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Kurt had never locked it, but now, some part of his mind made him reflexively turn the tiny bolt on the door.
The house was small, three rooms comprised of an outer office, a toilet area, and bunk. There were framed pictures on his office wall, a Greek urn with ancient wrestlers in an alcove, and neat stacks of paperwork on his desk—the recent deployment orders for Gamma Company.
He wished whatever was happening had started last week— when there had been three hundred Spartans on Onyx. The tactical situation would be much different.
Lucy lowered the bamboo blinds, and then hesitated by the pictures on the wall.
Kurt joined her. For the last five years the SPARTAN-II program had been publicly promoted by Section Two to boost morale. There were shots of Spartans in their MJOLNIR armor helping wounded marines onto a Pelican, Spartans surrounded by fallen Covenant Elites, Spartans standing tall. Heroes all. The SPARTAN-IIIs had studied their legendary predecessors, their battles, and their tactics—learning from the best.
He glanced at Lucy, her expression inscrutable within her mirrored helmet, and then he looked back to the pictures. There wasn't a single photo of a SPARTAN-III on the wall, however, and not one public mention of their sacrifices. And there never would be, either.
Kurt wished it was different, and that he'd taken the small steps to improve his Spartans sooner. The emphasis on their team training, the SPI-armor system upgrades, the new mutations—it hardly seemed enough.
"This way," he told her, and turned to the steel door set near the bathroom. He palmed the biometric and let the facial and retinal scanners play over his face. The door silently opened and they entered.
Fluorescent lights flickered on, revealing a room lined with
ammunition lockers, rifle racks, crates labeled SPNKr, and dozens of grenade bandoliers. Titanium girders crisscrossed the walls and ceiling, reinforcing the room so it could withstand a direct bomb blast.
He opened one floor-to-ceiling weapon cabinet and showed Lucy the arsenal of Covenant rifles, pistols, and grenades within.
"Start packing," he told her. "Take all the live ammunition. Fill up six duffels. Take the SPNKrs, all the grenades, too."
She held out both hands, palms up, and made a down-up-down motion. The sign for "heavy."
"We'll have to make a few trips."
Kurt moved to the comer and stood before the two-and-a-half-meter-square stainless-steel safe. He dialed the combination and the door clicked and opened with a hiss as the pressurized nitrogen atmosphere vented.
Kurt pulled open the safe's heavy door. A green glow suffused the room.
Lucy froze with a SPNKr launcher in one hand, plasma pistol in the other. She moved trancelike to his side and stared at the contents of the safe and let out a tiny strangled sound of surprise.
Inside was a suit of MJOLNIR armor. The muscular plates glistened ghostly green over the jet-black ballistic underlayer. It looked formidable even standing there empty.