Survivors of Mirage

''A piece introducing a number of characters trying to survive on a former colony world now occupied by a Jiralhanae warband. ''

''' 7th Age of Reclamation. Aboard the Expedient Restitution, in orbit around the Human colony of Mirage, '''

“It was my warriors who burned the human fleet and drove their forces into the highlands away from the relic site,” the amber eyes of the Senghelli Fleetmaster narrowed at the Jiralhanae chieftain who loomed beside him before the prophet. “This world is rightly ours and I would see its entire surface reduced to ash with your holy mark carved into its surface.”

The room went tensely silent save for the faint harmonic vibrations of the ship’s engines as the Minor Prophet of Consequence considered his retort.

“While all of what you say is true the terms of this trial were clear, fleetmaster.” The frail-looking San’Shyuum pivoted his hovering anti-gravity seat to face the two from his perch near the parlor’s massive viewing windows, his long cranium silhouetted against a smearing of a billion stars behind him. “The chieftain recovered the relic, not you. This world is his.”

A wrinkled index finger extended shakily from the San’Shyuum toward the hulking brute and accented the last four of the prophet's words ensuring they were resolute.

The Jiralhanae, tall in golden armor pockmarked with bullet strikes and wearing an impressive headdress, moved to lower his massive form to the ground in a low bow as his knee found the parlor’s deck.

“I am unworthy of such a prize,” the brute spoke in a tone low and growly. “You greatly honor my clan, noble Hierarch.”

Now the Senghelli’s glowing eyes burned with barely withheld anger and the muscles in the his neck tensed under the once white plates of his soot scorched combat armor. The split mandibles of his jaw twitched as he moved to further protest the prophet’s decision but before a word could leave him the San’Shyuum stopped the warrior with the wave of a dismissive palm.

“Go back to your ship, fleetmaster,” The San’Shyuum said gravely. “Your warriors have fought bravely but you did not satisfy my conditions.”

The Jiralhanae shot the Senghelli a sideward glance as the prophet continued.

“I am sending your taskforce to High-Charity so that you can refresh your warriors’ spirits with a holy pilgrimage,” the Prophet paused, raising his eyebrows contemptuously, “...and I suggest you spend time at the shrine reflecting on your failures as a commander.”

The fleetmaster glowered at the Chieftain as the prophet's words seared into his pride and honor like an iron to a beast’s thick leathery hide.

“I shall depart at once, noble Hierarch.” The words left the fleetmaster’s mandibles with thick frustration.

The Sangheili bowed before exiting the parlor through the hatchway, leaving the room hanging in a brief silence.

Both the prophet and the Jiralhanae watched the alien as he went and when the parlor’s doors closed behind him with a mechanical whoosh the prophet’s eyes moved slowly toward the chieftain.

“Arise, Jiralhanae,” the San’Shyuum said with a grin as he pulled up a live image of the human world on the room’s central holo-projector.

The planet was partially glassed from the excavations with kilometer wide plasma scars still glowing across its arid rocky surface. Massive plumes rose from the scorched lands and choked the dying world’s wispy atmosphere with millions of tons of dust and ash.

The chieftain rose slowly to his feet as the prophet raised a long bony arm from under the fine linen of his tunic that seemed to pile up around his small frame. The prophet gestured toward the display.

“I am eager to know what you and your clan intend on doing with your prize.”

''' 5:45 (Mirage Central Time), Mirage Highlands, July 15, 2545. Two months after the Covenant arrival in the Pavo Cluster. '''

“Jade! Hurry!” Glenn shouted as he ducked into the front of a destroyed civil refuel station to avoid a hail of spiker-fire. “They’re right on top of us!”

An explosion rocked the already crippled building as a fuel rod detonated against the northern wall. Dust and popcorned drywall fell from the ceiling in wispy clouds as the building shook.

“I’m almost done!” Jade replied from her position under a dilapidated countertop. “I just need to set the channel on the detnato-”

Her words were cut short by the crack of her companion’s sniper-rifle firing from the refuel station’s shattered front door only a few feet away.

“God damn that thing is loud,” Jade muttered as she shoved a spool of det-cord into her ruck, nestling it among a few scavenged bottles of water and bags of chips she had found before the brutes caught their scent. "Alright. Ambush set. We’re good to go!

Glenn helped Jade to her feet from beneath the counter and the two survivors dashed through the nearby door that led to the back exit through a storeroom. Jade took off first through the doorway and as she rounded the last corner of the short hall in a mad dash she came face to face with a lumbering mass of flesh and fur. The beast was hunched low to accommodate for the human-sized ceiling above it and what happened next seemed to happen almost all at once.

Attempting to unholster her sidearm Jade fumbled with the release and was left yanking on the pistol hopelessly. The alien started to level its own massive pistol at the young woman and Jade dove for cover behind a fallen shelf. Tracking her dive to the ground the alien’s weapon spit flame and fire and the wall directly above Jade’s head exploded into a splintery cloud of dust and drywall. The powerfully loud concussion of the alien weapon reverberated through Jade’s head and chest as she barely managed to unholster her pistol after hitting the ground. The alien roared, launching rancid spittle across the storeroom as it started to take aim at Jade’s pitiful piece of thin metal cover. Before the creature could fire a second time, blasting Jade away with hyper-velocity metal spikes, the crack of a high-powered rifle erupted from the doorway to the hall.

A steaming geyser of alien blood erupted from the creature’s chest as its shields failed with an electric hiss. Sparks and metal shards exploded from the breastplate of the brute’s armor as a hate filled roar left its mighty throat.

Another shot shook the teeth of the room’s occupants with its shock-wave and slammed through the creature’s face. The high caliber precision round sent emulsified brain matter, bone, and flesh splattering against the wall on the far side of the ransacked storeroom.

The beast’s head whipped around limply as it fell onto its back instantly dead. The creature’s adrenaline saturated nervous system caused its body to twitch in short visceral jerks after its massive form hit the dusty linoleum of the storeroom floor. Gore flowed down the far wall in a steamy pulp.

“Holy shit.” The former structural engineering student said as she shakily aimed her handgun at the alien corpse from behind her fallen shelf.

“We have to go,” the marksman replied to Jade as he hauled her to her feet by the back of her jacket.

The two stepped around the alien corpse and sprinted out of the back door of the refuel station. When they emerged into the bleak overcast of the outside world, they dashed through a hole in the chain link fence a few yards away that would lead them to the back alley. Spiker-fire and plasma continued to wreck the building as they ran. Their footsteps kicked up piles of soot and ash that had been accumulating from the atmosphere since the glassing stopped, covering their pants in a sooty gray powder.

Under an approaching wall of swirling ashen storm clouds the two retraced their steps from earlier that day and headed quickly for their observation post on the southern end of town. Jade and Glenn ducked and dodged between desolate buildings, city dumpsters, and wire fences all the way back to the half-constructed four-story office where their companions were waiting for them. The two slowed to a jog as they neared the front of the skeletal concrete and rebar structure.

Glenn used the change in pace to turn to Jade, his breathing heavy.

“Always keep your weapon ready at a time like this. Not that it would have done you any good against those shields. We got lucky.”

Jade nodded in response as Glenn unhooked his radio from the strap of his assault pack.

“We’re back,” Glenn keyed the mic as they approached the front door of the building. “Don’t shoot us.”

Once inside the two crossed the messy half-finished lobby and headed straight for a stairwell that would take them to the top of the structure. When they entered the stairwell, a survivor was leveling a hunting rifle at the pair from the third flight above them.

“Christ! It’s us Jim!” Jade shouted up at the man who had already lowered his weapon by the time he noticed their faces. “Are you deaf?”

“Sorry! My radio is fucked!” the man shouted back. “Hurry! They’re almost on top of the charges!”

Jade and Glenn darted up the concrete stairs skipping two or three steps at a time and panting short exhausted breaths as they went. When the two emerged onto the rooftop they dashed to a waist high wall on the northern edge where their two companions laid in cover. Above them now the sky was growing darker with every minute as thick ashen storm clouds closed in from the west, choking out more and more of the overhead glow that used to be the mid-afternoon sun.

Jade moved to retrieve the survivors’ makeshift detonator from her ruck as Glenn deployed the bipod of his tactical precision rifle on the ground behind a small gap in the rooftop’s wall. From their position on the edge of town the survivors could see down main street to the top of the smoldering refuel station roughly 800 meters to their north. Glenn peered through his weapon’s optic, slowing his breathing after running for so long and settling into the rifle’s stock. Through the weapon’s crosshairs he could see a group of the massive furry aliens supported by a number of squat grunts lurking in the street around the half-collapsed building. They were sweeping the surrounding buildings for the two humans who had just been there, probably expecting to find their bodies to mutilate or trophies to take. Glenn’s eyes darted to the largest alien in the group.

The massive creature wore similar armor to the rest but sported a large ornate headdress in place of the standard blue helmet of the others. From the creature’s belt dangled a pair of scorched black helmets with shattered silver visors and white service stripes down their tops, probably pulled from the body of a UNSC trooper on some other world the UEG decided was worth fighting for. It was clear that this one was the leader of the group and it seemed irritated as it barked orders at its subordinates, sniffing at the air with its massive alien snout.

A moment later a pair of the beasts with matted fur and bullet marked armor emerged from the refuel station carrying the corpse of the brute who had infiltrated when Jade and Glenn made their escape. The two tossed the dead alien at the feet of the leader.

The leader crossed its arms in front of it, looked down at its comrade’s mangled corpse, then made some subtle gesture toward the others. At once the pack proceeded to strip the fallen alien of his remaining equipment, taking the charges from its belt, the creature’s weapon, and even the undamaged portions of the creature’s body armor.

“Charges are ready,” Jade said, still breathless, as she closed her ruck and peered out from behind the concrete half-wall. “Are they where they should be?”

“Yes they are,” the survivor who had greeted them in the stairwell, Jim, said as he handed her a set of binoculars. “Failsafe valves on the hydrogen cells open?”

“Yep, took me forever to find the control panel” Jade replied. Through her binoculars Jade could see lightning building on the horizon. “Let’s cook the bastards before that storm hits us.”

Before Jade could move her thumb to the detonator Glenn stopped her.

“Wait. I have audio,” the marksman said, turning his ear toward the pack. “I think there’s a vehicle approaching.”

The two other men and Jade all cocked their heads in silence to listen. Glenn was right. Floating across the wind between distant rumblings of thunder was the distinct vibration of a Covenant repulsor engine, a noise that the Mirage survivors had become all too familiar with after the invasion.

“I think it’s coming down the avenue,” Glenn said. “But I can’t see it yet. We should wait to see if maybe it stops over the charges.”

“Will we be able to travel in that storm? Maybe we should just blow it now and get out of here.” Jim said. “It’s getting dark and seeing in the evening is already hard enough.”

“It sounds pretty close.” Glenn said from his scope. “If it doesn’t come this way in a minute or two we’ll go.”

The noise grew louder as whatever was making it neared the pack of aliens standing in the street. Soon the vehicle rounded some nearby corner and started to progress south down the main street toward them. It finally entered their view.

A large hovering utility vehicle of the same type the survivors had seen the Covenant use to ferry troops and equipment around the capital when the invasion first started lumbered in the street to the front refuel station ruins. The pack of aliens parted as it slowed to a stop among them. The instant he focused his optic on the vehicle the marksman could not feel the curve of the trigger against his gloved finger or the cold concrete beneath him because his hands and legs had gone numb with an involuntary reaction brought on by the horror he had found between his crosshairs. Not since the beginning of the invasion or during his years as a marksman during the Insurrection had Glenn seen something so awful.

Beneath the chassis of the long purple hovercraft were four cages. Their occupants were so malnourished and filthy that at first it was hard to even tell that they were human. Each cage was cramped with about a dozen people, many of them clearly dead or near death and some clutching the sides of the cage, their hollow eyes peering out at the aliens that surrounded them. Glenn scanned their faces for people he knew but the magnification was not enough to tell them apart. Most of the survivors removed their eyes from their binoculars and turned their now colorless faces toward one another. Glenn gazed over his rifle in the direction of the prisoners, removing his eye from the scope after he seeing the pack start to prepare a fire from the wood debris in the roadway.

“Jesus Christ…” one of the survivors said flatly. “Why couldn’t they have just fucking glassed us?”

“We have to help them,” Jade said. “Let’s radio for Tesko and his men to-”.

“We don’t have the means to help these people.” Jim cut her off grimly as he ran his hand through his short messy shock of auburn hair. “Our entire camp couldn’t take on a group of Covenant that large. And besides, we can’t even feed the mouths we have already. How many of them are there Glenn? Maybe forty?”

Glenn looked down at the concrete floor from behind his rifle and nodded. “We can’t help them. There’s only one thing we can really do for these people at this point.” Glenn’s cold steel eyes found the eyes of each survivor huddled behind the wall.

“What are you saying?” Jade questioned the man’s glare.

“It’s the only thing we can do for them, Jade.”

“Then I can’t be the one to do this.” The former college student’s eyes moved slowly down to the detonator in her now open palm like it was some disgusting artifact. “It’s too much.”

“I understand.”

Before Glenn’s hand could touch the detonator, Jim’s hand found it first.

“It’s okay Glenn,” Jim looked the marksman in the eyes. “You’ve really done enough for the camp already. I can do this.”

“Are you sure?” Glenn asked the former farmworker. “You don’t know what it’s like-”

“I can do it, really,” Jim cut Glenn off then hesitated for a moment. “Can you just… Can you just make sure that nobody survives the blast?”

Glenn gave a nod of understanding then returned his eye to his rifle optic.

The terrible weight and witness of what they were about to have to do stretched seconds into hours as Jim’s finger moved in slow motion for the firing trigger. When his finger finally found it, the first fat raindrops of the looming westward storm clouds started to fall upon them dotting the concrete rooftop with dark wet circles.

By the time Jim squeezed the detonator and set off the charges thick sheets of cold rain were pouring down over everything.