Halo: Stardriver

Listening to the crowds, the cheers and the cries, the gathered audience, there to witness history Koryn let out a breath. The rising shutters, revealing the doorway into the stadium, trundled upwards on mechanised chains. Light streamed in from the overheads, and the digitised arena flickered to life.
Light caught reflective, polished MJOLNIR armour. Resplendent in the humid air, pockmarked with microdamage from a thousand fights and bouts. Corporate logos emblazoned on raised reliefs adorned the titanium chassis, every Corpo from telecoms to trade wanting their logo on a Spartan’s armour. They cast small shadows beneath the bright lights, each one contributing a little bit more to the shade.
“Welcome one and all!” screamed the spokesmen in their booths. “To the Rumblepit!”
The Spartans of Fireteam: Stardiver trudged into the limelight. The cheering crowd intensified from raucous glee into a roaring cacophony. Strobes danced, confetti blasted from cannons the size of MBT barrels, along the dome-like roof digital jets screamed across a holographic screen.
The gathered crowd began to chant from the stands, “Rum-Ble-Pit! Rum-Ble-Pit!”
“This thrilling championship bout between two titan teams of the Rumblepit, is brought to you by the UEBC!”
Fireteam: Stardiver marched their way across the open space towards the cordoned-off arena, surrounded by retaining walls, stairs, and ladders. This was where they constructed the AOs piecemeal. This time, a makeshift prefabricated settlement complete with solar panels and generators stood on the podium.
The grass looked real, the metal shimmered with reflective pearlescence, and as they ascended the stairs, Spartan Hinato Koryn gazed into one of the windows, spying a homestead beyond the bulletproof glass. A datapad, coffee mug, coaster and vidscreen sat in a comely living room. A kitchenette off to one side modestly outfitted with a small oven and a fridge.
Spartan Koryn wondered at what settlement they had scanned, and whether it still stood.
They passed the threshold into the arena proper, the stairs behind them started to retract into the arena beneath them. Mechanisms pulled it back, stopping them from going back down as soon as they stepped onto the fake grass and gravel paths.
The arena had a wide boulevard down the centre, with a mixture of open sight-lines and closed off walkways, connected spaces, and plazas. The settlement square had a statue of a Spartan in the middle of a fountain, on a raised plinth of duracrete.
Beyond it, their rival Fireteam began to stride towards them—for the pre-match good-will handshake.
Fireteam Stardiver approached at a similarly leisurely pace. One member began cracking her knuckles, another member took out a spring-loaded false blade and began to twirl it as he walked.
Bravado, made to hype the audience up. Make them think they hated each other
But for Spartan Koryn, the hatred was all too real.
“All you have to do is take a dive,” the ONI Officer across the table said to him.
Hinato arched an eyebrow, but made no other move, besides lifting the hotel’s fine ceramic coffee mug to his lips, and taking a drink. He let it sit in his mouth for a while, enjoying the earthy and bitter tang, before he closed his eyes and took a breath.
“Take a dive?” he asked.
“Lose,” the Agent said, fanning out his fingers for emphasis. “One game, just one game, and that’s it.”
“That ‘one game’,” Hinato said, lowering his mug to the table with a clink, “happens to be the championship game.”
Deadpanning, the Agent folded his arms on the table and leaned on them. “C’mon, Spartan. What’s more important,” he laughed, smiled, and held up a hand. “Your career in some dumbed down sanitised sports version of real-world combat, or your purpose as Humanity’s bastion against interstellar threats?”
It was Hinato’s turn to deadpan this time, though that only meant lowering the arched brow on his stoic face. 
“You’re laying it on thick,” he said.
The Agent’s smile disappeared. Rather than the deadpan from before, this look was dangerous. “Answer the question, Spartan.”
Hinato clenched his jaw and started tapping the table. “Do I have a choice between them?”
“No,” the Agent said immediately.
Sighing, Hinato let the silence fester for a full seven seconds, tilting his head to one side. “Then why ask?”
The Agent leaned forward in his chair, pulling his arms off the table, and tilting his own head to mirror the Spartan’s .
“Because depending on your answer, the match will be painful.”
The wall beside Spartan Koryn exploded outward in a shower of metal, duracrete, and rebar. Koryn himself was thrown clear through the impact-resistant window on the opposing side. Shards of scintillating glass crashed down to the grass and gravel floor with a thousand tinkling sounds, like crystalline rain.
Koryn hit the ground and rolled twice, pushing himself up off the ground with a burst of thrust from the pack mounted to his back. His boots hit the dirt and skidded, kicking up streams of digitised earth and digging trenches with his heel.
Through the gap stepped a soldier taller than him by a head, boots sinking into the softly-simulated Earth. 
His armour was a league different than Koryn’s own burnished and shiny chassis. Matte black and featureless at its core, but with a plethora of additional mounted plates along the front. These were entirely unpainted, and remained their factory-issue gunmetal grey.
Koryn watched the unnamed Spartan approach, a mirthless smile spreading his lips as he panted, gripping his shoulder where the ache of the impact began to throb.
“This is what the Agent meant by ‘painful,’ huh?”
The man across the quad cracked his neck, flexed his fingers, and charged.
Hinato placed his empty mug in the sink and turned on the tap, rinsing it out once before placing it up on the drying rack. 
Turning around, he leaned up against the sink and folded his arms. “You want me and my team to lose. I want to know why.”
“That’s not your concern.” The Agent sipped his own coffee, still seated, and waved him off with a hand. 
“It is,” Hinato said. “You’re asking my team to take a dive against a team with no audience goodwill or history. You know what that means?”
Placing his mug down, the Agent raised both arms ahead of him, keeping his eyes fixed on the opposite wall. “Enlighten me,” he said, turning his head only after putting his arms down. “I’ll confess I’m not as big in the, uh,” he gave the Spartan a once-over in his casual dress. “Civilian scene as Stardriver is.”
“It means they won’t be cheering for the other team,” Hinato pushed himself off the sink and stepped closer to the table. “They’ll be jeering at mine. All the respect we’ve built up this season, last season, and all the seasons before?” He shook his head. “Gone immediately.”
Scoffing, the Agent rolled his eyes. “Forgive me if I don’t exactly view that as something severe.”
“You’re asking me to sabotage more than just this one game. This one championship game will be a black mark on my team for the rest of its operational cycle.” Shaking his head, Hinato shrugged. 
“I can’t help but think you know that.”
“Spartan,” the Agent laughed, a hollow, ringing and false sound that made Hinato sneer in disgust.
”We tolerate the civilian war games broadcasts because they’re useful,” he said. “We allow them to continue despite the many potential breaches of conduct and secrecy because they pacify, and they advertise.” 
He took a step up to the Spartan, who towered over him by a full head and shoulders, and stared up with a tilted head and a grin. 
“Civilians and service members who see a Spartan fighting another Spartan on the big jumbo screen,” he waved his hands, then pressed a finger to his temple “they get a certain idea about them. Maybe they’ll even volunteer.”
Hinato blinked, keeping his arms crossed. “Contrary to what you may think, Agent, I am aware of this. It’s hard not to be when we have a specific set of ‘civilian outreach’ armour emblazoned with more logos than Earth’s New Times Square.”
The Agent nodded, giving him the once over again, as though remembering who he was. “Alright,” he said. “Then here’s something you don’t know; you represent an old investment. You and Stardriver are outdated.”
That got an eyebrow raise from Hinato again. “Outdated?”
Nodding, the Agent continued. “The focus needs to be on what’s new, and, quite frankly, your stores of audience goodwill, as you call it? That’s useful, because as much as they love you, seeing you lose against the new equipment will allow us to say that despite all your skill, their gear was just better.”
Hinato arched his back and stared up at the ceiling, a throbbing pain in his temple protesting at the continued presence of the Agent in his room. 
“So,” he moved his head back down, swallowed, and pulled his arms closer across his chest. “It’s about controlling the narrative. I should’ve known. You Office types always have an agenda.”
The Agent stepped to one side, holding a finger up at Hinato. “You watch yourself, Spartan.”
“If you’re having to ask us to take a loss,” Hinato said, ignoring the Agent’s threat, “then the new gear must not be all that much better.”
The Agent dropped his finger, and held both hands out by his sides. “”What matters most in a dogfight, Spartan? The pilot or the plane?”
Hinato shrugged.
“A Spartan is still a Spartan,” the Agent said. “And there’s always a chance you win. But, if you do? Then that’s bad optics.”
Hinato took two steps forward, the Agent scurried back a step. Bending at the waist, Hinato let his eyes remain open and unblinking. “Fuck your optics.”
The Agent bristled beneath his civvie chiq and clenched his jaw. Before he spoke, he shut his eyes and took a deep breath, rubbing his eyes with a hand. “I had hoped you would see it my way—”
“I do,” Hinato snapped. “And I hate it, so I’m not gonna do it. We’ll just have to win, or lose the right way. Not because you asked.”
“I could give you a direct order—”
“No, you couldn’t.” Hinato took another step forward, and the Agent scampered backwards so quickly he hit the edge of the table with a clatter of the wood scraping against the floor.
You’re not in my chain of command. Spartan Branch is its own Branch, and you don’t factor in it. Especially not without a rank, Agent.” Hinato pressed one more step forward while the Agent righted himself.
He looked up at the Spartan, now incensed and red in the face, hands gripping the table to steady it after his misstep. 
“You’re making a big goddamn mistake!”
“Maybe,” Hinato nodded, then turned it to a shake of the head. “Either way the way I see it, me and my team are being rolled over. We lose, and get removed from the Civilian War Games due to poor public opinion, or we win, and the Office makes our lives hell. You’ve done a spectacular job of cornering me, Agent, but what you forget is that Spartans work best when they’re cornered.”
“Spartan—” the Agent held up a hand.
Hinato dropped his arms and turned to one side. 
The Agent went pale. 
“Stay any longer and you will be trespassing in my hotel room while off-duty and without uniform. As you’ve not given me your rank, I will be well within my rights to stand my ground and remove the trespasser regardless of any authority you may possess.”
Without a word, the Agent held Spartan Koryn’s stare for a few seconds, until Koryn tensed his arms and tilted his fists.
The Agent's eyes flicked down and then he turned, walking towards the door.
He threw it open, stepped over the threshold, and with a final parting sneer, slammed it shut.
Spartan Koryn ducked a fist and came up swinging, using his thruster pack to deliver a wicked uppercut to the other Spartan’s helmet. His fist connected with the chin-guard, producing a clang of metal on metal, and the man stumbled back.
Koryn followed up with a strike to the exposed midsection, but it felt like punching cornstarch. The suit barely moved, and the impact spread out barely enough to rustle the jet-black material beneath.
In the time it took him to realise it, the larger Spartan had recovered from the blow, raising both his hands up in the air and bending his back, picking one leg up off the ground. He stepped forward, bending at the knee, and bringing them down like a hammer blow.
Koryn’s eyes widened, and he jumped to one side. The fists missed his helmet by a hairsbreadth, scraping down his active shield layer and pulverising the dirt beneath him enough to kick up a plume of brown dust.
It dissipated in a swirl of pixelated light. 
Before Koryn could settle back to the ground, the larger Spartan rocketed forward off his prone position, kicking himself off the dirt with a burst of thruster power at the same time. All Koryn could do was watch as the behemoth rocketed towards him.
The Spartans collided in mid-air. Koryn felt the wind driven from his lungs, and the shielding around him broke apart under the stress. They hit the ground hard, and in that moment Koryn wondered just how much heavier the man’s armour was, as half a tonne of pressure crashed down on him.
The bigger man straddled him, raising a fist. 
Koryn went to push him off with his legs, but could barely move his legs at all. Instead, he raised his arms to shield his face.
“My turn.”
In an instant, the fist came crashing down on Koryn’s abdomen. What little oxygen was left in his system was driven fully out of him, and a wave of dizziness overtook his senses.
The man stood up, stepping around Koryn and grabbing him by the scruff of his armour. Koryn flew backwards, tossed like a ragdoll until he hit the borders of the arena. A shield of shimmering blue light that kept them from falling from the raised plinth.
He hit it, bounced like a trampoline as his momentum pushed him back, and stumbled forward. The man was there with a straight punch to his helmet, forcing him back against the wall.
Another punch from the left, then the right, Koryn’s head jerked left and right. He was pressed deeper into the blanket of the forcefield under the merciless barrage.
With a final pull back, the man pulsed his thrusters. For a moment it looked as though the man was fighting against the force, pushing more and more power into his thruster as he angled his back against it, then his body twisted. His fist barrelled forward, smashing into Koryn’s helmet.
Spartan Koryn’s visor splintered. He shut his eyes against the shards. The energy field behind him rippled, strained, and glowed white. 
Koryn was pushed through it, and for a moment he was weightless as he dropped the ten metres down onto the very real, unsimulated stadium floor below.
He hit hard, didn’t bounce, and his armour began to whine.
Vibration thundered under the holographic ground, from the leering jeers of a million people, Spartan Koryn fell limp. Resting a helmeted head down, he heaved a sigh. Drifting into unconsciousness to the cacophonic lullaby of a thousand thousand judging voices, from people who were once cheering for him.
“Guess it’s good for optics,” he said, before the world faded to black.
Category:The Weekly
Category:Short stories