Catharsis

It came at Cody, hard.

A curve blade cut through the air, arcing through the space his head had occupied seconds earlier. He stepped to the side, stimulants augmenting his already superhuman senses, making him faster, stronger, better. The brute furiously hacked away at him only to find empty air.

It screamed like a mad beast, bellowing, but he remained silent. It lunged forward, attempting to run him through, but he simply twisted out of reach and countered with a gauntleted punch. Metal split flesh above the lumbering alien’s eye, blood spraying. If it made any note of the wound, Cody didn’t notice above it’s feral roaring.

He ducked low, the brute’s meaty fist flying just over his head. In a blink he fired off his thrusters, closing the few centimeters of space between them at a brutal speed, his shoulder hammering into the Jiralhanae’s stomach. Aided by the boost, he drove it into the wall where the brute ricocheted as Cody stepped back to avoid another desperate lunging blow.

Cody put a few meters between them, enough clearance to let one hand reach back to the small of his back and pulling the length of sharpened titanium alloy free. It came at him again, hacking and slashing as it bled from a dozen different wounds, frothing at the mouth with a rage he knew.

He weaved between one strike, then another, then with a flourish of the machete in his hand he parried away another. It tried to catch him off guard, throwing a heavy punch at his head, but Cody saw the strike coming a mile away, pulling his head out of the way and letting the momentum carry the battered alien back across the hall, its heavy fist slamming against the cold metal walls.

Back exposed, Cody promptly brought the machete down on its shoulder. Metal cleaved through bone and flesh, the brute’s rippling muscles and the tendons that bound them split, bone snapped, and the alien let out a wail. Its arm hung at its side a bloody mess, the strands flesh that barely held the limb it its body tearing away as it spun around.

Pain was nothing, not when all you had was hate. He knew that, he’d lived that, it was no shock when the beat kept fighting. Something crept across Cody’s face, tugging at his lip while he weaved away from the brute’s attempted stab. As it staggered forward his elbow bashed it across the mouth, snapping its head to the side before the Spartan stepped back.

It was heaving, struggling to breathe, and beneath the sinister grin grew larger. He was a shark, and there was blood in the water.

He took a step forward, but out of the corner of his eye he caught a red blip on his mini-map behind him. “Demon!” The cry cut through the air as he spun to face it, narrowly avoiding an energy stave that soared past him. At the end of the hall stood another, beaten but alive. It seemed the eight gauge he’d put in its stomach prior hadn’t done the trick. Then he felt it, first it was a prick, then his side exploded in pain, the steel of the curveblade piercing him.

The other had taken its chance when he’d turned his back, and now the length of metal jutted out above his him. For a millisecond he processed the injury, and the pain shot through him like fire, but in that same moment he felt his head begin to pound. His adrenal glands kicked into overdrive, and the Spartan let out a growl of his own.

He twisted and brought his elbow back, the sharp edge of the VENATOR-class armor’s elbow guard punching clean into the brute behind him’s skull. As warm blood and gray matter exploded out across his arm, the brute fell, pulling its blade from him as it collapsed lifelessly, biofoam autoinjectors flooding the injury.

The one that had thrown the spear looked on in horror, then anger. It let out a ferocious roar, then charged him.

Cody sunk into a lower stance, the same twisted smirk on his face. This one came at him faster than the other fists hammering down, a storm of blows that he struggled to weather. He ducked and dodged but one after another caught the Spartan, heavy blows blurring his vision as the brute smashed his head every which way.

The brute roared and pulled an arm back to strike, and in a flash Cody hacked into it. A slash opened some of its stomach, then another blow bit into its chest, but suddenly its massive fist wrapped around his blade hand, and wretched him aside.

The brute slammed him against the opposite wall, and before his mind could even process it, the alien was battering him. The air left him and the machete clattered to the ground as hit after hit hammered into his stomach and head. His vision began to blur further, until all he could see was red. He bared his teeth and roared, his thruster pack fired and he rammed his head into the brute’s face at full speed.

It staggered the beast, forcing it to release his arm, and that was all he needed. Cody launched a few blows, splitting the brute’s lip with the first, then igniting his left thruster and shattering its jaw with the boosted second. Unrelenting he drove his knee up into the shotgun wound again and again, the brute writhing in pain as the tables turned on it once again.

It struggled to strike at him, but its blow did nothing to faze the Spartan as it was driven into a wall. Blow after blow rained down, the brute’s resistance ebbing away as strike after strike tore away flesh and pulverized bone. Cody wasn’t sure when it died, but he assumed it was before he stopped. His arms were coated in blood in bone, thick red streams rolling off his armor as he stood over the limp corpse.

If the creature had once had a head, it would be impossible to tell now, all that remained was the mangled mess piled atop its torso. Cody exhaled hard as his senses came to him again, staggering back as he stooped down to pick up his machete.

He needed to contact 142, tell him that he’d cleared the encampment. The pack was dead to the last.