Batarian Prison Camp, Aratoht, December 19, 2185
The night air of Aratoht was cold and dry, and Commander Shepard's breath rose from his mouth as he waited outside the batarian prison compound. The task he'd been handed by the Commission a day earlier was typical Chekist stuff with a spec-ops twist: get back Dr. Adriana Kenson by any means necessary, the more dead batarians the better. The slavers had struck weeks earlier as a part of the Citadel reaction to the coup in Grand Turia and had been reaking havoc. What Kenson knew would be of the utmost importance; she'd been handling documents for both Left Organization secret weapons projects and Commission intelligence. This was top priority.
He snorted. They hadn't given him many resources to do it, and he would have bet his right hand the long arm of the Anti-Partyists were preventing his own faction acting too overtly. First he'd been forced to continue working with Ashley's old crew on the Stalingrad. Petrovksy was cold, almost as much as Miranda had been at first, and he bet it was because of Williams' influence in the wake of his supposed treachery. Though her ship and crew were good and had seen them through the turian affair they still gave Shepard and his team a wide berth – the black sheep black op team of the Brotherhood. Second, with Garrus back on Palaven helping set up the Democratic Republic, he didn't want to be shorthanded and so had been annoyed at Ashley's demotion to an infantry instructor on Mars. He knew the bigwigs were doing their best for her and he felt a pang of guilt because, all things admitted, he was a little glad she wasn't there.
No, he only had a five-man team for this high-risk mission. The woman who'd occupied, if perhaps not fully conquered, Ash's place in his heart was here as he'd expected her to. The ex-Major was a legal nightmare for the Brotherhood despite her new Party membership and so Miranda was here sharing the risk of her own free will. He looked at her, her face covered by a helmet, hard underneath in a tight bun, and sighed. The Commander didn't want to make her go through this, not when he knew he was wont to get screwed if the Lefts didn't win the Party power struggle and her doubly so. But he needed her, and he felt a like a coward using her though all she said through comms was a reassuring,
"Right behind you, Marat."
Shepard smiled. She was as cool and collected as ever, and he'd need that if they were to cause havoc against the company sized forces guarding this VIP camp. He hated to admit it, but Kenson wasn't the only internee, just the most illustrious one. The batarian pirates weren't real criminals, just plainclothes Hegemony regulars seeking to seize the main Party cadres and agitators along border space who'd been inciting their slaves to revolt for years. And they'd succeeded in large part, seizing many of Shepard's spiritual comrades and imprisoning them here only to suffer a horrible future as slaves. The Commander was angry, angry he couldn't help them. But he'd always hated batarians, at least most of those he'd met, and he swore he'd make them pay in the future if he must.
Still the rest of his squad, though depleted, filled him with some extra confidence. Sure, he had fewer but then again he'd fought Saren with even less to go on, and the fact his companions were friends who'd chosen to stay with him, a band of misfits against an uncertain future, filled him with a warmer feeling than the coolness of the air and of his rage. Dr Solus had decided to come and though the salarian was a better doctor than a door kicker, he was happy to have someone as brilliant and the first and competent as the latter on his team. The doctor's friend, though, was still more warlord than doctor. Okeer was as imposing and huge and deadly as ever. His head was covered with a helmet too but Shepard would have bet the krogan was smiling his battle-grin beneath its cover. The last of his allies was an unlikely one. Shepard wondered why the geth Joker had dubbed Masses still fought alongside him but he was glad of its presence. The synthetic was the best shot he'd ever seen, better even than Garrus, and could move silently despite being made out of metal. He was happy Masses was on his side; geth he'd faced before had been much weaker and he hoped the ones he faced continued to be less like his squadmate. Masses simply stood there, bent over to present less of a target to the enemy, and nodded his readiness.
Kneeling down in the dark, his breath still frosting, even getting his visor a little fogged up, Shepard gave his comrades the shorter frag orders of the ones he'd presented to them and the ever frigid captain Anastasia aboard ship.
"As I said earlier," he whispered into his headset while his companions gave him their rapt attention, "our job here is to get out Kenson. We've been ordered to cause as much collateral as we can but remember there's only five of us. We have an approximate location she's being held, either building 7A or an attachment so we go and get her. We'll plant charges and detonate it prior to extraction, killing any guards and... and prisoners we can't salvage." His words hung on the last words but he tried to remind himself better let his comrades die a quick warrior's death than be tortured or worked to death by the batarian scum.
"Remember," he continued, "they might wear merc armour but these are regulars. They won't fuck around and we know from our intel that their patrol schedules will be tight and designed to catch groups such as our own getting in. We'll exploit that as we explained and cause confusion before we run for it. There's a chance this little side-show might be our last mission and we all die, I know it for a fact based on our resources. But we've faced tougher and it's been my honour to serve with you. We will again, come what may. Any questions?"
"One," piped up Mordin's voice. The little salarian looked formidable clad in full armour and he pressed on with his question, "Is best to approach from this angle? Better could be infirmary, aerial recce on omnitool shows it is less guarded."
"Negative," said Shepard, "We could be detected by inmates instead of guards, giving away our position and causing them to execute prisoners because a raiding det like ours can only go in for a rescue. It'll be be a frontal whether we like it or not. For now you know that this link in the fortifications will be the one blind spot we can enter due to the terrain. Go in fast and low."
The team formed in their order of march, Okeer at front, Shepard second followed by Mordin, Shepard's second in command Miranda and Masses at the rear. The geth's night- and far-vision would be an asset to seeing any oncoming guards. Shepard gestured the squad forward and the approached the edge of the camp. It was well guarded, right out of the batarian manuals. Shepard squinted. He'd hoped they'd at least have sent a mixed force but the Hegemony must have realized by now the incompetence of their own pirates. On Torfan, the bastards had been sloppy and by this time of night almost always too drunk to bother doing a good job of guarding. No matter; Shepard still had fourteen hours of darkness to cover his movement and he'd planned on the operation lasting half that. Now all he had to do was get over the fence inside and they could proceed.
The Commander moved forward, keeping himself low to the ground. He looked around as he went forward, and even Okeer was doing a decent job keeping himself low and quiet. As much as a krogan could, anyway, which given his size and strength was impressive. Fifty meters ahead he saw it, the break in the fence and tapped Okeer on the shoulders. The pair ran ahead as the rest of the team covered them across no-man's-land, and they were fortunate not to be seen by the guards. They might be cunning, but batarians were a textbook people who'd learned all their doctrine from the turians. Shepard had exploited it and hit them right between their scheduled patrols. Reaching the fence he realized it was barely wide enough to let even someone of Tali's size through. He pointed at Mordin and Miranda to go through as Masses covered their rear. Then he and Okeer grabbed a side each and activated their powered armour to boost their strength as they ripped the fortifications apart. They just needed to get it wide enough for the tall human and krogan to get through.
"Shepard-comrade, contact nine hundred meters away," intoned Masses.
The geth could see further in the darkness than they and these batarians were working in merc armour or even only half-armoured due to their ostensible cover operation. Too easy for the keen eyes of a synthetic killer, and so Shepard and Okeer shoved and dragged and pulled as quietly as they could, but the fence barely budged. Cursing, the Commander hissed an order at Masses.
"How many?"
"Det of four."
"Can you take them down silently?"
"As you humans say, 'I can try'."
"Do so. Feenoi?" the ex-warlord turned his head at the sound of his first name, "Hold your breath. We gotta be quiet so those bastards don't find us. It'll be four snap shots to take down that entire patrol without them noticing we have to be quiet. When they're down we have thirty seconds to tear this fence apart and run inside before the monitors in their armour tell the command post their vitals are down."
The krogan nodded that he understood and Shepard gave Masses the thumbs-up. The geth platform went prone on the cold wet earth of Aratoht and trained his customized rifle on the enemy. Garrus had done something like this, years before, at Fist's club while Shepard began his chase against Saren and the Commander's heart had been beating then hard as it did now. He didn't wanna die, not here, not like this dammit! He knew there were no gods so he enticed the flow of historical development to have mercy on his crew and let Masses take the shot. The geth for his part seemed not to notice; and the eerie silence of the night began irritating Shepard a little more. At last the silenced rifle gave four distinct coughs... and from just far enough, Shepard heard four thuds.
"Fuck me, Masses, but you are good," grunted Shepard as he and Okeer tore the fence apart, now uncaring how much noise they made so they could dive through. The krogan charged through first and Shepard followed him, the geth trailing at his heels and they advanced a hundred meters into the rear of the compound. Guards wouldn't need to be mobilized in this area; after all, it was the sleeping quarters. Shepard almost tripped over the prone body of Miranda who was keeping her weapon trained inside the camp before he noticed she was there. Moving five meters to her right, he himself dropped to the ground and awaited the oncoming chaos that the killings would bring.
Miranda turned her head and smiled at him, mouthing something he humorous he couldn't quite discern as all hell broke loose. Alarms were raised all over the camps and batarians ran from their quarters and latrines, half-dressed or naked and carrying their weapons to assume their stand-to positions. Little did they know that five communists had infiltrated their camp and lay now in their own backyard. Shepard saw sections running to man their machineguns while NCOs yelled at other sections to get formed up to go on patrol and find whoever was responsible. And over it all the endless blaring of turian-built Hegemony licensed alarm technology. These soldiers might not be amateurs at war, thought the Commander, but batarians sure were dumbasses when it came to subtlety.
Nobody even noticed his crew as they ran around in the chaos, fumbling to find the enemy outside the wire in the dark. Had they done a better job they'd have realized the terrain had caused a weakness that a skilled enemy like Shepard could exploit. Well, now they were going to learn. Leopard crawling forward, the team made slow headway at first bogged down as they were by weapons and armour but soon they reached underneath one of the, now empty, barracks. The windows had even been left open to let the cool night air inside, and Shepard nodded at Mordin. The doctor was not half the demolitions expert as Tali, but he was well-versed in the nature of chemical and biological warfare. Shepard almost, only almost, felt bad at what he was going to unleash on the xenos when they left but, well, sometimes the bastards deserved it. Not that the vicious substance had been Mordin's idea; no, he had just used good old salarian expertise to come up with a method of distribution. The real meat of the vileness of the weapon had been one hundred percent Okeer's warlord days. It was strapped to an EMP device; one which would deactivate all the camp's major electricity, especially their anti-aircraft guns. Enough to get a single shuttle in range for extraction. Slipping the weapon inside and priming it, Shepard nodded at his comrades to continue. They had to use it on the way out. First came Dr. Kenson.
Moving out again, the team advanced across the camp, using buildings as cover while the enemy remained stood-to, away from the inside of the camp and doing a poor job of defending its content if VIPs. Shepard loved when a plan went wrong and the improvised solution worked better. He'd never been a fan of skulking, anyways, it was more fun to be able to strut through while the batarians yelled at one another trying to find the source of the confusion. Poor aliens, he thought, humans had understood decentralized command in the late 18th century and these bastards were all more busy trying to find who was responsible for court-martial more than they were the foe. He shook his head and continued to the prisoner section of the camp.
The thing that he noticed first didn't surprise him, but still managed to anger him further. Commander Shepard and his crew were no squeamish lot, and they'd expected what they found next from aerial recce, but it still was enough to shock. The stench of the prisoners' camp assaulted them first, more terrible than all the angry xenos milling around. It was putrid; a disgusting combination of excrement and death and rot. Shepard almost wished he'd worn his rebreather helmet. The companions moved forward swiftly through the hovels and prefab shelters used to house the inmates. These were not just adults; but entire families of the people on the borders who had done something to enrage the Hegemony and now all sat there in pain, the wrath of the slavers ready to be meted out on them by the agreement of the Council. Shepard tried avoid being seen, and to avoid looking at the miserable inhabitants who all looked ill-fed and filthy, many with signs of torture and beating and, among the women and children, sexual assault. And what had their crime been? Many hadn't even been Party members, just people sickened that the batarians were stuck by their ridiculous faith in a mode of production humanity had transcended when little more than barbarian savages. He gulped down his rage.
"It's worse than Omega," Miranda's voice said on comms, but it sounded far off and unbelieving to Shepard.
"No," responded Mordin, "Sad to say: it is not."
Shepard tried not to choke on his next words as he asked them "Will your... your weapon, effect these people like it will those bastards back there."
As the crew advanced, drawing ever closer to building 7A, Okeer remained silent a while, contemplative though he watched his arcs of fire. At last he spoke when the abode was in sight.
"Once I would not have cared, Shepard. But now I have to tell you not to ask yourself questions you don't want answers to, as neither do I."
Well that settled that, then. The Commander was going to be using an experimental weapon on both the enemy and his own people just to get a single doctor. Sure, the math worked out sitting up in the Stalingrad or to his friends at Stavka, but seeing it down here, these people and their suffering, and the merciless ferocity of their captors... It almost was too much. So he clamped his jaws down and ground his teeth at the next unsavoury steps he'd have to take and swore he'd make it right one day.
The group at last approached the building and, gingerly as they could, kicked the door down. When the door slammed down, the three batarian guards in the room were greeted to the last sight of their lives: Okeer in full battle-rage with his shotgun, sawing death through the air with every burst. Their bodies had no sooner hit the floor than Shepard was analyzing their surroundings. The building itself was crude and filthy, typical of this area of the border and with the same lazy attention to hygiene as the batarians seemed to care about. It was a series of small sheds which had been separated into a main chamber for guards with each room being used as makeshift cells. The Commander hurriedly set about running through each one, trying to find the inmate in question but they were all empty save a few where the broken corpses of several Party leaders lay in their cells, bloodied and mutilated. Not all batarian units showed even this level of ferocity and Shepard swore once more he'd see their entire battalion – no, brigade, - wiped off the face of the galaxy.
When they came to the interrogation room, the team at last found what they had come for. Dr. Kenson lay in a crude chair, bruised and bloodied but looking far better cared for and fed than most of the inmates outside. She had known something the batarians wanted, and so they hadn't broken her too hard but she still blubbered as they entered the room.
"No, please, just stop, not again I'll -"
"We're here to get you to safety, comrade doctor," cut in Shepard. The woman's handsome features scrunched up and she began weeping.
"I'm sorry, I'm sorry, oh God I'm sorry. I talked and I told them things I shouldn't have. They know about the Project now, though I didn't want them to! The Commission will shoot me, I've been a traitor..."
Shepard had dealt with prisoners on the edge before and knew how to go about dealing with the problem. Beaten, hungry, and sleep-deprived as she was Kenson would be of little use to them so he talked to her in a soothing voice as Mordin moved round her back.
"No, doctor, I promise you, you'll be OK. Just relax for now and don't worry about a thing, you can tell us what we need later. We're taking you somewhere safe now. Is that alright with you?"
Kenson's eyes dripped tears even more as she nodded and Shepard nodded himself to Mordin, who carefully inserted a needle into the doctor's skin and sedated her. She would be better off relaxed than hysterical or disoriented, and they'd come all the way here just to get her.
"Miri, get me an all-round defence while I call the Stalingrad" he ordered. Usually he'd have his second in command call, but Petrovsky was being a bitch about recognizing any of his companions especially Miranda. Just another pain in the ass to deal with, not that he blamed her. He'd have found it hard a few years ago to trust anyone who'd been a White Guardist or Charioteer, and he'd associated with both. But for now Anastasia was in the same battle as him and so he called her.
"Ready for extraction on my navpoint," he said.
"Acknowledged," came Petrovsky's crisp reply. Shepard looked at the time. It would be another eight minutes until the shuttle reached them. It was a good thing the guards here were probably the most incompetent in the company; they hadn't even been wearing armour so nobody was like to come check anytime soon. Still he was on edge as the team manned their defensive positions around the perimeter of the building as the seconds counted down until their extraction arrived. The batarians were still stood-to so he hoped the stealth mode on the damn shuttle was engaged; even without anti-aircraft assets the xenos had enough small arms to blow them out of the sky. He looked over at Dr. Kenson, draped over the back of the huge Okeer, cursed himself for a fool again. He was doing this all for one woman, just to prove to people he'd never stopped fighting for he was still loyal. Damn Chariot to the pit and the Ghost Writer doubly so!
At last he saw that the shuttle was inbound. Anastasia might be acting like a bitch despite her former friendship, but she'd been smart enough to send it in cloaked. She didn't want him dead, and that was a good thing. He hoped he could build on it. But he realized as the transport neared that his next act would probably doom him. Even cloaked it would soon be within the danger zone of short-range scanners that the EMP blast couldn't disable and his distraction would probably cause more disgust.
Shepard sighed. Fighting the Reapers, Chariot, Council, whatever. It was all so confusing and it sucked. He wished he didn't like it half as much as he did. He waved a hand at the questioning gaze of Mordin and tried to hold back a tear as the salarian pushed the button.
As the shuttle neared the camp and the enemy began pointing their weapons to intercept it, the charge went off. At once all heavy arms, and several light ones, were disabled, comms in total disarray. The aliens scrambled to react but a second later the swarm was upon them. Okeer had done his work well, breeding miniature Collector swarmers with a poison, rather than paralyzing, agent. The insects had only wreaked havoc, killing xenos by the dozens, when at last the shuttle landed and the team piled in. Shepard swore he'd make it right as he and his comrades sat silent as the unconscious Dr. Kenson. Though the swarmers had a kill switch and would die out, and had been incapable of reproducing aside, Shepard felt angry. Angry he'd had to use such a weapon, and angrier that against what was coming, he almost certainly would have to again. He hoped Kenson had the answers that could at least mitigate that.
