"REPEAT, SECTOR FIVE IS LOST! WE ARE UP TO OUR NECKS IN REAPER TR-" The panicked transmission cut out suddenly to the roaring shrieks of Ravager shots and Susan Rizzi winced. There wasn't time to do anything else. The Cannibal a meter away lunged towards her, its jaw distending even as its flesh dissolved in her Annihilation Field. She met its attack with a Biotic Throw and triggered a blast that tore apart the Cannibal and the husk right behind it. A Marauder poked up from behind the counter it was crouching behind and Elijah Wu slammed into it with a Biotic Charge before decapitating the harvested turian.
"Clear!" Wu called once he checked the kitchen of the diner they'd just fought through. Rizzi sagged down, exhausted. The Otte evacuation was not going according to plan. Two days into the evacuation the Reapers had arrived, as Intelligence had put it, "ahead of schedule". Ahead of schedule, Rizzi thought bitterly. Like they'd showed up early for a tea party before the snacks were ready.
The last nineteen hours had been a grueling marathon of combat as Reaper forces hurled themselves wave after wave at the perimeter around Touchdown City. Rizzi had expended more energy than she could ever remember in such a window of time. Alliance forces were fighting their hardest to hold Reaper troops back from the terrified civilians waiting for evacuation at the spaceport. The outermost sectors of the city were already lost; now squads were playing deadly games of cat and mouse in and around the densely packed buildings of the city.
Major Hadra's steely voice directed reinforcements to Sector Five, which didn't have a direct impact on Rizzi's squad which was holding Sector Three. The blasted section had been a residential zone full of apartment blocks and the associated buildings of urban life: restaurants, shops, and recreation centers. A day of intense battle had reduced the smaller buildings to so much rubble and the larger ones to empty shells.
The diner Rizzi and Wu occupied sat on one side of a large plaza in Sector Three. They'd cleared three similar buildings in the last ten minutes. The plaza itself formed a natural bottleneck for the roads leading deeper into the city. That fact made it imperative they hold it.
"Nothing out here," Lisa Marx said. She was across the plaza in a tall apartment building putting its elevation advantage to good use. To Rizzi's surprise Maiena K'Thane was staying close to Marx, acting as spotter and close quarters defense. At Marx's report both Rizzi and Wu collapsed into diner seats, grateful for the respite. Gunfire, faint and distant, testified that not all the sectors were clear.
Rizzi reached up and removed her faceplate, seeing Wu do the same. They looked at each other tiredly. Wu had apparently taken what she'd said on the Salvador to heart: he'd stayed close and worked with the squad so far. She brought out one of the small packets of concentrated nutrients issued to biotics with a grimace. She'd never liked the sludge-like texture or the flavors. She tore the packet open and squeezed the contents into her mouth. The label said it was orange flavored, but in truth she hadn't been able to taste anything other than the sharp tang of adrenaline on her tongue for the last six hours.
"I hate these things," she said.
Wu nodded. "Give me real food any day." Rizzi caught herself staring at him. He looked tired of course, but that wasn't what stood out to her. He seemed more… alive somehow, after a day of combat, than he did on the Salvador. Wu grimaced as he swallowed his own nutrient gel and looked at the label. "Do these things ever taste like what they claim to you?"
Rizzi shook her head as she checked her weapon. Wu wiped a smear of blood off his faceplate. They sat there in silence for a moment before their comms crackled to life.
"Sector Three, come in," said Major Hadra.
"This is Sector Three," Wu said.
"We have a civilian convoy driving up Solar Boulevard towards the spaceport. They're about five minutes away from your position, and scans read Reaper forces closing in on them. Rendezvous and escort them past your position. Hold hostiles at that plaza."
"Yes sir."
Rizzi hauled herself to her to her feet as she locked her faceplate into place. "Once more unto the breach," she said.
"Heads up," Marx said. "I see that convoy. Looks like three vehicles, wheeled. Cargo haulers of some kind."
"Direction and distance?" Wu asked.
"Straight down the road to your west, call it… half a kilometer and closing."
"We're on our way," Rizzi said as they started moving down the road. "You got a clear field of fire from there?"
"Good enough."
"Stay there and cover us." Rizzi couldn't see far as the road was cluttered with abandoned vehicles, wrecks, and debris.
"I've got hostile movement here," Marx said. "Closing in on the convoy from nearby buildings." Her Widow roared, its crack echoing down the street. "They're slowing down… oh, damn. There's a bunch of wrecks blocking the road ahead."
"I see it," Rizzi said. It looked like six vehicles had collided, piled one on another, and then burst into flames, their charred carcasses straddling the road. She couldn't even see over the top of the wrecks.
Marx's rifle roared again. "They're bringing out the big stuff. I see at least three Brutes moving towards that convoy."
"Any ideas?" Wu said as they ran up to the wrecks. They could hear the convoy engines approaching on the other side followed by brakes.
"As a matter of fact I do," Rizzi said. "Stand back." She walked to the center of the road as Wu stepped away. She took a deep breath and activated her Annihilation Field.
She'd always thought the title of 'Fury' for her special adept training had been an inside joke. Of all the military specializations the Alliance fielded the Furies could least afford to give in to mindless rage. The Annihilation Fields they employed were incredibly dangerous without the proper control. The Field itself was just a tightly focused and localized Spatial Distortion effect that tore things apart at the molecular level. That part was simple enough.
No, the real trick to the Annihilation Field was not making it annihilate absolutely everything around her all of the time. And that took a focus bordering on a zen state, where she could maintain the effect while shaping the Field on a nearly subconscious level to only affect what she wanted to. Rizzi had spent over a month in training unintentionally dissolving obstacles and dummies until she'd mastered herself.
Now she forced herself to release that control. It felt wrong, like trying to do calligraphy with her off hand or typing with her toes. She consciously extended the field out to its full extent and dropped her mental barriers on its effects. Then she moved to the barrier formed by the wrecks. The effect was immediate.
The Field extended in a hemisphere several meters around her. It started flaying the charred vehicles apart everywhere they came into contact. Flakes of metal, plastic, and ceramics drifted loose from their structures before the Field rendered those down into pieces too small for the eye to see. She kept moving, pushing the Annihilation Field further into the wrecks and dissolving a path through.
The Field demanded all her concentration when used like this. Dimly she heard Wu yelling at the colonists on the other side and their panicked responses. It took nearly a minute to shear through all the wreckage and when she finally finished carving the path she dismissed the Field with a relieved gasp. The two refugees in the lead vehicle's control cabin looked at her in amazement.
"Go!" she shouted at them. "Keep following this road past the plaza to the spaceport! Hurry!"
She stepped to the side to clear the path. The driver needed no more encouragement and gunned the engine, sending the rectangular transport forward. Rizzi heard shouts of relief and hope from inside. The other two transports followed quickly just in time. The cries of approaching Reaper troops echoed from nearby buildings.
"You've got incoming," Marx said. "Cannibals with Marauder support from the left. Brute's coming from behind that shop to your right." A shot rang out. "Scratch one Cannibal."
Rizzi fell back behind the wreckage. She wished she could plug the path she'd carved but there was no time. Wu crouched behind the wreckage on one side of the opening, his pistol out as he covered her.
"That was impressive," he said. Rizzi felt a burst of irrational pride and forced it aside.
"I don't think I could do that again," she said. "Not without eating an entire boar and sleeping for a week."
"I've never had boar before," Wu said. Rizzi snapped her head to him. "Never mind. I must be more tired than I thought."
"If we get out of this alive, we'll have boar," Rizzi said as she activated her Annihilation Field with familiar constraints. "There was this restaurant back on Earth that-" She stopped. "We'll find it somehow. Maybe the Citadel has some."
Wu didn't respond. Something in his posture, some… intangible shift in the atmosphere, told her the mention of Earth had just triggered something in him. The cries of the Reaper troops grew louder.
"They're right on top of you!" Marx said. The first shots tore ragged little holes through the wreckage. The next ones soared through the gap. As soon as the volley stopped Rizzi swung out of cover and hit the Cannibal charging through the path with a Biotic Throw. It flew backwards with its skull crushed by the bolt of force. Three other Cannibals took its place.
"Mine," Wu said. His voice was a snarl that chilled Susan. His sword was already glowing in his hand as he stepped from cover. A round hit his personal barriers and drew no reaction. He swung the sword, unleashing a biotic wave that rippled down the gap in the wreckage and shredded the Cannibals. Several other Reaper troops attempted to overrun the gap but were cut down by Rizzi and Wu's combined biotics.
It went quiet abruptly. Rizzi and Wu both peeked down the gap. Only corpses greet them.
"Marx?" Rizzi said. "Can you see anything?"
"No. It looks like they pulled ba- Wait. There's a Brute coming up on that wreckage from the right. I don't have a shot."
They heard the clatter of metallic claws nearby. Rizzi focused her biotics, ready for the beast to show itself through the gap. There was a crash from the right, and then the wrecks on that side of the road started shaking. The loud noise of claws punching through metal sounded several times. Rizzi's eyes widened as she realized the Brute was climbing over the barrier.
"Back!" she called. Rizzi and Wu tumbled backwards in biotic blinks as one of the stacked wrecks flipped over and landed where they'd just been. The Brute leapt over the barricade with a roar. Its claws punched holes in the pavement as it landed and sprang forward.
Rizzi and Wu each dodged to one side of the charging Brute. It skidded to a halt, trying to reorient on one of them, and then staggered as Marx put a Widow round into it. Rizzi hit the Brute with a channeled warp effect and moved closer as Wu put a Phase Disrupter blast into its leg.
"Rizzi, behind you," K'Thane said. The Fury spun around to see a dozen husks swarming out of the building closest to her. She sprinted towards them, blinking into the midst of the pack to catch as many of them in her Annihilation Field as possible. She hit the closest husk with a Throw to trigger a biotic blast that knocked down its neighbors, and followed up with methodic Throws against active husks, triggering chains of biotic explosions.
Her breath came in deep gasps by the time she realized the husks were all dead and dismembered. The Brute was down too when she turned back to it. Wu had just finished sheathing his sword. Several deep slashes marred the Brute's arms and head while holes the size of her fist showed where Marx's sniper fire landed.
"What happened to the other attackers?" Wu said. Rizzi waved a hand at the husk remnants. "What about the Cannibals?"
"I didn't see any when that Brute showed up," Rizzi said. "They might have-"
"Get out of there," Marx interjected. "I've got movement all around those buildings surrounding you! A lot of movement!"
The two biotics started retreating back up the street. As if they knew the surprise was gone, the hunting calls of Reaper troops filled the air. They were many, loud, and close.
A pair of Cannibals burst out of a ruined building front onto the street twenty meters away, spraying with their arm cannons. The armor plating covering their distended bodies showed they'd been busy feasting on corpses. The left Cannibal dropped when Marx burst its head with a Widow round. Rizzi knocked the other back with a Throw and Wu put three rounds into it before it could rise.
"Keep going!" Marx said. The cries grew louder and weapon fire lanced in from ruined buildings as more Cannibals, husks, and Marauders poured out and rushed up the street. Their numbers grew by the moment and Rizzi and Wu found themselves forced back, keeping low and using whatever over they could. Whenever foes approached too closely they unleashed biotics to drive them back and retreated again towards the plaza.
"Command, this is Sector Five!" Rizzi heard Marx reporting at one point. "We have a Reaper assault coming towards the plaza, estimate company level strength or better!"
"Copy that," Major Hadra said. "Reinforcements are en route to your position. Hold that plaza, Lieutenant! We lose that; the Reapers will have a path straight to the spaceport."
"They'd better get here fast, sir!"
Rizzi lost track of the fight as the Reaper troops kept attacking. Her world compressed itself to targets and focusing on her biotics. There was no end to the stream of Cannibals and husks pouring out of buildings and charging up the street.
She popped up from behind a wrecked car and threw a biotic pulse to hurl back a husk clambering over another wreck towards her position. A form slid next to her from behind. Her biotics still cooling down, she brought her weapon around-
It was Maiena K'Thane. Encased in glowing orange tech armor, the asari had her own Annihilation Field active as she gave Rizzi a nod and signaled her to cover the right. Rizzi blinked to a pile of debris next to a blasted building. K'Thane reached over the car and snatched a Cannibal that had just run up to it. The commando grappled it to her feet and crushed its head with a biotically empowered punch.
Rizzi spun out of cover and blinked to a Marauder directing nearby Cannibals in its gurgling tongue. She floored it with a biotic blast and flung herself behind a nearby wall as the Cannibals fired at her. The Marauder pushed itself up with one arm- or tried to as the arm shattered and dissolved under the influence of her aura. Rizzi stayed in place as the Marauder collapsed to the ground once more and disintegrated.
A blur slammed a Cannibal into Rizzi's aura where it started falling apart. It was Wu, and he hit the nearest group of enemies with a Phase Disrupter blast before laying in with his sword. Rizzi hit a Cannibal rushing up behind him with a Throw. A second later Wu returned the favor by Charging a husk coming up behind Rizzi.
Rizzi couldn't get a sense of the ebb and flow of the bigger battle. There were too many enemies vying for immediate attention. Each foe she dropped was replaced by another. She found herself giving ground bit by bit as every time she waited for her biotics to recharge, every time she took cover to allow her barriers time to recharge, the Reaper forces advanced just a little more.
"Hold this position!" K'Thane said. Rizzi blasted a husk off her and looked around. She was back in the plaza. When had that happened? She cursed as she saw the mass of Reaper troops pressing in. The hulking forms of three Brutes stood out like dreadnoughts among cruisers. They charged, flinging aside wreckage, debris, and even smaller troops in their way.
What followed was a blur to Rizzi. She blinked between Cannibals and husks, annihilating them with her biotics. They scattered as Brutes hurled themselves at them. She and Wu kept a Brute staggered with repeated biotic blasts as he Charged it again and again from different angles as her aura tore it apart. K'Thane dodged and flowed around the Brute she fought with such grace it looked like she was performing a dance around it as her own Annihilation Field weakened it for Marx's shots.
The last Brute jolted Rizzi out of her near trance-like state by plowing into her from behind and tossing her four meters through the air. Her training kicked in and she tucked into a roll as she hit the ground, allowing her armor to absorb some of the impact. The Brute swung around towards her, glaring at her with synthetic eyes. It tensed its legs to charge again.
A thunderous roar drowned out all other sounds of the battle. It made Marx's Widow sound like a silenced pistol in comparison. Rizzi felt the shockwave of it compress her chest.
The Brute's head exploded in a burst of flame, smoke, and organic matter. The smoke cleared to reveal its entire upper torso gone, obliterated in a single shot. A stream of rounds scythed through nearby Reaper troops, cutting them to pieces. Small arms fire battered other enemies in the plaza as a Mako armored vehicle rolled into the plaza with a troop escort.
The Mako's presence decisively swung the battle in the Alliance's favor. It quickly cut down the remaining Reaper troops with a combination of cannon and co-axial machine gun fire while the accompanying marines mopped up scattered survivors. Before long the plaza was covered with enemy corpses. The Mako and its team withdrew, probably off to another sector. There was always one sector or another in dire need of reinforcements. The exhausted ground team sagged to the ground.
A roar behind her turned Rizzi's head to see a wounded Cannibal drawing a bead on her with its weapon. A burst of rounds stitched its side and knocked its aim off target, the round soaring past Rizzi's head. A second burst of rounds immediately after riddled its face and the harvested batarian dropped unceremoniously.
"Rizzi? Is that you?"
She turned at the voice. "Michaels? I haven't seen you since-"
"N7 graduation. Feels like a lifetime ago, eh?"
Rizzi nodded at the heavily armored figure in the middle of the plaza and walked over to him. His features were concealed by the angular faceplate of the T5-V Battlesuit armor worn by N7 Destroyers. "It's good to see you again," she said. "Thanks for the assist." She nodded at the Cannibal corpse.
"A pleasure. Wasn't expecting to see you in this hellhole." Michaels looked around at the devastation. "This is a colossal Charlie Foxtrot, isn't it?"
"It could be worse."
Michaels snorted. "Yeah we could have the bloody Reapers themselves actually landing."
"Don't even joke about that," Rizzi said. That was the most dreaded prospect Alliance troops faced: the direct participation of the Reapers themselves. Such an event was always the cataclysmic deciding factor in a battle, and it never went in the Alliance's favor.
"It's about the only thing that could make this worse," Michaels said. Still scanning the battlefield he reloaded idly, and Rizzi did a double take as she finally noticed his weapon.
"Michaels."
"Eh?"
"You're a Destroyer."
He cocked his head at her. "Yes, I know."
"Why aren't you using a bigger gun?"
He held up the submachine gun in his fist. "Do you think you could convince the bloody arse-wits in procurement to authorize me for one?"
Rizzi sighed. "You too, huh?"
"Yeah!" Michaels shook his weapon as he spoke. "This is a bloody Hornet! Mark bloody Eight! Eight! This peashooter's not even widely issued yet! And they have the bloody heavy weapons specialist running around with a Mark Eight! And don't even get me started on the bloody biotic amp authorizations! I tried explaining it to the dunce! 'I'm not a bloody biotic,' I told him! The bugger wouldn't shut up about how advanced it was!"
Rizzi found herself smiling at Michaels' rant. He'd nearly been drummed out of the N7 program three times for what he called "speaking the truth" and the instructors called insubordination. It was good to know that some things didn't change.
"Breathe, friend, breathe," Wu said as he stepped to Rizzi's side.
"Ah," Rizzi said as she indicated the men in turn. "Lieutenant Elijah Wu, Gunnery Chief Leon Michaels."
"Good to see another N7 on the field, sir," Michaels said.
"Likewise," Wu said as they shook hands briefly.
Michaels paused and cocked his head. Rizzi realized he was listening to a comm transmission on another channel. Michaels straightened up. "Look, I need to link up with what's left of my squad in Sector Four. Watch your arses out here, eh?"
"You too," Rizzi said.
Michaels tapped a control on his forearm. His suit subtly reconfigured itself with a whine of servos and hydraulics as it disabled the stabilization and targeting systems that were the cornerstones of the T5-V system. Michaels nodded to them and jogged off through the rubble towards the other sector.
"Did you know him from before?" Wu said.
"He was in my N7 class."
"Which year?"
"Eighty-four," she said. "You?"
"Eighty-three, actually."
"Oh," Rizzi said. "Was Commander Akitaiko the zero-G combat instructor while you were there?"
"'Psycho 'Taiko?' Oh don't remind me," Wu said. "Did he still tie partners together and throw them into a null grav obstacle course?"
"Ugh. My partner was this Sentinel who had no grasp of zero-G maneuvering. She ran us into every sharp corner on that course."
"Hmm. My partner got space sick. Violently."
Rizzi winced in her mask. "Ooh."
"That was… unpleasant." Wu paused for a moment. "Still, I felt worse for the people going after us."
Rizzi erupted into laughter. She wasn't sure why she found it so funny and decided it was the exhaustion.
"Did Rizzi just snap?" Marx said. "Cause this is not a good time and place for that."
"I… may have told a joke," Wu said.
"I didn't know you had it in you."
"I didn't think I did either."
K'Thane strode up to Rizzi and Wu. "It's good to see you can bond in such circumstances," she said. "Nevertheless, I suggest we try to block up that road with whatever we can. The Reapers will undoubtedly attack again."
That killed Rizzi's mirth. She exchanged glances with Wu. "Good idea. Maybe some of these abandoned cars and-"
The roar of Marx's Widow cut her off.
"Cannibals, five or six, and a Marauder," the sniper said. "Looks like a scouting team."
With a weary sigh Rizzi called up her Annihilation Field and threw herself into the fight once again.
The Alliance forces in Touchdown City endured four more hours of sporadic attacks and probes before the final unstoppable attack came. It hit all the sectors at once in numbers that mocked the tally of kills reaped by Alliance troops in the preceding day. Panicked calls for reinforcements went unanswered as there were none left to be committed.
Sector Two fell first. Its surviving Mako, forming the linchpin of its defense, was overwhelmed by the combined fire of seven Ravagers. The marines in the sector fell back in the face of the crushing offensive but were picked off one by one. Only the remnants of one squad from the 103rd Marine Division made it to the fallback perimeter.
Sector Two's collapse put all the other sectors in danger of being surrounded piecemeal from behind as Reaper forces poured in. His voice a tight coil of rage, Major Hadra ordered all teams to the fallback perimeter.
Rizzi's team nearly lost the race to a more defensible position as the advancing Reaper troops from Sector Two cut across the road that formed their lifeline to the fallback perimeter. The team cut down Cannibals, husks, and Ravagers in their way. They avoided Brutes rampaging on the streets by using rooftop routes. Rizzi and Wu biotically blinked through walls to surprise Marauders waiting in ambush. After what felt like an eternity they reached the line of deployable barricades that marked the fallback perimeter for the southern road.
"Come on! Move your bloody arses!" Michaels crouched atop the firing platform of the closest barricade, spraying rounds into the veritable sea of enemies behind them. The automated missile launcher mounted on his armor spat a projectile that arched over Rizzi and soared into a Cannibal pursuing her. Other marines behind the barricade added their small arms fire, suppressing the incoming enemies enough for Rizzi's squad to climb over to cover.
"What kept you?!" Michaels called.
"We stopped to take in the sights!" Marx said. "Lovely little café just down the street!" She shot a Marauder through the head. "Terrible service!"
"Hold the line!" Major Hadra said. "Pilots report they're making the last civilian evac runs! We need to buy them that time!"
The fallback perimeter formed a much smaller and tighter circle around the spaceport. It followed the circle road of Touchdown City's original borders. Four expressways ran in straight lines for a kilometer from the circle road to the spaceport, and the Alliance's defenses were concentrated at these arteries. Each of these chokepoints was assigned one of the four surviving Makos. Without the armored vehicles none of the barricades would have lasted for more than ten minutes. The Reaper forces appeared to take some horrible glee in throwing themselves at the defenses, as if offended by the audacity of the organic species at offering such resistance.
Rizzi herself lost track of how long they spent hurling back assaults upon the barricade. The constant chatter of small arms fire filled her ears, punctuated with shouted commands, curses, screams of pain, and the bass roar of Mako cannon fire. She was part of a forward defense team with Wu, K'Thane, and other close quarter specialists. They roamed the killing ground in front of the barricade itself, forming pockets of resistance to break up Reaper charges and cull their numbers before they could reach the defense wall in sufficient quantities to overwhelm it. The defenders on the wall supported them with suppressive fire and focused on priority targets like heavily armored Brutes. In any other war, on any other day, such actions would have been the stuff of ICA legend, studied as textbook combined arms tactics. In this war, on this day, it was just the desperate attempt of the living to stave off the tides of hell for another few minutes.
Rizzi mostly remembered moments and milestones of that holding action. One in particular came when she blasted a husk off Wu with a biotic pulse. A Cannibal took the opportunity to pounce on her, catching her left forearm in its jaws. She felt her armguard begin to buckle under the pressure. A blade burst through the side of the Cannibal's head and sliced its lower jaw off, freeing Rizzi's arm. She turned to Wu with thanks on her lips-
"The last shuttle is away!" Major Hadra announced to all the troops. "Repeat, the last civilian shuttle is away! Good work, soldiers!"
Ragged cheers erupted from surviving soldiers. Susan was not among those cheering, occupied as she was with a Brute attempting to crush her. She blinked away from it to a safe distance, giving their Mako a chance to put a cannon round through its chest.
"Extraction flights will commence shortly," Hadra continued. "Stand firm, soldiers. We're almost out of this!"
Rizzi detonated her Annihilation Field to obliterate a group of husks on top of her. K'Thane, distinctive in her glowing tech armor, slipped in and out of a group of charging Cannibals setting off biotic blasts all the while. A Vanguard charged into a Marauder and sent it bouncing off a holed car behind it. A husk promptly grappled him and wrestled him into the open where a pair of Ravagers incinerated them both with coordinated volleys.
She suddenly became aware of Marx yelling at them.
"Fall back, fall back! We're losing the barricade!"
Rizzi spun around to see a section of the barricade collapse under a Brute's charge as it rushed for the Mako. A nearly point blank cannon round halted the beast but the damage to the defenses was done. Cannibals and Marauders surged towards through the gap, cutting down those troops knocked out of position by the Brute's charge.
Even as she watched the collapsing line a single shot tore through two Cannibals at once. The Marauder next to them suddenly jerked around, flailing at the grenade stuck to its face. The blast flattened another Cannibal nearby and Rizzi saw Marx beckoning them through the gap she'd just created.
She sprinted for the barricade, trusting to her speed and barriers for protection. K'Thane was right by her, tech armor dissolving incoming rounds. Wu Charged into a Marauder in the gap and lopped its head off before launching a Biotic Slash that cleared the breach in the barricade. K'Thane ran past downed Reaper forces, her Annihilation Field ensuring some didn't rise again. Rizzi took a shortcut and blinked through the barricade wall itself.
There was no time to catch her breath. The ground itself rumbled and she looked up frantically, thinking that one of the Reapers had indeed landed to personally end the battle. The sky was clear apart from the inevitable smoke.
Unbeknownst to Rizzi or anybody at the south road the Alliance force holding the north road had just been slaughtered to a man. Captain Golovkin, the officer in command of the northern defense, was among the last to die, impaled to the ground on a Brute's claw. Spitting blood and curses, he activated the detonator for the demolition charges his squad had laid earlier in the day. The rumble Rizzi had felt was the result of two tall apartment complexes bracketing the north road collapsing in a storm of dust and debris, burying dozens of Reaper troops and cutting off access to the spaceport. The defenders of the south road were much too preoccupied to take much other notice.
"The north road is down," Major Hadra said. "Fall back to the spaceport. Shuttles are inbound."
The Mako started backing up the south road towards the spaceport, its co-ax gun firing all the while as another Brute tore through the barricade wall. The surviving Alliance troops attempted to perform an orderly withdrawal in the face of the relentless assault, but there were too few remaining to maintain a sufficient weight of fire. The most they could do was buy periodic space and time by killing their enemies, but for each Reaper thrall felled more replacements flooded in over the corpse.
They lost the Mako halfway up the road. A Ravager, skittering over rooftops alongside the road, knocked out its rear right wheel with a quick volley. The Mako, still reversing, slewed to its right as the driver lost control. The armored vehicle crushed an unfortunate marine and plowed into a building front. The momentum drove the Mako's rear up, angling its cannon down as it tried to draw a bead on the Brute closing towards it. Soldiers scattered from its berserk charge.
The Brute hit the side of the Mako with a thunderous crash and the shriek of twisting metal. It tore through the armor plating like it wasn't there, opening up the Mako as it lunged for the hapless crew. A shriek sounded from the interior and was cut off by wet crunching noises.
Rizzi hit the Brute with all her biotics. It ignored her, still fixated on getting to the Mako crew. The sound of small arms came from inside the Mako as a survivor fought back. The Brute pulled its head out of the Mako and punched its claw in. More pistol fire sounded.
"Get down!" A sticky grenade soared past Rizzi and latched onto the Brute's side. Marx ran past Rizzi, grabbing and pulling the biotic with her around the front of the Mako. A second later the grenade went off, scattering Brute chunks around. "That was my last nade," Marx said.
Rizzi went back to the hole the Brute had torn into the Mako as Michaels coordinated suppressive fire into the encroaching horde. "Come on! We've got to get outta here!" she shouted. A crewman hauled himself out of the wreck, his armor pitted with scratches.
"Loren and Ravi are gone," he said as he shook his head.
"Nothing we can do," Rizzi said. "Go! Fall back!"
"Fall back! Keep it tight and keep that fire up!" Michaels bellowed.
"South road, where the hell are you?" Major Hadra said. "The shuttles are here!"
Rizzi looked up and saw the growing blips of Kodiaks in the sky. "We're on our way, sir!" she said. "There's heavy enemy resistance!"
"Move faster, Lieutenant! The Navy is preparing to blast this place from orbit!"
"Copy that!"
Their numbers kept dwindling as they retreated up the last half kilometer of the road. Rizzi guessed they were down to a dozen fighters. At least the spaceport was in sight. Ahead of them Alliance shuttles landed wherever there was room. The spaceport and the roads surrounding it were completely littered with abandoned vehicles and luggage.
The south road survivors dashed into the maze of vehicles. They provided concealment and cover but also slowed their retreat down. Soldiers already at the evacuation zone sent fire over their heads, but Reaper forces were driven by wills that overrode self-preservation.
A small car flipped through the air and Rizzi threw herself flat, narrowly dodging it. She rolled to her feet and continued running.
"Incoming Brute!" somebody called.
"Where do they keep getting those things?!" Marx said as she put a burst from her Shuriken into a husk climbing over a van. She was long out of thermal clips for her Widow.
The Brute launched another car in its charge. It was heading for Rizzi. It shoved yet another car aside and she finally saw it. She hit the Brute with a lingering warp effect. Ten meters away from her, K'Thane hurled her own biotics at the beast. Marx decloaked by Rizzi firing her Shuriken and cursing as the Brute ignored the submachine gun rounds.
Wu slammed the Brute. Weakened by combined warp effects it collapsed to its knees and Wu jumped onto it, his sword held in a reverse grip. Screaming in rage, he plunged the blade into the Brute's face repeatedly. It shuddered and went still. Rizzi saw Cannibals and Marauders closing, escorting Ravagers between them and intercepting fire with their own bodies. Wu continued stabbing the downed Brute.
"It's dead!" Rizzi called to him. "Come on!" He didn't respond. Rizzi ran towards him, intending to pull him off if she had to.
A pair of Ravager shots streaked in. The first overloaded Wu's barriers. The second hurled him off the Brute. Wu hit the ground and rolled twice, sheathing his sword as he came back up. Visible cracks riddled the back of his armor. A Marauder leapt onto a nearby car and opened fire. Wu jerked twice and collapsed. A flurry of fire and biotics killed the Marauder and Rizzi ran over to Wu's side.
She breathed a sigh of relief. He was still alive. She gave him a dose of medi-gel and threw an arm over her shoulders, dragging him towards the shuttles. She saw with alarm that most of the shuttles had already left or were taking off.
"Final call!" said Major Hadra. "Get to the shuttles now!" More shuttles were taking off by the second.
"Leave… me," Wu said. His voice was ragged, but Rizzi was relieved he was trying to walk at least.
"That's not happening," she said as she adjusted his arm over her shoulders and tightened her grip. The sound of Reaper forces behind them got louder.
"It… was my own… damn fault." He coughed.
"Shut up and move." The closest shuttle was still thirty meters away, its side door open as Marx swung back out with her Widow freshly loaded.
"Come on!" The Infiltrator lined her rifle up. Rizzi felt like it was aimed right at her. Marx stroked the trigger and decapitated an advancing Cannibal. Twenty-five meters.
Another shuttle roared for the sky. Rizzi hoped Michaels had gotten out. She'd lost track of him in the vehicle maze. Twenty meters.
She saw K'Thane sprinting for the shuttle, swinging herself in. The shuttle itself fired its cannons at something she couldn't see. Her HUD flashed with barrier status warnings. Marx flickered back into sight as she dropped a Marauder while cloaked. Fifteen meters.
Rizzi staggered as something slugged her shoulder. She felt a sharp pain and then the cold oozing feel of her suit topically administering medi-gel as it detected the wound. K'Thane swung back into sight behind a pair of mounted turret guns and unleashed a stream of fire past Rizzi and Wu. Ten meters.
A round tore clean through her right thigh. She would have collapsed had Wu not been leaning against her on that side. She saw K'Thane yelling into the cockpit while she and Marx kept shooting. Another shot punctured her armor and her side. The breath left her lungs. She fell, taking Wu with her. Five meters.
The side turret hammered out a constant roar, but Rizzi knew she didn't have the strength to get back up. She felt Wu squeeze her hand in apology and she returned it. Then the shuttle slid toward them on its thrusters, coming to a halt nearly on top of them. Shots pinged off its armored bulk. Somebody grabbed Wu and hauled him up. A hand clutched her outstretched arm and she looked up to see Marx pulling her up. Marx got her half upright before looping her arm under Rizzi's chest and half-throwing her aboard the shuttle.
"Go!" she heard K'Thane shouting. She felt the press of acceleration and saw the light level dim as the shuttle door closed. She heard the doors seal with a hiss. Why were the lights still dimming?
Rizzi's shuttle was the last to leave Otte. It was still roaring for orbit when the Salvador, Madrid, Hyderabad, and Nefrane opened fire from low orbit. Alliance forces had held the city for over twenty-four hours. It took the cruisers less than twenty minutes to blast the city to rubble with precision mass accelerator strikes. The shuttle, curving around at an angle to avoid the line of fire, slipped into the Salvador's bay partway through the bombardment.
The convoy of warships and civilian freighters was drawing together for FTL transit when sensors detected Reaper vessels entering the system. The assorted vessels abandoned all attempts at orderly formations and jumped to FTL as a mob. The risks were considered negligible in light of the alternative.
Rizzi was unaware of all of this. She'd lost consciousness before the shuttle reached orbit. Medical teams rushed her and Wu to the med bay as soon as they reached the Salvador. Doctor Chung pronounced both their wounds serious but survivable even as she oversaw both surgeries.
The convoy would emerge from FTL in the Newton system nearly a day later. The evacuation of Otte was already being hailed as a resounding success by the Alliance News Network. Reporters spoke of extraordinary bravery in the face of overwhelming odds and of families leaving all their material possessions behind but getting out safely. One particularly popular picture showed crews helping a pregnant woman aboard a shuttle while a Mako and a squad ran by in the background. It was the same Mako that had reinforced Rizzi's squad in the plaza.
Few people knew its eventual fate. It had been ambushed and disabled while moving between sectors; its crew surrounded and cut down as they abandoned the unpowered vehicle. The hulk of the Mako itself was ultimately destroyed in the orbital bombardment. A total of eleven Makos had been committed to the evacuation of Otte. One was extracted.
The survivors of Otte, those who were conscious, gathered together in groups large and small aboard whatever ships they were on. There was no regard for species, ranks, specializations, or unit differences. Some gathered in celebration, some in mourning. Some shared stories of what they'd just survived while others stayed silent. When the first news broadcasts came on conversations all over the fleet stopped. There were scattered cheers at the mention of the heroism of the ground troops, but they were few and mostly weak. Most of the survivors were in silent agreement: Otte hadn't felt like a victory.
Author's Note:
Whew! That was the longest chapter so far. If you've read all the way to here, thank you. I only hope reading this has been as enjoyable for you as writing it has been for me.
A special thank you goes to those who've offered reviews and suggestions.
If I may share a little of my writing process and observations so far:
Maiena K'Thane's dialog and interactions with the team, and with Rizzi in particular, have been the hardest for me to write thus far. Conversely, Lisa Marx practically writes herself for me. In fact, she pretty much steals every dialog scene in my brain as I'm trying to plan it out. Which is interesting, because in my character concepts I had Maiena planned out a lot more in terms of personality, background, motivations, etc. Marx on the other hand started as a kind of joke character with a single punch line: she keep getting terrible teammates (Oh, and if anybody cares, she's the Infiltrator talking to the Vorcha about terrible squad members).
Hmm. Maybe there's a lesson here.
Also, you have no idea how much I wanted to name this chapter "The Voiding of Brahe."
