Heaven and Earth Interlude: His Name Was Lieutenant

Merlin’s pained grimace did not lift watching as the giant looming silhouette of a Created-commandeered Colossus mech shifted side to side next to the final resting place of the freighter Chancer V. There were times the black-haired Spartan-III spotted the starship’s orange-and-white hull among the UNSC refugee camp parked between a frigate and prowler within a Cleansing Blade supercarrier’s ventral hangar. However, he never bothered to step aboard himself and pay its crew a visit.
The ship was barely a blip on the radar of things he knew of human interstellar politics. But he did hear of it. By association with the infamous Spartan renegade Simon-G294. At one point the freighter and its crew called him family, and its blockade runner-reputation became a part of his legend and vice versa.
Now the Chancer lay lifeless in the sub-surface dirt of a Forerunner shield world, a giant military walker leaning over it like a mourner at a gravestone. Merlin regretted not visiting in hindsight after spending more than a day defending the crashed ship from repeating waves of Created and enemy coalition forces. It was the ship that rescued his best friend Andra-D054 when she was in a tight bind on Talitsa, a home for the rogue Spartan medic Cassandra-G006 who almost sacrificed herself to intercept a grenade meant for Merlin, and the makeshift family that the late frontier mercenary William Hargrove spoke fondly of during preparations for the disastrous advanced recon to the shield world’s control room.
The Chancer V brought Merlin and Davis’s ODSTs brief shelter after marching many kilometers through a hostile and forlorn battlefield. Now Lieutenant Davis and his Marines were gone, and Cassandra fought the Colossus alone to allow the rest of the Chancer crew to escape in a Spade truck.
Former Chancer V captain Zoey Hunsinger sat upfront pushing the Spade at a breakneck speed. Karina Larina and her boyfriend Thomas Koepke huddled close under two layers of thermal blankets and struggled to look anywhere but the ongoing and bumpy battlefield around them. Artillery crackled like thunder in the distance. Starship cannons boomed with hypersonic projectiles. Fires crackled everywhere. The screams of the near-death and dying filled the once forested Forerunner Dyson sphere grandiose entryway.
Cassandra’s fight with the Colossus joined the deep symphony of the warzone. The Colossus shifting and shaking around the Chancer V wreck in pursuit of the now-invisible and nimble outline of Cassandra as she distracted the war machine from a short rocket pursuit of the pickup truck. Merlin’s ever-loyal Smart AI Althea tried to give the Spartan boy some reassurances about their odds of escape but his knowing-better rebuffed her attempts.
“I’ve already redistributed some of your suit electronics to generate a makeshift jammer. It’s not great but its enough that we’ll have an extra three seconds to deal with any missiles it might fire at us.”
“Mjolnir power armor was never meant to jam anything, ALT. That won’t work.”
The withheld defense dripped in her voice even as she swallowed it down. “Three seconds is like a day in AI’s time.”
“You told me that was a misconception back on Oyster Point,” Merlin retorted.
“I did say that. Well, I hoped you would forget this once.”
“What are the chances we can avoid getting blown up by it if Spartan… Cassandra doesn’t beat it?”
“The effective range on a Colossus short-range artillery rocket is—”
“Fifteen kilometers. I know that.”
“Thirty-seven percent at three-point-six kilometers, Spartan. They’re not bad odds.”
“And what’s your plan in case we catch that thirty-seven percent?”
“Well, with your armor – I can sync our reaction time and with a little modification to one of our MA5s, shoot it down. I can handle the aiming; I would just need you to stand up and balance straight.”
“Hit probability?”
“I—You don’t want to know the odds.”
Merlin closed his eyes in mild distress knowing he undercut her attempts once more. He was just glad no one else was privy to his conversation.
“It wouldn’t work.” Merlin concluded.
“Probably not,” Althea admitted at a whisper lower than the road noise around them. Merlin still heard it.
“And there’s the chance of a bomber coming down on us at any moment, or a pursuing mechanized unit…” Merlin listed on.
“Just stop. You’re distressing the both of us.”
Merlin shut up at Althea’s command. She was right. He was acting out and being stupid. But he still couldn’t let go of his crushing reality around him. He pressed the ring of dog tags he procured from Lieutenant Davis’s dead body, left in the Chancer V’s cargo bay with four of his fellow Helljumpers. Three were mere patches of plastic cards stitched onto the ring for the bodies unrecoverable when the Promethean crawlers and watchers pursued the Merlin-led strike team through the jungle. The rest were blood-and-dirt-stained pieces of stainless steel etched with the single service numbers belonging to the dead Marines. A lifetime of dossiers locked behind alphanumerical designators in true Naval Intelligence fashion.
Merlin could never find out the lives of the men and women he served with these last few weeks without accessing a top-secret ONI personnel database or two. Not unless he intended to mess with human networks now dominated by hostile Created AI or even trying to find an intact and secure ONI base in an interstellar apocalypse.
21█63-█3496-MZ. 84521-283██-AK. 11█469-55296-OY… Their service numbers clicked between Merlin’s fingers, shifting between each piece of metal as he attempted to recall their names. His exercise ended empty. He never knew the ODSTs well. Spartans kept to themselves. ODSTs kept to themselves. And Merlin by his lonesome, a lone and listless Delta Company Spartan with no place to call his own.
Now he carried the last mementoes to the fallen he did not know. Some of their dog tags showed scratches, worn down and damaged by battle and borrowed time.
His fingers stopped on Lieutenant Davis’s dog tag. 55█814-█931-█D. Merlin couldn’t read some of the values. He filled in the initials himself.
JD. Lieutenant Justin Davis.
At least that’s how he recalled the man’s name while listening in on conversation between the Helljumpers during a lull in the endless fighting. Compared to other work environments, word around the water cooler became water around the fighting ring between Spartans and Helljumpers.
‘The LT is getting nervous. No one’s seen Commander Kedar this bad in… Well, ever.’
‘What did he say this time? Something about Forerunner daydreams again? Victory just around the corner?’
‘I don’t think so, Justin said he was more lucid this time around. The split-jaw fleet admiral wants a coordinated debrief between the Commander and a monitor one of the new war parties brought along. Maybe Forerunner AI are reasonable where our own went insane?’
‘Not sure I can trust an AI after months of this bull. The UNSC is gone man, we’re just some glorified attack dog for an alien master now. We’ll all be dead in six months probably.’
‘Have more faith in Lieutenant Davis and the Commander. We’ll find a way – Commander Kedar always does. At least the old drunkard isn’t captaining anymore.’
‘True…’
But of course, idle chitchat became prophetic on the battlefield. Meaningless words became curses. Merlin should have seen it all coming. Of course, he never could. But he still wished he had.
Commander Ryder Kedar betrayed them. Laid a trap for the Cleansing Blade fleet and paved the way for a Created fleet ambush. Ryder’s machinations laid out around Merlin, distributed across the flattened earth. Destroyed warships. Shattered armies. Guardians triumphant.
Justin Davis and his ODSTs, Merlin too; they followed the ONI agent-slash-Spartan-IV into the howling dark and then set the shield world’s defenses upon their former allies to the tale of total devastation. Trillions of Forerunner sentinel drones still buzzed in the skies like angry columns of bees as they sought out new aerial prey not of their own allegiance.
The Battle of Gilboan Citadel was over.
Merlin offered his curiosity up to the pickup truck for those he could not save. “Did any of you know the ODSTs? The ones we lost? I heard you saved them and Andra on Talitsa.”
“We did,” Zoey mumbled as her eyes remained glued to the dusty plains strewn out ahead of her. “But they didn’t introduce themselves. Mr. Davis insisted we call him ‘Lieutenant’ the few times we tried being nice and inviting he and his friends to a group meal. Not that we wanted them running amuck in my galley back then.”
“I think his name was Justin,” Merlin stated over the engine noise.
Zoey didn’t respond, either ignoring the Spartan-III or missing it behind the engine noise herself. Merlin didn’t bother looking for a reaction. For the survivors of the Chancer V, the ODSTs always were a questionable presence. Hargrove had said enough against their record as assholes and dicks. Something about it brought humor to Merlin’s mind at the wrong time.
To think that Hargrove was once a UNSC lieutenant himself, not unlike Davis.
“Merlin… I hate to say it but I have a few individuals listed as J.D. among Task Force Phoenix. Lieutenant Davis wasn’t one of them. In fact, his initials are L.D. Like—”
“Like Lieutenant Davis,” Merlin finished the sentence for the feminine AI as the inappropriate smile tugged at his lips until he chuckled hoarsely, a couple tears rolling down his eyes. He proceeded to whisper, “Hi my name is Lieutenant-Lieutenant Davis! But you may call me Lieutenant. My great uncle General-General named me! Nice to meet you…”
Zoey shot Merlin a weird glance from the driver’s seat but gave no comment. Whatever humor the Spartan wrestled with was his alone to bare. A humor of exhalation, letting loose frustration and mourning.
Merlin wanted to scream at the sky. To yell with such thunder and fury to bring the dead back to life. He bared the tales of the fallen, but he did not know their names.
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