He could be doing something else, anything else. Carving on a new crystal from the mines, examining the relics those plaza merchants tried to sell like trinkets, or just walking and talking with a stranger. Maybe even a girl. He wasn't that unattractive was he? A little under six foot so nothing unique vertically. Nothing to note width wise if either he was honest, but then his scrawny bean pole of a body did let him hide and reach places most other couldn't. His mother always told him he had a handsome face, even after a flirt with the wrong girl broke his nose. Maybe if he pulled his hair back? That seemed to be the trend on the mainland now, short and simple. But he liked his long locks. Sure they stayed filthy most of the time, but he couldn't imagine not feeling the weight and brush of those oily tangled strings on his neck and the tops of his shoulders. Yeah, he could probably get a girl if he wanted to, maybe even keep her for more than one night if he dug his manners out of the closet.
Instead, he was fishing. All alone, in the middle of the big blue nowhere.
Simon Kyanos knew exactly why he was in the middle of nowhere hauling in net after net of slippery squirming fish. As much as he preferred studying ruins and carving stone, neither brought in much money. The shop and stand his parents had left him near the harbor however, was a different story.
He hauled another net up into his boat, pouring what he could into the crates and baskets he'd brought, before settling down to pulled the rest from the net by hand. A quick glance at the sky as he retrieved a knife from his boot confirmed he would maybe have the chance for one more cast before he had to head in. He needed to make it count too, since the red sunrise heralded a storm later in the day, most likely coming from the west on the trade winds. Right now though the rising sun was about to make his already tedious job miserable, not to mention what would happen when it's red rays hit the fish.
"Sometimes,' he sighed, holding a fish up so its gasping face was looking at him. "Sometimes I think I really should have jumped that transport to the mainland. Sure I'd be poor and homeless, but at least there'd be something to do right?" He tossed the carcass over his shoulder, moving on to another caught in the net. "Grimm to kill, people to save. But no, I'm still here. Still stuck in boring, rotting, middle of nowhere Menagerie."
BOOM!
Simon only had a few tense moments to be baffled by the massive noise before it's shockwave slammed into his back, rolling him down head first into his boat and catch. He felt the boat roll and buck, water trickling over the side as it came within a hairs breadth of capsizing, only for its tall single mast to pull it back over.
"Was it something I said?" he asked, blinking his eyes as he tried to regain his sea legs, whipping his face if only to get some of the stinging scales and saltwater out of his spinning senses. He could just make out the shine of the sun gleaming on his catch when he saw another shine moving up the other side of the pile, just before the roar overhead overpowered that of the wind and surf.
He looked up, and his jaw came loose. It was massive, huge, easily bigger than anything Simon had ever seen. It streaked overhead, smooth outer shell burning green as it careened through the air, coming apart and leaving fragments of itself falling and burning through the air behind it. He watched it fly past, too busy watching to worry about the shards it shed, as a sickening realization hit his stomach. Whatever it was, it was headed for Menagerie's southern coast.
It had taken all of five seconds for Torres' spinning mind to translate the sudden panic around him into what had happened. A short circuit or power surge, Mekek's cursing wasn't clear, had caused the ship to make a blind jump, one that dumped them out directly into the gravity of an unknown planet.
All around him Elites were scrambling for handholds, as the ones who had kept their footing shouted the remaining Grunts and Jackals to guard the doors, even after the roars outside had been completely drowned by the alarms blaring overhead. The remaining Elites were being furiously commanded by what The Spartan assumed was the highest ranking officer present even as Mekek kept piling on more bad news.
"Stabilizers offline! Shields offline! Ship-wide communications offline! Artificial Gravity failing! Hull integrity 33 percent!"
"Commander!" Another Sangheili yelled, his hands gripping a flickering console for all they were worth. "We are caught in the planets gravity and our orbit is faltering! Impact calculated in 13.82 minutes!"
"Full reverse!" The ranked Elite bellowed, his gold warrior armor gleaming scarlet in the blaring alarms lights. "Reroute all power to engines and vertical thrusters! We must level our descent!" Torres knew from mission briefings that Covenant ship bridges were buried deep inside their hulls, but he didn't need to see outside to recognize the next round of violent vibrations that shook Whispering Piety's hull.
"We're entering the atmosphere!"
In the five seconds or so it took Whispering Piety to enter and exit slip-space, Harka made a promise. Six hours ago they had been destined for Sanghelios, on the path to final victory. Now his crew was on the brink of slaughter, his ship coming apart around him, and worst of all, his brother was lying five feet away in a bloodied heap.
He would kill them all. Every single one of the creatures infesting his ship. The monstrous beasts that had taken his greatest moment thus far and scattered it like dust. He would kill them all, even if it meant ending them with his bare hands. Starting with the beast trying to take his brother's life.
In the confusion and clamor of the sudden jump, Harka had been thrown from the wolf's back, leaving the Elite shipmaster facing the monster across seven feet of quaking hallway. He dared not glance past it, just behind its legs to where Nal still lay unconscious. The monster was fully focused on him, the one who had dared to injure it. Its black fur was still burning in places from its collision with the power conduit, and the bone mask covering its face had shattered away, revealing not a face, but a black void that swallowed all light that met it, with only the barest hint of a muzzle and snout. But there was no mistaking the fangs the beast was baring at him, and Harka could almost feel the hatred, the anger dripping from its mangled body like sweat. It wanted his blood, it wanted revenge. Harka had no intention of denying it.
"Well then?!" He roared, fists clenched and mandibles bared. "What are you waiting for?! FACE ME DEMON!"
"Not today." Harka spun, rounding on the new voice only to feel a five-digit hand clamp around his throat and hoist him off the ground.
"Such courage, such devotion," the female voice purred, obscured by her hold on Harka's neck. "Such anger." He clawed at the hand, reaching up and grasping at it, only to feel cracked skin as cold as death. She seemed to pause as Whispering Piety shuddered violently, the forces buffeting the ship tossing Nal's limp form like stones in a rockslide.
"So the frame of day crumbles, ashes before the burning night." Harka felt his muscles tense, a small, barely noticeable stabbing pain in his neck before a fog fell over his senses. "And after so long in battle, so many wars fought. Your valiant sacrifices, have what wrought?"
His limbs became lead, and he could feel consciousness slipping through his grasp. In a final bid to escape he reached out, only to find his fingertips barely brush he face of his attacker, and her cracked skin. Then his vision faded completely, and his body went limp.
"This will not be your final rest o brave knight, but for now it will offer some respite." She dropped her new captive, the muscled alien falling back into the claws of his former prey as the other form began to writhe on the floor.
Fighting through the familiar agony of a thorough beating, Nal forced his eyes to open and his limbs to move, snaking his hands under his torso and pushing up. He lifted himself up enough to turn his head, his arms shaking as his vision threatened to blur again, but not before he caught a flash of gold hanging against a wall of bleeding black.
"Har-ka," he groaned, trying with all his might to will his legs into action, but they were noodles beneath him. He blinked his eyes, trying to clear his vision. Was that another figure beside the monster? It was no more than a smear to him, pale skin peeking from dark robes, and when Nal next glanced up with open eyes, it was gone. They were gone.
"No." he heaved, gripping the dented panels on the wall and hauling himself up until his legs hand no choice but to stand. "Harka!" He searched furiously, eyes flying over the rumbling hall, trying to focus in the flickering light, but all that was left were the scars of battle on the metal around him, and the bone jarring quake that shuddered up the ships body like a seizure.
"Brother!"
"We just lost the engines!" Mekek screamed, his tiny hands holding onto his console for dear life as the bridge's commander bellowed.
"Then all power to maneuvering thrusters!"
"Commander!" Another elite shouted over the ships thundering. "Landmass detected! Bearing 0.021 to port!"
"Two minutes to landfall!" Torres didn't know anything about Covenant ship design, barely anyone in the UNSC outside of ONI did, but right now he had only one choice.
"One minute!"
"All hands, brace for impact!"
Deep inside Menageries ancient forests, a lone predator was stalking a dangerous, lethal prey.
She knelt down, shifting her grip so her axes shaft supported her weight, her other hand ghosting over the churned earth before her. Still warm. The trail was alarmingly fresh, an hour old at most. She glanced left and right, eyes darting to and fro beneath her hood. Broken branches and trampled brush lay all around. This wasn't just a straggler pair or a lone alpha in the making, this was a pack. The largest Menagerie had seen in decades if her information was right.
She resumed her trek, keeping her stance low and her pace slow through the torn underbrush. For once she was thankful she'd never gotten around to adding any more armor to her combat gear. But even if the small gusts ticking across her exposed upper arms told her she was safely downwind of the pack, she kept her steps quiet. Beowolves were known for their sense of smell, but their hearing was just as sensitive. One wrong step, one snapped twig and the pack would stop, listen, sniff, and more than likely scatter until dark. She couldn't risk that, not when she was so close after two days of tracking.
She fell back on her training, focusing her body on the motions needed to maintain crucial silence, until two somethings made her stop. For the past mile or so the pack had followed a trail carved out by farmers and merchants, a clear sign of just how few the Grimm had been in Menagerie until recently. In front of her the path forked, one branch heading north into the mountains and river valleys, the other pointing south toward the coast, where the packs trail lead.
Gabi frowned. There were no villages to the south. The nearest settlements were a day's run west, and another half day north. Was there a new settlement they hadn't told her about? Another mining camp on the cliffs? One thing for sure, if the pack didn't spook she was going to find out.
Then she heard it. A colossal, vicious noise unlike anything Gabi had ever known. First an explosion, a clap like thunder the huntress recognized as a sonic boom, followed by a screaming roar. She stopped, waiting as the sound grew closer, howling and vibrating through the air to the point it felt as if her very bones were shaking. But as suddenly as it appeared it was gone, replaced with the thunder of breaking surf, only amplified ten thousand times.
Then, the earth shook.
No one saw, but even an ocean away the impact was felt from the ground right into the people's bones. Whispering Piety did not hold to its name. It came screaming toward the earth, the wind howling, her frame groaning under the torture of crushing G-forces. The ships thrusters had nearly leveled the supercarrier, but only its hooked bow truly saved the massive ship.
It slammed into the water, throwing up a spray tall and wide enough to drown an island, one matched only by that kicked up when its rare also touched down. Had the ship been level it may have skipped like a river stone. Instead it careened through the surf, throwing up entire tsunamis of sea water until finally, with a sickening crunch the ships prow met land at a row of towering cliffs. Her forward hooked nose, the entire prow of Whispering Piety, bent and twisted on impact, its center beam cracking like dry wood. The ancient rock acted like rebounds in a pinball machine, forcing the ship to scrape and drag along the cliffs. Not a second later Whispering Piety's side hit, the sloped wing like sections flattening and sheering away like butter against sea battered coast. It was only after a torturous eternity of craping alongside the rock that the ship ground to a halt, her twisted prow coming to rest in the crook of the cliffs and a massive seastack, the gap between the titanic rock formations becoming a final catcher's mitt for the battered supercarrier.
Torres flexed, a whole body motioned all Spartans trained in to disable their suits most important survival function. But no training could prevent the Spartan from falling into an undignified heap as his armor lock disengaged, leaving him to tumbled down to the Bridge's lower level and roll across the now tilted floor.
"Status report," The Elite Commander groaned, slowly righting himself as his fellows did the same. Mekek had fortunately only been thrown a few feet from his console, and whether by his species own durability or sheer panic he quickly scrambled back to his station.
"Main power offline, reserve power offline. All systems are down."
"No power?" Thompson coughed, hauling himself up with his good arm. "Then where's the light from?" The Spartan soldier looked over to the illumination in question, a glaring streak of white in the midst of Whispering Piety's sparking battered bridge. Tprres swallowed hard, already computing the implications as his head swiveled up and around, following the shaft of light to where it streamed in. A few steps to the right was all it took, and the Spartan could see cloudy skies.
"Impact must've broken her keel," He half whispered as the Elite Commander addressed any of his subordinates still conscious.
"Take a squad and get outside. We must survey the damage to the hull."
"But what of the beasts?" At that everyone stopped, the bridge falling silent save for the low groaning of the ship's hull, and the sparking of its damaged internals. After thirteen agonizing seconds of silence, Torres activated his helmet Comm.
"Taurus 3, Taurus 4, Come in, over." All he heard was static, then a hacking cough.
"Tell the pilot he needs his license pulled." Torres felt his tightened shoulders loosen if only slightly at the sound of Wade's snark, but that still left one unaccounted for.
"Taurus 4, respond. Mik?"
"Mik?" Wade called. "Miky? Come on ya big Russian bozo now's not the time for a round of hide the vod…"
"Wade?" For a moment Taurus' joker was completely silent, the scuffling of armored boots the only sounds legible through the Comms, until.
"Mik's dead. His neck's broken." Both Spartans felt their limbs turn to lead if only for a moment as their brains processed their teammates words. Of course they trained you for it, but nothing could really prepare them. "He was picking off the faster ones from up high. Looks like he fell when the ship … Armor lock didn't engage in time."
CLANG!
Covenant and Spartan alike all flinched, heads swinging around as hands flew to their weapons at the sound of rending metal. Instead of a monster though they saw Thompson, the Spartan Enforcer pulling his already battered left hand from where he had buried it up to his thumb in the nearest console. An Elite five feet away moved toward him, a growl already in his mandibles only to find the commanders arm across his path.
"Still your tongue," he snarled, turning to the rest of his crew. "A warrior has fallen in our defense! You will grant him all the honors and respect he has earned!" Torres watched carefully as a round of snarling nods answered the commander's declaration. He knew the order was meant as a gesture of respect, but for the Spartans it only served to deepen the pit forming in their guts as the Elite turned to them. "Go to your brother, and see him off on his journey."
It took the better part of his training just to nod. Their comrade and friend was dead, and they were now more than likely stranded on an alien planet with a super-ship full of Covenant soldiers.
"Taurus 3 is in bound," Wade's voice crackled numbly. "No sign of any hostiles."
"Negative," Torres snapped hollowly. "We're coming to you."
"Roger that."
"Me too," Mekek said walking up to the Spartans, his right hand now gripping a Needler, while he addressed his current commander. "The consoles are dead, and we've probably severed half the plasma conduits in the ship. I'll need to assess the drives before we even get near restoring power."
"Be swift then," The Elite nodded, glancing at the Spartans with a final respect before heading to the Bridge's lower level. With the power out opening the blast doors took slightly more muscle than Torres was expecting, but once he'd wrenched the massive panels open they began their walk.
With stealth no longer their objective, both Spartans activated their helmet lights, keeping tight grips on their weapons as they made their way down the halls. Even Mekek kept his needler ready, the weapon staying level and steady in his grasp. As they advanced Torres couldn't help but take in the dizzying swath of blood coating the walls, from faintly glowing unngoy blue to thick paste like Kig-yar purple, and the slick dark blue of Elite blood. If there was one consolation the Spartans could find, it was that between the black beasts and the crash, most of Whispering Piety's crew was likely dead.
They soon reached the drive room and a short heave of the doors later, Fireteam Taurus stood reunited. Wade was, for the first time in either of his teammates memory, totally silent, barely even seeming to breath as he placed his fallen comrade's hands over one another and closed his eyes.
"He didn't deserve that," Thompson said numbly as Torres looked to the fallen Spartan. "If anyone should've gone out fighting it was Mik. Instead he goes because of murphy's law."
"We don't decide when Emile," Torres sighed, walking over and kneeling beside Mikhailov's body. "Sometimes not even the how. All we can do, is live well while we can." The other Spartans visor met his own, before a silent nod, one that became a wince. It only took Torres a moment to follow the involuntary motion to his seconds arm, and the fresh trickle of blood now flowing from the wounds.
"Just a scratch Boss," Thompson lied, only for another lance of pain to travel up his useless arm.
"Scratch or not you need a medic," He said, glancing back at the Covenant engineer as the unggoy waddled toward a dark console. "And we need a plan."
"Rrruuhhh." Both Spartans spanned to attention, raising their weapons toward the sound only for Wade to jump between them.
"No no, it's all right! He's not hostile!" Torres kept his SAW trained, watching as the dim glow of his Helmet lights bounced off the blood stained armor of a Sangheili commander, before he recognized the Elites dark skin and yellow eyes.
"Nal!" Mekek shouted, running as fast as his stumpy legs could over to the Elite as he struggled to hold himself upright. "What happened? Where's the Shipmaster?"
"Taken," The Elite snarled, though through the memory or pain Torres wasn't sure. "We were ambushed by one of the beasts as soon as the power was restored. It surprised me," he growled, with no small amount of shame in his voice, enough to finally make the Spartans lower their weapons. "When I awoke, Harka was being carried away in the damn creature's claws. One moment he was there and the next, rrrrgh!" He clutched his side, only to groan louder, likely from broken ribs.
"Great," Mekek groaned, before turning to the Spartans. "So, who brought the escape plan?"
"Excuse you?" Wade asked, looking at the unggoy as if he'd grown a second head out of his methane tank.
"He's right," Thompson said looking at his teammates. "Unknown planet or not we need to get out of here. Fast."
"Well no shit!" Wade snapped, whirling back on Mekek "But why the hell do you wanna run? I thought you were important to these split-lips?"
"Only as long as I keep the ship running," He sighed, looking at the now cold drive cores. "And if that new skylight on the bridge is any indication, Whispering Piety broke her back on impact. She'll never fly again."
"And your usefulness just ran out," Torres finished, then turned to the Sangheili. "What about you?"
"What do you think?" He snarled, mandibles clenching in pain. "I doubt my commanders will believe my tale, and even then I failed to protect my shipmaster. There is only one fate that awaits me in their eyes."
"But you can't find your brother if you're dead can you?" Wade asked almost rhetorically, earning a grunt from the Elite. The Spartan recruit shook his head, and it actually sounded like he was laughing inside his helmet. "So now we're marooned God only knows where, escaping a Covenant ship with two Covvie traitors in tow. Somewhere Mik is laughing his vodka soaked ass off right now." Immediately the three remaining Spartans looked to their fallen comrade's body.
"How far to the nearest vehicle bay?"
"Emile," Torres started, only for his second to round on him.
"We're not leaving him here for the covvies to make a trophy out of!"
"Unless you have the strength," Nal growled, walking toward them as he forced a limp out of his stride. "We must. The nearest vehicle bay is Lumn section; five hundred meters aft, and two decks down. With the lifts inoperable, we will have to use the maintenance shafts."
"Emile," Torres said, turning his teammate by the shoulder. "I don't like it either, but it would take both me and Wade to lift him. Your arms busted and Split-lips can barely stand. Wade?" The Spartan recruit stood a little straighter for once. "Do you still have those incendiaries?"
"Yes Sir," He answered numbly, taking two of the flame grenades off his thigh plate. They took a moment to place the grenades, one between the fallen Spartans knees, the other clasped in his hands, then started to remove what they could of Mikhailov's armor. They still had no idea where they had landed or how long it would take them to establish contact with a rescue vessel. Their Mjolnir armor was rugged, but it was still technology, and sooner or later they would need to fix it. That didn't mean all the training they had endured made stripping their fallen comrade of his armor any easier to stomach.
"We ready?" Torres asked, shuffling his feet under the added weight of several Warrior armor components now magnetized to his back. Wade was the only one who didn't nod, kneeling down and picking up his fallen teammates rocket launcher before fitting the weapon to his back.
"Ready." The Spartans paid their comrade their last respects while Nal sliced open a wall panel to expose a maintenance shaft. As they entered, Wade tossed the third flame grenade back, covering Mikhailovs body in a swath of flames and quickly igniting the remaining grenades. From there it was simply a matter of following Nal, walking sideways through snarled cables and muscling broken beams out of their path. Until the shaft became a wall.
"Blast," Nal growled. "The bulkhead must have collapsed in the crash. This way." As the elite cut into the panels, Thompson pinged his leader through their helmet comms.
"How do we know he's not leading us into a trap?"
"We don't," Torres answered, his tone reminding his teammates to keep one eye on their new covenant allies. A final slice let them out into the hall, and whether it was training or stupidity Mekek exited first, Needler raised and scanning only to find the hall way void of life. But not empty.
"Good lord," Emile gasped, his helmet sealing with a click against the pungent stench of blood and entrails. Every glance and shift of the Spartans heads caused their helmet lights to shine on a new swath of gore, illuminating the vivid spray decorating the halls of Whispering Piety. Jackal, Grunt, and Elite blood covered the walls, painting the light purple metal a dizzying swath of purples, dark and electric blues. The bodies were everywhere, almost to the point you could walk down the hall without ever stepping on the floor. Grunts, Jackals and Elites lay where they had fallen, each and every one mauled nearly beyond recognition.
"Murderous beasts," Nal hissed, kneeling down to take a handful of carbine batteries off a fallen Jackal as Wade glanced from one corpse to the next.
"This ain't right. None of this is right."
"Wade?" Thompson started, not at all in the mood for another of the night-ops specialist's jokes.
"There's too many bodies. Regular animals only kill for food but these things … It's like they were killing just for the hell of it."
"Quickly," Nal barked, clipping a discarded plasma rifle to the hip opposite his energy sword and hefting his reloaded carbine toward a sealed door. "The hangar is directly below us."
"Just get it open," Mekek toned, watching their back as the Spartans moved toward the door. "I can probably use some of the weapon batteries to charge it long enough to get us down."
"Wade," Torres snapped, stowing his SAW as the night ops specialist did the same with his smg. Together the Spartans pulled their combat knives from their hidden holsters, Torres from his right gauntlet, Wade retrieving one of two hidden in his shin armor. After forcing the blades in and the doors seam apart, the Spartans worked their fingers inside and pried the door open. They stepped away, reaching for their weapons just as a glowing blue fireball sailed past their heads.
"GRENADE!" Nal and Thompson dove away, leaving Mekek to duck and cover his head as the grenade stuck to the far wall and exploded in a flash of boiling plasma, the same moment Wade's gunsight found the grenades light glowing off a Jackal's eyes. The would be bomber dropped the same moment his grenade went off, slumping back in the elevator against the wall with a new hole between his eyes.
"Shit!" Torres swore, head jerking left and right. "The whole deck will have heard that!"
"No offense boss," Wade swallowed as a roar echoed throughout the ship. "But I'm pretty sure it's not the covenant we have to worry about anymore." Mekek wasted no time in hotwiring the elevators controls, though he had to sacrifice most of the carbines plasma batteries to bring it back online.
They rode down, weapons ready as the doors slid open only to reveal, surprise, another dark room. Only this one was much, much bigger.
"Okay," Wade laughed. "So who wants to enter the massive black void of doom first?"
"You're the night-ops specialist," Thompson snapped, lifting a leg and unceremoniously kicking his teammate toward the door. Wade grumbled but quickly snapped into his training, vanishing into the dark and letting his radar signature guide his teammates through the titanic space. After five minutes of following, the Spartan recruit blinked his tag for all clear, and the other Spartans activated their helmet lights as Torres turned to face their rag tag group.
"Nal, Wade, see if you can't find a bird that's fueled and ready, preferably one with some vehicles loaded on. We don't know how far we may have to go. Mekek."
"The answer's no," the Grunt, well, grunted, through his gas mask. "When we restarted the drives, the emergency doors shut. Powering a lift for a few seconds is one thing, but I would need enough plasma batteries to bury a Phantom, not to mention Gods only know how much time."
"Time we cannot depend on," Nal barked, eyes glancing and focusing through the darkness, making Torres rethink the ONI assessments of Sangheili night vision. "What is the integrity of the emergency doors compared to the hull?"
"Less than half. They're only meant to be deployed to maintain atmosphere in the event main power fails." Torres swore he could see a grin forming on the Elites mandibles.
"What're you thinking?"
"I believe, that a corked bottle is most easily opened from within." Torres followed Nals line of sight, and felt himself shiver at the sight of a pile of still glowing plasma batteries, easily as tall and wide as a Wraith tank spread out across the hangar floor.
Gabi ran through the forest, her Beowolf hunt forgotten. Her eyes darted between the forest and the sky as she ran, avoiding the thicker brush as she kept herself headed toward the thin tendrils of pale blue smoke rising in the distance.
The pack could wait. Whatever it was that had hit Menagerie, it was big, and on Remnant that almost always meant dangerous. She might not be a full Huntress, but Gabi knew it was still her duty to defend the helpless from any threat she could. She started sprinting as the brush thinned out, pouring more strength and aura into her legs as the path climbed toward a rocky ridgeline between her and the new threat. But as she approached the base of the ridge, a black shape darted through the brush to her left.
She stopped, rolling forward end over end and spinning until her feet found ground again, both her weapons drawn and compressed to their sub-machine gun forms. Gabi steadied her sights and senses, training Wash and York as her eyes scanned the forest for any hint of white on black in the green. Then a rustle from behind her, and another from her back, before Gabi realized she'd made the oldest mistake possible for a hunter.
In her haste to chase new prey, she'd neglected the trail and the Grimm pack she had been following. The hunter, was now the hunted.
"I'll give ya this split-lip," Wade grunted as he heaved plasma battery number, 43 or 44, up and onto the growing pile of improvised explosives. "Even if this doesn't work at least it'll look damn impressive." The elite only snarled, growling through tight mandibles as he lifted another battery into place, refusing to let his obviously painful injury slow him down. Torres couldn't help but remember Mikhailov's own stubborn refusal to accept a medics attention until after their mission was complete.
"Thompson, Mekek," he called, putting his own plasma battery in place before looking back and away from the vehicle bar doors. "How's that get away coming?"
"Almost ready," the Spartan enforcers voice crackled. It appeared Whispering Piety had been leaving a battle when it was caught unawares, as all the Phantoms and Spirits had plenty of vehicles and equipment still waiting to be unloaded. Their choice had been easy enough, a Phantom with a few more plasma burns on it than the others, but still carrying a Type-32 Ghost, and two old, but still working, according to their new grunt friend at least, Type 48 Revenants.
"Grunt says all the engines need is a few more ticks to warm up, then we're off and running."
"I have a name ya damn monkey." Torres sighed at the realization he now had not one, but two smart mouths to keep shut, as Nal heaved another battery onto the pile.
"There, that should be sufficient to effect our escape. All it requires is a spark."
"So," Wade huffed, leaning slightly on the pile of volatile improvised explosives. "Just as long as one of us can shoot straight with a turret and the phantom's got juice, we're home free."
He knew better, or at least Miguel thought Wade knew better. But apparently their brush with deaths backside on Instillation 03 wasn't enough to teach Taurus 4 not to tempt fate. Now he got another lesson, in the form of the hangar lights coming back on.
"The hell?!"
"SHIT!" Mekek screamed, loud enough to be heard all the way across the hangar without the comms. "They must've rerouted reserve power! Life supports probably already coming back online!"
"Weapons?" Torres asked, the Spartans and Elite already sprinting back toward the Phantom they had prepped.
"Last on the list, thank the Gods. But we need to hurry! The next systems back online will be the doors and."
A single chime echoed through the hangar, the soft whoosh of a door sliding open, followed by the confused babble of a Jackal troupe.
" … Lifts." No one on their side of the room dared move. Of all the covenant Jackals were the most trigger happy. All it would take was one wrong move and they'd start … fighting each other?
The Spartans and their allies could only watch and wonder as one of the jackals started to raise his carbine, only for another to smack it down. They started jabbering back and forth, the argument swiftly joined by a third, fourth, then the fifth Jackal until the troupe had split down the uneven middle.
"Should we … stop them or something?" Wade asked, frozen where he had paused reaching for the rocket launcher.
"Don't bother," Nal scoffed, resuming his walk toward the phantom. "Kig-yar have always been pirates at heart. They likely intend the same escape as we do, and are simply debating whether to kill us before or after leaving the ship." Torres nodded, not willing to stop and count their lucky stars as the Jackals argument devolved into a screeching match.
"Then let's move before they deci." A roar echoed, ripped through the air, stopping Spartans, Elite, and Jackals alike and turning them toward the far end of the vehicle bay. Then came another roar, one that sounded much, much closer.
"Hey Nal?" Wade asked, completely too calm for the situation.
"Yes?"
"Covenant doors are all motion sensor activated right?"
"Correct."
"Good to know. Now if I could make a suggestion, RUN!" The three soldiers turned and bolted, rushing toward the phantom, only for searing green plasma bolts and bright violet needles to start flying past their heads.
"I think they made up their minds!" Thompson yelled, the Phantom's engines glowing as the transport floated higher, ready to leave at a moment's notice.
"Cease your yammering!" Nal barked, "and fly you fools!" He leapt forward, diving and rolling end over end until he had turned just enough to unhook and lob a plasma grenade. Instantly the Jackals stopped, yellow eyes wide and horrified as the blue fireball arced through the air, landing between the frames of two of the piled high batteries. They turned back to the lift just as Miguel's feet left the hangar floor, the Spartan soldier vanishing into the Phantoms hold as the explosion ripped the doors apart.
Unfortunately, none of the fleeing party had given very much thought to exactly how and where their ship had landed. In truth, Nal's estimation was off. The batteries didn't have enough explosive power to open the doors enough for the Phantom. They had more than enough to weaken the doors though, and the ocean waiting just outside did the rest.