Death was not what Noble Six had expected. At first it had been darkness and oblivion, and for the briefest moment he had felt… peace, a solemn acceptance of dark stagnation. The spartan reckoned he wouldn't mind an eternity of this. Certainly it was preferable to the oft analogized hereafter of fire and brimstone he had at first anticipated. Given his history he had no other expectation. Yet it seemed this was not to be the conclusive end he had awaited. As quickly as he came upon this sense of serene solemnity, it was taken and thrown upside down in a kaleidoscopic surge of relentless assault on his returning senses.

The incoherent screams of alarm klaxons and the searing flash of emergency lighting was a rude and unexpected awakening for the surviving member of Noble Team as he suddenly regained consciousness with a rushed intake of breath, and a hacking cough as he expunged bloodied phlegm from battered lungs. Fresh adrenaline surged through his body as the spartan-III bolted upright from his sprawl in the blood and gore left in the wake of his supposed death, bewildered at the blurred corridor of the Covenant battlecruiser and the mangled dead. If still doubtful of his continued life, the deep ache he felt from his wounds and the presence of the slaughtered and very deceased aliens around him was sufficient enough to reaffirm the realization that he was still amongst the living.

The spartan fell forward as his fatigued system flooded with fresh chemicals, wiping the polychromatic slurry of variegated viscera from his face as he sent a gauntlet rummaging through the carnage for his helmet. It was with great effort that he forced down the bubbling mass of questions he felt thundering at the precipice of his attention. His attempted suicide had been abstained by his best guess, though the reason for such an abstention was as of yet beyond his discovery. Now was not the time for such distraction the spartan decided, clearing his vision with one final drag of a gauntlet across his eyes to fully reveal a scene of utter devastation.

The corridor, dark but for the flashing emergency lights, was scattered with bodies. Dead in all aspects, but a few he hazard might have only been rendered unconscious as he had been. He imagined that upon waking, they would not be nearly as calm and coherent as himself. The idea of a not inconsiderable number of ill-tempered and fanatical aliens regaining awareness while he was so plainly disadvantaged was not a pleasant consideration. In that he thought of the kukri sheathed to his left pauldron, but there was considerable risk of rousing the currently cataleptic throng if he tried any knife work. And in his current condition, he had doubts in regards to his survival. True that had not been a cause for concern for him previously, after all death had been the intent of this entire spectacle. Yet now he was not so eager for an end, at least not until he was able to figure out this new curiosity.

So it was, burdened by such grave contemplations, that the spartan felt a surge of relief as his probing fingers brushed against a hollow, semispherical mass in front of him. Grabbing it by the rim he picked up his helmet and turned it over to empty. A thick deluge of unpleasant fluid spilled from his helm and after a moment of consideration of its wet interior and the visor now adorned in a bold fracture splitting down the center, the spartan forewent his initial plan and secured it to the mag holster at his waist.

He found his MA37 not a foot away from him, the butt of the rifle's stock barely visible in the pool of fluids collected by the sloped delineations in the deck. Gripping the weapon by its rugged frame, he pointed the barrel toward the deck and gave it a rough whack with an open palm, watching as a spurt of blue blood spewed from its rifled maw. The spartan brought it close to examine, and after quickly cleaning the charge handle and loading a round, he aimed at the closest body and pulled the trigger.

The loud report of the weapon in the confines of the ship's corridor echoed through the silence, a reassuring and welcomed sound as he shouldered the battered, sodden, and yet still reliable instrument of war. Say what one might about utilitarian manufacturers, the reliability of their product was indisputable. Human weaponry was designed much like their vehicles and starships, and could be prescribed to three modest schools of thought, simple, reliable, and powerful. And while the Covenant may have had a fixation for pretentious artistry with their bulbous starships and sculpted tools of war, and while their equipment was undoubtedly of an alien sophistication currently unattainable by human technology, he'd rather kill his enemies with weapons forged by human hands.

The act had a fairly theatrical poetry that he rather enjoyed, made the task of slaying mankind's enemies that much more… satisfying. After all, there was nothing quite like witnessing what hollow point munitions could do to the varied biology of Covenant species.

But such thoughts were wandering and not fit for consideration given the nature of his immediate situation, and the spartan was quick to banish them in an effort to focus on the present.

Now, should the situation escalate even further than it already had, the odds would at least be somewhat impartial. The spartan brushed a gauntlet across his tactical harness as he lurched heavily to his full height, counting his remaining magazines and diverting a small portion of his mental processes to generating a hypothesis on his predicament.

B312 scanned the peculiarly contoured alien architecture of the battlecruiser's hallway and sent his mind to task in attempting to unveil just exactly why it was he remained alive. The oscillating shriek of the klaxons told him that something had occurred, whether that was a result of his plan, or an as of yet calculated variable, was a deduction that was too prepubescent to be forming. If it had happened as calculated, if this was the result of the makeshift bomb he had crafted from the cruiser's damaged fusion reactor and Shaw-Fujikawa drive, then by all means they should all be very, very dead. The Covenant battlecruiser, and himself by extension, should have been reduced to little more than free-floating atoms in solar winds.

If Noble Six could be confident of only one thing, it was that an event had most certainly transpired, and whatever it was had triggered unintended consequences. The spartan-III stood in the stillness of the alien corridor, the silence broken only by the rough interjection of emergency sirens, and wondered just how things had changed. He certainly could not stay where he was, he was after all still aboard an enemy ship full of fanatical religious aliens. It would only be a matter of course before he encountered ones that were not incapacitated. How he could change this fact however, was a solution beyond what he could presently devise.

Deliberating heavily on his next course of action, he detected movement in his vicinity. The spartan drew his weapon upon the figure struggling to reach the top of a nearby pile of bodies. Disbelief was the core of his emotions as he watched the battered but somehow still animated zealot field marshal drag himself to his feet, or so at least until several others boiled over.

The spartan struck immediately.

With a bullet-quick lunge, he grabbed the marshal by the collar of his combat harness and pinned him to the wall, spreading his mandibles wide with the barrel of the assault rifle shoved into his mouth. The spartan reflexively squeezed the trigger, full prepared and ready to splatter the wall with alien grey matter. But it was his immense discipline that prevented him from actually discharging his weapon.

Well that of course, and the influx of panicked words that suddenly emerged from the sangheili's comm unit in a broken garble of corrupted static.

"Marsh… umai… what i… …r status? Are …still …bat effecti… …? Report…. …. crash…. surface…. world…. .assi …. ar… under assault….. unknown…. ….. determined…. be… … hostile… situation untenable..."

The message repeated, in an even more broken and incomprehensible state, until eventually it petered off into distorted static. The spartan remained unmoving, attempting to decode the gibberish into some form of serviceable intelligence. Meanwhile his prisoner was silent, although he was uncertain whether or not to attribute that to the alien's unusual patience or the weapon currently lodged in his mouth.

As he pondered, the spartan felt his helmet vibrate at his waist, a moment of indecision passed before he shifted his body, keeping his rifle in position and using his left shoulder to keep the alien pinned in place as he grabbed his helmet and tipped it forward to read the flickering Heads Up Display.

What he then noticed was sufficient to give him considerable pause, his motion tracker surging with activity. And the little dots were neither the bright yellow of friendly IFF signatures nor the deep red of hostile sensor pings. He studied the swarm of white, anomalous signal returns meandering the narrow corridors towards their position and began to think. Judging by his calculation there was perhaps a minute before the unregistered IFF's reached visual and auditory range.

The appearance of such an irregularity, when measured with the recent string of inconsistencies that had been occurring so rapidly, was enough of a warning for the spartan to reevaluate his priorities.

Now, Six felt in an uncharacteristic moment of reluctant clarity, that for the first time in many years this was not the hour for his usual conduct. Something was at play here, a developing scenario that his instincts told him had changed the field of play. And perhaps it was the barest notion of insubstantial tolerance he felt towards this alien that proved to be the initial detractor. He was, after all, the most persistent sangheili Noble Six had ever encountered, and the first not to continuously spew religious madness from mandibled jaws. Or perhaps more realistically, it was his understanding that something fundamentally strange had just occurred, and the laws of reality as he knew them might not be the same as they had been before he had awoke.

Nevertheless the spartan's glare was hateful and cruel as he matched the shark-like eyes of the sangheili warrior that stared silently in turn, his expression remarkably calm considering the weapon jammed down his throat. The greater part of him wanted this monster to die, if for no other reason but the satisfaction it would give him. However, during training he had been often recognized as the greatest nonlinear logistician in his company, both during practice ops and academic courses. In those days of endless drills and brutal exercises he had learned a great deal about himself and what he was willing to do to ensure victory. And since then B312 had figured himself a survivor, by any and all means necessary.

It was true as well that he had no qualms with death, and if it was in the best interest of humanity he would not hesitate to meet his end. And for a moment, he thought that time had come, but the current evolution of events made the thought of his demise… intolerable. He could not die yet, not at least until he knew what was happening, till he had answers for his unspoken questions. And if his discovers probed to be actionable, something he could use, then he would prioritize returning to command, however that might have been possible.

Meanwhile, as he debated on his merits of his increasingly detestable prospects, the tracker flickered brighter in warning that soon his decision would have to be made regardless of his personal opinions, and he could hear movement in the corridor far to his left, the cautious pace of armored footsteps steadily advancing upon their position.

And in that moment, the spartan decided that he was no longer prepared to die.

"Do you want to die?" The spartan asked bluntly, waiting to see if his alien antagonist would share the same sentiment, neither possessing the time nor patience for the verbose rhetoric this particular alien seemed to enjoy. The spartan then waited, finger clutched around the trigger, until after an exasperatingly long stretch of inertness, the sangheili warrior slowly shook his head in the negative. B312 paused, contemplating the absolute irrationality of his decision and the sanity of his intellectual acuities, before reluctantly withdrawing his weapon from a creature whose species he had hated for more than ten years of bloodstained conflict.

His stomach recoiled at the very concept of sparing the alien before him, what was a being that propagated a genocidal campaign against humanity, responsible for the deaths of an incalculable number of human lives. Yet he was not so blind as to ignore the truth that he was only skirting a thin line between life and death, a line that was weakening as seconds passed. Pain was something he could ignore, a constant that had been rendered into an unimportant triviality for him, however the slight haze around his vision, and the weakness in his hands as he held his rifle told an undeniable truth.

Right now he had become a liability to his own success.

The mindless chatter of a grunt suddenly erupted from the corridor to their left, the alien babbling in its coarse language. Its tone seemed inquisitive, bearing the inherent confusion of its species.

And then it screamed.

The spartan flinched imperceptibly as the corridor erupted into violent sound, inundated with a sharp snap-fizzle he'd never heard before but instinctively recognized as the discharge of some form of unidentified weapon system. Silence preceded, broken then by several voices erupting into laughter. And then they spoke, in a lilting, foreign tongue, and Noble Six's decision was made.

The spartan fought viciously to restrain his frustration as he reached down and shoved a blood-soaked plasma rifle into the saurian beast's four fingered clutches, the act of arming his greatest adversary a cruel irony he certainly did not savor. The temptation in that moment to unload the weapon at point-blank range was… noteworthy, but it was to his immense regret that discipline won the day. He did not have to like it to accept it. And if he could use the damned alien then he would stomach the blow to his humanity, whatever remained. Survival was his prerogative, and so long as that goal was achieved he could endure his aversion.

The sangheili looked down at the item forced upon him, his twisting jaws whirling into what was perhaps a contemplative mein, before his grip solidified and he offered deferential nod at the towering spartan. Good. It seemed that the creature recognized their situation and was willing to allow survival to take precedence over personal opinion.

As satisfied as he was ever likely to be from a situation that was so utterly fucked as to be preposterous, Noble Six retreated from the alien to put space between them, and gestured for the hulking creature to take front. Regardless of his suspect sanity, the spartan was not so foolish as to place the damned thing at his back.

The alien nodded once more, seeing the wisdom of silence and signaled that they both withdraw to the mouth of the hall behind them, where they might wait and see the approaching party from a better position.

The concept of taking tactical advice from a sangheili he had already tried to kill on two separate occasions was a novel one, and the spartan pondered for a moment before ultimately agreeing, following after the zealot and trying to resist the urge to billet a round in the back of his exposed skull. He did smirk however, as the elite paused briefly before utilizing the piled corpses of its brethren as cover. Taking position further back and slightly to the left, Noble Six donned his helmet after a moment of reluctant thought, ignoring the repellently slick feeling of the advantageously placed padding as he reconnected its auxiliary battery to his Mjolnir's fusion reactor. The stutter of the HUD was then wiped away in the surge of power, restoring his supplementary combat systems with the soft trill of booting software.

He frowned when, as the tertiary HUD elements connected, his Mjolnir's shields did not join the listed series of reactivated systems. A curt glance at his armor did not reveal any serious damages that might have been responsible, which was both reassuring, and problematic. He was not exactly in a position to strip his gear and effect repairs, and he had no idea when next, if ever, that he might expect to receive such an opportunity. This left him in an even less savory position, and the spartan had to school his bubbling irritation in order to focus on more prevalent concerns.

The intersecting corridor in front of him and his reluctant companion flickered with new radiance as several separate beams of white light pierced through the crimson hue of the emergency lighting. The voices grew in volume, until distinct speakers could be heard, and as before, their speech was foreign, oddly lilting and yet somewhat… animalistic.

The sangheili in front of him crouched lower upon hearing, rifle readied in steady palms, and the spartan joined his preparedness, noting that whatever they were saying was not being translated by his Mjolnir's operating system. This meant, alarmingly enough, that they spoke in no recorded Covenant dialect, and study of the elite's response revealed that he did not recognize it either.

That alone was enough to trigger several alarm bells in the spartan's head, joining the cacophony that had been ringing since he came upon this madness. If he had been unsure of his rationality before, now his soundness of mind was all but contested by uncertainty. Nevertheless B312 remained silent and calculative as the first of the unknown force rounded the corner, his VISR system polarizing to cut through the bright luminary of the leading figure. And as he made out the outline, he was… confused.

The armored profile of the being was unnervingly human, even the segmented plate structure of the armor was somewhat recognizable. Unlike Covenant species, there was a distinct overlap between whatever creature this was, and the unmistakable framework of the human form. Yet before he could draw any hesitant conclusions, something flicked at its rear and all sense of normalcy shattered.

A thick protrusion weaved idly from its sprouted position at the creature's lower back, a tail the spartan eventually realized in weary hindsight, and after a moment of weighty skepticism. What features this new being might have possessed were hidden underneath an elongated red helmet with a reflective black visor, but whatever they may have been, Noble Six knew they would undoubtedly be as alien as the four mandibled jaw structure of his newest and most reluctant companion.

The spartan watched as, after a quick glance about the corridor, it barked a terse sentence, presumably to its cohorts who then filed in shortly after in a hurried lack of discipline that might have disgusted Noble Six if he had not been so focused on the weapons brandished by these new arrivals. Once more he was surprised, more so however with the continued familiarity. The rifle was… not unusual, its frame irrefutably similar to the weapon he held, although with a short cut stock and no visible input for a magazine or recognizable ammunition type.

Like the first of their kind, they wore a seemingly universal armor permutation, which was not so much a set of heavy plates over a uniform as a dedicated hardsuit not dissimilar to what he had seen in some ONI black projects and in ODST battle dress uniforms in the early years of the war, before supply had been unable to meet demand and less impressive options had to be considered. While interesting, that was not as disquieting as when he noticed that a few of their number did not possess tails, or did, but were of varying length and thickness, insinuating that there was more than one species present. The idea that he had stumbled across another multi-species hegemony was a rather sour one to stomach.

Almost immediately, a rapid fire dialogue erupted between them as they took in the wholesale slaughter. And as they bickered, B312 began to plan, though his thoughts were conflicted by the unknowability of the situation. Judging from the audible demise of a grunt before their arrival, he could assume some animosity between this new faction and the Covenant. But drawing such a conclusion was hurried and little more than wild extrapolation at best. The zealot marshal, judging from his intense stare and initial reaction, did not seem to recognize these new contenders for the spartan's ever expanding list of adversaries and Noble Six was uncertain as to whether to be amused or concerned about this turnabout.

Regardless of his opinion, this presented itself as a problem. At the moment he and the elite went unnoticed as the armored creatures examined the once embattled corridor, studying the bodies and rummaging through the assorted weapons and items left scattered after the fact. But there was no telling how long they would be overlooked. Nor could he be certain that this was the only foreign party aboard the battlecruiser. It was likely, from conjecture formed by what little information he had scrounged so far, that the ship could infested by these new aliens.

A sharp blast and flash of green light forced the spartan to duck low, thinking that they had been discovered and he readied to make his stand. Yet as he readied his weapon and brought it to bear, he found his worry to be unfounded.

One of their number, seemingly the first that had entered, took a step toward the molten hole it had just punched into the wall and warbled some unknowable sentence in a clearly impressed tone as it experimentally weighed the cooling plasma pistol in its left hand. It turned then, brandishing the weapon towards its companions and chattering in a rapid-fire diatribe of indecipherable gibberish.

Its fellows crowded around it, murmuring at the flaunted device, before hurriedly dispersing to acquire their own from the wide diversity of armaments lying in the bloodshed, callously shifting the bodies of the dead in their quest to acquire a toy of their own.

The spartan felt something shift at his side, and it was attributed only to his superhuman reflexes that he was able to catch hold of the sangheili warrior's neck before he charged out and revealed their position. Already weakened by his injuries, it was with monumental effort that he subdued the enraged elite without alerting the looting creatures with the violent clamor of abused metal. In that regard he had the klaxons to thank for masking the brief nature of their scuffle.

B312, aware of the immediate need for sound discipline, unsheathed the kukri he had taken from Noble Four and pressed it hard against the alien's throat in an unquestionable gesture. The intent behind his actions was clear. Regardless of his vulnerability traveling alone, he had no qualms with opening the damned thing's throat right here and now if it jeopardized his survival.

Once more his doubt surged as he questioned the elite's existence and its utility to his. Thus far it was proving far more trouble than it was worth. Better to kill it now, he supposed with an unacted shrug as he prepared to sanction the finishing blow.

"Please…"

A hoarse voice whispered underneath him as he readied himself for the act.

"I do not yet wish to die."

The spartan paused, the curvature of the kukri's etched blade cutting into the hide-like skin of the elite's throat, and he looked down at the somber countenance of his foe through a shattered visor. There was something in its eyes, a comprehending clarity that struck a chord somewhere inside him.

Slowly, jerkily, the spartan pulled his blade away and removed his knee from the elite's chest. He sheathed the knife and sluggishly paced back, a flicker of a memory ghosting across his consciousness as he watched the alien rise to his feet, offering a tentative air of silent gratitude.

Please….

I don't want to die…..

The translucent impression of familiar images danced behind his eyes before B312 forced the retentions down into the abyss of his unwanted memories, slamming the walls of his iron discipline into place and forcing himself to focus on the present. The spartan cuffed the elite on the shoulder, flicking his helmet to emphasize the empty hall behind them. Right now confrontation was inadvisable, and with the new objective to reach the nearest hanger, they need not yet provoke hostility.

After all, something told the spartan that soon enough they would both have their fill of bloodshed. All that remained to be seen in his eyes, was whether or not the field marshal would be on opposing sides.

For the sake of retaining some kind of normality in this increasingly incomprehensible mess he had found himself in, he hoped the damned alien would make that mistake.

XX-XX-XX

When Lumi returned to the waking world, it was with a keen sense of irritable familiarity. The female sangheili was growing rather tired of this apparent pattern and wondered as she sat up, how many times it would be before something in her head stopped working right.

And as she came to, upon the sight of several bickering unggoy standing over her, she questioned whether or not that had already transpired.

"I think we run yes?" One suggested nervously, the diminutive creature twitching timidly as it looked about the cavernous hanger. The crackle of weapons fire lit the air, the familiar pulse of Covenant weaponry combating the strange fizzle of something she could not yet identify.

The vast room was not as Lumi remembered, many ships had been torn from their cradles to lay in twisted heaps, with bodies interspaced between, their forms similarly contorted and broken as they lay unmoving. Yet, what perhaps was more alarming even over the devastation, was the warm yellow glow that had overtaken the purplish hue of the light crystals in their mountings, a harsh intruding light that shone in from the direction of the energy barriers that separated them from the harshness of space, or would have if not for the unsettling interpolation of natural light.

"No! Great Marshal entrusted this impor-tant task to Nipnup! Nipnup not break oath."

The sangheili scientist, now standing, fought a bout of nausea as she took in the dramatically altered environment. Her sudden rise unnoticed by the preoccupied, squabbling methane breathers, she shaded her eyes from the intruding light and listened.

She could hear the cacophony of conflict and pinpointed the source, of all places, to be worryingly close, although it was impossible to make out exactly where over the loud arguing of the unggoy. Lumi stepped away, leaving them behind as she searched for the source of the intruding noise, wandering far away as she honed in on the disturbance. As she drew near Lumi was just able to discern distinct sounds from the clamor, before the answer itself came screaming at her.

Lumi blinked as a bright red light traced across her peripheral, coalescing into a pearlescent beam of rubicund energy that flew right over her shoulder and slammed into the hull of a phantom still hovering in its moored grav field. The high powered lance of energy punched through its nanolaminate plating and gutted the shuttle from front to back in a luminescent detonation, the overpressure of the explosion throwing the young sangheili to the floor as a gout of purplish flame erupted from the transports side doors. Although frozen by the initial surprise, she was quick to spur herself to action in a scramble to get away from the now falling wreckage as it listed out of its containment field.

She barely escaped from under the tilting beast of metal as it slammed into the deck at her heels, chasing her off with a rapid pop of secondary explosions. Yet there was no reprieve as in her blind haste she collided with a small figure, falling over the unsuspecting unggoy in a graceless heap.

"Ah, there you is!" The little creature screeched happily in broken common as it waddled over and gently grabbed her by the shoulder. "Nipnup was to thinking that he had lost you, but gods seeming favor Nipnup today!" It continued to chatter at the concussed female as he and another arriving member of his species began to drag her behind the wreck of another phantom although thankfully this one was not rippling with fire and explosions.

"Nipnup was going to say, it too dangerous to be wandering." The unggoy chided the female sangheili, who even propped against the warped prow of a fallen transport ship, still loomed over its diminutive stature. "Many enemies outside, very angry, like buzzing Mud Wasps, zipping and zapping all about."

"Enemies? Outside?" Lumi groaned in confusion as she tried to piece her thoughts back together after the phantom nearly blew them apart.

"Yes, enemies. Not human, but still very mad. Shipmaster say they new, say nothing make sense, not stars, not planet, say to protect ship above all else. But Nipnup have impor-tant task from Great Marshal. Nipnup protect you!" He declared proudly, with a thump of a fist against his chest.

"Protect me? Great Marshal?" The words of an unggoy were hard to understand at the best of times, even more so now with all this noise. With an exasperated huff of frustration, she pushed away from the nattering unggoy and their nonsensical words. Her thoughts still bounced about in her head, disorganized and fleeting, unable to knit together long enough to form a coherent string of consciousness.

She looked outwards, towards where the energy barriers should have been, but were not. And she could finally see the drastic extent of their situation. The exuberant glow was indeed the byproduct of a yellow dwarf star that shone brightly above the gaping maw of the battlecruiser's main hanger section. The barriers were down, allowing as she could now see, the noise of outside conflict to be heard.

Lumi was able to just make out the uninterrupted canopy of a far off tree line, and as her attentions drew inward she could see a wasteland of uprooted plants and dirt, her analytical mind recognizing the wake of an orbital-to-atmospheric crash landing. Though, in truth it would not take anyone of significant intelligence to deduce the result. That was not so much her concern as the visible deployment of infantry and armor located outside the ship's hull, exchanging fire with an unseen force taking shelter in the jungle terrain.

That was her focus.

Not human, she recalled as the unggoy said, a possible reality considering the rare distribution of energy weapons in previous theaters. It was largely recognized that human technology had not progressed to the extent where large scale deployment of thermodynamic weaponry was feasible. And no self-respecting covenant force would dain to use such primitive tools, not since their mastery over plasmic matter.

Primitive, but more advanced than human technology she noted with concern as a trio of particularly vibrant lances of energy erupted from the jungle and gutted the housing of a Type-26 Assault Gun Carriage, or less verbosely, a wraith as the humans called it. Oft she preferred their simplistic naming conventions. Regardless of its extensive nomenclature, the onslaught of focused thermal energy had only moderate difficulty in piercing the mighty Covenant war machine. While the first shot was flattened and absorbed by the nanolaminate armor, the second and third were able to compound on the same point of contact and breach the crew housing.

The metal beast floundered under its mortal wound, toppling heavily to its left as power cut from its systems and the tank belched thick acrid smoke into the air. She watched in awe, as the vehicle plunged into the dirt of this alien world, casting a great spray of upturned soil before its propulsion drive overloaded and vaporized a small kig-yar phalanx, scattering body parts and molten metal for meters in all directions.

"Young Miss, is not safe." The most commanding of the unggoy muttered anxiously as it waddled over and tugged on her suit sleeve. "We must be getting you to safety."

While her profession might have involved walking battlefields to examine the technology of the Covenant's foes, she'd never been on one that was… active.

Seeing such callous death traded with such flagrant violence…

Lumi could not summon the words or thoughts to describe her feelings. She could remember the eagerness with which she listened to the stories of old warriors visiting her family's keep, often from a distance as such words were not proper in the presence of young females. Their tales had been of the beauty of battle, the pride of facing against worthy foes.

There was no glory or battle hymns, all she saw was horrid death and all she could hear were the screams of the dying and the harsh, guttural commands of sangheili war marshals as they directed the defense.

This… this was madness.

XX-XX-XX

Nipnup looked upon the muddied field of battle, unto the mindless barbarity of war, and sighed heavily to himself. He found no horror or fear in what was his gods-given profession. Unlike his brothers he was not afraid to die. If his purpose was to be sacrificed as a pawn, then he had resolved to the best pawn the gods could ever ask for. He would dedicate his very existence to proving the other species of the Covenant wrong. He would not snivel and cower like a weakling. Too many of his kin had fallen to such ignoble ends. He would show the filthy kig-yar that the unggoy were not just cannon fodder, and he would prove to the sangheili the worthiness of the natives of Balaho.

The Great Marshal, he saw worth in Nipnup, the only one of his kind that had ever bothered to see past his poor education and simple mannerisms. And for that the little unggoy was prepared to die for him.

So, the mission to oversee a young female seemed rather lackluster in comparison. Yet if it would make the Marshal happy, then Nipnup would do his best to see it through to the end.

The diminutive unggoy waddled close and reached up once more, this time firmly grabbing hold of the numbed female's sleeve. "Come… come…" He urged resignedly, leading her away from the sight and deeper into the relatively safe depths of the hanger. "Nipnup will protect you, he not fail The Great Marshal."

"Who is this Great Marshal you keep jabbering about?" The sangheili female demanded heatedly, though she allowed herself to be corralled by the small creature.

The unggoy endured her ire placidly. He understood that this was her first time seeing the truth of war, and so he did not take offense at her petulance. She was young, brought up with stories of glory and martial pride. He had also been raised with such false testament. And he remembered his first battle well. It had been nothing like the stories told to him by his deacon. He could still hear the ragged breathing and numerous chattering of his blood-kin as they shuffled into the assault ship under the harsh gaze of their sangheili minder.

And he would never forget the hot lash of blood on his face as he watched brothers that had hatched from his nest, gunned down by the fire and fury of human retaliation as they were corralled into the pitiless maw of their weapon emplacements. And it had been in that moment, as the burning sting of primitive munitions lodged into his side, that he realized they had been used, tossed carelessly into a fortified position simply because they had been deemed to have no other purpose than to exhaust the supplies of their enemy.

It had been the Great Marshall that had pulled him from death, away from the ruthless barrage of human death dealing. And even though he knew that the Marshal did not remember the name of the unggoy he had pulled from the fire, Nipnup would never forget the one who saved him.

"Great Marshal is name Ju'das Rasumai." The unggoy spouted proudly. After the battle he had made sure to learn the name of his savior, and even as his sangheili commander beat him for his impudence for demanding of a superior officer, he branded the name of his hero into his heart. He had spent hours in the communal quarters rehearsing the name so that he could speak it fluently, although he would never dare utter it in his presence. This was the first time he had ever spoken the name in the company of another being.

"You mean to say, that your Great Marshal is the Ju'das Rasumai?" She asked quietly, her voice shadowed by the faintest tone of disbelief. "The one who had slain the human demon of Polymous? Who singlehandedly secured the allegiance of the kig-yar pirate queens? …Who masterminded the defeat of The Banished in numerous battles during the skirmish of the Aleian Rift? That Ju'das Rasumai?

"Yep."

"And he asked you to protect me?"

"Yep, yep!"

Nipnup nodded eagerly.

The sangheili female's mandibles flexed in consternation, no doubt in awe at his pure awesomeness and at his worth to the greatest of the greats. A sense of accomplishment rose within him and he took a deep drag of methane from his breathing harness, chest inflating with pride at her unintended reminder.

The Great Marshal had given him a task and no matter the obstacle, he would not fail.

XX-XX-XX

War… an ancestral constant of society, the perpetual variable absolutely necessary for the advancement of civilization. The greatest reforms and most powerful of technologies were born of the conflagration, conflict the propagator of progress. And its foundries were fueled by the common people. It was a cruel mistress, no amount of sacrifice be it by the multitude or the individual, was enough to sate its depravity. And not even a person with the strongest will could outmaneuver inevitability.

The Empire was never going to win the First Lylat War. That undeniable truth had been recognized in the many detailed and lengthy reports submitted by the various military analysts, financial advisors and intelligence operatives in the years preceding its instigation. They simply could not match the increasingly vertical production capacity or the vast personnel pool of their ancient enemy. The math had never been in their favor. The feds had more planets, more shipyards, more leaders, more soldiers, more… everything.

They had been repeatedly cautioned that any attempt at combating the growing power of the Lylatian Federation would result in nothing more than a protracted defeat.

Yet it was that one word that they had been looking for.

Protracted.

After years of repression, left to fester and die in the toxic wastes of a failing prison colony, left to endure the remorseless whims of cancer and the ungodly rate of infant mortality. To live on poisoned water and withered crops and watch as your children wasted away in front of you…

No.

They might not have victory, but they were more than satisfied with bloody defeat. They would make the feds pay for the sins of their fathers.

To General Bloodmaw the war had been a way to strike back at those who had condemned his people to unending sorrow, to make them pay for the children they had stolen from him and the loss of his wife, a wonderful female, kind and beautiful, yet unable to tolerate the unrelenting callousness of their reality. Even if took a thousand of his own soldiers, he would ensure that even one of those bastards from the federation might wake up one day without a father, or a son, mothers or daughters, it did not matter, so long as they might understand the depth of his loss.

During the First Lylat War none of the Empire's soldiers had been fighting to win.

They had been fighting to hurt.

And after their eventual defeat, after their armies had been bloodied, and their fleets shattered, they disappeared, to lick their wounds and make preparations. Years passed as they scavenged, bartered, and seized whatever resources they could find, martialing their forces in wait for new opportunity. Right now they were scattered, spread across a dozen worlds and countless hideouts throughout known and unknown space. Their fleets parceled in quiet sectors and their armies dispersed amid major population centers. The Remnant learned where the Empire had failed. They might not be able to defeat The Federation in a contest of brute strength, but there were many other ways to fight a war.

Every day they grew stronger, joined by people escaping the harsh environment of their homeworld, and even defectors disillusioned with Federation rule. This was, after all, not a time where they could afford to be meticulous with their prospects. They had moles in fed government, feeding them Intel on mothball yards and old bunkers filled with military surplus. They converted, gathering the sick and the destitute, they provided care, they fed and nurtured, securing in full the continuation of their work.

Bloodmaw did not bother to hold lofty expectations of ever really defeating The Federation, certainly not now. Their military leader was far too shrewd and experienced, cut and molded by the first war and honed to a sharper edge against the efforts of his insurgency. Such a fine tactician, with the quality and quantity of resources at his disposal, would be a hard foe to counter. And there was of course the Starfox team to consider, a mercenary company only in name, with an unshakable allegiance to Federation leadership.

They were no more mercenaries then he was a father.

As far as he was concerned they were just soldiers with higher wages and circumspect autonomy.

Without their interference he could have been confident in the possibility that they might be able to turn the tide. But through the years his undercover assets had been vigilant in their duties, and the reports they submitted were… less than favorable. Starfox's piloting skills were legendary, renowned far and wide as being the best pilots in the entire Lylat sector. And he was not so prideful as to ignore the reality, despite its fantastical nature. It was easy to question how a handful of pilots could possibly be as credible a threat as they were, but he had seen the material, spent countless hours watching and thinking and planning. There was an… art to their flying, a level of coordination and effortless synergy that seemed almost supernatural.

Alone they were a considerable threat to everything he had worked to build.

Starfox, with the resources and leadership of the Federation presented to him an insurmountable obstacle.

And now there was… this.

The remnant general studied the holo-table nestled deep inside his underground fortress on Fortuna, hidden from orbital scanning technology by the dense stratum of an unexploited copper deposit. The tunnel network was extensive, spanning more than a hundred kilometers under Animus, the world's largest, and most tectonically stable continent. It had taken months of work and thousands of hours of labor, even with the most modern excavation equipment and the latest in plasma drilling. Past the first layer of tunnels designed to be indiscernible from natural formations, and under a false stalagmite with a keypad lock holding a twenty digit code that changed biweekly and was known by only his most trusted officers, lay hidden the real depth of their efforts.

Barracks, infirmaries, motor pools, and even a launch facility nestled in the mouth of a waterfall, housing more than three thousand soldiers at any time with enough food and supplies to last for years in a siege. Too deep to crack with orbital bombardment and too well ventilated to force suffocation. If they were ever uncovered, it would be a long bloody campaign to root him from his operations here on this world. And even so he had more than a dozen plans to ensure his survival.

Yet none of his strategies had accounted for this.

Bloodmaw grunted to himself, scratching his scaled chin with an idle claw as he mused on this most unexpected of developments. He could not have predicted for an alien warship to fall on his head. But this was not altogether a bad thing. What most considered being calamity, he had learned to take as prospective opportunity.

The reptilian brought his attention back to the strategic display, shifting aside his concerns and dreams of vengeance. He continued to study the reports streaming into his station, reading the information packets sent by his officers and reviewing the footage sent to him in real time from various squad-linked tactical networks. His eyes, trained and honed by a thousand battlefields, sifted naturally through the chaos of rushed reports and the unreliable nature of soldier-portable recording devices, gathering and assorting the surge of information into viable intelligence.

He looked back to the initial scout reports as well, those formed after they had made contact with a roving patrol of the enemy not far from their crash site, and factored it into the plan steadily taking shape in his mind. First contact had been quite brief and no less informative. These creatures had proven to be incredibly hostile, engaging his recon units without hesitation or regard to the gravity of the situation. But that was almost expected. Bloodmaw had long grown used to unwarranted enmity.

He was more concerned with interpreting what little information he was able to gather so that he might formulate the appropriate plan to handle this situation. As it was, this was proving to be an issue even more complicated than his first predictions had projected. These… things, were proving to be equitably troublesome. Initial intelligence indicated a strict hierarchy amongst the enemy that was discernable despite the scarcity of information. It appeared that height was directly correlative to both command and tenacity in battle. These larger creatures seemed more shepherds than combat leaders, guiding their subordinates in a way that reflected their role as something akin to fodder, or a shield of flesh, though he was somewhat repulsed with the idea he could not deny its affect thus far.

To further complicate, enemy command elements possessed some form of personal shielding technology, an application of a ship mounted system that neither The Remnant nor The Federation had been able to produce in a portable capacity. Even more alarming was the realization that their weaponry utilized some form of plasmic energy that nullified modern armors entirely.

He had been quick to realize that in a one-to-one engagement they were technologically disadvantaged and from what video records could show, engaging the larger creatures in hand-to-hand was outright catastrophic. Thus far in the opening hours of this battle it was owed solely to their poor utilization of infantry tactics that he had been able to contend with these aliens.

With a thought he withdrew his preoccupied hand and swept it across the display, pushing up the forward skirmish elements of an armored division. Though lightly armored to degree that enemy handhelds could penetrate their plating, G-diffusion drives gave them the ability to hover over rough terrain, allowing the column to traverse the nearby hilltop and bring their anti-infantry cannons and rocket systems to bear on the enemy fortifications.

The jungle topography played to their advantage well. His soldiers had been training in the environment for months, running exercises and drills in the very same trees and river valley low lands inhabited by their adversaries.

Tapping another icon, he traced a path into the northeast, knowing that the wireless uplink would relay his instructions to the unit of sharpshooters in the form of a waypoint atop the nearby ridge. They had standing orders to single out the largest aliens. Cut the head of the snake and the body would wither.

After all, the age old adage was universal, even for aliens.

Bloodmaw watched as his orders were carried out on the display, various unit icons maneuvering across the holo-map in real time. He studied the deployment of his frontline, at the ever updating list of wounded and dead as it was depicted on the table, gauging the cost-return ratio with calm prudence.

And upon conclusion of his analyses, nodded to himself, returning a claw to the incessant itch under his chin.

The local humidity played hell with his scales.

The enemy was numerous and powerful, but they would eventually be defeated, by attrition if nothing else. Here, at the heart of his operations, he had the numerical advantage. And no matter how many lives it took he would have this unforeseen prize. These aliens and their technology just might be what the Remnant needed to finally pay the Federation back tenfold for their transgressions against his people. This could be the edge he needed to turn this delayed defeat into sudden victory.

Even so, he would have to work quickly. The Federation garrison on Fortuna, while minimal in size after its reduction to pre-war figures, was still more than capable of sending transmissions on the fed network. Federation satellite and senor technology was more advanced then what the Remnant was capable of replicating with their limitations, and Bloodmaw was confident that they were already aware that something was happening. This ship had to come from somewhere after all, and the feds must have at least detected it entering the local sector, not the least its rapid descent into Fortuna's atmosphere.

He fully expected them to send an investigative task force, one he could not counter with the current resources at his disposal. Bloodmaw, planning for the potentiality of being discovered, had already drafted the possibilities in a similar scenario. By such estimates, he figured to have hours, maybe a day at most before the first elements of this force would start to trickle in from local patrol fleets and other nearby garrison forces.

In any other position he would not have had the chance to even prepare his troops before the feds swooped in. Ships had to be marshaled, resources reallocated, and diversions put into place to shift the attention of the ponderous beast that was The Federation military.

It was sheer dumb luck that the alien starship had crash landed directly atop their complex, thereby negating such extensive measures. And Bloodmaw was not going to let this potential windfall slip from his scaled grasp. They would crush these creatures swiftly and decisively, steal whatever technology that wasn't nailed down, and ensure that the Federation would find nothing but ashes.

To do that, more extreme methods had to be applied. The alien defensive line was remarkably resilient, and had thus far repelled even the most tenacious of assaults. Hundreds of his soldiers had already been killed trying to create a breach in their defense that might be exploited. There were six mechanized infantry companies behind the tree line, waiting for the opportunity to plunge a dagger directly in the heart of their emplacements.

But that even that was not enough.

Bloodmaw took in a deep draft of air, and hissed through his teeth.

"Colonel Arkwright." He uttered with a snap of his jaws, turning his enormous snout to the far more diminutive simian officer that had been waiting patiently, at a slight distance to his left side. His tongue flicked out to scent the air, accompanied by the usual amusement he felt at sensing the mammal's fear. Bloodmaw retracted the sensory organ slowly, trailing the thin, bifurcated slip of muscle across his teeth as he studied the ape's tightened jugular, contemplating for the briefest of moments, what it must taste like.

"S… Sir?"

And like always, it was the fearful statement of his subordinate that took him from his daydream, the recognition of the creature's sentience forcing primal instinct back into the depths of his subconscious. Bloodmaw sighed long-sufferingly, the sound coming out in a way that resembled a busted pipe or more acutely, the dissonance of a leisurely unspooling engine.

"What is the status… of the infiltration units?" The general made an effort to speak slow and deliberate, marshaling his wandering train of thought, and directing it carefully back to its proper station. Now of all times, he could not afford to cater to his lesser self. He would not prove those bastards back at central command that they were right in their discriminations. Reptilian species were suitable in command positions. The ponderous, taciturn thoughts of a reptile were not biological limitations. They were more than just their baser instincts.

With this... opportunity, he would prove all that to them and more, much more.

"Progress is… optimal, Sir." The simian replied hesitantly, swallowing audibly in the tense silence of the operations room. Around them, spread out in small clusters or seated at consoles, the rest of his command staff diverted a portion of their attention to the dialogue between their leaders. Most of the officers here had been working under the general for many years, and while there was a great deal of respect for his efforts and success against the Federation, fear was an even more familiar emotion.

Bloodmaw's gaze was piercing, and the ape wilted like a sun parched weed under his impassive observation. In turn, the reptilian native of Venom regarded the information his visual receptors were sending to him. He could see the rush of blood surging under his aide's skin, discern the heat of his body as fear forced his heart to pump faster and harder.

And his pits could almost hear the fluids thundering through the colonel's veins.

The general blinked hard.

"Not good… enough." Bloodmaw admonished, his lethargic drawl carrying a sinister undertone that most in the room were intimately familiar with. The reptilian scratched at a tooth with a claw, rooting for any lingering morsel of his last meal.

"Of course Sir, I'll inform them to work faster, Sir." The simian sputtered fearfully, his eyes reflecting the utter panic that flowed under his skin so… deliciously.

"See that you do." Bloodmaw warned, his thoughts finally reigned back to focus on the prominence of his current campaign, the giant crocodilian shifting his gaze back to the tactical map, and the fierce battle being waged. "We do not possess time for dawdling."

"We will have victory this day, Colonel Arkwright. Be it at your hand… or mine."

The simian nodded fiercely, all but bowing to the General as he retreated to the supposed safety of distance. "By your will, General, it shall be done."

He was not ordered so much as dismissed, by the wave of an immense, paw-like hand, and shirked away quickly to carry out his orders.

"Nothing will stand in our way."

Bloodmaw lowered a hand over the holo-image of the alien warship, and clenched a fist around his prize.

"I will have… my vengeance."

AN: A little white lie from me it seems. While I have been working on At Duty's End and Until it is Done, I could not help but focus more on this. I hope that this larger chapter will make up for the rather terse one before it, and that this story continues to interest you readers. As this chapter will show I am trying to introduce more perspectives in the story that might better flesh out the setting and improve its over all quality. As always, if you are enjoying this or any of my other works, I am always happy to hear from you guys, and your input does much to keep pushing me forward.

Keep the faith!

Drake