Halo: Terranova

Chapter 3

“I hear the Sangheili refer to them as Demons.”  -Doctor Daniel Burman

CHAPTER 3

Terranova, January 13 2554

ONI Research Base Kiln 0410 Hours

Thinking very quickly was how she’d made her way through life thus far. Thinking very quickly, and looking a bit too wide eyed and naïve for anyone around her to understand just how intelligent she really was, to be more specific. Others, from the orphanage staff to her rapid succession of professors as she blurred through schooling, tended to quickly come under the impression that she needed handouts. They came under the impression that she was brilliant but harmless, and allowed her more often than not to sit quietly in her corner of the room and look pretty so long as she offered an innocently genius comment or three in the course of any given interaction.

There was nothing sinister in her rather formulaic appraisal of those around her. It was simply that she knew her formulas to be correct. When most individuals hear Doctor and then Child Prodigy they almost instantly assume what they are dealing with is an idiot savant who, though far outclassing them in raw intellect, is more along the lines of a bipedal super computer with bubble gum lip gloss and pig tails. Only a worth notice if you happen to take pride in being able to do things like name every prime number to the right of the decimal point in pi up to the hundred thousandth digit from memory.

She could do that too, and probably faster than anyone she knew. But that wasn’t her area of expertise.

 She sat on an overturned crate, clutching her data pad to her chest and allowing her legs to swing, and those innocuous blue eyes took in the scene before her from behind a lock of black hair she’d allowed to drift over her right eye. It completed the look, and she was quite certain she didn’t require stereoscopic vision to form and accurate appraisal of the four Spartans and Captain Diya.

“We’re badass early in the morning too, ma’am. No big.” That was the one they called ‘Bishop’. She pretended not to know his nickname, and had referred to him as James every time she’d spoken to the Spartan. She didn’t call any of them by their nicknames, and was pleased to see it chafed each of them a little bit. The false monikers seemed to be some sort of strange attachment---perhaps a mental armor to compliment the Mjolnir systems each of them wore.

No. That couldn’t be it, not exactly. It was always best to remember, when observing, that any given subject has more than likely been who they are now for some time before observation began. The nicknames came before the armor, and were important to them even more for this. An identity, then? Something which separated the men with their weapons from what each of them did with their weapons. It wasn’t entirely psychologically healthy, and every time she gave the concept some real thought she felt a bit sad for the group.

Didn’t any of them have anyone back home who called them by their real names?

‘Bishop’ seemed the most likely candidate for such a relationship, at first glance. He was flirty. He’d even made her grin despite herself, once or twice---but the group, as others always did, had underestimated Amyra. She noticed things others didn’t. On one occasion, when Bishop was being his charming self, he’d made a comment to her which apparently required Ricochet to inform him that she was under the legal age of consent.

Faulton had jabbed him in the shoulder at the comment, and ‘Bishop’ took it with a perhaps dramatic “Oof.” A simple exchange, but not to Amyra. She knew how fast each of them really was. She knew how hard Emil would have hit him if he really meant it, and she knew that (though Emil was reputedly more talented in close quarters, and quite possibly the quickest individual she’d ever laid eyes on) Bishop wouldn’t have been struck at all if he didn’t intentionally allow it.