DT 2021: Among the Pillars of Loki

Written with permission from about Simon-G294 and Ralph-G299 preluding the Bombing of Philadelphia.
----
“Wouldn’t you say this has been an eventful afternoon? Simon?”
The question carried over Ralph-G299’s armor speakers despite the ragged breathes dominating his dried-out throat. His huffs and groans matched the SPI armor-clad Simon-G294 who stood a few dashes away and down the burned out mountain side.
Even as SPARTAN-III supersoldiers augmented with drug cocktails and gene therapies, the day had run them to a point well past exhaustion. The chase through the Highland foothills and subterranean caverns exposed by the Covenant plasma bombardment just three years earlier. The Forerunner teleporter artifact buried in the half-collapsed cavern rubble. Cassandra, left alone in a moment of desperation and easy bagging for the ONI task force.
Simon bore the brunt of blame and responsibility for it all. He wanted to offer a smart retort to his old friend but his gasps were the least he could make out. It was probably for the best too. The smaller Spartan could barely stand at this point after his legs carried him across kilometers of inhospitable terrain and more than lost the entire time.
Cassandra’s idea to break for the mountains to protect the civilian smugglers was a good one at the time but without their AI overwatch, it fell back into Naval Intelligence’s favor.
Ralph seemed winded but his second-generation Mjolnir power armor didn’t look so dusty and pot-marked like Simon’s Semi-Powered Infiltration suit. Maybe it wasn’t a fair comparison. Simon did wear this very same armor for 3 years on the run. From Mamore to Talitsa to that ancient alien world and back to Reach.
The reactive camouflage paint had long since worn out from wear and tear by the craze of battle and the buffeting of desert sands. In this armor, he fought against drugged-up frenzy insurgents, against the colonial military, UNSC troopers, his former mentor in Redmond Venter, his former friends in Team Jian, the best ONI trackers could put on a rogue SPARTAN-III. He survived them all, eluded them all.
But now seemed like a turning point for the worst. Cassandra was somewhere else now. Probably in the custody of Commander Sarah Palmer and her SPARTAN-IVs. Unlike Ralph, Simon, Cassandra-G006, and the rest of their friends in Team Jian, the Fours recruited from traditional special forces units. Not war orphans like the Threes.
It felt so wrong, chased down so… doggedly as if Simon was a rabid animal. The Fours certainly exuded a sense of smug superiority upon surrounding the compound and announced their arrival to the hideaway. He was tired. He was angry. He was alone.
“Seriously, the quiet thing doesn’t suit you. I preferred your snark; it made our fights back at Currahee enjoyable.”
Ralph was lucky. He got to ride in a cozy Falcon while pursuit teams took turns tracing Simon and Cassandra’s trail through the tunnels. Yeah, he was the first to catch up but he didn’t have to run. He didn’t spend these last few years as the runt of the litter or a stray runout of his pack.
“Cass… Cassandra. Tell me she’s okay.”
Ralph’s glared visor looked to and frow at the carnage that Simon left in his wake. He wasn’t there but the widespread death toll of another ONI pursuit team said enough. Firearms dented from blunt force trauma. Atmospheric suits designed to filter out Reach’s toxic atmosphere punctured through with dotted holes made by a pair of M7 submachine guns. Blood soaking in contaminated streams flowing down the scorched mountain side. A crashed Falcon tilt-copter, brought down after its pilot succumbed to shrapnel wounds caused by a well-thrown airburst M9 grenade.
“Yeah. She’s okay. Mrs. Palmer’s got her. Got your funky Forerunner McGuffin too. Maybe you can tell me how you pulled that teleport trick later, after I’ve brought you in. Or maybe not. You’re a stain on our team’s good name and putting you down would make me feel better.”
He said something like that back on Mamore. Or was that Jake who said it? It didn’t seem that long ago but the days blurred together, especially on account of adrenaline and combat. Both tried killing Simon back then. Both were trying to kill him now. Did it really matter who said it, in the end?
“I didn’t mean it. I just tried to survive.”
Simon’s words conveyed so much. Yet so little. He barely had the energy to expend on talking, much less explaining what he meant. It didn’t bring him any peace to admit it to Ralph, to anyone, to the world. It didn’t feel like atonement. It wasn’t freeing. But it was the truth.
His truth. The truth no one accepted, except Cassandra. But it took so long to reclaim her trust – he had two years on the run with her to do that. Simon doubted he could get that opportunity with Ralph. And part of him didn’t want to.
Their fights and his treatment of Simon was still fresh on the mind. The innocent pokes and prods. Verbal jabs. Theft of his gear and pranks on sleepless nights. His face shoved deep into breakfast gravy. Or Onyx’s jungle mud.
Simon considered Ralph a friend despite it all. He remembered when the bigger boy stood up for him against training cadre when scenarios were set unfairly out of Simon’s favor. Or when the other teams picked on him as the proclaimed “worst graduate of SPARTAN-III Gamma Company.”
But Simon wasn’t naïve enough to ignore the reality. Simon’s complicated recollection of his friend didn’t matter to Ralph. To Ralph, he was an enemy.
“Huh. Well, you did steal Cassandra for two years. Seems like a long time for someone claiming remorse. I don’t suppose time with her softened you a little bit?”
One to banter with, but Ralph’s grip on the MA5 assault rifle and twitches toward his thigh-mounted M6 handgun said otherwise. Another fight.
The talk was just a reproductive dream. A distant memory from far away and long ago playing out one more time.
Simon settled his breathing with sheer cold force. He didn’t have the luxury of time or any advantage on his side. But the banter bought him borrowed time. Every second more was another lived. Another chance to survive.
“She tried to kill me a couple times. Now that I think on it.”
Ralph seemed to chuckle even as his audio cutout, his shoulder shuffling in an animated gesture.
“I can’t say it wasn’t deserved. How’d you win her over? She seems to stick by you despite all the fire heading your way. You break her in or something?”
Simon grimaced, his imagination going wild for a long second. First to what Ralph looked like behind his helmet. His sneer. Then imagining what his words implicated. No. That never happened. He wouldn’t…
“I told her the truth.”
Ralph’s fingers stopped hovering over his M6 magnum.
“The truth? The one where you killed several UNSC peacekeepers on Mamore? Fought on behalf of the Insurrection against your own friends? The one where you kidnapped Cassandra and blackmailed us into not pursuing you?” Ralph asked in a hoarse whisper, carrying over the dusty mountain forest dotted with seemingly ancient pillboxes and rappelling towers.
Ralph’s voice rose to a grinding growl that made Simon wince, but he didn’t deny any of the insinuations.
“Your truth. Simon. You’re full of horse shit. Do you know that?”
Simon gave nothing in return. He heard it all before. More than a couple times out of Ralph’s mouth when he could still see his face. Now they were just two masked Spartans on some nowhere battlefield.
“You’re a blemish on the Spartan name, Simon. We’re protectors of humanity. What about you? Who do you protect? It isn’t Cassandra. It isn’t me. It’s not Jian. Everything you’ve ever done was in service to yourself.”
Ralph pulled his armored hand fully away from his handgun and toward the mountain ruin around them.
“Look around. They call these things the Pillars of Loki. This is where the Twos were born. Our predecessors. And here we are now, two Threes ready to show their ghosts what we’re made of. I can’t think of a more fitting place to have it out, can you?”
Simon examined the incline for what Ralph expounded. The smaller Spartan never had a good time with history lessons in training but he ate up the well-fashioned propaganda about Spartans while living in Camp Currahee.
Much of the landscape transformed into ashy flatland against the mountain base, however, close examination revealed petrified structures. Old logs fashioned into barriers separating fixtures in a training zone. Tree trunks leaned oddly in horrifying displays of nuclear fire and extinction, but sharpened at the ends like staves. Steel poles of similar or thinner fashion, some sharpened and others-not dotted the cracked terrain.
A sign on a pillbox announced a particular threat. Military Reservation 01478-B. Caution: Live-fire activity taking place. Explosive ordinance in use.
“I’d rather keep running honestly,” Simon admitted. Despite his ability to see open sky now, even if choked full of clouds, Diana remained out of reach. Simon’s Smart AI would be a force multiplier here; one more advantage he dearly needed in the face of this former friend getting ready to put him two meters under the dirt.
“The task force is too busy right now to clean up your mess and getting Cassandra somewhere safe. You and me, we can do whatever we want out here. No one to stop us and no one to get in the way. Personally, I’d like to end things right here. And I’m not letting you walk away. This is it, Simon. You understand that right?”
Simon gritted his teeth in preparation. He tossed one of his spent M7 submachine guns to the side and dislodged the suppressor from the other. His Heads-Up Display reported five more magazines of caseless five-millimeter ammunition. He still had three kitted out M6C magnums left to draw on but together they would drain ammunition quickly as well. He also had Tuka’s plasma pistol on him – low battery but still viable regardless.
But time was up. There was no escape in this probable live-minefield if the Covenant glassing didn’t cook all the buried ordinance first. Ralph was probably better rested while his armor and gear outclassed Simon any day of all time. At least it was just one Spartan; there was no way Simon could fight two or more.
“Fine. Let’s end this. After I’m done with you. I’m going after Cassandra.”
“That’s rich coming from a dead man,” Ralph muttered. “But I’ll give you this. You and I both care about her. She’s family.”
Simon held back a bark of laughter. At a time like this, talking about family. But maybe that was a sign of the times. Jian stopped being his family two years ago when they shot at him under the Mamore sun. Or when they left him for dead. Part of him still cared for them, but they didn’t feel the same for him. He let Ralph talk, at the very least he was confident the Mjolnir-clad teammate wouldn’t shoot him while claiming the moral high ground despite none existing here among a bloody history of unethical child-soldier programs.
“I’m not like you. I’m no traitor. But she isn’t like you, either. She doesn’t deserve to be treated like a criminal. If I kill you here, I’m going to do everything I can to free her from your screw up. But if you pull off the impossible and take me down somehow, well… I guess its up to you then. They’ll take her to Earth. Your pet AI can figure out the rest.”
Ralph stopped himself, seemingly caught in a haze. Simon processed his words with mild confusion. Why would he tell Simon this? Cassandra’s detention. The impossibility. He sounded even more like a dead man than Simon did.
But most of all… What next?
They didn’t have to fight it out. Not really. Simon could keep running, maybe by some miracle he did escape Ralph and his superior-ass gear. As improbable as that was, standing his ground seemed even more insane.
“Come on, runt! One last round. Give it your best shot.”
Ralph raised his assault rifle at lightning pace. His armor dilated his reaction time. There was no way Simon could match him, even with his augmented nervous system.
Simon answered the quickdraw by cashing out his time investment.
A fastball fragmentation grenade zipped towards Ralph from Simon’s left hand as the stray dived left for any concealment between the ridged, uneven terrain.
A grenade crackled through the ancient home of the SPARTAN-II program. MA5 bullets screamed through the air answered by the hose spray of a M7 submachine gun.
Category:Short stories
Category:The Weekly