Chapter Text
Tal Kastia, Algol System
Forerunner site # 009922484
31.07.2557, Military Calendar
14:56 MST
Naomi shifted her weight to her back foot and spun the helmet in her hands.
"Whoa, okay, okay. Let's all just,…take a deep breath, shall we?" Phillips' voice carried over to her and she caught sight of him slowly raising both of his hands.
The Kig-Yar just responded with a creak, which Naomi did not take to mean anything encouraging when the Kig-Yar clutched the forerunner artefact closer to her sinewy chest.
Naomi had been vaulting over a broken pillar, plunging towards the escalating situation when Phillips had halted and given the hold signal. While it'd look like a placating gesture to whomever he was speaking, they'd worked out earlier that it meant he was going to try and talk his way out before letting everyone else charge in guns blazing.
So instead she’d crouched, leaning forward, ready to rush in at a moment's notice into the scene unfolding below. Unfortunately, as she had stilled to observe the proceedings, the heads-up display on the inside of her helmet glitched. The motion-tracking radar jumped to sit smack dab in the middle of her field of view. She cursed and had quietly struggled to shift everything back in place, but her Mjolnir's on-board computer was simply not responding, and every fix she’d attempted seemed to make it worse.
She had almost wished she’d let BB, or Black Box, the team’s wonderfully witty AI tag along in her neural implant so he could fix it for her. Alas, this mission had required he stay as close to the artefact as he could so he could perform a battery of ONI-ordered scans, and that meant syncing up his fragment to Phillip’s nifty personal radio. So, when she’d realized that her solo troubleshooting was distracting her from the situation at hand, she’d forced the helmet off entirely so she could keep her field of vision clear. She would have a strong word with Adj back on the UNSC prowler Port Stanley later about his impromptu upgrades.
Luckily, she was the one waiting in ambush this time and, judging from their dingy old surplus Covenant uniforms, she doubted the scruffy band of scavenging Kig-yar had any weapons more advanced than the two beam rifles she’d identified earlier.
And yet, what this band lacked in resources they seemed to make up in luck.
Just when Phillips was about to step in and retrieve the…well, whatever it was Osman had sent them after on a planet even the Forerunners had forsaken, these vultures had swooped in. They'd chattered and hissed and clacked about something, completely incomprehensible. Naomi had wondered if she should have paid more attention when ONI's very own xenoanthropologist, Professor Evan Phillips, was waxing poetic about the subtle beauty of the Kig-Yar accents.
“They’re saying that there’s no chance in the Kig-Yar equivalent of hell that they’ll just trade off the artefact, especially if we don’t intend on offering decent weaponry as an exchange.” BB quietly translated over team com.
“Figures” Mal replied, “Do you think they’d go for a bag of feed instead? They look skinny and desperate enough.”
Phillips, hands still up, twitched his left ring finger. Another signal, this one meaning, “Yep, got that, now shut up and leave me to it.”
If anyone had told Naomi just a handful of years ago that one day she'd allow, let alone trust, a pencil-pusher with near zero combat experience to make calls on when to engage an enemy, she'd have wondered just how drunk they were. But here she was, halting an advance she felt pretty justified in, simply because the egg head wanted to practice his accent with the locals. She did have to hand it to Phillips, though. For having mostly been a theory guy, he was getting pretty good with the practical and applied parts of his work too. While he was still nowhere near the skill level Li An, Vaz, and Mal had, he was beginning to not be such a pain in the butt in battle.
Though Naomi had to admit, that was hardly a fair comparison. With years of ODST experience as the UNSC's finest non-augmented soldiers under their belts, Li An, Vaz, and Mal were good role models for Phillips to have. A great shot and an even better pilot, Sergeant Li An Devereaux had pulled the Stanely's crew out of more hot scrapes than Naomi cared to recall. Staff Sergeant Malcom Geffen was less of a crack shot and was more for cracking-wise, but he was the glue that held them all together. Naomi was often in awe of his seemingly innate ability to say exactly what someone needed to hear exactly when they needed it.
And then there was Vaz. Naomi wanted to say she knew him better than she knew the rest of the crew, but she had the feeling that as soon as she tried to claim this, he'd unearth another era of long forgotten history in which he'd been a florist that saved a world of fish-people from a scourge of bad poetry or something else equally mind blowing. Though, Naomi could confidently say she liked Corporal Vasily Beloi better than the rest of the crew. Or maybe 'better' was the wrong term. She did like all of her teammates, and would even consider them some of the few friends she had outside of the rest of the SPARTAN IIs. But with Vaz it was…different.
Somehow, Vaz had become the one to protect her. Not from physical harm. Naomi was a far more skilled combatant than Vaz, and he understood this with a perfect mix of grace, awe, and respect. But instead, Vaz had looked right through her polarized Mjolnir faceplate and seen that even though she was a Spartan, she was still a human with feelings and opinions. More incredible yet, he consistently made sure her feelings and opinions were protected and respected.
His intense esteem for her had thrown Naomi off guard when she'd first met and started working with Vaz. She wasn't used to being treated as much more than a weapon that could talk and think. Suddenly, there was Vaz, worried that an archived report about her long-dead mother, whom she could barely recall and harbored even less affection for, might upset her. And Naomi couldn't think of a single situation in which anyone had tried to not upset her. Being happy, or even just not upset, was a luxury she had never been able to afford. And Naomi had found that having someone who deeply valued that part of her was actually quite nice.
As Naomi and Vaz had continued to work together as a part of the ONI black ops team Kilo-Five, they'd gotten close. In their spare time, it was now common to find Vaz in the armor bay in Port Stanley, helping Naomi clean and care for her armor. Or to find Naomi and Vaz just quietly staring out at space together as they sat on the observation deck. Naomi had even joined one of the watch parties for Vaz' beloved hockey matches, though she had yet to understand why anyone would attempt to make sport of war games on ice with knife shoes. But she speculated that the creativity and uniqueness might have been why Vaz loved it so.
A particularly loud squawk erupted from the Kig-Yar who had accompanied the leader and stood at her elbow. The leader turned around and exchanged a few low growls with her subordinate before turning back to face Phillips. The second evidently did not take the leader's dismissal of her concerns well. The second then lunged forward, plucking the artifact that everyone had been after out of the leader's hands and scuttling away.
“Kilo- five we need that artifact. From what I’ve managed to pick up so far, this one’s a doozy. The only people who would be happy with the Kig-Yar making off with it would be the Kig-Yar, and I’m not feeling particularly generous today.” BB reminded them.
Phillips’ curse was loud enough for Naomi to hear even without her helmet's amplifier and by the time his hands fell back to his sides, she'd already jammed her wonky helmet back on and lifted her rifle up and ready, careening down the slope towards the courtyard where her teammates waited.
The lead Kig-Yar squawked in surprise and took a few steps back, just the way Naomi liked. Naomi had learned that the sight of a half-ton Spartan suddenly barreling down on you did a whole lot towards ‘shock and awe’ and sometimes did half her work for her.
The rest of the Kig-Yar party, being a little farther away, were not as scared as their intrepid leader. They raised their plasma pistols and opened fire, scattering searing plasma across the courtyard and sending Phillips dodging for cover behind another fallen pillar.
Naomi skidded to a halt behind another fallen pillar and brought her battle rifle up to bear, sighting two of the furthest back Kig-yar she’d identified earlier. These two were equipped with the nicest weapons in the bunch, a pair of shiny beam rifles, and as such were likely to be the biggest problems during the skirmish. She placed a few rounds in the skull of the right sniper, using the left sniper’s momentary surprise as the perfect opportunity to give him the same treatment.
There. Now Mal and Vaz could focus on clearing the courtyard without having to watch their heads for snipers.
The two ODSTs must have been paying attention, as they split from the spots they had taken up guarding Phillip’s back during the short-lived negotiations. Vaz went left and Mal went right, the duo stalking forward and keeping up a steady stream of fire.
Naomi counted the Kig-Yar as they fell, and her on-board computer did some quick math. Given the rate the aliens were falling, the fire fight should be over in…. Four minutes and thirteen seconds. Easy. As long as nothing went wrong.
At that, Naomi tensed and shot the shoulder of a Kig-Yar that had gotten a little too close to Vaz for her liking. The problem was, things always went wrong.
A blast of static followed by a series of rather creative curses came over the team-com channel. Naomi snorted. Mal must have accidentally activated his com again. Across the courtyard, she could see him desperately waving his arm at his side, flexing his hand open and closed.
“Bloody chicken shot my elbow plate straight off!”
Offended now, Mal spun and jabbed his other, still armored elbow into the face of a jackal that had tried to sneak up on him.
“Oh brilliant. You know, if anyone had somehow miraculously forgotten that mev-ut out on you two, I’m betting it’s back on now. Probably doubled, too.” Phillips buzzed over team-com.
The blast of Vaz’ shotgun and the dying scream of its victim cut off any additional sage advice on the legal procedure surrounding kig-yar mev-uts that Phillips may or may not have been dispensing.
“No one will report the bodies if there’s no one left to report the bodies.” Vaz reminded him.
Li An must have been listening in from her spot waiting in Bogof “Is that how Russians handle stealth?”
“Da.” Vaz blasted the beak off another kig-yar and turned, looking for his next target.
Unfortunately, this was when the kig-yar second in command decided to show some courage. She’d scrambled up another pillar and crouched atop its broken capital. She cackled and rattled the forerunner artefact in her clutches, fiddling with something on the side.
Something soured in Naomi’s stomach. Osman hadn’t been very specific about the nature of the artefact they were to retrieve, but this wasn’t anything new to Kilo-Five. Despite the fact that they took their orders directly from the Chief of the Office of Naval Intelligence, the one and only half-Spartan Serin Osman, who had even once been their very own Rear Admiral in charge of Kilo-Five’s black ops, they were never as in-the know as they’d like. In fact, they’d received plenty of assignments in which they were told only the barest minimum information, only the stuff they absolutely needed to know. And when it came to Forerunner recovery missions, she suspected this was often due to the fact that ONI just didn’t know or have any useful information to pass on to them.
But Spartans were smart and pretty much bred for this stuff, so Naomi had started to pick up on little things here and there. Most of the time, she wouldn’t be able to describe it or put it into specific words. All she had to go on was gut feeling based on the patterns her subconscious had picked up on.
And Naomi’s gut definitely had a feeling about this artifact. She shot forward, grabbing the side of the pillar she’d been using as cover to pull herself forward as she pushed off the pile of rubble behind her. She didn’t have much of a plan beyond “Half a ton of Mjolnir generally took hits better than ODST armor.”
But Vaz still had years’ worth of battlefield instincts on his side too. Sensing something was off, he twisted, shotgun up and ready for whatever he found.
He found the Kig-Yar blasting off a shot of…something from the artefact and Naomi flying through the air towards him at the same time.
Naomi was only the tiniest fraction of a second faster than the shot, and she barreled into Vaz at almost the same time as the blast. A brilliant white-blue light flashed through the courtyard, silencing and stilling the action.
~*~
UNSC Inifinity-Class supercarrier Infinity, 111 Tauri System
Coordinates Undisclosed
07.08.2557, Military Calendar
10:33 MST
Naomi sucked in a breath of air, hoping that would soften the pounding in her…well, everywhere. It did not.
A hazy buzz suffused her thoughts, like her helmet’s radio was busted. She moved to tap it off, but her arms were too heavy. This was not a sensation she could remember experiencing before. A knife of terror, almost unfamiliar, shot through her. There were very few situations in which a Spartan could find themselves that would make their own bodies too heavy to move, none of which were good.
While it was normal for Spartans to crash out post-op, some had even been known to sleep for days, Naomi had never felt this exhausted before.
For some reason, she couldn’t remember how she’d come to find herself too heavy to move. Which meant something very bad had happened.
“BB,...” She paused, surprised by the sheer amount of effort saying those two syllables took. “...update?” She asked into the darkness. But there was no reply. “BB?” Still nothing.
Either BB wasn’t on the Port Stanley, which seemed unlikely, or she wasn’t on the Port Stanley.
Now curious and more than a little concerned, she forced herself to peel open her eyes.
She was met with a warm light, but not the kind from the sun, like she expected. That ruled out being stranded somewhere planet side. It also ruled out being taken captive by Covenant forces, as they had always been partial to cool tones.
Nope, this was the light of a bedside lamp, and beside a bed it was. Naomi lay in a bed that was obviously meant to hold only a slightly above-average sized human at best, since her feet were smashed up against railing at the end.
But where was this bed? The bedside lamp was set to glow at the warm tone of an old halogen bulb. That was a very particular choice, a choice meant to convey comfort. She wasn’t at any official ONI research facilities then. The professors preferred stark, white LED lights.
The lamp illuminated a small space. The walls were lined with easily washable plastic tiles, and an array of monitors and machines hummed and beeped quietly against the walls. She found herself connected to these monitors with wires and tubes and confusion fluttered through her.
Adrenaline shot through her, giving her the power to shoot upright, terrified that she was fourteen and back on Reach, slipping in and out of consciousness after all of the augmentations. Had all of those years been a fever dream? A hallucination induced by the radical changes happening in her brain?
She searched around, looking for something to clue her in, and lifted a hand. There on the back was a shiny, jagged scar running from knuckle to wrist. No. That had come much later, courtesy of an elite’s energy sword.
So an infirmary then. She must have gotten hit really badly if she couldn’t remember it, couldn't move, and wasn’t in a space meant for Spartans.
This realization made the room start to spin. She sucked in another breath and waited for the bout of vertigo to pass. It did, but it took longer than Naomi would have liked. And she realized the buzz she’d thought was her malfunctioning helmet com had not gone away.
She laid back against the pillows and took a moment. Infirmary. But not on Port Stanley. Perhaps the Infinity then? Or another military hospital on a nearby planet?
She took a few seconds to gather up the strength to fling her hand out onto the bedside table. If this infirmary were worth anything, it’d have a button to call an attendant. She fished around, clumsily knocking over a bottle of water and flailing a pen off the table before brushing something small and cool with a bumpy surface. Probably some sort of remote.
She struggled to close her fingers around it and bring it over to see it properly. Sure enough, a big blue button was placed in the middle, with bold black lettering reading “Call Attendant” plastered over it.
She jammed it down with a thumb, then lay back on her pillows, more exhausted then she could ever remember feeling. And trying not to think too hard about what that might mean.
A ding sounded and then the door in the dark end of her room clicked open. “Ma’am? Are you awake now?” The quiet voice of a nurse inquired. She strolled forward, eyes wide behind her glasses, pulling a stylus out of her military-issue scrubs. She scribbled something on her data pad and tucked the instruments away, coming to stand at Naomi’s bedside.
Naomi took another deep breath in preparation to speak, but only managed a grunt. Everything still hurt. A lot. And it all took so much effort
The nurse nodded, then leaned over to check the monitors, issuing a flat hum as she studied the figures. “I’ll bet you’re not feeling so hot right now. You’ve been out for a week. Evidently you took quite the beating on your last mission, or so I was told.” She whipped the data pad and stylus back out, adding a few more notes to the data that had synched up from the monitors.
“...where..?” Naomi managed.
“Where was your mission?” The nurse shook her head. “I’m not sure, your crew didn’t say when they brought you in and apparently it was too classified for anyone to inform little old me.”
Naomi shook her head to one side.
“Oh, you mean where are you now?” The nurse gave a sheepish grin. “Sorry. Yes, you were brought back on board the Infinity, in the marine’s med bay.” She glanced down at Naomi’s bent knees and cramped feet. “Sorry, there’s a real nasty strain of a stomach bug going around and they’re currently disinfecting the Spartan’s med bay, so things are probably a little cramped in here for you, aren’t they?”
Naomi could only manage another grunt. It didn’t really matter where they put her, as long as she could get back out into the field ASAP. She’d grown rather fond of Kilo-Five and the thought of being stuck convalescing anywhere and not watching their backs while they were out on mission stung.
The nurse bustled around for a little while longer, making adjustments to the monitors and machines, all the while checking the info on the data pad.
“I wish it weren’t the case, but given who you are and what I can only guess you were doing to get yourself into this situation, Captain Lasky and Commander Palmer will be in shortly to speak with you. In the meantime, I strongly suggest you rest up some more. Go ahead and ring that bell when you wake up again, or if things get worse, just like you did this time. I’ll bring by some easy food in a little while.”
Naomi nodded again, eagerly falling against the pillows. She did not need much encouragement to take the nurses’ advice. Getting updated info helped, and a background buzz of stress she hadn’t noticed till now quieted a bit. She doubted it’d dissipate completely until she was reunited with Kilo-Five, but knowing that the situation was about as under control as it could be let her rest a little easier.
Naomi had only been on board the Infinity a handful of times. But she knew it was a large ship, the largest, in fact. So, she estimated that if they were being notified right now, it would probably take her visitors twenty minutes for them to reach her, even with the high-speed tram system.
So she had twenty minutes to gather enough strength for the visit. Twenty minutes to hope it would be more of a debrief than an interrogation.
She must have dozed off at some point, as she awoke with a little start to the sounds of voices who were trying to be quiet and failing miserably. She shifted upright again, pleased to find she felt marginally better, and tried to wipe away the drool that had accumulated on her cheek. While her appearance might not have been one of the signature spartan qualities that helped her in battle, she’d learned the top brass tended to care about it.
Just as she finished smoothing down her blonde wisps of hair, there was a ding and a click and the door opened once again. The lights in the room gently grew brighter, a trick she hadn’t noticed earlier. Or perhaps the light level depended on the occupants and top brass dictated better lighting. This time, a man with a squarish face and a button nose entered, closely followed by a tall woman in armor who somehow managed to turn her full lips into a perpetual, severe scowl. Captain Lasky and Commander Palmer. The newly minted, Commander Palmer, Naomi remembered with a start. No wonder the woman looked so pissed off. She would be too, if she suddenly found herself in charge of all the Spartans on the UNSC’s flagship and then some.
Naomi struggled with a salute, but Captain Lasky waved her off. “At ease.” He came to a halt at the end of her bed, leaning his hands on the end railing, studying her face. Naomi didn’t like what he evidently found, judging from his expression.
Palmer cocked a hip and crossed her arms across her still-armored chest. “Sounds like you took one hell of a beating out there Spartan.” Naomi shouldn’t have been surprised to find that genuine concern seemed to lace the statement, and yet she was.
Naomi hadn’t interacted with Infinity’s Spartan Commander Sarah Palmer before. She’d heard a lot about the woman, and Vaz and Mal had had only good things to say when they’d learned she’d been recruited from the ODSTs to the Spartan IV program. She was well respected and skilled. But Naomi knew there frequently were tensions between the different generations of Spartans. Especially between Spartans from her own generation, the IIs, and any others. So to hear that Palmer seemed to really care about Naomi’s pain intrigued her.
Naomi nodded, switching her gaze from the commander to the captain and back again. “I…” When her voice came out gravelly, she cleared her throat with a cough. “I’m not sure what happened, sirs.”
The captain and commander exchanged frowns.
Lasky took the brunt of the explanation. “Well we were kind of hoping you could tell us that, Spartan. All your team said was that you were in the middle of a retrieval op for ONI and some jackals happened along, sending the whole thing south.” Lasky tilted his head to the side. “That Phillips guy, he seemed pretty shaken up about it all. Mentioned some sort of flash and that you were out cold and unresponsive. Evidently the facilities on your prowler weren’t enough, so you were brought here.”
Naomi studied the sheets that had bunched up by her hands. That did all sound familiar. Kilo-Five had been retrieving a Forerunner artifact for ONI. But when they’d gotten there, the Kig-Yar pirates had already gotten to it. Phillips had said he wanted to try and bargain for it first. Then the Kig-Yar’s second in command had taken the artifact, a firefight had started, and then the Kig-Yar had fired the artifact, she’d run in to protect Vaz from the brunt of the damage, and then…nothing.
Her visitors might be brass, but that didn’t mean ONI wanted them knowing every sordid detail of their mission. So, instead of filling in any of their missing details, Naomi just nodded. “Sounds correct, sir.”
Lasky studied her for a moment and Naomi got the distinct impression he knew exactly what she was doing. But he nodded and looked away. “We’ve gotten orders from Admiral Osman to patch you up best we can for as long as you need. I see it helps to have friends in high places.” He gave her a wry half-smile.
Naomi wasn’t sure how to respond to that, so she didn’t.
Lasky raised a brow, but then let his expression return to normal. “Right. Well. I’ve got a meeting in five, so you ladies will have to excuse me. Naomi, I’m glad to see you’ve made it in one piece.” He clapped a hand on the railing and gave Naomi a tight smile before exiting, leaving Palmer to study the IVs they had Naomi hooked up to.
“Well now that it’s just us girls here, I can give it to you straight.” Palmer titled a head and gave Naomi a sad smile. “Docs say nothing’s broken and all your tests are coming back normal, you’re just in need of some serious bed rest. They are a little confused as to why it’s taking so long for you to heal, well, for a spartan. So they want to keep a close eye on you and your progress. They estimate about a month and half for recovery. But that doesn’t mean you’d be cleared for combat then.”
A month and a half. The timeline had Naomi reeling. She’d be out of commission for that, and probably longer if the doctors wanted her to complete a round of physiotherapy first. So much could happen in a month and a half. The whole of Sanghelios could glass itself in a month and a half. The Rebel Front could make serious headway in a month and a half. They might even find John in a month and a half. Kilo-Five couldn’t be down a spartan, their only spartan, for a month and a half. They couldn’t afford it. Not even ONI could afford it.
Naomi briefly debated if she should let her protests be known before she realised Palmer had a sly look on her face. “I know. But it sounds like Kilo-Five won’t be up to much while you recover. You weren’t the only one they brought in to medical.”
The news short-circuited Naomi’s spiral. “Who?” She asked in a hoarse whisper. It wasn’t uncommon for the gang to get a little beat up after an operation, but usually such injuries were easily treatable on the Port Stanley. If anyone else from Kilo-Five was brought here, that meant they couldn’t be treated on the ship, which meant they were in as serious a situation as Naomi was.
Palmer must have understood the urgency in Naomi’s voice as she didn’t waste any time in answering. “Corporal Beloi.”
Ice shot through Naomi’s veins. She took another deep breath and gathered the strength to ask the deluge of questions pouring from her. Luckily Palmer was a step ahead of her.
“Don’t worry. He’s mostly fine now. Definitely out of the danger zone. But it was damn close. His neural implant just about exploded right out of his head. Which is part of the reason we wondered what had happened.” Palmer hesitated, chewing on her next words. “We get that whatever you were doing was- is classified. But we don’t know of anything that makes an implant bust out of someone’s skull. And if there’s something out there that can affect my soldiers like that, it’d be better for us to know sooner rather than later.”
Naomi’s stomach dropped. Immediately, her brain went into assessment and mitigation and she did the mental math. The nurse had said she'd been out for a week while in her care. The doctors had already done all they could for her and now she just needed to rest and maybe do some physical therapy.
There were high chances Vaz was on the same track. Even if he wasn’t anywhere as close to waking up as she'd been, the doctors should be done with all they could do within a week.
So, she knew in her head that there wasn’t much she could do. In fact, it would probably be better if she focused on healing quickly so he could get out of there and see him again sooner. That was the logical action plan.
However, Naomi also knew how awful it was to be stuck recovering in a strange place with needles sticking out of you, isolated from your squad who were the closest thing you had to family. And hope could go a long way for recovery. She knew from firsthand experience that the best way to ensure that hope was by reuniting with squad mates.
Palmer cleared her throat and Naomi realised she’d been calculating silently for just a little too long. She tried to turn away from the overwhelming wave of confusion, fear, and concern for Vaz that was threatening to consume her and consider Palmer’s plea. It was a fair request, one that she probably would have made herself, had their roles been reversed. There was just one problem.
“Honestly,” She paused, hoping her sincerity showed. “I don’t know.” When Palmer’s face fell, Naomi was quick to add. “We weren’t told much. Just, retrieve it.”
At this, the other woman rolled her eyes and snorted. “How typical of ONI. I really shouldn’t be surprised at this point.” She rubbed a spot at her temple with her gloved hand. “Well I guess I’ll be sending a series of memos to our dearest CINCONI until I get a reasonable explanation then, won’t I?”
Naomi gave Palmer a smile. Despite great personal experience with the CINCONI, Naomi knew just how reticent Osman could be. She doubted Palmer would get an explanation until Osman herself had decided it was time.
Palmer stood there for another few minutes, gaze fixed on a spot just past Naomi’s bed, and she wondered what the Spartan Commander had on her mind. She couldn’t imagine she had any shortage of issues to worry over. Finally, after a moment, she seemed to come back to the present and turned to go. A second later she halted and half-turned back towards Naomi.
“Spartan, see that you make a full recovery. We… we need you.” With that, Spartan Commander Sarah Palmer brushed out of the room, probably on her way to put out fires across the galaxy.
Naomi slouched back into her pillows, already exhausted despite having done so little in her estimation.
So. The Forerunner artifact had done something to Vaz’s neural implant. And probably hers, if she had to guess, though it seemed that she had taken the hit better. But as another wave of exhaustion threatened to pull Naomi back to sleep, she decided she’d have to reassess that assumption. Maybe she’d just taken the hit differently. Or maybe her Mjolnir had taken the brunt of the hit? Or maybe Vaz’s neural implant was getting old and short circuited, or maybe…
Naomi woke with a start to find the same nurses, glasses, scrubs and all, bustling around her room. Damn, she kept underestimating how tired she was. If she wasn’t careful she’d while away a whole week sleeping. Who knew what could happen to Vaz in that time? If his injuries were really as critical as Palmer had reported, then she needed to confirm his status ASAP.
As the nurse placed a tray of unexciting food on a tray and swung it over to rest above Naomi’s knees, she noticed the Spartan blinking herself awake.
“See? I kept my promise. Unfortunately today’s menu is just congee and apple sauce. The docs didn’t want you trying anything too crazy. But we know how many calories you Spartans need, so I have two bonuses for today’s lunch. Bonus number one, the food is enriched, absolutely jam-packed with nutrients and protein and what not. Bonus number two, we’ve made Spartan-sized batches of everything, so you can eat as much as you want.”
Naomi eyed the two bowls, utterly unsure which was the congee and which was the apple sauce. She wondered if she’d be able to tell once she tasted them. UNSC cooks were not exactly renowned for their delicate play of flavors on the palate. Any food made for the infirmary was bound to be even less so.
She stirred one of the bowls. Eating was not the one thing she wanted to do right now. She wanted to bust out of the dumb wires and tubes and find Vaz and make sure he really was recovering. Unfortunately, something smelled like garlic, and her stomach growled in response.
The nurse tried to hide her chuckle. “Hey, no need to be ashamed. Spartans are humans too. And your body has been working overtime trying to heal itself. You’re allowed to be hungry.”
Naomi still wasn’t sure of it, but before she knew it, she’d lifted the spoon, just to give it a sniff, and then just a taste. And then the bowl was empty. Apparently that one was the congee. She eyed the apple sauce, but then the idea of a nice, sweet, refreshing dish to balance out the savory congee won out and it was soon emptied as well.
The nurse eyed the empty plastic bowls, surprise very clear on her features. “Oh, uhm” She slowly took the bowls back, as if she was scared the spartan might steal them away and scarf them down too. “Do you want more?”
But when the nurse turned back, Naomi had fallen back asleep. The nurse smiled. Even massive super-soldiers still got drowsy after lunch. She finished checking the monitors, making notes, and then quietly bustled the empty dishes away, letting the warm bedside lamp dim as she exited.
This time, Naomi dreamed.
She was on some sort of planet, she couldn’t figure out if it was one she had been on before. It might have been Reach. It might have been deep space. It might have been the Port Stanley.
There was an emergency on the bridge and she had to get to it right now. And as soon as she heaved open the bulkhead door, Osman stood up from her desk at Bravo Six and smiled, waving her to sit in a chair next to a woman. The woman had short hair, it was black and blonde. The woman stood to greet her, but she was frowning. Disappointed. Scared. Sad.
“Naomi, I’m not sure this time. You have a responsibility.” Her mother said.
Naomi opened her mouth, about to protest, about to explain it all so that they’d understand.
But Halsey just shook her head. “But that’s why we chose you. That’s why you survived, because you have a responsibility to the others. To keep them alive.”
Osman stepped forward. “It’s not her fault she’s a failure. You put too much pressure on her!”
Anger flared in Naomi’s chest, and she wanted to push Osman back, to tell her she didn’t get it, to stay out of it. But before she could, Osman pushed Naomi’s head down as a blast of plasma shot by overhead, nearly hitting them at the desk.
“Then you had better get over there. If you can bring him back, then maybe you can change our minds.” Her mother said. And Naomi knew.
She turned and sped down the corridor, tripping over rocks and other rubble. Eventually she came to a halt in the courtyard. But it was clear, empty. She advanced and took down two of the nearest jackals, knowing she hadn’t cleared the ones behind her, but she’d have to get them later, on her way back. Right now, she had to get to Vaz.
She slid behind a pillar and there he was, clutching the back of his head, trying to keep all of his brains in his fractured skull. He helped her up and hauled her across the courtyard. But the jackals kept coming. And then the howl and chuckle of brutes echoed across the courtyard. They were over the ridge, firing a barrage of spikes.
Vaz stopped and held up his shotgun. “Go! I’ll cover you!” And she knew, right then, that she’d failed.
But before she could argue, something pulled her arm. It was heavy and rough and damp. She tried to shake it off, and something clattered loudly against the floor.
Naomi shot straight up, breaths heaving in her chest and found her bed sheets tangled around her wrist. She sat in the bed in her dark room for a solid two minutes, studying her surroundings before she eventually figured it out. She was in the infirmary on the UNSC Infinity. She was recovering from a strange injury and had been sleeping. It had been a dream. Just a dream, a nightmare.
Sometimes, very rarely, but sometimes, she had nightmares when she was aboard the Port Stanley. The first time that it had happened, she’d immediately gotten out of bed and had gone to the armor bay to sit and study her armor. She studied the scratches, stains, burns, and dings. She studied the evidence of what had happened, and what was surely to come. Her armor, her battle rifle, its ammunition. That was what was real. That was what she could control. And that’s all that really mattered.
And that first time, purely by accident, Vaz had found her.
Who knew why he was up and about at that hour of the night. She knew that in space, there wasn’t really a ‘nighttime’ or a ‘daytime’. But the Kilo-Five crew and BB had somehow collectively figured out a routine and had stuck with it. And over the years, Naomi had learned that it was these quiet, unspoken routines and expectations that were the ones that became rarely broken habits. So Vaz’ appearance had piqued her interest.
He’d stood at the doorway to the armor bay, two cups of the Stanley’s signature coffee in his hands. He paused there, but then within a few heart beats he’d crossed the space between them and crouched down next to her, sliding the other mug of coffee her way.
“How did you know?” She’d asked him, circling her hands around the mug and letting its warmth seep into her.
He took a long slow sip from his mug. “I didn’t. I just thought this was a two-coffee kind of night.”
“Ah.” She’d tried not to think too hard about how that response disappointed her. “Then I guess I should count myself lucky.”
After a few moments of quiet sipping. Vaz leaned back against a nearby tool cart. “So. Couldn’t fall asleep, or just woke up?”
Naomi chewed the question, wondering how to respond. Usually, when she was in a hot zone, no one was sleeping, and everyone knew why. The problems came when you fell asleep. Naomi knew how to handle those types of comments and questions. Chin up, stiff upper lip, Spartans never die. Or have nightmares.
But this was not a hot zone and Vaz wasn’t just some officer who needed to see an indefatigable spartan in order to keep up morale. He was Vaz, and he was probably one of the only people who knew just how weak Spartans really were.
Luckily, Vaz seemed to be in no rush to hear Naomi’s answer. Hell, he probably wouldn’t have cared if Naomi never answered. He just kept on sipping his coffee and studying her Mjolnir with her.
“I…” Naomi’s voice cracked as she spoke and she cleared her throat to try again. “I had a nightmare.”
The extent of Vaz’s reaction was to take another sip of coffee. He raised his mug to motion to the knee plate on Naomi’s armor. “How many bolts on this thing?” He asked instead.
Naomi frowned, trying to recall the exact number. One of the ONI engineers had told her once, when they’d briefed her on updates. “Two thousand, six hundred and eighty four total for the whole suit. One knee plate has twelve.” She answered after a beat.
He nodded. “I only see six.” He reached out his free hand and tapped each of the six boltheads visible.
Naomi reached out and tapped in-between the spots he’d indicated earlier. “There are six more in the back that you can’t see.”
Vaz didn’t remove his hand from the knee plate when she pointed out the hidden bolt-heads. Instead he slid it over and captured Naomi’s much larger hand in his own, bringing their joined hands down to rest atop his knee.
“What about in the elbow plate? Same thing?” He asked, as if he hadn’t done anything.
“...yeah.” She eventually answered.
Naomi spent more seconds than she would have guessed was normal or appropriate looking at their joined hands. But she didn’t pull away. His hand was extra warm from the mug of coffee and softer than she would have expected, given his years of combat experience. Then he started to rub circles in the back of her hand with his thumb and Naomi found the warmth radiating throughout her whole body.
She stilled, afraid that any movement would break the spell that had apparently fallen on the armor bay. But Vaz didn’t seem to notice, and just kept sipping his coffee with his free hand.
Naomi watched the circles his thumb made on her hand, amazed. It really was quite an efficient method of conveying comfort. For being such a small and innocuous touch, it punched well above its weight at imparting affection.
It was perfect. All earlier gloomy thoughts from her nightmare were completely obliterated in the wake of her exhilaration at the simple touch. The strength of the feeling surprised her, but she wasn’t about to question it.
She hadn’t realised it till now, but this was exactly what she’d wanted. She and Vaz were close. They knew it. Everyone knew it. They knew each other’s pasts, presents, and what they wanted in the future. They could openly share the tides of their thoughts and feelings with each other. Naomi had gotten so comfortable around him and genuinely enjoyed his company. And over the past few weeks, she’d been trying to find the right place and time to try something like this. Just a little touch. Nothing crazy. But it had always been too busy, too life-or-death, or too public. It had begun to frustrate her and she had wondered if she should even bother trying if their lives were just going to be a constant stream of firefight after firefight. But then Vaz had just waltzed in, holding her hand and comforting her after a nightmare like he’d done it for years.
She couldn’t help the smile that spread across her features. She scooted a little closer, letting her knee brush against his. Naomi was suddenly glad that Dr. Halsey hadn't decided that hands-free illumination via bioluminescence wasn't a necessary spartan quality, otherwise she'd be shining like a plasma grenade right in this instant.
It really was perfect.
And that was all she wanted in this instance, here in the infirmary bed. She wanted to feel his warm touch on her fingers. See his deep eyes and wry smile. Hear his morbid jokes. Catch the scent of his shampoo and boot polish.
Instead, she was stuck here, trapped by tubes and wires and tangled bed sheets. While she had a pretty good idea that she was going to be okay, who knew how Vaz was coping? She knew he was tough, he was an ODST afterall, but he didn’t have the added advantages of Mjolnir to take the brunt of the blast nor augmentations to strengthen him as he healed.
That did it for her.
She reached over the bedside table and pressed the call button. This time, a different nurse answered. He peeked his head in, glancing over at Naomi, as if he wasn’t sure she’d actually meant to hit the button or not. When he found her awake and upright, he blanched and straightened up, stepping fully into the room.
“You, uh, you called? Ma’am?” He added the honorific onto the end as if he was afraid Naomi would bite his head off at the slightest provocation. Naomi wanted to laugh. She missed the first nurse already. At least she wasn’t afraid of the fact that her charge was a Spartan.
Instead, Naomi nodded and beckoned the new nurse over. “Yes, I have a question. Can I get a status update on ODST Corporal Vasily Beloi, service number zero-three-zero-three-two dash five-two-three-zero-one dash victor-bravo?” Naomi rattled off his service number easily, the rhythm of the digits soothing her.
The nurse just looked at her for a minute, then got out his data pad and brought up a search function. “Could you, uh, repeat that for me?”
Naomi suppressed another sigh and repeated Vaz’s information for the nurse. She fought back her judgement of his awful combination of ineptitude and cowardice and tried to remind herself that she probably was the strangest thing he had ever seen.
The nurse nodded once he had all the information entered correctly. He spent a few beats scrolling through info before he looked up with his face pulled to the side. “Looks like he’s still in critical condition.”
Naomi’s heart nose-dived. “What?!”
Palmer had made it sound like he was past the worst of it, had he regressed? She reached for the datapad and pulled it out of his grasp. He stumbled over a protest before realising he didn’t want to fight Naomi. Not on this, nor ever.
Naomi scrolled through the Vaz’s patient information displayed on the screen. It did indeed list his condition as ‘critical’- but the nurse had failed to mention that there was apparently a whole lot more information that had been designated ‘classified’ and been blacked out or otherwise made inaccessible. Naomi wasn’t sure if that was due to the fact that patient health information laws made it illegal for nurses to access information of patients that weren’t designated as under their care, or if it was due to the classified nature of the ONI op that had caused his injuries. Either way, there was more to the story than just ‘critical condition’.
Ridiculous. She wasn’t going to find out anything useful about his apparently bad condition this way. And she had suffered enough bad on her own that she wasn’t about to let Vaz go through the same thing. If it was really that bad, then she had to be with him, at least see him.
Naomi tossed the datapad back to the nurse and he struggled to catch it before it clattered to the floor. She swung herself over to the side of the bed and stretched her legs a bit, testing her strength and range of motion.
“Uh, ma’am?” The nurse stood by awkwardly, confusion and fear growing on his face. “I’m not sure you should be getting up quite yet, you still need to rest quite a bit.”
Naomi turned to face him. “Where is Corporal Beloi?” She demanded, ignoring his suggestion.
He frowned, as if completely bewildered by the situation. “I, uh, I don’t think-,”
Naomi stood up and cut him off. “Which room? Which room is Corporal Beloi in?”
His eyes went wide as he gazed up at her, now towering over him at her full height. He mumbled something and even with her enhanced hearing, Naomi couldn't quite make it out.
She raised a single brow and was about to ask him to repeat himself, but apparently just the brow was enough and he all but shouted his words at her.
“Room one fifty-four! Ma’am!” He even gave her a pathetic little salute.
Naomi paused, wondering if she should reassure him that she wasn’t going to turn him into a pretzel just yet, but decided there was no use in changing something that was working in her favor. Instead, she just nodded and brushed past him. Everything still hurt like hell and it was only years of Spartan training that kept her gait tall and strong as she strode away.
The hallway outside her room was quiet and lonely. To her left, the hallway turned away and she could just make out a sliver of a few screens and the desk of the nurses’ station. To her right, the hallway turned again. There were only a few doors on her stretch of hallway, and it looked like she was in room one fifty, with the numbers ascending to her right.
She breathed a sigh of relief. She didn’t have far to go.
She turned right and passed all the doors on her little stretch of hallway without finding room one fifty-four. So she turned the corner.
She immediately found door one fifty-four. However, a small group of nurses and medical staff were congregating just outside it. They looked up as Naomi neared, and everyone just blinked at each other for a moment before Naomi continued forward. With any luck, her earlier streak of sheer spartan aura would continue and they wouldn’t bother questioning her.
Unfortunately it seemed that her second nurse was indeed uniquely cowardly, as this group of staff did not cow so easily.
“Spartan? All good over there?” It was a voice she recognized and she found there in the middle of the tangle her first nurse, the woman with the glasses. She stepped forward, and the others, who must have been aware of her experience with Naomi, looked to her for their cues.
“Yes. I am going to visit Corporal Beloi.” She gestured to the door just behind the tangle of staff and stepped forward.
Her first nurse stepped forward to meet her, effectively blocking her path. “Ah. Beloi is resting right now. He was pretty badly injured too.”
Naomi faced her. “Is he asleep?”
The nurse gave her a hard smile. “He needs his rest.”
Naomi noted that particular choice of words. She wouldn’t disturb Vaz if he was sleeping. That was just rude. But the nurse had not actually answered her question and ‘rest’ did not necessarily mean ‘asleep’. If the nurse was deliberately blocking her…the thought made Naomi antsy.
She’d dealt with enough medics to know they often tried to hide the worst of the injuries, talking adjacent to the truth and even outright lying in order to keep everyone calm and hopeful. So the nurse’s reticence to speak to Naomi directly about the situation could only mean one thing- it was bad.
Naomi turned to face the door again, hoping that would be enough to dismiss the nurse. “I will see him.”
“Whoa, sorry, hold on there.” This time a different staff member stepped forward, one who until now had been hanging back and watching the exchange. He was an older man, in the uniform of the day, with a white doctor’s coat overtop. He must have been the overseeing physician and probably an officer of some sort.
Well then. She’d be seeing Palmer again later for disciplinary action over insubordination.
The doctor tried his level best to stare her down. It didn’t have quite the same effect when he had to crane his neck up. “I’m sorry ma’am, but we can’t let you do that. Beloi needs all the peace and quiet he can get, and you’ll have to excuse me for saying so, but Spartans aren’t exactly known for being harbingers of either. Besides, it’s not visitation hours, and even if it were, we could only allow official guardians or family in at this time.”
Naomi returned the doctor’s stare, trying to work out how to best approach the argument.
Her first nurse stepped forward, putting a cautionary hand between the pair. “What if we did let her visit? During proper hours, of course?”
The doctor looked Naomi up and down, as if trying to figure out if he could stop her if she decided to charge forward. Naomi was sorely tempted to ask him to try it.
“Doesn’t matter. Until I give the all clear, the only ones who have any say in his visitation are legal family.”
Naomi bristled. “I have served with Corporal Beloi for three years. He is already family.”
“And I’ve run this med ward for eleven!” The doctor was starting to get red in the face and he was dangerously close to shouting. Naomi decided it would not help her case if she pointed out that the Infinity had only been operating for four years, and only five months officially, and thus he could not have possibly been in charge of the Infinity’s infirmary for eleven years. This conclusion did not seem to pass through the doctor’s mind either, as he continued in his rant.
“My word is law here, Spartan. It’s not visiting hours and you’re not legally related, so stand down if you know what’s good for you and your little team of ONI hounds. Don’t make me call Palmer down here so she can manhandle you herself.”
Naomi took a step back. Well, really, it was just her left foot. Just enough to get into a subtle but effective ready stance. Either her first nurse knew a thing or two about combat or was just really good at reading the room because she backed away quickly, putting her hands up and shaking her head.
“Sir.” Naomi took a deep breath. She was almost surprised to find no qualms in her mind about her soon-to-come defiance. Almost.
“Let me see him.” She brought herself up to her full height and put on her ‘I know what I’m doing.’ voice.
For a moment, the doctor’s gaze shifted and it almost seemed to work. Almost. But then his jaw set and he crossed his arms. “No.”
Naomi didn’t waste any time and side stepped him, walking right past him. The nurses and staff glanced at each other and it almost seemed like they were going to try to step in and stop her. Almost.
There were certainly a lot of ‘almosts’. But seeing Vaz would not be one of them.
The doctor sputtered something furious and incomprehensible as Naomi strode across the hall and reached the door to Vaz’s room. She turned the handle and entered his room without a backwards glance.
~*~
UNSC HIGHCOM Facility Bravo- 6, “The Hive”
Sydney, Australia, Earth, Sol System
07.08.2557, Military Calendar
23:19 MST
Admiral Serin Osman sighed and flipped through the documents on her datapad. It was starting to get to the point in the night where the words were blurring together and her brain was properly comprehending what she was reading. That meant it was time for a quick break.
She pushed back away from her desk and stretched.
“Coffee or tea?” BB’s disembodied voice asked.
Osman considered the question. Coffee would get the job done faster, but tea would get it done better. Neither, however, were what she wanted at that moment.
“Do we have any more candied ginger, BB?” She asked instead. She was terrible of keeping track of the snacks stashed away in her office. But she tried telling herself that she was still plenty good at bringing governments to ruin and backstabbing operatives who wavered in the slightest.
Though she’d ‘come in from the cold’, so to speak, two years ago and no longer had need of the ginger’s calming effects for slip-space jumps, she’d come to quite enjoy the little candies. Her mentor and infamous former CINCONI Margaret Parangosky had first bestowed them upon the formation of Kilo-Five, and the candies helped her feel like she was still in on the action, even if she was stuck behind a desk ten stories below ground most of the time.
“Oh, but of course!” BB’s box avatar rose and pirouetted, and if Osman didn’t know any better, she’d suspect he was giving her his smuggest smile. He did love knowing things that others didn’t, afterall. “Second drawer on the left, behind that paper-weight of a nameplate you don’t deign to use.”
Osman followed his directions, and sure enough, there was a little jar, filled to the brim with little crystal ginger peels. “Well if someone has come all the way down here, then presumably they’ve come to see me. And if they’ve come to see me in my office, they know who I am. And if they already know who I am, then no name plate is necessary. Really, it’s a waste of desk space that I could, and do, use far better.”
“Ah, but it’s not about informing the ignorant. It’s about the presence. The name plate gives you weight. Literally. It would be an excellent emergency weapon. Especially in your augmented hands.” BB’s form rocked to-and-fro.
“Hmmn see my earlier point on any such person coming down here to begin with. If they’ve managed to pass all seventeen security checkpoints and still want to attack me, I’d almost let them.” She pulled a few pieces of the ginger peel out of the jar and screwed the lid back on, replacing it in its nice little hiding spot.
“Almost?” BB asked.
“Almost. I am still CINCONI and a Spartan wash-out, afterall. Someone with the augmented strength to hold a mop for that long has got to be around to clean up everyone else’s messes.”
“Oh, come off it. ‘Wash-out’ makes it sound like you’re a failure. I quite like how Rear Admiral Forrentes puts it- ‘half spartan’. That’s much better. Makes you sound like a werewolf, or some other ferocious hybrid.”
Osman snorted around her first ginger peel and stretched her neck and shoulders, getting ready to respond to BB when his box avatar ceased his usual rhythmic, idle bobbing and froze, slowly blinking yellow.
“Oh, this just in,” He paused, digesting, analyzing, and summarizing whatever report he’d just gotten his metaphorical hands on. “We’ve gotten another ping from her. This is the thirty-eighth, in case you were wondering.”
Osman took a deep breath. Thirty eight. Thirty eight pings from this AI. She said nothing, instead turning her last ginger peel around in her fingers, studying the way her office lights sparkled on the sugar crystals.
Bb waited a moment, then brought his box avatar closer to her. When he spoke again, his voice was soft and quiet. “Do you want to hear my suggestion this time?”
“That depends, will it be the same as the last time?”
“Yes.”
“Then no. My stance on Catherine Halsey has not changed.”