Leap of Faith

The Rookie took advantage of the chaos, leaning out from behind his planter and loosing a burst of muffled gunfire at one of them, the squat alien falling on its face as the caseless rounds tore through it. He couldn't see the second one, his VISR had lost track of it.

The Brute came back into view as the smoke cleared, and to the Rookie's horror, he saw that the beast was still standing. The grenade had collapsed its energy shield and had stripped away some of its armor plating, but the shrapnel hadn't penetrated deep enough to bring the thing down. It glared at him with its yellow eyes, its thick lips pulling back in a snarl to expose its tusk-like teeth, its brow and its stunted snout wrinkling like an angry wolf.

It loosed a bestial war cry that shook his bones, throwing aside its Spiker and charging towards him like an enraged animal. It had lost all reason, coming at him like a freight train made of leathery skin and muscle, hunched over as though it was preparing to tackle him like a nine-foot linebacker. He began to fall back, putting as many miscellaneous obstructions between him and the alien as possible, watching as it knocked aside cars and plowed through barricades like they were made of paper. The Rookie unloaded at it with his SMG, the rounds sparking against its damaged armor, the hail of bullets doing nothing to slow it down.

He emptied his magazine, fumbling as he tried to reload his weapon, the beast swiping an errant traffic cone aside with such force that it bounced off the second story of a nearby apartment complex like it was made of rubber. When he succeeded in slamming in a new mag, he once again turned the suppressed weapon on the alien, it was so close to him now that he could see the red sclera around its yellow pupils.

As it climbed over a wrecked car to get to him, the vehicle's chassis buckling under its weight, his rounds found their way through its armor. More of the damaged plating fell away, dark blood spraying. Even as he riddled its exposed chest with bullets, it kept coming, finally faltering as his second magazine ran empty. The Brute swayed drunkenly, then fell sideways, landing on the hood of the car and denting it inward.

The Rookie edged closer, reaching out and giving the limp creature a prod with his suppressor. It didn't react, its eyes were glassy, and blood was oozing from its nose and mouth.

"T-take this, heretic!"

A bolt of green plasma impacted the door of the car about an inch to his left, slagging the bodywork, the metal glowing as it sank inward. He spun around to see the remaining Grunt. It had clambered atop a nearby car, and it was aiming its weapon at him, the pistol flashing as it sent another shot wide. The Rookie let his SMG fall to hang from its sling and drew his sidearm, putting two rounds through its rebreather. The Grunt slumped over and tumbled to the road below, wheezing as it exhaled its last breath of methane.

He stowed his pistol, breathing hard inside his helmet, taking a moment to calm his racing heart. That had been close, too close, and now he was down a grenade and two SMG mags. That grenade blast would have echoed through the streets, alerting any nearby patrols to his presence. He had to get out of here quickly, before they came to investigate.

He reached across the sagging hood of the car, checking the Brute's limp body for gear, and found a Covenant plasma grenade that he stowed on his belt. He made his way back over to where his frag grenade had detonated, noting the jagged shrapnel that had pocked the nearby vehicles, stooping to retrieve the Brute's discarded Spiker. It was far heavier than it looked, it felt like a solid lump of lead. The Rookie had to wield it with two hands, despite the Brute being strong enough to aim it like a handgun, and he turned it over as he examined it. He had expended a lot of ammunition, and it was better than letting his SMG run dry if he found himself in another fight.

The Rookie stowed the weapon on his back and set off again in search of an uplink to the Superintendent.

Alba - Occupied city center, seven hours after slip-space rupture.

The rain was coming down hard, pouring off Alba's armor in sheets, seeping beneath her helmet and making her short-cropped hair damp. It wasn't doing much to lighten her already sour mood. They had been patrolling until sunset, and there had been no sign of Human resistance. The streets were empty, and the defenders were long gone. The Unggoy were pleased, but the Kig-yar were becoming even more restless than she was. They were bloodthirsty creatures, spoiling for the hunt, eager to sink their claws into whatever hapless native might cross their path.

She had been able to link up with a couple of other patrols, it seemed that there was still a substantial Covenant presence in the city. What's more, after the High Prophet of Regret had withdrawn aboard the Solemn Penance, the High Prophet of Truth had dispatched a large fleet to reinforce them, engaging the Humans in orbit and deploying more troops to the ground. That, at least, was some good news. The Prophet of Truth was a friend to the Jiralhanae, and his fleet was crewed primarily by her kin.

She glanced up as the whine of a Phantom's engines drew her attention, watching as the craft floated over the city, the bright beam of its searchlight aimed at the ground as it scanned the ruins for the enemy. The fleet was up there somewhere, probably tearing into the defenders in orbit, but she couldn't see them from the ground.

A crackling in her earpiece distracted her, and she paused, listening as the gravelly voice of a Jiralhanae Chieftain came through on her communicator.

"This is the Shipmaster of the Sacred Fury, calling all Jiralhanae forces. Rejoice, for today is a day that will go down in our people's history. With the blessing of the High Prophet of Truth, we have been made the sole protectors of the Covenant. The Sangheili are disgraced, ex-communicated by order of the Prophets. We have slaughtered them aboard their ships and taken control, our hour has finally arrived. Kill those that you find on the ground, show them no mercy, their reckoning is at hand."

She turned to see the Kig-yar and the Unggoy staring at her expectantly, the Jackals watching her like hawks from their high perches as a flash of lightning illuminated the roiling clouds above.

"What is it, Captain?" one of them asked as he clicked his jaws impatiently. "Do we have new orders from the fleet?"

"We do," she replied, still trying to get her head around what she had just been told. "The...Sangheili have been declared...traitors. Our new orders are to kill any that we encounter. It is the will of the Prophets."

"The High Prophets wish that we should...slay the Sangheili?" the Kig-yar repeated in disbelief. "There has been no mistake?"

"Those are our orders," she replied solemnly.

Why were the Prophets decreeing that the Sangheili be slain? She had fought alongside them in battle, and while the Sangheili and the Jiralhanae had always had an antagonistic relationship, she could think of no one less likely to betray the Covenant than the Elites. They were zealous and honorable, they would never go back on their sworn oaths. It was the Writ of Union, the battle-cry of the Sangheili. On the blood of our fathers, on the blood of our sons. They alone had shown her respect when no Jiralhanae would, they alone had treated her as their equal in combat, affording her a dignity that she was unaccustomed to.

"Fight t-the Elites?" one of the Unggoy stammered, trembling where he stood. "As if the Demons and the Imps weren't bad enough, now they want us to fight the Elites!?"

The Unggoy were almost in hysterics, but the Kig-yar seemed to find the situation amusing. They chattered to one another in their native dialect of hisses and shrieks, seemingly energized by the news. They didn't care who they were fighting, and they were no great believers in the faith, they cared only that their pockets were full and that their magazines were empty.

"Perhaps you will eat of Sangheili meat before the day is through, Captain," one of the Jackals laughed. His comrades joined in, whistling and barking as they continued on their way. Many of her kin devoured the flesh of their fallen foes, a practice that Alba had always found distasteful.

The comment brought her back to a scene that she had witnessed while serving alongside the Sangheili during the invasion of a Human colony planet. The fleet had crippled the orbital defenses in less than an hour, and then she had been deployed to the surface as part of the invasion force to secure sacred artifacts before the glassing could begin. On the ground, the Humans had fought like demons, delaying the Covenant advance for days. They had eventually quelled the resistance, but it had been a hard-fought victory.

The Elites had held a ceremony after the battle had been won to honor their dead, saying prayers for their fallen comrades, and showing respect for the defenders. The Sangheili had a weakness for the Humans that some in the Covenant found inappropriate, they admired their bravery and praised the way that the aliens would continue to fight even when their cause was futile. While the Sangheili had been praying, her fellow Jiralhanae had been eating their fill...

The Rookie - Occupied city center, eight hours after drop.

The crack of thunder echoed through the empty streets as the Rookie pressed on, dodging beneath the cover of a bus stop for a moment as a Phantom passed by overhead, its searchlight scanning the ground below for signs of life. There were more and more of the ships clogging the skies, perhaps more of the Covenant fleet had jumped into orbit to reinforce their armies. He needed to get out of here, and fast. He hadn't encountered any more patrols yet, but it was only a matter of time.

As he entered the foyer of a public building, his sidearm drawn, he finally found what he was looking for. There was a public data terminal mounted on the wall, shaped vaguely like a payphone. It would allow the user to access information such as bus schedules, emergency services, and maps of the city. He activated it, relieved to see that it was still functional, and apparently still connected to the municipal intranet.

The city was managed by a dumb-AI known as the Superintendent. It was responsible for keeping the trains running on time, making sure that there were no traffic jams, plotting garbage collection routes, that kind of thing. After the slip-space rupture, he wasn't even sure if it was still online, but he needed access to it if he was going to lower the blast doors that were blocking his path. He had come across a few of them while exploring, massive, reinforced doors that blocked off entire streets. The AI must have activated them to box in the Covenant, or perhaps to cover the evacuation. Unfortunately, the Rookie was on the wrong side of them.

An icon flashed on the screen, and suddenly, he had a wireless connection. His onboard systems interfaced with the terminal, and data began to stream. Access codes, evacuation routes, a map of New Mombasa. Everything that he needed was here. In moments, he had a complete database, and he pulled up a three-dimensional map of the city on his visor. It was like a maze, winding streets and plazas creating a complex, interlocking web. That was to say nothing of the underground metro lines, and the above-ground walkways that weren't shown here.

He needed to either join up with his squad, if they were even alive, or he needed to exfiltrate. He wouldn't last long if he remained in the city center while the build-up of Covenant troops continued. There was no GPS connection, the satellites might have been victims of the invasion fleet, but he plotted a course through the city all the same. He had to hope that there weren't too many obstructions that didn't appear on the map.

The Rookie returned to the street, hearing the rain pattering on his helmet. It had been hours, and the storm still hadn't let up. Fortunately, his BDU was rated for vacuum, and so there was no chance of him getting wet.

He darted back inside the cover of the building as a Phantom made a low pass overhead, blocking the rain for a moment as it hovered directly above him, the bright circle that its searchlight cast on the wet street very nearly catching him. Perhaps it would be wiser to avoid open ground, for the time being. He should try to make his way along the route that he had plotted through the buildings where possible. He turned, and headed inside, pausing to check his map for a moment. He could make his way through this structure, cross a walkway on the third floor, and then proceed towards the nearest blast door that he needed to open.

***

The Rookie explored the hallways of the abandoned building as he made his way towards his destination, using the flashlight that was mounted on his SMG in addition to his VISR. It was extremely dark inside, very few lights were turned on. He saw a few flickering monitors through open doorways that led into apartments and offices, but that was about it.

There had been little evidence of fighting between the Covenant and the UNSC in the street, but the more he explored, the more evidence of something far stranger began to emerge. There was what could only be described as Covenant graffiti drawn on the walls in many places, glowing eerily when viewed through his VISR, like fluorescent paint beneath a blacklight. There were messages left by the evacuees too, taunts for the invaders, or instructions that had been scrawled in marker in the faint hope that it might help reconnect lost family members.

It was as he had suspected, the civilians had left in a hurry. He passed by one apartment where there was still dinner laid out on a dining table, the television flickering with static. People must have grabbed whatever essentials that they needed, and hauled ass before the worst of the fighting reached them.

The Rookie crossed a sky bridge into an adjacent building, New Mombasa was remarkably navigable without even having to touch the ground, and he came upon the strangest sight yet. Something very odd had gone down in this corridor. He was up on the third floor of an upscale office complex, a drab carpet lining the floor, office cubicles and computer terminals visible through automatic doors that were stuck open due to a lack of power.

There was dried blood staining the carpet, not Human. It glowed through his VISR, splashed on the walls, and even on the ceiling. There were plasma burns too, and spikes from Brute weapons embedded in the dividers between the cubicles, along with little circular objects that he recognized as spent magazines from Covenant carbines.

As he explored deeper, his flashlight beam waving between the cubicles, he came across the source of the blood. There was a dead Grunt here. He knelt beside it, checking the body. It was cold, it had been dead for some time, but what had killed it? There were no bullet holes in its carapace, it hadn't been bludgeoned. The only evidence that he could find was a curious, two-pronged burn mark in its chest...

A plasma sword.

He rose to his feet, his mouth dry and his heart quickening as he scanned the cubicles around him for movement. Plasma swords meant Elites, and Elites were bad news. He wouldn't be able to take one down as easily as he had the Brute, and that fight had been close enough. Elites were the shock troops of the Covenant army, seven-foot-tall reptilians that were as fast as they were powerful. Unlike the Brutes, they were master tacticians, able to outwit as well as out-fight. For all he knew, he could be surrounded right now, the aliens using cloaking devices to remain hidden while they prepared to skewer him.

But why had a Grunt been killed with an Elite weapon? Had a human somehow stolen it from its original owner? That seemed unlikely.

He pressed on, and as he rounded a corner, he got his answer. Lying in a heap at the end of a corridor was a pile of bodies. The Rookie recognized the telltale design of their armor and the strange, finger-like mandibles that they had instead of jaws. They were Elites. He edged closer, stepping over another dead Grunt, and avoiding the hulking mass of a felled Brute. There had been a firefight here, the Elites had been cornered and killed. Their armor was charred by plasma rounds, perforated by metal spikes, and stuck with pink needles. It looked like an execution to him, like they had been corralled here, and then gunned down. The wall to their rear was splattered with blood and charred by plasma. Covenant were fighting Covenant, that much was obvious, but why?

He wouldn't find out by waiting around for the Covvies to stumble across him, he needed to keep moving. This couldn't have happened very long ago, the perpetrators could still be in the immediate area. The Rookie discarded the unwieldy Spiker that he had retrieved after his encounter with the patrol, exchanging it for an Elite's plasma rifle. The weapon was much lighter and more ergonomic, a vaguely horseshoe-shaped firearm that was made from shiny polymer, and which fired a stream of super-heated plasma. He checked that the battery had a charge, then stowed it on his belt, making his way to the nearby stairwell.

Alba - Occupied city center, eight hours after slip-space rupture.

The Kig-yar snapped their jaws gleefully as the patrol emerged onto an open plaza, surrounded on all sides by native buildings wrought from glass and steel. There were fewer derelict vehicles here, it seemed to be reserved for pedestrians, and the ground was covered with regular patches of alien grass in places. The center of the open space was occupied by a group of Covenant and a deployable watchtower, there was enough room here for the Phantoms to land so that they could deliver gear and supplies. Beams of energy suspended the circular platform in the air, the Kig-yar snipers that were perched on top of it peering down at the newcomers with their large eyes, an Unggoy manning a mounted plasma cannon beside them. There were weapons crates stacked at its base, some of them open to expose the racks of carbines and plasma rifles within. It looked as though they had fashioned a kind of makeshift forward operating base here.

What had the Jackals so excited was not the presence of friendly troops, but the pile of dead Sangheili that occupied one corner of the plaza. There were maybe a dozen Brutes and twice as many auxiliaries, and they had clearly been hard at work. Alba hadn't even come across a single Human yet, had the Covenant traveled all the way to this remote planet for the sole purpose of killing one another?

Alba and her procession of aliens were greeted by a Captain Major, a Jiralhanae wearing golden armor, and wielding a grenade launcher with a wicked bayonet on one end. His demeanor changed when he realized that she was female, seeming more amused by her presence than anything.

"Report," he said gruffly. He outranked her, and so it would be wise to obey.

"No contacts along our route," she replied, "no sign of any Humans."

"The Heretics are lying low," he huffed in reply, shifting his considerable weight from foot to foot as he readjusted his weapon. "At least the Sangheili are making for better sport."

The Kig-yar laughed at his comment, Alba looking past him, appraising the corpse pile as the aliens jeered. There were at least a dozen dead, maybe more. She couldn't help but think that the Sangheili had exacted a similar price on the opposing side, but those bodies had probably been left where they had dropped. These were trophies, proof of the Major's accomplishments to his Chieftain.