The lore about what day to to day life in the Covenant is like is annoyingly thin, so I may have just made some shit up on the fly.
Also, yes, it is the dragon age reference you're thinking of.
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Interlude I
Quiet As A Mouse
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Ninth age of Reclamation
112th Northwest precinct, Central Spaceport Complex, Ealen IV
There was one, and only one, advantage to being an Unggoy in the Covenant Empire: it made one easy to overlook.
Hissrad was what his mother had named him, for his greatest skill. He'd used it up until his first months in the Covenant army. But it hadn't taken him long to decide that cannon fodder wasn't the life for him, and Hissrad, son of Jejek was quickly changed to Kamak, son of Chothro, then Artra, Nandi, and a wide variety of other names, some in long-term rotation, some burners.
It was easy to get away with it. Documentation? Who has time to track the teeming billions of worthless grunts?
Pfeh, cannon fodder serves those fools right. You can live pretty as an Unggoy, if you've a mind to.
Hissrad clawed his way out of the sub-rail maintenance crawlspace, rolling quickly out of the way of the maglev. The track wasn't rumbling, but the transport trains were fast; one never got more than a few seconds of warning.
Ealen IV was the perfect place to live the underground life. Due to its critical industrial importance, practically every being who lived or worked there was well-off and wealthy. The Covenant ostensibly provided every citizen of its empire with all the goods and services they needed, but with such a viciously controlled hierarchy at work, there were always those willing to trade for what they should not have.
And such was how Hissrad - low-born even as Unggoy came - made a remarkably comfortable living for himself. Some Sangheili always wanted fresher rations than the logistics ministry would provide, or some underage Shan'Shyuum was interested in intoxicants that might suit their fancy, or -
The point is, there was a thriving black market.
Hissrad ducked through another maintenance space, this one a real corridor, as he quickly checked through his attire and equipment. His uniform was one of a low-ranking engineer; a wrench lackey, essentially. His tool bag looked appropriately beat up. Opening it, one would even see the standard cutting torch, bolt gun, and universal circuit diagnostic tool on top of a strata of stock replacement parts.
It was at the bottom of the bag where his expensive items were hidden. A drug tailored to the Jiralhanae physiology, it was a powerful euphoriant, but forbidden due to its tendency to cause episodes of extremely destructive mania in high doses. A few Jiralhanae could dose it responsibly; most could not. Some particularly bloodthirsty warriors were fond of snorting very large doses before battles, deliberately inducing blind rampages of death. Only the very large and strong ones had good chances of surviving such a thing, but Jiralhanae were not known for a strong self-preservation instinct.
As long as they ain't taking it while I'm in the room, I'll sell as much as they'll buy.
Hissrad tucked his head down just a little, hiding his face a bit further in his breath mask. It wasn't probable that he would be recognized, but he was older than the average Unggoy usually got a chance to grow to, and the adult scales around his eyes might betray him as someone suspicious. With his posture and gait otherwise about as relaxed and confident as one would expect from an Unggoy, he wasn't too worried about drawing further attention to himself. The guard at the hallway door accepted his faked area pass easily.
He approached the rendezvous point nonchalantly, but carefully. The large feeding room was central to the northern wing of this building, and there was a group of two Jiralhanae and one Kig-Yar hunched around a table on the periphery of the colossal hall - far enough from the central mass of hungry Covenant personnel to have few observers, but near enough to make it obvious if a fight were to break out.
"Ahh... at last, our friend joins us," the taller Jiralhanae rumbled, speaking the Covenant common tongue.
"Yeah," Hissrad replied, dragging out a chair and awkwardly climbing onto it. "Well? I got your thing. You got mine?"
"Mmhm." The brute leaned forward. "Show me."
"You first."
The Jiralhanae glared angrily, but reached under the table for an equally nondescript bag stashed there. "Special power cells. Like the model number you said," he growled. "They weren't cheap."
"Give me one," Hissrad demanded, cursing his squeaky voice for the thousandth time. "I want to make sure."
The Kig-Yar growled, grating and halting, like a screech and a cough mixed together. Shit. I can't make them too angry, but I can't look too weak, either...
The other Jiralhanae - a younger one, or at least smaller - reached into the bag, retrieving a small cylinder about 8cm long and 4cm wide. He passed it over to Hissrad, an annoyed expression on his face.
This one, at least, was the genuine deal. They were technically a prototype, designed for very long-term or high-output scenarios - battles where a sniper might need to fire hundreds of beamshots or a Sangheili knight might need to swing a sword hundreds of times.
"Alright, then." Hissrad set his bag on the ground, nudging it over to beside the Jiralhanae's chair with one hoof.
Jiralhanae tended to laugh in a very low pitch. This led to many believing that Unggoy couldn't hear it, since it was so far out of their vocal range. However, the truth was that, as prey animals, Unggoy had very good hearing across a very wide register.
Hissrad's erstwhile business partner definitely chuckled as he handed over the other bag, instantly setting Hissrad's scales on edge.
It's a scam, his instincts screamed. I'm being shorted, and probably framed.
He looked in the bag as soon as it was in his hands. Just by eye, he could tell that most of the power cells in it were fakes. Did they really expect to fool an expert in this trade?!
The Jiralhanae's hand was already on the straps of the bag Hissrad had passed to him.
Gotta work fast!
Like lightning, Hissrad was on his feet and slipping a crude scrap-metal knife from a hidden pocket in his fake engineering suit. He jammed it straight into the back of the Jiralhanae's hand, giving the bag a firm yank as he did so.
The Jiralhanae roared, more in shock and anger than pain. Hissrad's plan paid off, however: the hand on the bag-strap fell loose. Of course, this sent Hissrad stumbling backwards, but he was good at rolling with a fall - he was back up on all four limbs in the blink of an eye, the bag strapped securely around his torso.
With an angry Jiralhanae behind him, and the attention of the whole mess hall on his back, there was no time to think. Hissrad took off at his fastest sprint, staying on all fours for the absolute maximum of speed and agility an Unggoy could manage.
But I won't get anywhere against those long Jiralhanae legs, or those jumping Kig-Yar, on sprinting alone. He dashed for the most crowded corridor he could see, weaving between bodies and various pairs of legs with a grace that most would be surprised to see from his kind. Gotta stay low, gotta go where they won't go...
He ducked around a corner, entering a quieter corridor. If his mental map was accurate - and it usually is - he was entering dangerous territory, one of the barracks and staging area zones for the actual frontline military personnel deploying out of Ealen IV.
However, this could also potentially deter his pursuers. Sangheili warriors tended to treat Unggoy like rats - incurably unpleasant and not really worth chasing down to kill, unless they'd done something exceedingly offensive. But, as a rule of thumb, Sangheili hated Jiralhanae, and Jiralhanae hated them right back. They would pick fights over virtually any offense, real or imagined, no matter how slight; and the fights often ended in deaths.
But the pounding feet behind him didn't stop.
Not good, not good. Forerunners only know how I'm getting out of this one... hey, there's a corridor I don't know. Hissrad could feel the burning in his respiratory tract, and the buzzing whine from the methane pump in his backpack. Can't do this much longer! Whatever's down there, I hope it's scary enough to keep these pricks off me!
The pursuers must have halted, because the sound behind him faded out. Not even the normal pedestrian traffic of the Unggoy labor-hordes and their Kig-Yar or Sangheili foremen remained. The ambient sound of the facility was different here, too; the eternal hiss of the air ducts was overtaken by an irregular deep rumbling.
Even the clack of his hooves on the flooring was muted.
Are these floor plates reinforced or something?
At that moment, a thunderous boom shook the corridor as a door - so thick and broad that Hissrad had mistaken it for an oddly textured section of wall - slammed open.
A hulking tower of a figure stepped out from the dim shadows beyond - a leviathan of a beast, one that could play with Sangheili and Jiralhanae as if they were toy dolls. Hissrad tried frantically to backpedal, but the thing's arm was twice as long as he was tall; a single ponderous sweep was enough to knock him over and pick him up like he weighed nothing at all.
It didn't even have hands. The blueish woven-metal cloth that covered its skin simply terminated in a stump, and scaley orange tendrils protruded from several holes in the material, wrapping tightly around Hissrad's torso. It was unusual for any other member of the Covenant to see such a creature without heavy battle armor, but its stature alone was unmistakable.
Oh. Oh... Forerunners, if I die now, I'm sorry for every crime I ever did commit...
The Mgalekgolo lifted Hissrad higher, drawing him up to eye-level. Hissrad almost vomited at the sight of the eye embedded one of the snakes, comparatively small by the size of the whole colony organism, but far too large to fit naturally in the head of a much smaller component creature.
"Unggoy..." it crooned, and the thrumming reverberation of its voice rattled Hissrad's teeth. "Dens no place for these... so small, break when stepped on..."
"I can dodge feet," Hissrad muttered, and then immediately regretted it.
"Hmm... Unggoy knows Golo? Unusual..."
A rumbling that shook Hissrad's bones came from the room beyond, and was joined by two other voices. These, Hissrad couldn't have made out if he tried; Unggoy hearing only went about halfway down the Mgalekgolo vocal range. Mgalekgolo usually upshifted their speaking a little so as not to unsettle smaller beings with constant infrasonic exposure, but between their own, they had little reason to do so.
The behemoth that held him cocked its head, and there was a grotesque shifting in the snakes of the neck, just above where they burrowed beneath the cloth of the suit. "Familiar smell," it intoned. "My sister says she knows this one."
The word caught Hissrad off guard, as it was from the Covenant-common dialect, not the Golo language. "Sister?" He wriggled in the thing's grip, though his efforts were for naught. "Since when do Mgalekgolo have females?"
"Since when do Mgalekgolo have males?" Hissrad couldn't help but read an amused cadence in the deep voice. "These are your words, Covenant, not ours."
"Fuckin' fair enough. Can you put me down now?"
"Not yet, Unggoy." The voice was almost identical, but Hissrad had learned early in his career to tell people apart by any cues possible.
Another titan emerged from the shadows behind the first. This one was taller still, by at least half a unit; large even by the standards of a species whose infantry were tactically equivalent to armored siege vehicles.
"Liar, yes?"
Hissrad stiffened. "You know me? You know Bahalon?"
"You know Golo."
"I mean, I do, it's part of my line of work," Hissrad snapped. "Didn't even think any of you could hear the average Bahalon register, let alone learn the language. Not even more than half of us Unggoy know it, these days!"
"Line of work, yes. Smuggler, contraband broker. We met once," the taller Mgalekgolo rumbled. "You are named Liar. I asked you smuggle weapons."
"Hiss-rad, I know what it means, trust me. Shit... I haven't worked with one of you big guys - girls? In, what, twelve cycles? That was you, huh?" He rolled his eyes. "That was a rough job, by the way, back there at High Charity. Holy Guards were crawling the whole sector, almost like they'd been tipped off. Getting your stuff through that was a nightmare and I should have demanded a better deal."
"Past is not open to negotiate, Liar."
"Really? Even though the weapons I was running were found on bodies during the Unggoy uprising that happened just a handful of units after?" Hissrad sneered, pushing his luck. "I wonder what the Holy Guards would have to say about that, if they knew."
"You have much nerve, little Liar. Threaten us in our own den." The Mgalekgolo that held him shifted, tightening its grip slightly, and Hissrad struggled to draw his next breath. "Be glad, you are useful to us."
Hissrad wriggled as he sucked methane. "Useful? Useful how?"
"No love of Covenant law... no fear of Holy Guards."
"I dunno, no fear is a pretty strong way to phrase it, I wouldn't go around kicking their hooves or anything..."
"You break law. Good enough." The 'sister' turned, and twitched her arm, a very expressive gesture for a creature of leviathan proportions. "Come. Should not discuss in corridor."
The other Mgalekgolo moved to follow, stepping through the colossal metal blast doors with Hissrad still trapped in its fist. The den beyond was dark and misty, and almost cold enough for an Unggoy to survive without an environment suit.
"Oh, hell," he muttered, as the doors boomed shut behind them. "And I just had to run my mouth again..."
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