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"Lone wolf"
Seventy-four Spartans slept peacefully, exhausted after their day's training. At twelve year old, their exercises tested both body and mind, and the children slept like the dead when they had the opportunity. All but one.
Linda-058 lay awake in her bunk staring at the ceiling and counting the tiles, tense with anticipation. She didn't know if it would be tonight, but if it was CPO Mendez would be arriving any moment. She shifted in her bed and glanced at the door, listening to the deep breathing of the other Spartans. She was aware on some level that the Spartan concept of morality was not the same as most people's, but it was hard not to consider the next few hours as wrong. Outside the door there was movement she could see through the tiny window, and she swung her legs down off the cot, looking down at her toes and taking a deep breath. She stood and walked silently to the door, opening it with care not to disturb the others. The door closed behind her and she looked up at Mendez, trying to keep her face emotion-free.
Mendez looked back with those black on black eyes, and silently passed her a bag. She opened it quickly, and scanned the clothing within. The slinky black cat suit was laced with gray to help her blend into the shadows; a pistol and a box containing the pieces of a sniper rifle was settled at the bottom. She had the floor plan memorized already, and she took a deep breath and glanced back up.
"Last chance to back out." Mendez rarely gave anyone a choice in the matter, and Linda appreciated him doing it for once. The choice would make her different than the others; she would always be a lone wolf in the Spartans after this night. Although, it wasn't really a choice when she thought about it. She was willing to do whatever she had to when her family was on the line.
Senator Michael Yassur had decided to make taking down the classifications of ONI the pinnacle of his political career. Most people, even senators, would never be taken seriously in such an endeavor, but Yassur had an ace up his sleeve that made the Office of Naval Intelligence balk. He had serious pull in the Admiralty. While ONI could never be totally exposed, the organization was comprised of wheels hidden in wheels, there were certain programs that might be forced to reveal sensitive information if the senator kept pushing. One of the programs in jeopardy was Sections Three's SPARTAN II. If the program ever became public, Dr. Halsey's career would be over. While ONI had it's own version of what was acceptable losses, public opinion would never condone what had been done to the children; to Linda's family.
So now she had to make a choice to protect them, a choice to do something that even to her skewed sense of morality seemed wrong. She had to kill an innocent person. A man with a family of his own, a wife and kids. Linda locked eyes with her Chief and squared her shoulders, exhaling sharply. "I'm ready, sir."
Yassur was visiting Reach for only a brief time, and the security detail on him was nigh perfect. The only hole in the defense, the only place to assassinate him from that couldn't be found was a tiny exhaust vent set high in the wall in the primary conference chamber. No one could possibly fit in the tunnel, let alone have the kind of accuracy necessary at that angle. Not even in her teens yet, Linda was smaller than anyone in the Black OPS, and she had an uncanny knack for making the toughest shots. She was the only one who could do it.
As she climbed through the tunnels she thought about what she was about to do, distancing herself from it. She stopped in the last open area beside a large metal fan and assembled the rifle, hands moving without her conscious control. Linda decided then and there that once she picked up the rifle she was someone else. She was a soldier, a killer. She was emotionless, conscience free. The last piece clicked into place on the rifle and she felt a rush of cold emptiness. She climbed into the last tunnel and shimmied her way down, on her belly, barely able to move in the confined space. She managed to get the gun into position, although her shoulder felt like it was being wrenched out of the socket. She dismissed the pain.
Senator Yassur was deep in conversation with General Packard, and the sniper wondered to herself if the General was "in the know" concerning the pending assassination. She doubted it; his posture and language seemed too relaxed. The Senator seemed a little nervous but he chatted as though nothing was wrong. Linda read his lips; he was talking about the weather. It gave her a chance to take her time and line the shot up. She took a deep breath, and jammed her shoulder a little further out of whack to get her finger in place over the trigger. The breath hovered behind her lips, and she let the moment choose itself. She gently exhaled, and pulled the trigger.
The Senator fell, and she immediately shimmied backwards, pulling the rifle with her. Shouts of alarm and cries for a doctor fell on her deafened ears, and she dropped next to the fan appreciating the loud whirring that buried the screams. She disassembled the rifle and put it back into the box, retracing her path back to where she had entered the ventilation shaft. Once out, she redressed in her nightshirt and repacked everything else, handing the bag to Mendez at the doorway. Something about her frozen gaze seemed to affect the CPO, there seemed to be a flash of what might have been regret in his eyes before it vanished under his self-control.
"It's done." He knew, but she felt the need to say it anyway. Mendez nodded gruffly and escorted her back to the Spartan's bunkroom, and she moved quietly to her bed as the door swung silently shut. Movement to her left caught her eye, and John-117 pushed himself up onto his elbows, yawning.
"You okay, Linda?"
She looked back, wondering if she was. He tilted his head a little, that calm frown a balm on her abraded conscience. John was worth it; her family was worth it. She reached out and put a slender hand on his shoulder, giving a little smile and letting sniper Linda go away till the next time she was needed. She pushed a strand of crimson hair behind her ear and managed a smile.
"I'm fine. Go back to sleep." He nodded and put a hand over hers briefly before laying back down, yawning again. Linda climbed into her bunk and stared at nothing, as if the last hour of her life had never happened. For all her decisions to separate herself from it, she still couldn't fall asleep.
With a heavy sight she picked up where she left off, counting ceiling tiles.
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