Location: UNSC Infinity
Date: 21st February 2558
Time: 0400 hours
The next morning, Mayne was up well before the due time and decided that he should get a hearty breakfast into his gut before going on this mission. Who knew how long it would be before he would be able to eat good food again. On previous missions Mayne often went without a proper meal, relying on the meager MREs that he received in his drop pod. Yes, the MREs would sustain him with the basic nutrients to but they were tasteless and he would trade them any day for a hot meal and a coffee, something that was a rare occurrence, even in the barracks.
With two hours before he needed to report, the ODST changed casually into his now clean Shock Trooper armour, checking over it for damage as he strapped the pieces on. Picking up his worn helmet he gently brushed his fingers over the red pattern painted on it, a tradition he developed after the loss of his team. To Mayne it showed respect for his fallen brothers and sisters from Fireteam Chaos. To others, the crudely painted patterns raised eyebrows and even earned some dislike from the officers, mainly due to the 'disrespect of uniform' as the officers said.
Once padded up, Mayne packed his camouflaged coloured duffle bag full of spare uniforms, PT gear as well as basic items of hygiene and placed it on the neatly made bed and with that he left the room in search of the mess hall. As Mayne walked down the corridors of the Infinity there was an odd silence that seemed deafening. Aside from the quiet moan of the engines and the occasional cough or sneeze from an early bird marine, the only sound reaching Mayne's ears was the repetitive thunk, thunk, thunk, of his combat boots on the hard grey floor and the occasional rumble of his stomach which led Mayne to pick up his pace, his brain could wait for food but his stomach was begging for it.
The Mess Hall was a large room filled with long steel tables that could easily be commandeered by well over thirty marines at any one time. Today the tables were all but bare save for a small group of marines at the end of one of the many tables. Mayne could almost see the aroma of sausages and bacon waft past his nose and he let his stomach guide him to the nearest counter where a plate of bacon, sausages and baked beans were slammed down in front of him on a stainless steel mess plate. After plucking a pair of utensils from a container he sat down at the far end of the table, as far away from the other marines as possible. After his failed mission, Mayne barely spoke to anyone.
Hell, just having a full conversation with another marine was as rare as surviving a plasma grenade to the chest.
Seeing the marines on the far side of the table made Mayne's heart drop for a moment, those marines looked to be great friends, they were laughing and occasionally one would punch another on the shoulder. The only problem is that had the war between the humans and Covenant still been going, most of those marines would likely be dead by the next morning. Those marines that survived would likely move on and meet new people and make new acquaintances and then see them die as well. After seeing so much death on the battlefield Mayne couldn't bare to make new friends only to see their eyes glaze over as a shaft of plasma bites deep into their chest or a sword run through them. The death of his friends and almost himself, each by the same energy blade had been the last straw for the battle hardened ODST.
Mayne felt a presence appear by his side and turned to see what had approached him. The shock trooper saw it to be one of the marines from the far side of the table, the young man had left his friends and he walked over to the lone ODST. Mayne felt all emotions naturally fall away and a small scowl showed upon his face.
"G'day mate, noticed that you were all by your lonesome over here and I'm wondering if you wanted to join me and me mates. Its always fun to meet an ODST." The young marine asked in very prominent Australian accent, clearly oblivious to the range of emotions erupting beneath the surface of the ODST. Mayne remained quiet and instead of responding he turned a shoulder to the man and picked at his breakfast, hoping the man would just move on. The innocent marine seemed not to notice and pushed forward,
"That's an awesome pattern on your helmet mate, maybe we all should do something like that on our armour." The UNSC soldier commented and this time Mayne did respond.
"That mark has a meaning to it and there is no way in hell you would understand it. Now will you please do me a favour a fuck off!" Mayne snapped hard at the marine. The marine flinched at the attack from his supposed ally but before he left he had his own retort.
"No wonder your all alone mate, no respect, not a shred of kindness. I'm surprised that your teammates can stand you, if you even have teammates, that is. Only a madman would work with you!" The marine's words cut like a knife. Mayne's shoulders tensed and a deep rage boiled inside him. How dare he mention his team, the ignorant man doesn't know anything about what happened! In his anger Mayne almost turned and punched the man with a gloved fist.
Almost.
Instead Mayne let his shoulders drop and he turned stiffly back to his meal. He hated being aggressive and cruel but it was the only way to keep people away.
Seeing the ODST had nothing to say and was deep in thought, he scoffed and walked back over to his group. Mayne watched the marine sit down and begin conversing with his friends again, he noticed that the group would occasionally throw a cold glare in his direction. Mayne ignored them and finished what was left of his meal and as he picked up his dish and moved to the wash station he kept his eyes down and away from the marines. He could feel their piercing stares bore into his back and considered apologising but in the end he just walked with heavy feet out of the Mess and back to his room.
Upon entering his room Mayne fell heavily onto his steel cot, not caring that he put wrinkles through the perfectly smooth sheet. The idea of going back to sleep and making the morning disappear seemed like a great one until a red flashing light on his data pad indicated that he had just under an hour to reach hanger five.
With a huff the ODST lurched up and straightened his sheets and hauled his duffle bag and Battle Rifle upon his shoulders but as he walked out the door he paused and walked back in.
I'll bring 'them' along. He thought. Mayne went back to his draw and retrieved the photo of his team. Before placing it in his duffle bag he took a long glance at it and he felt salty tears spring to the corners of his eyes.
"Hey, Lucky get in here you dud, we're getting a photo," Called Sarah Kyte, Mayne ran from the dead Sangheili carcass and over to the group of ODSTs beginning to arrange themselves in amusing and childish poses. A wide grin spread across his face as he levelled himself next to Henry Whetherman and raised his fingers in a bunny sign above his head. The camera snapped a shot of the team and the soldiers rushed over to see the end result.
Henry punched Mayne hard on the shoulder,
"The hell you stick the fingers above my head?!" He growled menacingly but a smile breaking his lips proved the opposite emotion.
"OH deal with it you big man." Mayne shot back.
"Lucky, you better frame that and hang it in our room." Claire Novell ordered jokingly,
"Yes General, your wish will be my mission!" Mayne poked fun at the Lance Corporal.
"Alright people enough fun, we've got a pelican to get to. Let's mount up and get the hell outta here!" Sergeant Avery Brown ordered and the ODSTs replaced their helmets, checked their ammunition supplies and rushed towards the waiting M12 Reconnaissance Warthogs.
Mayne wiped the tears away and placed the framed photograph into his duffle bag. And then once satisfied he had everything he closed the door to his room and trudged sadly towards the Hanger.
Mayne turned a corner and almost walked straight into Sergeant Catherine Myers and the rest of Fireteam Phoenix.
"Nice of you to show up, Corporal. Jump in with us and it'll make us look better if we entered all at the same time, as a team." Mayne thought he could hear the added stress on the last word and hesitated, everything in his body told him to reject the offer but the steely woman's next words put a stop to those thoughts. "Don't make it an order, Corporal." Accepting his fate the ODST fell in step with the Fireteam but not before being fired upon by Gabriel Hudson.
"Look at his armour guys, its got pretty red patterns on it, maybe we should colour ourselves yellow and call our selves-" The words were cut off when Catherine shoved her face millimetres from his and snarled,
"Do you want that shotgun of yours to disappear up your ass? Shut it or I will let Alexander over there do it personally. He's one of us now so deal with it or get out of my team." The barley contained anger seeped from Catherine mouth and the Corporal let his eyes drop to the floor and said nothing.
"Alright, lets move!" She concluded and the now complete Fireteam moved at a quick jog towards the nearby hanger.
Reesha 'Moram stood at the gangplank like entrance to the Lich, observing the final packing of supplies and armaments into the alien craft. A large human force of about three hundred strong had assembled close by and she could see the mechanics making last minute repairs or adjustments to the numerous troop deployment vehicles they called a pelican and human soldiers carrying large crates presumably filled with equipment and munitions into the cargo bays. She couldn't help but also notice a row of reconnaissance vehicles and even a few assault tanks lined up beside the moving ocean of green armoured humans. Unlike the Sangheili Type-26 Assault carriage nicknamed 'Wraths', the human tanks had much thicker armour and produced from their rotating heads a long intimidating barrel that fired shells in a linear fashion unlike the wrath's angled catapult-like firing system. "They will be of great assistance alongside her own vehicles and soldiers when the fighting began, assuming the humans could fire accurately." Reesha thought.
The dark armoured elite shook her head and smiled sadly, the humans were always a force to be reckoned with, they would have made valuable allies. It only took the murder of hundreds of her species by the hands of the Jiralhanae to realise it. She and her fellow brothers in arms had finally realised what it was like for the humans but Reesha would never be able to comprehend the pain humanity felt after experiencing genocide for over 25 years.
Shaking clear her mind Reesha saw a human she recognised from the meeting detach from a group of officers and walk up to her, even though he was largely built for a human, the man looked to be in his later years with a bald head and dressed in a suit of green body armour he was still a head smaller to other Sangheili and equal height with herself.
"Captain James Hendricks, Commander of the 24th Infantry Company. You must be Spec Ops Commander 'Moram?" The man offered a hand once he had reached the female Sangheili. Reesha took the hand in her own clawed hand and shook it, knowing that this form of greeting was a common one amongst humans.
"Yes, I am Reesha 'Moram, how may I assist you?" She responded politely.
"My Company is almost packed and ready to dust off, I assume you have a corvette waiting to pick us up? We have some heavy vehicles and our pelicans won't be able to hold them all the way to Sangheilios."
"I have the Arbiter's Corvette Shadow of Intent commanded by Shipmaster Rtas 'Vadum on standby to receive my response once all are ready, Captain." Reesha clarified reassuringly. She suddenly noticed a group of soldiers in matte black body armour approaching from behind Hendricks, seeing her attention behind himself Hendricks turned too.
"Ahh Fireteam Phoenix are here, about bloody time you lot." He finished gruffly, addressing the ODSTs with the last part of his sentence. The ODSTs came to a halt in front of herself and Hendricks and the lead woman saluted the Captain and herself.
"Fireteam Phoenix reporting in, Sir." She said curtly and formally. Reesha saw that the ODST at the back wore the same armour but with red patterns on the shoulders and helmet under his arm; Mayne. She looked for emotion in his green eyes and found none, nothing but an emotionless, neutral soldier, the perfect weapon. The other ODSTs had a social look about them but the lone ODST at the back looked bare and lonely, an outsider. Like herself when she entered the army.
Since birth, all Reesha had wanted to do was join the military like her brother before her but because she was a female her father was completely against it and her mother had no say as she died soon after her birth.
"The Covenant army is a males life, you are a female, Reesha 'Moramee, you can not compete with the might of males, your role in life is to find a mate who will give the family strong offspring and continue our line when I pass!" Reesha's father was almost fuming, but Reesha, being the stubborn adolescent she was always fought back.
"You have no consideration about what I want in my life! Mother would have supported me!" Reesha screamed and kicked open the woven door and marched away down the lush path towards the forest, away from the village and her father, tears flowing down her elongated face. Before she left she saw the rage and pain of her fathers face as she knew that the loss of her mother had always been a painful area of discussion.
But she didn't care, she wanted to join the mighty Covenant army and she would prove her father wrong. She could beat the 'mighty' males and show her father that she is as mighty as any of them.
Reesha never had any friends when she was younger. All the other females her age would stay at home and learn to weave and act like 'proper' Sangheili women or be out trying to seduce other young males. Reesha never learnt to do any of those things, she loved adventure and always wanted to fight in the Covenants ranks against any foe they faced. This is how she gained the attention of a Sangheili elder by the name of Zuze 'Wantak. As a retired military General 'Wantak only taught those who showed most promise. He taught Reesha's older brother and saw her fit to undertake his training. After she had completed her training she was gifted the crimson coloured energy sword she had attached to her leg.
Instinctively she grabbed hold of the blade handle and felt its grooves and bumps that she had felt hundreds of times before. Coming back to reality the saw that the humans had finished conversing and were readdressing her.
"Commander Reesha, may Fireteam Phoenix ride along with your team, I'm sure you will need to all get acquainted if you're all going to work together for the however long it takes for us to defeat the Covenant bastards, I can't wait to see the Covenant's ugly faces when they see us in the fight." Hendricks smirked.
"I concur with the human, the Covenant shall be surprised!" The voice came from behind Reesha and they all looked to see Zek approaching them.
"This is Major Zek, he is second in command." Zek pounded his fist on his chest once,
"It is an honour to fight alongside humans." He announced
"As it is an honour to fight alongside Sangheili." The lead woman of the ODST squad declared respectively. Reesha smiled and bowed slightly in the praise.
"We may work well together yet, humans. Let us board and be on our way!" She gestured for the fireteam to come aboard and they began to walk single file into the craft. As Mayne entered she couldn't help but gaze at his short cropped hair, well defined cheek bones and the green eyes that seemed to be the main feature of his face. The emotions that had played on his face so clearly at the meeting were still fresh in her mind and she was so confused as to why she wanted to find out, what made this human so interesting, what had happened to him to cause so much trouble within his mind. She noticed she was the only one standing outside the Lich and so she walked back into the purple lit interior and slammed the button to close the door.
Mayne sat down against one of the walls of the Lich and looked about curiously, the Lich was a double story craft with an energy lift in the centre that brought elites up and down. The level that he and his new team resided on was an open room that contained most of the elites on the craft, the purple walls lining the ship were classic for almost every Covenant craft.
"I guess the elites really like their purple." He chuckled to himself but unluckily for him, someone heard him.
"I'd say it suits them," Catherine sat down next to Mayne on the floor, dumping her duffle bag and rifle on the ground beside her and she began to take apart her magnum and clean it, more out of habit than of any actual significant reason, "Matches their armour." She laughed, Mayne did not laugh. Dropping her act the Sergeant got real.
"Look Mayne, I read your file and saw the recording from your helmet cam, that was some really messed up shit you had to witness and I'm sorry for your team, if that happened to my team I would be like you too." Mayne was about to retort but she kept going. She laid a hand on the ODST's arm, "But this is war Mayne, messed up shit happens and we have to deal with it and move on. We lost one of our guys, name was Willy. He was our closest friend and this is why the other two are giving you so much shit, they miss him so much. Look, our team needs a second in command and I want you to be that person." The last comment made Mayne pulled away from her hand like it was poisonous.
"I can't Sergeant. Number one reason being that I don't even want to be here, no offence but I would prefer to work alone and number two, I won't be able to lead the others, you've seen how they talk to me, it'll screw up the team's functionality. "
"Alright Mayne, Number one, drop the numbering shit. Number two, drop the ranks, we're all family here and number three, I've already spoken to Gabe and Ajax about this and they have allowed you one chance to be their two IC. Use this opportunity to gain their trust and friendship, we can make this team whole again and everything will work out."
Mayne stood up almost defeatedly, seeing no way out of this predicament.
"Ok, I'll be your second." He said and Catherine stood with him,
"Glad to have you onboard Mayne." She clasped his hand and shook it hard. As their hands parted they noticed Reesha drop from the gravity lift and walked briskly towards them.
"Apologies for any interruptions humans, we got a transmission from the Shadow of Intent, one of our corvettes is under siege by a large Covenant Corvette. We are going to reach the Shadow of Intent and then immediately jump to their location to assist in the battle. Ready your team and be ready to move."
"Yes Commander Reesha. Alright Mayne, like it or not we're going to be tested sooner than expected. I hope you're up to it." Mayne nodded in agreement but kept his eyes on the female elite before him, as he had noticed before the only word he could describe her was... Attractive? He shook his head to clear the thoughts. There was going to be a fight ahead and he needed to be ready for it.