Halo: Xenomorphs Rising

Chapter 5 - Xenomorphs and Heretics

Relu swished her Carbine from side to side.

“Clear,” she said. Quinn stepped in from an adjacent room.

“Nothing in here either. Something isn’t right; this place was crawling with Xenomorphs last time I was here.” Relu shrugged and pointed to a painted word on the floor. CAFATERIA. They had decided to board the Taste of Hope, in the hopes they would find something tasty. Quinn chuckled at his pun and almost relayed it to Relu when the Sangheili stiffened.

“Did you hear...” she paused and sniffed the air a bit. “Never mind...” Quinn didn’t like it. She had been like this for a while now. Every so often she would stop and tell him she had heard something, or she had seen a flitting shadow. Whenever they investigated though, they found nothing. He rested the end of his Assault Rifle against his shoulder and put his free hand on his hip.

“Look, if you’re gonna keep doing this; you can wait back at the cave. It’s really unnerving.” She glared at him.

“If your senses were not so useless, you would be able to detect it too,” she snapped.

“My senses? I’m not the one who thinks there’s an Xenomorph round every friggin’ corner.”

“If it were not for me and my senses, you would have been slaughtered in your useless excuse for a ship! Which you are horrible at flying, by the way!”

“If you don’t need me, then why save me? I’m sure you and your senses could have survived on your own!”

“I am starting to regret that! You are arrogant, stupid, annoying, weak and a pain to look at!”

“Yeah, well, you have beautiful eyes!” Relu opened her mouth to counter his... compliment? What?

“Excuse me?” she asked. Quinn glanced away.

“I uh, we should get going. Food, remember?” he laughed nervously, then scratched the back of his head to hide his blush. Relu brushed past him, stopped, turned around and raised an ‘eyebrow’ at him.

“Coming?” Quinn realised he had not moved and quickly hopped up next to her.

“Yeah, just being polite. Ladies first, and all that.” She grinned at him, and entered the cafeteria. They quickly produced a bag each they had fetched earlier and started shoving in as many MREs as they could.

“Do you not have any other flavours? They all seem to be MRE,” Relu commented, indicating towards the bold black letters printed on every box. Quinn laughed.

“It means Meal, Ready to Eat,” he explained. “And yes, I do believe they are all the same flavour.” Relu clicked her mandibles. She was actually quite nervous; she had never tried human food before. Soon the bags were full, and the unlikely pair grabbed an MRE each to eat now. They sat at one of the many benches situated around the room and dug in. Relu was surprised to find that the humans’ meals tasted a lot better than the Covenant’s. Like humans, Sangheili were an omnivorous species. However, instead of vegetarians, they had carnivores who only ate meat, and got all the other nutrients they needed from the stomachs and livers of the animals they ate. Relu was glad she was not one of these, otherwise she would not have been able to fully enjoy the human meal. She found herself taking a liking to the ‘macaroni’ and resolved to eat it more when they got off this planet. She overlooked the fact that she would not be allowed to consume human foods if she returned to the Covenant, instead focusing on the part of ‘getting off the planet’. She wondered if she and her human friend would ever accomplish this. It was weird for her; she had never thought a ‘friendship’ with a human would be possible. She wondered if she might be able to convince the profits to let the humans live... or Quinn at least. Despite their argument mere minutes ago, she was growing to like the human more and more. She was staring into the distance dreamily, and Quinn noticed. He left the Sangheili to her thoughts and wandered around to retrieve his bag from where he had left it. He heard a scuttling sound. “Oh shit... Relu!” he cried. He ran towards the table she was sitting at. She leaped up, shocked at the sudden outburst. She fumbled for her Carbine. Too late. Something collided with Quinn’s back and the crushing weight forced him to the ground. His Assault Rifle was sent spinning across the floor. He flipped himself over and stared right into the ‘face’ of the Xenomorph. He punched the thing in the jaw, the outer one, but it didn’t react. Instead it raised its tail and prepared to send its inner maw to take a chunk out of his neck. Relu crashed into it from the side and all there crashed into the wall in a mess of scrambled bodies and tangled limbs, the Alien screeching the whole time. Quinn managed to kick off the wall and, thanks to the smooth surface of the floor, slid away from the pandemonium. He stumbled to his feet and grabbed for his Assault Rifle. The Xenomorph’s tail caught his leg and tripped him up before he could, leaving the weapon an inch away from Quinn’s desperate fingers. The creature was holding Relu in the air by the neck  and was now preparing to eat her instead, saving Quinn for afterwards. He drew his SOCOM and took a deep breath. He fired three rounds into the tail wrapped around him. He screamed as acid burned his ankle to the bone, but he was free. He snatched up the Assault Rifle and shot the Xenomorph in the back, so that none of the blood would get on Relu. The Alien dropped her and whirled around to face Quinn, hissing all the while. Relu kneeled for a better angle, then spammed the trigger of her Carbine, riddling the thing’s skull with holes. It dropped to the ground, its deadly blood already hissing and spitting as it dissolved the floor. There was more clanging and three more Xenomorphs burst out from an adjoining corridor.

“Crap,” Relu said. She grabbed Quinn and supported him by throwing his arm around her neck. As she helped him flee, he snatched up his sack, not forgetting why they came, and not wanting to come back any time soon.