Burnished Gold
Prologue
Circumstance and misfortune are the mother of heroes
July 23, 2176
Systems Alliance Space
Illyria – Elysium
2:10 AM
Throes of revelry from sailors and marines on shore leave brought headaches without end to police Sergeant Calvin Stein of the Illyrian Police Department as he sucked in a breath, drew his baton and used it to rap several times on the heavy wooden door of one of the innumerable prefabricated structures that remained from the early days of colonization, now serving as a seedy bar slash place where drinkers crashed and burned after hard nights of drinking. Behind the building, tactical teams were in position for runners. Property damage of the surrounding area, traced back to here, was worth more than a million dollars back on Earth, costs that wealthy colonies both could not, and did not, like to shoulder whenever a bunch of moronic jarheads got blitzed. "Police, open the door!" If the proprietor or whomever else was in charge refused to do so normally it would be brute force hacked open, unfortunately this was an actual door with a real lock and not an electronically connected modular design, handy he supposed.
"Cops!" A muffled voice inside sounded off, Sergeant Stein groaned, it was going to be one of those days… "Fine, have it your way." With everything he had the veteran cop of eleven years simply… stepped out of the way and let the battering ram do the job, the door went flying inward as it rocked off its hinges and came to rest as splinters of actual wood across the floor. Flashbang grenades followed that and from both sides of the building the IPD surged forward in a clinical manner shouting various forms of surrender, hands up etc. to the various addled servicemen. Not one shot was fired, nor one forceful measure undertaken beyond the flash and breach. All said and done the forty odd SAMC and SAN servicemen and women surrendered peaceably.
Sergeant Stein sucked in a breath and watched as they were loaded, in variable states of inebriation into police marked vehicles for transport to the drunk tanks at the nearest prescient, along with the civilians who'd also been inside. The Systems Alliance would probably have something to bitch about it, the mere colonial authorities stepping on their men, fuck it, Stein thought, don't break the law, don't get arrested, it was pretty simple, right?
Stein and his fellow officers failed to catch everyone, of course, tactical and precise or not, there were always fish that escaped the net.
July 23, 2176
Systems Alliance Space
Illyria – Elysium
2:15 AM
Lieutenant Catherine 'Kate' Shepard, SAMC, ducked behind a building after five minutes of bobbing, weaving and running for her life, and her reputation. Finally pausing for breath the six foot one inch blonde Marine took a second to look around her, not a soul in sight who gave a damn about a half-blitzed Marine who'd fled certain arrest and arraignment for destruction of property, being drunk in public, causing a public disturbance, causing a public nuisance and if she was being honest probably at least one count of assault. It's not that she was a hell raiser, every Marine under her knew that their Lieutenant was as hardassed as they came or they soon learned it. It's just when she had a sufficient amount of whiskey in her system, Kate's facade of iceberg quality stoicism slipped, for a few hours at least. "Ah, well, they got Stevens." She shrugged as she vocalized her thoughts with an even, slightly wobbly tone on account of the alcohol in her blood. Second Lieutenant Richard Stevens, SAMC, was two years her junior and they had grown up together on the various postings of their parents, both careerists in the navy there was no question to either of them where they were going in life. Now if only they could stop getting caught being drunk and disorderly on every single shore leave they got… It'd at least stop causing hell for their parents. Ah well, what's done was done Kate thought dourly as she started kicking rocks back to a somewhat cheap motel that she and a few other Marines in her unit been bedding down at for the last week, tomorrow was her detachment's last day ashore anyway so it was best to get the bad habits beaten out before they reboarded the vessels of the SAN.
The walk took about ten minutes, she checked her wristband, indeed, nine minutes thirty seconds, from her earlier position about three city blocks from Miller's Place, the name of the bar that she and hers had frequented every time the cruiser SSV Washington laid over at Elysium. She avoided the lobby, her room was paid for through the length of her stay thanks to her debit card, and made her way to her room. It was a small thing with the typical set up of motels back on Earth, and in her experience throughout most of space, be it owned by an elf, a frog, raptor or ape. A bed with complimentary lice, a physical television with the local equivalent of HBO and a minifridge for whatever people wanted to stuff in it. The shower in the adjacent bathroom was too small, the sink didn't work, the usual. Without much thought to that the Marine shrugged off the light jacket she'd been wearing and fell on the bed fully clothed and slept a drunken, dreamless sleep. She had no idea that tomorrow would change the very outlook she had on the world.
6:47 AM
An alarm blared with ungodly sound, a hand went out to mash the snooze button on instinct but the damage was done. The Marine sat up and pushed loose hairs out of her bleary blue eyes. A sense of lethargy possessed her, but long hours of endurance and denial training was sure she was wide awake. Dragging herself from the bed Lieutenant Shepard walked with uneven steps towards the bathroom, kicking off the heavy boots that had encased her feet for more than twelve hours by that point. Icy cold water shocked her eyes clear and open, the last traces of her previous evening washing down the drain with a healthy application of some soap so cheap it still had the chemical smell attached to it. As the water heated the LT brought herself to full wakefulness and was out of the bath within ten minutes, appropriately clean and in a freshly pressed service dress that represented her station, star and bars on her shoulders and peaked cap on her head. For eight minutes she cleared out the various rooms of the motel filled with her men and found it unsurprising to see that there were few available to report. The motel had accomodations for eight hundred, of these, eighty were her Marines, or there would be, if a score of them weren't currently drying out in an IPD drunk tank. Of the eighty man unit, twenty five were present for Duty, fifty five were somewhere in the various holding units of the police force… She winced, this was going to reflect badly on her, if only because something like sixty percent of her unit was effectively MIA.
"Alright!" She snapped, voice loud against the morning air and causing a few of the Marines to start. "Marching orders, we're fishing around the local prescients for our boys before they get booked for stupid shit that'll make us all look bad. Move out!" There was a chorus of affirmatives and the Marines moved out in double file before branching off in twos with a sense of purpose.
7:15 AM
"Second Lieutenant Richard Stevens, SAMC." Kate directed her statement at the desk sergeant not a foot and a barrier away from her, he was an older man obviously out of shape and had been riding a desk for a long time. He was less than amused, as well, word had gotten round the IPD that the SAMC and SAN were raiding their drunk tanks for their servicemen before the judges or district attorney were awake, to smashing success no less. "Stevens..." The Sergeant, Leon Poole, went through the lists on a computer screen in front of him that cataloged arrests and detainees. "Wait here."
"Thank you kindly." The blonde Aryan-ish Marine LT across from him politely said. It wasn't really his problem if they gathered up their drunks, they'd probably end up scrubbing toilets with their toothbrush or some shit after this, fine by him. It took about ten minutes of out processing but a bedraggled looking brown haired young man appeared from the holding area in rumpled service dress. "Sign here, here, and here." Sergeant Poole said plainly, handing over an actual pen to the bedraggled man who applied his signature to various points on a release form. "You have any more of my men?" The Aryan asked, Poole checked his database. "Nope, last one."
"Thank you kindly." The Marine stated again as she and her retrieved Marine stepped out of the police station.
"You know I really ought to ream your ass for getting caught, Stevens." Lieutenant Shepard said plainly as the two walked through the streets, while they did so she sent out a message to her unit to meet back at their motel for another headcount as well as to gather together their things for reboarding later that day. "But..." Stevens spoke, his voice mellow and quiet.
"But, I'd much rather get all you fucking drunks cleaned up and looking presentable before Captain Jones comes to collect all of us." Shepard said referring to the Commanding Officer of the Washington. She stressed the word 'all' as well.
"Yes ma'am, won't happen again ma'am." Friends or not, Stevens knew when exactly not to push his slightly superior officer and MARDET sub-commander.
8:20 AM
The eighty Marines of SAMC's 88th Division's 2nd Company stood to attention before their sub-commander who looked her usual stoic and immovable self in the parking lot outside the motel they'd spent the last week sleeping in, officially anyway, most had checked in on the first day and this was their first or second time back to it at best, having spent the week across the city in brothels and bars that may or may not have officially existed in terms of legality. While still officially on leave, the final hours were similar to this across the Marine Corps and Navy alike, small bands of men and women begrudgingly giving up their last hours of perceived freedom to brace for the return to artificial gravity and the monotony of shipboard life. Their immediate superior officer, Lieutenant Commander Isabel Glenn was due to arrive within minutes, and none of the Marines present had any desire to make a pisspoor show of themselves to her, or her dragon.
Then of course, the klaxons started blaring. Shrill alarms sounded through the city, a sound not dissimilar to the old air raid sirens on Earth. "What in the fuck?" More than one voice found itself saying, all heads turned skyward.
Blooms of light from laser turrets (before the light vanished beyond the visual spectrum), the sound of screaming from hypersonic slugs as immense railgun batteries fired, the streak of missiles from surface to space and surface to air missile systems all sounded off towards the middle and upper atmosphere. Out of the clear blue sky came what they were shooting at. An uncounted horde of light ships, antiquated frigates and light cruisers, multitudes of troop transports. It was a goddamn invasion force. From airbases across the continent, the colonial defense forces were also responding, and the few antiquated ships of the Elysium Defense Fleet were already engaging the plethora of equally ancient and mismatched vessels above their world.
"Marines!" Shepard bellowed, "Spaceport, fucking now! Double time, move it, move it!" The Lieutenant hollered, in double file they immediately started at a jog that bled into a combat run. Unarmed, the Marines would be of little use to the Colonial Defense Force, local laws, enforced however begrudgingly by the Alliance on their men, kept Marine armaments at the spaceports where they on and offloaded from their ships.
8:40 AM
Twenty minutes under fire was entirely too long a time for a cross-country overland transit but did remain in the realm of being understandable. In that twenty minutes the firing from both sides had not ceased, buildings burned and defense platforms were knocked out but the screen of fire did not halt. While the Alliance did prefer the idea of smoke and mirrors and concentration of force beyond their colonial outposts, the colonies themselves had no qualms about procuring high quality defensive implements and training highly qualifies militia forces to defend themselves from well, things like this.
The spaceport itself was unsurprisingly under assault when the MARDET of the Washington arrived, its own anti-air batteries firing periodically at overhead interdicting pirate vessels and the occasional fighter. "Lieutenant Catherine Shepard, SSV Washington, reporting." She did not snap a salute at a beleaguered man with the star of a Major on his cap, who directed them immediately towards the armory, a fortified building attached to the spaceport's auxiliary structures. It was at this point that the unit began to break down into their various, well known and well drilled, smaller units such as platoons and fireteams. "Maintain radio contact at all times!" Shepard yelled at her men over the symphony of moving men and gunfire as they outfitted themselves with light armor (all that was available) and M6 assault rifles.
"These radios are local quality, lieutenant, they're shit!" A Marine, Sergeant Mason Bates hollered over the noise.
"They'll have to do, Sergeant! Radio contact, understood!?" The Lieutenant was already heading for the door with her own platoon.
"Yes ma'am!" The answer came from various sources, all across radio as though to get the point across that they understood.
"It's gonna be a long fucking day..." The Lieutenant muttered to herself as they stepped outside into the raging battle once more.
Author's Notes: All owners retain their respective rights.
Okay I have entirely too many short scenes and too many breaks in this but I like it like that, this will get substantially longer as it goes on. I hope I didn't do too many grammatical errors, and this is unbeta'd. Anyway; Welcome to my semi-alternate universe novelization of Mass Effect because not enough people have done those yet, obviously. Everything and everyone you hold dear to your hearts will be recognizable, things will be slightly different but not canon defilement, mmkay.
Review if you like/hate/etc I'll give you more to work with soon, hope you like the prologue! Chapter one will cover the conclusion to the Skyllian Blitz which is meant to introduce you to my take on our beloved Lady of War and we'll get into the "meat" from around chapter two.
