The Major
UNSC Broken Dreams
4 Hours After Rupture

"They're gettin' hammered down there," Rebar muttered, the team's sharpshooter shaking his head as they appraised the hologram. The render of New Mombasa shivered with static, the city tinted orange by the briefing table projectors. There were dozens of colour-coded dots sprinkled throughout the miniature landscape, red for Covenant, blue for friendlies, the latter of which had been reduced to a few isolated pockets of resistance.

"That's why they called for us," Holiday answered, the soldier's BDU creaking as she shifted her weight. Like Rebar, she preferred to travel light, her battledress sporting minimal armour plating in favour of pouches for extra ammo and grenades, the holster for her magnum strapped over her sternum. "ODST's couldn't do their jobs properly, so they send us in to clean their shit up."

"Who backs up the backup?" another of their comrades added. The orange highlights on his armour, and the smiley face decal etched onto his opaque visor, gave the man away as Joker. The more experienced members of the Navy ended up customising their armour as Joker did, but unlike ODST's, these privileges came from a lack of authority than seeing a lot of action, not that they'd been strapped for fights lately. "At least, that's our cover, right Major?"

The last of their number was pulled out of his thoughts at that, looking down to appraise the shotgun in his hands. It was an M90 pump action, as personalised as the rest of the team's gear was, with a flashlight mounted on the barrel, and ornate patterns laser-etched into the stock that could only be seen when the light caught it at just the right angle. A massive suppressor capped the weapon, adding around a foot to the gun's overall length.

"We are helping, just not the way these marines might think," the Major replied, stowing the shotgun on his back. "Time to get set, if there are no more questions?"

There weren't. The Major switched the hologram off, walking with his team down the aisle, the ship's winding corridors a mess of exposed cables and access panels. They had gone over the plan numerous times during the jump in, so they didn't need much of a briefing this close to the drop.

Earth had been discovered. Despite humankind's best efforts to keep the homeworld a secret, a Covenant fleet had jumped into orbit and had taken the port city after breaking through the orbital defences. Not even half a day had gone by and they'd overwhelmed the defenders, and intel suggested this was because the carrier that had spearheaded the alien fleet had been the flagship of a Prophet, who were the highest-ranking members in the entire Covenant.

Unfortunately, the carrier had jumped to slip-space before anyone could take the Prophet out, leaving a giant rupture right above the city that had wiped out most of the infrastructure, including the orbital tether that housed the city's space elevator, which had hung like a loose piece of string above the outskirts before collapsing hours ago.

The Major and his team had boarded the Broken Dreams to join the next wave of ODST reinforcements, their orders coming straight from the top. The Captain of the ship wasn't exactly pleased with having a bunch of spooks on board, but the Major couldn't care less what a Navy officer that preferred to fly over a battle thought about his mission.

Shock Troopers turned to watch the Major's team trundle into the hangar, adjusting their gear as they found their designated pods. The ones not wearing helmets didn't look pleased to see the group of officers, quickly turning away when one of the specialists caught them staring. The ship was quiet, the only sound being the clunk of reloading weapons and troopers loading their gear. The human/Covenant war had been going on for years, and now the aliens had set their hooves on Earth's soil – there was no desire for chat at this stage.

Their pods were the last four along the aisle, the Major slotting his shotgun into the holster next to his seat. Single Occupant Exoatmospheric Insertion Vehicles, or eggs as they were nicknamed, were single-man transports launched out of the belly of a ship from orbit, dropping a soldier feet-first into any battle at incredible speeds. They were equipped with thrusters to slow down the descent before they crashed into the ground, but apart from that, the occupant just had to pray they didn't get shot out of the sky before they landed.

The Major had used a drop pod before, he remembered all too well how he'd wet himself his very first time, his fellow cadets back then had never let him hear the end of it.

He turned and secured himself into the seat, seeing his team doing likewise, hooking the straps and belts over their thighs and arms. A one-minute countdown blared over the intercom, the pod door sliding shut as the vehicle began to twist in place. There was a small window directly in front of him, the Major looking out over the horizon of Earth. At least they had a good view.

He powered on the monitors to either side of the glass, the helmeted faces of his team showing up on one, the navigation controls on the other. The status of their four pods lit up in green, the Major flicking the button that would allow him to remotely control their heading. It took a lot of guts to let someone else glide your pod in for you, and he respected his team's trust in him.

"The rest of the troopers will be dropping in to assist with the evacuation," he announced over the shared radio. "We'll stick with them until we get close, then we break."

"The Covvies are all over the place," Holiday said, her helmet turning about as she read her tactical displays. "Why haven't they nuked the city yet? Save us the trouble?"

"They want data recovered, not destroyed," Rebar answered. "And don't talk about wiping Mombasa off the map. I grew up here."

"Ten seconds," the Major announced. "Time to drop into hell, everyone. Duty Calls."

The pods launched from the underside of the ship, shooting out like bullets as they angled towards the surface. The Major felt his pod's main engines ignite, his stomach flying up into his chest as he was fired. He gripped the joystick controls, watching his height indicator tick down.

Through the window, he could make out the dozens of other pods joining the formation, the egg-shaped vessels framed by damaged ships listing in Earth's low orbit. What looked like a frigate had been shredded to hundreds of pieces, turning the world up here into a floating graveyard of scrap.

Beyond that, the orbital tether rose from the clouds below, trapped in the gravity well. It should have been connected to a staging area on the ground, but the rupture had sent its lower struts crumbling hours ago, the wreckage wrapping over most of the surrounding country and leaving a line of destruction. To see such a huge project reduced to rubble sank the Major's heart.

They dropped by the burning pieces of scrap, the world turning into milky whiteness as they passed into the cloud layer, turbulence making the Major's stomach lurch. They streaked through the clouds until the city could be seen below. The sun was slipping beneath the horizon, but the raging fires caking the city illuminated the urban expanses, the flames casting it all in a yellow glow, the winding mazes of the streets framed by the black, sparkling waters of the ocean.

"Everything's burning…" Rebar muttered, clearly troubled even though his expressionless helmet was all the Major could see. Nobody consoled him, there would be time for that later.

"Ten clicks," Joker reported. "Are we going or… wait. Incoming!"

The Major winced as a bright ball of energy speared up from somewhere in the city sprawls below, travelling like a comet towards the falling drop pods. The concentrated orb of gas impacted one of the pods in front of the Major's own, the vessel turning into liquid metal as the plasma slagged it.

More plasma fire joined the first, dozens of thick energy bolts sailing into the air from the ground, another drop pod off to the left engulfed in the superheated gas, its occupant no doubt cooking alive inside his metal coffin.

"AA!" Holiday warned. "They were waiting for us!"

"Adjusting," the Major muttered, pivoting the joystick to the side. His pod narrowly dodged out of the way of a plasma bolt, three other pods following his movements as they engaged evasive maneuvers.

The ground was rapidly closing in, the height indicator slipping from kilometres to meters. His feeds shook with static as more anti-air fire flew past their pods, the sky chocked with plasma as the barrage continued. The team streaked past the very tops of the highest skyscrapers, well off their original heading as ground fire forced them off course.

"Pop your chutes," the Major ordered, his pod beginning to shake as it engaged the brakes. As the stabiliser panels began to extend, he watched in horror as a plasma bolt tracked his slowing pod, missing him by mere inches, but crashing into the building directly behind him. The splash damage was enough to rock him in his seat, the belts digging into his limbs as he was thrashed around, his pod spinning wildly out of control. He reached over and disengaged the autopilot guidance he had over his team, giving them manual control, gripping the handholds on the door as the g-forces began to stack.

His BDU was flashing red with the internal warning lights, alarms blaring at him as his pod bounced off another building like a billiard ball. He could feel the pod slowing, his engines were still working, but the city was rising up to meet him all the same, his body freezing up as he prepared for a hard landing.

Seela
Above the Streets of New Mombasa
1 Hour Before Rupture

She hated dropships. She hated them ever since she'd joined the Covenant, they were too small to have so many aliens crammed into the compartment bay, and the combined stench of the various species sent her sensitive snout into a twitching mess that further irritated her foul mood. This wasn't to mention her body's poor tolerance for inertia, a thing her male counterparts chuckled about behind her back, as if she had more reason to be perceived as the weaker gender.

There weren't many females serving in the Sangheili ranks of the Covenant, but Seela had slogged her way through a training program that had been rife with intolerant fanatics, and she liked to tell herself that being so resilient as a recruit had made her one of the strongest warriors to serve the Prophets today.

As she rose through the ranks and survived her many deployments, she'd eventually been assigned a squad to lead, giving her the same command as an Ultra, though she'd never held authority over a fellow Sangheili or Jiralhanae. She'd been assigned to reinforce some squad pinned down in the city below, a trivial duty, but at least she would claim some honour in the process and prove she could handle being in a proper Sangheili squad.

She fiddled idly with her white power armour, grumbling at how it pinched the creases in her leathery hide, particularly around the elbows and armpits. There was no female-specific armour, fitting her just like her brother's oversized hand-me-downs she'd been given when she was a child back on the homeworld.

She glanced over at her squad beside her. She had a mix of Unggoy and Kig-Yar at her disposal, numbering about ten in all. The Unggoy were squat, fat little creatures with methane tanks strapped to their backs, with rebreathers connecting their mouths to the gas canisters which they needed to breathe. She'd seen many of those tanks explode under sustained gunfire, only cementing their role in the Covenant as cannon fodder and lowest standing among the races. She'd never seen one wield anything larger than a pistol.

The Kig-Yar were a little more capable than the Unggoy, though that was like comparing two piles of differently coloured excrement – with the scent to match. The avian creatures stood on a pair of backwards legs, their quills flittering in agitation as they chewed on their wrists and arms with their needle-shaped teeth. Their eyes were too big for Seela's taste, always flicking about like they were two seconds away from lashing out at the nearest thing. Some of them had shield gauntlets strapped to their arms, others had long needle rifles slung over their shoulders. Their armour covered their thin bodies in pitiful amounts of plating, the creatures so visibly lacking in muscle she wondered how they didn't crumble under the planet's gravity alone.

"The heretics will be waiting for us, expect a fight as soon as we land!" the only other Sangheili present shouted, backhanding one of the Unggoy that whimpered at the news. They were sharing the dropship with another squad, much to the chagrin of Seela's poor nose. She didn't know her kinsman's name, but as someone who knew what it was like to be abused by her leaders, she went easier on her charges than most would afford the pitiful warriors.

The Zealot was wearing the golden armour reserved for only the most devout of the Covenant, his suit catching the light of the overhead fluorescents as he shot her a snarl. As his rank suggested, he probably thought she was just as lowly as the runts surrounding them, but that wasn't exactly a new development for her.

At least he isn't a Jiralhanae, she mused. Those apes were covered in sweaty, muck-ridded fur that reflected their attitude towards her, seeing Seela's presence in the elite ranks of the military as just short of heresy. Combine that with the infighting that already divided the Sangheili and the Jiralhanae, and Seela had been forced to stay up countless nights for fear of an attack by fellow forces of the Covenant.

She lifted her carbine from its holster, checking the ammo count as the dropship began to slow. She could feel the ship rocking beneath her hooves as the nose-mounted cannon fired at something below, the primitive Humans still putting on a brave fight even as their world crumbled around them.

Although she was grateful for the respect the Covenant had given her, and the modicum of honour and renown she'd managed to create over the years, the war was not so back and white as she had been led to believe in her youth. Even her kinsman respected the ferocity the Humans showed in battle, and yet the things she'd seen, and the things she'd done to the aliens only dampened her faith in the cause.

Her squad bumped into each other as the Phantom slowed to a halt, the vertical doors sliding open on either side of the craft. Wind and sunlight slipped inside, Seela raising an arm to block her eyes from the harsh light. Air choked with smoke and burning flesh met her nose, Seela not sure if she preferred the smell inside the Phantom or out of it.

The alien street was a long drop below, the Phantom's pilot not deigning to get any lower, and for good reason. It was chaos down there, the roads full of strange, blocky vehicles that were not armed or armoured in any way. Their doors were open or blasted off, some still rumbling quietly as though abandoned only moments ago.

Trees of alien origin spaced parts of the asphalt, their leaves shaking in the breeze. Metal structures built in right angles flanked the roads leading out of a circular intersection of some sort, the sunlight casting harsh shadows over a battle in progress.

On the island in the centre of the intersection, Covenant troops were trading fire with aliens hiding in the buildings across the road to the north, the black, primitive weapons of the Humans flashing as they fired through the broken window frames. Unggoy and Kig-Yar cowered behind the abandoned vehicles and planters, firing blindly over their covers as they were picked off one at a time.

Seela braced herself, her squad waiting behind her as she readied her carbine. She leapt, gliding through the second-long jump and landing in the middle of the routing forces, cracking the ground like it was made of glass. She dropped into a crouch, shouldering her weapon as she aimed at one of the muzzle flashes. She fired twice, the weapon rocking into her shoulder, a muffled cry of pain reaching her ears as the Human dropped from view.

Her squad dropped down behind her, the Unggoy stumbling over themselves as they found cover, while the Kig-Yar leapt onto any high ground they could find. The Zealot's squad likewise dismounted from the transport, the Kig-Yar covering the reinforcements as they fanned out.

Seela was washed in the backdraft of the retreating Phantom, the dropship gunning its engines and flying over the tops of the metal buildings, disappearing from sight. If she had to board another one of them again, it would be too soon.

"Push them back!" the Zealot commanded, raising a pointed finger at the Human holdout, while igniting his energy sword in his other arm. Energy hardened into two ornate blades sprouting from the metal hilt, Seela feeling a surge of confidence upon seeing the holy weapon. She'd never held a sword before, if she were to, Zealot's like this one would have her head.

She spied a dead kinsman just off to the side, his purple blood splattered across the ground. She dashed over and lowered to a knee, checking his pulse despite the gunfire sailing over her head, only for her fingers to touch cold skin.

"Get some rounds on those windows," she ordered to her Kig-Yar, the avians scrambling onto the larger vehicles nearby, laying on their bellies and providing suppressive fire. She murmured a prayer for the fallen Sanghieli, there was no greater honour than to die in battle.

She turned to the surviving Unggoy and Kig-Yar she'd been ordered to reinforce, the runts cowering under her gaze. "If you do not wish to die, get on your feet."

She didn't wait for them to answer, vaulting over the front of a vehicle, the chassis denting under her weight, dashing to the next one along, her heavy hooves thundering across the ground. A wild spray across her front ignited her energy shields, the barrier going bright white as the rounds melted on contact. She put her back to the door of the next vehicle, the thing bouncing on its suspension as she collided with it. She peeked over the side of it, gauging the Human's holdout a couple more lanes in front of her.

The Humans crouched behind pieces of rubble on the first and second floors, the walls scorched black by plasma fire. She counted six of them, watching as one of the Humans levelled his rifle out of the window, sending a three-round burst into the face of a Kig-Yar trying to flank to the right, the avian crumpling without a sound.

She took aim with her carbine, her superheated rounds finding their marks in the Humans chest, the armoured alien falling to the pavement below with a clatter. She could see the Zealot's team was advancing on the right, while her team followed her on the left, a tried and tested maneuver.

The surge of numbers boosted the morale of the survivors quickly, the little aliens following after her as Seela advanced on the holdout. The Unngoy were too slow for her taste, even if their job was to be out front, Seela leading the charge while her squad covered her.

She could hear the Humans shouting from inside, the tide quickly turning as they abandoned their firing positions, Seela too close for them to get an angle without exposing themselves. She ducked into the low doorframe of the entrance, sweeping her carbine around as she checked the corners. She had to lean down to avoid hitting her head on the ceiling, the overhanging wood shaking as the Humans up there started moving.

"Secure those rooms!" she ordered, pointing at the doorways leading deeper into the building, keeping her eyes on a stairwell leading towards the next floor. As her Unngoy waddled inside, they were knocked aside as the Zealot charged through the doorway, his sword swinging by his side, the blade lighting up the shadows.

"Do not waste time," he growled. "I will push them out, go and wait by the exits and cut them off, do not let them escape!"

The Zealot dashed by, leaping up the stairs three at a time and vanishing from her view. There was a cry as the blade met its first victim, Seela grumbling under her breath as she reloaded her weapon.

"How far does this building go on?" she asked one of her marksmen, the Kig-Yar leaning around the side of the structure and looking through his scope down the street.

"Not far," the avian hissed. "It ends at a wall, but there are exits everywhere!"

"There are more on this side too!" another said, looking down the opposite street.

"Then we split up and cover each one, you five take the right, the rest of you with me. Move out."

Her squad split into two, filling onto the streets outside, Seela in the middle of her charges as they moved down the street, sticking close to the building. As her marksman said, the structure stretched on for a while before terminating at the wall of another structure at the end of the road, and there were three archways built into this face, each one cutting straight through where one could see the street on the other side.

She had little idea of what such an odd structure's purpose could be, but each archway provided an exit for their quarry, with staircases leading into them from either side of the arch, so Seela ordered a few of her underlings to guard each one they passed, while she would cover the last by herself. From somewhere inside she could hear her kinsman roaring in anger, the procession of gunfire slowly working its way up the building as the Humans were pushed back.

She dashed to the end of the street, skidding on the pavement as she turned to face the very last archway, her squad readying themselves as they set up their ambushes. The Zealot's team was methodically pushing the Humans through the building, wherever they came out, Seela or her team would be there, waiting.

She glanced to her right as one of her Kig-Yar fired a plasma bolt into an arch, the rest of her squad following suit. She could not witness the slaughter from this angle, but she could tell the Humans had been caught out, at least the Zealot would not take all the glory.

Seela didn't have to wait long until someone stumbled into her archway, a Human running out into the daylight. She aimed her carbine, but as she scoped in, she hesitated.

It was not a Human soldier like she expected it to be. This one wore fabrics that might have had some ceremonial purpose, with pieces of jewellery slipped over the fingers on its hands. As her reticle hovered over its face, she noticed its complexion was different to other Humans she had fought. It looked small, weaker, with long, flowing hair trailing down to its shoulders rather than shaved short. It looked at her with wide eyes as it clutched something closer to its chest. A weapon, perhaps?

But it was no weapon. As she aimed lower, Seela saw it was holding something bundled up in a white cloth, something moving. The sliver of a head peeked out from the folds of a blanket, a pair of tiny, curious eyes meeting Seela's own. They were blue, like the oceans surrounding the city, surrounded by pudgy skin with a little button nose in the middle. It was an infant. She'd never seen a Human infant before, they must be very brave creatures to not be making a single sound in the middle of a fight.

The mother, or at least Seela thought it was the mother, turned away, putting her body between Seela and the infant. At least she knew now the reason these Humans were fighting so desperately for this unremarkable piece of the city. Just as Seela let her scope drop, another Human stepped out from the side, and this one was clad in the weapons and armour she was familiar with. It raised a rifle in her direction without pause.

Before she could lift her weapon, Seela's shields flared as the Human unloaded all his ammo at her. Her shields were strong, but couldn't stop sustained damage, the barrier flickering away just as she stepped out of the alley into cover.

She waited until the gunfire ceased, Seela peeking round the corner to see more unarmed Humans filing out into the passage, the infant and mother disappearing with the group into a small opening between two walls, some kind of escape passage she guessed. The Human with the gun stood valiantly between Seela and his charges as he reloaded.

She reached for the plasma grenade on her belt, her thumb hovering over the triggering mechanism. The eyes of that infant, so innocent and studying, was burned into her vision like the afterimage of a bright light. Had they not evacuated the innocent yet? Or rather, the Heretics that didn't fight, she mentally corrected herself.

Sighing, she stowed the grenade away, peeking round the wall to see the Humans falling back, their sole defender covering them before turning to run after. Seela aimed her carbine at him, but steps against the pavement nearby drew her attention away. Her squad was coming up behind her, it seemed all their exits had been covered, and they'd come to investigate the shooting. An Unggoy at the front cocked its head at her.

"W-Where Humans?" it chirped, looking over her shoulder down the archway.

Once again, someone else stomped their way down the stairs, Seela and her squad lowering their weapons as the Zealot snarled at them, his sword still ignited in his hand.

"Where are the Humans?" he demanded, red blood staining his otherwise flawless armour. His sword was otherwise clean, the energy had burned all the blood away.

"That's what I say!" the Unggoy squeaked, Seela pushing him around the corner, away from the fuming Zealot's view.

"At least five of them escaped this way," the Zealot continued. "Surely even you could not have missed them, sister?"

Trying not to snarl at him, Seela pointed over his shoulder. "They fled that way, I could not get a shot before one of them destroyed my shields."

"I do not care for your excuses, find them! My team will stay here and hold this ground."

"Only one of them was armed," she replied. "There is little honour in chasing down those who do not fight back."

"There is even less in letting them go," the Zealot snapped. "You had one task, girl, now carry it out, or shall I raise the Penance and explain to the Prophet himself of how you shirk your duty to the Great Journey?"

Seela turned her snout up at the Covenant assault carrier, the bulbous ship hanging low over the city, casting its shadow over the Human dwellings. The Solemn Penance was the Prophet of Regret's flagship. She had only met him face-to-face once, but she had never forgotten the encounter.

"Very well," she mumbled, turning to her team. "Check your gear, we have a hunt on our hands."

The Kig-Yar clicked their beaks in glee, the two Sangheili letting them pass as they chased after the Humans, the Unggoy waddling after. Seela followed them, feeling the eyes of the Zealot on her back. It would do her no good to hesitate further in front of the devout warrior, she had no idea if he had a line of communication with the Prophet or not, but wasn't about to test him.

She worried for the alien mother and her newborn, sparing a worrying glance at one of her Kig-Yar who had picked up their scent, the bloodthirsty aliens scurrying into the next street as they gave chase. Hopefully, the Humans knew the city well enough to escape, or Seela would have to take matters into her own hands…

The Major
Occupied City Center
5 Hours After Rupture

A crack of thunder jolted the Major awake, the man blinking his blurred vision clear as he took in his surroundings. The interior of his pod was a mess of broken electronics and twisted metal, the Major slowly recalling the AA fire that had botched the drop. Had his team managed to reach the ground safely? He tried reporting in through his radio, but all he heard through the link was static.

The glass of his pod window was completely gone, the Major looking though it to see a frame of broken wood and metal cutting a hole into the side of a building, his pod must have slammed straight through the wall just before hitting the ground, it was a wonder the Covvies hadn't found him and put a plasma bolt through his head.

He pulled the manual release on the door, having to tug on it three or four times to dislodge some internal component. The door opened with a hiss of air, the Major kicking it open with his boot. It banged against the roof of the pod as it swung out, the Major thankfully finding his shotgun hadn't been damaged during the crash.

Clutching his weapon to his chest, he leapt from the pod, lowering to a knee as he took in his surroundings. It seemed he'd landed in the foyer of a mall, his pod landing right in the middle of some kind of food stand, bits of paper drifting across the cracked tiles. It was discouraging to see what should be such a busy place devoid of life and sound. Shopping carts and tables full of food had been left discarded in every direction, everyone had been going about their business when the aliens had turned up.

He stalked over to the big, glass entry doors, his boots echoing loudly through the vaulted space. The sun was gone, bringing with it the night and the beginning of a storm, the sky above dark with broiling clouds, another rumble of thunder sounding off in the distance.

Some of the street lamps were still working, casting the twisting streets in a white glow, flickering advertisement boards flanking the sidewalks still displaying their products in bright colours. Against the darkened backdrop, it was difficult to make out much, the Major flicking on his onboard visor with a tap on the chin of his helmet. His targeting systems rolled across the world around him, upping the brightness so he could make out objects in the gloom.

He checked his comms again, but he got no response from his team. The street on his right wound up a slight incline, maybe some high ground could help establish communications with someone.

He moved through the clogged street, the cars here abandoned with their lights on and their engines still running. They were piled up against a line of barricades that had been built into the road, the way they were positioned hinting at the mass panic that had gripped the city before the evacuation.

There was no sign of the Covenant or the city occupants, every car he peeked inside of empty of bodies. Perhaps the Covenant ate the dead, or the marines had managed to get most of the people out. He hoped it was the latter.

He followed the LED lights marking the lanes further up the hill, the street taking a bend to the left after levelling out. A couple of park benches sat close to the edge of an artificial balcony, the Major peaking over the railing at some sort of plaza below. The view above was mostly unimpeded, the horizon filling up with the burning skyscrapers of the City Centre, the plumes of smoke merging into the dark sky.

Despite the added height and the open air above, still his comms failed to work. He needed to link up with his squad, if they were still alive, or find their bodies if they weren't. As for the mission… he needed to know where he was if he wanted to get anything about that done.

"Need directions? Enter the name of your destination for assitance!"

The Major flinched as a synthetic voice blared to his right, raising his shotgun towards the source of the noise. There was a kiosk against the far end of the railing, and he walked over to it, seeing the face of the city's superintendent on the angled screen. From what he could recall, the superintendent was an Artificial Intelligence that managed pretty much all the city's infrastructure. The logo flickered away, replaced with a supersized keyboard. He let his shotgun hang by his side as he tapped at the letters and hit the enter button, watching curiously as the screen slowly zoomed out into a wide, birds-eye view of the city. The words you are here flashed at a point near the top of the screen, and a red travel line began to draw away from it, curving through the streets until stopping at a marker.

Strangely, that wasn't the destination he put into the computer, the kiosk directing him to some random building to his east. He tapped at the back button and typed in where he needed to be, but again, the kiosk plotted a course to that meaningless spot again. It was on the way to where he needed to go, but he was still suspicious all the same. Maybe there was another kiosk he could use on the way, this one was probably busted.

A raindrop plinked off the front of his visor, the Major looking up to see lightning streak across the sky, the rain slowly growing in frequency as the seconds ticked by.

After committing the roadmap to memory as best he could, he raised his weapon, moving off to the left where the road twisted down into the plaza beyond, walking around a bus stop and scanning the alleys for threats. The wet asphalt reflected the shining neons of the city's overhanging mega screens, the rain making everything look slick. He stuck to the outside lane as the road curved lower, the balcony with the kiosk now up and to his right in relation to where he was facing.

Staying close to the wall, he peeked round the corner, his shotgun at the ready as he checked the open area. In the middle of the plaza was a raised fountain, the sprouts still dribbling water into the surrounding bowls. The ceramics had been cracked and weathered, but if this was due to fighting or the rupture blast, he couldn't be certain. The water spilled out of the more damaged recesses to flood the surrounding stairs, sinking into the cracks in the ground. Park benches and seats where people could sit by the water were still standing nearby, planters placed around to give the place a more rural appearance.

His visor outlined something in red, and the Major focused in on it, cursing under his breath as he recognised the figure. Standing next to the fountain was a towering Elite. The creature was over eight feet tall, the reptilian warrior wearing red power armour that glinted under the flashes of lightning. He could see its skin on the three-fingered hands and the neck, its hide dark and smooth, covered here and there in fine bumps, not unlike the skin of a turtle. Where the chin and mouth would be on a human, instead two pairs of thick mandibles jutted out from the front of its open helmet, leaving the throat exposed to the air. Despite its size, the alien was somewhat slim, its powerful arms moving with an odd grace as it checked its weapon. The Major recognised the needle rifle, a long-range precision weapon that fired red crystals at subsonic speeds, the Covenant's equivalent to a sniper rifle.

Two Grunts were moving around nearby, he could make out the tops of the pointed tanks they wore just over the fountain and the benches. He could see the telltale mark of a plasma burn on a part of the Elite's chestplate, they must have come from a fight. Was one of his team nearby? Had the Elite killed them?

The Elite waved at his two underlings, his voice lost to the distance as he ordered them around. The Grunts started moving this way, the Major quickly ducking into the building just round the corner, finding himself in a small shop. Although he had suppressed weapons, he didn't like his chances facing off against an Elite by himself, Grunts or not. They were called Elites for a reason.

As he ducked behind the counter, he decided he'd take his chances and let them pass. He didn't know how good Elite sense of smell was, but he guessed he was about to find out.

He steadied his breathing as he held his shotgun at the ready, peeking over the countertop as the alien troops walked closer and closer. They were making their way back up the ramp he'd come from, travelling in a line with the Elite at the front. He held his breath as the Elite trundled past the shop, its giant feet ending in two hooves that strangely did not make much of a sound as they hit the pavement, the thing could be quiet when it needed to be.

The Elite disappeared round the bend, but the Major kept his breathing in check, the waddling Grunt's following behind their leader. The first one walked on by, but the second stopped, raising its masked face to the sky, sniffling loudly as it scented the air.

It stepped gingerly into the shop, dropping to one hand as its eyes scanned the shelving units. Even with its mask, it was still smelling him out like a damned canine, the Major's heart pounding in his chest as he weighed his options.

He clutched his weapon tighter, the barrel creaking audibly as he held his breath. The Grunt wasn't losing interest, so he decided to act first, leaning up over the counter and lining up the iron sights with the alien's head.

By the time the Grunt noticed him, the Major had already fired. A narrow spread of buckshot broke apart the thing's rebreather, the four-foot alien flipping head over heels at the point-blank shot. By the time it landed face-down on the floor, the Major was moving, dashing out of the shop and into the cover of the fountains.

Behind him, he heard the Elite grumble in its alien language, gesturing for its remaining underling to go after the Major. The Grunt fired its pistol at him, but the bolt went wide, the Major returning fire over the ceramic bowls, hitting the Grunt in the back as it tried to run away.

His visor outlined the Elite, who had doubled back to put itself behind a derelict car. His shotgun wouldn't do much at this range, so the Major drew his sidearm, unloading the silenced rounds at the Elite, its shields flaring as a couple found their marks.

He reloaded his pistol as he moved up, stowing his sidearm as he reached for his shotgun sling. He crouched behind one of the smaller fountains, the faucet bubbling noisily as he looked over it. His shotgun would work better than his pistol, but he needed to get close, and the Elite seemed to know this, giving up ground as it retreated, firing its needle rifle blindly behind itself as it found cover behind another vehicle further up the ramp.

Crystals bounced off the water as the Major ducked, the strange ammunition leaving small contrails that quickly disappeared. He let his weapon hang in its sling as he reached for his belt, grabbing one of the grenades and flipping the pin. He didn't want to draw more attention, but it was better than letting the Elite drag on the fight, he couldn't risk it calling in for backup.

He tossed it over the fountain, the grenade rolling to a stop by the wheel of the car the Elite was behind. The Elite loosed a bone-shaking roar as it noticed the explosive, but rather than dodge out of the way, it threw something back. A ball of blue flame came hurtling from the Elite's hand, the Major recognised the plasma grenade. Those things were covered in an adhesive substance – if you got stuck by one, you would be vaporised the second you tried to get it off.

The Major fell into a sprint as the plasma ball stuck to the lip of the fountain he'd been hiding behind, falling to the ground as his and the Elite's grenades detonated. The decorative, ceramic plates of the fountain sailed in all directions, spearing into nearby walls as the water flooded the surrounding area. His own grenade ignited whatever fuel was left in the car, the fireball coalescing into a giant explosion that rocked the ground. Windows of the nearby vehicles shattered as shrapnel was sent flying, the hood of the car tumbling into one of the second storey windows as the engine tore apart.

The smoke slowly cleared as the Major sat up, knocked away by the blasts but none the worse for wear. He crept up on the Elite's location through the swirling dust, seeing it laying on the ground, prying at the asphalt as it tried to crawl away, its armour scorched black. The tough bastard was still alive. The Major pumped his shotgun and pulled the trigger, the silenced hiss of the suppressor sounding off as he executed the alien.

Sighing behind his helmet, he took a second to collect himself as he reached for his chest sling, fishing out the spare shells there and inserting them into the receiver. He'd been so close to getting stuck, his heart beating against his chest as he realised the fate he'd narrowly dodged. He was down a mag with his pistol and two slugs, minus a grenade, the pair of explosions no doubt drawing the attention of any Covenant nearby. All in all, not amazing. He had to get moving.

He checked the Elite's body, finding that one of its sticky grenades was still intact, while the rest of its weapons were too damaged to be used. He clipped the explosive to his belt, moving to one of the dead Grunts and ripping its pistol from its cold hands. Most marines were familiar enough with alien weapons to use them, since the UNSC never had enough spare ammo for every trooper, not even for specialists like the Major.

Hooking the plasma pistol to his hip, he continued on, hoping there were other kiosks around that would actually work and get him out of this place.

Seela

Streets of New Mombasa

30 Minutes Before Rupture

She watched the star begin to sink beneath the urban horizon, the plummeting temperature making her shiver beneath her power armour, Seela pausing on the next corner to catch her breath. Her Kig-Yar had been running down the Human survivors through the winding streets non-stop, panting like a pack of rabid animals as they fell into their bobbing sprints,

She had tried to reign them in, but the Kig-Yar were restless, their desire to hunt overpowering their sense of tactics and discipline. Ignoring her orders, they broke formation, disappearing out of her sight. Insubordination was one thing, but hunting down Humans who were unwilling to fight only fuelled her depleting temper.

This was supposed to be a simple reinforcement assignment, now they were hunting down fleeing Humans through countless identical streets. She wasn’t a slouch in terms of physical performance, especially compared to the diminutive Kig-Yar, but the avians could be unnaturally quick when they smelled blood, and even she was starting to tire after so much running.

“We give up chase now?” one of her Unggoy asked, doubled over as he panted for air. At least her Unggoy had the sense to stick with her, even if their fastest pace was barely walking speed for Seela.

The one who’d spoken nearly tripped over when she rose to her feet, almost thrice his size as she stood to her full height.

“No,” she replied, her hooves thumping on the concrete as she picked up the pace. “We follow the Zealot’s will, and by extension, the Prophets own.”

Her Unggoy hopped along impotently on their stumpy legs, following her as she rounded a corner. Even beyond the sight of her devoted kin, she wasn’t about to betray his command, she was no Heretic. Yet she couldn’t shake the feeling of what seeing the human infant had instilled in her. The Great Journey was paved by flowing blood, but this was a step too far. If only she could find a way to reason with the Zealot, but they were so reverent of the cause, perhaps to a fault…

She banished these Heretical thoughts from her mind, but not just because she was fearful of the Prophets will. Over the endless stretches of colourless buildings had echoed the unmistakable report of Human gunfire, too close to be from anything else but their quarry. She fell into a hard run, following the direction of the noise.

Rounding into an alleyway, she glimpsed a pair of Kig-Yar at the far end, a couple of plasma shots carrying on the wind, the green muzzle flashes painting the crumbling walls in their emerald glow. The sound of the bolts filled her with guilt, what if she came upon the corpse of the tiny Human?

Her avian sharpshooters stood in a circle, looking at something on the ground out of her view. She pushed her charges away, and when she saw what was laying there, her worries lifted. The Human that had depleted her shields earlier was laying there, a plasma burn in the middle of his back, and another male Human was sprawled on the ground nearby, his thin clothes betraying him as one of the civilians.

She glanced to the right, the alley splitting off into one other direction, not counting the one she’d just walked down. She could make out footsteps at the edge of her hearing. At least some of them had gotten away, her relief mixed with a pang of underlying guilt as she realised she was rooting for the enemy.

“This one hardly put up a fight!” one of the Kig-Yar chittered as he prodded the Human warrior with his needle rifle. His beak angled up at her as he noticed her presence. “Ultra, the others went that way, shall we cut them down?”

“Break formation like that again,” she growled. “And it is you who shall be cut down. What were you thinking?” she barked, turning to the other Kig-Yar, each one wilting under her furious gaze. “Charging forward like that? What foolishness compelled you to break ranks?”

“Th-The Humans were escaping,” one replied meekly. “We have to hunt down all Humans…”

They were clattering their beaks at each other, anger and frustration getting the better of them. She had to say something or else they might run off again.

“You have to follow my lead,” she chided, reigning in her temper. “What if the Humans had laid a trap? They know these streets better than we do, you would have walked right to your deaths, throwing all sense of caution aside as you were, then it would have been you laying on the ground.”

She jabbed a finger at the dead Humans to make her point. She knew enough about the avians that their feathers were flattening in a display of guilt, she was getting through to them.

“None of you are of any use if you’re dead,” she added. “Control yourselves next time, any fool can charge into battle, but a patient one tends to live much longer. Trust me on that.”

“So… We go after Humans now?” an Unggoy asked her, Seela turning her attention to where the rest of the Humans had fled, her mandibles flexing in thought.

“No,” she said, the Kig-Yar tilting their beaks up at her. “We have hunted them down, including their warrior.” She gestured to the Human with the weapon. “Let the rest flee, they will tell others this area belongs to the Covenant. We’re done here.”

As they made to move out, one of the Kig-Yar spared her a suspicious glance, confused by her approach. Other Sangheili and Jiralhanae would have dealt with insubordination with violence at best, and this avian had probably seen more than one underling fall under the hand of a superior.

“Fall in,” she ordered tersely, the avian hopping away as she took up her position at the head of the squad, the relieved Unggoy at her flanks as she led them back the way they had come without further incident.

She glanced up to watch a pair of Phantoms rising from the cityscape in the distance, banking on their downward-facing engines as they rose to the Solemn Penance, its sight inspiring in her heart a feeling of protection, as though the Forerunner’s themselves were up there watching over them.

Movement drew her gaze to the side, and she squinted after spotting another two Phantoms banking towards the giant ship. The dropships disappeared into the many hangers pocketing the belly of the carrier, but did not come out. Perhaps they were getting ready to move to another part of the city?

Her squad relaxed as another Covenant group walked towards them from the other end of the street, the golden armour of the Zealot glinting in the light as he stood at their head. He brushed aside a two-wheeled vehicle in his path, his mandibles twitching as he met her gaze. “I’ve given you ample time to complete your task,” he said when he was close enough. “Report.”

“Following me, brother?” she asked, nodding in the direction he’d come from “What happened to holding that ground?”

“New orders. Plus, my faith in another is reflective of their standing in the Covenant,” he replied, his eyes flicking over her shorter frame. “Interpret that as you will, and give me your report. Did you find the Humans you failed to catch?”

“Yes,” she growled, suppressing her rising anger. “We hunted them down.”

“All of them?”

“Only two. One of them was their protector. He held us back to buy time for his charges, and they slipped away, deeper into the city. I lost track of them.”

“You let them go once again,” the Zealot sighed. “It is no wonder one who has served as long as you have has failed to gain any real worth in the Covenant. The rumours hold no small semblance of truth…”

“What rumours?” she snapped, her anger getting the better of her. She immediately regretted her tone of voice, watching as the Zealot let his arms hang by his sides, the way he brushed the hilt of his deactivated sword not going unnoticed.

“Do you think to ask things of me?” The Zealot’s mandibles clenched in a challenge. As they stared one another down, she was vaguely aware of their squads watching in silence around them, glancing between one other as they waited to see what happened next.

She broke eye contact, sighing as she backed off in deference. “No, brother, I just wish to know what these honourless kin are saying, that they would stoop so low as to whisper behind my back rather than face me.”

“There is little glory in gossiping like a bunch of Unggoy, I concur,” the Zealot huffed, making sure his runts were aware of his displeasure. “-but to act like one, there is less so. You’d do well to remember this, few females outside of the household ever learn such things from the truly devoted.”

She was clenching the grip on her carbine so hard she was starting to hurt her fingers, Seela turning away as she heard another telltale warble of a rising Phantom, her eyes tracking the craft as it soared overhead.

“Are our ships being recalled?” she asked aloud, changing topics.

“That would be those new orders I mentioned before,” he answered, their armours clinking together as he brushed past her. “The Field Marshal is readying all forces for a new deployment.”

“Has the Forerunner artifact been found?” she asked. She wasn’t privy to all the details of the Prophet’s mission on this planet, but any Sangheili knew that the presence of even one Zealot meant an artifact would be close by.

“Nothing more could force such a redeployment,” the Zealot replied, as if he was explaining to a fresh-faced Minor. “but temper your eagerness, the Humans will viciously defend these sacred relics, whether they know their true purpose or not. Follow me, we return to the base on foot.”

***

Enclosed on all sides by walls of glass and alien stonework was a clearing, the ground made uneven by rising sets of stairs leading to the facades of the structures, banners and alien symbols conveying whatever purpose these structures may have had. Covenant engineers had swept the abandoned vehicles and debris Seela was so accustomed to seeing away, erecting a command post alongside four watchtowers to safeguard the perimeter. There was enough room around the command post that Phantoms could land and take off behind the safety of the base’s barricades, Seela watching as one did just that the moment she and the Zealot emerged into the adjacent street.

Up on the closest watchtower, an Unggoy manning a stationary plasma turret peered down at the approaching squads with his beady eyes, the floating platform he was sitting upon gently bobbing on the anti-gravity beams holding the tower aloft. At the foot of the structure were Sangheili-sized barricades, walls of purple alloy allowing the defenders ample cover, Seela seeing many Kig-Yar standing guard behind them as she followed the Zealot between two such barricades.

Groups of the Covenant species milled around the base, weapon crates full of carbines, pistols and other various weaponry spaced throughout the area. As the Zealot moved for the command post, she paused as her Kig-Yar started clicking and squawking in their native tongue, Seela turning to see what they were looking at.

In the corner of the base, just beside the bottom of the northernmost watchtower, was a pile of dead Humans. Flesh had been torn from bone, black blood drying up in a circular splotch around their splayed limbs. It looked like she had mercifully missed the Jiralhanae feasting on the bones of the defenders.

She flexed her mandibles in disgust, finding the whole ritual barbaric, one of the few things she and her kin could agree on. She had heard of more influential Sangheilians trying to ban the act of consuming flesh, but the Prophets hadn’t listened, they had even encouraged it, if the rumours were to be believed.

“Get some rest,” she said to her squad, a sour look on her face as some of the Kig-Yar sauntered over to the pile, the avians also had a weakness of consuming sapient creatures. She turned and walked through the command post portal, feeling eyes on her back as her fellow kinsman watched her disappear inside.

The cramped interior was occupied by a command terminal, projections of the surrounding city and the current strength of their forces shimmering on its glowing surface. The Zealot stood to one side of it, talking with another kinsman. This one was wearing a suit of colourful, purple armour with an ornate helmet, with two decorative horns branching off the top of it. This was the Field Marshal, and his word was law among all Sangheili on the ground.

He noticed her presence, the Marshal’s stance adjusting to a more relaxed state as he addressed her. “Sister, I realise you were unsuccessful in catching some escaped Humans after your deployment. It is of no matter, we will purge the Heretics another day.”

Seela glanced from him to the Zealot, her eyes narrowing. “See you’ve been busy giving my reports for me, brother.”

“I merely wish to inform the Marshal of all the details,” the Zealot huffed in reply. Now that they weren’t alone, Seela decided she could afford to be a bit more flippant with him.

“In that case, did you mention the fact they slipped through your fingers first? You had them trapped, indoors, with that sword of yours, yet you somehow missed several of them.”

“Our plan was to flush them out,” the Zealot snapped. “had you not hesitated this would have-”

“Enough!” the marshal commanded, and they did, it wouldn’t be wise to disobey their superior. “You should know better than to treat a mouth of the Prophet with such disrespect, sister.”

She didn’t reply, knowing from experience when it was wise to be quiet.

“And you,” the marshal continued, turning to the Zealot. “you represent the Prophet’s themselves, yet you squabble over the words of one who is lesser in rank. To let such petty emotions cloud your mind, your father would be disgraced.”

The Zealot turned away in some vain attempt to hide his shame, Seela allowing herself a little bit of a smile as he finally shut his mandibles for two seconds.

“We have more pressing issues to address,” the Marshal went on. “there is no time to waste fighting amongst ourselves, so listen. There has been a complete restructuring of the chain of command, directly from the Prophet himself. I am… no longer to be your Field Marshal.”

“Are you being replaced?” Seela asked, the Marshal nodding. “By who?”

“Me,” a gruff voice answered. Seela turned around to face the newcomer, and her mandibles began to flex in disgust. Standing in the threshold was a Jiralhanae, his towering body covered from his stumpy two-toed feet to his neck in armour the same shade of gold as the Zealot’s own suit, identifying him as a Captain Major.

The lower part of his face was hidden behind a scraggly, grey beard braided into three thick strands, red bands of cloth wrapped over them to help keep their shape. From behind his lower lips emerged a pair of tusks as thick as her fingers, sharpened for cutting through flesh. Above his flat snout were two yellow eyes, regarding the Marshal and the Zealot with a resigned suspicion. When he turned his gaze back on Seela, his suspicion was instead replaced with a smile that made her skin crawl.

“It has been too long since I’ve seen a female among the Sangheili ranks,” the Captain Major remarked, taking a few steps forward. He was a head taller than her, his body so thick with muscle his presence was overwhelming on an instinctual level. “I wasn’t aware the Marshal was delving into his reserves, too many casualties, perhaps?”

“Tell us what the meaning of this is,” the Zealot ordered, the way he stepped between Seela and the Jiralhanae almost coming off as protective. When it came to the racial clash between Sangheili and Jiralhanae, chauvinism always took the backfoot. “Never has a Jiralhanae ever given orders to us.”

“A Zealot doubting the Prophet’s will?” the Jiralhanae chuckled. “Truly, your battalions need some reevaluating if these two are any reflection of your field group, Marshal. Or should I say, Ultra?”

“Do not presume to think I’ve been demoted,” the Field Marshal replied. “I have been recalled to the carrier because the Prophet commands me so. Your leadership here is temporary at best, so do me a favour and leave everything exactly where I left it for my return.”

“If you say so,” the Captain Major replied, finding the whole situation more amusing than anything. “Your ship is waiting, Marshal, better to not keep my pilots waiting, nor the Prophet, he insisted on speaking to you.”

The Marshal glanced at Seela and the Zealot before making for the threshold, making sure to give the Captain Major a pointed stare as he passed him. As she made to follow him out, the Major put up a furry hand, the thing as big as her face.

“Not you two,” he ordered, taking up the Field Marshal’s position at the table. “Since I have you here I may as well relay your new orders.”

“What has happened to cause such a drastic change of leadership?” the Zealot demanded. “We are in the middle of an invasion, and you dismiss our Marshal?”

“Again, you doubt the orders spoken by Regret himself,” the Jiralhanae chided, before gesturing at Seela. “At least our little sister here knows how to keep quiet like a good mate.”

“What are our new orders?” she asked. She’d heard similar comments from her kin, but from a Jiralhanae it felt ten times worse.

“And eager, too. Too bad I find the Sangheili people a little too thin for my taste.” He chuckled again, his tongue flicking out to wet one of his tusks. “You are both to take your squads on new patrol routes to seek out any remaining Heretics that are dug in, south of the base.”

“We are to work together once more,” the Zealot remarked. If the Marshal was still here, the Zealot probably would have complained, but now he was all too glad to be with kin, female or not.

“I cannot wait,” she replied sarcastically, rolling her eyes at him.

“You’re in luck, little sister,” the Jiralhanae interrupted. “I will not be sending you out together, as of right now all Sangheili teams are to be accompanied by one squad led by a Jiralhanae of my choosing. They will assist you in securing this city from the Heretics. One of my Captains is already outside waiting for you, Zealot, unless you have more objections?”

He clearly did, but decided to hold his tongue, storming back out into the daylight without a word, the Jiralhanae chuckling dryly as she was left alone with him.

“And who is to be my escort?” she asked when he didn’t continue.

“Leader,” he corrected. “One of my Minor’s will come find you when he is ready. Do not worry, you’re easy to pick out.” His yellow eyes played up and down her body. “Rest and rearm, have your share of Heretic meat, if you wish.”

“I’d sooner die,” she murmured, taking that as a sign she was dismissed. She made her way back outside, looking around until she spotted her squad resting on the concrete nearby, some of them hanging their heads to catch what little rest they could.

As she went to join them, a hand fell on her shoulder. She bristled, turning around to expect to see some male trying to sidle up to her, as was the usual case whenever she finally caught some down-time. Her arms relaxed when she realised it was the Marshal.

“I thought you had been recalled?” she said, glancing up at the carrier far above them.

“I didn’t want to speak in front of the Captain Major,” he replied. His voice was a whisper, like he didn’t want to be overheard. “This change in who leads the ground invasion worries me, sister. What did the Jiralhanae tell you?”

She relayed to him her new orders, the Marshal shaking his head when she finished. “He should hardly expect any Sangheili to willingly follow the orders of a Jiralhanae,” he murmured. “I do not trust this Captain Major for one moment.”

“You think the Prophet’s made a wrong decision?” she asked, looking over her shoulder as a pair of Jiralhanae walked by. She’d never heard of a superior being so doubtful, least of all straight to her face.

“Regret knows how to lead, not how to invade,” he replied. “I shall make him explain what reason he has to make such drastic changes, I should be back by the time your patrol is finished. In the meantime, you and your brothers must watch each other’s backs.”

“We will, Marshal.”

“I must go warn the others before I’m missed. Farewell, sister.”

She watched him leave, shifting from one foot to the other. The Marshal was one of the few males she’d known that didn’t talk down to her, likely because she had been serving with him for a time and had proved she could handle herself.

She joined her Unggoy, crossing her legs as she sat down next to them, telling the ones who were awake what their new task was. They didn’t seem particularly interested, especially the Kig-Yar, who were mercenaries above all else, they didn’t care what power struggles happened within the Covenant, but she felt compelled to clue them in regardless.

She bowed her head, drifting into a sleep riddled with nightmares. That damned infant just wouldn’t leave her thoughts be, her mind convinced it could hear its screams in the distance, her mind conjuring images of Kig-Yar chasing it down through a dark, swirling maze, Seela reeling in horror when she couldn’t move her muscles, couldn’t stop the aliens from devouring the defenceless Human.

Her eyes flew open, and she looked up, judging by the sun’s position that she hadn’t slept long. Footsteps rumbled the hard ground beneath her rump, and she looked up, sighing when she saw a Jiralhanae coming over to her, flanked by a small procession of Unggoy and Kig-Yar.

The colour of his armour identified him as a Minor, no doubt the one the Captain Major had earlier mentioned. He looked adolescent, a little less brawny than others of his kind, and he stank like a corpse, Seela brushing at her snout as he loomed over her.

“On your feet, female,” he ordered, his thick beard barely long enough to hide his features. They took great pride in the length of their hair, it held some cultural significance Seela hadn’t bothered to learn the details of, so to see one so clean-shaven reflected his inexperience. “We have Heretics to clear out. The rest of you runts get behind me,” he added, growling at the Unggoy settled in beside Seela.

“You do not hold authority over my troops,” she said, her mandibles clenching as she rose to her feet. “We are to patrol as two units, mine and yours. Those are our orders.”

“Our orders are that I take charge,” he insisted.

“I’m sure you think that,” she replied, gesturing at her helmet. “Do I have to remind you that an Ultra outranks a Minor, or are you too fresh out of the womb to realise who gives orders to who?”

She wasn’t an Ultra in any official capacity, of course, but the Jiralhanae didn’t know that, and she wasn’t about to start telling them. She’d never dream of talking like this to a kinsman, but her disdain with these Jiralhanae overpowered her hesitance, and she’d be damned to let one of them walk over her.

The young male could tell she wasn’t going to budge, his jaws exposed as he forced out a humourless laugh. “Looks like she has tusks. Very well, keep your runts and follow me, the sooner we get this over, the better.”

“On that, we are agreed,” she replied, motioning for her underlings to follow. With the Jiralhanae’s squad that put their group at about twenty strong. The procession moved out from the safety of the barricades, beginning their patrol as they disappeared into the winding streets.

***

“How long have you served in the Covenant?” Seela asked, trying to make conversation. She didn’t really care for his answers, the lack of Humans was making her antsy enough to put aside her prejudices so she had something to distract herself with. They had patrolled for a good time now, with no sign of the Heretics despite the Captain Major saying they were dug in around this area. It wasn’t silent, however, the distant sonic booms as aircraft broke through the atmosphere to swoop down on faraway skirmishes reminding her this planet was covered with Humans.

“One standard rotation,” the Jiralhanae replied, his eyes following his rifle as he swept the area for Heretics. There was something almost casual about the way he trailed his weapon back and forth, stalking through the alien streets without bothering to keep close to cover, like he knew this part of the city was long evacuated.

“You ever seen a planet so heavily defended before?” she continued, looking up at the dimming sky, the clouds joined to the ground by thick smoke columns trailing up from the worst areas of resistance, the sky occasionally filling with Banshees and Human spacecraft delivering airstrikes or reinforcements.

“Once. We must be on one of the Heretic’s core worlds,” he replied with a grin that exposed his many teeth. “Perhaps we have them cornered, and it won’t be long before all Heretics are purged.”

“They will fight harder than ever if that is the case,” she said. “We will grant them good deaths.” They emerged from the maze-like streets into a sort of plaza, the clearing centralized by a monument representing a Human figure, half of the bronze statue scorched with plasma fire. Blocks of rubble littered the footpaths near it, and off to one side was an armoured vehicle flipped on its side, the engine compartment coughing smoke. Heretics and Covenant alike lay scattered around, they must have just missed the fight.

“You Sangheili always praise the Heretics,” the Jiralhanae spat, pushing the Human vehicle out of his way while Seela just walked around it. “you admire those who worship false Gods, who fight the Great Journey at every turn. How the Prophet’s thought of you as the best of the Covenant I cannot guess.”

“There is honour in defending against an overwhelming enemy, to help the non-combatants,” she chided. “then again you probably don’t even know what half those words mean, I should save my breath.”

He bared his teeth at her in a snarl, and began to speak, but his words were lost as a blinding flash of light erupted behind them. Seela covered her eyes with an arm, turning to watch as the shadows around her began to strengthen, looking up at the smokey sky to see a ball of off-blue energy had appeared at the nose of the carrier, her eyes tracking the giant ship as it seemed to be pulled towards the rupture.

In a moment, the carrier was no longer there, the orb of energy popping out of existence too, an expanding ring of crackling electricity replacing it. The buildings closest to the carrier simply disintegrated, the ones further away crumbling apart from the shockwave, Seela’s eyes going wide as she felt a massive weight hit her front.

She dug her hooves into the ground, the Unggoy having no such luck as they were thrown around, bouncing and skidding off the pavement, the Kig-Yar joining them as they were knocked off their feet. The Jiralhanae braced himself against the derelict vehicle, shielding his face as the rushing air coursed through the plaza.

When the ferocious gale lessened, she turned her gaze up to the alien megastructure dominating the horizon, a column of metal rings spiralling up into the clouds. It rattled on its wire-thin supports as the eruption washed over it, tilting off-centre but managing to stay upright.

“Ship blew up!” an Unggoy squeaked. “Humans destroy Prophet ship!”

“Quiet, you runts,” the Jiralhanae snapped, his armour clinking as he brushed himself off. “The carrier has jumped to slipspace.”

“Gods,” she said in disbelief, plucking one of her Unggoy to its feet when he couldn’t roll off his methane tank. “Why did they do that? We had hundreds of troops stationed right below the carrier!”

“Do not question the Prophet’s will,” the Jiralhanae replied. “They had to have a reason.”

“We’re going to die!” another Unggoy wailed. “Prophet’s leave us on Human world!” The crustaceans were running about as though their methane tanks had gone dry, even the Kig-Yar were gathering up, looking nervously around as they searched for places to hide.

“Warriors of the Covenant!” the Jiralhanae shouted. “Shut your mouths or I’ll shut them for you. The Prophets have a plan, and so do we. We’re going to look for survivors from the blast and gather our forces. Lead the way, Ultra,” he added, motioning with his plasma rifle. “I’ll pick up the rear, make sure these cowards do not run.”

She narrowed her eyes at him, how could he know what the Prophets were planning after such a sudden jump out of the system? The chance of survivors being in the very middle of the rupture was nigh impossible, did he really think they’d find anyone?

She set aside her worries, leading her squad as she took up the lead, moving in the direction of the blast zone. They moved out onto a four-lane street chocked with abandoned vehicles, the ground beginning to tremble as one of the buildings up ahead gave way beneath its supports, the tower of brick and stone listing over the street, kicking up a mountain of dust as it crashed to the ground.

“The shockwave has weakened all these buildings,” she said, looking round to see if the street branched off somewhere, cursing when she saw no alternative paths. By the Forerunners she hated this place. “It’s too risky to cut through here, we must double back, find another way to-”

She turned, and found herself staring down the barrel of a plasma rifle, the prongs crackling with warming energy. Behind its curved top, the Jiralhanae grinned at her with his yellowed teeth.

“What are you doing?” she asked in disbelief, watching as his subordinates began to raise their rifles at her as well. “Traitors!”

“No, we follow the Prophet’s will,” he replied. “The San’shyuum finally grew enough sense to dismiss your kind, Sangheili. The Captain Major told us to wait for the signal, and that rupture was it. All of you!” he barked, gesturing at the Kig-Yar and Unggoy behind her. “Relieve this Heretic of her weapons, the Chieftain wants her brought back alive.”

Her charges looked at her, then at each other, the conflict visible in their eyes as they hesitated. Seela’s heart began to sink as they aimed their weapons.

“W-We know you no Heretic!” one of the crustaceans said.

“Yes! We like Sangheili lady!” another added.

“I won’t charge in blindly this time,” a Kig-Yar began. He raised his needle rifle and pointed it, not at her, but the Jiralhanae. “Heretic or not, better to follow the orders of one who values our lives.”

Seela felt a surge of relief as her squad joined him, pistols and rifles angling past her at the Jiralhanae’s squad. It seemed her desire to command through respect had paid off, and her words had stuck with the Kig-Yar, who she had thought would betray her at the first chance.

Her squad coalesced around her, Seela raising her carbine at the Jiralhanae’s chest, who growled at seeing so many weapons being aimed at him.

“You would all follow this female?” he snarled. “Very well, it makes no difference to me.”

He pulled the trigger on his plasma rifle, Seela firing her carbine at the same time, both their personal shields flaring as the superheated gas clashed against each other’s protective barriers.

There had been a vehicle off to the left, and Seela dove for it, the Jiralhanae mirroring her movements as he doubled back to hide behind a light post, both of them firing on the move. Their underlings held no such tactical awareness, firing on the spot as they broiled themselves in a point-blank bloodbath.

Crystal rounds crisscrossed between the groups of Kig-Yar as the marksmen levelled their needle rifles, their beaks painted pink in short instances as their muzzles flashed. An Unggoy flipped head over heels as a round embedded into his rebreather, another crustacean beside him keeling over as his torso was riddled with bolts, the plasma broiling over his thin armour like it was a liquid.

Those with shield gauntlets ignited them, one of the slower Kig-Yar dying before his shield had even flared to its full size, the more situationally aware avians backing up to seek cover. There was a high-pitched wail as one of the Unggoy produced a pair of plasma grenades, one in each hand, igniting the charges with his thumbs as he ran madly into the middle of the brawl. He along with five or so of his kind vanished in the resulting blast, pieces of methane tanks whipping in all directions, bouncing off the street with loud clangs of metal, Seela feeling the heat blast wash over her helmet.

She felt a pain shoot up her arm as she reached the vehicle, looking down to see a crystal as long as her hand embedded through her elbow, its jagged point poking out of the other side of her arm. Her shields had collapsed before she could get her head down.

She ripped the crystal dart out with a growl, casting it aside as she levelled her carbine over the hood of the vehicle, aiming at one of the hostile Kig-Yar and firing. The first shot hit his hand through the groove in his shield, and the second landed on his beak, the alien toppling over without a sound.

She scoped in on another Kig-Yar falling back, the avian jumping up onto one of the balconies protruding from the building nearby, the muscles bulging through his leg armour as he jumped an amazing height that would have been impossible for any other species to scale.

She pulled the trigger, her carbine flashing as she ended his height advantage, turning her attention back to the brawl. The Jiralhanae was firing from the hip at her loyal followers, two more of the Unggoy crumpling as he sprayed them down with a torrent of plasma.

He staggered back when she fired a burst of rounds, two of them catching him in his torso while the third missed. His shields had also been depleted, the alien roaring as bits of his armour broke away where her shots connected. As she reloaded, the Jiralhanae produced something from his belt.

“Catch this!”

The thing was shaped vaguely like a stick, the Jiralhanae thumping the bottom of it against his thigh, tossing it underhand in her direction. Dozens of silver blades stuck out of its length, their serrated edges glinting in the light as it tumbled over the car she hid behind.

It landed on the ground a few meters away, one of the blades digging through the concrete like it was searing into flesh. It glowed a subtle orange colour before it detonated, sending all those wicked blades flying through the air, Seela protecting her face with her arms.

She felt one of those blades hit her shoulder, but she ignored it as she popped out of cover, slamming a fresh canister into her weapon as she aimed at the Jiralhanae, who’d used the distraction of the spike grenade to fall back. Against the Human backdrop he was a massive target, and she emptied her magazine into his backside, watching as his heavy frame crumpled to the ground with a wet gurgle.

She took aim at the rest of the fighters, but they weren’t aiming their weapons at her, Seela relaxing as she saw the ones remaining were on her side. She vaulted over the vehicle, stalking towards the Jiralhanae, who she saw wasn’t dead yet, the alien crawling away with one hand, while lifting the other to his helmet.

“H-Heretic on my position, send support no-”

She silenced him, the muzzle on her carbine flashing once, Seela cursing under her boiling blood began to cool. They weren’t that far from the base, they would be coming this way ever since they heard the shooting start. Her chest tightened as she realised how many of her kin were back there, unaware of the traitorous Jiralhanae’s intentions.

Had the Minor spoken the truth? Had the Prophets really seen to it to dismiss her whole race from the Covenant, and why? She would not have believed his words had she not seen the carrier jump to slipspace, leaving all these forces on the ground behind in a move that reeked of cowardice.

As if she needed further proof, her communicator crackled to life, Seela’s eyes going wide as dozens of confused voices from her kin garbled through the speakers.

“The Jiralhanae have betrayed us!”

“My squad has turned on me! I cannot-”

“Brothers, th-the Covenant has forsaken us…”

The rapid report of a plasma turret echoed from nearby, Seela deflating as she pictured all those watchtowers as they opened up on her kin. They would be cut down in moments, their deaths nothing short of humiliating.

She couldn’t just stand here, she had to do something. If she couldn’t go back to the base, maybe she could link up with other patrols out here, but even that idea seemed foolish. The Captain Major had said himself all teams would be accompanied by a Jiralhanae of his choosing, they might not have gotten as lucky as she had…

“What are your orders, Ultra?” one of her Kig-Yar asked. She turned to see only three of the avians had survived, and just as many Unggoy, the short aliens looking to her for guidance. She could not afford to lose them now by hesitating.

“We look for other patrols led by my kin, find safety in numbers. Rearm from the dead if you need, we cannot stay here.”

She wanted to thank them for not betraying her, but couldn’t find the right words to say, and the opportunity passed as they fanned out to relieve the dead of their spare ammo. She hunkered by one of the Unggoy that had been on her side, murmuring a prayer she would usually reserve for dead kin. To die loyal to the end, there was no greater feat in her opinion.

Her arm burned with pain as she examined her carbine, Seela looking down to see a shard from the spike grenade still lodged in her shoulder. She’d almost forgotten about it.

Ripping it out, a spurt of her purple blood following, she pointed back the way they’d come. “Let’s move,” she said when they were ready, the Unggoy dropping to all fours as she led them away from the skirmish.

The Major

Kikowani Station

6 Hours After Rupture

Water splashed onto his shins as the Major stepped into the puddle in front of the kiosk, his gloved fingers tapping at the letters of the touchscreen keyboard. This was the third kiosk he’d tried after the first one had bugged out, each one either glitching out or pointing him to that same incorrect destination. Maybe the whole city network had bugged out and he was wasting his time trying to find his way round like a damned shopper lost in a mall, but third time was the charm, so they said.

He hit the enter button, cursing as his destination was once again replaced, the navigation waypoint encouraging him to go somewhere else. He thumped the side of the kiosk with his fist, watching as the screen sizzled with static, the map replacing with the green face of the city Superintendent, a tinny, artificial voice replying to his little outburst.

“Please follow these directions! Warning: fellow passengers may be sharing your designated route, please provide assistance if possible!”

The Major tilted his head, maybe these things weren’t bugging out. Was the city AI trying to point him to his missing squadmates? He took a closer look at where the map was pointing him to. Kikowani Station, the area was called, a train station not far to his east. He would rather not waste any more time than he already had, but if there was a chance one of his team was out there, he had to prioritize them over the mission.

The route pointed him to one of the tunnel access points leading below the city, where he could walk right through the subway to Kikowani. His HUD told him he had a full receiver plus thirty spare shells, and he also had his sidearm and the plasma pistol, he’d be as ready as could be if he ran into Covenant down there.

Memorising the directions, he cut through the nearby building, checking the corners of some kind of reception area for a JOTUN office, their signature logo hanging on the walls in big letters. They made farming equipment from their factories on Mars, that was all he knew about them. There was no telling if there were Covenant in any of the rooms branching off from here, but he didn’t have the time to clear each one, so he kept moving through.

The automatic doors on the other side opened up, the Major emerging out onto a street, with no Covenant in sight. There was a giant billboard on the face of the building across from him, and it shifted into a pair of white arrows pointing toward the left. The glare of the sign would have been blinding if not for his visor automatically dampening the harsh glow.

His eyes followed the arrows until they rested on a small shelter covering a staircase leading below ground, the sign on the arch flashing the word Platform 4 in orange letters. He weaved between the cars as he crossed the street, rain sliding down the front of his visor in thick drops.

When he got close, he saw the staircase was in fact an escalator frozen in place, the Major feeling better as he made his way down, the incessant rain finally stopping as the roof protected him. He wiped his visor clean with his glove, the sound that filled his helmet reminding him of when one wipes a window with a squeegee.

He brought his shotgun to bear as he reached the last step, scanning the subway for threats. The platform was covered in rubble, a pair of support columns having long crumbled to dust from some unknown force, maybe artillery. A flickering lightbulb washed over the front carriage of a train cart that had derailed, its nose smashed several feet deep into the platform’s edge. The accident should have left dozens dead, but as he made his way over to the cart, kicking stones out of the way with his boots, he was treated to a bodiless sight as he peered through the windows.

The tunnel leading off to the side drew his attention, the smooth walls outlined by the dying fluorescent on the platform. After a few feet the stone slowly faded to darkness as the tunnel curved gently to the left and out of view. Walking through had seemed so trivial up top, but now it felt like he was about to plunge into an abyss.

Leading with his shotgun, he hopped down from the platform, his boots crunching the rocks between the rails. It was easy to imagine civies running down these tunnels trying to escape the Covenant, it would have been horrible going into all that darkness with a Brute chasing you down.

He activated the night vision on his visor as he stepped into the tunnel, the illumination fighting back the intense darkness. Even after all his years of training and campaigning against the aliens, he hadn’t quite outgrown his childhood trepidation of dark places, remembering how Joker had never let the fact go after he’d found out, buying the Major a nightlight to cement his nickname in the squad.

The first bend was painted green by his visor low-light systems, but the fluorescents in this tunnel were black and dead, and soon the fading light behind him grew dimmer until his visor was struggling to outline the curving passage.

Without an outside source of light, his night vision was close to useless, so the Major flicked a thumb over the mounted flashlight on his shotgun. The beam cut through the inky darkness as he swept it over the shadows. The light was strong, but after around twenty feet the circle of illumination blurred into darkness.

He kept walking, at one point his boot slid against the rocks and he almost lost his balance, his hand shooting out to rest against the wall. The thump as his glove met the smooth stone echoed eerily down the tunnel, as if there was someone every twenty meters in front of him hitting the wall as well.

He shuffled along, the scraping of rocks below his feet also having an echo, the repeating scratching noise making his heart pound against his chest. The darkness was a perfect canvas to let his imagination run wild, a Brute could be waiting round the next bend, a cloaked Elite could be coming up behind him and he wouldn’t even know it.

He pushed these ideas aside, why would the Covenant be down here after all this time? They were here to destroy all of humanity, not skulk down here in the dark in some random subway tunnel.

He picked up the pace all the same, the circle of his flashlight beating back the swirling darkness, how long did the kiosk say this tunnel was? It didn’t, he remembered, the line just went on until it opened up at Kikowani, yet he couldn’t see any natural light, there must be a few more turns.

Something flittered above his helmet.

He shone his flashlight at the upward-curving walls, cracks splintering along the ceiling where dust occasionally fell like raindrops of powder. There had been a noise, but he hadn’t made it, and he listened to the echo with his finger ready to pull the trigger. The sound reminded him of the chittering noise of when a beetle flaps its wings.

The hairs on his neck stood on end, the circle of light too small for him to scan everywhere at once. He wasn’t sure how long he waited, only that a part of him began to doubt he’d heard anything at all, that the vapours of the dark were playing tricks on his eyes.

He began to move again, bringing his attention back to the rails so he didn’t lose his footing. The tunnel bent to the right now, every meter of the tunnel looking the same as the last, only the cracks in the tiles beside him holding any sense of change. He wondered what made them, Covenant artillery, explosions up on the streets, perhaps?

Something heavy landed on his back.

He yelled out, a stinging sensation adding a snarl to his scream as something sharp slipped between the plates on his BDU, the Major feeling warm blood trickle down his spine. He whirled around, but the weight on his shoulders followed his movement, whatever it was it was clinging to him hard.

He turned and thrust his back against the wall of the tunnel, a clicking sound that almost came off as a scream joining the echoes racing down the railway. A pair of bony hands slapped against his visor, four fingers, no, claws, beginning to rake at his helmet. They were made up of plates of chitin rather than flesh, the underside of the hand and wrist made up of angular sections of what looked like hard plastic.

The arms were backlit by his flailing flashlight, the orange plates of bone glinting in its light. He couldn’t take a shot with the thing so close, so he reversed the grip on his shotgun, swinging it like a club over his shoulder.

The stock hit something hard, and judging by the following thump, he’d missed and hit the wall. Something thin, long and covered in fine hairs brushed over his gauntlet, the Major shivering as he turned his head to see a pair of antennae poking out of a rounded head.

Through the claws scratching at his visor, a pair of glowing, green eyes stared back. They were arranged on the sides of a flat, disk-shaped head, a pair of serrated mandibles that flexed and twitched in the place a mouth would be on a human. Its head and back were layered over with thick plates of chitin or maybe armour, he couldn’t be sure. The thick torso tapered into a pair of skeletal hips, the legs and thighs covered in little barbs, ending into a pair of feet with two massive toes that were currently hooked into the waist of his BDU.

The thing looked like a giant, overgrown mantis, the Major recoiling in alarm as it gave up trying to pry his helmet off with its arms, going in instead with its jaws. Its mandibles wriggled as it latched onto his visor like a leech, the Major looking clear down its throat to see its entire gullet was lined with hook-shaped teeth.

He grabbed it by one of its antennae, snarling through his teeth as he fought to pull it off. It let go, but not before slicing him across the chest with its claws, the sound of fabric tearing as it cut through his pouches, the Major feeling its claws narrowly miss cutting into his skin.

He threw it to the ground, flipping his shotgun back into its correct position in one fluid movement. Now that he had it in his sights, he saw that two pairs of translucent wings extended from its back, the protective casings folded up over its shoulders twitching as the alien shifted on its thin legs.

It was a Drone, a flying race of insects the Covenant used to soften up positions before the elite troops rolled in. They weren’t the strongest race individually, but they travelled in such massive groups they could overwhelm even a Spartan. Why this one was alone he didn’t know, but he wasn’t about to question his luck.

The butt of the shotgun rocked into his shoulder as he fired off a shell. At such close range, the kinetic energy simply disintegrated the bug, parts of its exoskeleton flying apart like fragments from a grenade, yellow ichor trailing out to splotch against the Major’s front. In such a small space the blast from his weapon was very loud, the roar bouncing up the walls the way he’d come, the splatter of the Drone’s limbs following it.

Snarling through his teeth, he realised it had stuck something in his back, reaching up and giving what felt like a hilt a tug. He winced as he pulled it out, bringing it to his face, examining what looked like a dagger right out of the medieval ages. The blade was curved, much like the Drone’s claws had been, almost an exact approximation.

He threw it to the ground where the Drone had formerly been, the black blade reflecting the light of his flashlight as he lowered the receiver, replacing the spent shell. It didn’t feel like the stab had gone all that deep, but he’d rather be safe than sorry and look around for a medkit when he got out of this damned tunnel.

Where there was one Drone there would be more, the Major at least getting an explanation for all these cracks in here, there was undoubtedly a hive nearby, probably right above his head. He doubled timed it, not eager to see another one of them again any time soon.

He moved on for a few more minutes until he saw something through the scratches on his visor. Up ahead was a small ball of glowing light, gradually expanding with every step he took, orange light shining on the pair of rails, the fist-sized rocks casting shadows against the rest of the ground. It was probably light born from the burning city, but he wasn’t about to let morbidity stop him from feeling relief.

He moved faster, the mouth of the tunnel opening up into a huge expanse of open space. The tracks stretched on into what seemed like a bridge, ending at a platform almost identical to the one he’d just come from. What sounded like sloshing water reached his ears, but this was overwhelmed by the rapid echoes of plasma fire.

He took a knee by the tunnels end, sticking to the shadows. There was indeed a river the bridge extended over, its salty breeze filtering through the gaps in his helmet, but he was focused more on the gunfight on the other side of the bridge.

He could see six or seven Brutes off to the left of the tracks, the platform merging into a sloping set of staircases, the aliens taking cover behind planters and pillars as they fired at the train below them. One of the Brutes broke cover, the Major watching as he sprinted through the open, bee-lining it for the train. As it ran, the barrel of a Covenant carbine poked out from the train windows, cutting the alien down with a quick burst of rounds, his shields and then his body collapsing.

The dead Brute joined what looked like dozens of fallen Jackals and Grunts and even a few other Brutes, whoever was in the train setting up a nasty kill zone. He couldn’t see which of his squadmates it was at this angle, only that they probably deserved a promotion after such an amazing kill count.

“Hang on, I’m coming,” he muttered, shouldering his shotgun as he crossed the bridge.

Seela

Kikowani Station

5 Hours After Rupture

The light from the setting star had become a strange, dusty orange, and Seela didn’t like it. The sunshine filtered through clouds of ash broiling in the heavens, a strange darkness enveloping the world as the strength of the sun began to wane, the guttural roars of those who would see her dead flowing on the screaming wind. It felt like the end of days was approaching, though perhaps that was just Seela’s own bias’s speaking.

She had been searching for hours for her kinsman, and she would have preferred not finding them at all, after she came upon the first sight of fellow Sangheili since leaving the base and being betrayed.

The smell of blood had drawn her into one of the countless alleyways, Seela resting her carbine against her shoulder as she peered into the narrow passage. There, at the far end, she could make out the blue armour of a Sangheili Minor. There was no movement apart from stray bits of plastic scraping against the stone ground.

“Wait here,” she told her followers, the Kig-Yar and Unggoy taking up positions at the mouth of the alley as she proceeded in. There could be no possibility her kin were still alive, but Seela still held onto hope anyway as she walked, her stomach churning as she came upon a scene she would never forget.

The Minor was joined by another, her kin slumped up against the wall, their purple blood smeared along the limestone in two wide splotches, the dribbling lines trailing down the cracks in the stone. They carried no weapons, and by the way they were arranged, they had been facing the wall before their deaths.

It wasn’t hard to recreate the scene: the Jiralhanae had relieved them of their rifles, led them down the alley, and butchered them.

Her breathing hitched as her mind was convinced one of the Minor’s was staring back up at her, his clouded eyes locked on hers. Traitors or no, only cowards killed those without looking them in the face. To have fallen in such a pitiful way was more horrible than anything Seela could imagine.

“Find something?” a Kig-Yar called out to her.

“No,” she answered, resting her carbine against her stomach. Little to none of her kinsman ever saw Seela as more than a prospective mate at the best of times, and a weakling who should go home at the worst, but no warrior deserved to end like this, one should face death full of courage, lest their ancestors see their end as pitiful, unworthy.

“What did you find?” the Kig-Yar asked again when she returned. He glanced around her waist, clearly not satisfied with her earlier answer.

“Jiralhanae cruelty,” she answered. The squad’s collective heads snapped around when another of those deep, booming grunts sounded off, so loud Seela wasn’t sure which direction it was coming from. She had served long enough to know a Jiralhanae hunting party when she heard one, the primitive aliens were calling out, their cries carrying across the city to alert other packs of her location.

“Let us go, before the Jiralhanae scent us,” she said, her squad falling in behind her as they moved. Since her fight with the backstabbing Minor, the Jiralhanae were following in their footsteps, perhaps seeking revenge for their fallen packmate, or maybe they were simply so bloodthirsty they needed to kill every Sangheili they could find, she didn’t care which it was.

The crack of the sound barrier being broken turned her gaze up to the heavens, and she allowed herself to feel a bit of relief as first one cruiser, then another dropped through the cloud layer, beginning to deploy Banshees and Phantoms from their docking bays. She recognised one of the ships as one belonging to her kinsman. Reinforcements had finally arrived, maybe the shipmasters could lift her out of this damned place, and she could explain what had happened.

Yet as she made to hail one of the passing ships, a message over all frequencies garbled through the speakers in her helmet, Seela raising a finger to the receiver as she listened in.

“This is Shipmaster Vivercis of the Sanctity, calling all Covenant forces. The Prophet of Truth has blessed me with seizing this ship from the traitorous Sangheili. They have forsaken the Great Journey, and our hour has finally come to take our rightful place by the San’shyuum’s side. Fellow Jiralhanae, slaughter the Sangheili just as we have, show them a reckoning even the Heretics will be envious of.”

She watched as the Sanctity began to list to the side, its sight now filling her with an entirely new feeling. This treachery was happening not just here, but in orbit as well. She could just imagine this Vivercis stabbing the shipmaster in the back, seizing his place through the most cowardly of moves.

An expression of dread etched her features. The Prophets themselves had ex-communicated her race, and she would be hunted down like an animal in this Human city. She couldn’t risk signalling any fellow kin without bringing the whole Jiralhanae armada down on her location, even if there were any fellow survivors after this traitorous move from the Prophets. What could she do? She might be able to hide, wait for her kin to contact her, surely she wasn’t the only one left, was she?

Plenty of these buildings were big enough to house her and her faithful followers, the Jiralhane couldn’t search them all. And yet, just picturing herself cowering like an Unggoy in some decrepit building only morphed her fear into frustration.

No, she would not hide and wait like some spineless child. Regret had been a coward and left his troops down here to die when he jumped to slipsace, and Truth had taken over the Covenant forces, deciding her race after years of service, was no longer required. Bravery, loyalty, they did not know the meaning of these words, but she did, and Seela was going to show them in the most glorious way possible.

At the next intersection, the ground sloped down towards a sheltered façade that roofed some kind of underground complex, the archways flanking the descending staircase slightly more ornamental than the rest of the city. There appeared to be grooves in the thresholds of the arches, perhaps slots for lowering gates to protect the interiors from outside attacks, though Seela doubted much of the architecture here had defence anywhere in mind.

The exterior of the structure towered into the sky, as wide as a field, the walls thick, not unlike a bunker. From what she could tell, the building must be the same, or perhaps lower than ground level. It was a fine place to enact her plan.

“You should leave,” she said, pausing at the top of the steps. Her squad glanced quizzically up at her. “All of you. The Jiralhanae are your new leaders, not I.”

They did not have access to Covenant channels like she did, relaying to them the new shipmasters message. “A strange decision from the Prophets,” one of the Kig-Yar said. “one that reeks of political intrigue. So the High Prophets have removed all Sangheili from the Covenant?”

“They hunt me down, not you,” she continued, waving her hand. “I do not plan on running any longer. Do not linger here, they will kill you all if they see you anywhere near me, but play the part of ignorance, say you got separated from your leader, and the Covenant will surely take you back, none the wiser.”

“Noble of you,” the Kig-Yar commented after a pause. “I’m almost tempted to stay with you, but I can’t exactly spend my pay if I’m dead. Have a good death, Ultra,” he added, not hesitating to take her up on her offer as he turned away.

The other two avians hesitated before they followed, the Unggoy’s showing off their herd instincts as they too departed, Seela watching the squad disband in a matter of moments. She sighed, but not because she was annoyed. This was her choice, it would be best if she did not drag others into it.

“I-I stay with you, Sangheili lady!” one of the crustaceans yipped, Seela blinking in surprise as she looked down at the remaining straggler. The Unggoy puffed his chest out proudly, Seela allowing herself a soft chuckle as she got down to one knee, as close to eye-level with him as she could manage.

“No, you won’t,” she replied, shaking her head. “Though I’m thankful for the offer. You’re braver than most of your kin, you’d make a fine Ultra yourself one day, and I’d hate to ruin that for you.”

“You really think so?” he asked, Seela nodding.

“Really.”

“I have gift for you!” he said. He reached for his belt, producing a plasma grenade and holding it out to her. “Me save it for special occasion, but you need more than I do, I think!”

“Thank you,” she said, slotting the grenade alongside the one she had already. “Now off with you.”

She turned him by his methane tank, giving him a gentle push to get him going. The Unggoy waddled off, Seela sparing him one last glance before she turned around, vanishing into the underground structure.

Inside was a giant, open space, her hooves echoing across the stones as she walked through to the interior, though that was not an accurate word to describe the structure. The middle of the roof was open to the sky, dying beams of light shining down on a cavernous space.

Seela didn’t really know what to expect, but the sight still took her by surprise. As she passed the threshold the path split into three directions, two sets of stairs leading up, while the one in front of her went down to a lower level, the dozens of steps flanked on each side by limestone columns and planters full of green fauna. Most of the lower level was covered in sloshing water, made black by the lack of light, and in the distance were bridges suspended over the inky water, one of them gapping the far wall and the platform at the base of the steps.

Seela shuffled down the incline, her hooves too large to use the steps properly. At the bottom were a dozen square planters, set up in a grid-like pattern on the platform, the tall trees adding a touch of colour to the industrial environment. Their leaves did not move in such a sheltered place, Seela wondering how they grew with such little sunlight.

A long, thin vehicle sat idle next to the platform, where the bridge stretched from right to left. On closer inspection it seemed to be made of three individual carriages joined by steel cables, its wheels glued to a pair of rails built into the ground. This must be some kind of transportation hub, if all the bridges had such rails built into them.

The hunters call echoed out again, Seela bristling as it seemed to be a little louder than last time. She tried to quell her nerves, she did not want to resemble a cornered animal in these moments.

The top of her helmet grazed the ceiling of the carriage as she stepped inside it, examining the rows of seats, the cushions ripped in places where cotton spilled out, support bars and bits of metal littering the aisle between. This vehicle msut have come under attack, yet it didn’t appear to have any weaponry or armour plating, it was probably for civilians.

She leaned round the entrance of the carriage, looking back the way she’d come. There was hardly any cover on the stairs, save for the trees at the bottom, and this long vehicle would make a good spot for an emplacement to enact her plan.

She looked along the railway line, seeing that it extended to a hole on the far wall, the tunnel too dark to see into. Unless the Jiralhanae found a way through there, which she doubted, the stairs would be the only approach she had to worry about. Air support wouldn’t be an issue either, not unless they wanted to drop their troops straight into the water.

Keeping as much of her body behind the wall of the carriage, she brought her carbine to rest on the window, her sights training on the steps up above. A throaty cry echoed throughout the complex, chased by the unmistakable laughter of a Jiralhanae. They were close, but this did not dissuade her from her focus, in fact she welcomed the call.

She would not end up like her executed kin in that alley, she would not be stabbed in the back, and she would certainly not cry out over the communicator like her brothers had. No, Seela would go down on her own terms, prove to her dismissive kin that she was a warrior and would fall with more grace than they had this day, fighting until the bitter end in the name of her father and her ancestors.

They didn’t keep her waiting, the first few pairs of Unggoy waddling into her view after a few minutes, followed by a Kig-Yar. The latter hopped up onto the planters, surveying the flowing river like a giant, perching vulture as the former lumbered down the steps. Another pair of crustaceans rounded the corner, and at their back, a Jiralhanae followed them inside.

She could make out his gruff voice as he ordered his squad to look around, Seela resting the crosshairs of her scope on his helmet. She blinked when another of his kind appeared beside him, both of them armed with plasma rifles. They were both Minors by the colour of their armour, did that mean there was a third, higher ranked one out there?

They were trudging down the steps two at a time, the closest Unggoy about halfway down the incline, she’d have to spring her trap while they were still in the open. Exhaling a long breath, she adjusted the range on her scope one final time, and squeezed the trigger.

Three to the chest dropped the Minor’s shields, and the fourth knocked his helmet clean off, his head snapping back as he fell to the ground. She was already firing on the other as the Jiralhanae watched his counterpart fall, Seela dropping him with another four rounds.

The Unggoy did what they always did when their leaders fell before they did, Seela’s sights struggling to hold on an Unggoy as he started running circles, firing his pistol wildly into the air. Her carbine rocked once as she killed him, then once more as she dropped another, the little aliens toppling down the stairs as she picked them off efficiently.

As she reloaded, the Kig-Yar leapt off the planter he was perched on, exaggerating his strides as he descended the staircase, trying to make his movements as erratic as possible to throw off her aim. The first shot grazed his arm, but the miss caused him to stagger, and the second shot found its mark, the avian toppling over the balcony, a distant splash ending his fall.

She had dropped them all in a matter of moments, but that wasn’t the entire hunting party. She heard a Jiralhanae bellow a challenge at her from somewhere above, one she met with her own roar, bracing her carbine on the lip of the window.

Her earlier suspicions were confirmed as another Jiralhanae entered the complex, the waning daylight at his back as he crouched by the threshold, his red armour square in her sights. He must have thought himself out of her view as he raised a finger to his helmet, his head moving as though he was speaking with someone.

He was calling in reinforcements, she was sure of it. She could have taken him down then and there, but she waited, letting him send his call for help. Let them come, she thought. The more she killed, the more glorious her stand would be.

He disappeared behind one of the walls up there, Seela taking a moment to check the plasma charge on her carbine. The telltale warbling sound of a Phantom’s engines filled the complex not a few moments later, Seela watching its shadow pass over the water as it banked across the open ceiling.

She heard it lower to the street somewhere nearby, depositing a number of troops whose number didn’t remain a mystery for long. More Kig-Yar and Unggoy sauntered down the stairwell, the pair of species fanning out as more Jiralhane Minor’s brought up their rear.

The runts were more prepared this time, sending small arms fire down at the vehicle she was crouching inside of, Seela fighting against her instincts to duck away. Trusting in her shields, she returned a few bursts of her own, dropping two, then three Unggoy as they descended the incline, easy targets in such an open area.

Kig-Yar wielding shield gauntlets ignited their protective barriers now, three of them forming a line as they stood shoulder to shoulder. She could see their beaks tucked flat against their chests through the plasma wall, keeping their bodies protected as they advanced down towards her position. The shield wall was a tried and tested Covenant tactic, the novelty of being on this side of the manoeuvre making her heart race.

Her carbine bolts bounced harmlessly off the shields, the thin contrails painting green lines that joined to the vaulted ceiling. She growled as she was forced to duck away by a hail of suppressive fire, the Jiralhane covering the avians as they advanced with the shield wall.

She drew her pistol from her belt, feeling the metal on her back warming as the plasma fire splashed against her cover. Taking a knee, she turned out, looking down the sights of her pistol as she pulled and held down the trigger, a growing ball of energy coalescing around its muzzle. Pistols could be overcharged to fire a much denser bolt that could deplete even the strongest shields with a single shot, though repeated use would render the weapon unusable.

The weapon began to shake in her hand, even as Seela willed her muscles to steady her aim, waiting until the overcharge had reached its maximum power before she let the trigger go. The bolt was as big as her fist, travelling maybe half the speed of a standard bolt, curving through the air as though an invisible force was influencing its trajectory.

The bolt crashed into the leftmost shield, the Kig-Yar behind it voicing a squawk as his gauntlet overloaded. Seela cut him down with a single shot, emptying the rest of her ammo into the next one over, splitting the avian in half by the waist as a radioactive round found its mark in his centre mass.

The third Kig-Yar retreated upon seeing his shield-brothers die, turning to run head-first into the leg of the Jiralhanae that had been advancing behind him. Knocking the avian aside, the Minor charged forward, Seela emptying the rest of her cartridge, watching as he tumbled, his momentum carrying him the rest of the way down the stairwell.

She fished for another cartridge on her belt, seeing she only had two left. Good, she needed something to get her blood boiling.

The other Jiralhanae along with three Unggoy were inching their way down to her position, and she made them fight for every step, picking the little ones off one at a time, growling when her cartridge was empty again. She popped a fresh one in, looking over her cover to see the Jiralhanae was close enough she could see his mammalian eyes blinking at her.

They were within grenade distance, so that’s exactly what Seela did, producing the plasma grenade the Unggoy had given her and tossing it in the Jiralhanae’s direction. It narrowly passed the tree he’d been hiding behind, not sticking but landing too close for the big, lumbering alien to escape the blast radius, the explosion tossing his armoured body away where he collided with the wall, leaving a crater in the stone.

Her shields sparked as plasma struck her from the side, Seela snarling as she turned to see an Unggoy had snuck into the vehicle while she was distracted. He visibly deflated as she stared him down, his single shot the only one he sent her way as she willed him to drop his pistol using her gaze alone.

She flexed her mandibles as far as they would go, yelling a wordless roar, the little alien yelping a noise Seela wouldn’t be caught dead making herself, the Unggoy running off back the way he’d come.

Her gaze rose to the entrance, her heart hammering in her chest as she spotted another full squad up there, the sound of a departing Phantom just noticeable above the rain of plasma fire coming down on her. Six more Jiralhanae, along with the Major she’d seen before, formed a cordon behind their runts, the shorter aliens dashing across the open, supressing her as the Jiralhanae advanced.

One of the Jiralhanae produced a weapon that made her curse under breath. It was a thin, stout weapon with a tube for a muzzle and a blade for a stock, Seela throwing herself to the ground when he fired it from the hip, the thump-thump-thump as he pulled the hammer vibrating through her bones even from this distance.

Explosive charges arched towards her, the first two landing a few paces in front of her position, shrapnel peppering the other side of her cover. The third detonated on the roof of the vehicle, Seela flinching reflexively as the metal caved inward, her helmet muffling the explosion.

Her vehicle rocked on its rails as the Jiralhane emptied the rest of his grenade-launcher at her cover, Seela firing her carbine through the window at the advancing Unggoy, cutting three of them down before they could hide behind the trees.

Her cover was starting to lose its solidness with how much fire was coming down on her, the metal slagging into liquid in places as the heat began to accumulate. She dashed for the next window over, her shields flickering as they absorbed a few plasma bolts that found their mark in her flank.

Seela took cover next behind another window, raising her carbine over the lip, cutting down another Jiralhanae Minor. The one with the grenade launcher fired one last time, Seela stumbling as the resulting blast detonated not two paces in front of her. A cloud of obscuring smoke rose up from the blast, Seela firing blindly through it at the advancing aliens.

She could hear them reaching the end of the stairwell, ducking into the trees and fanning out, plasma fire hitting her cover from seemingly all sides. She fired over the window when she could, the energy of her shields rapidly depleting each time she popped out of cover. She tossed her remaining grenade at a Minor who was closing to within spitting distance, leaves from the closest tress raining down on the platform, Seela waiting for the explosion before leaning out to deplete one of their shields, felling another, but she was running out of breathing room, in a moment they’d be right outside her cover.

Her shields flared as the plasma overwhelmed her personal barrier, the energy shattering like broken glass as she hunkered down, the horrible sensation of exposure washing over her. Finding her carbine had run out of charges, she slotted it to her back, drawing her pistol.

She put her back to the vehicle’s side, the metal burning her through her suit as the metal started slagging, the Jiralhanae keeping her suppressed. She was running out of options, but the tightening feeling in her stomach was not one born from dread. She felt alive for the first time in years, how ironic that this feeling was here, so close to the end.

The one with the grenade launcher sent another explosive charge her way, this one detonating inside the vehicle to her right. The tiny Human seats exploded in clouds of cotton and plastic, what few remaining windows shattering as the vehicle rocked on its wheels from the impact.

Steeling herself, Seela dashed along the vehicle’s length, escaping the blast of a follow up grenade that exploded right where she’d been standing. She stooped to pick up the pistol the frightful Unggoy had dropped before, huffing as she realised she was picking up a lot of weapons from the small creatures as of late.

She snarled as she felt plasma impact her shoulder and stomach, Seela raising her pistols over the seats and firing at the Jiralhanae with the launcher. He was by the foot of the stairs, and she overcharged one pistol while firing the other one normally, combining the bolts. The heat washed over his thick armour, his shields fizzling out, the alien slumping to his side with a wet gurgle as the bolts cooked his insides.

“Signal for reinforcements!” she heard one of the Minors say as she hunkered down. “We need more Unggoy!”

“Call the whole Covenant!” Seela shouted at them, her pistols warming her palms as she stayed hidden. “Let the Prophets themselves know that a hunting party cannot deal with just one Ultra!”

“I will feast on your bones, Sangheili!” one of them snarled back. She could hear their footsteps drawing closer, tightening the net as two approached from one side, the rest from the other.

She emptied her pistols on the closest one, but only succeeded in cutting his shields down before she was harried with plasma fire, one of the bolts catching her on the helmet, Seela collapsing to the ground in pain. Her helmet had managed to dissipate the heat, but so much kinetic energy had been behind the bolt, it had felt like someone had thrown a brick at her face.

She heard one of them stomp his way onto the vehicle, the vibrations traveling up through her spine. So this was it, three whole squads had been needed to take her down, plus one Jiralhanae pack. She had hoped to last for a little longer, but with a bit of hope, her ancestors would find her worthy.

She struggled to her knees, but the killing blow never came. She looked up at the Jiralhanae on the vehicle with her, but he had turned his back on her, wielding his gun around on something else. She winced away as his shields sparked in an unstable white, a pair of follow-up shots killing the alien where he stood, the Jiralhanae keeling over on one of the seats flanking the aisle. Had some of her kin managed to find her?

She peered over the window frame, but her saviour was no Sangheilian.

An Imp rolled out of the way of a barrage of plasma, bringing a large, two-handed weapon to bear on the closest Jiralhanae, a sound like that of escaping gas echoing through the complex as he fired, collapsing the alien’s shields and following through with a single shot from some sort of sidearm, the Jiralhanae dropping his carbine as he died.

Imps were some of the deadliest creatures the Humans employed, second only to the Demons, but the ferocity they showed in combat was no less impressive. Yet something was different about this one. Imps wore black armour with minimal features, but this one had highlights throughout his plating, could this be their equivalent of an Ultra?

The Jiralhanae had all but forgotten about Seela, turning their weapons and attention on the new threat. The Imp stuck close to the trees, his smaller frame allowing him to use the fauna to its full potential, staying crouched as it moved to a better position, firing its strange, long weapon at the Jiralhanae Major.

“Damned creature!” the Major snarled, his shields breaking apart. It would take many Human bullets to deplete a shield from full, yet it had broken in just two shots. The Imp followed up with another blast from its Human weapon, one of the Jiralhanae’s arms severing at the shoulder, black ichor spraying. He tried to fight on anyway, charging the Imp down with a fist raised, but he only made it three steps before the blood loss caught up with him, and he collapsed.

The remaining Jiralhane tossed his weapons aside, dropping to all fours as it charged down the Imp, loosing a bestial roar. The bloodthirsty aliens lost all sense when they were the last ones remaining among dead packmates, and he made an easy target for the Imp, its weapon seeming to become more deadlier the closer its target was, the enraged Jiralhanae losing his shields after just one shot.

The Imp brought it down, the alien collapsing mid-lunge, his chin sliding along the floor and halting by its boot, the Imp giving it a kick to make sure it was dead. As the silence began to sink in, Seela found her mandibles had opened in awe, the Imp had taken all her foes down without a single hit, yet it didn’t seem completely unharmed.

Taking advantage of the lull to examine it a bit closer, she saw it was bleeding from its back, and parts of its chestplate were scratched, its opaque visor sporting jagged lines running across it, as though a great beast had raked its claws across its face. It even had a plasma pistol strapped to its leg, further confirming it had been battling Covenant at some point before now.

It lifted its blue visor in her direction, Seela stepping out of its view as her heart began to beat faster.

“Think that’s all of em’,” it called out. “You can come out now. That you, Holiday?”

It was speaking Human, a language Seela understood. She checked the charge on her pistols. Imps never travelled alone, where was its kin? She held her breath, fearing any noise might give her away.

“Joker? Come on, this isn’t funny.”

Holiday, Joker? What gibberish was it saying? Perhaps these were names of its kin, and it had assumed Seela was one of these Imps. It had so fearlessly charged the Jiralhanae down in order to help her, unaware of what she was, it was almost impressive. Should she send an overcharge its way? It would be an easy shot, it wasn’t in cover, yet the fact it had come to her aid made the decision much harder than it should have been.

She holstered her pistols, staying out of view as she waited for it to speak again, but it didn’t. The Imp’s boots clocked against the floor, Seela thinking up a plan as it started coming her way.

The Major

Kikowani Station

6 Hours After Rupture

“Think that’s all of em’,” the Major said, replacing his spent shells. “You can come out now. That you, Holiday?”

Holiday always had an affinity with Covenant weapons, but she wasn’t one to stay quiet when he called her, the Major frowning behind his visor as he examined the train. This whole side of it had been rendered black with plasma fire, the steel melting into chrome puddles that dripped to pool over the tracks.

There was blood everywhere, too, the Jackals and Grunts by the foot of the steps forming piles two or three aliens tall. It reminded him of the time he’d walked through a captured Covenant cruiser, where a Spartan had singlehandedly slaughtered his way from the cargo bay to the bridge, leaving none of the aliens alive, and a hell of a mess for everyone else to clean up.

“Joker? Come on, this isn’t funny.”

His only answer was his own echo: “Funny… unny… ny…” There was no movement from the train, the Major pumping his shotgun as the silence made him wary. He stepped over the corpse of the Brute, bracing his weapon as he made his way to the train. Had he been too late?

He exaggerated his step as he crossed the gap between the train and the platform. The ionising energy in the air warmed his skin through his armour, an uneasy stillness settling over the station. He flicked on his visor as he glanced at the carriage on his right, the systems fighting back the darkness. There was a dead Brute in the aisle, the giant alien plugging the whole path like a cork in a bottle, his dropped weapon laying on the seat by his slumped head.

Looking over his shoulder at the opposite carriage, his visor outlined the seats leading up to the driver’s hatch, but nothing more. He made his way up the train, the Major kicking aside a couple of spent carbine canisters littering the ground like bullet casings.

The aisle narrowed where the carriage’s joined, and he turned his body sideways so he could squeeze through, his bulky armour not designed with civilian trains in mind. There was blood in here, too, his head locking to a splotch of it on one of the seats in front of him.

The blood was purple.

The gears were still turning in his head as he emerged into the aisle, when all of a sudden a giant arm swiped down on his shotgun with a whoosh of air, the weapon clattering to his feet.

He turned to see an Elite had been standing just to the side of the threshold, the most obvious hiding place in the book, yet he’d missed it. Instincts kicking into action, he drew his sidearm from its holster, firing from the hip like a gunslinger out of a Western movie. He got off four shots, the Elite’s shields flickering as they absorbed the rounds, the alien snatching the gun out of his hand.

It chucked his sidearm out of the train window, its arm clad in the white power armour of an Ultra. Parts of its plating were burnt, and there was drying blood seeping out of a wound on its shoulder. It was obvious this was the one who’d been fighting off those Brutes, but how was that possible? The Covenant were a united faction who purged humanity, not each other.

It didn’t seem to react after disarming him, but the Major took the opening as his chance, producing the combat knife from his chest and driving it towards its chest. The Elite seized his wrist, its mandibles flexing as it growled down at him, the thing hunching so it could fit inside the train.

It leaned down until its face practically touched his visor, its pair of eyes filling his vision. Its sclera was a deep yellow that bordered on gold, and the irises were a striking purple, vertical like a reptile’s.

After these few moments of examination, he socked it in the mouth, or maybe snout was a more accurate word, since it didn’t possess a mouth in the traditional sense. His fist bounced off its mandible guards, the Major snarling through his teeth as white-hot pain pulsed through his fist. It felt like he’d just punched a wall of stone.

At least he wasn’t alone in his pain, the Elite’s face wrinkling as though about to sneeze, the alien voicing an “Oof!” –as it recoiled, its grip on his knife weakening. He pulled his arm free, reversing the blade so it pointed at the ground, driving it home at a different angle.

The tip of the knife slipped between the plates on its chest armour, sinking in a few inches before the Elite grabbed him by the arm once more. It was two or three heads taller than him easy, and probably three times as heavy, the alien easily overpowering him as it shoved him back, pushing him against the opposite wall of the carriage.

It slammed his arm holding the knife against the side of the train, his grip on the handle buckling, but he didn’t let it go. The Elite examined his blade with its amber eyes, as if confused by his strength.

It lifted his arm again, its whole hand completely blocking the Major’s limb from his sight, crushing it on the wall much harder this time. The knife slipped from the Major’s fingers, but he was already throwing another punch with his free hand before the weapon hit the floor.

The Elite was ready for it this time, engulfing his hand with its own and squeezing. He grunted as it thrust him up against the wall, his toes leaving the ground as it lifted him up by the arms, suspending him there.

“For one so small, you fight like a Mgalekgolo,” it said, the Major stopping his struggling to look it in the eyes. He had heard Elites and Brutes speak English before, but only ever to taunt their enemies. “I can admire one who struggles in the face of defeat, but you’d do well to calm yourself, or I shall rip off your arms.”

It was applying just enough pressure to keep him pinned, but not enough to crush him, the Major trying to get his breathing under control as he glared at it.

“Good,” it said, the deep contralto of its voice catching his attention. Its tone was husky, as it would be on such a massive creature, but there was some sort of quality to it he couldn’t quite place. “I do not need to see your eyes to know you wonder why I’m speaking to you. I’ll give you a reason,” it added, pausing as it waited for him to respond, and when he didn’t, the Elite continued. “You have spared me from a death at the hands of these Jiralhanae. Although part of me is frustrated by this development, honour demands that repayment is due, so I shall not take your life for the moment. You are welcome.”

“So what to do with you?” it continued, tilting its head at him. “I could tell by your marked armour that you have battled the Covenant before. We share a common interest.” It nodded towards the fallen Brutes behind it. “The Covenant are no longer my allies, the Prophets have betrayed me and my kin, and although I may not get revenge on the San’shyuum themselves, killing the traitorous Jiralhanae will be more than enough to please me. Since I no longer have my companions, and you have proved you can handle the Jiralhanae, we may yet wipe out more of their packs by working together.”

The Major was more than shocked, this thing had been ready to kill him, but now it was offering to work with him? It was a proposal that didn’t need a lot of considering. His squad was out there with no way of contacting him, the city maps weren’t working, and his pod had landed him right in the middle of the Covenant forces, this Elite was his one chance to maybe make it out of here alive. Of course, if he did say no, it would probably go through with its threat and rip his arms from his shoulders, so there was obviously only one answer.

“Why do you not talk?” it asked him, its mandibles flexing in what might have been impatience. “I know you can speak, Imp, you talked of some… holiday a moment ago.”

“Fine,” he replied. Its eyes widened, locking onto his own even though his visor was opaque. “You wanna kill Brutes, we’ll go kill Brutes.”

“Brutes?” it asked, tasting the word. “You mean the Jiralhanae? Mm, a fitting name. You may pick up your tiny knife if you think it will help you.”

It lowered him to the ground, slowly pulling its arms away as it waited to see what he’d do. He bent over to pick up his discarded knife, slotting it into its sheath with a quiet scrape of leather on metal.

“Your weapon,” the Elite added, leveraging his shotgun off the ground using only its hooves. The gun flipped into the air, the Major snatching it by the stock. The Elite’s eyes trained on the muzzle as he lowered it to the ground.

“I must collect more ammo before we proceed. Do not shoot me in the back, Imp, I’ve had enough of that this day.”

He would have done just that when the Elite turned around, exiting the train and moving to the closest dead Brute, but something about this alien came off as different, and not just because it had spared his life a second ago. Elites were the right-hand of the Prophets, living off combat, yet this one had chosen to talk to him after disarming him, that alone was enough reason for the Major to stay his hand.

He took a few moments to examine it a little more closely. The Elite carried itself much differently to others he’d seen in the past, its gait more balanced and graceful, the hips rolling in time with each of its long strides, the curve of its waist more exaggerated as it bent over to pluck a carbine from the hands of a dead Brute, a pair of toned buttcheeks drawing the Major’s gaze, each one bigger than his helmet.

It snapped the receiver open, ejecting the cartridge and slotting it onto its belt, taking two more from the Brute’s corpse. It reloaded the carbine holstered on its back, turning to the Major once it was rearmed. Seeing an alien looking at him with a weapon drawn compelled him to aim and fire, the Major resisting the urges all the years of training had instilled in him.

“Do not just stand there,” the Elite said, gesturing with a four-fingered hand. “You know this city better than I do, lead on.”

Giving it a sideways glance, he moved past it, retrieving his pistol as he made his way up the stairwell, moving between the dead aliens. He could feel the Elite’s presence just behind him, the Major confident that if it wished to kill him, it would have done so already, so there was little point in worrying about it betraying him. Still, it was difficult to shake the feeling of having an alien at his back.

When he reached the top, turning towards the next flight of steps on the side, the Elite spoke up.

“I came in from that way,” it said, pointing towards an entrance leading up onto the street, the rain falling down on the ornate threshold in sheets. “Why head in this direction?”

“That way leads north,” he said. “I need to go east.”

“Why?”

He didn’t answer, and the Elite followed him anyway as he trudged up the stairwell, the alien grumbling as it struggled to keep its footing, as its hooves were more than twice the size of each step.

When the ground levelled out, the Major was greeted with a view onto another street, but the way was blocked. A safety barrier had activated just inside the awning, a crisscrossing pattern of metal bars closing off this exit. The Major gave it a tug, finding it firmly stuck in place.

“Stand aside,” the Elite said, the Major moving out of its path as it stepped up to the barrier. It put its carbine on its back, the magnetic locks on the power armour holding it there as it dusted its hands. It bent down, wrapping its fingers over the lowest bars, its knuckles tensing as it started to pull.

The alien’s muscles bulging beneath its armour, the security gate began to rise, a horrible grating sound echoing throughout the station as the gate grinded against its own locks. The barrier was designed to keep vehicles out, the Major both impressed and terrified by the Elite’s strength as it lifted the barrier inch after inch. He ducked through the gap when it had raised the grates high enough for him to slip under.

The Elite braced the barrier against its back as it followed him out, twisting its torso once it was clear, the grates smashing back into place with a loud bang. The alien turned to him, a more than pleased expression on its face.

“Good job,” he said, giving it a thumbs-up. “There was a security booth back there that could have raised the gate remotely, but that worked.”

“What are you doing with your finger?” it asked, looking at his hand.

“It’s a gesture, means good or yes.” He lifted his shotgun as he scanned the street, rain dripping off the lip of the station’s awning obscuring his vision. “By the way, what should I call you?”

“You have no reason to know my name,” it replied.

“What if I need to call out to you? Should I just say, ‘over here alien’?”

“You are the alien,” it said. “But, you have a point. My name is Seela.”

“Seela? Hold on.” He looked it over, the Elite turning away a little as he scrutinised it. “You a female?”

Its eyes narrowed, a subtle growl drawing from its throat. “Yes,” it said, looking away.

Now he knew what had caught his attention the first time it spoke, its tone was distinctly womanly, and its curves had come off as feminine. With access to UNSC databases not even veteran Marines were aware of, the Major was a well-informed individual, but even he hadn’t heard of female Elites serving in the Covenant before, they must be rare.

“Having second thoughts about me?” Seela asked, her tone of voice altering somewhat, as though she was unsure of something.

“Well, not if I ever need another gate opened.”

“You cannot get rid of me even if you tried.”

The Major had the feeling he wasn’t following along, electing to say nothing as he moved out into the rain, passing round the hood of a destroyed car. “Not gonna ask me my name?” he asked.

“As if a creature like you has one I could even pronounce,” she replied tersely.

It was the last time the Major spoke for a while, the two pressing on down the street.

The Major

Streets of New Mombasa

Seven Hours After Rupture

The gentle patter of his boots stepping into puddles of water was drowned out over the downpour, but his strange companion made even less sound despite being twice his size. The Elite was content to hang back ten or so meters at his flank, the Major stealing the occasional glance at her to confirm she was still there as they made their way from street to street.

She had to be hundreds of pounds heavier than him, yet she carried herself along the sidewalk without so much as scraping a corner or brushing against a car, projecting a dexterity that shouldn’t belong on such a weighty being. Perhaps that was because unlike other Elites or Brutes, she didn’t sport much armour, particularly around the belly and waist, her distinctly hourglass figure outlined by a grey, form-fitting suit she wore beneath her armour, her range of motion going unhindered.

Her hips were wider than the breadth of his shoulders, her ass leaving nothing about its size to the imagination, as there was a lack of plating on her rear. Her bodysuit was practically painted onto her thighs, which were just as stout as the rest of her, packed with so much muscle they did not wobble when she walked. The Major had trouble keeping his eyes off her, she was plenty of woman, even for an alien.

They hadn’t exchanged a word since they’d left the station, the silence continuing from block after block. Their species had been fighting each other for years now, which didn’t exactly make striking up a conversation easy, and her being an apparent turncoat didn’t change that fact.

They soon stopped when he heard a familiar, artificial voice from around the next corner.

“Optican healthcare on demand!”

His companion, Seela, readied her carbine, the rain dropping off her armoured shoulders as she aimed over his head.

“Relax,” he said, peeking round the wall for enemies, proceeding when the street was clear. Built onto the sidewalk was a little sheltered alcove, the swept roof sheltering a long bench, and hanging on the wall above it were two medkits, the signature red cross on the casing reminding him he had not gone unscathed since leaving his pod.

He took one of the kits, sitting down on the bench as he opened the container, propping his shotgun against the wall. Standard Army medkits contained everything from biofoam to morphine, but this one only contained a packet of white, jelly-like substance no bigger than his hand, along with a small slip of paper that provided instructions.

As he read them, his Elite companion poked her helmet round the corner, her mandibles dipping in a frown as she saw him sitting there like he was waiting for the bus.

“Why have you stopped?” she asked, her head tilting as she walked a little closer, watching as he ripped open the packet and squeezed the gel out onto his finger like it was shampoo from a bottle.

“Got nicked back in Kikowani,” he explained. According to the paper, all he had to do was rub the gel where it hurt, and the pain should relieve in a short while. Reaching behind his neck, he dipped his hand beneath his collar, walking his fingers down his back to where the Drone had stabbed him. The warm gel mixed with his wet blood as he dipped his fingers into the cut, wincing behind his helmet as he applied the MediGel, so it was called, making sure he got it in deep.

“From what?” Seela asked. “No Brute landed a shot on you, I saw it.”

“This was before that,” he said. His BDU was making it difficult to reach the wound, the Major peeling off a few strips of the Kevlar to better access it. He fought back a wave of nausea as his wound started bleeding again.

“You give me very short answers,” Seela noted. She was still standing in the rain and not under the alcove, perhaps she didn’t want to be any closer to him.

“Why should I explain anything to you, Covvie?”

“Cov-ie?” she repeated. “I told you, I am no longer a part of the Covenant, none of us are.”

“Welcome to the club, then,” he replied, Seela tilting her head in confusion. Neither of them spoke as he applied more of the gel to his various wounds, his armour doing its job well enough so far to keep his wounds to a minimum.

The gel was irritating his skin the more he rubbed at it, he needed something to distract himself from the pain, the Major eventually breaking the silence when he peered up at her. “You speak English pretty well,” he said.

Seela shivered, stubbornly standing in the rain as she folded her arms. Only her hands and her face were exposed to the air, the Major finding that her skin was a deep, navy blue. It looked like leather, smooth and flawless save for a small scar on one of her fingers on the right hand. He wondered if she had a single hair on her or was smooth all over.

“All recruits are encouraged to speak the Human tongue, so we can interpret what you say during combat and gain an advantage. I studied longer than many of my kin have, and by your responses, I must be fluent.”

“Yeah, your ‘kin’ probably just stick to the tried-and-true phrases: ‘Kill them all’, ‘burn the children’.”

She scowled at his mocking accent, wiping at her face as the rain fell down on her. “And what of you?” she asked, nodding at him. “Do you and the Humans not also learn our tongue?”

“Know one or two words,” he replied, throwing the empty gel packet away.

“Is that all? Only fools would willingly be ignorant of the language of their enemy.”

“Haven’t had a lot of time to learn linguistics, you lot glassing our worlds and all that.”

She was beginning to growl now, losing her patience with his prodding. “I have never glassed a world, nor have I burned any of your children. I kill because it is… was, my duty to the Covenant, and unlike my kin I do not harm those who do not pose a threat.”

He scoffed at that, and that seemed to hit a nerve, Seela fixing him with a cold glare. “I speak the truth! Though I can tell I may as well save my breath with you.”

“There’s an idea,” he replied. The MediGel was starting to numb the pain in his back, not unlike biofoam did, though this gel seemed to lack the harsh side effects of biofoam altogether, such as hours of pain that chased a few moments of relief, the Major guessing it was manufactured for civilians in mind.

“You need some?” he asked, opening the other medkit and waving the gel packet at the alien. “You’re bleeding.”

Narrowing her eyes at him, she angled her bloodied shoulder away, as though that would conceal it. “It is nothing.”

“More for me.” He unzipped one of his pouches on his rig, storing the packet for when he would no doubt need it later. He picked up his shotgun, gesturing for the alien to follow. “I’m set for now.”

“At last.”

The Major led the way through the next block, the presence of advertisement boards and kiosks grabbing his attention as they rounded into a commercial area. Shops lined either side of the street, what few neon signs that had survived the invasion displaying their wares over their ruined facades. At the far end of the street was a giant blast door that would have looked more at home in the hanger of a starship, an impenetrable wall of grey steel that cut off this street from the next.

To one side, he spotted the telltale angled board of a kiosk, the Major making his way over to it. The brightness of the screen was unusually noticeable, the light setting a few notches higher than every other bit of technology nearby, like it was drawing more power from the city grid.

The Major bet that something would change now that he’d been to Kikowani, and sure enough, when he typed in his true destination, the Superintendent finally pointed him to the right place, a red line drawing itself through the three-dimensional representation of the city.

“What are you typing?” Seela asked, leaning over his shoulder as he traced the route with his gloved finger.

“I need directions,” he replied. The route was long, he’d have to do his best to commit the turns to memory.

“Don’t we all,” his companion replied, glancing at their surroundings. “This place is a Gods-damned maze. Directions to where, exactly?”

“You’re a master of language, read it yourself.”

“I may speak it, but your runes are… difficult to memorise.”

“Too bad for you,” he said. A strange, warbling noise caused him to glance up at the burning sky, the fires on the horizon competing against the darkness in a way he found distinctly unpleasant, as though the world was trapped in a limbo between night and day. From behind one of the distant skyscrapers, a Phantom banked into view, flying over the city at an alarming speed, coming this way.

He looked around, the closest cover was the store to their right, and he made his way over, clutching Seela’s arm as he moved. “Get down.”

She shoved his hand away roughly, the Major almost tripping over by her absurd strength, Seela jabbing a finger at him. “Nobody touches me, creature. I will cut off your hand if you do that again.”

“Get your ass down!” he insisted, Seela watching as he ducked into the store, crouching behind one of the display windows. Only now did she seem to notice the Phantom was closing in, the way she sauntered inside coming off as reluctant.

She took a knee as far away from him as possible in the confined shop, the two watching as the Phantom hovered over the street a second later, the twin plasma cannons poking out of its belly swivelling as they searched for targets. It did not stop, but the ship did slow to a crawl, a searchlight flashing on, the beam aiming at the ground as it started scanning the streets.

“They must be searching for their hunters,” Seela said, not lowering her voice, the dropship too far to have a chance of overhearing her.

“Hunters?” he asked.

“They sent a hunting pack after me,” she explained. “The one you so helpfully killed. They will find out they did not kill me, let us give them a welcome they shall not soon forget.”

She made to stand, the Major holding up an exasperated hand. “Wait!” he said, the alien bristling at his closeness. He wasn’t about to test her patience after her warning just now, keeping his hand clear. “You can’t just start picking a fight with a damned Phantom! You’ll bring the whole Covenant down on us!”

“You say this like it is a bad thing,” she replied.

“Of course it’s a bad thing, you’ll get us both killed!”

His words gave her pause, the Elite considering something as she glanced up at the Phantom, which had begun to drift in the direction they had come from. “No Sangheili has ever winced from a fight,” she muttered. “I told you I wish to kill as many of these Brutes, as I can. That was our agreement.”

“Us dying cause you’ve got a deathwish was our agreement? Look,” he added, seeing he wasn’t getting through to her. “Show a bit of self-awareness. You and me, we’re in the same boat now: we’re outnumbered, outgunned, behind enemy lines.” He paused, Seela mulling over his words as he continued.

“If we pick and choose our fights, we’d not only just might get out of this alive, but you’d end up killing more Brutes than if you just waltzed up to the first Phantom you see.”

The first part didn’t seem to interest her, but the second part did, the Elite looking away as she made a decision. The Major wasn’t doing this for her, but for himself. If she went berserk now, that would just make it more difficult to escape once that dropship started circling them, he couldn’t complete his mission if he was dead.

“Fine,” Seela sighed. “We will do it your way. For a little while.”

They waited for the Phantom to pass, the purple ship soon disappearing over the tops of the buildings, the two emerging back out into the rain. The Major took one last glance at the map before they got moving. “Looks like we’ve got to go through that giant door over there,” he said, nodding at the reinforced blockade.

“Not even a Kig-Yar could leap over that thing,” Seela scoffed. “What great help those directions are.”

A mechanical, whirring sound made the two of them ready their weapons, the Major lowering his shotgun as the blockade began to fold up from the ground, the giant slab of metal sliding into a recess in the upper part of the barrier, the street opening to them.

“You were saying?” the Major chuckled, Seela grumbling as she avoided eye contact. “You know, you should be nicer to it.”

“What on Sanghielios are you talking about? What is ‘it’?”

The Major stepped through the blast doors, calling back over his shoulder: “That’s need-to-know information.”

Keeping his answers short made her mandibles twitch in anger, the Elite following him through to the next street over. As she stepped off the metal blockade, the door returned to its closed state, the sudden grating of machinery making the Elite whip around in alarm.

“You can control these barriers?” she asked him, the two watching as the blockade settled with a final electric whir.

“Not exactly,” he replied cryptically. He set off without waiting for her, the Elite checking the area with her carbine as she followed.

Seela

Streets of New Mombasa

Seven Hours After Rupture

She and the Imp passed through another of those big, blast doors the little creature could somehow open by simply walking up to one. She remembered how much of a nuisance they had been in her recent time in the Covenant, where squads had to be ferried over by Phantom whenever they encountered such an obstacle. The Field Marshal had often grumbled about their inconveniency, and she doubted his replacement had anything otherwise to say about them.

She wondered what had become of the Marshal. Had the Prophet himself executed him the moment he boarded the carrier? Surely not, he was too cowardly to face his adversaries himself, the fact the Prophet had lured the Marshal onto his ship under false orders was proof enough of that. He’d have ordered one of the Brutes to make the kill. She chastised herself for ever fearing the Prophets, trepidation had no place when dealing with a foe who relied on subterfuge.

The road she and the Imp followed ended at an intersection, and as her companion turned down the left branch, she called for him to stop. Putting one of her thumbs to her helmet, she tuned her communicator to a channel which had suddenly picked up activity.

“Rahanis,” a voice growled through her helmet speakers. “Take your pack and move west, were there any Heretics in your sector?”

The Imp turned around, peering up at her and shrugging. “What is it?”

Ignoring his curt tone, she said: “I am picking up communications between two Jiralhanae.”

“Jiral-what now?”

“Brutes. Now be quiet.” She turned her head away so the plinking of rain falling on her helmet wasn’t so loud.

“No, Chieftain. Sector…” The Jiralhanae listed off a series of numbers. “-is clear, we’re moving on.”

Seela knew that list of numbers, all Covenant troops in this invasion did, and according to her memory, she wasn’t very far away from this Rahanis packmate.

“A Brute patrol will come from that way soon,” she said, pointing behind the Imp.

“How can you tell?” he asked.

“It seems the Jiralhanae failed to switch their communication channels,” she said with an amused huff. “As if the moronic apes could even figure out how to do that. They are still using frequencies I have access to, no encryption.”

“Probably thought they wiped you all out,” the Imp suggested. “Didn’t bother.”

“Perhaps, but the Jiralhanae have always been dense,” she answered. “I can pinpoint positions of their patrols as long as they stay in contact with their Chieftain.”

“Good, that’ll help us slip through their lines,” the Imp muttered. “Where to then?”

Seela hesitated, having never been asked for advice before. Not being bossed around was quite novel, but the fact this creature was behind the act still left a sour taste in her mouth.

“We should move that way,” she said, pointing to the right fork. “And quickly, the Brutes will be here soon.”

They walked on for a while longer, Seela making sure the Imp was always ten or so paces in front of her. The streets all looked the same to her, but the creature appeared to have a destination in mind, but with no references they may as well be running circles for all she knew.

“I need to stop,” the Imp said after some time. “Feet are killing me. I’ve been walking for hours.”

She didn’t know how long an hour was, but Seela hadn’t stopped moving ever since that rest back at the Covenant outpost, and her hooves were starting to hurt. “Very well,” she said. “anything to get out of this incessant rain.”

Her bodysuit was helping to stave off the cold, but all this time in the wet was starting to soak it through. The Imp turned a few more corners, then slipped into one of the buildings that lined the street, Seela ducking into the doorframe after him.

There was stairwell just in front of the entrance, but part of the ceiling had come down on it, blocking the way. The Imp moved off to the right into an adjacent room, the creature sitting himself into one of the plush chairs surrounding a tiny table.

Seela followed him into the cramped interior, having to duck to avoid hitting her head on the ceiling. “Humans live in these tiny spaces?” she asked, noticing that apart from the upstairs, this was all the room in the building. It was barely half the size of her quarters back on the carrier.

He didn’t answer her, the Imp tearing off a patch of armour on its shoulder, repeating its earlier healing as it examined its wound.

“Did you not just rub that… gel onto yourself?” she asked, water dripping off her armoured plates as she examined one of the chairs. They were way too small, so she opted to just cross her legs and sit down on the floor as far away from the Imp as she could manage, resting her carbine on her knees.

“Gotta keep an eye on it, in case the skin opens again,” he replied. It seemed Imps did not possess the regenerative properties she had been led to believe, or perhaps they simply used the same medicine Humans did. Strange…

“Haven’t got as much blood as you have, clearly,” he added, nodding at the spot the spike grenade had punctured her armour. The trickle of her blood from the wound was so consistent, even the rain hadn’t managed to wash it away, her white armour stained with her fluids.

“The sight of one’s blood is a sign of a hard-fought battle,” she said. “It does not bother me. On the contrary, I have always thought seeing myself bleed to be… salubrious.”

“Salubrious?” the Imp echoed. “An alien has better diction than me. What a world.”

“The Human language holds a kind of strange satisfaction for my throat,” she answered, feeling nostalgic as she remembered spending the hours between deployments in her quarters, brushing up on Human tongue and relishing in the privacy. “There are many intriguing words that seem to roll off my mandibles, such as… ubiquitous. I’ve always wanted to use that word in a sentence.”

“Haven’t had the chance, huh?” he asked. “Too busy killing us all to work on your vocabulary? Sound about right?”

“I told you, I fought only because it was my duty to the Covenant,” she said, trying to sound neutral but failing when her impatience got the better of her. “To take pleasure in killing, to revel in it, is the way of the Jiralhanae, not mine.”

“Yeah, you’re ‘different’, right?” he asked, Seela suspecting he was mocking her. “You’re not like the other aliens, you’ve always sympathised with Humans, thought the Covenant always was in the wrong.”

“I was proud to be in the Covenant,” Seela explained. “my kinsman within the higher ranks promised me renown and glory few females ever got to experience. It was not perfect,” she added, shaking her head. “but great honours follows greater challenges, so my father said, and I was brought no small measure of satisfaction as I battled my way through the front lines, besting Human after Human, watching my chauvinistic brother’s faces as they witnessed my victories. But the Covenant has been led astray,” she added after a pause. “I know not when, but Jiralhanae and San’shyuum political interests have taken precedence over the Great Journey, it has become corrupted. If only a creature such as you could understand what it means to have been betrayed by the one thing you devoted everything to.”

“I understand that you’re still a Covvie,” the Imp replied. “If your kind hadn’t been kicked out, you’d still be serving the Prophets.”

“Me and my kin were unaware of their intentions,” she said. “If I had known sooner the Prophets were so honourless, I’d have…” She trailed off.

“Ignorance is the worst kind of shield you can use, split lip,” he muttered. “You’re still a killer.”

“And what of you? How many of my kin have you slain?” she said, turning the conversation back on him.

“Not enough,” he replied after a pause.

“You criticize me for taking life, yet I have witnessed firsthand the ferocity of you Imps. Do not think yourself better than I, we have both dealt our fair share of death. You might have even surpassed me, the way you butchered the Brutes back in the station.”

The Imp turned back to his injury, dropping the subject. She had used his combat prowess as a weapon against him, but a part of her was impressed by his tenacity. He was as small as a Human, but didn’t seem to let that stop him.

“Why are you here, Imp?” she asked, his visor meeting her gaze. “Your kind usually work in small groups, I’ve never seen one alone.”

“And I’ve never seen an Elite by itself either,” he replied with a shrug. “So what?”

“I see you only like to talk when the topic isn’t about you,” Seela grumbled. “Shall we sit in silence while your wounds mend?”

After a bit of staring, the Imp relented. “I dropped in with three others not long after your carrier jumped away. We got knocked off course by anti-air fire, I don’t know where my team ended up, or if they’re even alive.”

“And you are trying to find them?” she asked.

“Take too long to comb the whole city,” he said. “If they’re alive, they’ll head towards our objectives, just like I am.”

“What do you hope to accomplish in the very centre of the Covenant foothold? Surely you do not plan on taking the city back?”

“Not exactly,” he replied. “the city is lost, everyone in the Corps knows it, but the Covenant brought something with them, a weapon that could turn the tide. I’m going to recover it, even if it kills me.”

“A weapon?” Seela echoed. Perhaps he was talking about the Forerunner artifact the Zealot alluded to. Even if she wasn’t a part of the Great Journey anymore, the reverence she held for the ancient aliens made Seela hold her tongue, she did not want to reveal their holy presence to a Heretic.

“What about you?” the Imp continued, Seela cocking her head at him. “How come you’re all alone? Didn’t see any other Elites back at Kikowani.”

“I was sent out with a procession of Kig-Yar and Unggoy, along with a Brute,” she said, the memory making her fume. The Captain Major had made sure to keep her kinsman isolated, she couldn’t deny his betrayal had been well planned, but he’d been a fool to think one Minor would be enough to deal with her. She would make sure he’d regret underestimating her.

“I was stranded once the carrier jumped,” Seela continued. “I’ve not heard from any of my brothers since, and I don’t know how many survived the betrayal. You and I seem to share this in common,” she added. “Worrying if we are the last ones alive, surrounded by our enemies.”

“I’m never worried,” he defended. “Me and my team know what we’re doing, we know what’s at stake if we let ourselves get distracted.”

“You certainly live up to your devilish namesake,” she noted, hearing the far-off sound of a passing Phantom. It didn’t grow in volume, Seela trying to relax her muscles as she leant on an elbow. “You spoke of your objectives in the plural,” she said. “What are the others?”

“Minor things,” he replied. “Sabotage, attacks of opportunity. Wrote them off as soon as I realised my team was separated.”

“But you’ll still try and recover this weapon? You’d be doing so by yourself if I wasn’t here.”

“Don’t put ideas in my head,” he said, rising to his feet as she narrowed her eyes at him. “We’ve sat around long enough, we should keep moving.”

Seela gestured for him to proceed, watching the Imp as he led her back onto the street, the rain flowing off their armours as they followed the road along to the left, the Imp eventually coming across another of those ‘kiosks’ he used to mark his way through the city, tapping his gloved hands at the screen.

Wary of any more Phantoms that might interrupt, Seela looked over his helmet at the map, the Imp so short he barely reached her chest. Their destination apparently lied in the middle of a body of water, close to the city limits.

“There is no land route towards your ‘weapon’,” Seela noted, sweeping her rifle across the buildings, her eyes fighting against the jarring fluorescents on the facades.

“Here’s hoping there’s a bridge, or something,” he muttered, turning and angling his helmet up at her when she grumbled under breath.

“You don’t know?” she asked. “How did you plan on getting to this weapon without knowing the terrain?”

“Supposed to drop right on top of it,” he explained. “Didn’t plan on getting caught out here with my pants down and an Elite at my back.”

“I hope you do not plan on us swimming to wherever it is we are going,” she muttered.

“Afraid of a little water?” he asked, his tone suggesting he was smiling.

“Water is a nuisance,” she replied, fidgeting about as the rain dripped down the grooves in her armour. “Argh, I can feel it slipping through my suit and trickling down my spine…”

The Imp chuckled, the little devil apparently finding her plight amusing. “I’ll fetch you a towel if we get the chance,” he said, turning away to follow the route the kiosk suggested. “You don’t need to tag along with me, you know,” he added. “Go hide out and wait for your split lip buddies to arrive.”

“To wait is to die,” she snapped. “I will meet my end on my own terms, even if it means having an honourless Heretic as company.”

He gave her a look over his shoulder, shaking his head as he pressed on down the road.

The Major

Streets of New Mombasa

Eight Hours After Rupture

“I don’t know what I’m looking at here,” the Major muttered.

Winking an eye shut, he adjusted the magnification with his right hand, using his left to hold the scope to his opened eye. There was no real reason to carry scopes when shotguns were his go-to weapons, but it was small, portable, and perfect for recon.

The view granted him an omnipresent vision, bringing him closely to a curved road that swept round the base of a fire station, maybe two hundred feet away. There were black plasma burns all over the building, its once striking coat of red paint now dark and scorched. The Covenant had probably targeted emergency services right after mowing down any military presence. A hose tower that jutted out of one side of the station had been decapitated, a plume of smoke trailing from its top.

The street they had been following ringed the station’s right side, the lanes flanked by cars and trucks, as if the drivers had pulled over before abandoning their vehicles. The road then curved back to the left, disappearing behind the bulk of the station. The street almost looked like a question mark from this angle.

He and Seela had set up on the balcony of a nearby office block, the Elite to his left as they peered over the handrail, exposing as little of their helmets as they overlooked the junction, distant noises putting them on edge.

There was movement at the base of the hose tower, the Major’s view zooming until two Brutes filled it, their red armours shining in the glow of a nearby traffic light. They had their backs turned, crouching on their knees as they wrestled with some sort of mass lying at their feet.

“Let me see,” Seela said, gesturing for the scope. He promptly ignored her, watching as one of the Brutes leaned down, hauling the mass to his armoured chest, presenting it to his counterpart.

Only now did he get a good look at whatever it was they were trying to overpower. It looked like some kind of air sack with tails and tentacles sprouting out of its sides, the tips of the appendages covered in cerulean points of light. On its back were teeth-shaped bits of armour, shielding the bulk of its glistening body. A long, winding neck trailed out of its chest, the appendage capped with some sort of helmet, a solitary blue eye serving as its visor.

The Brute not holding the bizarre alien produced a plasma grenade, thrusting his arm forward and driving the explosive into a cavity on the creature’s soft belly, his long arm burying up to the wrist in its flesh, a burbling screech carrying on the air. The Brute pulled its arm away, palm empty of the plasma charge, and the Brutes seemed satisfied, the one pinning the alien now letting it go.

The creature began to drift into the air like a balloon, floating with its slug-like neck twisting left and right, beginning some kind of patrol as the Brutes lifted their heads to watch it, one of them giving the other a nudge as he laughed at something.

“I think that’s a Huragok,” Seela muttered, snatching the scope out of his hands. The scope looked tiny in her massive arms, Seela pinching it between her fingers as she held it up. “This magnification is terrible,” she mumbled. “How you see anything with these is beyond me.”

“Then use your carbine,” he sighed.

“… I was just about to, fool,” she defended, bringing the weapon to bear in a way that came off as flustered.

“Better not pull the trigger,” he said, his rigging shifting as he adjusted his weight. “And give that back.”

She rolled the scope towards him rather than just hand it to him, the two watching for a while as the floating alien milled about a dozen or so meters above the street.

“Yes, definitely a Huragok,” Seela confirmed, tracking it with her weapon. The Major just preferred to call them Engineers. “We used them – we as in the Covenant – used them as technicians mostly. What were they doing with it just now?”

“They shoved a grenade down its throat,” he explained. “They planning on blowing it up?”

“I do not know,” she replied. “I have never seen one outside of a ship before.”

“Me either.” The Major pulled up a mental image of the kiosk map, having checked one only minutes earlier. The Superintendent had insisted this was the best route towards his objective, and that doubling back and taking any other route would add hours to his journey he simply could not spare. They would have to go through.

“There’s plenty of cover by those vehicles,” he said, gesturing down at the road. “Those Brutes are sticking close to the station, so we should be able to slip through if we keep our distance.”

“Slip through?” Seela repeated. “There are only two of them, plus the Huragok, and it is an easy target.”

“Listen to me,” he said. “We don’t know what that Engineer is capable of, and there’s definitely more than just two Brutes. See how those cars are all off the road? The Covenant moved them to clear the street, probably to let vehicles get through. We don’t stand a chance against mechanised infantry in a frontal assault.”

“Your tendency to slink around like a coward is becoming tiresome,” Seela growled, pointing her carbine at the ground as she swivelled to face him.

“Vigilance is not the same as being a coward,” the Major shot back. “Let’s say we do it your way and a Ghost comes flying over, you think you or I will be able to frag it before we get overwhelmed? You willing to take that chance?”

“Yes,” she bluntly replied, the Major sighing in frustration.

“Fine, go kill yourself but give me a few minutes to get clear, you’ll provide a distraction at least.”

“You are not leaving without me, Imp.” She raised her carbine, just a little, but enough for him to notice. “You said we would wait for opportunities to slay the Covenant, how is this not a chance for vengeance?”

“It might be, but we need to evaluate them a bit more first,” he said. “Let’s circle them, and once we’ve got a number on their forces, we can go from there.”

He thought that if they could safely reach the other side of the station, he could slip away if Seela decided to sate her bloodlust. She was such a hot-head, and he imagined she’d have charged right into the Engineer if he wasn’t here to reign her in. As amusing as that would have been to see, they had to stay hidden.

“Very well,” Seela conceded. “But if we are discovered, I want to see you firing your weapon, or I’ll shoot you myself.”

“Great, I’ll take that,” he replied, surveying the junction. “Okay, I’ll keep an eye on the Engineer, you move to those cars on my signal.”

“No,” Seela replied. “I will cover, you will lead.”

“The fuck is with you and making me lead?” the Major shout-whispered, as raising his voice might give them away. “Just go, I’ll be right behind you.”

“The last time I trusted someone to watch my back, they ended up shooting it,” she snarled. “And I do not trust you, Heretic. You might retreat the moment I leave this balcony. That, is a chance I’m not willing to take. Lead on,” she insisted, gesturing with her carbine at the street below.

“Whatever,” he grumbled. “Just don’t linger, I won’t wait.”

Staying low, he crept back into the room the balcony extended out of until he was sure he could stand without being spotted. It was a typical office workspace, a grid pattern of cubicles stretching from one wall to the other, the monitors blue with error screens. There was a stairwell at the far end he and Seela had made their way up from minutes earlier, the Major backtracking until he was back at the foyer, now underneath Seela’s position as he worked his way into the street.

He ducked behind the boot of a sedan, turning his helmet up as he watched the Engineer bob about near the fire station’s sloped roof. Like Seela had said, he had only seen these creatures inside Covenant ships, doing as their namesake suggested as they maintained the alien starships. They were the only non-combatant species in the Covenant. Maybe the Brutes had decided to change that, having replaced the Elites as the Prophet’s new favourite.

Dangerous or not, the Brutes had shoved a grenade into the Engineer’s stomach, the implication not lost on the Major as he treaded lightly through the frozen traffic, each splash of his boots making his chest tighten with anxiety. The two Brutes were on his left as he worked his way up the street, stopping behind a van as he peered back at Seela’s sniping position.

He could see her tall, sweeping helmet as she panned her carbine over the street, the Elite standing up, and planting a foot on the lip of the railing. Rather than follow in his example, Seela simply jumped off the balcony, rolling when she landed on the street, her powerful legs absorbing the long drop, the Major wincing as he heard her armour creak from the impact. She was definitely not the subtle type.

Following the same route he’d taken, she stalked through the cars, keeping as low as her tall frame could allow, the Major continuing on up the street when she was close. They moved from car to car, close enough to the aliens the Major could pick out the guttural breaths of the Brutes, the rain providing enough volume on its own to cover all the little noises his boots or Seela’s hooves made as they moved.

The Engineer drifted out of sight behind the station, making for a poor scout even with its aerial advantage. After a couple of minutes, they reached the other side of the fire station, but as the Major rounded the bulk of an abandoned truck, what he saw made him pause.

A garage was built into this face of the station, but instead of housing a fire truck, a giant purple vehicle plugged the space. Its design was smooth and bulbous, more resembling an aircraft then any type of land vehicle, with a rounded nose and two fins protruding out of the sides of the chassis, the vehicle maybe thirty feet wide and just as long. There were two turrets mounted on the top of the vehicle, a plasma cannon for the copilot, and a mortar turret serving as the main weapon.

The Wraith was the Covenant’s artillery tank equivalent, capable of tearing through infantry as well as armour at extreme ranges. The Major had been worried about Ghosts, but nothing aside from Covenant carriers inspired as much concern as a Wraith did.

“What’s wrong?” Seela whispered, stopping just behind him. She followed his gaze around the hood of the truck, her eyes widening as she spotted the parked Wraith.

He glared at her behind his visor, gesturing at the tank as if to say told you so. From behind the Wraith’s bulk appeared two Grunts, chasing pieces of rock as they rolled them around with their stumpy feet. If they had opted to fire on the Brutes, those aliens would have jumped straight into their tank.

“You were right,” Seela muttered, the Major picking up on a bit of shame in her tone. He’d gloat over this later, right now they had to put as much distance from here as they could.

He scanned the street ahead, the road splitting into two directions, north and west. The north road was clear, the road inclining to higher ground, but the other was not, the Major spotting two Jackals and a Brute behind a pair of plasma barriers, the screens of shimmering energy taller than Seela was. The Jackals were sweeping their needle rifles lazily around, but the Brute was more attentive, the Major ducking out of view as he reared his ugly head towards their hiding spot.

“Sentries,” he told Seela, holding up a hand when she made to look. “Two Jackals, one Brute.”

“We cannot slip past them,” Seela noted, taking a look for herself. “They watch the entire street.”

“Don’t have to,” he replied. “We’re going the other way, but there’s not much cover. We’ll have to wait for an opening and run across.”

“Perhaps it’s for the best we leave this patrol be,” Seela admitted. “I thought all our Wraiths had been recalled to the carrier for the redeployment.”

“Guess they missed one,” he said. “Alright, I’ll go first, wait here until I signal it’s clear, then you follow.”

He waited until the Brute he had his back turned, then the Major dashed across the street, being out in the open for so long making the hairs on his neck stand on end. There was about ten meters of open ground between the sides of the street, and every second in it was horrible. Turning his back on a parked Wraith was not something he’d ever imagined doing, he’d seen those things tear down entire buildings and chew through squads of Marines.

He stomped over the lane markers, splashing the puddles of rainwater that had formed in the potholes, dipping behind a letterbox on the far side of the road, breathing a sigh of relief as he hid in its shadow.

He peeked over at the Jackals and the Brute, they had not noticed him, but there wasn’t any room for relaxing, Seela still had to sneak past. When they weren’t paying attention, he nodded towards Seela, but the Elite just shrugged back at him. Did she not know what a nod was? He realised he had never described to her what his signal would be. Thinking quickly, he raised a fist at her and extended the thumb.

She understood the gesture, the alien breaking cover and moving into the street, the giant alien thundering across the road with far less noise than he expected her to make. About halfway through her dash, she slipped, the Major looking down to see she’d caught one of her hooves in a pothole, the Elite stumbling to a knee, her carbine skidding along the pavement as she braced her fall with her hands.

The Major’s heart started to race, but his concern was directed towards the Covenant. In the tranquillity of the storm, the clattering of her armour had been very loud, and one of the Jackals squawked, pointing a claw in the fallen Elite’s direction.

The Brute unleashed an intimidating roar, lifting a plasma rifle and firing it in Seela’s direction, her shields flashing as they absorbed the energy. She was closer to the truck than the Major, so she doubled back, pressing herself against the vehicle, her shields saving her from being cut down.

The Jackals suppressed her hiding spot with their needle rifles, the supersonic crystals shattering against the engine block, but the Major was looking elsewhere. The Grunts next to the Wraith had jumped out of their skin the second the shooting started, clambering over each other as they scrambled up the flank of the Wraith. In a few moments that thing would be sending plasma bolts the size of cars her way.

The Major considered leaving her. She was a huge target that would just draw even more attention to him, and the Covenant would be focused on her while he snuck away, but something gave him pause. She was a prime source of intel on the Covenant, and if he could exfil her, humanity would have a chance to learn more about the Covenant’s plans, that kind of information could be crucial for Earth’s survival.

“Damn it,” he muttered after hesitating. He vaulted over the letterbox, reaching for the plasma grenade he’d stolen from the last Elite he’d killed, thumbing the prime button. He tossed it like he was pitching at a baseball game, the grenade arching through the air towards the parked Wraith, the two Grunts grabbing at the handholds on the chassis as they climbed into the pilot seats.

The grenade landed between the mortar and the turret with a satisfying slap, the little aliens sent flying as the plasma discharged, a blue cloud of energy evaporating the turret mounts, a chunk of the tank blowing apart in the blast.

He let his shotgun hang from its sling, drawing his sidearm and dumping the magazine into the Jackals. One tumbled to the ground after his chestplate was riddled with holes, its counterpart ducking behind the safety of the forcefields. His pistol clicked impotently as he fired the last few bullets at the Brute, doing little more than making the alien turn his attention on the Major.

“Run you idiot!” the Major shouted, a barrage of plasma travelling over his head, so close he could feel his skin singe with their heat. He dropped the empty magazine and inserted another, backing up as he fired, the Brute’s shields dropping just as the pistol went dry again.

From the corner of his eye, he could see Seela resuming her dash across the open, her shields having time to recharge. She swiped her carbine off the ground, turning and headshotting the Brute in one smooth motion, the alien falling to the street with a grunt.

She dashed past the Major, who turned to follow, fumbling with his rigging as he reloaded. The remaining Jackal was firing up the incline from his entrenched position, sending supersonic needles their way, one of them aimed at the Major. Unlike Seela, he didn’t have shields to absorb incoming fire, the man snarling through his teeth as he felt the round slam him on the small of his back, the crystal shattering against his BDU. The plating saved him from being punctured, but the kinetic energy was enough to knock the wind out of him.

He stumbled to a knee, feeling a nasty swelling on his back, but he forced himself up the incline, watching as Seela rested her carbine on the roof of a car up there, sending a solitary shot down at the Jackal, killing it judging by the lack of return fire.

“More are coming!” Seela warned, sounding more ecstatic than worried at this development. He put his back to the car as he joined her, peeking round the tire to see the two Brutes from earlier were coming over to join the fray.

“You think!?” he asked, snarling as pain shot down his side.

She sent the rest of her radioactive rounds down at the Brutes, her mandibles twitching as her weapon ran empty. “Something is wrong,” she said. “Their shields are… stronger.”

She was right, her whole clip had only weakened one of the Brutes shields, the white energy that clung to his frame close to collapsing, but still online. He could tell because the weaker the shield, the more visible it was to the naked eye.

Movement from above drew his gaze, and the Engineer came into view, rounding the hose tower’s bulk, turning its long neck in their direction. It floated lazily over the Brute’s position, bellowing a screech that came off as distinctly painful.

The Brutes did not charge up the incline, staying close to wherever the Engineer drifted, the creature floating along at a snail’s pace towards the right. They didn’t seem to be able to control it, one of the aliens snarling something up at it in its strange language.

“The Engineer,” the Major said. “I think it’s overcharging their shields. Save your ammo,” he added when Seela raised her carbine at it. “We need to go, they’ve probably called for backup already, that’s why they’re not charging us.”

“Then move,” she replied. It seemed killing that Brute just now had sated her, not voicing another complaint as she followed him, the two retreating into the next junction, breaking line of sight with the patrol. The Brutes were hammering the car they’d hidden behind with plasma fire, probably thinking they were still there. If they moved quickly, they could slip away before they realised what had happened.

“This way,” he said, Seela following him into another office block. They cut through the foyer to the other side, the sounds of gunfire gradually ceasing as they distanced themselves from the fire station. They couldn’t check every room, but it was unlikely Brutes would be lying in wait, being sneaky was the last thing a ten-foot alien was built for. The Major and Seela delved into a mess of crisscrossing alleyways, and when he was confident they’d put enough buildings between them and their pursuers, he slowed down, leaning against a wall to catch his breath.

“… I thought you would leave me, when I fell,” Seela said, her mandibles flexing as she panted. “Perhaps having a Heretic as a companion isn’t so bad as I thought it would be.”

“Don’t kid yourself,” he scoffed, waving a dismissive hand at her. “You’re an asset to me, split lip, and a fucking clumsy one as well. You almost got us killed back there.”

“A trivial matter,” she replied. “I am not as suited to deception and creeping along as you or my cloaked brothers are.”

“Wouldn’t be surprised if you did it on purpose,” he mumbled under his breath.

“What was that, Imp?” Seela asked. “I did not hear you.”

He repeated himself, louder this time, and the Elite recoiled. “Y-You’re accusing me?”

“Just making an observation,” he said. “You’ve been itching for a fight ever since we met, and you’re barely fazed that we managed to escape just now. If I told anybody that a little pothole managed to fell an Elite, they’d never believe me.”

“You are such a little… bastard,” she said, the word coming out awkwardly. She mustn’t have used it very often. “You have no idea what you are talking about. Why would I put our lives in danger, and risk facing down a Wraith?”

“That’s what I’m wondering too,” he replied, the Elite fuming as she clutched her carbine tighter.

“Delusional devil-spawn,” she spat.

“Squid-faced, overgrown lizard.”

Her finger moved to the trigger, but he met her gaze fearlessly. She had said before she would not kill him after he’d saved her life, and he’d done so once more. Her show of mercy had sabotaged her threats, and they both knew it.

“I change my earlier statement,” she said, popping her carbine open as she reloaded the cartridge. “I wish you had left me.”

“How about a thanks for saving me, Major?” he grumbled as he checked his ammo. There were only two more magazines for his sidearm left, but at least he had the plasma pistol to spare.

“You are a Major?” she asked, as if this was some sort of massive discovery.

“Said I dropped in with my team, didn’t I? Yeah, I’m a Major.”

“Major pain in my side, more like,” Seela grumbled.

He ignored her comment, making his way down the alley, the Elite following him from an even further distance than usual.

The Major

Streets of New Mombasa

Eight Hours After Rupture

They didn’t see any sign of the Engineer or its Brutes after that, though the Major was sure they had gotten onto the Covenant’s radar after their encounter at the fire station. Over the next half hour, two dropships circled over the streets dangerously close to their position, he and Seela forced to duck into the buildings until they passed by. It could have been just standard patrols making the rounds, but if his training with ONI had told him anything, it was to assume the enemy was always searching for you.

“There is another patrol to our north,” Seela informed him, the Elite pausing to check her communicator. “They’re not moving.”

“Good,” he said. The road they were on took them east anyway. “Anyone out there talking about us?” he asked, the two crossing to the next block.

“One of them reported Heretics had attacked their Wraith, but I haven’t picked up a reply,” she answered, her mandibles flexing as she sighed. “It seems they have thrown me in with your lot, Imp.”

“What do you mean?” he asked, sweeping his weapon across the street.

“They said they were attacked by Heretics, plural. As if I am less of a follower of the Great Journey than they are.”

“But they’re right,” he said. “Your kind are out of the Covenant, the Prophets pretty much said so themselves, and they’re your leaders.”

“Were,” she corrected. “I follow my own path now, I have no leader but myself. Does fighting for my life, betrayed by my fellow followers, make me a Heretic?” She hastened her steps so they were slightly closer together. “Why does a conniving San’Shyumm get to decide who is a part of the Great Journey, when all he does is hasten the demise of others who were once loyal?”

“Don’t know,” he said, thinking if he didn’t give her much of a response, she’d turn her words into thoughts and shut up for a minute. That was not to be, the Elite directing her questions at him.

“What do Imps revere?” she asked. “I know humans have their false Gods, do you follow in their stead?”

“No,” he replied, stepping around a derelict car, Seela simply tall enough to step over it.

“Is there an Imp God?”

“Why do you call me that?” he asked, continuing when Seela just blinked down at him. “With you it’s always Imp this and Imp that.”

“You call my kind Elites, yes? How is that different?”

She had him there, the pair moving in silence for a while through the endless streets. Eventually the road sloped towards higher ground, the Major trying once again to see if the altitude would help his radio establish a link with one of his team. He didn’t expect much, but it was worth a shot.

Seela watched him strangely, her purple eyes reflecting the fiery sky as she watched him recite his team’s nicknames. “You are trying to raise your Imp kin, yes?” she asked. “Anything?”

He shook his head. “Thank the Gods,” she said. “I thought I was going to have to deal with more than one of you.”

“That’s my team you’re talking about,” he grumbled. “good people, loyal, but I wouldn’t expect a turncoat to know anything about that.”

“I was once commander of a squad,” she answered. “So I would know.”

“Yeah? They switch sides too?” He peered up at her in mild interest.

“I dismissed them not long before you and I met,” she said. “And nobody here has switched sides, Imp. I go my own way, now. That is not the same.”

“If you say so. Damnit, can’t even connect with a satellite…”

“When did you say your team entered the city, after the rupture, yes?” He nodded. “Your team has probably fallen, I would have heard activity on the BattleNet if it were otherwise. We may both be leaders, but at least I spared my squad from dying alone out here.”

Her comment stung. He should have planned more, should have expected Covenant anti-air to be ready for another drop after the first wave earlier in the day, and his team had paid a heavy price for his blunder.

As much as he wanted to hit her back, his tongue failed to find the right words, and if he gave her a reaction, she would know she’d hit a nerve. He kept his peace, wiping his visor clear as he continued on, the walls of the city blocks towering above the street like the walls of a deep canyon.

“Lead on, Major,” Seela said, loping along behind him.

-xXx-

The storm merged with the fires pluming from the city in a way that came off as unsettling, the clouds backlit by the licking flames as though the very horizon was aflame. The silence that hung over New Mombasa made it difficult to realise there was a battle going on in high orbit, the Major having caught glimpses of the Prophet’s fleet before they’d made the drop. The whole planet was in danger, yet the city seemed to stand still, the ruinous landscape oddly tranquil when there weren’t Phantoms flying overhead. As they rounded another junction on their kiosk-planned route, he heard his alien companion growl, but unlike the previous times, she hadn’t made that noise with her mouth.

“Was that your stomach?” he asked, pausing to look back at her.

“I have not eaten since we made landfall,” Seela explained, putting a hand to her belly, seemingly embarrassed by this development.

“Always wondered what split-lips eat,” he said.

“Nutrient bars, condensed supplementary paste, meat slabs if we are lucky. Unless you want to raid a Covenant barracks, I suggest you find me some food.”

“Little peckish myself. Can you eat human food?”

“We shall see.”

He clicked his tongue in thought, scanning his surroundings for a moment before motioning for her to follow. Power was still flowing through the city in places, maybe they could plunder a kitchen or someone’s fridge for snacks. A restaurant seemed an obvious choice, but he didn’t feel like whipping up a meal in a warzone.

He could see an apartment complex in the distance, towering a few storeys higher than the carpet of buildings, there had to be something edible in there. Seela followed him towards the building, and a few minutes later, they stood in front of the security gate that ringed the main entrance, a small lawn filled with a few bromeliads adding a nice splash of colour to the sterile area.

The main gate arched over a section of the fence, and the Major gave it a push, finding that there was some sort of electronic lock keeping it from budging.

“What’s the delay?” Seela asked impatiently, waiting on the sidewalk with her carbine raised.

“Locked tight, looks like this is where you come in.”

He gestured at the gate, Seela brushing him aside as she raised a fist and punched straight through the lock like she was some kind of martial artist smashing through a plank of wood. The gate clattered to the ground loudly, the Major wincing as the volume echoed through the empty street, following the Elite through the fence.

There was a glass door serving as the main entrance, and to one side of it was a porch extending out of the drab-coloured wall, protected by another fence. Each floor was a carbon copy, balconies extending out of the building all the way to the top. It seemed more intact than most of the city, that was a good sign.

The main entrance was also locked, Seela making the frame look tiny as she stood in front of it and gave it an experimental push. She used a hoof-shaped foot to kick the door down, the Elite practically having to crouch as she made her way inside, the Major following her into the lobby.

Doors marked with numbers led off into different directions from the front desk, the Major picking one at random, holding up a hand when Seela came over with her fist raised. “No need,” he said. “it’s open, see?”

He pushed the wooden door open with a glove, Seela having to turn sideways so she could squeeze her hips inside. She grumbled about the lack of space, but she kept her complaints under her breath, the two looking out into another hall lined with six or so doors, the far end opening up into a living area, the apartment lit by a few still-working lightbulbs.

“Okay,” he said. “You search the rooms on the left, I’ll take the right. Look for plastic wrappings and packets, preferably unopened. If it’s brightly coloured and has words on it, it’s probably edible.”

“Fine,” Seela replied, ducking through one doorway while the Major took another, the two glad to be out of each other’s hair for a few moments. His first room was the master bedroom, so he didn’t waste much time in it, the second room bringing him into an office. He rummaged through the drawers, pushing aside paperweights and staplers, only finding a scrunched-up bag of candy next to a stack of books on the desk. He snatched that up.

The next room was the main lounging area, a giant flatscreen propped up on the back wall, leather armrests filling up most of the space. He didn’t hold much hope for this one, until he noticed one of the armchairs had a built-in refrigerator unit on one side. He popped it open and found a few cans of soda, plus a little canteen which reeked of whiskey when he gave it a sniff. He didn’t want to get intoxicated on the job, he needed all his faculties, so he left that behind, gathering up the soft drinks and proceeding.

That was all of his rooms, the Major emerging into the living space at the far end of the apartment. On one side was the kitchen, and on the other was a table that could seat a small family. The wall leading to the balcony was mostly glass, but the curtains should conceal them from any wandering Covenant.

He searched the kitchen, finding a few bags of potato chips, a tin of biscuits, a trail mix bag and some ice cream in the freezer unit. A nice haul, if a little on the unhealthy side. He listened to Seela rummage through her own rooms for a few minutes, the alien appearing round the corner soon after, a bundle of random items in her arms.

“This was all I could find,” she said, depositing her find on the countertop. He quirked a brow at her haul – a few pieces of fruit, a houseplant, and a collection of random household items.

“Better than nothing,” he said, grabbing an orange off the counter before it rolled away. He slid it along with his own findings across the counter, appraising their food with a satisfied nod.

“This should be enough for now,” he said, pulling a nearby stool closer, its legs sliding loudly against the tiles. Seela didn’t bother with a seat, crossing her legs as she sat on the cold floor on the other side of the counter, her immense height putting her at close to eye level with him.

Plucking her helmet off with a hand, she set it down with a thud, the Major getting a clean look at her exposed head for the first time. It was smooth and somewhat flat, tapering into a winding neck, her blue skin completely smooth save for a small number of scutes trailing down the back of her neck. Her hide reminded him of stretched leather, not a crinkle on her from what he could tell.

She turned her purple eyes to their haul. He had seen other Elites without their helmets before, dead ones of course, but something about her was different - she wasn’t as… bestial as her male counterparts. Whereas her brothers would have exaggerated proportions and huge mandibles that twitched like the fangs of a spider, Seela’s bone structure was more tapered, her dainty features complemented by her flush skin. She could almost pass off as being acceptable to the eye, for an alien.

He smirked behind his visor as she picked something up from the pile, lifting it to her mouth, the four mandibles serving as her mouth flexing open. The Major noted the inside of each mandible was layered with spiky teeth, the sight making him grimace. Maybe acceptable was too polite.

“Uh, Seela?” he asked. She paused mid-motion, her eyes turning to him in an unspoken question. “You know that’s… toothpaste, right?”

“Yes,” she said, obviously lying, but squeezing the tube anyway as if to spite him, her gums smacking noisily as the paste splashed against her mouth. “Mm, interesting flavour.”

“Toothpaste isn’t food,” he sighed.

“You said if it had writing on it, it was edible!”

“I… just eat this,” he said, tossing her the bag of trail mix, a part of him wanting to see it smack right off her sloped head. She snatched it out of the air, the plastic crinkling as she appraised its contents with a frown, narrowing her eyes at him after a moment.

“This is your find,” she said, gesturing at him with the bag.

“So? Trade you for the orange.”

“Trade?” she asked, following his pointed finger towards the fruit pile. A strange expression passed over her features as she paused for the next few moments, the alien soon nodding her head. “Fine, that is acceptable.”

She rolled the orange towards him, the Major stopping it before it fell, peeling at the skin with a finger as he watched her dip a hand into the trail mix. He suspected her way of eating would be entirely different, given her strange mouth structure, but she proved him wrong, her mandibles serving as extendible teeth that pulled the various nuts into her throat, the alien making a face as she swallowed a portion of it. “Salty,” she said. “but I like a brackish aftertaste.”

“They say you are what you eat,” the Major chuckled, but the jab was lost on her, Seela cupping another handful of the mix and chewing contentedly for a while.

“What are you doing?” she asked after a bit of silence. He had found a kitchen knife in one of the drawers and was slicing the orange into pieces, digging the point into each slice.

“Don’t like the seeds,” he said, tossing one such seed away and moving on to the next. “Anyway, looks like you can eat human food, huh? And pretty well, too.”

“It would seem so.” She was wolfing the packet down, putting any thoughts of savouring aside. Weighing a couple hundred pounds, she must prefer the high protein count. “What is that one there?” she asked, pointing at the bag of chips.

“Pure calories,” he answered. That got her attention, Seela hovering a large hand over her pile of fruit as she contemplated what to trade.

“Just take it,” he said, tossing the packet at her. She caught it, her fingers so large they engulfed the bag, Seela flashing him a quizzical glance.

“You do not wish to eat?” she asked.

“I’ve always liked sweet over savoury, I’ll live.”

“But you are so small, surely one fruit cannot suffice you?”

He shrugged, silently going back to his orange cutting. “One would think you were trying to poison me,” she noted. “for all I know, this could be a bag of chemicals that would kill me as soon as I opened it.”

“Believe me, if I wanted to kill you, I’d do it with a gun, or one of these,” he said, waving the knife back and forth.

“Yes, I do recall you trying once before,” she chuckled. It was a halting, gruff noise, more a series of huffs than a laugh. “I would also grant you a similar death, Imp, for all you’ve done you deserve no less.”

“Gee, thanks a lot.”

“Do not misunderstand, a quick end is a powerful show of honour, as there is no prolonged suffering for either party. I am but returning the compliment.”

He tilted his head at her, and she chuckled again, his reaction amusing her.

“Indeed,” she replied, tearing open the chips, holding one up to her snout before taking an experimental bite. “Despite being my enemy – these things are stale – you have not made an attempt to betray me, which is more than can be said for my former Covenant brethren, and that deserves praise.”

“Does it? Even the fact I’d shoot you on sight if we hadn’t ended up stranded together by circumstance?”

“Especially, that fact,” she replied. “I felt somewhat in danger when you came at me with that knife a while ago, I can only imagine facing you down on equal footing would be an exhilarating experience. You are fearless if nothing else.”

It seemed her whole outlook revolved around combat and glory, no wonder she had been so against the idea of concealment.

He noticed she was almost done with the bag of chips, sliding another of his finds over to her side. “Let’s see if you have a sweet tooth,” he said, the Elite examining the bag of opened candy. “Even though sweet is the last word I’d use to describe you.”

She pinched one of the little rocks of hardened sugar between her nails, beginning to nibble at its surface with her mandibles. As soon as she bit into it, she spat it back out, the candy falling to the floor with a loud tap. “Argh, disgusting! Humans eat that drivel?”

He chuckled, and after a bit more knife work, his orange was ready to eat. He set the knife aside, lifting his hands to his helmet. The slightly grainy view of his HUD gently petered out as he lifted it away, and before the neck of the helmet filled his vision, he could have sworn Seela’s mandibles were flexing in what might be shock.

Seela

Streets of New Mombasa

Eight Hours After Rupture

“Argh, disgusting!” she said, trying to lick her mandibles clean of the overwhelming taste, but that just made it worse as the sensation glued to her tongue. “Humans eat that drivel?”

He laughed at her plight, Seela pushing away the candy as he called it, putting a hand on her stomach once the sugary taste subsided. It was liberating to have a meal in her after so long running on an empty stomach, and she couldn’t help but direct her appreciation towards the Imp. He had found more food than she did, but had elected to share rather than keep it all for himself. Giving meals away, let alone trading them, was unheard of in the Covenant, and once again she found herself conflicted that this creature had shown her more charity than all her Covenant brothers combined.

He was still a Heretic, of course, and an annoying little thing, his earlier accusation still fresh on her mind, but his resentment towards her seemed to be born from her Covenant background, not because she was female, as she had expected it to be, which was a nice change of pace from her prejudiced kinsman.

She was brought out of her thoughts by a clicking noise, and she looked up, seeing that the Imp was fiddling with his helmet, apparently done with his strange fruit de-seeding. His hands gripped the sides of his visor, Seela splaying her mandibles wide in surprise. He wasn’t going to take it off, was he?

The meal had put her in an acceptable mood, but not that acceptable, and she’d rather keep the food on the inside than out. Yet a kind of perverted intrigue washed over her, what kind of grotesque, abomination would look back at her if he was doing what she thought he was doing? Nobody in Regret’s fleet knew what Demons and Imps looked like beneath their intimidating armour, and she wasn’t sure she wanted to be the first.

A wave of shock eclipsed her features as his helmet gently lifted away, a rush of surprise soon following. She had only felt this kind of astonishment once before, back when she had been offered the position of Minor in Regret’s frontline ranks, a lifetime ago.

His face was covered in pinkish skin, topped with fuzzy, brown hair that was cut short, a pair of equally brown eyes with white sclera peering back at her. A small button nose sloped out of the centre of its face, and below that, a pair of lips sat above a small jaw covered in ungroomed stubble.

The Imp was… Human. She hadn’t known what to expect, chitinous plates like a Yanme’e, perhaps, mixed with something much more alien and hellish. Instead he looked, well, like a Human.

She watched with wide eyes as he set his helmet down next to hers, the starkly different headgears seeming to stare at one another, just as their users were at that moment.

His smooth skin was covered in a few faded scars, Seela unable to tell how old or new they were, the one sweeping over one of his eyes drawing her attention, had some beast mauled him? She finally tore her eyes from his flat face when he moved his arm, a piece of the orange ‘orange’ in his hand. He took a tentative bite of the fruit, Seela noticing his teeth were small and dull.

“You… You are Human?” she asked, struggling to find her voice through the soup of confusion that was her thoughts. “How?”

He took another bite, still staring at her, raising one of his hairy eyebrows at her. He seemed just as confused as she was by the question. “What do you mean, ‘how’?”

“This is… how can you…” She hated how confused her tone sounded, taking a moment to collect herself. “You are an Imp, yes? You wear their armour, you fall from the sky like they do, you fight like one.”

He chewed in silence on his fruit, his jaw not powerful enough to consume the whole piece in one go. “Explain yourself,” she snapped. “what trickery is this?”

“The hell’s gotten into you?” he replied, Seela thinking the same thing. “I was born here on Earth, that’s about as Human as you get.”

“Born?” She balked at that. Imps were created, not born, at least that’s what she’d thought until now. Was this why he had been confused when she called him an Imp?

While she battled with this new revelation, the Imp, no the Human, removed one of his gloves, seeing the juices from the fruit were making a mess. His hand was likewise smooth and covered in pink skin, each of his five digits tipped with blunt nails, not claws as she had expected Imps to wield.

“I thought you were a…” Seela trailed off, narrowing her eyes at his face again, as though she was trying to will him into turning into the monstrosity he should be.

“Am I that ugly?” he chuckled, leaning back when Seela craned her neck towards him. His flippancy was a complete contrast to her amazement at this development, and it agitated her.

“Why did you not tell me you were Human?” she said, leaning back and resting her arms on the counter.

“Isn’t it obvious?” he replied, and it was true. Same height, same build, all the differences were in his combat prowess. How could she and by extension, the Covenant, be so easily tricked? “Did you actually think I was a devil or something under all this gear?”

“Yes!” she said. “Imps put up more of a fight than Human warriors, you couldn’t possibly be one of them, you had to be a different species, summoned or created by your false Gods, perhaps.”

“I’ll take that as a compliment,” he said, chewing on another slice of orange. “Anyway, you thirsty?” he asked, switching topics. “Found some soft drinks, but I’m guessing you prefer clean old water.”

She was still reeling from this new development, but her eagerness to sate her thirst eventually overpowered her hesitance. In fact, knowing he was Human put her a little more at ease. He didn’t have claws or fangs, he wasn’t some abomination with burning eyes, he was mortal, like her or anyone else. His features sort of reminded her of a Jiralhanae, minus the fangs and snout, and smell most of all. It was hard to taste his scent under all his armour, but that was a good thing, she’d had enough alien stench to last her a lifetime.

Despite her discouragement from the candy, she tried his cans of liquid anyway just to see what they were like. The soda was like drinking down thick syrup, Seela unable to swallow a single gulp. He fetched her a glass of water from one of the taps, which was still working despite the carrier taking a chunk out of the city, and her stomach grumbled its approval as she quenched her thirst.

The Major offered her the last of his findings, warning her that it was also a sugary substance. To her it looked like small balls of frozen, white water, but pink in colour, and he used a spoon to scoop little chunks off so they could fit in his tiny mouth.

“You Im… Humans certainly like your sugars,” Seela noted, and it felt strange to refer to him as Human, like a part of her still wasn’t convinced of his species. “but I will try some.”

The spoons were too small for her to use properly, so she just scooped the substance straight out of the tub with her hand. It felt like solidified cream, and her mandibles had difficulty gripping the wet substance, but it left a very fruity taste on her tongue and was more edible than the drink or candy had been. Apparently ice cream was made purely for the pleasure of consuming, not at all like the military rations she was accustomed to.

“You said you were born here,” Seela said, breaking the lingering silence between them as they ate. “Did you live in one of these buildings?”

“Nah, I meant here as in, this planet,” he replied, his spoon clinking against the bottom of his bowl. “Can’t imagine living in this soup of a city.”

“It is very condensed,” she agreed. “I couldn’t begin to guess how many of your kin lived here before… we arrived.”

“One-twenty million, give or take,” he answered, Seela’s eyes widening as she recalled Human numerics. “I don’t know how they did it, but the whole city got evac’d a few hours after your fleet moved into high orbit, saved a lot of people.”

“Some, not all,” she corrected. “We crossed many Humans on our patrol routes, and some of them were… non-combatants.”

“Yeah?” he said. She knew he wanted to ask her to elaborate, but didn’t, perhaps assuming she did what anyone in the Covenant did when they found a Human.

“On my last patrol, we engaged a mix of warriors and non-combatants. This was when the carrier was still above the city,” she added, pushing the tub of ice cream aside, as the memory had ruined her appetite. “I only found out a few minutes later the warriors were covering the retreat of a few civilians, one of which I believe was a female, as she was carrying an infant. She put herself between me and the child, as any mother would when an alien aims its carbine at you.”

Her eyes met his brown ones. “You jested before that I always thought the Covenant was in the wrong. I do not regret my service to the cause, but in that moment, when I saw that child, it was a very… stark reminder that our journey across the stars is not so glorious as I had once believed.”

“So that’s it?” he asked. “Almost shooting a kid was what gave you a wakeup call?”

“Yes!” she growled, sounding very angry, but not at the Major. “Ever since my first deployment, I’ve known war is not at all like the Prophets would have us believe, yet it took me almost shooting an infant, to open my eyes, to see that our purpose has been corrupted. It’s despicable,” she sulked. “that moment shall hang over my head until the day I die.”

“… What happened to the kid?” the Major asked.

“I do not know. My squad was tasked with eliminating all Humans, but we only managed to catch two of them. I never saw the mother or child after. Maybe it was all in vain, and they ran into more Covenant after we gave up.”

“It’s not impossible that they were exfilled,” the Major noted, Seela looking up at him. “This was before the carrier jumped, right? The Corps had plenty of squads in the city before the rupture, those civvies were probably running to one of the evac points the Marines set up.”

“You’re trying to cheer me up,” Seela muttered, shaking her head. “Save your breath, for every Human squad there were two Covenant ones, the odds were against them. If I had only done more to assure their escape…”

“Even if they didn’t make it,” the Major continued. “You can stop it from happening again. Tell me what the Covenant is doing here, what they’re after, their plans. That kind of intel could save hundreds of lives.”

“What would I know?” she replied, shrugging her armoured shoulders. She suspected he was manipulating her guilt to pry for information. She should lie, and pray that she had learned from her limited interactions with the Zealot. “I couldn’t even be trusted enough to lead a fellow kinsman. They only saw me as a potential mate, not an equal,” she spat, digging her claws into the face of the counter, leaving scratch marks on the granite. “No, the price of my redemption shall cost much more than a simple exchange of information, one I will be glad to pay.”

“For what it’s worth,” he began. “you did something no Elite has ever done before, it was very… noble. ‘Course, you could just be making this all up,” he added with a shrug. “but I don’t see why you’d be lying now of all times.”

She felt a little better at his choice of words. Noble. The Zealot had seen her failure to kill as Heresy, but this Human acknowledged her actions as worthy, the right decision. Perhaps Heretics weren’t so corrupt as she’d thought.

“Thank you,” she said, feeling slightly better, despite telling the Human to save his breath a moment ago.

“Yeah… no problem,” the Major answered, Seela smirking at his body language. He appeared out of his element, uncertain, like he wasn’t used to giving or receiving praise. “You cleaned that tub out pretty quick,” he noted, pointing at the empty tub.

“It is… an acceptable flavour. Is there no more?” she asked, her mood drooping when he shook his head.

“Fresh out. About time we got moving anyway, the mission won’t wait.”

-xXx-

She still kept a wary distance behind the Major as they walked through the city, but not so much as she had before, their conversation over their meal and his revealing to be a Human putting some of her reservations aside.

The only halts in their journey were to give those imposing blockades time to open, and to find more of the kiosk devices for the Major to plot their way forward, the Human apparently relying on memory when it came to following their route, mumbling the words left and right in specific sequences.

She kept alert for any sign of the Covenant, but splitting her attention between listening in on the BattleNet and scoping down the streets was hard enough without the endless rain dripping onto her face and soaking her mandibles. What she wouldn’t give for one of those enclosed helmets the Rangers sported right about now.

“Can you not simply download a copy of that map?” Seela asked after they stopped at yet another kiosk. Her bodysuit was soaking, the material rubbing her hide raw thanks to all this walking and waiting.

“Do you see a port on this thing?” he replied as he tapped at the screen. “Usually I’d let Holiday do all the tech work. Unless you happen to see her, this is what we’ve got to work with.”

“At least write the directions down,” she mumbled. “I do not like staying out in the open for so long.”

“Because of the rain?”

“Because Kig-Yar snipers could make quick work of us… And that, too,” she added, her demeanour flipping as he called her out.

“Not a fan?” he asked, turning his visor up at her once they got moving again. “Gets your hair wet, does it?” he joked.

“If you have not noticed, I do not have an enclosed helmet or mouth like you do, Human. I feel like I’ve drunk a barrel’s worth of water ever since leaving that apartment.”

“The one con of being a split-lip,” he chuckled. He said the word like it was a slur, and she took offence, despite not being wholly aware of what it meant. “Doesn’t it rain on Sangheilios?” he asked, pausing to vault over a car.

“Yes, but never for nearly as long as this storm has,” she answered, following after him. “On my homeworld rain comes in short, violent bursts, but our dwellings are built in the shelter of the canyons, which keep us safe from the more harrowing storms. The longest storm I’ve ever seen lasted maybe twenty of your minutes, and that is on the lengthy side for my people.”

“Must be jarring,” he said. “Here on Earth it rains pretty much all the time, sometimes for whole days depending on what season it is. Damn.”

“What?” she asked, her grip on her carbine tightening.

“Nothing, just… realised we’re literally talking about the weather, of all things,” he chuckled.

“Not exactly a topic I ever thought I would discuss with an Imp,” she admitted. “What of your home?” she added after they turned down the next intersection. “You said you weren’t born in this city.”

He glanced up at her silently, perhaps contemplating whether he should answer her question or not. “Yeah, born on one of the other continents. It’s a little bit like your planet, mostly canyons and dry as hell, sometimes it goes for months without raining there, then other times it storms for two or three days in a row. Fucky weather, but its got its charm. Been deployed on the front for so long I almost forgot what this planet looked like.

“And you left to join your military, why exactly?”

“I didn’t, I was conscripted,” he answered, both his answers confusing her. “Means I was forced to join the Corps. We lost so many worlds to the Covenant that we started to have more guns than troops, and each town and city had to provide a certain quota of men and women for the war effort. Earth hadn’t needed to conscript in over five hundred years, but we had no choice, you aliens were right on our doorstep.”

“And what is the process of becoming an Imp?” she asked.

“You do well during basic training, have a knack for subtlety, someone’s bound to notice,” he said. “What about you?” he asked, turning the topic back on her before she could pry further.

“Me?”

“Why’d you join up with the Covenant? Surely there’s other ways of earning glory besides genocide.”

“The homeworld had nothing to offer me,” she said, ignoring his comment. “In my youth, my eldest brother would often come home and tell us stories of the glories of war, and I was enraptured by his tales of the strange, colourful worlds he spoke of. Exploring and fighting went hand in hand with the Covenant, even though many sought to discourage me from joining, not just because I was female, although that was the most common argument I heard, even to this day it is a point of ridicule.”

“It bothered your kind that much?” he asked. “We Humans have women in the army. Have to, considering millions of us have been wiped out in this war.”

“Even on the front lines?”

“Yeah, not as many as there are men, but they’re there. My squadmate Holiday, she’s a woman. Half of her is machine, but still.”

“In the Covenant, it is the collective opinion of all that the war is no place for females,” she explained. “Sometimes, it was harder for me to decide who thought of me as the enemy, the Heretics, or the other warriors.”

“Sounds rough. Why’d you stick around?” he asked.

“To prove that even the daughter of Rekan’Kahralee can carry the family name just as well as his sons could. The alternative was to be married off to raise young, but that would mean abandoning my family honorific, and that does not interest me.”

“You deploy with your brothers? Speak with them a lot?”

“No, they are all dead.”

“Oh.”

He didn’t add anything, and she respected that. Too many family friends had tried to console her, but their constant apologies had been tiring.

“Death is the penultimate display of one’s deeds,” she continued. “One can slay a hundred worthy foes and earn herself much renown, but if she were to be killed by one hundred foes, that shows she has earned a rightful legacy as a great warrior that required great effort to bring down.”

“That what you were doing back in Kikowani? Where I met you?”

“In a manner of speaking,” she admitted, not wishing to tell him much more than she already had.

“Don’t go dying on a hill just yet, Seela,” he said, his armour shining as he passed underneath the glow of an advertisement board.

“Taking an interest in my safety, are you?” she smirked. “I thought I was a Covvie?”

“Yeah, but you’re my in to the BattleNet, won’t get far if I run into a patrol without my eight-foot rat, will I?”

“That’s appropriate coming from you, a Major who scurries in the shadows,” she shot back. She took his silence as a small victory, but her smirk was short-lived as she glanced up at the cloudy sky, her eyes narrowing as something caught her attention.

“Do you hear that?” she asked, angling her head back the way they’d come. “Phantom.”

“Get inside,” he insisted, Seela ducking after him as he dashed into the closest building. Just as they had in the commercial district, they waited in the cover of darkness, guns aimed out of the doorway as a Covenant dropship banked over the buildings, gently coming to a stop in full view, its searchlights painting the buildings in white dots of light.

“They search for us again,” Seela muttered, the Major leaning out to get a better view. She shot out her hand and pushed him back, taking cover herself as a circle of light splashed against their hiding place. “Do not peak, fool! They know we are in the area.”

“They’re probably just looking for survivors,” he said.

“No, this is the same dropship as the one before. There are markings just above the nose of the ship.”

When she saw the aura of the light displace, she allowed him to look. There was a marking painted in blue colouring just above the pilot’s canopy, to the Human it would have looked much like the letter V, with dots surrounding the point. The symbol would have meant nothing to him, but Seela knew the rune belonged to the Jiralhanae alphabet.

“It’s like a decal,” the Major said after examining the rune. “Our pilots do that too, they personalise their birds with pictures of animals or sayings, but usually its skimpy ladies.”

“Skimpy ladies?” Seela asked, bewildered. “Why would you have that on an aircraft?”

“What, Elites don’t have vinyl alien girls on their wings?”

“A-Absolutely not!” she said. “That is hardly appropriate to put on a machine of war.”

“Don’t be so prude,” he said.

Before she could reply, the Phantom searchlights illuminated their street again, the proximity of the light making them go silent with tension. They waited for the ship to move on, but after five minutes, all it did was bank over to the next street, it was lingering.

“I don’t like this,” the Major mumbled. “He’s not moving off.”

“Perhaps we should destroy it,” she suggested. “That way, it cannot pursue us.”

“Oh yeah?” he asked, Seela knowing he was scowling at her behind his visor. “Go do that then. You want to lead, or should I?”

“What is your idea then? Let me guess… slip past?”

“We can’t stay here,” he said, checking his long weapon to make sure it was primed.

“Splendid observation, Major,” Seela said, rolling her eyes.

“Just shut it and follow me, try and keep your lanky ass down.”

“What did you call me?” she hissed, but the Major was already moving, running in a crouch as he followed the sidewalk towards the right, putting a building between him and the Phantom.

Seela weaved between the vehicles at his flank, her excitement growing each time their sightline with the Phantom was unobstructed. For countless times she had aerial support as backup, and to be on the receiving end of the attention of its guns would be an exhilarating experience, a new challenge for her to overcome.

After a few minutes creeping along, the Phantom descended to the street ahead of them, she and the Major taking cover behind a wall. The bay doors slid open to reveal the brightly lit interior, the space cramped with troops, Kig-Yar and Unggoy leaping from the ship and landing on the pavement with a series of thunks, Jiralhanae following up as the smaller species cleared the area. There were maybe twelve aliens in all, splitting up into groups of three and four as they fanned out in different directions.

As the Phantom doors began to recede, Seela noticed not all of its occupants had disembarked. The glint of golden armour caught her eye, a Jiralhanae clad in the colourful armour standing just outside the cockpit bay, a gauntleted hand clutching at the handholds on the ceiling. She flexed her mandibles in a suppressed snarl, it was him, the Captain Major!

“It’s just Major,” her companion whispered, and Seela blinked down at him, realising she’d said that thought out loud.

“No you fool,” she whispered back. “You see the Brute in gold? He was the one who coordinated the betrayal from the ground! Now we must destroy the Phantom!”

“Here we go,” the Major sighed. “Killing one golden asshole isn’t going to bring your dead buddies back.”

“No, but he must face justice for his actions.”

“Alright, let me just call in heavy weapon support,” the Major said, lifting his finger to the chin of his helmet. “Oh wait, I forgot, we’re just two soldiers against a dozen, completely stranded behind enemy lines. Unless you got a fuel rod stashed away somewhere, we’re not going up against air support.”

She remembered when they had encountered the Wraith, how his initial caution had ultimately been the correct approach. She doubted she’d be even able to kill a single squad before that Phantom strafed them with plasma fire, and she wouldn’t let that damnable Brute have the satisfaction of watching her die.

“Then lead on, Major,” she said, waving an arm at him. “You are the sneaky one.”

She followed him as he dashed from sidewalk to sidewalk – keeping the potholes in mind this time around of course – sticking to the shadows wherever they could as the Phantom rose above the city after depositing its troops, beginning a lazy circle over the area. Its bay doors were still open to allow the Unggoy-manned plasma turrets to add even more aerial cover, one on each side. Seela lived for combat, but she’d be a fool to let herself be killed so swiftly by four plasma cannons.

They cut through a building rather than cross the next street in the open, the space littered with overturned tables and chairs, the arrangement reminding her of the dining establishments on the homeworld, this place must play some similar role.

Halfway through, the Major held up a fist, the gesture obviously meaning stop, Seela pausing behind a chair obediently. He pointed a gloved hand to the way they were going, the outside road turning at a right angle, leading north and east. A Jiralhanae and two Unggoy were loitering around in the rain, their backs to Seela and the Major as they kept watch.

The Major opted to wait for them to move on, he and Seela taking up positions behind fallen tables, but after a few minutes, Seela tapped him on the shoulder. “They are watching the street, they will not move for some time. We must kill them.”

“Could double back,” he countered. “but… we need to go this way. Fine.”

Seela almost thanked him by how much relief was coursing through her. Finally, she could take out her frustrations on a traitor. “No grenades,” he quickly added. “I doubt you have a suppressor for that carbine, but suppose it’s not the loudest gun out there.”

He drew his pistol, the weapon barely bigger than her thumbs, but she knew not to underestimate the stopping power behind Human weapons. “The Jiralhanae will have shields,” she said. “I can destroy them easily enough, you deal with the Unggoy. Grunts,” she added when he made to ask her.

“How many shots does it take to collapse a shield?”

“Five.”

“Too many,” he said. He drew a Covenant plasma pistol from his belt, taking aim with both of his sidearms. “I’ll take his shields, then you pop him in the head. Ready?”

“Always,” she answered.

She scoped in on the traitorous Jiralhanae, watching from the corner of her eye as the Major overcharged the plasma pistol, the weapon wobbling in his hand. When it reached maximum charge, he sent it, taking aim with his Human pistol as the bolt sailed towards the group. There were two loud snaps as he downed the pair of Unggoy with precise headshots, the Jiralhanae yelping in alarm as his underlings slumped to the street.

The bolt slammed into his backside with all the force of a hammer, and he stumbled around, his eyes going wide as he looked down the barrel of Seela’s carbine. She pulled the trigger, and the Jiralhanae joined his dead squad without another sound. The whole attack had lasted about five seconds, Seela and the Major turning their heads towards each other in the ensuing silence.

“Nice shot,” he said. “Let’s go, the other patrols might have heard something.”

They walked out into the rain, the Major stepping over the felled Jiralhanae, Seela lingering as she overlooked the dead patrol. Killing from the shadows wasn’t an unheard of strategy, Sangheili swordsman often used cloaking technology to close in on their targets, but she’d always preferred facing her foe down where they could see one another. Yet this precise, hasty attack was no less thrilling than open warfare. She wondered why that was…

She noticed the Major was putting some distance between them, and she hurried after, the sound of the Phantom’s engines fading into the distance as they slipped deeper into the city. When she was confident they weren’t being followed, she spoke up, her mandibles flexing in a grin.

“The Brutes are none the wiser,” she said. “I have heard tales of Imps striking from the shadows, but to be participating with one, it’s a novel experience.”

“They’ll find out their patrol’s dead soon enough,” the Major interjected. “They’ll know someone’s been in the area. We’ve just painted a bigger target on our backs.”

“Then we shall face them down like the glorious thorns in the Covenant’s side like we are.”

The Major huffed, his first word trailing out from a laugh. “You’re impossible, Seela.”

“How do you mean?”

“I’m so used to working with patient people, soldiers who pick their fights, not hot heads like you.”

“I don’t know what a hot head is, but I’ll take it as an insult, given how many slurs you like to send my way.”

“Hot heads are-”

He stopped, whipping around, the sound of the Phantom’s engines returning in force as the ship banked into view above the rooftops, one of its searchlights swiping over the street they were standing in. They threw themselves into the closest building, the entire face of the structure made of shattered glass, the two vaulting into the shadows to take cover.

The searchlight locked onto their hiding spot. The Major might have been able to go undetected, his black armour helping him blend into the darkness, but Seela’s power armour held no such concealing properties, reflecting the searchlight like a beacon as the Phantom locked onto her.

“The shadows fail us,” she muttered.

“You mean your white armour failed us!” the Major replied. “Get down!”

There were a pair of marble columns a little deeper into the building, and they ducked behind them as a barrage of plasma fire streamed down from above. They appeared to have entered another space filled with tables and other furniture, the plasma melting through the wood and plastic as the dropship’s guns opened up.

She peeked round the column between the volleys of fire, seeing an Unggoy on the side of the dropship was rotating a cannon mounted on a flexible arm, the little creature barely tall enough to look down its sights.

That wasn’t the only weapon the Phantom had. On the chin of the slowly lowering vessel, another, larger cannon rotated on a gimble, the barrel splitting into three long arms arranged in a triangular shape. She knew from experience that its gunner was the copilot, safely nestled out of sight in the cockpit.

It aimed its multitude of barrels at her position, Seela crouching behind the column as it sent a burst of plasma her way, the muzzles glowing pink with heat as it suppressed her position.

She could feel the heat on the column as it took the brunt of the attack, Seela noticing the Major’s cover was faring no better. He was to the left of her, the pillar turning to liquid as the heat splashed against it in droves.

She leaned her carbine round the side of her cover, exposing as little of her body as she blind-fired at the dropship, knowing her weapon couldn’t penetrate the ship’s hull but wanting to retaliate all the same.

“We’ll die if we don’t move!” he yelled over the plasma fire, clutching his weapon in his hand but refraining from using his ammo.

“Open to ideas!” she shouted back, ducking away to reload.

“Wait, you hear that?”

She was about to ask what he was talking about, when she did. It was a distant ringing sound, coming from somewhere to their right. She looked that way, spotting a door at the far side of the room, the lightbulb above it flicking on suddenly, despite being off not a few moments ago.

“Cover me,” the Major said. Without warning he dashed across the open, narrowly dodging a stream of plasma fire that almost cut him down. Now he was behind her column, Seela leaning away as he edged closer out of the line of fire. “I mean that literally,” he added. “you have shields, I don’t. On three.”

He counted down, and they ran across to the door, dodging round tables and couches, the Phantom’s guns tracking them in their mad dash. Her shields absorbed the fist-sized bolts, but they didn’t last long against concentrated plasma from a cannon, and she let slip a pained moan as a grazing shot skimmed the back of her leg.

She ducked under the frame, the two finding themselves in a kitchen, the thick walls cutting off the Phantom’s line of fire. Pots and plates were stacked high on cabinets that would be unreachable to a Human without assistance, one such stack falling to the ground with a clatter as the Phantom began to harry at the building with its vast firepower.

Her companion wasted no time, running for another door on the opposite wall, Seela glancing at the strange appliances lining the room’s edges as she followed, the scent of cold food wafting into her nose. Her leg throbbed with pain every time she put weight on it, but she couldn’t let the pain stop her, she had to keep moving.

The Major shoved the door open with his shoulder, the frame swinging open to reveal a dark alley lined with waste bins and discarded bags of rotting food, rain drenching everything in a shining layer of water. Seela had to crouch to squeeze herself through the frame, knocking aside the door which had swung back to hit her on the face.

She looked up, seeing the Phantom’s bulbous shape framed against the dark clouds, the chin cannon adjusting its aim as the dropship drifted over their heads.

“This way!” the Major said, his boots splashing against the ground as he took off in a sprint down the alley. Seela ducked under an awning projecting out of one of the buildings, for once glad of the city’s confusing design as the many protruding facades made it difficult for the Phantom to zero in on her.

“Do you even know where you are going?” she shouted, running as fast as her pained leg would allow, her paces so much longer than his that her speed mattered little as she caught up with him.

“Not yet!” he answered, Seela giving him a bewildered look as he navigated the alleys. She couldn’t see the Phantom, but she could hear it, the aircraft’s vector engines flaring and dampening as it circled the skies, seemingly sounding like it was all around them.

The ringing noise from before was getting closer with each second, that must be what the Major was running towards, and sure enough, they emerged from the alleys back into the open streets, and across the road were four stations lining the wall. They were strange, blocky devices with number pads on them, protected by glass domes where Humans would presumably stand in cover while they used them.

One of the devices was giving off that incessant ringing noise. “Phones,” he explained. “they’re like the communicator in your helmet.”

“Don’t tell me you’re going to answer it?” she asked. “Who could be hailing us here?”

The phone stopped ringing, and a bright light drew her attention to the left. There was an archway sheltering some sort of underground entrance, the sign above the incline flashing on and off, the word unreadable to her.

“Caution!” a synthetic voice said from over by the phones. “Surface traffic is busier than usual, please consider using subway systems! Don’t forget your ticket!”

“Thank fuck, come on!”

“Who was that?” Seela asked, but the Major didn’t answer her, taking off in a sprint towards the flashing entrance, kicking up splashes of water with his boots. She took off after him, her hooves thundering across the street, glancing back over her shoulder to see the Phantom was pivoting on the spot, its rear engines pulsing. In a moment it would make a pass right over her position.

She threw herself into the awning, the spot of light from the Phantom’s searchlight washing over the entrance not a second later, the ceiling casting harsh shadows on the surrounding concrete. Seela rolled down the first couple steps before finding her balance, aiming her carbine up at the sky, but the Phantom wasn’t there. The ship was making another pass at the alleyways they’d come from, she had not been seen.

She jogged down the steps four at a time, seeing the Major had already reached the bottom. When she joined him, she planted her hands on her knees, depositing her carbine on the ground as she collected herself. She looked up the stairwell, watching the thunderous sky occasionally glow bright white as lightning streaked, her heart pounding against her chest. Was she… exhilarated, right now? How could fleeing from her enemy inspire such excitement in her heart? Perhaps it was just the lack of breath, she had never had to run so hard in a long time…

“That was too close,” the Major muttered, the Human likewise panting for breath, one of his arms leaning against the chiselled stone wall.

“Too close?” she echoed. “We were literally fired upon. That’s not close, that’s compact.”

He shrugged, or maybe that was just him fighting for air, she couldn’t tell. Seela took a moment to examine their surroundings in the following silence. The place was large and mostly empty, save for a few strips of railway tracks that cut channels into the colourless floor, with a depth of maybe her hooves to her chest. They were underground, obviously, the ceiling a huge stretch of tiled brickwork, with slopes instead of harsh edges at the corners. How much weight from the surface was sitting atop this thick roof? Just the thought made her nervous.

There were small shelters and sitting booths flanking the channels, the rails appearing and disappearing from tunnel mouths on either side of the complex. It reminded her of the place she had made her stand, only much bigger and more open. Kikowani, had the Major called it?

“Should be able to throw off the Phantom now,” the Major said, likewise giving the area a look over. “Plenty of other exits leading up to the surface, just have to pick one.”

He began to walk off, and Seela’s nostrils flared in agitation, stopping his trek as she reached over to clasp his helmet between her finger and thumbs, turning his head around to face her with all the effort of scruffing an unruly housepet.

“Who, was, that?!” she repeated, jabbing her free hand over her shoulder. “You said before we were stranded in this city, yet we were coerced into this hiding place by… by someone!”

“Stranded doesn’t mean being alone,” he replied, still being mysterious even with her giant hand engulfing his head. She wondered how much effort it would take to crush his puny helmet.

“If you do not answer me in the next five seconds, I’m leaving.”

“Best ultimatum I’ve ever been offered.”

“You need me, fool,” she growled, leaning close to his face, knowing where his eyes were by memory despite only seeing her reflection in his opaque visor. “I am the only thing stopping you from walking into a wandering Brute patrol.”

“I could take my chances,” he replied. “You know how good I am at slipping past Covenant.”

“Perhaps I should fire off a shot, then? Lure the Phantom and their forces to this place? I am not afraid to die, but you are, your mission is too important, you said so yourself.”

“Fine…” the Major sighed, rolling his eyes judging by the way his helmet moved. “I have a contact in the city, alright? A… sleeper agent. It’s like a spy,” he added when Seela cocked her head in confusion. “There, can you put me down now?

She blinked when she noticed his feet had left the floor at some point, and she deposited him back on the ground a little harder than was appropriate, the Human stumbling as she released him.

“See? Not so hard to give me a straight answer, is it?” she chided. “Now we may proceed.”

He grumbled something she didn’t quite catch, taking the lead as they delved into the complex. The place was huge, with various branching hallways twisting out of sight along the wall to their left, no doubt leading to more, identical areas like this one.

“So,” she began, lowering her carbine as she nudged her way through the loose rocks and discarded wrappings littering the floor. “can this sleeper agent contact you only through those ‘phones’?”

“My helmet’s communicator got trashed a while back, so yeah. Pretty one-way though.”

“How did you know he would direct you to this place?” she asked, glancing down at him. “What if we had not been close enough to hear the phone ringing? What if there had been no power, how would you know to come in this direction?”

“I didn’t,” he replied, pushing his way between a waist-high gate that spanned the hallway. “Looks like being on home soil for once has its perks.

“You don’t seem very bothered,” she noted, stepping over the gate. “I was sure we would have to make a stand against the Phantom.”

“We operatives have to always keep a cool head when we’re backed into a corner,” he said. “We’ve always got to have a backup plan, or be ready to make one up on the spot, cause we never know when the Covenant’s gonna bring the hammer down on us. We’ve got to be ready to slip away at a moment’s notice, cause help’s not coming.”

“What about your team?” she asked. “Do they not help you?”

“They do, but… when you’re deployed behind enemy lines, there’s gonna be casualties, and when you lose as many teams as I have, you learn to take care of yourself. Sometimes I’m almost glad to work solo, means I can only get myself killed if I make a mistake.”

“That sounds very… lonely,” she said, the two travelling up another staircase. “At least I was given ample time to mingle with my kinsman, arrogant and impertinent though they may be, forming connections with the precious few who saw me as a fellow warrior. Perhaps Humans deal with isolation differently than we do.”

She got the feeling he wanted to add more in the following silence, the Human mulling over her words. She remembered the day she had heard news of her first brother’s death, how she wept for his loss, tempering her mourning with the thought that he had died well. This Human must have gone through something similar, if he preferred to work alone than with a team.

“You get used to it,” he eventually replied. “I’ve gone for weeks without so much as uttering a single word, not sure if that’s a good or bad thing.”

“Well then, at least I am here to help change that,” she replied, smirking down at him. Seela only realised that they had shared a quiet chuckle after the fact. It seemed that nearly getting cut down by a Phantom gunner had done wonders for their animosity.

The Major

Beneath the Streets of New Mombasa

Nine Hours After Rupture

Given his past experiences with train stations, the Major decided to stick to the platforms and avoid trudging down the tunnels this time around. He didn’t head straight for the nearest exit, that Phantom could still be in the area, so instead they hopped over a couple of platforms until he was confident they wouldn’t immediately be greeted by Covenant when they returned to the surface.

His visor outlined the edges of the rectangular rooms as he and Seela climbed up a frozen escalator, the next area reminding him of a terminal at an airport, with numerous metal detector arches and filter gates protecting every branching direction. Judging by the various gift shops and corner cafés lining the area, this must be the hub of the metro. After a few minutes of walking, the Elite spoke up.

“I must stop,” his companion said, lifting one of her long legs up to rub at her calf, the Major frowning back at her over his shoulder.

“We need to orient ourselves as soon as possible,” he replied as he walked. “Already lost enough time thanks to that Phantom.”

He didn’t hear her following, so he sighed, turning round to see she was lingering ten or so meters back, her foot still raised as she examined herself. From this angle, the strange shape of her legs was more defined, the Major taking a moment to look them up and down.

They were digitigrade, like the hind legs of a dog, her thighs thick with muscle, her sparse armour leaving little to the imagination about their weight and power. They ended in a pair of wide hooves, like a deer. Her legs were huge by his standards, but proportional on her large frame, and to other Elites she probably passed off as slim, more lithe, sporting a balance between muscle and grace, as she was demonstrating at this moment – standing on one foot without even bracing herself against something.

There was a nasty scorch mark between her first and second knee on the left leg, her form-fitting bodysuit melting like candle wax in a rough patch the size of his palm. She must have been shot when they were fleeing the Phantom.

“You okay?” he asked, holding his shotgun one-handed as he adjusted his rigging.

“Oh yes my melted skin doesn’t hurt at all,” Seela answered with a roll of her eyes. “of course I’m not okay, fool, I told you I must stop, didn’t I?”

“Still have the medigel,” he reminded her, fishing in one of his many pouches. Seela batted a hand at him from across the floor.

“Forget your gel, it will not work on me, I’m not human.”

“I don’t think it discriminates,” he said. “It heals tissue, and you look flesh and bone to me.”

“I said forget it. I need but a moment’s rest.”

He began to complain, but restrained himself, Seela was too stubborn to warrant another argument. He internally winced when Seela hissed through her mandibles as she prodded a finger at her wound. It looked painful, if her gushing, purple blood was any indication. Did she expect to just let it heal on its own?

“At least run it under some water or something,” he mumbled.

“Do you see any water around here?” she asked.

“There’s a bathroom right there, go clean yourself up.”

“How was I supposed to know?” Seela shot back, walking over to the door he was pointing at, flexing her mandibles at him in the same way one would pull a face at a hated colleague. When she pushed the door open, she spun around, glaring at him. “Did you just snort?”

He had, she’d heard him even through the helmet, her senses must be much better than he thought. “That’s the men’s bathroom,” he chuckled.

She threw open the door again, which had closed while he was talking, pointedly strutting inside despite his words. After a moment, he heard her call out from inside. “Where’s the water?”

The Major sighed, seeing they weren’t about to get moving any time soon. He let his shotgun hang in its sling as he entered the bathroom, checking over his shoulder for contacts before moving inside.

There were three cubicles to one side, and just as many sinks on the other, the place looking untouched compared to the rest of the city, tucked away as it was. Seela was standing in front of one of the stalls, her tall helmet brushing the ceiling, her hands on her wide hips as she appraised the cubicles.

“Should I use the water in there?” she asked, gesturing at one of the toilets.

Part of him wanted to see her dunk her hand in it, but she’d probably punch him in the brain if she managed to piece together what toilets were used for, so he didn’t bother. “No use the sinks,” he said, leading her over and demonstrating how to turn one on. “Blue means cold, red means hot. Now hurry up.”

The top of the counter was below waist height to the giant alien, and she pulled a leg up on it like she was vaulting over a railing, placing her giant hoof into the sink. She grumbled as she tried to find the right position to put her injury beneath the faucet, angling her leg in ways that would have sprained his muscles if the Major had tried to copy her. She never stumbled, however, never lost her balance, her other leg completely straight and anchoring her to the ground.

Eventually she found a proper position, her leg angled awkwardly across the counter, her knee on one side of the basin, and her ‘foot’ on the other. She reached over and turned the cold water on, hissing through her mandibles as it began to wash over her burn.

The Major stood to one side of the exit, switching his attention between watching the exit, and watching her. A plasma shot like that could send a human straight to the infirmary for weeks, but she’d walked all this way without voicing a single complaint. He knew Elites were tough, but seeing it for himself was no less impressive.

He began to tap his foot, Seela occasionally twitching as she adjusted her pose. She sighed every now and then, the Major imagining how the cool water was relieving her burning pain. The silence dragged on into the minutes, until Seela glanced over at him.

“Could you stop that?”

“What?” he asked.

“Your foot, it is twitching. And you are also tapping on the wall, it’s annoying.”

He balled his hand into a fist, he hadn’t noticed he’d been flexing his fingers against the wall all this time. “You are disconcerted,” she noted. “I will not so slow us down, injury or no.”

“It’s not that,” he replied. “I know you can just shrug off anything that comes your way. It’s…”

“Don’t keep me waiting,” she chided when he went quiet.

“I’m just not good at standing around. Makes me nervous.”

“One should relish for the quiet moments,” she said, turning the water down a notch. “It is the only chance a warrior has to reflect. How can simply standing make one nervous?”

“I’m always on the move. Or fighting, or drawing up strategies. My whole life revolves around those things, I’ve practically made them my identity. When I’m not doing any of that, I start to… reflect, as you put it, on things I’d rather forget.”

“… I too, wish to stay ahead of some memories,” Seela replied. “Take the infant I almost killed, for instance. That moment is always there, burned into my mind like the afterimage of a bright light, and sleep is no longer the welcome reprieve it once was.”

He had a jab about what she dreamed on the tip of his tongue, but he held it back, not wanting to interrupt her. “-but a warrior cannot let regret weigh them down, lest they crumble rather than fall, when the end eventually comes.”

“Just keep moving forward, huh?” he said. “Guess that kind of outlook isn’t limited to just humans. Easier said than done, though,” he added, crossing his arms over his vest. “I’ve lost a lot of friends during my years with ONI, and tonight isn’t the first night my whole team’s gone dark. The other operators gave me a nickname, wanna hear it? Lone Wolf, because people assigned to me had a habit of never making it back nine times out of ten.”

“You feel responsible for their deaths?”

“Of course I do,” he snapped. “I’m supposed to get them out, not leave them to die. It got so bad I stopped calling my squadmates by their name, thought it would help cope if and when they died, like a defence mechanism, but it’s ended up fucking me and making me a stone-cold, miserable sack of... But you wouldn’t get it,” he finished with a shake of his head.

“I am also a leader, remember?” Seela said, a strange expression on her face. “I may not have led a fellow Sangheili in battle, but I do know of the duty and obligation one feels for their charges. You think after a battle on how you could have done things differently, how you could have minimised casualties, but you must banish these thoughts. To dwell on the dead, when you remain among the living, is a foolish endeavour. Perhaps on some level, I do ‘get it’. I may even see a shade of me in you, Major.”

“What do you mean?”

“We have both made war our livelihood, yet cannot seem to rationalise its consequences no matter how hard we try. We seek any means of distraction if it means ignoring our troubles, be that moving, or fighting.”

“Yeah, well, what else can we do?” he asked, his hands raised in exasperation. “All I’ve ever known is how to kill and fight.”

“On the contrary,” Seela said. “You have meticulously avoided confrontation whenever possible, and you have failed to kill me.”

“So I can’t even do that right, good point…”

“I meant that as a compliment,” she added. “You are not so bad a leader as you might think. Despite my complaints, your insistence on avoiding open battle has brought us this far, has it not? Keep your dedication ready, Major, and do not let the losses of your teams discourage you, no amount of lament will undo their deaths.”

That hurt him, but as much as he tried, he didn’t have a good comeback to throw at her, and not just because of his troubled thoughts. She had not meant that statement to be an insult, but a fact, and somehow that was worse.

“How’s the leg?” he asked. She narrowed her eyes at him, but decided to follow his changing of the subject. She twisted the tap, the water petering out as she lowered her leg to the floor, putting a little weight on it.

“Better,” she replied. She readied her carbine, cocking her hips as she planted a hand on her waist, her pose making him acutely aware of how lithe she was. “Well?” she asked, her purple eyes seeming to sparkle beneath the ceiling fluorescent. “I am ready when you are, Major.”

“Right.” He readied his shotgun, pushing the door open with his shoulder, the two returning to the hub of the metro. There were no Covenant, no sign that anything had come past while they were having their little chat.

“You humans love your underground complexes,” Seela said as they got moving. “We should be swift. I’ve seen the city from above, it could crumble down on us at any time.”

“Feeling a little claustrophobic, huh?” he asked.

“Do you mock me? I am talking about the destruction left by the rupture, and the great monument that has collapsed. Your city has become unstable.”

“What great monument?”

“The… tower, just beyond the city, the one that reached into orbit.”

“You mean the space elevator?” he asked, Seela shrugging at him. “Don’t worry, just a little further and we’ll be out. Hopefully your Brute buddies aren’t waiting for us when we get topside.”

“If they are, we will deal with them,” Seela replied. “I am curious, what is a space elevator?”

“Don’t have any on your homeworld?”

“No. What is there purpose?”

Seeing they had the time, and there was no harm in indulging her, he began to explain.

-xXx-

Water cascaded over the first couple of steps at the top of the incline, the exit from the metro nearly identical to the one the Superintendent had ushered them towards during their escape from the Phantom. The rain was coming down in white, misty sheets in a way one could see the wind’s influence through them, the Major suppressing a shiver beneath his armour as the cold lashed at him.

He swept his shotgun left as he emerged from the stairwell, Seela moving right as she mirrored his movements. There were no dropships waiting for them, no Brutes or Covenant, just the city and the fires it was all bathed in.

“Which way, then?” Seela asked, turning to him once they had cleared the area.

“Not sure, have to find a kiosk,” he said, beginning to walk down the street, clogged with vehicles just like all the others. “Keep an eye out.”

“Can’t your sleeper agent tell us where one is?” she said, following him on his left.

“He should,” he said, wiping his visor clear of water. “Eyes and ears out, then. He might ring another phone like last time.”

It would be hard to pick out anything over the storm, but he knew Seela’s hearing would be better than his, and unlike him, her helmet wasn’t completely obscuring her features, so it shouldn’t be hard for either of them to find something.

They marched on through the city and soon enough, a billboard on the side of a building flickered on, displaying an arrow pointing straight down. Following it brought them right to another kiosk, the Major taking a moment to find their location and orient themselves.

“Are we on the right track?” Seela asked, checking the area while he worked.

“Our little underground venture took us on a bit of a detour, but it’s manageable. Couple hours, and my mission will be nearly complete.”

“And, what after?” she asked, the two picking up the pace once he’d memorised the route. “Say you accomplish your mission, then what?”

“Then we’ll exfil, and be out of each other’s hair.”

“I do not have hair,” she replied, the Major rolling his eyes behind his visor.

“Figure of speech,” he explained. “Means we’ll be parting ways. You’ll be interrogated, and I’ll be redeployed to wherever it is the Navy needs me.”

“That is my fate, then? To be tortured by humans for information? That, is my reward for assisting you?”

“I’ll put in a good word for you,” he reassured. “The proverbial door is always open if you don’t like it,” he added, raising an explanative hand.

“You are giving me a choice?” she asked, her mandibles splaying wide, as though in surprise. “I thought I was an asset?”

“And I thought I was an Imp, but I guess opinions change,” he countered. “Can’t force you to do anything.”

“True, though perhaps…” She paused, rolling a shoulder as she adjusted her armour. “We shall see where our paths take us. For now.”

“Pretty vague commitment, that,” he noted, but Seela didn’t respond, and he didn’t pry. There was no reason to when his objective wasn’t even in sight. It was as the saying went, they’d cross that bridge when they got to it.

-xXx-

They walked down sidewalk after sidewalk, climbing over and navigating around numerous traffic jams, using the roads that pointed east to guide them. The metropolis was as unremarkable as it had been hours before, a landscape of empty buildings and narrow alleyways, darkness and fire coalescing into a harsh redness that shrouded every surface.

He kept his eyes on the hellish skies, expecting a Phantom to dive over the buildings at any moment, even though the Brutes had no way of tracking them besides visually. The silence combined with the rain was enough to almost come off as lulling, but there was a horrid temperance to the quiet, like this was all a giant no man’s land.

“Anything on the BattleNet?” he asked, turning to his towering companion. She would have told him the moment she picked up anything, but the silence was starting to grate him.

“No,” she replied. But a couple minutes later, she held up a hand for him to stop. She was almost following him by his side now, no longer content on keeping way at his flank. “Hold on, I am picking up something…”

“Your Brute buddies?” he asked, gripping the choke on his shotgun.

“No,” she said. “And it’s not the Prophet’s either. It’s…

She got to a knee, which put her at roughly eye level with him, and she gestured for him to come closer. “What?” he asked, apprehension swirling in his stomach as he moved next to her. He was like the size of a doll to her, and he could somehow feel her mass on some primal level, it was a strange sensation.

He was about to repeat his question, when she reached up and turned a small dial on the bottom of one of her mandible guards, a garble of static quickly growing in volume. She was adjusting her speakers so he could hear what she was hearing.

A raspy voice quivered from her helmet, followed by a wet gurgle. Whoever it was, they sounded like they were in a rough state. “What’s he saying?” he asked, the alien words lost on him.

“It’s… a Sangheili,” Seela explained, widening her eyes as though she couldn’t believe it. “He’s wounded, and he’s… speaking nonsense. He doesn’t sound like he has long, we have to save him!”

“Seela,” he began. “He’s just going to bring every Covvie down on his position, we can’t just walk into that.”

“No, no he’s using a private channel, one only Sangheili ranks have access to,” she said. “We know better than the Jiralhanae to broadcast ourselves on open channels. Major, we have to help him.”

“What if he bleeds out before we get there?” he asked. “And how’d he get so shot up in the first place? The Covenant are probably right on top of him.”

“I do not care,” Seela snapped. “Major, three of us working together is better than just two, and he may know if any more of my brothers are still alive.”

She got to her feet, the Major backing up before she could knock him over. “I am going, follow me or don’t, it matters not to me.”

She took off in a jog before he could get another word out, the Major finding himself hesitating as she ran down the street leading north. Would two Elites make his journey easier? That was a matter of debate, but it would be better than lugging it the rest of the way on his own.

“Fucking aliens are gonna be the death of me,” he sighed, running after her as she navigated the streets. After a couple turns, she stopped in the shadow of a towering building, getting to a knee as she peered back over her shoulder, waiting for him to catch up.

“He’s on the other side of this structure,” she said, bringing her voice down to a whisper. At least she’d grown enough sense to not go rushing in.

“Thanks for helping me out, Major,” he replied, sing-songing his words. “I sure appreciate the support for this useless detour.”

“Hush,” she snapped, raising a thumb to her communicator. “He has gone silent.”

“Then he’s gone? Shame.”

“We must be sure. Let us navigate to the second floor of this building, survey the area.”

“Wow, Seela’s not going to just shoulder her way straight into the open? I’m impressed.”

“I said hush, now move it.”

The stepped into the main lobby of what first came off as another office building, the two of them making their way behind the front desk, where a pair of elevators were built into the wall, along with a stairwell. They made their way up, Seela with a little more urgency, the two finding themselves in a barren floorspace. There were plastic films draped over large sections of the floor, along with a pair of step ladders and bundles of wooden planks. This place must have been under renovations before the invasion.

The wall facing their destination was a huge stretch of waist-high glass, he and Seela crouching in front of it as they overlooked a small, square-shaped area boxed in from all sides by other buildings. It appeared like some sort of miniature park, with hills as tall as the Major’s shoulders covered over in freshly trimmed grass, the area laced with juvenile oak trees, their bases surrounded by park benches. A dirt track weaved through the area, connecting the four corners of the garden together, where doorways led in and out of the neighbouring buildings.

It was like someone had plucked a part of a botanical garden and deposited it right here in the middle of this urban landscape. It would have looked almost serene, if not for the bodies.

At a glance he could count ten dead aliens strewn about the garden, bioluminescent blood glinting under the fiery sky. There were no humans, just Brutes and Elites, along with a few Grunts, slumped over in positions that hinted at the battlelines of a past firefight.

Seela had told him that her kind had been betrayed, but to actually see its effects was still an interesting sight. Perhaps the Covenant was weakening, and Earth might have a chance to still pull through this long war.

“There!” Seela said, the Major following her pointed finger. One of the Elites rolled onto its side, the movement easy to pick out over a sea of stillness. She looked antsy to go, but before she did, she mumbled something to him.

“What’s that?” he asked, her voice too low to catch.

“I said cover me,” she repeated, running off back the way they’d come before he could make a comment, emerging into the garden below after a few moments. He watched as she navigated between the corpses, sweeping her carbine left and right, dropping to a knee when she reached her dead kinsman. Did she not say her brothers were overtly sexist towards her? Why did she care that this one was still alive?

She turned the Elite onto his back, pressing her ear against his mandibles, like she was checking his breathing. She gave him a shake, but the alien didn’t respond. Seela waved an arm at the Major, making a come here gesture with her hand.

As much as he disliked this situation, he made an I’m coming wave, and before long, he walked out into the garden, the air laced with an unusual freshness thanks to the flora. The hills were so covered in dew they sparkled like mounds of gemstones, the overhanging canopy thick enough to bring the rainfall down to a light dribble. New Mombasa was starting to make him long for the rural areas.

Seela was in the middle of the garden, and she didn’t look up at his approach. “He’s still breathing,” she said, answering his unspoken question. “Major, do you still have your healing gel?”

“Seela…”

“Now, damnit!”

He let his shotgun hang by his side, fumbling with his pouch as he hunkered down beside her, ripping open the packet of gel with his gloved fingers. “Here. Rub it into the wound and-”

“I know how it works,” she snapped, taking the packet from him and hesitating, not sure where to begin. The Elite looked like he’d been through hell. There was a huge burn on his stomach, and his left arm looked like it had been shattered, as if someone had forced it through a grater. He was also missing two of his mandibles, his purple blood seeping down his neck and throat.

She started with his torso, the gel and the Elite’s blood quickly making a mess of her hand. “I need more,” she insisted after a few initial rubs. “Major?”

He looked around, but if there were any Optican stations around, they weren’t close enough that it would matter. “All I got. Don’t Covenant carry meds on them?”

She didn’t answer, moving on to the Elite’s arm next, rubbing what remained of the gel into his twisted limb with a kind of frantic desperation. “Seela,” he said again.

“H-He was just talking on the BattleNet.”

“Seela,” he insisted, and she raised her eyes to his. “Look at him, he’s gone.”

He pointed at the alien for emphasis, Seela beginning to deflate as his words got through to her. This wasn’t the first time he’d had to snap a fellow soldier out of it, but he still felt a bit of guilt for her, and he wasn’t sure why.

“You’re right,” she said, placing a hand on the Elite’s armoured chest. She began to say something he couldn’t understand, speaking in her native language. It was some sort of prayer judging by the tone, and as much as he wanted to get moving, he waited for her to finish.

“I knew it was a slim chance,” Seela said when she was done. “And even though your gel didn’t work, I-”

A purple muzzle flash cut her off, quickly followed by a gunshot. The Major managed to catch the split second in which the purple contrail was visible, the round coming from one of the doors the garden branched off towards. He felt like someone had struck his chest with a brick, the Major falling to the ground on his ass.

He dipped his head, seeing a crystal shard poking into his chestplate, about the length of a pen. The armour had failed to do its job, he could feel his blood trickling down his skin beneath the plating, but that wasn’t what had him worried. The needle round was beginning to glow, the pink hues of the crystal casting a strange light on his helmet, so bright it was making his eyes water.

He ripped the shard out with a groan, casting it aside, where it shattered into a thousand pieces before it had hit the ground. Needle rounds could detonate if they didn’t shatter first, his insides would have been blown apart had he been a second slower.

A follow-up shot rang out, and the Major would have been killed on the spot, had Seela not stepped between him and the sniper, her shields glowing as the rounds were deflected. She didn’t waste a moment, shouldering her carbine and taking aim, the squawk of a Jackal filling the garden as she pulled the trigger.

Another needle round bounced off her flank, Seela snarling as she dropped to a knee, aiming her weapon up at a balcony on the eastern wall, the barrel of a Covenant rifle poking out of the frame up there.

Another sniper revealed itself on the western side of the garden, leaning out from behind a doorframe and taking aim at the Major. Rather than get to his feet, he lunged for the cover between the hills, his vest scraping against the gravel path as he hit the deck.

Waiting for the right moment, he raised to a crouch, bringing his shotgun to bear on the Jackal, who fired off a shot. The needle streaked past the side of his helmet, the Major barely flinching as he sent a slug its way, the Jackal toppling over and out of sight.

“Damned snipers!” Seela snarled, backing up as she likewise ducked behind the mounds of earth, her shields just about to break. “Were they waiting for us?”

“Doesn’t matter, just keep your head down,” he replied. He pumped his shotgun, holding the barrel down as he and Seela practically had to prone to stay out of sight. “How many?”

“Three.” Another round streaked across the garden, leaving a purple contrail, the shard breaking apart as it impacted the top of Seela’s sweeping helmet.

He activated his visor’s low-light systems, rolling onto his shoulder so he could see the second-floor sniper, levelling his shotgun. He sent two slugs its way, the first broke a chip of the frame apart, and the second found its mark, the Jackal tumbling to the grass and landing with a sickening crunch.

He covered his helmet with an arm as return fire peppered their measly cover, puffs of dirt exploding from the little hills and showering both of them in soil. Seela could afford to be more liberal, her shields allowing her to peek over the mounds for longer as she picked off another sniper, discharging her cartridge as she emptied her weapon.

“I’m almost out,” she said, her scowling face framed by the swirling energies of her shields.

“Here.” There was a dead Elite just to the Major’s left, and he had a couple of carbine cartridges on his hip. He threw them her way, and she snatched them out of the air, punching them into her empty carbine. If she had any issues with robbing her dead brothers, she didn’t voice them.

Tens of purple contrails crisscrossed over their position, some impacting the hills and churning up the dirt, Seela peering over the lip of earth when she was reloaded. She sent a burst of green bolts at one of the snipers on the gardens edge, the Jackal flopping to the ground, his rifle firing off a couple more times as the alien seized up. The Major joined her, twisting his body round and propping himself up on his elbow, cutting down another Jackal that had been trying to reposition, his buckshot catching the avian as it darted between the trees.

He took advantage of the following quiet to reload, thumbing fresh shells into his receiver as he scanned for the last Jackal. “Up there!” he shouted, pointing back to where they’d overwatched the garden minutes earlier. A feathered head of a Jackel was peering through the windows, its beady eyes going wide as it realised it was spotted.

Seela turned her carbine on it, the first round shattering the window, the next going straight through the wall, the Jackal falling out of view. “More are coming,” she warned, gesturing over the hill to their north. The Major lifted his helmet, watching one of the many doors slide open to reveal half a dozen Grunts, the little aliens waddling onto the grass as they fired blindly with their plasma pistols.

The Major pumped his shotgun, moving over and crouching shoulder to shoulder with Seela as they opened up on the Grunts, the small aliens spinning like tops as they picked them off. He felt heat wash over his face as inaccurate return fire sailed over his head, his weapon rocking into his shoulder as he sent shells downrange. He almost felt bad for how easy it was for him and Seela to cut down the Grunts, but their presence distracted them from even more reinforcements piling into the garden after a few moments.

“Chieftain!” Seela exclaimed, her voice a blend of dread and excitement. From the same door the Grunts had come from, a trio of Brute Minors sauntered out into the rain, flanked by a fourth. This one sported armour the colour of rust, his head clad in an ornate helmet not too dissimilar from Seela’s own, save for the jagged horn poking out of the forehead. Clutched in its powerful arms was a giant hammer, longer than the Major was tall, the Chieftain swinging the massive weapon from one shoulder to the other with uncanny ease. That was a gravity hammer, the blocky generator on the head making the air around it shimmer with its anti-gravitational energies.

The Chieftain shouted something in its alien language, the other Brutes raising their plasma rifles as they fanned out, two going left, the other moving right.

“We must move!” Seela yelled, ducking alongside the Major as their hill was pulverised with plasma, the soil tossed up into the air in sheets, some of the grass igniting and immediately sizzling out from the rain. “I will draw them away!”

She stood out of their cover without warning, firing from the hip as she climbed over the hill to their rear, her shields saving her from being immediately shot down. She disappeared out of his view, the plasma fire going with her as she retreated to some unseen position.

He didn’t dare raise his head out of cover, so he flipped over onto his belly, crawling between the hills with his shotgun clutched out in front of him, his elbows digging into the soil. Green and blue plasma bolts crisscrossed over his head, the ground shaking as someone detonated a plasma grenade, though if this was Seela or the Brutes he couldn’t tell.

He clutched his helmet on instinct as another explosion sounded off, this time a lot closer, flecks of dust and dirt raining down on his helmet in clumps, it was like being back in basic training all over again.

He crawled across part of one of the gravel paths, seeing there was a tree up ahead. That would make for better cover than lying on the ground, so he made for it, his damned rigging getting caught on rocks as he crawled.

He felt the ground quake again, but this time it wasn’t from a grenade. He turned his head to see a Brute had moved this way. It raised a giant foot onto the lip of the hill to his right, firing on what he presumed was Seela’s location with a plasma rifle. The thing looked especially huge, considering the Major was on his belly.

It hadn’t appeared to notice him, and the Major quietly levelled his weapon, the sound of escaping gas carrying over the immediate area as he dumped a shell into its flank. Its shields exploded like shattering glass, the alien turning its weapon on the Major with a yell of alarm. It pulled the trigger, the Major feeling the ground around his head rumble as the Brute narrowly missed him.

He pulled the choke and fired again, the Brute’s head snapping upward as he hit it centre mass, the alien tumbling forward. He rolled out of the way of its massive, falling corpse, continuing his crawl as its body landed right where he’d been a moment ago.

He rounded the trunk of the tree, wiping dirt and rain from his visor as he rose to his knees, pumping his shotgun once more as he surveyed the area. He was on the left half of the garden, while Seela was on the right, trading fire with one of the Brute Minors as she took a knee behind one of the hills, their shields weathering the exchange of plasma. Behind the Brute, the Chieftain kept his distance, waving his hammer like he was a standard-bearer, his presence no doubt inspiring the Covenant to keep the pressure on.

The Major ducked his head when a bolt crashed into the tree, the final Minor having spotted him and suppressing him with plasma fire, a pair of Grunts pushing forward, following the dirt track as they tried to flank. He dropped them both with his pistol, stealing the occasional glance at Seela as she dealt with her own problems.

She snarled as her shields were depleted, a bolt catching her in the midriff as the Minor followed up with a burst from his rifle. Ducking down and fishing for the last grenade on her belt, she chucked it blindly over the hill, the Brute’s cry of alarm petering out as the plasma detonated.

A Grunt was coming at her from the side, letting off a shot as it rounded her cover, the plasma bolt slamming into her shoulder before she could react. Her carbine rocked as she killed him, Seela rolling her shoulder as she made to reload.

A gut-wrenching roar carried across the garden, Seela peering over the hill at the furious Chieftain. He braced his hammer against his side, thumping his fist against his breastplate as he began to charge towards her, every impact of his feet hitting the ground making the garden trees shake. She turned her carbine on the ten foot tall Chieftain, dumping bolt after bolt into the approaching Brute.

His shields swirled with every round she sent, but they did not break before her carbine ran empty. She reloaded, but the Chieftain bounded across the garden despite being laden with heavy armour and an equally overbearing weapon, raising the hammer over his head as he moved into striking range.

She danced out of the hammer’s path, the bladed side of the weapon smashing into the spot she’d just been standing on, throwing dust and earth into the air. Seela almost lost her footing as the weapon came down, the tremor that followed rivalling that of explosions, the gravity generator enhancing the already monumental slam.

She darted in and clocked the Chieftain with the stock of her carbine, a spurt of blood and a tooth or two streaking out of the Brute’s jaw. He immediately retaliated with a headbutt, Seela clutching her face with a hand. Readjusting the grip on his weapon, the Brute twisted the hammer out of the ground, hauling it in an upward strike. Seela stepped out of the way, wary of even a glancing strike from such an imposing weapon.

The Chieftain used the momentum of the missed attack to his advantage, turning on the spot and bringing the hammer level with his chest, swinging the weapon round for another strike, the blades shining in the waning light as they neared. She ducked beneath the swing, and the hammer collided with the nearby tree, the blades digging into the bark, the jets built into the rear of the engine igniting. It cleaved through the tree like it was made of water, the sound of splintering wood growing louder as the tree began to list.

The Chieftain snarled as he tugged his hammer loose, Seela taking advantage of the pause to shove her shoulder into his chest. He stumbled back, his glowing eyes turning up as the tree dropped onto his head.

Rather than to be crushed like an insect, the Chieftain gripped the trunk over his shoulder, like he was about to start hauling it off somewhere, his knees buckling, but not breaking. Seela took the distraction as a means to reload, snapping her carbine back into its firing state, filling the occupied Brute with rounds, watching as his shields collapsed with a flash of energy.

As she aimed for his head, the Chieftain lugged the broken oakwood in her direction like he was chucking a spear, Seela knocked off her feet as the trunk slammed into her chest, her back meeting the wet grass as she tumbled over a hill. Her breastplate crumpled like paper, the alloy digging into her bodysuit as it bent inward, the edges of her vision blurring as she fought through her daze.

The Chieftain was on her before she could get to a knee, Seela realising with a start that she’d dropped her carbine during the fall. He swung the hammer from left to right, the blades swiping inches from her snout as she dodged back. Rising to her hooves, she stepped in and seized the hammer before he could lift it, the two struggling for a moment for control over the weapon.

The Chieftain decked her across the mandibles with a fist, Seela staggering straight into the blades of the hammer, the metal digging into her ribs. The Brute pulled the haft, and Seela roared in pain, the sharp metal shifting around her blood as it cut along her body.

She had meant to overpower the hammer from his grasp, but now she was leveraging it for her very life, Seela aware of every inch of alloy that slipped beneath her skin.

“You will die slowly, Heretic,” the Chieftain growled, gripping the hammer by the lower half and throwing all his weight into it. The blades pierced deep into her hide, her purple blood staining the hammer as it dug a channel into her torso. She’d be severed at the middle, just like that tree. She wondered if she would still feel her legs as they disconnected from her body.

The overbearing strength of the Brute suddenly lifted, a suppressed snap of air carrying on the wind. She turned her head to see the Major was aiming his gun at the Chieftain, a collection of dead aliens behind him, he had dealt with the rest while she’d been occupied.

He fired off another slug, and the Chieftain doubled over, Seela using the distraction to rip the hammer out of his hands, a worrying amount of blood spilling out of her side as she dislodged herself from the weapon, but she paid it no mind, raising the generator over her shoulder, the sheer weight almost causing her to lose her balance. It weighed a lot, even for her.

She brought the weapon down on the Chieftain, the gravity generator crackling with energy as it added its own momentum to her swing. It slammed between his shoulder blades, his armour breaking apart in a rough circle from the impact, the Chieftain’s body impacting the ground with a crunch, the swing carrying so much momentum a shockwave rippled outwards through the grass.

“Vulgar weapon,” Seela muttered, her hands sliding off the haft, the thing buried deep enough it stayed lodged in the Brute’s spine even as she let go. She turned as the Major walked up to her, slotting ammo casings into his gun. “Major, it… was…”

A wave of nausea cut off her words, and she stumbled to a knee, planting a fist on the ground to brace herself, her laboured breathing laced with an odd, tingling feeling.

“Seela!” she heard him say, one of his gloved hands touching her on the arm. Despite her waning strength, she still bristled at his touch. “Fuck, you’re bleeding bad…”

She looked down, the wound from the hammer had run deep, her thigh painted purple all over as her blood spurted out in droves. Odd, it wasn’t hurting at all. If anything, her plasma burns were the most painful.

Darkness coalesced in the corners of her vision, and her chin met the dirt as her strength failed her. The Major said something about medigel, and when she tried to reply, all that came out was a pitiful groan. No matter, at least he was the only one to hear her final breaths.

The last thing she saw was his helmeted face peering at her from above, and then her world went dark.

The Major

Streets of New Mombasa

10 Hours After Rupture

“Seela!” he said again, shaking her by the arm, watching as her head lolled to the side, her eyes shut tight. He threw away all pretences he had about touching her, hooking an arm around her chest and lifting her up, bringing his glove to her mandibles.

He could feel her breath on his fingers, but it was faint, and that did nothing to steady his racing heart. She was soaked in her own blood from the waist down, her armour was burned with plasma, and one of her mandibles was bleeding. He worried she might choke on her own blood, the way it dribbled down into her open throat.

He brought one of her long arms over his shoulder, his knees shaking as he struggled to lift her. Despite being slimmer than her male counterparts, it took most of his strength to flip her onto her back, and he had to take a rest before trying to get her to her feet.

“Come on, Seela,” he pleaded, struggling to stand with her added weight over his arms. He got about two steps before he faltered, just managing to catch his companion before she toppled over and made her injuries worse.

Grumbling, he propped her up against one of the hills dotting the garden, his vest stained with her spilt blood. He reached into one of his pouches, he’d have to treat her before trying to move her again.

“Shit!” The only thing in his medical pouch was a discarded piece of medigel packaging. Of course, Seela had used it on the dead Elite earlier, the fight had come so fast he’d forgotten about that. He examined the garden, but like before, optican’s finest were nowhere to be seen.

As he began to let doubt take over, he heard it. A phone, the rings coming from somewhere nearby, beyond the garden. He looked towards the doors where the Brutes had spilled out from, then back to his companion. He couldn’t carry her out of here, she’d bleed out by the time he’d make it to the street, but leaving her could be just as fatal, any nearby Covenant would have heard the shooting and would show her no mercy if they found her. She’d die anyway if he didn’t get her some meds, so there was little choice in what he had to do.

“Hold on, Seela,” he said, squeezing her shoulder as he rose to his feet. “I’ll be right back.”

He slung his shotgun over his shoulder, the weapon clattering against his back as he ran out of the garden, a crack of thunder rumbling somewhere in the distance.

Panic began to grip him as he dipped back onto the street, following the noise of the phone. Seela was his responsibility, they were a team, one founded on necessity of course, but still a team, and he couldn’t just let her die, alien or not. He’d lost too many friends in this war, and if he could stop that number from adding up, he’d do all he could.

Was that what she was, a friend? She understood him more than even his own team did in what little time they’d been together, and the fact they’d watched each other’s backs all night added some semblance of comradery. If that constituted friendship, then he supposed she was. Had it only been a few hours ago he’d saw her as just an asset he was almost considering getting rid of? Time sure as hell flew in this place.

After a few minutes of desperate searching, he found what he was looking for. Three medical kits were mounted on the wall of a building, protected from the rain by a glass shelter. Their contents were identical, packets of medigel along with user instructions. Seela had said they wouldn’t work on her since she wasn’t human, but it was his only chance to help her.

Bundling the kits under an arm, he made his way back, but around the halfway mark, he had to duck behind a car as a loud, whirring noise drew his eyes to the sky. A Phantom banked over the buildings, its searchlights scanning the streets as its mounted chin cannon looked for targets. Whether they had heard the gunfire or one of the Brutes had called for backup, it was hard to tell.

He didn’t have time for this, the Major whispering for the ship to leave as though that would somehow work. Screw it, he thought, rushing out into the open and keeping to cover wherever he could. Being spotted now would get them both killed, but Seela would bleed out if he took too long.

The journey back to the garden was slow, but he returned without being detected, rain plinking off his helmet as he rushed onto the grass, stepping round the hulking body of the Chieftain, his hammer still buried in his backside. Seela was right where he had left her, and he skidded to a stop beside her, his knees in the dirt as he laid out the medkits by her thigh.

He should start with her bleeding ribs, as there was already a pool of purple blood creating a circle below her rump. The Chieftain had skewered her good.

Removing his gloves, the cold air pricking at his knuckles, he ripped open a packet of gel and poured it onto his palm. Her bodysuit was shredded, but still partially obstructing her wound, so he pried it away with a thumb and finger, the material made sticky by her rushing blood.

He slathered the gel across her nasty scar, the cut longer than the length of his hand. The medigel took on a purple hue as it mixed with her fluids, the Major grimacing for Seela as he pushed his fingers into the gash, feeling her flesh writhe around his digits. He wiped his hand on his chest when the gel was all gone, then opened the second packet, thinking the cut needed another dose.

After rubbing the second packet away into her injury, the gel taking on the consistency of glue as it mixed with her blood, he set about removing the armour covering his arm. The gel could only do so much, and he didn’t have any morphine or biofoam on hand, but he did have gauze, at least a version of gauze.

Slipping his combat knife out of its sheath, he sliced away the sleeve of his BDU, cutting the fabric into a long strip. Taking one end of it, he wrapped it over her front, then looped it over her torso, her bulk just slim enough his hands met on the other side. It would have been better to have the wrapping taught over her skin, but he had no idea how to remove her bodysuit, and he imagined she wouldn’t appreciate being undressed by him if he did know.

He tied his former sleeve with a knot, pulling it tight around her waist. His improvised bandage was already soaking through, but it was keeping her blood from leaking out, for the moment.

He moved on to her burns, the one on her shoulder looking the worst out of them all. It was the same shoulder that had been bleeding when he’d first met her, and her disregard for medicine back then hadn’t done her any favours, more of her blood dribbling down her back. Lightning shattered in the clouds above, and he looked up when the crashing noise was chased by the Phantom’s engines. It was somewhere out of view nearby, but with a bit of luck, the tree canopy would conceal them if it flew over his position.

Unlike her waist, her upper torso was armoured, and it took a bit of prodding to figure out her to remove her power armour. There were buttons hidden just beneath each piece that would disable the magnetic locks, a very modular design. He set her pauldron on the grass, peeling back the neck of her bodysuit to expose her shoulder.

Her dark flesh here was bruised over, her skin raw and swelling, like someone had pressed a cattle prod onto her. Medigel could help, but he needed to conserve it just in case, and water was a good alternative. He left her once more to search for a faucet in one of the buildings. Rain was in abundance, but he didn’t fancy putting her out in the open where the Phantom could spot them.

Each minute was laced with dread, but his searching in a nearby apartment turned up a plastic cup and a water cooler, and he filled it to the brim, spilling a little of it as he dashed back to Seela’s side. From a distance she looked right at home, just another body in a sea of dead aliens, and the horrible thought that she’d die while he was away made his heart beat faster.

“Come on Seela,” he pleaded, rubbing the water into her burn. He remembered the cut on her mandible was still bleeding, so he set aside the cup, opening his last gel packet as he moved to her face.

It was like pinching the fang of a spider, but he suppressed his apprehension, rubbing her mandible between his gel-laden fingers. The appendage was tough with very little give, packed with muscle, and a bit of curiosity came over him as he examined her strange split-jaw. He had killed too many of her kind to wonder about their alien biology, but he’d never had the chance to be this close to a living one, and he took these moments to study her a bit more.

The texture of her skin was like leather beneath his fingers, as smooth as glass, save for where she was injured of course. As he had noted before, her hide was a navy-blue colour, like an ocean at dusk, and as he moved back to nurse her shoulder he gave her hide a little push, feeling her hard muscles press up to meet him through a subtle layer of blubber.

She was so similar to a human, yet alien in many other ways, her split-lip that was her species nickname one of the most obvious differences, and he found himself examining her odd face again, purely to see if she was injured anywhere else, of course…

Her mandibles moved like lips did, she could replicate speech perfectly, and she also used them to eat as though they were just extensions of her jaw. Their abnormal appearance contrasted with how she used them, he couldn’t imagine having four fingers as a face, what would that feel like?

She stirred, the Major quickly pulling his hand back as she flexed her mandibles, her eyelids slowly opening. “W-Where…?” she mumbled, slowly turning her head up at him. “Major?”

She made to sit up, but he gently pushed her back down, his hands on her shoulders. “Don’t move,” he warned. “That Chieftain got you pretty good, but I’m working on it.”

“N-No,” she breathed, the Major switching his attention to her hip. The strip of cloth was ruined with her blood, he’d have to replace it soon. “Don’t,” Seela added. “Leave it…”

“What are you on about?” he asked, using the last of the medigel on the wound, peeling back his improvised bandage and rubbing it in. He blinked when she tried to bat his hand away, but she was so weak all she could do was grab his arm.

“Stop,” she said, shaking her head at him. “Don’t… Don’t heal me.”

“I know it hurts,” he said, bringing his hand out of her grip. “It’ll get better, just-”

“No!” she said, a little louder this time. “I… I want… this.”

“You need to stay still.” He wiped his filthy hand on his pants, resuming his treatment of her burn as he picked up the cup.

“Please,” she mumbled, and he paused, her purple eyes burning with a strange amount of awareness for someone in her state. He paused, having never heard her plead like that before. “just let me… let me have this.”

“Seela, you need treatment, or you’re not gonna make it.”

“Yes… I go to… meet my forefathers…”

“Not while I’m still here, okay? I’m not just… gonna let you die, alright?”

He cut off another piece of his sleeve, bringing the cloth up to her mandible and patting the blood and gel away. He met her eyes as he cleaned her up, and they began to lid, her words slurring as she slipped into unconsciousness.

“Please…. don’t…”

When her eyes snapped shut, a small drop of water slipped from beneath one, dragging down her cheek where it dropped off the side of her jaw.

The Major blinked, had she just… cried? Was that a tear born from pain, or something else? He wasn’t sure, and Seela wasn’t in the right state for him to ask, her breathing falling into deep, slow draws as she slumped over, the Major cradling her head to keep her from tipping over.

The Phantom made a pass over the garden, the backwash of its engines shaking the leafy canopy. They were out of time, and there was nothing more he could do for her, the Major stooping to pick up her discarded carbine, securing it to the back of his vest, next to his shotgun.

He ducked underneath Seela’s arm, intending to carry her weight on his shoulders, but as willowy as she appeared, he barely made it two steps before her weight caused him to falter. He tried to wake her up, giving her face a gentle tap, then a harder slap, but she was out cold, the blood loss and the plasma burns too much, even for her.

He resorted to dragging her, her hooves leaving trails in the dirt as he moved behind her and lifted her by the armpits, dragging her towards the edge of the garden, the Major pausing for breaths every few feet. He got close to the safety of the building before the Phantom once again entered his vision, the aircraft halting above one of the adjacent rooftops, the telltale sound of opening doors making his heart race. He picked up the pace, hauling his companion into the office he and Seela had entered the garden from earlier.

His laboured breathing filled his helmet as he dragged Seela towards the street, the chirps of talking Grunts filling the silence that proceeded their recent firefight. There was also the deep contralto of a Brute, the Phantom depositing a whole squad into the garden, the way they could be heard, but not seen, somehow making the situation all the more tense.

Seela might have been able to tell him if they’d been spotted, but he took the lack of shooting as a good sign he was hidden for now. He pulled Seela onto the sidewalk, his arms burning with the effort, taking a quick breather as he looked around for options. He couldn’t lug Seela along forever, he had to get her someplace safe, and quickly.

He picked a random direction and dragged her with him, Seela’s hooves scraping paved road as he moved across the street, keeping an eye on the tapered hull of the Phantom as it remained in place, its searchlights aimed thankfully at the garden.

Just as he lifted Seela onto the opposing sidewalk, he heard footsteps. A Grunt had waddled out onto the road, its head jerking around, its eyes eventually coming to rest on the Major. He drew his sidearm out of its holster with practiced speed, sending a single silenced round its way. The bullet dropped it to its knees, but the little alien was tougher than that, pressing its hands into the concrete as it started to get back up. A second bullet put it down, but the damage had already been done, its buddies would be on alert once they found the body.

He dropped the pistol back into its holster, hauling Seela up as he resumed carrying her. He made it another twenty feet before another Grunt poked its head out of the building, along with a Jackal. They yelled something in their alien language, probably a warning that they’d found the dead Grunt, the Major slipping between two sedans as he put distance between him and the Covenant.

A dazzling contrail lanced passed the side of his helmet, and he hauled Seela behind one of the cars as another beam smashed through the rear windshield, shattered glass sprinkling down on his head. One of them was carrying a beam rifle, probably the Jackal, covering his Grunt buddy as it moved up on him.

He could probably get away, but dragging Seela would make him an easy target, so he opted to stand and fight, drawing his pistol and leaning around the side of the car. He dropped the Grunt that was weaving between the dead traffic, spotting another one running along the sidewalk. As he aimed to fire, his pistol clicked rather than fired.

He fished for another mag, but he was out, and he cursed through his teeth as he reached for his plasma pistol, trading fire with the Jackal as it kept him pinned. He couldn’t go into a standstill with them, the rest of the Covenant would be coming any second.

As he was beginning to think the worst, a flash of light drew his attention to the side. A nearby advertisement board came to life, switching from displaying some hair product to an arrow, pointing down and to the left. He followed it with his eyes, seeing a small pathway curving between two structures, likely leading into the adjacent block.

More billboards and other screens came flaring to life all along the street, the lights concentrating around the Jackal’s position. Street posts blinked on and off, and some unseen car started honking its horn, as though its driver had suddenly returned and was venting their frustrations out on all the traffic. The Major and Seela were left in near-complete darkness, and the Major offered the Superintendent a silent thank you as he picked his companion up, heading for the path the AI was pointing him to.

The Covenant weren’t completely neutralized, plasma bolts screaming down the street as more of the squad joined the fray, but the bright lights were contrasting with the overarching darkness, and their shots went wide as he slipped into the side path.

The way was paved with neatly cut stones, flanked by lamp posts on either side every few meters, but they were all off, the Major’s visor systems keeping him from bumping into any stray debris as he heaved Seela through the path.

As suspected the paved concrete terminated at a different street, this one curving along until the road petered out, transitioning into polished metal that created a hump in the ground. It was another one of those blast doors, and the great wall of steel was wide open, the road beyond dipping into what looked like a tunnel system. It was their only chance.

His head snapped in the direction he’d come from. He could hear cars being pushed aside, tires squeaking against the road, as though some rabid animal was stampeding through the vehicles, the roar of a Brute unmistakable. Had one of them had gone into a frenzy?

Picking Seela up, he heaved her towards the blast doors, glancing over the top of her helmet when movement caught his eye. A pit formed in his stomach, there was something much worse than a frenzied Brute. Another Chieftain was standing at the mouth of the path, one of those gravity hammers clutched in his grey hands.

He stared it down for a second, and then the Brute uttered a roar that ignited a kind of primal terror in his chest. He double-timed it, ignoring the burning pain in his arms as he lugged Seela’s weight towards the doors, which were maybe a hundred feet to his rear.

Seela felt like she’d suddenly gained weight, slowing his literal drag to a crawl as he made for the blast doors. The Brute was gaining on him, but he didn’t dare look up to see how close it was getting. “Close them,” he shouted. “close the doors!”

His order was obeyed as the blast doors began to fold towards the ground, something about the mechanical movement coming off as slower than all the others he’d seen. The Chieftain bared its teeth in a snarl as it thundered down the path, raising its hammer over its head like it was about to huck the damned thing like a tomahawk.

Every bone in his body told him to drop Seela and save himself, but he couldn’t abandon her. Memories of lost squadmates flashed through his mind, casualty reports clutched in his hands, his name printed in the commanding officer field next to each lost soldier. Not one more, he told himself.

The Chieftain had already crossed most of the path in the span of a few seconds, its long legs making it look like it was leaping rather than running, the royally pissed alien bearing down on him.

His boots clocked against metal as he closed within spitting distance of the blast doors, the alien’s footsteps travelling from the ground into his legs as it sprinted into the street, the engines on the hammer audible as it drew closer, closer.

He swore he could feel the Brute’s breath on his skin as he summoned the last of his strength, lunging through the gap between the closing doors, not even a second passing before the Chieftain stomped its wide feet onto the metal, the hammer held high. The aliens swung his weapon with a grunt, but the doors were too tight together for the bulky weapon to slip through, the metal ringing like a gong as it smashed into the reinforced frame.

He dropped Seela rather unceremoniously to the ground as he fell on his butt, watching as the Chieftain disappeared behind the doors, the hammer the last thing he saw before the sliver closed. He jumped in terror as the metal dented in a rough circle, the Brute ramming his weapon into the obstacle in frustration. There was one last bone-chilling roar, and then there was silence.

He let his arms drape to the sides as he laid back, the earlier fight and now this frantic chase draining him of energy. He just wanted to lay back and sleep, helmet and all.

After he’d managed to catch his breath, he rose up a little, planting a hand on his knee as he turned around, examining the tunnel he found himself in. The road split off into two branching tunnels after a slight dip, two lanes going to the one on the right, two towards the left. Signs indicated where these tunnels travelled to, and the one on the right caught his interest, the Major tilting his head as he read it out loud. At least the Superintendent had put them on the right track.

“Getting close,” he said, turning to his companion. “Reckon there’s a Warthog in here that’ll help me carry your ass?”

Seela, of course, said nothing.

Seela

Streets of New Mombasa

11 Hours After Rupture

She opened her eyes, sucking in a lungful of air as she emerged from a strange dream, one she immediately forgot the details of. Where was she, what had happened? She reached for her carbine instinctively, but the magnetic holster on her back was empty, and the movement caused a splitting pain to rise up from her side, Seela gingerly lowering her arm to her waist.

There was a strip of white, slightly fuzzy cloth wrapped over her midriff, concealing a huge gash on her right hip, the sight refreshing her memory. She had brought down the Chieftain, and the last thing she remembered doing was succumbing to her wounds, yet this did not look like the afterlife she had envisioned, and a solitary feeling began to stir in her chest. Disappointment.

She rubbed at her eyes, her blurry vision slowly sharpening as her senses returned. She was no longer in the garden, but somewhere else entirely. She could hear rain slapping against the ground nearby, but there was a curved ceiling shielding her, light strips following the roof to the left and out of sight. She was in a tunnel, but how did she get here?

Planting a palm against the wall she’d been propped against, she rose onto her hooves, her legs complaining, a wave of dizziness forcing her to pause and clutch her head.

The wall terminated at a corner, and she followed it along, her hand sliding against the smooth stone, and she paused as the sudden intake of light burned her retinas. The city formed a circle beyond the limits of the tunnel, skyscrapers framed by the clouds of smoke that stretched over the horizon.

The rain drew a wet line across the shelter of the tunnel mouth, and crouched just behind it was an Imp, her carbine resting in his hands as he overwatched the area. She flexed her mandibles in alarm, but then she remembered that it was the Major, her newest companion. Had he brought her to this place, dressed her wound, stolen her gun?

He had done all that and more, she realised with a twitch of her eye. She had been gutted, a wound that would be fatal, had there been anyone else except for this Human in her company. Now her disappointment was laced with something more, something that made her hands clench into fists.

She must have made more noise than she intended, or maybe his hearing was better than average, because he turned his head round, her beleaguered body reflected in his visor as he glanced up at her. “Finally up,” he said.

He returned to his watch. The little bastard actually turned his back on her, as though there was nothing abnormal about this whole situation, as if he didn’t even perceive her as a threat.

“You… You ruined, everything!” she barked, punching the wall hard enough to shake the stone. “Were the irony not lost on me, I would kill you where you stand!”

He looked back at her again, lowering her carbine as he raised a questioning hand. “I nearly got my head smashed in saving you, and that’s the first thing you say to me? What’s wrong with you?”

“Me? What’s wrong with me! I had it all, my wish was to be granted at long last, and you took it away from me!”

“I didn’t take anything,” he said, his tone reflecting his impatience, as if he had a right to be annoyed with her. “I saved your life.”

“Exactly!” she replied, the Major shaking his head in an unspoken question. “Have you not figured it out yet?” she added, taking a step towards him. “I took on a Chieftain in hand-to-hand combat, I avenged my fallen brothers, made the traitorous Jiralhanae share in their graveyard, all under the guise of responding to a call for aid. My ancestors would have welcomed me with open arms, my legacy would have been of equal worth to the holiest of Sangheili, but you stopped that from happening. You and your… misplaced sense of longevity for others!”

“You… you wanted to die? So you do have a deathwish…”

“Yes!” she growled. “That’s why I was alone when you found me, ruined my chance back then, too, didn’t you? Every time I think death is about to find me, you stand in its way. You do not understand how your actions have made me so… furious with you!”

“Then make me understand, Seela,” he pleaded. “Why’re you so eager to die?”

“I have already told you why, you fool,” she said, shooting him a hateful look. “through all my deployments and battles, all I’ve ever had is ridicule from my brothers, what modicum of respect I’ve earned has been shadowed by mockery. If I cannot prove my ability in life, then I will do so in death.”

She clenched at her waist, her outburst bringing up a stinging pain, but she pushed through it, putting on a more wistful tone.

“To die a warrior’s death after the betrayal, alone but undeterred… everyone in the Covenant would remember my poetic end for years to come. Jiralhanae, Sangheili, Human… every one of them would revere my name and deeds.”

“What about your family? You’d break their hearts if they found out you died willingly.”

“How naïve your way of thinking is! They would be full of pride for me if they learned that I took so many Jiralhanae with me, where many others had died on the spot when they ousted us. It is the will of the Gods that warriors die on the battlefield, not to live through all… all of this.”

“Sounds like you wanna die for spite to me, rather than the will of any Gods,” the Major noted.

“It is not so simple!” she shot back, but it was on some level. She cursed herself for ever opening up to this Human. “What do I have to show for myself if I were to survive this day, or tomorrow? My accomplishments have never amounted to anything before, why would that change if I lived? At least in a good death that may change, and I would find some modicum of peace in the welcoming arms of my ancestors.”

She crossed her long legs, depositing herself on the ground. She didn’t want to sulk, but her body wasn’t listening to her thoughts, her helmet clicking against the side of a vehicle as she leaned back, staring at the ceiling of the tunnel.

“Do you get it now?” she asked. “I do not want to be forgotten, I want to prove that all those who doubted me were wrong, that their disbelief was misplaced. A good death is the only option left for me.”

“Seela,” the Major began, shaking his head. He turned his back on the city, leaning his hands on his knees as he sat down opposite her. “Let me tell you something. In Humanity’s history, people who lived hundreds of years ago are still remembered to this day, and most of them didn’t even raise a weapon or take a single life.”

“What else can I do?” she lamented. “Sangheili are different from you, our historical figures are exclusively warriors, members of ancient armies. Without a distinguished death, who would remember me?”

“… I would,” he said, Seela glancing at him. “So would that mother and her kid you spared. That’s something they won’t forget anytime soon, and don’t say they’re dead,” he added, pre-empting her comeback. “Just assume they got out, think of all the people she’d tell about what you did.”

“To be remembered by Heretics does little to reassure me,” she mumbled.

“We’re all Heretics, Seela. What difference does it make if a Human remembers you? You’d still live on.”

She stared at the ground, a thoughtful expression creeping onto her face, soon replaced with a glare. “That is but one deed, and it happened by chance. A lone achievement cannot substitute a legacy.”

“What about you surviving the Brutes backstabbing you?” he replied. “You might be the only one who made it through all that, how’s that not an accomplishment? Then you cut your way through Covenant lines without being detected, for a while at least,” he added with a shrug. “And then you took out a Chieftain with his own hammer, and you did all that in one night.”

“You were instrumental in most of those things,” she said, rubbing her arm as she looked at him. “I could not have done any of that had you not been there.”

“Doesn’t make it any less impressive,” he countered. “Look at it this way,” he continued, pointing a finger at her, Seela noting his sleeve was missing. “If you lived your life, day to day, you’d start to see every moment is an opportunity to do even more with yourself. You don’t have to die to make yourself a legacy.”

“Why do you try and reassure me?” she demanded, her pauldron creaking as she raised an arm at him. “We are aliens to each other, adversaries in this war.”

“Would adversaries watch each other’s backs?” he asked. “We might be different species, but like it or not, we’re a team now.”

“Is that why you mended my wounds?” she asked, pointing at her bandage. “We are… a team?”

“I told you before how I’ve lost a lot of people under my command,” he said, and now it was his turn to lament, the Human rubbing his hands together. “I felt as though if I lost just one more person, I’d… I don’t know what I’d do.”

“But all I have done for you is break our concealment and get us into more battles, jeopardising your mission,” she said. “Why do you insist on keeping me alive?”

“It wouldn’t sit right with me if you died, Seela, especially since you… know me, more than most other people do. I wanted to keep you at arm’s length like everyone else,” he said, turning his gaze towards the city beyond. “but it seems being pitted with you has made me realise how much of a lonely asshole I’ve been lately. I’m done with all the lone wolf shit. So no, I didn’t save you cause we’re a team, but because you’re… worth knowing better.”

“You wish… to know me?” she asked, her eyes going wide when he nodded.

“I’d be a hypocrite if I didn’t want to,” he replied. “You’re an opportunity for me to learn how to make friends again.”

“F-Friends?” she echoed. “You want to be my… friend?”

He nodded again. She didn’t know what to say. This Human, who’d she’d thought was an Imp not that long ago, was asking for her friendship? She could not remember a time someone had been so compassionate towards her. It made her feel so… strange, as though all her muscles were clamming up.

They had gone through many battles, survived for this long together, perhaps toning down her animosity would do them some good, she had more than enough enemies already.

“Yes,” she said, clearing her throat when the word came out as a whisper. “Yes,” she said again. “We have quarrelled long enough. I don’t know if I agree with your stance on life and death, but… you have given me much to think on.”

“Long as you keep the dying to a minimum, that’s good enough for me.”

“Very well, Major… friend, I mean,” she corrected.

“’Major friend’, huh? I like that,” he chuckled, and that went a long way to diffuse some of the tension between them, Seela feeling the urge to chuckle herself. “Need a few more minutes rest?”

“No, I can walk,” she replied, rising from her place against the vehicle. The movement drew a little flare of pain from her waist, but otherwise she felt well enough to move. “Where did you get this bandage from anyway?”

“Some people keep a few meds in their cars, got lucky after a bit of digging,” he answered, jerking a thumb down the length of the tunnel, where dozens of cars clogged the lanes. “Oh right. Here.”

He held his arms out to her, her carbine in his hands. She plucked it from him checking its ammo and replacing the cartridge with a fresh one, snapping the breach-loader back in place with a determined nod.

“Do you know where we are?” she asked as he began to move out into the rain.

“Sorta, we’re on the right track, according to those signs up there.”

“Tell me what happened while I was incapacitated,” she said, following behind as they moved up the incline. “How did we end up here?”

He told her, her mandibles splaying wide as he recounted his tale. “Another Chieftain?” she marvelled. “And you dragged me all this way? There must be more strength in that little body than I first thought.”

The Major shrugged in reply, the pair moving deeper into the streets.

-xXx-

They had passed by so many blocks and streets by this point it was all starting to blur together, although this wasn’t a massive development for Seela, this New Mombasa as the Major called it, being nothing at all like the cities on Sangheilios. She had plenty to keep her mind occupied as they navigated the city, her thoughts turning to the Major and his earlier words.

It was her duty to die for the cause, but what cause did she follow now that she had been ousted from the Covenant? The Major’s, Humanity, her own? To say she would gladly die for herself sounded quite silly, even in her own head, yet she had been ready to go through with it when the Chieftain had attacked her. Had this Heretic, this Imp who was technically Human, tried to twist the very foundations of logic? And had she been convinced, at least to a degree?

She had failed to kill the infant Human earlier this day, for better or worse, and death was the only way to restore her pride… wasn’t it? Perhaps he was deceiving her, his kindness merely a front, so that he could use her for the task ahead and then feed her to his interrogators.

Yet she could detect no malice in him, and he had not tried to mislead her so far. He had even healed her and saved her from a death while she slumbered, that was a lot of effort to keep an asset around, perhaps there was some genuine kindness in his actions. He saved her life, that meant he needed her, didn’t it?

The most she’d ever been needed for was gruntwork by her former Covenant brothers, or worse, a subject of personal pursual by the more hormonal warriors. This Human needed her for more than that, and it was a strange sensation, one she had no ability to describe, as it had never happened before. She had been so ready to fall for the sake of returning her honour, now she didn’t know what to think.

“Hold up,” the Major whispered, his voice pulling her out of her thoughts. He took a knee behind the bulk of a vehicle, pointing down the road. “See that?”

She hunkered, following his arm, her eyes picking out the details in the gloom. The road was split into two lanes here, the cars numbering in the few compared to other parts of the city. Chunks of concrete sprayed out in a cone from a gash in the wall on the left, damage from some kind of mortar fire she guessed. Part of the scene was illuminated by a solitary light post, the bulb occasionally flickering as its power wavered.

Maybe twenty paces up ahead was a strange glint, some kind of metal was sitting upon the road, the light catching it in just the right way to make it shine.

“I do,” she replied. They had not seen any sign of Phantoms or Covenant, but she didn’t want to go rushing in like she had last time. “Check the left, I will clear the right.”

He gave her an odd look, but nodded, quietly moving off to clear the area while she did the same. Most of these buildings would be too small for a Brute to fit in, but she was wary of Unggoy and Kig-Yar laying in the shadows.

Checking the area brought her closer to the strange glint, and when she was satisfied they were clear, she stepped round another abandoned car to get a better look at the shining point. She trained her carbine on it as she approached, but eventually lowered it when she saw what it was.

It was a kinsman, and he was in much the same state as the two Minor’s she’d found in that alleyway, right after the betrayal. There were plasma burns on his back, the Sangheilian laying on his stomach, his eyes staring out to the left, cold and black. This one was not a Minor, however…

“Is that a…?” The Major came walking up from behind, his weapon angling away as he looked round her hip. “Zealot? Here?”

She crouched beside the body, holstering her carbine on her back as she grabbed one of his golden shoulder pads, the armour polished to a shine where it wasn’t burned, flipping him onto his front. Recognition flashed in her eyes, but the feeling quickly left when she examined the dead Zealot’s face. This wasn’t the one she’d worked with before.

Nearby, a pair of Unggoy were slumped over, along with a Kig-Yar. Whoever had finished the Zealot off they hadn’t bothered to clean up or feast on the bones, perhaps they had been killed by Humans?

A quick inspection proved otherwise. The Kig-Yar had puncture marks going right through his chest, same with the Unggoy. The smell of burning skin was still fresh, this couldn’t have happened all that long ago.

She placed a hand on the Zealot’s chest, her eyes closing as she mumbled a prayer in their native language. She got a few verses in before the Major spoke up.

“What’re you doing?” He heard her stop just off to her left.

“Bidding him farewell,” she explained, her fingers going cold as they stayed connected to his cooling power armour, the rain coming down harder for a moment before relenting.

“Why?” he asked. “You told me these guys treated you like dirt, that they hated you as much as Humans did. He doesn’t deserve your respect.”

“He is still my brother,” she snapped, turning and giving him a cold glare. “Whether he was displeased with me or not matters little, he has gone through much this night, and deserves to meet his forefathers in peace.”

She returned to her prayer, the Major shifting on his feet nearby. He did not interrupt again. When she was done, a curved piece of metal on the ground caught her attention.

It looked similar to the handle on her carbine, with rubberised grooves fitted into the inside where fingers could easily rest. The ends flared out into circular caps, the whole thing a little wider than the span of her hand. She plucked it off the drenched road, turning it over and examining the runes etched into the spine.

She hooked two of her fingers over the grip, her palm pushing into the power button. There was a brilliant flash of blue from the caps on either end of the handle, energy hardening into two lines of wavering light that slowly travelled out and away from the grip.

The solidifying lights took on a blade-like appearance, tapering into two sharp points. The blades were about the length of her arm, streaks of electricity arcing through them, as though lightning itself was contained within them. A continuous sizzling sound filled the street, raindrops falling onto the blades evaporating as they met the superheated energy, wisps of steam rising from the points of impact.

She rose to her hooves, giving the energy sword a few testing swings, its weightlessness allowing it to cleave through the air. A circle of light surrounded her, the sword providing a small, but harsh illumination.

“I’ve always wanted to wield one of these, but even thinking about holding one of these would be considered heresy,” Seela said, glancing over at the Major. “I can say with certainty I am glad to no longer be part of the Covenant.”

“You look like you know what you’re doing,” he noted, watching as she gave it a flourish.

“I trained with one when I was younger, one made of wood, and I’ve always admired the finesse displayed by the Zealot’s. It seems you were right,” she added, powering the blade off, the energy snicking back into the handle in an instant. “you spoke of opportunities before, and now I may be the first female to ever hold a proper sword.”

“Glad to see you’re taking our chat to heart,” he replied. “But didn’t you just give that guy a prayer? Not uncomfortable taking his weapon?”

“He is dead,” she shrugged. “He does not need it anymore, and I do.”

They didn’t linger, stepping past the dead Zealot and forging into the streets once more.

-xXx-

Seela swept the streets with her carbine, the rain pounding down on her armour. The hilt of the energy sword rested on her hip, its weight comforting her. They were moving eastward, slowly bending to the south after each block traversed.

“Should be able to see our objective pretty soon,” the Major informed her, the Human stopping only once to orient themselves using a kiosk. “After that, it’s just a little more walking, then we’re done here.”

“I want to apologise,” she blurted out suddenly, the Human cocking his head at her as they walked. “Before, I said that your team has already fallen. I didn’t mean to insinuate their deaths were your fault, that was wrong of me.”

“It’s in the past, Seela,” he said. “And… I’m sorry too. When we went to that garden, I tried to talk you out of saving that dying Elite. Dick move on my part. If that was a Human on the line, I’d have done the same thing.”

“You did what you could for him,” she noted. “You gave me that medigel packet, when you could have kept it for yourself. You did all you could for me, as well,” she added. “No one has ever shown me such kindness before. You’ve put more value on my life than even I have, that shows how much you care for your charges.”

“Don’t tell me no one has ever tried to save your life before?”

She shook her head vehemently. “I have served many Majors in my life, but except for the namesake, you share no similarities with any of them. To treasure life, to ensure the survival of your underlings, these values are foreign to the Covenant’s warriors.”

“Not surprised, considering you were so gung-ho about dying an hour ago,” he said. “And you’re not serving me, I’m not your superior.”

“One of us has to take the mantle,” she replied. “You are taking the lead, and you know the mission, that makes you the leader.”

“But you’re an Ultra, right? From what I know, Ultras outrank Majors.”

“Then I hereby promote you to Ultra, all benefits and entitlements pending on the mission’s completion.”

“Consider me incentivised,” the Major chuckled, Seela grinning down at him. It felt nice to just be able to talk to someone as an equal, or friend as he had put it.

As they approached the corner of the block they’d been skirting, Seela held out an arm to stop him, her head turning to the broiling skies, raindrops falling on her face. Through the rumble of thunder came a sound that was all too familiar to the pair, a slow, pulsing noise that grew in volume as the seconds ticked by.

The Major didn’t have to say anything, the two of them ducking into the safety of the closest doorway, watching with bated breath as the street was suddenly illuminated, the background noise of the engines louder than ever. She didn’t have to look to know it was a Phantom, and likely the same one the Captain Major was on.

“I don’t know what you did to piss off this Brute Captain asshole,” the Major muttered, seemingly more annoyed than alarmed by the dropship’s appearance.

“My very existence insults him,” she answered, watching as the floodlights slid across the street from right to left. “The Prophet of Regret’s last order was to kill all Sangheili, he will do anything to accomplish this task.”

“You know the drill by now,” he said. “Follow my lead, stay out of the light.”

When the Phantom swivelled to search the adjacent street, they moved back into the open, kicking up sheets of rain as they proceeded towards their goal. They kept talking to a minimum, the presence of the aircraft putting them on edge. Even as they traversed from block to block, the Phantom kept its ever-vigilant watch over the city, never quite leaving their immediate area no matter how far they moved, like it was tethered to their position. Were the Brutes tracking her through her link to the BattleNet, or had they left too much of a trail, that the Captain Major knew which way they were going?

She didn’t know, nor did it really matter, as long as they stayed undetected, the Brutes would eventually move on.

Their progress slowed to a crawl, the Major taking every precaution they could to slip from cover to cover unseen. Seela kept as low as she could as she followed after, the two soon stopping at a four-way intersection. The Phantom seemed convinced that this very crossway was worth its sole attention, sweeping its searchlights up and down the long roads as it hovered over the buildings.

They waited in the shadows, minutes passing by. She could tell the Major was getting restless, the way he shifted on his toes, flexed his shoulders. For all his patience, the Phantom’s incessant searching was obviously starting to get to him.

Eventually the aircraft’s nose listed to the side, the ship beginning to search one of the branching streets. “Go, go!” the Major said, dashing across the street. She was larger than him, a little slower, falling behind a little as she dodged between the vehicles.

Something caught her eye, and she glanced over to the see the dropship was doubling back, its front dipped forward as it began to accelerate. She picked up the pace, throwing herself to the next sidewalk as the Phantom sailed straight overhead, its searchlights thankfully not washing over her position.

When she turned her eyes up, the Phantom was gone, hovering over the buildings as it patrolled over the area they’d just come from. She hauled herself to her feet, glancing down at her companion when he muttered something.

“What did you say?” she asked.

“I said I’m getting real sick of this Brute Captain following us.” He peered round her shoulder to where the aircraft had gone. “We’re short enough on time as it is, can’t afford to let him slow us down.”

“As I said, he searches for me,” she replied. “Perhaps we can find a way to throw him off our scent.”

“How about we blow him out of the sky? That’ll get him off our backs.”

“There’s a plan… wait, what?” she whipped round, fixing him with an incredulous look. “I thought you preferred subterfuge to open engagement?”

“It’d get rid of him permanently if we took out his little ship,” he noted.

“As much as I wish to follow through with this course of action, I do not wish to be within the sight of the Phantom guns again. You know how difficult it was to escape its sights.”

“Yeah, it was a dumb idea anyway, I’m just getting real fed up with this asshole. What’s he doing now?” he asked, the two turning their heads as the Phantom banked over their position, going in the direction they were supposed to be heading. She followed behind as they slunk down the street, the sound of the dropships pulsing engines letting them know the aircraft was holding position somewhere ahead of them.

“I can hear it’s troop bays opening,” Seela said, the noise on the precipice of her hearing. After a small delay, the dropship rose up above the rooftops, its ventral doors sliding shut as it banked away, disappearing into the next block after a lingering in the area for a while longer.

“Did it just deposit a squad?” the Major asked, looking to her for answers.

“How would I know? Are we going around?”

“We’re short enough on time as it is,” he replied, checking some sort of device strapped to his wrist, the face decorated with four Human numerics. “My objective won’t wait around forever, neither will my evac. We go through.”

“I was hoping you’d say that,” she replied, brushing the hilt of the energy sword on her belt. “Perhaps the Captain Major has left his ship, and I can plunge my brother’s blade through his heart myself.”

-xXx-

They came within throwing distance of where the Phantom had lingered for a little longer than it should have, the Major suspecting the Brutes had set some sort of ambush in their path. They took things a lot slower than they had in the garden, climbing up a stairwell in one of the adjacent buildings so they could set up somewhere above and could overwatch the next intersection.

They climbed to the third floor, Seela shuffling past desks and other furniture as she moved to the windows, the frames devoid of glass save for a few shards poking out of the sides. She peered through it, surveying the area below and keeping as little of her body exposed. Below them was a clearing, as much as that description belonged in a landscape of structures. It was boxed in on all sides by buildings, streets and pathways spacing the colourless walls apart a little.

Centering the clearing was a monument. It was monolithic in shape, but far wider than it was tall, surrounded by a circular patch of grass. She could pick out no details on the strange monument, save for a small plaque off to one side, its script illegible at this distance, not that she’d be able to read it anyway.

As odd as the black wall of rock was, there was something worth far more interest in the clearing than the oddly-cut stone. Crouching to one side of the monument were two hulking figures, and Seela’s eyes went as wide as plates as she recognised the aliens.

They were clad from their huge, flat feet to their sloped heads in thick, overlapping armour, taller than Seela even though they were kneeling down. Their left arms were covered over in a towering shield, curving slightly to follow the shape of their huge limbs. On the other arms were massive cannons, plasma canisters embedded along the sides glowing an ominous green.

Their blue chest pieces protected a flared midsection, long spikes poking out of the spinal area, their purpose unknown even to Seela, and she had served alongside Mgalekgolo many times. These were the largest and most ferocious species the Covenant deployed, their integrated fuel rod guns and ability to weather extreme amounts of damage perfect for pushing enemy lines and delivering devastating firepower.

“Hunters,” the Major said, his voice suggesting he found the situation more annoying than anything. “How’d you fit Hunters in a dropship? Things are like, eleven feet tall.”

“The Lekgolo simply lay upon the aisle when there is little room to spare,” she explained. “but enough about that. I don’t think we will be able to slip past these two, Major. Mgalekgolo can easily pick up the vibrations of others, and it’s safe to say they are on the lookout for us.”

“Any ideas then?” he asked, sliding a couple of green shells into his weapon, replacing ones that were red. “Been a while since I’ve dealt with Hunters.”

“We must split them up, force them to work independently, as much as a colony of worms can be independent. Think you can hold one off while I deal with the other?”

“About to ask you the same thing,” he replied, looking down at her belt. “You’re not gonna go out there with your sword, are you?”

“It will be more effective than my carbine, their plates are resistant to plasma fire, and I don’t have the ammo to spare. I am probably more agile than them up close.”

“’Probably’? You’re nuts,” he grumbled, but he made no more complaints as he peered down at the pair of Hunters, as he called them. “Cost me a lot of ammo, but a couple of slugs can get through their armour, long as I don’t get disintegrated by those fuel rods. I’ll draw one to this side of that monument down there, should give you some breathing room to take the other one.”

“Sounds like a plan,” she said, her heart surging with excitement as they made their move, returning to street-level and fanning out to either side of the clearing.

The Major stalked off to hide behind a raised section of the ground, which looked like a tub filled in with dirt and plant matter, Seela keeping light on her feet as she circled his movements, putting the Hunters between them.

As she’d warned, moving quietly around Mgalekgolo would be a difficult feat, even for the stealthiest Sangheili, and before long one of the Hunters snapped its head in the Human’s direction. It rose onto its thick legs, loosing an intimidating grunt as it pivoted round, digging one end if its shield into the ground as it levelled its arm-cannon.

Its counterpart did the same, the plasma canisters on their limbs swirling with heating energy as they primed. After a moment of wind-up, the Hunters fired, two bolts the size of her torso sailing towards the Major’s position. The first bolt crashed into this side of his cover, throwing up clouds of dirt and concrete, the second travelling wide over the Major’s head, splashing against the wall of the building behind him and leaving a black mark. She could hear glass break from somewhere inside, the impact shaking the building.

The Major repositioned, another fuel rod bolt lancing into the spot he’d just vacated, reducing the planter to a pile of rubble. He slowed down a little to fire, the supressed weapon rocking into his shoulder as he pulled the trigger. One of the Hunters growled as its shoulder snapped backwards, the shot doing little more than putting it off balance.

The Hunters moved in synchronicity, one lagging just behind the other as they shuffled to the side, always keeping the Major dead in their sights. The one at the back was readying its cannon, and Seela picked her moment to shoulder her carbine, sending a single bolt its way.

She could see the contrail ricochet off the top of its angled visor, the Hunter flinching in surprise, if a worm colony could be surprised. It turned around while its kin continued to track the Major, the green slats that served as its visor locking onto her, a pit of dread swelling in her stomach as it aimed its cannon. There were three claws on the end of its limb, making the cannon almost appear like a mechanical hand.

She forced down her troubles with an audible gulp, furrowing her brow as she stowed her carbine on her back, leaning forward and falling into a mad sprint, crossing the distance between her and the Hunter on her long legs. The other Hunters moved out of sight behind the monument, still trading fire with the displacing Human.

The fuel rod fired, a stream of boiling energy leaving a swirling trail of gasses as it shot towards her. She jumped to the side, the bolt passing so close her shields flickered as they protected her from the superheated plasma.

Seeing she would close in before it could ready another shot, the Hunter instead wielded its cannon like a giant club, stepping forward and swiping it from right to left. Seela ducked under the blow, feeling the wind break as the cannon passed over her helmet, and she launched off her knees into a leap, her added height making her eyes level with the tips of its dorsal spikes.

In the middle of her jump, she reached for her hip, taking the hilt of the energy sword into her grip and igniting it. The energy hardened into the two bladed prongs, and she brought them down with a grunt of effort, swiping the Hunter across its chest.

Where her carbine had simply bounced off its thick armour, the sword cleaved through the plates with an ease that surprised her, the blade entering one side of its armour and leaving out the other, leaving a long, searing burn in the chest piece.

The creature roared in pain, swatting her away with its shield, taking a chunk out of the nearby monument. Seela was too close to get out of the way in time. She was sent back a few paces, her shields breaking as she rolled to a stop, the kinetic energy too much for the barrier to handle.

She couldn’t wait for them to recharge, the Hunter would simply use its cannon if she didn’t keep it occupied. Holding the sword out to one side, she took off in another dash, the Hunter raising its shield protectively, ready for her this time. It slammed its cannon down on her head from above, Seela almost losing her balance as she dodged out of the way, the sheer mass that the Hunter delivered enough to leave a crater in the ground, cracks webbing their way out of the point of impact on the concrete.

She plunged the blade beneath its shield as it recovered, leveraging the sword with her other arm to angle the blades upward. The shield began to pry apart from one end, Seela impaling the blade through the alloy and pulling back, the reinforced shield ripping apart near the middle.

As the thick alloy tumbled to the ground, Seela saw wet, pink meat had been hidden beneath the alloy, wriggling and flexing like sentient bundles of rope. Despite appearances, the Hunter was actually made up of thousands of Lekgolo, worm-like aliens that formed a cohesive unit the more numerous the colony was.

The Hunter moaned in what might be pain, thrusting the pointed end of its damaged shield towards her chest, Seela parrying the strike away. A flash of sparks rained off the contact, the broadness of the Hunter’s armour the only thing able to withstand the hardened energy of the sword without being instantly rendered.

There was still so much strength behind the Hunter’s strike however, that Seela was sent sprawling backwards, the Hunter taking advantage of her disorientation to close in, splaying its arms out wide as it lunged towards her, as though trying to come in for a hug.

Rather than retreat, she moved into its grab, leading with her sword and impaling her weapon into the exposed bundles of Lekgolo, the blade exiting out of the other side of its limb. She could hear a sizzling sound as the heated blades cooked the colony from the inside, Seela giving the hilt a pointed twist.

The Hunter began to sag, smoke slipping through the joints in its damaged arm. There was a number of wet slaps as the rest of the colony abandoned the suit of armour, slithering across the ground to get clear. The Lekgolo in the fuel rod part of the armour took a swipe at Seela even as the Hunter was half-collapsed, the metal smacking against her flank and sending her to the ground.

She caught herself before her jaws met the deck, but a splitting pain still shot through her anyway. She could feel the wound on her hip had reopened, her warm blood spreading out in a circular patch down her hip and thigh.

She pushed herself to her knees, ignoring the pain, stepping round the husk of the fallen Hunter and retrieving her sword, the weapon having fallen out of her hand. She could still hear the sound of the Major’s supressed weapon from the other side of the monument, Seela reactivating her sword as she stepped around the wall of stone.

He was trading fire with the other, bulky Hunter, nimble enough that he could sidestep the fuel rod bolts as long as he kept at a distance. The building behind him looked like it had been pounded by a group of Wraiths, nearly the entire wall crumbling away, exposing the square rooms within.

“Go for its lower back!” he cried out. “I shot off most of its armour there!”

The remaining Hunter turned around, perhaps knowing the Major was addressing her. Its angular visor fell on its fallen counterpart, and it wailed in a way that came off as mournful, bringing its clawed arm-cannon around to aim at her.

She readied her sword, squaring off against the Hunter, but it didn’t take the bait and launch itself. It seemed to hesitate, wheeling around and directing its attention back to the Major, huddling behind its massive arms, trying to shield itself from two directions at once.

From this angle she could spy more glistening ropes just above its waist, where the small of the back would be on a Sangheilian, a section of the plating having been stripped away by the Major’s weapon.

After a few moments where nobody moved, the Hunter reacted, sending a stream of plasma in the Major’s direction. Seela dashed in, making to plunge her sword straight through the weak point, but she missed, the blades slicing into the surrounding armour in a graze. She ripped her sword away, pieces of armour flying through the air.

It swung at her, Seela ducking out of the path of its first arm, but not the second, her feet leaving the ground as the slab of metal sent her arching through the air. She slammed into the monument, her shields collapsing along with part of the stonework, Seela crumpling to the grass, stones bouncing off her back.

She pushed herself to her hands and knees, shaking her head as she patted the ground for her sword, the whirring of electronics drawing her attention upward. The Hunter raised its cannon, the barrel glowing from black to green as the weapon primed, the alien ready to finish her. A strange feeling gripped her as she stared down the barrel, the broiling plasma moments away from granting her a swift death. Was that she’d truly wanted? To be vapourised into a puddle?

Gas snapped as the Major fired at the Hunter from behind, the alien stumbling as a splatter of orange gel leaked out of its exposed flesh. The Major flipped his weapon upright, a spent casing tumbling to the ground as he reloaded, firing another shot that bounced off the Hunter’s shield.

Seela collected herself, her eyes frantically darting around in search of her sword, but she couldn’t see it, and she didn’t have time to go scrounging. She rose to her feet anyway, forgetting the sword and darting into the Hunter’s flank, the thing distracted enough she could get in close.

She raised a hand over her shoulder, and with a cry of effort, impaled her hand up to the wrist in the seething mass of worms. The Hunter wailed in pain, Seela feeling the Lekgolo move and shift between her fingers, the mucous they excreted soaking her hand in pearly fluids.

She balled her fingers into a fist, ripping a bundle of the tendrils away, the colony warring with her as she struggled to tear the ‘flesh’ loose. She summoned all her strength, succeeding in prying a chunk of the colony out of the suit. The Lekgolo seemed to beat like a heart in her palm, orange slop dripping down her arm with each subtle pulse.

The Hunter dropped to a knee, but it wasn’t done yet, swinging its cannon around, the green studs surrounding the cylinder glowing brightly as it primed, but the Major moved in, planting a foot on the cannon and thrusting his weapon into the Hunter’s visor, delivering a point-blank blast that sent its neck snapping back. The Hunter did not possess a ‘head’ in the traditional sense, but the blow still sent orange goop spraying, the Hunter keeling onto its side as he fired another shot, while Seela pried another handful of the worms out of its back.

The armour deflated, each limb tumbling in a different direction with a series of metallic clatters as the Lekgolo pooled out from beneath it, slipping and writhing about, incapable of posing a threat as the two butchered it until the Hunter was no more.

“You good, Seela?” the Major asked, his chest expanding and contracting as he battled for air, his visor tilted towards her.

She raised her hand, which was still clutching a wad of the Lekgolo, and she twisted her wrist, letting it fall to the ground with a wet slap. She extended a thumb at him, and he chuckled inside his helmet.

“Can’t say I’ve ever seen someone rip a Hunter apart with their bare hands before,” he said, taking care to not step on any Lekgolo as he moved away from the armour, little more than a lifeless golem now. “Come on, let’s move before that Phantom comes back.”

“Victory is ours, Major,” Seela breathed, her heart pounding in her chest. She felt so alive, adrenaline coursing through her veins in all the right ways. She had read about the ferocity the Lekgolo had shown when the Covenant came to conquer their world, and to have faced two of them down… it reminded her of the stories of that ancient conquest. She had experienced a sliver of it, and she found herself awash in pride.

“Perhaps we should linger?” Seela suggested, stooping to retrieve her sword after a bit of looking. “The look on the Brutes faces when they realised we have bested their most ferocious troops! I shall love to see it!”

“Please don’t tell me you’re serious,” the Major sighed.

“Relax, Major, a little humour never hurts, no?”

“Speaking of which, looks like your wounds opened after that tumble. Damn it, Seela.”

She cocked her head as he walked over, muttering to himself as he examined the bandage over her waist, the white fabric now purple with her blood. “I don’t know how you can lose so much blood but still keep going,” he said, glancing up at her.

“It is the stimulation of pain that drives me ever onward.”

She imagined he was giving her an odd look beneath his helmet. “Good for you, but can’t have you bleeding everywhere and leaving a trail, let’s go find some medigel.”

“You are quite the hardy little warrior, Major,” she said, giving him a pat on the back as they turned away. She underestimated her own strength, the gesture nearly knocking him over. “You faced a Mgelkgolo without a single scratch on you. I’ve always admired warriors with scars, but going unscathed is not so bad.”

“I prefer to keep out of reach of massive alien worm-beasts,” he said. “Unlike someone I know.”

“I had a chance to use a weapon I would never be permitted to use if I was a Covvie, you cannot blame me for taking it.”

“It was quite the sight, I’ll give you that.”

“Let us proceed, then. You will need to heal me if you want me to take down any more Mgelkgolo for you,” she teased.

Seela

Streets of New Mombasa

12 Hours After Rupture

“Here we are,” the Major said, the two of them rounding the edge of the block, approaching an awning built into the face of the building. There were two medkits mounted on the wall beneath the shelter, Seela clutching at her bleeding waist as the Major picked one up and opened the lid.

She took a seat on the bench nearby, the thing so small she worried she might fall off the thing. They had walked a good distance from the spot they’d dealt with the Hunters, but the exhilaration was still fresh on her mind, and her appreciation for his earlier words had only grown since. She had slain the Covenant’s fiercest warriors with a weapon she shouldn’t ever be in possession of, who else among her kind had done something so glorious? Had she really considered death before? What was the point of dying for honour’s sake when she could live, and push the limits of her potential?

She watched him unpack the kits and set the empty casings aside. No longer did her reservations about him being an alien, Imp or Human, bother her. His words were as comforting as his presence was, and as long as they were stuck in this mess, it mattered little what species he was.

“You would make a fine Sangheili, Major,” she said, looking up to watch the rain splash against the glass awning. It felt like she’d been constantly soaked through this whole night, it felt nice to be able to take a second to dry off. “Minus the whole… throwing your life away part.”

“Thanks?” he said, seemingly unsure how else to respond.

“You are what I first imagined my brothers in arms would be like,” she continued, the Major taking a seat next to her. “Stoic, honourable, fearless. Despite all my blunders at sneaking, all our fights that could have been avoided, you’ve never complained, just accepted it all and adapted.”

“Here,” he said, passing her a packet of gel in the following pause.

“My thanks,” she said, squeezing the gel onto her palm. She slathered it over her wound, dipping her hand underneath the fabric of her bodysuit. “It feels good to travel with you,” she continued, her blood congealing on her hand. “At first, I called you Heretic, alien, but I haven’t appreciated the benefits of that until now. You have no expectations of me, you do not know of Sangheili standards. It is so… refreshing, to be with one who expects nothing from me.”

“I expect you to watch my back,” he noted.

“That is an unspoken need between squadmates. That’s what we are, yes? A squad, and a pretty good one if I say so myself.”

He nodded at that, a few minutes of silence following. He eventually broke it, gesturing at her injury. “Seela you’ve got to push the gel in deep, won’t work otherwise.”

“I’m weary of gutting myself with my nails,” she explained, holding out her hand. Each digit was tipped with a triangular nail, almost as long as his fingers were, the tips shining as they caught the light. “Unless you have a file on hand, I must be careful.”

“You file your nails?” he asked.

“Of course, I do not let them grow long and wide like the males do.”

He seemed to find this revelation amusing, producing the other gel packet as he chuckled. “I’ll do it, if you want. I don’t have claws.”

“True,” she said, noting his nails were blunt and circular, rather than ending at points. “Very well, you may touch me.”

“Not gonna lose my hand if I do? I remember you said nobody touches you.”

“For you, I will make an exception.”

“Alright…” He dripped a portion of the medigel out, cupping the white glob with his fingers. “Turn around,” he said, and she did, her back facing him as he placed his hand on her waist.

A flare of pain came and went as he slipped his hand into her laceration.It was a strange sensation, she could feel his fingers wriggling around next to her organs, hot pain chasing each sudden shift. She needed to distract herself, his intrusion causing more of her blood to spill and her eyes to water.

“When I was in the Covenant, I did everything I could to earn the respect of my kin,” she said, lifting the handle of the sword from her belt and looking at it longingly. “My status became my identity, yet when I earned the title of Ultra it mattered little, hardly any of my kin wouldn’t listen to me, only the Unggoy and Kig-Yar were tolerant of a female warrior, and that was only out of fear of discipline. Now, it is different,” she said, turning her head to the Major with excitement blazing in her eyes. “I travel with one who does not care what my rank or gender is. I can wield this sword without fear of judgement from you.”

“What more could I ask for than a sword-swinging Sangheili at my back?” he asked. He was still spreading the gel over and into her wound, he was a good listener.

She felt a flush spread over her face, Seela turning away before he noticed.

“Your shoulder’s bleeding, too,” he continued, Seela glancing at it. It must have split when she’d smashed into that monument, but she hardly felt it, which shouldn’t surprise the Major by this point. “How’d you get this one again?”

“Spike grenade,” she answered, her head tilting as the Major stood up on the bench, as he was too short to access her shoulder if they were both seated.

“Nasty cut,” he noted, squeezing out more gel. He didn’t ask for permission this time, the odd scent of the gel filling her nose as he did his work.

“You fuss over me like my mother,” she chuckled. “I can take much more punishment than you can, Major.”

“Still at risk of infection, just like the rest of us. Hold still.”

“Never thought I’d let myself be healed by an Imp,” she murmured, the way the Major’s hand caressed her shoulder sending shivers down her spine. How could the touch from another feel so different from her own hand? She bristled as his other arm came to rest on the base of her neck. A simple way to balance on his part, but to her, he might as well have electrocuted her.

He continued to mend her wound for another few moments, Seela’s eyes lidding as the medicinal properties of the gel did its work, his soft fingers tracing the edges of her cuts. The process went on for minutes, did the gel really need to be rubbed in for this long? Perhaps was he taking an interest in her body, masking his curiosity behind the act of healing. She didn’t really mind, his skin was so smooth without the gloves on…

“All done,” he said, jolting Seela out of her lull. He shuffled away from her, placing his hand out in the air and letting the rain wash the grime away. He wiped his now wet palm on his leg, tilting his head at her. “Ready to go?”

“In a moment, I wish to rest for a while.”

“Alright.”

She smirked at him, shuffling closer so that their hips just barely touched. She had to hunch her head to look down at him, the Human’s helmet at roughly the same level as her chest. He was looking straight ahead, but she suspected he was watching her movements, and if he had any complaints about her closeness, he didn’t voice them.

“At first, I thought your small stature was a weakness,” she began, reaching out to run her fingers over his forearm. The sleeve was missing, his flesh exposed to the air. “But, there is a certain dexterity to you that I can appreciate.”

She moved down to his wrist, noting that his pink flesh was layered in very fine hairs, too spaced apart to provide much insulation from the cold, yet his skin radiated a welcoming warmth all the same. She turned his hand over, the Major letting her open his fingers with her own. She placed her palm on top of his, her fingers dwarfing his own as she brushed his flesh with her nails, careful not to cut him.

“Only the one thumb,” she mused, like she was taking notes. “How strange.”

“To me, having two thumbs is the strange thing,” he replied, and she gave the pair of thumbs on her hand a wiggle, wrapping them over his palm and demonstrating their flexibility. Her blue skin contrasted with his rosy flesh, their difference in biology intriguing purely for the sake of it.

“So warm and smooth,” she murmured, interlocking their fingers. “I know you are warm-blooded creatures, but the air is so cold…” Despite his soft hide there was a pleasant firmness behind the tissue that pushed back when she prodded, and she wondered how developed he looked beneath the rest of that armour. Simply because she was curious, of course…

“I didn’t thank you earlier,” she started, blinking down at him. “You saved my life after that Chieftain gutted me, and all I did was accuse you of doing something wrong. I will fix it now,” she said with a nod. “Thank you for saving my life, Major. I still am not quite sure what I did to earn your compassion, but I respect your decision.”

“I need you, Seela,” he said. “that’s all there is to it.”

“If only everything was so simple,” she replied, trying to sound as casual as he was, but failing when he gave her hand a little squeeze with his own, that strange feeling in her chest growing more and more distracting.

They peered into the street for a while, the rainfall adding an odd touch of serenity to the surrounding destruction. She remembered how he had said he wasn’t good at doing nothing, but she smiled when she noticed he wasn’t tapping his foot, not pulling away from her. She didn’t want to point it out, afraid that bringing any attention to it might spoil the moment.

Soon she drew away, a warm, tingling feeling lingering on her hand, as though she could still feel him touching her long after his fingers had left her own.

“Let us press on,” she said, placing her hand into the trigger guard of her carbine. “Do you think the Brutes have found the dead Mgelkgolo yet?”

“Probably,” he replied, taking his usual spot at the lead. “Hopefully it’ll take them a while to find some replacements.”

“An excellent thought! Drop a hundred more in our path, they won’t be able to stop us.”

“Not what I meant,” he grumbled, turning to glare at her, one she responded to with an innocent smile.

The Major

Streets of New Mombasa

12 Hours After Rupture

The air temperature plummeted, helped in no small part to the monsoon roiling in the skies. His hands were shivering as he swept his shotgun from side to side, his sleeveless BDU doing his skin no favours as water dribbled down his arm. Seela fared no better, the tall alien grumbling under her breath about how she was freezing. She had told him she was not used to such periods of rainfall, but rather than complain out loud, she turned to small talk with him.

“Will you tell me a little more about this objective of ours?” she asked, splashing into a puddle as she strode by his side. “Where it is, or what resistance you expect, for example?

“ONI will have my head if they find out I shared intel with a Covvie,” he replied, giving her a thoughtful glance. “But screw it, think you’ve earned the right to know a few things. The weapon’s being held below one of our facilities, we as in ONI. Before the drop we had reports that the Covenant were looking to do the same and were closing on the site. Know anything about that?”

“They did not tell me much,” she replied, scanning the skies for a moment. “I encountered a Zealot which had some implications, but all I was told was to hunt Heretics while the Covenant redeployed somewhere beyond the city.”

“Redeployed, huh? Interesting. What kind of implications?”

“Zealots are only sent to the surface of a world if Forerunner artifacts have been discovered,” she explained. “but from what I know of your role in your military, you likely already know that, don’t you?”

“You Sangheili aren’t very flexible,” he replied. “Makes you easy to predict. Well we’re not after any alien artifact, just to get this weapon out before the Brutes get to it. Have to assume they’re ahead of us, since they’ve got dropships and the numbers, but I can’t get more specific than that.”

“It sounds very important,” she noted. “Why send only your team then? Why not say, three teams, or four?”

“We did send a group of ODST’s earlier in the day,” he explained. “Imps you’d call them. But ONI lost contact with them almost immediately after they dropped. Maybe they got killed, maybe they’re still around, but we couldn’t sit on our hands and wait, so they sent my team in to finish the job. This place must curse Helljumpers, cause now I’m the one stranded out here by myself.”

“You have a new team now,” she said with a grin. “You know, I have heard that some of my more influential kin have tried to absorb your race into the Covenant, but the Prophets have been hard to convince. What I would have given to have you and me in a squad much sooner.”

“You’re better than most Marines I’ve worked with in the past, too,” he replied. “Can think of a few situations I could have used your… direct solutions.”

They continued on for a while longer, the Major wiping his visor clear as they rounded what seemed like the hundredth intersection he’d seen this night. Soon he felt her hand on his shoulder, and he looked up to see she was glancing at the sky again.

“I must stop,” she said. “I am cold and soaked through, my aim will be of no use if I am shivering. If only my shields protected me from water…”

There was an apartment complex just across the street, the Major leading the way as he walked over. They couldn’t wait around forever, but he’d do anything to feel dry after hours of walking in a storm with no breaks.

It only became more apparent how drenched they were when they moved inside. He could feel water sloshing inside his boots, making little squelches each time he took a step, the carpet in the foyer ruined as soon as he stepped into the apartment. He turned around to see Seela was even worse off than him, the amount of water sloughing off her armour could have filled a bathtub.

“Look at the state of me,” she mumbled, looking down at herself. He knew what she meant. Her blood had failed to wash away near her more grievous wounds, leaving stains on her armour. Her arms were tinted orange from when she’d ripped apart that Hunter, and the back of her legs were caked in dirt and dust, a result of when he’d dragged her out of the garden. “I shouldn’t expect to be clean in our current situation, but being a mess irks me.”

“Think I can help you with that,” he said, Seela cocking her head in a silent question. He waved for her to follow, the Major turning into the main hall of the apartment and peaking inside each doorframe, grumbling when the first few just led to bedrooms and living areas.

“What are you looking for?” Seela asked, peering curiously over his shoulder, the alien so large she practically plugged the hallway, her helmet and elbows always in contact with something. “Are we on another food hunt again?”

“No, I’m looking for the… here we go.” He nudged open the final doorway with the stock of his shotgun, Seela ducking so she could look inside. Half the room was occupied by a raised section of plastic, flanked by waist-high pedestals where a number of body wash bottles stood in a messy group. It was divided from the rest of the room by a glass wall, the Major spotting a showerhead through the stained window.

“That’s a shower,” he explained, pointing. “We haven’t got forever, but if you want to bathe, you can take five.”

“This device shall grant me ablution?” she asked. “How does it work?”

“Okay I refuse to admit you know what ablution means, I’ve never heard anyone say that word.”

“It means to wash oneself,” she said, following him inside and watching as he slid the divider open. “How does this ‘shower’ work?”

“Well, these taps give you ablution, okay? It’s exactly like the ones we used at the sink, you turn them and the water comes out of that head up there. I’ll find some towels while you-”

He glanced over to see that Seela had already set aside her shoulder pauldrons on the nearby sink, and she was pulling at a zipper built into the front of her bodysuit, dragging it down the front of her chest, the Major nearly dropping his shotgun in surprise. Her breasts had not gone unnoticed during their time together, and he caught a glimpse of her cleavage as she dragged the zipper even lower, exposing the insides of two smooth, blue mounds.

“I’ll… leave you to it.” He spun round and gunned it for the door, Seela watching him curiously as he brushed past her with his head firmly locked in place. He could hear her placing more and more parts of her armour aside as he closed the door behind him.

He felt… odd, to say the least, like his chest was sucking up against his lungs, what was going on? He didn’t see her in that kind of light, did he? He had only met Seela this very night. And yet, she had rubbed off on him in the hours since their encounter in Kikowani. That was his own fault, of course, she was his only form of conversation out here behind Covenant lines, and people always had a tendency to bond during a crisis.

He got moving before he could think about it too much, beginning his search for towels, as he hadn’t seen any in the bathroom. After a bit of scrounging, he found a wardrobe full of the things, stowing two under his arm, then picking up a third after a bit of consideration. Seela would probably need them all due to how big she was.

He returned to the hallway, a voice calling out through the bathroom door. “Major? You there?”

“What is it?” he asked, raising his voice a little as he approached.

“How do I make the water come out?”

“I-I just explained it,” he sighed. “Those two dials on the wall are the taps, you just turn them. Red is hot, blue is cold.”

“… Which one is red?”

“It’s the…” He faltered, how did you describe colour to an alien, or describe it at all for that matter? “I’ll show you,” he added after hesitating. “I’m coming in. Are you… decent?”

“What kind of question is that? A warrior must always strive to look their best.”

The Major shook his head. “I meant are you covered up?”

She didn’t answer, and the Major gave her a few more moments before he turned the handle, heading inside. More of her white power armour was laying in a pile on one side of the floor, her helmet and breastplate the largest pieces in the bunch, but fortunately Seela was still wearing her bodysuit when he turned his gaze over to her. The zipper was still dragged down, however, the mechanism hovering just above where the belly button would be on a human, and he got a full view of her front as she turned to face him. That thing was tight enough to cut off circulation, following the curves of her lithe figure like a mould, especially around her hourglass hips. His eyes were drawn to her exposed flesh, the zipper revealing a V-shaped slice of her cerulean hide, his gaze unavoidably drawn to her cleavage.

“Show me how to use this shower,” she said, her statement making him aware of how much he was staring. He moved over to the sliding door, placing the towels on the sink as he pulled the handle, his boots clicking as he stepped onto the raised plastic.

“This one is red,” he explained, turning the tap on. From the showerhead came a tiny dribble of water, the Major shutting the stream off after a second. “The more you turn it, the more powerful the water come out, got it?”

She put him in her shadow as she leered over his shoulder, the Major turning to see she was stood right behind him, but she wasn’t paying attention to the taps. Her striking, purple eyes were locked onto his, and he felt oddly vulnerable having her look down at him, while he had to crane his neck.

“I cannot remember the last time I let my guard down around someone,” she began, leaning on her knees and pressing her bosom together with her biceps, making her cleavage enticingly deep. He was thankful that his helmet was still on or she would have caught him getting an eye full.

“We are always on the move, always fighting, or fleeing from the conflicts that chase us,” she continued, locking onto his eyes even through his visor. “I want to stop running,” she blurted, looking at the floor in dejection. “The way I am right now, it no longer pleases me as it once did. I want to slow down, just for a little while and… live in this moment. What say you, Major?” she asked after a pause. “Will you… stop, with me?”

He'd have to be a fool to not see what she was getting at, but he still hesitated as he met her reptilian eyes. As much as she was an alien, he could see where she was coming from. Tonight could be his last night alive, and here was an opportunity he would never get again, a chance to just live in the now, rather than always looking to the future. And bleed off some stress while they had time, that was always a plus.

“I will,” he said, Seela’s tone turning sly as she leaned closer to him.

“Then, you will no longer need this…”

She placed her hands on either side of his helmet, slowly lifting it away until their eyes met in earnest. She dropped the helmet to the ground, where it rolled to a stop atop the bathmat, Seela taking him by the shoulders and leaning even closer.

From between her mandibles emerged her tongue, the tapered tip draping down towards his neck. He shivered as she dragged its moist surface over his face, from his chin to between his eyes, leaving a shining layer of mucous in its wake. She was sampling him, he realised, Seela slurping her long tongue between her mandibles and lathering it with her teeth.

“The sweat from your pores, it tastes like salt,” she sighed, leaning in for another taste. This time he opened his mouth when her tongue traced his lips, meeting her organ with his own. Her eyes went wide as their tastes mingled, but they soon lidded as she wrapped her tongue over his own, constricting it between her moist flesh and lapping at his gums, his cheeks bulging as she smothered his palate.

She drew back, subjecting him to doting licks as she soaked his lips with her saliva, then plunged in again. It was unlike any kiss he’d ever experienced before, if one could call being licked a kiss, the way she alternated between licking him like a housecat and plunging her tongue down his throat making him weak at the knees. Her four mandibles came to rest on his cheeks, splayed wide so that he was aware of the little knots of teeth lining them.

After what felt like a minute of kissing, she slowly pulled away, making him aware of every inch of her tongue she had piled into his mouth. Her purple eyes filled his vision as she connected her forehead to his with a quiet tap.

“Your armour, take it off,” she said, her voice commanding. “Wouldn’t want you getting uncomfortable when I put you on your back.”

“You don’t beat around the bush, do you?” he chuckled, starting with his arms as he unclipped the gauntlets.

“Why waste time when we both know what we want?” she countered. “Now hurry up, I want to see all of you…”

Under her hungry gaze, he set about removing his gear, placing pieces of armour aside with more care than Seela had with his helmet. He could feel her eyes playing over his slowly revealing body, his BDU going last as he pulled it over his shoulders, soon wearing nothing save for his underwear.

He'd never been a self-conscious person, but there was something about Seela that made him feel anxious. Maybe it was all that height she had that made him feel… small. Her piercing eyes drank in his skin, her gaze soon stopping on his waist.

“Are you taking that off, or am I?” she challenged.

“We got time, Seela, no need to go rushing in,” he replied. “Besides, you said you wanted to use the shower, right? Come here.”

She stood by his side as he reached for the red dial, turning the water on. Water jetted from the showerhead above them, raining down and splashing Seela right in the face.

“Woops,” he said, smiling as she flexed her mandibles, spitting some water out.

“You did that on purpose!” she accused, but there was a certain air about her that betrayed her amusement. “Ah, this feels good…” she sighed, angling her head below the warm water, as relaxed as he had ever seen her. Without her armour on, he could admire her in earnest, her suit fitting her body like a glove a few sizes too small, the fabric so thin every contour of her body leapt out at him. She had the body of an athlete in her prime, thin enough to allow her the agility and grace she’d displayed throughout the night, while also being packed with muscle, especially around her thighs and hips to allow her tall, powerful figure to stay upright.

He reached over to close the shower door, upping the water temperature a little more, the panes quickly misting as the heat built up. There was just enough room that he could stand back and admire her as she let the water cleanse her muscles of tension. She seemed to remember she was still wearing her bodysuit, grumbling under her breath as she plucked at the material, still soaked from the storm outside.

She flashed him a seductive glance as she pinched her zipper between her fingers, dragging it down slowly so she could tease him. Inch after inch of her flawless hide exposed itself, his eyes inexorably drawn to her torso as the zipper trailed down her stomach. She did not have a belly button like a human did, nor did she have abs, but that didn’t mean she didn’t have a powerful core. Her stomach was all muscle, the subtle curve of her tummy in line with her athletic build, her frame both dainty and powerful at the same time, her curves making his erection jump tent the fabric of his underwear.

She stopped just above her waist, shrugging the bodysuit off her shoulders one at a time, her delaying only enticing him all the more. Her suit peeled away like a banana, Seela freeing her breasts from the garment after a moment of struggling.

Two boobs fell free, so firm and pert they wobbled only a little as they spilled out from the constricting material. Like the rest of her, they were covered over in her blue, leathery hide, water washing over them to give them a reflective sheen. He noted that her boobs and underbelly were slightly off-coloured compared to the rest of her darker hide, almost like a discolouration.

Her nipples were erect and pink, contrasting with her aquamarine hide, swaying in time with her deep breathing. He noted that there was a collection of scars running down the sides of her midriff, as well as a few burns and bruises, her body an artwork of prior battles.

She caught him examining the numerous scars and chuckled. “Admiring your own handiwork, hmm?”

She traced one of her wounds with a nail, no bigger than the length of his finger. He remembered the solitary hit he’d scored on her during their first meeting, but Seela didn’t harbour any resentment, if anything it was the opposite, the way she caressed the scar coming off as distinctly sensual.

“You were fearless with that tiny knife. Do you still possess the same spirit as you did then, I wonder?” she mused, her waist tilting as she planted a hand on her hip, the way she leaned on it only accentuating her curves.

He knew a challenge when he heard one, Seela’s eyes tracking him as he moved closer, the hot water oozing the knots out of his muscles as it poured over his back. He was captivated by her bosom, the way the water cascaded down the muscular channels of her torso drawing his eyes to her alien anatomy. Despite being so lithe and nimble, she was still soft in all the right places, her breasts creating an admirable curve to her chest, her torso tapering into an hourglass waist, her muscles flowing down to a pair of powerful thighs packed with the strength that allowed her to be so agile.

His eyes lingered on her chest, her expression shifting from confidence to curiosity as she watched him raise a hand and fill his palm with a breast. It felt like he was pushing his fingers into cake batter, her flesh melting around his digits as he sought out the more sensitive tissue beneath her leathery skin.

“Oh!” Seela gasped, a delicate sound that was so unbecoming from the death-seeking companion he’d come to know. He squeezed his hand, and she moaned again, she mustn’t be used to a lot of touching if this was all it took to get her going. “P-Perhaps you do…”

He took her other breast into his hand, kneading her supple bosom in his hands like he was shaping clay. They maintained their alluring teardrop shape each time he let them spring back, gravity making them jump, her soft flesh so malleable beneath his fingertips. They were just a little too big to be perfect handfuls, and that might make her not so well endowed to other Elites, but to him she was plenty of woman for him to work with.

He pushed his face into her cleavage, brushing his thumbs over her nipples as he took in a lungful of her aroma. She smelled of that distinct, leathery scent, the kind that follows stretched leather everywhere, her exertion adding a spicy afterglow that drove him wild for more.

“What are you doing?” Seela asked, bristling as he breathed warm air on her boobs.

“You smell wonderful,” he said, leaning more into her cleavage. Her breasts were like two soft pillows caressing his cheeks, Seela’s bust quivering as she chuckled at him.

“I do?” she asked, tilting her head. “But, I am covered in plasma and blood, how could you…”

He interrupted the thought as he brought a nipple to his mouth, sealing it round his lips and biting down on it. There was a wet slap as Seela snapped her thighs shut, the sudden pleasure making her shake like a leaf. He couldn’t believe how sensitive she was, she could take down a Hunter with a sword, but just a little touching was setting her off? He mouthed at the nub of flesh, alternating between doting on it with his tongue and clenching it with his lips, Seela’s flesh wobbling around his head as his attentions made her shiver.

“You continue to surprise me,” Seela cooed, wrapping her arms around his head, drawing his face deeper into her shapely bosom, her soft body enveloping him from all sides. Her scent came down stronger now that he was sealed from the air beyond her, and he could have stayed that way forever. He reached out and linked his hands on the other side of her waist, Seela slim enough his hands could meet just above her haunches as he returned the hug.

He switched to her other boob, Seela gasping as he mouthed at her nipple until his jaw ached. When he was satisfied he’d given her bosom enough attention, he tapped at her arm, Seela begrudgingly releasing him from her bust, the Major blinking his eyes clear as he surfaced from her breasts like a diver breaching water for air.

“What a peculiar display,” she said, laying her arms on his shoulders as she peered down at him. “Male Sangheili hardly ever notice them, yet here you are… scenting them.”

“They’re missing out,” he said, Seela’s snout flushing a creamy red. “Doesn’t bother you, does it?

“Gods, no. I enjoy the… tenderness of your tongue. It is so smooth and warm, like the rest of you,” she added, gently clutching his head between her fingers. “Keep going…”

He sealed his lips obediently around her engorged nipples again, her hips flexing against his own as he made her dance on the spot with his organ. He trailed his lips lower, planting a kiss on her stomach, lowering to his knees as he mouthed at random spots on her smooth belly and hips.

He could feel her core pushing back up to meet his kisses wherever his lips roamed, his touches sending shivers through her lithe body. He placed his hands on her flared hips, the beltline of her bodysuit riding low on her waist, Seela’s violet eyes glinting in the light as she watched him bring her face level with her mound.

“A-Are we not going to mate?” she asked, a surprised look on her face. Her mandibles opened as she made to continue, but her voice trailed off into a low rumble as he planted a kiss on the spot just above her mound. Sangheili must not do a lot of foreplay, if she hadn’t already guessed what he was about to do.

“I got a few ideas before we get to that,” he said, putting on a mysterious front to hide his growing enthusiasm. He pulled her bodysuit over her thighs, extending the zipper as far down as it could, the Major coming face to face with her nethers.

His gaze fell on a pair of thick, pillowy lips, not so different from a human woman’s, except far larger, as flawless and smooth like the rest of her. They were covered over in her navy blue, reptilian hide, a mesmerising slice of pink buried between the two folds. Her lips were wet and shining, but whether that was because of the shower or her own fluids, it was hard to say.

“What… ideas would that be?” she asked, her breathing growing long and irregular as his face neared her mound. He didn’t answer her, peeling back her suit so that they draped over her knees, Seela stepping out of them and kicking the fabric over the glass wall, where it joined the rest of the pile of armour and clothing.

At this angle, having to look up at her to admire her form, it was like she was a giant statue carved from marble, her completely bare body so svelte and lean, hammered into shape by a lifetime of combat, her curves only exaggerated by her size.

He slid his hands from her backward-facing calves to her upper legs, blinking when his fingers sank up to the knuckle when he ran them up her inner thighs. They were as big as tree trunks, but covered in a supple layer of enticing fat, the bundles of muscles flexing beneath it when he dug a little deeper.

Her skin here was a lot thinner, thus more sensitive if her fidgeting was any indication. He left a lingering kiss on her left thigh, her cold hide brushing his cheek, Seela shivering as he sampled her flesh, travelling his lips up towards her entrance.

He wrapped an arm around her soft leg, hovering his lips over her mound, dragging his tongue across her vulva in one slow stroke. It was definitely more than just the water making her slick down there, her juices splashing over his lips as he nipped at her delicate folds of flesh with his lips. That leather smell was here in full force, coming on so strong he had to blink his eyes to stay focused.

“Gods!” she cried, rolling her hips as he mouthed and kissed at her entrance, his nose wet with her leaking fluids. He could hear her breathing morph into hard pants, her spine bending in a slight arch as his tongue probed into the beginnings of her tunnel.

He glanced up to see she was covering her mandibles with a hand, in some vain attempt to muffle the little growls and moans she was making. He laughed at her, the air he breathed making her tremble as he pushed past her silky walls, the alien shuddering as her muscles viced around his exploring tongue.

His tongue swept upwards, brushing against something small and hard, and Seela snarled, a noise that would have been concerning, had he not had his face up against her sex. He stroked the little nub again, cocking a brow as she thrust her hips forward, as though she was trying to fuck his face.

“There!” she said. “Right there! Lick it.”

It was more an order than a plea, but he obeyed her all the same, pursing his lips around the protrusion and flicking his tongue over its smooth surface. It was like sampling a ball, her g-spot much more exaggerated due to her larger body.

She suddenly lost her footing, the Major looking on in alarm as she stumbled back, hitting the wall of the cubicle with an audible thunk, Seela’s butt sliding against the tiles as her legs turned to jelly. He pulled his head back, water and fluids linking his lips to her vagina as he watched her tremble.

“You okay?” he asked, her head a little taller than his own as she propped herself up. Her eyes were facing different directions, he realised, Seela blinking them back into focus after a moment.

“W-When I was in training, it was drilled into my mind that I must be ready for anything,” she said. “I must expect any attack to come from any direction. I can say with certainty that I was not ready for that.”

“You’re usually so intense,” he said, shuffling over the plastic floor and rubbing her thighs with his hands. “I’ve seen you take out entire squads of Covenant, but a bit of licking and you’re out. It’s pretty adorable.”

“I-I am not used to such attentions!” she snapped, her expression turning just a little meek. She was probably chiding herself for sounding so defensive. “No other Sangheili has ever been so… creative, with me.”

“Then we’ll just have to make up for that now.”

He delved between her legs again, Seela’s eyes locked onto his head as he leaned over. Now that she was closer to the floor, it made things a bit more comfortable, the Major half lying on the floor between her splayed legs as he resumed his ardent licking. He picked up the pace, exploring every inch of her vulva, switching between mouthing at her walls and her swollen clitoris, her juices filling his mouth with an odd taste of leather and copper.

He could hear her hindquarters squeaking against the tiles as she rocked her hourglass hips, her movements lining up with the strokes of his tongue. He reached over her waist and cupped her bountiful cheeks, delighting in the way her flesh moulded around his fingers like melting wax. Her cheeks were as pert as her breasts, shifting muscles flexing beneath her hide keeping them in that mesmerising peach shape he had admired from afar.

He felt her fingers delve into his hair, her hands so large that they nearly encompassed his whole skull. Her sharp nails scratched at his scalp, a pleasant shiver running down his neck, the feeling so distracting he paused in his mouthing to relish the sensation. Was his scalp really that sensitive?

“Do not stop,” Seela growled, using her hands to push his mouth back into her sopping entrance. “I am getting… so close.”

She grumbled as her hips began to ground into his face, the Major resuming his work. He drew back a little to catch some air, bringing up a finger and slipping it inside her twitching opening. Heat and wetness engulfed his digit, and despite her oversized entrance being just that, there was a surprising tightness as her tunnel contracted around his probing finger. It must be her amazing pelvic muscles, allowing her such fine control over her velvet-soft walls.

She was constantly in motion, putting her flexible body on display as her upper body moved independently from her hips, like she was twisting on the spot. He was distracted as her abs, or whatever equivalent of abs Elites had, her stomach flexing just above his nose, her waist writhing as his mouthing reduced her to a squirming mess.

He felt her thighs close round his head as she began to tense up, and for a moment he was worried she might crush his skull, her muscles all the more obvious now that they were pressing against his cheeks from all sides. Yet she was being careful of his human limitations even in her mounting ecstasy, her legs applying just enough pressure so that he couldn’t move away, but not enough to hurt him.

Her thrusting became more violent, and just as he worried she might throw him off with her movements, her orgasm rocked her body, Seela shivering as though the running water had been turned from hot to cold. Her thighs flexed around his face as a cascade of her fluids spilled into his mouth, the Major pulling back alarm, or at least he would have if her thighs hadn’t locked his head in place.

Her gooey nectar leaked down his chin as he kept up his relentless attentions, drawing as much of her emission out as he could, Seela crying out something in her native language as another shiver roiled through her body. Her walls clamped down hard enough he worried he might lose blood flow to his tongue, but gradually her muscles began to relax, her violent thrusts subsiding into slower, placating shifts as she came down from her high.

He slid his tongue and finger out of her, her thick fluids dripping to the tiles below, the water quickly washing it away. Seela’s ass had raised off the floor during her climax, and now she let herself collapse, her eyes glossed over as one last pang of pleasure chased her into her afterglow.

He rose from his prone position, nearly slipping as he shuffled over to her, his right arm touching her left as he leaned against the wall with her, wiping his chin clean of her fluids with the back of his hand.

“Your dexterity extends to other places, it seems,” she muttered, her breathing deep and irregular, like she’d run a marathon. Her bust wobbled a little as she turned to him, her eyes tracking a rope of her pearly liquid sticking to his cheek. “Give me that tongue again.”

She pinched his chin between her finger and thumbs, drawing him in for another of her kisses, her tongue constricting round his own. She didn’t seem to care tasting her own juices, tilting her head to deepen their connection. He found himself sinking into her body, the act so sensual and dizzying as her tongue enraptured him. She pulled away so very slowly, slurping her long tongue out past his lips like the world’s biggest strand of spaghetti.

“I have definitely warmed up now,” she said, glancing up at the showerhead, then down at her messy crotch. “As for ablution, that is another matter…”

He reached up and fumbled with the dial, changing the setting to widen the spray so that the water rained down on both of them. “Can’t believe you didn’t know how to use this after I showed you, what, twice?” he asked, Seela chuckling at him.

“You really are a fool, aren’t you? Of course I know how to work the taps, I just needed an excuse to get you back in here. You ran off so quickly I thought you did not see me as… appealing. Your magnificent tongue has put those thoughts aside, of course.”

“There’s a lot more I can do if you need more convincing,” he said, smirking up at her.

“I am so used to fighting for what I want,” she said, draping an arm over his shoulders, her breast squashing against the side of his head. “Yet you give me relief willingly, both in mind and in body, allow me to return the favour…”

She eased him down, her massive weight leaving him no choice but to let her flip him onto his back, Seela following him down. When his back met the wet plastic floor, the side of his ribs touching the drain, Seela caressed his face with her hand, then with her tongue, smearing his face in her saliva.

Leaving its muscular tip hanging out, she trailed it down his neck, pausing there to grasp his flesh with her mandibles, her teeth pinching the skin. She didn’t bite him hard enough to draw blood, but just enough for him to notice, his back arching in reflex as he struggled in vain against her weight. She wasn’t straddling him, she was too big to sit inside the shower, instead she was kneeling over him in a sort of crouch, one of her digitigrade legs draped over his torso, his raging erection rubbing against her shin through the fabric of his underwear.

She held him by the shoulders as she travelled south along his body, exploring and testing his muscles just as he had to her, leaving wet trails of her drool that were quickly washed away by the water. She had such fine coordination, rubbing circles on his pectorals with her palms while leaving love bites on his stomach and ribs.

“The sweat from your pores, your musk,” Seela groaned, closing her eyes and letting them roll, as though she had just sampled the finest meal in her life. “The typical males who attempt to court me have scents worse than a Jiralhanae adolescent, but yours… I cannot seem to get enough of it.”

She soon reached the waistline of his remaining clothing, Seela’s gaze turning coy as she slipped a finger beneath the fabric, peeling the elastic down to expose his member. Her eyes were so intent on the tenting fabric it was almost like she was trying to see straight through it.

His member bounced free, Seela sliding his underwear down his legs, throwing it over the glass panes, never taking her eyes off his crotch. He didn’t know how big Sangheili junks were, but Seela didn’t seem the least bit bothered by his raging erection, her eyes running up and down his length with interest.

He lurched as she gave his tip a single lap with her tongue, his waist rising off the floor. Seela planted a hand on his stomach, holding him down as she cooed at him.

“Perhaps my tasting problem will be short-lived…”

His head was running circles as she dragged her velvety tongue over his tender glans, a flutter passing through his heart as her violet eyes drank in his reaction. She was gauging where he was most sensitive, those eyes staring directly into his soul as she painted his member with her spit.

She coiled his shaft inside her damp flesh, her warm breath washing over his length as she began to lap at him more greedily. Her mouth wasn’t built for sucking, but the way her wet flesh flicked across his glans and shaft was just as exhilarating, his thoughts turning to mush as she grabbed the base of his rod with her massive hand, giving him a tentative squeeze every now and then so he could never be quite sure where the pleasure would come from next.

He bucked as Seela swirled her tongue around his tip, the alien holding him down with her free hand. She gave him an especially harder pump, the movement peeling back his foreskin to expose his most sensitive flesh, Seela quick to dart her tongue in and continue her tastings.

The pleasure coursing through him as she circled his glans was so intense, the vulnerability as she pinned him down only adding to the stimulation. There was so much warm water and damp flesh around his loins, his impotent thrusting becoming irregular as she licked and slurped.

He lurched as he was suddenly reoriented, Seela hooking her arms round his legs and hoisting him up, his butt leaving the floor as she shuffled onto her knees.

Only his upper torso was in contact with the ground now, the Major looking down his chest to see his legs were resting over the top of Seela’s shoulders, the alien cupping his cheeks in her palms as she supported his weight. Apparently she had more access to him in this position, the alien getting creative with the lack of space in the shower.

Kneeling between his parted legs, she wasted no time in plunging her face back into his erection, redoubling her efforts as she stroked his organ with her soft, wet tongue. She found that there was a spot below his glans that was extra sensitive, Seela dragging her flesh across it, her drool sagging down to make her ever pumping hand slick, the duelling sensations making his toes curl.

Seela moaned around his shaft as she plunged his tip into her throat, the ends of her mandibles touching his belly. She couldn’t take him much further into her throat, her mouth wasn’t designed that way, but she seemed to want to try anyway. The pulsing flesh of her mouth smothered the head of his member, leaving the underside open for her tongue to continue its relentless stroking.

Only the tip of his dick entered the warmth of her mouth before she could take him no further, his glans encased in wriggling flesh. A blissful tightness surrounded him, Seela swallowing around his tip, the lewd sound of her dry-gulping making his cheeks warm.

She held him there as long as she could before pulling back, but as she did, her mandibles pinched his length as her throat retreated, dragging up the spine of his shaft like four smooth fingers, his breathing punctuated by a grunt as the sudden sensation caught him off guard.

Her eyes flashed as she caught his reaction, and she repeated the motion, the Major whispering a curse as her teeth left pinpricks of pain over his shaft, yet he moved his hips anyway, seeking out more of the sensation. How could something that hurt, feel good at the same time? Seela was making a mess of him, and she was enjoying it, the alien resuming her cruel licking, his cock covered in a sheen of her bubbling saliva as she increased her pace.

There were too many sensations to keep track of, her roiling tongue, the strokes of her mandibles, the seizing of her throat. A sweet ache began to rise up his body, aligning with his rapidly approaching peak, Seela sensing his need and upping her tempo, drawing back to use her tongue like a brush and swirl it around, trapping his length in a vortex of moving flesh. He couldn’t hold her stare for more than a few seconds, his position and her attentions too much for him to take, his head meeting the floor as he relaxed in her grip.

His abs began to seize up, Seela sensing his limit and pulling him tight against her mouth, sliding his tip into her throat. To his hypersensitive body, her mouth was no different from a lovers loins, his climax coming down harder than he could hold it back.

She met his eyes with her purple ones, her intense gaze the last straw as he erupted. A jolt of pleasure forced his eyes shut, the first rope of his emission splashing against her waiting throat, the Major gritting his teeth in a vain attempt to suppress a noise he’d be embarrassed to make under different circumstances. He arched his back as much as he could in this strange position, barely a moment passing before the next wave chased the first, Seela’s eyes widening as he bucked into her mouth.

He made another humiliating grunt as Seela began to swallow around him, drawing out more of his seed through force alone. He could feel her tongue stroking the underside of his shaft in a sort of come here motion, the sound of Seela gulping audible even over the running water.

He covered his face with his hands as his partner held him like that, each pang of his climax followed by a lurch as Seela drank down his fluids, easing out a few more surges with her tongue until he felt utterly spent. His afterglow blanketed over him, his breathing reduced to pants as he watched Seela gently lower him down.

His dick bounced out of her mouth with a pop, Seela’s mandibles and snout conspicuously free of his fluids. She had swallowed all of it down, not wasting a single drop, his heart fluttering as she raised her head so he could see her neck. There was a conspicuous bulge in her throat, and she forced it down, her tongue lashing out to lick her mouth and jaws clean.

His expression must have been amusing, because Seela laughed at him when she returned her eyes to his. “What? I told you I love a brackish taste, and you are the very essence of salt.”

He propped himself up on a quivering elbow, leaning against the nearby wall, his faculties gently returning as his euphoria oozed away, the warm water making him feel utterly relaxed for the first time in what felt like years. When was the last time he’d been with someone and released some stress? This war had left hardly any time for finding a woman, he hadn’t realised how pent up he’d gotten.

“You look so cute when you are tired,” Seela chuckled.

“I’m an ONI operative, I can’t be cute,” he replied, glaring at her.

His words only seemed to amuse her further. “But you have such delicate features and soft hair, not to mention your smooth skin.”

She brushed her nails against his leg to illustrate her point, his muscles twitching reflexively. As he fought to steady his breathing, Seela spoke up again. “Is the operative too exhausted to carry on? There is not enough room in this cubicle for me to lay on you, if you could even handle that.”

Not about to let her have the last laugh, he rose to his feet in defiance, Seela watching him covetously as he readied for their next round, his member still hard as a rock despite his orgasm, its length still wet with her spit.

She matched his movements, standing to her regal height, her purple eyes flashing as the light reflected off them. Her hips rocked like a pendulum as she strode forwards, the heat of her loins washing over his dick as she paused next to him.

“I am as ready as I ever will be,” Seela purred. “Do it, enter me.”

It wasn’t as though he was about to do otherwise, the Major reaching down and angling his dick towards her sopping vent. There was a slight problem, however, and he wasn’t sure how he hadn’t noticed it before. He chewed his lip, contemplating on a few ideas for a second, Seela glaring down at him impatiently.

“Why do you delay?” she snapped. “I’m not getting any wetter than this.”

“Problem,” he said, motioning at their hips. They were out of line by at least a foot, her vagina too far out of reach of his member, no matter how much he angled it upwards. “Think there might be a stool or something in that cupboard, hold on.”

“I grow tired of holding on, I need this now,” Seela growled, seizing him by the shoulders. His feet left the floor, panic making his stomach lurch as she carried him over to the wall, his back compressing against the panes as Seela positioned him so that their genitals lined up.

He hooked his hands over the top of the glass walls of the shower in alarm, looking down to see Seela wrapping a forearm round his midsection, holding him in position as she splayed her legs a little.

“Christ Seela, warn me before you pick me up like that!”

She answered his complaint with her version of a grin, her gaze slowly lowering until she was watching their waists. The wisps of steam were making it a little hard to see, but he could feel as much as see her crotch slowly connecting to his. Her lips glided against his glans, their flesh so slick his cock angled towards her opening without a hint of friction.

She slapped her hips to his, a small ripple travelling down her soft thighs as she impaled herself on him. He plunged into her squirming passage after a moment of resistance, her liquid excitement letting him slide the rest of the way inside with ease. They both growled in unison as her mound kissed his belly, her flesh tightening around him with a surprising strength. She was so muscular the size difference of their bodies hardly mattered, her abs flexing as her tunnel squeezed into the shape of his length, the Major aware of every twitch of her walls as they stroked his flesh.

Points of light danced before his eyes, her vent felt like it was lined with a hundred tongues, each one moving independently of each other, flexing and roiling just as Seela had done with her mouth. He was almost afraid to move, every inch of his dick constantly in contact with her roiling flesh, making him aware of even the slightest movement on either of their parts.

He mumbled a curse as he felt like he was melting from the waist down, the hot water and her even hotter tunnel making his thoughts a mess. Seela pushed herself harder against him, grinding her hips up and down his pelvis as though she was using his dick to scratch at in itch deep inside her. Despite her brawn and taking-charge approach, he could tell even she was having trouble keeping focused, her thighs quivering as she planted her hooves in different spots, trying to keep herself balanced as she supported his weight.

Confident she wouldn’t let him fall, he placed his hands on top of her head, stroking randomly since she had no hair or ears, just a smooth head and a long neck. She growled appreciatively as he drew figures of eight on the back of her skull, the water and sweat making his fingers glide against her hide.

After staying mated for a few moments, Seela pulled her hips back, a wonderful tightness seizing around his member as inches of his skin became visible. Her pearly fluids were clinging to his length in long strands, more of it gushing out after a particularly violent flex on his part. She paused when only the tip was still inside her, and then she pushed him back inside, the Major aware as the rings of muscle travelled down his length, the sudden explosion of raw pleasure making his legs go numb, it was a good thing she had him suspended.

She put them in a heavy, slow rhythm, Seela completely in control of their pace since he could not push back with the wall behind him. He could imagine Sangheili would want things going hard and fast, they were giants compared to humans, but she was being considerate with her pace and weight, pushing just enough of it onto him so that he could appreciate her brawn.

Each time she rose off his shaft, her insides clung to him, like her tunnel was trying to stop him from pulling away, the pressure lighting up his nerves like a switchboard. He wanted so badly to meet her thrusts with his own, but Seela was in control of this, perhaps wanting to make their coupling last. He wondered if he could survive a night in the sack with Seela in a proper bed, perhaps after all this was over he could find out…

His fingers roamed down to her breasts, cupping and mauling them just as he had before, Seela’s insides narrowing around him as he flicked one of her nipples with a finger, her little groans like music to his ears as she pushed her face into his pectorals, her tongue occasionally lolling out to sample his sweat.

Her silken walls slid up and down his length, the Major so aware of the wet sounds as her loins sucked on his length. Every flex of her walls, every throb of his member, sent a shock of pleasure through the two of them, the lines between their bodies blurring as they mated in earnest.

He could feel a rising need surge from his loins, but he gritted his teeth as he tried to stave it off. His glans were being constantly caressed by her alien walls, which never seemed to stay still as she pushed him into the glass, her love tunnel spiralling from left to right as Seela rocked her hips with a rising need of her own.

He placed his hands on her heaving flesh, reaching lower to cup her bountiful cheeks, admiring them as he looked down the length of her back from above. As he’d admired earlier, her ass was shaped like a cut peach, the cheeks filled to capacity with muscle and sinew that tensed when he copped a generous feel of her. Her butt had more in common with a statue than any living thing he knew, so round and perfect she might as well have been carved from stone.

He tried to slow down her growing pace, holding her by her soft hips and encouraging her to ease back, but Seela wasn’t having it. She brought a leg up, planting a hoof onto a shelf built into the wall just off to the side, bottles of lotion falling to the floor, her thigh now within arm’s reach. The movement caused the texture of her narrow tunnel to swirl around his shaft, the feeling making his eyes roll into the back of his head.

He could feel himself reaching much deeper in this position, Seela putting her agility on show as she alternated between hilting him and gyrating her hips, rocking and circling against his waist as though she was dancing to a beat only she could hear.

His hands couldn’t get enough of her lithe curves, his fingers roaming over as much of her body as he could reach, her springy muscles and her firm contours no end of admiration for his palms. The soft parts of her were like foam, the subtle layer of fat on her leathery hide giving her just the right amount of femininity to complement her musculature.

Seela made sure no two thrusts were the same, the Major never quite getting used to the intense pleasure as she bucked him into the glass. She was starting to lose control of herself, her thrusts becoming hard enough to leave bruises, the glass creaking and bending as their combined weight put it under strain.

She rested her head on top of his, pushing her chest out so he could access her boobs with his tongue. He mouthed and kissed, her leather fragrance coming back now along with the scent of her excitement, something about the blend of her aromas driving him wild.

Like when she walked, she began to rock her hips from left to right, the pressure growing each time she reached the peak of each swing. Her insides wrung him in a constant spin, their coupling growing too much for him to bear.

“Seela,” he growled. “I… can’t take this much longer.”

She began her reply with an oddly girlish mewl. “Th-Then come for me,” she panted, angling her head down until her eyes filled his entire view. “Do it, make me feel alive.”

His body seized up, the orgasm he’d been staving off threatening to spill, Seela burying his aching cock as deep into her tunnel as it could reach, her walls twisting in a tantalising motion, one lust thrust on her part all it took to force him over the edge.

All his muscles relaxed, his strength sapping out of his aching cock as he shuddered, his come erupting out of him to splash against her most intimate reaches. Her passage tightened harder than it ever had before, her hips stopping abruptly as she sucked in a gasp of air as his seed filled her spasming tunnel.

A second splash of his emission came shortly after, her velvet walls drawing on his length like she was trying to milk more out of him. Seela reached her peak right after, her slim body tensing up, then relaxing as her passage vibrated around his length, his partner loosing a heavenly moan as he thrust his hips forward, plunging his fluids deeper into her quivering vent.

Their climaxes just kept going, the two reducing to heaving messes as they locked their foreheads together. The lurid blend of their fluids spilled out of her as she was filled to capacity, making a mess of their thighs as the pearly fluids flowed down their legs.

Seela mumbled something in her native language as she trembled against him, her sensitive walls twitching as his cock throbbed inside her, her nectar spilling over his impaled shaft in waves. It felt like his dick was covered in warm glue, and it was a divine sensation.

Slowly, their reactions began to lose their intensity until their bodies had nothing more to give, Seela leaning more of her weight on him as she lidded her eyes as though suddenly tired. He gave her a gentle tap, motioning for her to put him down. She eased him to the floor, and he was almost afraid to move, the blend of their combined fluids was still plugged inside her, hot and thick, his rigid member the only thing keeping it from spilling.

Seela eventually pulled away, the disconnect making them both sigh as a final pang of pleasure coursed through them. The pearly mix of their emissions draped out in sheets, slapping to the floor where the water washed it up. He didn’t think he could come that much, he must have been more pent up than he realised.

He could have drifted off to sleep then and there, her delicious scent all around him, the warm air making his afterglow as sweet as honey, but he had to remember they were still technically in a warzone, and he fought against the complaints of his body as he resisted the urge to rest, the high of their encounter soon fading into the back of his mind.

“I was looking for incentives to escape this city,” Seela suddenly said, her voice breathy. “Now, I have found it. I’m glad I decided to keep you rather than kill you.”

“I’m… glad, too?” he asked, Seela laughing at his confusion. She got to a knee so that their eyes met, the alien almost toppling over as her balance hadn’t quite returned yet. The Major shifted on the spot as a long silence followed.

“Tell me,” she began. “What is your name?”

“My…? I thought ‘Major’ was more than enough?”

“It is,” she replied. “But, I would know it all the same, if that is fine with you.”

“Y-Yeah, it is,” he said. He had been addressed by rank for so long it was starting to feel like his actual name, he had even been reluctant to tell it to his latest squad. Another defence mechanism, he supposed. “It’s Andrew.”

“Andrew,” Seela repeated. “Nice to meet you, Andrew. As much as I wish to ride you until the sun rises, urgency insists that we should be moving on,” she said. “but first…”

“Ablution?” he asked. She nodded.

“It would not be appropriate to fight with our coupling all over us. Let us clean ourselves, we still have your mission to complete.”

The Major

Streets of New Mombasa

13 Hours After Rupture

“There it is,” the Major said, holding his weapon by his side as he fiddled with his helmet. The road they’d been following terminated in a rough line, Seela stopping at the precipice as they gazed out into an unimpeded view of their objective.

After their romp in the shower, he and Seela had followed the final few directions left by the kiosks, which had brought them to the base of a towering wall, maybe two hundred feet high and curving gently in both directions. The wall was familiar to the Major, all they had to do was follow the obstacle around until they reached its gate, which was yet another blast door like all the others, except it was already open before they’d even laid eyes on it.

He could feel the wind hammering his front as the gale swept through the area, cold air biting into his exposed forearm. This area beyond the wall was completely void of buildings, the wall creating a massive circle of space circling hundreds of meters out in front of them.

Seela stepped up to the lip of the road, which morphed into black and twisted metal after a few meters, as though a massive explosion had raised the ground here. Below the broken metal was a huge body of black water, made bright here and there as it reflected the fires that burned the horizon.

Beyond the ruined road, two rows of pillars jutted out of the lake, spaced out in regular intervals, topped with rebar and cracked concrete. He followed the struts with his eyes until they came to rest on the structure that sat in the epicentre of the walled-in lake, the Major allowing himself a moment of relief. At last, his objective was in sight.

At a glance it was a massive cube, or at least what remained of one. Chunks of metal had been ripped out of it here and there, plumes of smoke trailing out of the gaping holes. He could make out metal ribs lining the inside of the gigantic structure, his eyes tracking one as it fell from the ceiling, the crash very loud despite being a couple hundred meters away.

The cube was built upon a large artificial island, most of its features hidden behind a perimeter wall, giving it an almost medieval fort-like appearance, the body of water acting as a moat, and the ringing wall an extra layer of protection. There had been a bridge at some point that allowed vehicles and personnel to come and go between the site, but someone had obviously destroyed it, if the columns were any hint.

“Your mission has been obliterated,” Seela said, her gaze turning skyward. The orbital tether loomed in the backdrop, more a tower of fire and smoke than anything else, most of its length obscured by the dark clouds, themselves choked with ash and smoke. “Though, it seems the Covenant are as interested as we are.”

It was obvious what she was talking about. Despite the bridge being destroyed, the island was still connected to where they were standing. Where there was once a strip of metal and concrete, a band of blue light drew a line over the body of water, roughly the same width as a two lane road.

It was a Covenant light bridge, and he hadn’t seen many of these outside of alien strongholds or ships. He was no scientist, but the light bridge followed the same logic as Seela’s energy sword, where emitters projected a shape of light that hardened enough to become solid. There was an emitter on this side of the bridge, which looked like just a long stretch of thin metal with glowing boxes on either end. There was a soft humming noise coming from these boxes, the Major guessing they were generators of some sort.

“I suspect they moved vehicles across,” Seela continued. “They would not deploy a bridge otherwise, the Covenant would just use dropships.”

“Least you don’t have to swim,” he noted, patting Seela on the arm as he walked by. “Come on, we’re running late.”

Every bone in his body was telling him that he would fall right through the light bridge as soon as he stepped on it, and its slight transparency did nothing to help settle his nerves. The drop was a good fifty feet, and he could see no boats or emergency ladders ringing the wall, falling in would be a death sentence.

He placed one boot onto the glowing bridge, then the other. If he closed his eyes, his body would be sure he was stepping onto solid ground, but in reality walking onto hardened light was something his mind just couldn’t accept on some basic level. He kept his eyes locked on the site ahead of them, trying and failing not to think about it.

He turned to see his companion was having no such trouble. She was standing at her full height, giving him an amused glance as she paused by his flank. “This technology is an echo of the Forerunners,” she said. “it will hold us.”

She took a slight lead, the Major switching his focus from the island to the path behind them. The city had been so clustered with structures, and being out here with massive sightlines was putting him off. The lack of cover wasn’t helping either.

“Tell me the significance of this place,” Seela asked after a bit of silence. “What was its purpose for the city?”

“This was Alpha Site, the main headquarters of ONI, the group I’m part of,” he explained. “They did some pretty sensitive research here, hence the lake and the lack of ground access. Only visited a couple times myself, but I remember the layout.”

“And that giant building over there?” she said, pointing at the towering cube engulfed in flames. “What did it do?”

He realised she was trying to keep him focused on their objective, and not the sheer drop below them. She could read him pretty well by this point.

“That’s the HQ, and it’s filled to the brim with data about the city as well as intelligence for the Navy. It’s mostly made up of offices and storage banks, or was, anyway. Looks like some idiot thought it would be a good idea to blow it all up.”

“Why do you say that like it’s a bad thing?” she asked. “If the Covenant had access to sensitive data, you would be at a disadvantage.”

“All the important crap is stored below the site, destroying just the surface didn’t erase everything. That’s where we’re going, by the way, we can take one of the elevator shafts down to our objective.”

“And pray the island doesn’t come crashing down on our heads,” she mumbled.

As they walked over the halfway mark, Seela shouldered her carbine, the Major dropping to a knee behind her as she aimed at the island ahead of them. When she didn’t open fire, he asked her what she saw.

“Brute vehicles,” she replied. “But they are unmanned.”

They stalked forward carefully, the island soon coming into more detail. There was a perimeter wall compounding most of the island, with a gate that resembled a palisade, further adding to the whole ‘castle’ façade.

There were two hulking shapes in front of the main gate, the Major getting a better look once they were within a stone’s throw of the island. They were Brute Choppers, assault bikes that could ferry up to three Brutes at a time. The front half of the bike was a giant armoured wheel, with a spiked prow mounted on the front, designed for ramming down other vehicles. The back half was a single seat with a control dash, the chair so low against the wheel that only an Elite or Brute could be able to see over the top when piloting one.

Like the kickstands used by human motorcycles, the Choppers listed onto spikes protruding from the bottom of their frames, the design such an accurate mockery of human technology one might assume the Brutes had copied the design philosophy.

He breathed a quiet sigh of relief as they neared the edge of the bridge, his boots clocking as he stepped onto paved cement. They approached the pair of identical vehicles, the Major noting the mounted guns sticking out of the middle of the big wheels.

“It is unlike Brutes to leave their vehicles unattended,” Seela said, sweeping her carbine around.

“Probably couldn’t fit them through the gate,” he replied. “Hey, check it out.”

She looked to where he was nodding, a third vehicle sitting off to the side of the gate. Unlike the Choppers, this one was human-made. It was an all-terrain armoured truck, with a flatbed that housed a mounted chaingun, the weapon training into the sky as though its previous user had been aiming at aircraft.

The Warthog looked intact, save for the massive gash cut into the driver’s side of the chassis. Maybe one of those Choppers had rammed into it. It was a little beaten up, but as long as the hydrogen fuel tanks weren’t damaged, those things could drive for miles.

Walking over, he peeked into the cockpit, reaching over the wheel and flicking the ignition switch. The lights on the dash lit up, and his suspicions were confirmed as the fuel gauge lit up in green, almost a full tank.

“Finally something good swings our way,” he said, Seela looking over his shoulder as she joined him.

“Are we driving this thing inside?”

“No, this’ll be our ticket out once we’re done,” he said, turning the switch back to the off-state. “No more walking around for us.”

That seemed to please her, the two returning to the gate as they made to press on. ONI’s logo was emblazoned on the space above the gate, the Major glancing up at it as they moved into the compound. As he’d expected, there were pylons poking out of the ground below the arch to limit foot traffic as well as block vehicles from passing through, Naval Intelligence didn’t skimp out on security.

They passed beneath sheer meters of steel, emerging onto the other side. The compound stretched out before them, stairwells taking up the majority of the area, laced here and there by pine trees that were burnt to cinders, their stumps black and jagged, as though the island had been pounded with napalm.

What few patches of grass around here were brown and decayed, as was most of the pavement, peppered with burn marks and pieces of rubble. There were walls of sandbags standing in front of this side of the gate, the Major moving past one and spotting a dead Marine propped up against the other side of the barrier.

It wasn’t the only dead body he could see. At a glance there were dozens of dead Marines and police officers in the immediate area alone. Covenant were in abundance as well, all the various species splayed out along the steps, including Hunters, their giant bits of armour lying around in clusters of metal.

“This is one distinct battle we missed,” Seela noted. “That’s a wrecked Phantom over there. Your data is more important than I thought if the Brutes threw so much at this place.”

They walked through the thongs of the dead in silence, moving towards the towering headquarters built into the far side of the island. They encountered barriers of steel that had no doubt served as ample cover, not big enough to block the way, but giving the defenders an edge over the invading Covenant.

The stairwells sloped up towards the headquarters, and after a few minutes of walking, they arrived at yet another wall. This one hugged the base of the destroyed Alpha Site, the building looming over them, like a box of fire and metal. Parts of the wall had been blown apart, and from the way the metal was shredded, the damage had come from inside the building, further proof the HQ had been set to blow by the Marines.

A stairwell sloped down towards the main entryways into the site, Seela ducking her head as she followed him into one of the curving walkways labelled Administration. The path turned for a ways around the headquarters, terminating at an archway, and through it he got a good look at the inside of the Alpha Site, and the results left by the Marine’s choice to destroy the place.

Most of the ground was gone, leaving a pit of darkness that was just barely illuminated by the fires blooming on the ceiling. He knew from past visits and the mission briefing that the Site had many elevator shafts leading below ground, and he could still see remnants of them built into the sides of the giant pit, which more resembled a hollowed-out pillar of metal and earth. It was like standing on the top of a landfill, a sea of destruction down and around him.

“You are sure your data survived all this?” Seela asked, leaning over the sheer drop. With so much empty space below the building, it was a wonder the rest of the island hadn’t collapsed with it. The building creaked like the hull of an old ship at that moment, the two looking up at the skeletal remains of the headquarters worryingly.

“Have to get down there,” he said, pointing down into the darkness. The rubble filled the shaft with huge pieces of concrete, but there were doors spaced out down the length of the drop, places where elevators would usually stop. The way down looked precarious to put it lightly, but compared to what they’d fought through to get here, it was pretty tame.

“You are quite mad, Andrew,” she said. He didn’t know why, but hearing his name from her lips, or mandibles, made him smile. “Even the threat of a collapsing building isn’t stopping you. I love it.”

He activated his visor, his HUD fighting off the darkness, picking out the edges of the rubble to make the going easier. The shaft stretched down for maybe a hundred meters, but the shards of concrete that had served as the floor sloped against the walls, creating ramp-like slopes that looked navigable. As long as no more of the headquarters collapsed, they should be able to make their way down to the lower levels

He vaulted over the bus-sized pieces of debris, leveraging his descent with his gloved hands, the trickles of dust raining down from the Alpha Site the only other noise besides their footfalls. As they delved deeper into the pit, they passed by one of the archways built into the sides of the shaft, labelled with the number six, the automatic locks struggling to open when he triggered the motion detector.

He kept things slow so he didn’t fall on his arse, Seela holding no such reservations as she leapt down precarious falls with her hands firmly on her carbine, her long legs absorbing the impacts as she dropped after him. The light from the fires slowly faded into a point above them, the two passing by door number ten after a bit more footwork.

At one point, his boot slipped, the Major’s stomach lurching as his bodyweight leaned over an edge, the pit so deep down even his visor couldn’t help him see the bottom.

He felt a giant hand grip him by the bicep, hauling him back onto the slope of metal before he could fall.

“Where has that famous dexterity of yours gone?” she asked, lowering her hand when he found his balance. “Mind yourself.”

He thanked her, leading the way down to the base of the pit, the two delving as far as they could go after a few more minutes of descending. Pieces of rubble the size of cars plugged the base of the shaft, the walls webbed with cracks, the Major moving over to one of the larger breaks in the smooth stone and peeking through the sliver. An abyss yawned below their very feet, at least a hundred meters of complete emptiness creating a cavernous space directly underneath the shaft, and occupying it was a single structure, the Major viewing it from directly above at this angle.

It was a tower of metal and lights, jutting out of a floorspace too deep and dark to see. It was connected to the northern wall of the empty space via thick cables and walkways, the lighting strips hanging over the area providing enough light to see a few doorways down there, the number twelve signed above their arches.

“What is that?” Seela asked, joining him as she peered into the crack.

“Data centre,” he said. “That’s where we need to go. Shame we don’t have a jetpack or something, we could just drop down right on top of it.”

The door closest to the bottom of the shaft that wasn’t obstructed was level eleven, and the Major climbed up to it, quickly realising the electronics had been busted, the door staying firmly shut when he approached.

“You’re up, Seela,” he said, getting out of her way as she prepared herself. She wedged her fingers between the grooves, her muscles bulging beneath her suit as she wrenched the doors open through force alone. She pushed them back into their recesses with a pair of loud crashes, wiping her hands as she stood back.

“After you,” she said, gesturing for him to proceed.

The door led into a long hallway, featureless except for the ribbing pieces of metal spaced out along the length, the walls coloured a spartan grey. The far end of the corridor took a solid minute to trek, ending at another door, which Seela didn’t have to pry apart, it swished open automatically.

They stepped through into a space with a lot of open sight lines, far less cramped than the city streets, despite them being far underground. The ceiling was high above them, vaulted enough that a Pelican dropship would be able to navigate its way around in here. The open air was broken up in places by giant metal cylindrical structures, acting as both supports and electrical banks to store whatever power and other hardware the nearby data centre required to operate. Catwalks ringed around these columns, one of which extended out before Seela and the Major as they stepped into the space. The metal mesh rattled as they stepped onto the walkway, the short rail guards occasionally broken up by a low wall that sheltered a computer or terminal.

There was just as much empty air below the catwalks as there was above them, maybe fifty meters of a pure nothingness between the suspended walkway, and an even deeper sublevel of the Site.

“Gods,” Seela gasped, and for the first time he detected a hint of uneasiness in her voice. It wasn’t the height that troubled her, however, her eyes were aimed up at the roof.

He uttered his own curse. Built into the corners of the ceiling were massive clusters of green, webby substances, their surfaces pocked with hundreds of dark orifices, each hole spewing forth an ominous green mist. Parts of the webbing sagged towards the walkways, almost like giant, organic stalactites, nearly as thick around as the support columns and with rounded ends. At a glance they almost looked like giant wasp nests, the material holding a very resin-like quality, strong enough to keep the nests aloft by no other visible support.

“Bugs,” he sighed. “Thought I was done with these things.”

“You’ve encountered Yanme’e before?” Seela asked, looking down her carbine as she scanned the area.

“Just the once, back at Kikowani, and the bugger was alone.”

“We will have no such luck here,” she replied. The nests spanned in every direction, no inch of the original ceiling could be seen. “What is the plan?”

“There should be lifts or ways down all over this place,” he said, gesturing to the far wall where the catwalks trailed towards. “The data centre is that way, we should be able to drop down on it from over there.”

“We go through, then,” she said, shouldering her carbine with a look of determination on her face. “We should favour stealth in this situation, but I doubt the Hive is slumbering…”

“Why’s that?” he asked, the two stepping out onto the walkway, the grating wobbling with each step they took. No matter how lightly he stepped, the echo of his boots hitting the metal was very loud in this place.

“Look around you,” she answered. He did, and when he was about to ask her to explain, he saw what she meant. There were dead bugs sprawled along some of the catwalks, their green blood trickling over the edges. They passed one such corpse, the drone curled up like a dead spider, the Major noting its armoured chest was riddled with bullet holes.

“Someone’s been through here recently,” he said. “Could be one of my squad mates.”

“Perhaps,” Seela whispered. “Let’s not linger, I do not like being out in the open like this…”

The catwalk rounded one of the drooping nests, the pair passing close enough the Major could have reached out and touched the resin if he’d been utterly insane enough to consider it. He could hear a crackling sound as he passed by the alien construct, the noise reminding him of the sound a fire makes, and he realised with a grimace that the nest was flexing in on itself, as if something on the inside was constantly wriggling.

The path branched into two directions, ringing around another of the columns. They took the left branch, the path taking a gentle curve. As they made the turn, something stirred within the nest up and to their left, the two aiming their guns as something crawled out of one of the orifices.

Clawed hands gripped the rim of the hole, a drone pulling its thin body out of the lump in the nest, like a parasite emerging from an open wound. Its carapace was the same as the one he’d fought in the tunnel, tinted slightly orange, its thin, green eyes glowing brightly as it glanced around.

It settled its lifeless gaze on the Major and Seela, the two parties staring one another down for a long moment. Two pieces of chitin rose above its shoulders, a pair of insectoid wings emerging from the casings and flexing to their full lengths.

The wings began to blur as they flapped, the drone taking off with a flurry of buzzing sounds. The Major followed it with his shotgun, and he pulled the trigger, the slug hitting it centre mass and blowing it in two at the waist. The wasted drone listed through the air, the two parts slapping against the floor far below with a crash. The slug had overpenetrated its brittle body, the kinetic force tearing a chunk of the nest behind it apart, the resin falling like a giant breadcrumb.

“Stay behind me!” Seela ordered, stepping forward when they saw more insects pulling themselves out of the cavities, brandishing plasma pistols as they extended their gossamer wings. Three began to take flight, with another three gripping the nest and scampering up its lumpy surface for cover.

Seela fired from the hip, emptying her carbine into the emerging drones, shells breaking off their bodies as her shots found their marks. More started to emerge from the holes, but she took advantage of the bottlenecks, sweeping her weapon over the nest, bringing a cluster of them down before they could even draw their weapons.

“Always wondered if I would ever battle the Yanme’e,” Seela said as her shields absorbed a few incoming bolts. “Out of all the Covenant species, they were the most alien, and unpredictable.”

“Keep moving,” he said, sticking close to her flank. With nothing else to cover him on the walkway, Seela’s shields were his only protection.

The sound of beating wings grew in volume, the Major turning back to see a drone landing on the catwalk behind them, the bug brandishing two plasma pistols. He sent a slug its way before it could fire, the alien spinning like a top as it collapsed. Another drone landed to take its place, its wings folding back into the protective casings as it darted across the grating, this one holding a blade out in front of it.

He pulled the choke and fired again, dropping the sprinting bug, snarling as a stray bolt from somewhere above caught him in the ribs. His armour did its job, displacing the heat over a wider area so it didn’t melt through, but there was still enough kinetic energy to knock the wind out of him.

They moved across the walkway, firing as they went, his tall companion twisting on the spot and picking off targets of opportunity as more nests began to stir. The air was thick with movement, more and more drones pouring out of the nests. For all their numbers, a drone couldn’t survive a radioactive bolt to the chest, even glancing shots snapping their brittle carapaces apart as Seela emptied her carbine into a cluster of drones above them, the aliens dropping like paralysed flies.

He slotted fresh slugs out of his bandolier, reloading as he checked their progress. The catwalk they were on turned at a right angle, circling another support column, the obstacle thick enough to provide a small amount of cover.

Seela put as much of herself behind it, slamming in another cartridge and letting her shields recharge, the Major taking a knee nearby. He dropped another drone trying to get around them, the hulking insect clanging loudly to the walkway as its wings drooped uselessly over its shoulders.

A pair of drones flittered up onto a nearby column, their sharp fingers gripping the metal for leverage as they took aim with pistols, the plasma splashing against the walkway at the Major’s feet. He ducked into cover, trading fire with them and killing one, but the rest were keeping him pinned, the concentrated balls of gas sailing past in the dozens.

He and Seela coordinated, firing on the airborne bugs that made to flank, the lack of cover making them easy targets as they succumbed to shotgun shells and carbine bolts, their bodies disappearing over the sides of the walkway.

He heard something below him, and he looked through the metal grating to see a couple of drones climbing up the column from the level below them, turning their slatted, green eyes on their position. There was something almost spider-like in their movements, the way they scurried up the smooth metal with a worrying ease.

“Seela!” he warned, but his companion had already noticed. She dropped her carbine, brandishing her energy sword and igniting it with an electric snap. The drones scrambled up the column and jumped onto the catwalk when they were high enough, brandishing knives and pistols, the melee weapons the same design as the one the Major was intimately familiar with.

Her sword in hand, Seela charged the drones down, beheading two of them in one sweep before they could react. The Major emptied his shells into the flying bugs while she cleared the catwalk, stealing the occasional look as he watched her slice apart the drones.

The bugs who chose to clash swords with her were quickly dispatched, Seela changing her sword from one hand to the other so she could cleave to either side of her. She impaled a drone through the chest, another drone coming at her and driving its dagger towards her shoulder. She simply swatted the thing aside, the backhand strong enough to snap its neck, the bug falling to the catwalk in a twitching heap.

As much as she was a deadly force in melee, the drones in the air were more of a problem, peppering her with plasma bolts from on high, her shields saving her from a death of a thousand cuts. She pulled her sword-arm back, almost looking like she intended to throw the blade like a tomahawk, but then reconsidered, moving back to pick her carbine off the floor.

“My last cartridge,” she warned him, slapping the fresh cylinder into the weapon as she hunkered.

“Focus on the ones further back, my shotgun’s better up close.”

He fired off another shell, the buckshot catching two of the flying drones in its cone of fire, ichor spraying as he and Seela cut the bugs down to size. When only a few remained, hiding behind the column at their backs, they resumed their push, Seela’s shield taking the brunt of the plasma fire as the drones pursued.

As he paused to reload, he turned to see the catwalk straightened into a line, and at its far end it terminated at another pressure door, maybe fifty meters away.

They couldn’t afford to stop, the two firing while moving, Seela putting herself in front of the majority of the plasma fire. She couldn’t be everywhere at once, however, the Major taking another bolt, this time to his leg. He dropped, but Seela hauled him back to his feet, shoving him behind her as she continued firing from the hip.

“Do not falter!” she ordered, her flexing mandibles framed by her shield. “We will not die by the hands of these insects!”

He ignored the pain in his leg, joining her as he filled the air with buckshot, catching another bug that was strafing to the side, trying to get around Seela’s stubborn shields to get to the Major. The bugs were flittering between the columns, Seela picking off those who didn’t get to cover in time.

They rushed towards the end of the catwalk, the grating slagging in places as bolts filled the air around them. They skidded to a halt in front of the pressure door, but the two halves did not open.

“Wait!” the Major yelled, Seela moments away from ripping the thing right off its hinges. “We’ll seal it behind us, so the bugs can’t follow. Cover me.”

There was an emergency release panel to one side of the door, and he made his way over to it while Seela aimed her carbine back down the catwalk. More drones had dropped to the walkway with knives in hand, rushing Seela down without any sense of self preservation. She cut them down, then turned her weapon up at the flying counterparts, the bugs scattering for cover behind the columns as she unloaded her carbine at them.

Seela growled as her shields broke apart like shattering glass, taking a knee as she fumbled at her belt. The walls around the pressure door flared out a little, providing a hint of cover, but it was wasn’t much for the tall alien.

“I’m out!” Seela reported, placing her spent carbine on her back, the magnetic locks holding it in place. She let out a pained yell as a bolt caught her on the chest, charring the white plating.

“Here, use this!” he said, tossing her the shotgun. She caught it, flipping it into the correct position, pulling the stock against her shoulder. The Major keyed in the security sequence on the number pad, remembering the codes from the pre-mission briefings.

The shotgun rocked into her shoulder, Seela surprised by the recoil judging by her reaction, her hooves slipping against the grating. Despite the kick, the suppressor made the shot unusually quiet, the snap of gas drowned out by the plasma fire. The drone she’d been aiming at dropped to the walkway, flopping onto its back with a loud crash.

She pulled the trigger again, but it didn’t fire, Seela cocking her head as she flexed her finger once more. “It won’t fire!” she said, giving him an exasperated look.

“You gotta pump it!”

“‘Pump it’? I don’t know what that means.”

“You remember what we did in the shower?”

“Is this really the right time, Major!?”

“Pull the bottom of the barrel back!”

After taking a second to think, she gripped the choke with her fingers, the grooves catching on her digits as she made a pumping motion. The mechanism slid back with a satisfying clack, the spent shell tumbling out of the receiver. She braced her cheek against the grip, and fired again, another drone falling out of view as she cut its flight short.

The weapon looked tiny in her giant hands, but she started to get into the rhythm, each shot and pump more fluent than the last as she chewed through the bugs. Some of them began to retreat, regrouping with another fresh swarm of drones that flittered out of the nest to their right.

“Got it!” the Major announced, the pressure door sliding open with a quiet whoosh, another long tunnel stretching out before them.

Seela dashed after him as they pulled back, the grey walls enclosing protectively around them. Once Seela was inside, he punched the access codes into the panel on this side of the threshold, his progress frantic as the drones flew towards the doors like a swarm of pissed-off bees.

A pair of buggers dropped to the catwalk, their knives glinting as they raised their weapons over their heads like charging medieval knights. Before they could get any closer, Seela plugged the threshold with her bulk, blasting the drones back with a cone of lead.

He hit the confirm button, and the doors joined together, the Major getting one last look of the nests through the sliver before they slammed shut. There was a series of scratches as the drones piled up against the door, but the Major breathed a sigh of relief, unless the bugs had explosives, they wouldn’t be getting through.

He watched as Seela pumped the shotgun with one hand, her other arm hanging by her side as the spent shell discharged, his companion giving the weapon a satisfied nod. “I like this gun,” she said, turning to him. “It has plenty of kick for such a small thing, much like its owner, hm?”

“You okay?” he asked, wincing as he leaned on his knees, his burned leg aching. “That was way too close.”

“Do not concern yourself with me,” she said, moving to his side. “Your leg, it was shot, and you almost fell.”

“I’m alright,” he said, but Seela wasn’t having it, the alien kneeling down and giving him a questioning glance. She gave his leg a push, and he recoiled, he would have tripped over if Seela hadn’t reached out to catch him.

“You are not alright. Use your medigel, Andrew.”

He saw no point in arguing, so he did as she said, peeling back his BDU and rubbing a handful of gel onto the burn. When he was done, he put a little weight on his leg, and it was more tolerable.

“You work quick, little warrior,” Seela said, glancing back at the doors. “if I had broken those doors, this tunnel would be overrun with those things.”

“I think you could have taken them,” he added, half-jokingly. “You’re one mean alien with that energy sword. Clearly the Covenant made a mistake not giving you one of your own.”

“I’m flattered,” she cooed, wrapping her arms over his shoulders, resting her chin on his head. He returned her embrace, resting his hands on the small of her back.

They soon released each other, the Major gesturing for her to follow, as they still had a mission to see through. She passed him the shotgun, and they moved down the passage, the walls lit by Seela’s sword as she brandished it.

“Wonder how far those nests go,” he muttered as they walked. “Securing this city is gonna be difficult if they’ve made a whole colony underneath the streets.”

“You should see what the Yanme’e do on carriers when travelling between planets,” Seela added. “The Shipmasters give them entire decks to do as they please, this Hive is small in comparison.”

The hallway lowered into a ramp, the two following the incline until another door blocked the way. After Seela forced it open, the Major stepped through, finding himself in another area with a vaulted ceiling towering over his head.

An immense space stretched out to the right, the data centre occupying it, connected to where they’d emerged by a gently sloping bridge. The sightlines to the tower were blocked here and there by Covenant weapon caches, crates that were as tall as Seela with weapon racks built into the recesses. Fluorescent light strips built into the ground illuminated a bloody scene, Brutes numbering in the tens laying about in pools of their dark blood, the occasional Grunt and Jackal laying among the corpses.

The bodies carried on up the slope towards the tower, the Major trying to imagine what kind of carnage must have ensued as he and Seela proceeded. A Chieftain with his hammer nowhere to be seen caught the Major’s attention, the Covenant had brought a lot of firepower to take this place. As he and Seela moved towards the data centre, he noted that no plasma burns killed these Brutes, and there were no Sangheili around either.

“We seem to always miss the larger fights,” Seela said. “I see no human bodies, either Imps or Demons came through here recently. I know for a fact you are stubborn above all else.”

The thought that one of his squadmates could be in the tower right now was filling him with anticipation, but he had to control himself, this was a lot of Brutes for anyone to handle, and he had to assume the worst until proven otherwise.

After stepping over the bodies, the data centre towered above them, the pair standing at the entry doors, which were twice the height of Seela, though strangely enough they were wide open. Given this was where the most sensitive data in the city was stored, the fact he could just walk straight in was making him suspicious.

Just over the top of the tower, he could see a sliver of light through a crack in the ceiling high above them. That was the shaft leading from the Alpha Site, where they’d first spotted the tower.

“Let us complete your mission,” Seela said, giving him a pat on the shoulder. “I am interested to see this weapon, does it have as much recoil as your gun?”

“Not really,” he answered, leading the way as he stepped into the threshold. They made their way down the hallway cautiously, the passage ending at another doorway, this one open as well.

They stepped into the tower proper, the corridor petering out into a small room. It was dark, the Major activating his visor to cut back the shadows. Lining the base of the walls were tall, blocky machines, each one sporting a terminal where users could access the data stored on the servers. Ten of these data banks cramped the space, five on each side, their tops stretching to the roof. The place reminded him of a vault.

He swept his flashlight over a large machine in the middle of the room. At five meters across and just as long, its silver surface decorated with a circle of light not so different from the Superintendent’s logo, it stood out as the most important piece of equipment in the room.

“Well?” Seela asked, appraising the darkness. “I do not see any weapon.”

“Got a confession to make,” the Major began, stepping up to the large machine, slinging his shotgun over his back. “I said my mission was to retrieve a weapon, but you probably thought I was being literal. Remember how I told you about my sleeper agent?”

“Yes…” she said, her tone implying she wasn’t following.

“Well, my objective and him are one in the same. My team was sent here to get him out.”

“But there is no one here,” she said. “Unless there is a human hiding in the shadows back there. Come out!” she called. “We are here to rescue you!”

“He’s not human,” he explained. “He’s the AI that controls the city systems, he helped us through all those blast doors, remember? Everything the Covenant’s done up to now, has been recorded by the AI, and with that data, we’ll know what they’re after, and how we can stop it.”

She watched as he moved over to one of the terminals, pressing a button that powered on the little screen. “Sorry that I didn’t tell you before,” he added. “Wasn’t sure if I could trust you.”

“It is no matter, all I need to know is where our charge is,” she answered. “Speaking of, where is it?”

“Just a sec. What the….” He furrowed his brow as he tapped into the storage banks.

“Problem?” she asked.

“It’s not here,” he said, navigating through the menus. “The AI core is right here in front of me, but it’s… empty.”

He recalled his orders on how to compress the AI into a portable storage unit, but none of the subroutines were responding. Confused, he checked through the recent activity logs, and the very last one caught his attention. Data transfer complete. Emergency shutdown initiated.

“Did your team already extract your AI?” Seela asked, the Major shrugging at her.

“Don’t know, it says here the AI shut itself off after a data transfer, but it doesn’t say to where. I don’t recognise these passcodes used, either. It couldn’t have been one of my squad mates.”

“Other humans, then?”

“Maybe, but no one outside of ONI would know how to access the data core, unless the Brutes managed to splice in, but I doubt that.”

“So,” Seela began after a pause. “have we wasted our time? We came all this way only to find someone has already done the work for us? Brilliant…”

“Not exactly,” he said, returning to the terminal. “The core was shut down, but the data is still here on the backup drives. I can make our own copy and wipe the rest, make sure the Covenant never learns what the Superintendent learned…”

After extracting the data onto one of the drives and purging the system, he walked over to one of the data towers, pulling one of the portable drives out by the handle. It was the size and shape of a book, and he clipped it onto his belt, giving Seela a thumbs up when it was secured.

“That’s it?” Seela asked. “We fight tooth and nail, and the mission is completed with a few presses of a button?”

“Thought it’d be more difficult?”

“Thought there’d be a little more flare, at least,” she grumbled. “But, why bother copying the data?” she asked, glancing at the drive dangling from his hip. “someone has already made off with the core.”

“Never hurts to have a backup,” he said, shrugging. “Besides, I’d rather not leave this city empty-handed after all this trouble.”

“Fair enough,” Seela replied. “Let us return to the surface, and pray the Alpha Site has not collapsed in the meantime.”

-xXx-

The ONI headquarters was thankfully still standing when he and Seela backtracked their way to the surface, if one could call a building engulfed in flames as standing. Rings of flame still engulfed the high walls, the wreckage turned black within the smouldering inferno. As the two clambered out of the shaft, they heard one of the supports collapse somewhere above them, the clanging metal ringing out like a gong. The Major imagined that had they been delayed during their return trip, this way might have been blocked for good.

They had no choice but to retrace their steps through the Hive after recovering the data, as he had no sense of direction in the mazes on those sublevels. They had prepared for another fight with the buggers, Seela using the dead Brutes near the tower to refill on ammo, but the catwalks were somewhat absent of bugs when they returned. There were only a few handful of drones waiting for them, nothing for the hardened pair to worry about. Either they had killed enough of the aliens to keep them from mounting another attack, or the insects had simply lost interest in them. Seela thought it was a combination of both.

“The Covenant may have deployed the Yanme’e to help secure your data core,” she’d said. “Now that is gone, they left behind only a small holding force, and the rest moved on. That is my assumption.”

“Remind me to tell the Navy to burn out the city underground when we kick the Covenant outta here,” he’d replied. “Place is infested.”

When they emerged from the burning headquarters at long last, the Major had to shield his eyes as golden light poured down on the pair from above. This light wasn’t born from flames, however. It was sunlight, struggling to filter in through the cloudy sky. The rain had even ceased as well, the ground still covered in a wet sheen, but beginning to dry in the morning heat.

While the warmth of the sunrise was a welcome sensation, he and Seela still swept their weapons about as they moved out of the ruined Site, ready for any Covenant that might be waiting. The artificial island was still deserted, fortunately, the two lowering their guns as the battlefield loomed ahead of them.

As they began to walk back down the island, the ground suddenly began to quake, the two jerking their heads around in alarm. The noise morphed into a cracking sound, not unlike thunder, and a massive shape appeared in the sky above the city.

It was a Covenant cruiser, its purple hull glittering in the morning light. It was flying so low that it would collide with the skyscrapers if its pilots manoeuvred any closer, the ship looking enormous at this low altitude.

At the centre of its bulbous hull was a giant circle of light, beginning to glow with broiling energy. It discharged without warning, a pillar of plasma descending from the circle and lancing towards the city. He and Seela weren’t in immediate danger, the cruiser drifting towards something further inland, the roar of its devastating cannon soon drifting into a low thrum.

“The fleet begins its glassing,” Seela said, her head raised as she tracked another massive shape in the sky. Two more cruisers jumped in, the world trembling as they warped into the atmosphere, simply appearing in the span of a few seconds, the shimmering air the only indication of their imminent arrival.

“I knew a few people who said the homeworld would never get glassed,” the Major muttered, watching as the newly arrived cruisers activated their belly cannons. Glassing was the Covenant’s way of making a world unable to support life, melting away the crust of a planet until all that was left was a layer of superheated bedrock. “Guess they were wrong.”

“This is your homeworld?” Seela asked, her eyes wide. “I’m… sorry. I had no idea.”

“Don’t apologise,” he said. “You’re not the one burning our world. If these cruisers managed to get through the orbital defences, New Mombasa’s just the beginning…”

“Then we will stop them before that happens,” Seela said, patting him on the arm. “Your data, it will help the humans fight back, yes? We must get it to your superiors as soon as possible.”

“You’re right,” he said, pushing his gloomy thoughts aside, there was no point getting distracted on something he couldn’t control. “Come on, let’s get out of here.”

They made their way back across the former battlegrounds littering the artificial island, the various alien species and the humans laying exactly where they’d left them on their initial trip through. They passed beneath the gate on the far side, rushing around the Brute Choppers and moving for the idling Warthog.

He climbed into the driver’s seat, slotting his shotgun into the rack behind the seat, hitting the ignition with his thumb. Like before, the dashboard lights flickered on, joined by the satisfying purr of the engine as the vehicle rumbled to life.

He pressed down on the accelerator a little, the satisfying rev startling Seela as she rounded the hood, lifting a hoof over the passenger side of the chassis.

“It’s too cramped,” she complained, the chassis creaking as she clambered into the seat, her knees level with her face as she placed her hooves on the carpet.

“Gun’s there if you want,” he suggested, jerking a thumb at the flatbed.

She climbed back out, moving to the rear of the Warthog, the suspension shifting as she gripped the mounted gun by the handles, hauling herself up. The weapon was mounted on a rotating dial, and she brought the weapon forwards, the Major explaining how to fire it. She was a little tall to use the gun properly, but as long as they didn’t pass underneath any overhanging bridges, she’d be fine.

“Ready?” he asked, looking over the backrest at her, Seela giving him a thumbs up as the barrels of the chain gun rotated.

“Oh yes,” Seela replied. “Drive us to victory, Major.”

Pulling the vehicle into gear, he floored it, swerving round the Choppers and angling towards the light bridge. The horizontal plane was a little faded in the sunlight, but still activated, the Warthog lurching like they’d driven over a speed bump as they transitioned to its off-blue surface.

Driving over the hardened light was an odd experience to put it lightly. There were no flaws, no bumps, the suspension completely level as they crossed the alien pontoon. It was like driving over ice, not a hint of friction until they made it to the other side.

Since Warthogs were armoured enough to withstand small arms fire, the Major rammed straight into a derelict vehicle sitting on the street just for kicks, the small car simply crumpling as the Warthog rolled over it.

“We should have found one of these things much sooner!” Seela laughed, the Warthog ploughing through the street and leaving a clear path in their wake.

The Major chuckled, driving through the blast door imbedded in the wall that circled the lake, returning once more to New Mombasa’s streets. Unlike before, the claustrophobic sensation he’d felt in the dingy city was no longer there, the Warthog bulldozing into anything blocking the way. Nothing short of another heavy vehicle would stop them now, and the Major wasn’t about to waste time demonstrating the fact.

He gunned the engine, Seela’s joyful chuckling just reaching his ears as the speedometer ticked up to eighty, then ninety. The lack of rain, the heat of the sun, it felt nice to be able to experience these things after the night they’d gone through together.

He made a handbrake turn as the street split off in two directions, the Major spinning the wheel so they went to the right. Despite his lack of orientation in the streets, he knew off by heart where the extraction point was in relation to the Alpha Site, so he didn’t need the kiosks anymore.

The wind swept past his visor as he drove down the twisting streets, dozens of buildings and windows whipping by on either side, another junction closing in up ahead. As he made to make the turn, something further up the street caught his eye. There was a figure standing on the sidewalk, waving its arms above its head, and it wasn’t an alien.

“Who is that?” Seela called out, swivelling the mounted gun down, not quite aiming at the figure, but close enough to warrant caution.

The Major slowed down, the tires squeaking as they pulled up to the figure. They were dressed in armour not so different from the Major’s own getup, orange paint strips trailing down the chest plate breaking up the darkly-coloured Kevlar. They spread their two arms out in surprise, a battle rifle clutched in one of the gloves.

“Holy shit! Major is that you?”

“Good to see you, Joker,” he answered, his relief palpable. He hadn’t seen any sign of his squad mates after their botched crash, but at least one of them had made it.

“Likewise Sir. What the hell happened to you? Been trying to raise you all night, and…” Joker did a double-take on Seela, the alien giving him a friendly wave as he stared up at her as though only now noticing her presence. “Um, why do you have an Elite on the Vulkan?”

“Why do you have that Gods awful thing on your helmet?” Seela shot back. She was talking about the smiley face decal on Joker’s visor, the man struggling to form a sentence at the odd reply.

“I… how… when… you…?”

“She’s a friend, I’ll explain it all later when we’re outta here,” the Major said. “Get in, we’re exfilling.”

“I… okay!” Joker answered with a resigned shake of his head, taking the Major’s offered hand, hauling himself into the passenger seat. “Guess I’m calling shotgun,” he added, stowing his rifle as he settled in.

The Warthog roared to life once more, the Major pulling a one-eighty as they turned round, making for the junction. “So aside from picking up a hitchhiker, where have you been Sir?” Joker asked. “Hell would be my guess, you’re covered in blood and scratches, both of you.”

“We secured the Superintendent’s data,” the Major answered, patting the harddrive on his belt. “There were a few... complications, but it’s mission accomplished for us.”

“Really? We scrapped the mission soon as we landed miles from the Site,” Joker said, lurching in his seat as they drove over a piece of rubble.

“’We’?” the Major asked. “The rest of the team, they’re…?”

“Holiday and Rebar were moving to the evac last I heard,” Joker said, the Major relaxing in his seat. He’d assumed the worst, but they were all still kicking, it was a massive weight off his shoulders.

“You didn’t go with them?” the Major asked.

“Nah, doubled back to check on your pod while they did a little subterfuging. Didn’t fancy going around solo, but they drew enough attention for me to slip through. When I couldn’t find you, I didn’t know what to think, either you were dead or out there someplace, and I couldn’t get you on the horn.”

“Busted my helmet during the drop,” the Major explained. “Comms were shot.”

“Well we had to assume the worst after you didn’t check in. I was making my way to the evac when I heard the Warthog, and what do you know? It’s my CO with an Elite at his back. Fucking crazy night.”

He imagined Joker must have gone through some shit if he searched for his pod by himself, he probably had all sorts of encounters he wanted to share when they were as far away from New Mombasa as possible.

“And what’s your story?” Joker asked, looking over his seat as Seela, the alien jerking the mounted gun to the side. He didn’t seem all that fussed about her after the initial shock, maybe because she was clearly on their side, being on the gun and all that. “Noticed a bit of infighting in the Covenant recently. You an outcast? Turncoat?”

“Protector,” Seela answered. “the Major’s cause is my own, and I have saved him many times during our mission.”

“It was a group effort,” the Major interjected. “Plus I saved you in more ways than one, didn’t I?”

“And I rewarded your efforts to my fullest capability,” she replied, the Major’s cheeks warming beneath his helmet. Joker wasn’t quite following along, glancing between them as he settled in his seat.

They weaved through the streets, knocking aside any obstacles in their way. The road began to slope lower and lower, the urban landscape slowly losing its density as they transitioned into the outer limits of the city. In the distance, hills of earth began to take precedence, their peaks capped with rock formations with the occasional leafy canopy sprouting between them. It was almost like they were driving up to a Safari, and in a way that was exactly what it was.

Like the walled-in lake surrounding the Alpha Site, a twenty foot tall barrier enclosed these distant hills, the Major driving the Warthog down one of the streets that ringed the wall, the team soon pulling up to an entrance. He drove beneath the arch, the fluorescents on the roof lighting up a small stretch of sheltered road/ The engines echoed as they drove through the short tunnel, and then the world opened up once more.

Marula trees dotted the yellow landscape stretching out before them, their leaves waving in the gentle breeze. Walls of rock broke up the area, dirt tracks between them creating wide paths for vehicles to follow. Strips of grass added a splash of green to the otherwise dry surroundings, the air shimmering as the sun began to bake the rocky ground. In the backdrop, the towering skyscrapers of the city loomed, the urbanicity contrasting with the sudden blanket of nature.

“What is this place, Andrew?” Seela asked breathlessly, the mounted gun swivelling as she drank in the sights.

“Did she just call you Andrew?” Joker balked.

“It’s a nature reserve,” the Major explained. “Gives the locals a chance to see the native animals in their natural habitats, or at least it used to.”

“I much prefer this place over the city,” Seela replied. “The rock formations remind me of the homeworld.”

The Warthogs wheels churned up the gravel as he shifted gears, trundling their way deeper into the park. He knew from his mission reports that every aspect of the reserve was completely artificial, the park situated on a manmade island in the middle of the ocean, but the illusion was pretty convincing.

“Something up ahead,” Seela reported, her gun spinning up in preparation for a fight. They drove over a slight incline, the Major and Joker angling their heads to the right as they passed a pair of dead animals laying in the shade of a tree.

“Now that’s just cruel,” Joker said. “Covenant invade our home and kill our Zebras? Come on.”

“Why is it black and white?” Seela asked as the curve of the hill slowly concealed the animals behind them. “It does not blend well at all in this environment.”

“The black stripes absorb the heat while the white stripes cool them down,” Joker answered. “Keeps them nice and cool when they’re out in the sun.”

“Why do you know so much about Zebras?” the Major asked.

“Hey, I got interests outside of puns and guns,” Joker replied.

“And those?” Seela asked, pointing down the slope on the left, where more corpses were sprawled along the path. “What are they called?”

“Giraffes,” Joker said, chuckling bitterly behind his helmet. “I feel like we’re on a tour bus and I’m the info guy. If you look to your right: you’ll see dead, exotic animals. And if you look to your left: you’ll also see dead, exotic animals.”

“Can you get in touch with the rest of the squad?” the Major said before Joker could get another word in. “Tell them we’re on the way and to stall the boat?”

“One sec.” Joker put a hand to his helmet, tuning the commlink into their shared channel, fiddling with his wrist-mounted terminal as he patched in. With the open skies above them, there was much less interference, Joker able to interface into the team-wide frequency.

“Did you say boat?” Seela asked, turning on the flatbed to lean towards the Major.

“Yeah, we’re supposed to exfil to a Navy cruiser just off the coast,” he said. “they’re meeting us on a beach on the other side of the reserve.”

“Holiday, Rebar?” Joker asked, turning up the volume so the Major could listen in to the exchange. “It’s Joker, come in.”

“We read you,” a woman’s voice answered. It was Holiday. “What’s your status? Thought we’d lost you for a second there.”

“Status is green and mean. Picked up a couple of stragglers on my way back,” Joker replied. “Well, technically, they picked me up, but tomato tomato. The Major says hi.”

“He’s alive?” another voice answered, this one belonging to Rebar. It felt good to hear their voices, even though Joker had said they were alive, it was still a liberating experience. “So he was in his pod?”

“Not, uh, really,” Joker answered. “You know him, never one to stand around waiting for rescue. Tell you everything later, point is we got ourselves a Hog and we’re zooming over.”

“Good,” Holiday said, her voice coming through tinny on the speakers. “Navy boys were starting to get cold feet. I’ll tell them you’re almost here.”

“Don’t forget about my friend,” the Major said as he swept the wheel round, the truck trundling down the bend.

“Oh, right! Before you go,” Joker added. “Don’t uh, shoot the Elite. ‘Kay?”

“Very funny Joker,” Holiday answered. “See you soon. Out.” The connection severed, Joker giving the Major a sheepish shrug, who was frowning back at him.

“Hey, I tried, alright? Not my fault I’m the funny one. Anyway, I’m sure they won’t plug her full of holes. She’ll be fine.”

“She certainly will,” Seela answered. “She will simply put the ‘funny’ Imp in front of her to act as a shield, should the humans try anything.”

The Warthog drifted as they rounded a wall of rocks, the Major occasionally lifting his eyes up to the broken tether and the alien cruisers on the horizon. They were so close to leaving this place, but the Covenant was moving fast, soon the city would be lost for good and the whole city would be glassed.

“So,” Joker began, stealing a glance to make sure Seela wasn’t listening in. “You and an Elite, hm?”

“Yeah,” the Major replied.

“A whole night with an alien must have been quite the experience,” Joker continued. “You both seem more than acquainted.”

“We worked well together,” the Major said, looking at him, then back at the road.

“Well enough to be on a first name basis,” Joker noted. “You improving interspecies relations, Sir?”

“What are you getting at?”

“I think you know what,” Joker said, holding the Major’s gaze when they shared a glance. Joker’s visor was reflective, but he had an inkling the clown had a stupid smile on his face behind the helmet.

“Ready yourselves!” Seela said, her raised voice snapping the two into action. “On the left, aircraft!”

The Major looked through the windshield to where she was pointing, his eyes tracking a pair of Covenant aircraft swooping over the canyons. These were single-occupant, propulsion fighters, with a rounded nose and a pair of wing canards which terminated in small gravity drives. The fighters were small, six meters from nose to tail, but they were packed with firepower and were more manoeuvrable than the standard human fighter craft.

The Banshees soared low across the park, flying perpendicular to where they were driving. Seela turned her gun on them, tracking their progress, but refraining from pulling the trigger, as it didn’t seem like they’d been spotted yet.

“They’re going straight to the evac!” Joker said. “Heads up Holiday,” he added, patching into the channel. “You got Banshees moving in your direction.”

That wasn’t all the Covenant had, however. Following the Banshees at a distance was a Phantom, painted over in the same purple colour that was present on every Covenant dropship, the only difference being the alien symbol decaled onto the nose.

“It’s him,” Seela growled, turning the chain gun on the flying dropship. “This is no stray patrol.”

As if to confirm her words, the Phantom banked in their direction, its nose dipping as it picked up speed. He could make out the pair of guns bristling from its belly swivel on their gimbals, tracking their Warthog.

“What does she mean, it’s ‘him’?” Joker asked, pulling back the bolt on his rifle in preparation.

“She’s being hunted by this Brute leader,” the Major explained. “That’s his dropship. Seela do me a favour and bring that thing down for good.”

“With pleasure.” She opened up on the approaching dropship, a stream of tracer rounds connecting the barrel to the aircraft’s signature decal, the Major’s helmet dulling the roar of the mounted Vulkan gun. The Phantom banked away, sparks flying off its hull, its chin-mounted turret rocking back into its housing as it returned fire. Unlike before, he and Seela now had a weapon that could penetrate its armour, the Phantom’s pilot aware of the fact as it swerved out of the line of fire.

The trail of plasma bolts cut through the road ahead of the Warthog, the Major swerving the truck out of the way, Joker lurching in his seat as he pulled a rough turn.

“We got more Banshees nine o’clock!” Joker warned, pointing his rifle over the Major’s helmet.

From roughly the same direction the Phantom had appeared, another pair of Banshees flew into view, banking their noses down in a dive. He could hear their gravity drives scream as their pilots gunned the propulsors, the Covenant dropship pulling back to give them a clear shot.

The leading Banshee fired the fuel rod cannon mounted on its chin, the bright green bolt falling to the road like a comet. The Major pulled the wheel hard, narrowly avoiding the resulting blast by a couple of meters, the Warthog lifting onto two wheels by the shockwave.

“Can you keep us steady?” Joker complained, shouldering his battle rifle as he took aim at the retreating Banshee. The weapon was semi-automatic, the recoil jumping in his arms as he tagged it with armour piercing rounds. The bullets ripped into one of the wings, severing it near the middle of the length, the aircraft listing as it swooped high into the air.

The second Banshee was readying its own dive bomb, but Seela was ready for it, the chain gun making the truck shake as she opened up on it. The thin armour on the aircraft’s nose broke apart, flames seeping out of the fuselage as it plunged to the ground, detonating like a grenade as it smashed into one of the rockwalls on the right.

“I’m starting to become partial to Heretic weapons!” Seela said, seemingly enjoying herself as she watched pieces of the ruined Banshee roll down the slope.

She turned the Vulkan on the Phantom, but the pilot wasn’t taking any chances after the Banshee’s demise, dipping behind a canyon and breaking line of sight with Seela’s gun.

The second Banshee returned for another pass, the Major swerving out of the way as it sent a stream of plasma down at them. It was flying so low that they could have reached out and touched its hull as made a pass over the Warthog. Joker and Seela spun round to track it, Joker twisting his torso slightly as he strafed it with bullets, catching the other wing and breaking that apart too, the aircraft delving into a spiral as it plummeted to the ground behind them.

“One for me,” Joker said, ejecting the mag on his rifle and slapping in a fresh one.

“Surely you jest?” Seela exclaimed over the roaring engine. “I shot it more times than you did.”

“Hey I took out both its wings, that makes it my kill.”

“Both of you stow it,” the Major snapped, pointing ahead of them. “You’ve both got plenty of chances to rack up your kills!”

Rounding the next bend, they came across a small expanse, the canyons spreading apart to make an oval-shaped clearing. There was a building off to one side, presumably a tourist centre, and in the carpark surrounding it was a group of Grunts, plus a few Jackals. They were lingering around a pair of Ghosts, the vehicles sitting idly on the concrete. The squat aliens seemed to be taking a nap, and they jumped out of their skins as the Warthog closed in, Seela spinning up the chain gun as she took aim.

The Major pulled the Warthog into a continuous drift, circling the group of Covenant in a clockwise direction, giving his companions an open line of fire. Joker peered down the scope as he unloaded round after round at the aliens, the methane tanks the Grunt’s wore splitting apart to spill their collected gases. It was like a shooting gallery, made all the more chaotic as Seela pulled the trigger on her mounted gun, her sights trailing from the Jackals to one of the idle Ghosts, cutting a line through the alien ranks.

She riddled the smooth hull of the Ghost with bullets, leaving craters in the plating, blue-coloured flames leaking from the damaged seams. Her rounds must have tagged some vital system, the vehicle soon exploding in a cloud of smoke, shrapnel raining down on the Covenant and sending the ones closest to the blast flying.

The Major saw one of the Grunts push aside a panicking Jackal to climb into the remaining Ghost, the engines lining the belly of the vehicle igniting. The vehicle rose off the ground, as though an invisible force was pushing it away from the concrete.

The thrusters on its skirt ignited, the craft pivoting until the forward-facing cannons on its nose were aiming at their Warthog. It peppered their truck with two continuous streams of plasma, the bolts of gas splashing against the windscreen and the front tires, the Ghost starting to mirror the Warthog’s drift.

The windscreen broke apart, the glass melting in the upper corner, but the Warthog was designed to take punishment, the Major gunning the engine and initiating another turn to try and through off the Ghost’s aim.

“Take that Ghost out!” he ordered, reaching up to wipe the frame clear of glass, shards raining down onto his lap.

Seela swivelled the mounted gun on the Covenant vehicle, the Ghost sliding over the ground without any hint of friction, like a giant floating hockey puck. Tracer rounds filled the gap between the circling vehicles, Seela catching the Ghost on one of its skirts. The craft crashed against its own inertia, tipping onto its side, the Grunt pilot spilling out to fall to the dirt. Seela cut it down with a short burst of fifty-calibre rounds.

Joker had mopped up the rest of the Covenant with his rifle, leaving the carpark a bloody mess of ruined vehicles and fallen aliens. The Major swerved the Warthog round the massacre, the suspension sagging as they drove over a bump, moving down a path leading out of the clearing.

“Alright you definitely got more kills than I did,” Joker admitted. “I’ll give you that one, even though you’ve got the bigger gun.”

“That sounds like a you problem, Jester,” Seela replied.

“It’s Joker,” he corrected. “You wanna swap seats? It’s a lot harder to aim without a stabiliser and Major shortshift over here who can’t drive straight.”

“Anyone got eyes on the Phantom?” the Major asked, ignoring his squad mate’s words. His chair shifted on its springs as they drove up and over a crest, the road bending to the left.

“No, but I can hear it,” Seela answered. “The Brutes linger, they want to see where we go, or perhaps they await reinforcements.”

“We’re going to lead them straight to the evac point,” Joker warned.

“Haven’t got a choice,” the Major replied. “We can’t wait around, we’ll just get overrun. Best bet is to just get outta here.”

For a few minutes they were left alone, Joker slotting a fresh mag into his rifle, Seela pulling back the loading bolt on the chain gun. She kept her eyes to the sky as they crested another hill, Covenant spaceships filling the clouds as more cruisers began to jump in, disgorging Phantoms and Banshees from their docking bays. There had to be thousands of Covenant aircraft up there by now.

“At least you got the data in the end,” Joker muttered, his helmet angled upward. “Don’t know how it’ll help us wipe out these alien freaks, present company excluded, but here’s hoping.”

“ONI wouldn’t send us out here if it wouldn’t make a difference,” the Major replied.

“Yeah, well, data or not, that’s a lot of alien ships in Earth’s atmosphere right now.”

They took another turn through the canyons, and then their vision opened up, a giant unimpeded view of the ocean spreading out before them. The dirt road sloped down towards a beach, soil and grass giving way to sand and shallow water. The clearing was dotted with tall pine trees, and the Major could see figures standing behind them, rifles trained at the road as they took up firing positions.

Sitting in the middle of the strip of water was a Navy patrol boat, the radar dish on its roof spinning slowly. There was a mounted Vulkan gun on its prow, nearly identical to the one on the Warthog, a human standing behind it clutching the handles. He could see a few figures moving inside the raised cabin where the Captain would stand, its roof sprinkled with antennae and other sensory equipment.

There were about ten figures surrounding the boat, the Major recognising the signature green armour used by the common Marine. They looked antsy, but they lowered their weapons as he pulled the Warthog to a stop nearby. They soon raised them again, however, when they noticed Seela manning the gun.

“Marines!” the Major shouted, vaulting out of the truck and removing his helmet, raising his voice so all could hear him. “I am Major Dawson, ONI, and unless you want me to have a strong word with your superiors, you will stand down! This Elite is not to be harmed, she’s carrying vital intelligence on the Covenant’s plans, intelligence that’s beyond your pay grades.”

At the mention of ONI, the Marines got the message, lowering their guns while giving Seela exasperated, if suspicious looks. She stepped off the flatbed, the Warthog’s suspension rocking, standing by the Major’s side and giving him a confident nod, wary to keep her hands clear of her sword and carbine. He might not see her as a threat, but Marines had been trained to shoot Elites first and ask questions later.

“Welcome back to the living, Major,” one of the soldiers present said. It was Holiday, her lighter variant of specialist armour giving her away. Her synthetic arm whirred as she offered him a handshake, the Major noting it was scorched near the elbow joint. “See you’ve been busy,” she added, nodding towards Seela. “And that Joker wasn’t… joking. Suppose we’ll get at least something out of this mission.”

“That and more,” he replied, giving the hard drive a pat. “Copied the Superintendent’s data, that’s a wrap in my books.”

“Then let’s get the hell out of this city,” she said. She turned to the rest of the onlooking troops, raising her voice. “Marines, back on the boat, we’re-”

The report of a plasma cannon drowned out her words, the Brute leader’s Phantom appearing over the hill and banking to the side, its ventral doors wide open. A Grunt manning the side turret in the bay hammered their position with plasma fire, the chin cannon of the dropship joining the volley of fire, the specialists and the Marines diving for cover as the beach was strafed.

One of the trees stood in the way of the barrage of plasma, the wood severing near the base, the trunk listing with a loud snap. Seela launched towards the Major as it began to fall, pulling him close and shielding him with her body before he could even think, the trunk bouncing harmlessly off her back.

“Thanks,” he said, Seela nodding as she hauled him to his feet. As the Marines turned their rifles on the dropship, the Major noted the boat had been its target. A line of plasma had scorched it from prow to stern, the glass canopy on the driver’s cabin slagging in on itself. He watched as a pair of Marines leapt off the bow, and not a second too soon, licking fires blooming from one of the rear compartments, what must have been the fuel tank cooking off.

As the men emerged from the water, wading back to shore, he noticed one of them was a specialist. It was Rebar, the man clutching a sniper rifle in his hands. Wiping his visor clear, he levelled the long barrel of the rifle, aiming up at the circling Phantom. There was a loud bang as he pulled the trigger, the Major just able to catch the contrail of the round as it lanced into the sky, hitting the door gunner right between the eyes, the Grunt falling into the water with a splash.

“You good, Rebar?” the Major called out, his counterpart giving him a curt nod.

“Better than our ticket out of here. Instruments are fried, she’s dead in the water, literally.”

“Call in another one,” he ordered, Rebar nodding as he put a finger to his helmet. The chorus of gunfire began to recede, the Phantom falling back after making its initial pass, the decal on its nose catching the light as it pivoted. It dropped low over the canyons they’d driven in from, the unmistakable silhouettes of Brutes filling the troop bay as it neared the ground.

“What do we do, Sir?” one of the Marines asked, directing his question at the Major. As the highest-ranking officer around, they were looking to him for leadership.

“Form a firing line, Marines,” he shouted, his tone commanding as he pointed. “Navy’s sending us another boat, and we’re gonna hold here until they arrive. Rebar, status?”

“Replacement’s on the way,” Rebar answered. “ETA: not soon enough. Ten minutes.”

The Marines shuffled behind any bit of cover they could find, kneeling behind fallen trees and going prone around the chassis of the Warthog. An alien cry carried on the wind a moment later, the expanse of the park giving it a foreboding echo.

“The fuck was that?” one of the Marines asked.

“The call of a Brute,” Seela answered. “They’re alerting any other packs nearby.”

He could see the Marine’s helmeted heads were swivelling towards each other, the men clearly unnerved about the destruction of their boat, and the strange alien shouts that were responding. He had to say something to keep them in line.

“This is Earth, Marines,” he yelled. “Make these Covenant bastards bleed for every inch of her! Hold the line!”

They gripped their guns with a fresh determination, the specialists joining the defence, their backs lit by the glow of their flaming would-be rescue boat. Together they numbered at thirteen, including Seela, the alien waving at Joker to get his attention.

“You can have your big gun, Jester,” she said. “I shall stay on the ground.”

Joker climbed onto the flatbed, sliding back the loading bolt on the mounted gun as he swerved the barrel towards the slope. The road they’d driven down was the only land path leading out of the beach, which should provide enough of a bottleneck to give them an edge.

The Major took up position beside the Warthog, crouching shoulder to shoulder with Seela and Holiday, the Major lowering his voice so that only the two of them could hear him.

“If anything happens to me,” he began. “Take the drive and get out of here. This data is all that matters.”

“With respect Sir, stow that crap,” Holiday answered. “We’ve survived more botched missions than this.”

“I concur,” Seela added. “Only Jiralhanae lives will be lost in this glorious stand of ours.”

“Been a bit of a circle for you, hasn’t it?” he asked her, loading slugs into his shotgun, as they would add to his weapon’s effective range. “When we met, you were holding out against the Covenant.”

“But this time, I have a little help from my fellow Heretics,” she said, patting him on the back. “And now I follow a much more noble cause, rather than self-immolation. Let us make sure the Brutes never forget what we accomplished this day.”

After a few tense moments of waiting, a wave of Grunts crested the hill, their stumpy legs slipping in the dirt as they waddled down the slope. Jackal snipers peaked their feathered heads over the terrain behind them, levelling needle rifles in their thin arms. Lastly came the Brutes, a collection of Minors and Majors wielding everything from carbines to rifles to spikers, Brute-made weapons that were a blend between ballistic and plasma-powered guns, capped with wicked bayonets. The aliens outnumbered the humans two to one, though that was par for the course for humanity at this point.

The Marines opened up on the charging aliens, hundreds of tracer rounds filling the air as the Grunts were gunned down, the soil splashing as stray bullets chewed up the earth. Some of the waddling aliens were simply dismembered in the maelstrom of bullets, blue blood spraying, their bodies and pistols tumbling down the incline.

The Jackals and Brutes fired from the top of the slope, the plasma leaving green and blue contrails as the bolts sailed towards the beach, the Marines ducking as the gas sailed over their heads. Rebar rested the bipod on his sniper against a fallen tree, peering through the scope as he began to counter-snipe the Jackals, felling the Covenant ranks with frightening precision.

While the cannon fodder fared poorly in the charge, the Brutes were able to gain ground, but Joker was ready on the Warthog, the ends of the barrels glowing red-hot as he filled the charging aliens with lead. The Vulkan gun was designed to counter vehicles, and the Brute’s shields didn’t stand up to the barrage for long, the giant aliens slumping to the ground, pieces of their power armour shattering under the concentrated firepower.

Four Brutes lingered at the top of the hill, deterred by their decimated charge and keeping out of the line of fire. Some of the Marines took advantage of the lull to whoop and holler, but Holiday was quick to put them in their place.

“They’re just testing our defences!” she called out. “Get ready for more!”

The screech of engines drew the eyes of the defenders upward, a pair of Banshees breaking off from the Covenant airforce and diving towards the beach. Joker brought the Vulkan round, and opened up, the aircraft banking away to try and make themselves as hard a target as possible.

Lower in the sky, another Phantom broke off from its patrol route deeper into the park, its mounted guns hammering the beach as it hovered over to the other side of the crest, another squad of aliens jumping out of its loading bay. One of the giant plasma bolts collided with a Marine to the right, the man crumpling without a sound, his comrades shifting him onto his back to check his vitals.

“They charge once more!” Seela announced, her carbine jumping in her hands as she fired up the slope.

Another wave of Grunts came into view, the Marines meeting them with a hail of bullets, the weapons only ceasing when the men needed to reload. As the Grunts were mopped up, small, cylindrical devices arched over their falling bodies from the opposite side of the hill, the pieces of metal rolling to a stop in the gravel. They landed too far away to cause any real alarm, until they activated.

Parts of the small devices lit up in bright blue, a wall of plasma the shape of a scale projecting out of the points of light. The Major had seen portable barriers in Covenant staging areas, but never used to cover an advance like this before. They were being tossed by Brutes, he noticed, the aliens sprinkling the shields down the slope randomly, only stopping when there were ten or so barriers littering the area.

Only now did the Brutes and Jackals make their descent, skidding to a halt behind the deployed shields, the former knocking some of the surviving Grunts aside so that they could fit their larger bulks into the new cover. Bullets bounced uselessly off the wavering walls of energy, the Brutes holding their weapons out and sending bolts down at the beach, exposing as little of their bodies as they could.

“Seela, focus on those shields!” the Major ordered, Seela switching her fire onto the barriers. He noted that Holiday was holding a plasma pistol in one hand, joining her as they overwhelmed the improvised defences with energy, as they were more effective in bringing down shields than conventional bullets were.

The Covenant made some progress down the slope, but the barriers were only big enough to fit one Brute behind them, the aliens scrambling for any free piece of cover, the Marines mowing down those unlucky enough to be caught in the open. The barriers were a hindrance, but not invincible, the Major seeing one such shield collapse, the Brute hiding behind it quickly riddled with bullets soon after, but they used up a lot of ammunition, something they didn’t have an abundance of.

As the Covenant pushed through the bottleneck, Joker was fighting his own battle for the skies, steam rising from the barrels of the mounted gun as he continued to ward off the swooping Banshees. The Major glanced up to see him clip one of the aircraft along the wing, the nose plummeting down to the beach as the flight systems failed, the craft leaving a giant groove in the sand as it crashed into the ground, tossing up a huge cloud of sand. As the powder cleared, he saw the Banshee was remarkably intact despite the crash, the craft landing in the middle of the battlefield.

The fuselage opened up like a peg, and a Brute tumbled out, the Major noting the inside of the Banshee was lined with hundreds of little lights, the dash and control systems angled so that the pilot had to basically lie prone to fly the craft.

The Brute pilot lifted himself to a knee, reaching for a sidearm on his thigh, but the Marines quickly put him down, the Brute slumping against the crashed Banshee without a sound.

The Major pumped his shotgun, the spent casing flying out to join the growing pile of empty shells at his feet. When he was reloaded, he riddled a sprinting Jackal with a slug, sending it toppling over with a chunk of its torso missing. The next wave was hammered into the ground, the surviving Covenant pushing one another aside like they were playing some perverted version of musical chairs as they fought for the limited amount of barriers protecting the slope. He almost felt bad for the poor Grunts. Almost.

The Phantom with the decal hovered behind and above the advancing Brutes, the troops framed by its glowing engines that shimmered the air, the plasma turrets taking the occasional potshot at the defenders, the bolts sailing right over the heads of the alien troops.

“Joker focus on that Phantom!” the Major yelled. “If we don’t take it out they’re just gonna tag our boat as soon as it gets here!”

“I can’t!” Joker answered. “Clever asshole’s staying out my line of fire!”

As if to demonstrate, the moment Joker banked the gun on the dropship, the pilot would dip away, the Phantom hiding behind the walls of rock like it was taking cover. Joker couldn’t exactly afford to switch his focus off the remaining Banshee anyway, the fighter occasionally diving low to strafe the beach, a Marine caught in the path of its cannons crying out as his green chest plate was slagged.

The Marines and specialists reloaded during the lull in the fighting, before another wave of Covenant moved into view. The park must have been crawling with Covenant if there were no other Phantoms around to drop them off. The Major’s shoulder began to sting with all the shooting he was doing, the Covenant taking more ground as the Brutes chucked more portable barriers like they were softballs, the slope becoming more and more obscured behind the walls of energy. He set his sights on a Brute darting between the shields, its giant hand rising over his shoulder, a spike grenade clutched in its furred fingers. A slug tore its shields apart, startling the Brute long enough that a follow-up shot from Rebar brought the alien down. The spike grenade stabbed into the dirt, but didn’t go off.

Tens of Grunts and Jackals began their advance, the Major directing the Marines fire on the Brutes in charge of deploying the barriers, as they were the bigger threat. The alien bodies were starting to pile up now, some piles two or three deep, the newly arrived aliens having to step over their fallen brethren in order to continue their descent.

“I’m outta ammo!” a Marine to the left yelled, his assault rifle firing off one last burst. Another man tossed him a spare, but his rigging was nearly empty too, their stand couldn’t last much longer at this rate if they had to resort to sidearms.

The Brutes at the forefront of the charge tossed more barriers towards the beach, the lines of fire slowly cutting off as the shields reached the level ground. One of the Marines stood out of cover, pulling the pin on a fragmentation grenade and tossing it over the shields, the explosive detonating and sending a pair of Jackals flying, clouds of soil raining down on the heads of the nearby Brutes.

Some of the other Marines joined in, the explosives leaving craters in the sand as the front ranks of the charge were cascaded in shrapnel. It was like the beach was being pounded by mortar fire, the Brutes wary of advancing much further as the bolder members of their packs were dismembered in the blasts.

The Covenant charge started to falter, but just as the Major began to think their reinforcements were spent, another pack of Brutes appeared at the top of the hill, one of them standing out more than the others. His armour was the colour of a setting sun, his ornate helmet adding two feet to his overall height. A large gravity hammer was glued to his back, but that wasn’t what had the Major concerned. Hauled over the alien’s shoulder was a fuel rod gun, the Covenant’s more portable version of their heaviest weapon.

“The coward reveals himself at last,” Seela growled. “It’s the Captain Major.”

“Just how big of a boner does this guy have for you?” Joker asked, turning the Vulkan on the Brute leader, having finally dealt with the last Banshee, the craft plummeting into the water.

“The biggest,” Seela answered.

Joker opened up on the Captain Major, but he barely sent the beginnings of a burst downrange before the Brute fired his heavy weapon, the handheld launcher rocking in his arms as a bolt the size of an engine block arched through the air.

“Get clear!” the Major shouted, hauling a Marine away. “Outta the Warthog Joker! Now!”

Joker leapt clear, shouting a string of curses as he barrelled into Holiday, the two tumbling into the sand. The fuel rod impacted the vehicle a moment later, the chassis splitting apart like an eggshell, a green-tinted mushroom cloud erupting from the Warthog’s compromised fuel tanks, wheels and parts of the armour thrown away by the blast. The Major felt his feet leave the sand as the shockwave rolled through the beach, his helmet meeting the sand a moment later as he landed hard on his front.

As the ringing in his ears settled, he lifted himself onto his elbows, his senses slowly returning as he looked round. It was chaos. The Brutes had used the blast to close in, deploying more of those barriers, some of the aliens going berserk and rushing into melee range. The Marines cut one of them down as it hobbled on all fours like a giant ape, but another got in close, swiping at the man unfortunate enough to be in its way, his helmet twisting with a sickening crack as he was sent back, tumbling into the surf.

He turned and saw Rebar moving in, firing his sniper rifle from the hip at the attacking Brute, the round packing so much kinetic energy it simply blew a chunk through the alien’s torso, leaving a gap the Major could see straight through.

He looked round for his shotgun, seeing nothing but boot prints in the sand. His search was cut short as someone grabbed at his rigging, Seela thrusting her carbine into his hands as she sat him up. “Help your squad,” she said, reaching down and turning on her energy sword with a flex of her hand.

“Where are you going?” he asked, Seela turning her back on him.

“To avenge my kin.”

He couldn’t get another word out before she fell into a run, delving into the fray, swiping a Jackal across the neck with her sword, the little alien dying before he could even turn his beak on the charging Elite.

He peered down the blocky housing of the carbine, firing the weapon just like he would a battle rifle, bringing down a pair of Grunts circling to the left. It was hard to tell who’d been lost alongside the Warthog’s destruction, but he saw that Joker was still up, hauling a wounded Marine towards the surf, as far away from the fight as was possible. Holiday was nearby as well, handing her magnum to a Marine who’s rifle was running dry.

As he emptied the carbine into the Covenant, he paused to watch as Seela plunged her blade into a Brute that stood in her way, pushing her way through the Covenant lines until she was in the back ranks. It didn’t take a genius to see where she was going, the ten foot tall Captain Major bellowing orders from the rear.

The Brute leader noticed her approach, Seela cutting down a Minor that made to intercept her, slicing through its power armour almost in annoyance. The Covenant were starting to thin out, a temporary halt in the gunfire allowing the Major to hear her exchange with the Brute in the golden armour.

“Hello again, little sister,” the Captain Major said, his footfalls leaving small craters in the dirt as he approached. “You’ve eluded me for so long, yet now you come directly to me? Looking for a good death?”

“Yes, yours,” Seela snarled, holding her sword out to the side.

“Your brothers sought the same thing,” the Brute replied. “I sucked the marrow from every one of their bones, you will be no different.”

He levelled his fuel rod gun, Seela charging towards him at the same time. The Captain Major fired off a single bolt, but it went wide, Seela circling the ball of plasma and lunging for the Brute, her sword aimed for his chest.

The Brute clocked her over the head with the fuel rod, Seela stumbling back, planting her hooves in the dirt to steady herself. Her shields had weathered the blow, framing her body in white light as she dropped into a crouch, swiping her sword from right to left. Her opponent stepped out of the arc, quickly realising she was keeping close enough to render his fuel rod ineffective. He dropped the massive weapon, reaching over his shoulder and gripping the haft of his gravity hammer, brandishing it at her in a challenge.

They began to circle one another, the number of portable barriers nearby creating a small ring for the two to square off amidst the firefight, the sightlines too broken up for the Major to help her.

The Brute swapped his hammer from a one-handed grip to two, keeping Seela guessing as he darted in for a swing, the generator on the head making the air around the hammer quiver as the gravity pulsers idled.

She parried the strike with her sword, the weapons interlocking, a bright flash of sparks accompanying the collision. Seela pulled away, the Brute swiping at her legs as she backed up, kicking up a curtain of soil as the hammer grazed the ground, the sheer mass behind the hammer nothing short of titanic.

Seela squared off with him, her opponent constantly angling the hammer in different directions, striking out again, this time with the haft. She knocked the attack aside, but the Brute followed up with another swing, bringing the hammer in for an overhead strike, like a lumberjack about to sever a log of wood.

She stepped to the side, the ground shaking as the hammer dug a pit into the dirt, the Brute heaving it out of the crater, but not before Seela darted in, swiping at his ribs. Her sword clashed against his shields, bouncing off them as though they were magnetically opposed, the Brute snarling in his native language. It was a battle of attrition, to see who could get through the other’s shields first to draw blood.

Pressing the attack, Seela threw herself into the Brute, hammer meeting sword as the two aliens parried one another. Seela was more agile, but the Brute had the strength and mass that even a glancing strike from his hammer could be fatal, the design of their weapons reflective of the species’ favoured fighting style.

The Brute held his hammer horizontally, pushing the long bar into Seela’s chest, knocking her off balance. Taking advantage of the breathing room, he raised the hammer like it was a baseball bat, giving it a monumental swing.

Seela blocked it, another shower of sparks raining onto her hooves as the weapons clashed, stopping the hammer inches from her face. The Brute exposed his tusks in a grin as he activated the gravity generator, a sonic blast sending Seela reeling. She tumbled to the ground, her knees slipping in the dirt as she was sent a good five meters back. A blast that close would have crushed a human’s skull, but Seela wasn’t out of it yet, clutching her head with a trembling hand.

“How pitiful, that the last of the Sangheili is female, and a Heretic,” the Captain Major chuckled, stalking towards Seela as she struggled to her knees. “Your ancestors must be so disappointed. Perhaps you can gleam back some dignity, and accept your fate.”

He beckoned to Seela, heaving his hammer over his shoulder as he chuckled, Seela shooting him a disdainful look. Her mandibles flexed in a silent rage, but she held herself back as she wiped at the blood leaking from her temple. The Seela in the past might have taken the bait, but she wasn’t about to throw herself into death for the sake of honour, the Major could tell by the look on her face that she was done with that outlook.

She glanced to the corpse of a nearby Brute, Seela sliding over the dirt and reaching for it, plucking a plasma grenade from its belt. Still crouching, she tossed it, sticking the Captain Major on the thigh, the Brute snarling in surprise by the swift throw.

Blue flames engulfed her opponent, but rather than end him right there, his shields protected him from the blast, the shimmering barrier collapsing as the sudden influx of collecting energy melted away his defences.

Her powerful legs flexing like springs, Seela launched towards the Brute, bringing the two points of her sword down on the disoriented alien. The Captain Major blocked with his hammer, planting the haft into her stomach with enough force to impale her, had her shields not been there to deflect the blow.

They were trading jabs, the Major unsure of who was getting the upper hand as they danced round each other, Seela putting her agility on display as she swapped from dodging to blocking, some of the swipes of the hammer coming dangerously close to severing her head from her shoulders.

He held his breath as Seela’s shields also failed, the barrier breaking with a snap of parting energy as the Brute caught her on the ribs with his hammer. Rather than fall back, she pressed in close, throwing all her weight into a cleave. Her opponent raised the hammer like a giant quarterstaff, the two weapons colliding. Seela dragged her sword down the hammer’s length, a piece of decorative cloth tied to the shaft burning to cinders, the sword moving down until it connected with one of the Brutes hands. With his shield broken, the alien roared in pain as most of his hand fell to the ground, the flesh trailing wisps of smoke as the severed digits cooked.

The stubborn alien refused to give up, holding the hammer with its intact hand and sweeping it from side to side. Seela didn’t block, dodging out of the way instead, letting the Brute’s own momentum create an opening for her.

She swiped across his chest, leaving glowing hot lines in the Captain Major’s chest piece, a sliver of burning fur visible between the grooves as the Brute stumbled, the stump of his ruined hand clutching at his wound. Seela planted a hoof in his sternum, the Brute falling back into one of the portable barriers behind him, his hands slipping against the curved light as his rump met the dirt.

Laying there, he tried to swing his hammer at the approaching Elite, but she knocked it aside, twisting the sword round in one motion, so that she was pointing it like it was a giant hand saw, driving it into the Brute’s stomach. The armour melted into liquid as the heated blades slipped through the armour, the Brute lurching as she embedded the sword in his torso.

“Tell your ancestors a female Heretic sent you to them,” Seela growled, leaning close so that her and the Brute’s snout practically touched. “See how disappointed they are.”

She flexed her wrist, the sword twisting inside the Brute’s gullet, the Captain Major writhing one last time before going still. She slid the blade out, the Brute’s blood boiling on the hardened light and leaving it pristine.

“My kin are avenged,” she declared, meeting the Major’s eyes over the battlefield. He sighed in relief, lowering her carbine as the last of the Covenant were mopped up. They’d thinned out the rest of the aliens while she’d had her duel, and the loss of their leader sent the surviving aliens into a panic. As the last Brute was felled, a grating silence followed, the wind taking on an eery quality after so much continuous gunfire. There had to be at least fifty aliens littering the beach, with at least four entire packs worth of dead Brutes laced through the corpses.

“I can see the boat!” one of the Marines shouted, the Major turning his eyes to the ocean. Maybe a hundred meters out was another patrol boat, rising and falling as it barrelled through the waves, identical to the one still burning away on the shore.

“Uh, guys?” Joker called out, pointing at the sky. “Did everyone forget about the Phantom or something?”

The Captain Major’s personal Phantom rose over the park, its pilot not averse to what they were doing. In some last-ditch effort, it banked towards the beach, its weapons turning not on the exposed humans below, but the newly arriving boat.

“Open up!” Rebar shouted, slotting a fresh clip into his sniper and firing from the hip. Joker and Holiday joined him, as did the Marines with ammo to spare, battle rifles and magnums barking as they threw everything they had at the dropship. The rounds bounced off its armoured hull, making little pinging sounds as they ricocheted. They all knew the craft was too heavily armoured to be in danger of small-arms fire, but the humans tried anyway, they didn’t have the manpower to hold out against much more if this boat was destroyed too.

The Vulkan on the newly arrived boat opened up on the dropship, but they didn’t have enough time to chew through the pilot canopy before the Phantom would be on them. The Major felt a pit form in his stomach, his head darting around in search of something, anything they could use to stop the ship.

“Leave this to me!” Seela shouted, the humans looking over to see she was clutching the Captain Major’s fuel rod gun in her hands. She hoisted it over her shoulder, peered through the lenses that served as its targeting package, and pulled the trigger.

A brilliant bolt of green energy arched through the air like a blazing meteor, Seela leading her shot to compensate for the travel time. The Major felt the backwash of the Phantom’s engines as it flew over the beach, praying the bolt wouldn’t miss.

It did not. The bolt slipped through the ventral doors, the mounted guns on the sides having long been sniped clean by Rebar, impacting the ceiling on the inside. Some critical system erupted, a chunk of the purple alloy above the pilot’s canopy blowing apart from within, the front engines losing power.

The craft tipped until its nose was facing the water, momentum still carrying it horizontally as it began to arc towards the ocean. The boat swerved out of the way, a giant wave engulfing the Marine standing on the prow as the dropship collided with the water. As the spray settled, they saw the tail-end of the craft jutting out of the water, almost like a capsizing ship, the purple dropship slowly disappearing beneath the bobbing water after a few moments.

The Marines hollered and whooped, directing their praises towards Seela. Her brow jumped in surprise, but she quickly masked her astonishment with a satisfied grin, nodding stoically as she tossed the fuel rod gun to the ground.

“Everyone alright? Sound off,” the Major ordered. There was a chorus of replies saying they were okay, all the specialists reporting they were fine. The same could not be same for the Marines, three of them reporting wounds, four lying in the shallows, dead.

As the Marines began to haul the injured and the dead towards the approaching boat, the Major stooped to retrieve his shotgun, wading into the surf as their rescue pulled up to the shallows, water sloughing off its grey hull. One of the men aboard lowered a ladder, and the specialists helped the injured up first.

“Let’s go, let’s go!” the Marines who’d dropped the ladder said, the Major vaulting over the railing as he clutched at the knotted ropes, his soaked boots leaving puddles on the metal deck. Last to come up was Seela, the alien so tall the waterline barely reached her knees, while everyone else was soaked from the torso down. The Major offered her a hand, Seela chuckling as he struggled to lift her weighty frame onto the boat, Joker lending a helping hand when the Major couldn’t lift her up on his own.

“Hell of a shot you made on that Phantom,” Joker said, giving Seela a playful shove on the arm. “just wait until the Corps hears about your kill count.”

“Indeed,” Seela replied. “Tell all of what you saw this day, so that my deeds may be… ubiquitous among humanity. I said it!” she added excitedly, a hand on her chest as she blinked her eyes. “Major! I said the word!”

He chuckled at her, Joker and the rest of the team giving them odd looks as they shared their little in joke.

“That’s everyone,” the Major said, thumping his fist on the driver cabin. The boat lurched into motion, peeling away from the shore in reverse, listing into a spin until the nose pointed out to sea. The engines rumbled to life, the patrol boat picking up speed as the shore slowly began to recede into the distance.

The Marines collapsed onto the deck, exhausted, the Major all too eager to find his head a pillow. He told the Marines he’d let their superiors know of their hard work, before moving towards the back of the boat, passing the driver’s cabin where Joker was poking his head out of the doorframe.

“Coming in, Sir? Radio’s working in here.”

“Just a sec,” the Major replied, the boat jumping beneath him as the vessel speared through the rough waters. He put a hand on the railing as he reached the stern, looking out at the shrinking New Mombasa. The skyscrapers were framed by the glassing cruisers, the beams of light too bright to look at even at this distance.

“The day is ours,” Seela said, moving to stand by his side, the two looking out over the water. The only other thing filling the sky aside from the Covenant fleet was the tether, or the bottom half of it at least. He could just see the fallen rings dotting the landscape towards the right, sticking out of the ground like massive armbands.

“Doesn’t really feel like a victory,” he replied.

“Do not go all gloomy on me just yet,” she replied sternly, looking down at him. “Your mission was a success, and we escaped. Even took out the commander of the Brute forces, that’s a tremendous victory from my point of view.”

“You’re right,” he said, taking her hand in his and giving it a squeeze. “Forgot one thing, though,” he added, Seela blinking at him. “I found an asset, someone I think is a little more important than the data.”

“Oh yes?” she cooed. “And what do you plan to do with this, ‘asset’?”

“I’ll keep her around, make sure everyone treats her right,” he said, glancing back at the Marines. “Not that I think that’d be a problem, everyone’s seen how much Covenant she killed on that beach, word’ll spread fast.”

“And what of your organisation?” she asked. “This ‘ONI’? Your superiors will want to extract information from me.”

“Technically you’re in my custody,” he replied. “Means I’m responsible for you, and I’ll have to stay by your side for the foreseeable future.”

“See? Told you it was a victory.”

He laughed at that, the two going silent as the city shrank in size until the Major could cover it with a hand. They stayed like that for a while longer, the boat accelerating deeper into the sea, bouncing off the waves like a skipping stone until New Mombasa was just a bump on the horizon.

The Major

ONI Orbital Facility

30 Days After Rupture

The Major was drawn out of his conversation with Holiday as the door swung open, a figure dressed in specialist gear walking into the cargo bay. She had long, blonde hair tied up in a pony tail, the insignia on her armband identifying her as a Captain.

“Major?” she asked, and he waved her over to a part of the room where they couldn’t be overheard. “So, you’re the bunch who were sent to succeed where my team failed. Thought Lord Hood had a little more faith in me.”

“The Admiralty couldn’t afford to wait,” he replied.

“Can’t afford to waste time and resources and dual-ops either,” she said, her irritation not going unnoticed. “That data you recovered? Well, we managed to secure a much more…. advanced version of it.”

“The alien,” the Major said. “Heard they had a Huragok floating around here somewhere. Still not entirely sure how that thing managed to, what, absorb the AI core into itself?”

“Something like that,” she answered, turning towards the milling team members nearby. “Still, can’t say your mission was a complete misuse of ONI resources. Reports say you secured another asset, where is it?”

“She’s over here,” he said, leading her to the far side of the bay. Seela was sitting on top of a supply crate, Joker standing nearby, her energy sword in his hands, swinging it like it was an oversized cricket bat that weighed too much. Seela had been – after a bit of convincing – relieved of her carbine, but she’d insisted that she keep her prized weapon, Security wasn’t happy about it, but the Major’s clearance level allowed her to keep a hold on her trophy.

“We’ve never been able to capture an Elite before,” the Captain mused. “If it was there on the ground when the invasion began, it’ll know everything about the Covenant’s ground logistics.”

“Wasn’t captured,” he corrected. “She came here of her own free will.”

“And we all appreciate that,” she continued. “As long as it continues to be cooperative when we start the interrogations. The Huragok knows a lot, but seeing how the Covenant operates from the front lines could give us a valuable insight on their tactics.”

“I know Lord Hood thinks you’re the expert on aliens all of a sudden,” the Major said. “But you don’t see me butt in on your ops. She’s our asset, Captain Dare.”

In the Navy chain of command, he outranked Dare, and he knew it was the only way to keep her from intruding on his section. She had somewhat of a reputation among ONI for stepping on other people’s toes.

“Yes, Major,” she replied. “I understand.”

“You’re free to stick around if you want,” he continued. “And I agree, she’ll know how the Covenant works better than even our best spies could. We’ll take any edge we can get right now.”

They approached Joker and Seela, the latter chuckling as the former accidently nicked his finger on the superheated blades. They stopped to greet the two officers.

“Good news, Seela,” the Major began. “Admiralty just cleared you for asylum following a few… creative interpretations of the rights commission. All we need to do is a bit of debriefing.”

“Then we take the fight to the Covenant?” she asked.

“It’s eager, if anything,” Dare muttered.

“Who is this?” Seela asked, narrowing her eyes at the Captain.

“This is Captain Dare, she’ll be taking part of the interrogation. Purely in a supervisory role, of course,” he added, giving Dare a pointed look.

“Of course,” Dare echoed, rolling her eyes.

“Well then, if you would leave us to it, Joker, we’ll get started. Question one…”

The Major

Outskirts of Port Douglas

1 Year after Rupture

Andrew rounded the bend in the path, the bungalow he’d been living in these past few months coming into view. The sea breeze blowing up from the coast to the right added a touch of coolness to the otherwise hot summer air, the Major working up a good sweat beneath his shirt as he moved up the driveway.

Acres of trees surrounded the abode in a semi-circle, the next house along a good fifty or so meters away, just visible between the trunks lining the road. It added a nice touch of privacy to his chosen place to settle, something he certainly needed after the locals caught wind of the war veterans who’d taken up residence in the port town.

As he moved up the steps to the porch, someone was there to greet him. Seela rose out of one of the chairs behind the railing, the furniture upscaled so she could fit in them properly. It made Andrew feel ridiculous whenever he used those giant seats, like he was living in Alice’s Wonderland, but it was the thought that counted.

As soon as he mounted the steps, she pulled him in close, wrapping her arms round his shoulders, resting her mandibles on his hair as she embraced him. He almost dropped the plastic bag over his shoulder in surprise, setting it down on the wooden planks as he returned the gesture, his fingers just able to meet on the small of her back.

“Miss me that much, hun?” he chuckled, his face pressing tight against her rock-hard belly. Seela was wearing a tank top that was much too small for her size, the fabric cutting off around the middle of her stomach, exposing an enticing amount of midriff. Calling it a sports bra would have been more appropriate. Her legs were clad in a pair of criminally tight pants, not unlike the bodysuit she’d worn beneath her power armour, and her hooves were bare. Her outfit complemented the hot climate of northern Australia, the high temperatures suiting Seela, although she insisted it got much hotter on Sangheilios.

“Yes, you were gone for so long,” she replied, Andrew laughing as his cheek touched her cool skin.

“Ten minutes is not so long.”

“It felt as much. Your absence made me realise we have never been apart since the war ended,” she said, angling his chin up so that their eyes met. “A thing you shall not make a habit of doing.”

“Yes ma’am,” he said, Seela pulling away from him and leaning a hand on her hip.

“So what did you purchase?” she asked, peering down into the bag’s contents.

“Bit of this and that,” he replied, clutching the bag by the handles so she couldn’t peek.

“What are you up to?” she cooed, narrowing her eyes playfully. “First, you deny my company to the store, and now you hide the contents from me? Why the secrecy?”

“You’ll see,” he said, Seela tracking him as he navigated around her frame. She glanced down the driveway, an uninterrupted view of the coast stretching from side to side down the incline. The urban hellscape of New Mombasa had left a bad taste in Seela’s mouth, Andrew’s as well, so they’d sought to find the most rural part of the country as possible. Port Douglas had been the best choice, along with a side benefit for the Navy, as the nearby naval base would allow the higher-ups to keep an eye on Seela as she integrated into human society.

“Always the cryptic, aren’t you?” Seela noted, following him to the front door of their house.

“Part of my charms,” he replied. He knew she could just pluck the bag right out of his hands if she so wanted, but she played along, shutting the door behind them.

He led her over to the kitchen, setting the bag on the island in the middle. Seela had to hunch a little to avoid grazing her head on the ceiling. Initially she’d found it difficult to adjust to human-sized living areas, her shins being banged many a time on the corner of tables and other appliances, but with time she’d learned how to navigate the space with little issue.

He spilled the contents of his shopping trip onto the countertop, gesturing at them with a dramatic wave of an arm. “Tad-da!” he said, Seela cocking her head at the various containers.

“I… have no idea what any of this is. Except for that,” she added, picking up the bag of cashews.

“Don’t eat them!” he warned, Seela pausing as she brought a nail to the plastic. “Not yet, anyway. We’re gonna be making… you know what, you can guess as we go. Point is, we’re doing a little cooking.”

“Cooking?” she asked, watching as he reached into the cupboards to produce some mixing bowls. “Very well, I shall fetch the aprons.”

“We don’t really need them,” he said, holding out a hand to stop her. “It won’t get that messy. First thing’s first, we need to wash our hands.”

They took turns using the sink, Andrew drying his hands with a towel as he planned out the next steps. He wanted to find something they could both do together, and memories of their time in New Mombasa brought an idea to mind, and he had a feeling she’d enjoy the end result. “Alright Seela, we need a few measuring cups, remember where those were?”

“The ones with the runes on the handles?” she asked, and he nodded, Seela reaching into one of the higher cupboards near the ceiling, setting two of the cups down.

“Okay, we’ll need one and a half cups of milk, we’re making a big batch. That’s the white stuff in that bottle over there. You wanna measure it out?”

She took the milk bottle in one hand, unscrewing the cap and pouring it into the measuring cup. She had taken it upon herself to study English and numerics after the human-Covenant war, and he was interested to see how much she’d learned so far.

When the liquid filled to the brim of the cup, she stopped, having to get on her knees so she could get low enough to measure by eye. Satisfied, she stood back up, dumping the milk into the bowl.

“One and a half, you said?” she asked, Andrew nodding. She repeated pouring out the milk, grumbling when she went over the halfway line painted on the inside. She made to return the milk back into the bottle, but then reconsidered, turning and pulling a glass out from the shelf behind her. She filled it with the excess, then leaned over and poured the proper amount into the bowl.

“Perfect,” he said, grinning when she downed the contents of the glass, clicking her tongue against the roof of her mouth as she sampled it.

“It’s very thick,” she muttered. “Where does it come from?”

“It’s… produced from a cow, a native animal. Anyway,” he added, before she could probe him for an explanation. “Next comes the cream, that’s the tub over there.”

“Is this not milk as well?” she asked, popping off the lid and peering inside. “It looks the same.”

“Sorta, but it tastes different and acts as a thickener. We need the whole thing, so no need to measure it just dump it in.”

Setting the lid aside, she upended the container into the bowl, the coloured cream contrasting against the milk as they swirled. She tapped the bottom of the tub to knock out the rest, then began to lick at the rim of the container with her long tongue.

“You’re right!” she said, humming as she slurped at it again. “The taste is so much richer.”

“Glad to hear it. Now comes the sugar.”

“Ah, that I remember,” she said, reaching for the appropriate bag without Andrew telling her which it was. She eyed the little see-through window in the plastic with a narrowed eye.

“I know you like savoury over sweet,” he said. “but we’ll need at least a little bit for what we’re making. Trust me. I was going to suggest a cup, but…”

“That is far too much,” she interrupted. “can we not use less?”

“We can, there’s some measuring spoons in that drawer there, I think a tablespoon should be enough.”

She rummaged around until she produced a keyring of measuring spoons, holding the handles up to her face so she could read the labels. After pausing to consider, she held one out. “Is this it?”

“Yep, that’s a tablespoon. One of those should do it, make sure you shake off the excess so you don’t go overboard.”

She dipped the spoon into the sugar bag, pinching it between her nails like it was the world’s smallest shovel. When she raised it out, there was a lump of sugar bulging from the lip of the spoon, Andrew keeping silent to see what she’d do. That was a mistake on his part, Seela electing to blow the stuff away with a quick exhale, the powder exploding in a puff towards Andrew, who happened to be standing in the way of the dust.

He wiped at his eyes, feeling the stuff all over his face. As he blinked his vision clear, he saw Seela’s alarmed face peering down at him, her mandibles quickly shifting to her version of a grin.

“I’m so sorry,” she said, her words tapering into a chuckle that quickly contradicted her apology.

“Maybe we should have used the aprons,” he chuckled, plucking at his collar as the sugar turned his shirt white.

She took him by the chin, angling his face up as she leered towards him, her mandibles parting to expose her tongue. She left a wet smear from his cheek to this temple as she licked him, clicking her organ as she flexed it against her mouth. “Mm, the contrast between your salt and the sugar is exceptional.”

“Alright, miss connoisseur,” he said, wiping at his face with his sleeve. He could feel her warm saliva leaving a line through the mess. “try again, use a flat surface like a knife or something to level off the excess this time.”

“What about this?” she asked. There was a flash of light, and suddenly she was holding her energy sword, the light snapping into the signature pair of prongs, the hilt glinting as she gripped it in her palm. “I can scrape the sugar off with ease.”

“Why are you just carrying around your sword?” he asked, splaying his hands out in alarm. Even after the war, she’d been insistent that she keep her trophy. Usually she had it mounted on a stand in their bedroom, where it sat safely inside a display case.

“In the event of an attack, I will be ready to defend me and my mate,” she answered.

“Yeah well, your mate thinks you should just use a fork,” he sighed, holding out said implement.

Shrugging her shoulders, she holstered her energy sword, pinching the fork between her thumbs. As she resumed the measuring, Andrew stood on the other side of the kitchen just in case of another mess, moving back over when the sugar was safely inside the bowl. “Alright that’s most of the work done, now we do a little mixing.”

He fished for an electric beater, Seela watching curiously as he plugged it into an outlet, thumbing the on switch. He dunked the pair off mixers into the mess of ingredients, drawing small circles in the bowl as the contents stirred.

“It’ll take a few minutes before it’s ready,” he explained. “Go turn the stove on and get a pan. Now comes the secret ingredient.”

She turned on the dial to high and set a pan down on the circle of heat, Andrew pausing the mixing to set the bag of nuts beside her. “Roast as many as you want for a few minutes, careful not to burn them.”

“How are these a secret if I already know we’re going to use them?” she asked, giving him a sideways look.

He went to reply, but hesitated, Seela had him there. She huffed in amusement, using her nails to slice open the corner of the bag. She went to upend the bag over the pan, then elected to use the measuring cup. She poured one in, then after a moment of consideration, dumped two more in, which ended up being most of the bag anyway. She set the bag aside, but not before plucking a handful of them out to snack on while the stove warmed.

She gave the pan a shake every now and then as the nuts sizzled away, Andrew keeping up his mixing all the while. She leaned over to watch as the batter thickened, the liquids melding into a slightly stretchy substance.

“Ah ha!” Seela said, as though she’d just caught him red-handed. “I know what we are making! That stuff we had on our first night together. Ice cream, yes?”

“Good eye,” he said with a nod. “Was hoping you wouldn’t figure it out till we’re eating it.”

“But what are these cashies for?” she asked. “A side meal?”

“Cashews,” he corrected. “And no, we’re gonna combine it with the ice cream,” he explained. “Figured you’d like having your two favourite foods go together.”

“You know me too well, Andrew,” she said, scuffing his head like she was petting a cat.

The excitement on her face was amplified tenfold, Seela sliding the pan from the heat when the nuts were a nice golden colour, giving off a toasty aroma that made their mouths water. He told her to sprinkle the nuts over the batter, the alien setting the pan down when it was all gone.

“Nice work,” he said. “hang on it’s not ready yet,” he added when Seela made to attack the mix with the tablespoon. “We’ll set it in the freezer for a little while, then we can eat it. In the meantime let’s clean down.”

He wiped down the counter while she set the packages into the cupboards, chuckling at him as she peered over her shoulder at him. “The kitchen is not the only thing that needs a clean,” she said. “You look like you are wearing makeup with all that powder on your face.”

“You Sangheilians wear makeup?” he asked, glancing at her as he deposited the paper into the bin. It felt like he was learning something new about her people every day. “What kinds?”

“Highlights for the eyes, decorative warpaints, almost everything that humans use, actually.”

“Except for lipstick, don’t think that would work on you,” he chuckled. “Is it off?” he asked, pulling up his collar to wipe at his nose. Instead of answering, she just giggled, Andrew grumbling as he rubbed at his face again.

“Just had to lick it off, huh?” he asked, her saliva making the sugar stick to his cheeks.

“Poor thing, need a little help?”

She sauntered over, exaggerating the swaying of her hips, his eyes hopelessly drawn to her hourglass curves. He had just enough sense left in him to snap out of it, holding up his hands as she reached for his shoulders.

“No, no don’t pick me up I-”

Seela picked him up, hoisting him into the air, her mischievous eyes burning into him as she turned around, moving out of the kitchen with him in her arms. He felt like an unruly house pet being manhandled by a disgruntled owner.

“You know I hate it when you do this,” he grumbled, resting his arms on her giant hands, her palms encompassing the upper half of his torso.

“You won’t hate what I’m about to do next,” she cooed, her words tempering the nauseousness the backwards journey was sparking in his stomach.

They turned into the bathroom, and Seela placed him on the lip of the bench inside, one of his thighs brushing the sink. He knocked over a toothbrush and a bottle of shampoo as she held him there, suddenly feeling very small as Seela positioned herself between his legs, blocking him in. Even sitting on the bench, she still towered over him, the Elite sliding her hands down his belly and fiddling with his waistband.

He lurched as she cupped at his crotch through his shorts, giving him a covetous glance as she flexed her fingers. “Th-Thought we were going to clean up?” he asked, her warm breath blowing on his hair as she leaned down. Now that he was out of ONI, he could afford to let his hair grow out a little bit, something Seela had encouraged him to do.

“In a little while,” she whispered, a mandible brushing against his ear as she gave it a brush with her tongue. “Besides, I made a mess of you, it’s only fair that you return the favour…”

He went to say something, but she cut off his words as she filled his mouth with her tongue, the way she moaned into his throat making him tremble against her. The passion they’d founded in New Mombasa had not been quenched since, Seela and Andrew reinvigorating their newfound companionship every chance they could get, and he imagined this was only a taste of what was to come tonight.

She broke away, a strand of their saliva linking their mouths together as she looked down, slipping a hand beneath his waistband while the other wrapped round his head, dragging her nails through his hair and making his scalp buzz pleasantly.

He tensed up as she gripped his shaft, roughly pulling it free of his underwear and exposing it to the air. She continued to nibble on his ear as she clenched her fingers around his length, the sudden coolness of her palm catching him off guard. She squeezed him, his spine arching as a wonderful tingle spread up his body, his back meeting the mirror behind him as he relaxed in her embrace.

Seela enclosed on him from all sides, leaning most of her weight on his front as she pressed him into the bench, another bottle tumbling to the floor as she lifted one of her muscular thighs to plant a knee on the counter. Her hand on the back of his head, she turned him so that their tongues entwined again, Seela exhaling a wonderful moan as their organs fought for control.

Her chest wobbled right before his eyes, a sliver of cleavage visible above the tank top. He had half a mind to delve his fingers beneath the fabric and return the gesture, but her sultry kisses and her deft hand on his crotch were turning his thoughts into a haze, a blend of relaxation and tension sending him into an unfocused trance.

He grunted in annoyance as she released his cock, Andrew blinking up at her as she reached for the tap, the faucet turning on with a squeak. She ran her hand under the stream, then plucked the bar of soap sitting on the bench nearby. She manipulated the little bar in her palm, the soap dancing through her fingers as she rubbed the water into it, streams of suds bubbling up between her digits. When her hand was engulfed in water and soap, she placed the bar down, giving him a mischievous grin as she returned her hand to his shaft.

His member bounced as her slimy fingers slid against his skin, an obscene, wet slap filling the bathroom as she gave him a heavy pump. She squeezed down when she neared his base, slowly releasing her grip as her hand glided up to his tip, easing into a slow rhythm as her fingers danced across his shaft.

As she neared his tip, she circled his glans with a thumb, the soap making their contact frictionless. Her probing slowly peeled back his foreskin, and she dipped her finger beneath the layer of skin, his legs turning to jelly at the sudden tide of sensation. He bucked up into her hand hard enough she had to move her hooves to steady herself.

He muttered a curse, and she laughed at him. “Too intense, hm? I’ll keep that in mind… for later,” she purred, her intense gaze never leaving his as she drank his reactions in.

She upped the cruel tempo of her intense hand job, points of darkness appearing in his vision as he felt like his body from the waist down was melting. Her fist slapped against his belly, her pumps and the lewd sounds of her soapy fingers growling louder as she sensed his growing ecstasy. He pushed his waist into her gooey fist, seeking out more of the stimulation. It was like he was sticking his dick into, well, a bottle of liquid soap, the warmth and thickness making his eyelids grow heavy.

She pushed back with just the right amount of force whenever he moved his hips, the little channels between her fingers acting like ribs to add a hint of texture to her sticky fist. It almost felt like a lover’s loins if he closed his eyes, simulating a flexing love tunnel almost to a fault. He was swelling now, but Seela’s hand was big enough she could encompass it entirely, coating his shaft in suds as she continued her relentless pumping.

“Hand, or mouth?” she whispered in his ear.

“W-What?” he asked, tensing up as she gripped him harder.

“Where do you want to finish?” she explained, twisting her slimy fist as if to illustrate his rising need. “Those are your options.”

“There’s a… a third way,” he managed to say, Seela following his gaze as he looked to her waist.

“Later, my little warrior,” she said. “After we’ve had our ice cream. Until then, I want you to choose.” She leered closer, her nose touching his as she nuzzled his face, her cheek sliding against his own as she licked at his earlobe. “I like it you ask for it. So answer my question. Hand?” she asked in one ear. “-or mouth?” she asked in the other.

“H-Hand,” he replied.

“What was that?” she asked, feigning that she hadn’t heard him.

“Hand,” he repeated, his tone frustrated. She had kept her hand completely still to tease him, bringing his onrushing climax to a halt.

She chuckled, her sticky palm moving again in time with his thrusts, his pace increasing along with the desperate ache spreading through his lower body. A drop of his pre leaked from his tip, Seela quickly dragging it down his glans to add it to the gooey coat lathering his length. She pushed the tips of her fingers into his skin, like she was testing his firmness, each sudden probe making his erection jump in her hand. He had to stay focused to keep his eyes open, his mind soaked in a wonderful bliss as Seela continued to scratch at his skull all the while, every nerve in his body electrified as she ushered him towards a release.

She arched her back, pushing her bust out towards him, Andrew having little choice but to take in a lungful of her aroma. That leather-smell she gave off was the last thing to drive him over the edge, a small hint of her exertion adding a touch of spice to her overall aroma. She closed his shaft in her giant hand, pumping one more time as his erection flexed in her fist.

He uttered an embarrassing groan as the first wad of his seed splashed into her palm, his eyes shutting tight as a twinge of pleasure chased the release. He filled her soapy fist with his pearly ejaculate, the blend of fluids spilling between her massaging fingers, Seela timing her strokes along with his bucking. It was like she was milking him, a second load quickly following as her fingers seized his shaft, one of her fingers drooping down to caress his balls. He moaned into her bosom once more as she eased out another rope of his semen, Seela swirling her sticky thumbs across his tip to make sure she had properly drained him. She held him like that for a while, Andrew relaxing into her cool body as he drowned in the ecstasy of climax, a satisfying soreness spreading through all his muscles.

He wanted to stay like that forever, and he sated that desire for a few minutes until he finally drew up enough willpower to open his eyes.

“Th-The ice cream. It should be hard enough by now,” he mumbled.

“Interesting choice of words,” she chuckled, easing her weight off his chest. He looked down to see her hand was a right mess, the lines between soap and his fluids blending together into a cloudy mix, his drained erection flexing in anticipation as she brought her hand up to her mandibles, her tongue lapping at the lurid concoction.

“Hm, the soap tastes awful,” she grumbled between licks. “Still, your essence is satisfying enough.”

“You shouldn’t eat that stuff,” he said, grabbing a towel off a nearby rack and drying himself, stuffing his member back into his pants. The euphoria was making him feel dizzy, Andrew putting a hand to the wall to steady himself for a few moments. “Just… make sure you wash your hands again, thanks.”

They exited the bathroom, the Major fumbling with his pants as he led her back into the kitchen, clearing his head with a shake. He opened the freezer, setting the bowl of ice cream on the counter. It wasn’t quite as solidified as he would like, but he was too hungry to care at this point.

He scooped out two servings with a spoon, giving Seela the largest cutlery they had. They took a seat on the couch, the lowering sun warming their legs, as rays of light bled through the curtains, Seela scooting over so that their hips were touching.

“Mm-mm!” Seela moaned as she straight up swallowed an entire spoonful without chewing. “You were right about the roasted nuts, your cooking skills are commendable.”

“We made it,” he corrected. “Still, I’m glad you like it.”

“Ow!” she exclaimed suddenly, clutching her forehead with a hand. “My… skull feels like it’s been dumped in the Csurdon sea!”

“We humans call that a brain freeze,” he explained, laughing when her apparent way of solving this problem was to eat more ice cream. He held her by the wrist to stop her. “Just keep your head still, it’ll pass.”

She entwined his hand with her own, her purple eyes locking onto his as she held her bowl up. “What are our plans for this afternoon?” she asked.

“Dunno. I got something in mind for dinner, have a feeling you’ll like that too.”

“As long as there’s ice cream after,” she replied, Andrew chuckling. “I cannot let you cook all the meals for me or I will become spoiled, I shall assist you.”

“Great. You’re getting pretty good at reading English, by the way. You’re a fast learner.”

There was a flush on her cheeks as she drew him in, caressing his hair with her long fingers.

“All this talk of food is making me hunger for other desires,” she whispered into his ear. “Once you are done with your ice cream, we’re going to go to the bedroom, and I’m going to take my fill of you. How’s that for a plan?”

She giggled as he wolfed down the rest of his ice cream in five seconds flat. She set his empty bowl down for him and – after a brief brain freeze on his part – took him by the hand, standing him up.

“Shall we walk there?” she asked, a grin on her face. “Or, do you wish to be carried?”

“Don’t even think about it.”

She pounced on him, but he was ready, dancing out of her reach and rushing down the hall, Seela laughing as she gave pursuit, closing the bedroom door behind her as she chased him inside.

-THE END-