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Hunter/Hunted Rewrite, Ch. 1
Posted By: LordsFire<EarthMartianSpaceBob@hotmail.com>
Date: 22 October 2008, 5:42 am
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It had been a long time since I had been on leave. Well, that technically was not true, as 'never' was not a numerically measurable quantity in this instance. It was not like I had kin to visit, and this was the first time something had interested me enough to pull me from duty rotation. Besides, I was rotating through to a new assignment now, and apparently one of the heavily be-medalled Spartans had actually made it back from the battle of Reach, with company.
Spartans, legendary war-heroes, blah blah blah, totally unstoppable, blah blah blah, called 'demons' by the covenant, blah blah blah. Blah. Blah. Blah. Like I gave a damn. A single company of marines was cheaper to recruit, train, and outfit than one Spartan, and carried more weight in battle. Sure, they had their uses for special ops and crap, but I was sick of all the hero worship. So, while every other marine on the shuttle to the Cairo from the surface was headed off to see the glorious Master Chief, I was heading up to try and steal a peak at some of the toys he had brought back with him, before reporting to my new posting.
In Amber Clad, smallest ship with an ODST detachment I had ever seen. I thought they had stopped outfitting frigates with full-sized marine detachments, but apparently things had changed while I had been on Huntress. The shuttle cleared the Karman line and began its approach towards the Cairo, distracting me from my brooding, and redirecting my thoughts towards the bow viewport. At this range, the Cairo, and the rest of Earth's orbital military installations and infrastructure for that matter, were dull lumps in the distance.
I grunted; as much as it irked the strategist in me to have so many resources tied up in essentially immobile static defenses, I understood the sheer tactical and economic necessity of the obscenely powerful orbital Gauss super-weapons. Effectively mounting one of the massive weapons on a slip-space capable craft would be horrendously expensive simply in terms of design and construction work, especially if one wanted a vessel that did not maneuver like a cow on a high gravity world. Equipping the vessel with other weaponry, not to mention crewing such a monstrosity, and then the support vessels and marine detachments it would no doubt require would be prohibitively expensive.
I had caught word of a much more effectively ship-portable burst-fire gauss weapon, but my clearance had not been high enough to access the official records. There was a slight tugging sensation, as our deceleration sharply increased, bringing my attention back to the bow view-port, and the now very-close station. It was interesting how space distorted ones perception of speed; the shuttle had actually been steadily decelerating since we entered orbit, but with nothing close enough to judge our speed against effectively, it had not seemed like we were moving much, if at all. Now, though we were at a much lower velocity, and decelerating steadily, we appeared to be moving much more quickly due to the ability to more clearly perceive our motion relative to the station.
Regardless of perception of speed, our course was locked in, and it only took us another thirty seconds to arrive at the station; docking took all of fifteen seconds, and the airlock was open ten after that. I was through the airlock with my two duffel bags before anyone else had even made it fully out of their seats. I did not like wasting time. Once cleared into the station, I headed to the nearest data terminal to find out where the In Amber Clad was docked. Which, apparently, it wasn't.
Damn beaurocrats. Thirty-six hours before the In Amber Clad would arrive to dock with the station, and the Cairo didn't have guest quarters, not for a grunt marine anyways. I quickly paged through the station layout to look for a place I could crash without attracting attention, finding a few satisfactory storage compartments on the lower levels. I particularly liked the look of the fabrication chambers; there was always something interesting to be made with a set of lathes.
Shouldering my duffel bags, I headed for one of the lifts along the station's spine. Several marines and station crewers gave me odd looks as I strode along, my duffel bags were pretty massive. Largest size the Corps would issue in fact, and both held more than one hundred pounds of equipment in them. I'm no weakling, but at 195 pounds, I'm not the kind of muscle-man you would expect to see carrying that much mass either. The modified grav plates I used to counteract the weight were technically illegal, but I had long since addressed the reason behind the law, my units would not interfere with the station's artificial gravity. Not beyond the radius of the bags, anyways.
To the irritation of the other passengers, me and my bags took up almost half the elevator car. I ignored them, affecting my 'oblivious rookie soldier' routine. I would probably be maintaining it for most of the next two days.
Well, this was unexpected. Someone had beaten me here, and by at least a week, judging by the dust build-up on the equipment they had brought in with them. I stood in the large double-door into the machine room, my duffels held in hand, utterly neutral expression on my face. There were five of them, two pocket-protects equipped with men, a Eurasian with intensely intelligent eyes, a lanky man with steady blue eyes, and a Viking stuffed into a lab coat. I rated their total threat index at 47%, 40% of that coming from the Viking; I shifted slightly to better face him.
He was fast. I barely saw him move before he had crossed the room, knife in hand. Steel crashed against titanium-alloy as I blocked his knife slash with the edge of my blade. Damn, I thought, gave away too much. In my haste to block him, I'd drawn left-handed, giving away the potential surprise my uncommon dominant hand might have granted me. Not that it mattered much as the impact of his blade on mine slammed me back across the corridor. I twisted around and managed to brace my arm against the far wall as I collided with it, blunting the force of my impact. My duffels hit the floor, having fallen far too slowly for their apparent bulk and weight, and the Viking noticed.
"That's against regs," he sad, his knife disappearing into a sheath as he crossed his arms and frowned at me.
I said nothing, pushing myself away from the wall of the corridor and sheathing my long dagger, but keeping my hand on the hilt.
"Modified gravity plates?" the Eurasian with the sharp eyes asked, peaking around the Viking. His head barely reached the norse giant's armpit. I more carefully inspected the man, before nodding slightly.
"Ah," he said, "I am Yung, this troll next to me is Erikson. Johnson and Spaulding are the nerds, and Carter is the scarecrow. What brings you to the labs?"
"According to the station schematics," I said, in a carefully surprised tone of voice, "This is a machine shop. I was hoping I could get some use out of one of the lathes."
Yung waved his hand dismissively, and elbowed Erikson out of his way. Or rather, used his elbows to convince Erikson to move out of the way for him.
"Must have forgotten to inform the station AI we'd moved in," he said, "I'm sure one of us will get around to it when we've got a free moment."
It was not hard to infer that in his opinion, there was never a free moment. It was already fairly obvious that Yung was the kind of person who always had more energy than seemed quite right, and put it to use.
"So," he continued, "Do you want to see the lab private…?" he trailed off questioningly.
"Private first class Evans, ODST," I replied, affecting the tone of a curious layman, "Yes, I would like to."
"Excellent!" Yung was veritably glowing with enthusiasm, "I'll give you a quick tour of the lab, and then we'll see if we can set you up with one of the lathes, we've only been using the laser-lathes, the others should be free."
Yung's 'quick tour' ended up taking six hours. Not that that was entirely his fault, I asked all the right questions to encourage him to go into further and further detail, deciding subconsciously at some point that revealing how much I could learn from him here was easily worth revealing how much I already knew. I had studied photon/wave mechanics, and the UNSC's efforts to replicate the Covenant Active Camouflage technology, but this was the first time I'd seen the Covenant devices personally. It was… fascinating.
At the end of the six hours, I was joining the five of them for, well, according to the station clocks it was breakfast, but I suspected it was more of a mid-night snack for the research team. A large midnight snack; even Yung, who couldn't have been five feet tall, was packing away the station's mess like he had a singularity in his stomach.
"So," Carter asked, interrupting his more sedate rate of consumption to address me, "What brings you to the Cairo?"
"New posting," I said, "I've been assigned to the In Amber Clad."
Erikson's expression, and I glanced down at him to see his eyebrows furrow. He noticed he had gotten my attention and turned to meet my gaze.
"That's Commander Keyes ship," he said, slight confusion evident in his tone, "I was unaware it had taken casualties."
"If it has," I replied calmly, "I've not heard of it either, my previous posting no longer exists, and the other survivors and I were split up to reinforce already existent units. There's not a lot of different postings left anymore, after all."
"You were at Reach then?" Carter asked, his tone only mildly muted by the reminder of how desperate humanity's situation was.
"No," I replied, "Huntress."
Carter looked at me questioningly, lack of recognition plain on his face as he forked more meatloaf into his mouth. Erikson beat me to responding, however.
"It was a lightly populated world just outside the inner colonies," He said, his voice rumbling, "An oddity. Lower volume, higher density and higher gravity than most habitable worlds. Too many heavy metals in the crust to attract much resident population, but it had a lot of big game and large predators, as well as an interesting property to the oceans."
"Denser liquids and higher viscosity," I interjected, "A human who's fast enough and light enough on their feet can sprint across the surface without breaking the surface tension."
"Also home to one of the ODST's special training facilities," Erikson cut me off, "A rather highly classified installation."
I looked at him silently, my face bearing a carefully curious expression, aware that the other scientists were all looking at me. For a few long moments, our eyes locked silently, and then Erikson smiled wryly and looked away.
"Which, of course," He said with a wry humor, "Evans here is not allowed to speak about, not even to the degree of denying its existence, to anyone without proper clearance."
I, of course, did not respond in any way, shape, or form.
"It does, however," Erikson continued, "Mean that he's cleared for our little test project."
Everyone around the table except me grinned, and my instincts told me that I was about to 'volunteer' for something, something very dangerous. I very carefully kept my expression neutral, preventing the predator's grin I felt inside from showing on my face.
"The second set of armor in your bags," Yung said, "What sort of composition does it have?"
I looked at him, my expression still carefully neutral.
"Mag-res sensors?" I asked calmly.
He nodded.
"Why?" I asked.
"We need a guinea pig," Yung said, "And you appear to be a certified guinea pig."
I looked at him carefully, analyzing and weighing what I knew of him and his group, the potential benefits I might gain from working with them, and the potential costs. I highly doubted my personal cyber-security would hold up against what they could bring to bear against it, and I had not yet become familiar with the station's AI, or even introduced myself to the still-missing In Amber Clad's AI. Yung was clearly the curious type, and I highly doubted that if I worked with him, he would not look into everything about me he could. I could always kill them if they decided to leak to ONI, and disappear. I was very good at hide-and-go seek.
I closed my eyes for a moment, keeping my expression neutral; there was not much human left in me, but casual thoughts of killing still bothered me. I wondered how much longer that would last; hopefully long enough to keep me from killing this group, I liked them. I told them what the armor was comprised of, and Yung grinned.
They hadn't changed much visibly about my armor, not much that was visible yet anyways. I looked down at myself; flexing each muscle group sequentially. My armor still fit like a glove, my body measurements probably had not changed more than a millimeter or two since I joined the Corps. Blending in well with the machinery in the lab, the Cobalt-based crystalline hyper-magnetic laminate that coated the surface gave no hint to the new purpose it was about to be tasked to. It gleamed dully; Yung had stripped the dull gray paint that usually protected against unwanted reflective glittering off as soon as I had pulled it out of my duffel.
"Sure, it'll be more obvious normally," He'd said as he went over it with a solvent sprayer, "But it will be much less obvious once we're finished with it."
His grin was almost predatory, which looked odd on his small scientist's face. Once the group got going, I had little to do but sit back and watch. I understood the concepts behind most of the equipment they were using, but how they used it, not to mention the experience and skill they showed with it, was far beyond the point I could have made a useful contribution. Once the group got going, they were so focused that it took multiple attempts to distract them from whatever component, machine or program they were working with, so I picked an unused workbench, and slept.
By the time I woke up, everyone in the group except Erikson was asleep, and my armor was in what looked like a custom-built surface mapper. Erikson himself stood alongside the device, watching its optical readers slowly traverse across it, a subtly intent expression on his face. Curious, I silently dropped to the deck plate, my customized boot-soles making essentially no noise, and padded across the workshop to him, navigating the maze of equipment and machinery between us. I had not been the best hunter in my clan, but I had been the best in my generation, which was saying something; I wanted to see just how good he was.
"Who crafted this?" He asked quietly when I was still two paces from striking distance, the timing of his statement displaying not only that he had heard me coming, but also that he knew just how close I was. Damn, he was good.
"A civilian contractor," I responded quietly, keeping my tone as neutral as ever, "The planet he worked on was in the outer colonies."
"Unfortunate," Erikson said, "It is masterful work, I have never seen anything like it."
"Nor are you likely to again," I said, and failed to keep a note of bitterness from entering my voice."
Erikson looked at me, rotating his shoulders, neck, and head to face me squarely, and rotating them extremely swiftly. I knew I had slipped, and immediately jumped upon the best cover I could find, stepping around him to look at my armor in more detail. The boots had always intrigued me the most, the way Master Rend had balanced flexibility, stealth, and strength so flawlessly. Articulate overlapping plates connected by near-frictionless joints, repeated application of a simple concept to high effect. The only thing the boots sacrificed was tensile strength, they added little to my own body's ability to resist being torn apart. Hopefully, that would never be a concern.
The greaves were much simpler, except joinings that would hold them to the boots and the chest piece; two articulate joints at the knees, two more at the hips, the flanges from the boots covering the knee while the joint was straight, an extremely abbreviated laminated carbon-fiber Janice covering the hip-joints. Much more complex, the chest-piece was actually several pieces, a central triangular plate that covered the sternum and spread down across the rib cage, and several plates designed to overlap for flexibility covering the abdomen, upper ribcage, and shoulders. The bracers, gauntlets, and bicep-guards were much simpler affairs, the wrist was by necessity covered only by 'soft' armor, it required too much flexibility for anything else, and every other joint, except for the base of the thumb, essentially rotated on only one axis.
The helmet, of course, was the masterpiece of the set. It was of a single piece, and was the reason my hair was always kept even shorter than corps regulations required, it would not fit otherwise, it was so precisely shaped. Whereas removing the matte gray paint from the rest of the armor had removed the stylized black tiger that covered it, the helmet was engraved with the toothy visage of one of Predation's deadliest predators. It was a tribute to the master-smith's artistic flair that though the shape of a Predation Shadow Tiger's snout was drastically different from a human's face, the mask of the helmet almost flawlessly depicted it, even managing to position the eyes of the tiger where mine would fit. Many warriors that adopted an animal totem showed it snarling; the Clan believed there was no need to show any threat beyond that inherent in the powerful creature itself. Any fool who wished to challenge that would meet the fate he had earned.
"It must have cost a fortune," Erikson said, "And the cobalt-laminate must have at least doubled the price."
I thought a moment before responding, truth was valuable, but…
I realized it no longer mattered if I told him, I had already decided to kill him if he was a section three spook, and nobody else would have any real chance of reaching the conclusions I did not wish him to from the information I was about to give.
"I do not know what the market value would be," I said quietly, "The craftsman did not work for money, I never received a price estimate, and I have never before allowed more than a purely visual analysis."
I felt Erikson's gaze on me sharpen, and turned to meet it.
"Why did you allow us?" He asked, an edge subtly masked in his voice.
"Cost-benefit analysis," I replied, "I considered the possible augmentations more valuable than potential risk of exposure."
"Exposure of what?" He asked, and I realized he had trapped me.
He knew how to read eyes, I could tell that much easily, and that combined with my need to think and choose my words carefully before speaking, he would know I was hiding more than I was telling. So be it, he already knew I had been involved in classified operations, he had no way of knowing the particulars of what I held in secret.
"Many would like to get their hands on armor like this," I said quietly.
"It would be a waste of time and effort, it's too custom-fitted for anyone else to use effectively," Erikson replied.
"Many are irrational," I said shortly.
"And some few wonder what kind of a man has such a thing," Erikson said what I did not want to, "This armor would cost more than a dozen suits of standard ODST armor, and it lacks any sort of advanced components, for all the craftsmanship and sophistication of alloying and compositing, it is essentially a large lump of metal and ceramic. Not for much longer of course, but what did you hope to accomplish with such armor?"
"Stealth," I said at length, "The only spectrum I'm easily visible to in that, is infrared, and there are ways to deal with that too."
Erikson grunted before speaking, "It certainly beats Mjolnir," he said, "Those suits throw out radiation on essentially every bandwidth we know of, but that'll happen when you strap a fusion plant to your back."
"Large price to pay for energy shields," I replied, not quite keeping all the edge out of my voice.
Erikson looked at me again, his gaze measuring. I had little doubt he was perceptive enough to realize that the bitterness in my voice had as much to do with the uselessness of such high-powered systems in my own field, as it did to do with my own lack of such things.
"Not much demand for stealth in the middle of a battlefield," Erikson said.
"You'd be surprised," I said under my breath. Erikson heard that remark as well, I could tell, but he said nothing further.
Six hours later, a grand total of two visible components had been added, and I was wearing it for the first time in… I didn't really want to think about that. However long it had been, it felt good to be back in my armor, it might lack the strength augmentations and the HUD of my ODST armor, but this stuff was built for stealth. And now it had been augmented to serve that purpose more effectively than ever before.
"Go for it," Yung said excitedly, and I donned my helm.
It fit as snugly as ever, covering my head with an immensely strong protective sheath, and now… The perfectly fitted transparent ceramic eye-shields came to rest directly against my face, trimming a tiny, but noticeable margin off of my vision, just as always. A small HUD popped up, displaying bearing, ambient pressure and temperature, and charge; that was new.
"Remember," Yung said, "It can only be activated when fully charged, and it'll take one second to charge for every four it runs. Like I said before, it could last as long as two hours, unless the surface of the armor is compromised, but no guarantees."
I nodded, and tongued the activation stud through my cheek. There was a backup activation stud I could access manually, but the assumption was I would not want to have to divert my hands from whatever task they were engaged in. Very little sensation touched me, just a slight coolness around my major joints, as they stopped absorbing heat from light. Raising my hand in front of my face, I peered directly through what looked like the distortion caused by looking through water or a transparent composite. The effect was far too visible for my taste, but as I watched, my hand gradually faded from view completely.
"I thought they couldn't do that," I said, and looked down at the rest of me. I was in effect, completely invisible.
"Active Camouflage is restricted by several things," Yung said, "Strength of the field, area to be covered, operation speed, and the nature of what is within the field. The UNSC has only ever successfully tested it with MJOLNIR and some experimental rigs that were essentially stripped versions of the previous generation MJOLNIR. Your suit has a much lower surface area, we've substantially augmented the processor that runs it, and your suit isn't kicking out enough power to run a Pelican. Give the system time to optimize itself, and it'll operate much more efficiently, making you effectively invisible much more quickly. If you move too fast though, you'll still overwhelm the processors' ability to keep up and become a blur rather than downright invisible."
"Why didn't you tell me?" I asked, turning to face Yung, the motion revealing me for a moment.
"Wasn't sure if it'd work as well as I expected," Yung grinned, "We know how to generate and control the 'blue stuff,'" Yung said, "But we still don't know why it does what it does. I doubt the Covenant do either, probably something they picked up from the Forerunner, like most everything else they've got. Still don't know why they don't use it on their ships."
"UNSC destroyers generally mount a lot more electromagnetic sensors than your average marine," Carter said, "Optics are just the beginning of it, and even if they managed to somehow deal with most the other parts of the spectrum, their energy shields would make it all useless. We've had this argument before; yes you're smarter, you're still wrong, and we've got better things to do," Carter finished nodding towards where I stood, or more accurately, where I had stood.
A most satisfactory result, when I moved slowly enough, at any rate. Most animals humans had encountered eyes were attracted to motion, and I had little doubt the Covenants eyes were as well. Even if I was just a blur when moving at higher speeds, any visible motion at all would be enough for those with sharp eyes, such as the Elites and Jackals. I resisted the urge to snort; I doubted the Brutes would notice a thing. I did not resist the urge to grin behind my helm; Brutes were so much easier to kill than elites, it had only taken one battle with them to make that absolutely clear.
"Evans," Yung said in a raised tone, "Wherever you are, we need to start running tests on the damn thing. Now get over her," he gestured to the optical scanner.
I complied, grinning fiercely.
Alarms. Loud alarms. I shoved my helmet back on to muffle the obnoxious noise; it was a battle klaxon anyways. Crap, the covenant were here early, far too early for us to be adequately prepared for. There was no point in bumbling over the Cole protocol now though, there was fighting to do. A moment later, the alarm was muted, though the red strobe continued to pulse.
"It's a single battle group," Johnson said quietly from his self-imposed posting at one of the computer consoles, "A little over a dozen ships capital."
It was perhaps the most I'd heard him speak since I'd met him, and he turned to look at Erikson questioningly. Erikson turned to look at me in turn, and I realized he was testing me.
"A probe, a diversion, or a heavy patrol group that just happened across us," I said, "Too large a force for a scouting group, orders of magnitude too small for a real assault, probably too small to really even count as a diversion."
Erikson nodded in agreement, before turning to Yung.
"Unless they're suicidal, they won't get anywhere near us," he said, "But we should probably start packing things up here anyways."
Yung nodded before speaking, "We're finished here either way, and the In Amber Clad docked an hour ago, so Evans here should probably see about reporting to his station."
I started slightly, an uncharacteristic display of surprise in me. Of course, it was uncharacteristic of me to be surprised in the first place, especially about something as important as my new posting; a great deal depended on making the appropriate first impression with my new CO, as well as the ship's captain.
That was when the second alarm sounded, this one heralding a much greater personal threat.
"Boarding alarm," I shouted, and stormed over to my duffels, where I kept my disassembled sniper rifle.
Five minutes later, we had hit our first snag. The internal elevators were out. Protocol was fuzzy about what my precise directives were, since I was between postings, literally, and had no chain of command until I reported in. General UNSC directives were clear though, protecting civilian population, especially valuable specialist researchers was of paramount priority.
"No good," Spaulding said, looking up from his portable computer, which he had jacked into the elevators controls after Erikson had pulled the panel over it, rather forcibly, off. "The mechanical aspects are damaged, one of the Covenant boarding craft damaged the shaft when it pierced the hull."
The deck shuddered beneath us, and heat and force struck me, knocking me onto my back. I used the momentum to execute a complete roll, and came up into a crouch, leveling my sniper rifle at the shattered corridor in front of me. The mouth of a Covenant boarding craft's grav-conveyor arm stuck into the corridor in front of me. My blood thrilled with adrenaline, and I pulled a grenade from my belt.
"Erikson," I whispered at a level that should not have been audible over the clatter of debris and hum of the covenant equipment, "Take the scientists and find the Marine fire team, I will buy time."
I pulled the pin from the grenade, lifted my foot, and carefully placed the grenade beneath it so that my foot held the detonation lever in place.
"Wait," Yung's voice called out, "We can't leave him here, he's…"
He yelped, and I strongly suspected Erikson had simply picked him up to haul him off. It didn't matter, Erikson was ex-military, he would be able to take care of them, at least as long as I kept this rat's nest plugged up for a little while. I was ten meters from the boarding arm, it had punched through the outer hull, ten meters of food storage, and an internal bulkhead to open a path for its scourge to plague our station. Twenty meters beyond the boarding arm, the corridor struck a ninety degree left turn, ten meters behind me it t-junctioned to the left and straight down. I was clear in the open, no cover except the shadows; the boarding craft had taken out power to the primary lighting in this section of corridor, and crushed half the dull red emergency lights to boot. It was a shame my armor no longer had its dull gray paint, but the reflective gray might be mistaken for wreckage.
It didn't matter much, I only needed one and a half seconds once the first boarding party started landing, and only two things would matter; how quickly the first one spotted me, and how many Elites were in the first wave. My modified S-1 sniper rifle had a six round clip; I refused to upgrade to the S-2, it carried more power, and the fin-stabilized rounds had almost no perceptible drop at any practical firing range, but flash suppression was impossible, and the gas trail was unacceptable. A sniper needed to remain unseen; I had made a few, ah, customizations to my rifle to ensure that, and when I had reassembled it from parts when the alarm sounded, I had left off the scope; no use for a scope in these kinds of close-quarters fighting.
A grunt flew out of the landing arm, and I kicked the grenade. A trio of grunts, then a pair of blue elites, then a pair of grunts, then one more elite, a red, came pouring out of the landing arm. Just in time for my grenade to detonate, tearing the grunts to pieces, and causing the elite's shields to flare. Making them into big, bright targets. I pitted one blue elite in my sights, targeting upward past his mandibles, and blew his brains out the back of his long, narrow skull. I took the red next, he was already looking for whatever had attacked his squad, in the fraction of a second it took to drag my sights across to him, I pulled off a shot that struck him in the shoulder. His shields absorbed the blow, but I rode the recoil up to sweep my sights across his head, smashing his shields and spitting a round through his left eye. Fighting the kick of my rifle, I dragged it down to sight on the blue, the first shot striking him in the head, but his shields had enough strength left that his helmet turned the shot.
I had still effectively struck him in the head with a sledge-hammer blow, but I put a second round through his head before he had the chance to realize how hard he had been hit. I froze for a moment, eyes and ears grasping for any sign of life. One of the grunts moaned and began to move, I put the last round from my clip through his ear. He stopped moving. The corridor had been covered with brilliant, reflective splotches of color; a sniper rarely got to see the results of his handiwork this close; it was satisfyingly messy. I fell back to the t-junction behind me, the second wave would be coming soon. Five seconds had elapsed between kicking the grenade, and killing the last grunt.
At the junction, I reloaded and slung my rifle, pulled my second grenade off of my belt, removed the pin, and stood ready. It was too far to kick such an irregular object with much accuracy, and this time I would not need to use my rifle. With the dead elites plasma grenades no longer protected by their shields, sympathetic detonations were essentially ensured. The next wave arrived, a brace of grunts and jackals preceding their elite commanders off of the grav-conveyor that dumped them into the Cairo. In the moment where the first wave was frozen in shock at the mess I had made of their predecessors onto the station, I hurled my grenade.
The Unggoy in my squad were more nervous than usual, they had heard human weapons discharging at the mouth of the boarding craft's insertion arm. I had heard them too, it was only a handful of shots and a single explosion, Nerakhee's squad would surely have mopped up whatever it was that had interfered with their boarding. Nerakhee was a bit of an idiot, who tended to try to get too close, but considering the size of the installation, and the number of humans therefore likely to be aboard, he should not have any problems. The grav-conveyor's status indicator switched to 'open,' and I barked at my squad, snapping them into action.
It wasn't really 'my' squad, Idu Ashanee would normally have no business with such rabble as this, my squad was still on High Charity, serving with Honor's flotilla. The five grunts and three jackals I had been given command of mobbed onto the conveyor, several of the grunts tumbling over each other. I waited a moment for them to untangle themselves before following onto the conveyor; being as they were grunts it was a long moment. For the third time in my life, a grunt's clumsiness saved my life.
As the squad was dumped off of the conveyor onto the human station's deck, a human grenade detonated, and then a brace of plasma grenades cooked off, spewing a dozen blooms of obscenely hot ionized gas into the air. My squad disappeared into the brilliant mist; and the explosively expanding cloud washed over the mouth of the docking bay, overloading the shield on it almost instantly, and turning the armored hull into a molten mass. Unfortunately, the grav conveyor did not shut down, and at a mere six feet, I was not large enough to pin myself in place against the walls.
Damn, I hate being short sometimes. With not much else in the way of options, I pulled my legs up sharply and then slammed them down, dipping my hooves low enough in the through the grav field to gain purchase against the deck plate for a moment, and leapt through the burning aperture into the human station. The fading cloud of plasma caused my personal shields to flare wildly as they tried to attenuate the heat and protect me from being burnt to ash. I landed on the half-molten deck plate, and hurled myself to the side before my shields could finish themselves off. I crouched, and rapidly surveyed the area around me, looking for the human that had set off the blast.
It was much easier to spot the charred bodies of Nerakhee's squad; they were all dead, and all directly in front of the mutilated docking arm. I had gotten farther into the station than any of the others, and I was only a handful of spans away from the docking arm. There was one human down the hall, unlimbering a sniper rifle. One human. I snarled, and hurled a plasma grenade at him. He pulled back around the corner he had already been half hiding behind, and I rushed it, leaping over the congealing mass of metal where the grenades had detonated, slinging my carbine in favor of my plasma sword.
Human sniper rifles were one of the few weapons we elites feared, even the Zealot's, and Special Forces like me; for primitive chemical-powered projectile weapons, they were absurdly powerful. Completely ineffective at close range, however, especially in the weak hands of a human. I tore around the corner, and almost impaled myself on something. The human had a metal sword, and had braced himself in place, directly around the corner with it held point first towards where my chest had come around. The impact of my larger and more massive body knocked him back down the corridor, but not before he did the heretic's work on my shields.
The charge meter on my HUD dropped to almost nil, and I bristled. The human lunged at me, spinning into a high lateral slash against me, and I blocked with my plasma sword. To my shock, it did not cut his blade in half on impact, instead I felt the hard clash of blade on blade. It was a powerful blow, for a human, he had put his entire body behind it. In my confusion at the strange properties of his sword, I hesitated for an instant, and in that instant, he slammed himself into my chest, knocking me back into the junction. I staggered back, off balance, lashing out with my blade to keep him off me while I regained my balance. He parried the blow over his head, using the force I put in the blow to push him a quarter span away from me, up against the corner of the junction, and he launched himself off the wall, flying me with his blade high and to the side. I swatted him out of the air with my own blade; but he blocked with the back of his sword, and used my own momentum to slash me across the leg with the edge of his sword, finishing my shields.
It didn't matter though; I bumped into the wall of the corridor, and regained my balance. I kicked him, knocking him across the corridor and into the far wall; he rolled with the blow, and used the momentum to bring himself to his feet. I roared, and charged across the short distance, thrusting my blade toward his chest. I was faster than him, I was stronger than him, he was large for a human, I am small for a Sanghieli, so our reach was about the same, but he still managed to deflect my blow. He twisted his blade, deflecting mine and pushing off against the back of it with his off hand, pushing the blade away from him, and him away from the blade.
My plasma sword cut into the bulkhead; I spun around, slamming my left hoof into him, kicking him down the corridor. Unfortunately, the deck plate had cooled enough to solidify again, so rather than getting mired in molten metal, he skidded across it. Once he was clear of the rough patch, he again used the momentum to roll to his feet; he was like a tree-raptor, always tumbling about. He had thought a step ahead of me, as he rolled up to his feet, he already had a human pistol in his hands. Illuminated by the burning corpses of Nerakhee's squad and the rest of my squad, I saw him clearly for the first time.
He was not clad in the customary human marine armor, or the Helljumper armor I had started to subconsciously expect, but an armor unlike any I had seen before. Reflecting the orange hues from the fire in muted tones, it was a closer fit than any I had seen on a human before; it had to be custom crafted to fit him, the snarling predator engraved on the face reinforced this idea. It was some sort of mammal, one with large teeth and a fierce expression; whoever had engraved the image had been a skilled craftsman, fitting the muzzle of the creature onto the mask despite its clearly different structure from that of a human. The human's eyes were exactly where the beast's would have been were the engraving true, and they were alight with a cold intensity. A cold hard intensity, this was a killer, setting about his work, but there was more to it than just that. There was no time for more though; he was bringing his weapon to bear, and now my lack of shielding could hurt me a great deal indeed.
I hurled myself into the other adjoining corridor, out of his line of fire, and activated my Active Camouflage. Deactivating and sheathing my plasma sword, I unlimbered my carbine, and stepped back around the corner. The human was gone.
That elite was good; best I had faced in… Well, he was the only one still alive, so that made him the best I had ever fought. I had almost had him too, but the sights on my pistol had been knocked out of alignment when he kicked me across the floor. I had not been so thoroughly roughed up in years; my armor had protected me well, but I would feel the pain once the adrenaline rush wore off. In the meantime, I needed to join back up with Yung and the others; protecting civilians was priority. As I started to jog to the nearest terminal, I realized I was breathing hard.
A predatory grin crept across my face as I moved deeper into the station; I hadn't had that much fun in a long time. When I reached the nearest data terminal, it already had a deck plan for this level laid out on it, complete with a "You are here" icon for me, and a "We are here" icon as well. Johnson or Spaulding no doubt, up to their elbows in the station mainframe. Not seeing any point in wasting time, I stepped up my pace a little, and reached their position in just over a minute.
The marines and the research team were holed up on the far side of the station, at a T-junction that mirrored the one I had just left, lift and all. They were also in the middle of a firefight; pinned down by a pair of elites; the bodies of a dead drone swarm littering the corridor around the elites. The elites were both blues, both wielding a pair of plasma rifles, spamming the marines with torrents of plasma. I could not see clearly through all the fire, but the marines appeared to be pinned down behind some supply crates. The storm of plasma fire the elites were releasing was turning the crates slowly into slag. Fortunately, it looked like the crates had been loaded down with armor patch material; it would probably take half an hour of sustained fire to punch through.
Judging by the amount of enthusiasm the rookie elites applied to their barrage, they would probably be quite happy to do so; I did not intend to let them. There was no cover between me and the elites; if I opened up on them with my pistol, they would tear me apart before I could bring one of them down, much less both. I grinned under my helmet; it was time to get up close and personal again, just the way I liked it. Sneaking up behind the rookie elites was hardly difficult; I probably could have run them down with a Scorpion for all the attention they paid to their rear. Typical overconfident covenant, so confident of their own superiority. More powerful physique and superior weapons of war were only tools; a warrior's spirit was what made him truly dangerous.
I did not even bother to attempt stealth; I sprinted down the corridor, then leapt onto the back of the elite on the left, wrapping my right arm around his neck, as I rammed my sword into his shields with my left. It was slippery work, trying to maintain a grip on a shielded elite, the shields were like wet ice, slippery and psychologically disturbing to deliberately grab hold of. With the way Sangheili physiology was structured, if I had been able to grip him on his back directly, he would have been almost completely incapable of removing me from his back. Unfortunately, the covenant energy shields don't give much in the way of gripping surface, thus the neck lock; I certainly wasn't trying to choke him.
The point of my blade glanced off of his shields, and for a moment, the elite froze in surprise and confusion. Just how green was this one? I took the opportunity to pound another blow into his shields, the impact jolting my arm, and hopefully weakening his shields appreciably. Now he roared, and reached up to grab my arm with his four-fingered hand. His companion turned to look, and raised his plasma rifles towards me. I twisted around to try to interpose the first elite between me and his compatriot, but the elite would have none of it. Plasma fire washed over my right flank, and I twisted as the intense heat singed my flesh., even through my armor.
These elites really were idiots; the instant their attention was turned to me, the marines popped out from behind their cover, and opened fire. The elite was battered by heavy fire, throwing his aim off, and removing him from my concern. A violent yank on my arm told me the elite I was riding hadn't given up on living; a shame. I let him pull me forward, adding the momentum to my third thrust into his back. The impact almost dislocated my shoulder; this was a lot easier with the strength-augmenting ODST armor. It was loathfully clumsy stuff compared to the precision I preferred, but still useful.
However, the impact also overwhelmed his shields, and my sword flowed smoothly into the elite's back, skewering its large heart. It jerked as it started to die, trying to throw me off but I held to it tightly, the shields no longer interfering with my grip. I thrust my blade further in, pulled up, and twisted. The elite screamed, and every muscle in its body spasmed. I wrenched my blade loose from the dead elite's body as it tumbled to the floor beneath me. Blood spurted out of the wound, drenching the front of my armor with purple; none of it covered my eyes, so I ignored it.
The other elite was dead; there were five marines peeking over and around the crates, two with battle rifles, two with SMG's, and one with a shotgun. More than enough firepower to put the paid to any elite foolish enough to face them in the open, especially at such a short range. Stupid rookie. Not the only one making stupid mistakes here though; there was a blur moving slowly up behind the marines, who were still all gawking at me. Idiots. Ripping a pair of plasma grenades free of the dead elite's belt, I threw them one after the other past the startled marines, and almost hit the blur. It leapt towards the marines, and I rushed their position as well.
Finally jolted out of their reverie by me throwing the grenade, the marines had dived back behind their cover, which would have been excellent protection against me; unfortunately, not against the elite. I pulled my pistol as I charged, and fired towards the blur. Firing on the run, the shots weren't very accurate, but then I was shooting more at an area than a specific target. It wasn't until my third shot hit the elite, and his shields flared, that the marines realized I wasn't shooting at them. My sixth shot hit as well, but then the pistol jammed. Damn; apparently more than just the sights had been damaged. The elite ignored me, and lunged at one of the marines as its shield-flare began to fade. I was still too far out to engage, so I threw my pistol at it.
It struck the elites sword-arm just as it activated the sword. Instead of running the panicked marine through, the plasma sword sliced off his left arm. The marine screamed, lurched backward and fell, but retained the presence of mind to spray the elite with the SMG he still held in his right hand. Unfortunately, he had not reloaded after firing on the rookie elite earlier, and only a dozen or so shots were left in the SMG's clip, half of which missed, even at point blank range. Considering the man had just had an arm burned off, and was using a highly inaccurate two-handed weapon with one hand, it was understandable.
And it allowed me to interpose myself between the Sangheili and the wounded marine without fear of being shot in the back. The elite was smart; the marine squad was far more dangerous to him than I was, especially without my sniper rifle or any grenades. The elite whipped a plasma grenade off of his belt, towards one of other marines on my left. I lashed out with my sword and batted it back at him, but he, displaying the superior speed of his species, had already begun to move past me on my right, backhanding me as he passed. I crashed into the wall of the corridor, his powerful blow almost forcing me off balance; deliberately bouncing off the wall, I charged right up behind the elite.
He had made a gambit; the marine with the shotgun, a corporal, was the most dangerous to him in close quarters. The corporal constituted about half the total threat the squad represented at this range, and the elite decided to attempt to take him out first, before he could do any damage. Displaying titanium nerves, the corporal waited until the elite was right on top of him before firing. One 8-gauge load of steel buckshot slammed into the elite's chest, overloading its shields.
Energy whiplash from the shield's disrupting knocked the elite back, saving the marine's life. Buckshot ricocheted off of the elite's armor as it stumbled backwards, right into me. I slammed the hilt of my sword into the base of its elongated skull, knocking it senseless. The unconscious body unceremoniously thumped to the floor, and everyone stared at it silently. Its active camouflage faded out, and there was an unusually short gray elite on the deck-plate of the Cairo. Out cold, sprawled helter-skelter across the deck, the unconscious elite seemed almost anti-climactic, until the injured private grunted in pain, anyways.
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