Terra Log # 001
Omega squad had always been the best. They worked the best together, they were the best on the shooting range, they were the best during melee training, and most of all, they were the best at getting whatever job no one else could do, done. Then, it had been a huge shock to have their first casualty, and lose their first squad mate, their squad leader nonetheless, Drew. He had been getting a demo charge prepped on their last mission when a once in a lifetime round from a Needler had embedded itself in the soft plastic explosive. In a split second, Drew was on top of the charge yelling at everyone to take cover and get away. The squad rolled away and the round exploded, setting off the fatal chain reaction. Their MJOLNIR suits were strong but nearly a kilogram of high power explosives at point blank range was bad news for anyone. The shields collapsed instantly, and the hardened plates of battle armor made to save his life, ended it. They were crushed, and curled up inside Drew's body, puncturing his lungs and heart; he never felt a thing. The only good thing was that his suit saved everyone else from the blast. The rest of the squad was alive and Drew died smiling, knowing he had done his duty.
November Terra shook her head and pushed the thoughts of her dead squad leader to the back of her mind where she locked away her strongest emotions. She knew that the only real emotion that belonged on the battlefield was her anger. Not blind rage but an anger that got her adrenaline pumping. It was that adrenaline that set her whole body on fire, that same adrenaline that sharpened all of he senses, that same adrenaline that made her feel alive. Then, on the other side of the emotion spectrum, she loved the bliss of her Zen shooting state, where she would feel nothing but the life on the receiving end of her rifle. She loved how her squad mates said that there was nothing to her voice, like she was dreaming while speaking to them. Even above that, to her, there was nothing better than being able to feel the weight of someone's life in her hand, where it was your decision to banish that life from this realm of carry it to safety. In her Zen state, everything in the world, in that one moment just before she took her shot melded into her, making her aware of every last detail. Every blade of grass, every drop of the rain that she hated so much, every little insect buzzing around her head, was noticed, accounted for and placed into her calculations. It is then just after that, when she would apply the 9 kilograms of pressure to her rifle's trigger which would snap the firing pin forward, igniting the high density explosive powder, sending the modified ceramic tungsten round out of the barrel at over 1500 meters per second, she feels most like The Angel Of Death, bringing justice to all that oppose her.
The entrance of the ship lieutenant roused November from her thoughts and actions. She glanced down and noticed that she had been in the process of reassembling her rifle for what seemed like the millionth time. An old barrel, scorched from use, lay close by and a new barrel was already installed on the rifle. November quickly slid the action back onto her rifle, replaced the trigger housing and reset the safety to finish her chore and stood, saluting the new officer on deck. The lieutenant motioned for the partial squad to assemble and November took her place next to Aliisa. Alan and Yuri stooped their conversation and fell in next to Nova.
"Omega. The replacement for Spartan V 001 is due in soon. The Triton will link up with the Zeus and we will retrieve our next set of orders and the replacement will come aboard as well. We rendezvous in 0500 hours, until then suit up, full load out, AIs onboard. Move."
As much as she didn't like taking orders from a wing wiper, she had to. The squad dispersed away to their individual rooms to prepare. Nova stalked away from the group, stopping only to pick up her rifle maintenance kit, rifle, and Val's memory crystal. When she reached her quarters, they were very clean and very organized and everything was tailored to the UNSC regulations. There were two exceptions though. One was the case that Nova stored all of her rifle gear in. It was almost as large as her bed and it held everything she needed to fight a war, all encased in thick ceramic armor. She slid Val's memory crystal into the lock and soon the crystal was dispensed and case opened. Nova reached in and carefully took out the new experimental 250 power scope that was given to her to test. At least that's what the brass told her. She knew that there was no normal human alive would be able to use a 250 power scope and still hit their target. It was simply too far away for them. She didn't like being conceited but it was true. So brass gave her a brand new scope to use. Normally, Nova wouldn't need to make use of a scope seeing that her MJOLNIR suit already had top of the line magnification software. That was where she ran in to her problem. The software used information from orbital sensors as well as powerful long-range sensors on the suit to view targets that were below the horizon. This information had to be received by the suit, processed, and converted into an image Nova could use. This took time and the few milliseconds that it took caused the image to lag behind real-time. This phenomena usually only happens at extremely long ranges and in pitched firefights it could not keep up. That was when her real skills started to shine. When using the scope, she didn't have to worry about the lag. The scope didn't have to process the data; it just was essentially a large zoom camera lens. All Nova had to do was predict where he target would be and pull the trigger. After that it was the equipments job. As long as everything worked, she hit her target.
The other piece of non-standard equipment was her MJOLNIR armor case. The armor was encased within 3 inches of Titanium-A battle armor plate that was used most commonly for starship armor. The case had encrypted computer lock that only the AI that mated with the suit itself could unlock. Again, Nova plugged in the thin slice of memory crystal that held the best friend Nova had ever known. A slight humming emitted from the case as the powerful encrypting computer booted up and Val destroyed the blocks of code that protected one piece of the UNSC's most expensive projects ever. The price of one of the MJOLNIR mk.6 suits already cost more than the whole Spartan II project. The humming stopped and the memory crystal was ejected again. A faint light emitted from the seal on the case as the powerful hydraulic jacks silently pushed the case open to reveal the gunmetal grey MJOLNIR body armor and helmet. Each mk.6 armor suit is unique as the Spartan V that used them. One of the many customizations built into to Nova's suit was an extra set or micro-servos that actually made the legs of the suit stiffer, When Nova would sprint up to her top speed, something that was in range of 90-95 km/h, the stress of coming to a stop in a instant, like what would be required of her on the battlefield would splinter ever her reinforced skeletal structure of her legs. The servos are required to counteract this stress. Also, she has had a defibrillator built inside the chest plate of her armor that became necessary when she entered her Zen state. It had been documented before that she had dropped her heart rate to below ten beats per minute. Then one day while shooting at extreme range targets, she consciously stopped her heart to make a shot. She was unable to get it started again on her own and a med team had to strip her armor off of her to start her heart again. After that incident, Nova requested for Aliisa to place the defibrillator inside her suit so that Val could bring her back to life.
Nova undressed quickly, shivering as the cold air on the ship touched her bare pale skin. Looking at her own reflection on her battle suit, she gave a sigh. She was a beautiful woman and would have easily been able to get a job as a model on any planet, but she was here in the Spartan program. They didn't care if she was a woman or not. She trained whenever they told her to. When Nova started puberty, her trainers had laughed at her. She became clumsy, and her body changed again. She gained the more curved shape of a woman instead of being the small tomboy, and now instead of laughing at her, her trainers stared at her like a piece of meat. Nova forced them out of her mind for a while but it became impossible when a trainer touched her. She remembered the event like it was still yesterday. He had grabbed her behind while Nova was getting suited up and she had whirled around and grabbed his wrist in a vice grip. The trainer had a stunned look of shock on his face as she dragged him by his arm into the trainer mess hall, still dressed in the leg pieces of the MJOLNIR suit, and brought him before the rest of his peers. She had said nothing through the ordeal and now she looked at the scared man held in her grasp with sadistic smile. She squeezed his hand, felt several of the bones break, and slammed her open palm of her other hand against the man's elbow. She still smiled as she dropped his crushed hand and walked out of the hall. After that, the trainers had only pulled away from her.
Nova's usually impassive face slid into a full grin as she stepped into the leg pieces of her suit, remembering the event and all the years spent honing her deadly skills into a tool to use against the forces of the universe threatening humanity. All the time spent on her reflexes, her shooting, her martial arts, a whole lifetime of training all pressed into 16 years. Sometimes she would think of what her life may have been like if she hadn't been selected for the Spartan Program. It was weird for her to think of such, she knew, because she never knew what civilian life was like. She didn't know a single thing about life outside of war. But that stopped quickly. She didn't want her life to be any other way than how it was now. Lost in thought, Nova finished putting on her suit. She attached her compact rifle to the back plate of her armor perpendicular to her spine and upside down. Nova was considered a renegade for carting her rifle as such but it was more comfortable if she carried her weapon that way.
The last piece of armor to go on was her helmet. It sat inside the case, facing her like her own decapitated head. Taking the helmet, Nova inserted the thin slice or memory crystal into receptacle on the rear of the helmet. She felt a small tingle on her skin as the suit wirelessly transferred power to the helmet and powered the AI inside. Val's bell clear voice sounded inside the helmet speakers.
"It's nice to see that you still care about me, Nova." Val had that tone of a girlfriend that you hadn't talked to in a week. Nova quipped back quickly in return.
"Don't start already Val; it hasn't even been six hours. Plus the newbie is going to be here soon and I want you on your BEST behavior."
Val's tone changed in an instant. "You can count on me, my love!"
Nova twitched at Val's comment but decided to let it be for now. Val would be surprised when she got what was coming to her for that one. She put her helmet on, noting that all armor systems were functioning properly. Her heads up display disappeared, leaving the full view of Nova's small room unhindered. Nova stalked out of the room, and took a trip up to the bridge, intent on fulfilling a secret desire. When she got to the bridge, she nodded at the commanding officer and headed up to the clear observation window. Her efforts were to be rewarded. Ever since entering the Spartan Program and traveling the universe, she had developed a fascination with Slipspace travel. Watching ships enter and exit Slipspace was one of her favorite hobbies and she would always try and watch every ship she could perform mankind's greatest feat. Just off to the port side of the bow, space began to swirl, shift and bubble. The stars swirled together and compressed into one point of nothing, while faint spots of green light gathered and morphed into bright red tendrils of energy that lanced out from the exit point. From experience and her studies Nova knew that Slipspace was a violent dimension and those red strings were like physical signs of the wounds that time received as man tore it and bent to his will. A bright flash of light exploded on to her observation window, her faceplate instantly shielded Nova's extremely sensitive eyes, and space snapped back to normality.
The Zeus was a much larger ship than the enlarged prowler that Omega squad used. Nova stared as the massive ship slowly decelerated from Slipspace and pivoted to face the Triton. Nova spun on her heel and strode off the command deck and headed down to the hangar bay where her new squad leader would arrive. She did wonder where the UNSC came up with another Spartan V for the squad but then again Alan was a V either. The rest of the squad was already there standing in line, all three of them, in full armor, sporting their personal load out of weapons proudly. Nova checked her armor's concealed weapon joint and smiled knowing that if anything, she would be able to dish out the most damage in these tight quarters if anything happened. She fell in next to Aliisa and Val chimed in.
"You know you look so cute when you stand at attention. I could just eat you up right now!"
Nova could only imagine they way Val looked her.