Halo: Job Offer

1700 Hours, September 3rd, 2560

Blue Hands Valley, Cobb Protectorate

Whitefall, Athens System

The UV-14 “Hornet” VTOL gunship was, without a doubt, damn pretty. The twin vectored jets nestled into the wingtips glowed fierce burning blue, lifting the tiny one seater across the sky. Embedded in those wings, and even more interesting, were the twenty millimeter cannons, which complimented the nose mounted missile launchers perfectly. A strafing runs from one of the tiny, heavily armed fliers could reduce an armored convoy to wreckage or a reinforced base to rubble. So much firepower in such a small package. Plenty of problems of course, from light armor to a limited flight ceiling to delicately complicated internals, but even still…an admirable tool for killing.

Roger Jacobs lay flat on his chest, rifle cradled in front of him out of habit, watching the Hornet patrol. The power of it enthralled him. If the pilot had been intelligent and actually managed to do his job right---namely, not being blind as a bat and missing Roger during patrol---he might have even stood a chance, thanks to the deadly aircraft. Roger had been watching the Hornet patrol for the last three hours, though, tracking it in his armor’s viewfinder, and never during that time had there been any sign that the pilot had noticed the green armored giant lying in the snow along the ridgeline. Hew would have preferred to be observing it through a sniper scope---watching someone was always more fun when it was through a set of crosshairs---but Sunef had taken it an hour earlier. At least it was forcing him to get his money’s worth out of his helmet’s brand new magnification upgrade.

The Hornet completed it’s patrol route, but instead of starting another circuit, eased off it’s jets and lowered towards the ground. Roger decreased magnification on his visor, let his biochemical enhanced vision make up for the difference, and evaluated the rebel camp for the dozenth time. Squished into the bottom of the valley, it looked like every other rebel camp Roger had cleared over the years, makeshift and reliant on evading detection for protection. A cluster of pre-fab barracks surrounded a few larger buildings, likely ammo dumps and maybe a command center, all fenced in by razor wire into a rough rectangle. There were half again as many guard towers as a compound that size needed, all poorly positioned and attended by sleepy looking guards.

Just south of the base was an airfield, a well paved runway flanked by a fighter base housing a pair of old Skyhawks jump-jets and a VTOL pad with three more Hornets and a single Pelican dropship. A technician crew was unloading the patrolling Hornet while the next gunship over warmed it’s engines. They had an M12 Warthog LRV driving up and down the runway, scraping snow with a makeshift plow attached to the fender while a bundled up, cold looking rebel leaned out the back pouring de-icer. The whole base seemed to scream inadequacy. There was so much lag time, so much inefficiency: clearly the work of people who were long on fancy idealism but short on practical experience.

Normally, a job like this would’ve bored him almost too much to consider taking it. He’d done enough routine and boring missions serving as soldier. As a freelance mercenary, he got to pick his own work: hijacking hijacked freighters, putting down Unggoy food riots, killing off criminal elements---along with the inverse of everything, hijacking freighters, helping rioters, killing off police elements---otherwise known as the fun jobs. This mission was samey and boring, not to mention easy. If the Governor hadn’t been paying such a disgustingly large sum of credits, he would never have bothered.

The second Hornet lifted off, shooting upwards with a jet of flame that left snow melting into a puddle. The advanced hardware, Roger knew, were part of the reason the Governor had to offer so much money. Whitefall was an outer colony, cut off for years when the Covenant passed over it during the war, and only recently re-connected to the rest of the UNSC. Loren Curtis, the planetary Governor, had gotten very used to the autonomy---not to mention absolute, unquestioned power---of leading the planet without UNSC interference. Eight months after coming back into the fold, he’d cut ties with the UNSC and tried to go it alone. At first, the UNSC had treated the little rebellion with relative indifference; there were bigger fish to fry. Some of the local population had taken exception to Curtis’s move, however, and gathered to stop him; Curtis, unwilling to give up power, deployed orbital assets and massacred them.

In the aftermath, he’d set up militia’s, using appropriated UNSC gear, in order to maintain control of the populace---the remnants of which now formed rebel groups like this. The UNSC Navy had rolled on Whitefall and Curtis shortly after it became clear the Governor was turning to violence, and decimated his defenses in a fleet strike. Beaten and desperate to escape punishment, Governor Curtis had capitulated, selling out the very militias he’d formed. The UNSC had kept him on as Governor, putting him in charge of eliminating the remaining rebel fighters with the unspoken threat that if he let them slide, the fleet would be back to remove him for good.

The trouble was, of course, that Whitefall had no pro-UNSC forces left---Curtis had massacred all of them. Most outside merc groups big enough or dangerous enough wouldn’t touch the planet, either, hesitant to associate with a leader on the UNSC’s shit list. Finally, desperate and afraid of the rebels---rightly so, given the anger they held towards him for selling them out---he’d contacted Roger, offering nearly two million cR to make an example of one of the camps. It was common knowledge that Roger wasn’t afraid of the UNSC, but he didn’t come cheap. He did the job an entire company of mercenaries, and he got paid like an entire company of mercenaries. Early on, when Roger had first gone freelance, it often required an in person visit---usually in full MJOLNIR---for clients to agree to his exorbitant rates. After nearly a decade, however, his reputation spoke for itself. Everyone knew, if you had an impossible job, Roger Jacobs could do it…if you had the money. Nowadays, clients fought over him, not the other way around.

Roger had taken the job based solely on the cash payment, less worried about the UNSC than if it would be fun or not. All the other mercs---they were idiots. The UNSC had too many fires to put out and not enough water. They had left so quickly after their strike precisely because they didn’t have the resources to keep an eye on the planet. Besides, dumb as they were, they were hardly stupid enough to punish the hired help that helped kill their enemies. The UNSC was a blundering bureaucratic nightmare, but even it wasn’t that witless. The other mercs, if they had actually stopped and thought about it---well, supposing they were even capable of thought---would have realized this too. But they were dumb, just like everyone else.

All the better for Roger, in any case. Two million cR---that was no chump change. If the Governor had tried to hire a normal mercenary front, it would have required a small army to take this base, and their combined fee would have rose to the same amount---Roger refused to be shortchanged just because he did things with two men instead of two hundred. He was a wealthy man by most standards, but operating as a mercenary of his caliber wasn’t cheap. He’d gotten his most valuable asset, his MJOLNIR armor, for free---stolen it, technically, not that the UNSC could prove it---but all his other expenses added up. Guns, explosives, ammunition, tech, vehicles, bribes, maintenance, the occasional space ship---Roger payed for all of it. Sunef ‘Mhackphistho, his ex-Honor Guard, rogue Sangheili partner, split expenses where they overlapped, but they both had separate tastes. Missions like this, easy big money, had to be done. Even if they were boring.

Though Sunef’s most recent addition to this plan seemed ripe to make things much more interesting.

“Done yet?” Roger opened a comm channel to the alien. “I’m in the mood to kill something.”

“Patience, my friend.” The pompous, studied diction Suenf had spoken with when Roger first met him had long since disappeared. Years of work with Roger and Sunef’s own disdain for his species arrogant, narrow minded attitudes had broken the habit. When he spoke with the traditional Sangheili arrogance now, he did so out of sarcasm. “You wanted something interesting, and so you must wait. What are the…warriors in the base doing?”

“The guards are busy no working their perimeter and the Hornet’s are patrolling their pointless route.” Roger wiped a thin line of snow from his visor where it had accumulated. “I could drop half their base staff from here with that sniper rifle.”

“Exactly why I chose to relieve you of it.” Sunef sounded labored. He must have been climbing somewhere steep. “I would have hated to go to all this work only for you to spoil it out of boredom. Not to mention the inconvenience saving you would bring me.”

“No, you wouldn’t have to save me. They’d send the Hornet after me.” Roger smiled as he imagined the scene. “I’d shoot that down, and by the time they got their next one ready for take off I’d be down there slitting throats.”

“Or simply blowing everything up.” the alien said wryly. “But you would still complain for days.”

“Those ammunition dumps are right in the center of the base. I could burn a quarter of them in their sleep.” Roger laughed grimly, but he’d pulled all the assembled varieties of that trick before. There were only so many ways you could attack a hastily built rebel camp. Sunef’s idea sounded much more novel. “How far along are you?”

“Nearly to the southwest corner of the slope area.” Roger checked the area, saw nothing, and resisted the urge to activate IFF tracking. That was cheating.

“Cloaked?” Roger envied Sunef’s active camouflage module. It was integrated into the Sangheili’s combat harnestt and could turn him invisible for hours on end. Roger’s stolen UNSC module was severely outdated. He could manage no more than a minute.

“No point making it easy for them.” Sunef chuckled. Roger thought he caught a hoof print in the deep snow, but it vanished with the next flurry of flakes.

“Like they’d find you anyway.” Roger doubted they’d have caught a company of soldiers advancing on them if the Governor had managed to hire one. “Look at me. Obvious placement, right where you’d expect a sniper to be. No active camouflage, green armor. ''In. The. Snow''.”

“Yes, almost as if you yearn for them to discover you and destroy you.” Sunef assumed his deep toned, patronizing traditionalist inflection. “I’m finished setting the charges and moving to my position. Try to avoid killing someone out of boredom.”

Roger tried to kill time preparing for the attack, but he found he’d already made all the arrangements in his long wait. Each magazine for his ancient M392 Designated Marksmen Rifle was loaded and stuffed in the proper compartment, the Energy Sword Sunef had provided was clamped to his hip, his grenades were sorted and reachable, and his camouflage module was fully powered. Sunef had taken the black market Plasma Launcher to offset his annoyance at being stuck with a human made sniper rifle, leaving Roger lighter than normal. This plan had eliminated what little need for heavier ordinance he’d had. The rebels were going to be left with nothing that would require them.

Roger deactivated his HUD’s magnification and settled in to watch the world with his own eyes. Laszlo-108, the SPARTAN-II who’d trained him, had many times echoed an idiom his owner mentor had told him: “machines break, eyes don’t”. Nothing beat watching the world naturally. You caught things you didn’t notice through a monitor or a machine.

The wind picked up, howling through the valley and whipping the snow into deep drifts. The flurry of falling flakes thrashed sideways in a frenzy, obscuring the horizon in a white blur. The chill of it was palpable, even in the warmth of Roger’s climate controlled armor. Mica and James had died on a day like this, in a place far too similar. It set Roger’s temper on edge. He didn’t often dwell on that day.

A snowball tumbled down the hill, gathering snow as it rolled, picking up speed as it moved. A little trail of snow followed it, quickly covered by the wind blown drifts, and the tiny motion brought a smile to Roger’s face. His anger, his pain, they would find their outlet. Their vindication. Not much moved Roger. He was aware of it, found strength in it. He could make the smart decisions, the effective ones, the ones others never could, tied down by their silly notions of nobility or their care for other people. They never looked out for just themselves and their own. When push came to shove, they had lines. Things they wouldn’t do. Weakness that could be exploited.

Roger knew better. He, unlike so many others, even those he cared for, knew the reality of things. Roger knew the way people functioned, knew what was really important. People were not basically good; they used each other, committed terrible crimes to protect themselves. At his expense. At his friend’s expense. And taking care of himself and those he cared for was Roger’s lone priority. His törzs, his kin, were his only priority.

Other people did not matter. Trying to save, to help, to care about them---people who were beneath his help---was pointless. Beyond pointless. Negligent. Roger cared for his friends, watched out for them, and everyone else just…did not occur. Pretending the welfare of those he cared about and himself was ever less than that of the masses, that sacrifice for a “greater good” was ever valid, was a lie. A delusion. Roger knew to care only for his own and let all else matter for nothing. He practiced it when others could only preach it, bluff at self interest. Roger had dropped a five mile long Covenant Assault Carrier on an inhabited city to protect his friends, without a second thought. He was stronger for his “selfishness”, smarter. And long after the others would be dead, hesitating out of misplaced loyalty, Roger and his own would be living on.

“Glad to see you found a way to contain your boredom.” Sunef’s voice whispered in Roger’s ear over the roar of the wind. “I am in position, my friend.”

“Took you long enough, splits.” Roger rose to his feet, letting snow fall from his armor like river of white. He’d laid there for a long time. “Standby for the go.”

Roger braced his rifle across his chest and took off down the slope, powered armor and augmented muscles sprinting through waist high drifts like they weren’t even there. Adrenaline, warm and familiar, surged through his veins. The world slowed while it sped up, turned vibrant as it narrowed to only the details that were absolutely necessary. Roger watched the compound, enhanced vision fully engaged. At a kilometer away, he had no need for a magnifying visor; his body had been shaped and broken and modified to make him more than human, and Roger used every bit of those crimes against him to his advantage. Plunging down the valley wall, Roger took a cold satisfaction in that. The UNSC had stolen his life, hurt him and his friends, let his team die out of pure stupidity. But he was not bound to them any longer. Roger had taken all of their effort to break him, and turned it on it’s head, to make himself stronger at their expense.

Below, one of the sleepy tower guards finally looked up the slope. Roger could picture the man’s face as he stared, uncomprehending, eyes gradually widening and pulse quickening and palms growing sweaty, as he slowly realized what was happening. Roger imagined the way the fear would form in the man’s gut, the way he would fumble with his rifle and raise it only to freeze, unmoving and terrified, finger on the trigger but unable to follow through, eyes locked on the massive, seven foot tall armored giant plunging towards him, plumes of snow billowing off him like a great white cloud. Roger knew he would glance at the alarm switch, afraid to fire and draw the attention of the terrifying monster but thinking perhaps, maybe, he could just tell the others---

Roger’s rifle snapped to his shoulder, and mid-stride, he shot the guard cleanly through the head.

For all their incompetence, the guards at least were paying enough attention to notice Roger after he fired. The nearest guard in the next observation post over turned at the sound of the shot, jumped a good foot, and slammed his fist on the alarm. A god awful, echoing wail filled the valley, as dozens of rebels looked around in near panic. By the time the compound’s on duty response team was out of the barracks and running towards Roger and the eastern wall, he was two hundred meters away and nearly to flat ground.

“Sunef.” Roger would have bet share of this job’s take that his smile could be heard through the comm. “Do it.”

The rebel soldiers stacking up against the eastern wall, scrambling into the nearest cover and spraying bullets wildly in Roger’s direction didn’t see the flash of detonations in their rush. None of them heard the sharp, booming thunderclaps or the low rumbling roar that followed. They shouted and yelled to each other, called out congratulations as a stray round made Roger’s energy shields glow gold for a moment. For his own part, Roger held his fire, knowing how little danger he was actually in. He smiled, looking past the rag-tag firing line, watching the rest of the base panic, scurry, and flee from the oncoming tide of destruction.

Roger was fifty meters away when the first of the shooters turned to glance back at the commotion behind him, now to frantic to ignore. The rebel froze, neck craning upwards, rifle dropping limply to his side. Another rebel next to him shook him by the shoulder, trying to snap him back into the moment, but the energy, the urgency, the panic in the shaking became something else as he followed his partner’s gaze. And so it began, a cascading line of disbelief until half the firing line dropped their weapons and the other half were panicking over the loss of half their shooters. All the while, Roger drew closer, finger tensing on the trigger, waiting, just waiting, for that golden moment…

Three steps later, exactly twenty three meters from the fenceline, that moment arrived. A shrill cacophony of shrieking, crashing, crunching, thundering noise filled the air. Roger watched, mouth twisted in a sly grin, now totally ignoring the shooters in front of him, as the opposite side of the base disappeared beneath the leading edge of their artificially induced avalanche.

“I will admit, Roger.” Sunef’s voice barely rose above the din, even coming in direct through Roger’s helmet speakers. “This is a good deal more entertaining than picking them off from afar.”

Roger had no response, engrossed in the spectacle. A massive wall of billowing white rushed towards him, sweeping up tents, burying buildings, engulfing everyone in it’s path. The rebels tried to escape on foot, but it was no use. The snow was moving faster than any of them could even hope to run. A few smart ones managed to clamber onto roofs to avoid the surge; a few lucky ones made it to a vehicle to ride it out or even miraculously managed to surf the tide without being engulfed. Most…did not. The leading edge picked up detritus, rebar and trash and even a few weapons. Mostly, however, things simply disappeared. The ground rose ten feet in an instant as the wave progressed. The noise of it all---the screams, the destruction, the chaos---was deafening.

And there Roger was, running towards the rolling tide. Loving every second of it.

“Time for fun.” He let loose a dark laugh. “Watch and learn, Sunef.”

Roger smashed through the chain metal fence like it was nothing and in the blink of an eye his rifle was flashing. He put a round in the two nearest shooters, vaulted the low wall they’d been using for cover, and dropped the next pair one handed before his feet even touched the ground. All along the perimeter, the rebels turned, tracking him a hair quicker than he’d expected out of the poorly trained weekend warriors. Still, it was not even close to quick enough. Roger double tapped one as he the rebel tried to pivot his rifle, and charged shoulder first into another like an angry metal rhino. The man’s shoulder pushed aside, popping out of the socket with a crack that was noiseless over the din. The wide and long shoulder plate of Roger’s MJOLNIR slammed into the man’s temple and damn near took his head off.

The rebels couldn’t remain harmless forever, though. As Roger pushed the lifeless body off of him and raised his DMR one handed to fire, they opened up. Automatic fire peppered Roger’s shields---at this range, even they couldn’t miss. Roger grunted, bracing against the force of the impacts as they threatened to drive him backwards, and emptied the magazine of his rifle, sending the militiamen diving for cover. Two of them managed to slip behind a nearby shipping crate---a third didn’t fit, and Roger slipped a new magazine into his rifle in the blink of an eye and smoothly slotted two rounds into the man’s exposed side. He tracked him as he fell and fired again. The rebel’s head snapped back and his whole body went limp.

A high pitched whine droned in Roger’s ears, the familiar sound of a Hornet’s VTOL jets straining to push the craft to peek speed. Sunef must have been feeling annoyed at Roger’s last crack if that thing was still in the air. Roger and him both knew dealing with it was nothing more than a hassle for the ex-SPARTAN…but it was just that. A hassle. Roger breathed an annoyed sigh and started moving. He thumbed the detonator switch on one of his grenades and tossed it backwards over his shoulder as he ran, not even pausing to look back. A muffled thump shook the ground beneath his feet and the rebels hiding behind the cargo container let out a choked scream---but the Hornet took precedence over that bit of humor.

Something hot and loud and bright burst into existence on his left and a moment later Roger was swept off his feet by a familiar invisible hand. Equal parts training and years of experience took over and Roger tucked, rolled, and came up running. Blood on fire, he peaked over his shoulder, taking the scene in at a glance. The Hornet was jetting towards him from the south, burning in over the eastern side of the airfield. The pilot was giving the avalanche a wider berth than it needed, but his aim was apparently better than his flying. The Hornet might be more than a hassle after all. MJOLNIR was tough, but a missile would break it easy enough.

Roger dodged between the buildings, winding his way through camp and using the structures for cover. The avalanche rolled towards him, consuming the base. Another salvo of missiles from the Hornet sliced through the air, but it was a rush shot, meant to scare and drive him into the open. They slammed into an ammunition dump thirty meters to Roger’s left and a second later a fifty meter tall fireball lit up the sky. He stuck to cover and kept moving without a trace of hesitation.

Roger spun around the corner of a barracks and abruptly found himself face to face with ten odd rebels running straight at him. They were caught between a rock and a very hard place---avalanche rolling up behind them, slowing but still all too deadly, and Roger in front of them, charging like a rampaging bull and armored like a walking tank. He gave them no chance for the reality of their situation to sink in. Boring down on them, shrugging off the few rounds they managed to land on him, Roger returned fire with precise lethality. Six rebels hit the ground, then the slide of his DMR locked, magazine empty. Without missing a beat, he lifted the rifle to his back, letting the magnet plates on his shoulders grab it, and drew the energy sword from his hip.

The dual pronged blades of superheated, ionized plasma sprang into existence with a hiss and bathed Roger’s armor in electric blue light. He jumped, enhanced muscles and motorized joints propelling him high into the air, and came down slashing. The rebel in his path screamed as the blade cut her arm cleanly away just above the elbow, and her comrades, face to face with a seven foot tall giant glowing amber with aggravated energy shields, panicked. Avalanche forgotten, they backpedaled, firing wildly, helpless as Roger barreled towards them. A jab to the belly dropped one, while Roger, reaching out with one armored gauntlet, snapped the front receiver of another’s rifle in half. The man fired instinctively, and toppled over backwards as the weapon exploded in his face. The last one tripped, and Roger simply ran the blade across his legs as he sprinted past. The avalanche would cover him in mere moments anyway.

Out of the corner of his eye, the Hornet appeared, coming in diagonally at a low angle. The pilot let loose with a pair of missiles, but the trajectory was all wrong. They blew a crater out of an open spot of ground twenty meters to Roger’ s right, tossing flash-melted water and rock into the air. Roger calculated the angles in his head, still running towards the churning wall of snow. His next move was going to be…chancy. His timing would have to be spot on for this to work. Someone else, one of the new Spartan Fours, or even another Class I or Class III SPARTAN-II with Roger’s same augmentations, would have done things differently. More efficiently. But what was the point in being one of the best damn killing machines in the galaxy if you didn’t flaunt it from time to time.

Doubling his pace, slapping the energy sword back onto his hip, and grabbing a grenade from his belt, Roger ran with every muscle in his body strained to the breaking point. Thirty meters straight ahead, the avalanche wall loomed, rushing unstoppably towards him. A line of buildings, uniformly built “officers” cabins, were engulfed under the snow, roofs barely emerging from the snow. Fortunately for Roger, that was all he needed.

Roger sprinted forward until the snow was an arm’s length away and just before it engulfed him, leapt two meters straight up. The river of white past below him in a rush, and for a moment, he seemed to hang in midair, totally still---then he smashed onto the roof of one of the cabins, denting the sloped metal surface inward, and without pause, took off again. He vaulted from roof to roof, jumping across the islands of solid ground above the churning sea of powder. His heavy MJOLNIR would sink in a second if he made a misstep this close to the leading edge. He’d be buried alive.

The Hornet pilot clearly hadn’t been expecting Roger’s roof running antics, and missed his last chance for missiles. By the time the pilot recovered and reacquired a target lock, Roger was inside minimum range. Roger ran fifty meters across building tops, and then he was on solid ground, snow that had settled enough to support him. The Hornet pilot opened up with the mounted cannons, filling the air with depleted uranium rounds.

Roger twisted and dodged, swearing as the cannon fire tossed fist sized clumps of snow into the air. One clipped him in the side, slamming him like a car crashing into him, and he stumbled sideways, his shields draining to half. He corrected and kept running, counting down in his head, M9 HE-DP grenade clutched tight in his fist, pulse pounding in his throat.

Digging his feet into the snow, Roger skidded to a halt, a wide jet of snow spraying ahead of him. The Hornet screamed in, cannon fire belching from above the cockpit. Roger held his ground, drew back, and estimated the time in his head. A line of fire chewed up the ground in front of him, ugly craters exploding out of the ground, but he held fast. One hit him in the chest like a rough tackle, nearly leveling him. The shield bar on his armor flickered to a hair above empty. He braced, but stood firm. He didn’t dare move and miss his shot.

The Hornet let up on the guns and surged it’s jets, trying to gain altitude. The pilot was trying not to overshoot Roger, but momentum was not on his side. He wasn’t slowing quick enough. Roger drew back, frag grenade held behind him like a javelin, pressed down on the detonator, and threw. In the link of an eye, one hand shot to a hip pouch, drawing a magazine; in the other, he reached over his back, gauntlet wrapping around the pistol grip of his rifle. Both hands came together smoothly in one precise motion, right hand bringing the rifle to his shoulder and left sliding the magazine into place. The completed, loaded rifle was in his hands less than a second after the grenade left his hand.

The softball sized explosive sailed upwards, warning light blinking. As far as grenades went, the M9 HE-DP was designed to be as safe as possible---for the thrower, obviously, not the target. It was easy to make sure the bad guy on the other end ended up very, very dead, but keeping the thrower safe---that was much more difficult. The M9 featured an especially interesting hard-touch trigger mechanism safeguard. When activated, it required an impact with something solid to start it’s countdown. Obviously, this kept the grenade from blowing up in a soldier’s hands, but it also helped deter the inexperienced and overly zealous from trying to airburst an M9---something very dangerous, given the frighteningly large blast radius of it’s shrapnel.

Roger, however, was no greenhorn marine. He had MJOLNIR armor to protect him, no friendlies around to be worried about, and needed an airburst. So he made one himself.

“And…” Roger lifted his rifle, tracked the arc of the grenade, and pulled the trigger. “…goodbye.”

A cloud of thunder and smoke and twisting metal fragments erupted in the sky, just as the Hornet passed overhead. The VTOL flier buffeted and shook, overpressure abusing it’s frame, shrapnel embedding in every surface. One lucky piece slashed through a fuel valve, and the aircraft dropped, engines looking for hydrogen mix that wasn’t there. The pilot yanked hard on the stick, overcorrecting on the afflicted side, and the aircraft plummeted even further. As it dipped lower and lower, Roger started sprinting, following it‘s trajectory, letting it gain on him, timing things just right. Stowing his rifle once again and pumping his arms, he sprinted up the angled roof of a half-buried building, hit the lip, and jumped.

He hit the side of the aircraft with a thump and punched armored fists into the metal to make himself a pair of handholds. The pilot took one look out the window and panicked, what little reserve of courage he’d had stored up draining away. Bracing his feet on the landing skid, Roger took the energy sword from his hip, and stabbed the wingtip jet-nacelle right above him. The circular engine belched fire and with a deafening roar, the entire engine exploded, showering Roger with fire and metal fragments. He could hear the pilot’s screams and curses through the cockpit, even as thr whine of the lone remaining engine screamed above everything.

Roger tapped on the glass of the canopy, and with the tip of his knuckle plate, scratched a crude smiley face. Chuckling, he took a step back and flipped backwards off the plummeting flier. He landed in a crouch, shooting up a cloud of snow, armor crunching with the impact. After a spectacle like that, it wouldn’t be long before the rest of the rebels caught up with him. Nonetheless, he paused and took a moment to simply enjoy the entertainment value of his handiwork.

The Hornet spun and plummeted, the poor lone remaining engine, working off half the necessary fuel, trying valiantly to hold the gunship up, all while only making things worse. It fired as powerfully as it could manage, but with no opposite engine to counterbalance it, the flier simply spun faster and faster. It looped, twirling in a long arc, slowly nosing over and spinning towards the ground. With a shriek of twisting metal, it plowed into the ground. Skidding across the snow, a rooster tail of ice and powder and metal and fire trailing behind, it finally came to a rest, orange flames licking at the fuselage and dark, acrid smoke rising from the twisted frame.

A rustle behind Roger caught his attention and he turned, annoyed. There, standing in the soft orange light of the flickering flames, were nearly thirty rebels. It must have been nearly all the survivors from the entire base. They stared at Roger, weapons leveled, faces contorted in shock or fury or rage or fear or, most prominently, disbelief. Disbelief in what they had just seen this massive armored thing do to an attack aircraft. Disbelief that one man could do so much damage without even a scratch. Disbelief, like all the rest, that this could possibly happen to them. Roger held them in contempt. They were idiotic, moronic fools.

No, he corrected himself. They didn’t deserve his contempt. They were beneath even that.

They stared at him, rifles tight and at the ready, but unfiring. None of them dared pull the trigger. It was as if they sensed that such an action would be the final break that destroyed the damn holding back their final destruction, knew that their inaction was the only temporary stopgap they were allowed. None of them, not even the ones whose hands shook with wrath and whose vision turned red with hate filled grief, possessed the courage to pull that stopgap. Roger stared back, inscrutable behind his mirrored golden visor. He shifted his head, slowly turning, fixing one after the other with a disparaging look. One nervous, sweaty, peculiarly grizzled young man met his eye, and his whole body shook. The rifle in his hand’s rattled against his cheap combat plating. The color drained from his face. Roger lingered on him for a split moment longer than the others…

…and he broke. Tossing his rifle to the ground, he tripepd backwards, mumbling, moaning, trembling. In that instant, Roger raised his rifle, and the rebels were stirred into action. The moment he pulled the trigger and the first rebel dropped, three rounds neatly cluster in his chest, three dozen rifles thundered in retort. Roger was no longer there, however. He was coming up from a roll two meters to the left of where the rebels had aimed, pausing a single moments as the rebels checked their fire, turned in horror to see Roger unscathed, and realized, deep in their bones, that they were about to die.

This time, when Roger shot the next rebel through the heart and she twisted to the ground, the retaliatory fire came with a fraction of a second’s hesitation. Their faces, shrouded in gun smoke and illuminated by muzzle flare, mirrored each other, reflected their uniform, newfound realization. All odd thirty of them, every single one, was going to die. They could fight, they could run, and it didn’t much matter. They knew what Roger knew. He was going to kill them all.

Simple as that.

Sunef stepped out of the hazy soup of gun, grenade, and fire smoke with an air of antipathy about him. Acrid black plumes from the burning Hornet’s electrical systems, mixing with the dull haze and drifting puffs of dark white, made it look like a fog had rolled in and clung to the ground. Night was falling fast, the sun eclipsed by the walls of the ridge and darkness descending like murky waves of black ink. The Sangheili strode forward, bumped the bloodied body of a rebel with one armored hoof, and stepped over with a faint hint of disgust.

“Quite the scene of carnage.” Sunef reached down an removed a plasma pistol from the hip of one of the dead rebels. He tossed it away with a flick of his four fingered hand. “Fools, as you said. Fancy technology and stolen toys, without discipline or skill. A waste of our time.”

Roger laughed and rose from his crouch, examining his handiwork. The landscape told a tale of the violence it had played host to a few minutes prior. A dozen bodies clumped together, with two more trailing behind them---a pair who’d abandoned their group and made a run for it. A trio of craters, six more rebels strewn about, one shredded almost past recognition---Roger’s blast shield from rebel grenades. Brass shell casings, glittering in the firelight and blanketing the ground like a twinkling, shifting metallic carpet. Thousands of spent 7.62x51mm cases, hundreds clustered together, and infrequently, far from the bodies of the rebels, clusters of no more than ten. And everywhere, the blood; dark, dulled pools of crimson, soaking into the snow, white against red.

“The avalanche made it entertaining enough.” Roger brushed a pile of ash off his shoulder. “Everything on your end finished?”

“You even have to ask?” Sunef scoffed. He’d gone building to building in Roger’s wake, doing what he did best: hunt down those who tried to hide. Roger killed the bulk of the forces and drew attention in his nigh-impenetrable armor, while Sunef quietly cleared the stragglers, never once emerging from the invisibility of his active camouflage.

“Just thinking you might have saved one or two for target practice later.” Roger looked across the base, buried beneath the snow. The avalanche had swallowed everything: buildings, the airfield, all the way over to the fence Roger had breached on the far side. The sentry towers looked even more ridiculous than before. “I never know when you’ll get bored and need someone to play with.”

“Speak for yourself, friend.” Sunef chuckled and bent down to retrieve a pearl handled M6C pistol from a rebel’s corpse. He grunted in satisfaction and attached it to his hip armor. “I’m not the one who demanded an avalanche for amusement.”

The Sangheili wandered off in search of more treasures, leaving Roger by himself. There was still one last task to complete before they could leave this place behind. He tapped the TacPad on his wrist, and it spat out a small holo-transmitter. Tossing the projector on the ground, Roger slung his rifle and crossed his arms as the hazy blue image flickered into being in front of him. A pudgy, round face man swaggered into frame, tailored core world suit slimming the bulk of his frame a little, but not nearly enough. Roger had met Governor Loren Curtis before, but each time, he seemed to look more and more pathetic.

“Mr. Jacobs.” Curtis’s hands fidgeted. “The job’s…done?”

“See for yourself.” Roger stepped back and let the holoprojector catch an unobstructed view of the battlefield. The Governor’s expression let him know it had caught more than enough of the carnage. “Satisfied, Governor?”

“Y-yes.” The man looked like he’d barely kept his lunch down. “That…looks like everything is in…order.”

“Let’s talk money.” Roger had no desire to stick around and pick the dead like Sunef.

“Ah, yes…” Curtis’s hands fidgeted again. They hadn’t done that during their last meeting. “Two…million. Credits, direct transfer, in your account…now.”

Roger tapped on his data pad and accessed his account. Sure enough, there it was. He smiled.

“Look’s good.” Roger didn’t let a trace of satisfaction show in his voice. Dark and cold left a more ominous feeling. It was all part of the image. Well, along with the killing. “Pleasure doing business. Me and my partner will be off planet within a day.”

“A-actually.” Curtis spoke just before Roger cut the connection. “I have another job for you.”

“Not interested.” Roger had a backlog of contracts waiting for him. Well paying ones. Given the two million credits Curtis had just dropped, Roger doubted he’d pay as well a second time.

“Hear me out!” The Governor’s voice turned high and desperate. “I’ll double your rates, please!”

“Double it?” That got Roger’s attention. The Governor really was desperate. Four million was too good and offer to give up. Visions of extravagant equipment upgrades and lavish accommodations on a luxury moon swam in his mind. Roger would have attacked a Covenant Assault Carrier for that kind of money.

“Yes, double.” Curtis looked pained. “Four million credits. All you have to do is keep me alive.”

“Whose trying to kill you?” Roger measured suspicion against experience. On one hand, anyone willing to pay such a disgustingly large sum of money for a single job had to be looked at carefully; people had stopped trying to short Roger after he’d pulled that heart out of the last one to try it---and killed all his staff, of course---but people still tried to downplay the dangers of serious work to get him to take jobs. On the other hand, Roger had long since learned that desperate men---especially rich ones---would spare no expense to protect their own hide, whether or not it was actually in much danger.

“The Office of Naval Intelligence!” Well, that made sense. It really wasn’t ONI’s style to let potential rebel upstarts hang around. Especially not mass murdering ones. “The fleet didn’t kill me, but that was just to keep the government stable until after elections! As soon as I’m out of office, they’ll come for me!”

“What sort of contingency measures do you have prepared?” Roger was considering it. Normally, going against the military or ONI wasn’t worth the trouble it brought. The money was never very good, and it was much harder to find and complete a contract while on the UNSC’s shit list. Four million was a lot of credits, though. A hit on the Governor would probably be run by Section Zero, probably a small team, who wouldn’t be expecting much in the way of resistance. If Roger made sure none of them survived to report back to ONI…

“Contingency measures?” Curtis fretted.

“Defenses.” Roger clarified tersely. “Hiding places, bunkers, existing security, anywhere you can lay low.”

“I have a b-bunker.” Curtis fidgeted his hands again. That was getting annoying. “In Patience City. My best security is there but…I don’t think they’re loyal.”

“Guess they don’t like being stabbed in the back.” Roger marveled at the Governor’s shitty position, his basic incompetence. No security? Check. Bunker in the lone crowded city on Whitefall? Check. Still, he and Sunef could secure it easy enough. “If your honest about that pay, I might be interested.”

Sunef wandered over, turning over pearl handled M6C in one massive hand and holding a half dozen interesting knickknacks in the other. Roger spotted what looked like a special operations energy sword, and admitted the weapon would be nice. That blade would cut faster and run longer. The red glow given off by the specialty blade would be nicely menacing, as well. He could appreciate that.

Sunef didn’t look eager to share, however. He poured the items into a framed rucksack integrated into his armor, and looked with distaste towards Curtis. The Governor’s response to Roger’s last choked in his throat, as he stared at the blood stained, eight foot tall alien monster in front of him. Whitefall, an outer colony, had spent years cut off from the rest of the UNSC, terrified that at any moment a Covenant invasion force would arrive in orbit to glass the planet. Sunef was like something out a nightmare for Curtis. Roger cleared his throat and the Governor snapped back into focus.

“S-so you’ll do it?” His hands kept fidgeting. Roger furrowed his brow. It didn’t add up. Roger and Sunef had just flattened a rebel base with ease. Curtis should have been getting less nervous, not more. “T-that’s w-wonderful I---”

Sunef read the situation just as Roger had. The Sangheili raised the luxurious pistol and fired. The clap of thunder from the report made Curtis jump a good foot into the air, and the holographic image of his hands flickered as Sunef’s shot slashed through it. Roger took a step back and let the big alien take over, capitalizing on the sudden shock. The massive Sangheili stalked towards the hologram, hooves stomping ominously through bloody snow. He loomed over the Governor, mandibles clicking, glaring down into the man’s terror-widened eyes.

“You lie!” Sunef laid it on thick; roaring his best piously enraged Covenant warrior snarl, he bared his fangs and narrowed his eyes, letting spittle fly from his mandibles with every syllable. “You are concealing something, human. Do not deceive me!”

“I-I-I---” Curtis stammered, eyes wide.

“You scared of him now, over a holoprojection?” Roger paced forward. The Governor tore his gaze from Sunef, looking like he thought the insult of it would get him killed. “Think about whether you want to explain in person in that bunker of yours or over the comm like this before you lie to us again.”

“Yes, human.” Sunef really did have a knack for inserting a terrifyingly threatening tone into his voice. “I am much more persuasive in the flesh. Tell us. Now!”

“Ok! Ok!” Curtis’s face went whiter than Roger had thought a person’s could. “I-I k-know whose a-after me. He’s…n-not y-your average arrest o-officer.”

“You don’t say.” Roger growled, “They don’t send boy scouts to assassinate corrupt planetary officials, governor---”

“I know that!” Curtis howled. He looked over his shoulder, eyes frantic. God, the rebels had shown more gumption than Curtis, and they’d been moments from death. “I know who they normally send for people like me! Men in black suits and glasses and silenced weapons! He’s not one of them! He’s in armor like you! Black armor, all by himself!”

All at once, Roger’s blood ran cold. Ice flooded his veins. Armor? Section Zero? There was only one answer. Roger knew, almost without a doubt, who’d been sent to kill Governor Loren Curtis. He’d heard stories like everyone else, and more than that, been told to watch for someone just like this by an old friend. If what Curtis told him was true, there was no other option.

“Black armor, like mine.” Roger repeated the words slowly. There was no room for doubt. “Are you sure?”

“I have…footage.” The Governor glanced nervously between Roger and Sunef, maybe measuring them against what he must have seen. “He came in through the dockyards. Just…bad luck, that he was caught. A group of rebels were there to steal weapons. They…bumped into him and he killed…he killed all of them.”

“How did you acquire this footage?” Everything Roger knew, so did Sunef. Curtis couldn’t read the Sangheili’s facial expression, but Roger could. He was worried.

“I had men following the rebels.” Curtis scratched his neck, looking guilty. “Since the rebellion, I’ve been…very alert to security threats in Patience City. I thought the remnants might try and kill me for siding with the UNSC, maybe, not…this. You…y-you can stop him, can’t you?”

Curtis was looking at Roger when he asked the question. He didn’t catch the quick look Sunef shot Roger, nor could he see through the polarized visor to catch Roger returning it beneath his helmet.

“Send the footage to my ship.” Roger said blankly. “I’ll review it there. You can sit tight while we finish things up and decide.”

Roger closed the holoprojector, the Governor’s blank, speechless face vanishing. He grabbed it from the ground, motioned for Sunef to follow, and they departed without another word spoken.

The holoprojector in the common area of Roger’s small ship, a heavily modified gunboat going on thirty years old, was normally the most interesting thing in the room. Roger was vain by SPARTAN standards, but he was practical. His jobs didn’t require a ship for much more than transport, so he’d saved money and bought cheap. A good holoprojector, on the other hand, was one of those odds and ends that was essential for planning ops. Roger had spared no expense, and the shining silver projector stood in sharp contrast to the dull black metal interior.

He’d always liked the little projector, a pleasant reminder of the independence he’d taken from the UNSC. It always caught his eye as he walked through the room, giving him the tiniest of smiles. Today though, the image that hung in the air above it was far, far more interesting. Roger sat, settled heavily into a specially reinforced chair, staring at it as he tapped a finger against his leg plating. Centered in the screen, standing between two raggedly equipped rebels, was the unmistakable silhouette of a set of MJOLNIR armor. The figure had a combat knife wedged in the eye of one of the rebels, frozen in time mid stab, and an M7 submachine gun in the opposite hand, firing point blank into the second. The yellow-orange flash of the muzzle flare lit up the image, illuminating rows of cargo containers, an oil stained concrete floor, a half dozen rebels strewn on the floor behind them, and of course, that jet black suit of MJOLNIR.

Roger studied it intently. It was a model he’d never seen before, and looked modified. While he was no longer part of the military, Roger still kept up to date. He was always aware someone might decide to come after him for his own suit of armor---it was old, yes, limited in capability compared to the modern mass produced Generation 2 suits, but it might not slip beneath ONI’s attention forever---and kept up on the advancements and new models as the UNSC rolled them out. This suit had the classic spiked helmet and thin vertical visor of a Wetwork combination, but the body was smoother. At the same time, it had more bulk than a classic Wetwork model, giving it the interesting impression of precise, careful power.

It was also clearly a new suit. In sharp contrast to Roger’s pitted, dented, and scorched armor, the figure’s set of MJOLNIR was nearly pristine. Hardly a fleck of paint looked like it was missing. With the aggressive methods the mystery assassin was using to kill the rebels with, Roger knew he had to be good. Going toe-to-toe with enemies in close quarters was tough, but do-able. Doing the same without a scratch---that required more than just energy shields. He had to have reflexes so quick they would put even Roger’s miniscule reaction time to shame. The untrained eye might have seen the intimidating helmet and jet black paint job and impenetrable black visor and been intimidated, even terrified. Roger’s superior eye was even more impressed. He saw evidence of an absolute killing machine.

“Rewind.” Roger got up and strode towards the center of the room. It was time to get his money’s worth out of the projector. “Enlarge. Play.”

The image expanded, full three dimensional scene growing and filling the whole room. The rebels filling the room were a third life size, then half. It made Roger look like a giant, massive legs stepping right now cargo containers. The ragged group of insurgents burst into the moment, running through the narrow corridor of cargo containers and machinery, frantically looking behind them. There were ten of them. The recording, Roger noted, was ten seconds behind where he had paused it.

In the rear, one of the rebels tripped over a bundle of rebar poles and toppled to the ground. Two of his friends turned to look, but didn’t stop running. Three seconds had passed. A blur dropped from somewhere up above, landing on the chest of the third rebel back with a squishy sounding, sickening crack. In a flash, the blur was moving, camouflage fading, physical being resolving into view, faster than the reels could turn their heads, almost faster than Roger could track. The figure slid through the rebel ranks, light on his feet despite the armor, a knife in one hand glinting with blood. The other was empty one moment then had an SMG in it the next, without any sign it had moved. It was smooth and fluid, a ballet of death incarnate.

Five seconds had now passed. The two that had turned to look at their tripped friend died last, Roger noted---outliving the others by at most three fourths of a second. The tripped rebel himself was fumbling for a sidearm and the figure didn’t even spare a look back at him to aim, firing over his shoulder with a single round from the M7, catching him square in the center of the head. There was a moment where the two left out of the ten reached to unsling their rifles, and then the figure was on them. Roger let the final scene play through fully this time. With these two, he was more brutal, more forceful. Roger picked out the bulky, powerful half of the armor, of the figure’s style, shining through.

Chunks of concrete sprayed up in the wake of powerful, heavy footsteps. The knife, before a slim, precise tool, now became an instrument for heavy blows; the man slammed it into the eye socket and yanked down, tearing through soft tissue, embedding in bone, dragging the entire body violently down by the head. The lone bullet that had killed the tripped man transformed into dozens, a deluge of fire that chewed up the next rebel’s chest, pock marking it with ugly, wide, bloody impact marks. The eight before these had simply dropped, fallen. The first here crashed. The second crumpled.

Ten seconds. Seven of them to actually kill them. By himself, and just as Roger had noted…without a scratch. The image froze as the footage ended, with the black armor standing there, unscathed. Not even blood had touched it’s smooth surface. Roger stared at it for a moment longer, wrapped in thought.

“Close file.” Roger felt a hint of something peculiar, staring into the empty space vacated by the image. Practical understanding of a threat being greater than he could handle was one thing. His view of this figure trended too much for intimidation than he liked. Roger put it from his mind. There were more important things to deal with.

There was no denying it now. Roger had been suspicious nearly to the point of certainty before, but now it was indisputable. Everything Standoff had told him about the man he was supposed to be keeping an eye out for matched up. The Colonel had given him plenty of details that would help with the identification. Fighting style, killing methods, armor loadouts, general target profiles. Standoff had been hunting for the man in that armor for three years and counting, tracking him in the hopes of killing or capturing him. He had plenty of intel on who the man was, how he operated. After all, that was the whole reason Standoff was hunting the figure in the first place---because of one of the operations the figure had carried out in the past.

Colonel Standoff, of course, was the man who had trained Roger, working alongside Laszlo-108 to turn him and 49 other candidates into SPARTANs. For years, Roger had hated him; hated his complicity in Roger’s abduction from his home, hated his harsh standards, hated him like all the rest. No, more. All the rest, he was apathetic towards, with a few exceptions here and there based on personality. Standoff, Roger had truly hated. But when Roger and his teammates had broken into the computer systems at their training facility and obtained access to all sorts of classified files---including Standoff’s own personal journal---that had changed. During the war, when Roger and his team had stolen suits of MJOLNIR, they’d turned to Standoff to hide them, and he’d done it without batting an eye. Roger would have died for Standoff. He nearly had, once.

The Colonel fell within that rare group whom Roger cared for. His törzs, to use the word Laszlo had taught him. Standoff’s loyalty and devotion to him, Roger knew, was absolute, and so in turn was Roger’s. Roger knew for a fact Standoff would do anything, risk anything, for him. The Colonel might do things that baffled Roger---in fact, he frequently did---but that was ultimately unimportant. Standoff was törzs. Always was, and always would be. The reasons Standoff was hunting the man did not matter to Roger, though he was indeed aware of them. All that mattered was that Standoff had asked for Roger’s help finding him, and that meant Roger would do so. His contacts, his own eyes, they were Standoff’s wholeheartedly. It was what kin did.

Roger paced across the deck, checking the logistics of his next actions. Standoff was on Regent, meeting a contact. If Roger rushed a message off, it would likely reach him before the next day. That was easy. The Governor was still waiting, though. He would have to be…handled. The bullshit of dealing with nervous clients like Curtis irked him. He needed the Governor to stay where he was, though, if Roger’s plan had any hope of helping Standoff’s hunt. Curtis would make ideal bait.

One thing for certain was that Roger and Sunef would not be taking the job. Four million was an enormous amount of money---and completely useless if he was dead, which he certainly would be if he tried to stop the figure. Roger knew he could kill and outperform all but a few select individuals in the galaxy. This man, he could not. A smart merc knew when to cut and run, and this was one of those times. Roger was hesitant to even remain on planet. Without protection, though, Curtis’s first instinct might be to bolt. That would be…extremely unfortunate. No, he needed the Governor hiding in his static, tidy little bunker.

“Open a link to Governor Loren Curtis.” Roger decided on a plan of action, as he spoke to the ship’s computer. Curtis would be predictable in his fear.

“Mr. Jacobs!” Roger’s comm transmission connected immediately. The Governor must have been sitting waiting for the call. “Did you…make a decision?”

“I just reviewed the footage you sent me.” Roger tonelessly sidestepped the question. He would control this conversation. “You’ve made a powerful enemy, Governor.”

“I was right, wasn’t I. ONI.” Curtis’s face drained of color once again. “They’re…organized crime in uniform! Murderers!”

“Probably.” Roger was actually inclined to agree with Curtis on the second point, but he kept his tone suitably skeptical. He was not the Governor’s friend here. “Your chances of surviving are low. All my participation would do is get me and my partner killed. I’m forced to decline your offer.”

“D-decline?” The panic in Curtis voice turned it high pitched and scratchy. “What…what do I do, then?’

“You?” Roger made a show of disinterestedly examining the scratches in his armor. “Not much, really. You could run, but you’d probably just end up shot walking off a transport gang plank.”

Roger let an especially dark tone creep into his naturally menacing voice with that comment, and watched with satisfaction at the look on Curtis’s face. Yes, he could indeed play the Governor. It was a delicate game, influencing him without him realizing it. Roger could appear frank, portraying all the options as bad ones, the ultimate bringer of no holds barred bad news. Then the Governor would think him simply apathetic. The trick was making all of the options sound bad, but making one in particular sound worse.

“You could hole up in your bunker, of course.” Roger continued, “He’d find your location with ease. You might be able to secure it so you can delay and get out before he kills you. Or not.”

“I-I-I…” Curtis was stammering in panic again. Roger wouldn’t have been surprised if a heart attack killed him before the armored figure did. “I…I can’t make the bunker that secure…”

“Then go with a ship. All you have to worry about is the other end. Use your pull to get a private launch and ship out incognito.” From the look on the Governor’s face it was clear he had neither pull nor any idea how to leave anonymously. “Or fill your place with a few hundred cheap guards as a human shield. Bang out when they start dying.”

Roger watched with satisfaction as Curtis played right into his manipulations. The man’s facial expressions broadcast his emotions like a lightshow. Roger watched calmly as the gears turned inside the other man’s head, until finally, he looked up from his “deep thinking” and looked Roger in the visor.

“I…suppose I could probably hire some security for just that.” Curtis clearly thought he was taking suggestions Roger had made and making them his own, adding his own caveats, instead of merely playing into Roger’s hand. It was a good delusion to let him have. People always responded to manipulation better when they thought the ideas were their own. “I could avoid the danger of transit and keep the city locked down tight. Wouldn’t even have to tell the guards why I had them. And there’s plenty of grunt labor in the city that could handle that. Not like they have to charge a base or anything…”

He trailed off, mumbling little tidbits to himself. Roger smirked. Sometimes he did forget to have fun, it was true. Being a cynical, cold bastard could do that too you. The soul needed an avalanche, bloodshed, and good old fashioned manipulation every once in a while.

“I’ll leave you to that.” As always, Roger’s voice betrayed nothing. His satisfaction was for him and him alone. “Goodbye, Governor.”

Curtis mumbled something sounding like a valediction, still engrossed in planning his survival. Roger knew whether or not the Governor lived would have nothing to do with any plan of his own. Roger doubted even he could keep himself alive for long against the odds Curtis was facing. Working his way to his cabin, however, the thought disappeared from his mind. When he sat down to compose his message to Standoff, it was already half written in his mind. Törzs came first. Always.