The late March sun cast its warming gaze on the valley. Even this far north in the Highland range, a clear sunny day could raise the temperature just enough to make outdoor exercise practical.
John had always loved these kinds of days. The cold had killed off all the insects, and the brisk air kept them cool no matter how hard they worked out.
But this time, it was different. This time, they were different.He couldn’t wait to see just how different.“Come on, you lazy brats!” called out Sergeant Byrne as he waved the crowd of Spartan-IIs towards the storage building. “You’re just lucky I had Wentworth clear the snow first! One more bit of lip from you all, and I’ll have you shoveling the whole field first!”Laughter sprang out in reply from several of John’s fellow Spartans. The Orion supersoldier grinned in reply, proving that his words were nothing more than a bluff.
A stream of lanky, awkward teenagers moved between the parade ground and the storage shed. They worked in groups, carrying the long and heavy sparring mats, or individually, carrying the plates and bars and barbells for weight-lifting. Though they didn’t chat freely like some their age might have, there was still an easy comradery that John enjoyed.It should have been easy to get all the equipment out. They had plenty of experience wrangling it all. Five minutes, most days, since seventy-five pairs of hands meant that they’d only make two or three trips each.Not today. This was their first full day planet-side after they’d finally been discharged from UNSC Hopeful… and there was only fifty-four Spartans on the exercise field today, while the other twenty-one were elsewhere.John had gotten off lightly, compared to some of the others. Kelly was taking her sudden difficulty with walking in good humor, and Samuel was making jokes about his accidents with his strength. John was a bit lightheaded at times, and he struggled to pick up things. He dropped plates, cups, silverware – even his own clothes when trying to dress!It was… expected, the doctors said. The psychologists from the Compound had come up to the Hopeful with them, and the last few weeks had been full of both physical and mental therapy, as everyone got used to the augmentations.
Sergeant Johnson and the other Orions had talked about it in advance, sharing tips and tricks with the teenagers, as well as potential problems to watch out for. Everyone was extra careful to not replicate those mistakes, but sometimes it happened. John himself had already bent three spoons, two forks, and a butter-knife into unusability without even noticing until it was too late.
Personally, John thought that they’d gotten off lightly. The doctors had been doing their best not to scare him and the other Spartans, but the Doctor – Doctor Halsey, that was – had been upfront with them nearly two months ago, and they all knew the odds.
Statistically speaking, someone was going to die. The odds were as good as the Augmentation Team could make them, yet the likelihood existed that any single one of them could have suffered a catastrophic complication on the table. It didn’t matter that Visha had been the most likely candidate, because statistics didn’t work that way. Visha might have sailed out totally fine, while John himself had died instead.But nobody had died. Not a single one of them. Most of them felt sad about their friends who had failed, of course. How could they not? But they’d been trained that losses were going to be inevitable in the field. These weren’t even permanent losses. More than a few had already speculated that the Doctor would find some way to augment the others.And honestly… they were all too busy dealing with their strange new lives.Years of training and preparation, and now, finally, they had fulfilled the Doctor’s original paper. They might not have their power armor yet, but it would be coming soon enough.
The crazy thing was that, despite waiting for so long, John was still caught off-guard by how much everything had changed. His hands were clumsy. His eyes stung him in bright rooms. His bones ached. He was convinced that he’d already grown by a centimeter, and his next physical would prove it.
Good thing we’re finally back home, he thought to himself, as he wheeled out a container full of medicine balls on a hand-truck. The sooner we can get some practice in, the sooner we’ll be ready to deploy.It was a bit of a scary thought, finally being ‘deployable’. John wasn’t afraid, necessarily. The word didn’t fit right. Like a glove that was too big, and you strained to tug it tight. Concern was a better word for it. He wondered if he could live up to all the expectations placed on him.
Right now, it wasn’t even clear when they would be deployed. No orders had come down. Not even preliminary assignments to squads, so that the Spartans could start training with their sub-unit for specific missions.
Instead, they’d come back to the valley, to the compound, and they’d just… settled back into their rooms like everything was normal. Like they hadn’t spent weeks up in space, playing board games and watching movies while they tried to forget their anxiety about the augs.Was it a bad dream that had passed? Or a good dream that had come to life? John didn’t know, but he knew that no matter what, it was his life now. He couldn’t stay focused on that question. He had to move forward, advance, progress. He who dares, wins.
Today’s exercise was going to be gentler. Softer. It was already weird enough that they were skipping the mass PT that had been their daily routine for years now. Instead, each Spartan went off on their own, to stretch and limber up as best as they could.
Even weirder was the fact that they were starting so late in the morning, at 0900 hours instead of 0600.
“Each of you will have varying degrees of physical capability for the time being,” Chief Mendez had told them over morning chow. “You’ll need to evaluate your own condition, just like you would in the field. Medics are available, and you will check with them before you try anything that feels uncomfortable or risky. If you experience anything out of the ordinary, report it.”
John dropped off the container of medicine balls, and wheeled the hand-truck back to the storage building. Almost all of it had emptied out, and John went to rejoin the line of lifters – but one of the trainers held up his hand to stop him.“Don’t worry about it,” Corporal Markov replied with a smile. “Light day today, John. We’ll handle the rest. You go test your limits, see what’s changed.”The Marine waved him off, and John left, walking back to where he’d set up the container of medicine balls.
He wasn’t quite sure what to start with. Aside from some hand-eye coordination, he hadn’t had any of the other problems. After a few moments, he settled on starting his stretching routine. It bought him a few minutes, but it eventually ended, and then he was left unsure.The container of medicine balls drew John’s eyes. There were many ways to use a medicine ball, and John wondered if perhaps he could work on his hand-eye coordination with them. John started off with one of the medium-weight balls, though he frowned at how light it felt in his hands. He’d known that he was getting stronger after the muscle injections, but it was hard to judge exactly how much stronger he was. He walked over to the nearest of the compound’s building with the ball in hand. The building had a padded wall along the outside, and it was normal to use it for drills. The idea was simple: stand perpendicular to the wall, rotate your shoulders and hips, and throw the medicine ball against the wall, catching it on the rebound. The first throw, however, was a bit too much. John twisted his hips and shoulders in a vigorous motion, and flung the medicine ball forwards. But rather than hitting the wall and bouncing back, the ball exploded open, spraying sand everywhere. John flinched, stepping back and shielding his eyes with a hand on reflex. After a moment, he lowered it, and stared at the blown-open scraps of rubber. Maybe a little less force next time, he thought to himself, wincing at the idea of cleaning it up after his exercise was over. He glanced around, but luckily, none of the trainers had seen John’s mishap. The container had plenty of replacements, so John walked back over, and this time selected a heavier ball. Not the heaviest, but a good halfway point between that and the medium-weight ball that he’d just destroyed.John waited a moment, taking a deep breath, and then paused and cocked his head.
Maybe it would be better if he backed up a little bit from the wall? Normally, the drill required standing a little more than an arm’s length away from the wall. He didn’t particularly feel like getting more sand sprayed against him, and he didn’t think anyone would judge him if he stepped back a few feet.
Still, it was perfectly possible to bounce the medicine balls against the wall from a couple meters away, though it was a lot more difficult. Normally, it was done with the lighter balls, but John thought it would probably work with this one. He braced himself, and twisted a couple times lightly without tossing, just to get used to the motion. Each time, he tried to slow himself down a little, tried to use a little less force. He wasn’t sure it was working, but it didn’t hurt to try.
John sucked in another breath, then spun his hips and shoulders, flinging the second medicine ball against the building. This time, the ball didn’t explode! It bounced back smoothly, and John caught it on the rebound. He fumbled a little, but it was still fine. A couple fingers slipped, but the meat of his palm still took the brunt of the weight with a slapping sounds.
A moment later, however, he felt a gritty sensation. He glanced down, and saw that his fingers had some grains of sand on them. Was it from the first ball? Surely not. John squeezed the medicine ball experimentally, squinting down at it. There was a hissing sound, and more sand spilled out of it. He hadn’t exploded it like the last one, but he’d still burst some of the seams, apparently. Sighing, John went back to the container, and retrieved the heaviest medicine ball, dropping the broken one on the ground as he did.This one should survive, he thought to himself, tossing the ball in the air lightly as he walked back to the building. It still felt too light, but it should be fine.John didn’t bother warming up this time. He took his stance nearly four meters back from the building, swung his hips, and exploded outwards in a swift motion.As he moved to hurl the medicine ball, his fingers slipped. The ball spun inside his grip, and John panicked. He tried to stop his motion, but it was too late, and he fumbled. He flung his arms upwards, trying to stop the throw, but it was too late. Worse, the motion only threw the ball higher!The fifteen-kilo ball soared through the air – not at the first floor of the building, where the wall was padded and designed for this drill, but the second floor, where there were windows!Glass shattered with a crashing sound that echoed across the entire parade ground. Shards were sent flying in all directions – into the building, out of the building, all over the place!
John ducked and covered his head on instinct. A few moments later, there was a loud roar of an angry voice – and it was coming from inside the building. “Cadet, what the hell do you think you’re doing?!” John glanced up, and saw Gunnery Sergeant Johnson leaning out from the broken window on the second floor, glaring down at him. Whoops, John thought to himself.
“You stay right there!” Johnson ordered, jabbing a finger at John, before disappearing from the open window.John stiffened up and stood at attention. He didn’t look around the parade ground to see if anyone else was watching. He could hear some of the other exercises going on in the background, so maybe everyone wasn’t staring at him and his mistake.Good going, genius, he thought, berating himself mentally. You should have slowed down when you screwed up the first time, not kept going. Now you’re gonna get the ass-chewing of a lifetime.He waited there, keeping his eyes fixed on the building, not daring to look up at the shattered window. It took nearly a minute for Sergeant Johnson to emerge and enter John’s line of sight. Luckily for him, the Marine NCO looked to have calmed down significantly, and he was smoking a Sweet Williams cigar. “What happened, cadet?” the Sergeant asked after a few moments of puffing on his cigar.“Sir! My hand slipped while I was performing the medicine ball side toss, sir!” John barked out, keeping his face as still as possible. The Marine NCO nodded slowly, and then paused and looked up at the window.“Did that brick-head do this?” came a second, angrier voice from behind John. “God damn, son, were you trying to throw that ball to the moon?”
It was Sergeant Nolan Byrne, the cadet recognized. Caustic, rude, and definitely an abrasive personality… but he wasn’t so bad underneath all of that, and a lot of the time, his brash attitude was just a cover for how much he cared.“For a brick, he threw pretty good,” Johnson mused, as he held the cigar in his hand. “Oh, calm down Nolan. We knew this kind of crap would happen. They’re like greased seals right now, just flopping around, crashing into each other.” “Sir, permission to speak?” John asked.The Sergeant eyed him for a moment, before putting the cigar back in his mouth.“Go on,” Johnson granted him.“Sir, this was preventable,” the Spartan-II informed him, falling on his own sword. “I destroyed two previous medicine balls, and should have learned from those mistakes before continuing with the third ball.”Nolan Byrne laughed behind John, then circled around into his vision, allowing John to see the mixture of bemusement and incredulity on his face.“A.J., I thought you were training these kids how to not get in trouble,” Byrne told Johnson, shaking his head in disbelief. “Cadet, next time, don’t volunteer information like that unless you’re trying to get your ass busted.”John was confused. He’d told the truth not because it was some attempt to get himself in trouble, but because it might prevent future problems. This was a learnable, teachable moment. He was trying to help the Sergeant, not just with John’s own screwup, but to prevent the future screwups of every other Spartan-II.“At ease, cadet,” Johnson said, after searching his face for a moment.He relaxed, spreading his feet and turning his head to look at the Sergeant.“John, we knew something like this was gonna happen,” the Marine NCO told him. “When I got augmented, I broke every single thing someone put in my hand for a month! There was no way to prevent that. The Orion program knew it was gonna happen, and they ate the cost. If you hadn’t done this, you wouldn’t have learned a lesson. You got that?”“Sir, no sir!” John replied.Byrne and Johnson exchanged a glance, and then Johnson tried again.“You’re not going to learn by sitting still, son,” Johnson said, his voice gentle. “Muscle control isn’t automatic. Reflexes, the brain-to-eye-to-hand stuff… that comes with practice. It’s gonna hurt, but that doesn’t mean we can avoid it. It’s inevitable. But that doesn’t mean that we give up. That doesn’t mean that you’re allowed to blame yourself for these things. Instead, you gotta learn from it. Learn what you can do, and what you can’t do. This went wrong? Fine. Next time, go ask Sergeant Swanson for a carton of eggs, and practice juggling them until you don’t slip.”“Without information on what’s wrong, you can’t start to fix it,” Sergeant Byrne added, nodding along to his fellow Orion.“Damn right,” Johnson agreed. “Now, relax. I’m not gonna punish you. Instead, I want you to use those leadership skill o’ yours, and I want you to watch the rest of the cadets. Pay attention to what they’re doing, and what they’re doing wrong. Then start thinking of ways that they could work on their problems. Dismissed.”
John saluted, and the two Sergeants walked off, heading back towards the rest of the parade ground.He relaxed out of his stance, and turned around, looking out at his friends.Much to his comfort, nobody was paying attention to him. Maybe a few of them had looked his way when he’d first smashed the window, but by now, they were all focusing on their own exercises. Kelly was doing tire-step drills, her feet blurring through the rings of rubber faster than she’d ever moved before. She got to the end, tried to turn around, and tumbled down to the side, onto the padded matt.
Sam was lifting weights. He was on the bench-press right now, benching what looked like two hundred kilos. There were two or three trainers standing around him, eyeing the weight worriedly, so John moved on – if anything bad happened, they’d be there to spot him and stop any injuries.
Grace was trying to dance a jig, but she was stumbling. She was starting slow, but the more frustrated she got, the faster she moved, and that was just making things worse.Linda, at least, was being sensible. She was doing reflex drills with a trainer, trying to catch coins that the man was flipping towards her. John was painfully aware of his own lucky quarter, back in the barracks. He’d won it off of Sergeant Johnson at Donovan’s Bar, but ever since he’d gotten augmented, he was afraid to pick it up… he might bend it without meaning to, and ruin it.
And then he saw Carris, who was confident enough to have started grappling with one of the trainers.
They were going incredibly slow, but John still got a bad feeling about it.
Carris had once nearly killed one of the trainers by performing a hip-throw. In the time since, she’d become one of the best hand-to-hand specialists among the Spartans, almost as good as Frederic.
He couldn’t help but worry that she was trying to prove a point. Trying to show that she’d improved past that incident all those years ago, that she could adapt to the augs faster than anyone.Moments later, his fears came true. Carris was trying to do a joint-lock on the man’s shoulder. Done properly, it would immobilize him, keep him from moving, unless he wanted to pop his shoulder out of its socket. The pain would have been just enough to make him stop. The threat of pushing just a little further, and either popping the man’s shoulder out of its socket, or shattering a bone, was enough to ensure cooperation.But Carris was moving too fast, even while trying to be slow. Too fast, too strong – too late!A scream ripped through the parade ground, and every single person in the field tensed up, searching for the source of the noise.
John was the only one who saw the whole chain of events. Carris had tried to stop at exactly the right point, applying pressure without injuring the Navy trainer, but she hadn’t – she’d gone too far, unable to stop her muscles from moving just a little too much.“Medic!” John yelled, as he took off running towards the pair. Others were starting to notice, starting to turn. Sergeants Johnson and Byrne came running in from a different direction, both of their faces pale. Carris was staring, wide-eyed. She was babbling something, her mouth moving quickly as she tried to apologize, tried to make it right, but there was nothing she could do.
She held the Navy trainer in place, standing, even as his legs gave out. She looked terrified, and John knew that she probably wanted to lower him to the ground, but she had no idea if it would make things worse. Their training had covered this, and it was best to lower the man to the ground, but Carris had locked up and frozen in place.One of the trainers came sprinting up from the side, clutching a medical kit. He knelt down by Carris, cracking the seal on the case and searching through its contents.
Byrne and Johnson grabbed onto the trainer.“Easy, girl, we got him,” the Gunnery Sergeant said, soothing Carris even as he held up the injured man, who was still screaming in pain. “Let him go, let him go.”
The man’s screams died down, and he sagged. He was unconscious. Probably in shock, John guessed.
Carris released the man, and stepped back, staring at her hands. She was shaking, lightly – and then she turned, and ran, away from the parade ground. She was headed towards the playground, the jungle-gym of reconfigurable blocks that had hosted the Spartan’s games of capture the flag and king of the hill for the past seven years.
“Lower him down, gently!” the medic ordered urgently, as he dug the handheld MRI out of the medkit. “There. There, slower, slower!”The two Orions lowered the man to the ground, and held him still. The medic held up the scanner, flipping switches and pressing buttons until it whirred to life.“How bad is it, doc?” Byrne demanded.“Shit…” the medic exhaled quietly as he stared at the tiny screen. “That’s not a separation, Sarge. That’s shattered and torn. Completely. Ligaments, the socket, it’s all gone. It’s like a bomb went off. His career is over. Right now. We need to get him to a hospital immediately. I’m not seeing internal bleeding right now, but it’s gonna happen soon with all those fragments floating around.”
John only barely heard him because he was right next to them. After a moment, he realized that the other Spartans were approaching, curiosity dragging them closer.“Spartans, back!” John shouted, waving his arms at them. “Make a hole! Fred, Linda, get a stretcher! James, go tell Sergeant Wentworth to get the Pelican warmed up!”The other cadets backed up, their eyes wide, but following the orders on instinct as they moved several meters back. They clumped into tight groups, clearing pathways towards the admin building, the landing pads, and wherever else they might take him.“That’s it,” Sergeant Johnson muttered. “No more hand-to-hand training. Not without either Doc Sullivan’s prototypes, or against the Orions.”“You think that’s gonna be enough?” Byrne demanded. “A.J., even our strongest couldn’t have done this.”“We’ll figure something out,” the Marine Sergeant replied, undeterred. “We’re not giving up on these kids. They need the training, so we’ll just learn to train in a way that’s safe.”“And what about when fall comes?” Byrne asked. “What about when they go off to the academy? You wanna unleash the Spartans on some poor dumb DI’s?”
John tensed. He was starting to think that he shouldn’t be here, shouldn’t be listening to this.
He knew, vaguely, that the Doctor wanted to send them off to the Naval Academy, but that was always a pipe dream, wasn’t it? As soon as Doctor Sullivan’s power armor was ready, it would be time to deploy to the Outer Colonies. That was the whole point of the program. But the two Orions weren’t talking like it was a pipe dream. They were talking like it was going to happen, no matter what.“That’s why we’re going to make it work, Nolan!” Johnson snapped at him. “We’re gonna teach these kids right, so that they can live a normal goddamn life. I’m not taking that from them, and neither is anyone else in this damn program.”
Sergeant Byrne hesitated, not replying.
“If you say so,” he said, finally.“I don’t say so,” Johnson said, firmly. “The Doctor does, and what she wants, she gets.”