II: One-Spartan Army
"Day in the Life"


Year: 2556
Planet: Sonus V

The Pelican dropped like a stone as it shot its way through the vibrant black maelstrom, its four engines sparking with brilliant cones of blue flame, occasionally speckled with red shimmers. Clouds the color of night surrounded it, icy fingers of gas and condensation scraping past its hull. The windshield made peppering noises as debris pockmarked the craft—dust, tiny stones, anything thrown up by the humongous gale.

The pilots at the helm of the ship were working hard at the controls to keep it steady, but in their comms, they spoke with the cool and typical assuredness of flying aces. Past the canopy, even as the shrouded storm was repeatedly split apart by flashes of incredible white lighting, the pilots never made any jerking course corrections. They simply stayed on course, impassive to the seemingly disintegrating air just past less than a foot of heavy armor plating.

The forward pilot took a cursory look to his left. Forks of lightning illuminated the company of similar Pelicans—six, from what he could see—that were traveling alongside theirs. They appeared as black silhouettes against an already shrouded backdrop, but the treeroot shapes of the electric bolts that shattered the darkness gave away their outlines for anyone in visual range in split-second intervals.

The copilot behind him consulted his charts. The world of Sonus V was bleak and barren. If the planet had not been fortuitously burdened with massive hydrogen stores and other precious minerals, it would not have even registered as a blip to the UNSC. It was a young and angry world—volcanic activity was still heavy in some areas on the southernmost continents, and frantic wind storms (such as the one they were in now) were deadly and had the tendency to pick up every loose and sharpened rock on the ground so that they could be thrown about like razor blades. But humanity, in its hubris, never had the desire to admit defeat to nature. Especially not when a profit was to be made. A few sparse colonies dotted the map that the pilot was examining. Sites surveyed by mega-corporations, most likely. Populated by people with no ties to the inner colonies, perhaps, or looking to strike their fortune.

"Range: fifteen klicks," he told the pilot in front of him. "Descent angle increase in five mikes."

"Five mikes, roger."

"Trajectory locked in the navcomputer. Beginning deployment proceedings."

In the cargo bay behind the pilots, a series of red lights glimmered to life, the first signs of illumination in the bay since the Pelicans had departed from their mothership in orbit above Sonus V. The interior turned the crimson color of blood—apropos, considering the Marines colloquially referred to the Pelican's cargo bay as the "blood tray", but it was not due to the interior lighting.

In the first few moments since the lights flicked on, the Marine compliment all jumped to their feet. Their weapons were already in their hands, nervous fingers twiddling against the hardened stocks. Several of the Marines were chewing tobacco. Stubs of smoldering cigarettes oozed smoke out of a few mouths. Others were twitching from taking too many diet pills for the brief rush of energy. The group crowded around the middle of the bay, whereupon a blue holographic image of the frigate's AI bubbled to life, acting as a torch of ice blue light.

The AI resembled the shape of a faun—hoofed feet and horns atop an impressively bearded head. Its image was steadily crackling. The storm was undoubtedly throwing out a ton of interference. Fortunately, its audio channels were, for the moment, crystal clear.

"The combat zone you are being deployed occupies zone grids Foxtrot-Niner through Hotel-Ten on your TACMAP." A 3D map popped up in the faun's palm and it "tossed" the map upward, zooming it into greater detail. "The colony of SXS Industrie S5-3 is positioned at the southeast area of the grid at the base of a dormant volcano. To the northwest of the colony—between it and the LZ—a full-scale engagement is currently underway between the Swords of Sanghelios and the Banished."

The Marines didn't ask any questions regarding the combatants in play. Between them all, they had already encountered these two groups in several campaigns already. The Swords of Sanghelios had been born of the Covenant schism, led by the Arbiter and his fellow Elites in the wake of their race's betrayal by the Prophets. The Banished were a group that had also broken from the Covenant, albeit a few years before the Swords of Sanghelios. They were composed of mercenaries and raiders, led by Brutes who had been angered at the Covenant for treating their race as cannon fodder.

Naturally, the two sides were ideal enemies. They carried enough hatred between each other to go out of their way to deliberately begin engagements, even on the most desolate worlds like this one. And anything caught between them would inevitably end up in the terrible crossfire. The colonists here were just unlucky in that regard.

"The Arbiter didn't ask us to step in, I'd wager?" a corporal dryly rasped.

The AI absorbed the comment without a change in expression. If it had been human, it might have appeared miffed at being so interrupted.

"The hydrogen fields on Sonus V make up 4.6% of the total new sources of hydrogen discovered in the outer colonies in the last five years. Alternatively, significant stores of cobalt have also been discovered on the planet's surface. The partnership between SXS and UNSC is expected to result in a significant store of fuel for the next generation of fleet vessels. FLEETCOM has deemed that the colony of SXS Industrie S5-3 is a cost worth recouping. The presence of the Swords of Sanghelios notwithstanding, Sonus V remains a UNSC-controlled world."

"Any modifications to the ROE?" another trooper asked.

"None. Banished troops are to be destroyed without prejudice. Be advised: firing upon Swords of Sanghelios is not permitted, but if they fire upon you, you have authorization to terminate them as well."

A muted grumble rose from the troops. It was not that they had reservations about killing Elites, it was from the fact that they were going to be descending into a free-fire zone with poor visibility, increasing the chance of hitting an Elite that belonged to a group that maintained a tenuous alliance with the UNSC at best. To say that the conditions were piss-poor would be putting it mildly.

"Expect enemy armor to be substantial. Ghosts and Wraiths have been detected. Hunter presence has been reported but not confirmed. And ensure that your armor is tightly sealed. There is an environmental hazard ongoing that will significantly reduce your combat effectiveness if you… expose yourself."

Some of the Marines took the AI up on its offer to perform one last check of the heavy infantry BDU armor that surrounded their bodies. Others took that as their cue to spit out the wad of tobacco they had lodged in their mouths, or to stub out their last cigarettes, before they put their helmets on.

The BDU was only the latest variation of armor plating that Marines had been issued since the fall of the Covenant. The armor that everyone in the Pelican was wearing had bulkier chest plating than the standard M52B variant, and was paired with a full-face helmet, with a white face-mask and a green-tinted visor. The Marines were all wearing the same type of fatigues: either dark green or black as the primary color, with reddish-brown sections on the inner portions of the legs, neck, upper part of the sleeves, and torso sides.

"Your objectives," the AI continued, "are to eliminate the Banished presence from this sector of Sonus V. You will then proceed to the colony of SXS Industrie S5-3 and assist in rescue efforts, if there are any surviving colonists. You will have fire support from the Addis Ababa—those with the targeting locators on your person will be able to call down fire missions as you go. Queuing will be done on a first-come first-serve basis."

The AI then lifted its chin, peering somewhere behind the group of Marines, back toward the front of the Pelican.

"Are your objectives clear as well, Petty Officer?"

A heavy creaking groaned through the darkness of the craft. From the veiled corners of the Pelican, a huge figure rose from their seat. They stood nearly seven feet tall, clearly dwarfing the other Marines. They were donned in the Hermes configuration of MJOLNIR GEN2 armor, the definitive tool that befitted a Spartan. A full-shield mask glimmered a hemisphere of gold, capturing the entirety of the Pelican's interior within its lobed mirror. The armor itself was colored a cold blue-gray, the color of heat-shimmered mountains miles off in the distance, with sharp yellow highlights. A three-digit braille code had been embedded on the left side of their chestplate. In their hands, they clutched a long-barreled shotgun—an M90 model.

Despite their enormous size, the Spartan was barely making any noise as they calmly walked forward—the enhanced mobility subsystem in their armor meant that the wearer could move in it as though it weighed like nothing. There was a fluidity to its movements that suggested the person who was donning it had so much experience with it that it practically acted as a second skin. As the Pelican swayed as it was buffeted by the storm, the Spartan did not even seem to be fazed by the turbulence. They simply made minute adjustments, almost as if they were anticipating when the next bump was to arrive. No breathing sounds exuded from the vocabulator at the base of their helmet. They looked like every bit of the war gods as the UNSC propaganda proclaimed them to be.

"087 acknowledges," the Spartan addressed the AI, ignoring the stares of the Marines. Their voice was low and husky, with a pronounced English accent. A woman's voice. "Mark the latest known position of the TOI to my HUD."

"Marking it now, Petty Officer."

One of the Marines was looking to the AI, the Spartan, and his comrades in rapid fashion. "Hey, wait, hold on! You never said anything about there being a Target of Interest at play."

"Standard tradecraft. Don't be so surprised," the Spartan simply said as they gruffly, yet gently, walked through the group, even causing the AI's image to momentarily phase out of control when she simply stepped through its hologram. The Spartan was now positioned first at the door, their hands continuing to grip the close-range weapon with a tightness as though they expected to lash out with it in the next second.

"Spartan-087's objectives are complimentary to the Sonus V incursion," the AI explained. "ONI deemed her participation to be a necessity."

"That's just a nice way of saying 'mind your own business,'" the same Marine growled.

The group of soldiers were now looking at the Spartan's back. She had not bothered to address them at all. The Marines got the sensation the Spartan didn't think much of them, but could not decide if it was from arrogance or ambivalence.

"One minute!" one of the pilots burst over the PA. "Look sharp! Coming in hot!"

The rocking of the Pelican was more pronounced now, especially now that new shuddering noises were emitting from the airframe with each heavy bump.

One of the Marines decided to try and pierce the veil. He took a couple of steps toward the Spartan and cleared his throat.

"Don't suppose you were going to ask us if you needed any backup?"

The golden visor made the slightest of tilts before it righted back up. The Marine had no way of knowing if that was the Spartan version of a shrug or just an adjustment.

"I would have asked if I had needed it," the Spartan simply responded.

The Marine cracked a smile—he saw this conversation as a challenge. By now, the rest of the squad was lining up behind the Spartan. The red light in the Pelican had begun to strobe. There were thirty seconds left until the ship touched down.

"Think we couldn't match your skills?" the Marine coyly moved his shoulders back and forth, like he was a boxer. "Worried we might somehow show you up out there?"

Now the Spartan turned to look at the man and his reflection became encapsulated in a dome of what looked like liquid gold. The Spartan stood absolutely still, then gave a soft shake of their head.

The Marine was not sure, but he swore that he heard a noise come from the Spartan that sounded like the softest chuckle he had ever heard.

"No," the Spartan said as she widened her stance in a sprinter's lunge. "You wouldn't be able to keep up."

A buzzer in the Pelican then began to ring incessantly. The ramp then extended outward, allowing a brief hiss of atmosphere to resound as the two environs merged in that split-second. Then, a savage hail of rocks as sharp as knives surged into the craft, a blinding hurricane of debris and lighting screaming and pounding just outside.

Without hesitation, the Spartan, Kelly-087, lifted off on the balls of her feet, took at massive leap out the craft, and landed with her boots scourging the earth.

She dug her heels into the soft volcanic ground. Black clumps splattered her armor around her feet. The ground pulsed from her arrival. Behind her helmet, Kelly gave a smirk.

Then she ran.

"Holy shit," one of the Marines said as he saw the Spartan take off, but no one could hear him over the roar of the gale.

Able to reach thirty-eight miles an hour in full armor, the piezoelectric liquid metal crystal layer in the MJOLNIR suit provided an additional layering of artificial muscle, bolstering the Spartan's natural strength to something inhuman. It was almost impossible to fathom, but watching the half-ton giant sprint across the jagged fields of molten rock, one could easily imagine that she could beat a Warthog in a dead-head across such terrain. There was no other way to put it—Kelly was the fastest human being who had ever lived.

In five seconds, the sheets of black dust swallowed Kelly up from view. She was now alone. Or so it seemed. The HUD in Kelly's helmet was now acting as her eyes—she could see the FOF tags for the hordes of Marines that were being regurgitated out of their Pelicans behind her. Tracer round fire mingled with the crackling lighting that detonated as blinding balls within the deadly dust storm. To the untrained eye, it looked beautiful.

For Kelly, it was routine.

She was not even panting when she hit the mile marker in less than two minutes, much less having broken a sweat. The beacon on her compass was pointing her straight forward. A topo map showed a clumsy cluster of buildings situated at the base of a sloping volcano. A layer underneath it showed a maze of mining tunnels. If anyone had the sense to hole up anywhere during this storm, it was obvious where they would hunker down to.

Great, she thought. Confined spaces.

She was glad she had brought the shotgun.

Now, as she grew closer to the colony, Kelly was acutely aware of bright sapphire flashes cutting through the air just above her. She craned her head, unable to see any stars. The lights were coming from searing plasma bolts—turret fire, it looked like—accompanied by globules of arcing mortar fire from Wraiths. Banished, Swords of Sanghelios, it didn't matter where the fire was coming from. She was going to have to get through it all at some point.

As she approached, her motion sensor lit up bright red with a multitude of blips. A low ridge was just in front of her now. Her finger was already half-pulling the trigger of her weapon. The Swords of Sanghelios or Banished wouldn't be distinguished on her FOF system. She would only be able to tell if the contacts ahead of her were friendly via the hard way.

With a series of clomping strides, Kelly ascended the ridge in three steps, propelling herself into the air as she crested the lip of the rise. Windswept debris continued to ping at her armor as she lifted herself midair—which emitted an outline of sparks against her powerful form.

A gaggle of armored Brutes, Grunts, and Jackals stared up dumbly at her. One of the Brutes pointed in her direction. "Demon!"

How nice of them to make things easy for her.

Kelly opened fire with her shotgun. The 8-gauge buckshot caught the stomach of the closest Grunt, blowing a hole in the squat alien and barreling it end over end with a cry.

Machine-like, Kelly whirled and fired another round at a Jackal, but the alien's round shield-unit that covered nearly the entirety of the birdlike creature's profile absorbed the buckshot, its surface turning from aqua to white in response to the energy transferred from the projectiles. In a smooth motion, Kelly reached down and drew her pistol and shot the Jackal's unshielded foot once. The Jackal pitched forward with a cry, splaying its arms out and leaving it unprotected. Kelly blew its head off with another report of her shotgun. She then holstered her pistol in the next second.

Two Brutes rose from where they had been taking cover from mortar rounds. They each held Brute Shots—large-muzzled weapons with bladed stocks that were practically mini-grenade launchers. They raised their weapons to fire but Kelly was too quick for them. She whirled and let off another round with her shotgun. One of the Brutes yowled and shook its hand, which was now missing a few fingers, but at least it was now aiming away from her.

The other one, however…

The Brute fired and Kelly saw the momentary flash before instinct took over. Lightning-quick, she stepped to the side and the round just sailed past her head to the point where she could almost see the spiral grooving on the grenade. She did not see it detonate behind her, but felt the wave of pressure when it did, the sensation like a throb in the fluid of her brain.

The normal strategy when facing off against Brutes was simple: run. Kelly didn't have time for that, though. These two were in her way and needed to be dealt with if she was ever going to make it to the colony on the far side of the plain. That left only one strategy open to her: engage.

The Brute fired again, this time lower to the ground, hoping to catch Kelly's torso. She dove out of the way for this round, and the pressurized explosion helped propel her forward an additional meter. She felt heat at her legs for a brief moment as brief tongues of flame singed at her armor. More sparks scraped at her armor, appearing liquid in the dim light. She executed a smooth roll and reached her free arm out—

—and snatched up the fallen Needler of the Jackal she had just killed.

Mine.

Kelly tumbled head over heels, in control the entire way, and ended back on her feet in a low crouch. With both hands full, she fired her weapons.

Her one-handed shotgun blast caromed across the plain and the first Brute—the one whose fingers she had just removed—clutched his throat and began gagging. A long spray of dark blood was squirting from his neck—the buckshot had opened up an artery. The alien's ruined hand came up to the wound in an attempt to stem the bleeding, though it did little good. Its eyes widened in surprise, perhaps shocked to have been felled by such a lucky shot, but in mere seconds the blood had left its brain and it pitched forward to lie in the blackened dirt that had so eagerly drank up its life.

Kelly's repatriated Needler had fired at the same time, aiming for the second Brute. Her target had zeroed in on her again and had sent another grenade her way, this time close enough to drain her shields by half. A wave of static electricity passed over her as her shields fizzled. She smelled ozone. But the purple needles sang as they hurled through the air, homing in onto the Brute and spiking through armor and flesh. She never missed. Each needle made a sharp pinging noise as it hit home, one after the another.

One needle…

Four needles…

Seven needles…

There was a bright pink explosion as the needles resonance instability overclocked in an instant, resulting in a supercombine explosion. Crystal shrapnel hurled about in a short radius and the pink fog quickly dissipated—half of the Brute's head remained atop a badly mangled neck. Gore was pouring from the cavernous wound and the thing's remaining eye was scrambling in its socket, as if it was stunned to have been put in such an unexpected predicament.

Like his companion, he too hit the dirt, never to rise again.

There were no enemies in sight for the moment. Kelly stood back up and then looked at the Needler in her hand.

"Overdesigned garbage," she said to no one in particular. She threw the weapon away.

She kept sprinting across the treacherous terrain. Overhead, she could hear the wail of Banshees, but the surrounding storm was so thick that she couldn't get a visual. Now she was able to hear the chainguns of Falcons joining the fray in atmo, but paid it little mind. She proceeded further into Banished lines, killing as she went. Luckily, the roaring of the wind was so loud that it suppressed even the bellow of her shotgun. Grunts, Jackals, Brutes, and even the odd Elite were felled from either her bullets or her savage blows as she appeared through the throttling spray without warning, like a wraith made out of sand and fog. Soon, corpses littered the ground in her wake.

Kelly consulted her TACMAP again. GPS positioning put her within two miles of the colony. Not that many Banished between her and there now, either. She could even see that the majority of the UNSC's forces had fully offloaded by now. The icons for Warthogs and Scorpion tanks were engaging the enemy—if she toggled the sensitivity of her audio receptors, she might have even been able to hear the fighting from that distance.

She closed her map, preparing to run again, when all of a sudden, a massive ping seared red in her motion sensor. And it was headed right for her.

There was no time to think. Just to act. She dove to the right and the whirling drone of a Ghost's boosters made itself known to her as the hovering fast-attack vehicle sped just inches from her body, causing a ripple of wind to surge past the Spartan. She lifted her head, hearing the rider curse. The Ghost wheeled about, and its driver—a black and white armored Elite—made a threatening gesture. It also shouted something at her, but Kelly wasn't bothered enough to turn on her translator program. She knew full well what that Elite was saying to her.

"Right then," she murmured under her breath. "Let's have it."

The Elite gunned the Ghost, its plasma cannons blazing. Kelly dodged the first few bursts, but a couple of shots washed over her, making her shields react angrily. She darted back and forth, making the Elite constantly course-correct. She never took her eyes off the charging machine, her breath deep and mechanical in her lungs.

"Closer… closer…"

The Ghost howled as its booster engines fired. White contrails escaped from its wing-mounted engines as it sped on course for her, a purple shard slicing through the ragged night.

Twenty meters away…

Ten…

Five.

Kelly chinned a control. In the next instant, her shields overcharged all at once, and the powerful gravitic effect from the armor lock forced her to take a knee, but she reached out an arm just in time to prop up her upper body with a clenched fist.

It was too late for the Ghost to change direction, not when it was in the middle of a boost. Its leftmost wing plowed into Kelly, but her blinding energy shield made her so immovable that the entire wing sheared away without moving the Spartan an inch. Its center of gravity now skewed, and with its power distribution unevenly partitioned, the Ghost abruptly pitched to the right and its remaining wing sank into the earth. Immediately, the craft flipped end over end several times, ejecting its rider many meters away, until it final exploded in a wash of blue-purple fire. Scorched armoring landed near the still-glowing Kelly, who slowly stood back up after she deactivated her armor lock.

"They never learn." She dusted off a shoulder pad.

Embers of a far-away fire had now joined the fray, swirling about her armored form. Kelly stowed her shotgun and walked over to where the Elite had been deposited from its wrecked vehicle. The alien was lying in a twisted heap, its body bent at different angles. It was looking towards the shrouded sky and gasping for air. Its back was broken.

Its eyes found Kelly and its four mandibles shuddered in what the Spartan guessed was the equivalent of a snarl. The Elite tried to right itself but it either didn't have the strength or it was simply too painful for it to complete the action. Instead, it just settled back upon the ground and uttered a low sigh.

"Finish it, demon," it spoke in a clumsy accent, "if you have the—"

Kelly unholstered her pistol and unleashed one round. At close range, the pistol bored through the Elite's weak shields and burrowed straight into its forehead. Its brains painted the rock just behind its skull as the high-velocity round exited from its head.

"Obliged," Kelly said as she swapped her shotgun back.

A rising light was beginning to sear to the east. A pale cut of sun from a weakened dawn cut at the horizon, speckled with the windstrewn dust and debris that continued to hurtle through the air.

Kelly was on the move again, tantalizingly close to the colony. The storm was subsiding enough that she could see the arcs of plasma and the exchange of UNSC weapons fire off in the distance, about a couple hundred meters lower in elevation from her position. The dead volcano was directly to her northwest, with the colony straight ahead.

She headed over a ribboned rise, vaulting over the obstacle with ease, and nearly ran headlong into a Wraith tank.

Her actions had led her into a shallow gully, but her MJOLNIR armor was heavy enough that it sent her into a skid towards the bottom. But the Wrath's gunner—another Elite—had already seen her and squawked a warning. By now, the tank was already turning in her direction.

The Wraith was unlike any tank the UNSC could ever dream of making. It was bulbous, made of the same purple armoring that was found in any of the Covenant-built ground vehicles, and looked more like a VTOL lander than it did an actual tank. Like the Ghost, the Wraith had a short boost function and hovered a few feet above the ground. Its 35 cm plasma mortar was perhaps one of the deadliest ground weapons in the Covenant arsenal, capable of melting through armored tank plating with a single shot and obliterating anything softer than titanium into heat and atoms.

However, despite its boost function, the Wraith was still quite slow and required its entire chassis to be facing its target in order to properly aim its main weapon. That was why later models had inserted a turret position to dissuade infantry from getting any fancy ideas.

Unfortunately, Kelly didn't dissuade that easily.

The Wraith was still turning, but the pilot at the helm must have figured that he needed to deal with the Spartan immediately, and the cannon atop the tank blazed pure white as a lob of plasma as big as its target was unleashed. Kelly barely made it out of the way, avoiding being roasted to a crisp by the superheated explosion. Blackened glass exploded from the impact zone, showering the Spartan's back with fragile chips of earth. The Elite in the turret was already firing away, leading ahead of the main tank's cannon. A splash of fire rippled across Kelly's shields and she grunted. The skin underneath her armor felt burned.

Incensed, Kelly abruptly dug her heel into the ground and sprang off toward the Wraith. She bobbed, ducked, and weaved through the turret fire as she closed the gap and leapt onto the tank's frontal wing. She momentarily tipped backwards, but was able to balance herself just in time.

Now aware of the danger, the Elite at the turret struggled to swing his weapon in the Spartan's direction, but Kelly lifted her shotgun and fired again. The slug entered the base of the Elite's neck and blew his head off completely, trailing a spiral of purple blood in wild arcs.

Kelly now jumped upon the front of the craft and located a square panel. She clenched her fingers into a tight fist and began raining down blows upon the panel—her armored knuckles prevented her from feeling any pain. She could see how the metal crumpled with every punch, and how severed wires behind the ruined covering sparked and glistened with angry dribbles of molten metal. Once she had deformed the panel enough, Kelly reached out and ripped it off the tank and hurled it away with a flick of her wrist, exposing the cockpit. Inside, another Elite was trying to raise a plasma pistol, but Kelly punched the alien in the mouth, breaking half of its mandibles in the process. As the Elite roared in pain, Kelly procured a grenade, removed the pin, and dropped it inside. The Elite froze as the oblong device rolled into its lap, knowing what it was, and made a soft sound that sounded like gah.

The Spartan had already jumped off the craft by then and had made it up the opposite side of the ditch by the time the Wraith blew itself to smithereens. A mushroom cloud of smoke and rolling plasma glitched electricity and otherworldly fire as it lazily billowed into the air. Kelly allowed herself a moment to watch the smoking wreck, which had settled upon the ground, no longer floating, and inserted a few shells into her shotgun and did a mag check of her pistol.

No other contacts registered on her TACMAP. She was free to approach the colony.

In less than a minute, she was through the main gates to the compound—the main doors were empty, like she was practically being invited in. Once inside, Kelly proceeded methodically, her shotgun stock never leaving her shoulder.

The colony was filled with the typical ramshackle and dirt-streaked assemblages made out of heavy plastic. A My First Colonist Starter Pack, essentially. Empty vehicles sat in lots, the windows caked with black. Bars of light adorning dismal doorways flickered weakly. Pallets of tied down cargo were interspersed around the main yard—never having been unloaded.

And there were blast marks. Lots and lots of blast marks.

The wind had scraped away any sort of tracks, but the carbon scoring here was impossible for even the elements to scourge away. Kelly kept an eye on her motion trackers and did a few quick scans with her thermals to confirm that she was alone here before she bent down to investigate. She trailed a gloved hand across the markings in the ground. Plasma would have turned the ground here into fragments of melted glass. Here, the dirt was clumped and pulverized. Frag grenades. The colonists defending this place had been engaged. Put up quite a fight, judging from the amount of evidence around her.

Which, she deemed as she now stood back up, were nowhere to be found.

That didn't mean that she should expect the worst, but Kelly knew better to trust in blind hope. She continued her circuit around the compound, kicking open a few doors in the domiciles for good measure. She went room to room, scanning the living quarters of a few of the prefabs, but came away with nothing but emptiness within the confines of the buildings. It was strange, because several of the possessions of the colonists were just lying about like their owners had just stepped out for dinner, fully expecting to return soon. Even some of their media screens were still on in a couple of the bedrooms.

The Spartan walked back out and approached what looked like a makeshift bar. It was here that she noticed the bullet holes pockmarking the outside walls. Some trails were scattered, aimless. Untrained colonists with automatic rifles, she reckoned. Never a good combination.

But some of the other bullet markings were strange. They were grouped and had used comparatively less ammo. Tri-burst patterns—a battle rifle. Perhaps the colonists had a few crack shots on their side.

Then, if that was the case, where were the bodies? Surely the colonists would have been able to bag a Grunt, at the very least. Yet, there remained nothing. No evidence of any species' existence in this sad little corner of the world.

Kelly now approached the quadrant of the compound that was closest to the volcano. Here, she could see that there was something of interest. A massive doorway, bolstered by supporting steel beams, had embedded itself into the base of the slope, running at a downward angle into the earth. Thin rail tracks sloped downward as well—a nearby generator acted as the power source for the coupling-tooth-rail that could lift an ore-laden cart up from the depths. A mine.

The TACMAP lined the mine up with the beacon for her TOI. It put her directly within the expected radius of where her target was operating. So far, the objectives were overlapping.

Taking a moment to look around, waiting to see if she could detect any more signs of the battle off in the distance, Kelly then appraised the mine's entrance and stood upon the threshold, a shadow silhouetted against the blackened thunderstorm.

"Nowhere else to go but down."

With a tilt of her head, Kelly's helmet-lights blipped on, emitting twin cones of illumination that speared into the seemingly endless cavern. Without hesitation, shotgun raised, she began the march downward, her steps echoing heavily among the rounded walls.


SXS Industrie S5-3 Mine
Sublevel 5

The cells in the caverns were not part of the original blueprints. Nor were their tenants, for that matter. Crude metal bars had been fashioned here from building scaffolding, jolted deep into the black rock of the mine. Clumsy, but still effective, considering its objective.

There were three cells, packed to the brim with Sangheili stripped completely of their weapons and armor. They were either sitting or standing with the same blank stares on their faces. Some of them were bound with wiring—which had been the only tools that their captors had found at this deep of a level that they deemed adequate. Removed from the sky, a natural dark haze filtered over everything here, making every shadow appear as if it took on a life of its own, growing in depth and undulating beyond infinitude.

The jail had two exits, one on either side of the room. A Jiralhanae stood guard on both ends, each donned in the same olive-green armor. The ursine aliens shifted in place, their bored eyes roaming around the room. They had been down here for hours and nothing of note had occurred. No escape attempts and no clamor or rancor from the inmates. That was the thing about the Sangheili—they made model prisoners.

Some of the Sangheili clustered closer to one another, each wearing the same downtrodden gaze. Their mottled skin appeared textured in the bad light, their golden eyes completely lacking that warrior spark. They looked malnourished and despondent without their armor. They were shivering in the deep cold down here.

One of the taller Sangheili, a former Swords of Sanghelios captain, gripped the bars of his cell and tested its strength for perhaps the thirtieth time of his residence here. No luck, the bars wouldn't budge.

"How long has it been?" he asked no one in particular.

"Jura thinks we're on the third day now," one responded. "Some are saying it's the fifth."

"They're not going to feed us."

"Probably don't have enough to go around."

A third Sangheili grunted. "If only we could starve quicker. When the food runs out, the Jiralhanae will want to eat the first meat they set their eyes upon."

"Be quiet," the captain hissed.

The mere mention of food seemed to set off someone's stomach. A low rumble filled the air. Already, the corrugated outline of ribs could be seen under the skin of the Sangheili soldiers. Some of them had died already from dehydration. They had gotten used to the stench of death by now.

The second Sangheili sighed. "No blade to kill ourselves with. Keep our honor intact."

"Barka made an attempt last night, while you were sleeping," the second Sangheili said.

The alien's head perked up. "He smuggled in a knife?"

"No. Bashed his head against the wall. Apparently, his body was still twitching, hours later. Not quick."

The Sangheili cursed. "There is no honor in that. Needs to be quick and clean. Not desperate. What happened to his body?"

"What do you think? Jiralhanae took it away."

The implications of their reality were bad enough that conversation dwindled to mere rumblings after this. The prisoners continued to hollowly stare past the bars, unable to die in a way that would keep their honor intact. Some of them were already contemplating asking their fellows to do the deed for them—either by stoving their skulls in with their bare hands, or by strangling them. The stain of their demise would taint both of their houses, but the prospect was certainly better than wasting away from hunger or being eaten alive by the Jiralhanae.

The pattern of light shifted on the right end of the room and a San'Shyuum, flanked by two massive Mgalekgolo bodyguards, entered from the doorway. The trio appeared monochrome in the thin light—details managed to slip in as the prisoners' eyes adjusted.

The San'Shyuum was tall and slender, donned with a burgundy robe woven with a small number of star systems, with an anti-grav belt looped around its waist to support it as it slowly shuffled across the room. Filigreed material in their clothes glimmered like molten glass artifacts. Golden loops hung from the flesh appendages that hung from their heads, and he wore a battle helmet the color of jade.

The Sangheili all gave a subharmonic grunt at the San'Shyuum's entrance—the pompous alien routinely professed to his captives of his desire to be addressed by the self-granted title of the Deacon of Unwavering Faith. The Sangheili here never took him up on the offer out of spite—mostly resorting to refer to him as simply the "Prophet", to use the human tongue, which had irked the San'Shyuum. Had the Sangheili known the creature's birth name, they would have used that too, which really would have set their tormentor off.

"Still alive, it seems?" the San'Shyuum whispered to his assemblage. It was nowhere close to its mature lifecycle, yet its voice was as delicate as paper. "No doubt waiting for your compatriots to stage a rescue? Would it hasten your expiration if I were to reveal that their efforts have ended in failure? The Swords of Sanghelios are hours away from extinction on this planet, if not minutes. The Banished will reign supreme."

Such taunts would normally have had no effect on the proud Sangheili warriors, but after so many days of starvation and humiliation, the words bore down on them like lead weights. Some of them even dipped their heads.

The only one who was not perturbed by this address was the lone Sangheili that was sitting in the furthest corner of the farthest cell from the San'Shyuum, obscured by a legion of shadows. Ice-colored eyes blinked sonorously, their pupils never losing their sinister slant. A blood-stained bandage at their neck was the only article that they wore. They kept their hands closely clasped together in front of them. Never moving. Just listening.

The San'Shyuum turned in place, grinning in satisfaction upon his forced ministry. "How far you all have fallen. Once the great Protectors of the Covenant. Now reduced to silent, moping beasts. Our Hierarchs saw so much in you. You desecrate their memory even now by being so much of a disappointment."

Despite the terrible circumstances, none of the prisoners rose to the bait. The San'Shyuum wanted to exert every opportunity he could to make himself appear as their superior. Even captive, the Sangheili held their tenets close. They would not speak. Not in their defense. Not even when their life was dependent on a single thread in the great fabric of the cosmos.

A frown came to the San'Shyuum. He had attempted such morale-lowering sessions before, only to be met with the same result. He simply did not have the patience to be the one to break the minds of battle-hardened warriors. That was why he had the Jiralhanae.

His slender hands toyed with a plasma pistol that he had withdrawn from underneath his robes. He tapped at the controls as if this was the first time he had ever held a weapon like this before.

"I suppose you still have to recognize the depths of your own insignificance. I promise you, the stoic fronts you erect will matter little when the moment arrives. For it is the moment you have been waiting for all your life. You just never knew when it would arrive. But now… it is here. You will simply have to accept that it will happen, and that nothing you could possibly do will ever—"

The San'Shyuum halted midsyllable as a distant rumble resounded through the chamber. Dust filtered down in dark streams from the ceiling and the lights shuddered and flickered.

"Intruders," the San'Shyuum grimaced. He tipped his palm up and a series of blue rings like a solar system whipped into view above his hand—the Banished battlenet. "The perimeter's been breached." To the Mgalekgolo, he ordered, "Head up top and destroy the invaders before they reach this sublevel."

The Mgalekgolo each gave a rumbling noise and stomped off in the direction of the San'Shyuum's shaking finger. The orange worms that congregated in the bipedal shape underneath the blue-gray armor glistened and churned in a roiling mass. The fuel rod cannons they held began to warm to a sickly green as the conduits within them began to charge. They also carried a hunk of starship steel in another massive paw as though it weighed nothing. Perfect weapons for mass carnage, in the San'Shyuum's eyes, but lacked the brutal intelligence of the Jiralhanae. Still, anyone who stood toe-to-toe with a Mgalekgolo was either a fool or incredibly arrogant.

With the Lekgolo gestalts having departed, the San'Shyuum whispered into his comm. "I need the closest Jiralhanae company on this sublevel to the prison right now."

He eyed the captive Sangheili disdainfully.

"We need to make sure their compatriots obtain nothing of value if they make it down here."

As the immediate clomping of heavy boots upon the metal grated floors warped off of the dripping walls, a distant thrumming energy seemed to grip the attentions of the Sangheili. They looked to each other, fatigue having washed away the will to resist, a calm acceptance starting to overcome them.

All except for the one that sat patiently in the corner, their breathing never having faltered in tempo. Only their eyes moved, blinking slowly. Thoughtfully.

Unseen in the darkness, the lone Sangheili slowly parted their pressed palms, revealing the splinter of rock they had spent the last several hours filing down into a jagged spear. Blood from several cuts on their hands had soaked into the stone. If the time was truly approaching, then more blood would certainly be coming with the destiny they had planned for their new weapon.


Sublevel 3

Kelly's shotgun made a rapid chugging noise as cones of steel and fire blasted throughout the caves. Brutes seemed to be pouring out of the walls at this point, the darkness easily eclipsing their massive bodies, but not once did she so much as step backward to signal a retreat. The enraged aliens were rushing her, trying to close the distance in the confined space, but Kelly laid too strong a front of aggressive fire. Soon, a trail of dead Brutes marked a path behind her.

She moved throughout the mine, not bothering to rush, reloading whenever there was any lull in the shooting. She also liberated any spare grenades that the Banished troops had dropped, just in case. Kelly didn't use Covenant weapons if she could help it, but she had to admit that she did find the properties of their explosive devices to be rife with possibilities.

A group of Grunts rounded a cluster and all jumped in unison as they saw the Spartan. One of them threw a plasma grenade, but badly missed. Kelly didn't even have to move out of the way. Instead, she tracked the arcing projectile, watching until it made contact smack-dab against the chestplate of a Brute who had just squeezed out of an adjacent hallway on the other side of the shaft. The Brute opened his mouth to curse the Grunt, but quickly vanished in an electric ball of blue plasma. Kelly had her pistol out by now, the remains of the Brute now ignored, and quickly shot the Grunts in the head. Methane bubbled from the dislodged masks the squat aliens wore, neon blue blood having splashed around their skulls.

Kelly could have gone about this the stealthy way, considering the environment's natural advantage. However, nowhere in her objectives stated that stealth was a requirement.

She kept an eye on her motion-trackers as she went, rotating back and forth to send a full load of buckshot into any Banished warrior that dared cross her path. The tunnels here were short and made up of steep slopes. Terrible for long-range weapons. Which was good, because Kelly could get up close and personal to her enemies before they could even send off a round.

The shafts of light in front of her distorted and a Brute captain rushed out, a Spiker in his hand already blazing away. Pointed spears of red-hot metal embedded themselves into the wall just above Kelly's head. She ducked and let off another round. The Brute stumbled backward, his right hand dangling by just a few strips of sinew. She fired again, freeing the alien's head from his body.

She came into a crosscut off one of the downward slopes—a Jackal was already there with an overcharged plasma pistol. He fired, and Kelly grunted as it felt like she was just bashed in the chest with a massive hammer. A glance at her shield bar indicated that it had been immediately drained, but it slowly started to recharge back up.

Incensed, Kelly lashed out with a fist—the panicked Jackal squawked as it saw the oncoming Spartan and raised its shield to deflect the blow. The punch rippled across the electric surface and the device immediately overloaded and died, becoming nothing more than a useless paperweight. Now completely freaked, the Jackal turned to run, but Kelly swung the butt of her shotgun and caved in the Jackal's skull with a single blow—gore squirted out from cracks in the bone and the twitching corpse was dumped to the ground.

She stepped back out into the sloped shaft and followed it all the way to the bottom. The ground here was more fragmented than it was up top, but Kelly's boots ground the stray rocks to dust beneath her feet. She kept close to the hanging garden of LED lamps that had been bolted into the walls, passing by emptied railcarts that would have normally been filled with ore.

So far, not a single sign of her TOI. Nor had she come across any indication of the missing colonists. She neither hoped nor despaired, simply taking things in the moment as they came to her.

However, such introspection would have to wait, for when she reached the lowest chamber, two massive pings on her motion sensor made her pause in her tracks. She heard the danger before she even saw it coming—a two-note roar that sounded like a jet engine igniting. Instinctively, she dove to the side and a pillar of scintillating ugly green plowed through the air where she had just been a second before. The fuel rod burst smashed into the far side of the hall, melting the rock there into gelatinous clumps.

Kelly stood back up as the Hunter pair slowly stalked their way into the room, which was filled to the brim with mining equipment and an assortment of tools.

"Great," Kelly said. "They've got you in here too?"

Whether or not the Hunters understood the sarcasm was irrelevant. Their combined intelligence was only basic enough to distinguish friend from foe. Their friends, or whatever was the closest analogue, they left alone.

Their enemies, though…

The Hunters lifted their massive weapons together, never a millisecond apart, their mysterious link enabling the two of them to make simultaneous actions. The fuel rods belched green plasma and Kelly had leap across the room, smashing through tables and dislodging piles of collected ore, in order to evade the Hunters' attacks. The aliens were relentless, firing salvo after salvo. The plasma was slow-moving, easy to avoid. But the Hunters were closing. Things could get tight in a pinch if the range between them was reduced too much.

Problem was, the Hunters were blocking the route that Kelly had been intending to go. Internally, she suppressed a groan.

Kelly whipped up her shotgun and began pumping rounds into the Hunters. The massive aliens just stood where they were—most of her shots pinged off their heavy armor and shield, but a few sharp sprays of orange ichor squirted from the sides of the Hunters. Lucky hits.

One of the Hunters charged, swinging its shield like a club. It was strong enough to wave a piece a metal that weighed as much as a car like it was made of styrofoam. Kelly sidestepped and the ground shook where the shield smashed against it, just missing her. The Hunter was slow to turn and Kelly took another shot, this time to the Hunter's back. This time, a massive amount of blood exploded from the back of the alien, along with part of its armor, but it was still standing.

Angered at being dealt such a blow, the Hunter whipped back around and the spines on its back were close enough that one of them caught the shotgun in Kelly's hands and ripped it completely out of her grip. It then stomped on the weapon, completely shattering it.

"Shit," Kelly muttered. This was not going according to plan.

The emboldened Hunter pair now recognized that the Spartan was without their primary weapon and they began to step up their attacks. Their fuel rod cannons roared and sparked with energy and heat. Kelly's shields routinely dipped and plateaued as the coruscating bursts flared close enough to affect the electronics. The explosions that were occurring all over the room from the missed shots were enough to nearly overload the polarization in her visor. She wondered if she was going to go blind.

This is getting old, Kelly thought as she watched the second Hunter charge another burst on its weapon. She became a blur as she began to build up speed in this room, but something was different, this time. The Hunter swiftly shifted its body to keep aiming at her whenever she moved. No, this was a pattern. The alien always demonstrated quick bursts of movement to always keep her in its sights whenever she dodged. It was so slight that it could have been indiscriminate, but it was there.

Let's see if I can use this.

She mentally mapped out the battlefield: the chamber. The first Hunter was a few meters to her left, currently in the process of trying to beat her to death with its shield. The second Hunter was taking a position near the threshold, blocking the way, far enough to take potshots at her. She needed to time this right.

Kelly backed up a bit until she had gained some distance from the second Hunter. The first Hunter continue to pursue, bellowing a noise that sounded like boulders grinding together. She watched for the telltale charge of its cohort's weapon—there it was. Immediately, she sprinted to the left, and the Hunter, on instinct, rotated to track her like the last several times, and fired.

The blinding plasma charge sailed on course, blistering in the darkness, and hit its target.

The first Hunter.

Kelly had perfectly put the second Hunter's bond brother between her and it. The first Hunter gave a low keen as fire and green plasma enveloped it, igniting in a split-second that seared its outline against the curvature of Kelly's visor. Then it collapsed, its back a charred and smoking ruin.

The second Hunter stood in place, perhaps absorbing the fact that it had just killed its own bond brother. It then gave an indescribable roar, torn apart at the fact that it had been tricked so handedly by the Spartan. It charged Kelly, apparently having forgotten that it was still holding a long-range weapon, but the alien was now consumed by the bloodthirsty desire to rip the soldier limb from limb that it simply didn't want to use it.

Just what Kelly was hoping far. An angry enemy was a stupid enemy.

She skidded out of the way and the Hunter barreled into the wall and rebounded off of it with a sharp clang. Kelly already had two plasma grenades out, previously liberated from her fallen foes, and had depressed the button to activate both of them. She threw the projectiles milliseconds apart, and they stuck perfectly upon the unarmored back of the Hunter. The grenades made a clicking noise as they latched onto the alien and began to make a small, electric charging sound.

There was a brilliant flash and the Hunter was completely consumed by the vaporizing detonation. Blue mists of unignited plasma speckled the air as the Hunter's roasted corpse now joined its bond brother in death.

Kelly looked at the fallen Hunters for a moment, waiting to ensure they wouldn't get back up. When she was satisfied that she had cleared this room, she moved on.

She only had a pistol at this point—not the best tool for clearing house. Perhaps stealth should be back on as an option at her disposal. It seemed she would have to enlist the services of a Covenant weapon in the near future, if she was to make it out of this place.

There were no more Banished to engage here, at least not in this section of the sublevel. Kelly moved from hall to hall, keeping herself light on her feet.

After a couple more minutes of treading through the abandoned mine, a series of noises from one of the offshoot hallways drew her attention. Aiming her sidearm towards the direction of the sound, she crept forward, finger on at the ready, prepared to depress the trigger of her weapon so fast that it could be mistaken for an automatic.

In the next moment, upon entering the next room, Kelly realized that she had just stepped into a bloodbath.

This room had been converted into a jail and it was filled with Banished. Or, to be more exact, Banished and corpses. The room was alive with movement but none of it was directed toward the Spartan—Kelly figured that her entrance had been entirely unnoticed. There were several cages that had been erected in the room. Kelly could see the remains of Elites within two of them. Blood and gore splattered the sides of the cells—they had been ripped apart by their jailers. Some of the Elites had been disemboweled. Others had their limbs or heads forcibly torn off.

There was one last cell that was filled with any actual living prisoners, though it would not be that way for long. Three Brutes were inside that cell, howling in glee as their claws were raking the last of the Elite prisoners open. The Elites were unarmored and weak from their confinement, unable to resist back. The Brutes did not seem to care about this lack of sport, they were only excited about the killing.

One of the Brutes had tackled an Elite and was straddling them as their massive paws gripped their throat, strangling the life from them. The Elite's head turned and found Kelly. The Spartan saw the alien's eyes widen, but then there was a change and its stare abruptly grew cold. The Brute gave a roar of victory as it beat its fists down upon its victim, caving in the Elite's chest with the sound of breaking bones.

Something clicked in Kelly and she automatically moved forward. The Brutes had still not noticed her approach. She reached out and pushed aside the ajar cell door and walked up to the first Brute, behind it, and raised her pistol to the back of its neck and fired at point-blank-range.

A Brute's skin was strong enough to stop a burst from a battle rifle, but this close, and aimed directly at its spine, the pistol's bullet entered the creature without difficulty and destroyed its vertebrae in an instant, and exited out the front of its throat in a messy burst. The Brute gave a gurgle and fell upon the Elite it had just killed, never seeing the soldier who had killed it.

Another Brute turned, alerted by the sound of the sidearm. Kelly was already in front of him, a glint of steel clenched in a hand. She swung her arm upward and her knife went through the Brute's jaw and impaled its tongue. The Brute screamed, flecking Kelly's visor with spittle and blood. She withdrew the grisly steel spike, emitting a new gush of dark fluid from the wound, but she quickly replaced the knife with her pistol again, positioned it underneath the Brute's chin, and fired. The top of the Brute's head flew away like it was the top of a soda can, a mess of brains exiting from the cavern in sudden liberation.

She turned to deal with the last Brute in the cell, but something was strange with this one. It had not yet spun to face her—she was looking directly at its back. Instead, it was facing the corner of the cell, its arms spread half-open, twitching rather erratically. Kelly slowly approached the alien, her pistol raised again, but realized that there was another being alive in this cell when she saw the pale blue eyes of an Elite rise from behind the shoulder of the Brute, breathing hard as it manifested all of its willpower and rage into a fierce and terrible strength.

There was a crunching noise and Kelly saw the walls become splattered with purple blood. The Brute fell to its knees. A deep cut in its throat bubbled and sloughed the remains of its life. Kelly caught a glimpse of the wound—its neck had been slit all the way down to the bone. The Brute collapsed at the feet of its bloodied killer.

Kelly slowly backed out of the cell as she watched the Elite breathe heavily. The alien was sans armor but had a bandage upon its neck that was covering a weeping wound. The sharpened stone knife they clutched in a glistening fist was clumped with gore from the Brute. The prisoner must have been sharpening it in secret, waiting for the right moment to strike.

The Elite scanned the cell, pausing for a moment as if it was mourning the loss of its comrades. It then walked over to one of the Brutes, rolled the corpse over, and withdrew an object that had been dangling from the Brute's belt like a trophy. There was a sizzle of energy and the curved blade of an energy sword split the air. Kelly twitched her pistol back up at the sight of the ignited blade, but the Elite did not seem to be too concerned with the Spartan. Instead, they rotated their fist back and forth, examining the hilt, perhaps seeing if the Brutes had done any damage to it while it had been in their possession.

Soon, the Elite walked out of its cell, slightly limping. They had not shut off the sword yet. Their eyes found Kelly, perhaps noticing her for the first time, and acknowledged the pistol that was leveled toward their eyes.

Neither the Spartan nor the Elite moved. They simply stared at one another from opposite sides of the room. Trying to figure the other out. Wondering where their aggressions were directed.

Kelly kept her finger on the pistol's trigger. Any sudden move from the Elite and she would open fire. She was most worried about the energy sword—those things could saw through MJOLNIR armor as though it was paper. But the Elite seemed to relax, no longer adopting a strained pose. It lowered its sword slightly. A shared cue, maybe? Kelly guardedly copied the Elite's movements and slowly aimed her pistol lower and lower until it was aimed at the ground. All the while, the two never broke eye contact, each one mulling over their options, never completely dropping their guard.

A clattering noise broke the spell and both Kelly and the Elite glanced over to the far side of the jail, where a stack of crates with serial numbers stenciled upon them had been placed. From behind them, a Prophet timidly crawled out into the open, hiding behind a shaking Grunt that it had appropriated for cover.

Kelly raised her pistol. TOI located.

The Prophet was careful not to edge his head out too far lest the Spartan take a shot. He clutched the Grunt tightly, keeping it situated in front of him. The Grunt, from its struggling, clearly had no desire to be used as a meat shield, but it was in no position to resist. Its panicked yellow eyes scrambled around the room, a hyperventilating noise apparent behind its mask.

To the Elite, the Prophet called, "You there! Sangheili!"

From where she was standing, Kelly could see the Elite's eyes lower into slits.

"The demon stands in the way of our escape!" the Prophet cried. "Kill the demon and you will have your freedom!" The Grunt was struggling again—the Prophet punched the back of its head, eliciting a squawk out of the diminutive alien. "Cease your stirrings, you petulant creature! You will remain in this position for your Deacon!"

"No!" the Grunt howled. "Mawat does not agree! Leave Mawat out of this!"

Kelly and the Elite still had not moved. The silence in the air felt as if it could be carved with a knife.

The Prophet looked from the two warriors, his head whipping back and forth as his incredulity grew. "What are you waiting for, prisoner? Your freedom is right there! You just need to seize it!"

The Elite looked at Kelly. Kelly looked back at the Elite. The alien's eyes blinked sonorously. Kelly ever so slowly tilted her head, her finger edging back into her weapon's trigger guard. The Spartan saw the Elite's fingers clench upon their energy sword, gripping the hilt tightly into their palm.

Kelly smoothly sucked in a breath.

Then, in the next moment, she turned and unleashed a single shot. The Grunt's head whipped back as the bullet hit it squarely in the forehead. Blue gore splashed onto the face of the Prophet and he dropped the body of his impromptu hostage with a start. With shaking hands, he tried wiping the blood out of his eyes and off his clothes.

"I don't—"

The Prophet never got a chance to finish his sentence, because the Elite let out a blood-curdling roar and lunged towards its former captor, crossing the entirety of the room in two seconds. Energy crackling, the twin-scythe became a blur of light as its wielder gave a mighty swing.

There was a sizzling noise and the Prophet's head bounced to the ground, still wearing the same surprised expression. The rest of him followed just moments later, a deep sigh folding from the exposed trachea. Faint smoke marks trailed from the severed ends, smelling of burnt meat.

The Elite stood hunched over the Prophet's corpse, the sword still humming angrily in its clenched fist. It stared with hate upon the dead creature, its entire body rippling with adrenaline.

Kelly kept her pistol raised. She stepped toward the Elite. "Drop it," she said, referring to the sword. Immediately, she questioned why she had said such a thing. It would have been easier to shoot the alien and walk away.

The Elite did not turn around, but its head slightly twitched in her direction, indicating that it had heard her.

"Drop it," Kelly said again, this time louder.

There was a shuffling sigh from the Elite and it slowly rotated its neck. Then, the twin-curved blades of the sword winked out in a flash as the hilt left its owner's hand. It clattered with to the rocky floor.

Then, the Elite turned, eight feet of finely tuned flesh and muscle. They were on the thin side, but that was partly due to their incarceration. The bandage on their neck was nearly soaked through, a few dark trickles having escaped the boundaries of the gauze, painting the side of the alien a shiny hue. Their mandibles rippled in grim observation, their eyes fixated at Kelly, reminding her of how a wolf stared at its prey.

The alien cocked its head, curious of the Spartan. Then it spoke.

"If I still had my strength, you would have seen a different outcome this day, Spartan."

Kelly narrowed her eyes in surprise. Though the Elite's voice was low and husky, it was undoubtedly female.

"It can still play out that way. You Swords of Sanghelios?"

The Elite's stare hardened. "Even if I said I was, would you believe me?"

"Probably not."

"Wise of you," the alien shrugged. She then gave a low grunt as the wound on her neck gave a throb. She clasped a hand to the soaked bandage—her fingers came away bloody. "But your question should not go unanswered. Indeed, I align with the precepts of the Swords of Sanghelios. Though, the more zealous of my kind probably would not have even entertained the thought of trading words with a human."

"Perhaps, but your kind can be quite patient," Kelly said. "Deceptions can be laid on any foundation."

"You may find that goes both ways. Clearly, you're not one of them."

Kelly had no idea what the Elite was talking about. She would have written the creature off as having gone insane from their confinement, but there was a deliberate intelligence to their words and actions that betrayed their cognizance. Still, the alien had to have been in some form of shock at being the last survivor from the Brute's dispassionate slaughter of the entire prison, but it seemed eerily calm and in control. The Spartan still kept her sidearm aimed toward the tall alien, the crosshairs on her HUD never straying far from the target's weak points.

The Elite was still very much aware that Kelly was holding a gun on her. The female raised her chin defiantly and gave a snort.

"You can still shoot me in the head, Spartan. I'll die on my own feet standing up. It was more than what your brethren promised. What they… gave."

Brethren… the UNSC? Okay, so perhaps the Elite had lost its mind. Kelly's eyes narrowed behind her domed visor, her finger tense upon the trigger. She looked straight at the Elite's unblinking eyes, the darkened bandage at its neck, the fraught and exhausted breaths as their expanding lungs shuddered their ribcage.

It was so easy… and yet…

Smoothly, Kelly's thumb reached up and flipped the safety to her pistol. She lowered it back down, this time for good. At this distance, she could see the Elite relax slightly, but it was almost imperceptible that it could have been dismissed as a trick of the light.

"My assumption was correct. Virtuosity has yet to depart your kind," the female murmured.

"I can still disappoint," Kelly growled. She reached behind her and pulled out a set of heavy-duty zip-ties, made out of thick white plastic. She tossed them to the Elite, who caught them. "Put them over your wrists."

The Elite looked down at the restraints and back up at Kelly. "I thought it was made clear what my intentions were."

"You'll have to forgive me for not trusting so easily."

"And I have to trust you?" The Elite raised a clawed finger, the zip-ties rocking back and forth from the loop they were hooked upon. "Perhaps I might not be so open to the idea of being a prisoner again."

"As I see it," Kelly said evenly, "you don't have a choice. The Swords of Sanghelios were moments away from being wiped out when I arrived on the surface, if they haven't been wiped out already. Your treatment from this point forward all depends on you. The UNSC is your only way off-planet now, and I don't care if you leave as an internee or as a prisoner of war."

The Elite's eyes narrowed that in a stare that could have melted the polar ice caps of Mars. Clearly, it was not at all pleased with its new predicament, but it couldn't exactly disagree with what Kelly had said, either.

"Degrading," the Elite muttered, but it slipped its wrists through the zip-ties without further protest. With a few quick yanks, it tightened the plastic until it was squeezing into its flesh. The female then sat upon one of the nearby crates after kicking aside the Prophet's severed head, which bounced away with a series of fleshy splats.

Kelly used the moment to reload, even though she had only spent one bullet on the Grunt. She was about to tell the Elite to rise when she remembered something.

"Were there any other parts of the mine that stood out to you?"

The Elite didn't need to ponder. "I was brought in here while I was unconscious."

Kelly tapped her neck. "That was when you got that?"

There was a deliberate pause. "Yes."

"Didn't see any other humans? Civilians?"

"Not from my position. I was in the cell the whole time. What I do know is that the colony was empty when I arrived."

"Hmm," was all Kelly said in response to that. Still, there was still another section of this facility that she had yet to explore. FLEETCOM wanted a full accounting of the area—she needed to be thorough. "Stay here," she told the Elite as she entered the next room—she was not worried about the Elite escaping otherwise she would have locked it back in the cell. On her TACMAP, she could see that the colony was already swarming with UNSC transponders—escape through all of them, especially in the Elite's exhausted state, was a highly unlikely occurrence.

But it also gave rise to another question. If she could see the transponders for the Marines, why couldn't she see the ones for the colonists? Even civilians were implanted with the most basic of tech—a colony owned by a multiplanetary conglomerate would have seen fit to ensure that its staff had rigorously complied with having its employees equipped with tracking implants. Something wasn't right, here.

She walked into what was unmistakably a barracks. Brutes had clumsily torn apart shelves and tables to use as makeshift beds—anything to lay on in order to prevent the cold rock floor from sucking the heat out of them. A few light pillars flickered weakly and a nearby stack of plasma batteries glowed a sickly blue. Down here, it was quiet except for the faint trickle of liquid. Groundwater seeping through. Must have been a miserable place to sleep.

Kelly methodically went room to room, always taking the leftmost path whenever she reached a junction. Most of the time she came up against dead ends. There were no more Banished down here, it appeared that she had killed them all. There were just the scraps of evidence of the entrenched aliens along with a few meager supplies.

Yet, no colonists. Quite strange.

The last room on this level held no surprises—only emptiness. Kelly's frustration simmered, but did not boil over. Perhaps she had missed some signs of the colonists' departure back up top. Looks like she was going to be staying on this planet a bit longer than expected.

The Elite was still sitting on the crates by the time she returned to the jail, to Kelly's half-surprise. Truthfully, she would not have been shocked if the Elite had tried to scamper off, but was intrigued that the Elite had chosen to stay. She was about to fully cross into the jail from the barracks when she spotted the door.

It was directly to her left, hidden behind a lumination tower with wires that spilled from it like umbilicals. The door was massive, almost nine feet tall, and blended in so well with the dark rock that, even with her enhanced optics in her visor, it was quite easy to miss. Perhaps even the Banished had failed to notice it all the time it was here—Kelly could see that the rusting lock was still upon the door.

She took a step towards it. There was a splash.

Kelly looked down. She had stepped into a darkened puddle, the liquid rippling eerily. It had pooled at the base of the door—dribbles from underneath the partition flowed down the small ledge and into the recessed ditch before it.

"For posterity," Kelly murmured. She walked over and gripped the lock and squeezed it. It shattered in her armored hand, crumpled beyond recognition. She then gripped the iron bar and shoved it back along a resistant slide. Then she grasped the handle and pulled it towards her.

There was a tremendous wrenching sound as disused hinges achingly clamored.

The lumination tower crashed to the ground as Kelly swung the door into it, causing the entirety of the light in the room to skew at odd angles. Shadows were thrown upwards, toward the ceiling. One half of Kelly's armor looked like it had been caught alight. It was dark inside the space she had just unveiled. With a twitch of her head, her helmet-mounted lamps ignited.

She inhaled.

Bodies. Piled from where the door started to where the room ended five meters back. The corpses were stacked on top of one another—about four layers—of all shapes and sizes. The skin of the colonists was cold and gray, and the clothes they wore were starchy and tattered. They had been dead for days. Blood splattered the walls of the container area and coated the colonists, so thick that it almost seemed to seep into the air.

Hundreds of them. All like this. Their glassy eyeballs rolled in lifeless sockets, staring at nothing. Their gaping mouths lolled open, tongues spilling from beyond their yellowed teeth.

And then, Kelly noticed their wounds.

They were riddled with signs of penetrating injuries. Bullets had ripped through flesh and blood and bone. Ripping through their organs. Temporary cavitations shearing and compressing tissue, collapsing in the wake of recoil and dissipation of hot gases. Some had been shot through the abdomen, causing hemopneumothorax. Others had been shot in the head, their facial features missing. None of them bore any signs of plasma weaponry. There were no cauterized wounds, no signs of melting at the epidermal layer. Standard-issue projectile weaponry had done this.

But, as Kelly continued to examine the grisly sights, whoever had done this had been very accurate. The corpses were mangled, yes, but they were not riddled. They had been torn apart by very precise fire—aimed at the heart, the spine, the head. There were those with destroyed kneecaps, though—probably deliberately shot in those areas to maximize their suffering.

She took a step back, holding her pistol-halfway to parallel. Her helmet lights flickered upon the back of one of the colonists' heads and she stopped.

The Spartan completely froze in place. The back of the colonist's head was missing, just a fleshy red caldera, bored down to a dark core in its skull. She looked at the other colonists. Their heads had been mutilated, too. The backs of their heads had been carved away, as though it had been performed with a surgical scalpel and had just… scooped out whatever had been inside.

And what had been inside was…

Kelly looked down to a grouping of glimmering shards that had been placed right in front of the door, tucked away in the corner, not easily glimpsed at first view. She leaned in for a closer look and gave a wince when she realized what they were.

Stacked in a neat little pile, flecked with blood and bits of brain, the dead diodes of the hundred transponder chips slept patiently in their darkened domes, impervious to the mysterious and resolute violence that had pried them from their fleshy prisons to grant them passage to the world at long last.


A/N: Just because I've switched franchises doesn't mean that I've left my dark streak behind, heh. I hope you're enjoying the story so far!

Playlist:

Spartan On Station
"Fog Battle"
Junkie XL
300: Rise of an Empire (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)

Mine Descent / Hunter Fight
"The Dark Knight Returns"
Christopher Drake
Batman: The Dark Knight Returns (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)

Behind the Door
"Watertank"
Junkie XL and Christian Vorlander
Divergent (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)