So excited about seeing the alien warriors to the standing-stones, Twilight Sparkle didn’t even want to slow down or rest. She just fought through her fatigue, tearing in the forest more aggressively even as the woodland thickened in an attempt to hold them back.
It was in those instances that Twilight Sparkle charged her horn up and sliced through with a blade of purple light.
Following silently, Ishmir pondered exactly what it was he was witnessing. It was Marko’s simplistic outlook on everything in life that clarified it for him.
“Oh, yeah! Check it out, Ish, she does magic! Hey, you’re not gonna burn her at the stake are you, God-lover?” the Spartan added not with concern, just genuine inquisition.
“Where do you think I’m from? The dark-ages?” Ishmir snapped sounding a little offended.
As they talked, Twilight Sparkle cast a glance over her shoulder. “Burn who at the what now?”
Ignoring her, Marko added, “where I’m from we strap a few pounds of C-4 to witches.”
“What’s C-4, and why are we talking about witches?” Twilight asked.
“Oh, nothing, dick-face. Keep walking.” Looking back at his fellow headhunter, Marko continued to say, “hey, Ishy? Think your God made these ponies too?”
“Without a doubt.”
“… your God has issues, man,” the foul-mouthed Spartan said after a pause.
Ishmir smiled at that one, finding it hard to disagree. “At least I have a God though.”
Hefting his shotgun in one hand, Marko’s shoulders heaved with his chuckle. “I got my God right here, dude.”
Their conversation paused as they slid into a single file to squeeze through a cluster of tightly packed trees. Twilight’s slim frame managed to hop and squeeze through no problem. The bulkier Spartans took a bit more twisting, shifting and forcing.
“What do you think Zecora meant by our destiny awaiting us by the elder stones?” Ishmir asked as he shuffled over a fallen log.
Ahead, Marko un-wedged himself from between two trees, stumbling as he found his balance. “I don’t fucking know, and I’m not going to worry about it. This is all a dream anyway, and you’re just a manifestation of my mind.”
“No, we’re awake.”
“How do you figure?”
Ishmir’s actions came out of nowhere. Walking up beside Marko, he swung his left fist around until it made contact with the back of the Spartan’s head. The resulting clang was deafening, and the force of the blow nearly planted Marko’s face in the mud.
“Ow! The fuck!?”
Ishmir chortled. “The satisfaction I feel when I do that in real life; no dream can emulate that.”
The other Spartan huffed. “Alright, smart-guy. How do you explain the fact we look like cartoon-characters?” he asked drawing attention to the fact they both had flat colour schemes and distinct outlines.
Ishmir paused to think before shrugging with a glance at the sky.
“I got weird ozone readings during entry. Could be the way the light’s filtering through the atmosphere messes with our ocular rift,” he suggested drawing a blank stare from Marko.
“That even possible?”
“You try and explain it.”
“Alright, dumbass. I-…” Marko paused dead, opened his mouth a few times when he thought he had the answer, but after a while just sighed. “I can’t.”
“See? If you were dreaming you wouldn’t be such a dummy,” ishmir stated triumphantly.
Throwing up his arms, Marko sighed explosively. “Fucking ass-muncher,” he cursed loudly enough for his voice to break.
Ahead of them Princess Twilight Sparkle missed a step. On two feet it may have resulted in a stumble or a visibly uneven pace. But on her four hooves it led to a full on trip from which she only narrowly saved herself from kissing the dirt.
Pausing and turning to face the Spartans following her with a bit of a pressing question. “Wait a second, did your voice just break like a thirteen year old colt? How old are you?”
Looking down at her as he stopped, Marko shrugged holding out his arms. “Fuck, I dunno. Ishy! How old am I?” he asked his fellow.
“Mentally? Five.” Ishmir answered smartly.
Twilight giggled, obviously liking Ishmir’s comment. “Hee-hee. I could have guessed that.”
“Suck my dick,” Marko growled in response almost as if making a demand.
It sounded demanding enough so Twilight took it as a literal command, her eyes bugging as the colour seemed to drain from her face like before when she discovered what ‘fucking’ meant.
“W-what? N-n-no! No!” she stammered shaking her head. “Never! Why would you even tell me to do that!?”
Marko didn’t even have to say any more, sniggering to himself while Ishmir sighed.
“Marko, leave her alone. She doesn’t understand that kind of talk,” the crimson clad Spartan said.
“But it’s like picking on a retarded kid. It never stops being fun,” Marko admitted.
Ishmir was about to reprimand his partner when he stopped. Marko froze in the exact same instance before they both snapped their gazes down the path. Not understanding what was happening, Twilight Sparkle looked between them. Her mouth opened to ask what was going on, but before she could get a sound out she blinked.
When her eyes opened in a split-second, Ishmir had his sidearm drawn, aiming down the path in a covering pattern. Marko was falling on top of Twilight. Scooping the pony up with one hand, he kept his other clamped over her mouth to keep her quiet. And with a single leap they both disappeared into the undergrowth beside the path, vanishing like ghosts.
Ishmir followed silently, dropping prone in the mud beside where Marko and a very confused princess lay.
Holding up one armoured finger, Marko gently placed it on Twilight’s lips to indicate she had to be quiet. At the same time he whispered, barely audible, “Movement ahead. Stay low. Stay quiet. Follow me.”
Giving Ishmir a nod, he let his buddy lead on. The pistol still in his hand, the crimson headhunter slowly crawled forward. One arm and one leg forward, he pushed and pulled, sliding his stomach through the muck before taking over with the opposite limbs to drag himself forward.
Marko moved the same way, slower so to give his point-man some room to work with. Twilight Sparkle followed closely behind.
Their crawl stopped as they joined Ishmir behind a large boulder at the edge of a clearing. Sneaking a peek through the foliage, Twilight realised they had reached the ancient standing-stones Zecora had directed them to.
The stones still standing varied in size. Some tall, some short, others narrow, a few quite wide. One near the centre of the clearing had fallen over completely, and at least two had been reduced to small piles of rubble by centuries of erosion. Besides that, the clearing was unremarkable. The stones were plain, widely spaced to form three concentric circles, the largest of the standing-stones forming the outer ring.
Even more interesting than the standing-stones themselves were the figures moving among them.
“Hostiles,” Ishmir whispered. “Standard kill-squad. Little bastards en-mass, big ones sporadic.”
Placing a hand on the surface of the rock, Marko very slowly shimmied his way up beside Ishmir to get a look for himself.
The creatures moving among the standing-stones were impossible to mistake. They were Covenant. And not just any Covenant. Covenant warriors. A couple of elites, a healthy hand-full of jackals and a cannon-fodder contingent of grunts. A full kill-squad. And more worryingly still was that phantom drop ship hovering over their heads. The sleek craft was airborne, but there was no telling if that nasty looking chin-mounted plasma cannon was manned or operational.
The grunts – squat little bipeds with clumsy methane tanks on their backs and the IQ of a retarded lemming – and jackals – scaly bird-like saurian guys with wrist mounted shields, but besides that fought like wussies – on their own weren’t very threatening. As mentioned, the grunts were dumb and the jackals were pussies, irritating at the most.
It was the elites who worried the headhunters. Even just one of those eight foot squid-heads was enough to drive terror into the most hardened veteran. Tough, disciplined fighters with personal shields doubling their toughness, elites were like Marko. They lived for the heat of war and didn’t balk at the threat of death.
In the midst of it all there was one inactive figure. It was hard to imagine that singular lazy fucker wasn’t the leader running the freak show. An elite towering a little over the others, he was clad in bright crimson armour with a blood-red mantle draped over his shoulders. Everything about him reeked ‘officer,’ from his stance to the fact he was supervising the labour instead of taking part.
Safely in cover behind their rock, the Spartans and their alicorn hermana watched the aliens moving what looked like weapons crates across the clearing to where the glowing gravity lift connected the drop ship with the ground.
“When they get back to mommy they’ll come back with an army to either conquer or glass this world,” Marko whispered softly, Ishmir nodding in agreement.
“You might be right.”
Marko scoffed. “Fuckin-A, I’m right.”
Twilight Sparkle hadn’t caught any of their cryptic speech as she was still coming to terms with what she was looking at. “What are they?”
“They are called the Covenant,” Ishmir explained hoping to get Twilight up to speed with the basics as quickly as possible. “They’ve been conquering their way across the galaxy, killing our people every step of the way for no reason we can figure.”
“That’s horrible!”
“Yeah-yeah-yeah, they’re very anti-social. Are we going to get some killing done or what?” Marko hissed impatiently.
Hearing that, Twilight’s eyes widened as her voice raise hysterically with shock. “Killing!?”
Her cry carried, over the rock, out into the clearing, past the standing-stones and to the ears fo the working aliens. All of them stopped what they were doing with a start, dropping crates and equipment before turning towards the source of the sound.
The elite in charge turned on the spot, eyes narrowing as he scanned the dark treeline. Hearing nothing else, he in haled sharply twice, gently tasting the air with his mandibles hanging slack. All he could catch was the sickly sweet scent of this perfect unpolluted woodland. It was soft, kind and welcoming. Not at all like the harsh blistering wind and jagged landscape like on his home planet of Sanghelios.
He hated it.
Gritting the quad jaws, the captain turned away from where he thought the sound had come from, unconcerned with its source.
“Lamina na tsuj ylbaborp,” the cloaked alien reasoned gruffly before waving his warriors back to work. “krow ot kcab teg!”
With the aliens returning to their unintelligible chatter and hard labour, none of them noticed the two humans and the pony down wind. Back behind the rock, both Spartans were keeping their heads low in cover. Marko had an arm locked around Twilight’s neck with a hand clamped over her mouth and nose.
“Keep it down, boner-head,” he scolded before letting her go.
Gasping for air, the alicorn managed to slip from under the Spartan’s arm. “Did you say you were going to kill them!?” she hissed almost angrily.
“Well how else would we deal with them?” Marko demanded with a frown.
“Talk to them!” Twilight stated plainly as if it were obvious. “Clearly there’s some misunderstanding between your people and it needs to be rectified. There isn’t any problem friendship can’t solve.”
Marko and Ishmir looked at each other for a moment. Neither had really thought about it that way. Could it be so easy? Simply talk their problems out? Maybe all the Covenant wanted from them was to be friends?
Then realism kicked in and the headhunters burst out laughing at the sheer stupidity of Twilight Sparkle’s statement. Even Ishmir thought it was silly enough to snort at.
When they were about done laughing at poor Twilight Sparkle and her innocent tactics, Marko and Ishmir went back to planning their engagement of the Covenant forces.
“We’ll take out the bad-guys and commandeer that ship for a ride home.” Ishmir suggested. But that wouldn’t do them any good f they didn’t have the means to combat the Covenant effectively. “Gear check. What have you got?” Marko immediately groaned with dismay at the realisation of their limited resources.
“Jack and shit. And Jack’s not in town. I got four shells, and two SMG mags. Also, my shields are dead. You got grenades?”
“Nope. I’m down to my sidearm and bayonet. My shields died too. Still got my wits though.”
“Oooooh, brilliant. The day is saved,” Marko whooped sarcastically. “What I wouldn’t give for a rocket launcher right now.”
Ishmir wasn’t out of ideas though. “What about Twilight Sparkle? Could she use her magic to create a distraction?”
“Yeah. What about it, Princess Bitchpants? Think you can… uh… hello?” Marko turned his head to look at where Princess Twilight Sparkle had been sitting in cover with them a moment ago.
One of three things could have happened. Either she’d spontaneously combusted. Unlikely, as there were no ashes to be seen. Or she could have gotten her friend’s name mixed up and accidentally said Candleja-…
“Aw, fuck.” Or she could have done the one thing that would cause a Spartan as composed and civilised as Ishmir to let out an honest-to-God curse word.
Looking up to Ishmir, Marko quickly followed his gaze and looked across the clearing to see Twilight Sparkle trotting calmly out in the open to meet the Covenant head on. They heard her approach and like before when she had cried out stopped what they were doing. But so confused by the creature boldly approaching them, the Covenant warriors simply stood and stared as she trotted to a halt in front of the cloaked captain.
“Hello mister alien, sir. My name is Twilight Sparkle,” she introduced brightly to the towering alien. “Allow me to be the first to welcome you to Equestria.”
Watching from the shadows as their element of surprise slowly fell apart, Ishmir and Marko cringed heavily. Marko was angrily raking his armoured fingers down his visor, seething to himself through gritted teeth; “Stupid, fucking, horse!”
“However there are, uh,” – tapping her lip with a muddy hoof, Twilight thought of how she could put her concerns delicately – “issues that need to be seen to. You are after all wandering around without...”
Pausing and blinking, Twilight found herself looking at something fairly odd. The alien had calmly reached down with his dexterous hand and pulled something loose from a magnetic hold on the sleek plate of armour protecting his right thigh. Holding the electronic sounding device in one hand, he pointed it directly at the princess’ face.
Continuing softly, Twilight Sparkle managed to force out, “a... visa,” before the tip of the device began to glow a venomous green colour. Cocking her head curiously at the electronic whine and the intense heat emanating from the object, Twilight Sparkle glanced between the entrancing green glow and the alien’s frightful facial features.
“What is that?”
Twilight found out exactly what it was a moment later.
A green blur slammed into the towering alien, knocking the hand holding the device to one side. At the same time the orb of sickly green energy was unleashed, shooting from the muzzle of the device and flashing through the night. The ball of energy hit the dirt beside Twilight, crackling with enough static energy to make her fur stand on end. The sheer heat of it blistered her side and turned the patch of exposed mud to a small crater of cloudy glass, smouldering the surrounding grass that was supposedly too wet to catch fire.
Realising she had been standing nose-to-nose with a deadly weapon the alien had intended to use on her face, Twilight Sparkle’s eyes grew to twice their normal size. Screaming with surprise she looked up at the alien again. Only her view was blocked.
Standing in her way was Marko, the glint of his dome shaped visor and the wicked smile carved into the glass were impossible to mistake.
The elite captain was stunned by the sight of the army green demon standing before him. And those precious seconds of hesitation were not squandered. With his submachine gun gripped in one hand, Marko cocked his arm back and lashed out with a sharp jab, forcing the silencer of his weapon into the back of the alien’s throat. His personal shields flared as he gagged, mandibles wide as his eyes with surprise. The shields would protect from high velocity impacts, not from a punch, allowing the barrel to bypass the force field altogether.
Toppling backwards off the barrel of the firearm, the alien was fumbling for an object on his belt. A weapon, a grenade, anything! But all thought turned blank as Marko pulled the trigger of his SMG and unleashed a short burst into the elite’s face.
Blood and bone clouded the air as the elite twisted with the impact of at least six rounds, blasting free both right side mandibles and several shattered teeth.
Turning his back on the falling alien, Marko swiftly holstered his weapon and scooped Twilight Sparkle up in both arms. There was no time to tell her what to do and no time to put up with the possibility of her hesitating. They needed to move fast.
The servos in the Spartan’s armour whined as he kicked off the SPI-armour’s safeties, feeding the battery power of his dead personal shield systems into the mobility assist systems. The armour’s neural interface linking with his motor nerves picked up on the electrical impulses from his brain commanding his legs to ‘fucking-run’ and launched the Spartan into sprint, turning him into a green and purple blur. The sudden acceleration almost gave both Twilight and Marko whiplash as the alicorn was pressed tight against the Spartan’s chest.
Were it not for the headhunter’s bio-augmentations doubling muscle mass and hardening his bones, both legs would have been broken by the force exerted by his armour’s powered systems. Already it felt like his skin turned to broken glass when pressed up against the gel layer lining the inside of his armour. He wouldn’t be able to do this again anytime soon without seriously hurting himself.
As they were moving, Twilight Sparkle couldn’t see a thing. The speed they were travelling in those split seconds was too much. Everything was a blur. But for Marko, everything moved in ‘Spartan Time.’ He picked up on much more detail as his brain processed everything his senses picked up on much faster than the pony’s could.
Three grunts were scrambling for their weapons, only for their heads to explode suddenly and violently. All three victim to Ishmir’s pinpoint accuracy with that pistol. There were no gunshots, the suppressor only letting out whisper quiet puffs of air and fire with each shot. The gun’s internal mechanisms made more noise.
A jackal joined the body count, flung sideways as he tried to bring his plasma pistol to bear on the running Spartan. The headless jackal’s wingman was faster than his fellow. Ignoring Marko altogether, he let out a screech and shifted the circular aspis of energy mounted to his wrist in the direction from which Ishmir’s fire came from. Several splashes of energy rippled across the barrier as the jackal slipped his plasma pistol through a nook on the side of the shield. It flashed, unleashing a number of low-yield, but at the same time deadly, plasma bolts.
They hit the boulder Ishmir used as a sniper’s perch, blasting up clouds of dust and grit. The jackal’s fire was joined by several more shots from the other jackals being directed by the elites to return fire as they sought out cover for themselves and the grunts under their command.
Halting his fire as Marko reached cover, Ishmir decided he needed to move before he was winged. Sliding back over the top of the boulder, he fell into cover behind the rock, his armour scraping noisily over the rough surface and trailing a giant silver mark across his chest as the paint was ripped away. ignoring the aesthetic flaws of his fancy armour – fancy compared to Marko’s – Ishmir crouched low and glanced from side to side, seeking out new cover to run to when there was a break in the enemy fire.
In the meantime, across the clearing, Marko slid to a halt on one knee, carving a deep groove in the ground before dropping Twilight sparkle in the cover of one of the larger standing-stones. It stood on the outer ring near the clearing’s edge, far enough away from enemy fire and other danger. And if shit slid very far to one side, she’d at least have a chance to make a break for it into the woods.
“T-that... that was a weapon,” Twilight stammered hysterically as Marko put her down. “H-he... he w-was going t-to use that w-weapon on my f-f-face! H-he was g-g-going to k-kill me!”
“Stay down!” Marko simply ordered the shaken pony looking up at him with tear brimmed eyes. It was like she was giving him the puppy-dog eyes again, only this time it wasn’t cute. It was frightening to imagine something so innocent had been on the wrong end of a plasma pistol only seconds ago. Even Marko hadn’t pointed his weapon at the pony. He’d threatened her, but there was a difference between talk and charging a plasma pistol in one’s face.
Angrily, the headhunter drew his SMG, levelling it on the nearest alien. It was Marko’s opinion that someone had to die.
His weapon coughed, extended stock gently kissing his pauldron as he unleashed a sustained burst into the back of the nearest jackal. Thick purple paste splattered the inside of the glowing aspis as the hateful looking alien toppled forward riddled with holes and fell face down in the gore strewn mud. Pausing in his fire, Marko’s torso swivelled right as he locked on to the next target and fired systematically sweeping across another jackal and a grunt.
As the alien’s turned and shifted their aim to Marko, the Spartan leapt to his feet and ran along the outer standing-stones, drawing fire away from Twilight and Ishmir as best he could. His submachine gun held out in one hand, he didn’t even look as he fired into the mess of aliens. Safety and trigger-discipline that should have been drilled into his muscle memory were thrown to the wind. He didn’t much care for it with plasma whizzing around his helmet. Besides, he was firing into a crowd of Covenant. What was the harm of a little negligence?
His SMG let out a click and stopped firing, clear indication there were no more bullets in the mag. Diving forward with plasma scorching the armour at his heels, Marko tucked his weapon against his stomach and reached out as if lunging for a golden Snitch (yeah, Marko did read from time to time, what of it).
Hitting the deck hand-first, the headhunter curled into a ball and rolled, halting crouched on one knee, sliding with his momentum across the slick mud.
Sliding into cover, Marko dumped the empty SMG magazine with a flick of his wrist and pulled another from the dump-pouch on his hip at the same time. While reloading, he leaned around the standing-stone to get eyes on the situation.
The Covenant were putting cover between him and them, complicating thing a little. Marko was on his last mag, so he couldn’t afford to waste any more rounds on covering fire. If he moved from his fairly isolated cover he’d walk into enemy fire. And he wouldn’t be able to actually get an angle of fire on the enemy unless he moved and flanked them.
His saving grace however came in the form of a twitch, reminding him he was a headhunter. That he wasn’t alone.
One of the elites twitched, breaking all the discipline and skill they were famed for by stumbling drunkenly out of cover. It was as if something heavy had landed on his back, forcing the wind out of his lungs.
The alien shook and bucked, swinging his arms strangely to claw at the air behind him, before with a sudden sharp motion his head was twisted all the way around to the left. The thick saurian neck popped and cracked, warping out of its natural shape as the elite’s head was tugged around at an unnatural angle.
Standing high atop the broken alien, a shimmer of light intensified and solidified. Inch by inch, Ishmir’s crimson armour began to shine through his active camouflage. By the time he was fully visible, he was already surfing the alien’s corpse to the ground, rolling as he made impact. His pistol was drawn mid-roll, and when he was on his feet again the silencer was flashing as several shots were unleashed.
Almost immediately, the exposed backs of the remaining jackals blossomed open like gory flowers in time with the heads of a few grunts, their cover counting for nothing.
As some of the aliens turned to fire at Ishmir, the barrage assaulting Marko thinned out significantly. As Ishmir started taking fire, he curled his arms withdrawing his pistol in to his side. Held level, the weapon fired twice more, putting a double tap in an elite’s shields before the Spartan side-stepped behind a standing-stone.
“Taking fire!” Ishmir reported as he switched hands and stepped out the other side of the standing-stone, continuing to engage the Covenant from a new angle.
“Engaging!”
Straight up, moving in a similarly fluid fashion to Ishmir, Marko stepped out of cover and fired short bursts while moving. The holo-sights of his M7S submachine gun weaved from head to head, splitting open a grunt skull before sliding onto the next target.
With the cannon fodder laying dead in the bloody muck, two elites stood their ground, shields flaring violently as they took fire from two angles. The flashes of light glistening up and down their bodies blinded them like a flashbang grenade might, causing their return fire to end up cratering the ground or slicing harmlessly up into the air.
Both aliens’ shields popped at the same time.
Marko ran in a little closer, his index-finger never leaving the SMG trigger. Ishmir leaned sideways as a lucky plasma rifle shot came close to hitting him in the face. Firing one handed, he put two pistol rounds in the alien’s gut where the sleek blue armour didn’t protect, Ishmir’s free hand grabbing a handful of the alien’s mandibles. Pulling the alien off-balance, he kicked it in the legs at the same time as he put a final double-tap in the elite’s face at point-blank range.
“Asshole down!” Marko reported as his targeted elite fell to his last barrage of SMG rounds.
Ishmir pushed aside the dead alien collapsed in his arms as his fellow drew loose his shotgun. “Tango down. Clear!”
“Clear!” Marko repeated loudly as confirmation as the Spartans stood back to back, eyes and weapons still sweeping for contacts just in case.
They didn’t pause to celebrate or relax at the lack of hostile contact. Through it all they had tried to avoid one last thing.
The swivel gun under the phantom holding position above their heads. With a single button press that monstrous cannon would reign an unholy storm of armour and flesh melting fire down upon the headhunters.
Both Spartans snapped their weapons up at the phantom, expecting it to begin engaging them.
... nothing happened.
Marko slowly lowered his shotgun. “Something tells me nobody’s home.”
“Hmmm,” Ishmir grunted, figuring their luck was holding out.
Or maybe it wasn’t.
The prologue to Flintlock team’s luck faltering then failing altogether was sounded by a rumbling noise. Like a fanfare of roars, a colony of small-voiced warriors all crying out at once to generate a harmonic war-cry with enough bass it make the humans’ teeth rattle in their skulls. The ground shook in time with the cries, and turning to the relative position where the noise was coming from, the headhunters felt their blood run cold.
Blue and grey was all that could be seen at first. Hulking blue armoured plates covering everything from the head down to the bulky feet. Fused into the right arm was a weapon giving of a radioactive glow, with the left covered by a two part shield. One part battered metal fixed to the pauldron, and the rest of the long blade-edged barrier covering the whole forearm and in turn most of the body. Running down the back were long razor sharp quills, covering the rear where the featureless heads could not look. Between the armoured plates were tiny little slivers of orange flesh, the only visible weak spots on the massive walking tanks.
They were classed by UNSC troops as ‘hunters,’ unofficially referred to as ‘the big ones,’ ‘blue meanies’ and in extreme cases ‘holy shit; would ya’ look at that!’
Where they slid to a halt on the edge of the clearing, the hunter pair slammed their shields into the dirt threateningly before roaring the Spartans a challenge.
“Hunters,” Marko laughed. “Hey, Ishy! See that? They have hunters! And we have no explosives!”
Ishmir gritted his teeth almost painfully. “I see it, Marko.”
“So where’s your God now?”
“I’ll have to get back to you on that one.”
The hunters didn’t waste any more time and charged with surprising speed for hulks their size.
Marko and Ishmir immediately divided and conquered. They had to split the hunters up and get dangerously close so they wouldn’t use those nuclear fuel-rod cannons fused in their arms. Though, when the headhunters did get close the Covenant hunters would use those massive metal shields as melee weapons.
No matter the range they were engaged at, hunters were a fucking pain.
While Ishmir was engaging one, Marko weaved from side to side in a ducking fashion as he closed on the other. The hunter’s head bobbed like a bird of prey tracking a target, trying to keep up with the Spartan.
Slipping to his left, Marko shouldered his shotgun and fired. Flaming buckshot roared out of the barrel like the brimstone breath of a hellhound. The projectiles slammed into the hunter’s mid-section, glancing off the armoured plates and leaving scorchmarks on the blue paint-job. The hunter swung its shield around to behead the Spartan, but he’d moved already.
Pumping the weapon as he rolled under the slicing motion the alien made, Marko landed on his feet and unleashed two more shells into the hunter, working the action smoothly between shots. The mid-section armour buckled and cracked, breaking and slitting in places. The hunter stalled the attack again with another swing. This time Marko jumped back diving clear and sliding to a halt on his back.
Rolling into his neck, he coiled into a ball then sprang up to his feet, working the action of his shotgun. The flickering corner of his HUD displaying his weapon status revealed he was on his last shell. He had to make it count.
Angling forward, Marko sprinted. Not at his maximum capacity like he did when carrying Twilight Sparkle to cover. This time he needed to be a bit slower. He needed time to calculate. This had to be timed exactly.
The hunter met his charge with a wide swing of the shield, high to low. But as before, it met only air, Marko dropped to the ground and slid smoothly between the hunter’s widely parted feet like a soccer player tackling the player holding the ball. Beside his head the sharp edge of the hunter’s shield thudded into the dirt, tossing up a clump of grass.
Smoothly rolling to his feet behind the hunter, Marko snapped up his shotgun, aimed and fired.
Armour plating buckled and burst apart with a splash of static energy arching through the air between them. The hunter was thrown forward a few paces before falling to one knee, the wiry orange mid-section completely exposed.
Marko dropped the empty shotgun in favour of his knife. The firearm had served its purpose. He was through the hunter’s hardened shell and breached the gooey centre. He’d exposed the alien’s sweet spot.
Or maybe he should have referred to the single hunter as aliens – plural – instead of alien – single.
A single hunter was not a single creature. One hunter was made up of many more creatures all writhing around inside that big blue shell, all working together to form the limbs and guts of the walking tank. Hunters were comprised of large eel-colonies.
The alien eels referred to in Covenant communique as lekgolo were about a meter and a half long. No eyes, no mouth, no brain, no genitalia. Just microscopic muscular cilia lining the slick orange bodies of the lekgolo; cilia used to connect to other eels allowing them to communicate chemically. It was how they became a collective in the form of hunters.
Destroy those and you destroyed the pain-in-the-ass hunters. Simple, in theory. And unlike their insertion onto the Unyielding Hierophant earlier that day; if you had the means of breaching the armour, simple in execution too.
Knife in hand, Marko darted at the hunter’s back, leaning to one side so he wouldn’t be impaled on the long spines whipping back and forth. With a single lunge he plunged his knife into the hunter’s exposed midsection, punching through and letting his whole arm become consumed by the squirming eels within. Orange mucus smeared all the way up his shoulder as his fluid stained fist bust out of the hunter’s ‘belly’ with the knife still held tightly.
As the hunter twitched with pain, Marko flipped his knife into a reverse-grip and pulled back sharply. As he did, he cleaved further through the eel colony, severing the largest of the lekgolo serving as the main aorta at the heart of the armoured beast.
When his arm came free with a wet pop and a cloud of luminescent orange viscera, the Spartan rolled backwards, standing clear of the giant as it keeled over to one side. And with a rattle of armour the hunter fell dead, laying still on the battlefield.
Relief was short lived however as Ishmir let out a cry.
Straightening up he saw the crimson armoured Spartan fly past and hit the deck, sliding to a halt against one of the standing-stones. Marko didn’t have time to react, looking over to where Ishmir had flown from and spotting a blue blur.
The remaining hunter slammed the flat end of its shield into Marko’s chest as it barrelled through him. The Spartan was picked up and thrown through the air before slamming to a halt against something hard.
Hearing the crumbling of stone and tasting pennies, Marko fell forward and slammed face down into the dirt. Everything between his chest to the back of his head hurt. The whole world was spinning. Lifting his head out of the mud, Marko peered queasily through his visor – thankfully still intact – trying to make heads or tails of the swimming shapes sliding between the standing-stones.
Blinking hard he made out the red from the blue watching Ishmir roll and jump out of the angered hunter’s path. Like the headhunters, hunters were bonded in pairs. They watched each other’s backs. No exception. When one fell, the other fought harder. The only difference was that headhunters fought their hardest all the time, so their brother didn’t fall in the first place.
Running up one of the standing stones, Ishmir jumped off in a powerful leap, sailing over the charging hunter’s head and driving his charge right through the rock. Somersaulting around, the Spartan landed neatly while the hunter fell forward and kissed the deck.
Running over to him, Ishmir grabbed Marko by the arm and pulled the dazed headhunter to his feet.
“C’mon, buddy. Let’s finish this,” Ishmir encouraged.
Marko chuckled. “How did I end up with you as a friend anyway?”
“I punched you in the face for pushing me out of a pelican during selection.”
“Right!” Marko gave a nostalgic nod. “Spartan selection. Good times.”
As the hunter across the clearing climbed to its feet again, the Spartans stood ready for another assault. One final effort was all that stood between them and clearing the Covenant from this planet. Facing them, the hunter roared its final challenge to them. And the human duo shouted back a plethora of names and curses.
Holding out his knife, Marko gave it a flick. The blade whirled twice around his index finger, tracing a lethal arch through the air before Marko caught the weapon in an ice-pick grip by his side again.
At the same time, pulling a fresh magazine from his belt, Ishmir pressed the release button on the pistol. The moment the mag cleared the receiver, he slotted the next one in place. It clicked home before the mostly spent magazine even hit the ground.
“You go low, I’ll go high,” Ishmir suggested soberly.
Having the exact same plan running through his own head as if the duo were psychically linked, Marko nodded. “Hoo-ah!”
Flintlock team headhunters ran at the waiting hunter.
Marko was there first, only he wasn’t ready to deliver aggression on an epic scale. As the hunter lashed out at him, the Spartan ducked and evaded without returning the attack. Instead he sidestepped and faced Ishmir who ran in close. Interlocking his fingers, Marko formed a platform for Ishmir to plant his foot, then threw his buddy straight up into the air.
As he lifted off, Ishmir snapped out a knee, catching the hunter in the armoured face and snapped the flat head all the way back. Grabbing hold, the headhunter then planted his armoured boots on the alien’s shoulders, watching as Marko dodged clear of the hunter’s flailing arms.
Pitching his pistol downward, Ishmir put the whole clip down the hunter’s exposed neck. Round after round passed out of the barrel and down into the hunter’s collar, slamming into the inside of the armour and causing a deadly ricochet that sent the bullets bouncing around the chest cavity.
When the last shell passed out of the breech, the slide locked back to indicate an empty magazine. Ishmir jumped backwards, somersaulting as he dumped the empty mag into the air. Landing with a backwards roll, the Spartan pulled out his last magazine and slotted in place as he straightened up. Pistol held by his side, he calmly watched as the hunter stumbled for a moment, then heavily turned to face the headhunter.
The two stared at each other for a moment, and then as if realising it shouldn’t be alive, the hunter keeled over backwards, hitting the ground hard enough it made a sizeable dent in the dirt.
Letting out a breath as if he’d been holding it the whole time, Ishmir let his head hang for a moment before slotting his sidearm into its holster.
“Clear?” he asked just in case.
Walking to the body, Marko gave the dead hulk a solid kick in the mid-section, causing several of the dying eels to pop like orange-coloured water balloons. “Clear,” he confirmed.
“Are… are they dead?”
Turning to look where the timid voice came from, they spotted Princess Twilight Sparkle emerge from where she had been taking cover. She stepped gingerly between the bodies, hopping and sidestepping to avoid the corpses and pools of what was supposed to have been inside them.
“Yes,” Ishmir sighed. “I’m sorry we brought this on you, Twilight Sparkle.”
Swallowing a lump in her throat as she pulled her eyes from the grizzly sight of the hole-riddled bodies, the alicorn nodded. “It’s not your fault… they would have killed us without thinking about it, wouldn’t they?”
“And then had their lusty way with our skulls.” Marko added, earning a slap across the back of the head from Ishmir. “I mean, uh… yeah. Yeah, they would’ve. Sorry.”
Twilight nodded, giving a glimmer of a smirk. “Yeah, well, they were going to burn my face off,” she said loudly with a brave expression. “Good riddance to the bastards!”
Marko chuckled as Ishmir sighed, “Oh my God, you’ve created a monster.”
“You know what? You’re okay, princess,” Marko admitted with a smile.
The pony looked like she was going to let loose a full-on smile when something caught her eye.
“Ah!” Twilight Sparkle squealed as she recoiled from a moving body. “This one is still alive!”
Bringing their remaining weapons to bear again, the Spartans practically leapt onto the movement, a mud and gore plashed lump squirming in the dirt.
The last elite still breathing was the captain who’d tried to fry Twilight’s face off with a plasma pistol. The right side of his face, from the cheek up to the eye-socket had been turned into a ragged mess. So on the whole, an improvement on the alien’s good looks.
“So it is. Good eye.” Marko reached down and roughly picked up the elite by the arm, sitting him up on his knees as best the human could. “C’mon, motherfucker. Up ya’ get! Where do you get off pointing a weapon at an innocent little pony, eh?” the headhunter snarled giving the elite a good open handed smack across the face.
It wasn’t enough to make the alien flop over like a dead fish, but he definitely swayed where he sat awkwardly on his knees.
“I walk the divine path. I walk the great journey! It leads me to the eradication of you filthy heretics, and the servitude of these Godless animals to a higher cause. Our cause. The Covenant. The great journey.”
Ishmir growled. “Great journey, eh? So that’s what your heathen Gods call genocide and slavery.” Normally speaking Ishmir was open to the concept of religion. But a religion that condoned the extinction and or slavery of a whole race was not considered cool.
“Here, pal. Lemme send you on your way.”
He stepped forward – the elite was helpless as Marko wrapped one arm around his neck. Twilight didn’t get to see what they were doing as Ishmir stepped in the way to block her view. There was no need for her to see what was about to happen.
The squelch of a blade meeting flesh was heard along with a gargle. The elite’s legs kicked feebly as his whole body twitched. Marko’s torso twisted from side to side as his knife arm made a few brutal sawing motions and his other arm holding the elite’s head started twisting like trying to pull the head off an action-figure.
Then with a distinct crack, the elite’s body fell free of Marko’s efforts, hitting the ground with a thud.
Standing in the pool of gore left in the wake of his handiwork; Marko held a blood-stained blade in one hand, and an alien head in the other. And Twilight finally figured out what a Spartan headhunter was.