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Chapter Seven, part three:
1220 hours; Capital Ship Rampant Generosity
Hoku Zimivee opened one eye, the nictating membranes over both of them feeling oddly numb, as if he had pushed his face into some nerve gas. For what felt to be the longest time he thought what he was looking at was distorted by heat-waves, until he realized the truth of the matter. His eyes weren’t focusing.
Panic gripped him when he realized much of his body wasn’t responding to stimuli, leaving him mostly paralyzed on whatever surface it was that he lay. It hurt, though, it all hurt, and he wished he were in his quarters on the Radiant and not aboard some enemy vessel at the end of his ropes about to die some horrible death either at the hands of his counterpart, Mün, or those of a few dozen Brutes.
The shipboard population seemed willing enough to rip them both limb from limb, if they were ever slow enough to get caught. Zimivee rolled his head to one side, wanting to know if he were about to be killed or if he had managed to pass out in a place where nobody went, regularly. There was the distinctive sound of a Kig-yar arm shield activating, but he couldn’t see much to define if it was on a Kig-yar or not.
Despite all his desire and need to get up, to move, he discovered any and all attempts were futile, so he relaxed his effort in order to try amending his blurred vision. At the sound of a door sighing open, he stilled himself to listen, hoping he might be missed. This proved not the case, when he heard a distinctive Jiralhanae snort followed by a guttural word that he never did catch. Something huge and a little fuzzier than all the other things loomed over him, and in that split second, all his nerves fired off and he coiled out of the way, rotated and came about in time to scissor down on the back of the Brute’s neck. A stunned grunt escaped it, and it dropped onto its face, way off balance and open for attack.
Zimivee took a grenade from his belt and primed it, dropped it onto the Brute’s back between its shoulder blades, and let it melt the hair and meat there as it sank into a custom made divot fused in the muscles while he rested his hoof on the back of the squirming Brute’s head. He backed off once it was securely stuck, a burning ball of HE melted into the anatomy of one who couldn’t have deserved it more. The Brute, just as expected, went bawling backwards into the hall from which it had come, all the while clawing at its back in an effort to get the grenade out of its shoulders.
Three steps back into the hall, it detonated, and threw the Brute hard forward, against the partly closed door. Zimivee sagged to his knees, and slumped forward, uncaring of the half a Brute in front of him. He didn’t want to die, but he knew he couldn’t go on, not like he was. He was too tired, too hurt, and too far from help. His brothers might not even know he was alive at the moment, which made it harder still to cope. Nothing was easy… but why did he always end up getting the short end of whatever stick happened along? For once he wanted a break.
The next time the door opened, in its cycling attempt to allow the blockage to pass and close at the same time, the body was jerked back, out of the track, and dropped in the hall. Zimivee wanted to know who had performed said act, but he hadn’t even the strength to lift his head anymore. The adrenalin was gone, the moment was over, and he was through.
A hand cupped under his jaw, and lifted his head for him. Above him, standing just his side of the door, which now slid completely closed, was Mün Gazenee. Over his shoulder was a carbine, with plugs of loaded magazines on his belt. On each hip was a red-sheathed plasma rifle, and the two single-bladed swords snugly in their loops next to the grenades, opposite the carbine reloads. Zimivee wanted to say something, wanted to react somehow, but in the end his fatigue couldn’t allow for it. Mün smiled at him, if faintly.
“You could be the best, someday.” He was saying, softly. The words sounded liquid in Zimivee’s ears. He wondered if he was going to pass out again, his mind swimming as the world began to tilt. “You could be so much more than you are now… at your age, I was half this good.”
Zimivee rested the weight of his head against the supporting hand, sagging forward, nolonger listening. He would hit the floor, if he wasn’t held up, but he didn’t care. He was far too tired to care.
Mün Gazenee lowered the worn youth to the floor so he wouldn’t fall, and stepped back. Such strength- and stamina. It made sense, now. Whoever Hoku Zimivee had been before, he was stronger now, better attuned to the ways of the world, a deadlier weapon. But he was still just a child, so young and with so far to go. Truth be told Zimivee would have to be seen to and tested by the top echelons of the group, but there was no doubt in Mün’s mind that the kid had as much if not more potential than Mün had had when he was recruited. It was rare to find ones like Zimivee. Outside the main sources, unrelated and unconnected in all ways but one, that one being the Covenant… which was now dissolved.
Half-alive and wounded beyond repair, he had still felled an uninjured Brute and killed it to boot, without needing a gun to do so. Or maybe Mün was misjudging him again- half-alive was obvious, but maybe he wasn’t as beyond repair as one might think. Mün crouched next to the crumpled form of the youth who he had been keeping alive and who had kept him alive likewise, and began to wonder if he put in a word for him, if the Mirratord would accept him, or if he would even accept the Mirratord.
To the insiders, what was asked of the members seemed reasonable, but who knew what sacrifices an outsider might see it as. Finally in possession of the information he had been seeking, Mün had realized why his original impression had seemed wrong to him near the end, and where it had originated to begin with.
Growing up Zimivee had spent long hours of each day in practice, honing his reflexes to be the best for when he joined the Academy. When he became old enough to participate in the parade that the trainers chose from, he had been selected nearly right off. Despite being smallest in the class, there was no one he couldn’t get the best of, and he shot through the lessons at superlumenal speeds. Here was the warrior whose sire had made sure he would never fail when called upon, and would never falter under stress.
Too much stress, though, had gotten the best of him, and even though he obviously was in no way willing to quit even as yet, he still couldn’t push on any farther. This daunting task had taken it all out of him, and he had no more. It would be days before Zimivee was fit for duty again. He was one thing Mün hadn’t expected, though, aside from his apparent impressive skill- double jointed.
It explained why he was so much stronger- he had to be, else he would overextend and cause himself to come out of joint, leaving him helpless in pain on the floor- and why he was so much more flexible, able to do so much more in motion. He could escape any hold anyone had on him, regardless of where or who. And he could fling himself through the air like he belonged in flight, all aerodynamic and streamlined. But what he wasn’t was someone’s assassin-spy, nor did he hold any other loyalties apart from the Covenant he had joined. He wasn’t specially trained to take on a monster of an enemy and win- he wasn’t even trained specially. Zimivee wasn’t anything especially extraordinary, but he was scared half to death. And that made all the difference.
Mün spared their location a look, wondering what he could do to keep the Brutes from killing the singular fellow while he scouted out what they were doing in light of their loss of a central command station. The smart ones had scraped a couple of Engineers from the engine rooms to jury-rig a new one, but Mün knew he had time- if only a meager amount. The construction of said replacement command station would take time, especially since it was within the chamber where the old one had been- where all the contacts met. They wouldn’t have anything like what they had had before until they put into drydock, but for the time being and the circumstantial allowances, things were looking more or less in a general upward direction. For now, the crew was leaving Mün alone.
Zimivee, on the other hand, had just been at the brunt of a scout/patrol, loners either out of the loop or sent sneaking out to see about routing the pain in their collective rear ends. It was still popular belief that their ship harbored more than a squadron of Elites, but how this reasoning could stand up to any sort of logic made it plain why Brutes were considered so lowly by the Elites; if a goodly sized company of them existed aboard, the ship would have been emptied of Brutes by now. In light of their loss of coherent command, though, the Brutes were doing surprisingly well, and that worried Mün greatly. What did they know that he didn’t?
He often wished he had had a squad of his fellow Mirratord at his side, but his mission had been command removal, followed by a stealthy extraction. Truth in all Mün was supposed to have left long ago, not still be aboard a ship helping a lost and frightened youth trim the dwindling crew. But he had learned something, from that youth, in the time he had taken to change objectives. It had royally peeved his contact and extraction, Pylori Havwénee, but he had had more imposing characters become unhappy with him and he’d survived… he was not about to turn tail and abandon Zimivee after everything.