Halo: Return
Chapter 1: Genesis
"Hey pea-brain!" Victor Mancelli called out as Derrik walked past. Derrik ignored him and kept walking. But Victor wouldn't give up that easily, he never did, "I'm talking to you pea-brain!" he said, running up to Derrik and giving him a shove from behind.
Derrik stumbled, but didn't fall over, this had happened too many times for it to be effective. He turned around, "What's your malfunction, Victor?" he asked defiantly.
"Your face." Victor replied smugly.
"What about it?" Derrik said as he balled up his fists, the final straw, he thought, the one that breaks the camel's back.
"It's… uh… lame." Victor countered weakly, no one had ever stood up to him like this, especially not Derrik.
"It's lame?" Derrik said, "What kind of description is that?"
"You can't insult me, Derry-air," Victor tried a different approach, "I'm like a brick wall." He added, hitting his chest for emphasis.
"Yeah, you're about as smart as one too." Derrik countered, smirking.
"You little prick!" Victor said as he threw a punch at Derrik. But Derrik wasn't there any more, he moved to Victor's side and grabbed hold of his wrist mid-punch, then kicked Victor in the stomach. Victor was stunned by this sudden uprising, he had always been the best, now this punk was taking it all from him right this moment. After a few more blows from Derrik, Victor fell to his hands and knees, feigned defeat, then viciously kicked the back of Derrik's knees, causing him to fall to the ground, he aimed a punch to back of Derrik's head, but Derrik moved, he threw himself flat and rolled off to the side, into a crouching position, before tackling Victor head on, but Victor was older, taller and stronger than Derrik, he flipped the struggle, pinning Derrik to the ground, pressing his cheek into the dirt.
"Eat dirt Derry-air." He said with a sneer.
Derrik said nothing, but noticed that there was a teacher coming towards them, followed by two men in navy clothes. At the sight of Victor pinning Derrik, the two navy men rushed over, one pulling Victor away, the other helped Derrik to his feet.
"You okay, son?" the navy man asked.
Derrik nodded, "Why are you here?" he asked.
"Well," the navy man looked back to his partner, who seemed to be calming Victor down, then looked back to Derrik, "I'm here to take you for special training you're going to be the savior of colonies all over the Unified Galaxy. Would you like that?"
Derrik nodded vigorously, he had heard stories about his father from his mom and uncles, and wanted dearly to follow in his footsteps. He went with the navy men and as he followed them out the front gate, stuck his tongue out at Victor Mancelli.
Later, after a quick Slipspace jump to a binary system called Psi Seti, Derrik was joined with five other children in a small room with white walls and red-cushioned plastic furniture. They were then left by their handlers to get acquainted. But they mostly just twiddled their thumbs and fidgeted about until one of them spoke up, a young girl with blonde hair in a ponytail.
"Does anyone know where we are?" she asked, breaking the overall silence.
Derrik answered first, "I overheard some of the Navy guys calling it New Reach when we were passing through customs."
"New Reach?" A dark skinned boy said, "What does that mean?"
"I have no idea." A pale-skinned girl with short brown hair said, "But, I know that maybe we should introduce ourselves, I'm Kara, and I'm from Denston on Haven 2."
A boy sitting across the room from Kara perked up, "I'm from Haven 2!" he said, "I'm from Burston. Name's Drew."
Other's names and home planets were given, the dark-skinned boy was Jerro, and he was from Canton City on Canton. The Girl with the ponytail was named Sarah; she was from Macksville on New Harvest. A dark-haired boy introduced himself as Kurt, from Hentston on Willis 5.
And Derrik was the last one, "I'm Derrik, I'm from Portin on Chandons."
After the introductions were made, they began to talk about things like their home lives, or their interests and desires. Drew and Kara had many side conversations about life on Haven 2. Apparently, Haven 2 is in the same system as the ever so popular Haven 3, which is a nexus for travel and trade between Earth and Sanghelios. It has a mixed populace, humans and sangheili living side by side. Nowhere near as heavily populated as Haven 3, Haven 2's infrastructure is mainly rural, aside from the urban clustering near the spaceport and orbital elevator, and their outlying suburban areas.
The group began to kindle friendships with one another, but soon, a trio of Navy officers came in and separated them, bringing them each to individual smaller rooms lining the hallway outside, where they had to take some tests.
Derrik pondered the first question on the "Written Intelligence Aptitude Test": What does USSC stand for? It wasn't a hard question, if you glanced at it, and he had already written the obvious answer;
"United Systems Space Command."
But he couldn't help but think that there might be a deeper meaning to the question, he set his hands back on the keyboard and replaced his answer;
"The USSC stands to face any threat to the Galactic Alliance of Species with determination, and valor; and to be vigilant for potential threat from within the Galactic Alliance itself."
Satisfied, he continued with the test.
Meanwhile, in an observation room, a doctor conferred with an AI's holographic avatar on the children's progress.
"Did you see the answer that subject 410 put down?" The AI asked the doctor.
"Yes, I did, Vince." The scientist replied, "Directly from the inscription on the floor of the narthex at Central Command. Quite surprising."
"Not at all, Doctor." Vince said. "His father was a Marine, he died during the raid on Macedon Station by that pirate gang."
"Quite interesting; any other military history in the family?" The doctor asked.
"Yes," the AI replied, "In fact, almost all of his ancestors served in one military or another, I can trace it back to a commander aboard a sea-faring vessel in the 17th century: Commander Luis Bastian Jacobs. He was awarded medals of valor for-"
"That's quite enough, Vince." The doctor interrupted, Vincent was prone to ranting, he once ranted for five hours straight. Displaying the vast intellect that characterizes all 7th generation "smart" AI. "What you're saying, then," the doctor clarified, "Is that it's in his blood. A sense of duty and honor and comrade and all that?"
The Ai paused to think, "Well, I guess so, though there are no genetic markers for things like Duty and Honor and Loyalty, it's really more of a-"
"It's a figure of speech, Vince." The doctor interrupted again, "I mean that it's ingrained into his upbringing."
"I know that. Doctor, I think you sometimes mistake me for a Dumb AI." Vincent said, turning up his nose and flicking his cape. Typical.
"I'm sorry Vince, but now is not the time to discuss the idiosyncrasies of the English language, show me 907's answers."
The AI nodded and Drew's Test answers popped up on the screen.
A couple hours later, after a battery of tests, the six children had been moved back into the white and red room, they idled there for a bit, someone started a game of tag, which died quickly in the small room. After that, they began to talk about the tests they had taken; most of the physical tests were the same, runs on a treadmill, weightlifting tests, to see how strong they were. And, being children of six to eight, most has similar ratings, except Jerro, who, though only seven stood a full head over most of the others, could lift almost twice the average of the group. Drew, average height, but slight of build had one of the top speeds in the group. Then they started talking about the written tests, what answers they had put down. Derrik, Kara and Drew were the only ones who thought of what the USSC represents as the first answer.
"Huh." Jerro said, "I never thought of it that way." He shrugged.
A moment later, the door opened again, and a trio of Navy men brought them out onto the hot tarmac landing field, where a navy-grey Pelican waited for them.
"Hey." Kurt tugged the nearest Navy man's sleeve "Where are we going now?" he asked.
The group paused meters away from the Pelican's lowered gangway, as the Navy man kneeled down, "You're all going up to a planet to train, to help the USSC fight an imminent threat."
The group of children was silent as the Navy man's words sunk in; then Jerro asked, "What does 'imminent' mean?" The others burst into laughter, and playfully mocked Jerro as they filed onto the Pelican; and Jerro laughed along with all of them.
"Did you see that, Vince?" the Doctor asked as they watched from a window across the landing field, "They already act like a group of close friends."
The cloaked image to Vincent faded into view on the holopad, "Yes Doctor, their demeanors and postures suggest that they are already comfortable with one another, they will make a strong team."
The doctor nodded and turned back to the screens, "Bring up the team Omega's test results, please Vincent."
After being dropped off on the USSC Cruiser Shy of Frigate the six children were given a short tour of the ship, met the captain, and were given their own fatigues, Navy blue with their names on the left breast and a patch bearing the symbol of the USSC Logistics Corps on the left shoulder, as well was the ship's patch on the right. After that they were given free roam of the ship, as long as they didn't get in the way. The six of them wandered around for a bit, until an announcement over the ships speakers requested that all children on board report to Cryo-bay 2. This wasn't the first time Derrik had gone into cryosleep but judging by the looks between some of the others, like Sarah and Drew, they hadn't been "in the freezer"-as some Marines call it- before. They made their way to the cryo bay, getting lost only once, and ending up back by the bridge. When they got to Cryo-bay 2 they were walked through the Cryosleep preparation process once before being left to work it out on their own. As Derrik settled himself into his own pod he saw Kara giving Drew a reassuring smile and pat on the shoulder before they both got into their pods.