0000 Hours March 30, 2525 (Military Calendar)
UNSC Carrier Atlas en route to the Lambda
Serpentis system
"And so we commit the bodies of our fallen brothers to space."
Mendez solemnly closed his eyes for a moment, the ceremony completed. He pressed a control and the ash canisters moved slowly into the ejection tubes . . . and the void beyond.
John stood rigidly at attention. The carrier's missile launch bays—normally cramped, overcrowded, and bustling with activity—were unusually quiet. The Atlas 's firing deck had been cleared of munitions and crew. Long, unadorned black banners now hung from the bay's overhead gantries.
"Honors . . . ten hut !" Mendez barked.
John and the other surviving Spartans saluted in unison.
"Duty," Mendez said. "Honor and self sacrifice. Death does not diminish these qualities in a soldier. We shall remember."
A series of thumps resounded through the Atlas 's hull as the canisters were hurled into space.
The view screen flickered and displayed a field of stars. The canisters appeared one by one, quickly falling behind the carrier as it continued on its course.
John watched. With each of the stainless-steel cylinders that drifted by, he felt that he was losing a part of himself. It felt like leaving his people behind.
Mendez's face might as well been chiseled from stone, for all the emotion it showed. He finished his protracted salute and then said, "Crewmen, dismissed."
Not everything had been lost. John glanced around the launch chamber; Sam, Kelly, and thirty others still stood at attention in their black dress uniforms. They had made it unharmed through the last—
mission wasn't quite the right word. More or less.
There were a dozen others, though, who had lived . . . but were no longer soldiers. It hurt John to look at them. Fhajad sat in a wheelchair, shaking uncontrollably. Kirk and René were in neutral-buoyancy gel tanks, breathing through respirators; their bones had been so twisted they no longer looked human.
There were others, still alive, but with injuries so critical they could not be moved.
Orderlies pushed Fhajad and the other injured toward the elevator.
John strode toward them and stopped, blocking their path. "Stand fast, Crewman," he demanded.
"Where are you taking my men?"
The orderly halted and his eyes widened. He swallowed and then said, "I, sir . . . I have my orders, sir."
"Squad Leader," Mendez called out. "A moment."
"Stay," John told the orderly, and marched to face Chief Mendez. "Yes, sir."
"Let them go," Mendez said quietly. "They can't fight anymore. They don't belong here."
John inadvertently glanced at the view screen and the long line of canisters as they shrank in the distance. "What will happen to my men?"
"The Navy takes care of its own," Mendez replied, and lifted his chin a little higher. "They may no longer be the fastest or the strongest soldiers—but they still have sharp minds. They can still plan missions, analyze data, troubleshoot ops . . ."
John exhaled a sigh of relief. "That's all any of us ask for, sir: a chance to serve." He turned to face Fhajad and the others. He snapped to attention and saluted. Fhajad managed to raise one shaking arm and return the salute.
The orderlies wheeled them away.
John looked at what remained of his squad. None of them had moved since the memorial ceremony.
They were waiting for their next mission.
"Our orders, sir?" John asked.
"Two days full bed rest, Squad Leader. Then microgravity physical therapy aboard the Atlas until you recover from the side effects of your augmentation."
Side effects. John flexed his hand. He was clumsy now. Sometimes he could barely walk without falling.
Dr. Halsey had assured him that these "side effects" were a good sign. "Your brain must relearn how to move your body with faster reflexes and stronger muscles," she told him. But his eyes hurt, and they bled a little in the morning, too. He had constant headaches. Every bone in his body ached.
John didn't understand any of this. He only knew that he had a duty to perform—and now he feared he wouldn't be able to. "Is that all, sir?" he asked Mendez.
"No," the Chief replied. "Déjà will be running your squad through the dropship pilot simulator as soon as they are up to it. And," he added, "if they are up for the challenge, she wanted to cover some more organic chemistry and complex algebra."
"Yes, sir," John replied, "we're up to the challenge."
"Good."
John continued to stand fast.
"Was there something else, Squad Leader?"
John furrowed his brow, hesitated, and then finally said, "I was Squad Leader. The last mission was therefore my responsibility . . . and members of my squad died . What did I do wrong?"
Mendez stared at John with his impenetrable black eyes. He glanced at the squad, then back to John.
"Walk with me." He led John to the view screen. He stood and watched as the last of the canisters vanished into the darkness.
"A leader must be ready to send the soldiers under his command to their deaths," Mendez said without turning to face John. "You do this because your duty to the UNSC supersedes your duty to yourself or even your crew."
John looked away from the view screen. He couldn't look at the emptiness anymore. He didn't want to think of his teammates—friends who were like brothers and sisters to him—forever lost.
"It is acceptable," Mendez said, "to spend their lives if necessary." He finally turned and meet John's gaze. "It is not acceptable, however, to waste those lives. Do you understand the difference?"
"I . . . believe I understand, sir," John said. "But which was it on this last mission? Lives spent? Or lives wasted?"
Mendez turned back toward the blackness of space and didn't answer.
0430 Hours, April 22, 2525 (Military Calendar)
UNSC Carrier Atlas on patrol in the Lambda
Serpentis System
John oriented himself as he entered the gym.
From the stationary corridor, it was easy to see that this section of the Atlas rotated. The constant acceleration gave the circular walls a semblance of gravity.
Unlike the other portions of the carrier, however, this section wasn't cylindrical, but rather a segmented cone. The outer portion was wider and rotated more slowly than the narrower inner portion—simulating gravitational forces from one quarter to two gravities along the length of the gym.
There were free weights, punching and speed bags, a boxing ring, and machines to stretch and tone every muscle group. No one else was up this early. He had the place to himself.
John started with arm curls. He went to the center section, calibrated at one gee, and picked up a twenty-kilogram dumbbell. It felt wrong—too light. The spin must be off. He set the weights down and picked up a forty-kilogram set. That felt right.
For the last three weeks the Spartans had gone through a daily routine of stretching, isometric exercises, light sparring drills, and lots of eating. They were under orders to consume five high-protein meals a day. After every meal they had to report to the ship's medical bay for a series of mineral and vitamin injections. John was looking forward to getting back to Reach and his normal routine.
There were only thirty-two soldiers left in his squad. Thirty candidates had "washed out" of the Spartan program; they died during the augmentation process. The other dozen, suffering from side effects of the process, had been permanently reassigned within the Office of Naval Intelligence.
He missed them all, but he and the others had to go on—they had to recover and prove themselves all over again.
John wished Chief Mendez had warned him. He could have prepared. Maybe that was the trick to the last mission—to learn to be prepared for anything. He wouldn't let his guard down again.
He took a seat at the leg machine, set it to the maximum weight—but it felt too light. He moved to the high-gee end of the gym. Things felt normal again.
John worked every machine, then moved to a speed bag, a leather ball attached to the floor and ceiling by a thick elastic band. There were only certain allowed frequencies at which the bag could be hit, or it gyrated chaotically.
His fist jabbed forward, cobra-quick, and struck. The speed bag moved, but slowly, like it was underwater . . . far too slowly considering how hard he had hit it. The tension on the line must be turned way down.
He twanged the line and it hummed. It was tight.
Was everything broken in this room?
He pulled a pin from the locking collar on the bench press. John walked to the center section—
supposedly one gee. He held the pin a meter off the deck and dropped it. It clattered on the deck.
It looked as if it had fallen normally . . . but somehow it also looked slow to John.
He set the timer on his watch and dropped the pin again. Forty-five-hundredths of a second.
One meter in about a half second. He forgot the formula for distance and acceleration, so he ran through the calculus and rederived the equation. He even did the square root.
He frowned. He had always struggled with math before.
The answer was a gravitational acceleration of nine point eight meters per second squared. One standard gee.
So the room was rotating correctly. He was out of calibration.
His experiment was cut short. Four men entered the gym. They were out of uniform, wearing only shorts and boots. Their heads were cleanly shaven. They were all heavily muscled, lean, and fit. The largest of the four was taller than John. Scars covered one side of his face.
John could tell they were Special Forces—Orbital Drop Shock Troopers. The ODSTs had the traditional tattoos burned onto their arms: DROP JET JUMPERS and FEET FIRST INTO HELL.
"Helljumpers"—the infamous 105th. John had overheard mess hall chatter about them. They had a reputation for success . . . and for brutality, even against fellow soldiers.
John gave them a polite nod.
They just brushed past him and started on the high-gravity free weights. The largest ODST lifted the bar of the bench press. He struggled and the bar wavered unsteadily. The iron plates on the right end slid off and fell to the deck. The opposite end of the bar tilted, and he dropped the weight, almost crushing his spotter's foot.
Startled by the noise, John jumped up.
"What the—" The big ODST stood and glared at the locking collar that had slipped off. "Someone took the pin." He growled and turned to John.
John picked up the pin. "The error was mine," he said and stepped forward. "My apologies."
The four ODSTs moved as one toward John. The big guy with the scars stood a hand's breadth away from John's nose. "Why don't you take that pin and shove it, meat?" he said, grinning. "Or better yet, maybe I should make you eat it." He nodded to his friends.
John only knew three ways to react to people. If they were his superior officers, he obeyed them. If they were part of his squad, he helped them. If they were a threat, he neutralized them.
So when the men surrounding him moved . . . he hesitated.
Not because he was afraid, but because these men could have fallen into any of John's three categories.
He didn't know their rank. They were fellow servicemen in the UNSC. But, at the moment, they didn't seem friendly.
The two men flanking him grabbed John's biceps. The one behind him tried to slip an arm around his neck.
John hunched his shoulders and tucked his chin to his chest so he couldn't be choked. He whipped his right elbow over the hand holding him, pinned it to his side, and then straight punched the man and broke his nose.
The other three reacted, tightening their grips and stepping closer—but like the dropped pin, they moved slowly.
John ducked and slipped out of the unsuccessful headlock. He spun free, breaking the grasp of the man on his left at the same time.
"Stand down!" A booming voice echoed across the gym.
A sergeant stepped into the gym and strode toward them. Unlike Mendez, who was fit and trim and was always serious, this man's stomach bulged over his belt, and he looked bemused.
John snapped to attention. The others stood there and continued to glare at John.
"Sarge," the man with the bleeding nose said. "We were just—"
"Did I ask you a question?" the Sergeant barked.
"No, Sergeant!" the man replied.
The Sergeant eyed John, then the ODSTs. "You're all so eager to fight, get in the ring and go to it."
"Sir!" John said. He went to the boxing ring, slipped through the ropes, and stood there waiting.
This was starting to make sense. It was a mission. John had received orders from a superior officer, and the four men were now targets.
The big ODST pushed through the ropes and the others gathered to watch. "I'm going to rip you to pieces, meat," he grunted through clenched teeth.
John sprang off his back foot and launched his entire weight behind his first strike. His fist smashed into the man's wide chin. John's left hand followed and impacted on the soldier's jaw.
The man's hands came up; John stepped in, pinned one of the man's arms to his chest, and followed through with a hook to his floating ribs. Bones broke.
The man staggered back. John took a short step, brought his heel down on the man's knee. Three more punches and the man was against the ropes . . . then he stopped moving, his arm and leg and neck tilted at unnatural angles.
The three other men moved. The one with the bloody nose grabbed an iron bar.
John didn't need orders this time. Three attackers at once—he had to take them out before they surrounded him. He might be faster, but he didn't have eyes in the back of his head.
The man with the iron bar swung a vicious blow at John's ribs; John sidestepped, grabbed the man's hand, and clamped it to the bar. He twisted the bar and crushed the bones of his attacker's wrist.
John snapped a side kick toward the second man, caught him in the groin, crushing the soft organs and breaking his target's pelvis.
John pulled the bar free—whipped around and caught the third man in the neck, hitting him so hard the ODST was propelled over the ropes.
"At ease, Number 117," Chief Petty Officer Mendez barked.
John obeyed and dropped the bar. Like the pin, it seemed to take too long for the impromptu weapon to hit the deck.
The ODSTs lay crumpled on the ground, either unconscious or dead.
Mendez, at the far end of the gym, strode toward the boxing ring.
The Sergeant stood with his mouth open. "Chief Mendez, sir!" He snapped a crisp salute. "What are you
—" He turned to John, his eyes widened, and he murmured, "He's one of them , isn't he?"
"Medics are on their way," Mendez said calmly. He stepped closer to the Sergeant. "There are two intel officers waiting for you in Ops. They'll debrief you . . ." He stepped back. "I suggest you report to them immediately."
"Yes, sir," the Sergeant said. He almost ran out of the gym. He looked once over his shoulder at John; then he moved even faster.
"Your workout is over for today," Mendez told John.
John saluted and left the ring.
A team of medics entered with stretchers and rushed toward the boxing ring.
"Permission to speak, sir?" John said.
Mendez nodded.
"Were those men part of a mission? Were they targets or teammates?"
John knew that this had to be some sort of mission. The Chief had been too close for it to be a coincidence.
"You engaged and neutralized a threat," Mendez replied. "That action seems to have answered your question, Squad Leader."
John wrinkled his forehead as he thought it through. "I followed the chain of command," he said. "The Sergeant told me to fight. I was threatened and in imminent danger. But they were still UNSC Special Forces. Fellow soldiers."
Mendez lowered his voice. "Not every mission has simple objectives or comes to a logical conclusion.
Your priorities are to follow the orders in your chain of command, and then to preserve your life and the lives of your team. Is that clear?"
"Sir," John said. "Yes, sir." He glanced back at the ring. Blood was seeping into the canvas mat. John had an odd feeling in the pit of his stomach.
He hit the showers and let the blood rinse off him. He felt strangely sorry for the men he had killed.
But he knew his duty—the Chief had even been unusually verbose in order to clarify the matter. Follow orders and keep himself and his team safe. That's all he had to focus on. John didn't give the incident in the gym another thought.