The Siege of Shanxi

Chapter Twenty Five: That's So Obelisk

DEFENSIVE POSITION CENTRAL

ALPHA COMPANY, 1ST BATTALION, BCT-ONE

AT SOUTHERN END OF CENTRE RIDGE

A week's worth of beard growth on Captain Bob McDevitt's chin caught the sweat he was dripping and made the already intense heat a little more unbearable. The temperature was climbing into the low forties already. Thankfully, there was no humidity, just the heat of a hot sun beating down on their heads.

With a grunt, he continued swinging his mattock, breaking up rock and clay from the firing pit he was digging. When the order came through to begin developing the positions, Bob had kicked his company into gear immediately. They had worked furiously through the night, sinking all twenty seven pits down to chest height by the time the heat really kicked in.

Bob had taken extra precautions, scrounging razor wire, fence posts, sandbags, and whatever else he could find. He had set up wire obstacles, double sandbagged each of his pits to provide extra cover from direct fire, sunk at least one dugout per pit, and staked each of his machine guns.

Colonel Gurung had been industrious with the units available to him. Satisfied that the infantry was dug in deep, he had set them to digging firing pits for the armour. Each pit had to be sunk a metre deep, with a ramp for it to be reversed out at a moment's notice.

With the division's sapper units either dead or missing, McDevitt had drafted construction workers and what equipment they had kept with them. He had laid concrete fortifications in as many of the tank pits as he had room for.

Since that wasn't quite enough, he was now back in the pit, scraping out the last of the rubble. His muscles relished the work, it gave his brain a chance to rest. He wasn't cut out for this officer game, NCO work suited him just fine. And digging a firing pit was something he did very well.

"Captain, a moment." He heard Colonel Gurung's voice, and twisted his head around to look up at his new CO.

"Of course, sir." His voice was hoarse from calling orders and lack of water. He'd have gone to the Battalion Aid Post, if he could have spared the ten minutes necessary to grab a jumped up throat lozenge.

"I hope you're settling into your new command." Gurung knelt by the pit, extending his canteen to Bob, who gratefully took a swig. "Did the men get their food last night?"

"Yes sir. Each man got a hot meal, reasonably warm coffee, a cold wash and a change of clothes."

"Were there sufficient uniforms?"

"Not in desert camouflage, sir." McDevitt gestured to a few of his men in shirts and shorts. "Lieutenant Colonel Chekova assured me that she'll have the urban camouflage washed, repaired, dyed brown and then re-issued."

"Quite a situation, eh, Captain?" Gurung shook his head. "I have intelligence officers commanding battalions, and senior lance corporals commanding platoons."

"The men are ready for a fight, sir." McDevitt promised him. "You've put good troops in the line. And with first line ammo, we're set for as long as you need us."

"Well, I'm going to need you to adapt again, Captain." Gurung gestured to his line. "General Williams has requested three of the best and most experienced platoons, trained in ship boarding operations. And Commander Shepard requested you by name."

McDevitt frowned. "Sir, we've barely got three platoon's worth of Marines left in this battalion. And they're all that's holding the militia and cops together."

"General Williams is aware of the problems in manpower, the situation is brigade wide." Gurung shook his head. "Your orders are to select a platoon of your best men, which you will command. Appoint a temporary commander, I'll brevet them if need be."

McDevitt hesitated, then glanced to his side. "If I may ask...is this it, sir? The big one?"

Gurung grinned. "It just might be, Captain. It just might be."

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HNV TYREAUS

HANGAR BAY 1A

=This is Blackwatch Frigate Harrier, on final approach.= The fractured voice of the frigate captain was the first thing that alerted Desolas that something was wrong. The next was his words. =Sir, there has been...an incident. Request a suppression team with flamethrowers and heavy weapons be present for...extermination operations.=

Desolas was already moving as the air traffic controllers put a call throw to the ship's Lancer detatchment. As he walked, he lifted his hand. "Team One, with me!"

If something had gone wrong, it could not have gone wrong on a small scale. He had dispatched all of the Fourth Platoon of the Blackwatch aboard the Harrier. Anything that they could not have dealt with was something that no mere Lancer Platoon could hope to deal with.

As the commander of a Frontier Legion, Desolas was afforded two teams of the Sworn for his personal bodyguard. Cybernetically enhanced, and specially equipped and trained for close protection, the Sworn numbered at less than two thousand, and were charged with the protection of the Hierarchy's most vital leaders.

And with eight of them currently at his back, Desolas strode grimly toward the largest hangar bay on the ship.

From the second he saw it enter the hangar bay, he knew the mission had gone terribly wrong. The outside lines were scorched, two of the thrusters were completely wrecked. The blunt nose of the frigate had crumbled from an obvious ramming attempt.

The Lancers around the bay were grim faced, heavy mass accelerators, flame throwers, and more than one grenade launcher being firmly levelled at the front ramp.

Desolas gave a directory nod to Urelius, the team leader. "Be ready to bring down any intruders. If necessary, vent atmosphere in the bay."

"Will it come to that, sir?"

"The first two teams the Hierarchy sent never returned, Operative." Desolas glanced back at the Lancer platoon lead. "Draw what conclusions you will."

The ramp began to lower, accompanied by a snap of weapons priming.

Desolas held his breath, daring to hope for a glimpse of his prize...

...only to see half a dozen badly wounded and maimed Blackwatch operatives stagger down the ramp toward the line.

"Halt!" One of the Lancers stood. "Identify."

"Lieutenant Bar Actus!" The ragged leader grated over a shattered mandible. "Commander of the Fourth Platoon."

Desolas stepped forward. "Let him through! Lieutenant!"

Spotting his commander, the wounded officer staggered towards him. "General Arterius, sir!"

"Get the medics over here, now!" Desolas snapped at the Lancers, even as he grabbed the arm of the wounded officer and slung it over his shoulder.

"I'm so sorry, sir. So sorry." Actus rambled as Desolas led him to a stretcher. "My command...my whole command in ruins, sir."

"What happened?" Desolas demanded, even as he eased his wounded soldier into the hands of the medical staff.

"We went in slow, like you said, sir." Actus continued to stare at Desolas with eyes that had seen too much. "I bombarded the area around the temple, took out most of the defences that brought down the last few teams. We secured the artefact without any resistance..."

"The artefact? What is it? Where is it?"

"We were on our way back out." The officer's eyes glazed over. "They came out of the jungle, we never even saw them."

"Who came out?"

"The defenders, sir, the defenders of the temple." Actus grabbed his hands. "I lost twelve in the opening salvo, and another four in hand to hand before we killed the rest of them. Then...the others."

"Others?"

"We were tracked, sir." Actus continued to grip his talons. "STG...and Justicars. But not working together. They were as surprised to see each other was we were to see them. We got lucky, it was a full regiment...and a reinforced hunting party. They focussed on taking each other out...and in the confusion we were able to get back to the Harrier. The Justicars must have won...they caught up with us right as we finished loading. I lost all my biotics just killing one of them. I decided to blow the Obelisk, ordered my last four unwounded men to carry it out."

"You blew the Obelisk?" Desolas hissed with anger as he looked back at the frigate.

"No...no we couldn't." Actus was descending into some kind of delirium. "It protects itself...it protected us...they protected us. Saw...a Justicar...torn in half...the others all...screaming..."

Years of well honed command instincts kicked in. Desolas wheeled around to see several of the Lancers advancing up the ramp. "No!"

The point man twisted his head to look back. "Wha-"

The thing that speared its hand straight through the Lancer's chest was not something Desolas would have cared to meet on a dark night. To the best of his knowledge, the members of Fourth Platoon only had basic augmentations, yet the four figures that had begun to scythe their way through the Lancer's line glistened with silver and black steel, their eyes bright blue bulbs scanning in every direction for targets.

Even as he directed Urelius and his men into firing positions, Desolas could not help but feel a thrill of success. He had found it.

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The briefing room was a lot smaller than the one at Colonial HQ in Outreach. But even then, there were a lot of empty seats compared to the packed conference room little more than a week previously.

The senior police and emergency service personnel were dead from orbital strikes. The lieutenant governor and the Alliance Intelligence Service director were both lying in a makeshift hospital. Commodore Franks was missing. Most of the regiment, battalion and air commanders were dead, dying, too badly wounded to move, or missing.

Williams examined his new command team, Governor Worthing, and a handful of recently appointed civilian personnel grimly. Whilst Ganju had been the best choice for brigade commander, his other selections had not been so easy. Ganju had selected Major Chekova for one of the infantry battalions, breveting her to Lieutenant Colonel. A militia major had been promoted and assigned to the reserve battalion. Neither had frontline command experience, but they'd proved their worth in the fighting, and that was good enough for Williams.

Williams had personally selected the commanders for the armoured squadrons. A tank captain named Brennan had demonstrated extraordinary competence during the withdrawal, Williams had bumped him to Major and given him the heavy armour. Major Haddin had been given the light armour.

Harper and Shepard were both still alive, and miraculously, so was their team. That was good. He needed that team. And more than ever, he needed options.

"Gentlemen, ladies." He nodded at the group. "We've taken quite a pounding over the last week. Lost some old friends, lost our land. The situation is...rather dire."

Drained faces and sunken eyes stared back at him, and Williams was reminded that he wasn't the only one losing sleep over this fight. "I have consulted with each of you, individually, on the best course of action with what resources we have left. Some of you have insisted on an immediate attack, others on a furthering of defensive positions. In the end, I have decided on a third option."

He tapped his display. The by now familiar appearance of the enemy dreadnaught blinked into existence. "I have decided that the best course of action is the one the enemy will least expect. An assault on the heart of their command and control. Their dreadnaught."

There was a shift in the posture of his command team. He had caught their attention. Now he had to convince them. "The interrogations of our turian prisoners has revealed several interesting factors. Turian command and control is rigid, down to the last fireteam. They need the comms suites and command centres of a dreadnaught just to keep it all spinning. The second, the turians have been taking large numbers of human prisoners, up to five hundred, up to the dreadnaught for processing and interrogation. Most of them are frontline Marines, our best men, captured in Outreach. And the third, the two head commanders of this task force, the ones raining down fire above us, can be found on the dreadnaught, if we time it right."

The team was hooked now, an almost manic gleam appearing in Harper's eyes as he processed the data.

"General Desolas Arterius was on planet until a few hours ago." Williams brought up an image of an angular troop transport with elegant markings. "Our remaining recon assets in the city sent us this. It's the general's personal transport, taking him back up to the ship. We don't know how long he'll be there, but I don't intend to wait for him to leave."

"Is that our mission, sir?" Mack Shepard raised his hand. "Assassination of their leadership?"

"Actually, their deaths serve a bigger purpose in the larger plan, Commander." The general answered him. "According to one Commander 'Lacriss' Vakarian, if a spaceborn C&C vessel is compromised, turian SOPs are to transfer C&C groundside, to a hardened and networked location. Colonel Chekova believes that they are currently using one of our abandoned bases. Echo Base, to be precise."

"Tarmacs, hangars, barracks." Gurung looked annoyed. "I should have ordered the whole thing demolished after we left."

"You may have done us a favour." Williams gestured to the western side of Echo Base. "Our field training area. Five hundred kilometres of forest, forest that our men are very familiar with. To the north, open country, with a downhill slope directed to the base."

Chekova looked startled. "You want to attack it? Divide and conquer?"

"To be more accurate, I want to divide and conquer, and get to the storage hangars at the end of the base." The image zoomed in on the mega-hangars. "And the Settlement Fleet therein."

The command team looked at each other. Major Brennan raised his hand. "Sir...if I read you right...you want us to board and disable or destroy a dreadnaught, retrieve the prisoners on board, and eliminate the two senior military officers directing the invasion. You then want us to attack and take our former CP, so you can retrieve a mothballed fleet."

"Almost, Major." Williams smiled. "I want you to take our former CP, hold it for at least four hours, whilst we spin up the drives on these ships, load up as many civilians as we can manage, and then ride those ships the hell off this planet."

There was silence.

Lieutenant Colonel Chekova raised her hand. "Sir? If I may?"

"By all means."

"Sir. You are completely, fucking insane." The Russian cracked a grin. "When do we start?"

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It was the first time that a Hierarchy dreadnaught had been boarded since the Krogan Rebellion.

It was certainly as bloody.

The screams of dying turians echoed around the bay, almost fifty Lancers, security officers and deckhands lay dead or dying under the scything swipes of the four not-turians.

The welcoming platoon had exhausted their flamethrower fuel and grenades just bringing down one of them. They had redlined their rifles and burned out their heatsinks bringing down a second. That was when most of their casualties had been taken, as they scrambled around, trying to find new weapons or equipment with which to defend themselves.

Desolas had turned the tide by crushing one with a cargo loader, smashing in its skull and destroying whatever intelligence still controlled this...husk.

The Sworn had struck the final blow, magnificent as always. As a pack, they had taken out the last monster's legs, then pinned it down whilst Urelius personally sawed off its head.

Fifty men, just bringing down four. It was everything Desolas had hoped for.

When he finally boarded the ship, he kept a distance from the artefact, massive and black and glowing with unseen power. Beautiful. He chuckled a little. A client race? No. This would be what restored glory to the Hierarchy. Humanity would simply be a nice addition to what would become a massive collection.

"Urelius! Form a perimeter around this ship, allow none to board." Desolas turned away. "Contact my brother and order him back to the ship immediately. We have real work to do."

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"We have six low-orbit capable shuttles." Williams gestured to Flight Lieutenant Alistair. The young pilot was the most senior air power officer remaining, and for all the bandages and bruises, he was the best that Williams had. "Pilots, air crew, and just enough fuel to boost into high orbit."

Mack raised his hand. "Sir, even if we can get those shuttles into range of that dreadnaught, they'll pick us up and destroy us the second we can't answer their comms."

"Chekova?"

The intelligence officer turned infantry commander stood up. "Thanks to our asari and salarian guest, we were able to build a thorough lexicon of the turian language. Using this, and certain hallucinogenic agents, we were able to conduct a very thorough...subversion of our primary captive, Lieutenant Vyrnnus. Using him, and a few other captives, we will trick our way past their outer defences. Our guests will insist that they're flying back to the dreadnaught on captured enemy shuttles."

"There's no way in hell that they'll go for that." Harper shook his head. "They'll blow us out of the sky before we're within docking distance."

"Not necessarily." Alistair spoke up, the young pilot more calm than could have been expected for a man shot down twice in the last few days. "From what the prisoners have coughed up, they do not have a terribly high opinion of us. If they don't expect subterfuge, we have a damn good chance of making it all the way."

"Okay, so say we sneak our way past their fighter screens, frigate picket, their point defense system and their hangar sentries...what then?" Harper challenged the pilot. "Do we just beat down the door to their eezo core and set demo charges on the control console? Break into into their brig, carrying enough weapons and gear for five hundred Marines? Oh, and while we're at it, why don't we just stroll onto their bridge, and kill both of their most senior officers, all the while surrounded by potentially thousands of angry, killer aliens?"

Gurung coughed slightly. "Well...that is our plan...in brief, of course."

"Of course it is." Harper sighed. "Who gets what?"

One of the men Harper vaguely recognised, a scruffy bearded Marine in baggy cams, stood up. "Sir, the main force elements for the assault will be the Tier-One platoon under you and Commander Shepard, and three platoons of Marines."

"We will divide our forces evenly across the shuttles." Gurung explained. "No one shuttle will carry every member of the same team. That way, should two or three be shot down, we will not lose every vital member of the mission at once. Each shuttle will also carry an equal amount of mission critical equipment. One shuttle's loss will not mean the end of the mission."

"Once on board, you will split into three units." Gurung continued. "The first, comprising of Harper and Shepard's men, will assault through to here, what we believe is the C&C area of the ship. You will kill Targets Alpha and Bravo, a female turian named Jhirx, and a male turian named Arterius. You will identify them via uniform, should be bright and sparkly. I want confirmed kills on both of them. Further to this, you will kill as many command staff as possible. Operations officers, gunners, navigators, etc. Should our mission to blow that thing out of the sky fail, we will restrict her ability to operate. Captain McDevitt?"

"Sir." The Marine indicated the rear portion of the ship. "As best we know, both the eezo core and the main holding areas for our prisoners are in the rear portion of the ship. The holding area is lightly guarded, mostly with automated riot suppression gear. So we will send one of our platoons to crack through their defences, with enough light weapons carried on trolleys behind them to resupply two companies. After that, the re-armed prisoners will make their to the lower decks, seize the transports used to bring them up here, and secure them for our exfil."

"Meanwhile, I will lead the other force of two platoons, comprised of experienced heavy infantry and combat engineers, to the engineering deck, blast my way past their defences and then set charges on the eezo core. We exfil to the hangar bay, board the transports, then blow the charges and rabbit out."

Harper looked around for a second. "And you all expect this plan to work?"

"It's better than anything we've had so far." Shepard murmured as he stared at the rotating image on the display.

"Perhaps, but it's got more holes in it than Hislop after a night in Oldtown."

"One question." Shepard raised his voice. "Jack and I will take down Mr. Arterius. Captain McDevitt will kill the ship. Will the platoon commander hitting their brig be capable of organising five hundred prisoners in just a few minutes?"

"Not in the slightest." Colonel Gurung shook his head. "That is why I will be coming with you."

Harper reached for a flask inside his jacket. "Oh, this is going to be interesting."

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A/N: Oh, what's this? Two updates inside a week? IMPOSSIBRU!

On a more serious note, I've taken a very long break from Mass Effect, a culmination of being sick and tired of the game, BioWare in general, the ME fanbase in particular and just a whole heap of other factors.

However, re-reading Logical Premise's and Setrus' work actually got me in the mood for writing again, and re-writing the parts of the game and backstory that could have been so much better. So, I'm back in, and back in till the end. See you starside.