For Life For Honor
Chapter I: Graduation Day
Private First Class Kevin Winters
9th Ranger Battalion, UNSC
August 19th, 2534 UNSC Calendar
"You've all done well these past few months, all of you are ready to take the fight straight to the Covenant. I have full affirmed faith that you all have become the best soldier you could possibly be." Drill Sergeant yells out to the crowd of brand new Rangers.
We had endured the second worst training the UNSC had to offer, nearly up there with the ODST's but not close enough. Me and my pal Holzhy had been paired together from the start when the Sergeant realized my talent for shooting and his talent for spotting and identifying targets.
After the graduation ended we are herded towards the gear check area where we receive our duffel bags full of our personal possessions from when we first arrived here along with full Ranger armor, each chest plate had the class of the person in it, painted to look as badass as possible.
I lift the duffel over my back and I walk with Holzhy towards the first ship that would take us to our first deployment. We board the Pelican along with all of the other Rangers who had been assigned to Oriole company, they each hold a squad designation sheet. Of course Holzhy and I don't have to worry about finding a specific squad, we'd be around running about and providing support for whatever squad needed it the most
As for the war, we're all excited to get our hands on our duty weapons to kick some ass, most of the men here had signed up because the Covenant had killed their family or friends, or maybe both. Either way we are all finding ourselves boarding the UNSCHeretic.
The Pelican lands in the hangar before we step out, shuffling with our bags to our assigned quarters while the rest of the Pelicans fly in, this ship looks ready for war, every small ship of every kind was prepped and ready, completely on standby for any sudden attacks and to provide cover for the thousands of soldiers boarding the massive ship.
The ship itself is an Orion class battle cruiser, the massive craft has already seen some action and while it can't hold as many ships and troops as other ships, it still manages to amaze when against Covenant capital ships, ripping through shields with its two or more MAC cannons and thousands of Archer missiles and nukes.
I find Holzhy in our room, he's already chosen his bed and is fast asleep on it, I can completely understand why. While we are supposed to just drop off our gear and get into our cryo stasis pods, a moment of sleep wouldn't hurt anybody.
I place my duffel bag on the floor and I climb into bed, putting my arms behind my head and quickly falling asleep.
An hour or so later I am woken up by a female voice yelling through the door.
"Holzhy! Winters!" She yells.
I jump in my sleep and I get up, opening the door. "Do I know you?" I ask her. She's at least a good four inches shorter than I am, but I immediately regret my word choice when I see the Captain symbol on her shirt.
She looks furious, as if someone had bitch slapped her and she couldn't do anything about it.
"Uhh.. Sorry ma'am, it's been a long couple of months." I say before saluting her, she salutes only for a moment before dropping it, which I do in the same.
"Listen here hotshot, I don't know what the fuck they teach you in Special Operations training but I sure as hell know you do not address a senior officer in the way you did." She snaps.
"Ma'am, in all seriousness you really don't have any authority over me." I say to her dryly. I can hear Holzhy starting to giggle behind me.
She grits her teeth before nodding. "Have fun getting killed out there hotshot." She says before turning briskly and leaving.
I close the door before I turn towards Holzhy and both of us begin to laugh our asses off.
"Holy fuck, you've got balls Kev." He says while laughing, wiping his eyes. "You know they can court marshal you for that, right?" He asks.
"Oh please, humanity is getting wiped out by homicidal aliens, I doubt a Ranger sniper is at the top of their bucket list." I say with a chuckle.
Another knock on the door.
I turn and open the door, this time my senior officer stands in the door. I snap to attention, saluting the man in front of me, who is about my height which is 6'1 on the dot.
"Winters, Captain Reyes just informed me that you disrespected her, is that true?" He asks. I can see said Captain's shadow by the door, her hands on her hips.
"Yeah." I say to him.
He looks shocked, as if he wasn't expecting me to tell the truth. "Well.. Don't let it happen again, okay?" He says before starting to walk off.
"Wa-.. Wait! Punish him! Punish him goddamnit!" Reyes yells at him.
"Captain, you realize we are three weeks out from deployment, I don't know what the Marines do in terms of punishments before deployments, but I like to keep the morale high." He says before walking away.
She steps into the doorway, slamming the door behind her as she pushes me back into the room.
"Whoa, I think this relationship is going along too fast there, Captain." I say with a grin on my face.
"Listen fuckface, you even step in the wrong direction on deployment I'll have you tried for fucking treason." She threatens.
"My name is Winters, not fuckface, and secondly I'm the top sniper of my class back on that planet we left behind, so if you threaten me and I get a call to help you, I could just as easily decide that civilians or Rangers are more important than your jar heads." I say to her. "Now please evacuate my room so that I can get ready for cryo."
She opens the door and storms off without a word. Holzhy and I have another laugh about it before getting into our cryo suits. We walk to the cryo tubes and take our places, getting inside of them before falling asleep.
It takes three weeks for them to wake us up, and then we are out of the pods, vomiting the cryo fluid they had given us to keep our organs from freezing over and dying before we're running to our quarters, excited to deploy.
I get changed into my undersuit before looking myself in the mirror, noticing the armor plating behind me. The helmet had been painted with the picture of an Oriole on both sides of it, an SRS sniper rifle resting on its wing.
I get into the metal boots before attaching the leg pieces, they secure themselves to the boots. I work my way up from my feet to my head, all of the armor securing itself until the finishing touch, the helmet. I put on the full faced helmet over my head, it secures itself to my chestplate before suddenly the armor becomes a lot lighter, the armor's weight reducer kicking in.
I polarize my visor before walking with Holzhy to the armory. We find our way to the Rangers section. I open up my locker and I grab my magnum from the top of it, sliding it into a holster on my hip. I then grab the BR55 from the locker, putting the four magazines I am provided into my belt's ammo carrier.
I walk over to the special weapons wall, grabbing an SRS99 from the rack and around ten magazines for it, putting them on a bandolier before putting the carrier around me. I sling the rifle over my back with my battle rifle.
I then watch Holzhy as he puts his MA5B over his back before he walks over to me, nodding nervously. We walk to the hanger before getting into a Pelican together, a squad of Marines surround us.
A video camera image pops up on my HUD, the face of my Commander pops up. "Winters, Holzhy, I'm gonna quickly brief you two. This planet is called Beras III, it holds two major continents and seven known islands, since teraforming it, it's had around ninety two percent water, so we'll be landing on the bigger continents and taking out the CCS Battlecruiser hovering above it, it's been deploying troops all day." He says. "Expect casualties, you'll be deploying on a hilltop seven hundred meters away from the objective, good luck." He says before disappearing.
The Pelican swoops down through the atmosphere, plasma erupting around us as we get closer to the battle cruiser. The Pelican lands and the Marines run out before it lifts off again, leaving Holzhy and I in the back.
The Pelican shakes as we approach our objective, we get dropped around four hundred meters from our hill. We run out of the back, the drop ship flies off unharmed. We dash to the hill and we lay down at the peak.
The massive Battlecruiser towers over us, it's shadow seeming to block out the sun. The ship is still deploying troops as I look through the sight, looking around at the ground.
"Winters, there's a Major bearing two seven two." He says to me. I find the Major, he seems to be directing the troops around him as I fire, the round forcing blue blood to fly on to the Grunt behind him.
The troops that were under him begin to panic, running back up the ramp, where they are executed by several Minors. We continue finding and killing Majors, as the Generals seemed too afraid to show their slimy faces in the crosshairs of my rifle.
I hear branches break behind us and then Holzhy is on his feet, spraying his rifle through the treeline as I begin to take down any alien that moves. The ground attack starts as a massive amounts of Marines and other ground elements run towards the cruiser.
The lines of UNSC troops are hit by a wall of plasma, troops on both sides falling as they die. I look around for squad leaders, taking more shots at them to cause more disruption.
Holzhy has already switched to his magnum, aliens behind us have begun to get angry. I drop my rifle momentarily, grabbing my BR55 and turning on to my back, my legs spread out in front of me as I fire down at the enemy.
A pile of dead aliens lays below us, the lines begin to break. The aliens start to run off from behind, clearly broken.
"I'm out of ammo!" Holzhy yells. I toss him my rifle, handing him a magazine whenever he needs it. Eventually the aliens disappear from behind us and Holzhy goes on sentry to make sure no more aliens sneak up.
The battle ahead is beginning to turn in the UNSC's favor as our forces push to the ramp of the cruiser. The ramp begins to retract and that's when it happens.
A massive arc of light hits the Battlecruiser, and then another one, and then another one. The UNSC forces begin to run from the massive cruiser as the top of it completely explodes, falling towards the ground at alarming speeds. It hits the ground, crushing a company of UNSC Marines and at least three battalions of Covenant forces.
The dust cloud that rises up spreads out over what seems like the entire continent, the ground shaking fiercely with explosions. I start laughing as I watch the behemoth explode, they had been so focused on our infantry that they hadn't even noticed the Heretic moving in for a MAC cannon run.
Now alls we have to do is hunt down the rest of the bastards.
I look through my scope again but the dust is too thick, and my heat vision scope is overwhelmed by the fire emerging from the Battlecruiser. I put my sniper rifle over my back and I grab my pistol from my holster. I nod to Holzhy and we begin to move down the hill, eyes scanning through the dust for contact.
To keep close to each other I grab the hook on the back of his armor, keeping my magnum positioned over his shoulder for stability purposes.
Through the dust I can hear chatter, an alien gurgling to another. I let off a shot in the general direction, the scream of a surprised Sangheli Minor is the last noise it makes. Unfortunately it's friend runs off, using the dust to its advantage.
"Winters, do you copy?" I hear in my radio.
"Yo, still here." I say.
"Good to hear, we've pretty much gotten scrambled up by the dust, but we've been promised an evacuation at a town around four klicks from our position, make sure you're there." He says before logging off the net.
I nod to Holzhy as a waypoint is set on our HUDs, we begin a laugh jog to get there, but we lost so much ammo that we started a dead on sprint towards the objective as our gear was much lighter than earlier.
The dust begins to clear and that's when we see the town our Commander had been talking about. While it is fairly large, it looks dead, almost like everyone had just left everything behind and made a run for the evacuation shuttles. Or all of them are very smart about hiding.
The town doesn't look damaged either, every building still intact, cars still parked on the sides of roads.
"I thought towns were always the first targets.." I say to Holzhy quietly.
"They must've found something more important." He says with a shrug. "Why does it matter, they're dead aren't they-."
"Mayday mayday! All units be advised unknown amounts of Covenant have broken through the defensive line! Official count coming in now.. Oh my god.. We have confirmed reports of six CCS Battlecruisers, one supercarrier, and eight Corvettes." A voice says over emergency comm.
I look up and I watch as several pods make a freefall towards the city. Holzhy and I keep sprinting towards the town, those aren't ODST pods.
We make our way into the town, quickly finding our way to one of many skyscrapers within it. We step into the stairway, running as fast as our legs will take us up the stairs. We reach the top within minutes where we set up our sniper post.
"This is Overwatch, we've got a position set up in grid 104, 36, over." I say over the radio, receiving multiple replies of 'copy' or 'roger'.
The pods smash into buildings and spin around before hitting the roads, causing the polycrete underneath to become cracked. Elites come out of the pods, each of them wearing the special forces armor.
They all assemble before turning on their cloaks, disappearing into thin air.
"Holzhy, watch our back with thermals on." I tell him before switching my own thermals on, the Elites are nowhere to be seen, so I assume that they have gone into the building we are currently on top of.
The only weapons we actually have ammo for is my SRS99, my magnum, and Holzhy's magnum. I spot more Special operations Elites moving around, I fire a single shot once they line up correctly, taking two down with the one bullet before firing again, this time missing but sending them all scrambling for cover.
I hear Holzhy's magnum go off, I flip around on to my back and blindly fire a shot, sending an Elite toppling off of the roof, a stream of purple blood following it in its wake.
I jump up as an Elite grabs my neck, forcing me to drop my rifle. Holzhy is punched so hard that his visor cracks, putting him on his ass.
The Elite who is holding me deploys his energy sword, holding it close to my neck. "I will avenge the fallen." It growls.
"How about you throw me off the roof with him, squid." I manage to choke out. The Elite laughs and picks up Holzhy too, throwing us both off of the roof.
While we fall I turn to my buddy, fist bumping him before we deploy our standard issue Ranger jump packs. I fly back up to the roof, throwing my middle finger up into the Elite's face before blowing a hole through it with my magnum.
The other Elites around him take up positions around the roof and begin to fire at us as we land. I grab my rifle and fire several more hip fire shots, taking out an Elite every couple of shots.
We find ourselves jumping off of the roof again when we realized that we are outnumbered. We fire the packs a couple of times on the way down before we touch down. We start running up the street, using our heat vision to spot any cloaked Elites around.
I aim my rifle around the corner of a sidewalk, at least fifteen heat signatures lay in front of me.
"UNSC! Hold fire!" A woman yells in front of us.
I depolarize my visor, nearly bursting out in laughter. "Hello Reyes." I say to the woman in front of me, noticing the scared look on her face. "How's it going?"
"Fuck off Winters." She says while leading us and her Marines into a hotel.
"So what're we looking at right now?" I ask the Captain.
"They're still hovering around the area the Battlecruiser crashed at, it looks like they're looking for something." She says quietly, looking around at her Marines.
"Listen, I don't know if you guys know a way out of here.." She says to us. "We've taken fifty five percent casualties, we need evacuation but the comm is offline." She explains.
"We're out of ammo and in the dark, just like you." I say to her.
"We have plenty of ammo, go rearm." She says before sitting down on a small couch, taking her helmet off and letting her shortish hair fall to her shoulders.
Holzhy and I walk to a worn out looking Marine with several ammo bags sitting at his feet. We open up the bags and take several magazines for our rifles and pistols.
I personally take five more magazines for my BR-55, two more for my SRS99, and one more for my magnum.
We walk to the roof where I lean against the half wall with my rifle sticking up in the air. I watch Holzhy eat a shitty UNSC standard issue granola bar with one hand, his other holding his rifle.
I look up in the sky at the fleet of Covenant ships hanging above us like stars, their sleek elegance astounding me.
I watch them engage another UNSC ship, a smaller Halcylon class, the side explodes as it begins drifting towards the ground.
"It's falling from the sky.." I whisper.
Authors note
Oh god, I'm back.
Let me start off with the fact that I am really sorry. I didn't want to end Sins, and I felt awful doing it, but I still have no heart to continue it, so I'm starting a new one that will be much better with only this character's perspective, maybe every couple of chapters or so I'll put it in a new perspective.
I hope you all enjoyed this chapter and I hope you're as excited for this as I am!
Read on
-Rsk