Sixteen: Three Hundred

'Barbarians.'

[Hey.]

'No offense.'

[Hn.]

Once the Spartans had gone down the mountain, Kenera darted quickly over the rocks to scoop up the abandoned child. It sneezed and hid from the harsh sun in her shadow, though it quickly began to cry once it realized she wasn't its mother. Kenera worked quickly to quiet the baby as she bounded back to the warp pad. A temporary network had been set up an hidden planet-wide, and the teleporters themselves were almost identical to what the Spirit of Fire encountered on Shield 0459.

The network brought her aboard the FireRain, where a Lifeworker-led team was caring for the other children abandoned by the people of Sparta. 'This makes sixty-three,' she said, checking the gender just to be sure before handing the boy off to a Lituni. Many of the children found the aliens' purring soothing and quieted quickly.

[Only twelve more to go, and we can start the S-0 program.]

'Commander, that was terrible.'

[I'd like to see you do better!]

'At least he's not telling "dead baby" jokes.'

[I might not have a conventional upbringing, but I'm not that insensitive. There are places even I won't go.]

'At least he was trying. We'll make a decent, functional person out of him yet!'

[You keep saying that, and yet it seems that the only society in which I am fully functional is our own.]

'You just need experience. Quick, everyone force him into the shape of a child so we can dump him on the agoge!'

[That's no different from boot camp on Reach! Just with swords rather than guns.]

'Because everything's better with sharp objects.'

[Yes. Yes, it is.] The Commander ducked a swing from one of the Special Operations Infected, and then swept the other's feet out from under him. The other warrior turned his drop into a handspring to get some distance, but John followed closely, relishing the burn of sparring with a real, live person rather than swiping at Prometheans.

'Is that him?'

[Who him?]

'King Leonidas.'

The sparring match was temporarily halted as all the Infected peered down at Earth via the shipboard cameras. Etra latched onto a particular thread and brought up a live feed of the agoge, showing a particular boy who was clearly already a leader.

[Hm. Maybe.]

'…Maybe?'

[I don't know what he looks like. There was a statue of him made, but it's considered an artist's rendition.]

'…shit.'

[Yep. We'll know soon enough, though. Look.]

The view swung around to the Persian Empire, which was distinctly readying itself for a war many years off, putting the timeline at about 530 BC. John ducked a punch to the face, one intended to get his attention, and resumed fighting.

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Since no one in Sparta would look twice at a tall, strong male, Gramlek disguised himself as a commoner in the Spartan state, a "mage"-blacksmith, come to the agoge to sell some swords to the handlers for new graduates. They had been painstakingly made from the near-indestructible Forerunner diamond-steel – a risk, giving it to humanity at this point in time, but one they were prepared to take. There were tracking dots in the handles of the blades that could be monitored from orbit, so they could find them and pull them out at any time.

It was indeed Leonidas that they had seen from orbit, still young yet, but already showing promise. When his father met up with the Forerunner, the boy straight up asked, "Are you a god?"

The weapons master considered, conferring with his fellows. "My people have been called 'gods,'" he answered finally, "by races with greater knowledge and skill than yours, but no. We are not gods. Merely men, with power beyond the norm."

"Can you fly between the stars, like the legends?"

"We have a means of doing so, yes."

"Then… if there are other… races… out there, as you say, why come here?" the future king asked, frowning, "Surely if you have such power, you must have somewhere better to be?"

"We are the Watchers," Gramlek replied, "It is our duty to guard those who cannot guard themselves. There are things other than us out in the darkness, not all of them as kind as us, and strong though your people are, you are no match for them."

As one, the Infected sensed a disturbance in space, right before a small fleet transitioned back into real space. The past several centuries had not been especially kind, resulting in a lot of unrest and a number of rebellions. Pirates, smugglers, and traffickers of all kinds had sprung up left and right, even in the ecumene, and though many stayed away from Erde-Tyrene purely on principle of being the Fleet of Shadows "home base," some were apparently stupid enough to take the risk of tangling with the Flood.

"And one such 'thing' has just arrived." Gramlek inclined his head to the prince. "I must go. My people need me."

"Will you return?" Leonidas asked, but his tone made it more of a demand.

"Perhaps one of us will."

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The raiders weren't that much of a challenge, but they were part of a much larger network beginning to form throughout the galaxy. The Commander recognized that a good black market was a necessary evil, but this one was beginning to get into sentient being trafficking and drug smuggling. The Infected decided to board them rather than shoot them out of the sky, and found their holds filled with alien slaves and exotic narcotics, looking for new markets.

There were uncounted numbers of furious hisses, Flood forms curling and twisting in wrath at the abuse of fellow sentient beings – especially since the FoS was built to protect against such cruelty. Worse yet, some of the Galactic Councilors were involved in it, receiving funding in exchange for looking the other way.

The Infected were forced to leave Erde-Tyrene entirely in order to run them down. They presented their findings to a secretly-formed committee and waited until the corrupted officials involved were ousted before returning to Earth. By that time, twenty years had passed. The legendary Spartan was no longer a boy, but a man grown, soon to become king.

'Can we fight with him, Commander?'

[We can't all fight the Persians at Thermopylae. We'd obliterate them. The Grecian armies have to lose.]

'But Commandeeeeeer…!'

[No.]

'Awww…'

But there was some good news: Leonidas hadn't said a word about meeting Gramlek, so the fleet was still a secret (at least on Earth. In the Galactic Federation, they were the most well-known "secret" in existence). The Infected reinserted their "sleeper agents" all over the planet, and resumed their watch.

Leonidas spotted their Spartan agent within hours of him arriving at the capital.

'Damn, he is good.'

But the king didn't call Zhalek out – or any other aliens who drifted through in disguise, trying to catch a glimpse of the father of a legend. He just gave them weird looks – ones that said, "Who the fuck are all these weirdoes and what do they want?" and "Threaten my people and I will kick your asses to the galactic center and back." – and went on with ruling Sparta.

[I like him. Unfortunately, we can't infect him.]

'Awwww…'

[Yes, mourn lost opportunities-]

my mournstache

[-what was that?]

'Haven't the foggiest. What's a mournstache?'

[Haven't the foggiest.]

-------------------------------------------

"You're their leader."

It wasn't even a question, really. At this point, John was willing to write it off as "impeccable intuition and observation" and leave it at that. "And you're the king of Sparta."

"You're here to help?"

"Would I be here if I wasn't?" he answered, "Just me, though." There had been a miniature war fought over who would fight in the Battle of Thermopylae. In the end, no one could agree and there was no clear victor, so it was decided that the Chief – and only the Chief – would go, and become a real Spartan. [Real,] he'd snorted, [Does that make me imaginary?]

"Why?"

"Where I am from, your war against the Persian Empire is already known. My superiors named my fellow soldiers and I 'Spartans' in honor of you and your dedication and valor," he said, using carefully prepared words, "Now, through the maneuvering of gods and men and magic, I find myself with an opportunity to witness that for myself, an opportunity I am unwilling to pass up."

Leonidas looked him over. Despite the time between the Forerunner-Flood War and the Greco-Persian War, the Commander had refused to let his body go even the slightest. Fortunately, as a result of his augmentations and his Flood-modified biology, it was easy to maintain his physique. He was a SPARTAN, and looked it, too. And though the king might wish otherwise, John had learned to read people in that interim, and knew that despite himself, the king was flattered in some small way that such a powerful warrior had been named for his people and come to see them for himself.

'Flattery will get you everywhere,' John thought to himself when the king nodded at last.

"You knew I would come here," said Leonidas as John joined him and his men on their path to the Temple of Apollo, where the Pythia, the Oracle of Delphi, waited.

"I suspected," the S-II corrected, "Would you not take advantage of all resources available? – Although… I am unsure how… the God's Breath will affect me." When both Leonidas and his guards shot glances at him, he elaborated, "My family has a history of prophecy-" Not technically a lie. "-I, too, might receive a vision, were I to inhale the vapors."

"A double prophecy would be most fortuitous," said one of the king's guards. The super soldier hmmed in agreement.

The moment he stepped into the Oracle Chamber with the king, John's vision began to swim. He blinked rapidly, panting and dropping his head, but breathing wasn't helping. There was definitely something in the air, some chemical cocktail that he was reacting to, his instincts thrashing around inside its cage before curling up in a tight knot and refusing to move. It didn't like it either, whatever it was.

Nep'Thalia was already calling for one of the science team to get planetside and take a sample of the gases, but John could only just make out her words. He looked up at the Pythia, eyes watering and vision blurred.

"A star shines upon the hour of this meeting, Warrior."

Her voice was clear in the chaos of his mind. She must have already given her words to Leonidas while he was trying to acclimate himself to the chemicals in the air.

And she was speaking Forerunner.

"You have been patient for many years."

"There are many more yet to go," he replied.

She smiled. "Yet you will see your Intellect again sooner than you think, even if you cannot speak to her. You will survive this, you and all your Poisoned. Do brave things and endure."

He nodded in acceptance. "What of the Battle of the Hot Gates?"

"See for yourself, Breathe deep, and don't fight."

The Spartan-II did as she said, closing his eyes. When the light coming through his lids changed unexpectedly, he opened them again – and found himself on a ridge overlooking the narrow pass between said ridge and the Gulf of Malia. The battlefield was strangely ghostlike, made of mist and partially translucent. He could see the inner chamber of the temple beyond it if he focused on it, but he was far more interested in the vision.

The Greek camp was directly below him, holding the narrowest part of the pass. The rest of the army had already retreated, but the Spartans – the legendary three hundred – were still there, along with about eleven hundred other Greeks and the support staff. He saw himself amongst the warriors, standing at the Phocian wall and looking toward the Persian camp. They had set up out near the edge of the Gulf of Malia, where the water curved away from the ridge, opening up the land. A messenger from Xerxes had approached the camp to ask for their surrender, saying that their spears were a forest that could not be cut down, their arrows clouds that would blot out the sun. A hoplite named Diomelces delivered the famous reply, his voice echoing strangely in John's ears: "So much the better! We shall fight our battle in the shade!"

Then the induced vision blurred, and became a true battlefield. The Persians were charging the Greek line with infantry and some mounted soldiers. The Greeks vaulted the wall to meet them. Again, he saw himself amongst the melee, wielding spear and sword of Forerunner diamond-steel, initially next to Leonidas and his guard before they were separated in the crush of bodies.

The battlefield changed again, this time showing the aftermath. There were more Persian bodies that Greek on the bloody, churned up earth, but it didn't matter: all the Greeks who had stayed behind had been slain to the last man. The Spartan himself was slumped against the wall, stuck full of arrows like a pincushion. The king was next to him, unmoving and staring up at the sky, blood still slowly seeping out of his body.

The Persians were picking through the bodies, among them a few familiar faces: the twins, Gramlek, Zhalek. They came right over to the two men, and Gramlek shut the king's eyes while Zhalek collected the hybrid's weapons and the twins prepped him to be moved.

And then a single, brief flash – a mausoleum in the Fleet of Shadows, some urns of ashes and others disassembled skeletons, all packed in their own cubicles and sealed behind plaques bearing names and dates and important events or actions. John very clearly saw Leonidas' name on one of the plaques, inscribed in several different languages, along with his title, "King of Sparta (489 – 480 BC)" and "First Greco-Persian War, Battle of Thermopylae (September 8 – 10, 480 BC)."

The Commander came out of the vision suddenly, the mist dispersing between one blink and the next. He was shocked to find that he had only been "under" for less than a minute – it had felt like a small eternity in the drug-induced haze.

"Do brave things and endure," the Pythia repeated, "Fare thee well, Warrior, Guardian of the Earth. We will not meet again." Then she subsided.

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It was hard, living with so many people in a tight space, especially with his instincts still up in arms over the incident at the Temple of Apollo. It was gnawing at the bars of its cage, trying to get out and spread its infection amongst the Greek soldiers. In the privacy of his own mind, John could understand why it – and all the other Graveminds – wanted soldiers. They were combat-trained and physically fit more often than not, as well as pre-conditioned to obey orders. Even if it took a bit more effort to infect them because of the aforementioned characteristics, they were easier to suppress and handle than ordinary civilians, and tended to last a lot longer.

The hybrid clambered up to sit on top of the wall, breathing clear air without the stink of sweaty men and unwashed bodies. It was too much life for him to bear.

"The Pythia said you bear a great burden, you and your followers. That there are other worlds than these you are shielding."

Leonidas scaled the wall to sit next to him, carrying a jug of wine. The Infected had long since learned that very little affected them for any length of time – vision-inducing hallucinogenics aside - but he accepted to be polite.

"She spoke truly," he answered, "We are something of a magical vanguard. There is an enemy we must face, whose powers we have taken for our own, but space is vast and empty and hard to search. It is easier to wait for them to realize that there is something wrong and waste resources coming to us."

"Never were truer words spoken," said the king, "Let them come to you and spend their food, water, and gold."

The S-II took the jug back and swallowed another mouthful of wine. "I half-hope they never come," he said, handing the jug back, "that someone else finds a way to deal with them, though I know it's selfish of me."

"Human nature," Leonidas replied, toasting him with the jug, "We all want someone else to take care of our problems."

"Human?" John snorted bitterly. "I haven't felt human for eons. My flesh is filled with sickness, my blood poison. None who ever encounter me are ever quite the same, if they survive."

"Heracles used the poisonous blood of the Hydra to slay his enemies," the king responded, "Have you not done the same?"

Before John could reply that yes, he had, but that didn't make him a hero, he sensed something small approaching, fast, and snapped out a hand, not even batting an eyelid when an arrow meant for the Spartan king pierced his palm. "Doesn't seem very poisonous," the king said dryly, a splatter of blood trickling down his face as the super soldier pulled the arrow out and fired it back out into the night, a cry of pain and surge of information letting him know that he had hit his mark.

"Just don't get any of it in your mouth."

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The battlefield was the kind of tight chaos that none of the Infected had seen since the Forerunner-Flood War. They had observed wars in the past, and even participated, but none of it had been quite the same, quite like this – the crush of bodies, the tunnel vision making it hard to tell if the person at your shoulder was friend or foe. His instincts gloried in it, relishing the suffering of the dying, though the S-II kept it firmly caged.

He found Leonidas in the melee, launching his spear like a javelin to impale two Persians charging the king from behind. He drew his short sword to defend himself as he waded through the fighting to the man's side. The Greeks were being steadily pushed back against the Phocian wall, their numbers already cut down by more than half. The bodies of friend and foe alike were piling up, so as he fought, John found himself kicking corpses into short walls behind which he could duck to catch his breath before charging back out.

The battle still raged for hours, with occasional breaks wherein both sides made a temporary mutual retreat to recover from the strain and assess the damage. But at last, as the sun began to dip toward the horizon on the third day, only the king and the super soldier were left alive. Xerxes ordered a temporary retreat, his herald calling for them to "make peace with their gods before they met their end before the glory of the Persian Empire."

"Tell me," said the Spartan king, using a strip of cloth from another Spartan's cape to bind a wound on his forearm, "how did your superiors know about this battle, this war? Do they have an Oracle of their own?"

John turned his head just a bit, consulting with his Infected.

'It couldn't hurt.'

'Who could he possibly tell?'

'He deserves to know, if not for his own sake, then for his men. He really seems to care about them.'

"No," said the super soldier, "no Oracle. Just history. I was born two thousand, nine hundred, and ninety-one years in the future. And this battle – the Battle of Thermopylae – is known as one of history's most famous last stands." He paused, then continued, "The Egyptians, a people from the south across the sea, believe that so long as someone is remembered, their name spoken, the person will never die. And believe me, Leonidas, you and your men are going to live forever."