July 3, 2533 (UNSC Calendar)/
New Paris, Mars, Sol System
And so it was. I took the month long trip to Mars, carrying with me only two duffel bags filled with clothes and some other personal items.
Leaving Jericho VII was easier than leaving Earth. My only friends were the cooks in the mess hall and they came and went quite often so it wasn't like I had a lot of time to bond. I did miss my uncle a little bit, after all, he had been there for me (sort off) for the past eight years. No girlfrieds either, so it was fine in that sector.
I left the pelican dropship that had flied me from orbit. I shivered as I zipped up my jacket (which I had brought at my uncle's advice). Despite having been terraformed for more than four hundred years, it was still far away from Sol. The temperature seemed to be in the low thirties. Farenheit-wise. The sun looked much smaller than I remembered, but that was to be expected, since (as previously mentioned) we were farther away from Sol than Earth was. The star seemed to glare at me in the distance. I hadn't gotten a chance to look at the martian landscape since the pelican had no windows and the cargo door was closed. It looked like the weather should've been scorching, but I was starting to shiver, after all I was used to the semi-tropical climate of Jericho VII.
"Move it farmboy!"
Apparently everyone that was from the Outer Colonies and not a soldier or a politician was obviously a farmboy. I turned around to the man that had said that and noticed that it was the Marine sergeant that had been on the ship with me and the four other recruits. I didn't think it would be wise to retort something after glancing at the M6C that he had holstered in his hip.
"Of course sir, right away," I answered in the manner I had used on my uncle whenever he was pissed at me or at the world in general.
It seemed to work since the sergeant only nodded and motioned for me to walk forward.
I was apparently in some sort of military base in Mars. It looked like it had to be a large base since I could see both the flag of the UNSC Marines and the UNSC Army. I walked towards a table with a bored-looking corporal sitting there.
"Name?" he asked me.
"Francisco Castillo," I said.
He motioned to a troop transport Warthog standing fifty yards behind him.
"Next!" he shouted.
I looked over my shoulder and no one was behind me in line.
Asshole.
I walked to the Warthog and put both my duffel bags on the rear. I leaned back on it and waited for whoever was going to drive it.
Fifteen minutes and eight pelican landings later another man in his mid-twenties joined me. With him came another armor-clad marine that jumped on the pilot's seat.
"C'mon!" he yelled. "We ain't gota ll day!"
I promptly jumped on the back while the twenty something guy took shotgun. The warthgog immediately lurched forwards and soon we were doing 70 mph through the red and dusty surface of Mars. I just glanced at the featureless landscape roll by.
An hour and a half later I saw some buildings in the distance that looked suspiciously similar to the camp I used to live in back in Jericho VII. Yep, there were the barracks, the mess hall, the officer's quarters, and the good ol' track. This track's obstacle course looked even deadlier than the one back home.
The hog screeched to a halt and all three of us jumped down. There were already other transport warthogs parked here and there was even a group of recruits leaving a pelican that had landed here recently.
Everyone looked like normal people here, bar the ODST soldiers standing guard. The age of the recruits went from seventeen to early thirties. I was one of the younger ones, and I could even make out some recruits that were obviously former Marines or Army soldiers.
"Ok, listen up!" said a man with a powerful sounding voice.
I glanced in the voice's direction to look at the speaker. He was a man in his mid thrities. As black as charcoal and as muscular as a Draconian bodybuilder. He was wearing a black shirt with the letters ODST written on it and gray cargo pants.
"My name is Staff Sergeant Gabuka, and while you are here under me! I. AM. GOD."
We were a bit surprised by this man and no one had nothing to say.
Someone clearing his throat interrupted the silence. The man in question was in his fifties or something. He had graying hair and was wearing the same attire as SSgt Gabuka. He wasn't nearly as muscular, but he certainly looked intimidating for someone old enough to be retired. The large scar that covered the left side of his face didn't help in making him any more friendly-looking.
"I am sorry captain. scratch that recruits!" he started. "While in here, Captain von Klaus here is your god." He stopped and turned to the captain, who motioned for him to continue. "I am, in fact, the devil. You will learn to hate me, but you will learn to do it right goddamit! There are three-hundred and two of you in here." He enunciated every syllable of the word three-hundred. "That means that a year from now there will only be thirty of you remaining. My duty is to produce one platoon every year, and I'm not feeling being nice enough to make two." He banged his fist agains a Warthog. I winced involuntarily.
"Only the best of you will get to be Helljumpers," his volume was lowering. "You will be the pride of the armed torced of the UNSC and it will be thanks to the captain and myself."
There were some nervous whispers among the crowd of recruits.
"I advise you to rest," this time it was the captain speaking. "Tonight will be your last day of being civilians in a long time."
We started walking towards our new home, a group of large buildings on the west of the camp. There were six barracks, each one large enough to hold about fifty of us. Before we had gone to far though, I heard the captain's voice.
"Oh, and welcome to the 19th."
We recruits just got into the houses, most of us wondering what the hell we had gotten ourselves into. I picked a bunk and put my two duffel bags underneath it, the bunk on top was picked up by a kid that looked younger than me. The fact that he was a skinny looking guy probably didn't help either.
"What's your name?" I asked.
"Tarkov," he answered. There was a thick accent in his voice that I couldn't quite identify. Sounded like a recruit from Reach that had been under my uncle.
"Nice to meet you man," I said as I offered him my hand. He just took it and leaned back on his bed. He seemed sad, perhaps even grieving. I switched my attention from him to some of the other recruits in my bunk. There seemed to be a lot of recruits here speaking some foregin language. It sounded Russian, but not quite.
"It's Hungarian," a voice said.
I looked at the bunk in front of me to see the man that had been on the warthog with me, he was just sitting there, examining the barracks. He smiled and introduced himself.
"I'm Jonah," he said.
"Francisco Castillo," I said.
"Castillo," he mumbled to himself. "That's Spanish for fortress right?"
I laughed. "Nah, it mean's castle, but that's close enough. Anyways, how do you know it is Hungarian?"
"I'm from Reach," he explained.
It made sense, so was that recruit my uncle trained.
"All of them speak Hungarian?"
"Yep."
"Someone is going to be pissed, the might have to bring in a special drill sergeant just for this guys."
Jonah laughed. "They just might."
I looked at my watch and realized it was already close to midnight, back home at least, here the sun was still a couple of hours from going down. Right before my mind started wondering a fat man with an apron and a chair came in the barracks.
"It's haircut time!" he announced, in an almost maniatical tone.
This was welcomed by a groan from the recruits.
"You! Get over here!" he motioned to one of the Bulgarians closer to him. He understood enough English to know what the fat man was talking about. Truth be told, everyone spoke either English, Spanish, or Mandarin in adition to their native language this days. I was lucky enough to be able to speak two of the major languages of the UNSC controlled space.
As a line formed to the shaving chair, I went to take a leak. I looked at myself in a mirror for the first time in a month and a half. Cryo had made my skin look pasty white. I splashed my face with water and looked at myself again. I still had that redish brown hair that my mother used to love so much., but now I had gotten muscular and tall thanks to my uncle's torturous life. I was handsome looking (at least that's what I told myself every time I had the chance) and would probably seem attractive to a lot of girls (read previous parenthesis). My 6'1 frame was large enough to be imposing, but not overly intimidating.
After my piss I washed my hands and couldn't help but smile with nostalgia at all the scars that my fingers had. Most were small and realtively recent, they would disappear with time, but there were some pretty nasty ones, namely a large gash that crossed through my left palm. I'm still not entirely sure how I managed to cut myself like that. I must've looked like and idiot to all the other kitchen staff at the time.
As I was standing there reminiscing about the past looking at my hand like an idiot, someone came barging into the bathroom.
"So here's where you were hidin' eh?" it was the pile of lard with a scary looking machine in his right hand.
"Wha… No I was…"
He didn't let me finsh, he simply grabbed me by the hair and pulled me out of the bathroom and through the barracks. I could see that all the other recruits were now bald and their heads had clear scratch marks. He had shaved them all already? How is that even possible? I was in the bathroom for a minute and a half tops. A couple of seconds later my questions were answered as I was unceremoniously slammed into the folding chair and the hairdresser managed to shave away all my hair in the span of five seconds. My head felt itchy and I was pretty sure that it looked that way as well.
"There we go, that wasn't so hard now was it." Every woed was dripping with sarcsm and mocking me. Unfortunately for the large man, I was used to that.
"No sir, it wasn't," I answered in an almost cheery tone.
He grumbled and left, dragging his chair with him. He was obviously dissapointed that an undisciplined recruit hadn't started a fight with him. He probably had a shock baton with him, so I probably made the right choice.
I sighed as I felt my head. It was shaved completely and I could feel bumps where the man had pushed his machine to hard onto my skull. I was surprised that we didn't get the regular marine buzz cut, all of us were completely shaved. The ones that had beards looked awkward, but they promptly went to the bathroom to remove them.
I still had about half an hour before the sun set (or so said a recruit) so I wandered around the barracks and confirmed that they were in fact, plain old barracks. There was nothing of note in them other than obscene messages and curses written at the drill sergeants of centuries past. There was even a boring looking "Vlostok was here, 2389." This place was had been spewing out humanity's best soldiers ever since the ODST unit was created within the UN Marines.
I promptly moved all the stuff from my duffelbags to the chest under my bed. Once all my civilian clothes were in the chest, another ODST trainer came inside the barracks. He ordered us to throw all of the things that we had brough with us out the door. When someone asked why, he shocked him with a humbler baton. We promptly complied. I managed to keep a knife that Dominic Tenare had given me. I pushed it on top of the metal sheet that supported the bars where Tarkov's mattress was restinga upon. I felt some anger well up in me as I was forced to depart with all but one of the belongings that conected me to my home.
A truck drove by the barracks and a couple of soldiers started throwing out cardboard boxes with names and numbers on them. I looked around and turned over some boxes until I finally found mine. I brought into my bed and opened it. Inside of the box there were a number of things, on the very top was a set of dogtags. They made very clear that I was a recruit and not a fully-fledged ODST. I put them on as I stared at the rest of the contents of the box. There were five pairs of cargo pants, three black, one dark gray, and one sporting black and gray digital camouflage. There were five shirts, all of them black with the UNSC sign on the left side of the chest and our last name on the right. There was a pair of shorts and running shoes in there as well. To top it off we had also been issued two pairs each of combat boots. They were just regular looking combat boots. They probably had the same design as the ones they issued to recruits half a century ago. I had expected something more interesting for the renowned ODST's. Same went for our issued clothing. It was all boring looking fatigues, Besides, it was all black, who the hell do they we are? Batman?.
I huffed at my own lame joke and but back the clothes into the box. I slid the box under my bed and retrieved my knife. I looked at it. It was a large knife, about thirteen inches long, it had a blade that was a mix between a bowie knife and kukri. It was made with what Tenare had called damascus steel. The pattern of the blade was almost hypnotic.
"That's a nice blade," Tarkov mentioned. He was standing there with his box in his hands.
"Thanks," I said as I twirled it around my hand in well practiced moves.
"Showoff," Jonah said as he joined the conversation.
Tarkove simply raised his eyebrows as he pushed his box into the designated space for it. I simply smiled as I sheathed it and looked for a good place to hide it.
"That is against regulations my friend," said Jonah.
I motioned for Jonah to look around and see all the recruits retrieving their own personal contraband items. Some had datapads, some had smokes, some had weed, and some even had pictures of their families.
Jonah laughed and pulled out a datapad from under his matress. This time it was me who raised an eyebrow. It said hypocrite, that is, provided that eyebrows could speak. He simply laughed again and turned on his datapad.
I prepared to take off my clothing, the only personal colthes I still had before I notcied I had nothing to sleep on.
"Great, what'll I sleep with now?" I mumbled to myself.
"There are some pajamas in the box," Tarkov helpfully spoke from his bunk.
"Ok, thanks."
I pulled out my box once more and saw that there was in fact an extra pair of shorts and a shirt made with a different fabric that I hadn't noticed before. There were also half a dozen boxer briefs with the words ODST written in them.
Talk about pride in their unit. I thought.
I took off my clothes and put on my new pajamas. I noticed that the label in the back of the neck of the shirt said: These are your motherfucking ODST Jaimes! Treat them well! Apparently someone up there had a sense of humor. I glanced at the other recruits do the same and jump into their beds, taking as much rest as possible. Most of us knew we were going to have a tough day tomorrow. No one knew better than me, since it used to be a passtime of mine to watch the new recruits' faces when my uncle woke them up at 4:30 in the moring to take them for a walk. By walk I obviously mean forcing them to move through the plains around base at a breackneck pace.
My thoughts were getting blurry once I had pulled up the covers. Most other recruits were already sleeping in their beds. I started drifting away into the realms of my dreams. The last thing I remember was hearing an echo of a voice in my head that kept saying "Welcome to the 19th."