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Avalon, Part Four; Chapter Eleven: The Prisoner
Posted By: Triad<m.eelkema@student.tudelft.nl>
Date: 8 March 2006, 5:00 am
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Avalon; Part Four: Semper supernumerus, numquam superarmatus
Chapter Eleven: The Prisoner
0400 hours, September 23 2502 (military calendar), Below Ring-surface, Avalon nebula
Once again Steven regained consciousness in a totally unknown and alien surrounding. Lying face down, bathing in a sea of dampened cyan light he attempted to shake of the notion, the memory of his own crew, the men and women he had sworn to protect, being shred to minced meat less than a couple of feet in front of him. Yet, the more he tried to tell himself it was nothing but a nightmare, the more he became convinced of the reality of the slaughter the Flood had brought about.
After accepting this horrible scene as the truth, he desperately wanted to suppress it. Sadly enough his mind was locked in vicious circles, continuously replaying the event as if to torture him even more. Tears started to well up in his hurting eyes again.
But through his own sobbing he suddenly registered another noise. It was the sound of shallow breathing that alerted Steven of another presence hiding somewhere in the shadows of the poorly illuminated platform.
Steven tensed and moved to an upright position. His intuition told him the sound wasn't necessarily made by a Human. Could it be Flood? "Who…who's there?"
Something moved in the shadows at the edge, something golden shimmered, a being too big to be one of his crewmembers. Suddenly a dark shape almost eight feet tall slowly emerged from the twilight. The Commander immediately saw the thing couldn't be Flood, but wasn't Human either.
The creature was of slim build, but with wide and strong looking shoulders. Its legs reminded Steven of those of a horse, with high ankles and elongated metatarsal bones which ended in a bipartite hoof. The alien had a long bend-over neck which shaded into a pointed oblong head. Its face seemed to be split in half horizontally, with the lower part divided into four slender jaws riddled with short sharklike teeth. Just above its 'upper' jaws two indigo-blue eyes peered right at Steven. The creature's arms, legs and upper chest were clad with shiny golden armour, and on its head it wore a golden helmet accentuated by sharp backward pointed spikes. The parts of skin not covered by armour were dark coloured, intermittently accentuated by grey spots. The alien's appearance was both awe-inspiring and terrifying, having a robust, almost human charisma to it, yet in combination with a grisly visage.
The sight of this unearthly being frightened Steven to the bone. As the creature approached him, he tried to get up on his feet, but in his panic all he could do was to shuffle backwards clumsily on his ass, until one of his hands felt the edge of the platform. Steven curled up his legs and held his arms in front of his face. He screamed: "Please, don't hurt me!"
The biped being seemed startled and backed away. He slowly opened his trembling mandibles. "By the Prophets! Why did they put you here, my Lord?" he asked humbly.
Steven couldn't believe what his ears were hearing. The figure had spoken to him in a low-pitched solemn voice, overflowing with respect, dignity and submissiveness. It had spoken in a stately Victorian English accent, something Steven found hard to believe looking at its jaw-structure, until it came to him the thing probably had a translator somewhere on his armour, much like the Steward had used to communicate. Steven slowly dropped his arms.
"Are you hurt?" the creature asked again.
"What are you?" Steven replied, still frightened.
The alien looked surprised by Steven's question, tilting his head sideways and manufactured something which appeared to be a sort of frown above his intrusive eyes. "My name is Enno Ameklee. I am a Sangheili, an Elite in service of the Holy Covenant, and I came here on a quest to find and worship you."
"Worship me? What are you talking about? What do you take me for?"
"Aren't you a Forerunner, one of our Lords and Masters of the Holy Rings?"
"I don't have a clue what you mean. I am a Human, and I came here a day ago to find a lost ship and its crew. But when I set foot on this ring, these inhabitants captured me. They've also fed a number of my men to some kind of horrible beings. Now can you please tell me what is going on around here?"
The Elite, as it called himself, seemed shocked when Steven mentioned the experiment performed on his crew. "The Forerunners, they fed your men to the Flood? Are you certain?"
Steven nodded emphatically. "Dead in front of me. They said they wanted to test our 'resilience' to the parasite."
"How could the Steward do that to a Forerunner? This is truly incredible."
"I'm telling you, I'm not a 'Forerunner', or whatever you call them. I'm a Human being, from a planet called Earth." The realisation that the Elite meant no harm slowly trickled into Steven's mind, and he started to relax a little. The Sangheili didn't appear to be hostile in any way. In fact it was more the opposite; the Elite was as courteous as anyone, or anything could be.
As both learned more of each other, both of them gained more insight of what perilous situation they were in. Ameklee told Steven he was a Ship Master, a rank equivalent to that of a Captain or Commander, and that he commanded a cruiser called the 'Faith and Devotion'. He and his crew were on a quest called a 'mission of Reconnoitre'. Just like the Flying Dutchman they had followed the trail of a ship into the nebula, where they had found Halo instead. After they had set foot on the Ring they had been captured and subjected to the gruesome tests and torture, the memory of which the Commander was still trying to force back.
Steven came to understand the Covenant was an enormous alliance of several alien species, all united by a powerful religion that prophesied deliverance using the Rings made by the so-called Forerunners, an ancient divine race that had once ruled the entire galaxy, but at one time had fallen into decay. The various species of the Covenant had made an allegiance to find all the relics their Lords had left behind, and thus regain the rule over the lost empire by means of a 'Great Journey'. Halo was supposed to be the key to this transcendence.
In turn Steven taught the Ship Master some of Human's history, although his story was somewhat less religious panache. Ameklee came to know about mankind's careful venture into space, how they had only actively been colonising their galactic neighbourhood for the past four centuries, and how they had never encountered any intelligent life, until now that was.
Enno was obviously and thoroughly astonished at all these revelations. To Steven it seemed that the alien couldn't quite grasp the notion yet that he was anything but a galaxy-ruling God.
"…And that is why we were surprised to encounter the Forerunners to be such a cruel and vicious chaste. Our Prophets have always taught us our Lords were kindness and goodness itself. But when we arrived here, we were imprisoned without audience, and tortured without mercy, all because they desired to know whether we had knowledge about, or could resist this 'Flood' they speak of. They have already sacrificed half my men to those vile creatures, many of which right before my very own eyes."
"Do you know anything of the Halcyon, the ship that you followed into the cloud?"
"When I entered the system, the ship had already disappeared, and I assume the crew has been infected or destroyed by the Flood."
"Then where is the ship itself? And where is your ship for that matter?"
"After imprisoning my entire exploration-team, they somehow boarded and captured my ship; I don't know how they accomplished it. All I can say is that the ships are being held somewhere beneath the surface."
"Yeah, I also figured that would be the case. But if what you say about boarding the ships is correct, then my own ship might be in danger." Steven paused to think for a moment. It would be several more days before the probe, left outside Avalon would alert FLEETCOM, days in which the Dutchman could be captured, days in which he would probably die at the Flood-ridden hands of either his or Ameklee's former subordinates. His only option was to escape. "We have to get out of here. Is there any way off this island you know of?"
"The wall is about twenty body lengths from the edge of the platform. When the Forerunners deliver a new prisoner, they will activate an energy-bridge. But do you think it's wise to revolt against the Lords? After contemplation I concluded this treatment is punishment for my sins, and I don't want to upset them even more."
Steven was slightly troubled by such blind faith in the very ones that had subjected the Elite to such unimaginable torture. "Enno, you have to wake up and see these Forerunners for what they truly are. I don't want to burst your bubble, but I think they are not the divine beings you take them for."
The fretting Elite pondered Steven's words, torn in two by doubts on everything he was taught and meant to believe for his entire life. The rock-solid faith he had lived by for decades had been shaking ever since he landed on the forsaken ring and now it was finally toppling. The information Steven had given him on the origin of the Human species and his words concerning the Forerunners were starting to burn away the veneer of beliefs on his mind, which was already crackled by the way he had been treated. It slowly made place for the harsh, yet undeniable truth. "I am almost ashamed to admit it, but I believe you are right, Human. We must escape this Ring and warn our superiors. You can count on my alliance, Fi-shar."
"Good. First things first; we have to get out of this prison. Any ideas on how…"
A loud explosion thundered through the empty rift constituting the prison, as a door roughly fifty meters from the platform exploded in a bright blue fireball. After the ionized haze and the smoke had cleared away, the stretch between the hole and the platform suddenly became alight, as if a giant square-tubular neon lamp had been there all the time, but was only now switched on. Two Elites ran through the hole and over the new translucent walkway, both of them armed with the purple coloured rifles Steven had previously only seen in the hands of Forerunner soldiers.
The Elites were accompanied by three bird-like aliens holding transparent green shields on their arms. As the barge drew nearer, Steven got a good look at the new species he had not yet seen before. They were much shorter than the Elites, even shorter than most Humans. Their limber-looking bodies with orange skin were surmounted by a peaked face with a cormorant-beak and a dark Mohawk. On their wrists they carried transparent shields, which looked like they came out of a futuristic version of Homer's Iliad.
Ameklee veered up and waved them closer. "Innemee, you're still alive! How did you manage to come here?"
One of the Elites, which wore stained silver armour stepped on to the platform and lowered his rifle. "Ship Master Ameklee! Praise the Prophets you are unharmed. What has happened to our men?"
"Murdered, by the Forerunners, mind you! But how did you find me?"
"After you disappeared from our sight I started to unload my troops on the surface, but most of them were snatched away by some kind of displacement-device. By the time we adjusted our shields to throw off their teleporters, I'd lost all but twenty Elites, four Engineers and some Grunts and Jackals. After that they attacked us on sight, taking two Elites and all of my Grunts. I've been evading the Forerunner-patrols ever since. With the help of the Engineers we caught your armour's signal and mounted a rescue-effort to get you out of their grasp."
"I thank you for your loyalty and audacity, Osso. I owe you my life and honour. Are there any Phantoms left to escape Halo?"
"Maybe I can help you with that." Steven was standing behind Enno and couldn't be seen yet by the silver Elite. When he stepped out of Ameklee's shadow, it startled Osso so much, he gasped and immediately trained his rifle. "A Forerunner! Kill him!"
The Ship Master quickly grabbed the barrel of Innemee's rifle and directed it towards the ceiling. "No, Field Master! He's an ally. He can help us."
Osso looked at his superior with an incredulous look on his face. "An ally? He's a fiendish Forerunner; one of the very beings who are trying to slit our throats! We must destroy him before he betrays and kills us!"
"He's no Forerunner, Innemee. He is a 'Human'; the Ship Master of the same kind of vessel we followed into this cursed cloud. He and his crew are suffering the same fate as our own men."
Innemee took another good look at Steven and noticed he appeared somewhat different from the beings he had encountered so far. Yet, he remained sceptical. "I hope you're right, Ameklee. But I will keep an eye on him, and if he does as much as point at me, I'll turn him into Hunter-fodder."
"I assure you he is friendly, Osso, but you still haven't answered my last question; what happened to our Phantoms?"
"Captured along with the Faith and Devotion, Ship Master. Unless we commandeer an other vessel, we are stranded here."
"Not necessarily," Steven intervened. "My ship is still in orbit and maybe some of my dropships as well. I'd be happy to take you guys along with me in exchange for the rescue of the remainders of my crew."
The Elites were surprised by his candour. Innemee appeared offended. "When we need your help we'll ask for it, deformed Forerunner!"
"Osso, you are out of line!" the Ship Master thundered. "If Fi-shar can help us, we have no other choice than to accept his offer." Ameklee turned around to face Steven. "Human Ship Master, I would be honoured to step foot aboard your vessel and be taken out of here. I pledge to you my allegiance."
Steven tried vainly to sound just as honourable as the aliens by speaking in a low and dignified voice: "I will do the same, Ameklee. I would be honoured to take you aboard." Steven extended his right arm in a fruitless attempt to initialize a handshake with Enno, but apparently the Elites were not accustomed to the gesture. Ameklee tilted is head while looking uncomfortably at the hand, not knowing what to do with it. Steven realised and finally broke the ice: "On earth it's custom to shake each others hands after making an agreement. I'm sorry I don't know what you Sangheili do in such a case."
Ameklee smiled. "For us our word is enough. But if it means that much to you…" Enno lifted his right arm, grabbed Stevens hand and shook it. Although the alien tried to be as gentle as he could, to Steven it still felt like his hand was placed in a vice, and he could only withhold himself from moaning by the greatest of efforts.
"Very well. Innemee, lead us out of here and find the remaining Humans."
to be continued
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