The Contact War has been waging for the past 3 years, following humanity's first trip through the Arcturus relay. Following bad intel, Commander Shepard is inadvertently taken prisoner by turian forces. I own nothing.
Her breath ached as it was forced to enter and exit her lungs. Her heartbeat pounded loudly in her ears, barely audible over the sounds of the ongoing battle around her. The dusk of the planet was cool, and the wind only served to further chill the fine sheen of sweat on her chest and face. She didn't feel cold in the slightest as her bare feet pounded the ground frantically. Her green eyes were focused with a singular intensity on the small smattering of foliage that eventually led to a more wooded area beyond the base.
Once, in a former life, she would have been appalled at her current course of action. She was running from the firefight that was engulfing the Alliance base around her, rather that picking up the discarded weapon of a downed soldier and using it to aid her fellow soldiers. Except they weren't her fellow soldiers. Not anymore, at least. Not for at least eighteen months. Not since her incarceration. Not since Lieutenant Commander Shepard had been court-marshalled and stripped of her rank. It felt like an eternity ago. She wasn't that person any more.
She dove under a pile of scattered supply crates that provided minimal cover as gunships, both human and turian, flew low overhead. A fierce dogfight was occurring in the skies of this godforsaken rock. The base had been completely unprepared for this sort of attack. The assumption that a detention center would be the least of the turian's concerns had clearly been misguided. From her hiding place, she could see a group of turian ground troops push forward from her left, assault rifles held tight to their shoulders as they moved swiftly forward, pushing the human defenders further into the complex. She had to wait until they passed before she could make her break for the forest edge.
Lying prone on the dewy grass, Shepard began to feel the cold seeping through her thin prison smock and pants. She might as well have been naked for all the protection the useless cloth gave her. She watched with a wry grin as several other prisoners- who'd apparently had similar ideas to her own- were gunned down as they ran for the woods. It was unimportant when it was friendly or enemy fire took them down. Idiots, she thought bitterly. The base had been a maximum security detention center for criminals deemed 'significant Alliance security threats': splinter groups, terrorists, traitors... and the (in)famous Commander Shepard. The only prisoners lacking at the base were POWs, as they were deemed to valuable to be cast out and forgotten out in the ass end of Alliance space.
Sensing that the turian line had progressed a sufficient amount, Shepard shimmied out from her cover and sprinted hard for the brush a scant fifty meters ahead of her. Her foot caught on an unseen obstacle, sending her tumbling forward. Muscle memory kicked in as she tumbled, tucking her chin to her chest, twisted her shoulders to turn the fall into a roll. She sprang up to her feet without hesitation to continue her sprint- which proved difficult since whatever she had tripped over had managed to break several bones in her foot. Her sprint turned into a limping jog, adrenaline forcing her to ignore the majority of the pain shooting up her leg. A shout and gunfire too close for comfort on her right flank sent her diving the rest of the way into the brush, hiding in the low flora. However brave a soldier she had been had long fled her mind; she was in animalistic survival mode, working on pure instinct powered by fear.
The shouts and gunfire grew closer, and she could see human and turian soldiers firing their weapons and fighting hand-to-hand nearby. They were a whirling mass of bodies that vaguely reminded her of vultures fighting over a carcass. It was mildly amusing to her, given the semi-avian, dinosaur-like appearance of the enemy. Well, the Alliance's enemy. As far as she was concerned, the human soldiers were just as much her enemy now as the turians had once been. Forcing her gaze away from the maelstrom of war and back toward her goal of freedom, she began crawling prone toward the thicker foliage. She would be damned if she died now, given all the shit she had lived through. A stray bullet in a fight that wasn't hers would not be the end of Commander Shepard.
Reaching young trees on the edge of the wood, she stood and limped as quickly she could deeper into cover. Using the thicker trunks of more mature trees to shield her from the intense fighting, she made her way parallel to the main complex of military buildings, intent on making it to the airstrip. If she was lucky, she could hot-wire some kind of transport to get somewhere sa- else. Nowhere is safe, she thought in conjunction to the internal correction she had made. She needed to get it of here. This wasn't her fight.
The small forest ended abruptly and converted into a vast grassy field that bordered the airstrip. Hanging her right leg with its broken foot uselessly under her, she managed to use her upper body and left leg to hoist herself fairly high up into a size-able tree that allowed her a better vantage point. Daylight was rapidly receding beyond the horizon, but the glow of fires, explosions, and tracer rounds made vision easy in the encroaching darkness. The turians were rapidly pushing the humans back. She snorted in dry humor to herself- of coursethe turians would take this base with relative ease. The staff was fairly small, meant only to maintain the facilities and keep the prisoners in check. This place was hardly set up to take on an enemy insurgence.
Sitting on her perch in the tree, Shepard found herself oddly calm viewing the carnage before her. There was something she found beautiful about watching this hell hole burn to the ground. She allowed a small smile to grace her lips as the wind gently tussled her grimy, damp hair. The scent of destruction and death came with the wind as it blew over the base, kicking the various fires of the complex to burn more fiercely. The snap of a twig behind her caused her to instantly draw her legs up to her body and press herself into the trunk of the tree, willing herself to become one with it.
She cast a look over her should to determine the source of the sound. A small band of turian infiltrators was quietly stalking toward the air field. Shit, she cursed inwardly, spotting what were clearly explosives in their hands. The two at the front of the group spoke briefly before separating. One, with a dark face and white markings broke right, the others following him toward the air field; the other, pale with what appeared to be blue markings, stayed where he was, fiddling with his omnitool. Casting her attention back to the main group, she watched with dismay as they quickly an to the small air strip and planted their bombs on the last few air transports. She turned back around to find the one that had reminded behind- trigger man, perhaps?- only to see nothing but dark forest behind her. Where did he-The thought was cut short by a massive explosion. Apparently, the air transports had not been the only target of the infiltrators. The communications tower had apparently also been on the menu, as a massive fireball engulfed the building.
The shockwave and surprise at the size of the explosion of several air transports and the comm building was enough to send Shepard tumbling off her perch in the tree as it shook violently. While she managed to avoid the majority of the large branches of the tree, she was not so lucky as to miss a fairly large one roughly a third up the thick trunk. Whatever she made contact with on her way down came tumbling with her. The object was large, solid and decidedly heavy when it landed partially on her, winding her, when the ground came up to meet her. Then it moved. Fierce blue eyes met hers- turian eyes. Screaming, Shepard did her best to free the portion of her body trapped under the previously missing turian that now lay directly on her abdomen and legs. His hardsuit was slowly crushing her, pressing painfully into her lithe body. The turian scrambled to remove himself, tearing her thin prison uniform, appearing to be reaching for something, his gunher brain insisted.
Legs free from his weight, she scrambled to her feet as best she could given her previous and newly acquired injuries. She turned and made a break to get further into the forest. Her pathetic limping run gained new haste when she heard his growling paired with the thumping of his boots hitting the ground after her in pursuit. A hand taloned hand reached for her and attempted to grab her smock. The sad fabric tore with little resistance, allowing Shepard to continue her attempt for freedom. The attempt was short-lived, as another hand came down and grabbed her arm and pulled her down abruptly to the ground. Quick, practiced hands hand her pinned face-down and cuffed by her wrists before she could even attempt to resist.
The restraints and his armored knee in her back did little to dissuade her spirit, and she wriggled back and forth as best she could under him, snarling like a feral animal the whole time. She heard others coming up to join him, their voices loud behind her. She had no idea what they were discussing in their trills and clicks, but she figured it had to do with her, as her captor seemed to be motioning to her and speaking to the dark turian with white markings. The dark one cast his green eyes down to her, brow-plates raised in what seemed to be appeared to be surprise or curiosity. She met his gaze with hers, snarling and baring her teeth at him. She started screaming obscenities at him, calling him every foul thing that came to her mind, telling him precisely where he could go and several imaginative ways of how to get there.
He cast a look over to one of the others standing farther back from where she was pinned and drawled something out, motioning to her. The one holding her down started to speak before something hard struck her head sharply. Blackness enveloped Shepard's world.