Concurrence Chapter 4-1

2280 words.

The Major

Streets of New Mombasa

Seven Hours After Rupture

The gentle patter of his boots stepping into puddles of water was drowned out over the downpour, but his strange companion made even less sound despite being nearly twice his size, the Major stealing the occasional glance at her to confirm she was still there as they made their way from street to street, the alien content to hang back ten or so meters at his flank.

She had to be hundreds of pounds heavier than him, yet she carried herself along the sidewalk without so much as scraping a corner or brushing against a car, projecting a dexterity that shouldn’t belong on such a massive being. Perhaps that was because unlike other Elites or Brutes, she didn’t sport much armour, particularly around the belly and waist, her distinctly hourglass figure outlined by a grey, form-fitting suit she wore beneath her armour, her range of motion unhindered.

Her hips were wider than the breadth of his shoulders, her ass leaving nothing about its size to the imagination, as there was a lack of plating on her rear. Her suit was practically painted onto her thighs, which were just as stout as the rest of her, packed with so much muscle they did not wobble when she walked. The Major had trouble keeping his eyes from her figure, and not just because he’d never stuck this close to one without shooting it.

Not a word had been exchanged since they’d left the station, the silence continuing from block to block, the Major only stopping when he heard a familiar, artificial voice from around the next corner.

“Optican healthcare on demand!”

His companion, Seela, readied her carbine, the rain dropping off her armoured shoulders as she aimed beyond him.

“Relax,” he said, peeking round the wall for contacts, proceeding when the street was clear. Built onto the sidewalk was a little sheltered alcove, the swept roof sheltering a long bench, and hanging on the wall above it were two medkits, the signature red cross on the casing reminding him he had not gone unscathed since leaving his pod.

He took one of the kits, sitting down on the bench as he opened the container, propping hot shotgun against the wall. Standard Army medkits contained everything from biofoam to morphine, but all he found inside was a packet of white, jelly-like substance no bigger than his hand, along with a small slip of paper that provided instructions.

As he read them, his Elite companion poked her helmet round the corner, her mandibles dipping in a frown as she saw him sitting there.

“Why have you stopped?” she asked, her head tilting as she walked a little closer, watching as he ripped open the packet and squeezed the gel out onto his finger like it was shampoo from a bottle.

“Got nicked back in Kikowani,” he explained. According to the paper, all he had to do was rub the gel where it hurt, and the pain should relieve in a short while. Reaching behind his neck, he dipped his hand into his collar, walking his fingers down his back to where the Drone had stabbed him. The warm gel mixed with his wet blood as he dipped his fingers into the cut, wincing behind his helmet as he applied the MediGel, as it was called, making sure he got it in deep.

“From what?” Seela asked. “No Brute landed a shot on you, I saw it.”

“This was before that,” he said. His BDU was making it difficult to reach the wound, the Major peeling off a few strips of the Kevlar to better access it. He fought back a wave of nausea as his wound started bleeding.

“You give me very short answers,” Seela noted. She was still standing in the rain and not under the small roof, perhaps she didn’t want to be close to him. He felt the same way.

“Why should I explain anything to you, Covvie?”

“Cov-ie?” she repeated. “I told you, I am no longer a part of the Covenant, none of us are.”

“Welcome to the club, then,” he replied, Seela tilting her head in confusion. Neither of them spoke as he applied a bit more of the gel to his arm, a plasma bolt had hit him there and was burning a little.

The gel was irritating his skin the more he rubbed at it, he needed something to distract himself from the pain, the Major eventually breaking the silence when he peered up at her. “You speak English pretty well, where’d you learn it?”

Seela shivered, stubbornly standing in the rain as she folded her arms. Only her hands and her face were exposed to the air, the Major finding that her skin was a deep, navy blue. It looked like leather, smooth and flawless save for a small scar on one of her fingers on the right hand. He wondered if she had a single hair on her or was smooth all over.

“All recruits are encouraged to speak the Human tongue, so we can interpret what you say during combat and gain an advantage. I studied longer than many of my kin have, and by your responses, I must be fluent.”

“Yeah, your ‘kin’ probably just stick to the tried-and-true phrases: ‘Kill them all’, or ‘burn the children’.”

She scowled at him, wiping at her face as the rain fell down on her. “And what of you?” she asked, nodding at him. “Do you and the Humans not also learn our tongue?”

“I know one or two phrases,” he replied, throwing the empty gel packet away.

“Is that all? Only fools would willingly be ignorant of the language of their enemy.”

“Haven’t had a lot of time to learn linguistics, you lot glassing our worlds and all that.”

She was beginning to growl now, losing her patience with his prodding. “I have never glassed a world, nor have I burned any of your children. I kill because it is… was, my duty to the Covenant, and unlike my kin I do not harm those who do not pose a threat.”

He scoffed at that, and that seemed to hit a nerve, Seela fixing him with a cold glare. “I speak the truth! Though I can tell I may as well save my breath.”

“There’s an idea,” he replied. The MediGel was starting to numb the pain in his back, not unlike biofoam did, at the cost of excruciating pain to any Marine unfortunate enough to have to use some. This gel seemed to lack the harsh side effects all together, the Major guessing it was manufactured for civilians in mind.

“You need some?” he asked, opening the other medkit and waving the gel packet at the alien. “You’re bleeding a bit.”

Narrowing her eyes at him, she angled her bloodied shoulder away, as though that would conceal it. “It is nothing.”

“More for me.” He unzipped one of his pouches, storing the packet for when he would no doubt need it for later. He picked up his shotgun, gesturing for it to follow. “I’m set for now.”

“At last.”

The Major led the way through the next block, the presence of advertisement boards and kiosks grabbing his attention as they rounded into a commercial district. Shops lined either side of the street, what few neon signs that had survived the invasion flickering over their ruined facades. At the far end of the street was giant blast door that would have looked more at home in the hanger of a starship, an impenetrable wall of grey steel that cut off this street from the next.

To one side, he spotted the telltale angled board of a kiosk, the Major making his way over to it. The brightness of the screen was unusually distracting, the light setting a few notches higher than every other bit of technology nearby, like it was getting more power from the city grid.

The Major bet that something would change now that he’d been to Kikowani, and sure enough, when he typed in his true destination, the Superintendent finally pointed him to the place he typed in, a red line drawing itself through the three-dimensional representation of the city.

“What are you typing?” Seela asked, leaning over his shoulder as he traced the route with his gloved finger.

“I need directions,” he replied. The route was long, he’d have to do his best to commit the turns to memory.

“Don’t we all,” his companion replied, glancing at their surroundings. “This place is a Gods-damned maze. Directions to where, exactly?”

“You’re a master of language, read it yourself.”

“I may speak it, but your runes are… difficult to memorise.”

“Too bad for you,” he said. A strange, warbling noise caused him to glance up at the burning sky, the fires on the horizon competing against the darkness in a way he found distinctly unpleasant, as though the world was trapped in a limbo between night and day. From behind one of the distant skyscrapers, a Phantom banked into view, flying over the city at an alarming speed, coming this way.

He looked around, the closest cover was the store to their right, and he made his way over, clutching Seela’s arm as he moved. “Get down.”

She shoved his hand away roughly, the Major almost tripping over, glancing at her carbine as Seela jabbed a finger at him. “Nobodytouches me, creature. Never do that again.”

“Get your ass down!” he insisted, Seela watching as he ducked into the store, crouching behind one of the display windows. Only now did she seem to notice the Phantom was closing in, the way she sauntered inside coming off as reluctant.

She took a knee as far away from him as possible in the confined shop, the two watching as the Phantom hovered over the street, the twin plasma cannons poking out of its belly swivelling as they searched for targets. It did not stop, but the ship did slow to a crawl, a searchlight flashing on, the beam aiming at the ground as it started scanning the streets.

“They must be searching for their hunters,” Seela said, not lowering her voice, the dropship too far to have a chance of overhearing her.

“Hunters?” he asked.

“They sent a pack after me,” she explained. “The one you so helpfully killed. They will find out they did not kill me, let us give them a welcome they shall not soon forget.”

She made to stand, the Major holding up an exasperated hand. “Wait!” he said, the alien bristling at his closeness. He wasn’t about to test her patience after her warning just now, keeping his hand clear. “You can’t just start picking a fight with a damned Phantom! You’ll bring the whole Covenant down on us!”

“You say this like it is a bad thing,” she replied.

“Of course it’s a bad thing, you’ll get us bothkilled!”

His words gave her pause, the Elite considering something as she glanced up at the Phantom, which had begun to drift parallel to their hiding place. “No Sangheili has ever winced from a fight,” she muttered.

“That’s cause you had the Covenant backing you up. Go get yourself killed if you want, but don’t count on my help, my mission’s more important than your revenge trip.”

“I told you I wish to kill as many of these Brutes, as I can. That was our agreement.”

“Us dying cause you’ve got a deathwish was our agreement? Look,” he added, seeing he wasn’t getting through to her. “Show a bit of self-awareness. You and me, we’re in the same boat now: we’re outnumbered, outgunned, behind enemy lines. If we pick and choose our fights, we’d not only just might get out of this alive, but you’d end up killing more Brutes than if you just waltzed up to the first Phantom you see.”

The first part didn’t seem to interest her, but the second part did, the Elite looking away as she made a decision. The Major wasn’t doing this for her, but for himself. If she went berserk now, that would just make it more difficult to escape once that dropship started circling them.

“Fine,” Seela sighed. “We will do it your way. For a little while.”

They waited for the Phantom to pass, the purple ship soon disappearing over the tops of the buildings, the two emerging back out into the rain. The Major took one last glance at the map before they got moving. “Looks like we’ve got to go through that giant door over there,” he said, nodding at the reinforced blockade.

“Not even a Kig-Yar could leap over that thing,” Seela scoffed. “What great help those directions are.”

A mechanical, whirring sound made the two of them ready their weapons, the Major lowering his shotgun as the blockade began to fold up from the ground, the giant slab of metal sliding into a recess in the upper part of the barrier, the street opening to them.

“You were saying?” the Major noted, Seela grumbling as she avoided eye contact. “You know, you should be nicer to it.”

“What on Sanghelios are you talking about? What is ‘it’?”

The Major stepped through the blast doors, calling back over his shoulder: “You have no reason to know my sources.”

Echoing her own words made her mandibles twitch in anger, the Elite following him through to the next street over. Right as she stepped off the metal blockade, the door returned to its closed state, the sudden grating of machine making the Elite whip around in alarm.