Halo: Feet First

by MikeDice

Halo: Feet First covers the story of a team of UNSC Orbital Drop Shock Troopers of the 7th Battalion, 105th Shock Troops Division. The main character, Duncan Iris, faces the full horror of the covenant war effort against humanity as well as the brave retaliation of outnumbered and outgunned UNSC forces. However, he also witnesses the turning of the tides as the war progresses.

87. Kholo - Chapter 16 (Iaculat)

Chapter 16 – Iaculat

June 16th, 2545 (10:10 Hours - Military Calendar)

Hicetas System, Kholo

Land Control, Grid-20

5 Kilometers Northeast of Hayth

:********:

Zack ran down the first flight of stairs, jumped onto the middle landing and righted onto the last staircase. He jumped down again onto the floor of the lobby and dashed for the doors.

As he ran past the front counter, he saw two other ODSTs carrying backpack radio-sets like his own. They had to be Drift-4 and Domino-5, the guys Aiken was sending to back him up. They were running out from adjacent hallways to either side of the lobby and were headed in the same direction.

Zack beat them to the doors. He reached the outside veranda and slid down across the concrete to crouch near the beginning of the steps. He looked out to the east and at the massive disturbance that dominated the horizon.

The dust storm was less than 2 kilometers away. Even at that distance its height was intimidating enough to make him want to go back inside. He stifled the thought. The Staff had sent him out for a reason. As if to remind him of that, he saw the ODSTs of 5th and 6th Platoons moving the last workers into the garages of the north and south wings. Then there were the remaining upper windows of the building that hadn't been shattered yet. He could make out the silhouettes of the troopers standing behind them, waiting for the moment to strike. Before that, they would need the three combat controllers outside to do the job of whittling down the Jackal forces.

Drift-4 and Domino-5 crouched down to either end of the veranda, the former facing the northeast while the latter faced southeast. Together, the three of them were the most exposed of anyone here out of the necessity of carrying out the forward air control op.

Zack looked straight ahead. The slowly advancing wall of dust indicated no sign of the hundreds of enemy contacts marching just behind it. The Jackals thought they could use it as a veil to cover their movements. Little did they know that their 'cover' was about to be rendered useless.

He conducted a quick equipment check on his radio. Typing one-handed on the side keypad as well as twisting a few nobs helped to remodulate his carrier signals. He focused on removing the crackling interference from his personal connection to the Longsword fighter squadron that he was about to direct. He spoke into his comms. "This is Ep-7 to Baltic-5-1, can you hear me, over?"

Two seconds passed before the response came. "Baltic-5-1 to Ep-7, loud and clear. We're one minute out. Ready for target designation, over."

"Copy. Details in 15."

Zack looked at the feed on his HUD coming from the geological survey drone. Mr. Green had rerouted the feed from Land Control's local network into his personal head's up display. It showed a thermal view from high above. It was centered on the menacingly cold purple and blue winds of the dust storm as well as the scores of yellow, orange and red heat signatures moving within.

The Jackals' three groups were farther apart now than the last time he'd seen them. The northeastern group was still going northeast, though it had moved southward a bit. The same applied to the southeastern group which had gravitated more in that direction. He realized by their movement patterns and direction that they were actually trying to go around Land Control. At least 300 Jackals were going to bypass it entirely. That is if they survived Drift-4 and Domino-5's deadly attention.

The same could be said for the largest group of 200 strong that was headed straight for Land Control. The only problem and arguably the biggest was that the Jackals were all splitting up. They were no longer sticking close to one another in that bunched up, easily exploitable formation they'd used earlier. Now there was two to three meters distance between each one.

They were smart, he had to give them that. By spacing themselves out, it would take a lot more ordnance to neutralize them. However, that was only a worry for inexperienced air controllers. Zack knew exactly what he wanted to do as he eyed the feed in the upper right corner of his display. He noticed how the main Jackal force in the east were surrounded intermittently by small mazes of ruins from Kholo's original colony. There was one just north of their route; a V-shaped cluster of old skyscrapers sunken down to their lowest levels. But they were still tall enough to be of use.

He turned to his CCT buddies on his left and right. "Alright guys, I'm starting."

"Copy, starting in 10." Domino-5 said.

"I'm with you." Drift-4 said. "Ready when you are."

Zack exhaled as he looked out east again, past the forest of pylons, past the crescent of the partially hollowed embankment to the encroaching storm. He anxiously licked his lips and began.

"This is Ep-7 to Baltic-5-1. Warning: Grid Mission, over."

"Baltic-5-1 to Ep-7, warning received. State your target."

He took a hard look at the feed. "Target location: Grid EN 4456 4426, over."

"Grid EN 4456 4426, out."

"Ground infantry, 200 plus, armed and on the move using the storm for cover. Recommend sticking to your rotary cannons for this first one, over."

"Roger that. Coming in hot."

Baltic-5-1's calm demeanor was the antithesis to Zack's own anxiousness. He wanted to get this done quickly. Thankfully, the pilots were interested in doing just that as the five Longswords pierced through the clouds. The arrowhead-shaped craft were headed on an a near vertical attack path from the west. They zipped high overhead before partially leveling out so that their path arced down towards the storm.

He heard their engines increase their speed as the squadron accelerated into a V formation. Their rotary cannons flashed. He saw the shots long before he heard them, a sound more akin to ripping fabric.

Through his feed, Zack witnessed the carnage unfolding on the ground as the bullets struck their targets, tearing several columns of impact bursts across the Jackal positions. Even their loose formation couldn't save them from the fusillade. Many disappeared in flashes of thermal white, appearing a split-second afterward as mangled corpses or bloody craters.

The Longswords pulled up from their attack vectors before they got too close to the storm and banked south. It was a devastating blow. He counted close to 30 dead or fatally wounded; just under a fifth of their number.

Zack grinned. He glanced over at Drift-4 who was coordinating the assault on the northeast. He looked in time to see the smoke-trails of missiles headed into the haze followed by a series of rumbling explosions within the dust storm. Longsword squadron 'Caspian' was banking off from their run and headed north.

He looked to Domino-5 who'd finally gotten his firing solution in. A third Longsword squadron, 'Arabian', appeared in the south to rip the skies with their rotary cannons. The rain of fire thumped and pattered across that part of the storm, slashing through the dust itself to pound the Jackals inside.

He refocused on his feed. His drone was now circling to the east of the enemy's position. The large Jackal force he'd targeted, or what remained of it, were desperately running towards the ruins in the north, just as planned.

"Ep-7 to Baltic-5-1, we've got 30 plus confirmed hits. Great work."

"This is Baltic-5-1, business is good today. Let's keep'em coming."

"Copy." Zack waited a few seconds for his targets to channel into the entrance of the maze of skyscrapers. "New target location: Grid EN 4454 4428, over."

"Grid EN 4454 4428, out."

"Ground infantry, 170 plus moving into condensed urban ruins. Recommend switching to ASGM-10s, one shot each, over."

"Roger that. Dropping the hammer."

He watched Squadron 'Baltic' swing around south and come back from the west. They accelerated higher into the sky then descended sharply into their V formation. Each Longsword launched one of their ASGM missiles before banking off again. The missiles left long smoke trails across the skies as they soared into the storm, disappearing from view but reappearing on the drone feed as red-hot heat signatures. The white flash of the explosions struck several of the skyscrapers surrounding the Jackals. The blasts critically weakened the already deadened structures so that they began to crumble. The buzzards that had run for cover there were now scrambling away as the buildings fell on top of them. A good number were crushed but not as many as he would have hoped for, maybe 12 or 15. At least the result was that the remainders were effectively sealed within the maze of ruins, temporarily anyway. There was still a way forward and there was just a kilometer left between them and Land Control. Zack needed to hit them hard before they closed that distance.

"Ep-7 to Baltic-5-1, 12 to 15 confirmed neutralized."

"Copy. That's not the numbers we wanted but I hope you got what you needed."

"I sure did. New target location: Grid EN 4452 4428, over."

"Grid EN 4452 4428, out."

"Ground infantry, 160 plus, moving but disoriented. Recommend another round of ASGM-10s, two shots each, over."

"Roger that. Bringing the pain."

Zack observed as they did just that. Baltic swung around from south to west and accelerated into their attack run. The Longswords each unleashed a pair of ASGM missiles before breaking off, leaving their ordnance to cruise on down into the storm. The lances of red light appeared on the drone feed which was now oriented northward, showing the moment that the 10-missile barrage struck the heart of the Jackal formation. The collapsed ruins around them had become a makeshift cage, a bottleneck that contained their advance. Because of that a high number of them were in the open when the ASGMs struck from above, blowing scores of them out of existence and hurtling dozens more into the air.

Zack whistled. "Ep-7 to Baltic-5-1, great shot! That's 50 by my count. Geeze, I really wouldn't want to be those guys right about now."

"Copy that. It's a job well done but a job half finished. This'll have to be our last run. State your targets and we'll give them all we've got."

"Copy."

However, Zack wasn't sure what to do next as he watched at least 100 Jackal survivors stream out from the smoke. They emerged through the other side of the cluster of ruins and reoriented themselves southwest, returning to their original path to the LC. On the sides of his visor there were flashes of explosions from the northeast and southeast as Caspian and Arabian banked off of their most recent attack runs. He noted that the flashes were much more westerly than before, meaning the other groups were getting further despite the pounding they were taking.

Two ODST platoons against 100 Jackals was a doable but still tactically unappealing idea. He had to cut his targets down to size one more time. Then he noticed exactly where the eastern group was going.

They were running out from the storm and into the open air. Perhaps desperation at discovering that the dust storm wasn't helping them anymore was what prompted the maneuver. All it had really done was given him a great idea, because they were running en masse to the one position where he could target them best; the dirt embankment on Land Control's eastern perimeter. The embankment's slanting form was the perfect place for them to use as a firing position against the LC, meaning they would stop there to begin their assault.

He waited. He wasn't disappointed.

The Jackals spread out along the embankment and stayed close to it.

"Ep-7 to Baltic-5-1, danger close. Target location: Grid EN 44502 44262, over."

"That's a 10-meter precision level strike, Ep-7. You sure?"

"Positive."

"...Grid EN 44502 44262, out."

"Ground infantry, 100 plus, holding position at dirt embankment. Recommend your last ASGM-10s, two shots. Take a south approach, adjust for loose formation, over."

"Roger, last hammer coming down now."

Baltic flew in from the south. Their attack run ran alongside the approaching storm. They each fired their last pair of missiles then banked off to the west. The ASGM-10's soared down to detonate across the embankment, enveloping it in a thunderous drumbeat of light and smoke. Zack could hear the screams of the enemies on the other side. He checked the feed, although he barely needed to since he could see everything with his own eyes now. The drone's gently rotating view showed the white-hot impact craters pockmarking the area around the embankment. Dozens more Jackal corpses, body parts and splotches of splattered blood surrounded them. However, the bulk of the avian threats were still alive, having stayed far apart enough to avoid the blasts.

"Ep-7 to Baltic-5-1, I'm looking at 30 hits. Good work. We'll take it from here, over."

"Roger that, Ep-7. Give'em hell. Baltic-5-1 out."

The squadron angled up and boosted away into the western skies. The moment they were out of sight Zack got a contact on his HUD through the connection to his radio. The red symbol in the upper right corner of his visor showed it was an emergency call-in. He patched it through to the rest of the squad's comms as it played over his display.

"This is UNSC Cape Horn to all ODST forces at Land Control!" A male voice said in haste. "Be advised, the Jackal ship has broken orbit and is on its way to your location! It will arrive from the east in 30 seconds! Take cover immediately!"

Zack winced. He took a quick look around, as did Drift-4 and Domino-5. They scanned the skies for movement. So did the troopers posted in the windows.

"We should get back inside." Drift-4 said, sounding spooked. Domino-5 nodded in agreement. They were about to move when the distinctive scream of repulsor drives resonated through the air. It grew so close so fast that Zack could feel the vibrations in his throat. He looked to the storm and saw, just above it, a small purple dot. As it got closer he could see that it wasn't any normal Covenant ship. It was more like a giant stonefish with a bulbous front that smoothed down into a thin midsection before fanning out like a ventral fin. Its hull was covered in spikes and even from here he could make out the faint blue illumination of heating plasma lines.

It was coming fast.

"Ep-1 to Ep-7, get back in here now!"

Hearing the Staff pulled Zack's focus back to the doors and he ran into the lobby with the other two.

The ship's massive shadow swooped in and momentarily blocked out the sunlight. The scream of its engines grew to a deafening roar above, then faded off as the ship carried on.

But then it came back. The engines sounded subdued as it approached from the west with a menacing slowness until its shadow covered them again.

Nothing happened for what Zack felt to be the three longest seconds of his life. Then the world became so bright that his visor had to immediately polarize. Heat washed over him as the sound of explosions engulfed him.

Zack leaped and tackled Drift-4 out of the way of the oncoming pulse laser. The column of purple plasma sliced through the lobby with ease, cutting it down its length as it seared through the floor and ceiling like a hot knife through butter. He looked back but there was no sign of Domino-5. The plasma continued knifing through the building until it was out of sight, only for two more lasers to shoot through from above to dissect the lobby beneath.

:********:

Captain Stewards kept the accelerator pinned underfoot as he led Jinx' convoy down the old highway. The northeasterly route maintained a waving path from Hayth to Land Control because of the broad ridgeline that it was built atop of. The cracked asphalt was washed over in dust all the way from the south to the north and caused some of the Hogs to slip every so often. No one crashed though. No one could afford to because their current mission was a matter of life and death; of lives they needed to save and deaths they needed to cause.

Stewards' characteristic smile was gone, replaced by a clenched jaw and a brooding infuriation. No one had seen the current situation coming. Nor had Stewards thought he would be going into a battle with two men missing. Duncan and O'Reilly never came back at the time he'd specified and he was worried they'd gotten caught up in some other captain's defensive ploy.

After being sent out to respond to reports of ODSTs landing at Land Control, he was even more enraged to learn halfway through the trip that more troopers were landing at Hayth. By then they were too far to turn back. He had to trust that Quinn, Squad Jester and the rest of the AMADDS were able to hold the town while they were gone.

As they rounded a bend, he called over to Al in the passenger seat. "I'm still not getting any response. You're sure you can't get me through?"

Al kept finagling with the components on the radio-set that he'd been given. "I'm trying sir, but I'm just not getting through anymore. There's too much interference."

"Just do what you can because we're almost there. I want an idea of the situation we're running into beforehand."

"Copy."

Stewards piloted them down the last part of the curve and started onto another. However, the next curve hooked southward on a gradual, kilometer-long descent back to level ground. The route would take them just north of the LC with the giant dust storm looming on their left. They drove down the ridge and reached a stretch where the asphalt became much more difficult to see. It moved upward on a gentle incline before leveling off again onto a wide plain. Land Control lay less than a kilometer ahead. However, Stewards and his squad went wide-eyed once they saw it.

The building was submerged in smoke and fire. Several plasma lasers were carving through the structure from the underbelly of a Covenant ship unlike any he'd seen before. It was holding position a few hundred meters above. Its pulse turrets moved individually to partition the LC like a frog under the lens.

That somehow wasn't enough to stop whoever was in the building from shooting through the windows at the scores of Jackals that were marching across Grid-20. Bullets pinged off of three advancing phalanxes of blue and red shields, picking off some but not enough to stop them all.

Stewards slowed the convoy to a stop. It was strange to see the two sides fighting and killing each other over a piece of property that wasn't even theirs. Moreover, he wasn't sure what to do: to run in guns blazing or to let them keep killing each other. The presence of that ship made the second option more palatable.

"Think Dr. Schonberg's still in there, sir?" One of Ambers' men asked.

"Good question." Stewards said. "Al, any word from Athena yet?"

Al shook his head. "She stopped responding to my comm requests half an hour ago."

"Perfect." Stewards tightened his grip on the wheel as he weighed their options. "Alright Jinx, listen up. That's too much for us to handle. With that ship up there I doubt we'll even get close. We'll circle back to Hayth and-"

Al held up a finger as he pressed another against his ear piece. He tried saying "hello" to someone several times but obviously got no response. "Sir, I'm picking up on a signal. It's...Schonberg's personal comm. He's...giving orders to someone."

"Can you respond to him?"

"No. The interference is still too strong. My signal isn't getting through. He has to be somewhere..." He slowly trailed off as he looked at the encroaching storm. "There...the signal's strongest in that direction. He's heading northeast of here. I don't know how far he is though."

Stewards hesitated. He looked to Land Control then to the storm and back. "Change of plans, Jinx. We're heading after Schonberg. We'll secure him then return to Hayth. Land Control will have to come later. Get your gear on."

The crew stopped to place on their head-scarfs and slipped their thermal goggles over their eyes. Once they were set, Stewards hit the accelerator and made a U-turn. He drove them down to a small three way. They broke off leftward towards the storm.

The tidal wave of dust grew in magnitude before them. The shadow fell over them first, then the outer bands which whispered over them with the increasing speed of the wind. Then the world darkened to a brown hue as they entered into its depths.

A long trip followed suit. To Stewards, it was nigh near impossible to tell exactly how long they drove for. The most he could tell was that the roads and highways they were using felt endless. Al kept listening in to Schonberg's conversations all the while. But the further they drove after him and the deeper into the storm they went, the less Al could hear what the doctor was saying. His attempts at contacting him were met with futile bursts of static.

Soon the signal cut out altogether.

Stewards persisted despite the unending sting of the dirt pelting the exposed parts of his skin.

They reached what he guessed to be halfway down a neighborhood when the road disappeared. They could have been flying through the air for all he knew since there was no distinction between the ground and the dust swirling around them. At one point he even thought he heard the drives of a starship flying far overhead.

Then he saw something on the thermals that stuck out from the cold blue ruins and purple gales. He nearly missed it as he passed: a blob of red, yellow and orange lying on the ground.

"Hold it!" He ordered.

The convoy slowed to a halt. Stewards hopped out of his Hog.

"What is it!?" Al asked over the bellowing winds

Stewards looked at the heat signature. It was dim but visible. "I think someone's there."

:********:

"You'll live to regret this".

He'd heard those words before, from himself at a maglev station on Miridem. It was when he'd first met Stewards. Perhaps without realizing it, O'Reilly had echoed his thoughts back to him with a greater weight than he could have ever imagined. Because now there was something deep down telling him that he'd now lived to regret not doing what he should have.

He drove through the storm with the guilt of knowing he'd left his friend to his death, a death of blood loss and slow suffocation by dirt. He stayed in the storm looking for him for, well, he didn't even know how long. There was never a sign of him or a trace. He would have used his thermal goggles to find him if he'd had them. He didn't.

Eventually he knew he'd used up too much time. Still, he delayed going back to Hayth for as long as he could in order to save O'Reilly from a situation he'd arguably put him in. He'd shot him, drugged him. The one thing he hadn't done was thrown him out the Warthog. But what else could he have done back there?

As he looked for any sign of O'Reilly's face, the faces of others appeared in his mind's eye. Olivia. Arthur. Christa.

He had to make sure they were safe.

He had to find O'Reilly.

He couldn't do both.

Duncan summoned the will to decide. He took a good look at the winds to see which way they were blowing and used them to plot his bearings. He whispered an apology to his old friend, a friend that probably didn't want to be found, and drove southwest.

The arduous journey stretched on as the roads shortened or disappeared beneath the power of the storm. Maybe minutes passed, or hours, before he breached through the curtain of swirling earth. He came out onto an open plain that stretched all the way to the outskirts of the ruins where Hayth was. Using the location of Hicetas in the bright morning sky he confirmed that he was coming from the west.

It was a straight shot to Hayth's wall. However, he could see that Operation TROJAN was truly well underway. Shots were going out from firefights between the ODSTs and AMADDS. Added to the ballistic showcase were bolts of green plasma and pink needle rounds that created a deadly triangle of fire.

The realization that the Jackals had reached Hayth before him put a sinking feeling in his gut. He floored the accelerator. The Hog shot across the open ground as he navigated through the outer ruins on the town's outskirts.

There were noticeably less AMADDS firing from the ramparts. Nearly all the machine guns above the eastern gate were unoccupied or burning as the gate itself lay wide open. The remaining platoon's worth of mercenaries there were defending against two platoons of Helljumpers and twice as many Jackals fighting in the immediate area. The ODSTs were sandwiched between the AMADDS on the wall at their front and the alien scavengers at their backs. They traded fire with both from behind their pods, from the corners of sinking buildings and behind large boulders. The Jackals marched on in agile phalanxes. They were letting the troopers' efforts bounce off their shields as they advanced along streets leading to the gate.

One such phalanx lay directly in Duncan's path. A few Jackals in the rear saw him coming and tried to warn the others. He gunned it through their formation, slamming into their backs and sending several flying away or tumbling over the hood. The others reeled at his sudden appearance while those ahead turned to hurl plasma in his direction. He ducked below the dashboard to avoid the green bolts that burst through his windshield. He reached into his pocket and pulled out the pen-like beacon device, the third object Commander White had entrusted to him. He thumbed the button on its side, activating a signal that would identify him with a friendly IFF tag on the HUD of any ODST that saw him. The last thing he needed was his own guys shooting at him.

He drove on into the range of the troopers stationed to the left and right of the road. None of them fired on him. They simply looked on, probably curious and bewildered at seeing a dust-covered friendly donned with enemy gear and arriving in an enemy vehicle. They would make the connections soon enough. He was just glad they didn't kill him.

Duncan came before the gate. As he'd hoped, the AMADDS above didn't shoot either, mistaking him for a friendly. They weren't entirely wrong but they weren't entirely right either.

He'd reached to within two meters of the threshold when a burst of sizzling green static washed over his vehicle. The Hog's engine went offline and it skidded to a stop. He peered behind him with his MA5 at the ready. A plasma bolt struck his left arm, causing him to drop his rifle. He winced at the searing pain and tried to hold in a shout. Yet he got enough of a glance to see that a band of 20 or so Jackals were running after him, regardless of the resistance from the troopers. Leading the charge were several gray-feathered and gray-armored Skirmishers sprinting at breakneck speeds.

Not waiting for his electronics to return, Duncan got out and ran for the gates while clutching his wounded arm. When he crossed the threshold he stopped dead in front of a triple-barreled machine gun. Set just 20 meters past the gate was a sandbag wall with a turret at which Quinn was at the helm, guarding the area with the rest of Jester at his side. Quinn recognized him in time to avoid cutting him down.

"What're you doing here, Iris!?" He shouted over. "I thought you were with Riley and the captain!"

Duncan didn't have the words to explain himself or the wherewithal to parcel out any more lies. He doubted they would be taken as gospel anyway. Not anymore. Plus he was on the receiving end of too much firepower to try anything risky. He saw Thurston among them. He was trying to get a good look at the front to figure out what was going on.

Quinn tensed. So did Duncan at hearing the fast footsteps coming up behind him.

"Get out of the way!"

Duncan ran to the left side of the road. Quinn instantly started up the turret and poured hot led into the ranks of the Jackals bursting through the gate. A handful went down before the rest setup a hasty shield wall and jogged forward.

Duncan kept running, intent on reaching the intersection at the end of the street that would take him where he needed to go. While staying close to the houses, he noticed the gunfire and explosions going off in the area where the western gate would be. Moreover, through the alleyways between the houses he spotted a similar sight in the areas where the southern and northern gates were, just with plasma in the mix. The fighting had boiled over into the town itself. Only the eastern gate had held. Now that too was lost.

He was close to the intersection when he looked back. Half of Jester was engaging the Jackals storming into Hayth. The other half lay either dead or dying behind the sandbags. Quinn was maintaining a steady rate of fire with Thurston giving him support with an AR.

A hail of needler rounds streamlined into their position. Though most bounced off the gun palisades or stuck harmlessly into the sandbags, a quartet of lucky shards each made a loud THUCK as they stabbed into Quinn's chest. They exploded in a fine purple mist of electrolyzed particles that blew a chunk out of his torso and hurled him off the gun. Thurston was too close and got knocked down by the blast. The Jackals broke ranks and surged over their position.

Duncan pried himself away from the scene. He arrived at the intersection and turned left.

The sound of Jackal footsteps was never far behind. He stuck close to the storefronts along the left side of the road so that he could routinely take cover. Trash bins, lampposts, public chairs, anything and everything helped him avoid taking bolts to the back. Some of his pursuers even broke into the nearby stores. He heard them shoot down anyone that got in the way of them and whatever they were after.

The Dennis & Grandson's store entered his view. He preemptively whipped out his M6 before running into the doors. The lights were off. The aisles were dark. There was no sound beyond that of his boots crunching over the broken glass left in piles at the entrance. He held his weapon at the ready, regularly looking back to make sure he wasn't followed. He got to the central pathway between the two columns of aisles. There was no sign of anyone through the shelves. However, he spotted two small pairs of footprints in the dust on the floor that were accompanied by a larger pair. He carefully followed them towards the unoccupied back counter.

"Anyone here?" He whispered.

No one answered.

"Olivia? Christa? Arthur? Anyone? You guys here? Someone answer-"

He stopped halfway when he saw movement behind the counter. The barrel of an M6 slowly rose up to meet him. Olivia stared at him through the gun sights. Realizing she probably couldn't see his face due to the sunlight being right behind him, Duncan quickly held up a hand. "It's me. Don't worry, it's me."

Olivia slowly lowered the pistol and got up, albeit hesitantly. She looked past him to the doors. She brushed loose strands of hair out of her eyes and gave him a smile full of trepidation. "Didn't you say you'd be here to help us get the shutters up earlier? What ever happened to that, huh?"

"I...got held up."

Two small heads peeked over the counter. Arthur and Christa stared at him, Christa with relief, Arthur with a quiet suspicion.

"Duncan!" Christa shouted, practically on the verge of tears.

"Shhh, keep it down. There's-"

"Riley was looking for you." Arthur interrupted.

"...What?"

Olivia nodded. "He came by earlier; said he was looking for you. He thought you were acting strange or something. Did you see him on your way here?"

"You'll live to regret it." Though no one said it out loud, Duncan heard the voice echoing in his head. He cautiously nodded.

A loud, chittering squawk killed the conversation.

"Get down." Duncan said and braced himself against the end of the shelves between the fourth and fifth aisles. Olivia, Christa and Arthur ducked back down.

Duncan peeked out. There was a Skirmisher standing atop the roof of the two-story house on the opposite side of the road. It was squawking for all to hear while scanning the streets with a needle rifle. Teams of shield-carrying Jackals came into view, one on either side of the road. A group of four stopped at the front doors. A Jackal with a red shield he presumed to be the leader pushed its way in.

Duncan slipped back behind the shelves and listened. The number of footsteps in the store multiplied into four distinguishable movement patterns. He crouched down and risked peeking out to his left. The Jackals had split up. Two were scouring through that side with shields raised, each one taking an aisle to search. He shuffled to his right and saw the other two doing the same on that side. The buzzard with the red shield was heading down the aisle closest to him and was halfway to the end.

Duncan ran a hand through his tactical vest. It took a fearful few seconds before he found just one more clip for his magnum. He didn't have anywhere near as much ammo as he needed. What he did have however was a pistol and a plan.

He quietly took a water bottle from a small pack above him. He swung it far to his right. The crackling impact caught the attention of the leader and its subordinate further down. The former turned in that direction, exposing its side profile; a fatal mistake.

Duncan swiveled out. He fired two shots through the side of the leader's skull that elicited a surprised squawk as its brains spewed out. As it slumped to the floor, the second Jackal on his right gave a series of alarmed clucks and twisted back around. Duncan had already gotten down onto his belly to limit the thing's sightline on him while he in turn got a bead on its foot. He fired once, throwing its leg out from under it so that it tumbled forward. It put a hand to the ground to catch itself, leaving its shield out of place. A follow-up headshot finished it off.

He was shuffling over to his left side when the third Jackal turned the corner there, bringing the two of them face to face. Duncan immediately sprang up before it could level its plasma pistol. He grabbed its gun arm with his left hand in order to force it upward, simultaneously holding back its shield with his right to keep it from bashing him aside. The Jackal fired wildly into the ceiling. He tried forcing it back but it wouldn't budge. He tried forcing its shield out of the way and it didn't work. It was surprisingly strong and it screeched what was likely a line of curses at him in its own language. The plasma pistol released a high-pitched hum and began to violently shake as an angry green ball of energy gathered at the barrel. The thing was going to try to burn his face off.

A guttural squawk from behind made Duncan aware of the fourth Jackal. He risked looking and saw that it was flanking along the aisles on his right. The moment it turned the corner it brought up its plasma pistol, aimed and was shot in the shoulder.

From behind the counter, Olivia squeezed off two more shots which bounced off its energy shield as it swung around to face her. It fired off a burst of plasma bolts that made her duck back down.

Duncan shifted his grip from the third Jackal's gun arm up to the pistol itself. He quickly side-stepped, aggressively pulled down to aim the weapon at the fourth and pried the enemy's fingers off the trigger. The overcharged bolt released with a fizz and sailed straight into the target, knocking it back and temporarily disabling its shield. Olivia rose up again with the perfect timing needed to put two more rounds through its head.

Refocusing on the last one, Duncan tightened his grip on the plasma pistol under the panicked stare of its owner. It was too scared about what he was doing there to see that he'd aimed his M6 at its exposed gun arm. He fired a shot that blew through its elbow, earning a pained screech. Its grip faltered. He yanked the arm down and thrust his knee into the joint to dislocate it with a snap. More screeching. He finally pulled the plasma pistol away and tossed it aside, freeing his left hand to deliver a hard punch to the thing's face that snapped its head back. He grabbed its shield in the same motion and yanked it out of the way, incidentally pulling the arm-gauntlet off and causing the alien to pivot. He recaptured the creature by its unbroken limb and pushed it across the aisle to slam it back-first into the shelves. The thing was screeching louder now. He restrained it there while he pressed the M6 to its chest. Two shots made it hock up blood and spittle. Still, it refused to die and snapped its jaws at his neck. He pulled it up and slammed its back even harder against the shelf. Once it was disoriented, he forced the barrel into the underside of its jaw and squeezed the last round up through its brain.

The Jackal went limp. He threw it down to the floor. Exhausted, he stooped down, hands on knees, and took in a few breaths.

A vocal chittering came from his right. He froze at the sight of a skirmisher. It was standing at the other end of the aisle close to the doors, needle rifle in hand. It saw the body of its comrade in front of him and unleashed an ear-grating screech.

Duncan knew his M6 was empty. Reloading wasn't an option. It would just shoot him before he could finish. Running wasn't a good idea either. It could drop him before he got away. It had him dead to rights.

The Skirmisher raised its rifle only for the stock of an MA5B to come crashing down onto the back of its skull. It groaned and collapsed onto the floor, revealing the ODST standing behind it.

The trooper drained a quarter of a clip into it, kicked the dead alien in the head and, satisfied, depolarized his visor. Duncan recognized his thick eyebrows, tanned skin, prominent jaw and distinctive Indian features to be that of Gunnery Sergeant Singh. Singh sized him up and grinned knowingly. "Service number?"

Duncan snapped back to reality and stood straighter. "35549-80061-DI."

Singh nodded, tapped two fingers to his helmet and pointed them back at him in a mock salute. "Welcome back to the pack, Iris. We missed you."

More ODSTs came in through the doors, fanning out to secure the store. Seeing them, Duncan remembered something critical. He ran off to the back counter. Olivia was there looking down at the Jackal corpses. Arthur and Christa looked equally terrified of them.

He held out his hand. "Olivia, give me your gun."

"What?"

"I need your gun. Hurry."

Not sure what was going on, she moved to hand the pistol over. She'd almost dropped it into his hand when she spotted the first ODSTs reaching the back of the store. She flinched. Duncan grabbed the gun out of her hand and holstered it. She looked confused. Then the ODSTs came towards them, several briefly taking aim at her before deducing that she wasn't a threat. As Singh arrived at Duncan's side, her eyes dashed between the two of them and widened with shock.

Christa stayed confused. Arthur, however, had figured out what was going on and it showed. As Singh patted Duncan on the back and told him about the great job he'd done, Duncan could only pay attention to the tears welling up in Arthur's eyes. He saw confusion give way to betrayal, then a heated anger that melted into sadness. The kid broke down crying. Olivia went over to hold him. Christa kept looking between them, Duncan and the ODSTs, trying to understand what was right in front of her. Hearing Arthur's cries caused her to start responding the same way out of fear and worry.

They were too young for this. Duncan wished they didn't have to experience any of this. He wished much hadn't happened the way that it did. Yet what else could he have done? At least they were safe. He'd settle for that if it meant one less person that he knew didn't have to die. But why the crying? Why was Arthur crying? How did he understand any of this when Christa obviously didn't?

Someone else walked through the front doors. An ODST came up to the counter and stopped beside him. Duncan didn't recognize the helmet type. However, he had seen it twice before on Lieutenant Commander Cordova and once again on his last transmission to the man that had recruited him for this operation.

The 'ODST' took off his slit-visor'd helmet, revealing the whitened hair and questioning face of Commander White. The ONI agent took a cursory glance at the three behind the counter then set his sights on Duncan. "Friends of yours?"

Duncan hesitated. Olivia, still hugging Arthur close to her chest, answered for him with a slow shake of her head and a hateful, disgusted glare.

"These are the civilians I wanted to secure, sir."

"You secured them alright." Singh laughed, patting him on the back again. "And you got us a way in too. That was some nice driving you did back there. You helped us punch a hole big enough to finally get in. You're a real lifesaver, Iris. You saved yours and theirs."

Had he really? The way the three of them were staring at him made him think otherwise.

White rested a hand on his shoulder. "Hey."

Duncan finally turned to him.

"Good work."

Duncan nodded with a palpable reluctance.

"Come on. Let's move out. We'll come back later and-"

"Excuse me sir, but I'd like to stay with them."

White had turned to leave and stopped mid-step. "Say again?"

"With your permission, sir, I'd like to stay with them to make sure they make it through this."

White shifted his jaw in thought. He looked to Singh who stepped up. "I can stay with him, sir, me and two of my guys. We'll make sure they weather through this in one piece."

"...That's what you want, Iris?"

"...Yessir..."

"Then we'll be back." White slipped his helmet back on and walked off to the doors. Singh gave out orders for two of his men to stay with him. The rest of them followed the commander.

Duncan watched them leave and disappear into the day with guns raised, ready for anything on their push to Hayth's heart. He kept looking even as they disappeared from sight. He walked up to the doors and stayed there. He didn't dare turn around again to face the three behind the counter, afraid of what he would find there if he looked.

:********:

The largest building in the human settlement was proving to be more of a labyrinth of corridors, empty offices and armed guards not worth their salt. In the two former cases, Izari found that most of them held little evidence related to the presence of his target. In the latter case, the enemy were little more than rabble wearing feeble vests. They had insufficient awareness to notice his camouflaged form before he gutted them.

He was waiting for something amounting to a real challenge. So far there was little of that driving him aside from his deep devotion to the Gods and their prophets.

When a Sangheili reaches one of the pinnacles of the warrior society they are born into, it is only natural for them to want to ascend even higher. Why? Why not? What could a good warrior do except become a better one? He instinctually searched for any foe that could satisfy or entertain him as a warrior. However, that was harder to find here than he first thought.

Before this, as part of a joint operation between the Ministry of Resolution, the Ministry of Inquisition and the Ministry of Preservation, Izari and his team were investigating a Kig-Yar pirate group known as the Chu'ot Marauders. The pirate crew was one of many that their division had been surveilling across Covenant space. The focus of the three ministries mainly revolved around pirating activities near the Kig-Yar's homeworld in the Y'Deio system. Their work was three-fold. The Ministry of Inquisition conducted secret investigations into the pirate crews, primarily via Kig-Yar agents planted within those groups. The Ministry of Preservation would put down any dissenting factions among the pirates if any heretical or rebellious movements or actions were undertaken. The Ministry of Resolution would take Preservation's place if it was discovered that internal factors within these pirate groups were involved in affairs relating to the Covenant's war effort. That included any sort of undermining of Covenant forces, trading Covenant resources with humans or making alliances with them.

The Kig-Yar could not be trusted to operate free of scrutiny and so the task force that Izari was a part of prioritized cracking down on the dissidents of their species. His most recent mission began with the reports of an informant for the Ministry of Inquisition that was planted within the Chu'ot Marauders. The group was actually an alliance between two smaller pirate crews from different sub-species of Kig-Yar; the Ruuthians and the T'vaons. The informant had learned that a shipmistress, Nezith Fel, the captain of one of their ships unironically named the Honorable Spoils, was actively trading with humans. Specifically, she was trading items she'd raided from glassed worlds to a rogue world rebelling against the main human order. What alarmed the ministerial officers of Inquisition was a recent shipment of thousands of fusion cores delivered to the humans there. What was given in exchange was valuable information pertaining to another colony, one they'd already glassed, where more rebels like the ones they traded with were living. It was detestable to think the infidels would re-defile a cleansed world. That wasn't the point though. The point was that the Marauders wanted to use this information to attack these other rebels and to seize all of their possessions. The Kig-Yar's allies helped them further by reportedly planting tracking devices on several ships, vessels traded to the allies that these humans planned to betray.

Even though he hated the humans, there was something uniquely unsettling about them betraying each other to bring about the other's destruction. It was as if they were treating the Covenant, or parts of it, as pawns in their conquering game against each other. Didn't they know that the wrath of the Gods lay upon them all? That incineration was decreed for all their kindred regardless of sides? They were useful fools of course since this would help the Covenant find and kill them faster. It was just uncomfortable. The idea of being an unwitting pawn was detestable to him.

Toha had made it seem as if the humans were actually the pawns and that the Covenant were the ones controlling them and the Kig-Yar. Gruko merely shrugged at either idea, believing that as long as every human was slaughtered then it really didn't matter; an equally fair point.

Izari's commanding officer set them on this mission with two objectives. The first was to find and capture the leader of the humans on this fallen world, this Major 'Benjamin Kirkley'. Because of his high rank the Ministry of Inquisition wanted to interrogate him to see what information they could gain: from the coordinates of more human worlds as well as their homeworld to the tactics of the human rebels and their goals. Second, they would assassinate the Chu'ot Marauders' present leader, Nezith. She would then be replaced by their informant who unbeknownst to her was one of her most trusted subordinates; her younger brother Sav Fel. The pirate group would be allowed to continue their dealings with the rebel humans in exchange for more information on other worlds. The only difference would be that through Sav, they would get to learn more details about those deals as well as be able to influence the information requested.

Izari personally disapproved of the idea. He preferred annihilating all the humans and all the Kig-Yar that traded with them. That said, his commanding officer was of the opinion that having the humans sell each other out would bring about the end of this war much faster. Ultimately superiority of rank won the argument.

Izari was bolting his way down passages on the building's tenth floor. The four arrowed reticle of his plasma rifle stayed blue for much of his observations in sifting through office stations and turning corners. Whenever the arrows turned red, he would swiftly dispatch the nuisance on the other side. Twelve humans had met that fate so far since he got in. None of them was Kirkley. They knew what he looked like, they knew he was on this planet, they just didn't know precisely where he was.

Izari's growing impatience made him flip tables and cast down inventory shelves in his way. He left blood in his wake all the while.

After clearing another set of offices, he moved down the next corridor and considered taking a human alive to get information out of them. He reached a long line of windows and came to a stop.

The southern side of the settlement that he could see was serving as a battleground. There were firefights in the streets between the Jackals, the shock troops and the rebels. He could see the off-shoots of those skirmishes in the routine flashes, puffs of light and the numerous smoke trails rising into the sky. It was almost beautiful.

Motion caught his eye. He looked down to the street directly below. A dozen of the black-armored imps were assembling at positions outside the surrounding fence. They formed a line that stretched out of view to either side of the building. They were sealing it off and preventing the escape of anyone within. That would probably be a problem for his extraction plans.

A second spectacle grasped his attention. A cluster of insertion pods were descending towards the town. Their chutes slowed them while they punched through cloud after cloud until they slammed down onto the southeastern hill.

More reinforcements.

Izari kept moving. He searched several more offices and found nothing. The longer he searched the more infuriated he became. He was getting ready to take out his anger on whoever or whatever he saw next. He turned another corner and leveled his plasma rifle at a translucent Sangheili on the other end of the corridor.

He lowered his weapon and the shimmering figure did the same.

"Gruko?"

The Sangheili nodded. "Is Toha on the other side then?"

"He should be done already." Izari picked up a faint broadcast signal on his heads-up display. His armor's translation software played it back to him in his own language. A human male was giving out orders for others to follow. It was weak but it was coming from the door on his left near the center of the passage. He quietly approached it. Gruko followed his lead.

They stopped on either side of the door. Gruko looked to his commanding officer and received the permitting nod.

Gruko turned, raised a boot and slammed it hard enough to break the entire thing clean off its hinges.

A flash of blinding light and a burst of air and heat blew Izari clear off his feet. He tumbled end over end back down the corridor. He stopped himself by clawing his hands into the floor itself. His energy shieling was gone. The bar on his display was blaring a red warning. He felt like a Megalekgolo had kicked him square in the stomach.

Fire now filled the corridor. Smoke poured out of a gaping hole in the wall where the door had been. Sunlight streamed in from the other side.

He got back up and walked warily into the smoke. He would have missed his subordinate altogether had he not seen him through the haze. Gruko was sitting slouched against the wall on the opposite side. He wasn't moving. Izari ran to him.

Much of Gruko's armor was either charred or broken away, exposing burnt skin and parts of a ribcage that had gotten blown outward. His helmet was sliced into two jagged halves, the left half having disappeared to the same place as a good portion of his head

As his own shields hummed back into place, Izari lay a hand on his shoulder. He said a short prayer for him. Finishing, he took his plasma rifle from his limp hand and parted with the words; "Sleep well, brother."

He strode to the hole where the door once was. The room inside was filled with fire, smoke and light that came in from another hole blown through the exterior wall. The settlement was partly visible on the other side.

Izari tightened his grasp on his two plasma rifles. The humans had set a trap for them and he'd led one of his own right into it. He swore that he would find this Kirkley and make him suffer dearly for this deception.

He forged on, searching one corridor after the next and cutting down anyone he found. Still no Kirkley. He changed direction for what he believed to be the center of the building. He comm'd his last subordinate on the way. "Toha, are you there?"

"I yet breath, commander."

"But Gruko does not. We triggered a trap and the explosion killed him. I'm on my way to the center. Meet me there."

"...Understood."

The short hesitation was cause for some concern. The two of them were long-time comrades. He would need Toha to save his grief for later. Here they still had a mission to complete.

Weaving down the last of the corridors, he reached the final one left on the floor. He passed through the door on the end and entered into a large, dark room. It was less a room though and more an additional space, containing scaffolding and exposed crossbeams from the original construction; a room that was yet to be turned into a room.

At its center was what he thought to be a glass skywalk shaped into a circle. It was ringed by pillar supports that stretched down to a wider chamber below the glass.

Izari stopped at the edge and looked down. The chamber beneath was actually comprised of two floors. The one immediately below him was framed in by the same pillars so that he could see straight down to the floor after that. At the bottom was a room with a wide space beyond the supports. There was an immaculate carpet covered in winding vineyard designs and a squad of human guards.

His analytical mind worked quickly. He counted the guards patrolling the floor right below as well as those on the one after that. Examining their patrol routes came to him without problem.

Though there were no footsteps, he wasn't surprised to hear a voice come from right next to him. "Is that him, commander?"

Izari knew who Toha was looking at. They both gazed at the human at the center of the lower floor. It looked older than the rest around it and, much unlike the rest, was carrying only a sidearm. It wore the officer's headgear called a 'cap' and rectangular patches with tiny gold bars on its shoulders that further distinguished it from its underlings. It paced around, routinely pressing a comm-device in its ear to say something to someone else. It would stop regularly to shout profanities about a person named 'Wagner'.

"He is not as graceful as I expected him to be." Toha added.

"You expected him to be graceful?"

"Well, whatever that means for humans." Toha pointed down. "That wreaks of filth that does not know their time has come."

"Then let us break the news to him." Izari deactivated his camo so that Toha could see him handing over Gruko's plasma rifle. "Support me from above. Clear out the upper level first."

Toha reverently took it. "You will be the one to carry that worm out?"

"Either it or its head depending on how much trouble it should cause me. I'll take care of the lights." Izari reactivated his camouflage and walked off to the left side of the skywalk.

"Let us be done with it then." Toha said and headed right.

Izari perceived that the two floors below were lit by the lights of the single chandelier attached to the bottom of the skywalk. He used the beats of his hearts to time the attack. On the third beat, he activated a plasma grenade and tossed it down onto the center of the glass.

The grenade brightened then detonated, destroying the glass and the chandelier to cast the space below into a pitch-black darkness.

Izari's enhanced optics activated automatically. The function highlighted the environment in muted greens and the targets in vibrant reds. He hurled himself headlong into the open abyss.

The drop was short. At the last moment he performed a roll that transferred the force of his fall into a forward leap across the lower floor. His heightened mind processed that he was jumping over the fallen chandelier towards the human he believed to be Kirkley. The Major was still turning to see what had just happened. Izari was right on top of it before it could react and delivered an open-palmed strike to his target's forehead. Kirkley was thrown backward by an impact strong enough to incapacitate it.

Izari skidded to a halt across the carpet. He saw that the eight human guards around him were all trying to see their way through the dark. He decided to help them. The crimson blades of his energy sword flickered to life. That way the other guards could see the look on one of their comrades' faces as the sword arced down across its shoulder and came out through the waste. The body fell apart in a spray of blood and the blade deactivated instantaneously.

The guards hollered in alarm and began firing wildly in his direction. But Izari was already dashing towards his next victim.

His blade appeared again as it scythed through the neck of another, sending its head spinning away from its body in a bloody spiral before disappearing again.

Amidst the screams and random fire, his blade returned to life halfway across the room to impale a third victim through the chest. It disappeared again.

A moment later it manifested to cut diagonally across the head of a frantic guard, vanished and reappeared buried in the stomach of another that had backed up into a pillar.

Up above, Toha fired twin bursts of plasma into the humans on the upper floor. He moved around in order to avoid being located by the survivors.

Izari held no such qualms about being found. It was the enemy that had every reason to hide. He dismembered the third to last guard with a quick strike to its legs, cutting them out at the knees. The thing screamed and tried to crawl away. Izari stomped on its back and rammed his blade through its spine up to the hilt, burning the floor in the process.

He heard a clink sound and leaped away before the grenade detonated, spewing shrapnel that flared his shields and left him visible. He searched angrily for its source and found the last two guards positioned behind a pair of pillars on the opposite side.

The braver of the two wheeled around to shoot him while the weaker one cowered behind his cover. He whipped out his plasma rifle with his freehand and fired three shots across the room. The braver guard fell with half its face burned away. He returned the rifle to his belt, deactivated his sword and strode quietly around the ring of pillars.

The last guard didn't notice his arrival. It was too busy clutching its rifle close to its chest as it sat there crying. He decided to show it mercy. He ignited his sword right next to it so that the edge barely grazed its neck. He wanted to give it at least a chance to die honorably.

The guard flinched. It cried more. He waited, waited until it finally gripped its rifle tighter and bared its teeth defiantly. Then it took aim at him. He drove his sword through its neck just as it fired off a shot; a miss. Izari hadn't missed however. The human's head slid off its shoulders without a sound and the body fell away, revealing the glowing gash in the pillar behind it.

He turned on Kirkley. Much to Izari's surprise and the officer's credit, Kirkley was back on its feet. It saw the sword and pulled out its pistol.

Izari ran towards it to shrink its window to fire. Kirkley got off two rounds that flared his shields. He swung his sword in a forward arc that sliced uncleanly through weapon and limb alike.

Kirkley screamed as its decapitated gun and dismembered right hand flew away. Izari lunged and grabbed its neck, using the momentum to thrust it against the pillar behind it. The hard impact reduced its screams to a dull groan.

He raised his sword to Kirkley's throat and kept the tip just a few centimeters short of the skin. There was still something he needed to confirm. He spoke in the clearest version of the main human language that he knew. "Are you Ben-ja-min Kirk-ley?"

The groaning continued. Izari squeezed its throat harder and released it to let it take in ragged mouthfuls of air. "Benja-min Kir-kley?" He asked more forcefully.

"Benjamin Kirkley." The human growled. "Get it right. And who're you? You're obviously not human or Jackal. An Elite?"

Izari heard the last plasma burst from above and the dropping of a body. A moment later, Toha landed down on the floor behind him.

"We are shadows." Izari said, partially undoing his camouflage so that only the red glow of his visor could be seen. "And we have come for you, Kirk-ley, to drag you into the abyss with us. You will be taken for inquisition and you will answer our questions."

Kirkley glowered at him. The major cleared its throat and spat on his visor. "Screw you."

Fiery rage burned through Izari's being. He dropped Kirkley onto the floor, not to let it go, but to pin it beneath his boot. Izari put his sword away and took out two attached cylinders from his belt. He pried the cylinders apart, activating a green arc of wire-like plasma energy that formed between them.

"You first."

Izari had the energy garrote around Kirkley's neck before it could react. He pulled it taught and held the creature down beneath his boot while he suffocated it. After ten seconds its attempts to grasp his weapon became panicked flailing and desperate gasps. After ten more seconds of shaking, it started going limp. He removed the garrote right then while his quarry was on the border between unconsciousness and death.

He made sure the human was still breathing then applied his energy sword to the area where its hand was cut off to cauterize the wound. He picked Kirkley up and lay it over his shoulder. "Let's move."

Izari led Toha to the closest door which slid away to let them through. It was almost odd that it did. He was sure a security alert would have gone off by now to lock down this room, or any other that he'd broken into. It hadn't. He was beginning to realize that none of them had.

He ignored it for now as they passed again into the corridors of the eighth floor. They turned a corner with Toha taking the lead. They reached a four-way intersection at the end. Toha scanned all three directions with his plasma rifles. "Which way?"

Izari eyed the doors on the other ends. "Forward."

They went straight ahead. However, while they were crossing the intersection the door up ahead slid open.

Izari saw them first: a squad of the human shock troops already taking aim. They opened fire. He stepped into the passage on the right in time to avoid the barrage. Toha wasn't so lucky. Multiple rounds struck him all over, pushing his shields to the breaking point. He returned fire as he retreated into the left corridor.

"Where did they come from!?" Toha hissed.

"Doesn't matter! Whatever the reason, they knew to expect us! Let's-"

The door at the end of the left corridor slid open to reveal another squad of shock troops. They joined the fray, filling all four passageways with bullets, most of which struck Toha. He rolled back into the intersection and returned fire in both directions.

"Fall back!" He shouted. "I'll hold them here, commander! Withdraw!"

Izari nodded and dashed down the right corridor. He took out a grenade and threw it at the doors just to be on the safe side. It stuck and detonated, blowing down the barriers. There was thankfully nothing on the other side. He glanced back at his last subordinate. Toha was forcing the shock troops to retreat to the sides as they pulled wounded teammates out of the way. The fire kept coming. Toha's shields faltered then collapsed. The rounds battered then tore through his armor and into him. His resistance lessened as he fell to his knees under the sustained pressure.

Izari held in his rage and channeled it into his speed. He ran through the damaged doorway just as Toha slumped to the floor behind him. He came into a room with glass walls that offered a high view of the surrounding settlement. He didn't slow down. Instead, he cannoned straight through the glass and into the outside world.

His momentum carried him over the street and above the heads of the shock troops below. He fell several stories and landed hard on the rooftop of an adjacent house. His energy shields absorbed most of the impact. He forged ahead, leaping from rooftop to rooftop in a bid to reach what his display showed him was the northern side of the wall.

He bounded from balcony to balcony and from ledge to ledge for minutes on end, never stopping. He eventually reached a house bordering the rampart of the wall. There were no human rebels there to stop him. He took a running start. The resulting leap covered the distance between him and his goal. He landed and slid across the rampart. He quickly vaulted the wall to endure the 10-meter drop to the ground below.

The impact was harder on his armor and himself, blowing out his shields completely and lowering his own health bar by half. He took in a few deep breaths to recover.

The fighting in the north was far to his right and well into the nearest gate, too far for anyone to notice him. Once his stamina recovered and his shields returned, he set out on a dead run across the open plains of the northern outskirts.

:********:

Deaks listened to the reports coming in on his comm about camouflaged, special forces Elites being inside the Bastille Building. To him it wasn't that hard to believe. He could see the results for himself through the scope of his SRS-99. A quick upping of the magnification enabled him to see the building itself. He centered it on the smoke billowing out of where an explosion had gone off a minute ago. What he really wanted to know was where were the Elites now?

Earlier he had dropped in with Captain Ortega's 2nd Platoon onto the place called 'The Hill'. Upon leaving their pods, they were met with a light bout of resistance from the snipers posted in the windows of the U-shaped arrangement of housing units. It was nothing they couldn't handle. Ortega had him carry most of the weight in terms of counter-sniping while his teams secured the rest of the location. After shooting out three windows and nailing three targets, he was free to get onto the rooftop of the house with the best view of the Bastille.

He setup shop with his bipod and set his sights mostly on the target building. However, he regularly scanned across the town to pop other targets of interest; AMADDS that were often running somewhere else.

Then the news came in that a Covenant Special Forces Elite in active camo had escaped with Kirkley. It had leaped out the north side of the Bastille Building and was on its way to the wall. Because of the natural elevation from the Hill, he was able to see over and past the Bastille to the rest of Hayth. However, he didn't see anything out of the ordinary, that is until he looked beyond the wall.

Then he saw something peculiar; an apparently unconscious man being carried across the northern plains by...nothing at all.

Deaks grinned and took aim. He was looking at a 3-kilometer long shot with westerly winds from the incoming storm. He could see it coming on the horizon and could care less. It wouldn't stop him from doing what he'd wanted to do since the Molnar.

He pushed the scope to its maximum magnification. As he followed the man bobbing up and down on 'thin air', he made out the translucent figure of the Elite carrying him. The circle of his targeting reticle switched from a vacant blue to a deadly read as he centered it above Kirkley's forehead. Then he thought better of it and aimed just above his agape mouth.

"Hope hell feels worse than this, you inhuman piece of crap."

He pulled the trigger.

The thunderous report of his rifle echoed through the streets of Hayth. One and a half seconds later, the round itself punched through Kirkley's mouth with such force that it blew his face through the back of his head. The shot also pierced through the Elite carrying him, creating a combined spray of blue and red blood.

The Elite staggered forward but kept moving. However, it seemed to catch on that its charge was dead. It dropped the body and leaped into a sinking ruin before Deaks could pull off a follow-up.

"Lucky."

He scoped down to Kirkley's dead body and placed a Nav marker on it for the recovery team. "You, not so much."

:********:

Mr. Green had managed it all from behind the scenes. Since he'd taken Athena's data center and subdued the AI herself, he'd taken full control of Hayth. He opened all the gates to let Alpha and Bravo Companies in. Afterwards, he worked to shut off electricity in select areas across the town to put the AMADDS at a distinct disadvantage.

He'd also seen the Elites when they broke into the ground floor lobby. He purposefully kept the alarm from triggering to stop the rest of the building from knowing what was going on. He concocted a plan that he'd successfully ran past Commander White. He allowed the Elites to continue their carnage unabated. The purpose was to allow them to take care of the booby traps and remaining security forces holding out in the building. By doing so he would save the Helljumpers the stress and casualties that such an undertaking would entail.

He used two subroutines to stay in contact with the platoons securing the Bastille as well as with Corporal Deaks, Epsilon's sniper that was deployed to watch the windows with a few others. However, when the last Elite survived the trap set by Alpha Company's 1st Platoon, he realized that Deaks was the only one with the elevation needed to do what was necessary.

He delivered the update to the marksman when the Elite had broken out of the building. Deaks' skill paid off. Green could see it through the pair of cameras at the northern gate which recorded ODSTs of Alpha's 3rd Platoon heading out to recover Kirkley's body.

It was a job well done. Or half done. He remembered the other loose end he needed to tie off in order to help wrap things up. He used several cameras on the Bastille Building and the Hill to zoom in on the eastern horizon. Far above was the small but slowly enlarging purple dot of the Jackal ship.

Earlier, the craft had left orbit to assault Land Control after the Jackals had suffered major casualties there. It gave the resident ODSTs a fairly hard time before flying off. Then while the survivors of the two Jackal flanks headed for Hayth, the craft returned to the atmosphere and prepared to make a move on the town itself. The best time to strike would be before the storm set in and that time was now. Mr. Green and the UNSC Santiago had to handle it before then.

He contacted the man at the helm of the prowler. "Captain Del Rio, can you hear me?"

Del Rio replied quickly. "Yes, I can hear you Green."

"Good. I'm about to launch. Are you in position?"

"We're where we need to be and staying put. Just don't keep us waiting. It's hard to enough to keep looking at this thing as it is."

"Aye-aye, sir."

Green pulled up the linked interfaces for the remaining nukes before his core logic. He ran a hand through the threads of the missile operating systems for the last two SHIVA warheads. He reached in with the clipper of the launch codes he'd acquired from his latest victory and snipped one such thread, beginning the activation sequence. He locked the targeting software onto the Jackal ship and mapped out the launch path. With everything in place, he sat back and watched the second to last warhead fly off the flatbed beside the Bastille Building. The missile headed west in the opposite direction.

"SHIVA's away, captain."

"Copy that. Engaging."

Soon the Jackal ship was less than 5 kilometers away and closing fast. That speed died down as a flurry of Archer missiles materialized seemingly from thin air and honed in on it like a pack of hungry piranhas. The pulse lasers on the ship's underbelly shot outward to intercept them like fingers of plasma. They shifted through the sky, dicing and detonating one after the other until the last exploded less than 50 meters from its hull.

The Santiago chose that moment to uncloak itself. Its sky-blue camouflage faded away as the prowler's bat-like form appeared several kilometers south. The Jackal ship slowed down from its original course then changed direction to fly towards the prowler.

It had taken the bait.

The Santiago flew further south while firing off a second barrage of Archer missiles. These were met with a similar fate once they got within range of the pulse lasers. However, two of them managed to get through and hit their mark. The smoke cleared to show that they hadn't done much more than surface damage to the spiked beast. However, the premeditated move had proved one thing. It didn't have energy shields. That would make it much easier to destroy.

The Santiago launched a third barrage, the last. As it did, Green saw the SHIVA he'd launched now racing towards the rear of the Jackal ship. He'd plot a course for it that sent it far west enough for the Jackals to think it wasn't intended for them. Its path diverted north before Starship Row and pivoted back east once it got a certain distance past Hayth.

The prowler finally put more strength into its engines so that it flew away from the slower craft at unmatchable speeds. The Santiago quickly escaped the blast radius. The Jackal ship was still preoccupied with the missiles coming in front of it that it almost didn't bother to address the one flying in from behind. Then when it was just seconds away, the vessel righted itself to address the threat. Three pulse lasers fired at and eventually converged on the incoming warhead.

The SHIVA flew on for several more seconds before erupting in a flash of brilliant light less than 100 meters from its target. The Jackal ship simply disappeared in the enveloping illumination that forced part of the dust storm directly beneath it to split asunder, exposing and decimating the many hills on the ground below.

"Excellent form, Andrew." Green said, filled with satisfaction. "And that is what I call a job well done."

Iaculat – Shot