UNSC Kuching
November 24, 2557
Given less than half a second, both Spartans bolted out of the room was fast as they could. They saw in both of their HUDs that their shields were draining and felt impacts that made them flinch, but neither of them held back, as they knew their lives were dependent on how quickly they could find cover. Even when they exited the chamber, the firing didn't stop the relentless hail of spike fire.
Austal felt a stinging pain in his side and looked down.
That wasn't a normal spiker round.
The spike was nearly a foot long, compared to the seven-inch ones used in the heavy pistols. With a grunt, he yanked the metal rod out of his side. The feeling was painful enough, exceeding his gritted teeth and squinted eyes. Crimson blood was leaking out from the wound and he was wondering why his biofoam injector hadn't kicked in yet.
Fowler returned fire through the opening and Austal heard one of the brute bodyguards let out a death scream.
"We should charge and overpower them now!" A deep gravelly voice said from the other side.
"No!" That had to be the Chieftain. "Get a Shaman to look at his wounds. We hold this position."
"Chieftain," Another brute protested, "The demons have been weakened. We can finish them here!"
Fowler saw this as an opportunity to slide over, since they had retreated to opposite sides of the doorway.
"Dude, you're bleeding bad." Austal looked down and saw that the wound hadn't stopped since. His grip had been lost on his weapon.
Fowler knelt down at his side and stuck his fingers inside the hole. Through the visor of his new skull painted ORBITAL helmet, he furrowed his eyes in concentration. It seemed like it was coming from a leaking tank.
He finally found a nearby biofoam injector and worked carefully to rotate it so that it pointed directly at Austal's wound, a hole in his side that was nearly half an inch in diameter.
"There, now activate the injector in your back."
Austal did such and suddenly lurched upwards. "AHHH!"
Biofoam was extremely uncomfortable, a proper description being thousands of tiny jagged knives stabbing the wounded area. Thankfully, it would later numb.
"Son of a bitch." He grumbled. It still hurt, but now he was able to pick up his weapon and shakily prop himself on his feet.
"Walk it off you whiny ass punk." Fowler reached over to help him up. "As much as I'd love to leave you to sleep, I can't take these guys without you."
"Um, shouldn't we call in for backup?"
"You're my backup."
Austal gestured to the sealed wound in his side, "Yeah and look what happened. Only thing to compare to that was Cyprus."
"Whatever. At least it wasn't your fault. Stupid civvies."
"You got grenades?"
"I got a couple of frags, yeah."
"Give them to me."
Fowler unclipped the two round explosives and tossed them over, "What's your plan?"
"Kill those brutes. Although I have enough for the two bodyguards, I'm not sure what to do about the Chieftain."
"Least he doesn't have a hammer."
The duo stacked up by the door and Austal moved out in a flash. He took a scavenged spiker grenade and slapped it onto the frag. Pulling both pins, he held the handle of the larger one and threw it in a chopping motion.
The brutes dove to the side, just as one of the two bodyguards had the grenade stuck straight onto his chest. He let out a primal roar as he vanished in a spray of blood and red hot spikes.
The second bodyguard roared as well, throwing his gun to the ground and charging with surprising speed towards the entrance.
Fowler and Austal snapped their sights up on their weapons and squeezed the trigger. The bodyguard's armor shrugged off the assault and it kept coming towards them.
With a hammering arm, it hit Fowler, knocking him back. He landed in a roll and in the process, drew his M6 sidearm.
Austal ducked, from another swing. The berserk brute sure did hit hard. He loaded another clip in and smashed the butt against the brute's jaw when it tried to headbutt him. Fully stocked, he fired again, another hail of bullets this time punching straight through the dense armor. Blood began to spray out.
Fowler added his sidearm into the mix, a slug finally penetrating its helmet and exiting out the other side of the skull. From Austal's viewpoint, the brute made a face before toppling over.
"All good?"
"Yeah."
Nadirus opened fire again, the spike cannon making large indentations into the wall behind them.
Fowler and Austal darted out, firing in bursts under the pretense that Nadirus couldn't target them both at the same time.
They were wrong.
The Chieftain remained at his position and began shooting at Fowler. The Spartan ducked underneath a network of pipes and returned fire though the gaps. Shields sparked as the bullets splattered uselessly.
Austal saw a spike grenade sail overhead and lodge itself into the pipes on his side.
"Shit." He had a split second to act and dove to the floor.
The grenade detonated, sending a wash of heat over him and spikes flying in all directions. His shields sparked and he checked his armor for any of the projectiles embedded inside. Thankfully, there weren't any.
"Goddamn brutes." He muttered, slinking around the pipes and hearing the spike cannon go off again. He was about to rise up when he heard that same deep animal voice from before.
"I am rather underwhelmed at how formidable you Demons are. Hiding in the shadows, especially since you have puny little guns and I have this beast."
"We have teamwork." Fowler shot back, "Does that count?"
Nadirus snarled, turning to Fowler's position and opening fire.
Using the distraction to the fullest, Austal broke his cover and slapped Fowler's last grenade to another spiker grenade. He pulled the pin from both and flung it across to Nadirus.
The two grenades skidded to a halt at the Chieftain's feet and he looked down, pausing from firing.
Combined with their explosive force, the explosion sent him reeling with the shower of razor-sharp spikes. Amazingly, the brute's high threshold to pain was what kept him from falling.
The two Spartans quickly came into the open ground and emptied their remaining rounds into Nadirus' sides. Blood began to pump out of a dozen open wounds, spikes stuck out from various points in his armor and both of his arms were chewed up by shrapnel and bullets, far mangled beyond any recovery.
"Clear!"
"Clear!" Fowler swung his weapon's sights around, still scanning for hostiles despite saying the all clear.
"Fowler to Kuching Control, hostile Chieftain has been neutralized." Without waiting for a reply, he switched channels, "Hades, confirmed hit on Target Thunder."
"Acknowledged. Be advised that brute forces have brought an unstable plasma munition onboard and are targeting the engines."
"Say again?" Fowler asked.
"You guys need to disarm the bomb. Brutes have planted it before retreating to destroy the frigate!"
"Shit."
The two heard a gruff chuckle and glanced down to see Nadirus give a sly smirking expression on his face, "Demons. So predictable, just like what our Prophet had envisioned."
"Doesn't that make your Prophet predictable like us King Kong?" Fowler's retort was laced with venom, specifically at the mention of the Covenant Hierarch leader.
"How dare you defile his name!" Nadirus roared, spittle flying from his maw. "Our Prophet of Clairvoyance sees all of his foes and knows exactly how they shall act. Right now, we are initiating our campaign to revive our righteous Covenant under his divine leadership and you humans shall be exterminated one by one. Even those on the world called Providence, are finding themselves in the same state prior to the war's end."
A cocking sound brought Fowler out of trying to deduce the Chieftain's words. Austal had drawn his sidearm and had the barrel pointed at the smug face of the brute.
"C'mon Marcus. We got a bomb to disarm."
"Yes." Nadirus added, "Now you die."
Austal turned to Fowler, "I'm not letting this piece of shit walk out of here."
"You see the state he's in? He's not going anywhere."
Seeing the two Spartans in agreement, Nadirus barely had feeling in his right arm, however he kept a spiker pistol as a handy sidearm. Not as fun to use as the spike cannon, but the Spartans had not seen it during their battle against him. They were more concentrated on their own survival.
He brought it up, putting the smaller one through the gun's ironsights.
Four loud bangs erupted in the reactor chamber, followed by Nadirus going limp and finally dying from his new gunshot wounds. The spiker slid out of his hand.
Fowler's magnum had smoke curling out of the barrel before he holstered it. "I don't know what's more ironic. Us thinking those brutes are smart or them thinking we are dumbasses."
"You saw his arm trying to grab the pistol at the back of his belt?"
"Me? Oh yeah. Since it was behind him, it was kind of hard to see. That's probably why he kept us listening."
The two Spartans broke into a run as Hades fed them a waypoint to the mounted bomb, "Prophet of Clairvoyance?"
"All Covenant have some leadership. He is most likely that."
"We need to warn Bowman." Austal said, "I don't think he knows the full scope of this invasion."
The bomb was a large purple cylindrical tank with cyan linings and held upright by four purple metal legs. A timer was attached to the top and it blinked red.
Fowler was lying underneath it, tinkering with the mechanism in an attempt to disarm it while Austal stayed nearby, crouched and ready. He tested his side, managing to feel it again, but pain continued to flare.
"How much time you got left on the bomb?"
"Nine minutes and ten seconds."
"It would please me if you hurry." The younger Spartan's voice had a trace of anxiety inside, "I absolutely hate being on a ship with an unstable explosive charge."
"Any more problems?"
"Actually yeah." That was Hades, "The Covenant cruiser's energy projector is warming up and its vector has changed to your position. Looks like Target Thunder wanted to be a martyr."
"He'd know Spartans would be on here." Austal whispered.
"So he could destroy them even if he was destroyed himself. The bomb was just another ploy to keep us aboard longer."
"Hurry up Spartan Fowler." Hades urged, "We don't have much time."
"Actually I have an idea," He replied, standing up. His body language reflected that he had just experienced a Eureka moment, "Austal, I need you to get back to the bridge and fix a remote control frequency on an escape pod. I'll meet you there as soon as I can."
"What are you thinking?"
"We're going to save the Kuching."
Austal truly hated being stuck in a big metal hunk floating in space, especially if there was a plasma explosive onboard ready to go off within the next four minutes.
Fowler opened the pod bay, where Austal procured a datapad and opened one of the doors to the bumblebee escape craft.
Seeing his friend struggling with the weight of the bomb, he rushed over and grabbed the other side. Together they hauled it inside the bay, sealing the pod's door. Three minutes and thirty seconds.
"I've already went over our plan with Kuching. They're going to feed us codes and then guide our missile over."
"Roger that."
Austal's datapad blinked and he swiped something away with his finger, "Kuching Control, this is Eon Four, requesting disarmament of Bumblebee November Juliet Quebec Six Four."
"Eon Four, code feeding Nine Seven Tango Whiskey Papa Eight Zero. Handing over reins. Good luck."
Marcus turned to Brett, "Here's hoping your plan works."
"If it's big enough to destroy or seriously damage the Kuching, then you know it'll work."
The bumblebee pod shot out of the bay with a silent explosive force. It laid in space for a second before Austal triggered the thrusters. The lifeboat's fuel supply was very low, since an ignition with a higher amount could cause the death of its occupants. The engines were merely for a heading towards a planet and the blue/white marble of Providence was in the opposite direction of the Covenant cruiser.
The timing of his control had to be just right. Going too fast and he'd run out of fuel, leaving the advancing ship vulnerable. Too slow and the bomb would detonate too early to inflict damage.
With the camera mounted at the pod's front, even those at the frigate's bridge were watching with bated breath. Their weapon systems were offline or damaged and the Diablo's fleet was unable to get a good lock on their enemy without risking hitting their own ship.
A bright purple light flashed on the cruiser's port side, a pulse laser shot lanced out of the darkness, moving with surprising speed towards the small escape craft.
Keeping his cool, Austal fired the thrusters in a burst. The pod dodged the single shot by a mere five meters to its bow.
"C'mon babe." Fowler murmured.
The timer now read one minute and the distance to the cruiser's energy projector was decreasing, almost too slowly. The belly gun glowed red as the ship's front part began to pass directly over the Kuching, a half mile below. Why they didn't just fire plasma torpedoes or use their point defense guns was a mystery, but the Spartans were going to take full advantage of that.
Thirty seconds.
The pod was now too close for the cruiser to use its torpedoes and Austal continued to weave around the flurry of plasma shots.
Five. Four. Three. Two. By now, Austal purged the remaining fuel into the engines and when it hit one second, the pod had been just feet away from the projector heading into the section closer to the stern. It was just beginning to cross an imaginary line right over the helpless frigate. A second later and the Kuching would've been bisected.
Even though they were quite the distance. The Spartans imagined the brutes cursing out loud.
Slamming into the projector, just as the Covenant bomb detonated. A small explosion emanated out, followed by a much larger blast of blue fire. The glassing beam was instantly destroyed and secondary explosions reverberated throughout the hull.
Onboard the Kuching, the entire vessel shook from the shockwaves before settling down. There were no additional sounds of destruction and neither of them heard anything about the frigate indicating of it destroyed.
"Holy shit." Hades said, "You guys did it. The cruiser is retreating!"
The crew at the Kuching's bridge let out a loud cheer.
Back at the escape pod bay, Austal and Fowler had removed their helmets, the former enjoying the cool air. Brett saw that his entire face was covered in perspiration and a dried up trickle of blood had ran down his right nostril. The two of them just sat there in silence with grins that seemed to be permanently plastered.
Fowler extended his fist out to Austal, who lightly bumped it in return. Mission accomplished.
"You're amazing little brother." He breathed, "Cancel those beers you owe me."
These two make an awesome team! Just another day being Eon.
Brett Fowler and Marcus Austal are probably my favorite bromance pair. Either them or Trip and Drew/Vaal.
Thanks for reading and reviewing, you all give my writing purpose.