39The story you are reading is a narrative synthesized from news reports, cantina songs, and oral histories collected from the territories of the former Covenant Empire. It is but one of many produced by Project Footprint, a program of the University of New Aberdeen that seeks to chronicle the evolution of Human-alien relations in the years between the War and the current Diaspora. By presenting historical events in the format of a popular narrative, we hope to spark interest in the real events, and preserve history in popular memory for centuries to come.
As Boatswain Quatch stared down the twin barrels of a spiker, he realized that the greatest lesson he would learn from his shipmaster's last moments was that refusing to make a decision was the worst decision one could make. When two bad choices presented themselves, there was merit in finding a third. But when a pack of Jiralhanae march onto your dock and demand that you join the fight against the treasonous Sangheili, there was really no choice at all.
"Feckless, cowardly Kig-Yar," growled the chieftain as he wiped the last of Shipmaster Val's blood from his bayonet. He was a massive warrior, half again Quatch's height and covered from head to toe in coarse tawny hair and muscles like slabs of stone. What little armor he wore was bloodstained and not his own, but rather the plates from a crimson Sangheili battle harness, riveted to leather straps so that they would fit the Brute's massive frame. More trophy than armor.
He turned to regard the rest of the crew, most of whom were pinned down to the deck and held at gunpoint. "I should have known better than to ask you to fight. Your kind are weak, but you revel in your weakness and dare call it strength! You have no faith."
Beside him, Quatch felt one of the other Kig-Yar quiver with rage. It was Taol, one of the engine crew. Like Quatch, she'd served in the war against the Humans. She knew what it was like to leap out of a dropship under hostile fire, and she'd done it willingly. He clicked his teeth to get her attention, break off her indignation before she did something stupid. Her eye flicked toward him, narrowed, and she checked her temper.
The warrior watching the two of them grinned even wider. Quatch made the mistake of meeting his eyes, and quickly dropped his gaze to the warrior's steel-capped canines, but that only let him see the grin turn into a snarl. The boatswain braced himself for the blow that was surely coming… but it never landed. The warrior didn't dare interrupt his packmaster's speech for such a minor offense.
That was Jiralhanae leadership. It was rule by force and terror, all the way down.
The deck rumbled, which made Quatch's quills stand on end, but the Jiralhanae paid no mind. "The Sangheili knew what you are and they left you well enough alone. No more! Their days have come to an end, and empty promises of piety will not save you. You will fight for the faith, or you will die."
The deck rumbled again, louder. Within and without High Charity, the vengeful Sangheili and the ascendant Jiralhanae were fighting and dying for the faith, and it was tearing the ancient city apart.
"Watch them," the chieftain said to his troops. Without another word, he stormed off to the ship. For a moment, his large, shaggy frame was outlined by the light of the cargo bay. Then he was gone.
The Brutes snarled for the freighter crew to get to their feet and stomped on the heels of anyone who hesitated. Quatch scrambled to comply, but the Brute standing over him grabbed his arm and shoved him toward the bulkhead, where in a sane world the crew would be unloading their cargo for inspection. It was all the boatswain could do to stay on his feet, but then Quatch collided with the junior electrician and they both went down in a tangle of limbs.
The Brute kicked them both across the deck. The air was crushed from Quatch's lungs, but he rolled and ducked under the stamping hooves of his shipmates. He seized a deckhand by the belt and used her momentum as leverage to pull himself up, and then he was on his hooves and running, spitting curses as he caught his breath.
With kicks and jabs of bayonets, the Brutes herded the crew into a corner. Thirty Kig-Yar pressed into a space that would have been claustrophobic for ten. The deckhand fell and almost pulled Quatch down with her. He yanked her back upright, and as her weight spun him around, he saw the Brutes standing in a firing line, with their weapons leveled at the crew.
In that moment, Quatch thought he was going to die. The Brutes were laughing or snarling, but whatever they said to each other was lost in his shipmates' screams. Anger flashed through him like lightning, anger at the Brutes and their sanguine cruelty. It was the same helpless rage he felt years back when his lance was pinned down by the Humans' artillery, and back then he'd had to check himself before he did something suicidally stupid.
An eternity later, most of the Brutes lowered their weapons and walked away. Only one was left, a giant of a warrior with a plasma repeater and a savage look in his eye. He shouted for silence, and when he didn't get it, he lowered his gun and fired a long burst into the floor. The crew was quiet when he stopped, save for the bawling from the injured.
The warrior fired again, panning the gun from left to right. When he was done, he tripped the active cooldown and cleared his throat.
"I am Atroposus. You live at my mercy," he growled. "If any of you cross this line, all of your lives are forfeit. If any of you speaks above a whisper, I will kill you and all who stand near you."
Another shudder ran through the dock, one that made the lights flicker. It was as if the gavel of the gods themselves had punctuated his words. The warrior smiled and stepped back from the line he'd blasted into the floor.
His orders were all wrong. There was tension, an undercurrent of panic. Quatch could feel it like a glass rod in the back of his mind, slowly but surely straining under a growing load. Panic was growing, and it was spreading from one shipmate to the because they barely had room to breathe. Someone, maybe him, would snap first, and then they'd all make a blind scramble for freedom. They'd be fools not to. Anyone who didn't would be trampled underfoot or executed on the spot. Better to die on one's-
"Steady," someone said in a stern whisper. "Steady."
Quatch turned to see the engine chief, Nak, with a ball of tightly-wrapped thallit vine in his hand. The old codger was unravelling and weaving the vine between two claws. In a moment, he had a braid half as long and thick as his finger, which he wrapped in a thin, tightly woven cloth from a roll in his other hand. All the while, he gently admonished the crew with the same stern tone.
"Steady," he said, before he clamped one end of the thallit stick in his beak and lit the other end. He drew until the end glowed bright red, and then he passed the stick to Quatch.
"Steady on now," he said. Already, he was braiding another, deftly juggling the ball of vine and the roll of cloth and the lighter around in his callused hands. "Every last one of you had better calm down. Fright and flight will just get us all killed."
Quatch filled his lungs and passed the stick on to the next shipmate. From experience, he knew that the old T'vaoan had a nearly endless supply of the dry vine, and soon the whole crew would be passing the sticks back and forth like children playing catch. Nak might even have enough to improvise a smoke screen, Quatch thought wryly.
"This was a bad job," Quatch said. "Never should have come here." He was echoing the late Shipmaster. Whenever Shipmaster Val had said those words, he'd meant 'I want us out of this port in five minutes.'
"Keep your head down and your eyes open," Nak said. "Maybe we'll live to see the light of Y'Deio again, yes?"
"Yann's leg was trampled, chief," a Kig-Yar named Das said to Nak as she pushed by Quatch. "He can't run, and he's not the only one. Jiin and Cal-."
"We aren't running," Nak said, shooting a look at Quatch. "Are we, chief?"
If the cook couldn't run, he couldn't run. That was the difference between Quatch and most of the others. He was one of the few to have served in battle. Most of the others were civilians, and natives of Eayn at that. Their first instinct was to look after the weakest members of the crew. They passed around their thallit sticks and tended to the trampled limbs and bayonet cuts. They were good people like that.
Quatch had been a good citizen once, but that had been burned away in combat. Now he thought in terms of triage. Five years of fighting the Humans taught him that a chain was only as strong as its weakest link. But people weren't metal rings. Unlike chains, the weakest members of the group spread their weakness, and the group that wasted energy carrying the weak was all the more vulnerable. The weak had to grow stronger, or they had to be left behind.
Quatch looked around. The crew had spread out to within a pace of the Atroposus's line, and now they had enough room to sit down. He could see how terrified they all were. Terrified of their predicament, terrified of the Brutes, terrified of the fight that they would soon be joining. He saw wide eyes and clasped beaks everywhere, and he caught a whiff of an acrid smell. Someone had already soiled themselves.
When the shooting started, he knew they would shatter like brittle steel. Most of them. Not all. Taol was a veteran from his unit, and she could more than handle herself in combat. And Nak couldn't have gotten that old without seeing a fight or two. And the pipeliner… he didn't know her past, but she carried herself like she knew how to survive a firefight.
"Lan," he said to the pipeliner. "I need you to get Yann on his feet."
"He can't walk," Das protested. She was the doctor's mate, and the running joke in the crew was that she is too motherly for a female who wasn't raising a clutch of children.
"If he can't walk, he's dead," Quatch said matter-of-factly. "The Jiralhanae have no use for a crippled soldier, and they'll sooner kill him than let the rest of us think an injury is the easy way out of the fight."
"That's damn right!" their guard shouted. Quatch nearly jumped out of his skin. The guard smiled as he went back to pacing in front of the crew, but only a fool would mistake it for humor. With his nerves still ringing and his heart hammering against his ribs, Quatch turned back to the other Kig-Yar.
"I was going to tell you to get ready to run," he whispered. "But our guard's ears are cleaner than the rest of him."
"They're not going to make us fight, are they?" Das asked. Her tone made it clear that the Brutes might as well ask her to sprout wings and fly.
"They want cannon fodder," Quatch replied. "If fighting happens to occur, that's a bonus to them."
"We can't do that," Nak said.
"We don't have a choice."
"We're not warriors," Das said. "You're insane!"
"He's telling you the way things are," Taol rebuked her. "If you can't accept that, then that's your problem."
"It doesn't make sense," Das protested. Her eyes were like saucers of crinkled foil, her pupils narrow pinpricks in comparison. The thallit was either doing too much for her or not enough. "We aren't fighters. What are we going to accomplish for them? You're a warrior, you should be talking to them! Convince them to let us go! They can't all be crazy-"
For a moment, Quatch's terror cooled into cold fury. He seized her by the wrist and the scruff of the neck and hauled her through the crowd. They came to a stop just short of the line of scorchmarks, where they could see out through the hangar entrance.
The Libation was parked in a dock big enough to handle a vessel three times her length, out towards the end of a spire that rose from High Charity's ventral spine. Therefore, they had an almost unobstructed view through the canopy airlock to the battle outside, and Halo beyond.
The sacred ring was majestic. Elegant. Breathtaking. The surface outside was covered in designs whose scale and purpose defied the imagination. Just one of the disks on the rim was was bigger than all the megacities of Eayn, and the whole ring could girdle Quatch's homeworld with room to spare. The inside held oceans and mountains and everything in between. He knew in his heart that, even if he had never in all his life been told that Halo was a sacred artefact, looking upon it would still be a religious experience.
And in the foreground, the magnificent warships of the Covenant armada were doing battle with all the proper dignity and righteous fury of flies fighting over a scrap of rancid meat. High Charity's own home fleets had split into two factions, maybe more, and they were blasting away at each other with wild abandon. The warships hurled streamers of light at each other, at the void in between, and some of their light even flickered up toward the sacred ring, though it fell mercifully short. That same fight was raging all over the Covenant's most holy city.
Quatch wasn't one for faith, but he knew sacrilege when he saw it.
"The gods themselves have shut their eyes in shame," Quatch said. He turned upon Das. "Do you see that? The four-jaws and the Jirals are fighting over the Halo ring. They have all taken leave of their senses! You think this is insane? Wake up. Insanity is the rule of the day."
Das didn't reply. All the anger and indignation vanished from her eyes, and nothing replaced it. Quatch had defeated her, but maybe he'd gone too far, and there was no taking it back.
"Dasa," he said. "I need you to get Yann and the others ready to walk. Help them."
She nodded and fled. Quatch was left feeling something he couldn't describe and didn't like.
"Mmm. Nice view," Nak said behind him. Quatch turned, expecting to see the old engine chief's face creased with disappointment. Instead, he was very deliberately looking at the hangar door above, without any any expression at all. That was worse.
"Yeah, it is a nice view," Quatch said, looking skyward.
"Don't change the subject, chief," Nak said. He tied off one last thallit stick and wedged it between two yellowed teeth. "Violence is how you discipline warriors in the legions. That's not how we do things on a ship."
"We don't have a ship anymore," Quatch retorted. Some of the crew shot him a wounded look, as if to ask whose side he was on. He pitied their optimism.
"Doesn't change anything. Do the math. A crew is still a crew."
"Yeah, we're also missing a shipmaster," Quatch said.
Nak looked at him expectantly, but Quatch had nothing more to say. He was staring at the trail of bloody footprints that lead from the group back to the shipmaster's headless body. There were others lying on the deck, killed in the initial struggle or in the stampede. A curl of smoke was rising from a spike in the paymaster's head, not far from where the shipmaster's mate lay. Closer, one of the deck crew was lying limp with bloody footprints all over him. Quatch hadn't seen him move at all. He was either dead or mercifully unconscious.
Those four were the lucky ones. Barring a miracle, the rest of the crew was facing combat. Most of them were civilians. The rest of their lives were going to be brutal, panic-stricken, and short.
Quatch remembered what he had said to Das. The gods themselves have shut their eyes in shame. The only miracle that could save the crew was one of their own making.
A hovercart entered the hangar and turned smartly toward the Kig-Yar's corner. It was piloted by an Unggoy wearing a slave's white rebreather harness and ill-fitting red armor with a blue bloodstain down the side. The Unggoy had the burning eyes of a true believer, and when Atroposus flagged him down, he argued animatedly with the Jiralhanae. After a quick back-and-forth, the guard roared and raised his fist. The Unggoy nearly fell out of his seat in fright, but turned the cart around and drove it for the far corner.
"What was that about?" Nak asked.
"Delivery," Taol said. "That's a cartload of shield gauntlets for us, harvested fresh from the battlefield."
"And weapons?" Nak asked.
"Don't be ridiculous," Taol replied. "They won't trust us with weapons. The guard threw a fit because shield gauntlets alone would make his job harder."
"But when they throw us into the battle-"
"You'll have shield gauntlets and whatever you pick up from the dead," Taol said.
Nak looked to Quatch, but Quatch had nothing for him. Taol wasn't wrong, even if she could be more gentle about it.
But Nak didn't look away. And out of the corner of his eye, Quatch saw that some of the other crew were staring at him with the same expectant look. Because they were civilians? Because he'd seen combat, and still bore his service tattoos? He couldn't save them. He wanted to shout at them. They weren't warriors, and he wasn't their shipmaster.
"Stand up and pay heed," Atroposus barked. "the Fist approaches!"
"My men call me Fist," the chieftain said as he sauntered up to the crew. "You will call me Marsangtus."
He towered over the Kig-Yar, sizing them up and not liking what he saw. The Kig-Yar didn't like what they saw either. He still wore the blood-splattered trophy armor, but in addition to that he'd wrapped his limbs with ballistic weave and slathered his fur with fireproof lotions. Tendrils of greasy hair hung from under his golden helmet. Across one shoulder he carried a longarm spiker with an obscenely long blade, the same blade he'd decapitated the shipmaster with.
The chieftain singled out Taol, possibly because she was the only one who wasn't cowed. "Tell me, who is your commander?"
"You are," Taol said.
That got a laugh out of him and Atroposus. One thing that Jiralhanae and Sangheili shared in common, neither thought that joke got old.
"Your shipmaster is dead," Marsangtus said. "Tell me, who is next in command?"
"The shipmaster's mate," Taol replied. "Your warriors killed her too."
"And under her?"
"The bosun. He was on the ship. What did you do to him?"
Marsangtus snarled and seized her by the neck. Quick as lightning, Taol pointed to Quatch.
"You want him."
Those words hit like lightning. Quatch was in command now. In terms of time served on the ship or personal closeness with the Shipmaster, Quatch was the most junior of the officers. He was fourth in command on paper, but that hadn't mattered. Not until now. That was why half of his shipmates had been giving him strange looks. That's why Nak was calling him chief. The old man was too proud to ask someone eighty years his junior for orders, and Quatch had been too stupid to catch the hints.
Marsangtus shifted his gaze to Quatch. So did everyone else in earshot. Quatch felt a sudden draft as his loyal shipmates backed away from him.
"You," the chieftain said. "Tell me your name."
"Quatch, from the Tennbau clan," Quatch said as he brought himself to his full height. The chieftain tapped his shoulder with a bayonet, and it took all of the Kig-Yar's will to not flinch.
"You bear the branding of a warrior," the Jiralhanae mused, referring to the pattern of ring-shaped tattoos that spanned Quatch's shoulder blades and spread up his neck. "When did you serve?"
"Ten years ago, by the holy calendar. I fought under Field Marshal 'Ualothamee in the Select Fleet of Tempered Resolve."
The Brute laughed. "Rejoice!" he yelled to the other Kig-Yar, loud enough to make some jump in fright. "Here is a warrior who drew first blood on the shores of Bathtet! He shall lead you through what is to come!"
Quatch felt cold dread well up in his stomach. Bathtet. The world where the Humans built a coastal fuel refinery the size of a city. Seven legions landed to claim those fuel-rich seas for the Covenant war machine, and the 56 Dasim of Eayn Dragoons led the assault from the beach. Quatch only remembered those first three days as a chaotic tangle of briney water, burning dropships, and the twisted remains of unfathomable Human machinery.
He glanced over to the Libation, which the Brutes were loading with weapons and crates of supplies. He imagined the Libation storming the shores of Bathtet under the withering fire of the Human stutter-guns. It was a freight hauler. It wouldn't survive long. Hell, his crewmates wouldn't last long either. They would all have died on those cold shores, and their bodies would have washed out with the tide.
"Above us is the Spire of Reunion and Want, which even now the Sangheili hold. Our brethren call for aid! In the name of Truth and Mercy, for the memory of Regret, we shall join battle and crush them!"
"But we have no weapons!" someone shouted. Bel, one of the cargo handlers.
"And I trust you with none," the chieftain said with a smirk that bared his fangs. "When we land, you all will be the first off the ship. You will draw fire from my warriors and take ground as I command. If you survive, you shall have earned a place at my side."
"And you," the chieftain said, rounding on Quatch. He took a plasma pistol from his belt and offered it grip-first. "You will watch over them."
Quatch accepted the pistol, or tried to. Marsangtus wouldn't let it go.
"You will inspire them in battle, and you will shoot any who flee the fight," the chieftain said, his voice a low growl. "Or my warriors will kill every last one of you and throw the bodies into the void."
Quatch glanced over his shoulder. His shipmates stared back at him in horror.
He turned back to the chieftain, whose grin now spread from one cheekguard to the other. This was power, and the Brute knew it. Quatch wanted nothing more than to take the pistol and shoot that smug son of a whore dead. But he figured there was a better-than-even chance that Marsangtus would live long enough to lop his head off before succumbing to his wounds. And then every other Brute in the dock would draw their weapons and hose down this whole corner. The rest of the crew would die as surely as if Quatch himself put the gun to their heads and pulled the trigger.
Quatch owed them. He was the one with combat experience. He was now the senior officer of the Libation, and it was his duty to see his people to safety. In that moment, Quatch resolved that he'd find a way out. He would go along with the Jiral's mad plan only until he found a break, a third option. Something was going to come along and draw the Brute's undivided attention, and he would get every last one of his shipmates away from this insanity.
"I'll serve you," he lied. The chieftain released the pistol and said something, but Quatch didn't hear it. He was distracted by the haunting wail of his break approaching, and he cursed it. It was too soon, there was no chance to get the other Kig-Yar ready-
"Well?" Marsangtus asked.
"Banshees," Quatch said, looking out toward the tip of the spire.
The chieftain snarled and drew his bayonet, suspecting some kind of trick from the boatswain. Then he heard it too.
"To arms!" he bellowed. "Singleships on the approach! Draw arms and fend them off!"
The Libation rested in a sectioned dock. The dock was designed to handle ships much larger than a medium freighter, but was built with partitions so that it could service many smaller vessels. Those partitions were thick and bristled with machinery, but did not rise all the way to the outer skin of the spire. There was enough room for a patrol corvette to pass above them.
A pair of singleships popped over the partition. They were single-man attack craft with stubby wings tipped with gravetic engines that glowed bright blue. Twin plasma cannons spat a lance of blue fire that cut wide paths across the deck. Brutes died. Crates caught fire and burst apart. A cart of looted machinery vanished in a green explosion that rattled the deckplates.
The rest of the Brute pack drew their weapons and returned fire. Some raced out of cover to get a better shot. The chieftain already had his longarm spiker up, and he was pumping one heavy spike after another into the nearest singleship.
This was the best chance he might get.
Heart hammering in his throat, Quatch lowered his pistol and double-tapped the Brute in the back of the knee. The unarmored joint exploded into ash and strips of hairy flesh.
The Brute bellowed as his leg gave out and he toppled to the floor. Quatch's follow-up shots to the head splashed across the Brute's helmet, and in desperation the Kig-Yar switched targets and blew off Marsangtus's right hand.
"Run!" Quatch screeched. "Over there to the lower levels!"
The other Kig-Yar were stunned by the sudden violence, and many were on their knees. They scrambled to their feet, but not fast enough for him. He hauled Nak and the cargo chief upright and gave them a shove in the right direction. "Go, go, go!"
Atroposus was turning, his plasma repeater venting heat, but Taol was already upon him. She ducked under his swing, scrambled up his back, and drove a long knife into his neck.
The Kig-Yar were confused, frightened, and they weren't following him. They were scattering. Some ran for the ship, and some ran for cover. Quatch yelled again, but that only drew attention from the other Jiralhanae, so he cursed and sprinted for the turnwise edge of the dock.
Already, spikes and plasma bolts were sailing their way.
He saw two of the cargo handlers change their minds halfway to the Libation and curve to follow him, only to be cut down in the open. He saw Lan and Heik carrying Yann. He saw Taol leap off Atroposus, leaving her knife buried to the hilt in his shoulder.
And he saw the second pair of strike craft pop over the partition. That was the oldest trick in the book, and he was surprised the Brutes fell for it. The first pair comes in fast and low to provoke ground fire, goading the defenders to reveal their position for the second pair.
The fleeing sailors were caught in a hailstorm of spikes and bolts of red energy. Red-hot darts missed Quatch by a finger's width. Others weren't so lucky. He saw his friends cut down in the crossfire. Their names flashed through his head as they fell to the deck. Hanhe. Buce. Bel. Hok. He couldn't help them. He was too near to panic, and long-dormant combat instincts were taking over.
Quatch reached the end of the dock unscathed and jumped off. He landed hard and rolled to a stop on top of Taol, and then he shoved off her quickly in case she had any more knives.
The first thing he noticed was the quiet. The battle was still raging on the dock, and it sounded like Sangheili rangers had joined the fight. There came battlecries and scattered fire overhead, but down here the crew had time to gather their wits.
This was a utility storage deck, which was to say that it was a quiet space between the elevated dock and a highway where odds and ends tended to accumulate. Canisters of Unggoy food were stacked next to pipelines full of fuel, reactor coolant, and fresh air. Pallets of machine parts were piled high and sealed in tamper-proof wrap.
Quatch took a quick headcount. There was him, and Taol, and Nak, Kess, and Don hiding behind a large engine core due for the recyclers. And Bon with his fellow keelworkers Dith and Tal, the latter of which had grabbed the chieftain's longarm spiker. Lan and Heik both made it, but Yann was mewling in pain from a spike that had torn through her arm. Sap and Cam were turning over Val… who was dead. Landed hard and broke his neck, from the looks of it. Rounding it off was Tair and Dwe, hiding behind an empty crate.
Fifteen. Out of thirty two crewmembers he'd promised to save.
And Quatch's job wasn't over yet.
He checked the charge on his plasma pistol and stepped out onto the highway. It was empty, when it should have been chock full of road trains running to the heart of High Charity, or the great cities at the crown. But that was before this outbreak of madness.
"We've got to find someplace to hole up and listen for what's going on. We can't stay here," Quatch said to the others.
He beckoned with the plasma pistol. Force of habit. He was used to wearing a shield gauntlet on the other arm.
"Let's go."
A/N: Well, here we go.
It's been six years, give or take. Six long years since I last published anything. Now I'm back.
I've got to love a fictional universe to write for it, and I fell out of love with Halo sometime before Halo 4 arrived. The things that drew me to Halo are gone. They've fallen to the wayside, and what 343i has published since then has been one long chain of rushed plotlines and missed opportunities.
Of course, instead of moving on, I spent six years complaining about things I don't like. Now, I'm done complaining. In this story and others, I'm going to try writing Halo as it could have been. This isn't a story about Spartans or Forerunners returned from the grave. It's not even about biggatons, which is probably going to be a hard sell on Spacebattles. It's a story about ordinary people surviving the collapse of the greatest empire in the galaxy. It's a story about soldiers and civilians fighting to preserve their world, or struggling to rebuild in the ashes. It's about outcasts on a journey for fortune or glory, or a quiet piece of land to call home.
Basically, this story treats just the pre-343i stories as canon, as well as most of the books written by Greg Bear. Whatever else the guys in charge at 343i have done, they deserve nothing but praise for hiring him to write those books.
Aside from that… well, Jul 'Mdama could be considered one of those wasted opportunities. But that's a story for another time.
I'm posting this story here, but you can also find it on the Spacebattles forums, along with worldbuilding snippets and, eventually, artwork.