A/N: Sorry this one took so long, been tied up at work a lot lately, this chapter sat about 80% done for at least a good month. I'll try to keep things more regular, but life can be a bitch sometimes ya know. Blah blah pls review but really please do feedback helps.
Pragia, 2182
It can often be very hard to get a large group of people to agree on something. Ideologies, upbringings, how you got out of bed that morning, so many things made humanity unique in our different outlooks on life. And yet, all two hundred of us were united in mutual agreement that Pragia was an absolute shithole. For those unfamiliar with it, the planet was a jungle world. The humidity was off the scales, temperatures reached nearly unbearable levels, nothing would ever stay dry and the mosquitoes were about four times as large as back on Earth. Said mosquitoes also took about proportionally as much blood, but with some crazy toxins to go along with it. Before landing, we'd been put through a whole suite of inoculations, to prevent untimely death from any particularly unpleasant flora or fauna. Except on Pragia, all the flora and fauna was unpleasant anyway, the only difference was degrees of lethality. Despite all this, the worst part was far simpler. It was the mud. Everything was mud. It was stable enough to walk on and support your weight, but the moment the slightest amount of rain or moisture hit the ground, boom you were in a fucking cesspool up to your knees. And in this rainforest hopped up on steroids, through the clouds of fog coating the forest floor, was our objective; the rogue space port of Shok'To.
Arcturus Station, three days earlier:
Hallie clinked her glass against mine, toasting over yet another successful mission. "Dude, how did you even know Harkin was a dirty cop? He didn't have a paper trail or anything. Well, not the kind I'd expected." Just two days ago, Hallie and I had busted C-Sec's very own Harkin receiving contraband and credits to tamper with evidence against several smuggling rings and other criminal enterprises on the Citadel. In a 'lucky' break, we'd focused our investigation onto Harkin on a hunch, getting a warrant to search his personal files. Which had happened to turn up evidence linking him and several crime gangs both on the Citadel and off. Funny that. Of course, I attributed this to the outstanding investigative skills of Hallie and myself, plus the team backing us up. Nothing was quite like buttering up the bosses for a tidy bonus at the end of the year, god knows that working on the right side of the law sure paid less than our previous shady Illium dealings.
I downed the vodka, feeling the warmth spread down my throat, which was also probably a good dose of numbness to be fair. "Honestly a hunch, he just looked like the shiftiest, seediest dude I'd ever seen, and a C-Sec agent no less. The fact that he kept all of his dirty transactions logged in an honest to god paper notebook just confirmed his idiocy as well. I mean, who the fuck even has those anymore?" Harkin hadn't even put up any resistance once we'd shown up to bust him, he'd just accepted his suspension pending trial and went to go drink himself into a stupor. To be fair, it would've been a dumb fucking idea to resist, seeing as we waited for him in his apartment. Hallie had sat in his favourite chair, dangling Harkin's notebook in one hand while aiming a Carnifex at him with the other. Of course, Harkin wasn't very interested in having that conversation, and made to run right the fuck back out. It was at this point that he found his mouth wrapped around my Kessler, and Harkin was directed to take a seat. Seeing how Shepard would find him in a sorry state in a year or so, still drinking in fact, I was guessing there was no harm done in getting involved here.
Our quiet celebrations were cut short by our omnitools both starting to beep violently at the same time. Across the bar, several other marines or other agents also had their ones go off as well. It wasn't the normal tone used for messages, but rather one designed for high-priority notifications that signaled that something important had come up. The message was impersonal, containing nothing but our next orders. 'PROCEED TO DOCK E4, BOARD THE SSV TOKYO. WAIT FOR FURTHER INSTRUCTIONS. HACKETT.' I groaned, "You know, just once, I'd like to be able to unwind properly after a mission."
"Surely you don't mean like all the other times we unwind after missions and nearly drink this station dry?" Hallie smirked at me, knowing full well that I was just bitching for the sake of it.
I grumbled as I collected my things together. "We only just got off the transport back here an hour ago Hallie, I'm going to whine and you can't stop me."
"No one could Matt, that's your thing." About a third of the denizens here had also received the same summons, and were quickly trying to finish drinks before they headed out once again. One marine managed to convince the bartender into giving him and his squad mates an entire case of beers 'for morale on the road.' Soldiers will always be the same, no matter the time period I guess.
The SSV Tokyo was a Navy cruiser, designed for superiority in a combat theatre while still having greater speed and maneuverability than a dreadnought. The Tokyo was assigned as the flagship of a 'wolfpack,' leading a small flotilla of frigates and smaller corvettes and interceptors in raiding missions or interceptions inside and out of Alliance space. The ship's hangar bay was immense, far larger than the Blue Suns cruiser we had helped to capture above Bekenstein. Hallie and I lounged around, watching other teams and squads drift in over the course of the next hour. There was a surprising mix of personnel here. In addition to a handful of other AIS agents like us, there were also marines and special forces troops as well, ranging from special combat groups all the way to the N-series operatives in their distinctive black and red. It was beginning to look like there were lots of us in here though, more than a hundred at a guess. The Alliance definitely had an abundance of ground troops available to them, so the gathering of so many different branches was raising questions all through the hangar. We met up with Rachel Wyllie and a few of her other team members, though no one had any real ideas as to why we were all here.
The murmuring undercurrent of voices grew silent as a tall figure stepped off the elevator from presumably deeper in the bowels of the ship. He was a big guy, sporting obvious muscles under his uniform. The dark skin and nearly shaved head made him look imposing, but despite that it was obvious that he wasn't young, it looked like he was in his late fourties at least. After a while, it finally clicked. The guy was none other than David Anderson. The Captain was known widely as one of the heroes of the Alliance. While I'd had inklings of his importance and fame shown to me throughout the course of the games, I hadn't quite grasped what he really was until I'd actually lived in this world. In bars and barracks across the galaxy, from Illium to the Citadel, almost everyone had heard of Anderson at some point. His exploits from the First Contact War were legendary, and tales of clandestine missions run and conducted by Anderson were varied and often repeated. Anderson leapt up on top of a munitions crate, a podium of his own making. Despite his age, his movements were still fluid and supple. This was a man who should not be fucked with.
David's voice carried across the hangar, needing no amplification to reach all of us. Oddly enough, it still carried Keith David's distinctive baritone. "Alright folks, listen up. Thanks for all meeting us here on short notice, but this mission is time sensitive." Anderson brought up a visual projection from his omnitool, displaying a blown up image if a verdant jungle planet. "This is the planet of Pragia, forest planet in the Dakka System of the Nubian Expanse. After the showdown above the skies of Bekenstein, we started tracing the movements of mercenary and pirate vessels in Alliance space and in the Terminus Systems. From what we've gathered, Pragia is being used as a refueling and rearming port for not only mercenaries, but also contracted pirates linked to the Batarian Hegemony. The Nubian expanse links to several other systems with Human interests, and is considered the location where almost all the attacks on Alliance colonies have come from in the last decade." The Captain zoomed in on the planet, showing a scan of what looked like a huge industrial complex. "The port itself is located deep inside the equatorial rainforest, and has substantial air defense around the site. You'll be dropped in at a distance and have to infiltrate their perimeter on foot, it's an old abandoned military complex, perfect for setting down on." David turned and motioned back toward some of the other operators in the crowd. "First, I'd like to present your tactical commander for this mission, Lieutenant-Commander Shepard."
Of all the people, of course it had to be Shepard. Not that I minded, it was reassuring that there was going to be a few familiar faces out here. Shepard stepped on a munitions crate of her own, bringing up her own projection of the target facility. Her Canadian lilt carried over the crowd just as easily as Andersons did. "Thank you Captain. Okay, first off you may have noticed that we have people here from quite different branches of the military. That's because we are going to be splitting our forces up to strike at this port from three different directions at once. Each section will be under the chain of command from your own units, you won't have other officers from a different branch giving you overriding orders . The last thing we need is to be stepping on each others' toes." There were murmurs of assent amongst the crowd. No one liked being forced to work with new people who may or may not have a position of authority over you, so it seemed like Shepard and Anderson were appeasing all sides here. "Obviously, we will still be communicating at a command level with each other, and our objectives may change as the situation on the ground develops."
Shepard zoomed in even further, showing the building and emplacements distinctly, highlighting quite a few of them in blue. "The blue targets, located mainly around the perimeter and landing zones, are the targets for our marine contingent, under First Lieutenant Coates." I looked at the indicated man, he seemed damn familiar, though I had no idea where from. I usually didn't forget faces, so it must be a name for someone from the games. "The marines are to take out the air defense installations, and disable the facilities dedicated to refueling, repair and rearmament of vessels. Upon completion of their objectives, they are to dig in around the landing zones and keep them secure for our extraction. Otherwise it's going to be a damn long walk out of this jungle." Shepard then rotated the map, highlighting a new set of buildings in red. "These are the barracks, mess hall and armoury. These come under the N-series special forces teams, which I will be leading. Our job is to deal with the main garrison at the port, keeping them bottled up inside their buildings and preventing them from deploying against any of our other assets."
The Lieutenant-Commander highlighted a singular building in green, clearing her throat and saying, "This is for our friends in the AIS. While we are holding the attention of the garrison and causing havoc elsewhere, they are going to be breaking into the headquarters, securing any leaders they can for questioning and hunting for intel. Upon completion of their objective, they will lead any prisoners to the marines at the LZ for holding and redeploy as needed to any teams needing assistance." Shepard closed the holographic display, saying "Thank you for your time, we will be underway in the next five minutes. My staff and I will be coming around to clarify our strategy and objectives shortly, so please don't go anywhere." Shepard flashed a smile and leapt down off her makeshift stand, settling into conversation with Anderson and some of her other N-series commandos.
Hallie gave a low whistle. I knew that she still didn't like Shepard much, even after our cooperation on Bekenstein. The events of Torfan had been a shock to both of us, but I'd rationalised it away over time, while Hallie hadn't quite gotten over it. Still though, she didn't seem to fully hate Shepard anymore, just had a one-sided agree to disagree policy - with Shepard being none the wiser of course. "You know, it seems like we have a much smaller job than the rest of the force." Hallie remarked, "Makes me wonder if the higher ups don't trust us enough to get the job done, so they gave us only one so we could focus solely on it."
Rachel leaned over, clearing her throat and commenting with a slightly disparaging tone, "The reason we only have one objective is because there's only twenty of us ." Hallie immediately went bright red and seemed to melt into one of the containers behind her, trying to escape the chuckles from the other agents in the immediate area. She couldn't escape mine though, it would be a crime to let that one slide without a little bit of friendly humiliation.
The thudding of boots approaching drew our attention away. Coming toward us was Shepard, flanked by a contingent of her own special forces troops. Interestingly, one of them was Amy Thompson, another veteran of Torfan and the subject of a certain drunken hookup on Arcturus shortly afterward. Looks like the galaxy was a smaller place than what people gave it credit for after all. Shepard shook our hands, saying "Good to see you all again, some of you on the right side of the law this time as well." Shepard smirked a little at us as she passed her comment on. "You know, your little adventure on Bekenstein is being used as a training example for new AIS agents who are going to be conducting operations where they are outnumbered and outgunned."
I thanked her, saying "I'm flattered Shepard, but to be fair we had three days to set up explosives and various other traps to lead the Blue Suns into. Very little of it was improvised."
She shook her head. "But that's the whole point, Matt. They need to be shown that preparation is everything. Being caught off guard is almost guaranteeing casualties that you can't answer back for. Which is why we need to be prepared for almost anything on this operation as well. I can't have another Torfan. Casualties are a reality of war, but this is as much a political move as it is a military one. We need to be efficient and ruthless, but still prioritise Alliance lives as well. It's a hard balance." Shepard had grown since Torfan, we all had in our own ways. Once, she had considered everyone under her command to be disposable, but now it seemed that she was mellowing out to the Shepard that we would see on the Normandy some time from now. She wasn't the only one though. While Shepard had softened, Hallie and I had become harder, colder. We did things now that we would have balked at years ago. The slow decline had acclimatised us to these changes, and now it was all just part of the job. I wasn't unhappy with where we were going, but even so it was still surprising if I compared us to how naive we were just a few years ago.
Shepard once again brought up the hologram of the facility in front of us. "Okay, so here's the plan. You're going to be breaching this building here," she pointed at the same green-inked miniature from before, "and your objectives are threefold. The first two you already know about. The third is to extract an undercover asset. They're the one who set us up with this mission, gave us the intel, fleet movements, layout of the base, everything. Unfortunately, in the process, they got found out. They're being held pending execution or torture, we have no idea. This is also the reason why this mission is time sensitive. We wait too long, they get killed. This was the person who led us to this base, we aren't going to just leave them to die out there, and we can take the port anyway so we get to solve two issues at once. From what we know, the Blue Suns and Batarian troops aren't aware that there was a mole for the Alliance, just that they leaked information. The flip side is that if this informant does crack, it exposes us in too many ways to patch up. This is why we omitted the objective from the main briefing as well. If any troops get captured, we don't want them to reveal that we're coming for our informant."
Rachel spoke up, saying "How many enemy combatants do you expect to encounter down there?"
Shepard zoomed the map out a little bit again, giving the larger overview once more. "The estimates given by our source indicate that there are one hundred and fifty Blue Suns in the garrison, but there are fluctuating amounts of extra troops on the mercenary and pirate vessels that will be docked at the port. We won't know how many there will be until we come into orbit above the planet, but there could potentially be hundreds, or only dozens. We just won't know, same with the numbers for the Batarian military personnel onsite, it's likely that they're there to co-ordinate the attacks on Alliance colonies rather than as a garrison. This whole mission was thrown together by Anderson within hours of finding out our asset was compromised, so we only had the personnel on station here to draw from, if you're wondering why there are relatively so few of us. Thankfully, when the operation begins, we'll have orbital cover from the Tokyo and its escorts, so we may be able to take out several ships before their crews can evacuate and join the fight. However, closing the frigates into direct support range will be impossible until the air defenses are disabled. We are quite literally relying on the infantry to get this job done here."
I shrugged, saying "Impossible odds are becoming the norm with you Shepard. At least it'll never be boring with you around. Let's bring our lad home."
Pragia, present day
We'd been dropped in at the last place I expected. A decrepit laboratory and holding facility, which scans had shown had the only open space available to drop off a force of our size. The place itself was overgrown, unkempt and starting to fall apart, but the insignia on one of the walls was still legible. The orange, black and white of Cerberus winked out at us. No one else seemed to recognise it, or even know what this place truly was, but I knew. This was a Cerberus base, shut down obviously, but still intact. God knows what horrors had gone on inside there. Quietly, I marked the co-ordinates in my omnitool. Who knew, maybe it would come in handy if I survived the next few years. Despite the tropical heat, this place seemed to emanate a cold that seeped into my very bones. The sooner we got away the better.
The slog through the jungle hadn't been easy. We were wearing stripped down versions of our standard combat hardsuits, only using the chestplates and leg armour, going sleeveless to stay cool. We wore open-faced helmets, fitted with visors and display units but still allowing for freedom. Our gear was all dyed in dark greens and browns, striped and flecked to suit the flora of the jungle. The distance we had to cover to get to the base wasn't huge, but every kilometer was a struggle. There were no established paths through the jungle, we had to forge through and cut our own. Our greatest concern was enemy patrols, we couldn't let ourselves be spotted or we may run into an ambush, but at the same time we couldn't risk killing anyone, as their simple absence would be indicator enough of a hostile force being present in the jungle.
It took over a day and a half. The heat was oppressive, beating down on us with each step. The kicker was, there was no sunlight that could even penetrate through the canopy. Instead of grass on the forest floor, it was just a decaying mixture of dead plants, branches and leaves, rotting and sinking into the mud all around. The stench was intense, an all-encompassing musk of the tropics that prevented us from smelling anything else. Our column trudged through the rainforest, following the meandering course of a dwindling river to the West. It was more likely for us to be spotted if we directly walked along the banks, so our troop made our path running parallel to the river. The distance was close enough to reach the river within minutes, but not close enough to be seen by any prying eyes stationed to watch the waterway. The forest steadily got thicker the further we penetrated. The trees began to close in, restricting us at times to no more than two side by side. Slowly, almost imperceptibly, the trees began to thin. Patches of grass started to appear where the light finally broke through the trees above, and finally, our target came into sight.
It was less of a port and more like a military base with convenient hangars and airstrips. One long and insanely wide runway of sorts dominated the area. Our force was laid out waiting along the Eastern and Southern sides of the complex, scouting out enemy emplacements and watching their patrols. One thing became clear; this was going to be harder than expected. On the tarmac, there were dozens of ships waiting. Each one had a crew that was fully armed and ready to join the fight the moment we engaged. All up, our scouts estimated that there were around three hundred troops bunked on those vessels, not to mention the troops actually belonging to the port. Including the garrison, we were outnumbered more than two to one. Still, we had a plan, and the element of surprise. Hopefully these factors would help tip the scales in our favour, but none of us put stock in hope alone. Burrowed deep in the brush, we readied our ordnance and waited for cover of night.
Port Shok'To had searchlights roving amongst the trees, shards of light flitting between breaks in the foliage. Guards manned towers dotted around the complex, simultaneously watching both the jungle and the interior, presumably wary of the corsairs parked already inside their perimeter. The directions we had approached from corresponded to our targets, putting us within a few hundred meters of the defense emplacements and barracks buildings. On the Eastern flank, the Blue Suns manning the air defense cannons watched the skies, vigilant for any sign of incursion. Yet their very own diligence meant that they were not watching the forest around them. Out of the shadows melted a spread of figures, weapons raised and ready to engage. They crept up on the emplacements, waiting for the signal. Across the port, on the Southern flank, Shepard and her special forces teams closed in on the barracks buildings. Ready to strike, Lieutenant Thompson blinked a handheld laser light at Coates at the emplacements. The soldiers braced themselves, ready to unleash hell and dive headfirst into it themselves.
The Alliance troops hit the base with brutal efficiency, trying to deal as much damage as possible before the sleeping beast could awake and mount a defense against them. The mercs manning the air defense emplacements were wiped out almost instantly, satchel charges thrown into their bunkers and jammed into barrels. Their very own defenses turned into coffins. Snipers nestled far out of sight took out the guards in the towers before they reached their alarms. Elsewhere, Shepard and her teams detonated explosives at the barracks, sealing the entranceways and trapping the garrison inside. With that, the only way out was through the windows. Windows that had operatives watching them intently, ready to gun down whoever came spilling out. The Blue Suns were drowsy, confused, and not ready whatsoever. Finding the main entranceways to be caved in, they tried to clamber through the windows. It was the last thing they would ever do. Bodies began to pile up inside the buildings, choking the hallways. The N-series soldiers compounded the casualty list further, throwing incendiary grenades in to burn them out, and asphyxiate any that weren't as flammable.
Air defenses destroyed, Coates led his men to the landing zone, taking cover and engaging the troops spilling forth from the ships docked there. The vessels came from every walk of life in the Galaxy. Mercenary ships belonging to the big three, Batarian military, pirates, privateers, armed smugglers and merchants. made up the ragtag fleet parked there. Not all stayed to fight on the ground, a significant number lifted off to either escape or take the fight to the skies against the Alliance strike force. This thankfully left the marines with a significantly reduced number of ground troops to fight, but it still wasn't an easy task. The troops met the mercs head on, exchanging fire and taking the landing zone, meter by meter. And elsewhere, away from the fire and mayhem, our AIS team was pressed up against the headquarters building, ready to breach.
Rachel used a Katana shotgun to breach the doors, blowing out the locks while another operative kicked down the door. We rushed in, staying low, rifles at the ready. Surprised Blue Suns mercs rushed out from offices and hallways, investigating the sudden disturbance. Hallie and I cut them down with bursts from our Avenger rifles. The entire AIS force had built a mockup of the headquarters building while on the SSV Tokyo, and we'd practiced clearing all the corners and hallways over and over in the time available to us. Knowing exactly where we needed to hit first, we burst into a conference room, populated by mercs and military, most still seated. These were the leaders and commanders of the various vessels and the garrison. Rachel launched a singularity, surprisingly catching all the gathered mercs in one go. With surgical precision, her team sprinted through the room, grabbing the suspended foes and cuffing them smoothly. Hallie and I had our own task assigned to us as well, and we continued right through the room with our own team, not pausing to look at Rachel's catch.
We crashed down some stairs, looking for anywhere that could be used to incarcerate prisoners. We seemed to have hit gold, as a team of Blue Suns came thundering out of a security room ahead of us. The fight was short and dirty. Hallie and I opened up on them, forcing them to take cover in their doorway. With the space to move, the other two AIS operatives in our team rolled grenades into the entranceway. The mercs had nowhere to go. They could either take their chances with the grenades, or run out of cover into our guns. They chose the guns. Once the subsequent explosion had cleared, we ran into the security room, looking for camera feeds to show if anyone was still being held down here. Only one of the cells down the hall was occupied, a lone figure tied to a chair, slumped over and seemingly unaware of the chaos going on above them. Using the console in the room, Hallie unlocked the door to the cell as I led the other two agents to investigate the cell.
The cell was a mess. Purple stains were everywhere. A singular Asari was leashed to a chair, clad in a loose fitting jumpsuit. Presumably, this was our informant. Her face was caked with blood, bruises had formed around her eyes and she had cuts all over the visible parts of her body. She'd obviously been tortured to get information out of her as to who she'd leaked the location to. We untied her, applying medigel to her serious injuries. Somehow, she seemed familiar. I looked deeply, past her abrasions and injuries, the facial tattoos and skin markings calling to me. Suddenly, it hit. This was Lucielle, Asari captain of the Moonlight Sliver. I didn't know how, but she'd been working with the Alliance to get us this intel, and had paid the price. I hadn't seen the Moonlight on the ground at the port, so god knows what had happened to them. I wasn't sure if I really wanted to know.
Lucielle's eyes cracked open a little, blinking in disbelief as she tried to register what was going on. She managed to croak out a few words, her voice weak and almost at a whisper. "M..Matt, Hallie.. I thought you two were dead." It was a reasonable conclusion to come to, we hadn't had any contact with anyone from the Eclipse since our flight from Illium. For obvious reasons, Hallie and I had decided not to tip anyone off about our new lives and occupations. There was still a risk that the Blue Suns still had contracts out on the both of us, so we'd opted for discretion.
I leaned in close to Lucielle, reassuring her. "Sshh, it's good to see you too. We're gonna get you out, just hold tight." I took one of her arms, one of the team members taking the other, lifting her up and supporting her weight. It was like she weighed nothing, they'd probably been starving her as some form of torture. Fucking animals.
Hallie keyed her omnitool, linking us to the comms for the rest of the AIS team. "Wyllie, this is Giona. Package is secure, we're coming back up."
Rachel's voice crackled back over our comms, "Acknowledged Giona, we're all wrapped up here too. Link up at the front of the building and we'll proceed to the LZ that Lieutenant Coates has set up."
In front of the headquarters building, the AIS team waited, ready to deploy. All of their hostages were bound and linked up to small Mass Effect generators, designed to lighten the mass of the objects they were attached to. The result was that the prisoners effectively floated in place, able to be moved without any real effort. It made the sprint across the base easy, and we reached the landing zone quickly. Coates had taken the area efficiently, wasting no time in spreading his men out in a defensive perimeter. Behind us, Shepard and her own teams approached nonchalantly, with the swagger that only professionals can have. All up, most of the force was still intact, with only light casualties. For once, it looked like the strategy and planning had all worked out.
All of a sudden, Shepard broke out into full sprint at us, gesturing with one arm in what definitely was a 'get over here' motion. Seeing the urgency, we came over to meet her. Shepard slowed down and called out to us once we were in earshot. "Agents, we've got bad news! I'll patch you in to the fleet, they'll fill you in."
The comms chatter from the Alliance fleet above started to filter in through to us. "...enemy fleet. Message repeats. Attention all ground commanders, a new flotilla of mercenary vessels have jumped in via the relay and are closing in on a collision course for Shok'To. Take cover and brace for impact. Also, be advised that several other objects have broken away from the vessels and are believed to be drop pods of some kind. Additional hostile presence on the ground is to be anticipated. Evac and air support will commence once we've cleared the immediate space around the flotilla. Message repeats. Attention.." I disconnected from the comm channel, motioning over to Rachel. "Did you hear that? Get the teams together, we're going to need to prepare."
She nodded back at me, "I'll get people to move the prisoners into one of the abandoned ships, it's probably the best cover available. Grab whatever you can out of the cargo holds of the vessels here and build some kind of cover that we can use."
I turned to Hallie, saying "I sure hope that you liked building forts as a kid."
It wasn't exactly a proper bunker by any means, but we'd managed to set up various crates and other hopefully non-explosive items into a series of strongpoints around the ship we had the prisoners sequestered in. Each acted as a sort of pillbox or bunker, providing overlapping fire with the others that we'd set up. Coates was cursing having destroyed the air defenses, while we shared his sentiments there was no guarantee that we'd be able to make Batarian tech work properly anyway, so the point was moot. The Lieutenant pulled his troops close together in formation, opting to fortify one of the hangars and use it as a firebase to weather the coming storm. Around two hundred of the Marines dug themselves in and readied themselves to hold the line. Shepard had her special forces troops set up similarly to us, using another abandoned craft as cover essentially right next to us. This way, we could overlap fire and be close enough to help each other. The distribution of numbers was concerning though, there were only around sixty of us spread in two small clusters and separated by quite a large distance from the Marine force. It would be easy for whoever was coming down on those ships to focus all their efforts on us and crush us before turning on the larger force.
The night skies above us started to brighten with a sickening orange glow, the night being eaten away by trails of fire arcing through the air. Massive hunks of ship rained down from above, smashing into the ground all around us. It was unlikely that we'd be directly hit, but the looming possibility of instant death was still there. All we could do was hunker down, pressing ourselves low and against the various crates we'd appropriated as cover. Eventually the steel rain began to slow and cease, but that brought the more ominous second wave that was predicted to fall on us. The objects that followed fell more slowly than their predecessors, delayed by some sort of propulsion. They were shaped like squat upright cargo containers, painted in a rust-coloured red, but bearing no visible insignias or markings. There were nine of them, crashing down amongst the other ruins and wrecks of the vessels parked on the ground. The pods just lay there, inert, monoliths against the fires raging around them. Despite the mystery surrounding these escape pods, I had a sinking feeling that I knew exactly who these belonged to. There was only one mercenary gang that decked themselves out in full red, and that was the Blood Pack. I patched myself into the comm lines for our AIS team, Shepard and Coates, saying "This is Lieutenant Owens. I think I recognise these pods as belonging to the Blood Pack, prepare for Krogans and Vorcha. If you have incendiary tech rounds, they'll come in use."
Shepard's voice came back over the communicator. "Thanks for the heads up Lieutenant." There was no response from Coates, I hoped that he'd received the message. There was no time to wonder however, as an echoing groan shuddered across the landing zone. The ships that had presumably launched the pods followed, coming in at speeds likely too fast for any normal safety regulations, landing gear crunching into the tarmac and engines spooling down. The pods then began to open, rapidly dropping 'ramps' (said ramps were little more than sections of each of the four walls) that clanged down onto the tarmac. We couldn't see farther than the pure blackness inside, but every barrel we had was trained upon those entrances. A faint screeching grew, growing louder until it reached an almost unbearable level. The noise was disconcerting, but we still kept our focus. In a sudden rush, a wave of Vorcha spilled forth from the pods, screeching and skittering as they came at us full tilt, firing wildly with no thought to their own safety or really to where they were aiming at. The Vorcha were just the fodder, there to wear us down before the real attack started. Even so, we didn't disregard the threat the Vorcha posed. Without mercy we gunned them down, staining the ground with their blood, and littering the ramps with their corpses.
It felt like the Vorcha would never end. We would keep scything through them, but they kept spilling out. Our own makeshift pillbox only had Hallie, myself and the other two AIS agents from our team. We'd never even learned their names, just some callsigns long forgotten in the fires of the night. We were cycling our weapons, two of us firing nonstop until we overheated, then the others taking over as our weapons cooled down, with us waiting with our sidearms to pick off any foes that got too close. Slowly, the ranks of the Vorcha started to thin, but this was no reprieve. Krogan began to appear amongst them, thundering down from their parked ships, boots rattling our very bones. I could see why the Council had resorted to espionage to bring the Krogan down, they were huge, towering above the average Human or Asari. Their regenerative abilities made them difficult to properly bring down, and you couldn't even disable them with a shot to the heart or lung, since they had backup organs which would kick in to keep them going. In all honesty, I hadn't even seen a Krogan in the flesh yet, but I knew what to expect. The Krogan strode over the broken bodies of the Vorcha with impunity, blood and viscera sticking to their boots like it was meant to look that way to start with. This wasn't going to be easy. But then again, no one had ever said it would be.
We switched our focus from the Vorcha to the Krogan who were coming toward us. With enough focused fire, we could bring one down, but it was only a matter of time before they managed to close the distance and overrun us. Hallie switched over to her grenade launcher, firing incendiary rounds overhead, bathing the ground with spilled fire. The fire would help prevent the regenerative abilities of the Vorcha and Krogan, provided that we managed to actually hit them with it. For now, it served as a deterrent, to force the enemy into small chokepoints unmarred by fire, but allowing us to focus all of our firepower into one or two areas. However, one Krogan simply didn't get the message. He burst right through the wall of fire, flames licking at his skin and armour, blasting away madly with his shotgun and bellowing insults and challenges to us. Overheating his weapon, he threw it away and charged right for us.
The Krogan leapt right over our impromptu cover, he lashed out with a gauntleted hand and caught me in the side, smashing me against a crate and knocking the wind out of me. Wheezing, I reached to pick my rifle back up. Above me, Hallie and our two agents were circling around the Krogan, riddling him with projectiles, checking nervously over their shoulders to make sure no other xenos surprises made it over the crates. The Krogan roared, making as if to charge at Hallie, but she was ready for this and smashed a concussive round right through his face. There wasn't much left to see, just a smoking, gaping hole right where his reptilian features should have been. This bought us some breathing room, especially for me because I couldn't really breathe at all at that moment.
The reprieve, however, was short lived. More and more Krogan were breaking past our firing lines, rampaging through the Alliance forces. I could see bodies being thrown around like discarded Lego pieces, it wasn't a pretty sight. Three more Krogan busted right through our cover, tossing the cargo crates aside as if they weighed nothing. We took one down almost immediately, focusing fire and slicing his legs out from under him. I doubted he could regenerate new kneecaps or whatever the fuck Krogan have, so he was out of the picture. The problem was the other two. One of the poor other lads who shared the foxhole with us got the raw end of the deal. One of the Blood Pack picked him right up and smashed him against our own cover, putting his shotgun in the dudes' mouth and leaving little more than paste where the operative's head was. The other fired crazily at Hallie and myself, there was no way he could miss in such close quarters either, our shields redlined then cut out. We were finished. The Krogan who had pulverised our buddy turned to get in on the action, seeing an easy couple of kills.
Seemingly out of nowhere, the Krogan firing at us was bowled clean over by a biotic throw. The sheer force of this slammed him face first into the landing gear of the ship we had our backs to, audibly cracking his head-plate at the same time. The other seemed to grow a large piece of metal out of his neck, also biotically propelled. Our saviour was none other than Shepard, rolling right through the swathes of Vorcha and Krogan with her platoon of soldiers. She must have seen our positions being overrun and pulled her entire platoon around to smash through the flank of the Blood Pack offensive. I noticed that Shepard used her biotic abilities in rather unorthodox ways, often choosing to manipulate objects around her rather than using the skills outright on her enemies. To cover her advance, she had used lift on the corpses of dozens of Vorcha and Krogan, moving them along to intercept enemy fire while her teams fired grenades overhead. Anytime an opening appeared, Shepard would bring her other hand up, lifting a piece of wreckage or other detritus, and would launch it at the first creature to look at her the wrong way. In the distance, I could hear faint cheers from the other AIS members camped around our impromptu prisoner ship. Wasting no time, the three of us left riddled the bodies of the Pack members with enough bullets to make sure that regeneration was never ever going to be on the cards.
The flow of enemy reinforcements seemed to be faltering, no more Krogan lumbered out of the 'parked' ships, and few Vorcha were coming forth either. As if to hammer the point home, a great roaring of engines sounded overhead, and two Alliance frigates came into view, spitting fire from their cannons in direct support of our forces. It was ballsy of them to take their ships so low, but frigates were capable of atmospheric combat and landings, so I wasn't going to complain about the help. Shells thundered into the pods and ships, cleansing the area around them in halos of flame and shrapnel. You could actually smell the burning Krogan and Vorcha trapped amongst all that. It wasn't a bad smell. Hallie and I dusted ourselves off, taking stock of our surroundings. It was carnage. Of the wenty of us that had manned our positions around the ship, only about nine of us remained. Fires still licked away at the ground, using the bodies as fuel to keep themselves well fed. In the distance, I could still hear the yells and screams of Coates' force as they battled away, even over the chattering gunfire and thundering cannons from the ships. Shepard had heard the commotion too. She motioned her teams, and they turned as one and began their bloody journey toward the hangars where Coates was encamped. Without targets of our own, Hallie and followed suit, picking our way past the bodies littered around the place. A few Vorcha and Krogan were still alive, groaning as their bodies struggled to regenerate their wounds. Not wanting to fight the same foes twice, we finished them off as we went.
The hangars weren't a pleasant place to be. If I thought we had it bad across the landing zone, I was definitely mistaken. The majority of the landing pods had crashed around here, six compared to the three we'd had to deal with. The perimeter around the main hangar was choked with bodies, Vorcha, Krogan, the odd human crushed under the sheer numbers they'd had to deal with. The barricades had been cast aside, as if a tornado had ripped through the defenses here. Bodies were piled up so high, they had formed sandbag walls of their own. Judging by the discarded weapons and ammunition by them, they had been used as such too. The frigates were still making strafing runs overhead, but they couldn't fire on the hangars without the risk of hitting our own troops. Judging by clamour of combat ahead, there was still a fight to be had. Linked up with Shepard's platoon, we rolled into the hangar, smashing into the stragglers left behind as some kind of rearguard (or perhaps just looting). They never stood a chance. Caught by surprise, we laid into them swiftly, trying to keep up our momentum. Once they were dispatched, we didn't linger, but kept going farther in. Coming into the hangar proper, we walked into First Lieutenant Coates' own personal Alamo.
Coates had taken shipping containers, cargo crates, anything solid that wasn't bolted to the floor, and enough bad language to suspend your average teenager from school, and had made a fort of sorts in the rear of the hangar. He'd left almost no cover between his walls and the entrances, and had turned the concrete floor into a killing field. I'd thought I'd seen bodies piled up in the past, but this was ridiculous. There were literal mounds of corpses, piled up on top of each other, to form an unstable terrain of sorts that bogged you down to walk across. So much blood slicked the area that it was nearly impossible to walk at a normal pace, you had to take your time and move steadily amongst the still warm bodies lest you slip and end up face down in a Krogan's quad. Even so, there was still fighting raging on. The Alliance marines had pulled back inside their own walls, and were huddled together in groups, trying to take down the last of the Blood Pack. The surviving members of the Pack were clustered around a gargantuan Krogan, standing well above the others. This Krogan was raising biotic barriers to absorb fire and casting shockwaves and singularities to keep the Alliance forces off balance and unable to coordinate their fire. This had to be their Battlemaster, the one who was leading the Pack in this violent counterattack.
Shepard singled him out, not by any call or challenge, but rather by blowing away the Blood Pack around him with her biotics. He turned to face Shepard, his face a stony visage showing no reaction, not like his reptilian features were discernable anyway. Shepard immediately launched two biotic throws at him, the twin balls twining together, then splitting apart and striking him from either side. The battlemaster staggered, but held his balance and countered with his own biotic strike, a shockwave that ruptured the concrete floor, blasting the encircling Alliance soldiers aside and into groaning heaps as they tried to pick themselves up. Shepard was seemingly ready for this, she threw up a barrier to absorb the blow for herself and those around her, then dashed straight for the Krogan. Shepard threw what looked to be a warp while she was in her mad dash, and caught the battlemaster dead in his chest, the gnawing energy eating away at his flesh. Not stopping, Shepard reared back her fist, priming it with dark energy. Her biotically charged hand smashed into the Krogan, setting off a detonation that rocked the entire hangar. Shepard stood immobile in the middle of the explosion, seemingly safe at the eye of the storm. All the force seemed to be directed through the Blood Pack battlemaster, creating a pressure wave of sorts that thundered out from behind him, blasting Blood Pack and Alliance alike off their feet. The battlemaster himself stood there still, before crumpling onto the ground. There was little left of his chest, save for a deep black crater. Shepard opened her hand, letting the biotic energy dissipate. She looked haggard, but still stood tall amongst the carnage. Giving a sly smile, she managed to whisper "Cool huh?" before collapsing next to her fallen adversary.
This spelt the end for the Blood Pack. Without their leader to organise them, they were quickly mopped up by the rest of the Alliance forces. Us coming in as reinforcements sandwiched the remaining Krogan and Vorcha, and we utterly exterminated every last one of them, no quarter was given. The frigates circling overhead came in directly to land, spilling out reinforcements and medical personnel to gather the fallen and tend to the wounded. The dawn had finally arrived, a dull orange glow that added a somber tone to the wreckage all around us, a sepia filter over the carnage that had been wrought. Hallie and I sat with Rachel and Shepard, watching the proceedings from afar. We'd come out of the whole ordeal relatively unscathed, a few bumps and bruises here and there but miraculously no serious damage. Shepard sat with a cigarette draped between her fingers, looking decidedly exhausted. Hallie asked her, "Are you doing okay Shepard? When you collapsed back there it looked as if you were done for."
Shepard grimaced, taking a drag from her smoke and answering, "Using biotics is pretty taxing on the body, and requires you to be in the right frame of mind, using the right hand movements, that kind of thing. I'd been using mine nonstop from the moment those Krogan hit the ground, must've taken more outta me than I thought." Shepard absently closed and opened her free hand as she talked, "I believe I told Matt a few years ago, but I don't actually like using my biotic powers, I often only use them as a last resort."
I piped up with a question of my own; "I saw you manipulating objects a lot today, and back on Torfan as well. How come I've never really heard of other biotic users picking up pieces of metal to use as skewers or to block incoming fire before?"
Shepard gave me a small grin, saying "Not many users out there really think outside the box, they just stick to the forms that they were taught in whatever academies they were sent to. I didn't have what you would call.. conventional training, so a lot of the things I can do are abilities that I've cultivated myself" I'd never really considered that biotics could have their own personalised moves, I'd always thought of the abilities as being limited to what had been shown in the games. In a way, I guess it was. Biotic schools would teach their students all the same things, and thus the same moves and forms would always be perpetuated, plus many of them were so staple and useful in combat that they were almost mandatory to know anyway.
My train of thought on was interrupted by a familiar face coming into view from the side. Lieutenant Wyllie and what remained of our AIS agents were carrying stretchers, ferrying the wounded and fallen to medical shuttles. Shepard ground her smoke out, standing slowly and massaging aching muscles. Hallie and I followed suit. I groaned, every single joint ached from a whole night of abuse and no real rest since we landed on this tropical shithole. Hallie let out a ruinous yawn, managing to mumble out some discernable words. "Let's help out, the sooner we pick up the uh.. pieces around here, the sooner I can get some real bunk time."
Amongst the stretchers lay a figure in a tired jumpsuit, blue skin seemingly pale in the morning light. Lucielle was propped up on pillows presumably filched from the comatose stretcher-bearers on either side of her, inhaling deeply from what looked like a hand-rolled cigarette. The smell hit my nostrils, and I realised that the Asari was casually smashing back a fat joint. She spotted our approach, giving a cheeky wave and calling out, "It's medicinal officers I swear!" Lucielle had another toke, commenting "I can't believe that this stuff is still illegal on human worlds, you've been using it for hundreds of years and no one's died yet from using it."
"Yeah and next you'll be posting anti-government memes on Facebook, wearing Guy Fawkes masks on the weekends, and generally eating the Eclipse out of house and home."
Lucielle raised a tattooed-on eyebrow "You humans are fucking strange sometimes, I didn't follow any of that."
Hallie looked quizzically at me. "Yeeeaah.. neither did I. Didn't get too hard of a knock from one of those Blood Pack bruisers did you?"
"I kind of hope I did, I could make some good money off a lawsuit from defective helmets." I tried to pass it off as nothing, but the fact that I'd managed to slip like that concerned me. All it would take would be a few extranet searches and my connections to the past would be wide open. Most specifically, my own goddamn profile page. I'd been using a different last name ever since coming into this world, but considering how far technology had come, it wouldn't take much effort to find me. That is, if I even had existed in the past, or if I had, had I even died? It really was just too much to think about, and I didn't particularly want to go looking, lest I find out something I didn't want to know.
Changing the subject, I asked Lucielle "What happened to you after Illium last year? Last we heard you were heading to the Moonlight, but we heard nothing after that, no word from any of our Eclipse contacts about any of you guys." The last time we'd seen Lucielle, she was heading for her ship with the rest of her crew, with the plan being for the Moonlight to provide air cover over the siege of our headquarters. They never showed. At first, Hallie and I had thought that Lucielle had been another victim of the Blue Suns hit squads that had been roaming Nos Astra. Further investigation revealed that the Moonlight had departed from Nos Astra, but had gone no farther than Omega. Seeing as how the ship wasn't parked here on the tarmac, or in any of the hangars, and none of the crew were anywhere to be seen, something must have gone down back on Omega.
Lucielle flicked her eyes downward, a brief shadow passing over her usual joking face. As if it had never happened, she blinked and looked up at us, saying "It started a long time ago actually. Not just the troubles last year, but everything. I was approached by some.. shadier elements from your very own Alliance a long time ago." The Asari took another pull from her joint. "Well, a long time by your standards at least. It wasn't long after the Relay 314 incident had ended, your Systems Alliance was settling worlds left right and centre, and the list of enemies were growing by the day. I was employed to keep track of the underworld elements, find out where they were based, where they were going to hit. All those convenient joint operations between the Eclipse and Alliance? Finding out about Torfan, the bait op on Bekenstein, my crew helped set all of it up. It was probably easier than we thought to make the connections between us, we got too close to the sun and we were burned. The attack on headquarters was the underworld we'd been fucking for so long coming back to burn us and all who'd had contact with us. To be honest, my crew thought that you'd died along with the rest of the base. We tried to lay low on Omega, but there was no respite there either. One by one we were all hunted, until there was only me left. The Moonlight is still somewhere there on Omega, gathering dust in an Eclipse hangar. With nothing left, there was only the job. I became a normal merc again, just making that sweet extra cash on the side. Of course that didn't last too long, I was careless, and ended up in a cell down here. The fact that you moved up your operation to try and save me was kind of heartwarming to be honest."
It was a pretty heavy info dump to try and take in. The fact that all of our seemingly random missions had been linked, just pieces of a campaign orchestrated by the Alliance to fight for their place in the galaxy was a shock, but at the same time rather unsurprising in the grand scheme of things. It had been a little too convenient that all of our objectives had somehow lined up, the fact that a mercenary group was directly working with the Alliance added right to that. The attack on our Illium headquarters wasn't just an attack on us, but rather a message - a statement - of the consequences for allying with the Council. I rolled my neck, getting a few satisfying clicks out of it. It would probably cause some damage down the line, but goddamn was it good. I asked Lucielle, "So what now? You've been burned, the Eclipse probably knows about your other part time job, and there's likely several teams still hunting the survivors from our former base."
Lucielle absently rubbed at her wrist, seemingly staring through us as she replied "It's one step at a time now. I still have a ship, stashed on Omega. I'm going to start there, get a crew, and turn the tables on those Blue Suns fucks."
Shepard was smiling, looking awfully cheerful through her exhaustion. She crouched down next to Lucielle, putting a hand on her shoulder. "You know, this is where someone would usually say that revenge is not the answer. But I want you to find the people that killed your crew and end them. You owe them nothing less. They're gone, and there will be time to build again in their memory, god knows you Asari have enough years to play with. But those Suns are out there right now, and are going to keep hunting your comrades. You can stop that." I'd never seen that side to Shepard before, at least in person. No wonder people would listen to her, she was damn motivating.
The Asari sat up a bit farther, determination on her face. "I'm going to do just that. I'm not a girl that likes to take the long view on things. You know, for a bunch of upstarts, you humans really get things done. Once we get out of here, look for me on Omega. I'll be there, raising hell. If you ever need anything, I'll be there, Moonlight in tow."
We left aboard the last frigate, ground falling away beneath us as we ascended. The loading ramp was still open, several of us standing and taking in the light of the morning, Shepard, Hallie, Coates and Rachel among us. The port was a desolate warzone. The broken shells of burning ships and ruined buildings smouldered still across the ravaged tarmac. We'd taken all of our fallen with us, but left the others where they lay. There may have been no room on our ships anyway, but there was also no compassion for our enemies. Coates saluted, the rest of us followed suit. In his other hand, Coates held a detonator. Without ceremony, he hit the button. Across the port, several dull whumps sounded out. The barracks, headquarters, hangars, anti-air emplacements, fuel silos, they were all swept away in a sea of fire. Billowing plumes of flame and smoke rose above the trees, setting off secondary detonations as munitions and fuel dumps were ignited. The waves of heat were intense, sucking all the oxygen out of the air, the confines of the frigate providing only the smallest respite from the onslaught.
The loading ramp closed before us, shutting off the hell outside and leaving us in the cool air-conditioned environment. Shepard sighed, slumping against the tires of a parked Mako tank. I managed to catch her quietly mumbling to herself, "..hope I never have to come back to this shithole again." God, I hoped she never found out just how much foreshadowing went on just being around her.
I sat down next to Shepard, giving her one of my cigarettes. There were strict non-smoking policies aboard most starships, but hopefully the smell of burnt flesh which hung to us would cover it all up. Letting myself slump against the Mako, I told Shepard, "Don't worry, if you ever have to come back here, I'll be right with you."
Rachel Wyllie leaned over from my side and plucked the cigarette out of my mouth, taking a long drag and returning it to me afterwards. She gave us the weak smile, saying "Perk up guys, by Earth calendars, it's a holiday! Happy New Year, and welcome to twenty-one-eighty-three!"
The ride had only just begun.
A/N: You know how I said this sat at 80% done for at least a month? Well, that was true, but I also finished this and revised this like four different times for the next two months after that, I really wanted to try get it right. There won't be nearly as long a wait for the next chapter (fingers crossed) because I wrote this one from scratch to fill in the time gap and close up the opening chapters. Most of the timeline for 2183 was drafted years ago (on paper though) so I'm gonna take it and transcribe it to pc, doing what's likely to be a freakish amount of editing. PLEASE PLEASE leave a review if you have the time, looking forward to seeing you all again!