The Fall of Reach h-1 Page 6

  2. Muscular enhancement injections: protein complex is injected intramuscularly to increase tissue density and decrease lactase recovery time. Risk: 5 percent of test subjects experience a fatal cardiac volume increase.

  3. Catalytic thyroid implant: platinum pellet containing human growth hormone catalyst is implanted in the thyroid to boost growth of skeletal and muscle tissues. Risk: rare instances of elephantiasis. Suppressed sexual drive.

  4. Occipital capillary reversal: submergence and boosted blood vessel flow beneath the rods and cones of subject’s retina. Produces a marked visual perception increase. Risk: retinal rejection and detachment. Permanent blindness. See attached autopsy reports.

  5. Superconducting fibrification of neural dendrites: alteration of bioelectrical nerve transduction to shielded electronic transduction. Three hundred percent increase in subject reflexes. Anecdotal evidence of marked increase in intelligence, memory, and creativity. Risk: significant instances of Parkinson’s disease and Fletcher’s syndrome.

  /end file/

  Press ENTER to open linked attachments.

  Dr. Halsey closed the file. She erased all traces of it—sent Déjà to track the file pathways all the way back to Hopeful and destroy Admiral Jeromi’s notes and files relative to this incident.

  She removed her glasses and pinched the bridge of her nose.

  “I’m sorry,” Déjà said. “I, too, had hoped there would be some new process to lower the risks.”

  Dr. Halsey sighed. “I have doubts, Déjà. I thought the reasons so compelling when we first started project SPARTAN. Now? I... I just don’t know.”

  “I have been over the ONI projections of Outer Colony stability three times, Doctor. Their conclusion is correct: massive rebellion within twenty years unless drastic military action is taken. And you know the ‘drastic military action’ the brass would like. The SPARTANS are our only option to avoid overwhelming civilian losses. They will be the perfect pinpoint strike force. They can prevent a civil war.”

  “Only if they survive to fulfill that mission,” Dr. Halsey countered. “We should delay the procedures. More research needs to be done. We could use the time to work on MJOLNIR. We need time to—”

  “There is another reason to proceed expeditiously,” Déjà said. “Although I am loath to bring this to your attention, I must. If the Office of Naval Intelligence detects a delay in their prize project, you will likely be replaced by someone who harbors... fewer doubts. And regrettably for the children, most likely someone less qualified.”

  “I hate this.” Dr. Halsey got up and strode to the fire exit. “And sometimes, Déjà, I hate you, too.” She left the observation room.

  Mendez was waiting for her in the hallway.

  “Walk with me, Chief,” she said.

  He followed without a word as they took the stairs to the pre-op wing of the hospital.

  They entered room 117. John lay in bed and an IV drip was attached to his arm. His head had been shaved and incision vectors had been lasered onto his entire body. Despite these indignities, Dr. Halsey marveled at what a spectacular physical specimen he had grown into. Fourteen years old and he had the body of an eighteen-year-old Olympic athlete, and a mind the equal of any Naval Academy honors graduate.

  Dr. Halsey forced the best smile she could muster. “How are you feeling?”

  “I’m fine, ma’am,” John replied groggily. “The nurse said the sedation would take effect soon. I’m fighting it to see how long I can stay awake.” His eyelids fluttered. “It’s not easy.”

  John spotted Mendez and he struggled to sit up and salute, but failed. “I know this is one of the Chief’s exercises. But I don’t know what the twist is. Can you tell me, Dr. Halsey? Just this time? How do I win?”

  Mendez looked away.

  Dr. Halsey leaned closer to John as he closed his eyes and started to breathe deeply.

  “I’ll tell you how to win, John,” she whispered. “You have to survive.”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  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 littl
e 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 t
ime.

  “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.