Verdant Veil was a one-of-a-kind resort.
A hidden gem for Reach's elite, it proudly bragged of requiring guests to book a year in advance, and costing upwards of a hundred thousand a night.
It wasn't easy to reach, either. Tucked away in a small bay on an otherwise uninhabited island in the equatorial belt with no public naval, air, or space port, you needed private transportation just to reach it. All to keep out those that didn't deserve the experience. A true, exclusive resort.
Captain James Ackerson had learned all of that from a beautifully made pamphlet he'd been handed shortly after he got on his second mysterious Pelican trip in a week.
The engines were rumbling, and his seat in the troop compartment was rumbling with them. He was the only passenger.
Perhaps this little Pelican ride was ONI's way of repaying SPECWARCOM for the bullshit orders his unit had been given. A few days at a private resort was a surprisingly subtle bribe from the Navy's infamous intel arm. Maybe the squids had finally learned a new trick – probably from the chair force.
It had been a very confusing week.
His company had about to ship out when they'd been abruptly diverted. No orders, no messages, nothing in writing. They'd been waiting on the tarmac for dropships to take them up to the UNSC Hit 'Em Harder. It was midnight, and much of the airfield had been blacked out.
Once Ackerson and his men had boarded their dropships, an ONI officer had emerged from the cockpit. They were being re-routed. Special directive from HIGHCOM. Top Secret, Need-To-Know, you ever speak a word of this to anyone, and you will vanish.
They'd heard it all before. Nobody talked, but they were all imagining what kind of job this would be.
A full company of UNSC Army Rangers. The best in the galaxy at direct action. What kind of job would this be? A show of force? On Reach, of all worlds?
After arriving in some backwater jungle, his men had been split off, one by one, and led away by uniformed UNSC personnel that were missing every single indicator of name, rank, or unit. Ackerson had swallowed about ten different kinds of rage at that. The arrogance of whatever scum-sucking ONI bastard was behind this, to treat them like hostile prisoners, to be isolated and confined.
Ackerson hadn't seen most of his men since that day. He'd been politely escorted to an air-conditioned bunker, given a temporary room, and left alone for what little remained of the night.
Knocking at his door at 0400 had woken him up from his light slumber. He'd gotten two hours of sleep at most.
His alarm clock was a brunette woman, wearing standard issue jungle fatigues with the jacket worn unbuttoned and loose over a black undershirt. She'd greeted him by name, and led Ackerson to a command room. The main feature was a large holo-table, set up to display the jungle around them. 3D topography, GPS locators, the works.
The woman told Ackerson that his men were already on the job. Hunter-killer exercises, the nameless brunette had explained. One target, one hunter. The targets didn't know they were being hunted.
For the sake of fairness, according to her, his men couldn't be told that they were hunting until they got here.
There was a lot of tiers to the world of spec ops. Grades. Layers. Sometimes, civilians got a glimpse, and they'd spout off like they understood it all. You'd have a year or two of them talking about 'Tier One operators', or 'Special Mission Units', or generic 'The Unit', as if they knew what the hell they were talking about. Then, a couple years later, they'd learn some new term, and repeat the cycle all over again.
Frankly, it was all bullshit, and if you were in military, you knew that there was only two real dividing lines.
Almost everyone, even the special forces, got their unit designation. Ackerson and his men, for instance, were the 1st Company, 5th Battalion, 12th Commando Brigade. It was true that his unit didn't always identify themselves to a line infantry unit, but that was in the field, or on classified ops. If they ran into that same unit on post or on shipboard assignment, they'd introduce themselves and share their unit designation. Fair was fair.
But some people didn't even do that. No last names. No ranks. Just first names. Those were tip of the spear. The people so classified and skilled that there was no need for unit designations. You'd never forget meeting them.
This unit was one of those.
From the moment Captain Ackerson had walked into that command post, he'd been introduced as 'James' to the staff working the room. Over the course of the next two days, he'd only gotten a handful of names – Luke, Carlos, Matt, things like that. Very friendly people.
Didn't change the way he felt like he had funnel web spiders crawling up his spine. Didn't change the tension.
It took until the final day before he learned the woman's name. She was too busy running the whole show. Coordinating the Pelican flights to pick up eliminated targets, monitoring the individual progress of each individual pair in the seventy-five target-hunter pairs, and even redirecting ONI spy-sats to get updated weather reports, and a dozen more tasks.
Catherine. He vaguely remembered that it came from the Greek word for pure. What a fitting name for this woman. Because she was an exemplar of ONI at their purest – hyper-competent, very charismatic, and utterly terrifying, all wrapped up in an unassuming package.
After three days of dealing with Catherine and her operation, a quick vacation paid for by ONI was exactly what Ackerson could use.
He knew it wouldn't be public, of course. Even if all he'd done was stare at a map and occasionally answer an incisive, curious question from Catherine. ONI was too paranoid. They likely had have already paid the entire staff to clear out, and brought in their own people to run the place.
Of course, that probably meant that his men would be there at the resort, and they could all relax.
That was good. His boys didn't really need another rest, not when they were coming off a leave rotation anyway. But they would still appreciate it. It definitely sounded like the kind of place that none of them would have ever seen, no matter how much they saved up. The lap of luxury, indeed.
Personally, Ackerson was less concerned about the accommodations, and more about what this all meant for him, and his career.
This kind of thing was incredibly unusual, and he couldn't help but suspect selecting his company, out of all the Army Rangers, was a sign of personal appreciation from someone with major power.
As their commanding officer, some of that appreciation would rub off on Ackerson. The same way that the shine of this joint exercise would rub off on him, no matter how classified it was. HIGHCOM might have used his men as a punching bag for an ultra-clandestine, top secret group, but that still meant something. Those kinds of jobs didn't go to people seen as unreliable.
The Pelican came in for a landing, and the back hatch dropped. A cool, crisp breeze was flowing in from the ocean, driving away the humidity.
Ackerson smiled. A beach vacation was sounding better by the moment.
He stepped out, and looked around. White sand beaches, imported palm trees from Earth, landscaped grass and dirt paths between small villas in Mediterranean Revival style.
But there was noise. Chatter. He could hear children shouting, down near the beach.
Ackerson frowned, and walked away from the small landing pad, his kitbag slung over one shoulder. As he moved closer, he heard splashing. Diving. He saw signs of people, with leftover food or books left behind on lounging chairs and shaded nooks.
For a moment, he wondered if ONI had allowed the regular guests to stay. That seemed very out of character for the otherwise paranoid organization. He knew right away that those noises weren't from his Rangers. They'd be at the bar, or shooting guns.
A rifle fired. The distant boom of an Oracle, an anti-material rifle. Ackerson twitched, but before he could do more than that, a man came rushing up to him in official 'casual' attire. UNSC-issued white undershirt and casual shorts, unchanged for generations of tropical deployments.
"Captain, sir!" the man barked, snapping to attention and saluting. "Good to see you again, sir!"
"Sergeant Denny," Ackerson replied, recognizing the man and returning the salute. "Who's firing?"
"Sergeants Walsh, Fletcher, and Callahan," Denny said immediately. "They're shooting target buoys, sir. There's a sniper post set up at the end of one of the villas. They're far enough away that it's range-safe for the rest of us."
"Ah," Ackerson said. It was a useful sound to simultaneously convey his understanding and his annoyance.
"You'll probably want to meet with the Doctor, sir," Denny said, with a small twinge that Ackerson knew was a suppressed wince. "She set it up. After the exercise, we were all debriefed by her. She said this is a quick combination of R&R and teambuilding."
"Teambuilding with whom?" Ackerson asked, pointedly.
Denny opened his mouth, but before he could speak, the answer came running into sight.
A gaggle of four children came running from behind one of the villas. They were each clad in bright swimsuits of varying colors, with the girls wearing unisex one-pieces and the boys wearing long shorts. They were young, perhaps pre-teens. Three brunettes and a redhead with blood-red hair.
They were also oddly in sync. They weren't individually sprinting, or lagging, but all running at a steady jog, like a fireteam doing PT together. They weren't screaming, or laughing, or making any of the normal sounds of children. Their heads were fixed forward, on their destination, with the occasional quick glance to the side to check their peripherals. They were even doing it in a proper line element, with a young boy in the lead.
Shining metal items sprang off their torsos, then hit an apex like a pendulum, and swung back down. Ackerson's eyes caught them on the bounce. Dog tags.
"Never mind," Ackerson said quickly, interrupting Denny as his eyes followed the squad of children trooping off to war with the discipline of little soldiers. "I'll ask this… Doctor."
Denny nodded, and there was a small flash of relief across his face before military precision replaced it.
They walked off, his reliable first sergeant leading the way, quick-stepping down the same dirt path that the children had just jogged down.
Ackerson inspected the resort as they moved.
There was no sign of any civilian staff members. There was an enticing smell of food from a nearby pavilion that had been designed to look like a beach-hut restaurant. When Ackerson looked, the Staff Sergeant manning the grill behind the counter was wearing an unbuttoned fatigue jacket, his rank clearly visible, as well as his branch identifier. A Navy man.
There were more children running around, many more. Dozens of them, scattered around doing various leisure activities. Reading books in lounge chairs normally occupied by billionaires. Swimming in the ocean itself, or one of the several man-made pools. Engaging in athletic competitions, sometimes against each other, and sometimes against adults – rope-climbs and tire-steps and other events that didn't unfairly balance things too much.
Each and every one was wearing a set of dog tags. Some were wearing UNSC tropical gear, sized down to fit their smaller bodies, while others worn bright civilian swimsuits.
In so many ways, it looked like he'd stepped into the Munchkin Land version of an ONI Section Two propaganda poster. The kind that said 'Join the UNSC, and explore distant stars and exotic locales'. All it was missing was booze and smiling, attractive women.
But kids? Kids didn't belong in that kind of picture. Their presence here was… disturbing.
Ackerson recognized more and more of his men. He returned their salutes with a clipped nod and a return salute each time.
The children watched with observant gazes, though none of them made a move to salute him. Nor did any of the adults he didn't recognize, almost all of whom were Navy or Marines. That was fair. He was an officer, but he wasn't their CO, and he wasn't entering their space or interacting with them. UNSC regs were clear on that.
The central building of the resort was an enormous mansion in the same architecture as the villas, though with its size came further decoration. Where the villas had small marble statues flanking their entry doors, the mansion had a colonnade with classical Ionic columns. Instead of lounging beach chairs for individuals, there were larger plush chaise couches with reading lights and buttons to summon waiters.
There was a gentle hum of air-conditioning, even before entering, in an enormous waste of money. It only barely beat back the outside temperature by a few degrees, but that small comfort was immensely enjoyable. Nearly every piece of marble was white, but it had some natural gray zig-zag pattern of discoloration and impurity through it. It make a striking, but pleasing image.
Even nature had been brought to order. The grass had a laser-perfect level to it. The trees had all unsightly branches trimmed away. The birds were probably imported, bright plumaged with exotic feathers and calls.
It was so decadent that Ackerson didn't know what to call it. A clubhouse? Too juvenile. A lodge? Didn't fit the locale. A pavilion? Too small, too open-air. The closest word he found was mansion. The seat of some great and powerful business magnate, or some HIGHCOM-funded private retreat for the people who truly ran the UNSC.
It was the kind of place that Ackerson had always longed to live in. A demonstration of the heights he aspired to reach.
There was no artwork on the walls, but there was life. Green ivy had been carefully laced into cracks in the marble walls, flowering with bright blues and purples and reds and yellows. The overhanging roof beams were long, continuous shafts of Californian redwood, even though they were clearly unnecessary for structural support.
The entrance colonnade led to an interior plaza, revealing the entire mansion to have a hollow in the center, opening up to the sapphire blue sky, with even more luxuries inside. More of the same Roman-style loungers. Classical Greek amphora rested nearby on the floors, made of marble flecked with natural spots of blue.
Compared to the outside, it seemed lesser. No white sandy beaches, no jungle greenery. It was made up for by the wealth of food and drink that was spread out across the colonnaded walls of the plaza's periphery.
Enormous ewers of crystal, containing water and various colored juices and concoctions. The unneeded and unused service desk had been converted into a buffet table. There was a rainbow array of pastries, cheeses, and cold cuts of meat. Everything from fancy sandwich fixings to prosciutto-wrapped melon slices, smoked salmon, baked risotto balls, and more. Fine plates and cutlery had been laid out, and the food had clearly been sampled…
…yet even now, there wasn't the rampant carnage that he'd have expected of his Rangers and a bunch of children being given this food. Used plates had been bussed politely into black plastic tubs set on another counter that were slowly growing full, dishes organized by size and type, all prim and perfect.
He glimpsed a ballroom through a side-window. The floor was the same white marble with lightning-like streaks of gray throughout it. It was filled with gorgeous wooden tables, currently occupied by card and board games with yet more children.
Another side-window glance revealed a large, utilitarian kitchen. There was also more UNSC servicemen inside preparing for a dinner, though much simpler fare. He saw preparation being made for steak and mashed potatoes, chicken alfredo, enchiladas, and more. Hearty food, rather than expensive luxuries – though there was one serviceman working on what looked like a small birthday cake, for no apparent reason.
Sergeant Denny led him up a flight of marble stairs, towards the mansion's second floor. It was only here that Ackerson finally found a sign of conventional military discipline – a Marine in full battle dress, wielding an MA5B and standing guard outside a large door.
"Captain Ackerson, to see Doctor Halsey," Sergeant Denny informed the guard.
"Identification, please," the guard replied, looking directly at Ackerson.
A small warmth seeped out of Ackerson's otherwise cold stomach. Finally, a sign of normality in this fairy-tale of a place. Someone doing their job properly.
He offered the man his UNSC-issued ID card, and the guard slid it into his wrist-mounted bracer.
Ackerson had been seeing more and more of those popping up recently. Some kind of innovation from ONI, he'd heard from his superiors. One that they'd been surprisingly willing to share with the rest of SPECWARCOM.
For right now, what mattered is that it allowed the single guard to run his identity check and still keep one hand on his weapon. A small thing, but it would still be an incremental improvement to the lives of gate guards all across the UNSC.
Rumors said this new bracer design might spread out to the regular forces, and that it was just one out of many new designs. Nothing truly revolutionary, nothing radical… but even small improvements could be telling in large numbers. They'd known for years that their computers were small enough to fit in tight confines, but until now, nobody had thought of mounting one on a bracer.
"Thank you, sir," the guard said after returning the card to him.
The Marine stepped back from the door, but didn't open it for him. Ackerson nodded again in polite respect to the man's actions. A good way of showing both respect, but also not infringing on the detachment that any post guard had to have, no matter the rank of the man or woman in front of them.
The room on the other side was just as well-decorated as the rest of the resort, but immediately, it was clear that this was not a place of relaxation, but of business.
Expensive wooden paneling, auto-dimming windows, a table of darker blue with small and rare white stripes. Chairs of dark leather, uplink ports for electronics. Most of the light came through the windows where Ackerson could see the children playing. He couldn't hear them, however. They were oddly silent.
The door shut behind him. All outside sound ceased.
Ackerson tensed up a little as the door clicked.
This must be where the real business happens, he thought to himself.
A place for negotiations between the elite. Right next to all the luxury and relaxation, but still fully equipped for the needs of their clientele.
The room was noticeably darker and cooler than the rest of the mansion. There was a large central light fixture, a chandelier of glittering glass shards, but it was off. The only man-made illumination came from that two sources. A single lamp set in the wall, with nearly no glare thanks to careful design… and a laptop at the far end of the table.
There was a woman sitting there, where the head of the table belonged. Her fingers hit the normally silent gel-padded keys with such force and speed that it sounded like half-muted machinegun fire. She was hard to see; the white labcoat was visible enough, but beneath that, it looked like there was nothing. It took a moment for Ackerson to realize she was wearing the space-black, undecorated jumpsuit of an ONI officer. It blended in, with how dim the room was.
The typing stopped, and the woman looked up.
"James Ackerson," she said, her blue eyes catching the laptop's glow and almost seeming to shine with electricity.
He recognized her. It was the same ONI officer that had woken up him a few days ago. The same one he'd just spent several days shadowing. The one who'd run the exercise that had required his Rangers. Catherine, she had identified herself as.
But apparently, she wasn't an officer. She was a Doctor of some unspecified type.
"Catherine Halsey," Ackerson replied evenly, putting the name to a face as he stared at what might be the biggest threat to his ambitions… or the biggest boon.
Who is this woman? He wondered to himself. He didn't truly know her name for sure – but he hadn't gotten this far in life by being timid, and it was easy to put those pieces together.
He already knew that she was a capable military mind. Combine that with a doctorate, combine that with the political pull to arrange this little vacation…
…had this all happened in this way so that she could introduce herself to him? As some kind of power play? A show of force?
"Please, take a seat," she replied, without gesturing to any chair or smiling. It was like looking at a robot who hadn't been programmed with manners. She gave no indication of any respect for him at all.
But where to sit? The foot of the table, for an adversarial approach of them facing off across the table? The side, to show obedience or submission? Was even this another game of politics to the ONI woman?
Ackerson looked at Halsey. He stared, his eyes digging for whatever signs he could get out of the woman. There wasn't much. He could have tried to guess based on how many millimeters her eyelids were hanging down or drawn back, but that would have been ridiculous.
Decisive actions won the day, either on the field or in the boardroom. He needed more actual information on Catherine, even if he had to step on her toes to get it.
He didn't sit down. Instead, he walked to the windows, and looked out.
From this vantage point on the second floor, he could see much of the resort more easily. He looked over the playing children with their dog tags and brand new civilian swimsuits. Some of them were eating at the poolside restaurant, chatting lightly with the Navy and Marine personnel… who were talking back in a friendly manner. They clearly knew each other.
With a turn, he looked back at Catherine, to see her reaction. There was none. The woman had gone back to typing away on her laptop, completely and utterly absorbed in whatever she was doing. It was as if she had forgotten that James Ackerson even existed.
Ackerson frowned. Genuine disinterest, willfully matching his tactic of pretending to ignore her, or was her work truly that important?
What does she want? Ackerson mused to himself.
That was the most important thing. Even though he didn't know who she was, or how much power she had, or why it involved training children. If you knew what someone wanted, then you understood them. No matter what they said to hide, or how they behaved.
After a few more moments, he sat down at the table. He hadn't managed to reach a conclusion from her reaction, so it was time to talk turkey. He didn't bother with the adversarial approach of sitting down on the opposite side – he sat down next to her, at her left hand.
As soon as his butt hit the expensive memory-fabric of the chair, Catherine's typing cut off once more. She shut the laptop, and raised the lights with a touch on the table's instrument panel. It hadn't been too dark, but Ackerson still appreciated it. Too many spooks took 'dark deeds' literally, and insisted on darker lighting. It was a real headache to deal with, both literally, and because of the implication that the other guy didn't trust you.
"Captain James Ackerson, UNSC Army Rangers," she said, turning her whole body – chair, shoulders, head and all – to face him. "I have been told that you are a man on the rise. An ambitious climber. Curiously enough, I do believe they meant it as a compliment."
There was, as always, a small social pressure to smile or frown at that. The compliment, or the insinuation. As always, he did nothing, merely keeping his face still and smooth.
"I believe there are a great many ways that SPECWARCOM can help end the ongoing Insurrection," he replied, preparing to send out his first probe. "Some in ways that are underused. Evidently, so do you."
Catherine raised a single eyebrow, but said nothing in reply. An invitation to expand… and a test to see if he could.
"The children, Doctor Halsey," Ackerson reminded her, tilting his head slightly towards the windows. "They're very well trained. If I had to guess, they've been in your care for several years now. Perhaps you started at eight years old. Perhaps six."
"I couldn't say, of course," Catherine replied, her tone flat.
Now that's interesting, Ackerson noted, eyes narrowing just slightly. Not the words, those were expected of her. The tone. That flat affect on her voice. The woman was trying to appear emotionless. Robotic.
But there had been the tiniest lingering lilt. If Ackerson had to guess, it sounded… irritated.
Now what could that mean?
"I've long been of the opinion that radical solutions are sometimes necessary for problems," Ackerson said, deciding to throw out a lure on a different track. "Obviously, the creation of special forces by various militaries in history provides examples. The American and British ranger companies of the Revolutionary War. The British rifleman of the Napoleonic wars. And, of course, the Stormtroopers of the Third–"
"–of the Kaiserreich," Catherine interrupted him with a correction, her voice marginally less cold and mechanical. "I would disagree there. Arguably, that was merely the advancing of new regular tactics, and not special tactics. Much like your Army Rangers, Captain. Direct action, not… truly unorthodox techniques. The sturmtruppen themselves were elites, but their tactics became the new standard for all infantry, regular and elite."
"Point," Ackerson conceded, nodding his head as she spoke. "You appear to be the expert on… unorthodox techniques."
"I couldn't say," Catherine replied, locking down all emotions almost immediately. Her voice stopped accelerating, her breath evened out.
She was back to being a robot. Someone else might have been fooled, might have thought she was truly uninterested in his response... but to him, it felt like a defensive reaction. Shutting herself down so that she didn't give anything away.
Got you, Ackerson thought to himself, with satisfaction.
So, Catherine Halsey had some kind of weakness for the children. That left a lot of potential explanations, none of them conclusive. She could dislike their performance, or their situation, and everything in between, with no way for him to know.
A small piece of information, but vital nonetheless. He needed more. More pieces of the jigsaw puzzle, more steps on the path to enlightenment.
"Why did you involve us in your exercise?" Ackerson asked her, gesturing at himself. "As you said, Rangers are best used for direct action. The black ops equivalent of grunts. With your exercise, you could have done better by bringing in some of the all-branch Sniper team. Perhaps some Pathfinders. Even the Air Force's PJ's could have performed better, with more relevant skills."
"Better?" Catherine asked, with a little huff of amusement. "If you had performed better, then the... cadets would not have gotten the message. This way, those of my cadets that did show initiative, such as the one we watched over, gained a positive result. You should be pleased by your men's performance, Captain. They successfully eliminated seventy-three percent of all targets. An overwhelming victory."
Ackerson felt a small surge of pride warming in his stomach at that news.
He had been watching the holographic maps the whole time of course, but during that second day, something had gone wrong. He and Catherine had been spending most of their time watching over one 'target'. Hovering over their exploits throughout the day, drawing focus, leaving him with the impression that his Rangers had managed an equal performance to her 'targets' at best.
At first, Catherine had been concerned that the target had been harmed or even killed in the exercise. A legitimate concern, but accidents happened in military exercises, particularly with individuals spread across such wide terrain.
Then, when the news had come that the target had actually eliminated the hunter, and swapped GPS tags, she had lit up with a ghastly, toothy, downright predatory smile.
Just for a moment, then that jagged smile full of shark-teeth was gone. Fast enough that he'd wondered at the time if he'd been seeing things.
Only now did it truly make sense to Ackerson, now that he knew the 'targets' were likely the same children running around this resort.
"You seem very happy about your… cadets… losing," he replied, mimicking her odd hesitation around the word, as if she'd intended to use another, and replaced it at the last moment.
"Lessons learned now are lives saved later," she said calmly, but genuinely calm, rather than the forcible nonchalance that she had imposed on herself earlier. "A few years ago, we did a joint exercise with the ODSTs. My cadets defeated them soundly. But they had the initiative then, and they did not understand that if their enemy had the initiative, it would have gone very differently. Better to teach them that with a non-lethal humiliation."
Ah, so it was about competence with her? That must be what she wanted. For everything to be done competently and rightly, no matter if it helped her or hurt her. Ackerson had met plenty of such people before – they were often drawn to the more technical fields and niches. No better person to handle an armory, or a research project…
…or both, rolled up into one neat little ball.
That was easy enough for Ackerson to handle, and it gave him a clear path forward. Stroke her ego, offer his assistance in the future, and the ass-kissing would be enough to ensure a good result from this meeting. A few more ambiguous statements, easily interpreted by anyone this narcissistic to be praise, and he'd have come out ahead for this week. A feather in his cap, and a potential ally in his future career prospects.
"I can see that," he nodded slowly, agreeing with her. "It is a very good thing to deliver a quality product from your… program, isn't it? For the greater good of ONI, of course."
Those blue eyes suddenly turned to ice. There was little movement, just a small narrowing of the eyelids, her eyebrows lowering slightly… but there was no mistaking it.
Catherine Halsey was very, very angry at him. He'd seen looks like that before. She was angry enough to kill him.
Ackerson didn't flinch, but it was a near thing. The emotional flip was so intense that he wondered for a split-second if she was schizophrenic, but he threw that instinctive, inaccurate assessment away instantly.
"Of course," Catherine replied, her tone sugary sweet with so much artificial cheer that Ackerson wondered how she wasn't choking on it. "For the greater good. That is, indeed the sentiment behind this program Captain. I see your superior officer has already briefed you on why you were sent."
Ackerson's superior officer had done no such thing. As soon as Ackerson got a chance, he was going to corner the man and demand to know what the fuck was going on, rank be damned. He had dropped Ackerson into this frying pan with zero warning.
It had worked out for his men, sure, but Ackerson himself was now trapped in a negotiating room with a Rubik's cube of a woman that seemed to be one part ONI officer, one part kindly doctor, one part mechanical menace, and one part traumatized animal.
He didn't reply to her. He just stared back, and thought. Silence was strength. Silence was a sign of willpower and endurance. Silence allowed you time to think, to plan. To dissect her words.
'The greater good is the sentiment behind this program.'
No, not just that. She had been replying to his own words, which he hadn't even meant. They'd been a vacuous, meaningless sentence meant to bluff her along, talking about the benefit to ONI.
But she was taking his words with deadly seriousness. And she hadn't meant the generic version.
'The greater good of ONI is the sentiment behind this program.'
What would help ONI more than the UNSC itself? Better assassins, obviously. Technological improvements like those wrist-mounted accessories were useful for every branch. Better intelligence that could be used by anyone who had it.
ONI wasn't the only game in town, of course. Army Intel took out Innie leaders too… but who said ONI was going to use those assassins only on Innies?
That would explain the children. The years of training. Hunter-killer exercises with one-on-ones against veteran soldiers.
The terrifying implication was that ONI would use the assassins… but that wasn't actually required for them to benefit. Assassins were a great tool, but they were just as useful when you didn't use them, as when you did. Their potential use was a factor that scared people.
It was one of the reasons why Section Two didn't squash every single rumors of ONI kill-teams. A few lingering reminders that ONI could hunt you down and drag your corpse out of the woods went a long way towards intimidating the average, low-ambition Innie-supporter.
But… what if Halsey's child-soldier were used against the UNSC? What if the greater benefit to ONI itself was to have some kind of super-soldier assassin, intended to solve 'problems' with HIGHCOM that it didn't like? Not by killing them, not by doing anything that was provably treasonous… but using them as an unspoken threat?
Ackerson stared back at Catherine Halsey, and it took all of his self-discipline not to let his anger show on his face.
Why the hell is she telling me this? He wondered. Is Halsey so arrogant as to tell me about treason to my face, and think nothing will come of it? Does she think I'm so ambitious that I'd sign up for this stupid plan?
Then it clicked. Lightning struck. A lightbulb turned on.
Why she referred to the children as 'her' cadets. Why she'd wanted the Army Rangers to serve as the opposing force in her exercise, when she could've done it in house. Why she wasn't treating this situation like a debriefing, but more like a first meeting in a joint operation.
The children made it even more obvious. The way that some of them had fitting UNSC outfits, but others had civilian swimsuits, non-standard haircuts. The way that the Halsey's Navy men and Marines had been interacting with them more like favored students, rather than drill instructors and recruits. The way this entire tropical vacation had been set up as some kind of reward for them – even the birthday cake that one cook had been making.
She wasn't training or treating these kids like they were disposable tools… and she'd gotten very angry when Ackerson had suggested it was all for the greater good of ONI, specifically.
Add it all up, and there was only one conclusion that Ackerson could reach.
Catherine Halsey hated her own program. She was trying to sabotage it, however she could.
But she couldn't just burn it down without harming the children that she cared about. She couldn't train the children wrong, or give up, without setting them up to die horribly.
Which meant that she needed allies. Helpers. Other people that had power and ambition, and would agree with her.
People like him, Captain James Ackerson.
She was trying to recruit him. For what, he didn't quite know, but he suspected that it involved making sure the Office of Naval Intelligence could never do anything like this, ever again. He wasn't against the idea – both because it was the Navy Intel and he was Army, but also because this entire thing rubbed him the wrong way.
Ackerson had only a few days experience with Catherine Halsey. He had less than five minutes of exposure to 'her cadets'.
Yet it was without hesitation that he nodded at her, and let a slow smile spread across his face.
"Doctor Halsey, I believe I understand," he said. "What can the Army Rangers do to help you with this… goal?"
"Why, Captain Ackerson, how kind of you," Catherine said, the cheery artificial voice draining away. "Above all, I just want cooperation. Perhaps, in the future, a kind word from you, should my superiors try something ill-advised."
The final piece fell into place.
How could Halsey stop ONI from hurting the children, or using them as a threat to HIGHCOM? By blackmailing ONI with their own blackmail. That's why she needed him and his Rangers. Army Intel would be positively gleeful about knocking ONI down a peg.
You bitch, he thought to himself, impressed by her guts. I'm in.