Chapter 11

The Rookie – Tayari Plaza, nine hours after drop.

The Brute spoke. It opened its mouth, its breath misting his visor, its tusk-like teeth and its long tongue on display as he practically looked down its throat. Its voice was coarse and gravelly, but the deep contralto unmistakably feminine, the rumbling speech shaking his bones. There must be female Brutes, but he had never heard of such a thing. Its yellow eyes peered at him from beneath its blue, horned helmet, its features obscured by the gleaming material.

He had expected it to kill him, he was out of ammo, hopelessly outmatched against the hulking mass of armor and muscle. And yet he was still breathing. The thing was pinning him against the wall, but not applying enough pressure to crush him. It could have pulled his arms off like a child playing with a rag doll, but instead, it was bargaining with him.

“You will help Alba, Alba will help you. Both walk out of here, yes?”

Alba? Was that the Brute’s name?

The Rookie had no idea where his squad was right now. He was deep behind enemy lines, completely out of contact with command, and he had no hope of rescue. He was going to have to walk out of here under his own power, and if this alien really did know the Covenant’s patrol routes, then she might be his only ticket out of his mess. Besides, if he said no, she’d probably just crush him like a soda can.

“A’ight,” he replied. Her yellow eyes seemed to widen beneath the brim of her helmet, and then she slowly lowered him to the floor. He paused to pick up his trusty knife, stowing it in his boot, then waited for her to make the next move.

“If I arm you, you will not betray me, yes?”

He nodded, he had no intention of shooting her in the back. On a normal day, he’d kill a Brute with a rusty spoon if that was what it took for him and his friends to make it home, but this one was ... different somehow. Brutes were never reasonable, it wouldn’t have surprised him in the least to learn that they were kept in cages on their carriers, and unleashed like attack dogs when the need arose. But this ‘Alba’ was willing to have a conversation with him, and that alone was reason enough not to just plug her and move on.

She shoved the carbine that she was holding into his hands, knocking him off-balance, then vanished into a side room. Now that he was paying attention, her figure and her gait were different from that of a regular Brute, too. There was a flare to her hips that was visible even beneath her armor, and she carried her weight differently from the males, an ass the size of a beanbag chair swaying left and right as she walked. If she really was a female, then that was a whole lot of woman, even for a Brute to handle.

When she returned, she was carrying a needle rifle, and he had to resist the urge to aim his carbine at her. Every instinct in his body, all his years of training and combat experience screamed ‘danger’ like an air raid siren going off in his head, but he suppressed it. This was an opportunity that he would not get a second time, not in a million years...

Her footsteps made the floor beneath his boots shake as she came to a stop in front of him, peering down at him as if she was waiting for something.

“Well?” she asked, gesturing down the corridor. “You lead.”

The Rookie made his way past her, checking his map. If his squadmates had been here, then they weren’t here now, and there was no indication that the Brute had killed them. The aliens tended to leave a rather conspicuous mess. It was time to continue along the exfil route that he had originally planned. If the Superintendent wanted to add any more waypoints, then he would deal with them as they came.

They made their way down the stairs, the Brute’s weight making them creak worryingly, emerging onto the street again. The Rookie paused for a moment as he checked his map, his companion waiting impatiently.

The dead Grunts were nearby, their fluorescent blood was splattered all over the cars, and it was pooling on the asphalt like spilled motor oil. The rain didn’t seem able to wash it away, it was oddly viscous. If the Brute was in any way angry with him for slaughtering her squad, then she didn’t show it. What was it that she had said when she had been pinning him against the wall? That the Covenant were fighting each other. He had surmised as much from the pile of dead Elites that he had come across, but it was nice to have his theory confirmed. He didn’t know anything about the political makeup of the Covenant save for the fact that the Prophets were the head honchos, and that the different races were arranged in a hierarchy from most dangerous to least. Were two of the member species having a spat, or were two of the Prophets fighting each other with their private fleets? Perhaps he should ask the Brute, but he wasn’t in the mood for conversation right now.

The path on his map sent him down the East road that led away from the plaza, but as he turned in that direction, he felt the alien’s hand on his shoulder. It was as large as a dinner plate, heavy, too. He bristled, resisting the urge to wheel around and shoot her.

“We must not go that way,” she said, her low voice making the hairs on his arm stand on end. “Patrols are that way. We go ‘that’ way,” she added, pointing down the Western road.

“Alright,” he mumbled, taking a moment to reconfigure his map marker. It wasn’t much of a detour. They made their way down the street, sticking to the sidewalk this time, as the Brute was too large to fit between the cars. At least she was fulfilling her part of the bargain. What bargain was that, exactly? They were going to cooperate to make it out of the city, but for how long? What would the reaction be when he eventually linked up with UNSC forces? Perhaps she would claim asylum, or offer information in exchange for her safety. It wasn’t a trick, he knew that for certain. She could have crushed the life out of him without so much as breaking a sweat if she had wanted to, and he didn’t have any useful information to accidentally reveal to her, he was completely lost.

They arrived at one of the massive blast doors that had closed over the street, creating an impenetrable wall between two buildings. The Brute, or ‘Alba’ as she had referred to herself, watched as he walked up to the small control panel that was built into the middle of the door. He accessed the files that he had downloaded from the city’s Superintendent, cross-referencing the correct codes, then tapped in the sequence. There was a mechanical crunching sound as the two doors parted, sliding back into recesses in the buildings to either side of the road, their way clear.

Almost as soon as they were on the other side of the barrier, it began to close again of its own accord, no doubt the Superintendent’s doing.

“So you ‘can’ open doors, tiny man,” Alba muttered. “They have been thorn in our side since we make landfall. Which way now?”

He pointed down the street, and they pressed on, the Brute lumbering along beside him. It was hard to keep his eyes off her, the only Brutes that he had ever seen up close like this before were either dead or viewed through a scope. They moved with such ease that it kind of downplayed their sheer mass. She must weigh at least a thousand pounds, and she had the figure to carry all of that weight. Her thighs were as thick around as his torso, packed with muscle, and sheathed in a layer of fat that shook with every step of her two-toed feet. Her hips were wider than the span of his shoulders, and her ass was similarly scaled up, her copious cheeks wobbling with the impact from within her skin-tight suit as she walked. Apparently, the Covenant was not too concerned about its soldiers being shot in the butt because there was minimal armor plating there.

Her skin was varying shades of grey, as was the rubbery jumpsuit that she wore beneath her blue armor, making it difficult to ascertain where one ended, and the other began. What he could be sure was exposed skin was leathery and thick, reminding him of a rhinoceros, and he noted that there wasn’t a hair on her. Some of the Brutes looked like a Sasquatch, while others were shaved clean, save for their beards. If Alba had any fur, then it was out of view. Her facial features were obscured behind her helmet, and he wondered whether they would be any different from those of the male Brutes.

“You do not talk much, tiny man,” Alba said as he peered up at her through his helmet’s visor. He shrugged in response, eliciting a rumbling chuckle from her. “Most talk too much, I find it refreshing.”

“What would we chat about?” he replied, “the weather?”

She chuckled at that, a huffing sound that shook his bones.

They walked for a little while longer, and then the Rookie led his unusual companion into the shelter of a bus stop, the alien waiting outside as he sat down on the bench beneath the awning. She was far too large to fit inside it without crouching. The rain pounded on the curved, transparent roof, an animated advertisement illuminating him as he began to remove one of his boots.

“What are you doing?” Alba asked, cocking her head at him as he rolled up the leg of his BDU. He retrieved the pack of MediGel from his pocket, opening the bag and smearing some of the green-tinted gel on his swollen ankle.

“Healing,” he replied, the anesthetic soothing his growing discomfort. He had more injuries to deal with now that he had a moment of peace, and he examined his forearm where the Jackal had scratched him. Its bird-like talons had gone straight through the material, leaving him with a trio of nasty cuts. He rolled up his sleeve to expose his forearm as best he could, the material was padded and protected by Kevlar, then began to smear some of the goo on the wounds. This time it stung, but the pain-killing property of the mysterious gel soon put a stop to that.