| abstract
| - Kodiak didn’t like it. He decided it as he sat in one of the UNSC Infinity’s dozen or so mess halls, his thoughts nearly drowned out by the constant chatter of off-duty servicemen. He was surrounded by other SPARTANs, every one in the same form-fitting black MJOLNIR body gloves as himself, but it was a completely different atmosphere from the one he’d felt with his own kind. The SPARTAN-IIIs, his siblings in Gamma Company. These IVs were different. For one, there were so many that not everyone knew each other, even within this small, scheduled rotation group. So there was endless amounts of talking, conferring, arguing, usually about things Kodiak either didn’t understand or think were important. He sat pensively at the end of a table crowded by members of the new Shadow, Valiant, and Castle Teams . . . none of which were of the old breed. “So I’m scrambling around trying to find it,” Francisco Casillas said, continuing the story Kodiak had hardly been paying attention to. The Spaniard had a bright look to his brown eyes and a fairly impressive mustache. “And Spender is yelling at me from the ramp, saying he’ll fire me if I don’t hurry up.” Opposite him, Chris Dorton, a brown-haired German with a number of scars, chipped in, “This is why you think before trying to get in a quickie before launch.” He nudged the woman on his left. “Something you know about, ja, Bethel?” There was another round of chuckling as Chloe Estley-Bethel shrugged it off. She’d nearly been left behind when the UNSC Infinity departed Earth a month ago, another thing Kodiak had a feeling he didn’t quite understand. Casillas went on, “Finally, I just give up, and I’m about to run up the ramp, when I see a little shimmer next to the landing gear. I look closer, and sure enough, it’s the screen from my Chatter, along with the rest of the thing crushed right under the port landing strut. No wonder she was angry!” “Oh, I get it!” Dorton said. Kodiak didn’t. “That’s what she was talking about with the error message. She thought you changed your number to avoid her.” “That’s what I’d have done.” Horatio Fry, Shadow Team’s veteran leader, remarked. More laughter. Kodiak fiddled with the silver armor buckle on his suit. Unfortunately, Casillas took notice when he didn’t laugh with them, and his fidgeting brought up a new line of conversation. “That’s one thing you’ve got to love about the Infinity. Everyone’s in prime shape, and,” he paused, glancing around slyly, “Spartan undersuits are very flattering.” Casillas suddenly winced as he got a sharp kick under the table from Bethel, redoubling the round of snickering that’d already begun. Kodiak half-smiled wearily – it was the only thing he’d found remotely amusing this whole time. He didn’t know what they meant by flattering, or quickie. These people weren’t Spartans as he knew them, they were . . . grown-ups. He hadn’t thought of the word since he’d last thought of himself as a kid, but it sounded about right. And the thought of them just about made him sick to his stomach. “I’ll see you around.” He said, getting up to leave. Bethel, at least, noticed he hadn’t eaten, something far beyond uncommon for a member of Ion Team. She reached out and tapped his arm as he passed. “You feeling okay?” Kodiak turned back for half a second. “Fine. Just going to tinker with my armor.” As he left, his heightened sense of hearing picked up the other Spartans speculating about S-IIIs again, even amidst the mess hall’s crowd. They still hadn’t got the hang of whispering quieter around augmented humans. He strode through a few long corridors, weaving between these other Spartans without stopping to talk. One familiar face, Morgan of Bayonet, passed him going the other way, being just as quick about avoiding people as he was. They nodded to one another, and each kept going. It was all they needed; a Gamma didn’t need as much expression between them, because they already intuitively understood each other. It was something these S-IVs lacked. Kodiak quickly diverged from the path to the Armor Bay. He’d done a lot of tinkering already on the current regulation grey and orange suit, and it hadn’t been his destination in the first place. Just a ruse to be sure none of the IVs came looking for him. Instead, he boarded a tram headed several levels down for the Combat Deck. There was no hum of engines here. For the time being not even a crowd of Spartans, although Kodiak could usually stand them best when they were intent on combat and shooting at each other. That was a social situation he understood. Despite its name, for the time being the Combat Deck was calm and quiet, and Kodiak was overcome by the sound of waves lapping up on a beach. He pushed from his mind the fact that his feet weren't sinking into the sand, and that it was really just a hard-light barrier projecting what looked like an uneven surface. The artificial image of a sun overhead was bright enough that his black bodysuit warmed, and that was good enough for him at the moment. The ship's AI, Roland, even helped with manipulating the atmospheric controls, creating a mock sea breeze that countered the illusionary sun's warmth. Pine trees of all sizes layered over one another approaching the beach, a visual trick done so well he wasn't sure just where the wall was in all that. It all looked a bit familiar . . . He turned towards the water, and out on a jetty created from piling boulders upon one another, he spied Dyne crouching just above the water level, dipping his hand into the regularly-patterned waves. When he drew back, his hand and suited arm were still dry. Kodiak called across to him, "Is this Mariner Bay?" "Yep." Dyne yelled back, far enough away to warrant raising his voice. "I had Winter help me with the recollection, he had three-dee maps of half of Onyx." "Everything but Zone 67." Kodiak murmured to himself. This little cove of an inland sea on Onyx had been where Kodiak learned to swim, after marching for a day and a half under Mendez's angry tongue-lashings. After such a run, stumbling out onto that beach and into the cool waters had made it one of Gamma Company's favorite places. He walked over to a pair of foldable chairs someone had set up, and noticed a cooler set between them. He took a seat waiting for Dyne to hop across the boulders back to shore, and upon trying to grab a can of the Purple Concoction was startled by his hand passing through a soft hologram. Roland must've been trying to mess with him. "Still haven't got the water physics quite right, yet." Dyne said in a normal voice as he approached. "I asked Erin about using some of the fresh water in the Infinity's tanks, but she said Palmer wouldn't like it." Kodiak nodded, trying to fool himself into thinking he was still on Onyx, or that the planet even still existed. Dyne continued to stand, looking out over the sea that was almost literally smoke and mirrors until a rhythm of mechanical clanks entered the threshold of his hearing, and turned to face it as they grew closer and louder. The treeline's illusion of depth was interrupted and abruptly broken by a towering amalgamation of slate-grey steel on stilt-like legs, every hydraulic step it took sounding like a crash as it approached. The mech came to a halt just behind their camping spot, and crouched down as an external speaker activated with a screeching noise. "Have you tried these things out yet?" Amber's voice boomed from the heavy metal construct. "The Mantis is just a bigger suit of armor with rockets and a 20 millimeter machine gun welded to it!" Dyne smiled up at the walker, sure Amber could see him. He was already used to speaking to a faceless visor, so why not a mech? "It's pretty cool, I'll give it that. It's just the name that bugs me." "Why's that?" the crouching giant robot asked. "Besides the fact that there's already a Covenant AA gun called the Mantis?" Dyne replied rhetorically. "It breaks convention! All the mechs before were named after mythological humanoids, like the Cyclops or the Giant." He could almost imagine the mech tilting its head as Amber did. "Is it really that big a deal?" Dyne hesitated, thinking. "Well, no, but that's the point. It's those little details that make it interesting." "Details of what, exactly?" He pondered a moment. ". . . life?" "Whatever." Amber said, raising the giant walker out of its crouch and making the weaponized arms appear to move in a shrug. The torso spun 180 degrees, and then it started crashing away again, making a tight turn to realign its legs. As it tromped off, Dyne finally took the other seat, getting a surprise when he tried to grab something out of the cooler. Yeah. Kodiak thought to himself. I can live like this. Just escape for a few hours now and again.
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