Endgames

The Spartan kept a secret set of armour that no one knew about. Stashed away in her bunk, under false floor panels, were all the pieces of a functional set of Mjolnir armour. It was a simple matter for the ONI Agent to uncover the pieces, and set them out on the bunk the Spartan used to sleep.

All except the helmet. That, he placed on the table, facing the door. The first thing anyone would see once they stepped into the room.

The bunk was austere, and uniform. Grey sheets on a grey bed frame, chrome desk and a simple chair, personal effects were minimal, and this Spartan appeared to have an obsession with physical records, if the line of binders, and stack of datapads, were anything to go by.

The Agent had been waiting for the Spartan for roughly two hours, and had busied himself with setting up a chess board along with a table he pulled in from another room—if there was one thing he enjoyed more than his job and status, it was theatrics. He wanted his subject to be on edge, while he played the calm one.

The door to the bunk room opened. Into the darkness stepped an imposing silhouette. The Agent smiled when the figure froze in the doorway. The Spartans had impressive night vision—he knew she could see him.

“You’ve made a name for yourself,” he said to her, tapping the helmet he sat down on the table with three fingers.

The Spartan shut the door behind her, and switched the light on. The Agent squinted for a second, fished around in the pockets of the suit jacket he draped over the back of his chair, and put his datapad on the table; a file open on it for perusal.

“We don’t mind Spartans doing their own thing in their off-base hours,” he said, clasping his hands together, “but please, next time, try to pick something a bit more discrete and legal.”

The Spartan stepped over to the table and leaned over it. She tucked a strand of her above-regulation blonde hair back behind her ear. She read through the file, her eyes flicking from one side of the datapad to the other almost faster than the Agent could see her do it.

“I see an alias. I see probable cause.” The Spartan sat down across from the Agent, picked up the datapad, and scrolled down. “I don’t see evidence,” she said, looking up at him.

He could see her picture at the bottom of the page, suspect in at least seventeen assassinations across the planet. “We don’t need evidence,” he said. “If we had evidence, this conversation would be at the end of a loaded pistol, not a chess board.”

To prove a point, he unlatched his holster and set his SOCOM pistol down beside the board. The implicit threat went entirely unnoticed by the Spartan. No, not unnoticed, the Agent thought. The Spartan just didn’t care.

“More like you can’t find any evidence and decided to threaten me without something concrete to threaten me with.” She ignored the pistol entirely, tilting her head to one side and staring at him.

“Please, don’t act like you’re untouchable,” the Agent reached over to the board and moved one of his pawns up two spaces. “If we really wanted to, we could put you in a black bag and you’d disappear off the face of the galaxy.”

She echoed his move with one of her own. “Then, why don’t you?”

“Because you were, and continue to be, an asset.” More pieces marched across the checkered gulf between them. “You represent a significant investment.”

She smiled, and flicked her eyes towards the helmet staring at her with its featureless gold visor. “The armour is a significant investment. I think I’m willing to do what you Agents aren’t, and your superiors sent you to scare me into line, but that’s it.”

The Agent tilted his head to mirror her own. If she wanted to play, then he would play for keeps. He shifted a bishop up the board and took a Knight with it. “There is a difference between surgical incisions and blunt force trauma, Spartan Brooks. Our investigation of the Alliance are the former, your eliminations are the latter.”

Spartan Brooks took her queen and knocked the bishop off the board. It clattered down to the table, and she scooped it up, to place with the other pieces she had taken, set up behind the board in a neat line.

When it came to all things in life—both on, and off the board—the two figures at the table positioned their pieces in different ways. The Agent kept his scattered. It gave him the widest reach, and appeared before untrained eyes as random.

All it took, though, was someone to figure out the pattern, and, like anything else, it could be exploited. Brooks scanned her eyes across the board, trying to see the Agent’s strategy.

“Nine out of ten times,” she said, looking up at him, “which one do you think gets me information? Is it painless, surgical precision, or blunt force?”

Spartan Brooks preferred her pieces orderly. Rank and file, doing their jobs, exploiting all of their strengths to get them where she needed them. It’s how she did it, it’s how her trainers taught her to do it, and it played to her own strengths.

“You have jeopardized too many Office operations by choosing to engage in this hobby of yours. Random assassinations are counter-productive.” The Agent moved his king and rook around to protect it from the Spartan’s advance.

She did the same. “I eliminate no one at random. Randomness implies sporadic, impulsive thinking. You of all people should know… that almost nothing we Spartans do is random or impulsive.”

“On the seventeenth of May you assassinated a single individual who couldn’t have been more than a footsoldier in their organisation,” the Agent said. His queen moved up, taking her last pawn on that side of the board, and opening her entire left flank.

She moved one of her rooks to block the back line. It lined up with her second rook further up the board. “Allegedly.”

“The next week, you brought down the cousin of a prominent regional Governor. Not the governor himself, with known insurrectionist sympathies, but his cousin. What would you call that?” He pushed a pawn up a space to block an advance.

Sliding her queen up beside it, she set up a difficult situation for him to worm out of. “I would call that a rather narrow worldview, if I’m being totally honest.” She sat back in her chair, away from the board. “You fail to see the bigger picture.”

“Enlighten me,” he said, gesturing at her with two open hands, and ignoring the board.

Brooks placed a hand over her chest. “I freely admit; I take money for these jobs by finding someone whose interests align with my own, and exploiting them.” She balled her fists. “The Governor’s cousin fronted an off-world pharmaceutical company that supplied illegal rumble drugs to civilian populations. All my targets are deserving of their fate.”

He scoffed at her. “Ethics and morals of that statement aside, I fail to see the relevance.”

“The only thing that matters in this galaxy is what someone does, not what someone intends.” She ignored him. He grit his teeth.

“ONI fully intends to bring down this organisation,” Brooks said. “Eventually. When its fall will be most beneficial to the region, and to the Office’s own interests.”

“Yes. We have Humanity's’ best interests at heart,” he said.

Shaking her head, Brooks pointed at him. “You have the Offices’ best interests at heart. I, rather than intending to do something, am currently doing it.”

He let out a suffering sigh. “I still don’t see the relevance,” he said. “May we get to the point?”

“You Agents like structure. You like your complex rules. I have my own. To an outsider, both of ours may seen disparate, but all you need to do is find the pattern.” She motioned to the board.

He looked down at it, and frowned. Her Queen was ready to put him into checkmate in three moves. He clenched his teeth and gulped.

“You’re starting to see now,” she said. “The footsoldier was close to a member of your organisation.” She smiled up at him. “The men in charge, including our Governor, will now realise that their organisation is under attack. They will begin to plan a counterattack, ousting the members of ONI en-masse.”

Laughing, she raised her arms by her side, and leaned her head forward. “And it was all thanks to me.”

“You little…” he slammed the table, jostling the pieces, before picking up his Queen and knocking out one of her rooks.

Immediately, she picked up her second Rook that was protecting it, and all but catapulted his queen off the board. “My fight is not just with the organisation seeking to overthrow UEG rule. It’s also against ONI, whose inaction has costed just as many lives.”

The Agent moved his last remaining rook to protect one of his pawns. If he could get it to the end of the board, he would get his queen back, and maybe he could regain some control of this situation.

Brooks kept talking, moving her Queen one space diagonally up. “When the leaders of the rebel cell on this planet meet, and begin planning, I will cut the head off of the snake, with, or without, ONI’s approval.”

The Agent cursed, and was forced to move his Rook back, protecting the square that the Queen could take to put him in checkmate, right next to his King.

“I won’t let you ruin years of careful planning for your own selfish ends!” He thrust a finger at her.

She scoffed and slid her last rook down to his back row. “You can’t stop me.”

He moved a pawn. She took ahold of her piece, and removed his from the board. Her rook was right next to his King.

He moved his King, and topped her Rook.

“The only thing that can stop me is death,” she said, raising her eyebrow. “The only thing that matters in this Galaxy, Agent, is not what someone intends to do, it’s what someone does.” Moving her Queen down one space, it nestled up next to his King, and she let her fingers linger on the piece just long enough to drive it home that she had won.

“Checkmate.”

She clasped her hands over one another on the table. “So,” she cracked her neck. “What will the Office of Naval Intelligence do?”

The Agent sat back in his chair. Brooks watched him with wide, unblinking eyes. He held her gaze for as long as he could, tapping his finger close to the SOCOM pistol he placed beside the board. The air in the room grew stiff with anticipation. An electric charge in their air set Brooks’ hairs on end, like the fizzing bubbles just under the surface of a glass of champagne.

The Agent blinked. The air shattered. Brooks grabbed her helmet off of the table. The ONI Agent’s hand made for the pistol. Sliding one hand under the table, Brooks flipped it up and over, knocking the Agent’s pistol away just as it fired off a shot. The bullet splintered the wood and sliced the air apart a hairsbreadth past Brooks’ shoulder blade, and embedded itself in the wall behind her.

The Agent stumbled back, and the table came crashing down to the ground amidst the tinkling of polished chess pieces. Before he could right himself, she jumped between the table legs and raised her helmet into the air.

He brought his pistol up. She brought the helmet down. His jaw bore the brunt of the impact with the cracking of bone, and he fell to the floor, unmoving.

Brooks took a moment to compose herself, taking a deep breath. Stepping over the unconscious form of the Agent, she checked his pulse, and and looked her helmet over for damage. Satisfied that there was none, she slipped it on her head.

The rest of her armour was neatly laid out on her bed. She walked over to it, shedding her fatigues down to her Mjolnir bodysuit. She had work to do that night. It was time to see to it.