There was a time in Humanity's history where they would have never conceived experiencing the technology they now possessed. With the advent of the mass effect many possibilities have opened up in technology to the point where a man in the early 20th century might have considered it sorcery. The notion of biotics would have no doubt fueled that idea further with humans being able to manipulate mass with their minds and tear foes asunder with a passing thought.

Though magic is an element in story books now and nothing more, in the age before the Great Sleep, sorcery was quite real for the Necrons.

During their first harvest, the Necrontyr encountered many species who dabbled in the arcane arts and manipulated forces with their minds; torrents of bellowing fire, terrible hurricanes, and quaking earth. These unforeseen energies were the greatest impediment to the Necron's advance across the galaxy and garnered the most attention from the C'tan.

Realizing they could never win alone these various races formed an alliance and for once since the C'tan first laid their hand on the first world they consumed the tide had turned. The logic defying weapons of the Necrons clashed with the will manipulating forces of the organic races, tearing worlds asunder on a cataclysmic scale that's too awesome for one man to dictate with the English language.

The C'tan, though powerful, did not want to risk their new empire to the upstart psychic races and began a plan to dampen their power through a network of grand pylons. These constructs were to interfere with the brain patterns that activated the abilities of the adepts, thus rendering them completely helpless.

Before the web could be completed, however, an unexpected foe had risen up against the C'tan and the plan couldn't be executed, leaving the network largely unfinished.

So it was that pockets of unrestrained psychic potential could be developed around the galaxy; abilities that allowed an organic being to manipulate the forces around them to great effect. At first these supposed psychics were disregarded by the rest of civilized space, counting it as nothing more than illusions and showmanship, but with each new race's discovery of biotic potential within their respective communities one wonders if there is perhaps not more that the mortal mind can achieve.


"The Reapers couldn't kill me and neither will you, synthetic!"

Glass from the engineering deck shattered as it felt the force of Javik's biotics. The Prothean warrior flowed with malice and let loose a bolt of power from his arm that followed after the shards. It hit squarely into the front rank of the Necron warriors and tossed one of the metal ancients aside, disrupting the attack momentarily.

"Liara, singularity, now!"

"You don't have to tell me, Shepard!"

The Asari broke from her cover behind the shuttle and focused her power on a single point in the middle of the squad. The black vortex materialized, and expanded, throwing the Necrons off their balances as they resisted.

A few of the engineers and hangar crew had grabbed Avenger assault rifles before breaking cover to take advantage of the Necrons' brief reprieve from attack. They rained fire down the aisle, peppering the warriors with shots they couldn't see were bouncing off the necrodermis. Shepard joined them, pouring into the front ranks along with EDI, and took notice of their armor. His omni-tool prepped an incinerating charge and let it crash into the crowd. The projectile splashed all over the synthetics and the Commander shouted a focus fire order on those that were aflame.

The machines struggled to get free from the pull of the singularity, but it had not lifted them up helplessly. Liara took a second to be impressed at their endurance, where only larger constructs could resist entirely the embrace of her biotic power. Not even Geth troopers could do what they were doing right now.

Not waiting a moment more for her singularity to break, Liara ignited it with a biotic warp. The explosion threw the entire squadron down to the ground as warriors crashed into one another from the center going out. Their green eyes went dim.

There was a pause of silence as the crew were assessing what in the hell had just happened before Joker chimed into Shepard's communicator.

"Commander, the hell is going on down there? I got warning lights and red covering the lower decks."

"We were attacked, Joker, by whoever runs this world."

"Whoa, is everyone alright?"

"We're fine, can't say the same about the hangar."

The shuttle and the hangar were damaged beyond recognition; to say it looked like a hunk of Swiss cheese wouldn't be far from the truth. The place was perforated by unfamiliar impact points. Shepard rubbed two fingers against one such area on the shuttle and noticed there were no signs of a projectile. A piece of the shuttle was just stripped away as if a hand merely took a bit of it and ran.

"What now, Shepard? This isn't something that can be fixed in a day," Liara stated.

"We'll have to come up with a new plan, but first, where did they come from?"

"Oh, you're right, that nearly slipped my mind."

"EDI, how far are we from the-"

"Commander," one of the crewmates shouted as he pointed toward the warriors.

The squad turned around to witness their supposed dead foe rising back on their feet. Green energies seeped out of their joints and eyes as they self-repaired; one by one they all got up and seemed to not take mind to the damage they had sustained. In fact, there was no damage to speak of. Their armor shifted, repositioned itself, and healed the worst wounds as if it were an organism.

"That is impossible," said EDI.

The Commander and crew didn't give that statement enough time to be appreciated before ducking once more for cover as the emerald blasts showered them once more.

"I need a head count! Everyone not in the hangar I need you ASAP, we're under attack!"

Multiple voices responded at once over the sound of gauss pulling and vaporizing the diminishing cover around them.

"Talli and I are in the war room, Shepard, we're on the way."

"Garrus, grab the widow maker and position yourself on the engineering deck. Talli, join Garrus with the plasma shotgun. James, where the hell are you?"

"Right here, Shep."

James appeared right next to his Commander, fully armored and loaded for action.

"Was just getting suit up."

Shepard rolled his eyes and got on the com once more, "Javik, can you disrupt them again like last time?"

He looked up toward Javik's room and saw that the warriors were focusing more on his position than theirs, clearly having learned from before.

"They seem to consider me a threat now, Commander, as they should!"

"I got his back, Shepard," called down Ashley up on engineering. She was attempting to lay on suppressing fire down on the warriors, but this proved difficult to do to the oncoming machines as the bullets were but mosquitoes trying to bite the hide of a rhino.

The third deck was getting shredded and Javik's cover was quickly reduced to almost nothing, forcing the Prothean to shift every other second. Shepard made a series of short inputs on his omni-tool and a holographic drone materialized before hovering high above them. The orange orb managed to let fly a missile before being destroyed by a single gauss blast. The projectile hit square into the peak of the advancing warrior force, making them stumble back a bit and buying the Commander time to change positions.

EDI used this second to attempt a hack on one of the undying machines. With thousands of tries achieved in that moment of time the advanced AI found that this was impossible to do and realized that these were not like the machines they knew, but an entirely new life form built with technology she couldn't understand.

"Fire in the hole," James called out before lobbing a grenade over the crate he was behind. The pineapple hit one of the warriors in the head before it exploded, knocking out that one machine back to the ground and pushing back the others a bit. With the soldier being so close to the advancing force, the warriors focused on his position.

Two of the crewmen broke from cover and tried to take down the lead Necron closest to James with their assault rifles. The bullets continued to bounce off their bodies and a few of the warriors in the rear directed their fire toward the foolish would-be heroes. The gauss flayer hit the shoulder of one of the men, stripping it clean off as it pulled him away from cover. The crew member didn't have time to scream in pain before more streams of emerald flayed off the rest of his body to nothingness. The other man, now stunned with fear, dropped his gun and collapsed behind the crates as he witnessed his comrade being vaporized right before his eyes.

A few of Shepard's crew witnessed what happened and were just as fearful. Ashley whispered a prayer to herself and Liara the same.

"James, get out of there," the Commander shouted.

Before James could respond that he'd be fine, the crate his back was against instantly vaporized out of existence and he stumbled backwards. He looked up to see the tall metal creatures, standing over him, and the ends of their barrels. Shepard sent out an electric pulse followed by assault rifle fire, trying to direct their attention, but it failed to deter them.

Lt. Vega stared deep into those sinister green eyes and saw no life behind them. The world around him began to stop and he could hear his own heartbeat slow down in anticipation for what was about to happen next. In all the things that he had done on this mission with Shepard, he had begun to feel invincible, like not even the Reapers could stop them from accomplishing what everyone else thought was impossible. Now, here on a previously unknown world to the rest of the galaxy, he was going to die to a faceless enemy.


Author's Note:

Meanwhile on the tabletop...

"Tek, how the hell did you live that?"

"What?"

"I literally just fired a big assed beam of antimatter right at your guys, Imperial Guardsmen I add, and all they had to do was duck behind cover...and they're alright?"

"2+ saves man, it's awesome."

"This gun has literally busted open adamantium gates and it can't bypass a fricken rockrete wall with a gun emplacement? Can't I destroy it or something?"

"Newp, just the quad-gun."

"I can't believe I didn't even get one, not a single one, the pie plate was over half of that blob and you made all the saves."

*tongue click*

This is the conversation that followed after my first encounter with an aegis defense line and testing it with my Doomsday Ark. The guardsmen, like the groundhogs they are, were able to perform an effective defense by simply ducking behind the wall and getting back up during their turn when their general issued the order. Ever since then I've had a hateful relationship with aegis defense lines and concrete walls altogether.