Marine Operations Staging Area

So this was their grand mission, stopping some dumbass AI from selling the UNSC's secrets. Archer grunted as he glanced to the newbies among the squad. Jameson needn't worry, he'd keep an eye on them. This one seemed like it would be a walk in the park compared to other missions they'd had, the covenant resistance didn't look too bad. As good a mission as they could hope for to introduce the newbies into all this, he supposed..
The trouble would be getting to the rally point, as had been pointed out they'd have to fight their way there, and due to their positions not being guaranteed... he dreaded to think of what would happen if one of them landed in the middle of the Covenant. The covenant force was remarkably small considered what Loki could give. Good, that's just what he wanted to see from this. He took one last look at the map, opening his tac pad and linking it up, downloading a copy of the city map. Once that had done he lowered his arm again, took a last glance at the red dots on the map, then turned away from it and headed out towards his drop pod.

Some people just didn't get it. Some people just thought the ODST's were just average marines in droppods. He liked to call those people 'idiots'. It took a special kind of marine to lock himself in a metal coffin and be shot out through the atmosphere into a planet. It took a marine who wasn't intimidated by such an action, who was going to sit through it like it was a park ride and come out at the bottom guns blazing. Only a mad man wouldn't be afraid of that... which was obviously why he was actually afraid of it, despite doing it regularly. That was bravery, facing one of the most obvious fears a man can have and overcoming it.
Of course, once you'd done it a few times it became less intimidating... until you watched one of your squad-mates pod get smashed into the ocean or burnt up in the atmosphere, or some other unfortunate disaster having destroyed them before they'd even had a chance to respond... after you'd seen one of those (or several) then your mind quickly jumped back to the 'Oh shit I'm going to die', every time you got put in one of these
He cleared his head. If there was anything he didn't want to think about while sitting in his pod just before making a jump, it was that. 
Archers thoughts came back to why there was such a small covenant force present. Well, it wasn't small, small as in a single patrol, but compared to what it could have been? It was odd, to say the least. Maybe that spook knew more than she was telling, he wouldn't put it past ONI to hide information from them, particularly given how she'd acted. And after all, when had ONI ever given anyone the whole story...