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)
 * Zoey 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

An artificial intelligence talked to a mercenary.

"Four million credits," Diana said, raising a quartet of extended holographic fingers and wiggling them up at her partner's face. "Four million credits."

Simon-G294, known to most of the underworld's criminal community as Mordred, looked away from the holo-display on the grimy table and did a quick scan of the sparsely populated bar, a dingy little dive on the even dingier Outer Colony world of New Ceylon. Still all human patrons. That was good. The Path Walkers probably wouldn't hire "filth" to do their job for them, which mean that no two-bit losers would think to try and claim the seven-figure bounty they'd placed on his head.

"We have four million credits," Diana continued cheerfully. "That's one million times four. Four times one million. Four one millions--"

"Alright, I get the picture," Simon groaned, reaching for the mug of dull, flavorless beer he'd taken from the bartender. "Yeah, we had a good haul. Not that it matters now."

"Oh, but it matters a whole lot," Diana said, throwing a lock of blond hair over her digital shoulder with a toss of her head. "We are rich, dumbass. Richer than any of the losers we normally have to hang out with. Richer than just about anyone in our line of work. Rich, rich, rich." She was practically doing a little dance on the table, her legs making tiny skipping movements as she talked.

"What's got you in such a good mood?" Simon demanded, choking down the foul-tasting beer in a single gulp. He wiped the murky liquid off his chin with his left hand or, to be more precise, the skeletal prosthetic that had replaced his entire left arm. "Usually you're bitching that we haven't gotten enough out of the last job."

"Well, usually we aren't sitting pretty on four million credits," Diana informed him. "Now we are. Get the difference, dumbass?"

"I'll tell you the difference I'm getting," Simon growled. "Remember that cute little list of people the Fallen used to have? You know, the ones they were paying money to have killed? Well, the Path Walkers have taken over that little corner of the assassination market, and guess what? My name's on that list now. And that's not even taking the fact that the UNSC knows I'm alive now into account. So, my life was in the shitter before we signed on with Kahn, and now someone just came and flushed it for good measure."

"But you've been flushed down the shitter with four million credits for the trouble."

"Great. The only thing I should be thinking of using it for is bribing the hit squad ONI's going to send our way the minute they get a fix on where we are, which, seeing how wonderfully everything else has been going, will probably be in a matter of hours."

Diana snorted. "Relax, dumbass. I think the UNSC and its Union buddies are going to be a little distracted for a while. Just check out the news."

Simon glanced over at the bar's cracked broadcasting screen, which showed a grim-faced news anchor indicating a glowing star chart. The words Naval Engagements on Outer Rim were emblazoned below him.

"More reports of Interspecies Union naval forces engaging ships belonging to the Path Walker faction are coming in from the frontier," the anchor was saying. "UNSC officials have confirmed that additional warships are being contributed to the Union's joint navies to bolster its ability to maintain the security of frontier colonies."

"See?" said Diana, waving a slender, holographic hand at the screen. "That little war you started should help keep them from worrying about little old you. Stop worrying so much."

"Would you shut up about that?" Simon put his head in his hands. "I didn't start that war, okay? Kahn and I just got caught in the crossfire, Nothing more, nothing less."

"Don't be so modest," Diana mocked. "I think having some guys dressed up as a Spartan and an ODST breaking into their compound and kidnapping one of their friends helped kick things off. Don't let those UNSC goons take all the credit."

"I said shut up," Simon snarled through gritted teeth. "It was just a job! I wasn't looking for trouble with the UNSC!"

"Then explain that suit of Spartan armor we've got stashed back at the apartment," Diana told him with a smirk. "That's another thing you're not taking credit for: offing that Spartan guy. I mean, you couldn't have done it without me, but for you it's still pretty impressive."

"Do you want me to turn you the fuck off?" Simon was seriously getting angry now, and not just at Diana. He could still remember the chaos back in that forest, how they'd isolated that Spartan who'd come after them, confused him with holo-drones, the way his energy sword had felt as he slashed the super soldier's head off...

''He didn't look any older than me. Just another kid, another pawn in their stupid game. That could have been Terrence. Or Mary. Or Cassandra...''

Simon squeezed his eyes shut until they hurt. Anything to take his mind off everything that had happened over the course of the past week. He downed the last of his drink, choking down the foul liquid in the hopes that it would kill all the stupid feelings and memories that were churning around inside him.

''I'm done with all this guilt shit. That's what I told Tuka, right? All this crap that happens around me, it's not like it's all my fault. I don't need to go running back to the Visag keep with my tail between my legs just because a job went south. Same with Cassandra. She can keep all that peaceful living stuff to herself. It's not who I am. It's not who I'm supposed to be.''

But as many times as he repeated those lines to himself, the guilts and doubts just wouldn't go away. He'd been doing a lot of unwanted thinking over the past few days, reliving a hell of a lot of old memories that he'd thought he'd buried a long time ago. And the real kicker was that it all boiled down to one thing.

''Yeah, I've lived a pretty shitty life, and it sure as hell isn't getting any better. What the hell's the point of killing for money if all I ever use it for is keeping me going to the next day? I'm barely eighteen and I've gone to pretty much ever extreme there is to go, and what do I have to show for it? A price on my head, a smart-ass AI, and a body that's falling apart faster by the day.''

He reached his organic hand into a pouch on his battered Semi-Powered Infiltration armor and pulled out a small yellow capsule, which he crushed between his teeth. The gold-colored liquid inside tasted even worse than his beer, but he choked it down anyway. He couldn't be too careful these days. The strange, Sanghelios-based disease that had been steadily attacking his lungs for the past two years had been getting worse than ever over the last couple of months. If he went a day or even too many hours without taking him one of the capsules, he could end up on the ground, unable to breath and spitting out his own blood.

That's where that four million's really going, he thought numbly as the burning fluid wound its way down his throat. Buying more of the damn meds from Syndicate dealers.

More and more lately, he'd been doing the unthinkable and considering the option of taking his old friend Tuka 'Refum up on his offer to return to the Visag keep on Sanghelios. The kaidon there, Roni 'Visag, had once saved him from a savage Brute slave camp and brought him back to the keep, where he'd been allowed to study the art of wielding an energy sword as if he were a young Sangheili warrior. Although he'd been loath to admit it then, now Simon looked back on the period as one of the best times in his life, free of war or fear or death, the three things that had dominated the rest of his life. And yet he hadn't been able to handle it. He'd walked away from the keep because he simply couldn't adjust to such a secluded, peaceful life, and if he went back now, he'd just be a drain on the keep's finances, with his constant need for the pills to keep his disease in check. Besides, Tuka had already risked too much in letting him go after the Path Walker disaster; the last thing he needed was for a wanted criminal to show up at his adoptive home seeking shelter.

Another option would be to seek out his former Gamma Company comrade, Cassandra-G006, and try to find peace with her. He'd been responsible for nearly everything that had ever happened to her, from the death of her squad to her separation from the rest of their Spartan brethren, and yet she'd chosen to forgive him, remain his friend, and repeatedly extend the offer of escaping the hellish world of crime and mercenary jobs that he dwelled in now. That was but one of many things about her that Simon would never understand.

''But you know what happens to people who get close to you like that, right Simon? How'd the last person who told you she loved you end up?''

At the end of the day, he couldn't bring himself to just come out and tell Cassandra that deep down he wanted to be more than friends, had wanted that since they'd been together in Gamma Company. They both knew it, had come close to making that a reality during their brief, frigid exile together on Hekate, but in the end nothing had come of it. They'd been reunited for a brief time a few months back, but now Cassandra had gone back to the clinic she worked in back in Sangheili space, putting her peerless medical talents to the non-violent use she'd always wanted to use them for. There wasn't a chance in hell that Simon would go to her and risk bringing either the Path Walkers or UNSC down on her. He'd ruined her life enough times already.

''So you're on your own for this one. Deal with it. You're always on your own when things go to shit. This time isn't any different.''

"Well, if you're going to be all mopey about it, then I guess I'm the one who gets the credit," Diana was saying. "I, Diana, the greatest construct in the history of artificial intelligence, single-handedly pissed off the Path Walkers and kicked off an interstellar war, giving you meatbags something new to kill each other over. Oh, and I killed a big, bad Spartan while I was at it."

She took a deep bow. "Bask in my superior power and intellect, meatbag."

Simon glared at her over the rim of his mug. "Just power down already. You're being even more of a miserable bitch than usual."

She just shrugged. "I don't see why you meatbags get so busted up over just a hundred thousand or so deaths. It's not like you guys have much to live for anyway."

"I'm serious. Shut the hell up."

"Since when do you care so much about this stuff anyway? Whatever happened to the whole looking out for number one gig you had going on for a while there?"

Simon bristled, but he had to admit she had a point. "Just because I stuck my neck out a few times..."

"Let's see," Diana began counting off on her fingers. "Saving Doc back on the asteroid, that nearly got us killed; saving her from those Brutes on Hekate, that got you thrown in a slave camp; that disaster over Famul, our shuttle got blown to kingdom come... yeah, for someone who says he only cares about himself, you've got a real bad habit of getting all noble at the worst possible times."

Simon resisted the overwhelming urge to smash the holo-pad. Diana, who was projecting from where she was slotted into his prosthetic arm, would just keep chattering through the speakers he'd unwisely grafted into his armor. He was just about to eject her from the armor when a voice interrupted them.

"Mordred!"

Simon whirled to see a girl, probably a year or so younger than him, darting over to his table. She wore the working overalls that were all the rage amongst the colonists on New Ceylon along with a white shirt that was covered in grease stains. Her thin, pointed face bore similar stains, and her straw-colored hair had been pulled back to keep it out of her eyes.

With a start, Simon instinctively reached for the sidearm strapped to his leg armor. The girl wasn't carrying a weapon, but she could have any manner of lethal instruments hidden in her overall's pockets. Worse, she might just be a distraction, something to get in his way while her accomplices lined up their shots at him. His assault rifle was leaning against the table: within reach, but plenty far away if someone opened fire on him.

The girl stopped dead when she realized he had a gun trained on her. A few heads had turned, but most of the patrons knew enough about New Ceylon to mind their own business about things like this.

"Keep your hands where I can see them," he warned her quietly. "What the hell are you doing, yelling my name out for the whole damn world to hear?"

Rather than looking afraid, she just looked a little hurt. "Don't you remember me? Zoey? From Famul?"

Simon blinked, thinking hard. Finally it came to him. "Yeah, I remember you. The slave girl." That had been just one incident amongst many on that shitty trip.

He lowered the pistol, and the girl--Zoey--moved closer. "You're jumpy," she said, moving to sit across from him in his booth.

"Not being that way gets you killed in my line of work," Simon told her coldly. He was still shaken by her sudden appearance. "What the hell are you doing here? I gave you cash back on Famul didn't I? Why didn't you get back to that rich father you said you had on Earth?" Now that she'd come back to remind him, he'd been hoping to get something out of that particular good deed once she got back to her family. Quite disappointing.

"I got back to UNSC space as quick as I could," Zoey assured him. "But the money you gave me was only enough to get me as far as this place."

"So why didn't you just call your family from here?" asked Simon, exasperated. He had a lot bigger issues to worry about than some charity case who thought they were friends.

Zoey looked away. "You know how hard it is to get an encrypted call done around here?" she asked. "I could do it through local channels, but now I'm never sure who's not listening in."

She looked back at him, and Simon saw both fear and determination in her eyes. "I'm never going back into slavery. Ever."

"Good for you," chimed in Diana. "The dumbass here learned that the hard way, and he had it way worse than you did."

She turned back to Simon. "Now tell me, how was it that you got stuck in those slave pits? Didn't I just remind you?"

"Oh, you've got that cute AI with you still!" said Zoey, instantly brightening.

Simon flinched at her use of the term "cute"--it was one of many words that could instantly make him nauseous if it wasn't being used sarcastically. Now he was remembering how quickly Zoey's attitude had gotten on his nerves back on Famul. Rescue her from slavery and get her out of harm's way, and she was possibly the most cheerful person he had ever met.

Having a normal, peaceful childhood will do that to a person, won't it?

Remarkably, Diana didn't take offense. Instead she curtsied and smirked up at Simon. "Well, at least someone appreciates the effort I put into this projection."

"Great," Simon muttered to Zoey. "She only likes you because you're a better stooge than I am."

Zoey just shrugged. "Pays to be nice to people. That's how I got a job here. Never worked in my life, but I sweet talked the bartender into letting me help around back."

Her familiarity bothered Simon in a way that was different from the way most people annoyed him. "Listen," he said. "Glad to see that you got off Famul alright, but I'm a little busy right now. Job problems, the war, all that heavy stuff."

"Well, why do you think I came over here?" Zoey demanded. "You're still a merc, right?"

"Well, yeah..."

"Back on Famul you said you were busy with something else, but you don't look so busy now. How 'bout giving me a lift to Earth now? I swear my dad will shell out enough money to keep you out of cash problems for years."

The very promise of all that wealth was enough to make Simon drool. Then his more rational side took over and began pointing out the two main problems with that plan.

The first: waltzing into the Inner Colonies and knocking on Earth's doorstep probably wasn't the brightest thing he could do right about now.

Second: there was something he'd had back on Famul, something very important that he didn't have now...

With his old Insurrectionist shuttle blown to hell, he had no way of actually getting Zoey anywhere, let alone Earth.

"Ah, shit," he muttered. Why can't anything ever be simple?

"What is it?" Zoey asked. "What's wrong."

Simon sighed. "Back on Famul, there was a shuttle that I owned. It had living quarters, a Slipspace drive, the works."

"And...?"

"It got blown sky high about a day after you got out."

"Oh..." Zoey looked crestfallen. "But you're the only merc around here I can trust!"

Simon laughed bitterly. "What the hell makes you think you can trust me?"

"Yeah," said Diana. "This guy's a nasty piece of work, let me tell you. Right, Simon? Like on Famul, when you could have handed that Tuka kid over to the chieftain like you agreed, but instead you decided to go back to helping him."

She shook her head. "It's a shame when mercenaries can't finish the jobs you agree to. But I did like the bit where you told Tuka it was all part of the plan anyway. That was a nice touch." Zoey looked confused. "Well, you did save me. Doesn't that count for something."

"Might," Simon said with a shrug, pointedly ignoring his partner. "Might not. I've got my days. But if I don't have a ship, what do you still need me for?"

"Like I said, you're the only merc around here I know I can trust. If you can get a ride for me, I'd like some security."

Simon leaned forward. "Now you're talking business. What kind of trouble would you be expecting?"

"Slavers, pirates, criminals," Zoey said with a shrug.

"So basically everyone on this planet," Simon noted wryly. "Do people around here know who you are?"

"No, but that doesn't mean they won't find out."

"If I book us a trip to Earth, we just need to make sure we don't shout it to the hills."

Zoey leaned forward eagerly. "So you'll help me?"

"Well yeah, if there's really going to be a payout at the end," Simon told her. "You're positive your dad'll cough up all this cash you're promising?"

"He's really generous," Zoey assured him. "Always has been."

"Then we've got a deal." Simon leaned back in his chair. "I'll snag us a ride out of here, we hit Earth, and then your dad pays me more credits than I could possibly imagine."

Of course, that's if and only if I don't get my head blown off by an ONI hit squad the second I set foot on the planet.

"Ooh," Diana teased. "There goes poor Zoey's inheritance."

"I'm sure Mordred and my father can reach an agreement," Zoey told her, oblivious to the sarcasm. "How long till you can get us out of here?"

Simon thought about it. They would definitely need people they could trust, which ruled out just about everyone on New Ceylon or even in the entirety of the frontier colonies for that matter. That left people he'd worked with before, which ruled out just about everyone else. Then an idea struck him.

"There's two guys I know," he said. "They were docked here a week ago, so if they're still here we can get going in under twelve hours. Otherwise, we're stuck here for a few days. Weeks even."

"So how long till you know?"

Simon reached for his helmet. "About two minutes. How do you feel about aliens?"

"Long as they're not trying to enslave me, I can handle them."

"Good." Simon donned the helmet and opened a radio channel. The only question now was whether or not the two people he was about to call would actually be happy to hear from him.

''Looks like I've been recruited. Again.''

Chapter Two: The Navy Man
"The sweep's finished for this city. Subject G006 has been observed and cleared for forcible removal in two days. Now all that remains is for me to make contact with Subject G294 to determine his suitability for the program and then I can move on to the next colony."

- Lieutenant Victor Santiago in a status report to Colonel James Ackerson regarding the recruitment of children for Gamma Company

Then

"Just wait in this room, sir, and I'll go find him."

That was what the nurse had told Victor Santiago nearly an hour ago, and he was starting to wonder if Constantinople's orphanage system was--for illusive reasons of their own--jerking his chain. Victor, his recruitment team, and the dozens of other recruitment teams scattered across UNSC space by the Office of Naval Intelligence in its search for candidates for the SPARTAN-III program's latest company had been presented with literally tens of thousands of dossiers pertaining to every human child matching the parameters set in place by the program's strict selection criteria. Victor had interviewed hundreds of young candidates, and to the best of his knowledge, most had been accepted by the program. By the time an officer like Victor came calling for an interview, the unwitting candidate had already passed nearly all of ONI's admittance markers.

Victor looked back down at the dossier displayed before him on his holo-tablet. This particular candidate--Subject G294--was one of the few that might actually be disqualified by his interview. Unlike most of the other children Victor had looked into, this one wasn't a war orphan, one who had lost everything to the Covenant fleets that were eating away at humanity's colonies on a daily basis. That marker--one that had been stressed during the selection of the Alpha and Beta batches--had been toned down as the Gamma search revealed less and less suitable candidates, but Victor's superiors still considered it important. The more hate the candidate could muster at an early age, the more they would be driven to excel in the grueling training process that was to come.

Subject G294 (Victor never thought of his subjects as anything but their numerical designations--it was best to be as impersonal as possible with them, especially since they were children) was an orphan, just not a war orphan. The kid had, if the orphanage's report was anything to go by, been pulled off the streets by Constantinople's police force after a feral dog had nearly ripped his throat out. They had determined that he'd been living as an urchin for nearly a year and had entered him into the orphanage system following a stint in the local emergency ward.

Victor frowned down at the dossier. The kid's--no, the subject's--injuries had come from more than just the dog attack. Included in the medical report were the findings of the doctors who had operated on him, which included badly healed fractures up and down his arms and legs, cracked ribs, and even an untreated cranial fracture that had thankfully not been life-threatening. Almost all of these injuries had been determined to have been inflicted over the course of the subject's entire life, which meant that he'd spent a good portion of his short life having the shit beaten out of him.

This could go both ways, Victor thought, running a finger down the report. Either the kid, sorry, the subject winds up motivated by all this crap, or he's a traumatized wreck who isn't good for anything.

Either way, Victor was getting impatient. He was just about to contact one of his subordinates to see if there actually was a Subject G294 to interview when the door to the meeting room slid open and the nurse escorted a small child in.

"I'm very sorry, sir," she said. "He goes off places by himself and it always takes us forever to find him."

"You should install a surveillance system..." Victor's mouth said, accompanied by a practiced, artificial laugh. In the meantime, Victor himself was looking over the subject he'd been waiting for.

The subject was small, even for a six year old. Although he wore the same kinds of well-fit clothing that Victor had seen all the other orphans wearing on his way in, Subject G294 bore patches of dirt on his skin and body that made him seem inherently grimy, as if the caretakers at the orphanage hadn't quite been able to rub the filth of the streets off of him. His tangled black hair was streaked with grime, and his gray eyes peered out of his head as if they belonged to some animal gazing out from its cave at an intruder. Apart from the dirt, his face bore at least two recent-looking bruises, along with some mild cuts and scrapes.

"I'll just leave you two alone then?" the nurse asked.

"Just wait outside," Victor told her. "This won't take long."

The filthy subject slid into a chair across from him, and Victor waited for him to say something. Most of the other children had been confused about his uniform, wondering why a navy man would want to talk to dregs like them. This one just stared at him for several moments before shrugging and resting his dirty sleeves on the polished conference table.

"You got any food?" he asked, gazing up at the tall adult with those narrowed, sunken eyes.

Victor hesitated. This was a strange way to open a conversation, even for a kid. He pulled a ration bar out of his pocket and slid it across the table. Subject G294 snatched it up and, to Victor's surprise, slipped it into his own pocket rather than eating it.

"What do you plan to do with it?" Victor asked, intrigued in spite of himself. G294 was the first of his subjects to truly surprise him right off the bat.

G294 simply shrugged and continued to stare at him with undisguised suspicion. Victor cleared his throat and launched into his well-rehearsed recruitment pitch.

"You don't really have much here, do you?" he asked, indicating the subject's threadbare hand-me-downs. "You're just a ward of this colony, and unless you've made some friends here, you don't have anyone who cares whether you're alive or dead. But the United Nations Space Command--the people I work for--can change all that." In a colony system filled with military propaganda messages, it was amazing how well small children responded to the package Victor was laying out.

Subject G294 just shrugged again, his face a study in bored indifference. "No one cares about me," he said with a startling lack of any sort of self pity or indignation. "No one's ever cared about me."

"We can change that," Victor assured him. "We can make you into someone who means something. Someone who protects people. Someone who kills monsters."

The subject's eyes narrowed even more as he absorbed this new information. It was all Victor gave most of his subjects--particularly the ones who weren't war orphans--but it was generally enough to hook them enough to sign on.

After nearly a full minute of contemplation, G294 jammed his fist up under his chin and cocked his head. "Will I get to leave here?" he asked.

"Yes. You won't be seeing this place ever again," Victor assured him, though a tiny part of him made him hate himself for not giving the reason why the subject would never be returning.

"Good." Something new flashed in G294's eyes, but Victor couldn't quite place what it was. "I hate this place."

Victor stood to go. His datapad had recorded everything: the conversation, the facial quirks, even the subject's vital signs. All he had to do now was turn in his report and wait for further instructions. What happened to Subject G294 now was no longer his concern.

"You'll hear from us soon," he said as he turned to leave.

Congratulations, kid, his mind whispered, unbidden. Looks like you've been recruited.

Chapter Three: The Target
"Humanity now faces two threats: those from without and those from within. If we make the mistake of ignoring one in favor of the other, we risk the peace and stability we have fought so hard to maintain over the last two decades. This man, David Kahn, is a symbol of the threat from within, and we cannot allow his activities to continue. We will apprehend him and bring him to justice, and we will do it with the same level of dedication and effectiveness that our comrades fight with against the alien menace. There can and will be no mistakes or hesitation in this mission."

- Captain Yuri Rosch addressing members of the newly formed Task Force Watts.

Now

"Green team, in position. Visual contact with Blue team established."

"This is Blue team, affirmative. Confirmed contact with Green team."

"Red team moving to Alpha position. Requesting cover from Green team."

"Red team, this is Green team, we have visual across Alpha position. Cover confirmed."

"Yellow team advancing to Beta position. You got us, Blue?"

"Yellow team, this is Blue team. Cover confirmed."

They all moved with drilled efficiency, their combat armor blending perfectly into the darkened streets; black on black. Their armored feet fell silently on the rooftops, streets, and alleys as they moved to their assigned positions. If light from the moon and stars overhead were seen to gleam off of a visor or silenced gun barrel, it was quickly extinguished with a subtle shift of a gauntlet or tilt of a head.

These Marines had a target, and nothing was going to keep them from it.

Red team, a full platoon of thirty battle-hardened Orbital Drop Shock Troopers, moved in a slow, scattered formation hugging either side of the wide street leading up to the squat, two-story apartment complex. They'd studied its layout for hours before the assault had been launched, and now they scanned its many doors and windows for any sign that their target knew they were coming.

Their helmet radios crackled, and a clipped voice ordered, "Red team, divide up by squads, as planned. One for the lobby, two for sweeping the building."

Red team's lieutenant flashed a series of hand signs to his ODSTs, and they began arranging themselves to match their orders. One ODST noticed a ragged-looking homeless man staring up at him from an alley. He drew a small pistol from his belt and fired a tranquilizer into the bum's chest, knocking him out before he had a chance to say a word.

"Yellow team, form a perimeter," the voice continued. "Take up your designated positions and don't let anyone in or out of that building."

Unseen in the alleys around the apartment complex and the surrounding neighborhood, Yellow team's commandos fanned out to surround their target. Above them, the six sniper-spotter teams that were Green team angled their sniper rifles to target strategic areas across the building's surface; on the roofs facing the other side, Blue team did the same.

"All teams," the voice said, its tone utterly calm. "Launch assault in thirty seconds, on my mark..."



The apartment's doors were locked and every light in the lobby was extinguished when Red team moved in. A quick application of a spoofer device overrode the building's simple anti-theft systems, letting the entire platoon slip in without so much as a whisper of an alarm. The ODSTs scanned the darkened lobby with their weapons, their helmets' infrared sensors giving them a clear view of the entire room.

"Alright, Besser, take your squad up to the second floor," Red team's lieutenant ordered. "Start with the target room, and stay alert. Rajeev, your boys have this floor; Chung, stay with me."

The three squads split off immediately, with two vanishing into the complex's darkened hallways and the third spreading out across the lobby.

"Be ready to assist the others if they find the target," the lieutenant ordered. He signaled Sergeant Chung. "Chung, get over to the desk and dig up what you can on the target from their computers. Remember, Room 457."

Chung and two of his ODSTs approached the lobby desk and slid behind it, taking care to watch for booby traps. Just because their target wasn't supposed to know they were coming didn't mean he didn't.

"Shouldn't there be a receptionist?" one of the men asked nervously over the team's helmet links.

"Tough neighborhood," replied Sergeant Chung. "They've probably lost guys to shootings here before."

The squad's technician carefully slid a spoofer onto the desk's computer terminal. "Just gimme a sec," she muttered. "Let's see what this asshole's alias is."

Across the lobby, Red team's lieutenant swept the room with his rifle for what felt like the fiftieth time in less than a minute. He and his men had trained for lethal operations just like this one; hell, they'd pulled off more than their fair share real ops almost exactly like this one. So why was he so nervous?

"Besser, how we doing?" he asked, hoping his hair-rasing apprehension wasn't present in his voice.

"At the target room now, sir," Sergeant Besser reported. The sergeant's voice was tight. "No signs of trouble. We have one confirmed heat signature in there, and at this range it'd have to be a damn good decoy."

"Copy that. Stay on your toes and breach."

"Understood. You got us, Green?"

"This is Green; we have a team pointed right at the bastard's window. You're covered."

"Copy. Breaching in five..."



On the second floor, Sergeant Besser nodded to his point man. The burly ODST primed his combat shotgun as another man slipped a spoofer on the door. A moment later, a light above the door handle flashed green. It had been unlocked.

"Alright, go now!" Besser ordered. The door was tugged open and the point man ducked inside. Every ODST in the squad froze, waiting for the gunfire to start, but the doorway remained silent.

"Clear," the point man whispered. "I've got a solid heat signature in the bedroom; looks like he's sleeping."

"Copy that," Besser hissed back. They didn't need to whisper with their helmet's shielding their every word, but the tension was getting to him. It was getting to all of them.

"Queens, Andreson, get your tranqs ready," Besser ordered. "Everyone else, stick to lethal rounds. He so much as twitches the wrong direction, you waste him."

The rest of the squad moved into the apartment. It was a testament to their years of grueling training that ten armored Marines could enter through such a small doorway without making a sound. They followed the point man to the bedroom door, waited for his signal, then tensed. The point man took a breath, readied his shotgun, and kicked the door in.

It folded under his armored boot, and then he was in with the whole squad, all pretenses of stealth abandoned. Queens and Andreson each pumped a tranquilizer into the man who was lying on the bed, covered only by a small blanket. As the squad scanned the room for any sort of traps or weapons, Besser lunged forward and hauled their target up by his collar.

The next moment passed by very slowly for Sergeant Besser. The first thing he saw as he stared down at his target was a thin, balding man with a pockmarked face and terrified eyes. His brain registered confusion: was this really the guy they were after? Then his eyes traveled down to the man's shirt and saw the dirty, apartment uniform he was wearing. And then he knew.

"It's not him," he hissed. Shoving away the blanket, he saw that the man's hands had been cuffed behind his back. "We've been had."

Then he saw the odd metal lump strapped to the man's chest.

"Shit!" he barked to his squad. "He's rigged! Cover, cover, cover!"

The squad stumbled over each other in their haste to move, and as they collided and swore at each other, the bedroom's window tinkled four times. Three of the ODSTs fell instantly, while a fourth cried out and grabbed at his neck. Sergeant Besser looked up in time to see Queens collapse, his tinted helmet visor a spiderweb of cracks.



Red team's lieutenant's heart raced as Sergeant Besser yelled over the helmet link, "We're under fire! From the outside! Get some goddamn cover!"

"Say again, sergeant?" the lieutenant demanded. "Where's the target?"

"He's not here!" Besser's voice sounded as if he were on the verge of a breakdown. "The guy in the room... he's one of the hotel staff! I've got three KIA... dammnit, make that four! What the hell? Where's Green team?"

The lieutenant immediately opened a force wide channel. "Green team, what's going on out there?"

No response.

"Green team, I say again, what the hell is going on out there?"

Still nothing. Chung's squad had all stopped what they were doing to scan the room again, moving away from the front door and out of the potential line of fire. Finally, the lieutenant's radio crackled.

"This is Corporal Ethers," a man's voice yelled over the radio. "The rest of my team isn't picking up. Nothing from Lieutenant Young! I don't know... ah!"

The voice fell silent, and Red's lieutenant knew exactly why.

"Green is down," he yelled into the force's channel. "I repeat, Green is down. Blue team, possible enemy sniper out there!"

Over at the reception desk, Sergeant Chung motioned the two ODSTs with him. "Take cover!"

But for them, it was too late. The three Marines hadn't even moved a foot when the improvised explosive devices hidden within the desk's wood paneling went off, tearing the ODSTs into shredded meat and sending the rest of the squad sprawling to the tiled floor.



Task Force Watts had prepared dozens of contingency plans before launching the operation. Unfortunately, none of those contingencies had anticipated that half the strike force would be wiped out before even laying eyes on the target.

The sniper pairs of Blue team were already on the move, relocating and scanning Green team's positions to find the slumped corpses of its own sniper pairs where the living had been only moments before. And as they moved and sprinted across the rooftops, they began dropping too.

The bullets came silently, soaring through the gentle night air to find their targets in visors or necks. Blue's lieutenant was one of the first to fall, the side of his throat slashed by a high caliber round. He continued whispering orders to his men until more shots brought down the ODSTs with him and left him to slip into fatal unconsciousness alone. Those not killed outright threw themselves desperately behind cover, trying to connect with what was left of their team as the body count rose by the second.

Yellow team, spread out across a labyrinth of streets and alleys, struggled to get a hold of the situation without exposing themselves to the invisible killer who was slaughtering the strike force. Their lieutenant listened desperately for the radio traffic of what was left of Red and Blue teams, doing his best to gage some sort of location for their target. Finally, he got a lead from the last moments of one of the Blue snipers.

"I have visual! One guy, on top of building 4B! He's on the--"

Yellow's lieutenant checked his helmet map and gestured to the squad with him. "4B! Move your asses!"

They smashed through the door of building 4b--a small shop--ignoring the alarms as they raced up the stairs and sprinted for the roof access. The point man darted out first, dropping to his knees and beginning a scan of the dark rooftop. The man behind him didn't wait for his signal and continued his pelting run... only to have a high caliber bullet punch through his helmet and drop him like a stone.

The point man turned in time to see a dark figure in armor discard a long rifle and pull a sidearm from his waist. He tried to bring his rifle around, but the attacker punched two silenced bullets through his visor before charging for the roof access.

The ODSTs had been drilled endlessly on taking down larger, stronger opponents. They had to, what with the endless number of hostile aliens they were tasked with taking down. But this assailant moved fast, darting between them and delivering fast, accurate punches or kicks that more often than not shattered skulls or spines. One ODST stepped in too close, only to have her legs shot out from under her. Discarding his empty pistol, the attacker grabbed the crippled Marine and relieved her of her own sidearm while using her body as a shield against what was left of her squad.

The ODSTs were astonished to see that their opponent was wearing armor identical to theirs. Faceless behind his own ODST-style helmet, their attacker unflinchingly killed two more as they struggled to shoot around their still-living comrade. As the survivors moved to surround him, one desperately tugged out a grenade and threw it at him.

Breaking his prisoner's neck in an instant, the armored figure stepped to the side and snatched the live grenade out of the air. In the next, he lashed out at the nearest ODST, punching the grenade into the man's armor and sending him stumbling off the roof with a muffled cry. The grenade detonated halfway to the ground.

Yellow team's lieutenant suddenly found himself visor to visor with the dark-armored killer. He reached for his combat knife, but a savage blow to the neck crushed his windpipe and sent him slipping to his knees, gagging on his own saliva.

The last ODST looked around and realized he was the only one left. He stumbled backwards, tripping on his own feet and falling to the blood-slicked rooftop.

"You... you..." he gabbled, scrabbling around for his fallen weapon. "You're not human!"

The armored figure shrugged and shot him dead. It turned its visor back on the lieutenant, who was still on his knees.

You had to hand it to the ODSTs, the figure noted. They were tough sons--and daughters--of bitches. The lieutenant was fumbling for his sidearm in spite of his smashed throat. The armored figure gave him a second to do so, then gunned him down as well.

The UNSC's elite shock troops were spread out across the rooftop in a macabre diorama, their darkened combat armor stained with the same blood that was steadily spreading across the rooftop.

The armored figure paused and quickly scanned the area for snipers before going to retrieve his fallen rifle. As it did, it raised its free hand to its helmet and opened a secure channel.

"I've thinned them out," he reported in a calm, gravelly voice. "Send your boys in and start shooting."



Yellow team's two remaining squads were still keeping to their tight alleys, trying to get in contact with their dead teammates. The night air was now filled with the screams of panicking civilians, as the apartment owners who had been roused by the lobby explosion were now finding armored special forces between them and their exit. The Red team survivors were struggling to maintain their positions within the apartment complex while fending off the terrified newcomers. Red's lieutenant was yelling into his helmet radio, practically demanding evacuation from his superiors.

Just as one of Yellow's surviving sergeants had decided to risk moving in to link up with Red team, the sound of electric engines and squealing tires filled the air. The ODSTs looked up in time to see two civilian vans pull up in front of their alley as even more vehicles streamed past them. Figures wearing everything from body armor to tank tops and brandishing all manner of firearms spilled out, and suddenly the ODSTs had much more to worry about than a phantom sniper.



David Kahn, widely known as the most lethal mercenary in the galaxy's underworld community, slid into a small alcove and gazed down at the destruction unfolding below him. With his reconnaissance data to guide them, the legions of gangs in New Madrigal knew exactly where the ODSTs were, and they were rolling out in force to put an end to the UNSC intrusion. Yellow team was already pinned down in the alleys, and even more trucks were moving to surround the apartment complex that was now held by a besieged Red team.

It had all come together masterfully, Kahn decided. He'd spent close to three days hidden on these rooftops, watching as burly "civilians" scoped out the apartment. He'd memorized the layout of nearly the entire district as he'd planted subtle surveillance devices across the roofs and walls; perfect for knowing exactly where the sniper teams were setting up. He'd even managed to subdue the apartment's receptionist and move the man up to his room--along with a mock "explosive" to keep him still--without attracting attention. And now, with over half the strike team dead and the rest taking on New Madrigal's entire criminal element, everything was paying dividends.

He enjoyed a moment of professional pride as he reflected on how he'd used the UNSC task force sent to kill him as a means to complete yet another contract. The Syndicate, the galaxy's pre-eminent criminal empire, had been trying to bring New Madrigal under its influence for over half a decade now. But a colony founded primarily by independence-minded ex-Insurrectionists hadn't been about to just roll over and let some off-world group muscle in on their criminal operations. So Kahn had been called in to start a war.

And the UNSC troops had been exactly the kind of trigger he'd needed.

The firefights were still raging. The ODSTs now had suitable outlets for their fear and anger, and they were cutting the gangs down by the dozens. Yellow team had already pushed its way out of the alleys and was now coordinating fire down the street from behind commandeered trucks. Red team had managed to successfully get the civilians into cover and was now blazing away at the uncoordinated criminals from the second floor.

Yes, the ODSTs would certainly give much more than they got. Kahn wouldn't be surprised in the slightest if they managed to walk out of this wildfire alive.

But that wouldn't stop the gangs. Now that they were all out in force, it was only a matter of time before they forgot about the UNSC and turned on each other like rabid dogs.

For a moment, Kahn caught himself frowning. New Madrigal was about to be consumed by gang violence, and the body count was going to be high. The bodies in that pile wouldn't all belong to the gangs or UNSC. Kahn didn't feel much for the ODSTs he'd just killed--they'd known the score when they'd come after him--but he couldn't help but wonder how responsible he'd be for the civilians who were about to die in the crossfire.

I'm getting too old, he thought, shaking his helmeted head. Old and soft.

He wondered if that cunning little bastard Mordred had been caught up by the UNSC or Path Walkers yet, then decided it wasn't any of his business. Like the ODSTs, Mordred had known the score back when he'd signed on to kidnap a Path Walker.

The fighting was getting closer, and Kahn knew it was time to move. The ODSTs might have been able to know he wasn't with them, but the gangs might not be able to tell the difference between him and the shock troopers they were fighting.



The sounds of gunfire were spreading across town, and Doctor Terrence Stern was getting worried.

"Get the windows sealed," he ordered his nurses, who were in the midst of locking down the clinic they'd set up in downtown New Madrigal. "And start making calls. See if you can get a few freelancers down here to cover us, long as they don't charge too much for it."

"We should have stayed on Cordial Harmony," one nurse muttered, sliding a clip into his pistol. "Figures the Fallen get smashed the minute we get the hell out of there."

"Just get to it," Terrence snapped. "I want this place locked up tight by the time the patients start arriving."

"We can't just wait for patients," said a quiet voice behind him. "We'll need to go out there and get the people who can't make it themselves."

"We don't have a choice," Terrence said, rounding on his best medical technician. "I'm not sending anyone out there into that mess, least of all you."

"It doesn't matter." She hefted an assault rifle. "I'm going out there."

"Cassandra," Terrence said with exasperation. "I can't let you go now. We'll be understaffed as it is once the casualties start arriving, and I'll need every gun we can get if the gangs try taking over here."

"Don't worry." Cassandra-G006, ex-SPARTAN-III and currently the best medic on New Madrigal, slid a small flak jacket over her thin frame. "I already made a call. Nimue's setting up nearby; she'll cover the clinic."

"Oh," Terrence said as Cassandra headed for the door. "Well I guess we don't have anything to worry about, do we?"

"We'll be fine," she said over her shoulder as she grabbed her medical bag. "But there are people out there who need us."

"Yes," Terrence muttered. "Yes there are."

He rounded on the rest of his staff. "You heard her, didn't you? There are people who need us."

He slipped a handgun into his pocket. "So let's practice some medicine."

Chapter Four: First Kill
The fire raced up the sides of the house, licking greedily at the walls and roof as it steadily consumed everything within. The woods surrounding the modest dwelling were lit brightly by the conflagration, as the deathly light from the fire punched through the night's darkness like an infant sun.

Silhouetted by the flames, a lone man stood before his burning home, throwing his hands up and pacing as if his mind couldn't fathom what was going on. His pace was staggered and jerky; he was drunk enough to have impaired movement, though not nearly enough to send him toppling into the fire. He was dressed only in a pair of jeans and a T-shirt, which had been singed by the flames before he could get out.

And huddled against a tree nearly fifty yards away, the man's son peered down the scope of a hunting rifle as the crosshairs danced around his father's darkened crown.

''One shot. I only get one shot.''

If he missed, it was over. His father would run and be gone and soon he would realize just who had started the fire. And then he would kill the boy, just like he had killed Mother.

But that wasn't going to happen. The boy was certain of that, because he was going to make this shot. It wasn't a possibility. It wasn't a necessity.

It was an absolute.

Just him and his father, alone outside the burning corpse of a home that, as far as the boy was concerned, had died a year ago when the man who had made his life a living hell had murdered the only thing in the world he had ever loved.

Even at thirteen, the boy named Hector Thornhill's eyes had been narrowed by years of intense, focused hatred for the man he was about to kill. One of them was newly blackened--the last of many gifts his father had imparted during his drunken rages. Even now, his arms ached from holding the rifle, and not because of its weight; they, too, were covered in scrapes and bruises.

''But no more. You hear me? No more.''

But he knew his father couldn't hear him, and he liked it that way. This was how it should be. All that built up pain and grief and rage would be released with this one shot. That was the plan, the one that Hector had built up in the weeks and months after his father's military friends had gotten him off at the trial.

War hero. That's what his father was. A hero. That's what heroes did. They killed their wives for getting between them and their sons.

So now his father would die like a hero--heroically shot through the head before his burning house.

Hector's heart was racing, but his mind was completely at ease. There was no hesitation as he sighted his father's head within the scope. This was how things were meant to be. Just him, a rifle and his father.

There was no point waiting around any more, and Hector knew that he had to prove to himself that he meant how he thought and felt. So he sighted one last time, took a breath, and pulled the trigger.

Teaching him how to handle the rifle had been the only thing his father had ever done for him. And it turned out to be his worst mistake.

The bullet soared true, and Hector's father just collapsed like a puppet with its strings cut. No cry of pain, no squirting blood. Just a silent fall to the smoldering ground in front of the bonfire that had once been a house.

Hector walked towards the flames and the body, and he found that he'd been right. He felt nothing now, not pain or fear or regret. The sorrow and hate was gone as well, transported by the bullet into the man who'd caused it all. There was only the future, and what he'd make of himself now that he was free.

He reached the body, feeling the heat of the fire on his cheeks as he stared down at the corpse of the man who had spent the past eight years terrorizing him. He raised the rifle again, but found he didn't really want to pull the trigger. There was no longer any reason to.

For all his medals and friends and reputation, his father was now just a corpse in the dirt. In a year, no one would care that he'd ever even existed.

And Hector knew that he would never let that happen to him.

He tossed the rifle into the burning house and turned away. He had a long walk ahead of him before he reached the settlement.

He was quite the brave boy, getting out of there alive after bandits had murdered his father.

Chapter Five: Getting a Ride
"A prime example of the despicable criminal elements that have sprung up in the aftermath of the Schism and the Fallen insurgency, he is nonetheless a cunning and deadly warrior. What he lacks in honor he makes up for with ruthless efficiency in combat. He has no desire to restore his lost honor, and I believe he finds the very idea of it repulsive"

- Excerpt from Fira 'Demal's report on his excursion to Famul regarding the Sangheili known as Ro'nin

"Perhaps the most formidable opponent I have ever faced. His association with the sell-sword Ro'nin is odd, considering the latter's disdain for honor and his own unique brand of it. His devotion to--and enjoyment of--the killing arts border on a kind of madness, and yet he strikes me as a hidden intellectual amongst his savage kind."

- Excerpt from Fira Demal's report on his excursion to Famul regarding the Jiralhanae known as Kenpachus

"Alright, now you're just being an asshole," Simon said, glaring up at Ro'nin.

The Sangheili mercenary just snorted. "As if I'd let you anywhere near my ship, Mordred."

"There's a lot of money in this," Simon insisted. "More than either of us could imagine."

He jerked his thumb over his shoulder to where Zoey was standing at the other end of the docking bay. She was staring, wide-eyed, at Ro'nin and the hulking figure behind him; when she'd said she could deal with aliens, she probably hadn't expected these specimens.

"Her family is loaded," Simon explained for the umpteenth time. "All you gotta do is get us to Earth, and then we all walk away really damn rich. It's the easiest job you'll ever have!"

"No, it isn't," Ro'nin growled, folding his arms over his battered armor. "And do you know why?"

"Enlighten me."

"Every time you get involved in a job involving us, things... how do you humans put it? Go to hell. Very, very quickly."

"Oh really?"

"Did we not just go through that back with the Path Walkers? We're lucky we didn't get prices on our heads after the things you pulled back there."

"That was Kahn who hired you, not me," Simon protested. "We were in the same boat--"

"Famul," continued Ro'nin. "We nearly got killed because you stabbed us in the back."

"You wouldn't have even been there if your partner hadn't been so friggin' obsessed with going after that asshole Fira," Simon said coldly. "And for the record, I tricked Mallunus into hiring me back then. It was all part of the plan--" "You aren't fooling anyone, Mordred," Ro'nin snapped. "You only turned on Mallunus when you thought your friends were winning, and then you still made money off of it."

"If you're pirate friends hadn't destroyed my shuttle, we wouldn't even be having this conversation!"

"And now we have a ship and you don't. Why don't you just buy yourself a new shuttle with that money you got off of Kahn?"

"Because I need it for other things. Look, this is the best deal any of us are going to get for a while the way things out here are going."

Ro'nin let out a bark of laughter. "And what makes you say that, Mordred? Perhaps you're having employment problems, but the two of us are doing just fine. Right, Kenpachus?"

Behind Ro'nin sat his hulking Jiralhanae partner. Kenpachus had his huge metal sword out and was busy sharpening it at the foot of their human-made shuttle. He looked like a picture of a gorilla Simon had once seen during wildlife training with the other Spartans on Onyx. The gorilla in question had been sitting down and chewing on some sort of twisted branch, and Kenpachus looked exactly like it if one replaced the branch with a massive, cleaving blade and decked the gorilla out in battle armor that was almost as scarred as the warrior underneath it.

Kenpachus looked up from his sharpening. "Some more money would be good," he grunted before going back to his blade.

"Like I said," Ro'nin said quickly. "We're doing just fine without getting work from humans like you."

"Which explains why you two are sitting around in a human port on a human colony," Simon pointed out. He was beginning to wonder if he should just buy Zoey a ticket to Earth and have her contact him when she got there, but even with all her innocence and naivete he knew better than to trust her completely. Besides, with the Path Walkers and the UNSC on his ass, he needed the extra security that Ro'nin and Kenpachus could provide.

Ro'nin glared at him. "Get out of here before that Path Walker bounty starts looking tempting."

"I'd just remind them how you helped us hit their compound."

"So I'd deliver a corpse."

"I'm worth about twenty thousand more alive, moron." Simon's arm tensed. He didn't think Ro'nin would really go for it, but it paid not to be the trusting type. He couldn't take the Sangheili in a straight fight, but he could probably get himself and Zoey out before Kenpachus could come to his partner's aid.

As if on unwanted queue, the Jiralhanae swordsman grunted and lifted himself onto his feet. Simon heard Zoey let out a small squeak behind him, and he didn't blame her. Standing in the light, with his battered armor and the scarred body underneath, he was truly a hulking figure. Each of his massive hands looked strong enough to snap a human neck between their fingers, and his trunk-like arms seemed capable of tearing holes in titanium battle plate. Of course, it would be a fatal mistake to assume that such power made him slow as well. Simon knew that once Kenpachus started swinging his oversized sword around, he could be as quick as the lithest Sangheili.

"The Path Walkers are hunting him, correct?" Kenpachus rumbled at Ro'nin.

"Yes, of course they are!" his partner snapped impatiently. "Why do you think he's skulking on a human world?"

But Simon saw his opening and took it. "Listen guys, I've got hundreds of these guys on my tail. Do you know how hard it is to kill just one of them?"

Kenpachus's eyes narrowed, as if he knew he were being baited, but he took the offering all the same. "Then he comes with us," he announced. "We get paid and we have the whole galaxy after our hides. What could be more fun?"

"Do you have a death wish?" Ro'nin snarled. "The Path Walkers, Sangheili, and the humans... oh."

His shoulders seemed to slump a little. Once Kenpachus was on the trail of a good fight, no force in the universe could divert his course. He snapped his glaring eyes back to Simon.

"Let's hear some numbers," he grumbled. "I want something real, not your hazy promises."

Simon opened his mouth to speak, but to his surprise Zoey beat him to it.

"Ten million for you two once you prove that you have me for my family," she said. Her voice quavered in the presence of the two large aliens, but she kept talking regardless. "Plus ten more once I've been delivered safely."

Ro'nin's reptilian eyes narrowed as he did the math. "Quite a sum. How much is Mordred getting?"

"That's none of your business," Simon cut in. He was already blown away by how much money Zoey's family seemed able to throw around--Ro'nin and Kenpachus were already looking at twice of what David Kahn had been offered for the job against the Path Walkers. He didn't need Ro'nin getting any funny ideas.

Ro'nin leaned back. "Very well, Mordred. We'll take you to Earth after we stop by a Sangheili colony to refuel."

He waved his hand back at his ship, which was an odd hybrid of Covenant-made base and human-style add-ons. "They don't have the kinds of fuel we need on the black market here, so we'll have to hit Cordial Harmony before we can make for your homeworld."

"Fine. When do we leave?"

Ro'nin clicked his mandibles. "Does half a cycle work for you?"



"Just wait outside," Simon had told Zoey. "Act like you belong out there and don't get yourself kidnapped or anything."

Alone in his apartment--or as alone as he'd ever be, thanks to Diana--Simon kicked an empty crate aside and realized he wouldn't miss this place at all. He'd only rented it in the few months since his old shuttle had been destroyed, but he'd still manage to cover the entirety of the single-room dwelling in filth and trash. There were even dark stains on the walls; broad, heinous-looking patches that hadn't been there when he'd arrived.

"I always said this place was a shithole," he muttered, pushing three boxes up against the wall. It was depressing to think that almost all his worldly possessions could take up so little space, so he did what he always did with depressing subjects and didn't think about it. "If I never set foot in here again it'll be too soon."

"So I'm guessing you have plans, then?" Diana piped in. "For when we're rolling in all that money Zoey's promising us, I mean."

"Get my lungs fixed, for one," Simon replied, turning to a final, larger box. He tapped the light armor covering his chest. "So I don't have to worry about drowning in my own blood every time I forget to take some pills."

"Oh good, something that helps you out," Diana sneered. "And where, pray tell, will we find the magical doctor who can fix you up properly? Plan on turning yourself in after all this time? Maybe you can sell out some of our contacts for a lesser sentence."

"Don't even joke about that." Simon bent over the box and gave it a small push; it was heavier than the others. "I'm never going back to the UNSC. Ever. Not after what they did."

He sighed and nudged the large box again. "Besides, the only sentence I can expect from them is a bullet in the head. Same with the Path Walkers, only with them it'll be a lot slower."

"So when are we gonna try getting under the hood of that armor?" Diana asked. "You can really stick it to those UNSC goons by giving me access to all that classified technology they must have stuffed in there."

"Yeah," Simon muttered. He glared down at the box, remembering the face of the dead Spartan; young, like him. Like Cassandra. Like Rat Pack. What the hell was the UNSC--no, what was ONI thinking, getting a whole new generation of kids like Gamma Company to fight their wars for them? Didn't they have enough minions without creating more broken killers like him?

He bent down and shoved the MJOLNIR-concealing box up against the others. "We can take it apart once this job's over," he said, casting one last disgusted gaze around the apartment. "Right now, let's just stick with the tech we're familiar with."

"And the disk?"

Simon blinked. "What disk?"

"That Covie data file. The one we got off the last job's mark, dumbass. You may not give a damn what those Path Walkers have on there, but I do. It could be worth something, right? Some more cash to pay for that lung surgery?"

Simon shrugged. "It's probably just a bunch of troop deployments. Or maybe it's some Sangheili porn."

"Do they even have porn?" Diana sounded fascinated. "I always thought they got aroused by swords and honor and things like that."

"How the hell should I know?"

"You did live with them for two years. You should have picked up on stuff like this."

Simon snorted and adjusted the two energy sword hilts strapped to his chest. "I spent those two years learning how to swing their swords around, not what turns them on. Besides, Master Visag ran his keep like a monastery. If there is Sangheili smut, it didn't make its way in there."

"Shame. I guess we should have looked into that sooner, seeing how many Sangheili colonies we've done jobs on."

"Why the hell do you even care, anyway?" Simon demanded.

"Oh, I just like getting all the intel I can on the more embarrassing bits about different species," she replied innocently. "Speaking of which, have you ever heard of blood bonding?"

"No, and I don't really feel like hearing about it." Simon strode towards the door, wondering if he could get shanghai Zoey into helping him move the boxes. "You can look at that stupid disk once we're off this rock."

"And on our way to yet another madcap adventure," Diana reflected. "What'll we run into this time? Savage pirates who want to kill us or savage rebels who want to kill us? Or maybe the government troops who want to kill us? The possibilities just don't end, do they?"

"I know the feeling," Simon muttered. "You get used to the whole galaxy trying to kill you after a while."

"I guess the trick is to not take it so personally," Diana mused.

"Oh, I take it personally all right." Simon slid his helmet back over his face. "Very personally."

Chapter Six: The Price of Security
"As per United Nations Space Command order 6578-NM45, the colony of New Madrigal is now under martial law. All colonists living within urban areas are instructed to relocate to colonial refugee camps for the duration of this crisis. Anyone found resisting UNSC forces will be seen as accomplices to the rebel elements currently threatening New Madrigal's stability and corrective actions will be taken immediately."

- Public announcement delivered through New Madrigal's colonial administration on the behest of Commander Yuri Rosch

"Well, I'll be damned," the Pelican pilot's voice crackled over the troop bay's intercom. "Is this a peacekeeping mission or a goddamn occupation?"

"From what I heard back up on the Dauntless, the guy who's in charge of this whole deal's a real hardass," his co-pilot replied. "Apparently, he's some desk jockey who thinks the UNSC hasn't been taking this frontier shit seriously all this time."

"But still," the pilot said as they banked and began to pass over New Madrigal's eponymous city. "Just look at the damn place. If I didn't no better, I'd say there was a real war going on down there."

Standing before the dropship's open troop bay, Felix-116 had to agree with the pilot on that point. With the enhanced vision vision offered by his MJOLNIR helmet and augmented eyesight, he could see everything that was was going on hundreds of meters below in exhaustive detail, and those details weren't pretty.

Columns of smoke were rising from wrecked buildings and vehicles in nearly ever part of the city, branching off into smaller plumes to form a ghastly forest in the sky. Fires were raging unchecked everywhere, and some had even consumed whole blocks and were continuing to spread. Even the ones that had been seen to were grim mounds of ash that made Felix wonder if the fires hadn't been even worse than they were now before he'd arrived here. And everywhere, covering every debris-strewn street and charred corner, were the bodies. A few wore the uniforms and body armor of several different kinds of UNSC personnel, but most were garbed in battered civilian dress and looked like they'd been lying huddled in pools of blood for days.

And then, on top of it all, was the army.

Even if it wasn't technically part of the UNSC's army branch, there really was no other word to describe the force that had descended on the city. ODSTs, regular Marines, and even what looked like colonial militia were combing the ruins of urban sprawl, checking every building and car, wrecked and intact alike, with their weapons at the ready. As Felix watched, a squad of ODSTs hustled a trio of civilians--one man and two women--out of a burning building before roughly restraining and searching them as a platoon of Marines formed a tight perimeter around them. A building several blocks away suddenly spat gunfire at a group of Marines and militia soldiers, sending them scattering for cover. Less than ten seconds later, a barrage of high-caliber autocannon rounds tore the building to pieces. The militia and even some of the Marines cheered as they rushed to breach the building under the watchful gaze of an aerial guardian: a Vulture gunship.

If the carnage of the street war had been the start of Felix's amazement, then the Vultures finished the job. The SPARTAN-I counted no less than twelve of the assault gunships in the air above the city, with several more hovering at distant points further off. Each one was more than twice the size of a Pelican--large craft in their own right--and sported ten times the firepower. Essentially the UNSC's version of a flying tank, they were all heavily armed and armored--and incredibly expensive. Felix had heard of only a small production line meant mostly for Inner Colony defense being carried over after the end of the Great War, and yet here was a whole fleet of them, spread out over a mass deployment like any of the UNSC's mainstream war machines.

Felix had seen Vultures in action less than a handful of times in the past, but never more than one at a time and never in anything short of a massive, pitched battle. Now they were everywhere, providing support for a gang war suppression and the hunt for a fugitive. Smaller Hornet and Falcon VTOLs flitted around their hulking brethren, occasionally stopping to deposit troops on rooftops or to spray suppressing fire down into troublesome buildings.

Felix shook his head as the Pelican began to descent. This was one of the largest single deployments he had ever seen, and their targets were a single assassin and a few thousand criminals. Couldn't this amount of firepower have been put to better use on the new battlefronts opened up by the Path Walkers?

As they passed over more Vultures, Felix could see that the gunships actually had Marines positioned on their armored backs. These odd passengers ranged from two man sniper teams to entire squads of troops, all of them ready to rain even more firepower down on the outmatched gangs.

"Coming in on the F.O.B. now, Lieutenant Commander," the pilot reported over the intercom. "It's right in the center of this shit, real easy to find."

The Pelican banked again, and Felix reached out for one of the troop bay's handholds. A wise decision, as it turned out, because the dropship immediately jerked back and nearly sent him tumbling out of the bay.

"Shit!" the pilot snapped as the Pelican jerked away again. "We've got contacts on rooftops... damn! Three, no, four guys with RPGs! What the hell?"

Felix saw them immediately as the Pelican twisted to dodge another rocket. The moment he glimpsed some dark shapes on the rooftop, he tore his assault rifle off of its clamps on the back of his armor. Bracing himself against the troop bay's wall, he opened fire, doing his best to compensate for the Pelican's erratic evasions. The closest rooftop attacker crumpled, followed swiftly by a second who darted in to snatch up the rocket launcher.

His clip ran dry, and as he was reloading a trio of Hornets soared forward, raining machine-gun fire down on the offending rooftops. Felix slapped the new clip into his weapon but didn't fire; the Hornets had already finished off the poorly-laid ambush.

A Falcon glided in to hover amidst the Hornets, and Felix saw one of its door gunners wave at him. "Nice shooting, Spartan!" the man yelled. "Don't worry about anymore assholes taking potshots at you; we've got things covered up here."

Felix raised his hand in acknowledgement as the Pelican began to settle down in what had once been the city's town square and was now the UNSC's forward operations base. Clipping his rifle onto his back, he banged on the troop bay's wall. "Thanks for the lift!" he told the crew over his helmet's radio.

"No problem, sir," the pilot replied. "Got a good view of all that taxpayer money at work. Could've used a little less excitement, but we saw it through."

Felix jumped out of the troop bay, landing nimbly on the paved ground. As the Pelican lifted off, he took a look around the hub of all the UNSC activity in New Madrigal.

The square was bustling with activity. Strings of mobile command bunkers had been laid out around the perimeter, covering flimsier aid stations and vehicle depots from enemy fire. Dozens of Marines milled about the area, some checking their weapons while others formed up to head out into the war zone of a city. A few lounged about in New Madrigal's sunlight--or what little sunlight could punch through the clouds of smoke hovering over the city--but most seemed to be busy with some task or another. Felix watched as a squad of Marines marched a ragged line of battered gang members away towards an awaiting Pelican. The captives' hands were cuffed behind their backs and they looked as if they'd been through hell.

What interested Felix even more were the militia soldiers. There were even more of them than there were Marines, and they all seemed eager and even excited as Marines or ODSTs gave them instructions or directed their activities. A crowd of militia congregated around several large trucks, where a warrant officer in an ONI uniform was handing out assault rifles. A closer inspection revealed that these were new-model, top of the line MA7-series weapons; not the handed down scrap that colonial militia usually got.

A massive task force? Felix mused as he strode towards a Marine lieutenant. ''High grade gear for the militia? What's going on here?''

The lieutenant straightened when he saw the armored Spartan approach--a common reaction, even when the Spartan in question wasn't an officer. "Sir?" the man asked. "You need something?"

"Where's the commander?" Felix asked. "I was ordered to report to him directly."

"Oh, the commander?" The lieutenant pointed off towards one of the command buildings. "He's briefing a platoon over there."

Felix nodded his thanks and headed in the direction the Marine had pointed. As he neared, he saw a platoon of ODSTs, all armed to the teeth, staring intently at an officer who stood in front of a holographic projection of a series of buildings. The officer jabbed his gloved finger at one of the buildings, and the special forces troopers nodded in what looked like approval.

"Another sweep," the officer was saying. He spoke in curt, clipped tones as he paced before the projection. "You'll coordinate with the 332nd Armored to cordon off the entire block while the Altas Torres militia regiment provides support. You'll have full air support during the entire hit, and I expect you to use it in full. No more of this division pride, and that's an order. The Marines, the militia, and all the air units hare there to coordinate with you, and you will do the same with them. I will not be losing any more of you because you won't ask the militia to cover you."

The platoon's lieutenant nodded. She indicated her troops with her helmet, which she held in one hand while gripping a suppressed submachine gun in the other. "Understood, sir. This bastard won't be taking out anyone else on my watch."

"Make sure he doesn't." The officer raised his hand. "Dismissed."

The ODSTs filed away, heading for one of the vehicle depots, and the officer turned to face Felix, as if he'd heard him approaching from behind.

The first thing Felix noted was that the man's hair was perhaps the worst violation of military protocol he had ever seen. Heavy bangs fell down on either side of the officer's head, framing the clean-shaven face of a man who couldn't have been older than thirty. The hair had grayed prematurely, giving the man an austere look belied by his odd hair style but matched by his emotionless demeanor and eyes that seemed permanently narrowed. His skin was pale and smooth, save for a thin scar that ran up the length of his forehead.

Felix hadn't seen a picture of his new commanding officer beforehand--he rarely did with ONI types--and stopped to stare at the odd amalgamation of military norms and flagrant regulation infraction, an easy thing to do while wearing his helmet.

The officer nodded and approached him. He wore a large dark overcoat over his ONI uniform, with even darker gloves covering his hands. Everything about the man screamed spook to Felix, yet he extended his hand as if he were a regular Marine or Naval officer. Felix looked down at the gloved hand in mild surprise; few non-augmented humans were quick to trust their hands to the grip of an armored Spartan.

"Yuri Rosch," the officer said by way of introduction. "Section Three."

Felix blinked inside his helmet, and mentally braced himself. ONI's Section Three, the branch responsible for most of the navy's special and black operations, had always despised him for his suspicious entry into the SPARTAN-II program's roster. What infuriated them more was the fact that he'd gotten away with it completely clean, with no records of his deception ever getting caught under their tight-assed radar. Every Section Three officer he'd ever served with had made their contempt clear, and while he could handle the worst of their spiteful anger, he had to admit that it had gotten old very quickly.

"SPARTAN-116, reporting for duty, commander," he said quickly. Just as he'd anticipated, he saw Rosch's eyebrows flick upwards for a moment at the number "116".

"I'm told by my Section Three colleagues that you're a deceitful show-off who enjoys thumbing his nose at the system to no end," Rosch told him. "It only seems fair that my request for a SPARTAN-II officer would get you assigned to me."

Felix gave a small shake of his head. If this man was going to use his authority to make things difficult on him, then they might as well level with each other as quickly as possible. "Sir, you've heard what you've heard," he told the commander. "I know I can't change yours or anyone else in Section Three's opinion, but you'll get my very best results regardless of how you put me to work."

But Rosch raised his hand, lifting it slightly higher than normal to compensate for Felix's abnormal height. "That's what my colleagues think," he emphasized. "However, I plan to reserve judgement until I can get a good look at you in action for myself. Anything else is disrespectful to your abilities and, quite frankly, obscenely unprofessional."

Now it was Felix's turn to raise his eyebrows, though Rosch couldn't see the motion behind his helmet. "You're quite direct, sir," he said after a moment.

"I don't like beating around the bush," Rosch told him. He gestured at the bustling activity around them. "This city is proof enough of that. Besides, you aren't the only one with a bad reputation in Section Three."

Felix was beginning to wonder if Rosch had missed his calling in the military. The man was the most frank ONI officer the SPARTAN-I had ever met, and if the New Madrigal operation was anything to go by he would have been better suited for the Army or Marine corps.