The Author's short rambly bit: Hello! This story is my entry for the May writing competition at Aria's Afterlife forums. This month's contest is hosted by Rogen80, and is dedicated to Mother's Day. Last month's April competition saw me making merry with everyone's favourite Miniature Giant Space Hamster, so this month I've gone the other way, and hope to tug on a few heart-strings instead. It might not be immediately obvious how this story relates to mothers, but please bear with me, and all shall become apparent.

London's Burning

1. The Fires of Heaven and Hell

'It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way…'

David Anderson, former Captain of the Alliance and the human representative on the mighty Citadel Council, deactivated his omni-tool and watched Dickens' words fade from view. A pang of guilt settled in his stomach; his purpose in the charred building was not to save as many literary works as he could before the entire London power grid went down, but to search for survivors.

Mr. Dickens, he thought, as he stepped away from the dying computer memory terminal and began visually searching for his colleagues, if only you could see London. If only you could see what they have done to Paris and Oslo, to San Francisco and Sydney… if only you could see bodies of men once no different from you and I, but now little more than technological constructs, lurching down the streets in Karachi and Lima and Johannesburg… if only you could see how they have razed our planet and tried to burn us to char. If you could see, you would surely weep for humanity.

Little of the library's database had remained, but what little he'd been able to save would have to be enough. The Reapers had not been too selective in their desolation of London; any building which was large or looked important had been targeted. The library had suffered only a glancing blow aimed instead at the Centre of Commerce, on Canary Wharf, but it was a blow powerful enough to pull down one of the walls and the entire domed roof, condemning the people inside to a crushing death and speedy burial, or a protracted death-sentence buried beneath tons of rubble. So far, the dead outnumbered the living.

"Skinner!" he called out to his second in command. "Have you got anything?"

"No, Cap'n," came Skinner's reply. "There's nothin' 'ere but blood and bodies. I reckon anyone livin' scarpered at the first sign o' trouble."

Anderson followed the voice to its source, and found grey-haired Commander William Skinner, along with Corporals Danny Brooks and Nila Patel, pulling another body from the ruins. The two corporals carried the corpse away, their formerly black armour almost as chalk-dust-white as the corpse. Anderson purposely didn't look at the body. Just one more casualty, no different from the others. That's what he told himself, at least. He couldn't afford to see them as the people they had been. If he started speculating about their lives, he knew he would be overwhelmed by grief.

Grief could come later. Right now, he had a job to do.

"Do one final sweep with your scanner," he ordered the Commander. "I'll be out front."

He left Skinner to his scans. It wasn't smart to stay in one area too long; the Reapers seemed to have a way of sensing when humans congregated, and a group of more than five or six remaining stationery for fifteen minutes usually resulted in a visit by husks… some of them clearly not created from human beings.

During his time as an Alliance officer, and potential SPECTRE candidate, Anderson had seen many terrible things, but nothing as heart-wrenching or soul-destroying as the sight that greeted him when he stepped out on to the top step of the library's grand entrance. London was choking on the fumes of its own destruction. Thick clouds of black ash and white steam billowed into the air, coming together to create a thick, grey, noxious soup which clung to the cityscape more closely than any photochemical smog of the good old days of fossil-fuels and CFCs.

But not even the blanket of choking smog could hide the desolation of London. There were craters in some places, where before had stood buildings, and there was a beautiful symmetry to those craters, each one identical in shape and size, as if an expert surgeon had simply come along and lanced boils from the surface of the Earth's skin.

The craters were not the worst part. The collateral damage was far worse. Hundreds of wonderful old buildings, monuments to a time when London had been the centre of its own small universe, lay strewn like the carcasses of dead animals, their exposed steel frames and ancient foundations as harsh as sun-bleached bones in a desert. From his vantage point, Anderson could see what had been the Houses of Parliament, now little more than rubble. He could see Big Ben, damaged but still standing proudly, as if defying the hell-fires which had come not from below, but rained down from the sky, as if heaven itself were razing the city to ash. He thought he could even see his childhood home, from the steps of that desolate shell of a library… but he dismissed his last thought as an idle flight of fancy.

"Sir?"

Turning, he found Skinner and the young corporals standing at attention, and he had to try very hard not to smile. Here they were, in the middle of what couldn't even be called a war-zone, because the term 'war' suggested that the fighting had come from both sides, and his troops couldn't help but stand on formality. It was amazing, what a man could cling to, when his entire world had been turned upside down (and parts of it inside out, too).

A cup of tea. A quick shave every morning. Saluting when your captain so much as looked at you.

Anderson did not upbraid Skinner and the others for adhering so closely to military doctrine. He knew that they needed this. They need somebody to give them orders. They needed someone to salute. Someone to listen to, and draw strength from. Because without those things, and without the knowledge that there would be another tomorrow in which they could continue doing those things, what else did they have?

Skinner gave a grunt, his grey veteran eyes scanning the horizon.

"I don't unnerstand it, Cap'n."

"What is it, Skinner?" Anderson replied.

"The hospit'l." Skinner nodded at a large building—the only one in the whole city, in fact—which had not been so much as scorched by Reaper weapon fire. "Damn near every man, woman 'n' child'll be headin' there. So why'd the Reapers leave it?"

"They don't think like you and I, Reapers." All three of his troops stepped closer. Everybody knew that Shepard was the final authority on Reapers, but Anderson was considered a close second. There wasn't another human in the galaxy, save perhaps Admiral Hackett, who knew as much about their strengths and weaknesses as he.

"They don't want us destroyed," Anderson continued. Even though he was thinking, and talking, his eyes continued to scan their surroundings for trouble. So far, all was quiet, but he'd seen how quickly trouble could flare up, faster than acne on a teenage face. "They want us cowed. Submissive. Why would they destroy hospitals, where people go to get better? The more hospitals left, the more people treated, and the more survive for the Harvest. The more genetic material they have to go in their next capital ship."

Corporal Brooks shuddered, and Anderson couldn't blame the lad. He'd been in the military all of six months, and hadn't even seen his first tour of duty when the swarm of Reapers had descended like the locusts of ancient Egypt. Corporal Patel was only a little better off; she'd seen action in the Traverse, but fighting slavers and pirates was a whole other kettle of fish. The Reapers weren't a kettle of fish. They were a bucket of sharks.

Skinner nodded. It would take more than gruesome anecdotes to shake him. Together, the four of them made a pitiful squad, but the three Alliance personnel had been the only trained soldiers he'd encountered since the Reapers had first struck, three days ago.

"We best be going," he said, glancing up at the sky. So far, all was quiet. The Reapers, for some reason, had finally stopped firing. The angel on his shoulder told him to be thankful for small miracles. The devil to his other side said they're probably focusing on Moscow right now.

So, as he set off with his tiny squad in tow, he gave thanks for the miracle. And at the same time, he sent his prayers to the Russians.