"The fine line between chaos and order—such a distinction, due to its subjectivity, proves nothing on a macro scale. People impose order on themselves based on surrounding factors, ones that they themselves are unable to control, and the desire to bring those factors into a form which they consider to be diligent and orderly.
There have been examples on both sides in which many find the symmetry in the concept of order to be beautiful. The same goes for chaos, as others argue that the unpredictability and lack of an organized pattern lends itself to a beauty that is abrasive in scope. The Reapers found the harvesting of advanced species to lend itself to an orderly beauty of its own through the preservation of life in their mutated format. The organics found their unpredictable futures to possess an optimistic edge in turn, causing them to actively seek out the chaos in their own efforts to understand it.
This will be a debate that will fail to yield a clear answer for centuries to come. And such an answer may never arise, perhaps to the hope of some intellectuals. For the act of seeking an answer can very well provide its own enlightenment. If the ultimate goal is to discover the fulfillment gleaned from such an enlightenment, then perhaps the answer might not even matter at all."
Final Monograph: Transcriptions of an Augury
Unknown Author, (pg. 133)
Reprinted by permission of Purdue University
Messier 78
For one second, a small corner of the reflection nebula, untouched by the scorching of plasma beams and nuclear detonations, existed in its own private quietude in which absolute zero matter occupied its space. The multicolored waves of glass-like dust churned and sparkled like a stratus cloud layer, rippling in their hued bands as the massive battle all around it echoed with light and shards of metal.
In the next moment, there was an abrupt pulsating of spacetime accompanied by two flashes of atomic scintillation, and a sleek looking ship suddenly appeared within the thick cloud as if someone had rapidly ripped a cover off of it. The Anas wayfarer ship lazily rotated on its axis as it slowly pushed its way through the dust, now positioned above the raging fight down below, where hundreds of angular metal hulls traded blows in punishing volleys of missiles, PDC rounds, and ionizing beams, creating a cyclone of neon as the ship acted as a bystander to the devolving purgatory.
Inside, Roahn lurched against her seat restraints as the accelerator dampeners to the ship met an unexpected death, as did the power to the engines. She fell back against her chair, her shoulders feeling bruised. Groaning, she rubbed near her collar, the bleeping of the ship's console coming through blearily, almost as if it was emitting from underwater.
"Warning. Warning," the ship's computer impassively alerted. "Eezo core expended. Switching over to auxiliary power. Main systems offline."
Roahn unlatched the restraints and shrugged them off. The Anas had also suffered a loss of gravity—she floated free from her chair.
"Damn thing's falling apart," she groused as she used the overhead railings to point her towards the access corridor, her sehni streaming in a white blur as she hurried out of the cockpit.
After spending several decades underground, held together by her patchwork repairs, it was more impressive that the Anas had lasted as long as it did. As she floated down the hall, Roahn brought up a schematic of the ship to examine the affected systems—every single one was flashing red. The Anas was effectively dead in the water, and once the auxiliary power source would fail after thirty minutes, then the ship would be a cold, dark hulk to join the dozens like it within this treacherous battlefield.
"Alert!" the computer warned. "Detecting local UV pulses. Hard targeting lock sourced from 11-0-8-35."
Someone was targeting the ship, Roahn realized. Her arrival had not gone unnoticed. Whether it was from her side or the other did not matter in the slightest. If she did not already have enough incentives to leave this ship, she certainly did now.
A countdown to the target lock reaching 100% now occupied the top left corner of her helmet's HUD. Less than a minute before the culprit ship would have a complete and effective firing solution. There was no time to send out a distress call to delay any preemptive attack. She needed to get off the Anas. Now.
The quarian made her way over to where she had secured the weapons crate prior to the launch. She cut through the restraining bands and opened it up. In no time flat, she had the multitude of weaponry strapped to the magnetic holsters that lined her waist and back. The last thing inside the box was the thruster pack that she had also appropriated from Rotev—she quickly threw it over her shoulders after priming the activation switch. A new gauge appeared on her HUD that showed the amount of pressure the thruster pack was exerting.
"Missile alert! Forty-five seconds to impact!"
Now her time here had a definite endpoint.
Clad in armor and her white garb, Roahn pushed off against another railing, spinning her forty-five degrees to the left. She gently nudged the tips of her boots against the wall, propelling her towards the airlock door that led to blank space.
Out there was what she had been searching for. Out there in wild space, in the vivid hellscape. Coming here had been her only recourse. She could not imagine being needed elsewhere.
Roahn raised her arms to gently halt her trajectory and prevent her from colliding with the face of the door. Her prosthesis made a gentle clicking noise as her palm momentarily became flat against the airlock. She then keyed in the access code and the partition opened. The quarian then entered the airlock chamber, locking the door behind her after she headed through the portal.
"Set airlock door timer," Roahn said aloud to the ship as she maneuvered herself into position. Her mag-boots gripped the bottom of the room, allowing her to get into a kneeling position. Her hands reached out and gripped floor in front of her, the monochrome woman appearing as a revenant within the confines of the airlock. She then disengaged her mag-boots, but without any excess movement on her part, she remained in place. "Ten seconds to opening."
"Warning: opening airlock door without standard pressurization protocols will result in a catastrophic loss of atmosphere. Do you wish to proceed?"
Roahn remained still for a moment. The rays that beamed out of the door she was facing created a halcyon pillar that streamed across her body. The vaguely perceptible holo-skull that dusted her visor shed a brief layer of static, and in that brief moment of time, the only sounds that reverberated within the airlock pod were the synthesized sounds of her heavy breaths.
"Proceed," she said.
The computer then began rattling off the ten seconds that destiny was being forestalled behind, but the sound quickly descended into a vague murky blend for the occupant. Roahn's eyes were firmly locked through the tiny window of the final partition that kept her secured within this craft. Through it, she could see the typhoons and rolling thunderstorms of destruction—the chaos that enveloped and personalized the nebula. Explosions blossomed across the entirety of the cosmic phenomenon, as beautiful in their briefness as they were deadly in their viciousness. With her visor's zoom feature, she could pick out individual ships in the melee, their hulls ablaze as high-velocity rounds reamed them through in nanoseconds. She could see the quick darting of the fast attack fighters that swarmed the opposing frigates like gnats, drawn to the large hulls like they were decaying carcasses.
They were out there… somewhere. Korridon and the rest of the crew. Out in this mess, this glorious battle.
"I'm here," she whispered to the emptiness. "I'm here."
The timer ticked down from 3… 2… 1…
As instantaneous as it could be perceived, the airlock doors violently snapped open. Several different things happened all at once in that moment: the displays in the airlock room had shattered all at once, several rippling bangs echoed throughout the ship, and every temperature sensor plunged below their lower limits.
Roahn had noticed none of this. All that she had been able to cognize was a fierce tugging that had exerted itself upon her entire body, yanking her bodily out of the ship. As casually as releasing a breath, the force from the depressurization was so fierce that it caused the quarian to be shot from the airlock into boiling space, a projectile in her own right. Pure weightlessness lifted her—she slowly brought her arms up in a pinwheel maneuver as it felt like she was falling towards the battle that she was now streaking towards.
The darkness of the nebula cradling her, the quarian's momentum carried her through it all. A mote in the deepest of the deep.
Alone, she flew.
In the newfound freedom, Roahn spread all her limbs as she basked for a moment, unleashing a short laugh. She was travelling at several hundreds of thousands of miles an hour, spaced and outside of her ship in the middle of the most ferocious battle the galaxy had seen in some time. And she was laughing.
All because no one in the area, apart from her, had any idea what was about to come.
Glancing behind her, Roahn followed the projected trajectory of the missile that was displaying on the interior of her visor just in time to see it impact into the Anas, completely obliterating it in a singular explosion. If she had been harboring even the slightest hope of utilizing the ship in the future, they were certainly dashed now.
She resumed her attention upon her destination—the battlefield—which was rapidly looming in front of her at a dizzying speed. Her enviro-suit was completely insulated—she hardly felt the chill of space seep through the material. Even the mechanisms in her prosthesis were continuing to function properly, not fazed at all by the cold. She made herself flat, arms at her sides with her head tilted up towards the direction she was travelling. A brief outline of frost crept at the edges of her visor, but proceeded no more than a few millimeters in.
In the zero gravity, it was easy to forget that space was quiet. Roahn's breath was the only sound that hissed in her ears as she stared at the engagement between the two fleets—an altercation that would normally result in a deafening cascade of eruptive noise.
Roahn flew through a cloud of carbon dust. She felt tiny particulates pepper her body, but nothing penetrated. She was now nearing the edges of the battle. Her HUD was showing that she was currently being bombarded by several dozen wavelength pings: targeting sensors going haywire, trying to get a lock on any and all projectiles in the area. Roahn tightened her jaw as she approached. She felt that she was safe from the sensors picking her up—she was too small of a target to show up on any main battle map and she was not burning any propellant which would otherwise give her position away. She was flying silent, essentially invisible, but Roahn knew better than to take such supposed securities for granted.
Several dozen kilometers away, a pack of enemy Trident fighters spat out from behind one of the nebula's fractal crests. They zoomed by Roahn so close that she swore she could see the details of the pilots in their cockpits, and so fast that she unconsciously tensed herself, preparing for the rippling blowback from their exhausts, but relaxed when the punishment never came.
Right… no atmospheric backwash in space, she reminded herself.
Guess this meant that she was in the thick of it now.
She thumbed a button on her haptic interface. The twin jets upon the quarian's thruster pack hummed a cool blue. With even the slightest bit of feedback, the pack could adjust the trajectory of her voyage by spitting out tiny columns of thrust that altered her momentum in the zero-friction environment.
Altering her course, Roahn bobbed and spun to avoid being smushed into a paste upon the scorched hull of a passing frigate. Burning metallic hulks and brilliant explosions flashed by in sequence upon her visor. The thruster pack kept Roahn centered, always aimed in an arrow-straight path, preventing her from tumbling out of control. Her hands balled so tightly that she was certain she was going to pop a bone or a hydraulic, the quarian intently focused on her breathing. She made sure to take it slow, even though it both felt and looked like she was diving through hell itself.
Her eyes tracked an HE beam from a Synod frigate and watched it impact into the prow of a Radius corvette. The stricken ship immediately proceeded to spiral out of control as its atmosphere vented ferociously from the large breach, shedding armor plating and bodies as it uncontrollably rolled. Like a specter from on high, the quarian sailed over the doomed vessel, almost imagining she could feel the heat blister her skin as she passed over the flames, her very hands seeming like they could reach out and cup the broken ship and crush it in her palms like it was made out of delicate glass.
Surrounded on all sides by carnage, the white-wreathed Roahn continued to fly through it all with a renewed vigor. She watched crystal-clear concussive bubbles from sonic mines unfurl in the distance like cosmic foam. She gave a trio of destroyers a wide berth as they screamed on past in pursuit formation. No one paid her any mind. She was a ghost in the chaos, the predator in plain sight.
As she passed the centerpoint of the cylindrical-shaped area of the battle theater, surrounded on all sides by nebula gas, Roahn whirled her head as she saw a nearby Radius frigate suddenly erupt into multicolored bursts of flame less than a hundred kilometers and closing—right on a direct path for her.
"Oh… crap," Roahn muttered.
There was no time to maneuver out of the way. Roahn pulsed the jets on her thruster pack, giving her a burst of speed. She sucked in a breath as she headed on course for the stricken ship, which was so badly damaged that it was already fragmenting in flaming chunks, the conduits and feathering antenna upon it already melted, adding to the molten trail that streaked behind it like a comet. The oxidizing labyrinth was tumbling towards her at full tilt, threatening to bear down on her in the next five seconds. The hulk loomed in front of Roahn's eyes, the throbbing glow illuminating her visor like a vengeful firebird.
Mere moments before the out-of-control wreckage was about to obliterate the quarian, Roahn snapped her arms up, her omni-shield igniting all along her left arm. Quickly, she scrunched her body behind the shield, completely hiding her profile behind the glowing surface, and let out one final breath before the impromptu astronaut speared through the wreckage.
She vanished into the hellstorm.
Everything turned red, white, and orange for Roahn. Details became lost behind the curtains of fire. Bands of cascading oxidates and hexanes splintered bright blue spears that scarred her vision through her polarized visor. Lighting and phosphorous compounds sparked and arced in white dazzling displays, the energy powerful enough to burn the quarian in half.
Immediately, the turbulence threatened to rip Roahn's arms from her sockets. Fire was blazing on all sides, now licking at parts of her enviro-suit. The temperature sensors on her HUD readout all registered massive spikes. Now she could feel a distinct heat build throughout her body—sweat began to build up on her skin.
But she continued to huddle behind the shield as she rode her path through the incandescent wreckage. Her entire world was shaking in its blistering design as she punched a hole through the maelstrom, flames and sparks streaming around the edges of the omni-shield. The heat continued to build, burning… burning… making Roahn feel like her flesh was crisping underneath, her gray skin blackening and peeling away to expose glistening raw muscle and bubbling white fat.
The quarian was a speck in the churn of the roiling wreckage, the ship collapsing all around her as she threaded the needle through the metallic wildfire. The inferno now felt like it was groping her entire body, nearly consuming her face as she splintered through the plasma core of unstable fusion. She opened her mouth to scream.
In the next second, she was free.
Her suit's internal temperature immediately plunged back down. Roahn opened her eyes and took an incredulous glance behind her—the disintegrating wreckage was rapidly diminishing behind her, proceeding on its doomed course with its impassive fervor, heedless to the plight of the lone soldier that had braved its depths.
As she deactivated her shield, Roahn gave a shaky laugh. That laugh then became a full-fledged howl of glee. She had cleared it!
With a whoop, Roahn gave another burst to her thruster pack, sending her sailing in a graceful arc, shaped against a wave-like curve of the nebula. With joyful intent, she plunged through a cooling dust stream of glowing detritus, her entire body trailing fire-blue sparks as she spat on through the field.
Ahead of her was a fearsome Radius destroyer, less than fifty kilometers away, its cannons belching arcing plasma towards a cluster of Synod frigates. The fire-scorched quarian then had an idea. She blipped her thrusters to point her towards the massive ship and began decelerating to match her velocity with it. She used her boot jets to point her towards the vessel as she "fell" towards it feet-first, aiming towards a flat plain near the main Thanix cannon upon the bow.
Roahn watched the barrel of the Thanix turret glow amber then cascade into a blinding blue before it unleashed an aqua smear that trickled as a globular arc across the magmatic brilliance of the nebula, covering a thousand kilometers in an instant. Weaponry like that required a precise and intricate fabrication to contain and disperse the immense heat that built up when charging the projectile—a vulnerability that Roahn knew exactly how to exploit. All she needed to do was to find a way to overpressurize the turret, or at least destabilize it, and the entire weapons system of the ship would fail in spectacular fashion.
It was just fortunate that the stores on Rotev had been stocked with the very tools she needed for the situation.
Grabbing her knees and tucking into a ball, Roahn breathed in hard right before she hit the deck of the frigate. She tumbled and rolled along the smooth face—her kinetic barriers rapidly dropped with a violent snap from hitting the hull so hard. In desperation, she engaged all mag-points on her suit. She reached out with her prosthesis and laid her palm flush against the rapidly passing side of the ship. The mag-seals made an instantaneous snag, abruptly halting her in place so hard that had she performed the same feat with her right arm, the force would have ripped her shoulder apart.
Shaking her head, Roahn gave a grunt as she swung herself back up, planting her feet upon the solid surface. Straight ahead, the Thanix loomed, her destination.
Unslinging her Dreighton rifle, Roahn began leaping in complex gazelle-like bounds towards the turret, alternating between deactivating her mag-boots as she leapt while using her thruster pack to push her back down towards the ship. A few maintenance drones materialized from their vectoring shafts, having sensed Roahn's presence. With a singular sweep, Roahn unleashed a burst from her weapon while she was still mid-air, destabilizing all of the drones in one fell swoop.
She had to hurry. If any of the exterior cams caught sight of her, not to mention if someone was monitoring the unexpected deactivation of the drones she had just destroyed, she was about to get a lot of company real soon.
Roahn bent her knees and lifted off in a powerful leap, the arc of her jump carrying her right to the base of the Thanix. Before she landed, she pressed the stock of her rifle against her shoulder and leveled a sustained blast, ripping a hole into the turret's armor at one of the service seals. She then landed and plunged her prosthesis into the hole she had just created, ripping more of the paneling away and widening the gap. The quarian tossed the ragged pieces of metal away, the razor shards spiraling into space like a violent discus.
Her efforts had now exposed a carbon-black tube that belonged to the heat diffusion system. Roahn backed up a step, took aim at it, and fired. A shockwave rippled across the hull and a gout of pressurized gas ripped into the freezing void. Roahn quickly shifted herself and fired at another neighboring pipe, creating a cross flow of superheated oxidizing agents that flared and sent a blowback feed of pressurized gas surging throughout the intake system. At the far end of the ship, something exploded—a column of yellow fire abruptly towered into view.
The entire ship was detonating underneath her feet.
There was no time to celebrate her victory. Roahn tucked herself down once again, before pushing herself straight upward, lifting off from the ship, rifle still in hand. As she gained distance from the frigate, whose hull was starting to melt and bubble, she watched as her seemingly insignificant handiwork descended into an unrecoverable process of destruction before her eyes.
More eruptions burst from underneath the hull of the Radius ship. The frigate's outline bulged and distorted as more and more holes appeared in it. The shields of the ship boiled away and ultimately faded in a silver wash.
Two seconds later, the entirety of the vessel was consumed in a titanic explosion of electromagnetically charged plasma. Magnesium geysers flared from the combustion, rocketing away at dizzying speeds and destabilizing nearby patrols of enemy fighter squadrons, some members of which were disintegrated by the blast as well.
A miniature sun appeared within the nebula, the faint outline of a spacebound quarian silhouetted against the conflagration.
Silent Essence
Bridge Level
Erext frowned and gave a frustrated tap at his tac-display, certain the device was malfunctioning. He was already on edge from having to monitor the current mess that was ongoing in the drive core, but other issues were threatening to tear his attention away. According to the campaign map, two of his main defensive frigates had suddenly blipped out of existence five minutes apart. As in, they had been completely destroyed.
Normally, due to the circumstances of all ships currently being engaged in battle, the sudden disappearance of these ships could be explained quite handedly, but Erext knew for a fact that those two ships had not been positioned within the firing lane of any Synod craft, nor had they been subjected to any odd circumstances that would otherwise denote its fate, such as unintentionally bumping into phantom mines or also being subject to saboteurs. Something was amiss, here.
While the salarian was in the process of running calculations and estimates to get to the bottom of this, in the corner of Erext's eye, another battleship also dropped off all sensors on the tac-map. He nearly threw up his hands in despair.
What was going on here?!
"Ensign," he quickly directed, "lower the viewpoint armoring. Magnify on the last known position of the Hexus—I want to see this for myself."
With a rumble, the doors that protected the main bridge windows parted like curtains to expose the entirety of the battlefield. A circular viewfinder blipped onto the glass and honed in on a small quadrant in one of the darker corners of the nebula.
His displays had not been malfunctioning after all. The Hexus, by all rights, should have been sitting in its defensive screen intact, but right now he was looking at a smoldering cloud of what used to be one of his key battleships. The rest of the salarians and even a couple spare Dark Horizon mercenaries, looked up at the viewfinder, also perplexed at this new wrinkle.
"Give me cam feeds in the last five minutes we have on the Hexus' position," Erext ordered. "We might be able to catch what destroyed it."
A new window blipped up on the holo-panel, showcasing the utterly obstinate vessel in its unexpected final moments. Erext stared at the image for a few moments, prepared to hone in on the tiniest detail. But seemingly without warning, the salarian blinked as the Hexus exploded on his screen, seemingly without reason. The readouts were giving only blank values on the thermals, UV, and visible spectrums. From what the Silent Essence's instrumentation was able to determine, there was nothing that could be held responsible for the Hexus' death.
He shut the screen off. "No evidence of retreating infiltration teams… no detection of stray fire… nothing. Ships don't blow up without a reason. Contact all the vessels between us and the Hexus! Order them to comb through every scrap of data that leads to the culprit of the ship's destruction."
As multiple lackeys began carrying out his directives, Erext did a double-take as he saw—with his own eyes, this time—yet another cruiser flicker and abruptly ignite into a super-luminated flare at the far end of the fire zone. He mouthed a curse as he watched the remains of the ship fragment and drift away, speechless for the first time as he realized that something was dreadfully wrong.
"Concentrate all scanning modules!" he yelled. "Utilize the extent of your bandwidth limits if you have to, but someone find out what is destroying our ships!"
Silent Essence
Drive Core – Control Level
Korridon barely heard the thin whine of the mercenaries' weapons as they switched over to armor-piercing rounds. The Dark Horizon troopers registered as black blobs in his grayed-out vision, which was focusing in and out as he struggled to remain conscious.
Lying on the ground, a patch of blood splattered near his head, the turian weakly lifted an arm. A silent plea, perhaps. Even Korridon was having trouble figuring out what to say. Maybe he simply wanted the chance to die with some dignity, standing up under his own willpower.
Far away, he could hear the roar of the Aeronaut's jetpack recede, the cyborg having leapt to the upper level to deal with Garrus, having pinpointed his location. A thought came to mind, an inclination to call out Garrus. To warn him, somehow.
But it was impossible. He was too exhausted. Too wounded to even have a chance at helping his captain out. A part of him wished that the mercenaries would open fire already and end it. He had failed, after all. Why bother letting him wallow in his misery?
At least he might be seeing Roahn sooner than he had initially thought.
The turian cracked open an eye after counting to five, a resigned feeling smashing upon his constitution as he discovered he was still alive, but still under the volatile judgment of the rifles of the mercs.
"Stand," one of the troopers uttered, his vocabulator making the word come out low and scratchy.
With a heavy sigh, Korridon pushed himself to his feet. A wave of dizziness nearly bowled him over. He had to grasp onto the nearby control panel to steady himself. A fresh deluge of blood from his sheared mandible dribbled down his jaw, filling his mouth with a metallic taste. He spat, more out of disgust than out of outright defiance. The pulsating blue glow of the drive core coruscated around his frame behind him, a magmatic sphere of fusion energy almost liquid in appearance.
"Shooting a prone victim not satisfactory to your liking?" he croaked, almost past the point of caring.
One of the mercs gave a dry rasp in some semblance of a chuckle. "Something like that," he said as he carefully raised the barrel of the weapon to point directly at Korridon's head.
The turian tensed himself. The time for waiting was over. There was nothing else to be done—he was all out of ideas.
But then he spotted motion in his peripheral vision. The pistols of the two mercenaries suddenly lifted from their holsters, hovering in air like they were held aloft by an invisible force. The troopers did not seem to notice as they continued to aim down their rifles. Then, if they weren't aware of this—
The pistols, still seemingly supported by nothing, quickly flipped around and pointed themselves at the back of each merc's helmet. They then fired in unison, two bullets spitting from the muzzle in bursts of fire and static electricity. Bone and plastic popped, followed by the faint mist of blood. Korridon jumped at the noise and his eyes tracked the troopers as they fell before his feet, stone dead.
Korridon, astonished, leaned back against the console, blinking several times to convince himself he was not hallucinating.
"How… how the…"
A bipedal shape then materialized in between the corpses of the Dark Horizon mercs, their hands gripping the pistols they had appropriated against their former owners. The light-bending camouflage dissolved, revealing a human woman, tiny even by average standards of the species, with a shadowed hood draped over their head. The woman pushed the hood away, revealing a striking face with short but silky hair. Korridon found himself staring.
"I'm… I'm sorry," he stammered, "but what the hell is going on here? Who are you?!"
The woman politely chuckled as she twirled one of the pistols, offering it to Korridon grip-first. The turian hesitantly took it, too befuddled to even think straight.
"This?" the human asked airily as she also handed the turian a packet of medi-gel. "Would a rescue look any different? No—you don't need to answer. You've lost a lot of blood. Tends to impair rational thinking. As for who I am, that's an interesting question. Most recently I've been known as Lieutenant Colonel Mitsushima Goro… but you may simply call me Kasumi Goto."
The name jolted a spark of recognition for the turian. "Kasumi. Garrus' wife. You were… you were part of the Normandy crew too!"
The human reared back in mock surprise. "Oh? Is there another Kasumi that I'm not aware of that was on that ship? Would be a small galaxy if that was the case."
Korridon teetered back and forth, trying to mentally juggle the weight of this revelation. His jaw yawed open and closed as he struggled to formulate his next words, but Kasumi stepped forward and stopped him, gently leaning the turian back against a nearby pillar to steady him.
"One thing at a time, tall guy. You're not much to either of us if you pass out now."
"Can't… have to… have to get—"
"You need to heal," Kasumi urged. "Charging back into the fray will just get you more banged up than you already are."
"No!" Korridon gripped at Kasumi's arms, his nails digging into her bodysuit, but the woman did not so much as wince in pain. The turian's eyes flashed with their own hidden energy—Kasumi seemed to recognize it. "Kasumi… your husband… he's on the ship now!"
A steel-cold filter passed over the woman's face. She looked like a different person now. "Garrus is here? Where?"
"A few levels up," Korridon gasped. "But Kasumi… we need to hurry."
Silent Essence
Drive Core – 3rd Level
Garrus barely had time to move once he realized that the crescendoing noise of a howling engine was rapidly encroaching in his direction. He turned around from where he had been resting his sniper rifle atop the guardrail to his level, the entrances to the end of the room cleared underneath the gaze of his weapon, and looked up to spot a silver and gold streak down from on high, taloned feet spread wide, looking to sink into his flesh and tear it to ragged strips.
The turian dove out of the way as the Aeronaut slammed onto the deck right where he had been standing, the floor sinking down several inches around the cyborg's feet. The entire level seemed to tremble as the weight of the fearsome mercenary had pounced down upon it.
"Vakarian!" the Aeronaut roared as he spun to face the turian. His hands shot to his sides and came up with his two custom submachine guns. He brought them to bear on Garrus.
Just in the nick of time, Garrus rolled behind a nearby conduit right as the Aeronaut opened fire. A hail of sparks ripped up the last position of the turian as the oversized weaponry bellowed its high-velocity rounds.
The Aeronaut quickly embarked into a run and vaulted over the turian's cover. He then whirled and delivered a crescent kick that would have smashed upon Garrus' skull had he not scrambled away yet again.
Both combatants turned at the same time. Garrus stood and raised his sniper rifle. The Aeronaut rotated, submachine guns at his hips. Both ended up firing nearly synchronous with each other. Garrus' shot hit the Aeronaut in the shoulder but bounced off his kinetic barriers, the hexagonal energy field flaring angrily. The cyborg's own assault caught the end of Garrus weapon, shearing off the tip of the barrel and slicing through a panel of electronics. The ruined weapon was cast to the deck as Garrus went for his assault rifle.
There was a lull in the fighting as the Aeronaut lowered his arms once again, avoiding opening fire while Garrus was struggling to get his next weapon into play. Garrus then realized that the cyborg was not interested in a quick kill—he wanted to toy with his prey, to make this fight go on for as long as he wanted until he tired of the charade. Worse, Garrus already had his hands full with this persistent cough that was only getting worse and worse. Blood misted from his mouth every time he took a painful hack—radiation poisoning interjecting at the worst possible moment. The Aeronaut, in addition to not being plagued with an illness of his own, was well-rested and cunning. Worse yet, he felt he had a score to settle. And Garrus knew better than anyone else that revenge itself was a quite a significant well of energy.
Garrus had to duck again as the Aeronaut bent forward—the bladed wings attached to his back lurched towards the turian, jabbing and slicing at the mercenary's target. One of the wings collided upon a nearby pipe just inches from Garrus' head, sending out a brief blip of sparks.
There was no room for Garrus to get off a shot. No matter how much he tried to disengage, the Aeronaut was always upon him. He tried to lash off a kick, but his shin merely deflected off the merc's metallic one. The turian was quickly reminded of his foe's solid nature when the pain at the strike point began to blossom like a flower of fire upon his leg.
Tilting his head, the Aeronaut seemed to be silently asking, Really?
Raising his knee to his chest, the cyborg then let off a straight kick of his own that collided with Garrus' breastplate. The turian was sent flying backward, the armor now gouged and cracked from where the talon had impacted. He spluttered out another cough, flecking the ground below him blue. Seeing double, he scrambled to his feet, desperate to gain some distance from the enraged mercenary.
The Aeronaut growled out a warbling snarl. "Tired, Vakarian? No, that won't do. We've only just begun."
"Have we?" Garrus grimly retorted as he finally brought his rifle up and unleashed a concussive shot that spat towards the mercenary.
But the Aeronaut simply stepped to the side, the translucent streak narrowly missing his body. He shook his head disapprovingly.
"If only it would be that easy. I'm going to enjoy making you bleed. I owe you, after all."
Lifting the two submachine guns, the Aeronaut fired. The red-tinged bullets sprayed across the face of the column Garrus was hiding behind, obliterating the face of it and leaving behind a ragged and torn hole of melted and frayed paneling.
Garrus leaned out of cover and pulled the trigger of his weapon thrice. Three bullets smashed into the Aeronaut's shields, staggering him back a step, but they did not break. The mercenary had not even bothered to leap out of the way this time. His shoulders bobbed as he gave a rasping laugh, supremely confident.
There was nothing else that Garrus could think to do except to keep shooting. However, the Aeronaut bent his knees before he ignited his jetpack, sending him careening into the air at a steep angle. The cyborg reached one of the pillars that bolstered the room, magnetic points on his armor latching him to the column twenty meters up. He then dove to another pillar before Garrus could get a bead on him. The winged mercenary bounced around the room, trailing smoke and fire as he darted out of the turian's line of sight, the noise from the jetpack reverberating from so many places it seemed like Garrus was completely surrounded by the sound.
More gunfire exploded from a spot high up in the shadows. Garrus ducked and staggered away as bits of shattered metal sprayed his face. Wildly firing into the air, the turian limped towards another column, masking a fresh wave of coughs with his hand, the back of his glove becoming more and more wet with his blood.
There was another momentary pause. Finally, there was a swift thump and a puff of dust as the Aeronaut dropped to the ground, orange diodes brimming sinisterly behind his smoked glass goggles. He scanned the room, creeping tenderly around the perimeter, fingers twitching anxiously upon finely ridged triggers as his breath stormed through his external respirator.
"We're both professionals, Vakarian," the merc taunted out loud. "But you made this personal. And I will not let myself be compromised further by your existence. When I find you, you're not going to just get a bullet to the head. No… for you, I'm going to take things slow."
Messier 78
Roahn danced above the battle, frozen gas streaming from her spaceborne body as a Radius strike cruiser detonated just below her, the explosion cold in the stark vacuum. Metal shredded in violent red flowers, ejecting oxygen and men in an instant. The space was filled with flak, missiles, and railgun munitions, with the sparkling of countermeasures fizzling off in the distance.
But the quarian was just one speck in the macrocosm, hovering above the battlefield with her breath lodged in her chest.
She blipped her thrusters, easily evading a trailing piece of debris, having been thrown clear of the main hulk she had just destroyed. The Radius had been overzealous in upgrading the weaponry of their ships, as they had wanted to maximize their firepower but gave little thought to how vulnerable that made the vessels that had been newly renovated with the equipment.
Swarms of tiny one-man fighter craft streamed in the dead space of the no-man's land between the two enemy fleets. Roahn tracked their trajectory, watching them slash into the opposing platoons, her head internalizing its own soundtrack to accompany the moment.
Pulse throbbing throughout her entire body, Roahn slowly rotated to spot the dreadnought looming straight ahead. The route to the Silent Essence was clear now that she had removed a good portion of its defensive screen. The collection of NavPoints for her team's transponders were all showing that they were all on board the ship. She was still running silent in this cascading hell. No one could stop her.
Tensing herself, Roahn gunned her thrusters, putting her directly on course for the prow of the salarian ship. The dreadnought was enormous, more than three times the length of the Menhir. A floating city in its own right with a slight crescent-like curved bow. It made no attempt to course correct—she was flying undetected. Their mistake.
The quarian brought up a hastily programmed flight path. Thin boundary lines popped up on her visor, providing coordinates and calculations for her intended course. At the same time, Roahn gripped the Dreighton rifle in her arms, never looking away from the dreadnought, the silver and hulking monster. She raced towards the enormous hull, her fear long forgotten, ignoring the streams of smaller craft launching from the hangars of nearby Radius carriers. She had just turned half a squadron of ships into debris, having smashed their guns and breached their decks. Whatever she was capable of, she knew she could do more.
The main viewport of the Silent Essence quickly grew in size as she approached, less than five kilometers away now and rapidly closing. Chain-lightning and balls of brimming plasma revolved around her like she was a planetoid. The light surged off her frame. She grinned, filled with a crazed sort of power.
It was time to alter the paradigm.
Silent Essence
Bridge Level
Something looked wrong. Right there, out the viewport, past yet another exploding ship. A brief outline, almost imperceptible, but definite. Not at all a figment of the imagination.
Erext took a step closer and squinted at the phenomenon. It was oddly shaped, whatever it was. It didn't look like any munitions that he had ever seen.
"Troubling," the salarian noted out loud. He then waved a hand to his crew. "Magnify. Sector 3, quadrant 4.5."
The canopy's viewfinder swerved over to indicate the foreign outline that was becoming more and more defined. Too slow for a missile, but it was approaching this ship.
In the next second, the lens enlarged, cycling up the mysterious object into crystal-clear detail.
The salarian admiral's eyes widened in realization as he knew what was about to happen. There was no time to wheel the point defense cannons into place, nor did the command to overcharge the kinetic barriers come to mind. In the end, there was only one thing that did make itself prominent in the forefront of Erext's stream of consciousness, a sincerely animal urge that overpowered the well-honed instincts imbued into his central cortex.
He spun on a heel and sprinted for the exit, sealing it behind him.
All of his subordinates and the rest of the mercs stationed on the bridge quizzically looked at the spot their commander had just vacated, not quick enough to make the same determination he had been able to.
In the next moment, it was too late.
Within the magnifying lens, the swooping form of the quarian brought up a comically large rifle and shoved it firmly against their shoulder. Two pure white crosses flared from the muzzle.
The rifle jackhammered against Roahn's shoulder, the feedback diminishing her velocity by a fraction. She could see the first bullet smash against the clear transparisteel layer, creating a topography of deep fissures that carved throughout the surface.
The next bullet broke it entirely.
The canopy explosively vented outward, a geyser of atmosphere and pressure escaping all at once. Flailing bodies of salarians and mercenaries were ejected out from the broken hole in the ship, ice clawing at their throats as their eyes filled with blood. In seconds, the entire bridge of the Silent Essence had been cleared of all life.
Bulkheads on either side of the canopy began to creak closed in a vain effort to stem the wound to the ship. Roahn roared as she primed her thrusters to max, sending her shooting towards the rapidly closing gap. At the last moment, Roahn toggled herself into a half-roll, slicing the gap between the thick blast doors.
The silence of space no longer held her, but the electronics on the bridge were malfunctioning from the sudden venting. Roahn flew across the room, riding a wave of compressed gas, ignited oxides, with a faint burst of flame groping after her. Then the bulkheads finally hissed shut and gravity returned to the deck. The quarian dropped down… and her boots landed on the floor of the Silent Essence's bridge.
Condensation wisped from her frozen form as she knelt upon the upper plinth. She panted, nearly shivering from the adrenaline.
Everything seemed to minimize for the quarian. Her vision. Her hearing. Even simply feeling her own body, like she had been submerged in a murky filter of numbing liquid. A deathly haze. She barely noticed the lights crowning the entrance doors to the deck brimming right before they opened, a stream of salarian soldiers pushing through in a rush. All of them were shouting to subdue the intruder.
Superheated projectiles sliced just over Roahn's head. Her eyes flashed malevolently. A righteous anger sent fire hurtling through veins. The chill of space melted around her and she reached for all her weapons.
With a bellow akin to that of an unchained beast, Roahn activated her thruster pack and rocketed a meter to the left at sixty miles an hour towards the first group of assailants, firing as she went. Her boots skimmed the floor as she flew towards the salarian at the head of the column. She crashed into him, knocking him flat on his back as she fired her rifle one-handed, blowing half of a lieutenant's head away. Another salarian attempted to fire an ion-charge burst. Roahn dodged the blast and it hit the alien's captain instead, darkening his kinetic barriers. She lashed out with her omni-sword and the blade slipped between the ribs of a corporal, bisecting their heart and killing them instantly.
As she yanked the sword out, Roahn then grabbed for another conscript and, pure rage dictating her actions, brutally headbutted the man. The curve of her helmet met soft skin and bone. Green blood flew in a sickening arc as the alien's head cracked backward. Roahn snaked her prosthesis around the salarian's neck in the next moment and snapped his neck in a one-armed maneuver, creating a series of crunching noises like a pile of dried leaves had just been trod upon. The dead man slithered out of her grip.
Roahn saw an engineer level a shotgun at her head and she stumbled in another attempt to evade, but her boots slipped on blood and she went down. The shotgun went off, opening up a hole in the wall about the size of her head, narrowly missing her. Lying prone on the ground, Roahn brought her rifle up and vented a hole in the engineer's neck. She primed her thrusters again and was sent scooting across the floor along her back.
With a ripple of her hips, Roahn sprang back up onto her feet, enemy fire crackling all around her upon the bridge. She grabbed for two fusion grenades and lobbed them towards the lower decks—they detonated with a searing crackle. Roahn's barriers diminished a quarter as she was caught in the miniature EMP zone of the grenades, but after a moment, they slowly began to restore back to full.
Now Dark Horizon mercenaries were filling the room from the entrance behind her. They were looking to overwhelm her with sheer numbers. Roahn's tactical mind was running at FTL speeds, analyzing the situation. She was pinned on the bridge. The NavPoints for her crew appeared to be situated towards the drive core. She needed to move forward at all costs.
A grenade sailed in an arc and landed at Roahn's feet. She kicked it away. Armor and bodies painted one of the walls beyond after the concussive thump had finished resounding. Her rifle barked, downing several mercenaries all at once. Roahn glanced at her ammo counter—her supply of thermal clips was not limitless, she needed to be more conservative if she was to cut her way through the crew of the dreadnought and reach her friends in time.
A mercenary popped up, training a pistol at her head. The quarian shot out a sabotage burst and the pistol's thermal clip malfunctioned, catching fire in the trooper's hand. A salarian technomancer sent out a combat drone to take her out, but Roahn quickly looked up the protocol connection to the drone on the battlenet and hijacked it, sending it to attack its devisor while she materialized Chatika in the other corner of the room. The technomancer howled as its own drone shocked him with its short-range attack, and Roahn heard panicked cries of pain as Chatika detonated within a cluster of mercenaries, killing everyone within a five-meter radius.
The salarian engineer soon collapsed at Roahn's feet, his skin crisped and smoking. His barriers still had juice in them—Roahn drained the energy from the batteries and supercharged her own along the micro-wavelength band.
There was now only one enemy left on the bridge—a lone Dark Horizon merc. The armored privateer seemed to become cognizant of this fact in short order and, sensing he lacked many options, embarked into a brazen charge towards Roahn as he abandoned tactics, lifting his weapon high like a club while bellowing a war cry.
Roahn was not impressed by this demonstration of bravery. The merc swung his weapon when he got in range, but Roahn easily ducked the blow and stuck out her leg as he passed her by. The trooper, predictable to the end, tripped upon the quarian's shin and pitched forward with a cry. His chin met the edge of a weapons desk and abruptly forced his skull upward with the sound of several splintering crunches. He was dead before he even hit the ground.
The quarian shook her head at the corpse. "Unbelievable."
She then moved towards the bridge exits. The salarians had locked the doors in an effort to contain Roahn. She wondered if they seriously thought this was actually going to affect her progress in some way. Utilizing some of the plastic explosives in her pack, Roahn blew the doors to molten slag and stepped through the smoky breach. She moved up to the corner where she had initially spotted the salarians surfacing from.
Erext was waiting at the far end of a hallway with a multitude of doors lining it, only a Scorpion pistol clenched in a slender hand. Roahn stowed her rifle and took a defiant step forward. Her snow-white sehni was pressed tightly about her helmet, the dark charcoal skull that lightly brimmed in her visor seemingly trembling with the fury of a thousand suns. The salarian appeared unnerved for a moment as he took in the sight of the spectral alien, but quickly remembered his place.
"You're certainly a more resourceful person than anticipated, lieutenant commander," Erext called out to her before sourly eying the passage to his side. "The intel I had received claimed that you were deceased. Yet here you stand before me."
Roahn smirked. "I got better."
"More like the job was left unfinished. One more reminder to add to the records, apparently. One more example of our folly of joining with Aleph."
The quarian glowered. "And it only took you until now to realize that?"
"This was never about me," Erext snapped. "Nor was it about you, something which you have yet to learn. My oath was always to Sur'Kesh, quarian. To protect the civilization that brought order to the salarian people. It was my duty to deter and eliminate anything that threatened that order. That means you are part of that threat."
It was like Roahn could look upon the man and find that no similarities echoed between them. She almost pitied the salarian. Almost.
"Then you still haven't learned," she retorted. "You've been thinking too small the whole time." She then angled her stance, the lobed lamps behind Roahn appearing as gouts of blue flame. "One chance to surrender."
Erext's mouth tilted upward ever so slightly. "We finally agree."
The salarian's left hand twitched, priming a hidden control. As if on cue, every single door in the hallway opened at the same time. From each passageway, a salarian soldier stepped out. Ten more enemies in between Roahn and Erext.
"Kill her!" Erext yelled.
Weapons of radiant origin brimmed to life around Roahn's arm, a shield and a sword, making it look like she had suddenly burst into flame.
The quarian's eyes narrowed. "Wrong move."
Silently, she sprang forward, making it to the first salarian soldier in seconds. Too close for the alien to open fire. In a full-bodied charge, she smashed the entirety of her shield upon the face of the salarian, propelling him into the wall. Bone crunched, and the soldier dropped with blood streaming from his mouth. Roahn ducked a hasty swing by another guard and raked her right arm in a wide arc, slicing open their chest with her sword. Green fluid exploded from the long micro-cut and the salarian also died in seconds.
She put one leg in front of the other. Moving up the hall.
The salarians seemed to realize that they had no chance in shooting the quarian. The quarters were too tight and there was a huge risk of getting caught in a wrath of crossfire. They all moved to put their guns away, their hands now groping for the knives at their belts, but Roahn was upon them faster than they could arm themselves. Roahn primed her thruster pack, one hundred and ten kilograms of armored and enraged quarian pushing through space in the blink of an eye. Her reinforced shoulder crashed into flesh and bones, pulverizing them around her body. She reached out and grabbed a salarian around the neck with her prosthesis—she spiked him to the ground and stomped heavily on his face. Gore exploded around her boot, but Roahn's eyes were always locked at the end of the hall, towards the one salarian still doling out orders.
"Idiots, cut her open!" Erext was howling. "Carve her eyes out! She's just one quarian!"
A draftee reached forward with a wicked blade and made a quick gash with it. Roahn angled her shield just so and the blade danced along its face in a raking crackle of static electricity. She tipped the shield up, batting the knife away in the process, and stuck her sword in the salarian's gut.
Lightning-quick, Roahn became a tornado in the middle of the hall. She bobbed, weaved, and flowed in a trance-like state, her sword carving a bloody path as easily as trimming a hedge. She pivoted and twirled her shield as if it were a gigantic flag, absorbing every glancing blow sent her way, causing brief showers of sparks to emit wherever metal met hardlight. Crimson fire spread across the silhouette of the quarian, her eyes twin motes amidst a sea of violence.
She made herself low, in the stance of a raptor in a death dive, and made two more swipes, killing two more salarians, one in each second. One soldier, a salarian heavy, let his panic get the better of him and he lifted a shotgun. Roahn batted it away right before it went off—the flak missed the quarian's head completely and instead vaporized the head of a salarian behind her, melting parts of the wall on the far side and turning it into dripping slag. She then swooped underneath the still-outstretched weapon at the same time she made a spiraling motion. Her sword made a fizzing noise as it cleanly sliced through the waist of the heavy. Cauterized blood puffed out from the wound as scarlet ash. The salarian fell to the ground in pieces, cut in half.
Now, it was just her and Erext. Like it had been originally. As it was meant to be.
"You killed them all…" the admiral gaped, eyes wide and uncomprehending.
Roahn straightened from her battle stance. There were still a few meters left between her and the salarian. She began to close that distance, but in a slow stalk. Shoulders square and menacing. Eyes vibrant with an unruly hatred, the kind that seared fear into the hearts of the men who stared into them. Like Erext was staring at her now.
In an instant, the veteran of three dozen battles found his courage. He lifted his Scorpion pistol, did not wait for the charge to build completely, and fired. The projectiles were low-velocity squash-heads, dappled with sapphire light. The high-ex filler within doubled as an adhesive, turning the projectiles into sticky grenades.
Adrenaline poured into Roahn's veins. Everything slowed, becoming calm and clear. She felt that she could take a breath and exhale it in the time it would take for the projectiles to reach her.
Almost effortlessly, she moved her arm, the one the shield was wrapped around. The high-ex could not stick to barriers—it bounced off with a quick sound of thunder and attached itself to the ceiling behind Roahn, detonating harmlessly in tiny concussions.
Erext cursed and pulled the trigger again. Roahn deflected that one too. The salarian fired three more times and Roahn either ducked or bashed each shot away like she was the prodigy of an ancient human sport. All the while, she had been moving closer to Erext. Never breaking stride. Never letting the salarian dictate the tempo.
In desperation, Erext whipped up another pistol, this one a Predator, and began plugging at Roahn's shield with cryo rounds. Ice flurried past the glowing barrier, showering the quarian with snow and Bose-Einstein condensate. The super-condensed quantum boron particles streamed over the shields and froze over Roahn's arm and armor. Icicles dripped from the shield and from the quarian's metal fingers, but the irate look that surged behind the shield and her mask held enough heat to melt Noveria.
The salarian dropped the Predator upon realizing that he could not prevent Roahn from closing and began igniting his omni-blade. Roahn, however, saw her chance. She jumped forward and planted a firm kick directly upon Erext's chest. The salarian flew through the air, his hands emptied of their weapons, and hit the door behind him hard, emptying his lungs of air. He slid down, choking.
Roahn's boot nudged something on the ground. It was Erext's Scorpion pistol. She picked it up.
Erext gasped from the ground. Panting heavily. Roahn approached with her enemy's weapon in hand, her omni-blade sheathed. She looked upon the downed alien and felt absolutely nothing for the man. Most of her enemy's had faces she could remember. Erext's was forgettable. Might as well have been one of Aleph's many faceless denizens, only suitable to carry out orders.
The salarian's mottled olive face screwed up in defiance. His eyes flicked over to the fibered armor that wrapped around Roahn's right arm, the black covering conveying the thick stripe of white bisected by a line of blood red. The last piece of her father's armor.
Erext's arms cradled his gut. He looked straight into Roahn's eyes.
"Think that makes you worthy of his name?" he snarled, referring to the armor.
The stare that Roahn blazed seemed like it could have shattered the glass of her visor. She took one final step forward and plowed her heel into Erext's stomach. The salarian wretched and howled as he tried to suck in air, a faint mist of blood frothing from his mouth.
"It's my name too!" Roahn growled as she quickly aimed the Scorpion pistol and fired.
The projectile existed for merely a second in the cold air of the dreadnought, a thin neon line of the darkest blue, before it ripped into Erext's mouth.
Erext's head snapped back with a wet cough, but the shot had not killed him. Not yet. His cheeks bulged around the uncomfortably hot projectile, everything having happened too quickly for pain to set in. Realization soon seeped coldly into his head like chilled mercury had just been poured into his cranium and he looked up at the quarian in horror, who still held the smoking pistol that had just signed his death warrant.
Roahn crouched at the same time she brought her shield to bear, protecting her entire body behind its face. Ice continued to crackle along her left arm and her blood cried a warsong of fire and victory.
She closed her eyes. She heard a muffled thump and smoke slowly wisped over her.
Silent Essence
Drive Core – 3rd Level
Deep within the bowels of the drive core, the air here was a blue-black color. The multitude of columns were tinged with an ashen hue and wrapped endlessly within the chamber, fluids and power humming serenely within their confines.
Several dozen meters away, the globular and rippling drive core brimmed a blue light off in the distance like an ethereal wildfire. The sounds of distant battle could be discerned from far away, but they were so scattered and so fragmented by the placement of the hundreds of columns that the sound rippled from all sides, unwilling to be centered.
Garrus pressed himself into a tiny crevasse within one of these columns, his armor blackened and smoking. He had left the remains of his sniper rifle back near the balcony, near the perch he had selected for himself. His hands now gripped his assault rifle, down to its last clip. His fingers ached and were starting to shake. Not from nerves. Nervousness would have almost been preferential to what he knew was the true agent.
He listened to the approaching thuds that wrapped around the pillar. The turian closed his eyes and willed his throat to cooperate. He was too exhausted—he needed more time.
Two rows down, the Aeronaut emerged from behind one of the columns, clawed feet stomping upon the grated floor. Two Dark Horizon Gladiators flanked him, both brutes cradling large machine guns in their massive paws. The Aeronaut's submachine guns were back in his hands and the winged mercenary laconically scanned the room, an assured empowerment having wrapped about him.
"You know, I used to look up to you, Vakarian," the Aeronaut called out. "Every single scrap of media that had your face on it, I devoured. I had your entire service record chronicled—your dossier memorized word for word with every campaign emblazoned into my head. Your hunt for Saren. Your suicide mission to defeat the Collectors. The final push against the Reapers. The prominent son of Palaven—for years I dreamed of meeting you."
The cyborg's fingers tapped expectantly against the frame of his weapons. Meanwhile, Garrus was scrambling at his neck, fighting to stifle a rising cough.
"You were one of those titans where your vast skills were utterly wasted until you had the right motivator to guide you along. I thought I was like you in that regard. Untapped potential spoiling from disuse. You gave and you gave and you gave… yet you never truly capitalized on your talents on your own merit. You could have been a conqueror, Vakarian. Your name should have been whispered across the stars. But you chose blind loyalty to your commander—to his goals—and threw everything else away. You lapsed, Vakarian, and that makes you pathetic. It makes you weak."
Garrus was no longer holding his rifle up as his free hand was now firmly plastered over his mouth. His lungs ached and his esophagus throbbed. There was a wet feeling in his throat, like every stifled cough ripped a gash inside him.
"Vakarian," the Aeronaut continued to taunt. "Don't fold over and die like Shepard did. Don't let your pursuit of the 'right thing' lead you to capitulation. I know you, Vakarian. You've still got some fight in you. That old soldier, fighting to unearth himself. Well, I want it. I want to see that soldier. Whatever you've got left, I'll take it. I'll rip it out of you if I must, but before your lungs slither out that last, pathetic breath, you will validate my existence, however grotesque it might be, and allow me to surpass you once and for all!"
The turian could not hold it back anymore. Garrus clawed one final breath, shuddered, and finally coughed. The noise was explosive in the chamber, impossible for anyone in the vicinity to miss.
The Aeronaut whirled towards the source of the noise, just scant meters away. There was no doubt he heard the cough and had triangulated Garrus' position. He took a step forward, scaffold-like wings twitching upon his back, but flirted with hesitation for but a moment, turning his head to the side, almost as if he was keen to ignore the sound, to turn his back on it.
But the mercenary warbled an electronic sigh as he looked back over his shoulder, towards where Garrus was hiding.
"How pedestrian."
The Aeronaut trained his submachine guns on the pillar, with Garrus just behind it. The sleek and winged predator tipped his chin downward, polarized visor unreadable. When he opened fire, the entirety of the ship seemed to be filled with noise. Red-hot metal flailed past Garrus on both sides. A portion of the tubing that comprised the tall column melted. The air turned hot, crackling from the superheated rounds. Garrus' kinetic barriers rippled and turned burgundy from the sheer power of the assault, shrinking around his body, growing smaller and smaller until—
With a terrible wheeze, Garrus' barriers collapsed. The millisecond after that, he grunted as he felt something impact his right side. Hard.
His rifle left his grip and bounced upon the ground.
Something else in his body felt like it was on fire, along with his lungs. He did not even notice that his legs had lost all power as he slowly slid down, back plastered to the pillar, leaving a desolate blue smear behind. His hands groped at his side, just underneath his ribcage. He felt blood pump over his knuckles, shockingly hot against his skin, which had grown cold.
He was unsure of how long he was sitting there. Ten minutes? Twenty? It seemed like a lifetime had come to pass when he opened his eyes again, swimming through the pain that fogged his vision.
A shadow blotted out the glow of the drive core just next to him. The Aeronaut was standing before him now, one of his guns trained squarely at Garrus' head, his Gladiator squad milling around just behind the mercenary.
Tilting his head, the armored privateer took stock of the fallen turian for a few seconds. Perhaps he was wondering why he felt no pleasure in this. No joy to erupt from his victory. It was dawning on the Aeronaut now that this was to be a hollow moment, merely a stopgap that had never promised definition.
"You didn't even try," the cyborg snarled, weapon shaking in a clenched fist.
Garrus lifted a fumbling hand of his own as he gently pried his eyepiece off and set it in his lap. In his peripheral vision, he could see the shadowed form of Korridon and… someone a bit smaller hurry their way in his direction. They would not make it to him in time. He admired their initiative though, as he had never asked for their help. An internal smile wilted—he wished them all the luck in the galaxy. They were going to need it. He then stared up at the Aeronaut through glassy eyes.
"I didn't need to," he said.
The Aeronaut stilled for a moment, confused. He then noticed the eyepiece upon Garrus' lap and the tiny orange light that was winking in the corner of the vibrant blue glass. A connection icon.
"Transmitting?" the Aeronaut whispered before he stomped forward, jabbing his weapon into Garrus' face. "W-Why are you on an open channel?! What are you up to? Who have you been talking to?!"
The barrel shoved against Garrus' mandible. The turian simply narrowed his eyes, ever silent.
"Who have you been talking to?!"
A clattering sound immediately drew the Aeronaut's attention. He whipped his head around and saw a cylindrical object rock back and forth just a few inches from his foot. He looked down at the object and realized that it was a flashbang seconds before it detonated.
Garrus had closed his eyes and had rolled away from the blast to avoid the worst of the effects. The Aeronaut and his cronies did not. Not even their upgraded optics could shield them from their worlds searing white, causing distortion across their spectrums. Their auditory sensors overloaded and began to reset, causing immense ripples of crackling feedback that deafened all three of them.
"What… the… fu—" the Aeronaut yowled as he turned in place, trying to pierce the veil of white, right before a rifle blast shattered the momentary serenity.
The Gladiator heavies both dropped, their chests ripped open and smoking. The Aeronaut turned towards the sound of the gun blasts before a raking burst caught him along his knee. He dropped with a yell.
From out of the light, the flickering of phosphorous like bleached fire across their already silvery profile, a slender but armored form slid into existence. A long assault rifle was clenched in a powerful mechanical arm, which appeared to be trailing cold wisps from ice that encrusted the limb. Their visor was the color of night, a vague and argent profile of an incomplete lobe and maxilla etched within. A scratched and dented thruster pack dropped to the ground behind them, its exhaust having been completely spent in order to reach this level of the drive core.
The Aeronaut momentarily gaped in befuddlement before recognition gripped him, rooting him to the spot. He slowly stood so he could speak, but Roahn beat him to the punch.
"I've had enough of your idiotic ravings," the quarian growled.
She then shunted out her right hand, a tech burst shooting from her palm like a giant woodspark. The Aeronaut stupidly glanced at the blast all the while until it struck him in the chest, propelling him back several meters and careening him into a faraway pillar. He crumpled to the ground in a cacophonous heap, but was soon groping his way back up onto his feet again, his armored chest pulsating with yellow lighting and scorched with branching soot marks.
The Aeronaut reached for his weapons as he sourly appraised the quarian. "Aren't you supposed to be dead?!"
"You're surprised?" Roahn mocked as she also procured a pistol, twirling it in her finger to shake the encrusted ice off, which showered in all directions in jagged icicles. "Resurrection…" she crouched, "…is a family trait."
Then she attacked.
Firing her rifle one-handed and her pistol in another, Roahn bellowed as she erupted into a poetic frenzy of brooding rage. Bullets sparked off the Aeronaut's shields, tearing one of his custom submachine guns from his grip. The cyborg gave a snarl, unused to be overpowered so quickly. But he quickly recompensated by igniting his jetpack, sending him into a quick roll that robbed Roahn of the leverage she needed, firing all the while. Roahn skidded to a halt, missing most of the rounds sent her way, her shields taking the rest. This lull was more than enough for the Aeronaut to claw his way into a pouncing strike like a quadrupedal predator, razor wings outstretched and ready to slice Roahn to ribbons.
Roahn backpedaled, ducking below a nexus of pipework. Her opponent was skilled in navigating a battlefield though, and vaulted over the contraption. When Roahn was in range, he lurched forward, his bladed wings springing to life and making several burning slashes—one, two—that narrowly missed Roahn's head, the snapping of the metal clanging like cymbals. On the backslash of the second strike, a wing hooked against the quarian's Dreighton rifle, ripping it from her hand and casting it far away for it to be forgotten.
If she had been greener and had never faced the Aeronaut before, Roahn might have fumbled in this moment, losing the mental war to her nerves. But she was no longer that person anymore. The Aeronaut had barged well into her zone of influence, too entranced for him to properly retreat. Hell, at this point there was no reason for the Aeronaut to imagine why he would retreat. Roahn knew she could use that to her advantage.
Forgetting his submachine gun, the Aeronaut stutter-stepped forward, a clawed hand out to deliver a wide strike. Roahn somersaulted underneath the blow, exiting at the cyborg's back. She snapped her pistol up and delivered three shots to the mercenary's back. His shield pulsed and faded as the powerful rounds broke through. Then a bullet struck near where the Aeronaut's solar plexus would be and orange sparks flared from the man as his shield generator died completely.
"Oh, you little cunt," the Aeronaut growled as he whirled around. "You've done it now."
But Roahn was ready for him. Her omni-sword pulsing around her arm, she stepped forward, into his stance, and plunged the blade into what constituted for the man's stomach. The Aeronaut flinched but did not cry out in pain. He had no pain receptors to feel the bite of the sword, after all. Roahn could only take in the intricate nature of how the cyborg's metallic plates would all shift together in seamless harmony as she stabbed him twice more, magma and lubricating fluids spewing from the fresh gashes in his gut.
The Aeronaut tried to reach out to grab her, but Roahn was too quick. She darted underneath the spindly fingers and rammed her sword just underneath the mercenary's armpit, the blade exiting out the other side of his shoulder.
There was a noticeable change in the Aeronaut as his indignation finally reached a boiling point at being caught off guard by a quarian. He tried to back away, but Roahn was upon him, swinging her prosthesis wildly in a hammerfist that caught the side of his helmet, cracking his visor. Now enraged himself, the leader of the galaxy's most fearsome paramilitary group shifted his weight back forward, ducking down to complete a complex twirl in which his wings were fully extended, spinning like a top as he hoped to cut Roahn in half. The quarian dropped to the ground to avoid losing her head, but the Aeronaut had already anticipated such a move.
"Stupid bitch," the cyborg chuckled right before he raised a foot and smashed it down.
There was nothing there to meet his foot. Just the cold metal of the grate which had been supporting Roahn a mere second before. The Aeronaut's clawed foot smashed nearly all the way through the level while Roahn had rolled clear with a grin on her face, also having mapped out the sequence of events further in advance.
"Thanks for the compliment," she breathed, right before she unleashed a cutting upward strike, which sheared deeply into the Aeronaut's right wing, ripping part of it away.
Lurching backward, the Aeronaut was finally tasting real fear. His weight shifted in all directions, unsure of himself. "You're completely insane!"
"Possibly true."
The remaining jets on the Aeronaut's pack flared and Roahn's blood thudded. He would rather flee than face her wrath. There was no time to formulate a complete plan. It was time to do something truly foolish. To do the last thing he was expecting.
Before the cyborg could lift off into the air, he looked over to find himself beset by a howling Roahn, who had hurled herself through the air to land upon the Aeronaut's back, just in time for the golden flames to reach a throbbing blue.
The two of them lifted off the deck with a horrible bellow, the ground below dropping away and turning end over end as the out-of-control pair spiraled into the air. Roahn was clinging upon the Aeronaut's jet pack for dear life while the mercenary's limbs flailed in all directions, trying to throw her off. The duo broke their ascent just in time to avoid smashing into the ceiling, but now they were darting and weaving through the forest of columns and piping, having to constantly change direction in order to avoid crashing headlong into an obstacle.
Roahn could hear savage curses howling from the Aeronaut, damning her in multiple languages and creeds as if he thought foul language would get her to let go. Ignoring the thundering of her brain as the rapid spiraling slowly deprived it of blood, Roahn gritted her teeth and sank the fingers of her prosthesis deep into the metal of the cyborg's jetpack, which bent and hooked against them as she sank her hand into the contraption. With all her strength, she then ripped her arm back and away, tearing off a piece of the pack with it, wires and fuel tubing trailing like intestines behind it. Immediately, one of the Aeronaut's jets fluttered and extinguished. There was a lurch in Roahn's gut as they immediately started to lose altitude.
Now the Aeronaut's voice was rising in pitch, becoming more and more frantic as he realized what Roahn was doing. But she did not care—she doubled her efforts and clawed away more pieces from the Aeronaut's jet pack, her fingers ripping free components and dislodging fuel conduits. The rest of the shimmering flames from the vents of the pack either shrunk or died outright. Roahn looked up and noticed that the ground was approaching at a frantic speed.
Before she could groan out a curse of her own, a new voice broke out over her personal comm.
"Go. I've got you."
Without any more thinking, she jumped. Her stomach heaved up to touch her lungs for a brief moment, until she felt an unearthly power gently grip itself all around her. An azure glow warped around her very form and gravity seemed to lessen in her presence, as if she was caught in a bubble where the laws of physics were bent to one's whim.
Softly, Roahn was set back down upon the deck, her weight rapidly shifting back to normal. She looked over to a nearby stairwell, where Liara was finishing lowering her arm, energy like purple flames continuing to wisp along the asari's arm.
The quarian gave Liara a grateful nod of thanks.
Meanwhile, the Aeronaut, lacking a savior of his own, plummeted out of the air like a lead balloon and landed on the grated floor so hard he made an indentation sized to his own body upon it. Metal smashed against metal, creating a resonate crash. His ruined jetpack belched smoke and dribbled weak sparks.
Groaning, the mercenary stumbled to his feet. Korridon and Kasumi were closest and hurried in his direction to face him. The cyborg looked at the two of them—recognized Kasumi. An incredulous laugh wormed his way through his vocabulator. Amazed at his own blindness, for how else could he hope to explain that he had been existing within the same ship with that woman for weeks on end?
"You're kidding," he gaped as Kasumi shifted her stance, a pistol and a knife appearing in her hands. "You?!"
Kasumi flashed a grin, sinking her heel into the floor as Roahn joined the fray next to Korridon.
"I play a very patient game," the woman smiled.
Roahn glanced over at Korridon, noting the splash of blue marring the side of his face. He caught her gaze for a split-second, jaw partially dropping as a million words lined up in a queue behind his tongue. There was no question he recognized her, even with her modified appearance. What other quarian would throw themselves into such a fray wholeheartedly, let alone a quarian with a prosthesis? His eyes reflected pain, sadness, relief, and anger all at once. Something heavy pulsated just behind Roahn's heart, the spear of remorse. She forced herself to look back towards the cyborg. There would be time for apologies later. Other opportunities to earn his forgiveness. But not now. Their enemies needed to be destroyed first.
The Aeronaut's head shot back and forth, studying his opponents, before they all attacked en masse.
There were multiple strategies that the various races employed when dealing with more than one opponent, but the Aeronaut was so discombobulated that he forgot all of them. He raised an arm, a pistol flashing in his hand. Roahn jerked away from the shot and swerved her sword, bisecting the weapon. Kasumi closed in on the cyborg from behind, her light-bending hood zapping her in and out of existence. With a few precise slashes, she opened up sizzling cuts in the synthetic muscle of the back of the mercenary's legs, akin to where the tendons might be. The Aeronaut howled and stumbled, lashing out with his clawed hands to grab the faux-officer, but Kasumi easily darted out of reach.
Waiting for an opening, Korridon paced the perimeter of the scuffle, an invisible dais situated in his mind, while he trained a shotgun on the Aeronaut. In the middle of a counterattack, the cyborg noticed the turian in the background and deemed him the weakest enemy. His submachine gun spat several bullets towards Kasumi, forcing her to take cover. Roahn had previously disengaged to formulate another series of attack, leaving the Aeronaut open for the meantime. But the mercenary did not attempt to attack either woman. Instead, he dropped to a crouch, tilted his wrist, and unleashed a bright gout of flame from a hidden muzzle in his armor that billowed into the darkness, headed straight on for Korridon.
The turian's horrified eyes swallowed him whole. Roahn wanted to call out a warning. Something. Anything. Whatever it took to snap him out of it. All these options flashed through her head in a nanosecond, but her body was accursed to react too late. The yellow dragon of flame spat parallel to the ground, ephemeral fingers reaching out to grasp the man.
But Korridon lifted his arm and a golden bubble encased him—a shield. The flamethrower burst smashed against the hexagonally-segmented light and billowed around it like rapids around a rock. Lightning crackled against flames, exploding gracefully in their own private duel. Yet the turian within the shield remained unscorched.
Even better—he was walking, taking his barrier with him.
Pushing against the flames, Korridon's body shook in fear, but he never once faltered. Never slowed down. Just kept shoving his barrier against the onslaught, heat and death rippling all around him. The screams of long-dead ghosts bellowing in his ears. His own mistakes tearing at his body. All of them batted aside by the well of hope that sustained him, righted him.
He pressed forward.
The Aeronaut was shouting as he stomped forward, trying to burn away the last of Korridon's shield as he increased the volume of his flamethrower to the max. The turian was also bellowing, his voice carrying above the roar of the flames as he took one long stride, then two, and finally his barrier pushed against the Aeronaut's arm, surging it upwards and causing the flames to geyser into the air.
With a searing crackle, the turian disengaged the barrier and he leapt towards the Aeronaut's arm, gripping it in place. The cybernetic mercenary screeched in indignation, but was unable to twist his arm out of Korridon's grip. The turian was snarling, jaw open in a fury, eyes dark but brimming with their own shining light as he matched the Aeronaut, wresting the flamethrower out of the cyborg's control. The Aeronaut's other hand still gripped his last submachine gun—in desperation he cracked Korridon over the head several times with it. Blood ribboned down Korridon's face and he cried out. Raising his weapon for one final blow, the Aeronaut prepared to crush the turian's skull wide open, but Korridon ripped himself away at the last moment, claws raking the tubing to the flamethrower's fuel lines, dousing the Aeronaut and setting him alight.
Now the Aeronaut truly screamed. His entire chassis was burning, multiple fires crackling within him like a straw effigy. The flames crept along the tubing that snaked into his chest, parts of his armor melting and bubbling, creating a ghastly glow from inside the cyborg.
Blind with pain and rage, the Aeronaut lashed out with his free hand. Korridon darted out of reach and snatched up his fallen shotgun. Kasumi sprinted forward and stabbed the cyborg's leg, puncturing a hydraulic. Korridon shot the mercenary in the other kneecap—metal sparks and clear synthblood flecked the floor.
There was a brief moment of respite. The flaming Aeronaut raised his gun, but Roahn hurtled out of the shadows, omni-blade singing as she held it aloft. She brought it down with a violent crackle and the Aeronaut's arm dropped away, cut off at the elbow. The stump of his arm glowed yellow before cooling to a dark orange, molten slag dripping from the wound.
"AGAIN?!" the Aeronaut bellowed. "Are you serious?!"
Before Roahn could strike another blow, the Aeronaut toggled a control and a pulse grenade rippled between the two, bodily throwing the quarian several meters away. Wounded and coughing, the mercenary bent to retrieve his fallen weapon, still clenched in the fist of his dismembered limb, before he scurried behind a nearby column. Roahn did the same, hugging the wall as she breathed heavily.
With a series of grunts, the Aeronaut desperately tried to reload his weapon, but it was difficult with only having one hand. He scraped the upper ridge of the barrel along his armored thigh, wrenching the mechanism back and forth several times. The motions were sloppily done—shards of gold from the abused barrel soon littered the floor at his feet.
Silence befell the drive core for several seconds, except for the hum of energy whispering between the vault of columns within the gargantuan room.
Locked and loaded, the Aeronaut leaned out past his cover. "I have to hand it to you," he called, "you are the most tenacious bitch I've ever come across. You… just… refuse to die."
From behind her own cover, Roahn just panted, mind utterly clear.
"But don't worry," the Aeronaut continued, "I'll help push you over that edge. But I won't gun for you first, quarian. Oh no. I'll go after your friends. I'll flay their skin, peel it over their raw nerves, rip their guts out, put out their eyes. And I'll make you watch. Aleph was wrong about you, quarian. He's right about many things. But you… you're his blind spot. A fact I've never understood—but that mistake will be something he'll have to reconcile with himself. I have no such barriers."
He strode out into the open, feet spread wide, rimmed eyes glowering as his dipped his head. Smoke still rose from his roasted form, a few fires dotted within him.
"Time to end this farce, quarian. If only I could have seen your face as you watched your father die. To see this front you try so hard to put up reduced to your true self: a pathetic, weepy-eyed runt. Your name deserved to die with him… not live on in you!"
Something in Roahn threatened to snap, but she held onto the frayed threads just in time. But her world flashed white as her heart thudded her entire body, her ears only hearing the conical sounds of her own roaring pulse. But it was not the sound of her fear.
It was the sound of her triumph.
With a smooth breath, almost liquid, Roahn wheeled out from behind her pillar and broke out into a sprint. The Aeronaut already had his submachine gun out and waiting. Dark and thick gunblasts ripped the air apart, unleashing hell upon the onrushing quarian.
But Roahn whipped her arm up, her hexagonal shield snapping to life just in time before the bullets reached her. The shield rippled and fizzled as it absorbed the gun's fire, jackhammering the quarian's arms in her sockets. She practically flew, staring through the thunderstorm, ignoring the bruising of her arm as each round smashed into the barrier that protected her. Motes of liquid steel, searing bright white and yellow, splashed around the quarian's feet, the jagged fingers of electricity nesting around her. Coddling her. Every miniscule move seemed scarred into the very cells of her brain. She anticipated every shot, measured every step.
Calmly, she ran forward, her victory howling.
The Aeronaut backpedaled, feeling cold fear for the first time in quite a long while. He squeezed the trigger of his submachine gun harder out of reflex, but the abused weapon had finally had enough. The worn barrel finally cracked, a malfunction after suffering prolonged misuse. The slide lodged against the spring mechanism and exploded in the mercenary's hand, blowing off all but two of his fingers. The Aeronaut stared dumbly at his maimed hand only looking up when he realized that Roahn was inches from him.
In a singular motion, Roahn bent into a slide upon her knees, her shin guards carrying her easily across the grating. Her shield bent and reformed itself in the shape of a sword. She aimed her trajectory for the gap between the Aeronaut's legs. As she passed underneath him, she jammed her arm upward.
There was a savage hiss followed by a popping crackle.
She skidded to a stop two seconds later. Roahn did not immediately turn around. She waited for her breath to return before she finally stood, her temples pounding.
Slowly, on a heel, she pivoted. The Aeronaut was still standing upright, though he was facing the other way, a faint white wisp rising from the top of his head. He seemed to teeter, as if drunk, for a few seconds more before he finally collapsed. His body, split right down the middle, fell in opposite directions. The perfectly bisected corpse of the automaton burst dark fluids that pulsed onto the cold floor, the anatomical wounds having been sliced clean through like a cutaway diagram in a children's book. Roahn turned away.
Panting, she unleashed a slow breath, finality overwhelming her in a soothing wave. Her entire body jittered from the adrenaline comedown. Her breath felt like it was emitting in frigid streams. Faintness tugged at the edges of her consciousness, but she mustered herself upright, fighting through it all.
The rest of the ship came into focus and Roahn immediately found Korridon standing just a few meters away. The turian looked a fright—part of his mandible was missing and blood had nearly coated his entire face. Roahn jogged up to the man and, putting everything else aside, took him in a hug, wanting to feel small against his lanky frame.
To her joy, she felt Korridon's arm come along her back. The man gave a huge sigh of relief, his ribcage shuddering against her—it sounded like he was on the verge of tears. Blood dripped on her shoulder. She ignored it for now.
"Everything you said…" Roahn whispered as she broke the hug, the holographic boneplate fizzling out of existence so that Korridon could see her eyes through the smoky glass, "…back on the ship…"
"I was angry," Korridon interrupted. "I wasn't thinking, and I said it all without—"
The quarian slowly shook her head. "You were right. About everything. You were right and… and I'm so sorry, Korr. I'm sorry for what I did to you… for how I hurt you. And—Keelah, you're bleeding all over the place. I've got some medi-gel, just give me a—"
The turian's hand gently closed over Roahn's stopping the motion. She looked up at him, confused.
"Later," Korridon said with a dry grin. "We can do this all later. The healing, the apologies. We've got more time for that."
"Korr… I just don't want you to hate me. You were the one good thing that happened to me in the past year. I only found that out when I was lightyears away from you. In the darkest hell where I was truly blind. I thought I was protecting you… but I only hurt us both from what I did. I'll understand if you could never forgive me. You don't have to give me the answer I want to hear. But if there was the smallest chance that you don't find me deserving of your hate, then I would do anything to make it all right."
Eyes like wet stones narrowed, a tiredness overcoming Korridon. He raised his hand and gently cupped the chin of Roahn's helmet. His fingers scraped along the underside as if he was handling her soft skin and not cold metal. He then moved up to cup where her cheek would be, his fingers leaving a brief stain along the black glass. Roahn leaned into the touch, a soft sigh emitting as a warble from her vocabulator.
"You traveled lightyears to tell me all that," Korridon said, voice weighted down by both sadness and joy. "I forgive you, Roahn. You're here and you're alive. That's all I've wanted."
To Roahn, it felt like she could fall backward through a cloud in bliss. "Thank you, Korr."
The two spoke no more to each other for they had expended their capability to converse, the chemicals saturating their minds overriding all coherent thought. They headed back the way they came, where they found the rest of the squad all congregated together near the control panel for the drive core, which was still throbbing in its semi-liquid state, looking like a suspended heart surrounded by a circular ribcage of metal.
Kasumi was kneeling over the propped-up body of Garrus. Roahn called out the name of her captain and started to rush over to him, but Korridon gently grabbed her shoulder, stopping her. The turian was barely breathing, his entire right side was slick and oily with his own blood. But he was blearily looking up into the eyes of the human woman who knelt over him, a sereness he had not felt in a while claiming him.
"Ah," he said simply, his voice unnaturally clear. "Why… am I not… surprised? Don't suppose… this is a trick… brought on by blood loss?"
The woman caressed Garrus' cheek, her lips curving upward warmly.
"I may have fooled many people in my life, dear. But right now, I'm not hiding anything from you."
Garrus mustered enough strength to look playfully bemused, but erupted in a series of low coughs, each wracking of his body looking like he was being torn apart from within.
"The word of a thief?" was his facetious response. He raised a hand to touch the woman's face—Kasumi leaned in and held his hand to her cheek.
She then sheepishly smiled as she pointed to the Alliance insignia on her arm that she had failed to remove just yet. "Technically, it's the word of an officer. The word of Lieutenant Colonel Mitsushima Goro, to be precise."
There was a dramatic pause that interluded before Garrus started erupting into dry peals of laughter. He had to clasp a hand over his chest, for every single guffaw sent a powerful ache twinging all throughout his body.
"Goro," he repeated mirthfully. "Goro? By the spirits, Kas… you only changed one letter of your last name?"
"If it sounds stupid but it works, then it isn't stupid," Kasumi shrugged. "I'll let you in on a secret: a name is the easiest deception to pull off, if you're confident enough."
"I'll be damned."
Sam shuffled to the front and gently placed a hand on Kasumi's shoulder. "We need to get him to the Menhir right now."
The woman dimly nodded, now trying to hide the tears in her eyes.
"Of… of course. Who… who's going to help me carry him?"
Every single one of the crew stepped forward. Kasumi looked at them all and smiled through her tears, mouthing her profound thanks.
The Silent Essence's death was vibrant, but unremarkable. The drive core overloading blew out one entire side of the dreadnought, venting nearly all of its atmosphere in one fell swoop. Most of the ships in the nebula never got a chance to see it go down in flames. The Radius battlenet was in disarray until Admiral Huston managed to take control over the comms. By then, their side was too disorganized to mount a counterattack in an effective time. So, he made the tactical decision to retreat, carving a hasty line back through the cosmic cloud, towards the edge of the system where the relay was.
Everyone on Umbra had made it back to the Menhir by then, with Cortez having rapidly shuttled all of them off the enemy ship. The warship joined the reforming Synod fleet, which was heading in the opposite direction of the Radius, too battered to mount a pursuit. But everyone on board those ships could only hold victory in their eyes—they had beaten back the largest confederate fleet they had ever seen! More than that, they had destroyed a dreadnought! And not just any dreadnought, Erext's flagship. To call this day a defeat was a disservice to the efforts of the rebellion, not to mention a complete falsehood. The Synod formed up and headed to the other edge of the system to lick their wounds, battered but alive.
With all of the ships having left their berth of primordial silt and vapor, the nebula of Messier 78 waited in complete solitude once more, its clouds tattered and shorn, lit by the ghostly light of birthing stars.
A/N: All right, I'm back. I've moved into my apartment and blitzed through most of ME:LE (which was fantastic, btw). Already I'm super happy to see the resurgence in the Mass Effect fandom on all social media sites, including this one. Hopefully everyone here has been enjoying the newfound revival to the franchise as well.
I'm definetely eager to see your thoughts on this particular chapter. I've been excited for this particular one for over for quite some time - the reasoning being obvious, I could imagine. As much as I would have liked to have named this chapter, "Roahn Kicks Ass", I did force myself to tamper down on the rhetoric a bit. But I hope now my reasoning for making Mausoleum a tough slog until now is becoming slightly more clearer. Or maybe I'm being too optimistic - no doubt several people will still accuse me of being a cold-blooded bastard. Can't win all the time, right?
Playlist:
Roahn's Spacewalk
"Into the Furnace"
Sarah Schachner
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare (Original Video Game Soundtrack)
The Thief Revealed / Garrus and Aeronaut
"Kingdom of the Flies - The Final Standoff"
Ludvig Forssell
Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain (Original Video Game Extended Soundtrack)
Bridge Breach
"Fog Battle"
Junkie XL
300: Rise of an Empire (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)
Hallway Dance with Erext
"Infiltration"
Lorne Balfe and Hans Zimmer
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 (Original Video Game Soundtrack)
Roahn Emerges - Aeronaut Battle
"I Am Scorpion"
Benjamin Wallfisch
Mortal Kombat (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)
Flamethrower / Roahn's Final Charge
"We Stand Ready"
Neal Acree
Starcraft II: Legacy of the Void (Original Video Game Soundtrack)
Umbra Reunited / Silent Essence Destroyed
"An Eternal Reoccurence of Change"
Tom Holkenborg
Zack Snyder's Justice League (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)