-1Garrett got to the practice room early, two hours early to be exact. He still didn't know what to do in front of the Doctor as he didn't exactly know what he was capable of. He engaged the armor and asked Auron to train him. "Step 1: take a run around the designated area." Garrett ran around the room, which was the size of a football field. He noticed he was doing what he did last time, and that was move at over 90kph. He stopped, and didn't even break a sweat.
"What next?" he asked. "Step 2: booster control. Activate thrust systems and hover or fly to the other side of the room." He thought for a moment, got the boosters to work on the legs, jumped and flew straight at the ceiling. He tried to stop, but he cut the thrusters out, and sailed through the air, only to have to land 200 feet in the air. "CRAP!" He yelled as he fell from the "Sky" like a black armored brick. As he hit the ground, the legs recoiled and the hydraulic systems inside compensated. Actuators in joint areas reverted the body to a standing stance again.
"I… I didn't get hurt! My legs aren't broken!" He laughed. "Correct. Why would you think this? The armor is capable of landing from an orbital drop, without thrust systems or parachute systems active." He thought for a moment. "How fast would it fall?" Auron calculated the number. "You would be moving at a speed of Mach 25 once gravity was in full effect." Garrett thought for a moment. "You've been reading the data logs on board haven't you?" Auron acknowledged. "Your history as well as how your people define physics and other aspects of the universe is fascinating. Shall we continue with the training?"
Garrett said yes, tried the jump one more time, and made it, carefully.
"Step 3: ranged combat. Pull a standard rifle." Garrett engaged what he thought was a standard rifle and checked to make sure it was what he thought it was. He aimed at a target dummy and fired. "Accuracy 86. Please try again." Garrett fired again, this time a string of bullets. "Accuracy has increased 6. Acceptable." My accuracy was 92. That's fucking great! Not acceptable pfft… he thought.
"Step 4: Close combat. Put away the rifle and activate the energy saber and shield." He looked through a list of close combat weapons, found the saber, and pulled it out. It hummed to life and ignited into a bluish blaze, jumping to about three fourths the size of him. The shield engaged as well, pushing into position on his left arm, a large black tower shield. An energy field pulsed on the outside of it, probably enhancing its defensive capabilities. "Now, attack dummy target two." He did as he was told, and cleaved the target in two, catching the cloth dummy on fire as the heat from the saber passed over it. "Impressive." Garrett continued through the training with ease. "Basic training is complete. Would you like to start advanced training?" Garrett grinned.
Dr. Halsey had just finished her breakfast and had met the major outside the mess hall. She moved along the hallway, a few crew members saying hello and good morning, but other than that the trip was uneventful. John stood behind and to the right of her in the lift as they headed toward the practice room. As they neared the doors, they heard combat inside. They rushed inside, the Spartan grabbing a rifle and locking a clip into it, then scanning the area. What he and Dr. Halsey saw was a giant mech fighting against dummy targets, as well as dodging incoming fire from automated turrets. He noticed the two people standing at the door, stopped the training and had Auron turn off the turrets. He walked over to them, and could easily tell that Dr. Halsey was surprised. Every step he took was a sort of clank of armor and leg pressing against the ground, and he stood right in front of them. "You're early" she said. "I had to figure out what to do in this thing and not make a fool of myself ma'am." She chuckled and pulled a clipboard out from under her arm, and then pulled a pen from the back of her ear.
She brushed some hair slightly dangling from her face and pushed the button on the pen. "Alright. Let me see what you can do. I'd like you to do some basic things. Lifting boxes, firing at targets, communications, mobility, etc." Garrett gave the thumbs up and moved to the starting location she wanted him at. "Now, I want you to lift this crate." He moved toward the crate, grabbed both sides, and lifted with no effort. He then balanced the weight on one hand. "No problems here. How much is in this box ma'am?" He asked. "20 tons" she replied, writing things down. He put the box down and continued with the list she gave him. He jumped over hurtles and crawled through a fake ditch, as it was on a ship, and then communicated with her via LADAR communication. She furiously scribbled things down, and when he finished the last thing on the list, she walked up to him and asked "how would you like to play a game of dodge ball?" Garrett told her that he was doing that with the turrets before she came in. "I'm talking about the Major against you with paintball rounds." This was going to be interesting he thought. He grinned under the armor and replied "Yes ma'am!"
After twenty minutes of paint combat, two multi colored beings walking over to the doctor, she not being able to control her laughing. "I got you first, so I think I won" Garrett chuckled. "Your shot hit me in the foot; therefore it would have only incapacitated my leg. I hit you in the right arm the first time." Garrett turned. "You hit the pauldron, not my arm! That was armor! Not body!" The major motioned to the orange coloring down on his foot. "And your shot hit my ankle armor. What's your point?" the Spartan noted. Garrett grumbled, and Dr. Halsey started talking. "From what I've observed, the armor is quite impressive to say the least, but the targeting systems seem to be a bit slow when it comes to small fast moving targets." Garrett noted the info, asked Auron about it, and gained an annoying answer. "The reason for slow fire control is the secondary NNet is trying to determine how the pilot acts, and will adapt to the personality of movements the pilot uses as well as reflexes. You have been modified, but you are not used to the improvements yet. It will take more training or combat to fix this." Halsey wrote this down, making sure she had as much as possible about the armor. "So this thing has two AIs?" Garrett asked. "Negative. I am the Battle AI. The NNet is a semi learning battle computer that is not as able as a full AI, although they are quite similar. There are restrictions placed on them to make sure that they do not override the main system, which is me." Garrett thumbed his nose, trying to scratch at an itch under the armor. "Can I turn this armor off ma'am?" She told him yes, still smiling at the huge amounts of color all over his body. He turned the armor off, and the sticky paint sloughed right off, falling in a circle around him. The major stared at him, looked down at himself, and noticed a huge difference now.
"Major, go get cleaned up and meet me and the Lieutenant at my quarters." The major acknowledged, and walked off toward a cleaning shower. Garrett walked with Dr. Halsey to her quarters. "So how do you feel in that armor? Powerful? Slow? Clumsy?" She asked. "The first and the last, but the last starting to go away. It's difficult to walk around as a human and then change to a fifteen foot tall walking tank. Your center of gravity changes and it's gonna take a bit of practice to get used to that. Another odd thing is having an AI constantly at my ear. I've seen the Major with Cortana in his helmet, and I don't know how he can be so used to it. Having a woman's voice compared to a male's voice is probably the difference." Auron piped up. "This is the self determined guise that I chose, and you will have to get used to it." Garrett got annoyed. "Not unless another AI is given, in which case I don't have to get used to it." Auron was silent for a moment. Garrett felt a pang of guilt for what he just said. "AIs are thinking too you know. In some ways they are beings in their own right. I believe you should apologize to him Lieutenant" Halsey told him. "Auron… sorry." Auron was still silent for a few seconds, and then responded. "Apology accepted, though at this early stage of piloting, I assumed you would be displeased or annoyed with me. The way your personality is, you would accept me as a colleague in perhaps a few days or weeks, though this is an estimate, not an exact answer." Garrett put his right hand to his forehead and shook his head, slightly smiling. "Ugh. Let's just see how everything goes alright?" Auron acknowledged him.
They reached Dr. Halsey's quarters. "You know, Cortana and the Major were similar at the beginning. They didn't exactly like each other, but after seeing each other's strengths, they worked out the kinks." Garrett stood as she sat down in a chair, crossing her legs, and put the clipboard down. "Have a seat lieutenant." He sat down, wondering what she was going to say. "From the looks of it, I can't make heads or eagles of what the armor is made of, nor can I discern what is equipped inside the armor. It seems very capable of being underestimated when things start to happen, as although you were a large target, you were able to move surprisingly fast." She pointed to the data she had gained on the clipboard, and then pushed a button on a controller. A video screen came to life, showing the entire paintball game. "As you can see, when you fired your weapon at the major, he was able to move quickly enough so that the gun was actually trailing behind by about a couple of centimeters. At the range you were playing at, you wouldn't have been able to hit him very well. I suggest you do what Auron asks for in any training time you can get."
Garrett and Dr. Halsey watched the video carefully, her pointing out things here and there, and soon the Major accessed the door. "Enter" she told. The door slid open, and the seven foot tall man walked in. She reviewed what she had told Garrett with John before moving on. "You are now under the Major's command when we get to Earth. Once the council meeting is over, I think you can rest assured that nothing overly interesting is going to be happening to you, and by that I mean in a bad way." Garrett sighed a relief. "Thank you ma'am." She checked her watch, then added "Sorry to run out, but I have an appointment to keep. If you'll excuse me."
All three walked out of the room and she continued down the hall to a lift, Garrett heading toward a recreation area, and John 117 heading to the Spartan bunk areas. There were three new SPARTAN IIs inside, part of the new batch from Chief Mendoza. Jax, a Demolitions expert, sat on his bed playing videogames, and Marie, a sniper, laid back and watched a movie on a small couch. Trent, a stealth fighter, was curled up with a book on his bunk. They shot to attention when he walked in. "Officer on deck." He motioned at ease, and they moved back into the lazy positions they were in before. "Sir, how was the fight on the ground?" Trent asked. "It was interesting to say the least, but we can go home after a day or so. The covenant has been kicked from the system, though we don't know if they will come back. A defense screen is being left, and we get to play guard duty on the home front." Trent sighed, and went back to his book.
John sat down on his bunk and pulled an audio log from a container. He pushed it into a player near his bunk, plugged some headphones in, took off his armor and plugged Cortana into a slot nearby, then settled down with the sound of Michael Deconcheti and the Boston Symphony in his ears.