"They did what?" I asked, my eyes widening in stunned surprise.
"They attacked the trainers," Mendez said, standing perfectly at attention before my desk, "Incapacitating them and leaving them behind as they stole the Pelican. Candidate 117 recognized the AI interface symbol and requested Déjà's aid in flying it back."
I stood up from my desk, glaring at the man as I did. I grabbed the edge of the desk, so that I'd have something to squeeze, to hold onto, to keep myself from doing something I'd regret.
"Chief Petty Officer Mendez," I growled out. "I don't care about the cadets right now. Tell me again what the trainers did."
The Navy NCO's eyes flicked over to look at me for an instant, before returning to their previous position, and focus on the wall above my head, in the tiniest crack in his self-control. He did not hesitate to respond, which was perhaps the only good thing he had done since entering my office and informing me of the near disaster that had unfolded on a routine training trip in the wilderness.
"The candidates were ordered to present themselves immediately for inspection. When they did not, the trainers followed their orders and moved to detain them with stun batons," Mendez recited, stone-faced.
He said nothing further, but he'd already said far, far too much.
"I gave no such instructions," I said, barely restraining my voice from an ugly hiss. "I specifically ordered a minimal use of physical punishment. I even recall ordering your trainers to cease the use of those stun batons. Are your men insubordinate, Mendez?"
"No, Doctor," Mendez replied with a steady tone. "They were following the training orders given by Captain Wilson."
"Captain Wilson countermanded my training instructions?" I asked, as white-hot fury crawled through my body, like napalm across a hillside. "Is that correct?"
"Yes, Doctor," Mendez said.
I had no idea how the man was so calm. He was like a machine, lacking any emotion whatsoever. Was it the height of discipline, or was he truly emotionless? I did not know, and at this moment, I did not care.
My jaw clamped shut, and I squeezed my desk with both hands, holding myself back.
"Bring Wilson here," I ordered. "We are going to sort this out right now."
"Doctor?" Mendez asked, with a fractional turn of his head towards me.
"Now!" I barked, the whip-crack of my voice ringing in the small office. I hadn't spoken like that since my last life, but the voice of command was not a thing that you forgot – not when it had been honed in combat, not when lives depended on me communicating efficiently and effectively.
The NCO snapped a salute at the tone, like he was on a parade ground. He held it for a moment, then abruptly turned about face and marched out of the office. The door shut behind him.
I reached into the pocket of my labcoat and seized the small, rectangular keepsake that I carried within. My fist tightened, and my flesh ached as the harsh metal frame bit into it. It was so tempting, but I fought it off. Rage was an emotional response. It would not achieve my goals, it would not remedy this situation.
"Déjà," I called out.
The holographic interface on my desk lit up, and the blue image of a woman stood atop the desk, wrapped in a toga and carrying a clay tablet.
"How may I serve, Doctor Halsey?" the Dumb A.I. responded, her voice polite. If she'd heard anything of the previous few minutes, she gave no indication.
"Inform Vice Admiral Keeler that I need a meeting with him," I told her, keeping a firm grasp of my tone. "Tomorrow, ideally. If not, as soon as possible."
"Of course," Déjà said, the little motes of light orbiting her head tilting as she nodded. "Shall I tell him why?"
"No," I said, perfectly aware that giving the ONI spook a heads-up would only allow him time to prepare against it.
I didn't care if that was violating a social rule, if it was presumptuous. The man had given me a blank check, he'd damn well better accept a meeting with me when I needed one. Perhaps he'd put Wilson up to this, or perhaps the sniveling little shit had come up with it on his own, but I would not tolerate this behavior against the cadets. Was it not harsh enough that they had been kidnapped? Did they need to be physical tortured by the authority figures above them, as well?
Damn me for ever thinking of this evil program. Damn those bastards at ONI for accepting it.
"Do you have video footage of the incident at the Pelican today?" I asked Déjà.
"I do," Déjà replied, briefly gesturing with a hand.
The desk's holoprojector retracted her avatar, and up shot a video screen. An internal camera from the dropship's bay, looking outwards, the walls of the dropship forming an artificial border around the video's edges. Three trainers stood loosely at the lip of the bay, keeping a loose watch over the tree line in the background of the shot.
There was no audio. I stood there and watched as the trainers chatted loosely in silence, and then, as one, stiffened up and turned to look at something.
It was one of the cadets. A girl, I thought, though it was hard to tell even with the high resolution, thanks to the uniform haircuts that every single cadet had been forcibly given, shaving them down to the scalp. Even now, nearly two months later, their hair was still short enough to make discerning their gender difficult. She was saying something, gesturing behind her with a frantic hand, her expression worried.
One of the trainers yelled something at the cadet, pointing a hand at her, and then down at the ground by his feet. The cadet replied wordlessly, pointing behind her into the woods repeatedly. The trainer pulled a baton, and after a moment, so did the other two. The batons lit up with the hazy glow of an active stun prod.
The cadet ran, turning on her heel and darting into the woods swiftly. The first trainer said something to the other two, gesturing for them to stay behind, and followed after her at a quick walk, the baton raised to strike, as he too walked into the woods.
I watched, eyes glued to the screen, as the other two trainers waited by the Pelican's bay, stun prods glowing as they waited for their comrade to return.
But he didn't. After a minute, the female cadet returned, running back into the edge of the clearing. She called out soundlessly, and gestured behind her.
This time, her expression was not so worried – instead, it was mocking.
The two trainers took off instantly, charging into the woods after the cadet. They could not catch her. The moment they had started moving, she turned and ran yet again. The trainers chased, but barely had they reached the edge of the clearing, where the camera would lose them, when a hail of rocks smashed into them. Some came from in front of them, some came from the sides.
The woods that had appeared so empty to the camera were suddenly full of yelling cadets in dirty jumpsuits, hurling rocks. They jumped out of their concealment, and the trainers fell back, tackled bodily by several cadets with rocks in their fists. They tried to strike out, but they were swarmed and dropped in less than few seconds.
This was a disaster. In one single exercise, Wilson's orders had prompted the cadets to physically attack their own trainers, in justified self-defense.
What the hell was the man thinking? Did he have any idea what this would do to morale, to cohesion, to the willing participation of the cadets?
Did he have any idea how morally horrific such an action was, how abusive?
We'd done so many horrible things already, but I'd tried by hardest to ensure that these cadets would be given no reason to doubt their authority figures. No reason to grow up full of fear and suspicion, never trusting. Yes, we'd already damaged them, but that was no reason to double down and start carving scars into their psyches! This kind of action would make them into feral animals, ensuring that they were always distrustful and paranoid.
One of the cadets stepped closer. Another girl, I think, though the shaven head made it hard to tell. She carried a rock in her hand, and her expression was determined. She stood next to the unconscious trainers, and raised the rock as if to strike them, as if to finish them off.
Before she could, another cadet stepped up to her, and laid a hand on her shoulder. He said something to her, and she listened, before dropping the rock to the side. I could see the numbers emblazoned on the shoulders of their jumpsuits. Cadet 016 had held the rock, and Cadet 117 – the one that Mendez had identified as the ringleader – had talked her down.
The sound of a metallic grinding met my ears. I glanced down, and saw that my off-hand was still squeezing the edge of the UNSC standard issue desk. I didn't feel anything, but the desk was crumpling ever-so-slightly under my grip. I worked the muscles in that hand, and released it, each finger like prying open the jaws of an animal locked on its prey. What a pitiful loss of control, I mused, staring down at the desk. Now I will need to replace it.
I looked up again. The cadets had knocked the trainers unconscious, and some had even dragged back the first trainer by his shoulders. As I watched, some of them started unlacing the trainer's boots, and tying the laces around their wrists as improvised bonds.
"End playback," I said, the words dropping from my tongue like lead weights on my soul.
It took a few minutes for Mendez to return with the Captain. It shouldn't have. We worked in the same building in this compound, and his office was barely a few doors down from mine. I stood the entire time.
Finally, the door hissed open, and Captain Wilson entered my office in a clean day uniform, his face already formed into a studiously disinterested expression. Chief Petty Officer Mendez did not enter with him, and instead stayed outside, closing the door as he did.
"Explain," I said to him, my tone like steel.
"Explain what, Doctor Halsey?" Wilson asked in reply, his expression not changing.
"Why you disregarded my training plan and overrode my instructions," I said.
"In what ways?" Wilson asked again, folding his hands behind his back.
Perhaps he thought it made him look commanding, like an officer on the bridge of a starship. Yet all it did was draw my ire even more. Perhaps that was his real goal.
If so, the fool didn't realize how close he was to death.
"Ordering the instructors to beat the children for anything less than instant obedience," I told him, the vivid images of the stun prods returning to my mind.
"This may have escaped you, Doctor," Wilson said, his façade of calm shifting as he looked at me. "But this is a military operation. That means military discipline. With how insubordinate these children have been, it's time that they learn how to follow the chain of command."
The chain of command. The same thing that he had so flagrantly violated. The same principle that required that commands only go from one rank to the immediately next, to prevent conflicts.
If Wilson considered himself my superior, as I suspected he did, then he had violated it by bypassing me. If he considered himself my equal, then he had no legitimacy, as training was my remit. The only way that Wilson hadn't violated it would be if he believed that I was outside the chain, and thus irrelevant.
It was true that the org chart for the Orion-II program was rather loose at the highest level, but one thing that had been nailed down was that Doctor Catherine Halsey was in charge of the training program.
What a foolish thing to stake your career on, I reflected, the tiniest tinge of pity trickling through my burning anger.
"You have just made three mistakes," I told him, with an icy voice. "The first was thinking that beating the cadets would improve their morale, rather than emboldening their resistance. The second was bypassing the chain of command by countermanding my instructions. The third was failing to understand the cadets."
Wilson's face tightened, and he opened his mouth to reply. I didn't give him a chance.
"Déjà," I said, tapping the desk. "Play the Pelican's video, starting at the cadet's first appearance. Fast-forward through the gap between the first and second."
"Of course, Doctor," Déjà's calm voice answered, and the holoprojector flared to life again. The Dumb A.I. had even turned the screen so that it was facing Captain Wilson, already recognizing that I had seen the video before.
"Doctor," Wilson started to say, irritation in his voice.
"Shut up!" I snapped at the man, glaring at him and raising my voice over his. "If you haven't already watched this, you're even more of a failure of an officer than you have already demonstrated. If you have watched it, then you can bear to watch it a second time!"
Wilson's mouth clacked shut, and the remnants of his calm façade shattered at my reprimand, and a contemptuous expression replaced it. For a moment, he tensed, and I waited to see if the idiot would compound his mistake by attempting to turn this into a shouting match. He didn't, but it looked like a close thing. Doubtless, Wilson had been in these kinds of tense situations before, because they accumulated in a military like honey attracted flies… perhaps the difference was that this time, he wasn't being chewed out by someone that he personally regarded as a superior.
Yes, it wasn't officially clear who was in charge of the program, and yes, Wilson had clearly believed he had more authority than he did. Now that belief was crashing on the rocky shores of reality, and as I watched, Wilson swallowed his next words with visible distaste.
The Captain watched the video in silence. I stepped to the side so I could watch his reactions. I hoped to see regret, disappointment, maybe even guilt. Something, anything, that would indicate that Wilson had genuinely believed that the cadets would respond with obedience or with mild resistance at most. If he believed that, then he was still an idiot, but at least he would not have planned these instructions with the expectation that they'd actually be used.
No such emotions came across his face. Instead, his expression tightened even more, in clear anger. I locked my own expression back into a mask, and lashed my disgust for the man deep within, where it could not influence my actions.
"Do you understand now why this was a failure?" I asked him, giving the man one more chance to explain. To save himself. To throw himself on my mercy, little though I felt like giving it. Wilson glared at me, and worked his jaw for a moment, before spitting out a reply.
"Yes, because I should have assigned more men," he replied, his teeth grit. "I underestimated the level of insubordination present in the children, and that is a mistake I will not be make again."
So be it, then, I thought to myself, as Wilson threw away the last lifeline I could offer him.
"No, you won't," I agree with him, meeting his glare with a steady stare of my own. "Your alterations to the training schedule are revoked. You will give no further orders to the trainers until I have cleared this incident with Vice Admiral Keeler."
Wilson's eyes widened.
"You're going to run to the Admiral?" he demanded, face twisting into a scowl. "Waste his time for some kids in need of discipline? Do you understand who Keeler is, Doctor? He runs all of Section Three. He is one step from God in ONI."
"I am going straight to the only person with authority over this program, yes," I shot back. "You should think about what that fact means for this program's importance, Captain. Perhaps you'll realize how large of a mistake you just made, drawing that man's attention."
"And do you think you'll be immune to his attention, Doctor?" Wilson asked me, baring his teeth like an animal. "Do you think he'll move past your mistaken decisions so easily? Do you think he's got any room for mercy in that job?
"Which of us is replaceable, Captain?" I asked him back. "Will it be the black-ops officer garrisoned in an oversight role? Or will it be the only scientist in the UNSC capable of running four different bleeding edge research projects, in areas that punish failures with grisly, painful deaths? Which do you think, Captain?"
Wilson snarled at me, but didn't respond.
"I know very well who I am working for," I told him coldly, speaking before he could muster up a reply. "I fear the same cannot be said for you."
The Captain said nothing more, and with a final furious look, he stormed out of my office, leaving the door open behind him as he did. I said nothing as he did – there was nothing more childish in this situation than to chase a retreating man with statements. It demonstrated nothing but insecurity in yourself.
I sighed quietly, and moved to shut the door. As I approached the threshold, I spotted someone standing outside.
Chief Mendez, of course, I thought to myself. He hadn't come into the office with Captain Wilson, showing either an excellent grasp of discretion, or perhaps merely the same adamantine level of professionalism that he'd sustained thus far in the program.
I stepped out of the office and turned to look at the Chief, opening my mouth to ask him if he would like to come in and discuss the situation. Instead, however, the moment I stepped outside, my mouth snapped shut.
The Navy NCO was not alone. Standing next to him with wide eyes and an unmasked expression was one of the cadets, a young boy. The number 117 was emblazoned on his chest. The same cadet that had, per Mendez's debrief, been the last to climb aboard the Pelican, and had shouldered the blame for the rest of the cadets, stating that if anyone was to be left behind, it was him.
He must have been standing outside the entire time, I realized. There was no way that Mendez would have gone to summon him while I talked to Wilson, as he couldn't know how that discussion would end.
Mendez must have intended to frog-march Cadet 117 into my office, after the stunt the cadets had pulled. An immediate response, bringing him to the equivalent of the principal's office.
"Come in," I said, my voice soft with emotional exhaustion. "Both of you."
I walked back around my desk and sat down, as Mendez ushered Cadet 117 into my office. I pushed past my lethargy and wiped my face clean of feelings.
By a more militaristic point of view, there was only one way to play this situation – distinguish Cadet 117's actions from Captain Wilson's, and judge them separately, as isolated instances. I should pretend that my meeting with Wilson had been completely unrelated. I should punish Cadet 117 for disobeying the rules that had governed that individual incident, rather than obeying all instructions, no matter how unusual they were.
By a more rational point of view, that was an imbecilic way to handle things. Even the most emotionless, sociopathic individual could understand that it was far more beneficial in the long run to maintain a consistent enforcement of rules and culture. If a person believed that their situation was truly random, that there was no gain in being consistently cooperative to a set of standards, then they would revert to the law of the jungle. That was the death-knell of civilizations, and I refused to allow it any purchase in my program.
This situation had altered the normal expectations, and I could not blame Cadet 117 for keeping to the old expectations without teaching him that rules were to be followed only when convenient, and broken as soon as you had enough personal power.
Yes, the children had been punished before, because I could not unilaterally change the program's original hypotheticals without risking my own removal, no matter what I wished. I had to shift things gradually, a millimeter at a time.
But never had the program punished the children for ordinary, understandable hesitation! The trainers had waved the stun prods around as visible threats a few times, but they pulled the recalcitrant children from their beds with their bare hands. Refusal was consistently met with explanations and encouragement, not with pain!
They were children, nothing more. We'd just started on military commands like standing at attention, and every trainer had been told to be patient with failures or mistakes. Evidently, not all of them had listened. Those three trainers had demonstrated far too much willingness to obey Wilson's foolhardy orders, and could no longer be trusted in my program.
I watched Cadet 117 enter with my hands folded on top of the desk, and frowned internally as Chief Mendez nudged him forward when he hesitated.
With a flash of shame, I realized that I didn't even know his name. I needed to show him that I was a responsible, reliable authority figure, and I'd have to start by either asking his name, or referring to him only by a dehumanizing number.
My hands unlaced, and I quickly accessed my keyboard, flipping through windows and pulling up a list of the cadets. I scrolled through the list until I reached his number, and I scanned his classified dossier quickly, noting his name before shutting off the computer with another key-press.
"Hello, John," I said, looking at the six year old.
"Doctor Halsey," the cadet responded, throwing up a salute. It was sloppy, and I saw Mendez's eyes inspect his form, but neither of us mentioned it.
"Trainee 117," Mendez said, with a growling tone. "Tell the Doctor what you told me. Tell her why you stole UNSC property and attacked the men guarding it."
"Sir!" John barked out, stiffening up in a childish imitation of standing at attention. "The guards were out of uniform. No insignia. They failed to identify themselves, sir!"
I blinked in surprise, and glanced at Mendez. The Chief raised a single eyebrow, but said nothing.
Out of uniform. I squashed an uncharacteristic burst of amusement at the Cadet's technical, legalistic defense.
What an interpretation! John hadn't done anything wrong because the men weren't wearing their proper uniforms, therefore they were not his trainers, and were acceptable targets. From the narrow point of view that military law took – for there could be no other way when it came to warfare – he was entirely correct.
I know that children are supposed to imitate their caregivers, but I hadn't expected them to imitate me so quickly.
My amusement turned darker. John was not completely wrong. Those men were not his trainers – no longer. I would never trust them on this base again. They would be gone by tomorrow, if I had my way with Keeler.
"Is that correct?" I asked him, leveling the lightest stare on the boy that I could personally stomach. "You attacked them because they were out of uniform?"
John hesitated in responding. I saw his eyes flicker around my office, looking at the dark wood, at the bare walls. He was searching for an excuse, for an out, but in the empty office that I hadn't bothered to decorate, there was nothing.
"Would you attack another person if they were out of uniform?" I asked him. "Can I trust you on my base, cadet?"
"Sir, yes sir!" John replied, hurriedly. "You can trust me, sir!"
"I am not military," I told him, keeping my voice gentle. "The correct term is Doctor. Nothing else. I am no 'sir'."
"Yes, uh… Doctor," he repeated, turning his head just enough to look at Chief Mendez from the corner of his eye. He was probably checking for a reaction, a hint, something that would let him know how to proceed. Mendez didn't show any signs of noticing the obvious movement, and neither did I.
"John," I said softly, leaning forward slightly as I spoke. "Why did you attack them?"
He bit his lip, and his expression grew panicked. I could see the glimmer of something in his eyes. The start of tears, perhaps.
"You have done nothing wrong, John," I told him, before he could start crying. "You did the right thing, but I need to know why you did it."
"They were going to attack us!" he blurted out, before stopping, eyes wide. "I – I mean…"
"They were going to attack you," I repeated softly. "That is correct. You defended yourself and your team. That is why you were right."
"But…" John let slip, before cutting himself off.
"Listen to me, cadet," I murmured, standing up and walking around the desk. I kneeled down and put myself at his eye level. "You are never wrong to defend yourself and your teammates. No matter what happens, your life is still important. Anyone who disagrees with that is your enemy."
I didn't dare look at Mendez as I spoke. I was saying too much, too quickly. There was no way to square that statement with the knowledge that sometimes, sacrifices were needed to save lives. I was being blatantly hypocritical from his perspective, because I'd been the same one to condemn the children to this hell in the first place.
Perhaps he would consider me a hypocrite. Perhaps he would view it as just another lie for the sake of the greater good, like any other ONI flunky. I didn't particularly care what the Chief Petty Officer thought at the moment. I had a more important person standing right in front of me.
John's red-rimmed eyes latched onto me, and I refused to look away. I tried to show him the compassion that I felt, the guilt, all of my true feelings, no matter how unlikely it was that the six-year old would understand.
"What should I do with him, Doctor?" Mendez asked, interrupting our staring match.
"Do?" I repeated, standing up and giving the man a fierce look once I was well past John's height, where he couldn't see.
Mendez didn't say anything more, and his raised eyebrow was all I needed to know that he wanted an actual answer. For good reason, too. As much as I'd justified the cadet's actions to John, he had still been hauled in front of my office.
If I sent the boy away with nothing but a pat on the back, then he would inevitably wonder why he'd been brought there in the first place. With time, that wondering could become a realization that this training exercise had not gone exactly as planned, and with that, the realization that his trainers were not infallible, were not trustworthy.
I couldn't possibly allow that realization to form, no matter that it was the truth, no matter that it was an excellent summary of my own feelings regarding the matter. I needed to do something with the boy to justify why Mendez had hauled him in front of me. My mind spun for a moment, and a loose, stray thought caught my attention.
One of my intended goals, later on in the program's lifespan, was to teach the cadets to be virtuous. To reward actions that supported those virtues, to punish actions that went against them. What was this, if not the first chance to do exactly that?
"I think that's obvious, Chief," I said, smiling as I realized the perfect solution. "Make him a squad leader."