Ripples in the Stream
A D&D / Shadowrun / Mass Effect crossover
by Vyrexuviel
Disclaimer: The author of this story does not, in any way, derive any profit from the story. D&D, Shadowrun and Mass Effect are the property of their respective copyright holders. Jorukaia and other unfamiliar characters in this story, however, are mine.
It was a terrifying thing to hear the petrified scream of the Consort's Acolytes and clients.
And a nightmare to hear those screams followed by the harsh electronic blatting of the machines that strode into the Consort's establishment without a by-your-leave.
Nelyna was backing away, trying to shield the clients behind her as Sha'ira, Liara, and the Matriarch came down the stairs. About half a dozen people huddled behind couches and tables, and the sole asari standing to protect them.
"Nelyna!" Her acolyte's head snapped around, and that was when the machine-men started firing.
The first few bullets hammered home into Nelyna's shield, buffeting the asari backwards, even as the screams got louder. No, not just louder. Liara was screaming too.
But not in fear. In rage.
The young asari stalked forwards, her arm rising, and she threw a glob of biotic power at the nearest geth. It staggered slightly and started to shift fire. Benezia was already there, the shimmer of a potent shield flickering fitfully around both mother and daughter as she moved to support her still-screaming child.
A boom slammed through the room from outside, another explosion, but what was inside was more important.
Liara's aura should have been the bright shock-yellow of fright, like the rest of her clients, but she was different.
She stood out in Sha'ira's sight like a loud, angry, red siren, shrieking and howling the black spirals of her hatred as she sent Warp after Throw after Lift at the encroaching half-dozen geth. She seemed not to feel the drag of her biotics, the usual fizzle and crackle of over-straining her power, at least not that Sha'ira could tell.
Most of her own biotic training had come from masters of the mental arts, and had neglected more martial pursuits in favor of shielding and healing. As such, while her shield was moderately potent, it was nothing compared to that of the child, let alone her Matriarch-mother.
Matriarch Benezia stood out a cool, calm, decisive cyan, shot through with with dark-yellow worry and speckles of red frustration. Her shield was sufficient to entirely block the Geth from reaching their prey, and while she was busily disabling the Geth, her daughter...
Liara's violent-red and black aura screamed murderous intent to Sha'ira. It was barely all she could do to just look at the girl, let alone try to soothe her. But even as she finally mastered herself enough to try, there was a minor explosion, and a cheer from her clients.
The poor girl had torn apart the last geth with her biotics in a fit of unbridled rage.
"Saren." Her breath was coming in large gasps as Sha'ira stepped closer, her new fangs bared in a rictus snarl. "He dares? He dares!?"
"Calm. Deep breaths, slow." The consort's instincts cut in again, her voice gentle and soothing.
It seemed, for the first time, that the Consort's words went unheard.
"Is anyone hurt?" Liara asked of the room, not taking her purposeful eyes off the entrance.
"No, Little Wing." Benezia's voice was cold, her face a mask of serenity, but her eyes as cold as an Anservan winter.
"Good. I will not allow others suffer what Saren inflicted unto me. And so I will finish what I started." The young asari moved towards the door, her entire body almost shaking with rage.
"Wait one moment, Liara." Again, the whiplash of the Matriarch's words, low, soft, but forceful, rang across the room. Her dress swished easily around her as she stalked past Sha'ira. "Thank you for your hospitality, Consort, but now is not the time for words. Now is the time for action."
She glanced over the frightened clients. "We will escort you across to C-Sec Academy, you should be safe there."
At Liara's hot, burning stare, her mother turned. "And then, we shall go find Saren. Together, my Little Wing."
Liara's eyes narrowed to slits as she gave a curt nod to her mother and whirled to stalk out the door. "He is mine."
Sha'ira had to use all her strength not to tremble at what she saw. For a splintered moment, she saw not a brave, fearful, young asari there, but something else. Something far more powerful, and far more dangerous. And utterly covered by the murderous-black aura that occluded her from Sha'ira's sight.
Rage. Such deep hatred. The absolute need for wrath and retribution burned so great it felt like a star had ignited inside her chest!
She stalked across the bridge, bringing up the rear, and hurling Throws and Warps at the geth that got close. Her mother set the pace, her shield protecting the civilians as they made their way over the bridge towards C-Sec, but Liara's heart raged within her at every sight of a Geth, every reminder of the cruelty and abuse she suffered. The pain, the humiliation, and the agony.
'The villainy you teach me, I will execute. And it shall go hard but I will better the instruction. For I shall rain destruction down into you.' Liara's thoughts were interrupted as a geth stepping around a corner, but her mother's precise, controlled Throw sent it hurtling across the walkway and into the lake, where it shorted out with electrical arcs and electronic stuttering.
The commando group that Benezia never traveled without barked back and forth to each other as they kept in contact, the eight commandos keeping the civilians safe as they hurried across the bridge towards C-Sec, Benezia in the lead, and Liara behind.
"Goddess," a commando whispered during a momentary lull in the fight. "What's happened to her?"
"I don't know, she seems possessed!"
A third murmured quietly to her sisters. "What happened to her biotics? She's never been this powerful before!"
An electronic warble caught Liara's attention, even as Benezia was ushering the civilians into C-Sec. An armature was on the walkway further along, and aiming its siege-pulse down towards them
'No, you don't get to hurt me again!' With a roar, she stretched out, a singular thought in her mind. To rend, to crush, to destroy.
The warble of the machine changed as Liara strained, the power flooding through her in torrents as the singularity wrapped itself around the Armature, tearing at its shields until they fell, and dragging it in, piece by piece, until it vanished down the hungry maw of Liara's rage made manifest.
'To the black void with you!' she thought with vehemence, even as the last of the armature was sucked away by the dissipating singularity. But the roar of air caused by the miniature black hole didn't die away as expected. Instead it seemed to grow stronger.
Down the way, another light was shining the bright, actinic blue-white of biotic radiance. Liara shielded her eyes, straining. Was that?
"There's something going on down at the Relay Monument!" One of the C-Sec guards, a turian who had helped them with the civvies, was setting up a cordon around the entrance, to hold against he geth. "You should head inside, ma'am, we've got things under control here for now!"
Liara saw it first. A bright flaring flash that streaked down out of the heavens. Then the roar of energy discharge was replaced by the roar of an overtaxed engine as something shot out of the mass corridor, so much like a relay, and slammed into the wall near the monument!
A beat.
"That was a tank!" a human yelled incredulously. "A tank just popped out of the statue! What the hell?!"
Liara shot her mother a wide-eyed look, before both of them took off sprinting towards the overturned vehicle. Their commandos were quickly around them again, as Benezia began to pant and gasp for breath. Liara outpaced all but the swiftest of the commandos, however, and reached the upside-down tank just in time to help a turian crawling out of it.
He was on his back, held a strange-looking rifle, and even as she reached to help him, he brought it to his shoulder, aimed and fired. A vast gout of flame burst from the muzzle, and an eye-searing bright lance of violet fire slammed across the length of the lake. Liara hadn't even seen the Colossus, it was too far away for her to have picked up on, but the turian's bolt slammed dead-center into its faceplate.
The result was catastrophic. Something must have gone very wrong with its feedback systems, because instead of simply smoking for a second and collapsing, the huge walking siege weapon simply exploded!, sending a shower of wreckage up and into the lake.
Another much longer beat, as everyone present turned to stare at the turian who had casually one-shot a Geth Colossus.
He shrugged in response, almost apologetically. "Ah, sorry. That siege walker had this thing on its head that was just bugging the hell out of me. Had to fix it."
An irritated krogan groaned as he slid out of the tank. "Don't get cocky, Garrus!"
A flailing hand attracted attention, and Liara gently helped a slender, suited quarian out of the tank. She staggered a couple steps away, making gurgling noises as a few more asari slid out, including one that had Benezia staring in shock. "A-Aethyta? How...?"
"Sorry. The Spectre asked." Aethyta and Benezia shared a swift hug, with shyly touching her mother's hand. "Needed to blow off some steam. Headbutt Saren into the next millennium. That sort of thing."
"I could understand that." Benezia turned as an armored human slid smoothly out of the overturned tank's hatch, followed by Vasir flailing her way out and all but growling as she stood up.
"Right. Where's that fucker so I can put a bullet in his brain." Vasir looked around, then shot a look at Benezia. "Oh great, weren't you supposed to be on the Citadel?"
The Matriarch was silent for a moment. "Spectre Vasir. We are on the Citadel."
The younger asari held the matriarch's eyes for a moment, before she looked back at the Relay Monument, once more quiescent and silent. "Well, fuck me sideways..."
She ignored the quarian's sputtering over how impossible it was to jump halfway across the galaxy in a fucking tank, and just sighed, rubbing the bridge of her nose.
"Just so we're clear, the Prothean Conduit we've been searching the whole galaxy for the last six months brought us to the Citadel?" Garrus's musing tone sounded slightly amused.
"Yep!" Wrex gave a cheerful grin.
Tali shot them both a glare that stopped further comment, even as Kasumi was trying to help the poor quarian girl keep her stomach contents inside, instead of plastered across the inside of her faceplate.
"Sooooo..." Garrus said dryly. "Our noble quest had us come all this way just to find out we didn't have to come all this way?"
Dead silence.
"Oh, Keelah..." Tali didn't have much breath with which to comment further, as she held her stomach with one hand, while the other rested on her knee.
"I hate you. So. Much." Ashley groaned. Wrex merely laughed.
"Well, I got this great gun out of the deal, so I'm not complaining." The turian's mandibles spread in a grin, cradling the ancient-style rifle like a newborn.
"Hell yeah," Wrex hefted his new favorite shotgun and turned to the turian that came up behind him.
"Spectre Vasir, Ma'am!" One of the C-Sec guards stood at rigid attention, giving her a salute
"Yes, what?" She shot him a curious glance.
The C-Sec Sergeant relaxed and went on. "We've got a large massing of geth incoming, ma'am. Our scopes are being overloaded, but we know that they're coming in force. The colossus over there was just the vanguard."
"Shit." She shot Anderson a look, which was returned with steel in the human's eye. "Tell me, Sergeant..."
"Caestron, Ma'am." He gave a faint nod. "If you're looking for that barefaced bastard, he went up the Tower."
"Blast it, he's trying to take control of the Citadels!" Vasir snarled. "Alright people! It's time to finish this once and for all!"
Anderson gave a nod and shot a glance at Williams, who was staring at the older man with a look of reverent awe. "Right. Up the tower people, on the double!"
Tali gave a quiet wail, but straightened up as Kasumi slowly rubbed her back. Garrus and Wrex crammed into the elevator first, while the rest of them filed in. Jack was last, the heavily-armored woman shooting a longing stare at the Monument, before shooting a stare at the C-Sec officer. "If.. If anyone comes through that thing again, and asks which way we went. Tell them? Please?"
He hesitated, then gave a nod. "I've got to man the defenses, Miss."
She nodded back and headed to the elevator, which Williams was holding open for her. The marine gave the armored woman a sympathetic look, but Jack shouldered it aside.
Joru would follow along, she was sure of it.
The doors shut on an expression that would have made Saren go white with terror, as fire lurked in Jack's eyes.
"Goddess Athame... NO!" Matriarch Lidanya of the Destiny Ascension, cried out in distress, then began barking orders. "All ships! The Geth flagship is heading straight for the Citadel! Do not allow it to enter before the arms close!"
"Arms closing, five minutes to closure!" Her operations officer reported over the sound of klaxons The ship was vast, and its crew of over ten thousand (mostly) asari were rushing to battlestations as quickly as they could.
"Matriarch, Look!" The helm officer was staring in shock as the ancient and venerable turian dreadnought Oath of Order flared its engines The thousand-year-old dreadnought had originally been of salarian design, but over the past millennium, the Turians had made it their own. Now, too old to serve as part of the patrol fleet, and too 'alien' to serve as part of the Palaven Defense Fleet, it stood as the most powerful ship in the Citadel Defense Fleet, save the Destiny Ascension.
Even as the geth flagship streaked in, the venerable vessel kept firing. The geth ship was far too fast to be that big, and far too big to be that fast, but the Oath of Order kept its position, it's older spinal canon able to fire more rapidly with its less-powerful rounds.
Shot after shot hammered home into the geth ship, its shields flaring with each impact, but it didn't stop, or even slow. And the Oath was too old to react when they realized the other ship wasn't making any course corrections.
Lidanya couldn't pull her gaze away, urging the ancient ship, sister in all but blood to her own, to pull away. The Oath was turning, but too slow. Too old.
The geth ship slammed into it at considerable velocity, shouldering aside the fragments and shrapnel of the Oath of Order like so much dust and debris. All was silent on the bridge of the Destiny Ascension for a moment, before a soft sob came from the comm officer.
That's right, poor Alvanna. Her husband had been on the Oath...
"That... that monstrosity didn't even slow down..." Lidanya's voice was a faint breath.
Then the ship rocked, and warning lights flashed. There was still a battle to fight, and the Geth were relentless. "Shields down to 78%, Matriarch!"
"Target the dreadnought and fire! How long until we clear the Citadel?"
"One minute ma'am, but..." The operations officer didn't look happy.
"But that monster is already inside. We'll just have to hope that the citadel defense turrets can do what the Oath of Order could not. What's the status of C-Sec?"
"Unknown, ma'am, we can't get contact." The comms officer's face was streaked with tears, but her voice was as professional as ever. "Matriarch, the council is on board! We just had word from Shuttlebay six!"
The Matriarch's spine relaxed slightly. "Thank the Goddess. All available power to the engines, get us out of here!"
"Matriarch! We're getting a message from the Council, it's Councilor Sparatus!"
"Open a channel."
"Captain, status report! Now!" Gone was the usual biting bluster of the Turian Councilor, now there was professional tone of a born-and-bred turian officer.
"Shields down to 76%, Sir. Engines holding, but our spinal cannons are useless against the Geth ships, they're too small and fast."
"Spirits damn those machines! What of the Citadel Defense fleet?"
She had to report this, but it was so very hard. "We lost the Oath of Order, sir. The geth flagship...rammed it, sir. Total loss."
"Rammed the Oath of Order? Spirits, tell me there was at least some damage done to that flagship!"
"None, sir. The flagship just... crashed through it like it wasn't even there. They died heroes' death, sir. They did their duty, right to the bitter end."
There was a long sigh of regret on the other end. "I appreciate the sentiment, Captain. But in the Hierarchy, such sacrifice is expected. Victory at any cost. I'm afraid that wasteful sacrifice is scorned rather than saluted."
The Matriarch bowed her head. It was surprising to hear such talk from Sparatus. It was sometimes easy to forget that in the Turian meritocracy one was not selected for such a high-ranking position as Councilor without many proven years of service, leadership and devotion.
"I've just been informed that Valern is aboard too. I'm heading to the tactics room. Valern will stay in engineering. If Tevos manages to arrive, she'll be heading to the bridge."
Sensible. The three most heavily protected areas of the ship, but not the same area of the ship, in case of catastrophic damage to one zone or another. "I hope she makes it, we're nearly out of the Citadel now, Councilor."
"What's the fleet's numbers? Is there anyway we can get to the flagship and stop what that ship is trying to do to the Citadel?"
This was not going to be pleasant. "We don't have clear numbers of the opposition yet, sir. Reports keep coming in, but they're confused. Best guess is in the region of a thousand to ten thousand frigate-sized vessels, fewer destroyer-class ships, and perhaps two or three dozen cruiser-weight vessels. And their flagship."
"...Repeat, how many Geth did you say?" The councilor's voice had risen a little.
Lidanya lurched in her chair as another round scored a hit. "A thousand to ten thousand sir. It's difficult to get accurate readings and identify specific ships, they aren't running the usual IFF signals with unique identifiers."
She broke off as the ship winged out past the Citadel Wards. It was worse than she had thought. Half the Citadel Defense Fleet was already wrecked, and the rest of it was being picked apart by swarms of smaller ships. Not wolfpacks of three to six ships per larger opponent, these were dozens of ships per one of her own.
And Lidanya could see a swarm headed her way. "Councilor, I have to go. Brace yourself, we're in for a bumpy ride."
"Understood, Captain. Do whatever you must."
Lidanya prayed to the Goddess that she wouldn't have to sacrifice her ship, the way the Oath had. The first impacts of the frigate-scale ships' firepower began to make the shield bubble ripple slightly, but had only a minuscule draining effect on the main shield strength. For a moment, she thought that the Ascension would weather the storm of fire, before one of the cruisers hit her.
The ship reeled as the resonance of the shield bubble, tuned into by the smaller ships, utterly failed to stop the cruiser-weight shell from smashing into the hull. The wounded dreadnought turned ponderously, but the Destiny Ascension had a trick or two that ordinary dreadnoughts, and smaller vessels did not have.
Dropping engine boost for the moment, the mightiest dreadnought in Council Space loaded, and fired the main gun. Pulsing the astronomically expensive eezo drive core, precisely timed with the launch of the round, the drive gave the projectile a ten-degree kick to one side, allowing the off-axis cruiser to feel the full power of the asari dreadnought's fury.
The geth ship lurched visibly, gouts of secondary explosions visible as the titanic impact cracked the shields and crippled the cruiser.
But that still left dozens of frigates hammering on the shields, and now the ship was accelerating only with the power of her ion thrust engines. Powerful and durable, but for her size, they were plodding along. The Destiny Ascension was designed to require its drive core to be used in concert with its sublight engines, to bring the ship up to relatively quick and nimble for a dreadnought, but she couldn't use the drive in that mode, and use it for off-angle shots at the same time.
Her shields were being whittled down percentage point by percentage point, as the geth brought up two new cruisers to replace the one they'd removed. Soon, the hull bore new scars as the colossal dreadnought's shields were hammered into a resonance fracture once more, and this time the cruisers were staying far enough off-angle that the Ascension couldn't hit either, even with an off-angle shot.
Things were starting to look grim on the bridge, even as Tevos arrived, clad for some reason in a bathrobe. "Matriarch! ..Councilor! Shields down to 48%!"
Blast it, they couldn't take much more of this! While she had never been in an overwhelming battle like this before, centuries of experience taught her to recognize the tides of battle. She could feel it. They were cornered and didn't have the numbers. Even her legendary mentor who was undefeated in the Krogan Rebellions would be outmatched in this battle.
They were merely staving off the inevitable.
"Matriarch! The Relay is flaring!" Her comms officer's report was cracking under the strain.
Lidanya sighed. The geth had had reinforcements. Game set and match. She looked to the side, where the Councilor had taken a seat. "We'll hold out as long as we can, Councilor, but.."
"Wait!" Comms Officer Alvanna held up a hand. Her face was streaked with tears, but an incredulous smile was starting in her eyes. "Contact data coming in from the new arrivals!"
She turned, fresh tears in her eyes, but not tears of grief. Tears of joy. "It's the Alliance!"
"This is Admiral Stephen Hackett. All capital ships take Saber-formation, all carriers take Archer-formation. Move in in rank-eschalon. Primary objective: Save the Destiny Ascension!"
The admiral's voice rang over the comms as the ad-hoc fleet, comprising elements of the First, Seventh, and all of Fifth Fleet, began to assume a defensive formation. The core was built of cruisers, flanking around the dreadnoughts, while behind them the carriers closed in. Frigates ranged ahead of the main core fleet, in staggered formations at various levels.
The geth turned almost in unison, frigates winging in, at first piecemeal, then in ever greater numbers as they clashed with the Alliance frigate formations. Cruiser fire blasted frigates from the path of the main thrust of the fleet, while dreadnoughts punched holes in Geth cruisers.
The Destiny Ascension had many scorch-marks on her pristine grey-white hull by now, as the frigates hounding her began to be picked off by long-range fire from the Alliance cruisers, the massive vessel beginning a slow, ponderous turn to port, angling to bring itself behind the main formation.
"This is Matriarch Lidanya of the Destiny Ascension. The Citadel Defense Fleet thanks the Alliance for their timely aid!"
Several turian cruisers were still operational, at least in part. The Blade of Taetrus fought its way clear of the frigates nibbling at its shields by executing a full burn through the Alliance frigate screen, before moving into position on the starboard flank of the Alliance formation. Other cruisers followed suit, if they were still capable.
Three Geth cruisers close to the Ascension successively began implode, suffering from rapid critical strikes by the Normandy itself, in no small thanks to her stealth drive and the exemplary skill of her unique pilot.
"Gentlemen!" Joker jubilantly called out. "Let's plow the road!"
The fighter wings that had formed up on the undersized frigate screamed ahead, sending showers of Javelin torpedoes into the remaining cruisers, knocking down their shields for long enough that dreadnought fire hammered them into scrap metal.
But behind them, the ominous maw of the Citadel itself had sealed shut, blocking out any hope at rescuing the inhabitants, or striking back at the geth dreadnought.
"Destiny Ascension, this is Admiral Hackett of the Systems Alliance. You are all clear, repeat, you are all clear. What's your system status? Is the Council safe?"
"You have our thanks, Admiral Hackett." The vast dreadnought was having problems maintaining formation, slipping back towards the carrier group. "The Council is safe and onboard. Our shields are down to 26%, and we have damage across all subsystems, but most critical damage is to our drive systems. We are having trouble maintaining acceleration."
"Thank god." Hackett sighed in relief. "We'll keep you covered, Ascension. What's the status of the Citadel Fleet? And where is the Sovereign, the Geth flagship?"
"93% of the fleet is...destroyed, Admiral. We're practically all that's left." The asari's voice wavered slightly. "The geth flagship, designation 'Sovereign', is inside the Citadel. It...rammed our flagship, Admiral. Didn't even slow it down."
"I'm sorry to hear that, Matriarch. I visited the Oath on my first tour of the Citadel. But do you mean that two-kilometer monstrosity is free to do who knows what inside and we can't even get at it?"
"Correct, Admiral." The Ascension was being surrounded by its own screen of cruisers now, at the Admiral's direction, as well as being flanked by a pair of dreadnoughts, detached from the main formation. "We've been sending the codes to activate the Citadel's automated systems and open the Wards, but so far they haven't been responding."
"Keep at it. I'm sure that after six thousand years, the Council races have made a few back doors. Once you get the arms open, we hammer that ship with everything we got. And so will our friends."
"You started the party without me? I'm hurt, Hackett." The new voice on the channel was that of a turian. "Oraka here, with the Palaven Combined Fleets. My apologies for the wait, Councilors, the Primarch wanted to send everything he could spare."
The relay had flared and was still flaring, as squadron after squadron of turian vessels poured into the Widow system. The first to arrive were a phalanx of dreadnoughts, flanked by cruisers and escorted by yet more frigates. Another flare and a solid dozen cruisers and still more frigates arrived. And again, and again, as the Relay disgorged more and more ships, nearly equaling that of the hastily-assembled Alliance fleet.
"Oh, don't you worry, Oraka." Hackett gave a somber chuckle. "The Ascension and Citadel Fleet may be out of further danger for now, but our most dangerous adversary is still in play."
The Geth were already massing for a counter-assault Their frigates were nearly within touching distance as they arrowed in, spitting torpedoes and rapid-fire rounds to hammer on the shields of the larger ships, seeking for a resonance fracture. A momentary flickering of the shields as the natural resonance frequency of the system generating them was overloaded, much like how glass will break if a certain note is played. A cruiser flared briefly as its shields were hammered, and a Geth cruiser cored it with a high-powered round.
"All ships, begin evasive action, but hold formation if at all possible. We just have to wait until the arms open!"
There was a running joke among the humans who resided on the Citadel. If offered an elevator ride, they would respond, "No thank you, I'm in a hurry!"
The asari on the other hand, with their long lives and legendary patience, were never bothered by the otherwise notoriously slow speed of the Citadel elevators. The short-lived races cared too much about making haste, rarely realizing that haste made too little actual speed.
But for the first time, Liara T'Soni found herself actually wondering if the other races were onto something.
The three humans in the elevator, which was a bit more cramped than she'd ever remembered one being, kept fidgeting. Anderson was engaged in a low-voiced conversation with Vasir off to one side, and Williams at the back seemed incapable of remaining still with so many aliens around her. She kept checking her assault rifle over and over, and ignoring the helpful suggestions of the turian, Garrus she thought his name was.
Jack, the heavily armored human, however...
Liara could feel her anxiety, fear, and the miserable strand of twisted hope running through the girl's mind. Liara was right up at the front of the elevator, one of the last to enter, after practically begging her mother to allow her this one thing. Aethyta and Benezia had all but ordered her to come with them back to C-Sec Academy. Her mother was dangerously exhausted, both physically and biotically, and Aethyta was more concerned with keeping the other matriarch safe than going up the length of the Citadel Tower, to fight a mad turian bastard, augmented by who-knows-what mystic fuckery, to use the woman's own curious phrase.
The heavily armored human's sheer stillness, while her emotions roiled and surged behind her was almost as disturbing as the emotions themselves, which kept finding rents in her own rage through which to slip and startle her all over again with the woman's anxiety, fear, and hopeless longing.
But why... ah.
"You," Liara spoke, turning around and peering into the helmeted face. "You are the one I saw. The Darastrix's consort."
The helmeted head jerked back a little, before the woman relaxed slightly. "Um.. yeah?"
"I recognize your aura, back when I was... when I was trapped on the other side." Liara forced down the unpleasant memories. "You share her bed and you gave her your heart, and now you are terrified for her."
The twin asari seemed to be listening rather intently, their eerie meld-black eyes somehow still awake and aware. The human shrugged slightly and shuffled a bit. "... well... yeah. I mean, I..."
She sighed a bit. "I just... I don't know if she's dead or not, I mean... I don't think she's dead but..."
Asari learned to see the grief of loss in the eyes and movements of the other races a thousand times; after all, it happened all the time for their shortly-lived kind. Liara had learned it as well, and she could see it now. The human was afraid the darastrix was lost.
"She is not gone. I saw the true depth of her aura when I was... away from my body. There is a power there, a destiny that I doubt even she herself is aware of. It burns with the unending certainty of the stars. Not only am I sure that the darastrix still lives, I am also reasonably certain that she is not far behind. It is something that I can feel it in my bones, now that I bear some of her own blood."
Williams was giving her an odd stare now, and even Wrex was eyeing her. Jack's blank-visored helm merely gazed at her for a moment before she gave a faint nod. "...I feel that too."
"Then you already taking your first steps into something much... larger. And unknown." Liara nodded.
Sniff sniff.
Liara turned her head to give Wrex a glare. "Please. Do not do that, krogan."
"You smell like an asari, blueberry. But also not. Strange, but kinda familiar." The crimson-eyed krogan glared back at her.
Liara couldn't help but smile, showing her new teeth.
The krogan blinked, then began to chuckle. "Now I know why you smell weird, blueberry."
Vasir on the other stared. Then she glanced at the twins and back at Liara before mentally wondering if nothing was sacred to the damn dragon.
Even as she was opening her mouth to say something, there was a horrendous screeching as the elevator's emergency breaks deployed, bringing the racing railcar to a stop.
The primary reason for the long duration of the Citadel's elevator rides was the long distance that they covered. After all, it was several kilometers from the Presidium Ring to the base of the Council Tower, and even more up along the tower itself. They'd already made the transition, but the elevator had been halted part-way up the Tower.
"Damnit, looks like we're going to have to go the rest of the distance on foot. Helmets on, everyone!"
"Spectre Vasir, wait!" Liara suddenly cried in alarm when the older asari was about to shoot out the glass. "We can't do that, I don't have a helmet, or a pressurized suit!"
Vasir looked the T'Soni up and down, and snarled. "Damnit, we don't have much time! Alright, let me think..."
"Wait!" It was the quarian, who was suddenly fumbling with her glove, fumbling with it. "Just a minute, just a minute! There!"
She tore off the glove, exposing a hand made not of flesh and blood, but metal and plastic, on which was an ornate ring, glittering with sparkling jewels. She fiddled with the sleeve on that arm, which seemed to compress around her wrist, and slid the ring carefully off her finger, before offering it to Liara. "Joru gave me this, she said that it had.. had an emergency exposure function? I tested it, and it keeps the air around the wearer fresh, even if she's in vacuum!"
Liara's eyes bulged. "Wait... what?"
Oh good, she wasn't the only one staring in disbelief at the quarian.
"It's got what she called a 'base level of protection' on it." The quarian pushed the ring at her again, then grabbed her hand with the other, still-suited hand and pressed the ring into it. "Wear it, and we can all go!"
"I am sorry, are you seriously telling me that a tiny piece of jewelry can protect me from the hard vacuum of space?"
"Hey, didn't Joru bring you back from the dead?" Jack pointed out with an ironic smirk in her voice.
A brief pause as Liara felt Williams's eyes bore in the back of her head.
"...I see your point."
She slid the ring, sized for a quarian finger, onto her thumb, and gave a faint sigh. "Well, I suppose if I die here, I'll just haunt you all until the day you all cross over."
Talk whimpered and visibly shrunk into herself. Liara suddenly felt as horrible as the day she accidentally dropped a Prothean tablet in front of her entire class.
She didn't even know what had come over her to say such a hurtful thing. "Tali, I..."
"Fuckit. If you die, it's your own fault for trusting that bitch." Liara only had time for a sudden gasp before the Spectre pulled the trigger.
Air blasted out around her, she felt buffeted by it, and almost was ripped from the car before the air finished evacuating itself. Then, all was silence, except the beating of her heart, and the harsh sound of her own breathing.
Wait. She was breathing!
Liara stared at the ring.
...Does not compute! This went against every form of science she had studied at Serrice University, but...!
"See?" Tali's voice came to her oddly, as the quarian patted her hand. "I told you it would work!"
One of Vasir's scouts was handing her something, miming putting the bead into her ear. As she did, she could hear Vasir's voice again. "...lock your boots and get ready to head out. We're going to have to head up the tower, and I have no idea what we've got out here. Geth almost assuredly, krogan possibly."
Wrex's low growl came in loud and clear at that mention, and he racked the slide on the ancient-looking gun of his.
"So prep and move out as quick as you can!" Vasir nodded to her scouts, who stepped out of the open wall of the elevator. In seconds their magboots had locked to the side of the tower, and they were heading up the side, weapons drawn.
Wrex was next, shouldering the others aside, then Vasir. Williams hesitated, then followed the older human man out the wall, leaving her, the turian, Garrus, and Tali, as well as a hooded and masked human woman.
"Ummm..." Liara looked tentatively at her own feet. Sure, she could breathe fine now, but-
Tali wordlessly bent down and started fiddling with Liara's boots.
"What are you doing?"
"Giving you jury-rigged magnetic locks. We have to have backups on the Flotilla all the time in case something goes wrong. These should last you a few hours."
The bands that fitted around her ankles felt weird at first, but after Tali finished fiddling with them they were... at least acceptable, if...odd. Testing them against the sidewall of the elevator car showed they worked at least, and so Liara took a deep breath of the airless void and stepped carefully out of the elevator.
It was time for the final push to the finish.
The geth just kept coming. They felt no fear, and didn't hesitate or slow down, even as the mound of shattered mechanical bodies grew outside their gun-nest. Victus snapped off another shot, even as Caestron sprayed bullets at another geth coming in from the other direction.
They'd been holding the line alone ever since the lieutenant got hit by splinters from a near-miss of a rocket. So far, they'd been lucky, but both of them knew it was only a matter of time. Reinforcements were coming up from below in the Academy, but that will take time.
Another damned geth made the summit of Mount Scrap-Pile and charged down the near slope. Victus gave a short bark, and Caestron added his firepower to that of his partner, both of them hosing the charging juggernaut with armor-piercing assault-rifle fire until the damn thing fell over, giving that warbling blatting sound that Geth did when they died..
Caestron spun around giving another warning shout, as four geth came from the other direction. Both turians ducked as the quartet of rockets streaked over their position to impact against the hardened casemate-walls of the public-facing entrance of the Academy. Once again, Victus blessed that long-dead architect for doing his job so damned well.
It felt good to have his partner back. Caestron had been off his feet for over a month, and spent the next three slowly going through retraining to bring him back up to speed. Victus had been released for active duty again after only a week, but spent most of his time with Caestron, when his girlfriend would let him. She understood though, she was a physical trainer at a gym he frequented in the Wards.
Right now, it felt so damn good to have his partner backing him up as the pair of them dealt with three of the four rocket troopers.
They didn't have to deal with the fourth one though.
Victus caught a glimpse of something, the quality of the light changed. The presidium darkened for a moment, and then he was acting, grabbing Caestron and hurling him flat, landing beside him as their barricade took the brunt of it.
A truly massive wall of water slammed against the walls of C-Sec as if the very lake had decided to join the fray. A deluge sleeted through the air, as water broke over the barricade, and the backwash hammered Victus against the wall of the building, both he and Caestron crying out.
The huge mounds of geth were tumbling into the lake now, as the lake boiled and frothed. What the hell had the geth done, tried to drain the lake to get at them from that direction?
Then something black emerged from the water, and Victus suddenly found himself wishing it had been just the geth.
It was huge, easily the size of an aircar, the thick fingers as big around as his torso as the huge clawed paw came to rest on the edge of the walkway over the lake. Something else emerged, sluicing water off itself, as the lake roiled around it. It shot skyward, as something truly huge began pulling itself slowly out of the lake. Fire blossomed against its side and the tremendous long thing snaked around.
"By all the spirits, it's a thresher maw..." Victus's voice was weak with terror.
Caestron shook his head, "That's no thresher maw."
He was right. Something vast flicked out, the rush of air around it sounding like wind in the branches of a tree, as it smashed into something on the far side of the lake. The truly titanic body was visible now. No thresher maw, even if the head at the end of that long, long neck was frilled with long, jagged spikes. The jaw worked more like a varren's opening wide before...
Before spraying fire like a firehose over the Geth that had been annoying it. A visceral, gut-churning terror rooted Victus to the spot, his knees quaking, and Caestron's soft whimper in his ears.
Then the vast shape, which had now mostly emerged from the lake, flexed its vast, roof-like wings, shook them with the sound of a building rattling in a high wind, and brought its huge, spike-lined neck around, the tank-sized head coming closer and closer, little licks of flame dancing from the nostrils.
"WHERE IS SAREN?"
The voice was deep, so deep it shook in Victus's chest. He couldn't move, he couldn't speak, he could barely think in the presence of this monster which could barely even fit inside C-Sec Academy's vast atrium.
The thing tilted its head slightly, eyes the size of his head glowing with a deep ruby light. When it spoke next, the deep, subterranean voice was softer, almost soothing. "I will not hurt you. Which way did Saren go?"
Victus swallowed, feeling like a tiny child first presented with the stern face of Authority. His voice cracked and warbled, but he managed to get the words out in the right order and not crap himself in terror. "H-H-He w-went upthe.. the T-Tower..."
"Thank you." The thunder-growl of a voice rumbled softly at him. "You might want to go inside."
The thing, and damn if he wasn't already labeling it 'the spirit of fury given flesh' in his head, looked up the length of the Presidium, ignoring the continuing and continuous spatter of Geth fire pattering off its blackened hide, and flexed its huge wings, each the size of a small landing pad.
The hurricane as those vast wings snapped downwards, even as the thing lept skyward nearly blew Victus back through the door to the Academy, the long snake-like tail emerging from the lake, tipped with a collection of jagged spikes of what looked like glass.
One beat, then two, and then...
It was gone, with a thunderclap of displaced air.
Victus shared a look with his partner, swallowing his terrified whimper. "D-Did you g-get that?"
"I g-got it, alr-right." Caestron looked every bit as wobbly as Victus felt, and slumped against the wall. "B-Better call this one in to the Executor."
"Y-Yeah. Spirits..."
He and Caestron abandoned their post, post haste, slamming the door shut behind them.
And for some damn reason, he couldn't quite shake a sense of familiarity.
She let the rage flow through her, pivoting and blasting away with a speed and precision she had never known before. The kick of the gun in her hand was considerable, but manageable, and even Wrex seemed startled by how thoroughly Jack's new weapon tore through geth and tank-grown krogan alike.
While the latter took a great deal of shots to kill, the full-auto function was quite nice, as it allowed her to shred the fuckers that got in her way with rapid blasts of violet energy, which tore through armor like tissue paper, and shields like they weren't even there.
Wrex was pouting at her like a child deprived of a toy, which only made her smirk beneath her helmet.
They'd made good progress up the side of the spire, and the sight of the respirator-less asari girl with them still freaked Jack a little. Liara, she'd introduced herself as, that poor girl they'd failed to save on Virmire. Joru'd done something with her, and now the asari tore through entire massed formations of geth like a wrecking ball, opening up a path for Jack to follow, which she did with alacrity and thanks.
They were getting up closer and closer to the top of the Council Tower now, and the tremendous dreadnought perched atop the spire was getting quite visible. The Wards of the Citadel made a full sky of cityscape above, which only dimly illuminated the writhing dreadnought.
"Here, hatch here, that leads into the Council Chambers. It's a service maintenance hatch for some of the power conduits running through the floor. Once we're in, we can pop up and blow any buggers in there to the scrapyard afterlife."
Vasir was crouched behind a small rise in the topography of the spire, pointing at a meter-square hatch marked with orange against black background, which Tali and her two scouts were already working on.
Garrus hefted his long rifle and took a breather, giving Jack a slight nod as she kept a look out for more geth.
They'd not seen them in any great numbers since that dropship got driven off by the automated defense turrets that Tali had hotwired. Sending something like sixteen rockets into the thing had made it take the hint and bugger off, which suited Jack fine, even if she had unloaded a burst in its direction too.
"Got it! Everyone inside, on the double!" Vasir was the first through the hatch, followed swiftly by first Anderson, then the twin scouts. Wrex was next, with Williams close behind and Garrus gallantly offered Jack to go next.
Instead, she gestured for Tali to hop in, then followed the quarian before Kasumi could, smirking a little at the annoyed sound the infiltrator made. Garrus came last after Liara had slid in, and pulled the hatch shut.
After the silence of hard vacuum, Wrex's voice sounded especially loud as the airlock cycled. "Fun fight. Man, this tunnel is cramped. Or maybe that's just me, too many snacks of roast varren leg."
"Well that's what you get for always raiding the Normandy's gallery." Williams prodded the krogran in the back of the leg, making Wrex grunt at her.
Jack gave a smirk as she slid through the shaft, following the quarian's shapely rump. Damn, but Joru had spoiled her.
"Williams, take Kasumi and Ms Zorah up through the right-hand shaft at this T-junction." Anderson's voice cut in through the comms network, followed a moment later by the Alliance soldier's acknowledgment "Vasir, you got the left?"
"Just get off my ass, Anderson." The asari sounded amused. "Jack, you wanna come or stay with your buddies in the Alliance."
Jack glanced at Liara, Wrex, the Twins and the Spectre all in the same group. With those powerhouses, their group would be fine. "Yeah, probably best I cover the Captain's team."
"Right. There's another junction up here. Twins, scout. Wrex, with me. There st of you, take the other branch." Something about the HUD in Jack's helmet made the pitch-black shaft look as light as day, though in a washed-out grayscale way. "Wait for my signal before popping cover. We'll hit them from three directions."
Kasumi had already squirmed past her, eel-like in the tight confines. Garrus gave a faint chuckle from behind Liara. "Just us three, huh? Nice of the Spectre to leave me a couple lovely ladies to care for."
Jack smirked as she heard Liara swat the armored turian. "Right, this way."
Garrus and Liara followed the armored human, the latter staring at her hand as if she couldn't believe she had struck the turian, even good-naturedly.
The end of the line came far faster than Jack had expected, and the label on the hatch said 'elevator access'. "Damnit, Vasir, did you have to stick me in time-out?"
"That asari with you's on her last legs, keep an eye on her." Jack turned towards where Liara was looking affronted. "I don't want her collapsing in biotic exhaustion in the middle of a firefight, that's a good way to get killed, and the matriarchs would have my hide nailed to a wall if I let that happen."
Jack gave a faint sigh and tilted her head a bit in Liara's direction, planting her butt on the floor and shrugging a bit. Garrus came up behind, having to angle his gun awkwardly to fit the two-meter-long killing machine through the meter-wide shaft.
"Damn. First I'm doing after this is find a way to add our folding mechanics to this thing." The turian grumbled a little, but sounded amused, under his helmet.
Jack just gave a slight snicker as she waited for Vasir's signal.
The closet that Vasir found for them was cramped. Very cramped with three asari wedged in here with him. They didn't seem to think it was all that cramped, but asari are like fish, you can cram a surprising lot of them into a tiny little can.
"Gotta admit, I always knew Saren would go rotten since the day I met him, but never thought I'd be there to see him put down. And in the Council's own chambers no less!"
"You know Saren? You've met him?" Vasir shot him a look, having to crane her neck to do so. The twins merely blinked up at him, with those freaky black eyes of theirs.
"I've been around since before you Spectres were a thing, I've met more than a few of you." Wrex rumbled, "But yeah, I ran into him once."
"When?" Vasir seemed a bit interested. "I haven't met him yet, so all this is kinda a bad introduction."
"Eh, it was a while ago. Few years." The battlemaster shrugged, well as best he could in the confined space. "This band of mercs was on a recruiting drive for more muscle to raid ships near the Terminus. Good fighting, good credits and the boss was never around to ride us. Until a few months later when we took out this massive volus cargo freighter. Our biggest haul yet. That was when I saw him."
"What was he like?" One of the twins had spoken, her voice curious, but her other half continued. "Back then, we mean."
Damn, those twins were eerie, finishing off each other's words. Then again, the way their firm bodies filled out their commando leather made it especially easy to forgive.
"I didn't really know. Still don't. The fight was over, and I was checking the bodies for some extra loot. And there he was, just... moving around, watching us. Some of the mercs called out to him, but he never even looked at them. When I saw him, I forgot everything I was doing, the job didn't matter anymore." Urdnot Wrex turned rather quiet as he remembered that day. "I've fought asari commandos, drell assassins, more than a few salarian spies, raided a few turian warships... I've seen it all. But when I saw Saren, I had a very, very bad feeling about him. A feeling that I only felt twice before in my entire life, where I felt like I was standing in a nest of hungry Thresher Maws ready to snap. At that moment, I didn't care about the money anymore. So I got the hell off that ship and burned engines to the nearest Relay. And I never looked back."
The twins seemed to drink in his story, their liquid-black eyes reminding him of something he saw a long, long time ago.
"What-" , the first twin began, and the second finished, "-happened?"
"Heh. My instincts were dead on." He shot Vasir a glance, rolling his eye to do so. "Every merc on that job turned up dead within a week."
The asari Spectre shivered slightly. "I've never worked with Saren, but I've occasionally read reports. He always struck me as a cold one."
"Well, I knew there was something wrong with him, but I sure never figured that I'd be there to actually see him and his mystery robot army bite the dust. And protecting a couple of asari while I'm at it, with my new favorite shotgun." He gave a grin and cocked the weapon meaningfully.
The twins gave identical smiles, and one of them touched his chestplate. They reminded him of something, but what he couldn't quite put his finger on. And Vasir didn't let him ponder it to long in any case. "Right, Anderson's in position. Everyone get ready. We pop in five. Four. Three..."
Tali was really wishing she had her ring back.
The air from her rebreathers just wasn't right anymore, it smelled weird and musty. Oh Keelah, she had probably forgotten to change a filter somewhere. She could barely get enough breath to keep running, even as Anderson and Williams broke ahead, and Kasumi vanished to do her own thing.
She could see the silver-clad Turian at the glowing hologram, a haptic console in bloody-red and angry-orange. The Geth were behind him, heading down the stairs and covering each other with crossfire as they did so. A few of them were starting to turn back towards where Anderson and Williams were taking up firing positions at the pillars to the side of the Council Chambers, but the turian, that had to be Saren, he was ignoring them.
'Ignore me at your own risk, bosh'tet.' She growled internally, panting for breath as she slid into cover beside Williams. "I need to get to that console, stop him doing whatever her's doing!"
"Oh, I'll distract him alright," Anderson let out a low growl. "Do you have a lock, Gunnery Sergeant?"
Williams gave a curt nod, sighting down her assault rifle. "Locked and loaded, Skipper."
"And what about you, Sly Boots?" Anderson asked Kasumi on the comm, using the nickname N7s had for their Infiltrator division.
"Oh, I'm just peachy, Firecracker!" Kasumi sounded gleeful from wherever she'd gotten to, the old nickname for the heavy branch of the N7s. "I'm setting up to get the drop on this bastard, don't worry your little head about me!"
Captain Anderson gave a soft snort and turned back to the soldier with a serious expression. "Don't get too trigger-happy, Williams. I know what he's done better than most . I know he took away your entire squad on Eden Prime. He took a lot from me as well. But you must stay focused."
"Saren was the Council's most dangerous Spectre, and that was before whatever the Reapers did to him. I saw the way he fought against Joru, who we once knew as Commander Jordan Shepard. Trust me, as much as we want to, we can't be reckless because we aren't able to even hurt him. All we can do is keep him distracted long enough to create an opening for those who can."
Williams shot him a look, and let out a soft sigh, nodding and cuddling her rifle against her cheek. "Ready, sir."
Anderson nodded solemnly and closed his eyes, taking a long deep breath. Then he charged out of cover, bellowing at the top of his lungs.
"SAREN!"
"Anderson." The turian didn't even look in his direction. "Are you finished making whatever pathetic preparations you think adequate?"
"Sorry if we kept you waiting, Arterius," the Captain called, aiming his Valkyrie at the turian. "Had to wipe out several hundred of your followers as a good warm up on the way. But it's over now, you old son of a bitch. Turn around and step away from the console."
"You always were slow, Anderson." The turian didn't move, his hands still working at the haptic interface. "You humans, always rushing in where you're not wanted."
"Heh, I'd be a hypocrite if I said we didn't understand the sentiment. After all," Anderson frowned. "Isn't that what your brother Desolas and his men did at Shanxi?"
The turian paused, then gave a soft snort. "That...was a different matter. And General Solandus was publicly executed for his bad judgment How long did it take for him to die, two weeks? Three? Humans are so bloodthirsty I heard that there were some who watched until he finally expired."
Saren turned finally, and his gleaming metallic features were nearly skull-like. "I won't let you suffer for nearly that long."
Anderson raised an incredulous eyebrow. "Are you truly so surprised, Saren? In order to enforce an edict that humanity never heard of, Solandus offered no warning, made no attempts at contact, and furthermore ignored our own attempts at communication, and just opened fire upon coming across a flotilla of unarmed civilian science vessels! And on top of it all, he outright ignored the fact that Relay 314 was not a part of Turian space and instead decided to consider Citadel law applicable outside of its official borders!
"Solandus considered the actions of a few civilian vessels to be provocation enough for mass planetary invasion, extended siege warfare and goddamn orbital bombardment!" Anderson roared. "Tens of thousands of innocent people died at Shanxi through deliberately intended collateral damage! So tell me, after so many die at the hand of injustice, is the desire to watch justice carried out something truly exclusive to humans?"
Saren's eyes narrowed, and far too quick for the human to follow, his pistol seemed to leap from his hip. "All of this is beside the point, Anderson. The end has come. The Reapers are here, and there is nothing you can do to stop that."
"Maybe," Anderson shrugged. "But at least I can keep a murderous self-righteous asshole distracted long enough."
The click had come through over his comms, a code that Kasumi was in place. Now, the ex-N7 gave a fiendish grin as she tapped her omnitool, clinging to the underside of the bridge.
A high-voltage charge speared up through the insulated cable that she'd flash-forged from omnigel, running up the thickness of the bridge itself, and spreading out under Saren's feet in a gossamer-thin spiderweb.
Now, the high-powered discharge slammed through the specialized trap and sent a paralyzing charge racing up Saren's metallic leg, spearing into his spine and making him give a birdlike squawk of shock, pain, and startlement. For a moment he stood, partially paralyzed by the shock, before he began to topple, breaking the contact and the circuit and starting to react.
"Bad Birb! No cracker!" Kasumi slid around the side of the bridge, her omnitool impacting on Saren's back, even as he started to turn in her direction, sending another hundred-thousand-volt charge through his chest.
"Let's finish this, once and for all!" Anderson rushed forwards, even as Saren swept his arm around, trying to pin Kasumi in his sights.
The human infiltrator was too flexible though, bending over backwards to avoid the near contact-range blast of Saren's pistol, flipping off the bridge in the process.
Saren was forced into using a Charge to get out of the fusillade of fire that both Anderson and Williams were sending his way, blasting off the bridge and into cover on the far side walk of the Council Chambers. Tali took that as her cue.
She gasped musty, unclean air as she sprinted across the open space, bounding over the edge of the decorative glass-roofed garden, and onto the bridge itself. She was within touching distance of the console when she had to hunker down behind the railing, giving her scant cover from Saren's repeated blasts with his pistol, and the surge of some form of biotic that slammed into the rail itself just a few inches away from her head.
"How are you doing immuto-chan?" Kasumi's voice came her comm.
"How do you khenra THINK I'm doing, Bosh'tet?!" Tali's voice was shrill inside her helmet as she struggled not to freeze. "He's got me pinned down!"
"Whaaa?" Kasumi suddenly seemed to notice Tali's situation. "No, nope! Now I'm ticked! You don't touch a ninja's friend!"
The beleaguered turian was holding his own against the two humans, but when Kasumi landed on his back from somewhere overhead, he had to worry about the sudden extra 50 kilos of unhappy, contortionist-level ninja trying to stab him in the kidneys. This opened up his guard long enough for Williams to batter down his shields with a prolong burst of her AR, and for Anderson to sprint closer.
Meanwhile, Tali had a job to do, and she feverishly popped a panel on the console, hotwired a few things together, and cranked up her prosthetic-embeded omnitool as hot as it could go. Then she paused.
"Keelah Sel'ai, he forgot to lock the console!" She was in. Just like that, she was in! She immediately triggered the release of the Citadel Wards, at least she thought that was what that icon did, and noticed the repeated requests for wireless access, and the progress bar indicating a hardline connection was in the process of being established.
To what, she didn't know, but if it was a hardline connection, that meant something was in physical contact. And the only thing she knew of that was in physical contact with the Citadel right now, was that huge warship Saren used as his flagship.
"Nope, nope, nope, revoking your access bosh'tet! Nope, you aren't going to get your squiggly oversized bits in here, back you go!" She crowed as the progress bar turned from blue to orange, and began to retreat back towards zero. It had already been most of the way across, and was now slowly backing off towards the halfway point.
...Hold on, did she just save the galaxy?
At that moment, Anderson saw it. In an effort to stave off Chief Williams' barrage while also trying to handle the ridiculously flexible N7 Infiltrator at the same time, Saren left an opening. Eyes set with determination, Anderson took aim with his Valkyrie and—
And was startled by the low, guttural roar that rose from somewhere behind the Geth lines, drawing back the attention of the robots that had been trying to angle for a shot on Williams and himself. A blazing bolt of biotic blue slammed into Saren with the force of a cannon blast, sending him hurling across the chamber into the podiums the Council used during their public appearances.
Geth were being shredded out there, the terrible shriek of twisting metal and electronic blatting sounded almost terrified.
What the hell was going on over there?
Saren. She saw him clearly, despite the distance. Her entire attention was riveted on him, the slayer of innocence, the murderer of dreams.
She'd had nightmares every night she spent in his 'hospitality'. First of what he might do to her, then what he had done to her childhood friends.
And here he was, within her grasp at last. She strode forward, throwing off the hand on her arm, and sending a ball of biotic fury into a geth that turned to raise its gun in her direction.
It was beneath her notice. She stepped over its smoking corpse, and ascended the first set of stairs.
Now she saw more of the battle. Saw the brogan battle master off to one side, saw the Specter and her twin shadows to the other. Good of them to leave her an unobstructed path.
Well, not quite. There was a tree in her way. A burst of power sent it flying into the geth ahead of her as little more than splinters, and the followup bursts tore the geth apart. The railings too, but that was of no concern.
Saren was here, and she would not be denied her vengeance In her wake, scraped geth were lifted, and metal sheeting torn from the walls. She needed munitions, to properly vent her fury.
The Spectre was shouting something at her, but she paid her no mind. She was beneath her notice. Saren was all that mattered now.
"Saren!" She bared her teeth. "Your life is forfeit to me!"
His head snapped around, and his eyes widened. Recognition. Then he was distracted again by the two humans with guns. She strode up the second set of stairs, like the inevitability she was.
She felt her arm tingle as she sent another ball of biotics hurling into him, slamming him across the room, as she had wished to do so all this time. The rage was a comforting thing, a cold fury deep in her heart. It was good, to finally let it loose.
And Saren was her focus.
"He is mine!" With an idle flick of her wrist, the human soldiers were sent hurtling through the air away from Saren, tightening her fingers to halt their flight before smashing into the walls. A nearby hooded female that Liara almost didn't see watched the display, then promptly took the quarian and got out of her way.
"Liara!" The voice wasn't Saren's, he was rolling to his feet after the impact, having twisted to land feet-first against the wall. Good, he was ready for their conflict then.
A hand grasped her shoulder and wheeled her around with surprising force. The helmeted figure said something else, before she hurled her away, and turned back to Saren. Sparks burst against her barrier as his gun spat twice, thrice in as many heartbeats. It mattered not. Soon, he wouldn't have hands to hold guns.
"Dr. T'Soni..." Saren growled with a slight electronic burr, his implanted eyes glaring daggers at her. "How is it that you're still alive?"
"No." She growled, gesturing. At her command one of the metal plates was shredded into long, viciously-sharp strips. "Alive. Again."
"Alive... again?" Saren's eyes grew distant, confused by her words. His head tilted to the side, as if listening to a voice. Then his eyes suddenly blazed, his expression feral with rage. His entire stance changed into something entirely different, like a savage predator about to strike instead of a disciplined soldier.
"The Darastrix. An anomaly that has become... an annoyance. Such brazen interference will not be tolerated! The cycle cannot be stopped!"
More words. He needed less of them. She gestured, and flensing knives, honed from base metal and superior will, snapped out at her command. He shot one, dodged three more, before the fourth and seventh hit his shield. An annoyance, but one that can be dealt with. Instead of trying to pierce him, she sent a chunk of geth hurtling at him, following it up with a black-blue ball of Warp to shred and tear and devour.
"You should have accepted your place, asari! Your continued existence must be corrected!"
Words were beneath her, only his screams mattered. More metal was summoned, torn to shreds by her fury, and sent sleeting at him in torrents, fast enough and hard enough to spark his shield, and tear into the wall behind him as he moved.
He was far faster than she had realized. No matter, hers was the power, hers was the advantage. The stream of shredding metal moved at her will, guided by corridors of blue-black fury. Saren bounced from wall to bridge to floor as he attempted to evade the inevitable. He danced, she barely moved. The drain was starting to catch up with her, but she ignored it. This was her conflict. Her moment.
Then Saren froze for a brief moment when the terminal chimed.
::Codes accepted. Command confirmed. Reversing seals. Citadel arms opening...::
"No... No, no, no, No, NO!" The object of her ire looked around to where a quarian was waving at him from the side, her arm wrapped with light.
"Guess what, you bosh'tet?!" The quarian sounded triumphant, perhaps sharing in her retribution. "It's the 'meddling suit-rat' you sent your thugs after!"
He leapt towards the bridge, but she cut him off, a hailstorm of metal shards tearing at him in a grinding storm. Even his shield could not withstand her fury for long, and he gave a scream as his organic leg was torn to bloody tatters.
She... smiled.
The geth were being, if not handled, at least weathered. The initial focus had been on their cruisers, their heaviest-weight vessels, which cut down on the firepower they could bring to bear. The frigates could still hammer their shields, but without a cruiser to take advantage of a resonance fracture, they couldn't deal any significant damage unless they massed their forces.
Not that that was difficult to do with the combined Alliance and Turian fleets being still outmatched ten for one, but the Geth had to deal with hundreds of small fighter craft punishing them for any attempt to do an attack run on one of the larger vessels.
Oraka had to admit, seeing the carrier's usefulness first hand, it made more sense than he had initially imagined.
An aide reported in. "Penitent Martyr reports a fracture developing."
"Send a wolf-pack to harry the geth in that sector." He nodded at his XO, pleased with the man's quick thinking and decisive action. A worthy candidate for his own flotilla command.
"Sir! The Citadel Wards are opening!"
Oraka stepped forwards, tapping a command into his podium. "Hackett, you aware?"
"I see it. We're going in. Cover our flanks." The human's voice sounded cool and controlled, And Oraka's mandibles flicked a little. What a turian he would have made.
"You heard him. Keep our cruisers on the flanks, protect the human carriers at all costs."
"Aye, sir." The XO was young for his post, a mere thirty standard, but a cool head and a marvelous grasp of space tactics and strategy.
The wards arms were moving, spreading. The Geth fled within, even as the human vessels lit their engines to full and accelerated into the hailstorm of fire that emerged from the massed geth frigates. Dreadnoughts to the fore, their powerful shields tanking the shots, shadowing the more vulnerable carriers to their rear. Fighters swarmed in unbelievable numbers, just how many did the humans have?
The Turian Hierarchy never thought highly of carriers. Their policy was to devastate the enemy through brutal and overwhelming firepower, which was reflected by the Turian fleet having more dreadnoughts than all the races in the galaxy put together. How could carriers ever compare to such tremendous firepower?
But the humans seemed to place almost as much stock in their carriers as their dreadnoughts, which was more than any other race could say about their own carriers. And after seeing their swarms of Trident fighters in action both back in Batarian space and now here at the Citadel, General Oraka considered discussing their value with Hackett over a drink some time after, and then perhaps even with the Primarch.
Squadrons of fighters could knock down the shields of even a cruiser with ease, and a followup shot from a dreadnought would core the vessel with astonishing efficiency. Even the Geth hadn't adopted such efficient tactics, though no doubt the devious machines were already sending this battle's telemetry back to their hidden bases beyond the Veil.
The turian cruisers were passing through into the Citadel proper now, and the brand-new dreadnought 'Wrath of Judgment' was serving as his flagship, flanking one of the blocky human dreadnoughts and surrounded by a mixed screen of both human and turian cruisers. It was a picture that Oraka could never have imagined even half a year ago.
"Passing into the inner zone, General." The aide didn't see his acknowledging nod, and carried on. "I'm getting reports from the sensor operators. There's... something atop the Council Tower, Sir."
"Say again? Sitting on top the Council Tower?"
"Yes sir- Wait. Getting new reports. Object is moving sir, starting to...undock from the Council Tower."
"Sir!" Another ensign shouted. "LADAR confirms! It's the Geth flagship!"
"Hackett?" Oraka's talons were already on the comm.
"Confirmed on our end. That thing's our primary target."
Everything suddenly fell into place. "Spirits! That's it! That's why they've attacked the Citadel! That damned AI wants something from the Citadel's system!"
"I think you're right, General. I don't know what it wants but I do know that it can't be anything good. All ships! Move in and engage! Focus fire!"
The geth ships swarmed towards them, heedless of losses now. Even the titanic super-dreadnought was angling ponderously towards them, it's strange shape no doubt a product of Geth engineering. The AI was utterly alien, after all. A machine intelligence, so very unlike their own.
The eye-searingly-bright beam of red-gold fire speared out from the massive ship, and all hell broke loose. Reports were shouted back and forth, and the tactical map updated rapidly as ship after ship sent battle reports back to the flagship. It would have been an utterly chaotic mess to understand, if not for the tactical computer at the heart of every dreadnought.
The display updated second-by-second now, showing the fleet breaking formation under the swarm of geth frigates. He would have ordered them to keep position, had he not gotten the damage report from the 'Oath of Service'. Severe damage to the outer hull and significant damage to the ship's drives, from a single glancing hit that utterly destroyed her shields on that side.
Whatever that hell-beam was, it tore through ships and shields like tissue paper.
"Protect the cruisers, they aren't maneuverable enough to evade, and a single hit would destroy one." Using dreadnoughts to shield cruisers, it went against everything fleet doctrine taught, but the realities of the situation demanded it.
Oraka stumbled as the ship lurched around him, and he shot his XO a wide-eyed glance. The man was buried in giving orders, however, and Oraka was a good enough superior to know when and when not to countermand his subordinates.
If they both survived this, he would guarantee his XO got his own command. He'd certainly earned it.
The SSV Everest trembled under the repeated impacts of dozens of frigate-sized Geth vessels. They were swarming so numerous around the alliance flagship, that their point-defense guns were having difficulty tracking them. On the other hand, with that many geth in that small a volume, any stray shot was bound to hit something.
"Damage report!" Hackett's voice roared over the hubbub of reports and orders being fired back and forth.
"Minor damage to the secondary weapons systems. Primary weapon offline pending repair. Drive core stabilized."
The ensign giving him the report looked scared, and Hackett gave him a reassuring nod. "Good. Continue operations. Cut us a path to the primary target and tell engineering to get the main gun working."
The ensign vanished into the throng around him, and Hackett grabbed the edge of the command station as the ship rocked again.
On the viewscreen, the tactical display was updated in real-time, kept constantly current by dozens of specialist analysts housed in rooms off the main CIC. It showed a depressing sight.
Waves upon waves of tiny red pinpricks vastly outnumbered the larger blue blips of the combined Turian-Alliance Fleet. The remnants of the Citadel Defense Fleet were arrowing in from where they'd been chased to prior in the battle, but they would take a bit to rejoin them. In the mean time, his cruisers were taking the worst of the fire.
The damned Geth had some way to reliably generate a resonance fracture of the ship's shields. While a known phenomena, it took very specific circumstances to pull one off, and even then modern shields were only vulnerable for a split-second, far less time than any organic crew could use to exploit the vulnerability.
But he wasn't fighting an organic race this time.
He'd lost one dreadnought already, mission-killed by repeated blasts by the Geth's super-dreadnought Those fiery beams lanced through shields and tore huge chunks off the Kilimanjaro's hull, rendering the ship near-crippled, and slowly retreating from the battle under what escort he could provide.
Meanwhile, the rest of his ships were faring better, but still in a dangerous fix. The Everest herself hadn't taken direct fire from the dreadnought yet, which was lucky, but the geth had used their resonance fracture technique to slip in fusillades of frigate-grade fire that bypassed their shields. The resultant damage, while significant, hadn't crippled the ship, though it had knocked the main gun offline until they could clear the muzzle of debris.
"Sir, Prime Target is firing!"
Hackett winced as he turned to the display, and watched another of his blue blips wink out. The black diamond that represented the super-dreadnought was much larger than his own, and moved with a speed he could hardly believe. It had torn through their formation twice already. Luckily, with the forewarning from the Destiny Ascension, the largest blue blip, they had known to avoid its path when it surged forwards. He wasn't going to let his people die from having their ship crushed.
Even so, another of his ships was gone. Reinforcements were still arriving via the Relay, as his call of Dark Opal had mobilized damn close to the entire Alliance Navy. He had more ships under his command right now than any human had in history, save on very few occasions. And those were special circumstances involving civilian vessels, not purpose-built ships of war.
"When it comes around again, I want every ship we have left to hit it with everything they've got."
"Aye, sir!" The lieutenant relayed his order, even as the Admiral called up more data on the display. The number of cruisers that thing had destroyed was frightening.
"Sir, Prime Target is firing again!"
Another black line on the lighted display, momentarily there, then gone again, as the black diamond surged through the ordered ranks of the blue blips. Another blue blip winked out of existence, then came back as a yellow dot.
"Sir, the Madrid's been hit!"
Samantha Traynor saw it on the Madrid's map display. A great dark mass of machine tentacles spreading out ominously, menacingly, dealing hellfire in every direction.
And now it was coming for them.
"Evasive maneuvers!" Their captain cried.
It was all for nothing. Sovereign desired the destruction of the Madrid, and reality rushed to obey.
She felt arms encircle her chest, sensed EDI's presence, even as the impact came.
She saw the hull grow red hot, white hot, explode inward as a lance of unbearably bright light slammed in around her. She felt the chair she was sitting in loosen beneath her. She heard the slam-rush of air explosively venting as the hull breach widened, and the entire wall tore out. She had no time to see the devastation around her as the air rushed out of the compartment, sending her, and the seat she was still sitting in, spinning into the void.
EDI was with her, holding her with bone-grinding tightness, but there was no way to even say her name. Sam was venting atmosphere, even as the ship had. Exhale as deeply as you can, to prevent pressure differentials from tearing your lungs apart. It was one of the basic drills that she'd had in decompression emergencies, but...
But how had she even survived?! She'd been hit by a direct strike from Sovereign's weapon, a weapon she knew had destroyed entire starships!
The hands clamped around her chest loosened, and Sam gave a breathless scream as EDI came into view. She was burned-black, scorched by the fires that had raged across her and demolished her ship.
But no, the Madrid was still there, behind her as EDI turned her and unbuckled Sam from the seat. The ship was still retreating from them even as EDI held her tight, and sent the chair hurtling away from them with astonishing force. Even so, the rudimentary reaction drive only slowed them, it didn't send them back the way they had come.
The badly-burned gynoid looked at her and leaned in for a soft kiss, before turning and hurling Sam headlong back at the Madrid.
Had she the breath to do so, Sam would have been screaming the whole way.
As it was, when she passed through the emergency barrier and slammed to the torn and shredded decking, she tore in a great, gasping breath of fresh, delicious, oxygen-rich air, and let it out in a long, despairing scream.
"EEEEEEDIIIIIIIII!"
Her primary directive was Samantha Traynor's happiness, pleasure, prosperity and safety. It was and always had been her first and only priority.
And so when EDI understood that Sovereign's primary weapon was about to disintegrate the vessel her Mistress was aboard, she activated her greatest protection protocols. She had not known that the sphere of resilient energy would appear, but she was once again grateful to Jorukaia for including it in her construction.
The beam of searing energy splashed off the sphere as it momentarily slashed across the room, sending streams of molten metal lancing throughout the ship. However, instead of passing through the comms room and burning into the drive core, the much-reduced splatters of hyper-velocity molten metal merely did catastrophic damage to the immediate vicinity.
This was good. It meant that Sam would not die immediately, incinerated by the beam, nor would she have the ship detonate around her.
This was also very bad, as now that the beam was cut off, vacuum replaced the stream of molten metal, causing violent decompression of the chamber through the already-weakened hull.
She and Sam were blasted free of the ship by the explosive venting, sent hurtling away from the ship. She acted instantly, even as Sam began her emergency survival drills. She was pleased that Sam remembered those.
She unbuckled her human from the debris, and used it as makeshift reaction mass. Sadly, even with her full strength, there was little net change in velocity. However, her mass was much, much greater than that of Sam.
She gazed into Sam's bloodshot eyes, capillaries bursting due to the pressure differential, and gave her a soft kiss, before sending her back on a trajectory calculated to intersect the hole blasted in the SSV Madrid's side.
Her Mistress was now safe, but only for the moment. EDI had to get back to the Madrid immediately, but her body did not possess flight capabilities. She did not question how she knew this, but she was aware she possessed no form of self-propulsion in the hard vacuum of space. She was already beyond range of her own grapples, over a hundred meters and climbing, drifting further and further away from Sam. She needed additional mass with which to redirect her trajectory.
She nearly didn't spot the fighter in time, and only snagged it on the second try with her grapple. The sudden savage jerk of 12 gravities would have torn a human's arm from its socket, but EDI's chassis was constructed of stronger materials than the fighter she was now clinging to. She took a moment to shift her appearance, adopting the semblance of a set of heavy armor, to explain why she was still capable of functioning in vacuum, and hunted for the fighter's frequency, beginning to rapidly break into the encrypted comms.
Second Lieutenant Steve Cortez was conflicted.
On one hand, he was in his element. Whether it was calm or all-out battle, his always heart sang whenever he soared with his beloved F-61 Trident. There was almost no other feeling like it, and he always felt untouchable. It felt even better to fly like this as he fondly remembered how Robert had finally taken a knee and proposed to him just last month. Steve couldn't say yes fast enough, and they would be moving into a nice place together on Ferris Fields very soon. Once the joint campaign against the Batarians was finished.
But on the other hand, everything was going to hell. Dark Opal had been declared and many Alliance forces withdrew from Batarian space and rushed at full speed towards the Citadel. Steve went from racking up batarian kills (Hegemony pilots were a joke, he had seen Vorcha fly better) to flying against Geth frigate swarms. Their speed and precision was unprecedented; technologically advanced and their designs had no need for pilots, freeing up hardware space to make their fighters into more lethal killing machines. It was a more thrilling yet harrowing challenge that he never imagined.
And yet, all of that was nothing compared to the horror he was witnessing now. The enemy flagship was tearing the joint Human-Turian fleets apart. Steve had never seen so many cruisers lost so quickly before, and all at the hands of one ship. And with those ludicrous barriers it had, the geth super-dreadnought still didn't even have a scratch!
"Shit!" yelled Nadia, one of his squad. "We just lost the Madrid!"
Cortez whipped his head around, just in time to see the screamingly-bright beam slam into the Madrid. His heart sank, but then he blinked.
The beam slammed into the Madrid, but it didn't come out again. That was new.
"Lead, permission to give the Madrid a flyby. There's something fishy here."
"-...Copy that, Gold Three. I don't what just happened, but if the crew survived that, we'll notify the admiral to send rescue teams.—"
Steve didn't catch the rest of his squadron leader's words before his Trident suddenly lurched as if struck. "Whoah, hang on, Lead, something just happened to me. I think I mighta been hit by some debris."
"Damn it. Gold Two, can you see the status of his craft?"
It was very lucky that their squadron had a momentary lull in the battle raging around them, Steve pondered. God willing, the damage would only be superficial.
"Whoa, holy crap!" Gold Two's voice came over the link in a startled gasp. "It's not debris! It looks like... like a man!"
Steve did a double-take. "Griffen, say again?"
"I'm not kidding, Steve! There's a person climbing up the side of your fighter!"
A new voice broke into the sudden chatter. Female, cool and commanding. "Cease the frivolity. Gold Three, perform a close flyby of the Madrid, low and slow."
...
"Who the hell is this? How did you get our frequency? Wait, are you the one hanging onto my Trident?!"
A light tapping sound caught his attention and Steve turned, only to freeze. He could see a helmeted head just at the edge of his canopy, the black, heavily-armored faceplate showed no hint of the woman inside, merely stared blankly in at him.
There was a soft chirp of static in his ear as his radio picked up a new signal, on his tightbeam private channel. "Second Lieutenant Steve Cortez, fifth in your class at flight school. Engaged to Robert Englefield. You will fly me to the Madrid. Now."
Even with top notch military training to make snap decisions on the fly, there were some things that just couldn't be taken in stride. There was a young woman easily hanging on to the side of his Trident, in hard-vacuum with a massive battle raging around them, looking in through his canopy and calmly asking for him, by name, to do a drop-off on a nearby ship as if it were the most normal thing in the world.
It was legitimately the most surreal moment he had ever experienced. And he was engaged to the man of his dreams!
After staring back for nearly ten seconds, he noticed the iconic N7 insignia on the side of her helmet. Ah... that explained a lot.
"I'll... see what I can do, ma'am." Because seriously, what else could he say?
"Good. Hurry." The woman turned her helmet, the signature stripe of red-in-white down her armored arm visible for a moment.
"Gold Leader... I need to drop off the N7 hanging onto my fighter off at the Madrid. Proceeding with flyby."
"...Roger, Gold Three." Nadia sounded very nonplussed.
Steve would be wondering for weeks to come how he had managed to say that with a straight face.
Steve swallowed in a dry throat as he angled his unbalanced bird. With an extra fifty to sixty kilograms added off the center-axis of his Trident, he was careful with his vectored thrust, to keep from drifting into a circle.
The Madrid was, luckily, fairly close as things went. A few hundred meters away, the ship was slowly drifting, its drives almost entirely out, with only one engine cluster flickering with intermittent thrust. That whole side was pockmarked with the impacts of frigate-weight impacts, and one of the Geth's bug-like ships was attached to the hull like some sort of giant space-limpet. Ah, hell. The Geth were boarding the Madrid! No wonder his new passenger was determined to return.
The far side, where that hell-beam had hit, was a charred, flaming ruin. 2/3rds of the ship was blackened and torn open, and fires still gouted from spots on what looked like nine different decks. Emergency forcefields glimmered here and there, places where people had set up portable fields. One large, massive hole held a larger shield, looking like the epicenter of the impact.
Steve couldn't help wondering how much of the debris around here was corpses. He prayed he didn't find out.
'Hold position here.' The feminine voice was quiet, authoritative. His ship lurched violently and for a moment he saw the figure launch herself straight at the open wound in the side of the ship, arrowing in at impossible speed.
'Good luck lady, whoever you are.' Man, N7 training doesn't mess around!