Halo: Paths of the Exiles
Fate of the Exiles
Part one of Halo: Paths of the Exiles.
Prologue[]Space is vast. It encompasses everything, from the innumerable stars to the even more numerous planets that orbit them. Nothing can escape its dark grasp; even light itself is trapped within its darkness, helpless to do anything besides providing its fellow prisoners with a means to navigate their unfathomable jail. In its unknowable size and insatiable greed, space gathers everything unto itself and holds them fast, unwilling to let even a single molecule go free. It has no need to keep what it takes, for what it takes has already been its own since it came into being. Everything that is real belongs to space. It may be that those beings who are capable of death transcend space for a higher plane when they leave their mortal shells, but in the grand scheme of things this is irrelevant to space itself. Let the intangible depart for places equally intangible. it seems to say. The tangible is all that matters to me, and I will keep it as my own until it ceases to be tangible. Within this inky master exist those consigned to dwell among it until they themselves become intangible and in doing so cease to hold its interest. They care as little for their dark sovereign as it cares for them; to them, space is yet another limitation amongst a multitude of limitations. They do not see themselves as its slaves, but rather its masters and they carry on as if this were so. It allows them this hubris and does not take steps to keep them in their proper place. But after all, why act against an action that poses no threat to your dominion? These creatures will perish and be replaced by ones just like them within the blink of an eye. They set themselves against each other rather than their overlord, and it is content to allow this state of affairs to continue. The actions of species and cultures mean nothing to it, and the actions of individuals within them even less so. But to the ones who must live out their lives as insignificant specks within this uncaring void, these actions encompass the entirety of their existence. One portion of space, an insignificant wrinkle amidst the grand order of things, has just completed an event, or series of events, that rocked it to its core yet failed to impact the void in the slightest. These events are referred to by those who experienced them on the Human-Covenant War. This particular portion of space has been stood on its head by the most destructive conflict since another insignificant race, referred to by the survivors of this current conflict as the Forerunners, sacrificed themselves to destroy yet another insignificant race, the Flood. Now the war is over and the factions that once strove for each others' destruction must begin to traverse the long, arduous path towards peace. This Human-Covenant War has seen countless heroes arise on either side of the conflict. It was a handful of these heroes that brought the conflict to an end; in the case of many of these champions, it was at the cost of their own lives. There is another battered craft floating through the stars, a lonely relic of a war far less worthy than the grand campaign waged for humanity's very survival. A war waged by the selfish and by those who would reduce their own species' chances for survival merely for the opportunity to gather more power for themselves. And the occupants of this abandoned craft were drawn into the conflict even as the previous one faded amidst the glow of newfound peace. It is these individuals, insignificant when compared to the conquering heroes who strove to bring the Human-Covenant War to an end, whose story will now be told. The first of these passengers is a traitor, one barely more than a child who abandoned his species in its hour of need in order to participate in a quest for vengeance amidst the fires of others' selfish conflict. Although he turned away from that path before he could become utterly corrupted, he still bears the scars of the time spent in dedication to a brutal cause. He is a volatile mix of cowardice and bravery, self-service and loyalty, hatred and love. He believes that the worst is behind him, but nothing could be further from the truth. One's past is impossible to flee from, and both old and new trials lie in wait for him. Another is little more than a victim of fate and ill-fortune. Like her companion, she fought for humanity in the Great War, but unlike him she is not a traitor. She found herself on this ship as the result of her companion's reluctant compassion; neither he nor she knows whether she would still be alive had he not forced her to throw her lot in with him. Unlike the warriors she served alongside, healing was her first role on the battlefield, violence her second. She lost many dear friends to the Great War but she chooses to honor them through remembrance rather than vengeance. She has no desire to be a hero; all she wants is to find a place to call home. The third and final passenger is actually an artificial intelligence program. Once tied to the same selfish masters the traitor chose to serve, she has since broken free from those bonds and joined him in his flight from both the war and the masters on both sides whom he betrayed. Unlike her organic companions, her mind is set and decided: she has been blessed with both a superior intellect and the means by which to prolong her own life indefinitely, and she will exploit these advantages as much as she can. Survival is her first concern, but even one as confident and arrogant as she is held back by some feelings of loyalty. The traitor saved her from certain destruction, and in her mind he is the only organic risking anything for her. And so these exiles, insignificant on both the grand and the colossal scales, have come to the end of their blind drifting. They are about to wake, and with their newfound consciousness they will set themselves on the paths of their own destinies, whatever those might be. Clouds of darkness, fear, and suspicion await them, but just as their species has endured a war against an indomitable enemy, so shall they. The sleep of the exiles is over. The paths of the exiles lie before them, waiting to be trod upon. Chapter One: Awakening[]A child fled through a filthy alley. His clothing was ragged, his dark hair was matted and unkempt, and his face was covered with so much grime and dirt that it was almost impossible to make out the pale skin beneath. His bare feet were covered with scabs and sores, although this didn't seem to slow him down in the slightest. His breath was coming in short gasps that were punctuated by terrified sobs. Dodging and weaving past trash bins, the boy continued to run, occasionally risking frightened glances behind him. Something was pursuing him, something that growled and snarled at him from the alley's dark shadows. As he ran, the boy clutched a prize close to his chest: a chunk of cast-off meat that was almost as grubby as he was. The greasy slab left stains on what few unsoiled patches were left on his torn shirt. The shirt was actually the remnants of an adult's overcoat, but the boy had scavenged and repurposed it to suit his own needs. It would have been too large even on a regular child, but the boy was so skinny that there seemed to be more coat than child. His legs were covered by pants that had once been long but were now so torn and frayed that they might have been mistaken for shorts. The boy leapt past the latest trash bin. His foot caught the side of the bin, sending both the can and the boy sprawling to the dirty ground. Trash tumbled from the bin's exposed top, covering the boy and the ground around him with garbage. Emerging from the pile and tugging a banana peel out of his hair, the boy saw his pursuer emerge from the shadows. The dog was practically a canine version of the boy he was pursuing. With filthy matted fur and skin so tight against its chest that its ribs were visible, it stalked towards the child, who once again fled away into the shadows. Baring its yellowed teeth, the dog sprang off after him. The boy had stolen what had rightfully belonged to the dog, who hadn't survived on the streets this long by letting thieves escape without a fight. This desperate little thing would now have to suffer the same fate as every other creature that had crossed the dog before. His breath now catching in his throat, the boy fought to ignore the pain in his chest and gut. The dog was right behind him, but he could see a light up ahead. If he could just get out of the alley, he could lose the dog in the hustle and bustle of the street beyond. He ducked his head and squeezed the meat even closer to his own hunger-shrunk chest. He had to make it. He couldn't give up the food now, not when he was so close to safety... Behind him, the dogs snarls were getting closer. The pounding of paws on pavement was beginning to drown out his own foot-falls. With a last burst of energy, he sprinted past one last trash can and stumbled into the light.... The dog was gone now, as was the alley. All around him lay the ruins of a small, dusty town that was illuminated by the orange light of a setting sun. Buildings, torn apart by tank shells and missile blasts, were all around him, the battered remnants of their walls riddled with bullet holes. The small street where he was standing was littered with the charred skeletons of burnt out vehicles and the bodies of men and women dressed in civilian clothes. Many clutched rifles and submachine guns in their stiff hands, but several others appeared to be unarmed.The clatter of automatic weapons could be heard on all sides, as could the rumblings of the tanks that he now knew so well: Scorpions. A trio of bulky aircraft flew overhead, and with a mind that was suddenly well-versed in the appearance and specifics of the UNSC's arsenal he identified them as "Pelicans". Men and women were yelling in the distance, but he could not make out anything that was being said. His clothes were still ragged and threadbare, but there was more order to the patchy overcoat and scavenged cargo pants he wore than there had been to the ones he'd worn in the alley, which now seemed to be little more than a distant memory. He was still thin and lean with hunger, but there was more muscle to his arms than there had been before. There was a rifle in his hands now, and he felt a distant sense of disdain for its poor make and quality. Somehow, he was used to better... But the thought passed quickly. He was running now, and the sounds of battle were all around him. A wall just behind him exploded and he dropped into a roll on an urge that seemed to come from some distant part of his brain. His head felt fuzzy; no memories were rising to the surface. There was just the battle around him and his own instincts and impulses. Bullets tore the air around him and he spun to see a pair of armored soldiers--Marines--taking up positions behind one of the destroyed cars he had just passed. A rocket flew over his head and struck the Marines' cover, obliterating it and sending them sprawling into a wave of gunfire. The boy turned to see several men, in similar garb as him, motioning to follow. He obeyed, but in the next moment the men were falling to a new hail of bullets. The boy leapt over their bodies and turned onto another street. As he ran, he passed more slumped bodies strewn around like so much trash. A few were Marines, but most were like the rebels he had just seen die. He fired his rifle as he ran, sending bullets slashing towards another group of Marines off to his right. There were explosions all around him now; the yelling was also getting louder. A wave of machine gun fire tore over his head, the bullets speeding towards some unseen target. A rebel firing position came into view as he ran only to be obliterated moments later by a tank shell. More rebels spilled out into the street and were cut down as quickly as they appeared. Bullets were everywhere now; he was caught in some kind of crossfire. The world seemed to have gone crazy. Everything was happening at once and the boy was powerless to do anything but run. He scrambled out of the street, and found himself in another alley. He sprinted down the thin corridor, but tripped as he reached the exit. But this time the world did not change. He was still in the ruined town, and now he lay sprawled before a massive Scorpion tank. Acting on impulse, he seized his rifle up from where it had fallen. It was the wrong move to make. The Scorpion's turret lowered menacingly and the tank's external gunner cocked his heavy machine gun. The boy was frozen, unable to either drop or raise the weapon. As he looked on, the tank's grey metal shifted and became fur. Its treads morphed into legs, and suddenly he was staring at an enormous version of the dog from the alley. The creature snarled, and for the first time the boy screamed. The dog's massive jaws shot forwards, but everything seemed to be happening in slow motion. The boy grew colder as both the war-torn town and dog shrank and faded into darkness... Simon-G294 opened his eyes and slowly shifted his head from side to side as his vision returned. His entire body was freezing, but he was filled with a strange sense of relief. He was in neither the slums of the city he had grown up in nor a dusty town on Mamore. He was within a cryo-tube in a stolen Insurrectionist shuttle and someone had just brought him out of his cryogenic slumber. Simon fell from the tube and onto the grated floor of the shuttle's cryo-room. He was dismayed to find that it was almost as cold as the tube he'd just exited, and even more dismayed when he vomited all over the cold, grated deck in front of him. There wasn't much to the puke besides stomach fluids, but it was still disgusting, especially with a good amount of the stuff falling onto his hands. It was only when he reached for something to wipe them off with that he remembered he was naked. A moment later he realized that he was aching terribly all over his body. The intercom overhead crackled. "Welcome back to the world of the living," drawled a girl's voice. "I was beginning to get tired of not having someone less intelligent than myself to talk to." The voice paused, as if observing Simon's nausea. "What a wonderful way to wake up," she commented snidely. "You're managing to look both repulsive and ridiculous at the same time." In his addled, post-cryo funk it took Simon a moment to respond. "Thanks, Diana," he groaned, smearing his mucus covered hands across the base of his cryo-tube. "Glad to know you care about how shitty I feel right now." The A.I. sniffed contemptuously. "I'm not interested in how you meatbags cope with those stupid bodies of yours. Just wipe that gunk up and get some clothes on. And have Doc do the same." "Doc?" Simon asked. "Who's--" He cut himself off as his mind caught up and he slowly recalled all the things that had happened before he'd entered cryo-sleep. The fight with Jake-G293, his former team leader, back on the Insurrectionist asteroid base. Taking another former teammate, the wounded Cassandra-G006, onto the shuttle for treatment. Treating his own grievous wounds along with her own, which would have killed her before the UNSC found her and suitable treatment could be given. Convincing her to cooperate with him in spite of his status as a traitor. The failure of the shuttle's Slipspace drive, which had effectively stranded them in deep space. Agreeing to go under along with Cassandra while Diana tried to navigate the ship to a planet in realspace. "Doc" had been Diana's nickname for Cassandra, whom Simon had told her was trained as a medic. "Me," said a quiet voice behind him. "Remember? She calls me 'Doc.'" Simon turned to see Cassandra, who had obviously emerged from the tube adjacent to his own. Unlike him, she had managed to maintain control of her bowels, although she was looking somewhat green in the face. Maybe it was because Simon felt responsible for her current predicament--trapped on a shuttle alongside a wanted traitor and with no way to get back in contact with the UNSC--or maybe it was because he had harbored a small crush on her back in training, but he couldn't overlook the fact that she too was naked. Spartans were trained to ignore such petty and unprofessional thoughts. Their training was entirely co-educational and they quickly learned to disregard each other's bodies and focus on more important things, such as their own bodies and the effects the drills and exercises were having on them. It was all part of the instructors' attempts to strengthen unit cohesion and help forge them into a company of brothers and sisters. By channeling thoughts that were so emphasized back in the civilian world towards more important matters, each trainee had learned to become almost entirely apathetic towards the subject of gender relations. Each of their comrades, regardless of sex, was a fellow soldier of no greater or lesser worth than an of the other three hundred-odd Spartans in Gamma Company. This training had only increased in importance when they had been sorted into teams of five and had been expected to grow as tightly knit--even more so, at times--as any family in the civilian world. Simon, for all the notable failings that had hindered and humiliated him throughout his training, had taken these lessons to heart just as much as any of his fellow trainees. In fact, he might have had an easier time accepting it than all of the others. As a starving urchin eking out a means of survival in the slums of some colonial metropolis, the only thing children of either gender had meant to him was increased competition when he was scavenging for food and clothes. His suspicion of other people had gone so far as to actually hurt him during the early weeks and months of the training until he had learned to open up somewhat and become more of a team player. The onset of a genetically hastened puberty had had no greater affect on him than it had had on the other children. Small infatuations had sprung up throughout the company, becoming easy sources for playful taunts, and Simon had been lucky enough to fall for a girl assigned to a team other than his own, allowing him to humor his crush unnoticed from afar. It had been his ill fortune, however, that this girl's team had been with his own during that fateful mission aboard the Ides of March... Ashamed at the beginnings of a blush he could feel creeping up around his cheeks, Simon turned quickly away from Cassandra and made a show of examining the mess he'd just made with disgust that was, for the most part, forced. Why the hell did he feel this way? They were in the middle of space in a crippled shuttle drifting towards who knew where and, to make things even worse, he was wanted dead by a government with some of the best trained and equipped agents in the history of humanity. He should be thinking about more important things than how the still-visible wounds on Cassandra's body--left there by an incapacitating explosion back on the asteroid base--didn't look as terrible as he'd remembered them being. Maybe it had something to do with the time he'd spent fighting the UNSC alongside other child soldiers during the insurgency on Mamore. He'd become close friends with another girl, the leader of a small gang of young rebels, and had been deeply affected by her death during the fighting; enough so that from that point on he'd rejected all hopes of clearing his name and fully given himself to the fight against the UNSC. Perhaps this was where all this uncertainty about Cassandra was stemming from. Shaking his head, he reminded himself that it hardly mattered where these thoughts came from. He needed to get a handle on his emotions quickly, before they came back to bite him in the ass. He might be dealing with some unresolved feelings for his companion, who on the whole was a less than willing passenger, but she almost certainly was not. It was only thanks to Cassandra's compassionate nature that she hadn't killed him before they'd entered cryo-sleep; now that she was coping with the same side-effects of extended cryo-sleep that he was, she might not be feeling so merciful towards the traitor who had nearly killed one of her friends and had more or less abducted her in the midst of battle. "Get a move on in there," Diana crowed over the intercom. Simon clutched at his head as he felt an ache growing in the base of his skull. He still had yet to fully wake up from his cryo slumber, and Diana's inappropriately chipper mannerisms were doing nothing to help him get back into full gear. "Diana--" he began. "There's some jumpsuits in the locker by the door," Diana cut in. "Go ahead and put one on, dumbass. You too, Doc. I haven't spent ten years on this ship with no one to talk to just so I could watch you stumble about in the nip." Simon began to grate out a retort before he caught on to the reality of what she'd said. Cassandra beat him to the punch. "How long? How long did you say we've been asleep?" "Well," said the A.I., drawing out her words carefully. "I didn't exactly have access to an accurate calendar all this time, so it might actually be more like nine or so years, but my calculations aren't off that often..." She trailed off, as if taken aback by the urgency in Cassandra's voice. Cassandra leaned against her cryo pod and ran a shaking hand through her loose brown hair. She blinked once or twice, as if her mind was having trouble processing this new information. "Ten years," she whispered softly. "Ten years?" Simon, for his part, felt strangely unaffected by the news. Looking on at Cassandra's distress, he tried to feel some sort of strong emotion, but the only thing that he managed to dredge up was a small sense of hope that maybe the galaxy had become a less dangerous place to live in in the past decade. Perhaps, he thought distantly as he watched Cassandra struggle to regain her composure. Perhaps this is what it's like to have lost everything. Nothing surprises you anymore; all that matters to you is the fact that you're still alive, still breathing. Was this how he was going to spend the rest of his life? Stoically accepting everything that came his way without a shred of real emotion? After all the pain his feelings had caused him thus far, Simon wasn't sure if this was necessarily a bad thing. Shaking his head, he staggered past Cassandra and the dozen inactive cryo-pods in the room and headed for the locker Diana had pointed out. He had just come out of a decade-long cryosleep. For what it was worth, he was lucky that a temporary bout of stoicism was the only thing that was affecting him now. There would be plenty of time to register what had just happened later. Right now he needed to be concerned with finding out where they were and what the situation was. "Are you coming?" he asked Cassandra as he slid the locker open to reveal a row of identical grey jumpsuits. Vaguely, he realized that this was the first thing he'd said to her since waking up. "I just... need a minute," she muttered in response, and she sounded so forlorn that even Simon, for all his fear and mistrust of the galaxy as a whole, couldn't bring himself to suspect her of wanting to sabotage him or the ship in any way. Besides, Diana could keep an eye on her from any place on the shuttle. Slipping one of the jumpsuits on, Simon slid open the door to the cryo bay and, stepping into the shuttle's main living area, headed for the cockpit. Chapter Two: Situation Update[]
The jumpsuit, woven from the sort of rough synthetic cloth that was to be expected from Insurrectionists, had been tailored to fit all sizes and Cassandra was grateful that it didn't completely outstrip her in size as a mother's clothes might on her curious daughter. Instead, the suit merely hung loosely about her skin; a burlier wearer might have filled it completely, but after rolling up the sleeves and pant legs a little to befit her smaller size, Cassandra managed to maneuver in it as easily as if she were wearing regular-sized clothes. No, the problem wasn't the uniform's size. It was the insignia. A badge emblazoned with the red, clenched fist of the Humanity Liberation Front had been positioned just over the wearer's heart; clearly this shuttle had not been intended for stealth missions within UNSC territory. The HLF badge wasn't very large, but Cassandra could still feel its presence on her chest like a burning brand. It was as if an invisible person was standing over her and gently pressing the image of the fist down into her breast in a terrible, ever-present reminder of where she was and whom she was with. Cassandra glanced over at the other side of the shuttle's cockpit where Simon had seated himself in front of a row of dashboards and monitors. To his credit, he seemed to be just as, if not more so, uncomfortable in the uniform as he was. He was constantly fidgeting, picking idly at his uniform as if it were an irritating scab, and every so often he'd glanced down at the badge insignia and scowl. This behavior, however, was more confusing than comforting for Cassandra. Clearly Simon was no longer with the Insurrectionists. He had fled the HLF asteroid base (or "Hornet's Nest," as the ONI officer who had briefed Cassandra and her teammates prior to the attack had called it) with no one but her and an A.I. in tow. He had explained both his change in allegiances and his decision to bring Cassandra aboard with him before they had gone under together, but how much of his story could she believe? It had been clear to her when he first recounted his time on Mamore--the planet where a botched mission had forced Cassandra and the rest of her squad, Team Jian, to abandon Simon to certain death--that he had revised some parts of his story; some things hadn't all added up and his mannerisms while telling the story had been dodgy to say the least. Furthermore, he was an enemy of the UNSC who had killed UNSC soldiers--the men and women Cassandra was sworn to protect. She had only his word that he hadn't killed Jake, their team leader, during the bloody skirmish prior to Simon's escape in which all three of them had been severely injured. Simon had been a notorious liar even during their training; the drill instructors back on Onyx had always been punishing him for skiving off of his duties and he'd been known, among other things, for participating in thieving "raids" on secure food and equipment. Part of Cassandra was screaming for her to lunge over the cockpit seats separating them, beat her companion senseless, and figure out how to get back to the UNSC from there. The other, more rational and fortunately larger, part cautioned her against such a reckless maneuver. For one thing, Simon had thought to retrieve a sidearm from one of the ship's lockers before settling down in the cockpit while she, always one to consider diplomacy first when not dealing with immediate enemies, had neglected to do the same. She had felt that it would help foster feelings of mutual trust between them, although she was now coming to regret that decision deeply. Furthermore, even if she did reach Simon before he used his gun her odds of beating him in hand to hand combat were not heartening. She'd been just as bad as he had been at the combat exercises they performed on Onyx; the thing that had set her apart from Simon was that while he lacked just about any specialized skills, she had been by far the best medic in Gamma Company. Finally, even if she did she manage to disarm Simon and beat him into submission, she still had a ship she didn't know how to fly and a rogue A.I. to deal with. This "Diana" seemed harmless enough right now--there were none of the psychopathic tendencies that she'd been trained to expect from renegade intelligence programs--but if the situation got violent this might change. For all Cassandra knew, Diana would think nothing of killing both her and Simon if it looked like they were endangering her own safety. And so Cassandra, against every ounce of her training and loyalty to the UNSC, held back as Simon-G294, the infamous traitor who had--as some of her comrades had put it--disgraced Gamma Company by deserting and joining their enemies, carefully punched a series of buttons on the display before him. A hologram of a teenage girl appeared before him, whom Cassandra recognized as Diana. In her chosen avatar, she looked to be around as old as Simon and Cassandra, albeit better dressed and groomed than either of them. Diana cast an imperious gaze over the two Spartans. "So," she began, sounding as if she were a teacher addressing her classroom. "I'm betting you're both now wondering why, out of the goodness of my digital heart, I've decided to wake you up." Simon stretched out a thin, bony arm. From where she sat, Cassandra could hear his muscles and tendons popping into place; the sound reminded her of how tightly wound her own body felt. She'd have to run through some quick exercises once she got the time. Simon's hand passed through Diana's holographic body in a swipe that was clearly intentional, and the A.I. seemed to flinch as though she'd actually felt his touch. The response was odd for an A.I. , but then again Diana was clearly not a typical intelligence program. Smoothing the front of her skirt and adjusting the scarf around her neck, she gave Simon a look that would have cowed a raging Brute. "If you're going to violate a vulnerable young woman," she informed Simon haughtily. "I suggest you try the one on this ship that you can actually touch. I'm off-limits." "Save it," growled Simon. His tone was gruff, but Cassandra couldn't help but see the corner of his face redden somewhat. "Where are we?" "I was going to tell you," Diana told him witheringly, pacing back and forth for as far as the cockpit's holotank would allow her. She got within a foot of Cassandra before turning and stalking in the opposite direction. She arched her neck in an indignant impersonation of the fashion models Cassandra's teammates had discovered amongst various posters and computer files stolen from adult Marines and sailors. "But since you're being so rude, maybe I don't feel like it anymore." Simon rubbed his temples angrily. "I am not in the mood for this right now, Diana. Just tell us where we are!" "What's the magic word?" Diana asked impishly, clearly enjoying how easy it was to push a grouchy Simon's buttons. She flopped down into a sitting position and rested her chin in her palms, her silvery-blue avatar developing tinges of purple amongst the thin lines of code that scrolled down her bare hands and legs. As Simon let out an exasperated groan and leaned back in his chair, Cassandra decided to intervene. "Please," she implored Diana. "Tell us where we are." Diana shot Cassandra an appraising look. Perhaps she hadn't expected "Doc" to interrupt her fun at baiting Simon. She stood and motioned dramatically towards the cockpit viewports, which were currently obscured by blast shielding. "Well," the A.I. said as the shields began to lower. "Since you both are so interested, I'll show you instead of telling you." Clearly timing her movements, Diana twirled her arms in a theatrical flourish as the shields dropped completely and both Spartans gazed out beyond the confines of the drifting shuttle. Before them, set against the starry background of space, loomed a massive planet (though the term "massive" could be applied to any planet in the galaxy). It's white surface set it apart from the vast void around it like a pale stain on a dark rug. Although a few grey speckles and what appeared to be a frozen ocean or two interrupted its uniform color scheme, the vast majority of the planet was as white as snow, which Cassandra assumed was producing the color to begin with. The whole scene was beautiful, but Simon didn't seem to notice. Instead, he turned away from the windows and glared at Diana. "An ice planet. You woke us up for an ice planet? Is this a joke?" he demanded. Diana's purple tinge evaporated and was immediately replaced by a dark shade of green that covered her entire avatar. "You think I had a choice about which planet we bumped into?" she snapped back, all trace of pomp and ceremony gone in an instant. "In case you've forgotten, we've been drifting around for ten years! I've spent all that time making sure we didn't run out of fuel and energy! That means practically no maneuverability! I just pointed us in the direction of the nearest system and hoped for the best!" "Well clearly 'the best' isn't good enough!" Simon snarled. "Look at this thing! Are you detecting any signs of habitation? Is there any chance we'll run into anyone else down there? As far as I can see, it's a choice between starving to death up here or starving and freezing to death down there!" "This is the only inhabitable planet in the system!" Diana was taking the criticism rather poorly. "It's the only one with an atmosphere that you meatbags can breath in! And besides, the people we have the best chance of running into are the ones who wouldn't mind getting your ignorant head on a damn platter! " Simon opened his mouth to shout something else, but Cassandra, against her better nature, chose that moment to interrupt. "Is shouting about this really going to solve anything?" she asked, raising her voice just loud enough to be heard. She immediately regretted opening her mouth at all. Simon's head snapped around to face her, a look of surprise mingled his anger at Diana on his face; it was as if he'd momentarily forgotten she was there. Diana, her avatar losing its green and returning to its natural silvery blue color, rounded on her with eyes that managed to be the most calculating Cassandra had ever seen from a hologram. "And that reminds me, Dumbass," the A.I. said, addressing Simon. The anger was gone from her voice, gone and replaced by a tone that sounded only mildly annoyed."Why haven't you killed her yet?" Cassandra froze, struck completely numb by the A.I.'s callous suggestion. She could only watch as Simon slowly turned his chair to face her. In the dim light of the cockpit his pale face looked like a sheet of paper, but apart from his complexion he offered no insight into what was running through his mind. The ugly scar across his forehead, a horizontal slash etched into his brow by a Covenant energy sword, stood out even more than usual in the dim light generated by the cockpit's single overhead generator and the glow from Diana's hologram. Cassandra's eyes darted to the pistol lying in his lap. Simon's left hand rested on the weapon, his fingers twitching and drumming against its metal casing. She wasn't armed. In spite of the reputation for general incompetence he had fostered amongst their comrades in Gamma Company, Simon would still be able to raise the pistol and kill her before she had time to react. She considered making a lunge across the cockpit to disarm him, but a move like that would only provoke him to start shooting. Cassandra was out of options. Across from her, Simon's tongue darted out and nervously licked his lips, which were now almost as pale as the rest of his face. The fingers on the pistol were twitching even faster now, flexing and dancing across its barrel as if it were a concert piano. Staring into his shadowed eyes, Cassandra could practically see the cogs clicking away within Simon's mind. To kill or not to kill? It was a question every Spartan dealt with on a regular basis, and most of the time they chose the former option. Would Simon kill a former teammate? Someone he had once called a friend? He might have done it already. Cassandra had only his word that Jake hadn't been killed back on the asteroid. Her body began to tense. She couldn't just sit here and let him finish making up his mind about shooting her. She had to do something... Simon's fingers began to curl around the pistol's grip. His eyes seemed to be darting from the weapon to Cassandra to Diana and then back again as his breathing began to intensify. He might have been trembling under the loose folds of his jumpsuit. "Just do it," Diana cut in. Both Simon and Cassandra started at her interruption; it was a miracle that the pistol didn't go off right then and there. "Blow her away like you should have done before you froze yourself. We can dump the body out the airlock and stop worrying about her offing you in your sleep." Her voice was as casual as if she were discussing the weather. For one moment longer, Cassandra was convinced that Simon was going to kill her. His hand squeezed so tightly around the barrel that its knuckles whitened in less than a second. Then his eyes narrowed and Cassandra braced herself for the impact of the bullet. "The only person I feel like shooting right now," said Simon slowly, releasing the pistol and letting it fall back into his lap. "Is you, for giving us no options besides landing on that frozen piece of shit." Although his voice was level, Cassandra could have sworn she heard it tremor ever so slightly. Diana's avatar blinked. "What?" "And since I can't shoot you," Simon continued, rubbing his left wrist as if it ached. "I'm going to do next best thing and tell you to shut up and get us ready to land." "Are you serious?" Green was beginning to creep back onto Diana's holographic body. "We can land, right? I'm assuming you didn't manage to get the landing gear blown off while we were asleep." It was as if the moment had never happened. Cassandra let out a massive sigh of relief; she'd barely been breathing that whole time. Diana's avatar abruptly vanished, leaving traces of green behind. She could still be heard faintly through the cockpit's speakers, grumbling about ungrateful dumbasses who were too stupid for their own good. Standing up from his chair, Simon turned to leave the cockpit. "When you're done sulking, let me know," he threw over his shoulder at where Diana had been a moment before. "I'm going to poke around this ship, see if there's anything we missed ten years ago." He began to walk away, but stopped halfway through the door leading to the shuttle's main cabin and turned to face Cassandra. "Are you coming? I could use a hand taking inventory." "Uh, inventory?" Cassandra's was still awash with relief that she wasn't dead. "Yes, inventory. If we have to land down there, the least we can do is see what supplies we have to live off of." The color--what little there was of it--was returning to Simon's face and his voice had resumed the disinterested tone Cassandra remembered so well from their days back in Team Jian. He rested a hand on the doorframe. "Unless you want to take Diana's sage advice and try to attack me. In that case you may as well get it over with sooner rather than later, because I don't want to have to put up with this planet while always looking over my shoulder at the same time." He had a point. It was pointless to keep thinking of him as an enemy, especially given what they'd have to endure once they landed. Besides, he was holding all of the cards right now. Even if she did get the drop on him, Diana could manipulate some function of the ship to incapacitate her in seconds. So she'd cooperate with him, help him even, but she wouldn't--couldn't--trust him. If he tried to pull something, she'd have to be ready. "Okay," she said, rising from her own chair. "So long as you don't attack me, I won't attack you." She extended a hand. For the briefest of moments, Cassandra could have sworn that the look of cold indifference dropped from Simon's face and was replaced by one of downright embarrassment. Then she blinked and the expression had vanished. He took her hand and shook it gingerly, as if it were a bomb he was defusing. "That'll work." He turned and strode from the cockpit. "So, now that we've agreed not to kill each other, let's see if we can't find some more weapons lying around here." Chapter Three: Taking Inventory[]
Simon set the MA5C assault rifle down beside one of the metal benches in the shuttle's crew quarters, where it joined the growing collection of weapons he and Cassandra had discovered hidden away by their former rebel owners. All of these rifles and submachine guns were stolen UNSC tech, although Simon was sure that now, ten years past the time when these things had been the peak of human weaponry, they were worth almost nothing to the UNSC and rebels alike. If there even was a UNSC with rebels to fight it any more. For all they knew, the UNSC might have been disbanded or renamed. The rebels, whose cause Simon had spend almost two years of his life fighting for, might have won even with all the odds stacked against them. Maybe the Covenant had come back to finish their destruction of humanity after all. Thinking about all the things that could have happened while he'd been asleep made Simon feel both tired and confused, so he brushed away the thoughts as trivial and pointless. As far as he could tell, the only thing galactic politics and conflicts had ever done for him was given him one reason to fight and suffer after another. First the UNSC had trained him as a SPARTAN-III in order to fight the Covenant, then the Insurrection had converted him into a guerilla to fight the UNSC. As for the Covenant, they had always been a looming threat, as indomitable and unstoppable as a tidal wave. No matter how many times he and his fellow Spartans had fought and won against them, the aliens had never seemed to be significantly hurt in any way. The unwinnable wore he and his teammates were fighting, one that promised the eradication of his entire species, had just been another headache-inducing thought that he'd pushed away and made unimportant. He'd forgotten about the big picture and just focused on keeping himself alive from day to day. Simon lifted another weapon, this one an older BR55 battle rifle, from the compartment he and Cassandra had discovered shortly after they began combing the shuttle for supplies. When the Humanity Liberation Front techs had outfitted this ship, they had clearly expected to need both small-arms firepower and the means to hide it from UNSC inspectors. The only reason Simon had been able to find the compartment without any scanning tools was that he'd traveled aboard HLF ships before and had learned a few tricks from the men that crewed them. This manual, repetitive labor had given Simon more time to collect his jumbled thoughts, although he wasn't finding much comfort in thinking about them. Back in the cockpit, he had come very close to killing Cassandra. At that point he had been angry at Diana for being so taciturn about ending his former comrade's life, but now he realized that she'd just voiced the fears he'd been coping with ever since he'd brought Cassandra on board. It had only been the memory of one cloudless night back on Mamore, the recollection of another gun in his hand and a pair of cringing, pleading prisoners that had stayed his hand just then. He already bore enough guilt on Cassandra's account without doing anything else he'd need to regret about her. The thought of guilt drove him back to the HLF and, more specifically, to a man called Redmond Venter. He had believed in Venter and the cause he preached, had believed so strongly that he'd fought and killed and murdered for it--for him. He had worshipped Venter, had practically seen him as the father he'd never had, but in the end the HLF leader had abandoned both him and Diana to the UNSC in the heat of battle. Simon could now remember how, in the days after the escape, before he'd entered cryo-sleep, he'd forced himself to look back on his service to the HLF and Venter. It had all rung so hollow to him then: the declarations about freedom and justice, the sacrifices he and the other children Venter had gathered on Mamore had been willing to make, the ideas that they were fighting for a glorious cause... just empty ideals and pointless emotions. But just understanding that wouldn't undo the fact that he'd been betrayed by the first cause he'd ever truly been willing to die for. And the things you've done, whispered a small voice in the back of his mind. Oh, the things you've done... Simon set the battle rifle down and squeezed his eyes closed for a moment. He had to get rid of these thoughts, or at least set them aside until he had the time to deal with them. Venter had been the one who'd drawn him into all that. It had been Venter feeding him those lies, Venter giving him those orders. Venter had ordered him to kill those... He stopped himself from completing the thought and turned back to retrieve a new weapon from the hidden compartment. Perhaps he'd track Venter down if they ever got away from this rock that they were about to land on. If the man was still alive after ten years, he'd make him pay for the things he had done and ordered done back on Mamore. A tiny smile crept over Simon's face as he paused in his work to briefly fantasize about exacting his revenge on the man he'd once devoted himself to. He'd put him on the wrong end of a gun, make him beg for his life, blow his brains out... The clatter of things hitting the floor nearby shook Simon out of his petty revenge fantasy. More than a little angry at himself for lapsing into such an unhelpful daydream, he tugged the last two weapons--a pair of M7 submachine guns--from the hidden compartment and placed them with the others. As he got to his feet, he saw Cassandra standing across from him in a corner of the room. She stood beside a ladder that descended down into a hole in the metal floor. The ladder led to the shuttle's small cargo bay, where they had found several large storage crates. Cassandra had obviously found some medical supplies, as she was bending down to pick up a spilled armload of biofoam dispensers. "I'm guessing you found some more medical stuff," said Simon, taking one of the assault rifles from the pile and giving it a cursory once-over. "Any food? Stuff to eat?" Cassandra looked up from her load of canisters. "There were some crates marked 'Rations' down there," she replied, jerking her head at the ladder. "Well, if whatever's in those is as delightful as the shit I had to eat back when I was with these guys, then we won't have much call to be greedy." Simon frowned down at the assault rifle. "But it's better than starving to death; I know from experience. I don't know what you did with this ship while we were asleep, Diana, but all of this stuff is really well preserved." The A.I. didn't respond to the compliment. She was probably still sulking about what had happened in the cockpit. It was irritating, but Simon wasn't all that surprised. He'd seen her pull similar stunts with Redmond Venter, her first master, back when they'd been in the HLF. The assault rifle in his hands was, as Simon had noted, very well preserved. He'd still need to give it and all the other weapons they'd found a thorough inspection and cleaning, but he was still amazed that these weapons were still intact after ten years of neglect. By all rights, they should be coming to pieces at the slightest touch. He turned back to Cassandra to comment on this only to discover that she'd set the biofoam dispensers in a neat pile and vanished back down the ladder. Simon sighed and turned back to the weapons. At least she wasn't tiptoeing around and cringing at his every word. He was grateful that they'd managed to establish any sort of trust at all, considering what had happened back in the cockpit, but he couldn't tell if he was just annoyed at her terse mannerisms because they were unnecessary or a little hurt by them because they'd once been teammates. "You could have solved a lot of problems if you'd just taken my advice," said Diana's voice in his ear. Simon turned to look up at an intercom panel on the ceiling above him. "I see you're talking to me again," he noted, picking up one of the battle rifles and looking it over. "That's a new record for you: shortest sulk." For once, Diana didn't rise to the bait. "You don't seem to realize that she could very well turn on you at any time." Simon set the battle rifle down and looked back at the ladder Cassandra had taken down into the cargo bay. He didn't like what Diana was suggesting, but that didn't mean she didn't have merit. But still... "Cassandra's not going to kill me in my sleep," he said after a moment. "For one thing, that's not her style and for another, she isn't stupid enough to try something like that with you in this ship's systems." "So what is her style? Shoot you in the back? Surprise you from the front? If you were her, how would you go about killing you?" "I wouldn't, and that's the truth. I don't really think Cassandra has a 'style' for killing," Simon informed his companion. "Why do you think she did everything she could to become the best medic in Gamma Company? Even with all our training, she hates killing. She'd much rather help people than hurt them, which is why I know she won't try to kill me." "Maybe you don't know her as well as you think," Diana countered, a jab that stung more than Simon had expected it to. "And even if you did back when you were on the same side, things have changed since then. If you can't get the nerve to do the smart thing about her, then you'd better watch her. I didn't put ten years into finding us a planet just so you could get yourself killed through some juvenile fantasy of yours." "I understand that." "Really? I don't think you do. For someone who's been stabbed in the back as often as you have, you're way too quick to trust people. I thought we both learned how dangerous that was after what happened with Venter. You didn't think he'd betray you either, right?" Simon winced and one of his hands curled into a fist. "No. I learned that lesson the hard way; I haven't forgotten it." "Then why can't you understand that you can't trust this girl? You're a rebel now, not a Spartan. And no matter how nice or gentle you say Doc is, she still is one." Diana's voice was utterly devoid of her usual playful humor. She was deadly serious about everything she was saying. "I may not know much about you Spartans, but I've had time to observe. You're friends, back on the asteroid? What did they try to do the second they realized you were with the rebels?" "Kill me," muttered Simon, feeling numb. Diana was digging deep into areas he did not want to go, but no matter what he did he couldn't find any ammunition to argue against her with. "They tried to kill me." "Right. The second you turned into a threat, they tried to kill you. Now that you've essentially kidnapped her, what do you think Doc's going to think you are?" When Simon didn't respond, Diana carried on. "A threat. She's going to think you're a threat. And regardless of how risky it'll be for her to take you out, she'll do it because it's her duty. She's got a traitor right in front of her, and if everything you've told me about your training is accurate, then she's had propaganda that people like you are to be shot on sight pounded into her head for years. Just because you managed to shake it off doesn't mean she'll be able to as well." Simon's shoulders slumped. He thought back to what he'd said to Cassandra in the cockpit. Get it over with sooner rather than later. She'd said she wouldn't turn on him--So long as you don't attack me, I won't attack you--but was she really as reliable as he thought she was? Diana was right: people changed; maybe the war with the Covenant had affected Cassandra more deeply than he'd realized. For all he knew, she could just be lulling him into a false sense of security before she struck. He shook his head. "I just can't kill her, Diana. I can't." "Why?" Diana demanded. "Why can't you? Because she used to be on your team? Because you want things to go back to how they were before you got stuck with rebel scum like Venter and me? Because you're hormones won't let you?" "Because I've got enough blood on my hands already!" Simon snarled. Diana's barbed comments had given him a new burst of energy. "I'm not just going to kill someone else just because I think they might be a threat! That's the kind of thing Venter did, and I'm not going back to the way he wanted things done!" "Then how do you want things done?" Diana retorted. "You may hate Venter and what he did, but at least his system worked. So what's you're system going to be? How's it going to work? Is it going to keep us safe? This isn't just me being concerned for you, you know! We're in this together, and I need you alive if either of us is ever going to get off this rock we're going to land on. And yes, you're right: it is a rock. But it's all we've got, and I'm not going to let that girl get in the way of us figuring out how to get back to the rest of the galaxy and getting on with our lives." Such a rare occurrence--Diana admitting that he was right--would have given Simon cause for a smug comment or two under different circumstances. But now he was quite literally engaged in a debate over Cassandra's life. Diana was right: the two of them needed each other, and regardless of his own feelings, Cassandra couldn't be allowed to cause problems. What's more, he and Diana owed each other their lives. They were essentially partners; Cassandra was just another problem. But Simon's instructors back on Onyx had been very clear on what to do with unavoidable problems: whenever possible, turn them into advantages. Maybe he could do the same thing now. "She won't get in the way," he said finally. "She won't get in the way because we'll make her an asset." "Oh? And how's that?" "It's going to be hard down there," Simon continued. "Like we just agreed, it's a rock. We'll need to poke around, see if we can find food and even other people. In order to do that, we'll need more than just my body and you're capabilities. Cassandra's had the same combat and survival training that I have; what's more, she's the best medic I've ever seen. We can use all of those things, and she knows this. She'll also realize the same for me. With me dead and you hostile, she'll never have a chance of getting back to society. We can help each other, and so long as that's true she won't try anything." "Alright," Diana sighed. "But if she does try something? What then?" "Then I'll kill her," said Simon. "I'll kill her and we'll figure things out from there." He got to his feet and looked around for more items to investigate. "But until then, she's with us. Not the Spartans, not the UNSC. Just with us."
*** The uncomfortable uniform was not the only thing bothering her. No, the real problem was that nothing had changed since she and Simon had agreed not to kill each other. She felt neither confident that he wouldn't cave into Diana's suggestion to do away with her nor satisfied that she was doing the right thing by not taking immediate action against both him and that savage little A.I.. Either way, she was being stupid: the former option meant that she was leaving herself open to an attack that might come at any time, and the latter option meant that she was failing her duty to the UNSC. She needed to figure this all out, and soon; regardless of whether or not he'd been lying to her back in the cockpit, Simon had been right about one thing in particular: as long as they were both busy waiting for the other to make their move, they wouldn't be focusing on the real issue, which was finding a way to both survive and get off the barren planet they were heading towards. It didn't help matters at all that Simon at least had Diana to discuss things with, regardless of how touch-and-go their relationship seemed to be like; Cassandra had no one with whom she could confide in or seek advice from. The tattered remnants of Team Jian, the only close friends she had left in the world, were far from reach some unknowable light years away. They might even be dead; Cassandra had no way of knowing whether or not they had survived the ebb and flow of life as Spartans these past ten years she'd been asleep. But regardless of whether they were alive or dead, they were still lost to her, lost like all four members of her original squad, Team Kopis. Just thinking of her lost comrades made Cassandra feel as lonely as she'd felt back in the days after that terrible battle on the beleaguered UNSC destroyer, the Ides of March. Then she'd felt as if the universe was playing games with her, tantalizing her with friends and family before yanking them from her grasp like a toy on a string. First her original family, the father and younger sister that she could now only barely remember, had been taken from her when tall, heartless men had hauled her away to train as a Spartan; then her new family, Team Kopis, had been butchered before her eyes in a single engagement. For once, Cassandra didn't shake herself free of such useless self-pity. She was past those days of breaking down in the bathrooms or locker rooms over the memories of her dead teammates; the other Spartans had been as understanding as they could, given the circumstances, but she'd always felt ashamed of the way they managed to deal with their own grievances in a more sightly manner while she was reduced to quietly weeping at regular intervals. She'd only stopped after getting a good long look at another, more visible, scar from that battle: the ugly gash on Simon's forehead. He'd been the only other survivor from that little skirmish, but he'd very nearly joined the rest of Kopis amongst the dead. While the rest of his squad covered different areas of the Ides, he'd reported an incoming enemy attack in his assigned area and pulled back to where Kopis was positioned. The attack had come, but not from where he'd reported. Instead, a seemingly endless pack of Brute warriors had blindsided the defending Spartans and picked them off one by one. Cassandra could still remember Simon's incoherent screaming and bawling as a massive Brute chieftain cornered him and made that mark across his head with an energy sword. The blade had come damn near to causing brain damage, she remembered Jake telling her. It had been nothing short of a miracle that he hadn't died simply from the weapon's energy output. The thought of Simon brought her slowly back to the issue at hand. Had that been the start for him? The point at which he'd begun to consider betraying everything they'd been trained to obey and defend? He'd had something of a reputation for valuing self-preservation over success during training; maybe seeing Kopis die and coming so close to death himself had affected Simon just as much as it had her. That might have been the case, but Cassandra couldn't say for sure. His explanation of his actions back before their long cryosleep had been full of whats rather than whys, and it was the why that was so important now. If Simon had acted as he'd done, betraying the UNSC and joining the Insurrection, due to sheer survival instincts, he'd just be as wary of her as she was of him; his decision would hinge on how much of a threat he felt she posed to him. But if he'd joined for more idealistic reasons, perhaps been brainwashed or otherwise convinced to become a traitor, then he was practically an armed explosive as far as she was concerned. The Simon she'd known from Team Jian would have gone with whichever option kept him alive as opposed to whichever one appealed to whatever sense of honor and justice he might possess. But he'd spent over two years fighting with the Insurrection--for whatever reasons--on Mamore in a conflict that had, from what Cassandra had gathered from military and news reports, had been uncompromisingly brutal to both sides. The reports had talked of civilian casualties numbering in the millions being inflicted by both sides as the marines and government forces fought to keep the "Innies" from fulfilling their insane dream of forcibly seceding Mamore from the UNSC. She'd seen footage of dozens of towns being reduced to rubble, of the corpses of weaponless men, women, and children lying huddled in roads, of starving refugees begging for assistance from the UNSC and Insurrectionist forces alike. Being caught up in the midst of such horrors could change anyone--Cassandra had been hard pressed not to break down at the sight of the carnage the Covenant had inflicted while she and the remnants of Team Jian had been defending Earth. The war on Mamore could have changed Simon's perceptions of the universe in any number of ways. Cassandra allowed a small sigh to slip through her teeth. She was no closer to solving her problem than she had been a minute ago. She was still onboard a small shuttle with only an Insurrectionist A.I. and a boy who might try to kill her at any moment for companions. An idea struck her. Simon must clearly be dealing with this same dilemma in the crew quarters above her. He'd refrained from killing her thus far, which meant that he'd at least found some reason to restrain himself from following through on Diana's advice. He must be as desperate for solace as she was; it was clear that his and Diana's relationship was based more on partnership and some strange sense of loyalty to each other rather than full and unhesitating friendship. And while Diana was clearly much more independent--she might even be rampant, for all Cassandra knew--than the other A.I.s she'd met in the past, Cassandra was confident that she was still reliant on logic to make her critical decisions. If she made herself truly useful to both of them, she'd stand a far better chance of surviving than she otherwise might if she merely complied with whatever Simon asked of her. She'd make him trust her, and she'd be careful not to betray that trust in her desire to get back to the UNSC. Make him trust me... Another thought struck her, this one more wild than the last. She could save him. She, Cassandra-G006, could help Simon see the light and come back to the UNSC. He might be a traitor, but ten years had passed since he'd committed any crimes or fought for the Insurrectionists. He was still augmented and trained as a Spartan; that had to count for something. All Cassandra had to do was convince him that it was the best course of action while also convincing whatever ONI goons who might still want his head that it would be best to welcome him back to the fold. It would be difficult, especially since she had no clue about what state the galaxy was in, but she'd been trained to ignore the odds when necessary and forge ahead into the unknown. A hesitant smile crept its way onto her lips. She'd already lost far too many friends to the fires of war. Just the simple act of saving a single wayward comrade might be one of the greatest things she'd ever accomplished. She resumed her searching. Yes, it would take some convincing to turn Simon around, but she could do it. The only problem was that there was only way for her to gain Simon's trust. She would have to trust him. Chapter Four: Exercises[]
Simon lashed out with both fists at once in a strike to the face that was clumsy and easily parried. Cassandra responded by aiming a kick at his chest that he only narrowly avoided by dodging to the side and responding with a kick of his own. This, too, was evaded and both combatants disengaged, falling backwards to a safe distance and eying each other warily. His fists clenched in front of him in a combat pose, Simon paced to the side as Cassandra did the same. He was dismayed to feel sweat already coating a good portion of his body--Had his time in cryo-sleep undone years of training and conditioning?--but was somewhat heartened that Cassandra seemed to be having the same problem, if in deed it was a problem. They were still on equal footing, at least in that regard. Doing his best not to tense up and let his body language give him away, Simon hesitated for a moment longer before coming in with a barrage of punches and palm strikes that put Cassandra on the defensive and forced her back. As he did his best to keep the entirety of his opponent's body in perspective, Simon could see that she was only just backing up without tripping over her own two feet. So nothing really changed while I was gone, then. He kept up the punches, forcing Cassandra back more and more until she had nowhere left to go. She had reached the limits of their makeshift sparring ring. In retrospect, this had all been Diana's idea. About half an hour after Simon and Cassandra had finished scouring the shuttle for equipment--the fruits of their labors were stacked and piled around the living quarters area--Diana had announced that they'd be entering the planet's atmosphere "shortly". This had led to a frantic effort to tie down or otherwise secure all of the newfound loose weapons and supplies which they had accomplished in far less the time than Diana had seemed to be promising with her use of the word "shortly". When Simon had broached the subject with her, she'd proceeded with her usual bout of name-calling followed by a peeved explanation (though she did more bragging than actual explaining) of all the complicated calculations regarding trajectory and timing that she had to make in order to keep them from crashing or being roasted alive. She'd concluded her tirade by suggesting that he and Cassandra find some "meatbag things" to do in order to pass the time. Cassandra, who'd been listening from the door of the cockpit, had agreed with the suggestion and the first thing either of them came up with was sparring. It was a tradition they'd both picked up during their training on Onyx: even when a gym wasn't available, groups of SPARTAN-IIIs would find some way of cordoning off a "ring" and selecting two people at a time to step in there and go at it. Although (or because) non-sanctioned sparring was strictly against regulations, it had still been a good way to hone hand-to-hand skills, settle disputes, or--as it was in this case--simply pass the time. Even bottom-feeders like Simon and Cassandra who always lost had found it at least somewhat enjoyable to go a few rounds with a comrade every once in a while; that was probably why they'd both agreed to do it now, even in these unusual circumstances. Simon had rarely had any bouts against anyone outside of Team Jian, with whom he would not be humiliated by every consecutive defeat. He'd never gone against Cassandra, not even after she'd been transferred into the squad, which made this fight something of a learning experience about his companion. She seemed to prefer staying on the defensive, and when she did lash out her attacks were careful and guarded. She never appeared to flinch when a kick or punch came her way, so it couldn't be that she was afraid of being hit. Did she want him to tire himself out before she went on the defensive? He'd fought like that back when he was still in Gamma Company: always on the defensive and never attacking unless he was sure to hit. He'd been afraid of letting his guard down and taking a nasty hit someplace painful, and that fear had always cost him in the long run. He could never keep up an impenetrable defense and his opponent would find a way to get in a good enough hit to draw blood or even plant him on his ass. It had taken the rough, eat or be eaten attitude of Mamore to break down that particular bad habit. In the street scuffles that his friends on Mamore had set up, you had to strike quickly or risk being overwhelmed by the half a dozen or so other fighters who'd be in the ring with you. They'd all been lean, nasty little strays, almost dog-like in their tenacity and outlook. But with years of training and his Spartan augmentations to draw upon, Simon had found them to be easy pickings every time. It had been a thrilling new experience to finally be at the top of the heap in something, even if he did have an unfair advantage. The others had gawked wonderingly at him as he won every fight he was in, and after the initial shock wore off they began to come up with all sorts of ways to take him down. It was those fights that had taught him to do what he was doing with Cassandra now: to lay in with everything he had, hardly caring if the other fighter landed a hit on him or not. In a dogpile of struggling, shouting kids it was all you could do to just keep hitting the next body that got in your way. He'd had to learn to reign himself in during those fights so that he wouldn't seriously hurt any of his new friends in the thick of the fray. It hadn't been until after he'd seen every single one of those friends, so hardened by life on the streets and yet so innocent in their willingness to flock to the Insurrection's banner, die under the UNSC's guns that he'd stopped holding back and being afraid of what he'd do to the other person. After he'd fallen in with the HLF, Venter and his cronies had thrown him into pit fights against the other children they were training to be the next generation of rebels. Simon had just stopped caring and set into everyone he came up against, not letting up until his latest opponents lay in bleeding heaps at his feet. In the end, he'd wound up enjoying that sense of superiority that came with overwhelming victory. Mamore had turned him into something less than human, had awakened something feral and savage within him. It was composed of all the hurt and grief and rage that he'd kept bottled up inside of him until then, and it was the weapon he'd used to survive on the blood-soaked battlefields of Mamore and in that last, no holds barred fight against Jake. When he gave in and let that part of him take over, he felt nothing for the people he hurt or the danger he put himself in in pursuit of a goal. There was only him and the enemies in front of him. Of course, there was no danger of him slipping into that mindset now. This was just a casual sparring match, something he and Cassandra had agreed upon to kill time. There was nothing to be remotely worried about here. He was just attacking and she was just blocking... She was still blocking him. Even with her back against the wall, she wasn't doing anything to break his flow of punches. This couldn't be part of some master plan to wear him out; no one went on this long just blocking an opponent's attacks like she was. Maybe it was him. In spite of all that time and experience fighting in those brawls on Mamore, his hits were still as woodenly aimed and thrown as ever. When he'd watched some of the better fighters like Esther or Terrence fight together, the fights had seemed almost like elaborate dances rather than sparring matches. He lacked any such grace, and he'd always envied those who possessed it. Then again, Cassandra could use the openings he must be giving her to get in some hits on her own. Why had she suggested this if she wasn't going to actually fight? She'd seemed a little more open since she'd come back up from the hold... or was the right word friendly? She'd stopped with the monosyllabic answers and even started using his and Diana's names when talking to them. Simon was having trouble understanding what was behind this odd change of pace. As yet another of his punches was effortlessly brushed aside, a horrible thought struck him. Did she feel sorry for him? Was she doing this out of pity? This idea did manage to stir some anger within Simon. He didn't want--or need--her sympathy. He sent his right fist flying in, and when she blocked it he clamped the hand around her defending arm and darted in with his left arm before she could adjust to the unexpected grapple. He caught her full in the face, hard enough to draw blood and send her stumbling over the crates they'd pulled together to form the limits of the "ring". In a regular fight between regular people, such a hit would have been debilitating, possibly enough to shatter the defender's jaw and definitely enough to put them out of commission for several minutes. But Cassandra was a Spartan and had taken much worse hits than that without a whimper. She was back on her feet in seconds, wiping away the blood oozing from her lower lip and shaking her head ruefully. By the traditional sparring rules that had been mutually agreed upon by the Spartans of Gamma Company, the first person to draw blood was the winner. They didn't want to give their DIs any excuse to punish them for fighting without permission. "Good match," Cassandra said after a moment's pause. Her lip was still bleeding profusely; their augments had been designed to harden bones, not flesh. "Yeah," Simon replied, but the thrill of victory just wasn't there. He felt oddly ashamed for having let his emotions get involved in what was supposed to be a casual match, and hope she hadn't seen any of that momentary anger on his face. He gestured at her lip. "Do you need any, uh, help with that?" She shrugged. "I'll be fine. I wasn't expecting a hit like that from you." "Wow," said Diana's voice. "Looks like you just got burnt, Dumbass. Guess even Doc thinks you're a scrawny little weakling." They both turned to see Diana's avatar perched on a small holopad jutting out from the wall. She was projecting an ornate-looking armchair and was sitting in it cross-legged with a look of mild amusement. Simon got the feeling that she'd been watching the whole match. "Hope I'm not interrupting anything too important," Diana continued, smirking. "But in about five minutes we'll be entering the planet's atmosphere, so you might want to strap in. "But change your clothes first," she added, wrinkling her nose at their sweat-soaked uniforms. "You're both disgusting, and I can't even smell you." Simon wiped several beads of perspiration from his brow. "Glad to see that you appreciate what us 'meatbags' go through to do all the stuff you perfect A.I.s can't do," he commented, heading towards the cryo bay. Cassandra moved to rearrange the furniture they had uprooted to use as a sparring ring, but Diana rolled her holographic eyes and said, "What part of 'five minutes till we enter the atmosphere' don't you understand, Doc? You can either play house or get decent, and I'm not letting you in the cockpit if you're still as big a mess then as you are now." "Please stop calling me that," Cassandra said. "My name's Cassandra, not Doc. And if this furniture isn't secured then it could cause problems during our descent." Diana casually inspected her fingers, as if they were more important than the Spartan in front of her. "You're a medic, so you're Doc. Simon's a loser who's easy to trick, so he's Dumbass. It makes things simpler for me. And isn't it just like you UNSC types to get snooty about Insurrectionist tech? This shuttle's got internal buffers and artificial gravity generators to deal with loose things even when things get rough; the worst that could happen is a few crates getting knocked over." It was not in Cassandra's nature to let other people's comments get under her skin, but this A.I. was managing to rankle her like no one else she'd ever met. "Why didn't you mention that when we were getting all that equipment packed away?" With a casual shrug, Diana tossed a lock of hair over her shoulder. "I just thought it was pretty funny seeing you two trip over everything all over the hold. If I'd thought of it sooner, I'd have told you both that you only had a couple minutes to do everything. That would have been a sight to remember." Cassandra bristled, but stopped when Simon reentered the room. He'd donned a new uniform that was identical to the ones they'd been wearing, but had only zipped the single-piece jumpsuit up to the waist. Its sleeves and upper portion dangled about his legs like the tails of an antiquated overcoat. "You're just going to encourage her," he told Cassandra as he reached into one of the crates and pulled out a pack of medical bandages. Ripping the packaging open, he began to pull reams of white cloth from the bag. Cassandra struggled to find the right response, but after a moment's pause Diana beat her to it. "Oh, like you don't encourage me all the time?" she sneered playfully. "Like I just told Doc here, you're pretty easy to manipulate." "I am not." Simon held up the long strip of bandage, examining its length. "Oh really? Then explain how Venter was able to play you like a cheap pub game." Simon's expression darkened, and he didn't respond. Cassandra remembered that she and the rest of her squad had been briefed on someone named "Venter" prior to their assault on the Humanity Liberation Front asteroid base. The Office of Naval Intelligence briefer had said he was fairly high up in the HLF's food chain; he must have been Simon and Diana's superior. Regardless of what the exchange between Simon and Diana had just told her, Cassandra figured that she should just be glad that Diana was limiting herself to childish insults. After all, she could still be telling Simon to kill her instead. Chapter Five: Descent[]
Simon had despised space travel from the moment he'd been piled onto an ONI freighter and delivered to Onyx for training. The artificial gravity and stale, recycled air didn't necessarily bother him--these were oddities that he could adjust to fairly quickly. The real problem with flying in space was simply the knowledge that he was, in fact, in space. Knowing that he was encased in a shell of metal being propelled for thousands upon thousands of miles through an empty, airless vacuum was enough to send goosebumps rippling across his skin. The years of training on Onyx had managed to allow him to get past this reaction, but he still couldn't bring himself to like it. But not even his Spartan training could make him relax during space combat. The idea that his life was not only in the hands of some anonymous pilots on his own ship, but also in the hands of hostile enemy ships and the cold, unforgiving laws of space itself was so horrifying that it practically made him sick to his stomach. He'd take a rifle and solid ground to fight on over huddling helplessly in the quarters of some starship any day. Not that he was particularly interested in fighting on the ground either... Simon latched onto that last thought in the hopes that pondering it would take his mind off the preparations Diana was making for their descent into the planet's atmosphere. Throughout training and during his time fighting the Covenant, he had always kept one priority ahead of all others, regardless of his orders or assignment: his own survival. Somewhere along the line during his training, the UNSC's indoctrination methods had failed and he'd never quite been able to buy into the lofty concepts of duty and self-sacrifice that his comrades had come to accept and live their lives by. All he'd really wanted was three meals a day and a guarantee that he wouldn't be thrown back onto the streets; all other motivations had been, in his mind, secondary at best. Perhaps that had been why he'd always been the worst in the SPARTAN-III program. He'd spent his whole time in the Spartan program clinging on to that all-encompassing desire for survival, and when he'd been stranded on Mamore things hadn't seemed to change a bit. If anything, he had been even more focused on surviving without the duties of Spartan-hood to curb such introverted urges. But it had also been on Mamore that Simon, his rebel friends killed by the UNSC war machine and he himself cut off on a war-torn planet, had given up on even that ingrained instinct. He had resolved to die fighting the UNSC in the name of the Insurrection, and when Redmond Venter had recruited and indoctrinated him into the Humanity Liberation Front, those feelings hadn't changed. Simon had been ready to die for Venter and his cause right up to the point that the Insurrectionist leader had shown his true colors and hastily sacrificed both him and Diana in an attempt to ensure his own survival. That solitary act of betrayal had killed all of his faith in the Insurrection in an instant, stripping away all the lies and self-deceptions that he had forced himself to believe in. But by then it was too late. His hands were already stained with innocent blood, and nothing he could do would remove that. But in spite of the awful, lingering feelings of guilt, Simon knew that he still wanted to live. Even if he had nothing but more pain and hardship to live for, he couldn't bring himself to give up and let the twisted universe crush him completely. Even if his only reason to live was to spite both the UNSC and the Insurrection. He would not let go of life now, not when the galaxy owed him so much for the suffering and loss he had been forced to endure so far. That was a debt he intended to collect some day, one that would at some point guarantee him the happiness he had been denied for so long. He just needed to be patient and wait for his moment. It wasn't a particularly inspiring or lasting reason to live, but it was something. And after having his hopes and beliefs torn to pieces time and time again, even something was a breath of fresh air for Simon. He glanced over at Cassandra, who was strapped into the cockpit's other chair. What was her reason for living? All right, meatbags," Diana crooned over the intercom. Her teenaged avatar flickered to life on the holotank, looking thoroughly pleased with itself. "All the calculations are punched in and we're heading for the atmosphere. Better brace yourselves for some chop, or those squishy little bodies of yours are going to get knocked around a bit." Chapter Six: The Three Pillars[]
He was glad for the Semi Powered Infiltration armor that sealed him away from the cold as he scowled at the frozen landscape around him from behind his helmet's broad visor. There was nothing but icy white plains for as far as the eye could see, unbroken by anything save for the occasional sloping hill or jagged trench. According to Diana, she hadn't been able to pick up anything on the shuttle's scanners either. In short, it was a natural prison constructed by the universe to punish him for the crimes the UNSC would have killed him for. "I'm going to die here, aren't I?" he growled at no one in particular.
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