dawn had risen. The crisp air greeted me as I left the compound’s command center, and I jogged the short distance to the cadet’s barracks, where I could hear the trainers shouting the usual wakeup calls, and see the steady stream of cadets forming into ranks on the dew-slick grass.

I joined Mendez at the head of the formation. Three months after they’d had their heads shaved, each of the cadets had an inch of hair growth, perhaps an inch and a half. Yesterday, I’d informed the trainers that we would not require the cadets to be repeat their initial haircuts. They’d be allowed to grow it out in whatever way they wanted, so long as it followed military regulations, which effectively meant so long as they could keep it away from their face and fit it under a helmet, would be fine.

It was a small thing, but the smallest freedoms often were the most important ones. Besides, it made it easier to tell the cadets apart, and I had emphasized repeatedly to both the trainers and the psychology staff that we needed to be tailoring our approach to each cadet in turn – rewarding them for their achievements on an individual basis, and not confusing them for other cadets, lest we foster the self-destructive belief that there was no point in trying hard.

Mendez surveyed the group with an emotionless face, glancing down at an antique pocket-watch to count their time. The last of the cadets filed out, joined the formation, and stood ready. Mendez waited another few seconds, then tucked the pocket-watch away. He’d given them five minutes, and they’d all been outside, dressed and ready for PT, with a minute to spare.

“Cadets, follow me!” Mendez roared, starting the jog. I waited as the cadets streamed past in their two-man wide formation, each cadet accompanied by a trainer on their outside edge. I fell into the formation at the back, where I could participate without drawing too many of their eyes, without them seeing how I struggled to match up to the other adults in performance. In time, I would be as fit as them. In time.

Today’s jaunt was a relatively easy one. Just a couple miles of jogging, some bodyweight calisthenics, and then a trip to the outdoor firing range.

It was not advisable to exercise immediately prior to shooting, because your heart rate would be elevated and your accuracy affected. However, since it was inevitable that combat troops would be fighting in worse conditions, it was a necessary part of their education. Frankly, it only mattered for target shooting, because in actual combat a soldier would simply substitute volume of fire for their adrenaline-affected accuracy.

Still, we had taught the children to aim for excellence in all things, and it was time that they learned the next vital lesson – that sometimes, excellence was outside your grasp for reasons that you could not control, and you had to do the best that you could. Sheer skill, an excess of effort, or more creative solutions would be required for those situations when you were pressed up against the wall. It was time that they learned that, albeit in this small way.

The exercise was a welcome experience, both for the physical results, and for the time to think. Chair time, as I once heard a farmer call it. A repetitive task that you could perform on autopilot, using enough attention to keep your brain engaged, while allowing your higher thoughts to wander freely. The same concept as a ‘shower thought’ from my first life, but with the benefit of increased blood-flow stimulating the mind.

Landsknecht. I weighed the word in my head, tossing it back and forth. No, that would not work. Setting aside that the UNSC was primarily dominated by the descendants of the anglosphere, I didn’t want a name that evoked mercenaries, especially ones prone to mutiny. Praetorians was out for similar reasons, as was Vikings.

I could try to appeal to the anglo-roots with Minutemen, perhaps… but alas, Project Orion-II was about as far as one could get from the citizen militias of the American Revolution. On the opposite side of the problem, Immortals would be accurate to the role, but was too Persian.

Perhaps something mythological? Kronos, Titans, Olympians, Daedalus? No, definitely not that last one. Still, the Greek names were appealing. I had a feeling that I was getting closer to a proper name for the cadets… but I was not there yet.

I wiped away the sweat from my brow with a towel after we finished up the last set of burpees, and took a sip from my water bottle. The cadets around me did the same, carefully moderating their sips, to the watchful eyes of their trainers.

“Cadets, to the range!” Mendez called.

The children fell into line again, and we jogged the hundred or so meters to the range. Today, they were firing real rifles, albeit small calibers. The recoil of a .22 was light, but the smell of gunpowder, the ballistic drop, the knowledge that the slightest slip up could cause a fatal injury – that was what mattered right now. Slowly increasing the verisimilitude of their training, step-by-step as the children grew, until they were at the capability of actual soldiers.

Stations were marked out by firing mats, empty rifles lying next to boxed ammunition and empty magazines. The targets today were still a short distance away, barely twenty meters, though we’d shrunk them down in size to increase the difficulty.

I did not join the cadets in this activity. My own experience with firearms was primarily in my last life, and I’d… abstained as Catherine Halsey. It was one thing to join the light exercises with confidence, knowing I could perform to the standard. It was another to return to shooting with almost no muscle memory in this body. That I would practice on my own, in the privacy of the indoor range when it was unoccupied.

Instead, I occupied myself by patrolling the ranks, inspecting both cadet and trainer as they took to their tasks. They had to perform an inspection of the rifle, load the magazines, and only once their trainer approved, begin firing. Two shots each per circle, five circles per paper target.

By now, the worst rough edges had been sanded off the children. Almost all of them had never encountered firearms before, yet now they were comfortable with inspecting the receivers, peering down the barrel with white cloth to inspect for debris, loading, and firing on their own. Only once did I see a trainer intervene, and that was for a child that was taking too much time inspecting their rifle for safety, which was hardly the worst trait.

As usual, their performances had a wide range separating the best and the worst – though even the worst were still scoring above 60 in the scoring metrics, by which I mean, hitting all of the circles without any flyers, or missing the letter-size paper entirely. Pathetic by adults standards, but quite competent for six year olds.

Some of the trainers were prone alongside their charges, participating with constant advice. Some knelt, allowing the cadet more room to breathe. Only one trainer was standing, and he seemed entirely uninterested in helping his cadet.

I looked to Mendez, who had also spotted the exception. I was closer than the Chief, so I inclined my head and briefly pointed to myself, then moved over to address the man.

“Sergeant,” I murmured as I approached. “Why are you standing?”

“Doctor Halsey,” the Sergeant acknowledged with a nod, as he kept one eye on his charge – adhering to my standing request that I not be saluted, as I was not a military officer. “Cadet 016 hasn’t needed any advice thus far. I’m ready for when she needs it, but…”

The Marine NCO shook his head softly. We were speaking quietly, soft enough that the cadets shouldn’t be able to hear us, even though modern hearing protection allowed regular conversations and only muffled noises above a certain decibel level.

“What is it?” I asked, pursing my lips. The man did not look fully comfortable, and while some of that was probably from addressing me, the rest appeared to be unease with his cadet, judging by the look he was directing at her.

“She’s talking to herself,” the Sergeant whispered. “Doing math, I think. I don’t know what the hell it is, but since she started, she hasn’t missed a single shot. It’s bad form and technique, and I’ll correct it later…but right now, it doesn’t make sense, and I don’t know what to do. The movement of her jaw, her chest, her lungs, all those things should be throwing off her aim. Yet she’s hitting 100’s right now, and it’s…”

I frowned. That was absurd. We hadn’t taught the cadets enough math for them to be doing ballistic trajectories yet, and even if we had, they were shooting at a mere twenty meters. This close, math was less important than the basic techniques of body control – basics that Cadet 016 was blatantly ignoring.

Yet when I glanced through my spotting scope, I saw nothing but perfect shots through the bull’s eye, so perfect that had I not been watching, I’d have though she was missing her second shots each time – the bullets passing through the exact same holes, barely disturbing the torn edges.

I stepped to the side, as if moving away, but kept my eyes fixed on Cadet 016. Sure enough, once I got a good angle, I could see her lips barely moving, but moving nonetheless, as if she was whispering to herself. Most curious. The trainer was right – her jaw was moving ever so slightly, but with the rifle firmly seated on her shoulder, those jaw movements during her firing should have resulted in minor deviations.

Approaching, I knelt down beside the cadet, and strained my ears to listen.

Math. The trainer was correct. I could hear Cadet 016 reciting a formula. In fact, it almost sounded familiar…

I opened my mouth, and repeated some of the formula to myself. Where had I heard it before?

As I followed along, mouthing the words, I realized, all too abruptly, where I knew it from – I recognized the effects before the words came rushing back to me, like a pitcher of ice-water spilled over my skull. I could feel my body reacting, my eyesight sharpening, my body control increasing, my mind churning faster and faster, my reaction times decreasing.

The words were a jargon that I had not heard spoken in more than twenty-five years, and a language much the same. I had not recognized them because I had learned first to process the formulas in my head, and then later on, to simply select the proper formula out of the pre-set list with the aid of my computational orb. Speaking the formula out loud was an emergency measure, a way of using the technique when you had no orb.

Cadet 016 was speaking Germanian, and she was reciting the standard Germanian Aerial Mage’s formula for reflex enhancement.

I stepped back, nearly trembling.

The young Cadet finished her final shots, cleared the rifle with experienced hands, and set it down. She rolled over, perhaps to speak to her trainer, and froze as she saw me standing above her. Her eyes were wide, her mouth open. She clamped down instantly, stiffening to attention even in her prone position. She was scared of me, I recognized faintly, as if it was some unimportant trivia.

Her brown hair was shorter than I had ever seen it before. Her face was rounded by baby-fat that I had never seen, long removed by starvation and puberty when I’d first met her. Her eyes were bright blue, but surrounded by lashes far shorter than I remembered.

None of those things alone would have jogged my memory, so different was her face…

…but once I’d heard the magical formula, once I’d listened to that accented Germanian, tinged with the slightest traces of Rus, I knew who she was instantly, like a thunderbolt from God coming to strike me down.

Viktoriya Ivanovna Serebryakov lay before me, wearing the unadorned jumpsuit of a child conscript, and she was terrified of me.

I recoiled backward, hurriedly stepping away, barely able to keep my balance.

I don’t know what expression was on my face, so great was my loss of control. I turned on my heel, ignoring the Marine NCO that I had just been speaking with, and walked from the firing range as fast as I could without breaking into a run.

My hands shook as I typed away on my keyboard. I was in my office, back in the command center. I hadn’t changed from my exercise gear, hadn’t showered, hadn’t done anything more than throw on a spare labcoat to ward off the phantom chill that had seeped into my bones.

The smart windows were blacked out, removing the normal view of the Highland Mountains from my vision and preventing anyone from looking in. I’d locked the door, and no one in the compound had the authorizations to override it. I’d even ordered a full security blackout from Déjà, without telling her why.

I paged through the ONI computer with cautious, hesitant fingers, navigating the file structure until I found the personnel files.

Seventy-five children stolen from their homes. I’d been so confident that I had things under control, that I was finally gaining a ‘handle’ on the situation, that I hadn’t bothered to read their individual files.

Finally, I reached the file labeled 016. I opened it, and there, right at the top, was a picture of Visha.

The picture had clearly been taken before her conscription, for her hair was long, down to her shoulders, just as I remembered it from my past life. It did not change the alien sensation I got when looking at this vastly younger version of her, but it was the final nail in the coffin; one that I did not need, after hearing her use magecraft, but which confirmed that Visha, unlike myself, had been reincarnated into an identical body to her past one.

Her legal name was Victoria Pelham. She was born on July 28, 2511, on the colony of Siberia Prime. Daughter of a loving family, their only child. Identified by ONI first due to compatibility to proposed Orion-II augmentations, further selected after ONI obtained her early school records. Victoria had excelled in nearly every area, scoring perfectly on every single subject, and had been strongly recommended for skipping several grades. Strong kinesthetic awareness, excellent body conditioning, a mature attitude towards authority, highly self-disciplined… practically the ideal candidate for the project.

I recognized the signs. How could I not? I had lived three lives, it was relatively easy to see that Visha had not been excelling purely due to her genetic makeup or intelligence quotient, but due to her knowledge of her past life, and her adult memories.

Visha was an adult in mind, trapped in a child’s body – the same horrific punishment that I had suffered in my last life.

Is this what Being X intended from the start? I wondered. Months ago, I convinced myself to not blame that demonic entity for ONI’s misdeeds… but this was too ironic for it to be mere happenstance or free will. There was no chance that a person would just ‘happen’ to be reborn with all that past knowledge, for reincarnation was a purely fictional conception in this world. I would know, I had checked. And for it to be this person, of all people…

Not only was I being forced into the role that Germanian High Command had played in my last life, forced to make children suffer through the abominations of ethics that I myself had volunteered for… no, that was not punishment enough. Now, I had to do the same to poor Visha, the closest companion I’d had in any of my three lives.

I could no longer pretend that this was an impersonal task, ruled only by cold logic and efficiency. This was personal now. How could it not be?

Her terrified reaction made sense. She was an adult, and she was likely the only cadet that realized – truly realized – what the full implications of Project Orion-II were. The obvious indication that the UNSC’s government was teetering on the edge and was resorting to desperation ploys, the fact that they were throwing morals and ethics out the window to ensure their own survival, and the looming reality that ONI would never allow these horrific crimes to be publicly known.

Undoubtedly, she knew that a lack of performance would not result in merely ‘washing out’. She knew that it would instead result in her being taken away and summarily executed, to prevent any secrets spilling from her lips.

And to poor Visha, I was the architect of it all. I was Doctor Catherine Halsey, the self-identified head of the program, the woman who had taken responsibility on that first night. It had all been an act to ensure that ONI would not remove me from the program due to my very real disagreements with it, and one that I had performed to the best of my ability.

This can’t possibly get any worse, I thought to myself, gnawing on my bottom lip.

No sooner had I thought those words, then I reached the bottom of the personnel file, and my eyes widened as I read the damning words that concluded the ONI document.

Subject 016 compatibility index with proposed augmentations: 93%.

Subject 016 ranking of compatibility among all selected subjects: 75/75.

NOTE: Subject 016 is the least compatible with the proposed augmentation procedures out of all selected subjects. Despite this, her selection was chosen over several more compatible candidates due to her combination of extremely high performance metrics and complimentary psychological profile, making her a ‘high risk, high reward’ option.

Nonetheless, if any candidate will fail the augmentation stage, it will undoubtedly be Subject 016. As such, in the event of any resource allocation difficulties, Subject 016 should be triaged last.

My hand slipped from the keyboard. My arms were boneless, unable to exert the slightest pressure.

What a cruel retribution this was. To be forced to crush my dearest subordinate under the same millstone that I had once suffered under, and to know the entire time that her survival was the least likely of all.

Will I be forced to watch? I wondered. To see as her augmentations failed, to behold my dearest friend dying on the very literal table of my ambitions and arrogance. After spending seven years working to ensure her survival, only to fail at the end, with Visha never knowing that I was not her tormenter, the vicious Mengele playing sick games with the bodies of children?

No.

I refused. I will not stand to allow Visha to suffer in that way, or in any way that I can prevent. She did not deserve it, even more than I myself had not deserved my initial fate. She was a true innocent, blameless even of the aggressive yet accurate insults that I have levied at Being X in our fateful encounter.

I would not lie to her. I would tell her the truth, as quickly as I could. It was the least that I could do, but the most immediate. I could not bear the thought of Visha spending years living under the same fears that I have lived under, the feeling of unsalvageable despair, knowing that you were doomed, and escape was impossible – no matter how much I had reassured myself, had schemed to escape the trenches, the fear had persisted.

New vigor filled my body. I reached up for the control interface, and depressed the large red button that would disable the security blackout.

“Déjà,” I snapped out firmly, as the hologram emitter was replaced with the artificial intelligence’s chosen avatar. “Inform Chief Mendez that Cadet 016 is to be brought to my office as soon as the current training activity finishes.”

“Of course, Doctor Halsey,” the ‘Dumb’ A.I. responded, obediently heeding my instructions. “Shall I inform him of the reason?”

“No,” I told her coldly, before cutting the connection.

I folded my hands in my lap and leaned back in my chair. I would need to make changes, I knew now. The research teams would need to be informed of the new urgency, the need to redouble their efforts. I had been determined to not let a single cadet die when I had merely thought of them as innocent, yet faceless children. To know, without a doubt, that if any died, it would be Visha…

Silently, I ran through the same reflex enhancement formula that Visha had performed earlier, out of muscle memory, in total silence. I refused to allow my body to shudder, to display my visceral reaction before the world.

Long minutes passed as I ran through ideas in my head on how best to invigorate the research teams, how much I would need to be alter the training schedules. I had been planning for how to handle the next five years, but now I tossed those plans aside without a second thought – the next five years was still two years before the augmentation procedures, and that was the true objective, the gate that I had to breach, the filter that I had to destroy.

Visha would survive. This was no promise, no declaration to a false god watching. This was a fact, and I would burn this world to cinders to ensure that this fact became truth.

After some time, there came a knock at my door.

“Enter,” I called, my face an iron mask of willpower.

Chapter Text

Viktoriya Ivanovna Serebryakov was scared.

She was always scared, these days. Fear clung to her like blood on a uniform, like gas in a shell crater. How could she not be, when she knew full well what her presence at this horrific training program meant?

Her second life had started so well. She had been reborn into a strange, futuristic world, full of wild differences from her old home. Technology had advanced so far that it was almost magical, yet magic itself had vanished from the world entirely. Buildings soared higher than ever, and were made with shining metal and gleaming glass, rather than old worn bricks or timber. Every person, even the children, had wireless communication devices. Every room was exactly as warm or cold as you’d like it, and you could get all sorts of food no matter the season! You could watch opera whenever you wanted, or comedies, or all sorts of other plays!

Siberia Prime had not been a warm planet, but it had nonetheless been a very pleasant place to grow up, full of industry and growth and happy, productive people. Her childhood friends had been the children of laborers and professionals alike, with no social stigma between the two. They had played on elaborate toysets that were like something out of a novel, and eaten ice cream and snacks, and life had been good.

But then Visha had been taken, and she knew that all the happiness and luxury of the United Nations Space Command was nothing more than a dusting of snow over No Man’s Land, covering up the bodies beneath.

She had long forgotten most of her childhood memories, but Visha would never – could never – forget the days of frantic running as her family had tried to flee the Communist purges. The terrified faces of her parents and the other travelers. The constant watch for spies or enforcers that might drag them away to the camps.

When the UNSC had taken her, all her fanciful daydreams of life in this wonderful new world had come crashing down, and she knew that this life was no dream.

She had been dragged, kicking and screaming and biting, into a car, and injected with some drug. She’d tried to fight it off, and when she had regained her consciousness, it had only been for a few seconds. Visha had awoken naked, trapped in a tube as frigid air was pumped inside, so cold that felt like she was going to freeze to death in the depths of winter.

But that cold plunge had not been death. She even knew what it was now: cryosleep, a process to make the weeks and months of journeying across the stars pass much faster. She’d been frog-marched into an underground bunker, forced to sit alongside dozens of other children, and been told in blunt terms that she had been conscripted.

She would never forget that night. The cold, emotionless look on the face of Doctor Halsey, the scientist running the Orion-II program. She hadn’t been the fanatical, raving kind of mad scientist, but Visha still thought she was the same kind of monstrous researcher as the famed Doctor Schugel, whom she’d heard so much about. Even when Halsey had tried to feign compassion, telling them blunt truths on that first night, all Visha saw was a cruel master, rubbing their noses in the horror that they had been immersed in.

Visha had been conscripted once before, when the Empire of Germania had needed mages desperately, as the Great War had ground on and more nations had joined the fray. She had been a teenager then, painfully young by military standards, but still close enough.

To conscript a child… that disparity between her life before, and her life now, terrified her. What government would ever resort to conscripting six year olds in a time of peace, unless there was some greater danger that needed to be confronted? She assumed that this program’s mere existence was evidence that things were not going well for the UNSC.

For the past three months, she’d kept her head down. She’d tried to blend in, tried to pretend to be one of the others. It hadn’t been hard back on Siberia Prime, but here on Reach, the other children were far more observant. They could spot when she was imitating them, and they’d disliked it, resulting in many of them keeping their distance from her, because she was ‘weird’.

But now, she had failed.

Visha walked forward, with the trainer right by her side, one hand resting on her shoulder, ready to tighten into a grip at a moment’s notice. The man’s other hand was carrying an evidence bag, which carried a broken piece of military issued equipment. Thankfully, it had stopped smoking when he’d sealed the bag, but it was still a burning hole in Visha’s mind.

She’d been told that she was being brought to the CO’s office for destruction of government property, and part of Visha was terrified. If these people in the UNSC, in the Office of Naval Intelligence, were willing to kidnap children for some kind of military training program, what would they do when one of those children misbehaved?

What… would they do?

Visha realized that she didn’t actually know. The future was so confusing that nearly all of it was alien to her. It was only once she’d been conscripted that Visha found herself on familiar, if uncomfortable, ground.

During the war, destruction of government property would be grounds to have someone flogged, or if it was bad enough, even executed.

But the UNSC was not at war. They were at peace. And in peacetime, an offense like this could result in a dishonorable discharge.

Visha’s breath caught in her throat, and she struggled to hide that reaction from the trainer’s eyes.

She didn’t know why the government was doing this kind of training. Maybe they’d had some high-performing child volunteer, like her old commanding officer, and they were trying to replicate it. Foolish, if that was their idea, because there was an enormous difference between a volunteer and a conscript.

But… if it was some plan of high command, without care for the basic truths on the ground that all the enlisted knew, then it was entirely possible that they would be sticklers about protocol. Certainly, the trainers had been gradually ramping up their demanded precision for cleaning the barracks, or keeping your uniform tidy, and that kind of thing.

Which meant that this might be her escape. Her way out.

Visha would have never believed that she would be longing for a dishonorable discharge, but if it was the only was to escape this training program, then she would gladly take it. She’d thought about escaping initially, but at her age, without equipment, in a completely unfamiliar planet and region, it would have been suicide. This was much more preferable.

They had left behind the firing range where all the other cadets had been training. The trainer guided her out the door, down the concrete walkway, and towards the imposing three-story building in the center of the compound. It was painted in the UNSC’s drab green, with identifier codes in bold white lettering along the sides, and there were even windows on it, tinted and reinforced, but windows nonetheless. It was the command post, or the administration building, or something to that effect, because Visha didn’t know whether this compound qualified as a military firebase or a garrison.

No cadet had ever been inside it, except for John, Cadet-117. He’d been hauled in there by Chief Petty Officer Mendez himself, and Visha and all the other cadets had been certain that he was about to be punished. Yet when he’d returned, he’d been promoted.

John had taken an action to protect the other cadets, though. He’d come up with the plan to check if the trainers were going to be mean or not, taken charge, and gotten them all home safe and sound. It was an excellent example of small unit tactics, exactly as the Officer Candidate School would have taught her back in Berun.

Visha had not done anything so wonderful. She’d abused a piece of her standard issue gear in an attempt to regain a valuable ability, and had destroyed it in the process. The evidence was right there, visible through the clear baggie that the trainer was carrying.

“Listen carefully,” a man’s voice hissed in her ear, right after they walked behind another building and into what Visha already knew was a deadzone in the cameras. “Don’t react to what I’m about to say. Keep walking. Don’t say anything. Don’t look at me.”

She stiffened, but did as the man said. The trainer must have bent over slightly, to whisper in her ear like that.

“There are people who want to see this program shut down,” the trainer told her quietly. “Doctor Halsey has a lot of friends in high places, but not everyone agrees with her. We can’t get you out right now, but we’re trying.”

Visha’s eyes widened. Was this the Insurrection that she’d vaguely heard about on news reports, back on Siberia Prime? It didn’t sound quite like that, not to her ears. Was it internal politics instead? Some other faction of the Office of Naval Intelligence, working against Doctor Halsey? She didn’t know, and she didn’t care. If they could get her out of this place, she was willing to listen.

“We need evidence of how horrible Doctor Halsey is treating you kids,” the trainer continued, his voice turning harsh. “We need you to remember all the horrible things she’s doing, okay? You don’t have to do anything hard or difficult. Every time Halsey hurts you, or makes you cry, you need to remember it. Make sure you never forget it. Once we’ve got enough… we can get her punished. We can get you home, to your family. Do you understand? Will you help us with this? Don’t speak, just nod.”

She nodded, just once, with a furious certainty. If it meant an escape from here, she was fully willing to testify. After all these months, finally, she had hope. No, better than that – she had allies. Someone she could lean on, someone she could trust. Even if this trainer didn’t speak to her again for months, or years, she would know that she had a friend on the inside, who was working to help her.

The trainer didn’t say anything further, but his hand squeezed lightly on her shoulder. It was a small thing, but it was the first real human contact she’d had in months. Visha bit her lip, and tried to keep her tears from spilling out.

They walked up to the imposing building, and the trainer opened the door with a wave of a keycard. He marched her inside, guiding her with the hand on her shoulder, as they walked down the hallway towards an unmarked door.

Visha took a deep breath, and tried to steady her racing nerves. She was an officer of the Germanian Army, an aerial mage, and a veteran of the Rhine front. She could handle a chewing out for breaking government property, especially if it represented a step towards her freedom. Her body might be that of a six year old, and her brain filled with that body’s urges and whims and flights of fancy, but she could do this.

The trainer rapped on the door with a closed fist, and waited for a response.

“Enter,” a cold voice called out.

The trainer opened the door and gently pushed Visha into motion. She stepped through, feeling a little less uneasy about the trainer’s presence, now that she knew he was one of the good guys, trying to help her get out.

Unfortunately, the trainer’s presence was nothing compared to the presence of the Orion-II project’s director. Doctor Halsey sat at the other end of an imposingly large desk made of utilitarian metal wrapped around a central section of black glass, framed by the dark window behind her and a light directly above her head.

The Doctor was still dressed in the exercise clothes she had worn earlier that day, when she’d joined the cadets on their morning PT. She had thrown a white labcoat over the top of the exercise clothes, but nothing more, and her eyes were staring at Visha with an intense focus.

Visha repressed a shudder at the cold look in Halsey’s eye, but thanked her very small luck that Halsey had regained her emotionless mask – it was vastly preferable to the wide-eyed, manic expression that Visha had last seen on the Doctor’s face. That face was locked in her mind, and even though it was only a half hour old at most, Visha knew that she would remember that expression for the rest of her life.

She had been at the rifle range, following orders and performing basic marksmanship. With vermin rifles, there wasn’t as much challenge, and so she’d been distracted, and had allowed her technique to grow sloppy while she focused overwhelmingly on her attempts to recreate usable magecraft formulas. She had just finished shooting her target, had set down her rifle, and had rolled over to talk to her trainer, when she realized that she had not been alone.

Doctor Halsey had been standing over her. No, not standing. Looming over her. The woman’s brunette hair and blue eyes should have made her plain and unassuming in appearance, but that expression… the horror and fear that Visha had seen in Halsey’s eyes had made it clear that the woman was not normal – and that she knew that Visha was not normal.

Worse than that, however, was the knowledge that Visha had gained. A cold, mechanical, purely logical scientist gaining an interest in Visha was worrying, but manageable. A passionate, frenetic, emotionally compromised scientist gaining an interest was far, far worse. Especially if Halsey had learned that she needed to hide her mania from others, and pretend to be cold.

“Cadet 016, as ordered,” the trainer said, snapping out a salute to Halsey. He advanced forward, walking past where Visha was rooted to the ground at attention, and set down the bag containing the broken device. “The evidence, ma’am.”

The woman’s gaze shifted from Visha to the bag on her desk, and then up, to the trainer. Visha closed her eyes briefly, hoping that it would be mistaken for a blink. Doctor Halsey was not military. It was not appropriate to salute her. The trainer had made a mistake, and Visha wondered if, for the first and last time ever, she and Halsey were sharing an emotional reaction – irritation – at the trainer.

“You are dismissed, Sergeant,” Halsey said, her voice stiff.

“Ma’am,” the trainer nodded, before taking a quick step backwards, out of the office.

The door clicked shut behind Visha, and she was left alone with Doctor Catherine Halsey, the monstrous mind behind the Orion-II program.

It was silent for a long time in Doctor Halsey’s office.

Visha’s muscles were locked tight as she stood at attention, not daring to move a millimeter.

Halsey looked at the evidence bag for a long moment, then switched her gaze to Visha. She withstood the Doctor’s curious look by reminding herself of who she was. She was Lieutenant Viktoriya Serebryakov. She was standing at attention before a superior. She would not betray her training or her competence by showing any sign of weakness.

Finally, Halsey sighed. It was a slow exhale, like a train releasing steam after a long journey.

“Please, sit down,” the ONI scientist said, gesturing to the chair placed in front of her desk. It was a bare-bones metal chair of stainless steel, the kind of thing that would have been expensive and fashionable in her old life, but which was cheap and ubiquitous in this second life.

Visha hesitated. It wasn’t formally an order, but there was a lot about this program that had violated military protocol thus far. More importantly, any chance to make Halsey think better of her was worth taking, for surely she was somewhere lower than dirt in the Doctor’s mind.

She walked forward carefully and took a seat, watching the doctor for any reactions, any sudden movements, as if she was a tiger whose pen Visha had stepped into.

“I am so very sorry this has happened to you,” Doctor Halsey spoke, staring right into Visha’s eyes. There was the usual intensity that the cadet had come to expect from the doctor, but there was also something more. Something… tender, vulnerable. “I hope you can forgive me for this, Visha.”

Visha started to nod, words coming to her lips on automatic response, something like ‘Of course, Doctor’ – even though she had no idea what the Doctor was talking about. She couldn’t have been talking about the Orion-II program itself, because that was simply too bizarre to be real.

But then the words died in her throat, and her eyes widened against her will.

The Doctor had called her ‘Visha’ – the name that nobody in the Orion program knew. The name she had not entrusted to a single living soul in this world.

And she had spoken in Germanian. Not the German of this new world, so close yet so distinct to the language of her second home. This was more precise, less guttural, and it had come with the clipped intonations of a noble aristocrat, someone trained from a young age in the exacting manner that officers and gentlemen spoke in High Command; that was the Preussian fashion, unlike the Russy way of aristocrats being more relaxed in their accents than the military.

“What?” Visha whispered, unable to stop herself. She too had spoken in Germanian, jolted back by the familiar language.

“You don’t recognize me,” Halsey said, an uncharacteristic softness in her tone. “That makes sense, I suppose. I’m in a different body to that last one that you saw.”

Halsey lowered her head and breathed in with a loud, almost voluminous inhale, as if she was mustering her courage. She raised her head and looked back to Visha, and her cold mask had vanished. Halsey’s face was open, without any attempt to hide her true feelings. Her eyes were wistful, her chin sagging, and her cheeks slumped.

“I am Tanya von Degurechaff,” the Doctor said.

Visha stared. There was no breath in her lungs, but she was not breathless. She felt ethereal, as if she was having an out-of-body experience.

“Impossible,” Visha murmured, absently. They were the words of someone else, because she had not said them. She was too stunned, too frozen to say them.

“Impossible?” Halsey repeated, slowly. She stared at Visha, and slowly, she started to chuckle. It wasn’t a happy sound, but a sad, miserable one. “Yes. Yes, it is impossible. But yet it is true. How many impossible things did we achieve, Lieutenant? Do you remember Dacia? That night raid, where I spoke in such a childish voice? And now we have switched, and you are the child.”

Visha’s chest clenched. She did remember Dacia. She remembered the bombardment of the factory, the way that the Major had scrupulously followed international law by giving them prior warning, and how they hadn’t listened.

That was why it was impossible. Visha knew Tanya von Degurechaff. She knew her well. Tanya had always followed international law when it came to warfare, with a rock-solid legal analysis behind her actions.

“No,” Visha said. Her voice was shaky, but after a moment, she firmed up. She stood from her chair, and pointed an accusing finger directly at the imposter. “No. You can’t be. The Major would never have kidnapped children. Not after what she went through. You are not Tanya. You are Doctor Schugel!”

It was possible she was wrong about it being Schugel, in which case she didn’t know how Halsey would have learned Germanian, or how she knew about reincarnation… but she knew that Tanya von Degurechaff would never have been a willing party to this program, much less created it. Tanya had been a volunteer, and she’d confided more than once to Visha that she despised the policy of conscription for how ineffective most conscripts were.

Halsey stared at Visha. Her jaw was slack, and there was liquid building up in the corners of her eyes.

More confirmation, Visha thought to herself, distantly.

Tanya never would have replied to confrontation so meekly. She would have fired back, she would have recited the logical analysis that informed her every action, until her opponent in any debate was so thoroughly educated that they could do nothing but understand.

“Was it not bad enough that you hurt my commanding officer in your past life?” Visha demanded, harsh words rising unbidden from her throat. “Must you do the same to me as well?!”

“I made a mistake!” Halsey screamed, a sudden torrent of noise that blasted Visha back a step.

Visha stared, shocked, as Halsey raised a fist and slammed it into her imposing desk. The outer casing of the desk buckled, shrieking in protest. Even from a few feet back, Visha could see the indentation of her knuckles in the metal. It was a feat of strength beyond anything a normal human could do. Halsey’s head was hanging, her shoulder length brunette hair concealing her face.

A single tear dropped from behind that curtain. It splashed down onto the unbroken glass at the center of Halsey’s desk. After a moment, a second followed it, and then a third. The drops burst on impact and sent smaller dots of liquid all across the smooth surface. They looked like glimmering diamonds, caught between the obsidian glass and the lights above.

Doctor Halsey slowly raised her head. Her hair fell backwards, a few strands sticking to her wet cheeks, and she stared at Visha like a desperate animal.

“This was never supposed to happen,” she whispered. “I wrote a paper on how to train super-soldiers in college, and ONI thought it was brilliant. But it was never intentional. It was a bad joke, and now we are all paying for it. This program was never supposed to be real.”

Her eyes were wild as she stared at Visha. The dark blue orbs were not the same as Tanya’s. They were duller, less vivid. Yet there was something in them, something familiar.

“We were drunk,” Halsey confessed, her words gripping Visha like clamps. “We were joking about how to waste the most money possible. We all threw in our ideas. Paul, David, Steve, and I. We came up with wild and absurd theories… and then I ruined it. I was offended! We’d written all these pages on the science of how to make super soldiers, and I was angry that we hadn’t written a tactical doctrine for it. How the super-soldiers would be trained, how they would fight!”

Visha stepped back instinctively, and her calf ran right into the chair that had been behind her, preventing her from moving. The edge of the chair bit into her leg in short bursts, like the chair itself was shaking back and forth. No, Visha realized. It was she who was shaking.

“I was so arrogant,” Halsey murmured, tears still leaking down her face, as she stared at Visha. “But ONI saw my doctrine, and assumed that I must have been serious about it!”

Halsey shuddered, her spine arching, and it was only the fact that her fist was still embedded in the outer casing of her desk that held her up. She looked pathetic. She looked miserable.

“I’m so sorry, Visha,” the doctor told her, her voice breaking halfway through speaking Visha’s name, chased by a choking sob. “I have killed you.”

Even afterwards, later that night, Visha did not remember moving. She only remembered the feeling of her shoulder slamming into Doctor Halsey’s stomach, her short arms straining to reach around her and pull her tight. The force of her impact was barely enough to push the Doctor, but she was so feeble at that moment that it was enough to knock them both to the floor.

The Doctor’s butt hit the ground first, and she slid backwards slightly, as her back hit the far wall and stopped dead.

“Major!” Visha cried out, unable to stop the tears from coming from her own eyes as she hugged the woman before her. “Major, is it really you?!”

“Visha,” Catherine Halsey – Tanya – murmured, her own tears dripping onto the back of Visha’s head, and her arms slowly wrapping around the child in her lap. “Visha, I’m so sorry.”

“Major,” Visha whispered, shuddering and shivering from the rush of adrenaline that had propelled her around the desk like an artillery shell. “Oh, God, what happened to us? Why? Why are we here? How is this even possible?”

“God,” Tanya repeated softly, pressing a chaste kiss to the top of Visha’s head. “This is my third life, Visha. At the end of my first, I offended the thing that calls itself ‘God’. It was slothful, and arrogant, and it cursed me by sending me to live in a world where I would suffer. To live in the Empire, during the war.”

“You volunteered,” Visha remembered. “Before the war ever began. Were you… trying to get away?”

“Correct as usual,” Tanya concurred, hugging Visha tighter. “I wanted nothing more than a rear line posting, where I would be safe. But those damn war maniacs… every time I thought I had escaped that fate, I was roped into another assault, another attack.”

“That’s…” Visha murmured, frowning, as she pulled back from Tanya, the older woman’s armed releasing her gently. “You proposed many of those attacks and assaults.”

“Of course I did,” Tanya said, smiling sadly as they looked at each other. “At first, I couldn’t admit to cowardice, or they would have executed me. Yet after that, if I contradicted my lies, High Command would know that I been lying to them for years.”

“If you’d told the truth, at the start…” Visha started to say.

“If I’d done that, they never would have believed me,” Tanya answered. “And if they did, they wouldn’t have accepted me into the army. I would have avoided the start of the war, sure enough, but you yourself were conscripted for your magical potential, dear Visha. Do you think that I would have avoided such a fate?”

Visha shivered. She didn’t know. Like always, the Major had already weighed, evaluated, and made her decision on the idea that she herself had only just discovered.

“What will happen to us?” she asked, changing the subject as she stared up into Tanya’s unfamiliar face. “The cadets. Why is the UNSC doing this? Are things truly that bad with their rebels, that they need to do this program?”

Tanya scowled, a ferocious expression

“Fools,” she muttered harshly. “No, things are not truly that bad. But ONI has been convinced that they will only get worse, and so they must crack down harshly before the Insurrection becomes widespread. Their existing special forces were not up to the task, and so they went reaching for miracle solutions, like my damned paper on super-soldiers.”

“But what is a super-soldier?” Visha pressed, her old worries clawing deep, even through the soothing balm of her knowledge that she was not alone in this strange new world. “Are they trying to train mages? I haven’t seen anything about magic here.”

“No, Visha, not mages,” Tanya reassured her, though her voice quickly became grim. “They do not even know that magic exists. Our paper was wild, and full of experimental ideas. Robotic exoskeletons for a new type of powered armor that is much more durable. Expertly trained and psychologically inculcated soldiers to wield them, starting from a young age. Even… ‘cybernetic’ enhancements. ONI wants us to do them all – the full suite of improvements to human beings.”

Visha tilted her head in confusion.

“What is a ‘cybernetic’ enhancement?” she asked, the English word unfamiliar and standing out in their all-Germanian conversation.

Tanya’s scowl grew tighter, more serious, and she closed her eyes for a moment before responding.

“When you and the other cadets undergo puberty,” she said, speaking slowly and precisely. “The doctors will perform surgeries on you. They will cut and trim, and implant small devices to enhance your bodies. Growth hormones and other chemicals that will synergize with your own body’s puberty hormones. Your eyes will see further and spot patterns quicker. Your reflexes will be like lightning. Your muscles will be stronger. Your bones will be unbreakable. You will be taller than most normal men.”

“Taller?” Visha repeated, her eyes widening. “But Major, I don’t want to be tall! The taller I am, the bigger of a target I am! I’d rather be short, like you were!”

Tanya’s face twisted. It was split right down the middle, her lips crinkled both upwards and downwards, eyes twinkling and glaring simultaneously, one half amused and one half offended.

Visha winced. She hadn’t meant to rub Tanya’s face in her old height problems, for the Major had always been sensitive about it… but they had all used to joke about how it made her a better fighter. She remembered Koenig and Grantz chuckling about it with the Major once, in one of the quiet moments on some forgettable battlefield.

“It is inevitable that current situation cannot stand,” Tanya told her, solemnly. “I do enjoy it, but I am afraid that soon enough, dear Visha, you will once again be taller than me.”

She smiled weakly, and Visha did the same. One of them chuckled, Visha wasn’t sure which, and soon enough they were both chuckling and giggling and trying to pretend that this wasn’t a deeply horrifying idea.

“This future is scary,” Visha confided in her superior. “So many things that I could barely imagine back home. Travelling to other stars… implanting things like this in people. I don’t know how you can act like this is normal.”

“You’re young, Lieutenant,” Tanya said, mock chidingly. “I’m twenty-five years old, so I’ve had all those years to get used to this world. It’s not so different from my first one, admittedly.”

“Will we...” Visha tried to say. The words didn’t want to come out. “The implants. The… cybernetics. Will we…”

Tanya closed her eyes, and pulled Visha in to her chest again, hugging her tight. She didn’t speak for a long moment.

“We have several years to refine the technology,” she said, but her voice was frail. “To improve the chances.”

“What are the chances?” Visha asked, biting her lip. “Right now.”

“Eleven percent,” Tanya whispered, confiding the secret to the top of Visha’s head.

“Eleven percent…” Visha repeated, thinking it over with hesitancy. For an army, an eleven percent casualty rate was atrocious, more than enough to annihilate morale and ruin their combat effectiveness. But for training, an eleven percent wash-out rate was fairly good. “That’s… not horrible. That’s… eight losses, nine if you round it up. Not up to our old standards, but uh, it’s…”

Her voice faded, and even her thin attempt at a joke failed to draw any response from Tanya. She pulled back slightly, and saw that Tanya’s face was frozen stiff. Her eyes were red from all the crying, and there was a sorrowful cast to them.

“Not eleven percent failure,” Tanya admitted. The words echoed in Visha’s ears, like a shovel of dirt being dropped on a coffin. “It’s an eleven percent success rate.”

Visha’s breath caught in her chest.

Not eight deaths. Eight survivors.

“That’s…” she tried to say something, but she didn’t even know what to say.

An eighty-nine percent casualty rate was beyond horrific, beyond imaginable. Eighty-nine percent simply didn’t happen in a battle, because people panicked and ran away before they could die like their comrades.

“It will be improved,” Tanya said fiercely, her jaw clenched. “A month ago, it was ten percent. I have four science teams working on it, day and night, for the next seven years at the shortest, ten years at the most. I refuse to allow you to die.”

Visha smiled feebly.

“Don’t worry about me, Major,” she tried to reassure Tanya. “I’d rather than everyone survives. Don’t… don’t tailor it for me, if it means one of the other kids dies.”

She hoped that would cheer her old superior up, but if anything, it had the opposite effect. Tanya’s eyes grew sadder, the bags beneath her eyes deepened.

“Visha,” she said, before pausing. Hesitating. Something that Visha had rarely ever seen her do. “You are the least compatible with the augmentations. If anyone dies… it will be you.”

Tears dripped from Tanya’s cheeks, and Visha threw herself forward, squeezing her old friend tight.

“I won’t die!” she promised, the words hollow as she said them, but she said them as fiercely as she could, to reassure Tanya. “I won’t! You don’t have to worry!”

“Oh, Visha,” Tanya sighed, hugging her. “You don’t have to worry. I’ll crack the whip on those damn scientists until we have a hundred percent success. You will be fine. I swear it.”

They sat there like that for some time. Minutes, maybe. It felt like hours.

Perhaps it was Visha’s childish body, but it felt… so good to be held in Tanya’s arms, safe and warm, like there was nothing in the world that could touch her. It was the first real human contact she’d had since ONI had kidnapped her, and there was something miraculous about the fact that it was with the person she trusted most in the whole world – in both her lives, no matter what world they’d been on.

Finally, however, they had to straighten up. Visha pulled away from Tanya reluctantly, and slowly climbed back to her feet as Tanya rose.

There was an awkward shuffle as Visha walked back around to the chair in front of Tanya’s desk, and Tanya searched through her drawers for tissues or cloths to scrub at her cheeks. They’d never had problems with dignity, not in all the years that they’d shared a tent on the frontlines, but they’d also never been quite so honest about their feelings and fears as that moment.

“Was this all you wanted from me, ah… Doctor Halsey?” Visha asked, a slight grin on her face as she tried out Tanya’s new name. She couldn’t go around calling her Tanya, after all. There were appearances to be maintained, discipline to keep in order.

“Ah… yes, Cadet,” Tanya answered, with her own awkward smile. She glanced down at her desk, and saw the small evidence bag that was still full of plastic and metal. “Oh. What was this about?”

Visha looked at the bag, and winced slightly. It was amazing how just a few minutes could change so much. She’d been terrified of what Doctor Halsey would do to her, after she’d broken the valuable device, and now, it seemed almost completely irrelevant.

“I destroyed government property,” she told Tanya promptly.

“You did?” Tanya asked, a perturbed expression on her face as she picked up the bag in one hand, and inspected the contents. “Is this a watch?”

“Yes, Doctor,” Visha winced, but smiled anyway.

Watches were very expensive, what with all the clockwork they needed to work, and also the supply bottleneck, since most of the good watch-makers were instead working on magecraft orbs. Still, she was confident that Tanya could come up with some bureaucratic excuse for it.

“Huh,” Tanya remarked, blinking once before shrugging. “Just go get another one from Sergeant Wentworth at the armory. Watches are cheap these days, you know. How did you even break it, anyway? These things are designed to be durable.”

“I was trying to channel magic through it,” Visha admitted. “I don’t have a proper orb, and doing all the math for non-orb magic was too much to juggle while I was shooting, so I tried to improvise.”

Tanya paused, and stared down at the watch, then up at Visha, confusion on her face.

“But it’s not clockwork,” Tanya pointed out, the suspicion in her voice slowly fading into fascination. “Watches are printed circuitry. They don’t share almost any of the same technology as before. Did… did it work?”

“Partially,” Visha reported, folding her hands behind her back as she settled into her familiar stance when she was reporting to the Major. “I found it worked for low-level enhancement formulas, but too much and it started to smoke.”

“…digital watches can be used for magecraft,” Tanya said slowly, her voice growing more intense as she stared at the watch. “That’s…”

She reached into the pocket of her lab coat, and pulled out an object. Visha’s eyes widened as she recognized it immediately – the shining ruby-red of the Type 97 Elenium Magecraft Orb.

“I had this made custom,” Tanya told her, her voice distant, as she stared at the broken watch in one hand, and the gleaming orb in the other. “I had a lot of failed prototypes, and I lost a lot of money doing it. But I wanted an orb, for personal safety, so I did. I never even considered testing for substitute technologies.”

She let out a huff of air, and a wry smile appeared on her lips. She looked amused, but at what, Visha did not understand.

“What a perfect example of officers versus enlisted,” Tanya said, more to herself than to Visha. “I painstakingly insisted on the same weapon that had won me the last war, and failed to anticipate the changing times. While the enlisted man simply takes whatever he has on him, and made it work anyway, with improvisational ingenuity.”

Tanya gasped suddenly, and looked up, her gaze locking onto Visha with a familiar intensity, a mania in her eyes that Visha knew all too well. Visha braced herself.

“Visha, do you realize what this means?” Tanya exclaimed, dropping the priceless Type 97 on her desk without a care, and cradling the broken watch with reverence. “Circuity can be used for magecraft! That’s amazing!”

“If you say so, Doctor,” Visha replied, not seeing why her superior had suddenly perked up.

“Imagine the possibilities!” Tanya insisted, holding up the evidence bag. “Circuity is in everything these days, Visha. Including the exoskeletons that Doctor Sullivan is experimenting on! What if we could replicate a mage orb in them? What if your power armor was a mage orb? Imagine how powerful this program could be if you and the other cadets could also fly?”

Visha smiled gently, and nodded her head.

“Of course, Doctor,” she agreed. The possibility was interesting, she admitted, but that wasn’t why she was smiling. She was smiling because it was good to see her old friend happy again, rather than maudlin and depressed.

Chapter Text

Paul Wu was living in a nightmare.

Every morning, he woke up feeling the effects of restless nights. Every day, he waited for the next horrific surprise to come crashing down. Every night, he wrestled with his desire to charge into Halsey’s office and scream at her.

“Welcome,” said Doctor Catherine Halsey, the source of his nightmares, her head turning to each of them and nodding once. “In the interests of efficiency, these monthly meetings shall be instituted from now on. Allow me to introduce everyone, as we will all be working together very closely from now on.”

The meeting room was nice, but Paul was painfully aware that just by coming here, he was at a higher risk. This meeting wasn’t at Menachite Mountain, their primary research base, or at the Orion-II compound somewhere in the Highland Mountains. Instead, today they were meeting in one of the administrative towers at the Highland Military Complex.

There were six of them in the room today. Himself, Steve, and David, the three remaining sane members of the old Circumstance house. Two military men in uniforms, one in drab green with a bristling mustache, and one in the space-black, unmarked formal uniform that only ONI officers wore. And then Halsey, his former friend, blending the worst of both worlds with the same space-black uniform underneath a pure white lab coat, like the hybrid creation that she was.

“Starting with our research teams, we have Doctor Paul Wu, who runs the Augmentation Team,” Halsey said, indicating him with a hand. Paul stared at her, and nodded slowly, unable to bring himself to look at the others. “Doctor Steve Sullivan, who runs the Exoskeleton Team. Doctor David Meyer, who runs the Surgery Team.”

“And the Psychology Team,” David spoke up, interrupting her.

There was a moment of still silence as Halsey looked the large man, and then she smiled. It looked inhuman. Her cheeks stretched awkwardly, peeling back to show her teeth clearly grit.

“Indeed,” Halsey said, her voice tight, as she turned her gesture towards the green-clad military man, who was eyeing her with a watchful expression. “Next, we have Chief Petty Officer Franklin Mendez, the head trainer for the Orion-II cadets. You and your psychology staff will begin working with him shortly, Doctor Meyer.”

The two men looked at each other. They were the biggest people in the room, with David still being an enormous bodybuilder of a man, and Mendez only slightly smaller and lighter, but looking far more comfortable with the notion of violence than Paul liked to see in a person.

“Call me David,” his friend said, nodding politely to Mendez – who merely quirked an eyebrow, but made no response verbal or physical to David’s attempt at friendliness.

“And finally, we have Lieutenant Commander Hieronymus Michael Stanforth,” Halsey said, sweeping her hand to the ONI spook. “He will be our direct liaison to Admiral Keeler, and will keep him informed of not only our progress, but also our requisitions, in order to minimize the time our research teams spend on administrative tasks, rather than direct research.”

Stanforth regarded the rest of them with a distant, detached expression, but he did offer a nod of acknowledgement to them, which was a step up from Mendez.

There were no medals on the ONI man’s chest, no insignia, no indicators of any kind. Paul didn’t know how the strange language of military decorations worked, and he’d never been interested in that kind of pageantry anywhere else, but he was vaguely familiar with the concept. Mendez, for instance, had some symbols on the edge of his collar, maybe for his rank… but Stanforth had nothing, and the absence was disturbing.

“Now, let’s get down to business,” Halsey said, as she started typing on the keyboard built into the table’s surface.  Her voice was picking up, growing louder as some kind of sick enthusiasm entered it. “We have much to discuss today, so I will start with the most important one: with the conclusion of the first three months of Project Orion-II, we need to change some of our goals.”

Please, let it be canceling the project, Paul thought to himself, desperate, yet knowing full well that it was impossible. ONI and Halsey were both too obsessed with it for their own reasons.

“There will be no deaths in this program,” Halsey declared firmly. “Every cadet will survive their augmentations. A success rate below 100% is no longer acceptable.”

She looked around the table, her eyes burning with some unrestrained emotion that Paul didn’t know, couldn’t tell – anger, maybe? He’d never been good at reading people, but even he could tell that Halsey was different than before. No longer was her voice cold and callous, like a machine. Now, she reminded him of the old days at the University of Circumstance. Passionate ranting, that’s what Steve used to call it.

“Not much of a change,” Steve said hesitantly, as he spoke for the first time. “I thought that was already the goal.”

“It was, but now it is no longer optional,” Halsey said, nodding to Sullivan. “This project has been given a blank check, and until now, I have not been using it. That will be rectified shortly.”

“In what way?” Stanforth asked, the ONI spook leaning forward slightly, his hands folded together on the tabletop.

“To start, I will be requisitioning seven ‘smart’ A.I.’s, for immediate use,” Halsey told him.

Paul’s eyes widened. A smart A.I. was no small thing. Entire planets might have only a single one overseeing some vital industry like space-lift, or terraforming, where the smallest of human errors could cause catastrophic accidents. To demand seven of the things was insane.

Stanforth’s jaw worked in a vaguely circular motion, as if he was trying to crack it like a knuckle.

“It’s possible,” he said, slowly. “But as I understand it, the integration of A.I. into the cadets is the final element on the project timeline. Only to occur after we get Doctor Sullivan’s exoskeletons working, which itself can only happen after the augmentations. Given the lifespan of those A.I., they would expire before we hit that point in the project. Why do you need them early?”

“You misunderstand me, Lieutenant Commander,” Halsey said, with a small smirk that seemed almost devilish. “These A.I. would be to aid in the research and development of the program, directly working with the various teams to ensure their work proceeds swiftly and thoroughly.”

It was… possible, Paul considered. He’d been told repeatedly through his academic career that A.I. were no substitute for a human researcher. They were capable, they were intelligent, but at the end of the day, they were machines, not people. They fell into repetitive patterns and assumed those patterns were breakthroughs instead of their own errors. They were innately limited by their programming, or, in the case of smart A.I.’s, by their lifespan limitation.

It was one of the main places where an Artificial Intelligence’s perfect memory was a distinct drawback, rather than an advantage. Junk data could accumulate just as easily as valuable data. When you started looking for patterns in huge data-sets, it was too easy to spot the repetition of something unimportant. There were plenty of ways where a human researcher’s supposed ‘flaws’ were actually benefits, in the same way that a traumatized person could eventually forget their horrible memories – or at least, that was how Catherine had used to talk about it, in the old days, Paul thought to himself, frowning as he looked to Halsey, and the stranger that she had become.

But as assistants? Fellow researchers working in a team, rather than solo operators trying to pursue a goal without oversight? That was… a possibility, Paul admitted. The best of both worlds. Perhaps it was even the ideal way to do research, if smart A.I.’s hadn’t been so extremely expensive.

A human scientist reviewing an A.I.’s work would provide a cautious eye that could catch any errors. In turn, the A.I.’s pattern-obsessed behavior might spot something that a human had missed, a single forest among all the trees. Even if it was wrong, the human scientist only had to check out the exceptions, rather than painstakingly go through every single datapoint.

It had been the goal of Artificial Intelligence researchers for decades to develop an A.I. that was actually capable of both sides of that equation – extreme intelligence, speed, and diligence, without losing out on intuition and discretion, the human elements. It had been one of Catherine’s supposed dreams, before she’d reappeared here, chasing the insanity of that old paper.

“ONI policy is to avoid using smart A.I. for those tasks, Doctor,” Stanforth countered with a frown. “They’re too prone to extrapolation errors, making replicating their results too difficult. As well, the further they pursue a research subject, the more likely rampancy becomes, as they cannot prune any data without risking damage to the project. And, of course, they’re too expensive for most of our projects.”

“Which is why each A.I. will be tasked with evaluating the work of the others,” Halsey told him. “If this means that they are more likely to have a reduced lifespan, so be it. This project is of the utmost importance to ONI and HIGHCOM, and if that means I can spend more to achieve this goal, so be it. None of the cadets will die.”

“Why?” Stanforth asked, sounding almost absentminded, though his expression was still intensely focused on Halsey. “I understand the desire to ensure that they all survive, Doctor Halsey, believe me. But the purpose of this program, ultimately, is to provide a useful group of supersoldiers for missions of strategic importance. Even with Doctor Sullivan’s exoskeletons and Doctor Wu’s augmentations-”

Paul winced, barely able to keep the expression from showing on his face, at the idea of that these were his augmentations.

“- losses are unfortunately inevitable in the field,” Stanforth continued severely, with a frown. “Why should ONI invest the equivalent of seven warships, at a minimum, into merely aiding the existing research teams?”

“Because science is about reproducible results,” Halsey replied, her voice stirring in a voice that Paul recognized. She was getting on her soapbox again. “Any losses that we suffer during the augmentation process demonstrate that we do not fully understand the research, and therefore, that we are leaving money on the table.”

She paused, and leaned forward, and on sheer instinct, Paul leaned back.

The last time he’d seen this expression on her face, back when she was still Catherine in his mind, she had jumped on top of the coffee table and was loudly declaring that she’d combine all their fields together. The fateful moment when she had planted the seed for this horrific program. Nothing good came from this expression, from this woman.

“I disagree with you, Lieutenant Commander,” Halsey said firmly, staring the ONI spook in the eyes. “The ultimate goal is this project is not to produce supersoldiers, that is merely the immediate goal. The ultimate goal is the same as that of the first Project Orion; to increase our knowledge of various topics that could provide immense use for the UNSC in multiple ways. Most of them will be directly related to the supersoldiers, but that is hardly the limit.”

Stanforth matched her gaze, undaunted by her aggression. He unfolded his hands and lifted one up, resting his chin upon it. It looked disapproving, Paul thought, but Halsey showed no signs of acknowledging that.

“For instance,” Halsey said, almost hissing the words, her eyes bright and burning. “The current Orbital Drop Shock Trooper program was revived from nearly two centuries of stagnation by the innovations pioneered by the Orion-I program. This includes refinements to the older, highly dangerous drop pods, and an entirely new armor system that has greatly increased their effectiveness in combat operations throughout the Insurrection.”

Across the table, Paul saw Mendez shift in his seat. It was a subtle motion, but it was the first move that Mendez had made since David had tried talking to him, making it much more obvious. Was he an ODST, Paul wondered? He didn’t really know the difference between an Army soldier or a Marine soldier or an ODST soldier, but whatever he was, Mendez wasn’t a member of ONI, and maybe he had firsthand experience with what Halsey was saying.

“It also led to the current MA5B assault rifle,” Halsey continued, gesturing with her hands to emphasize her point. “Combat data gathered by the Orion operators indicating the need for larger magazine sizes to counter Insurrectionist ‘confetti-makers’ in suppressing fire, while still allowing for longer accuracy, if admittedly somewhat inferior to the Army’s MA37. The primary weapon for the entire UNSC Marine Corps was improved, with the right step at the right time, just as it moved into a focus on close-order urban combat. Imagine how many ways Project Orion-II could advance the UNSC’s operations, all while improving the original immediate goal of providing supersoldiers.”

Stanforth was no longer frowning. Instead, his expression was almost pensive.

The poor bastard, Paul thought to himself. It surprised him that he was feeling any kind of sympathy for any ONI officer, but it was clear that Lieutenant Commander Stanforth had never seen Doctor Catherine Halsey in one of her manic moments.

He was making the mistake that Paul himself had once made, and was still regretting – he was listening to her objectively, allowing her arguments a chance to work.

“I could regale you with hundreds of examples of military research development providing huge leaps forward in areas that were not the original subjects of the research,” Halsey said, throwing her arms wide as if to hold them all in her hands. “Thousands, even! I’m sure you can see the benefit of this approach.”

“Of course there are benefits,” Stanforth said, pursing his lips. “But there are also costs, and what you’re proposing is a very high cost. My question is whether the benefits will be worth it.”

Halsey’s grin widened, now resembling a shark about to strike, and Paul closed his eyes for a moment.

“Now you’re speaking my language, Lieutenant Commander,” she replied smoothly. “Indeed, the cost-benefit analysis is the most important aspect of military research. I have identified several areas where great increases can be made for relatively little cost. They affect the Navy, Marines, Air Force, and even the Army.”

“Doctor Halsey, I’m not sure how you get relatively little cost from seven smart A.I.’s,” Stanforth replied, frowning. “I’ll grant you that discoveries beneficial to the other branches would indeed be welcome, but the individual expenditure would be significant.”

“I believe I understand the issue,” Halsey said, tilting her head as if puzzle, though her expression didn’t change, still bearing that slight smile on it. “But if you’ll allow me just one question… you believe this will be a significant expenditure, compared to what?”

Stanforth’s eyes narrowed as he looked back across the table at her.

“Compared to not doing it,” Stanforth replied, folding his hands on the table. “The initial budget for Orion-II is quite substantial already. Unless you’re arguing that you cannot achieve augmentation of the subjects without this additional funding, I doubt that Admiral Keeler will be as enthusiastic as you are for the notion of spending even more on it.”

“That is exactly my point,” Halsey replied, her smile widening still further, stretching from ear to ear. “This project has already had an enormous expenditure allocated to it. Yes, when isolated, the cost of seven smart A.I. is indeed a terrible sum… but compared to what has already been spent on this? It is a drop in the bucket.”

She turned, and her eyes singled out Mendez, then Steve, then David, and then Paul. He shrank back, unable to resist the instinctive flinch.

“ONI is paying top dollar for every single scientist in this project,” Halsey said, gesturing to them. “We have experts in five different broad categories, and nearly two dozen sub-specialties. Chief Mendez is one of the single greatest special forces operatives and instructors in the entire UNSC. All of our skills, from the lowest trainer to myself, would be incredibly difficult to replace, so rare are we.”

She turned back to Stanforth, and Paul shuddered as her eyes left him – and across the table, he saw Mendez’s gaze flicker towards him, only for a moment. The soldier make no other motion, no sound, but Paul knew that Mendez had seen his trembling reaction.

 “We’ve built an entirely new compound for the cadets,” Halsey continued. “Re-routed hundreds of Navy ships to pick them up from over fifty colony worlds. We have already spent, in the first three months alone, far more than I am asking. These costs are not independent factors, Lieutenant Commander Stanforth – they are simple additions to an already generous budget.

“What is the point in running a marathon, and quitting at the last mile?” she asked rhetorically as she turned back to Stanforth. “Yes, we may achieve limited success without these additions, but what would happen afterwards? Do you think ONI would approve a project such as this a third time, after both predecessors had failures? ONI has committed to making a running jump into the future of science, and I am asking for little more than an extra burst of speed; an incremental addition, nothing more. If ONI wishes to do a third project later on, then they would have to do the entire running start again, for even greater costs than this small increase.”

Paul shivered. There was a dangerous edge to Halsey’s voice now, a hint of something deeper that he did not like. He didn’t know if it was possibility of a third Orion project in the distant future, or the potential backlash from ONI if they failed here and now. Yes, ONI had promised them protection, and the contracts had plenty of legalese about protections, but ONI had also bluntly told them that they might be summarily executed if they broke the NDA.

“This is a great barrier to many potential improvements in our way of life,” Halsey continued. “Imagine if these augmentations were not only a guaranteed success, but if we could apply them to adults, and not merely to teenagers during puberty. With more research abilities, we might be able to ensure that Project Orion-II is not merely a rare prototype, never to be repeated, but a pioneering advancement that ensures future developments are vastly cheaper, easier to apply to a wider population, and more effective.”

Paul risked a glance over to Steve and David. He couldn’t believe what he was hearing. Was she saying what he thought?

Steve looked conflicted. Paul knew that he hated this project just as much as Paul and David did, but something about Halsey’s words had caught his attention. Something had sounded appealing, attractive to him, because he wasn’t wearing his bad poker-face, or showing his displeasure outright. No, Steve was genuinely considering something.

David… David was worse. Paul glanced at him and pretended to return his attention to Halsey afterwards, as if he’d just idly done it – but David’s expression was so horrifying to Paul that he slowly looked back at him. David was approving. There was a small smile on his face, and he was nodding in agreement with what their ex-friend was saying.

It was impossible. David was one of the most vocal opponents of any immorality, any abuse. He’d go into dark rages about things as mild as medical doctors recommending specific medicines, much less kidnapping children!

What the hell is he thinking? Paul wondered, trying to wipe away his expression before anyone at the table noticed it.

“Besides,” Halsey was saying as Paul turned his attention back to her. “The per-unit cost of any prototype is always ridiculous, as it includes all the research and development cycles invested into the new technology. It is only when a prototype enters serial production, being created in massive numbers, that the per-unit cost begins to drop, and tremendously at that. With no more research needed, just production costs for the augmentations and the surgeries themselves, the individual cost of an Orion supersoldier could drop so low that the Navy could field entire divisions of them.”

“Doctor Halsey, I understand your arguments,” Stanforth said, pinching the bridge of his nose. “But at this point, it’s not up to me. I will present your arguments to Admiral Keeler, and he’ll make the final decision.”

My God, Paul thought to himself, as his throat tightened, and he clamped down on the urge to vomit.

Mass production? Doing it to adults? He knew exactly what this was – and to his horror, it was his fault.

He could still remember the words he’d shared with the Party House, before they’d written the paper. Before Catherine had proposed combining their specialties.

Paul had spoken of a world where humanity was improved. Where every individual person was as smart as a brilliant scientist, as physically capable and fit as an all-star athlete. A world where no one suffered from disease or ailment, where genetic maladies did not exist, where aging was more of a number than a harsh burden.

Humanity unchained, he’d called it. He’d explained the ideas that seemed almost ethereal to him, like clouds: always beyond his grasp, but always within sight, enticing him further upwards.

It was a pipe-dream, and Paul knew it. Even if such a miraculous procedure could be created, even if there were no complications, even if anybody could have it performed on them… it was impossible to make such a thing truly universal. They’d never manage more than twenty percent of the population even if the government made it free and prioritized rolling it out on every colony world.

There simply weren’t enough doctors nor enough money to do everyone. Not for a procedure so advanced that right now, even with the best researchers in the galaxy and pre-selected compatible candidates, they were sitting at an estimated eleven percent success rate!

The only way that everyone could be uplifted would be if the augmentations were somehow heritable, which was completely impossible. Every single change they were making was an alteration to the human body’s functions, but none of them affected the DNA. They were like tattoos – permanent changes on an individual, but not alterations to their base genetics. Hell, calling them ‘genetic augmentations’ alone wasn’t even accurate. They were surgical alterations, not genetic. And even if they were, it would take over a dozen generations to spread, probably more!

And God, what horrors would a partially uplifted humanity unleash? They’d killed each other in so many ways over so many lesser issues. Paul could see the Outer Colonies going into full revolt over the idea that the Inner Colonies were going to become some kind of Homo Sapiens Superior, and that they’d lord their superiority over the lesser ‘normal’ humans.

What kind of conflicts would this split create? The enhanced attacking first out of supremacist ideology, or the normals attacking first, fearing the supremacists? The Insurrection would be a joke compared to the kind of hatreds and fears that a mass uplift might create. It would be a war unlike anything that humanity had ever seen.

He'd wondered why Catherine had changed from the obsessively polite, driven young woman who wanted nothing more than to improve humanity through better communications, transportation, and A.I., into the cold, brutal ONI officer that seemed happy to condemn children to death. It hadn’t made any sense. She’d never been cruel before, never this cold or callous.

But now he saw it. Now, at last, Paul understood why Catherine had become Halsey in his mind, why she’d transformed into an alien creature.

Halsey wanted to uplift humanity. She wanted to be mother to an entirely new species of transhumans. She wanted to make it not just possible, not just common, but universal. She’d chased Paul’s old fantasies like a drowning woman racing after an oasis, never realizing that it was just a mirage.

Paul could see it now – the end of Project Orion-II. Regardless of whether they achieved Halsey’s goal of no casualties or not, the very next day she would be standing in front of ONI again, beginning for a third Orion project. Then a fourth, if possible. Anything and everything to keep pursuing her megalomaniacal goal.

That’s why she wanted more funding now. Not because of the chance it might save more children that she had already condemned to a lifetime of violence. But because it might be the next step in human evolution, in her crazed mind.

“Absolutely not!”

He looked at Halsey, and for a half second, he wondered why her face was slack, why she was staring at him, and why she was lower than him.

Then he realized that he was standing and staring down at her. That he had slammed his fist into the table. That he was the one who had shouted.

He froze, his limbs locking up and his mouth hanging there, wide open.

“Doctor Wu, how nice of you to join us,” Stanforth said, his grey eyes locked on Paul, his voice sardonic. “Do you have something to add?”

“Doctor Wu is concerned about the cost issues from expanding,” David barked out, jumping into the conversation. “Excuse me, sir, but that’s all this is. The financial costs of a third or a fourth Orion program, when we could instead just properly fund this program.”

“Is that it?” Stanforth asked, still staring at Paul.

“Uh… yes, sir,” Paul said, barely managing to get the words out past the block in his throat, as he slowly sat back down in his chair, moving as slowly as he could to avoid attracting any more attention.. “David’s right. Um. Doctor Meyer, that is.”

“Then why were you glaring at Doctor Halsey?” Stanforth asked, with a very stern, steely-eyed expression. “You seem to be objecting to her, more than me.”

“He-” David tried to interject.

“No,” Stanforth said, cutting him off. “I want Doctor Wu to answer.”

Paul trembled. What could he say? He had been glaring at Halsey and objecting to her. What on earth could he say to get himself out of this?

“It’s an old argument, sir,” Paul tried to say, stammering a little as he desperately reached for an excuse. “Doctor Halsey never agreed with me about it, back when we first wrote the paper. I’m just, uh… stunned to finally have her support. I was overcome with emotion, I can’t believe she’s finally… seen the light. I – I don’t want to see this opportunity wasted with, ah, half-measures.”

“Really?” Stanforth asked, staring at him, eyes boring down like drills.

“Yes, indeed,” Halsey said, interrupting. “I don’t blame Doctor Wu, I was… quite cruel to him in our old arguments. I suppose he may have thought that I was mocking him. But to be clear, I wholeheartedly believe that this is the best path forward for the future of this program.”

Paul blinked and tried to restrain his shock. Halsey, the monster, the one who was trying to bring Paul’s impossible college dream to life without realizing any of the horror that it would bring – she of all people was defending him?

“Doctor Wu actually wrote this section of the original paper,” David said, jumping back in. “He’s always been an advocate for more widely available human augmentations. Doctor Halsey, ah, disagreed back in university. We all used to argue about it, all the time.”

“And yet now, she agrees,” Stanforth said, briefly closing his eyes and inhaling slowly.

“I’ve had many years to reevaluate my position,” Halsey explained, a trace of her earlier passion returning to her voice. “I believe my colleague here was completely correct at the time. The best way to proceed is to ensure that we develop this technology in the most efficient manner possible, with this immediate project, so that we both save as many lives as possible with the prevention of an outright war, and, of course, preserve as many of the cadet’s lives, to further that first goal.”

Halsey smiled broadly at Stanforth, and then turned that expression to Paul, beaming at him in visible delight, a massive contrast to her cold and cruel façade of the last three months.

Paul felt sick. He didn’t want this. Mass augmentation was a nightmare waiting to happen, and now he was forced to defend it. His temper had gotten the better of him, and now he was trapped in a hellish world where he had to agree with a monstrous person and a monstrous idea just to keep himself alive.

He looked across at David, who had support Halsey in this absurd objective. David, who was looking back at him, with a tight grin that showed too many teeth. David, who was… unhappy? The burly man’s eyes flicked over to Stanforth, and then back to Paul, and then back and forth again.

A wave of relief crashed through Paul’s shattered psyche.

Of course, Paul thought to himself, as he nodded shakily back to his friend, who he never should have doubted. David wasn’t in agreement with Halsey. David likely still hated the idea just as much as Paul did – but he was smart enough to not blurt it out like a moron.

Paul smiled weakly, and turned back to Stanforth.

The ONI officer looked distinctly unamused by all of this, and Paul held his breath without thinking about it.

“I am very happy to have the unwavering support of my colleagues in this matter,” Halsey said, drawing Stanforth’s attention away from Paul.

Steve Sullivan stiffened in his seat, and Paul wanted to shoot him a look or kick him under the table, but Mendez was sitting there, watching this whole drama play-by-play, and Paul knew that his poker face was lousy.

Luckily, Steve seemed to get the message regardless, and he nodded along.

“Yes, absolutely,” Steve said, agreeing with Halsey. His voice was a little wooden, but still close enough to normal if you didn’t know him like Paul did.

“So you see, this is the unanimous opinion of the research staff,” Halsey said, lying outrageously as she smiled at Stanforth. She acted like they’d all known she was going to pull this stunt, when she had barely even talked to them about their part of the project as a whole, just listening to their reports and giving terse orders without any broader context, stringing them along. “I would be very happy to convey these sentiments to Admiral Keeler myself, if he wishes it, but I understand that he’s very busy, and have no desire to disturb him.”

“Any more than you already have,” Stanforth said pointedly, though Paul had no idea what he was referring to.

“As I told him at the time, I will only act with such haste when it is required,” Halsey answered smoothly. “This is a requisition request, nothing more. I will again stress that it is of the utmost importance, but we have a small amount of time before the need becomes urgent.”

“I’ll pass that along,” Stanforth said, a single eyebrow raised. “Is there anything else you’d like to share, Doctor Halsey?”

“Oh, but of course,” Halsey said, tapping a command onto the table’s inbuilt keyboard. “As I said earlier, this is merely the most important topic of the day. We still have to cover the other requisition requests, Chief Mendez’s report on the cadets progress, and the reports from each research team regarding their individual contributions to Project Orion-II.”

Paul closed his eyes briefly and offered a silent prayer upwards, in the hollow hope that Catherine Halsey was no longer a closeted introvert. All their college years, she had bottled up her words throughout the day, only to unleash them in long rambling rants when someone finally poked her enough. Usually, it was David, doing it deliberately to spare whatever poor, unsuspecting sap triggered the avalanche that was Doctor Catherine Halsey talking about one of her favorite subjects.

He already knew that his prayer was in vain, even before Halsey started talking. She looked far too enthusiastic for it to be anything else.

Chapter Text

The bar was mostly empty when Franklin Mendez entered it. He could see maybe six or seven people inside, counting the bartender, and almost everyone was keeping to themselves.

It hadn’t changed in the past three months. It still had remnants of a thousand conflicts, known and unknown. Battered weapons on display racks, ragged remains of old unit flags hanging from girders overhead, and dusty medals pinned on the wall with name plates beneath them – Colonial Crosses, Silver Stars, Distinguished Unit Citations.

“Frank,” the bartender said, nodding as the CPO approached the bar. “Beer?”

“Octanis, if you have it,” Mendez asked.

He didn’t bother with a wallet or a card. The cost would be charged straight to his UNSC account, because this bar wasn’t in New Alexandria or any of the other cities. Mendez had stayed behind after the first staff meeting of the Orion-II project.

The Highland Military Complex had dozens of bars spread across it, within the numerous recreational facilities that catered solely to active duty personnel. Mental recuperation was just as important as physical, and drinking in a soulless cafeteria was bad for morale. Most of the bars were open to anyone, since you needed a Secret clearance just to set foot in the Complex, but they were unofficially claimed by different branches and sub-groups.

This nameless bar was one of the few exceptions. This wasn’t a place for line troopers, desk jockeys, or fresh-faced officers. This bar was for special forces, and them alone, isolated from everyone else. It was a place where the sharpest men and women in the UNSC could lower their guard, and relax among their peers. The trigger pullers, the door kickers, the tip of the spear. You needed to have gone through at least one tour as the bleeding edge of the UNSC’s knife to be allowed in.

It wasn’t solely an ONI operation, no matter how much his superiors wished. The Army’s SPECWARCOM, the Air Force’s pathfinders, the Marines’ black-suited ODST’s, people like that. The best of the best, not just the basic level of Rangers, or PJ’s, or Force Recon. The top ten thousand, and nothing more. The bar had room for about a hundred, maybe a hundred and fifty at any given time. Given that they were always scattered around the Colonies, either on missions or at regional stations, that usually wasn’t an issue. The most he’d ever seen here was fifty-five, after what he’d guessed was a HIGHCOM op.

“You know we do,” the bartender said, with a nod, as he started pouring the drink. “How’s work?”

“Can’t complain,” Mendez said, speaking literally as he picked up the pint glass.

The bartender smiled slightly at the old joke. It didn’t matter that you needed to show your ID to get into the building alone, much less the bar. It didn’t matter that everyone in here had a Top Secret clearance. It didn’t matter that you could trust them to keep their mouths shut. At this level, everything was compartmentalized, and best practice was to never tell anyone anything, for any reason.

Mendez walked over to the side of the bar, away from the larger bench seats, the pool tables, the dart boards, and the like. The walls were ringed with private booths, and it was quietly understood that if you were sitting in one of those, you wanted to be left alone. If the place was more full, he might have gone in one, to be left alone with his drink and his thoughts. As barren as the bar was, he didn’t see the need.

A sigh slipped out as he sat down. The first crack in his self-control since the project had begun all those months ago. It was the tiniest of things, but it still felt like a failure to show any signs of emotion at all.

Mendez resolved to schedule some more physical activities for the coming week of training, assuming that he could talk Doctor Halsey adjusting her normally ironclad schedule. Hikes, bouldering, perhaps even swimming lessons in one of the lakes, now that it was warming up.

Did the children really need the extra physical training? No. They could use the emotional side of the excursions, just as his trainers could. To be away from cramped hallways and in the vastness of nature, alone with their thoughts and Reach. To be reminded of practical matters and their own growing capabilities. To learn new skills in new environments, and apply them.

He was halfway through his first beer by now. It wasn’t the heartiest brew, not the most refined concoction. It was a reminder of his homeworld, a familiar taste that could ground him no matter where Section Three sent him in the galaxy. It was like touching the soil after a cryo-nap.

This was the first ‘leave’ that he’d had since the project had started. He’d been warned, before he’d agreed, that he was in for the long haul, and even now, he’d only managed to schedule a few hours of quiet time. He’d take a ride in the back of one of the supply Pelicans filled with tomorrow’s food, and help Wentworth’s staff with unloading them. A little less sleep, but that wasn’t the worst thing to sacrifice. Maybe if this worked well enough, he’d repeat it after the other staff meetings, at the risk of falling into a routine.

Small things, he reflected. That’s all that was needed. The cadets, as Halsey insisted on calling the candidates, were observant enough to pick up lessons far faster than he’d thought they could. It was a double-edged sword. They were adapting well to the lifestyle, and better to the idea of learning skills in the first place, discovering how to best memorize the knowledge that his trainers could pass on… but that observation might turn against him, somehow spotting the routines of his trainers, of the supply Pelicans, of Doctor Halsey herself.

“Long time no see,” a voice called out softly, as a man approached.

Mendez looked up from the table, and saw an Army man walking up. Unlike Mendez, he wasn’t wearing a working uniform, but the lighter day-dress intended office work, and he was carrying a stein with a frothy German-style beer.

“Terry,” he said, nodding to the man. “Doing well?”

“Mix of good and bad,” Master Sergeant Terry McDowell said with a scowl, as he sat down across from Mendez. “Good news, I hear we’ll be working together soon enough. Bad news is what we’ll be working on.”

Mendez’s eyes narrowed. That was awfully close to breaching the unofficial ban on work conversations.

They’d lost a few trainers along with Captain Wilson’s abrupt departure, after the mess with that training exercise. Lieutenant Commander Stanforth had been sending him names of potential replacements, almost all of which Mendez had approved for the Orion-II project, and almost none of which met Doctor Halsey’s increasingly high standards. She’d been reviewing every single serviceman’s history, pouring over mission records to filter out anyone that she deemed unacceptable for the trainees.

Terry McDowell had been one of those names, he recalled, but he’d been rejected by Halsey. Had she reconsidered? Or was this something else, as impossible as that was? There was no way that ONI would have reassigned Mendez with the Orion-II project ongoing, but it might just be a smokescreen. Put his name on some project that never existed, to make sure there wasn’t a suspicious seven year gap that might draw attention from other black ops professionals.

“News to me,” he replied, keeping his voice bland.

“You’ll want to check your mail,” Terry told him, taking a sip from his stein as he leaned in, speaking much more quietly. “Just got it myself, on the way out of the office. Nothing immediate, don’t worry about that. It’s a paperwork job. Preference surveys. There’s near a hundred people CC’d on it, including you, so you’re gonna hear about it sooner or later. It’s got reps from the Army, Navy, Air Force, even the Marines.”

Mendez lifted a single eyebrow, and didn’t bother saying anything. His expression made his disbelief clear, and Terry chuckled at the unspoken request for him to continue. At least the CC list explained why Terry was willing to discuss it here. If this list truly was that large, then there was no way that it could possibly be Need-To-Know only.

“I think it’s the first steps of a new R&D push,” Terry said, lowering his voice even further. “They’re asking what kind of improvements we’d want on our gear.”

“Which gear?” Mendez asked, frowning.

It seemed odd for an overhaul to come in right now, when ONI was spending so much on the Orion-II project, and when the Insurrection was still steadily grinding away without any meaningful change in their effectiveness against USNC equipment.

“Armor, mostly,” Terry said. “There’s all sorts of questions in it. Armor comfort during extended field operations, mobility issues, equipment loads, plate effectiveness, better environmental protections, all sorts of stuff. It’s not just ONI fluffing up the damn ODST’s, either – all terrains, all environments, every potential mission profile.”

“We just went to the new system a few years ago,” Mendez pointed out.

He didn’t say that they’d gotten a new armor system thanks to the Orion-I project, since almost nobody knew about that. He himself hadn’t even known it until today, when Doctor Halsey had mentioned it.

Mendez paused, as a thought occurred to him.

Doctor Halsey had said that she hoped the Orion-II project would benefit the rest of the UNSC. At the time, he’d taken her at her literal words: that in the coming years, ONI would be able to repurpose some of the scientific progress made by her science teams to benefit other branches. That Halsey herself would only focus on this project, and any such improvements to the other branches would be incidental. Even with that, there hadn’t been any major progress this early in the program, and it seemed impossible for that to be happening right now.

Had he been wrong? Had she instead been planning to reach out to other branches directly, even before Admiral Keeler had approved her requisition request? If so, it didn’t seem like a smart move to Mendez… but then, Halsey had also been the one to convince Section Three that she could give them supersoldiers. Perhaps what seemed like a pie in the sky dream was merely a slightly more difficult goal, in her books.

But if it had been Halsey behind this new email, then she had made a mistake. Convincing ONI just required convincing ONI’s leadership. The source of any incidental improvements could be easily camouflaged by classifications. Both of those things were much smaller scale.

Sending out mail to a hundred black ops personnel across all four branches was like doing a cannonball into the murky pool of military politics. Halsey was announcing her presence as a potential competitor to all of their own R&D projects, dropping a gauntlet on the table for them to challenge.

And she probably had no idea what she had done.

Terry looked at him, waiting patiently for Mendez to finish his musings.

“What’s up?” the Army man asked, sipping from his drink.

“Every branch is involved,” Mendez repeated the man’s earlier words. “Sounds… ambitious.”

The man laughed.

“Frank, you have no idea,” Terry told him, with a wry grin.

“Who’s the organizer?” Mendez asked, ignoring the small sinking feeling in his gut that told him that Terry was wrong, and that Franklin Mendez knew exactly how ambitious the woman was.

It shouldn’t be Halsey. It wasn’t impossible, but these actions, so quickly, were uncharacteristic of the Doctor. In every meeting he’d had with her, in every lesson she’d taught to the trainees herself, she had demonstrated exceptional patience and caution.

He’d only seen her act this fast a single time, and that was when Wilson had drawn her ire. But that had been a response to a clear threat to her, though Mendez still didn’t know what the exact trigger for her rage had been – Wilson usurping her authority at all, the change in the training plan’s philosophy and methodology, or the potential danger to the children.

There was no reason for this to have been Halsey. There had been no incidents in the last few weeks, no obvious problems or mishaps. If she kept to pattern, then it should have taken something major to provoke such a quick reaction from her.

Mendez had only been in the bar for half an hour, at most, meaning that if it had been the Doctor, she must have sent out this email within minutes of their staff meeting with the science teams and Lieutenant Commander Stanforth.

Yet at the same time, something in his gut told him that it had to be the Doctor. Perhaps he’d misunderstood what she meant earlier.

“Some ONI scientist,” Terry McDowell told him. “A Doctor Catherine Halsey.”

Mendez closed his eyes for a moment, and took a sip of his drink to distract Terry from his reaction.

“A survey,” he said, as if he was thinking about it. “That doesn’t sound like too much. Answer a few questions, never hear from her again.”

“Except she’s offering funding,” Terry countered. “Nothing specific, no numbers yet, but she’s saying if the branches can reach an agreement, she’ll cover half the project’s total cost. You and me both know that everyone’s gonna be excited about that. New gear without having to spend the budget on it?”

“She’s throwing out red meat,” Mendez murmured, his heart rate picking up slightly.

“Exactly,” Terry nodded, not realizing what Mendez had truly meant.

If Doctor Halsey was offering to fund this broad and expensive of a research project, she was about to draw a lot of attention in a hurry. Forget the survey, that was nothing. Halsey would only have done this if she had an actual goal in mind. Maybe this new armor system was going to be an incremental step towards the exoskeleton systems – better materials for future armor plating, or better HUD systems or something like that.

Mendez hoped that she’d at least discussed this with Stanforth in private, but he suspected that the ONI officer was going to be just as surprised as he was.

“I’d better go check this email out,” he muttered, before draining the last of his beer.

He was disappointed as he stood up, nodding in thanks to Terry. He left the empty pint glass on the table and moved towards the door. He’d been hoping to get at least two drinks, but his desires had run into the brick wall of Doctor Halsey’s latest move, and he was a professional.

It was time that he got back to the compound. He needed to figure out what his role would be in this new, unexpected twist to the program.

It was 2205 by the time he’d gotten back to the Orion-II compound and finished helping Wentworth with the unloading of the night’s Pelican.

Wentworth didn’t ask any questions about his late stay at the Highland Military complex. All it took was handing over a small box with a bottle of Japanese whiskey, and the quartermaster looked the other way.

Normally, this kind of thing would have been a problem, but Wentworth had served ten years in NAVSPECWEP with the ODSTs. He’d been one of the best, right up until an Innie bomb-maker had taken out half his squad with a booby-trap. The man understood both morale and morals, and he allowed minor breaks in protocol in order to ensure his men were well taken care of.

It was a fact that Mendez appreciated right now, because he didn’t particularly want to talk to Wentworth about why he’d come back earlier than anticipated.

With Captain Wilson out of the picture, Mendez was technically the new military head of the program, and both Wentworth and the mess sergeant, Swanson, reported to both him and Halsey jointly. In practice, the shuffle had merely cemented Doctor Halsey as the undisputed dictator of the program, and she used him as a liaison to the others.

He turned on the reading lamp in his office, but decided to keep the main lights off. If he was lucky, he could read this email and go to bed swiftly, so that he wouldn’t be too tired during the morning PT. Missing it was, of course, completely out of the question. He had an example to set for the trainees, and the only way to do that was with consistent demonstrations of what a soldier was supposed to do.

The computer-desk booted up, and a holographic screen sprang to life before his eyes. He navigated swiftly to his mailbox, and found the email that Terry had told him about. Mendez took small sips from a water bottle as he read. The dim light of the hologram was brighter than the reading lamp, but his eyes quickly adapted.

All,  

You are hereby granted temporary, eyes-only access to Project GUNGNIR. Unauthorized distribution of any of the following classified information is punishable under UNSC Military Security Code 447-R27.

The goal of this project is to develop new battlefield technologies for the aid of USNC special forces, both for the replacement of standard issue gear and the creation of supplemental gear for special use cases. Specifically, GUNGNIR will focus on armor, weapons, C3 systems, and experimental vehicles.

Our starting focus will be the development and production of two new sets of protective gear for the UNSC’s special operations units. With the introduction of the revised ODST armor (BDU rev. 2506) nearly a decade ago, the UNSC has seen a steady decrease in casualties during special operations. In order to continue this current trend, ONI is gathering data on the non-measurable performance factors for further improvement.

However, as the BDU rev. 2506 functions both as a stealth-capable infiltrator suit and as direct action protective equipment, it was a compromise of functionality. Armor was sacrificed for stealth, and vice versa. This has resulted in a noticeable drop in stealth performance compared to its now-defunct predecessor (SCS rev. 2458), and armor that is barely superior to standard UNSC Army and Marine armor systems (BDU rev. 2490) despite significant cost difference.

As such, ONI will create two replacement armor systems that will excel in their specialized mission roles.

The new stealth-capable infiltrator suit is intended to be as protective as the SCS rev. 2458 that BDU rev. 2506 replaced, while enhancing communication, mobility, and comfort, as most use of these systems is on longer missions. C3 improvements will include point-to-point laser communications for secure coordination without the weaknesses of broad-spectrum radio.

The new enhanced armor system is intended to increase protection compared to the BDU rev. 2506, notably on the previously unprotected upper legs and arms, via use of advanced ceramic-titanium composite plates, as well as increased ballistic fiber. These plates are to be mounted on the exterior of the fibrous layers for increased coverage and ease of replacement as needed, compared to existing plates located on the interior of the BDU rev. 2506’s torso.

Both systems shall utilize a common helmet system, with improved protection, HUD, and C3 systems, with the starting point of the BDU rev. 2506’s helmet. Potential improvements being weighed at this stage include pattern recognition software, increased utilization of UNSC standard neural lace for IFF systems, and various visual enhancement systems (low-light, infrared, thermal).

The data we require from you will require the completion of an information gathering survey, to gather feedback on areas that should be improved with the next generation armor systems. Notable areas where ONI wishes to gather feedback include the above proposed additions, as well as any other areas which you consider to be notable.

In summary, additional ablative armor plating, increases in combat mobility, better integration of combat webbing, and extension of combat lifespan via decreased discomfort during extended operations. Each category will require answers for both the proposed armor systems.

Due to the suddenness of this communication, inquires on clarification and coordination may be directed to myself, to CPO Franklin Mendez, and to LC Michael Stanforth (adj. VADM Keeler, Section Three Head), with mailing addresses attached.

ONI is prepared to cover fifty percent of the final development budget for the new armor systems. As well, ONI is offering a multi-branch testing and evaluation process for further refinements to the prototypes, including field deployments. The remainder of the budgeting costs will be split equally between all branches that sign on to the project.

In return, ONI will require the two following conditions:

1) ONI shall maintain final authority over the refinements in the evaluation and testing phase.

2) Each special operations unit (not each branch) that participates shall be required to participate in one specialized training session with ONI operatives at a future, unspecified date.

Estimated completion time for the prototypes will be no earlier than 2523, and no later than 2525.

Doctor Catherine Halsey,
Section Three

With a frown, Mendez leaned back in his office chair, folding his hands over his stomach as he regarded the glowing hologram of the email.

He hadn’t been sure what to think of Terry’s words back at the bar, and he’d defaulted to withholding judgement until he could evaluate the email himself. It was a rational way to go through life. Assumptions were an insidious enemy, with the human mind encouraged to make them.

There was no point in trying to determine the life story of Doctor Halsey, or her core philosophical belief, or anything like that. He didn’t have truth. He had data points, nothing more. He knew that Doctor Halsey was a scientific genius. He knew that she had written the original proposal, including both the training and tactical doctrine.

And now, he knew that Doctor Halsey understood how the sausage was made. He knew that Doctor Halsey could handle the politicking, the office politics.

Just as he’d said to Terry, she was tossing out fresh meat with the promise of funding. But this email wasn’t the rookie mistake that he’d feared. There was nothing in here about the Orion-II project. No breaches of security. And given that she’d added Lieutenant Commander Stanforth on it, she’d either told him or Keeler in advance, or she was confident she could get them to sign off on it.

Moreover, the conditions were a good leash, keeping this from being so generous that it was suspicious. The Army and Air Force would be reluctant to trust ONI giving them a brand new armor system and paying half the cost – but tell them that ONI would be insisting on total control of the final product, and it was just enough to make them lower their guard.

But the real trick was the second condition. He’d wondered if Doctor Halsey was doing this as a step towards the exoskeleton armor that Doctor Sullivan’s team was working on, and perhaps that was part of her objective. Regardless, it was less important. The real gain for the Orion-II project, as Mendez saw it, was to guarantee the cooperation of other special operations units in cross-training.

Mendez and his trainers were some of the best, but they were generalist soldiers. They were deployed for missions that involved regular infantry work that had additional complications, such as covert infiltration, or heavy resistance, or covering a vast areas of rough terrain, or going in alone with no support. For instance, his men weren’t pilots, or pararescue, or combat controllers. Those roles were controlled by the Air Force, and the project would need the Air Force’s help in order to teach those skills.

Some specialties were simply too niche, too demanding, for them to be cross-trained in those areas… yet the Orion-II project required that the trainees gain many of those specializations. That was part of the point of conscripting the children, in order to give them the years needed to learn those skills.

Stripped from all the bureaucratic speak, Doctor Halsey was offering to do R&D for the myriad collection of special operations groups. In return, those groups would train up the Orion-II trainees, handling that issue for her.

Yet even that was underselling her gambit.

SPECWARCOM was a tight-knit group, and it didn’t welcome outsiders so easily. Mendez himself had no idea how long Halsey had been with the Office of Naval Intelligence. He’d never heard of her before three months ago, and that automatically made him suspicious of her. He’d buried that natural reaction under the professional competence that was his preference, but he knew that some of it would leak through inevitably.

The same suspicion of outsiders was even more commonplace with other units. The ODSTs were infamously prickly and arrogant, combining the aggression of Marines with the ego of the Rangers. The Air Force’s combat controllers preferred to keep to themselves, after suffering years of budget cuts and insistence that their role was obsolete. The Army’s SPECWAR groups had an institutional dislike for the Navy and Marines both, seeing them as usurpers of their rightful role.

Halsey, and by extension the Orion-II project, were going to face heavy scrutiny when the trainees finally became combat ready and began their deployments. It was inevitable that they’d run into other special forces based on their limited numbers alone. The surprise of finding out there was a new, fully formed task group of strangers wouldn’t be a happy one.

Simply put, the trainees weren’t part of the special forces community. They had no common ties, no shared experiences. Even lacking the boot camp experience that was universal in all other UNSC soldiers. They couldn’t talk about where they received basic training. It didn’t matter if they had all the same skills.

The rest of the UNSC special forces could react negatively and refuse to cooperate with the Orion-II’s, forcing them to operate without the benefit of truly combined forces. This was a potential problem. It was still years away from becoming apparent, but when it did rear its ugly head, it would be too late, and too difficult to easily remedy.

But if Halsey called in those favors, then the trainees would be a part of the community. They would have relationships, if small ones, with people like Terry McDowell, Nolan Byrne, Jack Kawalski, or James Ackerman. It might not be enough to overcome the worries that those men would have, but it would be better than springing the sudden shock on them without any warning.

Did Halsey know about the land mine that she had potentially defused? Or was she starting Project GUNGNIR solely for the training advantages it offered, along with the technological aid and deniable cover?

Mendez mulled the question as he shut down the computer, and then discarded it.

It didn’t matter if Halsey knew or not. They would gain the advantages of those decisions no matter what the original intention was. The final execution would be important, but that was a task for Mendez to handle when it came up.

He stepped out of his office and sealed the door behind himself with a press of his hand on the biometrics.

Tomorrow would be another day of training, albeit a lighter one, as all Sundays were, so that the trainees could recuperate. He should get some rest himself. They were in for the long haul, and Mendez intended to be there until the day the children graduated.

Chapter Text

Lieutenant Commander Hieronymus Michael Stanforth walked through the halls of the Hive and paid no attention to the stares he received.

He didn’t need to look at the bystanders, didn’t need to guess why they were staring at him. He already knew.

The UNSC was officially a meritocracy, which meant it hid its nepotism very well. Officially, he’d gotten his posting on Vice Admiral Keeler’s staff thanks to his excellent work aboard UNSC Atlas, where he’d fine-tuned the gunnery department until they’d gotten the Navy “E” three years in a row. Unofficially, everyone in the Hive knew that he’d gotten it because his father was Admiral Harold Stanforth, the man who’d retaken Eridanus II during the second rebellion, and one of the UNSC’s greatest fleet commanders.

Eyes followed Stanforth as he strode to the elevator bank, and made for the private cars, the ones that only the top floor could use as a security precaution. The Marine guard on duty checked his identification, nodded, and punched the button for him. He stepped in and waited for the doors to shut, well aware that no other Lieutenant Commander had the same privilege as him. Everyone else with this level of access was a full Commander or a Captain.

It was just another way that people desired power, and had no idea what it really meant. Not just the cost, but also the hollowness of it. The Lieutenants and Lieutenant Commanders that were glaring at Michael saw an office on the top floor of ONI’s private building in the Highland Military Complex as the literal highest spot on the totem pole… not realizing that not a single Admiral had an office up there, and instead chose a fortified office down in the basement of the Hive, beneath dozens of meters of Titanium-A and reinforced concrete.

The elevator rose swiftly up to the seventy-seventh floor. Another Marine greeted him as he exited, watchful eyes checking his identity one more time, this time getting both a thumb print and a retinal scan, before admitting him through the checkpoint. Daylight streamed through the windows in the hallway, full of enticing views of the sprawling military base and the scenic mountains that had started to grow dull to his eyes.

Michael sealed the thick door of his office behind him, activated the security blackout, and sat down in his chair. Only then did he let out a long sigh.

What a mess, he thought to himself.

Doctor Halsey hadn’t waited even an hour after their meeting yesterday before she’d overturned the apple cart yet again. She had sent out an email to ninety-five separate UNSC soldiers, announcing a new project without so much as a single word of warning to himself or the Vice Admiral.

To everyone on that email, they probably thought this was a long-planned research project, with clear lines of funding and a mission statement. Yet none of that was true.

And unlike before, Michael now had the sole responsibility of handling the situation.

A short while ago, Halsey demanded a meeting with Keeler, and gotten Captain Wilson removed from the Orion-II Project. Her reasons had made sense, and Keeler had agreed with the issues she’d laid out: compromised chain of command, failure to understand the program’s training methodology, potential damage to the reliability and efficacy of the trainees, the whole thing.

But demanding a meeting with the head of Section Three with so little notice hadn’t come without cost to Halsey. It had resulted in several important meetings being shuffled around for the Vice Admiral. The Doctor had burned a bridge, and the price was that she would no longer have direct access to Keeler’s time.

Instead, now everything had to go through Lieutenant Commander Michael Stanforth – something that Keeler had off-handedly referred to as his ‘first real assignment’.

That meant that when replies came back, asking for more details on this Project GUNGNIR, they came to Stanforth, who had exactly zero idea why his inbox was exploding so late at night.

Would he confirm that ONI was going to cover fifty percent of the total cost of the project? Should survey answers be compiled and sent as a unit, or as individual examples, and should they be sent to Halsey direct, or to the three supervisors of Halsey, Mendez, and him? What were the expected performance metrics of the proposed armor systems?

To every single email, he had given the same response: silence.

Michael doubted that any of the respondents had expected answers the very next day, and that gave him a small amount of time to figure out what he was going to do in response to this mess.

He’d wanted to have more direct tasks to do, rather than the continuing ambiguity of following Keeler around and offering mild advice, and like wishing on a monkey’s paw, he’d been rewarded with this ticking time bomb on his desk.

Fifty percent of an unknown total cost, for developing two new armor systems? He couldn’t dare sign off on that on his own authority. But if he went to Keeler within less than a week of being assigned as oversight for the Orion-II Project, it wouldn’t look good.

Impossible dilemmas were the stock and trade of commanding officers, however, so Michael Stanforth had to pony up a solution. The best one he’d come up with thus far was to write a full report on the project and the email, with the pros and cons, and leaving the final decision up to Keeler.

Just to start, one of the advantages of approving Project GUNGNIR was that they wouldn’t have to explain that no, there was no such project, and Doctor Halsey had jumped the gun. Finagling a polite way to express that would have been an even bigger nightmare, and it would have made ONI look bad, as well as ruining the first impression that the other branches had of Doctor Halsey.

Overall, Michael thought that it was likely that Keeler would approve the project. New armor was something that would be appreciated by the various special forces operators, both inside ONI and out. With the way the Insurrection was heating up, it would definitely be an improvement to the men that were facing a disproportionate amount of the danger. 

He fired up his computer, and started jotting down his primary notes on the email. What it said, how it said it, and who it said it to.

That final category was particularly important. Michael wasn’t an old ONI hand, but even he could spot the curious pattern in the email’s recipient list. There wasn’t a single man above the rank of an Army Major or a Navy Lieutenant Commander on the list. No one higher than an O-5. Most of the email’s recipients weren’t even officers. Of the ninety-five, a majority were senior enlisted men. Not E-8’s and E-9’s, the highest enlist ranks, either.

Michael only recognized a single name on the list – an old family friend of his fathers that he’d met as a child, and whom he’d later learned was one of the more senior NCO’s in the Army’s special forces detachment, SPECWARCOM.

He frowned, and decided to do a cross-check. He reached his desk and depressed the physical button that would deactivate his security blackout. He’d need access to the mainframe for this, and so long as the Faraday cage was engaged, that was impossible. After that, a simple copy-paste pulled the list of recipients from the email, and plugged them into the confidential database housed deep within the center of the Hive. Two more taps, and he’d opened up a service request.

“Good morning, Lieutenant Commander Stanforth,” a pleasant female voice said, as he logged on.

The hologram emitter in his desk came to life, projecting the head and upper half of a woman’s body, two arms holding her chin in a thoughtful pose. Her torso was wrapped up in a dress that quickly abandoned human limitations, the ‘weave’ of the dress tightening down and blending into the whirling narrow point of a tornado instead of legs and feet. He couldn’t make out where the fabric of the dress because streams of wind, and he didn’t bother trying. That was the kind of detail-obsessed particular that Smart A.I. loved to hide in their appearances, a small expression of idiosyncrasy that allowed them to stand out from each other or just annoy a given officer.

“Good morning, Aether,” Michael said, respectfully. It was more than just mimicking Vice Admiral Keeler’s professionalism – if there was any A.I. that an ONI officer didn’t want to annoy, it was Aether. She ran the Hive’s central database, and was the primary facilitator of almost every transfer, data packet, and service request that didn’t require eyes-only access.

“I see you’re requesting personnel files,” Aether said, smiling mischievously. “You don’t have access to the full unredacted files for these individuals. For at the moment, at least. I can grant it to you if you’d like, with Admiral Keeler’s credentials.”

“That’s not necessary, thank you,” Michael said, interrupting the Smart A.I. before it could start processing the request anyway. “I only need some basic information on the individuals I’ve requested. I’d like to get a summary of their average time in service, and how long they’ve been in intelligence or special forces. I don’t need every individual, just a broad grouping, and any notable outliers.”

“Certainly, that’s well within your security clearance,” Aether replied. “One moment.”

The Smart A.I. probably didn’t need a moment to process the request, Michael knew. The real reason was security – a double check of his clearance, probably a quick consult with the Marine checkpoints from this morning to make sure it really was him, and only then would she open the classified data-vaults for even this brief of a query.

The paranoia of ONI was enough to make a man tear his hair out, but Michael reminded himself of what Keeler had told him two months ago, when he’d asked about Catherine Halsey. Defectors were a real risk, and ONI was minimizing that risk as much as they could.

“Here you are, Commander,” Aether told him, as a stack of manilla folders appeared on her hologram, before they ‘transferred’ to his desk. “Would you like an audio summary, or will that be all?”

“That’ll be all, thank you,” Michael replied, nodding politely as the A.I. returned the gesture, and then disappeared.

He waited a moment to ensure the A.I. had finished interfacing with his desk, so that he wouldn’t ‘slam the door’ on her, and then re-engaged the security blackout with a press of the firm button. The document was waiting in his inbox, and Michael opened it without any further hesitations.

Ninety-five names on a spreadsheet greeted him. Just as he’d asked, in the second column of data was their total years of service, and in the third column was their total time serving in the blacker end of the military spectrum. Aether had gone a little further, however, and included their departmental posting as a fourth column, and their specific job title as a fifth column. Neither of those were classified information, but it was an unusual addition – until Michael spotted the pattern.

Immediately, it was clear that these were no random selections. Each and every one of these men and women had been with the UNSC for over two decades, and with the special forces for at least a year. These were not the high-flyers, climbing the promotion ladder as fast as Michael himself was, not even close. They were the grinders who spent years in their current roles.

Frankly, their seniority alone wouldn’t have answered his idle curiosity. Aether’s unrequested additions, however, made the pattern much clearer.

Doctor Halsey hadn’t emailed the heads of programs – she’d emailed their XO’s, their adjutants, their professional staff. She’d emailed the highest-ranking officers who still deployed on operations with their men. She’d emailed the unpromotable men who were older than most of their superiors, and whose quiet words of ‘advice’ could shape the decisions that they were supposedly barred from.

In short, Halsey had somehow found and isolated the exact right people to talk to about Project GUNGNIR; the real movers and shakers within the UNSC’s operators, and not their handlers.

Michael leaned back in his office chair and stared at the list.

Theoretically, he could see how Halsey had done this. She had a high security clearance, and these positions and job titles were much less classified than details of any particular mission or project, well within her access. They were bland, generic things, like ‘Tactical Advisor to Team Four’, or ‘Aide to CO of Group Three’.

Innocuous, unless you knew that Team Four was the Navy’s premier squad for asset removal, or that SPECWAR/Group Three was the Army’s preferred tool for inter-branch covert operations.

How had Halsey done it? How could she have known these things? Even if she was using old information from a childhood as an Innie, there had been several reorganizations since Robert Watts and Howard Graves had retired. Some of the people she’d emailed had job titles so plain and boring that she couldn’t have picked them out of an org-chart.

There was no way that she’d just asked Chief Petty Officer Mendez for a list of his friends. The man wouldn’t have provided a list out of professional policy, and even if he had, that wouldn’t have explained the Air Force pathfinders, pararescuemen, and combat controllers. The Air Force’s special operators were an isolationist bunch, understandably defensive about their steadily eroding funding.

It was another place where Halsey demonstrated knowledge that she shouldn’t have possessed, done actions that should have never occurred to her.

And that was before getting into the clever politicking of her offer. This Project GUNGNIR was a cold-hearted bribe to gain support from the other special forces units in the Unified Special Warfare Command. It was blunt and open, doing everything except for outright demanding their friendship in return for a pile of cash.

But why? Why would she want that kind of support? This program was so coated in black ink that none of those other branches knew about it. There was no reason to talk to them at all. Their opinion of Halsey, good or bad, had no effect on the program.

The only potential explanation was that she had a longer plan in mind.

There had been too many unexpected moves from Halsey for these to be accidents. At this point, the only event in the last three months that he suspected wasn’t a part of a rigorously organized timetable was her reaction to Captain Wilson, and her frantic demand for his dismissal. Everything else had been too neat, too precise.

Perhaps it was simple career-building, trying to ensure that even after the Orion-II Project was over, she was well-regarded and had support in a wide variety of areas… but why even bother? She already had the ear of Vice Admiral Keeler, the head of Section Three, the most powerful of all the Sections in ONI, which itself was the most powerful of all the intelligence services.

No, career-building didn’t feel right to him. The motivation didn’t fit. At this point, he didn’t know enough about Halsey to properly understand her motivations. Yet at the very least, he could still determine what possibilities were options by disproving them. Career-building was crossed out on his list. What else could he eliminate from contention, simply by seeing how it contradicted with her actions?

The most suspicious part of him, the one that had been wary ever since Keeler informed him of ONI’s theory on Halsey’s childhood, wondered if this was something malicious. Sowing seeds of discord that would create yet another crisis for the UNSC, crippling their intelligence apparatus in a display of carefully hidden Insurrectionist sympathy.

Michael scowled, and dismissed the thought yet again. It wasn’t impossible, but for Halsey to hide a secret of that severity from the most advanced Smart A.I.’s and the most paranoid ONI analysts was very difficult to believe.

Or perhaps it was an economic play? That seemed more fitting to Michael – closer to the answer, almost. Halsey could have a desire to maximize the effect of the Orion-II’s, eke the most utility out of them, purely to ensure that more money wouldn’t be spent later.

She hadn’t struck him as a true believer in the UNSC’s overall mission, but that wasn’t strictly needed for her to plan out a long, coordinated campaign to ensure the success of the program, even after her actual involvement had ended. So if that was her angle, then it made sense to involve the other branches in Project GUNGNIR. The better relations were between the Orion-II’s and the other special forces, the more effective they would be in joint operations, which were often the most critical and sensitive of missions.

Cost-effectiveness was one of the most important, but often overlooked aspect of military development, and he could see Halsey fixating on it in her strange way. Obviously, super-soldiers were incredibly expensive, and with the augmentations, the powered armor, and especially the integration of Artificial Intelligences, the Orion-II Program was on track to be one of the most expensive projects that the UNSC had ever created.

Yet if it succeeded in its purpose, managed to snuff out the burning brushfires of the Insurrection before they could grow into an all-consuming conflagration of a civil war, then the cost-savings of their existence could be literally immeasurable. The fundamental problem with military cost-effectiveness is that civilians tended to not realize the value of deterrence, and so they saw a military force that had been created, served, and retired without ever firing a shot as a waste of money.

The UNSC’s current situation was less of deterrence, and more of crisis management, but the logic still applied. ONI was trying to end the situation as quickly and cleanly as possible to prevent the catastrophe that a civil war would cause. If this guess was right, and Halsey’s long term plan was to ensure the effectiveness of the Orion-II’s in order to be as cost-effective as possible, then who was to say that her goal was strictly on their cost-effectiveness, and not that of the entire UNSC? Like reinforcing a collapsing wall at the most critical, load-bearing position?

The bigger problem, he thought to himself as he kicked his feet up on the corner of his desk and mulled over things, was that he couldn’t possible understand what Halsey’s plan was, or why she’d created this problem, without understanding Doctor Catherine Halsey herself.

Michael Stanforth had very conflicted feelings on the Doctor, and the more he learned, the more conflicted he was. At first, he’d thought she was an honest scientist, and then a devious planner, and then a straightforward, pay-for-play politician. Keeler had told him of the disturbing competence that had been revealed by the tactical doctrine of her paper, which made ONI suspect she was a trained Insurrectionist who had defected.

Yet this new move by her didn’t fit into any of those categories, and once again, he found that he had no idea who Doctor Halsey actually was – what she believed, why she believed it, and how those two things had brought her here, to ONI.

An honest scientist wouldn’t have considered the political maneuver of the email, the attached conditions, and the carefully curated list of recipients.

A devious planner wouldn’t have sent the email without covertly arranging everything how she wanted in advance, but Halsey was a complete unknown to ONI’s ranks, and had no pull to arrange anything.

A straightforward politician would have talked to Michael and Keeler before ever being this bold, because it risked undercutting them and turning them against her.

And there was no reason at all for a trained Innie commando, even a defector, to risk her cozy position at ONI with such a disruptive, attention-grabbing move.

Michael Stanforth knew that he could try to figure out some new angle, to try to evaluate what Halsey truly was… but he wasn’t sure it would be accurate. Not after he’d been wrong so many times, not after so many drastic differences between his mental model of the woman and what she’d actually done.

Part of him wanted to simply ignore the mystery and proceed with his job, but he’d left that part behind the moment he’d been assigned his first command in the JROTC, and been responsible for someone else. Michael had decided nearly half his life ago that he was going to be the best damn commanding officer he could be, and that meant caring about the men and women serving under him.

The lives of your underlings mattered. You didn’t have to be their friend, or care about their hobbies, but you had to care about them as people – their confidence and stress, their goals and competence, and plenty more besides. If he didn’t have a grasp on the core of Doctor Catherine Halsey, then he wouldn’t know when she was close to snapping, and when she was growing bored.

Without that knowledge, he couldn’t manage her effectively, and that would cascade down to everything that Halsey was herself responsible for. The science teams, the instructor cadre, the compound itself, everything. If he believed that Halsey was doing fine, when she was running on a knife’s edge and taking her frustrations out on her subordinates, then he would miss the signs of stress in the scientists, the instructors, the maintenance staff, until the entire program exploded in a thermonuclear fireball of poor human resources management.

That’s the real worst part of this situation, Michael thought himself with dark humor. It’s made me into damn HR manager.

But that was just part of being a good officer. You had to juggle a dozen roles at the same time, and do it well, or any one element could topple the entire structure.

In some ways, that was a relief to him. He’d played this role before, and doing it again – even for the craziest research project he’d ever heard of – was a step back into the comforting, familiar territory of being a proper Navy officer, rather than a paper-pushing ONI puke. That was why he’d wanted more direct tasks, rather than just following Keeler around. It was hard to feel like you were actually contributing to the cause when you never got your hands dirty.

Perhaps this was what would keep him sane enough to remain in ONI. Not the promise of promotions or glories or anything like that, but the knowledge that he was keeping a vital project from destabilizing like a gallon-sized jug of nitroglycerin. The professional satisfaction he’d gain from doing that task.

Michael didn’t consider himself one of the UNSC’s best optimizers or fine-tuners, but he’d admit to some pride in ensuring that everything in his department onboard the Atlas had been as neat, precise, and high performing. For all the benefits and drawbacks that he’d gotten from his name, those “E” efficiency awards hadn’t come from nepotism. He suspected that they’d been even harder to get because of it, in fact.

Of course, in order to do manage the Orion-II program properly, he’d need to start at the top, and work his way down. The trainees were affected by the instructors, who were affected by Mendez, who was affected by the good Doctor. He’d need to get a firm handle on Halsey. It didn’t seem possible at the moment, but he’d never know unless he tried. He didn’t need to know her entire life story, he just needed to know enough to have a grasp on her moods and motivations. A working man’s knowledge, not a peer-reviewed psychology paper.

Every good officer did this to some degree. You might not be able to keep a solid grasp on every single person on your ship, but you could do it for all your section heads, your major officers, and most importantly, your troublemakers. Halsey’s behavior being what it was, Michael couldn’t help but think that she fit all three of those categories.

With all his previous assumptions having been proven wrong, there was only one solution possible. He needed to discard all of his previous beliefs, and start anew. The old projections were a bias that he couldn’t afford, not if he wanted to avoid any more unpleasant surprises when it came to Doctor Halsey. He needed to look only at her actions, and not speculate on her motives.

What did he know about Halsey? Iron-clad, confirmed facts only.

Truthfully, there wasn’t much. She was a brilliant scientist who had gained her first PhD as a teenager, and now held three – in Slipspace Physics, Artificial Intelligence, and Economics. She’d published nearly a hundred papers, almost all of which focused on the economic effects of improvements to Slipspace engines or A.I., and one of which had focused on a hypothetical super soldier program.

Her homeworld of Endymion was a quiet Outer Colony world without much development, but still served as a crossroads for many other colonies. Perfect for the supposed Insurrection angle that ONI suspected, but they had no confirmation of it. Worse, Endymion had never had a single Innie attack on it.

Even after she’d left it for Circumstance, and its famous university, there simply wasn’t much. Catherine Halsey was a highly private individual, to the extent that she didn’t offer comments or post messages on the planetary nets for ONI to crawl through.

Michael knew damn well that he wouldn’t find an answer quickly. He’d only known Halsey for three months, and if ONI’s skullduggery didn’t drive him into requesting a shipside posting, he’d have another seven years to know her at the barest minimum, up to ten years if the augmentations weren’t ready by that first mark.

All he could do was jot down the facts on a clean sheet of paper, and evaluate them as he received them.

Michael reached for his coffee cup, stood up, and moved over the coffeemaker in the corner as he went down the dull list of facts.

So, what are the facts? Michael thought to himself, as the machine whirred to life and poured out a steaming trickle of pitch-black liquid into the mug.

Doctor Catherine Halsey had emailed ninety-five members of the UNSC’s special forces with notices of their participation in Project GUNGNIR. The project hadn’t existed at all prior to that email; even if she’d arranged it with Keeler, the Vice Admiral would have informed Michael when he handed off oversight to the young Lieutenant Commander. The project’s goal was to create two new armor systems for UNSC special forces.

No, that wasn’t strictly speaking accurate, he realized. The two new armor systems were only the starting focus of the project. An initial offering, and nothing more. The email had said the purpose of the project was ‘to develop new battlefield technologies for the aid of USNC special forces, both for the replacement of standard issue gear and the creation of supplemental gear for special use cases.’

What was Project Orion-II, but the mother of all special use cases? The new ODST armor was called ‘special issue’ simply  because it wasn’t standard issue, despite there being hundreds of thousands of suits issued. Compared to that, Orion-II could only hit a maximum of seventy-five suits – nearly unique.

This wasn’t a new revelation to Michael. He’d known from the first reading that the purpose of the project was to help the Orion trainees. Still, something about this seemed significant to him. He frowned as he thought about it.

“To help the Orion trainees,” he said out loud, sounding the words out, rolling them around in his mouth to see if it prompted any new perspective.

It shouldn’t have been that much of a difference from the four existing research teams, but it was. The Exoskeleton, Augmentation, Surgery, and A.I. teams were all about the trainees right now, during the training and augmentation process. Even though no Orion-II would wear their powered armor until after undergoing augmentation, the augmentations were a required part of it.

That wasn’t necessarily true for Project GUNGNIR. The way she had written it, Halsey had created a much wider scope. This year, it was an armor system, perhaps something that the Orion-II’s would wear if the powered armor wasn’t ready in time. Next year, it might be a better rifle. The year after, perhaps some experimental heavy weapon that only they could carry.

Even the political aspect. He’d wondered why she would want good relations with special operations groups that would otherwise have never known about the Orion-II project… but after the Orions started going on missions, the cat would inevitably come out of the bag, and that good relationship would be important then.

Halsey was trying to help the Orion trainees even after they left her care, and her involvement came to an end.

Now why would she do that? Michael wondered to himself.

A sudden flash of heat and pain cut through his thoughts. His coffee cup was full, and spilling over onto his hand. Michael swore, jerking the cup away from the machine and sloshing more of the scalding liquid onto his hand. He grit his teeth and set the cup down on the side-table, and turned the machine off.

Michael cleaned it up with a nearby napkin, and scowled at the mess he’d made with his lack of caution. A smart coffee maker would have automatically shut itself off at a specific interval, but ONI was so paranoid that they insisted on the dumbest coffee makers known to man, to prevent any eavesdropping. Their ‘one simple button’ rule was a pain in his ass.

It didn’t take long, but he went through the effort to pull out some cleaning detergents and wiping the whole counter down – there was no cleaning staff at this level of security clearances, and it was up to him to keep his office ship-shape. Better to do that now, before any coffee-stains could set in.

He’d been onto something, and the pain had distracted him. Michael tried to grab that train of thought as it raced out of the station, and he caught the tail edge of it easily enough. He even managed to distill it down a little tighter, into a form that he felt was a little more accurate than before.

Doctor Halsey was trying to help the Orion-II trainees even after they started combat deployments.

Now, why would she be doing that? Professional pride in the program, and patriotic desire to help the UNSC with the crisis it faced? Simple attachment to the lives of the Orion-II trainees, and desire to see them not wasted? Selfish fears that their deaths would harm her own reputation?

Michael didn’t know. Worse, he couldn’t know. Some of those options seemed much more plausible than others, but with his assumptions proven wrong time and time again, he knew better than to make the same mistake for a fourth or fifth time.

It was just another fact that he could write down with the others, and use to figure out who Doctor Catherine Halsey really was.

Chapter Text

Lieutenant Jacob Keyes looked out through the window in the back hatch, peering over the top of the supply crates that occupied the rest of the Pelican’s cargo bay.

He couldn’t see much, just more of the seemingly endless snow-covered mountains and forests that occupied the northernmost continent of Reach. Well, if you could call it a continent. He’d known, abstractly, that Reach was twenty percent larger than Earth, but it was much more evident to him now, after an hour of flying over the rugged landscape without any reprieve in the unrelentless mountains.

As the dropship dipped down and starting coming in for a landing, Keyes felt a huge sense of relief. After an hour’s ride, he could be anywhere in the Highland Mountains, and he expected to look out the window and see the looming towers of FLEETCOM.

But he was disappointed, and instead he saw low buildings. They were pre-fabricated, the same type that UNSC colony ships would drop down for initial planetfall. Green-drab and standard markings. It looked like any other wayward outpost, despite the fact that it was on Reach. In the summer, he imagined that the buildings would blend in quite well from overhead, but with the fresh snowfall, it was far more obvious where the buildings laid.

“Now arriving,” the pilot announced over the intercom.

Keyes stood, and straightened his uniform as best he could. He’d thought about wearing his dress uniform, but that could rub someone the wrong way. He’d gone with his service uniform, since he was technically assigned to a shoreside posting. He’d made sure his silver bars were shined to perfection, his tunic and pants were spotless, and his shoes were polished.

The back hatch cracked open, and Keyes stepped out onto the tarmac of the landing pad. It was already clear of snow, and it looked like someone had thoughtfully shoveled the paths between the buildings – though they were not all concrete or tarmac, and Keyes already knew that his shoes would be getting a little water-logged today.

A bevy of Navy men in working dress greeted him. The ever-present jumpsuit for physical tasks tipped him off instantly, and Keyes quickly walked past the thruster wash, and out of their way, as the men moved forward with jacks and handtrucks to begin unloading the Pelican.

One of the men, the senior NCO judging by his weathered face, stopped and saluted him. Keyes returned the salute, and refrained from raising an eyebrow as he spotted the sigil of the UNSC Marine Corps on the man’s uniform, rather than the Navy’s.

“Gunnery Sergeant,” Keyes said, nodding to the man, his breath steaming out in the cold weather. “I’ve been told to report to Doctor Halsey’s office. Can you point me to him?”

“Doctor Halsey’s office is in the admin building, sir,” the Gunny replied, nodding back. “Straight down the path, second building on the right.”

“Thank you,” Keyes said, and then set off, so that he’d not be interrupting the man’s work with his presence.

The compound was very… interesting, he decided. For all that it was made up of air-droppable forward base blocks, there was a strange lived-in quality to the place, as if it had become more of a community than the exterior alone indicated. Much like a ship could grow foibles as seen through flyers posted on the common area poster-boards, or small personal touches that still fell within military decorum.

One of the barracks that he passed on the way to the admin block, for instance, had a large announcement board on its side, with a block-printed title that read TOP PERFORMER OF THE WEEK. Individual name placards were slotted into racks beneath it, counting out the top ten, though they only held the individual’s first name, and presumably some kind of score. “John” was currently at the top, with one hundred and seventeen points, while a “Frederick” was in second place with one hundred and four, and then “Jerome”, with ninety-two.

The mess hall, instantly recognizable with the smell coming out of it – split pea soup with salt pork, an old Navy favorite – had a few non-standard benches stacked up by the exterior wall, underneath a small lean-to. In the current weather, they were unneeded, but in warmer weather, perhaps the servicemen and woman might choose to eat outside.

In the distance, he could see a firing range set up. The exterior one looked to be closed due to the snowfall, but light and soft gunfire was streaming and echoing from an interior one next door, with what looked like another competition board mounted on the side of it.

Small touches, but good ones, Keyes thought to himself. You could tell a good commander by how good the morale of his men was, and little rewards like that were a simple way to keep everyone happy and motivated.

Those small touches were also the first sign of… anything that he had received about this assignment. He didn’t know what he was supposed to be doing, or who was in charge, or why this base was located all the way out here in the wilderness. He’d only been given his orders – printed orders on paper, for a strange experience – when he’d gotten on board the Pelican, and after he’d read them over twice, the crew chief had taken the paper back.

All Keyes knew was that he was to report to a Doctor Halsey upon arrival, and that he would brief him further. Nothing more.

Keyes carefully walked through the compacted snow to the admin block. Just like he’d thought, his service dress shoes were already getting a little wet, and he mentally grimaced. So much for a nice, clean first impression.

As soon as he entered the admin block, Keyes carefully wiped his shoes off. He didn’t have a cloth or anything to buff them with, but he tried his best by tapping them on the edges of the doorframe, making sure to dump the small clinging bits of ice and snow outside the building.

Fortunately for him, there was a Navy man in battle dress uniform waiting for him, a Petty Office Third Class. He saluted Keyes promptly, and Keyes returned it.

“Lieutenant Keyes?” the Petty Officer asked. “Follow me, please.”

Slightly odd, but Keyes brushed it aside without much thought. The compound was fairly extensive, but as remote as it was, the man had probably already been informed of Keyes’s arrival and purpose.

However, he couldn’t help but notice that the Petty Officer had a few noticeable scars. There was a line drawn across his temple, as if from shrapnel, and poking out from his undershirt was a twisted, tangled knot of flesh, as if he’d taken a bullet. Wherever the man had served previously, he had seen real combat, the kind that was highly unusual for a sailor.

The Petty Officer led him just a couple doors down the hallway, and stopped before an unmarked door. He rapped sharply on the door three times, and a voice called out from within with something slightly inaudible from where Keyes was standing. He opened the door, and Keyes stepped through.

Doctor Halsey was not, as he’d expected, a man. Instead, a woman sat at the desk before him. She had dark, brunette hair with blue eyes, and she was wearing clothing far more suited to the weather, a sweater and snow pants, with a larger parka hanging on a coatrack by the door.

“Ah, Lieutenant Keyes,” Halsey said, standing up with a smile. “Please, come in.”

Keyes shut the door behind himself, and made his way over to the chair in front of Halsey’s desk. The surface of the desk was neat, tidy, and empty of any paperwork or objects. He couldn’t help but notice a small indentation near the far edge, as if someone had dropped something heavy on the desk’s corner. The empty desk was a curious sign, especially since the walls of the office were not empty.

Instead, along the left wall was an archaic blackboard, with chalk writing scrawled across it. Along the right wall was a series of printed photographs, along with what looked like classes of students from some school, though Keyes didn’t bother to look too closely. Behind Halsey, in the small space to the side of the large smart window that was currently tinted enough to dim the glare of the wintery landscape of the compound, was a set of diplomas and degrees – more than he’d expected, with a little less than a dozen crammed into neat columns.

“Reporting as ordered, Doctor Halsey,” Keyes said, erring on the side of caution and giving her a formal acknowledgement – though he refrained from saluting, as he didn’t see any indicators of military rank on her office’s cluttered walls.

“At ease, Lieutenant,” Halsey said, chuckling lightly. “Sit, sit. Welcome to our little base. I’m sure you’re wondering why you’ve been assigned here.”

“Only as much as any sailor does,” Keyes replied. They both sat down, and Keyes schooled his expression back into professional attentiveness. His words were a bit more forward than he liked, but the Doctor had said ‘at ease’. “I’m prepared to do my duty with whatever you require.”

“Excellent,” Halsey said, a broad grin spreading across her face. “Most excellent indeed. Now, I don’t believe I need to tell you, but just to make sure we don’t skip all the formalities, I must inform you that this entire program is classified as ‘Eyes Only’, and that Security Code 447-R27 will apply to everything you learn here. The price of being an ONI operation, of course.”

Keyes nodded. Nobody had informed him that this was an ONI gig, but it wasn’t a surprise with how hush-hush everything had been up to now. It did, however, make him wonder why he’d gotten the spot. He’d never worked in intelligence before, and he was only two years out of OCS himself, so it had been a real shock after his Ensign cruise aboard the UNSC Meriweather Lewis.

Of course, the promotion to full Lieutenant, only six months after his promotion to Lieutenant Junior Grade, had been even more of a shock. He hadn’t questioned it, hadn’t protested a peep, but it had been eating at him for a while. This assignment coming so soon afterwards was as plausible an explanation as any.

“Your job here will be very simple,” Halsey explained. “This facility currently houses a group of young cadets who have bright futures in the UNSC. You will be teaching them naval tactics, starting from the basics and progressing as far as you can.”

Keyes wanted to frown, but he stayed in control and kept that from showing. He’d had excellent scores at OCS, of course, but that didn’t seem to warrant the classification that she’d just mentioned.

“Some kind of… young leaders group?” he said, unable to resist asking the question.

“Correct,” Halsey agreed, her voice warming at his answer. “Think of it as a… running start for these young cadets, before they attend OCS. In the interests of their future careers, as well as the greater benefit to the UNSC as a whole, they’re receiving a little more attention and tutoring than most.”

Keyes nodded slowly. That seemed to make sense. He’d heard plenty of rumors about nepotism in the Navy, but in his limited experience, his classmates at OCS from those kinds of families had been far more prepared than other kids. Perhaps it was just to meet the higher expectations, or to ward off the potential controversies with high performance. The classification seemed a bit much, but just because something was ‘Eyes Only’ didn’t automatically make it strategically important – it could be to make sure that no rumors spread of this place, potentially damaging morale of normal academy students or enlisted.

Heck, maybe he’d gone to school with some kids who’d gone through this place. A few weeks of extra tutoring wasn’t much for imparting the actual specifics, but it could do wonders with helping people learn the right study habits and mindset to adapt to the Navy. It also explained his promotion – maybe there was a minimum rank requirement, or maybe it was a bribe to convince him to stay silent about this.

Doctor Halsey, then, was some kind of… psychologist, then, serving as a motherly figure to the cadets out here on rotation. That made sense too. If this was a preparatory course, then many of the kids had likely never been away from home before. A housemaster, or a den mother, or whatever those boarding schools called it. It certainly fit the kind attitude she had, and the worry-free expressions on her face. Maybe one of those degrees was a psychology degree, to better teach the young children or relatives of high-ranking UNSC officers how to acclimatize to their chosen careers.

“I understand,” he said, as he felt the tension in his shoulders relax. “When will I start?”

Halsey didn’t answer, and instead rose from her seat again, and Keyes matched her. Clearly, they were coming to the end of his initial on-boarding, brief though it had been.

“Right away,” Halsey told him. “The cadets are just finishing up some morning activities at the firing range, and they’ll be in the classroom shortly.”

She reached across the desk with a hand, and he clasped it, a little bit surprised at the firmness of her grip

“Welcome to the Spartan-II Program,” Halsey said, beaming.

The ‘classroom’ was more like an amphitheater, with five rows of semi-circular benches in recessed tiers. It was larger than Keyes had expected, but it should still be fine. He’d been a voluntary TA for basic naval tactics in his senior year at OCS, so he was accustomed to what would come next.

He found all the familiar tools available to him – the projectors, the wireless links to his newly issued datapad, the presentation clicker and even a microphone that he probably wouldn’t need, thanks to the room’s innate acoustics. There were storage rooms, closets, and overhead racks of additional equipment he could use, everything from older two-dimensional presentations, to modern per-student sensors that tracked every individual’s eyelines to ensure they could see and hear his teaching properly, and adjusted the presentation to match.

There wasn’t a holotable, however, which he found slightly unusual. It was an advanced device, not quite as widespread in the civilian world, but it was standard at Luna Officer Candidate School for a reason, and to not have one here, in an otherwise highly advanced base was strange.

“May I help you, Lieutenant Keyes?” a female voice asked him out of nowhere, as he was searching through the storage room one final time.

Keyes jolted, and spun around. But there was no woman standing behind him.

“Hello?” he asked, tentatively.

“Hello, I’m Déjà,” the voice said. “I’m afraid I don’t have any projectors in that room, but if you return to the stage, you’ll be able to see me.”

To ‘see’ her? Keyes thought to himself, frowning.

But there was no point in remaining in the dark when he could solve the mystery, so he returned to the amphitheater.

Standing on the stage was a glowing woman made up of blue light. It was an A.I. of some kind, dressed in some ancient style with a linen toga and with a golden circlet around her head. There was no overhead projector, however, nor a holo-display. She was simply standing there as if she was a normal human, as large as any living person rather than the usual miniature size that A.I.’s typically were.

“Is the entire stage a holo-display?” Keyes asked her with a gesture at her feet, barely able to keep his incredulity from slipping out.

It seemed like the only explanation, but it was ridiculous. Holo-displays weren’t too expensive, but they could be fragile, and it seemed ridiculous to have a hardened, ruggedized one serve as the floor to an entire stage, when you could just have a separate tank and emitter.

“Correct, Lieutenant,” the A.I. – Déjà – answered, with a smile and a nod. “I am the primary instructor here at the Spartan-II Program. I am specialized in general education, and more knowledgeable instructors are occasionally required, such as yourself. Of course, I’m fully available to assist you with any part of your lessons.”

“Thank you,” Keyes said, hesitantly.

He’d seen A.I.’s before, and even interacted with some when it came to the administrative work at OCS, but to have an A.I., even a ‘dumb’ one, dedicated just to teaching seemed like an extravagance beyond compare to him.

Still, for the teenaged sons and daughters of high-ranking politicians and officers, maybe no expense was too much. He swallowed his instinctive distaste, and set it aside.

“I haven’t been informed of how long I’ll be assigned here,” Keyes said to the A.I., cautiously. “I want to make sure I do a good job of teaching the cadets, but I don’t know how compressed my lessons will have to be. Would you happen to know that?”

“Your assignment here is contingent on performance,” Déjà told him with a serene, detached voice. “If you perform well, you can expect this to be a long term station for you. If I might make a recommendation, you should pace your first lesson as if you have a three month semester.”

“Just for naval combat tactics?” Keyes asked, frowning. “I can do that, but it’ll be rushed.”

“I would start with naval history for your first semester,” Déjà advised him. “The cadets have a solid grounding in the historical eras up until the late twentieth century, but they’ve not had any focused explanations on the whys and hows of naval combat, simply the results. Perhaps it would be best to start with the ancient Greek, Persian, Roman, and Carthaginian navies, and battles such as Salamis and Actium, and then the slow progress of counters being developed to existing tactics.”

“Okay,” Keyes said, biting at his lip. He wished that he could chew his grandfather’s old pipe, but that was probably a bad look for this first day on the job.

Normally, re-arranging the lesson plan would have taken him far, far longer. He’d prepared a generalized look at naval combat tactics starting with the second World War, a common starting place at OCS. That meant pictures and diagrams, video clips and recorded interviews, which could illustrate the concepts and events of the conflict. The sinking of USS Arizona, the battles at Coral Sea, Midway, Leyte, Samar, and more. Replacing all of those for a different conflict two thousand years prior was a very daunting task.

Déjà was a godsend, in that regard. Keyes directed her through the initial stages of the data-retrieval, pulling archival documents and lesson plans from FLEETCOM’s databases. She even managed to set up a quick holographic display of the battles themselves, lines of holographic ships sailing against each other, to be played on the stage’s floor while Keyes himself could walk through the intangible waves and narrate events.

It was a fascinating experience, even before he actually taught anyone. Hell, it was so good that he wondered what life would be like if more teachers could have a dedicated A.I. assistant to help with those fiddly details that took so long to get just right.

After about ten minutes, he was ready for the students, and said so to Déjà.

“Excellent, they’ll be in shortly,” the A.I. replied, before winking out as the projectors deactivated.

Keyes stepped to the side of the stage, behind a small podium that he’d hauled out of storage. There were a few brief notes dictated there, just for the beginning of the lecture, and then he could step away from the podium and begin the more dynamic aspect of the lesson. He knew most of the Battle of Salamis by heart, since the ancient Greece and Persia were some of the most influential nations in all of history.

The lights in the auditorium dimmed as the first of the swiftly programmed holo-displays came to life. The back wall was replaced with a video loop of the shores of the Aegean Sea, normally used for self-meditation, but here, would instead serve as a grounding of where the battle took place. Holographic waves lapped over the stage gently, moving towards the back wall, so that the cadets were sitting out, past the ‘sea’. Once the lecture proper started, the ships would float across the stage, taking up positions in whatever formations Keyes wanted.

The doors at the back end of the amphitheater opened, and Keyes put on a professional mask of courteous disinterest as they entered, streaming down the stairs and into the benches.

“Welcome to Naval Combat Tactics,” he said, projecting his words easily with the aid of the amphitheater’s shape, not needing a microphone. “I am Lieutenant Jacob Keyes, and I will be your instructor.”

The lights increased slightly, just enough for them to see him as he stepped away from the podium…

…and he stopped. He hadn’t been able to see their faces before, but now, with slightly more illumination, he could.

These were not the teenagers that he’d expected, fourteen to sixteen years old. Their faces were still pudgy with baby fat, their bodies too small and short. These were children. They were eight years old, maybe nine at the most. They wore little uniform jumpsuits, their hair followed military restrictions, and they sat with formal attention, but they were indisputably pre-teens.

Keyes’s throat tightened, and he swallowed, before forcing himself to continue the rest of his lecture.

“How old are those children?” he asked, after the lecture was over.

“That’s classified,” came the gruff response from the Navy man sitting across from him.

Chief Petty Officer Mendez was, apparently, the chief training officer for the Spartan-II program, and he was currently staring at Lieutenant Keyes with a keen look of inspection. This was another interview, like his previous one with Doctor Halsey, but this time he was being faced with the hostility and aggression that he’d expected from ONI, rather than a glorified den mother.

Small wonder they have someone like Halsey around, Keyes thought to himself, reflecting on the events of his lecture.

Keyes had lectured the children for an hour, explaining to them the history of their ancient ancestors, and the complex situations both before and during the Battle of Salamis. The lecture had been intended for teenagers, with a teenager’s ability to understand and conceptualize the dry abstracts of politics, history, and naval combat, but the children – nine-year-olds, all – had absorbed it ably. Some of them had asked questions, and they’d been good questions, demonstrating an intelligence far beyond their physical ages.

As soon as the lesson had finished, the children had been whisked away by two dozen instructors in BDU’s. Just like the Petty Officer before, these men had scars, and moved like combat veterans, which only added to the Lieutenant’s feeling of unease regarding the situation.

Finally, one of the men had come for Keyes, and led him to another office in the admin building, this one occupied by a tall, well-built man. Both the man and the office were utterly unlike the female doctor that Keyes had met prior to his lesson – intimidating, fierce, driven, and with no decorations at all on the walls. It was a cold welcome, but that fit the feelings in Keyes’s own stomach after what he’d just seen.

“Déjà tells me that you did well,” Mendez told him. “She recommended your continued presence here. Doctor Halsey agrees with her.”

“Why me?” Keyes asked. It wasn’t what he wanted to say. He wanted to ask who the children were, what kind of program this was, what the hell was going on – anything to give voice to the suspicions in the back of his mind. But if even the ages of the children were classified, then he wasn’t going to get anywhere with those questions, leaving him with precious few options.

“You refused to testify against an instructor during your time at OCS,” Mendez said.

He didn’t add anything else. He didn’t need to.

A sucking void opened up in Keyes’s chest. It had been a few years now, but the reminder brought him back. His palms felt cold. As cold as they’d been when he’d suffered third-degree burns across most of his body. The plasma had been so intense that his nerves had misfired, and he’d felt like he was shivering.

Mendez was still studying him with an even gaze. It occurred to Keyes that this man, with his leadership position over the other scarred, battle-hardened instructors, might be another one of those dangerous men. He might be able to read Keyes’s emotions as easily as reading a newspaper. There wasn’t much point in trying to keep a secret from a man like that.

Keyes waited, but Mendez didn’t say anything else.

He understood what the NCO had meant. Keyes could be trusted to stay silent, even about ugly things, even when under enough pressure to shatter diamonds.

“…I assume I’m going to need your approval as well,” Keyes said after a few minutes of silence. “To stay at this posting.”

“You do,” Mendez agreed, pointedly not saying whether or not he was giving it.

Keyes wanted to sigh. Cloak and dagger ONI stuff. He was starting to wonder how they got anything done, if they refused to just say what they wanted.

Except… they’d apparently gotten quite a lot done. Those kids were as smart as highschoolers, despite looking like they hadn’t cracked double digits yet. More than that, they were humble and attentive, nowhere near as arrogant as Keyes might have thought. Their questions were insightful, easily allowing him to lead them along to the next conclusion, or spotting something that he had forgotten to mention.

“If you stay with this program, what would your highest priority be?” Mendez finally asked.

Keyes stared at him. That was a very open question, and it was as good as asking for a commitment… but a commitment to what? To ONI’s goals, whatever they might be? To Mendez himself, and this program? To secrecy as an absolute principle?

He didn’t know what answer Mendez wanted.

“The children,” Keyes said, after a minute of contemplation. “I don’t know what this program is intended for, and I don’t know why it involves nine year olds… but they’re good kids. I can only assume they’re meant to be soldiers of some kind, and I think they should know about the realities of war before they have to discover it themselves.”

Mendez nodded slowly, and Keyes couldn’t tell if the man approved of his words, or was just humoring him, so solid was his poker face.

“I’ll inform Doctor Halsey that you have my approval,” the NCO said.

Normally, Keyes would have felt a little relief to learn that he’d gotten the job, and performed up to high expectations. This time, he wasn’t sure. It said good things about him professionally, but the children were a major fly in the ointment.

“You’ll have a single one-hour lecture block, six days a week,” Mendez continued, “Current estimates for the cadets are about two years of lessons on naval combat. That’ll include both history, and the basic, intermediate, and advanced tactics. An office has been set aside for you, including a bedroom.”

“Ah, I’m currently housed at Kisköre Base, just outside the security clearance zone,” Keyes said, awkwardly interrupting.

Mendez raised a single eyebrow.

“I have a young daughter,” Keyes clarified. “Six years old. There’s no one else to take care of her on Reach, and under UNSC regs, she can’t stay inside the Highland Mountains.”

The NCO frowned, and looked down at his desk. He reached into a drawer and pulled out a printed sheet of hardcopy that he inspected briefly. His mouth twitched for a moment, but Keyes couldn’t tell if it was in amusement or annoyance before the man’s face smoothed out again.

“It seems that Doctor Halsey has already prepared a solution,” Mendez told him. “A Pelican will pick you up from Fairchild Field, just inside the security zone, and bring you back at the end of your day. You’ll be sharing the ride with a supply run, just like today.”

He didn’t ask if that was acceptable for Keyes, and he didn’t need to. A man that protested at sharing space with a few crates was a soul too sensitive for military service. Personally, Keyes was just happy he hadn’t asked more about Miranda – such as her age, or why Keyes himself had a daughter at his own young age.

“These are the altered protocols that we adhere to,” Mendez continued, handing over the sheet. “Here at the Military Wilderness Training Preserve.”

“Awfully generic name,” Keyes observed, as he scanned the sheet. It was a bit paranoid to not have these things recorded electronically, but Keyes wasn’t going to complain – he preferred the old fashioned methods like this.

The list was surprisingly straightforward, and most of it wasn’t applicable to him at all, since he’d be commuting in and out every day. Chow times for breakfast, lunch and dinner, a list of prohibited items, those things were normal for any military base – though the prohibited list was a blanket ban on any unauthorized electronic devices of any kind, even down to a watch.

Most of it was dedicated to rules for handling the cadets. Specific bed-times to be strictly adhered to, save for designated wilderness expeditions. Firm restrictions on any form of hazing or corporal punishment. Stipulations on appropriate language and interactions. And at the end, a rule that there was to be no communications with anyone regarding the Spartan-II project, regardless of rank, posting, or authority.

It was a strange mix of casual and paranoid. Keyes wondered if the casual inclusions were the result of Doctor Halsey trying to get the trainers to ease off on the children so that they could have as close to a normal life as possible. On the other end of the spectrum, Mendez definitely looked like the kind of black ops man that would impose the complete lockdown of any information into or out of the compound.

“Is there anything else I need to do?” Keyes asked, when Mendez didn’t respond to his last comment. “Transfer paperwork, or…?”

“That’s already been handled,” Mendez dismissed, as he rose from his desk and offered Keyes an outstretched hand. “Welcome to the program, Lieutenant.”

Keyes shook the offered hand, and nodded.

It was five o’clock when Keyes returned to his apartment in Kisköre. He took off his shoes at the door, and put his headgear on the hat-rack to the side of the mirror.

As he technically wasn’t a married man, he shouldn’t have received a married man’s quarters, but upon his arrival to Reach the day before, he’d found that he’d received it anyway. At the time, he’d assumed that some kind-hearted bureaucrat had seen his situation, and decided to have mercy on him.

Now, though… was it just another way that ONI had rigged things for him? Trying to buy his favor?

In many ways, his new assignment was a dream. He’d been promoted to a full Lieutenant in less than a year. He had a great apartment in a nice section of Reach, south of the harsh conditions of the Highland Mountains. His work schedule was light enough that he could drop Miranda off at her new school in the morning and pick her up before dinner on most days. He was receiving a doubled living stipend due to his official posting being classified. His clearance had been upgraded to Top Secret.

With how generous ONI was being, Keyes even had the feeling that after this assignment was over, there might be another promotion waiting for him. A Lieutenant Commander at twenty-seven was unheard of. Maybe instead, it would be a plum choice of assignment, and a guaranteed promotion a few years down the line. A staff position at HIGHCOM, potentially.

All because of his new job. A secret program that involved teaching children in a hidden base.

“I’m home!” he called, trying to distract himself from the looming thoughts in his head.

“Daddy!” cried a high-pitched girl’s voice.

A pitter-patter of bare feet greeted his ears as he turned towards the living room, a smile growing on his face as Miranda Keyes, his precious daughter, came flying around the corner with her hair ruffled and her bright eyes shining.

He knelt down and spread his arms, and grunted as Miranda collided with him.

“Not so fast!” he chuckled, wrapping her in a hug as he stood up. “You’re going to hurt your old man one of these days.”

Miranda pouted, and Keyes chuckled again as he carried her into the kitchen.

“What should we make for dinner tonight?” he asked, setting her down on top of the kitchen island.

Miranda curled her feet under her, and tilted her head thoughtfully.

“Mac and cheese!” she exclaimed after a moment.

“Alright, mac and cheese it is,” Keyes replied easily. “I think I’ve got some of that around here…”

He opened up the kitchen cabinets and rummaged around for a moment, before pulling out a box of mac and cheese mix. He set it down on the counter, then went to the refrigerator, and pulled out a package of ground beef, and a couple carrots.

“No veggies!” Miranda protested.

“You remember our deal, right Miranda?” he asked her, glancing over from where he was retrieving a knife and chopping up the carrots. “Veggies and meat with every meal, so that you can grow up big and strong like me.”

“But they don’t taste good!” she countered.

“Maybe not, but they’re still good for you,” Keyes replied. He smiled at her, to lighten the words a little. “And besides, your taste buds will change. Why, when I was your age, I hated cheese.”

“How are you alive, Daddy?” Miranda asked, eyes widening. “Cheese is great!”

“Sometimes I don’t know,” he said softly, as he stared down at the chopped carrots, and the old burn scars on his hands. The places where he’d taken the least of the burns, so his skin hadn’t been replaced entirely.

Miranda fidgeted on the kitchen island, then clambered down from it with the aid of a nearby stool. She scampered over to him and flung her arms around his legs.

Keyes blinked, and looked down at her. He went to ask her why she’d done that, when her face looked up at him with a determined glare.

“Don’t be sad!” she ordered him, her voice firm.

He stared at her for a moment, and then a bubbling sensation filled his stomach. A laugh slipped out of his mouth, and then another.

“Okay, Miranda,” he said, as laughter slipped out around his words. “I won’t be sad. Just for you, okay?”

“Good!” she replied, nodding firmly and releasing him.

Keyes turned back to the food as he prepared the simple dinner. It was a miracle that she was as well-behaved as she was. His parents had helped out during his time at OCS, and he had visited as much as he could, but this was his first real chance to be a good father to her – a long term, stable shoreside post.

And all it cost was training child soldiers, just a few years older than her, a quiet voice whispered in the back of his head.

Chapter Text

It was a sunny summer morning, and even better, it was a Saturday.

Daddy was grumpy, since he had work even on Saturday, but Miranda didn’t have school, so she got to watch cartoons and eat big bowls of her favorite cereal and run around at the playground with the other kids and even eat ice cream so long as she didn’t eat too much and put it away, so it didn’t melt after she was done.

Miranda was even willing to say that living with Daddy was better than living with Grampa and Gramma, but she didn’t want to say that in front of Daddy, because he got really sad whenever she mentioned them.

Reach was a weird planet compared to Earth, but it was full of kids like her, with Daddies and Mommies in the military, so they knew what she meant when she said she was sad that Daddy was away all the time working. Some of the older kids tried to be mean about it, and they said she was a whiny little girl when she mentioned it, but one of the older older kids pushed them over when they did, and said there was nothing wrong with missing your family, and then they got a teacher, and the teacher said the same thing and punished the mean kids.

Which had really made Miranda wonder how much fun Daddy had at his job, when she wasn’t around him. Daddy was always tired when he came home, even if he came back way earlier than most other kids Daddies and Mommies came home.

He must be worrying about her, because he was always asking how her day went, and what she did in school, and if she was happy here, and if she was making friends, and all sorts of things. And he never talked about himself, either – he just said his job was important but boring, and stuff like that, which meant his job was really, really boring, if he never had anything fun to talk about!

So today, while he was busy at work, and she had the day off from school, she was gonna go find where Daddy worked, and make sure he was happy!

That’s why Miranda had been very careful to be on her best behavior last night and this morning, so that Daddy wouldn’t think she was up to anything bad! She’d also made sure they had bread and sandwich fixings, so she could make herself a lunch, and Daddy a lunch, and an extra lunch just in case she got extra hungry or in case Daddy had a work buddy he wanted to give it to.

She waited until Daddy had left for his work, and then she wanted to wait a little bit longer just in case he forgot anything and came back, and then, after twenty minutes were gone, she climbed up onto the kitchen counter and started making the sandwiches.

Daddy was usually gone from seven to three, so she wanted to bring him some food at eleven, which was halfway in the middle… but she didn’t know how long it would take her to reach Daddy’s office, so she should leave early, to make sure she was there on time!

Miranda put the sandwiches in plastic hard cases to make sure they wouldn’t smush, then grabbed her little foil-lined backpack and put them inside. It was nearly too much to fit, especially with her water bottle, but she managed to zip it shut.

She ran to her room and changed into her best clothes – good shorts with lots of pockets, a comfy long-sleeve that would keep her skin safe from the sun, and good boots for running or kicking or whatever she’d need to do!

Before she left, she made sure to grab her little keycard, and lock the apartment door very firmly. Then she ran to the elevator, pressed the button, and waited patiently so she could ride it down. She’d asked Daddy to let her climb the stairs once, because she was a big girl, and she was never doing that again!

Miranda made her way to the bus stop, and climbed aboard as soon as it pulled along the curb. She’d never ridden it alone before, but Daddy had told her that because they were on a military base, it was all free, and she knew that she could hop on board and be safe.

The bus driver gave her a weird look as she climbed up into the seat closest to him.

“And where are you off to, young lady?” he asked, raising an eyebrow like one of the old cartoons.

“I’m off to see my Daddy at work,” she told him happily, smiling broadly. “He goes on this bus to… Fairchild, I think!”

“Uh-huh,” the bus driver replied. “Well, missy, you’re on the right bus, but I don’t think they’re gonna let you through the gate. So, I’ll tell you what. If you sit there real nice and quiet, and you promise to listen to the gate guards, then I’ll let you ride the bus there and back, okay?”

“Okay!” Miranda said, nodding.

She didn’t think he was right, because why wouldn’t they let her go see Daddy, but if they didn’t, then she’d listen to them, because she’d always been told to listen to grownups who were in charge, and ‘gate guards’ sounded like they were in charge.

The rest of the bus was fairly full of people, with grownups and teenagers and even a couple kids like her, though they were with their families. Most of them weren’t even in uniform, and were instead wearing outdoor clothing like they were gonna go for an adventure, or go swimming, or do something else fun.

The bus lumbered into motion, and Miranda watched through the enormous glass windshield as they pulled out onto the road and started driving. Kisköre Base was huge, much bigger than the old town that Gramma and Grampa had lived in. Their apartment building was taller than any of the buildings there, and it wasn’t even the tallest building! It was like a big city, but it was all just for military people.

Miranda stared at the glass fronted apartment blocks, and the concrete-walled military buildings, and the trees along the parks, and the jets taking off in the distance. She’d seen a lot of it before, when Daddy took her on the bus to her school, but it was still so exciting, and she watched eagerly.

It took them about ten minutes to reach the Fairchild stop.

“Fairchild, now stopping at Fairchild!” the bus driver called out as the bus came rumbling to a stop. “This is the last stop on this line.”

Everyone on the bus got up and filed out of the exits, and Miranda waited patiently for them to go first, because Daddy also insisted that she not get ‘lost in the crowd’. Then she got up, smiled brightly at the bus driver that was looking at her with a weird, concerned looking expression, and she marched out towards the gate guards, following the line of uniformed men and women.

The line was long, because the guards were taking their job really seriously, and so every person had to answer questions and show ID cards and explain why they were going onto the ‘airfield’ today.

Finally, it was her turn, and she held out her ID card just like all the other people had.

“What are you doing here, Miss… Miranda Keyes?” the big guard asked her, taking her card with a bemused look at his buddy folded his arms and leaned back against the little concrete hut in the middle of the road.

“I’m here to see my Daddy!” she told him. “I’m bringing him lunch, ‘cause he’s always grumpy.”

“You are, huh?” the guard asked, his voice kinda bland as he passed her back her ID card. “Well, I’m sorry, but you can’t go past this line. This is for military personnel only, and you’re a little too young to be enlisted. The airfield is off-limits to civilians.”

“Well, can you call my Daddy and ask him to come out and see me?” Miranda asked, biting her lip. She needed to cheer Daddy up, and if she couldn’t surprise him at work, then maybe she could still give him food.

“Sorry, but I can’t,” the guard told her, firmly. “I’m not a messaging service. I don’t know your father, or where he works on the base, and I can’t ask. This is for security reasons, you understand?”

“Oh…” Miranda whispered, as disappointment started filling her stomach. “But… I can’t see him?”

“You can’t see him,” the guard repeated patiently. “This is a secure area, and that means only authorized people are allowed inside.”

“Well, she might be able to see him from behind the security perimeter,” the other guard said, joining the conversation and pointed off to their left, where a paved path walked off towards the trees in the distance, with a low hill rising up in the distance. “There’s an observation point to the west. You could sit there and watch the planes take off, and maybe you’ll see your dad from a distance.”

“Jerry, shut up,” the first guard said. “You know that not what she means.”

“Trying to cheer her up,” the second guard said defensively.

“Thank you Mister Jerry!” Miranda said quickly, cutting off their argument. “I’ll try that!”

She smiled, wide, so they knew she wasn’t mad at them, and then quicky turned and started running down the path.

It wasn’t all for nothing! She could still see Daddy!

The path was nice and smooth, without any cracks that old pavement got, and within a couple hundred feet it got all surrounded by trees! The shade was nice, much better than the sun glaring down straight at her, and even though she missed the air conditioning from the bus, getting to see Daddy was worth it.

There were a bunch of signs along the pavement, but they were much more boring, and she already knew where she was going, so she kept running. Though she did slow down a little into what one of her teachers had called a ‘jog’, which is what you did when you were gonna run for a while!

Miranda ran along the path for a long while, looking up at the swaying leaves, and the beautiful bushes full of flowers, and the sunbeams dancing through the branches. It was way better now that winter way over, and she could run around outside without having to bundle up into a whole bunch of layers.

A ways into the forest, the paved path turned left, away from the hill, and the base.

Miranda stopped, and looked up ahead, where the hill was still rising up. There wasn’t a lot of bushes, and she could see that the hillside was pretty smooth, without big holes or too many rocks, or other unsafe stuff. She wanted to get up to the top, but if the path wasn’t going to it, then she didn’t need to be on the path… right?

Right! Miranda thought to herself, clenching a small fist and tightening her backpack.

She stepped off the path, and started walking on the forest’s dirt floor – slower than she had been running before, but still with energy, with enthusiasm. She was gonna make it to the top of the hill, where that observation point was, and then she’d be able to see Daddy, and he could see her!

Going uphill like this was more difficult than she’d thought, and she found herself breathing harder, but it was all good, because it was for a good purpose.

The problem was that the hill was a lot bigger than she’d thought. There wasn’t a fence or a sign or anything to guide Miranda, so she tried to keep to as straight a line as she could.

It took her a long time, but finally, she got to the top. Miranda let out a huge breath, and turned back to where she’d come, so that she could see the airfield and see Daddy.

But there was no airfield behind her, or to the north, or in any other direction. There were no buildings, no roads, no fences. There was only a carpet of trees stretched out over a flat plain, and mountains on the far side, and a river gently winding down to the south.

“Uh oh,” Miranda whispered.

She looked around, jerking her head to the side, but she didn’t see anything on the second look around, and worse, she didn’t see how she’d come up the hill in the first place. It was so twisty, the bushes covered so much.

Miranda was lost.

“Okay, alright,” she said to herself, swallowing. “Don’t worry. You can get home. Just…”

Tears started leaking, growing into big bubbles at the corners of her eyes.

Before Miranda could let out a sob, there was a dull roar in the distance. She looked up, and saw an aircraft – one of the bird name dropships that Daddy had tried to teach her, but which she didn’t always recognize.

The dropship was swooping down lower and lower, towards a clearing in the plains. It was coming in for a landing.

The woods were nice and quiet, and John liked that.

Today was a relatively new experience for the young Spartan cadet. The Chief had said they were getting ‘too familiar’ with the terrain around their compound, so today they were being dropped deep, far away from their usual haunt.

It was weird. John wouldn’t have thought that two years of training was enough to get ‘too familiar’ with a place, but he couldn’t help but admit that this new environment was odd. The valley’s walls were much broader, much smaller. These weren’t mountains, but hills. There was far more sky to look at, and he felt exposed.

Even the trees were different – far less cedars and far more broad-leaf trees that were flourishing in the summer breeze. The wind was stronger, less constricted. It was easier to breathe, somehow. Maybe it was the wind, maybe it was the lower altitude.

And, of course, he was alone for the first time in… years.

Most training expeditions like this, the cadets were grouped up for their own safety, and to make it easier for the trainers to track them. This time, they’d given him a radio and a knife with the usual backpack full of water, rations, and emergency survival gear, and told him that if he needed help, to call for an overwatch team, and they would be there.

They even said that there were no wolves or other wild animals, save for maybe some skunks, which was an unprecedented admission, since normally the trainers tried to make sure they were prepared for any eventuality, even an unlikely one.

The first thing John did was get his bearings. The forest was much clearer, with less undergrowth blocking his view of things, and the trees were much, much taller. He waited for the ramjet engines of the Pelican to die away, and then he waited a little bit longer, for his ears to acclimatize to the sound of the wilderness around him.

He didn’t hear many birds, but there was water in the background, maybe a river. That would be a good place to aim for. The trainers liked to use rivers for navigation practice, and the cadets had picked up on it early. A river meant both their objectives would be easier, and they could link up for better odds of success.

While John waited, he cracked open the first water bottle and took a small swig, and opened one of the waffle-wafers. It had been an hour long flight in the Pelican, and he’d been the last cadet dropped off, so he was getting a little hungry, and that wasn’t the best for a wilderness expedition. Better to eat a little while you could, before it started messing with your mind. The honey-soaked snack was a bit thin, but it was good for giving you a burst of energy while still being lightweight, and he’d be able to fill his stomach with a heartier, more filling meal once he was back at the compound.

Once he finished, he put away his trash and repacked his satchel, ready to move on. Today’s exercise was another navigation exercise, and nothing more. John knew that the trainers might have been lying about that, because they liked to slip in little tricks and surprises.

A week ago, they’d drilled on basic marching and formations, the Chief had been the only trainer present, and that should’ve been a tip-off. When they were twenty minutes in, the rest of the trainers showed up on the rooftops of all the buildings, and they were shooting paintball guns down at the cadets, turning it into an improvised lesson on urban ambushes.

Or like that time during the last winter, where Gunny Wentworth had hidden paint-bombs in the snow before the cadets had to shovel all the paths, and unlucky cadets had to show up to all their lessons covered in blue or green or yellow paint.

John didn’t know what the trick on this exercise was, but he knew there had to be one. ‘Just forest training instead of mountain training’ was way too simple. It was too clean of an operation for anything else. The trainers wouldn’t be letting them off easy like that.

He stood up, but before he could go more than a few feet, he heard a voice call out behind him.

“Excuse me!”

John turned. He was surprised – he hadn’t expected to run into another Spartan-II cadet for at least an hour. He’d kind of been looking forward to it, to be honest.

The speaker was a girl, but not one he recognized. She wasn’t wearing the wilderness survival gear that he was, nor one of the cadet jumpsuits that they wore back at base, but a long sleeved shirt and cargo shorts, on top of running shoes that were not suited for the terrain at all.

In fact, she wasn’t the right age, either. The girl was younger than John by a couple years.

“Hello?” John replied hesitantly. “Uh… what are you doing here?”

On the list of surprises that he’d thought possible, running into a six-year-old girl was not one of them. He’d thought that the trainers would have a sniper, or that he’d be dropped off with a handicap, or that he was actually in the wrong valley. Something that would have made a specific aspect of the exercise more difficult.

The girl was trembling, John noticed. Had he been too blunt?

No, he realized. Her shirt had small cuts in it from thorns, and there were green hitchhikers all over her shoes, socks, and shorts. She’d been bushwacking without an actual trail… and if she was out far enough to run into his training exercise, then she was probably lost.

“I was…” the girl started to say, before choking up, and letting out a hiccupping sob. John’s eyes widened, and he stepped forward, bending down slightly to make himself look a little smaller to the younger kid.

“Woah there,” he said, keeping his voice soft. “It’s okay. I can help you. What’s your name?”

“Mir-” she said, before another sob cut the word off. She swallowed hard, and tried again. “Miranda. I’m Miranda Keyes.”

“Keyes?” John repeated, a suspicion growing in the back of his head. “Do you know a Jacob Keyes?”

The girl’s sobs dwindled, and she looked up at John like he’d just declared himself to be Santa Claus, with bright eyes and a smile.

“That’s my Daddy!” Miranda said, nodded quickly. “Do you know where he is?”

I’m never going to underestimate the Chief’s surprises ever again, John thought to himself, as he realized the ‘twist’ of today’s exercise with a dawning sense of horror.

“I do,” he said. “I can lead you to him, if you want?”

John braced himself, ready for her to keep crying, or to loudly yell in his ear.

Instead, the little girl scrambled to pull off her backpack, and started quickly digging through it for something. Despite himself, John tensed, ready to intervene if she was going to pull out anything dangerous.

After a moment, his paranoia was proven wrong – Miranda had pulled out a little hardcase container, and pried it open to reveal a sandwich inside.

“Here,” she said, holding it out to John with both hands. “Daddy said you’re supposed to thank people when they do good things for you, and giving gifts is better than saying words.”

“Thank… you?” John replied, uncertainly.

He reached out and took the container. It was a nice gesture, and he could use extra food.

Miranda giggled.

“No, no,” she said, shaking her head. “I’m thanking you. You don’t need to need to thank me – you’re helping me find my Daddy, after all!”

“Just a little further now, Miranda,” John encouraged her, looking back at the six-year-old trailing behind him. “We’re almost there.”

They’d been hiking together now for three hours, and John knew that he probably could have made the trip in just two hours without Miranda slowing him down.

Was that the lesson of this exercise? That you could run into complications that would slow you down, and threaten the completion of the mission? Burdens to bear, rather than assets?

John didn’t think that was the point. For all her slower speed, Miranda had been a pleasant enough hiking partner. She’d talked occasionally, pointing out some beautiful natural sight that John wouldn’t have cared to notice on his own, and she’d even offered him a sandwich thick with ham and cheese to supplement his comparatively meager trail rations. He’d accepted. Even if he didn’t really need the food, the gesture was appreciated.

Maybe Miranda’s presence was why they’d been taken on this long trip to the southern edge of the mountain range in the first place, down to where the landscape was less severe and steep.

Regardless, they were closing in on the rendezvous point, and the waiting trio of Pelicans. It was atop a nearby plateau, with a winding path circling around the cliff edge to the top.

“John!” a voice called out ahead of him in greeting.

He looked to his left, and saw Kurt waving a hand as he emerged from another path in the trees. Kurt was a good friend, one of the few that could really challenge John in the tactical leadership exercises – though none of them were good enough to beat either the Chief or the Doctor, when they joined in.

Kurt looked far more comfortable than John had expected, like he’d just emerged from a hide. He’d been whittling a fallen branch down with his utility knife, and now had a half-decent spear going, which he wouldn’t have done if he’d been walking. The suppressed yawn as he stretched was the bigger giveaway.

“You’re on watch?” John asked, as Kurt approached, frowning as he looked at Miranda with clear curiosity.

“Yeah, we were just about to send out a search party for you,” Kurt replied. “Everyone else arrived half an hour ago. Where’d you pick up your friend?”

“At the drop-off,” John said. “Miranda, this is my friend Kurt. Kurt, this is Miranda Keyes.”

“Nice to meet you!” Miranda said, huffing as she came to a stop next to them. “This is a long way to go to see Daddy.”

“Keyes?” Kurt asked, raising an eyebrow and glancing back at John.

“Yup,” John confirmed, nodding once. “Lieutenant Keye’s daughter.”

“The Chief likes his surprises,” Kurt shrugged, resting his short spear on his shoulder and pulling a stalk of grass from his pocket, sticking it in his mouth and chewing on it.

“I think it was the Doctor, this time,” John admitted. “It’s not exactly conventional, and that’s more her style.”

“True enough,” Kurt said, before turning back to the little girl. “Miranda, do you want to fly?”

The six-year-old was tired, and John had been encouraging her to keep going this far, but with those words, she lit up, her eyes shining as she looked up at the older boy.

“Flying?!” Miranda repeated, enthusiasm filling her voice. “Like, in a plane?”

“In a Pelican,” John told her. “It’s a VTOL, not a plane, but yes.”

“What’s a VTOL?” Miranda asked, as Kurt led them up the winding path around the plateau.

“It’s an acronym, it means vertical take-off and landing,” John explained, as he let Miranda pass him, and then took up the rear position, so that she was safely positioned between the two Spartan cadets.

“And what’s that mean?” Miranda asked, with the same tone.

“It means they don’t need runways,” Kurt said, looking over his shoulder. “They can just go straight up and down, and they can land pretty much anywhere.”

“Wow!” Miranda replied. John couldn’t see her face, but he could picture her eyes, all wide. She’d made the same expression a couple times, including when he’d mentioned that her Dad was one of his teachers, and that he did ‘hikes’ like this all the time.

The path ahead of them turned, and Kurt ducked underneath the overhanging branch from a half-fallen tree. Miranda wasn’t much smaller than Kurt or John, but it was just enough of a difference that she could walk right beneath it. John followed behind them, and after he stood back up, he saw the rendezvous point waiting.

Three Pelicans waited for them, and there were cadets lounging all around them, chatting idly, stretching, some tossing rocks off the plateau’s edge or weaving together strands of grass into rudimentary rope, or all sorts of things to kill time.

“Hey, look who I found!” Kurt called out, drawing surprised looks from the crowd, though most of them weren’t looking at John, but at Miranda.

“You found a kid?” called back Alice, with a confused voice.

 “I found John.” Kurt said, shaking his head. “John found the kid.” 

“There’s a lot of you guys,” Miranda said, looking around at them all.

John looked around himself. About half the cadets were already sitting down in the Pelicans, having taken the bench seats before anybody else could, probably so that they wouldn’t have to stand for the flight back. But that still meant that there was roughly thirty or so cadets looking at Miranda with expressions of bemusement, surprise, or curiosity.

“Alright, let’s get aboard,” he said to Miranda, nudging her gently towards one of the Pelicans.

“What’s with the kid?” Sam asked, walking over with a raised eyebrow that he had definitely imitated from the Chief.

“I’m Miranda Keyes, and my daddy teaches you history!” Miranda blurted out, before John could answer his best friend.

“Really?” Sam said, taken aback. “Well, I guess I can see it. You kinda look like him.”

Miranda beamed up at Sam, and reached out a hand, insistently waving it slightly at him. Sam glanced down at it, and extended his own, and Miranda grabbed it and shook it excitedly, before moving forward and tugging him along into one of the Pelicans.

“Tell me more!” Miranda said, as she sat down on the dropship’s deck, pulling Sam down to sit next to her.

“John?” Sam asked, giving him a pleading look.

John chuckled, and moved over to join them.

“Alright, that’s everyone! Load up!” Jerome yelled to the rest of the cadets, and they quickly dropped whatever they were doing and started to pile into the dropships.

“What do you want me to tell you about?” Sam asked, carefully, as the Pelican filled up with cadets.

“What does Daddy teach you?” the six-year-old asked. “He teaches me about veggies, and math, and cleaning my room, but John said he teaches you about history and stuff, and he never does that for me. What’s it like learning about history? Is it better than veggies and bedtimes?”

“I don’t know,” Sam said, as the dropship’s ramp lifted up and sealed, enclosing them within the thankfully air-conditioned interior. “Your dad doesn’t teach us veggies or bedtimes, so I can’t compare between the two of them.”

Miranda gasped, either from Sam’s words, or from the rumble beneath them as the Pelican lifted off, soaring upwards into the air.

“That makes sense!” she whispered. “But then, who teaches you guys about those things?”

John wasn’t sure what to say back.

The obvious answer was the Chief and the Doctor, and the trainers and the shrinks. Staff Sergeant Swanson ran the kitchens, and he made sure their meals were nutritionally balanced for their level of physical activities, and even made the desserts that were frequent rewards for the top performers. The trainers made sure that the cadets went to sleep on time, and that they made their beds up to military standards. Déjà taught them math, and science, and history, though the Doctor sometimes helped out with that, whenever she had spare time.

But just because it was true didn’t mean they should tell her that. They’d been taught about security classifications, and how important it was to not talk about things like the Program.

It was entirely possible that part of why the Chief had chosen a young girl to be the extra objective was to see what the Spartan cadets might let slip with someone who wasn’t officially part of the program.

John felt mildly impressed with how devious the Chief and the trainers were. Was that why they’d chosen Miranda? She was a kind nice girl younger than them, with an existing tie to the Program… meaning she appeared to be safe to trust, when she was actually a test?

The Doctor had given them a lecture on intelligence work a couple weeks ago – just the basics, anyway – and she’d emphasized repeatedly that the most important stuff was the basics, both because of how much it could help you, and because of how much it could hurt you. Just like a lot of the military lessons, your own arrogance and assumptions would get you killed faster than any bullet.

“We learned them at our birthday parties,” someone chipped in – Daisy, saving them all from the awkward silence that had filled the Pelican after Miranda’s question. “When you turn seven, they give you a big book, and it’s full of all the things you need to do to be a big kid. It was really convincing, so we all eat our veggies and go to bed on time and make sure our beds are done right.”

“Ohhhh,” Miranda said, nodding along. “That makes sense. What’s your name?”

“I’m Daisy,” the female cadet replied. “Hey, why don’t you tell us about your Dad, rather than us? You probably know him much better than us!”

Daisy winked at John and Sam, and thankfully, Miranda didn’t see it.

Instead, the young girl opened her mouth and started to chatter. It was mindless, aimless, babble. It probably wouldn’t teach them anything important.

But it could still be a lesson. Perhaps they would be quizzed on what they’d learned from Miranda Keyes, to see if they’d been investigating the anomaly of her presence. And so he listened closely, for the entire one hour ride back to the compound.

Despite the suspicion that was still lingering in his head about her… John could admit that it was strangely calming to listen to Miranda talk about Lieutenant Keyes, and how he was as a father. It had nothing to do with tactics or weapons or regulations, and that made it novel, and interesting.

“Stay close to me when we come out, okay?” John told Miranda, as the Pelican came in for a landing. “We’re gonna line up in a formation, and you need to be quiet and do what the rest of us do, alright?”

“Okay!” Miranda answered, nodding seriously.

The dropship touched down, and the ramp lowered. The air was much cooler now that they were back at the compound. The flight speed of a D77 Pelican at conventional altitudes, rather than a sub-orbital hop, was a little more than nine hundred kilometers an hour. Considering it lost time to take off, get up to speed, and land, and they were probably eight hundred kilometers further north now.

Miranda shivered as the cadets started trooping out of the bay. Where John was wearing multi-environment gear, includes long pants and a lightweight windbreaker, both with adjustable vents, the six-year-old only had shorts.

“Stay with me,” John repeated, putting a hand on her shoulder as the crowd of cadets surged out, across the concrete landing pad, and into their formation for the after action assembly.

“Cadets!” came the booming voice of the Chief. “Fall in!”

It was a scramble for a moment, and John pulled Miranda along with him so that she didn’t get lost in the mix. The trainers didn’t really care what order the cadets lined up in, so long as their spacing was right, and they were in the proper stances.

The cadets formed into long rows of fifteen cadets, five ranks deep. John normally would have been near the front, because of his position as a squad leader. That wasn’t actually required of him, though, so today he wound up in the third rank, just a little off the middle. He tugged Miranda into position so that she was just behind him, then put a finger up to his mouth and sshh’ed her so that she’d stay quiet for the initial part of the debrief.

“Cadets! Atten-shun!” one of the trainers – Staff Sergeant Callahan, it sounded like – called them to order. Seventy five sets of boots clicked together in stereo. 

Even with his eyes locked forward, onto the back of the cadet’s head in front of him, John saw the Chief walking along the ranks, inspecting them.

Staff Sergeant Callahan was doing the same, but Callahan was apparently checking the middle rows, because as John both watched and didn’t-watch, he suddenly stiffened, and then started walking firmly… directly towards John.

Uh oh.

“Cadets!” a female voice called out sharply. “At ease.”

It was the Doctor. Now that he was allowed to move his head around, John could see that the Doctor had just emerged from the office adjoining the hangar. John and the other cadets shifted, their feet spacing out and their hands going behind their backs as they were allowed to look around and relax slightly.

Sergeant Callahan, meanwhile, stopped moving as the Doctor walked to the head of the formation.

“-your performance was quite satisfactory,” the Doctor was saying, smiling as she walked along the first row of cadets. “While I’m sure that the environment wasn’t too dissimilar to the mountains around here, it is vitally important that you do not become hyper-specialized for mountain warfare, as impressive as that would be.”

Specialized? John hadn’t really considered them to be ‘specialized’ in anything. Not with only two years of training, and how far below their performance was compared to the trainers, or the Chief – or even the Doctor herself, on the days when she joined them for PT, or the range. Despite their best efforts, none of the cadets, not even Linda or Fred, could match up to the civilian level performance that the Doctor put up.

He glanced around, and saw Sergeant Callahan still standing at the edge of the formation. The Sergeant’s eyes were on John, and John met his gaze, nodding once.

Callahan, for some reason, didn’t return the nod – he just stared at John with an intense, almost offended expression that John hadn’t seen any of the trainers make in at least a few months.

John swallowed. He knew what that expression meant. He was in trouble.

But why? He’d succeeded in his mission, and located the unmentioned VIP for rescue.

Unless she wasn’t part of the mission, he realized. Unless he’d been wrong in his assumption.

Oh.

“There are all sorts of combat environments that you will be forced to engage within,” the Doctor continued, not aware of John’s thoughts. “Within the coming months, we will begin a series of extended training operations in other locales, so that you may acclimatize to their temperatures, flora and fauna, and other factors that might affect your performance in the fut-”

The Doctor abruptly cut her words short. John couldn’t quite make out her expression, because she was directly in front of him, and there were two cadets in between them, but her head was looking towards him.

“Cadets!” the Doctor barked suddenly, the whip-crack of authority ringing out like a gunshot. “One step – LEFT!”

The cadets, John included, stiffened reflexively, and they quick-stepped one pace to the left, doing their best to keep the formation lines straight without resorting to ‘dressing’ the lines with their arms.

A moment too late, John remembered Miranda, who wasn’t a Spartan cadet, and who didn’t know how to follow the commands. He glanced over his shoulder, and sure enough, Miranda was now standing in the open, unshielded by him.

The Doctor’s summer-wear boots were not heels, like the teachers at John’s old school, but he still thought he could hear them clicking loudly as she approached, cutting right through the ranks and coming to a stop right in front of Miranda.

“John,” the Doctor said slowly. “I see you made a new friend.”

“Doctor Halsey, this is Miranda Keyes,” John said, keeping his body still and gesturing only with his head towards Miranda.

He was pretty sure that he was wrong about all of this – that Miranda hadn’t been a part of the exercise… but he had no way of explaining that now.

The only way out was through. He’d have to stick to his original assumption and pray that he didn’t get in trouble for it.

“She’s Lieutenant Keyes’s daughter,” he continued. “Per the unmentioned additional objective, I’ve brought her back to safety.”

“Unmentioned… additional… objective?” the Doctor asked him, sounding each word out as if tasting them.

John opened his mouth to reply, but the Doctor raised a hand and stopped him before he could. She crouched down, squatting so that she wasn’t looming over Miranda, and held out a hand gently to her.

Though he didn’t – couldn’t – dare look away to check, John felt the heat of more than eighty sets of eyes staring at him, from all the other cadets and the trainers. He was pretty sure that the other Spartans were amused, both at the situation and at his embarrassment in particular.

“Hello, Miranda,” she said slowly. “My name is Doctor Catherine Halsey. I work with your father. It is nice to meet you.”

That was the Doctor in a nutshell – always trying to be nice, always offering out a hand in friendship and teaching.

Unexpectedly, Miranda didn’t react well to the Doctor’s words. She tensed up, and stepped to the side, ducking behind John. Her arms grabbed onto the sides of his ribcage, as if to use him as a human shield, and he felt her head press against his spine.

“There’s no need to be shy,” the Doctor coaxed gently. “We’re all friends here, aren’t we?”

“You’re weird, lady!” Miranda said loudly, poking her head out from behind John just long enough to say the words, and then retreating behind him.

Rude, John thought, offended on the Doctor’s behalf. He looked over his shoulder at Miranda, and frowned down at her. Miranda glanced up at him, and stuck out her tongue. He recoiled slightly, forehead furrowing at the expression.

Kelly chuckled from her position a few spaces down the formation, and John glanced up to see the other Spartans matching his half-confused, half-insulted feelings. Further away, some of the trainers looked angry at the situation, but he also saw at least one of them – Corporal Navarro – turning bright red and pinching his lips shut, probably to avoid laughing.

“What a… spirited young lady you are,” the Doctor replied, politely refusing to rise to Miranda’s taunt as she slowly walked around John. “Your father has been a disciplined and intelligent teacher to my cadets, and I see he has done the same with you.”

“Where is my Daddy?” Miranda demanded.

Her fingers bunched up on John’s windbreaker as she sidestepped, keeping him in between her and Halsey. The two of them were circling around him like snakes winding their way around a staff, and it was awfully distracting.

“He’s inside, preparing for the lesson that John and his fellow cadets will be attending in an hour,” the Doctor told her. “Of course, that’s assuming that they get done with their debriefing… which you are distracting them from.”

“No, you’re distracting them,” Miranda replied childishly. “I was already here, and they weren’t distracted before.”

That wasn’t true in the slightest, but John didn’t blame Miranda for not noticing the way the Spartan cadets had been cautious around her, watching her movements and avoiding their usual conversation and chatter.

“Well, perhaps it is my fault,” the Doctor conceded. “But we can’t keep distracting the cadets, can we? So why don’t I take you to your father, and the cadets can go back to their training?”

Miranda leaned around John and squinted at the Doctor for a long moment.

“Okay…” she agreed slowly. “But first, I gotta do something.”

“What?” the Doctor asked, confused.

Before the Doctor could ask what she meant, Miranda wrapped her arms around John and hugged him tightly.

“Thank you so much for helping me John!” she said, looking up at him and smiling. “I was really scared until I saw you, and I’m really glad that we’re friends now.”

John opened his mouth, and found that he didn’t have the words to reply. He wanted to ask when they’d become friends, because as far as he’d been concerned, he was being polite and doing his job – but there was no way to actually say that without being incredibly rude, so he was left there with his mouth hanging open for a long moment before he finally shut it.

“No problem,” he said after a few moments. “I’m just glad I could help.”

Miranda released him from the hug, but rather than accepting the Doctor’s patiently outstretched hand, she scampered off down the ranks of bemused Spartans, and wrapped Kurt in a hug too.

“Thank you for letting me fly with you!” she said to the brown-haired Spartan, who managed to react better than John – perhaps because he had a little more warning – and hugged her back.

“Any time,” Kurt said, not saying that it hadn’t actually been his decision to make, and that the Pelicans had already been there anyway.

The girl stepped back, then turned her head back and forth, apparently not seeing who she was looking for.

“Over here, kid!” Daisy called out, waving an arm in a flagrant display of unprofessionalism, breaking the ‘at ease’ stance as she did.

Miranda smiled and ran towards Daisy, crashing into her with an inexperienced and poorly formed tackle. The rowdy Spartan cadet laughed, picking up Miranda and spinning her around to bleed the kinetic energy off.

“Great to meet you,” Daisy said as she set Miranda back down. “Now go on, go see your pops, alright?”

“Okay!” Miranda nodded, as she turned back and skipped over to where the Doctor had been watching this all unfold with a blank, emotionless face.

“Come along now, Miranda,” the Doctor said, grabbing onto one of the six-year-old’s hands, probably to keep her from running off yet again.

“It was nice meeting all of you!” Miranda cried out, nearly walking backwards as she turned around to wave at all the Spartan cadets while the Doctor hustled her away from the landing pad.

John barely managed to restrain the urge to wave back, but a couple of the others – Daisy, Alice, and maybe Isaac – waved back.

“Cadets…” the Chief called out a few moments later, with a languid, drawling casualness that instantly made John stiffen back into the proper stance, suddenly aware of how out of place his hands and feet were. There was a rustling as the other Spartans did the same. “Would anyone like to comment on what just happened?”

It was a trap. They all knew it. The Chief wouldn’t be happy with the lack of discipline they’d just displayed, much less John’s colossal mistake of bringing a civilian back to the compound.

“Cadet 023, how about you?” the Chief said, stopping in front of Daisy. “What do you think?”

There was no way out. None of the cadets or trainers could pretend this was anything other than a failure.

But at the same time, the Chief had asked Daisy a direct question, and so she had to respond.

“Sir!” Daisy cried out, stiffening to attention. “Civilians are weird, sir!”

There was a long, pregnant pause as the Chief stared at Daisy with an inscrutable expression. The man was a brick wall. None of the Spartans had ever seen him display as much as a gram of emotion.

“…you are half right, cadet,” the Chief Petty Officer finally said. “But never forget that civilians are a group of people, and like any group, it is made up of individuals, including exceptional ones.”

“May I correct my answer, sir?” Daisy requested, still in picture-perfect stance.

The Chief eyed her, and even without a single display of his thoughts visible to the naked eye, John felt himself almost tense up.

“Proceed,” the Chief allowed.

“Miranda Keyes is weird, sir!” Daisy announced, loud and proud.

Off to the side, John saw Corporal Navarro abruptly turn around and walk away from the landing pad as fast as he could, probably so that the cadets wouldn’t see him break out into laughter. A couple of the other trainers were doing the same. Staff Sergeant Callahan had closed his eyes and seemed to be taking a long, slow breath.

The Chief briefly eyed the retreating trainers for a moment, before turning and walking back to the head of the formation without acknowledging either Daisy or the trainers, choosing to pretend like he hadn’t seen anything in the last few minutes.

Chapter Text

It was the second day of the mission, and Visha had never been happier.

Her five-man team, designated Omega Team, was herself, Grace, Leon, Robert, and August. Their target was the motor pool. Primary focus was on the fuel tank farm, the towering stacks of empty cylinders that could hold millions of gallons. Secondary would be the vehicles themselves, much more distributed and harder to destroy.

Ideally, the entire operation would be performed under stealth. A quiet insertion through the tall grass fields that ringed around the base for a kilometer in every direction, then perform their sabotage, and slip out, back to the hill where their observation post was set up.

Of course, ‘ideal’ didn’t always happen in military operations. Visha knew that from long experience, but her squadmates were learning that today. Chief Petty Officer Mendez had done his best, but he had a tendency to go for simple, one-step increments with his surprise additions to training.

As of yesterday, the base had been relatively well defended with machine guns, searchlights, and watchtowers. That hadn’t stopped Blue and Red Teams, led by John and Fred, from successfully taking out their command post and armory yesterday. The base defenders had only barely kept the satellite communications uplink intact, when Gold Team hadn’t met the deadline and had been caught in the open during the frenzy after John blew the charges.

But the men of the 105th Shock Troops Division were a little more intense than the Chief and his trainers.

They’d responded to their drubbing by intensifying their perimeter security. The walls of the base were now ringed with razor-wire. Patrols of ODST’s were roaming through the fields with loaded rifles. There were snipers in the watchtowers. Some of the vehicles were loaded up for fast response, with fireteams sitting inside the troop transport automobiles, ready to roll out.

All in all, it was a practical and effective display of reactive defensive thinking, adjusting to the tactics of the Spartan teams and ensuring those specific vulnerabilities were patched.

Which was exactly why the grown soldiers were going to lose today.

“You sure about this?” Leon whispered from a dozen meters away, his voice carried by the fiber-optic line that August had laid last night. “I mean, I get the theory, but…”

“It’s the last thing they’ll expect,” Visha replied, not bothering to lower her voice as she spoke into her helmet’s microphone. It was a little oversized, but apparently the UNSC had enough early training programs that Tanya had actually managed to scrounge up helmets that could fit their pre-teen bodies.

That was one of the reasons why Visha was so happy. Sure, it was good to get back into the field for a proper operation, and she’d been enjoying this refresher course on advanced tactics and infiltration… but it was the first time that she’d been able to do it in comfort.

UNSC issued armor was sinfully comfortable, molding to their bodies like silk, yet boasting armor plated protection far superior to the Sappenpanzer suits that some had been forced to use in Visha’s last life. Even better, the helmet had more amenities than an entire communications bunker! She had a wireless radio transmitter and receiver, auto-dimming eye protection, and even the ability to jack into fiber optic lines for truly undetectable communications.

And this was standard issue gear! What an amazing world Visha lived in. She’d been picking up the new technology of the twenty-sixth century about as fast as the other Spartan cadets, but so much of it was beyond her ability to rationalize. She simply had no context for artificial intelligences, or robotic surgeons, or faster than light travel. But when she saw something that was directly comparable to her first life, she marveled at how much more advanced it was.

Her weapon, for instance. A lightweight automatic rifle, less than eighty centimeters long, with thirty rounds in a magazine! Full sized cartridges, not the pistol-caliber rounds of the submachine guns, or the intermediate rounds that had been hypothesized in the later stages of the Great War. And this was a second-line weapon, issued to tank crews and truck drivers, because it was small enough to fit in tight spaces.

Granted, the gear that the 105th Division was using was supposedly even better. Their guns had sixty round magazines, with an integrated electronic sight. Their armor was both more durable and stealthier – though Tanya had already ranted to Visha once before about how overpriced it was for a fairly mild amount of improved protection. But unfortunately for them, the stealth properties of the black-suited, silver-helmeted men wouldn’t help them detect the Spartan cadets in their ‘inferior’ gear.

It was just so… fascinating. Visha loved her time with the new equipment, and she couldn’t wait for the trainers to start letting them use the real things with live rounds.

Alas, since the UNSC didn’t have mage orbs, and Tanya was still having some trouble with her attempts to scale up Visha’s use of electronic orbs, both the cadets and the ODSTs were using ‘training rounds’, which had much less recoil.

Still, even the training rounds were so advanced that they would actually mimic a proper bullet’s effects. No mere blanks, with painstaking effort to determine if you’d made a hit or not, and the constant annoyance of some soldiers lying about their shots. Not so with the ‘tactical training round’, which would deliver a splatter of paint to mark the hit visibly, an anesthetic to knock the target unconscious for a short period, and even an immobilizing effect on their specifically designed training armor.

There was no arguing with a TTR shot, no cheating it, and that was what made Visha’s plan possible.

She’d learned well from her time under the Major, and now, it was time to apply those lessons to the real world. The enemy’s biggest strength was also their biggest weakness: the minds and thoughts of the soldiers themselves.

The ODSTs’ decision to deploy most of their men on patrols and overwatch was a great move to prevent silent infiltration, she would happily agree to that.

But when you thought about it another way, it also meant that they’d used up most of their manpower reserve, and far too many were exposed in the open, away from the protective walls.

That wasn’t to say that the ODSTs were dumb enough to march out into a firing squad’s sights.

As far as the Spartan observation posts could determine, there were about a hundred and fifty ODSTs in total, meaning a two-to-one outnumbering ratio against them. It was a larger group than the special forces normally deployed in, but they were just as well trained in larger operations as they were in combat teams of around a dozen.

Of that hundred and fifty enemies, perhaps a third of them were outside the base’s walls. Most of them were patrolling in small fireteams of three, while the rest were manning the entrance gates. That wasn’t a lot of men to patrol such a wide field, but it was more proactive than they’d been before.

Another third were on duty inside the base, either manning the emplaced machineguns, sitting in the all-terrain trucks as a mobile reserve, or moving between the buildings. Their superior firepower and mobility was the real deterrent to the cadets, not the patrolling sentinels.

The remaining third was missing, and their current speculation was that they were inside the base itself, eating, resting, and sleeping in the barracks as a final reserve. It wouldn’t be nearly as comfortable as a proper garrison, but being able to sleep inside a climate-controlled barracks with running water was the height of luxury in Visha’s mind, especially in a field exercise!

All of this meant that if the Spartans simply tried to open fire from the safety of the hill-line, they’d be doomed to failure. The closest enemy was still half a kilometer away. While Visha was confident that Linda, Fred, and she could make a few of those shots even with the MA5K not being designed for precision work, three snipers would never win the day against an enemy company.

But that was alright, because they couldn’t have won the exercise via attrition anyway. Their orders were to neutralize specific targets within the base, and do so within a tight time window. They could start their sabotage whenever they wanted. But as soon as the Spartans were detected, they had only a half hour before the hypothetical enemy air support showed up, and every cadet outside their observation post was instantly declared to be KIA.

Which, as Visha had pointed out to the other Spartans the night before, didn’t technically rule out eliminating the entire ODST company.

It just meant that they had to be fast about it.

History played a big part in human psychology, as Lieutenant Keyes kept reminding them. Patterns of behavior became ingrained routines that were ripe for exploitation. With the UNSC’s special forces, that meant that they were used to being the aggressors against a guerilla resistance. They expected sabotage and snipers, isolated patrols being ambushed, and indirect bombardments via mortars or drones.

But those asymmetric warfare tactics were harassment, and little more. The few times that the Insurrection had managed to win up front battles like in Eridanus II, it was because they’d planted deep cover agents aboard UNSC warships months or years in advance, and used that orbital fire support to wipe out the Colonial Military Authority’s bases. There was no defensive preparation that any infantry man could have against that kind of strike.

Additionally, after yesterday’s partial success, the opposition knew that they were facing children. Gold Team was ‘out’ of the exercise, even though the enemy’s casualties had been regenerated, bringing down the cadet’s numbers. Children capable of sabotage was one thing, but sudden assaults? Out of the question. The amount of skill training they’d need, the physical conditioning, it was far beyond what a normal child could do.

So the ODSTs would never expect what the Spartans had planned for them. Not just a sabotage infiltration, not just isolated sniping, but a coordinated lightning assault to dismantle their defenses, destroy the targets, and retreat in good order before the ODSTs even realized what hit them.

In other words, the perfect situation for stormtrooper tactics.

“This is Blue Lead,” John’s voice said, coming in from hundreds of meters away through the same network of hardline fiber optics. “All team leaders, check in.”

“Red Lead, we’re ready for the rush,” Fred reported. His team of twenty cadets had snuck in the closest to the base, inching their way forwards over the hours of the early morning hours. They were the largest concentrated force, and they were maybe a hundred meters from the front gate. Given the overlapping fields of fire from the four machine guns, they’d be dead meat if they jumped up too early. If everything went as planned, their job was to handle the enemy’s numerical advantage – take out the mobile reserve, pin down everyone in the barracks, hunt down anyone hiding in a random building.

“Green Lead, in position. I got a good feeling about this,” Kurt said. He was commanding the second assault force, around fifteen in number, and they were aiming for the side entrance on the other side of the base from the main gate. It would be a tighter squeeze to get past the smaller door, and was a bigger potential chokepoint as a result, but hitting the enemy from two sides at once would allow the Spartans to maximize their enemy’s confusion.

“Gray Lead, overwatch in position,” Joshua reported. His unit was barely a dozen in number, and the only reason he was in charge was because Linda was surprisingly bad at commanding a squad while still shooting, and pretty much everyone agreed that they wanted her shooting. It would be up to them to ensure that the turrets were out of action and the enemy marksmen suppressed, and without their success, this whole operation would turn into a meatgrinder in seconds.

The other team leaders continued the roll call. The smaller a team was, the more specific its target, all the way down to John’s four-man Blue Team being assigned to eliminating the enemy CO and his staff at the base’s fallback command post. Finally, it was Visha’s turn.

“Omega Lead,” she said, smiling underneath her helmet. “Ready and waiting.”

“Alright,” John said, now that everyone had reported in. “Enemy patrols are nearly perfect. Prepare to execute in thirty seconds.”

Visha clicked off her microphone, and reached out with her mind towards her ace in the hole – the electronic watch on her wrist. It was brand-new and freshly issued, and based on previous examples, it would probably last a few weeks of infrequent use as a mage orb… but she’d never used one for long, continuous periods, and she didn’t know how it would hold up to the strain.

“Open fire!” John barked.

Visha tensed, but stayed exactly where she was, lying down underneath the cover of the grass.

A moment later, gunshots rang out behind her. Visha and her Omega Team were maybe two hundred yards away from the base, and the shots came from maybe fifty meters further back. If they’d been standing, the bullets would have struck them in the back. Gray Team was firing semi-automatic, and after less than five seconds, their fire stopped.

“MG’s down, snipers suppressed!” Joshua announced.

“Go, go, go!” John cried out.

Visha reached up and pulled out the connector to the fiber optic line, and scrambled to her feet. The nearest ODST patrol was barely ten meters away, and they were already turning around, instinctively re-orientating to face the gunfire to their north, away from Omega Team.

Time slowed down as Visha whispered in Germanian, reciting the necessary mathematical formula for a reflex enhancer. Her MA5K was already raised up.

She fired with her weapon on full auto, but controlled the trigger manually with just enough tension in finger. Her carbine spit out a burst of five or six shots at the lead man in the enemy squad, then shift to the second man and give him the same. The third followed suit. From her perspective, she could see their armor locking up in slow motion, one after the other, but she knew that to a normal person’s eyes, it would have looked nearly instantaneous.

Visha twisted, rotating her hips and taking aim at the next squad, thirty meters away on their left flank. Leon and August were already firing, since they’d been facing in the right direction to start, but she chipped in, taking out the final man in that squad. She didn’t have to look to know that Grace and Robert had done the same on their right flank.

“Charge!” Visha called out, her helmet’s communicator switched back to regular encrypted radio waves. Adrenaline filled her veins in a poor substitute for the already fading magical enhancement, and she quickly reloaded, stashing the partially depleted magazine in her combat webbing.

Red Team was already at the gates, rushing past the five immobilized ODSTs, rifles held at shoulder height as they split apart like a flower and swept out to cover all angles. There was a rattle of gunfire back at them, but the cadets dove into cover and fired back. Omega Team stacked up by the gate, ready to join in, but there was no need.

One of the large, emplaced machineguns roared to life – but it was firing inwards, not outwards. A fireteam from Red Team had peeled off as soon they’d breached the gate, ascending the nearby staircase to the wall’s emplaced positions. They’d needed several of the cadets to drag the hefty, ten kilogram GPMG and the additional weight of its tripod mount over to the other side of the wall, but it was well worth it.

The M247, unlike many of the other machineguns of the UNSC, was chambered in the same 7.62x51mm cartridge as the MA5K’s that the Spartan cadets were using, meaning that it could safely be used with TTR rounds for training. It also meant that there was no real downside to spraying fire around the base liberally, and suppressing the enemy with brutal efficiency. It was a good element of realism. Being careful with your shots for safety reasons only trained hesitation and other bad habits, when a real soldier might just mag-dump and call it good.

“Clear!” Fred announced, as Red Team resumed their storming assault on the base.

They threw stun grenades around the corners, and rather than charge after them, a flanking team went onwards from another direction. Sometimes this was around the side, sometimes they went through a building, and a couple times Visha saw her fellow cadets scrambling up and over a building to attack from above.

The essential idea behind a storm assault was speed and aggression. The objective was not to use overwhelming firepower. That would be better suited for artillery or aerial bombardment. Instead, it was to strike fast enough that your enemy was confused and disorganized. An army’s cohesion and morale were amongst the most important elements of its performance, alongside training, equipment, and logistics. Unlike the other factors, however, cohesion and morale could be altered on the battlefield.

When you attacked without warning, and moved fast enough to give your opponent no time to rally or organize, they would be stuck in a panicked state, without a clear chain of command to give orders, or the intelligence to devise a counter-attack. It was a doctrine that the Major had heartily endorsed and demonstrated with the 203rd on numerous occasions, and Visha was determined to live up to her standards.

There were easily a dozen ODSTs laying on the ground as Omega Team followed her into the base. She hung a left immediately, darting into the small alleyway between the base walls and the nearest building.

Something had bothered her about the incapacitated men. It niggled away like a skin tag. There was something… wrong about them.

It took a moment, and then it clicked. The TTR rounds had locked up the downed men’s limbs in whatever position they’d been in. Real corpses didn’t look like that – they had no muscle control, and they were limp and floppy.

Visha shrugged as she braced herself at the edge of the alleyway. You couldn’t simulate everything perfectly, not even with the UNSC’s technology.

Omega Team swept out from the alleyway, carbines raised, and advanced to the motor pool in a star formation, one cadet covering roughly seventy degrees of their arc. It wasn’t a long way to the motor pool, but enemies could appear from anywhere. They had to make it quickly, before their window of opportunity ran out.

All around her, Spartan teams raced through their missions. Red Team was bombarding the barracks with stun grenades and shooting at anything that so much as twitched, while Blue, Gray, Black, and Yellow Teams were breaking into buildings and hosing down their targets.

Yet of all the cadets, it was her Omega Team that was the most important.

They had half an hour before they had to be safely back in their observation posts, or they would automatically fail. That meant crossing a kilometer of grass and a kilometer of hillside. They could do that in ten minutes at the most, and in theory, twenty minutes was enough time to fulfill all their objectives and bug out on foot.

But that was cutting it close. It assumed that no ODSTs survived to chase them back to their observation posts, and identify them – another instant fail condition. It assumed that they didn’t have casualties that they’d have to carry, slowing them down. It assumed that they were all fresh and ready to run, instead of tired after twenty minutes of fighting.

They couldn’t win under those conditions. It was impossible.

So the night before, when Visha had proposed her assault plan, she had changed those conditions.

What if they didn’t have to run all the way back to the observation posts? What if they didn’t have to carry any casualties? What if it didn’t matter if they were rested or tired?

The ODST base had a motor pool that they were supposed to destroy, but technically, their objective was only to destroy the fuel tanks and the garages. There was nothing in there about the trucks themselves, and whether or not they could be reappropriated.

It helped that destroying the motor pool was one of the tertiary objectives on their mission briefing. Of the primary objectives, they still needed to take out the satellite uplink. Of the secondary, decapitating the enemy’s chain of command and recovering a data drive from the ‘server room’. The tertiary objectives weren’t even required for to succeed in the mission at all; they were optional objectives that would help, but little more.

The cadets didn’t know if the ODSTs were aware of their objective list, but cheating on exercises was a well-established tradition. After the debacle with Gold Team yesterday, Visha suspected that the enemy knew exactly what the Spartans were aiming for. Their rapid response team had moved so quickly to the exact target – they must have known.

Which was just another reason why the blitz assault had taken them off guard. There was no winning via attrition, so why would the cadets risk a pitched battle, with the inevitable danger of higher casualties, slowing them down too much to get back to base?

The answer was obvious to the cadets: because the enemy wouldn’t see it coming, and because the cadets had another way of getting their casualties home.

“All clear,” Visha reported, as her team slipped into the large pre-fabricated garage through a back door. “Robert, Leon, check the Warthogs. Make sure they’re ready to go.”

The gunfire outside the garage was loud, and nearly un-ending. Thankfully, the bay door was shut, hiding Omega Team from the running firefight outside, as elements of Red Team battled it out with the 105th’s mobile reserve. It seemed like the detachment had dragged a couple of the GPMG’s with them, because it sounded like a buzzsaw was roaring.

The troopers had been already loaded up into their trucks, ready to ride out to repel a push – but with the Spartans already inside the base, they had to dismount to engage, and they were still highly clustered in the wide open parking lot. Sitting ducks.

Grace knelt down by the side-door and started unloading the demolition charges. They were dummies made of harmless putty, so that nobody could improvise a detonator or accidentally ignite one with static electricity. August, meanwhile, was peeking out through a narrow slit in the bay door, on the lookout for any ODSTs.

“Barracks is down,” Fred reported over the radio. “Jorge, how’s the carpool?”

“Almost finished,” the Reach native said, grunting over the line. “Just one more… got him!”

The gunfire outside died down.

“Go, go!” August urged the others.

“Omega Team coming out,” Visha announced over the radio. “Jorge, stay on overwatch while we set the charges.”

“Copy that,” Jorge replied.

Grace and Leon picked up a pair of charges each and slipped them into their thigh-mounted pouches. Once they were ready, Visha launched herself out of the side-door, MA5K at the ready, and charged towards the towering fuel tanks at the other end of the carpool.

A half-dozen troop carriers occupied the parking lot, and they were nearly unrecognizable underneath all the bright red from the TTR rounds. There was also a lot of frozen bodies on the pavement. Almost every one of the 105th’s men had managed to dismount and take cover behind their vehicles, but they hadn’t lasted long.

Visha glanced up at the looming wall in the distance, and saw the bright blue identification pip of Jorge right next to the protruding barrel of one of the M247’s. It was his cadet number, 052, the same as hers was 016. Another amazing piece of technology, overlaying a friend-or-foe tag over every ally without fail or delay.

They reached the fuel tanks, the long cylinders that reached nearly two stories up into the air. It was only a matter of moments for Grace to ‘activate’ the charges with the fake detonators, and stick them an arms-length into the crevices between the silos. That way, one charge would destroy both fuel tanks – though that didn’t stop them from doubling up, ensuring that each tank was bracketed by charges on both sides.

“Omega Lead, job’s done,” Visha said into the radio. “Prepping our exit strategy now.”

The detached element of Red Team was descending from the wall as Omega Team rushed back to the garage. Jorge was still carrying that GPMG, though he’d enlisted one of his fellow cadets to help him, and two more to carry the ammo. The rest of his squad slipped through the throngs of parked vehicles, grabbing up the weapons of the ‘dead’ men and tossing them up into the cargo beds of the trucks.

Over the next few minutes, Visha and her team made sure that all the vehicles would start, and ensured that a dozen of them were ready to drive. Mostly, this meant adjusting both the seats and the pedals to be much, much closer together. It would still be awkward, with none of the drivers having any actual back support, but it would be possible to actually drive the Warthogs.

The rest were quickly crammed into the garage, and a couple spare dummy charges were placed right in front of them. Leon had found a handy spray can of bright orange safety paint, and drew a couple arrows to the charges, so that any ODSTs would understand the message – these trucks were out of commission.

Cadets streamed into the carpool in fireteams of three or more, and soon enough, they had everyone there.

The operation had not been without casualties. Five cadets were completely unconscious or locked up through hits to their heads or chest, and another ten were walking wounded, with one limb or more unusable. The ‘dead’ were loaded into the back of the trucks and secured as much as possible, so they wouldn’t get jostled too much, or risk falling out.

Twenty percent casualties. By the standards of the Great War, those were amazingly low casualty numbers. By the standards of the 203rd, they were horrendous. It was only the knowledge that this was training that kept Visha from fearing the Major’s response to their lackluster performance, though she still shivered a little out of ingrained instinct.

Visha checked her watch, then remembered that was a mistake. Though she hadn’t used her acceleration spell much, the watch’s timer was off, like a gear had slipped. Visha knew it ran on ‘chips’ instead, even if she didn’t fully understand the electrical circuitry that Tanya had tried to instruct her on.

Her HUD was still trustworthy, and said that it had been about eleven minutes. They had nineteen minutes left before they had to safely back in their individual observation posts, crammed inside like sardines, or they would be eliminated.

It seemed a little unfair that they could decisively stomp a base into the ground, achieve all objectives, and still lose if they weren’t back in their own fortifications by the appointed hour. But she wasn’t in the 203rd anymore, where their mere reputation had been enough to scare away a lot of enemy reinforcements.

And, if she was honest, the Major would have never allowed them to linger long enough for those reinforcements to regain their nerve, or gather in enough strength to overcome their fears. Getting out as soon as the mission was accomplished was extra effort, but it was also a safeguard, avoiding the extra risk that lingering would have provided.

“Got the package?” John asked Will, who nodded and held up a data drive, before tucking it back into his vest pocket. “Good.”

“Load up!” Kelly cried out, climbing up the nearest truck and putting herself in the passenger seat. “Let’s blow this popsicle stand!”

“What does that even mean?” Visha muttered, as she mounted the side-steps and pulled herself bodily into the driver’s seat.

She didn’t say it over the radio, however. There was no point, for there was so much new ‘slang’ that she didn’t know. Fifty different homeworlds had meshed together in a strange stew of terms, and Visha was not the only one of the Spartan cadets to be befuddled by another. She could ask Kelly later, when they weren’t on a mission.

The engines came to life with throaty roars. They were smoother and deeper than even the best airplane engines that Visha had seen during the Great War. They sounded almost like the purring of big cats from the holovids that Déjà showed them.

Grace climbed into the passenger seat, and the rest of Omega Team loaded up in the back, while Visha reminded herself of the controls. There was no clutch, no gear shifter, because it was all an ‘automatic’ that handled those things for the driver. Just another thing that seemed so wild to Visha.

Naomi hit the gate’s control pad and sent the enormous metal plate sliding to the side, revealing the open grassland in front of them.

The convoy of Warthogs rolled out, huge wheels churning through dirt and grass as the teams immediately started splitting apart. None of them were headed directly to their own observation posts, of course. There could be trackers in the vehicles, or surviving ODSTs that saw them, or the enemy air support could spot their thermal signatures.

Instead, they would drop off most of their fellow cadets at the edge of the treeline near the top of the hills, far enough from their true fallback positions to conceal them. Then the drivers would kick the cars into neutral and let them coast back down the hill, while the Spartans lugged their loot back out to their homes.

Visha suspected that the Doctor and the ODST commander would agree to call the exercise here. The joint training sessions were supposed to last an entire week, but in her opinion, there was no more value to be gained in this direct contest. The Spartans had sufficiently demonstrated their own skills, which would force the adults to take them seriously and treat them seriously.

Logically speaking, the next few days would likely be spent in workshops, with the ODSTs directly teaching the cadets alongside Chief Mendez’s trainers. She was looking forward to it. The past few years of training hadn’t really taught her any new skills. Unlike every other cadet, she’d been mostly focused on the more boring classroom lessons.

But now, Visha would be learning about the more advanced weapons and technologies that the UNSC had at its disposal. She was certain that once the cadets gave a debriefing to the veteran special forces soldiers, they could point out ways that it could have been faster, deadlier, more effective. The 105th Shock Troops Division had actually been out there, on the line, and those kinds of men were the most important resource that could be given to a training detachment.

Those skills would be incredibly valuable, not just for the fact that they were brand-new to Visha, but also because the Insurrection would know of them, with so many ex-UNSC defectors in their own ranks. Those tactics, tricks, and techniques would be the exact kind of thing that would be used against Visha, and therefore, she needed to know them innately.

Especially since Visha knew something that almost nobody else did, which made those skills even more valuable.

The Spartan-II program was going to be shut down.

Many of the cadets would probably be going back to their families, or choosing civilian lives, but Visha knew that would not happen to her. Magic was her great strength, and it couldn’t be turned so easily to a civilian life. Yes, magical healers had been commonplace in the Empire, but Visha had never learned those skills, had never been anything more than a soldier.

It had been hard, keeping that knowledge in the back of her head. It had been more than two years since she’d first been approached by one of the trainers, just before she’d met Tanya von Degurechaff in this second life. The double-agent had made contact a couple times since then, just to remind Visha of her agreement to turn ‘state’s evidence’ against the program.

Frankly, the worst part was keeping it secret from Tanya. But she had to.

Tanya despised the politicking of ONI, as she had told Visha several times in their rare private meetings. Her old CO wanted nothing more than to devote her life to studying Shaw-Fujikawa drives, to refining the creation of Artificial Intelligences, and to potentially discovering a true FTL communication method.

Tanya  had lamented, so often, that Visha’s life was a hostage to ensure her cooperation with the program.

But if the program was shut down, then Visha’s life was not at risk from the augmentation process. None of the cadets would have to risk their deaths.

The problem was that Tanya was a horrible actor. She’d always been so open to Visha, and Visha wasn’t the most observant of people! She had nothing on the trained spies and the A.I.’s of ONI. If Tanya knew, then those people might spot that she was faking, trying to stall things out, trying to get the program cancelled.

And that was intolerable, because if Tanya was caught malingering, then she might be punished, and that was something that Visha would not accept. For Tanya’s own safety, she had to appear to be perfectly loyal, perfectly obedient to ONI’s wishes. Which meant keeping Tanya in the dark.

Visha wasn’t proud of it. She knew that the looming dread of the augmentations was still eating away at Tanya, even if the odds had gotten much better over the years.

But she knew that there was a safety valve, a stop-cord on the train, that she could use to preserve the lives of everyone in the program, including Tanya’s.

Magecraft.

Visha couldn’t trust the double-agent to keep Tanya safe. That man, and whatever cabal he represented, clearly wanted Tanya in trouble, potentially even dead. Similarly, she couldn’t trust the truth – that the entire Spartan-II program had originally been a drunken joke on behalf of Tanya, and the Doctors Meyer, Wu, and Sullivan. She doubted that ONI would be any more accepting of the egg on their face than high command would have been back in Germania.

But ONI wanted super-soldiers, and Visha and Tanya could give them to ONI. Not via surgical augmentations, but through magic. Soldiers that had all the enhanced reactions, strength, and training that the original paper had envisioned. Even the more science fiction elements, like the hypothesized energy shielding, could be performed practically with an orb’s defensive shell.

Yet… even if Tanya could have been trusted to keep acting like she was a woman obsessed with ensuring the success of the Spartan-II program, Visha still would not have told her. She’d known her commanding officer for many years in their shared last life, and a few more in this life, and she knew Tanya’s weakness – her eternal optimism.

Tanya believed, erroneously, that the rebellions in the Colonies could be subdued peacefully through methods of communication and cultural exchange, through bonds of brotherhood and friendship.

And Tanya was wrong.

Visha did not remember most of her childhood. Her true childhood, not her second life as Victoria Pelham. She had only the memories of fleeing the Empire of the Rus during the revolution. She didn’t like to talk about it, and whenever the topic had come up and she was unable to dodge it, she told people that she had forgotten most of her memories, and only recalled the desperate journey to escape the communists.

It was true, she didn’t remember anything before that. But just those memories were more than enough.

She had seen with her own eyes fathers fighting sons, brothers fighting brothers. The violence in the streets, the gunshots and the yells. The bodies left out overnight, the snow stained red. It had been early days for the coming civil war, but in the end there had been so many dead that it was comparable to the Great War. It was especially similar in those early days – she’d seen the same thing twice. The optimism, the belief that the killings would stop if only one side or the other was victorious… only to grind on, and on.

She remembered the fear. Not just of armed men with guns, but the lack of trust that had swept the nation like a plague of unbelief in their fellow man. Her parents hadn’t dared go to any distant relatives, not knowing if those relatives were already dead, or if they were revolutionaries that would kill them, or if they were neither, but were still scared enough to turn them in, just to preserve their own lives.

The few meals they’d shared with other travelers had been silent things, even with cousins, because you couldn’t trust a single person. Anyone might report you to the mob, and no one was innocent of suspicion.

That was what the UNSC was truly facing. Not just terrorist bombings, not just targeted assassinations, or uprisings. The Insurrection was a contagion, a virus that was spreading throughout the Colonies. Even people without any loyalty to either side would soon come to be silent bystanders, refusing to help their fellow man, hoping to ride out the chaos without being forced to choose a side.

One of the clearest memories of those days was her parents talking as they’d ridden a horse through a winding forest trail in the dim dusky light as the sun was setting. They’d spoken softly, perhaps thinking that Visha wouldn’t be able to hear them in her sleep.

Visha had been on the back of the horse, nestled just above its hindquarters with their meager supplies of food and clothes, and she hadn’t been able to sleep with all the jostling. She had heard every word.

Her mother, always so kind-hearted, had asked if it was possible for this revolution to end peacefully. If there was a compromise between the sweeping radicalism and the stodgy aristocracy of the Czar. A reform, a shift.

Albion had done it, after all – they’d gone from an absolute monarchy to a constitutional one, with the monarch being little more than a figurehead.

Her father said there was no compromise possible. His voice had been hard. He’d said more bloodshed was inevitable. They would not be stopped by compromise. They would only take it as a sign of weakness, an indication of their power. He’d reminded her mother of the reforms to the Duma in the years prior. The oppressive chains of the Czar had been curtailed, the people’s rights had been strengthen. There were even land reforms!

But that hadn’t satisfied the intelligentsia. They didn’t want reform. They wanted revolution. Anything less than that was a betrayal of their ideal, and anyone who didn’t agree was nothing but a Czarist puppet in their eyes. They had pushed for more, and more, and they would do the same if their revolution succeeded. They wouldn’t stop until they had slowly choked the Russy people to death.

The only real option, her father had told her mother in a grim and hopeless voice, the best possible path for their countrymen, was to kill every single revolutionary.

Only then would there be peace.

Chapter Text

Lieutenant Antonio Silva had some real complicated feeling about this mission.

At first, it had seemed like an easy rotation. His unit, the 7th Shock Troops Battalion within the 105th Shock Troops Division, had just been rotated back from a deployment in the Outer Colonies after two years of managing brushfires. It had been a bitch of a time, constantly being called up and stood down, and even the occasional firefights had been even more hectic, because of all the civilian hostages or bystanders.

Reach was a welcome home-port for an ODST. Cool, brisk air, nearly an entire continent for the UNSC’s exclusive use, and vastly lower chance of Innie or civvie complications.

But apparently, ONI had decided to give them a new headache.

His company had been pulled out of the unit and sent off to Alföld, halfway down the continent. They were to play opposition force in a field exercise for some ONI project that was working up.

On one hand, the young Silva was more than happy to be further south, near Bars, Esztergom, Manassas, and Quezon. The four cities of Alföld were some of the largest and liveliest on Reach. Compared to New Alexandria, none of them were quite as big, but combined, they more than made up for it. The sports, the night life, the beaches… once this training mission was over, he’d be able to get some leave, and go party.

On the other hand, that was before the training mission had started. Before his company had been dropped onto a prefab base, told to defend it, and given almost no other information. Just… defend the primary targets, here’s a list of secondary and tertiary targets. Not the weirdest mission brief, and the Captain had gotten more info, so Silva had trusted that ONI vaguely knew what they were doing.

And then, on the first day, they’d suffered an infiltration that ‘blew up’ the command post (thankfully while only a single LT was inside), as well as the armory, and nearly taken out their satellite uplink. They’d nearly lost the planned five-day exercise in just six hours.

But it was worse when they’d captured the perpetrators on their third target.

Kids. Their opponents were kids.

None of them had spoken when they’d been interrogated. Sure, nobody in the company had dared to do anything more than ask them questions in a harsh tone, because of how goddamn bizarre the situation was, but the kids hadn’t said anything. Not even the old standby of name, rank, and serial number. They’d been silent as the grave.

The best they could figure, the five brats were nine years old. One of the team leaders had a niece about that age, and it was freaking him out to see children the same age running around in Marine combat gear and shooting MA5’s at them.

It was messing with the men, and that was damn hard to do. They weren’t fresh Marines out of Boot. Silva himself was one of the youngest in the unit, and he’d earned that after graduating OCS at eighteen, and putting six hard years in the Marines before he’d been offered the chance to join the Helljumpers. Fourteen combat teams of the best killers in the Marine Corps, and they were hesitating.

Fuck, it wasn’t even the first time some of these guys had fought child soldiers. Sergeant Mahoney in the third team had a couple real horrifying stories about an Innie compound out on Etalan, and he’d said that having to take out kids was the worst damn part.

But those kids had been Innies. They were brainwashed by whatever sub-flavor of crazy separatist bullshit their parents had fed them in that horse-camp a thousand miles from civilization, cooking up chemical weapons. Products of a diseased people that insisted their cause was more important than not just their lives, or their kids’ lives, but the lives of everyone and anyone that might inhale the gas from their WMDs.

To learn that the UNSC was doing something similar was…

Silva didn’t have the words. He didn’t want to go party in the four cities anymore. He wanted to find the nearest bar and go drink himself into a stupor. He wanted to drink until he couldn’t remember anything, for any reason, at any damn time.

But then the kids had come back and kicked their asses on the second day, and the entire exercise had to be jettisoned.

Now he was stuck in a debriefing room, along with the entire rest of the company, and they were listening to Chief Petty Officer Mendez, a Navy puke that one of the older non-coms recognized. He was telling them the cover story, which was so blatantly bullshit that everyone could tell.

According to Mendez, the kids were trainees in an advanced training course for high-performing relatives of UNSC veterans. They were all twelve years old, in their first few months of training. Supposedly, they were aiming for early admission to OCS at fourteen.

Not a single one of the ODSTs was buying it. Hell, Mendez himself wasn’t buying it. The man’s voice was flat, and he was giving them all the look that every drill instructor had mastered. That yes, he knew it was bullshit too, but they were being told to shut up and swallow it, because this was the official story, and nothing else could be allowed.

The only part that made sense to any of them was that now, after all that bullshit, the 7th Shock Troops Battalion was supposed to teach the kids. The next three days would be joint exercises between the ODSTs, the Navy trainers, and the cadets. They would be focusing on stealth reconnaissance, counter-stealth security, simulated sabotage and demolitions, and C3 – command, control, and communications.

Frankly, that was what reeled Lieutenant Silva, UNSC Marine Corps, back to reality.

Of course the Navy had seen something shiny, and gotten too bogged down in a crazy plan. Of course they realized, eventually, that they couldn’t pull it off on their own.

And of course, eventually, they had realized that they needed the Marines to bail them out of their mess.

After the first day of training, Silva had to admit that the kids knew their stuff.

Maybe he should have been willing to admit that after the field exercise, but luck played a part in those things, and you never really knew if your enemy had done everything right, or if you’d made some mistake that let them get away with a dumb strategy.

That had made his opening ‘lesson’ very easy.

Silva, per his rank and authority over a third of the company, had been in charge of about a third of the cadets. So he’d dragged the even mix of twenty-five cadets, twenty-five Navy trainers, and twenty-five ODST’s, to a nearby field. Then he’d had them explain their reasoning and logic behind the suicidal assault they’d somehow pulled off yesterday.

Had it truly been a good plan, or had they just been dumb enough to think that they could charge and their enemies would fall over dead, and gotten lucky? He thought it was probably luck, but the more he asked, the more he realized that it wasn’t.

The mastermind, a cadet named Visha, was with one of the other groups, but a snot-nosed brat named Jerome had explained the plan well enough to satisfy Silva. Their entire plan had hinged on the ODSTs being off-balance and unexpecting, both because they were kids, and because the UNSC didn’t really play defense that much.

More specifically, Jerome explained, Silva’s company had too limited numbers to properly patrol the entire field, and they’d stuck to repetitive patrol patterns – which the cadets had tracked and charted. Sneaking within those patrols only took time and patience. They’d already scouted out the base and made maps on the first day of the exercise. They’d laid fiber-optics the night before to ensure undetectable communications until the moment that they launched the operation.

They’d planned out exactly where each team would be at the start time, down to the square meter, and approached slowly enough to stay concealed under their sensor-blocking camouflage sheets. Once the cadets were in close, they had snipers take out the machineguns, and then blitzed through the gate.

Silva took turns asking the cadets questions, swapping between himself and his senior NCO’s. They drilled the cadets on why they’d made each decision, what their timetable was, why they’d chosen specific targets, and more. They picked cadets at random to defend those decisions, and it quickly became clear that while not all of the cadets had the same degree of understanding of the entire plan, they were all very well-versed in their own assigned roles.

After the debriefing, Silva had decided to start the training sessions. He needed to see exactly how much of this was bluffing, and how much of it was actual truth.

But the cadets weren’t bluffing. Hell, the cadets weren’t nearly as inexperienced as Mendez had claimed. Silva had known he was just feeding them the cover story, but ‘only a few months experience’ had felt like the most plausible of those lies.

These kids only had the basics of stealth recon down, but they’d clearly been working on those basics for years. They made none of the rookie mistakes that the average ranger school trainee did. It didn’t matter that they didn’t have the more advanced techniques, not when the basic stuff was just as important now as it had been five hundred years ago.

The Navy trainers were hiding their pride well, but Silva still saw signs. The way the trainers looked over the cadets, the set of their shoulders, like they were parents at a soccer game. Eyes lingering on favored cadets, small nods exchanged, and plenty of thinly disguised knowing looks.

Cocky bastards. But maybe, just maybe, they had something to be cocky about. There’s a few Marines among them, but most of the trainers were Navy special forces, and they’ve still managed to train these kids to a pretty good standard. If it weren’t for their ages, the kids would be good recruits for the Helljumpers. Give them a few more years, and they’d be real monsters.

Well, Silva reflected, as he stood back and watched a Sergeant explain a better way to hide from thermal optics to a pair of bright-eyed kids in drab jumpsuits… maybe it wasn’t the worst thing that the 105th had been brought in to help with this situation.

Eventually, these kids would be involved in special forces work. There was no way that ONI would invest this much time, money, and favors into training up a bunch of grunt infantry. When that day came, it was better that they’d been trained by the best, not just so that the adorable little munchkins would have a better chance of surviving, but so that the UNSC wouldn’t lose more ground to the Innies.

It was entirely possible that was why the Navy had been willing to bring in the Marines on this in the first place – to ensure that the greater good of the UNSC would benefit. He could even see the logic behind it. The tip of the spear got the most use, and became blunt faster than any other part. Add in that everyone was uncomfortably aware of what that bastard Watts had done, and there was a plausible reason for training up child-soldiers that could be… convinced to be loyal above all else.

What the Navy might not have thought about, however, was that introducing the kids to the ODSTs was a good idea for more than just that reason. Administrators and pencil-pushers loved to think that military units were interchangeable, that people were nothing more than bricks in a wall, but esprit de corps was a real issue.

There was no telling how people would react if a group of highly skilled operators emerged from out of nowhere, pulling ops from other units and shoving them out of the way. Jealousy, envy, all sorts of ‘communication issues’ could come up.

There could be a real risk of friendly fire accidents, both for legitimate reasons and… not.

None of that changed how disturbing Silva found this whole situation. How it would be best if it had never happened.

Skills, mindset, tactics… the kids had it all, but it didn’t change the fact that they were kids.

They could pull off a hundred operations and take out every single Insurrectionist in the Inner and Outer Colonies, and it would all be worthless the moment someone found out that the UNSC had resorted to using child-soldiers. It would be a legitimization of the bullshit lies that the Innies loved to spew. It would drive millions of people into their arms, give them actual industry to produce their own warships and weapons, rather than just stealing USNC ones.

In short, ONI was trying to scratch an itch with a loaded shotgun. They might be able to pull it off, but why even take the risk? What could possibly worth the potential downsides? Why not just keep using ODST’s like him, or Navy spec ops like Mendez, or hell, even the damn Army or the Air Force if they were getting desperate?

Silva found himself getting so angry that he needed to step away from the group. He told his senior NCO to handle the next lesson, how to properly use thermal optics to spot someone trying to hide, and walked off, through the trees, and down the hillside a little. He walked for about a minute, just far enough to be out of earshot.

In the distance, he could see the base that they’d used for the exercise. There was another group of cadets in the grass, being followed by another platoon of ODSTs. It looked like they were talking about the insertion yesterday.

One of his fellow Helljumpers was gesturing as he dropped down into a prone position, then jumped back up.  Probably something about how jumping up had been a bad decision because it delayed their attack by a few critical seconds, when they could have shot through the grass right at the ODSTs.

The kids were nodding along. A couple of them had raised hands, and there was clearly a productive training session going on.

Silva bit his lip.

That was one of the worst damn parts of all of this. The cadets were good kids.

Yeah, they had all the right stuff to be good operators, but more importantly, they were nice. They were friendly. They didn’t take offense to rude language, they listened well, they had suggestions. If this had been some other kind of career, the kids likely would have done just as well at it.

Hell, they were better than him, and his ODSTs, in one way – they didn’t have any of the ingrained rivalry. Despite being trained by the Navy, they didn’t care that they were learning from Marines. There wasn’t any inbuilt prejudice, any of the good-natured teasing or the darker, more mean-spirited sneers.

Silva didn’t want to like the cadets, but he was starting to. All his anger was at the situation, the program around them, and not the kids themselves. The kids were amazing.

And that’s why it was a problem that he liked them – that he was getting attached to them.

Attachment was dangerous. Attachment to kids living in a fucked up situation like this was even worse. Silva knew that these kids would be on his mind for the next couple years, at least, and it would be a distraction that could slow him down at the wrong moment. It would be a source of tension between him and the higher ups. It was a potential reason to question his previously unquestionable loyalty to the UNSC as a whole.

That was the real nightmare, and that was why these kids were so damn dangerous. Lieutenant Antonio Silva was UNSC to the core. His family had been Marines since the Interplanetary War, three hundred years before – and even he was thinking twice about that loyalty right now, just because of these kids.

Silva sighed, and fought to urge to grab a cigar. He was still on the clock, and there were kids nearby, so he couldn’t just relax with a smoke, even if he’d had the time to properly appreciate a good Sweet Williams.

That’s what he could focus on, he begrudgingly decided. The cadets.

Damn ONI, and damn the UNSC if need be, but the cadets didn’t deserve to suffer under all that tension. Let them think they were going to be the best damn shooters in the whole galaxy. Even if Silva rejected the notion that they’d be better than his Helljumpers.

He was just a Lieutenant. Not a Captain, or a Colonel, or god forbid, a General. He had pretty much zero pull with the higher ups. He couldn’t do anything to change this situation, not without something completely insane like trying to go public with it – and that would just blow it all up early, giving the Innies the biggest gift they’d ever received, and screwing over those kids in the process.

So, what could he do to actually help? In this quagmire of shit, what would be the best path to take? What action could he do, and still feel clean at the end of it?

He stood there, the wind whipping at his unhelmeted face, and thought about what their lives would be like. Bullets and bombs didn’t care about moral quandaries. Lieutenant Silva could picture it. He could see a grown-ass man in UNSC armor, riddled with holes and bleeding out, with a childish face like Isaac, or Joshua. His stomach clenched at the mental image.

No, he decided. That wouldn’t happen. He would make sure that didn’t happen.

For starters, he could train the damn kids. Not because ONI wanted him to train them, but because Silva himself wanted to. The better trained those kids were, the less likely that he’d ever have to live with their deaths on his conscience. The better chance that they’d all be able to come home. It wasn’t much, but it was the most that he could do for them, with how little power he had.

Silva tightened his fist, nodded once, and started walking back to his training group.

He’d make damn sure they’d be ready. Not just ready for the next couple days of joint training and low-level exercises, but for the lifestyle that they were in for, once they hit their adult years.

He stomped through the trees back to where his ODST’s, the Navy’s trainers, and the cadets were. They were standing around an improvised hide – one of the cadet’s observation posts, which wasn’t half bad, but definitely could have been improved.

It was the least he could do, as a big brother to them.

That’s right, Silva reflected, as he rejoined the group.

Compared to the 105th, these kids weren’t just physically young – they had no unit legend, no stories from previous veterans, no accumulated knowledge to draw on. Just the individual experiences of their trainers, which were probably useful, but it wasn’t the same as having a proper legacy and history behind your unit. To have predecessors that you were pressured to live up to, standards based on real people so that you’d know it was possible to achieve those heights.

If these cadets didn’t have anything like that, then the 105th Shock Troops Division would be happy to step up and take the job. They could tell them about unclassified ops, pass on the tales of retired or dead comrades, share the stories that should help them survive the shitshows.

And unlike the other stuff, he didn’t need any ‘pull’ to do this. He just had to convince his men, and the other officers, that this was worth doing. That this was important.

Silva glanced over at one of his Sergeants, who was kneeling down to help one of cadets with their optic. The bulky visor didn’t quite fit right on her smaller helmet, and the Sergeant was having a hard time keeping a grin from overcoming his professional reserve as he tried to adjust it.

Yeah, Antonio Silva thought to himself, holding in a snicker. That shouldn’t be too hard. We’ve barely known these brats for an hour, and they’re already wrapping us around their fingers.

The next couple days went by quickly for Silva.

He taught as fast as he could, teaching lessons to the squad leaders amongst the cadets: John, Kurt, Jerome, Frederic, Joshua, Visha, and more. How to utilize the optics that supplemented the Mark One Eyeball, how to incorporate their squad’s intel for a larger picture. How to recognize the signs of a situation that was going bad, and how to react to it before it truly hit the fan.

Now, on the final day of the joint training sessions, it was time to test all those lessons. The cadets had been split into fifteen teams of five total, each one aided by a five-man squad of ODST’s. Some would be led by cadets, some by ODSTs. Mendez himself was taking command of one team, as was the ODST company’s Captain.

They were running the assault course that the Navy trainers had been setting up under an old Marine: Gunny Wentworth, who used to be in the 65th Shock Troops Division. One of his oldest men, a near thirty-year veteran that was only still in the game thanks to UNSC medical advances, had nearly broken down when he’d seen Wentworth, and the two had promised to meet back up later at the Highland Complex’s bar after exchanging a long overdue hug.

The task was simple. A raid on a mock building. The ‘enemy’ was pop-out targets with gun turrets, each one calibrated to simulate a human’s reaction times. Everyone would run the course once, and then it would be modified for the next run. Maybe they’d be doing target elimination. Maybe they’d be doing hostage rescue. Maybe a bomb defusal.

Each team’s times would be recorded, and compiled. There were bragging rights on the line. The kids were being promised something special for dessert if they won, and the ODSTs were quietly placing bets on their own performance – and, with begrudging pretensions of gruff disinterest, on the performance of their favorite cadets.

Silva’s team was a real mixed bag of hellions. Daisy, Li, Randall, Sheila, and Alice. Three girls and two boys, and every single one of them was itching to prove themselves better than the rest. Silva hadn’t needed three days to figure that out, just three minutes.

Toss in five of the most ice-cold ODSTs in the company, and the Captain’s challenge to Silva was obvious. Keep the kids corralled, and channel their aggression into usefulness. The ODSTs were there for Silva to use however he saw fit – examples, disciplinarians, or partners in crime.

The obvious tactic would be to pair up one cadet with each ODST, and put the adult in charge. That way, somebody with a good head on their shoulders would make all the calls, and decide how fast things went.

But that wasn’t what Silva did.

“Alright, pair off,” he said, jerking his head at them. “One cadet, one Marine. Cadets will take point, so we can shoot right over your heads, and be twice as effective.”

Daisy stuck out her tongue at him, and Silva ignored it. Aggression wasn’t bad for a soldier. It just had to be tempered and channeled. Crushing it was out of the question. You’d either piss off the solder so much that they’d lash out, or you’d kill that aggression entirely, and lose out on the edge that it granted.

Best to let the kids go first. Either they’d live up to their egos, and prove that Silva was wrong to think about curbing them in the first place, or they’d have a crack driven in their armor that Silva could exploit. It was much easier to handle the arrogant trainees after they’d been taken down a peg.

After all, he didn’t care if his team came in first in the rankings. Not for the first run, anyway. He cared that they came home at the end of their deployment. If that meant they took a loss here, and remembered it for the rest of their training, then so be it.

After they learned that lesson... then they could aim for first place.

Silva ran through the course with the team. It was a three story house located inside a large warehouse, with plenty of lighting, cameras, and gantries for the other teams to watch from, though only after they’d gone through their own runs. Estimated twenty hostiles inside, with overwatch assumed so that nobody had to care about covering the exits.

For training purposes, and because TTR rounds couldn’t penetrate a sheet of balsa, the entire house was assumed to be located in a high density housing zone, had been reinforced by the Innies with armor plating, and had a secure ‘escape route’ in the basement. That way, the Air Force couldn’t blow it up with from ten thousand meters without risking the Innies escaping, and the Army couldn’t spray machinegun fire inside until they were confident everyone was a sloppy joe.

Which meant some poor bastards had to breach, sweep, and clear. The eternal bitch of being the infantry – doing the simple jobs that were still the most painful.

Daisy took point, the blonde-haired girl grinning in excitement or tension as she stacked up next to the door. She’d elected to ‘ask’ her escort, Staff Sergeant Carmichael, to kick the door in for her, and follow her in. A bold entrance, and one that might earn her a shot to the dome as soon as she did, but Silva was inclined to let her test it out.

The rest of the improvised squad would follow in behind her, with Li and Corporal Hardy taking the first side-door they came across, Randall and Sergeant Pocock taking the second, and the rest of the squad securing the interior stairs to the second floor. Silva wasn’t dumb enough to split his squad more than he had to, though. They’d clear the first floor, then move up as a unit and clear the second, then the third.

Sure enough, right after Carmichael mule-kicked the door and spun to the side, a flurry of TTR rounds zipped right through the open door at chest height. They barely missed Daisy, who’d been crouching, and only stuck her head and her carbine through the lower left side. The girl flinched, minutely, but to her credit she returned fire, squeezing off a long ten-round burst back at something that Silva couldn’t see.

“Go!” she barked into the radio, and the next fireteam entered, their carbine and rifle held up to their chins as they swept into the room.

In the end, they cleared the house in three minutes and thirteen seconds, thanks to the time penalties from their two casualties – Randall took a TTR shot to the calf and limped out of the house on his buddy’s shoulder, and Corporal Langston took an unlucky shot to the jaw that dropped him flat, for a KIA penalty.

Silva chewed furiously on a piece of bubble gum – tobacco having been banned from the joint exercise by some wacko in the cadet’s chain of command – and stared at the scoring screen back in the converted mess hall that was handling the overflow of cadets and Marines.

Team Silva was sitting in a solid fourth place, but the gap between them and fifth place was slim, barely five seconds, while the gap between them and the top three was a full goddamn minute, thanks to nobody in the top three having any penalties. Team John had pulled it off in two minutes and five seconds. Team Mendez had done it in one minute and fifty-seven seconds.

Sitting in first place, at an insane speed of one minute and thirty seconds flat, was a total unknown – Team Halsey.

“Who’s Halsey?” Silva asked, gesturing up at the score board.

The rest of his team was sitting around him, chewing on light snacks and sipping recovery drinks before their next run. The ODSTs shrugged, none of them having an answer. But the cadets exchanged looks, and chuckled.

“That’s the Doctor,” Randall informed him, with the gruff English accent, working-class. “She’s…”

Randall glanced at the other cadets, and they all descended into a flurry of strange looks and weird hand gestures.

“She’s involved in the program,” Daisy said, after about twenty seconds of bizarre, silent conversation. “More than that… I dunno, ask your boss if you’re allowed to know.”

“That’s cute,” Sergeant Pocock responded in his own Cockney accent, eyeing Daisy as he did. “You’re pulling classification on us, you brat?”

“Everything I do is cute, old man,” Daisy shot back, with an amused grin.

“One day, you’re gonna just as old and wrinkly as us,” Pocock replied, reaching over and tussling the blonde girl’s hair. “Now, focus. What could you do better? Unless you want to carry Langston out by yourself, next time.”

“Screw you, English,” Langston replied in his Australian drawl.

The Corporal went to make a hand-gesture, then abruptly stopped as he remembered the kids were there. All five of Team Silva’s cadets were staring right at him, with big eyes that just highlighted how young the nine-year-olds were. The Corporal awkwardly started retracting his hand, just in time for all five of the cadets to raise their own closed fists and jerk them back and forth in perfect synchronization.

“Wan~ker!” Sheila sing-songed out, in her own Australian drawl.

Langston flushed red, and opened his mouth to call something back, probably an insult that had no business being said to a kid.

“Children,” Silva cut in, before the table could descend into a food fight. “We’re up again in a half hour. Listen up, then after I’m done talking, I want you to finish your juice boxes, hit the head, and get back here with your game faces on in ten minutes. I’m not walking away from this building without getting the first place prize, you hear me?”

“We can beat John,” Li said softly, tilting his head as he spoke. “Maybe the Chief, if we do it all perfect. But the Doctor and Visha together? We’d need to be better than perfect for that. They’re scary fast.”

“Then we’ll be scary mean, and scary smart,” Silva replied, nodding to the boy. “First things first. What do you kids know about abseiling?”

“You mean, like, rappelling from the roof?” Alice asked, her eyebrows raising.

“Wicked,” Daisy breathed, eyes shining bright as she stared at Silva.

That’s it, Silva decided, as the most uncontrollable cadet grinned like a goddamn shark at him. I’m gonna give her a 105th unit patch, and I don’t give a damn if the higher ups don’t like it.

He glanced over to his second in command, Staff Sergeant Carmichael, and saw a similar look in the man’s eyes. Carmichael noticed his gaze and turned to look. They exchanged a glance, and Carmichael slowly nodded.

Silva looked around the mess hall. His wasn’t the only table with mixed units of ODSTs and cadets eating, talking, and planning out their next run on the combat course. The Lieutenant saw more than a few of his fellow Helljumpers smiling, showing exuberance, or otherwise acting like they were having a great time.

Hell, Silva realized, shaking his head slowly as he thought to himself. By the end of this, half the damn cadets are going to have a unit patch, no matter what higher says.

Chapter Text

“Alright, now take it slow!” one of the scientists said into his radio, as he stared down at the floor of the old mining chamber, below the gantry where he stood.

The primitive power armor was wide and hulking. Its surface was patchy, with steel body-plates welded along visible ‘bones’ of internal structure. Someone, perhaps in a fit of ironic humor, had spray-painted it in the UNSC’s ubiquitous olive green. The operator’s head protruded from the half-opened chest compartment, between two enormous shoulder blades. The Exoskeleton Team hadn’t yet managed to make a functional helmet for the suit’s anticipated electronics suite, so the operator was doing it all via manual controls.

Today was a simple test of motor function. The exoskeleton had already walked, but today, we were asking it to do basic tasks. The knees and arms would bend, the internal structural bones would take the weight, and the muscle layers would lift a steel beam.

I watched from above, standing on the observation gantry alongside Doctor Steve Sullivan. My own feelings were conflicted – I’d cautioned Steve to proceed carefully and slowly, to minimize any possible damage that could happen to either the prototypes, or to the operators. Steve, however, had been firm that the math all worked, the governors were properly installed, and that it was time for a proper test.

Originally, we had intended to use strands of myomers for the final product; artificial muscles that extended and contracted with electrical impulses. Unfortunately, the strands were more of a gimmick than anything else. They were an immature technology. They had a power-to-weight ratio that worked for this larger prototype, but they’d never work for a slimmer shape.

Due to lack of better options, we were still using myomers in the Mark One anyway. But for the future, we needed something more powerful, more compact. We had some decent leads with some of the more exotic materials involved in, of all things, Slipspace engines, but it needed more work.

Still, it was the best we had for now. Thankfully, I had told Keeler and Stanforth that this would be an incremental process, so they shouldn’t be too aggravated with our slow progress.

“Henry, you there?” Doctor Steve Sullivan asked, speaking into his own radio. “How does it feel? Movement good? Any issues?”

“Feels like I’m wearing a frigate,” the operator called back, as he took a shuffling step forward with a clang of metal on concrete. “It’s a bit sluggish, but I’m not getting any snags or blocks.”

“Don’t trip!” I warned the operator, wincing as the Mark One took another step, scraping the concrete with a foot-fall just a hair too short.

“It’ll be fine,” Steve dismissed, completely ignoring the signs of bad balance in his chosen operator.

The operator took another couple shuffling steps as he walked a circuit around the room. A robotic arm tracked his movements from above, holding onto the most temporary measure of them all – a thick power line that connected the Mark One directly to the fusion reactor buried underneath Menachite Mountain.

We had no final armor composite, no actual muscular system, hadn’t made any progress on the neural lace reflex enhancement, and had to plug the damn thing in just to get it to walk.

But other than that, it wasn’t a bad first effort.

“Walk cycle looks fine,” one of the scientists muttered. “Henry, let's try out the lifting motion. Bend down and act like you’re picking up the beam.”

“Got it,” the operator said.

The clanking motions of the green behemoth came to a stop, and he slowly bent down at the knees. The Mark One looked like it was trying to get rid of a particularly troublesome issue of constipation, but it was getting lower, so it didn’t matter what it looked like.

“Carefully, carefully,” Steve muttered, staring down with an intense expression.

The Mark One squatted down, ‘knees’ bent wide. Its arms were too high, still two feet above the ground. The prototype was starting to wobble, and I grit my teeth, gripping the gantry’s safety rail.

“It’s losing balance,” I hissed to Steve. “Abort the test. He’s going to fall!”

“No, he’s got it,” Steve replied, not looking away. “Just a little bit more…”

There was a loud screech as the Mark One’s claw-footed boots dug into the concrete, but it wasn’t enough. The suit of power armor teetered on a knife’s edge for a long moment, and then it fell forward.

“Woah!” one of the scientists cried out, as the prototype crashed into the ground with a thunderous, deep rumble that nearly deafened us.

It hadn’t fallen far, just a few feet, but the prototype weighed nearly two tons, and all that weight made for a colossal racket as it cracked the floor beneath it. It looked like those flightless birds from Australia – the ostrich, I think – having buried its head in the sand.

The Mark One’s shoulders were pressed to the ground, and it had finally regained its balance as a tripod, the head on one of the points and the two knees forming the other two points, with its rear end sticking high up in the air.

“Not great,” Steve remarked, slowly. “But it’s not… too bad?”

I sighed, and shook my head.

A moment passed, and I noticed that one of the scientists was shouting into the radio. Others had started running down to the testing floor, their feet pounding the thin metal of the staircase, and panic clear on their faces. Someone was calling for the forklift that was kept a couple rooms away. The entire Exoskeleton Team was all reacting to something that neither Steve nor I understood.

My eyes fell on the Mark One, and I realized that I couldn’t see the operator beneath all that metal.

“Henry!” Steve realized, his eyes widening in sudden horror.

“Shit!” I swore, doing the same.

We turned and ran down the gantry, heading for the stairway down as fast as we could. The Mark One’s operator hadn’t been wearing a helmet. There was a good chance that he’d just been smeared between the weight of his own exoskeleton and the concrete.

I practically flew down the stairs, barely resisting the urge to spin up the Type 97 in my pocket and just jump over the gantry. Perhaps, if the operator was still alive somehow, I could convince the other scientists to help me ‘push him over’, so that he wasn’t being crushed under the suit’s weight, and then use magecraft to augment my strength… but the thought was cold in my head.

It wasn’t likely that Henry was injured. He was either dead, or alive. There was little in-between when you were in such a situation.

“Henry, can you hear us?!” one of the scientists was shouting as we came down the final steps. I jumped the last five, a tiny flutter of body augmentation ensuring that my knees didn’t pop as I rushed over.

“Ssh, quiet!” another of Steve’s team was snapping, as he pressed the side of his head against the suit, near the upper back, just a few inches below the thick rubbery cable that connected the Mark One to the fusion reactor. “I think I hear something!”

The words cut through the panic of the dozen or so members of the Exoskeleton Team. They gathered around, and I had to shove my way through just to get close enough to hear.

“He’s… tapping!” the scientist announced, and a wave of relief crashed through the crowd. “I can’t make it out. Does anybody know Morse Code?”

I was highly disappointed in the reaction that question drew. The Exoskeleton Team was the research team that I had privately considered to be the most practical of them all. They were, after all, the men and women that worked with metal and physics, the hard sciences!

Oh, that’s not to say that the other teams were worthless. The combined Psych and Surgery Teams led by David Meyer were the most grounded, but they were still elitists that wouldn’t be able to tell the difference between a wrench and a hammer. The Augmentation Team under Paul Wu was even worse, they were all glued to their microscopes and emerged from their offices only to refill the chemical concoction they preferred over regular coffee (to which I begrudgingly had to admit was a half-decent brew).

And don’t even get me started on the Artificial Intelligence Team that I ‘led’ by dint of shooting the occasional memo at the bastards. They were such cloud-brained dunderheads that I strongly suspected were all high on hallucinogens half the time. Most of the work done by the A.I. Team was being done by the A.I.’s – and as one of the leading A.I. researchers in the UNSC, let me tell you, that was not a good thing!

And yet none of the Exoskeleton Team jumped up to answer in the affirmative. They were shooting nervous looks at each other, vaguely aware of the inferiority that they were revealing, but nobody was stepping forward. Was I surrounded by complete morons, or hyper-specialized savants that couldn’t brush their teeth and walk at the same time?

Who the hell didn’t remember the practical things in life, like right-tighty lefty-loosey, or Morse Code, or the difference between incoming and outgoing artillery fire? They were working for the military, damn it!

“Out of the way,” I said, swallowing my instinctive irritation as I kneeled down next to the man. “I know Morse Code.”

I pressed my ear against the cool metal, and listened intently. One dot, one dash, then a pause. One dot, one dash, and then two more dots. Two dots. Three dots, and then a dash. Finally, a single dot. After a pause of seven seconds, the pattern started repeating. A-L-I-V-E, I translated in my head.

“Alive,” I said out loud. “He’s alive!”

Well, obviously, I thought after a moment, resisting the urge to smack myself. If he’d been dead, then who was tapping in Morse Code? But stress was funny like that. It made men stupid, and I was no exception. for all that I’d been complaining about the Exoskeleton Team.

Steve let out an explosive sigh, and there was a chorus of relieved chatter amongst the scientists. I saw one of them wipe stress-sweat from his forehead, and another was leaning against the nearest wall, her legs apparently locked stiff with fright. Apparently, all of us had been stupid enough to not think about it. Some scientists we were.

“How the hell?” one of the other scientists muttered breathlessly.

“I think he ducked,” Steve guessed. “Tucked his head right into the chest cavity. It’s spacious enough.”

“If only he’d had a helmet,” I said, turning to glare up at Steve.

“If he’d had a helmet, he’d be dead,” Steve replied, shrugging off my disdain without a care. “No matter how tough the helmet is, his spine would still snap or compress under that much weight. Better to just ditch the helmet entirely until we’ve lowered the suit’s weight down to survivable levels.”

“Or you could extend the shoulder frame higher, and let it act as a roll-cage,” I shot back, standing back up, before glancing over at Steve’s second in command and pointing a finger at her. “Lilah, go get the forklift operator. Let’s get Henry out of this position before we do anything else.”

Steve was annoyingly nonchalant for a man who’d just had one of his team nearly killed by his reckless disregard for safety measures. I had to suppress my urge to snap at him.

It is a bad habit to publicly reprimand your subordinates. It kills morale and unit cohesion by forcing observers to ‘pick sides’ between two superior officers, and by giving them a chance to listen and disagree with your criticisms. Praise in public, criticize in private – a long held maximum of human resources that I was well familiar with from my distant first life, and which was still valid in the modern day.

In the three years since this program had started, the other members of the old Circumstance Party House had gradually come to a détente with me, regarding my role in this monstrous program. None of them insulted me, or belittled me, or took out their frustrations on me any longer.

Perhaps, like me, they had come to the realization that it didn’t matter if I was a monster, because the survival of the children mattered more than their hatred of me. Perhaps they were simply motivated by the fear of me, and of ONI.

But with Steve, I didn’t have to wonder. Steve was motivated by one thing, and one thing alone – power armor.

Which is what made him so frustrating to deal with right now. The man’s enthusiasm had overtaken everything else.

Back at the University of Circumstance, Steve Sullivan had dreamed of making the future come to life, and the future, to him, was powered armor. He had painted a picture to the old Party House, a mosaic image of a world of suits that could take a lumpy, slothful user, and allow him to run faster than cars, to dodge bullets, to leap tall buildings, and even to skydive without a parachute.

Steve was a firm believer that we had all of the necessary infrastructure and technology to make such a vision into reality, and that we simply needed to plumb the depths of materials science and wrestle with the math until it admitted defeat. He cited similar points in history, such as the first or second World Wars, where science had advanced by great leaps and bounds, but hadn’t been properly harnessed by industry until warfare had created a need for it.

In other words, he had regressed into the worst kind of visionary – one that refused to accept anything that slowed down the inevitable victory of his dream over the naysayers. His armor (not ONI’s) would be ready by the time the cadets had undergone the augmentations, so that its innate superiority could immediately be demonstrated to HIGHCOM and the universe.

Which was a real headache for me. Not only for the safety violations, not only for the budget requisitions, but because I didn’t want the damn power armor to be ready for field use that fast!

In the most optimistic situation, the cadets would undergo their augmentations at the age of thirteen, as they underwent puberty. Seven years, that was what we’d told Vice Admiral Keeler. But it was possible that the procedures would not be sufficiently refined by that point.

We had two more years of ‘stretch’ time – augmenting the cadets at the ages of fourteen, or fifteen at the latest. It wasn’t a simple trade-off, because the longer we delayed, the less compatible the cadets would be with the various growth enhancers.

Their bodies undergoing puberty were like chemical rockets, the kind we used to use to send men to the Moon back in the ’60s and ’70s. Once puberty started, the countdown clock had started, and they were leaking fuel. If we waited too long, the rocket’s fuel would run out without ever launching. That fuel was the natural growth that puberty would grant the cadets – so the longer we delayed, and the less total fuel there was, the less likely we’d succeed.

But if the augmentation procedures weren’t ready, and a cadet died, then the rocket would explode instantly, making it all pointless. In that situation, it was better to delay and waste part of the fuel during another year of frantic research.

Which meant that even if I managed to argue for a full year of post-augmentation physical evaluations and examinations to ensure they had worked properly, the Spartan-II’s would start their combat deployments at the ages of fourteen to sixteen.

Stanforth hadn’t been pushing me much in the last year – perhaps recognizing that he could only demand progress so often before his implied threats lost their power – but he didn’t need to. I followed the general-issue press releases as well as the more classified memos that I had clearance for.

The Insurrection was growing in both intensity and competence. There were fewer terror bombings or mass shootings, but far more assassinations, booby-traps, and thefts of war-material. Not just rifles or grenades, but actual ships, which was far worse.

Worse, the Insurrection had been canny with their stolen ships. There were no warship engagements, despite confidential estimates that the Innies could muster a full fleet with upwards of fifty bulk-freighters converted into missile carriers, and over a hundred lighter freighters that could be retrofitted into fast attack frigates or torpedo boats.

Yet no sign of that fleet ever emerged, which led the cabal of Smart A.I. dedicated to predicting the enemy’s movements to a single conclusion: the Innies were building a shipyard somewhere in deep space, or an abandoned system, or some undiscovered planet, in order to prepare for full-scale conventional warfare.

From ONI’s perspective, the insanity of the Carver Findings were steadily being proven correct, and they need their super-soldiers to provide a solution as quickly as possible. Which meant exposing them to gunfire, to bombs, to depressurization, to the thousands of potential ways of dying in the wild frontier of the Outer Colonies.

I didn’t want my Spartans dying in combat. I didn’t want them to be left lifeless on some barren rock, their sacrifice only remembered by their brothers and sisters. I wanted them to be powerful. I wanted them to be leaders of men, to be the man or woman with a hand on the wheel of destiny. I wanted to give them back every single iota of agency that ONI and I had robbed from them!

Every single day, I labored away like a tiger-mom that scheduled her child’s preschool enrollment as soon as she received a positive pregnancy test. I hovered over their future careers like a gunship doing hot-laps of the battlefield, looking for targets. Anything that would harm their careers needed to be either crushed or avoided. Anything that would aid their careers had to be pursued like the most precious gems.

My Spartans would need to be officers. No enlisted man, no matter how competent or professional or brilliant, would ever get enough respect from the aristocratic officer class. They would not have the pull or the power to prevent a third Spartan program, to ensure that nobody would ever be forced to undergo the same conscription as them.

So if I couldn’t hold the Spartans back for medical evaluations for that long, then I needed another excuse to delay their deployment.

A lack of power armor was one of my foremost strategies.

After all, no matter how desperate ONI was, they wouldn’t be insane enough to send out multi-billion dollar soldiers into combat in the same old gear as the dough-boy Army infantry, or even the slightly nicer gear of the ODSTs. Not when a lucky shot could end one of only seventy-five lives capable of wielding their futuristic, nigh-unstoppable power armor, and waste all those years of training.

The best option would be if I could delay the deployment of the Spartans for a full three or four years, and use that delay to insist that they attend Luna OCS, or the Reach Naval Academy. After that, I could similarly insist that because they’d graduated with honors – as I knew they inevitably would – that they must be made officers, or else the UNSC would shame the entire corpus of legal frameworks that made up its long institutional history.

In other words, Steve was racing forward, trying to overachieve, and I was trying to rein him back, to keep our goals reasonable. He didn’t understand. How could he? He’d spent years longing to bring power armor to life, and I was holding him back from the pinnacle, from his crowning achievement.

Of course, I didn’t agree that this was a crowning achievement.

These days, Steve Sullivan was reminding me more and more of my old supervisor, the zealous madman that was Doctor Schugel.

Oh, it was an unfair comparison in many ways, for Steve was not insane, nor religious, nor totally devoid of all desire for safety regulations, despite what this incident indicated.

His unfortunate similarity was limited to his desire for the most flawless design possible. To Steve, a suit of power armor should enhance every single aspect of a human’s performance that it possibly could. It should have no trade-offs, no deficiencies. It wasn’t enough for power armor to be strong, it also had to be fast. It was not enough for it to be durable, it also had to be nimble. I’d even seen a few of his notes pondering the possibility of making the damn thing fly!

Bluntly put, Steve had the soul of a perfectionist welded to the mind of a dreamer, always pushing forward and demanding more, yet also quick to dislike anything that delayed his vision.

But reality is not perfection, far from it. His stubborn refusal to understand the idea of necessary tradeoffs, of design compromises, was growing to be the biggest source of tension in our working relationship.

Take the Mark One prototype, for example. In my eyes, it only had three deficiencies.

Firstly, it didn’t have proper armor, just an improvised stop-gap. Not the worst thing, easily fixable once we refined our current plans. Steve was betting on a titanium alloy, and I wasn’t inclined to bet against him. Materials science was his area of expertise, not mine.

Secondly, it didn’t have a helmet. Not just for the physical protection, but also to integrate all the electronic systems that we could cram into the spacious interior of the suit. Normal UNSC infantry went into battle with a helmet equipped with a holographical tactical eyepiece, helmet recorder, microphone, polarized goggles, flashlights, night vision goggles, and a gas-mask. But the Mark One’s spacious carapace had enough room to fit in a portable ECM generator, enhanced communications gear, perhaps auto-targeting modules, or even a missile rack! All of which would need controlling, and thus, the helmet.

Thirdly, it still needed a solution to the power problem. Hooking the Mark One up to a fusion reactor was fine for now, but a death-knell for any hope of actual usefulness in a field deployment. Steve’s team had a couple theories on solving it, but they pretty much all came down to either creating a smaller battery with more capacity than ever before – essentially requiring us to revolutionize an industry worth trillions of dollars – or even less likely, we’d need to shrink down a fusion or fission reactor into something small enough to fit on the suit’s back.

But once we fixed those three things, the Mark One would be a marvel of engineering, an overnight success, an automatic inclusion in every single UNSC infantry unit. An armored suit able to squeeze inside tight places that a tank could not, able to survive gunfire and small explosions, and with the strength to carry heavy weapons or rip apart walls to get to its opponent.

And importantly, it would be much, much cheaper than Steve Sullivan’s idealized suit, with all its extra bells and whistles. Even with the caveat of extreme speculation, I would comfortably estimate that we could make ten Mark Ones for every single Spartan-II suit (no matter what ‘Mark’ it wound up being). Perhaps even a hundred!

That kind of economic efficiency, the production numbers that we could churn out, would turn what Steve considered an ugly first step into the true powerhouse of the UNSC’s power armored units. Heavy infantry that were survivable enough to be the first man into every breach, solving the issue that had plagued urban combat for the last six hundred years… without forcing my Spartans to be the sacrificial meat shield for every single house raid in the Outer Colonies.

Once we’d gotten the Mark One back on its feet safely, we immediately started disassembling it for inspection and repair. It didn’t matter that we hadn’t lifted up the steel beam for the experiment. Something had gone wrong, and proper scientific experimental procedure demanded that we determine what went wrong, and how to ensure it never went wrong again.

“Steve, let’s go check the video footage,” I said, stepping towards the exit and gesturing for us to leave. “Perhaps there’s something that we can find that will prevent this from happening again.”

He hesitated, but nodded after a moment.

We walked out of the testing chamber, through an airlock door that was a hundred years newer than most of the structural supports around us.

Menachite Mountain was an old UNSC property, dating back to the second wave of colonization efforts back at the dawn of the twenty-fifth century. Reach had been pivotal back in those days, not just because it was the metaphorical doorstep to Earth with its proximity, but also because of its intensely rich mines full of titanium, a boon for starship construction. Menachite Mountain had been one of the first mines, and unlike many of the others that were still in active operation, had run dry about fifty years ago.

When you think about it from a security perspective, a mine has very few entrances and exits, is almost entirely build up underground beneath hundreds or even thousands of meters of all-concealing earth and rock, and already comes with air conditioning and large, expansively excavated spaces.

Back when the UNSC was still dealing with the Hydra System Massacres and other pirate problems, they’d expanded their footprint massively, and the need for secure facilities like this one had become apparent.

Of course, in typical bureaucratic fashion, it was only after the engineers had painstakingly redeveloped the old titanium mines for use by FLEETCOM, someone pointed out that the mine itself was barely within the Highland Mountain range. Thus, it was actually pretty vulnerable to a siege, due to being on the outer edges of the security cordon. All those restrictive entrances would instantly become double-edged swords, and the FLEETCOM brass would be starving to death.

As a result, Menachite Mountain had sat disused for the last thirty years, and only the Spartan-II project had revitalized it as a location for secure military research that still required access to the all-important rail lines for material shipments. Regular off-site backups to the secure server-stack at the Hive, ONI’s headquarters in the newer FLEETCOM complex, ensured that in the event of a hostile incursion, the scientists could wipe the hard drives to deny the enemy their research, without losing much more than their lives – and, of course, the bureaucracy would much rather lose the lives of some top scientists than some top admirals.

Needless to say, it was a surprisingly interesting place to walk through, as rather than bland, painted metal or concrete forming up the walls around you, you were instead surrounded by igneous rock, anorthosite in particular, bracketed by the old structural support beams keeping the mountain from crushing you. All of the corridors had been widened enough to allow free movement, but you also had plenty of wider spaces where deeper lodes of ilmenite had been found and mined out, allowing for unusually distinctive layouts, rather than the UNSC’s usual boxy, identical grids of rooms and corridors.

I led Steve towards a secure meeting room a few dozen meters away from the large chamber that we’d been using for our testing ‘warehouse’. The wall-mounted display was already displaying the live camera feed from the chamber. Only after I’d shut the door and engaged the lock did either of us speak.

“It’s the balance,” Steve said, as engineers on the screen started stripping the suit with power tools, unbolting the fasteners that had pinned the entire ramshackle suit together. “He leaned forward too fast, and the momentum combined with all that weight led to an unstoppable tilt.”

“Most likely, but we have to rule out damage first,” I reminded him. “One of the myomers could have snapped.”

“If a myomer snapped, it would have been a sudden lurch,” Steve replied with a shake of his head. “No, this is just the center of gravity being so high. We’ll have better results once we slim it down to a more natural shape.”

“The ‘natural’ shape is still predicted to be a literal ton,” I said, rolling my eyes. “Face it, we have to put in some kind of balancing system. Why not one of those… gyroscopes?”

“Gyro stabilizer,” Steve corrected me. “And it wouldn’t work anyway. Even if we could find or build one small enough. A gyro has to have enough mass that its movements can counter any sudden impulses or shocks. But this wasn’t a sudden shift, it was a slow, natural motion. This is just a bad design for squatting and lifting. The knees don’t have enough range of motion, and the torso’s practically a single piece. We need more flexibility in the core, like how the stomach bends, so once we slim it down-”

“Steve, if we can’t solve these issues, there won’t be a slimmer version!” I snapped at him. “The whole point of the Mark One is to refine the technologies so that we can make continual, incremental progress towards a final version. Part of how I got this budget past Stanforth was by promising that we’d be able to repurpose the prototypes for other uses, and save money that way. We’re not skipping to a Mark Two without fixing something as important as the balance!”

Steve’s face grew red, and I glared, before my hindbrain kicked me in the back and reminded me of something very important.

For all my annoyance at Steve, I needed his help to ensure this project was a success. Without the promised power armor, the Spartans were nothing more than exceptionally well-trained spec ops soldiers, and they would almost certainly be used that way – without any of the bullet proof armor plate between them and the Insurrection.

I sighed, and hung my head a little.

“I’m sorry,” I said, loudly and clearly, as the unfamiliar words came out of my throat.

When I lifted my head, Steve had a bizarre expression on his face. Bewilderment, disbelief, and surprisingly… guilt? I didn’t have clue what that last one was about, so I pressed on.

“Regardless of what the final product will be, we still need to resolve this issue,” I said, slowly and as calmly as I could. “For now, why don’t we re-design the torso section? What was it you said, make it more like a stomach? Let’s do that.”

Steve frowned. He stepped back from the camera and pulled up the schematics of the Mark One with a few taps on the keyboard built into the boardroom table. The hunchbacked design sprang to life, emerging in a white hologram that slowly rotated in place.

“I guess, but that will add vulnerability,” he said, sounding unhappy about it, despite it having been his idea originally. “A grenade to the stomach, or a lucky bullet to one of the pinch points, and the operator would be dead.”

“Yes, but that’s a risk for every place where we need flexibility,” I replied, softening my tone as I gestured at the knees, the elbows, and the neck. “We can’t make a perfect armor. There’s always going to be places of vulnerability. We just have to do our best to minimize them, and make the best of a bad situation.”

Chapter Text

“I guess I just miss my parents,” the girl said, looking at David Meyer with an antagonistic, almost challenging expression.

“There’s nothing wrong with that,” he said, nodding to Adrianna. “While we’ve tried to ensure that your fellow cadets become friends, it is natural to still have an emotional attachment to your family.”

David paused, as he tried to come up with a way of explaining the potential problems to the strong-willed Spartan cadet. Perhaps something that reminded her that her actions had immediate consequences not just for herself, with the punishments, but with her friends?

“Nonetheless,” he continued, deciding to try that approach. “Trying to steal a Pelican put yourself, Jai, and Michael at risk. What if you had crashed? What if your friends had died?”

“We wouldn’t have crashed,” Adrianna muttered, looking away from him.

Doctor David Meyer, M.D. and Ph.D., bit back an instinctive urge to get up from his chair and wrap the nine year old in a hug.

He hated this damn program for so many reasons, from the kidnapping of children, to the planned experimental surgeries on them, to the cultural indoctrination towards a life of endless service – but most of all, he hated that it forced him to betray one of the foremost edicts of his two professions.

Primum non nocere. First, do no harm.

The phrase had been one of the standard oaths in the medical community for nearly three thousand years. Not just because it sounded good, not because it encouraged doctors to be healers, but because it acknowledged the most common and most deadly of sin that any doctor could have – pride.

With all their knowledge, it was very easy for a doctor to assume an ideal outcome. They could visualize how precise their incisions would be, how there would be no complications, and even how well the patient would recover… and in doing so, they could ignore the potential of failure. The risks of the procedure. The consequences.

There was no such thing as a perfect surgery. The numbers alone proved it, as Catherine used to argue in the Party House. Even if every single surgery was ‘safe’, and had a literal one-in-a-million chance of having complications, then statistically, those ‘rare’ chances added up to millions of individual people in the UNSC, every single year.

And in reality, most surgeries were not lucky enough to have that ‘safe’ one-in-a-million number. Many were far, far riskier.

No doctor ever imagines that it might happen to them, but it does. Things go wrong. The patient has an undiscovered allergy to the general anesthetic. The body reacts too quickly or strongly and tears itself open even further. Even the supposedly flawless auto-surgeons could have calibration errors, mechanical fatigue, or other problems.

Worse, most surgeries were not on perfectly healthy individuals who just wanted to see what a general anesthetic did, but on people who had something wrong with them. They had pre-existing conditions, either temporary like a sucking chest wound, or long term, like lingering knee issue.

Every time a doctor performed a surgery, he had to consider the potential that their intervention might aggravate that condition. That they might make things even worse, rather than better.

In other words, given an existing problem, it may be better not to do something, or even to do nothing, than to risk causing more harm than good.

And even in psychology, the same principle applied.

David would have loved to tell Adrianna that she was not wrong to miss her family, and that yes, what had been done to her was evil. That any attempt to fight back, to return to her family, was the right thing to do.

But he couldn’t say that. Even here, in the Spartan-II compound, where it had become a relatively ‘open’ secret that nobody in the program was happy with the concept. It didn’t matter that the trainers treated the cadets like favored pupils, or the scientists treated them like nieces and nephews.

In ONI’s eyes, his Psychology Team was the weakest link in the chain of secrecy. The trainers were UNSC military personnel, with long careers and proven track records. The scientists were primarily research focused, and only interacted with the kids very rarely. Catherine had created the whole idea, and thus could be trusted to stay on task – at least in ONI’s misguided view.

But the Psych Team was full of experts in human psychology, and they knew exactly what ONI was doing to these kids, because they were the tip of the spear, the ones responsible for actually doing it. They had the knowledge, the means, the motivation, and the access to poison the kids against the UNSC.

None of their ‘sessions’ were truly private. While everything in the Spartan-II compound was monitored, it was only the Psych sessions that got shipped back to ONI’s ominous tower at FLEETCOM HQ every single day, to be reviewed by their clandestine overseers and inspected for any hint of sedition.

Frankly, the pressure was worse than any position that David could ever think of. The only reason the Psych Team hadn’t started taking stress casualties was because David had been working himself to the bone to ensure they had ample recovery time in the outdoors. There were some silver linings to being on a secret military base where the expenditures were classified, after all.

Every single member of the Psych Team was, by this point, a devout worshipper at nature’s cathedrals – hiking the gorgeous mountains, driving ATV’s down hundreds of miles of off-road trails. They’d started picking up military weapons training out of sheer lack of any other options, firing off hundreds if not thousands of rounds in the firing ranges. They were taking out their frustrations with physical actions.

Fittingly, they were all constructive habits, the same kind of thing that they coached the kids through. Beyond helping with the temporary relief of stress, those hobbies were helping train their self-discipline in the dozens of ways. The unfit had become fit, the lazy had become workaholics, and some of them were even bonding with the trainers on hunting trips during their rare ‘days off’.

David himself had started the young ‘tradition’, but he hadn’t done it for stress relief. He’d done it because he saw far too many of his colleagues nearing the breaking point, becoming more and more uncivil as they stewed in their hatred of Catherine Halsey and the program.

It helped keep the Psych Team sane, but they were only addressing the symptoms, and never the root cause.

They all hated this program. Every single person on the Psych Team wanted nothing more than to stop it… and they couldn’t, not without getting a life imprisonment or a firing squad.

And worse, even if they were willing to die on that hill as a moral stand, it would mean that someone else would show up to take their place. Someone who wasn’t willing to bend the rules, who wasn’t genuinely trying to keep the children in the best psychological state, who wasn’t actively trying to teach them the necessary life skills to be functional adults, rather than human weapons.

It was bad logic. There were entire textbooks on why that logic didn’t work. The slippery slope, the sunk cost, the moral self-licensing. Case studies ranged from the atrocities of the 20th century genocides by dictatorships, to the Interplanetary Wars of the 22nd century, to even the current logic behind the Insurrection and the more ‘moral’ cells that still rubbed shoulders with the nihilistic anarchists and supplied them with dangerous weaponry.

None of it changed the fact that it was the best possible thing David could do in a horrific situation. With the increasing militarization of the government as the Insurrection continued to gain power, the UNSC could make him disappear permanently without anyone ever knowing. They were already doing it temporarily, hiding him away for a decade while he worked on the project.

It would have been easier if he’d known that this was a Milgram experiment, and it was just to see how far he and other ‘experts’ in the field could be deceived into blindly doing evil things as a test of their obedience to blind authority. Perhaps a re-do of the Stanford prison experiment, testing how a person could ‘adopt’ a role

But it wasn’t. He’d written the damn paper himself. He’d been the monster who had suggested using children. This was no lie, no long-running fake out, no reality TV show. This was real, and he was trapped in it.

“Well, maybe that’s something to focus on, for the future,” David suggested, bringing his focus back to the session he was currently conducting.

Adrianna was one of the most resistant cadets in the group. It made her a paradoxical source of both irritation and pride for David, who’d taken on responsibility for the sessions with her and her two compatriots in crime, Jai and Michael.

On the one hand, he was so very proud of them for refusing to bend under the pressure of ONI, and to seek out the healthy life that they’d been ripped from. It was stubborn, but stubbornness was a complicated thing. Unhealthy clinging to bad behaviors was detestable, while refusal to bend your own principles for something monstrous was near universally praise as a sign of strong morals.

On the other hand, every time David had to talk to them after their misbehavior, he was forced to confront exactly how outrageous this program was, rather than the comfortable delusion that he could have with less rebellious cadets.

It was an unwanted reminder that his own preference for the other cadets was, itself, an avoidance of a difficult topic. He should be wishing that more cadets were clinging to their families, remembering their normal lives, as opposed to fewer.

“Yeah?” Adrianna asked, turning her head to look back at him. “You think I should stick with the program, so I can learn to fly a Pelican, and escape properly?”

“No,” David lied with a gentle smile, for the benefit of the ONI watchdogs. “I simply think it might be a good idea to learn useful skills for many reasons. Either to serve, or for your own benefit in the future. It’s entirely possible that the augmentations would not be fully successful. In that situation, you could still find a purpose in life through piloting, or any one of the military skills that your trainers are teaching.”

He was toeing the line a little, but it was defensible. He could easily argue that he was manipulating Adrianna into engaging with the lessons in the short term, while gradually wearing her down on the idea of loyal service to the UNSC, one step at a time.

The cadet looked uncertain. It was a positive change. Better uncertain that hostile.

“You know, if the program succeeds, then you might not be in UNSC service for your entire life,” David continued, stretching out ONI’s leash just a little bit further, pushing the boundaries of what he could and couldn’t say. “The fastest way out might be to commit to the program, and do the best job you can. After that… well, piloting is a lucrative career on the civilian side of life.”

Adrianna bit her lip. A decent sign that she was considering it, though hardly conclusive.

“What do civilian pilots… do?” she asked, hesitantly. “I mean, how do they live?”

“You know, that’s a very interesting question,” David said, nodding. “Let me tell you how civilian jobs work, and why it’s so important we keep society safe, so that those civilians can live happy lives.”

It wasn’t much. It was so little that it was barely any better than holding her hand and singing kumbaya, and ignoring the very real issues that were at the root of Adrianna’s problems.

Yet it was all that David Meyer could do. Damn him for being too cowardly, damn him for falling prey to the same horrible logic that he was trained against, and damn him for ever coming up with the Spartan-II program at all – damn him for all of it.

But damned or not, he was going to keep trying to help with this avalanche of evil, even if all he could do was move one pebble at a time.

After his session with Adrianna finished up, David locked his office door, changed into outdoor clothes, and prepared to head out.

The weather today was nice. This far from the equator, the sunny day mixed with a surprisingly dry summer climate, and temperatures were soaring. Some wind would be a pleasant balm for the heat.

But David wasn’t going hiking because he wanted to sweat his balls off today. He’d much rather stay in the air conditioned office and not go stomping around in the dust with all the bugs.

Today’s walk was for a more important purpose.

“Jason,” he called out, as he caught sight of the man. “Come on, let’s go!”

The man standing outside the formerly-spare office building jerked abruptly at the call, and turned towards him. The building had long since been converted to house the dozen-plus members of the Psych team and their offices. Almost all the psychologists had been there for all three years of the Spartan-II program.

Almost all, save for Jason Thompson, a specialist in the psychology of high performing teenagers and pre-teens.

Unlike David’s team of generalists and theoretical experts, Jason was a highly experienced practicing psychologist. He’d worked for five years in Kensington, London, and then five years in Sydney, Australia, handling the children of Earth’s elite. A mixture of the highly intelligent and motivated, and the spoiled rotten and troublesome.

He had been hired by ONI six months before, and for those months, Jason had been working from Menachite Mountain, remotely contributing on a series of hypothetical scenarios. How one should handle a highly intelligent, physically capable, incredibly motivated child that was being tutored to the utmost degree. How to handle their tantrums, their clever tricks. Jason had been an enormous help in dealing with seventy five such ‘hypothetical’ cases as they evolved and grew.

Today, he met the Spartan-II cadets for the first time. Today, he learned that they were not hypothetical.

“Doctor Meyer,” Jason said, his voice hoarse.

“Call me David, please,” David said, slapping him on the shoulder gently, and leading him out of the compound. “We’ll be working together for some years yet, and there’s no reason to stand on ceremony.”

“You’re my boss, and this is a more… formal environment,” Jason said back, pausing mid-sentence as they walked past the Spartan-II’s barracks.

As it was Sunday, and around noon, it was one of the rare periods of free time that any of the cadets had. A few of them were hanging around the entrance, chatting lightly.

Jason’s head turned as they walked, his eyes lingering on the nine-year-olds in their summer-issue shorts and long-sleeve shirts. One of them – Linda, David recognized – was wearing a large sunhat to keep the rays from hitting her pale skin. She burned easily, as they’d discovered during that first summer.

It wasn’t the same communal barracks that the cadets had been forced into years ago, but Jason didn’t know that. David and Catherine had moved them over to the new one a year ago, when they had turned eight. They were no longer living in one large communal room, but in four-man and two-man rooms that allowed them slightly more privacy. They had desks, and bunk-beds, and shoe-racks, and tall, thin wardrobes for their uniforms.

Their living arrangements were more like a boarding school these days. They had inspections twice daily, with a full Number One inspection on every Friday night. Each night, while they were working on their schoolwork, a small number of trainers and psychologists would be assigned to walk the halls, checking on the open doors. It was an unnecessary assurance that they would punish any cadet that wasn’t working, with the unstated true reason of providing a chance for the cadets to ask for help.

Some of the cadets even made a game of re-arranging their furniture every week, trying out increasing bizarre room arrangements. Mendez had taken one look at the first room to do so, a quad that contained Kirk, Fhajad, Frederic, and Victor, and hadn’t said a single word. An hour later, after all the inspections were done, Mendez had reminded the cadets that their rooms needed to remain accessible to both cadets and trainers, and that they’d better be able to get outside in time for a fire drill or reveille call – and there was no further mention of the changed room layouts. So long as those two conditions were met, the cadets could do what they wanted.

The northern path out of the compound was guarded by a single trainer standing in a watchtower. There wasn’t much that could get up this far into the Highland Mountains, but you never knew when a wild animal could go crazy and try to take a human for dinner. That’s why the guard had both a DMR for smaller game, and a mounted heavy machine gun, in case a Gúta somehow made it all the way up from the lowlands.

“Two heading up for a hike,” David called up to the trainer, Sergeant Flores. “David Meyer and Jason Thompson.”

“Alright, you’re marked down,” Flores replied, leaning his arms on the watchtower’s railing and looking down at them. “Where you headed?”

“Howling Gulch,” David told him, before adding, in a deliberately casual voice, “I thought we’d get some fresh air, and Jason here’s new, so I thought I’d show him around the place, get him situated.”

“Understood, Doctor Meyer,” Flores said, nodding slowly. “You packing?”

“Yeah, just in case,” David said, patting his hip-pack, where the pistol was securely stowed across from his water bottle. “Anybody seen any signs of bear?”

“Looks pretty clear,” Flores said, his eyes flicking briefly to the left and right, before re-focusing on David. “But you never know, so keep your eyes peeled for poop. You have a good hike.”

“No, it won’t,” David agreed.

Flores waved them off, and the pair of psychologists headed north. They stayed silent as they walked; David because he knew that they were still in sight of the compound, and Jason for his own reasons.

It took twenty minutes to reach the trailhead. They turned west as the closest mountain slid away into a gulch, and as soon as they started on the turn, the compound was completely out of sight.

“So, how was your first day?” David asked, walking ahead as Jason followed behind.

It was odd how different experiences could age a person, David thought to himself as his colleague looked over at him with a bitter, angry look. Jason Thompson was a couple years older than David, but right now, his unguarded emotions made him look a decade younger.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” Jason countered, meeting David’s question with his own. “Why didn’t you warn me?”

“Oh yes, that would have gone well,” David drawled, deciding to meet anger with nonchalance and sarcasm. It would either defuse the situation, or it would tell him that Jason was far, far angrier than he’d been acting. “I should have sent a message over the ONI network, explaining that we’d kidnapped seventy five children. I’m sure the internal censors wouldn’t have noticed or cared.”

He waited for a response, but after ten seconds, none came.

The sun on his face, David turned back and looked to his new co-worker. Jason had stopped a half dozen meters away and was glaring at him. His fists were tight, and he looked like he was only a few seconds away from trying to tackle David and beat him to death with his bare hands. Of course, given that David had a foot of height and probably a hundred pounds of muscle over the older man, it probably wouldn’t have unfolded in the way that Jason wanted.

David sighed.

“I couldn’t have told you,” he said slowly, dropping the sardonic tone as he locked eyes with Jason. “If I had even tried, I would have been either thrown in prison or shot.”

“Self-justification,” Jason said, with a scowl. “It’s always easier when you’re already in a bad situation.”

“Jason, I didn’t bring you out here so we could scream at each other,” David told him, hardening his tone. “You aren’t saying anything new to me. I’ve been thinking those same things. And so has every other psychologist on this team.”

“Then why did you bring me out here?” Jason demanded.

“So we could have a hike,” he said, gesturing at the gulch ahead of them – the exposed craggy rock faces protruding from the hills, worn down by years of snow and rain, the gently waving tall grass along the higher edges, the splashes of color from brightly colored wildflowers.

“No!” Jason snapped. “Why’d you bring me onto this damn program?”

“Because you could do some real good here,” David said, staring the man in the eyes. “We’re all generalists, and these kids are incredibly intelligent. If they start acting out, we might not be able to notice it, until it’s too late, and they piss off ONI enough to do something… drastic. Preventing that is very important to me. Both for our sake, and the sake of the kids.”

“Nothing good could ever come from this,” Jason retorted. “This is all fruit of the poisoned tree. Even if those kids do wind up saving some lives, it doesn’t make up for what you’re doing to them!”

“I know,” David replied simply, nodding in agreement. “Now come on, let’s go.”

“Why?” Jason asked, before David could turn back to the trail. “What’s the point? Why bother with going on this… charade? Why shouldn’t we talk this out, right here?”

“Because the hike is a lesson,” David told him. “It’s more than a good excuse for getting out of the compound.”

“A sermon on the mount, is that it?” Jason asked, a tinge of disappointment mixed with his scorn. “I’m not interested.”

“Okay, then I guess I can shoot you, right here and now,” David snapped, his irritation getting the better of him.

He made no move to draw the pistol at his back, but Jason recoiled anyway, and his eyes flicked down to where it sat.

“You’re in a shitty situation,” David continued, glaring right back at the now hesitant psychologist. “You’ve signed up for a morally bankrupt military project that is so black, if you ever try to say a word about it publicly, nobody will ever know you died. You’d just vanish. So why don’t I just shoot you now, and get it over with? Save you all those years of pain? Is that what you want? Take the moral stance, and refuse to go on with it?”

Jason bit his lip, and slowly, carefully, took a single step forward. Perhaps he was thinking about taking the gun from David to save his own life, but David wasn’t going to shoot him. He wouldn’t shoot the man in a thousand years.

That didn’t excuse the vitriol that Jason had thrown at David, nor the way that he’d made the two worsts mistakes that any psychologist could make – he assumed that he knew everything, and he wasn’t willing to listen.

Well, so be it. David would have to make him listen. He didn’t have the time to do this gradually, over sessions that would help the man realize his own mistake. The children didn’t have the time for that.

“You’ve been under this pressure for all of one day,” David reminded the man. “Can you imagine what it feels like to the rest of us? We’re not monsters. We don’t agree with the program any more than you do. Now, if you’re willing to put aside your own perfectly sensible emotional reaction to what is honestly a very disturbing situation, maybe I can tell you something that you don’t already know.”

David turned back around and started walking up the trail. At this point, he had given Jason a choice. The newcomer could continue to enjoy his sense of moral superiority and abandon David as just another monster, or he could take a chance and listen to a potential enemy, and perhaps learn something.

He didn’t have to wait long – within a few seconds, he heard Jason’s hiking poles hitting the ground. The man wasn’t a quitter, and while it wasn’t much, it was at least a start. David had no use for quitters. Not these days, not with these stakes.

They walked in silence for a few minutes. The start of the trail was filled with older trees, tall enough that they’d blocked enough sunlight, and the undergrowth had died away underneath them, leaving a clear trail with a scenic view.

Further along, David knew, the trees would get shorter, and the bushes would start creeping across the trail, with beautiful wildflowers and thorny berry bushes and weeds, all trying to sting them. It was why they were both wearing pants instead of shorts, despite the heat.

“Alright,” Jason said, after he’d had some time to think. “What don’t I know about this program?”

“Quite a lot,” David said, sadly. “We should start with the most important item. This program was a joke. Literally, a drunken joke of a research paper. It was never supposed to be real. It was never supposed to actually happen. And yet…”

“And how would you know that?” the new hire asked, wary.

“Because I helped write it,” David told Jason, glancing over his shoulder and giving him a good look at his own bitter, weary expression. “I was one of four co-authors, back in 2510. We’d all just gotten our doctorates, and we were celebrating.”

“What kind of celebration would come up with something like… this?” Jason muttered, flapping a hand aimlessly in the air.

“Oh, we started simply enough,” David reminisced, smiling sadly at the memories. “We were talking about how we’d all be famous and successful researchers, and what we’d do with an unlimited budget. The wild and wacky ways that we could waste it all. Human augmentation, power armor exoskeletons, perfectly trained human beings, and potential integrations of A.I. into a person. After a few more drinks, Catherine – that’s Doctor Halsey – came up with the idea of combining our scientific fields, to spend even more. Making them soldiers was just a… natural evolution to Catherine’s idea.”

He paused near a bend in the trail, as the stream trickled past.

“In fact, that reminds of a small story,” David said, chuckling. “Let me tell you about the first time I met Catherine Halsey…”

“…we got away with it, but, well, Catherine and I were politely told that we shouldn’t attend any more protests,” he continued, as the sun bore down on them from above. “Something about instigating a riot, I think. Catherine told them that was stupid, of course. We had no involvement, and even if we had, it was technically riot control. Very different, she told ‘em.”

“Can’t blame them,” Jason commented, grunting as he clambered over the rocky outcropping and sat down alongside David. “Should’ve gotten you two kicked out of the university. Still, can’t say I’ve ever heard about defusing a riot with an improvised foam party.”

The small spur of rock was a few feet from the trail, and it projected outwards over the gulch with a commanding presence, like a bird’s beak, or a man’s face. They’d come quite a ways, even in a mere forty-five minutes and David could tell that Jason was a little impressed at how the gulch fell away – and by extension, how far they’d hiked.

There was something interesting about the psychology of it. Because you were constantly moving uphill, you knew that the trail wasn’t level, but your frame of reference was still skewed. It was all too easy to think you were ascending at a much lesser rate… right until you turned around and looked back, and saw the truth of it.

“It probably would have gotten us kicked out, if they could prove it was us,” David said, laughing. “Which it wasn’t, of course. We had nothing to do with the foam. We were just standing there. Birdwatching, that’s what Catherine called it. Now, Paul and Steve, they were the ones who actually started the whole chemical chain reaction, but they were further away, so they didn’t get spotted.”

“What happened next?” Jason asked, a hesitant note in his voice.

It wasn’t hard to understand that hesitation. Jason had only ever met Doctor Halsey, ONI spook. He’d never met the woman that David known – the one who’d screamed down a dozen football jocks at a party, after they’d started hitting a little too forcefully on a couple women that were way too drunk to consent to anything.

“It was a little tense,” David said, with no small amount of understatement. “They didn’t get it at first. They thought she was just some kid that had snuck in. One of decided it would a good idea to push her off the table she was standing on. Big guy, you know. Used to solving things with force.”

He paused, and both of the psychologists looked out of the descending floor beneath them. The way it zigged and zagged. The stream was gentle, with curves, but the walls of the miniature valley were stone and soil, and they didn’t shift as easily as the dirt in the center. Only enormous pressure could move them, and the landslides had resulted in sharp, jagged angles to the gulch itself.

“The jerk reached out, and she broke his thumb,” David said softly. “Yanked it backwards, shattered the metacarpal. Just like that.”

Fingers snapped, the sharp crack bouncing off the hills, and echoing.

“I’ve never seen anybody move that fast,” he recounted.

He could see it, even all these years later. The way that Catherine had seemed to blur, her arm whipping out like a snake. The instant reaction from the towering man, the scream he let out.

“Then they all saw me,” David continued, with a sad smile. “Big guy, just like them, with a couple of my weightlifting buddies. Think we… maybe seven of us, to the five of them? They didn’t like the odds, so they left.”

Jason turned his head, and looked him with a confused, thoughtful expression.

“But Catherine didn’t see us,” David said, looking right back at him. “She didn’t know that I was standing behind her. This little, five-foot six girl standing on a coffee table. Maybe a hundred and twenty pounds, soaking wet. And she was ready to keep going. She would’ve attacked every single one, if they hadn’t backed off.”

“Catherine really hates forced labor,” David said, as Jason gulped down a swig from his water bottle. “She hates it because it’s immoral, sure, but she ranted about it once, a couple months before we wrote that paper. It’s… oh, what did she say?”

He trailed off, trying to remember Catherine’s exact wording.

“It’s inefficient,” he recalled, speaking slowly. “It’s lower quality, it requires constant inspections to check for sabotage, you spend more labor on the guards, and all sorts of stuff like that. The economics of it, the sheer incompetence of it, that pissed her off almost as much as the principle itself.”

“I don’t buy it,” Jason told him, shaking his head. “Halsey’s crazy, boss. Even just a single meeting with her, that was enough. She’s a sociopath. She doesn’t get human emotions. She switched between anger and happiness too fast for a normal person.”

“No,” David disagreed. “She cares more about these kids than any of us. She’s not a sociopath, Jason. She’s just very good at pretending to be one.”

Jason made a non-verbal noise of disagreement, a descending ‘nnnn’ sound.

They were three hours into the hike, and by now, they’d risen up, above the gulch’s small ridgeline.

David could see, in the distance, the Spartan-II compound gleaming in the sunlight. This far away, the details were hard to make out, but he could see the fluttering motion of the UNSC’s flag, as well as the UNSC Navy flag just beneath it. He could see the firing range, the children’s playground, and even the admin block.

“She’s had a lot of experience with pretending to be a sociopath,” David continued, ignoring Jason’s disagreement. “She can’t let up on her acting job even for a moment. There’s far less scrutiny on the regular scientists. Even us team leaders aren’t watched as carefully as Catherine is. She’s the head of the entire program, and she’s the one that ONI keeps the closest eye on.”

“But how do you actually know?” Jason insisted half an hour later, huffing a little as they started up the final approach to the top. “About Halsey pretending, that is. Have you talked to her about it?”

“Haven’t, can’t, and don’t need to,” David said with a shrug, still breathing easily despite the increased incline. “All four of us – Catherine, me, Steve Sullivan, and Paul Wu – we lived together in a shared house for years. We’d talk politics and philosophy every night, Catherine and I. I know that woman better than anyone alive, Jason. That’s how I know she’s absolutely furious about this.”

Jason didn’t respond immediately. He was sucking down a breath as the trail leveled out, near the final ascent. The mountain itself was directly in front of them, but that didn’t make it any easier – the peak was another four hundred meters higher up, and the final climb had no trail, just a quickly rising ascent.

David wasn’t breathing quite as hard, which probably meant he’d been pushing a little too hard for Jason, likely because of his own irritation with Jason. Of course, David had always been in excellent shape, but before the Spartan-II program, he had been more of a gym rat than a cardio hound.

Over the last three years though, he’d done so many of these little walk and talks with the Psych Team that he’d grown fond of the different kind of exertion. It was simpler, purer, in some ways. And it helped with the mental struggles.

Even with the doctors who knew that Catherine wasn’t the devil she appeared to be, the stress could still build up. The classic dilemma, true for both medicine and psychology – doctors made the worst patients. They could be just as blind to the problems in their own lives as their patients, but they didn’t like admitting it.

As a result, David had been the therapist for every other therapist in the program. He was their safety net, their pressure release valve. It offloaded a lot of the stress onto him, but unlike the others, he had absolute faith that Catherine would make everything work out.

He didn’t know exactly how she’d do it, but at the moment, it looked like she was preparing from every situation. The options ranged from a peaceful and quiet shutdown of the program without having to put the children through experimental surgery, to calling in every possible favor or loan to ensure that all the children at least survived the surgeries.

“Besides,” David continued, moving more slowly as Jason caught his breath. “Catherine’s part of the paper wasn’t that bad. She wrote all the stuff about how to train soldiers, and how to deploy them. The Artificial Intelligence stuff too, but, honestly, that stuff is such a low priority that its practically dormant.”

“Then…” Jason said, before trailing off.

David’s shoulders sank, involuntarily. He already knew what the other man was thinking. There were four research teams in the program, and he had been telling stories about all four of the Party House for the entire climb up the mountain.

If Catherine Halsey had not come up with the child element, then who had?

“Doctor Wu?” Jason asked, in a guessing tone.
 
“No,” David shook his head. “Paul came up with the augmentations, sure, but he didn’t specify an age. Remember, we wanted to waste money. Efficiency like doing it at puberty? We could do it to adults, it would only take a few trillion extra dollars of research.”

He sighed.

“No, I did that,” David said. “I’m the one who said we had to use children. It would be optimal for… psychological inculcation.”

There was a hiss behind him, a dark, seething sound. Jason didn’t say anything audible, but he didn’t need to. His… disgust… had been made clear.

David kept his eyes forward, on the path ahead of him. There was no condemnation that the other man could express that would outweigh what David had told himself over the years.

“You wanted to know why we needed to go on this hike,” he said, changing the topic.

“It’s a lesson,” Jason said, repeating David’s earlier words. “About what, sunk cost fallacy? We’re already out here on the trail, so we might as well continue until the top?”

“No, but close,” David said. “It shouldn’t surprise you to learn that I’ve studied ONI’s file on you quite extensively before we made the decision to bring you on. You’ve only ever really lived in London or Sydney, right? Never been out in the wilds like this?”

“Hampstead Heath is wild,” the man argued. “We’re quite proud of that, you know. It’s not park. Not some manicured garden. Real wilderness.”

“Sure, but it’s not a mountain,” David replied, rolling his eyes at the meaningless point. “See that, up there? That’s our destination. Doesn’t really have a name, but some of the trainers are thinking of calling it Halsey’s Peak.”

“Yeah, what’s a little casual arrogance among friends?” Jason muttered.

“Total length of this hike is about nine kilometers to the summit,” David continued, ignoring the other man. “About one-point-six kilometers of vertical gain. Since we left at around noon, we’ve done about… four-fifths of the first half. Four hours, in case you haven’t been checking your watch.”

“Wait, first half?” Jason asked, abruptly stiffening.

David kept his face still.

The newcomer had just come out of a very traumatizing day at the Spartan-II compound. He had been so distracted by the revelations that he hadn’t asked for specifics when David had told him that they were going for a hike, nor when they’d started.

It was a bit cruel of him, to not tell Jason in advance… but that was part of the lesson. To realize, too late, what you had already agreed to do. To learn how trapped you really were. Jason’s busy mind had been too distracted to ask the details at the start, and to realize what it had meant.

The parallels were obvious.

“We’ve got to come back down,” he said, patiently. “Five hours to the top. It’s normally a little faster going down than going up, but let’s say that’ll be another four hours, so we’d be back in the compound by nine o’clock. Of course, sunset around here is about eight o’clock, but since the gulch goes east-to-west, it’ll be in partial darkness probably starting around six-thirty, maybe seven o’clock.”

He paused, and looked back to the other psychologist, who had stopped, and was staring at David in shock.

“Of course, going downhill in the dark is very, very dangerous,” he continued. “Especially across that scree, and especially without a flashlight, and… I seem to have forgotten mine. So our only option is to beat the time. To keep going.”

“Doctor Meyer, this is stupid,” Jason said, staring at David in dismay. “We’ll never make it back in time. We don’t have the gear to spend the night. We’ve got two water bottles and… what, some crackers? There’s no point. Let’s head back, and we’ll do it tomorrow, with an earlier start time and more preparation.”

“Nope,” David denied, cracking a smile as he looked back at the newcomer, amused. “We’re gonna do it today. I’m going to get a picture of the two of us on top of the mountain.”

“And then a dropship will pick us up,” Jason guessed. “This is a team-building exercise. Your twisted idea of a psych evaluation. You’re gonna make me stress and sweat, and gut it out, so that you can see if I had the stomach to go through with it. If I’ve got the determination. Because you think this will tell you if I can handle being in this position, in this program.”

“There won’t be any dropship coming,” David told him. “This isn’t about your determination to do the impossible, Jason. This is about talking to God.”

“I’m an atheist,” Jason said, flatly.

“I'm agnostic, myself. Religion doesn’t come into this,” David chuckled darkly, though he didn’t feel any humor at the moment. “This isn’t a religious thing. It’s a phrase.”

“Then what the hell does the phrase mean?” Jason demanded.

“Ask me again at the end of this,” David told him. “If you need to. I think you’ll understand by then.”

Jason visibly bit back a comment. It was likely something spiteful, something about how if Jason didn’t understand, it was because David was horrible at explaining.

Childish, yes, but everyone had thoughts like those, even the most well-trained and capable people at avoiding those mistakes. They were innate things, unconscious whispers. Nothing wrong with that, so long as you had the self-control to keep them unconscious. It was only when you lacked self-control, and you spat venom and vitriol freely, without thinking, that you could really put yourself into truly horrible situation.

For all his anger at the Spartan-II program, and his slowly growing dislike of David, Jason Thompson was still a highly trained professional. He had already figured out that the hike was a lesson in the first half hour. He would listen to David, think about his words, and try to determine the best path forward, like any good psychologist would.

Like every psychologist that David had brought onto this mountain.

It was a quarter past five when they reached the peak. The sun was still high, but not too high.

Jason set down his pack and carefully lowered himself to the rocky ground, leaning against it.

David, for his part, looked out over the valley that the compound lay inside, and then he turned, looking out over the next, and the next valley beyond it.

In the clear, cloudless day, he could see for dozens of kilometers, and everywhere he looked, there was nothing but more mountains and more valleys. It reminded him of looking at an ancient rug in a museum, underneath a magnification lens – seeing the threads up close, with the gaps between them.

“What’s the point?” he heard Jason mutter under his breath, just loud enough to make out.

David suppressed a sigh. He’d hoped for a chance to catch his breath before he got to this part of the trip, but Jason’s blood was boiling, and his temper wouldn’t hold long enough.

And to be honest, David’s own temper was about to snap.

“Have you talked to God yet?” David asked.

“What the hell are you talking about?” Jason snapped, glaring at David from where he was sitting.

“Are you desperate enough yet?” David demanded, sending his own fierce look back. “Are you still thinking about complicated stuff, or are you thinking about survival?”

The other man stared at him, and his mouth worked for a moment, but no words came out. His face was bright red, but he was so overcome with emotion that he couldn’t get the words out. David knew the feeling well.

“That’s what talking to God is about,” David snapped at him. “It’s about when you’re pushed to your limit, and you’re afraid you’re gonna die, and you start talking to God, asking for just one more step, just one more day to live. When you are so desperate that you realize how simple everything really is.”

“Simple,” Jason repeated, the word twisting out of his mouth like it was a living, wriggling thing of chitin and hate. The man stood up, his legs shaking, but still bearing his weight. “You think this is simple? What, the mountain or the goddamn child soldiers you’re training here?”

“Do you think this is hard?” David shot back, turning the man’s question around as he gestured at the mountain. “Do you think this little mountain walk was difficult? Do you think this is suffering? That desperation, that fear? That’s what every single one of us have lived with for the last three fucking years!”

His roar echoed down the mountain valley, like the trumpets at Jericho, as the sound spread to the valley below. But it was not yet the seventh day, and there was no glorious conclusion awaiting them. Luckily, Halsey’s Peak did not directly border the Spartan-II compound. His words would trickle down the mountain into a dusty, dry place where nothing but the bushes would hear them.

Jason fell silent, staring up at David. He was still angry, but he had at least stopped for a moment.

“Three years of watching these children suffer,” David snarled. “Three years of Paul and me doing our best to make sure that they survive the augmentations. Three years of Steve trying to make their armor, so they don’t eat a bullet and die! Three years of Catherine lying to ONI with every single report, telling them that the kids are loyal, that the kids are obedient! Three years, we’ve been climbing this mountain, Jason!

“Do you know who is out doing PT with those kids every single day? Catherine Halsey!” he continued, sweeping a hand down towards the distant compound, towards the training fields. “Who’s traveling two thousand kilometers a day, just to check in on everyone’s progress in person, to make sure nothing goes wrong? Catherine Halsey!  Do you know who’s chosen to take the child with the highest probability of dying, and made her into her personal protégé, reminding her every single day what the cost of our failure would be? Catherine fucking Halsey!”

David’s breath was catching in his throat. He hadn’t had enough time to rest. It would have been better if he truly had been a sociopath, like the new guy thought Catherine was. Jason had been pushing his buttons too fast, the entire final stretch of the hike and now David was screaming out his lungs before he could truly fill them.

But he couldn’t stop now. Just like Jason couldn’t stop climbing the mountain. Just like none of the scientists could stop the program.

Because there was no other option. There was no safety net, no stress release valve, no bridge back across the Rubicon. They could only go forward.

“And do you know who picks through the resumes of potential people to be brought on, to make sure we get people like you, who will be sick over what the program does?” David demanded, pointing an accusing finger at Jason. “Me!”

A small bit of spittle sprayed from his mouth as he turned that accusing finger back on himself. The wet droplets were dark against the rocky ground at the peak.

“I pick who else has to suffer in this living hell!” David screamed. “If any one of you cracks and decides to chew on lead, I’m going to have to pick the next man to suffer because you chickened out! And then, I have to go back to work the next day with another death on my soul. Seventy-five deaths, and counting. How many more do we need?!”

David grit his teeth and pulled off his hip-pack, flinging it to the ground. The bag of trailmix, tightly wrapped in rubber-bands, burst as he did, scattered peanuts and pretzels and brightly-colored M&M’s all over the peak.

He stomped over Jason, who stumbled back, eyes wide, perhaps realizing for the first time that they were four kilometers away from the nearest other person, and that David was tall, broad, well-muscled man who could easily kill him, right then, right there.

“That’s why you’re on this damn mountain,” David told the man, jabbing him with a finger, physically pressing it against his chest. “Because that feeling, right there in your heart? That anger at the mountain, at me, at Halsey? That fear? I want you to remember that. I want you to remember that exact feeling, and I want you to never, ever let it go.

“That’s what ONI has done to those kids, and to us scientists, and even the damn trainers!” he spat, stepping back from Jason and gesturing out, over the summit, towards the distant Spartan-II compound. “None of us can give up! None of us can ever turn back! The only thing we can do is keep going, and pray that we make it out the other side!”

Jason slowly turned his head, looking out over compound that David was pointing to. He was no longer wearing an angry glare, and it had been replaced by something more terrified, more haunted.

“And you’re just a small cog,” David hissed, forced to lower his volume by the hoarseness of his throat. “No matter how horrible this feels to you, it isn’t a fraction of the anger that Catherine Halsey feels for this entire God-damned program.”

David inhaled sharply, trying to fill his aching lungs. Jason didn’t speak, didn’t take advantage of the pause.

No humans spoke on that peak for a minute. There was only the wind, and the rustling of the spilled food, and the burst wrapper from the trailmix being carried away into the wilderness, flying free forevermore.

“Now,” David said, as soon as he felt like he could talk without throwing up. “Are you going to help us? Or are you going to give up, because this climb is too much for you?”

The other man’s throat clenched, and he swallowed hard. There was a tremble in his hands. A shakiness to his shoulders. His eyes were red, either from anger or fear.

Slowly, Jason Thompson nodded.