A Bit Cliché

The room was, for the most part, empty, save a trio of containers with the flag of the UEG draped over them and a massive example of a man standing before them, outfitted in his best dress whites. The containers were caskets, and they held the bodies of Spartans. Colin-142 stared at them, unsure of what to say or do, though his hand instinctively reached up to fiddle with the silver oak leaf that freshly adorned his collar. It had been a simple formality when Admiral Osman had bestowed the rank upon him during their meeting on Rossbach's World, when she informed them of their mission to bring down the Created and the creation of Operational Detachment-Sigma, something to legitimize his leadership.
Now it hung off his neck with a distinct weight to it that hadn't been present before. Of course, he knew exactly what had caused it, and why he felt so strange now. The men and women now entombed before him were Spartans, specifically those under his command. He had ordered them along, ordered them to fight, and they had died, and it was his fault. He knew what the responsibility of a leader was, though he had painfully little experience with it himself, and he knew that he had failed, and they had died because of it.
He recalled each of the three supersoldiers contained within, their names, units, and service history. Colin was only really familiar with one of them, Pavel Volkov of Fireteam Tango-38, an SAD team that had been onboard the Vegas for just over a year at this point. The other two were members of Fireteam Blitzkrieg, a Spartan branch team that had been dragged into this almost against their wills. While Colin wasn’t acquainted with the two casualties themselves, he was familiar with their leader, Oliver Braun.
Braun was a tough old son of a bitch, and he knew this loss wouldn’t stop the old bastard, but Colin knew it had hurt him. He had trained together with this people when they all joined the SPARTAN-IV program, and they were as much of a family to each other as Colin was with his fellow IIs. He had originally doubted the bonds between the IVs when they had originally rolled out, but as time went on, he began to wonder if the IIs had truly ever been that close, or if maybe they weren’t so special after all.
The longer he stared at the caskets, the more he thought back on the events that had led to this, and the angrier he became. He wasn’t a leader, and had never had an interest in being one. He had occasionally led small teams during the war, but that was always a temporary situation, often only lasting a few hours or days at most. The rest of the time, he was either following someone else or was by himself, that was how he operated.
That was how he had always worked, even during training. Colin had spent over thirty years working on his own, when Serin Osman, someone who absolutely should have known better, decided to stick him in charge of this hodgepodge collection of supersoldiers. What did she think would happen, that he would somehow become a great leader of men and take down the Created? He honestly hoped to God that wasn’t the case, because that would be remarkably poor planning on the part of the head of ONI, and he knew Osman and, despite their myriad disagreements over the years, knew she wasn’t stupid.
A thought suddenly appeared in his head.
Chi
Chi had been his executive officer ever since SAD was formed, and he had always shown great aptitude towards leadership. Maybe he could give Chi field command over the unit, and he could go back to running missions on his own. He could link up with another prowler and transfer onto it and run missions away from the Vegas, leave leadership to Chi and Bailey. They could certainly handle it, of that he had no doubt.
Coward
The thought violently shook him back to reality and he was immediately sickened by it. He had never run away from a problem before, and he certainly never let others clean up his messes, and they couldn’t afford for him to start now. No, he would not run, he would stay and deal with it the way he had with every other problem in his life. He would adapt, and he would fight. He would learn from those around him, and he would improve. He had to, in honor of those who had died, and to protect those still living. He would make himself into whatever they needed to survive.
Category:The Weekly
Category:Demons of Hope