SHIKARI

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Every movement the armoured-man made put Elaine’s teeth on edge. Made them itch in their sockets, and she didn’t even know that was possible. His helmet, contoured and brutalist in its design, flashed every now and then, as three lenses mounted on the forward optic pulsed with light. One red, one blue, each flanking a pure white lens in the center.

Elaine leaned forward on the railing, staring down into the training pit. Around fifty fresh recruits for the SIV programme were listening with rapt attention to the armoured man, as he paced up, and down, explaining proper Simulation strategy, and methods of engagement.

Elaine studied him for a while, then, her eyes wandered to the second armoured man, sitting down on the other side of the pit, working a datapad. When he tapped the screen, the main display the first man paced up and down in front of would change to various images, video clips, or recorded simulations, while he scrutinised the displayed Spartans within the images, videos, and recorded sims on their style, form, and skill in combat.

“Shikari,” Elaine muttered to herself, heaving a great sigh.

“You know the real reason they’re here, right?” a voice beside her said.

She looked over, and saw her squadmate had snuck up on her, leaning over the railing in much the same way she found herself doing. She stood up straight and tilted her head. “Whyssat, then?”

“It’s to train with them, record it all, and submit it to an ONI database,” he said, with a smile that she knew he only wore when he figured something out.

Elaine furrowed her brow. “Why would they waste time doing that?”

Alex gripped the railing and copied her confused look. “You think it’s a waste of time?”

“How many Spartans are there in active service right now?” she asked. “And you’re telling me that a SHIKARI Spartan,” she pointed down at the two armoured figures walking around the Pit, “recorded each and every one of us, then plugged all that data into one server somewhere?”

“Yes,” Alex said, without thinking.

Blindsided a bit by his sure response, Elaine just shrugged her shoulders. “Why?”

Alex said nothing for a while, motioning down at the two Spartans. “Who are they?”

Elaine blinked in frustration, and held up a hand. “They’re Spartans who wear SHIKARI,” she said. “Why?”

“Wrong.” Alex pointed at her, then jutted his finger the other direction down into the Pit. “That armour means that each and every one of them made a choice. Duty, or loyalty. That armour is what you wear when you choose duty,” he spat the words out, like they left a bad taste.

“Is that a bad thing?” Elaine asked.

“When it means hunting down people who used to be your allies, yes,” Alex said, his eyes darkening and brow lowering down.

Elaine closed her eyes as she thought about the one thing every Spartan knew, but didn’t speak of. The one protocol that existed as a last resort in the event of a rogue Spartan.

“Allegiances change. If STOLEN GAUNTLET is in effect, they need to be brought in,” she said.

“But look at what they created to do it.” Alex shook his head from side to side. “That armour is made specifically to circumvent MJOLNIR systems. Disorient the wearer, get in close, and finish them off.” He turned to look at Elaine. “Personally,” he finished, drawing a finger across his throat.

Elaine shivered, but fought down her squeamishness. “You still didn’t answer my question.”

“They hunt Spartans,” he said. “And now they have the perfect excuse to record how these newbloods fight, move, react under pressure, and behave in a combat environment.”

Elaine shook her head. “But it’s not real combat. There’s no stakes, everyone acts like a hard-charging dumbass in the Sims.”

“True, everyone acts that way eventually.” Alex said. “Once you shake off the adrenaline and realise it’s simulated combat; no live ammunition, no real stakes. But, for those first few weeks, you act like it’s real. It feels like it’s real.” He shot her a sideways glance from the corner of his eye, one corner of his mouth uptured. “Rather formative weeks for a New Blood, aren’t they? A look into their raw fighting style, how it would actually be, how they would actually move.”

Elaine looked back down into the Pit, at the gathered, relatively naive Spartans who had just been lifted from marine units, army garrisons, and SOF groups.

“You’re telling me it’s coincidence that SHIKARI show up right now?” Alex whispered.

Elaine kept staring at the lenses and contours of the man’s helmet, as he paced up and down the gathered Spartan masses. She found herself less thinking of the figure as a Spartan, and more of the suit he wore; the thing that turned her blood to ice, that could find her no matter what camo paint she applied, or armour ability she wired up to her systems.

No matter what her VI programmes did to assist her in battle, or what her system did to try and keep it out, that suit around the man down in the Pit could circumvent it all, find her at all times, and never stop hunting her until she was dead.

It sent a full-bodied shiver up her spine, and made her grip the railing a little bit tighter. Unabated, a single word whispered its way up out of her throat and through her lips before she could stop it;

“Freaks…” she trailed off.

Alex chuckled beside her, still leaning his upper body on the cobalt-blue railing, shaking his head. “Now you get it,” he said, looking up at her.

She turned to face him, slack jawed expression thankfully hidden from her squadmate, but she had a feeling he could see it all the same.

He turned his head back down to the few dozen recruits, and the man who still spoke from behind a voice modulator. Alex shook his head from side to side in a slow fashion while he spoke. “What fucked them up so bad that they chose that armour over everyone else in this troop bay?”

He pushed himself off the railing and walked away, leaving Elaine to her observation, with new information to digest.