A Brute Chieftain with a grav hammer could be almost as dangerous as a Hunter but Kurt couldn’t help the shiver of unease that crawled up his spine when Matt mentioned them. “It goes without saying, SPI armor is pretty much useless against a Hunter’s fuel-rod cannon.” Most everything was unfortunately. It was part of the reason the Hunters were so deadly and terrifying a foe...well, that and the fact that Hunters tended to come in twos.
“They are already better than even the best ODST, now we just need to refine their skills and give them that extra edge that makes them Spartan. Thankfully, we have months yet before they graduate to get them prepared.
"Most things are. Even Mjolnir," Matt agrees with a sigh. Nothing they can do to make that more survivable. Except training. Teaching them how to do the fight without letting them get close. Which will be hard.
"They'll need to work together better than Hunter pairs do," Matt muses thoughtfully. But as those seem to almost share thought. How is he supposed to teach them to be better than that? Either way he intends that he gets a piece of that grav hammer. May help cut through those hunters.
He just hopes they give the needed months. His faith in ONI has dropped lately.
“Supposedly the newer models come with improved shielding along with a lot of neat bells and whistles the MJOLNIR we got didn’t have. Unfortunately, since one of those still cost as much as a battle fleet, even I haven’t been able to charm ONI into letting me have one to play with.”
The only reason Kurt had heard even those rumors was because he’d made a concerted effort to keep tabs on all of his surviving Spartans an NOBLE had been outfitted with some of that newer tech.
“I agree. Alpha failed because in the heat of battle, their unit cohesion started to break down. That is something I tried to rectify with Beta.” But it hadn’t been enough, had it? He mentally flinched back from that thought and pushed on. “There is no stigmata in my Spartans becoming as close as family here, I actively encourage it in fact because it helps deepen both team cohesion but also because all of them come from the same common background, it gives them all a common ground on which to stand. They aren’t genetically superior enough to have passed Halsey’s exacting standards but because they have all personally lost everything to the Covenant, it gives them a fire and a determination even a II would be hardpressed to compete with. And I don’t say that lightly, Matt.” Kurt hadn’t tried to repress all memories his Spartans had of their families until even their family names were forgotten, instead, he wanted them to remember so they knew what they were fighting for.
And if you asked Matt, he'd almost say it was better not to remember their lives before. Surely they weren't that great if they could forget them so easily. Besides, that disconnect from other people meant that when it came to it, he could do the brutal math of war.
Sometimes people didn't live. You had to accept that. But those loses had to be worth it, had to have value. Not that Matt intends that any of these young men and women should be lost. He'll fight to give them the best chance they did. Than other people have had.
"Mjolnir... it doesn't matter. We shouldn't linger over it. We don't have the resources to have that."
It's been a while with their cards there, almost discarded, but Matt does start dealing. "I'm going to start looking into the ways we can improve the obstacle course. I just wish there was another few Spartans to help this."
"You're right, it's mere wishful thinking and we must make do with what is available to us."
Kurt's hazel eyes held shadows and sadness along with another emotion not so easily defined when he said that. The other Spartan seemed to suddenly have trouble looking his brother in the eyes but instead looked down at the table in front of them instead.
"As far as ONI is concerned, my Spartans are disposable assets. Pawns to be sacrificed on the field of battle if the the loss of life can be justified by a tactical advantage. They cost just a fraction of what we cost the UNSC to craft and outfit so they are forced to go into battle with armor far inferior to even the oldest models of MJOLNIR. It's my job to make sure they at least have training that rivals what we received." This was as close as Kurt had come thus far to verbally admitting just how calamitous a fate the previous Spartan-III classes had faced.
Or why there weren't a flood of fresh-faced new Spartans throughout the war. Though Kurt knew that Matt would be able to read between the lines.
"Any way you can find to improve our current training methods gives the III's a better chance at survival, so you have my full support. If we have to push them further and harder than Halsey and Mendez ever pushed us...so be it. They need every advantage we can give them." Somehow, the shadows in Kurt's eyes grew darker because he really was dancing on the razor's edge of desperation.
He couldn't help but wonder what Matt or even what Mendez would think of him if they knew what he'd done to Gamma. Kurt's mind recoiled from that just as it had every other time he let some of the crushing guilt eating at him gain a hold on his mind.
SPARTANs, disposable? There's such anger in Matt's eyes as he listens to that. Fury. Hands clenched tight at his sides in fists that he knows could dent these walls. Kurt may have learned how to manage that anger, that powerlessness, but Matt?
He hasn't.
"Casualty rates?" he asks when he's able to keep his voice level. Reading between the lines was trained in. He has to know what he's working against if he's going to help find a way to make these kids better.
More than that, he needs Kurt to not carry this alone. And he knows, better than anyone would, how much Kurt would put this on himself. No one but John could be harder on himself over a failure.
Kurt could see the anger in Matt's eyes and it was one he shared. One he'd been struggling with for the better part of two decades. that rage had been born in the aftermath of Operation: PROMETHEUS when he'd watched the footage of Alpha company being wiped out almost completely. Only his sense of despairing failure outweighed that emotion.
He'd tried to ensure Beta would not follow in their footsteps only to have their lives wasted just as callously. Kurt had learned his lesson though and had tried to save as many of the Beta Spartans as he could.
"Almost one hundred percent. Alpha Company's team cohesion fell apart in the battle but even then...I don't think they would have survived. They managed to shut down a Covenant shipyard and according to ONI...that is worth three hundred Spartan lives." Kurt couldn't keep the bitterness out of his voice.
"I am doing the best that I can, Matt. But I keep failing my Spartans." The confession escaped him before his own internal filters could stop it. It wasn't a sentiment he'd ever quite brought himself to say out loud to another person but Matt was his brother. If anyone could understand the weight of his sense of failure, it would be him.
"No," Matt says, voice firm. Angry. "You haven't failed them. You haven't failed any of us. ONI has failed us."
And Matt's going to dedicate himself to fixing that as best as he can. Because Kurt's been carrying this too long and he doesn't deserve it, not a single bit of it. Too long his brother has carried the weight alone.
Kurt couldn't quite bring himself to meet Matt's eyes. An unfamiliar feeling of shame churned through him but the other Spartan couldn't say for certain what was causing it. Maybe admitting weakness even if it was in front of perhaps the only person on this base who could truly understand him?
"Me, ONI, it doesn't matter who failed them does it? They still died in the end and are continuing to do so despite my best efforts." Emotion made his voice rougher than he wanted.
He'd never been a melancholy sort of person and in point of fact, Kurt had been infamous for being one of the friendliest and most outgoing members of their class who'd always expressed an empathetic interest in the well-being of both his team and others. And that sensitivity was proving to be his undoing. "Now you understand just how monumental a task we have ahead of us, Matt."
"It does," Matt counters, reaching out to put a firm hand on his brother's shoulder. Even squeezes it tightly. "You're not the one putting them out there. You aren't the one who orders them out there. It's not you."
Because trust him, Maine knows a lot about the bad command structures ONI allows to play out. The willful disregard for people. Gets it a bit. It's about survival of a species.
Who even knows if they would count as a part of that species anymore.
But clearly the man needed more and Matt pulled Kurt into his arms, a brief hug offered, but a strong one. Surely this would work for Kurt.
"Maybe we just expect too much of them." It was unclear if he was speaking of ONI or of the III's. They were at war and while it was devastating to watch hundreds of his Spartans be sacrificed in battle, Kurt told himself that those deaths weren't in vain.
By shutting down the Covenant shipbuilding capabilities, they had slowed them down for months. Months that saved countless lives. So he knew by the bloodless by the number logic of ONI that those kinds of missions justified the means but it was hard.
The last thing Kurt had expected was that hug and he was a little stiff and slow to reciprocate it. Maybe that could be chalked up to the fact that he'd spent the better part of two decades being cut off from his fellow II's and Matt in particular. "Thank you, Matt. I mean it."
Just having his brother here helped more than he'd thought possible. Kurt had battled with his own sense of loneliness and isolation both because of his rank and position at Currahee but also because he'd been apart from his team for so long. "I'm really glad you're here."
Shut up and stop defending ONI. Stop defending other people and tearing yourself apart. Maine is not amused. Not amused at all. He holds his brother for a long moment before letting him go. At least Freelancer had taught him support by watching it happen.
"Going to make this better," he promises. "Got more combat experience than you, than your trainers. Against everything. I'll manage it."
Well, this was what happened when you took a Spartan, a man who'd been trained to operate in a team and expect nothing less than perfection and put them in a situation like this. One where no matter how hard he tried, no matter how effective his training methods may be, his students lives were thrown away seemingly carelessly.
Spartans didn't deal with failure well and thanks to Halsey's teachings, taking seemingly the weight of humanity on their shoulders wasn't just a likelihood, it was an expectation.
"Good. The Chief, he's been an invaluable help and I really do think our training methods are on par with what we had to go through. But the Spartan-III's aren't kitted out as well as we were and as I said, the missions they get assigned are ones with an 'acceptable' casualty level threshold." He couldn't mask the disgust and anger in his voice when he said that.
"I've tried to save as many as I can, especially those who show real promise. But there's only so many numbers I can fudge. And ONI will have their pound of flesh."
"At least I can expect better teamwork than my last bag," Matt shrugged. He will make them into effective teams, or he will break them down until they hate him enough to manage it.
He will be your boogie man, Kurt. You just keep focusing on doing what you can to help them. TO make them better. And to give the chances they need.
The sooner he can get into Freelancer files the better though. He's heard some of the teach have been made on disposable one-off specs, that was the rumor. But what if they could turn more tech like that to their people?
Kurt offered him a sympathetic look because he understood. After working with Spartans, dealing with regular military personnel was just a let down in so many ways. "From the Gammas perhaps but prepare yourself for utter chaos when we start to train Delta next year."
He doubted Matt had a lot of experience with children outside of their own shared childhood and it was a whole other world. You had the find a perilous balance between supportive teacher and disciplinarian. Thankfully, he had Mendez to carry most of that particular role.
"They'll be a better team," Matt insists as he looks at Kurt. "Last unit wasn't about cohesion. They were trying to make something better than us. But... Less team deployment."
Solo insertion. Destroy teams to build up the idea that one individual could do better. How stupid was that? How was a SPARTAN supposed to believe in anything other than a team? He was raised to it.
"Boogie man when Deltas arrive. Hard-ass Brute until then."
The sooner he can start full on hand to hand with them, the better. Maybe start with teams of them. Three on ons.
"Good, do what you must. Better we are harsh taskmasters to them now rather than letting them get out onto the front-lines only to discover war is ten times harder than training could ever be."
And with that, he and Matt settled in to plan how to improve the Spartan-III's training methods. The next day, the newest drill instructor was unleashed upon the unsuspecting Gamma's.
Chief Mendez was a gifted and skilled instructor who had now overseen the crafting of four different generations of Spartans but the man was no spring chicken. He wasn't soft by any stretch of the imagination but the man just couldn't perform as well as a Spartan-II still in his fighting prime. When Kurt had announced they were doing search and capture exercises, more than one Gamma had visibly fought the urge to roll their eyes because that was so first year.
Of course, none of them had expected one lone DI to be able to effectively hunt each and every fire team down and incapacitate them one at a time. Sure, there were a few particularly promising units such as Teams Saber, Katana and Gladus but they were not equipped to deal with a fully-trained Spartan with decades of combat experience on his side.
It was well after dark when the last demoralized fire team of Spartan-III's returned to Currahee only to be faced with their CO standing there at a parade rest.
"You did well, now get cleaned up and then get some grub. We start early tomorrow." A curious mixture of hopefulness quickly dashed with resignation and uncertainly quickly passed over the teenager's faces. Still, they were too well-disciplined to not follow orders and they made their way towards the barracks at double-time.
Kurt schooled his expression into something appropriately serious but there was some hint of amusement in the other Spartan's hazel eyes when he pinned Matt with a look.
"So, how did they do? I see you returned them all in one piece." Some perhaps more bruised than others but war wasn't gentle or kind.
How did they do? Well, that was definitely a complicated question to answer. One should give them credit that Maine was standing there with a black eye and more than a few scrapes himself. But he didn't seem much worse for the wear than he would after a bit of heavy sparring with Kurt. And he was smirking.
"Good enough," he said, "for rookies. They're strong, fast. Like SPARTANs should be. But you're right about cohesion."
Not saying they were worse than Freelancers, but it was a near thing. Reminded him a bit of how poorly he'd done against Texas, with him failing to respect the skills of his teammates. Everyone wanted to be the one that put the new DI down. That didn't help in a combat situation.
"Do it again," he suggests after a thoughtful moment. "But start with arming them. Talked to your AI. There is new, modified lock-down paint we can consider. Arm them as if they are in the field. Will react to their gear, immobilize joins, give light electric sensation to mimic limbs numbing when hit."
Basically, equip them in a way where they feel like it matters, see if they work better from there. And, of course, give him the same. The ability to take their weapons if he needed. Force them to think on their feet but plan as a group.
Kurt scanned him over carefully, silently taking note of the fact that Maine had a fresh black eye and some minor injuries. He couldn't help a part of him that felt a tingle of pride in knowing his Spartans could at least somewhat hold their own against a fully trained II.
"They haven't an ounce of real combat experience. Hopefully that will come in time. Which is why this training is so critical."
Of course, what Kurt couldn't say was that once the Gamma found themselves out in battle where they were injured or hurt then the illegal alterations he'd implemented into their augmentations would come to the for and would hopefully give them the edge they would need to survive.
"Very well, sounds like a plan." They had stuck with using rubber bullets and low-energy blasts meant to simulate Covenant plasma fire but if Matt thought this would e of use, Kurt was willing to go along with it.
"Whatever you need, you have cart blanche to do what you need to do. Just don't permanently harm them or set their training back too much with anything truly grievous."
"Rubber bullets only sting. Life is harder than a sting," Matt reminds him quite simply. But he doesn't want cart blanche. He wants to make sure Kurt understands why he's doing what he's doing.
There had never been enough transparency in his last posting. But there's something more than that first. They should have a delay on that sort of thing. So Matt stands there, does he dare suggest this?
"Doing hand to hand training in fire team sizes. Me versus them. I get grav hammer, settings turned down low. Except I want the fireteams randomized. Just for this."
They are used to knowing how they fit together as a team. Which is why they aren't communicating as much. Teach them to communicate with those they haven't been assigned to for a while, and you'll teach them to communicate better in those teams. Because they weren't as close in these teams as his and Kurt's SPARTAN class had been. It will also make them reevaluate their own awareness of their skills now that the enhancements are in.
“I understand that and completely agree with your logic. You have my full support to implement any training methods you deem appropriate.” Kurt said evenly while meeting Matt’s gaze. “I just don’t want them hurt to an extent that it can permanently affect their combat readiness. We’ve worked too hard to perfect the augmentation procedure to start breaking Spartans in training.”
He was of course speaking about the unlucky members of their own training class who’d either died or been so disfigured by the augmentation process they were either crippled for life or worse. All of them remembered seeing René and Kirk relegated to living their lives in a neutral-buoyancy gel tank with their bodies so disfigured from the failed carbide ceramic bone ossification process that they no longer looked human.
“Break up the fireteams?” That seemed to surprise the other man and both eyebrows crept upwards ever so slightly. The suggestion was anathema to everything Spartans knew. Both II’s and III’s worked best when grouped with a familiar element. Fellow Spartans who you knew how they would react, what their moves would be like yet now that Kurt took a step back to examine it, he could understand what Matt was going for.
"Not forever. For this specific sort of exercise. Teach them to talk better. Was an issue with my last team. Got too set, assumed too much."
And these kids? They aren't SPARTANS like he and Kurt were. The cohesion wasn't there from the word go because everything they were and had been hadn't been taking from them. SPARTAN-IIs were a team from the first word. Because who else did they have? Not their families, but these kids remembered that.
"They run normal the rest of the time. People here? They don't know their people as well. Not like I knew you and Linda."
"Alright, let's try that and see what happens." He finally agreed after a long pause as he visibly absorbed what Matt was saying. It made sense of course but it was so unlike anything they had been trained to do.
His closest bonds in boot had been with his fireteam.
Kurt of course would argue his Spartan-III's had lost as much if not more than even them. Sure, they'd been absconded from their families but every single III was a war orphan who'd suffered through the traumatic events of Covenent glassing their homeworlds. It gave them a fire and a motivation to get the job done to say the least.
"Okay, lets get Mendez and see who all we can match up. Are we filling in deficiencies in skill sets? What's your plan, Matt?"
"Randomize them each pass. It's about communication. Sometimes you need to communicate overlaps and how that causes problems. My last team just about fell apart because of communication issues."
One day he might tell Kurt about it. Just a bit longer for him to feel... less like he's betraying them. Not like Kurt would tell anyone else. It would stay between them. He trusts Kurt like nothing and no one else.
His fingers come up to his eye to rub at it.
"I want them to be able to do more than this. If they can start getting good at it, we'll see about working the grav hammer in on lower settings. Get them catching it."
"I see, alright, let's try it." Kurt, bless him, seemed able to read Matt even after all these years and recognized that he wasn't ready for him to press him about his old team just yet.
He'd always been the most empathetic member of their training group and had an almost uncanny ability to read people.
"Well, do keep in mind, they are still in their adjustment period post Augmentations so we do need to exercise some patience with them." Kurt moved to clap a hand on Matt's shoulder. "Come on, we can figure all of this out while we get some chow. You must be famished."
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Kurt-051 + Matt-020 (Rvb/Halo Mashup)
A Brute Chieftain with a grav hammer could be almost as dangerous as a Hunter but Kurt couldn’t help the shiver of unease that crawled up his spine when Matt mentioned them. “It goes without saying, SPI armor is pretty much useless against a Hunter’s fuel-rod cannon.” Most everything was unfortunately. It was part of the reason the Hunters were so deadly and terrifying a foe...well, that and the fact that Hunters tended to come in twos.
“They are already better than even the best ODST, now we just need to refine their skills and give them that extra edge that makes them Spartan. Thankfully, we have months yet before they graduate to get them prepared.
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"They'll need to work together better than Hunter pairs do," Matt muses thoughtfully. But as those seem to almost share thought. How is he supposed to teach them to be better than that? Either way he intends that he gets a piece of that grav hammer. May help cut through those hunters.
He just hopes they give the needed months. His faith in ONI has dropped lately.
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The only reason Kurt had heard even those rumors was because he’d made a concerted effort to keep tabs on all of his surviving Spartans an NOBLE had been outfitted with some of that newer tech.
“I agree. Alpha failed because in the heat of battle, their unit cohesion started to break down. That is something I tried to rectify with Beta.” But it hadn’t been enough, had it? He mentally flinched back from that thought and pushed on. “There is no stigmata in my Spartans becoming as close as family here, I actively encourage it in fact because it helps deepen both team cohesion but also because all of them come from the same common background, it gives them all a common ground on which to stand. They aren’t genetically superior enough to have passed Halsey’s exacting standards but because they have all personally lost everything to the Covenant, it gives them a fire and a determination even a II would be hardpressed to compete with. And I don’t say that lightly, Matt.” Kurt hadn’t tried to repress all memories his Spartans had of their families until even their family names were forgotten, instead, he wanted them to remember so they knew what they were fighting for.
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Sometimes people didn't live. You had to accept that. But those loses had to be worth it, had to have value. Not that Matt intends that any of these young men and women should be lost. He'll fight to give them the best chance they did. Than other people have had.
"Mjolnir... it doesn't matter. We shouldn't linger over it. We don't have the resources to have that."
It's been a while with their cards there, almost discarded, but Matt does start dealing. "I'm going to start looking into the ways we can improve the obstacle course. I just wish there was another few Spartans to help this."
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Kurt's hazel eyes held shadows and sadness along with another emotion not so easily defined when he said that. The other Spartan seemed to suddenly have trouble looking his brother in the eyes but instead looked down at the table in front of them instead.
"As far as ONI is concerned, my Spartans are disposable assets. Pawns to be sacrificed on the field of battle if the the loss of life can be justified by a tactical advantage. They cost just a fraction of what we cost the UNSC to craft and outfit so they are forced to go into battle with armor far inferior to even the oldest models of MJOLNIR. It's my job to make sure they at least have training that rivals what we received." This was as close as Kurt had come thus far to verbally admitting just how calamitous a fate the previous Spartan-III classes had faced.
Or why there weren't a flood of fresh-faced new Spartans throughout the war. Though Kurt knew that Matt would be able to read between the lines.
"Any way you can find to improve our current training methods gives the III's a better chance at survival, so you have my full support. If we have to push them further and harder than Halsey and Mendez ever pushed us...so be it. They need every advantage we can give them." Somehow, the shadows in Kurt's eyes grew darker because he really was dancing on the razor's edge of desperation.
He couldn't help but wonder what Matt or even what Mendez would think of him if they knew what he'd done to Gamma. Kurt's mind recoiled from that just as it had every other time he let some of the crushing guilt eating at him gain a hold on his mind.
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He hasn't.
"Casualty rates?" he asks when he's able to keep his voice level. Reading between the lines was trained in. He has to know what he's working against if he's going to help find a way to make these kids better.
More than that, he needs Kurt to not carry this alone. And he knows, better than anyone would, how much Kurt would put this on himself. No one but John could be harder on himself over a failure.
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He'd tried to ensure Beta would not follow in their footsteps only to have their lives wasted just as callously. Kurt had learned his lesson though and had tried to save as many of the Beta Spartans as he could.
"Almost one hundred percent. Alpha Company's team cohesion fell apart in the battle but even then...I don't think they would have survived. They managed to shut down a Covenant shipyard and according to ONI...that is worth three hundred Spartan lives." Kurt couldn't keep the bitterness out of his voice.
"I am doing the best that I can, Matt. But I keep failing my Spartans." The confession escaped him before his own internal filters could stop it. It wasn't a sentiment he'd ever quite brought himself to say out loud to another person but Matt was his brother. If anyone could understand the weight of his sense of failure, it would be him.
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And Matt's going to dedicate himself to fixing that as best as he can. Because Kurt's been carrying this too long and he doesn't deserve it, not a single bit of it. Too long his brother has carried the weight alone.
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"Me, ONI, it doesn't matter who failed them does it? They still died in the end and are continuing to do so despite my best efforts." Emotion made his voice rougher than he wanted.
He'd never been a melancholy sort of person and in point of fact, Kurt had been infamous for being one of the friendliest and most outgoing members of their class who'd always expressed an empathetic interest in the well-being of both his team and others. And that sensitivity was proving to be his undoing. "Now you understand just how monumental a task we have ahead of us, Matt."
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Because trust him, Maine knows a lot about the bad command structures ONI allows to play out. The willful disregard for people. Gets it a bit. It's about survival of a species.
Who even knows if they would count as a part of that species anymore.
But clearly the man needed more and Matt pulled Kurt into his arms, a brief hug offered, but a strong one. Surely this would work for Kurt.
"I get it. I'll help."
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By shutting down the Covenant shipbuilding capabilities, they had slowed them down for months. Months that saved countless lives. So he knew by the bloodless by the number logic of ONI that those kinds of missions justified the means but it was hard.
The last thing Kurt had expected was that hug and he was a little stiff and slow to reciprocate it. Maybe that could be chalked up to the fact that he'd spent the better part of two decades being cut off from his fellow II's and Matt in particular. "Thank you, Matt. I mean it."
Just having his brother here helped more than he'd thought possible. Kurt had battled with his own sense of loneliness and isolation both because of his rank and position at Currahee but also because he'd been apart from his team for so long. "I'm really glad you're here."
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"Going to make this better," he promises. "Got more combat experience than you, than your trainers. Against everything. I'll manage it."
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Spartans didn't deal with failure well and thanks to Halsey's teachings, taking seemingly the weight of humanity on their shoulders wasn't just a likelihood, it was an expectation.
"Good. The Chief, he's been an invaluable help and I really do think our training methods are on par with what we had to go through. But the Spartan-III's aren't kitted out as well as we were and as I said, the missions they get assigned are ones with an 'acceptable' casualty level threshold." He couldn't mask the disgust and anger in his voice when he said that.
"I've tried to save as many as I can, especially those who show real promise. But there's only so many numbers I can fudge. And ONI will have their pound of flesh."
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He will be your boogie man, Kurt. You just keep focusing on doing what you can to help them. TO make them better. And to give the chances they need.
The sooner he can get into Freelancer files the better though. He's heard some of the teach have been made on disposable one-off specs, that was the rumor. But what if they could turn more tech like that to their people?
Tex's armor mods might be the most important.
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He doubted Matt had a lot of experience with children outside of their own shared childhood and it was a whole other world. You had the find a perilous balance between supportive teacher and disciplinarian. Thankfully, he had Mendez to carry most of that particular role.
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Solo insertion. Destroy teams to build up the idea that one individual could do better. How stupid was that? How was a SPARTAN supposed to believe in anything other than a team? He was raised to it.
"Boogie man when Deltas arrive. Hard-ass Brute until then."
The sooner he can start full on hand to hand with them, the better. Maybe start with teams of them. Three on ons.
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And with that, he and Matt settled in to plan how to improve the Spartan-III's training methods. The next day, the newest drill instructor was unleashed upon the unsuspecting Gamma's.
Chief Mendez was a gifted and skilled instructor who had now overseen the crafting of four different generations of Spartans but the man was no spring chicken. He wasn't soft by any stretch of the imagination but the man just couldn't perform as well as a Spartan-II still in his fighting prime. When Kurt had announced they were doing search and capture exercises, more than one Gamma had visibly fought the urge to roll their eyes because that was so first year.
Of course, none of them had expected one lone DI to be able to effectively hunt each and every fire team down and incapacitate them one at a time. Sure, there were a few particularly promising units such as Teams Saber, Katana and Gladus but they were not equipped to deal with a fully-trained Spartan with decades of combat experience on his side.
It was well after dark when the last demoralized fire team of Spartan-III's returned to Currahee only to be faced with their CO standing there at a parade rest.
"You did well, now get cleaned up and then get some grub. We start early tomorrow." A curious mixture of hopefulness quickly dashed with resignation and uncertainly quickly passed over the teenager's faces. Still, they were too well-disciplined to not follow orders and they made their way towards the barracks at double-time.
Kurt schooled his expression into something appropriately serious but there was some hint of amusement in the other Spartan's hazel eyes when he pinned Matt with a look.
"So, how did they do? I see you returned them all in one piece." Some perhaps more bruised than others but war wasn't gentle or kind.
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"Good enough," he said, "for rookies. They're strong, fast. Like SPARTANs should be. But you're right about cohesion."
Not saying they were worse than Freelancers, but it was a near thing. Reminded him a bit of how poorly he'd done against Texas, with him failing to respect the skills of his teammates. Everyone wanted to be the one that put the new DI down. That didn't help in a combat situation.
"Do it again," he suggests after a thoughtful moment. "But start with arming them. Talked to your AI. There is new, modified lock-down paint we can consider. Arm them as if they are in the field. Will react to their gear, immobilize joins, give light electric sensation to mimic limbs numbing when hit."
Basically, equip them in a way where they feel like it matters, see if they work better from there. And, of course, give him the same. The ability to take their weapons if he needed. Force them to think on their feet but plan as a group.
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"They haven't an ounce of real combat experience. Hopefully that will come in time. Which is why this training is so critical."
Of course, what Kurt couldn't say was that once the Gamma found themselves out in battle where they were injured or hurt then the illegal alterations he'd implemented into their augmentations would come to the for and would hopefully give them the edge they would need to survive.
"Very well, sounds like a plan." They had stuck with using rubber bullets and low-energy blasts meant to simulate Covenant plasma fire but if Matt thought this would e of use, Kurt was willing to go along with it.
"Whatever you need, you have cart blanche to do what you need to do. Just don't permanently harm them or set their training back too much with anything truly grievous."
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There had never been enough transparency in his last posting. But there's something more than that first. They should have a delay on that sort of thing. So Matt stands there, does he dare suggest this?
"Doing hand to hand training in fire team sizes. Me versus them. I get grav hammer, settings turned down low. Except I want the fireteams randomized. Just for this."
They are used to knowing how they fit together as a team. Which is why they aren't communicating as much. Teach them to communicate with those they haven't been assigned to for a while, and you'll teach them to communicate better in those teams. Because they weren't as close in these teams as his and Kurt's SPARTAN class had been. It will also make them reevaluate their own awareness of their skills now that the enhancements are in.
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He was of course speaking about the unlucky members of their own training class who’d either died or been so disfigured by the augmentation process they were either crippled for life or worse. All of them remembered seeing René and Kirk relegated to living their lives in a neutral-buoyancy gel tank with their bodies so disfigured from the failed carbide ceramic bone ossification process that they no longer looked human.
“Break up the fireteams?” That seemed to surprise the other man and both eyebrows crept upwards ever so slightly. The suggestion was anathema to everything Spartans knew. Both II’s and III’s worked best when grouped with a familiar element. Fellow Spartans who you knew how they would react, what their moves would be like yet now that Kurt took a step back to examine it, he could understand what Matt was going for.
“Very well. Let’s do it.”
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And these kids? They aren't SPARTANS like he and Kurt were. The cohesion wasn't there from the word go because everything they were and had been hadn't been taking from them. SPARTAN-IIs were a team from the first word. Because who else did they have? Not their families, but these kids remembered that.
"They run normal the rest of the time. People here? They don't know their people as well. Not like I knew you and Linda."
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His closest bonds in boot had been with his fireteam.
Kurt of course would argue his Spartan-III's had lost as much if not more than even them. Sure, they'd been absconded from their families but every single III was a war orphan who'd suffered through the traumatic events of Covenent glassing their homeworlds. It gave them a fire and a motivation to get the job done to say the least.
"Okay, lets get Mendez and see who all we can match up. Are we filling in deficiencies in skill sets? What's your plan, Matt?"
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One day he might tell Kurt about it. Just a bit longer for him to feel... less like he's betraying them. Not like Kurt would tell anyone else. It would stay between them. He trusts Kurt like nothing and no one else.
His fingers come up to his eye to rub at it.
"I want them to be able to do more than this. If they can start getting good at it, we'll see about working the grav hammer in on lower settings. Get them catching it."
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He'd always been the most empathetic member of their training group and had an almost uncanny ability to read people.
"Well, do keep in mind, they are still in their adjustment period post Augmentations so we do need to exercise some patience with them." Kurt moved to clap a hand on Matt's shoulder. "Come on, we can figure all of this out while we get some chow. You must be famished."
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