Observation

Finality held Lance Corporal Lione by the throat, suspended a good two feet off the ground. Bony, clammy claws wrapped around his neck and screamed, for mandibles opening and shut in a roar of defiant rage. All the Lance Corporal could feel in the moment was indignation. He grappled with the strong Zealot’s hand, trying to pry the fingers loose for a scant few more seconds of precious air.

He didn’t need to breathe anymore, he just wanted to spit one last insult at the alien, before it ran him through with the energy gauntlet attached to its other wrist. He would give his soul for the chance to hurl one last bitter, vehement word at the slimy split-lip.

As it happened, he didn’t get the chance. The elite raised a hand into the air, making sure the Human saw the blow coming. Before the alien could bring the arm across for the killing blow, the human began to laugh. He couldn’t squeeze anymore air from his lungs, but he could convulse and chuckle, bare his teeth in mockery, and hold up a hand.

A hand, displaying the Lance Corporal’s favourite finger, with the rest of the hand wrapped around a live grenade. The alien’s eyes went wide as dinner plates.

Before Lione could release the grenade and activate the primer button, the Elite’s second hand wrapped around his, and kept his hand tight around the grenade. Lione gasped, feeling his bones creak in the Alien’s mighty grip, pinned tightly against the chassis of the grenade.

Gritting his mandibles together, the elite angled its hand towards Lione’s face. The burning, sizzling energy dagger cut an acrid swathe through the very air. Lione could smell ozone, and the singing of his own hair as the temperature skyrocketed up, the blade inching closer to his reddened flesh.

Lione fought with his own hand to keep the gauntlet away from his face, but the lack of oxygen in his lungs robbed him of his strength. Bit by bit, the energy dagger began to slice into his cheek.

Lione screamed, swinging his legs up from underneath him, and kicking out at the alien’s chest plate with all his might. He hit resistance half an inch from the main chassis, and a sparkling, blue energy shield rippled into place where his feet struck. The blow did its job, causing the unprepared Elite to take a stumbling step backwards. At the same time, Lione pushed off of the taller alien, straightened his back, and ripped himself away from the vice-like grip.

He thudded to the floor, gasping for breath. The pain lancing up his back stopped him from gulping in air, and he flopped about on the black steel decking, mouth gaping open and shut like a fish while he scrambled around for a weapon.

There were corpses beside him, human and alien alike. Short, stubby grunts, birdlike Jackals, and the vacant stares of his lifeless friends. All of them, pockmarked with plasma burns and battle scarring.

Lione scrambled over for a rifle before he felt a foot stomp on his spine with enough force to crack something. Lione gasped—an explosive, wheezing sound that sapped his muscles of any will to continue.

The elite bent down over him, and Lione tried to look over his shoulder. He couldn’t see the Elite’s face. What he could see was a primed grenade on the ground beside him. The Elite raised an arm for a second time.

The grenade detonated, and all the world became light and heat.

.Lione took a while in the haze that followed to take a few breaths, and steady himself. There was cotton wool stuffed into his ears, and the feeling of something warm and wet trickling down his cheeks, both sides. The cut where the dagger plunged into his flesh still burnt, but now it was a distant pain, like an itch he couldn’t scratch, rather than a deep stab wound.

He rolled over to his side, and saw the smoking form of the Elite next to him, reeling, shaking its reptilian head from the blast. More importantly, around it was a sparkling blue miasma of drained shielding systems.

Lione braced his arms under himself and tried to push himself up on his legs, but they wouldn’t work. They flopped and rolled uselessly when he tried to move them, and the Lance Corporal found he could barely even wiggle his toes inside the charred boots.

The Elite standing between him and the grenade saved his life, and the shield saved the elite’s. Neither of them would be alive for much longer, if Lione had his way.

He crawled towards a grunt, picked up a plasma pistol, aimed it at the Elite, and pulled the trigger. The gun spluttered, shot a jet of green from its side, then went dead. Lione cast it away.

The Elite got up on shaky feet. Lione crawled over the grunt’s leaking methane pack, grabbed the standing alien’s legs, and pulled.

The Elite roared in surprise as its tenuous balance was interrupted, and it fell onto the metal floor with a thud.

Lione went for his knife, pulling his useless legs behind him as he squirmed onto the prone elite, stabbing at the thing’s throat. It caught the blade with a practiced hand and swept the other hand over into the side of the Human’s head.

The Energy gauntlet was destroyed in the blast, and the blow was weak—barely a fraction of the sangheili warrior’s strength—but it still felt like Lione was on the wrong end of a punch from an Olympic boxer. Blood splattered all over the ground, and so did half of a tooth. Lione’s vision swam, his knife hand felt weak, but he placed both hands on the hilt, and bore down with all of his strength. The Elite’s grip slackened for half a second, but that was all it took.

With a reverberating cry of triumph, Lione pushed the blade deep into the Sangheili’s grey neck, sank it deep, and held it there while the Elite began to gasp and gurgle. With one free hand, the alien grabbed the back of Lione’s head, pulling him down to stare the Human in the eye while the knife moved another inch, opening an angry purple slash in the thing’s neck.

With a last twitch of his mandibles, the alien went still.

Lione let the blade go, and rolled off of the fresh corpse, crashing back down onto brass casings, bloodstains, and black steel floor plating. His breathing came ragged, and quick; his chest rising and falling, heaving in great lungfuls of air.

He beheld two other figures at the other end of the room, watching him curiously. Lione didn’t know how long the pair of Elites were standing there, but they made no move to attack him. They didn’t even have their hands on their plasma rifles.

Lione froze, watching the two Elites. The adrenaline left him, and all he wanted to do was sleep. He closed his eyes and took a last breathe, and his chest went still.

The two Elites continued to observe the scene before them. A Lance of Covenant, felled by three Human warriors, cornered in a room that may have served as their den. One of them turned to leave the room, now that the last human had fallen still.

The other waited a few moments, before turning to his companion.

“What shall we do with the bodies?” he asked.

“Leave them,” the other said. “The cleansing beams will make short work of them.”

“Do you not think he deserves some sort of recognition?” the first left the room behind him.

The lead Elite froze, turning back to the second, and cocking his head. “Recognition? For a Sangheili that fell to a Human?”

“I didn’t mean for our brother,” the first said.

The pair didn’t move for a while. The lead Elite stepped up to the second, studied the younger warrior’s face for a while, before pushing past him and back into the room. A moment later, he returned.

The second elite craned his neck to peer inside the room. He beheld the human, sitting upright against the wall, a loaded weapon across his legs.

They both left the scene behind them, without another word.