CHAPTER TWELVE: Dying Embers
The first corpses appeared twenty minutes into Major Daniel Vaughn's journey. They were hard to see in the dim light, and at first, they only showed in ones and twos. Yet as Vaughn ventured further north into the woods, more appeared. The bodies were a mix of batarians, asari, salarians, and humans. By a rough estimate, there seemed to be an even split between the number of dead humans and dead aliens. But Vaughn knew that this spelled trouble. After all, Fletcher's men would've outnumbered Lady Isara's scouts at least five to one. Her losses would be more sorely felt.
By the time Vaughn reached to where the skirmish had been the bloodiest, he reckoned there must have been fifty bodies within his line of sight. It was hard to be sure, however. The crashed, flaming shuttles that had lit his way were beginning to die out, leaving only smoky heaps of dull red light. Tiny fires smoldered from where ejected thermal clips had caught and ignited the grasses of the forest floor.
"No survivors..." Vaughn observed. This probably meant that the humans had already scoured this battlefield for wounded – retrieving their allies and finishing off any of Isara's people. Scattered weapons fire sounded from both the west and the north. The battle still raged on, and Vaughn was thankful to find himself in its wake.
Ducking behind a large tree to shield some of his light, Vaughn glanced at his luminescent omni-tool. Kiros – or at least, Kiros' omni-tool with its hidden tracker – was close. A white dot on his holographic display flashed silently. Alexei had been right, for the signal hadn't been moving.
"Major… Major Vaughn?" A weak voice wavered through the night.
Vaughn jerked around, his free hand instinctively drawing and leveling his pistol at the darkness. For a moment, there was only silence. He squinted and tried to find the voice's location.
"Major Vaughn, please..." The voice sounded again, and this time Vaughn could see its source.
Vaughn rushed to the side of the asari woman on the ground. It took him a moment to recall the familiar face, but he soon remembered the name: Glissa, the asari scout who had greeted his team when he had brought Cass back to camp.
Glissa's wounds were bad. It was no surprise that Fletcher's soldiers had mistaken her for a corpse, for Vaughn could tell that she didn't have long. Her chest was a horror of cerulean blood, masking what must have been at least half a dozen bullet wounds. Rivulets of blood streamed from Glissa's mouth as her throat rattled for breath.
"Glissa, I..." Vaughn had trouble continuing. During the war, he had seen many fellow soldiers die at his side. He had never quite gotten used to the hollow comforts he was expected to give.
"You're here to help us, major?" Glissa asked. A smile struggled to life on her lips. "You'll help us fight back."
"I'm doing what I can to get your people to safety," said Vaughn.
"Thank you." Glissa nodded. "Will y-" Her question was interrupted by a sudden coughing fit, one which brought up a blue-tinged froth to her lips.
Vaughn winced. She was well past medi-gel at this point; the most he could do was stay for her passing. "I'm here, Glissa. What is it?"
"Will you kill him? Will… will you make him suffer for doing this?" Her voice became pleading. Her hand tightened around his. "Make Fletcher's death a slow one."
Vaughn was speechless, filled with shock and even a measure of revulsion at the request. And yet, he felt nothing but hatred for Colonel Elias Fletcher at that moment. There was a small voice that persisted at the back of his mind, trying to remind him that he was there to bring peace – to bring an end to the fighting. But as he knelt, surrounded by death, that voice was growing weaker.
He was spared the need to answer. A final breath wheezed in Glissa's chest, and an eerie stillness came upon her body. Glassy eyes still locked with his. A ghost of her sad smile sat fixed with blood-stained lips.
"God dammit." Vaughn stood and turned away. He sighed and forced himself to calm down. "There's nothing I can do about Fletcher right now," he reminded himself. Finding Kiros could be his only immediate goal.
He crept over bodies, accompanied only by his thoughts – yet all he could think about was the logic behind Fletcher's attack. Undoubtedly, Fletcher saw this night as his best opportunity to revenge himself on Lady Isara, and he was probably right. Vaughn cursed himself for not expecting it. However, there was something not quite right about the assault. Isara's eastern scouts had been engaged, but no other part of the perimeter had been hit. Rather than force his attack in a single direction, Fletcher could've used his shuttles as troop transports, sending them in wide, circuitous routes to allow his forces to encircle Isara. Instead, he was giving her and the other exiles an opening to fall back. "This was a push," Vaughn concluded. "But why?"
The frequency of the tracker's soft pinging increased. Vaughn came upon a lone tree, one that was some distance away from the rest of the carnage. The major glanced about the wide tree trunk, but could see nothing. He also searched the canopy above. Nothing there, either.
Or so he thought. However, as Vaughn began to turn from the overhead leaves, a sudden flash of movement made him stop. In truth, movement was not quite the correct way to describe it. The item itself was stationary – it had merely phased into sight. Vaughn blinked in surprise as he saw Kiros lying in the branches. The salarian's eyes were closed, but a faint whisper of breath told Vaughn that he was still alive. After a few moments, a buzzing noise sounded, and Kiros started to vanish again.
Realization dawned on the major. Kiros had hidden himself in the tree, and then had set his tactical cloak to cycle when it needed to recharge. It was a clever trick, one that had evidently paid off in keeping him hidden.
Vaughn reached up, just barely able to reach the salarian. The jarring movement applied to Kiros' body disrupted the cloaking field, allowing Vaughn to more easily lower him to the forest floor. But upon setting him down, Vaughn froze in momentary shock.
There were two small bullet holes in Kiros' stomach. Vaughn nearly despaired at the sight, for such a dire injury would be beyond his ability to treat. However, something about the wound was odd. Medi-gel had been applied, but the bullet holes seemed smaller than they should have been. It almost looked as if Kiros had been healing for days, yet the blood on Kiros' uniform was still wet.
"About time you got here..." Kiros said in a voice stronger than Vaughn expected to hear. The salarian's eyes opened slowly, his face settling into a mocking grin.
"Kiros? How-"
"You're wondering about the wound, I imagine." Kiros pulled himself up to a sitting position, flinching only slightly.
"Not even medi-gel heals that fast."
Kiros smirked, clearly intent on taking his time before responding. "I don't know how much you humans know about nanotechnology," he began, maintaining his smug expression. "But the STG have made great strides in the last decade – especially with regard to medicine. Right now, several thousand tiny machines are pumping through my bloodstream, repairing damage. Specialized and personalized, quick and effective..."
"Impressive." Vaughn masked his surprise. To his knowledge, that level of medical science was still experimental – nearly theoretical. "And was the STG planning to share this technology at some point?"
"I said 'personalized'," the salarian scoffed. "They need to be custom-designed to a person – a salarian – or the body will reject them. Besides, they're so expensive that only the STG's top operatives are worth the price." Kiros paused, glancing down at an empty injector in his hand. "Very expensive… and hard to manufacture."
"You're lucky to still be alive," Vaughn said. "Look around you."
"I took the two bullets early in the fight. If I hadn't, this battlefield would look a lot different right now," Kiros boasted, but then shrugged. "So what's the plan now?"
"Retreat," Vaughn replied bitterly. "Retreat and live to fight another day. Lady Isara is doing the same, falling back to a defensible position in the mountain caves to the northwest."
Kiros nodded his acceptance. "Fair enough."
"Can you walk?"
"I have thousands of tiny robots working on the shredded remains of my intestines and abdominal muscles." The smirk returned to Kiros' face. "But hell, I'll give it a try."
Kiros pushed himself to his feet, steadying himself on the tree beside him. He didn't cry out as he moved, but his face twitched, contorting slightly with the pain of moving. Exhaling a deep breath, Kiros took a tentative first step forward. Then a second.
Vaughn reached out a hand. "Here, let me-"
"I can manage this," Kiros said flatly.
Vaughn withdrew his hand and instead reached for a sturdy-looking branch that had fallen from a nearby tree. "Will this help?"
Kiros gave a curt nod as he accepted the makeshift cane.
"If you need to take a break, we can. But just know-"
"We have to hurry, I get it," Kiros interrupted again with an impatient wave of his free hand. He spoke through gritted teeth as he hurried to what would've been a fast walking pace under normal conditions. "I said I can manage this."
Vaughn nodded, pleased with the salarian's determination. He activated his omni-tool's low-light setting, giving the pair just enough illumination to avoid the bodies as they moved. If Kiros tripped and fell, Vaughn had his doubts about how quickly the salarian could help himself back up again.
"So how did you manage to find me?" The dreaded question came after several minutes of walking.
Vaughn winced. He had been hoping that Kiros would never think to question his rescue. The prospect of explaining that Alexei had placed a tracker on his salarian squadmate wasn't a pleasant one. As he struggled to think of a believable excuse, Vaughn glanced at Kiros and noticed a subtle grin. "So… you already know."
Kiros snorted. "You think I don't check my omni-tool's firmware before a mission? But I will say this for Corporal Volkov: he hid his tracks decently enough. It might've worked on somebody who wasn't STG."
"Either way, he shouldn't have done it. I intend to have a long talk with him when all of this is finished."
"You didn't order him to plant it?" Kiros asked dubiously.
"Of course not. If this team is going to work, I can't build its foundation on suspicion and distrust."
Kiros went silent at this, and a lull settled over the conversation. After several minutes, it looked as if he would speak – but a sudden noise killed the words before they could escape his lips. There came a cracking of fallen branches from their right. Instantly, the pair ducked and turned to face the commotion. Vaughn killed the light of his omni-tool.
After a few tense heartbeats, Vaughn could just barely make out a dark shape stalking through the trees. It moved slowly, pausing every few steps as if to regard the surrounding darkness. The figure's shape was large, and the slender shaft of the weapon it held was familiar.
"I can smell you..." Grall rumbled in a voice dripping with malice. The krogan lumbered a few steps further and tapped his makeshift axe against a tree trunk. "I can hear your heartbeat."
Vaughn didn't believe that krogan actually possessed such heightened senses, yet the effect of Grall's words was chilling all the same. And the grim reality of their situation was clear. The krogan was drawing closer. He didn't seem to know where they were exactly, but they wouldn't remain hidden for long. Vaughn had few options, for with Kiros' injured condition, running was out of the question.
Vaughn and Kiros shared a look, neither daring to speak. Instead, the major pointed at himself, mimed the act of shooting a rifle, and then pointed back at Kiros. Nodding, the salarian pulled out his monomolecular daggers and began to vanish into the cover of his tactical cloak. Vaughn slowly reached over his shoulder to grip the butt of his N7 Typhoon rifle. He wasn't sure how long to give the injured salarian, and so he waited almost a full two minutes. Then, steeling his resolve and praying for the best, he edged out of cover and squeezed the trigger.
As Vaughn expected, the stream of bullets deflected away from Grall as they made contact. He had aimed the weapon carefully, so that the projectiles blocked by Grall's biotic barrier wouldn't redirect toward Kiros' approach. The thermal clip burned out. Ejecting the clip, Vaughn dashed a few meters to another tree, hearing a biotic impact slam behind him. Vaughn reloaded and peeked his head out from behind his new shelter. "Now's your chance," he murmured, urging Kiros under his breath.
By their very nature, biotic barriers were more unpredictable than standard kinetic shielding. The power came from a biotic's ability to muster and deploy dark energy, and so the protection's capacity was never clear to an attacker. Additionally, barriers contoured to a biotic's body and were not limited only to the stopping of fast-moving projectiles. Yet there was one possible disadvantage that could be exploited. Biotic barriers, like kinetic shields, would weaken upon damage. And while kinetic shielding gave a fixed protection that aimed in all directions, biotic barriers were often redirected to where one anticipated danger.
Vaughn and Kiros both knew this, and so the attack was easily formulated with their minimal communication. In their last encounter, Kiros hadn't used his tactical cloak, and so Vaughn knew Grall wouldn't expect a strike from behind. And under better conditions, the plan might have worked.
There was a snarl of pain. Kiros stumbled into sight – several meters short of his target. Vaughn could only watch in despair as the abrupt movement shattered the cloak's delicate projection. Kiros let loose a string of curses as his body failed him, for it was clear now that he hadn't healed enough. A moment was all it took for everything to spiral out of control.
Grall bellowed something incomprehensible as he turned to face Kiros. The axe swung. But despite Kiros' injury, the salarian was able to twist and throw himself away from the whistling blade. He was not quick enough, however, to escape the bone-jarring biotic force that sent him flying back. Kiros thudded against a tree and went still.
Vaughn fired another spray of bullets, yet Grall anticipated him this time. Another biotic attack was flung toward Vaughn, but this one was aimed at the ground just past Vaughn's cover, rather than directly at him. The shockwave of residual dark energy ballooned outward. Vaughn felt himself get pushed to the side and into the open. Before he could react and scramble back into cover, there came a pull, and the rifle was ripped from his hands.
"Kiros!" Vaughn yelled as he stumbled forward. The salarian didn't respond, didn't even move. Then a push came. Vaughn was sent careening backward. He rolled as he fell, but adroitly managed to rip his Black Widow rifle from its holster. The barrel of the secondary weapon was still extending as he came upright onto one knee. A single blast thundered in the night.
Grall roared in sudden pain as the high-powered round lanced through his shoulder. This illustrated a second weakness of biotic users: power had to be divided between attacking and defending.
Truthfully, Vaughn was surprised that his hastily-aimed shot had connected. His satisfaction didn't last long. He had no time to react as the near-instant counterattack came. A loud screeching noise wailed next to Vaughn's head.
In a cacophony of shattering ceramic and splintering carbon fiber, the armor plating of Vaughn's shoulder rent itself apart from a biotic warping attack. The warping distortion also tore at the rifle still in firing position, and to Vaughn's dismay, the weapon he had carried through the entire Reaper War finally broke. The butt of the rifle suffered under the same twisting of shifting mass effect fields, and shards of tortured metal showered the faceplate of Vaughn's helmet. The housing for the weapon's thermal clip split open, sending the glowing cylinder spiraling away.
It took Vaughn a moment to recover his senses. As he did so, he found himself on the ground, not remembering the fall. He ripped off his now-blinding helmet, its faceplate scratched up beyond all usability. Within a second's span, he registered several things: that he now had only his sidearm, the upper right section of his armor was a broken mess, and his shoulder was starting to bleed. He ignored the pain and began to move once more. While he scrambled to his feet, a thudding noise sounded in his ears. At first he thought this to be his own heartbeat. It wasn't. It was the pounding footsteps of a charging krogan.
"I smell your fear." Grall swung his axe in an overhead strike, one Vaughn narrowly missed by dodging to the side. "I will taste your death."
Vaughn ignored the taunts, and as he moved past Grall, he swung what remained of his ruined rifle at the krogan's face. If any of the impact was felt through Grall's biotic barrier, he didn't show any pain. Instead, the alien laughed.
"You are weak. I am a champion of the krogan!"
"You've been away from your people for a long time," Vaughn said as he crouched low, ready to dodge the next axe strike. "I've met them – I have one of them on my team. You're no champion of theirs. You're just a mindless killer, drunk on bloodlust and high on Minagen." Indeed, at this distance, Vaughn was able to see that the krogan's eyes were dilated to the point where they looked completely black.
"Minagen gives me strength." To prove the point, the sidearm holster at Vaughn's hip suddenly tore away, taking a chunk of armor with it. Holding the floating weapon between them, Grall began to collapse the pistol in on itself with crushing biotic forces.
Vaughn swore. He had been hoping the krogan wouldn't realize that the pistol was there. As his last weapon, his best chance would have been to wait and fire into some weakened portion of the barrier. But now that hope was lost.
"Bloodlust is the gift of my ancestors." Grall brandished his axe for emphasis. The blade reflected the cold blue light of Grall's ever-present biotic shimmer. "Ancestors who charged into battle with axe and hammer. Ancestors like the great Surloc Khosk, who stormed and ravaged the High Pantheon. We have slaughtered our gods, those who have made us." His tone was like that of a priest delivering a sermon.
"You've completely lost your mind," Vaughn murmured, though he didn't voice the opinion loud enough for Grall to hear. In a louder voice, he tried a different tactic. "Your people have been cured of the genophage. They've been given a second chance. You can leave this place and rejoin them, but first, this bloodshed needs to stop."
"I will not leave this place!" Grall roared. "These are my slaughtering grounds, granted to me by my ancestors! I shall reap blood and screams!"
Vaughn ground his teeth; there was no reasoning with the krogan in his current state. His frustration got the better of him. "Would a krogan champion be the pet of a man like Elias Fletcher? Let me guess: he's the one who gives you the Minagen. He manipulates you, making it so that you're weak without him."
Grall howled again, but with a ferocious intensity that made Vaughn blanch. The krogan's hand shot out enveloped in azure light.
Vaughn felt as if a shuttle had rammed into him. The breath vanished from his lungs as his whole world became a blur of movement. Wind whistled past his ears, punctuated by thuds as he landed and bounced off the forest floor. Groaning and gasping for breath, Vaughn pulled himself into a sitting position and glanced down at his armor. The chest plate was a fractured wreck. The armor had absorbed enough of the blow to prevent serious bodily harm, but it was obviously beyond repair.
Grall continued to advance. He seemed to have calmed his sudden bout of rage, but a disconcerting, sharp-toothed smile made Vaughn's blood run cold.
"Dammit..." Vaughn's dazed mind struggled to think of a plan. Many of the usual tactics for fighting biotic users seemed so inadequate. Grall's drug-enhanced ability made attrition impossible one-on-one. And there was no running from the faster krogan, even if Vaughn was willing to do the despicable thing of leaving Kiros behind. Vaughn watched the relentless krogan stride forth and knew that he was simply outmatched.
Above all, it was obvious that Grall was toying with him. With the aid of Minagen, a single biotic attack could snap Vaughn's neck from a short distance. A biotic stasis field could hold him in place just long enough for an axe blow to cleave him in half. Vaughn's death was meant to be slow… but that could be his one saving grace.
"Blood and screams," Grall whispered reverently. His dilated pupils glimmered like pools of ink.
Vaughn surreptitiously moved his hand, feeling at his belt. There was the shape of a familiar item in one of his pouches. Its presence elicited a sigh of relief. He then glanced at Kiros, some twenty meters away. The salarian stirred in his unconsciousness. "I can't win this," Vaughn murmured to his comrade. "I can't promise our safety, but this is the best I can do."
The major began to pull himself away on hands and knees. He coughed and wheezed, making what he knew to be a pitiful-looking escape. Vaughn could hear Grall's laughter rumble like thunder from behind him. The krogan was close – but the plan seemed to be working. Vaughn then groaned with feigned injury, yet his eyes were alert, scanning the ground in front of him. And then he saw it: a small rock about the size of his closed fist. It was perfect.
Vaughn, crying out in exaggerated agony, made himself collapse over the rock. He then kept up the act, rolling onto his back and then dragging himself away, kicking and pulling at the dirt. Grall seemed to enjoy the sight – he didn't realize that the human's advanced armor had actually protected against much of the biotic attack's ferocity. Vaughn felt sweat trickle down his neck as the seconds ticked by.
"You should..." Vaughn began in a weak voice. "You should know..." His voice trailed off to an unintelligible whisper.
"Speak to me your last words," Grall sneered, stepping forward and looming over the fallen human. He reached down and snatched at Vaughn's neck, lifting the man to eye-level with ease.
Vaughn felt powerful fingers close around his neck, but the grip was light enough that he could still croak out the words. "Behind you."
The grenade detonated, rumbling the night with its volatile fury. The item – given to Vaughn by Alexei – had been secreted away underneath the small rock. But the stone did nothing to impede the explosion. Smoke plumed, and shrapnel splintered the bark from trees. Showers of dirt and rock fragments pattered the ground, and as the debris settled, a krogan and a human both fell.
