Longer Alaska short story
It was a slow day at the base, well every day has been a slow day since Alaska left PFL with John. No more mission, no more reports, no old friends. It got lonely from time to time but John always kept Alaska busy with needing computer parts or just being downright childish sometimes, it was refreshing for the most part.
Alaska was keeping himself busy today by doing some maintenance on his battle rifle and watching the security monitors he put up since he moved into the abandoned outpost, can never be too careful. Alaska was just generally paranoid, working for ONI then running from The Director can do that to a guy. Out of the corner of his eye Alaska noticed wisp of movement go across his screen, then on a different monitor an alert went off on motion sensors.
“That can’t be good.” Alaska says putting his rifle back together and heading out to the courtyard catwalk overlooking the gate and the courtyard itself to see what caused the sensors to trip.
“Cloaked tango, courtyard below you, left side.” Kappa informed Alaska through his implant.
“Come on out Tex, if you’re here to do me in at least do it with some dignity.” Alaska spoke to the void trying to lure Tex out. She cooperates and drops the active camo.
“I’m surprised Alaska, I expected you to be armed to the teeth and well defended. This seems a little lacking, even by your standards.” Tex says with a chuckle as she lowers her rifle. When she does so Alaska lowers his gun as well.
“Subtlety does wonders to keep me off the radar, you could learn a thing or two from it.” Alaska returns.
“Oh yeah, the nearby UNSC F.O.B. that got raided was really subtle. You kind of left a body count which didn’t make it too hard to find you, if you know what to look for.” Tex explains.
“Ok, so you found me, and you haven’t shot me yet, so I assume you want something.” Alaska bluntly states.
“I’m looking for The Director, and you used to be an ONI operative. So I imagine you’ve got quite a fair bit of resources to find someone like that.” Tex states getting to the point
“I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but I’ve been trying to put as much distance between me and him as I possibly can. Why are you of all people looking for him? I thought you were his favorite operatives.” Alaska asks.
“Oh yeah, I forgot you left before things got crazy with Project Freelancer.”
“What do you mean ‘when things got crazy’? What happened?” Alaska asks.
“Well, what do you remember?”
“I remember Connie going M.I.A. and The Director wanting to send John, a kid no less, out to the frontlines. So I took him and ran, after that I haven’t heard anything about Project Freelancer.”
“He’s in his mid twenties Alaska, he’s not as much of a kid as you would like to think, not to mention he’d be running tech support for field agents so he wouldn’t see much combat.” Tex explains.
“With the work we did I doubt that.” Alaska says bluntly.
“Well what you remember is only half of the puzzle. Connie isn’t actually missing, she’s dead. When she turned traitor team one and I went to an Innie base to extract her but she ended up getting killed and an Innie dragged her body into an escape pod and fled. We were unable to find them. After that the leader board and the missions that came with it became more high risk, the A.I. program got out of hand, and by that I mean The Director was torturing a full blown A.I. to create the A.I. fragments that we use, a fragment even killed itself inside Washington’s head. That’s why I’m looking for The Director, not only for the torture of an A.I. but for the endangerment Earth, he’s not following the Cole protocol Alaska. each fragment has the coordinates to human bases or even Earth and if that information would fall into the hands of the covenant, you more than anyone would know how bad that’d be. I’m also hunting him down because of what these A.I. fragments did to the other freelancers, team one has been reduced, some of them are dead or missing.”
Alaska pauses for a moment process all this information after a moment he starts to pace across the catwalk.
“How many are dead?”
“As of right now, three; Florida, Connie, and Carolina are dead. Maine and York are AWOL.”
“Do you have any leads on The Director’s location?”
“I was tracking Wyoming but he ended up getting away from me, fortunately I was able to put a tracker on him. I stopped by here because you were a stop along the way and I knew you were close with team one and would want to help get back at The Director.” Tex says trying to persuade Alaska to help her. He takes this moment to think about the situation, he wanted to help, sure, but Alaska had gotten comfortable with babysitting John and living an almost normal life, but he did miss fighting. He sighs knowing what he has to do.
“Sorry Tex, I don’t have any information for you and I can’t just leave to fight in another revenge quest. I’ve got John to take care of, your best bet is to continue trailing down Wyoming.” Alaska decides glumly.
“I get it, thanks for the help you were able to provide Alaska. Glad you were able to get out of all this craziness and I’m sorry for your loss.” Tex says gently, which has been something Alaska wasn’t used to seeing but appreciated it anyways. They nod at each other and Tex heads out on her way to continue hunting down Wyoming and Alaska starts doing some deep thinking.
“I know what you’re thinking and it’s a very bad idea.” Kappa interjects
“Duely noted, I’m going to be doing it anyways. I’m going to need you to find the nearest shipyard, an ONI prototype facility, and Carson’s location. We’ve got a lot of work to do to pull this off.”
“While I can certainly do that, I’m more focused on how you plan on convincing John and Carson to follow through on this. You’re going to become a very big target for the UNSC just from what I can see you thinking of right now. Are you sure this is wise Alex?” Kappa says trying to reason with Alaska. They’d become war criminals, terrorists, nothing better than the insercetionists he fought so hard to thwart. But in that moment all sense of logic was thrown out the window and replaced with a lust for revenge for both ONI and PFL both equally shady and in need of course correction.
“Yeah, I’m sure. I’ll talk to John about this and you track down Carson.” Alaska decides. Kappa acknowledges his decision and goes to work using the satellite the base has to locate Carson. Alaska heads off to a lab room that he helped John set up to make him more comfortable at the new base, hopefully this doesn’t fail miserably and they get to live to see the end of all this.
Submitted by: @gstud
