Jackal- Chapter 1

"How much do you think they paid this one to keep his mouth shut?"
"It's not important, what is important is that we extract as much information out of this one as we can. The Brutes are not ones to mess around when there are Sangheili to be killed."

He pryed his eyes open, which both ached in their sockets. A sticky warm liquid ran down the front of his face, while he attempted to stand up. It was to no avail, his legs wobbled in response, his arms numbly scratched at the floor. All of the energy he had earlier had obviously drained out, in the form of a tiny pool of blood. 'Great, I'm bleeding, can't see, let alone move, and there are two very angry Elites bickering over whether I know something..."
But what was that something? Why were the Brutes killing the Elites? And how the hell did he manage to loose so much blood for being out for... he looked up toward the window, it was coated with an amber glow, signifing either first light or last light. 'Bugger. I don't even know how long I've been out, but if my understanding of this planet's cycles is still in tact, it must be near night fall...' A bolt of pain shot through his temples. He near-blacked out, but managed to keep a grip on conciousness 'oh wow, that one really hurt..'
A gloved hand wrapped around his neck suddenly, the two thumbs nearly suffocating him. The owner lifted the Jackal up, brought him to eye level.
"How much do you know about Brute movements you coward?"
'Well, this sucks. Better figure out a way around that question... oh! Be witty! That works... right..?'
The Elite pressed the question, as the Jackal attempted to formulate a response.
"Listen weakling, I can easily snap your neck in two, and I would have done such if I did not need this information!" the Jackal could nearly taste the venom in the Elite's voice.
The other Elite, a Minor who'd been having an internal conversation with himself this entire time, spoke up:
"Major, it appears this one has his radio malfunctioning."
The Major turned "What do you imply? That he broke it to prevent us from listening in on the Brute's Battle Net?"
The Minor shook his head, and calmly pointed out the gash inside of the memory unit, caused by a plasma burn.
"Friendly fire, probably from an Unggoy with a bad aim. The burn looks to be about four or five hours old."
The Jackal, who'd been listening in, while trying to refocus his eyes, had just noticed that his sniper mask had fallen off. 'Pretty bad that I can't notice that one...'
The Major turned to the Jackal, "where do your loyalties lie Kig-Yar?"
The Jackal blinked "Loyalties? What do you mean by that?"
"If given a choice to support a Brute or an Elite who were fighting with each other, who would you shoot?" The Minor chimed in.
The Jackal couldn't help but let a big smirk cross his face "The Brute of course, they have this problem with using cover that makes them very shootable!"
The Major let a chuckle escape at the Jackal's response. "Alright, how long has your radio been broken?" he finally asked.
Good point, when did that dumb thing get shot? Funny enough, it wasn't a Grunt, but instead a human who'd be very brave. It was about noon, given the lighting, and for some reason that foolish Prophet jumped his cruiser away, leaving a weird blue-glow throughout the entire city. The Human had found him, attempted to sneak up on him, and subsequently fell into a quick-trap the Jackal set up. This thing was funny to watch predictable Humans run into a weapon that they had invented nearly six Centuries ago! The Claymore anti-personell mine was a light-weight explosive that would shred up anyone or anything less than a Tank that triggered it. The only unforunate thing that happened to the Jackal this particular incident, was that he did not want to waste a Claymore (one of the five that he brought, all personally manufactured from salvaged parts off of previously conquered planets) a mere two hours into his deployment. He turned around, confiscated an Assault Rifle off of a dead human Policeman, aimed it down range, forgot to turn off the saftey on the Rifle, forgot to turn off the mine, and ended up with a near-miss plasma shot to his radio unit (located on his left hip because he had a tendency to shut it off, as screaming Grunts generally forget to deactivate their radios).
He'd spaced out, however, and the Major tapped his head-wound.
"YEEEOUUCH!" he yelped.
"Are you going to tell me when your radio died or not? I am getting impatient!" the Major growled
"uh-y-yeah sure. It got shot like.... six hours ago. Around lunch."
The Major sighed, released the Jackal (who was roughly a yard above the floor at this point), and addressed the Minor:
"See that he gets patched up, a Kig-Yar's eye would be a valuable asset this evening." the Major exited.

*A short bit of medical work later*
"So, why did you guys knock me out again...?" the Jackal groaned through the sharp pain of intern-grade stitching. "Ow, why don't you turn on a light or something, your depth perception is terrible!"
The Minor glared at the Jackal "Okay, if you want to critisize the only healer left on this forsaken rock, then fine. Do it yourself."
The Jackal was not expecting such an objective analysis of his shenanigans. The Minor let the stitching needle and thread hang loosely from the Jackal's flesh. They sat there, in a forced silence, for probably about thirty seconds. The Jackal decided it wasn't worth attempting to convince the Minor other wise, and grabbed the needle, felt along his scalp and-
"BWAHAHAHAHA! You were actually going to do it! HAHAHAHAHAHA! Wow, I've not had that one happen since Reach!" the Minor was cracking up, and he had nearly risked self-mutiliation for it.
"Okay, I'll stop laughing", the Minor flicked a lightswitch located on the wall, "I just wanted to see if I could stitch blind."
The Jackal shot a grimmace at the Minor, who replied with a snicker "how about I patch you up right this time?"
"Yeah, that sounds good, but can I get some painkiller or something? That was rediculous."
The Minor sighed, "Alright ya baby, I've had tougher Unggoys."
"What do you mean by that!?" the Jackal shot back.
"When they are dead, they don't really bicker about anything" the Minor said with an obvious smile.
"Okay, I guess DEAD Grunts don't complain about pain much, but you're still giving me pain killer, think of it as a refund for your terrible stitching."
"Fine, ya baby." The Minor was obviously not done having fun, but alas it did not matter to much to the Jackal. The Minor applied a bit of pain killer via a relatively small needle.
"So Kig-Yar, ya got a name? Makes things alot less uncomfortable if I know who I'm patching up."
The Jackal let a slight chuckle escape, "Really, you're asking me for my name? Wow, first Eli-... Sangheili that has asked me that question."
The Minor was less pleased with the Jackal's response. "Okay, would you like me to call you Kig-Yar all day? Because I can do that, if that is what you perfer."
The Jackal sighed, and finally gave in, "Okay, name's Kol."
"Alright Kol, mines Rehn. Nice to meet you."
"Yeah yeah, formalities aside, could you please hurry up on those stitches?"
"Oh, right yeah sorry 'bout that Kol!"

The Major entered, "Are you two done flirting, or can we get moving?", he looked around, a subtle hint of worry made his jaws move very mechanically.
"Only a few more stitches Major, give me 5 minutes tops.", Rehn flatly reported.
"Good.", the Major stiffly recited, exiting the room with a forced gait.
"Great, something bad is about to happen, and I doubt we'll want to be around when it does.", Rehn murmured.
"Huh, my guess is we're going to be stuck inbetween the Brutes and the Humans. Aye, noooo bueno."
Rehn shot Kol an amused look, "What in the 'verse is 'bueno'?"
"Heh, um... it's human. A language they call 'Spanish'. Some of them are fluent in it, and have a tendency to label things in that language. It's bad enough not knowing more than the basics of their common language 'English', but combine that with Spanish, and you've got a catastrophy waiting to happen."
"Okay then, I guess I have been educated on where it came from... but WHAT IS BUENO!?"
"Oh, it means 'good'. If I say 'no bueno', it means 'not good', I have a tendency of doing that... heh, alot sometimes. Cost me three relationships actually, but then again, they were really one night stands anyway."
"Hah. Very funny. A Kig-Yar having relationships with someone."
"H-Hey! We're not all blood-thirsty cut-throats who are more interested in yanking someone's currency and valuables than settling down... just, uh, most of us are..", Kol sighed, "Sad news of the day is that it reflects on both genders, I've seen nearly as many cut-throat Fems as I have Males, if not more depending on the system...", a slight blush crossed his face, "Some of them probably would have laid with me had I not been a hired gun for the Prophet's Arm and Blade..."
"Oh please don't arouse yourself, it helps if I don't have to worry about you going unconcious from the blood loss.", Rehn joked, "Besides, this last stitch will probably hurt a bit."
Rehn didn't lie about that one. The final stitch had to go into some un-rended flesh.
"Wha- GAH! Wow I felt that one! Ughhh..." Kol started to reach up toward the peircing pain in his slightly-numbed scalp. Rehn grabbed Kol's wrist, however.
"Don't touch those for a bit. I doubt they would do you any good if they just tore loose.", Rehn finally cut the thread for said stitches, placed all of his associated medical items into his kit, placed the kit onto his back, and stood up. "How about we not keep the Major waiting, I doubt he wants to be here any more than you or me." Rehn strod out the door.
'He's pretty informal for a 'leet. Hmm... I wonder how often he's questioned the Covenant's practices?'
"You commin' Kol?" Rehn shouted from outside.
"Oh yeah, commin'!" Kol stood up, not to wobbely this time, thank the gods. He needed a weapon, "Where the heck did... oh hey there it is!", his Beam Rifle had been sitting propped up against the over-turned luxury chair. He quickly retrieved it and bounded toward the exit. A short set of industrialized corridors and a three flights of stairs later, he was in the lobby of the building.
It was a mess. A pile of deceased Brutes, Grunts, and a few Loyalist Jackals sat on the left hand side of the lobby, with a trio of expired elites slumped against the wall and desk of the lobby.
"At least they fought well. Not many would take down fifteen plus with only a group of three." Kol noted.
Rehn examined the corpses from his position, "Posthumously, they would have probably done better behind the desk.", Rehn went to retreve something from the corpses, "Hmm, Kol, how good are you with Carbine?"
"Decent enough to kill as many as there are charges in a cylinder.", Kol boasted.
"Let's hope you can do double that in one cylinder, Kig-Yar. We've got roughly half of the city to fight our way out of, and from there we can blend into the jungle life until either reinforcements arrive, or the humans unleash the Demon upon the Brutes.", the Major was already making plans for the future, "If we are lucky, we get reinforcements, if not, then I suppose our last option would be hijacking a civilian vehicle capable of slip-space jumps, and if that would be the case, gods help us, because finding one when we can't read, let alone understand human markings in this catacomb of streets and multi-layered structures, would be next to impossible.", he let a deep sigh out, "We might even have to allie ourselves with the Humans, and I doubt they will want to do that..."
'This must have been what was plagueing the Major.', Kol thought.
"I can read most of the Human's common language Major.", Kol volunteered, "Odds are good we can find a city-map or something of the like."
"Alright then Kig-Yar, where do you suppose we can locate one?", the Major growled, more out of anxiety than anger, but nonetheless a growl.
"Well, if my knowledge of Human common is correct, this is a Hotel, which means that they generally house travelers." Kol searched around the lobby, using the little knowledge of the Human's common language to read the various pamphlets scattered around. He found a pamphlet titled "Glorious New Mombassa Atlas", and opened it up, a vast network of streets and weird markings sprawled across the pamphlet as it opened to full size. A small data-chip popped out of the pamphlet as well, Kol quickly caught it and examined the weird oval-shapped device, which had a holo-memory section in the center.
"I think this could be a Nav-chip or something... maybe a possible-" a slight metalic clink, followed by a blinding light and deafening noise cut Kol off. He felt another sharp jab to the back of his head, but this one was much less painful than the last. He lay still for a second, the image of the data-disk burned in his retenas slowly cleared into the dimly lit floor, with several pairs of human boots atop it. The Major was still standing, but he was completely surrounded by humans, all bearing assault rifles.
"So you split lipped bastard, how did you manage to survive that big incident of friendly fire, roughly five hours ago?" Kol immediately recognized the human speaking... it was that Lieutenant he was about to shoot before being interrupted by Rahn's head-splitting intrusion!