Big thanks to those who don't let me quit, that never let me surrender. Y'all know who you are, and I appreciate each and every one of you.
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Gunnery Chief Adria Thrace huddled behind a broken wall, gasping for breath, clutching her Locust submachine gun to her chest. Fighting the urge to scream, cry and throw up, she wiped the black rotting goop that was Husk blood off of her face and mouth with her bare hand. Thrace had crushed the skull of a husk with the heel of her boot just in time to look up and see the last member of her fire team sharing the husk's demise by a marauder, the asari's last scream shrill and soul stabbing.
Bravo Squad's position had been swarmed by the Reapers so fast, there had barely been time to call for an evac. She wasn't even sure if the message had even been received by friendlies. Or if Alpha Squad and Charlie Squad were even alive. To be absolutely frank, the human adept believed she was completely and totally fucked every which way.
Peeking around the corner, Thrace threw a singularity at a cannibal that was getting too close for comfort, then slammed it with a warp that set off a biotic explosion. Her target fell to the ground dead with a soggy thump, two other cannibals already rushing to their fallen kin to devour its flesh for plating.
Thrace threw a shockwave and shot the batarian monstrosity that survived the biotic attack. She had forty shots left before she was out of thermal clips, and the nearest ammo stash was easily fifty meters away. From a distance a shriek pierced Thrace's ears, and her gut's turned to ice as her heart skipped a beat. Banshee.
"Come on, someone please come get my sorry ass," she whined desperately in a broken voice that had been shredded from yelling for over three hours, tears of fear welling up in her eyes as she looked up at the red gold glow of the Tuchanka sky.
Thrace was losing her edge, her senses past the point of being overwhelmed. Her vision had gone blurry long before the banshee announced it's arrival, and the hearing in her right ear was mostly only a high pitched ringing tone from too many frag grenades going off near her helmet. Thrace had burned through her internal calorie stores hours ago, and her amp was almost too hot to bear at the base of her skull. How she was still going was a physical conundrum.
"C'mon, Thrace, get your shit together," she growled, and vaulted over the hip high wall remains and threw a powerful shockwave with her free hand to clear a path for herself, it's outer edges snapping through the air like a bullwhip. Sporting a self satisfied smile, Thrace sprinted past the Reapers that were still on their asses and jumped into a doorway. Dashing down the corridor and up a ramp, Thrace hit the ammunition stash the same time the banshee biotic jumped into the ramp that she had used to get to the ammo.
"Not today!" Thrace cried in terror and defiant challenge as she grabbed the entire crate of lift grenades off the sandstone floor and holstered her locust on her hip. She threw one grenade slightly behind the banshee and another at the feet of it, knowing it'd try to shift backwards away from the second grenade and into the blast of the first.
The lift grenade exploded with a fierce blazing blue glow and it's odd implosion sound, sending the nine foot shrieking goblin bitch lurching forward and into the second grenades imploding 'whoomph'. Thrace's HUD indicated that she'd successfully managed to knock the banshee's biotic barrier all the way down.
"Ahhahahahaha!" Thrace cackled and tossed another grenade at the freak's feet, and chucked three over it's shoulder at the swarm of cannibals and husks behind it. "Come and fucking get me, you goddamn bastards!" She screamed, finally giving into the psychotic side that had been calling to her during these oh so many hours of killing.
Thrace was laughing hysterically, throwing grenades like they were flower petals as she cleared herself a path to another ammo stash on the other side of the camp for another half empty crate of lift grenades. Her system was flooded with adreniline and her hypothalamus had officially given up on her, she was starting to wonder if she'd die if she stood still.
The banshee fell after ten grenades, while husks, cannibals and mauraders floated about in the air on the residual lift force that had killed them. Thrace shreiked back in inhuman defiance at the crumbling shadow and echo of the banshee's last cry that hovered in her ears with a sinister weight that hung in the air, the grit of charred meat bitter on her tongue.
Thrace reached the next ammo deposit with three grenades left in the crate she'd hauled five hundred meters to discover the half empty crate was actually completely non existent. She could hear the shuffling and bellowing of a brute working it's way to her by scent just as her comm went off.
"Firebase Giant, do you copy?" A distinctly turian voice barked.
"Th-this is Giant Actual, I read you." Thrace responded, her voice once again almost too broken to speak english.
"We are forty five seconds out from your position, transmitting evac coordinates now. How many are we picking up?"
"Just one," Thrace said grimly, clipping the grenades onto her utility belt and pulling out her locust.
"Copy that," the turian said softly, a soft sadness reverberating through the comm and into her bones. Thrace felt that sadness acutely...there had been thirty five of them four hours ago, half of them on down time. But now? Now they were all gone except for her. And the score was nowhere near settled enough for Adria Thrace's liking.
She shook her head and checked her radar as she ran as fast as she could to the extraction point. She already had bogeys on her six, and she was on the other side of the building complex that made up her hell. Her heads up display counted down the meters as she flew up the last ramp and towards the holomarker for the evac.
"Five seconds, marine!" She heard on her comm.
"Don't stop, this needs to be a dine and dash, I'll jump!" Thrace yelled, speeding up, unloading bullet and biotic chaos all around her.
The shuttle came in low, barely slowing down, when the door was thrown open. A machine gun spat molten metal at her assailants, driving them back enough for her to take the leap into the shuttle without interference. As soon as she landed, a turian in heavily battle scarred gold armor grabbed her in his arms and pulled her into his chest to keep her from flying out the other side.
"Not today," Thrace whispered as the shuttle's flight stabilized, a promise and a reassurance to herself. She leaned into him, muscles quaking and cramping, and knew that if he released his hold on her, she'd slide straight down onto the decking. Instead of releasing her, he draped her arms over his shoulders and held her tight about the waist. Thrace's breathing eased a little even though her lungs still hurt so badly she wondered if she'd broken them. Was that even possible? It felt possible.
She looked up into her saviour's hawk-like eyes, weary and haunted by the things he'd just seen, yet still so very much alive. Taking another deep breath, she found herself grinning like an idiot … damn, he smelled good … amber and sunshine and warm sand.
He was the first creature that wasn't dead, dying or unnatural that she'd smelled in what felt like a lifetime. The stench of battle was on top of those wonderful scents, but Thrace could smell them as clearly as a good cologne passing by her in a crowded nightclub.
"I've got you," the turian rumbled, his voice sending a warm hum into her bones that made her feel like she spent the day laying in the sun.
Closing her eyes, Thrace sagged into the unknown turian and let herself revel in the fact he was alive and not letting her go as the shuttle shut it's doors and sped back up to evade enemy fire.
At some point, the roaring of the shuttle's engines and it's jostling in the air put Thrace to sleep, and in her dreams she found herself still holding onto that golden turian.