Novemeber 5, 2533 (UNSC Calendar)/
Camp Mars IX, Mars, Sol System
I woke up feeling surprisingly well rested. In fact, I was surprisingly well rested. I glanced at the clock. It was about mid-morning.
The hell?
We hadn't woken up more than thirty minutes after sunrise since we had moved into the barracks. I was surprised, but I wasn't about to complain about being allowed a couple hours more sleep.
"Then what are you complaining about?" I heard from some beds over.
"Nothing, I was just wondering what we are still doing here," someone else said.
Can't believe someone actually managed to see the negative side of this. I sat up and glanced around. I wasn't really surprised to see that O'Donell's stuff was gone. It seemed like he had been sent back home. He wasn't ODST material if he couldn't run fifty clicks in the time it would take someone to run a regular marathon. Then again, few people could do that.
I stood up and got dressed. I yawned as I ran a hand over my hair. It had grown to a short buzzcut, didn't actually look so bad. Well, maybe I just grew used to it. I yawned again.
"Rise and shine ladies!" yelled a voice that wasn't Gabuka's.
I turned to face the source of the voice and was mildly surprised to see the captain. I hadn't seen him more than a couple of times since his welcoming speech. Even then it was just short chats with Gabuka about our progress. The only time he had talked to me in person was when he told me his dead great-grandmother could do push-ups better than I could.
We all stood at attention immediatelly. Well, at least the ones that weren't still in dreamland, but those were given a warm welcome into reaality by Gabuka shocking them with his baton. We had even given the baton a nickname, but it wasn't really all that nice. Us recruits laughed in the night picturing the sergeant sleeping with his baton by his side.
"Listen up soldiers," he started. Did he just call us soldiers? "Today we start weapons training!"
Yep, he called us soldiers, not sissys, recruits, dirtbags, failure as men, pregnant women, infants, sauropods, bugs, grunts, farmboys, imbeciles, idiots, slack-jawed, bastards, inbred bastards, transgendered bastards, any derivative of bastard, dogs, or any other demeaning nickname. For the sake of myself I'm going to ignore that he called us ladies when he walked in.
Wait, weapon's training? That's gotta be good right?
And it was. At least when compared to Gabuka's fitness programs. We left our beds and walked into the courtyard. There were six trucks out there (one per barrack) and we were actually allowed to hop on them. They drove for thirty seconds to the west side of the camp. I think it was a really mean joke of sorts, first time we're allowed to hop onto vehicles, we're taken to a place that would've taken less time to get to by foot.
Well fuck you, sir. I could picture myself saying that to Captain Scarface, but I knew I would never do that, or anybody else would, for that matter.
We got of the trucks, all remaining 147 of us. I had never been to this side of camp, there wasn't anything interesting and it wasn't like I had spare time to do some exploration.
We left the camp through a gate in the fence. There was another truck over there waiting for us. I could make out targets in the distance. This was a shooting range, as rudimentary as any other, but we had all the space in the world, well a world. Mars, to be precise.
The captain hopped up on the truck.
"Soldiers, congratulations, you are no longer recruits and you have managed to survive through one of the toughest boot camps in this side of the galaxy." Gabuka nodded, mostly to himsef. The captain continues. "You could now run away from a battle with little to no problem, the issue here, is that you have no idea how you would win one. For this, you will need to learn how to shoot a weapon."
I was smiling as the captain signaled to the driver to open the door to the cargo area. As he did so Gabuka, Skinny, and Bulldog, as well as the drill sergeants from the other barracks started unloading some pretty heavy-looking crates.
I smiled at the thought of what might be in those crates.
"Now for the bad news…"
You've got to be fucking kidding me.
"…the bad news is that we have a shortage of food in camp, so you will need to earn it. Those targets you see down range are have numbers on them, they might look like hit-scores, but in reality they are credit-producing magical papers. The number you hit, the amount of credits you get.
I groaned.
"Is there a probelem Francisco?" the captain asked me, dead serious.
How the hell does he even know my name? I wondered.
I was feeling a little balsy today, specially after that long sleep that served to soften up my judgement a little.
"Can't we use our own credits captain?"
"No, the UNSC has phased out old credits in favor of this new magical ones."
"Wait, what, really?" said one of the recruits, no soldier, of Barracks Four.
No one even answered him, the guy next to him simply hit him in the back of the head. He didn't say anything else.
By that time all the boxes were off the truck and placed at regular intervals along the firing range.
"Move out to your drill sergeants."
"Sir!" we all said at once as we snapped at attention. The fear of doing one-handed pushups if we failed to answer now ran deep in our blood, courtesy of Gabuka and his evil mininos.
"Ok," roared Gabuka. "You heard the captain, we are suffering from a shortage of food right now, so you each need ten thousand credits for a meal. Any additional credits you may gain won't count and will be donated to the whorehouse your respective mothers work in."
This was actually pretty light for our sergeant. He was probably running out of insults.
The sarge pulled out a rifle with bullpup configuration, it looked slightly skeletal, as if it was mssing some parts. On top it had what looked like a filled-out carrying handle on top and a rather large flash-hider.
"Now this is the MA37 Individual Combat System. It is currently on use by the Army, but the captain here managed to get us a few crates worth of them. They are the standard assault rifle of the UNSC Army, and despite the fact that we are marines and you are training under me we will use this as it is deemed easier to operate and you maggot heads probably couldn't handle an MA5," that was actually a pretty nice one.
I made sure to pay attention as Gabuka explained how the rifle worked and did my best to remember the names of all the parts it had. I succeded in the obvious ones, but it would be a while before I got down most of them right.
Gabuka put the rifle aside and pulled out a rather large black pistol.
"Now this bad boy here," started Gabuka, "is one of my personal favorites. The M6G Personal Defense Weapon System. It fires 12.7mm semi-armor-piercing-rounds. It is the standard issue sidearm to the UNSC Armed Forces, it can…"
He went on and on about the virtues and disadvantages of the pistol as I did my best to keep up.
Next up he pulled out a rifle. I raised my eyebrows a little bit. It was a good looking gun. It was slightly short of three feet long, slightly less, this one had a real carrying handle with a telescopic sight on top, it also sported bullpup configuration, but then again, what gun didn't nowadays.
"This is a BR55 Battle Rifle. This little baby fires 9.5mm rounds in what I would like to call a very accurate manner. It has a 36 round magazine and can fire it single fire, there-round burst, and fully automatic. It can take the head of an innie or an alien at up to 1000 meters…" I listened extra carefully to this one.
The sergeant then proceeded to pull out weapon after weapon, including an M7 SMG, a M392 DMR, a shotgun, the M247L SAW, and an SRS99D S2 sniper rifle among many others.
He explained the workings of each one carefully and taking his time. He even asked us questions when it seemed like we were not paying attention. Skinny, the poroceeded to demonstrate how to fire the weapon, how to reload them, and how to fix a jamming.
While he was demonstrating how the sniper rifle worked we heard a loud boom and turnes to see an explosion down range.
"And that, gentleman, is how the SPANKr works," cried out triumphtantly one of the drill sergeants of Barracks One.
"Wipe those smiles of your faces, we'll get to that when we need to." Gabuka's voice distracted us from the pyrotechnics.
"Ok, now each one of you grab an M6," he ordered us.
I lingered a little longer than necessary and stared longingly at the BR55 for a few seconds before Bulldog yelled at me to move my ass, which I promptly did while saying 'yessir' and 'sorry sir.'
I stood at the edge of the designated shooting area and aimed at the target in front of me. It was perhaps fifty yards away.
"Fire!"
I fired, hitting the target right in the middle of the 10 score ring. I had shot my uncle's M6A once before, which was basically a downsized version of this, so I wasn't prepared for the recoil.
I smiled as I saw that I had hit the center. Maybe I'm a natural marksman, I thought.
I shot again. This time I missed the score rings altogether, hitting the target's "arm" and proving myself wrong
I shot again and again, gradually getting better and managing to cluster my shots close together.
"Huh," Ramsey said as he looked at my latest hole-riddled paper target. "Next time you go around crossing borders maybe you'll be able to shoot back at the US rednecks that only want to keep their jobs safe."
It was an old joke, there wasn't even a real border between Mexico and the former US anymore, but it was still annoying.
"Maybe I'll shoot you with my crazy Mexican skills." Was all I could retort.
"Wait, you're Mexican?" Jonah asked all of a sudden.
I stared at him. So did the guys that could hear him.
"Did all those border jokes mean anything to you?" I asked. "At all?"
"Well I thought… nevermind." said Jonah as he flushed slightly, certainly feeling like an idiot.
"Well don't worry Jonah, he certinly doesn't look Mexican with his past complexion skin and brownish hair." Ramsay said.
He kept looking for a fight.
"Oh shut up, you're Scottish." I said as it was possibly the worst thing in the universe.
"What the hell is that supposed to mean?" yelled a recruit from Barracks Three.
"Oh shut the hell up!" this time it was Dutch, being surprisingly level-headed. Normally he would've jumped at the chance of a fight.
I kept on shooting and after burning through six clips, we were ordered to switch to the MA37's. I picked it up and managed to stay a few seconds staring at the BR55. I fell to the ground in a heap.
"What the hell are you waiting for?" yelled Gabuka as he shocked me again. I stood up and managed to stand straight.
"Sorry sergeant!"
"STAFF Sergeant."
"YES STAFF SERGEANT!" I shouted. "SORRY STAFF SERGEANT." Just to be sure. I picked up the rifle and went back to my position.
"Serves you well," said Ramsey.
I stayed quiet.
After a few minutes of nothing but gunfire. I turned to Jonah.
"Seriously, how could you possibly not know I was Mexican." I was slightly offended that my best friend (if Jonah could be called that) didn't even knew my nationality.
"I always thought you were like a Spaniard or something, I wasn't even sure you were an Earth-born," he said sheepishly.
"Are you kidding me? I've told you that a thousand times!"
Jonah decided it was best to ignore me and fired a burst at his target. I rolled my eyes and did the same.
After we had gone through a sizeable amount of rounds, we were ordered to put our MA37's back in the crates. This time we were told to use the M7 SMG's. I cursed at the sergeant for not allowing us to use the BR55's.
I brought up the SMG and switched back to the closest targets. I fired a burst. I was surprised by how much recoil this puny thing had. It was hard to control. I tried and tried, but didn't seem to get the hang of it. Not like all my rounds missed the target, but from the third round up they all went into the shoulder and off the target. I simply started shooting one round at a time.
"Castillo, get over here!"
I turned around to see Skinny holding a rifle for me he tossed it. I almost dropped my SMG to catch the BR55. I had to stop myself from squealing with glee while I put the safety on the M7 and gave it back to the sergeant.
I grabbed the appropiate ammunition and went to my spot.
"Try for the 750 meter mark's head," suggested Skinny.
I located my target through the scope. I sighed and squeezed of a round. It hit right outside of the eight point ring.
Skinny nodded and went back to checking on the rest of Barracks Two.
I kept on firing, most of the time I found my mark, and I never even missed the target. This gun fired beautifully, there was little to no recoil.
After two magazines I started feeling adventurous and decided to switch to three round burst. I kept on firing with the same accuracy I had achieved so far, still no recoil to throw off my aim. I could even fire two or three bursts in a row without sacrificing too much accuracy.
As my gun clicked empty I turned to Ramsey, stroke a pose, and asked in a seductive tone, "Jealous?"
"Oh, piss off," he said, although I could see he was trying hard not to laugh.
Around noon I was sweating and could barely stand up, but at least I was having some fun. I had not switched back from my BR55 in the whole time since it had been handed to me and I had riddled targets as far back as 1200 meters with 9.5mm holes.
Ramsey had been handed a DMR, but wasn't really doing that well, his strong point was the MA37, he could fire long steady bursts and keep them within a two inch radius.
I was surprised by Jonah, had I not known he used to be in the Marine Corps (he certainly didn't look like it) I would've been jealous. He was switching through weapons and hitting home with surprising accuracy. He was by no means a sniper, or even a marksman, but he was the best shot here.
I was ordered to switch to the DMR, which I grudgingly did so, and found out that it was nearly as accurate as the BR55, but it had a hell of a lot more recoil. After a few magazines spent we were ordered to cease fire.
We were then marched to the mess hall, where we were fed a healthy dose of goop. It looked like it could go alive any moment and attack us. It certainly tasted like it too, but it had all the necessary calories, proteins, vitamins, etcetera that a marine, or in this case ODST would need. It seemed that they had forgotten about our new "credits", they probably just said that to make us sweat a little. Most of us had met the 10,000 point mark. If you spent half a martian day shooting, you were bound to hit something.
I swallowed my goop down as fast as possible as to aviod the taste. We then did an hour and a half of drill before we were sent to bed.
Next morning we were woken up at the usual time. Which was before the night could be considered morning, and made to march while carrying our rifles in addition to our rocky backpacks and armored boots.
We only ran five kilometers, and when we returned we were immediatelly sent back to the firing range. I resumed my training with the BR55, occasionally switching back to the M6.
We only stayed there for an hour this time, then we were sent to the courtyard and taught how to clean our pistols. We were told that the pistols we had been given for range training would now be ours. We would keep them, care for them, nurture them, and a bunch of other weird crap that came from Skinny's mouth.
Cleaning a gun is an annoying process to learn, specially the assembly/disassembly part. You have to get it right (obviously) or else the gun won't work. Luckily the M6 was designed for a quick field strip, so we all had it down by the end of the lesson.
We than had lunch, ran, fired our weapons, ran, cleaned our pistols, and ran some more. In that order. We were tired, but only normal tired, when we got to the barracks. Most of us even kidded around a little and did the usual manly things. Good thing there wasn't a chick in our barracks, unlike in barracks five. Poor guys, well, poor girl.
We fell asleep soon, trying to take in as much rest as possible.
"Welcome to hand-to-hand combat training!" yelled Bulldog.
We were standing at attention in the courtyard, The other barracks had been sent to the firing range, the ditch, or simply made to run. We were simply listening to our instructor, which was, unsurprisingly, sergeant Bulldog.
"What happens when you loose your rifle?" he asked. "Which I'm sure you piss-ass excuse for marines will certainly do more than a couple of times."
No one answered.
"Well, you use your knife." While he said that he produced a large knife from seemingly nowhere, although I knew that he had it tucked into the back of his pants. Neat move Bulldog.
"Hand-to-hand combat is…" he asked. "Anyone?"
No one said anything.
"It's when you fight with your hands for combat you idiots!"
I could tell he was enjoying this, for that matter, so were Gabuka and Skinny on the other side of the courtyard, watching us.
"What about the knife sir?" this was Sasha asking.
"Now don't get smart with me you filthy maggot."
Hand-to-hand combat is meant as a last resort way to neutralize an enemy. At least that's what sergeant Bulldog told us. He went on about the doctrines, definitions, variations, uses, and origins of hand-to-hand.
I'm not entirely sure why he even mentioned origins, we all knew about the sword-toting warriors that had existed on Earth a long time ago.
As Bulldog rambled a 'soldier' yawned. He tried to stiffle it, but it was to late.
"Weinberg!" yelled an angry sergeant. "Get over here! NOW!"
Weinberg did so as fast as he could.
The sergeant ordered to step right in front of me. I could make out Gabuka and Skinny laughuing at the scene. This can't be good.
"Hit me," he ordered Weinberg.
"Sir?"
"You heard me!"
Weinberg hesitated a little before taking a combat stance. I saw his stance and wished I was someplace else, this was going to be embarrasing. Weinberg then threw a right cross.
It seemed to happen in slow motion, Bulldog grabbed Weinberg's fist, then his elbow, and threw him into the ground. The large man dropped down along with the unfortunate recruit and in a matter of seconds had it in an armlock. The defeated man cried out in pain as his arm was twisted. The sergeant waited five seconds before releasing him.
Nice knowing you Weinberg.
"So, as you can see, it can be very useful to know how to turn an enemy into a piece of crap pile of flailing limbs without weapons."
"You, you're next!"
Oh crap. The sarge was pointing at me.
I walked towards him and stood in front of him. This time we were both given some thin gloves to protect our hands with. I stood in front of the sergeant, he offered me his fist and I bumped it, we both immediatelly took a fighting stance.
My stance was a little bit looser and I was on the top of my toes, while the sergeant had hunched over and taken a guard more akin to a boxer.
I kicked at his leg. He lifted his own leg and my shin collided with his. I instantly felt the pain, but didn't show it. The sergeant threw a quick jab at me, hitting me square in the forhead. I managed to absorb some of the blow while throwing an uppercut to the stomach, I could tell he was surprised by the way he opened his eyes, or maybe he just needed some air.
He punched me again, this time I managed to dodge his swing and strike his ribs with a quick hook. He kicked at my face. I put both my arms up to block the kick and as soon as his shin bounced of my hands I felt his other shin up in my ribs.
How can he kick so fast. I was quickly distracted from my thoughts as another kick brought me to the ground. I turned and swiped the sergeant's feet from under him in a similar manner as to when I had first gone to the trench. He fell and I managed to jump on top of him. I started pummeling away, he covered most of the blow, but I managed to strike home a few times. Just as I thought everything was going well I felt something in my back, all of a sudden the sarge had caught my neck with his legs and pulled me down, he grabbed one of my arms and bent it slightly backwards using his legs as levers. I felt a stinging pain all over my arm, and on top of all I couldn't breathe to well since his legs were squeezing my trachea.
I moved around, trying to get out of the lock, but he just pulled my arm farther down. Eventually I simply tapped out.
I stood up and shook hands with Bulldog. I was slightly embarrased , but not overly so. The sergeant went on to explain the virtues and mistakes of the fight, praising me (or as close as he could get to praise someone anyways) for my speed and strong punches, but pointing out the mistake in me not knowing any locks, throws, or grabs.
In fact I think his exact words went something like this:
"Well little mister here can punch better than most five year olds can, he also moves faster than an Arcadian slob, but only slightly. On the other hand, he has no idea of how to fight on the ground, his lack of knowledge in grabs is a shame to all the human race. I know parrots that can do better ground combat than him!"
I didn't know what to think at the time, but it wasn't such a mean insult, and other than the fact that it was probably one of the stupidest similes ever, I felt moderately good about myself.
The sergeant then proceeded to teach us the basics of hand-to-hand. He taught us grabs, throws, and all the necessary things to make your hands weapons, by the end of the week, we could all fight pretty decently. Fourteen straight hours of combat training will do that to you.
On day eight, our meeting in the courtyard started slightly differently.
"Knives!"
No one moved.
"Since you can now fight at the level of blind and crippled five-year-olds, I will now move on to showing you how to use sharp and pointy implements," he told us.
I think he was proud of us.
"A knife is a very useful tool, it can be used to cut and slash, as well as to stab, carve, gouge, scratch, hit, pummel, dismember, torture, scare, and a proyectile weapon."
He explained us the virtues of knife fighting much like he did with hand-to-hand combat. He produced two knifes, a thin one with a blade of weird make, it was apparently balanced for throwing as well as cutting. He then showed us a knife that was slightly over a foot long. It was a glorified knife or a downgraded machete. Your choice. As he finished showing us the details he called for a volunteer.
No one was stupid enough to take the dare.
"Castillo, you just volunteered!"
I think he still had something against me since that time I knocked him down first day of training. Last week's fight probably didn't do much good to his feeling towards me either.
"Sir," I said as I walked towards him. He handed me a mock knife made covered with rubber.
I had to resist the urge to smile, knives I'm good with.
I switched it around so that the blade was facing backwards and the sharp edge pointed outside.
Bulldog grabbed it in the exact same way I did. I took up a guard, using the hand my knife was in as a deterrent.
We started spinning around each other, each throwing a efw feints, measuring each other. All of a sudden he kicked my thigh. It hurt like hell and I was surprised by the kick, but I jumped backwards to dodge an upwards slash. I lifted my own leg and caught his knife hand. Then I launched a slash towards his neck as his knife hand flew upwards. I stopped my strike an inch from his neck and smiled triumphantly.
"I got you sir."
He smiled at me. I looked down only to be surprised by the sight of his own weapon pressed agains my stomach. I had to resist the urge to roll my eyes. We were re-enacting the most cliched scene in knife fights ever.
"Nicely done Castillo," he complimented me.
He actually complimented me, and with a smile in his face at that. At the time I thought I was going to go into shock.
This next week went much like last, with us learning the techniques needed to master knife fighting. Once we were done with basics, we started another routine, this one mixing out weapons, hand-to-hand, and knife training. Nothing out of the ordinary happened during the next months, other than the fact that our number got ever smaller of course. I was allowed to fire the sniper rifle, but I was apparently too impatient to become a sniper, so I was allowed to keep the BR55.
Eventually we were forced to do firing on moving targets and firing while moving. The sergeants rigged various scenarios in which we would clear a building while shooting at targets that popped every now and then.
We were all issued whatever weapons we were profficient with the most. I was lucky enough to get one of the few BR55's. I also had my pistol. We were then given four knifes. Two of the small machetes (or glorified knifes) and two of the smaller (yet still sporting seven inches worth of blade) knifes that were meant to be used as a last ditch effort.
Ramsey had gotten a shotgun in addition to an M7 SMG. Jonah had gotten the good ol' fashioned MA37 rifle and he was quite happy with it. The only guy in our barracks that had been issued something different was Sasha, who had gotten a grenade launcher in addition to an MA37.
That night we kidded around with each other and with our weapons, which had to be stored in a newly installed weapons locker. Our knifes were kept inside our trunks, which were now looking a little fuller.
"Hard to believe we've been here eight months already," mentioned Jonah.
"Hard to believe there's only twenty of us remaining in the barracks," I said.
"Hard to believe you guys are so fucking gay!" Ramsey shouted from a few bunks over.
I nodded at Jonah and we both sprinted at him. I tackled him while Jonah secured his arms, we then beat him up a little, mostly slapping him and hitting his head with our open palms.
"Get.. the fuck… of me!" he complained. After a few seconds we complied while most of the population in the barracks laughed at him. As we leet him stand back up he dusted himself with as much pride as he could muster and leaped on his bed.
I did the same, looking into the bottom of the empty bunk above me I thought of all the great moments I had spent here. I couldn't come up with more than three or four, one of them was being issued real guns, the other was a particular night when we were allowed to sleep for more than three consecutive hours, and that one time when the cooks had prepared lasaagna for us.
It was actually really sad that those werethe only big moments for me in the last eight months. Usually it would've been scoring with a girl or winning a barfight. Maybe even something vaguely realted to aceing one of my uncle's tests. I sighed while thinking back at my sad life. I closed my eyes, trying to take in as much sleep as possible and doing my best to ignore someone's vigorous use Jonah's pad.