There was a limit, I suppose, to what culture clashes could tolerate. But putting my Mjolnir-clad finger in G'wi's face had apparently done the trick, and he'd foregone anything his own people might have conjured, and he agreed – if reluctantly – to play it my way.
For now.
He did stress that if I demanded anything further damaging to either honorable Elite's tender pride, though, he'd off me himself. Well, I guess that made us even. I'd done little better than the human version of the same, in my own way. But it made us tenuous allies, at best – I would be happy to be back among a squadron of Marines, or following the Chief if I could catch him. This practice of operating with a pair of Elites was really crawling on me.
Anuna was looking worse and worse as the hours went by, but for the most part, the area we'd fled to appeared totally deserted – and that collapse I'd made for our pursuit seemed complete enough to prevent them from accessing us entirely, save by dropship.
I wasn't seeing anything of the kind, though on occasion I'd see some strange little ten-pound dragonfly in the sky, followed by a flitting housefly that looked about twice that big. None of these seemed to bother us at all, or even take note.
I learned this was a deceiving notion the hard way when a whole swarm of the houseflies turned up ahead of a landing that connected to a gondola. Stepping out onto the landing, all the big buggers came right out from under the platform and the gondola, and swarmed into the air, darkening the sky for the brief moment it took them to make landing on the platform's top. I was about to wonder if I needed to shoot them when I spied the first plasma pistol in the first one's chitinous grasp.
"My day just can't get any better, can it?" I griped.
One one thousand... two one thousand... three one thou...
G'WI 'CAERVASNEE – HERETICThe idiot human actually stopped, for a heartbeat, and he stared at the drones for a full three second segment of time! I was a little aghast he'd be so slow to react to the sentry swarm, but even as he backed past me, trading fire and plasma with the insectoid creatures, it occurred to me that maybe he'd not realized what they were... the ring was not without native fauna, after all, and the drones did bear a resemblance to what the halo array had to offer.
Anuna sagged to his knees against a rock face when I let go of him, but even though it was dangerous to attract attention to himself like that, it might well have been his intention of freeing me from the Spartan's wrath while simultaneously seeking that out I had been denied.
We three somehow managed to mow the insectoid alien creatures down completely, though, without ever achieving that end. I felt sorry for Anuna... better that he might have lived. But while living still, in the physical sense, he had little chances of remaining that way. I felt put upon to ferry his slowly dying self around like I was, bitter at the wicked human for inflicting this limbo of interests on us both.
He was, to a fault, alien. How could he be anything but, though? Really – he'd been born to alien culture on an alien world, and reared on alien ideas, spoon-fed alien logic. In the end, it could beget only the one outcome – an alien, in all ways.
I couldn't honestly begrudge him for being what he was – but he was out of line for demanding I... we... behave as if we were as alien as he was. What right had he, to so mar the youth's honorable legacy like this? It was a mercy, a fitting end, to just let him go. On top of cultural reasoning, though, I had to add, Anuna was suffering a great deal of physical pain. And that accursed Spartan wouldn't let him end it.
Was he insane?
I picked my way across the field of half-burnt, half-shredded bugs, noting which ones had green rosettes and which ones had blue. It was a beautiful metallic coloring on their otherwise dull carapaces and exoskeletons. I ran my eyes over the gondola, wondering where its connection was. Each gondola made a straight run – albeit an unsteady, swaying one – from one point to the next. They also made a connective stop in the halfway point, where the first and the sister transport would shoot data at one another.
I wasn't privy to why this happened, but it made it dandy for one gondola's occupants to jump across if they needed to turn around and go back... or for one loaded with Covenant to board one loaded with heretics, and wipe them out shy of their destination... or any possible escape.
I didn't want to look at Anuna anymore, and so long as I couldn't kill him, I would still have to as we dragged him along with us. Though for a moment I thought about leaving him behind – as even a death granted by a Covenant-loyal Elite would probably be preferable to this slow death – I realized the err in my logic.
It was fascinating to watch, really – I felt my dour expression slacken into passive curiosity as my Spartan hauled Anuna up from his place on the stone ground and verily carried the unfortunate soul across his Mjolnir-clad shoulders up to and onto the gondola.
It was not something we Sangheili practiced, really – if one were found splayed across another's shoulders it was usually a still-frame from a combat move. Humans, though, I had seen tended to carry their wounded that way. Perhaps their anatomies preferred the position, either for the carrier or the burden, one, and made them do it like that.
Or maybe it was just because it aided in the preservation of the carrier's balance when under fire. Being horribly front-heavy did nothing for a warrior attempting to flee a barrage of bullets. But on the other hand, being horribly weighted down and yet still balanced on one's hooves, the same warrior might make it to his intended destination before he was killed.
Humans... I swore I'd never fully understand them.
ANUNA 'VADUMEE – HERETICUnbelievably enough, the more time I sat still the less my innards wanted to become my outtards, and the more time went by in general, I felt less pain from them. It was by no means a recovery – I was still in a great deal of agony, and I still couldn't carry my own weight. But it shocked me greatly to be hauled off the rocks and carried – not dragged – by G'wi's Spartan across that impossible span towards and onto the gondola, where he propped me against a support for one of the overheads.
Much of the dizziness had faded, but the nausea was still there, so I kept my mandibles closed around my surprise as he turned away from me and walked towards the outer edge of the transport. He would find the controls and activation key there, but the things were primarily Forerunner, and I doubted he'd understand half of what he saw on those holographic projection panels.
As G'wi appeared in my other peripheral, though, I heard – and felt – the docking latches give, and retract. They ground inward on their cuff sleeves, and then rotated downwards to the locked position they always took when the gondola was in motion. I watched as the bridge slid back and folded down, the two cuff sleeves folding up under it as it went down. The whole contraption was a jointed nightmare, but even after eons, none of it needed maintenance... overmuch.
There was stipulation that perhaps a Huragok came through once a season or so just to check on it all... it wouldn't do, after all, to have some hinged part fail right when a Prophet went by over it!!
G'wi went past me without looking at me or pausing, so I let my gaze follow him, figuring he had something important to say to the human. The two of them stood there, though, on the front deck of the gondola, silent and sharing the object of their observation. I didn't doubt for a moment that those two could somehow commune without actually swapping words... understanding human body language had to have been a trick!
On the flip side, though, I knew they were not happy with one another at the present time. It had certain tells that even between enemies was obvious. The stiffness of the silence, sometimes, the aggravated motions that otherwise would have been fluid, even the way they both fought off the Covenant loyalists side by side.
G'wi wasn't saying what had him ticked, though, if he even knew. Maybe it was just that the human was behaving like a... well... a human. While we had been declared enemies because the Prophets had caught them desecrating Forerunner technology, we had long since discovered we did not actually mingle well regardless. Humans captured on the field of battle were never easy to get along with, even if they were not actively tormented for information, or for the degradation of their uncaptive fellows' morale.
I spent enough time lost in thought that it surprised me when the gondola stopped moving, the accompanying other pausing alongside it to swap information on the datastream. I still wasn't sure what exactly two gondolas would have to say to one another, but they all did that, and they all did it every time, too.
I sat still more for a lack of ability to do otherwise when the warriors occupying the other gondola began to fling themselves at ours, leaping the gap between the decks with their weapons in hand. One, and I know because I heard him yell on his way down into the water, didn't make it.
I actually didn't get to see anyone at all during that fight, as G'wi and the Spartan went on about the battle without me entirely abovedecks. Absently, I picked at the unidentifiable ooze under my claws, beginning to feel slightly hungry.
It didn't occur to me until later that that little sensation meant something.
SPARTAN 093 – FLINT
There were something like three Elites on that thing... and almost two dozen Grunts! I kicked the last little triangular-tank-toting alien off the deck of my gondola, and paused to check the ammunition in my carbine. It was about half full, but I had more reloads now thanks to that last attack. When I looked over at G'wi, though, what met my eyes was not the sight of him, but rather the feel of him.
My head snapped back so hard and fast it took my body along with it, and I smacked into the deck on my back instantly. Winded and surprised at the suddenness of the attack, I propped myself up on my elbows, and looked up at the fuming Elite. There was a new ichor smear on my visor, but it just made him look like I was seeing him through a warped mirror. Must have come off his fist...
I reached up, and wiped at it with my gloved hand, smearing it even worse in an attempt to see past it. Finally, I sighed. "You know, if you're trying to make a statement about how icky you feel, you could have just said something, instead of giving some of it to me." I mentioned.
I saw his face contort, and a moment later he gave me one of those really odd sounding Sangheili roars before turning and stalking off, possibly to mope at the other side of the gondola. I sat up, and looked around, noting I had dropped my carbine off the edge into the ramp-well that led to the lower deck. Shaking my head, I rolled to a knee and stood up, before stepping off the edge and dropping into the ramp-well to retrieve the weapon.
"I heard that." Came a voice from the left.
I looked up, instinctively narrowing my eyes even though my visor had auto-lightened to accommodate the darker shadows of the lower decks of the gondola. Anuna still sat propped where I had left him, his needlers adhered to the armor on his thighs.
"What did you say this time?" He asked.
"I didn't." I answered, plainly. "I think he's just starting to rethink the process by which he decided he liked me, is all."
The supposition made the Elite give a soft chuckle. "I do not claim to know him better than you, Spartan. But I doubt he would rescind a decision so lightly... especially now that its repercussions have already been fully realized."
"Repercussions?" I asked, curiously. "You mean like the part where the Covenant wants you two dead more than they want me?"
He nodded.
"Then what's his problem?"
"Possibly, it has to do with your constant, consistent, and irreproachable need to tear from him the one thing he did hold onto when he abandoned the Great Journey."
I thought about that, bowing my head to look at the carbine in my hands for a moment. Figuring the only answer I could possibly come up with, I asked, "His honor?"
"What there is of it." Anuna answered. "Though if abandoning the Covenant's cause was not a blight upon it, I fail to see why anything else would be."
I looked up at him again. "Well, I'm not one for overblowing such a thing, but from what I understand of it, if you don't believe in a cause, you are well within your rights – and honorbound to that end – to abandon it. Am I not right?"
Anuna made a face at me I couldn't really identify. "You think like a human, Spartan, because you are one. Belief is only one half of the contract – he was sworn to his duty, and he broke that oath."
"Once he discovered the cause was not what it seemed, was that such a bad thing?" I pressed, determined not to lose this argument. If I did – or even if I left it unfinished – I imagined some things said between him and G'wi might generate some unsavory action in the future that might well be ill-timed.
I already had G'wi fuming at me, I didn't need him to outright turn on me. Now, as obscure a time as it was, was not a good time for that. I had no idea where to find the crew of the In Amber Clad , or even her most prized charge, the Master Chief. I had priorities, but being stabbed in the back by one of those abominable energy swords was not on the list... and I was finding it was harder and harder to keep it that way the more time went by.
Anuna didn't look inclined to say anything else, which wasn't exactly conducive to my ideas about the conversation we were having. If he had nothing to say, how could I respond? Worse, what did that silence really mean? Was he just nursing his internal injuries, or did he feel a sense of insulted indignance towards me all of a sudden? I honestly had no way of knowing – he was a split-chin alien bastard, and I hadn't the first clue how to culturally read one.
Shaking my head in exasperation, I turned away, walking back up the ramp to the surface level of the gondola. That it had begun to sway again told me it had disengaged from its brother and was now on its way again, so once I reached the top of the ramp, I activated the zoom in my visor. Up ahead was a docking station not unlike the one we had departed from, but just looking from this lone point of view I could see it was much thicker at the support pylons and much smaller around than any of the previous places we'd so far seen.
When G'wi appeared in my peripheral, I made a hasty query to give that fist of his some pause – I was , after all, perched on the very outer front edge of a rail-less verge! "What is that place up ahead for?"
Remarkably enough, he didn't actually sound angry with me when he answered me; "It is an underwater carriage housing. If they know we are coming, they will doubtless take the carriage and depart, to prevent us from using it."
"What is an underwater carriage?"
"Not unlike your elevator platforms, really... spare that this one goes down, rather than up, and is watertight for the majority of the journey." G'wi explained. I looked at him. "If memory serves, this will take us to the contact point where another gondola run would take us to the temple where the Prophet of Regret is making his sermon."
"Sermon?" I almost fainted at the idea. These Prophet people were far too dangerous to be allowed to lightly give things like sermons – and if this one he'd called Regret was up to that much, who knew what it really translated into, in Human's layman's terms? He could be up to something very, very bad!!
"Prior to the lighting of the holy Rings, of course." G'wi added.
It sounded not unlike he were explaining this to a faithful but ignorant Grunt... as though I should be ecstatic about the idea, rather than daunted by it. Had he lost his mind? I wasn't even a creature of the Covenant, let alone one of their faithful! Looking ahead, I tried to work the worry out of my eyebrows, but it didn't really work, seeing as I couldn't really knead them with my fingers. This whole idea of Prophets and sermons and lighting... what the hell was a holy ring, anyways? Did they set their fingers on fire? Or was a holy ring more like a candelabra, where the fire was literal? Or worse, some techno-Forerunner-gizmo, that we all knew was some kind of weapon, but no one knew what precisely kind of weapon?
I had too many questions, and not enough answers. If I had an AI, I could have had it delving into the Covenant battle net, and retrieving much of the answers to most of my questions. But, sadly, I didn't... though I knew if I could just find John, I knew he'd have Cortana in his helmet, and that would suit me just fine.
"What... exactly... do these holy rings do?" I asked, tentative.
"Wipe the galaxy clean of all sentient life." G'wi sounded amused with himself. "It is better known as the cleansing flames of the Great Journey."
I about vomited my heart into my helmet I gagged so hard. "WHAT?"
He laughed at me!!
"And why does this crazy Prophet-person want to do this fallacy???"
"Because those who believe will be propelled along the Path to salvation, and only those unbelievers and the enemies of the faith – such as yourself, naturally – will be consumed." G'wi looked back at me, one of those rather odd looking Elite smiles on his face. "I wouldn't worry about it too much, Spartan. If he does, all are dead. If he does not, there are more immediate problems to attend anyway."
"But if we're going towards him, can't we stop him when we meet?" I begged.
He laughed again, a little louder. "Dear little Human... you misunderstand. The Prophet of Regret – any of the Prophet hierarchs, for that matter – are surrounded by Honor Guards innumerable – you could never make it past them no matter how much firepower you brought. These are not your typical Elite warriors. They are greater than you, greater than anything you have ever before encountered. They are... me, in a sense... with more time to acclimate to their positions."
I pointed at him, uncertain. "Honor Guard...?"
"Once."
I let my hands rest on my Covenant carbine for a moment as I absorbed that. Better than me? Better than a SPARTAN? Heh. Maybe, if there were enough of them, they could probably dogpile me... but I'd already killed two of these fabled Honor Guard just when Anuna had woken me up out of the cryo in the Mausoleum of the Arbiter back on High Charity. I wasn't so much daunted by the idea of so many guardsmen surrounding a single hierarch figure, but more by the fact that it was a little unlikely my two companions would give me any kind of a hand in pulling it off.
"I suppose by the way you're going on about this..." I began, "that you're not exactly thrilled with the idea of me going and picking that fight anyway?"
He cocked his head at me.
"I really, really want to stay alive, thanks... and being wiped off the face of the galaxy with everyone else along with me is not a very warm prospect. I'm a Spartan – taking care of the bad, the ugly, and the daunting is my job. And sometimes, the suicidal, for that matter. If this guy poses a direct threat to Humanity, then it's my duty to take him out... or die trying."
G'wi stabbed a long finger at me. "You already died once, for that cause. Is it truly so worthy of dying a second time?"
"Well... at risk of becoming the last surviving member of a race... sure. Your people are fighting for a religion... mine are fighting against extinction. That's a bit different."
He looked away, right as the gondola's docking slab rose up from its folded position, and the gondola settled with the deck of the underwater carriage's hub station. I was about to turn away from the apparently unguarded entrance to the place when G'wi moved past me, going the opposite direction I expected him to.
He headed back, down into the lower deck of the gondola. I turned, curious, and watched from where I was.
Mistake.
G'WI 'CAERVASNEE – HERETICHe was a human, there was no doubt – but I had never imagined their culture to be so deep, their manner to be so explainable, their very thought patterns with logical execution. He was still very alien to me, but his explanation of the circumstances under which he came to his decisions actually made sense to me.
Kill the most direct threats to his people first – all others are secondary and can wait. This meant no more meandering maurading around, killing whatever we happened to come across. There was chatter about us on the battle net, but parts of it were encrypted and I didn't have the key-codes to access those channels. It was just as well. It was likely ship movements and useless to us anyway.
We, being on foot on the ground of Halo.
The... um... second, Halo. That the Demon had destroyed one of the Forerunner artifacts just by attacking it single-handedly with a single Human dreadnaught was daunting indeed. Perhaps I had oversaid the estimation of a Human Spartan versus the average Sangheili Honor Guard?
I paddled down to where Anuna was resting, but I had only just reached the bottom and made the corner with a single step taken to close the gap between us when I heard the chattering, glass-on-glass tinkle of a needler firing the pins in rapid succession. I turned about, just in time to see the Spartan as the pale violet plasma boiled around his primarily green frame, concealing all from view.
Shards of metal, glass, and explosive filament wiring stitched across the ramp-well, and my shielding, before the telling thump of something very heavy hitting the deck met my ears.
"What happened? What's going on?" Anuna asked, struggling to rise on his own. He got halfway before I caught him, and hoisted him upwards. We could not be seen here, not with the evidence of a loose Spartan among us, if we intended to not be engaged in battle shortly.
But there was nowhere to go, and I was certain the Spartan was dead now... nobody I knew could survive having their backside filled to the brim with needles. Nobody.
Right as I finished that thought, I heard carbine rounds zipping downrange. Forerunners! What was this Human made of??? I abandoned all pretense of communication with Anuna and ran back out to see what the hell kind of demon my Spartan truly was. He was sitting down, remarkably, with the carbine propped on his forward knee, and he'd just finished pegging the last Kig-yar in the head. It was surrounded by six Unggoy and several more of its own kin, all of whom had already died. Silence descended on the field, and I looked down at the Spartan as he leaned to one side. He relaxed a little, propping up on that elbow, and breathed an audible sigh.
"Are you immortal?" I asked, a little astounded.
That golden visor turned upwards, looking back at me. "Huh?"
I shook my head. "Never mind." I extended a hand down to him, but he waved it away... but then he didn't get up of his own accord. Instead he just stayed there, mostly collapsed on the gondola's deck, propped up on one elbow with his carbine leaning against his raised knee. He looked, now I thought about it, like he had felt that detonation of needles after all... he'd just not been completely felled by it, as I was used to.
It took several minutes – very long, very uneventful minutes – for the Human to move again, evidently quite lost for breath. He could have damaged his armor further, but aside from massive scoring marks and that one older puncture where his ship had stabbed him when we'd met, I couldn't really tell if it was really broken or not. He eventually did pry himself off the deck, and haul his carcass upwards to stand as if everything hurt, but once up, he stood straight.
I asked again. "Are you immortal?" I was all set and ready to believe him, too, if he said yes.
But he just gave me one of those blank looks that I could never read, and he drew two fingers across his golden visor before lifting his carbine by the barrel and tucking it into his elbow again. As such, he attempted to head into the structure the gondola had docked to, but I could tell by the way he dragged each step that he wasn't in the greatest shape right now.
I figured he'd get over it in an hour or so... he'd survived everything else! Why not? I turned back away a second time, and watched as Anuna made frighteningly similar motions coming slowly up the ramp from the lower deck to meet us up top. His expression was clear, but he had one hand on the gondola's struts and the other resting against his side, as if trying to conceal or hold in an injury. I knew he didn't have anything on the outside to do that to, but that he could move of his own accord was of interest.
Had the internal injury been great enough to knock him silly, yet slight enough to not matter, and be able to heal itself over time? What kind of wound would be like that?? Still... it made me consider the Spartan's words from earlier in a whole new light. Had he known something I hadn't? Why hadn't he told me, then, instead of delivering threats? If he'd just said that all Anuna needed to get better was some time, I'd have been fully content with letting him sit.
But nooooooo, the Spartan had to do it the complicated way.
ANUNA 'VADUMEE – HERETIC
It had stopped hurting, finally... but it retained a weird feeling throb, and if I tried to stretch, it would twinge and cramp down, doubling me over. So I moved slowly, to keep from needing to move on my hands and knees. Once I was out of the gondola, I discovered that if I wasn't too hasty with my movements, I could actually maintain my balance well enough on my own. It was so refreshing, to realize my mobility again, and to understand with better depth that I was not, after all, going to die, wasting away slowly into nothingness.
How I could be getting better, though, I don't know... if the Spartan had somehow done something to heal me while I wasn't looking, though, I sure didn't know about it. Still, here I was, recovering swiftly from an injury I thought for sure would have been the end of me. I was happy!
But when I saw the Spartan, verily dragging himself forward, I half wondered if he didn't have a similar code to my own... it just went by another name. Honor, duty, justice... responsibility by any other name was still the same thing. I knew then what it had been that had exploded so noisily that G'wi had failed to explain to me before rushing back out to ostensibly help the Human out some.
He didn't look like he'd gotten that help quite in time, though.
G'wi trailed behind both of us, as we jointly walked wounded into the structure, the Human leading with his carbine and me without my weapons in hand at all. G'wi had his t-22 DERs both in hand, but that was fine. I didn't think he'd be encountering much that would need more firepower than that anyway, back there.
Though he was obviously suffering, the Spartan cut corners barrel first, tracing sightlines and slicing the pie as he cleared the room ahead.
The first one was empty, but the second had a full measure of freshly unloaded Covenant – oddly there was not a single Elite among them. Kig-yar stood ranks ahead of a squadron's worth of Unggoy, but I knew that hushed chittering sound.
Up above us in the rampways overhead, doubtless there was another swarm of Yanme'e, all rubbing their chitinous legs together and flapping their wings at intervals. Likely it kept their blood pumping, but it also gave away their position. Sure enough, when I looked up, I saw the familiar glinting of the bug's carapaces, those sparkling green eyes stenciled onto their wings and backs.
Strangely, though, not a single one came down as the first two Kig-yar went down... or rather up... in a gory explosion of a plasma grenade thrown at their feet beneath their shields. Only one got to complain, but true to the species the cry was more raspy and less pitched, so the sound didn't carry well even in the echo-prone cavernous chamber we were in.
There in the middle was the underwater carriage, clamped in and set, ready for the next passengers to get aboard. The Spartan cleared the last Unggoy with a carbine round to the head, and popped the magazine out to load a full one. The casing cracked against the wall behind him, and in that moment, with that sound, the Yanme'e decided it was offensive enough to come down from their perch.
I clawed my guns from their places latched to my hips, even as plasma fire streaked upwards from behind me. I rained needles at the swarm, and what missed initially ricocheted off the walls and ramp-ways up there and eventually hit something. Sizzling plasma made up for the needle's discrepancy, but even still some of the bugs got through.
I heard G'wi snarl something, but I was pretty sure it wasn't a word and I didn't understand its meaning, so I cast a glance in his direction. He extended both DERs in a crushing punch as he caused them to collide on opposite sides of an insectoid's head, before shoving the offending thing away and charging rather pointedly past me.
Instantly I suspected the Spartan had taken a bad hit, but instead of going to the Human, G'wi dove into the carriage. I heard the clamps release, but after that nothing happened as brilliant plasma fire splattered across the transparent crystalline steel windows on my side of the carriage.
Oh.
I strafed around a pair of weapons crates, looking for what had become of the Spartan, and on the opposite ramp up to the carriage's loading doors I found him. Plasma scoring from what looked like pistols had pock-marked all the flooring around him, but I supposed he wasn't sitting there huffing on his knees because he'd been shot just now.
Clamping my needlers to my thighs, I scooped my hands under his arms, and lifted. With the added pressures of nearly a ton and a half of Human powered armor, my middle exploded in fiery agony, but now he was back on his feet, and all I had to do was push on him, and he staggered up the ramp, the carbine hung by the grip and trailing after him.
Together we managed to pile into the carriage before it began to slide down the chute towards the water, but once in, he sagged into one corner and I into the other. G'wi looked at us both, before turning to the control interface, and activating the rest of the mechanism. The doors slid closed and sealed, and the graviton beam the thing followed latched on and sucked it the rest of the way down the chute into the water. When it hit, it jolted the carriage hard enough that it got a pained grunt out of not just me but the Spartan as well.
G'wi let the automatic mechanism go as it would, then, and turned to see us. "You both are more a mess than I have ever before seen in my life." He told us.
I gave him my best mirthless smirk.
My attention was averted, though, when I heard the oddest little noise. I looked around, then over at the Spartan, to find him quivering... and that was when it hit me. He was giggling !!
SPARTAN 093 – FLINT
I hurt in more places than I thought was fair to claim ownership to. Still, there wasn't a whole lot to be done whilst trapped inside an underwater elevator... damn thing looked claustrophobic as hell. The only part that saved me that sense was how the walls between bracings were transparent, and one could see out what looked. The control interface was strange, but I'd seen it before – there was a subtle difference between the holographic user interfaces that the Forerunners had built and the ones the Covenant had built, being as the older race's tech tended to glow a soft, almost natural blue, where the Covenant's re-mastery of it all had a harsh, sharp violet glow. Probably something to do with the power source and how it all connected.
Couldn't be perfect all the time, right?
But that last line out of G'wi had been amusing, so I let myself giggle at them both for as long as I held the breath to do so. Once I needed to inhale again, though, I shut up... I hadn't forgotten my pain during my momentary episode of mirth, after all. For almost thirty full seconds – counted off on my running mission clock, so I know I'm not wrong – nobody said a word and none of us really moved. G'wi was the only one standing, but he wasn't moving. Anuna and I had taken a seat on the floor, and neither of us seemed any more inclined to get up than the other. He looked, I'm sure, worse than me, but that could be blamed on the fact that my armor was theoretically still atmospherically sealed and covered all of me, whereas his had a number of big holes for parts of him to poke out through... like his face.
Absently I poked at the jagged hole through my shoulder, wondering if Humanity even knew I was back alive again or not. Likely not, though, considering I hadn't had enough time to really make contact with them.
It would be so nice if I could just catch John.
The ride through the bottom of the lake actually took a solid fifteen minutes, but it seemed short indeed when the thing latched to the chute going up into the next structure and broke the water level on its way in. That jiggered motion stirred all my otherwise relaxed bones and made me grit my teeth – almost in tandem, I saw Anuna imitate my motion.
Gah, I needed a medic!
G'wi didn't say anything as he stepped first over us and then past us going out, taking his plasma rifles in hand once more to sweep the area. I was still a little amazed at his seeming willingness to go head to head with his own kind during a fight like the one the Covenant had against Humanity... or maybe he knew his people were in no danger of extinction like mine were and figured more people died every day from lightning strikes than he could ever kill in a single campaign.
Or something.
I dragged myself to my feet successfully before Anuna could, but he was between me and the exit, and it would have done me no good to do a spectacular face-plant trying to get past him while he was half-risen as he was. So I waited, watching him haul upwards and then stagger sideways out the elevator door and into a horribly inefficiently designed room. Why was there access all the way around the elevator? Either the Forerunners had never heard of a maintenance shaft, or they liked to waste space. I wasn't making any bets, though.
Unwilling to be left behind, I put one foot in front of the other, wishing vehemently for something to at least numb the pain as I followed Anuna out of the elevator. We made the doorless exit of the elevator chamber after G'wi almost together, but the split-chin got ahead of me at that point and left me in the back again.
I hated being in the back.
I looked around, noting the odd fern-like plant in the person-sized bucket sitting in the far corner, but there was no other entrance or exit to this room, barring the elevator chamber access and the following exit G'wi had taken.
Okay, bet placed; waste space.
This room was useless! There wasn't even any way to ostensibly garrison the place during an attack, because the doors were at a ninety-degree angle from one another! Beyond, though, there was more of the same – G'wi stood at the bottom of a broad, jointed stair, with one spread going straight down along one wall, then a landing that took the breadth of the room and corresponding to the other side of it, was another stair set that also went down. Theoretically, one could stand at the top of one stair and shoot all the bad guys coming up the bottom of the opposing side, without ever needing to move. The same could be said for the other side, which opened into another door.
I wondered where that went, but odds were good it attached to another underwater elevator, just like ours. I was also disinclined to figure it out for myself, because while I might could make it down those stairs, there was no way I was going to drag my carcass up those stairs. They were sloped at a forty-five degree angle, which was gentle for a set of stairs, but cruel to one who was as beat up as I was.
So I began to step down the first flight...
HERETIC – G'WI 'CAERVASNEE
I felt a little apprehensive after I'd seen that first bullet-riddled carcass. Spread next to it was what remained of a Human, half-blown to hell and smeared where it wasn't still lumpy. That was gross. The blood was hard to distinguish, though... was it blue? Green? Red? Orange? It had all mixed, and where it hadn't, it still looked like a terrible paint-spill gone very wrong.
I stepped forward wondering what had happened – had the Humans attacked this place already somehow? I hadn't heard anything about a battle here on the net... but then I also hadn't been listening to it much, either. Now I did, and I kept my ear keen to any words that might tip me off to what I was seeing...
With a cautious look behind me, I saw that my two dragging companions had made it successfully down the first flight of steps, and were about to embark on the second, which would take them down to where I was standing. I didn't figure that a few strewn corpses would do them much harm, so I turned away and moved on. It was curious to me to note the sheer magnitude of the carnage before me, though. Somehow we had managed to kill enough time... that or this Ring-destroying Demon had a real knack for knowing just where to go to make the most mayhem.
Yes, I had seen those tracks before. It looked to me like my Spartan had gone and strode through this mess, leaving bloody smears and splatter marks all along the trail of footprints in that unmistakable pattern to suggest Mjolnir armor. Yes... the guy he'd been hoping to meet up with had definitely been here. But I was pretty certain that unless this defeated army had somehow managed to stop him shy of the far exit, he wasn't liable to still be here.
And if he was, he certainly wouldn't be any more alive than any of the rest of these carcasses. I stepped past the splayed heap of Mgaelekgolo worms that had decayed out of their armored carapace, wrinkling my nose at the smell. It all still was quite fresh, but there was just something about the worms of the Lekgolo that just couldn't seem to accept that at some point after their death, they ought to smell like a fresh kill. No, they always stank like they'd been dead for a whole week.
I had just stepped past the discarded cannon attachment when I heard the most spectacular slamming beat go thumping along behind me, followed by a startled yelp from what had to have been Anuna. My hearts leapt into my head, and I about spat them out. Once I had them swallowed again, I tried to turn an annoyed look behind me, but until one or the other of them rounded that last corner and entered the main hall I was in, I wouldn't see either of them. Grr.
Looking back, I could see the upper teir above where the stairwell chamber had been, and where we'd come through. Yanme'e carcasses were draped all across it like someone had been driving along at top speed through a swarm of them with the stair chamber's roof as their windshield, and had accumulated such a sticky mass of them before restoring the structure to its place.
Ichor oozed down the walls, certain to be a horror to get clean if ever anyone bothered to command it to happen. In fact... moving this many bodies out of a mainly underwater structure was going to be a real pain, regardless. Especially since there were a fair number of Honor Guard here – my species – and the cleaning crews were almost always Unggoy. Above me, the vaulted ceiling seemed the only thing here that had not been sprayed with blood from something, but even the upreaching spars had the occasional carcass draped across it. Those came from the bases at opposite sides of the main hall, and were leaned towards one another in pairs – they didn't touch at the top, but how they kept from drooping over the years was a mystery of Forerunner architectural genius.
It took a moment, but eventually I saw first my Spartan, and then Anuna emerge, and I thought for sure the human had a few more dents in his armored hide than he had had a moment ago... and when the thought hit me I couldn't help but burst out laughing.
"Sure, sure, laugh it up, squid face." The Spartan grumbled, coming forward. "But I get to laugh when it's your turn to fall down the stairs."
"Fair enough." I snickered. "Come on, everyone here is dead."
"I know, I recognized the style." He told me, nudging a Kig-yar that I had stepped over with the toe of his powered armored boot. "This is what you guys look like after John comes through."
"Who?" I asked, a little puzzled.
"Ugh. He's one of me."
"Oh, that. Yes, I saw some of your footprints. I figured it had to be this other of you, since obviously you hadn't been through this area yet." I told him. "Do you suppose he's after the same target that you are?"
The Spartan looked around, mirroring much of the carnage surrounding us in that golden visor, before looking back at me. "It's possible. He'd probably see it the same way I did."
"Well, since you wanted to catch him, now we know where he's going... you had better pick it up, shouldn't you?" I intoned, before turning away and marching across the field of dead towards the far end of the hall. The oversized holographic projector at one side of the center still projected Regret making his sermon, and I knew it was live footage – so if he was primarily undisturbed, it meant we had time.
And then the sermon stopped.
And the hologram screamed an obscenity at me.
"You dare interrupt my sermon!!" Regret's amplified voice thundered across the hall like a hail of cannon fire, jerking me from my thought train. A little alarmed that he knew what I was up to, I stopped and stared a little slackjawed up at the hologram.
"But..."
"Kill the Demon!" Regret commanded, indignance and arrogance in his raised voice.
I cast a look back at my Spartan. He was looking back at me. A moment later, he looked up at the hologram. "That thing live?"
"Incompetence! I'll kill it myself!" Regret screamed, toggling controls on the arm of his throne. I was almost convinced – convinced, that was, of my own impeding doom, and not that I ought to turn on my Human. I did, though, flinch when the defense cannon on the front of the Prophet's chair suddenly activated... but the projection only showed the first three inches of the beam that cannon emitted, as the hologram's emitters didn't go outward any farther than that.
"Looks that way to me." Anuna said, for me. "It's likely he'd command a live broadcast of his sermon for those who could not attend in person."
"This means your friend the other Spartan has met him already." I sighed. "Come on, we need to hurry. There's a network of tunnels and corridors connecting this hall to the other one, and on the other side of those is another gondola that connects to the temple. There's no way I know of to make a gondola move quickly, so we should probably try to make up the time lag before the ride."
The Spartan shook a fist at the hologram. "You trigger-happy bastard, that's my kill!!" And with that, miracle of miracles, he did his best running trot for the far exit. I kept up a little better this time, seeing as he was dragging and I wasn't, but we did a fair imitation of leaving Anuna behind... until he realized this, and picked up his limping pace to try to keep up.
I felt sorry for him still, but at this point I was pretty well convinced that he would be mainly alright given time to recover his wits and his breath. Our constant harrowing ducking, dodging and shooting wasn't going to help him any, though.
We got past the butchered hall and through the corresponding corridors, all the way out to where the gondolas were hitched... and I was about to step aboard when I felt a hand with far too many fingers on it for it to be Anuna's grapple around my shoulder and haul me back. I staggered, off my balance, before I tried to turn around, but my head got pushed away – pointed mainly upwards, too.
So I looked...
"Forerunners!" I squeaked. A ship from overhead had opened up everything it had, raining hell onto that temple... it meant only one thing. Regret was dead, and likely so was most of his guard, but in about a heartbeat, so too would be the Demon... or more affectionately known, as John.
A moment later, the blast wave struck, and the stone beneath us crumbled, sending decking, gondola, and all three of us down into the lake along with all the shoreline, that temple, and everything it had contained.
HERETIC – ANUNA 'VADUMEE
I floated along in a sea of clouded thought and dream, utterly convinced that the blast had taken my life. A kind of ethereal cold had settled into my being, until I could feel nothing else – no pain, no numbness, no texture. Just cold. It was a little like all the world had gone away, weightless and formless, barring all substance, and I had found myself floating empty in a naked vacuum...
Was it like outer space? Being in freefall, without an atmosphere suit to insulate me? Well... not really. I was about to be convinced of that part when I felt something. It was a light brushing bump, like when two very solid items touch light as a feather during a submerged plummet.
It was like a switch had been thrown – panic set in, and I demanded all my sensory input organs report in. Eyes, start looking, skin, start feeling, tongue, start tasting, ears, start listening. And what I got was a rush of sensory overload, so the panic doubled tenfold, and I gave what had to be a spectacular flail.
Oddly, I didn't feel like I was going to drown, though I had just been told my face was completely covered with water. Had I blacked out with my breath held? That was a little odd. I wasn't about to start questioning my luckiness, though, not as yet. I fought around the edge of a falling hewn stone... likely the one I'd been standing on a moment before... and pushed away, swimming for all I was worth through the masses of falling, dropping debris. Current rushed around it all, too weak to affect a falling stone the size of a Seraph fightercraft, shoving the crushed rock dust around and making it hard to see.
The cold remained, though, and it kept me from feeling anything I had been plagued by a moment ago. Now I was in total control, and nothing was done that I didn't want to do. I saw something highly reflective, and surged for it, certain that that had to be the Spartan's visor. There really was nothing quite alike to that guy's helmet.
I caught something in the thick of the murk, but I couldn't see what it was even though my hands were telling me I was holding an angled, fluted cylinder. When this slipped a little from my grasp, I found a four-fingered one-thumbed hand on the end of it. Yes – definitely the Spartan.
The response from that hand was nil, though it appeared to still be attached to the rest of him... for the most part. I tugged back, paddling against the water and the falling debris for all I was worth, well aware I needed to get this hulk into a shallow place before he hit bottom, because there was no way I was going to be able to drag him through silt... and especially not going to be able to lift him from the water myself.
I needed him to do that – it was powered armor, but only from the inside. If he was going to go anywhere, he needed to do it himself. All I could do was make sure that when that happened, he'd understand which way was up.
A sharp turn in the eddies got my attention, though, and I looked up right as something long and thin roped across my sightline, between two of the uppermost falling bricks. I had no idea what that could be, but I didn't realize it wasn't an inanimate object until another one snaked through past my waist, as if probing.
Alarm surged through my veins, and instinct from my years as an Honor Guard kicked in; my sword clawed from my hip and flared to life beneath the waves, and snatching crackling lines of agonized electricity lanced through the water around me. Right as the unidentified rope of whatever it was coiled back around me, I sliced right through it, severing it off at an impotent length.
In retaliation, though, it came forward a lot farther, and coiled around me very tightly... the only part of me not entangled was my swordarm, and that was because I had yanked upwards to make the cut. One of the last of the stones above us caught on the length of line, and bore us all down before that unknown ropey thing yanked itself free of the rock and began to haul back, like a fishing line reeling in a catch.
I wondered where it was taking us, and if I could fight off whatever foe it might turn out to be, but what I did know was that while our trajectory was mainly across, we were also going upwards, too... and my lungs were beginning to burn. This thing, whatever it was, was somehow strong enough to haul the Spartan I was still hanging onto in an upwards direction, which was a good thing. I only hoped I could deal with it if it turned out to be an unsavory rescuer in the end once our heads broke the surface.
Finally, when we did, the first gasp of precious air turned out to be so thick and heavy that it made me choke worse than if I had inhaled a lungful of the water I'd just been dragged out of! Beside me, several more of the tendrils coiled around the Spartan, who remained limp even as he bled water out of every puncture and perforation his armor had taken over the course of the time I'd known him... as well as that big one in his shoulder I couldn't place a weapon for.
Gagging on the smoky air, I began to wildly flail about with my active sword, chopping the tendrils or cords or ropes or whatever they all were into very small bits. More came, but I chopped those, too. I had plenty of charge in my sword, and I wasn't sure if I had any guns with me anymore, and I didn't think I had time to check either. So I hacked and chopped and swung and flailed about, desperate not to be dragged into the lair of some random Ring-native fauna.
Finally, the tendrils stopped coming, with the pieces of them squirming beneath us, and I got to my feet and looked around for the first time. That was about when panic dumped a fifth load of adrenalin into my battered bloodstream. Flood pockets had bloomed like flowers all over the terrain here, with one or two sickly, dead-looking trees standing at odd angles to the ground. Rocks jutted like knives into the sky, the uneven ground rolling in hills and mounds that all looked watercut... and yet were so thickly coated by long, snaking ropes of Flood-growth that I half wondered if we already weren't within the beast.
A gust of air off the lake caught the spore-infested air, and blew it back for a moment, allowing me to clear my lungs and get in some real air. There didn't appear to be any combat forms around, but I knew what those pockets contained – infection forms didn't just come from carrier form Flood, after all! This was the pregnant proliferation grounds of a Gravemind.
And I was standing in the middle of it.
Or, actually... on its shoreline. My hand went to my helmet's comn unit, toggling the thing until I found a working frequency. Then I hollered mayday for all I was worth.
HERETIC – G'WI 'CAERVASNEE
Somehow, I managed to come ashore without trying. I found myself again in consciousness draped more or less over the rocks of a stream where it met the mouth of the inlet that attached to the lake. Or... what I assumed met the lake. I certainly didn't recognize much when I raised my battered head and looked around.
What I did see, however, I didn't suppose I liked too much. Ahead were tall, broken bluffs, and to the sides were jutting, water-polished, rounded stones as big as a Phantom or bigger. Waves crashed over everything, blotting out all hope of ever finding real dry land again, but I thought I recognized the overall formation of the area... having gone past it once already from the air without anything better to occupy my time had at last proved of use. But here I was...
And up above me, I could see the profiles of at least a half-dozen Jiralhanae. One, the one in front of the other five milling about, extended a thick arm out to the lake over my head, pointing. For a moment I thought he was pointing at me, and I froze, hoping to be mistaken for dead... perhaps one of the hapless Guard put around Regret in his final moments.
This macabre thought was only reinforced as my stomach tied itself into a tight, hard little knot at the next thing I saw. I let myself lay in the gently pulsing surf coming off the lake, my head turned aside as I surveyed what I could see from that position. After about thirty seconds of this practice, I saw another form come bobbing along in the waters, assuming my locale as its own...
It was, sadly, what remained of a poor, luckless Honor Guard, his golden armor scored, brackish and beaten, his body torn into a terrifying gamut. There was little left save his armor – what remained of it – to bespeak the fellow as anything more than a half-blackened, bloated, smashed piece of meat. As his destroyed carcass began to touch upon the same rocks I had, and settle there in the retreating tide, I recognized what might have been an eye, at one point, and a few broken teeth shoved up through the top of his skull along with a section of that corresponding mandible... disgusted and shaken, I turned away, unable to see more.
Whoever it had been, wherever he'd been... there was nothing remaining of him now. Though I could feel several of my newest bruises, I pulled myself out of the water anyway, and I staggered across the smooth, slick stones until I caught the foot of the nearest bluff. Looking up it, I noticed it wouldn't be too hard to climb – the surface was water-worn as hell, but it only made it textured to an extent that it would be easily traversable.
If I was in better health.
With a resigned sigh, and well knowing that if Jiralhanae had been up top that there was some easy bridging up there to use to get around, I took the bluff in hand and tried to get myself to climb it. I stood there holding it for a good six or seven minutes, though, before pulling the first set of muscles tight and hauling upwards.
I had been climbing for several long minutes, and felt I had possibly come about halfway, when a sound from below me caught my attention. Craning my head around, I looked back, to see three of the brutish creatures approaching my hapless companion... they gathered around his mutilated corpse, jabbering and talking loudly amongst themselves. I caught that they had seen me wash up, and had turned away in time to miss seeing that guy wash up, and since he was there and I was not when they arrived finally at the bottom to investigate my arrival, they assumed that that guy had been me.
Well, let them.
I turned back to the duty of climbing, and resumed. My hands ached so badly that I couldn't even cry, but by the time I had reached the top of the bluff, a whole other kind of mayhem had begun. Where the Jiralhanae had owned this bluff top when I had washed up, now it was empty. Up the ways I could hear the percussion sounds of a bladed launcher's grenades detonating, one after the other. I heard several of them overlapping, and underneath were the unmistakable sounds of a dozen or so splashing, sizzling plasma rounds.
What was going on? Had someone unleashed the Flood here, as well? Or was there a typical Jiralhanae mutiny going on, and someone wanted to be Chieftain who wasn't yet? Shaking my head, I gathered myself at the top of the bluff, and looked down past my knees.
"Oh, Forerunners, not more of this."
Sangheili combat shoe imprints decorated the dust overlapping the Jiralhanae pawprints left from earlier. I knew the tenuous relations my people had with those apes, oh yes. I had even witnessed a few scuffles between Elites and the scruffy animalistic creatures in the past. But from the tracks, there appeared to be only one here... which explained why the Jiralhanae felt competent to get away with killing him... and there were absolutely no approaching tracks... only departing ones.
What the graul was going on??
Hauling myself to my hooves, I steadied myself a little, then wandered down the incline atop the bluff I had just crested, meaning to investigate this nonsense. I got pretty near to the fighting, when the sky lit up with a hell-for-leather scream. Pausing to look up past a natural stone arch overhead, I counted seven Covenant drop-pods.
Drop pods?
Now I was really confused!! Moving up to a trot, I approached what I felt was probably the beginnings of a sightline, the ground sloping ever downward until it suddenly cut off into another water-cut cliff face. A path had been carved around the side, though, leading upwards about halfway to the top of the cliff ahead of me. Surrounded by the emptied pods, I found myself looking up at that ledge, and at a Forerunner crafted door as it slid shut behind the backs of what could only have been Sangheili warriors.
I felt so mixed, standing there... I was a heretic. I yearned to go and talk to them, to see what was going on. Mauled and mangled and bullet-riddled bodies of Jiralhanae lay strewn in all places around me, fouling the air and marring the otherwise tranquil landscape... and my people seemed to be moving through them in military formation.
I turned, and looked back, noting the cut in the bluff walls where the sky opened to the lake, and in the distance I could almost see the smoldering wisp of the temple in the distance. That lake was a hive of such structures, but the temple was the only one that was smoking. I sighed. There was no way I could ever find either of my two unfortunate companions in that mess... if either of them had had the misfortune of surviving our last stunt, like I had.
With a sad sigh, I turned to the side path, and followed it upwards around the curl of the cliff face upwards. At the top, I paused to note the only fallen Elite the battle in this place had managed to create... and I wondered if he had died in combat, or been put out of his wounded misery by a fellow Elite.
Shaking my head, I turned to the Forerunner door. As it slid back to permit me entrance, and I strode through it into the underground complex it protected, I couldn't help but have a sinking feeling that I was stepping through the widening lips of a great and gaping maw.
Interesting feeling, I tell you... presuming that oneself is a food item.
HERETIC – ANUNA 'VADUMEE
I had nothing but my sword. I kept it clutched to my chest, deactivated, hoping my deathgrip didn't crush the crystalline contact technology the hilt harbored. I had seen exactly one crawly Flood part so far, but it had been at a distance and had not ventured near me. I didn't have the slightest hope of fending off a horde inside the nest of a Gravemind, not if I was even half right about where I thought I was.
And that I couldn't even get the damned Human to stir or groan by kicking him was slightly distressing. Had I gone to the trouble of rescuing and then sitting guard over what would turn out to be a dead carcass? Would he care, if his body was abandoned in the middle of a Flood-infested territory? If he had died on me, I was by no means going to sit there like a fool and guard his carcass.
Though... in the case of the Flood, having an augmented Flood combat form with powered armor on coming after me really didn't seem all that appealing, either. I just couldn't do much about it. And holding ground against the Flood was hard when we had had armies to do it with – all alone with only a sword to fight with, I was pretty much easy meat, and I was pretty sure both of us – myself and the Flood – knew it.
But where was everybody? The battlenet was a mess, people screaming on all channels, sometimes six and seven people per channel at any given moment... people of all walks of the universe, even. I was pretty sure I had heard a Human voice or two in the cacophony, but it was hard to be sure.
So I had begun trying hard just to make sense of which ones were which. Finally, I found one where there appeared to be only two or three voices on it, and they all appeared calm enough... though nothing any of them said sounded nice or civil. They weren't arguing – it was more that they were all aware of the mess the rest of the Covenant was in. So I interrupted them;
"Delo five-oh, you've got a thirty minute window to get in, get out, and get the – "
"Listen, don't mean to interrupt if it's important, but I'm in a bit of a spot." I piped up. "Do any of you three see my transponder, by any chance?"
"Who was that?" The third voice asked, sounding shocked. "Who is this, identify yourself!"
"Easy, 'Halhanee, you've got inbound on the port flank. Looks like a squadron of Banshees." The second voice put in. "Focus on that flight pattern, you've a dozen cliff sides not to hit."
"Identify yourself, stranger." The first voice added.
I couldn't help but smirk just a little at the mental image of a dozen cliff faces surrounding a panicked pilot who was also beset by enemy airpower. "This is Honor Guard Anuna 'Vadumee, I got dumped into the lake when the fleet vaporized the Prophet of Regret's temple, and I've washed ashore in the worst possible place."
I got dead silence.
Worried, I added, "Hello?"
"Anuna?" One of them asked, sounding slightly puzzled... and like he knew me.
Unable to think of anything else to respond with, I answered, "...yes?"
"What are you doing here?" Came the following correspondence. "You were on High Charity just the other day! Did you get requisitioned to Regret's compliment?"
I tried to find a face to go with the voice I was hearing, certain now that if he knew me than I ought to, in turn, know him too. I couldn't. "No, I was actually tracking the outskirts of the lake..."
"Forerunners be praised for that, then, 'Vadum, you've a lucky streak."
"Not right now I don't." I argued. "Look, I'm standing on Flood right now, can I get a ride with you or what?"
"Love to, 'Vadum, but I'm too far out of the way – and we're dodging some pretty heavy fighter fire over here."
"Anyone else? How many of you are airborne?" I begged, desperate not to feel helpless.
A fourth voice piped in very suddenly. "I see them. I'll pick them up and make rendezvous in half a cycle." This one was deeper, more gravely... and sounded a lot more familiar.
"You see me?" I asked, suddenly, jerking to my hooves and looking all around me. Right then was when I finally spotted my first combat Flood form. "Ho crap!" And then it dove right at me.
"Why is that a bad thing? I thought you wanted to be found, Anuna." Said the new voice, even as the comforting pulsing heartbeat of a hovering Phantom reached my ears.
I dodged the leap at my head, and brought my sword around and down behind it, cutting through the lower back and severing off the thing at what had once been hips. Gah... the form was built out of the remains of a Human! Once it was down and squirming impotently, I stuck the points of my sword down through the chest cavity to break the riding infection form inside.
"Oh, I think I see what you mean now." Said the pilot of the Phantom as it nosed through the spore-infested murk towards us. I stuck my brightly glowing sword in the air to signal it, and waved it a little.
"Hurry up, the Flood just found me!" I complained, irritably. "Drop your grav lift."
"Hold on... alright, it's down."
I looked at that, as the violet energy stream splashed down over a dozen meters away... there was no way I was capable of dragging that Spartan that far. I needed to get the lift to come closer to me, instead. So I swung my sword down and around me, feigning to be in a fight with more combat forms...
And was much surprised to feel when my sword bit into something solid. Alarmed I had just decapitated G'wi's Spartan upon his awakening, I turned on my heel to see what I had done... and reflexively jerked away when I found a Sangheili Flood form in my face, reeking spores all over me. I let out a howl of both fright and surprise as I staggered backwards from my second – and this time very lucky – kill. As it dropped, it revealed more than a thousand just like it, Jiralhanae, Human, Sangheili, even Unggoy basis on their deformed, mangled bodies.
"AAAAAHHHHHH!!!!!"
Almost as soon as the sound was out, a stream of sucking, pulsing, vibrating violet energy surged around me, lifting me off the ground right as those newcomers clawed at my retreating hooves... and before the lift had finished sweeping, it had lifted four of the reaching Flood forms and then sucked up the Spartan as well.
Try as I might, I could do nothing to alter my position until the lift had deposited me inside the bay of the Phantom – and I carefully hacked all the invading Flood forms into pieces as they each came up. When the Spartan appeared, I retracted my arm, cautious of hamburguring the wrong being. I spared a moment to drag him aside as far as I possibly could manage, then I manually reopened the sealed lift ring and shoveled out all the offending Flood ich.
And it certainly was ich.
I felt the Phantom tip over, so I used the axis turn to haul G'wi's Spartan over to that wall, and harness him in so he wouldn't tumble about. Once these tasks were completed, I scooped my sword from the floor, hooked it on my belt, and stepped quickly for the pilot's pit.
I ducked through the door, and slipped down instantly into the copilot's seat, where I buckled in before looking over at my rescuer. I paused.
"Rtas!"
I got a half-smirk – the best he could offer – in reply. "Fancy finding you out here, little brother."
I exhaled, long and slow. I hoped he never took a look in the back... "I... haven't heard a lot. I do know the Humans have come again. One ship, just as before. They brought the Demon."
He snorted. "That is the least of our problems, little brother. The Hierarchs have turned on us... the Councilors were slaughtered and the Covenant is breaking. Humans, pheh. No, we have bigger problems to deal with. I was on my way back to my fleets when the news struck. I couldn't make it, so I turned back to see what I could do here."
"I am honored." I gushed, feeling very inappropriate. It wasn't often I got to see my elder sibling – and even rarer that we got to actually talk during said rare visits. But the mentality didn't last long, even though I still felt overwhelmingly lucky to have not had to fight my way through a billion Flood forms all while dragging a dead Spartan behind me. My head lowered as I thought about what I had to say.
"Is something wrong, Anuna?" Rtas questioned, casting me a glance.
Blowing a sigh, I went ahead; might as well. He'd find out sooner or later, best be if he were warned. "I have... captured one of the Humans."
"Where did you leave it?" Rtas asked.
"He is... in the back of this Phantom." I looked up, then, seeking some reaction.
I was disappointed; "Huh."
"It is one of their best – a Sp... I mean, a Demon."
That, though, earned me a look. "A sp?"
I swallowed. "They call themselves Spartans, brother, I had grown accustomed to the term after a while of toting him around."
Again, he just grunted.
"Will you be returning to the fleet, Rtas?"
"Why did you capture a Human elite, Anuna?" Rtas countered, dodging my own question. "They are best left dead or alone."
I didn't know how to answer, honestly. "I don't even know if he's alive anymore." The admission came out sounding a little too much like I really cared. Gah... did I? It was news to me! I made a mental note to start communicating with myself a little more. I had too many secrets I just didn't know about, if this sort of thing could crop up. "I am... minorly wounded, myself, I suppose. The blast that broke our footing and sent us into the water was not the extent of our woe. I had a fellow with me then. He didn't wash ashore where we did, though."
"Probably dead, then. I saw some of the collapse when it occurred." Rtas mused. "How did you manage to keep custody of one of the Human elite? I was always told they fight until they are dead, regardless of the circumstances."
"This one... had ... incentive." I managed, weakly.
Again, I got a look. Rtas didn't appear convinced. "You are not telling me everything, little brother." He accused. "Why do you have one of the Human elite, and why are you keeping him?"
I inhaled. "I wasn't... not really. G'wi was. They were... together when I found them." Not entirely true, but not at all false, either. "Rtas, there is something you should know."
"Did I not just mention this?" Rtas asked, sounding speculative – and sarcastic.
I sighed at him, unappreciatively. "Elder brother, you must listen. I broke my oath to the Covenant when I took the Spartan from the custody of High Charity. He, G'wi and I left the vessel in a Phantom without departure orders or permission, and when we discovered the location of the Prophet Regret, our intent was to find him and kill him."
Rtas actually hiccupped... it was a first in several years, for him, I knew. But he amended his slack jawed expression soon enough, and asked, "So... did you...?"
Astounded out of my skull, I could not have told a lie had I wanted to. "No. The other Demon got there first."
He nodded, again recomposed and cool. I rather envied the talent. "Rtas...?"
I got a glance, only.
"What is going on?"
"The Covenant has broken. Jiralhanae... brutes... have been commanded to cast us out. Fighting has broken out all over the fleets, including here, on the Ring. In some places, we win. In others... they do. The Covenant is tearing itself apart. We have been betrayed, Anuna... it was good you got out when you did, though I regret your timing left you bereft of this information."
I nodded, feeling sick suddenly. I'd been kicked hard enough to cough up my stomach, allowed to sit for long enough to determine I required sustenance – which I never got ahold of – and then recently attempted to drown somewhat. I felt reasonably excused from needing to explain why I felt sick.
Even though I knew it had really little to do with my physical innards.
"I will drop you and your... Spartan... at the rendezvous point. The Arbiter has vanished – we think he was killed by the leader of the Jiralhanae. I will be making a second attempt to rejoin my flagship and my fleet, once you are safely delivered aground." He sighed, adding, "I do wish you'd take better care of yourself, brother... if mother were around she would worry herself to death all over again."
I hung my head. "What do we plan to do? As Elites, I mean, since we're apparently nolonger welcome within the Covenant."
He shrugged. "I will know more once I am back with my fleet. I do know that Truth and Mercy's plans to activate the Halos very soon are still in place... Truth and Mercy themselves were last seen on the move, heading for the city center at the installation beneath High Charity's orbit point. I believe they mean to take refuge within the Forerunner starship... may the gods help us if they choose to fly off with the thing."
I rubbed my mandibles, and then my eyes, wanting a bath and a meal and somewhere to sleep soundly for a few years. "Will you let me know if you hear about G'wi...? He was... a friend."
Rtas nodded. "If I hear anything." He toggled the landing controls, letting me know we had arrived by the motion. "Alright, this is where you and I part ways, little brother." He turned to me fully, then, as the Phantom finished descending and settled into the still. "I will expect to see you again. Alive, preferably."
"And the human?" I asked, tentative.
"We will attend to such petty matters when they become relevant, Anuna. Do not trouble yourself so. I do not think we will execute him outright... he could be used to barter accompaniment out of his kind for the duration of that idea."
"Accompaniment, brother?" I asked, puzzled.
"Humans. They fight bravely, with honor as profound and alien as has ever been seen... but still they fight. It is a passing thought among my peers, Anuna... to bribe them somehow into taking some of the brunt while our people pull ourselves together. It is not kind... but perhaps it will work."
"They hate us." I reasoned.
"But they are not unreasonable, and any rift in the Covenant that had so shattered their lives would be long cherished, I can well imagine." Rtas countered. "You are young." He reached across the pit and rested a hand on my shoulder. "Get your armor changed into something that isn't broken, get wiped off and something to eat in you. There is still much fighting to be done, and I will need you to help me direct them. Can I count on you, little brother?"
I felt like he'd just heaped a starship onto my back. Numbly, I nodded. "Until my final breath." And hopefully... that breath wouldn't be too soon.
He smiled a half-missing smile at me, but both eyes sparkled. "I will see you again when it is done, little brother. In the meantime... you must go now." He retracted his arm, so I slipped out of the cockpit and unhitched the Spartan from the harness where I'd left him. He curled up into an unceremonious heap on the floor of the Phantom, thumping heavily down without ever appearing to have woken, but I kicked him over into the grav lift anyway, and descended with him to the ground.
Here a command camp of sorts had been set up, with part of it embedded within a Forerunner facility that had been blockaded off at all the other exit points. As I collected myself off the top of the Spartan, several of the sentinel Elites strode over to investigate the strange heap of tangled Mjolnir armor at my hooves.
All of them, though, leapt back upon realization that it was a Spartan.
One ventured, "Is it dead?"
Another asked, "Why did you bring that thing here?"
I rolled him onto his back with a push of my hoof. "Because the hope is that he's not dead, and he has his uses – and they are many. Get me something to move him with. He's damn heavy and I'm very tired." I watched as two of the few that had gathered departed to procure something of what I had asked for, then turned my head back the other way to watch as my brother's Phantom turned in the sky and flew away into it, seeking a hole in the furball going on up there within which to insert himself so he could gain access to his flagship.
I only hoped he could make it there intact and alive... not only did they need his command and guidance, I felt I would be rather distressed to realize my brother's death so soon after his ascendance to Fleet Master.
I followed the Spartan into the re-purposed Forerunner corridors, and saw to it he was not treated unduly harshly before they sealed him behind a force-field where even if he awoke in top notch condition he'd never be able to get out. Then I went and procured for myself what I had been longing for, for so long.
Ah... food was never more good than in the middle of a terrible battle.
I ate exactly one bite.
And then I puked it onto the rest.