Zaeed swept the hallway with his improvised chaingun, keeping a careful eye on corners and vents as he moved. He was worried about the creature ambushing from a vent or corner and getting into close combat. So the UNSC marines advanced like they had been trained, moving together as a cohesive whole and keeping every single approach covered. Zaeed's hardsuit was the leader of the cloud computing network all the Hardsuits aboard the ship were a part of. While lacking the raw processing power of a strategic level BATTLENET, it could still assist the squad in moving optimally. Entrances and other approaches were marked, and soldiers assigned to watch them. This, combined with the motion trackers and augmented sensory package, made Zaeed confident they would not be ambushed.
It also made Zaeed convinced he was overconfident and going to be ambushed.
Zaeed disliked the dependence on technological assistance for many Human soldiers. The marines were trained well and disciplined, but they were dependent on their equipment to survive. He had his suspicions that several of them couldn't even read a map that wasn't on a datapad. And the new Mass Accelerators made "spray and pray" the calling of the day, the effectively infinite ammunition allowing soldiers to blaze away in the hopes of hitting something. When the first Hardsuits had been handed out to UNSC troops, and Zaeed had observed the insane levels of aim-assistance and target-acquisition provided to the users, Zaeed had not been happy. And especially about the newest batches of Marines and Army soldiers raised en-masse from Outer Colony refugees and was not impressed, to say the least. Most of them would probably be unable to hit their targets without VI-assisted targeting.
He almost sneered at the thought of soldiers who couldn't function without fancy auto-targeting and a battle network telling them what squad to join, what vehicle to use, what position to take, and where to fire. They wouldn't last a minute against an Elite with nothing but an assault rifle with half its rounds spent, and a knife. His generation of soldiers had been trained to work together as a cohesive whole, understand each other's body language, and almost think as a collective. Raw professional skill.
Oh, he liked the new Hardsuits that were being deployed, as well as all the rocket launchers, shuttles, tanks, shotguns, assault rifles, medical kits, rations, and all the other good stuff the Citadel Races donated to the UNSC war effort. But that didn't matter when the soldiers grew dependent on them. It pained Zaeed to admit that while Humanity's veterans were better at fighting the Covenant than most Turian soldiers, Humanity's new recruits were woefully inadequate, and it showed whenever the Covenant bastards shut down parts of the BATTLENET. Soldiers had to depend on their own skill and training.
But what could be done? The Orion Programme was gone, and his colleagues were either retired or dead now. And he didn't know where any of them were. Zaeed didn't know a single friend or family member from his youth who was still alive. For all he knew, he could be the last Orion soldier still in active service. And where did it get him? A career of getting shuffled from unassuming deployment to unassuming deployment, always under close watch by ONI so he didn't spill the beans on the Orion project. Getting prodded and poked by doctors who wanted to see the long term effects of his augmentations.
But at least he got to kill a demon!
Zaeed checked his minimap, noting that they were getting close to the Engine room. His suit sensors indicated a gradual increase in temperature, originating from the reactor. That was good, but it would also be noticeable by the infiltrator.
Kirrahe's voice broke him from his introspection. "Wait. I recognize this console." The Salarian was saying, pointing at a console the squad was passing. Zaeed turned to look at it, noting that the ports for the console had been widened. He tightened the grip on his improvised heavy machine gun. "I engaged the creature here. But I don't see the components I removed."
"You mean the head you shot off? Shouldn't that mean this thing is blind?" One marine asked, poking at a patch of frozen metal.
"I expected that," Kirrahe said. "But it had two tendrils which appeared equipped with sensor packages. Removing the head didn't slow it down in the slightest." Then the Salarian paused. "When I removed an integrated plasma rifle, it caught the weapon and opened fire with it. I believe it may have retrieved its head and could be attempting repairs. Where is the nearest place it could find tools?"
Zaeed brought up a map on his HUD. "The armory is nearby. Shit. Are you saying it's repairing itself? If it can do that, it can also raid the armory for weapons." Zaeed retook the lead, weapon at the ready. He headed directly for the armory, where the ground had several large splotches of blood as well as cybernetic fragments. He grit his teeth in anticipation of the revenge that was to come.
Zaeed quickly made a series of quick hand signals when approaching the door that his hardsuit translated into commands. Four marines took up breaching positions around the door. Zaeed stood just out of line of sight so he wouldn't immediately be shot the moment the door opened. He'd enter after the marines to lay down suppressing fire.
Zaeed pressed the button to open the door, and his marines entered in well-choreographed order, weapons at the ready. Zaeed went after them, spinning up the chaingun and looking for a target. He saw the head sticking out from behind an overturned table and opened fire, ripping through the thin metal in an instant. The rest of the squad joined in, opening fire at Zaeed's target, filling the dark halls of the ship with glowing orange and white incendiary and cryo rounds, respectively. When no return fire came, Zaeed ceased fire, immediately getting a bad feeling about it.
The creature's head rolled into view, riddled with bullet holes, but unmistakably mounted on a metal rod.
"Son of a-" Zaeed started a colorful tirade, when a vent in the hallway bust open, and the creature dropped in the rear of the squad. Within moments it was upon the rear guard, slamming an armored claw through the chest of one marine as the shoulder-mounted plasma rifle opened fire on another and melted through his chest after a burst in extremely close quarters. At the same time, one of its two tendrils grabbed a third marine by the neck and snapped it.
Zaeed took aim and opened fire, the 70mm depleted uranium rounds ripping apart one of the creature's arms and tearing open the wall behind it. He moved after it as it began to run the moment it saw Zaeed's weapon, sweeping the chaingun after the running creature, putting several rounds through its chest, only to duck into another vent.
"Follow me," Zaeed said, not giving the fallen marines a second glance. All that mattered to Zaeed now was dragging the abomination down into hell with him. He stepped over the fallen marines and continued the pursuit.
Suddenly the severed arm leaped up towards Zaeed's face, only to be cut in half horizontally by Kirrahe's omni-blade.
"Well, that's just fucking great. It's a zombie too?" Zaeed asked. Kicking one of the fragments into a wall. "Like things couldn't get worse!"
"It's still just a cyborg, Zaeed," Kirrahe said.
"Yeah, one that comes back from the dead and tries to claw my bloody face."
"If you say so," Kirrahe said, giving up and taking up a position in support of Zaeed, then held up a hand, pointing at the thin dividing wall Zaeed had shredded. "Wait. I saw something." Kirrahe leaned over and shone a light through the gap, then climbed through. Zaeed awkwardly followed him, followed by the rest of the marines.
The crew quarters had been ransacked thoroughly. All the lockers had been opened, the bedding was torn up, and a vast pile of torn clothes and other assorted trash put into a corner.
"This wasn't here before. This isn't an Army barrack." Zaeed muttered. "What is this thing searching for?" He kept close watch, waiting for the creature to jump out from somewhere.
Kirrahe looked up, motioning towards a service hatch. Then something caught Kirrahe's eye, and he leaned down and picked up a datapad.
"This was a soldier's private datapad. Why would this thing be reading datapads." Kirrahe narrowed his eyes and turned to look at Zaeed. "I think this thing must be gathering information."
"So?"
Kirrahe sighed. "It is gathering information it could have easily asked for while in disguise. I think that the Trader didn't know this monster was inside him." He continued advancing in the direction the creature had last fled. "That might mean it is not able to control its host. It chose to appear when the Trader realized it had been killed."
"Bloody hell. I can't believe I'm saying it, but that poor bloody bastard must have been converted and not been fully conscious of it when it did, the transformation began."
"Exactly. Wait. Did you just draw a sensible conclusion?"
"I'm a crazy old man with a chaingun. Not a stupid old man with a chaingun. But what do you think this thing is doing? It seems a bit unfocused."
"If I'm right. It's not got any real purpose besides gathering information. It caught Leng, that alone is a horrible breach of Coalition infosec. Now it's just gathering extra information. I think. Maybe it is planning something else."
They left the room and continued back towards the engine room. Zaeed was starting to wonder if Kirrahe had a plan to escape the ship, or was distracting himself from his imminent death by gathering as much information as he could. It was a weird coping mechanism, but Zaeed didn't mind. It was better to talk to Kirrahe than one of the marines scared shitless of him.
They started heading back towards engineering. Zaeed checked his thermals again and still didn't see anything. The damn thing had to be running on room temperature somehow, or be using some other method of disguising himself.
Zaeed turned off his radio for a moment. "Kirrahe. Why are you delaying?" Zaeed asked, he was pretty curious at this point. "You seem pretty willing to move around examining things at their own pace. But you're making it look like we're deviating for some other reason. You're smart enough to know to go directly for this thing and examine after. What gives?"
"Information wins war, Zaeed." The Salarian said.
Gunfire echoed in the distance.
"And I wanted that thing to think we had a separate objective from hunting it!" Kirrahe shouted. "It went for the engine room because it thought we were busy, we can catch it from both doorways and the engineers behind their barricades!" Kirrahe said and sprinted ahead, engaging his cloak and disappearing from sight.
Zaeed ran after the Salarian, followed closely by his marines. He ran faster than the lot of them, even with his improvised weapon weighing him down. His body would hate him afterward, but Zaeed didn't really care about that.
They quickly approached the door to engineering, and Zaeed promptly made a series of hand signals, ordering the squad to breach from two separate doorways. Zaeed went left, Kirrahe went right. They quickly took up breaching positions at the door, the gunfire in the room no less intense than before. Zaeed nodded at the marine opposite of him and slammed a fist on the door to open it.
The soldier right next to Zaeed immediately caught a spray of plasma bolts, while Zaeed's chest was hit by a smaller burst. He screamed as his skin blistered and burst, and opened fire in the direction the shots came from, all the while rushing into cover.
The creature let out a mechanical screech as the depleted uranium slugs ripped off one of its tendrils in an explosion of cybernetic components and unknown fluids. The marines with Zaeed took heavy fire from the creature. It sounded like a heavy machine gun ripping people to shreds, even though the beast hadn't had that weapon before. Then Zaeed saw that the infiltrator had somehow taken a turret and converted it into a weapon of its own. Its aim was impeccable, and men and women collapsed one by one, clutching stumps or mangled throats.
The creature had taken up a strong defensive position but was beset from three directions, it was squatting above the large computer mainframe that ran the Prowler's engines and reactor, using it as a vantage point. The creature had braced itself on a remaining "leg" with a stump jammed into the computer. The beast dug itself in and fired in three directions. Its shoulder-mounted plasma rifle sweeping back and forth, scoring headshots and hits that melted weapons. At the same time, it held a detached plasma rifle in a manipulator, using it to support its firing. It raked the turret back and forth. Zaeed, for an instant, glimpsed that the stump was lodged inside of a data port on a nearby console.
Zaeed's squad was thinning out fast, as were the engineers. The creature was taking damage, but it was just too damned tough. As it moved and slithered around at high speed, it was damnably hard to hit the thin limbs, while rounds just bounced off its armored chest. Another limb went flying; this time, the creature's intact leg. It stumbled, but it continued firing. It pulled the stump from the computer.
Zaeed's improvised weapon caught a precision plasma bolt from the creature, melting the barrel and rendering it ineffective. It brought the machine gun to bear, taking aim at Zaeed, spinning up.
Kirrahe appearing from his cloaking field, cutting the weapon in half, sidestepping a slashing stump, and jabbing his omni-tool into the socket the creature's head had been attached to, firing off an incendiary blast. The abomination was set on fire from the inside out. Kirrahe leaped aside, only to have the remaining tendril wrapped around his waist, squeezing and trying to put a plasma pistol against the Salarian.
Zaeed charged and cutting the Salarian free with his omni-blade. The shoulder-mounted plasma rifle moved to track him, but Zaeed sidestepped and grabbed the device, ripping it free in adrenaline-fuelled rage. He turned the Covenant weapon upon the thing from close range, melting the side armor, even as inner fires raged through it. Red lightning was starting to arc around its body, and a cold chill went through his spine.
"You have become a nuisance." the creature said with a cole and eloquent voice, dropping the turret. Red energy arced around the claw, sharpening it into a fierce spike it thrust for Zaeed's chest.
Armor-piercing rounds hit an icy cold patch on the arm where a Marine's cry rounds had found their mark, shattering the armor and damaging the limb. Kirrahe continued firing as he lay on his back, not letting up his assault. The limb's thrust went wild.
Zaeed put an arm around the creature's limb and used it as leverage to throw the beast over his shoulder and onto the desk. The weakened limb broke off at the damaged joint, and the abomination skid across the ground. Not wasting a moment, Zaeed charged, wielding the limb as a spear, and thrust it through the burning chest. The spike slammed straight through the reinforced armor, causing a horrific screech that nearly made Zaeed go deaf from the proximity. It shuddered as red energy arced around the limbs and out of its wounds.
Then with a final spasm, the lights went out.
Zaeed stepped back, admired his handiwork, and spat on the monster. Then lost consciousness as the rage and adrenaline finally wore off.