Confessions

Vilmos wasn’t expecting to see anyone in the drop bay.
He blinked a few times when he saw Ava sitting in one of the pods glaring at him from across the bay. Instead, he smiled and without a word walked up to the holographic projector centred in the berthing. The Spartan lazily activated the table, scrolling through the projections before landing on a series of solar systems saved.
He waved between them: Sol, CE-2-1239, 111 Tauri, Goombridge 34… Stopping for a moment to look at them and to make sense of the astral charts. He could name all the planets, all major bodies, the suns, and every major feature in them. He could imagine their distance between them, where they were in relation to each other, and how one would travel from one to the other.
But each time he waved to a new one, he lingered to catch a glance at Ava who watched him almost unblinkingly.
“What did you bring that up for?”
Vilmos paused, took in a deep breath and stepped to the side of the holotable to look at his fellow Spartan. He smiled as he always did, raising an eyebrow in confusion.
“Bring up what?” He asked.
“You know what,” Ava replied.
Vilmos shrugged.
“Well, I just thought it was funny,” He answered. “Y’know, just one of those moments from training that stay with you. But…”
Vilmos switched solar systems, taking a moment to look away. He hid what he could of his reservation, switching projections to the Zeta Doradus system.
“... I think about it still, sometimes.”
“Think about embarrassing me? My team?” Ava asked.
“No, no,” Vilmos chuckled a bit. “Just… Remember when we acted like we were dating?”
It was a daring deflection on his part. He looked back at Ava, trying to play it off with a smile before he took a step or two closer. She simply watched him, tracking his movements before glancing up at the projection of Onyx.
“No. I don’t remember it, not really,” Ava replied, folding her arms and leaning forward until her elbows were on her knees. She stared at Vilmos from the seat of her pod, silent for a few moments.  “Why were you fiddling with the thing?”
“Oh,” Vilmos replied, blinking a few times as Ava bumped off his deflection. “I just like looking at charts. I’ve spent hours learning all the features of every place humanity has been. It’s a unique way to read maps, like it’s on the complete macroscale.”
He paused, chuckled, and continued.
“Makes me a bit giddy as a Pathfinder. Knowing what we haven’t explored yet.”
“That’s how you’ve spent your time since Onyx?” Ava asked. “Reading maps and learning charts?”
“It’s about the only thing I’m good at,” Vilmos replied. “You’ve been a Headhunter since, yeah?”
“What about it?”
Vilmos sighed. He looked back at her, giving her his attention as he met her gaze with his own, dimming the projection and the entire bay in the process. She watched him carefully, almost in anticipation, but also in… Curiosity? Interest?
“It’s just that every Spartan I know is a Headhunter now,” His smile faded. “The rest of my team went on to become Headhunters, Yvan of course is a Headhunter, and… Well, you.”
She tilted her head to the side just a tiny bit, but noticeable to any Spartan before she slouched her shoulders.
“Yeah, well you ought to know what comes with that territory then,” Ava replied. “They grabbed all of us and made us Headhunters or Ferrets… Or whatever it is that you do. ONI Black Ops. That’s all there is to it.”
“That’s the thing, isn’t it? All of you minus me. I haven’t had another Spartan to talk to about all of this since Onyx,” He paused. “I didn’t think I’d ever see another Gamma again, let alone you.”
"I suppose, yeah... I was alone, for a while. And then it's just been me and Yvan. It's weird. Other than these new, shiny, adult Spartans, we should be the largest batch, right?"
“You’d think,” Vilmos answered. “But apparently I just get along too well with the other troops. I’ve been assigned all over the place with regular guys and girls, sometimes with a group of Fours.”
“So you’ve been hanging out with adults only, then?”
“And Yvan, a time or two. He doesn’t invite me to hang out that often.”
“Huh, he hadn’t mentioned you before–” Ava said before sitting upright. “Sorry.”
“That’s fine… ‘That’s all there is to it,’ right?”
Ava slumped down again, looking at her feet. "Yeah. That's all there is to it..."
Vilmos considered her for a moment. He tried to look past her sitting upright suddenly, even though he could tell it was because she felt a tinge of regret for having said what she did. The way she had been watching him since he entered the drop bay, she clearly had a chip on her shoulder, and he could tell he had hurt her by saying what he had during the social hour… But the way she was looking at the floor? That was pretty much what he did in his moments alone.
His finger danced toward the gravity controls, hesitating for a moment, before finally committing to terminating the artificial gravity in the berthing. Immediately his feet lifted off the deck, and Ava hovered above her seat in the pod. She snapped into a defensive posture, glaring at Vilmos as he pretended to “lay” down while floating around the bay.
“Vee, what th’ ‘ell!” Ava barked, reverting to her full Scottish accent.
“That’s all there is to it,” Vilmos shrugged before putting his hands behind his head. “Also, language.”
“What did ya do th’ fer?”
“Ears,” Vilmos tapped his ears. “These bays are designed to sling pods with EM coils. Turning off the anti-grav is a part of the process to do so… So, to prevent damage to their listening devices and cameras…”
“... They turn them off before they launch,” Ava finished the thought. “Still, could’ve warned me ya arsehole…”
“They would’ve heard then,” Vilmos replied. “But now that nobody is listening…”
“Woah, woah, woah… I’m not just gonna tell you anything! There’s reasons we have classified stuff!”
“I know,” Vilmos paused. “But how about this: if I tell you a secret, then you tell me one thing that, let’s say will be declassified in a week…”
“No deal, and I ought to report you for even suggesting–”
“Please?”
Ava folded her arms as she floated up, glaring at him. He watched her in anticipation, waiting for her to give him an answer, even if it was ‘no.’ Her posture loosened up, and she looked to one side, drew in a deep breath, and looked back at him with a frown.
“What secret do you even have, Vee? You’re a chatterbox. You can’t keep secrets.”
“I can,” Vilmos smiled. “I promise.”
“Fine. What’s yours?”
“I committed an act of treason,” Vilmos said.
Ava stared at him almost breathlessly, waiting for a break in his expression that would justify her belief he was joking. Vilmos however didn’t yield, simply blinking twice before he rolled to ensure he still faced Ava in the zero G.
“New Sopron, a few years back, I aided some Sangheili in capturing a Covenant Crusier that I was supposed to capture,” Vilmos replied. “It… Well, they were a Keep that had to flee their homeworld or face extermination. The leader of their clan, Thana, she and her people had no where else to go and I couldn’t stomach the idea of abandoning them in a situation where they’d end up dead.”
Ava floated quietly, looking away from Vilmos and instead looking at the projector for a moment. Vilmos held his tongue, tempted to speak more on it and talk Thana a bit more, but instead thought against it. He let the silence hold in the berthing, and started to believe Ava wasn’t going to share anything at all.
“I killed a man,” Ava eventually said. “I mean, I killed one. ONI had been observing him for years and his political activities that weren’t friendly to the UNSC. He hadn’t done anything wrong other than that, but… I was given the order and I killed him in front of his family.”
Vilmos sat his turn in silence. There wasn’t much he could say about it, perhaps other than he understood when he really didn’t. They were Spartan-IIIs. They were designed and trained to fight the aliens that had glassed human world after human world, not like the Spartan-IIs who were trained originally to crush human rebellion.
It hadn’t occurred to any of them that might be what they ended up being used for.
Vilmos nodded his head and continued to float, understanding they were bound on a collision course in the anti-gravity. But instead of pulling away, or trying to avoid it, they both accepted it.
Category:Short stories
Category:The Weekly