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I'll Find You
Posted By: A Halo Fan...natic<mikeandrewp@gmail.com>
Date: 8 November 2007, 10:48 pm
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I'll Find You
AN: This is a tribute piece for Draconic (on here as Katheryn Charles) for catching my 2000th DeviantArt pageview. It's based on her character Halley after the events of Halo 3. If you want to know what the hell is going on, read Drac's fic.
And yes, I am a Heinlein fan.
Halley was falling.
She flailed, she clawed, she tried everything she could to stop, to reach the rock walls rushing by, but something held her back, something monstrous, something -
She screamed, and used all her strength to pull at the thing restraining her, her Spartan strength reaching its limit - and the thing gave. She almost sobbed in relief, but then it snapped back, and she was spinning, spinning, and something banged and banged, and it had her again!
"John!" she sobbed, "John!"
"Halley!"
He'd found her! "John, help me, please, John!"
"Lieutenant Halley, ma'am! Ma'am!"
Halley jerked, tried to sit up, and tumbled through the air, bashing her head against something hard and unyielding. The world flashed violet white for a second as pain filled her head. She doubled over, then, hands on head, tried to get her bearings.
The world was spinning. What? No, she was spinning. Where? Bare metal walls spun past her, then a viewport showing a black field speckled with stars - a ship? In free-fall. A sleeping cocoon, ripped and torn - Oh my, she thought, did I do that? Then the entry hatch, and a rather concerned looking Ensign floating through it with one hand on the jamb.
It all slid into place. UNSS Andrew Jackson en route to Tau Ceti. Free-fall - they must be there already, simply waiting for permission to dock with Liberty station. She grabbed onto a handhold inset into the wall and checked her spin. Regaining her self-composure somewhat, Halley shook her head and tried to look reassuring to the navy man still waiting concernedly in the hatchway. "I'm fine, Ensign. Just a nightmare." She smoothed out her uniform coveralls and tucked her wildly waving white hair behind her ears.
The Ensign grinned back nervously. "Some nightmare, ma'am. Are you sure you're alright?"
"Quite alright."
"Well, here, let me help you get a new sleeping cocoon set up. You sure did a number on that one. I'll just get-"
"No, I can handle it myself, thank you." She felt bad rebuking him like that - he only wanted to help - but she needed some time to be alone. "I appreciate your help, but I really can handle it." She gave him her sweetest smile, and he grinned nervously again.
"Alright, ma'am, if you say so. But if you need any help, just press this button here."
"I will."
As the Ensign left, Halley sighed and kicked across to the storage locker on the notional "ceiling." As she opened it and untied the cords holding the spare sleeping cocoon in place, her mind wandered to the nightmare. Obviously it was triggered by going into free-fall - it was always unsettling going to sleep in gravity and waking up in no-weight - but why had she thought that John was there? She was no psychologist, but it obviously meant something.
"I still expect him to come rushing over the hill to save me, don't I?" she asked herself ruefully. It was nonsense, of course. John was dead, most likely, or, if one dared to hope, merely marooned in space somewhere. But…
She had the cocoon un-dogged, ready to be mounted, but she merely floated, lost in thought. She couldn't believe he was dead. John was a Spartan, the Spartan, defender of humanity, and, most importantly, he was her John. She grinned slightly as she recalled something he'd said to her, not long before he'd left for the last time: "The universe doesn't care if you love someone or if you're having a good time. It'll go on about what it's doing regardless of whether you want it to or not." Then she started to cry.
She didn't know how long she cried for, but it seemed like only a few minutes when the ship's sirens flashed and the intercom announced, "Attention! Docking in five minutes! Acceleration may come from unexpected directions. All on-duty personnel at their stations! All others remain in their sleeping cocoons until docking is complete!"
Halley set up her cocoon with a speed that would have put many a recruit to shame; she finished with two minutes to spare, and then slipped into the crash webbing.
Docking was a rather unpleasant experience, with weight coming at odd angles and the cocoon swinging wildly in the changing gravity. Docking in free-fall was tolerable only to those born and raised in null-grav - if a groundhog proved resistant to space sickness, docking at least was sure to get them green around the gills.
Halley had been in space enough to deal with it with grim determination, and when the ship was finally secure to the station and they once more had induced gravity, she un-strapped herself and jumped smoothly to the deck.
She traversed the halls of the Andrew Jackson, her bag of belongings in one hand, her near-universal pass card in the other. Two decks down, one bulkhead forward, and three to starboard, and she joined the crowd of people leaving through the airlock. Most of them were crewmen eagerly anticipating their time on leave. A large minority were civilian passengers, hitching a ride on the military craft for cheaper than a civilian cruise liner would have cost, though with fewer luxuries. A few were, like her, military personnel on unofficial business. Those stood out from the crowd, obviously soldiers, but in civilian attire, obviously uncomfortable being out of uniform among so many uniformed crewmen.
Halley endured the crowding and filed her way to the exit. When she was almost there, an over-enthusiastic sailor groped her. Without any real planning, she placed her hand in a sensitive spot, stared the man in the eye, and squeezed.
"Why, hello, Apprentice Spacehand… Reynolds," she said, looking at his nametag, "What a pleasure to meet you. Tell me, do you make a habit of offending ladies? Or is it just something you do in your off time?" She applied a touch more pressure. The man's mouth worked, but he didn't seem able to form any words. "What? Too choked up for words?" She released her grip and grabbed the neck of his shirt instead. "Are you going to apologize?" she asked, her voice all sweetness and light, but her gaze as sharp as daggers.
"Ah, I, uh, I-I-I'm s-s-sorry, miss, I, ah, I was just…"
"You were just being rude. I understand. I'll let it go for now, but I suggest you don't do that again. Ever."
"Y-y-yes, ma'am."
Halley let him go and patted him on the head. "Good boy." The man stood clutching himself for a second, then dashed away to his presumed friends, who were laughing raucously at him.
When she reached the airlock, the lady checking pass cards gave her a knowing wink. Halley pretended to ignore it. She'd prefer not to attract attention, but such bad manners required punishment of some sort, even if her style was a bit unorthodox.
She stepped out of the ship's airlock, passed through the station's, then stepped into Liberty's large, open lobby.
The space was over a hundred meters long and fifty deep, a luxury in space. There was full gravity; induced, not centrifugal. There were plants and signs and a great statue in the center of the room, but the thing that drew most peoples' eyes was the mirror.
Liberty space station's mirror was one hundred meters of perfectly flat and smooth glass. It had obviously been made and installed in free-fall, but how the designers stopped it from shattering once it was in full weight was a mystery. Halley didn't care; it was beautiful.
She caught her reflection through the crowd and grimaced; there hadn't been adequate refreshment facilities on board the Andrew Jackson to make herself look more than halfway decent, so this would have to do for now. She did pause to flatten her hair somewhat, though she knew it wouldn't do any good.
As she walked towards the corridor leading to the commercial section of the space station, she noticed the man - Reynolds? - whom she'd so forcefully told to back off. He was standing near the airlock, staring at her intently. He was no doubt just mad at her - he was still stooped a bit - but she catalogued his face in her mind anyways. No harm in being too careful.
She made her way to the main business hall. This part of the ship was in free-fall, to allow more surface area for stores. She slid from gravity to weightlessness with practiced ease, kicking off against one of the railings set into the "floor." She noticed with some amusement some first timers flailing wildly as they tried to adjust to the sudden change.
Halley found a Hoston Hotel, gave her name to the clerk, gave her thumbprint to the machine, and ordered a single person room for two days. As the clerk, a horse faced woman in her thirties, handed her the check, Halley noticed the cost - nearly fifty credits! That was more than enough to feed an average family for two weeks.
"Ah, ma'am, I think there's been a mistake," she said, handing the check back.
The woman accepted it and looked it over quickly, then, with evident relish, said, "Nope, looks fine to me."
Halley leaned across the counter, staring the woman in the eye. "Look, lady, I'm no naïve groundhog visiting space for the first time. I know the prices you charge to other spacers, and I know what you charge to tourists. You're charging me more than either. I'll not pay one tenth-mark more than I owe, do you hear me?"
The clerk lost her smile and glared back. "Sorry, Missy, new policy. All people not on official business will be charged according to the standards set out in mission statement one-ninety-three."
Halley repressed a strong urge to pull the lady's arm off and beat her with it. It might be an attractive idea, but she didn't want trouble with the law, and it wouldn't change anything anyway. Barely controlling her rage, she managed to grit out, "What is mission statement one-ninety-three, pray tell?"
The clerk spoke as if reciting a school lesson: "Mission Statement one-hundred ninety-three. In the spirit of cooperation with our competitors, all prices for persons not on corporate or government business will be charged our premium rate of - you don't care about that part, of course - It is in the best interests of the company and our local economy that we make this change, hoping for a better, stronger economy and a closer community. We -"
Halley waved her off. "Enough. I suppose I'll just go to one of your competitors, then."
The lady's smile came back. "You'll be charged the same price."
"What?" Halley was beginning to loathe that smile. It put her in mind of a shark, or maybe a vulture.
"Didn't you hear the 'cooperation' part of that? All the hotels on this station are charging the same rates except the Fellowship Inn, and they're only taking customers on government or military business. You'll have no better luck elsewhere."
Halley considered showing the clerk her pass card, showing her to be a Spartan, but decided against it. She wanted a low profile, lest her superiors notice what she was up to. She gritted her teeth and grudgingly doled out the fifty credits, accepted her change – three forty-nine - and took her room key.
Her room turned out to be a fairly standard affair: bed, table, chair, computer console, refresher, auto-chef, Tri-Dee televisor, and a false window showing calming, bucolic scenes, all crammed into a five by six meter room. Definitely not worth fifty credits. Especially, she thought sardonically, since I'll only be here for a few hours.
She looked around and spotted the inevitable security camera. There were doubtless several more that weren't as obvious. What she was about to do was hideously illegal, but she needed to do it. She couldn't just smash the cameras; a blank screen would be even more suspicious than what would be on her computer screen.
Fortunately, she'd already planned this part out. She turned on the shower and started to strip. She wasn't modest, but the thought of some slimy grease-ball in the hotel's security office watching made her feel like a whore. Nevertheless, it needed to be done.
Casually, she leaned against the computer and part of her mind jumped into the computer's circuitry. She quickly infiltrated the hotel's computer network, bypassed the security filters, and found her room's camera feed. She pulled up a file she had prepared before she left Earth and made a few modifications. The décor needed to be changed a bit, and the furniture re-arranged, but nothing major, and there it went…
She withdrew from the computer and pulled her underwear back up. She sat down at the computer and inserted her consciousness again. She found the video feed for the security room, and sure enough, there was a twenty-something boy staring at the video she'd substituted for her room's surveillance feed. It had been difficult to find a porno where the girl resembled her enough for this to work, but she'd found one. Take the 3D image, apply her face and hair to it, blend, put the image in a generic hotel room, and she had the perfect distraction.
Satisfied that she wasn't going to be spied on, Halley started to work.
Fifteen minutes later, she was sure that her plan could work. There were seven ships docked that met her criterion. Three were Navy vessels, out of the question. Another two were large cruise liners, slow and difficult to pilot. The remaining two fit her needs: the Mary Sue and the Willamette. The Mary Sue would be occupied during her timeframe, so by Hobson's choice it had to be the Willamette.
Halley erased all traces of her passage and gave a final check to make sure the guard was still occupied, then inserted a piece of code that would crash the hotel's computer network as soon as the false camera feed ended. That should give her time.
She left the hotel by the front door and kicked out into the stream of people traversing Liberty's commercial district. Ignoring the persistent efforts of an adbot to convince her to visit Harold's House Bar and Restaurant before she left, she made her way to the docks.
The Willamette was in dock 45-A-3. She arrived in the dock just in time to see a group of people enter the station through the airlock that led to the Willamette. It was a pleasure boat and racing ship, perfect for what she had in mind, and the owners had just left to go partying.
Halley had been taught that the best way to go unnoticed in most situations was to act like you belonged and had every right to do what you were doing. Halley looked ordinary enough, discounting her hair, and nobody should have any suspicion that she'd be trying to steal a ship, so…
She kicked off towards the airlock. No one noticed. She reached it, stepped inside. Still no challenge. She placed her hand against the ship airlock's controls and opened it, then looked around. Nobody had noticed. She stepped from free-fall into the ship's gravity field and closed the lock. Halley breathed a sigh of relief and looked around the ship's interior.
It was fairly standard for a playboy's yacht: large main room with a Tri-Dee screen, form fitting crash couches, and floating bar suitable for either gravity or weightlessness. There were several smaller rooms off the sides, including a bedroom with a surprisingly large sleep field, and a cockpit at the bow partitioned off by translucent float screens. The ship had large, oversized fusion engines, quite unnecessary for a civilian craft, but not illegal. It also had a slipspace motor. That's what Halley wanted.
She sat down at the main control console, placed her hand against the computer's interface port and jumped into the system. Thirty seconds later, she jumped out again and, satisfied, walked back into the main room. She'd told the station's traffic control computer to give her launch priority; the Willamette would have permission to launch in twenty minutes.
Halley was searching through the ship's storage lockers when she heard the outer airlock start to open.
She immediately flattened herself against the wall next to the airlock, waited until the inner door opened and the man had fully emerged from the lock, then kicked. Her foot connected with the man's throat with a sickening crunch, and he hit the opposite wall with a thud. She closed the airlock, then went to the body rolled it over.
It was Reynolds; the man who'd groped her. Halley swore under her breath and searched his pockets. She found his wallet and located the "secret" pocket. It held five thousand credits – in cash – and an ONI ident. She scrutinized the card carefully, and decided that it was authentic, as far as she could tell.
What's an ONI spook doing following me? Do they know!? she thought to herself. Then, No, of course not. He must have been assigned to follow her, to make sure she didn't get in trouble – or start it.
Right.
She stripped the body completely; finding a police grade stun gun, a .45 handgun, a communications ear bud, another two thousand credits, and a pack of thumbnail sized sticky cameras. She stored this all in one of the lockers and almost missed the computer's warning that it was time to undock.
Launching was routine, and when she was five hundred kilometers out she jumped into slipspace. She jumped out again a half hour later to dump the body out the airlock, making sure to rinse the mess off the floor as well.
She'd been in slipspace for two hours when the comm. set squawked to life. When she answered, the holo of a, balding, petulant looking man appeared. "What do you want?" Halley asked.
"Spartan-two-nine-two, Halley, you are under arrest for the theft of the luxury yacht Willamette, code nine-two-seven-see. You are also suspected of the homicide of special agent William Farland. You are also-"
"Enough," Halley said, getting annoyed, "I know what I'm doing."
The man tried to smile, but didn't quite make it. "I might question that. Just what are you doing?"
Halley said something extremely rude, and the man reddened. "Now, now, ma'am, there's no call for that. All I want is for you to turn around and-"
"Now hear me, man. What I am doing is of vital importance to the human race. You are to stand down and let me do it."
"I'm afraid not," the man said, "I have a warrant from the ONI itself, and I-"
"You know what you can do with that warrant?" Halley asked in her sweetest voice, "You can take it, fold it 'til it's all sharp corners, then shove it up your ass."
She flipped the intercom off and waited. A few seconds later the computer told her she had an incoming call. She waited for a while, then answered. Before the man could say anything, she asked, "How many angels can fit on the head of a pin?"
The man looked perplexed, but replied, "I don't know. How many?"
"Easy. Measure the head of the pin. Then measure the angels' arses. Divide A into B. I leave the numerical answer as an exercise for the student."
She flipped off again, and this time ignored the computer. Instead, she left the cockpit and went into the main lounge. There she ordered a cocktail from the floating bar. When the drink popped out of the top, she raised it in a silent toast, then downed half of it in one go.
Wherever you are, John, I'll find you. I swear I will.
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