• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

The Elite stared up as the two Spartans look down on it.

“I mean, really,” Jonah prodded. “I’ve always meant to ask . . . what makes you Covenant thugs think yer so damned special anyway? What gives you the right to do the things you do?”

The Elite passed his gaze from Jonah to Roland and back. “There is honor in our path,” he began, “you . . . your kind . . . humanity? You are nothing but a disease that must be wiped clean from this galaxy—a taint upon—”

“Yeah, well—this disease ain’t goin’ nowhere. In fact, seems ta me, it’s right up in yer goddamn face and there ain’t much’a damn thing you can do about it.”

“If we were to meet in battle as warriors—true warriors,” the Elite hissed, “you would fall, just as so many of your kind have fallen—to our swords and fire; under the weight of our boots. But you—you are not warriors. You are assassins. Weak and timid, you hide in the shadows—”

“Says the alien shit-heel who invented active-camo,” Jonah said. “Yeah, yer noble. How noble’s glassin’ a planet from orbit?” Jonah tapped the kneeling beast across his temple with an open hand. “Answer that.”

“Your influence must be expunged—eradicated—from the worlds you have fouled with your very presence—”

“I really don’t like this guy,” Roland interrupted. “Cut ’im loose, Jay. I think it’s past time we beat feet.”

“I fear not the path to the Great Journey beyond. I embrace it.” Though he was bloodied and gravely wounded, the Elite’s eyes welled with pride has he spoke.

“ ‘Great Journey,’ huh?” Jonah huffed. “What’s so great about it?”

The Elite stared directly at Jonah’s visor, making eye contact despite the fact he could not see Jonah’s face through the reflective surface. “You will never—”

In a blur of motion, Jonah’s hand flicked forward, plunging his blade hilt-deep into the side of the Elite’s neck.

The creature shuddered and lurched, sick wet gurgles bubbling up from its throat. It lunged for the blade, more reflex than an actual attempt to defend itself. Jonah stood motionless, holding his ground.

Purple-black blood seeped from the wound, dripping from the Elite’s split mandibles.

Jonah maintained his stance for a moment—looking down on his latest victim with disgust—then suddenly, violently wrenched his wrist, twisting the blade in place. “It was a rhetorical question, asshole,” he said, his voice a mix of disdain and boredom as he slid the blade out of the dying Elite’s neck.

In one fluid motion, he removed his M6C from its holster with his left hand, and kicked the alien to the mud-and blood-caked ground with a thud. As the heavy alien body settled, a sudden and silent flash burst from the muzzle of Jonah’s pistol as he fired a single round into his fallen enemy’s face—the bullet entering through the roof of its still-twitching mouth before exploding out the top of its thick skull, depositing itself, along with a myriad of brain bits and bone fragments, in the soft, soggy turf below.

“Overkill, don’t you think?” Roland offered, mockingly.

Jonah leveled his M6C dead center on the dead Elite’s chest, firing four more rounds, each whispered thwip of gunfire—thwip, thwip, thwip, thwip—answered by the kiss of punctured flesh and ventilated lung. “Better safe than sorry,” Jonah cracked back as he safetied his weapon and ran his blade along the armor-plating on his thigh, wiping away the residue of a battle well won.

“Yer funny.”

“Someone’s gotta put a smile on that grumpy face, Rolle, old boy.”

Roland checked his sensors and the power charge on his suit’s battery. “We got other places ta be and this joint is prime to blow—you ready to roll out?”

“Yeah.” Jonah paused as he gave the area one last visual sweep—Covenant carcasses and discarded weapons littered the campsite. “This place is dead anyway—”

As the last syllable escaped Jonah’s lips a sudden crackle of energy sparked in the cool night air.

FIVE

_____________

SOMETHING NEW

* * *

Roland’s body quaked—a violent, sudden spasm erupting from his torso and pulsing through his limbs in a series of aftershocks—then he seized as the muscles along