HRP - Theta Company - Act I - Operation: Grasping Maw

After two years of brutal, large-scale training and operations with the entirety of Theta company, you were sorted into your squads and trained in smaller, harsher groups. If one of your team-mates fell behind in a race, your squad would be peppered with rubber bullets or smacked with a Humbler. It was decided that Esma-T324 would be the leader of Karma squad, with Rosie-T014 acting as her second in command and fire team leader.

I stretched my back out as I pulled myself out of my bunk at exactly 0500. Around me, the rest of Karma squad, as well as the other squad we shared our barracks with, were doing the same and waking up. After a quick, cold shower, and after we had dressed in our identical jumpsuits, we would all be attending a mission briefing, and Colonel Swain didn't take lateness lightly.

Only one week. That was how long it took for Chris to stop sleeping in, like he used to. But one week worth of drill instructors jabbing him with a stun baton had changed that, and now he was up bright and early at the crack of dawn every day. Showers surprisingly took less time to adjust to, since he now had to shower with a dozen other kids his age with lack of covers.

But moving past the awkward beginnings, the day started off.....more or less as usual. Chris pulled on his fatigues and joined the rest of his squad, waiting for the Colonel to arrive. He spotted Rosie, the squads second in command but said nothing, standing rigidly still and waiting.

Jeremy was up maybe an instant before any sort of noise alerted him to waking up. Not so much out of training, but more out of a 'we will get this into your subconsciousness and then you will just have to deal with it' sort of way. He showered and dressed quickly, blinking sleep forcibly from his eyes as he did so. A minute later, once he was cleaned and pressed and looked professional, he joined his squad in the briefing room. Chris and Rosie he noticed were already there, and he sent a small nod to each of them as he stood to attention.

Despite being the leader of Karma squad, Skippy was always one of the last to clamber out of her bed and usually the last in the briefing room too. Today was an exception for the latter however and she'd ended up strolling in the briefing room mid way through it filling.

Jake awoke while rising from his bed and exiting, something he did almost every morning. Quick shower and into the suit that made them all the same in one way or another and towards briefing. Making it, Jake noticed that Rosie, Chris, Jeremy and even the team's leader was their before him. "Huh." Jake had said really quietly. It was a bit odd to see her early.

Teary-eyed from the sleep in his eyes Nikki rose from bed and showered in the same cold shower as everyone else. Got his fatigues and his boots on and laced. He was last to enter the room. His eyes were still watering despite having removed the sleep from his eyes - something he tried to correct.

Still standing, Chris figured it was probably a better idea to grab a seat in the room. That is what they were there for anyway after all, so he took his seat. It was a bit boring though, even with his training. They may have trained a child into being a soldier, but the child was still there and sitting idle was not his strongest suit. But he refrained from speaking, since they at least managed to teach him how to be quiet.

Her eyes open to the dull gray ceiling she has come to know very well. She wipes the sleep from her eyes and stands up, groggily. She makes her way for the shower, takes it and dresses up in her fatigues. After that, she makes her way for the briefing room to join her comrades. As she enters, she sees her squad standing at attention. All except Chris who was, for some reason, sitting down.

What are you even doing? I doubt anyone told you to sit down. She thought to herself.

She moves and stands next to Nikki at full attention.

How much longer? Chris thought, wondering where the colonel was. Everyone else was standing up it seemed, as if the guy would walk in any second. To be fair, he was fully committed to standing up straight when the colonel walked in, but until then he was going to stay seated. It's not like he was slouching.

Colonel Swain walked in, carrying his trademark metal baton behind his back. All 300 of the Spartans saluted him simulataneously, while one of his two security guards whacked Chris across the back of the head with his Humbler for having been sat down. Swain saluted back and gave the 'at ease' command and waited until several seconds had passed since the last boot thumping down.

"Operation: Grasping Maw," He started, the lights dimming as a holo-projection of a planet appeared. "Sixteen hours ago, the Covenant started to glass Minab. A Prowler in the area took these-" Several pictures taken from orbit showed a large structure on the planet's surface, as well as a massive Covenant ship "-pictures of Vestigial.
"Vestigial is a high-level ONI base, and the Covenant want something. You're not going to let them have it. Your squad leaders will be given more details. Report for deployment at 0600."

And that was the end of the briefing. They'd been longer before, but there was usually a lot more information to give us. I saw one of the security guards hand Skippy a file with several pieces of paper sticking out of it, probably our mission data, before we were ordered back to attention and dismissed.

Jake listened to the briefing quietly and once it was over, moved to where Chris was. "And that's what you get for sitting down. You ok?" Jake asked with a slight concern, head injury's were not fun from experience.

Jeremy walked over to Jake and Chris. "Want me to see if I can scrounge up some ice? Might make it hurt a little less." He said, standing next to Jake. He didn't see the hit, but he certainly heard it.

Skippy flicked open the file, wandering to the front of the briefing room where the other squad leaders were beginning to gather. They had a quick read through together before Ralei and Hammer leaders began a heated argument under their breath. Skippy just watch and chewed her lip, re-reading over her file.

I walked next to Skippy as we headed to the mess hall for breakfast, whispering to her as I approached.
"What's it say?" I asked her.

It took Chris a few seconds to regain his senses. Dammit, then why put chairs in the fracking room? he thought. Looking up, he saw both Jake and Jeremy worrying over him, though while appreciative for the concern....stood up on his own power, sighing. "I'll manage," he said to Jeremy. "Least they left my ass alone. Hell, would never get to sit down again....."

Skippy slapped the file shut as Rosie came over.

"Nothing good. I'll show you later when we're en route."

"Ha. True that. I think we should head to the mess room. My taste bugs are in needed desire for food." Jake added the last part with a little sarcasm before heading off towards the mess hall.

"That would be worse. Imagine standing in a Pelican in a combat drop. Or even a Drop pod." He shudders at the thought of it. "Hey, wait up, Jake. We're all hungry." He begins to follow suit.

I didn't answer Skippy, nor did I keep questioning her, choosing instead to give her a worried look. She'd tell me when she thought I should know, and I was fine with that. She was the Squad leader. In the mess hall, I accepted my breakfast and started to eat it silently.

Chuckling slightly, Chris decided to follow the pair as he said "Only you Jake, would be hungry after a briefing involving the Covenant." Just the word brought back memories, one of the few things all the harsh training, instructors and lessons, hadn't stripped from him. Memories of strange ships in the sky. Lasers and bright columns of light scorching the ground and cities. Monsters of different types killing people in droves......even as he had been escaping. It was a miracle in it's own right, his escape but it did little to overshadow the pain, a child's pain at losing their home. Family....

It made the boy quiet as he walked behind his squadmates, the sound of his boots the only noise he made.

"A boy's got to eat mate. All that protein and fiber and... other food things." Jake finished with a small confused face at what else food did for the body before shrugging and and continuing on to the mess hall where he would get his meal and then sit with his squad.

"Calories, nutrients, sugars, fats? Like those?" Jeremy suggested, smiling. Growing up on a farm had some benefits, though his abduction at an early age did leave much to be desired. He remembered bits and pieces, small things like the wheat fields and the dogs, but nothing in context.

Grabbing a meal was nothing special. Take a tray, get some food from the cooks, and sit down. Wasn't the greatest food, and given that they usually went on brutal training exercises in the morning Chris learned quickly to eat in moderation, tiny bites to give his growling stomach something to chew on or else that 'wonderful chow' would come up as 'wait there was corn in this?' That said....this time he found himself eating more, though unsure of why. Maybe because they were forgoing training.

Skippy walked into the mess hall with her file under her arm, grabbed her food and sat down at the head of their squads assigned table. She eat quickly, flicking back through the tiny file as she did, ignoring the rest of the squad.

"Yea them. All the goodies." Jake remarked while taking bite after bite of his brunch. "So, this mission. Sounds like a hella fun. What do you guys think?" Jake asked his two squad mates before taking some more food and eating. They were going to need all the energy they could get.

"I'm thinking it won't be fun," Chris said plainly. "I'm thinking that we're facing monsters, so we need to prepare for monsters and not a game." That was the anger creeping its head up, though it was no less true. Approach a fight, a live fire fight, like it was a fun game of gravball.....and you left the field in a body bag, if you were lucky.

"Sounds like the kind of thing we train for, to be honest." Jeremy said around a mouthful of food. He grabbed a similar tray to everyone else, but ate a little faster, with bigger bites. He had a stronger appetite to foods, a harder palette. He didn't mind the taste as much, but that didn't mean he really enjoyed it. "Get in, shoot aliens, go home. Only this time, with real lasers and not those paint guns or whatever those were."

"Hey Chris. I was only joking. This is the covenant, sorry if you felt like I was being... childish." Jake said a little apologetically. He sometimes forgot that seriousness was something people were just plain with. Needed to be serious to live on the field.

"Yeah well.....save the jokes for when we make it back," Chris said, trying to save a little face with optimism. "Besides, it'd look bad on our squad leader if you died during the mission. She wouldn't get to throttle you for the jokes."

"Yea, would rather not have my bones broken indeed." Jake said with a small laugh before looking towards Skippy who was focused on a file. "Indeed."

"Didn't they say our bones are unbreakable?" Chris asked, remembering what it was like after the augments. That......took some getting adjusting too. Especially in the days before all the damn pain ended. If there was a Hell, that would have been a vacation spot compared to how it felt getting, and adjusting to, the augments.

The pay off though, was fairly sweet.

"Yea. It's an expression, you need to learn man. You, need to learn." Jake was a little surprised with Chris's inability to not take every seriously. Then again... "Just get a joke book or something. If they ever allow that.. Ever."

"Yeah I think they'd need a sense of humor for that first," Chris sourly said. Eating another sporkful (a spoon mixed with a fork. Even nature wouldn't approve) he silently chewed on the food before swallowing. "Guessing we're learning more about the terrain when we're actually on the way to the planet?" he asked, slightly raising his tone and wondering if his leader would be willing to share any details.

It would help to know after all, what to prepare for.

Nikki sat down and ate silently with his squad. occasionally looking at them talking or looking around at other people.

Skippy glanced up at her squad at the raising of sound from one of them, before looking over at Rosie. She gave the other girl a look before standing up, taking her now empty tray to the deposit area and leaving the hall.

"Early but still the same." Jake said in remark to their captain. Besides the mission it would probably be a normal day in the life of Karma squad.

"Oh well, so much for the straightforward answer," Chris sighed. Then again, he wasn't looking to Skippy to answer his questions on the first try, but hell it never hurt to try. Maybe one day he'd get lucky.

Or maybe the Covenant would sign a peace treaty with humanity and the war would be over. That kinda seemed more likely than a straightforward answer.

I saw Skippy's glance as I was finishing my own food. I stood up from the table, looking at the others.
"I bet four desserts I kill more aliens than the rest of you." I announced to them, before taking my empty tray to the counter and following Skip.

"Yeah I'm not takin' that bait Rosie," Chris said, actually chortling a little. Still eating, he couldn't help but stare at the ceiling, where one of the base security cameras looked down on the mess hall. "Betting's against our code of conduct, right?" he said, though the question may as well have been directed for their audience behind the camera.

"I don't bet. I'll just kill more or less." Jake said in reply to what Rosie said. It was a thing he abides by. No betting, only trying. "Right, where too now?"

"Which person you asking?" Chris asked. "Because I'm heading where I always head. Jeremy will probably do the same. So will Rosie I'm sure."

Skippy stopped outside the hall and let Rosie catch up. Once she'd arrived, Skippy began talking.

"I need you to keep their spirit up. We're probably going to lose a few of them this mission and we need them focused at all time."

"Well I'm going brain dead, so I'll just go where I last remember I need to go after breakfast." Jake smirked before getting up to go where he remembered he needed to go.

"How bad is it?" I asked, making sure that none of the others would hear. "There can't that many of them, the Colonel they're glassing the planet already."

"They are, but they've committed to searching the base fully. The rest of the planet is more or less clear. The big issue is that we have no data on the inside of the base at all. We have blueprints, but that's it. Cameras and systems went dead twelve hours before the attack. We'll be walking in there blind, whilst it's full of Covenant."

Shrugging, Chris disposed of his tray and headed back for the barracks, sitting at his bunk bed and grabbing his issues combat knife. Titanium-A, perfectly balanced and it danced in his fingers, the blade was sharp as ever. Win or lose, live or die......one way or another, the blade was going to be swimming in alien blood.

"There are three hundred of us, with two hundred and eighty of that kicking down the front door." I answered. "What aren't you telling me?" I added, tentatively. Those odds were in our favour, the Covenant would be focused on the main attack rather than us.

Skippy flipped open the file and pulled out the deployment sheet.

"It's us, Ralei and Hammer squad being deployed. No-one else. We're looking at 30 of us max."

"What are the others doing then?" I asked, "Why'd we have a full company brief if the others weren't coming?"

"Different deployments across the planet. Honestly, I feel worse for Ricker's squad. They're hitting the Cruiser directly."