Section III: Helljumper

Chapter Thirty-Six: Setting the Tone

December 2, 2541 (Military Calendar, approximated) \ (Four Years Later)
Unknown Location, Slipspace

I dreamed of Reach.

Our mighty fortress in the stars. No safer place in the galaxy, we told ourselves.

Maybe we were right.

With its heavy orbital defenses and massive defense fleet, the Covies would pay dearly in blood for every inch of Reach they took.

But could they be stopped? I wasn't so sure. The Covies have been swallowing heavy losses for sixteen years, now. Sixteen years of constant struggle, and what do we have to show for it?

I first came to Reach in 2526, immediately after the Harvest Colonial Militia was formally disbanded, and my new home became Camp Needle Point, where I passed through Basic and joined the UNSC Marine Corps. I completed Basic in time for Command to send me back to Harvest for those five miserable and bloody years.

Last month, back in late September, I returned to Reach for the first time since Basic. My ship, the UNSC marathon-class cruiser Kronos's Scythe, had been recalled from the Outer Colonies. Our commanding officer, Vice Admiral Redmond, was needed at FLEETCOM HQ on Reach for some gathering of top brass, and it was anyone's guess what they had discussed. We still didn't know.

After the FLEETCOM top brass meeting was over, Vice Admiral Redmond returned to the Kronos's Scythe and we immediately jumped into slipspace, leaving Reach far behind us. From a three-dimensional perspective, at least. From a slipspace-oriented perspective, Reach and everything else in the universe was everywhere and nowhere all at once, or something to that extent. Admittedly, the mechanics of slipspace eluded me. Perhaps that's why I wound up with a rifle instead of a lab coat.

Slipspace, of course, meant cryo-sleep. We froze ourselves during lengthy slipspace jumps to make the journey less boring. If we don't remember any of it, how can we be bored by it? Apparently it also slowed our aging process, which I suppose was only fair. I'm thirty-two years old, but technically I have the body of someone in their late twenties. Lots of time spent in cryo really added up.

I was inside my cryo-tube, and I was naked. We couldn't wear clothes in cryo. Either because frozen fabric hindered the life support systems, or perhaps because whoever wrote the manual for these cryo-tubes had a twisted sense of humor. It was fucking cold. I hated this part. I've been frozen in this tube only for a month, and I felt awful, like years had passed.

I finally cracked open my eyes. I had been gradually swimming back into consciousness for the past couple minutes, and now I was fully awake.

After another minute of gradual warm-up, the lid of the cryo-tube unsealed with a hiss, its windows fogging up from the sudden change in temperature and pressure.

I immediately leaned forward and retched up a thin stream of foul-smelling, bluish-gray fluid, which was instantly absorbed by the gel-pads built into the floor immediately surrounding the base of my cryo-tube. It was as disgusting as it sounds. Sure, that fluid crap kept my lungs from freezing up and shattering, and I hated it anyway. Fuck cryo-sleep.

I quickly hopped out of the tube and made a beeline for the locker room, where I popped open my locker and took out my fatigues. As I pulled on my shirt, I paused for a moment, gazing at the tattoo on my right shoulder. The image of an HEV pod with a flaming skull emblazoned on its centre, and the letters ODST stenciled below, stared back at me.

It was the tattoo every ODST received upon induction into the ranks of the 105th 'Helljumper' Expeditionary Unit. It was not required. Technically, you were allowed to opt out. But no one ever opts out. Being an ODST was something to be shown, and loudly. To become an orbital drop shock trooper, one needed to survive a grueling stretch of boot camp in the cold and miserable Ural Mountains, and let me tell you, the only thing worse than going through Basic is having to go through boot camp all over again.

Helljumper training was the worst. I've suffered under Nolan Byrne on Harvest, and then under the notorious drill instructors at Needle Point. But after surviving the icy ruthlessness of the ODST trainers in the Ural Mountains, I realized how much Byrne had been holding back. If Byrne had used Helljumper training methods on the Harvest Militia, some of us probably would have died.

I don't like to think about the Ural Mountains. It was my first and thus far only experience of Earth, and I don't like to think about it. Earth has been ruined for me, and I know you're thinking that's absurd. How can I so easily write off an entire planet based on one experience? Surely I recognize the beauty that exists on Earth beyond the Ural Mountains?

Sure. And when the fuck do you think I'll ever get the chance to experience any that beauty? As a member of the armed services, if I wind up back on Earth, it'll probably be because Covies had finally discovered its location. I doubt I'd get to enjoy any of Earth's natural or human-made beauty under those circumstances. Earth was ruined.

On the bright side, now that I sported a prominently displayed Helljumper tattoo, I was far more easily able to assert ownership of my favorite seat in the mess hall.

Now that I was fully dressed, I checked the time. 0500 hours. I had about half an hour to wolf down breakfast before I would have to start making my way towards our briefing on Deck 12.

I traded nods and salutes with other personnel as I made my way down the corridors of the marathon-class cruiser.

A nearby lift plunged me several decks downwards through the bowels of the ship, depositing me a short walk away from the mess hall, where I arrived just in time to see the cooks begin serving the first trays. I loaded up my tray with pancakes and syrup, taking an extra moment to grab an apple from the fruit baskets. It was quiet in the mess hall. Most of the crew cycled through for breakfast between 0600 and 0700 hours. The only people who came to the mess hall this early were members of the Kronos's Scythe's crew who were pulling their equivalents of graveyard shifts.

Or Helljumpers hoping to grab a quick bite to eat before a mission briefing.

I spotted one such Helljumper sitting at my preferred table, an identical flaming skull ODST tattoo emblazoned on his left shoulder. After completing my tray with a glass of orange juice, I made my way over to my table and sat across from the other Helljumper. "Morning, Celt," I greeted my squadmate, forking some pancake into my mouth.

Celt looked up at me with bloodshot eyes for a moment before returning his full attention to his breakfast. "You look like shite," he grunted. "Cryo-tube get the better of you, Scar?"

"You look like you wiped your ass with your face and gave yourself pinkeye."

Celt smirked without looking up, taking a bite of sausage.

During missions, we constantly referred to each other as our callsigns, and this bled over into our off-time to the point where we never used each other's real names. I actually preferred it like that. It made me feel less like an all-too-fragile man in a suit of armor made by the lowest bidder.

"Big day, today," I murmured in between mouthfuls of pancake, dragging each forkful through my lake of syrup.

"Eh?" Celt grunted again, not even looking up from his tray. "All we're goin' to do is waste an hour of our lives in a briefing room before we get dropped feet-first into the next shitehole colony for our latest round of Dodge the Plasma. That's nothing new. You call that a big day?"

"Point taken," I conceded, washing down what I had eaten so far with a stream of orange juice. "I see you didn't dream any pleasant dreams last night."

"Sure I did." Celt picked up one of his pieces of buttered toast and took a big bite, crunching loudly. "I dreamed I was locked in a room with a group of Covie Prophets," he said between bites, "and I set the whole room on fire using a can of gasoline, and sparks which I was able to create by snapping my fingers."

"How did you get out of the room?" I asked.

"I didn't," Celt replied. "But neither did they, and they died first, and I enjoyed that. Burning Prophets smell like honeysuckle."

Celt had some fucked up dreams which made mine seem pleasant by comparison, but he seemed to enjoy them.

We shoveled down the rest of our breakfasts, trying to savor every morsel. This would be our last hot meal for a while, which landed us in the curious scenario of savoring the experience while rushing it to avoid being interrupted. At any moment, we could be called to the briefing room early. It's happened before. Ever since Christmas of 2524, courtesy of Nolan Byrne, I've always been a little paranoid about mealtime getting interrupted. Celt had clearly experienced similar ordeals, because he ate even more quickly than me.

Thankfully, no interruption happened today. Celt and I finished off our trays, returned them to the dish pit, and by the time we left the mess hall our briefing was scheduled to begin in ten minutes. Perfect timing.

We entered the nearest lift and requested Deck 12, which allowed the shipboard AI to send us hurtling towards our destination. While we waited to arrive on Deck 12, Celt caught sight of me glancing at the old photo I kept in my helmet. It was an image of Sophie Devereux and me huddled together under a wool blanket, our groggy expressions overlayed with laughter and light irritation at having a picture snapped so early in the morning.

The picture had been taken by my old friend Dempsey in a burnt-out home on Verus III, during the Siege of Cedar Rapids. Devereux had given it to me four years ago on New Harmony, right before I left the 9th Force Recon and shipped out to Earth for ODST training. When I arrived in the Ural Mountains, the photograph had been confiscated, but after I survived training I damn well made sure I got it back. Ever since then, I kept the photograph safely stashed inside my helmet, where it had thus far survived three combat drops with me. This was the first time someone else had noticed it.

My photograph with Soph was an object of deep priceless value to me, and all Celt had to say about it was, "Nice knockers."

I let out a quiet sigh. "Celt, have I ever mentioned how in awe I am at the depth of your personality?"

"You're in awe just from that?" Celt chuckled. "You should hear what Cajun and Pyro say."

"Cajun and Pyro? What did Cajun and Pyro say?" In that moment I realized my photograph hadn't been nearly as secret as I'd thought. "How do Cajun and Pyro even know about it?"

I would bet my pension that Celt discovered my photograph while I was sleeping, made a habit of masturbating to it, and then shared it with Cajun and Pyro in exchange for extra smokes and coffee. God damn it, that's probably what happened. That son of a bitch.

Thankfully for Celt, our lift reached Deck 12 before I could press him harder for an answer.

Waiting for us outside the doors to our briefing room was our squad leader. "Where in the blue fuck have both of you been? The admiral's been waiting for three minutes," he growled.

"Technically we're two minutes early," Celt tried to point out, but the Master Sergeant wasn't having it.

"Two minutes early is eight minutes late," the Master Sergeant retorted. "Inside. Now."

The Master Sergeant was a grizzled retread from Unified Palestine, a small nation on Earth - the only planet in the UNSC that still has many different nation-states sharing a world. All the various nations of Earth had coalesced centuries ago to form the United Earth Government, which had served as the primary governing entity for all of our colony-worlds. Until 2525, that is, when the UNSC military declared martial law and officially took control from the civilian government. I'd actually participated directly in that transfer of power - the Harvest Colonial Militia provided security to an ONI official who formally removed Harvest Governor Nils Thune from power, which quickly led to the military asserting authority over all other Colonial Governors.

But it also resulted in most of Harvest's civilian populace getting safely evacuated. Governor Thune had dug in his heels against what he perceived to be an overreach of authority on the part of the UNSC, at a time when any delay would have resulted in the death of every soul on Harvest, and so he had to be removed. No one had known how big this war would get. No one had anticipated how long the military would remain in control.

Perhaps the extent to which the military had asserted control over the course of the past two decades would become a problem further on down the line, but Humanity would have to survive this war to be afforded the luxury of being alive to deal with that problem. We would not be alive today if we still had to rely on the politics involved with keeping every Colonial Governor in a congenial enough mood to support the war effort.

Lost in thought, my body acted on autopilot, following Celt and the Master Sergeant into the briefing room, where the rest of my squad was already seated around the table. I grabbed one of the open chairs, sitting between Cajun and Pyro. Celt took the other remaining chair, between Virgin and Apache.

Standing at the head of the table was Captain Delucci, our squad's ONI handler. "Good morning," Captain Delucci greeted all of us formally, thanking us for arriving as if we had had a choice in the matter.

"Good morning, sir," we all replied.

"I'll get straight to the point," Delucci began. "We are en route to the Canis Serpentis System, where a small Covenant battlegroup has engaged the defense forces at the Irivet V colony."

"What's the outlook?" the Master Sergeant asked.

"Not good, but not the worst we've ever seen," Captain Delucci answered. "From what we've gleaned, the Covenant battlegroup seems to be more equipped towards reconnaissance than combat. When they initially entered the Canis Serpentis System, they may not have even known yet that Irivet V was inhabited by Humans. The Covies have landed ground forces on Irivet V in an effort to neutralize its orbital defenses, which thus far have successfully kept the Covenant ships at too great a distance for them to initiate a glassing. If the marines can hold the Covenant ground forces back, wear them down long enough, the Covies will likely disengage, which should allow the marines enough time to evacuate Irivet's population."

"But we're here for something else?" Virgin, our tech specialist, surmised.

"This is highly classified information. If any of you are caught leaking it, I will personally ensure you never see the light of day again," Captain Delucci warned, waiting a moment to let that sink in. "That being said," he continued, "ONI has a facility on Irivet V which is dedicated to research and development. Our scientists there have been working around the clock to reverse-engineer Covenant technology, and they have just recently reached a breakthrough. Your job is to extract the development team and their project. You should all know, these orders are coming directly from the top."

A silence settled over my squad upon hearing the words directly from the top. Delucci was referring to Admiral Margaret Parangosky, the Director of the Office of Naval Intelligence, who had acquired quite the Machiavellian reputation over the years in her efforts to quell the Insurrection and keep the public from finding out just how terribly the Covies were thrashing us on the front lines. We could not afford any errors on this mission, if Parangosky had a personal vested interest in its success. It was never good to run afoul of someone whose widely-publicized personal motto was Strength through Paranoia.

I found myself wondering where Admiral Parangosky was at this precise moment, and what she was thinking about.

"A rescue mission?" Cajun was not pleased, and with good reason. Last time our squad had been assigned a rescue op, after we recovered our civilian targets, we had been ambushed by Covies on our way towards getting extracted, and one of the civilian assets was so scared that he shat himself. Diarrhea was splattered all over the passenger seat of the warthog Cajun was driving, and some of it had even landed on Cajun's armor. It was a miracle that civilian made it off-world alive. "Don't tell me we're going to be babysitting civvies who'll shit on me when the plasma starts flying."

"Think of it more as a recovery op," the ONI Captain answered Cajun, choosing his words meticulously. "The development project is of greater importance than the scientists who have created it. Should a situation arise in which you are forced to choose between recovering the project or the scientists, your orders are to leave the scientists behind."

"Still a goddamn rescue mission…" Cajun muttered under his breath.

Delucci hadn't heard Cajun, thankfully. He continued with his briefing. "We have received word from the science team that our R&D facility is under siege," Delucci explained to us. "It is located underneath Mount Pylos, the second-tallest peak in the Erebus Mountain Range, approximately seventy kilometers southeast of Ainsdell City, the planetary capital. You will be dropping into Hellena, a smaller city on the western coast of the Ionian landmass. From Hellena, you will be taken east along Route 84, the highway connecting Hellena to Ainsdell City, and from there you will make your way southeast to Mount Pylos."

"And our extraction, sir?" asked Apache, our squad medic. "How are we getting out?"

"We will address your extraction when your squad confirms the package is secured. Kronos's Scythe will be returning to normal space in approximately thirty-five minutes," said Delucci. "Once we drop into the Canis Serpentis System, it will take an additional hour to reach Irivet V. Get suited up and retrieve your weapons from the armory. The instant we come within range, you're going in feet-first. Any last questions?"

We had none, and so Delucci closed the briefing and formally dismissed us.

I rose from my chair in unison with my six squadmates, saluting the Captain, dropping our hands only when Delucci returned the salute. We turned and quickly filed out of the room, and not for the first time I experienced deja-vu, as if I'd already received that same mission briefing several times. This was becoming routine.

This was my life now.