Captain Arnold Wilson sat at his desk, his tightly controlled expression giving no hints as to his true feelings.
In front of his desk stood Chief Petty Officer Mendez, his second-in-command, and head trainer of the Orion-II project. The native of Sigma Octanus IV had been summarizing the previous day's training, if you could call it that. The children were allowed to play with air rifles. Toy soldiers with toy weapons, passively encouraged to think of the military as 'fun' or 'cool.'
"Thank you, Chief Mendez," he said, acknowledging the head trainer. "That report was very enlightening."
"Sir," Mendez replied politely, still standing firmly at attention.
The NCO held that pose as Wilson thought to himself, like a good soldier; not because he was a robot, but because he understood that it allowed them both to pretend things were normal. Mendez's unflinching adherence to protocol let Wilson pretend that he wasn't off his game, that this wasn't a deeply terrifying situation. Wilson's refusal to show emotion allowed the NCO to pretend the same, even when they were both planning for how to fix that situation.
Enlightening. Yes, that was a word for it. It shed light on exactly how much Doctor Halsey had allowed her ambition to run wild, and how far she was willing to go to see it achieved.
Halsey was a snake, and Wilson despised her for it. She had charmed HIGHCOM somehow, but Wilson wasn't one of the high-bred politicos that strode through Sydney in white Mess Dress. He'd climbed through the mud and blood of the Marine ranks until he'd reached his current position, and he knew exactly what kind of problems the Orion-II program was breeding for itself.
She cast loving attention on the children when she was around them, Wilson had seen that. The Doctor was splitting her time between the Orion-II compound and the nearby research base at the foothills of Menachite Mountain, but she'd still somehow found the time to teach a few of the children's lessons personally.
Someone else might have assumed it was affection, but Wilson had seen Halsey's true face when she wasn't around the children. He knew that she was wearing a mask to hide her true feelings, her true goals. He'd seen her grin at him with a bloodthirsty, devilish hunger, completely removed from human kindness.
The worst predators pretended to be kind. They abused your trust, fostered good will, and then twisted that relationship into a collar, a leash, a noose. Halsey was clearly trying to coerce the children into thinking of her as a mother figure – a replacement for the families that she had willingly ripped them from.
And why? Because as Machiavelli wrote, it is best for a ruler to be both loved and feared, not merely feared alone. Fear could entice obedience, but always hesitant and lacking. Love could entice willing service, but sometimes careless and wild. Only when tempered together could a ruler extract the most performance from their slaves.
It gave him a sick feeling in his stomach. All these games, all these toys, they would be used like a surgeon's scalpel by the Doctor for exactly as long as they were useful, and then they would be discarded. A gentle acclimation to increasingly harsh privations, stretched out so gradually over seven years that the children would never realize it. Already, their high quality food was being replaced with more mundane options, as if Halsey had wanted to entice feelings of luxury early enough that they could have an effect on the children, and then phased them out as soon as that feeling was embedded.
Better to be honest. Better to be cruel, if needed. This was not a ski chalet or a boarding school, this was a goddamn military program, and these children needed to know that. They needed to learn exactly what they were, and what job they were going to learn. The children might hate it, but it would be honest, and they would know the truth.
"The training mission tomorrow," Wilson said, after the long silence of his musings. "Summarize it."
Mendez obliged instantly. He knew that Wilson had already read the training program, that Wilson was fully aware of the mission, but he also knew that Wilson had a likely reason for asking for this, that he had a reason for asking. That why basic social tricks like this existed, and they worked even if both parties knew about the trick.
"First, we will split the candidates into twenty-five separate three-man teams," Mendez explained. "Randomized selection, with a round of review to make sure no candidates are paired with any previous teammates. Once the teams are ready, we will drop them in the valley between Hill 421 and Hill 430. They'll be provided fragments of a map of the valley, with every five teams being able to form a complete map."
A basic land-nav training exercise. That Halsey was trusting children with it was arrogant, as even grown adults frequently got lost in training even with a compass and a full map.
"Once gathered, the map will indicate the location of their rendezvous with a Pelican," Mendez continued. "The first four complete maps to arrive – meaning a five-team group – will be returned to the compound. The fifth team will have to wait for the return ride, and will not be informed of their guaranteed pickup. Security measures will include trackers in their jumpsuits, with two separate Pelicans loaded with armed trainers, ready to intervene as necessary. The valley has been scouted in advance, and is clear of both hostile wildlife and dangerous terrain."
"The primary goals of the training," Wilson asked, not bothering to make it a question.
"The continuing focus on encouraging teamwork, while increasing independence, critical thinking, and confidence in the candidates," Mendez recited.
Wilson nodded, and thought about reaching for a cigarette. He suppressed the urge. It could wait until Mendez had left. No signs of weakness, no signs of lax discipline, not even with his second-in-command.
"The exercise will be altered," Wilson said, his voice steady. "I have alternate orders for the pickup team."
Mendez didn't move a muscle, and instead listened attentively.
"Thus far, this program has striven to ensure that the children are sheltered from excessive hardship," Wilson continued, choosing his words carefully. "This is an excellent idea for physical conditioning and long term health of the children, but we must begin to consider their emotional conditioning. The first steps will be demonstrating to them the importance of prompt, immediate adherence to commands from their trainers."
Wilson stood from his desk, and turned to look out the window of his office, towards the mountains in the background.
"Many of the children have been resistant to the trainers," Wilson said. "This is not a criticism of you or your men. You've performed very capably. It is a reflection of the children who have been selected. The same potential that they possess for the later stages of this program has made them difficult to handle. They were selected as some of the most exceptional individuals of their generation, and we are seeing that. I'll send you a report on the black-bag team that brought in Candidate 087, and the difficulties she caused them."
His eyes traced the children from behind his office window as they emerged from their current activity – another classroom session with Déjà, their A.I. trainer. The trainers surrounded them as they left, haranguing them into two even lines. It took a remarkably short time, but Wilson could see some of the looks that the children shot at the trainers when they thought they could get away with it. He saw two of the children swap places, which made no difference save for the petty rebellion of it.
Halsey's campaign of enticing love wasn't working. How could it, in this situation? Kidnap children from their parents, and try to replace them blatantly? Of course the children would resist.
"The pickup team is to act as follows," Wilson instructed, turning back to Mendez, his hands still folded behind his back. "When arriving at the pickup zone, candidates are to be firmly instructed to present themselves for inspection, the same as here on base. To promote teamwork, any teams with missing members or incomplete maps will be questioned. If they deliberately abandoned any of their teammates, they will be punished immediately by the pickup team, and sent to retrieve their teammate. If they come upon the Pelican by chance, they will be detained without punishment. If they do not immediately present themselves or answer questions, they will be punished. Punishment will be the use of stun batons. Is this understood, Chief?"
"Yes sir," Chief Mendez replied, his face still locked in professional detachment. "I will convey those orders to the training staff immediately."
"That'll be all, Chief," Wilson said.
Mendez saluted, turned on his heel, and swiftly left the room. The door clicked shut behind him.
Wilson sighed, and dug into his desk for a cigarette.
The sad part of all this, Wilson reflected, was that he could almost see the logic if he squinted. It was cold, emotionless, devoid of any morality, but once you made that presumption, it all clicked. It was a cascade of simple, logical answers to problems.
Got a problem with defectors to the Innies? Just indoctrinate your troops, so they won't defect.
Indoctrinating adults is too hard? Just do it to children, so they won't know any better.
The children might not be good enough? Just grab the extremely high outliers with the UNSC's healthcare database.
Losing too many men to bombs? Just design a suit of bomb-proof armor, so you don't lose that investment.
The suit's too heavy? Just make it powered armor, so it carries its own weight.
The suit's hard to control? Just genetically augment your troops, so they can react fast enough anyway.
What if the augmentations fail? Just increase the batch size, so at least some of them survive.
Wilson could understand it all, because any good military officer knew how to detach themselves from the emotion of a situation, so they could make the correct call. Sending in a thousand men to die, to save a hundred thousand. Use a terrifyingly dangerous weapon so that the deterrent ended a much more deadly war that might have continued for years.
How to conduct warfare in a way that arms limitations were not due to moral qualms, but due to being less efficient than more moral tactics. A sliding scale of if-then statements designed to achieve the minimal death toll via the most brutal methods – something that could easily describe the Orion-II program.
Wilson lit his cigarette with a battered old lighter that he'd carried since his first deployment. He stared out at the jogging backs of the children as they disappeared into the woods, going on a gentle two kilometer jog before they returned for another set of exercises.
If Doctor Halsey had been someone else, then perhaps he could believe that was her goal, Wilson mused. But she wasn't. She had already revealed her true nature to him, and he didn't think for a moment that Halsey's real goal was the greater good.
She might argue that. She might even convince HIGHCOM of that. He could see it now – taking whatever successes that Orion-II achieved, she would argue for a third program, and a fourth program. She'd argue for the lives it would save, the good it would do, but she wouldn't really care about it.
Wilson didn't envy HIGHCOM, or the higher ups in Section Three. They were so busy with the major problems of the galaxy that they didn't have the grounded perspective of the common man. They couldn't see Halsey's two-faced nature, because they were so worried about the Insurrection that they were reaching out, desperately, for any solution. A solution that Halsey promised to provide.
But what did Halsey herself want? Wilson didn't know for sure, but if he had to guess, it was the science itself. Not power, not connections. If that was her goal, she could have promised huge strides in any one of ONI's favored topics of research. Instead, she'd promised to advance four at the same time, and mix them all together. It was insanity. It was like trying to dig for gold by flattening mountains with nukes.
Oh, he could see her arguing for an Orion-III, and an Orion-IV program, even if the Insurrection had been crushed, just so she could continue pushing the bleeding edge of science even further. Just so she could keep the unlimited budget, the supply of test subjects, the best minds in the galaxy.
He'd done evil things. He wasn't some moralizing little prick, trying to pretend he was better than Halsey. They were both monsters. The difference, Wilson considered, was that he did evil for good reasons. He was willing to be a hypocrite about it, for the cause of keeping people safe. Halsey did evil because it was the best way she could wrestle with the universe itself, butting her brain against the unknown. She did it because she wanted to fight God. The arrogance of it, that pissed him off.
That was why she smiled at him, Wilson realized. It had bothered him for some time – Halsey had given away the game to him instantly, at their first ever meeting. He'd wondered why she'd done it, how she'd been so incompetent as to reveal her hand that fast.
She'd been too happy to conceal her true feelings. She simply hadn't cared that she gave it away, because she had just gotten everything she wanted. Ten years of the Orion-II program.
These children… Wilson shook his head, tapping his cigarette on a tray to shake loose the lingering ash at the end. If Halsey had her way, they would grow up believing that Halsey genuinely loved them, when they were nothing more than lab rats to her. He doubted that she would actually manage to achieve that loving affection with her current behavior, but that was what she was aiming for.
So yes, he was going to be cruel to the children. Yes, using stun prods on them was a crime. Yes, he'd just ordered the trainers to use those prods at the slightest excuse tomorrow.
He was a monster, but he knew that, and he knew how to use it. Better for those children to learn from him exactly what kind of program they were in. Better that they learn the nightmare that was their lives now. Better to wake up now, and know the truth.
Wilson took another drag on his smoke, and thought briefly about the blank resignation letter on his computer. He hadn't gotten further than opening it and staring at the blank page, because he didn't have any good reason to resign.
Yes, he hated Halsey. So what? He'd hated a lot of his superior officers, and he didn't even have to listen to Halsey's orders. He didn't have any real objection to the morality of the program. He simply thought the program could be run more efficiently. If he quit, then the program would be bogged down by Halsey's idiotic handling. She was probably one of the smartest scientists in the UNSC, but she clearly didn't have a clue how to handle the children, the trainers, or anything outside of the science itself.
The cigarette had burned low. It was a cheap brand, one of Wilson's little protests against the system itself. He didn't smoke Sweet Williams, like so many other UNSC officers did. Instead, he'd picked up a crappy local brand on some world a couple years ago – Asphodel, he thought – and he'd smoked them over anything else as a little rebellion of his own, a way of showing that it didn't matter what brand you smoked, just like it didn't matter how you got the job done, so long as it got done.
He might need to place an order, Wilson mused. He'd be stuck here on Reach for the next ten years, and there's no way his supply would last that long.