Another one that ended up taking a lot longer than it should have. I've had some of the scenes from this chapter in my head since I started writing this thing, but turns out getting that into actual words isn't always a quick process. Next chapter will have a bit less action, most likely.
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.
0400, 7 December 2549
Concord, Human Outer Colony
The Covenant battlecruiser still hovered over the city of Malakhit, the purple hull reflecting the faint light of the coming twilight. The wounded beast was still dangerous, but the UNSC was wearing it down. Last night, two Seraphs and a much greater number of Banshees fell to human guns, thinning the ship's fighter complement more. Meanwhile, UNSC artillery was intermittently firing on the ship, scratching up the outside and making life just a bit more difficult for the engineers aboard the ship.
God willing, it would be gone in a few hours.
Noble Team (less Noble Six) was assembled in the basement of an apartment building. The structure was empty of civilians but mostly intact, and had been reclaimed by UNSC forces the night before. Now they were only seven kilometers from the Covenant battlecruiser, a short walk were it not for the hundreds of hostile aliens still occupying Malakhit.
"Our way in will be the main grav lift, located here." Carter pointed to a paper map of Malakhit spread out on the floor of the basement, the outline of the battlecruiser crudely drawn in. "Recon drones show they've significantly reduced their forces in the immediate area, likely to try and hold back the army's attacks. With the push they'll be mounting simultaneously with our infiltration there should be few enough Covenant for us to easily handle."
"Same kinds as usual?" Michelle, Noble Seven, asked.
"Yes. Usual grunts and jackals, brutes in charge." Hardly any elites had been seen on the ground, which was unusual but not unprecedented. While elites usually had high level command and a significant presence in any Covenant force, occasionally groups led entirely by brutes would show up. (The reverse, elites with no brutes, was common enough not to be particularly notable.) Interestingly, this had been happening more often in recent engagements. ONI theories ranged from an incipient political struggle within the Covenant, to a theory that the elites had a low reproductive rate and their numbers were being significantly depleted in the war against humanity.
"No chance of just flying a Pelican into the hole? Would make getting out of the blast radius a lot easier." Kat said, glancing at the pair of nondescript nuclear warheads sitting in the corner. They were shielded well enough that any radiation dose was negligible, and the Spartans knew they were safe until armed. Still, it did get the heart rate up a bit having them sitting so close.
"Airspace is still too hot to risk it, and they'd see us coming." Luckily, the Spartans wouldn't just be riding the grav lift up before jumping out and hoping for the best. Before the start of Operation: KICKBACK, Colonel Holland had pulled a few string and gotten Noble Team an allotment of the new Series 8 jetpacks, modified with extra fuel capacity. Capable of lifting a fully armored Spartan II or III, the new jetpacks would not only make the jump out of the battlecruiser survivable, but they could even use them to get horizontal separation while the bomb counted down. A far better idea than the first plan of parachuting out.
"I'll be the primary for taking the warhead into the ship." Carter said. "Emile, you're backup if I'm unable." The other Spartan nodded, likely smiling behind his helmet. Thom would have been Carter's first choice for backup, if he hadn't snapped his leg in half yesterday and been put on a Falcon to the rear. Nothing unfixable, but he'd be out of action for a few days.
Carter traced his finger along a arterial road leading from near their current position to the Covenant landing site. "Here's our general ingress route. Not a straight shot, but recon shows it mostly clear and that cluster of high-rises will keep us out of the sight of the cruiser until final approach."
"Why not that highway? Too exposed?" Emile pointed out a six lane highway south of them. It led from the city center near where the cruiser was hovering to the airport to the southwest.
"Yes, but that is the egress route. Once that bomb is placed primary consideration is getting away from the blast site. That highway is straight and clear, and has reinforced drainage culverts underneath it here, here, and here." The structure of the Covenant ship would contain much of the warhead's explosion, but even so being near ground zero when it went off would not be a good idea.
The other UNSC forces in the area would again be mounting a diversionary attack while Noble Team completed their mission. The main thrust would be to the north, roughly perpendicular to Noble's route. Most of them would be too far away to provide direct support. A few reconnaissance squads were operating in advance of the front lines; it was possible that they could provide support, but no guarantees.
0600, 7 December 2549
Concord, Human Outer Colony
"Contact left, second floor!"
"On it!" Jorge pivoted the barrel of the Warthog's gun and depressed the triggers, shredding a trio of brutes in a nearby building.
Noble Team was in two Warthogs, speeding toward the grav lift at the base of the Covenant battlecruiser. Carter and Emile, holding the nuclear warheads, were sheltering in the passenger seat, while Michelle drove. Close behind, the rest of the team followed in the other Warthog. To the north, hundreds of UNSC forces were pushing hard, though from their position all Noble Team could see were vapor trails from F-99s providing top cover.
"UNSC Forces, this is Noble One, requesting sitrep on grid Six Four Alpha – Seven Two Kilo." Hopefully someone had a visual on their route and how bad the Covenant presence was. Not that Noble would divert at this point.
"Noble, this is Yankee Five, I have visual on grid." Even through the radio, the jackals' voice was recognizable and unpleasant. "I see many jiralhanae, at least twenty-four. I would stay away."
"Yankee, there is a high value target near that grid, that is not an option. Are you in position to provide fire support."
"Your choice, Noble. I'll try to kill a few." Carter supposed that was about the best assurance he was going to get.
The Warthog sped through a corner, and another Covenant patrol appeared in the road ahead. Shocked, they barely started to react as Jorge opened up again with the rear gun. Two jackals were hit, and one grunt was crushed beneath the human vehicle. The rest scattered, not even bothering to shoot at the oncoming Spartans. They were only two kilometers from the grav lift now; from here the battlecruiser loomed above them, its purple hulk blotting out a gigantic swath of the sky. Silently, Carter prayed that nobody was still hiding underneath it. It was only a few hundred meters off the ground, but it would surely crush anything beneath it when it fell from the sky.
Around another curve, a group of brutes was in the road ahead. They were already distracted, shooting at a building across a couple vacant fields, but one of them was still aware enough to raise the alarm as the Warthogs approached. As they turned toward the oncoming Spartans, one of them collapsed to the ground as a smoking hole appeared in the side of his head. Maybe the jackals were actually doing their job. That startled the brutes enough to get them to drop behind cover. Though they took a few potshots at the Noble Team, they didn't do much besides putting a couple new dents in the Warthogs.
They were almost at the launch point now, not even a kilometer away. The Covenant presence here was stronger; sitting atop the highway was a small encampment, a few supply crates guarded by a small pack of brutes and a pair of Ghosts. They would have to be cleared out before Noble Team could escape. But the first priority was getting the bomb into the Covenant ship.
A small park, littered with random debris and the wreckage of a crashed F-99, was a few blocks ahead. The massive grav lift just a few hundred meters away, the eerie hum of the machinery almost audible. With screeching tires, both Warthogs pulled into the park. At the same time, the two Ghosts took notice and accelerated toward the Spartans. Jorge on one gun, and Kat on the other, made quick work of them. One exploded under the hail of 12.7mm rounds before it even made it off the highway, and the other clattered to a stop after making it only a bit further, with a dead driver and leaking plasma from more than half a dozen holes. Angered, the brutes started running toward the Spartans, though they were smart enough to drop into cover after the first of them caught a burst of 12.7x99mm to the gut.
"I'll hold them off, get that bomb in the air!" Jorge yelled as he fired another burst at the oncoming Covenant. Carter was already out of the Warthog, reaching for the jetpacks held in a hardened case behind the passenger seats. The case had two sets, one primary and one spare in case the main one didn't work or took damage. (The other Warthog had a second pair as well.) Crouching behind one of the tires, Carter unfolded the jetpack and began the process of starting it up and attaching it to his armor. The pamphlet from Lethbridge said it took less than 90 seconds to go from unboxing to flying, but it felt like it was taking hours. Every second they spent on the ground was another second the Covenant had to disrupt the plan.
Carter had just finished the startup process for the jetpack and was about to do a few final checks on the warhead when something hit his back. A split second later there was a loud explosion and a pulse of heat; the Spartan fell forward to his hands and knees. Rolling to his side, he saw four brutes barely twenty meters away, popping out of a thicket. As Carter raised his assault rifle and opened fire, the other Spartans were already engaging. Two of the brutes were cut down by machine gun fire from the Warthogs. A third dodged but a second later was speared in the back of its neck by a pink beam. Carter put five 7.62mm rounds through the face of the fourth brute, neutralizing the last threat.
There was still a bit of warmth on his upper back, and Carter had an idea what happened. Reaching back, he detached the jetpack and pulled off a smoking, mangled mass of metal, a few small flames still burning in the fuel supply. A round from a brute spiker was lodged transversely in the fuel tank of the jetpack; less than a foot forward and it would have gone into his left shoulder.
"Four, you're up!" Carter yelled as he discarded the wrecked equipment. He could use the spare, but getting Emile in the air would be quicker.
"Already on it, boss!" Noble Four flashed a thumbs up as he finished securing the warhead to his chest.
"Here, take these!" Carter tossed Emile a bundle of fragmentation grenades. The other Spartan nodded, braced himself, and lifted off. In only a few seconds, he was inside the antigravity field of the grav lift, rapidly accelerating out of view.
After what seemed like far too long of a wait, Emile's static-filled voice came over the radio. "It's placed! Sixty seconds!"
"Solid copy, Noble Four! Get out of there!" Even though Emile had set the bomb with a sixty second fuse, it was designed to go off if the Covenant tampered with it.
As he jumped back into the Warthog and the vehicle began accelerating onto the highway, Carter switched to a main UNSC frequency. "All UNSC units, Bruiser, Bruiser, Bruiser! Repeat, Bruiser, Bruiser, Bruiser!" Though most of the forces on the ground weren't briefed on Noble's mission, they had been given code words that indicated an imminent nuclear detonation. Hopefully, sixty seconds would be enough for anyone in the open to get to shelter.
When the, bomb detonated, some of the force was directed out the bottom of the gravity lift, shooting out in a jet of superheated plasma that barely cooled before it hit the surface of Concord below. The rest went into the Covenant battlecruiser. Built in ancient assembly forges by some of the most skilled shipwrights in the Covenant, the Portent of Storms was a strongly built ship. It was to the builders' credit that it withstood the detonation of the human warhead for even a fraction of a second.
For a brief moment, the middle of the Covenant battlecruiser glowed from within, until the blast wave ruptured the hull, tearing the ship in two. As the fireball cooled, what portions of the central section of the battlecruiser weren't vaporized began their freefall to the surface of Concord below. Emergency thrusters in the farthest forward and aft parts of the ship held them up for a few seconds, but soon they also lost their fight with gravity and began to drop to the surface.
On the group, Noble Team's pair of Warthogs sped down the highway, the shock front rapidly gaining on them even at the vehicles' top speed of nearly 130 kilometers an hour. Ahead was a service road off the highway, leading to one of the large drainage culverts they'd identified in their planning. Before Carter could tell Michelle to turn, she was already directing the Warthog toward the offramp and braking for the sharp turn into the tunnel. The other followed close behind, understanding the leader's intentions. A voice came through on the headset: "Noble Lead, this is Noble Four! I'm through the shockwave! Going to set down northeast of your position!"
Hearing that Emile was still alive lifted Carter's spirits. He'd lost the other Spartan's transponder signal when the warhead went off.
"Understood, Four. Are you combat capable?" Carter braced himself against the inside of the Warthog as they skidded into the final turn into the culvert.
"Only one mag, but it's enough. Lot of dead Covenant-" Emile's signal cut off as the rest of Noble Team entered the tunnel. It was barely wide enough to fit a Warthog, but thankfully it was mostly empty of water. Carter briefly thought about getting out of the Warthog, but decided it would be best to stay inside. If the vehicles got thrown around by the blast he didn't want to risk getting crushed or pinned against the wall.
The culvert did its job protecting Noble Team from the blast wave. Most of the force bypassed the tunnel, but even so the wind was strong enough to blow around the Warthogs, shifting them a few inches and rocking them heavily for a few seconds. The biggest annoyance for the Spartans was all the debris in the tunnel that got picked up, pelting them with trash and filling the air with a thick cloud of dust.
Several kilometers away, at the Malakhit airport, the shockwave had weakened to the point it was barely stronger than the storms that blew through every winter. A few antennas and other minor pieces of equipment were blown over, and quite a bit of trash was picked up and thrown about. The people at the airport paid this little mind, though, as they were busy with far more important things. As the fragmented remains of the Portent of Storms hit the ground, all five Egret transports were taxiing out of their hangars and onto the runway. Each one had been sitting idle, engines warmed up, and fully loaded with civilians. In less than three minutes, the lead transport was away, the next four following as close as they dared. A group of F-99s was already orbiting over their airport, and as the transports climbing northward, the drone fighters fell into close formation alongside.
"Goddamn, that is beautiful."
"Sure is. Makes me wish I had a camera." The pair of UNSC soldiers watched as fire and plasma rose into the sky above the wreckage of the Covenant battlecruiser, lighting the bottom of a short mushroom cloud in purple and orange light. One of them then turned to the kig-yar sitting next to him. "What about you, jackal, you ever seen anything like this?"
"No. No, I haven't." Chac Lon responded. He'd seen a lot of things in his time, even destroyed starships. (Heck, he'd had a hand in a few of them.) But a nuclear detonation inside a battlecruiser in-atmosphere? That was new.
Chac Lon and his squad had moved up to this position early in the morning after the fighting started. By bluffing their way past a particularly stupid lance of unggoy (led by a not-very-bright kig-yar), they'd arrived at this small building, an apartment above a storefront. Since then they'd radioed in sightings of Covenant forces, and taken shots at some isolated targets. Somehow, the squad of kig-yar avoided detection (or the Covenant was focusing on bigger targets), and nobody had come to visit until that radio call just before the battlecruiser exploded. Four humans, survivors from a fireteam on the leading edge of the UNSC advance, sprinted into the building after the radio call, narrowly avoided triggering the booby trap on the stairs to the second floor, almost shot at the kig-yar on the top floor, and after all that nearly got into a fistfight before the bomb went off and the shockwave arrived.
Thankfully, the sight of the wreckage of a Covenant battlecruiser falling to the surface of Concord in flames seemed to have smoothed everything over. Not to mention that two of the humans and three of the kig-yar had been cut up a bit by flying glass when the shockwave broke every window in the building; it was fortunate that all the wounds were minor and easily mended with a bit of gauze and adhesive tape.
As Chac Lon finished cleaning up a few scratches on his upper arm, one of the human soldiers turned to him. "So, what are you jackals even doing here, anyway?"
Chac Lon looked at the patch on his shoulder. Private first class, definitely not cleared to know the full story (not that he would have told him, anyway). "Reconnaissance, sniping at Covenant targets, nothing too special. We're Yankee 1, rest of my people are Yankee 2, Yankee 3, so on."
"I knew they sounded weird, thought it was just the radio." One of the other humans muttered. But the first one was undeterred. "No, why are you here? We can do that stuff just as well as you, we don't need a bunch of buzzards to help us."
"Bro, you really think he's going to tell you. It's some ONI shit, just leave it alone." That human's interjection saved Chac Lon from opening his mouth and probably saying something stupid. For a moment, the room was silent. Then, a single gunshot rang out. Everyone turned to look at the source; one of the kig-yar, pointing an M395 out the window at the ground below.
"Some unggoy stumbling around down there." She said nonchalantly. "Probably did him a favor, looked pretty cut up."
"Guess those Covies didn't get that radio call warning them about the bomb." One of the UNSC soldiers wryly remarked. He turned to one of his squadmates. "You think it was one of those Spartans we saw yesterday that did that? Had to have been."
"If you humans had a few thousand more of those Demons you would have had the Prophets' heads on a spike years ago." That got a laugh from all of the kig-yar and even one of the humans. Suddenly, from above came the sound of an explosion and tearing metal. One of the human soldiers was the first one to the window. In shock, he pointed to the sky above; "Holy fuck, look!"
As soon as the civilian transports took off from the Malakhit airport and started their climb to high altitude, every Covenant aircraft within visual range that hadn't been destroyed by the nuclear detonation headed toward them. Without direction from the Portent of Storms, they attacked uncoordinated, singly or in pairs. Most of them were easily dispatched by the escorting F-99s, not even making it into weapons range. A few were lucky or skilled enough to take down one of the human drones before they died.
One Banshee managed to slip past the escort of F-99s. Damaged, trailing plasma, and barely staying airborne, it didn't even bother to try and shoot down one of the transports. Instead, it simply rammed one of the human craft, tearing a massive hole in its right wing and demolishing one of the engines. As the shattered fragments of the Banshee dropped away, the transport slowly pitched down into a gently arcing right hand turn, unable to maintain altitude.
All of this was happening only a few kilometers southwest of Chac Lon and Yankee 1, barely a kilometer off the ground. Trailing a sheet of flame, the transport continued its semicontrolled descent, passing low enough over the transfixed humans and kig-yar that they could see the landing gear dangling uselessly, half-deployed.
Despite the massive damage to the back of their craft, the pilots of the transport managed to retain a slight semblance of control. They directed it toward a shallow river running through Malakhit, hoping for the water to cushion the impact. At the last moment, the nose jerked upward, slowing the descent. The impact was still catastrophic. As it hit, the Egret broke roughly into thirds. The aftmost portion, already damaged and containing the mass of the engines, fragmented completely on impact with the water, igniting into a fireball. None from the section survived. The front two sections stayed somewhat intact, skidding onto the riverbanks and coming to a stop after a few seconds. Many of the passengers in these sections survived the initial impact.
By happenstance, the transport crash landed only a hundred meters away from the diffuse front line between UNSC and Covenant forces. Before the pieces of the wrecked transport had even stopped moving, dozens of humans and Covenant were headed for the crash site.
An understrength UNSC platoon, augmented by a squad of ODSTs was the nearest force to the crash site, close enough that one of them was injured by flying debris. They arrived and quickly began setting up a perimeter and started triage on civilian survivors. A minute and a half later, the first jiralhanae arrived. Torn between defending civilians and engaging the threat, the human soldiers did the best they could, shepherding any survivors capable of movement to cover while doing their best to protect those too injured to move. It was a losing battle. Ironically the bloodthirstiness of the jiralhanae worked to the UNSC's advantage. The jiralhanaes' undisciplined attack and attempts to both kill civilians and fight the UNSC did worse than if they had focused on one goal or the other.
Yankee 1 easily outpaced the humans they had (briefly) shared the building with and made it to the edge of the river in only a few minutes. Chac Lon directed his squad to find what little cover they could, and carefully advance toward the crash site. He didn't know how deep the river was here, and getting caught in the open trying to awkwardly swim across in armor would be a death sentence. (The remains of a small footbridge lay half-submerged nearby, but unfortunately it had been destroyed near the start of the fighting on Concord.)
The first Covenant Yankee 1 ran into was a file of unggoy and kig-yar, left behind by their jiralhanae minders in the latter's rush toward the crash site. More focused on catching up with their leaders than watching for enemies, they were easy prey. In their first volley, the nine kig-yar of Yankee 1 killed six Covenant. The four surviving unggoy and lone kig-yar dove for whatever cover they could, firing wildly in the direction of their attackers. One managed a lucky shot that missed one of Yankee 1's kig-yar by only millimeters, splashing plasma all across their right arm and torso. They fell, screaming as the plasma burned through the thinnest parts of their armor and their top layer of skin. One of his squadmates, a T'vaoan, grabbed the screaming kig-yar by his uninjured arm. As the rest of the squad finished off the Covenant, she simply dragged him into the river. The cold water was a shock, but it did its job cooling the burn and numbing the pain a little.
They would survive the injury, but they were out of the fight. Chac Lon pointed at two kig-yar, including the one who had drag her injured squadmate into the water, and gestured for them to stay behind. Hopefully they'd be able to wrangle a spot on one of the medevac Pelicans the humans surely had headed this way.
Now down to six kig-yar, Yankee 1 continued pushing toward the crash site. The sounds of combat, both of plasma and gunfire, around the wreckage of the transport were getting louder as the jiralhanae got closer. Chac Lon saw a few civilians escaping to the humans side of the river, half-swimming half-wading away from the wreckage. Hopefully none of them were armed; Chac Lon didn't want one of his kig-yar getting shot by a scared human, and shooting back at a civilian (even in self-defense) would likely result in his execution by the UNSC.
The T'vaoan stepped into the river, feeling the chill of the water. Holding his needle rifle above his head, he moved across as quickly as he reasonably could. Not only was he vulnerable, but he was getting wet and cold. (Chac Lon had never had as much affection for the ocean as some kig-yar, especially those born on Eayn, did.) As he made it across to the opposite bank, he realized he'd left the rest of his squad behind. Two of them were trying to follow but had found deeper water, while the other three were on the other bank, deciding whether to cross here or find somewhere else. On the spur of the moment, Chac Lon waved them off, pointing them further down the opposite bank. Splitting up would be a risk, but they might get to catch some jiralhanae in a crossfire.
Two human soldiers lay dead, torn apart by dozens of metallic spikes. Their killer, one of the jiralhanae, bled from half a dozen bullet wounds as he slowly tried to push himself upright. From twenty meters, Chac Lon put three needles into the side of his head, and it ceased to exist. Chac Lon continued forward, passing more bodies; UNSC, civilian, a few unggoy, and another jiralhanae. To his left he heard more gunfire. Turning, he saw the half of his squad on the other side of the river shooting at a group of unggoy led by a single jiralhanae. The enemy was in cover, and keeping up a good enough rate of fire to make engaging them difficult. Chac Lon was about to move to outflank them when he saw the three jiralhanae in front of him.
None of them had noticed the kig-yar yet. They were too busy focusing on something else. Around the edge of a small open area lay the bodies of half a dozen human soldiers, all seemingly dead. But in the center, where the jiralhanae stood, were four civilians. Two were clearly dead; one lay off to the side twisted at an unnatural angle, and the second was missing both its arms. A third human, still alive, was on the ground behind the jiralhanae, slowly trying to crawl away.
The leader of the jiralhanae held the fourth civilian, holding them in the air by their neck. Despite the human's desperate flailing, the jiralhanae easily maintained their hold, keeping them off the ground with only one arm and apparently little effort. Laughing, the jiralhanae stared the human in its face for a moment. Then, it grabbed the human by the head and twisted, snapping the human's neck with a single motion.
For a few seconds, Chac Lon's mind flashed back to a day years before. To a datapad showing a jiralhanae snapping someone else's neck, just like it had the human. Hissing with uncontrolled rage, he slammed a magazine into his needle rifle, pointed it toward the two subordinate jiralhanae, and held down the trigger.
About a third of the rounds went wild, sailing harmlessly into the distance. The rest hit. One of the jiralhanae died instantly. The other lived long enough to gape at its missing arm and hole in its torso for a few seconds before dying. The lead jiralhanae, unhurt (aside from the viscera splattered across its armor), dropped the limp body of the human it just murdered. It turned to face the new threat, and was shocked to see a kig-yar rather than a human.
"Stand and die, jiralhanae!" Chac Lon hissed. He was standing a few paces away from the jiralhanae, as close as he dared without risking being grabbed. The brutes could be deceptively quick when they wanted to be.
After getting over his initial shock, the jiralhanae seemed quite unperturbed by the kig-yar confronting him. "You would sacrifice yourself, kig-yar? For these unworthy vermin?" The jiralhanae said, gesturing toward the human bodies scattered about.
"Not, I'm doing it to kill you." Chac Lon growled in response.
"As you wish." The jiralhanae paused for a moment, before continuing. "The Prophets will reward me handsomely for bringing back a traitor's head."
They stood facing each other for a moment. Then, the jiralhanae slowly reached for the spiker at his hip, unlatched it, and dropped it to the ground. Sweeping it back behind him, he gestured at Chac Lon's needle rifle. The kig-yar obliged, slowly placing it on the ground beside himself.
Chac Lon looked back and forth. The rational part of his brain realized he'd put himself in a stupid situation; now he needed any advantage he could to get out of it. He had no eyes on the other two kig-yar with him on this side of the river, either they were behind him watching or fighting somewhere else. Hopefully they'd bail him out, but he couldn't bet on it. The last human civilian was motionless, dead or doing their best to stay invisible. Then, at the edge of the area, Chac Lon saw the UNSC soldier. Bruised and covered in blood but alive, they slowly reached for their weapon. The human made eye contact with Chac Lon for a fraction of a second, and subtly jerked their head toward the jiralhanae's legs.
Following his gaze, Chac Lon saw something he'd missed before. The jiralhanae's lower right leg oozed blood, leaking from two, possibly three, bullet wounds. That was something he could take advantage of. A wound like that would be far from fatal for a jiralhanae, but it would slow him down, make him less agile. Agility was the main advantage Chac Lon had, and he would need all of it he could get.
Chac Lon looked the jiralhanae in the eye a second longer, as he ignited his plasma daggers. If the jiralhanae was surprised by Chac Lon's weapons, he hid it well, as he began to shift into a combative stance. As he did, Chac Lon stepped left, bracing himself to jump. The jiralhanae reacted, moving to intercept the kig-yar, and Chac Lon jumped right.
The T'vaoan landed a few feet away from the jiralhanae and sprinted past, putting himself behind the enemy. Quickly, the jiralhanae turned around before the kig-yar could close the distance and attack his backside. Chac Lon was unconcerned; he wasn't trying to end this fight in a single hit, but force the jiralhanae to pivot and chase him. Wear him down, and damage his injured leg. When the jiralhanae was spent he would get in close, slashing at the ankles and knees until the beast fell. Then, the killing blow to the eyes or back of the neck.
Another feint, another jump, and then another. By the fifth the jiralhanae was getting annoyed. After another pass he was getting angry. "Face me! Or are you a worthless coward like the rest of your race?"
"Can't kill me that easily!" It was nearly enough to make Chac Lon laugh. The issue was that if he kept it going for long enough, the jiralhanae might simply pick his weapon back up and shoot him. No matter how much he hated jiralhanae, revenge was useless if he was dead.
Two more feints, and Chac Lon attacked for real. Sprinting in, he ducked low, below the jiralhanae's swinging fist, and plunged one of his daggers deep into the back of the brute's left knee. As it went in, Chac Lon smelled burning flesh and fur, and the jiralhanae screamed in fury and pain. With its right leg, the jiralhanae lashed out, swinging blindly for its assailant.
The technique on the kick was far from perfect, and the jiralhanae's leg was heavily damaged. The impact was still crushing. It caught Chac Lon as he tried to pull away, slamming into his left side and sending him flying.
Chac Lon heard his ribs splintering a split second before he felt them. Sharp, stabbing pain, all through his abdomen and up to his chest. He barely noticed landing back on the ground and skidding a few feet. Hissing, the kig-yar rolled onto his belly, and tried to stand. His first attempt only got him halfway up; Chac Lon nearly passed out as another spike of pain went through his system and he tasted blood. All four of his limbs were still attached, and working, at least.
The jiralhanae limped toward him, grinning ferally. Shuffling forward, its left leg was dragging, leaving a thick trail of blood. With the massive damage Chac Lon's dagger did to the ligaments and muscle, it was amazing the jiralhanae could put any weight on it at all.
Chac Lon barely managed to stand by the time the jiralhanae made it halfway to him. Suddenly, from behind the jiralhanae came gunshots. In a cloud of dust and smoke, the jiralhanae's already injured right leg was torn apart by half a dozen rounds. As the brute toppled to the ground, Chac Lon was shocked to see the injured human soldier from before, propped up on one arm and aiming their assault rifle at the jiralhanae. As the gun clicked empty, the human looked at the jiralhanae, then at the kig-yar, before slumping back to the ground.
As it lay on the ground, the jiralhanae roared in pain, clutching at the mangled remains of its right leg. Chac Lon strode forward, spitting up more blood. When he walked he could feel his broken ribs moving around within him, but the edge of the pain was gone for now. Another four steps, and Chac Lon was almost in reach. The jiralhanae swiped at him, he dodged, barely. But now he was inside its guard, and the head was open.
Chac Lon braced himself, sinking his claws into the jiralhanae's hide as he prepared to strike. With a sharp intake of breath, he drove his right hand as hard as he could at the enemy's face, sinking the dagger into the eye. The jiralhanae jerked, flailing wildly as the kig-yar pushed the blade through its skull. It twitched once, twice, and then lay still. Chac Lon struggled to stand, heart pounding as the edges of his vision darkened. He took a single step, and collapsed into the dirt. The last thing he felt before he went completely unconscious was two pairs of human hands grabbing and lifting him.