[B-Deck] Boredom & Shenanigans

[Furby, J.]

Furby listened to the responses and rolled his eyes. He didn't like the idea at all. There was way too much that could go wrong; too much room for error. Of course, they didn't really know the full extent of the plan yet, but the gist of it had been downloaded by the Lance Corporal Underground and passed around like a loose prostitute. Exit slipspace, drop the Marines onto three separate moons, and evict the Covenant from each moon with prejudice. How the hell the Navy planned to keep the Covenant from simply swooping down and glassing the moons as soon as the Marines touched down, he didn't know. The ground battle wouldn't be the problem. It generally never was. 

It was always the fight in space. A single Covenant cruiser had the ability to take on at least three human ships with relative ease. That meant that the Navy usually got its ass kicked, even with greater numbers, because Covenant ships were designed to take a punch with their shields. Meanwhile, a single accurately placed plasma torpedo was enough to gut a UNSC ship. Not to mention humanity had, by no means, perfected slipspace travel. It was often the case that a fleet that entered slipspace together in a relatively tight formation would exit thousands of meters apart from each other. The Covenant, on the other hand, could make pinpoint jumps via slipspace and never lose unit cohesion. There was a chance that several of the carriers and cruisers carrying Marines would be far off from the moons and have to high-tail it to the drop points. It would take serious cover fire from the plethora of frigates and destroyers to keep the Covenant from putting down the ships carrying Marines until they reach their destination and offload them. 

None of it sounded very well thought out. Damn near suicidal, actually. "Yeah, *if* we can get to the ground to fight anybody," he replied. "I just don't see that happening en masse."

Avery shrugged. "Long as the Navy gets me close enough, I'll jump outta the ship and land on the moons my damn self if I gotta."

"Good luck with that," he said with a shake of his head.

[Anderson, E.]

Ethan had spent a good portion of the last two weeks swaying between Confused, Anxious and more than a little stressed. It was going to be his first taste of combat. Truth be told he was Terrified of it. Far more than anything else in his life, his first Kiss, High school dance let alone the embarrassment that was loosing his virginity. He shook the images of the thorny bush aside. That was something he was trying to forget. The young marine had trained for it sure, hell ever since leaving the school of infantry and sitting in garrison on Reach that had been most of his marine life so far, besides the usual duties and trying to get his hands on and into the guts of every gun he could, Armory duty was his favorite and always volunteered if he could.

That had continued as best he could onboard the Vengeance. He'd tried to wrangle his way into the Armory at every opportunity. However something he hadn't been prepared for was the other marines he had been assigned to. They sure seemed to be quite the mix and he'd heard stories that first Squads sergeant was a total Psychopath, on more than one occasion. He'd seen the man only in passing but it certainly seemed that way, though the marines of first squad seemed to pay him little mind. probably thought he'd be dead in five minutes, or that's what he thought to himself.

So far he had largely kept to himself, get himself squared away. He'd made sure his uniform was in pristine order, boots polished almost to a mirror and laces tight. probably too tight, he'd always over tightened his footwear. Even as a kid he had worn through the sides and laces of his running shoes like no tomorrow, but it was working to keep his fears at bay. What helped him the most with his fears was learning every pin, spring and detent on his MA5B. Right now as he sat in second squads common berth area he was carefully inspected the fully field stripped weapon in front of him. It all looked exactly as it should. the same as the five or six times it had already this morning and the ten times yesterday. But something felt off, sounded off. He was sure it was a spring as whenever the bolt closed into battery it sounded wrong to him. Sure nothing was wrong, it locked, unlocked and dry fired exactly as it should. But still something felt and sounded just a little off to him.

He closed one eye and squinted a little trying to reduce any parallax error. Was the spring too short or too long? The young marine wasn't sure what was wrong with it, but he wanted, nay needed to find out before they went into combat.

The private shook hid head with a sigh and looked around. Silva had been reading her book and his team Leader lance Corporal Gray had been pretty quiet. As had he, he just wanted to make a good impression. Though he got a feeling the Company had received a fair few other replacements at the same time, they're seemed to be far more people a little nervous like him than he expected for a Company from a battalion with the nickname of suicide... or maybe that was why they had so many replacements?

His thoughts were disturbed by the thick french accent of his fellow team member addressing Lance Corporal Gray. He listened intently hoping to learn something new.

[Ward, J.]

Ward leaned back against the wall with a smirk as he listened to the brief exchange between Furby and Avery. The Lance Corporal was, per usual, playing the role of naysayer. After spending so long on First Team, he had grown accustomed to it. It was a normal affair that was to be expected. If there was something to bitch about, Lance Corporal Jayson Furby was the go-to guy to bitch about it. Ward often did not agree with his perspective on things, but he was still relatively fresh. He hadn't experienced enough to really call himself disgruntled. He had his misgivings about the Marine Corps and the day-to-day monotony, but it was nothing to remark about. The way he saw things, no organization was perfect, and there would always be something that could be improved or even abolished that, somehow, remained stagnant. 

He tended to agree with Avery, however. If the Navy couldn't get them into the fight, he would find his way down to the moons. The Covenant was responsible for murdering millions of human lives, and that number was steadily growing every day. It was past time that humanity gave them a taste of their own medicine. Any opportunity to put the hurt on them was welcomed by him. After all, he was personally affected by the war. The war had taken his father's legs. It hadn't made him any less of a man, as his father was still a force to be reckoned with, but it had clearly taken a toll on him. His father had been forced out of the infantry due to his injuries, and it had been a very rough adjustment period for his family and him. Jon could remember vividly the days that his dad would come home frustrated and angry -- mad at the world for taking away the only thing he'd felt he had been good at -- and arguments between his parents would ensue. 

His parents did their best to keep him sheltered from that, but it was hard not to notice when he could hear the shouting from his room. It had been progressively getting worse over the course of the proceeding months until it reached its boiling point. Both of his parents had been in a pretty heated argument when his father put a hole in the wall. That had been the catalyst that had driven him to seek help. Ultimately, it seemed to have worked. His father had been on a strict regimen of counseling and extracurricular activities such as shooting, exercise, and ironically, running. The prosthetic legs were realistic replacements to his previous limbs and without the typical limitations of the human body. He exerted less effort when jogging than the average person, meaning he could do it for longer without tiring. 

"I'm with Avery," Ward said. "I'd snag an HEV from the Helljumpers if it meant getting into the fight." 

Avery smirked. "That's my fuckin' boy right here. Stealin' peoples shit to wreck peoples shit!"

"You mean tactically acquiring, Av."

"Right."

Ward turned to address Mihaylov. "I bet you'd do it too, Lance Corporal."

"Oh, so I don't rate the proper form of address, Fox," Avery inquired, leaning slightly forward. "Just 'cuz Mihaylov's a TL means fuck Lance Corporal Avery, huh?"

There was a momentary pause as Ward tried to figure out if Avery was serious or not. He'd thought they'd moved past that phase now that he'd seen his fair share of combat. Ward was no longer the boot he used to be. He'd earned some salt since the day he arrived in the unit. There was a faded pair of woodlands in his locker to prove it. Avery paused for a moment and then cracked a toothy grin. "Just messin' with ya, Fox," he said, rather of matter-of-fact. "You gotta learn to lighten up, bro."

"Aye, Lance Corporal," Ward replied, returning the grin with one of his own. The machine gunner flipped him the bird, eliciting a chuckle out of young Marine.

[Wilkas, G.]

Where as her fellow marines seemed to be up for the fight, all Wilkas felt was trepidation and a growing sense of anxiety. Though she was meant to be a marine, she feared fighting the Covenant. The memories of the hunters left the young woman frightened at the thought of facing them again. She had not been a volunteer, the UNSC called for her. She came willing, largely to escape her parents' never ending attempts to control and direct her life. She wanted to do her part and help protect everyone she could from the horrific aliens. She could not share in their thoughts of the battle to come. She had entirely different concerns, not dying for starters came unsurprisingly top of the list, a close second not being taken alive. She heard the horror stories and she hoped and prayed that she might never discover the truth. "Erm... I have to er... Go." Wilkas responded as she stood up to leave, appearing quite pale as she rapidly made for the exit. She did not want to share her worries. These were brave soldiers, reliable, strong able to clamp down their terrors, whilst Wilkas tended to curl up and try her best not to cry. It was bad enough being treated like a little sister, or what felt like it. If she going to have a panic attack, then she would prefer for privacy.

[Chambers, T.]

As expected the very bare bones plan his fellow Lance Corporals had found out and shared hardly inspired much confidence, but an offensive like this was rare particularly of this scope. Only a couple came to mind, most notably Harvest, they had spent too long defending and fighting rear guards, they had to try to go on the offensive, he understood that. Tom just wished it was some other unlucky chap who drew the short straw. However unfortunately his poor luck continued to hold out and he was like his fellow marines on his way.

He knew perhaps better than most of his fellow Marines the risks and dangers of space combat. It was part of the reason it was even here. The Jackboot had practically disintegration within mere moments of combat beginning. Chambers listened as it went back and forth between the members of first team. Furby wasn't wrong, it was a long shot the Navy would get everyone down, but so far they had beaten the odds why wouldn't they do it again? However he was a little worried as it went about staling the ODSTs HEVs to get down to the moons.

All Tom could think of was his memories of the lifeboat off the Jackboot and onto the surface of Archangelsk. They had hit the surface hard, very hard and was over the safe landing speed. He'd awoken in an agonizing pain, his back peppered within the remains of a small power module that had been behind his seat. The smell of his open and burned flesh filled him again.

Briefly he felt himself back on the floor of the lifeboat looking around and finding a few others dead and many other injured, it appeared his passing out from the wounds on his back had saved him from the worst of it, his relaxed state reducing the impact on his body from lack of bracing. The scene began to fade and he was looking at Ward as the banter between him and Avery went on regarding the Privates remark to Mihaylov.

It wasn't an experience he cared to repeat. The HEV Pods however seemed far safer, they were after all designed to crash into the surface of a planet. The lifeboats had been too... and he keenly remembered how that felt.

"I just dont want to repeat the last time I fell from orbit... I'd recommend not taking lifeboats down if you can. Haven't tired a HEV pod. Might be nice to check out the ride." He added with a shrug. trying to force some sarcasm to hide the pain, he didn't like the idea anymore than Furby. He just felt there was little use in complaining about it, besides he always had the food and his bad luck with women to complain about.

[Gray, L.]

Some of marines around Gray were sleeping, some were reading, some cleaning their gear, others watching the television in the room. Gray's best friend, PFC Leona Lawrence was lounging in a seat next to where Louise sat. Suddenly a movement out the corner of her eye made her look across the room. Silva, Gray's other friend and team mate had just closed the book she had been reading with a snap.

Gray studied her friend for a few moments. Though the girl had never said much about the loss of her home planet, Gray suspected her friend was struggling more than she let on and was worried about her. When Silva looked at her and said hello, Gray smiled and nodded. "Hey Silva...what did you get up to during our downtime on Reach? Anything of interest?" She says as she spoke quietly, also taking note of the replacement Marine that had been assigned to second squad and her fireteam, sat nearby.

Louise glanced over at the young marine who went by the surname of Anderson and then back over at Silva. Even though she wasn't thrilled about going back to war, she was curious to see how the youngster would perform under pressure and in an actual combat situation.

[Silva, J.]

Silvia let out a quiet sigh. "Well my fiance dumped me on reach, so I drank far more than I should." She chuckled with dark amusement."Moral of that story, if you gonna date someone... Date someone who is military." In all truth, she was not bothered by the break up, which probably did not help in the fall of the relationship. She believed it to be not her problem anymore. She had tried her best to make it last, if the other person refused to reciprocate such a thing... Well that was on the ex. The loss of New Paris however was far more of a concern. It's beautiful forests, rolling hill, sweeping plains more akin to a sea of green, gleaming oceans and perfect blue sky.. All gone, countless lives lost in it's defence, murdered by the alien filth. She knew it was her anger and grief speaking, but right now, once humanity won, she wanted to exterminate Covenant.

It would not bring back her home, or restore the land to as it had been... But she hoped it might break a vision of peace to those had been murdered for the crime of daring to live. "I did meet an ODST in one of the bars though. He was cool." She grinned at Gray, a amused light in her eyes. "What? I'm single now."

She glanced over at the new kid. "Trust me you will love shore leave." Not that they would be doing any of that any time soon of course.

[Furby, J.]

Furby turned his attention towards Chambers, a single inquisitive brow arched. It sounded to the Lance Criminal that Chambers had first-hand experience with the Bumblebee Lifeboats. Considering his previous occupation as a Navy tech, it wasn't hard to imagine he'd had to abandon ship a couple times or so. It was no secret that the Navy often had its ass handed to it on a silver platter by the Covenant's own naval forces. It was what made the whole premise of their upcoming operation so risky.

According to what he'd heard, they were to essentially invade a trio of moons in an effort to recapture them from Covenant hands. Talons? Claws? Whichever it was, he knew that it wasn't going to be a walk in the park. Thousands of Marines were going to put boots on the ground against a massive Covenant ground force and try to regain control of the moons, with no reinforcements expected for quite some time -- if at all. It all hinged on the Navy successfully repelling the Covenant's warships in orbit. If the Navy lost the battle in space, their gooses were cooked.

Avery and Ward could be all moto about it if they chose to, but he had his doubts about their mission. For one, what if they exited slipspace and they found glassed rocks where moons once were? What would be the point in liberating a trio of lifeless, barren planetoids in space? He saw little strategic value in it. And, even if the moons weren't glassed to hell, what did the UNSC intend to do with the moons? Recolonize them? Send the refugees back to their homes? He could see that going well.

It was, after all, undoubtedly the scene of a vicious massacre of civilians. What better way to restore hope in the colonists than to return them to the scene of a genocide and tell them to rebuild their broken, shattered livelihoods. None of it made sense to him, and that was his main objection to the whole thing. However, in the grand scheme of things, his opinion mattered little. The brass was gonna do whatever the brass intended to do. His objections would fall on deaf ears.

They already did amongst his own squad.

"I'll take your word for it, Chambers," Furby replied. "But I think we'll be taking the flying coffins down to the surface. The Suicide Suits will wanna ride their HEVs down to the surface."

Avery chuckled. "We could totally snag a couple."

"Oh, yeah?" Furby asked with a roll of his eyes, "and how's that?"

"Easy," the machine gunner replied. "We take the pods and kick anyone's ass that tries to stop us."

Fury shook his head furiously. "You'd fight ODSTs?! Are you nuts?!"

Avery grinned. "Momma ain't raised no bitch!"

[Ward, J.]

Ward chuckled at the exchange between the trio, shaking his head as it continued to further devolve into the typical shenanigans that he had grown so accustomed to. Furby and Avery were pretty much expected to carry on back and forth on a variety of subjects as part of their daily routine. Arguments were a common occurrence between the two friends, and generally it was always over something particularly ridiculous and inconsequential to their every day duties. Furby would always find something to bitch and moan about, whether it be the decisions made by command or the price of food at the chow hall or its many dispensers around the ship. Avery would then rebuttal with some fact or tidbit of information that seemed to disprove Furby's assertions, and then within moments the whole argument would devolve into a series of insults and name calling. This particular conversation was not an exception, apart from Avery not really having anything meaningful to put forward other than threatening to fight ODSTs if they attempted to stop them from committing grand theft drop pod.

Furby, of course, seemed to think the machine gunner was certifiably insane. Jon had long ago come to the conclusion that he was. The Marine loved two things, from what Ward had gathered in his time on First Team: Avery liked beautiful women and belt-fed ammunition. Specifically, he enjoyed dispensing that belt-fed ammunition in the direction of the Covenant -- or any unlucky son of a bitch that found themselves on the business end of his machine gun -- and seemed to sleep very soundly at night when he was given the opportunity to do so. His idea of forcibly acquiring a handful of ODST drop pods to ride to the surface was by no means the craziest thing the man had ever said or suggested. Furby was, at this point, simply overreacting.

Which, to be fair, was exactly what the marksman was known for doing.

"Hopefully it won't come down to that," Ward said, rather matter-of-fact. He was trying, perhaps in vain, to keep the conversation on the rails and steered in a northerly direction. He looked over at Chambers as if to ask for some help in that regard. "I think the Navy'll get us in close enough to be able to make it down to the surface in the Pelicans. So long as the Longswords keep the Covenant's spacecraft off our backs."

There was a legitimate concern about every planetary landing. If the Covenant had control of the star system and dominated the space around the planets, it made safely disembarking the Marines on the surface a challenging prospect. Covenant air and space assets would be dispatched rather quickly to prevent the Marines from reaching the surface intact. Banshees and Seraph fighters were the number one enemy of an "amphibious" Marine landing. Drop-ships could be shot out of the sky before getting anywhere near the ground below, and the Marines inside were pretty much at the mercy of the pilots. If the pilots could not fly evasively or make an emergency landing, they were goners. Jon recalled Phoenix III with some level of discomfort. The entire ride down to the surface had been unsettling. Covenant aerial forces had tried their level best to keep the Marines from touching down, and there had been a couple of moments where he'd thought he needed to say his prayers and prepare to meet Jesus. If it hadn't been for the pilots and the Navy's Longsword squadrons, he probably would have been shipped home in a casket.

And that was assuming there was anything left of him to ship back home. He'd heard stories of Pelicans exploding in midflight. According to Avery, that had happened on the machine gunner's first ever drop. The Pelican that contained Third Squad had been caught by errant plasma torpedo and flash-vaporized. A friend of his that had been on board the Pelican had died in the explosion, and Avery had said there hadn't been anything left of him to recover once an attempt was made by the Navy. It was not how he wanted to go out. If he was going to die in this war, he wanted it to be in the middle of a firefight. At least then his family could be told that he went down fighting the enemy, just as he had been trained to do. Besides, anything less would probably incur the wrath of Sergeant Stone, and he really didn't want to harassed by him in the afterlife for failing to die according to his strict standards.

"I just can't wait to finally get back into the fight. It's been, what? Almost a year?"

Avery nodded. "Yeah, bro. It's about time we dropped some bodies."

"And watch Mihaylov outshoot Furby."

He had to. He simply had to.

The games had to go on.

[Chambers, T.]

It didn't matter to him. Everyones concerns were valid even Furby. But unlike Furby Tom felt there was little use in complaining about it. Life had changed when he'd joined the Navy, again when he decided to become a Marine. even more when New Darwin was glasses and again when he'd killed his first human being. Chambers still wasn't quite adjusted to Everyone in first team, Avery seemed to at least Tolerate if not begrudging like him. Furby... He wasn't sure he liked anyone or was particularly well liked in return but he was a good marksman, If he could reduce the mindless dribble of complaints it would be nice, but you never always got what you wanted.

Tom shook his head at Furby's response to his addition of the lifeboats. If it went that far, they were as good as dead already. his number wasn't go to be lucky to get out of that twice. Ward added a piece looking over to him."If what we've heard is true, this is a big fleet coming out. Gonna hurt'em one way or another." Smirked back at Ward "The Longswords'll do their job. They always do. Just wish I could get myself more of them lady pilots."

He thought it over, if it got to lifeboats again, they were as good as dead already. his number wasn't go to be lucky to get out of that twice. He had been about to add more when Avery and Furby went at it about taking some HEVs down again, fighting the ODSTs for them. It was in its own way probably safer than taking a Pelican or an Albatross. The Aussie shook his head at his fellow Machine Gunners Bravado. It was something to behold but had saved them so far, he could walk his talk it seemed.

"Even better to back on the alien assholes." But Tom let out a chuckle as Ward reminded Furby of their little bet. His eyes flicked to Mihaylov then back to first team's marksman. This was going to be an interesting deployment.