Warm Welcome

He could hear them coming now, moving through the cargo bay, ascending the rungs of the ladder towards the cockpit. Orders would’ve been for him to finish what he started, scuttle the mangled remains of the MJOLNIR he’d just crawled out of and himself with it.

Maybe it would be nice, to end it all at this point. No more war, no more suffering, the galaxy would have to sort itself out. But something, perhaps the illegal adrenal augmentations he’d tested for Kurt, stayed his hand. Or maybe he just wanted to take in the vistas of Oyster Point with the welcome party filing into the crashed dropship.

Regardless, Cody wasn’t going out, not like that. He heard two of them stacking up at the door, they’d be coming in soon, and he was at quite the disadvantage. Adrenaline clouded his mind to the pain radiating from the stump below his right knee, but it didn’t dull his instincts and Promethean weaponry at least had the decency to cauterize the wound. He had a plan.

With a few taps of a datapad he set a self destruct timer. Two minutes. He had to be generous given his impairment. There was a click, the unmistakable removal of a pin from a flashbang. Cody snarled.

Rolling away from the pile of armor he propped himself up as best he could. His arms and remaining leg gave him enough support to be somewhat mobile, in truth the bodysuit clad Spartan looked like an predator about to pounce.

He just wished he had more to work with than his knife.

The flashbang came through the door, sailing towards him and instinctively Cody smacked it right back out. They hadn’t expected that. The stun grenade dropped back down into the cargo bay of the Albatross and detonated.

The flash was mostly obscured, but the noise left his ears ringing. Thankfully he wouldn’t need to hear for this.

One of the boarders stepped through the door, the black armored man to the untrained eye could have been any sort of mercenary or spook, but Cody knew better. The one tinge of color was a red bull emblazoned on the chest plate. 'BDS'.

His thoughts flashed to Gilgamesh, the charred corpses of UNSC sympathizers, APOLLYON, mass graves. The bastards.

In a flash Cody shot forward, slamming into the mercenary. Instantly he heard the man’s ribs break as his MA5C fired wildly before falling from his hands. The Spartan had propelled the two clear of the ladder, all that was left was for them to fall. With the split second they were airborne he counted five others. One next to the cockpit, three desperately trying to get back up on the floor of the cargo bay.

More bones broke beneath his weight as the merc broke Cody’s fall, but he didn’t pay any mind to the screaming. Instead he lashed out with his leg, hammering his heel into the knee of the woman unfortunate enough to be next to where he landed. There was a sickening crunch as the bone snapped and shattered, in a blink she fell forward in agony. He’d deal with that later.

The Spartan rolled onto his back, bringing the wounded mercenary under him in front of him as well. An instant later gunfire ripped into the man from above as his comrade made his move from atop the ladder.

Cody’s hand snaked down to the corpse’s thigh and wretched a pistol from it’s holster and thumbed the safety. He squeezed and the weapon barked, spitting a round into the shooter’s throat. One down.

He pivoted, and lined up another scrambling to put the Cody into his sights. Two more shots thundered from his pistol and the mercenary crumpled to the floor. Two down. Someone screamed, not in agony, but in rage.

A woman charged at him with blade in hand, lunging at him with fury in his eyes. Cody threw the bullet riddled corpse of her comrade into her as if he was tossing aside a piece of garbage, but nonetheless it knocked her to her back.

Cody’s eyes flicked back and forth at a speed no average human could hope to match, locking on to the last one standing. A rifle cracked, and something ripped into his shoulder. It should’ve left him writhing in agony, but instead it was nothing but a scratch.

He unloaded the remaining rounds into the stunned mercenary at the base of the ladder, the man and his DMR crumpling to the floor. Three down. Cody looked to the woman who’s leg he’d destroyed, she was trying to get up, trying to keep fighting.

He admired that.

Without pause he launched another kick, this one into her head. There was a wet 'thump' when her head met the wall, and her body went limp. Four down.

In an instant Cody was on his hands and leg again, wild eyes set on the last survivor as she shoved the mangled carcass of her former ally off of her. She was livid, if it was from humiliation or camaraderie he wasn’t sure, and he didn’t care.

He lunged for her, one hand wrapped around her wrist another around her throat. Cody squeezed the former until it broke, the knife clattering to the deck as the hardened mercenary let out a scream.

“Fuck you! Fuck you!” A fist hammered into his jaw, blood pooling beneath the skin as she frantically swung and cursed at him. He didn’t react, he didn’t say a thing. His free hand pulled his blade from it’s sheath on his side and plunged it into her throat with a single violent blow.

She stopped writhing beneath him, and her fist fell to the floor as she failed to gurgle out one last insult as the life drained from her eyes. Five down.

Cody pulled the knife out as steadily as he could and re-sheathed it. His hands were starting to shake, adrenaline was going to fade sooner rather than later. He had to move. Now.