TNH ODST Drop Bay – Austin Bunton Designs

ODST Drop-pods are the ‘hardened’ (better shielding against EMP/jamming), militarized (armed; stocked with small-arms), and intentionally often more difficult-to-detect version of an escape pod. Here is info’ about the TNH room which stores and releases them.

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Table of Contents:

Introduction
Location
Numbers
Procedure
Images
History with Auz

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Introduction:

This hangar in The New Horizon spacecraft carrier is specifically designed to release the HEVs (‘Drop Pods’) of the ODST, including during –and amidst/within– orbital bombardments via kinetic-impact rod releases.

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Location:

Drop Bays are always on the underside of a Spacecraft; they are kept on the side of it which almost always faces any planet being orbited. They are also not placed near cannons or other weapons, nor near shield generators, nor near other parts of a ship likely to be targeted; this is to increase the chances of each Drop Pod surviving its exit/launch. ODST are often housed in berths/squad-bays nearby, sometimes right outside a Drop Bay’s inner hatch/es, if not –at most– down a short hallway; this allows those personnel to get to their pods as quickly as possible, deploying within mere seconds, if need be.

The location of each pod / drop-hatch within this room of the carrier is based on the ODST squads; all the pods of 1 ODST squad are in a line-formation perpendicular to the ship’s main/long-axis –and this is so that when dropped, if all at the same time, all the ODST personnel in the pods will land closer to each other, facilitating easier small-squad operations planet-side. (If the pods were arranged 90° differently; parallel to a given ship’s long-axis, even a slight difference in when each was released could result in them landing a lot farther apart from each other.)

Both the rows of pods in this room are parallel to one another.

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Numbers:

Most ships do not have drop-pods, let alone bays full of them.

TNH, being a carrier, has an entire platoon of these guys. Since their units are structured similarly to how SEAL platoons of ETW were, a platoon of ODST is only 16 individuals, split into 2 squads.

Typically only 1 squad is dropped at a time, though a single fire-team can be; when situations are not as severe as battles / open-warfare / emergencies.

The ODST of note in our saga is Zhanna Mariya.

For reference: Even during the upcoming Human-Covenant War (2525-2552 A.D.), ODST were an uncommon sight, most UNSC vessels not designed to carry/drop/support them.

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Procedure:

ODSTs file into this bay, man their respective pods, and wait for the command to drop. Once slid down the tracks holding their HEVs, they remain in free-fall as they enter the atmosphere of the planet they were orbiting. Arriving on the surface of any world can take up to half an hour, depending on various conditions. Special metallic parachute-like devices and retro-rockets help slow them down. Once on the ground, precise explosives rapidly move the HEV hatches out of the way, allowing the ODSTs to come out charging. Unless retrieved by a Dropship, HEVs remain where they hit the ground. Backups are kept in the side-chambers of their ODST Drop-bays.

Details about this type of Space-born soldier here.

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Should the ODST Pods bay/room in TNH become damaged or just inoperable for some reason, these special troops can be directed to eject using some of this vessel’s life-pods –if they don’t just ‘borrow’ a shuttle or dropship from the hangars.

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History with Auz:

As you might expect, the leader and maker of the Inisfreeans has ‘christened’ more than one of these pods, not just the bay in which they are stored. He has also taken one (of the pods) out for personal use. Why not? He masterminded and fielded this entire ship, and it is a social experiment also of his own design; everything in it is for his exclusive use, always to see how the humans working in it will choose to interact with and regard him and his kind.

Women I (Auz) fucked in here: