Conspicuous Absence

Vinh should’ve been with the other Spartans, she knew. They were making some attempt at mingling, despite towering a foot or more above the other after-ceremony attendees. Their Navy dress blues almost fit among the other uniforms, stuck on puffed-up brass or out-of-place-looking enlisted men. There were some she hadn’t seen in years, and some she’d counted among the dead for decades. She doubted there’d ever be a time again when they were all together. But despite their effort to branch out, the giants still stood in a consciously strung-out group, clinging together like shy children, and some on the end were conversing with one of the only figures to match their height—an Elite in burnished gold armor. Him, she wanted to avoid, and so she walked alone.

The morning was getting on, the sky losing its rose-pink tint, turning the silhouette of the memorial on the hill into just another piece of debris in the savannah, and there were plenty of those now, with the orbital elevator fallen across it. Vinh wasn’t entirely sure why this piece should be paid so much attention, but as long as it was, she had one thing she needed to do. She’d waited all morning for the stream of visitors paying their respects to slow, and finally ascended the hill herself when it was empty enough to be a little private.

The base of the sheared-off Pelican wing was near-completely obscured by bundles of flowers, rifles left propped-up, and pictures. Dozens upon dozens of pictures, taped over one another as they tried to fight for space without overlapping obtrusively. As she opened her left breast pocket, Vinh felt this gave her a way of fitting in better than taking part in any ceremony could.

She withdrew a small, laminated photo of her own. On it, the fuzzy image of a brown-haired man made a stab at a dumb-looking smile back up at her: Isaac. It was just a capture from a MJOLNIR helmet recorder, and probably illegal to possess seeing as it’d been taken on a classified op… but Isaac had left it with her while she was in hospital for nine months, and he was covering for them by taking on the special ops they had lined up by himself. She’d already prepared the back with adhesive.

She made polite use of her height to stick the photo above where most pictures clamored for space, and stepped back to take in how it looked. There were hundreds of photos, and some with more than one face. Isaac was just one more among the scattered top fringe.

Vinh was smiling, until it struck her how it was the only face up there she knew. In the course of the war, twenty-three billion human lives had been lost, more than half mankind’s total number. There wasn’t anyone alive who hadn’t lost someone close. Family lines, entire names had been wiped out. And she had just one picture to put up there.

Her mind turned back to the other Spartans clustered down the hill. Were they the only people she considered close? There were a handful outside them she considered friends, but they numbered even fewer than the seventy-five children she’d been conscripted with. Were the Spartan-IIs really that insular as a group? With Spartans seemingly coming out of the woodwork, how many people did she really have to mourn? A dozen? Half?

Vinh’s eyes scoured the wall, searching and almost longing for a face among them she recognized, could share in the rest of humanity’s mourning over—and quickly wished she hadn’t.

On the memorial’s far right side, away from the main crowd of pictures, lay a crude etching no photo dared infringe upon. A single number, and an MCPO insignia taped above it.

117

For a horrible, dysphoric moment, Vinh felt as if she were about to wake from a sickening dream. John was dead. So how could she or anyone else be alive? Some twisted rationale in her mind rejected it as a possibility.

The moment passed—but the disbelief did not. To Vinh, to every other Spartan, John was… invulnerable. Not because of strength or speed, but because he always knew, without hesitation, what to do when things went wrong. When the Spartans faced impossible odds, John would analyze the situation, assess their resources—the other Spartans and their talents included—and apply them to pull a victory as if out of a hole in slipspace. With him in charge, none of them ever had to think, think about what terrifying monster they faced, only do. Each of them trusted him that completely. If they died, it would be knowing if the war went on for a hundred years, John would find some way to keep fighting.

It hadn’t lasted that long. It’d barely lasted a quarter of that, because John found a way, and it had killed him. How had it killed him? It was why Vinh couldn’t face that split-lip the others talked with over drinks.

Vinh’s hand extended, and her fingers found the rough grooves making up the number. Had Fred carved this? She knew him well enough to be certain he always had a knife on him. Kelly, who’d always been so close to him? Another Spartan Vinh had yet to learn was still alive?

No, she decided. Better not to know.