Halo_ The Fall of Reach - Eric Nylund [24]
“I . . . believe I understand, sir,” John said. “But which was it on this last mission? Lives spent? Or lives wasted?” Mendez turned back toward the blackness of space and didn’t answer.
0430 Hours, April 22, 2525 (Military Calendar) / UNSC Carrier Atlas on patrol in the Lambda Serpentis System
John oriented himself as he entered the gym.
From the stationary corridor, it was easy to see that this section of theAtlas rotated. The constant acceleration gave the circular walls a semblance of gravity.
Unlike the other portions of the carrier, however, this section wasn’t cylindrical, but rather a segmented cone. The outer portion was wider and rotated more slowly than the narrower inner portion—simulating gravitational forces from one quarter to two gravities along the length of the gym.
There were free weights, punching and speed bags, a boxing ring, and machines to stretch and tone every muscle group. No one else was up this early. He had the place to himself.
John started with arm curls. He went to the center section, calibrated at one gee, and picked up a twenty-kilogram dumbbell. It felt wrong—too light. The spin must be off. He set the weights down and picked up a forty-kilogram set. That felt right.
For the last three weeks the Spartans had gone through a daily routine of stretching, isometric exercises, light sparring drills, and lots of eating. They were under orders to consume five high-protein meals a day. After every meal they had to report to the ship’s medical bay for a series of mineral and vitamin injections. John was looking forward to getting back to Reach and his normal routine.
There were only thirty-two soldiers left in his squad. Thirty candidates had “washed out” of the Spartan program; they died during the augmentation process. The other dozen, suffering from side effects of the process, had been permanently reassigned within the Office of Naval Intelligence.
He missed them all, but he and the others had to go on—they had to recover and prove themselves all over again.
John wished Chief Mendez had warned him. He could have prepared. Maybe that was the trick to the last mission—to learn to be prepared for anything. He wouldn’t let his guard down again.
He took a seat at the leg machine, set it to the maximum weight—but it felt too light. He moved to the high-gee end of the gym. Things felt normal again.
John worked every machine, then moved to a speed bag, a leather ball attached to the floor and ceiling by a thick elastic band. There were only certain allowed frequencies at which the bag could be hit, or it gyrated chaotically.
His fist jabbed forward, cobra-quick, and struck. The speed bag moved, but slowly, like it was underwater . . . far too slowly considering how hard he had hit it. The tension on the line must be turned way down.
He twanged the line and it hummed. It was tight. Was everything broken in this room? He pulled a pin from the locking collar on the bench press. John walked to the center section—
supposedly one gee. He held the pin a meter off the deck and dropped it. It clattered on the deck. It looked as if it had fallen normally . . . but somehow it also looked slow to John. He set the timer on his watch and dropped the pin again. Forty-five-hundredths of a second. One meter in about a half second. He forgot the formula for distance and acceleration, so he ran through
the calculus and rederived the equation. He even did the square root. He frowned. He had always struggled with math before. The answer was a gravitational acceleration of nine point eight meters per second squared. One standard
gee. So the roomwas rotating correctly.He was out of calibration. His experiment was cut short. Four men entered the gym. They were out of uniform, wearing only shorts
and boots. Their heads were cleanly shaven. They were all heavily muscled, lean, and fit. The largest of
the four was taller than John. Scars covered one side of his face. John could tell they were Special Forces—Orbital Drop Shock