May 13, 2534 (UNSC Calendar)/
Camp Mars IX, Mars, Sol System
The rain was hitting us hard. It was almost sideways and it stung whenever it hit my unprotected face and forearms. Yet still I managed to feel like I was in an oven. Oh Mars, you and your funky weather.
"Movement right," Ramsey warned.
Me and Jonah shifted our aim to the right, the rest of the squad didn't bother.
We were in one of the more rocky parts of Mars, so there were plenty of places to hide. The rain wasn't helping either.
I saw muzzle flashes and I dropped. I could hear the training rounds whistle overhead. Jonah opened fire while everyone went to cover. We were playing a simple game of elimination. The last squad to survive was the one that won. The only problem was that there were six squads all fighting each other. It was some sort of massive free-for-all.
By now there were only ten people per barracks, so there were sixty persons in teams of ten shooting at each other. Right now we were under fire by one of those teams.
I skidded to a large boulder while paint splashed all around me. Our squad managed to take cover from the ambush intact. I looked around to see that there were only six of us in here, the remaining four were probably flanking our attackers.
"Draw their fire," ordered Jonah, our de-facto squad leader.
We did so, firing in short bursts at the muzzle flashes and keeping our heads down. We did this for around five minutes before we heard the cries of surprise from our attackers. We rushed their position while they were in chaos by our flanking fireteam's manouver. Before seconds they were all knocked out by our tranquilizer-infused paint.
I nodded at my squad mates. We were clad in a mix of Army and Marine armor, they were old leftovers that our captain gave us for practice. It was more than good enough for the use we gave it. Jonah did a quick check of our squad and was pleased to find that there were no "wounded."
I smiled to myself and we moved on. It was the second day of this war game, we hadn't gotten any intel on the status of the other squads, but we knew that Five was done for, we had only just done that ourselves. Four was at 30% strength at least, and One was two men down.
We moved up to a position that had been marked in a rough map of the area. It was an abandoned building on top of a small rocky hill, it would make a perfect position for the duration of the excercise.
We arrived at our objective a few minutes after we had killed Squad Five. We checked every rock twice to prevent booby traps from taking out some of our numbers. When we were satisfied that the place was clear we set up inside the small building. It had only one floor but it had some broken windows that were quite nice for shooting. I noticed that the walls outside and inside of the building were covered in red and yellow paint from training rounds. Apparently we weren't the only ones with the great idea of setting up here.
My thoughts were proven right when two hours later we fell under attack by Squad One. We could handle them, since there were only eight of them and they were surprised to find us already there.
I aimed at the men from inside the house. I didn't shoot just yet, I was looking for the man in charge. I ultimately found him, at least I thought it was him since he was the only one shouting stuff at the other ones. Instants after I had seen him, three training rounds slammed into his right temple, knocking him out.
One fell into confusion as we peppered their position. It didn't last long though, since a moment later our machine gunner, a skinny fellow whose name I managed to keep forgetting was hit in the back of the head.
I turned around and sprinted to the other side of the house, there was another squad charging. I cursed. I opened fire on them, bringing one down and getting another in the leg. The rest took cover, the one with the wounded leg didn't, but I didn't shoot him, instead I waited for someone to go help him. It didn't take long for an idiot to take the risk, I shot them both with two bursts.
"Frank! What the hell is going on?" asked Jonah.
I was slightly annoyed at being called that way, but fore some reason no one could pronounce either my name or last name completely right, so they settled for the english version of my name.
"It's the fucking Hungarians," I spat through my teeth.
I was pissed, those guys were fucking hardcore. They had managed to kill our gunner, which in turn allowed the guys from One to shoot down two other of our men. It turned into a desperate situation at that point. We were down to seven men, but that didn't last for long, soon it was only me, Ramsey, and Jonah left. Ramsey took out the rest of the members of One before being hit himself by one of the Hungarians.
Jonah closed the door and placed a chair on it. He looked at me and then looked around, he was unsure as to what he should do. When it finally seemed like he had found an option the worst imaginable thing happened.
"Ok," he started. "Frank, here's what we'll do…" his chest exploded in red as a round made contact with his armor.
"Ouch," was all he had time to say before fainitng.
"Sniper rifles, fucking sniper rifles!" I screamed at no one in particular. "No one gave us sniper rifles." Even as I said that, I had traced the vapor trail back to a small ridge 700 meters away from me. I spotted the sniper and took him out with three quick bursts. He hadn't even bothered with cover.
There were now only three Hungarians left. They were nowhere to be seen. I was now scared. It's not a nice feeling when you're facing superior forces by yourself, even if said superior forces are only armed with high speed paint.
Before I had time to even think, my world went white and loud as hell.
"Flashbangs!" I yelled as I blindly fired my rifle at the general direction of the door. "No one gave us fucking flashbangs!"
As the pain in my eyes and ears receded, I heard the clicking sound of my rifle signaling that my gun was empty. The ammo counter in the back of the carrying handle was a good indicadtor as well.
I opened my eyes and was surprised to see two Hungarians on the floor, splattered with paint and another one kneeling, with his hands covering his head. It was Tarkov.
I smiled as I drew my sidearm. I raised it and right before I had time to fire Tarkov threw his rifle at my face. I dropped my pistol in reflex and suddenly all the wind was knocked out of me as the wiry kid tackled me. He punched me twice in the jaw before pulling out his knife. I punched him in the nose and grabbed his knife hand. If that training knife touched any vital part of my body, its sensors would immediately declare me as dead.
I had to use all my strength to keep him from stabbing me. He punched me twice before switching his free hand to push down on the knife. Now it was only inches from my neck. I started panicking. I flayled my legs like a madman and managed to make Tarkov loose some of his balance. I immediatelly took off my helmet with my free hand and slammed it into his face as hard as I could. He collapsed. I stood up and threw my helmet at him, then I grabbed my gun and emptied the whole magazine into his chest.
That was it. I had won.
"That's right you mothers!" I yelled out triumphantly. I left the building while kicking and punching the air in triumph. I even did a cartwheel. I was whooping and yelling out insults and challenges to the unconscious troopers.
I don't think I had ever felt that happy in my life. I fact, it wasn't until many years later that something I deemed happier happened.
I was ecstatic. I had managed to knock out most of the Hungarians by myself even when they had surprised us from the rear. Granted, we should've posted some sort of sentry to prevent that from happening, but I had still won. I turned around a rock only to find myself face to face with one of the soldiers from Three. I knew that because of the large white three painted onto his chest piece. Now that I think of it, I shouldn't have been so surprised, after all there was absolutely no information about them. My smile faded from my face into what must've been record time.
I immediatelly raised my hands.
"Mercy?" I said, not really expecting any.
The man just smiled while he shook his head, and ever so slowly he raised his MA37, aimed it at my chest and fired a single round. The last thing I remember was him and another man from Squad Three looking over me.
I woke up next day in the medical bay. I sighed with disappointment.
The doctor was sitting in a chair next to me, reading some book about poetry. I sat up and shook my head.
"Where is…"
"Mess," he cut me off. He hadn't even raised his head.
Mean doctor.
I walked out of bed, put my armored boots on and carried the rest of my armor towards the mess hall.
I heard roaring laughter before I even got in. Well this can't be good. Turned out it wasn't good. Not for me at least.
For some reason, there was footage of me being shot. It was from the guy that tagged me vantage point. He must've had a helmet cam in working order.
"No one can beat Francisco the Great!" I heard myself screaming like a maniac.
I facepalmed at how stupid I sounded. I'm never going to speak again.
The phrase was welocomed with laughter from everyone in the mess hall. That meant everyone in the whole camp was laughing at me, drill sergeants, captain, and other staff included.
A man turned around and called out to the others to turn.
"Here be the one and only!"
Everyone laughed while I was being shot on camera.
"Ha ha, very funny," I said while sitting down.
They all teased me for a while, but I mostly ignored them while I ate my chicken. It tasted like plastic, but it was better than a piece of goop that tasted like plastic. After a while their jibs subsided and they went back to their business.
"You'll never hear the end of this you know," said Ramsey as he sat down next to me.
"I am aware thank you very much."
He laughed and ate his own meal.
The captain, who had left a few instants after I came in walked back into the mess hall with a hurried pace.
He went towards the holopad that had been playing my shameful moments from yesterday. I thought he was going to start playing it again, but luckily he pulled out the chelmet chip and tuned the holopad to a inserted another chip.
An ONI officer popped up on the holopad. A very good looking ONI officer at that.
"Captain, I appreciate the intention, but I do not want to watch this with other people around," said one marine from Three.
"Shut up!" yelled Bulldog. The soldier complied.
"It's not porn you idiot," I could hear another man of Three saying.
There was an audible chuckle amongst us recruits.
"This is a message from ONI to HIGHCOM in Australia and Reach," explained the captain.
That made sense, people were a lot more likely to pay attention to a pretty gril giving a debriefing than to any other person. I stopped my mind from wandering off and payed attention to the broadcast.
"As you all know," the blonde officer started, "we are fighting a war against a collective race of aliens that refer to themselves as The Covenant. The war has been fought against them ever since 2525, when the First Battle of Harvest took place. Since the last nine years they have managed to glass most of the Outer Colonies…"
What? We had never heard any of this before.
"…some of which have been abandonded and some of which have seen terrible human casualties, both civlian and military-wise."
The proyection of the blonde woman switched to recording of a battle somewhere far away from here.
There were approximately thirty marines, regulars, fighting a small group of ten aliens, there wasn't only one race, but four different ones.
The battle paused momentarily and the camera zoomed in on a smallish alien with some sort of large backpack. It looked slightly pigish and it's skin was gray.
"This is called an Unggoy, that's the name they give themselves, they are colloquialy known as grunts. They serve as the Covenant's cannon fodder. They are physycally weak and are considered cowards, however, in large numbers they can be quite deadly."
The camera panned out as the battle resumed and quickly zoomed in on another alien. This one looked like a bird. It was carrying a purple rifle.
"The Kig-Jar, or jackals, as they are more commonly known are excellent marksmen and often serve as scouts."
The camera switched to another jackal, this one carrying some sort of energy shield in it's right arm.
"They also serve as light infantry roles sometimes," was all the ONI woman said.
The battle went on and suddelnt two marines went flying thanks to a green explosion. The camera followed the trail to a pair of gigantic monsters. They had shields and it looked like their weapons were quirurgically implanted into their bodies.
Talk about commitment to the cause.
"This are Mgalekgolo," she pronounced it muh-gah-leg-olo, "they are otherwise known as hunters. They serve the role of heavy infantry and are also devastating in close combat."
Her point was made as the hunter jumped forward and slammed a marine at least thirty feet in the air with its shield.
"Their armor is incredibly strong and they are only vulnerable in the unprotected parts of their bodies. It is advised to neutralize them with heavy weaponry."
That being said, the hunter was blown up by a SPANKr rocket. While its partner howled in anger it was blown up as well.
The aliens in the battle were now reduced to five.
The camera then zoomed into a tall alien that looked sort of lizardy and quite puny when compared to the hunters, but it didn't make it any less intimidating.
"Finallly, we've got the Shangeili, or Elite. As thier name suggests, they are the most skilled soldiers that the Covenant has. They generally serve as squad commanders and apparently hold most, if not all of the higher ranks within the Covenant military."
While the officer spoke, the elite fired pink rounds from a weapon that looked like the rifle the first jackal had been holding, but with pink spikes protruding from it.
"Elites on the battlefield always sport energy shields that can stop proyectiles. It fired away and his armor seemed to flicker with golden lighting whenever he was hit. After a few seconds of concentrated fire the elite was brought down.
"Elites are incredibly tough and skilled, they should be handled with the utmost care and with extreme prejudice."
The video then went on to describe many of the Covenant's weaponry and vehicles. I was particularly impressed by a pistol that fired pink crystals, whenever to many cristals bunched up together they would explode in a majestic display of fireworks. The result was not pretty. At least that's what the pictures told us.
After rambling for about an hour, the ONI officer finally bid her farewell and the video ended.
"Gentlemen, the video might not say so, but we are fighting a loosing war," stated the captain. His face inescrutable.
"This means your training just got harder."
No one said anything, if anything we snapped at attention and saluted.
"Sir!"
Our training did get harder. We weren't only forced to do live-fire excercises, we were also forced to memorize the names, roles, strong and weakpoints of all aliens in the Covenant. Hell, we even had to take some random tests every now and then. We were still missing a month from our training, and our sqaud numbers were now reduced to about eight men each. I would've said barracks numbers, but we could barely fill them, so no point in wasting ink for the story.
We did different missions for our training, including VIP retrieval and guarding, we did recon, infiltration, sabotage, we practically did almost everything.
Our superiors also saw fit to give us crash courses on pretty much every single vehicle that the UNSC had in posession. We were taught how to drive warthogs, scorpions, rhinos, hornets, pelicans, and my personal favorite, mongooses. Or mongeese, whatever the plural of mongoose is.
In addition to that, we also did some simulations on captured covenant vehicles. There were few of those, so the information provided by the simulators was sketchy at best, still, it was better than nothing.
I was driving away from an "enemy base" when the mongoose me and Jonah were in hit a rock. Fuck.
"It's gonna slip!" I yelled as I slowed hit the brakes.
It was no good, the ATV tipped sideways and Jonah and I jumped off before it could land on top of us.
Yeah, I was kidding when I said it was my personal favorite.
I jumped up, blood flowing from my unprotected arm and legs. Jonah stood up equally quickly with similar injuries. We pushed the mongoose upright again and Jonah secured the package, which was essentialy a piece of hollow steel.
We drove on as fast as we could. The other team would no doubt be chasing us, and we had no time to spare, since me and Jonah had absolutely no backup.
Who the hell sends a two man team into a heavily fortified base to retrieve a piece of crap? They could've at least made the packaged a box with something intereting inside of it, to motivate us or something.
I still wasn't entirely sure how me and Jonah managed to sneak past thirty other recruits without them noticing us, grabbing a guarded piece of metal and then leaving before anyone knew what was happening. Jonah's timed bombs on the opposite side of the enemy base probably had to do something with our success.
After a five minute drive we made it into our evac point. We were slightly early, so no reason to worry about the pelican not being here.
"Over there," Jonah motioned.
I saw the pelican coming here to pick us up, but all of a sudden our radios crackled to life.
"Oh no, we have been hit. We won't be able to land, we need you to fall back to the following coordinates."
The man speaking had been Skinny, I could clearly make out a completely intact pelican as it flew overhead. Skinny's bad voice acting didn't help in any way to lighten my mood.
I checked the coordinates only to find out they were located all the way back to the enemy base and then some miles further on in the opposite direction. I kicked a rock.
"Wait, look over there," Jonah said, again, having eyes that could see through lead.
I glanced in the direction and saw a plume of dust. I aimed at it with my rifle and zoomed in. It was a single mongoose from the base defenders. Only one guy on top.
I immediately got an idea.
"Here help me tip over the mongoose," I asked Jonah.
A few seconds later we were hidden behind a boulder about fifty meters from our upturned mongoose. The enemy scout arrived and stopped. He stepped down from the vehicle.
Unforgivable. I thought.
"Amen to that," agreed Jonah.
I really have to watch my mouth.
I fired a burst at the man and watched as he collapsed. Me and Jonah then pushed the ATV into an upright position and did a two out of three rock-paper-scissors contest.
I won, so it meant that Jonah was to be bait. He gave me the package as he grumbled something about cheating and hopped on the now unoccupied mongoose the stupid soldier from the enemy squad had left.
He drove straight back towards the enemy base while I took a route that would circumvent it.
Three hours later I was on board the pelican with Gabuka and Skinny whooping my ass for sacrificing a fellow squadmate to complete the mission. Apparently he had been splattered with paint by the enemy guys as soon as he approached their base. Despite having suffered a 50% casualty rate, our mission had been accomplished. We had successfully returned our box to command.
Training went on like normal for three weeks. A whole lot more intense than before, but the prize defenitely went to our training jump. The remaining 34 of us had been flown up to the sky to a station designed to provide us with a platform to launch from. We had been on simulations before, but nothing beat the thrill, the fright, and the panic of our first jump. Even combat jumps weren't as intense.
We had been stripped of our weapons and armor, we would be jumping with only fatigues on. I wasn't experienced enough to know if that was a good or bad thing.
While we were in the aisle where the SOEIV pods were located, Captain von Klaus stepped in the room.
We snapped at attention.
"Gentlemen, today is the firs time you will experience the most thrilling ride in all the known universe. Today you are going to become real men!" he started.
"Today, you become ODST's… and how will you do that?" he asked.
"We go feet first, sir!" we answered, reciting the ODST's creed.
We proceeded to occupy our pods. I stood there nervously for a few seconds before I heard a banging on the walls. I banged back twice. The "ready" signal.
I looked up at the pod's countdown system. It went like this: red, yellow, green.
I felt my stomach lurch upwards as the pod was launched from the space station.
I could see Mars very clearly from here. I could also see about a dozen other pods all around me. This part was actually enjoyable, I was in zero gee, which was always a funny situation to be in.
Then it startd getting hotter. Like a lot hotter. While I was there, leaving some very visible wetspots on my clothing, I thought back at the past year of training. I remembered how mean our sergeants had seemed at first, how mean they had remained throughout the year, and how mean they still were.
"Deploy chutes!" yelled an automated alarm system. I pressed the appropiate button. I could see the red landscape of mars coming to me at incredible speed. I felt the pod lurch slightly.
"Deploy rockets," the voice ordered again.
"Gee, you don't have to be such a meanie," I said as I complied.
The pod slowed down considerably and I closed my eyes as it slammed into the ground. I managed to keep myself stable and pressed the button that opened the door, it flew away.
I left my pod and saw that all the other pods had already landed. Marines were out of the SOEIV's high-fiving each other and whooping triumphant war cries, except for one, who was throwing up his lunch.
A few minutes later a pelican appeared overhead.
"Congratulations soldiers, you are now ODST's," said the captain, smiling.
We yelled in triumph.