Halo: Apostasia

==Part I: The Failure Spartan==
===Chapter One: Once A Thief...===
“Watch me carefully. Just do what I do, and you’ll be fine.”
Simon Onegin hugged himself, shivering at the cold wind blowing through the holes in his oversized clothes. He looked up at his brother, who pressed up against the side of the concrete wall and peered out at the street beyond. “You sure about this?”
Arthur glanced down and flashed him a smile. That was all it took—all it ever took—to make Simon feel better. “You bet. Remember, we’re doing this for Mom.”
“Yeah.” Simon nodded in agreement, crouching down behind Arthur’s legs. “For Mom.”
Arthur pressed a finger to his lips and indicated one of the passersby: a well-dressed young man of about his own age leaning against a bench and chatting with a girl. “That one,” he murmured. “The boyfriends are always the best ones.”
Without warning, he pushed off from the wall and stepped out into the street. Pressing one hand against his side, he affected a limp, hobbling at an angle towards the bench. His free hand dropped to his side; the fingers twitched, beckoning Simon to follow.
They cut a strange pair, ambling out into the quiet city streets. Arthur was tall and lanky, with thick dark hair, patched-up clothes, and keen eyes that peered out from underneath the layer of dust and grime that coated his skin and clothes, searching for the next opportunity to score a little money or food. Simon, many years younger, barely came up to Arthur’s waist. He shared his brother’s unruly black hair, but aside from that he didn’t think he bore much of a resemblance to his brother at all. He wished he did; a short life spent tailing after his brother had convinced him that everything would be better if he were more like Arthur.
The boy and girl looked up as they approached. Even from afar, Simon saw their eyes widen. They exchanged looks with each other, then looked hurriedly from side to side in the hopes that these two urchins were coming for someone else. When Arthur was close enough that they couldn’t ignore him any longer, the boy stepped forward, as if trying to shield his companion. The girl got off the bench and eyed the brothers warily.
“You want something?” the boy demanded.
Arthur raised his hands placatingly. “Sorry, sorry, don’t mean to bother you. Look, I know we’re being trouble here, but could you spare a few credits? Not for me, see, it’s my brother…”
That was the cue. Simon turned his head and let out a quick, hacking cough. It wasn’t a hard one to pull off; he was sick so often that half the time his coughs were real.
The girl made a sympathetic noise. Her companion glanced back at her. His eyes widened again, but when he looked back he gave Arthur and Simon an appraising look. From where Simon crouched beside Arthur, he could see the boy look back to his friend again. After another moment’s pause, he let out a sigh and withdrew two items from his pocket: a chatter mobile device and an adjustable credit chit. He slotted the chit into the chatter and began inputting a code on the screen. “I guess a few credits can’t hurt,” he said, more to the girl than Arthur. “How much do you need? Ten? Fifteen?”
Arthur tilted his head to the side, eyes fixed on the device. His legs tensed and then, just as the boy raised a finger from the device, he sprang. In an instant he had forced the boy to the ground with a kick to the back of his leg. He plucked the chatter out of its startled owner’s hands, knocking the yelping boy’s hand away when he tried to snatch it back.
“Sorry,” he said, dancing out of reach. “Don’t worry, it’s for a good cause.”
The girl yelled something in another language and leaped forward, grabbing for Arthur. Simon scuttled forward on all fours, entangling himself in her legs. She struggled to keep her balance, then tripped over him and fell back against the bench. Simon leapt up, but hesitated as he watched the girl curl into a ball, grabbing her arm. A pang of guilt flashed through his gut, paralyzing him. He hadn’t wanted to hurt her, just keep her from hitting his brother…
Something hard latched onto his arm. The boy whose chatter Arthur had just grabbed was clinging to his arm, trying to wrestle him to the ground. Simon yelped and tried to tug away, but the boy’s grip was too firm. He wasn’t strong enough to break away.
Arthur came down on the boy in a flash. A swift kick in the gut broke his grip and left him sprawled beside his companion, gasping for air. Arthur grabbed Simon’s hand and hauled him away, back toward the alley. "Come on,” he urged. “Before someone thinks to call that in.”
Simon hurried on after his brother without sparing the couple another glance. They darted through the alleys, weaving around walls and trash bins as they returned to the safety of the shadows. Arthur was tapping into the chatter as he ran, dodging the obstacles without even looking up. He kept up a fearful pace and it was only when Simon had begun to lag several paces behind that he turned and stopped in a small service alcove to let his younger brother catch up.
“Nice job,” he said as Simon knelt down beside him, panting. “Now, gotta start the transfer, before he gets his girlfriend to kill the account.”
Simon looked back up at him. “They’ll be okay, right?” he asked, still feeling a bit guilty about the girl.
Arthur snorted. “Rich kids like that? Please, he probably has three more of these back home.”
The older boy chuckled as he worked the chatter. “Dumbasses. Always want to impress the girls when I ask for handouts.”
Simon laughed in reply, though he wasn’t quite sure why. Off to the side, someone else laughed as well.
“Got him as your backup now, huh, Arty?”
The brothers spun to see a man wearing a faded overcoat watching them from the corner of the alcove. The man thrust his hands into his pockets, a smile playing over his weathered features.
Simon shrank back, but Arthur just let out a derisive snort. “Don’t worry. It’s just Toby.”
The man laughed again. “’Just Toby’?” he repeated drily. “Is that any way to talk to your elders? What would your mother say?”
Arthur’s eyes narrowed. “You saw.”
“You get up to the most interesting things when I follow you around,” Toby said in answer. “How many times do I have to tell you, you can’t just transfer the creds from the account on the chatter. It has to get approved by the sender after you make the transfer.”
Arthur glowered but said nothing. He seemed to deflate a little, looking less like a triumphant thief and more like a scolded boy. Simon didn’t like seeing his brother like this. He opened his mouth to say something, but couldn’t quite figure out what to say.
“Oh, don’t be like that,” Toby chastised him. “You had a good hit there. Picked a guy you knew you could beat, got him in a spot with no surveillance cameras… I have to admit, you’re getting better at this.”
He held out his hand, palm up. “Come on, let me see.”
Still glaring, Arthur handed the device over. Toby took it and immediately began plugging away at the screen with practiced ease. He furrowed his brow, appraising the chatter. “Hm. You screwed up on the credit transfer, but this piece is in pretty good shape. One of the newer models, too.”
Toby tapped the screen one last time and reached into his pocket. “I know a few people who’ll pay some nice credits for one of these. In the meantime…” He dug out his own chatter and slotted in the stolen credit chit.
Arthur made a grab for the chatter. “We don’t need you to sell it for us. Give it back!”
Toby shrugged. “You think you can wipe the memory data, cancel out the ownership safeties, and reboot the whole system so that this thing will actually work? Come on, Arty, I know you’re smarter than this.”
Simon sat down and hugged his knees to his chest. Above him, Arthur let out a low growl but took a step back. “Fine. Keep it.”
“Ah, don’t be so sore about it.” Toby tapped his chatter screen. “I think two hundred will go off well for this. Help your mother keep things running back home.”
Arthur’s eyes narrowed. “You don’t need to sell that thing. And you could still give us more money. You could actually help her, if you wanted to.”
“But what sort of man would I be if I just did all the work for you and let all your little outings go to waste?” Toby offered Arthur the credit chit. The older boy considered it darkly for a moment before snatching it and turning on his heel. He started to walk away, then hesitated.
“Are you… are you going to tell her?” For the first time, he sounded more worried than angry.
“I don’t know. Probably not.” Toby shrugged. “What were you planning on telling her?”
“I… I got a job. Taking out trash in the old warehouse district. I’ve gotten work there before.”
“Well, I don’t see any reason why I should ruin that pretty picture. Don’t worry, though, I think gigs like this are a much better use for your talents.” Toby waved the stolen chatter before slipping it into his pocket. “Make sure she doesn’t let that cash go to waste.”
“Come on, Simon,” Arthur muttered. “Let’s go home.”
“Yeah. Home.” Simon sprang up and followed after his brother. He spared one last glance over his shoulder at Toby. The scruffy man leaned against the wall, smiling as he waved good-bye.
***
It wasn’t long after that day in the alley that the men in blue came and took Arthur away for good.
“You wait here,” his brother had said, one foot already through their apartment door. “Toby’s out there. I’ve got to go talk to him.”
Simon hadn’t had anything to say to that. He didn’t know why Arthur had to talk to Toby and his brother left too quickly for him to ask. Arthur just flashed him a smile one last time and darted out, feet pounding against the grated stairs leading down to the street. Simon didn’t see what happened next. He heard voices, then yelling, and when he’d rushed to the door to try and see what was going on his mother came from her room to shoo him away. Climbing onto the kitchen counter, Simon had looked out the window in time to see men in blue put Arthur into a car and drive away. Toby was nowhere to be seen.
His mother cried for hours that night. Arthur didn’t come back the next morning, or in the evening, or the morning after that. He’d simply vanished and Simon didn’t know where to look for him. His mother didn’t talk to him much after that. The scent of her grief filled the apartment. After that night, she never cried—Simon learned from his mother that tears made no difference one way or the other—but he could still see the pain that lined her face, the distant look in her eyes whenever he asked after Arthur, and the way she kept him close by her, as if he too might be snatched away at any moment.
Arthur had often taken Simon out down to the city streets where they’d play in the dirt and garbage that lined the sidewalks, finding treasure in the things the people from the tall buildings threw away. After Arthur was taken away his mother did not let Simon outside, but he snuck out anyway, slipping off to the places he and Arthur had played. But without Arthur there was nothing to do; Simon just sat on the pavement, hoping that his brother might show up again. The other kids from their apartment complex came by, calling for him to join them, but he didn’t pay much attention to them and they soon decided he wasn’t worth the effort. A few dogs—thin, mangy strays who slept near the sewers—would come by to investigate him. Sometimes Simon slipped them food and they seemed to like it.
Aside from the kids and the dogs, there was someone else who came by when Simon snuck out onto the streets. Toby came by sometimes to smile down at him and ask how he was doing. Whenever Simon tried to ask after Arthur, Toby would just laugh and change the subject.
Simon wasn’t sure what was funny about Arthur; when he asked his mother about it she smacked him and kept him from going outside anymore. A few weeks later, Simon got sick; through his feverish haze he remembered seeing Toby again, arguing with his mother. Afterwards, his mother gave him some medicine that she hadn’t had before, and things got better.
“What was he doing here?” he asked her.
“Just don’t worry about it,” was the only thing she’d tell him, the same answer Arthur always gave after he took Simon out stealing. But there was an edge to her voice, one that was neither grief nor pain. It was fear, and that fear made Simon afraid for reasons he couldn’t understand.
“Where’s Arthur?” He didn’t know where the question came from. By now he had learned not to ask after Arthur, but being sick had made him lonely for his brother.
“He had to go somewhere else.” His mother’s face pinched and she looked away. “He has to work, work somewhere else.”
“What kind of work? Who’s he with? When will he be done? When’s he coming back?”
“I don’t think he’s ever coming back.” His mother got up and left the room quickly. “It’s better this way.”
“Better? What’s better?”
She stopped, halfway through the door. “I don’t know. That’s just what he told me.”
It wasn’t long after he got sick that he was taken away. Men and women in suits came to the apartment and spoke to his mother. She yelled at them and told them to get out, but they wouldn’t leave. One of them took Simon by the arm and took him to the door. He struggled and tried to reach his mother, but they gave him one of his soft toys, a dog Arthur had given him, and he calmed down.
His mother said something to him, but Simon couldn’t remember what it was. He was small and tired and confused; he couldn’t remember much of anything.
They took him from the apartment he’d grown up in, down to the streets where he and Arthur used to play. He looked up just before they put him in the car and saw Toby one last time, talking to his mother. Her face was full of pain and grief, the same pain and grief she’d held when they took Arthur, only this time it was far worse. Toby said something to her and put an arm around her shoulder. It felt strange, seeing someone like that touch his mother, but there was nothing for Simon to do. The anguish in his mother’s face never went away, but she didn’t shake off the Toby’s arm.
Then they shut the door to the car and he couldn’t see her anymore. He hugged the stuffed dog and wondered if they’d take him where they’d taken Arthur.
For days Simon was taken from one place to another. He remembered little of what went on in any of the buildings where he was taken. They were all clean and sterile and smelled like soap, nothing like the apartment he had grown up in. Each was just another blur of waiting and sleeping and eating as adults talked to each other and filled out forms. His mother was not there. Arthur was not there. He kept the stuffed dog close and wished they would take him back to the apartment.
But they never did.
After what seemed like an eternity, they took him to a building filled with other children. They were just like the ones from the apartment street: noisy and rambunctious, always pestering him to come do things with them. He tried to ignore them, keeping his distance as much as he could and speaking to them as little as possible, but this center was crowded . More children were brought in every day and few ever left.
There were a few amongst the other children who, like Simon, kept to themselves. These quiet ones looked out at the world with dull, mournful eyes. It was ones like these that Simon wouldn’t have minded talking to. They seemed to know things about the world outside the cramped center, things about other colonies and even the Covenant and the war the news feeds were always talking about. But they weren’t interested in talking.
Simon didn’t know how long he spent in the center. One day blurred into the next and became a week, and then maybe a month. He wished and hoped and prayed that his mother or Arthur or even Toby might come to take him away. There were no familiar faces here; he barely knew any of the other children’s names. He wondered if he would spend the rest of his life shut away in here, forgotten by everyone.
One day he woke up with a start and realized as he climbed out of bed that he could barely remember what his mother’s face looked like. He squeezed his eyes shut and tried to bring the memory back, to will himself back to the apartment, back to Mom and Arthur. But when he opened them again, he was still at the center, surrounded by strangers.
He could feel a tightness welling up inside him, filling him up so much that he thought he might explode. He wanted to cry out, to scream, to sob. What had he done wrong? What was he being punished for? Why was he here, in this place all by himself?
But the tears wouldn’t come, and even as the scream welled up in his throat he felt it die away just as quickly. There was no point; no one would care. The adults would yell at him for being noisy and the other kids would laugh at him for being a baby. Crying wouldn’t help anything. He sat on his bed and buried his head in his hands. None of this made any sense.
And then one of the other boys decided to take his stuffed dog.
The fight was just another blur amidst the endless misery of the center. In the next moment Simon had thrown the boy down with a move Arthur had taught him. Then another boy jumped on him, and when he pushed that one off one of the girls kicked him to the ground. Everyone was yelling and laughing and cheering at the brawl. Someone punched Simon in the face; he spat at them and bit them on the arm. Even as someone else grabbed him from behind and hit him in the head, Simon felt something he hadn’t felt since Arthur had been taken away.
I don’t feel so bad anymore, he realized. He lashed out and punched someone else. This feels good.
A moment later someone pushed through the crowd of screaming children and hauled him to his feet.
***
The man in the uniform looked Simon up and down and made a face. “They really did a number on him.”
Simon fought the urge to hold his throbbing head. He knew he was bleeding from more than a few places. His nose was dribbling all over his clothes and the surface of the table in front of him. Beside him, one of the caretakers made a disapproving noise.
“You can rest assured that we don’t tolerate this kind of fighting here,” she told the uniformed man. “It’s against all of our policies.”
She shot Simon a dirty look. “The children are usually more well behaved than this.”
The uniformed man grunted and looked down over the datapad in front of him. “Yes, yes. I’m sure you’re all the model of structured youth development.”
“If you want to inspect the other dormitories—“
“Won’t be necessary. Ma’am, I’m not here to do an inspection. Just let me speak to the boy here for a few minutes, would you?”
“Feel free to ask him about—“
“Alone, ma’am.”
The caretaker made another disapproving noise, but turned and left the room. Simon looked across the table at the man in uniform. His nameplate said “Santiago”; Arthur had taught him a bit of reading back at the apartment.
“You feeling all right?” Santiago asked. “Looks like you took the worst of it.”
Simon shrugged.
“Does this sort of thing happen with you often?”
Another shrug.
Santiago rubbed his face wearily. “Can you talk?”
“Yeah.”
“And here I was thinking you’d bitten your tongue during the fight. Any of your friends come to help you out back there?”
“No. Well…” Simon dropped his gaze. “I don’t really have any friends.”
Santiago looked over his datapad again. “Not the worst thing in the world. No one here seems that personable.”
“Being here is the worst thing in the world.” This was already more talking than Simon had done during his whole time at the center. He looked back over at Santiago hopefully. “Can I go back home? Can I see Mom?”
He’d been gone for so long that it already seemed like a long shot. He didn’t even feel disappointed when Santiago shook his head.
“I can’t take you back to your family,” Santiago told him. “If there were any chance of you going back home, I wouldn’t be talking with you now.”
Simon nodded and dropped his gaze. He wondered how long he’d have to sit here, and if the caretakers were going to punish him for fighting.
“I can’t give your family back,” Santiago continued. “What I can do is give you a new one.”
Simon looked back up. A new family? What did he mean?
“Right now, you’re a ward of this colony. You don’t have a home and until you come of age you’ll just be dead weight for the people here. Just one extra mouth to feed. But I don’t want that for you. The United Earth Government doesn’t want that for you. Humanity doesn’t want that for you. We want to help make you into someone better. Someone who protects people. Someone who kills monsters.”
“Kills… monsters?” None of what Santiago was saying made any sense. Simon just wanted to know about this new family he was talking about.
“You’ve been selected to be offered this opportunity. Not a whole lot of people like you get a chance like this.” Santiago slid his datapad over to Simon, who looked down and gasped. His own face peered back at him, surrounded by reams of data and words he didn’t understand. “The people who sent me had you in mind before I even came here to talk with you.”
Someone had been watching him? Someone had selected him? “Are there others?” Simon asked quietly, still staring at his picture on the datapad screen. “People like me?”
“Lots of others,” Santiago promised. “Hundreds. If you come with me, they’ll be your new family. You’ll all be part of something so much bigger than yourselves. You don’t understand now, but what I’m offering you is more than just a new life. It’s a new existence.”
Simon, do you want to be a hero? Do you want to be a Spartan?”
===Chapter Two: Into The Void===
"Last chance, trainee! Jump!"
Simon's quivering hands locked around the straps of the backpack the Navy men had given him as his legs buckled and threatened to fall out from beneath him. Before him gaped the open troop bay of the enormous dropship, and beyond that lay an icy blackness that threatened to reach up and swallow Simon whole if he let it get any closer.
Behind him, the other children were yelling impatiently. The adult standing beside him was yelling too, telling him to jump. It was all he could do not to pass out. His body was frozen solid, unwilling to jump and unable to pull back.
“I said jump!”
He couldn’t do this. There was no way he could do this. His hands wrapped tightly around the straps of the backpack they'd given him, Simon squeezed his eyes shut and once again wished he were someplace else. What was he doing here? What had he been thinking, coming here?
“Jump!”
Someone was laughing at him. Simon kept his eyes shut, trapped between the wall of children behind him and the surging darkness before him. There was no way out. What was he doing here?
***
They had taken him away, men and women in uniforms just like Santiago. There had been a few of the other children with them in the truck that drove them away from the center. Simon recognized them as the quiet ones, the ones that knew things but didn’t talk about them. No one said a word as the people in uniforms drove them away from the city. It wasn’t until later that Simon realized he had lived in that one city his entire life. First the apartment and then the center; those had been the only places he had ever known. And just like when they’d taken him from the apartment, the center vanished from his life with just a few street turns.
And just like the first time, Simon remembered very little about the journey that followed. The uniformed people were even more forceful than the people who had taken him from the apartment. They kept him and the other children on the truck for a long time, then ordered them out and onto a huge ship. Simon clung to his seat throughout the entire launch sequence; his mind burned with fear and he already wondered why in the world he had agreed to leave everything behind for this.
There was not much to remember about that first sojourn into space. Simon knew little of it beyond the ship’s terrifying trembling and days filled with harsh words from the uniformed adults who kept him and the other children in line. There were other ships after that; Simon found himself herded from one vessel to another, the number of children growing with every move. Some were noisy and boisterous. Others were tearful and afraid. But most kept their heads down and said nothing, their eyes filled with a burning determination that gave Simon the chills every time he looked at them.
Finally, they were taken from their cramped living quarters and placed on dropships—Simon remembered from the news reports that they were called Pelicans. Strapped in to his seat and surrounded by the other children, Simon clung to his safety harness and kept his mouth closed.
Beside him, a boy with scraggly brown hair looked over at him and grinned. “My name’s Dyne,” the kid said. “What’s yours?”
Simon shot a fearful look at the scowling guard at the far end of the Pelican’s troop bay and said nothing.
The dropship trembled as it descended from the transport ship. Simon’s stomach lurched and for the millionth time since the journey had begun, he fought the urge to throw up. One girl a few seats down did just that. She squirmed and tried to get out of her harness, but the guard barked at her with such force that she went limp, tears of fear and embarrassment streaking down her face. The foul stench of the vomit filled the troop bay and Simon and the other children gagged.
By the time they reached the surface, the smell of the vomit was so overwhelming that they didn’t even need the guard’s furious yelling to herd them out of the troop bay and onto an enormous grassy field. The fresh, clean air hit Simon hard. He stopped in his tracks and looked around at his new surroundings. Enormous lights lit the field from on high, and beyond them twinkled a night sky full of stars. It was the first time in his life that Simon had seen anything outside of the urban cityscape. The night air and the grass beneath his feet were so vivid and real, nothing like the pictures and holos he had seen back home. The sheer scale of it all took his breath away. His pace slowed and he looked up, amazed by the lights, stars, and empty space spread out above him.
And then someone shoved him from behind and sent him stumbling into the grass. Harsh commands cracked above him and feet pounded all around him as dozens, no, hundreds of other children raced off of a line of dropships out onto the grassy field.
Simon scrambled upright, grass stains smeared across his knees and elbows. There was no time to look around to see who had pushed him. The only thing to do was run, run and try to stay with the pack of shouting, fighting children. The uniformed adults did nothing to stop the scuffles breaking out amongst the unruly crowd. They simply hemmed the children in, making sure that the mob stayed together as it flowed out to the center of the field.
The other children pressed in from all sides. The floodlights and noise beat Simon down, building up into a pressure that made it hard to even stand up. He fought down the urge to panic. This wasn’t a place for him. He shouldn’t be here. He wanted to leave. He wanted to go home.
But, with all the yelling and screaming and crying going on around him, Simon couldn’t get things straight in his head. Where exactly did he want to go? Where was home?
I can’t do this on my own, he thought desperately. I need Mom. I need Arthur.
A voice boomed over the field, amplified by dozens of speakers so that it came from all around: “Quiet.”
Everyone, children and adults alike, fell silent. Kids paused in the middle of pushing and fighting each other to look over at the far end of the field. A small group of people stood on an elevated podium even more brightly lit than the field. Simon squinted to make out the group’s central figure. He wore a uniform like everyone else, but something was different about him. He was bigger than the adults around him; even from a distance Simon could tell he was a head taller than everyone else. But there was something else about him, something that set him apart from the other uniforms. The men and women who had herded the children off of the dropships shouted and cracked their fists to show their authority. This man didn’t have to do anything to establish his authority. All he had to do was stand there and look out over the sea of children spread out across the field and all eyes were fixed on him..
Simon peered over the heads of the others and wondered if this man could explain what he was doing here.
***
Lieutenant Kurt Ambrose looked over the crowd of young faces and felt a now-familiar mix of confidence and uncertainty form in the pit of his stomach. This was it. Gamma Company had finally arrived. ONI’s recruiting staff had done their work. Now it was up to him and the rest of Camp Currahee’s training cadre to turn these children into Spartans.
Beside him, Chief Mendez sensed is trepidation. “We’ve done it twice before, sir,” the veteran Spartan instructor murmured. “We can do it again.”
“I know,” Kurt replied. “That’s what worries me.”
Gamma Company, the third wave of the SPARTAN-III program. Kurt himself was a product of the SPARTAN-II program, raised and trained by Chief Mendez and others like him back on the fortress world of Reach to be the United Earth Government’s secret weapon against colonial insurrection. Kurt’s fellow Spartan-IIs had numbered less than fifty. Now he and his former mentor were tasked with churning out Spartans by the hundreds, fast tracking them through the grueling Spartan training so that they could be sent into battle against the Covenant.
It had been Alpha Company first, the prototype class. Kurt had brought them up for years and seen them go off to accomplish feats unheard of throughout the entire bitter history of the Covenant war. They had been wiped out, sacrificed to prevent a renewed Covenant offensive. Beta had followed; they had received better training and guidance, improvements bought by Alpha’s sacrifice. But they too had met their end when the higher ups at ONI—officers like Parangosky or Ackerson who undoubtedly saw the big picture far better than Kurt—had deemed another suicide mission necessary. 
Twice, Kurt had watched children he had trained march off to war as Spartans—still children, but Spartans—and never come back. And each time he had braced himself to do it all over again. Today was the start of another bitter cycle. Another pattern of breaking down and building up, triumph and accomplishment and death. No Spartan Kurt trained ever came back.
At least, most of them didn’t. Kurt glanced over his shoulder at an empty spot on the podium. At first glance there was nothing there, but Kurt’s eyes—augmented by the SPARTAN-II program and honed by a lifetime on the battlefield—picked out distortions, slight ripples in the air where there should only be thin air.
“We’re ready, sir,” a young man’s voice said quietly from that empty space.
Kurt allowed himself a brief smile and turned back to the crowd of children assembled on the field. There was always hope, he couldn’t forget that. These Spartans would be trained differently than Beta. He wouldn’t let the sacrifices of his fallen students be in vain. This time, more would come back alive.
But there was one ritual that still had to be observed. A tradition he and Mendez had started back with Alpha Company. Kurt approached the edge of the podium and faced the assembled children, arms clasped firmly behind his back. In the time since Chief Mendez had first called them to attention, the children had slowly but surely begun to slip back into talking and infighting.
"Attention, recruits,” he began, his voice amplified by the mic embedded in his collar. The talking continued.
“Attention!” He bellowed, making feedback howl out of the speakers for a split second, and as one, more than three hundred children fell silent more quickly than when their mothers had yelled at them.
“Better.” Kurt murmured, then addressed the children once again.
“I am Lieutenant Commander Ambrose, and this is my facility. Allow me to be the first to welcome you to Camp Currahee.”
Nearly five hundred confused eyes were fixed on him, searching, questioning.
“You have all endured great hardships to get here. Your journeys began in disparate parts of the galaxy, on Alluvion, or Miridem, or too many other worlds to list, but they’ve all had the same things in common. Just starting them meant losing your closest loved ones, and to make it this far has cost you anything you had left. The Covenant have made life unforgiving for every living human being.”
Just like with the other companies, the recruiting officers had done their jobs. Dozens of confused looks hardened into ones of determination, hatred, or just plain rage.
“The galaxy is a harsh, unforgiving place. You do not, however, have to accept that life will be unfair to you. I can offer you the chance to learn how to fight back. The chance to become stronger than any fighting force in history. The chance to strike a blow against the universe for everything it’s taken from you. I can offer you the chance to be like them.”
Kurt gestured to the empty podium behind him. At his signal, two armored figures emerged as if from thin air. Tom and Lucy, the two survivors from Beta Company, decloaked their Semi-Powered Infiltration armor and stood at attention on either side of Kurt.
A startled murmur swept through the assembled ranks. Near the front one wide-eyed boy actually whooped. Kurt smiled. The flashy entrance had actually been Tom’s idea, a little something to impress the new blood. He stood at Kurt’s right, taller than most of his fallen brethren but still only coming up to Kurt’s shoulder, even in the SPI armor. On Kurt’s left, the shorter Lucy stood no less confidently. He wondered how she felt about all this and realized with sorrow that he would most likely never know; she was still suffering from PTSD-induced silence after watching the rest of her company die.
The sight of Tom and Lucy reminded Kurt of the last bit of his speech. “You have lost your families, it’s true. But here on Onyx you will find a new one. Endure the hardships we will throw at you here, become Spartans, and you will be part of a tradition founded on the bonds you will forge between each other. Once a Spartan, always a Spartan.
“These are Tom and Lucy,” he said, indicating the two armored figures. “They once stood where you are now, and they will help you to become like them: Spartans. But not if you can’t help yourselves, first. To be able to call yourselves Spartans, it will have to be earned. So tonight, Senior Chief Petty Officer Mendez will give you your first test. Good luck.”
***
And now Simon stared into the void, a whirlpool of dark clouds swirling amidst the howling of the wind. He could barely here the man beside him yelling; his mind was churning, unable to process all that was happening to him.
What had that man meant? Fight the Covenant? Why would he want to do that? His family wasn't dead, they were still alive. He needed to get out of here, needed to find them. This was all wrong, there had to be some mistake...
The edge of the dropship and the hideous fall beyond loomed before him. There was no way. No way he could do this. He didn't want this.
Someone stepped up beside him. The girl who had thrown up on the dropship down to the planet glanced up at the uniformed man, vomit stains still coating the front of her jumpsuit. She brushed a lock of brown hair out of her eyes and cast an uncertain look first at the uniformed man and then at Simon. Her pale features reflected just how Simon felt: sheer, absolute terror.
The man barked an order. The girl glanced back down at the dropship entrance, then turned back to Simon and made a strange gesture. Maybe it was a beckon, an invitation to follow, or maybe a warning to step away from the edge. Before Simon could register what was happening, the girl had stepped out of the dropship and been snatched away by the swirling darkness.
"Next!" the uniformed man said, now ignoring Simon completely. Simon loved him for it. Now he could go back to the orphanage, back to those bleak hallways and angry teachers, never again having to face the darkness that was in front of him. He'd rather be thrown back onto the streets, with the dogs and the cops and the days filled with endless hunger, rather than go into the blackness.
He took a faltering step back, not fast enough for the kid behind him and the kid behind him. A rough arm grabbed him by the shoulder and pushed him aside.
Simon's leg slipped, just an inch...
Suddenly he was on his knees, hands scrabbling wildly at the metal surface for something, anything to grab onto. But there was nothing. The wind grabbed him and dragged him, backpack and all, out into that dreaded blackness.
The next few seconds stretched on forever, composed of an endless scream that was immediately snatched away by the wind the moment it left his mouth. He screamed and screamed and screamed until he couldn't breathe. There was nothing around him, just the open air and the impenetrable darkness. It was only after he ran out of breath that he remembered the thing that the Navy man had screamed at all of them when he'd given them the backpacks.
Pull the cords.
He couldn't even see those, but he reached up and beat desperately at his shoulders until his numb fingers closed upon a length of what had to be the cord. He grabbed it and pulled with all that remained of his fading strength.
Nothing happened.
He froze. That's not right. He desperately yanked the cords again and again, jerking his arms up and down as the wind whistled around his plummeting body. And then, after another eternity, something behind him jerked up and away from his body. He felt a massive jolt, then yelped in pain as the backpack tightened around his body and squeezed out what little air he had left. 
He must have blacked out then, because the next thing he knew his face was buried in a mound of dirt while the parachute that had saved his life floated down around him like an enormous blanket.
Heart pounding furiously, Simon struggled to untangle himself from the parachute. His arms were sore and it was all he could do to just push the cords and parachute folds off of himself.
Strong hands—armored hands—wrapped around his shoulders and pulled him free. Simon gasped for air as he found himself staring up at the starry sky he had fallen from. The cool night air played across his face, no longer the howling gale that had pulled him from the dropship.
Above him, a face concealed by a helmet and visor looked down at him. Simon recognized it as one of the two figures who had appeared as if by magic next to the man giving the speech back on the field. He stared at the helmet, unable to look away from this strange face without a face.
"Happy landing," the armored figure said, helping him to his feet. "Nice job getting down here. Welcome to Onyx."
Simon just kept staring at the helmet. It spoke to him, a vision of the future. A sign of what he was going to become. His legs buckled, still weak from the fall.
"Not everyone can make the jump," the helmeted figure continued. "You just passed the first test."
But I didn't pass. I didn't jump. I just tripped. The words formed in Simon's head, but he didn't have the strength to voice them. He just slumped back to the ground and looked back up into the visor.
So this is a Spartan.
===Chapter Three: Another Day Older===
Four Years Later
Sim rounds ripped through the treeline, snapping branches and stripping bushes of their leaves.
"Simon, get a visual on Ralph and help him move up!"
Simon-G294 tried to get his rifle up to a firing position. From where he was lying, pressed as close to the ground as was physically possible, this was not the easiest of maneuvers.
"I'm working on it," he grunted back into his helmet com. "Maybe if Terrence would give me some cover..."
"What do you think I'm doing?" another voice demanded over the com. "Rondel's got me zeroed from three different angles, maybe you want to to get up here and take 'em out?"
"Yeah, like Simon could hit something that's further than ten meters..."
"Up yours, Mary." Simon scanned the trees, trying to find some trace of Team Rondel other than the withering barrage of sim rounds the opposing squad was putting down on his position. He couldn't see anyone, not even any of the trainees from Jian, his own squad. A burst impacted a foot away from his position and he instinctively rolled over behind a fallen log. His stripped down SPI armor shielded his body from the worst of the twigs and brambles in the way.
"Hey, if the runt's the only one available to help me out, I'll just move up without cover," Ralph put in. "At least then I'll just have to worry about Rondel shooting me."
"If you're gonna be like that, I'll just stay down here," Simon shot back, doing his best to take in everything around him while keeping his body firmly behind cover.
Jake, the team leader, let out a barely contained groan of frustration. "All of you, clear the channel! Ralph, you're moving up! Simon, you're covering him!"
"Seriously, he's gonna shoot me in the back again..."
"Fine, you're both moving up together then."
"Uh, yeah." Simon glanced at the sim rounds going off around him. "I think I'll just stay here and, uh, keep drawing their fire. No way I'm getting shot for Ralph."
"The feelings mutual, runt."
"This is not the time you two!" Jake barked. "We've got to get up there and take Rondel's position! Mary, you're with me. Simon, Ralph, move up the front. Terrence, how's the view up there?"
A moment's pause. Then Team Jian's marksman said, low, over the radio, "Not sure if I should be talking now. They, uh, they kinda got me."
"Oh, hell," Jake snarled. "This is just... Team Jian, advance!"
Something moved in the bushes nearby. Simon turned in time to see Ralph-G299 burst out of the undergrowth, rifle at the ready. There was no sign of Jake or Mary. His teammate sprinted through the bushes, darting between trees to keep Rondel guessing. Simon gave Ralph a few seconds' head start, then hurried out after him. The sim round fire around them seemed to lift for a moment; Simon opened his pace, hurrying to close the distance between himself and Ralph.
And then Ralph emerged from cover for another burst of speed and ran straight into a wall of sim rounds. The radio filled with his furious swearing--at ten years Ralph was already fluent in all manner of profanity--as Jian's point man went down.
Simon dropped down behind a tree, once again pinned down by Rondel's fire. "Hey, Ralph, how you doing out there?"
"How do you think?" Ralph coughed. "At least it wasn't you who shot me. This time."
"Yeah..." Simon looked around the trees. Still no sign of Jake or Mary. "I'm gonna go out on a limb here and say we've lost."
The bushes off to the side rustled and two figures clad in the same stripped-down SPI armor as Simon and Ralph slipped into view. They weren't Jake and Mary; their gaits were all wrong and, more to the point, their rifles were trained on Simon's chest.
"What makes you say that?" Ralph demanded from where he lay a few feet away.
"Call it a hunch," Simon replied, tossing aside his rifle and raising his hands in defeat. "A big hunch."
*
Today's the day they cut me.
Simon woke to the sound of Camp Currahee's blaring morning formation call. Years of the same endless routine had turned his wake-up routine into an instinctive pattern: roll out of the bunk, make the bunk, throw on the work-out clothes, grab your mess kit, and hit the showers. Around him, the rest of Team Jian followed the same routine, doing their best to stay out of each other's way this early in the morning. Every single one of them was still sore from Chief Petty Officer Mendez's "penalty round" after their bout with Rondel the day before. The Chief had not been pleased with the team's tenth consecutive loss, and Jian had paid for his displeasure in sweat and more than a few tears.
Jian wordlessly filed into a practiced line and trooped into the latrines. They congregated at the little row of sinks off in the corner that they had claimed as their own years ago, brushing their teeth in silence. Beside Simon, Terrence produced two extra rolls of toothpaste and passed them around to the rest of the team; he had stolen them from other trainees during the ten-second walk to the back of the latrines. Simon, Ralph, and Mary grinned and accepted the pilfered rolls while Jake looked on with displeasure.
And then they were done in the latrines and were trooping out onto the enormous grassy landing field in the center of Camp Currahee, the very same field where they had first arrived years ago. Gamma Company, over three hundred and fifty trainees, emerged from the bunkhouses and divided into assigned workout formations with barely a word passed between any of the trainees, just as they always did. Drill instructors appeared to lead them in the morning's exercises, just as they always did. From Jian's position near the end of the field, Simon could see Lieutenant Ambrose and Chief Mendez getting ready to lead the company workout over by the podium. Just as they always did.
And just as they did every morning, Gamma Company saluted the twin flags of the United Earth Government and the United Nations Space Command, recited the Oath of Allegiance, and proceeded to plunge into a grueling routine of push-ups, sit-ups, and every possible exercise Chief Mendez's sadistically creative mind could come up with. Team Jian struggled with the cadence, still sore from yesterday's punishment work, but not one of them fell out of the exercise formation. The pain was worth it.
It was all worth it. Every early morning, every day of training and hardship, it was all worth it. Every single one of the trainees was here on Onyx because they wanted to be. Maybe some of them could remember their lives before they had come here--Simon vaguely remembered a jumble of dirty streets, a woman, and someone named Arthur--but none of them looked back on those lives with any sort of longing or nostalgia. This was their reality, their one and only purpose in life. To be a part of Gamma Company, a part of their teams, a part of this next wave of Spartans. They all wanted it, more than anything in the world.
And that was why the prospect of being cut, of being dropped from the program, filled Simon with dread every time he woke up.