Backup lighting and power somehow flickered on. He was trapped under one of the bridge’s large, swooping holoprojector pillars. It was intractably pinned below the command dais, refusing to budge free.
	He wasn’t bleeding though. Something to be grateful for.
	Feet thumped around the bridge’s wreckage and stopped in front of Rojka.
	Keza, one of his special operation commanders, stood tall over him.
	“This is all your doing,” Keza hissed. His energy sword sputtered as motes of swirling dust from the crash struck it. The surviving Sangheili glanced about, nervous. Fearing that one of the others would attack him, he also sought to strengthen his own courage. “Now I must end this madness.”
	Rojka looked around as best as he could. Other surviving Sangheili crew stood by silently, watching the scene unfold. It became clear that they would not stop Keza, even if Rojka ordered it. But they would not help the renegade Sangheili either. This was their way. Combat, even between a superior trapped in wreckage against a subordinate with an overwelming advantage, was not to be interfered with. Still, Rojka doubted that anyone here would follow Keza. They would likely soon kill him, as he was a weak commander, though clever at times.
	Rojka had thought him loyal too. More bad judgment on his part.
	The Sangheili were not patricidal savages like the Jiralhanae, but it was tragically clear that they had much more in common than Rojka would have liked to admit. In war, weak leadership needed, of course, to be rooted out for a clan to survive. Unfortunately for Keza, Rojka would not go so quietly into the night.
	He still had other scores to settle.
	“Do you think that Thars will reward you for killing me? He will kill you as well.” Rojka forced himself to focus on moving his right arm. All he needed to do was free it. He pulled so hard he thought he could hear something in his shoulder pop.
	“You have led us to ruin! ” Keza screamed, and raised his sword high. “ You have done all that you could to destroy us!”
	Rojka managed to find enough purchase with his arm to finally reach his plasma pistol. As Keza swung down, Rojka twisted to pull his limb up and shot the commander in the foot.
	Keza howled and dropped to his knees. But then he realized his mistake and quickly scrambled to recover, grabbing Rojka’s wrist and forcing the pistol’s barrel into the air just as the fleetmaster fired again. The shot veered wide, the plasma bolt splashing against the ceiling. Keza struggled to hold Rojka’s arm down while also maneuvering into a killing position.
	“You should have just killed me and gotten it over with,” Rojka jeered, not letting go of the weapon as Keza tried to break his arm in two. Rojka fired again, just grazing the side of Keza’s head.
	“Fleetmaster!” Keza bellowed.
	“I am no longer your fleetmaster.” Rojka arched his back, panting, pulling his forearm toward himself. Keza’s sword bit down into Rojka’s side as the commander tried to finish what he had started. “I am simply your enemy now.”
	Both Sangheili roared in fury and pain, each trying to summon one last spasm of strength to finish the other off.
	Rojka’s arm moved a slight, nearly imperceptible twitch closer. He squeezed the trigger and shot Keza in the face. The commander’s right mandibles burned away in an instant, leaving a gaping hole of melted flesh. As Keza jerked back in horror, eyes wide, Rojka finally yanked his arm free and jammed the muzzle into what remained of Keza’s mouth, pulling the trigger again. Plasma burst out from the inside of Keza’s helmet with a gush of sizzling purple blood.
	The Sangheili’s body toppled forward. Rojka grabbed it, brought it closer, and retrieved the dead traitor’s energy sword still in his grip. He activated it, jammed it into the column pinning him, and started cutting, ignoring the molten splashes that seared his skin.
	When he stood free, he kicked Keza’s body aside and pointed around himself with the sword. His side burned where Keza had managed to injure him, but the sword had cauterized the wound shut. Rojka ignored it for now.