Chapter 2

I was jarred awake by the redundant beeping of my alarm clock. I proceeded to smack it as hard as I could having just woken up, If the corps gave us more than a cot to sleep on and I had a desk, the bugger would have slid right off.

"God I hope today is better" I though as I began getting ready for work. Today the alert level has been raised, and all personnel have been ordered to wear heavier armor and carry heavier weapons. Great. Also we're going to have some visitors today apparently. Wow.

I finished clamping my boots, picked up my SMG, picked up two clips, put them in my ammo-pocket.

I walk through my room's door, and lock it behind me. I began my way down the catwalk to the Hanger. I needed to see if they had a part I needed to take to engineering.

I looked to my side out the massive see through walls, there was a ship coming into the docking port, which was pretty close to where I was now. I paused for a second to see if I could catch a glimps of the passengers. This didn't look like a cargo shipment.

The vessel locked on, the doors around the airlock sealed and began pumping oxygen into the transition chamber, the room that people go through between their ship and the station to make sure they you know, don't pop, literally. The vacuum of space can do nasty things.

Then I saw them. A large group, maybe around 25 of them, all wearing black helmets with blue visors blocking their entire face. Black spec ops style suits, really tall clamp boots, black and grey camo pants. They walked out of the ship in 2 lines then turned and stopped in front of the Stations caption.

"ODSTs" someone said.

I turned to see one of my 'neighbors' standing beside me, one of the ones I didn't know very well.

"What" I responded.

"Orbitally Dropped Shock Troops, their like the Black Ops Elites, but you know, Human. And they don't have active camo. And they only have one jaw…not four."

"I know what humans look like, you know, we kinda ARE, human, relax" I told him.

"Heh, these guys think they rule the universe. Apparently ODSTs don't know what fear is. They can take on three Major Elites and come out on top. Their one step away from being the God Damned Spartans."

"I take it you don't like them" I asked.

"Naw, last station I was on, they came aboard once to recruit people that the CO's recommended, you know, the best in combat. They basically acted like slobs while here, I wont go into details but it wasn't fun having them around. I don't know, I hope we just got a bunch of bad apples"

He put his hand on my shoulder

"I gotta get to my Squadron, see you later" He walked off.

Before he left I saw his name tag on his jumpsuit, Corp. Layne. He was a pilot, his helmet under his arm and his jumpsuit were kind of a dead giveaway, and the pins he had on his collar.

I looked back to the ODSTs in time to see them salute the Captain and break away to wherever they needed to be. Probably to find the people they needed to recruit.

Well I better go to, I thought to myself.

I clanked along the remainder of the catwalk to the elevator. Got in, punched in the code for the Hanger, and the things sped off. First down, a few decks, then the rest of the way horizontally. I loved this thing. It took you past the viewing decks, you could see the MASSIVE cluster of buildings that made up Gehenna's Wing, and of course you could see Reach.

The doors slid open and I walked down the next hall to the Hanger.

"Nicole, got that part?" I asked the tech in the Hanger.

"Over here" she looked at a large crate a few feet away.

We both walked over to it, and lifted up a very, for lack of a better word, huge ass, side cannon. She opened a panel, dug around inside for awhile, then handed me a firing coil.

"Cool, thanks" I said as I left the Hanger with the coil in hand. Back down the hall, into the elevator.

Oh God, I paused before getting in the elevator, then realized I looked like a fool and walked in, awkwardly positioning myself beside the ODST standing with some kind of gadget. He was poking at its screen with a sticklike object. I've seen them before.

He got off on the next stop and walked out of view.

The doors opened to the main engineering bay. I walked through the large, well huge, room to my Fighter. I walked around it to install the coil in its side cannon.

I dicked around with the stuff inside until I was able to lock the coil in place. I closed the maintenance hatch on the cannon and walked over to the sink to wash my hands. When I got back there was an ODST standing beside my fighter. Helmet under his arm.

"Need something"? I asked him.

"Is this your fighter?"

"Yup, and no you can't fly it" I said in a nervous but joking way.

"Then you are James Thomson"?

I nodded.

"You have been selected to join the ranks of the UNSC Special Forces as an Orbitally Dropped Shock Troop. You will have until tomorrow morning to make a decision as to whether or not you will join, have a nice day".