#this time i'm torturing my spartan baby Kurt

[gamelpar]

Do and Die

The Spartan-IIs were built to live and conquer. The Spartan-IIIs were built to inflict as much damage as possible and die.

Kurt tries not to dig too deep into it, but wants his Spartans to survive.

Characters: Kurt-051, Mendez (mentioned), Emile-A239 (mentioned), Carter-A259 (mentioned), Jun-A266 (mentioned), Kat-B320 (mentioned), Lucy-B091 (mentioned), Tom-B292 (mentioned), other canon Spartan-IIIs mentioned briefly, other canon characters mentioned briefly

Warnings: a bit sad, maybe a little angsty, digging into the aspects of the SPARTAN-III program, the IIIs are all Kurt’s children and Kurt is trying to deal with the fact that all of them are meant to die, me only writing introspectives and inner thoughts rather than a story where stuff actually happens and people actually do something in response to the actions

edit: read it on ao3

I’m training them all to die.

That sentence never left Kurt’s mind during the years he’d trained Alpha Company.

The thought had always been there when he’d trained Beta Company.

Always lulled around in the back of his mind when he watched the candidates of Gamma Company perform their drills and exercises.

Not all of the candidates in Alpha Company and Beta Company had graduated to become Spartans. Only 300 of the respectively 497 and 417 candidates, and he’d wished it could have been different but at the same time he didn’t.

Because then all of them might have died. Or maybe more of them would’ve survived. He doesn’t know. He’ll never know. It was probably for the best.

At least he had a third opportunity to do something different. There was a chance he could have all of the 330 candidates of Gamma Company graduate as Spartans. It was possible he could help them increase their chances of survival beyond developing a tougher training regimen that reached further past their limits.

What he could’ve done for Alpha and Beta Company didn’t matter anymore; only what he could do for Gamma Company now.

Because the War was still going strong and more colonies fell and the UNSC only got away with a few significant victories at great costs, the need for more Spartans only grew. The UNSC was somehow still holding it together, but ONI were desperate. Kurt knew that humanity was losing and that they needed every Spartan they could provide to prevent that from happening. Hadn’t it been for the Spartans, humanity would’ve lost a long time ago.

While the creation of the Spartan-IIIs had made a huge difference, Kurt initially believed that---had they been given the same access to armor and technology as the Spartan-IIs had, and been trained to last in the battlefield---they could have done more.

But that was the purpose of the SPARTAN-III program. It was intended to produce Spartans in a cheaper and faster way than the IIs, with a greater capacity of numbers, and they were meant to be deployed on suicide missions. They were meant to die.

His thoughts would sometimes wander away to the Spartans he and Mendez had managed to extract from Alpha and Beta Company before their final respective operation which ended in each company’s deactivation. He chastised himself for doing it---he had another company of future Spartans to focus on---but late in the evenings when he was too tired to stop them they invaded his mind and stuck around.

At least he refrained from checking any of their current statuses to save himself from the sense of guilt and failure. Because he hadn’t trained them hard enough for them to survive the missions they were deployed on, because no matter they were all meant to die and not to live like the Spartan-IIs. That was just how it was, and that discipline was drilled into each one of them from a young age, and it was necessary in times like these.

He thought of Carter-A259---one of the born leaders of Alpha Company, inspiring and confident. Recruited into the program as an 11-year old boy who’d remembered his losses all too well.

He remembered Emile-A239, whose heart had harbored more than enough hate for the Covenant but also for human insurrectionists. Aggressive like many others and further holding the belief that Spartans were nothing more than the proficient killing machines many military personnel and civilians saw them as. He’d always shown more interest in killing the enemy than actually winning the war.

Jun-A266, who had graduated as one of Alpha Company’s most skilled snipers, not to mention one of the most talkative ones. Yet he always remained calm and tightly focused on the task at hand, a certain aspect of his that had him approved as a selected candidate for the top-secret Headhunter program.

There were those like Kat-B320 from Beta Company---brilliant and intelligent, a cynical tactician and exemplary combatant who Kurt and Mendez had, with difficulty, managed to extract from the program after Operation: CARTWHEEL.

SPARTAN-B312, who Kurt and Mendez had extracted immediately after training. A lone wolf; quiet and lethal, and with a record so impressive that ONI had classified most of it. The Spartan always reminded Kurt of someone.

And there’d been several others: Rosenda-A344, Owen-B096, Kevin-A282, Hazel-A302, Thom-A293, Jonah-B283 and Roland-B210.

All of them trained to die, and those Spartans were only spared from being deployed alongside the rest of their companies in their respective suicide operations because they were deemed too valuable to be wasted---some of them could have been recognized among the ranks as a Spartan-II.

But in order to advance in the war they needed suicide soldiers. They were trading lives for time. That’s why Ackerson had proposed the program, and why Parangosky had approved of it. Kurt understood the purpose of it---he understood why it had to be done---but it didn’t mean he wouldn’t do everything he could in his power to enhance his Spartans’ survival, or to propose alternate engagements that didn’t send them to certain death.

These children he had trained and gotten to know for years, only to watch ONI send them away on missions where casualty rates were 100%, sometimes for nothing but buying the UNSC a few minutes of time.

All of them kids, all of them so young---the youngest barely even teens---and all of them were built and raised to die, sacrificing themselves for humanity.

And no one would know the sacrifices they made. The program was top-secret and people would never know the things the Spartan-IIIs died for. The things that they’d done that saved humanity from being completely annihilated by the Covenant.

It reminded the Lieutenant Commander of certain Spartans; Lucy-B091 and Tom-B292, the only survivors of Beta Company from Operation: TORPEDO.

Both of them now served under him as drill instructors for Gamma Company, but they had been among the IIIs who were deemed expendable. They’d just been twelve years old when they’d witnessed the deaths of their 298 brothers and sisters, and that experience left them with trauma they were far too young to endure, to the point where Lucy was diagnosed with post-traumatic vocal disarticulation which rendered her unable to speak even the most basic combinations of letters.

Before Operation: TORPEDO, both Kurt and Mendez had tried but failed to extract Lucy from the company with the intention of deploying her with SPARTAN-B170 for long-term reconnaissance. Furthermore, after the operation, she was classified as “unfit for duty” due to her condition, and the Office of Naval Intelligence had attempted to reassign her within their psych branch for “psychological evaluation”, while Ackerson had requested for Tom to be deployed in his own private operations. It had taken hell to convince Admiral Parangosky that Lucy and Tom were a better use to train the next generation of Spartan-IIIs but Kurt had been persuasive. They didn’t deserve the fates that ONI had intended for them to have.

His Spartan-III were expendable. The Spartan-IIs were built to live and conquer. The Spartan-IIIs were built to inflict as much damage as possible and die.

Kurt watched as a team of Gammas came back from a jogging exercise. They were tired, breathing fast and hard, sweat dripping everywhere. Almost immediately one of the DIs stepped in front of them. and those who were crouched on the ground trying to catch their breath straightened up as the DI ordered them for another run in a loud and intimidated voice. Too tired and frightened to complain, the Gammas began jogging slowly the same route again and increased speed when the DI yelled after them.

Gamma Company was going to survive. Kurt would see to that.

He couldn’t help to wonder if he, by some miracle, would meet any of his Spartan-IIIs extracted from the two earlier companies again. It had been a long time since their graduation where he last saw most of them before their immediate deployment to somewhere out in the galaxy to fight the Covenant, and deep down he so desperately wanted to see them one final time

But he had an ominous feeling that it would never happen, and if it did, it would only happen in death.

Which meant that despite his wants and wishes, he would never meet any of them ever again.

Because Spartans never die.