Chapter 4
Old Friends
God not this asshat again…
Anybody but him.
"Oh… Great, so what suicide mission do you want to send me on?" I deadpanned
Oswald pinched the bridge of his nose and let out a sigh. "Reeves. I brought you here because we need someone of your expertise again. Our recon teams are getting wiped out by the masses. We can't get any intel on our enemy."
So… That's why I'm here. They need an experienced asset.
"Look… You won't have to lose your rank, actually we plan on promoting you to 2nd Lieutenant. The last competent CO of ForCon went down a few missions ago."
Great now they want me to lead them…
"Follow me we'll discuss the details in a more… Secure location." He said while gesturing to the buzzing flight deck.
"Let's get this over with." I sighed
The walk was short. On our way we passed a few groups of Marines and even ODST's. I recognized a few faces, and they recognized me. Soon I could hear the whispers begin to form among them. Then the whispers turned into talk, the talk turned into shouts, until almost every Marine we passed was shouting my name.
Eventually we made our way to his office.
"Look I'm gonna drop the shit here… I know why you left, and honestly with your background I'm not surprised nor do shun it." He prodded
I guess it was about time that they found out about my past. Took em' long enough.
"So you finally found out about it. Let me guess ONI thought I was an Innie in disguise?"
He raised his eyebrow and seemed surprised.
"Yeah. You should've seen em' scrambling all over the place, Almost losing their heads. Eventually they found out that you slipped through the loose background checks at the beginning of the war." He said with almost slight pride in his voice.
"Figures… Now about those details?"
He seemed to slightly twitch at that… I could only guess why.
"Right… The front is like I said it is, We have lost a lot of recon teams in the past few months and the number is only rising." I could feel a but coming. "But that's not the only reason. ONI has been losing a lot of research facilities, bases, observation stations, etc. Now normally we would just send in the ODST's. But since most ODST's are deployed from orbit that means most of them are permanently stationed on ships."
I could feel where this story was going.
"And most of those ships often go down before we can even deploy the ODST's effectively. And when we can the ship is often destroyed before they can extract them out leaving them on there own." I understood what that meant for the ODST's but not for me.
"So what you just want me to… Do a few ONI assignments on the side?" I asked.
"No… You and I both know that when your teams would be sent on retrieval missions, or S&D on ONI sights or UNSC installations. You always excelled there with not only your navigation of the bases but tactics as well . Something you got from your insurrection days. We want you to train these new recon teams to handle missions like this when we can't deploy ODSTs or Spartans." He finished.
Okay… That made sense but that left me with one more question.
"So if ONI and High Command knew about my insurrection day's why didn't they just shoot me planetside?" I questioned
Oswald gave a quick snort to that question and a grin plastered his face.
"Let's just say I gave a good word in for them." And that was all I needed to know.
It was a tough decision, but I didn't have many options. I've gotten so tired of the bloodshed, but this late into the war we'd be exclusively fighting covenant. It's not like I really had a home to go back to. How long until the covenant find my new one… Guess I don't have a choice.
I lifted my hands up gesturing to the cuffs on my wrists.
"When do I start?"
The ride back was long and painful. Not that I had been injured in anyway. ONI had got what they wanted. Apparently our little stunt kicked up the Covie battle net enough to buy time for ODSTs to grab whatever the hell ONI wanted inside that building. But in that short time the assault force had been met with an onslaught of Covie bastards.
Hordes of the little fuckers came up the hill only to be met with gunfire. Then the bird like… Jackals as we call them would pick off our LMG's and HMG's after they were down we became prey to the upper species of the Covenant. Elites and Jackals were either racing up the hill under the cover of their grunt's or getting deployed by dropships right on top of us. Once the helljumpers had the package secure the evac order was given.
15 minutes to work our way halfway up the small mountain to a suitable LZ… Or get left behind. And trust me we didn't sonter our way up.
We charged up the side of the mountain scaling rocks and hiking trails as fast as we could while under heavy enemy fire. By the time we made it to the top Kilo company had all but been decimated with only a handful of people left. Me, PFC Sheldon, PVT Asheval, and Corporal Forman.
We looked down only to see the bodies of our fallen comrades sprawled out along the way up.
That's what made the ride so painful.
But not unbearable. I was used to losing people.
Once the Pelican broke orbit and docked with our Frigate the "Magnificence" we were ordered to cryo storage. The fleet was in full retreat. We had lost… Well I use "we" as a broad term it was a victory in ONIs eyes.
Once we had stripped down and got into to cryo the ship began a slipspace jump with the rest of the fleet.
And that was the last thing I remembered before I woke up.
When I was woken I looked around to see 2 destroyed pod's and and another damaged but that wasn't what surprised me the most. In front of me were 3 Marines. 1 Corporal, 1 PFC, and 1 Captain.
And this is how I met the Marine Force Reconnaissance. They wore a standard Marine BDU only with a woodland camo under their armor. The armor itself only had a few differences from standard Marine armor. For example the helmet's they wore. The helmet went around their entire head, sealing it off. Near the top of the helmet, where the eyes were, it protruded outwards from the helmet, on the side of the helmet was a standard combat light. They wore ODST knee pads and had light shoulder plating.
Once the blur of being awoken so abruptly wore off I realized what helmet they were actually wearing. It was the Gungnir helmet. The Captain came next to my hunch over form as I spat out the gel they always told us to swallow, while the other 2 guarded the door to the room. The Captain slung his battle rifle behind his back and offered me a hand. I took the offer and was helped up to my feet.
"W-What the hell… is going on" I wheezed out
For a good few seconds he just looked at me before speaking.
"Covie attack. They followed us through slipspace and are about to board soon, they bombarded the ship first however. Whatever the ODST's took back there, they want back. As for the jump itself we made a one in a million shot and landed next to a UNSC installation. A planet called Orion. The Corvette that followed us through has dispatched boarding parties for the ship and ground forces for the planet. We've currently jammed it's comms so it can't call for help but we need to hurry." He gestured to the door. His voice was monotone, almost bordering boredom under the right circumstances.
It didn't take a genius to get what he meant. He wanted me to gear up quickly.
"As for your comrades in Kilo company...I'm sorry to say that you're the only one capable of actually fighting the rest either got injured in their pods and the other remaining companies are else where on the ship. And some…" He pointed at the few destroyed pods.
He handed me his sidearm and grabbed his battle rifle. I was still in the nude but that didn't matter at the moment. We jogged through the ship towards the Marine bunks. Pilots were scrambling to their longswords, Naval crew rushing to their stations, and engineers trying to fix what they could. It was absolute chaos, controlled chaos but chaos.
Once we reached the bunk's they told me they would wait for me on the upper flight deck as that's what the covies usually attacked first.
I had to prioritize what I needed. So I threw on my underwear and pant's then grabbed my armor and geared up. I made a quick stop at the armory for my assault rifle and ammo and ra to the flight deck. I opened to door to the flight deck to see it in shambles. Marines lay injured or dead and only a few actually still fighting. The Covies had flooded the upper flight deck and were beginning to overrun it. I ran forward to the nearest piece of cover and shot at the incoming enemies. For each one we took out 2 more Marines fell until it came down to just me and the ForCon members holding it down. And by then we had cut the enemy down to only a handful.
We stood up and observed the flight deck. Nothing was still alive after that. Only us.
We stood there for almost 30 seconds in silence. The 3 ForCon members looking at each other under their helmets. Almost as if they were having a secret conversations. Eventually the Captain broke the silence and spoke to me.
"We're being retask to support ground assets planetside. We'll be dropping in 2 mikes. Normally this would never happen but given the circumstances I think we might have no choice. Reeves do you know how to work a SOEIV" He stated blankly.
"I-Uh...What?" I asked dumbfounded.
One of the others stepped forward and slapped me of the back of the head. "Drop pods idiot!" I looked blankly at him and shook my head.
Once again they looked at each other for almost a minute now in silence.
The once again the Captain spoke up.
"We'll give you the crash course, we're gonna need another on the ground with us"
Wait… What. Drop pods are extremely dangerous and can take months to properly control, and they wanted to give me a less than a minute crash course and drop with them. ForCon would often drop into locations for recon missions and such but this could be bad. Still I knew that the Captain wasn't asking but more so ordering me to so in my head I gave myself a clear mission.
Adapt and survive...
Easy enough.
