Delta's Path/Face in the Crowd

It’d been seven years since Roxanne had bothered calling that dusty rock below “Home.” Back then, it had been lush, green and covered in water. Vibrant but rugged, Reach was where she was born. However, that was a different life entirely. The last time Reach had been her home, aliens set her village ablaze, her parents’ bodies gunned down on the patio, and alien Jackals were scouring her house for her older brothers. Roxanne hid in the storm cellar hoping they could no smell her. She waited, two days, for a sign that it was safe to come out. It never arrived; there was gunfire and then silence for hours on end. Sometime later, an Army squad came through her house. They burst down the cellar door and found Roxanne, hungry, freezing, and very scared.
One moment a combat medic was hugging Roxanne as she wrapped her in a warm blanket, then seemingly the next, Roxanne was heading to SPARTAN-III training along with several hundred other children. Now, here she was back again; not on Reach, but floating, living aboard an off-world habitat installed where one of Reach’s space elevators once proudly stood. She glanced out the window behind her looking at “home.” She caught a glimpse of a lighting bolt dancing through turbulent storm clouds just as a massive hangar door zipped open and the crowd behind Roxanne snapped into wild cheering as the Saviors of Humanity marched through those doors into the living habitat’s main lobby. Roxanne’s eyes snapped back to the crowd all the same and clapped ferociously like she was concentrated on them the entire time.
Spartans.
In their blue, green, and grey MJOLNIR power armor, they stood over the crowd like superheroes, born from a different crop. Easily seven feet tall or more. Roxanne knew every single one of them, not personally, but by reputation. In addition, more than just the propaganda fed to the tired working souls that called Reach and this orbiting habitat home, on a career level. Roxanne was just like those superheroes in their titanium exoskeletons and decked out in dozens of weapons and top-of-the-line tech gadgets. These were no ordinary Spartans; this was the Blue Team. Master Chief and his childhood companions, legends on the battlefield, Saviors of Humanity, Demons to the Covenant.
Roxanne could distinguish SPARTAN-II operators by his or her armor, their weapons, their quirks, and gimmicks. She went through Spartan training just like them; she studied them specifically as part of her SPARTAN training, to become just like them.
John-117, the Master Chief, marched briskly forward at the head of his four-Spartan fireteam. His armor was iconic, the legendary and original drab-green Mark VI, recognizable anywhere. He didn’t pay a single mind to the crowd gathered around them.
Kelly-087, John’s best friend in training. She was the fastest Spartan alive and her golden fishbowl helmet was a staple of her equipment. A rabbit emblem appeared faint on her armor in a place only Roxanne’s sharp Spartan eye could pick out. She seemed to brisk close to the crowd but showed no sign of recognizing the population.
Linda-058, the team’s sharpshooter. The lens array on her helmet was purpose-built specifically for her, allowing her to see into any visual spectrum with unparalleled battlespace awareness. Roxanne remembered the Office of Naval Intelligence called the helmet ARGUS or something along those lines.
In addition, there was Fredric-104, the highest-ranking member on the team as a Lieutenant in the Navy. He had a reputation among Spartans as a nasty and dirty close quarters fighter with a deadly pension for blades. He was also the most charitable of the group, and outgoing. He waved at the crowd in a seemingly friendly motion even if you could see nothing past his golden helmet visor.
Roxanne knew more about these SPARTAN-IIs than anyone in the crowd around her did, well, with maybe exception to the ONI officers that flanked the legendary Spartan team on either side, keeping the crowd between themselves and the super soldiers. Roxanne knew how the SPARTAN-IIs abducted at the age of six by the Office of Naval Intelligence and forced into conscription in a dangerous government project called the SPARTAN-II Program. Many of their friends died in the augmentation process, a process Roxanne also experienced as a SPARTAN-III, though without the dead comrades. No one but Roxanne was privy to that secret because no one in this crowd but Roxanne was a Spartan.
Or rather, she used to be a Spartan. Not according to the Office of Naval Intelligence anyway. Not according to her former friends either, probably. She decided to leave that life behind when her team leader presented a rogue Smart AI and a cryptic warning that Earth was to become the center of a great tragedy that would shake the galaxy to its core. Now, Roxanne was a skeptic but the original owner of the AI and the signs put forward by the AI painted a dark and terrible picture. Unseen forces were maneuvering in the background of Human space and politics. Therefore, Roxanne ran “home.” To the one place, she could feel comfortable while hiding out in preparation for what was likely to be the end times.
However, this wasn’t her home only. Roxanne stared down the Master Chief in particular. Those SPARTAN-IIs, they were never born on Reach, but they grew up there, trained there for most of their childhoods. There wasn’t much of a difference when it came down to it. She felt a strange sense of comradery with them, these solemn fighting machines grafted onto the fragile template of toddlers. She’d been through that too, she knew what it was like. However, she also gave it all up.
The Master Chief’s helmet twitched and turned toward the crowd, giving them a glance over. The crowd’s cheers and shouts grew more frantic and joyous as they assumed their savior was giving them recognition like rabid fans to a rock star. Roxanne doubted it but she wondered what was passing through the man’s head as he skimmed the crowd’s with his ghostly-golden visor. She froze when her eyes met that golden visor and it felt like time seemed to slow down to a pause.
Roxanne’s first instinct was to run. The second instinct was to charge the Master Chief and to fight him and his team. The third instinct was to shrink down and hide. She was a fugitive, a rogue Spartan. Classification: STOLEN GAUNTLET. If they knew Roxanne was a Spartan, they would certainly gun her down on the spot, or, they’d attack and detain her. She thought back to her armor and weapons buried on Reach’s inhospitable surface in a bombed-out building. She had no means to fight off such a possibility. She also had no means of escape in this crowded atrium. All Roxanne could do was stare unblinkingly into the Master Chief’s golden visor, unblinking. Her mind raced to thoughts of shrinking herself into nothing, how he’d recognize her face instantly, how she already looked suspicious, and how her six-foot-three stature made her stick out like a sore thumb.
Roxanne gave off a quiet, involuntary whimper in fear as the legendary Master Chief made eye contact with her and then turned away, all the same, not recognizing the rogue Spartan among the crowd around him. She breathed a sigh of relief but also one of nostalgia and sadness.
Roxanne gave up that life. In many ways, she absolutely missed it. Being a legendary supersoldier and a hero to Humanity even though her name was not to be in the history books like that of Blue Team. She missed her team and all their good times and bad times. She missed that sense of comradery that the Spartans had. What she was in Blue Team now, total, cool confidence and trust in one another as they marched along in silence. They were a family, and Roxanne had thrown hers away.
She was now just a bystander, another face in the crowd. No one special, no one with a destiny or purpose any longer. She was like smoke in the wind. Unseen, unnoticed, without presence. She was no Master Chief, and certainly not a Spartan to them. It was best she just remained that bystander then. Another face in the crowd.
Category:The Weekly
Category:Stories