Heaven and Earth Interlude: War's Children

“Lieutenant, a word?” 
Callum’s eyes turned away from the graves, green spheres settling on the younger Spartan making her approach. Andra-D054 was still clad head to toe in what might’ve been the most battered set of ODST gear he’d seen in his life, so battered it made her seem more a ghost from the glasslands than the girl he’d come for. It was enemy gear, he recognized the configuration from Redmond Venter’s dossier, altered to fit her needs but still largely the same. He’d left Merlin behind to find her, and part of him wondered if that’d been a mistake.
“Pretty sure you’re the only Lieutenant that matters ‘round here.” He answered, bitter venom on his tongue escaping with a breath into the cold air. It was a pointless thing to say, and the barb didn’t make her shrink the way it might once have. 
“Sorry, what is it?” He pressed his hands into his pockets to fight off the chill spreading into his gloves, shifting his attention from Andra to a dozen different Kru’Desh milling about. Insurrectionists, and aliens so vile their own monstrous kind had made them separate. The Free Domain was psychotic, but this group worried him more, behind the runt of a Spartan that was Simon-G294 they had a drive and purpose beyond self-indulgence as much as they might’ve denied it. The Stray tried to hide it, to reject what he was and cover it with a name that wasn’t his, but Callum wouldn’t let him.
For all he’d done, for all he’d ever do, Simon-G294 had still been a Spartan, and he’d been Tom’s boy. He remembered crossing paths with B292 after the war, seeing the hurt in his eyes when he saw the debrief from Mamore. They’d been talking about other things, about his Gammas, and Simon had come up. A Spartan was a Spartan, no matter how they failed. 
“Why are you here?” Her question brought Callum back to reality, and the bitter cold of Archangel’s Rest. Looking down at the girl he thought on how he was meant to answer that. The simple one was that Merlin asked him to, and he owed the boy a debt, but there was more to it. Always more.
“You could’ve gone back to the UNSC, you could’ve gone back for him, you could’ve done any number of things but you came here. Why? I appreciate the thought sir but-“
“I don’t leave my people behind.” He answered, firmly. It was a lie, and he knew it. He’d run on Pegasi, let Hastings save him on Reach, failed Jamal on Earth, lost Jamison to the void only for him to return and force him to abandon his brother. Circumstance, contex, it didn’t matter, he’d left. 
“Lieutenant, the Imperium was a long time ago I don’t really thin-,”
“Not you, Merlin. He wouldn’t come, and I couldn’t get to him. ‘Refum’s gone or dead and this is the only friendly force I knew where to find.” He cut her off again, quietly noting how her fingers began to curl into frustrated fists. Callum could’ve kept pushing, could’ve let his bitter disposition keep seeping into every word as the two stood beside the hulking Mastadon rumbling in the snow. But he remembered Mendez, Ambrose, and what they might’ve wanted him to do. 
“And Callum is fine Andra, we’re a bit far outside Palmer’s jurisdiction for the formalities.”
“Yeah, ‘fuckin right we are.” The girl mumbled, a small chuckle of affirmation coming from Callum. She’d adjusted to this place, these people, there was an edge there that hadn’t been at Montak. He liked it, if for no other reason than it made him more confident in her having grown into a full Spartan, but not one like him, or those that came before. She was something new now. Maybe they had Stray to thank for that.
Callum sighed cold breath out and turned fully towards Andra and put the graves to his back. He was torn on the souls of Fireteam Gravity. They’d died for what they thought was right, either too naïve or too jaded one to see the cost of the Created’s peace was too costly, but they were traitors still. Yet they were laid to rest with more dignity than any of his breed.
These kids, the Gammas and Deltas, had shared memories of homes being glassed just as he did, perhaps even dead friends at the hands of the Covenant, but it wasn’t the same, was it? The former had spent their lives in the transition from war into the most perverse version of peace lever imagined, the latter lived and died only in that peace. But there was a difference between standing at the close and battling to it, wasn’t there? 
Callum had been a creature of war. His home hadn’t been enough, he’d watched glassing beams more times than he’d bothered to count, and through that hell he’d never had the chance to bury his own. No they became dust beneath a rain of plasma, or were left to rot.  
There had been no one to guide them, each contingent of Spartan was largely isolated to itself beyond the more specialized teams. Once one left Onyx, or Reach, or whenever else, the only teacher was experience, and the only protector was oneself. But, that did not mean it needed to be that way.
“They’re not so bad, you know.” Andra nodded to some of Stray’s men still out in the snow, though her voice was the quietest whisper she could manage. “I mean, they are, but not all of them.”
He wasn’t sure if he believed her about the rebels, and he certainly didn’t about the aliens, but the elder Spartan nodded anyway. She trusted them enough to vouch for them, if privately, and for all his disdain he could not help but quietly acknowledge the triumph that was their victory here.
“Bad or not though, it’s Simon’s army, he calls the shots here. I’m not telling you to go bow down or anything but if you go picking fights I can't protect you. Merlin needs someone alive.” She added, and Callum’s slight smile creeped ever wider. It was funny, she’d seethed and raged about missing the loathsome Stray once, and now he was just ‘Simon’ to her. Funnier still was the idea she’d protect him.
It was certainly more plausible given his ill fitting prosthetic and simple combat armor. But Callum didn’t consider it, not even for a moment. He’d walked this road before, only come out of it beaten, broken, and more than half dead. Callum had deluded himself those times, selfishly convinced himself that either they were not his problem, or that they entirely were. Both approaches ended in failure. But this one wouldn’t. He wouldn’t let it.
“Alright, I’ll keep my head on straight if you keep yours.” He assured her.
“I wasn’t the one about to go at it with a rogue Spartan and a room full of elites.”
“Touche.” She reminded him of his ghosts, friends who’d never made if off Pegasi, or to the end of the war.
Callum was done letting kids die, and though he couldn’t stop Andra or Merlin from being what they were, he could make sure that nothing the galaxy threw at them would be enough to stop them. He’d keep the promise made between frightened children huddled on an exfiltration craft, that if they won they’d stop this from ever happening again, or he’d finally die trying. 
Either way worked.
Category:The Weekly