Disclaimer: I do not own Mass Effect or the various X-COM games. They belong to their respective copyright owners. This story is not written for profit. I make no money from it. It is not for sale or rent.
Chapter 7: Citadel Blues
=SF=
Part 5
=SF
15 June 2177 CE
Insight Cyber-Solutions Corporate HQ
Tayseri Ward
The Citadel
At a first glance, the IC-S seat on the Citadel was no different from that of the thousands of other corporations that had either branches or even their corporate headquarters on the massive space station. However, if someone was to look close enough, IC-S was anything but an ordinary corporation, though a customary check wouldn't be able to find a shred of proof.
That afternoon, the nominal CEO – Jason Black, sat relaxed into a sinfully comfortable leather chair and used his implants to go over the day to day affairs. Cover or not,
IC-S's above the board trade was reasonably profitable; profitable enough in fact that Black had to spent almost half of his precious time actually acting as the CEO instead of merely using his post as the cover that it was supposed to be. He still had to go over a hundred memos, then he had a meeting with the shareholders in the evening, which would ensure that today he wouldn't be able to see to his primary purpose on the Citadel, which was a shame. Things were going reasonably well over the past couple of years since he got assigned to his current post and he looked forward for the next stage of the plan – something that his day work tended to delay more and more as IC-S's fame and profits grew.
Black glanced to the right side of the office, where on a couch sat his greatest achievement to day. She currently posed as a wealthy heiress trying to learn the family trade, though in fact she was so much more…
An unexpected call interrupted the CEO's musings.
"Black speaking." He plastered a carefully crafted and painstakingly trained fake smile that people often called charming.
"Beta Three was compromised. Burn and leave." An electronically distorted voice announced. His implants caught and deciphered the codes and details contained within what might pass as an artefact of the programs keeping the caller's identity confidential. Four seconds later, Black knew for a fact that the call was genuine, either that or they were truly compromised and fucked.
"I see. Thank you and have a good day." He said blandly and his smile never wavered. "Jacqueline, we'll be leaving shortly." Black's smile momentarily morphed into something that held a hint of affection and satisfaction of a job well done.
"Do I get a candy?" The brown haired teen muttered after looking up from her cartoon. The motion was enough to make her waist long hair shift and reveal a band around her temples where it had been cut and replaced with subtly concealed implants.
"Two. Would you kindly prepare our way to station three? I'll be ready in a moment."
Jacqueline bobbed her head in confirmation, shut down her omni-tool and got up. The air pressure in the room suddenly dropped enough to make Black's ears pop. He felt Jacqueline drop her shields and access her power and this time there was no doubt his smile was genuine.
"People, this is CEO Black!" He accessed the intercom built into every single room of the skyscraper that IC-S possessed. "Would you kindly… The word is red. Prepare a proper welcome for our unexpected guests." As he spoke, Black's fingers danced over his workstation and his implants accessed the internal network. Military grade software packages began rampaging through all computer systems within the skyscraper and charges built in next to any and all data drives containing anything of importance activated with a three minute count-down. There was no kill like overkill. It would have been even better if he had authorization to erase the whole building out of existence, however doing so might have made the secondary purpose of this whole operation a moot point. After all, in case they were somewhat compromised, his bosses wanted certain traces of data to be found by whoever came calling.
The memos and reports on the screen of his workstation disappeared only to be replaced by two countdowns. Two minutes until the software packages scrubbed the drives clean and filled them with gibberish, and three down before said drives evaporated, literally.
A wave of raw psionic power washed over Black's back as Jacqueline began working her magic. A visible aura of dancing purple energy surrounded her and not only her eyes but the band around her head shone with inner light. She clasped her arms and slowly moved them away from each other while feeding as much power as she could into her masterpiece. Guided by her mind, a rift in space and time appeared in front of her and began to expand. Soon she had a metre in diameter vortex in front of her and all that remained was to stabilize it and make a passage survivable.
Meanwhile, the building went on lock-down, security teams and "civilian" employees alike went to grab weapons, shields and if there was time – armour, while various guests and the few uninitiated workers had a brief and nasty surprise. A few short but violent struggles occurred, with most unlucky sods having just enough time to see their colleagues or the people they came to meet pull out guns from concealed compartments of desk or walls and point them in their directions. Subdued shots echoed throughout the building and then the only sound was that of doors and barricades sliding and locking in place and weapon emplacements either popping out of the floor or descending from the ceiling.
Black took a moment to wonder what the powers that be would make of what awaited their people when they came to storm the building and shrugged. It wasn't as if it particularly mattered if they would fall for the diversion or someone would draw the correct conclusion. Their cause was just and it wasn't like X-COM managed to do more than be an inconvenience and a setback before. The aliens? The System Alliance itself would make sure they wouldn't pursue beyond the border anyway.
The vortex made of pure psionic energy stabilized and Black calmly walked in. A moment later, Jacqueline followed and it collapsed behind them leaving no trace but a dissipating pool of power to herald their passage.
=SF=
Part 6
=SF=
15 June 2177 CE
Insight Cyber-Solutions Corporate HQ
Tayseri Ward
The Citadel
The first sign that something was wrong was when C-SEC received calls of shots fired from a place they were already mobilizing to raid. That put a stop to the hasty planning and had units racing to cordon off the area with ERS moving right behind them.
A C-SEC patrol was the first on scene. During their approach, which they streamed back to HQ, they notices that the windows of the target building were already sealed with metal shutters, the same was true about the doors… and there was a body bleeding out on the ground in front of the ground entrance with bystanders staring dumbly at it. An Asari and Turian knelt beside it trying to administer first aid and an ambulance was already on the way.
"Unit Blue Six, be advised, we've got CDF and ERS units on approach. Clear the area, now." Dispatch announced even before they could land.
The pair of Turians wasted no time getting out of the air-car. One raced to the casualty while the other did his best to disperse the crowd. He could already hear approaching sirens and a glance up graced him with the sight of multiple fast approaching and growing dots descending towards his position. Those got to be assault shuttles! He could make the familiar formation from his time in the military not so long ago. They were coming in fast and if he wasn't mistaken, with fighter escort too! By the Spirits, what was this about?! The cop shook his head and redoubled his efforts to disperse the civilians. He had to get them as far away as possible before the assault teams arrived!
Two more patrols got to the scene next, barely beating the first ERS transports, which barely slowed down to either land in front of the ground entrance or hover above the rooftop so armoured figures could jump down in a hurry.
Three more Turians, an Asari and Salarian joined the C-SEC agent busy dealing with the crowd and between them they managed to make the civilians move back a bit. It was only when the ERS at the entrance blew their way through the barrier that people thought that gawking might not be the best idea. Then the assault shuttles decelerated in the last possible moment with a pair moving above the roof and three more blasting their way through the side of the window to disgorge marines inside.
=SF=
Sergeant Titus of the ERS was the first C-SEC operative to breach into their target. He moved in huddling behind a reinforced shield that was supposed to be able to survive even a plasma burst with SMG on the ready. The precaution of throwing a few flash-bangs in the hole before charging in proved to be wise because the moment he got through bullets slammed into his shield with enough kinetic energy to sent nasty shocks through his whole arm. He fired blindly in an attempt to suppress the hostiles and buy time for the rest of his squad to get in and into cover, if there was any.
This kind of assault was the worst for the ERS – they excelled when there was time enough to get intelligence on both the targeted building and the hostiles as well as any friendlies who needed extraction. Blind assaults – that was the job for the military and thankfully, those were on the way as well.
Cameras mounted on the front side of the shield fed their feeds into Titus' HUD showing him an overturned desk where a pair of security guards and a secretary with an SMG took cover as they sprayed him with bullets. A turret with pretty large guns was unlimbered on the ceiling behind them yet remained silent so far. That changed as soon as one of the Sergeant's buddies moved from behind him. The automated weapon swing his way, took aim in the same time and let lose with a pair of barely visible laser bolts. Corporal Aticus stood no chance – the coherent light bypassed his barriers as if they weren't even there and blasted two neat holes into his chest-plate an instant before the area around the hits blew up from the sudden tremendous heat transfer. The resulting blast threw the Turian's corpse against the mangled barrier cutting the lobby from the outside world.
"Overload on the turret!" Titus snarled while doing his best to suppress the Spirits damned bastards behind the desk. He slammed burst after burst at the secretary. Whatever shield she had had to be cheap – the first shots popped it up and the next three burst turned her torso into a bloody mess.
The turret swung to Titus' right and blew off the head of the squad's tech specialist, the Salarian Lorik but not before he launched a powerful overload at it. Electricity crackled all over the automated weapon and arced to the closest guard frying his shields. Titus took the opportunity to put a burst into the human's neck that sent him to the ground grasping the wound and choking in his own blood. As he moved forward and aimed at the last hostile, more agents piled in behind him and wasted no time in shredding the guard with automatic fire before shifting their arm to the turret before it could reset its targeting and open fire again.
Spirits, they already lost two people and they just got their talons through the door! This was going to be a bad one, Titus had no doubt about it!