***DOWNTIME: THE ARMOURY***
He made his way down the corridor towards the armoury - while the other marines got some rest for the mission ahead, Sam Dunn intended to spend his downtime gearing up. With the amount of preparation required to make a M56D Smartgun ready for combat, along with the other rituals that he needed to do to mentally prepare himself for facing the creatures that had taken his friends, he was going to need a few hours. The rhythmic clunk of his combat boots against the steel floor grating formed a beat for the war music that had started to play in his head - killing time was coming soon.
He reached the hangar bay of the Chicago, where the loadmaster and ground crew were hard at work getting the large frigate prepared for a combat mission. He nodded respectfully to them - being an ex-pilot, he knew just how hard the ground crew worked to make sure that the troops had everything they needed. He quickly identified the loadmaster and walked over to him - a burly man with an ugly series of scars, a patch over his right eye, and greying hair. He'd probably been a marine or pilot back in his day, and now was serving the Corps as best he could. Sam could respect that.
He made his way carefully across the large hangar - keeping out of the way of the ground crew - and slipped quietly inside the ship. The Conestoga classes were a lot more high-tech than anything he'd had access to back in the SAS, and he was suitably impressed by how much technology they'd packed into such a small parcel. He quickly made his way to where he knew the armoury was, and was very pleased to find that it was fully stocked and ready for him. Good. He closed the door behind him, wishing not to be disturbed, and began his work.
He already knew that he would be told to use a M56D for the mission - being the only qualified Smartgunner on the strike team all but guaranteed it. He found the ammuniton storage, and lined up 300 M250 10x28mm Caseless Rounds on the large gunsmithing table that dominated the center of the room. Bigger and more powerful than the M309 round that went into the Pulse Rifle, they also had the feature of a selectable fuse setting. He didn't need to do it manually though, the gun took care of that when each round was loaded into the chamber. He then separated the rounds into 12 groups of 25. Then he got out his engraving tool from his shirt pocket and got to work.
On the first 25 rounds, he engraved, as neatly as he could, "Lt. Ken Harry. KIA Operation "Acid Reign." He remembered Lt Harry - a kid with no experience at all, like most junior officers...but he had the rare quality of recognizing that he didn't know shit, and actually asking the veteran members for their input and advice. He cared more about the people under his command than his delusions of glory and grandeur. That made him a rare man, a good man. Once who had gotten them out of many a sticky situation alive. His democratic leadership style hadn't seen him through the mining tunnels of Epsilon Facility, though. They'd taken him when he'd led 2nd Squad in to rescue Kawalski and the Doc.
Next batch. "Sergeant Jack Dunn. KIA Operation 'Acid Reign'." Dad had always been a hell of a bloke, the kind of man who always knew what to say to inspire the team to do their very best, and pick them up when they fell. He'd been the heart and soul of the Platoon, the man who kept them going no matter what happened. He'd been a good commander, a good father, a good comrade and a good friend. He was getting close to retirement age when the orders for Acid Reign got down. In the end, he just wasn't as quick as he had once been - he killed the bug that got the drop on him...but he hadn't gotten away in time to avoid the acid blood.
One by one, he etched the names of each and every member of his old platoon into the rounds before him, so that each dead marine had 25 bullets to their name. The last 25 bore his name - for he had also been listed as KIA during Acid Reign, only to be rebuilt bit by bit thanks to the money of the Corporates. They weren't about to let the valuable combat experience he'd gained go to waste, and they'd wasted no time telling him that he was an investment - and that he'd better pay off. He sighed to himself. As long as he made sure that every single one of those bullets with his comrades names on them found their mark, he could die knowing he'd balanced the scales. He was going to take the honour roll that his ammo now contained and violently insert it into the bugs, the mercs, anyone that stood in his way.
Next, he grabbed two empty drum magazines, and on each he engraved the names of each squad. The first drum also got Harry and Jack, whilst the second one got his name and that of his old copilot, Jarred Ethers. The process took him well over an hour, but by the time he was finished, he had two fully loaded drums of ammunition, each holding 150 rounds, that had strengthened his resolve and prepared him for the hell ahead. He knew he was not going to die until both ammo drums were empty, and he wasn't going to waste ammo. He couldn't let his friends die unavenged. He wouldn't. No way.
Next, he tracked down where the crew had stored his personal M56D Smartgun. Smartguns were notoriously unreliable things, and notoriously unique. Lots of them had their little problems, their glitches. It was rare when you found one that you meshed with so perfectly that it completely overcame the technical issues the weapon had. When you found 'your match', Smartgunner lore said to never let go of your weapon - keep it forever. Sam had tested out dozens before he'd found his match. It had once been jet-black, but now its surface was bone-white, every available bit of space sporting the painted visage of a skull. It was a bone-weapon. A dead weapon. A reaper's tool of destruction and misery.
That was the name of his weapon. Misery.
He found his combat harness and strapped himself in. He opened up the front ballistic plate to check that the tracking and targeting processor and inbuilt communications system were undamaged. Everything looked to be in order, but he wouldn't know for sure until he switched the whole weapons system on. He closed it up. Like his Smartgun, the armoured breastplate had an undercoat of black - but instead of skulls, a realistic representation of a ribcage with a bleeding heart was painted on. He still enjoyed painting - he'd done so ever since he was a kid.
Next, he attached the stabilizer arm to the mounting on his hip, and plugged the leads into the harness - where it connected to the radio and tracking processor. He then plugged his HMS into the system - and the HUD that was already superimposed on his vision lit up with new data - a comms channel, a red box and a series of warnings saying 'Unable to detect M56D Smartgun unit'. Of course - he wasn't plugged into Misery just yet, he still had a couple of things to do. First, he plugged in a DV9 Lithium battery to the gun - this would power most of the systems. It would have powered all of them, but he had a secondary battery fixed to his HMS - a custom mod, since he relied on the damn thing to see out of his bad eye.
Finally, he plugged the weapon in. First, he plugged the other end of the battery to the stabilizer arm - immediately, the LED counter on his weapon showed '000' in red digits. He heard a faintly audible whine as the system powered up. Next, he linked the weapon to the stabilizer arm with the other cables - now, the HMS sprang to life. Targeting and ranging data appeared, along with remaining ammunition (this was in red and flashing, showing he was out of ammo), and the other warning lights disappeared.
Now the thing was powered up, he had one thing left to do. He located a Motion Tracker, and clipped it onto his belt, in the empty space between a large ammo pouch and a smaller canteen pouch. He then grabbed a lead from one of his pockets, and plugged it into a small socket in the tracker - the other end went into his gun harness. He switched the tracker on...and on his HUD, a transparent image of a motion tracker screen appeared in the bottom-right corner. No movement within its range of 25m - though the dense walls probably had something to do with that - he found that trackers worked best in open ground.
He slipped the second drum mag into his ammo pouch, and he clipped the other one into his weapon. The red flashing ammo icon on his HUD disappeared, replaced with a green '150'. He was fully loaded. He pulled back the cocking handle and let it go, loading a round into the chamber. If he let the thing load itself, the first round was all but guaranteed to jam. Screw that. He knew the weapon was on safe - he'd checked that before he'd loaded it, and set the ammo selector to 'delay' which meant the round wouldn't explode until it penetrated the target - vital against armoured mercs and Xenomorphs.
He knew he only had fifteen or so minutes until it was time to head out to the hangar to listen to the boss make his speech, so he strapped on the rest of his armour (this consisted only of a pair of greaves), and packed the rest of his gear. Okay. He was combat ready. He knew it would be six days before mission start, but he wanted to be sure everything was working perfectly - and it was. Plus, he needed to get his head into the right frame of mind. If he was going to be killing and surviving...he needed to feel ready for war.
Okay, time to head out. He turned, opened the armoury door, and stalked out, towards where he knew that the other marines were. He made sure to clip his weapon against the harness, so the barrel was pointing straight down towards the ground - weapon control was important. He ejected the ammo drum, then cocked the weapon to eject the one bullet from the chamber, and re-loaded it into the mag before slipping that one into his other ammo pouch. Weapon unloaded and safed, he was ready to hear the boss ramble.
***1700 HOURS***
Okay, so it wasn't a ramble after all. In fact, the speech was brief and to the point - just the way he liked them. He moved a bit away from the team after the talking stopped, so that he could observe the goings on from a safe distance. His arms crossed over his chest, he waited for them to finish up and board the ship - he absolutely hated cryo, and he looked forward to getting it over and done with. Bloody cryo sickness. Bloody freezer burn. Bloody hell. It was only six days - he was damn tempted to just stay up and paint the dropship, if the crew had no problem with it. Hell, he'd don a suit and paint the whole ship's hull if it meant getting out of cryosleep.
He was musing on the heresies of being frozen alive when one of the soldiers, the other Australian, walked up to him an extended a hand. Well, he hadn't expected that - after his little tantrum, he'd been hoping the marines would keep their distance. It'd be a lot easier on him if they weren't nice o him. He didn't want to care about them. He didn't want to hurt when they died. Still, he wasn't about to just brush off the one bloke who had the balls to go and talk to the new psycho - courage was something to be rewarded, after all.
"G'day mate, welcome aboard, I'm Mike O'Brien, Obi for short."
He didn't smile, but he reached out and took the hand, shaking it firmly. He held the man's gaze with his one good eye, and was disappointed to find a small smirk appearing on his own face. Damnit, how dare the bastard be all nice and comradely? It reminded him of his old platoon, of the SAS blokes. They'd had the same friendly attitude. It hadn't done them any good.
"Dunn. Sam Dunn. Back when my friends were still alive, they used to just call me 'Dunny' for short." His smile wavered and his voice cracked a little as he corrected himself - all the people who had known his nickname were dead now. Gone. In a mission just like this one. It took a moment for it to sink in, before he forced the pain deep down and slammed the lid on it. In truth, he'd started the nickname himself - just self-deprecating enough to be funny without being serious, a reference to the fact that he used to talk a lot of shit. It came with the job description of platoon comedian.
"As for how good it is to meet you...if we both get out of this one alive, I'll consider it a bloody good omen. I'll do my best to make sure that we both do." He said, his tone light. He didn't really consider the possibility of them both surviving - he knew none of them were coming out alive, but after what Dugan had told him, he decided to try to keep morale in mind. If he crushed the hopes of the group with depressing talk, then they'd probably give up and die easily. Better to let them have their hope, so that they died well.
<Tag Obi>
"Careful O'brien, it aint healthy to talk to assholes."
He heard the comment, and didn't bother suppressing a dry little chuckle, obviously enjoying the comment - especially how petty it was. He shook his head and sighed, tuning his head with a flirtatious wink towards Morse.
"Getting jealous are we, Morse? Aw, sorry babe, you know I love you the most." He teased back, looking for all the worlds to be honestly shocked and hurt. He managed to keep the expression for about three seconds, before breaking into a never-before-seen grin.
"But I shouldn't be talking to you. It ain't healthy." He added, turning to O'brien with a conspiratorial grin. When Morse added the comment about killing Obi for using the wrong channel, Dunny turned to face him, a contrite expression on his face.
"You're insinuating I'd cheat? Shame on you, Morse - you know I'd never kill any marine but you!" He then burst into a chuckle, shaking his head and leaning against a nearby wall. Goading the marine was far too easy - and he was more than willing to make gay jokes against himself if they dragged Morse down to his level - after all, he could take a joke. The question was, could Morse? He wondered to himself if the marine would pass the little test he'd devised for him. Sam looked forward to the retort that he new was coming.
<Tag Morse>