Chapter 9: Daring Escape

Pain burned through the blackness, flickering in the corners before completely engulfing the void and burning away to reality. But as Oriné 'Fulsamee's eyes opened, the searing pain did not go away; it grew stronger. His vision was horribly blurred, and he could barely hear or feel anything around him. All he was aware of was sunlight beaming down from above, and the large amount of snow around him that was stained with his own purple blood. For an instant, his vision was perfect, and he saw bodies all around him. Slumping against a nearby boulder was Gagaw, blood splattered across the rock. Then his vision returned to its previous state.

The sting pulsed higher, and he let out a guttural moan. Suddenly he was aware of two shadows over his limited field of vision, a far off chattering, and the sensation of being picked up by his arms and legs. The horrible pain returned, causing him to yell again, but he was not let down.

He was carried in this fashion for a distance longer before his vision began to clear, and the pain begin to numb slightly. Soon, he recognized the shadowy blob clutching his feet as Rurut, and the one that had his hands as Yarna. As his sight grew ever sharper, he realized that each looked highly abused. Yarna had scratches and burn marks all over his body, and Rurut's armor was broken and chipped, and a gash on his forearm bled profusely.

The Elite looked down at himself, and possibly was the most shocked right then. His armor was non-existent, and his blood-soaked undersuit only clung to him in certain places. What was left of his exposed skin was horribly mangled, heavily burned and charred from the fire and shredded by the shrapnel. Blood poured from his multitude of wounds, running down his legs and onto Rurut's hands.

"What happened?" the Elite tried to say, but only managed a series of raspy groans. But his comrades seemed to know what he asked.

"We thought you were dead," Yarna managed with effort. "Everything else in that explosion was, so we considered you to be no exception. That human, the one with the special armor, he managed to destroy us alone. We wiped out his Marine support, and he still managed it. I don't know how he did it."

Rurut let out a despondent sigh from near his feet. "Everyone is dead because of that human. Right after the grenade went off, he shot poor Gagaw right in the head. Killed him instantly. Then he ran around, killing all of us. We only managed to survive because we were knocked unconscious when he destroyed the tank near us. He probably thought we were dead because of the damage Yarna took, and the fact that I landed in a pool of another Grunt's blood."

"What about the human?" Oriné gasped hoarsely. He could feel his strength slowly trickling back.

"Don't know," Yarna said curiously. "I woke up just in time to see him hijack a Banshee and fly off into the night."

They went the rest of the way in silence, each considering what just happened. Finally, they arrived in a familiar-looking ravine. Oriné peered over his own shoulder and spotted the crashed drop ship that had brought them here. It didn't look that much different from when they had first arrived, and Oriné could tell because it was still positioned against a cliff.

The group of two Elites and one Grunt entered the ship and found their way to the cockpit. It had enough room for the three of them, plus the already-dead pilot. Yarna and Rurut set the wounded Oriné down in the data officer's chair and then took their positions. The black clad Grunt hopped into the communications officer's chair (it was the only one that suited his species) and Yarna picked up the corpse of the former pilot, threw it outside the ship and then hung his head in brief mourning before returning to the cockpit. He took a seat in the pilot's chair, cracked his knuckles, and then activated it.

At first, nothing happened. Then it sputtered, coughed, seemed to die, then came to full life. The ship hovered off the ground, dampeners kicking in and smoothing out the ride. The Elite at the helm took it into a steep climb and turned up its speed as a heavy blast door sealed the cockpit off from the rest of the ship.

As the ship left the ravine, the communications console was suddenly alive with chatter. Distraught Covenant teams radioed in reports while humans screamed about some such thing or another.

"…the Truth and Reconciliation! She's going down!" A Marine squealed into the radio before it suddenly turned into static, then noise. The console cycled.

"…I repeat, the Pillar of Autumn's reactor is going critical!" A distinctly female voice, sharp as that of an AI, spoke over the comm. "We need evac! Now!" The console cycled again.

"Clear the ring!" an Elite shouted. "All ground units! Find a way to get off Halo, or—" More static and white noise, and the console cycled again. The sound droned in the background.

"Well, you heard him," Rurut spoke in a squeaky, worried voice.

There was a brief moment of silence before Yarna's voice pierced the air to Oriné's ears. "Right. We'll take her out. Just hang on, Oriné." The Elite felt the ship ascend even faster than before, and soon could feel a brief second of weightlessness before the artificial gravity kicked in. The ship had made it through the artificial atmosphere without even a slight tremor.

A screen behind Oriné flickered to life and displayed a picture of Halo. It seemed normal enough, until there was a huge, noiseless, brilliant flare on the inside of the ring. It remained for a moment, and then a shockwave resounded through the inner habitat. It began to break apart, shattering at the seams. A large chunk spun and collided with another portion of the ring, breaking that apart and hurling debris into space. Atmosphere trailed off the continent-sized shards of ring, and Oriné thought he could see the shining bodies of his fellow warriors in it.

A siren blared a warning of an incoming shockwave a moment before it hit the small craft, sending it tumbling a little through the cold, black void.

Oriné 'Fulsamee was dimly aware of the cold, hard surface his near-lifeless body was resting on. He had been thrown to the floor during the shockwave, and more or less unconscious. He drifted somewhere between reality and dream world, but he didn't know of his friends. Rurut was slumped in his chair, peacefully dreaming of his methane-rich, colder than zero home world while Yarna 'Orgalmee fitfully slumbered while images of himself wrenching humans' throats right out of their necks filled his head.

They had been out for hours, yet none of them were aware of the incoming Covenant investigation fleet, nor of the single human Longsword interceptor that floated derelict in space not 400 meters from their ship.

Yes, they would live to fight another day…

But what day will it be?

Closing Note from the Author:

This was quite fun to write, and hopefully more fun to read. Only you can be the judge of that.

I know what most of you are thinking: OMG WTF but all Covvys are suppsed = dead! LOL!11!1

Well, let that be a lesson to you: never get so attached to your characters that you can't kill them off if your life depended on it.

Is this story random? Yes. Is it fun? Yes. Could PBS squeeze a public service announcement out of this baby? You betcha! This not only entertains, but it teaches people about the horrors of war: casualties, fatalities, innocents, murders, superiority, outnumbering, and of course the inevitable disgusting zombie-like creature that endangers both sides. If you want added effect, "no war is skill; its all chance and luck." To summarize it: war is bad.

Expect the sequel, Negative Halo 2, to roll out sometime around late April/early May (it'll probably take me that long to beat Halo 2 and get comfortable with the material) so while we're all waiting, I just might turn out a second Halo fanfic, or maybe even Maverick: Fragment.

If I'm lucky.

Closing Note 2:

As of 9 September 2011, I've updated the format of the chapters and fixed a few errors, some grammatical and one canonical. Of course, there's no reason to read too much into this sudden new attention.

Unless there is.