Disclaimer: Alright this is my first fanfic guys so please don't slam me too hard. Please read and review. I do not own Halo though I own the characters. Without further ado let the story begin.

Chapter One: Wake up Call

0825 Hours, May 19, 2545 (Military Calendar) /

Central Transdanubia, Reach, Epsilon Eridani System

My name is Jacoby Rex. I am a twenty three year old Caucasian male with dreams. One of those dreams was to become a member of the United Nations Space Command's Marine Corps. I accomplished that dream, joining up when I was seventeen in 2339 and became a Marine Mortar man with the rank of PFC. Over the course of six years and three different tours of duty fighting on worlds such as New America II, Cheribdess and Miridem.

Over that time I became what many would call a "veteran" of this war. Hell war, this wasn't a war. It was nothing but a stalling of genocide. Ever since 2525 a religious hegemony of Alien species known as The Covenant had been slowly twiddling away at Humanities very existence.

It was the same thing every time they found another human world. They would battle with the Fleet defending the world and usually win. If there weren't any MAC cannons defending the orbit, they would move in with their capital ships towards the planets surface. They would unload their ground troops upon the planet and attack the local populace.

They would battle with the UNSC units on the ground. Now most times on the ground the UNSC could hold its hold against the Covenants ground forces, but this didn't matter as the Covvies, the affectionate nickname used by many UNSC personnel, would simply fall back to their ships in space and glass the planet with their orbital guns.

Alas, this was the case with most engagements with the Covenant for the past twenty years. Humanity was living on greatly borrowed time; it was only a matter of time before Earth was discovered and everyone knew it. But if humanity was going to die then I was going to go down fighting. That's why I joined the Marine Corp.

"War is hell," that's what my dad told me when I told him of my ambitions to become a marine back when I was sixteen. "Well I would rather go through hell fighting then experience it without anyway to defend myself." After that my dad had a newfound respect for me.

Sadly both he and my mom perished along with most of the other inhabitants of Ilias III when the Covenant came to pay them a visit in 2540. I had been lucky enough to get off the planet in time.

But that was the past and I have to look forward to the new. New currently was becoming an Orbital Drop Shock Trooper or ODST for short. The ODST were the Elite Shock troops of the UNSC. They were the closest thing any normal human being could be to a Spartan II. They were renowned for their use of Human Entry Vehicles to land on a planet and engage the enemy.

I had dreamt of being one ever since I first saw them advertised on the television when I was younger. It showed ODST dropping onto the planets surface in their HEV pods and then a trooper would exit the pod with his weapon raised. Then the slogan, "The Few and the Proud" would appear. The slogan had originally been used for the US Marine Corps hundred of years ago, but within the last two hundred or so years the Marine Corps swelled to such a point that they outnumbered any of the other branches by quite a bit. So the few became the many.

After finally being accepted as an ODST after applying three times prior. I quickly packed my bags said my farewells to my old squad members and got onto the nearest ship heading towards the Planet Reach.

Now I was on a stuffy bus heading to Camp Geronimo. There were twenty six others on the bus. Their age ranged from probably seventeen to about thirty. There were a couple guys whose hair was beginning to gray and another who was balding. I subconsciously put a hand to my brown hair just to make sure it was there.

I watched as the vast number of trees became nothing but open plain. It continued like this for another half hour until the bus came to a slow stop. We had reached our destination. A few others of the younger men pushed and shoved to see out the windows.

"Oh cool," one said.

"This is going to be fun," another chimed. I shook my head. Poor bastards didn't know what was in store for them. Well truthfully I didn't know as well, but we all had been through at least marine boot camp so we had a feeling what was going to go down.

"Haha little teens are going to have one helluva time," The voice came from a red headed man with a handsome face about my age sitting in the seat opposite of mine. He scooted over to the edge and extended a hand, "Simon O'Reily."

I grasped the hand and shook firmly, "Jacoby Rex." O'Reily grinned flashing a group of pearly whites, "Rex, that's one helluva last name." Despite him using the word helluva in both of his first two sentences I couldn't help but like the man.

"Yeah, it either goes two ways with me," I admitted, "People say my last name is cool and leave it at that or they pick on me making dinosaur noises behind my back during class."

"Tough childhood?" O'Reily guessed. I nodded, "You have no idea."

Any further conversation was cut short by the doors leading onto the bus hissing open. A drill sergeant in green camo fatigues strolled onto the bus. He was wearing the signature Campaign Hat that was associated with drill sergeants.

"Welcome to Camp Geronimo," he said in a surprisingly cheery voice, "Will you guys ….Get your sorry asses off of this bus!" That's the drill instructor I know. We all quickly got our belongings and hurried out the bus. We congregated under a flag pole bearing the flag of the UNSC and a flag of the Helljumpers.

Two more Drill instructors came upon us like carrion birds and began shouting at us to move our asses. The Drill Sergeant on the bus, whom I assumed was the leader swaggered to the front of our bewildered group. With a smirk he said, "Welcome maggots. You may all come from different branches of the military, Army, Navy, or hell even the good ole' Marine Corps, but that ends now. From this moment on you are nothing, but don't fret there is a chance that you could become one of the greatest things to ever live. You can become an Orbital Drop Shock Trooper. Ain't nothing out there that can best us and only after you complete your training can I even think of calling you Helljumpers," He seemed to pause to let that sink in before continuing, "Also while you are here you will show the utmost amount of respect to me and my fellow drill sergeants. We are judge and jury, got it?"

"Yessir Drill Sergeant!" we all shouted in unison. The drill sergeant smiled.

We were led to the barracks where we were told to drop our things. "This is your bunk," The Drill Sergeant; who liked to be referred to as Sarge, informed us patting one of the wooden bunk beds, "You will sleep here, that's it."

We nodded and began to unpack our things.

There were over a hundred twenty trainees in my class. And they split it up so that there were twenty recruits to each drill sergeant. Of course I get stuck with the Sarge.

First thing we went over was basic weapons use. We all had been through the mill of basic so we knew how to handle a gun, but the Drill Sergeants made us run through it again anyways.

That's pretty much how the first whole month went. Simply refreshing ourselves with the basics of being an infantry man. Holding your rifle correctly, how to clean it and even we practiced shooting.

That was my favorite part. We learned to shoot from the different positions, just like in basic. There was the standing position, the prone position and even the sitting position. We each took turns firing from the different positions at targets a hundred meters down range. Mostly everyone got the standing shots on target and about half that were able to hit the targets from the prone position, but only three people were able to hit the targets from the sitting position and I wasn't one of them.

Sitting while firing just felt awkward and in my six years of fighting the Covvies I had never fired from this position. Although I was a mortar man and not in every battle did I fire my gun. Despite not hitting the target while sitting I could while standing and going prone and I was proud of myself for it, though my DS was less enthusiastic. "What the hell Rex!" He would shout, his face turning red, "My momma could shoot better then you… and she's partially blind!"

Yup, after that the Sarge took a "liking" to me. He would get on my case about marching and how I held my gun. But it wasn't like he only got on my case. He also seemed to take a liking to disrupting O'Reilys' life as well. The fiery red head, who I guessed had some Irish in him. The Sarge had decided after I accidentally dropped my gun on a march that I will stand under the flag pole all afternoon reciting "I am a bad boy and dropped my rifle." Now usually this would be an humiliating thing to be alone reciting the same thing over and over again while platoons of trainees on march strolled but I wasn't alone for too long. After about an hour the Sarge returned with O'Reily in tow.

"Rex, looks like you are going to have some company this afternoon," He turned to the red headed man and pointed at the spot next to me, "Well you Irish prick get your ass over there." O'Reily did as he was told, mumbling obscenities under his breath as he did. He placed his rifle across his chest and began to recite the same thing I had been reciting for the past hour.

After the Sarge was a good distance away I turned towards O'Reily, "What are you in for?" O'Reily turned to me showing that toothy smile he had before, "Tried to knap me some more oranges from the mess hall, but the DS caught me."

We shared a small laugh at that one, but quickly subsided when one of the other Drill Sergeants patrolled pass. After that one had gone they continued their conversation. "So do you really think we will become ODST's?" O'Reily inquired squinting up at the afternoon sun.

I turned to the man and smiled, "Hell yeah we are. We didn't come all the way out here and take crap from guys like the Sarge just to quit." O'Reily chuckled, "yeah." There was an awkward silence for a minute before O'Reily turned to me and said, "Make me a promise bro?" I nodded.

"Make me a promise that we will get through this," he went on, "We will get through this together and become some of the finest Helljumpers ever to go feet first." He extended a hand. I smiled grasping it firmly, "You got it."

With that a friendship had been forged. O'Reily and I tried our best persevering over every thing that ODST training had to offer. After about two weeks of weapons training and daily marches through reaches Ardennes Forest we finally began our serious ODST training.

This was no easy task. We had to first adapt our selves to the smaller units the ODST usually went around in and we had to adapt to tactics used by the Helljumpers.

We learned to pilot most vehicles of the UNSC. You name it, Warthogs, Pelicans, Falcons, Scorpions; hell we even learned how to pilot one of those big Main Battle Tanks, the M1A8 Bronco. Then, much to our surprise we were then instructed in piloting and using some Covenant tech.

"Seems the Covvies left some of their shit just lying around," the Sarge joked, "And being the good Samaritans we are couldn't help but pick it up." There was a lot of stuff ranging to small arms like the plasma pistol and rifle to some of their big shit like Wraith tanks and what not.

One day, while we were being instructed in the ways of operating a Type-32 Rapid Assault Vehicle or 'Ghost', a young man who had been a merchant marine prior, questioned "Why the boys at research and development hadn't been able to manipulate the weapons and dish them out for our own use?"

The Sarge simply turned and said, "That's classified." After that he made us go on a three mile long hike up Mount Geronimo; the resident hilltop we had been running up and down daily since we got here, because we had "asked too many questions." Lets just say we were slightly angry at that young ex merchant marine that night and he got a nice little blanket party that night in the barracks as a result.

ODST training is some of the toughest training you could ever go through in the UNSC. Second only to Spartan II training and as a result many hopeful trainees drop out. From our original number of a hundred twenty by the time we were done it had dwindled down to about half that number.

But O'Reily and I made it and after some three months of the most grueling work I had ever been through we were finally done. There was no public awards ceremony, it was just a simply congratulations and a good ole' fashion group Oorah. We were given ranks. I was surprisingly demoted to Lance Corporal. Although this wasn't that big of a deal, I heard of entire Army, Navy and Marine officers joining the Helljumpers and being demoted to Private. Me just going down one pay grade was not that big a deal. At least I could say I was an ODST now. We were the best of the best, though we were only human.

Later that day from graduation, we were marched through the hot humid summer night towards a cluster of tents at the far end of the camp. I had failed to ever notice this tent city on my three month stay in Geronimo, so I assumed that they had recently been placed.

"This is where you will be assigned to your respective units that you will fight in the war with" the Sarge informed. I could have sworn I heard a sober tone coming from his voice, "Some of you will be infantry, others weapons platoon. Maybe some will be pilots, but whatever you are just remember the training you received here and everything will be okay."

"Yes sir Sarge!" we uttered in union. Even though this man was responsible for much of the misery I went through on my three months here, I couldn't help but love the guy. He was like a father figure too me and it slightly broke my heart to leave him.

We were marched quickly to a lighted oblong hut, with a door at either end. We stood at one end while an N.C.O called our names.

"Rex."

I detached myself from my platoon, ending, in that motion, my association and friendship with the majority of the men who had been my comrades for eleven weeks. Including O'Reily, I would especially miss him.

I walked quietly into the indicated hut. An enlisted man motioned for me to sit down opposite his desk. There were three or four others in ODST BDU's that were similarly "interviewing" other new arrivals. He asked me some personal questions rapidly, interested only in my answers, ignoring me. Name serial number, rifle number, etc.

"What did you do in the regs?" He asked, referring to my previously being in the regular Marine Corp.

"I was a mortar man, assistant gunner."

"Alright, 9th Battalion. Go out front and tell the sergeant."

And that was that. I was now part of the 9th ODST battalion part of the 105th Division. I had heard some little about them. They had been in some tough shit since the beginning of the war. Fighting on Harvest as part of Admiral Cole's counterattack force. And they had been on New Constantinople and barely got out with their battalion in tact. To be part of them was an honor and I would have it any other way.

I emerged from the lighted hut and said "9th Battalion" proudly, to a cluster of sergeants who had been standing there. One of them motioned for me to go stand with a group of men; I took my place among them. About a half dozen other groups were being formed.

"9th Battalion," I heard someone else mutter behind me. I turned to see who might possibly be in the same battalion as me and was surprised to see O'Reily making his way over to my group.

"Look what the cat dragged in," I said, giving my friend a clap on the shoulders. O'Reily smiled, "Yup, I'm surprised we got the same unit." He paused before going on, "We made it Rex, we really did." I couldn't help but smile back, "Yes O'Reily we are finally going to be real ODST."

At a command we were ordered into trucks. I piled in with my new comrades and the driver started the motor. We rolled off down the bumpy road to our deployment zone. With a sudden stop I was finally home.

Home being Fox Company, 9th Battalion, 105th Shock Troops Division. I was an infantry man and that was a big difference from being a mortar man, but training had prepared us and you know the saying, every marine a rifleman.

The process of enrollment in F Company hardly differed from the method of our "assignment" the night before, except that we run through a tent occupied by Captain Montgomery, the high nosed beady eyed commander of F Company. He assigned O'Reily and I to the same squad and we were off. As we left the tent I turned to O'Reily, "Dude this is just the beginning, we really are about to be ODST."

We got acquainted with our new squad and were surprised to find more then half were newbies. Guys who was nothing more higher then a Corporal. About half the Company was new. The N.C.O's who were the veterans of the Company were referred to as the Old Breed by us New Breed ODST. I felt comfortable with everyone and felt right at home.

Well I better have felt at home because for the rest of my UNSC career, all of these people would be my family.