Valkyrie's Song Chapter 4
Breached
Valkyrie's Song is a Mass Effect Fanfiction by Eisen. Mass Effect belongs to Bioware.
It all felt like a dream. She remembered seeing her mother's familiar blue-black hardsuit through the scope. Through the visor of the armour she was wearing. Through the eyes of an assassin. She had done all she could then: overridden the assassin's medigel dispensers. Locked the actuating points, discharged the defibrillators…. None of it had helped.
When her eyes were open, she saw everything, but noticed nothing. The people on the Einstein just moved around on their usual business, hurried otherwise or not. Most of them looked at her with surprised expressions. They never said anything - they might have shouted something. She was long past them by then.
When they were closed, it was like a video, stuck on a loop like an old reel from two centuries before. Her Mother's familiar armour stepping through oily black smoke, rifle scanning. White glare, the muzzle flash of a high caliber round accelerated through mass-effect fields. Her Mother staggering, fumbling with her free hand towards where Eris knew the medigel catch to be. Her Mother, ablative chestpiece cracked and weeping, falling to a knee before toppling over.
She was in the CIC of the ship, half-sitting on the floor, half-kneeling, with her feet splayed out to the sides. She could not remember how she had got there. She remembered running out of her family's rooms, the rest was just gone. At some point the helmet had been removed - It was lying in the crook of her foot forlornly. Anderson was in front of her. He had his hand on her shoulder and was speaking to her. She could not understand what he was saying, or she could not hear it. She could not feel his hand. Of course you can't feel his hand, genius, you're wearing armour...I wonder if Mom can feel something. She's also wearing armour. Funny, I can't feel anything, huh.
"Eris? Eris Shepard! Are you listening to me?"
Anderson's deep voice finally reached through the haze of nothing and gripped her. New tears started welling from her eyes and she could feel her sinuses getting blocked up and running again with that annoying feeling that made you want to punch your nose off so that it would just not run, because sniffing did not seem to work permanently enough.
"I'm not gonna pretend to be able to give you false hope, but you picked this up faster than any of our mission control; medevac is already inbound on her position. We'll do our best to save your Mom."
Eris sniffed hard, annoyed that she did not have any tissues. That her arm was encased in bloody armour. A handkerchief appeared in front of her. She gave Anderson a look of incomprehension.
"Just make sure I get it back eventually, those things aren't as easy to get out here as they are back home."
She nodded dumbly, blowing her nose and wiping away the tears. She was sure her face was a new level of blotchy...pale skin did not cater to pretty sobbing. A part of her mind recognised the attempts at focusing on menial things to try and block out the big ones, but she no longer cared. Or told herself that she didn't. Fuck! Fuck emotions! Fuck colonies in the middle of nowhere. Fuck fucking Batarians. Fuck backstabbing turncoat bitch assassin pricks. Fuck the fucking navy!
Her hand slammed into the metal floor. The offending surface did not give way though, but neither did her hand hurt. Fuck fucking fucked armour.
She sighed. She did not much care about what others thought of the scene she was likely making, but she wanted their eyes to go away. To stop with their semi-hidden pitying glances. She wanted to punch that assassin so hard that they would give birth to their face. She wanted to murder something. With her hands. And sob like fucking hell while doing it, blotches be damned.
She was halfway down the elevator back to their quarters when the ship shook and the soft blue light went off, replaced by a dull red one. Fuck.
~o~
"More medigel, stat!"
The voice drifted into Hannah's consciousness from far away. Far away and underwater, Who was under water? Was she under water? Was the person shouting underwater shouting? How do you shout underwater? She was probably the one underwater, since she wasn't the one shouting...was she?
"BP's dropping. Not fast but it looks like her body is shutting down."
"Like hell it is, check if the suit paddles are still working, set them up just in case."
Shutting down? Bodies had no business shutting down; her daughter would explain it to them properly. The only things that should shut down were computers, and that only when they would be off for too long to consider even hibernating. BP was a shitty name for a company in the twenty-second century. Nobody used petroleum anymore.
"No show on those paddles, sir. The entire plate's components are fucked."
"Shit. Fine, get the ones from the aux-kit charged up, we're not losing another soldier to this shithole. How much longer to the Einstein, Zondi?"
"Ten minutes, Sergeant."
"Make it five."
"I'll try."
"Fuck trying," another voice called, "your ancestors were taxi drivers, get this bucket going stupid like that."
Paddles? Why were they talking about paddles? It had been a while since she had last gone boating, it would be nice to go again. Maybe on their anniversary. Eris would understand. But first she needed a rest...just a small one. Eris would...understand.
"Brain activity is dropping again, sir"
"Dammit. Check the blood-oxygen levels. Fix shit if it needs fixing. I'll try and see what I can do about this stupid huge chest-crater."
"At least it didn't hit the heart."
"Fuck that, she's almost running on a lone lung. The only thing I'm grateful for is that the fucker didn't use tech ammo."
The voices faded. Hannah wondered who had left the hospital drama on….
~o~
"Brown, sitrep!"
Anderson bore down on the technician closest to him. First his best squad leader and friend go down to friendly fire, or blackops, or...some shit. Then the ship gets hit by something. He just wished it had not been Eris who had been witness to what she had been, even if it might save her mother's life. There were some things in the military you tried to keep compartmentalised. This was one of them. Girl had skill though, to pull off what she did.
"Mass Effect core is offline, sir. We're running on backup power and I can't reach engineering."
Fuck.
"Is Chauvet's squad ready to go?"
"Yes sir, checked with them just before you showed up."
"Good man, send them in, full zero-G gear. I want to know how we lost contact and power on our own ship when we're the only one on sensors. Have Falkenhein check all frequencies for anomalies."
"Aye aye, sir."
~o~
"Lee, have you made it to the extraction yet?" The garbled synthesised voice asked, the omni-tool comm's screen showing only static.
"Yes sir. All mission objectives accounted for."
"And you're sure that nobody saw anything?"
"Positive. I checked all systems beforehand, the only variable might be that Lieutenant Shepard, but she didn't see anything."
"You're wrong Lee."
"No I'm sure that she didn't see anything."
"Not her, Lee."
"What do you mean, was there a surviving Civvie or Pirate?"
"No, of course not. We're thorough, unlike you, Lee."
"So what the fuck are you accusing me of?"
"Your hardsuit Lee. It was hijacked. How did you let a prototype hardsuit running the Orpheus system get hacked?"
"I...what?"
"We were watching. The Lieutenant would have died had someone not interfered, Lee. Someone using a custom rebuild of the SANOS system over the Einstein's networks."
"So is there no extraction?"
"No."
"What the fuck man…what do I need to do, kill the dick who hacked the suit?"
"No, Lee, that will be taken care of in due course. You though, have become a liability. You will be taken care of now."
"The fuck, I thought you said no extra-"
The world rumbled, fire broiled. The small apartment building the planted soldier had taken cover in was gone. Dust filled the streets around it, coating walls, roads, pot-plants, small gardens and corpses in a fine layer of aircraft-grey dust.