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Author's Note:
When I first started this story in March 2006, I intended to finish it quickly. That didn't happen. But I didn't give up on the story, either–I just developed the characters in my own way. Now I'm making time to finish it. The formatting was awful at first, but that's been fixed, and hopefully the story is a lot more readable. Please do leave your honest comments, opinions, and suggestions–no matter how honest–because I want to make this a story worth reading.

The Other War
Part I: THOSE Rebels

Captain Langer proceeded along the walkway in a half-crouch, scanning the area in front of him with one eye, while concentrating on his tactical heads-up display with the other. In practice, this meant he relied on his peripheral vision for almost everything except aiming his M7SDS3. When he found it necessary to do that, it took the entirety of his right eye and an insubstantial part of his concentration. The team's light amplification gear had malfunctioned an hour after insertion. The area was twilight-dark, however, he did not use the attached flashlight, even in infrared mode, which the display in his HUD could display like visible light.

These particular rebels would likely be able to see the IR light, as well, and it acted like bouncy monkey carrying a flag to announce his presence. These particular rebels would probably hear his nigh-silent footsteps, but he tried not to think about that. Reaching the end of the raised path, he scanned both sides of the intersecting walkway, and then keyed his helmet radio. Even the radio should have been off-limits, but the rebels knew that the ODSTs had arrived, and the radio, unlike the flashlight, was both encrypted and nearly impossible to locate in transmission mode. Even these rebels wouldn't have the equipment to locate him via his radio broadcast.

"Red three to Red one, path is clear for m—"

Langer's transmission was cut off in mid-sentence as three 7.62 mm rounds punched through his neck. One round bounced into his helmet and ricocheted twice before exiting via his visor. Rebel First Lieutenant Jonas approached the corpse even more cautiously than the Captain had approached him, and quickly appropriated the late officer's submachine gun, ammunition, and flash-bang grenades. He left one frag grenade under the corpse, wired to the dead man's belt, ready to blow if the corpse were moved more than a few inches. Slinging the ancient HMG-38, he moved away, still facing the direction the ODST had come from, ducking back behind a crate of agricultural equipment. Ditching the M7 would be easier--against armored ODST even .30 cal was a bit small--but he was a rebel, after all.

He pulled out a pocket maser and aimed it at a certain point in the ceiling, then heliographed a quick code with the tightbeamed microwaves. The rebel's radios were not nearly as secure as the ODSTs', and would also give away their position. The heliograph would give away Jonas' position as well, if anyone were in a place to receive it. As it happened, an ODST Second Lieutenant was in position to receive it, though not in position to see it, his eyes glazed in death. Behind him, the rebel sniper grinned as she received Jonas' report. If this ODST team were anything like the others they'd encountered, only three would be left. And the part about the frag grenade under the corpse was a good joke, indeed. She hoped he'd left it pressing on the Captain's right kidney. Payback for the hours of boring drivel about his "condition" and whining about his "diet".

Major Oppenheimer, Red One, swore mentally as he heard Red Three's transmission cut off and saw his lifesigns drop to zero on his command HUD. Five and Six had already been removed from the mission in a similar manner; Red Six almost as soon as they had inserted. Indeed, this one (here the Major inserted a few extra words in his internal monologue) group of rebels were the best he'd ever fought against. They always were.

"Red team, report in." he called over the radio, just to be sure.

"Red Two, reporting. I'm within view of the main mechanical section, though I'm waiting for the Velazquez to get here so we can breach the door. Other than that, I'm golden. No one near me."

The radio crackled again: "Red Four, reporting. I ran into a little trouble with a Tango just a few minutes ago. Neutralized him, but it slowed me down, and I took a few hits to my suit. Nothing serious, but I don't think I'm vacuum-tight anymore. I should be at Two's position in . . . oh, three minutes or so."

Oppenheimer scratched his chin. "Red Two, Red Four, we're all that's left. They got Langer just now. If you find him, do not, I repeat, do not touch his body. You know how these rebels like to play tricks with trip-mines and such. I'm going to move down to your position, I'll be there in about five." He mentally added, "I hope."

First Lieutenant Mbaro Mbutu cursed his luck. Everything was not fine. Half his team was down, and he was waiting for the others to rendezvous at his position. Which meant he had to stay in one place. Which meant . . . like an AI-controlled train, the sniper's round arrived right on time. And like an AI-controlled train, at least the ones he grew up with, the round missed its target by a few millimeters. He wondered if perhaps the sniper had hit the target, but the target was some obscure spot on the wall just to the side of his head.

Some rebels were like that. Mbutu rolled, scooted to the left, and looked behind him at the hole the round had left in the wall. The half-centimeter thick steel wall. Having figured out the sniper's approximate location, he zoomed in with his integrated monocular at 5x zoom. There was a glint in the twilight, then a muzzle flash, and another round slammed into a crate, millimeters to the right of his head again. His M7SDS3 would be ineffective at that range, so he ducked back behind the crate and radioed the Major.

"Red One, this is Red Two. We have a sniper playing our position. Up on the third level, on your eight if you're coming straight down the hall I'm in. About where–shit, right where Holmes was supposed to be. I guess that's what happened to him. Permission to engage? I'll have to get closer. This area is clear, and Four'll be here momentarily."

"Green light to engage as soon as Velazquez gets to you. Make sure you police that S2 AM–can't let weapons like that fall into Rebel hands. Let me know when you're in position if you have a chance. Actually, on second thought, cover us from that position."

Two acknowledgment lights clicked red in the team leader's HUD. Major Oppenheimer paused in his steps and listened. Nothing. He continued onward.

"Red Four to Red One, I've rendezvoused with Red Two, and he's moved out. He was right. There's nothing here. Should I start on the lock, or wait for you, sir? If it's anything like the normal rebel crap, I'll be through by the time you get here. Of course, with these rebels, you never know. Maybe they jammed a chair under the doorknob for good measure."

Velazquez sounded relaxed. Again, not a good thing. "Keep your eyes open, Velazquez. Start on that lock, but don't open the door until I get there. If there's a chair, I know where to put it, and how. ETA one minute fifty." Red Four's light blinked once.

Red One continued, then stopped. He had a fleeting contact, which appeared then disappeared. Distance had been thirty meters, and it had been moving away from him. Probably not enough of a threat to engage, what with the importance of the task at hand. Velazquez should be in sight in less than a minute.

ODSTs are not known for being quiet. That's because you never know where the quiet ones are, or that they passed by you at all. Rebel Master Sergeant Ramona Lucente knew exactly where the ODST was, but he had her position slightly off. At least, that's what it looked like, from the position his visor was facing and where the Marine sniper had been positioned originally. What a moron. Why would she take his old position, which would be known to the ODSTs, when there was a better one just a half-dozen meters away, with better cover? The answer was simple: because it would lure half-witted men who weren't thinking with the correct head for the job. Just like a translucent miniskirt.

And she wasn't in the previous sniper's position; she was 70 centimeters to the right, a location better suited for shooting at the jerks about to open the door to the mechanical room, rather than covering them. A clank and muted curse signaled the ODST's approach, then a pause and a spray of 5 mm rounds washed over the inert Second Lieutenant. He would have been pissed if he had been alive. Ramona suppressed a giggle, and sucked in air through her teeth instead, and shifted loudly. Another spray of bullets washed over her presumed position, and she dropped the SRS99C-S2 AM over the edge to the floor below.

The ODST grunted, and then made a series of clacks as he reloaded. "Gotcha, rebel bitch." Then he began to creep toward her.

An SRS99C-S2 makes a very distinctive sound when it drops from three stories onto a steel deck. When Mbutu heard it, he swore again; now he'd have to go down to retrieve it. Best to confirm his kill, do what he'd come to do, report his position and kill, and then retrieve the sniper rifle. The Major had certainly either seen or heard it fall. Slinking up toward the dead rebel, he peeked his head around the corner and saw her feet. Good. They weren't moving, and were covered in blood and riddled with holes. He came around the corner quickly, and sat on her back.

"Thought you could outsmart me, bitch? You're not even an officer. You'd never make it through the academy. Only one thing you're good for." The LT reached out his hand, and then took a second look at the corpse's helmet. It was a standard issue ODST helmet, and rebels didn't wear helmets.

"Aw, Gawd, sorry Holmes!" he whispered loudly, and rolled off. If Holmes was where he was supposed to be, and there wasn't another body, then she must have been elsewhere, but near enough to drop the rifle so it would sound like it was directly below this position.

A faint contact appeared on his motion tracker, and he spun toward it, and took a knife in the thigh The skinsuit he wore should have stopped a 5 mm round, but it didn't stop the knife. Rebels didn't wear helmets, and so there was nothing to impede the stream of lead Mbutu let loose at Lucente's head, turning it into pulp.

"Mmmm. You gonna pay big for that, whore. Hurts like a mutha, but this is gonna hurt worse." Falling to his side, the man began to slide his hand in between a seam in what passed for armor on the dead sniper. He got his hand halfway in toward her chest when he heard a voice speak from his helmet.

"Red Two, report!" He pulled his hand back and opened his mouth to reply, then realized that the voice had been female. And hadn't come from his comm. Then he was dead, three 7.62 mm bullets at point-blank range ripping through his helmet and shattering his skull.

His assailant tripped, and fell with her knee in his crotch. Then she did it again. "Bad idea to play with your food, hon. Have fun when you're not working. Don't think I'll be able to get a court-martial for him, though. Sorry. We need to have a talk later," Rebel Colonel Yi whispered into the dead woman's ear. She re-sealed the Master Sergeant's armor, and pulled her arm out from an awkward angle behind her back, placing it on her stomach.

"You can still be part of the team. Be a good benchrest."


A buzz came from the ODST's helmet, followed by a murmur of vocals: "Red Two, report. Are you in position to cover us? Do you have a weapon to do it with?" Yi tucked her fingers under Mbutu's visor, flipping it up, which she'd never be able to do if it didn't have three holes in it, and keyed the acknowledgement signal twice.

"Good, we're going in." crackled the radio. Taking a moment to scratch her fingernails down what was left of Mbutu's face, she scooped up the M82A3 and dropped the barrel across Lucente's arm, which lay across her stomach. Through the 10x scope, she sighted on the Major's head, and waited.

Velazquez grimaced, then tapped a few buttons on his spoofer. The status light cycled from red to green, and he nodded to Major Oppenheimer. Moving to either side of the door and shouldering their weapons, they crouched, and First Lieutenant Velazquez opened the door. A fireball roared through the opening, along with a rather large quantity of fast-moving scrap metal. The ODSTs were pelted with ricochets, but their skinsuits prevented any real damage. When Oppenheimer signaled, Velazquez used a mirror to peek through the door. A scorched chair sat a meter from the opening. Oppenheimer watched through Velazquez's video feed, and then motioned him in.

"Assholes," the senior officer commented. As Velazquez stepped through the doorway, his upper torso fell off. The remaining portion, a wedge-shaped slice of abdomen on legs, finished the step and then dropped forward. Apparently, the rebels had strung an EVA line across the doorway, from the upper right-hand corner to the lower left; while the "string" was only about a hundred carbon atoms thick, it had boasted incredible tensile strength per pound, and was readily available to most space-farers. Including these rebels, who used them for other purposes.

"OK! You've got me! I'm FUBAR, I know someone has a bead on me, and I can't blow the main panel without the equipment you cut in half in Velazquez's pack. I'm done," yelled the Major. He looked around him, then glanced toward Mbutu's position, and made a gesture with his hand which meant "cover me while I do something crazy."

Instead of an acknowledgment light, however, the radio crackled. "Sir! We've got hostiles here! They're onboard the Pelican! They–AAAAGH!"

Oppenheimer drove his fist into the wall. "Idiots! The pilots aren't even part of the team! They're AI-generated! And they won't shoot at you unless you try to get us on insertion or extraction! What the fu–"

A voice as smooth as velvet and cool as ice cut him off. "Thoroughness, Major. Something you would do well to emulate. I'll give you one last chance to redeem yourself. Duck." He did, and Colonel Yi put a .50 caliber anti-materiel round through his head when it dropped into her cross-hairs. A gut shot would have been equally lethal, but might look like a miss on the post-op stats.

"You shouldn't break character until the sim is over, Joe. Bad form."

"Hey, the sim isn't over until the lights come up!" retorted Oppenheimer, as the lights came up. "But . . . Mbutu! How? Did you manage to hack our systems, too? You–"

As the Major began to rant, Yi cut him off again. "Ah, First Lieutenant Mbaro Mbutu. I'm using his comm right now. He doesn't have his helmet on. Have anything to say, Mbutu?"

A series of choked sobs came through the radio, and then the Colonel's cold voice returned. "Why don't you take a look at this video feed before I send it to the General for a board of inquiry? It's from three minutes ago. I think you'll recognize Mr. Mbutu. This is the third time he's tried this sort of thing, you know. The third. Notice where his hands are. That's Master Sergeant Lucente, not Second Lieutenant Holmes on the ground."

After twenty seconds of silence had passed, the Major grunted. "Damn. That's gotta hurt. OOOOH. Twice? That doesn't look like an accident."

Yi shook her head, though the Major couldn't see the gesture. "The floor was slippery–lots of blood. Transmitting. Ares, please route that through to the General."

"You know he'll just give him a slap on the wrist, don't you? They're not going to court-martial him for something stupid like that. We need his skills. And we don't have much contact with your team, anyway. I won't let it happen again."

"Damn right it won't happen again, but I know it won't be your, ahem, watchful eyes stopping him. If I see Mbutu within five meters of her again, I'm going to terminate him with extreme prejudice." Yi stood up and helped Ramona to her feet; the bulky sim-suits made such movements difficult when they were releasing the stasis locks.

"That's not extreme prejudice? A knee in the crotch twice?" asked Major Oppenheimer.

"No, Joe. I mean terminate." snapped Yi.

The Major sputtered. "Y-you can't do that! If–"

A third time, Colonel Yi cut him off in mid-sentence. "Of course I can, Major. It's what they trained us and pay us to do. Ridding the galaxy of scum and vermin, most especially the kind that calls itself human. I'll see you at the debrief."

Throwing the helmet down at the still-prone First Lieutenant, the members of the Blue Team made their way down toward the exit, leaving Second Lieutenant Bob Holmes with First Lieutenant Mbutu.

"What the hell was that about? Were you trying to cop a feel or something? You'd think you'd learn sometime."

Mbutu finally managed a coherent word: "Shaddup."

First Lieutenant Vazquez flexed his shoulders, then jumped onto his feet from the sprawl he had been laying in for the past few minutes.

From behind him, First Lieutenant Grigory Ydrionis said "Bang." Vazquez spun and threw a kick at his head, which Ydrionis caught, twisting Vazquez's foot.

"I'll say. That was a hell of an IED. What did you use, captured C-12?" Vazquez replied, shifting his weight and then springing into the air with a spinning kick with his free leg, hitting Ydrionis on the side of his head, glancingly. Ydrionis let go, and Vazquez landed.

"Ow. No, fertilizer and tractor fuel. Old tech. We were rebels, remember? And this was an agricultural storage facility. What'd you think of the surprise in the door?"

Stretching his legs and flexing his ankles, Vazquez thought for a moment. "If you mean the chair, then I think you'd better not hog all the pretty girls at the bar this time. Otherwise I'll slip you a Mickey and make off with them. But if you meant whatever it was that killed me, I think you gotta show me how you did that. Didn't hurt a bit, by the way. Thanks."

The two LTs shook hands, and then Ydrionis pointed to the doorway. "EVA line. I locked one end to the top corner of the door, and rigged it to shoot the other end toward the bottom on a diagonal as soon as the explosion had cleared a bit. Colonel Yi loves those things. Hey, meet you over at Orbits after the debrief. No sense wasting any time–you're buying, after all. The chair was the trigger for the EVA line."

Vazquez hung his head for a moment. "Yeah, see you in the South Side. Damn chairs."

1650 Hours, March 17, 2552 (Military Calendar) / Sol System, Chawla Base, planet Earth, City of Boston


The female locker room was empty except for the two women from Blue Team. As they untangled themselves from the clingy VR simsuits, Lucente addressed Yi. "Ma'am, permission to speak candidly."

The Colonel looked at the enlisted soldier. "Ramona, we're not in a combat situation, and there's no one else around. You don't need to ask."

The Master Sergeant sighed. "Julie, please, don't push things with Mbutu. It's just going to make it worse. I won't let it happen again. Really, I don't mind."

Pursing her lips as she thought for a moment, Yi shook her head. "Do you mean that you don't mind enough to stand up to him? Or do you mean you like it? If you and he consented to what happened, I'll have to cite both of you. This facility isn't a necrophiliac make-out room. But it would be a lighter charge for him that way. I don't think you meant that you like it, though."

Ramona's eyes filled with anger. "You're not my mother, Julie! It's not your job to look after me. If I don't want any trouble from this, for him or for me, then you shouldn't push it."

Again, Yi shook her head, more slowly this time. "I'm not your mother, I know that. And if it were just a matter of you, you'd be right. But there's more to it than that. Do you think you're the first woman he's tried that sort of thing to? Do you think you'll be the last? Even a court-martial wouldn't stop him, but it might calm him down for a while, and maybe they'd put him out on the Covenant front. He wouldn't have much chance for that kind of crap out there. They'd frag him if he tried it."

The Colonel sighed deeply. "Look, I'm not your mother, but I'm almost old enough to be, and I am your CO. So I have the right to say my piece. Men have been using the kind of mentality you have to abuse women for thousands of years. Maybe since as long as we've been human. Part of the reason they've been able to do it is because women say things like 'I don't mind' when they really mean 'I'm afraid to say no.' Sometimes 'no' doesn't stop a man, but most of the time it will. If you don't use that one little word, you're just encouraging that kind of behavior, and you're helping him do it to someone else.

"Ramona, how about this: I won't push the issue, and you don't have to press charges, as long as you promise me you'll tell Mbutu not to do that again. It doesn't matter that he outranks you. You have the right. Tell him you'll push for a court-martial if he tries anything to you again. Don't show any weakness, but let him off the hook. Promise?"

The women looked one another in the eye, and Ramona conceded. "OK. I promise. Thanks, Julie. For . . . everything." After a few minutes of silence, the younger woman spoke again.

"Julie, are you doing anything tonight? I figured we might as well have a girl's night out, while we're away from Coral for a while. I know how hard it is to get away from Sophie and your husband. . ."

But the older woman shook her head. "No rest for the wicked. I have to go over the mission in preparation for the debrief tomorrow. But have a good time. We're meeting at 0900 sharp," she said, ending the sentence on an uncertain note, barely remembering to hold back the advice. "So be there or be square," the Colonel ended, lamely.

Ramona laughed. "The only way you could sound more like Mom is if you told me not to drink too much after the bars close."

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