Author's Note: Here you go, another chapter. I think I should put a lemon in this story. A COMBUSTIBLE lemon, haha! Oh, Cave Johnson, you're so funny... For those of you unaware, that was a joke. Ok, enough stupid humor. Story time!
"Are you effing kidding me?" Jake's shout went unheard over the noisy atmosphere of Chora's Den. He and I were sitting at a table while Kai Leng and the rest of Echo were doing their own thing around the club.
"Keep it down, would you?" I requested. "I know, it's not what I wanted, but it's Cerberus. You've heard what happens if you decide to not help them." Jake sighed.
"I was just hoping to get a break before we went on another mission. It's been what? 3 in a row? I'm getting tired, and you start making mistakes if you're tired. And we don't make mistakes." I nodded, agreeing with him.
"I'm honestly surprised we've done this well so far," I said. "I mean, I'm 19, you, Evon, and Timmy are 18, Tillman's 17, and Alex is 16. 16 years old. We should be in school, not playing mercenary."
"The problem is we aren't playing," Jake argued. "It's real. It's good that we bulked up so we don't look like teenagers when we're in armor, but right now, for example? We look like kids. I'm sure this Kai Leng guy must think we're a joke." I shrugged.
"He'll just have to deal with it. We haven't failed a job yet, and we're only getting better."
"Yeah, you're right," Jake said wistfully. We both stopped talking and just watched the crowds in the bar for a few moments. I picked up the beer in front of me and took a swig.
"You ever regret the lives we've taken?" I asked Jake suddenly, setting my drink down. He looked over in my direction but kept his gaze towards the floor.
"I try to avoid that," he said quietly. "We shouldn't be hardened killers at such a young age."
"I guess we should find a girl to take our minds off that stuff then, eh?" I joked. Jake looked me in the eyes with a smile on his face and playfully punched me in the shoulder.
"Boy, wouldn't that be nice?"
"Well, come on," I said, standing up from the table. "Let's go get the others and do this thing so we can find a girl." Jake rose alongside me.
"I'm game for that," he said happily.
I ordered Evon to go to the bridge of the Fury to fly us out of there while I spoke to Kai Leng in the captain's quarters, the closest thing on the ship we had to an office. More accurately, I ordered Evon to pretend to go fly the ship. In reality, none of us still had a clue as to fly the ship. We just let TRON do all the work, and he was under strict orders to not reveal his presence to outsiders. I don't know how Mr. Leng would react to finding out we had an AI onboard, but I guessed it wouldn't be in a good way.
"So, what's this intel you have for me?" I asked him.
"Cerberus managed to I.D. one of the Alliance soldiers who was present on the raid," Kai announced. "If we can find out where that man is stationed, we may be able to find out where our substance is being held from his information."
"Are you sure the Alliance wouldn't have destroyed whatever they took?" Kai shook his head.
"No. It's too important, and the Alliance knew it. That's why they attacked us in the first place."
"Alright then," I mused. "What's this guy's name?"
"We don't know his rank," Kai told me, "But the man's name is David Anderson." And there go my hopes and dreams of joining Shepard.
"You said Anderson?" I asked, double-checking his story. Kai nodded. Well, that's just great. We're hunting down Captain Anderson, or whatever rank he is now. If he gets captured or killed, that'll probably result in Shepard not saving the Citadel from Sovereign, and we all die.
"How are we going to find him?" I was trying to play it cool and not let that revelation show on my face.
"I recommend we head to the nearest Alliance outpost and access their archives from there. The system is notoriously hard to hack from off-site, and we need to find out where Anderson is so we can go get him." I sighed. Great...
"So where is the nearest outpost?" I asked Kai.
"Bekenstein," he replied curtly. "In the Boltzmann system, Serp-"
"Serpent Nebula," I said, cutting him off. "I know, I've been there on business before." Kai Leng narrowed his eyes.
"To tell you the truth, I can't believe the Illusive Man hired a group of kids for this job." The condescension in his voice was unmistakable. Like I didn't see this coming from a mile away...
"Are we gonna have a problem here, Mr. Leng?" I demanded. "You're a veteran at what you do. I get that. And I understand that, yes, Dead Echo is composed of a group of teenagers. But you don't have to think we're incapable of doing what needs to be done. There's a reason The Illusive Man hired us to do this instead of the Eclipse or the Blue Suns."
"Until you can prove that you and your little friends are capable of actually getting something done, I'm going to treat you as a child. If you can complete the objective, then fine, good for you. A bunch of kids have no business screwing up our plans though, so if you can't do the job, then you better get the hell out of the way so the adults can clean up your mess."
"Listen here, you-" I caught myself. There was no point in getting mad at the guy, there was nothing I could do about his beliefs. In order to prove ourselves to him, we'd just have to get the job done like always.
"Alright, fine." I said. "I'll go tell our pilot to set a course for Bekenstein. You can just...I dunno. Eat maybe? Whatever you want." Kai nodded, then turned on his heel and walked briskly out of the room.
"Alright, that guy's a jerk," I muttered to myself. "I do NOT like him..." I glanced up at the ceiling.
"TRON, you hear all that?" I was greeted with silence. I slapped my own head because of my stupidity.
"That's right, you can't talk. I'm going to assume you did hear me. I want a course set for Bekenstein immediately." I felt no change in the ship's gravity, so I knew the ship hadn't moved at all.
"Oh, for God's sakes! I'll head to the bridge then and make sure you hear me!" I started to storm out of the captain's quarters when I felt a slight shudder as the Fury disengaged its docking clamps and began heading out to space. I shook my head playfully. This AI gets too much leeway around here. It'll be nice when he can actually talk instead of sending text messages.
Dead Echo, along with Kai Leng, stood in the central concourse of a Bekenstein spaceport while we waited for Evon to finish paying the docking fees. With the amount of time we had been waiting however, Evon probably could have gone to the bathroom, bought himself some food, and then go mess around doing nothing for a while.
"This is taking forever," Ricky exclaimed. "This is so boring!" I glanced over at him, his hands in the pockets of his so-called "civilian" outfit. We all had attire that was decent enough for our surroundings, except for Kai Leng. At least we looked like we belonged on the planet, Kai resembled someone who should be on Omega. It would probably be a good idea to keep him out of sight whenever we could, his clothing would almost certainly attract unwanted attention.
"Relax, Ricky," I said. "If you want, you can go explore while we wait here." He looked at me, his expression cheerful.
"Really?" he asked. "Dude, that's awesome!" He turned to Jake and Tillman. "You guys wanna come with me?" Both Jake and Tillman diverted their gaze to me. As the unofficial leader of Dead Echo, I had the last say in pretty much everything we did, so people normally deferred to me when someone asked them to do something. I nodded my consent. The three of them were up and moving so fast that it was like they had just heard that there was free food.
Ricky didn't even bother asking Alex and Timmy because those two just kept to themselves mostly and avoided anything social. Except for Alex when he was in combat. Then you couldn't get the guy to shut up sometimes, but he otherwise found people annoying. His call.
"So..." I heard Kai Leng's voice from behind me, so I turned to face him.
"Mr. Leng. I hope you have some sort of plan for breaking into an Alliance outpost." Kai looked around, an almost unnoticible sense of apprehensiveness in his eyes.
"I'd prefer it if you didn't refer to me by name," he said.
"Then what should I call you?" I asked. He didn't say anything. "Alright, for the time being, it's Mr. Leng. Nobody'll know you by your last name."
"Last time I was here, it didn't go so well. They might recognize me on sight."
"When Evon gets back, we'll go somewhere more private. Until then though..."
"Right," he said. "Plan. I'm former Alliance, so breaking in shouldn't cause too much of a problem. I remember the basic layout of the smaller outposts, that'll make things easier. I recommend we get a hotel room, something like that where we can set up a listening outpost of our own."
"And you didn't feel like sharing this information earlier because...?" Kai shrugged.
"It wasn't relevant at the time." I had completely forgotten he used to be in the Alliance. That was probably why someone of his caliber was with us instead of, say, Miranda.
"Alright, whatever," I said. "Does that mean you have contacts that could get us in the base?" Leng pondered this for a moment while I glanced around the pristine spaceport. There was so much white aroound the place it almost hurt to look at the walls. It was very similar to Mirror's Edge, that game had the same effect. There were a few stores that I could see Jake, Ricky, and Tillman going in and out of. They looked like they were enjoying themselves, which was nice. It was obviously better than sitting around with nothing to do.
"I might be able to have someone do something for us," Kai Leng said abrubtly, jolting me back to the task at hand. "I wouldn't know until I ask, but it's better than nothing." I nodded, agreeing with him. A little help was always better than none. I noticed Kai's eyes shift from me to somewhere behind me, so I turned to see what he was looking at.
Evon was heading in our direction, dragging his feet and staring at the ground. I watched him drift up to me with a bemused smile on my face.
"What took you so long?" I asked him. He brought his eyes up to meet mine and jabbed me in the gut with a finger.
"Next time, you're the one who has to stand in a line for more than half an hour. That line barely moved at all, it was like one person every five minutes."
"Why else do you think we keep you around?" I quipped. I turned to Timmy before Evon could make a comeback of his own.
"Go get the other three, would you?" I asked him. "We're on the move." Timmy silently rose from his seat and headed off to find the other Echo members. They'd be disappointed that they didn't get to run around longer, but too bad. They did enough of that in our downtime on Omega. There were plenty of times that I needed them for something, but they were too busy having fun in Afterlife.
"So, Mr. Leng," I began, rotating back to face him. "You wanted an observation post?" He nodded once.
"I'll go find something with a good view of the Alliance base," he said. "You can go do whatever kids do around here." He then quickly walked away, heading out of the spaceport. Evon leaned in close to me.
"I get the feeling he doesn't like us," he whispered. I looked at him with one eyebrow raised.
"What gives you that idea?"
Kai Leng had set us up with a very nice view of the Alliance base. It was a corner room on the top floor of a cheap hotel, well, cheap for Bekenstein, but the expense didn't matter. Leng had established a connection with the secondary Alliance security camera feeds on a monitor, but it wasn't enough to get us detected fortunately. We could see everything going on near the exterior of the base, but the other cameras that monitored the interior of the base were located along the primary network, so we couldn't hack those.
About an hour after Kai had left to find a place where we could stare at the human military for hours on end via cameras and windows, he called us and told us where to go. After we checked the place out, we deemed it acceptable and began moving our gear from the Fury to our hideout. "Gear", as we affectionally called it, consisted of our armor and weapons. Once we had everything set up, we waited. And waited. And waited. Taking shifts to watch the compound and the security feeds, we hung around the room while we were awake, and slept when we needed to.
Right now, everyone was armored up with their weapons, except for Ricky. Today was the day...night, actually, when we finally tried to sneak inside the compound. The past two days of stalking the Alliance had finally paid off.
"Ok, Leng, run us through the plan one more time," I said. "Just so everyone gets it for sure." Kai was all business during the planning stage. At least with him being preoccupied, he wasn't being a jerk to us, so that was nice.
"One of my old buddies has arranged for a service entrance to be unlocked on the condition of no injuries, so you are not allowed to harm any Alliance soldiers." I glanced over at Alex, who seemed to be very focused on a spot on the ceiling.
"We can't have too many people going into the base," Kai continued, "So a one or two man team will have to go in alone. I will not be infiltrating since my contact also allowed me to have access to the Alliance com network, and I'm not letting a group of kids handle the task of monitoring their chatter." Has this guy been beaten up by a group of children before? This is getting ridiculous.
"Now, according to their schedules, the guards will be away from the entry point in just a few minutes during the shift change. This base has never been infiltrated before, so the guards shouldn't be expecting trouble. Once the infil team is in, they find a terminal, access the database and get what we need, then leave quietly. We meet up, leave, and go after the target. Simple as that."
"Any volunteers for sneaking in to the base?" I inquired. Timmy rose his hand, obviously a perfect choice for this mission due to his ninja stealth skills. Jake raised his hand as well, since he tried to do everything, and Tillman did too because Jake did.
I chose Timmy, but then I was left to decide between Jake and Tillman. Those two have done a lot of important tasks lately. Alex always does his own thing, Evon asks for the jobs he knows he can handle, and Ricky... I shifted my gaze to Ricky. He appeared to be bored, as evidenced by his bouncing from foot to foot and looking around the room.
"Ricky," I said. He stopped "being bored" and turned his attention to me.
"What, me?"
"Is there another Ricky here?"
"Oh yeah..." I shook my head, and I noticed Mr. Leng doing the same out of the corner of my eye. Now he must really think we're idiots.
"You're up," I told Ricky. He looked surprised.
"I actually have to do something?" he exclaimed. I nodded. With a sigh, he walked over next to Timmy and waited for the signal to go. I looked back at Kai Leng.
"We've got our two-man team," I said. "We ready for this?"
"Alright, let's do it," he replied. "You two, get going." They started to leave the room as I called out to them.
"Remember, helmet mics only!"
"Yeah, yeah, yeah," Ricky said as they walked out the door. Kai Leng immediately turned to the monitors and began watching them like a hawk, so the rest of us were left with nothing to do except twiddle our thumbs and look out the window.
I wandered over to the window that was facing the Alliance base.
"Activate HUD," I murmured. The lights on the outside of my level 3 RIG helmet lit up, causing a slight glare on the window. Inside the helmet though, the effect was all but unnoticible. The HUD displayed a small map in the lower left hand corner and a weapon overheat meter in the top right. The bar was empty at the moment since I wasn't holding a weapon, but microsensors in the gloves would detect the grip of a weapon and display its overheat gauge in the HUD when I needed it. There was a kinetic barrier meter located at the top of the screen, which turned combat into a version of Halo.
I noticed two blue outlines appear in the shadows of the city. There you are. The outlines belonged to Timmy and Ricky. Tillman had made the HUD recognize the specialized Friend-Or-Foe tags in our suits, and so the other members were outlined in the color of blue whenever we were in the field. Tillman hadn't quite figured out how to make the enemies outlined yet, but he had plenty of downtime to do so. I watched the duo slowly make their way towards the rear of the Alliance base.
They made it close to the service entrance, but Ricky rushed ahead just as a searchlight passed close to his position. He made it across the short distance from his hiding spot to the door, but Timmy was stuck with a light blocking his path. I cut off my external helmet comms and opened a private line with the Fury's AI.
"TRON, I want you to monitor any suspicious non-Alliance chatter. If something comes up, just put it through, don't wait for my approval." I normally do that with every job because we have been ambushed a few times, so it's always just a precaution. I closed the line and turned around to look at Mr. Leng, who was currently breathing a huge sigh of relief. He noticed me looking at him and spoke.
"Your pal here almost ruined the op," he said.
"It's under control," I assured him. "They know what they're doing." I turned back to the window. Timmy was still stuck behind a small wall while Ricky was motioning for him to hurry up. They were probably talking to each other from the way Ricky was moving his hands. I was about to cut into their conversation when somebody else's cut into mine. I was bewildered by this freak incident before I realized it was a comm channel from TRON.
"How soon for the exfil?" That voice was certainly turian, but it sounded slightly higher pitched than all the other turian voices I'd ever heard. Wonder what that means...maybe the guy got it hit in the wrong place and never recovered.
"Just wait for the signal. Go on the mark." Batarian, that was obvious. What the hell is this? A few seconds passed before I heard Tillman shout out.
"What the fuck?" he exclaimed. I whirled around and saw him facing the second of two windows, this one facing the city. Instead of a normal light-filled city though, there appeared to be a very large fireball emanating from a plaza of some kind off in the distance, the reverberation of the shockwave shaking our room.
"Now, that is an explosion," Alex yelled. I stared in astonishment for a moment before I remembered Ricky and Timmy. I turned back to the Alliance base, my HUD still displaying the positions of the two Echo members.
Ricky was standing in front of the service entrance, staring at the fire cloud rising from the city while Timmy was rushing towards Ricky. An instant later, all the lights in the Alliance compound snapped on, illuminating the entire complex. Ricky seemed to figure out that the lights meant he'd be caught, and turned his head to look at Timmy when the door opened and an black armored figure sprinted out.
Whoever it was slammed right into Ricky, knocking both of them to the floor. The person who burst out of the base quickly jumped up and ran off, leaving Ricky lying on the ground, holding his foot in pain. I snapped into my leader mode, shouting out orders.
"Ajax, Flynn, pursue that target," I barked. "Ghost, Necro, Leng, you're with me, we're going for the others." Echo 3 and 5 were already out the door by the time I had finished giving orders. Leng was grabbing his Avenger assault rifle that he had brought with him from the Fury as Ghost and Necro dashed out of the room.
"Let's move it," I yelled, then I was heading out as well. We thundered down the staircase of the hotel until we reached the bottom floor, where we then exited the building and sprinted towards the Alliance base to save Ricardo and Ninja.
By now, the Alliance had figured out that its colony had just become a victim of a terrorist attack of some kind, and had mobilized what seemed to be all of its men. There had to be at least a hundred men flooding out and away from the base to discover what the hell just happened in their city. Fortunately, they didn't have too many men watching the back door, but even the ones that they did have there were too busy staring at the raging inferno off in the distance.
We rushed inside the perimeter of the compound, making a beeline towards Ricardo, who was still lying on the floor. Ghost and Leng were watching the sides while Necro and myself had the front and back of our makeshift diamond formation as we moved towards my teammates. Without alerting any Alliance soldiers, we made it to Echo 4 and 6.
"Ricardo, how you doing?" I asked quickly, my voice coming from my external speakers. He grunted in pain.
"Whoever steamrolled me on their way out must have twisted or sprained my ankle when I fell," he said. "I don't think I can walk." When the situation's serious, the guy cuts right to the chase, I'll give him credit for that. I motioned for Necro and Ninja to help him to his feet, then turned to Kai Leng.
"We've gotta get out of here," I said. "Now."
"The objective's right here," he exclaimed. "We can't leave without it!"
"I'm not willing to risk the safety of my friends just so we can get something now instead of later," I retorted. "We're leaving."
"I'll get the data myself then," Leng argued.
"Fine," I said. "Risk going into a base on high alert. We're heading back to the Fury, if you aren't there in thirty minutes, we're leaving without you." Kai rushed through the service entrance without another word. I turned back to my friends who were helping Ricardo.
"Can you get him back to the Fury?" I asked them.
"Aren't you coming?" Necro asked. I shook my head.
"No," I said. "Ghost, I want you to come with me. We're going to check out that explosion."
"Sounds fun," Ghost said. I started jogging off away from the base with Ghost following me, while Ricardo was carried out on the shoulders of Necro and Ninja.
As Ghost and I jogged towards the giant smoke plume rising out of the angry dark red sky, I opened a private communication channel with Ajax.
"Ajax, how's it going on the hunt?" I asked.
"Just fine," he replied, slightly out of breath. "We had to run to catch up with the turian at the beginning, but he's fleeing with the crowds now."
"So it is a turian?"
"Yes," he confirmed. "It is definitely a turian. He appears to be fleeing towards the spaceport, as are a ton of other people."
"Has he seen you?"
"No. The crowds prevent him from seeing us, and I'm pretty sure he didn't notice us following him in the first place. It's like Assassin's Creed, in a way."
"Ok, good," I said. "Ghost and I are moving to check out the explosion, Ricardo, Ninja, and Necro are heading back to the Fury, and Leng is getting the data we came for."
"I wish I could be heading towards the crater," Ajax complained. "Following a turian is much less fun." I just cut off the comm line. This wasn't the time to be joking around, as much as I agreed with him. I don't think I can remember a time when so many civilians were killed at once. That was a huge explosion, it had to have killed at least a couple dozen people.
"We're coming up on the bomb site," Ghost informed me. "Should be just up ahead." I looked up towards the sky. The stars were blotted out by the ever-growing plume of smoke with ash falling from the sky. The light from the fires made it seem like the heavens themselves were bleeding from the blast. I just hope we can find something other than death...
Ajax shifted through the ocean of people fleeing from the blast, all the while keeping his eye on the absurdedly calm turian.
"From the way this guy is walking so...normally, you'd think someone would notice him," Ajax said to Flynn.
"Yeah," Flynn agreed. "At least he's easy to track this way."
"You know it." They followed the turian as he split away from the main crowd and traveled into the line of private hangars.
"Where the hell is this guy going?" Ajax wondered aloud.
"My guess is an FTL-capable shuttle," Flynn said. "It'd get him off-world, and to wherever he's headed next."
"Then we need a tracker." Flynn cocked his head. It was the easiest way of showing curiosity or confusion while in the armor.
"Tracker?" he asked. Ajax looked over at him.
"Yeah, tracking beacon. There's no way we aren't following this guy."
"Oh! Ok, here." Flynn pulled a small object off his belt and handed it to Ajax.
"This works in the usual way, right?" Ajax asked. Flynn nodded.
"Yep. Stick it on the ship, and it's good for the next month. Unless they find it, but you know that never happens." The turian suddenly turned from the hallway he was walking down into a private hangar. Ajax got right up close to the doorway and poked his head around the corner.
He saw a small ship, but it looked large enough to fly wherever it needed to. The turian was entering the ship from the rear, his back to the doorway of the hangar. Ajax glanced down at the small tracking beacon in his hand, then back at Flynn.
"Cover me," he whispered, then he dashed out towards the ship. Flynn quietly drew his pistol and readied himself, just in case it was necessary. As the ramp leading into the ship was closing, Ajax rushed up and slapped the tracker onto the hull of the ship. He then quietly ran as fast as he could back out of the private hangar.
He tossed himself to the side of the doorway, then stood back up and peeked around the corner. The ship gently lifted off the ground and rose into the air. After clearing the hangar doors, the ship activated its thrusters and rocketed off into the night sky. Flynn put his pistol back on his belt and watched the ship fly away.
"That went surprisingly well," Flynn mused.
"Yeah, that never happens," Ajax agreed. "Well, back to the Fury then.
"Yep." The two began walking back to their ship when Thunder's voice popped into their helmets.
"Uhh...got a problem here guys," he said.
"What's up?" Flynn asked.
"Can you bring Preytor over to the giant smoke cloud?" Flynn glanced over at Ajax, who had to have had the same confused expression on his face.
"Sure, why?"
"Why not?"
"What have you gotten into?"
"Oh, nothing big," Thunder said nonchalantly. "Just this." The sound of a very commanding voice replaced Thunder's.
"You are being placed under arrest of suspicion of participating in a terrorist attack on the colony of Bekenstein. Get down on the floor with your hands behind your head." The communication line cut off after that. Ajax looked over at Flynn.
"I'll go warm up the gunship..." Flynn said with a sigh.
Author's Note: The plot thickens. Just like in every single other chapter I write. The story's moving along though, so that's a plus, as always. Thanks for reading, please review, yadda, yadda, yadda-SPACE! Sorry, Portal 2 has had an interesting effect on my brain. Until next time!