The Onyx Chronicles/The True Meaning of Christmas

T’was the night before Christmas, and all through the base—night guards followed routes by twos, making irregular checks where Deep Winter’s cameras didn’t cover. But in trying to spread out at random, they spaced themselves almost evenly, creating the gaps Kodiak and Dyne needed to sprint from the Workshop to the shadow of the Mess Hall.
The doors, they’d long since learned, were cam-monitored and wired with redundant security alarms. Breaching was difficult, and took too long anyway. Instead, each pulled a power drill from pilfered rucksacks and set them in screwheads holding the cold room's refrigerator exhaust panel on—screws they removed so often the heads were half-stripped.
Once the panel was free, they squeezed inside the wall amid nests of coolant tubes and compressors. Then they pulled the panel back into place behind to hide their track, clamping it with borrowed magnetic hull breach patches. Sacrificing most of a third dimension to shuffle along inside the wall, and the two trainees pushed aside an ice box to enter the mess hall’s cold room.
The breath Kodiak took to reinflate his lungs came back out as a wintery wisp, visible even in the near-dark. He pulled a flashlight from his belt, its blue beam casting frosty moonlight on the frosted concrete floor. Above him towered a forest of shelving units, filled with row after row of freeze-dried, pre-packaged meals stuffed with nutrients and growth hormones. Everything a growing supersoldier needed.
Dyne rubbed his hands together, fidgeting out his eager greed as he warmed his hands. “Now, where’s the target?”
“It’s not a regular restock,” Kodiak thought aloud. “Overflow aisle.”
The pair dashed to the shelves lined up against the furthest wall and scoured every level. Each of the tight-packed crates bore serial numbers, bar codes, and the insignia of ONI and the UNSC to warn against unauthorized tampering. The Spartan trainees, as the intended recipients of their contents anyway, paid them no mind. Toward the end of the row, the flashlight illuminated scuff marks in the shelf’s usual permafrost—and drew them to one crate in particular.
“The coveted Menu Number 99H,” Dyne whispered reverently as Kody heaved the crate to the floor with difficulty. As soon as he backed away to stretch, Dyne dove in to flip a set of latches and throw back the lid.
Within lay row upon row of cardboard drink cartons, bedecked with festive green-and-red markings: Camp Currahee’s annual egg nog ration. Worth a fortune in Currahee’s black market of contraband, favors, and test answer sheets. And such a rare break from the usual meal plan even those who didn’t admit it was delicious would pay.
Dyne unshouldered a rucksack, tore open its zipper, and started grabbing cartons by the fistful. Kodiak took another second to breathe. Focused on respiring, his gaze wandered idly across the crate’s lettering. When he realized what he was reading, the urgency of processing it forced even his lungs to yield.
“Wait, wait, wait... something's wrong. The numbers are off.”
Dyne didn’t even slow, hooking extra cartons on his fingertips to dump in the bag. “I know. One-hundred eighteen milliliter serving size? Barely a half-full cup.”
“No no no, not that. The total.”
That got Dyne’s attention. Dumping his latest handful into the rucksack, he followed Kody’s eyes and read from the shipping stamp. “Seventy-eight point one liters. Kinda specific. So what?”
Kodiak turned to meet Dyne’s eyes with a hard stare. “Divide by three-hundred and thirty.”
A heartbeat passed as Dyne did the math. Then the whites of his eyes flared, widening in shock. “No… no! This has to be a mistake. One serving for each of us?! Where’s the extra for the DIs to slip in all the booze they shouldn’t have?!” He turned to the shelves, scanning desperately for another crate with the same number.
“I guess they’re going without this year,” Kodiak shrugged. He stared at the half-full rucksack, filled with the only portions allotted to the good killing machine children of Camp Currahee for the year. “I’m calling it. Mission scrubbed till next year. Abort.”
“No!” Dyne protested. “There’s gotta be a mistake! Another crate. Or a surplus from last year! That’s why they didn’t send as much.”
“We drank all the surplus last year.” Kodiak reminded him, smiling sadly as he recalled being sick after a ruck march fueled on the stuff. “Must be a shortage. There’s a war on, you know.”
“But…” Dyne’s eyes watered as empathy warred with a sweet tooth in his greedy little heart.
Kody put a hand on his shoulder and smiled. “It’s the only treat we all get. Everyone deserves to share it.”
Dyne hung his head, spirit broken.
“I know. It's just…” he peeked over the crate’s rim to survey the cartons, lined up like battalions of festive nutcracker soldiers. His voice was strained. “It's so much egg nog. So much.”
“Maybe next year, Dyne.”
Category:The Onyx Chronicles