User:RelentlessRecusant/Halo: Vector/Chapter Five

 CHAPTER FIVE  JUVENILE DELINQUENCY

Nine years before the present day

FEBRUARY 2562 ASPHODEL MEADOWS SPECIAL WARFARE CENTER TRAINING GROUND ALEPH

Her re-entry into the realm of consciousness was with a corybantic scream, of rage of fear, of passion and anger, of blood and darkness, the caustically cold air scarring her lungs as her lips contorted in a feminine cry. Her eyes dilated slightly, absorbing the ambient light, and she collapsed upon the tempered iron cold of the mattress, her eyes, distant, unfocused, her chest heaving as her brilliant beryl pupils were fixated open, the light draining into her implacable lenses.

There was a sharp pinch on her left arm, and she felt a small cot of cotton sealing the point of puncture. Her thoughts, her consciousness, refocused, formed discrete thoughts again. It was painful to the point of agony, and she felt her thoughts solidify, become cohesive again. Her body throbbed in sympathetic pain as her vision blurred and her mind resisted the pharmacological agent, the alien elixir.

There was a double snap, and she looked up.

Her irises drank in the blurred visage of a tall man, clad in a black uniform, golden epaulets decorating his shoulders, his face a scarred mass of flesh, burnt long ago from Covenant plasma. The familiar heraldic device of a burnished golden leaf was set upon his lapel—

—and her body went rigid in a spasm as the synapsing occurred within her brain. She knew that leaf. She knew that face.

And there was only one response she had never known, since the depthless beginning of time immortal.

Her pale, shrunken, immature figure clothed only in a modest gown and wracked from the caustic chill of the unnaturally frigid room, she snapped to a rigid attention, her black hair swaying by her shoulders, eyes fixed towards, sculpted back hamrod, her right hand adhered to her forehead.

It was after assuming the posture that she vacantly wondered where she’d learned this.

Her mind bristled, and that thought vibrated, tremored, disintegrated. There would only be full, formed, cohesive thoughts in her consciousness now. A splay of pain played across her full, frostbitten, cyanotic lips, and an inexorable, overwhelming pressure grew in her head, and she tremored, unwilling to submit even as the pressure threatened to swell her eyes, pop them out like raspberries—

The stranger of man, yet familiar, said stiffly, “At ease, Chief.”

The pressure eased, and her body, host to this violent battle, nearly collapsed in exhaustion. She forced herself to maintain her upright posture, her fierce look, maintain her cloak and aura of power. She could not show that man her weakness, the pressure—they could never know—

As if telepathic, an oily smile spread across the gaunt man’s mouth. “It hurts, doesn’t it?”

Her lips moved autonomously, without her mind’s direction. “Yes, sir.”

He withdrew his hands, which had been formerly clasped upon the nape of his back. Within one palm he concealed a pair of unmarked chalk white tablets. He held them in front of her trembling figure.

“Take these. They will help.”

“What are these?” she inquisitively asked. Internally, she knew she didn’t mean to ask that question. She wanted the pills, she wanted them now, and she couldn’t give a flying fuck of what they were.

“They will make you fight stronger”, he answered simply, as if knowing the precise answer she wanted.

She ravenously grabbed and twisted his wrist until the tablets slipped into her other hand, and she voraciously wolfed down the pills without water, feeling the medication resisting in her esophagus, and then vanish away. She felt a welcome warmness blossom across her face, felt a coy, addictive energy return to her. It was intoxicating, seductive. She felt so powerful, as never before. She knew they couldn’t stop her.

The energy hit her core, and her very being then radiated with that strength. Effortlessly, she backhanded the man, the strength of her blow leaving a bloody mark against his cheeks as his eyes dilated wide with surprise—

Her leg swept out, knocking him down against the floor, and the heavy-set commando unceremoniously fell, dispatched by this girl—

She saw him fumble for a handheld, and she screamed, stuffing his hand in her mouth, chewing—

And then there was a pneumatic hiss. She glanced up at the clock. Five minutes had passed, five minutes since she had awoken that she had no recollection of.

She looked at the man. He looked as if he’d been torn from Africa’s primal jungles, his right hand a bloodied, mangled mess, with blood pooling to the broken skin of his shattered check. She said automatically, “Master Sergeant? Are you operational?”

His eyes blazed with such fury that even her submerged tenacity was halted in her tracks. She resisted the impulse to back against the bunk. His voice was wrought from spiked garrote wire, with the cold of interstellar space yet the heat of a pulsar burning at its apocalyptic core. “Chief Petty Officer Talon. Attention.”

She readily snapped to attention without hesitation.

His voice was quiet, but threaded with palpable malice that one could have mistaken it for a predator’s fixed, wanton cry. “Chief Petty Officer, you will never assault a commanding officer again. Is that understood?”

She didn’t quite know what he was speaking of, but returned, “Aye, sir.”

The man acrimoniously stared at his hand, and she wondered where the bite marks had come from, the dark red arterial blood pooling by the sheared cartilage and skin. Finally, the Commander turned towards her. He withdrew something from his waistband, and handed it to her.

Her eyebrows quirked. She knew this. It was familiar. She couldn’t quite exactly place it, but it seemed to her as the M6C Individual Personal Weapon, 12.7mm high-explosive semi-armor piercing, 2x integrated electronic scope, by Misrah Armories and modified for special warfare usage by the UNSC Special Operations Command. It seemed vaguely familiar, the darkened handgrip, the unmuzzled venom of its elongated, shaded barrel, the oversized proportions. She couldn’t quite exactly place it, though.

She said absently, “With all due respect, Commander, what is this?”

“You know what it is”, he replied.

She nodded, and her luscious hair swayed with that motion. Yes, she did.

He beckoned towards the door to her quarters. There were human-shaped shadows lurking outside in the lights with conspicuous, familiar outlines cradled in their gloved hands. “Come. Your training starts today.”

MARCH 2570 UNSC MERIDIAN RAYS FORWARD OPERATIONS BAY NEW MONMOUTH, ALPHA OSIRIONIS SYSTEM

The UNSC Meridian Rays (CV 387) was maintained at Alert Red Two—the second-highest military alert readiness, second only to Red One; when the mammoth vessel was actually fully engaged in combat. Red Two maintained both man and machine at the taut knife’s edge of intensity; far worse than actually diving into an unfurling battle, for with war was an absolute certainty, a cold and resolute calm. Being on the percept of a storm and unable to resist its maw was far worse, and during the War, Earth’s defenders had been maintained at Red Two for months during 2552; fighters on the decks, munitions armed, rotating patrols, electronic warfare protocols engaged. It was not a flurry of activity; it was a sickening, overlooming shadow. The warriors of the Meridian Rays could not surrender to the calm of battle nor the relaxation of regular shipboard duties until the vice of Red Two was lifted.

When the combat klaxon rose to its familiar banshee’s cries and the carrier was plunged into the bloody atmosphere of the crimson combat lights, Warrant Officer Derrick Banks knew the time had come. It ended the sickening nausea of waiting upon battle’s edge. They were joined now, committed. This was what he had been trained for.

The voice that spoke afterwards was soft, seductive, her quiet, pedantic tones sharply juxtaposed against the piercing cry of the klaxon. It was a pre-programmed voice, and every UNSC aviator and pilot knew that voice. “Scramble. All fighters, scramble.” Those four words were the battle’s cry, mankind’s maiden rousing her warriors to battle.

Adrenaline, liquid energy, spiked through Banks’s chest, and his limbs were fueled by fire as he tore the distance from the pilot’s ready room to the awaiting, receiving angular forms of the combat warships on the Meridian Rays’s forward operations bay. A crescent of suited pilots and technicians emanated from the hangar’s sides, enclosing the fighter craft from all angles, an irregular, spotted wave of fighters.

Banks reached Kilo Tango Nine before his fire control officer (FCO) and the electronic countermeasures (ECM) specialist. His chest, already garbed in the nine-piece pressure suit, wasn’t heaving from any exertion at all. There was no time to breathe, to draw a breath. His motions were a paranoid frenzy as his gloved fingers gently brushed across keyboards, engaged levers, flicked switches. There was a steady whine and a welcoming orchestra of winking green diodes that illuminated the Foray’s cockpit.

It was a moment later before the Fighter Ops officer aboard the bridge broke into the general fighter command frequency. “Fighter Ops to Strike Group—”

As the ECM specialist, shortly followed by the FCO, leapt into the craft’s restricted confines, Banks didn’t pause his maelstrom of activity, his energized swarm of practiced motion. There was a shudder and then a steady murmur as the secure oxygen supply began to circulate throughout the craft, as electronic systems initialized, and performed their final self-checks.

“Strike Group, you are hereby authorized to prosecute close air support for special warfare group on the surface. There are friendly casualties. Decouple hostile activity and extract.”

As Banks initialized the final shake-up protocol and a steady cyan light in the reactor console began to flare, he felt an excitement flood him, and a pallid, indignant anger burn against his cheeks. SOCOM operators were on the ground—he’d dropped them off nearly twelve hours ago—and they were down there now, fighting and dying against the insurgents, the rebels who shorn the fabric of the UNSC, the depraved savages that had abandoned Earth during her darkest moment, and now were slaughtering Earth’s defenders. The Deltas had called. He wasn’t planning to leave them hanging.

The ECM specialist had done his own calculated dance, and another spectrum of green lights flared on. “Reactive camouflage go. Texture buffers go. EMCON go. EM warfare is go. We’re dark.”

Banks blurted his own series of affirmatives seconds later, when the FCO tapped his shoulder. “We’re packed heavy, sir, down to top. Hand-to-hand punches.”

Derrick absently nodded, sliding the galvanized silver key into the fire control slot in order to decouple the safety locks on the loadout—

It was the FCO’s touch on his shoulder again, and as he slid in the key into the reciprocating notch and saw the crescent of tangerine warning lights regarding loaded ordinance flare on, he stared irately at the FCO spec. “Yes, Lieutenant?”

“Cannons are buffed out and we’re stocked with red and blue.”

The FCO referred to the colored arming tags that affixed with individual bomblets and warheads snugly packed by the automated dolly’s into the Foray’s nose. For quick reference by the maintenance and pilot crews, all the warheads were denoted a specific color; a crucial time-saving step—“red” meant the laser-guided precision Bloodhound anti-tank busters, “blue” referred to the Indigo directed EMP munitions—both excellent weapons, not his concern—

The man’s expression was peculiar. “And white.”

He ignored him for a moment, continuing the preflight check as the computer systems finalized integrity checks and confirmed system validation and electronic readiness, and then—“Shooter, did you say white?”

The FCO nodded tersely. “Yes, sir.”

“What’s ‘white’?”

“No clue, sir.”

The wing commander’s voice jarred them from their distracting conversation. “Mother Bird, this is Strike King. Fighter foray is green lit.”

The Meridian Rays’s fighter compliment had been substituted with the aviators and the machines of the 2nd Special Aviations Wing—one of UNSCSOCOM Special Operations Aviation Reconnaissance’s tactical warfare contingents. In the carrier’s cavernous warren of a forward mammoth bay, they’d installed in interceptor squadrons, strategic bomber squadrons, radar-killer squadrons, orbital drop pods, troop carriers—and the M99 Foray gunships of the 7th Aerial Warfare Applications Squadron.

There was the terminal, reassuring, steady cadence of the Foray’s propulsion drives, and finally, all the lights on the board were fully lit.

“Two-Seven Alpha to Control. Clear for take-off.”

“Squadron Two-Seven, prepare for insertion.”

Despite the gunship’s metal frame, he felt his skeleton jar, cartilage sheer from enormous acceleration and inertial forces. The UNSC Meridian Rays was turning, orienting the launch bays towards their final target.

“Go, go!”

In a heartbeat, Kilo Tango Nine was thrown into the null zero-g of space, a metal trinket held in abeyance in the blackness of space, and then the nimble craft reoriented, streaked away at right angles towards the planetary surface upon a tail of fire.

“Two-Seven Alpha confirms launch.”

A series of affirmations, and then—

“Strike King to Two-Seven Alpha. Lead the way.”

This was an unexpected order, but a good one—they’d have the first taste of blood, ahead of the bombers and the other gunships.

“Leading all the way, King. All elements, form up on my signal. Atmospheric insertion in twenty-five seconds.”

UNSC MERIDIAN RAYS COMBAT INFORMATION CENTER

Montgomery breathed heavily, and he was acutely aware of the smoldering coals burning through the darkness that was the intensity of Cooke’s eyes, of the mild intellectual interest of Gibson, of Hayes—the UNSCSOCOM controller—flinching and looking away in his seat, pretending not to notice the divide in the handful of senior ONI flag officers that had inhabited the carrier and had been jerking every string, designing every machination.

Gibson’s voice was mild. “Well, we might as well.”

Montgomery’s look was pained and reluctant as he looked at Hayes. “Commander, let me talk to our little birds.”

M99 FORAY GUNSHIP “KILO TANGO NINE” NEW MONMOUTH LOW ORBIT

It was as if a massive, undulating wave had streamed for from the Meridian Rays, a numberless horde as numerous as the stars upon the sky, with its arrowhead pointed towards a singular target. The formation slackened slightly as the leading formation elements struck atmosphere, and then Kilo Tango Nine shuddered violently as it was grasped by an unrelenting hand, embalmed in fire, a fiery star falling from heaven upon Earth. Even as the diminutive vessel tremored from the heat of re-entry, the FCO had the gall to interrupt as Banks closely hugged the approximated fourth-order parabolic trajectory through Monmouth’s atmosphere, bloated Betelgeuse’s light beautifully shining down upon them as they broke through the barrier between space and atmosphere, surging through.

“There’s something wrong with the load.”

It was the ECM specialist that first incredulously swiveled in his seat. “What? Our torps?”

The carpet of UNSC craft pulled out from their trajectories, a convection wave rolling off from the exosphere into the stratosphere.

“Three minutes to target. Maintain formation integrity.”

Banks turned furiously to the FCO. “This better be good, Shooter.”

“Yeah, sir.” The gunnery spec indicated the weapons boards, where there was a tally of the laden Foray’s pregnant missile bays and their munitions. “The tank-killers and the EM weps are lit.”

“Yes, and?” The officer pointed hopelessly towards four remaining diodes, each one representing a warhead, which still remained with locked safety interlocks. “The greys. They’re still frozen up. They say they need firing authorization.”

Banks snapped, “I inserted my key before we even took off. We armed all the missiles.”

“Yes sir. But apparently not the greys.”

Derrick stared.

“What the hell are these ‘greys’ that someone loaded onto my ship?”

The FCO said almost protestingly, “No fucking clue. I certainly didn’t requisition it”.

The ECM specialist said quietly, “Tight-beam coming in for you, sir, from the Meridian Rays.”

Banks turned irately. “Over the battlespace com?”

“No, sir. Tight-beam just for us. Not over the carrier wave.”

He said, intrigued but cautious, his frustration over the unarmed weapons temporarily resolved, “Alright. Patch it through.”

There was a fuzz of static, and then the point-to-point laser transmission stabilized. He said curiously, “This is SOAR Kilo Tango Nine, come in, Meridian Rays.”

“This is Prophet. Do you know who I am?”

Banks froze. “Prophet” was the brevity code for anonymous ONI command-rank flag officers speaking over an unsecured frequency. He’d been unaware that ONI had been onboard the carrier, much less an admiral.

“Sir.”

The voice continued, with an air of authority but perhaps a novel tentativeness, “Is this Warrant Officer Banks that I’m speaking to?”

“Yes, sir.”

“You have special mission munitions aboard your vessel, Tango Nine. Please confirm.”

Nine years before the present day

FEBRUARY 2562 ASPHODEL MEADOWS SPECIAL WARFARE CENTER TRAINING GROUND ALEPH

The two NAVSPECWAR guards snapped stiffly to attention as the commander and Talon drew close. The commander ignored them, brushing past them and through an open metal door, with Talon following closely behind, her small pre-adolescent stature moving with surprising ease and a feline, sinuous, practiced, ease.

Her acute eyes caught a stray word upon the retracted door; CERBERUS.

The room beyond had a pungent, venomous smell that sickened her to the core. Indescribable black and red was unsparingly strewn across the air. The lights held a particular blue tint.

Her hypothermia-numbed hands turned over the dull glossy black of the handguns in her small palm, feeling its contours, her almost porcelain fingers slipping through the trigger guard, unflicking the fire selector toggle, feeling along the cold metal of the barrel, examining it for corrosion. How this knowledge came to her, she did not think of. She was too engrossed in the sinister beauty of the weapon, how the unnatural light played against its dull metal, the reflection of its burnished length.

It had a morbid loveliness to it. She was enraptured by it.

Her eyes flicked towards the tall frame of the Master Sergeant. “Orders, sir?”

She felt a yearning within her, some primal thunder to which her heart thundered to. She still felt the warm vigor of before, but this was a different desire, some lust, almost a sexual demand, a biological imperative against which she had no resistance. Without her conscious control or voluntary thought, her fingers slipped into the trigger guard. The handgun came up in her hands.

There was a man kneeling against the far concrete wall with a shag of a face that had once been a buoyant complexion, now depleted of muscle and energy from famine and plague. Two deeply recessed brown eyes were set in the almost skeletal face, all the flesh drained from over the bones because he was so impoverished. His eyes were weak, and she could tell that he had no strong blood within him.

Her eyes set upon him, and upon that brittle, famished body she saw a dozen places where a single blow could kill—a knife-hand’s blow to the cervical vertebrae could dissociate his head from his neck, a punch to the chestbone could interfere with the syncopated beating of the heart and induce myocardial seizure and cardiac arrest—

Her heart swelled in her ribcage, and blood welled against her eyes, and her world filled with bloody crimson as the pressure surged, as if her eyes would explode from her face like blueberries, dangling from her eyesocket by the stringy optic nerve. A horrible, hoarse cry escaped her lips, a formless bellow of elemental hate, of such strong rage.

She leveled the handgun and fired.

She didn’t know how many times she fired, how many times the handgun kicked against her hand, as if rebelling from her yoke. One bullet caught the side of the man’s face, and his skull exploded as if it was a gourd full of blood and flesh. The man collapsed on the ground, and his brains steadily deformed and poured from the crater in his face. Something still twitched in them.

He took one last, shallow breath.

The last thing he saw was an infant girl, in a pink nightgown, standing over him, a pistol in her hands, a slender thread of smoke emanating from its barrel.

Talon was four years old at the time, the youngest age of the SPARTAN-III trainees.

She glanced from the still corpse, the blood and brains still flowing from it, towards the Master Sergeant. “Sir?”

He adamantly shook his head. “Faster. Tighter shot grouping. Your accuracy was horrible for a whole magazine.”

He tossed her another clip, which she expertly caught. Deftly, her other hand brushed the magazine release, and mechanically, as the spent clip fell to the floor, she slammed home the new magazine into the weapon’s receiver by reflex.

As she righted the reloaded weapon, she casually brought her heel against the man’s skull, crushing it with a crustacean crunch.

The room’s lights came on brighter, and she saw that it was far larger and more vast than she’d expected. There were at least fifty other kneeling humans.

The Master Sergeant had over fifty pistol cartridges.

He gestured and sucked in a deep breath. “Continue.”

She automatically nodded and felt the pistol’s cold metal settle against her palm.

MARCH 2570 UNSC MERIDIAN RAYS FORWARD OPERATIONS BAY NEW MONMOUTH, ALPHA OSIRIONIS SYSTEM

Their arrival back to the UNSC Meridian Rays incited a paroxysm of activity. When Foray gunship Kilo Tango Nine settled upon the notched landing hardpoint upon the Forward Ops Bay, a human wave surged and broke against it.

When Delta-Three staggered from the dropship, a rill of blood twisting down his face, a deep gash on his right hip giving his stride an awkward cant, his face encrusted with dried crystals of sweat and crystallized blood. Immediately, a storm of medics, technicians, relief crew, soldiers, fell upon him as he descended, and he was assailed from all sides.

“—are you alright, sir? We have the surgical suite prepped for—” “Standby, I need to take down your biosigns—”

Irritably, he brushed away the medspecs, as if swatting away a cloud of irksome flies, mindlessly advancing, sluggishly limping across the bay in his full black tactical gear, his rifle slung across his shoulder, his brain willing to fall into sleep, his eyes still forcing visual information into them, immersing him in a state of nocturnal semi-consciousness.

Behind him, he heard Delta-Four snap acrimoniously, “Corporal, take care of the head wound, dumbass, not me!”

Despite his sleep-logged and heavy lips, Three managed a little smile. The rebels had done their best; they’d thrown everything at them, every militant, every vehicle, every heavy weapon against the Deltas, willing to sacrifice every life to burn out and excise the UNSC special warfare team that’d been cleansing the Outer Rim of insurgents and terrorists. And they’d made it out, fucked up the rebels, survived an hours-long gunfight against thousands of armed militants and their vehicular support—

“Dr. Avery to Neurosurgery.” “We need a crash cart! Going into v-fib!“

He groggily turned, saw the bloodied, still bodies of the Echoes, in the field medical stretchers, swarmed and mobbed by the medics and doctors, and felt a pang of regret seize him. Before the mission, they’d jibed about the green soldiers, how inexperienced they were, had even side-lined them in contempt. And now, their fellow special-operators had paid the price in human blood. Scarlet blood.

As the Meridian Rays ponderously turned, breaking free of New Monmouth’s gravitational vice, he saw Betelgeuse’s bloodshine light flash past them one last time, and he gingerly unclenched his hand, staring at it wordlessly.

When he looked up, he saw a lone figure descend from the gunship, a single, lone figure in white and blue, frayed hair veiling piercing eyes, and when she moved through the crowd of medics and officers, they parted around her, forming a negative space. And as she vanished away into the lift to the lower bays, Three felt an unaccustomed deep regret for her in his heart, how no one had offered their condolences, how no one had offered her medical aid, letting her just stride away into the distance without a word.

Without her, they’d all have been dead.

And that guilt slit his heart like a knife, and a grey pallor favored his lips.

Delta-One strode by. “Three, you planning to sleep with the Longsword torpedoes or the afterburner fuel?”

In a minute, they were in their bunks, and before he even collapsed into his cot, he was already fast asleep, his body purging itself of the blood and toxins of the day.

Nine years before the present day

DECEMBER 2562 ASPHODEL MEADOWS SPECIAL WARFARE CENTER TIBER RIVER PLAINS

“—twenty seconds until impact. Please remain calm; primary system failure is an expected contingency. After planetary impact, the retrieval of individual body parts of personnel from failed orbital insertion vehicles is still possible. Please sequentially pressurize the hydrostatic layer, deactivate the safety interlocks, then activate the secondary capsule release, deactivate the integrity lock, and then depress the emergency ejection—”

Her hands mechanically followed the pedantic instructions emanating from the speakers, depressing levers and fingering buttons as the capsule shuddered spasmodically, the synthetic human voice intoning, “—Warning. Capsule integrity zero. Vehicle failure imminent. Five seconds to impact, four, three—“

In a heartbeat, the HEV pod crashed into the ground at terminal orbital velocity, it peeled into two, and the world shuddered as if in birth pangs and every bone in her body showered into skeletal confetti.

She felt an oily substance against her cheek and her tongue dabbed it absently, absorbing the copper sweetness of her own blood. She knew that Master Sergeant Lovejoy loved to stack the odds against her. The chance of a HEV pod failing was one in fifty thousand—what were the odds that exactly on her fifth birthday, this pod would happen to fail twenty seconds before impact, when it took twenty two seconds to normally complete the recovery failsafe procedure? Those FORCE RECON types certainly had interesting impressions on how to celebrate one’s birthday. She certainly didn’t appreciate the thought of her organs splattered against Asphodel Meadow’s surface to inaugurate her birthday, she vacantly mused.

Then there was the high-pitched stutter of nearby automatic weapons fire, and she leapt free from the warped titanium-molybdenum frame of the ejected HEV capsule, its surface still smoldering from the three thousand degrees of atmospheric re-entry. She effortlessly melded from her leap into a roll against the Tiber Plain’s underbrush, and felt splinters of wood shower over her as the tracking hostile fire peppered around her and shatter vegetation and leaves.

She saw the muzzle flashes in the distance, and she recovered from her roll into a half-crouch, her suppressed M7 submachine gun extended in front of her. There were two trills of three-round bursts, almost like quieted coughs, and two man-figures in the distant forest crumpled and fell.

There was no more time. If the ODSTs of Gauntlet Company had any semblance of skill, they’d see the ruined HEV pod in a few moments, realize that one of their two-man patrols weren’t reporting, and make the obvious assumption.

Talon didn’t appreciate losing. In fact, she hadn’t lost yet, before, and she’d kicked the collective asses of three other ODST companies. Imagine that. Fucking Marine types. In fact, she’d bet that Gauntlet had already spoke to Lovejoy previously to “coincidentally” position all their patrols where her HEV was supposed to crash. Gauntlet was ODST and Lovejoy was FORCE RECON—both were MARSPECWARCOM, right? Fucking Marine types. Always ganging up on her, taking advantage.

Her peripheral vision caught more movement in the bushes by her crashed HEV, and she knew she had to keep on moving. She slipped by the bodies of the ODST patrol, the two long-rifle scount-snipers, both of them firmly down for the count by a burst of stun rounds to the cranial area. For good measure, she stomped in both of their faces, enjoying the sight of blood fountaining from their faces, and then had the good measure to pick up one of their still-squawking helmet mics and transmitter.

“—OK, Helljumpers, she’s landed at, uhh, map grid six-charlie by two-zulu. All units, converge.” “This is Five Leader to Control; our comm spec has a good track on her signal.” “That’s an affirmative, Control. This is Lovejoy—I’ve activated the tracker in her helmet. You should be able to get a good short-range carrier wave off of that.”

She swore acrimoniously and tore off her headset. That’s how they were doing it. She torqued her arm back, as if throwing a grenade, and hurled her helmet off into the distant trees.

“Five to Control again, she’s sprinting fast—real fast, northwest to grid six-kilo.” “Confirmed. Go and catch her. Recon Six, that’s your patrol area; help out Five Lead.”

Her lips curled into a cruel smile. They obviously hadn’t anticipated that she’d down one of their sentry teams seconds upon landing and would take one of their comms. Gauntlet Company of UNSCSOCOM had made the first of a very long list of mistakes that they’d make today, including their assumptions about five-year-olds, yes.

She examined the black-armored bodies next to her, the unconscious forms of Recon Team Six, found a high-power sniper rifle slung over one of their shoulders; the BR55 DMR—the BR55 Designated Marksman Rifle, with attached high-power telescopic optics, a detachable suppressor, an elongated barrel guard, and a tripod. It would be helpful. Talon ushered the bodies into a nearby ditch, and then sprinted upslope towards a likely pair of rocks on elevated ground—a reasonably good sharpshooting point, with elevation and cover.

Covering the hundreds of meters within a reasonable number of seconds, forcing her lungs to arrest her deep breaths, lest they interfere with her shooting, she set up the DMR on the rocks, snugly fitting the tripod against a flat planar edge of one of the rocks. A moment later, she snuggled closer, hugging the oversized rifle as her viridian eyes sighted through the high-power optics.

In the distance, by the still-sparking chassis of the HEV pod, a handful of black-armored figures were cautiously advancing towards the wreck, rifles raised.

There was comm chatter. “Alright, Control, Five here again. We’ve secured the hostile insertion vehicle. No contacts.”

“Control copies, Five. Go prosecute her at northwest six-kilo. Doesn’t look like she’s moving. Recon Six, circle around, set up high, give sniper support to Squad Five and maintain comm silence.”

The brittle crosshairs swept across the tight cluster of ODST special warfare operators, the commandoes moving low and quiet, crouching to be hidden underneath the ubiquitous underbrush, their weapons extended. She grimly smiled a second time. She calculated distance and windage and adjusted the sniper’s sights accordingly, checking that the suppressor was well-fit on the corrugated barrel.

She surgically picked them off on single-shot mode, each round’s audio signature and flash masked by the veil of the suppressor. Moving from left to right, the ODSTs began to stagger, crumple, the leading edge of their squad wavering as their members crumpled.

“Cover, cover!”

They scattered, and she took two more, who fell headlong into the bushes with cries as the others bolted in primal fear, seeking the forest’s cover from the invisible sniper.

That was when she heard the rustle of leaves behind her, and she despotically swore.

She’d been flanked, perhaps fatally.

There was a brilliant muzzle flash nearby, and a high-caliber handgun thundered, the bullet scratching her cheek, drawing blood as it scythed past her.

The ODSTs were using live ammunition, no doubt.

She heard the caterwauling scream in her ears, saw the fire, the ashen smoke mixed with blood. The crying voices, the chthonic paranormals.

And she screamed and screamed.

She grasped the armor-cupped chin of one of the ODST scouts, pulled down hard, and heard the jaw completely tear loose, heard the flesh tear like fabric, the maxillary joint break as if crashing porcelain. That ODST howled as blood hemorrhaged from the bottom of his skull, his bottom jaw completely missing.

Talon seamlessly turned, and as the other surged at her in a tackle, she deftly moved underneath him, and the commando toppled as his right knee gave away, and his unhelmeted head hit against a boulder of onyx as he collapsed, and there was a splattering noise as red and black suddenly flashed against the rock.

The ODST’s eyes opened wide as the shadow moved on him, and she beat his head like a gong against the rock until the life faded from his eyes and he grew unnaturally still.

And she moaned slightly as she felt the ecstasy surge through her. Then she picked herself up, the lust burning in her eyes. There were more ODSTs to kill.

7 -  7  -  7

FIELD TRAINING CONTROL TIBER RIVER PLAINS

Sergeant Major Lovejoy, Commodore Cooke, and the Gauntlet Company commander, Major Boltzmann, watched through the live feed from the ODST’s helmet as the man’s biosigns fluttered and then steadily plummeted as blood poured from the missing chin, as the helmet’s lenses saw the lovely, lithe shadow smash the second ODST’s head against the rock until the bone shattered and the face collapsed inwards.

Boltzmann’s face was locked in a rictus of abject horror as he saw the girl smash the head of one of his soldiers into pieces.

Lovejoy said nothing, his face under tight control.

Cooke said mildly, as if it was a spectator’s sport, “So that’s two ODST sniper-scout teams down and a rifle squad down in…” He checked the mission chronometer. “T plus one minute thirty? Even when we gave her a sabotaged HEV and tried to trace her headset?”

The ONI Section Three senior officer held Lovejoy’s face appraisingly. “Good work, Sergeant Major. You are to be commended.”

One year before the present day

MARCH 2570 UNSC MERIDIAN RAYS SLIPSPACE, UNKNOWN DESTINATION

After fifteen hours of solid, uninterrupted sleep, two baths, three debriefings, a physical examination, a clinical radiation exam, and a molecular pathology assessment, Delta-Three staggered down the halls of the UNSC Meridian Rays, his stride now lacking its crippled jerk, now filled with a flourishing confidence. He was alive, and it was a good feeling.

The Meridian Rays’s lights were dimmed in the Fire Control bay as he walked past—the carrier was in Slipspace, and would have no use for its primary batteries and tactical armaments during its transdimensional crossing. The overheads illuminated his tall, muscular figure, clad in the grays of the UNSCSOCOM service dress, complete with his golden chevrons of a Petty Officer Second Class and his campaign decorations. Only his last name and his unit patch were conspicuously missing from the uniform, and similarly apparent was the darkened M7 submachine gun slung over his right shoulder as he strode through the carrier’s ashen halls.

He found his way through the Meridian Rays’s signals intelligence (SIGINT) compartment in the womb of the vessel, through the bifurcating vessels of the hallways beyond. He found it after a half hour of prowling.

CHIEF PETTY OFFICER TALON POLITICOMILITARY ATTACHE, OUTER RIM AFFAIRS UNSC OFFICE OF NAVAL INTELLIGENCE UNSC NAVY, UNSC DEFENSE FORCE

Three snorted. It would have been easier for them to have scribed the door with “Black Ops, Covert Ops, Section Three, ONI.”

And there, humbled before the plaque, he paused before the Chief’s quarters, and he felt the sweat on his right palm, the cool warmth, his fingers brushing his calm as his eyes lidded momentarily and saw crimson. She’d saved them. His heart rate picked up, his mouth became dry.

He politely rapped the hard wood door.

And he stood there, at erect attention, for nearly a minute.

He paused, his lips creased into a frown. Was she still sleeping? Was she practicing at the range?

Then he heard it.

The steady crash. Then—

The screaming. The feminine shrieks, the childlike pleading, the curdling banshee’s cry.

His eyes dilated for a moment.

And then he realized that he was hearing screaming aboard a UNSC carrier at night time.

His right hand unsafed the submachine gun, and then he pivoted, stamping his right boot against the reinforced door, and hundreds of pounds of flesh and steel came crashing through—

As he entered, he swept left to right, the M7’s diopter sights clearing the room, the adrenaline surging in his veins.

That was when Delta-Three saw her, her pale form curled on the floor beside her bed, curled into a fetal ball, whimpering as she rocked back and forth on the ground, her hand uncontrollably seizing beside her, dancing as if a tarantula on fire as her face was contorted into a death mask, mouth vacantly hanging open, tongue lolling against her cheeks, eyes wide, unseeing as she screamed.

Fuck.

He rushed to her side, planting his iron hands on her shoulders as he tried to slam her down against the floor, pin her before the epileptic seizure struck her whole body—

And a moment later, her armored boot scythed through the air, and his vision exploded in white and cartwheeled, as if he’d taken a direct hit from a flashbang, and he found himself collapsed against the side of her desk, his mouth agape, blood dripping freely from his temple from the impact.

And then he saw her left hand, beginning to uncontrollably twitch, seize the unmistakable shape of an intramuscular injector…

And of no involuntary control, her shaking hand raised the injector over her thigh, then plunged in the needle. A moment later, she lay still, and a death rattle escaped her lips.

He scrambled to her, but a moment later, she was raised to her full height, and her viridian eyes flashed with bitter fury and scorn as they met him.

“Petty Officer Delta-Three. What are you doing in my quarters?”

His eyes flashed for a moment, and then he realized. Had it been some nightmare?

No. He saw the empty injector rolling by her bed, already fallen from her left hand. The anticonvulsants had already hit their full pharamacokinetic strength and had retaken control of her.

He stiffly snapped to attention. “Chief!” His cheeks considerably blushed, and he felt the embarrassment and humiliation roll through him.

She stared, and he nearly sprawled again by her bedside, for such venom was within her lovely irises. Her beautiful face contorted into a mask of fury.

“Out.”

He instinctively about-faced, and then remembered what he was doing in a woman’s quarters at night.

He turned again, back towards her smoldering, trembling, hateful figure. His voice was gentle, but slightly shaken by the events he’d just seen. “Chief, I just wanted to say—”

“Fuck you, asshole.”

“—thank you”, he finished. His brown eyes were serious, unintimidated now, and he saw the scarlet blood in his vision, and his voice shook momentarily as he remembered the blood, the broken bodies—first Earth, then Beryl, now Monmouth—

“Ma’am—you watched my back for a long time out there.” He paused. “Thank you.”

He lowered his eyes respectfully, and his voice fell another register until it was barely a whisper. He didn’t care that she was a thermonuclear pyre for so intense was her hatred, the blow of her agonizing stare, the tremoring of her rage. Years ago he’d learned that his life had been paid for by human blood.

There was an uncharacteristic formality to his words. “Thanks, Chief.”

And then he finished his circuit, and then departed, aware of the scalding stare upon the back of his head, but his soul relieved of its heavy-handed burden, the guilt he’d felt in the Meridian Rays’s hangar bay, the pity of her lone figure making its solitary route through the bay, untouched by anyone, unspoken to.

That lonely figure.

Seventeen years before the present day

MARCH 2554 ASPHODEL MEADOWS SPECIAL WARFARE CENTER OFFICE OF THE DIRECTOR OF SPECIAL INTELLIGENCE ASPHODEL MEADOWS, 47 URSAE MAJORIS SYSTEM

“Commodore! This is unacceptable, completely unacceptable—”

Normally the office of the Chief of ONI Section Three, the Director of Special Intelligence, was not host to a brawl as vicious as any Longsword-to-Seraph dogfight. These days, things were different.

Rear Admiral Montgomery, Director of the Department of Biological Warfare, predatorily circled Commodore Cooke, while Rear Admiral Gibson, enthroned at his onyx desk, looked on with interest, unwilling to interfere, and perhaps, a slight trace of horror flashing across his eyes as Montgomery continued his tirade, his monologue of fury.

He turned to Gibson, the coattails of his uniform swaying, as if trembling with his anger. “Director! Did you hear about this? Four thousand! Four thousand!”

Montgomery turned back to Cooke. “You are wholly responsible for this fuckup, Commodore! You have done everything from the start. Four thousand dead within three days! You directed a NAVSPECWAR operation on Beryl that indiscriminately killed six thousand—the men, the elderly, and the children—”

And then the room exploded. The door swung open with such force that it rebounded against the wall with enough kinetic energy to send the paint splintering.

Standing in the doorway was Beah Schore, but this time, clothed in the unfamiliar black dress uniform of a flag officer of the UNSC Office of Naval Intelligence, two gleaming silver stars shining upon his breast. His face was so taut it seemed like his head had been gripped in a vice, his face so swollen that it appeared that his eyes and jaw could explode from his face at any moment.

Schore said loudly, in the doorway, a gaggle of NAVSPECWAR guards behind him in confusion, “Director Gibson. I didn’t even know that I had to re-activate my Rear Admiral commission in order to gain access to a facility that I just sent one billion credit’s worth of drugs to. Leave your office immediately.”

Gibson stared at the brazen figure in the doorway, his shaggy, patrician silhouette brilliantly outlined by the incandescence of the hallway lights, accentuating his dramatic entrance.

Gibson flashed a look at Montgomery, and it was a testament to the graveness of the situation that the two admirals promptly vacated the office, Gibson ejected from his own office without protest. Only Cooke remained, firmly seated, his face a careful mask, on the knife’s edge between humiliation and military decorum, his lip trembling with anger.

As Gibson and Montgomery made their hasty exodus, Schore slammed the door with enough force to make the door tremor. From the door, he threw a manila file folder onto the floor, and the floor was carpeted with thousands of spilled vivid color photographs.

Cooke’s gaze remained stalwartly fixated to an invisible point on the wall just above Gibson’s empty desk.

Schore’s voice was loud, sarcastic. “Commodore, do you know what a birth defect is?”

Cooke’s jaw mechanically worked the words, “Yes, sir.”

“What is a birth defect, then, commodore? Pray do tell.”

“A congenital defect resultant from pathological developmental processes.”

“And what kinds of drugs cause birth defects, commodore?”

“Teratogens, Admiral.”

Beah said thunderously, “You know, commodore, I’ll let you in on a secret. Do you know why we don’t use drugs that cause birth defects on pregnant mothers that are giving birth?”

“Yes, sir.”

“What? No? You don’t know? Well, let me enlighten you, commodore. Drugs that cause birth defects cause defects in developing fetuses, like those in pregnant mothers. Do you now see why teratogens are contraindicated for pregnant mothers?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Good”, said Schore loudly. “So, let’s see. Do you know what a nanomole is?”

“Yes, sir. One billionth of a mole; a mole times ten to the negative ninth.”

“When very ignorant scientists such as Beah Schore write down on a piece of paper ‘use this drug in nanomolar concentrations’, do you think that these very ignorant scientists instead mean ‘use this drug in molar concentrations’?”

“No, sir.”

“What is the difference between using a compound at nanomolar concentrations and molar concentrations, then, commodore?”

“There is a billionfold difference in concentration, sir.”

“I see”, said Schore. “So let’s say a compound, at a nanomolar concentration, is toxic, mutagenic, and teratogenic, and an ONI officer decides to use this same compound at a one molar concentration. What happens?”

“The toxicity and mutagenicity is increased up to one billionfold”, said Cooke stiffly.

“Thank you. So that now we’ve covered why don’t we use teratogens in pregnant mothers and their unborn children, and also why one billion fold changes in concentration can be important, let’s review your latest experimental protocol, yes?”

“Of course, sir”, jerked Cooke’s lips.

“So, when Admiral Schore and Acumen Science send over a reservoir of an experimental pharmacological, let’s say, called SCARLET, and this compound is a teratogen at nanomolar concentrations, do tell what your logic was when you used this mutagen at molar concentrations in pregnant women.”

“I have no response, sir.”

“What? Can you say louder why a chemical that induces birth defects was used at doses one billion times higher than recommended in pregnant women and their unborn children?”

“I have no response, Admiral.”

“Really? That’s very curious. Because I seem to remember sending one billion credits worth of our mystery drug, SCARLET, to this very facility, and I had ten thousand pages of typed data that said on the top ‘use at nanomolar concentrations in experimental animals’. The last time I checked the UNSC Medical Corps Regulations on Biomedical Research, I didn’t remember human fetuses listed as ‘experimental animals’.”

“I have no response, sir.”

Schore’s hand trembled as he picked up a photograph, thrust it into Cooke’s face.

“What do you see, commodore?”

“I see a human female, Admiral.”

“I see a human female too, commodore. What do you see that’s special about this particular woman?”

“There are hands, sir.”

Beah shouted hoarsely, and his fingers spasmed with fury and blood, “Did you notice that this woman has three hands?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Do most humans have three hands?”

“No, sir.”

“Do most humans have an extra hand sprouting from their chin?”

“No, sir.”

Schore fished another random photograph from the floor, almost unable to pick one up, for his fingers were undulating with depthless anger. “Can you tell me why this person’s left hand has thirteen fingers?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Then, why does this human have thirteen fingers on one hand, commodore?”

“She was exposed to an experimental pharmacological treatment of the SCARLET polypharmacological.”

“And what’s special about SCARLET, commodore, that led to these thirteen fingers on one hand?”

“SCARLET is a mutagenic polypharmacological, Admiral.”

“What do mutagens do, commodore?”

“They mutate, sir.”

“Mutate what?”

“They mutated this human female subject, sir.”

“Really? I thought SCARLET was a teratogen too.”

“Yes, sir.”

He picked up a final photograph. “Why does this developing fetus have eyes growing in its tongue? Is that one of the ‘birth defects’ we discussed earlier? Something about not using drugs that induce birth defects in pregnant mothers at billionfold excessive dosages?”

Cooke didn’t answer, and his eyes were rigidly pinned to an invisible spot on the wall. Schore felt acid lap against his stomach and his world tremored with fundamental hatred, a fury strong enough to kill. His voice grew quiet, his words so garbled with emotion that they were barely incomprehensible.

“Commodore, never ever dare to cross me again. I swear, if you try to explain away why four thousand women and four thousand developing fetuses began to sprout hair from their eyes, began to grow second heads, began to grow extra legs, and if you try to blame this on Acumen, you will be fucking with your heart beat. Your family and children will be sent to a Covenant labor camp and killed within a month. You will spend the rest of your days as an ensign on a logistics hauler, spelling out four-letter profanities. Do you understand?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Do you understand?”

Cooke’s face flushed with anger.

“Yes, sir.”

Schore raised his face close to Cooke’s tremoring ear. “If we weren’t in a building with thousands of your special forces cronies, I would kill you right now, commodore. I would kill you for the six thousand you killed on Beryl, for the four thousand fetuses you just indiscriminately slaughtered overnight, for the four thousand women you mutated until they were no longer human.”

There was a pause that was held in abeyance for an infinity, and Beah’s heart contorted with maniac, sociopathic fury, before he finally choked the word, “Dismissed.”

Cooke swept from the office, not daring to look at Schore’s stormy figure.

Beah collapsed in Cooke’s recently-vacated seat, blankly staring for long minutes at the photographs on the floor, the physical and emotional skeleton ripped from his body, his body unbreathing, his glassine irises distantly staring, his mind and soul elsewhere.

Finally, he raised his voice again. “Admiral Montgomery. Come in, alone.”

Montgomery, careful of his colleague’s unstable mental state, gingerly entered, and was attentive to say contritely, “Admiral.”

Schore finally breathed again, inhaling air into his smoldering lungs. Beah gestured at Gibson’s chair, behind the desk. “Sit.”

When Montgomery did, Beah’s voice was quiet, and his eyes were desperate, and they shone with a profound sadness. Schore’s hand was dappled with tears he didn’t even remember shedding. He said softly, “Montgomery, tell me Cooke didn’t do what I heard he did.”

His two words collapsed Schore’s universe.

“He did.”

The fight left Beah’s face, the resistance, the energy. He sprawled catatonically in his chair.

Montgomery’s voice was mechanical, relentless, a drone mindlessly reciting the events of the past few days, too numb to inject emotion, because that meant he would have to re-visit his memories.

“He hormone-primed the women, jump-starting the menstrual cycle, until they reached mid-cycle and ovulated. He then impregnated them by surgically injecting the sperm, and then began dosing them by in utero perfusion of SCARLET direct to the uterine cavity by catheter, at one billion times the recommended concentration.”

“They died, Beah. They all died. We began with just over four thousand impregnated women on Day One. By nightfall, they were already dead. I remember how the cases presented. By six hours after SCARLET infusion, the first cases began to present. Intestines were growing within her mouth. The rest just began to pile from there. Beating hearts growing inside brains”, he said, his voice hoarse. “Nails growing on eyes. Second heads coming from chests.”

“It was the largest fuckup that I’ve ever seen. Cooke just stood there, trying to take notes, finding the prevalence of each mutation, detailing where each limb or organ was growing. I tried, Beah. We collected a thousand of the finest physicians and surgeons from the UNSC MEDCORPS. Not one could be saved. Not a single one. No matter what experimental pharmacological regimen, no matter how many growing limbs we tried to surgically remove. They all died. By the first day, only two thousand physically died, but the other two thousand women were already dead. By the second morning, I had the rest euthanized. They were in such excruciating pain from the mutations that they couldn’t even breathe anymore.”

Montgomery closed his eyes, too-real images from just days ago filtering through his lenses.

Schore stared.

“Cooke even had the gall to submit a letter to Gibson that he wanted to dissect apart the mutated corpses of the women to investigate and dissect the fetuses within.”

Schore didn’t have a response for that.

“Gibson actually has morals, I found out”, said Montgomery. “He vetoed that last request.”

Beah stared.

Montgomery said gently, “Just tell me the word, and Cooke becomes busted to a quartermaster’s mate.”

For a long moment, Schore stared into the distance, his lips immobile. Finally, when he looked back at the admiral, his voice was at a more moderated register. “But that won’t anything. Those women are still dead.”

And then there was a flicker of recognition in Montgomery’s eyes. “Wait. Did you hear about three-eight-two-nine?”

Beah wearily looked up. “What? A small molecule compound? I’m sick of science, Montgomery, sick of what we’ve done.”

“No. One of the women still lives.”

7 -  7  -  7

ASPHODEL MEADOWS NAVAL SPECIAL WARFARE CENTER INTENSIVE CARE UNIT #3

A lone woman was enshrouded in crisp alabaster sheets in ICU Bay #3 of the bowels of the facility. Beah Schore, his ONI uniform askew, dashed from the decontamination airlock to her side, fiercely squeezed her hand tight.

“Alexandria, Alexandria, wake up. It’s me. Schore.”

The woman slowly summoned the strength to raise her eyelids, and bloodshot eyes filling with arterial blood weakly looked at him. Her voice was a croak as she wavered, attempting to cling to life. “Dr. Schore?”

Beah looked down at the hand he had gripped in horror. There were unfamiliar, bony ridges scarring it underneath its surface, and her nails had jutted forth as if scimitars.

He turned and raised his voice to the most voluminous bellow he could. “Doctor!”

An ONI physician with the insignia of a Commander briskly stalked over, petulant. “Sir?”

“What the hell?”

Behind him, Montgomery cleared his throat. “This woman was impregnated eight days ago. She has been on the saturating concentration of SCARLET for a week now. She still lives.”

Schore stared. “How’s that possible?”

“Her genetics, we think”, meekly said the ONI diagnostician.

“What?”

“According to microarray expression analysis and SNP sequencing, three-eight-two-nine has—”

Beah said furiously, “It’s Alexandria Blackburn, not ‘three-eight-two-nine’, understood, Commander?”

“Yes sir. Miss Blackburn—”

“It’s ‘Mrs. Blackburn’ after your commodore artificially fucked her.”

“Yes sir. Alexandria’s high-throughput profiling reveals indistinguishable homology to the genetic profile used by Dr. Halsey in the Sierra Two program to identify possible S-II trainees. This may impart a threshold of resistance against the mutagen.”

Schore understood the implications immediately. And then, he remembered from who the—

Montgomery said quietly, “Yes.”

Beah turned furiously to the ONI physician. “I want you to saturate Alex with cycloheximide, emetone, and nagilactone C until it precipitates from her blood. No more protein synthesis across her entire body. I want a dozen more diagnosticians on this case, and a full molecular biology workup on her. I want a focal signal transductome, kinome, and expression microarray done on her, and then the use of small molecule inhibitors to block the adult mutagenesis.”

“Sir.”

When Montgomery saw Beah’s eyes, he saw that his wintery blue eyes were shimmering not with anger, but a deep sickening.

“Dismissed, Commander”.

The commander stiffly saluted, made good his retreat from the two admirals.

Schore waded to Alexandria’s bed, gently brushing her fair, inflamed cheek with his hand, and when he stared into her brilliant viridian irises, he saw no more vivacity in those lovely eyes, just a fading spark of life, struggling against the suffocating darkness.

There was suddenly a klaxon whining on the nearby monitor, and a cyan LED began flickering erratically.

Beah didn’t even look at the electrocardiogram.

The ONI crash team was in a moment later. One of the officers urgently grabbed Beah’s arm. “We need to stabilize her, sir. You need to leave.”

He stared at Alexandria’s prone, stiff form one last time before white-smocked medics devoured her, dexterously attaching IV lines, one drawing a syringe of epinephrine.

Schore looked at Montgomery. “Let’s go.”

In the hallway, his voice was soft. “Montgomery, I need to get back to Earth. They would be curious if the Acumen CSO disappeared from the board for nine months. They’re already suspicious of my several day disappearances. You need to stay here. Block Cooke however you can. This woman must be saved; she is the last one left.”

“We will.”

Without another word, Schore pivoted sharply on his heel, for surprising alacrity for an aging professor, stalked down the hallway, already lost in the abyss of his own thoughts.

Montgomery stared at his diminishing figure, and then finally looked back at the ICU, where medics surrounded Alexandria’s shrouded form, a defibrillator in hand.

And then, he too, left.