Chosen Heir
(Ptolemy Emrys)
"FUCK! THIS! SHIT!"
As far as battle cries went, it wasn't the most refined or awe-inspiring. I doubted very much that it would be immortalized in word or song for generations to come. But whatever it lacked in sophistication it more than made up with raw passion. The damaged hydraulics of my brother's ATLAS suit let out hissing screams of agony to match his own as he held the wounded Deeper in place with one hand and worked the other in piston-like fury to bludgeon the thing into a fine pulp.
"Is it dead?" I wheezed, only half-joking.
"It gods-damn better well be," came the exhausted reply, and the suit's mimicry systems made it slump in copy of Khentu's own posture.
Beside us, Uncle Abdul slammed into cover, waiting for his rifle to exit its cool-down mode.
"The meat is very near the bone, boys," he chuckled, giving the first half to an old Blood Arrow proverb. Even as tired as we were, both us managed a smile as we gave the reply:
"But the bone is not yet broken."
"There can't be that many left," Taggart's statement was almost pleading. "There just fucking can't be."
"Everyone we lose is a fighter they gain," my brother's Earth-born priest stared evenly. "Tough odds to overcome."
Luckily, Khentu's Legends had warned my Blood Arrows of the mysterious black orbs that they had encountered when first securing the Deeps. That had not saved the first patrol of Blood Arrows that had encountered one of them; under the infernal influence or control of…something, they had each turned their guns first on each other, and then the survivors turned them on themselves. After that, I had deployed the RAMPARTs to create an even longer screening force.
Which had thankfully worked fairly well; two more had been discovered and destroyed with little or no incident by the mechs. Whatever influence the orbs had on living creatures, my purely mechanized troops seemed nearly impervious to its effects. But sending the RAMPARTS so far ahead without support had thinned their numbers far more quickly than I had liked. The only comforting thought I had was that perhaps those three orbs had been the only ones.
Our small knot of fighters stood huddled to one side of the ongoing fight, using Khentu's and Taggart's exo-suits for cover. All around us, the pitiful remnant of the RAMPART mechs and the remainder of the human Blood Arrows and Legend continued our offensive. Our mono-species representation was due to the fact that the RAMPARTs, while few in number now, remained still utterly incapable of determining any non-human as an ally. Laila and the rest of Khentu's aliens were pushing the advance from their own fronts, but their progress was as much as a slow crawl as our own.
"He's got a point," Khentu was saying. "Unless there's a portal from hell buried somewhere underneath us, simple math says they gotta be running out of…"
"Oh, sweet JESUS," came a cry from some poor bastard, "Here they come again!"
Sure enough, from the myriad and labyrinthine tunnels that made up this potion of the Deeps, more dark figures could be seen sprinting forward.
"Pick your targets!" I called out. "Cover your zones of fire!"
That was all the instructions and planning I was able to give before a fresh round of biotic blasts and gunfire erupted all around us.
Taggart had a point: the waves we had been fighting no longer seemed to be coming on in rushing hordes as they had been. Now it seemed our sheer abundance of firepower had taught them prudence. But that achievement brought with it its own complications: now our enemies ran from cover to cover, using it effectively to return fire, where once they had simply bum-rushed headlong into our crossfire. And based on the losses they were inflicting on our people, I wasn't sure which one I preferred.
As far as I could tell, based upon our brief-yet-violent encounters, the Deepers were deadly pack hunters. They preferred to remain in cover, observing potential victims and 'distracting' them by firing those damned biotic cannons they had for arms. When they selected a target they wanted dead or to become one of their own, however, they would rush forward as a body, combining their fire to create a violently unstable mass effect field that caused severe disorientation and renders the target helpless. Which was hard as hell to prevent; the Deepers had the muscle mass and ability to leap surprising distances, allowing them to close in and infect their targets almost before we could react. Which meant we had to keep them at more than arm's length.
I swung my rifle right, left, and then back again. It was surprising how quickly I and my people had learned to recognize and target these creatures' weak points. The 'heads' of the people they had been were useless as targets, as we had all witnessed them take several shots clean through their craniums, to no effect. That had been our first indication that the Deepers, as clever as they seemed, didn't have individual wills or personalities. However, even a glancing shot to the glowing… bags? Sacks? Organs? on their backs caused immense pain, and given enough damage, seemed to cut them off from… each other. Abdul had suggested a 'Hive-Mind' of some sort, and to be honest-
My internal musings and strategizing were cut suddenly short as the piercing scream of a very familiar voice rang out, and I turned my head just in time to see Tess land hard on her back and rolling limply. The world seemed to slow down to a crawl. In my mind's eye, I could see the flesh already distorting and twisting, could see my hand holding the gun towards her head…
A fire of equal parts rage and fury burned within me, and I was moving her direction before she had even stopped moving. Two massive forms arose from the rubble between us, and I jammed my rifle into the closest's chest and pulled the trigger. As it went down, I channeled my biotics and sent forward a wave of biotic energy that blasted a half-dozen of the advancing creatures flat on their backs.
Arrows, Legends, and mechs went forward to dispatch them. I turned towards Tess to find that one of the Legends' medics was already beside her, examining her wound despite her sharp hiss of pain.
"Not infected, Pharaoh!" The medic called out, "Just plain shrapnel!"
Whatever relief was in her voice was tripled in my own emotions, and even so I had found myself doing a double take at one of the Legends not only recognizing who I was but using my Egyptian title as well. Was she one of the survivors from the original Arrows? The question was shoved to the back of my mind as I reached out and took Tess' hand in my own. Her returning squeeze wasn't as firm as it might have been, but it was a response, at least.
Now that I knew that I wouldn't have to put her down like a rabid animal, I turned my attention from Tess back to the melee around us. Everyone seemed to be establishing their positions but there were simply not enough of them left to set up enfilading fields of fire. My rifle bucked against my shoulder, and then I made my decision.
"Activate Operation Isola," I stated into my comm pickup. "Confirmation Code: Emrys-One-One-One-Red."
I saw Taggart jerk upright in his suit, but it was only long enough to send me an approving nod. As the command code named for my deceased wife activated, the few RAMPART mechs that remained ended their monotonous drone of Egyptian cries of human superiority and the supremacy of the Pharaoh who led them. They then let out impossibly shrill screeches and proceeded to go berserk, charging forward with total abandon of anything that could possibly be called a tactical advance. Operation Isola had one goal and one goal only: to take down as many of the bastards opposing us as possible before they died. It had been envisioned as a last-ditch effort to protect our retreat, if our invasion of Doru had gone completely wrong. It was the worst-case of our imagined worst-case scenarios.
And now, it was the only card I had left to play. Well, almost the only one. My free hand snaked to my back. The first shot of the Big Boy had been when we had first landed, and we needed to clear a beachhead against the hordes of enemies pressing against us. The results had been… impressive to say the least. The sheer explosion had been more comparable to a pocket nuke than any standard ordinance. The second had been, to be honest, an act of desperation as our advance fireteam's position had been threatened to be overwhelmed.
My brain didn't even pause to consider whether or not I should use the last carefully hoarded shot to save the mother of my child. The explosion mushroomed out to consume everything in its path, and then the shockwave leveled everything beyond in a circular swathe of destruction. For the most part, anything that wasn't immolated immediately were knocked prone, just in time for the RAMPARTs to reach them. The mechs ran forward, leaving behind both cover and all chances of this battle intact. Khentu and Taggart went forward in their suits, supported by what human squad-mates remained.
And that's when the shrill screams began.
Omega's Child
(Khentu Emrys)
I had no idea what kind of fresh hell had been unleashed upon us, or what unholy demon had spawned from it. It looked something like an asari, fresh from a Red Sand-induced nightmare. Its crest, rather than lying flat, arose long jagged spikes in mocking imitation of a crown. Its limbs were too long and too thin, and the fingers ended in vicious sharp razors.
And they apparently had biotics to spare.
One of Ptolemy's people, I'm pretty sure his name was Taggart, was the first to die. The… not-asari, as I wasn't sure what else to call it, damn near flash-stepped through him and his exo-suit. One minute he was there, and the next minute he and his suit lay scattered in several pieces. The thing didn't even seem to have noticed that it had just torn him and his suit apart.
Matthews died next. The ex-Zada Ban militiaman shifted left, fired off an incendiary round that bounced off a biotic barrier, and then died messily as the…thing impaled him cleanly through the neck with the skewers she had for fingers. Some part off my brain was objecting to my use of the word 'she', as it was clearly no longer an asari, and asari didn't have genders anyway. But another equally irrational part of my brain was next to delighted to be fighting something even remotely more normal looking.
Welcome to fucking Omega, where everything is relative.
The not-quite-asari apparently decided that I and my arm-mounted cannon were the next greatest threat, because her... because its next move sent a massive biotic warp into my mech-suit and causing me to spin wildly to my right. I instinctively shot out my left leg and was rewarded by feeling it impact something solid and hearing a screeching howl in response. However, the ATLAS suit had never been designed to perform such martial-arts maneuvers, and I crashed down to the dirt as I overbalanced. Something in my hip tore, and the dull ache of my old injured leg that I had lived with for years since my little run-in with Archangel became a searing torrent of unbelievable pain. I was keenly aware of a slight pinprick as the suit's auto-med systems applied both a sedative for the pain, and a combat stim to keep me lucid.
Gods, I have got to get me one of these, I thought for the hundredth time that shift, and then, glancing around at the broken and sparking joints and wiring, mentally added, OK, another one of these.
Something rocked my suit from behind, and I was suddenly looking directly in the face of the… not-asari. The eyes were black as the void, and the skin was pulled away from teeth that were far too long and too jagged. The deceptively skinny arms batted aside my arm-cannon with ease, far too close now, and a biotic-glowing hand raised to peel me out of my ATLAS like a Thessian sardine from a tin can.
"God of power and mercy!"
The Not-Asari whirled at the shout that rose even above the din of battle. There was Ignatius, standing amidst all the chaos, with both arms outstretched, as if he was praying at one of his services:
"Maker and Lover of peace,
to know You is to live,
and to serve You is to reign."
The abomination actually seemed to fucking giggle in answer to the useless prayer as it took a slow step towards the priest, the sound a kind of pathetic echo of whatever poor bitch it had once been. I struggled and heaved madly, trying desperately to do something, anything, rather than see a good friend sacrifice himself for me. My armor's control panel blinked the crimson scarlet of error codes, and then went black as it sent itself into an automatic reboot.
"Through the intercession of St. Michael, the archangel,
be our protection in battle against all evil."
I was vaguely aware of my own voice yelling in sheer frustration as I tugged at the safety harness that held me in my seat, and without thinking I lifted my leg to kick at the windshield so I could at least use my pistol to shoot at the damn thing. The searing pain that shot down my spine told me what a stupid idea that had been, and I heard the priest's next line in a dim, pain-induced haze:
"Help me to overcome war and violence
and to establish Your law of love and justice."
The demoness, still walking leisurely, gunshots bouncing uselessly off her barriers, raised a hand to impale the human where he stood.
"Grant this through Christ our Lord. And Fuck you, Bitch."
With an audible crack and a flash of white light, the nullifier grenade exploded. I had no idea where he had gotten it, or why he had bothered to bring it with him, but I thanked his god and all of mine that he had. The nullifier dissipated the dark energy that had emanated from every pore of the creature's skin. It screamed in pain, and the blow that was supposed to impale him merely batted Ignatius away like a troublesome gnat. As the creature's hands went to its head, clearly in pain, Abdul Abbas' brightly painted armor slashed at the creature, twin knives twirling in his grip. Hamstrung, the creature staggered and attempted to lurch sideways, flailing wildly to put distance between it and us, or at least the temporary nullifier field.
It was at this precise moment that my suit's restart sequence ended, and power surged back through the artificial limbs, albeit with a copious number of sparks and mechanical protestations.
"Oh, no you don't, bitch."
Still lying prone on the ground, my cannon trapped underneath me, I reached out and grabbed one thin leg with my mech's good hand. I had the immensely satisfying feeling of bone crunching beneath the artificial grip, and the creature howled in equal parts pain, frustration, and anger.
"Shoot it, by Ra!" I heard Uncle's voice calling out over the general broadcast channel. "Shoot! Shoot! Shoot!"
Jagged claws tore away at the ATLAS limb holding it in place. The creature was desperately trying to free itself from my hold, desperate to get away, to recharge, and come back to kill us all. Ignatius strode slowly forward, seemingly unperturbed as chunks of metal sheeting the size of his head flew off my mech and just past his head. As if he had all the time in the world, he drew the heavy pistol at his back, and leveled it at the flailing… demon, creature, whatever it was.
"My daughter," he said in a voice so low I was pretty sure I was the only one who could hear it, "I grant you this mercy."
The giant pistol boomed once, twice, and three more times. The creature fell limply backwards, its face and chest a messy ruin. We all breathed a collective sigh of relief.
"Khen?" Ignatius' and Ptolemy's faces appeared in my windshield, craning to see through the cracked and filthy transparasteel to see if I was alright. I stretched painfully and pressed my 'Broadcast Speaker' button.
"Well, thank the gods that's over," my horribly garbled voice echoed through impossibly damaged speakers.
And then, as if to give us the universe's largest middle finger, more screams arose, and as we slowly turned towards the sound, we could just barely see two more figures appearing albeit at the other end of the passageway.
"Oh, come on," the priest groaned, at his god or the universe in general, I didn't know. Probably both.
"Get out of here!" I heard my voice saying, before I was properly aware of my own train of thought.
"Not without you!" my brother replied predictably. My massive hand came up and poked him in the back, causing him to look back at me.
"I'm in no fit state to move, brother," I hissed as a fresh stab of pain crept over the influence of the meds. "My leg is broken, and this mech is not going anywhere. I can't move with this mech or without it. If I stay in here, I at least have a heavy cannon to slow these bitches down."
To back up my words, I swung the stationary torso around, and proceeded to throw as much firepower downrange as possible.
"Go!" I called out, switching from our private channel to the general one. "Link up with Laila and the rest of the Legends! With no more mechs left, that means we're free to commit any forces we have! You can come back and get me!"
"Khen, I…."
"GO TOL!" I snarled. "Take care of Tess! And Alex… and Little Khen!"
A gout of warpfire, thin and precise as a needle, burned just above us. From a chocked off scream it had been aimed at someone else, and yet another one of our people died.
"GO!" I yelled, and actually shoved him out the line of fire. He paused for another second, and then turned to follow the rest of our retreating squads.
"I'll come back," I heard him say grimly, over the private channel. "You stay alive 'til then."
It was a pointless sentence and we both knew it, but we both knew that he had to say it. I settled in to my epic last stand, watching my heavy tri-barrel rounds bounce harmlessly off biotic barriers. I deployed my very last two fragmentation grenades, my fingers typing the code to set them for proximity detonation rather than a simple time-delay. If I could just lure them into coming at me head on the mines might…
"EMRYS?" The gruff voice came over the comm, and I was utterly taken aback.
"What?" I gasped.
"EMRYS! By all the ancestors, tell me you're not so boring as to be dead!"
I shook my head a little, trying to clear it. "Syed? Is that you?"
"I and my krantt are on the Fury in orbit around Omega," the Nakmor krogan replied, "We're headed in on the Docks."
"No, fuck that!" My mind raced, trying to process this totally unexpected position. It then proceeded to come up with a very, very, VERY bad plan. "Are the Fury's cannons' online?"
"They are." No small amount of offended indignation was laced into the two words.
"Use my Omni-signal to home in on my position!" I called out, "Roll your broadsides, and open fire with everything you have! NOW!"
"Tracking signal now," came Syed's bass voice, "Opening fire."
Despite everything going on around me, I blinked in surprise. I had half-expected for Syed to issue some kind of protest, like Ptolemy had, and I would have to talk him around to killing me with the Fury's massive cannons. At the very least, I had expected him to argue for several minutes that there had to be another way to solve the problem than to blow up his own commander with his own ship's guns.
Then I remembered who I was talking to, and his species' shared feelings towards the kind of sacrificial gestures mine was rapidly becoming.
Fucking Krogans and their damned practicality.
I slammed my fist down on the red button on my panel, and the windshield popped off with a hiss of compressed cylinder releases. I slipped the Omni-Tool from my wrist and gently tossed it into the massive hand I brought around to the front. Then I hurled it as far forwards as my exo-suit could manage. As far as throws went, it was impressive, and much farther than my unaided arm could have done.
But as far as proximity to ship-mounted cannons go, it was far, far too close; a fact I was only too conscious of as I slammed the button diverting every scrap of energy back into the propulsion systems, every gear of the ATLAS suit screaming in protest, and half-sprinted, well, to be honest, it was a fairly ambulatory shuffle, as fast as I could the opposite direction.
My rear-view cameras were long since gone, so it was through the cracked reflection of my physical rear-view mirror that I saw the massive explosion tear through the solid bulkheads that separated the Deeps from the open space surrounding Omega Station. The intense fireball was almost silent, muted by the vacuum of space, but it was quickly followed by a whistling sound. It was a dull rumble that soon became a deafening roar, swallowing up everything in its wake.
Broken Vessel
(Laila Adonis)
Date: 03-08-2187
Location: The Deeps, Omega, Sahrabarik System
"KHENTU!"
Chell and the Nakmor Krogan were pacing back and forth across the battlefield. Here and there, flamethrowers roared, and Cutters barked to ensure that a suspiciously twitching body was well and truly dead. Subtlety was out the airlock, but I didn't blame them one tiny bit. Neither did any of the red-armored Talons or the black-armored regulars Aria had sent down. They were staring at the deformed, mutated corpses with horror, and the looks they gave towards the surviving Blood Arrows and Legends had shifted from mere disdain to something much more akin to respect.
We had found Ignatius, huddled together with Ptolemy and a wounded Tess, half-buried beneath a pile of Deeper corpses. Hadasi and Drella had thrown their arms around the human who had become the closest thing to a surrogate father they had and sobbed their relief at finding him still alive. I was as glad to see the three of them as anyone, and even the brightly painted figure of Abdul Abbas had brought a spike of joy to my heart. But overhanging everything was the sheer awareness of how many people we had just lost. The Legends Cartel had been gutted, to say nothing of the Legends proper. Exactly zero of the Blood Arrows' mechs remained functional, and of the six hundred Cerberus-armed troopers Ptolemy Emrys had brought to this station, less than a hundred were in any condition to fight.
I had everyone detailed to search among the battlefield for survivors and any wounded. Few of either were left, due to the sheer size of the hole the Fury's guns had torn in the side of the station. Anyone who had managed to not get themselves killed found themselves vented to open space. Even in the few seconds it had taken for the station's automated barrier system to engage, I didn't doubt that hundreds of Deepers, and probably several dozen of our side, had been blasted out to a cold, lonely grave.
All because my boss, my best friend, and my lover had decided to call a spirits-damned kinetic strike down on himself. It was a Karking miracle that the station's pet AI hadn't flagged the Fury as hostile and used the recently upgraded defense cannons to blast the ancient trawler into so much scrap. Of course, what that suggested to any paranoid conspiracy theorist worth their salt was that Omega Central Command had already instructed the heavily shackled AI to ignore any ships firing down on our positions.
And wasn't that a charming thought, I glowered. Because we didn't have enough on our plates already to drive us crazy.
I turned over another human in Legends armor and felt guilty at the rush of relief that it wasn't Khen. Every person that we found that wasn't him increased the chances that he was still alive somewhere else…right? Or else meant that my man was still out here somewhere… or floating through the emptiness of space….
Nope, not going there, my mind rebelled against the cold logic and probability. Not. Gonna. Happen.
"Khentu! Spirits damn you, fucking answer me!"
I didn't even attempt to call over the radio. Khentu's damn-fool plan had required Syed to destroy his Omni-Tool; to home in on the damn thing as a way to pinpoint the crucial focal point of the combat. Some grotesquely optimistic part of me hoped against hope that meant he had set it up ahead of time in a central location, and then relayed its comm-code from a safe distance.
But that would have required a great deal of tactical pre-planning, and that simply isn't Khentu Emrys' style, I thought as I stamped my foot in sheer frustration.
"AMUN-FUCKING RA!"
Something very close to a startled squeak escaped my lungs, and I half-hopped, half-jumped away, my shotgun coming around to bear on the spot where my armored boot had crushed someone's hand.
"What the hells?"
I half frantically tore away at the sheet of metal that still covered whoever was lying there. Khentu's helmet lay beside him, the visor cracked and the seals obviously broken. His left cornea was definitely detached, and a trickle of blood was coming from somewhere up in his scalp. The lower half of the ATLAS mech he was sitting in was completely gone. Pretty much the only thing left was single arm that had grasped the crack in the wall, and the pilot's seat into which he was still strapped. The shock-frame had bent and warped, trapping him in the seat and his left leg was dark with blood, but otherwise he was… intact.
"Are you OK?" I asked, fighting back the tears and sheer raw relief that flooded through me.
"Hells no, I'm not OK!" came the angry snarl. "I don't think I have a bone left in my right hand! You could have stomped on my fucking bad hand, but NOooooo… gods forbid you damage the hand that was already missing fingers!"
"Shut up, you big crybaby," I cut him off and I felt the tears coursing down my cheeks beneath my helmet.
"I found him!" I called out over the general broadcast channel. "Someone bring me an arc-cutter! Now!"
He let out a weak, almost wheezing chuckle. "And maybe a Med-kit while you're at it?"
"And a med-kit!"
I turned back to Khen, stooping down to get closer and get a better assessment of the damage.
"Don't you ever do something like that again, Khentu Emrys, or it will be your Karking skull beneath my boot next time, do you understand me!?"
A thin smile crossed the pain-laced face, and a choked sob escaped me as I pressed our foreheads together. There was a moment of silence, and then we both took a deep breath.
"Well," he stated, wincing as he cradled his hand, "That was a hellova thing."
Author's Note:
Well, that brings the penultimate chapter of this story to its end! I really enjoyed bringing an alternate conclusion to the Adjutants and their eldritch masters. My full thanks to Kat-2V for the use of the wonderful Mass Effect AU, and the awesome beta-reading skills!
As always, your thoughts/ comments/ suggestions/ constructive criticisms are always welcome either in the reviews below, or in a private PM!
ROCK ON, my friends!
EE-RAH!
Reviewer Responses:
BJ Hanssen – Thanks! Limiting each section to a limited POV helps to keep writing combat scenes simple, as you're only experiencing the battle from one perspective.
seabo76 – Yep, Murphy will always put in an appearance when you least expect him.
