Chapter Text
Chapter 1: Perchance for Peace
Aurelia’s largest port, Riordan, was a bustling hive of all sorts of stores and cantinas. It was one of the few colonies that had been recently settled right after the Human-Covenant war, and its proximity to many of the re-terraformed colonies made it an extremely fast-growing hub. But whether it was just the governance of Aurelia or its citizens’ lack of interest, it never became industrialized; had never grown beyond the frontier look it had. Choking dust clogged the air, and the shouts of many merchants selling their wares made it extremely hard for anyone to hear each other. Children, adults, traders, merchants, smugglers, thieves; everyone who came here had a purpose and those who didn’t usually ended up on the illegal slave market.
Slavery was banned per the United Nations resolution that had been passed almost 500 years ago, but it was not for the slave market that the six-man team of SPARTAN-IIs had been sent on this particular mission. Their target was a black-market ring that had been supplying the resurgent rebels since about five years ago.
ONI had given them the briefing via COM about the ring’s leader, Luanne Michani, the bastard daughter of one of the most influential businessman in the trade business that circled the colonies. Of course, Michani’s father had denied all accounts of having fathered an illegitimate daughter, but ONI had not gone into details about that. That briefing had been about two weeks ago, when they were near the far end of the Outer Colonies, having just returned to the Ember of Winter. The only reason why it had taken ONI so long to track down where exactly Michani and the central location of the black market operations was taking place was because of the complex nature in which Michani had covered up all operations. There were so many legitimate fronts that covered her operations that even the UNSC intelligence analysts had been stonewalled for a long time by the bureaucratic red tape that kept them from digging deeper.
Now however, that was about to change.
For the better, John thought to himself as he and his teammates sat in the back end of the rickety sled cart that was about five carts long, dragged by a black-smoke-churning tractor. Incredible amounts of dust were kicked up on this end of the tractor, almost obscuring the front, and that was the only reason why John and his team had chosen to sit here. Other vagrants who couldn’t pay for the ten kilometer ride from the spaceport, across the parched desert to Riordan were also sitting near him and his team. None of them were paying attention to them, being more concerned about the fact that any minute, the dust would be whipped away and the driver would see that he had a cart-load of non-paying customers.
The change in the gears of the tractor was audible, even from where he was sitting, and John felt the deliberate shift of a gear change as the tractor started to slow down. He saw that they were only a kilometer away from the entrance to Riordan and gave a very slight nod to the rest of his team, who were watching the landscape and the upcoming city with alert eyes.
He hopped off, carrying the dust-covered duffle bag with him. It contained half of all the equipment they needed to pull this operation off. One by one, at different times, the rest of his team got off the slowing tractor and blended seamlessly in with the other people that had decided to approach the city by foot. Last to be off the tractor was Fred, who carried the other duffle bag with their equipment.
John frowned to himself as he followed a small knot of jabbering mechanics, shuffling his feet and keeping his eyes down a bit. Though it had taken some time for him to get used the fact that Fred now outranked him, he was surprised that Fred had not opted to take the lead point for this particular mission. All the other missions they had gone on after their successful return from Operation NOVA had been led by Fred, though the planning was shared by both John and Fred. He had briefly wondered why for this particular mission, but didn’t think much of it. Whatever was bothering Fred, was his own to deal with. There was no need for John to know, and it didn’t seem to affect the Spartan’s combat readiness and skills.
Both Cortana and the Ember of Winter’s AI, Calista, had gotten incredibly detailed imagery of Riordan from its security cameras and from random pictures that circulated through the integrated network from the various people that took images of the city. The imagery had been overlaid with the blueprint map that ONI had given them, and they all knew what the building looked like. Getting inside the building was going to be the easy part. Planting the explosives without detection was the tricky part and some had said almost impossible. But they were Spartans, they ate impossible for breakfast.
He suddenly veered off to an alleyway as he saw an approaching group of the local security force, making his departure from the main road as seamless as possible, as if he knew that his destination was down this particular alleyway. He saw the dark and light cloaked outlines of Kelly and Jerome veer off to another alleyway while Douglas and Linda fell into a crowd of people that had slid to the side of the street to give the security force room to pass. Fred had stopped in front of a stand, seemingly interested in the wares that the vendor was selling.
John tugged the hood of his cloak a bit further over his head and gripped the duffle bag a bit tighter. Ever since the UNSC had revealed that Spartans were still alive and had been active during the Flood crisis, the stories that circulated through the networks had shot them to near-legendary status…again. For this particular mission, their MJOLNIR armors were too bulky and too obvious and certainly would not let them crawl through vents and small spaces, so they had opted for the uncomfortable lightly armored black body suits they had last used nearly forty years ago.
In this heat, he was still sweating even with the suit’s thermal unit on active, but his hood obscured most of his face, so no one was paying any interest as to why rivulets of salty water was dripping down his face. It also meant they could not take Cortana on this mission, but she had assured them that the security protocols on Riordan were nothing like standard ONI security. She had even uploaded a part of her own intrusion software into the datapads they took along, if they needed it.
As soon as the security detail passed, he took the long way back out of the alley and resumed walking towards their mission destination. As soon as he reached an innocuous, multi-storied, slightly dilapidated-looking building, he walked straight in with his teammates following behind him. He bypassed the noisy, smoky cantina that was blaring excruciatingly awful music, immediately in front of him and headed straight down the ramps to a public restroom.
A patron of the cantina was in the nearest stall, vomiting his guts out, while two others were sitting in the adjacent room, smoking what smelled like an extremely noxious mix of military contraband black tar cigars. He led his Spartans to the farthest corner of the restroom and dropped the duffel bag, immediately crouching down and unzipped it. Fred dropped the other one and did the same. The six of them quickly assembled the firearms they needed and made sure that the explosives were equalized in both bags. Earpieces were hooked up and a quick COM check was done. No one in the restroom paid attention to their actions.
Both Linda and Fred slid their sniper rifles under their cloaks and left the restroom first. John knew that they would be on their way to find separate perches to support the rest of the team as they crawled around ducts and planted their explosives all over the exterior and interior building. Linda was their external sniper support while Fred would be on the inside. The explosives would be planted by the rest of them.
They walked out of the restroom and towards a neglected-looking elevator. Getting in, it creaked a bit and for a split second, John was unsure if it would hold the weight of the four of them. But the creaking stopped and the doors closed. Holding down the ‘CLOSE’ button, Kelly inserted one of the two datapads they carried and the intrusion software quickly churned through the pathetic layers of security. When the elevator started to move, he let go of the button and less than a minute later, the doors slid quietly open into the maintenance hall.
The four of them quickly got out, shed their cloaks and donned the coveralls that were the colors of the maintenance crew for the building. Though the topside was mostly a frontier dump, it was the lower levels of the building that showed the true industrial nature of Riordan. However, they had to plant explosives both on the lower levels and upper levels in order to successfully blow up the place.
John and Kelly took the left passage shaft that would lead them deeper into the lower levels of the building while Jerome and Douglas took the right which would bring them to the exterior. Each had a datapad with the intrusion software. John emerged from the downward passage and carefully opened the door, pretending that he did not want to smash the door into any business men or women in their officious suits.
They ignored him as he and Kelly shuffled to the nearest dataport, which also happened to be attached to a rather large support structure for the building. Inserting the datapad in the port he touched a button and watched the numbers scroll through as Kelly crouched with the bag, seemingly rummaging for several tools that would help them diagnose whatever problem they were pretending to solve.
The datapad beeped and the dataport automatically shut down. Using a powered screwdriver, John unscrewed the bolts to the port and yanked the terminal free of its housing. People continued pass by both of them without another glance. He shined a flashlight in the gaping maw and saw the connections that were there that would overload the system if connected right. However, it was not that simple, for Kelly was assembling a disguised explosive that would render the overload about three times more.
“Guards approaching, Blue Lead,” Fred suddenly whispered over COM. “One of them is suspicious.”
“Hey, you,” a slightly angry, irritated voice said from behind him.
John tensed, as did Kelly, and he turned slowly around to see one of the security details that roamed Riordan looking at him a bit shrewdly. It was too crowded and there were too many witnesses in this area for Fred to shoot the guard or the detail. He hoped the guard wasn’t too nosy or else a mission abort was going to be in order.
“You,” the guard said, nearly standing on his tiptoes to peer at the messily sewed on name tag on his uniform. “John…Doe?” the guard asked, incredulous.
“Ye-ah,” he mumbled, catching himself from saying the automatic ‘yes, sir’.
The guard stepped back and gave a bark of laughter. “Momma must have had a sense of humor. Think you can get that network outage resolved soon?”
He shrugged, and tried to pitch his voice to be as inarticulate as possible, “Hope so.”
“Do so. Don’t want to be reported just because I missed my five-o-clock show now, would you?” the guard said, sneering a bit.
“I’ll try my best,” he said, again, almost adding the honorific sir.
“Good on ya,” the guard replied then walked off, laughing a bit with his buddies.
John turned back to the mass of wires and Kelly silently handed him the disguised explosive. He inserted it, hooked up the appropriate wires and re-inserted the port’s housing back onto the wall. Using the datapad, he powered it back on and it gave him a beep of confirmation. He unhooked it, and both he and Kelly continued down the corridors of the building.
As he and Kelly wound around the interior of the place, he saw many weapons lockers full of ammunition and all sorts of guns. Some looked experimental and others were still locked in their crates marked UNSC. Quite a few looked like Covenant weapons too, and he felt a spike of anger course through him, though he quelled it quickly. They had a mission to complete.
Ten more charges were set between the two of them, all at locations where overloads would be possible, though one of them had been conveniently set attached to a generator that powered a part of the building. No other guard details had bothered them, though Fred did snipe two overly curious people that had tried to examine the explosive that was attached to the generator. That had forced both him and Kelly to go back and haul the bodies into vent shafts. They and the explosives had not been detected so far.
As soon as the last of the explosives was wired, he whispered over COM, “Red Team, status?”
“Noisy crickets have all been calmed down, Blue Lead,” Jerome answered.
He tapped into the datapad at the last dataport they had rigged up, calling up the countdown timer. Whispering into COM he said, “Set on my mark…three, two, one, mark.” He tapped another button and the five minute countdown started.
Kelly and he calmly walked back down to the maintenance area, meeting up with Jerome and Douglas. They quickly donned their cloaks and rode the elevator up to the main floor. Getting out, they walked out of the building and blended into the streets, staggering themselves. At the edge of Riordan, Linda and Fred met up with them after the two of them had jacked an unattended car and the six of them quickly drove to the spaceport. Their transport, a Pelican disguised with disfigurements so bad that even John thought it was an eyesore to look at, was still waiting for them.
They were already half-way to space when the building that housed the black market hub exploded into millions of metallic and concrete fragments. John grimly smiled to himself; another mission against the rebels accomplished.
* * *
“Welcome back, Spartans,” the two AIs who served aboard the Ember of Winter said at the same time as soon as Fred and the other Spartans stepped off the Pelican on the hangar bay.
Fred still found it slightly disconcerting that the AI, Calista, had the all-too-familiar voice of the deceased Lieutenant Hattersfield. He thought he had gotten used to it, but it seems that even after all the years he had served aboard this ship, some things weren’t meant to be ordinary or gotten used to. He shook his head slightly, more to shake the dusty sand from his hair that was not stuck to his scalp, than for his brief moment of disorientation. The interior of the Pelican was covered with a massive amount of Aurelia’s dusty sand, and he could hear the slight groans of the deck hands as they ran up the Pelican’s ramp to maintenance the transport.
“Good to see you’re all back in one piece, Spartans,” the voice of Lieutenant Commander Jake Creighton said as he looked up to see the captain of the ship walk down the steps to the hanger deck floor.
“Mission accomplished, sir,” John spoke up as they all snapped to attention and saluted their captain.
Lieutenant Commander Creighton, a formerly active first-generation Spartan, returned the salute and said, “Debriefing will be in one hour. Get some food and get some rest.”
“Yes, sir,” they replied in unison.
If Fred had been the leader for this particular mission, then a one hour break prior to a debriefing would have meant about forty-five minute break. It was because of the necessary paperwork that needed to be filled out, most of it a detailed mission report. As he walked from the hangar bay to the common washrooms while listening to the chatter between Kelly and Jerome, he briefly wondered if he should take over the report writing for John, but quickly decided against it. Encroaching on pride and dignity were one thing, but filling out someone else’s report…not worth the bruised pride that he might inflict on John.
As soon as he was done cleaning himself, he entered his own personal quarters, granted to him because of his officer rank. There were many days at times when he missed being a NCO, where he could sleep in the same bunk room as his friends, joke with them on a whim, or play a mean game of cards. As he sat down in front of the small desk and turned on both the laptop and the datapad sitting on the desk, he leaned back and stretched. His left shoulder popped and twinged a bit; that wound had never healed properly after constant dislocations and torn-and-fused musculature.
“Welcome back, Lieutenant,” the crisp, no-nonsense voice of Calista said as her image resolved into a tiny hologram on the small AI port sitting next to his laptop. “The files you’ve requested have been compiled. I’m sending them to your laptop right now.”
“Thanks,” he said as he saw the active transfer flash across his screen and opened up the files.
“Wait,” Cortana’s voice interrupted his reading as her image resolved on the same pedestal that Calista occupied. “You let her gather data for you? I’m hurt, Lieutenant.”
“Cortana, you’re not the only one with intrusion software,” Calista said, shaking her head slightly.
Those two were just as bad, if not worse than when the AIs Jerrod and Serina had been bickering aboard the Forerunner ship, four years ago. The only reason why the Ember of Winter had two AIs aboard was because of the unique parameters that were inside both AIs. Cortana had extremely useful knowledge about the Forerunners, even more so after Operation NOVA, along with knowledge of the Covenant. The AI also had very sophisticated counter-intrusion software built into her base code, courtesy of whoever had originally created her. Calista was built with the mindset of a first and foremost extremely skilled military tactician and strategist with the secondary being technologist. The extremely experimental R&D group at the tiny colony of Peloponnesus had built the dual-donor AI.
Fred ignored the two AIs’ argument and focused back on the files that had been collected. There was not much, but then again, he had not expected anything, so the fact that Calista had found data was rather surprising. He had requested the same data over a year ago before, but nothing concrete had been found except for a codename. What he now looked at was very brief and didn’t even say much about the dossier of the person he had been searching for. Most of it was only listed as a status of ‘unknown’.
He had originally intended to take the lead point on the mission to Riordan, but Calista had found out through borrowing Cortana’s intrusion abilities, that the intel sent to them about Riordan and the black market nest, had been sent to ONI through a particular agent. This agent was one that the Spartans had formally been introduced to on Reach and whom had joined them in Operation NOVA over a year ago…
“Kelly, stand down,” Fred, interrupted, stepping forward before either could say or do anything. There was something about Falcon, right now, that suddenly made him uneasy, and it was not from the simple akimbo stance that the Spartan had adopted. He didn’t know where the fear came from, except it seemed like a strange vestigial whisper from Kurt that was guiding him to intervene. He took a quick glance at the SPARTAN-I.Is who had stopped their sparring and had visibly backed up at least half-a-meter away from Kelly…from Falcon. That was the source of his fear. “Stand down, Chief Petty Officer,” he repeated. “That’s an order.”
When even your most staunches of allies move back, perhaps its time to start paying attention because they sure as hell won’t tell you what’s scaring the bejeezus out of them, but they damn sure know that something is coming…most of the time, bad, Chief Mendez’s voice echoed in his head.
Falcon was the only Spartan who did not remove his or her helmet since they saw the Spartan on Reach…at least he never saw Falcon remove his or her helmet. The Spartan always had it on, even when he or she was getting food in the ship’s mess and it made him uneasy. Whenever Linda in her icy Zen no-thought mode, it had did not made him as anxious as he felt right now. Something was not right about Falcon.
Mentally, he shook his head, not really one for hunches, but all his instincts were screaming at him to make sure no one provoked Falcon. What little material he had gotten from Calista after Cortana had reported the mysterious Spartan’s name was only speculation on Calista’s part: the report of the entire rebel leadership on Regatta, which they had received earlier in the year, being assassinated without a trace one week after their hostage-rescue mission, did not help his worry at all. He normally would not have paid attention to such a report, but since that encounter with their rescuer whom he was almost sure that was the Spartan named Falcon, he had long suspected that Falcon was the one who had carried out that particular mission. He voiced that thought to the shipboard AI and the AI had extrapolated on it to produce some interesting theories.
Fred saw the brief surprise flash across Kelly’s face as he pulled rank on her; she had not been expecting it at all. But that flash of surprise was quickly replaced by a neutral look and she nodded, though Fred saw that it was somewhat reluctant. Even John had a slightly surprised look though that had been closed just as quickly as Kelly’s expression did. Explaining his actions to his would not help, but he just hoped that they were perceptive enough to see the possible threat that the Spartan known as Falcon could be. He had no doubt that Falcon would do anything to get the mission done, as they would too, but was this Spartan going to be a potential snag during their mission?
He had seen the Spartan in action during the defense of the Forerunner structure when John had been planting and arming the NOVA bombs, and to him, Falcon was a wildcard. However, in the aftermath of the mission, before all of them were cryogenically frozen for the duration of their long trip back to Reach, he had seen John approach the mysterious Spartan. The Master Chief must’ve opened a private COM channel because Fred had not heard anything exchanged between the two Spartans. The only reaction that Falcon had displayed was a tilt of his or her helmet before the Master Chief had walked away. Fred thought that Falcon was unpredictable and certainly someone that even the surviving first-generation Spartans feared, even if the Spartan was a strong ally and warrior during battles.
Unpredictable meant snag in his terminology and since the Spartans’ return from the Forerunner system, there had been a certain amount of unknowns in each of the briefings that they had received. In the months that followed Operation NOVA, Cortana had managed to pounce on several Intelligence files that should have been classified and stored away. One of those had been where the Intel for a prior Blue Team mission to Regatta to rescue hostages, which ended up having an unexpected fatality and had almost forced Fred to tread ground that he was alien to. The Intel for the planet, rebel base layout, and where exactly the hostages had been kept had all been sent by an ONI agent only codenamed: Falcon.
Several more files had ended up in Cortana’s possession, a few of them relating to the missions that the Spartans had undertaken before Operation NOVA and a couple after. Most of those Spartan missions had Intel provided by the same ONI agent. Fred had no doubt that it was more than a coincidence that a lot of the high-risks and high-stakes missions that the Spartans had been sent on for the past four years that the ONI Agent Falcon and the Spartan named Falcon were one in the same. He had Cortana backtrack and see if this mysterious person had done Intel work earlier, and the last that the AI could find had dated back to the late 2520’s, when the rebels and UNSC were still largely unaware of the threat the Covenant posed. The last mission that had intelligence tags from Falcon was for Spartan Blue Team’s planet-side Eridanus II mission to hunt down and arrest two high-ranking leaders of the rebel forces.
That mission had ended in success for the Spartans, but was the ONI agent Falcon from back then the same one now? That agent was pretty old then, he mentally calculated, so it couldn’t have been the same agent. However, the nagging feeling would not go away, no matter how much he had told himself that the two same-codenamed ONI agents from different time periods were not the same.
He had also briefly pondered about the ease in which Cortana had acquired the files after she herself had mentioned it in passing. Those mission files were supposed to be classified top-secret. Someone had either deliberately leaked the files, or worse, the rebels had developed an extremely talented AI that had hacked into the highly secured ONI network. He had pushed the thoughts on that subject away, deciding to wonder about it later, when there was not such a heavy threat from the rebels still hanging in the air.
It was because of the information that Cortana had given him that introduced his reluctance to take the lead point for the Riordan mission. If he had taken lead then he would have been one of the four to execute the main plan, but as a sniper, he had free reign to watch their surroundings, and he made sure that none of them were being ambushed. He wasn’t sure where exactly the Intel for their mission to Regatta had come from, but both Calista and Cortana had theorized that it may have come from the same agent, Falcon, due to this being one of those ‘high-priority, high-risks’ missions. The Spartans had nearly botched the entire mission on Regatta, and for the mission on Riordan, he was not going to let that happen again.
“ONI agent Falcon?” Cortana suddenly asked, peering over to read the files on his laptop. “Interesting…”
“It’s not going to work, Cortana,” Calista spoke up, shaking her head slightly. “Even if you rewrite and block traces or divert them, they have this agent locked up. I have a horde of viruses locked away from my foray. Would you like to help me destroy them?”
There was a distinct one second pause before Cortana gave a reluctant sigh and said, “Fine. Gremlins have latched onto me too. I suppose its time to get messy.”
“Just think of it as an exercise in vermin extermination,” Calista quipped as the two holograms disappeared.
Fred snapped off the laptop and glanced at the clock. Thirty minutes before the briefing. “Calista, wake me up in twenty, please.”
“Will do, Lieutenant,” she replied. “Pleasant dreams.”
Thirty minutes later, the Spartans were gathered around the austere briefing room aboard the ship. They debriefed Lieutenant Commander Creighton while he took notes, and at the end of the briefing, the Lieutenant Commander dimmed the lights and brought up a projection with their next set of orders.
“HIGHCOM has called us back to Reach,” Creighton began. “Judging from the urgency, this is most likely a priority one mission. I was not given the full details, but the planet you see here is called New Manhattan. It’s a populous colony and it’s near the middle belt of colonies that was untouched during the Human-Covenant war.”
The projector changed to another image, this time of a small station that was orbiting the planet. “Orbiting the planet is what the UNSC considers the United Nations for all the colonies,” Creighton continued. “This station was established after the Human-Covenant war. The UNSC does not have jurisdiction over this station, because it’s entirely civilian-controlled. Once every two years, delegates of the colonies meet here and discuss trade routes, politics, anything and everything that concerns their own planet.”
He turned off the projector and raised the illumination again. “As I said before, I was not given details, but from the brief message, it seems that HIGHCOM has a plan that may solve the Insurrectionist problem and bring peace between the UN and colonial differences. To guarantee that this mission is successful, they’ve requested Spartans.”
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