Hey guys! RNG here!

So by the majority request, this chapter, along with others, will have the Rookie's point of view of things in the story. If you guys have any other suggestions, please leave a review and tell me what I can improve on or add. All support is appreciated.
(I would also like to add that I am sorry for any spelling/grammar problems that you see)

Enjoy!

Edited on 12/21/16. Fixed minor errors.

Ch.4 Prepare to Drop

Location: UNSC MARATHON CLASS CRUISER: SAY MY NAME
A few minutes before drop

Sleep

That's all the Rookie ever wanted to do before any combat mission. He learned a long time ago that sleeping off your fears of an upcoming mission was a great way to improve combat efficiency.

However, as he slept, he sometimes had nightmares. This was one of those times.

He stood in a field of wavy golden sunflowers. The sun was in a high noon position. A single mountain stood in the background. He had an odd recognition of the mountain, but couldn't place his finger on the thought. He gazed down at his own body. He was still in his ODST battle armor and even had a BR55 Battle Rifle in his hands.

'How odd' He thought to himself.

He turned his head to his right to find a woman standing there. She had tan skin with short, dirt brown hair that slightly covered her face. She had soft features and a slim figure. He recognized her as his girlfriend.

Something seemed odd, as she just stood there, not running into his arms or even recognizing him. She just stared at him.

BANG

A lone sniper bullet pierced through the calm noon sky. A crimson-red blood began to pool on the woman's chest.

Gazing down at the bullet, then back at him, the woman then replied with grim, "It's all your fault." and fell to the ground.

As she hit the ground, a bright flash appeared from the mountain. At this moment, he knew where he was and what had happened. The mountain that exploded was Mount Haven on the now glassed world of New Jerusalem. The explosion was from a Shiva Nuclear missile detonated by his CO at the time, Gage Yevgenny, to prevent a group of rouge ODSTs from taking their Pelican's cargo from themselves after it was shot down. He grew depressed at the thought of the incident. As the explosion reached the Rookie, his vision faded to white and then a sudden pain hit his chest.

Startled by the events of the dream and the sudden pain, he woke up to Romeo, the sniper of his current squad Alpha-Nine, holding a 99D-S2 Anti-Material Sniper Rifle. He had blue ODST armor in contrast to the default black.

"Wake up, Buttercup," he said.

The Rookie then made the connection that Romeo hit him with the sniper rifle to wake him up.

Romeo was suddenly pushed out of the view of the Rookie by Dutch, another member of his squad. He had an orange-yellow colored chestplate. He held two M7S Caseless SMGs. Each gun had a red-dot sight mounted on the top of the small firearm. Along with a silencer at the barrel and 48-round magazine attached to the side. These were standard firearms for ODSTs on stealth ops.

'I thought we would be on a covenant ship. Why would we need stealth weapons?' the Rookie questioned to himself with worry.

"Relax Rookie. He don't mean nothin'," Dutch said as he handed one of the weapons to him, "Besides. Now's one of those times, it pays to be the strong, silent type."

The Rookie instantly grabbed the weapon from Dutch's hand and mounted his single-seater drop pod. He patted his right thigh and found that his M6C SOCOM silenced pistol was already there. The M6 had a black finish with green glow sights, an integrated silencer, a twelve round mag, and a pretty damn fast fire rate for a semi-auto pistol. The M6C was also a weapon commonly used for stealth weapons.

'Mickey and Buck must already be in his pod' he thought.

Mickey was the squad's pilot, and the demolition expert. He wore red armor in contrast to the variety of colors that the squad already supported on their armor.

Buck, on the other hand, was his squad leader, and wore armor that had a similar color to the Rookie's. Instead, he had a command uplink on his helmet and a combat knife attached to his chest plate.

After taking a seat, he forced the M7S into one of the weapon holsters on the left side of him. The doors to the pod then closed as the pod was moved to the drop bay of the ship. The Rookie could see everything as the pod came with four windows that were mounted on the door. Many pods were visible from his current position.

Inside the pod were many teal green screens with stats and information scrolling across them. Two larger screens, one on each side of the pod, lit up with two helmets on them. On the left screen was Buck, who had his ODST helmet depolarized. On the right screen, there was a helmet and face that he didn't recognize. The helmet was blue and had a visor that ran only over the eyes whereas the standard ODST helmet's visor covered the entire face. The only indication of a name was the word Dare written across the top of the helmet.

'Maybe Dare is a nickname' the Rookie wondered.

"Latest intel reports. Covenant troops are massing beneath the carrier." Dare began over the radio.

"They're pulling back? Why?" Buck responded, questioning Dare's statement.

"We're not going to find out way up here." Dare shot back, intent on ending the conversation.

At this point, the helmets on the screens polarized with Buck's being the default ODST black and Dare's having a yellow glow.

"We're dropping into hell troopers! Time to grow a pair!" Buck shouted to nobody in particular.

A series of four beeps began. The first three had the same pitch, with the fourth having a higher pitch to signify the drop.

The pods were released from the cruiser's drop bay and a sudden presence of motion almost made the Rookie fly from where he sat, he quickly latched onto the hand grips on each side of his seat.

As he stared out of the window, the clouds rushed toward the pods with great speed. Wishing for a different sight, he looked up to see the New Mombasa Space Elevator extending from the ground into space and a Charon-class light frigate that was split down the middle and was starting to dip towards Earth's surface.

"I take it back. Navy got it's butt kicked." said Romeo over the radio.

"Hey Romeo," Buck replied with a stern voice, "Remember when I told you to shut your mouth."

"Yeah?"

"Consider that a standing order."

That shut Romeo up.

After reaching the cloud layer, Buck spoke up again.

"Captain? Fifteen klicks of the deck."

"Standby to adjust trajectory. On my mark," Dare replied.

"What did she just say?" Dutch asked with surprise.

"Mark!" Dare commanded.

The Rookie felt a slight shift in the pod as it's maneuvering thrusters kicked in and adjusted the pod's trajectory. He could see the gigantic carrier hovering near the base of the Space Elevator. The carrier had a purple/silver gleam outline with dark areas massing around the interior parts of the top of the ship.

"We're way off course!" Mickey complained.

"We're headed exactly where I need to go!" Dare shot at Mickey.

"But we're going to miss the carrier!" Mickey complained once more.

A blue-purple pulse of energy flowed through the body of the carrier.

"Radiation!" Dutch screamed with alarm.

"Did the Covenant just set off a nuke?" Mickey asked, who was more alarmed than Dutch.

"No," Dare started, "The carrier's going to jump! It's a slipspace rupture! You need to-"

Dare didn't get to finish her command as a bright light appeared in front of the carrier. Then, in an instant, the carrier sped through the light faster than light. An EMP began to pulse through the air. A flurry of panicked screams and commotion began to echo through the Rookie's radio. He couldn't make out what any of his comrades were shouting as a pod slammed into his own, cracking the glass of his pod. As if by instinct, he held onto anything he could as his pod spun out of control.

After several seconds, his vision went black and he could hear nothing.

6 hours later

The Rookie struggled to open his eyes as he slowly drifted back into consciousness.

'What have I gotten into this time' he thought to himself, remembering the New Jerusalem incident.

After finally held his eyes open for more than 4 seconds as he scanned his pod. He noticed that the windows of the pod were cracked to the point of having no visibility out of them, there were 4 lime-green lights on the corners of the pod door, and that the screens were now dark, with no sign of activity. His radio was dead silent, and most likely broken.

'How do I get out of here'

His HUD flashed with a message that told him to manually eject the pod door by hitting the 4 lights on the sides of the door. He complied as he hit all four of them, turning each light a cherry red. As the last light turned red, the pod began to hiss and produce smoke.

BANG!

The door flew off and, too the Rookie's dismay, fell five stories down into the street. Instead of blindly jumping out of the pod, as his training told him to, he scanned the surrounding area from his pod. The sky was pitch black with a small orange glow from the fires that spread across the city. The once standing orbital space elevator was now shattered and aflame. He could see pieces of it from his pod. Small sounds of sirens and bright lights from police cars could be observed. More cars and trash were scattered across the street to make the world's biggest traffic jam. Streetlights were still glowing. Even a Phantom Dropship passed by, searching for any more human enemies that may have hid from the initial battle.

Grabbing his M7S and his M6C, he jumped down from the pod and instantly regretted it.

He could hear his bones crack as he hit the street. To make matter's worse, a covenant patrol found him right as he landed, assuming they were investigating the loud noise that his pod made when it opened. One grunt, a jackal, and a brute all stood there for not a second before raising their weapons.

But, they weren't fast enough.

He raised his pistol and shot the grunt with a single, clean head-shot.

Moving on to the jackal, he shot a kink in it's glowing blue shield, causing it to recoil and opening up his opportunity for the instant head-shot.

After dealing with the jackal, the only thing left standing was the brute, who fired it's Spiker at him at him.

A few of the spikes hit the Rookie in the chest plate, causing him to grunt in agony.

The Rookie then switched to his SMG and unloaded the entire clip into the beast. The brute shrugged off the barrage until all of it's armor was shattered. Then, the brute cried a roar of pure fury and charged the soldier.

Seeing the charge, the Rookie switched back to his pistol and unloaded the rest of the clip into the brute's head followed by a quick pistol whip as the brute came close.

The brute, finally defeated, slumped to the ground lifelessly.

Checking his HUD, the Rookie noticed his vitals weren't looking too good. The bar that monitored the vitals was orange and depleted halfway, both from the attack and the initial fall from the pod. Slowly, he walked over to the side of a building to an OPTICAN healthcare center, where one white canister set in the dispenser, whereas another was on the ground and already opened.

'Someone must have already passed through here, maybe they can help me find my squad' the Rookie thought hopefully.

As he stuck the shot into his shoulder, the Rookie heard a small PING behind him.

Wasting no time, he turned around, pistol in hand, expecting a grunt or some other covenant enemy to neutralize.

Instead, what he found was much weirder.

In front of him stood a woman, hands raised in surrender. However, she wasn't like the one in the dream. She had red hair brushed to one side, turning white at the edges. On her left arm, he saw a baby blue tattoo of some sort, stretching from her hand to the middle of her chest. She had a rose red, sleeveless top covered by a yellow overcoat accompanied by brown pants. While her eyes had some worry in them, she could still probably kill him with a quick stare.

'She thinks I'm going to shoot her, isn't she'

As much as he wanted to question how she got here and what her intentions were, or even shooting her for scaring the ever living shit out of him, he had other things to worry about. Suddenly, he aimed his pistol above the woman's head and chucked a frag grenade. She ducked out of the way of the sailing grenade. As it bounced and detonated, a grunt flew into the air and screamed as it died, landing next to a potted plant. He then jogged up to the strange woman and pulled her up.

"Thank's, I guess." she said as the Rookie helped her to her feet.

He nodded his head in acknowledgement and gave her his pistol.

'I'm sure I can find another, she needs it more than I do' he thought as he walked away.

"Hey!"

He turned and found the woman running up to meet him.

"Wait up!"

'I guess I don't mind having some company' the Rookie noted.

And so, the two walked into New Mombasa together.

Before everyone asks, yes the Say My Name is a Marathon class Heavy Cruiser (I looked it up)
And, if any of you guys want to be in that upcoming story that I mentioned (see the update chapter) let me know via private message or review.

Thanks for reading, see you in the next chapter.
RNG OUT!