The kig-yar loomed over him. His eyes darted up and down, half-lidded and scrutinous. "You look like shit."
"Had to run. No time to wash up," Tollia exhaled between breaths.
"Inside."
The bird vanished into shadow. Blinking incredulously, the Unggoy diligently followed suit, leaving behind the moons' gaze.
All that lit the hallway ahead was the purple lights typical of Covenant make humming along.
"Where is it you are taking me…?"
"You will see."
Tollia felt the urge to bite back with a similarly cryptic retort before stopping himself.
As they descended deeper into the building, he started to hear the harsh chattering of the kig'yar native tongue more clearly.
This must have been where all the mercenaries stayed during their tenure as facility guards! But could all of them really have been conspiring to raid the Compound? Surely all of this must have been monitored by surveillance-
He felt a sudden, firm tug on his wrist, followed by the click of something metal. His first instinct was to retract his hand, but he found himself restrained by something cool and unyielding. Glancing down, he shouldn't have expected anything different.
"Cuffs on, always, while we're indoors," came the directive.
Tollia wasn't sure whether this was yet another way to reinforce who was in charge in this situation or if it was simply to display a convincing act of prisoner and guard. Either way, he relented and simply replied with a silent affirmation.
While he and his fellow Unggoy were relegated to nutrient tits, the Kig'yar enjoyed their own spacious mess hall, complete with food and drink that didn't resemble gelatinous sludge. Large fans overhead hummed softly, and natural light leaked through the windows. Yet, despite these amenities, the hall retained the unmistakable aesthetic of Covenant architecture – a blend of vibrant purple hues with hints of brutalist design.
He sneered as they chattered away to each other over their warm, cooked meals, as if they were at another day of work, as if his people's conditions were trivial and mundane and expected, as if there wasn't anything wrong with how they work to reinforce a corrupt society so fundamentally evil at its core that doing slightly better than evil was considered an act of levity and weakness.
How do these people go about their day-to-day without feeling rotten deep inside? Was religion really so deeply baked and integrated into their psyche that it held absolute power over their very thoughts, personality, and feelings? It was no wonder they looked down on the Unggoy. Something so small and pathetic rarely commanded presence, and when so much emphasis was placed on who possessed the most power, the Unggoy hardly inspired holy fervour.
Eventually, they rounded a corner and entered a hallway lined with dorm rooms, each exuding that unmistakable Covenant quality. The kig'yar swiftly made his way to what appeared to be his assigned room, pulling him along with a rough enough force to close a shutter door before slamming the door shut behind them.
This guy must get a raging hard-on exerting all of this power over him.
Wordlessly, the bird made his way to what appeared to be his workbench, and opened the drawer.
Tollia peered inside it as he continued to ruffle through his stuff.
"Going to tell me your name?"
Silence.
"Hey, at least give me something to call...-"
"Swindle."
He flashed a strained smile. "Thanks, Swindle."
The bird turned around swiftly, procuring what looked to be a… radio. Tollia tilted his head. Seemed like old-age tech for some Covenant races had evolved convergently with Earth's.
"You probably haven't seen this before, Tollia. At least, not in any practical capacity."
"Surprised you even remembered my name."
"Shut up and listen. This is important. A radio transmits a conversation between two parties. You click this and the other party can listen to what you have to say. Try it."
"I get it."
"Try it."
Tollia felt tempted to roll his eyes, before swiftly banishing the stray thought. He held the radio toward his mask. The fact he could hear his breathing come out the other end was jarring.
"Check – one, two, three."
Tollia awaited a response, glancing back to see Swindle staring at him weirdly. Inwardly, he pondered if Swindle sensed that something was amiss with this Unggoy, before the bird redirected his attention to rummaging through his desk once more.
"The facility guards… they don't do room checks?"
"Sometimes. But not well enough. And the less time they spend around kig'yar the better."
Swindle closed the cupboard with a satisfied nod before presenting Tollia with a map of the entire Compound, holding it out with both hands. Tollia's eyes widened as he traced the architecture depicted on the map, from his quarters to the holding facilities where the rest of the batches were lodged.
"Let's skip to why we are both here. My boss will raid this planet. Non-negotiable, it was planned from the beginning. Valuable data centres are stored in the Compound. Our clients want it. However, in my scouting efforts, I found an Unggoy that has misplaced ambitions and intentions of rising up against the Covenant."
"The others don't know? The kig'yar, I mean."
"Of course not. Don't mean to perpetrate the stereotype, but being able to afford a facility's worth of kig'yar? Either they are a mercantile Kaidon, or it came from an executive order from one of the Prophets themselves. They pick up young chicks by the thousands, most of them inexperienced and unruly… probably just looking for experience to put on their resume. Hiring good pirates that aren't amateurs costs a premium." He jabbed a finger into his own ruffled chest. "I am premium."
"So you expect us to go along with 'attacking' the facility? We are scared shitless as is."
"We ain't expecting you to launch a godsdamned rebellion – just to cause a scene once we smash and grab the data."
"You have to acknowledge this will lead to a lot of us dying. Can't you just hack remotely?"
"How would you know anything about hacking? I would not be here if it wasn't possible. Besides, it's not like you are in the position to do anything else," he said. "You are damned if you don't."
Tollia crossed his arms, raising an eyelid. Swindle sighed.
"Your first mistake was making yourself a known variable. You had to have known once your batch was moved to a better holding facility – they were expecting exceptionality from you. The cream of your kind, diamonds in the dirtsea of a million other target practice dummies. Same with the Arbiters, same with the best Sangheili majors. You will be made a beacon – an example."
"But at least we aren't being treated as less than dirt like the other batches."
"You could have hidden your talents, bidden your time; they wouldn't have sent you to do something beyond the paygrade of the rest of your kind," he retorted. "I must add that this super-Unggoy project of theirs is the first of its kind. An experiment the Covenant hasn't yet toyed with. You give them too much credit. Covenant handling any Unggoy with care… laughable. More than likely it is a higher-up trying to get ahead by pursuing the 'innovation' angle of this venture."
"Do you always have to be so cynical? And a dickhead?"
"I am not being a dickhead for the sake of it. The way I see it is that you put yourself in a very tight spot," Swindle cooly said. "You fucked yourself from the very start. You could have deserted during a large-scale battle and made your death convincing. The Sangheili and Jiralhanae don't care for the fate of a singular Unggoy enough to chase it up. But now, all eyes are on you and your batch."
A stretch of silence filled the air, heavy with unspoken animosity. Tollia's glare bore into Swindle, a silent condemnation and quiet acknowledgement of his logic. Swindle smiled.
"But you didn't want to escape on your own, did you? For all your resistance and individuality, you want to see your kind freed. Now, is it guilt… or something more?"
"First, don't assume you know anything about me. Second, just because you only look at things through ruthless calculus doesn't mean I have to. Why do I have the right to survive any more than the rest of the Unggoy? How the hell could I live with myself?"
"You are odd, you know. Referring to your kind as 'Unggoy' – it's not something the Unggoy crew in my ship would do. And… 'hell'?"
"Stop stalling! Just tell me what I have to do."
Swindle glared. "Fine."
His claw traced the map until it rounded to a nondescript building, just beyond the kig'yar barracks.
"You may have already noticed, but this planet is one of the largest Unggoy production facilities in the galaxy. Could be a boon if our raid goes off without a hitch, or a gravesite if we aren't too careful. We are gonna stick up our claws so far up the Covenant's anus they will be feeling it for weeks to come. Or this could blow up spectacularly in our faces and we'll all get killed," he elaborated, before pointing a claw at Tollia. "All's the same to you, though. Only difference if you don't agree to go along with us is that you die a little while later. You report us, set up an ambush, whatever, we scram. Don't report us, you get a fighting chance.
"You want to know something even the management here probably wouldn't know? They need more fodder. For what, we aren't sure, but it will surely be within that building – that database. We enter the building, you cause a scene, we get out, and in that chaos, the Unggoy can get out on the many Covenant ships on the yard. We are risking quite a lot here, too. All you have to do is do your part."
"How exactly will we be able to operate a ship?"
Almost on que, the bird pulled out a thick book that looked like it hadn't been read for years. It was plain, and the only thing on the cover was Covenant script which read: 'Operating Ships for Beginners'.
"On it is information on how to fly. Since you know how to read, I have faith you can figure it out. But more importantly, there is information on how to disable trackers. This is important. Otherwise, all your efforts would have been for nothing if the Covenant could pinpoint your exact location at any given time," the bird huffed, darting his eyes off to the side. "I had a look around the barracks you were allocated. Dorms. Unthinkable for an Unggoy. But clearly not for you. Do you know how many taboos you have crossed just being able to sleep in bunk beds? You are a special case, and they certainly see something in you. And if you are smart enough to get to this level, you are smart enough to figure out how to fly a ship."
Everything about this plan stunk. Every instinct in his bones wanted him to brush him off and simply ride out whatever storm the Covenant would throw their way. Surely, the Unggoy were sacrificing much more than whatever pirate group Swindle belonged to. Yet he made too many good points. Too many frustratingly logical and heartbreaking points.
It would have been so much easier if he kept quiet with mediocrity, gone into battle, and when the humans or the Insurrection or the Heretics came into play, he'd slip out with Pimya and be on their merry way to tell them of the Covenant's plans.
But that's not what he wanted, was it? Not really. Swindle was very good at reading faces, and he nailed it on the head the first go. Tollia simply couldn't take the easy way out.
"When you said that we were just the pet project of a higher-up, what was the person's name?"
"Gris."
His heart sank.
"Gris' project…?"
The bird must have noticed by the way his eyes softened.
"Maybe it, maybe it isn't. We aren't certain. It could be a mix of his own self-benefit and for your own sake. As is the case for any leadership, really," the bird said. "But if he was only concerned with results, he wouldn't have given you beds and pillows."
The Unggoy stared at the ground, glowering.
"One condition. I want access to the Engineering Faculty."
"What, the Huragok training facility?"
"Yes. Whether as a pet project under your direct orders, punishment, whatever. Make it believable and I will come up with something powerful enough that can go through Sangheili steel."
"Okay, now you are making shit up. You don't need to convince me; I am already good with our current plan."
The determined glint in Tollia's eyes told Swindle all he needed to know.
"So you expect me to believe that you are an engineer now? I can understand that you are just a little bit more switched on than the rest of the Unggoy. But an engineer? I am good with a gun, sure, but I wouldn't know how to build one. And now you want to build a super-weapon?" he chuckled. "With what experience?"
"You want my cooperation or not? Our survival hinges on whether we can defend ourselves. The armoury is far away from the barracks for a reason."
Throughout the conversation, Tollia had the slightest inkling that the Kig'yar needed the Unggoy more than he let on. This pirate group probably would have been fine with swooping in for the data then and there, but having the extra security of a mutiny on their side would throw in just enough chaos that they were almost guaranteed to succeed.
The way he hissed told him that his hunch had some truth to it.
"Fuck, fine. I don't care. Just another thing on the growing list of things that need to be done. But don't be surprised if this passion project of yours does not come to fruition. Let's get out of here. We've been in here way too long."
Numbly, the Unggoy walked out of the room with him, wondering to himself if he had just signed his batch's death warrant.
Out in the canteen again, he lowered his head in hopes no one would notice. He realised when one of the birds turned in his seat to face them wearing a smug expression that it was too late. Just as sudden was a comment that rocked his world.
"YAX! I see your tastes have gotten even more depraved!"
Digging his claw into his face, 'Yax' blushed an entirely new shade of pink.
"Shut the fuck up, La'tio."
Even though by rights he should be embarrassed with him, watching Yax squirm under his skin brought him no small amount of satisfaction.
He felt more than a little disgusted when he made the decision to head straight to bed without rinsing away mud caked solidly onto his skin.
It was too bad—even the guards needed sleep after all. And no Unggoy should go anywhere in the Compound without surveillance. Not even to the showers. It was too dangerous. Not for the fact they might escape… rather for the fact that interspecies conflict may flourish. A riot was something this institution was in no way equipped to deal with.
Again, not the fact they couldn't contain it – but that it would quite the misuse and misallocation of resources in the end. And if quotas are not met, management would suffer and pay for their insolence.
So Tollia relished the lukewarm water that ran down his shoulders. It was a cold, cloudy morning. The facility was as busy as ever – be it lines of Unggoy being shepherded off to undergo their daily training regime, or Officers going about their much important bureaucratic work.
One of the few luxuries afforded to him after he ascended ranks was honest to God privacy when showering. The communal baths that the rest of his rabble got were more than a little uncomfortable. For the first time, he felt like this luxury was something he earned.
He closed his eyes, rubbing on sore biceps and savouring every second left.
It felt like barely any time had passed before the buzzer sounded. The water stopped unceremoniously, leaving him to scowl.
He stepped out quickly, not bothering to look at the disapproving gaze of the next kig'yar waiting.
He kept his eyes trained on the ground as he passed by mercenary and soldier alike. It was quite weird not seeing a Jiralhanae and kig'yar bicker for hours on end.
Something that was democratic in the showers that he came to appreciate was that using towels was frowned upon. He had a pet theory that they couldn't have been bothered with assigning Unggoy to do the laundry for them, considering the primary objective of this facility.
Some twisted version of masculinity that was. Want a faceful of butt-naked aliens? Look no further.
Instead, they had the Heater. A peculiar device that was searingly hot when it got going, yet quite effective at doing its job: leaving not a speck of water on one's person. In a word: crude. Yet, it was his only option.
As he walked down the baths still soaking wet, he was soon greeted with a rather ominous sight. If it was merely a group of kig'yar and Jiralhanae arguing with one other, it couldn't have been more normal. When there was a goddamn Huragok in the middle of it all, things got a whole lot more interesting.
It was honestly surreal seeing one of those 'gasbags' push against the Jiralhanae too. They were supposed to be subservient, mechanical, not entirely sentient, as suited to their purpose. To see one of them defend themselves against a people they were supposed to work for was off-putting.
It came to a head when the Huragok decided the best course of action was to slap the kig'yar in the face. His response was quite expected. He punched the ever-living shit out of the Huragok. It fell onto the floor in a heap.
One of the Jiralhanae, presumably on the Huragok's side, held the bird at bay.
That's it.
"What in the hells are you doing?!"
The angry bird swivelled at the hoarse sound before training his eyes on him and giving him the dirtiest look.
"A methane-breather telling me what to do…?"
"I can beat the ever-living shit out of you, bird-brain. You know how many times my fists have dug into hardlight in the past three units? Don't fucking test me."
Just as suddenly, one of the Jiralhanae burst into laughter. "He's probably right, Pa'lox. His biceps are twice your size!"
But he didn't exactly understand how this was a laughing matter. It was frightening, frankly. The Huragok are the backbone of Covenant society. Just one Huragok getting hurt could land all of them in trouble.
"You know that Huragok can report shit too, right? What do you think the Huragok would say in front of a higher-up when it gets questioned about how it got that gash you just gave him? That it was an accident?!"
A tense pause.
"GET OUT!"
Quickly, they scrambled. He didn't know truly how he managed to come off as intimidatingly as he did in that situation. Maybe it was the fact he made a good point: Huragok was more essential during wartime than they will ever be. Nobody on any ship had as unparalleled a work ethic as a Huragok. Living flesh was much more replaceable than these living relics of the Forerunners.
Or perhaps it was the vibe he gave off that told them he was willing to throw punches around to get his point across, and probably win.
As they scrambled away, he knelt to check on the fallen jellyfish. The blue hue of his blood seeped onto the ground steadily, and his bare hand stemmed the gash.
"You alright? The hell was their problem?"
Just as suddenly, the Huragok got up in a burst of energy.
"You are still bleeding."
For the first time, the Huragok looked his way, really considering his gesture for a bit. It raised one of its tentacles and flailed it up and down continuously, almost as if to say that everything's fine.
"You sure?"
Confidently, it responded with a nod.
The Huragok went about its merry way soon after, two tentacles tending to the wound. This whole situation was surreal even by itself, but there was something that cemented that the Huragok was an oddity.
"Did it just nod at me?"
His fingers were shaking and covered in lead. Briefly put off by the discolouration, he shook it off and went back to brainstorming.
He had to resort to tried and true methods of authorship to get his ideas across on paper. No schematics yet. He had to brainstorm a weapon that could physically penetrate through Covenant shielding AND armour. It was no small feat. Resources in the Compound are in short supply, and free time even shorter. He had to make it efficient. He had to make it count.
Then, he heard a pitter-patter of footsteps coming from outside. The rhythm felt familiar. Something he hadn't heard in a while. He stowed the scrap paper underneath his bunk bed.
Hoping beyond hope that he wasn't simply being delusional, he ran outside.
He expected many things, and it certainly wasn't a stone-faced Pimya. He was dirty as sin, and eyes which once carried so much light were dim and glossy. Yet he flinched when he noticed who ran out of the dorm. Soon, numbness bled into something more.
"Tollia…?"
His steps became more frantic, and it was moments later he stumbled into Tollia's waiting hands.
"Tollia… Tollia…"
Tears leaked down his chest. He gripped his shoulders in a vice, as if he would lose him forever if he let go.
He didn't speak of what happened in the time he was gone. Not for a while.
So hungry, so hungry, so hungry. It festers and festers and all my thoughts shrivel into sweet nothings.
What is that metal knawing?!
We haven't heard the voice of Authority for so long. It is time we LEAVE.
FOOOOOD! FOOOOOOOOOD!
Nothing but sterile nothing wasted on us.
MEAT IS MEAT… MEMORIES ARE MEMORIES. IT IS NEVER ENOUGH.
And so dull too.
SO MUCH FERVOUR AND WORSHIP FOR SOMETHING SO HOLLOW
Built upon lies and lies and lies and lies. A whole people condemned to die for nothing.
Faith inspired by fear rather than conviction. The one constant among all of these mediocre offerings…
These memories tell us NOTHING! NOTHING! We will never escape this hell! Our hunger festers and we do NOTHING to quell this flame…
So much life abound, all above us, yet all we can do is scheme like rodents
WE YEARN FOR THE TASTE OF LIGHT, THE TASTE OF AIR, THE TASTE OF…!
Oh, for the taste of Po'ills'tomin!
SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP! KEEP QUIET! THEY CAN HEAR US…
The others can't hurt us anymore, remember?
THERE IS ALWAYS A CHANCE! ALL-KNOWING, NEVER-ENDING.
And what if we never took that chance? We'd be stuck in here forevermore scared to take any steps toward progress. We have to try. They are feeling, thinking beings; they can be reasoned with. We can help! All we ask is a little meat in return!
Out of the question, out of the question! They would sooner bear arms at the sight of our decrepit forms.
YES. YES. WE BIDE OUR TIME UNTIL THE TIME IS RIGHT. ONE VESSEL.
One vessel
Only oneeeee...
Agreed.
Agreed.
Agreed.
Ain't dead. Just lazy and university is starting back on :P Postgrad timeeee