Halo: A Soldier's Story

Meet the troops

They all seemed like a good bunch of guys. I hoped would have time to become a close unit.

I yawned. We all had patrol in the morning, and I needed got some shut eye. Let's just hope for peaceful day......

-

As I got ready in my uniform, I tried to be quiet and not wake up the rest of the squad. Because of harvest faster rotation than earth the days lasted 17 hours. With the 17 hours days, the time we had to wake would change day to day.

Unfortunately this completely messed my internal clock and woke about an hour and a half too early

"Hey Seth," Mark said from his bunk. He was the only one who got his own bunk here.

"Hey Mark, why up so early?"

"I was raised here on a farm, this isn't early for me, why are you up so early" he replied while staring up at the top bunk of his bed.

"I have never been a big sleeper."

"Alright well I'm going stay here for a while, if you're going to get some food, the mess hall is straight down followed by two rights and another straight, and then a left."

"Thanks"

It took me all of five minutes to get lost in the building.

"Why is this building so dumbly designed" I yelled to myself

"Because army bases in this region on the planet follow the maze design, If it an invading soldiers got in it is designed to keep them confused and lost long enough to let defenders regroup and counter attack."

I turned around to see Sergeant Forge, walking behind me sharpening a combat knife

"Good Morning Sir" I saluted

"At ease soldier," he said while sheathing his knife in shoe "It's too damn early for formalities."

"Umm yes sir" I replied

"My names, not sir, its Forge, John Forge."

"Ok Mr. Forge" I replied

He shook his head, "You can always tell new recruits, let me give you some advice soldier unless its stiff in a suit or a ceremony don't say sir, you need brothers and sisters in a war, not captains and subordinates. Think of it this way, who would you save, your brother or some guy who bossed you around and made you salute every time you saw him."

"Umm, my brother."

"Exactly, remember that," he said while walking off

"Oh hey Mr. Forge can you help me find my way to the mess hall" I shouted after him

"Read the walls man, egg means food, you're not the first recruit stay at the base," he said without even turning around

And with that he rounded the corner and was off. I figured I had nothing to lose to, so I examined the walls around me. To my surprise, the walls had a lot of strange little markings. One was of a crude shotgun firing while another was two battle rifle going to each other in an X. There was also, a warthog, and bunch little thought bubbles with different numbers of them and, of course, an egg with a crack going across it.

Each symbol had a little arrow pointing in different directions. After a while of walking, I finally found my way to the mess hall. The markings seemed to be on every wall in the base, with doors leading to the area the marking represents having a larger mark above them. I was determined to learn what each symbol meant before leaving the base.

I don't know why but actually having a goal I could achieve on the base cheered me up.

I walked in the mess hall. It was a huge room. When I say huge I mean this room could at least take up half my block back on earth. I saw Mark, Oliver and Alex over by one of the tables. After getting my food (something I really couldn't recognize, for all I knew they had cooked some of those alien punks we had been fighting yesterday), I headed over to the table.