Suits of Armour

----
The scorched chassis of the Pelican dropship didn't so much land on the asphalt when it came in, as it did drop like a leaden weight. Pockmarked with plasma-scored craters, pitch black burn marks over most of its armour plating, and bleeding jet-black smoke from three thrusters, the craft sagged on its struts. When the thrusters keyed down with a fading thrum, one of the landing arms supporting it hissed, whined, and let out a bang as the hydraulics failed, and the entire craft listed to one side.
Fire crews rushed in a moment later, armed with foam extinguishers and medical stretchers. As they were pulling the pins set in the nozzles of their extinguishers, the wing pressed into the ground exploded in a shower of flames and shrapnel, scattering debris across the asphalt.
Before the fire crews could rush towards the source of the inferno, the ramp of the Pelican wrenched off its hinges, slamming down on the asphalt behind the dropship, and belching yet more black smoke from a ruptured fuel conduit like a beastly dragon maw. Red light bathed a silhouette in the smoky haze.
Jumping down from the craft’s rear hatch, an armoured figure hit the ground with the force of several people. 
The fire crews paused at the sight, inferno forgotten, mouths agape in awe. The armoured soldier strode out of the haze, bearing a signature reflective golden visor embedded in a MJOLNIR helmet. 
Clutched in her arms—and also draped across her shoulders—were wounded soldiers. Two wore the fatigues and helmets of pilots, dragged behind the armoured tank-like figure with her fists clutched around their scruffs.
Across her shoulders were two ODSTs. Plating scratched, various limbs in slings, and freshly-applied biofoam dripping from gaps in their armour. She dragged the pilots a few feet from the burning craft, let their scruffs go slack, then slung the ODSTs off of her shoulder, and placed them down delicately next to the other two prone figures.
Without so much as a word to the fire and rescue crews, she turned around and plunged back into the inky black smoke. 
The crews shook off their fugue and rushed forward, stretchers bared, and the fire since forgotten in favour of the wounded. They managed to get one of the pilots onto a stretcher, rolling him over until he laid atop the canvas, before the Spartan emerged again. This time, she exclusively held ODSTs in her arms.
The Spartan went back twice more, dragging more and more bodies from the murk and laying them out for the fire & rescue crews to take away. Most of them were still twitching, but some were still, and their breaths shallow.
The Spartan stood next to the burning, smoking wreckage watching the fire & rescue crews haul off the bodies towards triage. They were out of her hands.
The only members of the rescue crews that remained were busy fighting the fire raging out of the ruptured engines. To the Spartan’s own augmented senses, the fire danced in a slow waltz. 
Light glinted off of her gunmetal grey armour, but she stood still. Statuesque and immobile, watching the flames dance and writhe against the increasing intensity of the fire crew’s attempts to tame it.
“Spartan!”
Suppressing the shock of adrenaline, the Spartan didn’t turn to face whoever had spoken. Enemies didn’t tend to speak to her. If they did, it was to utter things in guttural, alien tongues, or shout anti-UNSC expletives.
The voice behind her was neither one, so she kept watching the flames, listening to the footsteps of the unknown speaker draw ever closer.
She could tell it was an old soldier by his speed. Older soldiers didn’t sprint anymore, they reserved their energy for combat, preferring to power-walk or jog. The almost-lazy halfway step the soldier behind her was falling into told her he was in no hurry, yet also wanted to appear as though he was.
The footsteps stopped a few feet beside her, and she saw the man’s uniform out of the corner of her eye. Chevrons, crossed rifles above a curved bar.
The middle-aged man looked her up and down, reaching out to brush something off of her shoulder pauldron. He thought better of it halfway through, retracting his hand and placing it on his hips. 
“You look like you’ve come back from hell,” he said.
The Spartan’s narrowed visor turned to face the man, offering nothing in its reflective surface save for the Sergeant’s own increasingly-uncomfortable face.
Clearing his throat, he swept a hand up and over his shoulder, pointing a thumb back behind him. “They sent me to fetch you,” he said, then extended his hand out for a cordial shake. “Staff Sergeant Corwel. I’m to escort you to the hangar. Impromptu disassembly.”
She made no effort to shake the officer’s hand. 
“What for?” she asked. 
Staff Sergeant Corwel kept his hand out for an extra second, before slowly bending the fingers and flexing them. With an owlish blink of his eyes, he straightened back up and let his hand fall back to his side.
“Our engineers and technicians have done their best to get an armour assembly station up and running,” he explained, his eyes darting from corner to corner of her narrowed visor, unable to decide on where he should keep them. 
“Uh,” he caught himself trailing off and swallowed before he continued. “But the only place big enough and with enough privacy was the Pelican hangar.”
She turned. took a step towards him, and kept her helmet pointed low. The visor was no longer looking into his eyes perfectly, instead, it was like the visor itself was staring out from under a heavy, angry brow.
She took an audible breath. “I meant why am I expected to remove my armour?” 
The man flinched back from the titanic soldier, his hands balling into nervous fists and shaking. He turned a foot away from her, ready to bolt off in the other direction if she so much as twitched.
“Leftenant Colonel Mwanga wants a debrief,” Staff Sergeant Corwel said. His nervous voice broke into a native accent. 
The Spartan tilted her head to one side.
He held up a hand. “I dunno any details, so you’ll ‘ave t’ask him.”
After a second’s pause, the Spartan visibly relaxed her posture, and drew herself back into something approaching a neutral stance. 
She motioned a hand towards him. 
The man flinched. 
“Lead the way, Staff Sergeant.”
Nodding, he turned around and began marching towards the hangar bay.
The Spartan heard him let out a shaky breath of fear.
----
Staff Sergeant Corwel didn’t exaggerate, it seemed. The disassembly station was impromptu, with little regard given to aesthetics. Robotic manipulators typically used for extensive medical operations had their scalpels and syringes replaced by drills and grabbers. 
Technicians in masks and lab-coats scurried around past the privacy screens set up to offer some modicum of protection from prying eyes. From the way they were spaced, it was clear they were a courtesy rather than a genuine attempt at concealment. 
The rest of the hangar was abuzz, hauling crates of weaponry, ammunition, and even entire Pelicans out of the way of the technician and engineer’s new playground. An overhead crane clutched the hastily-stripped main body of a Pelican dropship, while a fleet of four forklifts carried the wings like driver ants.
A missile rack and rocket turret were hauled away by two Marines clad in powered haulers. Hydraulics whispered and their boots clanged on the deck as they walked past her, sparing her a glance back as they went.
The Staff Sergeant hadn’t waited while the Spartan had glanced around. He was halfway across the hangar towards the assembly station. The Spartan fell into step beside him and kept her strides wide to catch up, and found herself closing the distance rapidly.
By the time SSGT Corwel had reached the loose square of privacy screens, she was back behind him, having to shorten her steps lest she overtake the officer.
They came to a stop beyond the perimeter of the privacy screens. Thin blue sheets to serve as drapes hanging from a simple metal frame. A bright enough light could shine right through them, to say nothing of the spaces left between where they’d set up.
The technicians inside had used their resources to try and cover every approach, rather than consolidate what they had to cover what they could. She wondered why they’d not just 
Cover three angles instead of trying—and failing—to cover all four.
“Wait here. I’ll see if they’re ready for you.”
The absence of the Sergeant gave the Spartan pause. She’d have to remove her armour eventually. Even if she didn’t have to attend a post-op debrief with the Lieutenant Colonel, she’d need to. 
But doing so felt wrong. Clad in the armour she felt solid. Rooted like some great tree or immovable wall. Not invincible so much as able to weather the storm. The same vulnerabilities as everyone else around her, from a single bullet to a bad memory.
Without the armour, she felt unable to bear the weight of the mantle of ‘Spartan’. The weight of past hurts, expectations, and even entire operations needed a powered exoskeleton to hold aloft.
Every time the plates came off they all came rushing back. Piece by piece, latching onto her wherever she was exposed. 
The weathered, dull-copper face of Staff Sergeant Corwel appeared from around one of the privacy screens with an inquisitive arch of an eyebrow.
“Spartan?” He turned to the side and motioned for the assembly station beyond. “They’re ready for you.”
With so many people around her, and the only thing keeping her away from the eyes of passers by.being spaced thin drapes, the Spartan steeled herself and stepped past two screens.
The area was a cluttered mess. Packing crates full of tools, a table bearing spare parts to her right, and a cable protector running across the floor. The mechanical arms were assembled around a set of mobile stairs used to board aircraft. What appeared at first to be one station actually revealed itself to be a modular assembly of five.
A circular dias in the middle of the floor held the major and central station. A circle of titanium held four mechanical manipulator arms. Another half-circle jutted forward with forward-facing drills to access the MJOLNIR armour’s bolts and screws.
On either side, two more half circles were bolted to the floor outside of the raised dias—and likewise outside the area on the floor marked with black and yellow hazard tape. Behind them were raised spotlights shining down on the centre of the contraption, and two independent arms with hand-holds for technician’s use were seated on the edge of the dias.
A technician holding a tablet motioned for her to take the stand.
Two more clad in white lab coats and face masks sat off to one side. A monitoring terminal beeped in front of them. They were sneaking furtive glances at the Spartan, largely ignoring their screen.
Taking a breath, the Spartan stepped closer to the assembly station. Other technicians dotted around began to move closer, taking ahold of the two manipulators with hand-holds, and raising their tablets, ready to begin.
She stepped up the stairs, took her pedestal, and waited. The technicians and the Sergeant stepped back, staring up at her on her raised perch, illuminated by floodlights and the glow from the dias beneath. 
“Whenever you’re ready, Spartan,” one of the technicians said.
Looking down at the floor, the Spartan stepped forward and planted her feet firmly on either side of a marked cross.
The robotic arms began to move. Their circular holders clicked, whirred, and spun. 
“Raise your arms, please.”
She did so, and felt the grabbers hold her limbs steady. The assembly apparatus moved forward, surrounding her on either side.
“Please place your hands on the holders provided.”
She looked around. Sure enough, nestled on the sides of the assembly unit beside her were handles. She reached for them, straining her arms slightly to reach, but managed to wrap her hands around them.
“Very good,” the technician said. “We’re ready to begin…” trailing off, she looked down at her tablet, tapped a few times, then looked back up. “Begin disassembly procedure.”
Two of the automatic arms latched onto her gauntlets, at the hardpoint below where the armour wrapped around her elbow. The vibrations from the drills lanced up her arm and made the Spartan shut her eyes beneath her visor.
----
The Pelican shuddered. Something strapped to the cargo shelves overhead snapped loose, tossed about the cabin as the dropship bucked under flak fire from below. A seven foot armoured Spartan held onto a safety harness over her chestplate, strapping her to one of the Pelican seats.
Around her, the seats were full of soldiers. Most of them wounded, some of them already limp in their seats. All of them had something blemishing their otherwise-perfect black armour; biofoam leaking from cracks, smouldering plasma craters, even makeshift slings around broken or missing limbs.
None had escaped unscathed—save for the grey armoured titan sitting near the pilot’s cabin door. 
“Clear of the blast in twenty seconds!” a voice over the comms said. “God be with us!”
An ODST next to her groaned. “Might as well be twenty minutes!” He reached up to grab his helmet, shaking it from side to side in his hands. 
“So much for a smooth exfil! One of the others managed to groan. 
The Spartan kept her voice level, steadied her breathing, and made sure her voice wouldn’t crack before keying the comms link. 
“We’ll make it,” she declared. 
“You might, Mrs suited & booted,” the one next to her said. “We don’t have your gear!” He huffed and shook his head. “The war would be over if we did.”
“We’ll make it,” she repeated; a forceful enunciation, hoping she might even believe it herself. 
“So you say,” the ODST spat. 
She snapped her head to look at him. “So that you’ll stop saying we won’t.”
He met her visor with his own and leaned forward, straining against his harness. “Because we won’t!”
The Pelican rocked. Something on the wing cracked, exploded, and they listed to one side. Pandora gripped her metal harness so hard the metal began to bend around the shape of her fingers like a mould. 
She let go once they steadied, but the Pelican kept its starboard side list. She gave a quick thanks to the Pilots, before taking a shaky breath and re-keying the comms. 
“Then why did you come?” she asked. “You knew the risks.”
“Because I thought we had a chance!” the ODST hissed back. “You’re a Spartan!”
She looked at him, shook her head, and leaned back in her seat. “I’m only one Spartan.”
The comms link crackled. A name appeared in her visor belonging to the pilot once more. “Clear of blast! Trigger the damn thing before we get riddled full of plasma holes!”
The Spartan held up a detonator, fishing it off of her belt as soon as she heard the comm link spark up. 
“Hey,” the ODST beside her said. 
She looked over at him, thumb poised over the detonator.
“If we do make it, I owe you a drink.” He nodded.
She gave a soft laugh and nodded in reply. “I’ll hold you to that.”
She hit the detonator.
Somewhere behind them a network of nanolaminate hallways and buildings got vapourised. In an instant, where once there was a purple structure of alien spires, a three kilometer fireball replaced it. Two seconds later,the blast wave reached the Pelican. Pressurised air thrust the craft up, and everyone was thrown back into their headrests.
The Spartan felt her helmet clunk against the seats, and her vision went black.
----
Her armoured gauntlets were taken by the arms and deposited in the arms of waiting technicians. They placed them on a sheet of memory foam cut to the dimensions of her armour. Once they were secure, they slid the foam into a packing crate, ready for when she’d next need them.
She didn’t feel the cold air when clad in her temperature-regulated bodysuit. The climate-controlled gel layer saw to that. But the numb feeling in her arms when they took her gauntlets and vambraces was still there. Still as hurtful as a hundred cuts.
The technicians manning the manual arms stepped forward and slotted them through the guard rails. An inelegant solution to a problem caused by impromptu military improvisation.
Her eyes squeezed shut beneath the visor. At the hardpoint behind her knee guards, the same sensations that once accosted her arms now rattled her knees.
----
Pandora threw her training helmet across the locker room when she stepped in. It impacted against the wall with a crunch, the visor cracking. Clattering to the ground, it came to a halt half-rolled over.
She slumped down on one of the benches, nursing a bruise and a fat lip with her hand. Sore to the touch, fresh lances of pain raced up her face. A constant reminder of her failure to land even one hit on the instructor. Despite the weeks of remedial hand-to-hand, and the days spent studying the data vids of others.
Every pose recorded and analysed, presented to her with notes and comments. Then, interspersed with her own form, likewise recorded and presented. There was a world of difference, night and day recorded against navy blue backing with white text surrounding it like faded stars.
She turned around and pulled her locker open with a slam of metal on metal. A thin tube of pain relieving opti-gel sat on the bottom shelf. She picked up the rolled tube and squeezed the end, working her fingers up to wrong as much as she could from the spent packaging.
A pea-sized offering dropped onto her pinky finger. Pandora brought it to her face and placed it on her lip. Sighing as the pain-soothing gel worked into her skin, she allowed her eyes to close.
Compared to the trainer, she was still a child. Compared to her peers, she was an underachiever.
Compared to the Spartan she’d been studying the entire night, clad in her armour and holding her staff like a master, she was nothing. 
The walls and floor of the locker room seemed colder than usual. Metal and linoleum barely had warmth, but today it sucked out whatever warmth she had left. Or perhaps it was the medical gel she was continually rubbing along her swollen lip.
She brought her hand away, slumping over and allowing the weight of the day to drag her down onto the bench. The night’s worth of studying caught up with her, along with the blows and bruises of the training session. Training staff covered in cushioned fabric could still hurt, but the pain of not being good enough stung harder.
Pandora allowed her eyes to shut, images of Spartans dancing in her eyes.
She wondered if she’d ever be good enough at all.
----
They sequestered her greaves and sabatons away in the same packing crates, leaving more of her exposed. She flexed her calf muscles to shake some feeling back into them, the sensation of cold numbness taking them, too. Psychosomatic, no doubt, but one she couldn’t shake off.
Pain had a habit of sticking around long after a wound healed. Scar tissue never truly went away, just became less visible over time.
The more plates were extracted from her armour—the more she was laid bare to the eyes of those around her—the more she wanted to be allowed to step down. Step out of the hangar, step into normal fatigues, be alone.
The armour killed anyone who didn’t have the augments to use it. But the weight of carrying that ability around could kill as surely as any plasma bolt. 
Her belt and cuisses came off next, extracted without ceremony by the work that other arms had done on the rest of her legs. Technicians waited to ferry the pieces away, aiming their mechanical arms up higher to assist the automated ones in their work. 
----
The hangar deck of the UNSC Cassiopeia had rarely fallen totally silent. There would always be the grumbling of machinery, the pacing of footfalls from ensigns and maintenance crew. The roar of engines, and an alarm klaxon whenever the deck was to be vented prior to a launch. 
Now, she fell still, and quiet. Lines of soldiers stood on either side of a procession moving down the centre of the expansive hangar bay. Carried on their shoulders were coffins, smaller than the average human, but still unmistakably coffins. Stainless, smooth steel hiding the contents therein.
Pandora stood with the others of her unit, bandages around half her body, and an eyepatch over one of her eyes. It would come off soon, then go on her other eye while her vision acclimatised. 
There were twelve coffins in total. Twelve bodies of what once were her classmates. Her brothers and sisters in arms. Rich, Ev, Singh… all of them better soldiers than Pandora could’ve ever hoped to become. Now, they were reduced to the contents of a few coffins.
They were being loaded in pods to be ejected on the next pass around Epsilon Eridani. Whenever that would be, they’d be there to see them off once again. 
Pandora didn’t like the idea of having to mourn them twice.
She wanted to turn away, but knew she couldn't. Those beside her would never forgive her—just as she would never forgive them if they did the same.
On the other side of the line, imposing silhouettes of armour-clad soldiers stood, helmets slung under their arms. Even the generation that came before Pandora’s came to grieve the loss of their comrades. As they rightly should.
That Pandora should live while they died… it didn’t seem fair. Balling her fists, she closed her eyes but for a second before reopening them once the last coffin had passed her by.
A pair of kind eyes belonging to a woman in the other line caught hers. The Spartan gave her a sympathetic smile. 
Pandora didn’t smile back.
----
The technicians stepped back from their manual manipulation; no longer required. They folded the arms away and set them down into their low-powered state, then stared up to watch the rest of the disassembly.
Next came her pauldrons. Two arms gripped the outer edge of the armour plates, while two more ascended from behind to unbolt the rerebrace armour beneath. More shuddering jolts of drills, and the feeling of some heavy weight being lifted accosted the Spartan. But rather than being a comfort, it was akin to a weighted blanket pulled off without ceremony in the midst of the coldest night.
With the pauldrons and rerebraces removed, she felt the numbness continuing the inch its way closer to her core.
----
“Run it again, please.”
Pandora swallowed a thick bubble of air, her throat and mouth parched dry from some unidentifiable emotion coiling itself around her gut.
The Lieutenant Colonel linked his hands together, his forehead resting on them. Bags were present under his eyes, a deep, almost burgundy colour that drained the vitality from them. 
He stared at the screen in front of him, the orange borders, red flashing letters, and the image of a burning planet behind them. The text read the same thing it had been displaying every few minutes for the past five hours; 
PLANETARY ANNIHILATION
“Sir, the outcome is always the same,” a smooth, undoubtedly robotic voice said to him. There was a flash of light on the desk, and a holographic podium generated the form of a woman in a svelte black, backless evening gown. Lines of code ran along her body and up into her hair, where it cascaded down in independent rivers of red. His resident AI, Cynthia.
“I know, just…” he sighed, letting his head fall further down, and his fingers run through his shorn hair. “Please, run it again…” he trailed off, picking up a coffee cup and glancing inside at the contents They were almost black, and he gave it a cursory sniff to make sure the contents weren’t rancid before downing the cold liquid in a gulp.
Cynthia closed her eyes. “Calculating…” the image in front of the General changed to a lush world, with rolling oceans and a single, vibrant white supercontinent spanning most of one hemisphere. 
Spatters of land were dotted around it, but nowhere near as much as the imposing mass dwarfing them.
“Done.” she said. 
Pandora stepped closer to the image despite herself. Despite the knowledge of what would inevitably come after.
The screen shifted again, the bright white ice sheets and coral blue oceans replaced by scorching orange fires raging over where they once stood. Charred black trenches visible from orbit where there were once trees and cities. 
Closing her eyes, Pandora stared down at the floor. 
“Planetary annihilation. Three weeks, thirty seven hours, two minutes.” Cynthia said.
The Colonel groaned. It had been years since he had been transferred away from the front lines, with a fresh new promotion, and instructions to ‘prepare defenses for inevitable Covenant assault.’ 
“How am I meant to defend a planet better than a computer…” he muttered to himself.
Pandora didn’t answer him, merely shifted her weight from one foot to the other.
The Lieutenant Colonel looked up at Pandora through his fingers and messy hair. Straightening up, he smoothed down the creases in his uniform.
“Something on your mind, Spartan?” he asked.
She shook her head.
“Good. Because you and yours might be the thing that wins us this battle.”
Arching an eyebrow, Pandora balled her fists behind her back and tilted her head. “Us, sir?”
“ONI dumped dozens of Spartans on this planet for a reason. You’ll forgive me if my expectations are above estimate, but so far you’ve not halted the enemy advance.”
“Because we’re not being deployed as a unit, sir. We’re being carved up and sent in fireteams.”
“You’ve been given tactical command of an entire Marine company.”
“But I’m not a squad leader, sir. I don’t lead my Spartan fireteam, I’m just a rifleman within it.”
“Your rank, on your file, signed by your Major Briggenshaw lists you as a Petty Officer.”
“Third Class, yes sir.”
“By my reckoning that makes you an Officer.”
“No sir.”
“Explain.”
“Our internal rank structure has Petty Officer Third Class as the lowest Spartan rank. This was done to give us a limited amount of authority in the field when dealing with other, non-Spartan units, yes. But realistically, 90% of us are not suited for a command role, as we have not retrieved the proper training, sir.”
“That’s unacceptable.”
“I suggest you take it up with the Major, sir. But the truth of the matter is carving us up into three man teams by executive order, and then expecting us to function as a cohesive unit with others whom we have never trained with nor operated with before is a gross mis-use of resources, sir.”
“Are you questioning my command decisions, Spartan?”
“Yes sir, I am! And I find it ironic considering how decorated you were for them in the past, Sir.”
That one struck him hard, she saw his eyes harden, his jaw clenched hard enough that she could hear his teeth grind together. He raised a finger to her chin, took a deep breath, and stopped.
In that instant, Pandora looked at him. The bags under his eyes, the wrinkles around his forehead from the constant frowning. Worry lines inching their way across his nose, and the grey hairs at his temples.
Pandora knew his reputation. Knew him as a pillar that stood defiant in the face of three Covenant sieges. The Hero of Bravo Sector.
And so far, he hadn’t come up with a single battle plan that could win them the fight. The outcome was always the same, no matter what he did. He tried concentrating his forces around population centers, he tried spreading them out and waging guerrilla warfare, but everything hinged on the battle for space. 
Every time they lost that, the Covenant ships simulated a glassing of the entire world. Casualties were absolute, and defeat was total.
He looked at her, too. He knew Pandora as a Spartan; Humankind’s last, best hope in the face of the inexorable Covenant juggernaut.  He expected her to be something more than she was, something around which his defenses would never crumble. An unbreakable spear to throw and recover then throw again.
Both of them stood facing each other, coming to the same realisation at the same time.
The Lieutenant Colonel’s face split into a smile. Absent or mirth, and draining the fire from his eyes that half a second prior looked ready to burn her to cinders.
He stared down at the floor, shaking his head from side to side. “I guess we both have a problem with what people expect from us, don’t we?”
Pandora unclenched her fists. Each of them was just one, but bore the weight of the many. Bore the weight of the world.
Both Spartan and Officer turned to face the simulation, the roiling fires, and the burning continents.
And both of them were afraid.
----
But the largest hurts were dug-in deeper. Like a burst of gunfire to centre-mass, these hurts burrowed down and latched onto vitals, making each breath or heartbeat hurt. The mechanic arms latched onto her chest, and her backplate. Extracting the four industrial-strength bolts holding the plates together, then starting on the hardpoints where it connected to her bodysuit.
----
Gunfire, rapid like a jackhammer, split the air. Pandora woke up in a cold sweat; the other children around her likewise bolting upright from their beds.
A light streamed into the room, illuminating a silhouette at the doorway.
“They’re coming!” said the voice from the shadow.
The younger children asked who ‘they’ were. The older ones didn’t need to ask. Most of them knew what to do, some didn’t. Those that did hopped off their cots, threw on some clothes, and fled through the open doorway. Those that didn’t know sat there, wrapped in their blankets and hugging their legs to their chest.
Pandora was one of the former, throwing herself down onto the hard linoleum flooring, and sprinting for the doorway. Their survival instincts were honed by years spent in the Kafkan Badlands, where if ‘they’ were coming, you had best be leaving.
There were those on Kafka that paid good credits for the vulnerable. Orphanages especially. If the orphanage refused, then the gangs wouldn’t ask. The orphanage would be the one paying, then.
The cities didn’t have that problem, but the cities also didn’t allow the destitute. The unemployed, the homeless, all were rounded up for misdemeanors. The industrial complex on Kafka marched over those with no property of their own, as no one would miss them.
Even children were sequestered away in administration-sponsored workshops. With the public aim of teaching children valuable skills, and giving them a moderate education, and the private aim of producing the next generation of indentured corporate servants.
Many destitute chose the Kafkan Badlands instead. Where gangs roved past the city walls, and prefab settlements needed CIWS turrets and a UNSC garrison to survive.
The halls of this orphanage once seemed inviting. Warmth and homeliness radiated off of the dark orange walls. Real wallpaper, rather than just leaving the prefab walls bare. Real wood floors made of Kafkan oak.
Now, in the dim gloom, with gunfire chasing the screams outside, the halls seemed less welcoming. The smiling faces on the wallpaper were now mocking and cruel.
Pandora stopped at a junction, turning towards the admin room. The orderlies had already got the younger children out, the door to the nursery and infant wards were still open. Pandora wasn’t going there, she was going to the counselling room.
She paused just outside, looking around. The dim gloom casted shadows over everything, streaming in through the plexiglass on the other side. She couldn’t see out, but the dim perpetual twilight of the planet let her see just enough of the room to know where the A/C unit was.
The A/C was always broken in this room, so much so that they’d stopped bothering to fix it. Which meant they’d long since stopped checking behind it. She stood up on one of the chairs, ripping the unit from the wall with a colossal heave. The unit clattered to the ground with the sound of denting metal and rattling components. 
Pandora fished around in the darkness, her hands closing around a sharpened piece of glass stuck into a handle made of chewed, mashed-up paper and glue. A thin strand of belt leather held it all together, wrapped around the flaky handle for a better grip.
She sighed in relief when she found the handle, yanking the shiv out of the hole and sliding it into the belt of her jeans. It paid to be cautious, and Pandora was paranoid.
Headlights shone through the plexiglass window, illuminating her on her perch, casting long shadows over the wall. She couldn’t see what vehicle was shining in, but the one-story orphanage didn’t allow vehicles anywhere except clearly marked zones.
She made the decision to throw herself down on the floor before the chain gun mounted on the bandit technical opened fire. The plexiglass and prefab steel walls of the orphanage gave way under a hail of black market AP rounds.
Pandora kept her arms over her head to shield her from the cubes of glass raining down around her. Pressing her upper arms into her ears to block out the thunderous shots. Eventually the hailstorm stopped
The bottles smashed on the parquet flooring, flames licked up the walls. Everything caught alight. Floor and wall, furniture and halls. Even metal could burn to ash in an enclosed space.
Before the flames could start to box her in, she took off running. Back down the blackened halls towards the reception area. She could hear more gunfire, more glass breaking. Every window in the place must’ve been a mess of shards on the floor by the time she made it to the entrance.
No bodies yet. They must’ve wanted them alive.
She didn’t have time to take in the reception. Commit the details to memory, savour the last time she’d lay eyes on the kind smiles of the orderlies, or the gentle tones of the wallpaper and parquet wood floors.
She bolted for the front door, slamming her shoulder into it and wrenching it open.
Pandora was clocked in the side of the head before she was halfway out of the door. She collapsed onto the dirt. Something was upon her as soon as she came to a stop, some weight pressing her hips down and pinning her wrists above her head.
She shook the daze away and started wriggling, but the ironclad grip of the man atop her was too strong. If she could just get to her shiv.
The tightened his possessive grip around her wrists. “I know a few people who would pay out their nose for something like you.”
She retched. Blood threatened to seep down into her lungs, then she paused. Gathering what little saliva she could, she spat up into the man’s face. Blood splattered over his eyes, and he reflexively reached a hand up to wipe at his face, lifting his body up off of hers.
She drew her legs up as close to her chest as she could, then screamed as she thrusted them both out into the man’s stomach. He doubled over, explosively sighing as the breath left his body.
The hand around her wrists slackened, and she wriggled one free, reaching down for the shiv tucked into the hem of her jeans. 
He wiped his eyes free of blood. Looking down at her with a snarl, his free hand reached for the knife strapped to his thigh. . 
There was a glint of metal. Pandora fumbled with her shiv, lifting her hips.
He brought the knife towards her throat.
“You little bitch—”
She stabbed upwards. The sharp shard of mirrored glass slid up into his chin. His eyes went wide as the tip pierced his soft palette and went up. Pandora wrenched it free then stabbed upwards again, then again, and again.
The man’s knife fell from his limp grasp, and he rumbled over on top of the girl.
She started to sob. The man’s blood seeped out into her hair, onto her neck, down her shoulder. She pushed the corpse off, scurried back over the dead leaves and gravel, away from the broiling ruins of what once had been her home.
She took off sprinting into the abyssal forests, with their gnarled dark barks stretching high into the sky. She didn’t look back until the light of the burning orphanage faded from sight.
----
The heaviest weight pressed against her ribcage, yearning to be let free. Pandora held her eyes shut as long as she could before the flashing images became too much to bear.
Her MJOLNIR chest piece fell from her shoulders, and hit the decking below with a thudding crash. A noise loud enough to make her clench her fists around the hand-holds. Just one more piece of armour separated her from the outside world.
The mechanical arms slid away from her hands, leaving her arms to drop by her side. When she lifted her head up, she found one waiting for her helmet’s rear neural interface port. Something pressed into the joint, a cool sensation washing over where the neural interface met her brain stem. 
Another two arms came from the sides to connect to her helmet, gently holding her in place. Her helmet served as both a tether and weight. Connecting her to the rest of the armour, but holding her there by the interface in her skull. For the helmet to come off, the port had to be released.
Usually she would just twist the helmet off and break the seal that way. But this was the ‘proper’ way, and didn’t come with the risk of data scrambling or disconnection sickness.
It also unfortunately came with a drilling sensation lancing up her brain stem directly into her skull, which Pandora waited for with tears prickling the corners of her eyes.
----
The little girl stepped around the corner of the wall, into the living room. It was dark, the only light coming from the TV they’d lifted from a junkyard six months ago. 
He was there, of course. Pickled in fumes and motor oil from his day spent in the garage, working on ‘the only damn thing that gives me joy’.
She’d never seen it. She wasn’t allowed to, and whenever she tried to sneak a peek, he’d get angry.
Abby didn’t want him angry, so she approached the doorway and leaned her head in before the rest of her. Testing the waters, sensing for danger.
“Dad?”
She felt her stomach flip at the word, like it always flipped when she made a loud noise in the house.
“What do you want?” he rumbled, bringing a clear bottle of equally-clear liquid to his lips. It wasn’t water, because Abby could smell it from across the room.
She stepped closer, keeping a cushion close to her chest as she went, her slippers sliding across the smooth metal floor. 
“What’s my name short for?” she asked. 
He paused with the bottle halfway to his lips, looking over his shoulder at her. “Your what?”
“My name,” Abby replied. “What’s it short for.”
Shaking his head, he took a swig of the liquid and put it down next to him on a unit. “S’not short for any name. They wanted one, I gave them one.”
“Oh.” 
Abby wasn’t sure who ‘they’ were. Furrowing her brow, she took another step closer and stepped around the unit besides the chair. “Because there was a girl on TV yesterday,” she began.
“Didn’t ask.” He reached over for the remote to the TV and turned it up. 
“Well, she had the same name as me but it was short for Abigail,” Abby said. She put her hands on the arm of the couch and leaned up to look at her father’s face.
He shifted in place. “So?”
Abby huffed. “So is my name short for Abigail?” she asked. 
“I already told you it’s not short for any name.” Rolling his eyes, he took a hold of the remote and turned the TV up again. “Go away, and leave me be.”
“But it’s got to be short for something, right?” she took a look at the TV, as though the answer might be blaring from the sports footage currently being broadcasted. 
“Yes it is,” he said with a chuckle. 
“What is it?” Reaching out to him, she grabbed his forearm and pulled on it. “Tell me please!”
He tutted and tried to shake her off. “I said piss off.”
She pulled even harder, insistently, tugging at his arm and whining. “But I wanna know my name!”
“No!” He pulled his hand out of her grip and shoved her away. She went tumbling to one side, dragged by his pure strength. She hit the couch-side unit and toppled it over, the bottle and the drink inside tumbled with her. It broke on the floor, shattering into a thousand glimmering shards of white.
The rancid, stinging liquid spilled out as well, pooling around her waist.
Her father jumped up, turning around to face her as she scurried to right hearself.
“You little…” 
“I’m sorry!” She went to pick up the pieces, not knowing what else to do “I’m sorry!”
“Abortion!” he hissed.
She paused, looking up at him with wide eyes. “What?”
He stepped closer and grabbed the scruff of her shift, pulling her up off of the floor. “That’s what your bloody name is short for!” He roared into her face.
“Abby the abortion!” He let her scruff go and balled his fists so hard the knuckles cracked. “The unwanted cyst on my life! The thing that killed my wife!”
Shocked, stunned into stillness, Abby was no match for the lighting-quick blow that came from his left hand. 
The hand slapped her hard about the face. She felt a tooth dislodge in her jaw, the rich, copperish taste of blood started seeping into her mouth. Stinging pain swept over her skin and up behind her eyes, where tears pricked at the corners  
A gentler, smaller hand came to rest on the burning red mark where her father’s hand struck. Her own hand was dwarfed by the mark left behind, which already spanned nearly a full half of her head.
He’d slapped her with his hand cupped, aiming for her ear. He wanted her disoriented, ears ringing. He’d missed her ear, but had clobbered her hard enough for an all-encompassing daze to wrap itself around her nonetheless.
Heart hammering in her chest, and face bearing a mixture of fear, pain, and anger, the girl looked up at him, towering far above her. 
Her father—the man—still had his hand raised, his own face twisted in a miserable, angry scowl. His cheeks were beet red in rage, a vein pulsing in his forehead, and froth pooling at the corners of his pursed lips. 
“Abortions don’t get names,” he hissed at her. “Why the fuck would you ever get one?!”
On wobbly legs, ‘Abby’ the scared girl stepped back from him, turned around, and fled the living room.
----
The helmet lifted from her head. The floodlights and fluorescents ate into her eyes and stung. A thousand pinpricks and then a thousand more. She wiped her eyes and found them damp with moisture, then dropped her hands with a sigh.
Looking up, the technicians and the Staff Sergeant were looking at her with a mixture of emotions. Some concerned, some confused. Stepping down off of the stairs, letting the assembly machine return to its default state, Pandora—the woman, the remnants of a scared girl, absent her Spartan attire—stepped down from the raised podium, and met the Staff Sergeant’s eyes on level footing.
He cleared his throat, stepping to one side.
“Ready to meet the Leftenant Colonel?”
She tilted her head to the left. “Are you giving me a choice?”
He hesitated, opened his mouth, then closed it again. With a shake of his head, and a shrug of his shoulders, he sighed. 
“Even if I was, you don’t have one.”
He turned around, stepping back through the spaced-out privacy screens.
Without the hundreds of kilograms of armour on, Pandora had never felt quite so suffocated. 
“I never did,” she said to the man’s back, before following him out of the hangar building.