“Thank you for this, for… everything. It’s been incredible.”

The Sangheili nodded back to the human before asking “Are you ready?”

The human nodded and the alien took a knee before him, their gaze meeting as his massive claw encircled the human’s neck and began to squeeze with ever greater force, the stare between the two unbroken. The human’s face reddened and his vision dimmed a tear trailed from his eye and fell onto the alien’s hand.

17 hours earlier

He awoke slowly, conscious thought trickling back into his mind like a steady drip, increasing in complexity as he regained his faculties. He knew he was alive but he was hurt and weakened, struggling to open his eyes and short of breath. He knew who he was:  Rigo Mortamee, Sangheili swordmaster, proud and honorable, on his first solo mission to track down a human communications relay and take the outpost by surprise. A memory appeared in his mind: he could see the control panel of the orbital drop pod, feel the jolt of the pod being ejected from the ship as well as the buffeting shocks of atmospheric compression as the re-entry vehicle slammed through the atmosphere at hypersonic speed and then…nothing.  The memory just ended. 

As his sense of smell returned he could detect the unmistakable stench of a human, not as pungent as the multitude he had slaughtered on the battlefield, but still present. His eyes fluttered open weakly, taking in the sight of the room he was in. It was mostly a greyish box, ugly bluish tube lighting on the ceiling casting down a clinical shade of white onto the surrounding objects in the room. He was sitting on what appeared to be a small human bed, his back propped up against the wall with pillows and his legs hanging over the side. A small kitchen sat in one corner of the room with a radio console in the opposite corner. His body, devoid of armor, was clothed only in his protective gel suit, save for the patches of white bandage soaked with his blue blood.  Covering his limbs like vines were sections of large chains, interlaced and locked together to bind him. Even his finger were bound, each digit on both hands zip-tied to the other. Looking up he saw what he most dreaded: A human. 

The human sitting in front of him was small, no taller than a grunt. Engrossed in his electronic pad he failed to notice the Sangehili regarding him. He didn’t look like a soldier, a pistol lying haphazardly in his lap and clothed in little more than grey shorts and a T-shirt emblazoned with “ODST”, a familiar crest. Rigo recognized the name and symbol immediately; he had killed many black-armored humans wearing it. He was white-skinned with short cut black hair meeting at a widow’s peak on his forehead. The majority of humans Riga had bested in battle were young, but this one looked slightly older, if only by a little. A subtle tickle in the Sangheili’s throat began to grow. He tried his best to fight it but eventually the sensation overcame his ability to suppress the aching and he coughed, alerting the human. He looked up from his pad with an expression of surprise. 

“Oh, you’re awake!” The human stated in an offputtingly cheery tone, “My name is Major Styles, but you can call me Frank. Welcome to Relay Zulu!”

As the situation sank in Rigo realized the true horror of his predicament. The highest value of a Sangheili warrior is honor. To die in battle honorably was nothing to be ashamed of, to be a warrior was his purpose in life.  One of the greatest dishonors, other than surrender or retreat was to be captured by the enemy. He was certain the human would attempt to torture him for information which he would never provide, but his people would know that he had been captured, no less by a human as pathetically diminutive as this one. His reputation would be terminally tarnished. Even if he survived this he would rather commit suicide by his own sword than live with the shame of such dishonor. Riga seized and struggled in his binds, attempting to tear them off as best he could, only to cause a lot of useless ratting to no effect. The human moved his hand over his pistol but didn’t pick it up. He didn’t need to. The alien was going nowhere.  This was true fear, this was panic. Riga could engage in a firefight with a squad a humans and his pulse would scarcely increase. This however was terrifying. Huffing from the exertion of attempting to break the chains Riga stared intently into the human’s bright blue eyes. 

“Torture me all you like you pathetic little parasite!” Riga raged loudly at the pink skinned being before him, “I will tell you nothing!”

The human, unmoved by the alien’s outburst, began poking at his pad and reading, “Your ship slip-space jumped into the asteroid belt around this planet six hours ago, a stealth corvette approximately seventy meters long with a complement of likely seven to ten Sangheili including yourself. Your drop pod entered the atmosphere of this planet four hours ago with you on board. Your mission was to kill me and retrieve whatever useful information this station may hold. A phantom shuttle will pick you up on the surface at this site in eighteen hours once your mission is completed. Did I miss anything?”

Riga was dumbfounded by the response, “If you already think you know everything then why capture me?”

“I didn’t plan on this, it just sort of happened.” Frank replied with a shrug, “As soon as I saw the radar contact for your drop-pod I ran outside with my M41 rocket launcher and pointed it at the sky. I fired at the first silhouette I saw against the clouds and managed to hit you. It was really a one in a million chance of hitting and for some reason it did. My main plan was to run away from you as soon as you saw me and pull the pin on a grenade. I was hoping that you would try to kill me in close proximity and I could get the both of us.” The Major sighed before continuing, placing his handgun and pad on the floor beside the chair, “Look… I’m the only one here. I know I could never take you one-one-one. I’ve fought your kind before; you’re impressive, an entire race of natural bred warriors. But when I saw you sprawled out in the snow where your pod crashed you looked vulnerable, helpless even. I didn’t see a point killing you, so I grabbed the logistics heavy-lift exoskeleton instead and dragged you inside.”

Riga shook his head at the unsatisfactory explanation for his capture, “It doesn’t matter. Though I have failed my mission your home world will be found and incinerated eventually. It is only a matter of time.”

The Major furrowed his brow in what the alien realized to be a look of confusion. Humans were absurdly easy to read, their inner thoughts telegraphed across their face without regard to who might be reading them, “You don’t know?” he began, leaning forward in his chair, “Three months ago a covenant fleet hit Earth. They breached the orbital defenses and managed to land on the planet. That’s all I found out before the long range transmitter on Luna stopped sending. You’ve already won. It’s… over for humanity.” The human stated in a solemn tone. 

Riga reflected on this. His ship had spent months in slip-space without communications to reach this location. If there had been a successful invasion of the human homeworld,  Earth, as the human called it, he would have never known. “So you wish to torture me as revenge for your species?”

“I’m not going to torture you.”

“Then why have you captured me!?” Riga raged impotently, spittle flying from his mouth as he shouted. 

“I just wanted to talk to you…” Styles replied softly, without anger or malice, “ever since I was a child I always wanted to talk to another sentient life form. I don’t want tactical information, that doesn’t matter. I want to know who you are, how you were trained, what your people, society and culture are like. If you do that, then I’ll release you before the drop-ship arrives.”

Riga was shocked by what the human was offering. Why would a member of the species he was exterminating be so willing to offer his release for such useless information? It must have been a trick, he reasoned.  “If you release me I will kill you.” The Sangheili stated with an absolute, threatening certainty. 

“I know…” Styles stated, his cheery appearance fading as he looked down towards his feet, “There are two scenarios. Number one:  You refuse to talk to me and we sit awkwardly staring at each other for the next eighteen hours, your drop ship arrives and your comrades find me sitting across from you, captured. I blow my brains out right after they open the door and your reputation is permanently ruined. Number Two: We talk, I get to learn the history of a fascinating species, and about an hour before the drop-ship lands I cut those chains and you kill me in a humane manner, preferably strangulation. Then you get to pretend that none of this ever happened because we’re the only ones who know that you’ve been captured.”

“Strangulation?” Riga interjected. 

“I want to look into your eyes as I fade away. You wear stealth armor and carry an energy sword. They don’t just give those away, right? Regardless of the conflict between our species you must be an accomplished warrior. I respect that. I want to die looking into the eyes of someone that I can respect.”

The Sangheili had to ponder the proposition. He would always carry the shame of knowing that he had been captured, but that would be his burden alone to bare. More interesting was how the human referred to him. He never considered fascinating or respectable part of the human vocabulary when describing his species, in fact he had never considered a human feeling an emotion towards him other than blind hatred. 
 
“Why would you do this?” Riga asked honestly, “Why would you die for my sake? I don’t understand…”

“My home world, Harvest, was the first colony to fall. I was fifteen years old. I escaped, barely, but my parents didn’t.” Styles explained with honest conviction, Riga fascinated by his answer, “I joined the United Nations Space Corps as the age of sixteen. The war has been raging for twenty nine years but I’m only thirty years old now. I’ve spent so much time in cryosleep, hopping from battle to battle that I’ve lived a half-life. I missed birthdays, funerals, marriages, relationships, life…  all of it to protect humanity against the Covenant. What has been the result of my sacrifice? Nothing.” His voice quavered and his hands began to shake as he stared earnestly into Riga’s eyes, “We slowed the tide, but we couldn’t stop it, and now that Earth is gone none of it matters anymore. My tour here was only supposed to last six months, but I’ve been here for eight and a half since the relief ship didn’t arrive. I only have a week’s worth of food left. Regardless of whether you dropped in to kill me, I was dead anyways.” The Major clenched his fists and leaned back in his chair before taking a deep breath and continuing,“ I want my last act alive to not be one of hatred or revenge but one of kindness. I’ve got eighteen hours left and for once I’d like to live them for me. If this is truly the end of humanity, then we will live on only in the words of our conquerors. Maybe one of those conquerors, someone like you, could say something nice about us poor doomed humans.”

As a perpetrator of the extermination Riga had never considered what this war might be like for the humans, seeing one’s own race exterminated by a superior force must have been terrifying. To him, humans were just the enemy. No greater intelligence or motivation ascribed to their action than what they accomplished tactically on the battlefield. Could he actually trust this human? He seemed to have little choice. He sat in contemplation for a while, looking the pink-skinned being up and down. Humans after all were social creatures, when stalking any group of human soldiers they never quiet their incessant, pointless chatter. This one must have been driven insane enough after nearly nine months of isolation to want to attempt conversation with his executioner. 

“To confirm: You captured me because you could, and because you are already going to die you will release me if I kill you in the way that you request no earlier than an hour before my rendezvous, and all of this hinges on the condition that we talk about irrelevant drivel up until your death. Is this correct?” Riga laid out in incredulous condescension. 

“Heh, yeah!” Major Styles replied with a laugh, failing to take the bait of Riga’s tone. He just sat there with a dumb smile on his face, absolutely disregarding how much the elite hated him for the excitement of meeting an alien who wasn’t immediately trying or able to kill him. 

Riga looked down at the study chains crisscrossing his body. There was simply no breaking them.  He relented with a sigh, “And what are we to talk about?”

“Who are you?” The major asked in curiosity. 

“My name is Riga Mortamee, the head swordmaster of Mortam Keep. I have faced your species in battle for the entirety of my military career, slaughtering them without mercy. For my success on the battlefield I was awarded the designation of special operations, earning my right to use an energy sword.” 

“I want to hear the story of your Keep.” Styles requested as he leaned in.  He knew that all Sangheili warriors proudly memorized the mythology of their clans, organized in Sangheili culture as Keeps. 

“That is a very long story.” Riga warned. 

Styles just smiled, “I’ve got the rest of my life.”

The “conversation” went as one might expect, Riga Mortamee speaking of his clan’s history, and Major Frank Styles sitting on his chair’s edge in enraptured fascination during the mostly one-sided affair. Styles would interject every now and then, usually to ask for clarification on something Riga said, or to delve further into a certain subject. Somewhere after an hour the nature of the dialogue began to shift, with the history of Mortam Keep covered they instead talked about economic systems and government organization. Now Styles was doing the majority of the talking with the Sangheili interjecting to either ask questions or demean the human and his dying civilization. If someone had told Riga that he would be fascinated by a human explaining their government structure he would have told that person they were mentally unwell. On the contrary, he was fascinated by the difference between human leadership and that of his own kind, if only to hear how insane it seemed. 

“So your leaders do not engage each other in combat to settle arguments? How else will you determine who is the strongest leader?” Riga questioned, the very concept of democracy sounding strange and unmeritocratic to his ears. 

“No, god no!” Styles laughed in response, “Whichever party has the most seats gets to pass laws by a vote. The party representatives are voted into their seats by citizens.”

“And these citizens earn their right to vote… how?”

“Well, everybody gets a vote. Every citizen has a democratic right to decide who will lead their society.” Styles explained to the alien whose look of distaste was apparent. 

“Ridiculous,” The Sangheili spat back sternly, “a society based around consensus instead of strength will naturally be weak. No wonder your kind are being exterminated so easily.”

Riga saw the human’s expression fall, his eyes looking down to the floor as his lips pursed. A strange feeling hit him, the same kind that he would feel if he had disappointed a friend, but he just had to remind himself that the human was not only his enemy but captured him and was currently keeping him in bondage against his will. The feeling subsided. Frank looked back up at Riga, his brow furrowed in thought. 

“Say something nice about humans for once.” The Major demanded softly. 

“Why would you give me an impossible task?” Was Riga’s sarcastic reply. 

“No, seriously.” Styles pressed, “There has to be something you can say about humans that isn’t insulting or degrading.”

Riga took a long few seconds to think on the question before answering. True, humans, their society and military were entirely inferior to his own, but not compared to other covenant species. “You stink less than Brutes, disgusting creatures. Tactically your kind might be as strategic as Sangheili, though handicapped by your physical and technological inferiority. You are far braver than Grunts and more versatile than Jackals. I will not tell you that I haven’t been impressed with how daring some human soldiers are in the face of the enemy, even if they are soon cut down by bolts of plasma.” He paused for a second, wondering if what he might say next could be construed as blasphemy against the Prophets, not that this human could ever tell a soul, “I do not understand why the prophets want you gone. Your species could make a very useful addition to The Covenant, and even if not in the Covenant then your species could be very useful as slaves.”

“Uh, thanks.” Styles replied, unsure how to take the back-handed complement that humanity deserved slavery instead of genocide, “So you think that destroying humanity is wrong?”

Riga shook his head, “It matters not what I think. The word of the Prophets is law and I am their instrument. I serve the Prophets so that I may join my ancestors on The Great Journey, it is my purpose.”

“I envy you.” Styles stated softly, “I’m a non-believer. There is no after-life waiting for me, no heaven or Great Journey. I wish I had your faith, your purpose in life.”

The human shifted in his seat and grabbed the back of his neck, clearly anguished by his lack of belief. The Sangheili couldn’t help but pity him, the last of a dying species with no greater purpose than to die on the orders of the Prophets. After a long silence Styles shook his head and looked back at Riga curiously. 

“You haven’t had anything to drink for a few hours. Could I get you some water?”

“I am thirsty.” Riga replied, unwilling to actually ask the human for anything. 

Frank walked off to the side of the room returned with a metal canteen cup and a plastic canteen. He placed a side table beside his chair and set the metal cup down on it before turning to the Sangheili. Looking at Riga’s bound mitts he considered how best to allow his prisoner to drink. 

“Oh, uhhh. I’ll undo your hands.” Styles said as he placed the plastic canteen on the floor. Holding a pair of cutting pliers he leaned over the massive saurian, having to climb over Riga’s legs to reach his hands. 

As the human carefully snipped away at the plastic ties binding the massive claws of the alien together  Riga saw an opportunity.  Within a millisecond of the last tie being cut the Sangheili had grabbed both of the human’s hands and yanked him forward, Styles able to do little more than yelp in surprise as he was thrown off balance. Wrapped around the pliers his hands were being menacingly crushed by the Sangheili, the force just shy of what it would take to dislocate joints or snap bones. Frank whimpered as he looked up in fear into Riga’s predatory yellow eyes. 

“Do you still feel in control of this situation?” Riga teased, finding himself enjoying the look of fear in the human’s eyes. It was a look he had seen hundreds of time but rarely had the time to revel in as he moved on to the next target. 

“Please… Don’t.” Frank whimpered, taking deep breaths and screwing his eyes shut to try and regain his compose in the face of blind panic, “We had an agreement.”

“Yes, we did.” Riga said calmly as he gave the human’s hands another squeeze. He couldn’t help noticing how soft the human’s hands were, the skin soft and supple, surprisingly pleasant to his touch. “I agreed not to kill you before the drop ship arrived, but crushing your hands would not kill you. It would be a gentle squeeze for me, but absolutely shattering for you. There is an alternative however.”

“Anything.” Styles gasped, his eyes still closed to avoid the glare of his tormentor. 

“These chains are becoming heavy, and if I let your hands go you will remove them.”

Frank opened his eyes and nodded frantically, “Okay, I’ll take off your chains. I’m sorry.”

Riga never had an opportunity to torment a human in the past, often interrupting their pleas for mercy with his hoof. The act was more fun than he could have imagined, the pathetic submission of the human to his will giving a distinct sadistic pleasure that ticked his instinct for domination.  “If you dare to disobey me I will shatter far more than your hands. Understood?”

“Yes sir.” Styles stated insistently, Riga taking pleasure in the human addressing him as a superior.  

Upon releasing the human’s hands he immediately pulled out a key and removed the five thick locks holding the chains together. Riga shoved frank to the ground and stood, stretching out and allowing the chains that had previously imprisoned him to rain down on the frightened human. 

“Get up” Riga ordered, the human rising to his feet less than a foot away from him, their size difference only too apparent now. The human rose to a mere two thirds of the alien’s height, Styles finding himself staring into Riga’s lower ribcage until he tilted his gaze skyward into the dominating glare and rows of teeth in the Sangheili mandibles above him.  He grabbed the human by the back of the head, palming it easily.

“Who is in charge here?” Riga asked the human. 

“You are, sir.” He replied with a gulp. 

“Very good.” Riga replied, grabbing his canteen from the floor and lying back on the bed before gulping the entire liter of water at once. 

“You may sit, and hand me your pistol while you are at it.”

Frank saw down in his chair, throwing the pistol onto the bed with a nervous toss. Riga grasped the weapon, and examined the chrome plated exterior. 

“Uhh, be careful.” Styles cautioned as Riga’s finger wrapped around the trigger, “It’s loaded.”

“Oh is it?” Riga replied in amusement, turning the pistol toward the shaking human, “Is it accurate?”

Frank threw his hands up in front of his face as if it would actually protect him from a bullet. In that second a shot rang out, Frank expecting a searing pain as the concussive blast reverberated in the small concrete room. Instead all he felt was a wet splash against his side as the canteen cup impacted the wall behind him with a hollow clack, its content splattered all around from the force of the gunshot. 

“You were right, it is accurate.” Goaded Riga, removing the magazine and racking the slide before placing the gun on the bed. 

Frank took a deep breath to calm himself, “Could you not do that?” He rose from his chair and started walking to the kitchen corner. 

“Where are you going?” Riga asked, unsure if he should be allowing the human to do anything without his permission. 

“To get a drink.” Styles replied in defiant annoyance, not even bothering to turn his head as he walked, “You spilled my last one.”

The human returned to his chair with an ornate bottle and a carved crystal glass, filling the vessel with a dark amber liquid before knocking down the contents in a single gulp, cringing as he swallowed. Riga was able to discern the drink immediately. 

“Alcohol?”

“Yeah, scotch.” Frank coughed back while refilling his glass to the brim, “I was saving it for my next rotation out, and when that wasn’t going to happen I started saving it to work up the courage to kill myself once the food ran out. Its sixty percent alcohol, want some?” 

“Sure.” Riga said, eyeing the bottle suspiciously as it was passed to him. He gave a few tentative sniffs before taking a large sip, too large in fact. He started coughing and hacking as the potent solvent burned his throat and lit a fire in his belly, Frank chucking as the alien responded to the booze the same way he had. The human raised his glass to Riga and took a sip. 

“This is going to be a very interesting…” Frank paused to look at his watch, “Fifteen and a half hours.”