Easy Days (TPF)

==Friendly Discourse==
Samuel understood High-Value Target Crow-One better than the Interrogator running a session on him. He watched the ONI intel specialist try to work the guy into cracking him for more information about where the rest of his operating cell was on Carrow. Crow One’s vision of fracturing the UNSC and SoS crashed to reality when he was captured by ONI and not his own peers.
Information from the Colonial Administration Authority High-Risk Individual Database listed Crow One from Talitsa, a prominent colony where many Insurrectionists retreated to. Sam tabbed through the file to learn more about his target and where he originated. ONI listed Madrigal and the status of the planet, glassed by the Covenant in 2528. Reports on Madrigal were scarce because the Covenant decimated the colony well before the UNSC got a fighting chase. Anyone who stayed to fight, was killed while others fled.
“I did nothing wrong,” Crow One said folding his arms. “It was always you spooks who thought you were right.”
“You were going to use a FENRIS nuclear weapon to destroy an innocent city with no ties to the Covenant to start another war.”
“So now you care about those split lips?! Those stupid fucking aliens?! Six months ago, they were burning fucking planets!” he screamed. “And you, stood there, letting the Outer Colonies get glassed to amass power. The blood of BILLIONS is on your hands!”
The moral argument had some merit, Sam agreed with his hatred of the Sangheili. Anybody who survived their colony getting glassed by those split lips was never going to warm back up to them, ever. Looking back at the file, Sam learned about The Rubble and how Crow One grew up there as an orphan. He fled the Covenant there and ended up on Talitsa, a perfect breeding ground to turn a traumatized child into a valuable weapon for the United Rebel Front.
Ironic, Sam ended up on Reach and was recruited by ONI into the SPARTAN-III Program while Crow One arrived on Talitsa and was recruited into the United Rebel Front. No activity was listed in the 40s, partly because ONI threatened their security if any Insurrection movement attempted something. Crow One rose through the ranks as a respected commando. Section One included a report about the Commando Brigade where Crow One was assigned, nothing was useful. By the 50s, he was listed as a Wanted Fugitive for violating the Cole Protocol for traveling to Venezia.
If Talitsa wasn’t enough, Venezia was the perfect shithole for Crow One to end up at. The black market was booming, and it was untouchable by the UNSC, allowing for the military-grade trade to be extremely profitable. Sam theorized Venezia was the colony Crow One got the nuke, as did everyone else in the room.
“Sam, meet me at the door,” Verlin said over their personal channel.
Walking up to Verlin, Sam watched as his commanding officer studied the interrogation.
“You want a crack at him?”
“No, sir,” he replied flatly. “I haven’t done a proper interrogation since 2544.”
“I wasn’t asking for you to interrogate him. SPARTANs tend to scare the shit out of people more often than not. Plus, I know you can twist a few arms, if needed.”
Grasping at the ideas V was throwing out, Sam nodded his approval.
“Just a word of advice, we need him alive. Don’t hit him too hard.”
“Yes, sir.”
The door opened in time for the interrogator to see Sam step in and smiled, Crow One tried to turn around but couldn’t. He waited eagerly to see who was going to surprise him.
“Well, well, well,” he said in surprise at Sam. “You look like a cunt. You look like a fucking toy my kid would play with,” he turned back to the interrogator. “You really think this action figure was going to scare me? You’ve got to try harder.”
Sam stood on the side and continued to watch the back-and-forth between the two. He began to see where Crow One’s anger came in when talking about the Covenant and the UNSC’s reluctance to do a damn. He knew the UNSC was trying, but they weren’t fast enough to respond, often leaving many colonies to their own merits.
“Mate, I don’t give two shits about what you think!” he turned to Sam. “I more impressed I got one of your action figures to come after me! I might as well be a celebrity!” turning back to the interrogator with a smug smile, “this is the best day of my life!”
“Sam, get ready to punch him,” V said.
“Yes, sir.”
There was silence for a bit, Sam was more than ready to punch Crow One. He had enough of his talking.
“Good news Sam. Tech made it through cryption, we got everything we need. Whatever he says now is bullshit.”
Things began to wind down when the interrogator began showcasing all the data they were ripping from drives Crow One had. His encryption was cracked by a Dumb AI through brute force and helped with organizing actionable intelligence. Crow One understood he had nothing else to dangle in front of ONI despite his best efforts.
Yet, he continued to surprise everyone.
“Wait, wait, wait. I have one request,” he announced loudly.
“Fuck your requests.”
“I don’t care, I’ll voice it anyways,” Crow One turned to Sam and smiled. “I want your action figure to hit me as hard as he can. I want to see if he hits like he fucks.”
The interrogator looked at Sam then at the door.
“So, you want to punch him?” V asked after a long silence.
“Sure, why not, sir.”
V opened a channel to everyone watching the room.
“All in favor of with watching Sam punch this shit spewing fuck?”
A number of approvals gave Sam the chance to give Crow One a good punch. Hell, he was ready to do it without the request.
“SPARTAN, this idiot here wants to you to punch him, please entertain him.”
“C’mon you fucking pussy. Don’t go easy on me!” Crow One jeered as he smiled.
Two steps forward, Sam cocked his arm back and watched his vision slow to see his fist connect with Crow One’s cheek and sent his head flying viciously in the other direction.
“GOD DAMN!” one of the AAG assaulters said over the channel. “Jesus Sam! His own momma wouldn’t recognize his ass!”
Sam made his way out of the room and to V seeing his smiling like an idiot. He couldn’t help but smile behind his helmet seeing how everyone reacted.
“Sam, I said take it easy on him.”
“That was easy sir.”
V looked back into the room to see Crow One groaning loudly and trying to gain back his senses. It was certain he had a broken cheekbone along with whatever else he followed through on. Sitting up, he looked at the glass to see his nose bent awkwardly and spit blood while wincing.
“Well, let’s get back to the field, we got some cleanup to do Sam.”
==Feet First into Hell==
“IED!”
Three letters derailed Aniela’s career as a hard-charging intelligence officer for the Marine Corps.
Fuck.
It was over, her packet to the SPARTAN-IV program was never going to get approved back home, especially with her father in command of all Marine Forces. The doctor told her it would take at least two years of physical therapy to get back to strength, putting her out of the window to rejoin the ODSTs. Key Development Assignments were going to be garrison duty, not field duty.
“You got to be the hero on Earth and look at you now,” Orson, her older brother lectured. “And what’s this about a SPARTAN packet?”
Everything she did was criticized or judged by Orson; it was wrong in his eyes. Of course, he looked up to dad and thought everything he said was gospel. She learned to drown out Orson’s lectures with the hospital background noises to keep her sane.
“Aniela?”
She looked at him then rolled her eyes; Orson was annoyed she decided to stop listening to him. He finally realized his messages weren’t going to get through, her stubbornness prevailed again. There wasn’t much to say, she got blown up. Aniela didn’t want to face the reality of desk duty and hated the prospects of where she’d end up. Her priority was back to a Radio Reconnaissance Battalion or an ODST Regiment with an intel slot. Both of those were full, but she still had hope.
Orson sat down and sighed loud enough to make her turn to him. He was still wearing his damn service uniform and those Captain bars annoyed her more than they should’ve. It didn’t matter if he had age, she did more during the Great War and fought the Covenant on Earth. The family always competed against each other, and she did a shitload more.
“I’m worried about you.”
“Huh?!”
The revelation from him about being worried made her groan from the pain of her injuries.
“Relax,” he said after signaling her down. “This isn’t going to be like 5 minutes ago where I turn two minutes into two hours.”
“Then tell me damnit, stop telling me a story.”
“The Insurrection isn’t worth losing your life over. I get it, they’re the main opposition right now and those fires will burn for a long time,” he said while staring past her. “If you’re going to die, I much rather see you killing the Covenant than some bumblefuck innie.”
“Thanks for your support on how you’ll validate my death.”
“The Marines won’t get you where you want to go, but ONI will,” he sighed after saying that. “I know you want to make a difference and ONI will give you the tools to do so. They’re going after the big fish, so to say. Marine Intel is picking up the scraps.”
“You want me to go to ONI?”
“Not really, but remember Chloe?”
“Yeah, the one who broke your heart at CMI?”
“She didn’t break my heart, but yes, that Chloe,” Aniela nodded after Orson finished. “She’s in Section Three, the one doing all the black shit.”
“How do you know that?”
“She’s, my girlfriend. And she really likes you.”
“And?”
“She’ll be willing to put in a good word for you, if you want to go.”
Aniela stared at Orson and thought he got a Flood infection. There was no way in hell he was advocating for her to go to ONI. He’d be tarred and feather by everyone back home if they heard what he was talking about.
“Orson, what the fuck?”
“Like I said, I don’t want you to die to some bumblefuck innie. Besides, dad lined you up for recruiting duty. ONI will be your best chance to get out of that shithole detail.”
“HE WHAT?!”
The beeping on the heart monitor grew faster as Aniela stared at Orson. She balled her fist and the pain from her surgery didn’t matter. Aniela wasn’t going to get fucked over by her father again.
“Don’t kill the messenger! Christ, calm down as well. You’ll make that damn monitor explode at this rate."
"I am calm!”
“Ok then,” he said after seeing her breathe. “I take it you want to hear his reasoning?”
“Fuck no!”
“Figured.”
The two sat there for a while, not wanting to say anything. Orson didn’t want to piss her off more, dad was already a sensitive subject to her. He knew she was thinking about ONI more seriously. Marines was going to be a dead end with her dad controlling each detail. If she wanted to stick it to him, ONI was the way to go.
“Tell Chloe I want in.”
==Osage==
Four years was a long time. The last time Sam saw Oriana was in 2553, right after the end of the Great War. He learned she was psychologically unfit for duty and required a re-evaluation screening. Now, he sat across from her and smiled to himself. Someone he knew and trust was back in his life. It was hard to keep contact with her, he was deploying everywhere while she stayed on Earth. Vague and intermittent messages from her let him know she was still alive and recovering. There was never time to visit, both were busy with their lives.
The visit was no courtesy meeting, she wanted to pitch him an idea. A team, much like Red Team, but more flexibility. She realized a gap between the incoming SPARTANs under Spartan Operations and the dwindling few remaining within the Navy. Too many high-speed dorks with their shiny new armor and few doing consistent low visibility. Her research into Gamma Company provided an idea for untapped assets in her team. She always said, “Spartans prepare Spartan missions.” It wasn’t pride or ego, more of it was focused on building trust among the community.
Sam studied the specialties of the Gammas she picked out and their former assignments. The Ferrets Program was a glorified detective service and a gross misuse of Gamma capabilities. Most of Oriana’s opinions about Beta-5’s work was negative and rightfully so. The shackles were bolted down and ONI wasn’t letting go of their power. In came the idea of her team, called Osage.
She cited Osage as a mixture of blending low visibility operations with some high-speed capabilities. Oriana wanted to hit the areas where things were growing, put out the fire before the fire burnt the whole forest. She didn’t want to play whack-a-mole against High-Value Targets, like so many others were doing. Sam agreed, he spent the better part of the four years hitting big names but seeing no result.
Gammas had the experience of working in contested environments, the ones she picked spent their days on Venezia and Taltisa. Sam was the best tracker O knew, she figured he’d have a knack for sniffing out leads and developing target packages like he did in Red Team. And O had the fuck you attitude to get out into the field and bridge the gap. Their handler, Verlin, supported the concept of Osage and found a way to allocate the Gammas O wanted. Verlin didn’t say no, he made it happen.
“So, what do you think?” O asked once Sam put down the datapad.
“Aside from your rant about how shit Beta-5 is, I’m with you on this,” he said. “But we’ll need a few things.”
“Such as?”
“Prowler for a base of operations. Winter-class fits our needs, and they passed mission qualifications. We don’t need the extra crew.”
“And?”
“A starting point. We’ve got a lot of fires and we can’t hit them all. What’s our primary focus and who are we stacking?”
O smiled at the second piece; she slid another datapad across the table. He opened it to see their primary focus. Prometheans and Jul ‘Mdama. Wherever the UNSC Infinity came back from, was quiet compared to their other missions. The headline of their return was about the Master Chief, not about Requiem, the new shield world. But, there was one catch, they needed to prove themselves before Requiem. A mission to Venezia, rumors of the Banished looking to buy UNSC military hardware. Rumor developed from a Ferret source embedded into a Banished mercenary group.
“We start with this Banished work, then go on to Requiem. When do we start?”
==Bragging Rights==