The Marines were silent, rifles still aimed at the surrendering Elite, but to their credit, nobody fired. They glanced back and forth at each other, confused by the grossly out of character Sangheili behavior. Zaeed finally got a good look at the Elite. It was wearing blue robes with a simple armored chest piece.
"Since when do Covenant surrender?" Zaeed asked incredulously, speaking to nobody in particular. He put a hand on the side of his helmet to show his squad he was communicating with the Circumference.
"Captain, are you seeing this? We got a surrendering Covenant."
"Your feed is coming in loud and clear, Sergeant Zaeed. I don't know what's going on, but let it be for now. Leng is preparing our translation software."
The Elite began to speak.
Zaeed was at a loss for words. He had just boarded a Covenant ship and been met by an Elite who surrendered. He had absolutely no clue what was going on anymore. The Covenant didn't talk to humans, and they certainly did not yield! But here he was, looking at an Elite that peacefully surrendered in the face of overwhelming force. He tried to rationalize what he was seeing, find some reason for it, but he had no success.
"Captain, what are your orders?" Zaeed asked. "I have no bloody clue what the thing is saying, but he sounds rather calm. At least, I think that's calm for a bloody Elite!"
The voice of Leng came over the COM. "I am translating the Elite for the bridge crew and your Platoon. One moment. Just keep him talking, do not attack unless he charges or opens fire on you. We don't often get a chance to take an Elite prisoner."
Fluently translated words flowed across the SQUADCOM. "- merchant. If you wish for a Tithe, I have little to give but my depleted cargo. Surely we can come to an arrangement? I am stranded aboard this ship, but I have finances stored on other worlds."
"What are you talking about," Zaeed yelled. "Do you think we're a Pirates? The hell do you think we are?" A translation came out of his helmet's speaker, and the Sangheili looked up. The Elite looked taken aback, but not intimidated in the slightest. Its mandibles clicked a few times, then it resumed speaking.
"I do not recognize your equipment or your race." The Elite paused, mandibles clicking. "You are not of the Covenant? But you know the trader tongue. I thought you were members of a fringe race collecting a tithe for crossing your territory." The Elite cocked his head to the side. "No, you must not know of the Covenant. Then allow me to introduce-" The Elite began to stand up, only for Zaeed to tighten his grip on his rifle and resume aiming. The Elite eyed him cautiously and kept his hands behind his head as he rose.
Suddenly, Zaeed's microphone was muted by Leng, and the speakers of his helmet were taken over remotely. Captain Exaviel began speaking through Zaeed's mask. "We are not with the Covenant. Do you not know about Humanity?"
"Am I speaking to the leader of these warriors?" The Elite asked.
"You are," Exaviel answered.
The Elite's eyes widened in surprise."Then I was wrong to think you Tithe collectors. I would speak to you, Shipmaster to Shipmaster." The Elite crossed his arms. "As is custom."
Just as half the Marines were about to start yelling expletives at the Elite, Leng muted their microphones, leaving them to scream inside the confines of their helmets. Zaaed got a chuckle out of this, as his helmet continued to relay the words of the Captain.
"You mentioned a cargo. Are you a trader?" Exaviel asked, sounding interested.
The Elite waited for a moment, looking back and forth at the soldiers aiming guns at him "I am a free trader. But my drive failed, and I got stranded here after an emergency exit from Slipspace."
Zaeed gave the Elite another scrupulous look. The Elite definitely looked very thin and scrawny. Had he been starving? He looked at the dark hangar. It made sense to minimize life support if a single person was trapped aboard a ship. That did give his story some credibility.
"Wait. How long have you been out of contact with the rest of the Covenant?" The Captain asked. His voice sounded increasingly confused and pained.
"I have been away for [Translation Error: Closest approximation, 0.78 Earth years]," The Elite said.
Now Zaeed was curious. He'd thought this Elite had been out of contact with the Covenant since before the war. But he hadn't. So how the hell didn't he know about Humanity? He had absolutely no idea what to think, and just resigned himself to being a relay for the Captain's words.
"How do you not know of your race's war upon Humanity? It has been going on for seventeen years!" The Captain sounded angry and incredulous, very unlike the seasoned prowler Captain Zaeed knew him to be. The old soldier assumed it was because the Captain expected Humanity to be more known amongst the Covenant. He sure did.
"War?" The Elite asked quizzically. "When I left, there was no talk of war, of any kind. I do not know what you're talking about."
"What." The Captain bluntly stated, sounding deflated.
"Until today, I didn't even know your species existed, let alone that there's a war. Are you sure you're not dealing with a warlord?" The Elite said.
-
Bridge of the Circumference.
Utter. Deafening. Silence.
"Are you sure you're not dealing with a warlord." The words repeated themselves in Exaviel's head again and again. A warlord. A fucking warlord. If the Elite was right, which Exaviel dearly hoped he wasn't, then the UNSC hadn't been in a war of life and death with the entire Covenant, but only some warlord on the fringes. This could change everything. He needed to get to the real story.
Kirrahe turned around, looking at Exaviel. "We should take him on board. He is starving and could be a valuable source of intelligence. The option is both a moral and a pragmatic imperative."
"Bullshit!" Tambudzai stated. "We should kill him and take over the ship. It has to be a lie, right?" She sounded like she was trying to assure herself that it was, in fact, a lie, but had difficulty in doing so.
"Irrelevant. A chance to speak to a Covenant trader could be invaluable." Kirrahe countered vehemently. "If we understand how they think, we can use that against the Covenant."
Exaviel turned back towards the viewscreen, looking at the Elite. "Are you the only survivor?"
The Elite on the viewscreen nodded. "I am the last survivor of my crew. My offer stands. Get me off this ship, and I'll make it worth your while."
Exaviel thought it over. "Bring him aboard," Exaviel ordered. "Ready a full medical team to take the Elite to a secure medical room. I want him to be guarded around the clock. Sergeant Zaeed, continue to examine that ship, find out if he's telling the truth."
-
Circumference Medical bay.
The Elite lay strapped into a medical bed, surrounded by doctors and medical equipment that attempted to examine the alien and find out how to save its life. The Elite had collapsed from exhaustion after arriving aboard the Circumference, and he'd been rushed towards the medical bay. He'd been strapped onto a medical bed, given intravenous saline, and fed via a tube. Exaviel did not know how ONI doctors had figured out Elite anatomy, and he did not want to find out.
The Elite stirred, opening its eyes and looking directly at Exaviel. "So it was not a dream." He groaned. "I must thank you for getting me off my ship. I owe you a debt of honor." The Elite said. His voice, though unintelligible without Leng's translation, sounded proud and noble, surprisingly. And that bothered Exaviel. This Elite was being completely reasonable, so why were others of his kind waging a genocidal war? He just couldn't find it.
"You surrendered. It was the right thing to do." Exaviel said, not being completely honest. He had considered venting the Elite into space. But Kirrahe had convinced him to interrogate the creature.
Said Salarian was currently sitting opposite to Exaviel, hidden by a cloaking field, and with a gun to the Elite's head. Not surrounding the Elite sounded like the best course of action with its advanced state of starvation. So instead, there were just four guards in hardsuits, with shotguns loaded with taser rounds standing at the entrance to the room, as well as two medical professionals. The rest of the bridge crew was watching via the cameras.
"You mentioned your race was at war with the Covenant?" The Elite asked, leaning forward in his bed, only to be held back by the straps. It raised a brow and mandible at the sight, but did not prod any further. "When I left High Charity, our capital, there was no war." He paused. "Our Executioner fleets were still in peacetime deployments."
"Executioner fleets?" Exaviel asked.
"Pure dedicated warships. Unlike most of our ships, these ships have one purpose, to destroy. It's a reminder of the violence that will be required to bring about the Great Journey, so they are kept out of the hands of those who would use them against the Covenant. If there was a war, those ships would have been sent to the front."
Exaviel felt a chill go down his spine. If the UNSC was being slaughtered by a Covenant warlord, and their actual warships had not been sent into battle? Just what was the UNSC dealing with? He continued talking. "For the last seventeen years, we have been getting slaughtered by Covenant warships and soldiers. Hundreds of ships, and possibly millions of soldiers. Is it normal for warlords to have that many forces?"
The Elite narrowed his eyes, looking deep in thought. "Something is wrong, then. To make a violent first contact without permission from the Ministry of Conversion is a grave crime. For your plight to not be discovered for seventeen years sounds… unlikely." The Elite rested his head in the palm of his hand, as if nursing a headache, scratching his right temple, or whatever the Elites had there. "I've traveled across the Covenant fringe, and I've not heard of warlords like that since Xytan cleansed the fringes."
Exaviel had no idea what to think about these revelations. He kept hoping and assuming it was a fiction. It kept him at ease.
"What were you transporting?"
"Odds and ends. Curios and trinkets for the rich, fancy produce, as well as some high-grade Xenotime. I don't ask questions about what I transport."
Exaviel nodded. He was starting to suspect he was dealing with a not entirely legitimate trader. Perhaps a smuggler? The way the Elite sounded almost delirious from the combination of starvation and dehydration made him think that the Elite would otherwise have been more stringent in what he said. He was
"We examined your ship. Why was it dead in space?"
The Elite looked hesitant before he spoke. "When we entered Slipspace, something went wrong. It was like we were being thrown back and forth inside of Slipspace, and I lost control over the ship. Swathes of the crew went mad, dropped dead, or disappeared outright. By the time we left Slipspace, we were almost out of fuel. I set life support to minimal and prayed for deliverance."
"What do you mean, "thrown around?" Exaviel asked, a knot of tension forming in his gut.
The Elite looked him directly in the eyes.
"Like there was something outside, and it was trying to get in."
-
Aboard the Sangheili cargo ship.
Zaeed looked up from the crates of spoiled produce he had been examining. The ship smelled horrible, and he and his men had disabled their olfactory sensors while looking around. The ship looked unlike any Covenant structure Zaeed had ever seen. It was filled with a mish-mash of technology that appeared rigged together in a way that resembled some pirate freighters Zaeed had boarded in his earlier days.
The realization gave him an idea. He went down on his knee and began tapping on the floor panels. And soon enough, he heard a hollow sound. Zaeed grinned at his cleverness and ripped the panel aside. A classic secret smuggler compartment. Apparently, even the Covenant had smuggling. It was filled with small containers with suspicious powders and liquids, as well as small odds and ends. Necklaces, rings, and other trinkets Zaeed had no idea where they would even go. There was a single small box that didn't stand out from the other trinkets, but Zaeed was curious. He gently took the box and took it out of the smuggler's compartment. He opened it.
Inside was a small cylindrical black object covered with organic-looking spikes and tendrils, rested on a soft bed of velvet and silk. Zaeed picked it up with his left hand and looked it over, he took a flashlight from his belt and used his free hand to shine a light on the device. There was a plug at the bottom that made it look like it could be attached to something, but it also had a chain attached to it. A string that was definitely not made of the same materials. Zaeed's hand brushed across one of the tendrils.
Suddenly the device lit up with a baleful blue light, and Zaeed felt something inside lash out, slamming against his mind and trying to burrow inside. He raged against the intrusion with a mental fortitude he did not even know he had. His muscles tensed as the invasion intensified, and he could not drop the device. His memories drained away as the machine extended cold metallic tendrils throughout his mind, ripping out what felt like every positive emotion and memory he'd ever had, ripping out everything that made him human.
With the last of his free will, Zaeed put his pistol beneath his right cheek and fired up.