"Come on, get up! You've got to get up, we're almost there!"

Commander John Shepard opened his eyes to the sight of Amanda Kenson rapidly detaching his blackened, crumbling N7 armor as she moved to haul him to his feet. The world was a cacophony of bullets and explosives from the hills behind them as nearly 50 batarians continued to advance on their position, hell-bent on recapturing the undercover Alliance operative.

Kenson threw off the last of Shepard's torso armor and slipped an arm around his shoulders as she began dragging him to the evac site. Shepard, for his part, unholstered the SMG at his hip and began firing wildly at the batarians coming up on them. Where the hell was Hackett and his evac?

"Shepard, come in. This is Anderson, I've got Zaeed, Garrus and Tali with me. We're almost to the evac site, what's your status?"

Shepard's answer was drowned out as another grenade exploded near them, which he responded to by putting half a dozen bullets into the batarian who had thrown it. His aural implants immediately activated automatically to dampen the explosion's noise. Kenson was not so lucky: blood was pouring out of her left ear from a ruptured eardrum.

They had barely made it maybe 20 feet and still the batarians were advancing. Shepard's weapon spat out its overheated thermal clip and he fumbled for another one until he grimly realized he was out. He threw away the SMG and drew his pistol, resolving to go out fighting as his shields flickered and died…

"This is Lightning Four-One, we have a visual on your position, standing by." The most wonderful sound he'd heard that day.

"Lightning Four-One, cleared hot!" screamed Kenson as she moved to pull Shepard to his feet.

An Alliance Navy Mantis gunship suddenly swooped into view of Shepard's line of sight and launched a barrage of missiles at the batarians. The blinks, suddenly realizing the new threat, directed their fire at the gunship until its Gatling guns spun up.

"Lightning Four-One, cleared hot, over. Guns, guns, guns."

A torrent of metal was unleashed on the blinks as they began to rapidly fall back into the treeline, bullets the size of footballs tearing the cover to pieces. Shepard's vision began to drift in and out as exhaustion caught up with him.

"Stand up, c'mon!" yelled Kenson as she hauled him to his feet and they began walking. A Kodiak shuttle landed and Admiral Hackett stepped out of the vehicle, flanked by a half-dozen Alliance soldiers wearing black armor Shepard had never seen before. The gunship that had unleashed hell on the batarians flew back into his line of vision, the blinks either dead or in full-scale retreat. As Shepard worked to get his mind back in order, a single thought came to the forefront.

"Did you get the OSD for the Mass Relay?" barked Hackett.

"Yes sir, it's right here." Kenson moved to produce the item in question and handed it to the admiral.

"Good, that's one less loose end."

Fire erupted in Shepard's gut and he collapsed.

"NO!" A second later, Kenson's head was a bloody mist as the bullet from the archaic .44 magnum passed through her skull. The Mantis gunship continued to hover above the area as a pair of Hackett's men moved to dispose of Kenson's body and the rest moved to create a perimeter.

The pain in his gut began to slowly subside as adrenaline rushing through his system as well as his cybernetics began to take effect. Judging from how he felt, Shepard figured the bullet had exited his back: he was damn lucky it hadn't nicked his vertebrae.

Or rather, he was lucky until agony erupted again in his chest, this time, as Hackett calmly let go of the knife he'd just planted in Shepard.

"I know you're wondering why," the admiral said casually as he popped open the chamber on his revolver and dumped out the spent cartridges before loading in fresh bullets. "Five years ago, I lost 30,000 men in the blink of an eye." He snapped the chamber shut.

"And the galaxy just… fucking watched."

He loaded the OSD's contents into his omni-tool as he began fiddling. Horror swept through Shepard as he realized what Hackett was about to do. The omni-tool beeped as the command codes were sent to the Mass Relay in question.

"It's done then. Tomorrow, there will be no more denial. No more hiding the truth. The lives lost in 2183 will not have been in vain. Tomorrow, the galaxy will acknowledge that the Reapers exist. Or they will die in obscurity." He cocked the revolver and laid it level against Shepard's head.

"I know you understand."

There was a sound of thunder. A number of things happened.

Shepard felt a puff of dirt land on his cheek. The Mantis gunship that was hovering exploded into a ball of fire and smoke as a rocket impacted the lift cradle. Hackett's black ops men suddenly began screaming as a torrent of gunfire began raining on their position. Dimly, Shepard heard Zaeed's London accent screaming obscenities as he charged into the fray, throwing his rocket launcher aside as he unslung his assault rifle. The crack of Garrus's sniper rifle was easily heard and Chiktikka vas Paus was flying circles around the black ops men.

And Anderson was above him, trading blows with Hackett in a vicious fistfight. Hackett's .44 had landed a few feet away. Shepard's own heavy pistol had been lost in the chaos of the fight. Ignoring the screaming pain in his gut and chest, he began to pull himself inch by inch toward the fallen handgun.

His fingers had barely closed around the grip when a heavy boot kicked it aside. He looked up, seeing Hackett's furious eyes as the admiral kicked him in the forehead. Everything else came to a halt as Anderson again tackled Hackett and began punching him.

Shepard began to lose consciousness again as the world became fire and blood. As his eyes drifted open and closed, he could see Anderson and Hackett continuing to trade blows. The gunfire in the distance dropped off for a moment as Hackett's black ops men fell, but the Mantis gunship had compensated for the damage and was now spraying his team's position with Gatling gun fire.

Anderson was on the ground again, his nose broken and his mouth spitting up blood. Hackett moved on the top of him and began raining blows onto his unprotected head. Both men had been out of the field for years, one stuck behind a desk pushing pens and the other staring out into space from the bridge of a flagship. Their fight had been that of savages, not soldiers, and it was not going to end cleanly or quickly.

As Shepard watched the continuing punches onto Anderson's face, one last option came to mind.

With every ounce of willpower left in him, he pushed the burning pain aside and grabbed the knife in his chest. And with an inhuman strength granted by his cybernetics, pulled it out in one clean yank.

Shepard's agonized scream was enough to grab Hackett's attention. Just as the admiral looked up in disbelief, the Spectre threw.

The gunship pilot growled in anger as his targets continued to scatter and take cover near the Kodiak shuttle. His orders were explicit: the shuttle was not to be destroyed. This was an unsanctioned operation by Hackett's Black Quasar private militia, and if the shuttle were destroyed, there would be no way to get back to the cruiser in orbit without alerting the rest of the Alliance Navy brass. But it just so happened that his three targets were so goddamn hard to kill.

Another rocket struck the gunship and its shield bars flickered and collapsed. Shrapnel from the blast sent dozens of cracks through the bulletproof glass and a nasty spiderwebbed weak point appeared. The pilot immediately began diverting power from the engine to recharge, but as he did so, something happened. The computerized monitor began to lock up and process at a sluggish rate.

To his horror, he realized the ship's computer had been hacked. As he glanced out the side window, he saw the quarian typing into her omni-tool, throwing a glare at the Mantis.

And the turian next to her, lining up a shot with his own, appropriately named, Mantis sniper rifle…

The pilot never felt it as the heavy round punched through the weakened glass and lodged itself in his brain.

"Shepard… Shepard!"

Tali was there first, quickly seeing to Shepard's broken body. Garrus moved to check that Hackett was well and truly dead - a knife lodged in the eye tended to do that to most humans - before helping Anderson up as Zaeed swept the area and the crashed gunship for any survivors. A burst of fire from the mercenary's assault rifle put an end to the gunship's gunnery officer.

She hadn't seen Shepard this badly injured since escaping the Collector base. He had lost so much blood, shrapnel was embedded all along his left arm, and he had a nasty bruise on his head from collapsing to the ground and from where Hackett had kicked him. She hurriedly pulled out the last of her medi-gel and moved to treat his wounds as best as possible.

Anderson was next to her all of a sudden, having grabbed a med-kit from one of the fallen black ops men and moved to dress Shepard's gunshot and knife wounds. "It'll hold for now, we've got to go." Catching Garrus and Tali's eyes, he said, "He'll be fine. He's in a hell of a lot of pain, but he's taken worse than this. Help me get him up."

Tali moved to support Shepard's left arm, mindful of the shrapnel, as they began to move into Hackett's Kodiak. She could hear Garrus yell at Zaeed to get on board.

"They'll be looking for us, you know," she murmured as she and Anderson gently sat Shepard down on one of the seats. The former N7 operative managed to open his eyes long enough and nodded gratefully at both of them.

"I know," said Anderson as he grabbed a piece of gauze from the stolen med-kit and held it to his nose. The shuttle began to lift off as Garrus and Zaeed took up the pilot and co-pilot seats.

"And Hackett opened the Mass Relay," continued Tali. "The Reapers' arrival will be tomorrow. What will we do?"

Her uncertainty was brought to a halt as a strong hand gripped hers. Despite the pain he was in, and the fact that he was literally on the verge of collapse, Shepard never ceased to amaze her as he fought against impossible odds, against everything an entire galaxy could throw at him.

With the conviction underlying his every action, he looked her in the eye and said, "We have to give everything. Even if that means our lives. We will stop at nothing. We will fight for the lost."

The low quality of this piece can be blamed on a number of things.

1. This is the first piece of fiction I've written in five years.

2. This isn't really meant to be taken too seriously. This was born out of a discussion on IGN's Mass Effect board. The only thing that this piece was based off of is that Lance Henriksen voices both Admiral Hackett and General Shepherd in Modern Warfare 2 (note the different spelling of the name from Mass Effect's protagonist).

3. This was rushed because I wanted to get it uploaded before the Arrival DLC becomes available on Tuesday, March 29, 2011 (this story was written in the span of an hour on Saturday, March 26, 2011). I know video of the first 3 missions of it is available now, but I have not watched it.

4. This will probably not be anything like the actual Arrival DLC, but it was fun to do.

5. Once Arrival comes out, I'm sure we'll look back on this and laugh.