3; Sonata in F Sharp
SPARTAN 093 – FLINTI felt as if I were floating on a cloud of vapor, buoyant and lost, drifting between reality and dream but never able to reach for either. The feeling was entirely mental – if I had a physical anymore, I couldn't find it. I had just regained enough sense to start putting one and one together in such a cohesive fashion as to get two, but the only thing I could recall with any clarity was the expression on that damned Elite's face as he stood there, doing nothing at all, just watching me die…
Wait… whoa. Die? I was dead? Oh, no. If I was dead, then Humanity had likely seen it happen, and now they were one shy a Spartan, meaning they all felt that 117 was the last available of my creed – because poor Kelly was little more than DOA when she'd reached the Autumn.
Where the Autumn was now was anyone's guess, but if John couldn't get some form of act together out there and put the parts back where they belonged, then he and I were in the same boat. Dead, and somewhere alien for our troubles. I would have sighed, had I the capability, but the part I remember with painstaking clarity was that I was in the middle of testing if I could find my body enough to tell it to breathe when the whole world I knew of came to an explosive halt… and suddenly the physical came screaming back at me, all at once, and all I felt was agony.
I couldn't inhale, it hurt so much, as everything was constricted and cramped up, the tension building to unbelievable levels before I could convince anything to free up and relax. My mouth was dry as bones and I couldn't taste anything because of it, but I surprised myself in that I could feel each of my teeth and the ridges in the roof of my mouth rather acutely… the tongue was always said to be a sensitive thing, but until then it had always been taste-prone and feeling came as a distant second. Right then, my swallow reflex was shot, though, and my eyes were watering so bad I wondered if salivation hadn't moved up an orifice or something.
Finally, working my jaw loose, I heard a faint, anemic thud in my head. At first I thought someone had hit my helmet, and fought to see through my visor to tell if it was a field medic trying to make me respond, but then it happened again, this time in tune to the awful pounding pain up there. My whole cranium exploded in the worst headache I had ever had, at about the same time I recognized that I was blind.
Blind… for a moment the idea dominated, until a striation lanced across what I was presuming was my vision, and it dawned on me what that distant thumping was, right as a third one choked through, a weak background noise at best.
That was my heartbeat.
Slowly, little by little, the pieces fell into place. The electrical shock I had received at what I presumed was an altar of some kind had stopped it, effecting a kind of coma over the rest of me as my body fought between shock and shutdown. Somehow, in return, I had then received another one, of something either equal or greater in power, to restart the thing, but for all it was beating again, it seemed lethargic, weak… strained. I could barely muster the strength to blink, but even as the blood began to push through my veins again and my headache ebbed, a smidgen of sight worked its way through and I was able to focus on my savior… had I the strength, I would have twisted the bastard's head right off his miserable neck!!
Another of those damned Elites stood staring down at me, but I had known my pet alien for long enough to know that this one… oh, hey. These two, correction. That these two were not him. One spoke to the other, decrying himself as most definitely not him, and then the other responded in kind – no, if both of these could speak, then my initial impression was correct, and I was in more shit than I could ever recall.
Fire dominated my nerves, every blasted one of them that I owned, but it was all constant and more or less equal throughout, so after only a few minutes my natural response shut them all out, and it became a numb throb behind my heart. It was picking up some speed, but had I been merely out of it, I knew at this point it ought to have been racing, and I wondered briefly if that was the only thing keeping it going as slow as it was – that adrenalin had dumped into my system almost as soon as my vision had returned, and the self-inflicted medication had stimulated an otherwise fading pulse to continue.
It hurt, it all hurt, but I felt like I had been stowed in cryo… there was no feeling quite like cryo thaw, and even if one had to scream one's misery the feeling could not be denied, because while it wasn't easily described as pain, it certainly could work a body's nerves… tingly, more like. I forced my first breath, and heard the filters hiss, choked and had to suffice with near motionless coughing as I fought to free up my airway the only way I knew how – by forcing more air down it.
This was rather difficult to do, all things considered, when the one thing that commanded airflow in and out was the one thing that wasn't responding. I had to gulp air, and then try to make myself swallow it while commanding my inhalation to function. Finally, a second breath, wheezing, went in. Thud-thud.
The first complete heartbeat filled my ears, and for the first time in my entire life I could feel the blood pulsing up the veins in my throat. It was macabre, to me, but it was also oddly invigorating – to feel my own life slowly coming back to me, as each part of me started to come back online and then report in, resuming prior duty as it ought. The thrill in that I was alive at all held me in thrall, and I fought for another breath. Just one more, just one more… all I wanted more than anything was just one more breath, I just needed to breathe, and if I could get my air in, then I was going to be okay. I inhaled hard, spreading my ribcage all the way open, filling both lungs to capacity. Thud-thud.
Speed… function was speeding up. Soon animation would become possible, but just that I had managed to work myself up from barely revived at all to this point was remarkable. Had I been in a conventional Human hospice, I would doubtless have received more than just the one shock to restart my stalled heart. Fortunately, my augmentation allowed for a much wider margin of error, and with the one I had gotten – and lord only knew why or how it had been procured or applied, considering my location – I was now well on my way to a full recovery.
Now… if I could just survive at their mercy for long enough to get mobile enough to grab a gun… oh, I'd survived worse, I surmised, but coming back from the dead was really a new one, and I had to admit, it was not the most pleasant resurrection I'd imagined.
HONOR GUARD ZEALOT – ANUNA 'VADUMEEAt first my brain denied what my eyes saw. How in all hell had a Spartan gotten into the Mausoleum?? But slowly things pieced together as the Councilor beside me just stared in numb shock. Oh, how interesting the pieces fell, as I realized now the ends to a means I had only ever seen the beginning of.
The recording stopped shy of the smoke ceasing, but I had been among the viewers at the actual event – having been in-system with 'Akaendea at the time – and I had seemingly been the only soul to stand there watching until there was nothing left to see – I had wondered why 'Caervasnee had bothered to pluck the Spartan from his place himself, and carry his body away, but it had never occurred to me to wonder where he thought he was going. That the event was several months ago startled me. Still, why place one of the hated enemy here with the honored fallen of our own? More so still, with the Arbiters that had fallen? The curious Assassin-Guard's air of mystery renewed for me.
'Akaendea finally managed to tear his eyes away, and looked at me. "What meaning is this heresy? Who put this vermin here??" He demanded, as if I would know. His voice had a rasp to it, his countenance still shaken.
I was about to reply when I realized that I did. But he didn't know that. "I don't know, sir." Was all I gave him. "Would it interest you to know that an Imperial Admiral was killed here in this very room the night of the Spartan's execution?"
The information smote like a revelation. 'Akaendea looked honestly stunned. "I… I was not informed…"
"Neither was I… I looked it up when I recognized a different system of command rippling through the ranks." I continued. "I didn't say anything because I assumed you knew."
He gave me a critical eye. "What else don't I know? Who is hiding these things from me? I've a right to know! Tell me more."
I shrank a little, startled that 'Akaendea would be so angry… it was just a Spartan, and a dead one at that. "I don't… where do you want me to start, sir?"
'Akaendea gave pause for thought, before motioning for the other two guards attending him to pull the Human out of the pod. As they did so, he turned back to me. "Who could have gotten the Spartan this far into High Charity – dead or not – without someone seeing them?"
"My guess is the Admiral saw, sir. Which is why he was killed." I responded, watching as my brothers-at-arms exchanged their burden from both to one so the other could then close the pod. To all extents and purposes, it was a limp Human indeed. Absently, I rubbed my elbow, still able to feel the tingling and burning the electric shock had rendered. "Although how it came to be consolidated within a single witness would lead me to assume it happened after hours, at which point the only ones on duty would be the Unggoy, cleaning up after the day's close."
'Akaendea nodded his head in agreement. "And it is never easy getting Unggoy to talk when they are frightened…"
"And there exists no Sangheili of whom they are not frightened." I added, glancing at him. "Councilor, if I may… I do recall seeing 'Caervasnee that day… I did not know who he was at the time, but it did puzzle me then why he would bother to take the Human down from the cuffs and take him away personally…"
'Akaendea gave me a look I found disturbing. "What madness is that?" He asked. "Why would an honored member of the Honor Guard disgrace the halls of the Arbiter so with such filth as this Human, whom he saw to the death of personally??"
I could only shrug. "I have no idea, sir, I really cannot say." I looked back at the Spartan in time to spot something oddly amiss before anything else outlandish could happen – the 'dead' Human had somehow gotten one of their swords into his hand, and in the instant he was dropped off to one side, he curled right back off the floor in a calculated motion that speared the Guard on the left through the hearts. He gave a pained gasp before collapsing, but my other fellow only got to parry three of the following strokes before he was caught by his wrist and turned, and then his head was severed completely in a following stroke.
'Akaendea stood staring slack-jawed in shock. I powered on my own blade, and growled, warning the Human to stay back. If he was good enough to down two inside a heartbeat, he was dangerous. More so that he'd made more than a million and a half Covenant think he was dead. He turned that convex golden visor at me, looking as though he were sizing me up. But he seemed to waver, and for all his attempt not to he eventually sagged to his knees, and sat on his heels in defeat. Puzzled, I cocked my head. If he hadn't been dead… was he then wounded somehow?
'Akaendea would have none of this, though, and his commanding voice cut through my thoughts. "Kill it! And this time you cut it's bastard head off and put it somewhere separate!"
I took a breath… if 'Caervasnee truly had been privy to this Spartan's survival, he would likely be the next one on my blade… and that hurt. To think how much I had put into preserving that Zealot only to lead to this… but heretics didn't turn a different color than the rest of us when they lost faith, and were often hard to imagine as they were.
Steeling myself for what might come, I stalked closer to the Spartan, aware infinitely how he could still be fooling with me. Cautiously, I paused just outside of lunge range, and raised my sword between us. He didn't immediately react, but it seemed a calculated wait – he was biding his time, and when I got close he would probably gut me too. I had to exercise all forms of caution and ware with this one.
I took a grenade from my belt, and primed it, but though the sharp glow didn't hardly affect me, the Spartan sighted on it, then looked up at my face. Like he meant something… communicatory. The span was easily closed, but he only got close enough to snag my hand – and I hissed as I felt the plasma fusing to my palm inside his own grip as it crunched down. I snarled at him, and drew back my blade, but it was met point-on by his, and I felt the hot sizzle of the split blades surround my own sword hand. While a precarious position to be in indeed, he couldn't cut me without cutting himself, and vice versa. I pulled on my grenade hand, but his grip was incalculably strong. Twisting, I disengaged my sword from his, but it left me wide open and he didn't hesitate to spin his own down and towards my chest. Taking his focus on queue, I seized control of the grenade half of our equation and smacked him in the helm with his own fist. His blade grazed my armor and killed my shields, but I was mostly unharmed. Seeing his own shields flare disheartened my attack, but it had saved me, and now I was nolonger wide open or vulnerable. I brought my blade down to cut through his shoulder at the neck, and met with a swift parry that sent my cut out wide. I brought it down and over, but again he blocked my strike.
If we continued like this, we would both die when the grenade finally went off. I hammered his blade with mine, he parried with all the deft determination of one who hated to die in a losing battle. Finally, I caught the inside of the top blade on his sword, and it plucked from his grasp and flung across the room. Striking the floor, it deactivated with a poof and hiss before rolling to a stop. He didn't waste any time, though, in embedding his fist in my throat, causing me to gag and stagger backwards, barely remembering to hold onto my own blade.
He took my wrist, and forced my arm between us, but I caught hold of my own before he'd quite made me to cut my own hand off. That was close… I snarled at him, but as a Spartan it was either impossible or against his edict to make any noise at all in reply. He just stared at me in silence from behind his golden visor, but my eyes widened in fear when I heard the grenade whine down, and grow ominously quiet. We now had exactly three seconds to say our prayers. Desperate, I yanked away from him, but all he did was use my motion to bring up his feet, and he planted them both in my gut and kicked hard. While it separated us, I was the one with the grenade fused to my hand. I was about to give in and slice it off myself when the device suddenly lost its glow, and simmered. Hissing, I pried it out of the muscle of my palm, and let it roll away.
I looked at the Spartan. What in god's names had he done to diffuse the grenade like that? He'd piled up and looked to be suffering in his own way for some reason, though, but my gaze was drawn in the other direction when I heard a muffled gargle and a collapsing thud on the floor where 'Akaendea was supposed to be. Horrified in seeing that it was indeed the Councilor who had dropped – and was now spreading in a pool of his own blood – I looked up past him to stare in disbelief at the Elite holding the sword.
"Anuna." He said, almost surprised.
The look in those golden eyes told me volumes – that he had found his past was evident. He knew who he was now, and he remembered me. How or what had invoked those buried memories to surface was a mystery, but such questions were far from my consciousness at the moment. Fear crept into my soul as what he'd done sank in. "You… you killed 'Movashdea."
He gave me one of those informed, sour looks one gets when impatience with a lack of facts becomes evident. He stalked past me, though, letting me live, and stopped in front of the Spartan. It was the oddest thing… at first there was nothing, as the two just stared at one another, before the Spartan – gasp – spoke.
"You miserable bastard." He accused.
'Caervasnee just laughed, and put down a hand, which the Spartan took and used to help him to his feet. "I had not realized you were alive."
The Spartan was looking at me, now, but for some reason 'Caervasnee stopped him when he started to step forward.
Turning to see me again, the traitorous Zealot regarded me for a moment. "Yes, I killed the Councilor. As it was deeply evident, he deserved nothing less."
"Why 'Akaendea?" I begged, starting to crawl to my hooves.
"Ah, him. For the same reason, I would expect, that the Admiral could not be tolerated. Your beloved Covenant is sick, Anuna. As much as it pains you to know, it is the truth… you must know, else you would have killed me the first time you heard me speak."
"You had no memory of what you were saying!" I cried, distressed.
"Hm. Perhaps not then. But I remember you from before then."
"You didn't speak then."
"I did." 'Caervasnee stepped forward. "But no one was wise as you to know to listen."
HERETIC – G'WI 'CAERVASNEEHe looked frightened of me – that he thought I was something I was not became clear in that he was trying to keep me at a distance, yet was unwilling to outright flee my presence in that he hoped to either sway my place or at least remove me from it through death… but I was shaken myself. I swore to myself that my eyes had not lied when I saw the Spartan die. How he now lived was beyond me – but he was his usual self, accusatory, ungrateful and hostile while minding his manners for the most part. He was a strange Human… although how I thought he wouldn't be found here was of some note to me. I amended the thought with the idea that I had probably not thought about that far ahead at the time… which I couldn't be blamed for, when later injury robbed me of memory for a time.
I was still slightly off my balance, but within the span of a night in which I couldn't sleep, things had begun to fall back into place. Sorting through a lifetime's worth of memory and putting it all back into place and in order had been confusing – but right now, even though I wasn't quite sure I recalled just how I had found the damned Human to begin with, one thing that was very clear was the part where we had come together and fought, parted ways, and then how I had used him… and gained a position I quickly found I didn't want.
High Councilor 'Movashdea was testament to that. I wanted, and needed, out. But Anuna wasn't just another witness – he'd been the first among millions to bother to learn to listen to me, and he heard what I had to say. In my hour of need, he was the one that helped me keep my feet. For what little honor remained me, I couldn't just leave him like that. I couldn't just kill him, too.
The Spartan behind me wanted to kill him. I debated doing it myself… but in the end Anuna didn't deserve any such fate. From either of us. That he was loyal to the wrong end of my world was immaterial. He'd been there, stuck his neck out for me. Kept me from my own end, one I might have met without even knowing. Lessons learned the hard way seemed to be my specialty. Yet they were mine – may perhaps a little of the Spartan's… but not Anuna's. The kid had only just come up in the world, and was still discovering what it meant to be in the middle of the biggest mess anyone could imagine.
"Are you going to kill me too?" He asked.
I shook my head.
"Why? What are you going to do, then? How can you stand there, and let that Human live?"
"Anuna, perhaps in time you will come to understand what it means to be at the receiving end of misfortune, but for now, attached to your innocence, you cannot hope to understand. For years I toiled under the boots of everyone else. Years, Anuna. No one listened to a word I said – often accused me of refusing to speak with them. I was scorned with the worst of them. And this Spartan changed that – for a long time I thought that this was what I wanted, until I got here. 'Movashdea hated me. He made that much plain – he threatened to kill me simply for looking at you. You! Do you realize how petty that is? I don't care what station or status he held. He was despicable and had no honor. But you know what I learned, Anuna, in all my short months of occupation here as an Honor Guard?"
He shook his head.
"I can't go back. Not that I especially want to. But it was a far cry better than being here, among the worst of them. Strutting around giving themselves airs, pretending to be better than the rest of us. Many of them were born to their places! It was not earned! You, at least, you and your ilk, you bothered to play the game how it was designed, and you earned what you gained. You truly hold to your faith, you truly deserve your honor. Yours are a dying breed, Anuna, remember that. You're a good kid… and as old and bitter as I have become, I do not wish my ill fortune upon you. You helped me when I was down. You listened when no one else would. No, Anuna, I'm not going to kill you… and if that means you raising an alarm that ultimately gets me killed shy of departure…" I sighed. "Do as you must. No one here has ever done anything different than just that."
He looked surprised. "You…?"
"I'm not a monster, Anuna. I merely live for ideals no one else holds." I cast a look over my shoulder at the Spartan, and he cocked his head at me.
"Are you actually saying anything to him?" He asked.
To put it as bluntly as I could, I nodded.
He seemed to give that thought. "Huh."
"He doesn't hear you, 'Caervasnee." Anuna decided. "How can you hope to get far at all when you cannot even communicate with the majority of those you encounter?"
I shrugged. "I have lasted this long."
His expression darkened. "Not as a Heretic."
The words struck me as profound… and sharp. He was either threatening me, or was expressing that he was disappointed in me, had expected fanaticism befitting my title – that of a zealot. I could only shake my head, and sigh. "Do you think I'm a heretic?"
The question, despite being in direct relation to what he had only just decided to accuse me of, gave him pause. "I…"
"What have I betrayed, if I have never been fully accepted as one of them?"
He stumbled over a word, didn't bother to try to say it again. "G'wi, you're asking for your execution." It sounded like a plead.
"I know."
"No one knew it was you until you came in here… and told me."
I felt myself smile, but it was a sad expression indeed. "Can you keep a secret?"
He choked. "G'wi, this isn't about me!"
"Isn't it? If I kill you, you can't tell them who did this. You can't tell them how there was a Spartan in the Mausoleum, and how he killed two of your fellows before your Councilor was killed. You can't tell them it was me. But I would also lose the one soul who ever bothered to hear me out, the one warrior among the millions I have crossed paths with who was a friend to me. If I kill you, Anuna, all this will go away. I can go wherever I want to – possibly after a short visit with a Prophet, I could leave. But if I let you live, you are then pressed with the dilemma of either informing the Hierarchs all about everything I have done since my instatement as an Honor Guard here in High Charity, or you can keep your mouth shut… although for as much as I owe you, you owe me nothing. You see, Anuna, this is about you."
"Only because you stopped shy of completion." He answered. "I don't know you."
"You never did, Anuna."
"Who are you? Why have you done these things? What pushed you over that edge? Or are you following some hidden sect of hierarchs and are following orders of some kind, to erase the High Council?"
I shook my head again. "For as much as I have done… I have orders from no one. If I was told to do something, I missed it, and may possibly get in trouble later for a job not done. I don't claim to know how you think, Anuna, but I've been around you for long enough to know how you draw conclusions under stress. I'm alone. The most I have right now is that Spartan… who for all intents and purposes I swear I thought was dead. How did you revive him, by the way?"
He seemed to give that some serious thought, before absently rubbing an elbow. My eyes traced to the wall near the pod I had put the Human into, then back again. Ah… practically the same element that had ended him, to bring him back. Humans were such odd creatures! I looked back at the Spartan, who looked from Anuna to me, back to Anuna, then back at me again.
"What?"
"It must have been the shock… I caught my elbow on a contact or something after I opened the pod. My arm is still tingly." Anuna offered.
I nodded, my mandibles curling into a smile.
"G'wi." The Spartan said. I looked at him. "Your name is G'wi?"
"I will never understand you, 'Caervasnee." Anuna sighed. "You're as much a mystery to me now as you were the day I first saw you."
"When was that?" I asked.
"The day he died." He pointed an accusing finger at the Spartan, who didn't even flinch. Although I suspected that had he had a gun, Anuna would have caught a magazine load about then. "I saw you carry him away. Like he was someone special… and you put him here, in the Mausoleum of the Arbiter. Why, 'Caervasnee? What deed did he perform to so deserve that honor? This is a sacred place!"
"He what?" The Spartan choked. "I think I'm still dead – I cannot possibly be hearing this right."
"You weren't there. He didn't kill my squad – his crashing fightercraft did. He buried Welav 'Dedekilee under the resulting wreckage. I was the only one that survived the impact, and he only survived because I pulled his carcass out of the ship before its fuel reserves ruptured and detonated. I was all alone out there, abandoned to a useless patrol in an unoccupied valley on a planet we had claimed in a battle weeks ago. The last of the Human occupation came down from orbit – orbit! He and I were all we had to keep one another sane for the next month as I tried to find where the cruiser had put down."
Anuna looked past me, then, for the first time not seeing the Spartan in anger or contempt. He looked genuinely curious.
"And at the killing… the pylons… maybe he doesn't hear what I say, but he listened when it mattered, and he understood when it counted. Can you claim similar? You know nothing of what you claim to profess in. Humans… how can you believe they are a manifestation of evil? Do you witness now this one taking arms against me? Evil takes no sides, makes no compromises. Learns from no one."
"How am I to know it is not you who has been made blind?" Anuna asked, his tone almost pleading. "I do not claim to know the Human – or his reasoning. But you… you I thought I understood, at least in part. You're one of us, G'wi."
"If I was one of you, I would not be here today, as I stand, accused so of heresy." I turned away, motioned at the Spartan, and headed for the door. If Anuna wanted to stay behind, Anuna was welcome to do so. But I knew I couldn't – I had to get out, because now that I'd dared to leave a crumb trail, I had to part with it, and I couldn't tell Anuna or anyone where I was going. I heard the Spartan's boots behind me, and felt reminiscent of our time trekking across the watered-out wasteland of that planet where Welav 'Dedekilee had died.
"You could have said it nicer, you know." I heard the Spartan say. The comment gave me pause, and I turned back to look at him. "By the way he looked at you." He elaborated, explaining how he knew how I had said what I'd said.
Damn. There went that theory.
HONOR GUARD ZEALOT – ANUNA 'VADUMEEA thousand thoughts and feelings welled up inside my head all at once. Betrayal and abandonment not the least among them all, but somehow it all seemed justified, even though the concept of such a thing sounded alien to me. I had gotten the feeling that I needed to get him out a while ago – without knowing why, I had sat still, bided my time. Now I knew… but it still didn't quite all fit. That G'wi hadn't known his Spartan wasn't dead was a new one. I had thought he would have been privy to that, but that I had jolted him back to life with the same shock that had highlighted my own life for a moment there did seem credible.
It sure had hurt like enough hell…
Still, one arm from the elbow down burning like electrical fire, the other hand scorched and in fiery pain, my guts roiling in agonized protest from impact trauma, and my throat sore from being punched, I jerked from my lean against the pillar that held the wall, and I lurched after them, staggering. "Wait… wait." I begged.
I met G'wi at the door, attempting to speak, but he just pulled my grenade-scorched arm over his shoulder, and helped me to walk as he made his own way to wherever it was he meant to go.
That I had for some reason decided to throw my lot in with them rather than playing the part of their accuser and getting them killed shy of escape reeled in my head for some time, but for as much as one Honor Guard holding another off the floor turned heads, no one said a word to us – I wondered where the Spartan had gone, noting how no one was raising alarm at spotting him, but he proved nowhere to be found.
It took me until we reached a craft bay and found a Phantom to hide in to figure out where the Human was; right beside G'wi, and he shimmered under the colored light as he faded into view. Slipping past, he settled into the cockpit, while G'wi strapped me in for the ride.
I watched as he moved up to the copilot's chair, settling in almost as if the Spartan were one of ours – another Sangheili – and saying something to him that I didn't quite catch. Right then all I knew was how much I wanted to be sick all over the Phantom's floor. I held it in, miraculously, but the thought that the engines firing up and running might make it worse proved false – instead the smooth vibration served to settle my roiling innards, oddly enough, and after only a few minutes I was feeling much better. My throat was still sore, but though most of the feeling had returned to my right arm, the tingly burning sensation persisted in the palm of my right hand. Turning it, I committed the next hour to the study of the wound, well knowing that there had been nothing wrong with my grenades, and wondering why it hadn't gone off… at the least it should have snapped my arm off and burned my face.
It hadn't even detonated… I had never, never seen a grenade fizzle before. The familiar transitory hum of going from atmosphere to vacuum swallowed our ride, and I looked up to see when a motion got my attention. 'Caervasnee walked past me, removing his Guard's cape as he went. He stowed the thing in a small hatch compartment, and took something else out before turning back to me, taking my upturned hand and applying a healing salve to the palm.
"Why didn't it go off, G'wi?" I asked, curiously.
He looked at me. "I told it not to."
I met his gaze, then, closing my fingers into a fist. "You told it?"
"Each grenade has an electronic diode detonator that unseals the pressurized plasma coil. I told it not to unseal."
"How?" I asked, interested and intrigued. "You really can talk to receptive electronics?"
"It's a language I have only a sketchy command of, but yes…" He nodded. "You make noises, and so do computers. You have to make the right computer noise to get any response or it just takes what you say as random segments of code and they get ignored."
"I… don't really understand."
"Why did you light the grenade if you did not mean to part with it, Anuna?"
I looked down, at the stamped shape of the grenade's exterior that had burned into my palm. It would be there until the day I died. "I wanted to stick it to your Spartan, but he stopped me."
"He's good that way." 'Caervasnee told me, with part of a mischievous grin that I caught the last of right as he turned away, replacing the field medical kit to the compartment.
SPARTAN 093 – FLINTThe controls weren't that hard to figure. I had driven enough Covenant equipment to have a basic understanding of how their things worked, but truth be told I didn't think that any Spartan had ever been in a Phantom before – at least, not to drive it. My Elite friend… 'Caervasnee… got us cleared through all the checkpoints for a smooth exit, but just in case my fingers still hovered near the gun controls.
I wanted to try them, but we got through cleanly so I had to let them go. I understood what had gotten me this far, though – luck. A hellacious lot of it. Probably more than 117 had, really, and he was practically made of lucky. He'd trip and fall on a dry gravel bed if it meant he got missed by a sniper's round. He just had a way of being graceful under fire and it put most of the rest of us to shame.
I was apparently having my own run of good fortune, this time, though, which I was grateful for. How cool was this? I was in a Covenant Phantom without authorization, at the behest of not one but two of their Honor Guards! I wasn't sure how many times that had happened to a Spartan in the past but I was pretty sure I was safe to claim I could very easily be the first one.
I watched as the stars swallowed our craft, and then wondered where I was going to go to now. Doubtless without a stardrive of some kind we'd never get far. Definitely not deep enough into Human territory before we ran out of food… and to that end, what was I going to do with my two Elites, since Humanity at large wasn't liable to be terribly nice to them?
I let that one lie for a while, as I watched 'Caervasnee get up and walk into the back, pulling the cape off his armored hide as he went. His little friend… whoever he was… had been sitting still and quiet for a while, but when they started to talk again I began to configure the input on my helmet, certain if I just played with it enough I'd find what frequency of noise 'Caervasnee spoke on. Surely he wasn't just lip-motioning all his words. I'd seen him doing that, but it hadn't occurred to me at the time to play with my sound input to see if he was actually making any real noise.
It took a little calibration to find it, but when I did, I realized as I looked over the related data for that setting that this guy had to have the weirdest deformity in his vocals… the weirdest. But he came through loud and clear, audible enough.
I nodded as I looked back across the controls before me. Talking about grenades. Wait… I raised my head, and after a moment I played back a part of their conversation, sure I had heard another name. Yeah, sure enough, there it was. Anuna. I made a mental note of it, and went back to minding my controls. I got the readings for the local cartography to come up, so I looked at that for a bit before deciding I was probably deeper into Covenant controlled space than any Human had ever been.
I was about to ask if either of my two companions knew where we could go when a huge hole in slipspace opened up almost on top of us. I stared through the forward screens, awed at the sheer size of the cruiser that poured through it, but I frowned deeply when I thought I recognized quite a number of the bits of debris it left in its wake before the rift closed up.
I leaned forward in my seat, and keyed the zoom on my visor to see some of it better. Holy shit! Those were bits of buildings!! Human buildings!! What in god's name had that cruiser been doing?? I squinted at something that was bigger than the rest, but I was as zoomed in as I was going to get… so I steered the Phantom closer.
In Amber Clad. My heart almost stopped right there… again.
Her odd axis tumble slowly corrected, but before I could figure out the comns unit in the Phantom, her engines had fired, and she moved forward, so I looked ahead to see where they were heading.
High Charity still hovered over the same Halo it had when we had left it, but for all that we had been moving, the new Covenant arrival looked inclined to dock more with the ring than with the larger Covenant establishment. I turned the Phantom, and chased that ship down. That was my ticket home, but for now I could probably do some good making trouble with my fellow Humans right here under High Charity.
If I was lucky, 117 would be with them – he had a penchant for being where he was needed, and if there was a Human vessel near a Halo, the Master Chief Petty Officer was most definitely needed there.
If I found him, I knew I'd never be able to stop grinning again. This was my lucky break… alone, separated, we Spartans had made hell a new place for the Covenant. With my two new friends, I could make it more so, especially if John was around to help out.
There was just one problem – where would he put down? If one didn't start out with the man, one would be hard pressed to catch up to him when he was working. I had been there when Kelly was still around, and while there had been over fifteen of us then, she left everyone behind, even John, but though I wasn't the slowest of the Spartans that ever served, I had a nagging feeling I was the slowest surviving one. I just didn't have rockets in my ass like some of my siblings did.
We sailed in fast and steep, diving practically at the ring, speeding after the Human vessel that had come through right in front of my nose all huge and beautiful like a gift on Christmas morn. Both of the Elites were still in the back, talking. I wasn't listening anymore, though, not even after the revelation that my eleutherian enemy actually wasn't mute after all. I had a destination in mind, all of a sudden, and I meant to meet it.
HERETIC – G'WI 'CAERVASNEEI knew the kid was distressed, but even as I soothed his rattled nerves and outlined the real reality he'd been missing, I realized the longer we talked how little else about himself he betrayed. His manner was flawless – for the most part. Had I been speaking to him looking at something else like he was, I would have missed it. Had I been listening with half an ear, I would have missed it. Had I been in the other room, at the other end of a comn, even immersed in some otherwise benign task, I would have missed it all completely and never been the wiser.
But I was paying more attention than my usual for one reason; I knew his trust in me had been shaken, and even though he followed where I had not led, he was still questioning that decision. I didn't need him to suddenly revert and stab me through my shoulder blades. If I was going to die, I wanted to at least see it coming… and see who gave it to me. Rather than attain that end, I felt confident enough in my own assertion to explain the rest of what he'd jumped into that I had philosophically evaded until now. It was, after all, my own method of doing things…
Watching him, stoic, guarded, cautious… among other things. I felt as though I was walking on the edge of a blade, and I could cleave my hooves in twain and then the rest of me on it or fall from it, so precariously perched was I. Yet it was none of those things that I zeroed in on when the last on the list made itself apparent.
Between words, he inhaled softly, but in that mere benign action a bold sentiment was made clear to me, paying such close attention as I was. Anuna was in pain.
No other element to his person betrayed the fact, but it had been spoken, and there it lay. I could take it or leave it, however I chose. I had fragmented memory of him at best, but though disarranged, it was all there. Whenever I got it back into order, I'd understand it better, but right now all that mattered was the contents of each fragment – I had been felled, been kicked while I was down. Anuna had been the one to pick my battered carcass up and carry me away from what otherwise would have become an end unfulfilled. He'd cared enough to do as I asked of him, to provide for me when I would never have known the difference.
He turned away, started to rise and approach the cockpit, but I set a hand on his shoulder, and held him down. He turned his head back the other way to look at me again, curious why I had just done that. There was no overtly open hostilities between him and my Spartan, and there was no fear in my hearts for the Human's integrity should he again fight with Anuna. Yet it wasn't the Spartan I was concerned for, in stopping them from meeting again, inside that cockpit.
I was about to speak, had formed a word in my forebrain who's next deployment was in my mandibles, but it withered and died, replaced in a blink when he next inhaled, upon seeing my expression change just inside the span it took for him to turn enough to see me and to turn enough to focus on me totally. He started to draw away, unsure what I was about, but again I stopped him. "Be still, brother." I admonished. "What wound have you hidden from me?"
He looked away. "I am fine."
"You may soon see battle again, Anuna, any ill you harbor now will be agitated by it. Tell me. What pains you?"
Anuna looked back at me. "How do you even know?"
"Your pain is betrayed on your breath." I told him. "I can hear you strain each time you inhale."
He blew a big, obvious sigh – and there it was again. That slight, faint tremble in his breath, decrying what agony he sought to conceal. But the action was an expression of disappointment in the self, not an agreement and advertisement of my observation. "Nothing evades you."
"Some things do." I corrected. "But not this. Where are you wounded?"
"Inside."
My brain froze for a moment. If it was just impact trauma he'd be fine. I'd received bruises before. But I had entered the Mausoleum in time to witness my Spartan's parting gesture, the double-footed kick that had separated him from Anuna at the conclusion of the fuse of his grenade. Being kicked that hard by powered armor – especially powered armor as big as one of us and as heavy as a one-man fighter – that was different. Especially since it had landed quite square in Anuna's belly.
That he'd lain for a moment gasping, oblivious to the world, after, was no surprise at all. That I had had to carry him to the Phantom we now sat in was also no real surprise. Still, there he sat, curled just slightly for the ache, and just when I started to imagine exactly that, he gave a small cough.
Oh, shit.
I stood, and retrieved the medical kit once more, certain beyond doubt the poor kid would start coughing up his own blood from some severe internal bleeding. He didn't really get that far, though, sustaining with just the one cough, as though clearing his throat instead. His bright, attentive eyes traced my every motion, and as I fished the hydrocolloid pills from the bottom of the box, a slight, faint smile touched his features.
When he had the medication in hand, he paused to look up at me and say, "I will never truly know you, will I, G'wi?"
My own responding smile was broad and warm. "It's my understanding."
SPARTAN 093 – FLINTThe radio chatter from In Amber Clad was apparently entirely in-ship. I couldn't find the frequency they were using, though, if I was wrong. Still, it didn't take long at all for me to catch up, and by the time I did, they had loosened their first wave of pods at the ring.
This was my chance – but I couldn't get square with the ship nor catch up to the pods without being blasted to bits, so I had to hang back initially and then make my own entrance after everyone had settled. This proved interesting. Phantoms innumerable had been deployed upon the assaulted area the pods had fallen in, but I didn't know that until I had finally made that gap and gotten it closed.
We came up broadside with another Phantom as it stitched the ODSTs on the ground with plasma fire, but just as I had swung my own Phantom's guns around, a warning light came on in my display. Just shy of enough time for me to blink after it activated, the Phantom rocked hard to port, and the alarm changed pitch. Now it was screaming bloody murder, because my starboard side had just been disarmed… by a rocket.
Damn! I had just enough time to tilt my bird to the side to fly her away when the second rocket ripped the cannon off my prow… argh! I knew exactly who that was, no one had aim quite like John. But I was going to give him a stern talking to once I finally caught up to his shiny green ass, for shooting at me like that! I got the Phantom ducked over the side of the cliff and away from that ruined, shelled-out building the guys were hiding out in, aware I couldn't land there or help them with all those swarms of Covenant.
G'wi stepped up beside me, suddenly, alarmed by the impacts. He sat in the copilot's seat, and looked at the control board before looking at me. "What is happening?"
"I found John." I told him, through gritted teeth.
"You found… what?" He asked, sounding confused.
I looked over at him. Oh. Right. Oops. "The demon." I elaborated. "I found him."
"Oh." He nodded. "He is one of you, correct?"
"Yeah… ranked twenty four ahead of me in our old class. He was the best of us… had all the second best on his team, too… back when we still had teams, that is." I sighed.
"I rather expected he would be happy to see you." G'wi mentioned, playing his long fingers across the controls.
"Me, too." I agreed, propelling us forward. The place was sliced – broad, uneven topped cliff ribbons, all running parallel. The one the guys had landed on was connected to the next one over by a giant link-bound metal bridge… I imagined it was Covenant constructed since it wasn't just an energy beam, like what I had seen before. As I brought us over the far side of the cliff top John had landed on, and over to see the one he would go towards, I made note of all the surrounding enemy.
Damn.
Heavy armor danced with infantry galore, and within spitting distance, there was going to be a lot of Banshee support. Not so much the Phantoms here – those would be exhausted on the initial. John would see to that. And while they raced to be reloaded with more infantry, he would dive headlong into the next batch of them, leaving them unaided and un-reinforced. The Covenant's only help was going to be those Banshees, and truth be told, those were not such a big deal. Not to John.
I took the liberty of running one out of the sky, and shooting another down, but there were six or eight of them total, and I had to do better than that if I was going to make things easier for John. G'wi didn't say anything, oddly enough, but I figured it might be because of the detail I only later came to realize… these particular Banshees were piloted by Brutes.
God, I hated Brutes.
I got all but two of them before the telling whine and thump of heavy artillery exchanging blows back at the bridge redirected their attention. Screaming in terror, or so I liked to imagine, the final pair went speeding for the canyon cut. But before either could make a second pass, that Scorpion had shot them both out of the sky.
Hmm… I hadn't realized how small Scorpions looked from way up… and then the third shot zipped past my Phantom. At that point I decided it would be prudent to abandon the obviously enemy-make craft and go it on foot. At least my armor wasn't Covenant design! Or John might never stop shooting at me. I left him to the four or so Wraith tanks and the half dozen ghosts on the far side of the bridge, casting a last look behind my bird in time to see his Marine buddies run one of the Ghosts right off that edge…
That Elite must have been having one hell of a bad day right then.
We circled around to where a giant device that looked partly Forerunner and just a little Covenant sat, and I lowered us there. The shelled-out ruins were all knocked over, here, with several large pylons lying flat on their sides, but it didn't look like it had a lot of enemy on it.
By the time I had made the gravity beam, though, that had changed. Covenant came out of all the little nooks and crannies, every hole, every perch, from all directions. As I proceeded to duck away from the initial volley of fire and shoot back, I heard the beam twang again to signify someone else was coming down.
Looking back from where I had taken cover, I thought it was Anuna… but the way that battle-cry sounded, it had to be G'wi. He threw a grenade at a cluster of Grunts, then – to my utter surprise – pegged a fellow Elite in the head with his carbine until the hapless fellow fell over dead. Brutal! I reloaded my own guns, which for the moment were a pair of Covenant needlers. For a moment I wondered if I would have enough ammo, but looking up to see Anuna coming down, a sleet of pink streaks parted the air between us.
I smiled.
Rising from my cover, I dove headlong into a group of three Jackals, four Grunts and a pair of blue-clad Elites. Smacking the shield of one of the Jackals, I drove it onto its ass, knocking one of the Grunts into the second Elite's knees, and felling that, too. I elbowed through the other two Jackals before they could fire at me, then filled the rest of the Grunts with needles. When one of them exploded under the standing Elite's aim, all his plasma went right into the broken stone ceiling above us.
A little battered from the blast myself, I had to recover a lot faster from it, and put the last of both magazines straight into that Elite's face. He roared right before he went up, throwing the Jackals flat and punting me onto my ass. I got to a knee and grabbed one of the Jackals by its ugly head to keep it from shooting at me, and threw it at the other one.
By this point, the first Jackal I had shouldered aside was back up. Clawing the Elite's plasma rifles from the stones, I shot the lot of them until both my new guns overheated and their vents popped open.
But for now… at least… this group was gone. Standing, I shook the guns a little to help them cool, and when their vents snapped shut again, I proceeded to the next battle. G'wi and his friend were not inefficient, though, and we soon had the place totally cleared. I looked up right as the gondola detached from the port, its counterpart loaded with more Covenant bastards and headed this way. I sighed. Oh, well… for the moment, the place was empty, and if I could convince my two Elite buddies to lay low, maybe John wouldn't shoot me anyway, enemy guise or no.
We paused for a collective breath for just a heartbeat, but right as we had all turned to head back towards John's push, a retreating wave of Covenant poured out of the tight, narrow doorway ahead of us. Spotting the two Elites in front of me earned some words – but when they spotted me, the shooting started all over again. First, one fool idiot tried to tell G'wi that he ought to look behind him.
If I hadn't know any better, I'd have sworn I heard him laugh.
HERETIC – ANUNA 'VADUMEEMy innards were all on fire, and there seemed nothing could quench the pain. Every motion I made hurt worse and worse, but years of honor-driven combat and training refused to let me allow that to slow me down.
Lost blood was lost honor, but I suppose when one has become a heretic to one's own people, it becomes a moot point. At the fore of my guns were former comrades – I had never met any of these footsoldiers before, but I was no simpleton. Some of the clan markings were recognizable in the melee, and I knew some of them were closely known and honored by my own bloodline. I only hoped, as I slew them and cast them down, that the gods would still honor their lives as they might not honor mine.
Thoughts of what my esteemed brother might think of me now escaped me – I was focused, making headway and carving a path out of what had once been my ally. G'wi and I were not the spearpoint, though – for having just come out of cryo that was by no means configured to sustain a living being in any kind of revivable condition, the Human Spartan was doing remarkably well.
But when the number of Unggoy and Kig-yar had diminished, and only eight or nine fellow Sangheili warriors remained, each of us trying desperately to out-maneuver the other, things became suddenly interesting. As I rounded the corner on an unsuspecting – and I say unsuspecting not because he was oblivious to me, but rather because he was expecting me to come around the other side of the pillar he had his back against – warrior clad in deep, cerulean blues, I noticed his reinforcements had arrived.
A pair of Hunters led the charge ahead of a full squadron of more Sangheili… that was more than we three could handle, and rather than engaging the Elite before me, instead I reversed momentum, caught G'wi by an arm, and spun him back towards our only escape. The gondolas would have to be ignored for now… there was no way to speed them up or slow them down, and there was certainly not one readily available to run away in.
G'wi gave the signal to the Spartan, and he covered our retreat as we made our way to the Phantom. But going there proved hazardous as well… informed of our status as heretics, the Hunters promptly blew the nose out of the bird, and it listed badly until it buried the port flange in the stonework to its side. Ruptured plasma conduits blew hot fumes and rippling waves of noxious gasses out as the hull boiled away, parts of the frame slagging down under the intensity of the released heat.
But for some reason, the Spartan was undeterred. So following his lead, we each vaulted right through the middle of the dead Phantom, leaping through the cracked fissures in the sides of the hull and out the other side of the collapsed wreck to the open, uncontested stones beyond.
Right as I, taking up the rear as I was, made it through, the Phantom's simmering remains erupted spectacularly in its final rupturing explosion, right under both pursuing Hunters.
No one was going to go into that inferno… and certainly no one would be coming out of it, either. We were home free… except the part of the structure the Phantom blocked off was not entirely cut off from the rest of it… and something told me we had come to the wrong place on the map to meet up effectively with anyone willing to aid our endeavors.
Regret was here… Truth had only just headed out. Mercy was still with Truth, but Regret's sermon was scheduled to start at the heart of the central lake network, inside the vaulted antechamber in the middle. This meant that the number of Covenant forces here would be so ridiculously bloated that there was absolutely no way any of us would last long at all here, if we kept having to shoot our way into and out of every situation we met. It also compounded matters that our Phantom had been shot down.
My insides felt like they could pour out my navel without any help. We took across the better part of what remained of our elevated platform, our combat shoes slamming hard on the ancient stone brickwork beneath them. Broken pillars stood in stark relief against an azure sky, but there was a foreboding darkness that seemed to hover just beyond that tranquil blue.
I was beginning to run out of breath as we made the last unobstructed corner, but as G'wi and the Spartan darted ahead, the little voice in the back of my head told me to hitch my rifle to my thigh and pull out my sword. Not one to ignore my instincts, I did just that – and I had only just marked the activation switch with my upper thumb and watched the blade flare to life against the running colors ahead of me when something smacked into the back of my head.
It was as if everything went white, but I could still hear sound bleeding through before I felt myself hit the stones. The pain in my middle faded somewhat as all my other senses began to disappear, but I heard one thing plain before the colorless oblivion swallowed me.
"Forerunners… Honor Guard?"
HERETIC – G'WI 'CAERVASNEEMy Spartan had a hell of a gait. I knew my legs were longer, knew I could have outpaced him, but it was apparently in his interests to evade something before it, theoretically, burst. I didn't know what he was running from or to, but I wasn't about to let him out of my sight.
We'd done that dance before, and the last time that happened, by the time I found the bugger again, he'd been strung up. I was not a slow learner, and while the human was irritating at best, he was still… I guess a friend. He had enough honor to understand where I was coming from, and that was good enough for me. I still had questions, and I knew I wouldn't hesitate to kill him if he chose to turn on me, but in the meantime I was content to think of him as one of mine.
He turned through a tight spot and was gone across the other side, and I had only just popped through that same tight spot when I heard the clamor of pursuit just a breath behind me. I turned on a hoof, my guns up, but instead of firing them, my mandibles snapped apart.
Anuna. His expression was blank, his gaze riveted to me. I had only a half a breath to consider that before his sword flared to life, as if he'd had a change of heart and meant to end me here and now. I couldn't hold it against him, truly, but even as I backpedaled from such a fate, something in white armor rose up behind him, and with a crosswise strike, flattened my fellow Guard to the stones. His sword struck shy of his grasp, and deactivated with a loud poof before clattering away between two stray bricks.
The Commander paused, and looked up at me past Anuna's crumpled form, his own eyes accusing. But his outward expression looked more like incredulity. "Forerunners…" The words came out of him sounding scandalized. "Honor Guard?"
I felt my aim begin to fall, as my posture relaxed from my backward momentum. If I could just play this momentary lapse of reason on his part, maybe I could retrieve Anuna before they killed him.
But the Commander wasn't that shocked to see us; standing over Anuna's fallen form, he tore his own sword from his hip, and activated it so it blew chunks out of the bricks where Anuna's own had fallen. "Your heresy will not go unpunished."
I blew a sigh. Great. I tasted my mandibles, testing the grips I had on my guns. I didn't have a clue where my Spartan had disappeared to, and if he had somehow managed to miss the fact that both Anuna and I had fallen behind, he'd probably failed to stop moving ahead. He wasn't one to move slowly, either, I'd found.
But this business of getting caught, and getting left behind was really starting to get old… all my life it had just repeated. Well, this time, I was going to give it my best effort not to let it. I opened my hands, and felt the grips on my guns leave them. The Commander's eyes flicked downwards in that instant, and in the next he was back on his heels, forced to parry defensively as I surged back through the tight passageway between the pylons at him with my own sword in hand.
Plasma crackled loudly in protest, at times making small exploding noises, at times screaming like tortured metal, as he and I battered hard and fast at one another's blades. Eventually he got his turned between the blades on mine, but after having my wrist wrenched sideways, I wrenched his right back – I had a tough grip, and I wasn't going to be disarmed so easily. The Commander's sword popped right out of his grasp, but before it had gotten far, he stuck his other hand up and snagged it left-handed.
The connection parted, and we went at it again, dancing forward and back, and more often than not in circles as we each tried to gain entry around or through one another's deft defenses. I got an opening in mine when he caught me and hooked my sword out and up, but I stuck a hoof into the gap and kicked him straight in the guts, staggering him when he'd wanted to stick me instead. I followed his unbalanced retreat, hammering hard on his blade, trying to make it break. He got the edge turned on me, though, and pushed me back. There was a distinct difference between metal and plasma blades – sword connections in metal were best made flat-on, as an edge-on connection would severely serrate the leading edges. In plasma technology, however, that leading edge had some interesting science behind it.
For just a heartbeat, the blades passed through one another, and he and I both were driven back, parting us for a heartbeat. With a roar, he leapt at me again, but rather than meeting his downward strike, I ducked my head, rolled over it, caught the brickwork with my hooves, and slashed hard in an upward arc that would, if not blocked, slice him from hip to shoulder across the breast.
I made contact against shielding, heard it crackle, the skidding, syncopated pops the contact emitted causing the Commander to roar something at me – and while I didn't catch it, I knew it had to be some kind of curse. I straightened into my swinging thrust, and battered aside his incoming block, before scraping my blade across his shielding a second time. Colored light splayed across his white armor, the crackling lines of crawling electric current branching across his shielding giving the Elite beneath them a sickly, rainbowed pallor.
He pushed me back, snarling, but he must have thought he couldn't win. I wasn't that great at this – I was operating mainly on what he was telling me, as I had always done, even in the lessons given prior to assigning me a High Councilor to guard. It was touch-and-go for me, but I had already thought up a good counter when he brought his sword around in such a manner as to catch my own outward swing.
The tips connected, and slid down across one another, locking into place once more. Crosswise to their edges, it was unlikely the quantum theory that had accosted the swords earlier would strike again. They were locked, and so long as we kept pushing, they'd stay that way. He brought us down, clawing a set of four measured lines in the stone at our hooves, and reached across the gap between us for me with his free hand.
His right, and injured, hand.
I ignored the blind, feeble groping at my throat, peeling back with a lefthanded slug that connected so sharply with the nose of his helm that I felt my own knuckles crackle. Pain lanced up that arm, lodging and burning especially harsh in that wrist, but the blow snapped the Commander's head back so hard he reeled away, unlocking my blade from his own and freeing me for my next move.
I leapt after him with a feral snarl, catching him with a knee and my aching hand just a second before my blade plunged deep through the center of his chest. Shielding broke apart in explosive display just as we hit the ground together, and he gagged up at me as I felt my sword bite hard into the stones behind his back. I just growled at him – he wouldn't hear any words I might have to spare him, and I was not one for sparing them to the dead anyway.
He'd called me a heretic.
And he'd killed Anuna.
He deserved this.
SPARTAN 093 – FLINTIt had taken me fully a heartbeat to realize there was only one red dot on my motion tracker where there ought to have been two. But circling around, I found we'd been caught. Scores of Elites in red and blue with Grunts at their heels in swarms to rival the Flood had come up behind us, cutting in from the side. I hit a set of tumbled bricks and leapt to the tops of the pylons surrounding the small courtyard I'd managed to squeeze into, and circled around.
Damn. They'd already nailed the kid, and that mute was getting his ass handed to him by a sword-wielding guy in white. Memory suggested the color meant the Elite clad in it was of some significant rank… like Fleet Master. Basically it amounted to an Admiral in my own half of the war. He was responsible for the command of one of the Covenant's many fleets. I'd heard that they had a goodly number of them.
I stashed my needlers and shouldered a carbine I'd swiped, and began picking off the guys coming up behind that white dude's lead, a little unwilling to interrupt a swordfight that actually looked more like a duel of wills than any actual field battle. G'wi looked pissed as hell, down there… and he was stalking that white guy like he was the most offensive kind of prey he'd ever been presented with.
As the tides turned in the battle below my left ankle, I had to recall everything I'd been taught about shooting. I was constantly in motion, picking off heads and hammering through shielding as fast as I could. If I missed a single one of them, the fight below me would be decided by the mob.
If there was one thing I knew without needing told, it was that I was not liable to get far without some kind of backup. That meant, barring the kid's demise, I had to hang onto the mute for all I was worth, until I could get to John or one of the Marine's dispatches. I hammered out rounds from that carbine as fast as they would go, adjusting my aim almost for every shot I took, adjusting my position between each. Return fire was a constant hail, splashing and shattering against the stacked stone bricks around and behind me.
One of the Grunts lasted long enough to pull free a grenade, but it never got to recover from the backwards wind to be thrown when my next round went through the alien's head, and dropped his coiled form right over onto his methane tank.
The magazine's auto eject once it was fully emptied helped greatly – it added to my speed of loading a new magazine into the shunt without needing to either pause to key it so it would drop or fight with it to pull it out myself. But even after I'd gone through a good half my available store of ammo for the thing, I did a fool thing and the magazine popped me right in the visor.
"Gah!"
And that told every last split-chin alien bastard right where I was.
I pelted headlong off the overhead arches into their midst to avoid having my carcass shredded for me by so many grenades I couldn't even count them, and I succeeded in slamming at least one of them into the stones. The Elite gave a pained wheeze, but before he could execute any other action, I was up off of him and moving again. The first thing I did was claw a fresh gun from the next guy's hands, and I filled him with plasma from it before I let him drop. Needles sprayed in all directions as Grunts panicked and went in all directions, one of them being so disoriented that it ran straight into me.
I staggered over the thing, fighting not to trip up and land flat, but once it was past, I shouldered into the next Elite and bullied him into a pylon. I had not honestly looked at the pillar before I did that, but its top crashed down on top of us as the middle part swayed back from the impact. I gave an involuntary yelp of surprise before ducking out of the way, but had I paused even for a heartbeat to look back at what I had caused, I would have become a permanent resident.
Stacked and suspended stones came down around me on all sides, squashing Elites and Grunts and filling up empty spaces. It was the first time I'd had an adrenalin rush from something other than actual battle – and boy was I hopping. It seemed everything I sought purchase on just turned under my grasp, until finally I'd made the gap where the overheads had already fallen, and the arch was incomplete enough that it fell short when it toppled. The rising plume of dust had to be visible for miles out, though…
Straightening, I turned to look back. Limbs and weaponry and the occasional scattered piece of armor was all that I could see of my former enemies. I breathed out, long and slow, and spared a moment to dust myself off a little. The motions caused a twinge to form in my pierced shoulder, but it wasn't even worth a grimace. If it healed with a hole through it, though, I knew I'd never be the same again. My grip in that hand was still weak, even though most of the pain had finally faded.
It was a spectacular mess, though, and I had to admit, as I dusted my palms together… John would have been proud of me. I turned away, back to the courtyard, and pushed through a similar tight squeeze to reach its interior as I had the last time. There in the middle, G'wi stood, his sword still active at his side, standing looking down at what remained of the Elite in white. He'd won the fight, it seemed, but he didn't look terribly happy about it.
Keying my comn filters, I asked, "Something wrong?"
He lifted his head, and swung it around, to look at me. I saw his mandibles move, but heard nothing – at first I thought he'd switched noise-types on me again, but then he shook his head, and walked from his kill to the place where we all had first come through this circle.
He stepped up to the entrance I had used at first, and stepped sideways through it, before kneeling next to the other Honor Guard. I sighed. Time, time, time, and we were wasting it. Oh well – if it had been a Spartan over there I might have done something similar. We weren't even assured he was dead, after all.
I mean… look at me!
I let the warrior have his moment, occupying myself with policing items that I didn't have to dig for. If the kid hadn't bought it, though, he was going to slow us down… and if I wasn't quick on my feet, I knew I'd never catch John at all.
Finished with that task, I walked back over to where the two Elites were, to find them both on the ground – G'wi sat on his heels, the kid's shoulders in his lap, his long head tucked into one of G'wi's elbows.
"I had wanted to see him again." Anuna was saying. It was part of a conversation I'd missed most of, I realized, standing there apart from the rest of them. "They sent him to the human world."
"You may, as yet." G'wi answered, sounding speculative. "No one knows how the stars turn until they have turned."
"Was it futile, G'wi… was it wrong, of me, to follow a faith so blindly?"
Noticing me, G'wi looked up at me, but he didn't appear inclined to say anything to me at present; "Misguided, perhaps. I was there once, too."
"I feel I have wasted my life." Anuna mused, taking a shaky breath.
"Your life is only wasted if you don't do what you feel is right, as each situation appears. If you squander opportunity to correct past wrongs, however misguided or deliberate." I put in, drawing Anuna's gaze from where it had been, somewhere off in space. "Make each moment count." I told him. "That's all anyone can do. That's all anyone can ask of you."
He gave me the strangest little smile. "It speaks."
I grinned, behind my golden visor. "From time to time."
G'wi looked back down at Anuna, then, and blew a sigh at him. "He cannot go on."
"What does he need?" I asked.
"Nothing a heretic would receive." G'wi looked up at me again. "Do your people understand honor, Spartan?"
I stood silent for several long seconds, absorbing that, and trying to force down the inevitable reaction before I could think it – this caused a feeling to well up inside, and make me feel unnaturally ill. Finally, it came out in a sigh. "I know it's a little overrated."
G'wi cast me a disapproving look.
"You're going to kill him, aren't you?" I asked. "Because he can't get up and fight. Because he's wounded. Am I right?"
G'wi seemed to study me for a long moment before he answered. "We can neither carry him nor dare I leave him here, to whatever dishonorable treatment the Covenant might mete out when they find him. It would be a stain on my honor to abandon him."
"It'd be a bigger stain if you turned on your own. He just needs a patch-up." I argued. I pointed one armored finger at Anuna, then, and added, "You kill that kid, G'wi, and you and I will be enemies again."
Anuna promptly adopted a very distressed expression.