Halo: One Last Tie

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: "IT ENDS TOMORROW. I KEEP TELLING MYSELF, OVER AND OVER AGAIN, BUT IT NEVER QUITE SEEM’S TO SINK IN. IT ENDS TOMORROW." 
: "I’VE BEEN OFFICIALLY HUNTING LEONID FOR THREE YEARS, FOUR MONTHS, AND TWENTY SIX DAYS. BUT THE STORY FOR THIS WHOLE THING START’S A LONG TIME BEFORE EVEN THAT. LONG BEFORE I EVEN STARTED ON THIS PATH, LONG BEFORE I EVER COULD DREAM OF EVEN BEING HERE. IT STARTED TWENTY YEARS AGO, LOOKING OUT AT THOSE KIDS GATHERED FOR INDOCTRINATION. IT STARTED AS I WATCHED CRYING FACES STRUGGLE TO UNDERSTAND WHAT LASZLO WAS TELLING THEM. WITH A DAY TWELVE YEARS AGO I’LL NEVER FORGET, A DAY WHERE HALF OF THE CHILDREN I’D COME TO KNOW AND LOVE LOST THEIR LIVES TO CRIMINAL STUPIDITY AND NEGLIGENCE. I SPENT THREE YEARS WATCHING A WAR BEING FOUGHT BY MEN AND WOMEN WHO SHOULDN’T EVEN HAVE BEEN OLD ENOUGH TO GRADUATE HIGH SCHOOL. A WAR I SHOULD HAVE BEEN FIGHTING. I GOT TO SIT AND WATCH AS ONE BY ONE, TWO BY TWO, THREE BY THREE, THEY DIED. KNOWING I WAS RESPONSIBLE IN SOME WAY. NEVER BEING ABLE TO FORGET THOSE CRYING FACES FROM INDUCTION DAY." 
: "AND THEN MY WORLD SHATTERED AGAIN. ON APRIL 7TH IN 2552, SOMETHING INSIDE ME THAT HAD BEEN TORN, MAULED, ABUSED, MUTILATED---AND YET STILL MANAGED TO CLING TO LIFE---FINALLY DIED. I DON’T THINK I EVEN REALIZED IT. I’D BEEN POURING MYSELF INTO HELPING MY KIDS EVERY WAKING MOMENT, EVERY DAY, ALWAYS TRYING TO DO MORE. BUT THE REASONING, IT CHANGED THAT DAY. I’D DONE IT BEFORE OUT OF LOVE, OUT OF DUTY, OUT OF RESPONSIBILITY. I CONTINUED IN PART FOR ALL THOSE REASONS. BUT THEY WEREN’T ALL ANYMORE. I DID IT FOR SURVIVAL. HELPING MY KIDS, PROTECTING THEM, WATCHING OVER THEM, IT SAVED MY LIFE." 
: "THOSE KIDS, THEY’VE GROWN UP. ROGER HASN’T NEEDED ME IN EIGHT YEARS. HE’S THE ONE GIVING ME CRUCIAL INTEL NOW, THE ONE WATCHING MY BACK. BALDUIN AND RACHEL TOOK CARE OF ME IN ‘57, LIFTING ME UP WHEN I WAS AT MY LOWEST. OUR DYNAMIC IS LONG SINCE FLIPPED. ADAM AND LUCIA ARE RESPECTED AND HAVE MUCH MORE CAPABLE PEOPLE WATCHING OVER THEM NOW. SOMEONE FINALLY IS PAYING THE ATTENTION TO THEM THAT THEY DESERVE, TREATING THEM WITH THE CARE THEY WARRANT. CONNOR, HURT SO DEEPLY, IS HEALING. HE MAY EVEN JOIN SPARTAN. SOMEONE LIKE HIM IS IMPOSSIBLE TO KEEP OUT OF THE ACTION FOREVER." 
: "AND GOLD...PERHAPS IT’S JUST THAT I’M HERE PERSONALLY WITH THEM, BUT THEY’RE THE MOST GROWN UP OF ALL. THEY’VE TAKEN A LIFE, THE TOUGHEST LIFE IMAGINABLE, AND EMERGED STRONG. OTHER SPARTANS TRAINED LIKE THEM HAVE BEEN JUST AS SKILLED, JUST AS DEADLY, BUT THAT’S NOT THE STRONG I SEE WHEN I LOOK AT THEM. I SEE THE STRENGTH OF PEOPLE WHO HAVE COALESCED INTO WHOLE PEOPLE. NOT THE CRYING FACES FROM INDUCTION, NOT THE BLINDLY LOYAL AUGMENTEES, NOT THE JADED AND SUSPICIOUS SOLDIERS FROM AFTER RICHARD, BUT SOMETHING GREATER. SOME AMALGAMATION, SOME COMBINATION OF ALL THOSE TRAITS. NOT WITHDRAWN, RESIGNED TO A LIFE OF ORDERS AND DIRECTIONS, WITHOUT HEART OR LOVE. BUT REAL PEOPLE. THEY ARE WHAT FEW SPARTANS HAVE REALLY MANAGED TO BECOME." 
: "FOR TWENTY YEARS, THIS PROGRAM HAS DEFINED ME. IT REALLY HAS. BEEN MY LIFE, MY SUM TOTAL EXISTENCE. MY FRIENDS CAME FROM WITHIN THE RANKS OF THE PROGRAM, MY KIDS CAME FROM WITHIN THE RANKS OF THE PROGRAM. IT’S NOT EVEN ARES TO ME, NOT ANYMORE. NOT FOR YEARS. IT’S WHO I AM. BUT THE PROGRAM IS FINISHED. WE WENT OUR SEPARATE WAYS YEARS AGO. THE PEOPLE THAT WERE FRIENDS ARE LONG GONE, AND PERHAPS SOME OF THEM WERE NEVER REALLY FRIENDS AT ALL. MY KIDS DON’T NEED ME ANYMORE. THERE’S JUST ONE LAST TIE OF MINE TO CUT. ONE LAST JOB TO WRAP UP. ONE LAST CONNECTION TO CLOSE. AM I SAD THINKING ABOUT IT? I DON’T KNOW. (AM I A LITTLE CRAZY TALKING TO MYSELF IN A JOURNAL? DEFINITELY)." 
: "THIS PROGRAM HAS BEEN THE MOST NIGHTMARISH, INSPIRING, TUMULTUOUS, EXCITING, CHALLENGING, AMAZING, AWFUL EXPERIENCE OF MY LIFE. I HAVE KNOWN GREATER SORROW AND GREATER JOY THAN I’D EVER BEFORE. I’VE SEEN PEOPLE TRANSFORM INTO SOMETHING AMAZING. I’VE SEEN PEOPLE TRANSFORM INTO SOMETHING FRIGHTENING. I’VE SEEN ALL TOO MANY OF THOSE TRANSFORMATIONS CUT SHORT. I’VE SEEN THE WORST EXCESSES OF LAZINESS, OF NEGLIGENCE, OF DESPICABLE SELF CENTERED FEAR. AND I’VE SEEN THE GREATEST TRIUMPHS OF SPIRIT OVER DIFFICULTY, STRENGTH OVER PAIN, LIFE OVER DEATH. IT’S NOT REALLY AN EXPERIENCE I GUESS I CAN SAY WAS EITHER GOOD OR BAD. IT SIMPLY WAS. IT WAS LIFE, COMPARTMENTALIZED. TOMORROW IT ENDS. PERHAPS FITTINGLY, WITH A LIFE." 
: "BEFORE I STARTED THIS MISSION, I WAS A BROKEN MAN. MAYBE I STILL AM. BUT IT HAS GIVEN ME PURPOSE. SOMETHING TO LIVE FOR. TOMORROW IT ENDS. READING OVER SOME OF MY ENTRIES, IT SOUNDS LIKE BLOOD LUST. BUT I DON’T THINK THAT’S IT. NOT ENTIRELY. LEONID-144 DID SOMETHING AWFUL AND HAS TO PAY THE PRICE. THE BUREAUCRATS AND SPOOKS ESCAPED JUDGEMENT FOR THEIR OFFENSES, BUT IF I CAN MAKE THIS ONE SPOT OF JUSTICE, IT CAN MAYBE BE A START. I’M READY. I’M SURE LEONID IS TOO. BUT TOMORROW, IT ENDS. THERE’S NO ESCAPING THAT." 
::—Griffin Standoff's Private Journal: December 5th, 2560
==Plot Summary==
In 2558, when the UNSC deployed to , it carried aboard it a hidden stowaway: Leonid-144, a . Abducted by Section Zero, the internal affairs division more than three decades prior and designated Codename: EGOR, this super-soldier excelled at one singular task: assassinating those that had run afoul of ONI. The product of an off-the-books ONI black op known as Project: LEONIDAS, EGOR was deadly, mysterious, and nearly impossible to track---until 2558, when a slip up finally put EGOR on the books.
During an investigation by Operation: VORAUSSICHT operatives into a Flood research project known as Operation: BLUE NIGHTS, EGOR was discovered, engaged, and in an unlikely turn of events, captured by SPARTAN-II's under control of Codename: SHOGUN's protege, Codename: RAINFALL. However, with civilian intervention in VORAUSSICHT imminent, Codename: OLYCINDUS, the Deputy Director of Section Zero, authorized a mission to hide the assassin in plain sight, aboard the Infinity: Operation: SUNSHINE. A Section Zero team, spearheaded by Codename: SUBMARINE and Codename: HANNIBAL, led the effort, manipulating Infinity's AI and blackmailing a member of her crew, . Miller, a former Section Zero triggerman, assisted in passing EGOR off as a Spartan Four fireteam, but things quickly escalated as the solitary but highly skilled Leonid managed to outperform every other Fireteam on Infinity. With the cover falling apart, it was not long before EGOR was discovered, Miller was detained, and Section Zero had to scrub the mission, evacuating EGOR elsewhere.
Things would have ended there, if not for the intervention of the newly commissioned Spartan Branch leadership. Eager to limit ONI's hold over them, prove themselves independent, and answer pressing questions about EGOR, Spartan Branch began building a small internal intelligence agency and launched an investigation to track down and captured EGOR---Operation: SKADHI. Without an proprietary intelligence agents on staff, however, Spartan was forced to turn to Jared Miller---now known as Codename: MONTAGUE, his Section Zero title---and put him in charge of the operation. While Spartan brass was uncomfortable with the decision, it quickly paid off; MONTAGUE assembled an impressive field team, caught onto EGOR's trail, and launched mission after mission to bring him in. Unfortunately, while coming closer to EGOR than any prior group, SKADHI still was unable to capture the mysterious SPARTAN-II.
Without intelligence on EGOR's targets, SKADHI was forced to react to Section Zero's moves, rather than anticipate them, and EGOR remained stubbornly out of reach. Despite the addition of Gold Team, a SPARTAN-II Class III fireteam, to the field team, direct action missions against EGOR proved fruitless. This frustrating turn of events continued until 2560, when the ex-ONI Colonel turned civilian Griffin Standoff contacted MONTAGUE with an offer of information. Standoff, the training officer responsible for the creation of the Class III's like Gold Team, now hunting Leonid for his own private reasons, had been contacted by a former trainee of his, Roger Jacobs, with intel on EGOR's next target. Unable to bring Leonid down without help, Standoff partnered with SKADHI---trading his intelligence for a place on the mission---for the final take-down of EGOR.
==Dramatis Personae==
File:El6.jpg|Elias Olson
File:Ga1.jpg|Bradford Gale
File:Dor10.jpg|Jonathan Dorian
File:Marksp6.jpg|Mark-G253
File:Ma5.jpg|Matt-363
File:Jacky8.jpg|Jacky-359
File:Mv3.jpg|Mason-317
File:Mont9.jpg|Codename: MONTAGUE
File:Standoff1.jpg|Griffin Standoff
File:LA10.jpg|Codename: EGOR
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==One==
::::::1600 Hours, December 6th, 2560
::::::Patience City, Cobb Protectorate
::::::Whitefall, Athens System
In another life, ex-Colonel Griffin Standoff had lived for moments like these. The jarring, quaking roar of re-entry shaking him to his bones. The harsh orange light bleeding in through the porthole in the rear of the dropship. The sweat beading on his brow, as the troop bay warmed with the frictional heat of the plunge into the atmosphere. It had been two decades since Standoff had stood in a place like this, doing something like this. But it felt like hardly a day had passed; the experience, at it’s root, was the same thing he had done a hundred times before. The armor covering him was more durable, the HUD in his helmet swam with twice as many holographic status readouts, and the rifle in his hands was factory new rather than worn by years of use, but the anxiety was the same, the tightness in his scalp was the same, the adrenaline bubbling in his gut was the same. It was a mirrored parallel of what he had done before many, many times. 
He’d stopped having dreams about his former combat company---the unit he’d served with before ARES---and their tours fifteen years ago, but the whole experience still felt it was like something out of a wild fantasy. He could still clearly recall the last combat mission he’d ran before ONI recruited him. Him and the 151st dropping onto Shakespeare, to take down a network of Covenant artillery and clear the way for an evacuation. The details assailed him from across the chasm of the long years, from out of the old depths of his mind. Gunsmoke. Bodies. A sharpened stretch of rebar covered in bright blue blood. Cyan jets of fire as charges detonated. Standing around a burning Wraith smoking cigars. 
It was a world wholly removed from the slow work he’d done for the last twenty years. Standoff hadn’t fired lethal rounds on a live target since that day. He’d been twenty years younger, twenty years that had aged him like two hundred. Part of that was why he was here. The struggles that weighed him were the same ones pushing him into this. 
“Standoff, you ok?” Bradford Gale’s voice came over the radio with an earnest hint of concern. “Are the auto adjusters acting up again?”
Gale put an armored gauntlet on his shoulder, touch light despite the weight of the heavy metal plating and the power in the reactive joints. Gale’s choice of armor reflected a lot about him. He wore the same steel-and-gold color scheme with blue visor combination as the standard Recruit variation of the armor. The actual armor itself, however, was a fierce looking, purely combat oriented machine. Boasting a narrow-visored, martial looking Warrior helmet and it’s sleek, powerful subsidiary chest and shoulder plates, alongside heavily armored arm and leg sections, Gale looked like a purely warfare oriented evolution of the standard Spartan Four. 
“Just waxing nostalgic to myself.” Standoff had long ago come to terms with the fact that he was largely defined by his past. “Armor is working just fine, don’t worry.”
Codename: MONTAGUE, the Spartan Intelligence agent running their mission, had provided Standoff with a set of Semi-Powered Infiltration armor. SPI, as it was commonly called, had been standard issue during the Great War for both SPARTAN-III commandoes and Standoff’s own kids---the SPARTAN-II Class III super soldiers he’d trained. More advanced than a standard Marine BDU, or even ODST Battle Armor, it had a layer of photo-reactive panels covering every surface; these panels mimicked their surroundings, creating an imperfect illusion of invisibility. SPI lacked the energy shielding, heavy armor, and strength enhancing circuits of MJOLNIR armor, but it could be operated by unaugmented humans. 
Standoff was still vulnerable, but at least he had the best gear available. MONTAGUE hadn’t spared the expense, because he knew Standoff would need it. Operation: SKADHI, their mission, had one objective: track down and apprehend Codename: EGOR---Leonid-144, the Leonidan SPARTAN-II who’d spent the last thirty five years assassinating high value targets for Section Zero. Leonid, an original graduate of the legendary Class of 2525, was without a doubt one of the most dangerous quarry’s in the galaxy. The Spartan Intel strike team that Standoff had ingratiated himself with, an eclectic mix of Spartan Fours, a SPARTAN-III, and three of Standoff’s kids, had already gone after Leonid twice, both times with disastrous results. 
Standoff had never been one for false optimism, and knew their chances of actually getting Leonid were slim to none. But he didn’t have much choice in the matter. He had to kill Leonid. It wasn’t up for debate. 
“Granite Actual to MONTAGUE, requesting secure line.” Elias Olson, the Spartan Four squad leader of Fireteam Granite, was all business over the radio. It was interesting to Standoff how professional and dry the Spartan could sound. Olson was equipped with a set of white Air Assault armor, complimented by green stripes and an emerald colored visor. The set up was flashy, and if the lightweight chest plate, cut down shoulder plates, and dome-like jet pack was any indication, geared for daredevil aerial combat. Standoff would have picked out someone with such risky preferences to be more excitable. 
“Go for secure, Granite Actual.” MONTAGUE answered Olson, sounding chipper. It was, as Standoff had known almost immediately after meeting him, a calculated technique to disarm people. Standoff wasn’t fooled. No one who saw the Spook in action was, either. “What’s your position and ETA?”
“Just crossing over southeast Patience, sir.” Olson’s opinion towards MONTAGUE was something Standoff struggled to discern. On one hand, he was about the only member of the strike team who showed no hint of distrust towards MONTAGUE. But he was also indefatigably loyal to the UNSC and the mission. The degree to which that loyalty was responsible for Olson’s faith in MONTAGUE wasn’t clear. “About five minutes out, sir.”
“Understood. Radio when you’re on site.” 
“Everyone prepped?” Olson cut his comm link and turned to face the team. “Standoff?”
“Son, I’ve been doing this since before you were born.” Standoff put a healthy dose of indignation into his voice to hide the anxiety. “I know my job.”
“Just checking, sir.” There was something…strange in Olson’s voice. “Didn’t mean anything by it.”
“If half the stories Standoff tells are true, I don’t think we’ve got anything to worry about.” Gale clapped Olson roughly on the shoulder, letting out a loud clank. “Has he told you guys the one about the Moa and the frag grenades?”
“He told it once. Then you repeated it three times.” Olson got an amiable but distracted tone in his voice when it became clear his attention was elsewhere. “Mark, you have visual yet on the long range scopes?”
Mark-G253, normally Fireteam Granite’s designated marksmen, was acting as pilot today. Mark was a SPARTAN-III commando---a true, original SPARTAN, unlike the Spartan Fours that comprised the rest of Granite. There were numerous little differences between him and Standoff’s kids---he’d been taken from an orphanage after volunteering, rather than been abducted; he’d trained for six years in a less intensive fashion, rather than eight years patterned after SPARTAN-II; and his augmentations were safer and less powerful, rather than the dangerous but extremely effective augments Standoff’s kids had undergone. Nevertheless, Mark was a true, original breed of SPARTAN. Standoff had watched him in the last month he’d been aboard, and had noticed that the SPARTAN-III was a perpetual fish out of water, despite the best efforts of his squad mates. 
Mark had been nominated as the Pelican pilot mostly out of necessity. Operation: SKADHI’s security was hyper-tight, to the point where the team’s stealth vessel, the Nox, was crewed solely by the strike team and a dumb AI---no other personnel were attached. With no technical Pelican pilots embarked, it was up to the strike team to fly. Olson, truth be told, was the best pilot, but seeing as he was busy, Mark took over instead. Every Spartan Four, Standoff had been told, could fly as a requirement, but Mark spent his entire childhood training. Coupled with his precision and natural professionalism, he made a damn good replacement. Standoff had no complaints. 
“Standby…” Mark was busy putting the Pelican into a shallow dive. Standoff could feel the slight shift in the center of gravity before the inertial dampeners corrected. “Target identified, repeat, visual contact with the target area. Two thousand meters to landing zone.”
“Alright. Initiate the autopilot sequence and get ready.” Olson began double-checking his equipment. “Fireteam Granite, final check, now.”
Standoff slid into old routine, actions drilled into him so thoroughly they still felt like second nature. He checked armor systems, counted his magazines, ran a backup comm diagnostic, found his grip on his rifle. He watched Olson fiddle with his Battle Rifle, practicing magazine swaps one…two…three times before racking the bolt. Gale had a DMR and a Plasma Pistol, but didn’t bother checking on them; instead, he sauntered over to the corner of the troop bay and rapped his knuckle plate on Spartan Jonathan Dorian’s helmet. Standoff had a brief moment of confusion, standing there, before Dorian shot up with a start. It looked like the man had been asleep. Dorian ambled around the bay, apparently in no rush, retrieving gear. He boasted a set of red and black ODST variant armor, along with an M6C/SOCCOM silenced pistol and a customized, gold colored Covenant Carbine. Standoff wondered vaguely what the story behind that exotic choice was. 
Mark trundled into the bay, completing their human tank menagerie; in olive drab, with a gold visor, he looked like a SPARTAN of yore. His suit, Standoff noted with interest, was comprised of an eclectic mix of armor components. A Mark V helmet, a Pathfinder chest plate, an EOD right shoulder plate, and a Mark VI left shoulder plate; altogether, his set up looked vaguely like an old set of Mark IV MJOLNIR. That setup definitely had a story behind it. Standoff almost made a mental note to ask Mason about it, then remembered. He squelched his curiosity. Better to focus on the practical. Once upon a time, Standoff remembered being a simple man. He had to try and get back to that mindset. 
“Elias, Jacky here.” Jacky-359, the close quarters specialist of Gold Team, was one of Standoff’s kids. Her voice came over the radio with the slightest hint of static. “I’m tracking the target with our sensors and he just went inside the bunker. Our timing is going to be tight.”
“Understood.” Olson’s voice was level and reassuring. “We’re on site in three minutes.”
The roar of the re-entry had faded, and in it’s place came the rush of air as the troop bay door at the end of the dropship slip open. One hand firmly gripping the support rail, Standoff edged to the end of the gangplank and stared out at the ground below. Standing there, with the roar of the wind, rifle in his hands, being buffeted by the open bay, he felt quietly, calmly, at peace. His last tie to the past was nearly ready to be cut. It cooled Standoff’s anxiety to stand there. 
Leonid-144 was going to die today. Armed, armored, surrounded by metal giants, he could actually believe it. All his life, Standoff had struggled to look on the brightside. Laszlo Katona, the SPARTAN-II who’d partnered with Standoff training the kids, had tried to cajole Standoff out of his gloom many times. And Standoff had tried---him and Laszlo had been friends then, or at least, he’d thought they were---only to fail time and time again. There was always a just a bad that outweighed the good. A negative that overrode the positive. He could always see two ways things could go right but five they could go wrong. He’d spent years convinced they would lose the war, spent years thinking about the life he’d been forced out of, spent decades now sure that his soul was damned for the crimes he had helped facilitate. 
That cynicism had permeated his private hunt for Leonid, even when he’d refused to acknowledge it. He was determined to kill Leonid, unstoppably driven, but part of him had never believed he would make it. As always, Standoff could see all the things that could go wrong. Laszlo’s betrayal, lying to him to protect Leonid, his old teammate. The other dark groups---probably CHAUCER’s---constantly trying to take Leonid down for themselves. His own weaknesses as an old man, unaugmented, who was, for all intents and purposes, broken. 
But he could not give up. He simply couldn’t allow himself to do it. Three years ago, he’d committed himself to his mission, and there was no backing out. Giving up was not in Standoff’s vocabulary. The struggles he’d put his kids through, the awful things that had been done to them---he couldn’t pretend he had any right to take the easy way out. In this more than anything. 
----
“Understood. We’re on site in three minutes.”
SPARTAN Jacky-359 listened closely to Elias’ update, searching his voice for any hint of concern. Ever since she was a trainee back on Tantalus, Jacky had been excellent at reading people. An evaluator had once called her “precise and analytical”, something she’d taken pride in even before she knew what the words meant. People’s moods, their emotions, could all be discerned from the little details, as long as you paid close attention. His tone was calm, she decided, but the wrong kind of calm. A little too smooth, much smoother than Elias normally was. 
“Elias, is the Colonel throwing you?” Jacky switched to a closed comm channel, shutting out everyone but her and the Granite team leader. “What’s he doing?”
“A lot of staring into space, mostly.” Elias answered plainly, without the false reassurance. “Gale’s babying him a bit.”
“So what’s wrong?” It was clear something was. “You’re worried.”
“Just nerves.” Elias sounded like he was holding something back. A brief bout of patient silence made him relent. “Just thinking about our talk on the ship. I know I said I’d watch him, but it’s going to be tough with the plan.”
Jacky felt a familiar---yet very unfamiliar---twinge of something in her chest. Elias wasn’t worried about Standoff endangering the mission, like everyone else in his squad would have been. Elias was…an anomaly. Jacky and her squad mates were friendly, but they didn’t make many friends. It was, like most things in her life, because of the program. Gold Team---comprised of Matthew-363 the squad leader, Mason-317 the squad marksman, and Jacky herself, the squad CQC specialist---was a SPARTAN-II Class III Fireteam. They were set apart from nearly everyone they met. The Class I SPARTAN-II’s were aloof---well, besides Laszlo-108, their training officer---the SPARTAN-III’s were shy and suspicious of SPARTANs who weren’t, and the Spartan Fours were arrogant, intimidated, or thought of them as freaks. 
Even other squads from the ARES detachment---their training class---were distant. During the Great War, the Class III teams had taken casualties---a lot of them. They’d been thrown at suicide missions with minimal care. Nearly half the total teams had been killed outright. Those that had survived had all lost at least one member. Not a single ARES team had escaped the war unscathed---not a single team, except for Gold. Jacky’s squad emerged from the war intact, surviving impossible odds. It bred resentment from the others, prompted exclusion. Gold didn’t know the pain of losing family. They were different. 
Being bluntly honest about it---blunt honesty, of course, being Jacky’s specialty---Gold’s attitude also made things worse. Other teams thought they were not just different and lucky, but arrogant for it. It was a hard accusation to deny. They were supremely confident, better than most other SPARTANs---and they knew it. Jacky was always honest in letting people know where they stood with her. It was likely the thing that was the most damaging, really, and also explained much of her tendency towards pissing people off. That being said, it was by no means limited to her. Mason was casually flippant at the expense of inferior teams, comfortable in superiority---by no means an endearing quality. Matt, meanwhile, was always aggressively assertive about their capabilities---even if that meant telling other teams that, quite simply, Gold should do the job because they were better. 
Somehow, in spite of this team wide abrasiveness, in spite of her own frank confidence, and most impressively, in spite of the fact that their first meeting had been a deliberately awkward prank, Elias and her had become friends. Close ones. It was a thinly differentiated distinction, but a very important one. Mason had made friends with Jonathan Dorian, Granite’s quiet spotter, and tried coaxing him out of his shell, but they weren’t close like Jacky and Elias. She had told Elias things no one outside her team had ever heard, not even Laszlo or the Colonel. 
And Elias hadn’t just listened. Hadn’t merely kept the secrets. He’d chosen to actively help. That was something Jacky really hadn’t expected. Elias had offered willingly to help Gold with their true mission---their real reason for requesting a spot on SKADHI---keeping the Colonel safe. They knew the Colonel had private reasons he wanted EGOR gone, and were afraid he’d get himself killed in the process of it. The plan originally had been to get on with SKADHI and take EGOR down quickly, before the Colonel even had a chance to find him---much less do anything stupid and dangerous. That little scheme had gone out the window a month ago, after the Colonel had bought his way onto the investigation with intel on EGOR’s location. 
They’d had to go with an imperfect evolution, protecting the Colonel while on the mission. Jacky had told Elias everything, and he’d just naturally assumed it was his responsibility too. Without even knowing why the Colonel was so hellbent on catching EGOR. Sitting in the hangar before the mission, waiting for MONTAGUE to give the go ahead to launch the Pelicans, Jacky had almost told him. He’d been so understanding. So faithful. It hadn’t sat right with her. But that---that was also Gold Team’s darkest secret. Their biggest failure. How could Jacky tell him, without making him doubt her? How could she tell him about Ricky, that they’d failed---
“Jacky?” Elias’ voice hit her like a bucket of ice water. “You still there?”
“Sorry.” Jacky didn’t do that. Didn’t get distracted. It bothered her even as she tried to answer normally. “Got caught up in thought.”
“Anything you feel like sharing?” Elias knew it wasn’t like her. 
“Yes.” Jacky made the decision after a moment’s consideration. She didn’t like the lying. Even if it was only omission. She could be upfront about the fact that she was holding back all she wanted, but it still felt wrong. Especially with Elias. She was deciding where to start---
---Matt caught her eye, tapping his purple and white Strider helmet. It was specialized, not standard issue with his War Master armor. Mason was trundling out of the cockpit access way, sealing his gold armored Scout helmet to his armor. It was time to go. 
“But later. I have to go to the general channel.” Jacky switched, and new voices assailed her ears. 
“…sir. We’re prepped for the deployment.” Matt was in full mission mode, his voice steely professionalism. 
“Alright everyone.” MONTAGUE answered cheerily. “You know your roles. Let’s go.” 
The dropship bay doors shot open, revealing the city of Patience below them. Buildings flashed by in a blur of grey and black. Whitefall was an outer colony, but the capital city was impressive enough. True, it was hardly a sprawling megacity like some of the ones on Earth, but it had a few sky scrapers and a population in the tens of millions. As they slowed, closing on the drop zone, Jacky could pick out individual citizens, necks craning to catch a glimpse of the Pelicans. Granite’s dropship came in high, settling onto their tail, and then both craft rotated thrusters, dropping diagonally. Forward momentum sent them diving towards the drop zone, smoothly dropping their remaining altitude. 
“Brace.” Matt’s order came a moment before the thrusters fired, strongly. Jacky was already ready, one red-and-yellow gauntlet wrapped around an overhead railing. The dropships’ engine nacelle rotated nearly fully vertical, belching flame. In an instant, the Pelican slammed to a halt, hovering over a wide parking lot filled with dump trucks and commuter sedans. A lone fast rope tumbled to the ground out of the back of Granite’s troop bay; Jacky clutched the MA5B Assault Rifle in her hands, tempted to switch it for the M90 shotgun on her back. 
“Gold Team,” Matt’s voice didn’t raise, lower, or show any emotion at all besides cool authority. “Deploy.”
Years of training and experience, years of fighting alongside her team, kicked in without conscious thought. Jacky and Mason didn’t stop and think about Matt’s orders, they simply did. They moved seamlessly, silently, automatically. Jacky leapt from the open troop bay, landing in a crouch besides a sedan---probably a construction worker’s, parked there over the weekend. The concrete buckled beneath her boots, crushed from the impact, spraying a plume of rock and gravel. The sedan rocked back and forth under the shockwave, and before it even finished the first shake, Jacky was moving. All of Gold was moving. They were a team, functioning on a fundamental, shared connection.
==Two==
Spartan Elias Olson dropped out of the troop bay of the Pelican, waited for a split second before impact, and keyed the thrust on his jetpack. The blast of flame kicked hard, and he hopped up a few feet, deactivated the jets, and landed at a full run. The rest of Granite crashed to the ground behind him, spewing dusty rock chips, sending cracks spiraling across the pavement. To the left, Gold Team had already landed and were moving at a dead sprint for the gate complex, MONTAGUE close behind. They weren’t Olson’s responsibility, however. He had his own job to do. 
“Granite, move!” Olson held his battle rifle at his side, urgently waving them past. “Get through that gate and into position! Standoff, sound off!”
“Right behind you.” Standoff slid down the fast rope like an old pro and hit the ground running. “Where I’m supposed to be.”
“Copy that. Standoff on me, everyone else rendezvous with Gold. Shift it!”
Olson put on a burst of speed, letting his armor do the work and carry him forward. As he ran, the layout of the zone played back in his head. The parking lot they had landed in was southwest and adjacent to their designated ambush area. EGOR was below them, working his way towards Loren Curtis---Whitefall’s former planetary governor, one time upstart rebel dictator, and high profile target for Section Zero. Curtis’ emergency bunker was built underground, right smack in the center of the city---right under them, in fact. It was meant to protect against an orbital strike, using the civilian city as a massive shield, but was useless against an assassin like EGOR. 
Standoff had predicted EGOR’s escape route, a tunnel exit that opened into a civilian construction site. There were half a dozen entrances and exits, all opening into different areas of the city, but Standoff had studied EGOR for years; he knew as well as anyone how the assassin would choose to play things. The construction site was their ambush zone. The plan---brutal as it was---was to let EGOR take out Curtis, then move on him as he tried to escape. The moment he came out of that exit tunnel, Gold, Granite, and MONTAGUE would light him up. 
That was not to say, however, that they expected that to be the end of it. Their plan counted on it, actually. Standoff, their newest addition to the team, had yet to run a mission against EGOR which meant---hopefully---that Section Zero would either be unaware of his presence or underestimate him. The old bastard was their secret weapon. He was charged with targeting the support columns of an incomplete building with a set of explosives, with the intent of bringing down the entire structure. EGOR was in for a nasty surprise the moment he would least expect it. 
And it was Olson’s job to plant those explosives. 
Ahead, the gate house to the construction site loomed in front of them. With three meter high fences, topped with razor wire, fronted by a set of vehicle spikes, and reinforced at the base, it might have been an issue---but definitely not for a Spartan Four with a jet pack. What was a problem, however, were the two guards rushing out of the gatehouse, panickedly unslinging their rifles. 
“Standoff, take cover!” Olson could have dropped both the guards easily enough at range, but these were unaffiliated, private security. It felt wrong to kill them when he still had other options. “I got this.”
Olson ran at a dead sprint, waited for the first guard to unsling his weapon, and leapt into the air. Force amplifying circuits multiplied the power of super human, augmented muscles, throwing him into the air. He leapt two meters straight up, and right at the crux of his jump, keyed the jets. Fire leapt from his back; the guards craned their necks in surprise; Elias soared upward and forward…until nearly right above the duo. This was Olson’s drug. The adrenaline, the thrill, the speed, the height, and most of all…the falling. Most people who joined ODST hated the orbital drops above all else. It was the thing that made even hardened veterans cringe and squirm. Almost everyone boasted about their own private method for “coping” with the intense, stomach sickening plunge, the terror that accompanied dropping out of a ship in low orbit in little more than coffin of heat shielding and parachutes. But for Olson, it wasn’t coping. It was thrilling. 
And so he fell. The ground rumbled as he smashed into it, shields glowing, armor crunching. He grabbed the first rebel with one hand, smacked his chin into the man’s own rifle, and turned to the other. The guard was standing, silent and still, gun level. He didn’t look too eager to pull the trigger. 
“Put down the weapon.” Olson waived pointedly at the guard’s knocked out coworker. “Open the gate. Maybe look into other lines of work.”
The guard stumbled backwards, unceremoniously dropping the gun in his rush. Olson didn’t even bother raising his battle rifle. Standoff jogged over, glancing suspiciously at the security man. The ex-Colonel shot a look at Elias, but Olson just waited for the gate to open and ran through. They had bigger issues to worry about. 
----
Jacky slammed into the side of the concrete wall, shoulder pressed against the thick cement and assault rifle in hand. Muted vibrations rumbled through the surface, as Matt and Mason stacked up behind her. A moment later, a third rumble rattled her shoulder, signaling MONTAGUE’s arrival. A smirk crossed her face beneath her helmet. Even the best of the best of the Fours were a little bit slower. 
Ten meters to her front, Granite came around the corner of a superintendent’s trailer, moving smoothly in a one-by-one line, rifles held cross chest, heads up, alert and scanning. They stacked up on the opposite wall, Gale in front---of course---and Mark in back. 
“Drone’s going up.” Jacky reached into an armor compartment, removed a small translucent sphere, and tossed it high into the air, clear of the wall. She tracked it with augmented vision, narrowly managing to pick it out among the cloudy sky. It vanished into nothing a moment later. “Downloading…intel is good.”
A ragged, real time holographic snapshot appeared in the corner of Jacky’s HUD, and she blinked rapidly three times to magnify it. The drone was a one-time use, digital three dimensional imaging system. Jacky overlaid the image---rough at the edges where the drone’s subsonic mapping hadn’t reached---on top of orbital mapping done by the Nox. In a split second, Jacky checked for inconsistencies, compared the projections, and made notes about the layout. 
The walls that Gold and Granite had positioned themselves against behind were two separate halves of the west wall---the entrance to the ambush zone. The zone was a roughly circular construction site, boxed out by tall concrete walls. It was quarry like, three tiered ledges leading downward from the edge to a depressed base. The higher two were both solid ground, while the lowest was a raised metal platform, suspended by a latticework of metal. The beginnings of a raised foundation---four pillars, instacrete braced by Titanium A---lay at the bottom, assorted bits of heavy machinery, concrete blocks, and piles of material surrounding it on the ledges. On the north side---left of the entrance---a mid sized crane stood dormant, a bundle of steel I-beams still held in it’s grasp. It rested with it’s operating cab on the second tier of ledges, bracing feet outstretched onto the metal of the lowest to stabilize it. 	
And of course, straight back from the entrance, due east, across the site, was the tunnel. Easily ten meters wide and rising level with the second tier, it looked unnecessarily cavernous. It seemed like a solid bet that it would connect to the foundation being built to form a secret entrance out of the basement. That, of course, must have been why the walls were so high: so that civilians from the city couldn’t see in. Jacky shook her head. No wonder protecting Curtis was a lost cause. He clearly should have been worrying about bigger problems than nosy civilians. 
Arrayed throughout the site were guards---fourteen, to be precise. Jacky noted their positions and disposition. They looked sluggish, inattentive, and bored. Not exactly the sharpest pencils in the security contractor box, no doubt. Five were arrayed along the southern side, right of the entrance, all along the upper tier, with a sixth atop the tunnel itself on the second level. Four more were scattered in the depression, around the pillars---a really awful place to be. Three more ringed the northern edge, with a forth on top of the crane, on overwatch. They were all close to cover, but not in it, and their firing positions were sloppy. In a firefight, no more than half would have been able to bring their weapons to bear for fear of shooting each other in the back. Jacky sighed, unimpressed. 
“Intel from upstairs matches with the scan.” Jacky said, “On your go, lead.”
“Copy, standby.” Matt took a moment longer to review for himself. He didn’t have Jacky’s same eye for detail. “Gold Actual to all callsigns, we have third party hostiles inside the ambush zone. Positions are marked on your HUD and individual targets are assigned.”
“MONTAGUE, there’s fourteen guys in there. I know we went non-lethal earlier, sir, but that’s a lot of hostiles.” Gale interrupted over the radio. “Have our rules of engagement updated, sir?”
“Lead, if they don’t think they can do it, then let’s just go.” Jacky was annoyed. She liked Granite, but they were wasting time. “We can do it just fine.”
“SPARTAN-363 to all callsigns.” The amount of targets marked on Jacky’s HUD updated and tripled. “Standby. Gold Team will subdue hostiles.”
Jacky smiled. 
“Gold Team, go.”
Jacky was moving the millisecond the last syllable escaped Matt’s lips---not a moment before, not a moment after. Matt had given her six targets, spread along the southern tier. Mason and Matt himself each had four. Jacky slid around the corner, unslinging her MA5B in one smooth motion, pushing off the corner of the wall---tearing a chunk out of it away as she did so. With her other free had, she drew her combat knife. The cloth wrapped handle was in her hand---and she set to work. 
The closest guard hadn’t even finished opening his mouth in shock at the sudden appearance of her seven foot, red-and-gold armor when she slammed into him---with care. The human body---or any alien one, for that matter---was the same as anything else. Everything was in the details. Put a knife in the right spot and a person bled out in seconds. Hit the knee just right and it would buckle. Shove a shoulder to dislocate it. Twist a neck to snap it. The body was so easy to break, in so many varied ways, if you knew the details. Jacky’s Venator armor---geared for close quarters, jagged and sharp---seemed impossible to not be deadly in a hit. Instead, Jacky hit with the rounded edge of her forearm, slamming it into the guard’s chest. An inch higher, and he would have been impaled on spiked metal. But she hit in just the right spot, with just the right force. He went tumbling backwards, coughing and wheezing. 
The next nearest guard staggered as he slammed into him, and Jacky clapped the back of his head with an open gauntlet as she passed. Her farthest target---the one atop the tunnel---reached for his rifle, but never got the chance to fire. Jacky’s arm extended, cobra-quick, launching the chunk of concrete in her hand. It hit the guard square in the temple, and he dropped, unconscious. Three down. 
The next three exchanged glances, swore collectively, and charged. They had to know Jacky was trying to take them down up close, and thought they had a better chance together. That might have made a difference in a bar room brawl on some outer colony, but here, it was irrelevant. The first two came in on either side, right punching low, left striking high. Jacky twisted, catching the right’s punch on her sharpened, jagged shoulder plate, then ducked the left goon’s punch as the right howled in pain. She slid around the left as he overstepped, following through on a punch that he’d expected to connect, and under hooked his right shoulder across the chest. She lifted him with one arm and brought him down---hard---onto the ground. 
The right guard was still screaming, staring at the gaping, bloody puncture wound where his fist had been. Jacky calmly walked behind him and slashed her combat knife across the back of his calf, severing tendons and muscles, slicing to the bone. He toppled, writhing in agony. The last guard stood motionless for a moment, staring, trying to process exactly what he’d just seen. Then, abruptly, he turned and ran, jumping off the ledge to the next one, apparently going for the tunnel. Jacky sighed and flicked her wrist. Her combat knife sailed through the air, rotating once, planting in the man’s heel. He tripped, face planted into a toolbox, and lay there moaning. 
“Gold Two, I’m clear.” Jacky hopped down onto the second ledge, and glanced at the north side just in time to see Mason dome the guard at the top of the crane with a rock. He moved at a swift walk as the hapless man tumbled off the crane and caught him as he fell. 
“Same here, lead.” Mason unceremoniously dumped him on the ground. “Jeez, these fellas need to lay off the donuts.”
“Gold Actual to Fireteam Granite, area secure.” Matt was down by the foundation pillars, holding a length of bloodied rebar casually at his side. “Establish at the designated positions and set up your engagement parameters.”
Jacky stooped to collect her knife, then lifted the shaking guard it had been sitting in. She trudged up the stairs as Granite filed in through the entrance. Dumping him on the other side of the site wall, she handcuffed and leaned him against the concrete. For the next few minutes, Jacky and Mason trudged back and forth, leaning and hand cuffing the disabled guards to the wall while Matt and the others kept watch. As she moved in and out of the construction site, Jacky felt the beginnings of an idea forming. Every detail screamed it at her. Dropping the final guard at the wall, she waltzed over to Matt and tapped him on the shoulder. 
“Matt, I think we should re-think the plan.” Jacky opened a closed comm channel, shutting out the world. “I think we can take EGOR here. Keep the Colonel out of harm’s way.”
“What do you have in mind?” Matt had always been good at thinking on his feet. Jacky really wouldn’t have even asked if she hadn’t already thought he’d say yes. “I’m acting under the impression that you have a plan.”
“Plans are your job.” Jacky gestured across the spread of the construction site, “But I’ve got plenty of ideas. I’ve been looking at this place. It’s a readymade kill zone. We’ve got elevation, cover…we’ll be at an advantage. Put Mason on that crane, Granite on suppression, then go after him up close.”	
Even through his polarized visor, Jacky could see the gears in Matt’s head turning, working things over. This had always been one of Gold’s strengths. They were a seamless unit when the rounds started flying, of course, but before the battle---even if “before the battle” was just a second or two---they were just as good. Jacky could see things in the world around them---people, terrain, whatever---that few else could, and saw them quickly. She could inform Matt, so he could give his orders, in that mysterious, uncanny we had of playing exactly to each of their strengths. 
“The original problem still stands.” Matt still needed more convincing. “EGOR won’t fall for the sniper trick like he did for VORAUSSICHT. If we confront him up close, we’ll be doing it with him at full strength.”
“He’s fast as hell, Matt, but he’s not immune to bullets.” Jacky motioned across the ledges, indicating a dozen good firing positions behind sturdy cover. “Basic rules of combat might be a little more elastic here, but they still apply. We put Granite into those spots, with a clear line, and they can get rounds into him. At very least, he’s distracted.”
“The whole point of not going in too aggressive is to avoid putting ourselves in unnecessary danger so that we’ve got the best possible chances to take him down once the Colonel springs the trap.” The gears were turning again; despite his words, Jacky could tell Matt was less sure now. “It’s a needless risk.” 
Jacky decided it was time to play her game changer. It was her biggest reason for wanting to change the plan. She knew it would be Matt’s too. 
“Come on Matt. We both know that if the Colonel has to blow those charges, there’s a good chance he’ll be going down there himself to try and kill EGOR. If we can take him down, he’s out of harm’s way. Even if we just wound him, the Colonel’s got a better chance. It won’t matter one bit if there’s three of us in good health pursuing versus two with one wounded back here at that point. We won’t get there any quicker. But the Colonel will have better chances.”
Matt turned away, staring at some unseen point in the distance. Jacky could tell by his posture that he was checking his HUD and looking at his tactical map. His right shoulder always tensed when his eyes had to dart between all the projected information. When he looked back to the present, his unit wide comm was activated. 
“All callsigns, this is Gold Actual. Updated positions are online. Gold Three, I need you on top of that crane on over watch. Fireteam Granite, take position on the second level at the marked positions. MONTAGUE, sir, reinforce the right side. Gold Two, you’re with me.”
Jacky checked her HUD to look at the positions Matt had marked for himself and her, but she needn’t have done so. They were rear of Granite’s position, right near the support columns. The perfect location to go after EGOR the moment the bastard came out of the tunnel. 
==Three==
Standoff let out a low grunt of exertion as he hauled himself up the final rung of the access ladder. One foot on the burnished, cross checkered metal, he swung his other leg up and over and landed in a low crouch. Up here on the second floor of the half complete apartment high rise, there were no guards, but instinct wasn’t a voluntary thing. Standoff’s body was on autopilot, moving without conscious input half the time. From his crouch, he swept the upper tier with his rifle, scanning the dark corners of the half-finished frame. A moment ticked past, and Standoff took off, satisfied he was clear of targets. 
Ultimately, he didn’t want to be stuck in this building. The kill zone they were planning to trap Leonid in, the shell of an under construction skyscraper, had very limited access. A temporary steel bridge connected it to Standoff’s building, which was where he was heading now. He could make his way across the bridge right out onto the second level, and set up there on the incomplete floor. Technically, according to the plan, he didn’t actually have to be that close. As long as he had a clear line of sight, he could detonate the charges from anywhere. But Standoff needed to be close. Everything depended on it. 
“Standoff here,” he came around the corner, found a locked door, and kicked it open. “How are you coming along with those charges, Olson?”
“First and second are set.” A flash of light above caught Standoff’s eye. He glanced up to see Olson, light despite his heavy armor, jetting towards a support pillar. The Spartan Four slammed into it and clung to rivets in the side, shaking the entire structure. “Working on the third now.”
Standoff stalked across the bridge, watching his footing carefully. Two stories wasn’t the kind of fall that would kill him, but he could easily break an ankle. His plan would be scuttled. He put one foot in front of the other, stepping cautiously around the roughly hewn connecting joints. The latticework of metal vibrated with a clang and a slight bounce with every step. 
“Get moving. I’m almost in position.” Standoff stepped off the bridge and swept his new surroundings with his rifle. “Don’t want to get beaten by an old man now, do you son?”
“Don’t really want to rush placing explosives, either.” Olson didn’t even sound out of breath, even as he climbed straight up the support column. He reached a break in handholds and leapt a meter to a spot with grips and continued climbing. “Not when the explosives are supposed to bring down a building.”
“Well, then I tip my hat to you for not putting pride ahead of the job.” Standoff was half paying attention to the conversation as he trudged across the building’s wall. The second story was still in the process of being floored, forcing him to walk the top of the bare cross beams along the edge of the building. Standoff gripped one of the mid-span bracing columns and slid around it, hugging the metal. Further along the span, a small free-hanging lift clung to the outside of the building. Standoff headed for it and quickened his pace. 
“Gold Actual to Granite Actual.” Matt’s voice came in over the mission wide comm channel. “Gold Team and Granite Bulk are in position. What is the status of the ambush charges?”
“Granite Actual here, wait one.” Olson finished his climb, wrapped armored legs around the column, and attached the charge to the metal. It snapped on magnetically and activated. At the bottom of Standoff’s HUD, a third status light winked from green to red. “Third charge is online. Moving to plant number four.”
“Copy all.” Standoff had a moment of déjà vu listening to Matt’s stiff, professional tone. He could have been listening in on the radio chatter from any of the training sessions back during training. “We have detected movement in the tunnel. Finish ASAP and rendezvous at the forward position.”
“Shit.” Olson spun around the pillar, holding on to it with his arms behind him. Standoff watched him kick off and activate his jetpack. He shot upwards, grabbed onto a crossbeam, and threw himself forward, flipping through the air, onto the final support column. The man should have been a gymnast. “On my way.”
“Ah, now you rush.” Standoff snapped out of watching Olson’s aerial acrobatics and stepped onto the exterior lift, sizing it up as a crow’s nest. It trembled a little as he stepped on. “Not sure whether to be offended you ignored me or proud that you’d listen to one of my kids.”
“Matthew knows his stuff.” Olson slapped the final charge to the column without even holding on to it, hovering in place with his jet pack. “No offense. He wouldn’t rush us if it wasn’t important.”
Standoff watched the final status indicator turn green in his HUD. The explosives were ready to go. He glanced at the pouch on his belt containing the detonator controls. One click and the whole place would come down. Three floors of the building itself – and a few hundred metric tons of construction equipment and supplies. Standoff tested the lift switch, and the basket lurched up slowly. He smiled. It would do nicely. 
“So this is your spot?” Olson landed on the bar just in front of the lift, keying his jet pack at the last second to cushion the impact. The landing was light as a feather. “Awful close.”
“I’ve got av-cam, if you’re worried about him seeing me.” Standoff put an amiable tone in his voice, but underneath his helmet, wore a frown. There was something in Olson’s voice that left him uneasy. The man wasn’t a good liar. “I’ve got to be close to know when to trigger the explosives.”
“Alright.” Olson glanced towards the ambush site. “Keep your head down. We’ll lead him right into your line.”
Olson jumped off the cross beam and keyed his jetpack, transitioning seamlessly into a sprint the moment he touched the ground. Standoff watched him go with apprehension. Something unmistakable told Standoff he was hiding something, but the tone in his voice had sounded very…protective. Where had that come from? Standoff racked his brain, even as he put his rifle down on the elevator behind the lift console. Could he have just imagined it, maybe? No, he’d been listening closely. There’d been an unwarranted weight behind Olson’s ‘keep your head down’ remark. Almost like…an order? A threat?
Could Olson know about Standoff’s plan? It was true that he’d been open and up front about his hatred for Leonid, but he’d hoped that would make his case seem more believable. Put everything they would know anyway up front, be honest about it, and keep them from digging any deeper. He’d thought he’d done a pretty good job of it, too. MONTAGUE was suspicious, but neutralized, his hand forced by circumstance. Granite was either on friendly terms – like Gale – or withdrawn. And Gold – Standoff had been very careful with Gold. They knew, obviously, why he was there, but he’d tried to drop hints about trials. Keep them guessing on the wrong end of things. 
He realized he really should have spent more time learning how to be a good liar. Years of fooling ONI, and he still wasn’t very good at it. Olson barely knew him, and he had figured something was up. If Gale had picked up on something, that would’ve made sense, at least. Standoff had spent most of the past month since coming aboard the Nox talking with the Spartan. But Standoff had scarcely seen Olson outside of the team wide meetings. The four was always busy hanging out with…
“Son of a bitch.” Standoff breathed. 
It clicked, embarrassingly obvious. Jacky must have gone to Olson and asked him to keep an eye on Standoff. But…Olson wouldn’t have taken a request on blind faith. He would have demanded answers, wouldn’t he? Which meant Jacky would have had to tell him, at a minimum, the basics. Standoff’s pulse quickened. No one in Gold would give up any part of that secret, even the smallest part of it, without damn good reason. Standoff could tell – without even asking – that the three of them were still defined by it. The one time they’d failed. So confident, so bold, and still, deep down, driven by a mistake. 
Had Jacky really let Olson in on it? For a moment, Standoff took a break from his rabid deductions and stopped to digest that. The trust it spoke of, the closeness – if it had been anyone else than one of his kids, Standoff would have wondered if there was something…more than just friendly between them. He stopped. Was it crazy to suspect that? It would give Standoff an out, an explanation for how Jacky had convinced Olson without requiring her to give up Gold’s secret. But no, that was circular logic. Standoff focused. No matter how close those two were, Jacky wouldn’t have told him unless it was important. 
There was only one thing Standoff could think of that would motivate her like that: if she thought his life was at risk. Face turning to stone, stomach churning, heart aching, he tested the lift, seeing how fast he could drop. He checked the timer on his HUD. The descent was too slow. Damn, he’d have to start dropping the moment he detonated the charges and jump when he got close to the ground. Standoff didn’t think for a second that Gold was going to let him anywhere near Leonid if they could stop it. He’d have to get Leonid before they could stop him. He would have to be close to the assassin. 
How else could he kill him, after all?
	
----
The crack of the first rifle shot carried down the tunnel like a low rumble. 
“Everyone else heard that, right?” From his position on the right side, Gale sounded worried. “Cause if I’m imagining things, I won’t be too broken up about it.”
“Sound signature corroborated.” Matt, on Jacky’s left, had that faraway look again. “Echo analysis indicates shot location approximately two hundred meters east. Signature matches motion tracker readings.”
“Putting that in term’s you understand,” Mason’s tracking dot on Jacky’s motion sensor blinked as he spoke. “It mean’s he’s on his way.”
“Thanks, I got that.” Jacky had a hard time reconciling this timid element of Gale with the boisterous normal version. EGOR spooked him. 
“Oh, my pleasure.” Mason managed to sound sincere and mocking at the same time. “Anything for the good of the team.”
Gale started to stutter out a response, but Jacky’s attention was diverted as Elias’ green tracking dot appeared at the edge of her HUD TacMap. He was hustling towards Gale and the position Matt had marked for him. Jacky kneeled with one leg up and kept her eyes on the tunnel, but opened a private comm channel to him. 
“Running a little late, aren’t you?” Jacky laughed like she was teasing him, but the sound that came out was more nervous than she liked to hear. 
“Had to check Standoff’s position.” Elias sounded a little out of breath. “He’s a little close.”
“How close?” Jacky’s grip tightened around the grip of her rifle.
“On the same structure as the charges.” Elias came in through the back entrance and jogged into place next to Gale. They clacked shoulder plates against each other in acknowledgement. “Little elevator car on the side.”
“The same structure.” Jacky repeated it, not quite believing. “How long---“
“Will it take him to get down?” Elias interjected. “Not long.”
“Well, shit.” Jacky noticed a blip on her HUD, motion detected outside the indicator, further down the tunnel. The whispers of rifle fire had risen to a low din. EGOR had to be engaging the guards in the tunnel. “Elias, we have to take him here It’s too much of a risk.”
“All the reasons for the plan are still---” 
“I know they are.” Jacky felt a twinge of unfamiliar anxiety rise up in her and squashed it. “No choice though. Me and Matt are ready to get in close. Just put fire on EGOR and we’ll do the rest.”
“I’ve got your back.” A hint of something…soft infiltrated Elias’ voice. “Just be careful.”
“Don’t need to be.” Jacky focused on the crosshairs in her HUD in an attempt to ignore the twinge in her chest. “I’ve got a fully loaded rifle and a hell of a lot of luck.”
Jacky closed the comm line, realizing that boisterous talk wasn’t cutting it. Elias’ last comment just…stuck to her like tar. She took a step back, retreated into her memories. She visualized a checklist in her mind of her gear, just like Laszlo had suggested. Every little detail appeared in her mind. The curl of the paper in the lower right corner, the three holes punched in the side, on with the tiniest sliver of paper ragged and twisting off, the bright red line running vertically down the page, the indentation of the words where the pen had pressed down. Jacky hadn’t written on a real, physical piece of paper more than a handful of times, but that was always the image she conjured up. 
A cool wave of calm washed over her, spreading as she worked her way down the list, absorbing the details. Then she snapped back, returning to the moment in a flash. Less than a second had passed by, but it was a second she had sorely needed. Elias was still there in her mind, but she had a rein on that twinge. Emotions weren’t part of the equation. She took a deep breath, her hands perfectly steady, focus completely pure, body totally prepared. 
The blinking mission clock in the corner of her HUD shifted from cool blue to dark red, as it displayed they were ten minutes in. The din of combat coming from the tunnel hit a crescendo, then fell nearly silent. Two short, quiet cracks transitioned into total quiet. The darkening clouds above opened up softly, a few fat drops plopping onto their armor. A hint of wind whispered through the construction site. It was as if nature itself had read the mood of the team and responded with an ominous omen. Jacky heard armor plates clacking as Gale practiced switching between his DMR and trademark plasma pistol. 
“Motion detected, one hundred meters east.” Dorian’s soft voice came over the comm unit. 
“Target may be equipped with active camouflage.” Matt had no emotion in his voice, pure professional detachment. He was sinking into his most natural state, sparing no attention at all to anything but the mission. “Activate Z-5080 Spectrum Augmenter and broadcast HUD feed.”
A small square appeared in the corner showing the world from Dorian’s point of view, everything shaded in dark blue, edges outlined in white. Jacky saw herself, still in her crouch and rifle up, as Dorian scanned the area. His feed stopped and rested on the tunnel cut off slightly by the angle of the roof. Jacky kept both eyes on her own field of view. She could see farther down the tunnel, and trusted her augmented vision to make up for lack of technology. 
The tunnel was lit by two rows of LED’s running along the length of it’s roof---until they all, simultaneously, went dark. Jacky activated her night vision, only to find her view obscured by a hazy soup of smoke rolling off the lights. Damn, EGOR hadn’t just cut the power, he’d overloaded the electrical systems and blown them out. Dorian could see through the haze with his visor, but his angle was still cut off, and he couldn’t move back without compromising the kill zone. 
“Shit, visuals are gone.” Jacky kept her voice as level as her rifle. “Mason, what do acoustics sound like?”
“A lot of white noise from all that falling material.” Mason sounded frustrated. “Trying to filter it out. And the rain. Jesus, someone call Infinity and get it here to turn off the rain. I’m assuming it can do that, right?”
“Gold Three, can you report on anything or not?” MONTAGUE mistook Mason’s chatter for nerves. Jacky listened, wondering how close the spook had read their files. There was no way Mason’s obnoxious chatter hadn’t come up. She focused in on the pitch of his voice, trying to decide if MONTAGUE was seriously peeved or just nervous, when her augmented hearing caught the trace of something else. “Because I need intel on that egress point right away---“
“Wait.” Jacky held up a hand. “Listen. Anyone else hear that?”
In the distance, sandwiched between the clatter of crunching light bulbs and the patter of the rain, the faintest hint of a low whine peeked out. Collectively, the chatter stopped, the whole team straining to listen. Jacky could pick it out, but struggled to the place the sound. The whine sounded familiar, but she couldn’t decide where from. The tunnel’s acoustics were playing hell with the nature of the sound and even obscuring it’s distance. 
“Rifle’s tight, people.” Matt heard it too. His tone made it clear that he was hedging his bets, in case the sound was a threat they hadn’t anticipated. 
“Shit, I don’t hear nothing.” Gale sounded more frustrated than nervous now. “Would he just show his face already? I’m sick and tired of all this…”
Gale’s sentenced trailed off as the sound abruptly clarified and jumped in volume. EGOR must have rounded a corner, because Jacky could immediately tell the assassin was close, and knew exactly what was causing the sound. It was the hum of a thrumming engine, a sound every UNSC soldiers from every branch of service knew like the back of their hand. Jacky swore and reached for a grenade, but even with enhanced reflexes, she wasn’t nearly fast enough. 
Out of the hazy soup of electrical smoke, the distinctive front end of an M12 LRV “Warthog” emerged, pockmarked by bullet holes, a dead guard still strapped into the turret, and behind the wheel, EGOR. 
“…this sneaking around.” Gale finished his sentence, disbelieving, and then all hell broke loose. 
Jacky tossed the grenade in her hand as time dilated, compressed, and expanded. It was a futile gesture, the ‘Hog already out of the tunnel and moving to fast. A low rumble erupted as they open fired, yellow lines of tracers slicing the dark, grey day into sections. Bullets pinged off the ‘Hog’s plating, ricochets bouncing everywhere. Mason jumped up from a crouch, snapping off a shot that struck the jeep just above the engine block. The big bore round took a chunk off the front end, but the durable vehicle kept moving regardless. 
The ‘Hog skidded as EGOR hit the e-brake, fishtailing expertly without losing anything but a fraction of his speed. Jacky caught a flash of smooth black armor plates as the jeep turned and thundered by. A moment of confusion seized her, even as her body moved independently and shot after it. The left side of the construction yard, the side EGOR was turning for, was skinnier and cluttered with concrete blocks. EGOR would be stonewalled trying to get out that way. He had to know that---
Jacky cleared the construction pillar ahead of her, raised her MA5B to fire a burst into the tail of the retreating vehicle, and in an instant, recognized EGOR’s intentions. Damn him. He had taken all their prep work and made it totally irrelevant. 
The speeding Warthog slammed into the delicate metal latticework supports holding up the artificially elevated second tier and crushed the crossbeams like toothpicks. EGOR dove from the ‘Hog, hitting the ground with empty hands outstretched in a superman position, and rolled forward, coming up with hands now carrying a pair of M7 sub machine guns. In the driver’s seat he had just vacated, EGOR left behind a present---a bright blue, pulsating one. 
“Grenade!” Jacky yelled. “Granite left and Mason, shift it---”
Her warning came too late as the grenade detonated in a blue white ball of fire. The already damaged ‘Hog couldn’t withstand the explosion and it detonated in an ugly, yellow and black, secondary explosion. Jacky watched in horror, time slowing to a crawl before her eyes, as the melted, crushed, abused support structure groaned and collapsed. As it toppled inward, plating bending and shifting towards the hole in the support structure, the bracing foot for the crane slipped, slid---and the entire assembly toppled forward. 
Rough hands grabbed a hold of the ridged metal along her armor’s spine and yanked her backwards. Matt threw her clear of the toppling structure, taking a glancing blow from a falling bundle of rebar before he could get clear. His shields flared bright gold and he doubled over, but instinct kept him moving and he rolled clear, avoiding the main crane assembly. The long, thin extension of interlinked metal hit the ground with an earsplitting crash, twisting and bending and throwing off pieces in every direction. Jacky glanced up and down the wreck, looking for any sign of Mason, Dorian, or Mark. 
“Gold Three, Granite Secondary!” Matt’s voice was unnaturally level. “Status report, over.”
They were nowhere to be scene. They’d been buried somewhere in the avalanche of steel. 
“We’re here.” Mark’s normally calm voice was strained. “Trapped under this pile of junk.”
“Can you get free?” A burst of fire interrupted Matt midsentence. He kept talking and changed tact smoothly. “Standby. Granite Right, status.”
“We’ve been engaged!” Olson called out, “We need backup, ASAP!”
“Copy, responding.” Jacky knew Matt was dying to look for Mason, but there was no time. “Gold Two, take point.”
Jacky didn’t need to be told twice. She was up and running, MA5B cradled, trying to catch snapshots of the battle through the twisted wreckage while she looked for a place to round the corner. The crane had fallen near diagonally across the construction site, crushing the top left and bottom right concrete pillars. The sound of gunfire wasn’t letting up, though, and she knew she couldn’t waste any more time. Going over the top of the crane wasn’t ideal---it would leave her dangerously exposed---but it was still the quickest way. Counting on Olson’s group to keep EGOR’s attention, Jacky leapt upwards and landed in a crouch atop the wreckage. 
	
She took the situation in at a glance---absorbed all the details in less time that it took for her to raise her rifle. EGOR was down in the depression, just in front of the tunnel, submachine guns burping rounds. Olson’s group, still in their firing position on the right, were faltering under his assault. MONTAGUE was already down, a trio of bullet holes in his shoulder leaking blood, his side pockmarked with embedded shrapnel, and armor smoking---EGOR clearly had targeted him first. An extended burst caught Gale in the chest, and his shields flared and popped, overloaded. The bulky Spartan activated his hard light shield, deflecting a second burst that would have finished him; he was trapped holding it up, however, as EGOR kept up his onslaught. Olson ducked up from behind cover, firing his Battle Rifle over and over again with mechanical precision, emptying the magazine. 
EGOR smoothly cartwheeled sideways, dodging burst after burst, never letting up his fire on Gale. His shields never so much as flickered. A line of thirty-six holes in the dirt marked all of Olson’s near misses. One of EGOR’s SMGs ran dry, and without letting up fire from the other one, the SPARTAN-II reloaded one handed and started a fresh mag. Gale’s hard light shield couldn’t keep up under the strain of so much fire, for so long; it darkened to an angry red, flickered, and vanished. In the moment between it flickering out of existence and Gale’s subsequent dive for cover, EGOR lit him up. 
A burst hit the Spartan four dead center of the chest and he twisted away, groaning in pain. EGOR rolled backwards, throwing off Olson’s aim just as he adjusted to the cartwheels. He emerged in a half crouch, one hand at his side, the other extended straight out and M7 belching fire. Olson shouldered into the hail of bullets, shields glowing a brilliant gold, staggering forward as if caught of a maelstrom of angry yellow jackets. He slapped a new magazine into his rifle and fired a burst in line with EGOR’s head, but the SPARTAN-II ducked the trio of rounds and kept firing. 
Jacky had a split second to wonder if the bastard was immune to bullets after all. 
Olson’s shields flared brightly, close to failing, and Jacky leapt from the crane and sprinted across open ground, firing her MA5B. EGOR dodged at the sound of the rifle’s growl, but it was a weak move and Jacky tracked him, feathering the trigger. Glowing energy shields and tracer fire lit the air, as for a moment, Jacky managed to walk a line of fire up EGOR’s chest. An impact rolled through the ground, as Matt landed behind her, hot on her tail. 
Then something small, brown, and cylindrical landed at her feet, and Jacky realized that whatever advantage she’d thought she had, she didn’t have it anymore. 
The emergency thruster pack on her pack erupted in a jet of pink-white flame, throwing her to the side. The grenade blast came a second later, overpressure buffeting her and shrapnel slashing against her shields. Behind her, Matt got it worse, shields vanishing as a cloud of smoke and thunder threw him backwards. Then he was clear of Jacky’s field of view, out of sight, and her attention snapped entirely onto EGOR. 
She charged, assault rifle belching fire, filling the air with lead. EGOR ducked and dodged, avoiding most of the rounds. He retaliated with a burst to her torso, but Jacky’s shields held and she charged through, shoulders hunched against the force of the impacts. The magazine in her rifle clacked empty as another burst from EGOR drained her shields to a hair; Jacky threw the rifle lengthwise like a boomerang, forcing a duck out of EGOR, as she slid the Shotgun off her back. She racked the slide, now little more than three or four arm’s lengths away from EGOR, and fired. 
The SPARTAN-II rolled forward as the cloud of buckshot passed overhead. Jacky saw his plan and tried to stop, but it was too late; her momentum carried her forward, right into EGOR. As the black-armored SPARTAN came up from his roll, SMG’s in hand, Jacky stopped thinking and let reaction take over completely. She brought the stock of her Shotgun down on EGOR’s right hand, knocking the SMG from it. The assassin raised the other one to fire, but Jacky kicked an armored foot out, snapping it away as well. 
EGOR gave her no time to press her small advantage. He faked for her head with a high blow and slapped the shotgun, just as she lined it up to fire. He didn’t manage to take it, but the blast went wide and she didn’t have to re-rack the weapon. EGOR came on strong, putting her on the defensive. Jacky held the shotgun with one hand across the stock and the other near the grip, blocking left and right as EGOR rained down blow after blow. A flurry of strikes drove her backwards, then EGOR kicked out with a high strike at her head, and the shotgun snapped in two. 
That was when the knife came out. 
Jacky rolled backward as a slash aimed at her throat missed by centimeters, emerging with forearms up. Her thick plating deflected the knife, but EGOR was too fast. A feint put her wrist out of position and he managed a deep slash across the top of her wrist, slicing through the more vulnerable under suit layer. As a sharp spike of pain erupted in her hand, she realized the situation was going to have to change if she was going to come out of things alive. 
Jacky changed tactics and charged, bludgeoning into EGOR with the full bulk of her armor. The SPARTAN-II twisted, avoiding the full blunt of the impact but losing grip on the knife as one of Jacky’s sharpened shoulder plates stabbed into his gauntlet. He didn’t miss a beat, however, stepping back, arms wrapped around Jacky’s neck and chest, using their joint momentum to throw her overhead. Jacky felt her feet leave as she sailed overhead. A second later her neck snapped back and ears started ringing as she smashed into the ground, helmet practically embedding in the dirt. 
Jacky rolled without thinking and managed to avoid EGOR’s finishing stomp. Her roll brought her right to the assassin’s feet, and she sprang up, trying to swipe his legs out from under him. He didn’t fall for it, hopping over her legs and kicking out, snapping Jacky’s chin backwards the moment she stood up. She staggered backwards, as EGOR relentlessly pressed his advantage. Blow after blow rained down on her, as she meagerly tried to fend them off. A punch to the head, a sidekick, an open handed chest strike, a flurry of short, rapid strikes to the stomach. Jacky’s body moved on it’s own to block what it could, but it simply wasn’t enough. He was too fast. 
The SPARTAN-II feinted with a jab at her midsection and as Jacky parried that, she was left open to a downward elbow slam that knocked her to her knees. Her body automatically tried to fight back up, right into the path of EGOR’s oncoming uppercut. The hammerblow hit her at the base of the chin and she went flying, sprawling backwards. Her vision exploded into stars edged with black and as she tried to stagger to her feet, the world spun. Jacky took a step towards EGOR, unwilling to give up, and was slammed by a chop to the neck and a leg swipe for her trouble. 
She fell heavy to the ground, collapsing in a heap with the crash of clacking armor plates. EGOR turned to leave, walking casually past her struggling form, without so much as a glance down---
Until his shields flashed and he stumbled under the impact of a Battle Rifle burst. Jacky spun---the world doing some spinning of it’s own---and watched in shock as Olson fired again, drilling a burst into EGOR with deadly accuracy. The assassin rolled backwards, heading for the cover of the downed crane, snatching up his fallen knife but leaving the sub machine guns. Olson leapt from his tier, his jet pack roaring, propelling him upwards on a column of white fire. He fired again, and again, and again, drilling burst after burst into EGOR. The assassin tried his roll move, but Olson adjusted, putting a trio of rounds into the chest plate. EGOR’s shields flared blindingly bright, close to overloading. 
And as they popped, electrical discharge erupting in streaks of brilliant gold and white, Jacky realized, her gut turning cold, that the knife was no longer in his hand. 
Olson let out a yell of shock as his thrusters misfired, sending him shooting towards the ground. He slammed into the dirt with a thunderous thump, cratering into the hard packed dirt. Bouncing once, then slamming headfirst into a hollow concrete pipe, smashing one through one side before coming to a rest. EGOR’s knife was lodged delicately, perfectly, in the fuel line. Flame erupted from the pack, showering the site with sparks. Jacky felt her heart skip a beat, watching his still form. EGOR took off running, heading for the exit near the rear of the site. 
“Gold Actual to all callsigns,” Matt’s voice was ragged like he’d been coughing. “Status report, sound off.”
“Gold Three here.” Mason was back, sounding worse for wear. “I got thrown clear of the wall. Green to pursue.”
“Gold Two here.” Jacky ambled over to Elias, trying to steady herself. “I’m a bit banged up, and Granite Actual is incapacitated. EGOR is heading out the back towards the Colonel.”
“Understood. Gold Three, move to the Colonel’s position. I’ll rendezvous with you.” Matt coughed again, continued speaking---but halfway through, switched to a private channel. “Gold Two, check out the Granite wounded. Then go straight to the Colonel. We have to use the backup plan. Keep him out of trouble.”
Just as Jacky opened her mouth to speak and respond, the air split with four echoing cracks. A second later, a cacophony of crashing, smashing, slamming noise rose up. The earsplitting racket rumbled through the ground, and below her, Olson came to life, shooting up in shock with a sharp intake of air. Jacky spun in the direction of the noise, and quietly swore. The source itself, the building, was hidden behind the construction yard’s high walls, but a rising cloud of dust peeked out over the top regardless. Just like always, EGOR had been too fast. The Colonel had triggered the charges. 
“Son of a bitch.” Mason’s voice was breathless. 
“All call signs, revise previous directive.” Matt’s voice was sterile. “Converge on secondary ambush area immediately.”
==Four==
The explosion from the charges had been a hell of a lot louder than Standoff had expected. He was glad for the helmet MONTAGUE had provided, because if the ringing in his ears was any indication, he’d probably have gone deaf without it dampening the sound. His heart, pounding in his chest as he listened to the firefight in the distance, had gone cold the moment he’d seen Leonid’s black armored form come charging around the corner. His blood had turned to ice. His body had calmed. He’d pulled the trigger on the detonator without a moment’s hesitation, and picked up his rifle with equal calm. As he activated the elevator, Standoff had felt every muscle, every tendon, every nerve, every cell in his body tensing for the coming struggle. 
Standoff rode the cart down at top speed, eye on the corner of his HUD. A small video feed from the fiber optic camera he’d left on the platform showed as Leonid scrambled to dodge the rain of debris, unsuccessfully. The assassin dodged a falling spool of heavy industrial wire only to be slammed by a metal I-beam. He had disappeared under the downpour by the time Standoff was close enough to jump for it. He vaulted over the basket, careful to keep his balance with the cart swinging, and dropped for the clearest space he could find. Fighting Leonid, even an injured or crushed Leonid, would be chancy. He couldn’t risk any disadvantage, even one as minor as a twisted ankle. 
He landed with knees bent, rifle high. Debris was still cascading down, mostly contained to inside the skeletal superstructure---but not entirely. Standoff glanced upwards and was glad he did---a set of wiring sheaths bounced off one of the second floor’s cross beams and hurtled towards him. He dashed forward, under cover of the buildings structure, and peaked out towards the interior. Every construction implement and type of material he could have imagined was inside, either falling or already on the ground. Steel plates, I-beams, tubing, rebar, saw horses, wooden planks, wiring, glass planes, steel sheets, concrete blocks---hell, even rolls of sticky tape. 
It was an ugly mess, but he couldn’t wait. The biggest, most dangerous pieces had already fallen, creating a shifting, haphazard maze. And somewhere inside was EGOR. He would no longer be surprised to see Standoff---not now that he’d had a building dropped on him. He was undoubtedly hurt, but he had to be ready. Keeping the corner of his eye on the video feed in his HUD, just in case EGOR revealed himself, Standoff sprinted into the rubble storm. Pieces fell to the ground all around him, playing hell with acoustics but at least giving him more noise cover to run as fast as he wanted without regard for making a clatter. 
A few small pieces bouncing off his armor, denting the outermost layer, the photo-reactive panels. The images became skewed, distorted, shattering the illusion of invisibility. It hardly mattered, he had to admit. Leonid, Standoff figured, probably wasn’t one to be fooled by such tech. Better not to get comfortable relying on it. Standoff weaved through the maze of wreckage, trying to move quickly while staying alert. It was a dangerous environment, dozens of nooks and crannies. The ideal place for Leonid to stage an ambush. Standoff felt no fear, though. It was like he was caught in a current and moving inexorably forward. He couldn’t have stopped, even if he wanted to. 
Carried by fierce momentum, hardened by pain, readied by experience, he hunted. He was back on Harvest, searching for a camouflaged Elite. He was on Eridanus, stalking a man with a bomb strapped to his chest. He could see himself from above, from the high vantage point of a glass observation booth in Tantalus’ training caves. He was detached, yet more inside himself than he’d ever been before. His rifle was an extension of his arm, the unfamiliar armor more real than his own skin. 
He slid under a piece of I-beam that had fallen crosswise between a pile of rubble and a spool with steel cabling spilling out. He was at a roughly Y-shaped junction, on a path of uneven, rubble strewn ground. In front of him, plain as day, no longer shadow, was him. Leonid. Standoff had the briefest of looks and he exhaled explosively. Leonid was near flat on his stomach, legs pinned beneath a massive slab of metal. He must have been in the path of it as it fell, forced to dive out of the way at the last second---a second to late. 
The assassin froze at the sight of Standoff. The armor must have made it clear, at very least, that he was not a SPARTAN. Standoff figured a million other details must have set him apart as well, as he paced forward, rifle leveled. The black, empty, pure focus was gone. The relief he’d felt had blindsided him. He’d expected a fight. To die, probably. There was an M9 fragmentation grenade keyed to his heartbeat, ready to take the bastard with him. 
He deactivated that grenade, and let his finger drift---dance, really---to the trigger of his rifle. 
And then he blinked. His field of view widened; his brain suddenly allowed to take in more around him outside of the narrow focus. It felt like coming out of a fog. And he saw them. The purple and white. The flat gold. The red and yellow. The white and green. The steel and gold. Already there. Matt, Mason, Jacky, Olson, MONTAGUE. Advancing. Weapons drawn. Bloodied. Burnt. Battered. Together though. Still a unit. Still fast enough. To beat him. Cold, sickening pain seized him like ropes. Tied him into a knot of despair. He heard Jacky, asking him what he was doing. Mason chattering about the weather having a chance of toolbox. Matt telling him, so softly it hurt, to put down the rifle. 
He couldn’t. He could barely think. One foot. In front of the other. Stalking towards Leonid. Towards the horrible slit visor. Trying to think. Trying to reason. What was he doing? Nothing formed. No thoughts stuck. Baseless imaginings. 
Was this what going crazy felt like?
----
“One last tie.” Olson heard Standoff whisper it. “You’re my last tie to everything.”
“Whose your last tie, sir?” Matthew’s voice was softer than Olson had ever dreamed it could be. “Last tie to what?”
“They hate me, all of them. They’ve hated me for so long, I can’t even remember a time before they did.” Olson watched Standoff pace slowly toward EGOR, never once breaking his gaze. “But they didn’t get it. Never realized. However much they hate me, I hate myself more.”
“Standoff, step back.” MONTAGUE was rock. “Now.”
“Do you know me?” Standoff ignored it like he hadn’t even heard. “When you killed him, did you do your homework? I had to have come up, right?”
Olson chilled at the tone in Standoff’s voice. He flashed back to the man in the interview. All the weight, all the pain he’d seen pulling the old man down---he could hear it. Could hear the weight come alive. The tremble of emotion. The growl of hate. Elias took a deep breath. He wished Standoff would do the same. 
“Standoff, this isn’t how the mission is supposed to go.” Elias tried to keep a steady tone. “It’s capture, not kill.”
“Did you even know him?” Standoff still didn’t sound like he was listening. Olson tried to take a step forward, but was blocked by Gold’s collective bulk. They were rooted in place. “He was a SPARTAN! He saved Admiral Hood! How could he just be another name? Do you hear me? I want to know!”
“Standoff, back away.” MONTAGUE’s gun hand twitched. “You’re upset. You don’t know what you’re saying. Let us restrain him.”
“Don’t know what I’m saying?” Olson’s microscopic sigh of relief was quickly overshadowed by anxiety as Standoff took another step towards EGOR. “Don’t know what I’m saying?! I know exactly what I’m saying. This man has to die.”
The vitriol in his voice burned like a hot iron. Olson saw MONTAGUE’s hand dropping to his hip. The tension was a thick fog in the air. Gold Team were rocking back and forth on the balls of their feet, in the ready position. Elias kept his rifle trained on EGOR, but felt his attention fraying. 
“Why does he have to, sir?” Olson was sure his voice was bursting with obvious anxiety. He had to try and buy time no matter what. “Why does he have to…die?”
“I thought you of all people would know.” Standoff halted. He seemed genuinely distracted, if only for a second. “Because he’s a killer, Olson. Because he killed one of mine.”
“Who?” Olson knew some of the details but not all. “Why?”
“Ricky.” Standoff said the name, a wholly new flavor of pain in his voice. A guilty pain. “Richard. Richard-312. He went rogue and lost control. He…killed people. And then Section Zero killed him.”
“EGOR.” It fit, but there had to be more. Olson was too timid to ask the catalyzing question he knew needed to be asked, though. 
“If he was rogue, then they were right to do so.” MONTAGUE had no such reservations. “Why is his death so wrong? Sounds just enough to me.”
“Just? Just?! ” Standoff roared, “You ignorant, arrogant, son of bitch! You don’t know a damn thing about just. Leonid here? Killed Ricky after he was secured. After he was in fucking custody.”
Standoff somehow managed to look even more intently at EGOR. “Didn’t you, Leonid?”
“Colonel, just let us take him.” Mason took a half step forward. “Please.”
“He was subdued? And EGOR still killed him?” Olson just wanted to keep everyone talking. “Why would---” 
“Because he was told to!” Standoff cried out. Elias was suddenly conscious of Jacky and Matthew stepping forward to match Mason. “A goddamn bureaucratic nightmare monster told him to kill, and he did it without a fucking second thought. Ricky was no threat. But Leonid didn’t care. He put him down. Like a common criminal. Like a rabid dog. Like he needs to be put down now.”
Standoff, Elias saw, was shaking. His whole body trembling, shivering. Yet the rifle in his hands, clutched in a death grip was completely, dead, still. 
“They used him. Ate him up with their big damned war. His team died because ONI was careless. He was unstable, but in the field because they demanded it. He devoted his life to them. And they put him down. Without hesitation.” Standoff grew quiet. “They have to pay. He has to pay.”
“EGOR was just an agent following orders.” MONTAGUE spoke as Standoff racked the slide of his rifle. “I would have done the same thing.”
Olson knew how bad things were going to be after that sentence left MONTAGUE’s lips, and still somehow didn’t anticipate any of what happened next. A blur of gold plates flashed past and next to him, MONTAGUE toppled over. Elias watched, aghast. Jacky and Matthew slid into place in front of Standoff, forming a wall of metal. Mason stood totally still as MONTAGUE recovered, drawing his pistol and training it on him. Mason took slow, deliberate steps backwards, falling into place beside his team. 
“You weren’t there.” Jacky said. “Ricky was no threat. Tied up. Beaten.”
“And EGOR put a bullet in him.” Mason finished explaining.
Olson’s gut churned. Jacky had told the barest basics of this days ago. But she’d also told him that Gold was just here to keep Standoff safe, not extract revenge. The aggressive tone in her voice could have been pure knee jerk defense of an old mentor, but could also have been something more personally vengeful. It was right on the edge. 
“Everyone just---calm down!” Olson yelled, but no one was listening. Gold had rifles trained on MONTAGUE, MONTAGUE had his pistol on Standoff, and Standoff had his rifle on the pinned EGOR. 
“Gold Team, stand down!” MONTAGUE barked, “That’s an order!”
“Negative, sir.” As soft as Matthew’s voice had been with Standoff was as hard as it was with MONTAGUE. “Lower your weapon, sir.”
“This is not up for debate.” MONTAGUE’s gun didn’t move an inch. 
“We say it is.” Jacky pointed to the ground with her shotgun barrel. “You’re not putting a finger on him.”
“Think long and hard about what exactly you’re doing, SPARTANs.” MONTAGUE didn’t actually sound like he had the patience to give them time to do that thinking. “Standoff isn’t worth betraying all of Spartan.”
“Don’t presume to know us, sir.” Matthew, Mr. Business, wasn’t flinching from the rules, “Or the Colonel.”
“Know you?” MONTAGUE chided. Olson really hoped someone else was watching EGOR beside him and Standoff. “Of course not. You’ve been holding back from the moment you’ve got here. All of you. Except your ‘Colonel’ there threw a wrench in your little plays and now I know you’ve been lying. Lying to help a man with petty, personal, revenge.”
“Petty? Petty!?” Standoff roared, looking away from EGOR to stare at MONTAGUE. “Maybe contract killings on prisoners are your norm, but they’re not where I come from. Not unarmed prisoners. Not our most valued own.”
“And if he had escaped from the people holding him and killed more people, then that would have been on ONI.” MONTAGUE somehow managed to communicate an eye roll through his visor. “If this Richard was a SPARTAN, he might have escaped. Section Zero was just eliminating a threat before it became to threatening.”
“Ricky was secure.” Standoff said, “Tied up, beaten. He didn’t have to be put down, he needed a trial.”
“Tied up?” MONTAGUE scoffed “I read, Standoff. You’re ARES Teams might have just had SPI, but a few ropes and some marines weren’t going to keep a Spartan down for long---”
“It wasn’t Marines holding him.” Jacky stepped forward. Her voice was wavering. 
“Gold…Two.” Matthew sounded like he was trying to warn her but couldn’t inject any force into it.
“Look around, Matt.” Jacky waved her shotgun at the whole impossible, absurd scene. “It’s been eight years. It’s time we face our failures.”
“Failures.” MONTAGUE tested the word like it was foreign. It was for Gold Team, really. 
“We were on the ground. When Ricky was killed.” Jacky’s voice went flat and cold. “We were the ones who secured him. A whole other ARES team died taking him alive. But we had him. EGOR killed him after all of that. We failed to stop it and we failed to catch him.”
“A whole other team died trying to take him alive?” Olson felt his jaw drop. “Three SPARTANs?”
“And Section Zero pissed on their sacrifice.” Standoff’s voice teemed with rage. “Sent this man into kill him.” 
For a moment, Elias couldn’t help but just stare at EGOR. The lack of expression, the darkness there, was profound. It wasn’t just the armor---Elias lived in his armor, with people who lived in theirs. Everyone always communicated something. With their body language---the way they stood, the way they sat, with the thousands of tiny details. EGOR was devoid of it. The black, slit visor, the smooth armor, they were completely, utterly impression less. It was the armor of a killer. Yet EGOR lacked any trace of killer to him. It was at odds with everything that Olson had seen. Yet he couldn’t deny it. And Elias had to admit, it scared him more than a killer would have. It was emptiness. 
“Why were there seven SPARTANs on a single takedown op?” MONTAGUE, for the moment, sounded baffled. “EGOR would have been enough by himself.”
“Because ONI is a bureaucratic nightmare.” Standoff’s finger tightened on the trigger. “It was a mix up. Your basic garden variety fuck up. Two sides both ‘taking care of it’ without consulting the other. Except my kids got there first. Sacrificed, but succeeded. And Leonid didn’t wait. Didn’t check for updated orders or ask his superiors about it in light of the new information. He just killed.”
The hurt in Standoff’s voice was alarming. Olson looked at him and saw his iron disciple fading, that terrible weight crashing down. Every man had a breaking point. The place where he could be pushed no further. Olson watched the old man tightening on the trigger, muscles taut. MONTAGUE tensed almost imperceptibly. Gold Team shifted slow and deliberately, blocking MONTAGUE’s approach. Elias’ stomach tossed and turned. He wasn’t prepared for this. He didn’t know what to do. 
“Sir, if you kill that man right there, you’re just killing the messenger.” Olson felt panic creep into his voice. “We capture him and get him to talk---”
“He won’t talk! If he doesn’t get away, he won’t reveal anything anyway. These people are ghosts. I’ve hunted them long enough to know that.” Standoff turned downbeat, “I won’t ever find them. I know that. But I can kill Leonid. That I can do. I can get this one little thing back for my kids.”
“No, you can’t.” MONTAGUE said. And he pulled the trigger. 
Jacky, Matthew, and Mason moved simultaneously like a single person. Matthew twisted into the path of MONTAGUE’s pistol shot, purple and white shrouded in glowing gold. Jacky cannoned into the Spook, slamming into him with a titanic crash like a train derailing. Mason raised his rifle, and training it on MONTAGUE’s visor. Elias stood, dumbfounded, caught in the spectacle of it. 
Only something was wrong. It was so subtle, so unobtrusive, that he took a moment to notice it. Gold Team, subduing MONTAGUE, didn’t see it. Even seeing it, looking it dead in the face, it took a moment for it to click. Then it hit him like a punch in the gut. 
EGOR was gone. The space beneath the metal beams was empty. Only EGOR wasn’t gone. He was right behind Matthew, utterly silent, totally implacable. Olson screamed a warning, raised his rifle, but the other SPARTAN was in the way. It cost him a fraction of a second as Matthew spun, rifle coming up…and then there EGOR was. Standing perfectly still, not making a single move towards Matthew. 
But standing still with a knife in one armored hand, lodged in the neck seal of Standoff’s SPI suit. 
Matthew finished his turn and froze, stiff as a board. The moment stretched into infinity. Mason turned after Matthew. Jacky stopped her struggle with MONTAGUE. The world was frozen, trapped in the most horrid moment imaginable. EGOR yanked the knife from Standoff’s throat, blood bubbling up. Bright red on cold black. Droplets arcing through the air. The heat of it steaming in the rain chilled afternoon. Standoff toppled to the ground, body limp. Olson blinked. 
And the most horrible sound Elias had ever heard roared over the comm. Matthew was screaming, a choking, guttural, whimpering moan. It was the cry of a wounded animal. Uncontrolled grief, unmitigated anguish. It tore something out of Olson’s heart, that sound. Matthew dropped to his knees, indifferent to EGOR’s bloodstained form next to him. Mason simply froze, staring, entire body sagging. Matthew was cradling Standoff’s body, screaming, tearing the helmet from his head, crying, sobbing, a child dressed up in a big boys clothes and suddenly so, so afraid. 
MONTAGUE roared an indecipherable cry of a much different feeling and pushed past Jacky, pistol firing, arms pumping. EGOR ducked a volley of rounds and took off running, sprinting down the nearest path and around the corner of a wall of debris. Training and instinct snapped Elias from his reverie. His mind raced, running down options. No possibility him and MONTAGUE could stop EGOR alone. Matthew obviously ineffective. Mason catatonic. Jacky. It had to be her. He ran to her, shook her, yelled for her to come on. She just mumbled, over and over again. That she was fine. Good. Green. Ready to go. 
She didn’t move, just mumbled. Elias heard grunting, yelling in the distance. MONTAGUE and EGOR going at it. He shook her again. Un polarized his visor, showing her his face. The panic that had to be visible on it. The fear. The urgency. The mumbling stopped. Her visor un polarized. She looked down at him, locking eyes. And he saw it in her. The weight. The fear in his stomach transformed, multiplied, exploded outward into every direction, every inch of him. Elias saw the beginnings of what he’d seen in Standoff. 
He looked over his shoulder, at the sound of the fighting. MONTAGUE stood no chance without him. But he stood precious little more with just Elias’ help. He felt a gauntlet clamp down on his shoulder, and looked back at Jacky. There was something new in her face. Fear, but…a new fear. Not the lost child like Matthew. A pleading fear. A begging fear. Elias looked in her eyes and knew where her mind had gone. Could remember the discussion they’d had. Standoff’s weight: the long accumulation of loss after loss. She pleaded silently with him. Elias looked over his shoulder again. 
He stayed. 
==Five==
MONTAGUE staggered back fifteen minutes later, armor scarred with deep slashes, plates smoking, helmet bent and broken, leg dragging behind him. EGOR had toyed with him. MONTAGUE had never been a real threat. Olson wondered if he’d just saved both their lives. If EGOR had come up against both of them and deemed them a valid threat, their deaths would have been quick and efficient, he was sure. 
He ran to MONTAGUE and supported him, taking the weight from the spook’s mangled leg. His own legs and ankles twinged from memories of past injuries. Jacky let go of his should plate with a relieved limpness. She mumbled a little, but didn’t break down all the way like earlier. She just stood there. Olson hooked MONTAGUE’s shoulder over his own and walked him to a place to sit. Matthew was sobbing quietly, holding Standoff’s head. Mason had collapsed, sitting with knees in front of him and rifle across his lap. He was dead quiet. 
Elias laid MONTAGUE down and looked back. The three broken people in front of him. Standoff’s blood pooling atop the debris. The dark, brooding sky. The destruction that formed their landscape paled so sharply in comparison to those three’s devastated hearts. The image burned itself into his mind. Closing his eyes, it confronted him. He had his own private collection of terrible memories already, yet somehow they all fell terribly, laughably short of this. 
His HUD told him that Gale was up and moving, that Mark and Dorian were digging their way out. That their automated, auto-pilot Pelicans were repeatedly querying for a landing site. He knew he had to move. To be a leader. Had to do something. But for the briefest of moments, he couldn’t move. Couldn’t tear his gaze away from that awful body. From the broken people in front of him. People he’d seen so effortlessly confident, so unfailingly sure of themselves. But all it took was one knife. Elias stopped a moment and wondered what would happen next. They had failed twice already, yet this was so different. So much more devastating. 
Olson realized he had automatically been treating MONTAGUE’s wounds, taking biofoam canisters from his armor and filling the bullet holes. It was instinct. So maybe he couldn’t sit still after all. Maybe doing something was an ingrained trait that he just couldn’t turn off. Did that make him, in spite of all his inferiority, superior? Olson had seen close friends die, could think of losses that had before or could in the future hurt him badly. But he knew he wouldn’t end up like Gold. He knew it deep down. He wouldn’t snap like they had. 
Gold Team, he realized, were broken. Right at their core, deep in their hearts. Healing, perhaps, but fundamentally, deeply, broken. They were still recovering from a twisted, inhumane childhood. They latched on to the high points of their old life, the few things that had brought them joy in a place where they had been secure, if not comfortable. Olson had seen them do things he hadn’t considered possible for a human being. But at what price?
He went on, helping MONTAGUE, radioing the Pelican, hiking back to the construction site and tending to Gale, freeing Mark and Dorian. The rain came down, cold grey drops against an inky black sky. He finally made his way back to Gold and MONTAGUE, and found them standing right where had had left them. Jacky had removed her helmet and was staring---just staring. Short hair matted by rain and sweat, skin pale in the cold. Strength mixed with fragility. He wondered blankly if they were even more connected. If maybe the strength came from the breakability. They obviously had a shared root cause, the training. But maybe, he mused, there was more to it. Strength driven by overcoming weakness. It seemed as likely a cause as any. 
But at what cost. 
----
The lobby of Spartan Branch headquarters was an interesting amalgamation of new and old---both ideas and architecture. It had been a waiting room used by the Air Force to entertain visiting officials or dignitaries, a hundred and fifty years old---back when the Air Force still had some clout. After Spartan Branch had been granted it’s own command structure by the defense committee, the Air Force had donated it to gain a little favor. Spartan had caught everyone’s eye---upsetting a centuries old military hierarchy---and reactions to that varied. Some, particularly those with power, wanted to try and limit Spartan’s growth, while others just wanted to get on good terms with the rising star. 
Spartan Intel had appropriated the room as soon as the Air Force offered it up, customizing it to fit their needs. That mostly meant taking down the Air Force insignia and replacing it with the Spartan Branch livery. There wasn’t much consideration for ascetics, however, which had an odd effect on the room. Odds and ends furniture had been moved around to make room for the practical needs of the branch, without any regard for aesthetics. It was a haphazard look---elegant old mahogany and leather furnishings scattered randomly. Jacky sat in an old rocking chair, back straight, eyes forward, face like stone. 
Her eyes were still itchy. She’d spent every moment of the last few days blinking, it seemed like. Blinking slowly for biometric scanners. Quickly to fight off tears. Evenly and calmly as Olson sat and listened. Quickly again to fight off tears. She hadn’t cried since augmentation day. Since Anna’s smile vanished and Otto’s laugh disappeared. Twelve years without a tear. She knew Matt and Mason were both scared for her. She was scared for herself. But if she broke like Matt, let it all out…she didn’t know if it would ever stop. So she sat, she talked, and she blinked. 
A door hissed open, startling her. Jacky jumped as an aide stepped out, carrying a datapad. Jacky hadn’t noticed the door. 
“SPARTAN-359?” The aide sounded bored. “They’re ready for you. Follow me.”
She stood up and followed him down a long, dimly lit hallway. Paintings of Air Force heroes and great battles hung in regular succession, with one or two occasionally missing and replaced with crudely attached machinery. The click-clack of their booted feet echoed down the long passageway. 
“Tunnel and the whole structure used to be the old emergency bunker. Air Force never used it for anything cause of the long walk.” The aide rambled, still sounding bored. “Spartan Intel doesn’t mind a little walking, though.”
Jacky made a non-committal acknowledgment noise, trying hard not to think about how much the tunnel reminded her of Tantalus. The ONI faction that had sponsored her training had wanted it kept as quiet as possible---most of the training had taken place in the tunnels deep beneath the planet. Those subterranean spaces---the tight connecting passageways, the cavernous open training spaces---were as close to home as she could imagine. It made her think of old memories, this place. Training; The Colonel’s stern, watchful gaze. They’d rotated back through Tantalus for a debrief after Ricky, too. That was the last time she’d been in those tunnels. The Colonel had been so concerned. 
“You haven’t been down here before, have you?” Jacky wondered dimly why he was still talking if he was so bored. “I don’t think I’ve seen you down here before. But you’re an ARES type, right? A Class 3? Heard some crazy stories about you guys. Must be something big to bring you down here.”
“Just another mission I can’t talk about.” Jacky meant to put some frightening vitriol into her voice, but it came out flat. 
They came to a heavy duty blast door, wide and flat and grey. Jacky felt like it had come out of nowhere, and she looked back to see if they’d rounded a corner without her noticing; they had not. She must have just…spaced. The aide swiped a key card through a scanner and the door rumbled open. The room ahead was lit in cool blue and looked more like an ops center than a fancy headquarters review room. 
“SPARTAN-359.” A voice echoed out as the doors shuddered to a halt, “Please join us.”
“Yes sir.” Jacky trooped dutifully inside. The room was vaguely half moon shaped and ringed by an elevated tier of desks. Jacky didn’t bother looking at people in the chairs. 
“SPARTAN, thank you for coming.” The voice was different, but all the dividing details of it escaped her. “We’ll be reviewing your entire team later, but we thought it might be best to give your squadmates…more time.”
“Of course sir.” The biting sarcasm she wanted to convey came out as submissive instead. Jacky couldn’t feel the fire. “Understandable.”
“We’d like to ask you a few questions about the Operation: SKADHI mission, Jacky.” Another voice filled the air, just as indistinguishable as the others. “First off, why did you request the mission?”
Fiery Jacky would have said something snarky but honest, reveling in the frank, brutal power of the truth. 
“We wanted to catch EGOR to protect Colonel Standoff.” Jacky felt no fire. “The Colonel was hunting him. We were afraid he’d get himself killed.”
Cold mercury pooled in her gut. If the panel of officers reacted, she didn’t notice. She blinked, over and over and over again. 
“I…umm…see.” The voice might have sounded hesitant. She didn’t trust that assumption, however. “Can you…talk about your experience?”
A bloody knife sliding out of a throat. Frothy blood bubbling up. A choking, quiet gurgle. Sobbing. More blinking. 
“Can you be more specific.” Jacky spoke haltingly through the ice in her stomach. “Mission summary? Personnel analysis? Next stage recommendations?”
“Start with just a mission summary.” Another indistinct voice. She’d forgotten what the others even sounded like.
“My team joined SKADHI six months ago.” Jacky felt out of body, but blind. Looking in on herself from outside but unable to see anything. “Participated in two direct combat ops. Both failures.”
Normally, “failure” would have tasted like bile. Jacky couldn’t feel anything. Shouldn’t she have felt more, at this greatest of failures?
“What was your impression of the mission?” She could hardly even make out any characteristics of the voices now. “Your personal feel?”
Blinking. Sobbing. Silence. Blinking. Blinking blinking blinking blinking blinking. 
“Well run.” Blink. “Diverse team, all very good, all very unlikely to get along. MONTAGUE kept everyone focused and on task, despite a lot of bickering and sniping. Probably the best group for the job available.”
“Even though it failed.” No more blinking. “Two missions, both ineffective? And you still praise MONTAGUE?”
“Don’t praise.” Jacky just wanted to leave and go back to the Nox. See Matt and Mason. Elias. “Just explain.”
She glanced up from her stiff silence and looked at the nearest officer. She should have been able to see right through her. Analyze the traits of her face and identify her, read her emotions, decipher her intentions from the millions of tiny clues. Instead, she just saw a face. Details there but just…blank. The officer stared at Jacky, doing who knows what. Jacky limply held her gaze. 
“Thank…you, SPARTAN.” The woman must have mistaken her apathetic glare for something with real weight and meaning behind it. “You’ll be returned to the Euclid’s Anvil with your squad.”
“Not very many questions.” Jacky mentally knew she should have said it with more emphasis. The best she could manage was to ask the question. 
“We just wanted a little personal input.” Jacky raised an eyebrow, then her heart sank. “And to get a feel for the mission’s emotional aspect. We’re not ONI. We know he was close. You’ll have time to grieve. We won’t put you on active duty until you’re ready.”
“What’ll happen to everyone else?” Jacky felt the slightest twinge of…something. Feeling? “MONTAGUE? Granite?”
“Codename: MONTAGUE and Spartan Gale will be returning to Infinity. MONTAGUE will return to previous duties now that he’s proved himself. And Spartan Gale requested a standard combat tour.” The woman’s face looked earnest and pained. Jack could tell by the way her jaw set and her eyes blinked. “SPARTAN-G253 has requested to be placed in an all Gamma Company team. He may end up on Infinity as well. Spartan Dorian is being assigned to train new Spartans recruited out of ODST.”
“What about Elias Olson?” Jacky felt another twinge of feeling. Panic. The face of the officer contorted a bit, like she was debating whether or not to lie. Jacky stared. The details leapt out at her. As did more questions. “Where is he going? Why did you not mention him? And how does MONTAGUE get a pass if he failed? Wasn’t the deal that he had to bring back EGOR for a second chance? I mean he could have just deliberately let him go---”
“Hold on, SPARTAN.” The woman watching sounded shocked at Jacky’s sudden vitality. “For one, Codename: MONTAGUE has been closely examined. Given his actions and our own monitoring of him, we believe him to be loyal. He was nearly killed going after EGOR alone. He held nothing back.”
“And Elias?” Jacky still felt afire inside. 
“Spartan Olson has been offered…a permanent position here with Spartan Intel.” The sentence hit Jacky like a punch. The words sounded garbled; foreign. “He has skills we look for and has proven himself very effective.”
“He accepted?” Jacky felt some of the details around her…fading. Olson would be good there. He was a perfect field agent. Something inside her didn’t like thinking it. But he was skilled. Uncomplicated. Brave. Smart. Intuitive. He had experience with the things the new Spartan Intel operatives would undoubtedly struggle with---plainclothes ops, long slow hunts, playing things subtle. He was the whole package. Jacky knew she wouldn’t have to worry about him. 
“He did.” The woman had few features left. The answer really came as no surprise. 
“Thank you for your honesty, ma’am.” Thoughts of Elias were sidetracked by flashing images of the glinting, bloody steel. It wasn’t insistent enough anymore to grab her attention. Grey and red, shining. Blink. 
“Our pleasure, SPARTAN.” A new voice? “You and your team are exceptional soldiers. A huge asset to Spartan. Take good care of yourselves.”
The curious warmth of the officer’s dismissal went unnoticed. Jacky just blinked, the crushing in her chest almost overwhelming. The door behind her slid open---when had it closed?---and the aide stepped forward, beckoning for her to follow. Jacky trooped dutifully after him, trying her hardest just to go blank. To feel nothing. To just blink. As she walked down the long darkness, she could hear the patter of rain on her helmet. The steam rising up. The sobs. The silence. Elias’ grip; firm, pulling away, yet in the end, staying. 
That image---his hand gripped in hers, staying, her desperate fear of one blow too many---was the one that played on repeat as she left the tunnel, left the lobby, rode the elevator to the shuttle bay. The thought that dominated her, made her blink. It felt wrong---she blinked more---to think about Elias’ grip instead of that bloody knife. She hated herself, hated admitting to that grief. 
She couldn’t though. Couldn’t hide it. The shuttle arrived at the Nox for a brief layover, before the Euclid’s Anvil arrived to pick them up. And she didn’t look for Matt, or Mason. She walked the halls, searching but afraid to find. Told herself she just wanted to talk and have a distraction then retorted to herself that it was an obvious lie. She wasn’t just blinking because of that knife. She was blinking, grieving, because Elias was leaving. That familiar strange twinge when she thought of him mixed into a churning, swirling nausea. Jacky blinked. Numbness---that was what she wanted, what she could cope with. 
And then he was there. 
“Jacky, you…ok?” Elias’ tone was cautious. “You look a little wobbly. Did the review go…ok?”
“Yeah. Not very many questions.” Jacky focused on keeping her voice level. “I think they just wanted to dot their I’s and cross their T’s.”
She forced a laugh, hoping it didn’t actually sound as hollow as she thought it did. “Probably wasn’t even worth the cost flying me down there.”
“You sure you’re ok?” Elias didn’t outright call her out, but his tone was clearly doubtful. “Did they tell you our deployment orders?”
“Yeah.” Jacky blinked, walking past Elias and waving for him to follow. It conveniently hid her face. “Spartan Intel, huh? A permanent position? Suits you.”
“I guess so. They need good people and say I’m one of them. I figure I can oblige. Plus it’s not like it’s forever. Intel is offering an incentive program to attract good field agents voluntarily. Do a certain number of ops and you get your choice of regular duty assignments. Provided you don’t go back into intel.” Elias stopped, a quizzical look on his face. “Sorry about not telling you. They asked me to hold off a few days. Until they thought you were in a better place.” 
“They didn’t really need to wait.” Jacky tried to be her old self, fiery in her skepticism. “They should probably stick to what they’re good at. Concern for people’s feelings isn’t really their forte.”
Jacky expected Elias to say something vaguely noble about how Spartan Intel wasn’t ONI and how it might be a good idea for her to give them a chance. He definitely believed in what Intel was trying to do---and more importantly, approved of how they were trying to do it. But he just looked at her. 
“Jacky, Matthew’s been in his cabin all day. You can hear him. Mason hasn’t cracked a single joke. You’re allowed to show it. There’s no shame.” Elias, in his kindness, still didn’t quite hit the mark. It didn’t keep him from trying, though. “Gale cried. I cried. He was a friend for us, and I knew he was so much more for you.”
“Elias, I’m---” Jacky stopped, choking on her words, blinking furiously. “---Fine. I’m dealing.”
“Turning yourself off isn’t dealing.” Elias didn’t quite snap, but there was force in his voice. “You remember when we talked about actually living? I’ve never gone through what you’re dealing with, but I’ve had hurt. Shutting everything off doesn’t get rid of the problem. It just makes turning back on that much harder.”
Elias’ stare was hard but kind. Not altogether that different from the looks the Colonel used to give. Just that thought brought memories to the forefront. The Colonel’s stiff shoulders. His grim look of acceptance. The hurt that defined him. She didn’t have to blink, didn’t feel that pain---she felt afraid. The Colonel had let everything weigh on him. He had accepted all his feelings, had kept them on all the time. 
“He at least lived, before he died.” Elias read her thoughts perfectly. She excused the imperfection of his assurances. “He was dealing. Not turning off, or shutting down. He let himself feel, Jacky. Maybe he didn’t deal the best way, maybe he didn’t let go when he should have, but he was at least living. At least from what I saw.”
“How do I know I won’t break?” Jacky blinked until her eyelids burned with lactic acid. “How do I know it won’t define me?”
“You don’t know.” Elias reached out and gripped her shoulder. “And it will define you, probably. At least a little bit. Maybe break you a little. But you have to try.”
There was a quiet, sad appeal there, wholly separate from what Elias had pleaded for aloud. Even numb, eyes blinking, details obscured by mechanistic apathy, Jacky could feel it. It was powerful. That tingling---turned to an electric shiver. Part of her wanted to stop blinking. Another couldn’t bear the thought of lettings out if that tingle was going to cause pain when Elias went off to play spy. 
“Maybe it wouldn’t break me. Maybe I could handle things right now.” Jacky stopped trying to hide the hurt in her voice and the broken, pitiful sound of it nearly made her lose it. “But in a week? When I’m on a cruiser, surrounded by strangers, Matt and Mason broken, and without…you? With a broken family and without a friend? I don’t…believe it’ll work, Elias.”
“Just because we won’t talk, doesn’t mean we won’t be friends.” Elias looked hopeful. “And if I do anything, all it’ll be is just showing you what’s already inside. Doesn’t matter if I’m here or not.”
Something about it---the words, the tone, the hand still on her shoulder---was just enough. Her tired eyes held still. The hurt in her chest swelled. It was awful, gut churning---and a release. She didn’t choke on the fear. Didn’t feel her spine tingle with panic or jaw clench with stress. The hot, burning tears were nothing in comparison. They were a foreign relic of a distant, softer self. Of training, of team, of the Colonel. 
“Can we just…talk a bit?” She hiccupped. “Take things in chunks?”
Elias nodded. 
“Of course. Whatever you need.”
So they talked. Things didn’t come in chunks, of course, but all at once. Hours of stories. Jokes. Memories. Not just the Colonel, of training. Of Anna, Otto. Blessed memories that she rarely dared contemplate. At some point they sat down, leaning up against the hard, cold metal bulkhead like it was the softest in the world. The tears flowed as freely as the stories. Elias joined her as they reminisced about the Colonel’s time aboard the ship, then simply about the whole mission. Her eyes puffed and her head hurt. Memories bred laughter. Hiccups and sobs and chuckles and sidesplitting snorting mixed together. In the end, they sat in silence. All the words that needed to be said had been said. 
----
The Euclid’s Anvil arrived a little less than a day later. When Gold Team had arrived, they’d done so in careful secrecy. Boarded a second ship---off the record---and transferred to an orbital station, where the Nox had met them. With the mission scrubbed, so were the security measures. The Euclid’s Anvil met them over the lunar periphery and simply performed a direct dock with it’s umbilical. Gale and Mark both accompanied them---they would be riding to Infinity aboard the Anvil. 
The rest of Granite came to the hangar bay to see them off. Elias stood next to the ever silent Dorian, watching the atmospheric pressure indicator turn green, as the tube filled with air. He wasn’t looking forward to the next few days, alone on the ship with MONTAGUE and Dorian. The Spook’s damn permanently chipper tone didn’t set as well with him anymore. He had a feeling it was no longer entirely an act. The mission had failed and was being scrubbed, but he’d still gotten his place on Infinity back. He’d be going as Jared Miller again soon. Gold had been left grieving, and MONTAGUE had gotten exactly what he’d wanted. 
Olson glanced at Jacky, fiddling with her gear pack and sorting a few odd bits and ends at the last minute. She had been getting better ever since they’d talked, but she still wasn’t quite the same. He hoped time would heal what the release could not. The hurt was still written all over her face. There was a welcome new vitality there as well, though. It gave him hope. For a long, long moment, he contemplated contacting Intel to tell them he’d rethought their offer. It was a nice thought. He had no idea what Jacky felt about him, but he knew he wouldn’t have minded spending more time with her. He’d accepted the offer for a reason, though. He could help humanity and Spartan in a unique way from that position. Rejecting it would be selfish. 
The airlock’s circular indicator flashed green and the tube opened, a pair of uniformed Navy personnel stepping through. One of them---an older looking officer with a swarm of medals on his chest---recognized Gold at first glance. He strode over to Matthew and shook his hand warmly, welcoming him with a wide smile. Olson guessed it must have been the Captain. The fact that Gold’s return warranted a personal welcome back from the skipper didn’t surprise Elias in the slightest. While Matthew and the Captain chatted idly---Matthew making a very noble attempt to look up beat---Elias wandered over to Jacky. 
“Look’s like it’s time.” He nodded to the airlock and then to the Captain. “At least you’ve got a friendly reception.”
“Captain’s a good man. Know his weaknesses just as well as his strengths.” Jacky had to look down to talk to him, looming in her armor. Elias was used to being even in height with her. Craning his neck felt funny. 
“Going to be weird going back there?” Olson tried to imagine going back to Infinity like Gale. It would be odd. 
“The crew won’t give you a hard time, will they?”
“The real crew?” Jacky snorted. “Course not. Might have to kick the embarked Spartan contingent’s ass a little bit, but that’s child’s play.”
It sound at the surface like the old Jacky. The words did, at least. But her tone didn’t quite match up. It hurt a bit to listen too---but Elias reminded himself that the fact that he heard anything at all was a good sign. 
“A lot different than where I’m going.” Elias shook his head. “Don’t even know who I’m meeting yet. Not going to know anyone.”
“You’ll have to message me and bitch about it.” Jacky laughed with a hint of bitterness. “Course you’ll probably have to redact every other word and use six dozen code sequences…”
“And a codename.” Elias chuckled. “Did I tell you? I’m going to be going as VERDE for a while.”
“Green.” Jacky furrowed her brow and gave him a look of confused exasperation. “Why are you named after a color?”
“Why is MONTAGUE called MONTAGUE?”
“Because of the M. Miller? Matches marvelously to MONTAGUE.”
“Well, maybe it’s after my visor and highlights. Who cares?”
They chuckled, and as Olson snuck a glance at her, he found she had snuck one at him. He distracted himself looking at the bay. Matthew had finished talking to the Captain and was walking back to his bag to grab it, footsteps clunking on the deck. Mason was already through the tube. Jacky reached up and rubbed her eyes with one gauntlet. 
“I guess it’s about that time.” Her voice was husky and thick with reluctance. “I’m gonna miss this Elias.”
“Me too.” It seemed like such an underwhelming thing to say. “I’ll keep in touch as much as they’ll let me.”
He looked up, deliberately this time, into her eyes. They were red and poofy with tears. 
“Sorry.” Jacky wiped her eyes. 
“Not a problem.” Elias gave her shoulder a squeeze. “Everything hits a lot harder when you’re raw from something tough.”
“I’ve got to go, Elias.” Matthew had disappeared into the tube. Jacky hefted her bag with one hand, slipped her helmet on, and swiped two fingers across her visor. It was the traditional Spartan smile, the sign of warmth and closeness for people who lived much of their life behind visors. It was rare these days. 
“I know.” He returned the smile, two fingers across his face. “Be careful.”
“Always.” Jacky turned, strode away, and disappeared through the umbilical. 
Elias stood motionless as the tube retracted, the atmospheric pressure indicator turning red. He turned to go, mouth set into stone, and wiped the tears that had accrued on his face away. It was no use though. His whole face was wet. The world was blurry. He stood still, breathing out slowly and deeply. As the deck reverberated with the Euclid’s Anvil detaching, he finally collected himself. He had some packing of his own to do. For that, he was glad. The distraction was going to be welcome. 
==Epilogue==
“Well, that worked well.”
He looked, point for point, like the perfect Spook. Black, simple, elegant uniform. Emotionless mask for a face. A basic, grey metal desk in a dimly lit, cold room. A slight blue glow on his face from the array of monitors and screens covering the walls. Shit, he even had the glasses. Opaque, black, covering his entire eyes, and probably filled with HUD information. 
“I take it you’ve read my report, sir.” She smiled. It was rare for someone without at least a decade of experience to be put in charge of such an op. She had proven it wasn’t a mistake. “Glad you liked it.”
“A nice bit of subterfuge, using the asset to lure the target into perfect position. I’m not usually a fan of letting the asset anywhere near video recordings, but you made it worth our while.” He opened a tab on his desk’s data pad. “We’ll have agents erase planet side copies. The Jacobs copy will have to be handled later.”
“Thank you sir.” She wanted to cover all her bases. “For what it’s worth, sir, I’ve talked to the asset. Discussed strategies. There won’t be any after target complications again.”
“Glad to hear it.” He flicked a screen and projected it above the desk for her to read. It was an intercepted communication. “Though I think you worry needlessly. For one, a little complication is expected with Spartans involved. For two? SKADHI is disbanding.”
He flicked the screen again and a new image replaced it. A biography footnoted with notable crimes, location details, and security composition. 
“New target?” She scanned the image. It looked like it was going to be almost too easy. “Easy mark, sir. Especially with no SKADHI or CHAUCER weighing us down.” 
“After the good work you did on the Field Investigation Team ambush on Berkenstein and the last one?” He paused where someone normal would have laughed. “Thought I’d give you an easy one for a change.”
“A targets a target, sir.” No use complaining about a too easy job. “I’ll get it done.”
“I have no doubt.” He flicked the image off the screen. “The galaxy is turning into a much more complicated place. SUBMARINE’s little dust up with MONTAGUE is an example of that. We can’t operate the way we used too. Direct hits are going to be tougher and tougher. And we clearly can’t afford to be ignorant of galactic events. Let the last mission be an example of that for you. We have to use more…misdirection.”
“Understood sir.” She was almost smiling. “I can work with that.”
“After SKADHI, I’m quite sure of it.” Codename: HANNIBAL handed a datapad to her and opened the door for her. “Hell, you eliminated a top level data infiltrator and made it look like happenstance.”
“Well, I had it pretty easy, really.” She grabbed the pad, walked to the door, and glanced back with a hint of a smirk. “Griffin Standoff really wasn’t hard to manipulate, after all.”