Halo: Indelible Past

Dramatis Personae

 * Simon-G294 "Mordred"; former SPARTAN-III and Insurrectionist fighter, current mercenary (human male)
 * Diana; former Insurrectionist technical coordinator and operations adviser, current partner to "Mordred" (artificial intelligence, feminine programming)
 * David Kahn; mercenary (human male)
 * Zoë Hunsinger; former slave (human female)
 * Nimue; mercenary (human female)
 * Redmond Venter; Insurrectionist leader and enforcer for the Syndicate (human male)
 * Peter Collins; Insurrectionist (human male clone)
 * Helen Powell; Syndicate agent (human female)
 * Hawk; Syndicate bodyguard (human male)
 * Shinsu 'Refum; Rebel warlord (Sangheili male)

Part One: The Fugitives
"Violets are blue, roses are red; living like this we were already dead."

- "Blood Gulch Blues"

Prologue
Then

The sun burnt furiously in the clear, sallow sky, gazing down at the savaged landscape like a disapproving god. The heat from its fiery eyes beat down on one and all as if from physical blows, enough to send the small and weak to their knees from its sheer, unchecked power.

With such a furious overseer in place, it was a wonder anything was able to grow on Mamore's sun-baked plains at all. The planet was notorious for its brutal summers, and this one--which promised drought as well as heat--was one of the worst in years. And the summer hadn't brought just heat and drought to afflict the people of Mamore. It had brought something else, something even more deadly.

It had brought war.

The plains were barren, save for a few shrubs, bushes, and the occasional withered tree, but there was the definite sound of repeated gunfire issuing out from the horizon. It continued in a faint, endless clatter that would only pause for moments, like someone drawing in a breath, before continuing its lethal dialogue with even more distant targets. A pair of squat dropships--United Nations Space Command Pelicans--flew low in the distance, escorted by a trio of nimble Hornet gunships. The soldiers they'd be carrying were no doubt on their way to respond to some rebel offensive, part of the Insurrection's planet-wide effort to liberate Mamore from the United Earth Government's authority. The men and women on those dropships would have their chance in combat soon enough.

The twenty-odd Marines of Epsilon platoon had already had their chance at it, and every single one of them, from their lieutenant to the lowest of privates, was dead.

They lay in a mangled pile, their blood leaking across the dry ground and being sucked down into the soil by the ravenous, dehydrated earth. Only half were still wearing their combat armor; the rest had been stripped down to their undergarments, their gear piled unceremoniously some feet away.

The boy who had killed them was leaning over the body of a sergeant, rifling through his pouches and pockets for hidden nicknacks or extra rounds of ammunition. He wore what had, in a previous life, been a rough cloth blanket and now fulfilled the role of makeshift camouflage. Under it was what had, in its own previous life, been a kind of military-style jacket. He'd pulled its hood over his dark mane of hair to shade it from the relentless glare of the sun. A rifle with a crescent-moon ammunition clip was slung over his shoulder. Its bayonet gleamed in the sunlight.

Finding nothing of value in the sergeant's pockets, the boy proceeded to unclip the dead man's armor. Tearing the bloodied green carapace off the Marine's body, he tossed it over into the pile of other stripped parts. Spare gear that he would leave out here beside the bodies. Badly needed supplies for his comrades in the Insurrection; a warning for the UNSC.

It was his enemy now, but it hadn't always been that way. The UNSC had once been his master.

There was sweat trickling down from his overheated brow, but the boy didn't so much as pause to wipe it away. He knew he needed to move fast if he wanted to avoid being discovered by whoever the UNSC sent out to look for its missing platoon. The sergeant's corpse was hauled over to the pile of other stripped bodies and heaved against the already-rotting carcasses of his former comrades.

It had been a simple ambush, nothing the boy hadn't done before. A single platoon sent out beside its main force to scout for potential ambushes had instead run straight into his own, which had taken the form of a trio of well-hidden improvised explosives hidden amidst the rocks they'd been stepping over. A flurry of grenades into the panicking formation had taken most of the survivors out, and then he'd put the rest of those down with some quick bursts from his rifle. The whole thing had happened in less than thirty seconds, and now he had twenty three new notches to carve into the barrel of his already well-notched rifle.

He'd started making those notches a week ago, and it hadn't gotten old yet.

The friends and comrades he'd had what seemed like an eternity ago back in his old life would never have believed he was capable of such an attack. Loser, they'd called him. Worst. Weak. Incompetent.

Coward.

The friends and comrades he'd had a week ago might have been less surprised, though they wouldn't have expected him to take the offensive like this. Not after he'd spent the whole of the two month old war telling them to stay away from all the ambushes and offensives, trying to keep their little group together. Of course, it didn't matter how those friends would have felt about the ambush, because they were all dead.

The boy moved on to stripping another corpse. This one had been caught in the explosions and was little more than a bloody pulp, but the boy rummaged through his gore-encrusted pockets all the same.

The sudden sound of a droning engine--several droning engines--stopped him cold. His body tensed, ready to run and hide down in the rocks below the ambush spot. They wouldn't get him here. They couldn't. He still had so many more of them to kill.

But he relaxed when the Warthog jeep that drove over into sight over the crest of a small hill bore the red fist insignia of the United Rebel Front, the conglomeration of hundreds of factions that were all fighting to break away from the UNSC. It stopped short when the driver saw the ambush site and slammed on the Warthog's breaks. He and the woman manning the jeep's battered chaingun leaned forwards in awe of the child soldier and his prizes.

After a moment of mutual staring, another man leapt out of the Warthog's passenger seat to land confidently on the top of the hill. Holding a rifle of his own, the man looked down at the boy and gave him a congratulatory smile.

"Hey, kid," he called down cheerfully. "Did you kill all of them yourself?"

The boy looked up at him through a pair of sunken grey eyes made heavy from lack of food and sleep. "Yeah," he said dully.

The man nodded approvingly. "Nice. Good to see someone who can actually fight around here."

He paused for a moment to consider the dead platoon again. "My name's Redmond Venter," he said at length. "How'd you like to come with me?"

The boy's gaze didn't falter or change in the slightest.

"I'll make these attacks of yours mean something," the man called Venter assured him. "You'll get to hit the UNSC like no one ever has."

After another moment of quiet contemplation, the boy nodded his hooded head. "Alright," he said, bending back down over the shredded body. "My name's Simon."

"No last one?"

Simon. Simon-G294. Trainee G294. SPARTAN G294.

"No."

"Then let's go." Venter smiled. "I think the two of us will get along just fine, kid."

The boy simply nodded again and got back to his gruesome work.

Chapter One: No Good Deed...
"I don't care what crimes he may have committed to anger his own kind so much. That miserable human helped assault our facility. He killed our brothers and took one away from us for his own greedy ends. You will find the one to the galaxy's scum as Mordred and you will kill him for the glory of the Path Walkers!"

- Urei 'Cazal, Supreme Commander of the Path Walkers, to assassination squads tasked with hunting down Simon-G294.

Now