Mastema, Eudemon

September 12, 2558

Eudemon was a satellite orbiting a massive blue colored gas giant. The only habitable moon out of the three that circled the planet, it was among the largest colonies that were ever on a satellite. Nearly as large as the Saturnian moon Titan, Eudemon's atmosphere required little terraforming, since it already had partially an oxygen nitrogen atmosphere and water that flowed in small seas. Much else of what land was on the moon was desert terrain. Vegetation was very little due to the colony's hot climate during three quarters of its year. It was a popular destination for tourists, especially the coastal cities like Mastema.

During the Human-Covenant War, Eudemon had been among the first of the border colonies, out of the way towards the Inner, but close enough to escape the Outer designation. Spies from the alien empire had already detected the moon and its human presence. Since there were no artifacts and its location was of no strategic value, they decided to focus elsewhere, coming back later to finish them off. Fortunately for humans residing on the hot moon, the war had ceased before an invasion could be mounted.

After hostilities ceased, Eudemon suddenly had one of its biggest economic growth. Having headquartered Covalus Security, it attracted business, luxury and everything in between.

However, most of the colony was in riots and ruin.

Recently, the governor of Eudemon had allowed sangheili settlers to occupy areas in the desert that were relatively close to human cities. There were currently five sangheili states on Eudemon, but the people wanted none.

News releases of human and sangheili riots in their respective cities have hampered any progress on the relations between the two races. More than once, these outbreaks have occurred because of an armed sangheili defended himself from a human attacker and ended up with the human dead. Either way, the sangheili states on Eudemon did not like the humans and vice versa. Attempts by both races to control the other, often resulted in even more violence. Neither side had a force to contain rogue aliens.

That was the reason why the rusty looking ship was entering Eudemon's atmosphere. Slightly longer than a Paris frigate, she was actually a top-secret vessel. The paint of the dilapidation was merely to deter attention from investigators who wanted to be detective.

The Ballista remained overhead, like an ominous shadow as she opened her main hangars, deploying two pelicans and a threatening phantom. Far from any traffic, they accelerated across the sky before settling down near a bunch of large drydocks, the closest one unoccupied by a ship.

The Pelican closest to the group standing at the edge of the raised platform peeled off, settling down on the elevated landing pad. Doors opened with a puff of steam and a hiss as the seal to the cabin was broken. Inside, the occupants were a mix of humans and sangheili. When they walked out to the group in front, the other side couldn't help but gape.

No human that was in the dropship was below seven feet tall. Wearing the iconic MJOLNIR armor by Spartans, they were intimidating and deadly just by looking at them. Every Spartan's armor was slightly different than the others surrounding them.

To the Spartans and the accompanying sangheili, the group they just met looked like they might as well have been stuck on a ship stranded in space than regard the other side. A human with the suit of a colonial governor stood with a handful of armed men as bodyguards. Across from them, there were two sangheili, one of them covered in a light of gold and silver armor. The kaidon harness was composed from precious metals and highly desirable, but could only be obtained by one elite at a time. Beside the kaidon was a blue armored sangheili minor, who was most likely a translator.

"Welcome to Eudemon!" The human governor greeted them once the Spartan nodded. At the same time, the kaidon had uttered a single word in his tongue and stepped forward. The minor gulped and translated, "Welcome to the colony of Eudemon."

Both the governor and kaidon had moved forward to shake hands with the Spartan who stood in front. They halted in mid stride and stared at one another.

Although it was indistinguishable from behind his red Solar visor of the Air Assault helmet, Spartan couldn't suppress a grin.

"Pleasure." He returned the pleasantries, shaking both the governor's hand and the kaidon's. Surprisingly, the sangheili made no effort to squeeze and cause him pain, even if his palm was bare.

"I am Governor Michael Florette of Eudemon. Thank you so much for coming."

"Governor, it's a pleasure to meet you." The Spartan repeated, "Spartan Trip Aegis, commander of the Strike Blades."

"I suppose that you'll be working with both sides."

"I will." Aegis replied, looking now at the kaidon. The larger sangheili towered over him, but this time after so many years of war, made no move to attack. Aegis looked down and saw a deactivated energy sword clipped to his belt. On his left shoulder, there appeared to be some wound that was long gone, most likely inflicted during wartime.

The kaidon uttered some more gibberish to the translator, who in turn relayed it to Aegis. "I am kaidon Akuo Talam of the sangheili state of Talam. I hope you enjoy your time here and strengthen our ties with our former human adversaries."

"I will be." Aegis replied, at the same time gesturing to another pair of Spartans to go with Florette.

"I will be working with the elites for the majority of my time. I'm sending some Spartans to work with your police."

"Thank you Spartan Aegis." Florette replied, gesturing for Conan Pyra and a second Spartan named Armes to follow him to his pelican. Aegis, Spartan Suvorov and the three sangheili that had accompanied him on the flight headed to the edge of the platform, where Akuo's purple phantom awaited.

Once they were inside the craft, the translator strapped himself into the control seat and toggled a few icons. Within moments the hum of the engines grew in volume, the side bay doors shut and they felt acceleration under their boots.

In the back, one of the sangheili that accompanied Aegis was speaking with the kaidon in the sangheili language. To him, the linguistics were all a bunch of gibberish, Vaal Talam was his third in command speaking and one of his best friends.

The flight took twenty minutes before the translator began to descend the aircraft and open the side doors. Now the landscape had drastically changed. The sun was now setting; a yellow star that now dimmed the horizon to a gorgeous pink. Compared to their arrival at Eudemon earlier, the landscape was now drastically different.

The sand shifted in an endless sea of rising dunes. Small streams of water had cut grooves into the rockier areas where they pooled into reservoirs and served as an oasis for the clusters of palm trees surrounding them. Further along, the rivers expanded into irrigation channels that flowed into fields of large stalklike plants being tended to by a few sangheili farmers.

Aegis was amazed at how quickly the elites, managed to start their own techniques of growing their food. When he was an ONI agent, he was told that sangheili food was mostly imported by other species, as they focused more on training the most feared warriors the Covenant could produce. However, with the prophets now dead or in hiding, they suddenly had an immense shortage of food. Power had shifted towards agriculture and hunting, making backwater states on sanghelios like Mdama become more powerful. This shift in power indirectly gave the state a huge boost in firepower in their war against the Arbiter.

The first buildings began to appear, purple and blue lined structures that shimmered in the desert heat. Completely foreign to most elite cities, Trip and the humans could only stare in amazement. Had they not been traveling for longer, they may have concluded that they were on another world.

The phantom weaved through some of the taller buildings, some of which were still under construction until it circled a larger building. The kaidon's keep rose into a spire and was surrounded by several sniper towers. In the north side, Aegis could see a motor pool outfitted with four wraith mortar tanks and a handful of ghosts.

The pilot maneuvered the large dropship into a hangar on one of the higher towers. When he halted all movement and began communicating with the control to begin shutdown sequence, the passengers began moving. Outside, a group of armored sangheili awaited their arrival, all of them had a translator device on their helmet.

Akuo remained standing by Vaal as he began to speak to the group gathered in front of them. Thanks to his pilot, he now had a translator device on his side as well.

"Brothers, I bring the Strike Blades led by Spartan Trip Aegis." He found it comical that sangheili had difficulty pronouncing the "p" so instead his name was something like "Triff"

"He and his crew will be showing you, who will in turn begin exercises to help quell and human insurgency that is plaguing our state. Another group of his will be demonstrating these techniques and drills to the humans so that we can stop these blasphemic acts of terror." He gestured to Aegis, "The floor is yours demon."

Aegis ignored the demon part and stood in front of the two dozen sangheili dressed in what he guess was a police type of combat harness. "Alright. Now I've been hearing out both human and elite terror acts going on in the State of Talam. Kaidon Akuo was kind enough to let me use this hangar as a drill zone." He could feel some of the elites standing as straight as possible, trying to intimidate him. However, he had faced elites and brutes that were much taller than the police force standing before him, so he ignored it. "From what I've heard is that every time you capture a human who just decides to attack your fellow countrymen, you then send warriors to do a killing spree on the human side of the colony. Before you know it, the governor will be evicting you faster than you can swing your swords to cut his head off."

None of the elites made any move, partially since the things that he said was right.

"If you want to continue living here with the fact that you and humans can live side by side in harmony, these attacks must stop. On both sides."

"You speak of nobility." One elite finally decided to interrupt his speech. Aegis whirled around as the surrounding policemen parted. The interrupter was much taller than him, but a couple of inches shorter than Vaal. "You're a demon. All you know how to do is kill us and the remainder of the Covenant."

"Silence Herl!" Akuo snapped from his spot.

Aegis held up a hand, stemming anything the kaidon had left to say. "So what you're saying is that I'm not qualified to teach? If so, then why didn't your kaidon hire someone else?"

"Unfit is all." Herl chuckled, joined by a few others. Vaal placed his hand over Akuo's arm, halting his attempt to draw his sword.

"You think I'm unfit?" Unbeknownst to him, Aegis had a smirk on his face. "Why don't you come here and show me how unfit I am?"

With a few encouraging words from his friends, Herl stepped forward. Aegis stood opposite as Akuo backed the remaining Blades up to give the two ample room to fight. Aegis removed his combat knife from his sheath, dropping it on the floor and kicking it away.

"Lesson number one." He began speaking as if a lecturer addressing his class. Just as he finished speaking, Herl sprinted forward. Trip's reflexes kicked in as the elite made a grab for him. In his augmented vision, the charge was much slower to someone without his boost.

Aegis twisted around, slipping right through the larger elite's grasp. Recovering from the shock, he swung a hammer arm aimed straight at his visor. Using the larger beast's strength against him, Trip drove the arm into the ground so that he was leaning on it. He then sprung up, using his legs. With Herl dazed from the impact of his arm, he used his weight to wrench the free arm into a lock behind the back. The arrogant elite snarled, struggling a bit to free himself. Trip anticipated the movements, making adjustments as necessary to keep him pinned. After a few seconds, he looked around at everyone.

All the elites, save for Vaal, Rak and the third Blades member named Kraz had their maws agape. Even kaidon Akuo couldn't suppress his disbelief that an elite was subdued by a Spartan without even using a weapon. The Spartan Blades members all bumped fists. Trip finally relented after the kaidon nodded at him and then got off. Herl glowered at him, but made no retaliatory move before joining the crowd again. Murmurs starting growing before Akuo held up his hand and let Trip continue.

"Never underestimate your opponent."

Unfortunately, that was drilled in sangheili nature.

In the middle of a takedown exercise that he had done to Herl and then demonstrated for drills, using Vaal as the "insurgent elite" Trip's com started to ring. The signal was bordering on the weak end, so he strode to the hangar's edge, where the blocking metal walls were the least interfering.

"Spartan Aegis."

"Trip, we've got a problem."

Whenever his main client Adamant said that, nothing ever was good. Usually when they were called in for a job, there was something even more ominous on the horizon.

"Full details." He put a recording on the call in lieu of his absent note taking utilities.

"Yesterday we lost contact with our Hesduros ambassador Jonah Beech. His shuttle was returning from the world when it disappeared around Imbel Alpha."

Imbel Alpha was pretty far from most other colony worlds. The only habitable world of the Slater System, it was always quite a trip even. Hesduros was located quite far away and if he was headed to Earth, Imbel Alpha was definitely not on the stopping routes.

"Didn't Imbel Alpha get glassed?"

"It did. We have no idea how or why his shuttle disappeared. I need you to report back to Earth for assistance in investigating. I'm willing to offer up twenty four million if you manage to solve the mystery."

"As much as I'd love to play detective, I'm currently training local forces on Eudemon how to be proper police teams."

"Just be here tomorrow and I can work something out." Adamant cut the connection.

Aegis sighed, returning to the group just as operation director Vasili Suvorov, another ONI veteran and Spartan IV was introducing another takedown move, performed by Rak. He sat down again, looking up when Vaal's shadow passed over him.

"So how did we manage to get us this job anyway?"

"What's new?" Vaal leaned against the side of the docked phantom, already knowing something was on Trip's mind.

"Playing detective. Ambasador's shuttle disappeared around a glassed colony."

"Perfect. Just when things got easy."

"Don't let that stick up to you." Aegis grinned, "You seem to know the kaidon very well."

"We've known each other for decades."

"That explains your friendship."

"It's more complex than that," Vaal followed his gaze to the kaidon, watching with mild interest as another one of his enforcers performed Vasili's instructions for a maneuver on the green armored Spartan. "Kaidon Akuo Talam is my younger brother."


Woah! Vaal has a younger brother?!

Just a heads up that this story has a deadline, updates will be more frequent. Good huh?

Thanks for reading and reviewing everyone! You all give my writing purpose!