Mass Affected
Disclaimer: Mass Effect owned by EA games and Bioware. Everything else either comes from my head or I have borrowed from ideas already in mainstream science.
This is an alternate universe story where humanity develops certain technologies, then discovers the Prothean archives and adapts but does not outright adopt everything about the Mass Effect. Expect differences from the canon systems alliance.
Chapter 2a: One wrong step
Pobius Octaculus walked up to the room with his newly assigned team members.
"Okay squad lyrik, with me!"
At that statement Gnaevius Vyrnnus gave a grin. His sub-tones implied that he did not view Pobius Octaculus as being worthy of being a squad leader.
"You may be the so called squad leader... Pobius, but it would be best if you stayed out of my way."
Upon saying that Gnaevius scraped his talons across the sides of his mandibles... it was the universal sign of a challenge in Turian culture and was also used as an insult, akin to calling someone a homosexual.
Pobius tried as hard as he could to maintain his military decorum, but the sight of Gnaevius had scared him. he had heard rumours that Gnaevius's older brother was a well-known mercenary commander as well as being a biotic. Biotics, especially Turian biotics were feared and shunned by most Turian's, so it seemed that Gnaevius was born with a hard shell. Saying someone had been born with a hard shell was a Turian metaphor to describe one was overly harsh or tough.
Gnaevius walked back to his men and shouted to his team as though he were the real squad leader. "Ok squad, we are going to follow this... painted boy into battle, i do not want any of you hurting him"
Pobius Octaculus knew that he was not very well liked aboard the P.F.S Quilinus and that was due to the fact that his father was a very well off political figure that used his finances or rather his bribes to ensure that Pobius was sent out on a vessel that would remain far away from any actual combat. The rest of the Turian's on this vessel were generally barefaced and viewed Pobius in disdain due to the fact that he was a 'marked one'. One thing that did not help Pobius was that his father had an anti-crime based agenda and quite a few of the Turian's aboard this vessel had connections to certain shady ventures. It was ironic to Pobius that his father who was supposedly anti-crime yet he was bribing the naval board to have his son sent on a vessel that would never see combat.
Pobius decided to address the squad on what to do. "Okay squad, i want you to ready your arms and i want V.I drones on the ready."
Gnaevius laughed. "V.I drones... are you a Turian or a coward? A true Turian faces the odds and triumphs over them! Something a marked one wouldn't know about."
Pobius really, really wanted to put Gnaevius in his place. That could not happen with all of Gnaevius's friends aboard the vessel because Pobius would end up dead very quickly. Pobius decided that the best action was to agree with Gnaevius, at least for now.
"Fine then, no V.I drones. If you end up dead remember that i warned you so"
Gnaevius grinned before he reached for his Banshee assault rifle made by the ERCS (Elanus Risk Control Services). It was the one of the few frontline service assault rifles of the Turian military and fired at 600 projectiles per minute, a standard fire rate all things considered.
"We are all ready and on standby... Pobius"
"Then move out"
-Five minutes later-
It took quite some time for the ship-board plasma cutters to weld their way through the hull, but when it did the ship board docking bay expanded outwards to cover the welds and to keep the vacuum of space from filling the enemy vessel.
Squad lyrik hastily made their way through the docking bay.
It was at that point that something struck against Pobius's armour which left an indentation on his armour plate as well as having enough brute force to give Pobius something that would bruise him in a day or two.
Pobius was initially afraid as his kinetic barrier should have protected him, but he had no time to worry about the situation as right now he had enemy aliens to fight off.
Pobius quickly rolled out of the way as he heard the sounds of several impacts striking against the wall. When Pobius knew that he was safe behind a metallic crate, he quickly turned his head to where the projectiles where coming from.
Pobius spotted five aliens, four of the five aliens were firing actual firearms which he could tell by the spherical muzzle blasts emerging from their gun's which was far different from the electrical emission of a mass accelerator, which stunned Pobius.
"Contact right, 15 klirek's!" shouted out Pobius to his helmets communication suite.
"We are getting on it!" was Gnaevius's reply.
Pobius quickly held out his head from the metallic crate, acquired a quick line of sight with the aliens, raised his weapon and fired a seven shot burst into the direction of the enemy.
The alien's kinetic barriers stopped Pobius's shots, but with the swift arrival of the rest of the squad things changed. The alien's position fell apart as powerful bursts of radiant blue light ripped through the barricade of steel crates and positioned them far away down through the narrow pathway.
Pobius knew Gnaevius had used his biotic's to push the metal crates away from the aliens before he himself created a biotic barrier to protect himself.
As the aliens were now fully exposed, Pobius and the squad delivered a withering volley of high velocity shots into the enemies. Their kinetic shields withered away and with it so too did the lives of the aliens. With only white and blue coloured cloth to cover them the rounds tore right through and they were then stained in red. Blood floated around in beautiful spheres in the zero gravity… The colour of the aliens blood was red it seemed.
It was then that Gnaevius walked up to one of the aliens fueled by his curiosity.
"Hmm, they are shaped suspiciously like the Asari. These are like a male version of asari and would have no place…"
Gnaevius then turned to face the squad before boasting. "If their females look like Asari though… then I just might give one of them a fuck!... hahahahaha"
The rest of the squad snickered and the dirtiest of the members of the squad gave a shouted hoot and some harsh words describing certain acts that Pobius would not want to think about. Even Pobius found himself laughing, if more to join in with the rest of the squad than anything else. In reality Pobius was shocked by the similarities between the Asari and the aliens when he too began to check on one of the downed aliens floating in the air.
Pobius turned his head when he was done investigating to see as Gnaevius reached for one of the alien's weapons before giving it a look over.
"See here squad… these alien's still use firearms. Primitive bastards… however it also seems they have mass accelerators too judging by that one's different looking gun" Gnaevius pointed his finger in the direction of a floating alien corpse. "That probably means that the rich or elite troops would carry the mass accelerators and the poorer troops would have the firearms. This means that if we can take out the mass accelerator armed ones then we are probably taking out their elite forces, them gone we can take the other aliens without as much trouble"
Gnaevius seemed delighted at the prospect of gaining a trophy, so he began to grasp the firearm with his talons and he held it in his arms.
Pobius quickly realised that he was having his 'commanding' thunder taken away from him. Pobius took the initiative to retake charge of the squad. "Gnaevius is right, if we can take out the mass accelerator armed ones first, then we can take out the rest with less effort. Let's move out"
Pobius quickly paced his way through the narrow pathway which then led to a bend. Pobius stopped roughly two meters away from the bend and lifted his talons into the air as a sign for the squad to stop. It was on this sort of occasion where a V.I drone would have been immensely useful.
"Metcus, Tultius… check around that bend"
Both of the soldiers slowly paced themselves to the edge of the bend.
Tultius peaked his head down through the bend to observe what was on the other side.
An enemy alien spotted Tultius's head and shouted out to the room in it's strange alien tongue. Tultius and Metcus quickly rushed out to the bend and leveled their assault rifles onto the alien and fired several short bursts.
The alien was not wearing a kinetic barrier so he was killed upon the first bursts that struck it, its red blood burst outwards and formed spheres that floated around.
Several squad members rushed out without permission to assist Tultius and Metcus.
It was at this point that Pobius heard a new sound emerge as he was rushing in to stop the disobedient squad members.
To Pobius it was a sound that he had never heard before, it was unlike any sound that he had ever heard but it was a noise that would forever be struck into his mind.
With that one droning sound came death, Pobius realised. Flashes of brightly illuminated red projectiles flew through the air and struck upon the hull plating. Some projectiles bounced off or spat out backwards in a dazzling display of sparks. Pobius knew that those of the squad who were on the bend where dead, surviving through such a sheer amount of projectiles would be nearly impossible.
Pobius heard screams coming in not from his communications suite, but through the cracked helmet visors of several crewmembers.
The sound stopped and an eerie quietness surrounded the whole vessel.
Pobius decided to order the rest of the squad to retreat, so he spoke into his suit's communication's suite to the commodore.
"Commodore Tannian, the aliens have killed several of our squad, I am asking for permission to retreat back to the Quilinus"
Gnaevius heard the discussion through his communications suite and he would not have it. "My squad is not retreating from this fight. No Turian shows his back to the enemy 'till they are dead!"
Commodore Tannian offered his retort back to the disruptive soldier. "Gnaevius… disobey one more of my orders and you will be cleaning the latrine for a week. This is not your squad, it is Pobius's squad and it will remain his squad until I see fit… disobey an order and you will see to it that you will never be squad leader ever again." Commodore Tannian then addressed back to Pobius. "Pobius you and your squad have permission to return back. Be sure to do anything in your path to delay the aliens when retreating. I am sure that you are actually knowledgeable about hierarchy military standards and that you would know what I mean by delaying actions"
"Yes sir…" Pobius cleared his throat before reciting his memorised portion of the Hierarchy military standards "Upon retreat Turian forces are to do anything that they can do to delay the enemy forces and save the hierarchy more time… laying mines, setting traps and sabotaging equipment are the usual delaying actions used"
Commodore Tannian laughed before speaking back. "Indeed, be sure to teach Gnaevius how the real hierarchy does things... teach that disobedient 'Cabal' dog how real Turians do things!"
Pobius grinned. He really wanted to reprimand Gnaevius by telling him that if they had brought a V.I drone with them then the loss of Turian lives could have been avoided, but doing so would have been really bad for the morale of the squad and would only cause Gnaevius to lash out in anger which could lead to Pobius's accidental demise.
Pobius turned to face Vomius, one of the squad members.
"Vomius, you still have those proximity charges… yes?"
"Yes sir"
"Pass them over to me, I do not trust any of you enough to do this"
Vomius quickly threw the pack of three proximity mines to Pobius.
Pobius quickly tore open the tied sash that held the mines together with his talons.
With that done Pobius quickly ordered for the squad to retreat whilst he would lay down the mines and retreat later. Pobius was always on the alert for spots most suited for placing down proximity mines as he was rushing down the same hallway that lead to the docking bay of the Quilinus.
Pobius found a rather large crate that had a broken off side with a large hole, so he lifted the crate on its side and carefully placed his first proximity mine into the hole with the proximity sensors going through the hole in the crate. It would be hard for the pursuers to spot and it would be nearly impossible to avoid the sensor beam to straying feet... the result would be deadly.
With the mine laid out, Pobius quickly started retreating back to the entry point.
Upon reaching the bodies of the floating aliens near the docking bay, Pobius had a sudden hit of inspiration.
"Hehehe" laughed Pobius in a malicious grin, if there was one thing that many Turians forgot about Pobius, it was that he could be vicious himself to a scary degree.
Pobius placed one of his proximity mines onto the chest of the alien and then secured the mine around the aliens hands. If Pobius was lucky a curious alien would come over to investigate the strange object in the alien's hand's... and boom.
With one mine left in his hand and with nowhere else to go Pobius decided to go with a rather lazy but also potentially deadly option. Pobius decided to throw the proximity mine up on the roof near what seemed to be a light. If Pobius was lucky the aliens would see the proximity mine as being an addition to the light fixture and that the aliens would probably presume it was some sort of smoke detector or some such thing. Additionally with this mine being in close proximity to the second mine, they could potentially both detonate and do much more damage than normal. It would also be much harder for the aliens to detect both mines without detonating one or the other in the process.
Pobius retreated back to the docking bay and rushed down as fast as he could.
Upon reaching the ship he was greeted by a fully crewed palisade constructed out of cargo containers. Guns of various sizes were drawn up on him as he entered through but they were all quickly lowered upon realising that he was Turian.
Chapter 2b: Feet deep in blood
Pvt Christopher Bascomb could not escape from his own curiosity… he had to know about the aliens and what they looked like. So pvt Christopher broke from his formation and did a quick investigation.
Pvt Christopher unceremoniously removed the cracked visor from one of the floating aliens. Upon the removal of the visor Christopher saw a predatory looking bird/raptor like face that had weird mandible like protrusions coming out from the side of its cheeks. To top that off was the line of razor sharp, pointed teeth that were the stuff of nightmares.
"Ugly fuckers aren't they?" Christopher heard a voice from his back so he turned his head.
"Captain!" Christopher quickly stood up and gave a salute as he noticed who the person was who spoke to him.
"At ease… damned good armour these aliens seem to have. Seems the armour managed to hold up quite well against a few 7.62 rounds. If our boys were using SLAP rounds it would probably be a different story, probably would've torn right on through the armour"
Christopher decided to speak up, even though he was afraid of a reprimand... after all he had never had a captain who talked so openly before. "I wonder what the xeno's will tell their buddies back on the vessel… at the same time though they might have fucking plasma miniguns aboard their vessel for all we know"
Captain Roderick gave a good laugh before giving a reply. "No shit, fifty rounds every second will fuck up anybody on the opposite end of that barrel. I would not want to imagine the amount of blunt force trauma all that armour couldn't protect against… I bet you the surviving aliens will be frightened and they know that we have a fucking bitch-slap device aboard our ship ready to go at all times... If they have plasma miniguns though... well that would be very fucking bad for us"
Christopher began to reach his hand to grab at one of the alien's guns when the Captain quickly grasped Christophers hand before he could touch the alien weapon.
"You are not touching alien ordinance on this god-damned vessel, you hear me… it could be rigged to go off on contact"
Before Christopher could offer up a few words in his defence, the sound of a series of small explosion's resounded through the hull and caused the room to slightly vibrate momentarily.
"Fuck!" shouted the Captain.
Christopher and Roderick as well as a fraction of the naval officers stopped what they were doing and rushed down the hallway to investigate the source of the disturbance.
They reached the site of the first explosion about a minute later. They saw carbon scoring on a half metre length of hallway floor as well as the scattered debris from what looked to be a crate. Floating around were large globules of red blood. Two soldiers were floating around but they did not know if they were dead or not.
Captain Roderick rushed to the sight of the bodies and he quickly held out his fingertips against the necks of the floating soldiers to get their vital signs.
"No heartbeat… this one is dead" Roderick turned around to repeat the same method on the second soldier. "Same as the last… no heartbeat. Two KIA, move out"
When the soldiers and naval troops continued onwards they saw the site of the last two explosions.
Organs, intestines and limbs of blown up soldiers were scattered around here and there whilst the whole region was speckled in floating blood globules. The fucked up bit would be that to get through to the enemy vessel you would have to walk through all that blood and the mess of gore.
Fortunately through all that mess there were several survivors who seemed to have been knocked unconscious from the blast.
Christopher rushed off to a nearby corner to vomit. Puking in zero gravity was never a pleasant experience, especially when the vile substance could float around and hit you, which several globules of vomit decided to do by placing themselves onto his combat armour.
"God-damned alien motherfuckers!" blurted out Roderick at the violent display.
"I think we have two survivors, get the stretcher!" shouted out a naval soldier.
Roderick quickly thought about the prospects and realized that it would be a waste of time to get a stretcher.
"No stretchers and no medics, there is no god damned time… they might as well be dead when the aliens get to them"
"But…" replied the naval soldier.
"No but's navy boy, you do your fucking job and you follow my fucking orders… got it!" rebutted Roderick.
Roderick did not want to go through all that putrid body matter to get to enemy vessel, so he opened up his communication suite and dialled in the frequency to Admiral Ryan's Omni-tool.
"Captain Roderick, I take it that the boarding action is going well?"
Roderick gave back his honest reply. "We have several KIA and what could be two concussed soldiers from enemy exploding ordinance… I want you to turn on the gravity"
Admiral Ryan's face lit up in curiosity.
"Why?"
Roderick quickly took a picture of the mess with his omni-tool and sent it to the Admiral.
"Fucking hell! I will get one of the engineers to turn the gravity back on but it may take a few minutes… kill some fucking aliens for this shit!"
It took about two minutes but eventually the ship began to receive gravity. They could tell by the fact that all the blood and the body parts began to fall down to the floor in a great sloshing pool of blood and gore.
Roderick and the rest of the men continued forwards through the narrow hallway.
Pvt Christopher closed his eyes as he was forced to wade through the torrent of blood and gore that lined the floor. The sound and the sensation of stepping on bodily organs on accident were embedded deeply in Christopher's mind… this was beyond fucked up. Christopher knew that one day he just might wake up on the opposite end of a shrink from witnessing this sort of fucked up shit.
After he managed to wade through it, he felt a pat on the back from one of the nearby soldiers.
"Take a deep breath pukey, eight deep breaths will get you through anything"
Christopher took in a deep breath and calmed himself down. By the end of his sixth breath Christopher began to feel much calmer and ready, by the eight he was a new man, calm and assured knowing that he fought for humanity, that he was fighting for the right cause.
"Feeling better pukey?"
Christopher grinned before he turned to speak to the soldier. "Yeah… my name isn't pukey and my head is back in the game"
Roderick waved his fist through the air before he spoke to Christopher and the nearby soldier.
"Enough chatter, we have an alien fucking vessel to board and i want to be there pronto"
Roderick turned his head to ensure that all the soldiers were ready to go. "So who is ready to enter the lion's den and kick some fucking alien ass?"
Roderick then took a moment to think, before a hint of inspiration entered his mind.
"Have we got any exo-suiter's armed with riot shields?"
One of the soldiers gave a speedy reply. "I think we have two of them... they would be good defense against fucking mass accelerators, that's for fucking sure."
"Then get them to get their asses's over here as soon as fucking possible."
See you later... Space cowboy
So what did you think?