User:RelentlessRecusant/Halo: Children of War

RELENTLESSRECUSANT HARVARD STEM CELL INSTITUTE HARVARD UNIVERSITY  ACTENE HALO FAN FICTION WIKIA Halo: Children of War is a collaborative compilation of short stories co-written by writers RelentlessRecusant and Actene as a preface to their other collaborative works, Halo: Beyond Veil's Azure and Halo: Galactic Era. The pieces are chronologically ordered and further detail the training of the Myrmidons, fourth-generation SPARTAN child soldiers.

The authors consider the work to artistically serve as comic relief for their more serious and grave works.

Full Text
Naval Special Warfare Center Asphodel Meadows Asphodel Meadows, 47 Ursae Majoris System

The D774 Cormorant dropship crisply exited the skies, transitioning from space, then to air, then to the firm ground, completing the three-point landing maneuver delineated by winking lights on the tarmac. A ragged file of men and women in military fatigues watched the dropship intently, as if attempting to derive some portent from it. Whispers and rumors had percolated throughout the staff at the Asphodel Meadows Naval Special Warfare Center for weeks preceding this event; the very entrance of this Cormorant had been a subject of intense debate, and a mixture of fear, jealously, and fascination.

A row of Marine Force Recon operators in battle dress advanced towards the dropship as it landed, the shuttle’s exhaust and dust washing over them as they fell into a horizontal line that ran perpendicular to the newcomer from the stars.

The Marine formation leader, a Gunnery Sergeant, bellowed, “Atten-shun!”

With mechanical rigidity, the Marines snapped to attention, smartly righting their rifles as the Cormorant’s womb issued forth a gangplank with a pneumatic hiss. Two mismatched figures—one a male, one a female; the former in battle dress and the latter in loose-fitting clothes—strode forth.

Murmuring whispers broke out amongst the aggregated personnel, as if the rustling of the arctic winds over the plains of ice.

The morning air bled sunlight from the skies as if a sieve, illuminating the figures.

The first newcomer—clad in a freshly-pressed uniform of digitized cyan and grey, his cap embroidered with the design of the UNSC Defense Force, his storm flap bearing a velcro insert with the three slashes of a Master Chief Petty Officer. The word “PLUMMER” was embroidered over his right breast, with the tag of “UNSC NAVY” on the contralateral side. His stance was rigid, sculpted musculature and frame gleaming in the sun.

The second newcomer, a taller female, was in a easy jacket, clad in loose blue jeans—the exact antithesis to the dozens of commandoes curiously watching this spectacle. She bore no rank insignia, affiliation pin, or nametag on her dress.

The first one said easily, “At ease, Marines.”

The Marine Force Recon operators fractionally relaxed, now at parade rest.

From all the onlookers, two of them—boldly clothed in short-sleeved white button-up shirts bearing military accoutrements in comparison to the armored black-garbed soldiers beside them—advanced forward, promptly meeting the two newcomers in the center of the tarmac.

Both had black five-edged stars on their sleeves against the white cotton—the stars of flag officers of the UNSC Defense Force. The first’s shirt was labeled with “SON”, the second was labeled with “DANIAL”. Both had the thunder-and-eagle devices of the Naval Special Warfare Command upon their collars.

Vice Admiral Kawika Son, Commander-in-Chief of the Naval Special Warfare Command, tightly seized Kimberly Blackburn in a tight hug, the taller woman warmly and affectionately clinging to him.

When they broke their embrace, the casually-clothed Kimberly broke into a wide-mouthed smile. She addressed both of the officers with a playful mocking tone. “Admiral Son, Admiral Danial—Blackburn here, Asphodel Meadows, reporting.”

Rear Admiral Chandler Danial shot Master Chief August Plummer—the first newcomer, in the camouflage uniform—an interesting look. “Does she make fun of your rank all the time at home too?”

Plummer grinned. “It’s her way of make fun of those of us that we’re still stuck in the stupid military while she gets to do whatever she wants as a civilian.”

Son intoned deadpan, “Even when she was in my unit, little Kim didn’t seem to care too much for orders, either.”

The woman blushed at the use of her pet name. “Good to see you too again, Admiral, sir.”

That brought laughs from the set of reunited friends and a start from some of the gathered personnel, who had been observing the exchange with some interest.

Kimberly’s eyes panned over the soldiers and military materiel clustered around the tarmac. “This is a pretty serious set-up you have over here, Kawika. Looks like Special Operations Command threw out all the stops for your pet unit—Marine Force Recon, Naval Special Warfare, Army Special Operations—is there anything you don’t have in your unit?”

“Nope”, he said with a little smile. “You see, once you get stars on your collar, people start listening to you when you’re flag rank. Eleven-bravo types like you in the field never really get that; instead, we get to backseat-drive you over the radio while you’re getting your asses shot off.”

Kimberly favored him with an ironic stare. “I seem to remember that not a few decades ago, you even remembered how to fire a rifle.”

Danial commented, “He wasn’t too good at that either.”

It was now Son’s turn to blush slightly, but he waved it away.

“But, Kim, to answer your original question—Naval Intelligence was kind enough even to donate Charlie-Oscar units to the Myrmidon training effort.”

“Oh?”

Her mind raced, parsing the phrase—“Charlie Oscar” was the handle commonly used by ONI officers to the Department of Covert Operations, the “wet work” division of the Directorate of Strategic Intelligence—Covert Ops was an umbrella for a number of rarified and unsavory elements; foremost of which was Special Warfare Group SPARTAN.

“SPARTAN-IIIs?” she guessed.

“Yeah. And a bit more—have you heard of Hotel Papa Alpha?”

Kimberly frowned at the unusual acronym. “I think I took some of their CT jobs once or twice.”

“They’re here too. Although, I must admit, they weren’t extremely happy to hear you were visiting; a matter of professional turf, I think.”

Kimberly’s mind flashed back to the few, but still mildly-recallable encounters she’d had with the HPA Division. “I can imagine that”, she conceded.

“You don’t make too many friends where ever you go, do you, Blackburn?”

Kimberly and August smiled easily.

“Only you, Admiral”, said Kimberly with an affectionate smile.

Chandler spread her arms invitingly at the looming black-walled citadel before them. “Well—do you want to check them out?”

“Sure”, said Kimberly.



The hallway was quiet, save for the rhythmic vibrations of Simon’s feet as he walked down the hallway, which mixed unevenly with Redmond’s own as he struggled to keep pace with his superior.

“I heard that Admiral Son was visited by an old friend earlier today, sir.”

Simon removed his hands from his pockets for a moment in order to shrug indifferently before shoving them back in. “Why should we care what the good Admiral’s social schedule is?”

“You did tell me that it’s best to know as much as possible about our superiors, sir.” Redmond wasn’t exactly sure what Simon had meant by that, but he had taken it to heart along with everything else the SPARTAN-III said.

“So I did, but you should really only be that diligent about it when you’re suspicious of the officer in question.”

They continued walking in silence for a moment as Redmond pondered this new statement. Finally he nodded. “I see. If I suspect an officer of treason, I should make sure to build a good case before reporting him.”

From behind, Simon’s body appeared to slump a little. “Yeah... that wasn’t exactly what I meant.”

Redmond’s acute hearing picked up a new set of footsteps headed their way. The young Myrmidon prepared himself in case he had to salute an officer, but instead a black haired woman rounded the corner in front of them and continued by without a word. Since she was dressed in civilian clothes, Redmond paid her little mind, but Simon glanced curiously at the woman’s face.

For a moment, their gazes met. A pair of grey eyes locked with a pair of viridian ones, and the grey ones broke contact first.

Simon stopped walking so quickly that Redmond nearly bowled him over from behind. The woman marched on without paying them any more attention and vanished around the next corridor. Simon remained motionless until her footsteps had faded and then slumped against the wall.

Looking at Simon with concern, Redmond saw that the older boy’s face had gone deathly pale, almost like the corpses he had seen in his combat medicine classes. Reaching one hand up to his forehead, Simon seemed to wipe sweat from his brow.

“Sir?” Redmond asked. “Sir, are you all right? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

“Yeah.” Simon sounded as if he was almost panting. “I’m fine. But it wasn’t a ghost I saw.” He turned and stared off in the direction the woman had gone. “More like a demon.”



The spectacle possessed a rare and mesmerizing beauty, and Kimberly felt quieted, as if now privy to something marvelous and fascinating—the frame of the image was unremarkable, the overhead feed of a Navy UAV holding at a fixed altitude of 15,000 feet above Asphodel Meadows, with the infrared filter engaged. The image itself was a medley of grey, white, and black in collusion—white humanoid figures snaking in labyrinthine, apparently random trajectories above a surface of dull black, under the infrared filter.

What was remarkable was the haphazard dance that the figures were engaged in: hundreds of meters distant from one another, they flowed in serpentine curves, advancing and withdrawing, endless iterations of contact and dissolution—to an untrained eye, it might have been akin to sharks percolating in tropical waters, or perhaps to others, acrobats engaged in a highly elaborate dance.

The brilliant white lines that stitched across the scene betrayed that to Kimberly that it was a battle. To her trained eye, it became readily clear that despite the stochastic motions of the humanoid figures, there were two spheres, formations in which the dancers were engaged in, two polar spheres set on opposing sides of the forested training ground. The spheres drew together and distanced at irregular intervals, their surfaces skimming across one another occasionally—at these contact points, stutters of semiautomatic fire would trickle, the spheres drawing together at a focal point upon a firefight, and then quickly reforming their globular structure after each exchange was completed—and with each firefight, a handful of dancers grew still, collapsing on the forest.

Admiral Danial explained, “This is one of our regular wargames; we’ve split up the entire Myrmidon detachment into eight teams, ‘squadrons’, each comprised of roughly twelve trainees. They’re armed with M7SF submachine guns with rubber bullets. Every day, the squadrons are randomly pitted against each other, and at the end of the week, the standings are released, with the top squadron given an accolade.”

Kawika continued loosely, his eyes still fixated in wonder at the whirling tapestry of blurred fire and motion before him, “The Myrmidons are incredibly competitive; most of them. They became insanely obsessed with the exercises; each squadron is given a battle once or twice a day against another squadron. When they’re not training, exercising, or in class, they’re endlessly plotting tactics for their next wargame. Being the best squadron has become an obsession to many of them.”

Master Chief Plummer nodded his assent. “Encouraging competition amongst them is much better than competition against the trainers; the DIs get their respect, while the kids are trying to bear each other. Makes for a good social dynamic.”

Blackburn, however, was surveying the overview of the battle with some interest. “It looks like that there’s a lot more than two dozen people on this screen, though.”

“Yeah. Occasionally, we pit them through paired exercises; two squadrons against two more squadrons. We’re trying to forge some cohesion amongst squadrons—make them learn how to fight cooperatively.”

“The M7SF isn’t a primary weapon though”, cautioned Kimberly. “It’s close-quarters application only, when I used it—maximum effective range was one-fifty meters, and that was really stretching it. Why not the A12 CQC Carbine?”

“Progressive Warfare Command’s primary intended application for the Myrmidons is close-quarters battle; in extremis hostage rescue, and so on”, said Kawika. “We’re training them first with close-quarters weapons, make sure their skill at close quarters is sharp and accurate, then we’ll graduate to more mainline and versatile weapons, like carbines,”

Blackburn indicated several positions on the real-time display where there were prone, glowing infrared figures, but bearing long-tipped weapons that were far more phallic than the submachine guns carried by the rest of the soldiers.

“Those don’t look like close-quarters weapons to me, unless SOCOM has drastically changed its way of doing things.”

Chandler lightly smiled. “Some of the Myrmidons have already differentiated amongst an accuracy spectrum; they’re all good shooters, but some better than others. We’re training a small subset of them with M108 sniper rifles.”

“Doesn’t it kind of defeat the purpose when you have snipers against troopers with submachine guns? It’s like when the enemy has cruise missiles with a thousand-kilometer range and you have mortars that can only shoot over the next hilltop: not a very balanced fight.”

“The Myrmidons have no concept of hiding”, said Kawika bluntly. “With submachine guns, they’re perfect shots—on the range, they hit moving targets almost every time at a hundred-meter range. All they know is how to shoot people—they don’t know how to maneuver strategically, to work with their teammates to flank the enemy. Putting in a few sniper rifles dramatically restricts the liberty of movements of the trainees; they’re forced to start thinking—how to avoid the fields of fire of the snipers, how to run when the snipers aren’t focusing on them.”

On the screen, a Myrmidon bolted from some shrubbery, moving with incredible speed—a human bullet at fantastic velocities, fueled by muscle and strength, not gunpowder. However, far distant, the prone figure of a sharpshooter flashed twice—two streaks of white interdicted the sprinter’s path, and crisply, he was thrown aside, lanced twice in the chest.

Kimberly’s eyes were fixated on the spectacle. “That was bad maneuvering on both of their behalf’s. The runner should have coordinated suppressing fire with his teammates, or at the very least, thrown a smoke grenade to cover his run. But the sniper was sloppy—he missed on the first shot at a reasonable range. With the SRS108, the accurized rifle and the match-made rounds give remarkable accuracy. There’s no reason to miss.”

Artemis emerged behind them from the shadows, her figure seamlessly being constructed from the darkness into the light—her stance was tall and muscular, clad in the digitized blue-and-grey Naval Special Warfare work uniform that August was clad in. An argent eagle gleamed on her collar; the device of a Captain of the UNSC Navy.

“The sniper was Redmond. Trainee Nine-Four.”

Kimberly regarded the newcomer with some interest: Artemis’s figure was powerful and lithe, an exemplary meld of hardened muscle and vigor. Her face was mirror-smooth, eyes gleaming in the light of the Tactical Operations Center. She wore her black hair short, dangling to her ears.

“Captain Artemis”, acknowledged Blackburn steadily.

Artemis’s look was cool, unfazed. “You’re Kimberly?”

“Yeah.”

Her look was searching, interrogative; Blackburn had the distinct feeling that her gaze was sweeping over every pixel of her body, cataloguing her, calculating physical descriptors of her body and clothing, and then indexing the relevant information.

“It’s good to finally meet you in person, Master Chief.” Her voice was ice cold, frigid, with military precision. The others in the room watched the conversation with some conversation.

Kimberly smiled easily, in stark contrast to her counterpart’s stiffened lips and straightened posture.

“Master Chief, no more. Retired now—Earth.”

“I heard you’re in academics now?” The voice itself carried a contemptuous sneer.

“That’s right. Harvard Stem Cell Institute; Cambridge, Massachusetts, Earth. Nothing like Asphodel Meadows Naval Special Warfare Center, I’d imagine.”

“I see. No, nothing like here”, said Artemis coolly, with a touch of unmistakable arrogance in her voice.

August stared at Artemis for a moment before Kimberly attempted to stir up conversation. “Nine-Four? Wait, I think I’ve seen him before—awhile ago. Walking through the halls with an officer.”

“A Lieutenant Commander?” asked Danial.

“Yeah. I think so.”

That aroused chuckles from some of the gathered drill instructors, notably Artemis.

Kawika explained, “It’s a well-known fact that Redmond-Nine-Four is attached to the hip of one of our more infamous instructors, Simon-Golf-Two-Nine-Four.”

The phrase “Golf-two-nine-four” aroused a particular memory within Kimberly. She said slowly, “I seem to remember that SPARTAN-III under my Title 9 clearance—he gave Naval Intelligence a bit of alarm for awhile. Why is he here?”

“Target practice”, supplied Artemis. “All the DIs can take on six or eight trainees without a hitch. Except one; Simon. Some of the better trainees can take him out in a one-on-one gunfight.”

Kimberly quirked her eyebrows in confusion. “Oh? I thought the S-IIIs were fairly proficient.”

“Except for one of them. Simon is laughably incompetent”, said Artemis. “Even the trainees don’t even bother listening to him in his Platoon Tactics and his Ethics of Warfare classes. They have no respect for an instructor that they’re better than in the field.”

“If he’s such a joke, then why is this Redmond-Nine-Four always with him?”

Kawika coughed loudly. “It is the popular and unofficial opinion of many of the trainees and the instructors that Simon and Redmond share a lot in common; their personalities are psychologically eccentric, and Redmond is like a lap dog to Simon, sucking in and memorizing whatever he has to say without hesitation.”

“An unusual relationship between a DI and a trainee”, noted August.

“Yes”, said Artemis firmly. “What makes the situation even more interesting is that Redmond can actually shoot better than his mentor.”

The juxtaposed incidences were very curious to Kimberly, who now had turned her black-maned head back to the video display, where the very last few survivors on both combined teams were finally battling with one another to decide the final victor of the match; there were heated exchanges of rattling submachine gun and sniper rifle throughout the forest, with eventually, Redmond being surrounded by three foes. Redmond’s blurry infrared image raised a sidearm futilely, but it was only a gesture—he was shot twice by each of the three foes encircling him, and he crumpled, concluding the exercise.

DIs were rushing into the field, moving to relieve the downed trainees that had been plastered by the rubber bullets, while another DI, this one an armored SPARTAN-IIIs, was barking the conclusion of the mock battle.

Kimberly looked curiously at Redmond’s limp form.

“This Nine-Four intrigues me. Admirals, do you mind if I have a moment with him?”

“Knock yourself out”, said Chandler wryly.



The post-exercise chatter, typically ribald and lively, was now a harsh cacophony of stinging accusations and bellowing shouts.

M013-Karen’s delicate face was convoluted in anger. “Redmond, you piece of shit!” she bellowed. “Where was that fucking sniper cover at Rally Point Saber? I don’t give a shit if you can’t yourself—but I’m now giving a shit because you can’t even cover your teammates.”

The unofficial class leader of Training Squadron Grey, M014-Brandon, held up a hand to the fiery Karen. “Karen, I can understand your—”

M064-Raphael’s dulcet tones pulsated with a tempested lethality as he sharply addressed Brandon. “This is the first exercise that my Red Squadron has lost in two weeks, One-Four. Instead, your squadron utterly failed to execute even the most preliminary tactics; you failed to lend sniper cover when One-Three’s team assaulted the enemy ridge, and later, you failed to provide perimeter security and allowed our own rifle component to be flanked. You and your trainees are primarily responsible for this … debacle.”

Another one of Red Squadron’s trainees chimed in, “Red-mon got fucked over again!”

Redmond’s cheeks became florid: the trainees had now taken to call Simon and Redmond as “Redmon”, amalgamating Redmond and Simon together into a single word—because wherever one was found, the other was there too.

The conversation quickly became heated, with both Red and Grey Squadrons turning on Redmond: his marksmanship with the SRS108 sniper rifle had been substandard for this exercise, allowing one of Red’s fireteams to be disintegrated by enemy ranged fire, and then later, he had failed to provide perimeter security for their operating flanks, allowing them to be pincered. Soon after that, both the combined Red and Grey Squadrons had crumpled under the aggressive onslaught of the opposing Blue and Black Squadrons.

Redmond’s face became flushed with humiliation.

I thought that with the sniper rifle, I could hang back—run away faster. I guess that didn’t help when everyone else was dead and they were all chasing me.

The furious clamoring in the Loser’s Locker Room was abrogated by the arrival of an armored SPARTAN-III—one of their DIs.

Raphael bellowed, “Atten-shun! Captain on the deck!”

Immediately, all pretenses of hostility were dropped; the twenty-four combined trainees snapped smartly to astute attention as the SPARTAN-III officer entered, her motions fluid, the silver device of the rank insignia of a full Commander gleaming on her shoulder pauldrons.

The armored figure indicated Redmond with a stiff finger, and the room drew deathly cold—while having one’s teammates turn on one was bad, if the officers noticed you fucked up, the results were notably worse.

Redmond found himself terrified. Commander Esther-G071 was the commanding officer of the Training Detachment; her prowess was legendary, and he found himself unwilling to be a guinea pig to be exposed to her wrath.

Her voice was soft as she strode through the stiff and saluting Myrmidons, ignoring their salutes.

“Trainee Nine-Four?”

“Ma’am! I acknowledge that my actions today on the field are regrettable and I—”

Redmond didn’t even know how his mouth came up with that phrase, for he was so terrified.

“Trainee Nine-Four, someone wants to see you.”

The chill stiffened his marrow, and the gravity of the situation settled into the hollow of his stomach, generating a black hole that ravenously spit despair into him.

“Aye, ma’am!”

Thoughts drifted through his mind—his warm and inviting bunk, his little desk in the barracks—he could only wonder who would want to see him, and after their ‘discussion’, what he’d be doing—he heard of disappointing trainees living in the wild for weeks as punishment for—

Esther’s voice was soft. “You had better not to piss off this visitor, Nine-Four, for your own sake. The repercussions of that mistake would be far worse than your current failure in the combat exercise.”

Visitor? Then, he made the mental connection, and immediately wished he hadn’t. He remembered his brief discussion with Simon a few hours ago, right before the commencement of the field exercise.

“I heard that Admiral Son was visited by an old friend earlier today, sir”—

“Sir, are you all right? You look like you’ve seen a ghost”—“More like a demon”—

He suppressed a wild fear that raged within him. She’s still here?

More like a demon—

Simon’s description rolled within his head, and he felt nauseous.

“Walk with me, Nine-Four. The rest of you are released to your afternoon classes.”

They all quickly dispersed, quick to leave behind Redmond to his grave fate.

Esther’s gait was long, forcing Redmond to increase his pace to follow her. He dared not to ask the Commander who the ‘demon’ was, but to his dismay, she supplied him with her identity anyways.

“Her name is Kimberly Ivy Blackburn. She retired a few years ago, but before that, she was a Master Chief Petty Officer in the Naval Special Warfare Command, and was the Command Master Chief of the Progressive Warfare Command. She was Title 9 under Naval Intelligence.”

He didn’t even have the faintest idea of what ‘Title 9’ was—considering his fairly-extensive knowledge of the UNSC Defense Force (which he had significantly improved in order to help out Simon’s lackluster knowledge of UNSCDF organization), this was terrifying. ONI cryptonyms and codewords were often associated only with the most sinister of individuals, and Redmond had no desire to learn what ‘Title 9’ was, or what this ‘visitor’ had to do with it.

His voice was timid. “Command Master Chief of the UNSC Progressive Warfare Command?”

Esther’s gaze was iron. “Like I said, Nine-Four, don’t piss her off, or you’d wish I’d let your teammates beat you for what you did in the field today.”

The UNSC Progressive Warfare Command, officially a SOCOM division for the “integration, progressive evolution, and advancement of UNSC special operations forces”, was an umbrella program for the Tier-One commando units of SOCOM and ONI combined—the darkest covert-action divisions in the UNSC Defense Force.

There was too many sinister connotations to this individual: he found himself immediately repulsed.

Yet, he had no ability to impede his inertia as he strode with Commander G071 throughout the hallways of the Asphodel Meadows Naval Special Warfare Center—he found himself drawn to the inevitable meeting, unable to stop himself even as his stomach wretched acid—

They stopped before Esther’s office—emblazoned on a golden plaque was “SPARTAN-G071, COMMANDER, UNSC NAVAL SPECIAL WARFARE COMMAND”, replete with the dual heraldic insignia of the Naval Special Warfare Command and the SPARTAN-III Program.

Of the handful of unfortunate trainees to “have a chat” with the Commander in her office, all had come away scathed verbally and emotionally.

Redmond grimaced as Esther unlocked the door, revealing a tall, muscular woman in civilian clothes reclining on an easy chair behind a massive granite desk.

Redmond’s eyes gave a start as he saw the beryl eyes in that creature that had disenchanted Simon so much earlier. Fear clung to him like sweat.

Esther winked at Kimberly. “This is Nine-Four, Kim—he’s all yours.”

“Thanks.”

Esther-G071 parted, locking the door behind him. The tumbling of the lock felt like a thunderclap, heralding a terrible storm.

Redmond’s eyes darted back and forth throughout the office.

The visitor made him the object of her intense gaze, and he felt his skin smolder where her eyes met him searchingly.

“You are Trainee Nine-Four, Redmond?”

“Ma’am! I—”

“There’s no need to call me ‘ma’am’, sailor. I’m retired from the Service.”

“Yes, ma’am!” he found himself stuttering.

Kimberly looked at Redmond curiously, as if some insignificant arthropod now worthy of a moment of her considerable attention.

“Have a seat”, she said freely, indicating a few chairs scattered before the imposing desk.

Redmond uncomfortably settled into one of the chairs, his body so stiff that he felt as if he was still encased in his claustrophic combat armor.

“Do you know who I am?”

“Yes, ma’am! Master Chief Blackburn, Command Master Chief of—”

“I’m not a ‘Master Chief’ anymore, Redmond.” Her voice was not unkind. “I’m a civilian now.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Do you have more than two words in your vocabulary, Redmond, besides ‘yes’ and ‘ma’am’?” she asked.

“Aye, ma’am.”

She chuckled lightly, and he felt as if some arbiter was whimsically laughing about his impeding fate before crushing him. It was an unpleasant sensation.

“So, Redmond, how are you enjoying your training?”

Enjoying? What?

Then he remembered another one of Simon’s warnings—“There are two things you should never trust in this galaxy, Red. One is the UNSC Office of Naval Intelligence. The other is any girl.”

Unfortunately, this interrogator before him was a combination of the two, even moreso, as she was associated with codeword-classified ONI covert programs.

—the UNSC might one day test your loyalty—

“Ma’am! One hundred percent, ma’am!” he barked.

“Calm down, sailor. This isn’t some damn promotion board.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“They say that you like one of your instructors, Lieutenant Commander Simon-G294, very much. Why is that?”

A stake of fear drove itself into his heart. Obviously, the woman was up to much more than simply testing his allegiance to the UNSC. Were they after Simon?

“The Lieutenant Commander is an exemplary instructor, ma’am. He taught me everything I know.”

“And what about your other instructors, then?”

He realized he had committed a small verbal misstep, and attempted to clumsily correct it. “The Lieutenant Commander was kind to me—”

“Does that mean your other DIs who clothe you and feed you aren’t kind?”

He winced. This was getting steadily worse: it might even mean a few more extra kilometers of running during the evening outdoor drills if this conversation got out to the other DIs.

“Ma’am! Begging the Master Chief’s pardon, ma’am—the Lieutenant Commander’s teachings are very much unique amongst all our other classes and instructors. He advocates a different kind of warfare.”

“Oh?”

There was a silence, and Redmond jerkily realized that he was supposed to explain himself.

“The other instructors are exceptional, ma’am—their tactics and combat prowess are unparalleled.”

“Much more remains to be said about that regarding Simon”, mumbled Kimberly.

Redmond’s cheeks flushed for the dignity of his friend, but he was convinced not to make even more of a fool of himself. “However, while the other instructors are convinced about effective campaign strategies and counterterrorism abilities, the Lieutenant Commander’s classes focus on another aspect of warfare: humane treatment of the enemy and of civilians, and to avoid unnecessary loss of friendly life.”

“Does ‘unnecessary loss of friendly life’ mean ‘retreating’ in military-speak, Redmond?”

His cheeks flushed even more, but Kimberly relieved him by saying, “You don’t have to answer that, Redmond. But I’m interested in what you said about ‘humane treatment’. Go on.”

“The Lieutenant Commander holds twice-weekly seminars regarding battlefield ethics and morality: how to properly treat enemy combatants, prisoners, and civilians in line with the Uniform Code of Military Conduct and the Articles of Humane Rights.”

He recalled one of the lines from Simon’s lectures, which had extensively committed to memory.

“Our humanity is the only thing that we have—if we deprive others of their humane rights, then they are no longer humans, but are animals.”

Something within Kimberly’s face softened, and Redmond realized that he might have actually impressed her. He reminded himself to redouble memorizing Simon’s seminar notes.

“Very good, Redmond. It’s good that the Lieutenant Commander tells you about these things. You’ll find that within the Special Operations Command there are few others that pay attention to those doctrines … and even fewer within Naval Intelligence.”

“Thank you, ma’am.”

That this ONI spook was openly telling him that others within the Black Tower had even less regard for human rights and morality only reinforced his uneasiness with ONI—especially so, since he was living and training in a facility that was partially owned by the Office of Naval Intelligence.

Kimberly sighed, reclined. “And what do you do in your free time, Redmond?” The answer came to his lips before he could stop himself: “Spend time with the Lieutenant Commander, ma’am.”

Kimberly observed him quizzically. “How much time do you even spend with this guy anyways?”

He didn’t trust himself to answer.

There was a long interlude where Kimberly only stared at him extrospectively, and Redmond remembered that Simon might have some unknown interest in this visitor, and took the time to inspect her: she was dressed in a cottony tank top that accentuated her tanned and strong arms, her exposed thighs still strong and powerful, the product of decades of relentless honing exercise. She was exceptionally fit and slender.

She wore her dark hair in a playful ponytail that ran down her back: they framed her wintry and severe face, her dark crimson lips in sharp juxtaposition to the cool, unnaturally pale color of her face. Her eyes were a striking viridian, glistening in the light—he had the uncomfortable thought of a serpent’s potent venom when he saw their unnatural color.

“You’re an interesting sailor, Redmond. I wish you the best of luck in your studies and training—I look forward to seeing you graduate from Asphodel Meadows. I know how it feels; I underwent a very similar training regimen in this exact same Naval Special Warfare Center myself, three decades before you.”

Her youth was startling though—it was difficult to believe that scarcely thirty years earlier she had emerged from this very place … and with that thought, he found himself not particularly inclined to know what hellish craftsman had forged this demon from the depthless fires of Asphodel Meadows, and what she had undergone.

“Thank you, ma’am.”

Kimberly stood in a single graceful motion. “Do you have any questions for me, sailor?”

The question startled him. “Uhh, for you?”

“Yes.”

Redmond froze slightly, caught in mid-thought, petrified as if he had been a boned fish when the sea had frozen around him, catching him in mid-leap, entombing him.

“Uhh—”

It was then, out of some strange eccentricity of his terrified mind that he abstractly realized that she wasn’t wearing a military uniform—there was no rank or any other identifier on her.

“What do you, uhh, do then, ma’am?”

She cocked her head curiously. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“You’re not in the Defense Force anymore, right?” he asked, feeling a bit foolish. “What else is there to do?”

His voice was earnest, innocent, and she decided to take the unassuming child soldier at face value.

She said gently, “Redmond, I get the feeling that once upon a time, we would have been friends.”

We would have been friends?

Surprise and revulsion rocketed through him, but he said nothing, keeping his silence.

“You should explore more, Redmond, beyond the shooting, running, and explosions that they keep you here for. I was very pleased to learn that you know something about humanity and ethics—you should do more of that. It’s a … shallow existence just living in the Special Forces, a … facsimile of how life really is.”

The honesty in her voice surprised him, as well as what she was referring to.

“A facsimile, ma’am? I’m living right now—how can this be a fake image of how life ‘really is’? I’m living now—studying, training, and fighting.”

Her smile was tender.

“Oh, Red”, she said softly. “You have a … lot to learn, I think. You are dismissed.”

He straightened and left, feeling relieved as he escaped beyond her aura and the deathly shadows cast by the office—the warmth immediately flooded into him again, and he felt life again.

Yet, he found himself unsettled, disturbed by the meeting. Regardless of the naïve comments he’d made about his training and instructors, which were bound to land him in some of cruel punishment at the hands of the DIs, undoubtedly, and beyond his discomfort with the woman’s unsavory background, there were some things she said…

“A facsimile of how life really is.”

The phrase puzzled him immensely. As he mentally composed what he’d report on the meeting to Simon, especially what he’d learned about her, he noted to ask him what that phrase meant.



The problem with Simon’s battlefield ethics lectures, which were one of the few things about his job that he actually took seriously, were that it was so damn hard to dredge up credible material to use for them. It seemed that an ever-shrinking number of officers within the UNSC were writing papers on the subject, and he had quickly discovered that the Myrmidon trainees were reluctant to respect anything that had not been written by a military author.

After his first two months of giving the lectures, he’d been completely out of contemporary source material. By the fourth month, he’d been struggling to look up essays written during the Rainforest Wars. Now he was glaring at a list of civilian human rights articles that discussed events of the 21st century.

Of course, you could always give it up. It’s not like anyone but Redmond pays attention during those things, and the others only go because they have free time on their hands and they don’t have a clue as to what to do with it.

But he had grown attached to the lectures in spite of all the time and research he had to pour into them. For one thing, it gave him another excuse not to stand up and be humiliated during the Myrmidons’ combat training; he could always cite the lectures as a source of more paperwork. For the same reason, it allowed him more time alone and away from the other SPARTAN-IIIs and their sidelong glances and passive hostility.

Although he hated to admit it, it was also out of a grudging debt to Kawika Son that he continued in his attempts to drill ethics into the Myrmidons. He had heard enough rumors on the subject and was smart enough to figure out that the Admiral had not brought him in for his combat skills. Son had wanted someone with an attachment to ethics, and had been so desperate to find that person that he had gone delving into ONI’s files on then-Public Enemy #1 SPARTAN-G294 in order to do so. And if it hadn’t been for Son’s dogged determination, Simon would almost certainly not be alive today.

Just don’t get so grateful that you forget that the admiral only saved you because he needed you. If you hadn’t been useful to him, he would have let them gun you down. Simon was still trying to decide if Son would actually have seen his execution as justice in those circumstances.

Finally, Simon himself was attached to them on a much more personal level. All of his life he had despised the UNSC for its readiness to use child soldiers and its tacit disregard for human life, and now he had the opportunity to influence its next generation of killers, to paint them in his own colors.

0f course, the only person you’re actually affecting is Redmond...

Simon sighed and instinctively reached up to touch the back of his forehead. His fingers brushed a small patch of metal: the place that marked where the AI Diana had been implanted directly into his skull.

He missed Diana and her quirky little retorts and witticisms, but without the modified suit of SPI armor that had linked with his skull implants, there was no way for him to activate her anymore.

A knock on the door of his quarters roused him from his reverie. Instinctually, Simon slid open one of his desk drawers and withdrew a small service pistol. After quickly making sure it was loaded, he rested the weapon in his lap and faced the door. “Come in.”

The door slid open and Redmond entered to stand at attention. “Sir.”

He was dressed in his casual fatigues and he appeared to have just showered, but Simon couldn’t help noticing that he sported a significant bruise on his cheek.

“What the hell happened to your face?” he asked, lifting the pistol from his lap and setting it down on the table.

“Field exercises, sir. I was the last person standing on my team and was dispatched with... appropriate thoroughness.”

During his time on Onyx, Simon had quickly learned that to be the only person left in a mock battle meant that you would be subjected to a withering amount of non-lethal bullets from a number of exuberant enemies. He wondered where else Redmond was bruised.

Redmond indicated the pistol. “I see that you’re security measures are as thorough as ever, sir.”

Simon briefly wondered if Redmond was poking fun at his paranoia or actually complemented him, then decided on the latter. The trainee couldn’t read between the lines at all.

“Yes, well, you never know when an assassin will come after you,” he responded lightly. Or a whole platoon of them, he added silently, remembering Hekate.

“Anyway, next time that happens just try and hide somewhere,” he told the Myrmidon. “And if a DI gets mad at you for it, tell them you saw no other logical course of action and that when the situation becomes unwinnable it’s best to avoid contact with the enemy.”

Redmond seemed to consider this, then nodded. “But all of us have been extensively trained to find hidden enemies.”

“Then spend some private time on the course and find good hiding spots,” Simon informed him as he scrolled down the list of human rights articles on his computer. “And if that doesn’t work, try to figure out a way to pretend to be on the other team.”

He found it highly ironic that, in spite of all his lectures on acceptable conduct when not fighting, he seemed to be the only DI who encouraged unacceptable conduct while the fighting was actually happening. He was pretty sure that none of the other instructors advised their charges to “pretend to surrender” when discussing combat tactics or “kick him in the balls” when teaching hand to hand combat.

“So... um...” Redmond seemed to be struggling to form the appropriate words.

“What? Did you go quoting me directly in front of other people again?” It really was only a matter of time before he got hauled in front of Son or one of the other superior officers for a chat about certain philosophies he held.

“Um... not exactly...”

“Please spit it out.” Simon wondered if Redmond had managed to get him in trouble. Perhaps if his next ethics lecture was inspiring enough Son would let him off the hook.

Because, y’know, it’s not like he’s been doing that for you since day one... mused the treacherous part of his mind that was not clouded by habitual dislike.

“I spoke with that woman today,” Redmond blurted.

Simon’s brow furrowed. “What woman?”

“Uh, don’t you remember? In the hallway earlier?’

Simon’s breath caught in his throat for an instant as he remembered those horrible eyes. They had seemed normal at first, but the further you looked into them the more terrible they had seemed...

“What?” he mumbled, feeling for his water bottle and taking a gulp to steady his nerves.

“Uh, it was like she wanted to speak to me or something.” Redmond fumbled with the words. “She seemed nice enough, but I remembered what you said about UNSC officers and girls and so I tried not to give her too much information on you!”

What’s he blabbering about? Simon thought distantly as he lowered the water bottle. What did I say about UNSC officers and girls?

Then he remembered. It had been after a particularly brutal faculty officer’s meeting that had left him unsteady on his feet for several hours. This had led to a hesitant attempt at beer, a discovery that he would never like the stuff even when he was old enough to legally drink it, and a long and rambling conversation with Redmond about the UNSC and the opposite gender.

He actually remembers that shit? Then Simon’s suspicious senses kicked in. “That person was a spook?” Why am I not surprised?

“Well, she said she was retired and then she asked me a bunch of weird questions. But she seemed pleased with what I did tell her about you though.” He added the last sentence quickly, as if he was afraid Simon would panic.

“And then...” he hesitated. “She said something weird. She said that my life here was just a,a ‘facsimile’. What did she mean by that?”

Simon blinked. That was not what a spook was supposed to say. Obviously this nightmare person actually shared some of his opinions.

He took a moment to find his voice again. “What she meant is that there’s more to life than shooting stuff and following orders.” He was surprised at how bluntly he put it.

“I still don’t get it, sir. What ‘more’ are you talking about?”

“Things like... stuff like... civilian stuff,” Simon stumbled over the words as he struggled to place them correctly.

“Civilian stuff?”

“Yeah, like, like, uh, dating!” The last word came from nowhere. Simon wasn’t sure that he’d ever said before in his life. Now he really was panicking. Redmond was taking this conversation into waters that were unfamiliar to even him.

Redmond’s brow furrowed. “Dating? But I thought you said not to trust-”

“Yeah, I know what I said about girls, but sometimes you just have to, uh, go along with them.” I think.

“Oh...” Redmond breathed. “Do you have any experience with civilian things like that?”

“No.” When he’d been a civilian, he’d been five years old getting the shit beaten out of him by older kids in a dirt-poor orphanage on Sigma Octanus IV. He was pretty sure that this wasn’t a part of the non-combat utopia he envisioned whenever the UNSC did something that made his blood boil. “I’m more of a... career military officer, you might say.” He was amazed he could say this with a straight face.

“Well, you seemed to have a lot of experience with girls.” Redmond seemed to be trying to find some aspect of this mysterious life that Simon was familiar with, as if he were the only one who could explain things to him. “Like when you’re non-combat... non-military... civilian.”

Well Simon, answer the kid. Tell him that yes, you have spent a month alone in a cabin with a girl in a semi-civilian environment. Of course, you were too busy making sure she didn’t commit suicide to really explore your social capabilities, but other than that it must have been pretty damn normal, right?

Simon shoved the annoying voice out of his head. “Um... no. I wouldn’t know anything about that. It wasn’t exactly covered during my basic training.”



The Hardheart Café was very much a replicate of the simacrulum that Kimberly had remembered from thirty years before—its low-backed black leather seats, the kindling candlelight that illuminated the gleaming obsidian bar and the rotund tables frequented by Naval Intelligence officials. The Hardheart was scarcely a five-to-ten minute walk from the nearby formidable balustrades of Asphodel Meadows Naval Special Warfare Center and the Naval Intelligence Directorate of Operations—the two insidious, hallowed dark palaces that held dominion on Asphodel Meadows.

The café, a favorite watering hole for both Naval Intelligence and Special Operations Command, was infamous for the dark tales of conspiracy that ran through it—how ONI officials had plotted the murder of dozens over some liquor and whiskey on these very tables.