The Serpent Nebula
Shepard did not envy Doctor Cole as she was summoned to the Council to explain this mess. At least the Citadel got through safe, but she was sure that this was the last time the technology had been used. The risk of a wormhole opening to unknown territories was just as bad as the activation of a dormant relay.
Spy probes were sent through the portal after it was determined to be stable, but luckily they all found nothing beside the usual stellar background radiation. The wormhole did not appear to have linked anything instantly dangerous to the Serpent nebula, and for that she was grateful. She also had the sinking feeling that she knew who will be being sent to scout out the other side, a thought that made her already irritated. At least she had the best team of the galaxy behind her. Whatever was lurking on the other side, they were ready to face it. Never a dull day in the life of a Spectre.
The Veralis system
Reality buckled and tore as the Warp vomited out into real space with a sickening rainbow of colours that had no name or place in the material universe. From this maw of daemonic illumination the Retribution shot out, trailing tendrils of fading ectoplasm as the portal closed behind it.
Powerful augur arrays began sweeping the system for anything unusual as the Strike Cruiser set course for Veralis Secundus. After a few minutes they have found what they were looking for, the disgustingly alien shape of an Emissary class Tau cruiser. The tactical systems of the bridge quickly retrieved every information the Blood Ravens had on these xenos vessels. Very well armed, they never the less possessed rather weak shields and hulls for their size and their top speed was lower than that of the nimble Astartes Strike Cruiser.
"Martellus, get us within close range. We can not stay in front of it for long and withstand its firepower. Get us close and bring our broadsides to fire!" The Captain ordered, knowing that to rest in front of a Tau gun line was a never a wise idea. The Retribution's plasma drives flared as it plummeted towards the Tau vessel at half the speed of light, its heavy prow lance powering up to unleash beam after beam of incandescent blue death.
The Tau vessel's shields were already raised as the first lance beam hit, its sensors no doubt at least as potent as those of the Imperial vessel. It quickly turned its flattened prow towards the Astartes vessel, gravitic missiles and railgun fire blasting towards the Strike cruiser with commendable efficiency. The Emissary did not attempt to charge, holding its orbital position as it rained death at the incoming imperial vessel.
"Void shields holding, but they will not hold for long, Captain." Martellus reported as the voids displaced the incoming railgun fire and shielded the cruiser from the plasma detonations as the gravitic missiles found them with unerring accuracy. The Tau vessel's own shields were able to stand up to the heavy lance battery, but as the Strike Cruiser closed to a hundred thousand kilometers range, its prow bombardment cannon opened up, a devastating railgun of its own with a firepower that no individual tau gun could match.
The huge shell crossed the distance between the two ships in a second, detonating into a vivid, kilometer wide fireball as it hit its target. Shields collapsing as they took the brunt of the giant bombardment shell, the Tau vessel fired a last desperate volley as it suddenly accelerated with an elegant agility and began speeding towards the star. While it could not match the top speed of the Strike Cruiser, it accelerated faster.
"Captain, our sensors can not pick them up if they enter the star's corona, while their own Blacklight systems will be able to track us with... " Martellus's report was cut short as the last volley of gravitic missiles managed to overload the final layer of the coruscating void shields, the Cruiser rocking under the shockwave. "Shields down, Brother Captain! It will take an hour to recharge them! If the Tau manage to bring their prow weapons upon us, our victory will become very costly."
"After them in the name of the Emperor! They know they can't risk to turn and fire on us without getting into boarding range, and if they do that, they are dead." Aramus scowled and glared hate at the image of the fleeing Tau cruiser. "If we let them get lost in the corona, they will return with their shields fully charged at their leisure."
He looked at the enemy cruiser's image as if it was already a wreckage. "But they can't loose themselves if we stay right on their tail." Lance fire blazing from the prow mounted cannon to keep the enemy's shields from recharging, the Retribution turned to speed after the Emissary towards the burning atmosphere of the star.
The Serpent Nebula
The Normandy slid through the anomaly without any problems and found nothing as EDI scanned the surrounding area. They seemed to have been transported into somewhere in the Attican Traverse, though some of the star charts seemed a bit off. At least they knew how to get home, and were not lost in somewhere in the Andromeda galaxy.
A quantum entanglement probe was stationed on this end of the portal and its other pair was now hooked up to the Normandy's CIC room. Activating the stealth systems, the Normandy engaged its FTL and moved to investigate the nearby system.
It was an uneventful journey that ended in an uneventful system. At least there were two gas giants to discharge the drives with, but otherwise they found nothing of interest until EDI detected life signs from the second planet.
"Commander, I have detected light and heat signatures on the night side consistent with small settlements. No orbital presence I can detect." The silvery woman reported and Shepard let out a long sigh. "Lets hope the locals are friendly and got a few answers for us. Suit up people." She strode off towards the arming locker as the ship moved towards the world, fifty times faster than light.
The Veralis system
The two UT-47A Kodiak encountered no resistance as they entered the atmosphere. The lack of replies to the Normandy's hails was worrying, but the initial scans showed the planet to be a backwater so it was possible that they simply had an old, malfunctioning communications relay.
Cortez and Goldstein put the shuttles down in the forest beside the nearest settlement, a small town that could hold roughly two thousand people. She holstered her Hurricane SMG on her belt and locked the heavy duty M-99 Saber to her back. The former provided a near limitless amount of shots while the latter could blow up anything save a Harvester with relative ease. The locals will be no doubt impressed.
"All right people. We do this safe and we do this right. Grunt, Wrex, you are taking point with me. Jack, Samara and Miranda, you are in the middle as support. Tali and Liara, guard our rear. Javik, Zaeed, you watch our left flank. James, Garrus, the right." Williams and Mordin was staying on the Normandy with EDI to make sure they had a ship to go back to if shit hit the fan. A chorus of acknowledgments sounded in her earpiece and she began leading the best team in the galaxy towards the edge of the forest.
The sight that greeted her was not a welcome one. Two score of chained humans were being escorted by a squad of short, stocky aliens in bulky ochre armour and a rabble of the ugliest creatures she had ever seen. They looked like a horrible melding of Turians and Vorcha, not that she would ever offend Garrus by voicing that thought as the team moved into the cover of huge granite boulders. Not that she had to worry about that.
"Those sons of bitches are almost as ugly as you, Garrus. Did your people got a party with the Vorcha and forgot to invite us?" Grunt laughed as Shepard took out her binoculars to scan the scene. "Well that big one almost looks like you, my dear friend! A lost relative?" Garrus quipped as a huge, lumbering beast came into view, obviously related to the avian aliens.
Bile rose in her throat as she saw that the ragged group of people were civilians of all ages, with children and elderly chained amongst them, were being directed by well placed blows by the avians. They were no prisoners of war, that was apparent. If there was one thing she hated with a passion, it was slavers. "Get into position and cover me. Be ready to unleash hell, I'm ending this farce right fucking now."
Flanked by the towering Krogans, Shepard strode towards the raiders with her voice amplified by her helmet's speakers. She saw them talking with the humans, so she was sure she would be understood. "Freeze and stop where you are! If you move my team will drop you in a second!" That got their attentions. The avians bristled and the stockies stopped raising their blocky, bulky rifles. One with a white helmet, obviously the squad leader, turned to her and spoke in accented English. "Explain yourself Gue'la, or prepare to die!"
"I'm Commander Jane Shepard of the Systems Alliance and a Spectre of the Citadel Council. Your treatment of human civilians is a clear violation of galactic law and you will desist right in this instant!" Up close and personal, she towered over the diminutive alien. It was not as short as a Volus and Shepard have never quite seen anything like it. It had hoof like feet and four fingers on each hand, its face hidden behind an impassive helmet.
"Surrender to serve the Greater Good human, and your life will be spared. Resistance will be met with deadly force." It took all her willpower not to raise the Saber at the tone of the alien. Did the fucker just offer her slavery at the exchange of her life as smugly as if it was the best deal this side of Noveria?
"No you arrogant little... you surrender right now and I will speak a good word for you when the court hauls your ass over the coals for war crimes!" She gave the alien a glare that would have made Aria proud and sent the Citadel Council rethinking their policies, but the 'arrogant little bastard' did not even flinch. "The threats of your dying empire mean nothing, Gue'la. The stars will belong to the Tau Empire and in the name of the Greater Good, you will assist us whenever you like it or not!"
As the Tau, as they were apparently called, resumed raising their bulky rifled, Shepard had enough. Reaction speeds honed by brutal N7 training and further enhanced by her implants sent her fist slamming right into the helmet of the squad leader. The nearest alien reacted with commendable speed, firing its bulky rifle in her direction just as she fired back at it with the Saber.
Even as she dodged the incandescent pulse of plasma searing beside her, she heard the alarms chime as her kinetic and biotic barriers collapsed instantly even from the near miss. Holy fuck what kind of guns are these, she thought as she saw the shot alien rise from the ground, its chest plate dented. She could not survive a hit from such a weapon and she lunged forward, her Omni-blade burying itself in the alien's throat in a spray of vivid blue ichor.
Seeing that brilliant blast of plasma boil a meter wide crater into the earth near Shepard was all that her team needed. Jack cursed and pulled the rest of the alien squad into the air with a singularity. They tried in vain to shoot back as mass driver fire pinged off their chestplates without any apparent effect. A trooper missed by the biotic attack suddenly went down with a hole in its neck. "Target the seals!" Garrus ordered and quickly zoomed in onto the next alien just as Samara created another singularity to keep them from retaliating accurately while plasma fire melted the ground around her team. Shepard launched a biotic shockwave to blast the aliens that managed to escape the pull down into the earth, breaking necks and limbs. Liara was the next one to pull them up into the air even before they managed to hit the ground and she saw James throw a fragmentation grenade into the middle of the floating squad.
Wrex laughed and blasted the nearest of the ugly avians with a burst from his Revenant rifle, gaining a new respect for the aliens as it went down only after he emptied the whole clip into it. The aliens were hellishly fast and the other one was upon him, raining blows from a bladed rifle that battered the Krogan Battlemaster back, each hit gouging new lines into his red armour. Taken aback as the blade began to pierce the armour and draw blood, Wrex knew this was a battle he had to win quickly, and not with brute strength.
Never in his seven centuries did he ever face something this fast that was also a match for him in brute strength. One thing it did not have was all the experience that came with such age. Wrex feinted to go for his rifle with his left hand and delivered a thunderous right hook to its beaked face with enough force to crack the bone. He followed with as strong a head butt as he could manage, sending the alien sprawled to the ground where a quick stomp on its neck put it out of commission.
"I am KROGAN!" Grunt bellowed as he blasted a stringy avian with his Claymore, dark green ichor splattering his armour. Another tried to lunge at him but he charged it down to the ground, kneeling on the alien's chest and pounding its face into a bloody ruin.
The ape-like monster came charging at Zaeed as he ducked behind a rock after Tali managed to shoot the rider off it with a burst of SMG fire. The animal simply smashed the five ton boulder aside like a chew toy and he barely had time to roll away as a heavy fist came crashing down where his head happened to be just a second ago.
Holding the gun with one hand, the wily old mercenary emptied the thermal clip of his Mattock rifle into the side of the beast with no apparent effect beside a splatter of green gore landing all over his body as the wounded animal turned to face him with a screech of rage.
"Eat this you ugly motherfucker!" He lobbed the inferno grenade down its gaping, stinking maw and scrambled back as flames slowly began to consume its head. It took half a minute to die even after that, and he emptied another clip into its head just to make sure.
Shepard was not a religious person, but she still thanked all of Earth's gods and goddesses that these aliens seemed to have been so surprised by biotics. Any other team would have been blasted to ash in ten seconds against that kind of firepower. As the singularity faded, she went for the nearest still living enemy.
"Look you asshole, I generally like aliens but you just make me want to join Terra Firma." She punctuated every word with a blow to the head, before realizing that the Tau's neck have snapped mid sentence. They were more fragile than they appeared and with her enhanced muscles, her victim's neck had snapped like dry wood. She throw the corpse to the ground to asses the situation, noting with relief that the civilians have all fled amidst the carnage.
All the alien slavers were dead. With a dreadful realization she saw that all the wounds were on the neck and arm seals of their armour. Nothing they threw at them had penetrated their chestplates. The last of the avians was trying to flee just as Javik managed to shoot it in the back of its quilled head with his Particle rifle. "Get into cover, everybody!" She yelled as she heard the unmistakable sounds of engines, sprinting with the Krogan towards the nearest boulder.
The now familiar ochre hue of the incoming tank left no doubt to its allegiance, and the rain of plasma from its gatling prow cannon was no surprise. What was a surprise that how fast it could chew up the granite. "Shepard, catch!" She has never been so happy to find out that Grunt had brought the M920-Cain. She caught the heavy weapon and began to charge it as their cover continued to diminish at an alarming rate, a hundred kilograms of rock vapourising with every blue shot.
"Fire in the hole!" Shepard popped out of cover and fired the polonium and mass enhanced warhead at the incoming tank, taking shelter as the missile hit and shook the earth with a loud blast and a flash of orange light. When she looked up she expected to see a wreck inside a crater, but the damn thing was still flying. "Keelah what are they made off?" Tali exclaimed and Shepard noticed that the armour was cracked, falling off in places to expose the machinery under it.
"We cracked its skin! Warp it as much as you can and focus fire!" Miranda, Samara, Jack and Liara moved in unison, their fists glowing with blue energy as they slammed their power into the side of the enemy hover tank, the sudden change in mass causing flakes of the armour plates to fall away. "Fire! Bring that thing down!" She yelled, unleashing a biotic flare, and the rest of the squad begin pouring everything they had at the exposed tank.
But it was still not enough. She was about to order the retreat when four beams of mass accelerator fire slammed into the side of the tank, finally making it explode into a blue ball of plasma. "Now that was a though nut to crack!" sounded the cheerful voice of Cortez over the comms.
"Thank you guys!" She sighed in relief as the Kodiak shuttles hovered into view only to hear Joker's worried voice in her ear. "Commander, the enemy got a corvette coming your way! Get in the Kodiaks ASAP while I bring the Normandy down to scoop you up! Cortez, Goldstein, prepare for evasive manoevers. that thing is coming in fast!"
