Halo: A Soldier's Story

Meet the troops

As I walked around the base to find my squad's assigned sleeping sector, I couldn't help but feel a sense of dread and optimism at the same time. We had won the battle, and I had survived, but my mind went back to when the squad who the man who was the gunner on our warthog, had found out they had lost a squad mate.

It wasn't just seeing the obvious sadness on their faces, but how the squad looked seemed familiar with death. Just a few short words that they had obviously said numerous times before and a numb expression that undoubtedly came from seeing too many comrades die.

My thoughts were interrupted as I heard my squad leader called to me.

"This way Seth, this is our squads sleeping quarters on the base," Mark called

I picked up the pace and went into the room he was standing in front of. It looked like I was the last to arrive in the room as they were nine guys already packed into the tiny gray room. The room was narrow with three bunk beds going along side each of the long walls.

Eleven Members including Mark and Me. It looked like we all managed to survive our first day. Though a few had bandages on, including Luke, but nothing seemed too serious. I decided to take the top bunk of Luke's bed since he was only one I knew.

"Well looks like we are all here Raze Squad," Mark said, "This is where we will be staying for as long as were stationed at this base."

"The brochure had much better rooms than this" A tall white guy with a British accent joked "I would like to speak to the manager about an upgrade."

We all laughed.

-

As I laid in my bunk, that night I mentally went over my squad again. We had attempted to learn a bit about each other.

The British guy, whose name I found out was Oliver, and I were the only ones actually from Earth.

Oliver was my height being 5'11 medium build. He had very light complexion and brown hair with green eyes.

Luke (who, out of the jeep, I realized was actually taller than me by about 2 or 3 inches) and three others Jace and Jake and Alex were from Reach.

Jace and Jake were a pair Spanish twins with very thick accents. They were slightly shorter than me by about an inch. They had a very dark complexion and short black hair (Jace had his cut into a very low mohawk so they could be told apart easily.)

Alex was also Spanish, but not even from the same continent on Reach as the twins and he didn't have much of an accent, but you could tell he spoke Spanish fluently when spoke to the twins in Spanish. He was about 6"3 and had back hair that curled slightly even with his low cut hair style. He had blue eyes as well but a shade much lighter than Luke's.

Brandon, Dave, Daniel, and our squad leader Mark were all from harvest.

Brandon and Dave were both had light brown skin with light brown eyes to match. While Dave was about Luke height and build, being skinny but muscular while Brandon was a short and stout guy being only about 5"5 at best.

Daniel had a light complexion like Oliver's but had black hair with light brown eyes with a similar height as well being 5"11 as well.

Josh was our only member from a planet called Arcadia. He was the biggest in the squad being about 6"8, and he had at least 70 pounds on me. He had red hair with very light brown eyes.

We had been divided into two, smaller firing squads, five-member teams, who are both under Marks command. Alex, Luke, the twins and myself were a part of one squad while all others were, in the other. Within our firing squads, we had leaders (these were decided by scores from the Academy, so I was defiantly not even close to being chosen to be one) With Alex being my squad leader and Oliver being the other since they graduated with Private first class.