Halo: One Last Tie

1600 Hours, December 6th, 2560

Patience City, Cobb Protectorate

Whitefall, Athens System

In another life, ex-Colonel Griffin Standoff had lived for moments like these. The jarring, quaking roar of re-entry shaking him to his bones. The harsh orange light bleeding in through the porthole in the rear of the dropship. The sweat beading on his brow, as the troop bay warmed with the frictional heat of the plunge into the atmosphere. It had been two decades since Standoff had stood in a place like this, doing something like this. But it felt like hardly a day had passed; the experience, at it’s root, was the same thing he had done a hundred times before. The armor covering him was more durable, the HUD in his helmet swam with twice as many holographic status readouts, and the rifle in his hands was factory new rather than worn by years of use, but the anxiety was the same, the tightness in his scalp was the same, the adrenaline bubbling in his gut was the same. It was a mirrored parallel of what he had done before many, many times.

He’d stopped having dreams about his former combat company---the unit he’d served with before ARES---and their tours fifteen years ago, but the whole experience still felt it was like something out of a wild fantasy. He could still clearly recall the last combat mission he’d ran before ONI recruited him. Him and the 151st dropping onto Shakespeare, to take down a network of Covenant artillery and clear the way for an evacuation. The details assailed him from across the chasm of the long years, from out of the old depths of his mind. Gunsmoke. Bodies. A sharpened stretch of rebar covered in bright blue blood. Cyan jets of fire as charges detonated. Standing around a burning Wraith smoking cigars.

It was a world wholly removed from the slow work he’d done for the last twenty years. Standoff hadn’t fired lethal rounds on a live target since that day. He’d been twenty years younger, twenty years that had aged him like two hundred. Part of that was why he was here. The struggles that weighed him were the same ones pushing him into this.

“Standoff, you ok?” Bradford Gale’s voice came over the radio with an earnest hint of concern. “Are the auto adjusters acting up again?”

Gale put an armored gauntlet on his shoulder, touch light despite the weight of the heaving metal plating and the power in the reactive joints. Gale’s choice of armor reflected a lot about him. He wore the same steel-and-gold color scheme with blue visor combination as the standard Recruit variation of the armor. The actual armor itself, however, was a fierce looking, purely combat oriented machine. Boasting a narrow-visored, martial looking Warrior helmet and it’s sleek, powerful subsidiary chest and shoulder plates, alongside heavily armored arm and leg sections, Gale looked like a purely warfare oriented evolution of the standard Spartan Four.

“Just waxing nostalgic to myself.” Standoff had long ago come to terms with the fact that he was largely defined by his past. “Armor is working just fine, don’t worry.”

Codename: MONTAGUE, the Spartan Intelligence agent running their mission, had provided Standoff with a set of Semi-Powered Infiltration armor. SPI, as it was commonly called, had been standard issue during the Great War for both SPARTAN-III commandoes and Standoff’s own kids---the SPARTAN-II Class III super soldiers he’d trained. More advanced than a standard Marine BDU, or even ODST Battle Armor, it had a layer of photo-reactive panels covering every surface; these panels mimicked their surroundings, creating an imperfect illusion of invisibility. SPI lacked the energy shielding, heavy armor, and strength enhancing circuits of MJOLNIR armor, but it could be operated by unaugmented humans.

Standoff was still vulnerable, but at least he had the best gear available. MONTAGUE hadn’t spared the expense, because he knew Standoff would need it. Operation: SKADHI, their mission, had one objective: track down and apprehend Codename: EGOR---Leonid-144, the Leonidan SPARTAN-II who’d spent the last thirty five years assassinating high value targets for Section Zero. Leonid, an original graduate of the legendary Class of 2525, was without a doubt one of the most dangerous quarry’s in the galaxy. The Spartan Intel strike team that Standoff had ingratiated himself with, an eclectic mix of Spartan Fours, a SPARTAN-III, and three of Standoff’s kids, had already gone after Leonid twice, both times with disastrous results.

Standoff had never been one for false optimism, and knew their chances of actually getting Leonid were slim to none. But he didn’t have much choice in the matter. He had to kill Leonid. It wasn’t up for debate.

“Granite Actual to MONTAGUE, requesting secure line.” Elias Olson, the Spartan Four squad leader of Fireteam Granite, was all business over the radio. It was interesting to Standoff how professional and dry the Spartan could sound. Olson was equipped with a set of white Air Assault armor, complimented by green stripes and an emerald colored visor. The set up was flashy, and if the lightweight chest plate, cut down shoulder plates, and dome-like jet pack was any indication, geared for daredevil aerial combat. Standoff would have picked out someone with such risky preferences to be more excitable.

“Go for secure, Granite Actual.” MONTAGUE answered Olson, sounding chipper. It was, as Standoff had known almost immediately after meeting him, a calculated technique to disarm people. Standoff wasn’t fooled. No one who saw the Spook in action was, either. “What’s your position and ETA?”

“Just crossing over southeast Patience, sir.” Olson’s opinion towards MONTAGUE was something Standoff struggled to discern. On one hand, he was about the only member of the strike team who showed no hint of distrust towards MONTAGUE. But he was also indefatigably loyal to the UNSC and the mission. The degree to which that loyalty was responsible for Olson’s faith in MONTAGUE wasn’t clear. “About five minutes out, sir.”

“Understood. Radio when you’re on site.”

“Everyone prepped?” Olson cut his comm link and turned to face the team. “Standoff?”

“Son, I’ve been doing this since before you were born.” Standoff put a healthy dose of indignation into his voice to hide the anxiety. “I know my job.”

“Just checking, sir.” There was something…strange in Olson’s voice. “Didn’t mean anything by it.”

“If half the stories Standoff tells are true, I don’t think we’ve got anything to worry about.” Gale clapped Olson roughly on the shoulder, letting out a loud clank. “Has he told you guys the one about the Moa and the frag grenades?”

“He told it once. Then you repeated it three times.” Olson got an amiable but distracted tone in his voice when it became clear his attention was elsewhere. “Mark, you have visual yet on the long range scopes?”

Mark-G253, normally Fireteam Granite’s designated marksmen, was acting as pilot today. Mark was a SPARTAN-III commando---a true, original SPARTAN, unlike the Spartan Fours that comprised the rest of Granite. There were numerous little differences between him and Standoff’s kids---he’d been taken from an orphanage after volunteering, rather than been abducted; he’d trained for six years in a less intensive fashion, rather than eight years patterned after SPARTAN-II; and his augmentations were safer and less powerful, rather than the dangerous but extremely effective augments Standoff’s kids had undergone. Nevertheless, Mark was a true, original breed of SPARTAN. Standoff had watched him in the last month he’d been aboard, and had noticed that the SPARTAN-III was a perpetual fish out of water, despite the best efforts of his squad mates.

Mark had been nominated as the Pelican pilot mostly out of necessity. Operation: SKADHI’s security was hyper-tight, to the point where the team’s stealth vessel, the Nox, was crewed solely by the strike team and a dumb AI---no other personnel were attached. With no technical Pelican pilots embarked, it was up to the strike team to fly. Olson, truth be told, was the best pilot, but seeing as he was busy, Mark took over instead. Every Spartan Four, Standoff had been told, could fly as a requirement, but Mark spent his entire childhood training. Coupled with his precision and natural professionalism, he made a damn good replacement. Standoff had no complaints.

“Standby…” Mark was busy putting the Pelican into a shallow dive. Standoff could feel the slight shift in the center of gravity before the inertial dampeners corrected. “Target identified, repeat, visual contact with the target area. Two thousand meters to landing zone.”

“Alright. Initiate the autopilot sequence and get ready.” Olson began double-checking his equipment. “Fireteam Granite, final check, now.”

Standoff slid into old routine, actions drilled into him so thoroughly they still felt like second nature. He checked armor systems, counted his magazines, ran a backup comm diagnostic, found his grip on his rifle. He watched Olson fiddle with his Battle Rifle, practicing magazine swaps one…two…three times before racking the bolt. Gale had a DMR and a Plasma Pistol, but didn’t bother checking on them; instead, he sauntered over to the corner of the troop bay and rapped his knuckle plate on Spartan Jonathan Dorian’s helmet. Standoff had a brief moment of confusion, standing there, before Dorian shot up with a start. It looked like the man had been asleep. Dorian ambled around the bay, apparently in no rush, retrieving gear. He boasted a set of red and black ODST variant armor, along with an M6C/SOCCOM silenced pistol and a customized, gold colored Covenant Carbine. Standoff wondered vaguely what the story behind that exotic choice was.

Mark trundled into the bay, completing their human tank menagerie; in olive drab, with a gold visor, he looked like a SPARTAN of yore. His suit, Standoff noted with interest, was comprised of an eclectic mix of armor components. A Mark V helmet, a Pathfinder chest plate, an EOD right shoulder plate, and a Mark VI left shoulder plate; altogether, his set up looked vaguely like an old set of Mark IV MJOLNIR. That setup definitely had a story behind it. Standoff almost made a mental note to ask Mason about it, then remembered. He squelched his curiosity. Better to focus on the practical. Once upon a time, Standoff remembered being a simple man. He had to try and get back to that mindset.

“Elias, Jacky here.” Jacky-359, the close quarters specialist of Gold Team, was one of Standoff’s kids. Her voice came over the radio with the slightest hint of static. “I’m tracking the target with our sensors and he just went inside the bunker. Our timing is going to be tight.”

“Understood.” Olson’s voice was level and reassuring. “We’re on site in three minutes.”

The roar of the re-entry had faded, and in it’s place came the rush of air as the troop bay door at the end of the dropship slip open. One hand firmly gripping the support rail, Standoff edged to the end of the gangplank and stared out at the ground below. Standing there, with the roar of the wind, rifle in his hands, being buffeted by the open bay, he felt quietly, calmly, at peace. His last tie to the past was nearly ready to be cut. It cooled Standoff’s anxiety to stand there.

Leonid-144 was going to die today. Armed, armored, surrounded by metal giants, he could actually believe it. All his life, Standoff had struggled to look on the brightside. Laszlo Katona, the SPARTAN-II who’d partnered with Standoff training the kids, had tried to cajole Standoff out of his gloom many times. And Standoff had tried---him and Laszlo had been friends then, or at least, he’d thought they were---only to fail time and time again. There was always a just a bad that outweighed the good. A negative that overrode the positive. He could always see two ways things could go right but five they could go wrong. He’d spent years convinced they would lose the war, spent years thinking about the life he’d been forced out of, spent decades now sure that his soul was damned for the crimes he had helped facilitate.

That cynicism had permeated his private hunt for Leonid, even when he’d refused to acknowledge it. He was determined to kill Leonid, unstoppably driven, but part of him had never believed he would make it. As always, Standoff could see all the things that could go wrong. Laszlo’s betrayal, lying to him to protect Leonid, his old teammate. The other dark groups---probably CHAUCER’s---constantly trying to take Leonid down for themselves. His own weaknesses as an old man, unaugmented, who was, for all intents and purposes, broken.

But he could not give up. He simply couldn’t allow himself to do it. Three years ago, he’d committed himself to his mission, and there was no backing out. Giving up was not in Standoff’s vocabulary. The struggles he’d put his kids through, the awful things that had been done to them---he couldn’t pretend he had any right to take the easy way out. In this more than anything.

“Understood. We’re on site in three minutes.”

SPARTAN Jacky-359 listened closely to Elias’ update, searching his voice for any hint of concern. Ever since she was a trainee back on Tantalus, Jacky had been excellent at reading people. An evaluator had once called her “precise and analytical”, something she’d taken pride in even before she knew what the words meant. People’s moods, their emotions, could all be discerned from the little details, as long as you paid close attention. His tone was calm, she decided, but the wrong kind of calm. A little too smooth, much smoother than Elias normally was.

“Elias, is the Colonel throwing you?” Jacky switched to a closed comm channel, shutting out everyone but her and the Granite team leader. “What’s he doing?”

“A lot of staring into space, mostly.” Elias answered plainly, without the false reassurance. “Gale’s babying him a bit.”

“So what’s wrong?” It was clear something was. “You’re worried.”

“Just nerves.” Elias sounded like he was holding something back. A brief bout of patient silence made him relent. “Just thinking about our talk on the ship. I know I said I’d watch him, but it’s going to be tough with the plan.”

Jacky felt a familiar---yet very unfamiliar---twinge of something in her chest. Elias wasn’t worried about Standoff endangering the mission, like everyone else in his squad would have been. Elias was…an anomaly. Jacky and her squad mates were friendly, but they didn’t make many friends. It was, like most things in her life, because of the program. Gold Team---comprised of Matthew-363 the squad leader, Mason-317 the squad marksman, and Jacky herself, the squad CQC specialist---was a SPARTAN-II Class III Fireteam. They were set apart from nearly everyone they met. The Class I SPARTAN-II’s were aloof---well, besides Laszlo-108, their training officer---the SPARTAN-III’s were shy and suspicious of SPARTANs who weren’t, and the Spartan Fours were arrogant, intimidated, or thought of them as freaks.

Even other squads from the ARES detachment---their training class---were distant. During the Great War, the Class III teams had taken casualties---a lot of them. They’d been thrown at suicide missions with minimal care. Nearly half the total teams had been killed outright. Those that had survived had all lost at least one member. Not a single ARES team had escaped the war unscathed---not a single team, except for Gold. Jacky’s squad emerged from the war intact, surviving impossible odds. It bred resentment from the others, prompted exclusion. Gold didn’t know the pain of losing family. They were different.

Being bluntly honest about it---blunt honesty, of course, being Jacky’s specialty---Gold’s attitude also made things worse. Other teams thought they were not just different and lucky, but arrogant for it. It was a hard accusation to deny. They were supremely confident, better than most other SPARTANs---and they knew it. Jacky was always honest in letting people know where they stood with her. It was likely the thing that was the most damaging, really, and also explained much of her tendency towards pissing people off. That being said, it was by no means limited to her. Mason was casually flippant at the expense of inferior teams, comfortable in superiority---by no means an endearing quality. Matt, meanwhile, was always aggressively assertive about their capabilities---even if that meant telling other teams that, quite simply, Gold should do the job because they were better.

Somehow, in spite of this team wide abrasiveness, in spite of her own frank confidence, and most impressively, in spite of the fact that their first meeting had been a deliberately awkward prank, Elias and her had become friends. Close ones. It was a thinly differentiated distinction, but a very important one. Mason had made friends with Jonathan Dorian, Granite’s quiet spotter, and tried coaxing him out of his shell, but they weren’t close like Jacky and Elias. She had told Elias things no one outside her team had ever heard, not even Laszlo or the Colonel.

And Elias hadn’t just listened. Hadn’t merely kept the secrets. He’d chosen to actively help. That was something Jacky really hadn’t expected. Elias had offered willingly to help Gold with their true mission---their real reason for requesting a spot on SKADHI---keeping the Colonel safe. They knew the Colonel had private reasons he wanted EGOR gone, and were afraid he’d get himself killed in the process of it. The plan originally had been to get on with SKADHI and take EGOR down quickly, before the Colonel even had a chance to find him---much less do anything stupid and dangerous. That little scheme had gone out the window a month ago, after the Colonel had bought his way onto the investigation with intel on EGOR’s location.

They’d had to go with an imperfect evolution, protecting the Colonel while on the mission. Jacky had told Elias everything, and he’d just naturally assumed it was his responsibility too. Without even knowing why the Colonel was so hellbent on catching EGOR. Sitting in the hangar before the mission, waiting for MONTAGUE to give the go ahead to launch the Pelicans, Jacky had almost told him. He’d been so understanding. So faithful. It hadn’t sat right with her. But that---that was also Gold Team’s darkest secret. Their biggest failure. How could Jacky tell him, without making him doubt her? How could she tell him about Ricky, that they’d failed---

“Jacky?” Elias’ voice hit her like a bucket of ice water. “You still there?”

“Sorry.” Jacky didn’t do that. Didn’t get distracted. It bothered her even as she tried to answer normally. “Got caught up in thought.”

“Anything you feel like sharing?” Elias knew it wasn’t like her.

“Yes.” Jacky made the decision after a moment’s consideration. She didn’t like the lying. Even if it was only omission. She could be upfront about the fact that she was holding back all she wanted, but it still felt wrong. Especially with Elias. She was deciding where to start---

---Matt caught her eye, tapping his purple and white Strider helmet. It was specialized, not standard issue with his War Master armor. Mason was trundling out of the cockpit access way, sealing his gold armored Scout helmet to his armor. It was time to go.

“But later. I have to go to the general channel.” Jacky switched, and new voices assailed her ears.

“…sir. We’re prepped for the deployment.” Matt was in full mission mode, his voice steely professionalism.

“Alright everyone.” MONTAGUE answered cheerily. “You know your roles. Let’s go.”

The dropship bay doors shot open, revealing the city of Patience below them. Buildings flashed by in a blur of grey and black. Whitefall was an outer colony, but the capital city was impressive enough. True, it was hardly a sprawling megacity like some of the ones on Earth, but it had a few sky scrapers and a population in the tens of millions. As they slowed, closing on the drop zone, Jacky could pick out individual citizens, necks craning to catch a glimpse of the Pelicans. Granite’s dropship came in high, settling onto their tail, and then both craft rotated thrusters, dropping diagonally. Forward momentum sent them diving towards the drop zone, smoothly dropping their remaining altitude.

“Brace.” Matt’s order came a moment before the thrusters fired, strongly. Jacky was already ready, one red-and-yellow gauntlet wrapped around an overhead railing. The dropships’ engine nacelle rotated nearly fully vertical, belching flame. In an instant, the Pelican slammed to a halt, hovering over a wide parking lot filled with dump trucks and commuter sedans. A lone fast rope tumbled to the ground out of the back of Granite’s troop bay; Jacky clutched the MA5B Assault Rifle in her hands, tempted to switch it for the M90 shotgun on her back.

“Gold Team,” Matt’s voice didn’t raise, lower, or show any emotion at all besides cool authority. “Deploy.”

Years of training and experience, years of fighting alongside her team, kicked in without conscious thought. Jacky and Mason didn’t stop and think about Matt’s orders, they simply did. They moved seamlessly, silently, automatically. Jacky leapt from the open troop bay, landing in a crouch besides a sedan---probably a construction worker’s, parked there over the weekend. The concrete buckled beneath her boots, crushed from the impact, spraying a plume of rock and gravel. The sedan rocked back and forth under the shockwave, and before it even finished the first shake, Jacky was moving. All of Gold was moving. They were a team, functioning on a fundamental, shared connection.