Lions in Blue and Silver

The story of what happens when you are too badass for your own good

"This is liable to be a complete, unmitigated clusterfuck, just so you know."

The voice of Rachel Florez was strained and had a sour note to it, but that didn't really surprise Ahern. He merely exhaled as the two of them walked through the hallway of Alliance High Command Vancouver. He didn't exactly figure being summoned by the High Admirals and then told to go to a 'sensitive briefing' was anything good, and he hardly needed his old friend to tell him that.

He glanced around at the corridor as he walked, grimacing. Vancouver was, as always, glittering and clean, and High Command had that kind of overwrought opulence that always made his teeth grind. The corridor was covered in thick blue pile carpeting, and the sides of the corridor were bracketed on either side by black tiles. Sturdy armaplast spars imprinted with the SA logo framed huge armaglass windows overlooking the Reclaimed Expanse, the giant natural park outside of Vancouver proper.

He snorted, and Rachel gave him a thin smile. Like him, she was probably less than impressed by the view, given that she hadn't removed her attention on the clunky datapad held in her hands the whole time they were walking except to bitch.

He eyed the padd thoughtfully; one of the new pieces of techs the science boffins had come up with. Although it was a lot thicker than a tablet, it could also take combat conditions and had its own wireless transmitter, which was useful when a cell phone had no signal.

He was musing on the pace of advancement when she sighed. "Tradius, this is bad. I know I sound like Yonis now, but this is fucked." She jabbed a finger at the thin plastic screen and grunted. "The fucking spikes overran Terra Nova last night. The 6th Japanese Imperial Guard was there… died to the last man and woman. Hastar V was captured, and it doesn't look like anything but a handful of frigates and evac ships got out."

Ahern grunted as they rounded a corner. "I get it. We're losing our ass off, and they're at the doorstep. Doesn't explain why I'm walking through some fucker's evil secret fortress of doom for a briefing." He rubbed his shoulder as he mused on the truth of that statement.

In the five years since they'd all nearly died in a godforsaken swamp, Team Smashfucker had been, as Saracino put it, smashfucked. The war had caught the Alliance with its pants down, and as some of the leading lights of the military forces, his team had been split up and given different directives. God only knew what the fuck the AIS had Chu and Mike doing, as they'd vanished without a trace – much to Rachel's displeasure.

Kyle had been shuffled off as a commander of N-series teams, doing deep raids into occupied space to sabotage and scout the enemy. Rachel had, after making N7, been placed in charge of an infantry battalion, and then multiple battalions, fighting hard to hold the line against unceasing invasion forces at Eden Prime and on Therum. She'd actually crushed a turian army on Therum, using explosives to trigger a lavalanche on top of the enemy.

Ahern had been roped into Fleet Marine operations, even commanding ships. It had started with him being a ground commander for naval forces, but when Admiral Drescher had nearly been killed with her entire bridge crew, he'd taken command of the badly wounded Daedalus and managed to get the ship out of the battle in one piece.

Since then, he'd been given several spaceside commands, none of which ended well, but he was doing better than poor Admiral Grissom, who'd managed to lose most of 1st Fleet.

There were a few other people he knew from the clusterfuck at the Okefenokee Swamp that had moved into high command positions. That was because most of the goddamned generals were either dead or captured, and the new generation had to step into their shoes. Unfortunately, they were losing people faster than they could train them, and things were bad enough that they'd started arming fucking prisoners and putting them into shock legions headed by Commissars.

He shook his head as he remembered a talk he'd had with Chu, on the eve of the N-series testing debacle, and the briefing on the Raptors. He'd dismissed the whole thing at the time, thinking they still had decades to prepare, and he'd been wrong.

The aliens were here, now.

They'd slaughtered an innocent tech team at Shanxi, then hit the stage one colony world with an entire fleet. 2nd Fleet had wiped the alien assault force, but when it withdrew for repairs, having lost half the ships doing so, the aliens had pounced again.

They'd obliterated most of House Williams and orbitally bombarded Shanxi, with only a handful of refugees surviving. The aliens had then begun an invasion in force. The fighting was brutal, the aliens – turians, if the boffins got the translations right – were a militaristic force with much more advanced technology.

The Systems Alliance had lost sixteen worlds, five more were ruins, and now Terra Nova – a core member – had fallen. Nothing lay between Arcturus and Sol now but a handful of fortified asteroid bases. The 1st Fleet was a smoking wreck, 2nd Fleet was mostly laid up in repair, and 3rd Fleet had been completely obliterated.

As Rachel had said, they were losing.

So when the High Admiralty called Ahern and Florez up, pulling them from their command positions to report immediately, her statement that this was going to be a complete charlie-foxtrot was a blinding flash of the obvious. They'd be lucky if it wasn't some kind of suicidal bullshit. They turned a final corner, coming to a slow stop at the door that the corridor ended in.

It was a literal wall of reinforced steel, over four meters wide and three meters tall, overlaid with faintly glowing circuits full of eezo that he knew represented a kinetic barrier field. Standing in front of the door, in heavy black combat armor and holding ugly-looking shotguns, were a pair of Guard of Iron soldiers, expressionless and grim like all their kind.

Also standing in front of the door, hands folded neatly behind his back, was Preston Kyle, his golden hair gleaming in the light streaming in from the huge windows. His uniform was immaculate as he turned around and broke into a smile as he saw them. "Tradius. Rachel."

Ahern exhaled again and walked forward, slapping Kyle on the shoulder. "What the hell are you doing here, Golden Boy? Thought you were on Terra Nova?"

Kyle grimaced, even as Rachel gave him a peck on the cheek. "I was. Commissars came in late last night and pulled me out… had to leave my unit behind. I heard it fell this morning. If I'd been there—"

Rachel shook her head. "If you'd been there you'd be dead. The raptors hit the place with half a million soldiers and one of those fuck-all giant ships. There's still fighting, but the world is lost."

Kyle sighed. "I know. It just galls me to abandon the fight." He glanced at the two gray-armored soldiers. "All I know is I got here and these two told me to wait. So I wait."

Ahern nodded, then glanced at one of the soldiers. "Do we wait some more?"

The soldier gave him a single, grim nod, his accent Germanic and thick. "Ja. Wait. You will know."

Ahern arched an eyebrow and spoke in German. "Can you tell me what is going on?"

The man grunted, then gave the smallest of shrugs. "You think they tell us anything? I know who is within the room. It is not admirals. I can say nothing else; I know only that you are to wait until you are all here."

Ahern frowned. "Until we are…?" He broke off, turning around, as two more figures rounded the corner, and then he groaned. "Of course."

Clad in identical black cutaway coats, white armor-weave shirts with thin black ties, Michael Saracino and Yonis Chu walked forward, the former grinning like a lunatic. "Ahernia! Rachel! Daisy-kun!"

Kyle eyed Saracino with mute frustration. "I asked you not to call me that ridiculous name."

Yonis snorted. "Ha, that's mild. He's been acting like an uber-asshole for years now. I think the AIS threw a party when the Commissars came and got us."

Rachel gave Saracino a kiss before pushing him away. "Alright, time to get serious. I can't think of any reason someone would put Team Smashfucker back together, since half of us are AIS, half are N7, and Kyle is… like, a general, basically."

The two guards tapped their earpieces, then nodded. One of them tapped a keypad next to the door and stepped back. "They are prepared for you now. You may enter."

The doors slid down into the ground, revealing a black-steel armored corridor ahead with no windows and heavy-caliber turrets in the ceiling. Two glowstrips of blue lighting outlined the corridor, while blue and white hazard tape was emblazoned at head-height, with faintly glowing letters on top. 'SUPERNOVA Security Area. Unauthorized access is punishable by execution.'

Ahern sighed. "This is getting better and better."

Saracino's usual mirth was absent as he stared at the lines, then he gave a weak chuckle. "C'mon, gang, let's get this over with. Maybe it won't be a horrible death sentence of a mission and we can all get drunk together."

Kyle eyed Saracino warily. "The last time I got drunk with you I woke up in a strange apartment with two women I didn't know and my head shaved bald."

Saracino cackled, Rachel giggled, Chu sighed, and Ahern facepalmed. "If you children are done…" He gestured down the passageway.

The five of them walked down the long, dimly lit corridor, chitchatting casually as they did so. Rachel regaled them with tales of her work on tactical planning, Yonis explained what intelligence the AIS had gathered on the turians, and Saracino made bad puns.

Nothing new there, although Ahern was amused and horrified to hear Chu had been pranking the Commissariat with drones. The man was a lunatic.

At the end of almost a kilometer of walking, they came to another door, identical to the first, which slid open, into a wide, brightly lit circular room. Ahern stepped into it, the others following, then came to a crashing halt.

The room was large, a huge steel oval flanked by pillars of cherry wood. The floor was a worked parquet of more cherry wood framed in black carpeting, and in the middle was a dais with five comfortable looking chairs on it.

View-screens hung along the top edge of the room, some displaying maps, drone footage, or broadcast news, with others showing scrolling lines of data. Off to the right another door was ajar, a trio of more Guard of Iron standing there.

Sitting in a semicircle around the perimeter of the room were the High Lords of Sol. In the middle, Prince Maxwell Manswell slowly stood, leaning on his cane heavily, his black clothing augmented by the sword at his hip. To his right was the equally ancient form of Duke Si Chu, to his left the serene and content looking visage of the Japanese Emperor.

"Welcome, soldiers of Sol. Sit." Manswell's voice was hoarse, but the iron in it was unmistakable, and even Saracino kept his mouth shut as the five sat down in the chairs in the center of the room. The door behind them shut with a hollow boom, followed a moment later by the sound of a kinetic barrier kicking in.

Manswell himself sat down, and next to him, Duke Chu glared at his distant relation for a second before speaking, his deep baritone cold and clipped. "You are all undeniably aware of the position the Systems Alliance is in, in regards to our war with these… turians. What you do not know is that situation is worse than we have admitted publicly."

The lord exhaled and tapped something on his chair, and one of the far walls slid apart, revealing a large flat-panel view-screen. It illuminated a moment later, with a view of the systems of the Alliance, marked in green, blue, and red. Tiny script indicated blue was Alliance, green was empty systems and red were occupied systems.

"As you can see, the turians have cut off all of our outlying food-producing colonies. They have also taken Horizon, Terra Nova, and are in the process of overrunning Eden Prime. There is no direct relay link from Terra Nova to Arcturus, but it will not take their scouts long to find the relay."

The Duke exhaled slowly. "Current estimates indicate we'll have problems feeding everyone in Sol in six months if something isn't done. That's hardly the more pressing of our problems, however."

He turned his gaze back to the five of them. "Our combat analysts have determined if the aliens reach Arcturus, we do not have the ships to repel them. And once past Arcturus, they will overrun Sol."

His eyes hardened. "While the Solguard will die to the last to defend Earth, we all know what would happen if the full might of the invaders fell upon us. We saw what they did in Shiva."

Ahern said nothing, but inside he felt an icy sensation go down his spine. The Shiva System had been utterly destroyed by the aliens. If that happened to Sol, with ninety percent of humanity in it, it would be the end of the human race.

Manswell nodded. "So, now you know the stakes we face. Now, for the dilemma we are in." He gestured back to Duke Chu.

The Duke tapped another control. "We require breathing room. A few weeks to repair 1st and 2nd Fleet and we can hold them off long enough to bring 4th Fleet – a new fleet – online. If we can stall them for a month we can push them back. We've recovered enough of their tech to start replicating it for ourselves – we can win this, if we have the time."

There was a pause, and Ahern spoke. "We can win this if we do something to delay them, Your Grace?"

Chu nodded. "That is correct. We have tried… several methods. None have worked. These things do not retreat, they massacre soldier and civilian alike, they do not follow any rules of war and may not even be capable of feeling fear as we understand it. Our efforts thus far have been in vain, which has driven us to consider more extreme measures."

Ahern managed not to snort. When an ice-cold bastard like Old Man Chu was talking 'extreme' measures, he seriously doubted it was going to be conducive to him living much longer. He focused on what the Duke was saying.

"That being said, we have a plan. Or rather, a possibility. We have already run this through High Command and they have told us it is impossible, that no group of soldiers could do this. We have run it through computer analysis and received the same answer."

Saracino arched an eyebrow. "…So you called us? I guess that makes me feel like a badass, Your Grace, but, uh, why are you ignoring the experts?"

Chu gave the sniper an icy glance. "Because the alternative is extinction. And that is not an option."

After a long moment of silence, the Duke tapped another control, highlighting a system in red. "We have analyzed all possibilities that we can actually have a chance at accomplishing, and have determined a single course of action to take."

"This is the Sinear System. It contains four planets, two of them He-3 bearing gas giants, a molten world, and Sinear-II. Sinear-II is unique in our known space as it bears simple life – plants, insect analogues, and a mobile carnivorous moss – but the chirality of the planet is opposite that of Earth life. The sugars and proteins are mirrored to our own, making the planet useless to us without extensive and complete terraforming."

Chu glanced across the room, and a slender, elegant man smiled in response. "I am Prince Henri Eldfell, and I am what passes for an esprit de science et de connaissanceamong my noble brethren. I doubt you will grasp the significance of this issue, but it is important. The chirality of this world matches that of the alien invaders – indeed, one of the troubling aspects of this invasion is why they are taking our worlds at all, since they are all useless to them as places to colonize.

"One may ponder why I am telling you this information. Sinear-II is the main operations base that the turians appear to be operating from. More importantly, a fortification on the surface of the planet contains their storehouses of medical supplies, ammunition, eezo, and food stocks, as well as critical replacement parts. For some reason, this is also where they have placed ALL of their communication uplink facilities at."

Forgetting herself, Rachel snorted. "Surely they can't be that stupid… Your Grace."

The Frenchman gave her a thin, unamused smile. "Madame, they are better fighters than us, better shipwrights, with certainty, better tacticians, perhaps. But in logistics, they are less capable than us by far. It is as if they have never had an opponent resist strongly before."

He tapped a control on his own chair and the graphical display of the system moved closer. "We have captured a single turian shuttle with FTL capacity. Our science minions have not discovered anything we can use immediately from it, and thus it is of no further interest from a technical standpoint."

He glanced back at Duke Chu, who spoke. "Our plan is risky – but required. We will provide you with a tactical portable eezo-enhanced nuclear device. You must find a way to sneak into the system and onto that world and destroy this… fortress they have their supplies and comm gear in. If successful, our analysis tells us this would give us a minimum of three weeks and a maximum of two months of reduced pressure. Maybe even more, if we capitalize on their logistical weakness."

The Duke met the eyes of Ahern squarely. "I will neither prevaricate nor understate – this is a suicide mission. The system is well-guarded, and our single probing infiltration showed upwards of ten thousand turians in that base. They also have a dreadnought in orbit, undergoing repairs, as well as several heavy-cruisers. We cannot extract you, even if you are successful."

Ahern glanced around the room, at the grim, cold faces, and then gritted his teeth. "How are we even supposed to get into the system? Take that shuttle and hope no one asks who the fuck we are?"

Several nobles frowned at his curse, but Maxwell merely smiled and leaned back in his chair. "Tell me, Commodore, are you a coward?"

Ahern's eyes narrowed. "I would think my record speaks for itself, Your Grace."

Manswell nodded. "Indeed it does. You all have much to lose, I understand that. Wives. Loved ones. Children. Dreams for the future."

The old man folded his hands together. "You are some of our strongest defenders, our most talented leaders, our most skilled operatives, our most lethal assassins. I do not throw away my tools on a hopeless task, no matter if it would save my own life or not. Nor do I throw your lives away.

"But in this, Commodore, we need warriors who are willing to give everything – their skill, blood, and very lives – for humanity. This is not about anything but human survival. In that light, if I must lose the lives of the brave, I must choose those who can succeed at the task, even if it costs them their lives." He stared hard at Ahern. "I did not make this choice lightly. And if you and your companions have shown anything in your careers, it is that you defy the odds."

Ahern blew out a breath. "Yes, Your Grace. Will we have anything to assist us in this mission?"

Manswell nodded and leaned back. "We have obtained a translation program, ironically from the turian shuttle you will be using. We do not know who coded it, but it is rife with hints that indicate a third party – yet another alien race – may have had a hand in it. What we also have are recorded logs of actual turian communications with the shuttle."

The Prince gestured to Chu again, who spoke. "Using the logs and the program, we are convinced you can bluff your way past any guards and get down to the planet. If you can do that and drop the bomb off and get away, wonderful. If not… do what you can. At the worst case, we've overridden the FTL plotter of the shuttle – crash it into that dreadnought or into the fortress if there is no other choice.

"Turians are too tall and… alien shaped… for us to come up with any kind of disguises. But we've rigged up transmission software that should replace your faces with images of the shuttle's original crew for any communications you may need while on the shuttle."

Kyle glanced around the room, then spoke slowly. "It sounds, milords, as if we have no choice. I am not afraid to die for Sol, but I have… things left undone. Do we have time to say goodbye to our families?"

Manwell's eyes narrowed as he nodded. "We are not cruel, Colonel Kyle. It will be three days until the shuttle is ready. The fragments of 3rd Fleet and part of the 1st Fleet is busy leading the main turian force astray to give you an opening. We will equip you with the best weapons, tactical gear, and body armor we have."

Ahern looked at Kyle, then Rachel and Michael, and finally Yonis a long time before speaking. "…Ah, fuck it. It can't be any worse than the swamp. We'll do it. By your leave, Your Grace?"

Manswell nodded, as the kinetic barrier fell and the door slid open behind them. "You may go, Commodore. I am grateful you chose to do this freely."

The five of them exited in a group, walking out of the corridor a few minutes later, when Saracino finally spoke. "So, we're going to die. Horribly. Shocking outcome, never expected that."

Chu gave him a look, but Kyle spoke. "We only die when we decide to die, Mike. Nothing's ever stopped all five of us. And nothing ever will."

Ahern shook his head. "A bunch of idiots on a stolen boat are going to invade a giant alien fortress and save the fucking world. Jesus fuck this sounds like a goddamned video game script."

Saracino nodded. "Look on the bright side. We weren't asked to go back into a swamp."

Kyle shot him a look. "We don't know the terrain on this planet yet. So don't jinx it."

A/N and Pimpage: It's been a while since I updated this, and I thought I'd just push it out.

I'm dealing with some family and legal issues right now, and I haven't made a lot of progress on the next chapter of TWCD, so you may see several other side stories update before it does.

It's also time for that announcement, the one everyone dreads getting.

For now, I'm putting work on my original fiction on hold to work on my fanfic. I've let myself get distracted by the original work, and frankly, it's not shaping up how I wanted to, so I will set it down for a bit.

Make sure you leave reviews for the awesome Aberron on his story. Also, ArielFetters, Xabiar, SLotH4, and Katkiller-V have stories you should read. :D