"Doctor Halsey, why don't we talk in my office?"
I looked up from the table, where I had been gathering up my notes, confused. We had just finished the monthly meeting for team leaders at the FLEETCOM Military Complex. Everything had been normal, and I was looking forward to returning to the Spartan-II Compound and getting some sleep.
Repressed instincts from two lives ago came roaring to life at those words. They were the worst words you could hear in an office – my hindbrain was screaming that I was about to be fired.
"Commander?" I asked, without thinking, before realizing how stupid of a remark that was. I had heard him just fine. "I mean… of course, Commander Stanforth."
Michael Stanforth nodded, and walked out of the briefing room. I glanced around at David, Paul, Steve, and even at Chief Mendez, but none of them seemed to know what this was about, and only David offered me anything other than a small shrug.
"We'll hold the Pelican for you," the Surgery Team Lead said, before he departed the office.
They abandoned me, and I could only finish putting my notes into a carrying case and put on a professional, impassive face as I walked out to join Commander Stanforth at the elevator bank.
The others all entered an elevator and started descending to the ground floor, even as Stanforth and I entered a different elevator and ascended higher up in the Hive.
Stanforth didn't say anything as we made the quick trip up to his office. Out of nervousness, neither did I.
Was this about the surgeries that ONI wanted me to make commercially viable? Perhaps, but this was far too soon. It had barely been a few weeks since our trip down to New Alexandria. While both surgeries had gone perfectly, with enormous amounts of new data for the Augmentation Team to look over, not even the most ambitious overseer would expect results that quickly.
The door sealed behind me as I entered Stanforth's office, trailing him. I'd been here once or twice over the past three years, but never in such a suspicious circumstance.
"What can I do for you, Commander?" I asked, as I sat down in the chair in front of his desk. My voice didn't waver, which was good.
The Commander didn't answer immediately. He made himself a cup of coffee in a machine off to the side, and then without asking, made me one as well. I idly noted that he stopped well short of the rim of the mugs – perhaps that was a sign that this would be a short conversation, if we didn't need that much coffee for it?
"I'd like to thank you for your professionalism over the duration of this project," Stanforth said, starting off the conversation with the equivalent of a land mine, or perhaps a double-tap.
Am I being fired? I wondered, barely able to repress my confusion before it showed on my face. I hadn't known what to expect, but surely not such a bland, yet terrifying statement as that!
The man was practically bidding me goodbye!
"Thank… you," I replied stiffly, unable to stop the pause.
I thought about responding, but immediately shut that thought down. Say nothing unless asked a question, that was the best way to handle ONI.
Stanforth took a sip of his coffee, and looked up at my untouched mug. He paused for a moment, and then let out a humorless chuckle.
"My apologies, Doctor," he said. "I'm in the middle of some career considerations, and I hope it wouldn't be too much of a breach of your normally impeccable professionalism to ask for your thoughts on the matter."
"Career considerations," I repeated carefully. "So soon, Commander? Weren't you only promoted last year? Surely, even with such excellent service as yours, a promotion to Captain would be years from now, if I understand the military correctly."
"You are correct," Stanforth agreed. "Though this is less about a promotion, and more about specializations. I'm not sure how much you know about the Navy, Doctor Halsey, but generally, there is a… preference given to officers who have commanded ships. The traditional belief is that being forced to handle the day-to-day decisions for an entire warship is good training for the difficulties of higher command."
"I can see the logic," I said, nodding slowly, though I didn't truly.
It sounded like self-justification to me. Perhaps high command had always come from the ship-handlers, and they wanted to keep it that way.
But it wouldn't do to argue with the man, not when he was being unusually open.
"Lieutenants, generally, are not trusted with ships," Stanforth said, his words somewhat rambling as he leaned back in his chair. "Too green. At most, they might run a ship's department. But it's not unusual for Lieutenant Commanders to be sent off to command a corvette or a light frigate. Commanders handle frigates and destroyers, and full Captains handle everything heavier."
He paused, taking another drink from his coffee mug.
"I've never commanded a ship," he remarked, as if it was idle gossip, though I could tell that he placed far more weight on the words. "Never… gotten my feet wet, with a solo command. By the time I'm a Captain, it would be very unusual to have my first command. By the time I'm an Admiral, it would be impossible. HIGHCOM will never allow an officer to lead a fleet, when he's never led a single ship."
My breath caught in my throat. I was starting to understand what Stanforth was getting at.
He was saying goodbye, but not because I was leaving the Spartan-II program – but because he was.
Still, I didn't dare interrupt as he continued, looking up from his coffee mug and staring me straight in the face, his expression stern.
"I'm considering requesting a transfer from the Office of Naval Intelligence, and back to frontline duty," Stanforth explained, finally saying it outright. "I have no complaints about you, or your project, Doctor… but as I have been the only overseer that this project has ever had, I thought it would be best if I informed you of the possibility before the final decision was made. I don't want there to be any interruptions in your important work."
"I appreciate that," I said.
As with almost everything I'd said thus far, it was out of automatic courtesy, rather than because I meant it. I'll admit to having an uncomfortable amount of experience with lies, but I preferred being truthful when I could be. Alas, that was almost impossible in this line of work. Especially with this man.
Damn it. Where had this come from? It had taken me years of effort to convince Stanforth that my gentler methods had their advantages. To lose him now and have to deal with a replacement would be a disaster!
The man was cold, but he could be convinced by logic, and I refused to blindly hope that the next ONI officer would be of a similar attitude. After all, ONI had believed that maniac Captain Wilson should be in charge of training children!
Commander Stanforth was quiet now. He seemed to be waiting for me to say something, though nothing came to mind. I could hardly beg the man to stay, not without giving away too much of my real feelings about the program.
"I'm… not sure what to say," I muttered, trying to buy some time. "This is… unexpected. I thought you were supportive of this program, and what it entails."
"I am," Stanforth replied, with a tiny bit more force in his voice than before, I noticed. "I believe that the Spartans will be a key part of the UNSC in the future. However, I'm less certain about my role in it."
My eyes widened a tiny fraction, before I forcibly wrested control back, and brought them back to normal, praying that Stanforth hadn't seen the lapse in my control.
Was Michael Stanforth, heir to a naval dynasty, son of the Hero of Eridanus II, having an attack of his conscience?
Why couldn't he have had this earlier, and gotten the entire project canned at the start?! I thought to myself, barely restraining the urge to say it out loud and demand the answer.
Yes, Stanforth had only been a lowly Lieutenant Commander at that time, but his father was on HIGHCOM, and surely that influence could had prevented this entire atrocity from ever taking a single step!
For a moment, I entertained the thought of telling him that. Of confessing the truth, that the pivotal paper behind the entire thing had been a drunken joke, and that he should immediately cancel the project before the children were made to suffer any more.
But no, I couldn't do that.
For one thing, I could be wrong! I wasn't going to risk getting myself, David, Paul, and Steve all fired, and throwing the project into the hands of complete amateurs. This plane might be crashing, but that was no reason to throw out the captain and put one of the passengers at the controls.
For another thing, this was still potentially salvageable. If Stanforth was growing a sense of morality at long last, and it was causing his to doubt his purpose, then that was an advantage to me, not a disadvantage. After all, the man had all but confessed that he could be manipulated by that moral conscience.
Perhaps it was heinous to use another person's sense of right and wrong as a yoke to steer them around. Perhaps it was even hypocritical to trick them into staying in the exact same moral quagmire that I despised being caught in.
If I did this, then how was I any better than ONI? Sure, I would not be pointing a gun at the man's head and telling him to work, or else… but I would still be leveraging the man's own conscience, threatening him with the fear of children dying.
But then, how was that anything new?
I had threatened every one of the scientists with that exact same moral dilemma three years ago, at the start of the project. If it meant that I would be condemned to some hellish afterlife, then so be it. I was already twice-damned by that monstrous Being X, and I would gladly damn myself a third time if it could keep my children alive.
"I'm surprised to hear you say that… Michael," I said slowly, making sure to mention the man's first name. It was a thinly veiled attempt to appeal to him, but there was no trick too low for me right now. "I certainly have no complaints about your performance as overseer of the program, and I'm sure that all of my colleagues would agree. You've been doing a wonderful job."
Stanforth had been looking out the window of his office as I spoke, but at my last words, he turned his head fractionally back towards me, just enough to see me out of the corner of his vision.
"It's not a question of competence, Doctor," the Commander replied, after a few moments of silent contemplation. "It's a question of where I can be of the most use to the UNSC. I'm not convinced that this is the best use of me."
He opened his mouth once more, but after a moment, he closed it again, choosing not to continue.
Shit, I thought to myself. Okay, that's not working. Let's pivot. If he wants to be a good Kantian and be as useful as possible, then I just need to convince him that involves staying put.
I couldn't just say that openly, of course. I needed to work my way around to it.
"Has the Insurrection started deploying their warships?" I asked, trying to affect a tone of curiosity – and then immediately wincing. Curiosity probably wasn't the right emotional note to strike there.
Luckily, Stanforth didn't seem to have noticed. He sighed, and turned back to face me.
"Not at the moment, no," he said, with a twisted frown on his face. I got the feeling he wasn't being fully honest with that answer. "However, there are still plenty of uses for a warship in supporting ground operations, and handling the smaller fires before they grow out of control."
"Yes, of course," I agreed, nodding my head while I racked my brain for a counter-argument to that.
The obvious tactic was to point out that he was advocating for the same line of logic that the Spartan program was built for, and would handle much more capably than warships – targeted assassinations to snuff out the leaders before they could instigate larger discontent.
But that would be a direct comparison, far too confrontational. I couldn't use that.
Flattery, perhaps. Not direct flattery, that was too easily spotted for the tactic that it was. Something more circumspect.
"At the risk of offending you, Commander," I said carefully. "May I ask a more… direct question?"
"Go ahead," Stanforth said, his face looking troubled, but slightly interested in my words.
"I know I am hardly the greatest military mind," I said, taking care to ensure my words were humble, but not too humble. "I am sure that you would be a highly capable Captain of any UNSC warship. But it occurs to me that this might be viewed from a more economic lens."
Stanforth raised a single eyebrow at me. He didn't interrupt, though, so I kept going.
"It's a question of relative supply and demand," I continued. "The demand for capable ship commanders is high, because it is an important job, and I would not dare argue with that. The supply, however, is limited. There may be plenty of officers, but even I know that there's a difference between sailing a desk and sailing a ship. The desire to aid in that lack of supply is perfectly understandable, and even noble… but."
I paused, hesitating. I wasn't sure how the man would take this next step in my argument. Unbidden, my tongue flicked out to lick my lips on reflex, in a display of nervousness that I hadn't been able to prevent.
"But?" Stanforth repeated, prodding me along as he waited for me to continue.
"But… is that not true for your current position?" I asked him. "The supply is limited, and the demand is high, because the job is very important."
"As you just said yourself, Doctor Halsey," Stanforth replied, his voice calm. "There is a difference between sailing a desk and a ship. It's far easier to replace a desk jockey, even in ONI. The supply, to use your metaphor, is much higher."
"If we were talking about salarymen, then I would agree with you," I told him. "The boring day-jobs where nothing important ever happens. Managing the paper-clips and stationery at a depot, for instance. But we're not talking about those jobs."
"Of course we're not," Stanforth said, still unperturbed and unmoved from his position. "Even when you narrow the field down to intelligence officers, there are still far more of them than there are good captains. ONI has several thousand officers within its ranks. Plenty of them are both vetted and capable of handling the oversight of this project."
"'Vetted and capable' are only two qualities out of many that are necessary for your position," I countered, raising up two fingers, and then raising more on both hands as I rattled off more. "Temperament, intelligence, communication skills, attention to detail, strategic thinking… all of those have been very important in the last three years, and they will only become more important as this project continues."
The man sitting across from me didn't reply. He set down his coffee mug next to mine, which I still had not touched. I knew that I should drink from it, if only to be feign at politeness. I didn't. I was too 'wired up' already, as Alice might say. More caffeine would not help me.
I took a deep breath, and matched gazes with Stanforth, trying to convey some of the intensity I felt with nothing but my eyes alone.
"And that's not including the single most important quality that you possess," I said, speaking more softly, more quietly. "The one that I am most afraid will be missing in your replacement. Your moral principles."
The words hung in the air for a moment. Stanforth leaned back in his chair, and rested his head on an upraised hand, the thumb supporting his chin, and the index finger curling along his lower lip.
Neither of us spoke. Through the glass windows, the sun was drifting lower and lower, though it was still several hours until it would set. The office was still a stark, cold, and empty place, with nothing to distract from our unspoken staring match.
I knew that I had already made my point, and continuing any further might have risked it backfiring. It was already a risky thing to do – daring to remind Stanforth of the severe ethical problems with this program, the potential for abuse that was laced into it from the very first day.
I had been so very careful to not voice any complaints about the ethical issues since that first day… but now, there was no other option. If I withheld these words now, then I risked a monster gaining control of the children, which I would not allow.
For his part, Stanforth did not seem inclined to say anything either. I hoped that it was because he was considering my words, and not because he had realized the truth of how much I despised this program.
"Thank you, Doctor Halsey," he finally said after a few minutes of silent tension. "That will be all."
I didn't move. I kept my gaze focused purely on him, and did not shift my expression in the slightest.
Stanforth sighed. He sounded… disappointed, though I don't know if it was in himself, or in me.
"I will keep you informed of my decision," he added, begrudgingly. "At this moment, I've not made up my mind."
"That's all I can ask for," I said, nodding to him as I stood up, and walked to the door.
I hope he understood what I really meant. The unspeakable message in that final line.
ONI was such a pit of vipers that neither of us could discuss the moral and ethical issues of the Spartan-II program for fear of someone finding out. The internal politics were so intricate that it made the Ottoman courts look stable and controlled.
I literally could not ask for anything more of the man. I had already hinted at a major source of my own weakness – my concern for morality, hidden for so long – and revealing anything more would be like baring my naked belly to a hungry wolf.
The door clicked behind me as I left the office. I could only hope that Stanforth realized the severity of the situation.
Hieronymus Michael Stanforth frowned as he set Doctor Halsey's untouched cup of coffee back on the side-counter.
What a mess, he thought to himself, holding in yet another sigh.
Four weeks ago, word had arrived at Reach that a frigate, the UNSC Bangor, had been lost. From the datasquirt that had been recovered by a listening post in the system, they'd been working a customs inspection on a merchant ship when the United Rebel Front had struck. The merchant ship had been a URF smuggler, and they'd panicked. Within moments of the inspection party's Pelican docking with their ship, they flushed every missile on-board.
Bangor had gone down with all hands, though not before returning fire with a handful of Archer missiles and blowing the more fragile merchie to kingdom come. The UNSC losses totaled some two hundred and fifty sailors and Marines.
It was the first combat loss of a warship since the retaking of Eridanus II by his father and the Twelfth Fleet, and it had already sent ripples through the Navy's grapevine.
The war was heating up, yet here he was, sitting in a comfortable office on top of an office block at FLEETCOM… and he couldn't even request a transfer without staring headfirst into a major crisis.
Doctor Catherine Halsey had been an enigma since the first day he'd met her. Several times, he'd thought that he understood her, only to be blindsided by some action that didn't fit his mental model.
Hell, he didn't even have a mental model for her right now, to lead him astray with false assumptions – and somehow she'd still managed to throw a curveball his way.
Michael would never have imagined that Halsey would react so strongly to this news. Before he'd talked to her, he had thought that she might have been happy to be rid of him, so that she would have someone less stubborn overseeing her progress. Instead, she'd acted like she was being punished, which was ridiculous.
Like so many times before, he made a note of her unpredictable reaction. He'd observed many such reactions in the initial few months of the program, and while he'd seen less over time, this was a significant one.
No mental models. No assumptions. Just the raw facts, written down over time.
Michael walked back to his desk, sat down in the plush office chair, and pulled out an old fashioned leather notebook from a locked drawer.
It had been a gift from his mother, back when he'd first started his naval service. She'd intended for him to use a diary. Write down his thoughts, his recollections, get a start on his memoirs.
Unfortunately, shipboard diaries were banned under Naval Code, as they were potential liabilities if recovered. Hardcopy books were even worse than electronic ones, as they both were harder to check for, and couldn't easily be wiped by a computer purge from the bridge of a ship.
The empty journal had sat in his locker aboard various ships for years. He'd never considered tossing it, because it was still a gift from his mother, and perhaps there'd be a use for it someday.
Each page was now occupied by a single set of details of Catherine Halsey's oddity. Basic background on her was the first seven pages. The rest had slowly begun to be filled by what Michael referred to as incident reports. He couldn't think of any better way to label them, even though it made him feel sometimes like he was tracking the habits of an urban legend, a cryptid of some kind.
He flipped through the pages, reminding himself of the facts. Born on Endymion twenty-eight years ago, in 2492. Attended Endymion Gifted, but remotely. Graduated at the age of twelve, and got a full-ride to the University of Circumstance – though not through any official scholarship, but a private party. ONI had checked, and it had been a Dean who'd been impressed by her. First PhD at eighteen.
The very next day after she'd attained that PhD, she submitted the research paper that had started this entire program. Then seven more years of research and lecture positions. Two more PhD's, ninety-one other research papers on economics, Slipspace physics, and Artificial Intelligences, with absolutely zero overlap with the super-soldier paper.
Admiral Keeler had told Michael of his suspicion that Halsey had been raised as a part of the Insurrection, potentially with a connection to Robert Watts or Howard Graves, two of the greatest special forces officers in the galaxy.
He'd said that the Spartan paper was the one mistake she'd ever made. The only time that she'd ever slipped up and displayed something unusual.
Perhaps at the time that was true, but in the years since, she'd made many additional mistakes.
From the very first time Michael had met Doctor Halsey, she had immediately thrown up warning flags to him. Boldly telling Keeler that he needed to re-route some of the Spartan program's discretionary funding so that it didn't come out of HIGHCOM. At the time, Michael had thought it was a sign of her being a cold, uncaring scientist.
When Keeler had challenged her about the power armor development, pointing out that her industrial method would be expensive, she'd fired back without hesitation. There had been seemingly no awareness on her part that she was disagreeing with the head of Section Three.
Had it been confidence, or lunacy?
By the end of that first meeting, Michael had three potential explanations for the Doctor's character.
The oblivious scientist, dedicated to her projects.
The devious planner, manipulating a web of influence to gain power.
The blunt and straightforward politician, trading favors openly, scratching others backs so that they'd scratch hers.
But none of them had fit. There had been flaws, holes, in each and every one of them.
Then, just a month or two later, had come the incident with Captain Arnold Wilson, the military head of the then-named Orion-II project. To say that Halsey had reacted dramatically would be like saying that Mount Vesuvius had been a mild disruption to the local Roman city.
One hastily arranged appointment later, and Wilson had been summarily ejected from Halsey's program faster than an Archer missile on terminal guidance.
It had been an extreme reaction from Halsey, with the most emotion that he'd ever seen from the Doctor, before or after. Keeler hadn't appreciated any of it. The rude summons for an unscheduled meeting, the tone that Halsey had used in the room, or the presumption to demand the firing of a Captain, even if it was a mere Marine Captain instead of a Navy Captain.
Why had she reacted like that?
Yes, abusing children usually did not match most people's idea of good behavior, but Halsey had been the one to happily suggest cutting open far more children to make super-soldiers. Perhaps it was the cold scientist angry with her experiment being disrupted by amateurs. That's what he'd thought at the time, at least.
And then he'd been plopped into the driver's seat. Keeler, frustrated with Halsey's response, had appointed Michael to be his direct liaison to Halsey's program, making him the informal overseer of the entire show.
Within a week of that appointment, Halsey had pivoted yet again, and nearly broken the program's secrecy by mass emailing half of the best special forces units in the UNSC for her new idea, Project GUNGNIR. Unlike Spartan-II, GUNGNIR was designed from the ground up to provide useful innovations for the rest of the special forces under SPECWARCOM's banner, and buy their favor with some of her budget.
She had given ONI zero forewarning of that pivot, and Michael had nearly had a stroke dealing with all the turmoil from it.
That was when Michael had decided to throw out all of his assumptions about the good Doctor. He couldn't see a cold, detail-obsessed scientist throwing out an entirely new research program so willy-nilly. It was too fast, not nearly as methodical as her previous rage at Wilson would have implied.
More importantly, it was also a massive cross-contamination. The idea that the Spartan-II program would be isolated, secretive, was a bad joke by now.
Forget control groups, Halsey had tossed out the entire idea of the Spartan cadets being solely trained by ONI's handpicked best, and instead was willing to expose them to hundreds of other black ops personnel that had no reason to ever be informed of the project otherwise. Why had she done that?
How had Halsey managed to determine who to contact? She'd managed to avoid a dozen common pitfalls, as if she'd somehow known exactly how a military bureaucracy worked and how best to get word to an elite combat unit without coming across as an unaware and clumsy outsider.
It made no sense.
Exasperation had led Michael to the conclusion that it was all part of a longer term plan of Halsey's.
But he had nothing to suggest that. Nothing save for the distant belief that even if he didn't know what Halsey was planning, hopefully at least she did.
And wasn't that a desperate position for him to be in?
But maybe there was a golden key that would unlock this whole mystery for him. Maybe there was some frame of reference that could fold in all the contradictory behaviors from Catherine Halsey, reverse the kaleidoscope, and explain it all.
And maybe, just maybe, she had just given it to him.
"My moral principles," Michael repeated Halsey's words to him, leaning back in his chair and staring at where Doctor Halsey had just been sitting.
It was the first time that Halsey had ever spoken of morals to him. To anyone, as far as he could tell.
She was just flattering him, of course. Michael could recognize that. An attempt to make him reconsider his decision to request a frontline posting.
Perhaps that flattery was another lie, and perhaps Halsey didn't care about morals at all… but it had still given Michael another fact about Halsey that he could write down.
Doesn't want me to leave the program, Michael thought to himself, as he neatly wrote the words into the journal with a ballpoint pen.
Curious. So very curious. Why would Halsey prefer him to remain in the program? He hadn't thought that she'd liked him at all, and maybe she still didn't, but apparently, she valued him to some degree.
Did Halsey think that his political connections were of some benefit to her? That his name alone might give either the program or her some additional power or prestige? That seemed possible, but why? Especially from a woman that might have had connections to the Insurrection before defecting.
The woman was brilliant, but she was clearly playing her own game, by her own rules, and it was starting to drive Michael Stanforth up the wall. A more fitting place for his skills, the rightful burden of duty… at least some small part of Michael wanted a reassignment just so that he wouldn't have to deal with the enigma that was Doctor Catherine Halsey.
Why gather power? It's not like Halsey could do anything with that power outside of ONI.
The most she could use it for would be to enhance her own position, gaining more pull within ONI, perhaps even rise through it's labyrinthine ranks. Even that was pointless. The Office of Naval Intelligence was a military organization, and she was not military.
If, by some miracle, Halsey gained enough power to take over the Office of Naval Intelligence, and make herself Bitch-Queen of ONI, she'd still need some poor schmuck to be her patsy. The public face that directed things while she ruled behind the scenes.
The journal was shaking. Michael looked down at it, surprised, and then realized that it was his hand that was shaking, not the journal.
No.
No, that's absurd, he thought to himself, as a hysterical laugh tried to fight its way out of his chest. He slapped the desk with his off-hand, trying to cough to no avail.
Halsey was a nobody. Influential within the Spartan-II program, sure, but there was no way that she was ever going to be powerful enough to stage a coup of ONI. She was a scientist, not a spook. She didn't belong in their uniform, no matter that she wore it so well, without any sign of discontent or unease.
Just to start, she'd need so many things that were nigh impossible for a civilian to gain.
She'd need a good reputation with all four Sections of the organization – Section Zero for Internal Affairs, Section One for Intelligence, Section Two for Public Relations, and Section Three for Special Projects.
She'd need name recognition and connections, blackmail on where the bodies were buried, a loyal core of supporters, and a history of producing excellent results.
All that, just to outweigh her lack of history in the organization, her obscure origin, and her lack of explicit credentials.
Michael flipped through his journal, back to the beginning.
Potential Insurrection connection, read one page.
Top tier grasp of special forces tactics and training, read another.
Designed super-soldier program to handle assassinations, a third.
Insists on no mistreatment of cadets, a fourth.
Demanded cross-branch collaboration, a fifth.
Spends budget on UNSC-wide improvements, a sixth.
Participates in PT and field drills with cadets, a seventh.
Displayed elite combat skills during ODST exercises, an eighth.
Michael flinched. The journal dropped from his hand, and hit the desk. The pages flipped from the force, rustling like a deck of cards being shuffled.
There was more within the pages, and Michael was suddenly, abruptly afraid to look. He'd written so many of those little observations down because they were data points, the only solid thing that he could absolutely trust when it came to the misleading and mystifying Doctor.
He'd thought that if he had enough data points, he might be able to discern a pattern.
But this pattern was impossible. It was too much. Too bold. Too arrogant.
No eighteen-year-old, genius or not, comes up with a multi-decade plan to take over the Office of Naval Intelligence.
Carefully, slowly, Michael picked up the journal again, and looked at the tops of each page. Just the headlines, just the core facts.
College roommates with leading scientists in three fields necessary for program.
After Wilson's firing, hand-selects all replacement trainers.
Loans out Surgery Team personnel to other projects in Sections One, Two, and Three for free.
Hired personal tutor in Naval Combat Tactics for Cadets.
Repeatedly discussed possibility of cadets attending Naval Academy.
Insists on zero cadet deaths during Augmentation.
Proposed making Augmentation surgeries commercially viable.
Has knowledge of SPECWARCOM internal structure.
It was all there. Every element that Michael had considered necessary for the insane hypothetical. They'd been staring him in the face the entire time.
A good reputation, earned through a half-dozen actions that were alien to the normal way that ONI did things. Sharing her enormous budget, developing technology for other divisions, sharing her personnel freely.
Halsey's generosity was so unnatural that half of Michael's in-house communications were just reassuring spooks that yes, this wasn't a trick, this was a genuine offer of assistance from Doctor Catherine Halsey.
Even her 'conventional' behavior was displaying her abilities. She had demonstrated her military skills and leadership ability to the ODSTs in live-fire exercises, and would likely do the same at the other joint exercises.
She practically took pleasure in showing off her intellectual prowess, going by how she was pushing for the individual augmentation surgeries to be publicly revealed as ONI-invented treatments for rare medical conditions.
Michael had wondered before if it was arrogance on Halsey's part… but now, he wondered if it was by design. A series of stunning successes, all attributable to her, raising awareness of her competence, creating connections with various parts of ONI in the process. Establishing a history, albeit a short one.
If Halsey had merely stayed in her compound and done her job, she would have been a ghost, without anyone in ONI being aware of her until the project had been completed.
Instead, her name was slowly becoming scuttlebutt. Seeping through the cracks like a slow leak.
Halsey was becoming known as a wandering expert that roved the Office of Naval Intelligence like a sage, fixing problems and helping others, improving everything she touched.
It should have been a disaster, a sign that the walls of secrecy were broken… but even now, even with a full company of ODSTs knowing about the Spartan-II program, nothing had entered the grape-vine about the program – just Halsey herself. Every single one of the black ops troopers had stayed quieter than the grave about their joint-training exercise.
That was loyalty – real loyalty – and Michael hadn't seen it. He'd thought that the joint exercises were about securing political support for the Spartan-II's, not about securing political support for Halsey herself.
And now it was too late. Now, she'd gained exactly what she wanted.
A good reputation, a loyal core of followers, and slowly growing connections among ONI.
Yet even that wouldn't have been enough.
The military was a dictatorship, not a democracy, and it didn't matter if all of ONI wanted Halsey to be their ruler so long as HIGHCOM put its foot down. Halsey didn't have any blackmail on the power-blocs in ONI, nor connections to the highest levels of power.
That was the missing piece in her plan. She had no power to force the issue.
Worse still, it was the most necessary part for her plan. She needed something to prevent ONI from having her disappeared, to prevent HIGHCOM from kicking her to the curb on automatic reflex.
Halsey could appear to be the best possible candidate for running ONI, and she could simply not be selected, because HIGHCOM didn't like her personality.
She needed blackmail.
Blackmail like a HIGHCOM-sanctioned operation to kidnap children and mutilate them with human experimentation. Something that Keeler and Michael had both acknowledged were a massive risk, a scandal with enough potential to justify every single act of Insurrectionist terror in the last thirty years.
As blackmail, it wouldn't matter that Halsey herself was implicated in the program. It didn't matter that she'd been the one to come up with the project, that she had run it herself. All that mattered was that Halsey could threaten to publicly reveal it, and she could take them down with her. ONI and HIGHCOM would fall over themselves to either silence her, or give her what she wanted.
And it would be difficult to silence her, when their own special forces were slowly being swayed to her side.
Of course, it was impossible for Halsey to sway all of ONI to her side. You only had to look at Captain Wilson, still seething over his dismissal and reassignment to run an intervention company in the Outer Colonies, to see that.
Even accounting for only the best of the best in special forces, that was still a good ten thousand soldiers, and Halsey had only met a couple hundred of them, at most. Someone among the remaining vast majority would be willing to do the dirty deed and remove Halsey from the equation.
But those would-be assassins were just men. Highly skilled, but ultimately armed and equipped with standard rifles and slightly nicer armor…
...and soon Halsey would have Spartans on her side. Trained by the best of the UNSC's elite, equipped with powered armor that could shrug off bullets, augmented to superhuman strength and speed. Super-soldiers, in almost every sense of the word.
Keeler had approved the Orion-II project because he saw it as a solution to the defection problem – having soldiers that could eliminate highly-skilled UNSC defectors, while being immune to potential defections themselves.
Except they'd made a mistake. Keeler, specifically, had made a mistake.
He had handed those supposedly incorruptible soldiers to a supposedly trustworthy woman, banking on his own personal assessment that Catherine Halsey had dedicated her life to running away from the Insurrection.
Keeler had mentioned, in one of Michael's regular meetings with him, that he regarded Halsey's papers on other topics – economics, Slipspace engines, and artificial intelligence – as further confirmation of his theory about her origins.
If she had been born an Innie, then all those papers were not just hypotheticals about solving the conflict bloodlessly, but Halsey's hopes that she wouldn't have to orchestrate the deaths of her family, her potential friends. She was pursuing a child's dream of a perfect outcome where everyone went home safe and sound.
What if Keeler was right? Michael thought to himself, staring out the window of his office, at the nearby mountains of the Highland Range. The FLEETCOM Complex was still buzzing with life even at the late hour, with men whispering about the destruction of the UNSC Bangor, but still continuing with their duties. It felt like a good representation of his thoughts – active and frantic, but still moving forward, trying to handle the issue as best as possible.
Halsey was no Innie, that much was clear. She was too viciously protective of her program, too zealous about its success, to be an ideological opponent to the UNSC. She would have done something to sabotage it by now, if she had been.
But if his superior had been correct, and Catherine Halsey still held some hope for a perfect solution to the Insurrection, some kind of peace deal that ended the bloodshed… then she'd need a high position for it. She'd need to be on the UNSC Security Council, a member of HIGHCOM itself.
And if she was running ONI, then she would be on HIGHCOM.
"Shit," he swore, as one final thought came crashing through his turbulent thoughts, clear even through the chaos of his mind, like a lightning strike in the middle of a hurricane.
The Spartans were Halsey's combination of elite bodyguards and blackmail, but they didn't fix Halsey's lack of higher political connections. She needed some kind of pull with the upper reaches. A connection.
Such as an overseer named Hieronymus Michael Stanforth, the son of Harold Stanforth, hero of Eridanus II and current member of HIGHCOM.
It all crystalized in front of him. A perfect distillation of the entire mess. All of this – this tornado of realizations – explained the last three years of mystery, had been prompted by Halsey encouraging him to stay with the Spartan-II program.
Michael's own decision to be a professional, and inform Halsey of his potential reassignment to the fleet, had panicked her.
If he left, then she would lose her trump card. There would be no Michael Stanforth in her corner, safeguarding her from rivals like Wilson, supporting her projects and advancing her agenda. She would lose the single largest political factor in her corner.
But all of that relied on Michael. The power was not in Halsey's hands, the ball was not her court. It was in Michael's.
Even if he had never figured out her scheme, he could have easily decided not to back her up, without any malicious intent, in the same way that HIGHCOM could have passed her over.
That didn't make sense. For all of the clever planning that Catherine Halsey had done to engineer this situation, to create a distant dream of solving the Insurrection via her own ascension and control of ONI… she couldn't have made such an elementary mistake, and leave such a large factor up to nothing but luck.
His breath caught in his throat. His eyes widened.
"Moral principles," Michael whispered, repeating the words for the second time.
That… that hadn't just been a plea for him for stay in the program, a flattery of his character so that he might think kindly of her.
Halsey had been hinting, consciously or not, intentionally or not, that she was hoping Michael Stanforth had the moral principles to stay with the Spartan program instead of going over to the Navy.
She wanted him to join her conspiracy. Maybe not now, not so suddenly, but at some point in the future, to serve as her ladder upwards. She thought he would agree with her. She thought he was recruitable.
And Michael had thrown a wrench in her plan by telling her about his doubts, his desire to leave.
This complicated everything. There was no neutral option here. Michael couldn't just ignore this, pray that he was wrong about all of it and that he'd been tired and was seeing conspiracies where none existed.
He was trapped between a rock and a hard place.
If he went back to the Navy, served as CO of a warship, then he was deciding to fight the Insurrection until it finally submitted. To maim, and kill, and burn, until every last rebel was dead.
Even if all of this speculation was wrong, and Halsey didn't have a grand plan, that was the inevitable conclusion. Everyone knew that the UNSC was not going to negotiate with the Insurrection. There were a dozen good reasons for that, but it didn't change things.
If he decided to stay with ONI, to take a chance on Halsey's mad scheme – if it even existed! – then there was a chance, a slim, possible chance, of Halsey not only becoming the head of ONI, but also managing to end this war peacefully.
After all, Catherine Halsey was almost undoubtedly a former Insurrectionist. She had ties to some of the Innies greatest leaders, and she would then have ties to HIGHCOM, the equivalent on the UNSC.
She wouldn't just be a new boss, the same as the old boss. She would be a bridge. A connection point between the two factions, able to use those personal relationships to convince the leaders to give peace a chance… and offering up her potential solutions to the base problems behind it all – the economic issues. The tyranny of distance that separated Earth from the Outer Colonies.
It was unlikely. It was so statistically improbable that Michael had a greater chance of winning the lottery a dozen times in a row, than this working.
But…
…but if it did work, then it would save so many lives.
And wasn't that the duty of a soldier? To save lives? Wouldn't it be worth it, if they could pull it off?
Michael leaned back in his chair, and rested his weary head in both hands, cradling his skull as gently as he could.
Yes, he decided, swallowing heavily and nodding his head in a jerking, unsteady motion, even though nobody was there to see it. Yes, it's worth it. Even if Halsey is wrong. Even if we can't make peace with the Innies. It's still worth trying for…
…and if the worst comes true, and peace is impossible, then at least we still have the Spartans. We can still try to end the war with as little bloodshed as possible.
God help us all.
Michael turned back to his desk. He pulled up his draft email to Vice Admiral Keeler, expressing his desire to seek a reassignment to a line position, and he deleted it.