Covenant Controlled Territory
February 19, 2558
'Xiva cycled the feed over and over again.
Through his contingent, he commanded an entire legion of Covenant that was based on Requiem with a sizeable force. It wasn't handpicked by him, but he did give many of its senior leadership additional pointers on combatting humans.
While they were relatively weak individually, they proved to be resourceful, smart and hardy foes. Not to mention numerous. Eliminating a human usually meant that four more were going to take its place.
However while they were relatively easy to deal with, the new human, the Spartans were much more difficult.
No longer could he or his men charge in with energy swords raised to slaughter at a reckless abandon while their foes stood transfixed with terrified looks on their faces. Spartans were skilled in close combat and even though they remained smaller than sangheili, they were fast, agile and when they hit…it hurt a lot.
'Xiva had seen other swordsman charge blindly at a Spartan with common sense being overridden by bloodlust, only for them to sprawl on the ground because they got outmaneuvered or struck down by combined fire that broke through the brother's shielding. While he exhibited similar thirst for a Spartan to become impaled on his blade, he knew that he was not to become completely consumed by it as things could go south very fast.
So his anger began to build as he watched the feed of one of the warriors under his command leading several sangheili storm, kig-yar and many unggoy as they were dropped off onboard the Infinity and pushed the humans back.
He immediately recognized the team they were engaging; Eon.
It confirmed his suspicions that there was a fifth Spartan and it was just ever so slightly smaller than the others. Must be a female.
His men worked together, trying to keep the lesser species alive long enough to provide aid, but many of the unggoy were rather rattled and the kig-yar were blown apart by grenades or human railguns.
Then his sangheili began to fall and things just went haywire in just a few seconds.
As his elites became the Spartans' newest victims, the unggoy had all thrown down their weapons, completely dumbstruck of what to do when they were without a leader. Some of them ran off and the rest ignited plasma grenades, rushing forward in a suicide attempt to take down their foe.
Amateurish.
The lead unggoy was cut down by pistol fire and the others behind him had no time to react before his grenades detonated, killing his fellow kamikazes and setting off a subsequent chain reaction.
When he first viewed it his eyes gleamed with anticipation to see if the attempt had actually worked. Oddly, the spy camera on an Ossona who was with the group and killed in the crossfire was still functioning. The white glare from the grenade explosions cleared and all five Spartans, now joined by the tinier ODSTs remained standing and talking among themselves as they proceeded forward for the next threat.
'Xiva felt no remorse at the death of his men he had sent off to invade Infinity and he had already known that they were going to be no match if they happened to run into Eon. Yet still, he felt anger creeping into his body. He did put some level of effort into their training and cleaning up some of their sloppy habits, only for them to get cut down like grass.
Which was precisely why he observed them in the few minutes of confrontation between the two sides to observe their fighting styles and how they worked as a team. While his men were mere cannon fodder for this assessment, he wanted to be guaranteed that his other men would not make the same mistake as them.
The only problem that he saw with trying to bring them down after watching the recording was that they had no primary fighting style. He had thought the best way to bring Eon down was to attack their weakness and he had spent some time from multiple views of the feed to watch how each member engaged the Covenant.
Now he was less than certain that he could attack the flaws. They moved seamlessly to compliment one another and more sparse shootouts between them caused their camouflage to kick in again and fade from sight. Any one of the Covenant that was by themselves were easily picked off. In one of the feeds, an Eon Spartan just hid right in the open, prompting a veteran sangheili commander to pursue him into a corner. The Spartan reappeared out of thin air right behind to twist his head in two directions.
He couldn't attack them head on because they didn't just specialize in one thing. Every member specialized in everything to a degree.
If a sangheili was capable of smiling, he would have done a devilish grin to himself.
Then again, he had brought his troops onto their turf and fought them on their terms. What if he could bring them to their knees? There had to be something that he could exploit as a weakness. Maybe not a combat one, but rather throw an unexpected variable into the mix?
'Xiva stood up from his chair and grabbed a spherical mapping device of Requiem off a shelf in his quarters. Maybe the cartographers had something that could be of use.
Two hours later, their phantom crested the skies above the planet. 'Xiva and a few other similarly armored sangheili stood by his sides, clutching plasma rifles and traditional metal blades.
Only one of the elites was not dressed like the others. In the bulky ranger armor, Kafth was his loyal second-in command and trusted friend. The two of them had met when they were shipped to High Charity to serve in the Covenant from their homeworld on Suban. While they both were proficient warriors, Kafth's hunger for action and thrill from combat landed him in the Rangers while 'Xiva pursued commanding. Upon the Covenant's collapse, they both quickly found work with Jul 'Mdama and despite neither trusting the other when they had first met, their resentment towards humanity was all that was keeping them from betrayal.
Kafth had studied the footage of the combat as well and he had come to the same conclusion; there was no way to take them down outright. He did exhibit particular interest to the one that had given his friend quite the ferocious beating, first saying that he didn't seem so tough. Then watching his speed and knifework just happened to change his opinion.
So over the course of the day, they had set a new plan in motion.
While Jul had his own agenda for the invasion, both 'Xiva and Kafth had used it both to test their adversary's prowess as well as confirm that they were not on Requiem to interfere with them. He believed that without solid information, enemies had a knack of being at the right place in the right time to interrupt and dismantle.
It wasn't long before their destination suddenly opened fire on them. Their pilot quickly engaged the craft into a dive as most of the human missiles tried to follow and subsequently lost the aid of their guidance systems, causing them to crash to the ground in red fireballs. This was followed by the drumbeats of more anti-aircraft fire.
Their pilot engaged the phantom's primary cannon and several volleys of the plasma explosive bolts silenced the triple-A.
"Let's move!" 'Xiva shouted to his men when the bay doors noiselessly opened.
They were in a desert area with a deepwater river at the edge. On the side of the banks was a white and gray building with a perimeter fence and a couple batteries of guns that were smoldering and half melted. The humans' rather primitive architecture irked 'Xiva.
Standing at the front of the base, they all charged in. Several human guards had already rushed out to the base's entrance and fired upon their new foes.
Like he did against Eon, 'Xiva continued to stride forward, much to their surprise, ignoring the bullets as they uselessly dissipated against his energy shielding. Even had it overloaded, his armor was impervious to everything but their highest caliber weapons.
His men took the base in a matter of minutes and they quickly shut down all distress calls to the Infinity, not that they would be responding with all the trouble they were dealing with presently.
However he had given explicit directions not to harm any of what humans called "scientists", they typically were unarmed with white robes and usually the ones that the people with guns were trying to protect.
Now with all the guards dead, Kafth had herded the remaining dozen or so scientists into the main command center of the facility, a place that said "Carnegie Base" painted on the walls. They all seemed rather frightened and whispering amongst themselves.
"Who is in charge here?" 'Xiva had studied the English language, thus he had adequate knowledge of the primary means of human communication.
Nobody dared to move, so he unsheathed his blade, "Answer me!"
One of the humans in a white jacket timidly raised his hand.
'Xiva wanted to laugh at their terror, they were even worse than he thought. However he remained stoic and nodded to his partner.
Kafth rather roughly hauled the gray-haired man to his feet and shoved him over.
"Use communication terminal," He demanded, "Contact Infinity,"
It seemed that this particular scientist was accustomed to being under duress, it still didn't keep him from a nervous reply, "Infinity is being jammed by the Covenant,"
"Nonsense," He snarled, causing the human to jump to his amusement, "Communications will get through,"
The man hit a few buttons at the terminal and sure enough, the feed connected to the large holotank in the center of the room.
"This is Infinity Command," A gold projection of a man in pilot gear answered, "We are currently in condition red due to hostile incursion within the ship,"
"Listen here!" 'Xiva strode up to the podium, "We have your human science team and we will kill them with great pleasure unless you send someone to come and rescue them! Do send someone worthy so we can kill them for vengeance. Like Eon."
The transmission cut out when he struck the entire table with his sword, gashing the entire device in half.
"So now what?" Kafth asked in sangheili.
"I will take these humans aboard Pragmatist," 'Xiva said, "Make sure someone keeps us informed that 'Mdama does not know of our whereabouts. You and two of our brothers stay here to engage Eon. If they do not arrive within the next day, take a phantom and meet us at the rendezvous point."
"Three of us against all of them is suicide!" He angrily pointed out, "You saw how easily they defeated the Covenant, what do you think three of us will fare out?"
"You are not to engage to kill. Retreat when they arrive and pursue as we will be leaving a very striking message for them."
"As you wish brother, although I still believe that this is cowardly."
"It is also important to live to fight them another day. There will be a time where our names may be spoken with terror on human tongues across the galaxy," The former Field Master raised his sword high above his head with other members doing the same. The tip was just inches from the ceiling, "More so than the Covenant! We shall make this day one step closer to that goal and ensure our supremacy against humanity goes unchallenged forever!"
Hope everyone is enjoying the story so far. As for me, I'm still addicted to playing Halo 5's Warzone and I absolutely cannot wait for the new firefight mode!
Thanks for reading and reviewing, you give my writing purpose.