Ten

"So you've killed forty people, but rescued five."


 * ''"I guess, young 'bass, I guess... But, I guess the thing was, when you just kill guy, they’re just dead then, they don’t do noth’ no more. But when you save one, one maybe save two, save five, save forty, and maybe keep going on saving."

- Honcha to Mark-G264 and the Spartans of Gamma Company.

Honcha (Oracle Code U3-M0922, nicknamed "Ten" by his fellow servicemen) was an Unggoy Minor who fought in the Human-Covenant War from 2550 to 2552. Formerly a soldier of the Zamam clan during the Battle of Draco III before their near-annihilation, he was later transferred to the main infantry and continued to serve in that role for the Covenant Army during their entire campaign in the Cygnus System. Four battles passage led to his servicing as a scout, and he eventually joined in as an unofficial member of the Special Operations Unggoy Squad "The Brown Bellies."

Captured from Balaho at the age of four and sold by the Kig-Yar to the Zamam clan of Sanghelios, Honcha's first years in the Covenant were spent as a worker on the plantations, to service the supplies for the policing duties of his masters. Their clan kept the peace on their keep of the northern Chachu islands, a rampant hideout for Anti-Covenant terrorists. As an indentured farmer, Honcha was expected to provide the workload of ten Unggoy, a number of which had he had been scheduled for delivery with to the Zamam, until a skirmish rendered him the only survivor. Nine months of farming eventually ended with a new assignment: serving in the Covenant Army with the Zamam, who would lead the assault on the human colony world of Draco III. Recruited as an Unggoy Minor, Honcha was enlisted by his masters joined with his clan aboard the CCS-class cruiser Purity of Spirit.

Early Life
"Your overgrown "mother" thought that she could steal and keep her end of the bargain just the same simply because of a "loose end" on our side. What she did not understand before her doom was nigh was that this was no mere "tit-for-tat" bargain, this was our Covenant. And in that Covenant your end is all that gives your life meaning. To forsake your end is to forsake your life, to preserve it is the will of the righteous. Her end was not preserved, for that she dies with it."

- Special Ops Sangheili Krar 'Zakatmee

Honcha was born on Balaho in 2545, well into the darker days of the Human-Covenant War. His clutch was born to the matriarch keep of Edomea in the Threshold Valley. Like all Unggoy clan keeps, half of his clutch was expected to be sold to the Covenant Empire in exchange for protection to their matriarch and their tribe. However, Edomea was entering a period of heavy pregnancy, and as the winter was approaching expected a great need of storehousing to ensure survival during the forecoming months. When the Kig-Yar traders came in ready to buy their slaves, Edomea refused to sell to them, responding violently when the traders protested.

Eventually, military intervention was required, and a Sangheili brigade was dispatched and overpowered the entire keep. However, the conflict was bloody, and in the end, the half-clutch requirement that the traders had come for had to be filled with over three-quarters of the entire remaining tribe, including some of Edomea’s previously established home clutches and long-time workers necessary to service her.

Edomea and her tribe ended up starving throughout the winter, before being overpowered by the neighboring matriarchs Chalkea and Po Kom the following season and then killed, while her deported kin were sold as usual to various parts of the Empire. Even so, their unfit nature thanks to the scrounging nature of the deportation resulted in nearly two-thirds of the captured slaves dying before delivery. Of the ten Unggoy that Honcha was intended to be delivered with to his buyer at Sanghelios, he ended up being the only one.

Servitude
"Do not expect us to pity you just because you are a survivor, Unggoy. Make your life worth something first."

- Chuka 'Zamamee

Honcha’s buyer was the Sangheili Chuka ‘Zamamee of the Zamam clan, whose estate was held on the mountain fields of the northern Chachu islands. His arrival to the estate was met with immediate annoyance, as he was the only one of ‘Zamamee’s ten ordered slaves to arrive. As such, he was expected to fill up their entire workload, while the other previous bought slaves would attend to their former tasks. These workloads included the tending of the southeastern fields, the maintenance of the shrubgrain vaults, and the shepherding of the beefing livestock. Of the former of the three he would work with the others as a team, on the latter two however he was expected to have them completed by himself.

All the work he needed completed daily did not give him much time to eat or sleep, and leaving any of them unfinished would get him punished and leave him with neither. To cope with this, Honcha ended up having to sleep in the barns rather than the Unggoy compound, wake up the earliest of all the servants, while there still two suns set, and then take regular naps midday after refilling his methane tank. For feeding he relied on foraging, using the regular mealtimes to complete his tasks instead, and instead eating from the fruits and vegetable portions of the areas he harvested. Ironically, this regime actually ended up making him a lot healthier than most of 'Zamamee's slaves, a fact that never fully occurred to him.

Among the other Unggoy Honcha was at first treated stereotypically as “the new guy”, who they resented the idea of having to train. He was also given a wide berth by being a “clans Unggoy” who had been bought directly from Balaho, while most the team here had been bred on the estate or else sold from other plantations. Eventually, they warmed up to him as he slid into his new role as a “go-fer”, the popular nickname for a “tool retriever.” His fellow Go-fers included Bapat, also known as “Pocket”, and Murr, the orneriest of the group. "Go-fering" was still looked down upon as a lowly job since it was most often given to those the main group wanted to keep away. Nevertheless, as a tool retriever Honcha felt more than grateful to be in some way accepted.

One of the harshest figures to him, however, was Dayab, the chief Grunt and Zamam’s 2nd-in-command as a slavemaster. Dayab would often taunt him, assign the hardest tasks in the midst of Honcha’s duties, ignore his requests and make fun of his ideas, and derogatorily remind him of his inferiority at completing the tasks his full squad would have done had they survived. It was under him that Honcha gained the nickname of “Ten” as reminder of his status as the lone survivor, a name that was quickly picked up by the Unggoy. Honcha deep down actually admired Dayab as his master, but let this constantly disappoint him every time Dayab went out of his way again to bully him.

The Sangheili themselves he saw little of, Chuka especially, because the adults' police work was usually done in the night, and in the day the Unggoy were encouraged to stay out of the way of the rest of the family and their business. The first time he did encounter them was an early morning, where he found Chuka’s wife out in the fields taking a walk. Choosing to respect her privacy, Honcha kept his work at a distance, though eventually her idling in the pastures ended up delaying his work by a full hour. The second time, it was the Zamam children who, one morning while their Unggoy jester was sick, styled themselves as Honcha’s “overseer” and began berated him to obey them as “slavemaster”, a game that amused Chuka. The only silver lining from the Zamam children, to Honcha, was at least they would occasionally reward his "tricks" with scraps.

Punishment and Service
5 months into his farming position, things had only gotten worse. Despite his best efforts to keep up the pace of a ten-Unggoy workload, Honcha was still falling behind on his daily tasks every week. The grain and fruit fields were being farmed in a zig-zag manner,the Suibordi livestock were regularly left in the pastures unprotected, and the interior of the barns were often left cluttered and with tools lying about. Output-wise, Honcha was succeeding in producing the daily supplies and resources, but had to leave too many of the maintenance tasks unfinished to provide them. This left him on a shaky ground when the time would come for inspections, and all Honcha needed was a single slip-up for his inadequacies to be caught.

Eventually, it happened. The Zamam Headwife was found unconscious and badly injured after entering the Suibordi barns and accidentally springing one of Honcha's traps against wildlife. Honcha was given "gaspburn" punishment as a result of his failure, a form of punishment for Unggoy slaves where they had their methane masks taken away and then stabbed repeatedly in the back with a branding pike. But the real penalty came in the days that followed, when the closer inspection of his farming areas found all the trick machines and cut-corners tactics he had been using to try and finish up his tasks quickly. The discovery was a heavy blow to Honcha's reputation. Decided unsuitable for even a farm position, Honcha was nearing consideration by Chuka and the Zamam for execution, or even being sold to the Army of the Covenant as part of the infantry. Surprisingly, it was 'Zamamee's wife herself who interfered, allowing for the Unggoy to retain his place on the farm, as well as him being placed under her complete jurisdiction.

Nevertheless, one further task was still added to his roster. On the final days of the week, Honcha was expected to now join the clan in their regular police work patrolling the villages of Chachu. The patrol work was the worst for Honcha, as he was heavily resented by both the involved parties of Sangheili and Unggoy, as it was fully known his presence was only as a result of his punishment. The villagers encountered were too of an intimidating nature, being commoners and lower classmen of a far shadier region, which was well known as potential hideout for anti-Covenant terrorists. Amidst the hidden face of Sangheian society Honcha never felt safe at all, and was often left alone to fend for himself in the deeply dark region.

As for farm work, there was some improvement. Honcha was now under the personal command of Chuka 'Zamamee's headwife, the Lady Laconi, and she turned out to be a charitable mistress. The incident at the barns had been due to her own foolish exploring, and in some ways she was happier to be out of the house, where she could be under her own leadership, and away from the routines of subservience under her husband. While in some ways still prejudiced in treating Unggoy as inferior, she appreciated Honcha for his knowledge of the fields and overall improved his situation so that he could spend more time allowing her tours of the location. In the end, the two shaped up to develop an amicable friendship, and in midst of his farming Honcha never forgot how she had intervened to save his life.

Personality and Traits
Honcha’s naivety was his largest trait; he never lost his hope in trusting people. Despite his fears and wracking worries about the present, deep down he held a hope within him that things would turn out better in the future. He was always fully in the mind of a servant, having been trained that way like all other enslaved Unggoy under the employ of the Covenant, and even more so since he had been raised under a matriarch. It was his hope to perform his tasks faithfully for his masters, that he might be valued by them, and so assist in whatever great purpose they had been planning since the beginning. This "Great Purpose" was always his way in explaining the actions of those above him to himself, and fully expectant that they had so led him to always trust them.

Too often, though, this led to his exploitation at the hands of others. Many of his masters rarely expressed any regard for him, and most often viewed him and all other Unggoy as a tool to perform their lowliest tasks. Honcha took their abuse without question like other Unggoy would, but it left him deeply settled how none of his masters ever seemed to accept him. What worried him further, though, was that they might lose hope in him.

As for his motives in battle these were highly mixed in question. Honcha understood there was some sort of social conflict at the heart of war, but whatever it was always remained very vague to him. Under Chuka 'Zamamee he would be taught about how the Humans been heretical towards the Forerunners, but fear of battle after first taste of it led him to rather fight simply for the sake of survival. This drive for survival would remain his highest motive for many battles and it would take a very long time before he chose his ultimate master as the Covenant.

Combat
Like other Unggoy, Honcha was inexperienced in battle, and his various masters had taught him nothing. Combat-wise, he was ineffective, and only succeeded in bringing down foes by himself when armed heavily, such as with Plasma Grenades or in a Ghost. Weapon-wise, he relied on the Plasma Pistol, but it rarely did him any good in battle. Despite his ineptitude in combat, Honcha ended up surviving skirmishes manifold times, if only out of luck or from allied assistance. The only way he could guarantee it was to remain fighting with the main force, or, as the mantra went, "Move with the Horde" Remaining fighting together as infantry was the only way Unggoy like he could win battles, and thus allowing him to live for a little longer.

A few times though, he had been faced with the impossible. Once he found himself left alone in the deserted city, which was due for glassing by the approaching cruisers. Another time he found himself on the receiving end of a Spartan, who delivered what should have been a killing blow had it not accidentally glanced and then mistaken him for dead a few seconds later. Several further times had him cornered by a Falcon, attacked by a starving Brute squad, out of methane, and even betrayed by his fellow Unggoy soldiers to be a distraction.

Throughout all those times Honcha had survived the encounters, and the question of how he had done so disturbed him greatly. The effects of it were clearly not absent for him, as he suffered often from frequent headaches, occasional nightmares, and a gnawing feel of guilt, that his life hadn’t been worth it. In battle it haunted him, and he often wrestled with the constant fear that kept to pushing him to seek survival, against the desire to fulfill his proper duty to the Covenant. In all his battles he never gained the proper response to his dilemma, but following them would always pledge to do it better next time.

The worst of it was when he had to kill. Like all Unggoy he rarely understood the fundamental conflict, but when the stakes came to his basic need for survival, he could turn monster, and even traitor. The darkest of it came during the Siege of Leslia, where he ended up throttling a boy in an apartment who tried to kill him with a rock, followed by dropping him out the window. A week later he ended up against three Brutes who tried to eat him, and crippled with a damaged gas tank, drove off two of them after killing the third with a Shotgun. Honcha never truly hardened as a soldier, and his worst fear was that he'd be left as that kind of monster if left to fend for himself when all friends had left him.

Health and Appearance
Honcha was a Threshold Unggoy, and being from a southern region tended to be darker in skin tone than most other Unggoy. His raising in a tribe-keep had also acquainted him with the nurtures of a matriarch, and as such was raised on the traditional diet of ovular queen eggs and snowscrub vegetation, a diet left out from all other Covenant Unggoy in exchange for the infamous "food nipple." Under the average lifespan for an Unggoy, Honcha had been roughly ten years old when he was sold to the Zamam clan and about twelve a year later when he was brought to battle.

By the year 2552, Honcha had been present in numerous infantry engagements, and with the burns to prove it all over his body. His friend Gaafi regularly joked that Honcha was "growing darker every day I see ya", a quip that Honcha rarely appreciated. His vision had also gradually worsened, and he regularly suffered from headaches thanks to blunt force trauma, though regular training with the Special Ops would help alleviate some of these symptoms.

Hobbies and Habits
Honcha often held a sentimental attachment to his tools, and could often be seen his spare time regularly polishing his equipment. A slight superstitious vibe went with it, and he hoped that treating the equipment well that it would thank him and bring him good luck. After his move to infantry it was rare he would receive the same equipment, but he tried to cope this anxiety and simply move along with his new weapon.

Honcha also tended to be rather contemplative in his spare time, and overall was very down-to-earth as a person. This had complemented his simple work as a farmer and following his enlistment tried to seek a place regularly after battle where he could be quiet. Thinking about life tended to comfort Honcha and he felt that everyone should be given their own "thinking place' where they could regularly think of things.

He also held a mild appreciation for art, a partial habit encouraged during his brief stint under the Lady Laconi. As such, drawing was a rare real pleasure of his he would regularly get during his time in the Covenant infantry, and a few of his doodles were occasionally passed about among the Unggoy soldiers as part of their "underground" culture.

Unggoy
"What is so different about Unggoy dying in this war?!"

- A Sangheili Major, enraged at Honcha taking up valuable resources and space while being treated in hospice.

Before his recruiting into the war, Honcha simply viewed all species as the same, and never quite associated himself with a certain type. Not until during the war did he begin thinking of himself as an Unggoy, after he discovered what it meant. To be an Unggoy to him was to be forever entrapped, forced between great evils and struggle to ally himself with the good, be protected by someone powerful, and perhaps be safe and in peace. Each one of them would all have to find their own way there, and to be a horde was to try and reach it together.

Occasionally, however, his view was not so pessimistic. Honcha longed to become an Unggoy Major, and perhaps lead his own squad into safety. However, this rank was impossible for him to achieve thanks to his position as infantry, since Unggoy there were appointed the position, not promoted, and without a clan nobody would be keeping track of him. His infantry role also kept his fleet deployment shifting, and as such he rarely got opportunities to acquaint himself with any fellow soldiers, most of which who were just sold and often of lower intelligence.

Gaafi
"Right in the sewers, just where I expected."


 * ''"You expected me to get in the half of Spirit that crash-lands in river and gets washed down the sewers?"


 * ''"I plan these things."

- Gaafi to Honcha during the Battle of Orville.

Gaafi was a Special Operations Unggoy, and Honcha’s closest friend. The two of them met in the aftermath of the Battle of Westfield Base, after the former helped him escape in time to the cruiser above. The latter was then briefly recruited into his squad to assist in an op of disabling a UNSC vehicular hangar. Following this, the two often participated in battle together.

To Honcha, Gaafi was an example of everything he should be, and hoped one day to become like him. He was strong, capable in battle, and boasted considerably more freedom as an Unggoy than most ever did. In their career together, he never once saw a single moment where the former found himself over his head, or unable to handle the situation, and such could usually count on him to get them out of trouble.

At other times, however, he worried about his friend’s decisions, and outlook on the world. Gaafi would regularly challenge authorities, tended to ignore the regulations and rules, and occasionally even voiced his distaste for the war and its objectives. While he fought faithfully for the Covenant side all the same, it confused Honcha how little he regarded it, especially how little he regarded its leaders, the most important figures in Honcha’s life.

Edomea
"My children, do not forget our time together. Though you may have been sold, and thus been unable to taste of our life as a tribe together, know that through it we may preserve that life for ones yet unliving, through your sacrifice of yourselves to the Covenant."

- Edomea during a final farewell to her children.

Sangheili
Honcha’s first masters were the Sangheili, and remained so until the day of the Great Schism. While with Chuka 'Zamamee at his estate at Sanghelios, his policy had been just to avoid them, but in hopes of his work pleasing them, during the war instead he had to remain in complete attention of them. Very often he found the ones on the field to be dangerous, dismissive of companions, and often very quickly to turn wrathful when faced with their troubles. While short-tempered Sangheili in particular tended to be characteristic of the lower rank members, among the higher ranks he usually found their actions inspirational, though of course they would never go downward to acquaint themselves with his lower caste. It took several years before he ever made a close connection to any Sangheili and even longer to ever realize it.

Chuka' Zamamee
"The little one, Honcha?”


 * “Still a Minor...”


 * ''”Still alive."

- Chuka 'Zamamee with his former slave Honcha during the 1st Battle of High Charity.

Chuka 'Zamamee was Honcha’s first master and the leader of the clan whose estate he worked on. Thanks to the aura of authority that surrounded him, Honcha was expected to avoid him, but saw enough of him to see him as stern, and continually demanding of his servants. Their first battle in the War had them briefly fight together, but Honcha was quickly abandoned, and had little idea where to seek his master. Thanks to having been found with no master, Honcha thus permanently lost his clan status and was recruited into the infantry.

In the following years, Honcha thought little about Chuka, but when he did, thought of all the cruel Sangheili had met on his journeys and wondered if being a clan’s member had really been all great things that others claimed it should be. His only memories of Chuka had been anger, indifference, and distaste whenever he had failed to get the job done. It wasn’t until years later that he had the opportunity to find him, speak to Chuka, and learn that he was indeed proud.

Lady Laconi
The Lady Laconi was the wife of Chuka 'Zamamee, and she took Honcha under direct jurisdiction during his final months on the clan estate. While she held a certain degree of affection for him, years of xenophobic raising still rendered their relationship being "master-servant", and with never any knowledge of it as a deterrence. While the Lady would treat Honcha initially as merely the funny servant who tended her favorite fields, Honcha's reaction had been to almost revere her as a near-angelic figure. It was not until very much later that she would begin to confide in him about her very mortal troubles, and following these developments the two would slowly begin to see each other as equals.

Humans
"They just leave me like last time. To them I'll never be worth it."


 * ''"You’re worth it to me, boy. That’s why I’m saving you."

- Honcha and then-Lance Corporal Marrita Tiner after the Battle of Bethany.

Honcha followed his orders to enter battle against the Humans faithfully, but never understood quite why they were being punished. It was under the guidance of Chuka that he was told the reason, that it was for their disrespect of the Forerunners, that they had trampled their gifts, had spit on their grave. Even so, these facts usually were glossed over by Honcha while in battle, as his key objective became to survive for just a little while longer.

Two years of fighting them led him to fear them. He knew they had power, and even against the worst of the Covenant were ready to test it hard enough to make it bring out that worst in the first place. Many times they had outsmarted them, and he knew when it came down to it he could never outsmart them back. And he also envied them for their comfort, that they had a home that they could turn to, a home that they had fought for, and often wondered if given the same type of stakes whether he would do the same.

Honcha’s most important encounter with a Human, however, was at the end of the Battle of Bethany, where he saved from imminent suffocation by a Marine survivor. The battlegroup had left hours earlier, and Honcha had been found lingering between life and death in the forest due for destruction. The two of them never saw each other after that, and Honcha never even saw which Human helped him, but the fact that one did so weighed heavily on him in his following battles.

Trivia

 * As a result of his upbringing on Balaho, Honcha possessed a strong ethnic accent, a fact that was persistently teased about by his farmmates.
 * Honcha often desired to wield a Needer, but he was never issued it.