Silent Storm: A Master Chief Story Read online

  Innies was an ironic term for the insurrectionists, given that they wanted out of the Unified Earth Government, which had taken full military control over the previous Colonial Authority as the primary organizing body for humanity’s growing interstellar footprint. For much of the 25th century, the Colonial Military Authority had been the policing arm that managed the stability of Earth’s exosolar colonies, but when corruption began to surface two decades before the Covenant arrived, the UEG took a firm hold of the reins and the UNSC initiated full-scale efforts to stem the Insurrection. It was the innies whom John and his fellow Spartans had been created to destroy, and the one positive aspect he saw in the alien invasion was that it might persuade the insurrectionists to forsake their rebellion to stand with the rest of humanity against the Covenant.

  Unfortunately, events on Seoba suggested the insurrectionists were not yet thinking along the same lines.

  When Fred remained silent, John asked, “Fred? Anything to add?”

  “You’re not going to like it.”

  “Try me.”

  Fred sighed into his helmet mic, then said, “You remember when I said Lieutenant Hamm was up to something?”

  “How could I forget?”

  “I hate to brag, but . . .”

  “Really?” John was already beginning to fume. If Fred was right—and he usually was—Hamm had sent Blue Team up the accelerator tube knowing they would be spotted and attacked while in an extremely vulnerable position. “We were the diversion?”

  “Only one way to find out.” Fred knelt against the side of the tube and pressed a rectangle of thermite cord to the wall, then glanced back at Kelly. “You might want to be ready with that SPNKR, in case I’m wrong.”

  “You’re not wrong, but why not?” Kelly knelt behind him and pressed the SPNKR barrels to the rectangle he had outlined. “I’d really like to blow something up right now.”

  “As long as it’s not Lieutenant Hamm,” John said. “I want her for myself.”

  Avery Johnson’s voice sounded over TEAMCOM. “You know I can hear you, right?”

  “Affirmative,” John said.

  John gave Fred a thumbs-up, then looked away as Fred ignited the thermite cord. The interior of the tube flashed white, and a ten-by-twenty-centimeter chunk of steel fluttered out of the wall.

  Kelly peered through the hole, then shifted position so she would be firing down the mountain, then finally lowered the SPNKR.

  “Damn Daggers.” She secured the firing safeties again and backed away from the firing port. “Always in the way.”

  John stooped down and peered out at the mountain. The ice-fog was as thick as a smoke screen, but a couple of hundred meters below he saw plumes of burning fuel boiling out of half a dozen crippled Civets, their shadowy hulks surrounded by flashing coronets as the ammunition inside cooked off. About halfway between the convoy’s wreckage and the Spartans’ position inside the tube, a ghostly line of dark-armored ODSTs was leapfrogging down the slope, pouring rockets and small-arms fire into the convoy wreckage.

  John looked toward the mountaintop. The comm center was not visible from his position, but he could see a rising prowler silhouetted against Biko’s swirling pink disk.

  “I don’t believe it,” he said. “It was a prowler drop. Hamm lied about the availability.”

  “I told you,” Fred said. “She’s an officer.”

  “And ODST,” Kelly said. She secured the SPNKR on her Mjolnir’s weapon mount, then grabbed her assault rifle and turned up the tube. “If we hurry, maybe we can still blow the comm center while they’re busy finishing off the convoy.”

  “Oh, boy,” John said. “The consolation prize.”

  As they ascended the last kilometer to the end of the tube, John ran through all of the different comm channels assigned to Alpha Company and finally understood why Hamm’s deception had slipped past him so completely. The rest of the company was operating on their assigned channels, but First Platoon had switched to the logistics channel. He was beginning to think that the lieutenant might be more of an enemy than the insurrectionists—maybe even the Covenant—but he wasn’t sure what to do about the situation. Running a formal complaint up the chain of command would only lead to Crowther, who was—if anything—an even greater problem.

  Maybe Staff Sergeant Johnson would have a suggestion.

  Unless, of course, he was in on it too.

  A few minutes later, Blue Team emerged from the acceleration tube to find that they would not even be the ones to destroy the comm center. A team of First Platoon Black Daggers was already inside planting charges—supervised by Lieutenant Hamm herself.

  When Hamm saw John, Fred, and Kelly approaching, she stepped away from the building and came over to meet them. John did not salute, and she did not seem surprised.

  “Where’s Blue Four?” Hamm demanded. “She didn’t get—”

  “She’s fine, ma’am,” John said. “We use Linda on long cover.”

  “Glad to hear it.” Hamm’s helmet tipped up and down as she looked Blue Team over, taking them in from head to foot. “And it looks like you three came out unscathed. Well done.”

  “Well done?” John didn’t even try to keep his bitterness out of his voice. “You played me. We were decoys.”

  Hamm braced her hands on a pair of ammo pouches and leaned back, turning her faceplate up to look at him.

  “I needed to get that missile launcher looking in another direction, so Nyeto could do a prowler drop without losing another bat.” Bat being the nickname for a prowler. She reached out and flicked a gloved finger against the abdomen of John’s outer shell. “In these tank suits, I figured you Spartans had a better chance of surviving than anyone else.”

  John was a bit taken aback. He hadn’t really expected her to have a solid reason for the assignment—but having a solid reason was no excuse for deliberately deceiving him.

  “That makes sense,” he said. “But you still lied to me—and that put my people at unnecessary risk.”

  “That’s right, soldier.” Hamm rose on her toes, pushing her faceplate a few centimeters closer to John’s, then thumped his Mjolnir with her finger again. “I guess that’s what happens when you don’t obey orders. It’s one shitshine after another.”

  CHAPTER 11

  * * *

  * * *

  0816 hours, March 19, 2526 (military calendar)

  Assembly Chamber 4L430, Abandoned Habitat, Seoba Ice Quarry

  Moon Seoba, Biko Planetary System, Kolaqoa System

  With portable stand-lights flanking a folding conference table and a UNSC flag hung on rough polycrete-coated walls, the subsurface assembly chamber looked more like the venue of an impromptu court-martial than of an after-action debriefing. John-117 advanced to the front of the room and presented himself to the task force commander, then selected a seat on the respondent’s side of the table, as far as possible from Nelly Hamm. Like all ODST personnel present, she wore plain grays—a fire-retardant working uniform with a four-pocket shirt and cargo pants. On her collar tips, she now sported the double bars of a Marine Corps captain—a field promotion that could only mean Alpha Company’s previous captain had been killed during yesterday’s assault on the quarry dockyards.

  John hated to see that, and not only because Hamm had it in for him. Captain Zelos Cuvier had impressed him as an intelligent, commonsense commander who cared more about getting the job done than protecting his turf. The Spartans had only been integrating with the regular military for a few months, but John had already come to understand how rare that was.

  Once John was seated, Captain Ascot folded her hands on the table and leaned forward, her gaze drifting between John and Captain Hamm. Situated between Dr. Halsey and Colonel Crowther, Ascot wore naval utilities in star-pattern camouflage—a not-so-subtle reminder that she was the task force commander, which meant this was an ONI operation first, UNSC second.

  John hoped it also meant she had a soft spot for Spartans.

 
“I’ll begin by reminding everyone here that this informal debriefing is not a disciplinary action,” she said. “Our purpose is not to assess blame, but merely to determine what went wrong with Ghost Flight’s drop on the dockyards yesterday.”

  “Who says anything went wrong?” Halsey asked. “The dockyards were captured in less than an hour.”

  “And Alpha Company took fifty-two KIAs,” Crowther said. “Including Captain Cuvier and his staff. That’s a thirty-two percent casualty rate. The rest of the battalion took six percent, without losing any captains.”

  “Taking out the comm center was a mission-critical assignment,” Avery Johnson said. He was seated at the end of the table, adjacent to Crowther. “To do it, Alpha Company had to drop blind into a kill zone against an enemy who was expecting us. We’re lucky we didn’t lose seventy-two percent.”

  “The enemy was expecting us?” Halsey said. “How do we know that?”

  “The bunkers,” John said. “That’s not something you can put together on the fly. It takes hours to dig in and camouflage like that.”

  “Doesn’t mean they were expecting us,” Nyeto said. “Just that they were ready when we showed up.”

  “You weren’t in the drop bay when the jump hatches opened, when those Vulcans started firing,” Hamm said. “It sure felt like they were expecting us.”

  “And yet you dismounted anyway,” Crowther said. “Explain that.”

  “Not my idea.” Hamm looked down the table toward John. “Spartan-117 acted on his own.”

  Crowther let his gaze slide toward John. “And how did that happen from the back of the drop bay?”

  “I wasn’t in the back.” John was pretty sure Crowther already knew the answers to his questions, but if a colonel asked, you answered. “When First Platoon started taking casualties, I moved forward to assist.”

  “With the casualties?”

  “With stopping them,” John said. “As the designated fire-support soldier, I carried the platoon’s heavy weapons. Upon reaching the jump hatch, I observed Vulcan fire coming from six camouflaged bunkers. It was clear that Alpha Company would not be able to complete its dismount until those positions were eliminated.”

  “So, naturally, you reported your observation to the platoon commander.” Crowther’s tone was sarcastic. “Because, even after leaving your assigned position, that would have been the proper way to handle a battlefield intelligence report.”

  “Captain Hamm was tending to a casualty,” John said.

  “I’d like to clarify that,” Hamm said. “I was tending a casualty because Spartan-117 had dumped one into my lap. I believe he was trying to keep me busy.”

  “Don’t be silly,” Halsey said. “You can’t possibly know someone else’s motivations.”

  “We can find out,” Ascot said. She looked to John. “Spartan, why did you hand a casualty to your platoon leader?”

  “Because I wanted to assess the situation,” John said. “And to do that, I needed to keep Captain Hamm busy for a minute.”

  Nyeto sighed and pressed his palms to his brow.

  Ascot looked to him. “Is something wrong, Commander Nyeto?”

  “You call this a debriefing?” Nyeto flung a hand toward John. “This kid saved our asses at the dismount, and you’re hanging him out to dry? Are you crazy?”

  “That’s not our intent here,” Crowther said. “We’re trying to determine why Alpha Company’s casualties were so high.”

  “Your casualties were high because you ordered a hot dismount without recon,” Nyeto shot back. “What the hell did you expect?”

  “What I didn’t expect was a petty officer to start freelancing.” Crowther was speaking between clenched teeth now, and he turned his glare directly on John. “His team was carrying most of the heavy weaponry, so when they went, the rest of the company had to follow—and the Black Daggers don’t have titanium-alloy power armor.”

  The anger drained from Nyeto’s face, and even John began to see how he might have forced Alpha Company’s hand by ignoring his platoon commander’s abort order.

  “I was just trying to support the boots on the ground, sir,” John said. “I didn’t expect the rest of Alpha Company to follow.”

  “What did you think we’d do?” Hamm demanded. “Leave you alone down there?”

  “That’s what you were doing,” John said. “Alpha Company already had a dozen troopers down there, being chewed apart by the Vulcans.”

  “And Ghost Flight was getting ready to come around for a missile run,” Ascot said. “Until you decided to do something else, Petty Officer.”

  John did not know how to respond. He had been trained to take the initiative and operate independently, but he was beginning to think that those qualities weren’t valued in the 21st. Worse, it seemed to him that officers like Hamm and Crowther actually considered them liabilities.

  Hoping to find some hint of support—or at least an indication of how he should respond—John looked toward Avery Johnson. But the staff sergeant was deep in thought, his gaze fixed on Nyeto, his brow lowered in contemplation.

  When John made no attempt to defend himself, Nyeto stepped in. “Look, maybe he got excited—”

  “Oh, it wasn’t excitement,” Hamm said. “He knew exactly what he was doing.”

  “And he got the job done,” Nyeto said. “Maybe not the way you would have done it, but cut the kid some slack, okay? I’ll bet you took a few shortcuts when you were that young.”

  Hamm’s eyes narrowed. “I’m twenty-two,” she said. “Just three years older than Spartan-117.”

  Nyeto smirked and started to correct her, then suddenly looked away. Everyone fell silent and watched Nyeto with expectant expressions, and John knew better than to hope the slip had gone unnoticed.

  Crowther asked, “You were going to say something, Commander?”

  “No, it was nothing,” Nyeto said. “I just thought a captain in your outfit would be a little older.”

  “Captain Hamm graduated first in her class at Luna OCS and in ODST school,” Crowther replied. “She’s been a Black Dagger for three years. And she’s the one who salvaged the mess at the dockyards yesterday. Does her promotion meet with your approval now?”

  “Sure thing.” Nyeto caught Hamm’s eye. “I didn’t mean any offense. You just look, uh, mature for twenty-two.”

  Hamm gave him a frosty glare. “No offense taken.” Her voice grew ten degrees cooler as she added, “Sir.”

  “Glad to hear it.” Nyeto looked back toward Crowther. “Now maybe we can talk about what really went wrong with yesterday’s dismount.”

  “I’m dying to hear your thoughts,” Crowther replied. “But since you’ve broached the subject of age . . . your reaction a few moments ago has made me curious. Is there something about Spartan-117 that we should know?”

  Nyeto shrugged. “I don’t really know what you mean.”

  “Commander . . . how old is he really?”

  “I don’t see what John’s age has to do with this debriefing,” Halsey said. “Perhaps we should stick to the subject at hand.”

  “John-117’s judgment is at issue in this discussion,” Ascot said. “And his age certainly has a bearing on that. If he’s not actually nineteen, I’d like to know his true age—and why the DOB in his personnel jacket would have been falsified.”

  “All I can tell you is that the true age of any Spartan is compartmentalized, and classified Top Secret Level One,” Halsey said. “But, I assure you, a few years at the Luna OCS doesn’t compare to John-117’s training. His tactical judgment is beyond reproach.”

  Ascot did not quite roll her eyes. “I need more than the assurances of a proud mother, Dr. Halsey.” She turned to Nyeto. “And I won’t be kept in the dark by a specious top-secret designation. Commander Nyeto, have you been read-in on the Spartans’ ages by a proper authority?”

  “Not exactly.”

  “But you do know John-117’s real age?”

  Nyeto sighed and shot a glanc
e toward John. “Sorry, son.”

  Halsey’s jaw fell. “John, you didn’t tell—”

  “Of course not, ma’am,” John said. “He had a friend who trained against us on Reach. Commander Nyeto worked out our age from there.”

  Ascot’s glare remained fixed on Nyeto. “Is that so?”

  “It was just scuttlebutt,” Nyeto said. “I didn’t realize he was breaching security, or I would have shut him down.”

  “We’ll worry about your friend’s security violations later,” Ascot said. “Just give me the math.”

  Nyeto looked at the tabletop and sighed. “I had a buddy who used to get his unit’s butt rightly kicked when training against a bunch of eight-year-old ‘kidmandos’ on Reach,” he said. “He was bellyaching about it seven years ago, so when you add it up . . . the kidmandos would be about fifteen now.”

  Halsey leaned forward, placing her upper body between Ascot and Nyeto, then asked, “And what makes you think these kidmandos—as you call them—are my Spartans?”

  It was a clever move, John realized, designed to make Nyeto feel shielded from Ascot and reinforce the out she was giving him. From what he had said so far, there was no way he could be certain the children his friend described had grown up to become Spartans.

  But, apparently, Nyeto was not comfortable deceiving his superior. He merely nodded at John, then said, “Spartan-117 has a lot of skills, but lying isn’t one of them. I had him pegged as one of those kidmandos the first time he denied it.”

  “So figuring this out was just an accident?” Avery Johnson asked. He was staring down the length of the table, watching Nyeto with unblinking attention. “Just one of those things that comes up in a conversation?”

  “Yeah.” Nyeto met Johnson’s gaze evenly. “How’d you find out?”

  “Who says I did?” Avery flashed a tight smile that left John wondering what he was missing between the two men. “I’m not even sure I believe you.”

  Nyeto shrugged. “Fine with me,” he said. “I didn’t want to tell anyone their age anyway.”

  “But you did.” Halsey looked around the table, then added, “And it’s an unfortunate disclosure that can’t leave this room.”