Interloper: 35
"Fire team, this is Shepard. Drone control located and destroyed. You should have clear skies from now on." Shepard's voice filtered through the static of battle. Sure enough the strafing petered out and finally stopped. I took the chance to pull my rifle from the sucking sand and clean out the exposed workings. I heaved myself up onto one of the scorched and split sandbags before offering a hand to Steiner, pulling her from the water that sloshed around her waist. She stood shakily on her wounded leg and gazed out over the battle scarred hill we were hunkered behind. In the distance, the fires of the Geth fuel station were already visible as a dim orange- blue glow. It would have been pretty had it not been for what it stood for. I flipped open the rifle and ran my Omni-tool over the wires to clear out the muck and soaked in the silence. As I went about the routine task of cleaning my rifle, I couldn't help but feel optimistic. Perhaps the additional marines would be enough to avoid the choice that my fellow players so despised.
"This was always the hardest part of a battle for me." Steiner spoke up. She leaned heavily on the bags. "The quiet part I mean." She sounded pensive. The comment struck me as odd, this quiet was the first time I had been able to stop and think all day.
"Really? Compared to that last bit, this seems pretty easy." I snapped the rifle closed and blew some of the water off.
"Fighting's easy, you fall back on your training and you stick at it till they're dead or you are. They never train you to stand the quiet." Steiner continued her gaze. It struck me at that moment just how much fighting Steiner had done. With her flippant and often blasé attitude, it was sometimes hard to remember she was a combat veteran of many missions.
"I guess so, I like being able to hear the sound of my own thoughts."
"That's often the problem." She replied grimly, "Looks like it won't be quiet for long though." She stood up straighter and pulled what looked like cut down binoculars from her belt. Something was kicking up a lot of sand on the other side of the hill. "Oh no, that can't be what I think it is."
"What is it?" I peered through the storm, trying to get a clear look at whatever was stampeding towards us.
"See for yourself, I'm calling this in." she roughly pushed the binoculars into my free hand. I pressed them to my face and fiddled with the controls that lined their upper surface. Beside me Steiner's communicator crackled. Her words reached my ears at around the same time as the binoculars focused. Both shook me almost to the core in a way I couldn't have imagined before my fall onto Eden Prime.
"Chief, we've got krogan." I pulled back on the zoom until my view covered our entire front sector. The crest of the hill was now covered in red armoured krogan warriors in full charge, giving the illusion of a tide of blood coming to wipe us from our pitiful defenses.
"Well so much for that." I muttered to myself. Already a yell was going up from the other trenches. A smattering of troops were already engaging the krogan, but what few rounds made it past their shields were shrugged off by their insane regeneration. I readied my own rifle with the fervent hope that the sand wouldn't foul the action. My first round went well wide; there was still some distance between us and the crushing wall of muscle. I swore and adjusted my aim. My second shot missed even worse. By now my hands were shaking. I took a few breaths, closing my eyes. When I opened them the krogan were closer. Buckle down Liddle I silently chided myself. I drove the rifle but into my shoulder and fired again. I was rewarded with a hit square on the krogan's jaw. Krogan regeneration might be powerful, but catastrophic cranial trauma put them down well enough to keep them there. I fired again and again as the horde continued its headlong charge. Someone further back must have trained the mortars on the sandy plain, because a plume of sand erupted in front of the closest chargers. It knocked them backwards but failed to stop them completely. The chatter of Steiner's gun joined my own now, the bright needles spitting out to meet the red monsters. Somewhere back and to the left, a distinctly alien cry came as one of the STG must have caught some of the ill aimed but voluminous return fire.
"We need to get out of this trench!" Steiner called at my elbow. I looked away from my rifle to see her already limping of toward the ladder someone had thrown over the back wall.
"Wait, Steiner!" I followed behind, still firing over the lip. The scrabble back to the next trench would be hard enough without a wounded knee. Steiner tossed her rifle up and out of the trench and started to climb. I went up backwards behind her in an attempt to provide cover, for what good it did. It was unlikely these specially bred warriors even knew the meaning of the word 'suppression.' A round pinged off of my shoulder, almost spinning me around and off the ladder. A hand steadied me enough to roll up and into a prone position on the sand behind the first line of trenches. I hurriedly shimmed sideways until I was able to slip into the second trench, landing none too gracefully on the equally slimy floor. Strong arms hauled me up and to the firing step without comment. Hurried thanks were all I had time for before I was firing madly at the krogan again. They were very nearly at the front trench, and would surely have caught us had we not bailed out. As it was they hopped down into the hastily dug slit, standing chest high to the back wall. A position that presented a particularly inviting target. The men and women around me unleashed a volley into the exposed heads of the rabidly scrabbling krogan. A handful were cut down as more jumped in to fill their place. A low angled mortar round caught one dead in the chest and showered his comrades with a mixture of dirt and meat. It only seemed to drive them onward more ferociously. And then, all of a sudden, the krogan were out of the first trench and approaching the second. One landed roughly off to the left. By the looks of things he had already caught the softer side of hell on his way in. It was time to show him the harder side. More than three rifles trained on him in seconds, razor sharp shards seeking his redundant vitals. The heavy krogan thudded backwards, hopefully dead. I trained on another one, much fresher looking. He charged directly at me, lining up perfectly with the barrel of my rifle. An extremely close ranged shot put him down before he could jump down on top of me. I ducked another as he sailed over me to impale himself upon the rear trench's fire. A third krogan dropped in behind me. I whirled to avoid its wild swings and dropped the long rifle, too cumbersome for the trench, to draw my shotgun again. Another splash signified a fourth attacker landing to the left. The krogan I was facing swung again, faster this time. The blow caught me in the gut and lifted me off my feet. I sprawled backward into the fourth krogan, opening me up for another savage punch. The blow was hard enough to sap my shield capacitors, leaving me naked to a follow up. I didn't give them a chance. I pumped two rounds into the krogan before whipping grenade at the warrior's chest. The krogan stared dumbly at it for brief seconds before it detonated. The krogan behind me grabbed me in a tight grip. I let my weight drop to the floor and squirmed into a position to knee the attacker. The maneuver was ineffective. The krogan tossed me. I landed roughly a few feet away. The krogan ducked as if to charge, but I recovered more quickly this time. I shifted my waited and pushed off. I thrust my shotgun upwards, pummeling the krogan in his mask. The punch didn't do much, but the follow up pull of the trigger certainly did. I hunched over double, gasping to catch my breath. The sounds of battle swirled around me in a confusing whirlwind of sound. Two words pierced the cacophony.
"Pull back!" My eyes snapped up. Marines and salarians alike were scrambling to haul themselves up and over. One stopped to give me a hand, but an errant shot made a ruin of him. I jumped up, abandoning my shotgun in exchange for a quick escape. More men were cut down in the mad dash for the dubious protection of the final line.
"Watch it, Liddle!" I landed close to where Ashley was yelling into an unfortunate comms man's ear. "Sorry, Commander, we're all but overrun here. We'll hold as long as we can, but it doesn't look good."
"Hold on chief, we're almost in. Help is on the way."
"Thanks Commander. Williams out." She let go of the comms man and turned to me with grim determination etched on her face. "Drop your rifle, kid?" I nodded. "Look around, there's plenty spare to go around." She slogged off to rally some scattered men on the far flank, leaving me alone in the wide command trench. The forward two trenches seemed to be acting as a fair brake on the krogan advance; slowing the tide just enough to keep them at arm's reach. The mud back here was thick with the fallen and broken equipment. I fished an intact looking lancer and cleared the barrel as my eyes scanned the trench. I recognized a few marines; Rahna stood at the fore, lifting Krogan off their feet and tossing them back, Steiner leaned heavily on the wall and steadied a mortar for a pair of salarians, and Jenkins stood fast despite the scoring that marked the armour under his arm. I made my way towards him, avoiding the dead. The whole ordeal was almost unreal, something from a war film turned horribly, terribly real. I lost my field rations on the way over, mercifully not in my helmet, which had been left down in the forward trench.
"You look terrible, mate." Jenkins slapped me on the back. He looked a little green himself. "Still kicking though."
"Yeah, still kicking." I said tiredly. "When do you think the cavalry will arrive?" somewhere in the storm of battle, I still looked for the ray of hope that I could change the odds, that we could get off this rock with the whole gang still in one piece. Jenkins just shook his head. Coming from the usually unnaturally cheerful Jenkins, the gesture sent a chill through my already soaked body. Somewhere in the din of fighting, I heard Ashley yelling, seconds later, her voice rang more clearly in my earpiece. Her commands almost struck me dumb.
"All men, form ranks! Afix, bayonets!" the men around me stood to, pulling long metal knives that tradition still dictated they carry from their belts. A short rattle of steel on steel rang and ten men and women prepared their ancient weapons. The salarians looked on horrified but resolute. They drew strange curved daggers from their own belts. I looked across, expecting to see Ashley grasping a sword, standing beneath some woven banner out of history, but I saw only a tough young woman gripping a rifle. She nodded to me and turned to face the krogan who were just now escaping the mire of the second trench. "Front Rank! Volley Fire!" she barked. Guns fired until they overheated all down the short line. After the last rifle fell silent, Ashley uttered a single word, just above a whisper. "Charge."
Author's Note:
Will our brave heroes triumph over the endless krogan horde? Is this the last ride of the Interloper? Find out on the next exciting chapter of ME:I. As a side note, I really hope you enjoyed this chapter, I've been watching a lot of old war movies to try and get a handle on all these firefight scenes. Let me know how I'm doing in a review or PM, whichever works.
-Liddle Out