This is the second chapter of The Invisibles. Today's chapter applies to Argo' Varvin, a stranded Sangheili in space after the Battle of High Charity and the Great Schism. This is his introduction to the Universe and a story that dabbles in the spiritual toll that seeing a society collapse brings.
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["Intervention"]
[APPROACHING DEATH / / 18 NOVEMBER 2552]
[Location: HIGH CHARITY DEBRIS FIELD, Dark Orbit, Substance]
. . .
The darkened hollow smelled of grease, feces and all manner of dead things. Once ceremonial-indigo in color, the armored walls of a decrypted gunboat were now painted black with ashen paint chips and scorch marks from a quenched flame. It used to be a splendid chamber capable of housing dozens of the Covenant's mightiest warriors at interim of battle, primarily Fleet Security who serviced and deployed the craft on numerous occasions.
To the Humans who fought the Covenant Empire for so long, the small combat vessel called a "Phantom" based on its bulbous hull and ghostly-sounding gravitonic thrusters proved vicious as a medium-tonnage gunship. This particular model once served with distinction; however, it was now nothing but another lifeless wreck adrift in an orbital debris field thousands of kilometers across in the shadow of a blue gas giant called Substance and the massive ringworld that orbited nearby.
Something moved in the shadows of the charred trooper bay; if viewed with the naked eye, most souls would have mistaken the half-dead corpse for another trash heap. Scaly, unnaturally frail, and lying on his side in a mound of metallic garbage, the nude form of an eight-foot-tall reptilian alien rolled over on to its forward-swept knees. Once adjourned in well-maintained maroon combat armor, the creature, belonging to the sapient species of the Sangheili, had forgone his combat harness as he inched closer to what was likely a pitiful demise.
Nude mostly, the frail Sangheili still lay covered in the melted patches of his hexagonally stitched bodysuit. Remnants from a previous fire like the rest of the gunboat, the suit was cooked and seared, what did not melt away became grafted to the alien's skin. Shaking haphazardly, the Sangheili threw off the tatters of the junk pile, once pieces of armor, bodysuit cloth, and any manner of fabric that he could find within the former combat vessel. Aged claw marks tore through the rubbery-soft bodysuit material and dented the armor pieces: a self-inflicted action.
He rose on shaky limbs and slowly arched his back in a manner befitting of an elder far more than a seasoned holy warrior. A dull pop echoed from the alien's contorted spine. The horrors of days past had taken their toll on mind, body, and spirit. In his nude state, the alien's four mandible jaws quivered with hesitation; his eyes glazed over with endless time and his shallow breathing sprayed a low, humid fog into the air.
The Sangheili wrapped his bare arms around his ribcage and marched, slouched forward, wincing slightly with each heavy step. His hands rubbed along his scaly flesh that depressed at the weak but firm grip, instinctively seeking warmth. The skin hung loosely from the alien's form in a manner akin to a starving animal. He stumbled forward, keeping a hazardous eye on the piles of burned and shredded junk that populated the rest of the Phantom's troop bay.
On closer inspection, especially in the low lighting, holographic spray paint splashed into the form of Sangheili hieroglyphics warned of something dangerous, translating into a Human tongue, "Don't Touch." It looked as if the order was still in effect because the paint and piles looked untampered, even after the passage of days or weeks. The piles themselves were of possibly irrelevant stuff: shredded metal and impact cushioning from the walls cropped electrical wiring and loose rebar from the Phantom's architecture. Strangely, goops of oddly scorched bone and biological matter lay among the piles.
One of the armor pieces still latched on to the nude Sangheili, a duty belt, was broadly loosened and thrown over his shoulder like a make-shift satchel bag. The bag came with a magnetically glued hand-held plasma pistol and shallow pockets probably containing spare weapon-grade plasma batteries. The Sangheili tickled the pistol grip as he passed the last trash heap as if to draw upon unseen foes within but gingerly continued past it.
Reaching the door, the Sangheili fell to his knees and stared at the symbol of Reclamation etched into the door frame by means of hand and pocket blade. Taken from the Forerunner glyph system, the symbol had been one of the most important markers in the Covenant's religion, at least, when the Covenant had been whole. The hand-carved recreation of the Reclamation glyph was a circle within another circle with a stem that connected the interior to the exterior shape. An iconic inscription, warped into a fragile mess from a creature long past his own sanity.
It was all this Sangheili had left. More carvings adjourned the other panels of the Phantom troop bay; however, they held little meaning compared to Reclamation. This was what he had spent a lifetime seeking out, he and the rest of the Covenant. Their Great Journey for final salvation led by wayward Prophets promising divine ascendancy through the capture and deployment of the Forerunner gods' timeless artifacts, the Halo Array.
They promise was Godhood, ascension. Yet, the Great Schism happened. His entire species, a founding member of the Covenant Empire, were declared to be blasphemous heretics, to be exterminated, and replaced by the brute-like Jiralhanae. The Sangheili remembered the horror of watching dozens of his brothers-in-arms cut down by interlocking plasma discharge from their once-supposed allies. He remembered the Parasite overwhelming everyone and everything in its path like a demonic flood of flesh and bone descending for a feast on the living.
The last thing the Sangheili remembered before complete isolation was the external cameras on the drifting Phantom displaying Jiralhanae and Sangheili warships firing on one another in space as the Parasite consumed the entirety of High Charity, the Covenant's holy capital and city-station built into the side of a mobile planetoid. Not long after, the entire station under the control of the Parasite jumped to Slipspace, destination unknown. The ensuing radiation took out what was left of the damaged Phantom's external cameras.
He was alone for so long after that, adrift. Left alone with pointless vindication and his paranoid thoughts. He mumbled a silent prayer for salvation from a doomed existence. It was a prayer he thought to himself many times over, desperate for an end to the starvation and wasting away. A fate like this was no end any Sangheili was due, to die without the honor of a battlefield passing.
The Sangheili was broken from his trance-like stupor when something outside the Phantom rocked the boat. The distinctive sound of melting metal start to lance the troop bay's port side.
Even in the darkness, the glow of hot metal was beginning to shine with an amber glow. The glow's intensity quickly warmed the troop bay and ended the Sangheili's shivers as he detected the approach of destiny.
Intervention.
The Sangheili rose on his unstable legs but mustered his wasting health to stand tall. Friend or foe, he would meet this answered prayer with dignity becoming of a Sangheili. He was broken but even in his half-insane state, the proud warrior stayed true to his being. He marched across the hold and drew his plasma pistol. He did not care to notice his weapon battery was at full depletion.
The glow burned into a shape akin to a doorway, cutting into the nanolaminate armor and warming the metal into a near-liquid state. Where the glow traveled, the architecture turned a bright violet. The Sangheili listened close, clenching his claws around the grip of his depleted plasma pistol, holding it close to the waist in a shooter-ready posture.
The specific glow of a plasma torch receded from the wall, along with its hot pink hue. Metallic, hollow impacts thumped against the Phantom shaking the entire gunship's hull under the Sangheili's feet. He stared down the glowing entry point and readied himself.
A solid whirling of noise in rapid thumps echoed through the metal as if something was cutting through. Instead, the cutting stopped abruptly but it did not bring about a pause or a phase.
The wall exploded open with a blinking white light.
Shouts echoed into the troop bay as combat boots pounded onto the deck of the Phantom. Human soldiers drawing their large black, short-cropped rifles decked with flashlights swarmed in and quickly began taking up shooter positions.
One quickly identified the Sangheili's plasma pistol and rushed forward as he yelled, "Gun! Gun!"
The Sangheili attempted to press his finger to the ignition detector on the pistol's handle but found only a quiet beep of fuel loss, he had run on empty. Before he could reach for another battery or clobber the charging Human, the other soldiers took action, pointed their rifles from a distance and repeating the first speaker's warning.
"Gun! Gun! Gun! Gun!"
The closest three Human combatants rushed forward and tackled the alien with their combined weight, a force that in the Sangheili's prime would have done little but push him onto his back foot. In this case, he hit the ground hard, clobbered by his attackers.
A rubber rifle butt found contact with the Sangheili's face, bruising him into a daze and submission. He felt the inert plasma pistol yank from his sloppy, loose grip. A pair of large handcuffs appeared out of nowhere and latched onto the Sangheili's arms, placed on his back as he came into an upright kneeling position by force.
In all this, the once proud Sangheili could only process so little, the blinding light of the Human vessel's interior, the shadows of Human combatants, their distant voices shouting "Clear!" in repetition, and the blinding flashlight beams as they were directed into his eyes.
One of the Humans spoke in a gruff voice on a headset to one of his superiors, "We've cleared the Phantom. One survivor, it's a Split-Jaw. We've also got the presence of Flood residue across the cabin, looked like the Elite tried to set himself on fire and the interior of the ship to kill whatever got onto the vehicle with him. We're going to take him in."
After a silent pause, he turned to the Sangheili and the Humans restraining him. "We got an affirmative, take him aboard."
The Humans dragged the Sangheili toward the doorway, the airlock, and pushed him into the blinding white light. Behind him, he heard the Human commander talking to his subordinates. "Get a thermite charge ready, burn everything inside the Phantom. Make sure to leave nothing but ash. In addition, quarantine the Elite. We'll see what awaits him later."
A couple of Humans responded with a "Roger" and they went to work.
For the Sangheili, he was drifting into unconsciousness. He could only think how bad this salvation had gone. Any chance left at honor redemption or a good death, gone. Humans would do monstrous, despicable, unspeakable, heretical things to him.
Before he passed into twilight, he produced one last coherent thought. This would be the end of Argo 'Varvin, a Sangheili assassin of the once proud Covenant Special Warfare Group.