Featherkisser
7
Clung~! –went the plasma drum, like a thickened gong rapping off a solid plate of titanium. A Gauss-shell had passed right over the Eschell and had rattled the entire interior. One of the potentially explosive plasma tanks had literally teetered and had fallen onto the deck.
Taptap gave a shrill noise and scurried over, shoving the tank back into the corner he had stood it up in. The sleeve indicators lining the drum's top-lid flanks were pulsing a consistent yellow as the contents inside were jostled. Taptap may have been dumber than a stump, but even he knew that if the tanks started to pulsate red than the ore-plasma was in danger of exploding.
After what had just happened down below in the trench, that was the last thing the little Unggoy wanted.
Taptap was frantic, and he used the chaos around Tower defense as a cover for what he was doing. There was now a small band of humans and Kig-yar from Kuhaga's group who had gathered to start filling the other Eschell schooner and the Phantom. They were under the false pretense that Taptap had stuffed the first ship full of the shared loot already.
For all Taptap know, they be right!
The Grunt was squeezing through the tens of drums he'd spent all morning shoving into the small schooner's cargo bay and nets. He was just wedging through a trio of drums when he stopped and began to quiver.
The explosion. What if Yamva was dead? How did that fit into the plan? He was a goner if that happened!
Taptap whined like a terrified dog and dug through the drums, coming out the other side of the gap with a panicked squawk as he tripped over his heels and slammed onto the deck. He held his chitinous paws over his head and pressed his mask into the grate mesh plate. The Eschell's hull groaned around him as something rattled the air outside.
Part of him was beyond terrified. Yamva may have been… cruel in his methods of mentorship (at least, in Taptap's standards) –but nobody else on this dig even registered his bloody existence. The humans would probably leave him behind, and the Kig-yar might-
...Taptap swallowed.
He may never have seen the fullest extent of the Covenant, but he had heard the stories of what Kig-yar did to prisoners during the war.
Despite that fear, Taptap truly didn't know how to handle Yamva potentially being dead. Yamva was a source of elation for his tiny little mind, and, seeing as Taptap was a member of a race that had been genetically ruined to a predisposition of expecting cruel treatment on principle, Yamva's abuse wasn't so much a crime to him as it was normalized behavior.
Did Taptap like it when the Kig-yar kicked him? And called him names? And told him that his nipple-mother had defecated him out instead of proper birthing? No. Of course not. Taptap had the intelligence of a doornail, but he still had feelings.
The Grunt controlled his breathing and gingerly rose from the deck. Sunlight beamed through the Eschell's ajar rib-hatch and bathed the beginnings of the drum-stacked cargo chamber with blinding white. Cargo net meshes swayed from the ceiling racks, filled to their brims with miniature plasma cans and cell blocks.
He supposed that if Yamva croaked, he could steal the ore-plasma. Taptap had… limited experience with the human schooner transports.
He could figure it out.
The light filtering in from outside became halved by something tall standing in the bulkhead's frame.
Taptap looked up at the source of the shadow, and squealed in a mixture of fright and joy.
"Yamva~! You alive!" The Grunt clapped his meaty paws and waddled over. "Taptap do good on order. Stock whole ship with drums for us. We take off soon, just like plan, righ-"
Taptap realized the wild look in the engineer's eyes too late.
Thwack~!
-The Unggoy flew back and sprawled on the spine of his tank back to the deck, his eyes locked on Yamva with shocked stupor. The Kig-yar had kicked him in the stomach.
"You blundering, floundering, senseless and nugatory little bastard." Yamva squawked, stomping over the grate mesh with such force that each step shook the little schooner. Taptap shrieked and started to scrambled backward, grinding his tank against the metal. "You broke it."
"What-?! Me break what?!" Taptap hollered.
Yamva pinned the alien under his cloven heel, leaning down to snarl in his assistant's face with all of his razor-sharp, saurian teeth.
"Our impromptu bomb." Yamva clarified in a feral snarl. He ripped the plasma pistol off his belt and jammed the searing, hot prongs of its barrel right between Taptap's eyes. All screaming and flailing from the Unggoy stopped immediately. "You almost killed me."
"T-Taptap not know what talking about." The Grunt mumbled.
"Your drum." Yamva pointed the gun drunkenly at the barrel that Taptap had fixed earlier, off in the corner. The Kig-yar's eyes were bigger than platters, his nostrils flared and a terrible, salty smell was rising from his skin as his pheromones flared. "You broke one of my nodes. A delicate, delicate device that is not meant to be thrown around when it is installed inside a feed-port pumping flammable substances."
"Taptap not notice."
Yamva cawed like a crow. It was a cackle.
"Who knows how many people are dead because of you. And all you can muster is that you did not notice?" He asked manically. Without knowing what else to do, the Unggoy nodded very slowly.
"-T-Taptap thought you hate humans… and own kind-"
"I was not asking out of concern, you stupid little piece of shit." Yamva stamped on Taptap's breast, making the alien wheeze. "If I was smart, I'd have used you to kill people more often, seeing as death is something so grand, your tiny brain cannot understand its depth."
Taptap didn't respond either because he hadn't understood half of what Yamva had said, or he was too afraid. Eventually, the latter answered the Grunt's unasked question.
"They have not seen me." Yamva shivered all over, like the sentence had been euphoric for him to say. "We are out of time, because of you."
The Eschell rocked again, and contractors were screaming outside. Yamva could faintly make out some of what his fellows were saying. The Kig-yar clenched his fangs and growled.
R'ha.
Then, the Sangheili knew. He supposed that in hindsight, Taptap's idiocy was just an acceleration to something already doomed.
Yamva flexed his bladed toes on Taptap's chest. He appraised the inside of the schooner with a few sweeps, seeing it filled with enough ore-plasma to make any one Kig-yar a decent fortune.
Whether it went to the Confederates, merc's, the Neo Covenant, it did not matter. Hell, Yamva would've sold this bounty to the UNSC if speed was an unspoken part of the payment.
"I will ready the engine drive." He glowered. "Pick yourself up and prepare to leave."
Taptap heaved as the engineer stepped off of him and began to trot towards the cockpit. Looking up from the floor, he rubbed tenderly at his chitinous stomach.
"Y-Yamva?"
Yamva stopped in the bulkhead to the controls.
"N-Not stock on methane." Taptap poked his mask, indicating a meter that only he could see, showing his tank was down less than half. "Need spares."
"You left them down there." Yamva stated with a grim beak-smile.
"Piled outside." Taptap pointed at the arch frame to the chaos outside. "Right outside."
"Run."
Taptap scrambled to his stubby little feet and hoofed it out the bay. Yamva snorted and swept into the cockpit, chattering in discomfort as he shoved himself into one of the two human-built chairs. He clicked the proper controls and yanked back on a lever. The Eschell crooned as its life support came online, and the engines started to light. The whole bay sifted a bit as the ship levitated a foot off the sand beneath it.
Yamva hovered a claw over the sealant button that would take in the schooner's loading ramp and shut the shutters to the outside. He gazed around the chair's spine and waited.
Why am I doing this for that destructive rodent?
His jaw went a little slack, and he started to drool. If he took off now, Taptap would be left behind with everyone else. He'd be left behind with that backstabbing tyrant, Kuhaga, that murderous psychopath, Tollen, that freak sniper, Talner and-
-and Kel Yn Gor.
Part of Yamva shuddered and shriveled in defeat.
Kel Yn Gor had been part of his plan, and now he realized that he would probably never be able to lay eyes on her again. His mate had been Ruuhtian, as he, but for some reason, the foreign plumage of the T'vao had fed into a sort of carnal desire in the engineer's person.
R'ha would most likely kill everyone here. So, he supposed there was some victory in that. At least, if he couldn't have the female than no one could, especially that damnable human Kel had that fascination with. Such things were crimes against nature, and he could smell that partnership across an entire warband.
"Taptap back!" The Grunt careened through the open shutters on all hours, a pair of roped-up spare tanks jostling and clanking under his arm. "It really bad out there!"
"They all run in circles I know." Yamva called back, slapping the button and watching as the interior of the Eschell came to rely entirely on the light fixtures overhead. He keyed the cockpit panes and light caused him to blink as the glass' shutters folded upwards to reveal the digsite to him. "None of that matters now."
"Not just that, look!" Taptap gripped Yamva's chair and pointed a fat claw past the Kig-yar's beak. "Old People are here too!"
Yamva's heart sank into his chest.
Gradually growing in the desert sky above was a medusozoan shape, with protrusions that could only mimic the Carakian style of a race that had first sported its like thousands of years before the Covenant.
It was a Sangheilian Man-O-War, lowering itself through Tg-66's atmosphere with shocking speed. Every second was it getting bigger. He and Taptap were trapped.
{👾}
Talner slid one of his last magazines into his rifle and shouldered it.
Bang~! –the brass screamed in his ears. A Sangheili rounding a dune lost half his face and tossed into the sand.
"Relocating." Kel croaked in the auxiliary link in his uniform's collar.
"Coverin'." He grunted.
Up ahead, Kel was a dark flitter of movement. She ran so fast that her feathers were a blur behind her. The T'vaoan's legs were like those of a raptor, arching and swinging past one another with phantasmal agility. Talner had to force himself not to become distracted. He fired again and an R'ha warrior ducked behind cover right as he made to fire on Kel's flank.
Kel Yn Gor leaped off her cloven heels at the last minute. Talner ducked as if an artillery round was sailing overhead. She cleared a span of fifteen feet in the single jump and landed with a scrabble of dust right beside him.
"Don't pull a hamstring or nothin'." He muttered, slipping his gun's stocks down and sliding it to its mag-holster over his back.
"What is a ham-string?" Kel quirked an eye at him and loosed off a cluster of pot-shots all in one movement. Plasma raked the rocks they were behind and she ducked right as a few bolts slipped over her head feathers.
Talner ignored her and glanced over the stone. The Dromon dropship had pulled back, and he could vaguely make out the top of the ship's spine over a few hills to the north. With its chin-gun blown off and its troop complement expended, the pilot could do little else but shelter his craft from Huan's Gauss-gun back at the Tower site.
Still, two Sangheilian infantrymen were doggedly pursuing them every inch back towards the dig. One of them had a carbine, and he wasn't half a bad shot.
Talner flinched when a green bolt vaporized the stone literally right in front of his face. He coughed and batted at heated pebbles eating into his cheeks.
"Sumnabitch' if I ain't getting pinned by some hinge-head." He grumbled, ripping off his sidearm, a Vesor Stut-Pistol, and yanking the pin back. "How's your ammo?"
Kel looked down at the minuscule and final little spire of blamite protruding from her rifle's spine. She rolled her amber eyes- a human gesture –and shook her head at him.
"Welp'," He smiled at here, still ignoring the steam wafting off the shoulder he'd been shot in. "good thing there's only two of them, huh?"
A gradual roar descending in the sky caught their attention. Talner and Kel stared grimly at the large jellyfish-looking ship breaking through the upper atmosphere with a slight, amber glow.
A Sangheilian Man-O-War. Colored crimson and yellow in the colors of R'ha. A spreading cluster of smaller craft were breaking away from a dorsal bay on the ship's belly.
"Shit on a stick, that was bad timing." Talner swallowed.
Kel gripped his arm. Talner tore his eyes off the spectacle above and looked at her.
"Run away with me." Kel Yn Gor said, and Talner blinked. "Now."
The Helljumper had made tough decisions before, decisions way tougher than anything like this. But for some reason he hesitated, even if it wasn't for long, he still did.
He glanced once over the rocks, back at the sky, and back towards the dig. Then, he looked at Kel again, and immediately became lost in her amber eyes. Her feathers were bloomed and quivering, just like they had been in that lucra-bar on the space-habitat.
"Alright." Talner said, his mouth going dry.
{👾}
The lift screamed as Kuhaga and Tollen reached the topsite Tower. Most of Kuhaga's crew were here, a small detachment still hanging out below and rounding up the last barrels of ore-plasma. Tollen had assembled his mercs into a kill team and was preparing to spread out around the landing site to try and hold off any beachhead attempts, several of them armed with standard-issue Rocket Launchers that they had purchased in an arms-deal a few weeks before coming to Tg-66.
They were helpless against the Man-O-War. Nothing they possessed would allow them to go toe-to-toe with a capital ship, even of such small size. But Kuhaga knew the Sangheili would refrain from using orbital weapons, lest they destroy their own tombs that they were so obsessive over in the trench below.
Fully uniformed and wielding a DMR rifle, Kuhaga nodded for Tollen and pointed at the Eschells and the Phantom landed nearby.
"You'll join us on the Phantom. Leave the heavy gear, take the plasma and pull out. This is going to turn into a sweeping run." He said. "I.E, Tollen; you're gonna' have to jump on that ship as it's going over your head."
"I've been through worse, lad." Tollen snorted, shouldering an Assault Rifle, and leaving a pair of Vesor pistols on his belt. "Besides, it gives me a while to indulge in my true passion; killing alien bastards."
Huan was still at the controls for the Gauss-gun. The little tech-man was hauling the pedals to bring the gun to bear at the encroaching swarm of ships coming down from the Man-O-War.
"-Eleven contacts~!" Susanne hollered from the flap of the Tower tent right beside him. "Dropships incoming, and a fighter!"
We're dead, Kuhaga realized. But, dead or not, they had to try. He wasn't about to sit down and let some Elites do him in without a fight.
"Susanne, Chelsea, ditch the equipment and get in the schooners, prepare for takeoff." Kuhaga pointed. "Liop, Grak, one of you get in the Phantom and lift her off the grav-lock. We are leaving and shooting."
"Contact~!" One of Tollen's men shouted nearby.
"Lookout~!"
Kuhaga ducked when a shadow slipped over the entire Tower area. A fat, bulbous craft riding trails of ghostly blue energy swept over the crags and dunes in an instant. A blast of plasma seared outwards from its belly like an incoming meteor, and Huan and the Gauss-gun platform vanished in a climbing pylon of purple and orange fire. The report was deafening, and chunks of scorched earth rained hellishly on all of their positions. Nobody was asking if Huan was dead. Everyone knew that answer.
"Tarasque." Tollen spat. Kuhaga watched as the tail-end of the heavy-fighter vanished over the other side of the Crag Belt. "Eyes-up, boys, dropships are here to play!"
Kuhaga unpinned his DMR and knelt behind a boulder. The air was overwhelmed with the reverberating cacophony of a small fleet of repulsorcraft circling their position like buzzards.
Dromon dropships, around ten of them. Tollen's men ducked into cover as plasma began to spray the rocks they were hidden behind. Rockets arched out and smashed into the dropship's chins, shattering several of their guns and damaging their cockpits.
The Phantom hovering nearby groaned as soon as two Kig-yar- the bickering pair, named Grak and Liop –were swept up into its anti-grav chute on the belly. The cannon on its chin started belching pulse-shots at one of the Dromons, raking its alien ribs and chin with blasts of pink and crimson fire.
Death screams hollered out as Tollen's group took losses. Kuhaga saw Tollen himself rising out of a crag cluster, RPG over his shoulder. The entire left side of his body kicked and the missile struck out into the sky, striking an already damaged Dromon in its opened troop bay compartment. The dropship whined shrilly for a second, and the air itself shifted as it vanished in a colossal burst of light and falling shrapnel, distended, Sangheilian corpses flipping through the air in burnt crisps like ragdolls.
One of the Dromons swept right over the Tower tent, and its troop bays belched open. Kuhaga rose as an eight-foot-tall behemoth landed in a kneel just ahead of his boulder. The R'ha Sangheili rose, garbed in crimson and yellow nonstandard plating.
Kuhaga saw its green eyes widen in surprise before his DMR kicked and he riddled its powerful chest with four rounds. The Sangheili staggered and crumpled, purple gore misting from its breast.
Another alien landed right beside Kuhaga's boulder and bellowed at him in an impossibly deep voice. A two-handed Plasma Repeater in its claws screamed and Kuhaga's cried out as his protective plating minimized a pair of bolts that hit him in the chest.
He fell on his backside and fire three times. One round bounced off the Sangheili's helmet, the other went in and out of its throat, and the last punched through its eye. The body fell forward and collapsed on top of him painfully, pinning him beneath Sangheili cadaver, and sand.
Kuhaga cried out in defiance as he struggled to push the immense corpse off of himself. Then, more boots thudded into the dirt nearby. The Dromon veered off course as a rocket smashed into its ribs, ripping great rends of alien metal off its flaming fuselage.
Two more Sangheili stood over him, sneering. One raised a plasma rifle, and Kuhaga knew he was about to die.
Plskkk~! –the alien's head exploded in a fountain of purple blood, casting chunks of brain matter in every direction. Its fellow spun around and then dropped when a pink, glowing needle stabbed into its snout. It burst like a tiny grenade and vaporized the Sangheili's nose and an eye as he fell.
Talner, Kuhaga figured with a terrified huff, still trying to wedge himself out from under the corpse. And he's still got that fucking bird with him.
{👾}
As soon as Chelsea vanished inside the first Eschell, Susanne made for the second. She didn't even notice it hovering off the ground slightly as she sprinted for its loading bay.
Her mind was on overdrive as she hugged the Stut-Rifle to her chest. A Dromon passed right overhead and sprayed the ground she was running across with plasma. Susanne shrieked as some of the heavy bolts singed her hair and missed her by inches.
Runrunrunrunrun- her brain screamed.
The shutters meant to seal off the Eschell's cargo bay were beginning to rise. Susanne was too panic-stricken to get into cover to wonder who was already operating the ship.
Right as the bay finished sucking into the rib compartment did she leap off her boots, and sail right through the last gap in the rising shutters.
Clang~! –she landed on her belly across the deck inside, groaning in exhaustion and pain. The firefight outside continued to rage, now muffled, and the whole schooner shook as a passing Dromon raked its exterior hull with plasma sprays, trying to bring it down.
"-Who the hell is up there?" Susanne coughed, rising to her knees and staring ahead at the little bulkhead for the cockpit.
"Look!" –She heard a shrill voice inside, and her eyes adjusted to show her the little, triangular-tanked back of… a Grunt? "Old People are back!"
"What the fuck?" Susanne blubbered.
The little alien froze, and slowly turned around to face her, its eyes just over its rebreather mask wide and unbelieving.
As soon as Taptap made eye-contact with the confused contractor, he let out a feminine screech, emitting a clang of metal-to-metal as he tossed himself back into a corner of the cockpit and pointed at her in terror.
Engineer Yamva's ugly snout pistoned around the spine of the pilot's chair, and as the realization set in for Susanne, she scrambled for her Stut-Rifle that was splayed across her lap.
Yamva arched his plasma pistol between the pilot chairs and shot her in the face.
{👾}
Easa waited until the troop bay lowered, hanging onto the roof-slip over his helmed head for balance. The Dromon was jolted several times as the pilot navigated around rockets and gunfire. The whole hold shuddered under the duress of a massive, exterior explosion.
"We have lost another." –Came the growling answer through Easa's communications uplink. He snarled underneath the yellow guards protecting his mandibles. Easa remembered his wife's concerns and scoffed at how true they were turning out to be.
It will not stop me from getting that skull. Or twenty.
"You look good." Soyljuk said beside him, the old warrior staring at him through the center eye-diode making the heart of his stealth suit. The black and red plating covering Soyljuk would grant him the benefits of stealth, where Easa's golden and yellow Kaidon armor would protect him with inwreathing energy shields, a rare gift for those who had never benefitted from the Old Hegemony.
"You will take their flank." Easa inclined his snout. "Target their heavy weapons teams and pull their fire from the sky."
"As you wish, Kaidon." Soyljuk bowed and glanced at the back of the bay. Eight other Sangheili warriors stood behind their Kaidon as his personal guard. They were silent in the darkly lit space of the Dromon. The hull shuddered again. "Disembark! Mur'rootha R'ha, brothers."
The soldiers echoed the call and light flooded into the bay. Darken Cleft's sandy surface was revealed on an angle. It was chaos around a small field the enemy fighters had set up as a landing zone. A pair of drab-colored, human transports struggled to rise from the ground. A Covenant-era Phantom resisted the Dromons circling and peppering it with plasma fire that was incapable of puncturing its hull. Dead humans, dead Kig-yar and dead Sangheili were speckled lightly about the zone as R'ha infantry dropped from their vessels and engaged ground teams wielding DMRs, Magnums and Rocket Launchers.
Easa snarled and clenched a large hilt magnetized to his belt. He unsheathed his Energy Sword and bathed himself and his fellows in glowing white light as the weapon sparked to life. In his other claw he brandished a Plasma Rifle, rolling his shoulders in anticipation.
"I can feel your eagerness in the air, brother." He smirked when Soyljuk's tense form bundled underneath his stealth armor. "You have point."
The old man jumped out of the bay first and immediately, his physical form wavered and vanished before he hit the ground. Easa could faintly see a pair of hoof-prints materialize in the dirt, before Soyljuk's movements became untraceable.
He nodded at his men a second later and jumped himself, landing in the center of the fight with a rupturing report of synthetic metal from his boots.
Today, he would consecrate this hallowed earth with human and Kig-yar blood.
{👾}
Talner and Kel merged into the firefight from the south, Talner taking cover behind a few crates, and Kel finding a perch atop a nearby basalt stack.
He could see Kuhaga from where he had erroneously decided to save him. He was pinned under one of the Sangheili corpses still, buried in the bodies. Tollen's entire band was dedicated to fighting off the dropships and Kuhaga's remaining contractors were wrapped up with the infantry, and they were losing.
"The phantom is active." Kel voxed, and Talner could see the dropship swiveling around madly, trading shots with Dromons that pack-attacked it like a drove of cooperating sharks. If the Phantom crashed, and the Eschells were destroyed, then they were dead. "Do we take a schooner?"
"We're goin' for the Phantom." Talner said, ripping out his sniper rifle again.
"You are insane."
"It has the armor to get us out of here in one piece." He focused on the nearest cluster of R'ha infantry. Ten Elites, taking cover near the Eschells, their backs to his and her positions. He aimed at one of the rearguards and pulled the trigger.
Bang~! –the back of the Sangheili's head popped like a cist. He collapsed.
Crack~! –Needles from Kel speckled the back of another. The Sangheili screamed as he fell to his knees, and the combined crystal-cluster exploded with the errant force of a grenade, wounding and slaughtering half the squad. Talner lowered his gun and looked over at the basalt towers. He could swear Kel was peaking over the rocks right at him, grinning with her bird-muzzle like a proud, small child.
"I'm out of ammunition." She clarified, sounding shy.
"I noticed, darlin'." The rifle bucked again. A Sangheili leaping from the bay of a Dromon flipped head over heels as the round caught him in the throat mid-drop. "We gotta' move."
Talner advanced towards the Eschells, rolling when a passing Dromon took a strafing shot at him. The plasma ate the sand around him and vaporized the caps of a few sealant crates.
"How are we supposed to penetrate this mess? There is so much gunfire, that we might as well sprint into a wall." Kel croaked.
"See if you can flank around to my zone, it's calmer over here." Talner voxed. "Tollen's men are doing a number on those dropships."
A pair of Kig-yar contractors just ahead of him twisted in odd directions as plasma fire raked their exposed bodies. No sooner had they crumpled did a Sangheili round a crate pile, see Talner and yank the trigger on his repeater rifle.
Talner barked as a bolt caught him in the chest and he went to ground behind some empty ore barrels. He rolled on his ribs and took out his Stut-Pistol, the Veson kicking as he drained the mag past one of the barrel's bases.
The Sangheili absorbed the fire and ducked behind a boulder, peering once over as he let his repeater cool, and Talner changed his magazines.
"Talner, are you injured?" Kel's voice frantically came through his vox.
"Not down an' out, but hell does that sting~!" Talner screamed, clenching his teeth as steam rose from the impact point on his blast vest. "Damn it!"
"I'm coming to you."
"No! Stay in cover, don't-" It was useless, he could already see Kel using her wicked speed to sprint over to where he was. Plasma fire whipped around the T'vaoan as her legs pumped and swept under her. She was running so fast that even the dropships couldn't get a bead on her. From one end of the fight to the other. No one else here, not even the other Kig-yar, could've pulled it off.
Kel's beak hissed a single derogatory term in her own tongue. She was holding a new gun, a plasma rifle that she'd ripped off the body of an enemy. She drained the charge at the Sangheili ahead and shrieked in reptilian pleasure when the warrior collapsed screaming.
Response fire whipped out. Talner felt like screaming himself when a carbine bolt jerked Kel's arm to the west. Some of her beautiful feathers were scorched to black stumps as a plasma ball passed an inch over her brow.
The barrels they hid behind tumbled. Kel flew to the south, airborne, and Talner rolled across the dirt. A Sangheili wielding dual energy swords cried out barbarically as he shouldered through and bulldozed their position.
"Talner!" Kel sounded very distant to him, so Talner silenced the blood pounding in his ears and brought up his pistol. He vaulted off his boots as one of the blades ran through the earth his stomach had been over a second earlier. He drained the feed in a series of magazine-depleting jolts of his finger. The Sangheili jerked and twisted, bullets that didn't bounce off his plating ripping through his breast, collar and shoulder. He abandoned the first sword and came at Talner brandishing the other one over his head, still hollering out a warcry of deafening volume.
Kel returned on her wicked legs. She mounted the Sangheili's massive shoulders and used her rifle like a club, batting him over the head twice, the second strike dislodging his helmet, where it skittered across the sand nearby.
Talner jumped to his feet and slipped a carved-grip trench knife from the ankle tether of his boot. He sliced open the Sangheili's ankle, ducked between its great legs and scythed horizontally through the vulnerable joint of its other calf.
The alien's cries and barks were lost on the two as they gradually cut and beat him to death. Kel hooked her heels into the back of his harness and drained his rifle's reserves right into the Sangheili's head. Plasma splashed and flesh crackled. Talner tossed himself to the side as the eight-foot-tall corpse fell to its knees and crumpled.
"Talner~!"
The ex-ODST gathered his breath and stared over his foe's cadaver, thinking it was Kel who was still calling him.
It wasn't. It was Kuhaga, just crawling out from under the dead Elite nearby.
"Talner~!" Kuhaga barked, reaching for his DMR.
For a moment, the two men stared at one another over half of the Tower area. There was an unspoken exchange of knowledge between them. Kuhaga's face became very blank, and Talner set his brow in a pained grimace.
"C'mon." He grabbed Kel as she crawled away from the dead Sangheili.
Plssskkk~! –Talner opened his mouth, and an ear-piercing holler leaped through his teeth. He looked down. The flickering blade of an energy dagger was protruding through his bicep.
Kel squawked something unintelligible. Something invisible hit her across the face and she spun like a top in the air, landing atop the corpse of the Elite they had killed.
Hooked like a fish on a line, Talner screamed again as he yanked his arm forwards and slid himself off the dagger. He spun on his heel and slashed with his knife, catching his assailant across the chest.
The blade kicked sparks as it harmlessly slid down and off a black and red breastplate. The stealth field nullifying the Sangheili's visage faded. Talner was face to face with a black assassin with a single, vision-diode glowering at him in the ornate helmet's face.
Talner staggered back as the dagger swept just before his throat, the Sangheili grunting with effort. He fell onto his back, his hand dancing across his belt. He produced another blade, and presented its tip upwards at the alien.
The Helljumper clicked a release on the handle, and the projectile blade shot out and impaled into the center of the Sangheili's helmet, right into the vision-diode, with a shriek of sparks and metal. The assassin grunted again and staggered back, ripping the helmet off his face.
Talner jittered and jumped to his feet. His head swam when the assassin Sangheili reared back and threw his own helmet at him like a projectile. It bounced off Talner's forehead, and blood started to leak down the bridge of his nose.
Overhead, another Dromon exploded as a final rocket embedded into its hull. The burst sent chunks of synthetic metal everywhere. One of them bounced like a bowling ball that had loosed off its own track. The torso-sized plate trailed fire, and ricocheted off the assassin's gut with an organic crunch~! –as it shattered several ribs.
Doubling over, Soyljuk fell to a kneel and was just grabbing for the pistol on his belt. A Stut-Pistol barked and Soyljuk's world went dark, his aged face relaxing as a purple-leaking hole appeared right between his eyes in the center of his snout.
The elder died silently, and Talner lowered his gun, his bloody face twisted in fear, anger and effort.
Arms slipped under his shoulders, and he felt the sand sliding under his back. Everything was caught in a surreal haze as the plasma scoring, the cuts, the ruined arm and the head-wound took their tolls. All Talner understood was pain.
Kel was over him, her beak bleeding dark magenta blood, her one eye swelling shut.
A muffled explosion sounded nearby, and for a moment, as both them stared at one another, they went temporarily blind.
{👾}
"Hold onto something!" Yamva took his claw off the key of his datapad, and a second later, the Eschell jolted so hard that Taptap thought they had crashed.
Deep inside Gingerback Cavern, all of the burn tanks that Yamva had rigged to explode did exactly that. A small team of six men from Kuhaga's group who were just about to be slaughtered by two squads of R'ha Sangheili were vaporized along with their would-be murderers when they, the aliens, and the drums they had been sent to retrieve all vanished in a green/yellow miasma of fire, heat and collapsing rock.
The mushroom cloud filled the entire sky over the area in an instant as the plasma-fueled air current fled for the top of the trench. The smog blinded the crews of the Dromon dropships and stalled all of the firefights still going on around the Tower's ground levels. There was a flash of light, and soon, everything had vanished in soot.
The skies were clear.
Yamva didn't wait for Taptap to recover. He jammed the throttle and keyed in the proper runes. The schooner shuddered through the mess as he aimed the nose up at the heavens and gunned it for clearer space.
There was nothing but rumbling for a very long time. G-forces beyond his control compressed him into his chair, and sent Taptap wailing as he rolled like a sports ball down the cargo bay and face-planted into a plasma drum in the back. Yamva begged the contents not to react unfavorably to such roughness.
Up and up the Eschell went. The sky shuddered in the cockpit's glass, and clouds parted around the schooner's drab nose.
To the combatants below, Yamva and Taptap were just a green speck that soon did vanish into the blue aether.
{👾}
Tollen drained the mag of his gun and the Sangheili folded over the rocks he had been climbing over. One of his men tossed back as plasma boiled his chest and incinerated his face. He shouldered the falling body aside and switched feeds for his Assault Rifle.
Aren't you just a huge bugger.
Tollen grinned like a madman as he witnessed the largest Sangheili of the bunch slice effortlessly through a pair of Kuhaga's crew with an Energy Sword. A rifle in the alien's other claw flared and one of his mercs spun like an interpretive dancer as plasma ripped through his sternum and shoulder.
Tollen ran through another mag as he held down the trigger. Energy fields flared around the Elite's towering form as his armor negated the bullets. The champion charged Tollen silently, his draconic, golden and yellow helmet angled downwards in a predatory challenge of intent.
Backing away, Tollen vaulted some rocks and chucked a fragmentation grenade with the ease of a Frisbee. It detonated on the warlord's flank and ripped away the rest of his shields, including one of the beautiful pauldrons decorating the alien's arm.
"That's right, come on and fight me, you Covvie' dog!" Tollen laughed, throwing away his rifle and reaching for a machete on his hip.
{👾}
"They come up the lift!" Grak chattered in broken English, his eyes on one of the visual monitors displaying the activity beneath the Phantom's belly. "Two them. Friendly?"
"No idea." Liop growled, rangling with the controls as a Dromon flew dangerously close to their flank through all the smoke. The troop bay, stuffed with ore-plasma drums, clanked and rung silently from the deathly swerving. Grak eyed the cargo fearfully, remembering that they were essentially operating a flying bomb.
"Be more careful!" He chattered, staring at the opened chute for the gravity lift as two shadows started to get bigger and bigger. "Now because you can't fly, I have to kill boarders!"
"So kill and kill quietly!" Liop snapped.
A second later, and Kel Yn Gor materialized from the bottom of the chute. The lift carried her and the human she had been dragging limply forwards. She stumbled on her heels and Talner rolled across the deck, close by to Grak's feet.
On reaction, the Ruuhtian turned his plasma pistol down at the limp body and went to shoot it. Kel Yn Gor's rifle whipped up and cut down her former ally without a second thought.
Liop was just glancing back to see what happened when Kel shot and killed him too. Plasma bolts slapped into Liop's beak and incinerated half his skull. His body tossed from the controls, and the Phantom lurched as it hovered to stillness.
Talner grunted something to her as she stowed her gun and strode into the pilot's bay, her amber eyes straying worriedly on him as she passed.
Stay alive, Talner, she thought, shoving Liop's corpse off the rune dais. She clicked the hover-keys needed and gripped the Phantom's operation rails, waiting for the dropship to start nosing for the upper atmosphere. Stay alive.
As Kel frantically wrestled with the craft's direction, she witnessed something spectacular.
The Tower site started to shrink farther and farther below. The earth itself buckled as the mushroom cloud from the second ore-plasma burst subsided. Gigantic cracks began to form under and between the feet of the surviving combatants, all of them originating from and spreading from the edge of the Crag Belt.
The T'vaoan's eyes were fixed in wide fascination. An entire chunk of the trench's edge started to slide away from the surface of the planet, creating a tumbling fall of rock, earth and dead bodies that gradually vanished over the edge of the cliff. The explosion was causing the trench to fill itself up.
Kel gunned the repulsors and leaned tiredly on the console to watch, but other than that, she did not lift a claw, or even a thought of concern for Kuhaga and Tollen's bands. Nothing else mattered to her anymore.
Faintly, though, in the distance, she could see the last Eschell schooner zooming off in an opposite flight path to theirs. The cigar-shaped vessel was zipping away faster than any of the few surviving Dromons could target, and by few, perhaps two to three remained, lazing in circles in the smoky sky around the collapsing digsite.
The landscape buckled one last time and shifted. The Tower, the landing zone, the ramshackle lift and a small army of dead bodies and still living Sangheili were swallowed by the Crag Belt. A third mushroom cloud- this one tan and brown –rose from the trench's gullet.
"…That's certainly a way to end a firefight, huh?" Talner appeared, limping, over her shoulder. He was bleeding everywhere, and a haphazard lump of biofoam stuck out from his forehead where he had made quick fixes.
Kel Yn Gor craned her crimson neck over to look at him, saw the growth-like protuberance jutting from his bruised face, and began to fill the Phantom's pilot bay with resonating, avian-clucks.
She was laughing at him.
"What's so funny?" He drunkenly grinned, his lips fat from the bruising, making his face look all the more comical.
Kel buried her snout in his chest, weakly clasping her arms around his waist, and the two of them slid down to the decking, exhausted and hurting.
{👾}