My name is Tahk and I used to be a sniper. I had been a mercenary. I'd snipe Humans, Sangheili, Jiralhanae, other Kig-yar, Unggoy—it was the Unggoy that got to me. For all that they can be dangerous in a horde, a single Unggoy is physically the smallest and weakest of the Orion Arm's sentient races, and they have the worst lot of anyone in the Orion Arm. They had to take it from everybody. Even the humans killed a disproportionately large number of "Grunts" in the Human-Covenant War some three decades ago. Before that, they had been abused by almost every member of the Covenant, especially the Kig-yar. We'd try to poison them, throw fruit husks at them, make them retrieve things stuck in feces—my species had done all of this to the Unggoy. But the worst action had been taken by me personally, when I had taken a mev-ut to kill a local planetary Kaidon on one of Sangheilios's colonies.
The Kaidon was outside, near an Unggoy residence attached to the keep. I aimed for the methane generator, and the explosion succeeded in taking out the Kaidon, but it also took out the entire Unngoy community. I saw Unggoy running out of their bubble, bodies on fire, gasping for air in the oxygen atmosphere. I saw Unggoy without breathing harnesses, females and children. I heard their dying gasps. This was not the first time I'd seen an unmasked Unggoy, but it was the first time I'd seen a female or a child. This was the first time I'd heard an Unggoy child gasp for air until it died. It somehow didn't make me feel like a skilled mercenary. Looking at the home I destroyed, I felt something else. I felt like a coward who had to prey upon those weaker than myself. Looking at the scale of the destruction I caused, I felt like a monster too. The Human-Covenant War had been before my time, so I didn't really have any guilt over that, but what I had done to this Unggoy bubble—that was in a way more horrible, because I saw the destruction first hand. I wasn't sitting back comfortably on a destroyer flicking a switch to remotely glass a planet.
I'd taken his earnings and proceeded to spend them all on jang, an intoxicating Kig-yar beverage, until I spent the entire next day puking my guts out. Then I tried smoking thilin—which had the same effect. Anything to ward off natural sleep—but I was too exhausted and weakened. Sleep overtook me. Then the nightmares came.
In a waking darkness I could see red eyes filled with malice staring at me. Translucent Unggoy bodies would appear to hold the eyes in their sockets. I then realized that the eyes weren't the evil ones—I was. I had killed all of them, after all.
I would wake, the forearm quills and feather mohawk of my Ruuhtian Kig-Yar body wet with oil. I would fleck grains of sleep from his eyes and try to get another target. However, my aim got worse with my drinking, and more and more bounties started to go uncollected.
A few years ago, the Servants of Abiding Truth promised me a bounty large enough to take care of my growing debt: there was some new religious leader on Sangheilios—Rtas Jonathan Brooks—a Sangheili who had been adopted by Humans and was encouraging the growth of a Human religion on Sangheilios. I didn't really care that much about religion, one way or the other—if there were gods then why did they let the kind of things I did go unpunished? Well, what did I know about Sangheili affairs? The monks were paying good money-money that could settle my debts. So, I got in my ship and went to Sangheilios.
I had the target in my sights as the Human-raised Sangheili came out of some building that his congregation used. I started to fire but my finger twitched—a result of all of my drinking and I hit the building just above the door way where the Sangheili exited.
As the congregants looked in shock, I knew that i'd been spotted. I tried to hurry away but caught my foot on a rock and came tumbling down the hill I was perched on. I banged my head and brittle bones against the rocks on the slope and finally on the solid ground. The last impact shouldn't have been enough to make me black out, but all of the hits together were.
Everything faded to black. Then IT happened.
I was completely surrounded by a blinding white light, but I could vaguely make out the figure of a brown-skinned bearded human holding me. There were no words but there was no mistaking the feeling that told him You are free now. The past no longer owns you.
What I felt was true bliss, not just something to distract me from my guilt, but the actual absence of guilt. It was…good. I closed my eyes to relax.
When I opened them, I was in a hospital room on Sangheilios. In the past thirty years the Sangheili had gradually overcome their cultural aversion to doctors and now every major city had at least one hospital. The Sangheili I'd been sent to eliminate sat on a chair next to his bed, quietly mumbling something. He must have been praying.
"Where was I?" I asked.
"You've been in this room ever since your fall," he said.
"I tried to kill you."
"Yes, I gathered as much."
"Others will come."
"I'm sure," the Sangheili said with total sincerity.
"Why did you bring me here?"
"You were hurt," he said with as much sincerity, "and there is good security here."
"I don't want to go back to that life anymore. I caused too much pain and carried around too much guilt. It's gone now."
"Would you like to stay here with for the time being?"
I was surprised.
"I just tried to kill you."
"And did a poor job. But you just said that you wanted to leave that life behind."
"So I do."
Tahk stopped typing. He'd gotten his personal testimony up to the point where he'd joined the congregation and didn't really know where to go from there. He'd met Chol there and the two of them were going to become that most rare occurrence—a monogamous Kig-Yar couple. He'd been helpful member of the city's security force, but he wasn't sure where to go from there. Maybe just accepting the new faith and passing it on to his chicks was all he was meant to do. Still he felt like he needed to do something with his faith. He'd only been a believer for about 10 years on the UNSC military calendar, which was becoming something of a standard in the Orion Arm. Was he mature enough for any kind of big project? He tapped a claw against one of the keys as he thought.
Maybe he was getting ahead of himself. He shouldn't be trying to make some big lifetime commitment until he was sure it was the one God wanted him to make. Recently the only one he had made was proposing to Chol five days ago. In fact, it was a consequence of preparing to ask her, her saying yes, and thinking about his future that got his mind on these big life questions in general.
The tapping of his claw on the key was drowned out by a much louder tapping on his door.
He got up and looked through a narrow visor on the door. It was Chol. He opened the door.
"Hello, Tahk," she said.
"Please, come in," he gestured inward.
She crossed the threshold and he shut the door behind her.
"How are you doing this evening?" he asked as she took a seat on the brown couch.
"Well. And you?"
"Fine, fine," Tahk said, then looked over his shoulder at the computer, "Just trying to finish my testimonial."
"Ah," Chol said. "Bok has been talking with Rtas about starting a congregation on Eayn"
"Hmm…"Tahk took his own seat. "With God all things are possible, but Eayn…there's going to be a lot of work to do there."
"And you know that planet better than most here. You're from there."
"Yeah, but I haven't been there in ten years. Great place for Kig-Yar to get drunk, have various kinds of sexual encounters, and their claws on whatever drugs they want. Has some nice buildings though."
Chol nodded, slightly embarrassed. She had been hatched and raised on Sangheilios, and was somewhat disheartened to hear that the Sangheili stereotypes of Kig-Yar had a basis in fact.
"Like I said, needs lots of work."
"Have you ever heard of a place called Shek zen Julan?"
"'Island of Summer?' Can't say that I've heard of it."
"It's located somewhere of the northwest coast of Ruuht. It's somewhat rural, and most of the current population are disillusioned with the cities."
That much was good news.
"Well, that's progress," Tahk said.
"Anyway, Bok thinks he can start a congregation there in time if he can establish a friendship with the locals, and since you are an Eayn city-native yourself, he thinks you'd be a great help in getting him situated, but he'll need you for a couple of months."
"Suits me," he looked at Chol with a glint in his eyes, "I don't have anything on my schedule until Zhuimeto 17." Their wedding date on the Sangheili calendar.
She shot the same look back, a look of chaste desire waiting for that date to arrive.
Tahk pressed his muzzle against hers and she softly vibrated her throat. This was as much as was right until the vows were exchanged.
He moved his head away and softly whispered, "How am I going to survive three months without you?"
"Focus on helping Bok, learn a little something about the local culture, and tell me everything when you get back." She put a hand on the side of his maw and got up.
"Wait," he said, springing to his feet. "Let me get the door for you."
He opened the door and the two held hands for a moment before she let go. There was probably about an hour of light left, so she bid him good night. He returned the farewell and went back inside.
Idiot, he chided himself. You should have asked her to stay for the evening meal.
After mentally kicking himself he started thinking about food: what he was used to here on Sangheilios, what he had been used to in Eayn's cities, and what the local cuisine might be like on Shek zen Julan. Kig-Yar were omnivores and their diets could adapt to a lot of changes. One thing they couldn't take in was alcohol, which seemed to get the human's drunk, but the had their own beverages that affected their bodies in the same way. If Shek zen Julan was an place for people who wanted to get away from the cities, he expected that there were would be a lot less of the exotic stuff like fried lizard and a lot more of the traditional northwest Ruuht staples, smoked fish and fresh fruit. That sounded good and refreshing.
As Tahk set about taking his own food items out the storage and cooling unit that the humans called "the refrigerator"—a slice of kolo and some irukan, he thought about meeting and discussing the trip with Bok tomorrow. He had questions about the nature of the settlement. He could get wanting to reclaim a little slice of the home world from the conditions prevalent in the cities, but he also wondered why it was that he'd never heard of this island before. That told him that it must be pretty small. For a moment he worried that the island authorities might be running some bizzare social experiment. Oh well, he'd have a much clearer idea of what to expect after he talked to Bok tomorrow.