Shepard closed the comms and looked up towards the sky. With his old eyes, it was unlikely he'd have noticed, but the enhanced vision from his brand new pair let him see the merch ships entering the atmosphere. Shuttles or transports, there were half a dozen of them. It wasn't the best situation, they were close enough to the merch enclave that they'd probably catch their attention if they went out guns blazing.
Then again, it wasn't like he had much choice. Or like he ever ran from a fight – after Akuze, that is.
"All right people, we are about to have company," Shepard said, putting his command face on. Dho'klee looked at him with the same lost, fixed stare he had used up in the ship during the briefing. It really wasn't encouraging.
At least Legion didn't seem fazed by the imminent trouble. Not that he ever looks fazed about anything, Shepard thought. Perhaps not. The eyeflaps were expressive enough on him.
"Tactical appraisal?" Legion inquired.
"You know me, I'm not one for waiting around. I want us to get the jump on them as soon as they start landing." He looked up again at the incoming ships; they were approaching fast, and on a very direct vector. "Legion, keep track of the ships and figure out where they're going to land."
"Affirmative," the geth replied.
"Bo!" Shepard called over the comms. "We need you back here, we've got a hell of a party coming and-"
"Shh~" Bo replied, interrupting the commander with a hiss. "I'm being sneaky!"
"What?"
"Sneaky! Sneak... sneak..." Bo kept chanting in a low voice, much to Shepard's surprise. Dho'klee looked at him, an inquisitive look on his face, but all Shepard could do was shrug. When he was about to ask Bo again what he was doing, an ungodly screeching sound of metal being ripped, bent, and snapped flooded the comms, making the shorter alien wince visibly.
"What the hell was that?" Shepard said.
"Got it!" Bo cried out triumphantly. "I think it looked surprised! I bet he looked surprised. They really don't know how to make faces, it's such a shame."
"Bo, can you start making sense?"
"I was sneaking on a merch!" Bo announced. "There's a lot of them here."
"And we're about to have a lot more! We need you back here, on the double!"
The blaring of alarms, once again, interrupted the conversation, which was starting to become a regular occurrence when it came to speaking with Bo. In or out of missions.
"Oh, the party noise!" Bo exclaimed. "Gotta go, they're starting without me!"
"Bo!" Shepard shouted uselessly into thin air. In the distance, he saw that the merch base was buzzing with activity, with armed merch climbing atop the makeshift walls. That was odd, Shepard had expected them to go after Bo if he had been found. And it sounded like he was already inside the perimeter.
His surprise didn't abate one bit when the Thanix cannon atop the downed ship started to move, spinning in place and aiming high. Straight towards the incoming shuttles.
Then, the weapon fired.
The Thanix cannon was a weapon of turian design, reverse-engineered from a Reaper beam cannon. It worked in a similar way to the collector beam weapons, a core of molten metal was propelled to a significant fraction of the speed of light, and solidified – to a point – when fired. Like beam weapons, the fact that the projectile was made of molten metal meant it didn't fly off as a solid item, but rather it hit the target as a stream of particles of variable size.
It was made for ship-to-ship combat. In space. Firing it inside an atmosphere created a veritable stream of metal particles burning away against the atmospheric gases. It lowered its effectiveness, and it also generated heat. A lot of heat.
"Down!" Shepard shouted, pulling Dho'klee with him as he dove for cover. The heated shock wave travelled fast to their position, and a wall of hot air rushed through, kicking up rocks and dirt, and scorching all the vegetation it found on its path. Shepard's shields flashed angrily, and so did everyone else's.
And as quick as it had come, the wave of searing heat was gone, leaving only smouldering grass on its wake. The smell of burnt plant matter was quite strong, even for Shepard's dull, artificial receptors. Given the faces Dho'klee was making, it was even more unpleasant for him.
Once he made sure everyone was all right, Shepard's thoughts turned to what had just happened. He looked around the edge of the crevice they had taken refuge in, and saw that the plains between them and the merch base had been completely scorched. Not only that, but the walls and outer structures of the improvised fortification all bore the marks of the wave of high heat.
As did all the merch still standing.
I bet they weren't expecting that, Shepard thought, shaking his head. He raised his hand to his ear and flicked the comms on.
"Bo, are you still in one piece?"
The answer came with a crackling of static, and the sound of gunfire. "Shep! Did you see that? That was awesome!"
"I'll take that as a yes. What-"
"A'di..." Dho'klee said suddenly, getting everyone's attention. He pointed to the sky, where the merch shuttles were already visible. As were the several that had been knocked down by the Thanix cannon's shot, and were diving down towards the ground in an uncontrolled crash trajectory.
"They shot their own ships?" Shepard asked rhetorically.
"I think they did just that," Dho'klee answered, missing the "rethorical" part of Shepard's question. "I thought they were trying to hit the Normandy."
"No way they can hit from here," Shepard replied. "What the heck's going on?"
The cannon started moving again, with a groan of metal and smoke pouring out of its base.
"They're going to shoot again!" Dho'klee shouted, already looking for a place to hide.
"Not while the cannon's that hot, they aren't," Shepard said. Even with Garrus at the helm, the Thanix had to be nursed carefully and at length before it could fire. It was a complex piece of technology, and the main reason why it was only to be used when a shot could be all but guaranteed to hit.
Regardless, what it meant was that the merch in the base had their attention on the sky, not on them.
Shepard smirked. It wasn't the first time he had gone off the rails mid-mission, after all. In a way, it was his trademark plan.
"Okay people, change of plans. This is our chance. We're going into the facility, and getting to Liara's time capsule while they fight each other."
"But why would they fight each other?" Dho'klee said, his question finishing in a squeak worthy of Sprockets himself. He was clearly panicking. The mission was going out of control, things were happening that he couldn't control or understand, and he just didn't know how to handle it.
"Because someone up there loves us," Shepard replied, somewhat flippantly. He gestured with his head and led the march towards the base, speeding up the pace. Behind him, Dho'klee struggled to keep up, while Legion followed easily, the Prime platform's long legs able to keep up with Shepard's pace with little apparent effort.
They hadn't gone ten seconds when the comms crackled to life again.
"Normandy to blue team," C'ie's voice called over. The background noise of the Normandy had changed now, and there was a lot more chatter and shouting.
"Go ahead Normandy, what's going on?" Shepard said, not stopping his run and gesturing for the others to continue.
"I was about to ask that very question. What happened at the base? We registered a large explosion, and then a kind of weapon fire we couldn't even identify."
"The merch have built a Thanix cannon," Shepard said. When no answer came back, he continued explaining. "Long story, it's a beam weapon of Reaper design. But I don't think they'll fire it again. What's going on up there? I'm hearing a lot of noise."
"We are currently engaged with the cruiser. They seem to have finally taken notice of us."
"Are you holding out?"
"Surprisingly, yes," C'ie said, and Shepard heard Guni's voice in the background shouting "there's nothing surprising about it! We're that good!"
"Did Laile make it to you?" he said, ignoring the headswing's remarks and suppressing a chuckle.
"Yes, the shuttle is secure, but we will not be able to send red team your way while we are in the middle of a firefight."
"Okay, just stay safe. We'll figure out what to do once we're inside. Keep me updated. Shepard out."
It wasn't long before they could hear the sound of gunfire, and following the sound they quickly found Bo. The honbarg was pinned down behind what appeared to be a piece of the ship's outer hull, which, given how it was half-melted along the edge, must have broken off during the firing of the Thanix cannon. On the other side, at least a dozen merch were firing at him. Two of them were larger units, at least ten feet high, and the rest were about half that. They all shared a similar look, with their bodies shining under the sun's light with a silver, metallic gleam.
For what Shepard knew of the merch, that probably meant they had all been built from the same set of scavenged parts. Also, going by what he knew of Bo, it was surprising to see him taking care and getting into cover.
As if he had heard Shepard's thoughts, Bo leaned out of cover casually, apparently ignoring the rounds pinging the metal piece he was hiding behind, and the ones accurate enough to hit him. His shield kept flashing as more rounds hit, until finally the kinetic barrier broke, and a round hit him on the neck. Bo kept ignoring them, simply flexing his neck when the round bounced off his incredibly thick skin, and kept looking around. Whatever had caught his attention, it seemed more important than the shots being fired at him.
"BO!" Shepard shouted. "Get into cover dammit!" Saying so, he followed his own advice, and hid behind the nearest convenient spot, just a few metres behind Bo. With practised ease, he grabbed, unfolded, and aimed his sniper rifle with a single smooth move. The second the crosshairs landed on one of the smaller merch's heads, he fired a round, and saw it explode in a shower of shrapnel and sparks.
As he had expected, that drew the attention of some of the merch, lowering the pressure on Bo. The honbarg seemed to be done with his observations, and had fallen back into cover, his eyes fixed on the half-burn beam structure overhead.
With a mental sigh, Shepard made a gesture at Legion and, as soon as the relevant order was carried out – namely, Legion shooting a rocket straight at the increasingly populated mob of merch – he sprinted out to land in cover next to Bo. The honbarg was sitting on the ground, looking up, and apparently ignoring the bleeding cuts and nicks that he had gotten during the fight.
"Bo, what the heck are you doing?" Shepard said, leaning out of cover to take stock of the situation. The smoke had begun to clear, and Legion's rocket had definitely left a mark. And a large gap in the ranks of merch.
"Just thinking," he muttered. A feral grin started to spread across his face. "I think it'll work!"
"Bo, you and I need to talk about the way you communicate."
"Really? Why?"
"Because half the time I have no clue what you're on about," Shepard said.
"Just wait!" Bo exclaimed, and without another word, shot up to his feet, and scrambled up the wall towards the scaffolding above them.
Shepard muttered something that could have been a curse, if only it didn't sound like a plea for the universe in general, and Bo specifically, to start making sense. But there were merch to kill, and killing synthetics was what he did best. He leaned out of cover again, assault rifle in hand, and started spraying. The long burst of the weapon was carefully controlled by his expert hands, hitting a tight cluster of merch and making shields flare blue and wink out of existence, until the end of his gun's barrel started glowing cherry red and the telltale beeping of an overheated weapon made him get into cover again.
As if it was his cue, Legion took over. With his own assault rifle, he continued firing at the same tight cluster of merch, making high iron containing mince out of the now unshielded targets. Unlike Shepard, though, Legion didn't seem to have a pressing need to fire from cover. The prime platform, with its highly capable shields and thick plating, simply stood up and fired at the enemies completely in the open, shrugging off the mass accelerated rounds from their more primitive weapons.
While he waited for the rifle to cool, Shepard took a moment to follow what Bo was doing. He was walking along the beams of the scaffolding, easily balancing on the narrow and twisted long pieces of metal without a care in the world, and going straight for the merch. They either hadn't noticed him, or had decided that Legion was a bigger threat, because they were ignoring the honbarg.
What the hell is he doing?
He shook his head and went back to the fight. The merch numbers weren't thinning, as more reinforcements seemed to be coming every second, but for some reason all the merch were very lightly armed, and were not putting much of a fight. Shepard was expecting a more heavily built unit to shop up any minute, and the paranoid part of his synthetic brain was trying to work out what exactly the merch could be planning.
His question was answered when he heard renewed sounds of gunfire, coming from somewhere on the other side of the walls. He got back in cover, and looked behind them. Nothing.
"Dho'klee!" he called.
"I'm here, there's no need to shout," Dho'klee answered over the comms.
"Can you hear the shots?" Shepard said, leaning out of cover again. Legion had ducked down into cover now, so he had to keep the merch busy. Their fire was becoming more accurate, so he had to stick to short bursts, and weave in and out of cover at different spots.
"What shots? Yours?"
"No, on the other side!" Shepard replied. His shields had flared hard when a harder round had hit his head, and was now busy trying to figure out what merch was carrying the heavier weapon. A second round forced him back into cover.
"I... do, yes," Dho'klee replied.
"Double back and figure out where they're coming from, I don't want any surprises behind us."
"Okay."
"Get ready. Legion, covering fire!" Shepard called. The geth moved at the same time Shepard did, and the two of them started unloading on the merch. Another rocket flew off Legion's launcher, adding a large explosion to the confusion. "Now, go!" Shepard shouted.
Dho'klee obeyed, scrambling out of cover, and running back at a crouch. The merch responded with a furious volley, and Shepard felt the impacts on his kinetic barriers come in thick and hot. Even though they were somewhat weak, the merch seemed determined to make up for the lack of punch with sheer volume.
In just a few seconds his shields were down, and he was forced down into cover as half a dozen rounds slammed into his armor. One of them punched through, and an internal warning started flashing on his HUD. One of the battery pack capacitors was damaged, which reduced his operational time by a third. Legion followed suit not soon after, the Prime's shields almost completely depleted.
"Shepard, I'm at the back," Dho'klee announced over the comms.
"What do you have?" Shepard replied.
"Merch fighting each other. The ones in the shuttles are coming straight for us, and are getting pummelled by the ones in the base."
"Crap, we have to move then. Get back here. Legion! We have to punch through!"
This orders were followed to the letter, with Legion standing again and letting loose with the rocket launcher. Shepard knew the ammo for that thing was limited, but they had to get through and recover Liara's information while the fight outside was coming to a head. He was about to bolt out towards a new cover closer to the action when another explosion caught his attention. It was right above them, and two more followed. Several metallic beams fell off, hitting merch left, right, and centre, and a final explosion preceded a loud snap and groaning of metal. The wall of ship hull behind the merch tilted forward dangerously, but didn't fall.
"Oh come on!" Bo's voice came through over the din of battle. "Just fall!"
For a moment, Shepard saw the honbarg standing atop the metallic wall, jumping up and down on it. Then, another groan of metal, the wall decidedly tilted forward, and gravity did the rest, crashing down spectacularly right over the merch.
With Bo riding on top.
The crash made the whole base tremble, and Shepard had to duck into cover to avoid being blasted by the shockwave of the impact. As soon as the dust started to settle he leaned out of cover, then stood up when he saw there was no need to be cautious. The entire merch force had been buried under the metal, except for a single unit, which was only half buried. It was trying to claw away and reach the gun it had been wielding, which made for a surprisingly disturbing imagery.
"A'di..." Dho'klee said, in a way announcing that he had returned. "What did you do Shepard?"
"This one goes to Bo," Shepard said. "Bo! Are you still in one piece?" he called.
Answering the summons, the honbarg shot to his feet, sending the rubble and metal pieces he had been buried under flying. He was covered in dust, and coughing loudly. Or laughing. Or a combination of both, Shepard couldn't tell.
"Ay-ya!" he shouted, pumping both fists into the air. "I knew it would work!"
A short burst of gunfire interrupted the conversation, coming from Legion. The last remaining merch was on the receiving end, and stopped twitching entirely.
"Honbarg-Bo, we have found a spot you missed," Legion deadpanned.
"Pfft," Bo replied, completely unfazed. "You try next time."
"Enough, let's move," Shepard said, his command voice on. With the sounds of the battle outside coming closer, they wouldn't have a better chance to get in and out of the base.
The entrance to the hideout was particularly well hidden, even though Dho'klee had been there already once. The small drakat didn't look like he was enjoying his field experience one bit, and so far had barely spoken two words together. The inside of the base was fairly empty, with most of the merch troops having made their way to the fortifications outside, and leaving behind only the odd straggler.
It was strange. Shepard had expected the fight to be similar to the ones he had had against the geth. Being seen by one meant being seen by the entire geth collective. Their actions were coordinated to the point that a whole battalion of geth platforms moved as a single body. Yet the merch were different. Their communication was very poor – they made noises, which Shepard and Legion had surmised was a form of speech neither of them could understand – and they didn't coordinate so strongly. Yet the individual platforms were far superior to individual geth ones. An isolated geth had something like a hundred programs in it, and could only perform the most basic functions. Individual merch were more adaptable, the only thing letting them down was their primitive weaponry.
The one time a merch had gotten its synthetic paws on some superior hardware – the railgun C'ie had appropriated – it had been a disaster for his group.
These units they were running across seemed utterly unprepared for Shepard's group being inside the base. Geth would have noticed immediately when a wall crushed a score of their platforms during a firefight.
"Over here," Dho'klee called. He disappeared between two large rocks hidden underneath a large sheet of metal, and the others followed suit, with Bo at the forefront and apparently quite happy to go somewhere underground.
The passage was narrow and twisted, and twice it looked like it had ended, only for Dho'klee to reveal a well hidden pathway to continue. After the third turn they finally arrived at the entrance. A large metallic round door had secured the room, but it now lay on the side, twisted and discarded. Stepping inside, Shepard couldn't help feeling a bit displaced. The last time he was in, he was still part of the console hardware, his body had been the entire room. Now he was looking at it from the outside.
And the room was very different.
"What happened here?" Dho'klee said.
"Is that... an altar?"
Liara's console had been moved to the centre of the room, and was sitting on top of a round construction, as if overseeing the entire room, making it look like an altar. The image wasn't looping this time, it was merely frozen in place, with the image of the asari frozen standing in place.
"Ooh, pretty," Bo said, looking at Liara with his mouth hanging open.
"Doesn't matter. Legion, Dho'klee, get downloading. Get all the data, then wipe the terminal. If there really are weapon blueprints in there, we don't want the merch having them."
"Isn't it too late for that?" Dho'klee said, already complying with the order and dismantling the ports on the holographic console.
"Maybe, but I rather not leave it to chance. If these are a faction of merch separate from the others, there may be a chance the main group won't get the Thanix design."
"What about the one they have already built?"
Shepard looked at Bo and smirked. "I have an idea."
Dho'klee stopped his work to look at Shepard, then at Bo, and shook his head. "You're going to blow it up, aren't you?"
"I'd rather steal it, but we may not have a choice."
While Legion and Dho'klee worked on the terminal, Shepard decided it was a good time to find out how things were going upstairs. He stayed by the door, keeping an eye out for errant merch coming to worship Liara – odd as that sounded in his head – and opened the comms.
"Blue team to Normandy," he called.
The comms opened to the expected cracking of static, and frantic activity on the bridge.
"Normandy here," C'ie said. "We-" A clang and a rattle interrupted her, then she continued. "We're running intro trouble here, Shepard. What's your status?"
"Downloading the package," Shepard replied. "What kind of trouble?"
"Guni and Nagi took down the cruiser, but three more have shown up." A beeping sound rose above the chaos, and he heard E'le, the navigator, announce some new arrivals. "Make that four. No, five. A'di... What is that thing?"
"C'ie, talk to me. What's going on? If it's getting to hairy, high-tail it out of trouble, we'll make our way out and wait for a chance to make it off-planet when it's not so hot."
"The merch have just brought a ship I've never seen before. Where did they get it? It's-"
A loud beep sound silenced the cabin at once. At first Shepard thought the comms had dropped, but he could faintly hear C'ie's breathing.
"C'ie?"
"The ship. It just opened fire on one of the cruisers. It blew out of the sky like it was made of feathers. I've never seen... No, I've seen this. It looked like the weapon down at the base, Shepard."
If he had been alive, Shepard would have probably felt a cold sense of dread settling somewhere in his insides, but even as it was, his processes were being overclocked by the sheer number of possibilities, none of them good.
"C'ie, send me a visual, and get the hell out of there!"
"Atal'ine, send Shepard the ship's scan." Another loud beep. "That's another merch ship gone."
"What are the others doing?" Shepard said, as he saw the progress bar on his screen fill up.
"They aren't returning fire. Some are launching shuttles."
It didn't make sense. Not just the merch fighting the merch, but how a fleet that had just arrived to reinforce a faction had started some in-fighting too.
It didn't make any sense.
Or maybe it did. As soon as the image arrived, his overcocked brain stopped the random darting at once.
"That's a reaper," he said. It didn't look like Sovereign at all, and it clocked in at just over 160 metres long, but the design, the jet black colour, it was unmistakeable. "That's a goddamn reaper!"
"Are you su-"
"C'ie! Get the hell out!" Shepard shouted, interrupting her.
"We can take it, it's not bigger than we are!" he heard one of the twins shouting.
"No you bloody can't! This is an order, get the hell out!"
A series of loud beeps announced the reaper finishing off the remaining capital ships of the merch fleet. The CIC was in chaos, with everyone shouting reports at once.
"Shepard, the reaper is coming your way! I rep-"
A buzz of static stopped the transmission. Shepard stood in place for several seconds, hand still on his ear, and a lost look on his face. They had a reaper coming, and worst still, he couldn't raise the Normandy.
"I told them to get out. Dammit all, I told them to get out!"
"Shepard?" Dho'klee called, worry clearly etched in his voice.
"You and Legion, stay here and finish the job," Shepard said, his voice low and dry. "Bo, let's go. We have a Thanix cannon to get to."
"We're blowing it up?" the honbarg said, eagerly following the commander.
"No. We're going to use it and blow that reaper out of the sky."
"Sweet! I've never seen a reaper!"
"You'll get to see one today, and you get to blow it up too," Shepard replied.
Once they made their way back to the surface, it was complete chaos. Merch forces had made it inside the perimeter, and the synthetics were fighting each other without any order or tactics. It was a full-on melee, with no clear sides drawn, gleaming silver merch against more dully finished ones being the only clue as to what sides were where.
Bo was about to make a beeline towards the Thanix, until Shepard grabbed him by the back of his armor and stopped him. The honbarg's feet keep paddling on, trying to free himself from Shepard's grip by sheer force of will, but the commander managed to hold hirm and pull him back into cover.
"Don't just step out like that!" Shepard said, his voice irritated.
"Why?"
"Because you'll get shot? Because it's not very smart? Because you will alert every merch within eyeshot of where we are?"
"I don't really care," Bo replied, completely nonplussed. He was about to step out again, so Shepard grabbed him and pulled him down once more. The response from Bo was a low growl, baring his sharp teeth at Shepard.
"Bo," Shepard said, suppressing a sigh. "Tell you what. Let's be sneaky. If we get to the Thanix and fire it when they're not expecting it, what do you think their reaction will be?"
Shepard's suggestion quelled the honbarg's anger in an instant. His eyes widened, and he seemed to mull over the idea, liking it more and more as a feral grin appeared and intensified on his face. The commander was surprised it had been that simple to change the stubborn honbarg's mind, but apparently it had worked.
"That's... an awesome idea!" Bo replied.
"Hush, we're being sneaky, remember?"
"Right! Sneaky. Sneak... sneak..."
Following Shepard, the two of them made their way along the battlefield, jumping from cover to cover, keeping to the back of the inner courtyard as much as they could. They only ran into trouble twice; once, Shepard had to take down a merch in hand-to-hand combat, finishing it off with a shotgun blast at point blank range, and walking off with a deep gouge on the left side of his neck; the second time, Bo jumped a merch and ripped it to pieces with his hands and teeth in the blink of an eye, much to Shepard's surprise. It was one thing to know he could do it. It was a very different thing to see him do it live, and all with a really disturbingly childish glee at being able to rip enemies to shreds like that.
When they got to the bottom of the ramp leading up to the Thanix cannon emplacement, there was an ungodly shriek which, for a moment, seemed to silence the entire battle. The reaper flew overhead, and landed with a resounding thump not a hundred meters from the merch emplacement. The reaction from the merch was even more confusing. They started making loud noises, both sides did, stopping the fight for a moment.
"Are they... cheering?" Shepard said.
"Come on! I thought we were being sneaky!" Bo protested, ignoring the chaos and pushing ahead.
Shepard followed, and soon they were both high enough to be able to see the reaper. The ship had landed awkwardly, and even now it was struggling to stand up. It looked as if it was quite severely damaged, with internal parts visibly exposed here and there, and the uneasy balance speaking of extensive mechanical damage. He saw it finally stand up, and turn a glowing red eye towards the base. It started shining more and more brightly.
"Oh crap. Bo! Get down!"
The reaper's main weapon fired. The beam tore straight through the middle of the merch base, melting recycled ship parts and synthetics left, right, and centre. A wave of heated air followed, slamming on Shepard like a freight train, and throwing him down to the ground. The alarms of his suit started blaring angrily, warning of impeding shield and structural failures. When the shields finally failed, the temperature of the ceramic coating started raising dangerously.
As the outside of the armour started to melt, the wave of heat passed, and the beam weapon faltered. Under them, a good chunk of the base had been simply blown off, and merch were laying everywhere, melted or in pieces. The survivors looked utterly confused, running around like headless chickens, and some of the local, silvery ones were rushing towards the reaper.
It didn't like that. Soon, the massive ship was simply stomping merch as if they were ants.
"Wow! That was even better than before!" Bo shouted. Shepard looked at him, and saw that some of his mane had been singed, and his suit of armor was showing substantial heat damage.
Bo himself didn't seem to care much.
"Come on! We can't let it fire again!" Shepard said, standing to his feet and running.
Bo followed suit, and this time they did draw attention to themselves. Several merch saw them, and despite the obvious threat of the massive reaper – or not so massive, as it was but a fraction of Sovereign's size – decided the two of them would make excellent practice targets. With his suit already having trouble, Shepard got several bullets going through him before finding cover at the very top of the structure, behind the main pivot of the Thanix cannon. Bo got it worse, and one of the bullets was a lucky shot to hit at the right angle and go through his right leg. He stumbled and fell, and Shepard was forced to get out of cover and get another two bullets in him to drag him to safety.
"Bo!" Shepard shouted.
"That feels funny," Bo said, looking at his leg bleed. He tried to flex it and stand, but it failed under him.
"Stop! I've got to fix this," Shepard said. He pulled out a tube of medical foam, put in inside the hole in Bo's leg, and pulled the release. At once the foam filled the wound, and as he had expected, Bo immediately started to bounce.
"Ayayaya! Hot! Hot!" he shouted, the only reason he didn't jump to his feet being Shepard holding him down. "That's hoooot! I'm never getting shot again!"
"Really?" Shepard replied, smirking.
"Well, maybe until next time. Whoo, that's weird."
"I know." Shepard picked up Bo's rifle, and helped up to his feet, one of the honbarg's arms over his shoulders. "We have to get inside, once this thing fires it's going to be melting heat all over again."
"So?"
"So I'd rather you be inside helping me than outside being melted."
"… 'kay, let's go."
Shepard shook his head at Bo's cavalier attitude towards life and death. He was starting to think the honbarg wasn't just fearless, rather he had no concept of life being a finite thing. It was useful, but worrisome; he could be perfect for dangerous missions, only not, because of that flaw.
They made their way towards the interior of the small tower. It hadn't been made for a gunner, rather there was a small spot where a merch could be perched and operate the thing. And there was a merch perched behind the cannon, at least for a second or so. Bo grabbed the rifle off Shepard's hands, Shepard himself drew his own, and between the two of them they reduced the synthetic to scrap metal.
"Dibs!" Bo shouted. And without another word, and ignoring his very pronounced hobble, he rushed up to the controls in less than no time. He got there when Shepard was still putting his rifle on his back.
"Bo! Do you know how to operate that thing?"
"How hard can it be?" Bo replied. He started messing with the controls, and soon the tower was spinning on its axis. "Wheeeee!"
"Bo! Dammit, aim at the reaper!"
The spinning stopped, and finally Bo started manoeuvring the cannon in the right direction. Shepard peeked through the front opening of the tower, and saw the reaper had finished stomping merch. At least for now, because the evil red eye in the middle of its face was now powering up again, and aiming at the base.
"Bo, hurry up!"
"Shepard-commander," the radio crackled. "We have finished download of all data from Liara-broker terminal."
"Good, blow it up and get the hell out! The reaper's going to shoot up the base, you need to get to safety!"
"Acknowledged. We recommend Shepard-commander follow his own advice on exiting in an afterlife fashion," Legion replied.
Shepard snorted. He really didn't regret giving Legion the idea that snarky one-liners were a great way to get organics to warm up to him. He did have a point about the reaper, however, because it looked ready to shoot.
"Bo!"
Answering his call, the thanix cannon started powering up too. Too late. His internal processes started overclocking once more, slowing everything to a crawl. There was no time. The reaper beam was going to shoot before the Thanix cannon for sure, and it was aimed straight at them. Even if it wasn't, a glancing blow while it swept its beam would be enough to render their gun inoperative.
After all these years waiting, getting a team together, it was all going to end with a reaper melting him into scrap. With any luck, Legion and Dho'klee would be able to make it out. At least one had to make it out alive, and carry the information Liara had given them.
When the eye of the reaper flashed red, Shepard expected the blow to instantly disintegrate them. Instead, what happened was that something impacted on the reaper, hard, and threw it completely off-balance. The beam exploded off-target, making a wide sweep to the sky. Even the wave of heat wasn't particularly bad, such was the width of the angle.
Then, the Normandy swept down, correcting course to dodge the beam and pass just a few metres from the reaper and the ground. Its forward swept wings moved almost organically, and the way it danced in the air made it look like it had all the grace of a real bird.
It shot towards the sky once again, almost a vertical climb. Then the wings extended, it changed course in a way that had to have been a challenge for the inertial dampeners to keep up, and folded itself once more, wings swept forward, and shooting towards the ground at incredible speed.
The reaper tried to aim its beam at the Normandy, but the helmswings could manoeuvre the ship much faster than the reaper could aim its beam. A second barrage fired from all the wing cannons, and crashed on the reaper and the broken ground it was standing on.
Shepard didn't see much damage done to the black ship, even though it looked plenty of damaged already. But it was thrown off once more, and the beam was no longer firing. That gave them a small window of opportunity.
Then, the Thanix cannon fired, and Shepard was forced down to avoid having his face melted by the wave of heat. There was an almost deafening, high pitched whine, and a moment later the sound of metal being impacted, twisted, and melted. The reaper roared, an actual voice of pain and anger. The heat coming from the cannon intensified, until several pops announced that the thanix had outlived its components and failed all at once.
In the eerie silence that followed, not even Bo said a single word. Shepard took a deep breath – useless, but something he was in the habit of doing from his days as an organic – and stood up to look down at the reaper.
It laid down on the ground, an enormous hole where the red eye used to be, and metal bent and snapped. It was still twitching, but not for long. The Normandy made another sweep, firing all guns, and the reaper, with no kinetic barriers, and openings all over its hull, took the brunt of it with internal explosions and breaking parts. A second sweep, and the ship was finally, truly dead.
"Norm- dy... -eam. Please rep-... -mmunicat- -maged by re-..." Shepard's comms crackled. He never thought he'd be so glad to hear C'ie's voice.
Reinforcements came in the form of red team, with Fuusley at the head, who immediately took to cleaning the remnants of the merch force. Shepard and Bo left the cannon – the latter with clear regret in his eyes, mostly because he wanted to see the thing blow – and met with the other team in the courtyard. There really wasn't much to do, the reaper had made a mess out of the place, and only a few errant merch remained. All of which were meeting the business end of Fuusley's shotgun.
"Shepard!" the drogn greeted him as soon as he and Bo arrived. "You sure know to court death!" he said, laughing heartily.
"Where is C'ie?" Shepard said, already all business.
"Still aboard the Normandy, why?"
"Nothing, I just need to speak with her." He raised the comms again. "Legion, come to the courtyard, our shuttle is here."
The sound of combat greeted him. "Estimated arrival in thirty-seven seconds."
"Do you need reinforcements?"
"Negative. The chances of merch survival are zero point zero," Legion replied, and used the moment to fire another rocket.
When the geth arrived, Shepard directed the rest of his team towards the shuttle sitting outside the base. "Get going, I'll be right there."
"Affirmative," Legion replied. Dho'klee didn't say anything, but the look of relief on his face was eloquent enough. Bo, on the other hand, had to be almost dragged away by Legion, aided by the fact that the honbarg's leg was pretty much useless at that point.
"Fuusley," Shepard called. He took over shooting at the small pocket of merch while the drogn got into cover to listen to him.
"Safah?"
"I want you to make sure there are no merch left. They got the information on how to build those things," Shepard said, gesturing at the Thanix cannon with his head. "I don't want that information getting back to A'di'shira."
"You got it," Fuusley said, his grin intensifying.
Shepard stuck around only until they had cleared the small group of merch, then made his way to the shuttle. With no merch reinforcements coming, courtesy of the out-of-control reaper, he could trust Fuusley to clean up the base. He spared the fallen reaper one last glance, and wondered. It was small, a kind of reaper he had never seen. Yet even though it was on its last legs, he had been damn lucky they had taken it down. Even with a Thanix cannon in hand.
He'd worry about it later. If Liara had left the specs for the Thanix in the time capsule, there probably was more on weapons, and their effectiveness against the reapers. She had always been thorough.
Thinking about Liara once again brought the fact that everyone was dead to the forefront of his thoughts. He stubbornly pushed them back, focusing instead on the fact that C'ie had not followed his orders to move out and get to safety. True, that had probably saved them, but it had risked something that was much more important, the information on Liara's capsule. Legion would have made it out, and they could have figured out how to get him back later on.
The shuttle ride was uneventful, and Shepard had the chance to take a look at the Normandy from the outside. There was a deep scarring atop the dorsal beam, consistent with a beam weapon having gone much too close, but otherwise the ship didn't seem damaged.
"Damn lucky," Shepard muttered.
"Leader?" the pilot said.
"Nothing."
As soon as they docked, Shepard made it out of the shuttle and went straight to CIC. Eager eyes and big smiles greeted him, but he ignored them. He was going straight to C'ie.
"Leader, welcome back," C'ie said, saluting.
"What the hell were you thinking?" was the first thing that came out of Shepard's mouth.
C'ie was taken aback, but only for a moment. She regained her composure quickly, and her feathers bristled slightly.
"I was thinking that I was in command of the vessel while the leader was away on a ground mission," she replied.
"I told you to get away from the reaper."
"And given that you did not have enough information about the situation aboard the ship, I decided to ignore that order," C'ie replied.
The two of them looked at each other for a couple of seconds, then Shepard noticed the looks the rest of the CIC crew was giving them, a mix of worry and surprise.
"My office," Shepard said, and turned without a word. C'ie followed, and the two of them made it down to Shepard's quarters, including a very silent, very awkward, and very long elevator ride. When they finally made it in, and Shepard closed the door, he finally let loose. "You ignored my order?"
"Yes. I had assessed the capabilities of the reaper vessel, and decided we could stand up to it. Even if we couldn't disable it, we could stop it from destroying the base long enough for you to get out."
"You risked everyone in this ship! Not to mention the entire mission!"
"Of course I did!" C'ie replied. "That's what we're here for! You really think our first mission should have ended in failure, with the leader dead, and the information we were sent to retrieve still firmly in the hands of the enemy?"
"You couldn't possibly stop a reaper with this... this..."
"This what?"
"This Normandy! My Normandy was equipped with state of the art technology miles ahead of what you all have, and even then I wouldn't be stupid enough to try and take a reaper with it alone!"
"Then maybe what you needed was a good headswing, not a better ship."
"A..." Shepard looked at C'ie, and her words threw his train of thought completely off the tracks. A better headswing. A better pilot. A better pilot than Joker? The image of Joker and the twins exchanging boasts about who could make the ship dance in a more fashionable way came to mind, and he couldn't help but start laughing.
"What's so funny?" C'ie said, clearly annoyed.
"A better pilot. Ah, you should have met Joker. He'd have never let you live those words down."
"I stand by them, you have a pair of extremely capable headswings aboard this vessel, and I trusted them to keep the ship intact."
Shepard shook his head and sat down, and invited C'ie to do the same, on the strangely shaped visitor's chair. It was a lot like a bird's perch, really, which did make sense.
"C'ie," Shepard said, his voice more calm than before. "I know the reapers, there is no way the Normandy could have taken it without the Thanix cannon on the surface."
"I-"
"Let me finish," Shepard said, raising his hand to silence C'ie. The ground wing bristled slightly at that, but complied. "The point is, this mission is much too important. It has to come first. Ahead of me, you, and anyone in this ship. The mission was to retrieve Liara's time capsule, and the information it contains. Legion had the information, he could have avoided the reaper and waited for an opportunity to call for extraction."
"Are you that eager to die?" C'ie said.
"Not really, but death and I are old acquaintances. Doesn't scare me anymore."
She shook her head. "Still, you weren't up here. I judged us capable of getting out of the encounter in one piece." She smirked unexpectedly. "Well, mostly. We lost the comms when one of the beams glanced us."
"Yeah, I saw the scorch mark outside."
"My point, as you say, is that you left me in charge, and I led the ship to the best of my abilities. If all you want is someone to carry out your orders without question, then next time I suggest you do not leave me in charge."
"I am not looking for a yes-man," Shepard said, shaking his head. "I'm- Wait. Next time?" He fixed his gaze on C'ie, until she nodded.
"Yes."
A small smile appeared on Shepard's face. "So you've decided to stay. Good."
"There is one condition, Shepard. And I would prefer if it does not leave this room."
"I can promise that much."
"Good," she said, and immediately looked up. "That goes double for you two!" she shouted.
Shepard heard a snap of static and then the voices of the twins.
"Sure, sure!"
"We won't say a thing!"
"Of course not!"
"Guys," Shepard said, interrupting them. "Have you been listening the whole time?"
"No!"
"Yes!"
…
"I mean, maybe?"
Shepard shook his head. Damn, it was like having Joker and EDI aboard all over again.
"Well, I'm making you abide by my promise to C'ie. Not a single word out, or I'll have you for breakfast. Am I making myself clear?"
"Yes sir!" the two twins replied at once.
"Good. So, C'ie?"
The avian female took a deep breath and passed her hands over her head, picking between the feathers with her fingers.
"There is a reason I do not like talking about my training as an infiltrator, Shepard. It's the reason why I may have to leave your crew and never come back."
Codex: The Hundred Cycles of War
For millennia, the Drakat Empire ruled the galaxy unchallenged, the only sentient species to have an established interstellar domain. Other species, namely the fuquee and the drogn, were brought to the fold of the empire without much trouble, kept not so much as servants as simply outsiders, with limited access to precursor technology and the mass relay network.
While the Empire has been, for the most part, stable, it has not been without incidents - the most notable being the relay rebellions, a galaxy-wide civil war that nearly fractured the empire forever, just over a thousand cycles ago - with made them well versed in the art of war. Stability was enforced with an iron fist, covered in a velvet globe, with the long history of the Empire being the chief reason for this attitude.
When first contact with the ar'alee was made, a hundred years ago, the news spread very quick through the Empire. A new sentient species, so much like the drakat themselves, was an eye-catching headline. The ar'alee, too, had established a loose interstellar domain of their own, mainly using peripheral relays and avoiding the main hubs of the drakat empire. No explanation for this was given, as they seemed unaware of the existence of the drakat themselves.
While first contact seemed auspicious at first, things changed rather dramatically once an expedition from the Imperial Court met with the ar'alee Federation's leadership. Negotiations over the handling of precursor technology, which the Empire claimed sole rights to across the galaxy, and the Ar'alee claimed as their birthright, as their homeworld of Makata contained large amounts of precursor technology.
Negotiations broke down, escalating very quickly into an all-out war. Seemingly eager to prove their superiority, the Empire threw their armada at the Federation, only to find their match in the Federation's own spaceships. War measures started to become increasingly rigid, first affecting the economies on both sides towards a war-like status of weapons and ships production, then establishing a mandatory military service, as well as an at-will draft for the Empire. The Federation responded by establishing tributes for all families, which had to be paid in the form of money, resources, or people to fill in the ranks of the army - leaving the ultimate decision to the heads of each household.
The populations responded well at first, complying with the new orders as a way to gain a quick victory in what they believed to be a just war where they had been attacked by their opponents. As the war dragged on, these measures started to grate more on the populace, and both sides' treatment of the civilians started to become increasingly militaristic. With war fatigue starting to settle in, hopes were high when the two sides met for talks on a neutral world about twenty cycles ago, but little came out of the talks, each side accusing the other of being unreasonable with their demands. The next ten cycles seemed to cool down the war slightly, with less battles between the sides and a substantially reduced death count.
Then, ten cycles ago, the merch arrived, and changed the face of war forever.
Author's Notes: Ladies! Gentlemen! Romans! I'm back! After a somewhat prolonged absence - mainly driven by the 2014 edition of NaNoWriMo and the aftermath of that, we are back on the air!
NaNoWriMo? Yes, National Novel Writing Month! I spent November not thinking about anything Mass Effect related, and I spent December working hard on editing and improving what I hope will be my first published novel: Alice's Adventures in Zombieland! Following the classic from Lewis Carroll, but completely changed inside and out. While this has been done before, I haven't found it done to my satisfaction (a quick google will reveal two "Alice in Zombieland" books already exist, the first by Nicholas Cook, published a long time ago but much too close to the original with just a few details changed, and the second by Gena Showalter, which turned out to be a teenage paranormal romance that had little to do with Alice or Wonderland), so if you're curious about Alice fighting hordes of zombies with a crowbar, stomping zombies while she is twelve feet tall, and having a one-on-one with the queen of hearts for the fate of Zombieland, all wrapped in weirdness, tongue-in-cheek, and mad cows, stay tuned!
Anyway, enough with the shameless self-promotion. We're back to the future, with Shepard having a second go at the Reapers! For the first mission, getting back Liara's time capsule, and probably leaving all my dear readers confused about what the hell just happened.
Well, fret not, because I intend to reveal all! Mostly, this was starting to get ridiculously long, and the coming story of C'ie's background will make a good spot to break the chapter a bit. Also, throwing Bo into the mix is never dull - at least when writing it.
So, in short, thanks all for your patience, sorry for the long absence, I hope you enjoyed the chapter, and hopefully I'm delivering enough intrigue and entertainment that you'll enjoy and keep reading!