Spares

Spares
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He’d thought about it for so long, what he’d say, what he’d ask, and now that the time was almost here he could not think of a word. From behind the mask of his helmet, Bedivere looked out on the menagerie of colors of the city outside the rain streaked window. Their Circanae weaved between the skyscrapers, its glow piercing through the red ambiance of the ready lights within the compartment of the twin-rotor.
“No idea what to say to him then?” Xun-452 pressed him again. Bedivere looked back at the Spartan, and gave a shrug. Xun, and the Spartans in general outside the new breed, didn’t know life outside the program, they’d been too young to remember much else outside fleeting memories and anger, when it came to IIIs. Bedivere had been someone before, someone with a different name, a different life, even with his family dead he’d still been his own person free of the UNSC. 
“What’s there to say? To ask? I know why, and I know why me. We were losing the war, and I was part of a demographic that was an easy target, and predisposed to military service to boot.” He answered, watching the world go by outside with a strange awe.
They’d taken that, Meyrick had taken that.
“How’s the suit?” He asked, giving the MJOLNIR-clad Spartan a once over. He’d be one of them soon, so he’d been told. The last quirks in the additional augmentations he’d require to don the same MJOLNIR had been worked out, and the last remnant of CAMELOT would be no more. He wasn’t sure how he felt about that, truth be told. 
They’d always been different from their brethren, weaker in some ways, but stronger in others. That’s what Meyrick had told them, they were their own breed, their own soldier. Even that was going to be taken soon.
Xun looked down at his and and made a fist. It was older set, but even the dinged up Mark V had an edge on EXCALIBUR. A fancy name for an altogether unremarkable armor system. Expensive, prone to malfunction, and ultimately little more than a step below SPI, but it was what he’d been given. Xun had been given worse from what he understood, the dinged up set of black armor was the first powered system he’d ever worn.
SPARTAN II Class IV had been equipped like a bunch of ODSTs, and sent out to die. They and their like all had that in common. They weren’t the real Spartans, they were attempts at making them even cheaper, experiments, one offs who if they were lucky enough to survive whatever scientific venture that had been forced upon them were sent out to die. If they’d all just died it would’ve been easier.
If they’d all died, then people like Meyrick could’ve washed their hands clean, chalked it all up to necessary sacrifice. 
“It fits.” The Spartan answered, ever more interested in Bedivere than in talking about himself. For a nearly seven foot tall killing machine, Xun-452 made for a strange mix between a kid brother and the grim reaper, and seemed to flip between them without warning. Bedivere wondered if they were all like that.
“Do you think he’d know about the others?” Xun questioned, continuing on the conversation they held within the privacy of their own COM channel. 
“Only as much as I do.” The others were dead, those he hadn’t watched die were still gone. He didn’t question that anymore.
Xun didn’t ask anything else, and Bedivere let himself go back to watching the world rush by as the aircraft shifted beneath his boots, weaving past one sky piercing monolith after another. The BR55 was heavy in his arm, heavier than it had ever been before.
Lieutenant Colonel Trevor Meyrick had been a hard man, especially so on him and Galahad, he’d robbed them of any kind of innocence the world hadn’t already taken and made them into dogs of war. He’d taken so much Bedivere could scarce even think of himself by his old name. 
He should’ve hated him, this mission to take him in should’ve been everything to him, when STORMBORN had approached him for it, it had been. But now, a minute out, he felt a knot for in his chest.
Had the old man been right? Was CAMELOT the only place they’d have mattered? The only place they’d have had a chance? He hadn’t been wrong when he’d said they’d all just been waiting to hit eighteen to throw themselves into the meat grinder anyway. For Bedivere it’d been the marines, he wanted to follow in his parents footsteps. He would’ve too if not for the program, no doubt he’d have followed their every move right up to getting atomized from orbit.
He'd have made it a family tradition. 
He was alive because of CAMELOT, because of what they made him. No one else had, but he’d made it. That was something if all that mattered to him was survival. But there was more to him, and his resolve strengthened at that.
Galahad bleeding out in his arms, her broken body becoming still, mattered to him. Arthur’s wasted sacrifice mattered to him. Percival, Hector, Tristan, Elyan, the others, they all mattered. Maybe they’d have made it as regulars, as helljumpers,or whatever they might have chosen to be, they sure as shit wouldn’t have been sent on missions half as impossible. They might have made lives for themselves, ONI would’ve found other kids to go in their place.
But no, they’d chosen them, and Meyrick had approved that decision for each and every one of them. 
“Thirty seconds.” A voice crackled over the COM, and Bedivere shot a glance back over his shoulder at Xun, then over the black-armored squad cramped into the seats beside him. Not all of them were coming back from this. 
Meyrick had protection no doubt, initial recon suggested as much, and even if he didn’t the old bastard still had fight in him. A common trait among the old ORIONs he supposed. There was no chance he’d be coming quietly.
That was the first lesson he’d had Sergeant Varadkar beat into them, to never go quietly. They’d picked that up quickly enough. Meyrick practiced what he preached though, and everything in him told Bedivere this would be a bloody affair.
His eyes dropped down to his rifle, and the glow of the ‘36’ on its ammo counter. He thumbed the select fire to single, as Varadkar’s screams about conserving ammo echoed in his mind.
“Remember your roles. Everyone does their jobs and we have this done in five or less.” STORMBORN’s voice came, swift and stern. He wondered if she was watching him now through one of the others, or if he had a guest in his helmet. 
It didn’t matter. He’d do his job. 
Bedivere brought the rifle into both hands as the Circanae shifted beneath them, rotors flaring as it slowed itself. His body tensed, augmented musculature twitching as the moment came closer, the twin rotor swinging over the rain swept rooftop. The doors seal hissed hissed as it broke, and each of them swept back, letting in the downpour of the outside. 
The rain washed over him as he stepped from the hold, and chaos followed.