Chapter XI: Transfer
August 19, 2534 (UNSC Calendar)/
Pálháza, Reach, Epsilon Eridani System
I had been released from the hospital two days ago. The needler round hadn't done much damage besides tearing through my flesh and cutting my femoral artery. The biofoam had held me together for long enough. I arrived at the ship's hospital and my artery had been stitched together, then I had been promptly placed on cryo, to prevente any further damage on my wounds and to free some space in the hospital bay. There were plenty of wounded people in the ship, there were even a few dozen civilians that hadn't made it in time to the evacuation transports.
A week and a half later I had woken up from cryo, only to have someone slip me a breathing apparatus. A day later I had been abruptly woken up, this time by one of my nightmares. When I looked around I realized I was in a hospital, it looked like a ground-based hospital, since the walls weren't metal gray or that light green that was supposed to make us feel calm.
I had been given two days leave after I was able to walk. No one really knew what to do with me, I had lost all my unit and was probably the sole survivor of the Count Me In. I was limping down one of the streets in the red district of Pálháza, the second largest city in Reach.
It hit me hard, the death of my only friends in the universe. Literally. It took a while to sink in, but when it finally did, all the signs that pointed to the "sole survivor syndrome." There was guilt, sadness, depression, stress, and all that bunch of medical crap. I had been given some pills to relieve my stress and depression, but I dealt with it the way any sane marine would have.
Cheap booze and cheap women.
I went to a crappy little bar hidden under a couple of skyscrapers. I drowned myself in whiskey. The only thing I remember clearly is that I started a conversation with a veteran. He told me a couple of stories and listened to mine. He nodded understandingly but said nothing. The last thing he said before he left the bar was something that instantly turned off my urge for cheap women.
"Damn hooker gave me herpes," he complained as he scratched his crotch.
I downed a couple more glasses and went outside. I walked through the city for about ten minutes before I had to throw up, I emptied my stomach on a trash bin on the street. I stayed there for two more hours while the nausea went away.
Don't get me wrong, it wasn't my first time drinking, but it was my first time drinking to drown my sorrows. There's a big difference in the amount of liquor consumed in both of those situations.
Next thing I remember was an armor-clad police officer shinning a flashlight into my face. It was early morning, but it was still dark.
"Get up!" he ordered. I heard the familiar noise of a shock baton powering up and complied.
I jumped up and the ground spun in circles around me. I tried to keep my balance but I fell back to the bench I had slept on.
"Hmm, drunk and disorderly conduct," started the police, "that is going to cost you some creds to get out of kid."
"C'mon, give me a break," I mumbled, my head hurting like hell.
"Now why would I do that?" asked the officer.
I said nothing for a few seconds.
"All my friends are dead."
The officer's eyes went open. He eyeballed me thoroughly before reaching into my shirt and pulling out my dogtags.
"You a soldier then," he stated.
I nodded. The officer simply sighed and talked into his helmet. He looked at me as he did so and shook his head.
"Ok, I'll give you a chance this time pal, I'll even call you a cab," he said.
"Thank you," I said as I collapsed sideways onto the bench.
Before I knew it I was on top of a taxi with a man with a funny accent that complained that I smelled like "dried pig excrement" every chance he got. I left the cab and paid the man, no tip though.
I stumbled upstairs into the hotel room that the UNSC had been nice enough to rent for me for the duration of my leave. I collapsed on my bed and downed a couple of aspirins. I then took my stress relievers and fell asleep.
A couple of hours later the sound of someone banging on my door woke me up. At first I thought it was someone from the other room banging. Yes, banging, but I woke up fast enough to realize the difference in sounds.
I opened the door, my headache now only a lingering feeling and my dizzines completely gone. Thank God for aspirin.
"You Lance Corporal Castillo?" asked a marine soldier, he was unarmed and unarmored, probably doing courier or messenger duty.
"Yeah?"
The marine simply rolled his eyes and handed me a letter. I tore it open while he waited there. It consisted of two lines. They gave me a location and a time. I was supposed to go to a meeting in the Bonaparte Marine Base. It was the marine garrison closest to the city, about thirty minutes away from my current location.
"You driving?" I asked.
The impatient marine simply nodded.
"Lemme pack," I said. I was still tired and not completetly awake, but I managed to pack my clothes in under a minute (not that there was much to pack anyway) and left the building, trailing behind the marine. I no longer needed to hop on one foot, it's amazing what modern medicine can do for a sliced femoral nowadays.
The marine drove me to the Bonaparte Base in a wharthog. I tried some small talk, but he didn't look like the chatty type.
I was dropped off in front of a large building in the center of the base. Said building was about ten stories high, but it probably went much deeper underground. Before I even had chance to ask the driver what I was supposed to do he drove off, leaving a dust plume behind.
"Jackass," I mumbled under my breath.
I walked towards the main door, which was flanked by two marines. I did a quick salute as I went through the doors.
The lobby of the building looked like a normal building's lobby should've. The floors were white marble and there were some modern-looking brown leather sofas on the edges. There was a reception desk that was also made of marble. In the middle of the lobby was the insignia of the UNSC, it was surrounded by a number of stars representing the colonies. I had no idea there were that many. The insignia was black against the white background, it was probably made of marble as well, but it could've been black onyx. Who knows?
I approached the receptionist, who was, unsurprisingly, a striking young woman, she looked slightly younger than me, and I was only nineteen years of age.
"Hello," I said with a smile, "I got this letter saying to be here at 1700 hours."
The girl didn't even glance upwards.
"Can I see that?" she said even as she grabbed the piece of paper from my hand. For some reason, people from Reach seemed to be very mean. Or just touchy, again, who knows?
She raised an eyebrow as she read the twenty words which made up the letter. She even managed to look up and once-over me. For some reason, it made me very uncomfortable.
"Wait a sec," she ordered. That's right, ordered.
A minute later there was a fully armored marine escorting me to an elevator. He showed me in and placed an electronic key in a special slot. A panel actually slid down to show more buttons. This was getting absurd.
The escorting soldier pressed a button that signalled "U-32" and stood back from the elevator.
"Good luck," he said.
"What do you…" I said just as the doors slammed closed. I rolled my eyes. Objects had a bad tendency to interrupt me. The elevator ride took roughly thirty-two seconds. About a second per each floor, and I was going downwards.
The elevator stopped and the doors slipped open with an almost comical ping. I was really starting to think that someone in top brass had been a comedian. I walked out of the elevators and found myself in a large room. This room was almost exactly like the lobby of the building, only that instead of the UNSC insignia, it had ONI's.
I walked towards the end of the room, instead of a receptionist, there was simply another door, guarded by another armored marine. He looked exactly like the one on the first floor.
Are they cloning people? I asked myself. Nonsense. Even I knew it was a stupid notion.
The marine asked for an ID. I told him I had none, since I was in my civvies. I simply showed him my dogtags. He pulled out a datapad from his backpocket and checked something on it. He looked up from the datapad and at me.
"Where were you born?" he asked.
"Earth," I answered.
"Where in Earth?"
I rolled my eyes. "Mexico."
He nodded. "How's your dad?"
"Dead," I said, my eyes shooting daggers.
"Mother?" This guy really had no sense of tact.
"She's a vegetable," I was ready to punch his face in.
He read more stuff from his datapad. After a while he decided it was enough and opened the door for me.
"Third door on the left," he said helpfully.
I would've thanked the man, but I was slightly pissed at him. I was also creeped out by the amount of information that ONI had on me. I guess that not all of the rumors were a bunch of paranoid horseshit.
I entered the signaled room. As I crossed the doorway I noticed two things. One: the room was quite nice for a military office, two: there were a couple of guys dressed in ONI uniforms sitting down, smoking cigars.
"Ah, mister Castillo, I'm glad you made it," said the older man with a smile. He even offered me his hand. "Cigar?" he offered.
"Nah, thanks, I don't smoke."
He simply shrugged and served me a glass of whiskey, I wasn't about to turn that down and I gladly took it.
"I'm Major Cavallaro," he said as he handed me the glass.
"Nice to meet you," I said. "Who might that be?" I asked, pointing to the younger man sitting in a comfy-looking chair.
"Well, don't worry about him, he's my friend," he answered.
I shrugged.
"What can you tell me about the death of your squadmates?" he asked me as soon as I had taken my first sip from the whiskey.
"Damn, this is the good stuff," I noted.
He simply nodded in appreciation.
"Ok, I'll get to the point."
I told him everything since the moment I woke up on that day. I told him about the ship falling under attack, the unexpected Covenant presence in there, and evacuating the ship in our SOEIVs.
At that point the man sitting down spoke for the first time.
"That's enough," he said as he waved his hand dismisively.
I stopped talking. Cavallaro looked at the other man and he nodded to him.
"Have you ever heard about the SPARTAN program?" he asked, his voice measured.
I nodded. "Why, you recruiting me?" I joked.
"No, you're too old," said the Major absent-mindedly. The other spook cleared his throat.
"Right, pretend you didn't hear that," Cavallaro told me with a smile, although the threat was clearly there.
"Sir."
"What do you know about them?" he asked me.
"Well, until now, I though they were just propaganda," I answered. "I've heard that they are supersoldiers, more machine than human. Freaks. They are supposed to be able to take on thousands of enemy soldiers by themselves, they're supposed to be the best of the very best."
There was an edge to my voice. I had always been the best of the best, at least since last year. I had joined the ODST corps with the though that I would become the pride of the UNSCDF. Now I realized that I was outmatched by some obscure freaks in fancy armor.
"Anything in that head of yours regarding Section Three?" he asked me again.
"Yes, they conduct the top-secret proyects and stuff like that."
He simply nodded, as if he was a satisfied parent or teacher.
"I take it you haven't heard of the Alpha-II division?" he asked.
"No, sir," I answered.
"Well, you see, SPARTANS are outfitted with fancy armor, as you say, to create this armor, ONI outsourced to several civilian companies to place bids. Their projects were quite good, don't get me wrong, but some were simply not SPARTAN material. Alpha-II takes charge of combat-testing said armor and if the armor parts are deemed good enough and cost-efficient, variants are issued to the UNSC forces."
"So you're saying Alpha-II gets sloppy seconds?" I asked.
"That's one way to put it," said the major with a smile, "but they get sloppy seconds from what would I would compare to banging a supermodel that has only had sex once before."
As crude as that simile or comparison (whatever) might've been, the man certainly had a way of making it sound interesting, everything gets more interesting when you throw supermodels in the equation.
"The point being?" I asked. "Sir."
"Well, we would like you to join out section," he stated.
"Why?" I had seen it coming, but I whanted to know the reason I was picked.
"This projects need to be tested under extreme battle conditions," he started, "you got outstanding ratings on your training and managed to survive a battle where there was a 88% casualty rate, granted, you entered it late, but you entered it from an exploding spaceship and with a blind jump."
"Sir, why did you pick me?" I asked again. They probably could've picked up a whole lot other people with similar characteristics.
He sighed. "You're a sharp one." For some reason, that didn't feel like it was a compliment.
"Well, you have nothing to loose," stated the man.
I am expected to go into battle and see how long I last before the equipment gives up. I realized.
"What if I say no?" I asked.
"Well, god forbid a psychotic killer tear out your tongue and vocal cords," said the man sitting in the couch.
I nodded, I had seen to many spy films to be surprised by this.
"Ok, I guess I'm in then."
The major nodded. " First of all, you need to know how Alpha-II operates. They are based of an improved Paris-class frigate. There are about 300 Navy personel on board the ship, as well as a small Marine Batallion. The battalion, Alpha 2nd, as it is commonly known, is composed of a mix of Army and Marine soldiers. All soldiers do some orbital insertion training, since you are an ODST, you won't have that problem."
He paused for me to get a moment to catch up. I nodded at him to continue, which he gladly did.
"I said that the section's main purpose is to test the ineffective armor, but you also get some of the armor pieces that actually made it through selection, in addition to those, you get some shiny toys that aren't available to the general public," he told me.
I nodded once more.
"You should also know that the discipline on the ship is… somewhat lacking," he explained. "The marine contingent in the ship consists mostly of sole survivors and other people that have nothing to loose, that makes for a pretty interesting crowd."
"As I said, I'm in," I repeated.
"Ok," he said as he pulled out an envelope from his desk. "Report to landing pad 72, you'll be transported to an orbiting dry-dock, then you'll be flown to your new ship."
"What? That's it?" I was slightly surprised, almost no paperwork.
"Yes, just sign here," he said as he pulled out another sheet of paper.
I skimmed through the document, it had the same basic clauses about no disclosure, admitting the risk of death. There was slightly more emphasis on the death part, although the no disclosure of secret information section was also quite lengthy.
I scrawled my signature.
"On your way son," said the major as he dismissed me.
I turned around and left. Before I walked out of the door I stopped.
"What is the name of the ship?"
The major smiled as he answered. "It goes by the name UNSC Inconvenience."
Well guys, just taking a moment to thank anyone who's actually reading this. Also, I still need someone who is willing to proofread my documents.
Love- casquis