Mass Effect: Andromeda is owned by BioWare Montreal/Electronic Arts

Above The Pahenaan Plains, Voeld, Nol System, Heleus Cluster, M31 Andromeda, June 24, 2819 CE/Day 532 Nexus Arrival


Prologue: White Out


Today, Liam Gary Kosta thought to himself as he rode in the belly of a Angaran-repurposed Kett Personnel Shuttle being flown by an Angaran pilot, was a pretty good day.

It was, too. Ever since TEAM PATHFINDER had went into the Kett Facility in which Moshae Indira Sjefa had been held along with hundreds of others, relations with the Angara and more especially with the Voeld Resistance improved drastically when they rescued the Moshae along with dozens of Angaran captives. After all that they learned of that horror-filled base, rescuing folk was a good solid win followed through with the death of the Cardinal and the destruction of that facility. Relations with the Angara had warmed considerably after that, helped with the half-dozen small Kett bases taken down and dozens of Angarans rescued and returned to their families before the Pathfinder sent the team on the desperate rescue mission to save one of the most respected and revered members of Angaran society. He never thought he'd find himself fighting a war, much less in Andromeda, but Liam was okay with it. The Angaran were good folk for the most part, having spent something like the past seventy years under Kett occupation and oppression. Freeing people… it felt good, it felt righteous. He had been a bit of a shite cop back on Mars, but damn good at Search and Rescue with HUST-1, saving folk during their time in need. This was like doing both, and though the days and battles were punishing, the British-born man felt like he was making a difference, making things work.

Well, they would be fools to think they could just drop into a new galaxy and find the road an easy one.

The latest victory was one worked out by the Pathfinder and the Leader of the Voeld Resistance, Commander Anjik Do Xeel. The plan was to weaken the Kett in the surrounding area around the Kett Tactical Operation Command Facility. Taking out small bases would do one of two things; force the Kett to repopulate the bases with forces from the K-TOC (as they'd come to call it) or leave them empty to let Angaran forces occupy them for strongholds. For the past two weeks, TEAM PATHFINDER had been doing just that, hit-and-run tactics over a variety of locations with no pattern whatsoever to keep the Kett guessing and reeling. One day, it would be a holding facility with Angaran prisoners. Another day, a research facility. Then a resupply point. A forward base. A maintenance facility. The bases were picked at random so that the Kett wouldn't know which ones to refortify or reinforce, having to chose between retaking what was once theirs or holding onto what they had left. Each base was emptied of its occupants but left standing, a tempting target for the Kett to try and take if they didn't mind the many presents of booby traps that the Angaran Special Forces known as the Heskaarl liked to leave behind. If the Kett wanted it back, they would be walking through minefields, sabotaged equipment, victim-activated explosives, proximity charges, and the ever-popular jury-rigged ignition switch bomb that would command detonate a vehicle when one tried to start it up. The former Police Officer had to admit that those Heskaarl boys and girls were a righteously tough bunch, a mix of hunters and unconventional warriors that sabotaged the enemy within their own holdings, infiltrated into bases to plant listening devices, and found interesting ways to make the Kett die without alerting the others. They were good, scary good.

There was a pair of them in the same shuttle as himself and Jaal Ama Darav.

Khay De Qjanar was the leader of the Techiix, a quiet purple-skinned male Angaran who was a scary-good shot with that Isharay Sniper Rifle of his, able to hit a Kett skull at distances that started with the word 'ridiculous'. In command of the ten-member elite squad of Angaran Rangers, Khay was on every mission, providing guidance, reconnaissance, intelligence, observations, and experience for a being who had been fighting against the Kett for something like two decades. Even Nakmor Drack respected the man, and that was saying something. Then there was Ovfa Sjef, the demolitions expert. She had a saying that had Liam laughing; the difference between a good demolition engineer and a great one was getting something to blow up that most didn't think possible. Oh, it was true, too. The pale blue-skinned female was actually a pretty cute representation of her species, but the things she could make explode were mind-boggling. She once two two fresh thermal clips and loaded them into a Kett computer and somehow got it to explode into a mess of shrapnel into several Kett troopers who were investigating a computer alert that Liam had hacked into said computer. No explosives were used, but Ovfa turned the panel into an improvised claymore mine and took out five troopers who had the rotten luck of pushing a button, causing a power surge, and eating too much metal with their bodies. Khay and Jaal Ama Darav were talking in quiet tones about something they had pulled out of the computer banks of the last hit they had, a Kett Communications Relay Facility that kept the races' network up and protected. The strike had been an obvious one; take away communications, and one was left in the dark. Ovfa was tinkering with a Salarian-made Universal Power Cell and a few Angaran protein chips to turn the UPC into something even more lethal.

The shuttle flew away from the destruction of the Communication Relay, the facility still standing (technically), in the lead while the second shuttle carrying the other half of the team followed them.

In that shuttle was none other than the Pathfinder and newly-nicknamed Woman of Mass Destruction (pretty totes bitchin' nickname, actually), Sara Elaine Ryder.

Two weeks since the destruction of the Exaltation Facility by the means of an improvised kinetic strike thanks to a cargo container filled with rocks dropped from the AISS Tempest by means of an opened ramp and an atmo barrier from that Karman Line of Voeld, the math of the strike done by SAM. Two weeks worth of raids, equaling twenty-two in all. Different hours in different locations, relentless and determined, seemingly at random but never without reason. TEAM PATHFINDER was swapped out with the missions to different configurations to keep the Kett from getting use to their tactics, swapping out members for their strengths and values and combining them in different ways to keep the Kett on their toes and sending them to their graves. This mission it had been Liam, Jaal, and Vetra Nix. Previous mission it had been Drack, Cora Harper, and Vetra. Before that it had been Liam, Peebee, and Jaal. Before that, Peebee, Vetra, and Drack. The only real constant was Sara, though she took off every fifth and sixth mission and had Cora lead the missions for rest (Doctor Lessus 'Lexi' T'Perro's orders when the Asari Physician discovered Ryder hadn't had any real rest in a week save catnaps). The members of the Techiix Heskaarl were rotated out as well (they all wanted to play 'Wack-A-Kett') yet Khay De Qjanar was there with practically every mission save one, when he had gotten fairly wounded taking on a Destined single-handedly in hand-to-hand combat. There was no question that the Heskaarl Rangers were badass, and Khay the epitome of their kind.

Another day, another mission, another success. Now it was time for the exfil back to Techiix so the the Resistance could pour over the intel they had gathered while going back over the battle plan to see where their next strike would be, finding vulnerabilities or surprising targets to keep the Kett off-balance and seething. For all the losses that the other alien race of the Heleus Cluster had taken, they certainly had to be reeling.

Exfiltration meant flying through a storm, of course.

Sara, bless her heart, was much like her Dad; finding ways to help, and then finding surprising ways in order to do so. Voeld was not a planet for the weak-of-heart or weak-of-anything, really. A garden world in the grips of an ice age thanks to the Scourge, it range somewhere in the balmy negative minus forty degree Celsius range on the surface when standing in Nol's weak rays whenever it pierced the cloud cover. There was always a gust of wind that felt like an icy spear going through one's armor and clothes and sending one's teeth a-chatter, and there was nothing biological growing to be seen; no stubborn trees or planet, not even hearty lichen. How the Angaraa survived on this planet continued to surprise Kosta, their stubbornness and tenacity well into the neon range and heading towards quantum levels. It might have been an icy ball of rock, but to the Angara it was their icy ball of rock, and God (and whomever the Angara saw as God) forbid anyone try to take it from them. It had been their home, no matter the conditions, and Human history (as well as the others) had absolute zetabytes of stories of men and women who defended home with their lives and ingenuity even if home seemed pretty crappy to a foreigner. Sara was using that 'crappy' status to their advantage, using Voeld's ice age weather as a tactical weapon and advantage in their multiple strikes.

By storm, Liam of course meant 'minor hell blizzard made up of icy daggers falling out of the sky, gusting winds of eighty kilometers, and next to no visibility'.

Sadly, he had seen storms worse than this one. Not flown through one, thank God!, but he had seen worse. He remembered TEAM PATHFINDER having to sit out for three days during one particularly nasty one that the Angara called a 'White Out'; apt name. Kett, as brave and as stupid as they were, were appropriately fearful of Voeld's temperamental weather. They took caution when traveling through the day.

No one traveled through the night. No one.

So there he sat in the belly of an Angaran-repurposed Kett Personnel Shuttle in the middle of a swirling icy minor hurricane, accompanied by Heskaarl Rangers, Jaal, and their pilot Ahkid De Kjov when the first missile slammed into them.

The shuttle immediately went up about five meters from the force of the explosion, slamming Liam into his crash seat harness with a hearty 'off!' as the vessel careened and wailed, the klaxon of protests coming from the Kett's computer system indicating that, yes, they were in danger. Several instruments flashed read with warning as the pilot fought to stabilize and maintain the shuttles' flight as the vessel-in-question rattled and groan while being buffeted by the minor hurricane outside, the whoop of alarms continuing as the shuttle threatened to take the day off.

They did not want to be landing in this icy hell out in the middle of nowhere while a blizzard raged on with enemies in the vicinity.

Ahkid corrected the course with one hand on the yoke while another hand worked the instrumentation, trying to acknowledge/silence alarms while keeping them aloft when the shuttle went sideways to port this time, another explosion rocking them as the squeal of tortured metal rang out louder and fiercer than the electronic alarms. Liam was jostled to the side as he had a flashback; that first re-entry into Hab Seven.

He remembered the door blowing out, catching onto a grip bar and dangling out of the spiraling shuttle as Sara Ryder heroically held onto his right wrist while gripping a safety strap, half-dangling herself to keep him from plummeting to his death before the both of them had been blasted out and into the skies of Hab Seven. For four hours the two of them had traversed through a poisonous hell of unimaginable belief, where rocks floated and the very atmosphere tried to kill them where they stood. Yet Liam had made it through because, despite it all, he had the spunkiest scientific research technician in existence at his side, quick with a quip and her spirit never giving in. She was as stubborn as her father, with a sense of humor and life about her that was easy to follow. When the chips were down, Liam had Sara at his side, the young woman never faltering or giving in to desperation or despair no matter what Hab Seven or the Kett threw at them. A spunky personality, a rapier-like wit, a quirky sense of humor, and good with a gun. Practically any man's dream girl.

The shuttle shook and jostled, fighting the wind and damages as Liam held onto his restraints, the vibration and sinking pit of his stomach getting to him as the shuttle was blown about by the blizzard and its failing systems, feeling as if it were being tossed about like a childs' toy. Jaal and the Heskaarl were hanging on, not a word passed between the four men as they pilot fought to retain control of their battered, damaged vessel, and for once Kosta was grateful for Kett military manufacturing. The shuttle was nothing if not durable as it spun out of control, plummeting from the skies as the thrusters whined and the engine strained to keep them aloft. For what felt like an eternity, death had become an almost sure thing before the pilot finally regained control, the navigation systems still blaring alarms and flashing read over its instrumentations as the sickening feeling of falling out of the sky and spinning like a top subsided and the pilot announced that he had gotten control of the vessel, though systems were in danger of failing and they needed to make it to Techiix with all due haste before the shuttle gave up the ghost. The former cop wasn't at all ashamed to let off a sigh of relief as the shuttle struggled onward, heading towards its destination as he touched his OmniTool to report to the Pathfinder that, despite their best efforts, they were all okay and going to make it. The line went unanswered and Liam frowned as he craned his neck to look out one of the viewports, to look behind them.

"Um, guys?" Liam called out, getting their attention.

"Where's the other shuttle?"


Author's Notes: Rut-Roh, Shaggy!

And Happy 11th Birthday, Shepard!