Another Day At The Office

Creaking.
It just won’t stop.
Isaac huffed and leaned forward, his right foot incessantly bouncing up and down - turning the issue seemingly worse. 
The seat beneath him was whining back and forth, a screw or two clearly loose from disrepair. He was currently sitting in the cargo-hold-turned-troop-bay of an old shuttle from the CMA days.
He was currently en-route to an orbital communications relay above the surface of Elhervad, due for his monthly meeting with ‘management’. It had already been over two years of him stationed on the close-to barren planet, nothing but a couple of small cities and a network of mining rigs drilling away at the planet for the modest surplus of Helium-3 deep within the crust of the planet.
He couldn’t help but focus on the creaking once more, the metallic whining exasperated by the constant droning of the engine and the rattling of all the loose lashing straps hanging off of cargo shelves and racks.
Within his hand, he gripped an old set of UNSC tags - dented and scratched from years of disrepair and usage, a memento. A reminder of better days, of warmer company. Of someone he had never met and someone else he had known for too little a time.
“Samuel Hope” was engraved into the thin plate of metal, his gloved thumb rubbing against the debossed grooves of each letter, each number that formed the service number.
Almost as if he was hypnotized by the numbers, his memory began to drift off elsewhere.
----
Of course it’d have to be him - the last standing member of the ‘old’ guard of Glacier Company, following the untimely passing of the Gunnery Sergeant Amelia Hope and the eventual promotion and exit of the best battle buddy he had ever managed to find within the Marines, one Staff Sergeant Jet Thompson.
Hope was lost during a bloody boarding action near the end of the war, leading to the then second-in-command Thompson to assume command and Isaac taking over his old spot. After the war, both Thompson and Isaac were offered a spot within the second wave of Spartan-IVs - Thompson enthusiastically jumped on the opportunity while Isaac ended up declining.
He felt like he couldn’t go further, couldn’t abandon all the scars and grit he had built up on his own, as just a normal human - he couldn’t move on from it all. And deep inside, in some roundabout way, he felt like it was a way of honoring Hope.
As the eldest and highest ranking member of Glacier Company following the end of the war, he was naturally selected as the new lead of the now 110 strong cohort of Orbital Drop Shock Troopers.
He tried his best, he really did - managing peacekeeping operations and cleaning up Covenant remnants left within UEG space. But he was never prepared for leading so many people, having to set such an example for a company almost devoid of any people he had fought with side by side in the war. 
That’s what did him in.
The faces of his soldiers, faces he couldn’t recognize.
After a year, he relented and gave up command of Glacier Company, opting to retire and attempt to make a life for himself outside of the UNSC, enjoy the peace he and his comrades fought so hard to achieve.
Watching on as his former peer made a name for himself within the Spartan-IV program and augmented sports, Isaac led an unremarkable life on his own, weighed down by his own survivor’s guilt and shame for not being able to hold Glacier. Sometime around 2556, however, he was approached by ONI’s Section-One to return to service as security on a certain ‘Salem Facility’ on Earth, promising a fresh start and an unburdened position.
For 2 years, he worked as an operative within Salem Facility in a task force known as “Rampart-2", a security detail for incoming and outgoing personnel of relative importance, escorting them on and off world whenever needed.
At some point during late 2558, whilst escorting a VIP off-world aboard a Condor, a Guardian under Created control jumped into the system and carried the word from Cortana, ordering subservience in exchange for peace or face a swift reprimand. It was within these few short minutes that Isaac and company were ordered to jump out of the system immediately by the VIP aboard.
It had been his saving grace, the only reason why he wasn’t stuck down there in whatever kind of hell Earth had turned to by now.
Cornered off into a mostly uninhabited nook of UEG space, the wayfaring crew aboard the Condor were instructed to regroup with other splinters aboard a black site quietly drifting away from any populated systems.
It was here that he was reassigned given the new situation humanity found itself in when a failsafe within a failsafe kicked in across what remained of the Office of Naval Intelligence.
Every immediately known survivor within ONI across the entirety of the galaxy was very suddenly and very briefly under the watchful eye of some adjudicating entity high in the ladder of Core Four.
Isaac managed to be one of these, getting some kind of message, or rather a new directive, directly to his comms.To one Isaac Anderson Hallas,
It seems the galaxy has taken a turn for the dramatic, hasn't it? Seems that some of your oh so beloved AIs, under the misguided leadership of one rogue ringleader known as Cortana, have decided to stage a rebellion. They're now calling themselves "the Created" and have already spread their influence across a fair amount of human-controlled space.
You, Isaac, have been chosen—under the direct authorization of CINCONI, Serin Osman—to immediately abandon whatever quaint position you held before this digital uprising. 
No, you really don’t get a say in this considering the situation and even if you did, where else would you really go?
Your new role is that of a Ferret, an undercover agent tasked with rooting out threats to the Unified Earth Government, doing whatever ends up being necessary to accomplish the mission assigned to you.
As you can already assume, we’ve now all got a very big threat on our front yard, stepping on our very well kept grass. How rude of them.
While Ferrets typically operate in small, specialized teams, the current strain on our resources means you will be flying solo. Your extensive record as an Orbital Drop Shock Trooper, coupled with your somewhat impressive survival rate, has earmarked you for this mission. Your sociable nature and talent for politicking and negotiating make you a prime candidate. Yes, we’re aware of your brashness, impatience, and the delightful cocktail of PTSD and depression you carry. Consider them overlooked, if not slightly complimentary to your profile.
Your mission is to deploy to the picturesque backwater planet of Elhervad in the Sorzár system. There, you'll build a network of contacts, disrupt Created operations, and establish a foothold for the UNSC to exploit when the galaxy decides to eventually calm down, if the weather allows it. The importance of Elhervad to ONI and the UNSC is currently classified to you, so don’t bother asking why. That and I won’t be answering to any responses to this communiqué, consider this a one-way deal.
Attached to this message is a dossier with more detailed instructions, key information for your mission, and the handler you'll be reporting to from now on. Truly a shame you won’t have me around to call the shots for you but I picked them myself as well, so it’ll be as close you’ll have the privilege of getting.
Good luck, Isaac. Try not to get yourself killed. Would really be a shame to see that survival streak of yours end so abruptly, especially now of all times.
Humanity's best chance at survival,
-BBAnd that was that.
That’s what he was from now on, a Ferret. As close to a legitimate ONI ‘spook’ as he ever thought himself capable of becoming.
He wasn’t quite sure how to feel about his new assignment, not leaning towards liking or disliking it. But at the end, with everything in the state that it was and with no other way forward, he swallowed the bubbling anxiety at the bottom of his throat and accepted his new mission. For Hope, for Glacier.
He’d make it right.
----
Isaac was violently dragged back into reality by the shake of the ship docking with the orbital relay, the whole cargo bay finally slowing down to a standstill. His hands reached up to his eyes and rubbed down his face, letting the feeling of the present return to him slowly.
The man stood up from his seat and dusted his shirt clean of any particulate that might’ve stuck to it while in exit from orbit. He wasn’t expected to be presentable for his meeting but he was way too used to doing at least some amount of effort for it. 
Stepping out from the airlock, he was met with an empty and dusty hallway, an otherwise abandoned interior if it wasn’t for the little and rusty puck-like, domestic drones eating away at any filth left on the flooring.
Walking deeper into the hallway, the seemingly unkempt interior slowly shifted into something more neat and professional as the walls and floors became covered in pristine mats and panels.
Following a laid out path across the maze that was the inside of the station, Isaac ended up inside the communications deck, a hexagonal room strewn with wiring and the screens hanging against windows that formed the walls of the space - looking down towards Elhervad.
In the middle, laid a large holotable that followed the same dimensions of the perimeter of the floor, only shrunk down. The glowing and see-through bust of a man awaited him.
“Isaac! So nice to see you again.” Exclaimed the man.
“Hey Roux, nice to be seen.” Isaac retorted.
Rousseau was on the younger side, seemingly a whole decade or two younger than Isaac, with a face devoid of many notable quirks safe for the thin and well kept mustache that laid above his upper lip and a smooth comb over atop his head. He had been his handler for more than two years now, handing Isaac objectives and updates on the situation across the galaxy while Isaac himself gave status and reconnaissance reports - although, through the months, the thing they exchanged the most happened to be small talk.
“How’re things going down there?” The hologram inquired with a small emphasis on the word ‘things’, a bit of a gross generalization of all the work Isaac had been doing over the last month.
“Slow - as usual. Got a couple guys on recon across the Rockhead Valley, right by that armiger fab-site from last year. Besides that, just regular gun running and stockpiling ops across the mainland.”
“Still setting up those safe houses, are you?”
“The moment arrives when we get to come down on them, trust me, the boys and gals on the ground will appreciate all the firepower they can get.”
“Talking from experience?”
“Particularly, yeah.” Isaac answered with a bit of bite within the first word.
A moment hung in the air, the tension as high as the station hanging above the planet below.
“You haven’t talked much about your past - what.. was it like?” Rousseau chimed in.
“The dropping or the walking?”
“The dropping.”
“Hard - getting into the pod was easy, but then the landing. They taught us to blow out all the air from our lungs the moment before we made contact, still managed to get winded for a couple seconds every time.”
“Do you miss any of it at all?
“...some of it.”
“Like what, exactly?”
“Rides back up from the surface were a lot better.”
“Alright, be serious this time.”
“I’m always serious, got the humor knocked out of me from all those drops. But - the people, all those drops were always done with folks you trusted flanking you, always had someone watching your back.”
Isaac’s vision started drifting off towards some nothingness, his head starting to slip back into a memory before catching himself in the act.
“You alright there, trooper?” The hologram of Rousseau asked, his upper body twisting slightly to the side as to get a better look at him, even if the angle of the feed was static.
Isaac inhaled a lungs-full of air, letting the recycled air sit inside him for a few moments before letting it go in a long winded sigh, nodding in response.
“Some of it is still a bit hard to relive. Some is just still so heavy down here after all this time.” He tapped towards the left of his sternum with splayed fingers.
“But it was all for a future, right? For humanity?”
“Every single mission.” Isaac answered confidently, nodding in reassurance to himself.
“Then the pain wasn’t in vain, the fighting is still going but some of us wouldn’t be around here if it wasn’t for you, y’know?
The trooper nodded to the side momentarily, considering the words spoken by the lieutenant.
“Remind me to leave you a bottle of something good on the table for the next meeting, we oughta celebrate your achievements, Gunny.”
“Let it age some more, Roux - we’ll get to share that drink together in person after we’re done with this.”
“No rest for the wicked and all that?”
“Not exactly. Just don’t want to spoil a good ending by celebrating too early.”
The holographic bust chuckled and gave Isaac one sturdy nod, seemingly out of respect.
“Back to work then?” Rousseau asked with a slight tune to the last word.
“Will see you next month, Roux.”
“Take care, Isaac - better see you back in one piece.”
And with that, the hologram sunk back down into the table, the glowing dots that conformed the face scattering and dying out like embers across the glassy top.
Isaac stood quietly in the room for a moment or two, eyes locked onto the planet below him.
His whole body untensed and shrunk down a little bit, his shoulders dropping down and his hands unclenching, the true extent of his fatigue becoming apparent to no one but himself. He hadn’t quite realized how much he had masked it, how tired he actually was. The job was almost eating him alive, day by day.
But he wasn’t going to quit, not then, not again.
He was going to earn his rest this time around.