Expendable Wolves

It wasn’t easy, knowing you were expendable.
Ehud Kalanin crept through the carcass of a once lively metropolis. Hesiod IV’s dull-brown sun cast its mottled rays down through smoggy clouds, illuminating rubble-strewn streets and faded traffic signs. Abandoned buildings hunched like weary statues overhead. The concrete itself seemed tired of this wretched planet. The colonists who once called this city home were long gone. Their city was a lifeless corpse splayed out on a sun-bleached plain. Now carrion of all feathers swooped in to pick the concrete bones clean.
Expendable. No one liked using that word, so they’d come up with wonderful euphemisms: Delta-Six, Lone Wolves. Some academy graduate back at AJJAMS (“A-Jams,” Ehud and his less pious friends called it) must have been tickled pink to come up with those titles. The brass thought the term evoked deadly stealth raids and “hyper lethal vectors,” whatever the hell that meant. Ehud knew better. Lone wolves never survived long. Neither did Spartans cut off from their teams far behind enemy lines. While the Spartan Branch regrouped at A-Jams, Ehud and his expendable brethren set out to buy time—with their lives if need be.
He preferred “expendable” to “Delta-Six.” The UNSC loved to hide its desperation behind pomp and glamor. Ehud preferred honestly.
The sensor package inside the TAC scanner clipped to his helmet beeped in warning. Ehud brought his rifle to his shoulder and scanned the sun-baked street. The drone pulling overwatch twenty meters above street level revealed the Banished patrol before they marched into view: three Jiralhanae and a gaggle of their Unggoy peons picking their way through the rubble. Ehud vanished through the window of what had once been a department store. He slipped into the shadows as the patrol marched past. The armored brutes loomed over their waddling minions, sweeping their bladed weapons over the ruined city. Ehud recognized the leader, a tall, lean warrior with distinctive tally marks etched into his armor. This one typically led the afternoon patrols around the Banished perimeter.
Ehud relaxed as the patrol moved further down the street. His parched lips quirked in a wry smile. He felt a strange kinship with these Banished. After all, they were the only other living things left on this continent. He watched them work, eat, and even play—some of the Jiralhanae had taken an interest in an old basketball court just beneath one of his safehouses. He respected these creatures in a way few of his fellow Spartans could understand. You had to respect warriors like these, tough soldiers who never shied away from hardship or danger.
The Banished were winning this war, after all. Respecting them kept Ehud alive.
But given the chance he’d kill every last one of these Banished savages. Respect only went so far. If the enemy caught Ehud slinking around Hesiod IV they’d skin him alive. And he would die a thousand deaths before he saw them come anywhere near the family waiting back on Venezia.
Home. He didn’t know if he had a home left to return to. Deborah… Esther… Best not to think about it. Expendable or not, Ehud had a job to do.
Two hours of skulking later found him in an abandoned apartment six stories up and one kilometer from the Banished operations hub. Ehud had risked discovery to set up a small equipment stash once he realized this building sat in a hole in the Banished patrol web. He released two more drones, then magnified his TAC scope and scanned the cluster of orbital-dropped bunkers nestled in what had once been a city park.
Agryna and the brass back at A-Jams didn’t know what the Banished wanted with Hesiod IV. This planet had never held a significant UNSC presence. The colonial militia hadn’t left much behind when the colonists fled and the Created hadn’t moved operations here. The Banished were mining a few mineral deposits on the other side of the planet, but they had no reason to conduct operations in the city center. They were looking for something. Command wanted Ehud to find out what that something was.
He watched a chieftain in ornate armor bark orders at a group of young warriors engaged in a vicious live-fire exercise. The Banished felt secure enough here to run their brutal training regimen. Ehud wanted them to stay comfortable. It made this recon job an easy gig—if you could call three months of creeping through the city like a rat easy.
Three months. Some Delta Six operators bragged about how many kills they bagged each week. Most of those ended up dead. Ehud prided himself on exactly zero kills since making landfall. On ops like these it paid to keep a low profile. Ehud hoped he’d get one shot and one shot only: a 14.5x114mm round through that chieftain’s head before he took his leave.
Ehud launched a third drone, different from the others. It zipped out the open window and streaked up into the sky. Ehud linked the drone to his HUD and settled in to wait. At least this Rakshasa frame was more comfortable than the mainline gear. He didn’t even need one of those horrible machines to put it on and take it off. The coolpack draped over his Rakshasa carapace soothed his armor-enclosed skin.
He didn’t have long to wait. A voice buzzed in his ear, a woman’s voice clipped by a Jovian accent: “You’re an hour overdue. I was getting worried.”
“Not overdue. Just unpredictable. Don’t want them tracing these calls.”
Tamara Morozov—the Delta-Six operator observing Banished mining operations on the other side of the planet—laughed. The connection was rough but Ehud was grateful for the com link. Tamara was the only human contact he had on this planet. She couldn’t help him if he was compromised, but these calls kept him sane. That was support enough.
“Nice of you to keep me waiting in the middle of the night to suit your unpredictability.”
Ehud glanced up at the midday sun and smiled. “Nothing out of the ordinary today. Just more patrols. This chieftain of theirs is holed up in city hall. I may slip in for a closer look tomorrow.”
“They’ve stepped up mining operations on my end. Still no sign of whoever’s running the show here.” Tamara paused. “Be careful. We aren’t due relief for another month.”
“I’m always careful. Stay safe, Tam.”
“Until next time. Whenever that is.” Tamara terminated the link. They couldn’t risk more than a minute’s conversation. Ehud would need to move now, just in case the short data burst made the Banished suspicious. He called back the drones and spared one last look at the Banished camp.
He might be expendable, but Delta-Six had him here for a reason. He needed to find out what the Banished found so important down in city hall. Ehud might not like it, but he had a job to do. He collected his rifle and vanished into the concrete jungle.
Category:The Weekly