The blaring of an unfamiliar alarm woke me.
I rolled over in bed and drowsily smacked the offending device. I cracked a yawn as I slowly roused myself, rubbing at one eye.
Some might believe that years of combat experience would make a person jumpy, scared, and easily awakened by alarms. They weren't wrong, but I'd had many years of life since my days in the trenches. My instincts had dulled, yet the soldier's desire for sleep had remained strong.
Still, I mused, as I set my feet down on the carpet, there was something odd about this.
Had I bought a new alarm? No, I hadn't, but I had been traveling, and it wasn't unusual for university provided housing to come with such things.
That would explain the unfamiliar bedroom around me – I was at another university! Somewhere closer to Earth, I vaguely remembered.
I stumbled through my morning routine in the attached en suite bathroom. A facewash, towel dry, a cleansing toothbrushing, some minor hair care, and I was well on my way to mental clarity, and prepared to get on with my day!
At least, once I fixed these bags under my eyes. Ugh. Whatever had I done last night, to earn such unsightly signs of stress?
I reached for my makeup case, still looking at myself in the mirror with a frown. Some concealer, so that no one would see my ugliness.
My fingers had barely touched the tube when yesterday's memories returned, blasting off a naval salute in my hindbrain. The case slipped from my suddenly frozen fingers and crashed into the ground, spilling open with a clatter.
My eyes slowly crawled upwards from my terrified reflection, to the emblazoned sigil etched in the corner of the mirror. A monochrome pyramid split in twain, with a black dot in the center, and bold lettering beneath.
UNSC Office of Naval Intelligence.
"Oh…" I whispered, sibilantly.
I almost swore, but something about that sinister logo made me hold off. Call it paranoia, but if I see the logo of an intelligence service on a bathroom mirror, I assume it's a one-way mirror.
Epsilon Eridani II. That's where I was. The beating heart of the UNSC, and the home of its secretive, silent intelligence service.
And, for the next ten years, my new home.
I stepped out of the bathroom numbly, bare feet gliding over the regulation carpet. At a side desk was the employment contract – already signed, of course – and there, in black and white ink of old-school, formal hardcopy, was the death knell of my career and the doom of all my ideals.
Ten years of service to the UNSC. Ten years of cutting edge research. Ten years of child abuse.
Was this Being X's revenge, I wondered, my cold fingers flipping through pages.
He had tested me deeply in my last life. A life of senseless violence. He'd been convinced that I would cry out to him if I drowned in blood and gore. Instead, I had spit in his face, and learned to swim. When the world had sought to crush my spirit and kill my body, I'd responded by crushing and killing theirs first. In that dog eat dog world, I'd been a prize fighter, obedient to the leash of my earthly masters, all to survive the trials of the false divine.
But in this life, I had thought I was free. I'd believed, naively, that I had once again pre-empted that lying daemon by my swift action to escape his intended life. My assessment that he had desired for me to grow into a struggling terrorist had been wrong.
How could I be so blind? I'd once berated that incompetent monster for its failure to understand the basics of Human Resources. I'd proven his incompetence in that last life.
Yet for the past twenty-five years, I'd not considered the possibility that Being X could have learned from its mistake, and dedicated more effort to my damnation.
And so that demonic spirit had.
I'd planned my life so carefully, pursued my goals with alacrity, and sought to help the people of my new universe with what meager gifts I had.
To think that two decades of hard labor and clever plans could be unraveled by a single night's bad decision and a few drinks.
I stared down at the thirteenth page of my devil's deal, and there, in plain English, was my sin. In exchange for the above listed terms, pay, and conditions, I was to see to the execution of the experimental program detailed in the following research paper:
Enhancing Humanity: A Multidisciplinary Approach to the Development of Genetically Modified Super Soldiers with Integrated AI Neural Systems and Advanced Power Armor Technology, by Dr.'s Halsey, Meyer, Wu, and Sullivan.
It was, by technicality, the first research paper that any of us had written as a full PhD. How could it not be – we'd written the damn thing the same day we'd gained the title, while drunkenly celebrating.
A joke. That's all it was, originally. I'd been happy over both gaining my doctorate, and achieving the drinking age. My colleagues, some of the few PhD candidates at the University of Circumstance that had been friendly towards a teenage prodigy like me, had been similarly exuberant.
It was a wonderful night of chatting and drinking in Steve Sullivan's rented house. We'd imagined our future lives, speculated on the ways that we could advance humanity. Debated, good-naturedly, about which of our diverse fields would prove the greatest.
Then one of us – I didn't remember who – had sparked the conversation.
"When we're all famous researchers, we'll be rolling in grant money," he'd said, giggling a bit over his cider. "What would we even do with it all? With unlimited money?"
We'd all had our ideas.
David Meyer had talked at length about the psychological understanding that could revolutionize every aspect of human life, if only we could fund his project to fully understand the mysteries and neuroses of the human mind, combining the two halves of psychology, both social and biological.
Steve Sullivan had detailed his plans to usher in a world of exoskeletons and power armor, capable of re-entry skydiving for recreation, lifting tanks, and enhancing the human body beyond the greatest Olympic athletes, sketching a world of sleek plates and strengthened bodies.
Paul Wu had dreamed even further, disdaining the need for powered assistance at all, and sketched an image of humanity itself rising beyond its furthest limits, of genetic augmentation of every human, eradicating disease, and making the average human as smart and as strong as the greatest athletes and scientists.
And I had scoffed at my three friends, and loudly demanded to know why they were so pitifully lacking in imagination.
They'd asked for my answer, all good cheer and smiles. What great achievements could I work, with an unlimited budget for such boring fields as Shaw-Fujikawa physics and 'mere' artificial intelligence.
"Why limit ourselves to just one field?" I had replied, planting one foot on the coffee table and milking the giant cow, as I spoke the fateful words that had doomed us all. "When we could combine our fields, and waste even more of that unlimited budget?!"
They were interested, of course. Arguing about the superior field of study was a long exhausted vein. Planning out the most optimal way to waste government funding was a new topic, laced with a hint of sacrilege and exotic zest.
How great could power armor be, if even the base human wearing it was genetically augmented? How much more effective, if they'd had the greatest education in the world, carefully sculpted to inculcate them into the optimum mindset? What if they had an ongoing neural link with an artificial intelligence solely dedicated to helping them pilot said power armor?
Foremost on our minds: how to waste as much money as possible.
Why dedicate this masterpiece to mere soldiers? What if they were also officers, engineers, doctors, pilots, scientists? Think of the training budget spent to have multi-disciplinary super-solders clad in exoskeleton armor. We loudly speculated that perhaps, if we insisted on enough 'necessary qualifications', we could make a single soldier cost more than a starship! We even floated such insane hypotheticals as non-existent technologies unsupported by current science, such as energy shielding.
And as we'd theorized and planned, late into the night, we discarded more of our moralistic qualms and replaced them with sweet alcohol.
Human beings, David had explained near midnight, with a giddy hysteria, were stubbornly defiant animals that deluded themselves into egotistical delusions of grandeur. Adult humans were the product of thousands of psychological stressors and shapers, almost all of which could be randomized by vagaries of childhood environment and upbringing. Meritocracy was nothing more than selecting adults with the 'correct' experiences so that one could hopefully get the right mindset.
But children, on the other hand, were much more malleable than adults.
Take a child, and inculcate in them the correct attitudes and mindsets. Train them to be a soldier, an engineer, a doctor, a scientist. Dutiful but creative, aggressive yet calculating, intelligent yet subservient. Train them for the decades needed, and you could potentially shape them into a masterpiece, like Michelangelo sculpting his David.
Paul had leapt onto the possibility. Genetic augmentation might be more stable with a grown adult, but it also meant dealing with the aftermath of their pubescent growth. Risks of malnutrition, vitamin deficiencies, potential allergies, and more.
What if you could select your augmentation subjects from the entirety of the UNSC's population, using the genetic databases created to prevent disease outbreaks in the Colonies? The bell curve of humanity already led to so many exceptional individuals on the extreme edges, just from the combination of statistical outliers, and the sheer size of our population.
Start the augmentation procedures during their puberty cycle, and co-opt their natural growth. Bones laced with carbide ceramics for nearly unbreakable limbs. Protein-cocktails for intramuscular injections to stimulate growth and achieve optimal musculature. Thyroid enhancements, retinal augmentations, even enhancing transmission speed of the nervous system!
Steve Sullivan had been dismissive, citing the lack of usability for children in power armor, before we'd reminded his drunken ass that they were children in training, and that one day, they'd be trained, grown adults.
Imagine, we'd coaxed him, what kind of amazing suits could be designed for soldiers who stood seven feet tall, with reaction times under twenty milliseconds, whose bones could not be broken by the extreme stresses of the artificial muscles surrounding them. Capable of harnessing the full potential of his most sensitive power armor designs, with no reduction in capability required for ill-trained or ill-suited pilots.
And for myself, the integration of artificial intelligences. We were all well familiar with the massive utility and efficiency of dedicated 'dumb' AI's, but what of vastly more capable, and vastly more expensive, 'smart' AI's? If the goal was to waste money, then demanding a smart AI for each super-soldier would easily double the price per unit. Just one was nearly the cost of a small warship. What about dozens of them?
The price of integrating such advanced technology into such a small package as a set of power armor would similarly be catastrophic. Much less the medical challenges of integrating the hyper-quick calculations of a smart AI into a compatible neural implant without frying the user's brain.
We'd been nearly gloating by 1 a.m., when I'd realized how stupid we were.
In an instant, my jubilant mood turned, and I'd berated them all, angrily switching between English and German as I castigated each of them in turn, and then, with the fury of a guilty conscience, criticized myself most of all.
We'd fleshed out a hundred details of our theoretical program to kidnap children, indoctrinate them into super soldiers, torture their bodies into the perfect building blocks for radical transhumanistic exploratory surgery, equip them with exoskeletons of powered armor barely dreamed of by current standards, and combine their minds with advanced self-aware computers.
But, I'd angrily barked at their amused faces, we hadn't considered a tactical doctrine!
How would the government utilize such super soldiers? What missions bore the greatest efficiency increases from deploying such masterworks? Where would they be trained? How would they be trained? What weapons would they carry? What tactics would they utilize? How could we squeeze every last ounce of value out of decades of economic investment into a soldier that might die in their first combat engagement from an unlucky missile or artillery shell, and waste all our efforts?!
I had descended into such a manic state that my colleagues and friends had assumed I was joking, and they responded by swearing that they had not dared impugn on my expertise by suggesting such things, when clearly it was my job.
Who else, they'd laughed, could create that manner of military framework for our hypothetical billion-dollar experiments?
At the time, in my stupor, I had thought that the joke was on them. They did not know – could not know – that I had prior experience.
And so, we set to writing out our work, like mad scientists in the worst of pulp fiction novellas.
We'd whipped ourselves into such a frenzy, and fed on the energy of each other. When one of us had flagged at their workstation, dictating or diagramming notes, the others had pounced on the laggard, and motivated them with a combination of insults, compliments, alcohol, and caffeine.
When the morning came, our unholy combination of alcoholic frenzy and intellectual minds unshackled by morality had churned out a hypothetical academic paper.
I'd even insisted, solemnly holding a last toast as the sun's rays filtered in through the rental house's windows, on submitting the paper to the University.
And now…. Being X had his revenge: the joke was on me.
No longer was I an individual fighting for my own survival. No longer was I the leashed dog, voluntarily signing up for the military. No longer was I the master of my fate, captain of my soul.
Now, I was the monster looming above the suffering. I was holding the dog's leash, forcing them to fight. I was trapped between the wheels of ONI and the children I would be forced to brainwash and send to die.
No.
No!
I felt like snarling, and brutally crushed the urge under an iron fist. I would not give ONI the pleasure of seeing me in a weak moment. I refused to have a weak moment.
I was damned. I had been damned from the moment I stepped foot on that courier ship, to come to Reach.
It was not a new sensation; I had been damned before. I had once been trapped between the jaws of two animals; the inhuman savagery of trench warfare, and the soulless cogs of bureaucracy. I was familiar with such things. I could still operate in such places.
Yet even though I could survive in such a place, what of the children?
ONI, in their monstrous machinations, had already procured the test subjects. They had even discussed expanding the class size, potentially doubling it or quadrupling it, before settling on my original plan. They had only abducted seventy-five children. Seventy-five ruined families, destined to be broken by the loss of their intelligent, spirited, amazing children.
I was under no illusions that such children would manage to handle this situation. I myself had barely managed to keep my sanity in the military, and I'd entered at a later age, and with an adult mind. None of them would have any such advantages. They would be trained by harsh veterans of ONI special forces, the coldest killers in the galaxy. They would be nurtured at the breast of black operations.
It was barbaric. Inhumane. It would break them all, leaving them as small, unmarked graves, or as shattered remnants of their former selves, reforged into alien beings. I'd brought this down upon those children, and I was doomed to be the maestro to their symphony of suffering.
It was the work of Being X. It was too ironic, too pointed to my personal experience, for it to be anything but.
But something twisted in me, as I cast the blame upon that monster.
Being X had not inspired the idea of this program in me and my colleagues; that had been our choice to drink heavily and our emotional fervor.
Being X had not forced us to set aside morality in the pursuit of wasting money; that had been my own excitement at hypotheticals and dislike of government spending.
Being X had not forced us to write our horrific thoughts down, nor to publish it; that had been my pride, my hubris, my desire to see such quality work remembered, and not forgotten with the hangover.
I could not blame my own failings on that monster. I was so proud of being free from his grip, and I had not heard his voice once in this new life. It had been my own hand behind those evils.
And even without knowing, I felt that I could not blame that demon for ONI's decisions, either. How could I, when I'd seen so many generals make decisions they believed logical, yet only propagated the suffering of their soldiers? How could I, when I'd bemoaned the failure of both the UNSC and the Insurrection to understand that their biases and beliefs were coming from the fear of the distant unknown?
It would be hypocritical of me to decry such human weakness for most of my life, and then, the moment I fell victim to the same weakness, shift the blame to otherworldly influence, and hold men blameless for their horrific decisions.
If I was weak enough to say that, then I might as well blame Being X for forcing that damn ex-employee to throw me onto the train tracks. Or blame him for influencing my decision to fire that slacker, after all the time I'd invested in trying to help him improve his performance. I knew both to be completely wrong, given how utterly incompetent the false god had been when I had met him.
No. I refused to follow that winding, twisting road. I was free. I was the master of my fate. I was the captain of my soul.
And so too were the agents and masters of ONI, the men who'd looked at my utterly immoral idea, and decided to implement it.
Clearly, those decisionmakers at ONI were incompetent. Just as much as Being X had been. And yet they were now in charge of raising seventy-five children.
I was nodding, as the logical conclusion presented itself.
If ONI could not be trusted to raise these children, then I would have to. Their parents were no longer an option, and I was both trapped in this situation, and bore a share of the responsibility for it existing in the first place.
After all, I had experience with such things. I had trained super-soldiers before. I had often been given suicidal orders and reinterpreted them to ensure survival.
And all it would cost… would be willing, eager participation in this. I must pretend to be an immoral monster, uncaring of the suffering of children. I would have to rub shoulders with sharks. I would have to operate within their system, their culture, their belief in necessary evils.
So be it.
I returned to the bathroom, and started doing my daily ablutions. I showered, washed my face, brushed my teeth. I picked up my dropped makeup kit, and carefully concealed the signs of my stress. I moved to the bland, government-issue dresser, and pulled out clothes. I clothed myself quickly, dressing in a neat, severe style. I needed to be distinct from the military uniforms, while still showing personal discipline.
The routine consumed my focus. When I emerged from this fugue, ready to start the first day of the rest of my life, I caught sight of myself in the corner of the mirror, and paused.
Apparently, it didn't matter how I dressed. My back was stiff, my bearing proud. I may be wearing the garb of a civilian consultant, but I stood as I was wearing a uniform once again, ready to stand before a panel of Generals and defend my tactical decision.
I held back a sigh. The return of my last life's habits was inevitable. Perhaps, in time, I could view it as the asset it undoubtedly would be.
Now that I was fully awake, I could remember more from yesterday, including the local layout, and more troublingly, the schedule of events.
My new home was a separate compound deep in the FLEETCOM Military Complex, sequestered from other UNSC facilities by the rising spines of the Highland Mountains. We were situated near the bottom end of a low-rising canyon, shielded from casual observance by millions of cedar trees, and the peaks of the mountains themselves. More determined attempts to spy would be deterred by thousands of miles of restricted airspace, with any number of concealed, AI-controlled SAM sites, and dozens of UNSC Air Force fighter wings. On another world, perhaps we might have still been observable to spy satellites, but this was Epsilon Eridani II, and no satellites flew over Reach without the UNSC's total awareness and approval.
It truly was a picturesque location, but it was also very remote. The only access into our training valley was via dropship, or a fifty mile hike through soaring mountain passes and narrow canyon descents. The latter option was entirely theoretical; no human had ever done it, and from the towering heights I'd seen on my flight in, I didn't expect anyone to achieve it soon. I wasn't convinced that even mountain goats could do it. The UNSC had settled the canyon from the air, deploying assets from above like they were colonizing a distant frontier instead of their private backyard.
Despite the rugged remoteness, the UNSC had wasted no expense in preparing this compound. The training compound was comprised of a dozen above-ground buildings, and an enormous underground labyrinth connecting them, carved out of the granite with high explosives and equipment from the titanium mines in the lower reaches of the Highlands. In the event of the biggest blizzard in a century, a hostile incursion, or even unrestricted nuclear warfare, the compound's inhabitants could safely reside inside the underground tunnels for years.
The list of actual facilities was extensive. There were three barracks, a separate officer's quarters, two mess halls capable of housing the entire population of the compound, five auditoriums for varying audience sizes, ten 'classroom' settings, four armories, a half-dozen gymnasiums for every kind of physical exercise, two pools, a fully equipped field hospital, several deep silos with extensive storage for every kind of supply, a motor pool, two separate hangars, one for our own assigned dropships, and one for visitors.
The scientists associated with the project would not be residing here, save for myself and the psychology staff. The UNSC could easily direct a few daily dropship runs to keep the low-hundreds of human inhabitants supplied, but only so long as we weren't consuming much in the way of actual materials, just food. As the research teams would be trying to break ground in half a dozen fields at the same time, they were going to use vastly more resources than that, and would require much more specialized facilities.
This did mean that I would have to split my time between three different locations, and I was not looking forward to the constant VTOL commutes required for such activities. The first, obviously, would be this training compound. The second would be the research facilities that my project had taken over from their previous occupants, located two hundred miles away, near the edge of the Highland range, with actual railyards and transportation facilities. The third, to my anger and horror, would be FLEETCOM HQ itself, and the ONI sub-annex beneath it, to keep the shadowy intelligence organization apprised of our progress.
Today was the official start of my still un-named super-soldier project. All the required resources had been assembled, all facilities were secured and prepared, but there was still some pre-production steps to manage before the curtain came up.
To start, I had to meet with my military staff, and dictate the start of the training programs. The original paper had been quite specific as to the training of the test subjects, but only after they reached the age where they could actually build muscle and skills. The earliest ages were useless for the former, and had reduced effectiveness for the latter. The only reason to start training someone at six years old was for the psychological aspects – inculcating a belief system in them, training mental obedience, things like that. Demanding that a six year old do hundreds of push-ups every day was of limited use for anything other than sadism.
As a result, we hadn't written much on the day-to-day training of six year olds. Just what kind of mindset we wanted to teach, what mental traits would be encouraged or discouraged. Apparently, I'd written at least some of it last night, before I crashed in a dismal haze. I didn't recall much of it, but what was written here seemed to be good. I could explain further on the particulars to my staff in the meeting.
This was the foremost meeting on my schedule for a simple reason: the test subjects were to be woken from cryosleep today. Their training started tomorrow. They would spend the next ten years training, every single day, preparing them for cybernetic augmentation surgery that didn't yet exist. They'd been gathered over the past few months, at the best possible times, and simply left in cryosleep until ONI was good and ready to open their pods.
As one might imagine, despite the optimism of the ONI higher ups, the actual training staff were anxious to know how they were supposed to train these children, given that they would have at most twelve hours to familiarize themselves with said training plan before executing it.
After that, later tonight I would be giving a speech to the children and introducing them to the program. According to the notes written by some anonymous ONI expert, this way the children would learn the full truth late in the day, after the physically stressful process of defrosting from cryosleep, reducing the chance of abundant morning energy being directed at resistance. That allowed ONI to satisfy the barest moral qualms by telling the children bluntly that they had been conscripted, before giving them a filling dinner and sending them off to sleep. When they awoke tomorrow, they would already have some familiarity with their circumstances, and be less inclined to resist.
As I walked through the halls of my new prison, I wondered idly if that was a standard procedure for ONI. They had done the exact same thing to me just yesterday, and had now handed me a detailed explanation behind the tactic. Was it honesty that compelled them to tell me, or was it simply the result of so much compartmentalization that they didn't even realize they were admitting it to me?
What was incompetence, and what was deliberate malice? It seemed so hard to tell with ONI, and I was unimpressed by the organization thus far. I could spend days ruminating on the precise nature of their failures, but such behavior was unproductive and satisfied nothing but the shallowest of egos. Far better to focus on production and creativity. What could I do with the limited time available to me, that provide the most concrete, physical benefit?
It was a reaffirmation of my decision to work 'willingly' for ONI on this monstrous project, but it also applied to the supersoldiers I would be training.
I was not so arrogant as to dismiss the value of the common soldiery, either in the sacrifice of their labor and lives, or in the intelligence of their creativity and productivity. But it was nonetheless true that they provided much less overall productivity to a military. From a purely utilitarian perspective, a skilled technician was more 'useful' to a military in many situations, until the actual shooting started, and the infantry grunt was once more needed. It was a dilemma as old as soldiering itself, and it was one that I intended to crush under the greatest military power in existence – an unlimited budget.
I didn't want to spend ten years educating these children, so that they would understand what horrors had been done to them, and be left with no other skills, no other options than to continue working for the same military that had enslaved them. Both ONI and I had robbed these children of their childhood, but I refused to also steal their adulthood from them.
No, these children would have options. They would be more than enlisted or officers. They would have a grounding in useful subjects that could provide a career outside of the military. The only twist was that I couldn't possibly be obvious about it. I could not teach them masonry, or accounting, or medicine. But I could teach them battlefield engineering, logistics, and first aid. Those rudimentary first steps would have to be enough.
I hid these thoughts behind a cold mask as I approached the private conference room attached to my office. The schedule was so hectic that I hadn't even had the chance to see my office before I was thrust into bureaucratic meetings. I'd say it was an ill omen for the future of this project, but honestly, at this point we were collecting death flags like spare change on the streets.
The conference room was only intended for meetings of my command staff, and so it was cozy, tight, able to seat eight people and no more. When I entered, I was encouraged to see that the four figures had already entered. One of them, a Captain Wilson judging by his rank insignia and name tag, had already decided to take a seat at the head of the table, taking my spot. The three others appeared to be non-commissioned officers.
Wonderful. I was back in the military for two days, and the power plays had already started.
Perhaps this Captain Wilson believed that he was in charge of the project. Perhaps he'd even been told as much by Vice Admiral Keeler. Unfortunately for him, no matter how legitimate that perception was, I could not allow him that power. If I was to try to raise these children properly, as the closest parental substitute that they would ever have, then I could not be countermanded or overridden in my daily work by a figure above that. Disputed authority would achieve nothing but confusion and disobedience, making children more prone to negative behavior.
It would be an uphill battle to dislodge this man from the project, but it was achievable. After all, he could be replaced far more easily than me. Exceptional military officers were rare, but a scientist capable of running four separate research projects and combining them together was borderline impossible to find.
"Dr. Halsey," Captain Wilson greeted me, his tone courteous, but in a perfunctory, token manner. "So glad you could join us."
Ah, hostility. I smiled back at the officer, my expression just as fake as his. I had arrived precisely on time for the meeting, despite it being scheduled for 0700. Perhaps Wilson believed that I would be irritated by the early schedule. I doubted that he knew my own habits were to rise at 0500, and only the travel lag had reduced me to sleeping in to 0600.
"But of course," I replied, walking in and sitting at the clear 'foot' of the table. "However can this project proceed without coordination between the training and research sections? Thank you, gentlemen, for your prompt arrivals."
I nodded in turn to each of the non-coms in the room. Two of them had the bearing and appearance of elite soldiers, but the third one was plainly uncomfortable, and his uniform had a particular stiffness that suggested it had either just been issued, or it was rarely ever worn. The nametags read Mendez, Wentworth, and Swanson.
"So, shall we get started?" I asked, turning my gaze at Captain Wilson as I laid a datapad out on the table. A tap of the screen hooked it into the table's projector system – a standard feature at my old lecturing positions, in this new technological age.
"Yes, let's," Captain Wilson replied, his words clipped and tight. His eyes narrowed as he gazed back at me, and my smile widened in turn. He did not bother to hide his animosity for me, and I did not care to hide mine for him either.
"The first item on our agenda is the training schedule," Wilson said. "As of this morning, no training regimen has been provided. Given that the subjects are being defrosted as we speak, could you enlighten us as to why that has not been provided, Doctor?"
I was tempted, quite heavily, to tell him that it was because I had only been hired by ONI yesterday, but that would have been a mistake. Not because I would be pleading ignorance, but because I would be giving an excuse, apologizing, and submitting implicitly to his authority as a newcomer.
"Gladly," I replied, showing no signs of hesitation at his baited question. "That is because you are being provided with it now."
I tapped a key on my datapad, and the schedule flashed up on the projector.
The two grizzled non-coms looked at the data and started reading. Wilson didn't bother, merely keeping his glare locked on me. Swanson looked uncomfortable, and barely glanced at either of us.
What was such a timid person doing in this situation? I glanced at his rank insignia, and saw that he was a Staff Sergeant from the Marines. Not the highest of NCO's, but an E-6 was nothing to sneer at. It was the highest that many might reach by the end of their service.
In comparison, both the other non-coms were E-7's. Wentworth was a Gunnery Sergeant, also from the Marines, while Mendez was a Chief Petty Officer from the Navy. There had to be a reason for this, but I couldn't tell what it was yet.
"Why the delay?" Wilson demanded from me, leaning forward. "And why is this schedule only for the first week of training?"
"Because the rest of the schedule is still being refined," I answered calmly. "It will be issued before the end of the week."
"And why not sooner?" Wilson pressed.
Again, I was tempted to tell him that was because it hadn't yet been written. Frankly, I was lucky enough to have written down the first weeks' worth of training last night! But that would be a mistake.
"If you have an objection to how I run this program," I said instead, addressing the man directly, "then you may take it up with Vice Admiral Keeler at your leisure."
Mendez and Wentworth stopped reading the projection, and stiffened. Swanson tried to freeze in place, but I could see slight movements under the table as he clenched his hands together. I didn't know what thoughts were running through the heads of those men, but I could handle those potential issues later. For now, I had to nip this problem in the bud as swiftly as possible.
Wilson didn't reply immediately, and instead locked eyes with me, initiating a stare down. His gaze was intense, and I could see in it the well-earned confidence of a man that had achieved nigh-impossible tasks with focused application of force. He was an elite among elites, a man of towering pride and capability. He had no hesitations about killing, and I could see now that he was weighing how much of a problem I would be.
I didn't look away. I looked straight back at the Captain, my own gaze firm, and let my smile widen slowly, remembering all the times I had met men like him on the battlefield, and left their corpses strewn across the landscape. Men like him were chaff to me. No, more than that. They were lacking. I had faced down mad scientists, crazed zealots, and God himself. A mere man like Wilson was nothing compared to that.
The Captain broke off from the stare down first, and grunted in reply to my previous sentence.
I started explaining the details of the next week's training program to the tense table, and spared no more thoughts on Captain Wilson.