Some familiar characters showing up in this chapter. Sorry for the chapter being a bit later than normal, had a busy weekend and a week at work.
Standard copyright disclaimer: I do not own Halo or any associated media, characters, or settings which are properties of 343 or Bungie. This is a work of fanfiction written purely for entertainment and not for monetary gain.
2230, 28 September 2549
UNSC Camp Saranac, Ballast (Inner Colony)
After the exercise on the 26th, Chac Lon's kig-yar had not had much going on the next two days. A few weapons demonstrations, and a discussion with the Spartans the day before. (A259 was very matter-of-fact and businesslike, while A173 was prone to more biting, sarcastic displays of humor. She reminded Chac Lon of a few shipmistresses he'd known through the years.) Nothing that was too physically taxing.
Perhaps Korhonen left some free time in order for the humans and kig-yar to mingle a bit. Chac Lon thought it would take more time, and knew Korhonen was smart enough to realize that as well. But there had been a few successes; polite chatter in the chow line, passing by each other without looks of hatred or mumbled comments under their breath. The biggest surprise was that a few of the human soldiers sneaked over during lunch today and invited Chac Lon and a few other kig-yar to an illicit dice game they were holding in their barracks. Chac Lon wasn't as obsessed with gambling as some of his crew was, but he wasn't going to say no to this opportunity. Things like this were how you really got to know people, and he might be able to score some UNSC credits off the humans. What he would bring to bet had taken some haggling; they eventually settled on the kig-yar bringing a bunch of small featureless blocks of silver. It was convertible to UNSC credits, had not identifying markings, and Chac Lon had had a business interest in a crooked metals dealer on Eayn before he fled, so it was available.
The game started half an hour ago, and Chac Lon was already losing money. This was despite the fact that the humans were using six-sided die like the kig-yar did, and the rules seemed fairly simple. Someone would throw the dice, then they and the other players would bet on whether they'd roll that number again before they got a seven. If you had a 'harder' number like eleven or twelve the odds were longer but you'd win more. Easy enough.
Something felt off, though. Either he was getting very unlucky, or the game wasn't following the odds. He'd brought Shim Vol and Teth with him, and they were both losing too. Teth was deep in concentration, silently trying to figure out why he was losing. Shim Vol was getting annoyed, cursing in kig-yar under her breath every time she lost a roll. Already she was out over half her money; Chac Lon just hoped she didn't take out her anger on him if she got cleaned out. At least some of the other humans were also in the hole, so it wasn't just their problem.
Actually, just about all of them were losing except for two humans. The lance corporal who'd invited Chac Lon to the game, and another sergeant that human was friends with. Hmmmm. Something was definitely going on, but he couldn't start throwing accusations around in a place like this. He and his kig-yar were outnumbered seven to three, and even if they could win the hand to hand fight they were still on a base full of humans. Aside from the fact that getting into a fight with a bunch of UNSC soldiers would undo the efforts to build relations between his kig-yar and the UNSC. Absently, he wondered whether any other kig-yar would work with humanity. He'd done trades with a few insurrectionist groups, but never really worked side by side with them. But if the Covenant came down hard on the kig-yar because of what he did, then... Maybe some would take their chances with humanity? Unlikely, but possible. And if it did happen, Korhonen would probably make him act as a go-between between the UNSC and the kig-yar. Not what he wanted to do, but he supposed he wouldn't really have a choice.
Before he could continue further down that line of thought, Chac Lon's concentration was broken by the human next to him gently nudging him.
"Psst, jackal. Need a second opinion. Something funky with the dice?"
Chac Lon paused. Was this human trying to bait him? He looked again. No, this human had been losing money too. "Yes, the odds are off. We're both much unluckier than we should be." He whispered.
"I fucking knew it. Fucker's doing it again." The human fumed.
"Doing what?" The clear implication was the whoever was running the game was cheating, but how? And they hadn't lost every roll. Maybe the luck was just bad?
He was turning to Teth to make sure his math was correct when the human answered the question for him.
"You fucker!" The human yelled as he stood and threw a half-empty can of beer at the lance corporal. "You told me you were done with this shit! I don't give a shit if you cheat the turkeys, but cheating us! Piece of shit!"
"Jones, what are you talking about?" The lance corporal responded as he wiped beer off his uniform. He was trying to play it off, but Chac Lon easily saw he was lying.
"You've been doing that shit with the dice again! Where you control how they roll!" Jones obviously didn't believe him either.
"Bullshit. I saw you talking to that fucking jackal, you're pissed you're losing and trying to scam me out of money." Now the sergeant was getting involved.
Chac Lon decided to stay silent for the moment. Shim Vol didn't. "You're the one with the most money here, human."
That only made the human angrier. Angry enough that he pulled out a small folding knife. "I've killed hundreds of you, jackal. Don't think I won't do it again." A couple of the humans backed away, and Chac Lon saw one duck out of the room entirely.
Had any of those kills been hand to hand or with a knife? Probably not, Chac Lon guessed. The human didn't look like he was in peak physical shape, even compared to the regular UNSC soldiers here (let alone the Spartans). Still, he was more curious about the cheating that had been going on.
"One of you humans explain how he's cheating. I want to know."
There was a pause for a moment, than one of the other participants spoke. "He practiced so he can control what he rolls. Notice how he never bounces them off the edge of the arena? He's got caught a couple times before, so he makes sure to lose rolls sometimes so it's less obvious. Now that Jones pointed it out it's fucking obvious."
Chac Lon was intrigued. "So he didn't load the dice or anything, it's actually a kind of skill?"
"Yeah, I suppose so."
"Hmmm." He paused for effect, then pointed at the lance corporal. "Good job, human! I can appreciate being cheated like that as long as it's done well! But if you do it again I'll rip your throat out."
"I'll fucking kill you you Covie piece of shit!" The sergeant reared back, preparing to lunge at the T'vaoan. Chac Lon set his feet, he was confident he could take this human, but he didn't want to get scratched up too bad in the process. But before the fight started, a quintet of MPs burst into the room. Everyone froze immediately, leaving the one human soldier standing awkwardly with a knife in his hand.
"All of you stay where you are!" The lead MP bellowed. In a different time Chac Lon would have bolted or pulled a gun on a cop like this, but he wasn't dumb enough to try that today. Especially since he hadn't done anything wrong this time.
"You two." The rest of the MPs hefted their submachine guns, as their leader pointer at the lance corporal and sergeant who'd been accused of cheating. "How many times is it now you've gotten caught pulling this little stunt? Aside from that gambling in the barracks is illegal anyway!
The only reason the brass let this game go ahead was so that we could get a bit more info on their culture." The MP pointed at the kig-yar, who were a bit surprised by the revelation. Was this ONI's idea, or just the regular UNSC doing intelligence gathering?
The MP continued. "And then you fuck it up not only by cheating them, but your brothers too? Idiot. You'll be lucky if all Korhonen does is NJP your asses." He turned to his subordinates. "Get those two out of here, I'll handle this situation." At that, the two cheating soldiers were frog-marched out of the room, leaving everyone else standing around awkwardly. The MP cleared his throat and addressed everyone present.
"Alright, that really wasn't how that was supposed to go. Not sure if I'm supposed to tell you this, but part of the purpose of letting this little thing go on without interference was to try and get humans and kig-yar to interact in a social setting, see if you could find some common ground without killing each other. So, let's see if we can salvage that." He paused. "You don't like Elites much, right? We don't either." That got nods from some of the UNSC soldiers in the room. "You have any stories about dealing with them."
Chac Lon sat himself down on the edge of an unoccupied bunk. "Yeah, I've run into them a couple times. Don't usually fight them head on like you guys do. They're a lot easier to kill when they've got their shields down and their back to you." A few of the humans and the other kig-yar chuckled. "Most of my run-ins with them have been with the ones serving as law-enforcement for the Covenant, like you there, human. But I don't think those stories would be the most interesting to you. What do you think, Shim, Teth?"
"That one incident from two years ago? You know which one I mean." Teth said back.
"As long as the humans have a strong stomach." Shim Vol slipped into the conversation.
Chac Lon waved her off. "With all these humans have seen fighting the Covenant they'll probably appreciate that part." He turned back to the humans, who were listening with moderate interest.
"So you know how all sangheili are honor-obsessed religious zealots, and kig-yar are all pirates and criminals? That's not exactly true. Only about one in eleven or one in twelve kig-yar are actually pirates or full-time criminals, though they do hold a special place in our culture though. There's even a few kig-yar who get full on into religion and act like zealots. Sangheili, it's sort of flipped. Most of them, especially the men, are in the Covenant military, but you've also got some who are merchants, farmers, artists, any other job. Couple of them even do piracy. Not a lot, but there are some"
He continued. "Now thing about sangheili pirates is that they're usually insane. Don't know whether their brains are actually wired for honor and shit, or if it's because their families hate them for what they're doing, but they're some of the meanest, nastiest things you'll ever see. Scary to get into a fight with, but not a lot of kig-yar want to work for them."
"Why would you want to put yourself under someone who probably hates you and can snap your neck without trying?" Shim Vol asked.
"Right." Chac Lon continued his story. "Lot of them end up as hired muscle or running one or two man ops. Like the sangheili we had a run-in with on Eayn a while back. Some of my newer crew were running a side operation, stole some things from an unmarked warehouse. Light narcotics, some chemical precursors, things like that. Ended up that stuff was owned by this sangheili, Jatar. He wasn't too happy to find his stuff gone, and he was smart enough to track down who did it." Really, it had been that the kig-yar were too dumb to cover their tracks, but Chac Lon wasn't going to speak ill of the dead.
"I had no idea any of this was going on, until one of my lieutenant finds three of my kig-yar dead in their room."
"I mean, isn't that an operational hazard of doing criminal work like that? Live by the sword, die by the sword, you know?" One of the UNSC soldiers interjected.
"Eh, yes, killing a bunch of people over some stolen chemicals is a bit excessive unless you're trying to send a message or something like that, but the real problem was how Jatar did it. My buddy Yath found all three of them impaled, nailed to the wall. They'd been tortured, too; burned, broken bones. Saw the pictures once, don't care to see them again." The humans noticed a shift in Chac Lon's tone, and it looked like he was staring off into space somewhere.
"There's no formal rules for being a kig-yar pirate, I couldn't go get a book and look up the exact line where it says what Jatar did was wrong. But there's certain understandings, lines you don't cross. And when somebody crosses those lines, well... you can cross them a bit yourself to get back at them."
"Fight fire with fire." The soldier who had interjected before spoke again.
"Right, I think that's what that saying means. Yath pays a bit to get camera footage from some places nearby, picks up Jatar real quick. Not a lot of sangheili in that part of Eayn, and he wasn't exactly trying to hide himself. He lets me know, me, Teth, seven other kig-yar go track him down in his hole in Tilu City. Not going to have a talk or fight fair. We all brought along these grenades, flash-bangs I think they're called, that I bought off a human insurrectionist a while back. Make a huge flash and horrible noise, even worse when you throw eight of them into a room half the size of this one. Jatar probably heard us coming but when we took down his door he wasn't in a state to resist. Had my people knock his head around some to make sure."
"By the time Jatar woke up we had him tied up pretty well, hands behind his back, legs tied together in a couple places. Might have broken some bones doing it, don't care too much. Either way when he woke up he had to have known he wasn't leaving that room alive. Most sangheili, you put them in that spot, they'll keep fighting for the sake of it or realize they're beat and die with as much dignity as they can. I respect that. If Jatar had done that I would've just put a round through his head. But he didn't. Shitter decides to go on this incoherent rant about how we're all going to be tortured for eternity, that he's going to feast upon my entrails, even challenged me to a duel!"
"I guess you didn't accept." One of the humans said. That got laughs from all three of the kig-yar.
"Gods no! Even hurt and missing half his teeth that bastard weighed near two and a half times what I do. So I'm standing over him, and I ask him whether he regrets what he did, or if he'd rather I treat him the same way he treated my kig-yar. He spat blood in my face and compared me to some kind of sangheili intestinal parasite."
"Decided to give him what he wanted. Tied a rope around his feet, put it over a ceiling beam, and hauled him up until his head was a bit off the ground. My guys might have gotten a couple more hits in doing that, Jatar was basically unconscious when we strung him up. Then I pull out this big knife." Chac Lon used his hands to illustrate how long it was. "Got serrated teeth on it, borrowed it from a cook. Usually use them to cut through fish bones or this one kind of fruit with a real thick shell. I jam it into him about a hands width below where his legs meet, and I start cutting. That woke the bastard up real fast. He starts thrashing, I just stare him right in the eyes and keep cutting. Made it about a third of the way down before he stopped moving."
"Damn, almost makes you feel sorry for him." A UNSC soldier said.
"No it doesn't." Another spat back.
"Yeah, you're right. What'd you do with the body, jackal? Must have been a lot of blood?"
"There was." Chac Lon responded. "Got lucky, that sangheili lived in a pretty rough area without much Covenant presence. Just dumped the body in a river near there, fish probably ate the entire thing by now."
"Well, that wasn't exactly what I had in mind, but if it works it works." The MP mumbled to himself.
5 December 2549
Concord, Human Outer Colony
Like so many colonies before, the planet of Concord was under assault by the Covenant. This time, though, the humans had gotten somewhat lucky. On their arrival the 16th of November, the Covenant pushed aside the UNSC naval forces in orbit, but failed completely destroy them. The arrival of a few UNSC reinforcements days later, combined with fire from the colony's surface-based mass drivers, depleted the Covenant ships enough that the humans forced a stalemate. Though the Covenant's ships weren't pushed out by the UNSC forces, they could not begin glassing, nor drop ground forces anywhere beyond the initial landing site. So the Covenant was forced to fight on the ground, and every day gave more time for human reinforcements to arrive.
The biggest group of ground reinforcements so far was the task force en-route from Ballast that entered the system two days ago. The transports dropped them near the equator on the western side of Concord, an eighth of the planet around from the main Covenant landing site. A smaller group landed there two days before, and was already preparing to launch a counterattack.
Among them were five Spartans, plus another two from Ballast.
"Good to see you in one piece, sir. Who's the newcomer?" Asked a tall Spartan in orange-colored armor.
Carter nodded at him. "Jorge, everyone, this is Michelle-A173. She'll be joining us as Noble Seven on this op."
"Did you pick her up on your birdwatching vacation?" Another of the Spartans asked. Carter sighed. Of course Kat had poked into what he was doing on Ballast. None of the other Spartans commented on Noble Two's remark, though Noble Three, Jun-A266. shot him a look that told Carter he knew something was up.
Before Noble Four could poke further, Thom-A293, Noble Six arrived. "So, we finally doing something about that cruiser?" The Covenant battlecruiser Portent of Storms had been heavily damaged during the battle for control of the space around Concord. Though it destroyed two UNSC light cruisers and several smaller ships, it had been hit several MAC rounds that breached its armor in multiple locations. ONI assessed that the Portent of Storms had a good portion of its weapons inoperative, and most importantly, the slipspace drive was nonfunctional.
Despite this, the battlecruiser retained enough structural integrity to descend into the atmosphere, where it was now acting as a command post and supply base for the Covenant ground forces on the planet. Worse, it was likely that the slipspace drives could be repaired within a few days, denying the UNSC the chance to destroy it in its vulnerable state. That was where Noble Team came in.
"Correct, that cruiser is our primary objective." Over the next few minutes, Carter explained the basics of Operation: KICKBACK. The primary goal was indeed the destruction of the Covenant cruiser. To that end, Noble Team had at their disposal a pair of low yield nuclear warheads, salvaged from one of the UNSC light cruisers destroyed in orbit. Though far less powerful than something like a Hornet mine, if detonated inside the Covenant ship the damage they caused would be catastrophic. It would be up to Noble, and Noble alone, to get a warhead inside.
Before getting to the cruiser's landing site they would have to get through tons of Covenant on the ground. Noble Team's second objective was to enable the evacuation of civilians off Concord. The Portent of Storms had set down only kilometers away from one of the planet's major population centers, and its weapons and surviving fighters closed the skies over the city. Two days before a civilian ship tried to run the gauntlet, only to be caught by a pair of Seraphs not even two miles off the ground. Nearly six hundred civilians died.
At least in that part of KICKBACK they would have support. Four battalions of UNSC soldiers and Marines arrived from Ballast, and the convoy's escorts left behind their complements of ODSTs and Marines, adding about another battalion. There were also some other units brought along; companies and platoons scrounged up to be used as replacements by the UNSC formations on Concord, and other less conventional forces.
"Hey, boss, you think it's odd the Covenant only sent one ship? Not that I'm complaining, but..." Emile-A239, Noble Four, had an earned reputation as the most bloodthirsty member of the team, but also an eye for detail. He was mostly right; aside from a few corvettes and a frigate, there were no Covenant ships in system besides the damaged battlecruiser.
"Concord's not the only place getting hit, command reports at least three other colonies under attack by similar Covenant forces." Carter responded. "A bit different from their usual M.O., but it makes it more important that we get rid of that cruiser before they can shift reinforcements."
It was true; around the middle of November three other outer colonies (besides Concord) had been invaded by Covenant battlegroups consisting of about a dozen small ships around a battlecruiser. ONI was divided on why they'd split up their forces like that; the current hypothesis was that they were diversions intended to pin down human forces in preparation for a larger attack on a major world.
Carter continued. "ONI estimates that ship will be in good enough shape to leave in 48 hours."
"Estimates?" Kat said wryly. "Based on what?"
"Not my job to ask. Command wants it dead in 36. Airspace is clear enough to take a fast mover within a hundred kilometers, past that it's on the ground or taking our chances in Falcons."
"Thirty-six hours to fight through a hundred klicks of Covenant and take out a battlecruiser? We better get moving." Jorge said.
"We move in half an hour. Friendly forces are already in contact, so take your breaks now. No time for rest once we get there."
"Tell me more about these 'friendly' forces." Jun said. "They have anything to do with your sudden assignment and our newest team member?" He gestured at Kat. "I saw how you reacted, she knows something but has been keeping quiet."
Carter gritted his teeth. He knew he had to explain this, but he was still worried about how his team would react. Especially the more hotheaded ones like Emile or Thom. He could try to ease them into it, but sometimes it was best to just rip the bandage off.
"Four months ago about two hundred jackals and some of their grunt lackeys showed up at the colony of Levosia and announced their intention to defect to the UNSC. They were subsequently transported to Ballast, where Michelle and I were requested to provide our expertise and insight on their tactical capabilities and possible means of integrating them into our forces."
All the assembled Spartans were briefly silent. Jun was the first one to speak.
"Sir, you're telling me that Holland pulled you out of the team for months because jackals decided to be friendly? Have to say it sounds a bit far-fetched."
"What made them decide to grow a conscience after all these years? How do we know this isn't part of some Covenant plot?" Jorge asked.
"To be clear, this is some splinter group, pirates for lack of a better word, not actual Covenant jackals." Michelle responded. "99% of the rest of them are still on the Covenant's side as far as we know. As for why they decided to defect, it has to do with the Covenant's religion. Remember that incident around Saturn a while back?"
The other Spartans nodded. The UNSC had hidden most details of what happened from the general public, but Noble Team was important enough to be kept in the loop.
"That was these jackals. Evidently they found some ancient artifact marking the Sol system as important to the Covenant's gods, and were not expecting to find humanity there."
"ONI has the artifact in custody, Earth's location is still secure." Carter quickly added, to forestall any questions. The location of humanity's homeworld becoming known to the Covenant would be catastrophic.
"And these jackals were worried that if word gets out about them knowing humanity is important to their gods the Covenant would have them all killed. They decided their best bet was to run to us, the only place in the galaxy where the Covenant can't get at them." Michelle continued.
"Still, they're jackals, why didn't we just kill them? Everyone knows those fuckers deserve it, and ONI still gets to look at their gear." Emile's feelings weren't surprising. Everyone had seen the footage from Draco III, and even if they hadn't the jackals were universally hated more than any Covenant species except the brutes.
"Highcom decided they're more useful alive. ONI's been grilling them on everything they know about the Covenant, how their ships work, if there's any more strange artifacts lying around, anything they can think of. Also, this." Carter pulled out a datapad and brought up video footage from the Covenant attack on Levosia. "Covenant arrived at the planet a couple weeks after the jackals did. Local forces were desperate enough to let the jackals fight alongside local forces."
At first the footage just showed regular infantry engagements or the jackals sniping elites from long range; useful material to analyze in detail but nothing the Spartans hadn't seen before. After a bit it got to the more interesting stuff. Thom let out a whistle as footage of a jackal stabbing an elite ultra to death, while Emile laughed. "Alright, maybe these bastards aren't too bad."
Jorge appeared less convinced. "That's good, but how can we be sure we can trust them? It's not exactly the same but imagine; if an insurrectionist tried to defect to the Covenant. Would they be trusted even if they'd killed UNSC before?"
"From my interactions with them their commander operates mostly in his self-interest, and right now his interests align with the UNSC." Carter said. "Neither of us like the Covenant, and the jackals are smart enough to know that if they try anything we'll kill all of them."
"Even if we can trust them, how useful will they be in a large-scale engagement?" Kat asked. "Pirates aren't going to train to fight against the Covenant, they'll preparing for small unit actions and hitting civilians. If they train at all."
Michelle decided to handle that question. "They're... decent. In exercises we ran on Ballast they came out about even against the army units we put them against, even in some cases when they were outnumbered. Granted, that was in company scale combat in urban or wilderness areas without any heavy forces involved, and they'd get shredded by ODSTs or veteran units. But they're not completely incompetent. At the very least they're more tactically flexible than Covenant jackals, even if their lack of discipline did catch them out a couple times. To their credit their boss at least realizes that they're deficient and is trying to get them in shape to work with UNSC units."
"And at least their snipers will be useful." Kat added sarcastically.
"Heh, true. Though to be honest I'd say only a few of those jackals are actually 'snipers' instead of just someone who can shoot decently at long range and got handed a beam rifle."
"Either way, I can handle them." Jun wasn't idly boasting; he'd killed dozens of kig-yar snipers in his career without taking a scratch.
"Since we can assume these jackals are here if you're bringing them up, how are they actually to deal with? And what happens when they end up with a bunch of regular soldiers?"
"Michelle and I mostly interacted with their 'commander', and a few of their 'officers'." Carter said, as he swapped the datapad to another image. "Here he is, Chac Lon. Skirmisher. He's greedy, a gambler and a thief, likes to be a sarcastic jerk, and probably has latent sadistic tendencies. Other than that, he's not too bad."
"But other than that, Mrs. Lincoln..." Jun muttered.
"Honestly, he's less terrible than I expected. Best thing you could say about him is that he really cares about his people, more than most elites in the Covenant would. To be blunt he's also fairly intelligent, and knows English better than I expected."
"And he hates brutes." Michelle added. "Considering the Covenant we're up against here, that doesn't hurt at all."