Segment 1: Cannon Fodder
November 3, 2552 Sol Relative Time
Covenant Fighter Seraph Class
Sunlight streaked through the front window, playing across the lone Sangheili's dark, scarred skin. Alone aboard his vessel, a seraph fighter with residence capacity for six but filled instead with supplies, the warrior sat reclined in the copilot's seat without his armor, disinclined to wear it right then when he had no need for it.
Major Hoku Zimivee was asleep, his mind reflecting on the past sequence of events that had led him here, isolated aboard a fighter flying for the frontlines. It had begun, he knew, with the betrayal, but the combat had not found him on the far away outpost until much later on, when troops could be spared for that location. It had been a wasted campaign, in the end, for the Brutes… slaughtered to the last, they had succeeded only in trimming the population of Sangheili and Unggoy, and no more, before their utter defeat. There remained nothing Jiralhanae, Yanime'e or remotely Kig-yar aboard. The Command Station Radiant had not seen just the one fight, though- and she had been unable to so withstand the multiple beatings her enemies gave her.
There was enough habitable area left to hold what warriors remained alive, but though these numbered still in the thousands, this was a far cry from what had been there before. They were weakened, and wounded, and could not hold against another onslaught. The Brutes just kept coming, and coming, and coming… finally after the fifth assault it had occurred to them all that perhaps there was a reason- and maybe a good one, considering- why the stupid Brutes had not simply and efficiently strewn the Radiant's wreckage through space. After questioning several of the Jiralhanae before execution, the reason was determined… but Zimivee was the only one who understood fully what it meant. They were looking for someone, someone specific, someone who absolutely positively had to be proven was dead, before the station could be destroyed.
That one lone soul, of all the ones he could think of as worthy targets, had been himself- Zimivee had become a target after transmissions had been sent back to the Covenant about the Mirratord agent that had in truth died some weeks back, in the initial assault. That their intel was lacking was no surprise, but how it had narrowed to Zimivee had come as little shock, either- considering it had been Zimivee at the operative's elbow the whole time, and now it was Zimivee holding those dreaded, albeit signature, swords.
Had he known what they would cause him, he would never have picked them up, but it was beyond too late now. Following enough logic to determine that since they were coming because of Mün, and apparently only because of Mün, he had opted towards the only path he could see. The enemy was afraid of the Mirratord, which in truth still remained something of a mystery to him, but they were cutting from their otherwise focused armada to come hunt this one lone agent.
Following this, he determined if he left, they would leave the battered station be, at least for long enough for it to rest, heal and perhaps even get out in time to miss being annihilated by the next ship to blow through, since he wasn't aboard anymore and the station's destruction need nolonger be postponed. They would chase after him, instead… somehow he had failed to work his plan beyond that point, though, and now that he had not only left the Radiant, but had drawn fire away from her and to himself, he was somewhat at a loss as for what the next course of action ought to be.
He had known when he started out that he might not make it through the plan in one piece, but for as long as he held the Brute's attention in thrall, they would forget about the station he had left behind… he hoped. There was certainly a pair of slipspace-capable war-birds riding his ion trail like stalking birds of prey, and whenever he let them get close they gave him all kinds of hell for the trouble.
An alarm sounded, wakening the Sangheili warrior, but he neither jumped nor stiffened in his seat- he had long ago learned that unless he was captured, there was no real reason to do more than merely lift his head, and run his tired eyes over the control panel. The Brute-controlled dreadnaught Contritious Action was drawing painfully close to his small, vulnerable ship, and soon enough it would open fire on him again. With a sigh, he sat forward enough to reach the controls, and uncrossed his arms to manipulate them. Taking the seraph off of autopilot, Zimivee turned the vessel broadside to the bigger war-bird, stalling all motion. After running from them for so long, he was tired of the game and wanted to employ some other tactic at least for the time being. If things got too hairy he could always change his mind and go back to plan A, seeing as he neither had superiors to answer to nor companions to look out for.
And he was bored- having had sufficient time to heal from his own wounds and regain the use of his left arm, Zimivee nolonger noticed the rippled scar behind his shoulder, nor the pain it used to grant him whenever he exerted those muscles. After the encounter with the Forerunner hand weapon, Zimivee had lost some of his ocular receptor function, leaving him colorblind. But the slim white line across his head that crossed over one eye had no relation to that injury, and he expected the line to fade, as it had only been deep enough to part the skin at it's deepest layer, leaving his skull relatively unharmed. It would take time, though… years… perhaps before then he would find a method by which to avenge it or maybe he would die and cease to care.
Plasma seared through space over the cockpit of the seraph, cutting a clean swath through the void above him. Dodging the huge stabs meant to destroy him weren't easy when at a distance enough for them to aim properly, but the closer he got to the vessel, the better he was able to dodge, until finally he was between head-ports in the hull and within the "safe" envelope close to the ship.
He held next to the shield skin for the next several AU's, matching speed and vector as best as the seraph was able, aware they knew precisely where he was and that they couldn't do anything about it without lowering the ship's shields to let out fighters of their own- which if they did, would permit him entrance… and that was precisely what he was waiting for. He wanted in, wanted to see about killing a few of the smelly beasts.
Being alone made things interesting toward that prospect, though, and he gave the idea considerable thought even as he watched on his display that the bay doors had come active, and were about to open. Soon the shield would be lowered to let them out at him, and then…
Zimivee powered the engines, dodging swiftly away from the attack runs the other fighters were making. They danced for a time, exchanging fire, until Zimivee saw an opening he couldn't resist; with a calculated twist of trajectory, he did a spiral around the closest fighter, causing some momentary confusion as to which was which when they parted ways. Just as he had hoped, the other fighters were now helping him to shoot out one of their own, and since that pilot was too harried to call them off and too poor to evade them all, it was destroyed in short order.
Following this, the rest of them filed back to the bays, ignoring Zimivee and failing to bother to scan to determine that he wasn't one of theirs. So, naturally, he was able to follow them inside the shield envelope and was permitted into the docking bay. Once inside, though, and the doors had closed, he used the close quarters to mow down everything in sight- even breaking off the balconies that ringed the multi-level bay. Crowded beyond hope, the Brute pilots all tried to turn on him at once and collided into one another and then the walls of the bay, until their time had run out and Zimivee focused his guns on them, dissolving their vessels into the floor of the bay.
When everything was more or less quiet, Zimivee settled his bird, and picked up his armor, donning it so he might go outside for a look around. He activated the grav lift, and then his camouflage, before descending into the smoldering bay. One look around told him he was very alone, but after picking his way across much of the rubble, he discovered he had been a bit too liberal with his application of plasma fire; he had melted the walls and the doors were all slagged shut, welded effectively into a permanent, stationary piece of the wall. He sighed, and shook his head- maybe there was one of these that he had shot through, and was stuck open, rather than closed… he turned from the mess, which was rapidly cooling, going back across the rubble to investigate his theory.
There was none such on the floor of the bay, the only door he hadn't melted shut being the one he had buried shut with rubble. But climbing what remained of the balconies, he discovered at last a door that was remarkably unharmed, protected by the angle of fire to a support column. Stepping up to it, he watched as it acknowledged his presence and opened, and a calm, quiet smile touched his features.
"Hey, Mün." He whispered. "Check this out." He shook his head, bemused, and stepped forward, passing the door and going deeper into the ship he had just made a mess of. Invisible, he passed through several sector doors before encountering the first of the crew since his entrance, but the Brute had three Unggoy with that Jackal, and clamoring down the hall heading for the bay he had ruined went a Hunter-pair.
"Lekgolo." Zimivee marveled, watching them go. He hadn't seen that species since his transfer to the Command Station, where such troops were not needed. Hearing the word, the Brute assumed it was one of the Unggoy, and snarled at the trio to be silent, regaining Zimivee's attention. His face wrinkled, and he berated himself for the word- what had he been thinking? Dismissing it as it had not really compromised him, Zimivee watched as the Brute took his Unggoy away, past the Sangheili and back the way he had come in- Zimivee surmised that they might be the only ones to actually gain entrance to the bay, and that was if they followed his tracks perfectly. Deciding he need not have them enter or strip down his seraph, which would likely be his exit from here when he left it, considering, and that was where his supplies were, he followed them for long enough to catch up, then sliced them down into little pieces, first the Brute and the Jackal, then the Unggoy when they proved of a mind to attack him.
Unused to having to kill Unggoy while fighting with Brutes, Zimivee spent a moment pondering the new situation, staring down at the little bodies of the smaller creatures he had just lacerated into segments. He wondered if there would also be delusioned Sangheili still fighting for the Covenant he would encounter, but that idea seemed far fetched… until he realized the whole concept of the civil war and the breaking of the Covenant had seemed far fetched too, until it was painfully proven to him. Zimivee sighed, and shook his head, turning away. His small fighter was not equipped with starship-grade sensors, and he wanted to have a look at the readings at the Command Chamber at the very least before he left again, just to verify where he was.
That and, Zimivee noted with some satisfaction, it was nice to get out of that little bitty space for a change, and have some places to go without being confined to two choices- inside the ship, and outside the ship. To stretch his muscles, he allowed himself to run for a spell, but not long enough to tire himself, as the ship was crawling with enemy he would need energy to dispatch. Along the way, he encountered several hundred Brutes, but without bothering to so much as warn them he was coming, he sliced many of them down from behind- but since he didn't have both of his camouflage generators on hand, once he faded back into view he was stuck that way until the device cooled.
It didn't seem to hinder him much, as even when he rounded the corner to face a mass of eight Brutes, five Jackals and twelve Grunts all packed together, he didn't encounter a lot of resistance at first. It always surprised him how every time he showed the enemy his twin swords, they tried first to flee from him rather than fight him. Amused by the chaotic jostle he had just invoked, Zimivee dove right in, cutting down more than half before one of them finally got up the gall to fight back- and all its comrades used this as an opportunity to gain some ground.
Reaching around the Jackal's shield, Zimivee wrenched it sideways, exposing the creature behind it. The result was a cry of alarm and fear, followed by a desperate volley of bolts from the plasma pistol it carried. Zimivee, annoyed by being unable to see past his sparkling shields, cut first free the hand, then its head, and let it drop. He looked around, then, forgetting the fact that he had outlasted the time it took for his camouflage engine to cool, and moved past, thinking. Were they deliberately avoiding him? Was this Mirratord so formidable that one lone member, without hope of backup, was so daunting?
He laughed aloud at the response the Brutes had mustered, laughing because he wasn't a Mirratord member at all, laughing because they were stupid enough to be fooled. Shaking his head at their mentality, he started forward, but though his reaction- the laugh- had caused them to hesitate, his motion towards them brought them all back to focus, and as one they all began to fire.
Had Zimivee owned one of the augmented Mirratord shields, he could have just stood there and took it without much to care, but his were standard grade, and he had to move to stay his life. So he did- twisting with momentum, he traced their fire from straight down the hall to along one wall, then across the ceiling following a descent down the opposite wall. Having thus avoided all of their attempts to mow him down, Zimivee now stood verily nose-to-nose with the front rank.
That detail changed, though, when the head attached to said nose was severed, followed shortly by many of the other extremities. Zimivee understood what it meant to be too close to a Brute, and he was not about to allow one of them to get a hairy hand on him. His methods had improved since Mün's death, but his style was still not perfect, or at least not within his own standards. He had seen Mün wield them, and he knew he could do it too, just like the agent, and anything less required he practice more with them. Boarding this ship was just one more training exercise, but the failure of a lesson was never any different from what it had been to begin with- fail, and die. There simply wasn't any other arena.
Zimivee didn't much care, but he fought hard and dirty, wanting to become good enough with them so he, like Mün, could engage more than his share of the enemy and come away with less than his share of the injuries. This was combined with the facts that, though he had no wish for death, he knew the enemy wasn't going to die without him, and someone had to do it.
Cutting a swath of his own through the forces in the ship, he discovered quickly that the closer he was to his enemy when they realized he was there, the better- his main weapons were for very close enemy, and any distance would allow them to hurt him before he could hurt them- so went the lesson, learning new and often painful things that would have seemed obvious had he the time to sit back and think about them at all. Zimivee fought his way to the bridge, and with the aid of an opening salvo of grenades to clean the first row out and disorient the rest, he was able to pass the door and begin killing the command staff. When the room was clear, he closed the door and locked it shut, not wanting to be snuck up on. Disappointed he had not encountered a Prophet, Zimivee began to look over the screens and search for the data he had come here for.
Finding it, he studied the readouts for a time before deciding what to do next. He looked at the crew complement to see what he was going to be up against, then shook his head- this ship had armed for the battle ahead of them, even though it was hunting him. There were six Hunter-pairs aboard, the usual complement of Brutes and Jackals, and enough Unggoy to make him wonder who the little creatures really worked for.
But the final item on the list changed his mind almost immediately. "A Sharquoi?" He breathed aloud. What in creation did they think they were fighting, here? He looked at the door, speculatively, wondering if he would be able to make it back to his seraph before the remaining crew got that creature loose. He tapped the controls, looking for the status of the thing- dormant. Zimivee nearly fainted with his breath of releif.
He was most definitely not going to stay aboard a ship with one of those things, regardless who it pledged loyalty with. But the coordinates they were at and the ones they were heading towards made him wonder if he might see about dispatching that monster from afar, so he might not need to worry about it. Tapping a claw on the side of the control panel, Zimivee tried to think of a plan. He couldn't fly the starship alone, but he didn't know what Mün had done to destroy the last one, and he was not about to let the Brutes have her back. So he needed a plan.
"The Unggoy." He mused. Jackals were out of the question for a very good reason, but if there were three kinds of Unggoy, mayhap he could get a few of them to open their eyes. He did, after all, have history with some of those creatures where they fought the Brutes together, and with the help of one very charismatic Sangheili, made true warriors out of them, completely crippling the Brutes without crippling the Unggoy simultaniously. But getting them to listen might become tiresome. Especially with Brutes at their heels.
Zimivee shook his head. If it worked- if it worked- he would still need to get past the armada already there, surrounding that blue-green ball that was turning black with smoke in the atmosphere. It was the Human's homeworld, but he hadn't bothered to read off the name of the planet, as he found the detail rather unimportant.
Shaking his head, he straightened, and looked around the room. "Well, Sharquoi or not, I am significantly lacking in options, suddenly." He said, to himself.
An active comn unit on the belt of a nearby dead Brute decided to respond anyway; "Yes, you are. Come out where we can kill you, filthy Sangheili!"
Zimivee started at the corpse, at first not realizing the beast was dead and thinking it was speaking. After seeing it was just the active comn, he relaxed. Stooping, he picked it up, and looked down at it. "You are next." He had long ago stopped telling them not to use his species' name, as it was a rather useless statement, and they used it anyway, and even the ones that didn't died all the same. "But I don't take orders from despicable, dishonorable Jiralhanae." He switched it off, and tossed it down, before making his way to the door he had locked.
He figured as long as that Sharquoi stayed in it's confines, he would try his plan- but the moment it proved itself loose, he knew without question that he would be leaving the Contritious Action with all due haste.
Zimivee made his way out of the Command Chamber and down into the maze of halls, in search of Brutes that needed killing. In order for his plan to work in the slightest, he would need to be rid of all the Brutes first- one thing Grunts detested worse than anything else was being forced to fight their own, and it would come down to that inevitably if he got that far with enemy still dogging his heels.
The first group appeared nearly solid Unggoy, which he thought at first was a good thing, accepting the turn to progress as acceptable until he realized they were all trying to kill him. Irritated, he had to cut down more than he would have liked, before he could get through them enough to reach their commanding Brute, and kill that. Seeing no more Brutes and no Kig-yar anywhere in sight, he fled the remaining Grunts, leaving them all wondering what in the world had just happened- it was something shy of uncharacteristic of the Sangheili people to leave an attacking enemy so cold in their dust, the way Zimivee just had. Turning one's back on one's enemy was considered 'dishonorable', and was therefore frowned upon. They couldn't know what he had planned for them.
Following his nose, Zimivee was able to track down the next company of Brutes without that much trouble, but this time he remembered to activate his invisibility before engaging. It helped, he realized, as he flew at the first still unsuspecting Brute and carved it down to more manageable pieces before it realized. He turned from the first into the second, looking to mow them back and down before too much time had passed to allow them time to realize where he was and what he was doing, as he had no intention of letting them brace against his attack.
Energy swords or not, there was still only a mortal behind them, and a small one for his species, at that. He cut through the fourth Brute and trod over it as it fell, but even as that one died and dropped to the floor, the one directly behind it seemed to have been waiting for that very moment, and snatched out with a hand bigger than Zimivee's face. Before he could recoil, it had clamped that hand around his neck, and brought his momentum to a screeching halt. Zimivee stopped and stared at the Brute, a little surprised. Neither moved for a heartbeat, the one startled to know he had actually caught that whirling dervish, the other surprised to know he had been grabbed rather than hit. A moment later it was over and the Brute rammed his other hand forcefully forward, spike rifle in hand. Zimivee twisted, coiling on the end of the Brute's arm, sliced it free and discarded it on his way over the owner's head. He cut that free too for good measure.
Completing the landing back to his hooves, he was forced into a backflip across the top of the freshly fallen Brute that had had a hold of him, as a solid rain of plasma sailed by over his head at chest level. He didn't know if he had enough shield left to handle that kind of barrage and was disinterested to find out the hard way. Righted from that maneuver, he sprang forward, walked across the shoulders of the Brute in front and dropped back to floor level right in the middle of them all. From there he had only to lash out in whichever direction he chose.
It actually proved more of a tangle than he anticipated, as the Brutes not under immediate assault tried to kill him each in their own way- some shot, some punched out, and one tried to land on him, bodily, bearing him to the floor. Zimivee managed to evade them all, but it took more than just standing there cutting them apart with Mün's swords.
For the first half of the fight he had only to duck and dodge the flying rounds and arms. For the second half he had to move like lightning, which meant he only got away with about half of what he would have liked. Still, he completed the fight without injury spare one bruise, and by it discovered what it meant to perform a dance of daggers.
It was the same dance Mün had done, all those times before. Turning to see farther down the hall, Zimivee spied more Grunts coming, but these were accompanied by Jackals and another couple of Brutes. He didn't need a million of them, he surmised, but it would be prudent not to kill them indiscriminately when it came back to getting them on his side. So instead of making his introduction with a few well-aimed grenades, like he would have any other day, Zimivee charged in with nothing more than his shields and his swords. When the fire got heavy, he rounded across the ceiling again to avoid much of it, having found the move quite effective and unwilling to discard something that worked just because someone might have anticipated it and compensated… an up-flung grenade neatly missed his shoulder, the same one that had nearly been lost to him by the last grenade to stick there, and the mental implications sent imaginary fire coursing down that arm.
Landing back on the floor, Zimivee was clenching not only his mandibles but both fists as he bit back that phantom, insisting to himself it wasn't real and it wasn't there. The exercise proved unhelpful, but the imaginary pain did fade faster than any real ache might have, even as needles overloaded his shields and dug into his armor. In addition to the two Brutes and the Jackals, he had to kill three of the Grunts just to get free of them, but in the middle of the fight he was rather disinclined to spare them at all, due to his personal circumstances.
Zimivee rounded a corner, out of sight of the Unggoy, leaned on the wall and sagged to the floor, gasping. Winded and trying with all his might to will the pain away, the pain he knew wasn't real, Zimivee felt he had had all he could take. He looked down at his camouflage engine to check the time he had left, and right as his eyes lit on the timer gauge, it shut off, revealing his presence to all that dared look. He deactivated the swords, and hung them on his belt, well knowing he couldn't use at least one of them for as long as that phantom continued to torment him. Much of the muscle across his shoulder blade and a piece of that deltoid was missing, but at times his body would insist they were still there, and that they hurt like all hell.
It was something he would need more time to get used to- the injury was old enough that it didn't bother him on a matter of course, but when something invoked the memory of the infliction, it all came back as if it had happened just an hour before. Gathering his legs beneath him, he pushed off the floor, determined not to be wasted for the effects of a false pain. Checking his camouflage engine told him he had to be discreet for another hour, but checking the battery on Mün's swords told him he needed to pick his targets carefully. They weren't dry yet- but the Contritious Action was a big ship, and she had a lot of crew. Zimivee made his way through the corridors down the center of the prow of the craft, heading aft. For the moment, he didn't care where he wound up, so long as he didn't get cut off irreparably from the bridge. The odds of such a thing happening were higher if he spent Mün's swords on the wrong targets, but he had already removed one category of enemy from worth on them.
Ahead, he heard a Brute snarling orders at his fellows, and drew up short. He wasn't sure how many there were, but unless his arm stopped bothering him, he couldn't handle much over two. Right when he was about to come to a decision, his senses freaked at the sudden introduction of motion behind him, and he never really got to know what that decision might have been as he spun on a hoof to face whatever it was that had snuck so successfully up behind him. His face twisted into an unappreciative snarl at the irony of his luck- two Brutes, one with a plasma rifle, the other with one of those ugly, clumsy and heavy RPGs, and both were looking right at him, from just twelve paces away.
The lead Brute, the one on the left, roared and began backing up, firing his rifle. Following suit, the second began to empty the cartridge of shot grenades at the lone Elite, backing up in step with his comrade. Zimivee easily avoided one, but not both, but the circumstances were making him angry. Catching several rounds of searing hot plasma on his shield broadside, he charged forward full-tilt. Without much thought to the matter, he hit one wall, ricocheted to the other, then rebounded back into the lead Brute, landing the first contact with a well-aimed hoof, smacking the Brute in the ear. Twisting in the air, Zimivee landed upright facing away, but he pivoted easily to swing around and plant the same hoof in the same Brute's belly, adding winded to his dazed state of being.
The second Brute played into his hands when it finished reloading, emptying the second clip onto the first Brute in some apparent attempt to shoot through it, at Zimivee, who simply stepped behind the bigger creature. When the last grenade was airborne, the Sangheili darted from the staggered and badly wounded first Brute to meet the second. Catching the blade of the grenade launcher with his good hand, he turned it aside, then hit the wielder in the chin so his head rocked back- and followed up with a harder, faster blow straight to the trachea. Zimivee didn't even bother to watch it fall, suffocating slowly, before turning back to the semi-recovered Brute he had attacked first.
Once the second was taken care of and out of mind, he was able to focus, and the already wounded Brute he had left behind proved little hazard when he got back to it. Zimivee turned another kick to it's head, knocking it off its balance, and with a single second's worth of activation time, one sword flashed to life in a blaze of motion before vanishing again and reattaching back on his belt. He held still, then, one arm curled, the other hung by a thumb on his belt, watching as the Brute sagged, and finally toppled, the head rolling free on impact with the floor. Zimivee looked down the hall, then, dismissing them both in favor of more that might have spied him while he was otherwise occupied. Seeing no one had come, he allowed himself to relax for a moment, and assess the situation. From somewhere down the same hall he had once heard Brutes arguing, another sound came, and it froze him in his tracks. Oh- so that was why there were so many Brutes over there. On second thought…!
Zimivee turned and left the area, well knowing he could never have taken a Sharquoi even had he all the advantages and it was a good day. Let the Brutes handle it- there soon would be no more of any of them.