August 25th, 2557
2343 Hours
Atop a UNSC base nestled between a rolling, mountainous hillside and a lush, grassy valley, a lone T’vaoan watched the stars.
In the pale lights of night, her combat harness gleamed, deep blue, almost black. Where once sat the gold of a Champion and the orange of the Swords of Sangheilios, now a human-designed shape guarded the body of Roth Niq, with all of the edges and ridges that came with it. Now, however, she paid it no mind, focused solely on the twinkling points of light above her.
If she lied to herself, she could say she could point out Y'Deio amongst the evening sky, point out her home. But there, on an alien world, so far removed from battlegrounds Human- and Covenant-owned and abandoned, the stars were as alien as she was. Bootsteps and machinery and the soft rumbling of engines almost convinced her she was at her second home.
High Charity was long gone, however. And every memory that was aboard went with it.
Lucky her that she still had her old datapad. Countless little moments over her life, preserved neatly in digital form.
The clan home on T'vao. The ruined clan home on T’vao. The ship that brought her to High Charity. Her decorated armors, representing her promotions. Her clutch, in their fragile state. Pictures of her children; the most she'd seen of any of them as of late.
Most of them were deployed, just like her. Most of them wanted to help, just like her. She was proud, and yet, a small part of her would keep them near with the strength of a Jiralhanae if she could.
They might as well have been as close as the opposite side of the galaxy.
And Roth was here, where the UNSC could keep an eye on her until they deemed her Fireteam fit for combat after her addition.
Her thoughts broke as an access door behind her opened without warning, and she turned, feathers raised in alarm.
Feathers that flattened back down as Jane stepped out onto the rooftop. A mix of moonlight and the base's lights framed the monochrome Spartan as gravel crunched under her boots. Even through the silver of her visor, Roth could feel the teasing look from the human. "Thought I might find you up here. Knocking on the sky?"
“Listening to the sound, I believe, is the second part, yes?” Roth turned back to the stars as Jane settled beside her, shoulder to shoulder. "Am I needed?"
“Not unless you want to keep listening to Matt’s intricate speech on the differences between DMR models.”
“As much as I am intrigued, I require…” The stars stole her attention again, sparks of light in her vision. "...Space."
Silence filled the cold wind as the two simply watched the stars, broken only by a hiss of air as Jane removed her helmet. Her small ponytail came tumbling from its tucked up spot, in a cascade of dark strands. "What's on your mind, Roth? Only time you get this quiet is when you're in the guts of a machine or scheming, and something tells me it’s neither of those things.”
“My clutch is among the stars, far from my grasp, and nothing I can do here will change that or their fates.” Roth’s voice was small and raspy as she barely let the admission slip between her teeth. "Do not misunderstand," she added with a glance, "I do not regret joining you. I only wish they were closer, safer. That we had a true home besides stations and starships."
"No, I get what you mean." Jane’s helmet came to rest on the edge of the rooftop, and her metal hand kept it in place. “I haven’t had anywhere truly stable in a long time. Just bases and ships and worlds on time limits. To have somewhere solid and sturdy? It’d be a dream come true. Especially for a family, I'd imagine.”
A small look passed from T'vaoan to Human. Steel-eyed and -willed the Spartan might have been, but the avian mother picked up on the emotion beneath Jane's words all the same. “How many summers are you along?”
Confusion flashed across Jane’s face, followed by understanding. “Twenty-four, why?”
“That young?” Roth’s outburst startled the Spartan as the melancholy T’vaoan suddenly came alive with a caw. She couldn't possibly have heard right. “That young and you wear yourself like an aged fleetmaster and yearn to settle?” Flustered discomfort bloomed in surprise’s place, and Jane looked back towards the stars, unable to meet Roth’s eyes. So, she did hear right. "Almost as old as my youngest was, and I still protested it every time she put on armor."
It was written in every inch of Jane's face that she knew she shouldn't have asked, and yet, "Which kind of 'was'?" came out all the same.
Roth's posture sagged. Too soon, it was far too soon to be thinking about it again. She shouldn't have brought it up. She shouldn't have even gone up to the roof in the first place. Grief ached fresh in her heart as her mind plummeted back to when—
"Hers was one of the first squads deployed to Reach."
"Oh."
Grim understanding came over the Spartan’s features, and Roth didn’t miss the way her prosthetic tightened around her helmet. “She was also the one trying to get the rest of us to understand the lying, festering hole that was the Covenant.” The admission was accompanied by a downpour of shame, and Roth took her turn not meeting Jane’s eyes.
So much for her maternal wisdom. Highest of ranks and rearer of chicks, and yet she–
“What was she like?”
Roth’s spiral shattered before it could even form. “She– She was brash,” she said with a warbled laugh. “She was not afraid to speak her mind if you angered her. And the Covenant angered her. But she was as stuck as the rest of us, if not more. A sharp shot and a sharper tongue made her a deadly adversary. If that were not enough, she also took after me in the mechanical areas as well, and we had the best equipment in the Covenant. Only our closest of allies enjoyed our comforts.
"She was kind, too." Roth's voice went soft again as she turned back to the stars. "If you angered her, you'd face a fiercer wrath than the glassings. If you befriended her, she'd put every feather and scale on the line for you, and if you fell, she'd be there to help you up—even if it meant by force with her legs."
Jane laughed a soft, careful laugh. "Sounds like she was a handful. What was her name?"
“Rok Niq. Though, to most, she was simply ‘Rok’.” A humorless chuff left Roth’s throat. “Covenant doctrine overtook more than a few traditions.”
“The way you talk about her… You must be a proud mother.”
“I was—I am.” Roth swept a curious gaze over Jane’s form. Even with the smile on her face, there was a deep loss and longing in her eyes, betraying knowledge of the secrets held beneath the silver pools.
Roth knew she shouldn’t ask. “Is yours not?”
The smile evaporated. The Spartan looked to the stars. “I don’t know,” she said under her breath. Again, her voice grows thick, and all Roth can do is listen. “Lost my parents on Kholo. Barely remember them telling me to run. Can’t remember much of them, probably a mix of time and injury. I need a photo of them just to remember the important things. Names, jobs, hopes, dreams. I know we had a little farm. Just us, the grains, and the animals. Some pieces here and there of hiding amongst those tall golden stalks while my family looked for me.
“And then… the Covenant found us.” Under Roth’s gaze, the relaxed, Spartan exterior fractured. Jane’s eyes shut tight, and both of her hands settled on the edge of the roof, either side of her helmet to brace herself. “Practically over before it started. We didn’t have a lot in the way of defenses, so the scout ships practically won the planet on their own.” Jane breathed deep, shifting her weight from one leg to the other. A faint, shining trail started down her cheeks. “The farm was too out of the way, and we never made the evac. Farmstead had a couple guns, but that’s not nearly enough to stop an invasion force. So–” A crack in her voice made Jane try again. “So Mom packed supplies. Dad told me to run. So I ran. I was six.”
A child. Jane was a child. Eighteen years ago, Roth was on the front lines and Jane was a child. “How–” The T’vaoan’s voice failed her, the word coming out more as a squawk. “How did you get from there to… to this?”
“ONI picked me up.” In four words Jane’s tone flipped on its head. Buried grief became a long-festered loathing as her eyes came open again. “Didn’t want to lose one of their prized options for becoming a Spartan."
A chill soaked into Roth's core. "Is that when you started in the military?"
"Yeah. That's when they started my training."
Hells. Hells on every T'vao, every Earth, every world. Roth knew it, but being slapped in the face by what horrors the war brought was another thing entirely. The Covenant was crushing and powerful, and the only way to survive was either breaking off a large enough piece or– "That's what it took to beat the Covenant?"
Jane nodded, and loathing vanished alongside grief as she smoothed her face into neutrality. "Apparently."
“Jane, I–”
What could she say, really? What could make up for a lost family? A lost world? A lost life?
Words felt empty. Hollow. The smallest of stitches to fix a gaping wound.
“Roth?” Once again, Jane’s voice snapped her out of her thoughts. The Spartan’s face bore none of her earlier emotions, merely concerned for the T’vaoan lost in thought beside her. “T’vaoans dye their feathers along with their rank, right?”
Roth blinked in surprise. "Yes, we do. It is a tradition older than the Covenant, but it carried over. Why?"
"What color was Rok's?"
The answer is clear as day in her mind. Rok, standing proud for her mother's picture with Roth's Needle Rifle at her side. A dusting of dye had been applied to her feathers to match the new combat harness that came with her promotion. "Red. Her feathers were red."
Of all the things Roth expected out of the pair's admissions, a gentle smile on Jane's face wasn't one of them. "Well, while Matt may like to ramble about the intricacies of every machined part of equipment, he's got a better eye for detail than I do. What do you say we ask him if he can make a little remembrance on that armor of yours?"
Roth couldn’t believe her ears, nor hold back a surprised chuff. “You– You would do that?”
Jane just shrugged and pulled her helmet off of the ledge. “Of course. We all gotta remember some way, right? Pictures help a lot, but keeping them with you? I’ll bet that feels a lot better than just looking at them.” A gentle hand came to Roth’s shoulder, and Jane turned to head back inside. “Come on, we can go ask and save some poor marine from one of Matt’s lectures about–”
Roth didn’t think before she spoke, didn’t wait to doubt herself. “And if I did the same for you?”
Jane stopped in her tracks. Her gaze turned back over her shoulder in an instant, sending her ponytail swaying in the breeze. "What, are you going to paint my armor?" she said with a small laugh.
A laugh of her own flowed like a river without a dam from Roth's beak as she turned to follow the Spartan. "I am sure I can do more than that. After all, I do have a reputation for making things in my spare time. Not the least of which, little memories for wayward chicks."
Roth's offer struck hard, and its effect practically shone in the night. The little smile that lasted on Jane's face from her laugh was wiped clean off of her face in an instant. Her chest noticeably stilled for a long moment as the breath was ripped from her lungs.
And then, softly, almost lost in the wind, she said, "I'd like that."
Roth chortled as she stepped past Jane. Pride was carved into her, from her expression to her stance—tall, proud, and just over Jane's eye level. "Then we would better get to work, hm?"
A few days later, Roth stood on the roof again, under warm, late-summer light. Now, the deep blue of her armor shone proudly, gleaming in the morning light. Accompanying it was an equally deep red, stenciled in the pattern of feathers along her gauntlets, greaves, and in an arch around the helmet she held at her side—all covering where her own feathers rested beneath them.
“I know it won’t replace her,” Matt had said, “but I’m glad you like it.”
Roth’s own gift had taken longer to make than a simple paint job. Fabric had been asked and traded for—and perhaps some of it was snatched from old shipments—but, favors notwithstanding, Roth had gotten everything she needed for Jane's new accessory.
As the Spartan stepped onto the rooftop, gone was the dark ghillie that had decorated her armor for years. Instead, the vibrant yellows and beiges of her new scarf caught the light. Stripes of color formed well-grown stalks of wheat, barley, rye, and other grains.
The T'vaoan allowed herself an avian grin as she caught Jane's gaze. One of Roth's finest works, if she said so herself. "How do you like it? Did I get your grains correct?"
"It's perfect, Roth, thank you.” Even if the colors stood out like a flare in the night against Jane’s dark armor, she still caressed the fabric all the same. “Reminds me of the farm, makes me think…” She let the sentence hang to give her head a firm shake to clear it. “You heard me already. Exactly what you were going for.” Just as before, she stood beside Roth, watching as the base came alive. “You treat all ‘wayward chicks’ this well?”
“Of course. Every one of them deserves to remember the ones they love.” Roth turned a pointed look towards the Spartan, and merely smiled when Jane returned the favor. “I build to help. For the future. Anything I make that can assist…”
Jane didn’t need her to finish, thankfully. “Anything helps, sometimes. So, thank you.” A sly grin turned towards Roth. “Mom.”
It was amazing, really, how one word filling Roth's ears could rattle her so easily. There Jane was, her daughter’s age, grinning like she would, bearing one of her creations proudly.
It was almost as if she were still–
“We will see,” Roth forced out with a laugh. A thought came to her mind, with a word picked up from around the Humans she’d been spending so much of her time with lately. “What’s one more bastard child?”
An awful snorting noise came out of Jane, like a child’s imitation of an irritated Jiralhanae. The Spartan’s face was contorted in surprise and mirth in equal measure as a soft wheeze followed.
Roth could only watch in mild concern as the wheeze continued, slowly morphing into a soft laugh. From there, the T’vaoan gradually joined in, and the two stood on top of the base, laughing like a pair of lunatics.
Eyes squeezed tight in mirth, neither of them noticed as the red feathers of Roth’s armor seemed to glow in the morning light.
Written March 23, 2023