Beta-read by Saberlin

-J-

Gunnery Chief Ashley Williams of the 212 knew she was going to die. There was no way around it. That ship was still hanging in the sky, as though waiting to find a soft target from which to leech the life out of the planet. The geth—they had to be geth—were still working with mindless devotion, running down any organics the flashlight-headed drones came across, maiming prisoners, or going about other identifiable tasks.

She suspected she should be glad she did not know what the geth were doing, but she was not entirely sure. Fear of the unknown was a powerful factor, and a distracting one. This was doubly so when the unknown was being performed on people she knew, people she cared about.

The chances of anyone getting Marley's distress call were low. They were the only ones in the cluster; no one ever thought Eden Prime would need a garrison for more than show. Eden Prime was safe, secure, firmly controlled by the Alliance...

...that was also what they said about Elysium, and look what happened there. Never trust a politician, especially one with investments in the colony in question.

Besides, Marley's message was a short-band communication, not meant to get out of the system—and there was no chance any vessels were out there. The Alliance might be en route, but more likely they were occupied trying to decide what was politically better in the long run: keep the beacon, or share it with everyone else.

She was all for fragging the thing. She hated politics anyway.

Closing her eyes, she leaned against one of Eden Prime's many oversized rocks. Complaints about an agrarian colony having too many rocks long ago ceased to bandy about. Now, there weren't enough rocks behind which to take cover. In a hot zone, you could never have too much cover.

At least she had plenty of ammunition, and three of her teammates left. Four people could do some damage, though she did not hold out hope that they would be able to forestall the inevitable forever. That beacon was officially costing more than it was worth—the fact that she only had three teammates left of her original patrol, and no sign of the rest of the garrison attested to this.

If she got close enough, she'd blow the thing to Kingdom Come. Frag the eggheads. It wasn't worth all these dead scientists, colonists, and marines.

"We've got to get out of here..." Came the thin, shrill murmur from her left.

Williams rolled her eyes. The cavalry was going to ride in, late as usual; anyone could see that. She would be grateful if they did, somehow, manage to show up in the nick of time. Unfortunately for most of the 212, the nick of time had passed.

This was one of those situations a person spent their entire career trying to avoid. It was a no win situation, and therefore to be avoided. She could almost hear the instructor in that hot, sunny classroom droning on about it.

Anyone who had a gram of common sense knew these situations tended to ambush the people who ended up facing them. It was never a question of trying to avoid something, it was a fact that trouble snowballed. There was no avoidance because there was no warning

Case and point.

"Bhatia!" Williams hissed. They might be dead meat, but there was no point in giving up. Not to these walking toasters, anyway.

Ten or so feet away, behind another rock, Bhatia looked up, tensing. Behind her, Tanner did the same, his hands clenched about his rifle. If he held it any tighter, he would leave small imprints of his grip.

Private Alpert crowded close to Williams, shaking from head to foot, her eyes wide as she mouthed silently—not unlike a goldfish, Williams thought savagely. But that was why Alpert was with her, and not with Bhatia or Tanner: Williams was the NCO, it was her job to keep Alpert in hand and from doing anything fatally stupid.

"Get back, Alpert!" Williams hissed before re-addressing Bhatia. "Your omni-tool working?" Bhatia was the biggest tech-head in the foursome. With everything else going wrong, Williams half expected Bhatia's omni-tool to malfunction. The thought gave a new dimension to the concept of 'morbidly amusing'.

Thankfully, Bhatia's omni-tool blossomed around her arm, casting an amber sheen on her sweaty face. For a long moment she squinted at it, hitting the wrist unit a few times with the heel of her hand before shaking her head. It was with apology and frustration that she gave her attention to Williams. "They're scrambling my readings!"

Unlike Alpert, Bhatia kept a level head. Tanner even more so, as he peered around the rock, keeping an eye open for hostiles. Williams wished Alpert would stop crowding her as heartily as she wished something besides their rifles would work. Biotics made her nervous, but one would be handy to have right about now.

"Gunny—we've got company," Tanner reported hoarsely, ducking out of sight.

There was no soft snarling, no profanities uttered, just a thickening of the atmosphere as the three marines still competent to think and act pulled themselves together for another burst of action—maybe the last one.

Geth gibberish wafted through the air, further alerting the soldiers to the presence of pursuing hostiles. It was hard to tell how many geth were actually present until a visual could be established; geth chatter was as confusing to the ears as regional turian dialects were to a human with a malfunction translator.

The geth did not seem interested in running the marines down quickly so much as forcing them to keep moving. Otherwise the cat-and-mouse game would have ended ages ago.

The geth had the advantage of numbers, of superior firepower, they were in no hurry, so no organic would be overlooked. Yet for all that, they pursued the marines doggedly, flashlight heads alert for any sign of life.