The warm summer had faded, and so too had the autumn’s leaves. Now there was only the cold snow of the winter of 2523, and I was stuck, staring at the white-covered landscape that represented the graveyard of all my decisions. A famous UNSC officer had remarked that he found the frozen tundra to be a far more inhospitable and vast sight than the depths of space. I couldn’t help but agree, staring out the window of my office, down to the south, where the valley of the Spartan-II compound opened up, and the harsh winds blew across a relatively flat area in the Highland Mountains. The problem is relative scale. By all technical definitions, space is obviously larger and more inhospitable to life than a cold area of a planetary atmosphere. Yet the human brain does not grasp all things equally. It operates on the primitive scales that it can comprehend, even if a person intellectually knows things far beyond those scales.
For example, people only really think about our galaxy, or perhaps the next two or three. They might know the objective fact that we have confirmed the existences of well over two hundred billion galaxies, sure, but when they talk about galaxies, they’re only talking about the Milky Way, or perhaps Andromeda.
They might have some favorite day-dream or fictional fantasy about the events and lives of a single one of those galaxies, but that’s just it: one of them. Not five, interacting with each other. Not a hundred, in some enormous inter-galactic polity, spinning with trade and communication and transportation links. Not a thousand, not a million, not a billion – and even if they were, a single billion of those galaxies is still less than one percent of all known galaxies. The scale is just too big to grasp. Not intellectually, but emotionally. It’s so big that our mind shrugs, and goes back to a smaller scale. Thus, the tundra is more easily understood than the vastness of space.But we cannot ignore the true scale of reality. It does not matter if it is easier. When your crimes are piling upon each other higher, and higher, until they reach so high that they blot out the sun itself, you cannot simply live in the shade and pretend you will be fine. I refuse to live my life that way.And so, on this wintery day in December of 2523, I turned away from my window and sat down at my desk.Delays had already frustrated me over the past few days. I had seen the Spartans and the Orions off in their bulky parkas and winter gear as they’d departed for glacial training at Reach’s north pole, with Mendez and Sergeant Johnson supervising the process. Unlike so many times before, I had not accompanied them on this particular exercise, and I would not be there to ensure their training was adequately performed. Food and drink had already been acquired, eaten, and saved. Coffee, perhaps a bit more lukewarm than Visha would have ever allowed in my presence, sat in a large mug off to the side. Two ‘leftover’ sandwiches had been stashed in the office refrigerator.
I had no duties, no other distractions, and no other ways to avoid the pressing subject that had dominated my thoughts in the five months since Section Zero’s investigation and trial.Swallowing my unease, I prepared to face the true cost of the Spartan-II program.Déjà, my ever faithful A.I. assistant, was already waiting for me. She opened up the holographic interface, and prepared to take notes without me saying a word.The familiar lines and grids loomed at me, and I shuddered slightly. I enjoyed mathematics to a degree – no Aerial Mage worth their salt could be neutral or worse on the topic – but I had never found a taste for this particular torture.“The costs are all totaled, Doctor Halsey,” Déjà informed me, unnecessarily, as I stared at the rows upon rows of numbers in the spreadsheet. “As well, we have a number of production contracts, performance obligations, and miscellaneous ‘favors’ that are being called due.”“Let’s set aside everything but the budget amounts for now,” I said, despite knowing I’d be unhappy with the result, no matter how much I tried to pare it down in advance. “How much money do I owe everyone?”Déjà didn’t answer immediately. Instead, she tapped her rod against her clay tablet, and the holographic spreadsheet reformatted itself, opening up a new tab and isolating out just the raw cash. Each new account added to the total, a number written in bold red, and which grew ominously with each line.The final result glowed like a nuclear reactor gone supercritical. The number had four commas.
“A trillion dollars,” I said, admitting the words out loud.Well… shit, I thought to myself, grimacing.“One trillion, two hundred billion-” Déjà started to recite, before I cut her off. “Thank you, Déjà!” I said loudly, clearing my throat. “My eyes work perfectly well, I assure you.”The Greek A.I. raised an eyebrow at me, but politely did not comment. A trillion dollars. How had I ever let it get this bad? Argh, the inevitable consequences of writing blank checks. I’d been too desperate for support, so I’d thrown out offers to so many departments, so many units. And it would have been fine, if not for Section Zero’s meddlesome investigation. Just another heartache that I could rightfully pin on that arrogant bastard Wilson.
Owing money to multiple people isn’t impossible in theory. In fact, it’s even practical, if you have the right mind for it. There are entire industries that exist solely to borrow money from one party, use it all up on some long-lasting investment, then borrow money from a second party to pay off the first party. Real estate is only the most obvious. Politics does it even better, but they simply don’t talk about it as much.But thanks to the trial, every one of my creditors knew each other, talked to each other, and knew exactly how much I owed all of them, collectively.
This was a problem for one simple reason: leverage.
Just owing money to someone isn’t necessarily a problem. There are many historical quotes for this phenomena, usually in banking metaphor.
In my personal experience, I had a much more obvious example.
The entire Spartan-II project, as a whole, was so expensive that I wished it cost as little as a trillion UNSC credits.
But yet the UNSC could never call me out on that particular debt. Not just because they’d put me in charge, but because it was simply too large. Until I delivered functional super-soldiers to them, any attempts to yank my funding would only backfire. If they didn’t get Spartans because they yanked my funding, then they’d wasted all that money for nothing.
I had gleefully weaponized the sunk-cost fallacy against them. That wasn’t true of the UNSC Army, Air Force, Navy, or Marine Corps, much less Section One, Two, and Three of the Office of Naval Intelligence. I had promised them direct financial incentives, saying I would pay them in cold hard credits to entice them into joint cooperation – sometimes with specific monetary amounts, and sometimes by paying a percentage of the cost of our joint projects.It would be one thing if the Air Force angrily demanded their fifty billion credits by the start of 2524. I could probably pay that, because nobody else would be so quick to demand their money. Even if they did, I could negotiate, using delaying tactics to avoid admitting that I outright did not have the cash to pay them… until I did, and then I could act as if I’d always had the money.Except that now, everyone knew everyone, and they were all talking about how much money I owed them!If I gave the Air Force their fifty billion, then the Marines would get angry, because I’d promised them a hundred billion long before I’d ever contacted the Air Force. Why were they getting paid after this newcomer? What the hell was I playing at?Egos, egos, always with their egos! Nobody wanted to be humble, nobody wanted to be patient. Everyone just wanted their damn money, right now, no excuses. So many years of carefully building up a web of financial obligations that I could gradually pay off, one at a time, dancing between my duties as if it was always part of my intentions… and now, Evelyn Caldwell had set fire to the whole web, and left me to clean up the mess! This mess wouldn’t have existed if she hadn’t given Wilson a chance to speak in front of everyone.
I didn’t know who I was more angry about – the partners that were demanding their payoffs now, or the ones that were lurking in the background, letting the early sharks get their nibbles in to test the waters, before they would inevitably swoop in to take an enormous chunk out of my side.Ackerson, in particular, had been exceptionally quiet. That would have been suspicious all on its own, given my read of the ambitious Army Intel man. Coming on the heels of his all-but-explicit declaration that I owed him several favors in exchange for him killing Wilson’s investigation, and it was nearly driving me insane.
And now, annoyingly enough, my theoretically unlimited budget had backfired on me.If I had a regular, scheduled budget that I received annually, I could have distributed some of it to my creditors already, and eased some of their cannibalistic hunger.
But I didn’t. I have an irregular, unscheduled budget where I received as much as I wanted, whenever I wanted it… so long as I could justify it.
Even with Stanforth still standing firmly on my side, what were the odds that he’d be able to convince Keeler or Parangosky to dish out a trillion credits just to pay off all my bribes? Not bloody likely, that’s what!
In smaller sections, perhaps, it would be possible. A few billion here, a few billion there, and soon enough, we’d be talking about real money. But that would take time, and time was the one thing that I did not have. The investors in Project GUNGNIR wanted results, and they wanted them now.Which meant I needed some kind of distraction. If I had still been working at my old company, back in Japan, then I would have said this was a great time for a product display at some trade show. Whip up some positive energy by demonstrating some new technology or innovation, or show off our logistical muscles, or something like that.But it wasn’t like I had those options, did I?
Sure, I’d managed to finish up the design specs for the basic suit of the BDU Rev. 2519 for the ODSTs, and they liked it, but that card had already been played. I couldn’t play it again. And while it might satiate some of the Army’s demand for their four hundred billion credits, it would just drive the Marines up the wall, because the Army hadn’t been part of the deal.Power armor was never on the table, for the obvious reason that nobody outside of the Spartan-II program had even known it was going to exist, and for the next most obvious reason that it took an augmented individual just to use the stuff. I had promised a lot of equipment and devices to so many of my creditors. Everything from mass improvements to every UNSC soldier’s gear, to individual customized items for the various special forces branches out there.
My promises had been grand, my dreams ambitious, but most of all, my contracts had been tight.
Obviously, there was always the possibility that no matter how much money we threw in research and development, we might not be able to come up with the new technology anyway. And in those cases, I’d been quite clear: Project GUNGNIR would pay for the research budget, but there would be no financial penalties. But again, all the gear I’d developed had already been distributed. I had nothing left in my bag to use as a quick distraction.
Well, that wasn’t technically true.
I did have one thing.
Out of the five of us Party House scientists, it was always going to be Steve Sullivan who had to adapt the most.
Yes, David had to deal with psychologically indoctrinating the children, as well as cutting them open and stuffing them with augmentations.
And yes, Paul had to come up with those augmentations.
Additionally, I was supposed to be working on somehow mind-melding a living human brain with a Smart Artificial Intelligence – which I hadn’t even tried to work on, because that was such an impossibility that it would probably fry both of the poor bastards the millisecond they connected.But Steve? Steve had to make the power armor. It might have seemed like a simpler task, and for the early stages, that was true. But now that we were narrowing down the final designs, there was one rather significant problem with the armor itself.How big did the armor have to be?It’s a simple question in theory. Every piece of armor, from the old days of metal rings riveted together to form a mail, to the modern UNSC BDU’s, had a size. It would fit someone of specific dimensions, with perhaps some range to allow people larger, or smaller.
So, how tall would the Spartans be?
We were, after all, planning to shove a platinum-coated pellet into their thyroid gland, containing a cocktail of the most potent growth hormones we could cook up. Would that make them six and a half feet tall? Seven feet tall? Seven and half? Eight?
It was one of the places where the entire Spartan Project was flying by the seat of its clown-shaped pants, and almost nobody realized it. It was yet another reason why we’d made sure to emphasize that the power armor had to come after the augmentations. The other reasons were more plausible – both post-augmentation rehabilitation and the fact they couldn’t use the power armor anyway until then – but this third reason had gone quietly unmentioned.
But there’s one part of the human body that doesn’t really change that much based on your height: your head.
It wouldn’t be exact, and you had plenty of people with smaller or larger heads, but overall, no matter how much the growth hormone messed with my Spartans, their heads should be close enough to what we’d predicted. And if not, rebuilding the helmets was easy enough.Helmets were the one piece of our power armor system that had already been mostly completed. And by ‘mostly’, I mean that Steve had fully complete prototype helmets at his laboratory in the depths of Menachite Mountain, where the Augmentation, Power Armor, Artificial Intelligence, and some of the Surgery teams lived.Even if the Spartans had gotten bigger heads, whoop de doo – prototypes were prototypes for a reason. Unlike the strength and reflex enhancement of the armor system itself, there was nothing inside those helmets that made them unwearable by a normal, un-augmented human. Anybody could have worn one of the things!And even better, I could use the greed of my creditors against me. Originally, I’d only wanted a single design of helmet for my Spartans. It’s good to have specialized equipment, don’t get me wrong, but that’s when you can carry multiple items. Carrying a radio shouldn’t replace carrying a target designator, or mean that you couldn’t carry a medical kit, or you weren’t allowed to have a camouflage net.
Life wasn’t a video game, and you should be able to carry all of those things! But that wasn’t the case with helmets. You could only wear one helmet at a time, so I’d only wanted one helmet design. The best generalist possible, and then if my Spartans needed some specialized thing, then they could carry it.Yet when I’d launched Project GUNGNIR, one of the ‘hot’ items that had been eagerly discussed by the collected special forces units was the potential of mission-specific helmets.
I didn’t know why, but I wasn’t dumb enough to disagree with them publicly about it – not when the entire point of Project GUNGNIR was to scam them into supporting my Spartans politically.
I’d started off simply enough, taking the standard issue UNSC helmet, the CH252, and creating a better version with superior environmental sealing and the first generation of Steve Sullivan’s polarized helmet visor. Beta-5 Division liked it so much that they made it standard issue for their Military Police units – a fact that had surprised me when I’d watched Wilson’s flunkies walking around wearing the things without a single clue that they’d come from me and Steve. After that, I’d proven that yes, we could make custom variants, and the requests had started to pour in. Instead of demanding a few extra billion on some requisition, I could easily promise a brand new helmet design to one of the branches, asking what kind of specifications they’d like. It had worked like a charm!It was an exemplar of the real joy of Project GUNGNIR. I got to promise something that seemed incredibly amazing, and which would require years and years of dedicated R&D in a fraction of the time… and then I just walked down to Steve’s Team, and mentioned that they’d need one more helmet variant. To the Navy, the Marines, the Army, the Air Force, this was a huge undertaking! But to the Power Armor Team, this was Tuesday. They were perfectly happy to have another concept to play around with. After all, they wouldn’t be responsible for mass-producing the helmets, just creating the prototypes and ironing out the kinks. It was a win-win situation!
And now, that win-win situation would be my way out of the imminent debt crisis that I found myself in.One potential problem was that I didn’t have the mass production numbers for the helmets. Not yet. None of them were officially completed, they were hand-made prototypes… but functional prototypes, nonethelessTo counter any irritation that these weren’t the final version, I just needed a bit of the old magic from any good sales department: lies, lies, and more lies.
Now, I obviously couldn’t admit that we’d only made a single example of each helmet design.
Instead, I’d just tell them that they were working prototypes, and that we were handing them over for ‘testing and evaluation’. That they should test each helmet to see what areas still needed improvement. I could even claim their failures as part of the process! It was simple enough. Just ask Steve and his team what the failures were for each prototype. Turn right around and inform each branch of those failures, but phrase them as ‘areas where we are actively improving the design’. Then, to cap it off, I’d ask them to keep an eye out for new, exciting places where we would improve the design.Not only would I be able to pawn off our primitive, first generation test-beds onto my various creditors to keep the hungry wolves at bay, I’d be able to convince them to do some beta-testing of the things for free! Frankly, it was probably a good thing that we’d be able to do this. I wasn’t really able to determine if the helmets were good or not, and I was the closest thing that Steve had to a genuine military voice to talk to. We couldn’t bring in the trainers, both because of compartmentalization, and because Mendez’s training staff were not mission specialists in all these various roles.And role specialization was the entire point of all these helmets.
Explosive Ordinance Disposal wanted a helmet that could dissipate blast waves. What the hell did any of my scientists know about blast waves? I’d thrown one of our Smart A.I.’s at the task, and the best he’d come up with was a heavily reinforced helmet with the strongest jawline I’d seen outside of Hollywood.The Navy, understandably, wanted a helmet specialized for extravehicular activities in the cold void of space. So we’d stripped away most of the armor plating, maximizing the wearer’s peripheral vision. After all, when you’re doing repairs and EVA work, armor isn’t really as helpful as you might think. A piece of debris might be zipping by so fast that no amount of armor will save your life. So, since it was realistically going to be used by zero-G welders, better to give them the best vision possible, along with good polarization options to dampen all that raw, unfiltered starlight stabbing straight into their eyes.The Precision Targeting Group wanted a helmet with a rangefinder and a targeting laser built in, just in case their scopes failed in the field. The solution was to rework the ‘cap’ of the helmet, and stick them into small protrusion above the visor. As well, decrease the size of the visor itself, so that it couldn’t reflect back at any enemy with that legendary ‘scope glare’. Probably one of the cheaper fixes, though the prototypes lacked all the stealth materials that the full version was supposed to have.Ackerson had demanded a helmet suited for team leaders doing assaults. Something that maximized their ability to access tactical information, while still providing excellent protection. Steve’s solution was to rip off the ‘bill’ or ‘cap’ of the standard design and replace it with a broader armor plate. Less useful for skipping off shrapnel away from the face, but better able to take a direct bullet. Similarly, he shrank the visor down, gave it cheek guards and a combined plate to cover the mouth and nose, and it was ready for Ackerson’s Army Rangers.
The flyboys from the Air Force wanted something that enhanced their pilot’s field of vision in both atmospheric and exoatmospheric conditions – which was, very technically, against their organizations remit, since once the atmosphere ended, that was supposed to be the Navy’s domain. I’d made the helmet anyway. Remove the armored cap entirely, extend the visor upwards and draw it out to the sides a little better… but because a pilot might get whiplash and bang the back of his helmet against something in the cockpit, it still had better protection on the sides and back than the Navy’s EVA model.I could hardly forget ONI themselves. When Ned Rich and Aaron Gibson had heard my offers, they’d demanded a helmet suitable for ONI officers and agents on a field deployment. Something stealthy, optimized for minimal IR signatures, and – and I’m not making this up – ‘a non-UNSC appearance in case of blown cover’. Yes, they had demanded their helmet look visually distinct in case they got caught. Rather than just planning on, oh, I don’t know… not getting caught!And this was just a half dozen of the numerous requests that had come pouring in. How was I to predict that special forces operators were just as susceptible to gacha-mania as small children? It felt impossible! The stress of the job must have made them all snap, and they were back to the minds of children!
We were barely lucky enough that none of them had demanded that their helmet be the ‘coolest’ of them all, or that they hadn’t sent in little hand-drawn stick-figure sketches on the back of napkins.
But at least small children with gacha-mania were easy to manipulate, I consoled myself.
And if it had worked the first time… then why not a second time?
I’d been complaining about the fact that I could only hand over a single example to the various special forces groups, and that was true. But that didn’t mean I couldn’t promise more in the distant future.
“Déjà, open a new project file,” I said, speaking for the first time in many minutes as I stared at the spreadsheet.
The Dumb A.I. raised an eyebrow, but obediently opened a new window, tapping her stylus on her clay tablet as she prepared to take dictation. I stood up from my chair, and began to pace back and worth as I worked out the words.
“Due to the overwhelmingly positive reaction to the helmet designs of Project GUNGNIR,” I said, starting strong, “further sets of helmet variations will be made available.”
I thought for a few moments as I walked circles around my desk, mulling my next words carefully.
Fundamentally, I didn’t want to have to create a dozen new helmet designs. That would be an extra burden on Steve Sullivan’s team. One that they desperately did not need at this late stage, now that they’d finally figured out the last kinks in the base concepts, and were making huge strides forward in the power armor.
The only reason we’d had the spare manpower to make these helmets was because of the long delay from the earlier stages, leaving many of the Power Armor team with nothing to do. That delay was over, and it wouldn’t return, so we didn’t have the time to do that again.
But it had been the relative freedom of design that had appealed so strongly to the various special forces groups, so I didn’t want to totally lock them out of possibilities.
Therefore… variations. Take one of the existing custom designs, and create a variant version of it. Same production line, no real extra design work. Then just… bolt on something extra that they’d want.
Oh! There was an idea! Bolted on extras. As in, mounted on the helmet itself.
Not like the PTG’s range-finder and targeting laser, since those were integral to the structure of the helmet itself. That was a sub-optimal design decision that the snipers were fine with, because they would never need to swap it out for a flashlight or anything like that.
But for other units that did want some options, that kind of solution wouldn’t work. You couldn’t pull off your helmet and start ripping apart the insides in the middle of a mission, that would be ludicrous.
So instead, we’d simply create a set of modular attachments that could be mounted at various positions on the helmets.
“At the moment, these variations will consist of modular attachments that can be mounted to additional hardpoints on the helmet itself,” I said out loud, as Déjà transcribed my words.
Now, how to make them do the work? I hardly wanted to spend the next several weeks coming up with these attachments myself. Even if I did, I simply didn’t have the time! I had far more important things to worry about.
The augmentations were scheduled to be performed in the summer, and that was far too soon. I needed to delay them, to convince Keeler that we needed another year. Augment the children at fourteen years old, rather than thirteen years old. “Due to the sophisticated nature of specialized mission planning, and the unknowable aspects of your work to those outside of your respective areas of expertise,” I said, gesturing with a flowing, almost patrician hand movement, as if I was bowing to the relative superiority of my audience, when I was actually just mocking them. “We have not presumed to create – no, not that, scratch that line, Déjà. That sounds far too much like laziness, and we can’t admit to that. We have not presumed to… tell you how to do your jobs. Please inform us of which specialized devices you would desire as helmet attachments, so that your soldiers may lighten their combat loads.”
I paused, picking up my coffee mug from my desk and taking a sip of my coffee. I winced at the taste. Lukewarm, it was not. I had spent too much time thinking, and the coffee had gone cold, ruining it. Visha could never find out.
“Our team has marked the attachment points on each helmet,” I continued, getting back into the flow of drafting my message to the Project GUNGNIR partners. “These are currently our ideal positions, but if your team prefers another location, please inform us on the feedback surveys that we are distributing.”
My eyes speed-read through the draft letter floating above my desk.
Hmmm… it reads well, but it’s still a bit too much of a naked bribe, I thought to myself. It needs more tempering, more downsides.
“Additionally,” I said, “due to weight requirements and the risk of damage to the user, the helmet will be limited to no more than two separate attachments at any one time.”
There. That should put a little dampener on any overeager recipients that were crazy enough to imagine a helmet carrying half a dozen modular attachments, and looked more like a luggage rack than an actual piece of protective equipment.
And now… how to defray the cost? I didn’t want to add to my debt in any way – the whole point of this was to get these money-grubbing jerks off my back before they called my bluff and took all my cash. The true cost here was split between the budget requirements and the skilled labor.
Perhaps I could argue that they should pay for the entire budget necessities, since this was all happening on helmets – no, no, ‘modular device platforms’, that sounded more corporate – that my people had done all the work on.
Yes, that sounded right. I’d say that our part of the price was coming up with the best places to mount these attachments.
“As the existing budgetary costs of the mass production has already been settled,” I said, delicately dancing around the fact that we were already on the hook to pay for the damn things, without admitting that we hadn’t yet covered the cost. “These additional costs for the design process shall be paid by Project GUNGNIR, while the additional costs for the materials shall be handled by the recipients.”
There. All wrapped up neatly in a nice little bureaucratic bow.
I hope they understand my clear, straightforward, and precise message: that the Spartan Program was no longer their piggy bank, and just because I was giving them cool toys did not allow them to rob me for my pocket change.
“What do you think, Déjà?” I asked the A.I., smiling at her.
“Hmmm…” Déjà mused, tapping her chin. “It seems acceptable to me, Doctor Halsey, but do you think it’s wise to keep expanding these operations? With the augmentations so close, we should be focusing more on the children.”
“I am focusing on the children,” I replied, a little irritated. “Specifically, I’m focusing on their inheritance.”
“Ah,” the Greek A.I. replied, as if she understood.
I thought about explaining it further to her, but I held off. Déjà either understood the multi-layered gifts that I was setting up for my Spartans, or she didn’t, and either way, it didn’t matter.
All that mattered now was that everyone did their jobs, and nothing went wrong in this final stretch of the Spartan-II Project.
As if I’d ever be so lucky, I thought to myself darkly.