Xepo appeared at the Plague's right hand side, holding his cooling beam rifle one-handed.

"Not if I can help it," the green armored Elite said.

Ludo looked over at him, then back at the Brute Captain and responded to the Shipmaster via HIGHCOM, "Situation is under control."

"Like hell!" the Brute cried, insulted, and leveled his Type-52 Grenade Launcher at them.

Xepo brought his rifle up and aimed. Ludo tackled him down out of the way of the incoming grenade volley and four successive explosions went off behind them against the closed bay door. Utilizing the momentum, Ludo rolled off of Xepo, armed a borrowed plasma grenade, and hurled it at the Brutes as he swung back into a shooting stance.

The grenade sailed true, adhering to the Captain's chest and emitting a cheery chime of beeps upon activation. The Brute yelled, "Damn you!", and the bomb detonated. For a split second, the room was painted in fluorescent blue light, and the Brutes standing behind him were thrown backwards, all clumsily flailing and tripping over each other into a huge dog pile against the closed ventral door.

Ludo saw Itan get to his feet, finally, then turned and helped Xepo up. The first of the Brutes to recover was one of the Majors that stood and instantly strafed to the left, shooting spikes. Itan fired overcharge number two and blasted the Brute square in the shoulder, spinning it halfway around. It fell to a knee, down, but not out. Ludo brought his carbine to bear and brought the ape all the way down and out for good.

He neared the end of his last mag, so he pumped the remaining two rounds into the corpse for good measure. Some think overkill, Ludo thinks solid confirmation. The gun clicked on empty and he tossed it aside like the sheath to a sword, as though the real weapon was now unleashed. In theory it was, Ludo thought, flexing his hands open and closed, tensing his legs.

Then he remembered his spiker and grabbed that instead. Not because he couldn't handle these Brutes bare handed, but because the rugged weapon just felt more appropriate for the moment. He laid on the trigger and swept it back and forth, spraying nails into each Brute that had gotten back on its feet. In other words, all of them.

The second Brute Major was shouting, "Take them down!" and the remaining Minors all rushed the Elites, rather than engaging them from a distance. This last Major, unlike its predecessors, had enough sense to know that they would lose a mid range battle. What this Major didn't know, was that the others had done themselves a favor by not letting the Plague get his hands on them. And the doors were sealed shut? Trapped in a room with Ludo 'Macdemee was the last place any knowledgeable soldier wanted to be, given the choice between that, and facing a Hunter pair or being eaten alive by the Kig-Yar.

He never released the trigger. With the drum, he didn't have to. He was burning through the second half of the generous magazine, shooting right past a Brute Minor coming straight at him in order to keep the second Major from advancing. Ludo felt a heavenly level of satisfaction when he saw a spurt of blood as a spike embedded itself deep in the Major's eye. Then the Minor's fist came into view.

With the speed of a frog snagging a fly, Ludo jerked to the left and the wild haymaker skidded inches past his head, grazing his purple armor. He then sidestepped to the outside and thrusted the spiker forward, impaling the subordinate Jiralhanae through the side of the head with a sickening thwok! He could feel the extra weight resting on the gun, so he pushed forward and released it and the Brute fell over with a spiker sticking out of his head.

Two blue lines flashed and dropped two of the three Brutes that were rushing Itan, who was backpedaling like mad and unknowingly towards a bulkhead. He alternately and rapidly fired both pistols as he did so, but the lead Brute absorbed every shot like a sponge and grabbed his wrists, pinned him up against the wall, and roared in his face. The blue-clad Elite strained to turn the pistols towards his opponent's head, but he could not match the Brute's strength. The death grip released when a third blue line punched through the Brute's skull and tossed it off its feet.

Ludo turned back to the Major, who stood there stumbling and off balance, swaying back and forth as if in a daze, and walked over to him. Ludo was a blur of purple brutality. He batted away a Bloodhand that the Brute had tried to pull from behind its back at the last second, then snatched the spike from its eye, flipped it around and forced it up through his foe's chin before cracking him with a heavy hook to the fleshy eye wound.

The Major crashed to the floor, alive but probably wishing he wasn't. Ludo hovered over him and planted a foot on his chest, then turned and panned around the troop bay. All threats neutralized, two teammate casualties confirmed. He'd had better battle reports, but he'd also had worse. He could learn to live with it. Ludo always thought that that was always the best quality about his robotic mentality; his arrant lack of any emotion when it came to the loss of life. Except perhaps, the slight mirth of a task successfully executed when it was he who was the life taker.