This Idea had been rattling around my head for a while now. Time to excise a few frustration spirits!
BAN: I am using Myetel's Turian and Batarian culture, as things might go...
The survivors would, after having been recovered by Hierarchy forces, unanimously swear that it was the most beautiful sight that any of them had ever seen.
They had fought bitterly, savagely and with honour, a series of words usually reserved for juxtaposition, just as all true Turians do. All but the youngest had fought, the women as hard as the men, the boys as hard as the men, and girls as hard as the women. Grandfather had fought along son and Grandson, Granddaughters with their mothers and grandmothers. Clan with Clan, family with family, friends with friends and neighbours and mates.
They had held on for hours, days doggedly refusing to give up ground, that famous Turian Stoicism shining through, refusing to acknowledge pain or hunger or thirst or any number of minor concerns that had cropped up over the last three days.
But Three days is a long time to hold on without help or support or food or water or rest. They had started to give up ground in an effort to shore up losses, concentrating their forces in an ever-tighter circle to overlap their thinning fields of fire.
For thinning, they were, with the inevitable losses that come about whenever one decides to fight a war. Many had fallen to the bullets of the enemy, but more were falling to a lack of ammunition for their life sustaining Guns. In an act of desperation old guns, ones that still used heatsinks, long since mothballed, were brought out of storage, and that act brought them precious time. Eventually they stopped too, the well-worn, well-used mechanism finally caving in to the ravages of time use, with heatsinks finally having absorbed enough heat to consider themselves finally sated, breaking, shattering and melting through the calloused casing of the weapons they used to serve. Auto-loaders, finally having run out of metal to shave off blocks that no longer existed, gave a curious clacking sound that had no real equivalent before or since. For it was the sound of Death, hastened.
Scavenging for clips of their fallen foes was a risky and degrading experience for the proud Turians, but it was a necessary one. The bloodied clips brought time, but less than the valorous defenders had hoped for: They were poor quality, and all too often, they did not give as much as promised, or they refused to go in or come out the correct slot. When they noticed these imperfections, they shared the bitter laughter that all too often passed for humour among the dying.
The very reason that we are not dead yet, they laugh, though it is painfully evident that it is forced, is the reason that we will die soon!
They laugh and joke, but their shoulders sag and their spirits are in danger. Before long, their spirits will fly away, leaving nothing but a body and honour. And in the last, bloody bitter battle, honour will be abandoned, reverting to primal instinct. Only the body, the empty shell, is left, simply waiting to die. And these Mor'loci will not have to wait long, they believe.
Their distress calls are left unanswered, their equipment unable to pierce the jamming beacons planted by their destroyers. They have given up all hope. They know the next patrol is too far away to do anything but catalogue the bodies and arrange funerals.
The wounded, those old enough to understand the consequences, but unable to distract their wandering minds by defending the young and the infirm, wonder:
Why attack to destroy? Why attack at all? Turians were hard to keep as slaves, too strong and fast. Too hard to find Dextro food to keep them fed. Much more profitable to capture levo species. Hard to attack Turians, too. All trained, all in the military at some point.
No. They say. Not Slavers, Mercs. Hired to destroy us. Their minds and bodies rail against it, but their nothing they can do. They cannot run, they cannot hide. They cannot win, either. There is no chance of glory. Only impending death.
They have all given up hope.
Thus, the survivors would, after having been recovered by Hierarchy forces, unanimously swear that it was the most beautiful sight that any of them had ever seen.
It was a human frigate, but with evident Turian designs influences. While Humanity's ships were by the large blocky and square, this one was sleek and streamlined.
It wasn't adorned in the livery and symbols of the Systems alliance, though. This ship was midnight black, with Green lettering adorning the top of the strip like a dab of war paint. The Lettering was in a language that no one spoke. It was common knowledge, of course, that no one spoke Prothean. It was as universally acknowledged as the fast that grass was green and that birds fly.
And yet there it was. Clear as day. There was only person that spoke the language, and only they knew what it meant:
We are the Vanguard. We are first and last and only. We fight unacknowledged threats. Though we may be called Exiles and traitors by our people, we owe our allegiance only to the galaxy. And the Galaxy we serve.
And then, underneath the proud Human letters: 'NORMANDY', came more sigils:
We are the Broken Blade, Re-forged.
It was in Superior-to-inferior, she could have told you.
Commander Laracra Shepard had more important things to worry about.
The Raider ship that had been haemorrhaging shuttles like an open wound had fallen easily to a brace of concentrated Javelin fire and an few Thanix Cannon shots. The source safely destroyed, the Newly re-painted Normandy SR-2 released its own forces:
First, an old Gunship, once the plaything of Tarak, the Blue Sun leader on Omega, had been repaired, repainted in Midnight black and Green script that translated as sins-repaid-in-good-deeds. It was a sound word in Prothean, elegant and easily rolled off the tongue if one knew how.
It had been heavily altered with Geth technology, appropriated from the Heretic Station by a second team deployed with the first. It was Legion's plaything now, and in a strange fit of emotion, he had refused to allow anyone else to touch her. He claimed that it was because no one else could pilot it, but a few quick peaks inside the cockpit had confirmed that any organic could pilot it.
It was a running joke among the crew that Legion was hiding something dirty in there. Some said a blow-up sex doll; some said a LOKI mech, or more disturbingly, a FENRIS mech reprogrammed to become the mechanical equivalent of a prostitute. The particulars of this rumour had not been fleshed out, as it were. Some said Legion had a girl in the back. The species of the mysterious woman was as of yet undetermined.
The next, in the now ubiquitous colour scheme, was a floating tank based on the M-44 Hammerhead chassis. It had clearly received some heavy modification. It had a co-axial cannon attached to the main turret, which could now swing on the horizontal axis as well as the vertical. Above the turbines, low weight kinetic barrier generators, courtesy of, once again, Legion. Racks of missiles were attached to the back fins, which had been lengthened to accommodate the increased weight. The Green glyphs read tools-of-the-unworthy, repurposed. Slightly less elegant to pronounce, two sounds instead of one: Where tools-of-the-unworthy was a harsh, brutal sound, called up from the depths of the gut, repurposed was soft and smooth, rolling off the tongue as naturally as a breath. They balanced each other out, as sins forgiven through new purpose are.
The last was based on the UT-47 Kodiak drop Shuttle. It had not, unlike the others, received obvious modifications, aside from the ubiquitous colour scheme. However, upon closer inspection, it was ever-so-slightly larger than the regular model. It's lettering, forgoing the complex phrases of the others, simply read trusty. And it was.
Sins headed for the crash site, to check for survivors.
Unworthy headed for the main concentration of Batarians that it could reach, dropping off its cargo of one very powerful biotic and one very large Krogan. It then carried on hunting, using its enhanced jump-jets to hop over obstacles and surprise the Batarian invaders. They were on the lookout for ambushes through the buildings, between the buildings, from the buildings... anything but over the buildings.
Jack and Grunt, of course, were having the time of their lives.
Trusty headed towards the last ring of defences, and the last choke point before the Batarians could gain access to the underground Bunkers that held those who could not fight for whatever reason.
And as it landed, the beleaguered defender's eyes lit up with a forbidden emotion: Hope.