2554

March 24th

Sanghelios

Vadam Keep

Rukal Ukar

Log recorded.


One standard year...

It has been one standard year from when our conflict with the Humans has come to an end. Hundreds of worlds have been fought over. Billions participated. The galaxy has not seen fighting on this scale aside from the days of the Forerunners battling the Flood.

Officially, at least. All fighting came to an end by the end of the year known as ' 2552 ', but it was a minimum of several months before the Honorable Arbiter Thel Vadum, and the ranking officer of the unified Human armed forces, a man they call ' Admiral Hood '.

A title I still find unfamiliar, though it is their equivalent of Fleetmaster. I still do not know much of their species- let alone due to how varied they are among themselves. So many cultures. So many divisions.

It is why, to an extent, why I feel compelled to record this.

There has been much to consider, between then and now. Over 27 standard years worth, and all of it from a vastly different perspective. One that I'd held for the vast majority of those 27 years. The overwhelming, to be honest.

From the day our conflict against the human race began , to be honest.

" Heretics ", they were called by our ruling Council. " Unworthy of the Great Journey ".

Labeled an affront to our entire belief system. To everything we held holy. With each and every one of us having been raised from birth to hold faith as the most valuable pillar of our lives, its easy to understand why we all had fires lit within us at those words.

It was manipulation. Brainwashing. So masterfully done, we had not the slightest clue that it had happened...till so many years later.

The cruel trick that robbed us Sanghelli of our identity. Our history, and culture.

And, had us waste our lives for the sake of a elaborate, demented charade.

Worst of all...against an enemy who wasn't actually our enemy. The Humans...what did they do to earn our wrath ? What did they do to earn our fleets and armies bearing down on them, with the goal of not defeating them, but of only killing them as a species ?

Nothing.

Nothing at all, as I eventually learned. Our leader's decision to exterminate them was due to a desire to not let their position of power be ruined. They could not let the masses know the truth- that the Humans were the true heirs to the legacy that the Forerunners had left. If they had...the Covenant would've fallen, and the leaders would've been cast down.

With the advantage of hindsight, that would've been for the better.

But, their hubris and their thirst for power would not let them. So, they led us on...to fight the UNSC for nearly 30 years.

30 years...

The thought weighs on my head like a star cruiser. How could I have thrown away so much of my life for...

...For a total and utter lie. A lie, a trick, and a scheme. The Sangheli were a proud race once. A dignified race, one with a thousand years of history and customs defining us. All of it, though...gone. Gone for the sake of a promise and a reward loftier than anything we could imagine...all while being the exact oppsite. We lost ourselves and let our race be led astray. Let us be used, like fodder and slaves. Worst of all, though...all while having the belief that we were each a king.

That we were righteous. Holy. Every battle was vindication of our cause, our purpose. Every world burned or attacked was evidence we were fighting for a divine cause, who's goal demanded these..." heretics " perish planet by planet.

Their resistance ? Sinful, we were convinced. They could not even die while accepting it. They had to fight back...every time.

Every. Time.

They lost dozens of ships against half as many as ours- but they fought on. They lost whole divisions against, again, half as many of ours- but they fought on. Whole planets burned like a handful of grass held to a campfire blaze..

But. They. Fought. On.

From the very first battle- the very first- on a world they called " Harvest ", they showed this courage. It offended us, and we could not understand. These " heretics ", they dared to resist the will of the Council ? The High San Shay'um who ruled us decreed they die, yet they had the hubris to resist ? They would not flee like the unbelievers they were supposed to be, so we had to fight them, as they would not submit.

Now, I applaud them. Back then, I loathed them for that.

For year, after year. Fighting went on and on, but no matter how many of them died, no matter how many of their warships were left as gouged-out hulks adrift across the vacuum of space, and no matter how many of their tanks and trucks were left melted wreckage on muddy battlefields on world after world...they always met us on the field of combat. They would lose a thousand men at the end of a day...but the next, a thousand more would engage. A whole fleet would be crushed with only a handful of surviors...and days later, they'd regroup with other survivors of other crushed fleets, and attack whenever and wherever they could.

Sometimes fanatical. Sometimes, desperate. But, always determined. Always committed.

And, there was more.

Once we reached their homeworld...

Earth.

My God.

...The scale of their resistance...the ferocity of their attacks and their will to fight on that world...

Unparalleled. Unprecedented. Unmistakable.

There were cased of them...literally throwing themselves at and onto us, going hand to hand. Pockets of defenders would fight to keep a patch of land despite being utterly surrounded, dying to the last. Soldiers charged our tanks on foot to throw grenades. Sometimes they made it. Not always.

Every city, was a fortress. Every building a bunker and a pillbox. Not a day went by when they did not strike at us, or when they did not fight to their last bullet to stop our advance for even one minute longer.

Even for us, who had been fighting near endlessly for so many years, had not seen this. Not on this level. And again...30 years. For all those years...we had, yes, become accustomed to stiff opposition. On some way, to a limited extent...we had even become grudgingly impressed with their resilience. We did not despise them any less, but perhaps it could be said we thought of them as " heretics with teeth ", who could fight. Fighting like warriors. Ones who deserved death, yes, but ones who would force us to fight like true warriors ourselves.

But, they also had a cause to be, like us:

Survival.

They just wanted to live. They were fighting for...existence itself. Just to...be. With all their issues, and quarrels, and discoveries and joys- they were fighting to exist.

Heretics ?

They just wanted to be. But, we disagreed. We thought they were sinners, for not kneeling to our laws, our religion. Our leaders hubris became our hubris, and so...we sought to end them all. Came to their homeworld, the origin of their whole species with all its countless billions...and we aimed to erase them all.

They did not go quietly.

After one battle- one the fiercest I have ever seen, ever- I was crossing the field. It was a city, somewhere on the continent they call " Australia ".


Sydney. Yes...that was the name. Sydney. We had descended to assault its streets , with our Phantoms packed with warriors, who then spilled them onto the strange, black, pebbly surface of the human built roads.

I cannot begin to empathize the noise of that battle that followed- no, the fist day of it. It went on for hours, that first phase, and there was scarcely a minute where you could not hear weapons fire- from us or them- blazing away from some point within the city limits. The rattle of their firearms, or the whine of our energy rifles, and all punctuated by a thunderclap of heavy artillery...

Columns of smoke, oily black or sandy, rose all over. They marked the engagements, as they flared up, then died out again, only to flare up again once more...

Typically, there were more of us dead then them, whenever each of them finally did come to an end. They fought better on the ground than space. I was furious. I was hungry for more of their blood, for they had committed the sin of spilling ours.

I had my sword held so tightly, my fingers ached. I scanned the rubble and the detritus of the aftermath of the battle, ready to spear the first still living human warrior I could find through the chest. It was a rage that I had become all too familiar with over the course of all the countless battles I had been through.

Glass crunched underfoot. I stepped on the gaps between the remains of the other fallen Sangheli, doing my best to ignore the biting scent of gunpowder from those... " primitive " human weapons. Weapons that had nonetheless pierced our armor, and shed our blood on the ground.

Weapons that left those curious metal casing they call " brass " littering the ground. Thousands upon thousands of them. Well beyond my ability to count..

...and, then it only rose.

...Because, at the top of the hill, I found a borderline carpet of dead Sangheli.

At first, I thought there were dozens. But, quickly, I realized that, no...there were hundreds.

Hundreds...!

Not ever before had I seen such a sight. Over 20 years of battles, with nearly a thousand fought, and even then, I had not seen so many dead Sangheli. At a single glance, every aftermath of every battle shot through my mind, thousands of images worth, but...none leapt out at me as one that could truly rival what I was confronted with now.

Not Harvest. Not Draco III. Not even Tribute, had I seen so many. At most...I had seen countless Unggoy dead-or Jackals. Drones as well. They had died by the score, yes...but they weren't true blood Sangheli warriors. Sangheli !

Sangheli. The epitome of warriors...as I'd been raised to believe.

The apex. They were the complete picture of a warrior...and yet here they were: Dead by the hundreds..! Imagine that the sun that you had watched rise so often you do not even think of it...suddenly coming up glowing purple. You can't. Not till it actually happens...and even then, there will be a head voice of yours that demands that it can't be true.

That you are dreaming. Dreaming...just a moment from waking. Then the solidness of the dead Sangheli's armor beneath your palm when you reach down and touch comes out, and you are forced to understand:

This has happened. Yes, it has...

I was still at that stage, of even coming close to processing the scene I was standing amid, when one of my fellow fighters called out to me.

Yuze Ku'an. Been with my battalion for 15 years. A true warrior, by every and all measure. He had stood on dozens of battlefields like I had, the ones who were so pockmarked with blast craters that they resembled the surface of a moon. He was..

The one who always roared above the thunder of the battles. That kind of fighter who could always be counted on, always, to be a rock against any of your enemies. He gave you the impression that nothing could faze him on your first meeting with him...let alone over 20 years.

He had hardly shown the likes of undisciplined rage, as well. You might think so- it could be forgiven- but he was too disciplined for that. No matter what we saw on the field, he did not lose his focus.

When he called out to me now, though...his voice shook like it had not ever before.

" Uze..! Brother, over here...! "

He could have added a " You need to see this ! " on the end of that, but there was no need. I trusted him, and he knew that. The tone of...shock, and utter disbelief, though...that got my attention even more.

Like a Human nuke on the surface of an ice world. My blood had that flash of chill to it...the kind that ran down one's spine. I had utterly not expected it, even amid this field of dead.

" Rukal..! "

My head came around at that, and I found him, standing a ways away. He was on the opposite side of the circular city plaza we had entered, where the road halves met to form a single one that led out, with one of the soaring city gates-those gunmetal grey doors that, admittedly, looked solid enough to even withstand a direct hit from a Wraith.

Other Sangheli, walking among the dead, prodding them with blades to ensure they were dead and gone, watched me momentarily as I went by. They nodded and calling greetings, though I could not respond to all of them.

Only some of at all.

The Humans, though, had been...out of the gate. Not behind it, which was not like them at all. If there was one constant among all the battles I had fought against them, it was that they always liked to be behind their strongest walls, door, or both if at all possible, forcing us to breach and clear. The kind of attacks that always cost us, even with the best of our best leading the charge- human " shotgun " weapons were astonishingly deadly at such close range..

But, they had proven that they could also be tenacious on the attack, so why...?

" Rukal ?! What have you found ?! "

I was nearly over to him by now, weaving my way past and around the aftermath of the fighting. There were even more bodies the closer I got...and more holes and divots torn out of the ground. Solid, rock hard ground, but there had been so many strikes from plasma and explosives that had been expended during the battle, that you had to be constantly aware of where you placed your steps. Some of the craters were still glowing dull orange on their sides, smoke wisps curling upwards...with carpets and clusters of those..."brass " casings that came flying out of the Human weapons when they discharged...

And they had done so much of it recently. So much, for sure...

The casings were so numerous, I could not count them. They clinked and echoed, bouncing and rolling haphazardly as I kicked them aside, running across the width of the field toward where Yuze stood. He was at the center of the plaza, atop a gentle slope of the hill that served as the center. It must have been, before the assault we had unleashed, been a garden for display of some sort- but the Human warriors had been busy, converting it to a makeshift fortress of sorts. Sandbags, metal armor plating that they were known to manufacture to serve as field barricades, and slabs of concrete formed a rough oval that covered nearly the whole of the summit. Behind its edge, at the middle, stacks and piles of crates, boxed, and other assorted equipment that I could not be sure of were arranged- many of which were slagged and riddled with damage from the searing heat of our guns.

He was still as a sculpture, with his back to me as I arrived. Both his sword and pistol were holstered away, and his arms hung by his sides the way they would when the mind is fully occupied.

" Brother...! "

He did not answer my call. Hardly even seemed to acknowledge my presence...though, as I came to a halt nearby, I rapidly understood.

...The humans who had held us back here at this battle. He had found them.

None had survived, needless to say. The Covenant did not take prisoners- that had been established for us even before we'd unsheathed our blades on the world they call Harvest. " Heretics are unworthy of life if we take them alive. If they were not, we would spare them ", our commanders always told us. To that end, thus, we did not hold humans as captives if we ever managed to disarm them- we would execute them where they stood. Adding to that, they did not raise their hands to us when it was blatant the battle they were fighting was going to end with their defeat- they would either do all they could to fall back, and fight again at a later date, or...they would fight till every last one of them was dead.

The latter had become the norm over the past 18 years or so. We didn't think twice about it. Neither did they, from how fiercely they resisted.

But, at a minimum, such resistance required there to be a decent number of them. Hundreds, perhaps even a thousand. Against the several thousand or even tens of thousands of warriors that we would typically deploy to a fight, that was often the most they could field at any one place, though even then...it was still usually enough to force us to expend a dear price to overcome them.

A cornered animal fights the most desperate, and while we had the advantage for space combat, on the ground...much less so.

And yet...even for a doctrine ( a forced upon them doctrine granted ) of the few against the many amplifying their number with the strongest defensive location available...what I- what WE were facing here was a shock nonetheless.

...Because...there was only 20 of them.

20.

It...I could not believe my senses at first. Or at second. Stopping cold the moment I came up next to Yuze, I recognized at once the appearance of the armored warriors the Humans called...ODSTs.

The ones who fell from the sky, wreathed with fire.

They were the ones who wore those up-armored helmets ( often decorated with bizarre imagery of teeth that must have been the likeness of some Earthly animal ) that fully encapsulated their heads, with visors that could hide their faces at a whim, with angular armor plates covering themselves from end to end.

Aside from the...Spartans ( For so long, they were " Demons " to me...it is hard to adjust ), these ODSTs were the deadliest of the Human ground forces. Every one of our encounters with them had proven to be vicious, hard fought ones where they attacked with the kind of dogged determination that we expected from any one of us. Always advancing, always firing...often without cover. They attacked like the Jiralhanae when the Blood Lust activated...expect, there was no maniacal screaming, or primal roaring. Just blazing guns, and pounding soles on the ground as they rushed our lines, aiming like a scalpel toward where it was thinnest.

And, on the defensive, they were no less formidable.

Tenacious.

Immovable.

Undaunted.

We were filled with rage, though also a hint of awe, at how they would hunker themselves behind anything and everything that would offer even a hint of protection against our fire- our white hot, scalding plasma fire that melts through solid metal , and eats dents from solid concrete. But, no matter how much of it we put down on them, they did not flee. They did not collapse...

They did all that they could to stand their ground.

And...

"...Rukal.."

My own voice sounded...well, stunned. Like there was a disconnection between my ability to control volume had been tampered with. All the pieces of the puzzle were already there, and they were even already assembled but-

I had nearly 30 years of battle. 30 years, and not once had I found...

...this.

They...they just did not connect. With all those many, many battles, I had not encountered something like this: a handful of humans taking down this many of our own. Those had all been...gargantuan ! Sprawling storms of violence that you could see stretching out for miles on either side of you: opposing battle lines shifting, ebbing, and flowing with narrow bands of no man's land between them. Bolts of plasma and streaks of tracers from Human bullets crisscrossed the air at such a volume that there was 0 doubt whatsoever how the scale of the fighting. You knew from a glance that there were armies at play here. One was required to oppose and stop the other. Their enemy was too numerous for their to be any less.

I should have realized, though...how easily that could be an illusion.

I should have realized that...a handful could, if they were cut from the right cloth and chosen their spot well enough , could more than put out the same kind of fury as a unit a dozen times their number.

But...I had not seen this myself.

I had not seen them just...sacrifice themselves like this.

"..Look, there...".

Yuze. He finally spoke. Stunned yes, but a bit stronger now.

Glancing his way, I saw him place a gloved hand on the barrel of one of the human machine guns- the triple barreled ones that they were so fond of. It sat on the edge of their perimeter, atop the barricade wall.

Its barrels were warped. Warped, and clearly showing that the sheer heat of their firing had caused them to bend.

Solid metal bent...by the the sheer heat of firing so long with no chance to cool.

" The weapon was out of action, and they didn't retreat ? ". Yuze stared at it, still holding the ruined barrels. " Why ? Were the gates sealed ? This may be Earth, but what's to be gained by staying at a place you cannot defend ? "

" They had other weapons, Yuze..."

As he had spoken, something else had caught my attention- among the dead. A glint of bright, polished metal- the one that they called " steel ".

What they used to make combat knives. What we so derided as a weak excuse for not having an energy sword..

Mostly to hide how it had pierced more than one Sangheli chest.

The one here, though, had not left its sheath. I tracked the glint , to find that this blade was still resting where it was supposed to be carried: on the chest of a ODST, who lay slumped against a jumbled pile of empty metal boxes that must've been used to carry ammunition.

I leaned closer. It seemed that...this warrior had been about to draw the blade, before dying. The cause of which was impossible to miss, as it jumped out at me now that I was nearer: a gaping hole punched clean through the chest. From what I understood of Human anatomy, that was a surefire way to kill them.

Actually...that was virtually all I knew of them...aside from their heads being an even greater prime target.

" Died going for a blade. ". The metal glinted again.

"..And I think he would have used it on us. Not to end his own life. "

" ...Or , hers. I cannot tell males from the females with their helmets on...", Yuze reminded me. From the sound of it, he had come over to see for himself.

" Tue..", I conceded.

Returning my attention to the dead Human, I studied the knife again for another moment or so. It was half out, with a hand wrapped around its base. Even after death, the grip on that handle had not collapsed. Loose, yes...but it was still there.

Who was this warrior ? I did not know- I still do not know- why I was suddenly struck with that drive to know. Perhaps, if I was to guess...it was the strongest-and first- hints that our crusade was a lie, and a fraud. That the " heretics " were no religious traitors who couldn't be allowed to live at all ?

Possible. For lack of a better answer, it must be.

The ODSTs helmet was still on, though, hiding the identity of who was wearing it.

" Unbelievable...". The shock of Yuze' voice had begun changing to one of genuine confusion and disbelief- and the times I could remember that would only fit on one hand.

" This is what they are willing to do ? Is this an anomaly ? Or is it what we should expect from them all ? "

I did not respond...not at first. My gaze had gone back to where the ODST's helmet met the rest of the body, still tightly sealed and locked.

" How is this possible ? ". Yuze was now sounding outright confused, frustrated, and shocked, all at once. " How did they do this ?! "

My hand reached out, toward the helmet. I had no clue how to undo the seals, but...

...My curiosity needed to be satiated. This was unprecedented, after all. I had not ever, ever...seen a band of humans so badly outnumbered stand their ground to the bitter end- against US, the Covenant. Their enemy who had the power to burn a whole planet...and they all but threw their lives away to stop us.

...But, not quite. The many, many dead Sangheli I had literally stepped over to get here said otherwise.

Maybe that was another reason why I was now fumbling with the helmet clasps. I had to know who this human was. Who had killed so many of us ? Who was this ?

Who ?!

'I had to know. My Sangheli fingers tugged, gripped, and awkwardly pulled at the unfamiliar human design, unable to stop thinking about it all. Eventually, though, there was a loud clicking, clacking noise...and the helmet came loose.

" Uze..? "

I heard the note of confusion from Yuze at my action, but I did not stop. Holding the helmet now firmly with both hands, I pulled upwards.

What had I been expecting ?

The answer is too varied to say for certain. I had seen enough human faces over the years ( albeit, ones who were virtually always dead ) so as not to be stunned by how...odd their faces were compared to us. It revolted me at first, then had eventually faded to mild disgust over the decades as I saw more and more of them. Dead continued to the the most state that I found them as, but a face was a face, even if the owner was deceased.

It would be so again here, needless to say.

Finally, off the helmet came.

Beneath was...well,...I..

"...I often forget: They let their women fight. Not that they can afford to let them stand aside, though.."

" Certainly not these days. "

...Definitely a female. It could only have been either that or a male, as we all know.

Her skin was a dark tan color, and she had a scar tracing along the left side of her cheeks. Her dark hair was braided by tightly bound rows, running back across the top of her head toward the back.

Would I call it beautiful ? Retroactively, yes, now that my assessment of the human race is less misunderstood and manipulated by the devious High Council. Back then, though...I...well..actually, even then I would.

My emotions were a cyclone though: My Sangheli and my warrior was seething at her for having felled so many of the others. For who would be so stubborn, and so aggravatingly tenacious ?

Unbelievable. Again

But, then the rest of me- the thinker who had such doubts as to how " holy " our mission truly was, and the Sangheli who had been a helpless trainee before taking up the sword- thought differently.

It was not just a measure of...it was..

...A...hint of understanding. Of why they had fought so astoundingly hard. Of why they had fought till their final moments..

They had no choice. This was their only choice: Fight , and yes, many of them would die.

Or, they could not fight, and all of them would die. Every last one...

Every. Last. One.

" Uze...Uze, have you realized that they allow their females onto the battlefield- driven by desperation though it may be- but we do not ? I cannot recall a era when we did, not even from our archives ", Yuze confessed. " But, they do not fight like conscripts...like the Unggoy. "

" I...I keep thinking we've been misled, about who they are. A heretic- a true heretic- would be...the ones that we fought with the Arbiter. On that platform. A mixed bag of desperate vagabonds fighting to defend a lonely station. Not a united, cornered species fighting for their homeworld under pain of extinction itself. "

" Yes..", I agreed. Setting the helmet down, I gazed long and carefully at the dead ODST.

Dead though she was, there was something about her. About...all of them.

They had fought to defend this world. They fought to defend their species not from defeat, but from utter annihilation. They had fought as one army.

Why had it taken decades for me to even begin thinking so ? Why ?

It should have happened

They had died as a clan.

"...They fight like warriors, Rukal ".

I finally stood, gazing down once more at the ODST, feeling, still, a baffling cyclone of emotions that only much later I would know had been the precursor to finding out the full truth that would lead me to abandon the Covenant.

It was then, also, that I finally noticed the name etched onto the strip of metal at the base of the front of her chest plating:

" Jevchenko "

Dead, yes. Still fighting the fight, though ? I think I can say...

Yes.

Yes, she was.