Chapter Seven: Repetition
16th June, 2533 (UNSC Calendar)
Ninth Age of Reclamation, 8th Solar Cycle (Covenant Calendar)
Eayn, Y'Deio System
The days dragged on, and we did our best to drag ourselves along with them.
I'm not going to give you a full account of every day of my training on Eayn. This is partially because it would bore any reader - training itself is constant repetition, so when you do it often enough it becomes dull to everyone involved, the participant included.
That brings me to the other reason why I don't want to spend ages discussing my time in Vara. After a while, the constant repetition of physical exercises - running short and long-distances, jumping, moving as a lance and separate files - all just passed me by as a blur, so quite frankly I probably couldn't recount every detail of each training day.
Other than being exhausted shitless at the end of each day, of course - and the abuse our instructors eagerly meted out on all of us, at every opportunity.
What I can say is that the days following the jump over the Ravine were really more of the same - except without the Ravine. As I said, the core of training is repetition, repetition and more repetition. Physical conditioning is paramount to the training of any soldier; once you can run over long distances – say, ten or fifteen miles a day – without too much trouble, then you know the conditioning is taking effect and you can face greater challenges.
I could feel that such exercise was becoming easier – that had to be a good sign. For T'Vaoan soldiers, the conditioning is far more intense than other soldiers born of Chu'ot. It has to be – speed and agility are my kind's greatest strength in battle. We had to run well to survive, put simply.
After three weeks, we had gained that skill through constant, repetitive exercise every day. We could now run over long-distances, jump with ease and most importantly, run in co-ordination on a file, lance and even unit level.
My body – our bodies – became more attuned to such runs over time. Consequently, I also found they took punishment much better.
As the healer Gakh promised, my leg and light wounds healed in just over three days. Once they did, Gakh was able to remove the dressing as he prescribed. It felt good to get back to normal quickly.
Unfortunately, 'getting back to normal' also meant more running and jumping – and the sick, pathological creativity of our instructors.
Those three weeks were hell. Yet we all suffered the same way we did on the first run and leap – together.
We still trained as three lances – the 4th, 5th and 6th Training Lances - and only among those stationed in the East Barracks of the Vara Grounds, including our attached Majors. We seldom interacted with the recruits and trainers of the West Barracks – if anything, something of a rivalry had developed between the 'Westings' and 'Eastings' as we called each other. There is no greater stimulant for any soldier than rivalry between different groups of soldiers.
That - and having superiors whom you don't want to cross.
Most times Nix would take my lance alone out on long runs - but on special occasions all the lances of East Barracks would go, along with Major Krel and also Major Fark, commander of the 6th Lance.
All three of them were people you knew better not to cross.
To ensure we were physically conditioned to the maximum, Nix, Krel and Fark took us every now and then to a few more of their 'favourite spots' in Ha'chut peninsular and the neighbouring mainland. All but one of these unique locations of natural beauty involved a run of miles, in both reaching them and getting back to Vara.
Furthermore, every one of them was just as gruelling and life-threatening as the Ha'chut Ravine had been. Sometimes even more so.
I've mentioned that much of that training was a blur. This was not the case for our superiors 'favourite spots'. Those places are seared into my memory - I don't like to talk about them either, for different reasons.
For example, there was the Var'ka'mar Swamp, located south of the training grounds at the foot of the hills and mountains that separated the Ha'chut peninsular from the mainland of Ah'lomet. The swamp was located in an inlet close to the coast in southern Ha'chut, and was overgrown with great vo-va trees, the roots of which can only grow underwater. On their branches hang thick, strong vines which can support a full grown Kig-Yar - for a few minutes at least.
The whole swamp was a stinking shit-hole, infested with biting insects and sucking worms. The waters at the foot of the vo-va trees were filled with wake-serpents - aquatic predators that love to snatch large prey in their coils, before constricting their victims and drowning them alive.
The one good thing about that day was that we got to fly to the swamp in Phantoms, saving us energy from running. Var'ka'mar was the one 'favourite spot' we didn't have to run to - but the amenities ended there.
The Majors dropped us in the canopy of the vo-va forest above that damn swamp from the dropships; they observed us from the safety of these craft throughout the whole exercise. They then forced all of us in the three lances to jump from tree-to-tree, leap from branch-to-branch and swing from vine-to-vine, until we found a way out of the swamp.
That was our main objective - no navigational aids, no maps, nothing. Just find your own way out of the marshes. That - and of course avoid falling into the basin of the vo-va swamp, where the murky depths and wake-serpents waited. Our jumping skills were tested to the maximum - we had to pass the test or die.
Not all of us succeeded. Another three of our brothers fell from the trees and met their ends in the dark waters of Var'ka'mar. As with the Ravine, we were being progressively weeded out.
I still remember damning Major Krel to every hell and torment in every afterlife I knew of, as he and several Minors cackled down at us from the open side-bay of a hovering Phantom, mocking us as we leapt, swung, stumbled, tottered and struggled through that stinking marsh below. They had a perfect view of our suffering from their dropship.
"You all think you're something?" Krel jeered, as I just managed to grasp on a vo-va branch, dangling for my life above the foul-smelling waters. "I did this in less than half-an-hour! How long have you been in there?"
I fought back the urge to scream back in retort - I didn't put it past Krel to take offence and declare me a 'wash-out' in response by shooting me off the branch. I was already in enough trouble as it was - I could even see the tell-tale signs of wake-serpents as they circled hungrily in the basin below, eager to consume the foolish Kig-Yar just waiting to drop down to them.
The sight only amused Krel and his brothers-in-sadism even more. I could hear their demonic laughter above the hum of the Phantom's engines above, and the hissing and splashing of the wake-serpents below.
Krel was by far the most entertained.
"Half of you won't make it out!" He laughed out loud with glee, the bastard. It was deeply satisfying when I swung myself safely onto the branch, causing him and those Minors to shut up.
It was even more satisfying that the overwhelming majority of the recruits of the East Barracks made it out of that swamp in one piece. That didn't bring back the three lives we had lost, but perhaps it gave them some peace.
Another of the Majors' idyllic spots was a rocky hill located in the southern highlands of Ha'chut, whose name I've since forgotten. The Majors forced us to run up the hill, but first we were made to form up into standard files - four men per file.
My file included Par, Vek, myself and a recruit named Hoth - a native of Han City's eastern suburbs, about five or six years older than me. His feathers were lined with plasma scalding, which gave away his previous occupation - he told me that he had previously worked as a crewman on the mining vessels which plied the rings of Chu'ot for precious minerals.
A dangerous job, to be sure - but not as dangerous as what we soldiers had to face, even in training.
For this exercise was more than running up the slope. At the summit of the hill itself, the Majors - together with their subordinates - rolled great boulders down the slope, which we had to dodge as we advanced to the summit. The summit was filled with loose rock, giving our tormentors an ample supply of ammunition.
Not only were we expected to reach the top of the hill, we were also expected to maintain our unit cohesion and stay in our files - while dashing up the slope and dodging the boulders. We had to maintain our discipline under pressure, while staying alert and agile - just as we would have to when storming a human-held hill, while dodging their weapons-fire.
Needless to say, not all of us made it.
I still struggle to believe that Hoth was one of those who perished. He had survived hazardous mining operations out in the asteroids, which I knew often suffered from cave-ins and other accidents. He even told me he had survived the destruction of his ship from a collision with a rogue comet, which literally tore the miner in half.
Hoth had escaped the rapid decompression, donned a vacuum suit and together with other surviving crewmates, spent days in a lifeboat before being rescued. He was twenty years old at the time.
He had been lucky then. But his luck ran out that day on the hill, when a giant boulder tumbled straight to my file's position.
We had scattered, and I dove to the right just in time - but Hoth just wasn't fast enough. When I emerged from cover, all that remained of Hoth Tal was a purple smear on the hillside. The boulder had rolled right over him.
He had survived the vacuum of space for nothing.
Still, most of our number made it up that hill. Hoth was one of only four lives lost that day. The rest of us had passed that brutal test of cohesion, reflexes, agility and courage.
We would suffer casualties every time we visited our tormentors 'favourite spots' - there were many more than the three I have described. Yet everything the Majors did to us - no matter how brutal - was necessary in moulding us into hardened soldiers.
As I said, training is constant repetition - even in its most vile form.
After three weeks, we were hardened to death and loss, as expendable infantry are expected to be. After seeing someone like Hoth die - someone I had thought would go far - it just didn't affect me as much. Our losses would only go up once we reached the frontlines - we were only having light casualties inflicted on us right now, in order to give us a taste of what was to come.
All of those tests refined the skills we would need to survive the greater challenges ahead. Together with the constant running and regular exercise, our minds and bodies were well honed. As I said, we had learned a lot in those three weeks.
But you can see now why I don't look back on them too much.
When we rose on the first day following those three weeks of damnation, we all expected the worst. Every day we lived in fear that the Majors would want to show us another of their 'favourite spots'. Such occasions were 'special treats', they told us.
Bastards.
So we of the 4th Training Lance all shuddered when Major Nix made his morning announcement, after waking us up in the same violent, loving way he usually did.
"Today is a special treat, children!" He smiled at us with the most mocking version of a loving, parental smile that was possible. "Assemble in the courtyard!"
We all moved out of the dormitory, none of us disobeying an order or asking silly questions - not after all the trauma we suffered.
Even Vek kept quiet - which was quite a feat for him. He had a bad habit of opening his mouth at the worst possible moment - even after three weeks of brutal training. He was an odd one, to be sure - but together with Par, he was pretty close to me. Of course, it helped that our bunks were positioned quite close to one another.
As per usual, we assembled into the sandy courtyard, the main part of the grounds where we did most of our exercises outside of the cross-country runs. The dust got kicked up, as usual - but we had become accustomed to it.
Along with many other things.
Nevertheless, we were pretty surprised at what we saw in the courtyard of the Vara Grounds that day.
Nix, Krel and Fark all stood in front of us, as they were at the beginning of each day. The recruits of West Barracks were not present - they were on a cross-country run that day. Their Majors probably also had 'favourite spots' in the local area that they were keen to show them.
Champion Xen was present however, as were a cluster of Minors to act as assistants. That wasn't surprising - he did sometimes supervise our exercises. At Var'ka'mar, he had been one of those watching from the Phantoms - though unlike our Majors he had remained silent, showing no emotion as he had observed. If he was here though, that meant today had to be something big.
What was truly surprising, however was what was located in the middle of the courtyard.
A row of containers, coloured in the violets and purples of most technology in our Covenant's military, the metal shining in the early morning light. Within these containers I could see distinctive objects, some glowing green, others blue, and some with pink crystalline spikes.
Weapons. Today, we would receive weapons training for the first time.
There was an even greater surprise. Floating lazily above the weapons station, occasionally adjusting the weaponry and checking for faults here and there, extracting, checking and replacing power cores or needle shards with their fine fluorescent tentacles glinting in the emerging sunlight, were two Huragok.
"Gas-bags, here?" Vek murmured. "How..."
Par elbowed him to shut up. Vek closed his mouth. He was learning. Slowly.
Nevertheless, he was right to wonder. It was very rare to see the other races of our Covenant in my species' home system. There would be the occasional missionary visit or Sangheili fleets visiting to extract tithes and fresh troops for the fleets and legions, or the odd merchant convoy, but most of the time High Charity was content to leave Y'Deio to its own devices.
You would certainly be lucky to see Huragok like this - among our kind and on our homeworld. The Prophets never allowed the floating engineers to be used too much by Kig-Yar. They might not have cared how much we actually believed in the Great Journey, or how much we still observed our old traditions - but they did care about how much we were able to maintain and produce the technology they gave us, along with how much we knew about said technology.
The fact was that the San 'Shyuum never trusted us - even less so than the Sangheili did. To them, we were all potential pirates and traitors; thus every Huragok in Kig-Yar employ was a source of sensitive technology - or even just the knowledge of such technology - that they didn't want in our hands.
This was especially true of slipspace drives and advanced weapons - the Prophets made sure we knew as little as possible about such tools. Yet they also knew we needed to use and maintain these tools in order to be of service to the Covenant.
Thus, the Prophets had no choice but to allow Huragok to work alongside us - though they permitted as few as possible to do so, under close supervision.
For example, as Huragok were used to maintain our slipspace drives, Unggoy Deacons were posted aboard every one of our vessels that travelled the slipstream in service of the Covenant. The Deacons were not primarily there for any spiritual reason, as was officially claimed - they were the only crewmembers of any Kig-Yar vessel permitted to communicate with Huragok aboard. Thus they served a major technological role and restricted our access to the engineers of our Covenant.
The same rules applied to the maintenance of our infantry's weaponry and equipment. Sure enough, I spotted the squat, wheezing form of an Unggoy Deacon, clad in glinting white armour and orange robes, sucking on his mask at intervals as he directed the two Huragok at the weapons station. His presence on the homeworld of my people was even more of a shock.
I heard Par sneer in disgust at the sight of the gas-sucker - like most of us, he had little love in his heart for Unggoy.
I didn't either - but Unggoy Deacons were the official representatives of a San 'Shyuum Ministry, one of the few important positions their kind could get in our Covenant, if they were educated enough.
This one had likely come from either the Ministry of Resolution or Preparation, which dealt with military forces and weapons production, respectively. Either way, he was the eyes and ears of the Prophets in the Vara Grounds - Unggoy or not, there would be consequences if any harm came to him.
I knew starship crews regularly ignored this rule - my mother talked of how she disregarded her Unggoy Deacon aboard her own vessel, whenever she was home. But we were not miles out in space, where the Deacon's authority would be eroded to the point where he might suffer an 'unfortunate' accident with an airlock.
Right now, our Deacon was signing away with his palms as he communicated with the two Huragok, no doubt making sure all of our weapons were ready for this exercise.
That was the main reason why he could come to no harm here, more than the trappings of his holy office - he was the only one in Vara who could communicate with those strange, floating beings. Our species was explicitly forbidden by the laws of the Covenant to commune with Huragok, or learn even a single glyph of their sign language.
As I said, the Prophets simply did not trust us with that knowledge. Only they, Sangheili engineers or select Unggoy like that Deacon were permitted to consort with Huragok. The word of the Prophets was law, as it always was in our blessed union.
So if the Deacon suffered an 'unfortunate accident' with, say, his methane suite or gas reserves during the night - we would lose our only link with the Huragok. We were just as dependent on that unusually smart Unggoy in the orange robes for our weapons as we were on the Huragok - an arrangement that fully suited the Prophets.
It was that kind of thing that caused real resentment towards the Unggoy among our kind. I didn't envy this one, stuck on the homeworld of the Kig-Yar. I could only imagine the abuse he received almost every day of his miserable life. He might even have welcomed having his methane poisoned, or his sealed chamber decompressed one night in his sleep.
The presence of the Deacon was not the only measure the powers-that-be had taken to keep the Huragok out of our hands. I noticed that both of the floating gas-bags were harnessed to distinctive metal casings - self-destruct harnesses. It was the same arrangement for any Huragok aboard our spacecraft.
If something did happen to the Deacon, then I suspect they were set to auto-detonate, permanently ensuring that the Huragok did not fall into the irreverent, heretical hands of Kig-Yar filth.
Thus the will of the Prophets was enforced, even on this least faithful and most autonomous among the many worlds they ruled over.
I hadn't encountered this Unggoy or his Huragok charges around the Vara Grounds before - so today was obviously a day of introduction, a special day. Champion Xen confirmed this.
"Recruits of the Eastern Barracks - today is a milestone for all of you. You have been put through many tests of speed and strength - those that stand here today are those who were strong enough to survive. You have thus earned the right to continue on the path of the warrior. As such, you will take the next great step today - for you shall receive your first weapons. Today, you shall be granted access to the armoury of our Training Grounds for the first time."
He gestured to the weapons station - I saw that he was also subtly indicating to the Deacon that he wanted the Huragok to stop tinkering. The Unggoy took the hint, and signed for his charges to stop. They obeyed without question, withdrawing with subdued whistles.
"These weapons have been provided for your training and future use, through the generosity of the Prophets," Xen continued, keeping his voice neutral. "You shall treat their gifts with care and respect. To ensure this, those that maintain our holy technology shall oversee the...proceedings. Deacon Ribib shall explain, as representative of the holy offices of the Ministry of Resolution."
The Champion gave a curt gesture to the Deacon, a sharp flick of a talon. The Unggoy - Ribib - stepped forward, doing his best to avoid the dozens of narrowed Kig-Yar eyes that were focused on him. I even saw Major Krel spit on the ground at the sight of the gas-sucker.
As I said, I did not envy the creature.
He began his speech with more confidence than I would have imagined, to give him some credit. Yet I was even more surprised that he addressed us in near-perfect Ruuht'ka, the main language of Eayn's children - rather than the common Sangheili tongue, which served as the unifying language for our union. It would have been much simpler for him to use the latter.
Every Covenant citizen was required by law to learn the four-jaw language - like all common citizens I was introduced to it at early childhood and rehearsed it every day at school. My father made sure I rehearsed it extra-hard - it was the single most useful language out there. If I wanted to survive in the Covenant, I had to know it well.
The same went double for Unggoy; and this educated Deacon would almost certainly have had four-jaw speak as a natural second language. It was much to his credit that he spoke Ruuht'ka with almost equal fluency - he was by no means required to learn it with the same vigour.
"You will all have the honour of receiving consecrated weaponry this day," he declared, the high-pitched, weedy accent of his kind mixing awkwardly with my people's main tongue, "weaponry which had been blessed by the power and light of the Gods. The weapons that you will wield from this day forth are thus none other than the tools of the Gods themselves. Thus, they require nothing but the utmost reverence, care and devotion, as expected from all true followers of the Path..."
He continued with his repetitive liturgy and religious babble. Our weapons were the tools of the Gods, consecrated and passed down by their noble and just messengers, the Prophets, who granted them to us to serve as their faithful, true and obedient arm by which they delivered judgement on the defiler, the non-believer, the heretic, the unclean; we were thus to remember that we were the arm of the Prophets, the instrument of the will of the Gods, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera...
Quite frankly, to recite all of it would bore you just as much as it bored me that day. I'd heard plenty of such drivel before in tedious broadcasts for 'maintaining faith and purpose'. None of it ever made an impression on me.
I've said before that I never truly believed a word of our Covenant's official faith - or even any religion for that matter. Yes, there were atheists among the Covenant, even then. My people were probably the least faithful, so my own views weren't that unique.
That isn't to say there weren't any true believers among the Kig-Yar - there were, and I would suffer consequences from them if I opened my mouth too wide about my own faith. But by and large most of us didn't take the self-proclaimed True Path seriously the way the Sangheili and Unggoy did.
Many, like myself, chose to fight for the Covenant for the higher pay offered to our species' soldiers. There were some genuine crusaders among us - I'd met more than a few those past weeks. Yet most of us thought that people who genuinely believed everything the Prophets said - who were actively seeking death to get on the Great Journey - were misguided fools.
Yes, we received the Prophets' sermons in official broadcasts almost daily and heard their teachings repeatedly from childhood. And yes, we knew our weaponry and technology was enhanced, derived or in some cases directly reverse-engineered and copied from the technology of the Forerunners. That was the centre of the Covenant's promise - the Forerunners would provide for us in this world, and show us the Path to the divine beyond where we would one day join them.
Such holy work regarding the divine technology was the exclusive reserve of the Prophets, and their Huragok servants - only they had the divine right to do so, as the voices and tools of the Gods, respectively. So sayeth the Unggoy. The weapons we would wield for the first time today could be said to have been 'blessed' by the ancients themselves.
Yet I also knew from my father that some of those weapons - like that Type-33 Needler the Deacon was pontificating over as he lead the weaponry hand-over rites - were of Sangheili design, dating back from before the Covenant. The material it used was mined from one of their homeworld's moons. Modified by the Prophets or not, it was still the same weapon.
In short, that weapon's origins had little to do with the Prophets or the Forerunners. So how blessed an instrument was it? To me, it was no less deadly, divine or different from that Focus rifle - directly reverse-engineered from a Forerunner beam weapon - that the Deacon had turned his attention to. The Type-52 Special Applications Rifle was known to have reliability issues, in fact - so could it really be more 'blessed' than the Needler?
The Sangheili had once been against using Forerunner technology - for them that had been the main heresy of the time. It was only through force, by means of the Dreadnought that now stood in High Charity, that they were persuaded otherwise - thus their old beliefs were the heresy of today. Could that really be called a divine conversion, an enlightening miracle? How was using 'divine' technology for our own ends less heretical than leaving it untouched?
Would our technology be worshipped, when our civilisation vanished? Had the Forerunners even imagined their technology would be considered as 'divine gifts' in their own time? For that matter, had they even expected to be worshipped as Gods?
Maybe I asked too many questions. That could get me into trouble. I'd admitted to my father about my own cynicism about the words of the Prophets - cynicism which I knew was widespread. He wisely told me to keep it to myself.
I had no control over what the Prophets taught, or what people believed. The Covenant provided good pay and a strong, stable economy for my people, true faith or not. That was enough for me.
The Unggoy continued with his rites, blessing each class of weapon individually. Needless to say, it was a long and dreary process. He concluded with one very significant passage, however.
"The faithful never forget that it is the sacred duty of the Prophets - and the Prophets alone - to oversee our sacred tools. Those who would alter them, steal them, sell them, replicate them in graven images; abuse the gifts of our Gods for their own selfish purposes, are guilty of the most grievous heresy, the most unconscionable desecration. The gifts of the ancients are for the good of all - not for the ends of a few."
Funny - last time I checked, the Prophets were a few. A minority in the Covenant, in fact. And nearly all of the Covenant was forbidden from producing or even understanding our technology.
I tried not to laugh at the irony. I'm still thankful I managed to.
Even so, the Deacon had laid down the Covenant's most strictly enforced and draconian law. Besides the Prophets, individual soldiers or citizens were forbidden to modify, replicate, produce or sell the technology our Covenant produced - only those who had received the official sanction and blessings of the Hierarchs and High Council were permitted to do so.
These were always the big Sangheili arms-masters, with their great foundries on their homeworld (it was alright for them, the Gods fully approved of course) so we could forget about any such allowance. We received the technology designed by the Prophets (and sometimes Sangheili), produced by the Prophets and distributed by the Prophets; that was that. We could repair and maintain our weapons, with Huragok help - but no more.
Of course, I knew that there was a large underground cottage industry, mostly among pirate groups, where our kind did modify, replicate, produce and sell Covenant weaponry under the noses of the San 'Shyuum; a heresy they were still trying and failing to eradicate. Our local authorities often turned a blind eye to it - so the illegal producers diligently continued their work. Their products regularly ended up in the numerous black markets that operated across the Covenant Empire, by-passing the endless bureaucracy of official channels.
If our training grounds had been found using such counterfeit weapons though... since we dealt closely with the Sangheili in providing troops for their legions, I don't even want to think what they would have done to us.
"Thus you are not to modify any of these sacred arms for your own ends," the Unggoy rasped out. "Always exercise self-denial before these consecrated instruments. May the Gods and their holy Prophets preserve this knowledge in your souls, always."
With that, he concluded his sermon, and bowed out. Xen merely nodded - I was amazed how he had seemed attentive all that time.
Even so, he didn't want to waste any more time with words and blather. He merely gestured with a talon, and Major Nix stepped forward.
"Today, we shall start with a test of accuracy, through use of a basic weapon," Nix announced briskly. He sounded as thankful as we were that the Deacon's sermon was over. "A favourite of every common soldier who serves the Prophets - one that will become familiar for many of you."
He marched over to the weapons station. Each weapon type had its own storage rack - Nix was aiming for one weapon in particular. He pulled out a single example - a curved, smooth plated creation, which from the side looked almost like a small set of jawbones.
The teeth of the jaws glowed green, nodes of potent and deadly plasma waiting to be unleashed. We only needed half a second to recognise the gun in question.
"The Type-25 pistol is the best friend of nearly every Kig-Yar and Unggoy alike that fights for this Covenant. You might complain about some of its characteristics, you might wish for a higher weapon. But this tool will be what most, if not all of you, are issued with as your main firearm. It will be your life, your closest comrade. Know it well."
He went through the basics - how to eject and replace the power core, field stripping (a plasma pistol only has a few strippable parts for its user - the rest of it, including the intricate and integral systems, was designed only for Huragok to access), cleaning and such.
The Type-25 plasma pistol is overall a very durable weapon; not too complex, easy to operate and most importantly, easy to manufacture. It was designed specifically to be mass-produced for use by huge units of low-trained soldiers. Unggoy, in other words. We sometimes called it the 'people's gun', and it was as common as muck in the military.
For the Sangheili it was little more than a handgun. For us and the Unggoy soldiers, it would be our main infantry weapon. Equal our Covenant was not.
Yet the pistol had one special feature that made it unique. Nix began to test fire the weapon, shooting globules of green plasma at the open ground in front of him, scorching it.
"As you can see, it can burn through anything that isn't protected by energy shields. Fortunately for you, that includes human soldiers."
We all chuckled with laughter. Nix did have a some sense of black humour, alongside a twisted imagination. He allowed for our amusement and continued.
"However, you may encounter larger targets - we have found their combat vehicles to be highly formidable and deadly to our infantry, and so will you. In the event that no heavy weapons available, there is a use for the Type-25."
As part of his demonstration, one of the Huragok brought out an engine from a Type-32 Rapid Attack Vehicle, otherwise known as the Ghost. The engine had been dismounted from its chassis purely for this exercise. On a signal from the Deacon, the Huragok activated it, lighting it up with power.
The Deacon then signalled the Huragok to withdraw, before directing to some over task at the far end of the grounds, where its partner was already working. I paid them no mind, my attention focused on Nix.
"There is a feature that can be activated simply by holding the trigger down. Like this."
He pointed the pistol to the Ghost engine as he spoke, and as he said those last two words, his hand gripped the trigger in a tight compression.
A concentration of plasma began to build and swell between the two nodes with a shrill hum, until it became as bright as a star. The weapon trembled, humming and whining in Nix's hands.
Finally, he released the overcharge straight at the engine with a hiss, green vapour diffusing like noxious smog from the pistol's opened vents as it overheated.
The overcharge burned through the air like a meteor, slamming into the engine with a splashing hiss of energy. The engine went dark, stray crackles of static electricity sparking across its form. It had been completely shut down.
"We have found that a plasma overcharge has the same effect on human engines," Nix continued, venting the overheated pistol. "So if you have the sense when one of their vehicles is headed straight for you, release an overcharge and hope for the best. That, or you can hide behind a Mgalegkolo. Not that they'd care to protect you."
He checked the pistol's vents again, making sure all excess waste energy had been expelled. After a quick examination, he clicked the weapon shut.
"There shall be a test concerning these weapons," he continued, returning the pistol to its rack after replacing the power core. "A test of accuracy."
He nodded to the Unggoy Deacon, who once more signed to the Huragok at the far end of the grounds. They gave their own signs in response and within a second, a row of shimmering energy fields sprung into being.
Each of these fields was rectangular, powered by a projector on the sandy deck. Similar to deployable energy shields in the field - but these served a different purpose. The single red circle at the centre of each field made this purpose obvious.
"Each of you will take a shot at these targets," Nix declared. "The results of each shot will be recorded by the field projectors' systems. We shall determine the accuracy of each individual recruit. The results will be made known to you after the following meal."
He turned directly to face the lance he commanded, the 4th Training Lance - or in plainer terms, us.
Out of the twelve of us in the lance that had begun this training, eight remained, including myself. Hoth and the three others who had passed on had since been forgotten. There was no use in dwelling on the dead.
"You will be called one by one, lance by lance. You will be chosen at random. The first to shoot shall be..." he paused, briefly deliberating, before finding his voice again. "Recruit Par!"
My bunkmate grunted in surprise, before stepping up to the weapons station. The Major handed him another plasma pistol - a fresh one. Nix wanted the test perfect, so it wouldn't do to have a malfunction with the pistol he'd just overheated.
Par wordlessly accepted the pistol. He wasn't one for small talk, or courtesy in general for that matter - though he had become my closest comrade these past weeks.
You got on fine with him as long as you stayed on his good side - if you could call it his good side. I would call it more his placid side. When he got angry, you didn't want to be in his way, or the subject of his wrath. Nevertheless, Par had stayed focused and strong throughout - which was one reason he was still here.
He'd saved my life, too. On the hill of the rolling boulders, soon after Hoth had been killed, he'd pulled me out of the way of an even larger boulder that rolled by. He was a good comrade, even if he didn't show it most of the time.
Besides being averse to courtesy, Par wasn't one for subtlety either. He simply raised the pistol and fired straight at the field. It was difficult to see from where I was, but I doubt he hit the circle, let alone the centre.
Still, he didn't seem too bothered. He had a very strong physique, so I suspected he would be better used as a close-quarters fighter than a ranged combat specialist.
He rejoined the rest of us, and Nix called out the next recruit.
"Recruit Vek!"
Now, Vek tended to go for talk, as I said. Even now, he was profusely thanking Nix for the opportunity to finally use a weapon - though the latter couldn't have cared less, and made this painfully clear.
"Just aim for the target, recruit," Nix snapped, grabbing Vek and shoving towards the range, before snarling and finally screaming into his ear. "We don't. Have. All. DAY!"
Vek would stay focused so long as he had someone to scold or slap him into focus - that someone would either be Par or myself. But when a situation got really bad, he would rise to the occasion, even though he would still mouth off. He had taken Nix's lecture on the first morning here to heart, and he'd made up for it since.
So it only took that tiny bit of scolding from Nix to get him back on track. He took a bit longer in aiming than Par did - and I think he got it closer to the target, too. Satisfied, he rejoined us.
"Recruit Kreth!"
I've said that there were a few pious crusaders in our ranks. Oddities to be sure, but they did exist.
Kreth was one such crusader. I later found he already knew the Deacon was present here before today, as he was one of the handful of recruits in Vara who went to the camp shrine every evening.
No mistake, he was a true believer. He would openly get angry with recruits who joked about the Path which, he said, we all followed like it or not. For him, every word of the Prophets came straight from the Holy Oracle of the Dreadnought on High Charity. That same Oracle had chosen the Hierarchs who lead us now, as it had chosen those before them. Thus our leaders were always right, no questions asked.
Unlike most Covenant citizens, Kreth had found the money and time to make his own pilgrimage to the holy city, a cycle or so before coming here. This pilgrimage included the Forerunner Dreadnought itself, which he always described as dramatically as possible. As the most holy site in the whole Covenant, it was a dream come true for any pious pilgrim to even see it.
Kreth saw more, however.
He had attended a special ceremony in the Abbey of the Voice of the Gods located within the mighty ship, which honoured the Oracle at its heart. During that ceremony, lead by a San 'Shyuum priest of the Order of Ascetics, he claimed to have experienced a vision - one that he said drove him to join the military.
Kreth claimed to have heard the Oracle's voice speaking to him in his head, telling him that it was his duty to fight in this war and bring doom to the humans. I am certain that it was his own fevered mind. Still, after returning from High Charity he was left with no doubt about his faith; fresh from his 'vision' he was drawn to fight for it.
He was eager to get to the frontlines - more so than any of our fiercest fighters, even Par. He always said it was the duty of every true believer to fight in the war with the humans, against this greatest of all heretical civilisations the Covenant had encountered. This was a holy war, one he had been commanded by the Oracle to join, in order to prepare his soul for the Great Journey to come.
I'll give him credit - he had the faith and devotion of a Sangheili. This was reflected in the training - Kreth was the most focused out of the whole lance, a great asset to the rest of us.
Even so...I did not like spending too much time with him alone. Whenever he was not present, we would whisper about him in hushed tones: was he truly so misguided?
Kreth kept the same focus for the shot that he had throughout our whole training regimen - the focus of a true zealot. I'm certain he got close to the mark.
"Recruit Salz!"
Salz was Kreth's opposite - he was in it for the money, more so than any of us. He always talked about his supposedly certain future, which involved an estate on some nice place in Eayn, or some luxury retreat colony. He was the eternal optimist, you understand.
His brother was apparently an already very successful mercenary who ran his own guild, and Salz hoped to join him in the business soon after gaining enough experience as a full-time soldier. Still, he'd have to survive first. He took the shot with all the confidence he always possessed.
"Recruit Shik!"
Like Hoth, Shik had been working as a crewman of an asteroid miner before enlisting. He was the oldest member of the 4th Training Lance that still lived - I'd say around in his late-twenties - and covered in scars. Par told me that they were most likely from rock chippings in the mine-shafts and tunnels, or molten sparks from the on-board refineries of the mining stations.
Such an experience would make anyone confident they could survive anything - and Shik certainly exuberated the kind of calm, quiet confidence that comes with experience. He showed that as he took his shot down the range.
"Recruit Fehn!"
Fehn was from the Fac clan, like I was. Not that it made him special or particularly related - our clans contain many branches and at most, he was likely a distant cousin. He'd lived his whole life in Han City itself, with all its hustle and bustle. In spite of this, he was mostly a quiet sort, speaking on the rarest of occasions.
"Recruit Nokh!"
Another quiet sort, Nokh was from a small plantation-owning family. Like Par, he was from the plantation flatlands north of Han. His family's plantation was apparently less successful than most; it seemed he was in this to get enough money to support his kin, rather than for personal gain. I respected him for that - he was another oddity within our ranks.
"Recruit Trau!"
And finally, me. The last to be called out. I couldn't help but think that Major Nix had done this because he wanted to be able to easily compare me with the others. It wasn't the first time that he'd subtly highlighted me like this.
Not that he ever gave me any special treatment, or anything like that. But I still remembered our first meeting back in Han City, when he had tried to persuade me not to join the war. Whatever relationship Nix had with my father - it was clearly affecting how he viewed me.
I have to say that I was bothered by that. I wanted my achievements to be my own, I wanted to be subject to the same standards my comrades were. I didn't want to be the product of any nepotism. I still loved and looked up to my father, even in death - but I was not my father. I didn't want his legacy to colour how others viewed me. Yet it seemed impossible to avoid.
I brushed aside my thoughts, preparing myself. I took the plasma pistol from Nix and as I did so, he whispered into my ear with a hiss.
"Don't mess this up, recruit; or the last you'll see is my teeth going for your throat!"
That was a sign that he truly cared.
Without further hesitation, I took my place on the impromptu firing range, and aimed the weapon as best I could at the distant red circle.
As I did so, a distant memory came back to me...
"Remember Trau, remain absolutely still - like a stone."
We were out in the wetlands one evening, under the cover of the tall grasses. It had been a peaceful summer day - a treasure on T'Vao.
"So long as you are a stone, you can always shoot straight. And those you hunt - your prey, your enemies - they will never suspect a stone. As long as you blend in, as long as you stay focused and still, you will remain a stone. A stone always survives."
He was whispering softly in my ear, his voice as soft as the breeze. My young voice was just as soft as I repeated his advice.
"I am a stone. I must remain a stone."
I kept the bolt-rifle absolutely still. It was an antique weapon of native design, not produced by the Prophets - but it could perform the task at hand.
I kept my eye focused on my target, aligned in the iron-sights. My species have keen eyesight, even in low-light or darkness. This would serve me well here, as it serves all Kig-Yar marksmen.
I am a stone...I am a stone...I am a stone...
It was now or never. I fired.
The high-pressure gas system in the rifle expelled the thin, finely crafted bolt through the barrel, straight into the curving neck of the Great Net-bill that had been feeding just in front of our hiding spot.
My father smiled proudly down at me, as I breathed in exhilaration.
"Well done, Trau."
No sooner than my thoughts had cleared, I fired. The bolt of green plasma left the twin nodes, and straight into the red circle.
I probably didn't hit the centre-point itself. But I definitely got it within the circle. I returned the weapon, confident that I had attained a high score.
Even Nix seemed satisfied, giving me a curt nod and a grunt of acknowledgement. High praise indeed, coming from him.
I returned to my lance-mates, giddy with triumph. All those years in the Ream wetlands had paid off - I already knew how to shoot straight, I just needed to prove what I knew. I was confident that I would make it as a marksman in the army.
The recruits of the 5th and 6th Lances took their shots, but to be honest my thoughts drifted off again. People get like that, when they are stood in a dusty yard for hours...first listening to a tedious sermon and then only moving and shooting once, watching over people take the test for the rest of all that time...
Fortunately Par nudged me in the ribs, waking me out of my thoughts. I hadn't even realised Champion Xen had been speaking these past few minutes.
"...so upon your return from the morning meal, then and only then will you know your results. Your results shall determine whether you will follow the kut-van - the way of the boarder and brawler - or the irs-van - the way of the marksman. You have taken your test, it is now out of your hands. Have your meal, then return."
We all filed out, assembling towards the recruits' mess hall. Whatever my results were, they would determine what weapons I would fight with in the future - and how I would fight, in terms of how I would be deployed with the Sangheili. As a sharpshooter armed with a mid to long-range rifle, or as a shock trooper armed with a close-quarters weapon, like a needler.
It was a key point of my training - and I was nervous.
But as Champion Xen said, I would have to wait until after breakfast. So, if you'll excuse me...
A/N: Dissertation handed in and finished, 1st September! MA course completed! Now I can focus. Hope this chapter is to your liking guys. Please review!
