January 16, 2525 (UNSC Calendar)/ seventeen years earlier
Mexico-Toluca Highway, Mexico City, Mexican Autonomous Region, URNA
I saw a white flash and a dark shade moving quickly. I felt pain like no pain I had ever felt before and was instantly knocked out.
I opened my eyes, every movement bringing pain. My hair felt wet and my fémur felt shattered. It probably was too. I didn't know at the time, but I had also cracked four ribs and broken three fingers in my left hand.
I am not entirely sure how, but my eleven-yeat-old body somehow managed to break the car window (which was already almost pulverized), climb through it and then collapse on the highway. I leaned on the undercarriage of the family car, which was now turned sideways and sported dents all over the framework. I started crying. There wasn't really anything else I could do. I was ten, I was in pain, and my parents were in all likelyhood dead.
I stopped crying because it caused me even more pain, and I saw a man descend from a large truck. He was babbling and looked even worse than I did. He was the one that had hit us. He asked me if I was ok and then started cursing. He called emergency services and then started crying himself.
"What have I done?" he kept repeating.
When I next woke up I was in a hospital bed, almost all the pain gone, just a weird stinging in my left side and a mild headache. Sitting in a chair to the side of my hospital room was uncle Manuel. My dad's brother. He's usually hard eyes were red with tears. He laughed, it was a sad lauch. He hugged me and didn't let go.
When he finally let go. He slumped back into the chair.
"What happened?" I asked.
"You were in a car crash," he was avoiding the topic.
"Where's mom, and dad?"
"They're…" his voice broke and he stopped.
I started crying.
"Your dad is gone," his shoulders slumped and he took a deep breath. "Your mother's alive, but she's in a coma and the doctors say she probably won't wake up anytime soon." He was crying now. "I'm glad you're ok."
Before I knew it I was on a UNSC destroyer on the way to Lambda Serpentis, to the planet of Jericho VII. My uncle happened to be a marine drill sergeant. He used to whip rich boys into something ressembling real marines. I used to think that that made him softer than other drill sergeants, but it turned out that he was a real ass. He just managed to intimidate his recruits into not making any sort of contact with their rich parents.
At first I hated him for being the way he was. I actually hated him for everything. Making me move a gazillion parsecs away from home and into a colony with nothing in it other than oceans so large that they could've served as a test bed to prove that Jupiter would, in fact, float if placed on water. The land was not all that interesting either.
My uncle had made me leave my home and my mother. He had made me leave my friends and even my planet. It took me years to understand why he requested that transfer away from Earth.
Despite all this quasi-legitimate reasons to hate my uncle. I hated him the most for a different reason. Actually it was more like a bunch of other reasons bunched up into one.
My life was as hard as a boot camp. Literally.
Wake up at 5:30. Run the track for half an hour before the recruits woke up. Clean my room. Take a shower. Get breakfast. School. Help the cooks at the mess hall. Study time. Run the track for another fifteen minutes with uncle. Historic battles discusión with uncle. Dinner. Bedside reading (mostly classics and war novels). Bedtime.
It was a tough life, but it probably saved my life many times afterwards. No, scratch that, it definitely saved my life a bunch of times.
As an orphan (or the next closest thing) I was troublesome. I got into fights with kids my age whenever I left the base and more than a few times I had been shot for trespassing into restricted areas. I have to give credit to my uncle, he never gave up on me. Sure, he spanked me like crazy and gave me the most inusual punishments for a pre-teen. Cleaning all the rifles in the armory and polishing his office floor was a common occurence for those first years. I eventually got better, but that didn't mean that my life got any less harder physically-wise.
By the time I was fifteen I was already at the shooting range whenever the recruits were running their mini-marathons. I was actually pretty good with the M392 DMR. By the time I got to the age of seventeen I was running drills with my uncle's recruits. Unfortunately, the rest of my schedule was still there, albeit with shorter time slots and a later bedtime to allow for more physical work. The best part of my day was probably being in the kitchen with the cooks, Besides being able to munch on something whenever I wanted to, there was this large cook that was also from earth. He was some sort of American indian. Native American he had said to me once. I forget the tribe, but I clearly remember his talent with knifes. In fact, whenever we had free time in the kitchen we would start a knife throwing contest, usually it was between Dominic Tenare (the Native American) and another cook with philipino heritage. Eventually we all got into it as they taught us basic grips and throwing techniques.
My relationship with my uncle had gotten better. So I was living a life as normal as possiblefor an orphaned child living in a military camp with his uncle. Hell, I even managed to pick up some girls at the bars in some of the bars in Olimpia, the capital city (tip: knife throwing happens to be a skill that ladies are attracted to).
Then I turned eighteen. My uncle was already expecting me to joing the marine corps, but he was still sad that I would be leaving his side. I said goodbye to him in one of the most awkward farewells in the history of man and left to the recruiting station.
When I got there it was relatively crowded with ten people milling around asking questions to the three recruiters. Army, Navy, and Marines. I joined them and started asking questions. I immediatelly realized that being in the UNSC Navy wasn't my place. I belonged groundside, fighting insurrectionists, and if the rumors were true, aliens. Last I heard Admiral Cole had kicked their asses back in Harvest, but contact with a couple of other colonies had been lost, allegedly due to Insurrectionists. Regardless, I was opting to join the Marines but there was still something missing for me there, something new.
"Something missing eh?" the recruiter had said.
"Yes, somehow this doesn't feel like enough o fan adventure, or a thrill."
The recruiter laughed and handed me a pamphlet. It was completely black and only had the words "Feet first into hell" written in silver letters. I opened the pamphlet and went through it. I coud feel my eyebrows rising with every sentence. I finished reading it and wondered how was it possible that I had never heard of the ODST's choice method of transportation. I knew they were the elite forces of the Marine Corps, but I had no idea they were this insane. I tried (and failed) at keeping a pocker face with the recruiter as I gave back the pamphlet.
"Sounds interesting," I said.
"You my young friend, are going to Mars."