Mortal Reveries: Rest And Little Reprieve

He gazed out over the rolling dunes, tracing the harsh geometry of the pulsing superstructure in the distance. Spartan Gilberto ‘Gil’ Vargas still had no idea what the angular facility that punched out of the surface of the ringworld, firing a blue pulse into the sky every hour on the hour was actually meant for, only that it was pretty to watch. Gil would follow the pulse as it left the atmosphere and coalescent into the void of space, then look over the gaping wound on the opposite side of the ring, swearing it’d somehow gotten smaller.
He’d been here six months to the day. ‘Zee plus six’ they’d begun to call it, after tracking months had become more convenient than days. As his eyes fell back down the curve of the ringworld, he wondered how many more months they’d count. Looking out over the approach to the cave they’d made into their most recent holdout, Gil found it was as barren as it had been four seconds earlier. Still, he visually swept over every crevice, hunting for any distortion that’d signal the presence of a camouflaged enemy.
There was nothing, just the same expanse of rocky crags and sweeping sand dune. Gil looked down at the ammo counter on his DMR, just to be sure it was full, then ejected the mag to inspect it visually. Training burned into his mind refused to allow him to rely on technology for verification, at least with weapons he understood. One hand fell away from the marksman's weapon and pulled the plasma rifle from his thigh. 
Looking over the indicator on the side, and recounting the classes on Covenant linguistics before settling on thinking it looked fine. This was had to be the thousandth time he’d run through this cycle during his firewatch, but he’d do anything to stave off boredom until-
“Shift’s over ‘Gil, my turn in paradise.” Gil turned his mirrored faceplate to face Bently Morris. He hardly looked like the pale-faced aviator they’d found in a losing fistfight with a jackal half a year ago. The stained and signed flight suit he was forced to retain was now adorned with various armor pieces human and otherwise, crisscrossed with bandoliers, slings, knives and webbing holding extra ammunition. Like the rest of them, he’d had to adapt, to make do with what they had. For a man who’d claimed to have not run a combat sim since ‘57, he’d grown into a fearsome soldier, someone Gil could count on.
“Try not to sound too excited.” The Spartan answered as the smaller man came alongside him, a stripped-down BR75 cradled in his arms, chuckling slightly. It’d taken a long time for Gil to come around on the idea that they didn’t always need a Spartan on watch, and Bless-G189 still hadn’t. In fact, if he were to bet, she’d be sitting upright on her sleeping bag, checking the mags and plasma batteries on her gear. Or taking inventory of their skewer bolts, one of the two.
Gil took another look over the horizon, and back to the pilot-turned-warrior. There wasn’t much else to say he supposed, so the Spartan tipped his helmet towards the replacement sentinel, who returned it in kind, then turned to go.
“Oh Gil, before you go losing sleep, Luzon got signals from second and third group. We’re all good.” Tightness in his stomach that’d held for days finally released. Since the Reverie, they’d been moving almost constantly, and bleeding people with every passing day it seemed. By the time they’d desperately crossed through the teleporter that’d brought them to this part of the ring, there’d only been a hundred of them where there’d once been close to half a thousand.  They’d made the banished bleed for every life taken, but their foe had the skies, and just about everything else. But this last hundred, they’d gone the distance.
Gil took the news with another hand, and a pat on Morris’ shoulder before making his way down into the cave. A small stream trickled through the darkness, and were he to take off his helmet, he’d feel the cool moist air of their sanctuary across his face rather than the dry misery of above. But he kept it on, keeping up appearances as a Spartan kept up morale, and they needed all of that they could get.
Some thirty souls mingled quietly in the cave, huddled around the green glow of their lightsticks, some planning reconnaissance or foraging ops, others checking their stocks, and a lucky few catching their hard-earned rest. Bar one, that was. 
Bless-G189 was sitting upright with an array of disassembled weapons in front of her, halfway through reassembling one of their few M6 Magnums when the thin slit of her visor tilted up to see him. She froze for a moment like a child caught with their hand in the cookie jar, then promptly resumed her work. She was supposed to be sleeping, her shift on watch was in an hour, and she knew it.
Bar a few of the marines, Bless was the youngest person there, and also one if not the most dangerous person among them. He’d thought he was hot shit when he’d made ODST at nineteen, even though he’d known it’d only happened because the Helljumpers were chewing through their reserves faster than they could replenish them. For a long time, that was what he thought had been the peak of humanity’s desperation, shoving kids barely out of high school into special forces schools years ahead of time.
But then he’d met Bless.
It’d taken time, and the deaths of the rest of Fireteam Anchor for her to spill all the gory details, but there had always been something off about their replacement. Her records marked her as barely twenty-one when she’d filtered in to replace their last Anchor 5, which made no sense given the combat record of the Spartan-IIIs dating back far before her supposed eighteenth birthday, and a mountain of other inconsistencies. But she’d staunchly refused to answer questions, until three nights after the Reverie.
ONI classification didn’t matter much when one didn’t think they were going to live to pay for it. 
She’d been fourteen when she saw combat for the first time. At that age, Gil had been trying to impress the girls in the refugee camp with his pals, throwing rocks at the reservists called in to help police the massive tent city on Tribute. And of course, her first engagement was Mars. He’d been there too, half a planet away, but pounding dirt on the once-Red Planet all the same. Gil hadn’t had the time to process that since and doubted he ever would on the ring, but that wasn’t his concern at the moment.
Slinging his rifle over his shoulder, he made his way over to the other Spartan and feigned a cough. She didn’t so much as flinch, giving the re-assembled magnum a final once over before finally addressing him, “Couldn’t sleep, keeping busy instead.”
“You’re supposed to be busy resting.” Gil countered, crossing his arms over one another, the jury-rigged plating he’d affixed over breaches in his armor grinding against the native components. He’d have to adjust that later. 
“I just said I couldn’t,”
“I said rest, not sleep. Can’t force you to sleep.” Gil said, slowly coming down to his knees, the floor in front of her. “C’mon, what’d you guys do to relax? All the Helljumper stuff needed cards or alcohol, but Sergeant Faucher has my deck and we wouldn’t get anything of booze even if there was any.”
She set the sidearm down neatly next to three others of its kind, and met her visor with his, silently gesturing to the assortment of weapons before her as if it was a sufficient answer.
“So you all just disassembled guns in silence for fun? That’s it?” Gil leaned back against a groove in the cave wall, trying to find something resembling a comfortable sitting position.
“Yes. Give me your rifle.” She answered, ignoring Gil when he scoffed, but paying enough mind to him to catch the rifle by its sling as he tossed it over. She insisted on maintaining his weapon, usually reminding him of some poor score on a weapons inspection from before she’d even met him as her reason for handling it. In truth though, Gil was pretty sure she just liked the DMR.
She’d begun to strip in from the moment it was secure in her grasp, and with tired eyes he watched her begin to undo in seconds what it’d taken him to do in hours. The rifle was held together by sheer will and sported a number of modifications internally to keep it functional so high the Misriah techs probably wouldn’t know what to do with it, but she did.
“Alright, you got the gun, now quit bullshitting me Bless, what’d the threes do to relax?” She glared at him the more he used her name. Not Spartan-G189, not her rank or callsign, but her god-given name. It wasn’t that it was cruel, just alien, to be recognized as an individual rather than an asset. She hated it, he could tell, it made her squirm like his baby sister when she’d seen him flinging mud.
She looked at him hard for a moment, then sighed.
“We told stories. Usually just things from training. It was hard, but we uh, we found ways to keep spirits high I guess.” Bless’ shoulders seemed to slack as she spoke, relenting to Gil’s torrential badgering. Behind his faceplate, Gil smiled, victory was his, he’d have her cut loose, just for a little.
“Oh yeah, what kinda stories make kids like you laugh?” He teased.
“I’m not a kid.” She snapped
“Tell a story, Bless.” Gil waved her off, though he could practically feel her glaring daggers into him. 
“Only if you go get those cards from Faucher after.”
“Deal.”
She cleared her throat, satisfied with the arrangement, and began the tale of the Great Onyx Tank Theft of 2549. Gil found himself caught between balking at the fact she and her comrades truly had been just children and laughing at the sheer madness of their antics. Time ticked away, and tales of tent city tribulations and child-soldier basic passed too and fro.
She even laughed a quiet, nervous thing. It reminded Gil of his sister and ensured that no matter what came, their cherished memories would not die with them.
Category:The Weekly