The Hearts of Rogues

Chapter Three: Escape Velocity

"Prepare for landing," the shuttle pilot stated over the radio. The guy was lucky. All he had to do was drop us off and fly back to the safety of the F.O.B.

Megan could feel the shuttle start to descend. She snapped the black helmet over her head and blinked as her H.U.D. flickered to life. The readout told her everything was in working order. Wouldn't stay that way for long though.

"Dropoff is clear. Port door opening." Megan stood up as the door to her left opened with a hiss and she got her first view of operation site They were atop a hill overlooking a cluster of buildings that lead up to open ground, probably a park or something. She couldn't tell; the rubble made it hard to distinguish. The open ground lead to a colossal bridge that spanned the breadth of the river that ran through London. She never could remember its name nor did she bother to try; she was a colony kid and had never been to Earth before this mission. Something inside her told her she would probably never leave.

Malus stepped next to her an inhaled. "So," he chuckled, "this is where we all die, isn't it?"

"Shut up, Malus," she said. He was joking, of course. The drell was always joking. But that didn't mean what he said wasn't necessarily true. They were supposed to hold this position while the rest of Hammer and the resistance made their way to that beam that was lighting up the center of London. Just the five of them. Against whatever the Reapers were going to throw at them. They had been in tight spots before, both before the Reapers and during. Very few still alive could say that they hadn't had their backs up against the wall at one time or another. But the wall always managed to give way, allowing for a quick escape. As criminals, they'd been running their entire lives. But they hadn't started truly running until Spekalis. Here though, it didn't seem like there'd be a quick escape. They were finally through with running.

"Ladies and krogan," she had heard Malus say, "I think we're going to have problems soon."

"Problems?" she had asked, "What kind of problems?"

"The kind we always seem to run into, Laforge," he chuckled over the comm, "the unfriendly kind."

"The Reapers know we're here and that we have the ship," Tirik Palad chimed in, "The janitor was indoctrinated. They saw everything he saw."

"Indoctro-what?" Megan asked.

"Doesn't matter," Janna interjected, "Megan, download a map of the station to your omni-tool so you can find us. Activate station's defenses along every route other than the one you'll be taking. Counter-clockwise starting with your position. I'll take the rest. Malus, get inside the ship and make sure everything's good to go. Palad, check the ship. Make sure that psycho didn't do anything to it."

Megan deactivated her mic. "Kalok," she said to the krogan who had been angrily pacing the control room, "Start prepping some cover. Try to block the windows." He grunted and left the room. As her fingers flew over the haptic display, she heard the banging and scraping of crates from the hangar outside. The defense systems were easily accessible from the hangar's computer; the batarians obviously wanted each section of the base to be defensible at all times in case of discovery. Perimeter alarms, multiple turrets in the hangars and the hallways, mass effect barriers to box in assailants and neurotoxin to finish them off. All were activated by species-recognition algorithms. The batarians must've tried to activate them during the killings, but, as their murderer was one of them, they most likely shut them down when they realized they were useless. All Megan had to do was key them to recognize human, drell, krogan and turian as friendlies. Her eyes lingered over the BATARIAN parameter.

Megan tapped her comm, "How are these things going to get to us?"

"What?" Janna said briskly.

"All the ships outside were too big to come in through the tunnels."

"Dossier said it was likely they would have smaller assault transports. They're coming, Megan. Are you finished?"

Megan ignored her, "What? Are we going to be fighting a bunch of living warships?"

"No," Palad groaned, as if he were lifting something heavy, "they were working with the Collectors. Likely, they'll have husks to kill us."

Megan watched as Kalok stacked a large metal crate in front of the window. "The hell is a husk?"

"Corrupted humans. Or converted." It was Malus; Megan could practically hear the smirk in the drell's voice. "Husks were humans. Collectors were Protheans. They tend to do that kind of thing."

Megan bit her lip and pressed the button.

"Why did you do that, Megan?" Janna asked.

"What?" the turian grunted, "What'd she do?"

"Leave it," Megan stated. "Call it a hunch."

A klaxon sounded inside the control room. The perimeter alarm. Something was coming down the tunnel. "Kalok!" Megan shouted into her mic, "We're going to have—"

Something exploded across the hangar. That was fast. The automated turrets kicked on and opened fire. A bestial shriek echoed in the room, rattling her teeth. Whatever was out there was big. She heard Kalok's Locust open up, a rolling metallic cacophony of bullets. Good, the krogan was being smart for once.

Megan looked over the display, seeing if there was anything else that could be done. Seeing nothing, she drew her Shuriken and opened the door.

The hangar, so empty and quiet a moment ago, was a battlefield. Kalok stood behind a stack of heavy crates, leaning out to fire bursts across the hangar at…she didn't know what it was. She scrambled over and crouched down beside him.

"The hell is that thing?" she yelled, popping up to fire a few pistol rounds.

"Dunno," snarled Kalok, "Looks like a Harvester. Different though."

The Harvester was nearly two stories tall. Its long snake-like neck extended from a black carapace. Pincer legs extended crab-like and torn gossamer wings grazed the top of the chamber. The thing looked more machine than animal, metal and wire protruded and intertwined unnaturally across its body. Its mandibled head swiveled, surveying the room as the turrets fired upon it uselessly. It focused on the closest turret and reared back. Cannon-esque fire erupted from its mandibles, reducing the turret to a smoldering heap.

Megan grabbed the krogan's arm, "Kalok, we have to get out of here. It's too big to follow us into the tunnels. Where are the bags?" The krogan pointed to the middle of the floor in front of them, right in the monster's line of sight.

Megan gritted her teeth. "Alright, I'll cover you. Get ready to move. Grab those bags and scramble back into cover." Her omni-tool glowed and she phased out of sight.

Originally, being invisible had taken some getting used to. During her initial runs with the device she had stolen from a wealthy merchant, Megan had a hard time knowing where her limbs were. Like a person in a darkened room, she was constantly stubbing her toes and crashing into objects. It was amazing how much one depended on sight of oneself to avoid bumping into things. She had to develop a different sense of spatial awareness, a complete knowledge of the range and motion of her body at all times.

Now, she was a pro. A literal ghost. She leapt from behind the cover and dashed across the hangar. The Harvester was focused on another turret. Its guns charged. She drew several grenades from her pouch and primed them. A large blue circle glowed where the Harvester's neck met its body. A weak point? She crow-hopped and flung the spheres. They clung the creature's skin, dead in the center. She turned and started to sprint back.

At that moment, her cloak gave out. The thing screeched. It had seen her.

"Grab the bags! Grab the bags!" She screamed. Kalok bolted from cover. The creature's guns charged. Two rapid explosions erupted behind her. The Harvester shrieked in surprise and she heard it scrabble frantically on the hangar floor. Still sprinting, she glanced back for a moment. Smoke billowed from the monster's chest as it thrashed about. It was hurt but not dead. At least they knew it could feel pain now.

She raced past Kalok. He hefted the final bag over his shoulder. She reached the door and punched the pad. "Come on, come on!" she yelled at him, motioning with her gun. He lumbered through the doorway and kept going. She flitted inside and keyed in the emergency lockdown. As the door shut, she saw the Harvester's carapace shift and dozens of figures slithered out. Humanoid figures.

On the run, Megan reached up with her bad arm and tapped the comm in her helmet. "Janna," she winced and glanced sideways at the markings on the wall, "I need you to activate barriers K09 through 12."

"Can't do it," the other woman yelled as bullets flew in the background, "little busy."

"Shit," Megan swore as she rounded a corner, "One of the big ones?"

"Big ones?" Malus chortled, "Nah, bunch of the little ones. They look like batarians. Oh and the husks. Y'know, shooting them is sort of liberating."

"The station's defenses are targeting the batarian ones," Palad remarked. "Smart thinking, Laforge."

"Almost to the hangar." Megan said, ignoring the turian's compliment, "Are we almost ready to—" Something crashed into her and knocked her to the ground. She spun and saw one of the husks on her. Its sharp skeletal fingers clawed at her throat. She fired a frantic burst from her Locust, riddling the once-human. Black and blue liquid erupted from its torso, spraying Megan's helmet and bodysuit. She shoved her now-dead attacker to the side. Wiping the liquid from her visor, she saw Kalok's meaty hand extended towards her. "C'mon, we gotta go," he barked, as he hoisted her to her feet, "Those things are coming through the vents." Behind him, another husk dropped from an exposed duct. Megan fired, clipping its shoulder. "Run!"

They sprinted down the halls. Kalok lead the way, his Locust holstered in favor of the sheer power of his Graal. He lumbered along like a stampede, shouldering and shooting everything in this path. Megan stayed close behind, checking their six as they went. The husks weren't faster than them, but there were many. Their ghoulish moans and snarls resounded from all around. She shot haphazardly behind her, trying to stymie the mob's progress. She might as well have been throwing stones at a tidal wave. "Kalok! I need an explosion back here!" Without breaking stride, the krogan drew a blue sphere from his pack, primed it, and tossed it over his shoulder. Megan watched it sail over her and collide with the lead husk. A biotic explosion rocked the front of the crowd, flinging the lead runners to varying heights. Those behind them caught and stumbled on their lifted fellows. The effect dominoed and soon the hallway was a stalled, tangled mass of limbs and bodies.

Megan and Kalok reached the hangar door. She punched in the code and they ran through. Gunfire whizzed past them. "Janna, we're here!" Megan yelled into her comm as she ducked behind a stack of crates. "Seal the door behind us." She drew her last grenade from her pouch, set it to proximity and tossed it through the closing doors. She turned and assessed the situation in the hangar.

There was a hole at the opposite end of the hangar. Husks and other forms, the batarians Malus had mentioned, swarmed from the recess. The batarian-things quickly took cover as the turrets targeted them with precision. Unlike the husks that charged across the hangar with reckless abandon, the corrupted batarians seemed capable of some semblance of tactical thought. She watched as one stood from behind a service vehicle and lobbed what looked like a grenade across the hangar. As the monster was ripped apart by turret fire, the grenade landed behind some crates near the sole ship in the hangar. Megan saw Palad dive out from behind the boxes, the merc's Revenant tearing holes in the advancing husks as he dived. He hit the ground and the grenade exploded where he had been, tossing the crates haphazardly in the air. The turian leapt and scrambled behind the nearest cover, bullets dogging his every step.

"I'm finishing up the last of these flight checks," Janna said over the comm. "Kalok, get up there and help the merc suppress. Megan, get to the ship and make sure Malus hasn't forgotten anything."

"I've got an eidetic memory. You think I've forgotten something?"

As Megan engaged her cloak, she heard Palad shout, "Have you ever piloted a batarian-Reaper hybrid warship?"

Kalok leapt over the crates, the tech shield he so loathed using fully engaged. Several of the batarian-things honed on him, their shots fizzling against the holo-overlay. Megan, still invisible, took advantage of the krogan's charge and made her way towards the ship. She tried to keep as much cover between her and the other side of the hanger as possible. Just because she couldn't be seen didn't mean she was impenetrable to stray bullets. Her cloak ran out just as she reached the ship's on-ramp.

As she clambered inside, she was struck by the utter alienness of the interior. She had been inside batarian ships before; in the past year, the gang had stolen from just about every space-faring species in the galaxy. But there was something…off about this ship. The strangeness crawled at her from the corners.

The metallic ting of shots on the ramp behind her snapped her from the reverie. "Malus," she spoke into her radio, "where do you need me?"

"I can handle the final checks myself," Malus rasped. "There's a turret below. Two rights and a ladder on your left. Happy shooting."

Megan found the ladder and climbed down. As she slipped into the gunner seat, the haptic display lit up. It had been configured for the four-eyed configuration of batarians, whose multiple optics could track and retain more information than binocular species. She managed to turn off most of the display, effectively neutering the controls to manual. But she wasn't tracking fast-moving ships in space.

"Guys, I'm in the ship's turret. I can cover from the pylon to the excavator. Try not to get in my way."

The ship's landing stilts had raised it above the ground to a height that allowed Megan to see over the nearby cover. She saw a group of the monsters crouched behind a service vehicle, shielded from the hangar's turrets and harrying Kalok and the turian in rapid succession. Megan grasped the handles with both hands and pulled the triggers. There was a brief second of spinning motor, and then shooting pain in her shoulder as the gun kicked back from the initial burst. The turret wouldn't work with just one trigger pulled. Taking a deep breath, she braced herself and fired the gun again. A quick burst ripped into the batarian-things. Megan could feel blood dripping down her side. The bandages in her shoulder must have ripped open. She was going to kill that merc, if they actually got out of here.

"We're a go down here," Janna crackled over the radio, "Power her up Malus. Everyone on board." A hum and a whine filled Megan's head.

"I've got you guys covered." She swiveled the turret, raining an arc of gunfire over the hangar. Kalok and Palad dashed from their respective cover and disappeared from her field of view.

"Kalok, stay on the ramp and cover the boss," Malus rasped hurriedly, "Tirik, there's a turret topside. Let's see if you're really all that lucky."

Megan fired a few volleys at some husks that were sprinting through the hangar. The batarians who were still alive had recognized her line of sight and had found cover from both her and the auto-turrets around the hangar. They were taking quick shots at her, ducking back behind their cover before she could bring the shooter into her crosshairs. The ships shields were engaged, so the shots probably weren't doing any damage, but the whole of the hangar was coming to focus on the spacecraft. And since she had turned off the haptic readout, she had no way of viewing the ship's levels.

"Merc, I could really use some tandem fire here."

"Don't worry, Laforge. I'll save you." Megan was about to snap back but she saw her attackers consumed by the turian's shots. She didn't know if these things could feel fear, but it looked like they were panicking under the barrage. She picked them off as they stood and attempted to scatter.
"Wow, " the merc said, "Lotta kickback in these guns. Surprised you're handling this with your shoulder."

"Some of us can handle a little pain, turian." Though in this case, she thought to herself, it was a whole lot of pain. The blood from her wound had started to pool in her suit. It took all she had to keep her hand on the trigger.

Something exploded from behind her. She swiveled the turret and saw the entrance door blown open. A husk stepped through the smoke and was immediately zapped with electricity. Janna's drone came into view as it fired arcs of electricity into the breached door. Shots from within the smoke pierced its holographic form and disrupted it. A burst of rifle fire let her know that Janna was halfway to the ship to the right of the door. The wrong side.

"Keep covering the exit, merc," she yelled as she pulled the triggers sending a stream of shots down the smoking corridor. She couldn't tell if she was hitting anything, but this was about suppression, not accuracy. The pain made it hard to keep the powerful gun level. "Janna, you have to go under my fire and get to us!"

"I know what I have to do," she responded coldly.

"Right, let me know when you're about to go and I'll—" An orange form slide from behind a stack of crates, inches below Megan's incessant fire. Well then, Megan thought. Janna popped up and sprinted onto the ship.

"I'm in Malus. Close the ramp and let's get the hell out of here." Megan felt her stomach lurch as she and the ship were lifted from the ground. Her aim thrown off, she watched as an endless waved of husks spilled from the doorway. If that many were still coming, she must've killed scores.

"Everybody strap in," Malus said over the radio, "C'mon, baby, be gentle; it's my first time."

As the ship rose higher, Megan saw that the hangar was filling with the Reaper soldiers. There were so many. As they flew through the ice tunnel, she saw that there were many, many more. They swarmed along the walls and floor of the tunnel like ants. Some of them fired on the ship but the mass effect fields surrounding the ship easily rebuffed their shots.

"Damn," Palad swore over the comm, "They're dropping onto the hull." Apparently they were on the ceiling as well. "I'll try to knock them off, but some maneuvers would be appreciative."

"There's no room!" Malus exclaimed. "It'll have to wait until we're out of the tunnel. Coming up now."

As they burst out into the ever-raging blizzard, Malus rolled the ship into a corkscrew. Megan saw several forms fall past her turret. Beyond the falling bodies, she caught a glimpse of a monstrous black shape. The thing was as tall as a mountain. It was propped up on stubby finger-like legs. A Reaper. And before the rolling of the ship tore the view away from her, she felt the thing look into her.

As Malus leveled the ship out, Palad asked, "Did anyone else see that?"

Janna either hadn't or was just ignoring the question, "How we looking, Palad?"

"Uh, clear. Well, clear as I can see in this mess."

Janna said something to Malus over the comm, but Megan wasn't listening anymore more. All she could think about was the dark monolith in the snow. She saw it for only an instant, but its visage was burned into her brain. Megan felt a tingling that started in the back of her mind and spread all the way down to her toes. In an instant, she started shuddering and couldn't stop.