I know what you're thinking: Y U NO UPDATE DOVAHKIIN OF ZERO?! Bear with me as I search for my muse. She decided to go on vacation and I'm stuck here, following her trail and picking up what little pices of inspiration that she left behind...frak it to hell.
DISCLAIMER: I do not own Warhammer 40k or any of its affiliates. Games Workshop owns those. Neither do I own the Mass Effect franchise. BioWare and EA (ASSUMING DIRECT CONTROL) own the ME franchise. The only thing I own is my Warhammer 40k fluff I bought from the bookstore, my Necron army (rulebook and codex) and copies of Mass Effect 2 & 3.
A/N: I'm so used to writing about Skyrim, not grim-dark fluff. James Swallow (Hammer and Anvil, The Blood Angels Omnibus) is my main source of inspiration because his fluff is epic [unlike a certain 6th Edition Necron Codex author's fluff]. Advice about writing in a grim-dark setting is appreciated.
Matt Ward...Y U NO MAKE SPACE MARINES DIVERSITY?!
The Battle for Eletania: The First Wave
How did it come to this?
The Southern Eletanian winds blew countless upon countless microscopic organisms into crevices that she herself would never thought have existed. Hell, at one point in her stay, her team of N7s and the rest of their G.I. comrades would hunch over their guns and hard suits, cursing and scraping off what little residue the quarantine chamber didn't purge. Avery would laugh about tiny bugs and how if they didn't exist on this "god-forsaken" jungle, he would be able to settle down with her here, all of the boys fighting to the last for her hand.
But that was no more. Avery was dead, killed only seconds after the attack came. The underground cavern had been his grave as they triggered explosions to seal off the tunnels, his life leaking out of his body and painting the floors crimson. She held his hand at the end as the cavern and the ground eagerly accepted his blood, turning the obsidian-green floors crimson.
Sergeant Alicia Johnson ran through the caves, ducking and weaving through caverns as the built-in GPS in her Alliance helmet helped her escape the treacherous tunnels. She had no time to make sure that the archeological team was following her and she deeply hoped that they were tracking her signal (Like she had said) and running like hell, following her like a savior guiding them from hell. Her breath was harsh and ragged in her ears but it was preferable to the loud chittering noises of that...thing back in the cave.
Libera Nos a Malo
In the cavern, the Keeper looked at the corpses of the intruders. Ancient protocols in its mind were beginning to awaken in response to the intrusion of the alien fleshlings. It silently floated into the antechamber stationed next to the grand hall of the Overlord. With a screech of binary, it dispatched the guards and began the process of awakening its master...
Libera Nos a Malo
After she exited the cave, Alicia resisted the urge to tear off her mask for a breath of air. Fleet Command had warned them that the survey of the planet reported that the microscopic organisms in the planet's oxygen caused Anaphylactic shock to any bipedal and non-native organism without a breather strapped to his/her/its face. The panicked shouting of the team was not far behind her.
They came out in trios, pairs and even alone, spilling out from the underground hell that they had been so eager to unearth weeks before. Alicia began to open up a transmission to the base as she saw Private Mike stumble out of the cave, firing blindly behind him. He cursed as his gun began to chirp and he ejected the spent clip, slotting in a new thermal clip for the gun.
"Is that everyone?" she shouted. Alicia noticed that the light around the mouth of the cave was warping slightly but she dismissed it as glare that occured whenever a person exited underground enviroments.
"Yeah! That's everyone!" he replied, hunching over to catch his breath. The sunlight split into spectrums of color as a shape moved behind the Private. Light twinkled brightly on the outline of an edged shape. Her mind immediately put the connection together and two words popped up in her mind: cloaking device.
Mike stretched. She began to form a scream in her mouth. The ghostly figure moved through the Private's chest. With a crackle of energy, metal materialized in the young soldier's chest, eliciting a scream of agony that caused all heads to turn in his direction. Trained Alliance soldiers could only watch in horror as something revealed itself with a chittering noise and raise the writhing private up on its blade, pulling him further on the spike he was impaled on.
The chittering machination resembled a scarab from the deserts of Earth, however all familiarity was washed away as a dark emerald body revealed itself. More claws appeared, silently moving on both sides of its body and an bladed tail twitched lazily back and forth. But the one thing that dominated her attention was the sphere of bright jade on the center of its body; ancient, cold, calculating and evil as it took them in its gaze.
Stabbing the Private in the stomach with another claw, the eldritch automaton gave an unearthly screech and tore the human in half with a sickening scqueltch. He was still twitching in his death throes as the machine, in a manner to a man shooing an annoying insect away from his hand, disdainfully threw both halves of her subordinate to the ancient ground, blood staining the Eletanian fields crimson.
Libera Nos a Malo
The Keeper retreated respectfully and bowed in mid-air as the eye-slits of its master flared with renewed life. Cryptek Wosret rose slowly out of her coffin, testing the servos in her limbs that had not moved for countless cycles. Her vocoder favored a voice of rocks grinding against each other, albeit with a higher pitch of voice. "Spyder," she said, weighing the title of the Keeper briefly before continuing, "How long has it been? And why have you awoken me"
The Keeper responded with a noise that was a combination of the chittering of the Scarabs and the harsh binastic language of the ancient tech-interfaces. Its master processed its information silently, unmoving as it analyzed the burst of new data from her creation. With a flick of her wrist, the Eldritch Lance that had laid on the wall next to her tomb flew into her outsretched hand.
"I see." the master mused as her hand flexed the staff. "Go join the Wraith and spread destruction among the fleshlings." With a flick of her necrodermis cape, the Cryptek turned towards the interface of the Tomb and the ancient terminal stirred to life with an emerald sheen. "I will assume command and awaken the others in the stead of our lord."
Silently accepting its orders, the Keeper floated towards the tunnels that led to the surface of their Tomb-World.
Libera Nos a Malo
"OPEN FIRE! Alicia screamed as she smashed the trigger of her M-8 Avenger. The automatic gun responded to her touch and sprayed mass-effect accelerated shards at the machination that had slaughtered Mike. She had remembered her lessons about dealing with the Geth and (sincerely hoping that the same principal applied with this ancient...monster) she smashed a button on the grip of her gun. The sides of the rifle flared blue, showing her that her rifle was firing Disruptor Ammo.
Her comrades did the same thing, unslinging their rifles and responding with a blizzard of electrically charged shards of metal, glowing blue as they stormed towards their fellow soldier's killer. The rounds hammered the surface of the artificial life-form, scoring countless holes in its armor and sending blue electricity arcing across its form. With a shriek that resembled a Geth in a twisted parody of pain, the machine began to crackle with emerald energy as its began to charge their line of fire.
NO! Alicia mentally screamed as she mashed in a new thermal clip and fired with renewed vigor at its "head". I am not losing another soldier to these...things! She concentrated the bulk of her rounds toward the glowing sphere at the front of its body. As the construct drew closer, she fired a Concussive Shot in sheer desperation at its face. The round rocketed towards the radiant sphere and impacted its surface, driving through the reinforced material and shattering it utterly.
The charge of the machine stopped and it screeched in agony. The servos in its joints began to extend and retract uncontrollably as the tail that it was supporting itself on became limp. It fell to the ground with a mighty crash that shook the earth underneath her standard-issue boots.
The soldiers poured in their shots with renewed strength as they saw the machination go down. With a jerk of her head, they drew in closer to the writhing golem, making every shot in the clip count before each reloaded. Several of the archaeologists began to protest that they were destroying an "invaluable research subject". She didn't care if they reported her to Hackett; she didn't care that Alliance Command would have her court-martialed, get her out of the N7 Marines and stick her with a desk job at Arcturus Station.
The only thing that was in her mind was making this metal monster stay down and die.
Libera Nos a Malo
Wosret manipulated the interface of the terminal with expert efficiency, sending her metallic digits clacking across the terminal. The tomb responded with her touch and the power matrixes that fed the crypts that housed the serfs of the Dyvanakh began to activate, sending energy into the sleeping bodies of her Overlord's legions.
The fleshlings would burn for desecrating the Tomb-World of Overlord Mahket.
Libera Nos a Malo
"Do you realize what you idiots just did?!" the head scientist shouted at the N7 Marines as Alicia struggled to control her breathing, her pulse, her hatred of the machine that lay smoldering under her feet. "You've just destroyed an invaluable specimen that's worth five times of you arrogant jarhe-"
Her temper snapped and she whipped out her pistol and smashed the top of the gun into the side of his face. It wasn't a pleasant sound that the impact created as he went down. His aides rushed to his side and helped him up, taking care to not to touch his bleeding face and took all of her self-control not to take the new, off-the-line M-5 Phalanx and test it's "armor penetration" on his body for saying in public that the thing that killed- no, slaughtered- Michael was worth five of an N7's life.
"I'm warning you, right now," Alicia growled at him as she angrily stomped over to his cowering form. "If you don't shut the hell up, I'll throw you back into that hellhole myself and seal the entrance." She paused as she took out a detonator to the charges that were in the Makos, contemplating the small device for a second before to face him. "Maybe then your 'invaluable specimens'," she spat out venomously, "Will thank you for putting yourself between me and them."
Turning to the remainder of the squad, she barked out orders. "Alright! Langley, Zu get the civvies into the Makos! Richardson, radio base camp and tell them to begin immediate evacuation of the team! Make sure that they call Arcturus Station to bring in the calvary! And-" Her eyes drifted to the ruined body of Michael and her vision lurched as images flashed into her mind.
Mike Williams flashed by, new candidate that just arrived in "the villa" at Rio de Janeiro for "N-school"; Clever Mike followed, using a damaged FENRIS mech interface to shut down the dummies that fired back at them during hell year; courageous Michael shouted a charge, leading a slave revolt on a Batarian slaver ship during his first N6 mission; humorous Mike, joking about his "unofficial induction" to the N7 "Thunder Jumpers" by jumping off a skyscraper; Michael Williams smiled warmly as he accepted a tool from her, making him feel like the younger brother she never had.
And in a heartbeat, it was all gone, leaving her staring at the mangled corpse of the N7 soldier who died during his first mission as the elite of the elite.
"R-Rodriguez!" Alicia barely managed to get out. "Take Private Williams with us...we'll...bury him in the terradome gardens..." As Rodriguez nodded and grabbed a body bag to collect their fallen comrade, she turned her head to the entrance of the cave, hoping that the squad wouldn't see her face, squinting into the darkness with a defiant stare.
Libera Nos a Malo
Through the optics of the spyder, Wosret saw the organic female glare towards the cave and the mangled remains of the wraith she sent to terminate them. To think that they could damage a Dyvanakh wraith so badly that its repair and recall protocols would be shattered beyond field repair! Truly, the fleshlings had gathered strength whilst they had been in the Great Sleep. They had their own sophisticated ways of ballistic weaponry that the Chronomancer had never seen before, not even in the ancient Codex of technologies. And, though it required a large amount of time to do so, they could fell a wraith.
Her processors went over this data over a billion times in a nano-cycle. Logic determined that,despite taking casualties, they would prevail over the companies of serfs that she initially deemed adequate to exterminate them. But now, it seemed that they would be harder to kill, despite the weakness of housing their consciousness in organic meat.
The thought of awakening the Overlord briefly processed through her before it was banished. Rousing the Overlord for such a trivial matter would only enrage him. She deemed that it would be satisfactory to awaken him after she had dealt with the meat-bags. It would serve the Crptek no purpose to wake him during a mere matter of pest control.
The tread of her iron-clawed feet resonated through the thick air and soon, Wosret saw the stasis-crypts of the transports. A single pair of Immortals, recently awakened, stood by the sides of the entrance, Gauss Blasters primed and at the ready, emerald eyes staring into nothing. They had not acknowledged the presence of the Chronomancer. Instead, after a brief cycle of sampling the intelligence stream via the mnemonic probe from the complex's knowledge nexus, they interpreted her intentions and let her pass, stepping to the side and powering down their Blasters.
She followed the corridor to its end. A single terminal stood at the exit and Wosret activated it. With a dull hum of energy as she manipulated the interface at the speed that would have puzzled even a triarch praetorian, the chamber of Dyvanakh vehicles flared to light with a rush of eldritch green and the first thing that the Cryptek saw was the column of the ancient war-machines of their kind.
The focusing crystal of the Monoliths began to glow, as if eager in anticipation in the blood that was to be shed on the surface.
Wosret knew she was.
Libera Nos a Malo
"Can't you get this to drive any faster, Richardson?!"
"Sir, if I go any faster, I'd probably hit the Mass Relay at mach seventy!"
"Sergeant!" cried the muffled voice of Zu from the turret. "I've got unidentified bogies on the radar and closing fast on our position!"
With a curse that would have made even a krogan blush, Alicia flipped the slide of the rear exit of the Mako. She squinted and through her limited view, she saw four dust clouds in the distance, growing bigger every second. She barked at Rodriguez for his Mantis sniper rifle and she pressed the scope of it to her eye. There! Out of the dirt and debris, four shadows grew in the clouds and with a burst of debris, four unknowns shot out of the brown cover.
She had never seen anything like them. Straining to keep her eyes on them, she saw four vehicles that resembled tilted magnifying glasses that she had seen in the Historical Museum on Earth. Each shielded by a green sphere, four pilots clad in silver combat armor navigated the controls of their fighters. She remembered protocol when dealing with an unknown threat: secure as much evidence as possible for the calvary, though she had a grim feeling that they wouldn't be alive to hand it to the Admiralty Board.
The camera built into her retinal display of her N7 breather helmet activated with a click. Maneuvering the gun to keep the scope on their pursuers, she directed the camera to the parts of their opponent's fighters that she guess-timated were their weak points. She pinged the green spheres in front of the eyes of the pilots and the control panel that they were manipulating to keep themselves balanced. She pinged the blue-sliver wings that jutted out of the sides and tracked the scope down to ping the wires that fed the glowing guns on the bottom side of the fighte-
Glowing guns?
Oh, shit.
"Zu! Stiefel" she shouted into her mike, going on open frequency so that the gunner and driver in the other Mako heard her. "Four mobile fighters are priming their weapons and are moving into intercept trajectory! Shoot them down! Richardson, Savage, drive like Westerlund News is after you for an interview!"
"But, Sergeant!" Stiefel crackled over from the speeding transport next to them. "They're going too fast for the tracker to put a lock on them!"
"Switch to manual! I want you to blow those motherfucking...things back to the hell they came from!"
She lined up her shot with the craft of one of their pursuers. As the mass-effect propelled, electrically charged shard of metal discharged itself out of the barrel of her rifle, eldritch lightning fired shot from the barrels of the twin under-mounted blasters the fighters were sporting.
The Battle for Eletania had begun.
OK! That took a long time for me to write! God, writing grim-dark is so strange, especially when it spills over into the Mass Effect universe. As you probably have guessed, the faction that I have brought into the ME Universe is none other than the Necrons, the soulless machines who sacrificed sentience for immortality, the sunders of the star-gods and bane of the Eldar people.
I will be doing the chapter segments in a similar fashion to Dovahkiin of Zero in which the first pretext in the title is a particular arc in the story. Commander Jane Shepard will make her appearance in the arc after the Battle for Eletania segment is over, so if you were expecting her this chapter, I am so sorry.
This takes place in Mass Effect 2, by the way.
A/N: Some of you may have looked up the name of the Necron dynasty that I brought (I probably would have, too). If you didn't, kudos and don't because the later chapters will explain as to how they got into the ME Universe. In respects to the new Codex that came out, I will mix some of the new stuff and the old stuff together with a dash of the "Dawn of War" bits. For me, Pariahs still exist so shove off, Mat Ward.
Undoubtedly, progress for this will be slow as I have to update the mentioned title as well as try to write more grim-dark. But I will try my best to accommodate.
And as usual...
If you have any comments, threats, flames, criticisms, etc. please don't hesitate to PM me or post a review. I will accept it with my head held low and my body and mind humble. Just try not to overly curse me if I did anything overtly stupid.
Good night (for me, at least. Maybe it's in the morning when you read this, so good morning).
I hope you enjoyed the chapter.