User:RelentlessRecusant/Halo: Vector/We Part Our Ways

DECEMBER 2564 ASPHODEL MEADOWS SPECIAL WARFARE CENTER ASPHODEL MEADOWS, 47 URSAE MAJORIS SYSTEM

Her benumbed, tiny white body was an icy lump on the grey sheets, skin bleached because of the below-freezing air of the room, the blood drained from her epidermis by peripheral vasoconstriction, her heart struggling to maintain a core body temperature high enough to even continue circulating blood to her brain. Despite her hypothermic body, she could not ever muster the muscular energy to even shiver, for her body was so deprived, so gaunt, muscles locked fast in the rigid paralysis of sleep while her mind was…where?

Lieutenant SPARTAN-091 stared gently at her petrified form, collapsed over the miserable cot that was her bed in the womb of Asphodel Meadows Naval Special Warfare Center. He saw her—stars screaming into the interstellar void as they imploded, galaxies collapsing in profound abysses, stars freezing, surrendering to the absolute zero of space; dying. Of dark universes beyond this one, of all of space and time diminishing into the utter maw of a singularity. Of fire, of the most sensual, raw hate. Of cold, of anger so powerful it could extinguish the stars, extinguish the lights.

He watched her tenderly, with care, the bitter arctic rays of her room’s light illuminating the edge of his hard, gaunt face, splaying over the strong jaw, long scar, and intense eyes. He had no need to consult his chronometer. It had been two hours.

Why was he hesitating? He was showing weakness, the SPARTAN-II was showing tenderness. If anything had been learned from the past four years, he knew that was the one Achilles’ heel; never show her that you were bleeding, never show the world your tears. This predator, this graceful blade of beautiful muscle and sinew crafted by a mother’s hands, would kill you. She had killed over one hundred operators of the UNSC Special Operations Command by the age of six, more UNSCSOCOM operators killed by any single Covenant special forces team during the Great War.

And yet he showed pity. Perhaps Jared inwardly frowned, perhaps he didn’t. It was irrelevant.

But it was relevant. Did he care for this assassin? This murderess? This predator?

He gently depressed a small handheld, and as if metal tentacles sliding forth from the leviathan’s carapace, serpentine, snaking rays of black metal and gloss fell from the ceiling, angling towards the prone, comatose child sprawled on the sheets— Jared almost expected her to whirl then, to beautifully wheel, grab the ODST’s jaw and thrust downwards with enough force to rip off his chin. And then to turn again, beat the second commando’s head against a rock until the skull caved in.

Haunting images flickered through his mind, the phantom memories retained by yonder synapses within his brain; images he’d never forget. Section Three had enlisted him to train their newest SPARTAN, their newest child soldier. Yet this killer, “Talon”, was not a SPARTAN, the farthest possible creature from one. Jared had been a SPARTAN-II, fought with the cohort of John-117 and Kelly-087, and as children, they’d eluded Marine guards, stolen UNSC supplies, hijacked Pelican dropships. He’d been shocked, perhaps even paralyzed when he’d seen the SPARTAN-III records; a thousand little baby SPARTANs, all of them with a grudge after they’d watched their parents burn in Covenant plasma, creatures more of hatred than honor, each one wanting to take the fight against the Covenant. To die.

And this Talon, this haunted child. She was no SPARTAN; the S-IIs and S-IIIs had fought for a cause; for the UNSC, to overthrow the rebels, then to destroy the Covenant, rescue mankind. Yet this girl was unbridled fury and hatred in human form and flesh, some satanic beast. She didn’t care about the UNSC; she didn’t even know what the UNSC was, even after being controlled by it for six years. She’d killed more UNSC soldiers than any company of Sangheili Honor Guards. She slayed with such ease that if not for the hemorrhaging human blood and faces locked in eternal rigor of death, she would have been beautiful, a lovely dancer who seamlessly moved to the concert of life and death. She slaughtered with such brutality that she was more mindless beast than even the Jiralhanae, who had been tried for crimes against humanity for their mutilation and cannibalism of UNSC prisoners of war.

Who was she?

The serpentine arms closed with her, secured one arm that was so white it was translucent, and a vile, slender, glittering black tip emerged from one of the arms—

And steadily punched into the brachial vein.

She didn’t even stir. Her body was so locked in coma, so enraptured with death, her muscles so departed of any vigor or will. The pain couldn’t even elicit a change in her electroencephalogram (EEG) waves.

But the antipsychotic cocktail was in. He paused for a few heartbeats, for the small-molecule compounds to diffuse through her blood, to perforate the blood-brain barrier (BBB), to seep into the grey labyrinth of her mottled brain and find their distal targets.

He moved sluggishly, feeling the withering cold bite his skin. How could one even fall into slumber in this room?

And he stood there, by her bedside, that tight handful of white muscle and flesh on the dilapidated bunk. He felt guilty at times. He’d earned no pity from the SPARTAN-II drill instructors (DIs), had returned none to his trainers.

But this girl—

Something different?

And for a horrible moment, he thought what if the SPARTAN-IIs had been exposed to what Talon had taken without comment. They would be terror, irresistible power. Killing without hesitation—

No. They would have all broken. How Talon was even alive now as she vainly writhed to bring blood to her brain to keep her heart and lungs pulsating in a syncopated rhythm, he could not fathom. She wasn’t trying to survive training, she was trying to not ship out in a coffin.

That would change today.

The cold, rough cinderblocks of his fingers gingerly brushed her fair cheek, the stray tangle of raven hair juxtaposed vividly against her translucent skin.

She didn’t stir.

And he felt a strange sense of contentness, his fingers rubbing her cheek as if a worrystone, cherishing it. When she awoke, it was with a piercing scream that broke the spacetime continuum, and 091 gently closed his eyes, fingers still upon her cheek as the medusa’s scream gurgled from her mouth and the arteries stood out in her eyes as she screamed, of fury, of hatred, of anger, of hunger, of simple carnage, of death.

It was when she had screamed so much that there was no more air left to inflate her lungs, she dramatically collapsed on the dreary bed. She roused herself a moment later, beryl eyes lancing, alert, attentive, a predator on the hunt. She felt the unfamiliar presence of his callous fingers upon her tender skin and looked up.

Talon said stiffly, “Lieutenant.”

''Stay asleep, child. Stay in bed this morning. Stay asleep—''

She was already at her feet, muscles precisely controlled, as if in a mask—this was a predator, pure economy of power, such strength. Her eyes burned fiercely with hunger even in the brittle lighting.

Talon stared at him for long minutes, content to wait for her master’s orders. Killing ODSTs? Dismembering prisoners? Firearm proficiency? Advanced special-operations cross training? She saw it in the eyes, of all the other UNSCSOCOM operators on base, how they feared her, feared for their little eyes as they saw her tear apart their friends with her bare hands and sprinkle her body with their still-pulsing blood.

He felt a sudden pang of revulsion strike him, a sudden horror at the pure murderous rage in her eyes, the unconcealed bigotry, the hate. He’d seen those beautiful eyes for every day of the past four years, but today—

He placed a gentle hand on her shoulder, and he felt her muscular, taut body flinch with disgust and surprise. “Talon, let’s go for a run.”

Her head cocked at him curiously, her eyes piercing through him, as if trying to discern some superior ulterior motive percolating within his cortex; where was the endurance track? Where were the positions for a camouflaged sniper-spotter team? Where were the mounds to conceal claymore mines in? How accessible was it to close-air-support aerial strafing?

Jared saw the tactical contingencies and the mathematical strategic calculations flutter through her eyes and he wanly smiled for the first time. “No tricks this time, Chief. Come on, get kitted. Let’s go surfaceside.”

7 -  7  -  7

It was to Jared’s acute surprise that even the frigid morning air of cool Asphodel Meadows was warmer than the temperature of Talon’s bedroom. And the two giants strode there, under the first fingers of ambrosia light as 47 Ursae Majoris began to clamber over the planet’s horizon, the two dimly lit by a golden luster.

091 set the pace, and it was far from a run. It was a leisurely walk, perhaps even more a trudge, a nature walk. And Jared breathed hard, his eyes casually inspecting the severe beauty of the wind-sculpted hills, how stunningly did 47 Ursae Majoris’s yonder starlight gleam on the snow-encrusted conifers, giving the trees a striking rainbow corona.

Talon was clad in her familiar blue-and-white environmental suit, the skintight garments accentuating her supple, strong body, the bonelessness of her walk and gait; she was pure muscle, savagely beautiful.

And they walked their lonely walk for over an hour, and the lieutenant maintained this odd space, this silence. Talon merely looked at her officer commanding (OC), disinterested but still trailing him with a militarily-appropriate spacing after his well-muscled form. As they walked, 47 Ursae Majoris angled higher in the sky, the cold light illuminating the black silk of her hair, the sinuous, swaying form of her tight ponytail as it oscillated with her every steady step. And Talon thought. She thought of killing at first, first with a cleaver—decapitating, “experimental interrogation” methods, then of more civilized forms of killing; the assembly of a BR55HB SR Battle Rifle from its components, the careful adjustments to compensate for the S2 AM Sniper Rifle’s promiscuous recoil, how to land the bullet in the head and watch it explode like a watermelon. And then she saw the yonder, forlorn blue-black shapes of the faraway Calypso Mountains, and then thought of the calculations for windage and elevation with an artillery piece, that she was within striking range of .440 shockwave artillery at her current position.

When Jared suddenly turned to face her, she halted, a distant cortical sector still replaying the efficient impalement of a titanium carbide combat knife through the jugular and temple, the other maintaining a distant peripheral watch for the familiar grey-cyan streak of inbound shockwave artillery shells.

091 saw her thoughts in his eyes and immediately was disappointed. This wasn’t what he’d been trying to foster in her. One last climatic walk; and what? She could only think of ways how her primary instructor could be luring her into an artillery barrage?

“Stop.”

The singular word reverberated within her mind like a gong, sonorously resonating, dropping a cadence with every mountaintop echo. And when it reached her substratal depths, her body went rigid as her synapses fell dark, then resumed firing, at a more subdued pace. She hung onto his words now with a rapt attention, her psychology under the control of the antipsychotics and anticonvulsants now.

His face was serious, as barren as the lunar surface, the rill of his longitudinal knife scar a planetary trench, his eyes twin seas of frozen methane.

When he spoke, it was with finality, and—her predator sense was keen now, thirsting for weakness, for blood. Was that clumsiness in the vestiges of his syllables? Loss of control? Emotional disturbance? Confusion? Lost?

“Talon, I—”

He paused mid-syllable, and she said nothing.

For a long time, he stared at his pupil. The attractive way the rising sunlight played off of her strong jaw, the gleam of her eyes, with such cunning. He’d seen that exact same physical beauty before; he couldn’t place it.

He breathed heavily again, and it was a clumsy rattle in his lungs. His voice was gentle, soft, pliable. He was quiet, and for a long moment, he stared into her brilliant eyes, not relinquishing her attention. She saw an emotion in his eyes that she’d never seen before.

“Talon, I’ve known for you for four years. You are the best fighter I have ever known.”

Her voice was echoing. “Are, sir?”

“Do you know the date, Talon?”

“December 23rd, 2564 by the UNSC Standard Military Calendar.”

“Do you know the significance of this date?”

“No, sir.”

For a long moment, he regarded her steadily, staring deeply into the mesmerizing aquamarine kaleidoscopes of her irises, and the morning mist gently fell from the nearby hills, and their feet were swilled in the fog. When he broke away, he could not meet your eyes. “It’s your tenth birthday, Talon. You’re ten.”

She said nothing, interpreting that statement, attempting to divine some military significance from those two numeric digits.

“As per Directive 3-43 of Section Three, you are hereby confirmed to full operational capacity, Chief. Do you know what that means?”

She said absently, blandly, reflexively, “Yes. Thank you, sir.”

The SPARTAN was uncharacteristically taciturn, and he gingerly toed the frosted dirt of the unhewn road with a toe before looking at her again, and his brown eyes were distant, his lips twisted into a little sad moue.

“I’m not sure you should be thanking me, Chief.”

“Sir?”

He exhaled a deep breath, met her eyes, and those brown eyes were soft. “I pity you, Talon.”

Four simple words.

I pity you, Talon.

It was as if Jared had released a breath he hadn’t realized that he was holding; that some inexorable pressure was now purged from him, released.

His voice climbed to a more accustomed formality, but his words were gentle. “You take care, Chief, you hear me?”

“Sir.”

Jared stared at the creature before him, so trim and lovely, so strong, such a fire playing in dazzling emerald eyes. Yet that trim was the huntress’s build, a slender primordial being of amorphous muscle that could be effortlessly shaped into a killing blade. Her gross strength, the well-defined thighs and the powerful body, was so sinewy underneath her skintight suit that it far exceeded any SPARTAN in any program that had been before her; her superhuman strength, like a paranormal demon, tearing off jaws, decapitating heads. That fire in her eyes; the anonymous fierceness of an assassin, the determination and impulse to kill.

He wasn’t staring a ten-year-old girl. He was staring at a serial killer.

And the immediate word that had come to his mind; creature—he couldn’t fathom what had caused the word to come to mind, but its usage in this context was inherently disturbing to him.

''What have they done to you, Talon? Who are you?''

He choked on words, face flushed, and fell silent. Finally, he asked, his voice almost shy, “Do you think we’ll meet again?”

She was mute.

Finally, with a slight smile playing on his lips, he produced something from his back pocket. It was a circular patch of colored cloth, with a steel eagle in its center clutching thunderbolts, some primal deity of war. “I thought that I’d give”—he stumbled on the foreign words. “The SPARTAN unit patch, Chief.”

She looked at it curiously, the amber sunbeams rolling against its topographic surface.

He proffered it. “For you, Talon, and that black suede jacket you like so much. For us—for you to remember us.”

Her slender, gloved hand palmed the SPARTAN patch for a moment, and it coruscated brightly in 47 Ursae Majoris’s light before she silently replaced it into one of her pockets.

There was a rustle above, and the two saw the diminutive, rough-hewn shape of a Pelican dropship on an inbound vector, a filigree of contrails marking its trajectory as it vectored inwards.

He took several steps away, back to the Special Warfare Center, and sharply turned on his heel, as if to say something—

They looked at each other one last time.

Then, he headed off into the distance at a speed that no human runner could outpace.