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Interlude: Conspiracy Revelations IV

Still from Tora's point of view.


Date: 03-01-2186

Location: Novgorod colony, Attican Traverse


Present

A Cerberus agent stumbled back as the first shot rang off the shields around his skull, then collapsed in a spray of red mist as Victoria's second shot finished the job.

My own carbine began to crack as I focused on my own target, heavy rounds hammering at one of the numerous white armored figures. It was hard to tell at this range, but it seemed like his barriers dropped with strange speed, allowing the heavy-caliber rounds to smash into his armor plating. One of them evidently penetrated to hit something vital because he went down in a heap, letting me adjust to tr and find a new target.

Even as my victim fell, two more carbines abruptly opened fire, swiftly accompanied by a pair of burst-firing weapons as Cell, Calius, and his turrets joined in the barrage.

In total our ambush accounted for four targets, including Victoria's initial assassination, before the Cerberus forces fully realized they were under attack from two directions and reacted appropriately. The two remaining body-suited figures vanished behind a building, while their escort broke apart and moved rapidly into cover. One made the mistake of moving forwards, trying to utilize a crashed ground car for cover, and was hauled into the air as Cell brought a singularity to life above their position. He died with gratifying ease, but that still left us outnumbered as the terrorists got themselves organized.

Their own weapons proved to be fully automatic, three of them starting up a barrage into the restaurant, while two more began to try and throw fire in our direction. Vic promptly wounded or killed one of them while I exchanged long range fire with the other, but several grenades flew out into the street before he or I could properly sight in on the other. Smoke and chaff began spitting out almost at once, obscuring their flank... and allowing them to focus entirely on Cell and Calius.

I snarled as my HUD flicked through vision modes, none of them giving me a good target, then brought a hand to my helmet and broke radio silence, "Calius, get out of there, we have no line of sight to support you."

"Confirmed!" The Turian replied at once, flares of blue and orange coloring the smoke screen as technical mines and biotic powers were used. "Turrets aren't doing much, I think their armor is optimized to stop light, rapid rounds."

Optimized to fight their fellow monkeys in the Alliance, or perhaps Turians then... strange. Why send a team so equipped into the deep Traverse? Lack of options?

Growling at myself, I shook my head sharply and forced my soul to focus on what I needed to be focused on. "Vic, we need to move."

The steady chatter of gunfire continued unabated as we moved, punctuated with the occasional low blast, and we reached the ground floor just as Calius and Cell broke out of the back of the restaurant. Both promptly began sprinting in our direction, neither so much as looking behind them as they ran. Victoria quickly followed my lead as I pulled a grenade off my belt hurling it to set a screen of our own. The two canisters promptly began to fill the street with even more smoke and flashes of light, swiftly joined by fire from my carbine as I fired blindly past Cell's shoulder.

It wouldn't hit anything, but it would make it clear that we were still a threat, and hopefully keep their focus in our direction.

As soon as the pair reached us, I made a quick motion with a hand and we all scattered for cover. While I would have loved nothing more than to continue to put distance between us and them, we unfortunately had to remain visible, and had to keep them more focused on us than on exploring the colony.

Settling in behind the edge of a prefabricated container of a home, I brought my carbine back up just as the smoke began to clear, revealing the Cerberus troopers as they advanced. The monkeys moved in good order, I would give them that much. Several lingered back, firing tight, accurate bursts that rang off of our barriers and allowed their companions to rush forwards with minimal interference from us.

My own fire went wide as rounds smacked off my right arm, my shields collapsing as I cursed and ducked back behind my building. Calius let out a similarly frustrated sound, though he and Victoria at least managed to drive two of the more distant targets deeper into cover. That might have been enough if not for the short distance between our 'lines', and another singularity from Cell was the only thing that kept four of them from reaching close combat in short order, though this time none of them were caught up in its effects. Instead they scrambled back and away, moving into buildings and alleyways to avoid it.

But at least we had their attention, and the singularity warped the fire chasing after us as we fell back to reposition once again. A quick glance over my shoulder made me curse when I realized that two of the troopers who'd vanished between two buildings hadn't re-emerged, and then cursed again when I realized that I had no idea where the body-suited agents had vanished to.

"No!" I snapped at Cell as the Asari made to settle behind a crashed ground car, grabbing his shoulder and pushing him back into motion. "Back to the bunker! Drop smoke!"

He let out a breathy curse of his own, but dropped his only smoke grenade, Calius quickly following suit.

I realized I'd made a mistake in sending Joten with Ori when we were about two thirds of the way to the colony's old militia headquarters. Or, more accurately, that I hadn't taken the extra few moments to take his cache of explosives before sending him off.

The Blades, as had been hammered into my skull during the training regimens, were supposed to be defensive experts, much as our Executive was. To that end, the bulk of the command training that I had received had been on how to properly defend a location against larger numbers of attackers. The problem, or a problem of the many we had at the moment, was that a lot of what we'd been taught had come straight from the SIU handbook... and almost everything in said book involved using traps, explosives, and mines as a force multiplier in this kind of situation.

Worse, Cell had to drop two more singularities behind us as the smoke screen faded, the gravitational effects warping the trajectories of the rounds chasing us as the Cerberus forces kept up their pursuit. While it kept us alive, and slowed them down, the Asari was gasping for air by the time we reached the small fortifications, all but collapsing behind the low walls and grabbing at his belt for food and drink to replenish his depleted body.

"Vic." I growled, trying to come up with a plan that would see us survive this. "Take the left side. I'll handle the right. Calius, what do you have?"

The Turian twitched a shoulder as he dropped to a knee, "I've got a recon drone, can have it on a flank to warn us. East entrance?"

"Yes." I confirmed, "I want an overload-incinerate trap at the gate as well, both sides. Then setup to support Vic. Cell, get those nutrients in you, then move to my side. Everyone keep an eye up for flares."

He nodded, sucking in a harsh breath before rising and getting moving. The tech mines wouldn't be nearly as effective as full explosives, but they were better than nothing, and at least our more open flank would be covered.

The harsh crack of Victoria's sniper rifle announced that the Cerberus force had found us once again, and I cursed as I hauled myself behind the wall on the west side of the gate. Exhaling sharply, I hefted myself up onto the small firestep and started searching for a target.

One trooper went down as my sharpshooter took a second shot, while I focused on two more darting up the right side of the street. My carbine began to sound off as I fired, the heavy rounds slamming into the weak barriers of the lead target. The return fire was made on the move, and mostly just impacted the wall I was standing behind, while my own steady shots quickly tore into the white armor plating to send my target down.

Losing two more soldiers to an inferior force seemed to finally cause them to slow up a bit, the remaining terrorists falling back somewhat into cover and starting a long range exchange with us.

I let out an irritable growl as a few rounds skipped off of my helmet's shielding, dropping it sufficiently that I ducked down to let them recover. They had to be thinking up a new strategy, but I was entirely unsure of what it would be. My training said that a proper response would have been for them to drop smoke once again and roll forwards to new positions to maximize accuracy, then focus all of their attention on one target, probably Victoria.

But that was Blade tactics... Hegemony tactics. Not human ones. From what little I'd learned in the Suns, humans liked to be more mobile, they hated the slow moving, attrition fights that my own people excelled at. They would... try and flank us.

I was opening my mouth to order Calius to be alert when something struck me hard. Not on my left side, where the only other entrance to the small complex was, but from my right.

A long burst tore through my shields before I fully processed that I was being shot, more rounds hammering into my side even as I tried to swing myself around to return fire. My heavy armor held until the trail end, then cracked audibly as two lances of agony speared their way through my chest. The fingers on my right hand abruptly ceased working as I collapsed back against the wall, my carbine dropping limply to the ground as I gasped for air.

"Squint is down!" A cocky voice shouted, my vision focusing on one of the body-suited agents as he nimbly fell to the ground, biotics flaring a bit to slow his descent, and a heavy rifle in his hands.

His grin lasted until someone put a round right into his forehead, his biotics flaring brightly to save his life. The surprised oath that followed became a howling scream of agony as Cellesariel abruptly appeared beside him via flash step, an omni-blade springing from his wrist as he drove it into his center. The Asari cut sideways as he dove aside, opening up the human's guts as he moved.

Somewhere nearby the characteristic sizzling cracks of overload mines went off, immediately followed by the deeper whump of incineration mines. Gunfire and a whistling Turian battle cry preceded another human's death scream, and Victoria's viper began to snap off rounds far more quickly than it should have.

"Rushing us!" Calius snarled in the distance, my anger at my body's weakness growing by the moment. "Cell, move to-!"

His orders were cut off by shouting and more gunfire. A feminine cry of pain... Vic was wounded. More sounds of physical violence.

Snarling inside of my helmet, I fought to heave myself up, to turn my head, to grasp my Pillars damned rifle. Agony assaulted me even as I tried, the pain only driving the anger into a whirling sandstorm somewhere in my chest. I was not going to die at the hands of monkey terrorists, not on my first assignment, and they weren't going to take any lives that belonged to me.

"Targets suppressed, confirmed Silver Blades sir." A voice spoke even as I rose, my eyes finally properly taking in the sights in front of me.

Two, holding down Calius's snarling form, a gun held against his helmet. One standing over Victoria, the human girl curled around herself and not moving. Cell on his back, the Cerberus officer having planted a boot right on his left breast, an omni-blade at the Asari's throat.

"Confirmed... we'll save them for the eggheads to dissect." The human chuckled darkly, "No, only one who died was a squint, so no real-fuck!"

I hit the stupid thing in a driving tackle, my shoulder slamming hard into the center of his back. My wounds had prevented me from building up nearly as much momentum as I would have liked, but the stupid idiot hadn't been expecting the hit, and went down in a tumble with me on top of him.

I might not have had an omni-blade utility... but I did have a mono-molecular dagger, my still functional left hand driving the short blade into the Cerberus leader's throat. His entire body convulsed as blood began to spurt outwards, and I vaguely realized that I was snarling incoherently as I yanked the weapon back and then stabbed him again.

That was all I had time for before a round slammed into my chest, thankfully hitting a still intact strike plate, though it still drove my weak body backwards, and once again I was prone on the ground.

Still, the position left me with an excellent vantage point for what followed, my fogged vision splitting to keep track of the events. The man standing over Vic had been the one to shoot me, and rolled forwards a step, clearly aiming to finish the job. Instead he went down with a cry as the wounded girl drew her own dagger and slammed it into the back of one of his ankles. She was on him the moment he was down, her weapon cutting at weak points between armored plates as she searched for anything vital.

Cell announced her own freedom by hurling a gout of warpfire right into the head of the soldier threatening Calius's skull at more or less the same moment. His barriers had evidently failed and not recharged, as he immediately flailed backwards with a shout as the dark energy began to burn through his protection, the round intended to kill the Turian instead simply burying itself in my subordinate's shoulder. Calius let out a growling sound of pain even as he drew his pistol from his belt, putting three rounds into the other soldier's groin and stomach before the man could decide who he needed to shoot first.

Events became... disjointed, after that.

Cellesariel pulling my armor off inside of the shuttle, cursing to his goddess as he poured the substance into my wounds. Joten's serious voice relaying instructions from the ship's doctor as the Asari worked.

Tiredly glancing to my right, seeing Cell and Ori working on Victoria, the young girl's dark stomach a mess of red blood as they fought to staunch her own bleeding.

Zera, shouting something about holding on, that something was happening.

Darkness.


Next up is going to be Part V

Probably an overused cliffhanger on my end... but it works. Next chapter will be the end of the interlude, after which we'll be back to Cieran's point of view for the remaining five chapters of the act.

Please read and review, criticism is welcome, flames not so much, as usual. Reviews are my lifeblood as a writer.. every-time my email goes off with a review it makes me want to write more, so please take the time to leave one. Guests can leave them as well, and it only takes a minute, so please. Even if it's as simple as "I enjoyed it, please continue."

P a treon Zach_K2V

Thanks, Kat


Review Responses:

Meatzman/gods-own/Ireland/Dracco - The idea of Batarians referring to Asari as male rather than female was something I toyed with way back in Arrival as part of the cultural differences between Batarians and humans, but ultimately cut out since I could never quite get it to read in a way that wasn't horribly confusing and/or difficult to read. A side conversation between an Asari and an Angara in andromeda reminded me of that attempt, and I decided to go ahead and give it a try since this was from a Batarian pov. In this particular set of Interludes, yes, Taro is the only one referring to them as male, while everyone else (mostly Victoria) refers to them as females.