Maldonaldo: Siege
DISCLAIMER: Bioware owns Mass Effect. I take no credit or part in such except for this story. Inspiration of this story goes to theorangeguy's 'Saren's Effect'. Jennifer Hale is a real life person. Same goes for Mark Meer. These are merely fictional representations, and do not reflect the actual opinions and personalities of said persons.
Chapter 23: Maldonaldo, Siege
Constant, Eden Prime, Utopia System, Exodus Cluster, April 2, 2183, 1232 Zulu
"C'mon, motherfuckers! Who wants to live forever?"
Master Sergeant Paula Maldonaldo shouted over the din of gunfire and battle as she took aim with her M-96 Mattock and proceeded to shoot a Geth warform in the chest, blasting a hole right where a human heart would be. Sadly, it wasn't as lethal a tactic as it was with an organic, so she shot it in the middle of the chest, punching another thumb-sized hole into the Geth chassis. Four shots later, she had finally punched through enough circuitry and processors to put the warform to the ground, activating whatever blue screen of death Geth went to when they died. Slinging her Mattock upon her chest, the Typhoon of Eden Prime went back to the defensive turret that she had been manning on top of the municipal building that her platoon of Marines had been holding onto near the main thoroughway of Constant, disrupting Geth operations as best they could. The turret she was stationed at was a Benson-Rothchild 75g autoloader, firing some six hundred rounds per minute at 1.2% the speed of light. A great defensive turret... if one only were firing at five or so baddies. The problem with the BR turret was that it overheated within six seconds of constant firing, and suppression firing only got you perhaps ten seconds, with half-a-minute cooldown. Still, it proved useful against massed mobs of Geth warforms and warframes, though it was a bit overkill for those mutated zombie fuckers that kept coming in waves.
The Typhoon pulled the duel triggers on the double-barreled turret, aiming at a Geth defensive position, and whooped as seventy-five gram rounds spitting out at ten shots a second began to slam into the AI fuckers.
The BR turret decimated the Geth line, warforms and warframes bursting into pieces from the onslaught of death raining down from the roof of the municipal building as the Marine Master Sergeant laughed maniacally, watching as the AI soldiers were violently blown to pieces by her suppressing fire. She took special attention to the big ones, eight-foot monstrosities that seemed to take a lickin' and keep on tickin'. They didn't survive her wrath as she mowed them down, some trying to dodge her rounds as others were scrapped in less than a second. The area was quickly turned into a cloud of dust as each round impacted with an explosion the equivalent of ten sticks of dynamite, ten of them a second causing quite a bit of pressure changes and vibration shocks. She didn't even necessarily need to get in a direct hit; the concussive force of the impacting round were enough to shake a Geth to pieces as far as two meters away from the impact point.
She had been doing this for a good half-an-hour.
"LT! Get some men on that barricade on the north end!" Maldonaldo called out as her turret overheated, having fired sixty shots in six seconds, plowing through a large contingent of Geth reinforcements that were moving in on the Marines' position. The north barricade was a hasty position created in mere minutes with Aircars and dumpsters pushed into the road to create choke points, cover, and a final protective line if needed be, manned by a few teams of the Eden Prime Colonial Army that the Normandy's Marines had run into. The 222 platoon, known as 'Triple-Deuce', had perhaps half of their men alive when Lieutenant (j.g.) Kaiden Alenko discovered several M-96 Mattocks pointing out of widows from an improvised bunker that was once a building. They had holed up with surviving civilians and what remaining militia members and law enforcement officers they could find, perhaps equaling fifty armed soldiers and cops, and another one hundred civilians. Alenko, bless his heart, had come up with a good idea; to take refuge in an Alliance Government Building, which were usually built of much better quality than standard colonial design, as well as fortified with defensive measures. The municipal building had been designated by the highest-ranking person left in the 222 (sadly, a freshly-promoted Sergeant way in over his head and knew it) and had happily giving the reins of command to the Master Sergeant and Biotic Lieutenant. The municipal building had been armed with four Benson-Rothchild defensive turrets, one on each corner of the roof, and that alone made the trip worthwhile. Small searches into nearby buildings had garnered them more militiamen and police officers (as well as civilian yahoos who picked up Mattocks and Lancers from fallen Soldiers), and their civilian population had exploded into the thousand range, with perhaps two hundred defenders.
Two make-shift Infantry Companies against the fury of the Geth Invasion Forces numbering... who knew.
"Top! We got some more of those Geth Jumpers on the north end!" Came Alenko's voice over their radio, one of the civilians actually making themselves useful by hardwiring a transmitter/receiver directly into the principle buildings' back-up power supply, providing more wattage than the Geth signal interrupter. Unfortunately, they only had a broadcast range of about half a kilometer. Still, it was better than trying to shout from the top of a three story building in the middle of a war.
"Goddamn those little fast fuckers." The Typhoon swore as she picked up her Mattock and started laying fire towards the eastern end of their defensive position, where the main part of Constant faced. That had been where a majority of the forces had come from, right down the road. There were more than a few pieces of Geth soldiers and their armored vehicles smoldering on the track from where she had laid waste to the machine race. "Lieutenant Parkerson! Get your sharpshooter team on the north side of the building and take out those little jumping fuckers." Lieutenant Parkerson was in charge of a five member SWAT team of the Eden Prime Police Division. They had all come to their position after hearing their transmissions, armed with ERCS Hammer sniper rifles. Five trained snipers working in concert made for a hell of a precision strike against ground forces.
"Those jumpers aren't faster than bullets." The SWAT team leader commented as a volley of high-powered precision fire rang out, almost sounding as if one shot instead of five. Maldonaldo had already seen their effectiveness; five targets dropped like the Gods had cut their strings, and the SWAT team didn't waste their time with the Geth Peons, as they were calling the regular man-sized troopers. Normally they went for the Flamers and Cloakers, the ones that really fucked with their defensive positions.
Only the eight-foot ones were giving them problems, the ones someone had coined 'Metal Gears' after some video game about a walking battle tank.
"Lancey! Give me some more fire support towards the north end! Jumpers soften a target for a push!" The Typhoon shouted to Lance Corporal James Frederickson, on the northeast turret. They had been alternating who fired their BR turret so both guns wouldn't be overheated at the same time. Impossible of course, with a six second fire to thirty second cooldown rate, but it was better to have back-up than to wait a full thirty seconds during a firefight; a lifetime of waiting in combat. "Jenkins! Send some more militiamen to the east side, third floor windows for suppression to cover for Frederickson." She didn't even wait for an acknowledgement as she laid out more orders as she saw more glints of sun-on-metal and the telltale flashlight faces of the Geth.
"Hale, wherever the fuck you are," the Typhoon charged her BR turret into readiness as she saw another Mobile Creeper coming down the thoroughway from Constant, the four-legged spider bastard from hell already charging its main gun; some sort of plasma caster that fucked everything up, "get your pretty little doohicky back here pronto before we find ourselves all fucking dead." Turret ready, Maldonaldo re-earned her nickname once more as the Typhoon of Eden Prime let off a warcry that would have impressed the Vikings of old as she aimed at the Mobile Creeper with her BR turret and mashed both triggers once more, sending death.
A/N: "C'mon, you apes! Who wants to live forever?" A quote often attributed to Marine Corps Sergeant Daniel Daly in the trenches of France during World War I of the Battle of Belleau Wood, before scaling the trench and crossing the No Man's Land in a push against the Imperial Germans (this is also the same battle that 'Retreat? Hell, we just got here' contributed to Captain Lloyd Williams of the 2nd of the 5th Marines, giving their motto 'Retreat? Hell!'). Doughboys had some fucking balls on them, charging machine gun nests through mazes of barb wire, artillery craters, and carpeting of corpses. Sergeant Major Daly was one of nineteen people double-awarded the Medal of Honor, and one of two to get it from two separate occasions. Described as the 'Fightin'est Marine I ever knew!' by Major General Butler, another double-MOH awardee.
Triple-Deuce - An homage to the 2nd Battalion, 22nd Infantry of the 3rd Stryker Brigade Combat Team, 2nd Infantry Division. It just so happened to be in between 212 and 232, the two acknowledged Infantry platoons on Eden Prime.
The game conveniently names the Geth troops via the HUD; Hopper, Trooper, Hunter, Destroyer... I changed those for this chapter alone as the soldiers don't have a convenient healthbar and naming HUD. Troopers are Peons, Hoppers are Jumpers, Pyros are Flamers, Hunters are Cloakers, Destroyers are Jaegers, and Primes are Metal Gears. Mobile Creeper is the Armature. I fucking hate that thing in ME 1.
This chapter somewhat shows what's going on for Eden Prime sans the Prothean Beacon Team; pretty sure the Geth were shooting at everything. Constant, btw, is the canon capital for Eden Prime, and I assume by the skyline in the first game that you land close by it. There were cops and firefighters and other people in Eden Prime when the Geth attacked. Where did all those husks come from, you think. I wanted to spotlight a little bit of it, as this will be featured later as the Miracle of Eden Prime.