by Matt Forbeck
This was nothing like that. The exact opposite, in fact.
Mickey didn’t give me any space. To be fair, neither did I.
We pounded the hell out of each other.
Romeo later told me that it sounded like thunder rolling down the slope. If that’s so, both of us kept bringing the lightning.
Mickey had been a brawler back in school, mostly fighting people who gave him a hard time about his parents. After he enlisted, the UNSC had trained him to be a far better fighter than that, with much better weaponry, and I’d watched him develop into one hell of a trooper.
In a fistfight, though—struggling for his life with someone he’d considered a friend for years—he fell back on those old-school habits. They mostly involved hitting as hard and fast as he could, hoping to knock the wind out of me or just scare me enough that I backed off.
I’d seen Mickey spar, and he made the same mistakes in the ring, too, no matter how many times I’d try to coach him out of it. He came at me hard and fast, and I saw I could finally teach him the lesson he’d been begging for. I did what he least expected: I covered up, braced myself, and let him hit me.
When his first punch landed, I thought maybe I’d made a mistake. My right to his jaw had loosened what little grip he had on his temper, and he fueled his biceps with that rage.
He aimed for my cracked faceplate and hit me with a sledgehammer cross that I caught on my shoulder instead. I let it knock me backward, but kept my footing.
He came at me again and again and again, trying to slug me in the faceplate, each blow like a shotgun blast at point-blank range, but I kept blocking him with my shoulder.
My shields did their best to protect me, but they could only handle so much. When they finally gave out, I felt the plating there start to crack, and I realized that he wasn’t going to tire himself out before he pounded his way straight through my armor.
When he threw his next blow, I leaned to the left and dodged, and he overbalanced himself. I grabbed him by his right shoulder and hauled him over my leg, throwing him face-first into the ground.
He skidded down the slope, trying to find purchase with the heels of his hands. I dove after him and landed on his back. Then I grabbed the back of his helmet and began to slam his faceplate into the rock-strewn dirt until it cracked open like a rotten egg.
It took forever, but my own anger lent me strength. Eventually his shields gave, and the faceplate—which was weaker than the armor on my shoulder—shattered.
Mickey managed to get one arm under himself and shoved upward hard enough to spin around onto his back. I stayed on top of him, straddling him, slamming him with my fists.
I kept hammering at his faceplate. I could see his eye staring at me through the hole I’d made in its silvered surface, wide with fury and terror.
I cocked back my right fist for a devastating blow, but as it came down, he grabbed my forearm and stopped it. I tried the same with my left, and he blocked me the same way.
“Gunny!” he said. “Wait!”
I don’t think he really expected me to—and I didn’t.
I couldn’t.
He’d already spoiled every bit of trust he’d ever earned from me. He’d thrown it all away to join up with the Front. He’d spat not only on the ODST and the SPARTAN program, but on our friendship.
On our brotherhood.
This was the only shot Romeo and I had for getting out of this alive—much less completing our mission—and I wasn’t about to throw it away by hesitating to take down another human being. Not even a former pal.
Not the way he’d let the Rookie die.
While Mickey held my wrists, I spread my arms apart and dove forward, smashing the forehead of my helmet into his faceplate, shattering it.
I didn’t feel his nose give way—my helmet protected me from that—but his arms went limp. When I drew back, I saw blood streaming out of his face, the fight gone out of him.
I looked down at him for a moment. I wasn’t sure if he was shamming or maybe I’d killed him. With the adrenaline pumping through me, though, I was ready to go at him again if he made another wrong move.
That’s when Dr. Schein shot me in the back.
My armor slowed down the bullet, but the impact knocked me down the slope. It hurt like hell, as if someone had shoved a red-hot hook right through my lower back.
If I hadn’t been in the middle of a fistfight with Mickey, my armor’s shielding might have deflected the shot. As it was, I had nothing but the armor plating itself between me and the bullet, and that proved not to be enough.
Fortunately, my armor hadn’t stopped working. It automatically sealed the hole the bullet had made, keeping me from bleeding out, and injected me with a flood of biofoam, which brought the agony down from blinding to almost tolerable.
By the time I could breathe again, I flopped over on my back and found Schein stalking toward me down the slope, his rifle aimed at my head. I glanced farther downslope and saw Romeo having his way with the rest of the rebels. They’d scattered before him like rats trying to escape a hungry lion. The only chance they had was to run, but he was so much faster. It was no contest.
Still, they’d keep him too busy to help me until it was far too late.
“You sons of bitches!” Schein said as he drew closer. “We tried to do this as peaceably as possible, but you couldn’t help but ruin it. We didn’t even get you into the camp!”
“Best laid plans,” I said with a groan. “I didn’t think one of my own teammates would betray me today either.”
“Just stay right where you are!” he said. “Don’t you dare try anything else!”
This guy had me dead to rights, and I didn’t doubt he’d kill me once he realized that Romeo was destroying the rest of his squad. In a one-on-one fight against any Spartan alive, none of them would walk away.
Given my state then, I might have been the one exception to that rule.
He came to a halt about five meters away. He’d seen what I’d done to Mickey, and he wasn’t about to give me an opportunity to do the same to him. “I’m telling you, do not move!”
I froze, but I kept glancing around in my helmet. If I could have found a rock nearby, I’d have chucked it at Schein like Romeo had at his own attackers.
Just my luck that I had to land in the one spot on the entire damn slope that didn’t have any at hand.
“I should just shoot you right now,” Schein said.
“Can I at least take off my helmet?” I said, wheezing as hard as I could.
“What?” He’d heard my words, but they didn’t make any sense to him.
“Lungs filling up. Can’t breathe,” I said, hacking.
He frowned as he considered it. I don’t think he knew for sure at that point if he wanted me alive or dead.
Maybe the fact he was a doctor—someone supposedly dedicated to saving lives rather than taking them—helped him make up his mind.
“Fine,” he said with a nod. “Do it. But don’t try anything funny.”
He didn’t lower his gun. I fumbled with the catch on my helmet. I failed.
“Hurry up!” He glanced down the slope at Romeo tearing through his troops. The entire plan had apparently hung on Mickey’s betrayal, and with him down, Schein could see it all falling apart.
I gave my helmet another shot, and this time it came free. I pulled it off and barely caught it with one hand before it went tumbling down in Romeo’s direction.
I gasped for air, but it didn’t help me much. The problem wasn’t really with the helmet anyhow, but with the man pointing a gun at me.
More gunshots rang out below, and Schein scowled in their direction. He couldn’t decide if he should shoot me in the head and then go down to help out his troops or not. He grimaced and stabbed the barrel of his rifle at me and then took a step toward me.
“Get up,” he said. “I’m not done with you yet.”
I shoved myself up into a sitting position like an old man on a ventilator.
“Spartan Agu!” Schein called down the slope. “I have your sergeant! Lay down that gun, or I’ll shoot him in the head!”
“So that’s how it is,” I said. “Back to the same old threats?”
He ignored me. “Spartan Agu!”
Romeo stood up from behind a boulder downslope. “What? Can’t you see I’m busy with these idiots?”
“You bastard!” Schein gaped at Romeo’s brazen violence.
I’d been holding my helmet behind me by the edge near the chin. When the barrel of Schein’s gun wavered from me, I brought my arm around in a sweeping arc and hurled that tin can at him like it was a harpoon.
It caught him right in the chest and knocked him over on his back. I ignored the pain lancing through my side with every movement and flung myself at him.
He brought his rifle up to blast me away, but I was already inside the barrel’s reach. All he could do was smash the side of it against me.
I sat on his chest and snatched the weapon away from him. It was too long for me to turn it on him, so I used the shoulder stock to pound him in the face instead.
His cheap, stolen armor had nothing on Mickey’s or mine. I cracked his helmet in half with a single blow, and the force of it knocked him cold.
I slowly stood and surveyed the situation. Mickey and Dr. Schein were down, and armored rebel bodies littered the slope below me. Down in the bottom of the valley, I saw additional personnel scrambling around, looking for a way to escape—and probably to take Vergil with them.
Romeo waved at me. I put on my helmet, and I could hear him over the comm again.
“You all right?”
“Schein just got it worse,” I said, “but I’m not good. Took a high-caliber round in my left side.”
“You can still walk?”
“Hell, I can still fight. Just maybe not for too long. Let’s go get Vergil before these clowns figure out a way to fly off with him.”
“What about Mickey?”
He had a point. I hadn’t killed Mickey, but maybe leaving him alive up there on the slope while we went down to rescue the Huragok wasn’t such a good idea. My suit had kept me going, and I knew his would be working overtime to get him up and about as soon as it could, too.
I frowned and then nodded down at the rebel camp. “You think you can handle them on your own?”
“Be simpler to put a bullet in his head.”
“Just answer the question.”
Romeo nodded. “I think they put about everything they had into catching us.”
I started trudging back up the slope. “That turns out to not be true, you give me a shout.”
“I’m on it,” he said as he charged off in the other direction.
I collected Schein’s rifle as I worked my way up toward Mickey. He was still out when I got there.
I checked him for any holdout weapons and removed a combat knife and a pistol from his armor. I doubted he had any other ordnance on him—but then I’d figured him to be a good teammate up until that point, too, so I checked him over a second time.
I found another knife, a little T-handled thing meant to be held in your fist as you punched your foe. The kind you used to stab someone in the back.
I threw the damn thing as far as I could.
Then I trudged a bit farther up the slope, sat down on the most comfortable rock I could find, and laid Schein’s gun across my lap. From there, I watched Romeo tear through the camp, hunting for trouble.
Every now and then, I’d glance down at Mickey and have to restrain myself from pointing the rifle in his direction and perforating him. I didn’t know how I was going to explain this to Commander Musa or Jun. Or even Veronica.
Goddammit. I’d known Mickey for years. We’d helped save humanity together. I thought I could have relied on him for anything. How could he do this?
Yet maybe that’s what blinded me to his treachery. I hadn’t entertained even the possibility that he might go rogue like that and betray us all. It still seemed inconceivable.
Maybe that’s why I didn’t kill him. I wanted to see him go through a court-martial. I wanted to see him try to explain himself. I wanted to watch him as the prosecutor tore through his lies.
And I wanted him to suffer for it for a long, goddamn time.
“You’re looking good from up here,” I told Romeo over the comm in my armor’s collar. I spotted a small squad of five rebels heading his way. “You got a few wannabe heroes coming your way on your ten o’clock.”
He didn’t reply. He just did his job. Much as Romeo pissed me off sometimes, when it came to getting the work done, there weren’t many better.
The rebels weren’t outfitted even as well as the ones Romeo had torn through up here on the slope. They wore generic black armor that looked more like it belonged on a police officer than a soldier. It didn’t stand up well to Romeo’s bullets.
Their return fire never even got past his shields.
From there, Romeo moved into a one-story building that looked like a barracks. I didn’t see anyone else enter or leave the place. The walls and ceiling muffled the sound of gunfire from within, but I spotted plenty of muzzle flashes inside, flickering against the windows like strobe lights.
No one else rushed the place. I didn’t see anyone running for cover or heading toward a transport to get the hell out of there, which would have been the smart thing to do.
I suppose I shouldn’t have expected to see those kinds of smarts in the rebels though.
When Romeo finished in the barracks, he emerged from the other side. From there, he moved into the hangar where I’d spotted Vergil, and I heard a whoop of triumph over the comm.
“Our old gasbag’s here, Gunny, and he’s got company.”
“The welcome kind?” I hadn’t heard any shooting inside there yet.
“She says her name’s Sadie Endesha.”
As down as I was about Mickey, I couldn’t help but smile at that.
“Give her a great big Spartan welcome from me.”
“Will do,” he said, laughing like a schoolboy.
“I don’t see a whole lot of other activity down there at the moment,” I said. “Wrap up that reunion fast, and make sure our friends are secure.”
“Already on it.”
I heard a groan from Mickey’s direction, just downslope from me.
“Then clear the rest of the buildings and call for a ride home. I got something to take care of up here.”
“Roger that.”
I waited for Mickey to sit up, facing away from me. He stared down at the bodies scattered along the slope below him and then focused his gaze on the base beyond. “Shit.”
For a long moment, I thought he’d gotten stuck on gaping at how sideways his plans for the day had gone. Then I spotted his shoulders shaking. You need to sob pretty hard for that to show through a Mjolnir suit.
I cleared my throat.
Mickey jumped like I’d jabbed him in the spine. He spun around onto his hands and knees and goggled up at me with red, puffy eyes. His tears had washed tracks through the blood on his face.
“Just shoot me, Gunny,” he said quietly. “Please.”
I can’t tell you how much that tempted me. “I’ve given that a lot of thought while I’ve been sitting here. More than I probably should have.”
I pointed Schein’s rifle at him. He gazed right into its monstrous barrel and held his breath.
When I didn’t pull the trigger and put him out of his misery, he turned his attention back to me. “So what are you waiting for?”
“I’m not going to do it,” I said. “I can’t just execute you. We’ve been through far too much together.”
The way he said it sent a chill straight through me. This wasn’t something he’d done in the heat of a moment. He’d decided to betray his government, the Spartans, and his teammates, and then he’d set out to do so with all due deliberation.
“That you did, and you’re going to have to face justice for it.”
“And you think I’m going to survive that?”
“That’s not up to me.”
He blinked the tears out of his eyes. “You think you’re showing me mercy, but you’re not. It’s the opposite of that.”
I glared down at him. “I’m good with that either way.”
If he really wanted me to shoot him, all he had to do was attack me again. My sympathy for him would only go so far.
I could see him mulling it over. In the end, though, he was too broken up inside to give it a go. It had taken him everything he had to betray us, and when it all went wrong, he had nothing left.
Instead of rising up at me, he sat back down.
We were still like that when the transport came scudding in over the ridge to collect us.
EIGHTEEN
* * *
You did the right thing, Veronica told me when I finally got ahold of her by viewscreen. I let her say it to me over and over, and I kept hoping that eventually I’d believe it.
To this day, I still don’t know. There are so many times when I wish I could go back and put a bullet between Mickey’s ears. Or beat his skull to a pulp. Or strangle him until I saw the light go out of his eyes.
And yet I’m grateful that Mickey didn’t force my hand.
I’ve killed lots of people—Covenant and humans alike—but always as part of my job. Mickey’s the first person I ever wanted to kill with every goddamn fiber, right down to my Mjolnir-clad toes.
Not to stop him from hurting someone, or to keep him from sounding an alarm, or to further any plan or cause.
I mean, I’ve killed people those ways as part of my job. To defend humanity and serve the greater good.
