ESV Verdun, Undisclosed Location, March 2079
Aethyta grunted as she put on her old commando leathers, the thing had stiffened with time and her tits had gotten bigger, thank the goddess, but it still fit. She strapped her FN Five-Sevens to her hip holsters, a European design used for decades, still reliable enough to stay in service, as the bullets were design with anti-armor capabilities. The days of the First Contact war where human bullets could completely ignore shields were long gone, and now shielding devices were tunned to interact with lower velocities, albeit at an increase cost per unit and less durability, something about the field's strength needing to be higher and how it consumed exponentially more energy, she didn't know exactly.
There was a chance, however, that low-life pirates hadn't gotten the money to update their own shields, and in that case the guns were going to punch right trough their cheap armor.
Grabbing a Krogan shotgun, a favorite of hers since her maiden days, she turned to see the collection of warriors she had at her disposal for the coming operation. Twenty asari huntresses, divided in ten groups of two, were all excitedly chatting among themselves, helping their sister-in-arms check their equipment one last time. Then there were the krogan Wrex sent her.
She didn't know if the old man was losing it and thought "three" meant "six" or if he was trying to show his support by sending in more soldiers, but she was pissed at him, nonetheless. She'd asked for three because it was the maximum amount, she was sure to be able to reign in, having double that number could… complicate things.
The krogan were amusing themselves with the collection of heavy weapons provided by the humans. Two of them had taken up heavy, 12.7mm machine-guns and were carrying them around like assault rifles. The biggest krogan of the group was enamored with some sort of gatling gun, strapping two enormous steel containers to his back to carry enough ammo to that thing.
Thank the goddess she convinced the ship's quartermaster to hide all the rocket launchers they had lying around.
Her girls were, like her, sporting a combination of human and asari (or krogan) weapons. Most had Scar-Hs assault rifles, with a few carrying human pistols as a backup as well. She was about to go talk to them when she heard the familiar "ping" of an arriving elevator.
Matriarch Benezia was dressed formally and immediately stood out among the crew and soldiers of the Verdun's hangar bay. Aethyta narrowed her eyes and stared at the ambassador. Getting closer to her, she said
"Hey babe, wanna go groundside and get in the action? You should change your outfit first, don't think a long dress is appropriate for a battlefield"
The cold, sideway stare thrown at her was her only answer to her jesting
"I'm only here to talk with you, Colonel"
"Well then, talk away, goddess knows it's your favorite pastime"
Benezia broke her dignified façade and pinched the bridge of her nose, sighing and shaking her head, she spoke, much warmer this time
"Aethyta, please, let's stop acting like idiots, I'm here to ask you why are you going groundside? Surely the commandos have someone who can led this mission?"
Aethyta was incredulous, here Benezia was, worrying about her safety after all those decades
"Because I want to, and because I personally asked Wrex for the krogan support, with the implicit agreement I'd be leading them. And because this is the first major operation we conduct alongside the Europeans; I want everything to go out without a hitch. You're not the only one who's interested in the success of this partnership, you know?"
Benezia looked her ex-lover in the eyes
"When they told me I would be working alongside you in Europe, I was mad, surely that was a bad joke from Thessia, But I was wrong, you're doing a good job, and I found myself less and less angry with you, even with all the teasing and poorly timed jokes. Be careful down there, ok? We should talk when you come back, it's time for Liara to meet her father"
Aethyta was livid with anger. A hundred years since they last spoke, a hundred years with Benezia forbidding her to contact her own daughter. The absurdity of it all was too much for the old woman
"Now? Why the hell do you want her to meet me now? Thought you didn't want me anywhere closer than a system from the kid, lest I influence her with my "unorthodox ideas", but guess they were proven correct, no? And what, just because I'm acting like a proper matriarch now, working with the stooges on Thessia again, it's ok for you to just come back to me, because I won't embarrass you in front of your influential friends?"
Her rant was stopped midway by Benezia's hand on hers. She seemed to be crying
"Thyta, please, I'm sorry, I was a coward, what I did to you was horrible, and you have all the rights to hate me forever for that. But, please, Liara isn't at fault here, she'd love to meet her father"
The earnestness of Benezia's words took Aethyta by surprise, they spent hundreds of years together, she knew how to read the woman like an old favorite book. Aethyta relaxed, and closed her hands on top of Benezia's
"Guess I have something to come back to now, hm?"
Benezia allowed herself a small smile. "Yes, Colonel, that you have"
Her mission was a complete success. The moment they landed a Blood Pack shuttle "acquired" by the European navy, the Batarians were caught completely by surprise. The approaching pirate thought it was a delivery of much needed supplies, but the only thing delivered was a torrent of 5.56mm rounds that literally cut him in half. The hangar was cleared after a caphony of sound that made her pretty sure she would need aural implants after, three krogan with machine guns tore and sliced their way trough unsuspecting batarians. Grot, the big krogan with the gatling, trew his empty ammo pack back into the shuttle and produced a new one, strapping the giant thing on his back.
The way to the mains security room was largely empty, during the chaos of their entrance the pirates had sent forces from all over the base to the hangar, only for them to be cut to ribbons by the krogan. Once inside the room, Thyta started dispensing orders
"Kurin, take three girls and secure the communications center, bring down whatever jamming devices they have. Kalindra, you and Yamis secure the hangar where we'd come from, take Grot with you. And I want two teams of six asari and two krogan to go secure the mines and the living quarters."
The main base was quiet far away from where the slaves worked and lived, no doubt so that the slavers could simply cut acces to those areas and let the slaves perish from hunger or brave the inhospitable surface. The two groups would access those areas via a tram system that connected the base to the workplace.
"Once you get there, secure the place from hostiles and notify the fleet, they will send in the transports"
She stayed at the control center alongside two asari and a krogan. Activating the feeds from all over the base to keep track of her teams.
A few minutes latter, she received confirmations that all of her teams had completed their objectives. Comm towers had only two scared slaves with some technical knoledge who were very helpful to the asari. The hangar was empty except for the massacre they did when they arrived.
The worst came from the barracks and the mines. Resistance was light in both places and her teams liquidate the pirates without suffering a scratch, but they then discovered a fuck-ton of slaves.
Most were in the barracks, laying so close to each other one could not see the floor beneath them. They looked sick, and not just what one would expect for a slave, malnutrition, dehydration and assorted diseases, some people had painful looking lymphs and were vomiting blood in some cases. Shit, Aethyta thought. "Mine group, are you guys there? Just what the hell are they mining in this place?"
The answer came after a few seconds "Colonel, we secured the mines and the workers inside, it appears they were extracting eezo from the rocks"
Fuck, Aethyta thought, using slaves without any protection to mine eezo was cruel even for Batarians. No wonder half of them were dying of radiation sickness already. She contacted the fleet and told them the situation, asked for decom teams. She could only hope the other teams were having an easier time
Elswhere in the traverse
Shepard's group wasn't having a better time.
Anderson had split the teams into two. He'd assault the control center for the facility while Shepard went to rescue the slaves at an isolated part of the compound. From what she heard from Anderson over the comms, his team was having trouble as well, and Vasir had gone solo to do goddess knows what.
Their problem was that they were not fighting normal slavers and pirates. If she had to guess, they're engaging elite forces from the Hegemony itself, their Special Intervention Units. Just what those guys were doing here when Kar'Shan was about to collapse was a mystery she intended to resolve.
They were currently pinned down on the tram station, the Batarians having fortified positions expecting an attack. They were equipped with top-of-the-line gear, so no chance of Shepard's weapons just ignoring their barriers. She glanced at her right, only to see a private fall before a barrage of automatic fire. Shit, that was their machine gunner. Shepard quickly picked up the fallen man's gun and started laying suppressive fire.
The battle devolved into a bloody stalemate soon enough: B Squadron didn't have the heavy weapons needed to break the Batarian emplacements, and the Batarians probably didn't have the numbers to just finish them off. Shepard had already lost 3 out of her 15 men and women. She was about to consider calling a retreat when a streak of blue light rushed past her and collided with a Batarian with an LMG.
Vasir, Shepard thought, was a sight for sore eyes. A complete insufferable show-off, but a sight for sore eyes, nonetheless. The specter quickly recovered from her charge and threw a singularity behind a makeshift barricade, the defenders floating haplessly in the air. Shepard took the opportunity and mowed them down with MG fire.
But Vasir wasn't finished yet, she tore down a group of Batarians with her assault rifle – so modified Shepard had trouble identifying the base model and threw a warp in the face of the defenses' commander. With their leader gone, a hail of human gunfire against them, and a murderous asari in their midst, the defense quickly crumbled, the ones lucky enough managing to retreat deeper into the base, the rest being gunned down by the soldiers.
Recovering from the adrenaline rush, Shepard got up, picked up her rifle and walked to Vasir.
"Thanks for the assist, without you we would either be dead or forced to retreat"
The asari shrugged her shoulders, "You're welcome, but try avoiding kill zones and bottlenecks from here on out"
Shepard flipped the specter and went to check on her men. Five dead, almost everyone else wounded to some extent. Shepard herself had taken a bullet to the arm, but the medigel was already doing its magic and she felt she could continue unimpeded. She looked at one of the dead soldiers, the machine gunner, who looked no older than 19. She sighed, losing people was expected but it still felt like a failure for the young officer.
"Take their tags and alert the fleet that we have deceased soldiers, they will need evacuation"
Her sergeant nodded and got to work; Shepard turned to Vasir.
"Any idea why the Hegemony's special forces are here?"
The Specter turned her omnitool on and showed Shepard footage she gathered from her solo run of the base
"This place isn't a mine or a factory, it's a lab, I don't know what they are researching here, but its important enough for the Hegemon to commit special resources to protect it"
The images Vasir recorded showed science equipment and several cryopods laying in a large hangar, then the corpses of what appeared to be scientists.
"By the way, I didn't kill those guys, they were already dead when I got there, guess the Hegemony ordered them dead when we started the assault"
Shepard frowned, the facility was looking shadier by the minute, but before she had a chance to react, a muffled explosion on the background signaled that her troops had breached the doors to the rest of the place.
"Let's move out people, Vasir, coming with us?"
The Specter glowed with biotics. "I guess so, can't let you get yourself killed pup"
They had an easier time with the rest of the Batarian defenders, Vasir's biotics giving them an edge on close quarter combat, and the hasty retreat of the defenders didn't give them enough time to mount solid defenses like in the tram station.
But their good lock was about to end, signaling her team and Vasir to stop, Shepard said: "Are you guys hearing this?"
And sure enough, Vasir started hearing, a low grumble, approaching slowly. It sounded like dozens of people by the footsteps, but they were all erratic, almost as if they were dragging their foot.
And them, the screaming started
A cacophony of screams and shrieks that sounded like several members of several species were being tortured just around the corner. It grew louder, fast, and before they could react, the source appeared on the corner.
Dozens of slaves, of various races: human, asari, turian, salarian, even a quarian were slumbering towards them. Vasir noted that they didn't seem in control of their minds, which was expected given the slaver's collar on their necks, but there was something else…like cables and wires crossing their faces. The quarian's mask was broken, and the same pattern applied to him. Shepard was ordering her team to move very slowly backwards, as she took the lead along Vasir, in hushed tones, she said: "What do we do?"
Vasir, for the first time in her life, had no idea of what to do, "I don't think talking to them will help, but we can try"
Shepard nodded and with her best commanding voice said "Stand Down! We are European Special Forces! We are here to rescue you!"
Her words snapped something on the slaves, and they started hissing, assuming menacing postures. Vasir, ever so patient, said "fuck this" and armed a concussive shot on her weapon
Before Shepard could scream "no", Vasir fired, and the round did nothing to the turian in front. What it did, however, was to enrage the whole group, who rushed the soldiers like starved animals with a cornered prey.
"Fuck, Vasir, rise a barrier, we'll fall back to some place secure, try not to kill them!" Screamed Shepard, as she loaded a riot control round on her underslung grenade launcher and fired. That shoot was supposed to stop a krogan charging, but the salarian it hit just kept going, as if immune to the pain.
Luck for the group, the abominations were only in on side of the facility, and they managed to lock themselves in another room. After taking a minute to breath, Shepard decided to contact Anderson and let him aware of what was happening. His response was less than stellar
"I know about the slaves! Seems the Batarians were experimenting on their control chips and collars to create some sort of army. Bunch of them showed up on the tram line, I've been holding them ever since. Got some intel for High Command, but we'll need more, something is amiss here, try to find everything you can and go to the roof to evacuate, you have 30 min, Anderson out"
Shepard cursed, loudly, and it attracted Vasir's attention
"So, what's happening here?"
"Seems the Batarians were experimenting with mind control with the slaves, but there has been a breakout and Anderson is engaging them at the tram station on his side. We're to comb this place for more intel and evac in 30, download everything you can"
Her soldiers nodded in agreement and went to work. Since the debacle at the tram station, she hadn't lost anyone else, it was a relief for her.
Vasir approached a bare wall on the other side of the room and touched it. To her horror, it was a window, and she just deactivated the privacy mode.
Below them there was a giant warehouse, full of slabs and cryopods. Each one filled with someone, some poor slaver captured they were all moaning, certainly in pain, tubes shoved in their bodies, and electric circuits crossing their faces and limbs.
She turned away from that scene, almost vomiting her launch. Some private didn't have the same luck. Looking to the rest of the room, she saw a slight movement on a nearby closet. Signaling Vasir to cover her, she went investigate.
As she opened the door, a few things happened at the same time. First, a loud curse came from the inside, followed by a Batarian rolling to the ground and being surrounded by the barrel of several rifles. He raised his hands in defeat.
Shepard leaned closer to the man. "Who are you"
The desperate Batarian was already pleading "Please! I'm just a scientist, please don't kill me"
Raising the man to his feet, Vasir and Shepard took the initiative on their impromptu interrogation. Vasir went first. "And what in the name of the goddess are you imbeciles doing here?"
The man was shaking and on the verge of evacuating his bladder. "I-I don't know, I'm just a neurosurgeon, I just compare scans!"
Shepard could smell the bullshit as easy as a krogan could, landing a punch on the man's torso, she asked him "Please, answer my partner here, and don't you dare to lie to her again"
The Batarian broke. "Ok! We were investigating how to increase control over our subjects with the control chips and the collars! Apparently, we are using some ancient tech the Hegemony found! It's all I know, I swear!"
Vasir and Shepard turned away from the crying mess of a man for a instant. "So, Vasir, what do you want to do with him? Take him? Kill him?"
Vasir gave the man one good look and turned back. "As much I despise him, I think he still has more info inside his ugly skull, we should take him along with the data, but only if he doesn't prove to be a…dead weight, I'm not carrying him."
"And neither am I, or my men, so it's decided, let's just…"
Her sentence was stopped by the frantic screams of her man. "Lieutenant, the door cannot hold much longer, they will break into the room"
And the screams of Anderson in her comms. "Shepard! Gete the hell out of there! I've been tracking several more breakouts on the base, we will be overrun, get to the rooftop, now"
What followed was a desperate attempt to get to the roof before being eaten by zombies, Shepard thought. Vasir had thrown the strongest shockwave she'd ever seen to clear a path to the elevator from the room they were. Everyone followed suit, ignoring any and all rules of engagement to protect civilians and just shooting at the poor zombified souls. A corporal got unluck, and as she turns a hard left, a Turian managed to pierce her neck with his talons, almost decapitating her. Another private was mobbed by several humans, who seemed to be biting him. As they got closer to the elevator, Vasir threw another shockwave. Their shuttle was already there, with Anderson's team aboard as well.
"Shepard, did you get the data?" Asked the commanding officer
"Yes sir, and a scientist who participated in that abomination, he may be willing to talk"
"Good, because I just received the word, High Command doesn't want this place left standing, the Stalingrad and her cruisers will commence orbital bombardment shortly"
Just as he finished his sentence, the air around them grew hotter, and everything was enveloped in a corona of green. Next came the deafening sound of the rounds entering atmo, it sounded like a giant foghorn, only much graver, if it was even possible. Shepard leaned on the window of the shuttle and saw the shoots connecting. Each one almost a low yield nuke going off, pieces of debris and soil and rock ejected from the planet's orbit, the weak gravity not managing to compete with the sheer destructive power of their main guns. As the shuttle boarded the Stalingrad, all was left was a giant plume of smoke and debris, and chuncks of rocks floating harmlessly on space.
A/N: You guys cannot imagine how I such writing action scenes, maybe I'll just turn them all into after reports and be done with them (kidding), but here it is: Aethyta and her Krogan massacring pirates, Shepard getting in hot waters during her first mission commanding and...some indications that the Reaper the Batarians found is being used for more... insidious things
Stay tuned! Reviews always welcomed!