A/N:Continued gratitude to visitor for his feedback (and pointing out some rather embarrassing errors, I seriously need my head checked for terminal amounts of stupid)! Enjoy this extra-suspenseful chapter!
"Dropping out of slipspace in 5...4...3...2...1. Shipmaster! We're here!"
Khor turned to the helmsman and raised a claw as a massive space station came into view in the window. "Full stop," he said stoically before looking over the railing at the CIC section of the bridge; "Sensors, give me a full sweep—life signs, power, everything. I want to know what we're dealing with." Khor regarded the station with an experienced eye; at first glance, it appeared completely intact... but the utter lack of any lights, on the exterior or shining from within, gave it an eerie sense of dilapidation in spite of its otherwise pristine state. Whatever happened, it happened fast, and involved boarding action.
After a few minutes, the head CIC officer shouted up from his floor; "No life signs detected. All power is inactive, save for life support, and no radiation detected from the station's reactor."
"Hmm," Khor said, closing his eyes in thought and crossing his arms. "Something doesn't feel right. I smell a trap." A few more moments passed as he considered various courses of action; "Send a single SpecOps squad as an away team, with a few Unggoy to pad out the numbers; have the squad leader broadcast visual and audio to the war room. Keep the rest of our troops and SpecOps in reserve and at the ready; if it's a trap, that should be enough to spring it, and we can escalate from there as needed. If not, we still need to find out what happened. CIC, put up a constant sensor sweep of the area around the station, with weapons and shields on standby—I want no surprises, inside the station or out."
As the various commands were relayed to the relevant officers, Khor turned his gaze back to the station. In all his years of service, he had never experienced a situation so strange. And though he was careful not to show it—and loathe to admit it even to himself—he could not deny a spark of almost superstitious fear in his heart...
Tim stood around the holotable in the war room with the rest of his squad, observing the away team's broadcast with the rest of his squad; though he did his best to pay attention to what was happening, he couldn't help but feel distracted by internal conflict.
"Hangar is clear; there are plasma burns on the walls, some blood here and there, but no bodies yet."
Half of Tim was glad he was being held back; if there were UNSC personnel who were somehow hiding inside the station, it meant that he wouldn't have to fight them directly—but the fact that he wouldn't be able to warn them, that he would have to watch and listen to them die, meant that this was a cold comfort at best. He wasn't sure he could do either with a totally clear conscience, need to maintain cover be damned... but the fact that it was out of his hands was preferable to the alternative. It was the other half of his mind that presented the biggest problem.
"Corridors clear for now; more plasma, more blood, still no bodies. Movement sensors negative."
Namely, that on some level, he wanted to be there, fighting alongside his battle-brothers. Indeed, it was becoming increasingly difficult to think of them in any other way; after all, he had fought alongside them, bled with them, and swapped stories with them. He knew their names, their hopes and dreams, their personalities. They were no longer anonymous monsters, no longer nameless enemies. Tim couldn't help but draw parallels to that old story from the history books of the first World War in human history, where common soldiers realized—for the first time—that the people on the far side of no man's land, in the enemy trench, waiting to kill or be killed... that those people were people. In that sense, was it really that much of a betrayal to see his current peers in the same light? After the war was done, when he was human again, could he share a drink with them and the soldiers of the UNSC? Furthermore, by that time, even if he did change back... would he truly be human anymore?
"Approaching central command room; there's emergency lighting in there. Breaching now—"
A disturbing pause came across the entire war room as the command room was breached, shared by both the away team on the station and the reserve squads on the Inspiration. After a few minutes, the away team leader spoke with a horrified tone, unable to do anything but state the obvious.
"They... they piled the bodies, stacked them. Beheaded the officers, then placed them on the top of the piles with their heads pinned on their own swords. What manner of..."
Suddenly, a beeping was heard; a second Sangheili voice crackled over the radio. "Sir! Tracker shows movement!"
"I see that! Everyone, stand firm, prepare for comba—"
All at once without warning, the feed cut out completely. The comms officer, standing nearby, began to repeat a question that all present knew the answer to.
"Away team, what is your status?...Away team, what is your status?...Away team, status!"
At the head of the holotable, Tim saw Khor close his eyes and bow his head. "That's enough. All squads, all troops, prepare to—"
The veteran elite was interrupted by a shout from the CIC. "Shipmaster, the away team's phantom is returning! No life forms detected on board! Orders?"
Khor growled in anger for a second before shouting his next command. "All regular combat personnel, SpecOps squads two through four, assemble at the hangar to receive the phantom, weapons at ready! Whatever took out the away team has got to be on it. I don't know how they fooled our sensors, but this farce ends here! Capture whoever is aboard if you can—we may need to interrogate—but the priority is now kill on sight! SpecOps squads five through seven, remain here on standby!"
Tim—on squadron five along with N'tho—could only curse his helplessness once again, continue warring with himself as the situation grew ever more tense, and watch as the holotable display switched to a security camera in the hangar as the phantom landed, the requested troops assembled and prepared for any assault.
No one was prepared for the phantom exploding with terrifying force, powerful enough to nearly blow the entire hangar apart, killing everyone within. The atmo was unaffected—being held in by the ship's grav systems—but the devastation had blown the blast doors apart, meaning that the hangar could not be sealed off. Only the security feed remained intact, and even then the footage went in and out.
"Shipmaster," the CIC officer shouted again, "two small pings—human-shaped—flying through space towards the hangar! Hold on, they've... boarded... FORERUNNERS PRESERVE US! DEMONS!"
The entire room went silent in shock and terror at the sight of two humanoids, covered from head to toe in absolutely unmistakeable armor, landed with shocking ease and rushed towards the open blast doors. As Khor shouted orders and all present scrambled to carry them out, Tim couldn't help but reel in shock.
Back in the UNSC, there had been rumors. Rumors of Spartans who worked not on the battlefield, but in the shadows, at the behest of ONI. "Headhunters", people called them. Word had it they were sent after only the highest-profile targets, that they terrified the Covenant even more than the other supersoldiers... and that they always arrived in pairs. In all the stories, there were two of them. Now, two Spartans—and yes, Tim could definitely see why they were called "demons" by the Covenant now—had arrived and were blasting their way through the corridors of the Inspiration. And, out of all the souls aboard the vessel, only Tim knew why they were there.
They're here to kill me. God, they're here for me! Why?! An entirely new wave of shock overtook him as the truth hit him like a MAC round. ONI... did they burn me?!
"BROTHER 'VALARMEE!"
The voice of Khor shook Tim out of his thoughts; there was anger in it, but also worry. "To your senses, warrior! Assemble at the bridge blast doors, weapons hot! NOW! Have courage—your battle-brothers stand with you, as will I!"
Tim—finding the Shipmaster's tone somehow inspiring in spite of the situation—gathered his wits as best he could and followed orders, even as the chatter over the comms became increasingly panicked.
"Shipmaster, we can't stop them! Sacred rings, they keep coming!"
"Fall back! Fall back!"
"By the prophets, what are they made of?!"
"Sealing bridge corridor blast doors... Gods, they tore right through it! RETREA—AUGH!"
The sounds of fighting had now grown close enough that Tim could hear them with his own ear-holes; they were just outside the bridge. Time itself seemed to freeze as Tim's mind raced.
They were Spartans.
They were UNSC.
They were here to kill him.
What was he to do? What could he do? Try to reason with them—almost certainly in vain—and in doing so, betray those he now knew as friends and comrades in service to a cover that no longer mattered? Fight and kill them, and in doing so betray humanity? There was no right answer. There was only a door, and death beyond it—unstoppable, unrelenting, undeniable DEATH.
And there was only one choice.
At that, time flowed once more, this time with blinding speed. The doors were blown open, but Tim's shields somehow held up to the force of the blast as the Spartans—the Demons?—came in blasting, covered in the blood of their victims. Tim, acting on instinct, joined the fray, firing his plasma rifle in short controlled bursts, throwing grenades, dodging return fire from the Spartans. True to the reports, they shrugged off attack after attack.
Charged plasma shots blazed through the air. The Spartans dodged.
Carbine bolts and needler rounds flew with pinpoint accuracy. The Demons soaked them up with their shields.
Grenades exploded. The Spartans leapt aside and threw their own.
Blows were traded. The Demons held firm, punching with bone-shattering force.
The battle raged, with the bridge crew joining the fray; bodies dropped, and the enemy's armor shields were brought down, but still the pair of intruders fought. Khor and N'Tho remained, and somehow brought down one of the pair, but with its last breath the Spartan fired assault rifle rounds into the leg of the former, piercing the veteran Sangheili's shields and crippling him as N'Tho was sent flying into a wall by a kick from the remaining Demon as it tossed aside its empty weapon. Both Elites were alive, but unable to fight.
Leaving Tim as the only remaining combatant.
With the loud roar of a proud Sangheili warrior erupting from his maw—unbidden, unwanted, out of reflex—Tim charged at his opponent, firing the last few shots in his own weapon to bring down his opponent's shields and bringing both him and his foe crashing to the ground with as powerful a tackle as he could muster. The fight quickly became almost a wrestling match; Tim wrapped his arms around the Demon's head, and prepared to wrench it for a neck break, only for a series of punches to his midsection to force him to release the grip. The Spartan grabbed his right arm, and performed a hip toss that slammed Tim to the floor; a follow-up stomp missed its mark as Tim grabbed his opponent's leg and tripped it to the ground before mounting it, alternating between savage punches and simply grabbing the head and bashing it over and over again on the floor. The Demon responded with a headbutt that Tim barely had time to avoid, giving the Spartan just enough room to grab its combat knife and slash at Tim's right eye—the one carrying the implant.
"ARRRRGH!" With a scream of pure agony, Tim reeled backwards, and the Demon launched itself at his midsection with such force that it might have torn any lesser race in half; not stopping for even a moment, the Spartan returned the favor for the earlier beating by mounting Tim and preparing to stab the knife into his neck. Acting purely on survival instinct, Tim grabbed the Demon's wrist, and it became a slow struggle of pure strength. The knife grew perilously close to Tim's throat, the tip pricking the scales... before Tim kicked up, twisted the knife around, and flipped on top, throwing his entire weight onto the handle of the knife as it went into the gap between the Spartan's armor and helmet. Blood spurted out, but somehow the Demon struggled still, punching the gruesome remains of Tim's slashed-open eye. Another stab, then another, then another, and another... and finally, the Demon fell still.
With that, blackness finally overtook Tim.
Tim awoke in the infirmary two days later, his wounds patched up, a temporary cybernetic patch covering the spot where his right eye once was; the physicians stated that a prosthetic was nearly ready and could be interfaced with the internal workings of the patch without need for surgery, but that he lacked almost a week of healing to go before he could be cleared. N'Tho, Khor, and what few other SpecOps troopers had survived had apparently taken turns watching over him during his brief comatose state, and continued to do so whenever possible. But the pain of the situation remained. And though Tim knew he had already been forced to choose his side, the inner conflict remained... in the form of denial. Whenever Tim was certain he was alone, he repeated his mantra, though he knew it meant little now:
"My name is not Tam 'Valarmee. My name is Tim Newman. I am not Sangheili, I am a human. I serve the UNSC, not the Covenant. My name is not Tam 'Valarmee..."
After what seemed an eternity, the new prosthetic was implanted, and a few days after that he was cleared to return to duty. But as he approached his bunk in the SpecOps barracks, one final shock remained in wait:
"Brother Tam."
Standing in between Tim and the door to his bunk was N'Tho, Khor, and a group of Brutes in ominous-looking armor; it had been Khor who had spoken earlier, and continued.
"I am very sorry. I am so very sorry. You are an honorable warrior, and a hero of the Covenant. But... Brother N'tho heard your ravings."
N'tho looked Tim in the eye with sorrow painted on his face. "Whatever the humans did to you during your captivity, it must have involved brainwashing. You were going on about being a human yourself."
Tim spluttered. "I... you can't be serious—"
"Young 'Valarmee, you are unwell," Khor interjected, his tone calm and filled with clear intent to comfort as he gestured to the group of Jiralhanae; "Brother N'tho saw fit to call upon the Ministry of Inquisition. They will take you back to High Charity for rehabilitation; they will help to remove whatever lies the human heretics planted in your mind, so that you may return to the path of the Great Journey."
Before Tim could protest, he was bound with his claws behind his back; knowing resistance was pointless for the moment, he did not struggle—save to glare at N'tho and spit out the first phrase that came to mind:
"I should have let you die that day."
With that, Tim was led away, and began to brace himself for whatever fate awaited him... not bothering to look back to see a bewildered and confused look on the face of the one he had—until this moment—accepted as his brother in arms.
I struggle a lot with fight scenes, but hopefully I pulled the brawl between Tim and the spartan off well. See you next chapter!