FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

Name: Tyler-162

Hair color and texture: Black and curly

Eye color: Bluish-green

Chapter One - Enemy of my Enemy "Trees..." the human mumbled, gazing upward with pain-filled eyes. "Huge trees... Big, beautiful flowers... It reminds me of home... If I'm going to die, I'm glad it's in a place that looks like home..."

A soft sigh sounded from the prisoner he had been assigned to escort, accompanied by a bird-like trilling. "Your home must be much like my own," came the multiphonic voice, layered by clicks and chirps, "but you are not going to die. Your kind never does."

The human glanced at the silvery metal that gripped his forearm, winced as the needles bit deep into his flesh and blood began to flow along the tubes connecting it to the transfusion device. He surveyed the mangled wreckage that splayed across their crash site, the charred and shredded bodies of the indigenous predators that had come looking for easy prey. They had not found it. He turned his gaze upward again, half-remembered images playing across his mind's eye. Home...

"There were trees like these," he mumbled again, "but bigger. Flowers, every shape and color and size imaginable, flowers as big as a Pelican, but those were the dangerous ones. It smelled... so pretty, it always did. I remember falling to sleep to one scent and waking up to another. You could always tell when one of the dangerous critters was comin', 'cause then all the smells stopped, the flowers closed up."

"It sounds beautiful," the captive commented, panting slightly at the pain of having its blood forcibly extracted. "I hope this works... The bleeding has stopped, but you've lost too much already. I just hope no more predators come by before this device is finished."

"Well, at least it looks like home..."

His words trailed off into a sigh as the painkillers took hold, dragging him off to the land of dreams, of nightmares. He was back on Fibrula, the start of it all. The first time any of the Covenant had surrendered.

The humans were winning the battle, but losing the war. It was a small colony, scattered settlements sporadically cropping up around the rich veins of ore and minerals that pocked the crust. It was a valuable world, supplying much needed materials for the UNSC, materials needed for weapons and ships, to fight the evil spawn that threatened to wipe out humanity. That was, of course, why the Covenant had attacked it; take out a major link in the supply chain, and humanity would suffer a severe blow. Unfortunately, the Prophets had drastically underestimated the forces needed to quell and exterminate the small population. The colonists were miners, many of them former asteroid jockeys, fiercely independent and fiercely protective of their claims. When the enemy began to rain down from the heavens, powerful lasers that could bore deep into the earth were turned skyward, sonic drills that could shatter rock were turned on soft flesh, and the indomitable instinct to protect hearth and home rose up to smack those alien bastards right where it counted.

Tyler-162 had been with a small battle group nearby when the distress call went out, deployed to help combat the ground forces with the Marines. The space battle was fierce but swift, the enemy leaping away via slipspace. The ground battle was long and tedious. Tyler-162 ended up trying to scrape the last of the enemy out of a dug-in position with frustrating results. The area they occupied had never been intended as a fortification, but it worked well as one. Monoliths six feet wide and ten tall of the various valuable materials to be mined at the site had been set up in an artistic ring, layered and interleaved, with the town's main generator buried at its center. They had built the monument as a matter of pride, glorying in their success and wealth, but now it served to protect the enemy from ground fire with its sturdy blocks and air assault because of the threat of detonating the generator. The enemy was surrounded, was getting picked off one by one, but they were still inflicting casualties of their own. Jackal snipers and Grunts with plasma cannons made advancing difficult, and a camo'd elite was ready to meet any who came too near their position. They seemed well prepared to make it their last stand and ensure the humans paid dearly. Then everything seemed to go to hell.

There came weapons fire from within the monument, then the detonation of plasma grenades. It lit a daisy chain that danced around the ring, blowing the monoliths outward and in, laying low the human triumph. When the dust settled, there was only one thing moving in the area, a Jackal, obviously wounded and weak, disoriented from the concussion wave, but without weapons and with hands raised in surrender. They approached with caution, wary of some sort of trap, but what was a lone Jackal really going to do against them? He was first on the scene, of course. He was a SPARTAN. The Jackal was one of the plated kind rather than the spiky or feathery ones, rare to see on the battlefield. It was oozing purple blood from its earholes, eyes, nose, mouth, several plasma burns visible on its hide and a gash across its side from shrapnel. As he drew near, it slumped to its knees, clutching at its wounded ribs, and he was doubly amazed. It spoke: plainly intelligible English.

"I surrender, Demon," it told him, watching his shadow as he stalked closer, not even flinching when the barrel of his assault rifle pressed against its elongated skull. "I do not wish to fight any longer. Do with me what you will."

Its breath wheezed, that seeping purple drooling from its spread jaws, surrounded by the dead and the destruction it had wreaked upon them. He had seen countless others just like it fight to their dying breath, missing limbs, gaping holes blown in their bodies, yet still they struggled to slay, to maim, to take one more human with them before they died. He had watched them mercilessly murder civilians, women, children, surrendering soldiers, without conscience or compassion, no mercy, soulless killing machines. Yet here was one, kneeling at his feet, weapons cast aside, laying its fate in his hands, tired of the endless struggle, the constant battle and bloodshed. Training and instinct fought against logic and emotion, the rifle trembling in his grip, clattering as the clip rattled in its holder. The Jackal let out a long sigh, part relief, part resignation, and closed its eyes, accepting the fated death it knew was coming. His grip steadied, his finger squeezing the trigger to the hairline that would send a rampage of projectiles raging down its barrel to split the flesh and bone of his enemy, then eased, slowly, hesitantly, reluctantly. He raised his aim to the sky as the colonists crowded in to sight on their quarry, and called the stand down.

Those sparkling, gem-faceted, gold-streaked eyes opened and gazed up at him with a mixture of emotion he somehow ready clearly: confusion, depression, desperation, and hope.

"Perhaps," it growled, with reptilian resonance, "there is some way to end this after all."

Then it collapsed.

"Get me a medpack," the SPARTAN mumbled, though his voice sounded clearly via the vocal enhancement of his armor.

"What?" the town's mayor nearly shrieked. "Are ye a daft boyo? Tis one o' tha enemy! Let's gut it 'n hang it from tha flagpole, oI say!"

He turned; his fist clutched the man's shirt amidst the raucous cheers of the colonists, lifted him bodily from the ground to their gasping dismay, pulled him upward to hover with his gaze even to the glossed visor that concealed the super-soldier's face as they fell to silence. "Get. Me. A. Medpack. NOW!"

He thrust the civilian away from him, aware yet unaware that the surrounding crowd cushioned him, saved him from a fall, allowed him to pat himself off and straighten his vest with all due dignity before stalking off. Tyler-162 knelt, cradling the enemy in his armored arms, gentle, infinitely gentle. Things could break so easily when he touched them now... His MJOLNIR armor registered pulse and respiration, the heartbeat fast and fluttery, though he could not guess if that was normal or not. Body temp was much higher than a human's as well. Carefully, he gathered the Jackal to his chest and stood, carrying it as he slowly walked in the direction the mayor had taken. While not as thoroughly stocked to deal with battlefield injuries as the standard military-issue Health Kit, the civilian-made Medpacks contained Medigel, a substance similar to the Biofoam used in its military-grade counterpart. It was, so far as he knew, a mixture of biological and technological agents designed to speed the healing process in any species, though it certainly hadn't been designed with Covenant physiology in mind. He tried to recall the terse briefing they had received about it when the substance was allowed to go commercial but could only bring to mind its many benefits. He gave a mental shrug, careful to keep the jackal unjostled; it would work or it wouldn't.

"Kayle," he spoke to the AI currently inhabiting his armor, enhancing his already considerable prowess to god-like levels of speed, acuity, agility, and strength. "Patch me through to the Captain. I need to let her know what we have."

"Are you sure, Tyler?" the feminine voice inquired, seemingly hesitant. "I don't think Captain Reminger will be pleased to have one of... those... on board her ship."

"Yes, I'm sure. So far as I know, not a one of them has ever given up before. Even if I'm wrong, this is still a high-value capture. It might know nothing, or it might know everything. Any information we can get from it will help, and we need all the help we can get." He paused a moment, and he knew she was thinking the same thing as he was at that moment. "There aren't enough of us, Kayle. We're too few and too thinly spread. One of us is worth half an army, but we're not immortal. We're not invincible, as much as we want them to think we are. They call us Demons, we scare them so bad, but we're just men and women like anyone else. We can be killed, and they have been killing us. We need an edge, Kayle, any edge. The Captain will understand."

"You're right, Tyler," the electronic being conceded. "I'll patch you through."

A moment later, the captain's visage appeared in a pop-up on his visor screen. She was over fourty, but still looked damn good, slight creases crinkling the corners of eyes and lips that were more often solemn than laughing but belying the joy she took in life. Her hair was a commingling of grey and a dark brown that reminded him of the bark on the trees back home, and her eyes were the blue of a cloudless summer sky. Her voice, usually gentle with power and command, now came sharp with tension, and he could tell she was worried that the enemy fleet had fled so swiftly and with so little fight.

"Tyler-162, report," she ordered.

"I caught a Jackal," he told her, deciding brevity was best. "It surrendered after killing the rest of its squad. What do you want me to do with it, Captain?"

A woman who barked out orders in the middle of combat with the rapidity of an assault rifle's bullets, who made decisions about the lives and deaths of dozens of soldiers and sailors in the blink of an eye, who fought the enemy with a passion only rivaled by the care she felt for those under her command, was struck speechless. She stared at him with gaping jaw for several long seconds during which he remained painfully silent. As it stretched out toward becoming minutes, she gathered herself, giving her head a vigorous shake.

"What?" she demanded in a whisper, her expressive face conveying confusion, incredulity, and disbelief. "Show me."

He switched to visor cam and tilted his head downward, played his gaze over his unconscious captive in full scan mode, giving the Captain a holographic display to review, Kayle filling in the missing pieces from memory. He took a moment to consider the prisoner as he did so. Its head lolled, pointed tongue hanging from between parted jaws, swaying gently with each step he took. Its chest rose and fell with regular, if swift, breaths, which he took to be a good sign. Its hands were cradled against its chest, arms huddled close to its sides, legs dangling over his other arm to sway like its' reptilian head. It looked to be still alive, at least.

"I'll be damned. I'm dispatching a pick-up. We have your coordinates. They'll be there in fifteen minutes. And, Tyler-162, make sure to keep that thing alive."

"Yes, ma'am," he answered, and returned his gaze to the fore as the Captain cut the connection.

He was nearly at the small medical complex that serviced the city. The mayor, a few dozen yards ahead of the SPARTAN, stormed angrily inside, and Tyler became suddenly certain that there was going to be an "unfortunate incident," as such encounters were often called. He pushed open the door with his shoulder, back to the room within, half- turned to protect the Jackal, and saw the mayor standing with drawn pistol, just waiting for a clear shot.

"I wouldn't do that, if I were you," Tyler advised the man, whose fair skin had turned splotchy red with rage.

The man let out a wordless battlecry, charging toward the SPARTAN and unloading his clip. The bullets bounced harmlessly from armor, kinetic energy absorbed by the flickering shield that hovered above its surface. Tyler-162 shifted the unconscious captive to settle in the crook of his left arm as his right pulled free. He experienced only a moment of hesitation before drawing his own pistol. However, instead of firing, he switched his grip to the barrel and, after two steps toward the mayor, delivered the man a sharp blow that slumped him against the wall. Tyler observed him a moment, detecting life signs still vital, then sought out the damn Medpack he had come for.

The Medigel spray was inside, as he had hoped, and he read the directions before applying it, spraying it onto the Jackal's burns and gently rubbing the substance into the gash along its side. It made soft gurgling noises and odd chirps as it lay there on the examination table, squirming slightly. Maybe the Medigel hurt, but the stuff was working. The plasma burns were visibly vanishing, and the cut sealed itself closed. The SPARTAN pried open his prisoner's mouth and gave a few spritzes inside, as well as over the eyes, nose, and earholes then anywhere else blood seemed to be leaking from, just to make sure everything would be in working order. It wouldn't do much for any internal injuries the creature had received, but the external seemed to be enough. The Jackal let out a harsh, rasping cough and groaned then began to squirm against the table. After almost a minute of this spasmodic twitching and writhing, it fell still once more with a soft sigh laced with bird-like whistles.

Those brightly hued and faceted eyes slowly blinked open, gazing with disoriented confusion at the room around it, seemingly struggling to focus. He watched with interest as they settled on him, the captive squinting first, then pulling its lids wide, the pupils swelling to encompass most of the iris and shrinking down to pinpricks. At last, they settled for a finger-tip-sized dot and seemed to be more or less in working order, for the Jackal let out a soft grunt.

"I'm still alive," it observed. Its upper lip lifted slightly in a snarl. "Are you going to torture me?"

Tyler was taken aback by the question and took a moment to answer. "That isn't up to me. The captain will decide what to do with you once we have you onboard."

"Ah, so, yes."

"How do you speak our language?"

It let out a clicking, raspy sound that seemed to reverberate in its throat. "Why does it surprise you? Wars are won and lost on the ability to gather intelligence about your enemy. If you cannot understand their words, then you are at a supreme disadvantage." Then it lifted its lip again for a moment. "Shouldn't you wait until the torture starts to ask me questions?"

Tyler-162 realized suddenly that the little lift of a lip wasn't a snarl but a wry grin. The monster had a sense of humor?

"Oh, did you want me to? I prefer to handle business before pleasure."

It blinked at him, drawing its head back with wide eyes, then blinked again and let out that raspy clicking noise once more. It was laughing.

"The Demon makes jokes? Prophets guide me, but I never expected that."

"This is Pelican Bravo-Six to Tyler-162," interrupted his commlink. "Touchdown in five, do you copy?"

"I read you," he responded, then to the Jackal, "Can you walk on your own or should I carry you?" It began to sit up, then let out a groan and clutched at its head. "That answers that."

There the dream warped, and he was aboard the Pride's Downfall, watching through the observation window while the Jackal sat nervously fidgeting inside the interrogation chamber. It had been wholly cooperative and compliant, silently obeying their orders. Now it sat shackled to the metal chair, waiting for someone to come in and fill the only other adornment of the plain, plated room: a second chair set three feet in front of its own and facing. It kept glancing at the observation window, which was mirrored on its side. It was impossible that the creature could see him, but Tyler was certain that it could. When it looked away, he moved two paces to the right in an attempt to test his theory, but the door to the interrogation room slid open at that moment.

A young woman entered, mid twenties, black hair tied back in a ponytail, her uniform so crisp he could almost hear the crackle. The Jackal eyed her, turning its head from one side to the other to let both its big eyes get their fill, then looked at her head on. She sat, prim and proper, back straight, chin up, eyes forward, and Tyler wondered what it was they did to Intelligence officers that they all acted like that. The two stared at each other for nearly a minute before the lieutenant made a horrendous gabble of sound that must have hurt her throat. The Jackal looked back at the mirror, adjusted its gaze to fall on Tyler once more, then jerked its head toward the woman with a look that plainly said "Can you believe this?"

"Your accent is painful," it told her. "Why don't we use your language instead?"

The lieutenant blinked, eyes widening slightly, but otherwise displayed no outward reaction and regained her composure quickly. "Very well then. Why did you surrender?"

The response was instant. "I'm a masochist. Getting shot wasn't going to hurt enough, and I have it on good authority that you humans have some very nice torture devices."

Tyler let out a burst of laughter before he realized it, finding himself grinning. Gutsy critter, that Jackal, and a sharp wit, too. The lieutenant seemed to be at a stunned loss for words, and when she spoke again her words came out in a surprised stutter.

"I... what do- You... We- uh..." She stopped, flustered, and took several deep breaths, but still couldn't keep the incredulity from her voice. "You want to be tortured?"

"No," the Jackal admitted. "However, if I were you and you were me, I wouldn't believe a thing you said until I had done my poking and prodding and cutting off of bits and peeling of skin. I would just like to get the fun part over with so we can both move on with our lives. That is, if I still have a life after the fun part."

"I... I mean... Wh-why do you think I wouldn't believe you? You surrendered willingly, apparently after killing the rest of your own squad. You're the first member of the Covenant ever to surrender. Why? Why would you do that?"

The creature gave let out a long sigh and hung its head, the slender, flexible neck allowing it to droop so that the tip of its muzzle rested nearly between its own knees. "Because we were sent there to die, and I saw no reason to give the Prophets the satisfaction of obeying their whim." Its eyes blazed with hatred and fury as it lifted its head once more. "I was found to be infected, poisoned, tainted. I am a heretic." It put strange emphasis on the last syllable, almost a clicking noise. "It was absolution to die in the feeble attempt to take your world. I seek no absolution from false Prophets and dead gods."

The woman stared at the monster, and Tyler could tell that the low-key growling it could not seem to stop was scaring her, but she held firm. After a long moment, she nearly whispered, "I believe you."

The Jackal ruffled its plates, something that startled both humans, the hard scales lifting and resettling themselves against its flesh, and the growl ceased. "Well, that is a start. I learned this phrase from your kind: the enemy of my enemy is my friend. Do you know it? The Covenant are my enemy. Shall I be your friend?"

The word echoed within the confines of his mind as he was whipped across the span of memory to the more recent past, leaping into a dazzling hell of light and fire. The small frigate that had been assigned to escort himself and the prisoner back to Earth command had a coincidingly small slipspace drive. That being the case, and having come from the far edges of human-controlled space, they were forced to hop between refueling points: outposts, colonies, listening stations, anywhere that could keep them topped up. A third of the way back to Terra, and everything went sour even though they were in supposedly "safe" sectors.

"Spinning down," came the call over the intercom. "Prepare for realspace intrusion."

A slight tremor rumbled the decks, and then the alarms were blaring, and orders were being thrown left and right as the view screen was filled with a fantastic light show of dancing colors that would have been beautiful if it had not been so deadly.

The captain had taken hold of him and said very calmly, "Get the prisoner to an escape pod, and hit the planet. There's a unmanned communications outpost down there. I know; I used to be assigned to it. You have to get back to UNSC Command, and they need to know what's happening here as well. You'll have to call for a pickup."

Tyler-162 absorbed the information and could only feel pride in his species. The fight was hopeless. The space station was clearly doomed, and a single frigate wasn't going to make much of a difference in the fight. Against two carriers and three cruisers, it was a very one-sided battle, yet the captain was not about to abandon people to certain doom if there was even the slightest chance he could save them. It was obvious, as well, that they had been spotted. The small lights of fighters were already homing in on their position. The Sally Forth was going to die, but it was going to die fighting. Tyler offered the captain a salute before leaving the bridge. Few things can match the speed of a SPARTAN at full run. He reached the brig in under two minutes, deactivated the containment field, and dragged the Jackal along as he explained what was happening.

That was where he got a little hazy. As they neared the escape pods, the ship bucked beneath him, rocked hard by whatever had hit it. He remembered the explosion, part of the corridor erupting into flying debris and molten shards. He remembered the foot of twisted, jagged support pylon that had driven itself into his lower abdomen, the searing agony that faded swiftly toward the black void of death. He remembered those enormous golden eyes, and then they were on the planet, and the predators had come for them. He remembered the horrific hours of changing clips, expending shells, of blood splashing across his visor, or bodies piling up in wave after wave. The pack had been enormous, but it had eventually given up. Dozens, maybe over a hundred, of the small, compact carnivores had rushed the two of them, had thrown their lives away in an attempt to feed some few of them. When their bullets and plasma charges had run out, they had resorted to brute strength and cutting claws. Then had fallen, the cold, calm silence of victory, and they were left to tend their wounds.

And he was afraid. He was afraid of what his blood would do the Jackal. He had been born on a world dissimilar to Earth in many ways. It was a world of jungle, hotter and more humid, rife with greenhouse gasses, a factory for plague and disease to ferment. His parents had undergone genegineering to triple the power of their immune system, to multiply the defensive capabilities of their T-cells by enormous numbers. They, and he, were immune to disease of all kinds, but the transfusion device did not care. It took in one kind of blood and transformed it into another, then fed this transmogrified fluid back into the original host. It would cycle the Jackal's blood into him, but it would also cycle his blood into the Jackal, and he was very afraid that it would kill his prisoner, his companion, his friend.

He sucked in deep breaths, blinking in the bright light of midday, one gauntleted hand stretched upward toward the canopy, the other gripping at the ground hard enough to shatter stone. The Jackal lay nearby, still hooked into the device, still sharing its blood with him, and he ripped free the connectors, severed the continuing cycle of replenishment. It was enough. He was awake. But he knew it was not truly enough, and the creature would as well when it awoke from the torpid torments that ravaged its slumber. It writhed and cried out, but never awoke. It screamed and arched but never rose to consciousness. In time, it would recover, but he was, for now, its guardian as it had been his. For now, he would await its awakening, and covet every second of life that had been granted him by its sacrifice. He owed his life to the enemy of his enemy, and he was its friend.