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Probably No Choice, Part II
Posted By: Jon M... a.k.a The Flu<onesider@hotmail.com>
Date: 27 February 2004, 7:43 AM
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Chapter One: Probably No choice, Part II
From M-L5 there are 335 trillion, trillion more stars that can be seen with the naked eye than from the darkest mountain top on Earth. That's the kind of thing they tell kindergarteners on the primary school science channels. Adam 037 had never heard this before. He had not been raised like a normal child. He had not been a normal child. As the orbital shuttle he was in approached the dock at M-L5, he closed his eyes and tried to remember his childhood.
First he saw numbers: TWO-FOUR-SIX-EIGHT-TEN-TWELVE written in black, block, military letters across the cover of a white LCD book. Below these in a much larger text was a single, centered number - TWO -
"What do you see?" Said a voice out of his distant dreams.
The pages of the book began to scroll.
"Let's play What Comes Next," urged a woman's voice: soft, strong and imperative. "Mother?" He thought.
He saw a picture of a tank, a Scorpion M708A. In it was a driver. His red battle suit shone through the baked alloy cage that never protected him as well as it should. The next three pictures showed the tank on a road; then coming to a hill; then cresting the hill. As the tank crested the hill, the rangefinder turned red and the digi-dial clicked up 343 meters. The triangular crosshairs were fixed on an older model warthog with two marines in it. Their armor was blue.
"What comes next?" The soft, strong voice said again.
A giggle echoed through his head as he saw a chubby little boy's hand reach toward the book's flat panel page. The fingers danced lightly over the different possible endings. There was one where the warthog drove away and one where the warthog's blue marines were replaced with red. Finally the fingers landed. They tapped deliberately on a picture of the warthog and its two blue marines sailing through the air in a cloud of smoke and fire. The contrail of the 90mm shell was rendered faint on the LCD page, but the little fingers traced in perfectly.
"BOOM!" Said a two year old's voice, and he laughed as his mother said, "Good boy."
* * * *
One kilometer up the gravity well and half a spin around the black 10 km cylinder that was M-L5, Captain Dorling watched the orbital shuttle creep slowly into the docking bay. There was a soft beep on his com.
"He's on station, sir"
"Yes Lieutenant, thank you. Could you please activate the Train the Trainer construct for me?"
There was a click and a hum behind him. If there had been a slight, "tink, tink, tink," he would have thought a grenade had just landed in his office. Two people appeared beside him. They both said good morning, and the woman's face flickered. For some reason, the hologram construct of Dr. Halsey always flickered a little. CPO Mendez' image was as solid as if he could reach out and pick up the Captain's cup of coffee.
Captain Dorling looked at the constructs and tried to think of how to word his question. Dealing with the constructs was not tricky. They could understand human speech as easy as any advanced AI, but getting them to answer in the way that Dr. Halsey and CPO Mendez would, would take more exact wording. He needed to speak to the real articles, but they were...busy...he had been told by the UNSC top brass
He was as deliberate as he could be. "What I really need to know is, can this subject be re-oriented in a way that makes the best of his genetics and his abilities and yet still have him operate as the soldier we need?"
Dr. Halsey flickered, a sure sign that she was about to speak. "As you know Captain, he's not really SPARTAN. He was part of a pre-test of genetic abilities that came before the SPARTAN I program. He is incredibly strong, and remarkably intelligent, but his group was never oriented in the same way that the SPARTAN's were."
CPO Mendez cut in. "He had the 2-4-6-8-10-12 training didn't he?" They all agreed that he had. This was the training program that SPARTAN children went through. Each number stood for the primary program that a young SPARTAN underwent during the years of his life corresponding with the number. At age two, they began cognitive and motor training. By age four they were starting martial arts and strength training. Age six began the more intensive focus on weapons and tactics. Ground vehicles were mastered from eight years of age, and air vehicles were added at 10. By the time they were 12, they were ready for military AI and computer hack training. The routine had been part of Mendez' brain-child and Adam 037 had been part of the first group to test it out before SPARTAN I could begin in earnest.
"That training is essential," agreed Dr. Halsey, "but from what I see in his file, he dropped the program at age 19. He was transferred to ONI research at Bethesda Hospital, Earth, Maryland and trained as a physician. That was over ten years ago. From what I can access, there is no good reason other than it says, 'it was discovered that he had certain abilities that were incompatible with further military training."
"The healing." Said Mendez.
Captain Dorling had never known what to make of the claims that there was a Pre-SPARTAN test soldier who could heal with his hands. Nobody did. 26th century science explained it as a focused alteration of body energy brought about by extreme states of mental concentration. It was thought that differences in Adam 037's brain made him better able to channel his own body's energy, but the fact of the matter was, that it did work, and just as the Military now secretly used Remote Viewers to track Covenant fleet movements, Adam was strongly encouraged by UNSC to explore the limits of this unusual talent. Perhaps encouraged was the wrong word. They owned him. As they used to joke in the bunks of training barracks, "He probably had no choice," meaning he was ordered to do it.
"If you don't mind my asking sir," Dr. Halsey's construct spoke up, "Why did you give the order to re-orient him at all?"
It was a reasonable question. "We have no choice. The Covenant are flattening every colony we have, and our only chance to keep them from getting to Earth is to engage them in deep space with everything we've got."
The constructs appeared to look at each other for a moment, although that was probably impossible.
"He can be trained." Dr. Halsey insisted. "It's going to require some surgical procedures to upgrade his neural link, but I don't think his body structure needs any upgrading. He's actually as strong, or stronger than a battle ready II."
Mendez lamented, "He'll never have the same reflexes or endurance as a SPARTAN II."
"He won't have to." The Captain explained. "His scheduled mission won't require that."
* * * *
There were thirteen enemy forces camped across a river, over a hill and behind a concrete bunker so strong that a tank shell could not crack it. They had several heavy weapons, and were going to hold their positions to the death. The sun was beginning to creep down past 20 degrees to the horizon. It would be dark soon. They could hear the hawking chatter of the parrot birds that called this alien jungle their home. Adam 037's team had three members left, but their orders were clear. Eliminate the enemy encampment. Morning would be too late, because enemy reinforcements were on the way.
The EC was dead north, zero zero degrees. The three of them set out in the opposite direction to hit a favorable hill that could be hit if they bore 179 degrees for half a kilometer. One had a sniper rifle with no backup magazine. Four shots, but he was the best sniper on the team. The second had a rocket launcher. Their only heavy weapon, but he could reload only once. They had used up all the other rockets defending an assault earlier that afternoon. Adam had his pistol and AR, but he had two grenades. The others only had one each.
There was a hissing sound off to their left. The twilight lit up like a beacon flash, and a green splash of plasma slammed into the sniper's boot. They could see the receding heat from the overloaded plasma pistols contacts just long enough to make out a small figure rolling behind a tree 70 meters away. Adam's team dove to the ground, but the sniper hopped up one foot and spun his rifle up to his shoulder. Then just as fast, he knelt and leaned way, way right, and, "CRACK!" The echo screamed through the jungle and was instantly muffled by the soft, misty rainforest.
"Twelve. We all counted." Adam thought. "Only twelve left, but now they knew we were on the move."
Too late.... was the next thought, as the all too familiar, "tink, tink, tink," of a grenade hit from the right. Like grains of pepper in a cup that someone dropped soap (explosive soap) into... they dashed in three different directions away from the bobbing, hissing little sphere. It detonated with a thunderous chunking sound and the earth seemed to shake around them. Sensors went off in their battle armor, and on-line health monitors dipped a few clicks for everyone.
The rocket launcher coughed twice. Silent flaming trails hurtled themselves toward two different enemy groups about ten meters apart and 30 meters away. All Adam could hear was the click, clack, clunk of his team-mate reloading the rocket launcher. But what he saw was quite different
Click.....two bodies flew like pieces a melon that had been hit by a huge hammer. One landed in a tree. The other disappeared behind a small hill.
Clack..... three other bodies twirled in the air as though caught in a small hurricane. The one that was furthest from the blast landed on its feet and brought its weapon up to fire. Shots began to pepper out of the gun, but Adam had thrown one of his grenades by instinct. It hit right behind the surviving gunner. His body hurled toward them but thudded down just out of arms reach. His rifle actually bounced forward and hit Adam in the leg.
Clunk....the rocket launcher was reloaded and ready to go. There were seven left.
Dreams have a way of distorting time and Adam next remembered cresting the hill to the right of the Enemy Camp to find it eerily deserted.
They were wrong. As they crept into the bunker, suddenly from all sides the enemy rushed in. The sound of rifle fire was deafening. Red hot ricochets clanged all around the inside of the reinforced concrete box. The sniper rifle went off behind Adam three times. The Rocket launcher fired out of his line of vision, to his left, and the blast knocked him into the opposite wall. His sensors were screaming so loud it hurt his ears. He pulled a grenade and threw it toward the heaviest concentration of muzzle blasts.
He saw the grenade drift through the air toward the raging storm of assault rifle fire. He heard it hit the ground. There was a click and a crackle like the sound right before a lightning bolt hits you. Then all went black and silent. When he was able to crack one eye open he saw the face of a marine only inches from his. Blood trickled down from behind his helmet cam's eye piece. Adam's own eye followed the trickle across the marine's nose, down his chin and to the top of his armor's chest plate. There was a bone poking out from behind the metal plate. It looked oddly crooked, and Adam felt the overwhelming urge to push it back into place.
He heard a soft hum as he stretched his hand out. Slowly it crossed the gap between him and the bleeding, broken marine. Ten centimeters to go....five...one. He could sense the marines skin before he made contact, and he could feel heat flow out of his own hand toward the marine's body. Then just as the tip of his middle and ring fingers made contact...the marine screamed and it woke Adam up.
Adam had been dreaming about training. All those years ago. He guessed that was tactical training and reckoned that the exercise he had remembered happened when he was 11 years old. That felt right.
What didn't feel right was the sound of his boots on the shuttle bay tarmac as he stepped out of the shuttle. Shuttle tarmac was supposed to be harder than this, but maybe a lot of things had changed in ten years.
Ten years. Indeed a lot of things had changed, but one of the things that hadn't changed was how a corporal you didn't know always appeared out of nowhere and said something like, "The Captain wants to see you, Chief."
Chief they were calling him now? "Well show the way Corporal. Let's see what the Captain has to say," Was all Adam could reply.
All the feelings were coming back. He could smell battle as though he had walked out of UNSC training ten minutes ago and not ten years. "All I can say I better not like what he has to say," Adam thought to himself, but as he already knew, he probably had no choice.
* * * *
Author's note. Sorry for this being a continuation of chapter one. This is a ship that I ain't always steering, if you know what I mean. Thanks again for reading and stay tuned.
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