The sun beat down intensely overhead, but he welcomed the heat. While Leonidas had worked up a sweat setting up the test, it had been before sunrise and therefore unpleasantly cold. Sitting on the edge of the Avenger's upper deck, looking down on the ground below, the Spartan leader admired the proving grounds that they had set up. The massive ship was currently landed firmly in this remote forest clearing, where the trees were young and sparse enough to avoid collision with the hull and landing gear. The Avenger lacked the facilities for a proper setup within, so whenever new recruits were to be tested, XCOM's flying fortress would simply land so the crew could set something up outside. The "course" was made of empty crates and whatever they could pull from the terrain. Not very advanced or glamorous, but it got the job done. Leonidas and his Spartans had been the ones to design the layout and put everything into place, as was the usual arrangement.
The testing process was simple: the new recruit to be evaluated would run through a simulated mission with both Rhino and Jackal Squads, and their performance with each one would determine where they would be placed. Robin had been the last person to be assessed this way, but the current layout was different from hers. The ship could not land at the same location each time, so the setup was constantly changing. This also meant that previous test-takers could not easily help new recruits cheat; the challenge was different every time.
The first steps had been to put Alia in the ship's shooting range while the Spartans set up the test outside. This was to test recruits on one of the basic skills needed in the field. Despite their current recruit being anything but normal, the officers had decided to follow the routine as usual―Alia was to be tested against the human agents of XCOM since her viability as a soldier would depend on such relative comparisons.
Curious about the viper's results, the Spartan King has asked Bradford―who would be overseeing the range trials―to notify him of their newest recruit's performance. Less than five minutes ago, Central had informed Leo in a deeply amused voice that the serpent "had achieved the third best score recorded in the range". This surely was a good sign.
The boarding ramp opened below, and the team of operatives who were playing ADVENT walked out onto the field, taking up positions on the other end of the course and familiarizing themselves with the layout. This would make it more realistic since real ADVENT units would most certainly have such advantages unless deployed as reinforcements partway through the fight. For even more realism, the "enemy" team wore salvaged ADVENT armor, though the suits were modified; impact sensors were installed under the plating. Operatives on both teams were given weapons with non-lethal riot munitions, which were essentially just subsonic rubber bullets. Leonidas knew from experience that these rounds, while far from lethal, hurt like Hell and left a nasty bruise.
The system for determining a participant's "health" was handled by the Commander, but Leonidas had a basic grasp of these rules. Headshots were automatic kills unless they were grazing hits, center-mass hits were next in line for damage, and shots to limbs were the least "deadly." Though in the end, the Commander had the final say as to whether or not someone would be declared "KIA". In team-on-team practice, the rule was that you were "dead" with a single hit, but this test was meant to be as close to reality as possible. The impact sensors―which would also be present in the "friendly" team's armor as well as that of the "enemy" team―allowed for XCOM's leader to know where participants were getting hit, allowing for the "health" rules.
The Commander approached from behind him, "Here to observe with me, Leo?" He was wearing a headset and eyepiece that would help him manage everything―an unusual look for him, to be sure.
"Mm-hm," the Spartan King confirmed, "Should be a nice break after hauling crates, boulders, and logs around."
"Can't argue with that," the older man chuckled, "So what do you think today's tests will yield? Will Alia be a Rhino or a Jackal?"
Leonidas laid back on the metal surface, the sun having made it pleasantly warm, "I think she's not gonna be a Rhino. Not her style. Jackals might work, though."
The ramp opened once again, and Leonidas sat up to observe. Immediately, he saw Rhino Squad come lumbering out with Alia in tow. She was holding a simple assault rifle, which struck him as odd since she was clearly more of a marksman than anything, but he dismissed it for the time being. A sniper rifle would not see much use with the Rhinos anyway.
The objective for this trial was simple enough: fight through the enemy team to reach the objective―an assortment of scrap metal meant to look like an ADVENT relay―and destroy it. Rhino Squad never had anything complicated; there wasn't anything complicated about loudly shooting everything and blowing up what was left. Their role in XCOM was crude to be sure, but a necessary one. And one that not everyone was cut out for.
At the Commander's signal, the test began and the team got to work. The simulated operation would deliberately deviate from a real mission in that XCOM's leader would not be directing the battle. This was to allow him to observe how well new recruits worked with the squads without his expertise. He could make nearly any arrangement work, so it would ruin the entire point of the tests in the first place.
The team's SPARK unit charged forward, unable to use cover due to its massive size. With that size came armor, though, which allowed the unit to take huge amounts of abuse from enemy weapons. The grenadiers moved up alongside it, two of them taking cover as normal, with the third simply using the SPARK as a shield. This third grenadier was Moose, the leader of Rhino Squad. The specialist moved to flank right, while Alia flanked left. A sound strategy, and a Rhino Squad classic. The beauty of simple plans was that there were fewer things that could go wrong. And with this plan, the only possible thing that could ruin it was an extreme underestimation of the enemy. As was the nature of a head-on assault.
Enemy units scrambled for cover when they saw the SPARK, and Alia fired off a quick burst at one. The riot rounds hit their target in the chest, and he was marked as dead. Moose shouted something at her about acting without orders, but Leonidas admired her initiative. If anything, that stunt had just made their job easier; one less opponent to worry about. The enemy team opened fire, pelting the main attack force with minimal damage and managing to hit the serpent in the shoulder. She hissed in pain, but quickly recovered and pressed herself against her cover.
Moose ordered Alia to draw their fire, and she rushed forward obediently. To an outsider, this would appear to be Moose simply regarding the viper as a bullet sponge, but in reality, he was treating her as he would any Rhino Squad member; to be a Rhino, the ability to operate under heavy fire was paramount. The serpent managed to find partial cover behind a fallen log and hunkered down there to avoid taking any more hits. The specialist was ordered to do the same, advancing on his own side and taking a shot at another enemy unit. The burst missed, and he cursed angrily, scrambling to take cover behind a tree.
The grenadiers then moved ahead, with Moose using his launcher to destroy a stack of crates that was between him and the target before relocating with the others. He signaled the other two, and they demolished the next few barriers with grenades of their own. The first explosive blew up a tree, while the other blasted apart a man-sized boulder. Leonidas grimaced at this, remembering how much effort it had taken the Spartans to move that rock into place.
Once again, the enemy team opened fire with their assault rifles. Alia twisted and contorted her flexible body to tuck herself behind the log, avoiding the shots that came her way. She was getting the hang of this rather quickly, Leonidas noted. The specialist was not so lucky, catching a full burst to the chest and dropping to the ground in agony. His GREMLIN drone flew down and administered painkillers, which were used in lieu of medikits during combat simulations since the bullets only caused bruises and not wounds. The Rhinos' SPARK unit absorbed several bursts, simulating extreme damage since the riot rounds had no real effect against its heavily-armored chassis. The grenadiers took some fire, but it had little to no effect since most of the enemy team's attention was devoted to the SPARK and the two units that were flanking them.
Alia was ordered to throw a grenade, and she did so without hesitation. The serpent hurled the explosive at the designated target―another object in front of the objective―and watched as it landed just barely close enough to destroy it. Her upper-body strength was lacking, Leonidas noted mentally, since most of her muscle was in her core and tail. The SPARK, at Moose's command, used its BIT drone to fire a rocket directly at the now-exposed objective. This had been the plan all along. The self-propelled explosive soared through the air and into the mock relay, eviscerating it. Moose and the other grenadiers then used their cannons to mop up the rest of the enemy team while Alia simply watched, unsure of what to do. Before she could even pick a target, Rhino Squad had already hammered them to the ground.
As the test concluded and the participants re-entered the Avenger, Leonidas turned to the Commander. "I hate to say 'I told you so,' but," he grinned slightly, "I told you so."
"Always best to check," was the response, "Now let's get ready for Jackal Squad."
After half an hour, the Spartans were able to restore the course. Robin was able to help this time, and she did not complain once during the process, despite what her seniors had expected. Leonidas returned to his spot atop the upper deck and waited silently for the next test to start, lying back on the warm surface once again and absently drumming his fingers against the metal, tapping out the tune to When Johnny Comes Marching Home. He debated whether or not to retrieve his guitar and play while he waited, but the sound of the Commander's footsteps answered that for him.
The second test started soon thereafter, with a fresh "enemy" team occupying the field. The test for Jackal Squad was a simulated assassination. The operatives would have to locate the target amidst the other units and eliminate it before it could escape. "Escape" meant touching a marked crate placed across the field from them, so the soldier playing the target would have to run a certain distance to reach it. This time, when XCOM was deployed, the "enemies" were not made aware, so they had no idea when the test would start. They knew what the objective was, and nothing else. After all, the test focused on the team being tested, so these "hostile" operatives had to abide by a few rules to ensure that they wouldn't cheat. These rules were mostly centered around communication and "detection" of the Jackals, necessitating half-decent acting skills. The Commander needed the results to be as accurate as possible without the use of actual ADVENT forces and lethal weapons. While this had never been the perfect simulation, it was enough to determine who belonged in which squad.
Leonidas sat up again, bringing one knee up to his chest and resting his hands on it while leaving the other leg hanging over the side. He watched as Alia, who was given a modified throat mic, allowing her to communicate with the others quietly via a standard handheld radio, and the Jackals were silently released, spreading out across the field stealthily. While the enemy team did not know when they would appear, the Jackals, in turn, did not know where their target was right away. They would have to find him first. Led by Jane "Voodoo" Kelly, Jackal Squad excelled at this sort of thing.
Even so, it was somewhat surprising when Alia was able to determine where the target was. The "hostiles" were using authentic ADVENT armor recovered from the field, and the target was wearing a Captain's garb. Normally, Captains weren't labeled with HVT status, but it was different enough to be distinguished from the Trooper armor that everyone else on the enemy team was wearing. Leonidas knew that Alia had identified him when―after flicking her tongue out a few times―she turned to look directly at him through several objects and darted forward, weaving easily between the makeshift barriers to close in on her target.
Voodoo noticed this, too, and ordered the serpent to hold position via comms. The viper hesitated, then ducked into cover and reported that she knew where the HVT was. While the Jackal leader was audibly surprised, expressing her disbelief about the claim, one of the snipers piped up, confirming that Alia was heading toward the target. From her position on a nearby hill, the operative could see almost as much as Leonidas and the Commander, and she had just spotted the Captain herself.
After a moment, Kelly ordered her team to get into position to launch an ambush. She raced to take cover behind a standing tree that was somewhat nearby, and Leonidas watched as the two snipers found their perches. The second ranger dashed forward, taking up position across from Voodoo, and Alia slithered closer than ever to achieve line-of-sight with the target. Finally, the specialist moved up, finding a position near Alia. They had gotten this far remarkably quickly, but now came the hard part: actually taking down the target without getting overwhelmed by Troopers or letting him get away.
Kicking off the fight, Voodoo charged forward and drew her stun baton, as all melee weapons had been replaced with these devices used by ADVENT Stun Lancers in the field. Technically, these batons were replicas, but they functioned just like the real thing, being extremely painful to get hit by, and successful strikes meant immediate "death" status for the purposes of the simulation. Kelly brought the weapon down on a Trooper, eliminating him as he screamed in shock and pain before passing out.
Now that the enemy knew that they were there, the rest of Jackal Squad leapt into action. The snipers "killed" a Trooper each, and the specialist fired a burst that took down another. Alia discharged her own weapon at the VIP, the shots making contact but not eliminating him. Such targets tended to be tougher in the field, so the Commander had given this man orders to take much more fire than his cohorts. The viper hissed angrily at her failure to bring him down, watching the second ranger fire his shotgun and miss.
The remaining Troopers scrambled for cover before returning fire, suppressing the group as the target sprinted toward the safe-zone. One of the snipers took a hit to the abdomen, and Voodoo growled as several shots grazed her chest and shoulder that were exposed from behind cover. Nothing too severe, but a simple truth about Jackal Squad was quickly emerging: they were not very confident in a firefight. Clandestine assaults and ambushes were their specialties, and while the operatives were certainly capable of winning a straight fight with the enemy, that was Rhino Squad's forte. The Commander had tasked Leonidas to specifically design this layout to push the Jackals out of their comfort zone, since they had both known right away that Alia was by no means a Rhino―the previous test had really just been a formality. The hope was, this way, they would be essentially forced to integrate the serpent into their strategy. Evidently, this had worked a little too well; the Jackals were actually being forced to include Alia now.
A Stun Lancer tried to attack the serpent, but she easily dodged his lunge, bending and twisting out of the way. This was something that the alien recruit seemed to be very good at, Leonidas noticed; she had used similar tactics to avoid getting shot during the last test. The specialist quickly dispatched the Lancer, and Voodoo shouted for Alia to stop the target from escaping as the Jackal leader leapt out and eliminated another Trooper. From his perch, Leonidas raised an eyebrow; how would she accomplish this? Vipers were fast, but they weren't that fast, he knew. Instead of chasing the man down, Alia moved out from behind cover and shot her tongue forward, grabbing the VIP and pulling him to her. She then quickly bound the man with her powerful tail, pointing her rifle at him.
"Must we carry this through until the end and shoot this one," Alia asked over comms, "Or might we spare him the pain and simply consider him as eliminated?"
Leonidas looked to the Commander for an answer, realizing that this was a very good question. Despite the fact that the Jackals were meant to shoot the HVT until he was counted as dead, this person was still a member of XCOM. Alia was raising an excellent point. The Commander thought about it for a moment, then declared that the target would be considered dead. If it had been an actual encounter, she could easily crush him to death after the damage that he had already sustained. They would, however, still have to clear out the rest of the Troopers as normal.
This proved to be easy enough. Both snipers worked together to pick off two more targets, and the male ranger took out another with his shotgun. The last few enemy units played their part until the end, opening fire just as real ADVENT Troopers would. They actually managed to score several solid hits on the Jackals and got Voodoo declared dead. But even with the loss of their leader, the other members of the squad were able to wipe them out in seconds, ending the test. Leonidas bid farewell to the Commander, heading down to meet the participants as they came back inside.
He arrived just in time to see Voodoo storming in. "Dead, huh?" He joked dryly.
She responded by throwing her stun baton at him, which the Spartan dodged easily as she growled, "Not. A. Word."
As Alia entered, Leonidas moved to walk alongside her. "So," he asked, "What do you think? Who do you think you'll end up with?"
"I do not know, Leonidas," the viper hissed sadly as she shook her head, sounding somewhat out of breath, "I do not wish to be a part of Rhino Squad nor Jackal Squad."
Leonidas was somewhat taken aback, "Why not? You did pretty well with the Jackals just now, if you ask me."
She sighed, "Yes, but they lack the ability to adapt. The moment that the battle became a firefight, their leader did not have an effective means of regaining the advantage. They were stuck, while the target was escaping. And while Rhino Squad does not have this problem, they... well, I am not any good at what they do."
"They are kind of a niche squad, yeah," Leonidas agreed, "And tipping the scales like that is more my thing. But you gave the Jackals the versatility that they needed. Mind you, we made that test to force them out of their comfort zone to a realistic degree, but you did great! I forgot that you could do that thing with your tongue. And just how did you find the VIP so quickly?"
"I have a very acute sense of smell," the viper answered, flicking her tongue out momentarily for emphasis, "Very few humans can match a viper's ability to detect scents in the air."
"Right; you're snakes," he said, "But that would only make you more valuable to the Jackals. Like I said: you gave them the flexibility they needed. And I'm not just talking about that fancy dodging you were doing."
"Yes," Alia admitted, "But I do not wish to be a part of such a squad. I wish to be a part of Spartan Squad! You possess the adaptability and variation of tools that allow you to dominate any battlefield!" She paused, then inquired, "Why was there not a test for Spartan Squad?"
"Because you don't test to be a Spartan," he explained, "You either are or you aren't. Besides, you already fought with us, remember?"
She nodded, "I wish to be a Spartan, but I understand that I may not be skilled enough."
"Not about skill," he corrected her, "Skills can be taught. It's all about your instincts. Fight or flight, save yourself or someone else, and how far you're willing to go in order to get the job done. I'm not saying that you aren't Spartan material, I'm just saying that there's a reason that we aren't so easy to join. In the end, it's up to the Commander to decide."
...
Standing before his terminal in his quarters, the Commander watched the recordings of the tests. He had a good idea as to where Alia was going to end up, and the thought of it made him grin slightly.
The door opened, and Central walked through. "Made a decision yet?" he asked brusquely. The two of them had served together long past the point of formalities, so Central always skipped the salutes and crisp speech that most of the crew was expected to display.
"Yes, Central," the Commander responded calmly, "I believe I have."
The other man sighed, "You know how I feel about this whole thing, Commander. The Control Room is tenser than a rubber band that's about to snap, and it isn't limited to just there. The entire crew is on edge about that viper, and the only reason that no one is acting out is that you set Leonidas on them to make sure they behave. Sooner or later, someone is going to either get brave enough or stupid enough to disobey orders, regardless of whether or not the kid is their disciplinarian. Especially when Spartan Squad is gone on a mission."
The Commander grinned wider, "We won't have to worry about that, John; I think we found our sixth Spartan."
"What!?" Bradford exclaimed, "I'm sorry, Commander, but what in the Hell are you thinking!? Do you realize how Leonidas is going to react when he hears about this!? I have to tell him!"
"He'll react as he always does," XCOM's leader reassured him, "With indifference. If anything, he might be glad to have his team at full strength for the first time. Need I remind you, Central, that Alia will be our sixth ever Spartan? The other squads lose members to permanent injuries and mental trauma, but we keep them at full capacity as often as possible. This will be an achievement for us, to have six Spartans. Besides, I truly believe that she will be best suited to be a Spartan rather than a Rhino or Jackal. Did you see how she found the target during the second test by smelling him out? Genius!"
Central shook his head, still not believing what he was hearing, "Leonidas only did this in the first place because you told him to. Everyone has their reservations about this, and he's no exception."
"I don't doubt that," XCOM's leader said, keeping his even tone, "But he has warmed up to the idea. He's the closest thing she has to a friend aboard the Avenger. You know what he always says..."
"Different is his normal," Central finished with a sigh, "How can you be sure that he won't mind?"
The Commander chuckled, "Oh, I think he'll mind a little bit. It'll surprise him, to say the least! But this is just something that I've learned to identify in him, Central. I may be his Commander, but I'm still his father as well. Neither of us have forgotten that."
"I forget that he's your son," Bradford admitted, "Nobody ever brings it up."
"That's because only you, I, Leonidas, and Ghost know about it. And he only knows because he's Leo's godfather. And I don't think that I've said this before: the two of you did a good job raising him for me. Thank you."
Central sighed again, "I just hope you're right, and that he won't decapitate me with one of his axes. Ghost and I might have raised him, but that doesn't mean that we have any authority over him anymore. He's got a fire in him, Commander. He didn't just get your eyes; he got your spirit, for better or for worse."
"He does have my eyes, doesn't he?" The Commander said absent-mindedly as his friend left, "I suppose he's always wearing those aviators when I see him. Guess I should be glad my old shades are seeing good use."