Insubordinate

This fanfiction article, Insubordinate, was written by Ahalosniper. Please do not edit this fiction without the writer's permission.

2332 Hours March 8th, 2558 (Military Calendar)/ Troop Bay, Pelican Bravo 029; en route to Sub-vessel 7, in orbit over Stavros, Frontier Space

Even missing the mass of a hole torn in its breastplate, the MJOLNIR suit was heavy enough to anchor the corpse to Pelican's floor as the dropship rattled free of Stavros' atmosphere. Glowing in the dim light of the troop compartment, the pristine white of its titanium plates silhouetted the lithe figure they'd failed to protect from dexterous hands to athletic legs, locked forever in rigor mortis. Everywhere but the chest, where carbon blackened the twisted steel around a crater of roasted flesh, as if a hot scoop had gouged out the torso.

The nightmare of viscera was a grotesque contrast to its shaped titanium frame, and to the unmarred, pasty skin of the face a helmet—since removed—had shielded in the moment of her death. The fringe of her snowy, close-cropped hair hung almost low enough to veil the lidded eyes, black lashes meshed to tie them ever closed. Her wan lips had often pursed when they'd called her Snow White. Their contrast with her gruesome wound could only further grieve the boy who'd loved her, by her side in one of the jumpseats lining the bulkhead, entwining his memory of her perfect face with mortal disfigurement. He sat hunched with her helmet on his knees, the tears he'd poured over its silver visor no more than salt trails now.

Kodiak sat across in the narrow compartment, shaking with the Pelican's quakes. Everything they'd said in training ran circles in his head. Spartans never died. Spartans never died. So what the hell was this? He was their team leader. He was responsible. And he'd been two klicks away when two of his team had...

Dyne looked up at last as the Pelican's ride smoothed out into vacuum. Even in the dark, Kodiak's augmented eyes could make out the swell of his best friend's eyelids, flush from swollen tear ducts. Grief had stripped the constant cheer from his face.

"What happens now?" he asked, as if depending on the answer for a blueprint to life from then on.

Kodiak was lost for even an adequate response. "I don't know."

Dyne's gaze dropped again to the mirrored visor. "They're going to want her back."

"There's no family to return her body to." he objected. "Even if there were, S-III is still classified. We'll probably oversee the burial ourselves once—"

"I'm talking about Amber."

He'd known. Machete was a four-man Fireteam, and only three were coming back. Only two alive—because of the fourth. But with Morgan's body on the deck between them, he didn't want to think about what would come next. He couldn't stand to.

When he didn't answer, Dyne's inflamed eyes fell back to Morgan's cold features. "We lost a friend today. I know it's her fault, but... I don't want to lose another."

Kodiak didn't either. But whatever they wanted, he couldn't see a way it wouldn't end up happening.

---

1008 Hours March 9th, 2558 (Military Calendar)/ Corridor B16, outside Briefing Room 4, Sub-vessel 7, in orbit over Stavros, Frontier Space

Erin Coney's night had dragged on so long even the patter of her shoes became a soft rhythm, lulling her long, black lashes lower as she paced the empty corridor. Catching them in the act, she trained her eyes on the next approaching ceiling light to burn the ideas of day and wakefulness into her retinas. Too much could fall behind if she allowed herself the luxury of exhaustion, let alone rest.

As soon as the shock of the Stavros operation going wrong had worn off, she'd run ragged. As the mission's handler, there'd been so much to document, verify, file, and authorize for the inevitable UNSC investigation. And as the operative who for years had interceded on Team Machete's behalf—falsifying military records to keep the young Spartan-IIIs from becoming pawns for some ambitious ONI ingrate—so much to erase, edit, and gather for blackmailing silence from those involved. All to fit a cover story invented on the spot, all without the notice of the powers that be by sweeping everything under the rug before the investigation began. Nothing like penciling time in on her list of enemies, right under the nightmare of bureaucratic malevolence that was ONI.

Neither she nor the young Spartans of Machete should have been involved with the UNSC Infinity and its operations⁠; officially, they weren't supposed to be anywhere at all. As members of Gamma Company, the last class of Spartans illicitly recruited as children by the UNSC, Machete should all have been retired, living out full lives to make up for the terrible mistake committed in taking them—or secretly under ONI's direct command, carrying out exactly the sort of operations so many resources had been spent preparing them for on behalf of a department too powerful and inscrutable to hold accountable. Their involvement in a mission entailing a Spartan casualty—one inflicted by another Spartan, no less—risked shedding light on figures who very much disliked their dark disturbed.

And as for Erin herself, the life imprisonment for so many counts of falsifying military records and appropriation of classified assets would be a slap on the wrist compared to the real fate awaiting her if they were discovered. She'd played the role of weary, coffee-sustained mission handler long enough to make it comfortable, to really live the daily rituals of finding the comfortable adjustment of her headset and making sarcastic banter with the captain while waiting for the next order to come down. Sometimes, she could almost allow herself to forget despite having just half a dozen years on the captain biologically, she'd been born half a century earlier, and spent most of that time between long intervals in cryo-sleep undertaking wet work that would've made an upright, noble Navy officer's uniform crawl.

Contrary to the service record she'd fabricated with the rest of her identity, for most of her life Erin had been a spook, an agent in the myriad shadow-wars for power and position within the Office of Naval Intelligence—one of the best, in fact. And in getting out of it alive had made enemies of practically every power that be under its veil of secrecy. Her cover identity had been as carefully tailored as any she'd used for infiltration, back when she crumbled the anthill empires of division heads with ambitions of usurping ONI's throne practically for her patron's pleasure, but no cover could withstand the scrutiny a Spartan desertion would bring down. If all—if any of—those enemies learned what corner of the galaxy she'd hidden in, a quick assassination, or made a living example with some everlasting torture devised by the sick mind of a pet scientist with nothing better to do were some of the rosier visions of the future prodding Erin further towards haste.

One possible story had sprung to mind as soon as Erin knew she had a coverup to arrange: Fireteam Machete hadn't existed in the first place, ergo no Spartan casualty had occurred at all. The paper trail would be easy: most of the reports were hers to file anyway, and those outside her control were easy to intercept and redact. Send a few replies in ONI's name swearing those aware of the incident to secrecy on pain of treason, and there would be no recordings for the investigators to find. The ONI personnel already involved with the Stavros mission were a bit trickier; blackmailing them was the easy option, but a clumsy method and not always successful—peoples' righteous instinct to come clean when threatened could be frustratingly unpredictable—apart from which she hadn't any convenient evidence of their wrongdoing on hand. Thus, she'd been up overnight arranging to conduct all the operation's debriefings herself, after which she could falsify what she needed and reassign the personnel before an ONI investigatory team's ship had time to arrive through slipspace. For a guilty moment, she recalled the satisfaction a well-orchestrated coverup could afford.

With that concluded, she could safely doctor Machete's own transfer orders and reassign them far from the scene of the crime, perhaps off the UNSC Infinity altogether. And then...

And then figure out what to do next.

Kodiak and Dyne would have grieving to do, and so would Erin. Half the team... Morgana was dead, and Amber had fled without any further communication after the two had fought. It hadn't been intentional, Erin was certain of that much. The two had been friends practically their whole young lives. To just run away had to mean she was scared, and the boys would want to find her. Authorizing an assignment to search for her under some guise or getting out from under Spartan Corps entirely would be difficult, but nothing Erin couldn't manage with time. She'd sworn to those who trusted her most, and to herself besides, to look out for these kids—as much as she could while sending them up against alien soldiers routinely. If she'd failed one, she was determined not to fail another, as dire the straits as she'd put them all in.

The door to the briefing room she'd set aside neared, an inlaid screen reading 'occupied'. Erin stopped for only a moment, enough to see herself reflected in the glass. Black fatigues tight around an athletic figure she'd maintained despite her mainly desk job, blue eyes alert despite dark circles beneath, and high, slender brows reaching from a furrow at their center to her middle-parted bangs. She'd noticed within the last year they'd started to lose their raven sheen. Cryogenics to put her aging on hold could only do so much, she supposed, and brushed them back in the moment she allowed for one deep breath as her other hand found the door's print pad.

Erin stepped in as the door rolled aside and surveyed the conference table, empty but for a handful of its dozen seats. On its far side sat Kodiak and Dyne, MJOLNIR armor stripped down to black, diamond-weave bodygloves, arms listless by their sides. Frazzled brown hair and bloodshot eyes attested to a night as restless as Erin's. They looked up at her from morose stares at the table, bereft of the joy they'd radiated in spite of their lots in life. From the near side, a young woman—youthful face at odds with her powerful frame, same as the boys—with a blonde ponytail twisted in her seat to glare contemptuous green daggers at Erin. Lieutenant Oswynne Baines, apparently only Wynne-G327 before accepting a position in ONI, had commanded the Stavros operation, only to be humiliated and left helpless by Amber's betrayal. Her evident fury made her an obstacle, but one Erin could deal with. And far at the head of the table sat...

The breath Erin had taken for calm became a block of ice her lungs tightened around as it caught in her chest.

Halo: Consequences

Insubordinate • Derelict • Deserter