-Part One; On Your Mark, Get Set...

"Drop in fifteen."

The voice was that of Max, the Lance Corporal. In a normal squadron, the Gunnery Sergeant would call out that sort of thing, but the 42nd Mobile Orbital Drop Infantry was not really normal. Max was the town crier, more or less, though he wouldn't ever say anything if it wasn't so.

Walking into the room with the rest of the assembled squadron members, Max ran his sable brown eyes over each face once, noting their expressions. There were nine total, and none looked any less ready for this than they had for the last drop, or the one before that. But they seemed to like to look at one another before each drop, as if to be sure they got one last good look before the worst.

With some fifteen minutes to kill before needing to assemble themselves in their HEV pods, the squadron returned to their former occupations. Amanda, in the back, was playing a card game with Elliott, a trooper some twice her size. He didn't seem to be any better at the cards than she was, though.

At the holographic projector table, Connor and James stood discussing the nature of the programming underneath the projected landscape they were looking at. Where normal troops would be discussing layouts and tactics and plans, these two just bickered about the ones and zeros behind the imagery.

Propped up with his feet in the air, Alex-1 looked like he was asleep... until Alex-2 got ahold of his left boot and yanked it up and off the crate he'd propped it up on, then the two Alexes were in a race around the room as fast as the leader could go. Alex-1 was older, more experienced, and caught his winks where he could. Alex-2 was younger, tended to be more playful, and would prank anyone he could get away with. Within his own squadron, though, this had become difficult, so it was harder to get his teammates to play.

Watching this, and across from the card game and slightly apart from the crates and the projector table and the door through which Max had come, stood Andrew, stout, lanky, but quick as a whip, and Adam, the thinker. Given two minutes, the man could conjure a hundred ways around, through, past, or into anything. The team had been assembled out of the best of the best, without regard to age, sex, disposition or quirk. So that had saddled them with an array of very interesting characters... but all were good at what they did best.

Which would await them at the other end of that drop in fifteen.

"You had an ace?" Elliott suddenly complained. "Where were you hiding that thing?"

"Read it and weep." Was all Amanda would say, grinning with an unholy glee. She scooped up Elliott's cards, and stacked them neatly by tapping them edge-on against the tabletop, looking up in time to see the Alexes coming around for another pass.

At a glance to Elliott, the bigger trooper casually stretched out a leg, sending Alex-2 sprawling. It didn't take but a second for Alex-1 to land on him and wrestle him into an arm-lock, leaving him squealing and the other troopers laughing at him. "I got you now, you half-pint!" Alex-1 crowed, triumphant.

"Okay, boys," Amanda interrupted, still grinning. "Time to start grabbing our crap. Don't want to land and remember we forgot something, after all." She dropped the worn cards into their ratty cardboard box, and slipped the top closed over them, before standing up.

The tussle on the floor disassembled on its own, the team rising to and filtering down to the other end of the room, past the crate where Alex-1 had been dozing a moment before. There, they began to outfit with their weapons of choice. Amanda took a 99D-S2 AM model sniper rifle and a pair of M7's, nesting the weapons down into her pod for the trip groundward. Alex-1 pulled down a standard BR55 from the rack, and a .45 Magnum to go with, though he did slip a monomolecular-edged tungsten carbide eight-inch combat knife with a diamond-hone sheath into one boot, just in case things became more than a rifle and pistol could handle.

As Alex-1 propped that leg up to tie off the top of the sheath around his knee, Alex-2 brought down a 12-gauge shotgun and a single M7. Wiggling past Amanda and Alex-2, Max managed to get himself a shotgun as well, though he wiggled back out again to pull open the rack holding the heavy weaponry, and reached past the SPNKr for the W/AV M6 G/GNR, also known in some circles as simply the "Spartan laser". Hefting the massive energy weapon from the rack, he turned and shouldered through the others heading for his pod.

Elliott watched him go, holding his BR55 in one hand, his other on a rack lip, then turned and picked up a pair of .45 Magnums, and promptly followed him. Connor made sure he got that abandoned SPNKr before its feelings got hurt, giving the tubes an affectionate pat as he lifted a pair of the M7's with his other hand. It just wouldn't do to have the explosives get persnickety!

Once Elliott and Connor were out of the way, James could finally fit through. As Amanda and the two Alexes sorted into their own pods, Andrew and Adam took their places at the weapon-rack. James pulled down another of the BR55's, and an M7 sub, and was done. Andrew and Adam both took MA5B assault rifles, though Andrew went with the .45 Magnum and Adam took the very last M7. Before he left, Adam pulled out the other monomolecular combat knife, having become rather fond of the thing for when guns were good for beans and all he needed was a knife.

Outfitted with their guns, James then unsealed the grenade crate Alex-1 had had his feet up on, and passed out pairs to the qualified carriers; Elliott, Connor, and Adam. Nobody else had the aim or the arm-power to make them go far enough and into the right places. This didn't stop the bereft from bemoaning this disqualification's unfairness, though, and it never stopped a single one of them from filching the far more dangerous variety off the bodies of the enemy.

Covenant sticky-grenades were just sooooo much more fun!