"Thank you for answering my call, Commander. I know you're very busy these days." The whip-thin man on the other side of the FTL commlink was cordial, but there was a hard edge to the tension that wound tight through his body.
"Of course, Colonel." Shepard clasped her hands behind her back. "What can the Normandy do for Tenth Recon?"
She didn't know Lieutenant Colonel Zhou personally, but she knew of his command - had even done a couple of missions alongside them when she'd been a Raider. The Tenth Reconnaissance Battalion was the eyes and ears of the Tenth MARDIV, and they knew their stuff.
His jaw stiffened, and he spoke as if the words had to be ground out. "As you know, one of Tenth Recon's responsibilities is to provide Recon Marines to set up and man listening posts to intercept and track communications across the Traverse." When she nodded, he continued. "Two of my listening posts and a space station through which their comms and supplies were being routed have all missed their last check-ins with my headquarters. I've already activated the nearest QRF to the depot, but both of the listening posts are in the Styx Theta cluster. I could send drones via a Corsair but…"
"A drone or a Corsair crew wouldn't be able to interfere if they have gotten into trouble," she surmised. Styx Theta - now that made things complicated. It was only accessible through the Horsehead Nebula Relay, jealously controlled by the Noveria Development Corporation and their ERCS lackeys, and more than even that it was uncomfortably close to the 5 Kiloparsec Ring - where new stars were birthed within molecular clouds. It was a chaotic region of space with an overabundance of space phenomena that could kill you, uncharted planets and places no sane captain would take a starship through. All in all, it was the sort of place that pirates and other such sorts liked to hide in, away from the (official) scrutiny of navies and anti-piracy patrols.
"Yes."
"So you need a ship that can use the Horsehead Nebula Relay and use stealth, limiting the chance anyone watching will find the location of your troops, especially if this is just a case of coincidental comms blackouts."
"Yes. But I don't think this is a case of a blackout." There were deep bags under his nearly-black eyes. This was not a man that had been sleeping well recently. "All of them at once?"
"I don't think it is either," Shepard said solemnly. "Give me a moment, Colonel." She triggered the CIC circuit. "CIC, how far out from the Relay are we?"
"We're in the queue now, ma'am. Twenty mikes."
"Okay, tell Relay Control we need to pull out of the queue. A technical issue we need to sort out. A couple of hours maybe, but we don't require any assistance. We'll go into orbit above Veles though - just in case and to keep out of the way."
"Technical issue, ma'am?"
"Make something up," she replied serenely. "You know navigation systems better than I do."
"Aye aye, Commander. ETA to Veles is twenty minutes."
"Very good, Lieutenant." She shut off the PA system and turned back to the screen. "Luckily, Colonel, the Normandy happens to be in Pax already. I'll get your guys out."
A relieved smile bloomed across Zhou's creased face. "Thank you, Commander."
"No problem." It'd been the Tenth MARDIV that had come for her and everyone else trapped in Illyria, during the Blitz. This was just what any Marine owed another. "I'll need the precise locations of the outposts and personnel lists so I can account for them all."
"Yes, of course. I'll have my staff send it through to you immediately."
"As soon as I've received it, I'll get us through that Relay."
"Roger that. Update me as soon as you can. Assassin out."
The screen faded to buzzing static and then blackness. She straightened her uniform jacket and stepped out of the comms room, looking for the comm tech on duty. The CIC division chief - Comms Technician First Class Yasser Amjad - was at the station, and he looked up at her approach. Amjad was the sort that never seemed to attract much attention from the command team. Quiet, competent, devoutly religious - so one of the few sailors that didn't give her headaches by getting DUIs or being thrown in the drunk tank. He had a wife and four children back home on Demeter.
A quiet planet, he'd told her when she'd finally managed to get him to relax enough to talk, but a good place for his children to grow up.
She loomed over his shoulder, and he fixed his eyes on his screen. "Send Admiral Mikhailovich a quick heads up that we've been delayed."
"Aye, ma'am," the petty officer agreed.
"We'll be receiving file transfers from the Tenth Recon Battalion. Please have these put on a secure datapad, brought to the briefing room and the coordinates given to Sax."
"Understood, Commander."
She hit the switch for the 1MC on the Captain's podium, Lieutenant Rodriguez hurriedly moving out of her way. "Commander Pressly, Lieutenant Wulandri, Lieutenant Alenko, Sergeant Williams, Sergeant Draven, report to the briefing room. Buffer, your presence is requested in the briefing room."
She was probably pulling the Marines from their bunks. Regrettable - she'd never liked those COs that cut into their crew's sleeping time for no good reason - but unavoidable. The Colonel's Marines might not have a lot of time.
As the officers and three NCOs filed in, she shot off a quick message to Chakwas via the ship's network. Alenko, Draven, and Williams all looked as exhausted as Shepard felt.
"Take a seat," she told them, tapping the datapad from Colonel Zhou against her palm.
"We've changed course, ma'am?" asked Pressly as he settled into his seat beside her.
"Yeah. Tenth Recon has some listening posts in Styx Theta that've gone dark, so we're going to investigate. Gung Ho, you were in recon - what do you know about those posts?"
The Marine tilted her head and grimaced. "Listening posts, ma'am? Worst fuckin' job Recon gets if you ask me. Y'all get stuck on a tiny ass COP in buttfuck nowhere for six months babysitting a bunch of commo POG bitches who spend the entire time whining about no extranet. Real isolated too, Skipper, no comms outside of the tightbeams to command. Even the resupplies were done by drone ships to limit the chance of leaks or us being tracked. Closest I've gotten to committing a murder-suicide."
"How many people are usually in a listening post?"
"Sixty to ninety, ma'am. Thirty or so Recon grunts, and attached support Marines. Cooks, commos, engineers, and intel, that sort of thing. Usually has a Staff LT or a Major in command."
"What sort of defences were usually in place?"
"Well shit, not getting found was our primary defence, ma'am. Ninety Marines alone in space - kinda fucked if anything comes knocking, you know? But we'd put up fortifications, a few HMGs, and a few defensive turrets. If anyone did find us, it was all hands on deck and hope we lasted until the QRF got there."
Shepard stood and stretched until her back cracked. "Alright. Pressly, get us back in the Relay queue, this time for a jump to Styx Theta. Put us into stealth once we make the jump. Wulandri, I want you to have torpedos loaded and GARDIAN systems operational."
"Roger that," agreed Guns.
"When we're two hours out from the first, X, put us to general quarters. The Marines will arm up then."
"It could be a comms failure," suggested Alenko.
"It could be. But always prepare for the worst." Those words were the echo of a long dead Marine. "Get some rest, all of you."
Negulesco hovered as the others left the room. Shepard raised an eyebrow.
"I hope you were planning to get some sleep too, ma'am."
"Yes, Buffer," she said dryly and the Master Chief, satisfied, went on her way.
When Shepard had first taken command of the Normandy, she'd rounded up the Marines and told them very seriously that she had some rules for them - and that one of them was that if any of them took stims without the permission of herself, Chakwas or Ling, she'd personally kick their arses into the nearest star. Nothing could really replace sleep, and there were enough things on a starship that could hurt you without needing any help.
And that was the first time Williams thought that her dad would've liked her commanding officer. He'd said to her plenty of times, made pale and wan by the exhaustion endemic to the Eighth Fleet, that making sure your subordinates got enough sleep was one sign of a good captain. Overuse of stims was the opposite.
Ashley was just waking herself up from her three-hour nap - just long enough to have a break from sleep deprivation hopefully - with a steaming hot cup of coffee sipped in between putting bits of armour and gear on, when Chakwas began making rounds amongst the ground team. She dropped a pill into Ash's outstretched hand.
"Go pills, ma'am?"
"Shepard wants you all sharp. The Noveria mission was long."
Ash nodded and swallowed it under Chakwas' watchful eyes before the doctor moved onto Draven. Sleep deprivation was one thing, getting shot was another. She lifted her chest rig over her head and fumbled with the straps and latches, her hands shaking slightly. Then someone else was there, knocking her hands aside.
"Lemme," Shepard said and then began doing them up with steady fingers. Ash went still, all too aware of her closeness, the way her own eyes wanted to focus on the near black of her irises or the texture of the scars on her face.
Damnit, Skipper. She could at least make this easier on her.
Shepard perfunctorily tugged on the top of her chestplate to make sure it was all tight enough and then stepped back with a cough. "Looked like you were having a bit of trouble. Don't want any of my Marines going into battle without their armour done right."
Even though Alenko always checked Ash's anyway? She shrugged it off. "Thanks, ma'am. I always get a bit shaky on stims to begin with."
"Common enough reaction. Good luck down there."
"You're not coming with, Commander?" butted in Draven.
She shook her head. "Need to be up here in case we run into any geth or pirate ships."
That explained it then. Shepard didn't say it, but it was clear she didn't really like them going on missions without them. Last time they'd run into a thresher maw after all.
"Tali and Wrex will be going with. Wrex will be attached to Alpha team, Tali and Chou to Bravo Team. You got that?"
Draven grimaced slightly. "Just headbutt him if he gets outta line, right?"
"Yes, just like the cultural sensitivity slide shows taught you," Ashley deadpanned.
Shepard's lips twitched. "I have full faith in you, Sergeant Draven, Sergeant Williams. Or…at least in Lieutenant Alenko."
"Hey!" Ash shot her a playful glare, but the Commander was already stepping away, leaving behind only the echo of her laughter.
"Good to see the boss lady loosening up a bit, ay?" said Draven, loading up her webbing. "Do you reckon Waaberi is right?"
"About what?" She slung her shotgun across her back.
"That the Commander and Doctor T'Soni are a thing, you know. Jaz saw them hugging, in the storage compartment."
Ash frowned at her. "T'Soni just lost her mum."
"Yeah, but…"
"I don't think now is the time for scuttlebutt about our CO and the kid who just had to shoot her mother," her voice came out sharper than she'd intended.
"Jeez, alright, boss. Message received." Draven raised her hands.
"Sorry," she muttered, checking her sidearm over. "Just a bit tired. Noveria was fucked."
Gung Ho waved her off and started loading her rifle.
Ashley slid her pistol into its holster and started filling up her webbing with grenades and heatsinks, letting the bustle in the armoury wash over her - before halting with her fingers still on a strap. "Waaberi, what the fuck do you think you're doing?"
The Lance Corporal raised her chin defiantly from across the armoury bench as Mohamed slunk away from where he'd been helping Waaberi put on her chest rig. "Gearing up, Staff Sergeant."
"You've got a broken finger. You're on light duty. Going on mission is not light duty, Lance Corporal Waaberi!"
"It's not my trigger finger that's broken," Waaberi replied stubbornly, "I ain't sittin' up here because I got a broken little finger, boss, not while we got Marines in trouble. I'll just tape 'em together."
Ash stared at her.
"And the skipper ain't bringing a bunch of people, so there's plenty of room for me! And I'm the acting team leader and - no offence - I don't really want Teke in charge of my team and -"
There was a faint 'Hey!' from Teke on the other side of the room.
Ash raised a hand to cut her off. "Fine."
The Marine grinned widely. "Thank you, boss."
"Just finish getting suited up." Chakwas was going to kill her.
The 'listening post' stank of ichor and death. Wrex's chest steadily filled with a rumbling growl that longed to tear free of his throat, roar the fury of his ancestors to these blood-slick corridors. But Urdnot Wrex was no whelp without control of himself, and so he locked it away as he stalked forward, eyes stabbing each corner, each shadow as they pursued the rachni remnants.
Rachni! He'd warned Shepard, hadn't he? And now they found only the bodies of Alliance Marines. The base was silent now of shrieking rage, the only noise the hum of abandoned equipment. Behind him, the wall was splashed with the yellow light of the team leader's omnitool as she scanned for any clues.
"It doesn't make sense," Sergeant Draven muttered behind him. She'd been wise enough not to challenge his demand to take point. "They shouldn't have gotten through their defences that easily. The turrets look like they never fired a shot."
Wrex huffed. "You Marines didn't know what they were until I told you on Noveria."
"Yeah, but - "
Williams and Alenko approached from another hallway along with the other Marine team, dried blood on the gauntlets of the corpsman Ling. Draven had also insisted on checking each corpse for signs of life. Inevitably, there were none.
"Rachni," he rumbled, amused by the way Alenko's attention snapped to him, wariness in the lines of the Lieutenant's body. "I warned your Commander that there would be consequences for her actions."
Williams' body language shifted almost imperceptibly. There was a snarl hidden in the taut syllables of her voice. "Is that a threat?"
He eyed her, lips curling back from his teeth. "A warning."
"Enough," said Alenko, a snap of electric blue between his fingertips. "Think, Wrex. This outpost went out of contact before Shepard freed the queen on the Noveria. These rachni can't be hers. Binary Helix must've shipped some elsewhere - and somehow they've ended up here."
"I hope for the sake of your Commander and your people that you are right-" he turned away irritably- "because mine won't be around to save your asses this time."
"But how did they get in here?" Draven insisted. "There were no ships in orbit, and the external defences don't look like they've been triggered."
Wrex snarled to himself and turned away, aiming a heavy kick at a dead rachni with a satisfying squelch. The blood of his ancestors surged within him.
"I don't know," Alenko shook his head, troubled.
"Kaidan! Ash!" the quarian called urgently. He shouldered past the young warrior Teke as the two senior Marines raced over, looking over Tali. Her expression was impossible to read, under that opaque mask. Quarians smelt wrong. At least her technique with a shotgun was better now she listened to him. "It's a distress signal!"
"—Mayday, mayday, mayday! This is Lieutenant Marie Durand, acting commander of Listening Post Alpha. 10th Recon Battalion, to Listening Post Theta. We are being overrun by hostile alien lifeforms, requesting immediate assistance from any Alliance units in the region! Our long distance communication buoy has been destroyed, and our defences are compromised. Mayday, mayday!-"
"It was sent through two hours ago," Tali said excitedly. "They might still be alive."
"Good job, Tali," Kaidan said, patting her on the shoulder.
"Let's get out of here, sir," Williams suggested. "We've no signs anyone here survived, and Alpha is running out of time. The Skipper can just drop a bomb on this place to get rid of the rachni later."
"You're right. Even the rachni won't survive one of our orbit to surface bombs."
"What about the bodies?" Draven asked, crossing her arms. Human warriors were sentimental about the bodies of their fallen. A krogan knew when to leave the dead behind.
Alenko hesitated before clenching his jaw. "We'll take those we can carry, but we don't have time to stay and fight the rachni for corpses. Our duty is to those we can save, first."
Draven didn't like that, shifting from foot to foot as she said stiffly, "Aye, sir."
The Lieutenant paused, hardness draining from his expression. "I'm sorry. But Alpha needs us."
Draven squared her shoulders. "I understand, sir."
The Marines scrambled as Alenko talked over the comm to the Normandy, dragging dead Marines over their shoulders to carry them out. Wrex slowly put his shotgun away, and then grabbed two, hefting them easily over each shoulder. He'd known vorcha that had lived longer than one of these dead whelps.
Once they'd extricated themselves from the ruined base, they lined up the dead in rows under the dull brown of Altahe's sky and waited for the Normandy.
"Thanks for that," Draven jerked her head towards where he'd placed the two he'd carried out. "Their parents will get some comfort from getting their bodies back."
"If it were my son, I would want to send him into the Void myself," he said stiffly and then stepped past her. His son, who would never draw breath under the baking heat of Tuchanka. His son, who had gone to the Void half-formed and without glory. It was an ancient pain, and he hated it for its still-sharp knife edge in his gut.
He had left Tuchanka behind him. The ghosts should stay there.
Behind him, Jaz Teke spread a dull green-brown survival blanket over one of his fallen brothers. They'd run out of body bags.
"Contact!" Lance Corporal Chou shouted down from the turret, the Mako reverberating as the coaxial machine gun began to rattle away. "We've got rachni!"
Alenko gave his rifle one last look over to make sure the heatsink and ammo block were seated properly. They were all still getting used to the experimental rifle, the different movements to reload when compared to the M7.
"Alright guys." He looked around the compartment at his Marines - and Tali and Wrex. "This is gonna be a dismount under fire, so I want smoke and covering fire ASAP. We'll form a skirmish line once we're out, and advance to destroy the attacking force alongside the Mako. Tali, I want you to be last out."
The quarian's shields were very strong - she'd tinkered with the generators herself - and Draven and Williams had fashioned a makeshift plate carrier for her so she had added protection, but the fact remained that if her suit was breached that could be it.
"I'm ready," called Teke from near the lever that'd open the door.
"APC safe!"
The ramp thudded down, and boots rang against metal as the Marines darted out. Teke and Waaberi, both armed with the light machine guns, found cover behind folds of rock and dirt and immediately starting laying down a field of fire as smoke bloomed, hiding the movements of the others. Kaidan crossed the open ground in long strides and found cover behind a convenient rock, lifting his head to take stock of the chaos.
When he'd been fresh out of universe, butter bars just pinned to his collar, he'd wanted to lead from the front. Get his hands dirty. Thoroughly avoid being one of those lieutenants who made their Marines do all the work, take all the risks. The day after his first firefight, his platoon sergeant had pulled him aside and set him straight.
Kaidan would always prefer getting his hands dirty then sitting in an air-conditioned ops centre while his people got shot at, but sometimes you had to do your job as an officer and let your Marines do the trigger-pulling.
The rust brown sky rang with the rattle and popping of gunfire as the Mako and squad opened up. To his right, he could hear the familiar snap of Ashley's sniper rifle. Unlike Theta, Listening Post Alpha was above ground, a haphazard collection of prefabs, earth fortifications and a perimeter of gabions. Dusty camouflage netting had been draped over the whole affair, but the tattered remnants now fluttered sullenly, torn and eaten away in splotches. Two silent turrets peeked over the top of the half-wrecked barrier wall, but there was still gunfire coming from the base.
Someone was still alive in there.
The rachni, caught between the heavy fire from the Normandy Marines and the outpost, fell beneath scything fields of machine gun fire, leaving sodden heaps in the cracked volcanic dust. One or two scurried away and down into what had to be tunnels beneath the thin crust.
Kaidan took his finger off the trigger, a little disappointed he hadn't had a chance to get a shot off. "Advance!"
The Marines walked carefully forward, picking their way through the rocky terrain and making sure to double tap any rachni corpses. Couldn't be too sure.
"Friendlies!" he shouted at the walls. Days of nearly being overrun? Yeah, he'd bet the Recon guys were twitchy as hell.
He stepped through an acid-splattered gap in the walls and past a pale-faced youngster trying to pile rocks into the breach.
"Sir, you have no idea how glad I am to see you." The woman who approached, white medigel patches bright against the dark of her armour, had to be the same officer who'd sent out that distress signal.
"First Lieutenant Durand?" he guessed.
"Yessir. I-I was the XO but..."
He grasped her shoulder firmly to steady her. "It's alright. I'm Staff Lieutenant Alenko, 103rd Marines."
"No offence, sir," a bone-tired voice trailed out of a Gunny leaning heavily against the earth wall beside him, his hands on the trigger of a medium machinegun, "but I was kinda hoping for a tank battalion."
"I don't blame you," said Kaidan frankly, "but we're what you've got. Sitrep, Lieutenant."
Durand straightened, lifting her chin. "I have ten KIAs, eleven seriously wounded and twenty walking wounded. The first attack destroyed our generators, so our defence turrets and OGS are all down. We're running low on medigel, ammunition, and oxygen."
"How'd they get in?" Williams inserted herself into the conversation, brown eyes sweeping across the tattered outpost, taking in the makeshift repairs, the exhausted Marines scattered here and there like detritus.
"Our food." Durand's voice was hot, her jaw clenched. "They drop off our supplies about a klick from here. We'd only brought in a few boxes when the creatures attacked. That's what saved us - but they still killed six of my people, including my CO, before we put them down."
Kaidan winced. "The other rachni are burrowing?"
"Rachni?" the Gunny burst out, he and Durand exchanging glances.
"Yeah. Rachni. Are they digging burrows?" he insisted.
"I think they've gotten into the old mines beneath the surface," The younger officer shook her head. "There were wildcat miners here for a while, but they were gone before we got here."
"Damnit." Ash turned away to glare at the holes the rachni had disappeared into. "Sir, we know they're intelligent. We go down there..."
"They'll pick us off," he agreed. "We don't have the manpower or time to clear an entire mine complex."
Durand's shoulders slumped. "So we just try to fend them off until they run out of bodies?"
"I recommend we get the hell outta dodge, sir," Williams opined, toying with her rifle.
He nodded decisively. "Durand, can you start triage? Our ship can start loading your worst wounded, then the walking wounded, while the rest of us defend the base."
"Aye, sir!" Durand seemed a bit relieved to have someone else giving orders and jogged off towards the outpost first aid station. Alenko didn't blame her.
"I can set up on that ridge with a team and the machine guns," Williams suggested. "Interdict any rachni trying to attack the landing zone once the Normandy is down."
"Good idea. Do it. Tali!"
The quarian looked up from where she was looking at the acid splattered main generator. "Yes, Kaidan?"
"Can you hook the Mako's fuel cells up to the POGS and turrets?"
She tilted her head in the way that meant she was tackling some technical problem. "...yes, I think so."
"Once it's done let Durand know so her Marines can refill their oxygen tanks."
Kaidan took a step back and watched the chaos around him start to take on focus, then opened a comm channel to the Normandy. Hopefully they could get as many of the outpost personnel aboard before the rachni came back.
He shouldn't have wished for that. Somewhere, Murphy was laughing.
CODEX ENTRY
Portable Oxygen Generation System: maintaining sentient life on long distance starships, space stations and outposts on planets without breathable atmospheres requires a complex life support system, including oxygen production, deal with waste products, maintain environmental controls including appropriate pressure on the organic body and shield against harmful radiation. On starships and space stations these systems are either designed into the construction itself or a 'plug and play' module such as the Commercial Environmental Control and Air Revitalisation System (CEC-ARS) manufactured by Andrenov Industries designed for commercial shipping.
These systems generally use the electrolysis process to generate breathable oxygen. Water is reclaimed from other uses onboard and then fed into the oxygen generator, which uses a direct electric current to split water into hydrogen and oxygen gasses. Many space stations and ships have back up chemical oxygen generators, which burn solid lithium perchlorate to create oxygen gas. However, electrolysis systems are generally preferred for efficiency and fire safety reasons.
In the field, the life support needs of ground forces are generally met by hardsuits and military vehicles. Hardsuits, when equipped with 'breather' helmets, usually combine oxygen tanks and rebreather technology to extend the amount of time troops can stay in the field. Contrary to popular fiction, human skin is gas-tight naturally and doesn't require protection from the vacuum of space - however, human flesh will expand to twice its normal size in vacuum environments, and military hardsuits are sealed and pressurised for safety reasons.
However while troops can go for several days using their suits for their oxygen needs, for bases or operations (such as the Torfan campaign) on planets without breatheable atmospheres, oxygen quickly becomes a problem. This can either be addressed by bringing in oxygen supplies or using the Portable Oxygen Generation System (POGS). A smaller version of a starship's electrolysis system, the POGS can be transported by vehicle and powered by generators - or in a pinch, vehicle fuel cells.
