Chapter 8
Droplets of blood marked the commander's trail, like bread crumbs do children in fairy tales. He had to move fast. Any fool could follow such a blatant trail, and there was much to do.
"A Prophet turns to an Unggoy, hands him a Needler, and orders him to go into the room and kill his mother. Unggoy looks up at his hierarch and cries 'I can't do it.' Prophet turns to a Lekgolo, hands her the Needler, and orders her to go into the room and kill her life partner. Lekgolo goes into the room, but comes out, saying she can't do it over and over again. Finally the Prophet turns to a Jiralhanae, hands him the Needler, and orders him to go into the room and kill his own brother. The Jiralhanae strolls into the room. The Prophet hears half a dozen shots, then a loud scream. Jiralhanae comes out and the Prophet asks 'What happened?' The Jiralhanae says 'The Needler was filled with blanks, so I beat him to death sir.'"
Zardock chuckled bitterly, but a feeling of dizziness overcame him, and he braced himself against a wall. Laughter pounded the gash on his cheek, blood smearing and pumping out. He'd have to do something about the wound. He was leaving a trail of purple, tar smelling blood that even an idiot could follow. He had to move fast.
"My father taught me to fight, I guess that's how it works. The generation who survives teaches the generation who will be sent off to die. If not for my father, I'd probably of died along time ago against the human, or the Jiralhanae, and I'd of been sent to war by the Hierarchs with or without my father's consent. So, it's not my father's fault?"
As if struck by revelation, Zardock looked around the cramp confines of the hallway. "Who am I talking to?" he wondered. He shook his head and cleared his thoughts. Dementia, blood loss, a near complete lack of sleep. Maybe a concussion from the gunshot wound a week ago. He was beginning to degenerate. It was harder to focus. Talking helped though. It kept him thinking. It kept his mind off the pain.
"I have to rescue the others. The human mentioned she had more Sangheili. I can't abandon them. The human will put guards at them assuming I will attempt to rescue them, if only for reinforcements. I need a diversion that will not put my men in danger. The Jiralhanae would make a good diversion. The communications room. I have to save my men."
He noticed footsteps approaching from down the hallway, and immediately pushed himself to the wall. The footsteps came closer, the pitter patter of footsteps grew louder. In a moment, two human soldiers turned the corner. Zardock took both by the skull in a hand each, and smashed them together. The bone yielded, and blood dribbled out into the human's scalp. Zardock took the moment to catch his breath.
Finding the communication room was difficult in its own right. The hallways stretched and twisted into infinity. It would be impossible to arrive anywhere specific. And his blood lose was urging. He slipped into the next open door so he may take a moment to gather his thoughts.
He was granted enough time to drop the two human corpses to the ground before his legs nearly buckled beneath him. It was only by grabbing a nearby wall that he was able to keep from falling.
"Where am I?" Zardock asked, looking around. "Personal quarters, the bed and lavatory. The quarters of a high ranking soldier at this base. But where is the communications room?"
Before the answer could strike him, the door to the quarters slipped open with a creak, and a human walked in. Her attention was not on the area before her. Rather, she seemed preoccupied with the floor, and she was muttering profanities gently under her breath. The moment the door behind her closed, Zardock was upon her.
Even without his energy sword or a projectile, a Sangheili was more than capable of fighting hand-to-hand. War was a large part of their culture, and so they were trained to compete in every aspect. In an instance, Zardock wrapped his fingers around the humans throat and he lifted her off the ground so her feet dangled helplessly beneath her. The anger inside of him could have snapped her neck with a flick of his wrist. But he swallowed the boiling down. His men came first.
"Where is the communication's room?" he demanded, slacking his grip just enough to allow her to talk.
"Fuck you, squid-face," she muttered.
A week's worth of anger boiled inside of him as he recognized the voice. "What was it you said? You would cut off every portruding limb, rip my mandible from their sockets? Trust me, I am more than willing to do it to you. If I had the time, I would break every bone in your body. I would crush and break you apart. But I need the communications room. You are going to die, but tell me where it is and it will be quick."
"Fuck you," she spat
Zardock smiled. Or at least that's what he appeared to do. Nicole was as competant in reading an alien's body langue as an alien was at reading her's. "Brave. But foolish." For he took her left arm and casually twisted it at the shoulder. But he didn't stop, he continued to twist it, rip it and wrestle it from the socket. Then he began to pull, placing a hoof on her back to increase the leverage as he ripped it away from her body.
"Talk!" he roared.
"The north building," she cried. "The communcations center is there."
"North?" he asked. "Well it's a start."
His hoofed foot fell upon Nicole's head. Leaning his weight fully upon her, her head quickly yeilded between the floor and the hoof. A red stain spread out from beneath Zardock's foot.
---
The preservation of the Covenant was all that mattered. No life was more important, no duty higher. Such all were taught. The words were drilled into their brains until they believed it. But it wasn't this belief that allowed SuKahn to kill so mercilessly. He simply enjoyed killing. He loved the recoil that ran up his arm with each blast of his Brute Shot. He loved the smell of human blood and the taste of human meat. He loved the sound of tanks rolling over corpses, the bodies popping wetly under treads the moment the weight grew too extreme. He loved the eruption of the heavy artillery. He loved the soldiers engulfed by flame.
And once the remained Sangheili were found, they too would meet their end. In particular, he would see that Commander Zardock met a fate befitting the most vial of traitors.
"Cheiftan," one of the lower ranked Jiralhanae said. Cheiftan was a title bestowed onto Sukahn by the High Cheiftan Tartarus. It was granted after a particularly devastating slaughter, in which SuKahn marched at least a hundred humans into an air lock, then released them into the cold embrace of space.
"Incoming transmition, it's a human frequency."
"Let it through," SuKahn grunted.
The Jiralhanae typed on the computer. Soon enough, a voice sounded over the speakers. Who it belonged to, SuKahn wasn't sure, as it was heavily distorted by static. The human's communicating technology was horribly inferior.
"I am inside the human base," said the voice over the speakers. "Send reinforces immediately. I will leave this channel open so you may trace it to my location. May the Forerunners watch us all."
It took a moment for the words to reach SuKahn's brain, but immediately, he gave his orders. "Trace that signal," he roared. "Arm every soldier, we go within the cycle."
SuKahn's bloodlust was too great, his delusions of grandeur and invincibility to blinding, for the thought of a trap never occurred to him, and his underlings were too scared of him to question the order.