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Killing Machine
Posted By: WONDERLIBERTARIAN<wonderlibertarian@yahoo.com>
Date: 30 November 2004, 3:49 PM
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"Luke 216."
The box calls my name, if that's even still my name, into my cell. I pull myself from my contemplations and look into the cold and gleaming helmet I call my own; but who's to say it is mine as I live my very life in bondage.
I begin to slip into the armor, the box is watching me, the scattered burn marks from the last time I had smuggled a weapon in glaring with far more ire than even the glaring blue eye.
It can tell that I'm taking my time, that I'm none too eager.
"Luke 216."
I smile at it as I slip the helmet on; I know how far I can push it. In a few moments the electric flames will flicker through my cell. I have my scars to remind me.
The portal is staring at me with awe.
"Te morituri salutamus," I utter to it, I imagine that it's very impressed.
The glaring blue eye and the blackened metal box are not.
"Luke 216."
I step forward.
-
Sometimes I wonder about my family during the time between the battles. I never remember anything of them. I was six when I was taken from them and any memories I might have held have been long ago trained out of me. Spartans need nothing of families, not even memories.
I like to think that we lived on Earth. I like to think that my family was too poor and burdened to become inner colonials, and too devoted to the planet to become outer colonials. I like to think of us as poor and proud, these are the thoughts that keep me alive as I wait for the next battle.
My ice blue eyes are open and staring up at the ceiling as I lay sprawled across the small bed, there isn't anyone else around, and nothing to do but exercise in the small and sturdy gym or to think about my forgotten past in my tiny box of a room. I wait until the next battle as I sit here, the blast holes in the impenetrable walls my only companions.
I wonder about my family's names. I wonder about my own name. Was I always Luke? Did my father, his poor eyes beaming down affectionately upon his infant son, think the name Luke? Did my mother? 216 was the name that the UNSC gave me, but to replace what? What did my father call himself?
I frown as I sit alone in my cell, stripped of family and name to find them replaced with rank and honor, only in turn to be stripped of rank and honor.
All that is left is the metal heart of the armor.
"Luke 216."
The box is calling me again.
The portal flashes to life, its green light bathing my cell. It's very impressed.
"Te morituri salutamus."
-
I like to think that I'm good at what I do. Twin Machine Guns hang from my hands as I march across the top of the base, the rifle is sitting on the other side.
I'm not an expert sniper, but no one else sees the need to protect the flag. Perhaps they've never been on the loosing side. Perhaps they have, and as such are so eager to grab the other flag. I don't know what they're thinking. The last fellow that the other team had sent had thought that with only one defender our base would be easy to take.
I like to think that I'm good at what I do.
I pick up the sniper rifle.
It's just like UNSC would have given me, a perfect replica remade for these games, this entertainment. I cannot imagine there being any point to these battles but as entertainment for some great watcher, or some many spectators. I like to think that they're cheering for me, that they like to watch me while I kill my fellow humans and former comrades. I like to think so.
A Warthog is hopping gracelessly over the hills between the bases. I have to smile. This will give me every opportunity to impress the spectators; maybe if I impress them they'll free me. These are the thoughts that keep me alive as I prepare to shoot my fellow humans and former comrades.
I should go for the gunner first; the other two would never know what had hit them.
The rifle snaps a shot off and the Warthog shudders to a stop, the driver is always more entertaining of a target, the gunner begins to fire wildly at me. Another snap and he stops. The other man is running from the undamaged, blood-soaked Jeep, he looks frightened.
I was frightened once, the first time if only for a moment, before my combat training had finally taken command. A Spartan II should never be afraid. My teeth grind together. A Spartan II should never run away.
The sniper rifle snaps one last time.
-
Sometimes I wonder about the race I was stolen from. We had been at war with the Covenant and we had been loosing when I was stolen from the siege at Paris IV.
It's a hard thing to remember, my disappearance, I remember the battle clearly, but as soon as I disappeared I can't remember a thing until my first battle here.
I remember the Covie bastards, every last one of them leaping with religious fervor to sacrifice themselves at the hands of fate. I remember the gunshots in the streets of Paris IV before we had to retreat from the city proper. I wonder if we won. I like to think that we had, that we finally beat them in the skies too, and I hope that maybe we won and stopped them for once. Maybe there's been a victory somehow that's turned the tide, maybe everything's changed.
I can't know the facts; I can only dream the dreams.
"Luke 216."
The light glows with almost a mystic aura, I roll over and look at the armor and the even more mystical green light of my portal.
"Te morituri salutamus."
-
Te morituri salutamus.
We who are about to die, salute you.
Deja had tutored the willing in Latin in the old days, so long ago. The Romans had fascinated me, their farmer's work ethic, their mix of the soldier and the citizen, the empire that they had built with such shoddy tools. The tools, the pitiful machines, could never have won such an Empire; it was something in the hearts of the people.
They had fallen from their noble beginnings though, time had worn away against them just as the Covenant now cut away at humanity. They had become fascinated with the blood of the arenas and in the ancient days their gladiators had spoken to Emperors in such words as I now spoke to the glowing portal each time as I prepared to kill my fellow humans and former comrades.
Te morituri salutamus.
The field is different; the spectators would watch me in another arena than the killing canyon, the gulch of blood. The ruins of something were in front of the base that I suddenly appear in. The volcanoes in the distance shot their lava deep into the sky and the ash coats my helmet's visor.
There are turrets arranged in the base, easy targets for the attackers to shoot at. They will be coming with the bomb soon.
This is the deadliest game of all; even if they plant the bomb they would probably not survive the explosion. If they do not plant it they would be tortured afterwards as is the lot of the defeated. There will be blood spilled on these fields.
A man, a fellow Spartan clad in blue armor much like my own stands at the front of the base, waving his arms.
"We need not fight, friends, we can escape if we only work together. There is a way out of here, I promise, somewheea..." his last word is cut off by a sudden choking that fills the intercom. He is being suffocated by the spectators, he is trying to kill their show and he will have to die. I've seen it happen a thousand times and each time it grows more tempting to join the futile fight of the suffocating man.
He falls to his knees.
The others, in their shiny red armor approach, I can hear their boots thudding against the ground in the cave behind us.
My grenade is loosed towards the hole that they will come out of and I pick up another gun.
I like to think that I'm good at what I do.
The bullets hammer themselves against the back of the twin guns just to force themselves to plummet forwards, and I can see them dancing persistently against the armor of the others. They are still stunned from the grenade and another gun joins my own. The others fall quickly, more executed traitors than fallen heroes.
I glance to the other fellow.
"Nice work there."
He frowns and I can hear it though his mask betrays no expression, "The killing of my fellow Spartans?"
"They were probably just clones."
He tips his helmeted head to the side in the silence that fills the vast moment, "And?"
I frown myself, there is little to be said.
The other man's arm twitches upwards, as he gasps for one final burst of air.
"At least it was a good show for the spectators."
"Spectators?"
"The way I figure it, there have to be spectators."
"My friend, there aren't any spectators."
"How do you know that?"
"My friend, we are in hell, not in some romanticized arena for gladiators."
"How do you figure that?"
"It's too perfectly built to be anything but Hell. Look at that guy," he pointed at the twitching body, "Who but the devil would know to clip him to send the example?"
My frown deepens.
Who but the devil? Could this be Hell?
The corner of my eye catches the green light of my portal and I turn from this man, this demon, and I hurl myself back into the cell of my illusions.
-
If this were hell, how could they die? I ask myself, proud of the conquest that my mind has made of the undefended allegation. If this is hell then where are the demons? If this is hell then why do they leave me unmolested in my room so frequently? I am confident that I am not in hell, but this is some manner of spectacle, some sort of show and it is to me to entertain and to, perhaps, gain my freedoms.
I look to the armor and it glares back at me, its gloves soiled with the blood of a thousand of my former comrades and fellow humans. Its accusing visor sears deep into my soul and I look away for a moment, breaking the spell, the delusion.
I try to look back but my eyes won't, they evade it with all of their might.
I am a Spartan, fear is below me.
My eyes cannot bear on the armor.
What is a Spartan?
A Spartan is a soldier, a super soldier, a commanding presence and a fearful figure.
Is that a Spartan?
I know that there must be something more.
A Spartan is a defender of humanity.
Am I a Spartan?
A Spartan is a defender of humanity.
Am I a Spartan?
My eyes cannot bear to glance even for a moment on the blood-soaked blue armor.
"Luke 216."
The machine calls me by my Spartan name, as though I were a Spartan.
Am I a Spartan?
My hands are in front of my face, I realize, and I'm writhing wildly in my bed, the crumpled sheets are scattered across the floor.
The portal is glowing on the far side of the room.
The armor is glaring at me, I can feel its glance burning into me.
I cannot bring my eyes to look on it.
A Spartan is a defender of humanity.
"Luke 216."
I begin to scream even before the electric blue current slips out of the walls, searing my flesh.
-
We all come to the battlefield eventually, no matter how charred our flesh, no matter how blurred our vision, how red our eyes. Everyone comes to a battlefield eventually.
I'm in the canyon again at least, and between these sacred cliffs there are places where I can hide from my fellow combatants if only for a moment.
The battle rifle lies next to me as I sit in the cave, suited in my sinister armor.
I am afraid, and that's all that keeps me alive. I am afraid to stand up and to die, regardless how merciful a death it would be. I am afraid that there is a crowd, that there are spectators, those who watch me and who care. Those who might see me freed from this endless slavery.
There's a magnum pressed against my helmet.
For a moment I wonder if I should just let it end, and give this bastard another notch on his armor.
For only a moment.
The battle rifle is in my hand faster than he expected, and his knee is knocked far out of joint as I stand up. He totters, leaning against the wall with his leg at a bizarre angle.
The magnum spits wildly in his hand, he's panicking. The battle rifle launches its bullets perfectly into his skull, leaving red smears across the back of the cave. The broken body collapses to the floor.
I am not a Spartan, a Spartan is a human, with a heart and with a soul. I am a soulless machine, a machine painfully precise in murder.
I am a killing machine. A Spartan is a human skilled at killing.
I step out of the cave, the body left, meaningless, behind me.
-
Sometimes I worry about my mother. I hardly knew her, she vanished so quickly into the forest of memory and is as much fantasy as anything else now, but I still worry for her. How did she feel when I was taken? Does she ever worry about me? Is she worried about me now, has she forgotten me?
What did she call me back in the innocent days when there was no Covenant and with the first Spartans barely out of training? Was I Luke?
What would she think to see me now?
To see the barely human shell of her son, burned for his transgressions and too afraid to commit himself to death, to see the scattered remains of a human and to see only the killing machine left in its place, to see this, would it bring a tear to her eye?
I like to think that it would.
I can only hope, for her sake, that my mother would be ashamed of me.
The armor, soaked in the blood of fellow humans and former comrades, glares at me from across the room.
"Luke 216."
The machine and I pretend that that's my name.
I know what I must do.
I reach for the armor, my eyes catching the green glow of my portal.
-
It is in the canyon again, which is fine with me, we've all seen men die in the canyon.
I stand atop the base, my team is barely assembled to prepare the attack.
"My friends and fellow humans, I have a dream of peace."
More words sputter out of my mouth, I know that the others will be angry with me as I sign my own death warrant, they will be a man down on the reds.
"Te morituri salutamus," I shout to my teammates.
I feel the embrace to my neck, and I like to think that I smile as it chokes me.
I like to think so.
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