Mutiny

"Brothers, can you all hear me? Can you all… see me?" I spoke with outraised hands to the assembled Chieftains and Ultras under the former command of War Chief Grax in what would be my greatest con or soon to be an absolute bloodbath through the use of the bombs Jack had fixed to the ceiling of the muster room, "Look upon me and witness everything the Prophets promised us. Transcendence, immortality, power. I have embarked upon the Great Journey and returned to you all to bear witness to the truth. Today I declare before you brothers, all of you… That the Prophets are mother fucking liars!"

Those giant space monkeys went ape shit.

They all, to some extent, bought into the bullshit being spread by the Prophets. Despite being the most recent addition to the Covenant, the belief in the Great Journey was pretty much universal among the Brutes.

"The Prophets have no idea how to launch the Great Journey!" I yelled over the rapidly turning hostile group, the power of Ormagoden carrying my voice to every ear, "Their belief in the Halo Rings is false! But today I live as an example to the truth! Any who doubt me come up and feel my strength for themselves! I have risen above and become more!"

One of the Chieftains leapt up at me with no hesitation and threw an overhand superman punch with everything he had. When his strike landed on my chin and failed to produce the expected result he stared at his hand as if it betrayed him.

"Is that all you have?" I challenged him, "Strike me! Prove the truth with your strength!"

He threw a hook with his other hand which I endured, then another right, and another left. Eventually I grabbed him and looked him in the terrified eyes.

"I said to strike me! Like this." I shouted as I reared back my muscular neck and headbutted him so hard his legs gave out.

I tossed him aside as if in disgust.

"You all see the truth for yourselves!" I declared, "None here can match me! None here can challenge my truth!"

I always love when I am dealing with a species of savages. It makes life so much more simple when might makes right and you got all the might. Though the Chieftains look unconvinced, the Ultras loved the violence on display. None of them could have weathered that assault, none of them could have dropped the Chieftain with a headbutt. This was strength on display, everything their biology told them to value, to pursue, to follow.

"Today I declare the start of the Great Schism and I will lead you all to greatness or drag you there! Glory and fame, blood is our name! Souls full of thunder and hearts of steel! Go forth brothers, rally the packs, and take this ship for the glory of the Brutes and the truth of the Great Journey!"

I walked to the exit as the Ultras began howling and sparked up a point defense gauntlet on my left hand and a shield of glowing red energy blazed in front of me as I began running with my hammer in hand towards a trio of Elites on patrol.

They were quick on the uptake, I'd give them that, as they began blasting away at me with their plasma rifles. I leapt at them and brought the Hammer of Might down in a detonation pulse that shook the area and tore the Elites apart in an explosion amplified by Ormagoden's scream. Only one survived the attack, but with both legs blown off. He tried to spark up a plasma grenade to take me with him, but I brought my foot down on his head before he could activate it.

This more than anything else bought me the souls of the Brutes. They wanted to kill the Elites, and I was giving that to them.

My mutineers spread out to gather the other Brutes on the ship and take over. I lead the charge to the life support systems, unwilling to let the Fleet Master order them destroyed to kill us should we prove successful. We already controlled the greater armory, giving us a huge advantage as our forces took whatever they wanted (whatever made the biggest boom) and turned the weapons on the rest of the Covenant.

The Elites had already moved a substantial amount of their own forces and the Jackals and Skirmishers to the planet of Reach as part of their rather complex infiltration strategy to lower the planet's defenses before the main body of the fleet arrived. This meant we were mostly up here with the naval forces and the Grunts waiting for the proper battle to begin.

Sensing the tide swiftly turning in our favor I noticed more and more Grunts turning on the Elites while shouting things like 'Long live the second revolution!' and 'Vengeance for the home world!'

I guess the little guys had been bottling up a lot of pain and resentment for the species that not only oppressed them, but also partially glassed their home world.

I was having a hell of a good time pushing to the bridge when the lights turned off and the dim red glow of the emergency lighting came on.

"Status report!" I shouted into my wrist-mounted communicator.

"The Elites took their swords to the engines and the slip space drive!" Answered one of the Chieftains who joined me in this uprising, "The ship is dead."

"Fuck!" I growled at having lost this precious ship, "Get to the hangers! Don't let them sabotage the Corvettes we still have docked!"

Jack was currently stationed on one of the Corvettes docked on the supercarrier, having driven The Good Evening onto it in the initial confusion of the mutiny, so we had a way off this ship, though it would be a tight fit to get all the Brutes onto that one ship despite its enormous size.

I continued fighting until I got to the bridge, where the Fleet Master waited in his silver armor and purple cape on his floating throne.

"War Chief Grax." He growled, "You will pay for this heresy. Your whole species will pay for this heresy."

"The only heresy I see hear is your cowardice." I countered as I sparked up the axe blade on the Hammer of Might, "Come down and face me. Prove your worth."

The man did just that. He stepped off his throne, threw off his cape, and activated a pair of plasma swords.

I was impressed by his quickness and skill. He would have slain Grax with little trouble, but I was so much more than Grax could ever be. This fight almost ended when I battered aside his swords and brought my axe down on the now exposed region between his neck and should, but the man was quick enough to get away with only a partial amputation of his arm, half the meat of his shoulder carved and burned by my axe making the whole limb useless.

"You have my respect for surviving the first exchange." I told him, "That is more than the rest of your kind have managed thus far."

"You're not Grax!" He hissed, "You can't be."

"I am Grax, and so much more." I declared, "I will deliver us from the lies of the Prophets and their attack dogs, the Elites."

I swept his legs out from under him with a swift tail strike and buried my axe in his chest.

Throwing his purple fur cloak over my shoulder and turning on its magnetic clips I sat up in the Fleet Master's throne and activated the ship wide broadcasting system.

"This is War Chief Grax!" I bellowed, "The Fleet Master is dead, slain by my hand in single combat! To all who follow me, begin loading the Corvettes in the hanger. If the Elites want to deny us our right to this ship by conquest, then we will deny them the chance to repair it. Our exodus from falsehood will be heralded by the destruction of this vessel!"

I travelled to the Corvette Hanger and found one of my Chieftains and his subordinates guarding an unarmed herd of Jackals and Skirmishers.

"War Chief." he greeted, "These mercenaries surrendered when the fighting started. I chose to defer judgement to you."

"Well done." I patted him on the shoulder.

The leader of the prisoners, a Skirmisher in golden armor that I recognized came forth and took off his helmet revealing a long scaly face and a head full of swept back feathers.

"Graxxy old boy, I sure do love the new look. Really sells the whole transcendent being thing when you have traits from so many of the Covenant species on display." Timit the Skirmisher Champion wheedled, "I take it you aren't averse to us joining the winning team?"

"Happy to have ya, little buddy." I grinned, "After all, just because we are on a quest to save the galaxy, doesn't mean we aren't going to charge an arm and a leg to save the day."

"Saving the galaxy?" he requested some expansion.

"Oh, I guess I forgot to mention that." I chuckled, "The Halo Rings that the Prophets are so hard up about activating, they aren't some starting point for the Great Journey. They are weapons designed to emit a radiation pulse throughout the galaxy that will kill all life. A hard reset for the Forerunners to reseed the depopulated worlds with life from their archives and begin again with a fresh start."

"Oh." Timit looked up at me. "Shit."