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Concurrence Chapter 4-10
🕑 Added 2023-08-03 01:09:24 +0000 UTC3717 words. WiIl upload previous chapter soon before continuing.
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The last thing she saw was his helmeted face peering at her from above, and then her world went dark.
The Major
Streets of New Mombasa
10 Hours After Drop
“Seela!” he said again, trying to shake her awake, and watching as her head lolled to the side, her eyes shut tight. He threw away all pretences he had about touching her, hooking an arm around her chest and lifting her closer, bringing his glove to her mandibles.
He could feel her breath on his fingers, faint but there, but that did nothing to steady his beating heart. She was soaked with her own blood from the waist down, her torso was a mess of plasma burns, and one of her mandibles was bleeding. He worried she might choke on her own blood, the way it dribbled down into her open throat.
He brought one of her long arms over his shoulder, his knees shaking as he tried to lift her. Despite being slimmer than her male counterparts, it took most of his strength to flip her onto her back, and he had to take a rest before trying to get her to her feet.
“Come on, Seela,” he pleaded, struggling to rise to his feet with her added weight. He got about two steps before he faltered, just managing to catch his companion before she toppled over and made her injuries worse.
Grumbling, he propped her up against one of the hills dotting the garden, grimacing at the copious amount of her blood staining his vest. He reached into one of his pouches, he’d have to treat her before trying to move her again.
“Shit!” The only thing in his medical pouch was a discarded piece of medigel packaging. Of course, she’d wasted it on the dead Elite earlier, the fight had come so fast he’d forgotten. He examined the garden, but like before, optican’s finest were nowhere to be seen.
As he was beginning to let doubt take over, he heard it. A phone, the rings coming from somewhere nearby, beyond the garden. He looked towards one of the exit doors, then back to his companion. He couldn’t carry her out there, he was too weak, but leaving her here could be fatal, any nearby Covenant would have heard the shooting.
“Hold on, Seela,” he said, squeezing her shoulder. Seela said nothing, her face drooping towards her chest. “Just hold on.”
He slung his shotgun over his shoulder, the weapon clattering against his back as he ran out of the garden. He had no choice, he just had to hurry up and get back before she bled out.
Panic began to take him as he dipped back onto the street, following the noise of the phones. Seela was his responsibility, they were a team, one founded on necessity, but still a team, and he couldn’t just let her die, alien or not. He’d lost too many friends in this war, and if he could stop that number from adding up, he’d do all he could.
Was that what she was, a friend? She understood him more than even his own team did, and they’d watched each others backs all night. If that constituted friendship, then he supposed she was. Had it only been a few hours ago he’d saw her as just an asset? Time sure as hell flew in this place.
After a few minutes of desperate searching, he found what he was looking for. Three medical kits were mounted on the wall of a building, protected from the rain by a white shelter. Their contents were identical, packets of medigel along with user instructions. Seela had said they wouldn’t work on her since she wasn’t human, but it was his only chance to help her.
He made his way back, but halfway along, he had to duck into cover as a loud, whirring noise drew his eyes to the sky. A Phantom banked over the buildings, its searchlights scanning the streets as its mounted chin cannon looked for targets. Had they heard the gunfire, and were looking for their Chieftain, perhaps?
He didn’t have time for this, the Major whispering for the ship to leave as though that would somehow work. Screw it, he thought, rushing out into the open and keeping to cover wherever he could. Being spotted now would get them both killed, but Seela would bleed out if he took too long.
The journey back to the garden was slow, but he returned without being detected, rain plinking off his helmet as he rushed onto the grass, stepping round the hulking body of the Chieftain, his hammer still buried in his backside. Seela was where he had left her, and he skidded to a stop beside her, his knees in the dirt as he laid out his gel packets by her thigh.
He should start with her bleeding ribs, there was already a pool of purple blood creating a circle below her rump, that Chieftain had skewered her good. He hoped the gel would be enough.
Removing his gloves, the cold air pricking his knuckles, he ripped open a packet of gel and poured it onto his palm. Her bodysuit was shredded, but still partially obstructing her wound, so he pried it away with a thumb and finger, the material made sticky by her rushing blood.
He slathered his gel covered hand across her nasty scar, the cut longer than his hand. The medigel took on a purple colour as it mixed with her fluids, the Major grimacing for Seela as he pushed his fingers into the scar, feeling her flesh writhe around his digits. He wiped his hand on his chest when the gel was all gone, then opened the second packet, thinking the cut needed another dose.
After rubbing the second packet away into her flesh, the gel taking the consistency of glue as the fluids mixed, he set about removing the armour covering his arm. The gel could only do so much, and he didn’t have any morphine or biofoam on hand, but he did have gauze, at least a version of gauze.
Slipping his combat knife out of its sheath, he sliced away the sleeve of his BDU, cutting the fabric into a strip. Taking one end of it, he wrapped it over her front, then looped it across her torso. It would have been better to have the wrapping taught over her skin, but he had no idea how to remove her bodysuit, and he imagined she wouldn’t appreciate being undressed by him if he did know.
He tied his former sleeve with a knot, pulling it tight and catching Seela from falling when he moved her around too much. His improvised bandage was already soaking through, but it was keeping her blood from leaking out, for the moment.
He moved on to her burns, the one on her shoulder pauldron looking the worst out of them all. It was the same shoulder that had been bleeding when he’d first met her, and her disregard for medicine back then hadn’t done her any favours, more of her blood dribbling out of her arm. Lightning shattered in the clouds above, and he looked up when the crashing noise was chased by the Phantom’s engines. It was somewhere out of view, but with a bit of luck, the tree canopy would conceal them if it flew over his position.
Unlike her waist, her upper torso was armoured, and it took a bit of prodding to figure out her to remove her power armour. There were buttons hidden just beneath each piece that would disable the magnetic locks, a very modular design. He set her pauldron on the grass, peeling back the neck of her bodysuit to expose her shoulder.
Her dark flesh here was bruised over, her flesh raw and swelling, like someone had pressed a cattle prod onto her. Medigel could help, but water would be better, since it had worked for her back in the metro. He left her once more to search for a faucet in one of the buildings, he didn’t fancy putting her out in the rain where the Phantom could spot them.
Each minute was laced with dread, but his searching in a nearby building turned up a plastic up and a water cooler, and he filled it to the brim, spilling a little of it as he dashed back to Seela’s side. From a distance she looked right at home, just another body in a sea of dead aliens.
“Come on Seela,” he said, more a plea than a command as he rubbed the water into her burn. He remembered the cut on her mandible was still bleeding, so he set aside the cup, opening his last gel packet as he moved to her face.
It was like pinching the fang of a spider, but he suppressed his apprehension, rubbing her cut between his gel-laden fingers. Her mandible was tough with very little give, packed with muscle, and a bit of curiosity came over him as he examined her strange jaw. He had killed too many of her kind to wonder about their alien biology, but he’d never had the chance to be this close to a living one, and he took these moments to study her a bit more.
The texture of her skin was like leather beneath his fingers, as smooth as glass and flawless, save for where she was injured of course. As he had noted before, her hide was a navy blue colour, like an ocean at dusk, and as he moved back to nurse her shoulder he gave her hide a little push, feeling her hard muscles press up to meet him through a subtle layer of blubber.
She was so similar to a human, yet alien in many other ways, her split-lip that was her species nickname one of the most obvious differences, and he found himself examining her odd face again, purely to see if she was injured anywhere else, of course…
Her mandibles moved like lips did, she could replicate speech perfectly, and she also used them to eat as though they were just extensions of her jaw. Their abnormal appearance contrasted with how she used them, he couldn’t imagine having four fingers as a face, what would that feel like?
She stirred, the Major quickly pulling his hand back as she flexed her jaws, her eyelids slowly opening. “W-Where…?” she mumbled, slowly turning her head up at him. “Major?”
She made to sit up, but he gently pushed her back down, his hands on her shoulders. “Don’t move,” he warned. “That Chieftain got you pretty good, but I’m working on it.”
“N-No,” she breathed, the Major switching his attention to her hip. The strip of cloth was ruined with her blood, he’d have to replace it soon. “Don’t,” Seela added. “Leave it…”
“What are you on about?” he asked, using the last of the medigel on the cut, peeling back the cloth and rubbing it in. He blinked when she tried to bat his hand away, but she was so weak all she could do was grab his arm.
“Stop,” she said, shaking her head at him. “Don’t… Don’t heal me.”
“You’re delirious,” he said, bringing his hand out of her grip. “It’ll get better, just-”
“No!” she said, a little louder this time. “I… I want… this.”
“You need to stay still.” He wiped his filthy hand on the grass, resuming his treatment of her burn.
“Please,” she mumbled, and he paused. He’d never heard her plead like that before. “just let me… let me have this.”
“Seela, you need treatment, or you’re not gonna make it.”
“Yes… I go to… meet my forefathers…”
“Not while I’m still here, okay? I’m not just… gonna let you die, alright?”
He cut off another piece of his sleeve, bringing the cloth up to her mandible and patting the blood and gel away. He met her eyes as he cleaned her up, and they began to lid, her words slurring into nonsense as she slipped into unconsciousness.
When her eyes snapped shut, a small drop of water slipped from beneath one, dragging down her cheek where it dropped off the side of her jaw.
The Major blinked, had she just… cried? Was that a tear born from pain, or something else? He wasn’t sure, and Seela wasn’t in the right state for him to ask, her breathing falling into deep, slow draws as she slumped over, the Major cradling her head to keep her from tipping over.
The Phantom made a pass right over the garden, the backwash of its engines shaking the leafy canopy. There was nothing more he could do for her, the Major stooping to pick up her discarded carbine, securing it to the back of his vest, next to his shotgun.
He ducked underneath Seela’s arm, intending to carry her weight on his shoulders, but as willowy as she appeared, he barely made it two steps before her weight caused him to drop her. He tried to wake her up, giving her face a gentle tap, then a harder slap, but she was out cold, the blood loss and the plasma burns too much, even for her.
He resorted to dragging her, her hooves leaving trails in the dirt as he lifted her by the armpits, dragging her ten feet at a time, the Major pausing for breaths. He got close to the edge of the garden before the Phantom once again entered his vision, the aircraft halting above one of the adjacent rooftops, the telltale sound of opening doors making his heart race, the Major picking up the pace as he slipped into the office he and Seela had entered the garden from.
His laboured breathing filled his helmet as he dragged Seela towards the street, the chirps of talking Grunts filling the silence that proceeded their recent firefight. There was also the deep contralto of a Brute, the Phantom depositing a squad into the garden.
Seela might have been able to tell him if they’d been spotted, but he took the lack of shooting as a good sign he was hidden for now. He pulled Seela onto the sidewalk, taking a quick breather as he looked around for options. He couldn’t lug Seela along forever, he had to get out of here, and quickly.
He picked a random direction and dragged her with him, his boots meeting the paved road as he moved across the street, keeping an eye on the tapered hull of the Phantom as it remained in place, its searchlights aimed thankfully at the garden.
Just as he lifted Seela onto the opposing sidewalk, he heard footsteps. A Grunt had waddled out onto the road, its head jerking around, its eyes eventually coming to rest on the Major. He drew his sidearm out of its holster with practiced speed, sending a single bullet its way. The round caused it to drop to its knees, but the little alien was tougher than that, pressing its hands into the concrete as it started to get back up. A second bullet put it down, but the damage had already been done, its buddies would be on alert once they found the body.
He dropped the pistol back into its holster, hoisting Seela up as he resumed carrying her. He made it another twenty feet before another Grunt poked its head out of the building, along with a Jackal. They yelled something in their alien language, probably a warning that they’d found the dead Grunt, the Major slipping between two sedans as he put distance between him and them.
A dazzling contrail whipped to the side of his helmet, and he hauled Seela behind one of the cars as another beam lanced through the rear windshield, shattered glass sprinkling down on his head. One of them was carrying a beam rifle, probably the Jackal, covering his Grunt buddies as they moved up on him.
He could probably get away, but dragging Seela would make him an easy target, so he opted to stand and fight, drawing his pistol and leaning around the side of the car. He dropped another Grunt that was weaving between the dead traffic, but as he aimed at another, his pistol clicked rather than fired.
He fished for another mag, but he was out, and he cursed through his teeth as he reached for his plasma pistol, trading fire with the Jackal as it kept him pinned. He couldn’t go into a standstill with him, the rest of the Covenant would be coming any second.
As he was beginning to think the worst, a flash of light drew his eyes up. A nearby advertisement board came to life, switching from displaying some hair product to an arrow, pointing down and to the left. He followed it with his eyes, seeing a small pathway curving between two structures, likely leading into the adjacent block.
More billboards and other screens came flaring to life all along the street, the lights concentrating around the Jackal’s position. Light posts blinked on and off, and some unseen car started honking its horn, as though its driver had suddenly returned and was venting their frustrations out on all the traffic. The Major and Seela were left in near-complete darkness, and the Major offered the Superintendent a silent thank you as he picked his companion up, heading for the path the AI was pointing him to.
The Covenant weren’t completely neutralized, plasma bolts screaming down the street as more of the squad joined the fray, but the bright lights were contrasting with the overarching darkness, and their shots went wide as he slipped into the side path.
The way was paved with neatly cut stones, flanked by lampposts on either side every few meters, but they were all off, the Major’s visor systems keeping him from bumping into any stray debris as he hauled Seela along.
The path terminated at yet another street, this one curving along until the concrete petered out, transitioning into polished metal that created a hump in the ground. It was another one of those blast doors, and the great wall of steel was wide open, the road beyond dipping into what looked like a tunnel system. It was there only chance.
His head snapped in the direction he’d come from. He could hear cars being pushed aside, tires squeaking against the road, as though some rabid animal was stampeding through the vehicles, the roar of a Brute unmistakable. One of them had gone into a frenzy, he couldn’t outrun a crazed Brute.
Picking Seela up, he heaved her towards the blast doors, glancing over the top of her helmet when movement caught his eye. A pit formed in his stomach. Another Chieftain was standing at the mouth of the path, one of those gravity hammers clutched in his grey hands.
He stared it down for a second, and then the Brute uttered a roar that ignited a kind of primal terror in his chest. He double-timed it, ignoring the burning pain in his arms as he lugged Seela’s weight towards the doors, which were maybe a hundred feet to his rear.
Seela felt like she’d suddenly gained weight, slowing his literal drag to a crawl as he made for the doors. The Brute was gaining on him, but he didn’t dare look up to see how close it was getting. “Close them, close the doors!”
His order was obeyed as the blast doors began to fold towards the ground, something about the mechanical movement coming off as slower than all the others he’d seen. The Chieftain bared its teeth in a snarl as it thundered down the path, raising its hammer over its head like it was about to huck the damned thing like a tomahawk.
Every bone in his body told him to drop Seela and save himself, but he couldn’t abandon her. Memories of lost squadmates flashed through his mind, casualty reports clutched in his hands, his name printed in the commanding officer field above each lost soldier. Not one more, he told himself.
The Chieftain had already crossed most of the path in the span of a few seconds, its long legs making it look like it was leaping rather than running, the royally pissed alien bearing down on him.
His boots clocked against metal as he closed within spitting distance of the blast doors, the alien’s footsteps travelling from the ground into his legs as it sprinted into the street, the engines on the hammer audible as it drew closer, closer.
He swore he could feel the Brute’s breath on his skin as he summoned the last of his strength, lunging through the gap between the closing doors, not even a second passing before the Chieftain stomped its wide feet onto the metal, the hammer held high. The aliens swung his weapon with a grunt, but the doors were too tight together for the bulky weapon to slip through, the metal ringing like a gong as it smashed into the reinforced frame.
He dropped Seela rather unceremoniously to the ground as he fell on his butt, watching as the Chieftain disappeared behind the doors, the hammer the last thing he saw before the sliver closed. He jumped in terror as the metal dented in a rough circle, the Brute ramming his weapon into the obstacle in frustration. There was one last bone-chilling roar, and then there was silence.
He let his arms drape to the sides as he laid back, the earlier fight and now this frantic chase draining him of energy. He just wanted to lay back and sleep, armour and all.
After he’d managed to catch his breath, he rose up a little, planting a hand on his knee as he turned around, examining the tunnel he found himself in. The road split off into four lanes after a slight dip, two going right, two going left. Signs indicated where these routes travelled to, and the one on the right caught his interest, the Major tilting his head as he read it out loud. At least the Superintendent had put them on the right track.
“Getting close,” he said, turning to his companion. “Reckon there’s a Warthog in here that’ll help me carry your ass?”
Seela, of course, said nothing.
