Scene Eleven; Mourning Glory
The run for the extraction point was hot, and rough. The cliff faces weren't so much the problem, quite as the constant barrage from behind. Under normal circumstances, the Mirratord attending the scene would not have fled, but there was an underlying sense of urgency; after all, one lone cruiser, no matter how augmented, couldn't possibly outlast two fleets, especially when both were sizeable armadas and one of those two happened to be Flood comprised.
The group had made it halfway, or a little less, when the Brutes had shown up all of a sudden. Their arrival was so abrupt, in fact, that it took both sides a full heartbeat to realize they should start shooting at one another. After that, though, the fight hadn't waned much at all.
The Spartans hung in back at first, pegging at the Brutes and their Jackal counterparts with their Human weaponry, until at last the return fire had fried more than a little of their shielding mechanisms.
They then switched out for the secondary wing team, which while had a couple of SPI troopers, was mainly comprised of Elite warriors. These held the six while the newest rock face was addressed, then those on the top of the cliff covered them while they ascended after the rest were all up.
Brute tactics demanded more than cat-and-mouse, though, and it especially bothered the ape-like creatures to be so denied any real chance to charge in and slaughter something by blunt dismemberment. Thus far, all those who had dropped their guns and charged in on their knuckles had lost their lives far short of any such achievement. The Jackal's shield wall, however, was keeping the Mirratord's return fire from really doing a whole lot of damage.
The group all stopped, though, at the conclusion of the crest of the latest cliff face, because it was high enough the Brutes couldn't just shoot over it at them and force them to go on farther along. Still, the Brutes weren't stupid enough to just scramble up the thing after them promptly, and the Mirratord wasn't simple minded enough to think they would.
The tactic used, however, was of curious note; Spartan 249 turned to face whatever came over the cliff side, in time to see a Jackal come flying up like a dart, to roll once over its head and then stop on its feet in front of him.
Before it could fire up its arm shield, though, he smashed its head in with the butt of his MA5C-IV. As the body crumpled to his feet, lifeless, a fleet of others all sailed up at him, causing him to scramble back in alarm. Jackals could do many things – but they shouldn't fly! Logically he understood the Brutes were probably throwing them, but the facts hadn't quite sunk that far into his brain just yet. The shield wall they attempted to recreate on the new surface, though, didn't really take all that well.
As the Humans fell back behind the fore line, the Sangheili suddenly surged forward, and in a brilliant flashing display of powered filament knives and sparking zero-point shields, the Jackals were all cut down. One of them went so far as to fly back again the way he'd come, his head only attached to a half a shoulder and one arm. The rest of him tumbled shortly after.
The distraction, however brief, provided by taking the time to kill the Jackals, had allowed the Brutes time to ascend the cliff wall themselves. Aozora, standing nearest to the edge, was the first to kick a Brute in the face, knocking it back and into freefall. They were fast climbers, though, much in the same way Humans were, and the broken, jagged surfaces on the rocks allowed a great deal of purchase for any who dared to test them.
Aozora was forced back by pure physics – he couldn't kill them all, all at once, and he certainly couldn't occupy the same space as a dozen ascending Brutes. The first one pushed him away, costing his balance and flattening him, but no mere drop in posture had ever really rendered much change in the Admiral's fighting capacity.
Red plasma lanced over his body armor as a swarm piled past him, and he was busily getting to his hooves while slicing at his enemies when an ingenious thought occurred to him; he tucked in his arms and braced his stature, right before an undulating bubble of deteriorating translated molecules shunted into a matter stream three people wide all around him.
Brutes just inside or half out of the affected area toppled, dead, into the abruptly empty area, their missing parts consumed and gone. The others roared in anger at the insult, bashing and slashing alongside their bullets at their enemy. Only one managed to get a good hit on his target, and even so it wasn't the one he was really aiming at. Kuro slipped out of the way as if she were made of water, and the Brute between her and Lai moved with exact timing so poor Lai Tasha was caught squarely by the punch.
He slammed back from it into the Brute he'd been battling at current, spearing the beast on both single-blades at once in the sudden body-slam past its defenses. He gave an involuntary grunt as the air was blasted from him, but the Brute he'd just stabbed had saved his own balance, and he stepped back as it fell, to turn and cut outwards and up at the next available foe.
Hot plasma lanced through the crowd, permeated by lead and tungsten steel rounds, sometimes the two bullet types intersecting, leaving little left of the solid and shattering the gaseous plasma into a more or less harmless spray that was no longer directed. Shielding on both sides of the fight flared brightly in protest, the conflict quickly turning to a battle of wills and muscle, rather than wits and aim.
Spartan 09 and 249 both caught a Brute in a bear-hug, grappling for purchase as their guns were knocked from their hands. 09 punched his catch in the place where a Human would have had kidneys until it let go of his head, but 249 was a trickier, slicker, meaner motor skooter, and at the first sign he was going to be denied his sight by a hairy paw across the visor, he popped out his own, rarely-used single-blades, and stuck the sucker in the armpits with them both at once.
The Brute burbled, trying to cry out in agony, but its heart had been pierced on two sides, and much of both lungs were being cauterized by the heat of the energy flowing through each blade. 249 plucked them out, spun one in his hand, and shoved that arm across at throat level so the Brute's head dropped back, freed from the body.
The next Brute came up so quickly it was able to smack the SPARTAN hard enough across the helmet to dizzy him, as well as knock him from his feet. He spilled out on the rock under the feet of more than three other sentient beings, one of which had been an ally.
The lot of them tripped up and piled down on him, still struggling with one another. His heartbeat pounding slightly out of synch in his ears, 249 caught a hairy something – it could have been an arm – and stabbed it repeatedly with the sword in his other hand until it withdrew, allowing him to see the next Brute sail down at him, all anger and drool.
He supposed the Brute thought himself imposing, being toothy and snarling at his prey, but to the human inside the MJOLNIR armor on his back on the rocks, it just looked a little on the disgusting side. The teeth were all crooked, one looked missing and the others appeared broken in some manner or other. But the beast was wearing armor, had a shield, and had somehow gotten its hand around his other sword.
Which explained where it had gotten off to. 249 shrugged mentally; at least he knew where it was, and that meant he could then get it back reasonably easily. He turned away from the strike, blunt and clumsy as it was, tripping someone else up and staggering them into another Brute. From there, though, he was able to stand himself back up by rolling his hips over his head, and bouncing up from his knees. He saw Lai Tasha flash past behind the Brute holding his sword, and somewhere on the other side, he could see what looked like one of the girls.
From the thorny look of her armor, it had to be Kitty.
The Brute slashed wildly at his head and chest, missing badly and opening itself wide several times. If he hadn't been being shoved around so sporadically by the closeness of the fighting around him, 249 imagined he'd have had the opportunity to exploit one of those openings by now.
A stream of plasma and a few Carbine rounds slathered across the thing's shields, dimming them. 249 had to parry a few closer cuts and one thrust, but the next opening he saw he knew he couldn't get his sword up into fast enough.
It didn't matter; his other hand came up, and the titanium-alloy magnum round tore out the back of the Brute's helmet in a spray of gore. The SPARTAN caught the active blade out of the Brute's hand as it toppled backwards, dead, spun it in his hand, and moved to engage another enemy.
EvilKitty had only one recollection of a crush this bad; and she couldn't seem to really recall where it had been or what over, and why so many Brutes had been there. Maybe it had been their old base… or maybe not. Still, when the first ripples of distorted matter began to peel off layers from the Brutes and the rock they were on, she knew well what to do.
Squalling like a stuck pig, she barreled into enemy and ally alike to get away.
The distortion broadened until the event horizon sparked open, then snapped back, leaving the Imperial Admiral standing amid a perfectly spherical hole of empty air. This quickly filled with first the gory remains of those he'd halved, then with cross fire, and lastly, a live, mostly whole enemy, as it roared and leapt at him. He extended a well-muscled arm to greet it, and sliced it from navel to neck as he lifted it according to its momentum to land on its head behind him.
Correcting left, he moved in on another Brute, balancing right as it shifted to the left, so when he hit, it toppled promptly and was out of his way when he sought the next enemy.
The bloodbath was quickly finished, leaving the Mirratord standing more or less knee deep in their messy handiwork. Lai Tasha straightened from his coiled battle-pose. "Well. That was almost half what I imagined."
"Almost." Aozora echoed, surveying the carnage. "If there are indeed more, we do not have time to address them in this manner."
"Has anyone seen my right-hand sword?" A familiar voice piped up. "It's kinda shiny, has curlies all over the handle…"
EvilKitty could only barely stifle her giggling as the familiar thrumming heartbeat of approaching Phantoms met their ears.