Concurrence Chapter 7-3

3529 words. Okay quick confession, I was well into the following scene when I had an epiphany. Or a realisation. I figured that Major and Seela openly taking on a Phantom would draw all sorts of attention that went against their need for discretion so far, so I scrapped it and started over. We still got some action as you'll soon see, but as much as I'd like to see them take on a Phantom, that'll have to wait. Hope you guys can agree with my decision. This first bit overlaps the last update, have fun!

***

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 plan, I do not wish to be within the sight of the Phantom guns again. You know how difficult it was to escape its sights. It will be difficult enough without having to deal with the Captain and his personal squad.”

“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, once they were out of sight, the sound of its 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.

“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 gotta 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 there 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 get overwatch the next intersection.

They climbed to the third floor, Seela shuffling past desks and other furniture as she moved to the windows, the frame 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 an 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 rounded heads in thick, overlapping armour, easily taller than her 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 its other arm was a truly massive cannon, 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 handheld 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 stealth 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 arms swirling with heating energy as they primed. After a moment of wind-up, the Hunters fired, two bolts the size of engine blocks sailing towards the Major’s position. The first bolt crashed into this side of the planter, 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 at her. 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 fuel rod fired, a stream of acid-coloured 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 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, Seela 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.

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 shield, 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 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, part of the stonework falling down with her.

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 the 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 armoured 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 anymore.

“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 that had been pulled apart. “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.