Halo: Beckon Forth Sunrise

 HALO: BECKON FORTH SUNRISE  A SHORT STORY PREQUEL TO HALO: BEYOND VEIL'S AZURE

RELENTLESSRECUSANT HARVARD STEM CELL INSTITUTE HARVARD UNIVERSITY Hekate, Alpha Orionis System April 9, 2578 (Resynchronized Military Calendar) 0425 Zulu Hours

OPERATION: Marshal Yellow UNSC Special Operations Command, PROGWARDIV UNSC Office of Naval Intelligence, Section Three

The flowing pleated cloth of night’s dusky skirt gently brushed Cassandra’s downy cheek, the fleeting glancing touch of an artist’s pastel over canvas. In the suffocated incandescence of the twilight dark, the external foliage of snow-draped conifers and glacial ice reflected themselves in her terra-cotta brown irises, her eyes hollow mirrors of the world that encompassed her—

Hollow. Lonely.

One person in the dark, all alone.

With not a friend in the world, a wanderer forever lost in the night, forever lost in Hekate’s ice.

She was a criminal on the run. A fugitive running from justice. Public Enemy Number Two of the UNSC, the second most prominent terrorist threat in the entire UNSC.

She vacantly stared at the convoluted, darkened landscape of lofty snow and brittle ice that carpeted the plains to each angle of her modest townstead. The eternal winter, held forever in abeyance in Hekate’s poles; Cassandra, forever sentenced to the night.

She didn’t know why she even woke at 0400 hours anymore. A remnant of her military past undoubtedly.

Yes, a remnant of her military past. She was past the military.

She was a traitor to the UNSC.

A UNSC special forces operator gone rogue, who went “broken arrow” and went off the “deep end”.

They’d fled. They’d run for their lives from the UNSC. Run away from everything. From Earth. From the UNSC. From the military. From Naval Intelligence. She and Simon.

They didn’t even know what they were running towards. They were running forever, running through the rain.

A haphazard juxtaposition of coincidences had landed them in alien hands—Sangheili hands. She didn’t know why anything happened anymore. Why she was raised as a child soldier with an operational capacity of one mission; she was a plastic toy soldier. Not re-usable. Use once, throw away in the trash bin (make sure it’s not the recycling bin.

Why ONI was trying to kill them. Why the entire galaxy was trying to kill them. She didn’t understand that anymore than why the Sangheili had taken her and Simon in, healed them, placed them into the stygian slumber of cryo-sleep, why they’d now been woken up again after twenty-four years and been relocated with Simon to Hekate, a desolate UNSC border world on the fringes of UNSC space.

She didn’t know anything anymore.

She didn’t want to know anything anymore.

There were too many tears.

She was a mother’s dear daughter, wasn’t she? A father’s proud child. Where were they?

Why was she alone?

Why was she in the dark?

She felt the jewels of moisture roll over her cheek, tears that she never remembered crying.

And she stood there, a lone, pale, shrunken figure alone in the darkness.

She thought about it often.

About leaving. About shutting the doors on the world.

Who didn’t want her to do it?

No one.

She’d do the UNSC Special Operations Command and the UNSC Office of Naval Intelligence a favor, actually. She knew that there were military counterterrorism teams searching for her now, staging advanced reconnaissance operations to find her, neatly put a bullet in her head, throw her into a river somewhere. They wouldn’t have much of a challenge. She’d always been the worst. Always the last one. Last place.

She shook her hair bitterly with such lachrymose self-pity that she choked on it.

It’d help everyone out. UNSCSOCOM, ONI. All the civilians of the UNSC, who thought she was a gun-toting, highly-dangerous commando ready to blow up a hundred schoolkids with a single explosion.

They couldn’t have been more mistaken.

If she was killing anyone, it was herself.

She suspected that Simon knew. For practicality, they’d been given a single 9mm M7 submachine gun by the Sangheili. Simon had disassembled it, hidden the ammunition, and hidden the composite parts, completely rendering the submachine gun out of her reach. Out of her head’s reach.

Actually, she knew he knew. He tried to talk to her sometimes about it. She was beyond caring. No one cared about her, not even her.

It wasn’t really anything she saw with her tear-blurred eyes. It wasn’t a discrete quantum of an object. It was more or less some subtle movement.

If anything, in suicide kid soldier camp, she’d learnt one tenet. In special warfare, everyone on all sides was subtle, covert. Nothing overt, obvious. So when she saw a subtle, surreptitious, indiscrete smear of movement in the forests, it inexorable. It was human nature. Pre-programmed cognitive circuitry, psychological reflexes written in potentiated synapses and GABAergic interneuron pathways, encoded in glutamatergic, cholinergic, and serotoninergic vesicles and post-synaptic densities across her central nervous system. The light was transmitted from the optic nerves through the optic chiasma to the lateral geniculate body, where it was transmitted through the contralateral optic radiation to the primary visual cortex, and where processing of patterns occurred in lower-level statistical complexity in the thalamus and the tegmentum, and where higher-level natural pattern association occurred in cortical neurons in the visual associative cortex.

For one moment held forever in eternity, her tears froze on her face.

And then she saw the keen, familiar viridian glint of distant, reflected starlight.

She knew that.

It was a sniper rifle’s night-vision telescopic scope.

Aimed at her.

Her SPARTAN reflexes were automatic, she inventoried her environment. One disassembled submachine gun without bullets, hidden away in different pieces. No SPI armor. No personal melee weapons. No explosives. No battalion-level asset supports. No orbital assets.

She was a small, prepubescent girl standing in front of a window, contemplating suicide, and a military sniper was pointed at her.

Her first instinct was to run.

Cassandra immediately dismissed that notion. Running would have been a “I see you too” message to the sniper, who had been staring at her with a .50-caliber rifle for God knows how long.

Her best bet, actually, would have been to turn away, pretend she didn’t see the sniper, innocuously walk away, rouse Simon up, reassemble the M7, get ready for action.

She found that she didn’t really care about dying.

In fact, there was a sense of relief that ONI had found her.

It was over. She was going home.

Home to die.

She called softly in the darkness, “Simon?”

His voice answered her from behind her. She didn’t know he’d been watching her too.

“Cassandra.”

She didn’t even turn; her body was locked in the rigor mortis of death. She had already imaged the trajectory of the sniper bullet as it intersected her glabella, penetrated her frontal bone, intersected her cortex and neocortex and made an exit wound in the occipital lobe.

She said softly, with a stoic finality, “They’re here.”

“I know.”

There was a long silence. A nothingness. She stared at the window. He stared at her back.

They were both silent.

Simon shattered the keening silence first. His voice was raspier than she’d ever heard of it. Shy. She’d never heard this voice from him before. It was hopeful, desperate, depressed, all in one.

“Was there anything you wanted to say to me?”

It was so achingly desperate. She knew he wanted to take her in his arms, cling to her as the NAVSPECWAR sniper shot both of them in a single shot. That he wanted to die crying with her in his arms, finally.

“No.”

He said nothing, but even in the darkness, behind her, she could feel him recoil in mortal pain. He had already died because of that one single word, more lethal than any sniper bullet.

That was when they decided to turn on the lights.

The two SPARTAN-IIIs weren’t just two teenagers standing in the darkness now.

Now, twelve high-power neon lights scythed searing cones of brilliant light through the darkness, pinning them in their focus. Three dozen crimson shimmering laser sights appeared out of nowhere, and after the spotlights kicked on, she saw a full platoon of armored NAVSPECWAR commandos with submachine guns and suppressed carbines in flanking and breaching positions by the house, she saw the six sniper-spotter teams in the trees, she saw the M808 Scorpion Main Battle Tank in the background with the 120mm cannon.

She even laughed in her head. It was such as acerbic, acid laugh.

Why did ONI waste a whole reinforced platoon of shock troopers to kill her? They could have called her up on the phone, asked her to kill herself, and she would have done it gladly.

Then she saw the seven shimmering half-shadows flickering in the dusk, and all her mirth drained.

This was it.

Her friends were killing her. They were out there, SPARTAN-IIIs in SPI battle suits, seven of them, two combined fire teams.

It wasn’t enough that a NAVSPECWAR sniper would be shooting her.

Her friends had betrayed her.

She had once thought she knew people in this galaxy.

How much of a fool she had been.

How much of a fool.

She had always been alone.

There hadn’t ever been hope.

There was an androgenized masculine voice on the loudspeaker, loud and blaring.

“This is the UNSC special forces. Lay your weapons down.”

Simon answered for them.

“We aren’t armed, just for the record. You should note that in the op briefing next time before you send a whole strike platoon to kill us, you know, make sure that J-2 has that noted in the tac sack before you guys check out.”

That gave them only momentary pause. No one was laughing.

Cassandra’s eyelids didn’t even flicker as the laser sights of the snipers played over her face.

Her last words were resigned, stoic. With a sense of the end to them. A finality. El fin.

“Who do you think those IIIs are, out there in the SPIs?”

“Black and Vulcan Teams”, steadily answered Simon. “Chiefs Cassidy and Daniels commanding. I recognize them through the suits.”

“We never knew them.”

“No, we didn’t.”

There was a pause.

Simon spoke his last words, and there was a reassuring warmth and strength to them. A desperation. To get it out all before the end. To let her know.

“I’ve always cared for you.”

There was another pause.

“Okay.”

“You’re not even going to look at me, Cassandra?”

“No.”

Pause. He couldn’t breathe.

“Good bye, Cassandra.”

Her eyes welled with unexpected tears.

“Good bye, Simon.”

Bifröst, Alpha Corvi System April 9, 2578 (Resynchronized Military Calendar) 1200 Zulu Hours

OPERATION: Rally Violet UNSC Special Operations Command, SPECWAR SPARTAN UNSC Office of Naval Intelligence, DEPTBIOWAR

He heard the D72-TC King Penguin dropship’s angle-vectored thrust scramjets before he saw the blocky UNSC vessel angle from the stratosphere. He heard the resonant clamor of the sonic boom as they broke Mach One and the sound barrier, and as the furniture and very concrete of his house consonantly reverberated in chorus.

2994 gathered himself in his business casual; a buttoned dress shirt with nicely-ironed jeans, gathered himself to the window for this unusual occurrence.

Within him, something else too was resonating. There was a definite excitement. A pressing hunger, a voracious depth emerging within him. His heart beat in imagined rhythm to the steady ticking of the King Penguin’s navigational rangemeter, his body pulsed with the vessel’s descent. His body was synchronizing with something lost.

Something he’d been missing the last five years of his life.

When he stepped to the window, he saw that there was not one, but three of the angular, planar dropships. They were now hovering around his house, their jets indiscriminating cauterizing his painstakingly-maintained lawn.

His surgically-amplified and acute hearing picked up the omnipresent background hum of military communications and then—“Go, go, go!”

Three dropships burst into clouds of falling black-armored soldiers—Rangers from the UNSC Army, UNSC Special Operations Command. He watched their exacting technique; thickly-padded gloves against the glazed, fibrous fast-rope lines that dangled from the dropship like medusian fleshy tentacles. They executed the vertical envelopment well, sixteen Rangers per deployment platform, then went through angular fire maneuvers, exactingly sweeping the area from field of fire to field of fire with their carbines before settling into strategic defensive fire positions, establishing DEFCON (defensive fire concentrations), rifles smartly covering the flanks and vectors.

He noticed only one oddity.

The first dropship, the one with the squadron leader’s markings, was still hovering above his front lawn. It had a seventeenth sinuous rope hanging from its womb.

He heard a mic crackle—“LZ secure. TF Ranger is secure, repeat Task Force Ranger is green-lit.”

A slender and familiar figure lithely maneuvered down the last fast rope, and 2994 bit off a terse profanity as he felt his mouth become dry, his heart rate pick up against his conscious will.

As the lissome figure landed on the ground, detached the hand-brake from the fast-rope, his eyes met her familiar one, and he felt an unaccustomed sweat wetness gather an oppressive nervous sheen across his skin, an unfamiliar cold, apprehensive nervousness.

He knew those eyes.

She was smartly clad in a tight-fitting black jumpsuit with the emblems of UNSC Special Operations Command, the affiliation pin of the UNSC Office of Naval Intelligence, and the SPARTAN-III unit patch. A dozen unfamiliar campaign ribbons had sprouted on the jumpsuit as well.

As she lightly stepped up to the front door, he opened it, observed the fluid grace of her movements, how they melded into one another, feline, lithe, lovely.

He kept his stare steady as he stared at her and she stopped in front of the threshold to his modest home.

He said evenly, “Chief Petty Officer Artemis.”

“It’s Senior Chief Petty Officer now. I’d call you ‘Petty Officer’, right now but that title only holds for those of us that actually remained in the Office.”

The flesh tightened over his brittle cheekbones.

“That hurt”, he said sardonically.

“It should”, she responded tartly.

She’d kept herself in shape, maintained her figure; her build was still athletic, graceful.

She said loudly, “When I heard that the worst operative in the Program had dropped out to become a … mechanical engineer with HRV Armament … I had to go see this disaster.”

“I enjoy life out of the military.”

“You left because you knew you couldn’t keep up with me.” “I never said that.”

“You never could. Always behind me, always a few pay grades below. Now I’m E-8, and you were, what, PO1?”

“Petty Officer Second Class 2994”, he replied, amused. “That’s E-5”.

“Three pay grades below, very good now.”

His answer was light. “Really? I hear that HPA is no longer the hot stick these days.”

“And what idiot told you that?”

“I hear that there’s some FORECAST program going around. Little girl by the name of Kim, goes around UNSCSOCOM. She seems to have taken all the tier-one CT and CP special operations from you HPA guys.”

“Shut up.”

“You don’t enjoy losing, don’t you? Sore loser. Such a temper, Artemis. You haven’t changed.”

“Fuck you. Do you need me to break your jaw again?”

He raised his eyebrows sarcastically.

“I saved your ass.”

“No, you didn’t. If you hadn’t fucked up and cut the power earlier, we’d all been fine. It was only incompetent you that could have fumbled shooting a switchboard.”

He smiled wanly.

“That’s right, you’re a goddess, Artemis. Untouchable. Divine, actually. It was indeed all my fault on all the snagged ones. You always rendered them through and through alone. With me, I fucked it up all the time.”

“Yes, you did.”

He nodded approvingly, but his mouth was marked with an unmistakable smile of victory.

She froze. “You didn’t actually mean that.”

“Do they teach sarcasm along with maritime operations these days? Back when I was in SPECWAR SPARTAN, I think that wasn’t in the operations manual. You should get some real world experience, Senior Chief. You know, learn to laugh. Learn to smile. Learn what sarcasm is.”

“Says the person who’s retired from UNSCSOCOM and is now a … mechanical engineer on some backwater hole.”

“And you’ve taken a whole Ranger platoon exactly to see that incompetent engineer”, he noted with a condescending wink.

“Asshole.”

He repulsed her fury with a mild shrug.

“So, ‘Senior Chief’, what brings you to this ‘backwater hole’? We going to stand here all day?”

This time, it was Artemis’s time to shine. She shook her head, and he admired the gleam of Alpha Corvis’s rays off of her strong cheek, the play of smooth muscles running down her neck.

“So I get word from UNSCSOCOM brass that they want a screwup who’s not useful for field operations to be delegated to training duties. All my soldiers are actually useful, and lo and behold, I look at the roster, and find one useless screwup.”

“Which happens to be me, a mechanical engineer.”

“Yes, you.”

“I see.” 2994 glanced at the Rangers, who were covering the grounds and fortifying it. “And what were the Rangers for? To glorify me with fun memories of fast-roping and airborne drops at night at sixty kilometers per hour?”

“I told the brass that it was an unnecessary waste of time, but they insisted on it. I knew you’d be hooked from the start when you saw me.”

He arched an eyebrow and gave a smile he knew to be infuriating. “Oh?”

“You miss us too much. The whole show.” She said loudly, “I imagine it has to be pretty exciting being an HRV engineer, you know, all the close air support, all the orbital-to-surface deployments.”

He met her strong viridian eyes, and for a moment, they acknowledged each other, through all the façade of posing, through all the shells of sarcasm. He saw Artemis again.

When he spoke again, his voice was softer, barely a whisper.

“Yeah.”

There was a silence.

He had the temerity to face her and ask, “Who am I training?”

“Everyone in the Program is being reassigned to this training initiative. UNSCSOCOM is pulling off all the tier-one units for this.”

That included elite strike forces from the SPARTANs and UNSC Naval Special Warfare (NAVSPECWAR). It was a significant action; pulling off major counterterrorism deployments to a training command.

There was an instant connection between oddities in his mind, catalogued peculiarities. “This have to do with this Blackburn girl?”

“Mostly no”, she answered evenly. “UNSCSOCOM is raising the second epoch of SPARTANs.”

He was silent for a moment, mulling it through. He thought they’d been the last. The second and last generation.

The War was over. There was no need for more SPARTAN deployments.

He thought of only one word.

“Why?”

For once, there was a humbled, an admiring glistening to her alluring beryl irises.

“It’s a beautiful plan. I’ve read it through and through. Everything’s different, everything’s better.”

She paused.

“It’s just… new. Different. I can’t explain it.”

“Alright”, he said evenly. He was willing to accept that.

Yet, that respect within her eyes died, transfigured into something different—

Her eyes focused abruptly on some imaginary point on the wall, her masseter and jaw tensed, her fingers subtly balled into fists.

He knew her too well.

“Something’s wrong.”

She didn’t say anything.

“Tell me, Artemis.”

Finally, the focal point of her attention faded from the wall to him again. Her face was visibly agitated underneath her mask of honed muscle and cartilage.

“They’re too different. They’re better, but wrong.”

“Explain.”

She took a deep breath, as if to say something, and then shook her head, her black hair lashing against her slender cheeks.

“There are code-word protocols to follow with this.”

He caught her gist.

“Alright.”

She looked up from the ground, and her feet toed the concrete patio.

“So, you in?”

“Let’s go.”

Hekate, Alpha Orionis System April 9, 2578 (Resynchronized Military Calendar) 0430 Zulu Hours

OPERATION: Marshal Yellow UNSC Special Operations Command, PROGWARDIV UNSC Office of Naval Intelligence, Section Three

There was no countdown. No blaring alarm, no flashing lights. No massive clock that counted down the seconds and milliseconds to their deaths. No time glass whose sands quantified their lifespans.

Simon and Cassandra just stood there. Vulnerable. Naked. Exposed.

Dead.

Cassandra didn’t even close her eyes against the bullet to come. She didn’t fear death. No, she beckoned it forth. She wanted it. Wanted the end. This was it.

That was why she saw some of the laser sights become obscured—against the spotlight, she saw a black-clothed officer running in front of the line of the fire of the troops, blotting out their sights, exciting a plethora of terse epithets from the counterterrorism teams.

This was so ridiculous—an ONI officer running in the way of a firing squad of forty-seven assaulters, twelve snipers, and a battle tank—that she had to take notice.

She heard faint words in the distance.

“Fuck! What the fuck? Hold your fire! Hold it!”

Beside her, she felt Simon rustle and stir. This was—

Unusual, to say the least. An interesting accoutrement to make the ends of their lives more interesting before they got shot, nice epitaphs on their graves.

She felt the convective heat roll off of the officer as he strode with angry purpose across the fields of fire, and half a dozen of the UNSC commandos lunged after him furiously, trying to repair the shambles of their shattered operation and to get the two unarmed SPARTAN-III fugitives into their sights.

If she wasn’t about to die, she would almost be laughing.

There was some shuffling beyond her field of vision, and a moment later, the front door was broken down, and the same ONI officer, his black garb of a dress uniform tainted by wet snow, irritably stalked through the ruins of the door, followed by two of the SPARTAN-IIIs.

Their helmets were undoffed.

Cassandra saw their eyes.

It was Cassidy and Daniels, the two leaders of SPARTAN-III Black and Vulcan Teams.

Simon was right.

No one had ever cared.

Even the brothers and sisters they’d trained with were about to kill them.

No one had ever cared.

Despite her flowing tears and swollen cheeks, she managed to stifle a choking cry. Simon stared at the SPARTAN-III team leaders.

They stared back.

The ONI officer audaciously strode through the visual crossfire, raised his hands.

Simon stared at the ONI officer.

It was almost comical. The officer broke out quickly, “Shit. Sorry about that.”

Simon and Cassandra weren’t quite sure if he was joking or not. This wasn’t exactly the place for sarcasm.

The officer, Asian in complexion, quickly looked back and forth between the two fugitives. Behind him, imposing, iron fists, were the two other S-III counterparts, armored in the SPI battle armor, cradling MA5K carbines in their gloved hands.

The officer’s two argent stars gleamed under the spotlights outside, as did his pins for UNSCSOCOM and the UNSC Navy. This was a Rear Admiral of the UNSC Navy. Not an ONI officer, then. This was interesting. Was ONI so contemptuous of the two criminals that they entrusted Navy forces to hunt them down instead of ONI assassin teams?

“So you’re SPARTANS-G294 and -G006.”

Simon’s voice was brittle, colder than the hyperborean wind, than the nebulous aurora borealis.

“We prefer to be called ‘Simon’ and ‘Cassandra’, respectively. Forcibly retired from the UNSC Special Forces after we were shot at by ONI commandos, you know.”

Simon’s stare was copious with indignant fury as he tremblingly held the two other SPARTAN-IIIs in regard.

“SPARTAN-G044, Senior Chief Cassidy, SPARTAN-G288, Senior Chief Daniels. Good to see you’re trying to kill us too.”

The Navy admiral held up his hands reflexively. “No one’s getting killed here, soldier. No shooting.”

“Thirty-six laser sights and a shock platoon were just for props then, yes?”

“They didn’t shoot at you.”

“They only tried to kill us. I know, big difference.”

The admiral instantly sensed he’d chosen the wrong tack. He tried again. “I’m Admiral Kawika Son, UNSCSOCOM, UNSC Navy.”

Cassandra was forever lost in the rain. Running away. In celestial darkness. Running deeper into the abyss, uncaring of where she went. Just anywhere else. Away.

But even those words were enough to dissociate her schizophrenic detachedness. She was temporarily immersed back into reality again.

Her voice was a husky whisper, “Cambridge? Janelia Blue?”

“Yes.”

He paused, gathered himself. “So, as the two of you have seen, I’ve come all the way out here, six hundred light-years, run in front of a platoon of commandos…”

“…That you sent to kill us…”

Son adamantly shook his head. “No. That was a miscommunication. There was supposed to be no platoon. Just me, alone, and you two.”

“Right.”

Yet, his voice was achingly earnest. There was some gleaming genuineness to its syllables.

“There was a FUBAR because a NAVSPECWAR commander got jumpy at the thoughts of Public Enemies One and Two within his sights…”

“Thank you. We like to be remembered as criminals, not defenders of humanity”, answered Simon pointedly.

“…and they jumped the gun. We have no interest in killing you.”

“I’ve only killed an ONI officer. You protect your own. How long have you been watching us here?”

Son’s smile was sad. “Do you remember the Sangheili?”

Cassandra’s heart broke. Shattered. They’d been betrayed even by their doctors. Their caretakers. Their defenders.

She felt Simon’s shock ripple from him.

Yet, not all was as it seemed.

The admiral continued, slowly now, with some thought to each word, “Do you remembered how they said they’d only wake you when you were needed?”

This time, Cassandra reacted. She didn’t know how she felt it, but she did.

The dynamic of power was shifting. Somewhere distant, dawn was rising. Something was afoot.

For the first time in over five decades of existence in the Milky Way, she had courage.

“Yes”, she said firmly, without her cognitive conscious accord.

“Things are different now”, Son said lightly. “Everything’s changed.”

Simon’s laugh was so bitter, it was vitriolic. “That’s right. What’s new? That we weren’t raised as suicide troops, you know, warm up in the microwave, add Covenant, and then throw out?”

Son’s jaw tensed. “I had nothing to do with the first epoch of SPARTANs, and now I have everything to do with the second?”

“Second?” cooned Cassandra softly.

“It’s all different. They’re not the SPARTANs anymore. They’re the Myrmidons; the second epoch of SPARTANs, the future of warfare. Everything we learned from the successes of the Is, IIs, and IIIs, everything we learned after decades of analysis of their shortcomings and failures.”

“Different”, he repeated again.

Neither Cassandra nor Simon had any care.

The admiral said forcefully, “It’s all changed. No more mass deployments, no more accelerating training and augmentation protocols. We took two decades to step back, to rethink everything. The UNSC is in good waters now. There is no more war. We took two decades, redrew the thinking board. The new SPARTANs—the Myrmidons—are different. A single company of soldiers, counterterrorism and defense only. The best of the best. Combinatorial chemical biology, chemical genetics, and specific chemical embryonic teratogenesis and postnatal enhancement. All chemical augmentations, no biological augmentations, little invasive surgery.”

“For every one of the hundred children, we tailor the augmentation protocol to their genetic and kinomic architecture; this took us twenty years. Modeling the profiles of every single future child, performing in vitro high-throughput screening to develop a chemical protocol for each SNP and RFLP signature. One hundred survival rate, the same as SPARTAN-III Gamma Company. Maximum efficiency, far surpassing the SPARTANs of the first era. This is new. Everything is new.”

“No more large-scale warfare training. No more blood. Clean, precise counterterrorism and counterproliferation operations, all above the board, public, documented, taking out the bad guys and only the bad guys. No more high-asset value incapacitation. No more experimental interrogation. We’re raising a hundred children to be the best soldiers that we can have, sending them out on missions that protect the UNSC civilian populace. There are no more wars.”

“We took twenty years to step back, rethink everything. To change all the augmentations from biological to small-molecule chemical compounds, with augmentations specifically tailored to each child. The entire Myrmidon objectives, core fundamentals, all different. It’s a new world. New SPARTANs for a changing time.”

“No more suicide troopers, no more throwaway expendables. We are taking the time to ensure every single one of the Myrmidons is raised to the best, the physical, mental, and strategic best we can make them. They serve the UNSC for thirty years, retire, and are replaced by the second Myrmidon company. They leave the service and live ordinary lives, while the second company takes over, keeps the peace.”

“We’re the keepers of the peace. No more black operations. No more covert action. Every single Myrmidon operation will be suitable for press release. No black corners.”

“And why do you want us?” asked Simon sharply.

“We’re keeping things transparent”, Son said with a smile decorating his lips. “Everything’s open. You two were my first pick for trainers and mentors. You two are the only ones in UNSCSOCOM who’re still above-record and legitimate with no dirty spots, no dirty intentions. I am confident that you two will be able to mentor the Myrmidons, steer them straight, and keep them all above the line and ethical, make sure they do the right things, that they don’t learn the experimental interrogations and the incapactiative direct actions.”

Cassandra stared.

“I don’t believe it”, said Simon flatly. “You should shoot us now, without the pretense.”

“We don’t have a reason to shoot you”, said Son.

“Besides the fact we’re UNSC Public Enemies One and Two, no, you don’t.”

Son’s shrug was appraising but sincere.

“You’re free to go now.”

Simon stared.

Cassandra looked outside. All the NAVSPECWAR and SPECWAR SPARTAN soldiers had left, their presence only tracks in the snow, misaligned conifers in the treetops. “Your records are all cleaned. I ordered a UNSC Judiciary Committee investigation into your records, and everything’s been wiped. No charges can be filed against ONI because of coincidental plausibility on their behalves, but it’s all over.”

“Is that a phrase to suggest how mandatory our service in this Myrmidon program is?”

Son was adamant. “No.” He waved outside. “You’re free to go, now. Everything’s clear.”

“Go where? Into a sniper’s field of fire?”

He shrugs. “Anywhere. There’s no incentive for you two to join us.”

“To join the agency that destroyed our lives and killed our team mates; I’d say ‘no’.”

Kawika’s look was serious, and his bronzed face stared at Son. There was a lull, a silence, and finally, the admiral shook his head tersely, and his look was crestfallen.

When he looked up again, his voice was neither bitter nor enraged. It was with a morose moue.

“I am a man of honor. My offer still stands; all the charges and warrants have been cleared.”

Simon indicated the doorway. “We can just go?”

“Yes.”

“Alright.”

Simon took a few footsteps towards the shambles of the door, arrogantly shouldering the admiral and the two other SPARTAN-IIIs. As he reached the front door, he pivoted, stared at Cassandra.

“You’re not coming?”

Cassandra was lost; had been lost. She didn’t know why, but—

Somewhere, dawn rose, beckoned midday forth. Somewhere, there was an eye of the storm, a calm.

There was something else, somewhere.

There was sunlight somewhere else, it was irresistible, seductive. She couldn’t resist it.

She was a wreck. A walking human corpse. She had never lived.

There was something else.

For the first time, she felt she breathed life. That she had finally been born.

Her voice was soft, “I’m in for it.”

Simon’s voice was incredulous, and then became angry. “What, with this admiral’s program? Haven’t you forgotten that we’ve lived the last twenty four years in Covenant space, exactly running away from the UNSC and their special forces? You didn’t remember that you were raised a child soldier, a suicide bomber with guns? Did you forget the last three decades?”

The tears had stopped long ago, and she spoke with cold, pale lips. When she spoke, her heart moved her lips for her, without any intention. She was guided by soul, victory of heart over mind and body.

She had won.

The night was over.

Her voice was so quiet.

“I saw it for the first time, Simon.”

His face lost its fury, and he stared into her eyes for a long time, and his voice was reserved, soundless.

“Okay. What did you see?”

“The light.”

“Okay.”

“I saw the sun, Simon.” Her voice was so pale, so desperate. “I saw it for the first time.”

Tears welled in her eyes, glistened.

Dawn’s rays illuminated her tears; Betelgeuse rose over the horizon, brought light to Hekate. The night was over. Dawn had come.

“A second sun rises, Simon. It’s all over.”