Chapter 11, in which both the Chief as Shepard cut loose.
~0~
"For the past few weeks, I have been gathering information on the strange readings found beyond the Terminus Systems. Gravitational anomalies, radiation bursts of unknown origin, energy readings…the source of the thousands of individual measurements all have one thing in common: they originate from the uncharted space beyond the Terminus Systems. I spoke to a close friend of mine, Jondum Bau, who suggested that this section of space might not be as impossible to reach as I previously thought."
-Commander Rentola's logbook, entry 4
~0~
Citadel
Presidium
Councilor Chambers
Councilor Tevos was staring out the window, nervously fidgeting with her hands. Every now and then she would check the time, realize that she still had a few minutes, then look back at the window. There wasn't anything of particular interest to see, but it kept her distracted from the dreaded meeting
When the asari Councilor checked the time for the fifth time, she suddenly heard the double set of doors that led to her administrator´s room open.
No words could be heard in the few moments it took the ´visitors´ to walk past the administrator´s office and straight into Tevos´ room.
Not wanting to appear incompetent at a critical time, Tevos quickly called, "The door is open," two mere seconds before it actually did slide open."
The Councilor swallowed a lump in her throat and tried to make herself appear regal and self-assured, but upon seeing the appearance of the visitor, her breath hitched in her throat and she was unable to convey a proper welcome.
"Ah, Councilor," said the Matriarch as she strode into the office. She wore elegant red robes, of the same dark shade as the two Justicars that followed behind her. Though they were most definitely not clad in robes. She gave Tevos a slight but disarmingly-warm smile and then joined her at the window, not even giving her a chance to find a more comfortable position.
"A-Amalya," the Councilor said, hating how stuttering she sounded. "What brings you to my office?"
"You know full well what brings me to your office, Councilor."
Tevos winced at the accusatory tone, however slight that may have been. "I am afraid that the last message I retrieved scheduled our appointment somewhat…later this week."
"Oh?" replied the Matriarch. She beckoned at one of the Justicars, who nodded and promptly walked over to Tevos and held out her hand.
The Councilor shakily extended her omni-tool and tapped a few buttons, praying to the Goddess that she had not been mistaken.
"Hmm…" the Matriarch quietly went through her messages, stopping at the most recent message.
It was the one detailing their meeting a few days from now.
"How quint," said the Matriarch. "It appears a mistake was made. Not to worry, Councilor. The blame is no to be put on you."
"I -I am glad to hear that," Tevos replied, nodding ever so slightly. Somewhere, somehow, an unfortunate individual had just had their fate sealed.
The Justicar took her place by the door again, her expression shifting not one inch.
"Now then," spoke the Matriarch. Her skin was pale, but she had matured well. Her dress could not exactly be called modest. "I had a team of our more gifted commandoes storm the derelict. The being we discovered had proven to be quite hostile when it got loose."
"It got loose?" replied Tevos. She could not fathom how a team of well-equipped soldiers were unable to contain one specific specimen.
"Of course it did," the Matriarch spoke with a rather self-assured tone, as if she was placating a child.
A test, the Councilor realized with a chill. "A-and the research team was unable to contain it?"
"Of course."
Tevos dared not show her shock at that callous waste of life. "Dare I ask why?"
The Matriarch gave her a curious smile. "I would not know…dare you?"
Tevos withered under the other asari's scrutinizing glare. When she looked away, the Matriarch smiled. "The abomination has proven to be most adept at the arts of the warrior. The Cyclonic Shield modifications proved useless against its strikes. The after-action reports were quite intriguing. "
The Matriarch gave her a rather cruel smile. "And what do you believe my commandoes found inside that derelict?"
Tevos nervously crossed her wrists behind her back. "The creature?"
Her smile deepened. "Indeed. Along with the first human Spectre."
The Councilor was unable to prevent a gasp from escaping her lips. Shepard was there?
The Matriarch appeared very bemused at that. "Oh yes. And as the abomination slaughtered the maidens, Commander Shepard handily dispatched of the Lieutenant I had personally assigned for that test."
"You have my most sincere condolences…wait, test, you say?"
The Matriarch turned towards the window and glanced down. "Such a lovely office they assigned you…yes, test. You see, Lieutenant Manah had proven to be most incompetent as of lately. I dislike my associates showing incompetence."
Tevos was desperate to change the subject back to the creature. "And this being…it defeated your commando lance?"
"Indeed…the abomination proved itself most capable. It killed the science team and the official escort assigned to it, as well as the response team when the reports stopped coming. And then the first human Spectre had to go and recruit the creature… a grave insult to the Asari Republics."
The Councilor nodded, seeing where the Matriarch was going. "A most grave insult."
"Unfortunately, your specific jurisdiction is limited to Council Space."
"It is."
"Apprehending the Commander would be difficult, as the Terminus Systems lie far outside Citadel jurisdiction."
"What would you have me do?" said Tevos.
"How pro-active of you…"
The threat of that terrifying creature the Matriarch had taken with her during their first meeting was still fresh in the Councilor's memories. How could she not be pro-active, when faced with such a monster?
"It would be difficult to accuse anyone outside the Citadel. However, if Commander Shepard were to bring her crew to the Citadel and, say, bring the abomination with her…"
The Councilor nodded. "I…even of an incident were arranged, the Alliance could not be blamed. She appears to have sided with Cerberus, a rogue human faction."
"Not to worry," said the Matriarch. "I shall take care of the political strings. You do what I require you to do, Tevos."
"Of…of course, Matriarch."
The Matriarch smiled and then touched Tevos' check with a cold, but gentle hand. "I knew I could depend on your assistance."
~0~
New Canton
Alice was holding both of her hands in front of her mouth, desperate to make as little noise as possible. Her breath came in short, rushed gasps as her tiny lungs struggled to replace the breath that her frantic, horrifying escape into the forest had cost her.
The devils were everywhere! They were attacking every house, every building and every person they saw! Neighbors, friends and family -all of them were attacked and then kidnapped by the monsters.
She wanted to help, she really did! She wanted to run out there and scream at the devils to stop, to beat them with branches and throw rocks at them until they ran away…but she was scared of their dogs. Massive, savage-looking monsters with large eyes and enormous teeth. The monsters growled and barked at everything that looked and twice now they had found out that Alice had been hiding nearby. The devils would tug at their chains and beat them with their weapons until they stopped growling, but that had been enough to chase her away.
And now the devils knew that someone was hiding, because they were panning through the bushes and the trees, searching for her!
"Come out," one of them yelled with his heavy, gravelly voice. "We know you're there!"
Oh Gods…
Another one joined the first. "If you show yourself, we promise we won't kill you!"
Lier!
She had seen them kill people! They shot someone in the face and then left their body for the monsters to eat. She had not stuck around to watch, but even thinking about that made her nauseous.
The two devils were joined by another two. The two pairs started spreading out, whacking bushes with their guns and checking out trees. One of them held a large animal by an iron chain.
A monster, Alice realized with a shock. Those beasts looked like dogs, so they could sniff like dogs and dogs always found what they were looking for!
She had to run, but where? Where could she hide? And they would only capture her if she tried to run.
No…running was a very bad idea. She was hungry and thirsty and dead tired. Her legs were already wobbling and these devils looked really tough. They would catch her in no time.
So Alice stayed put. She lowered her head and laid down on the grass, hiding in the thorny bushes where the monsters wouldn't want to stick their noses. Her parents had told her to run and hide, but she was done running. She couldn't set another step!
So hiding it would be.
It was the tensest, scariest moment in her life. For many minutes she could hear the devils scurry around the forest, searching everywhere for her. They climbed up trees, they kicked at fallen logs and at one point, one devil even shot his weapon at something that moved in the distance. An animal, small and just as frightened as she was.
Alice covered her face with her hands and just…waited. Waited for what felt like hours in the thorny, thick scrubs. It had been like this for the better part of the day; constantly playing a dangerous game of hide-and-seek with the devils, never revealing herself to them because if she made even one mistake, they would take her.
Eventually, she was starting to feel cold. Very cold. She hadn't felt it during the running and the hiding, because the tension and fear kept her warm, but now she was starting to shiver.
She wanted to cry for her parents to come safe her, but even that was impossible. The devils would hear her, the monsters would come for her.
She wanted to ask for help, but there was nobody around.
She wanted to beg for food, but the only thing she could eat were the yellow berries that grew on some of the bushes.
She wanted to feel the arms of her mother around her, but everybody she knew was gone.
She was alone.
It was night now. It had been for a long time. When was the sun coming up? She couldn't even see the stars…
Tears dropped down from between her hands as Alice broke down sobbing. Her mind spun up all sorts of fantasies about soldiers and knights and heroes coming to save her and everybody she knew. Fantasies of her father finding her in the forest, accompanied by her mother, telling her that she was safe…
Before long, Alice had cried herself to sleep.
~0~
Unseen by anyone in the cover of the night, the Master Chief exited the impromptu bunker made out of small shacks and metal huts and stepped onto the surface of the colony, crushing grass and leaves underneath his boots. In his right hand he held a newly-acquired, albeit empty weapon, while he carried a sturdy-looking radio in his left hand, still receiving.
"Hello? Anyone read me? Damnit Celak, if you are there, answer me!"
He attempted to reboot his shield generator for the third time, with about the same about of results as the previous two times. The voice on the other side of the radio, meanwhile, didn't seem to understand that it would not receive a reply anymore. Celak, along with five other batarians, had shed human blood for the last time.
"Damnit, the Captain's going to gut you if you don't report, you know that!"
Grenades, rifles, shotguns and even crude melee weapons. These slavers were organized and well-equipped.
"I -argh, never mind. if you somehow managed to break the radio again and can't transmit, here's what you still need to do in your sector…"
But not well-equipped enough to stop him. He had torn through their outpost, slaughtered every single batarian in his way, but he found no trace of Cortana.
"…make sure that there aren't any unwanted visitors near your side of the crash site…"
Plenty of cages though. Most of them empty. He didn't know how to feel about that.
The fight to reach the top had been somewhat slow, but once he had actually breached the bunker, it had been quick and brutal. Blood coated his right arm and chest from the various close-quarters tricks he had pulled to make the most use out of his pistol, which he had quickly complemented with a weapon that he had very quickly identified as a shotgun. It had a light-brown camo pattern, a black, stocky grip and a compact design. A word had been painted at its side.
M-23
It was built for thermal clips, of which he had found a small supply. He had stuffed them in the only duffel bag that had not been torn away from his suit after his landing.
"…don't need their valuables anymore. Check for rings, jewelry, piercings…"
The Chief felt a twinge of pain in his chest with every breath he took, lancing through his ribs and reaching down to his stomach. He could ignore it, but it was only one of multiple accumulated injuries on his body. A fractured finger at his left hand. A torn muscle near his right ankle. A mild concussion.
Those were the small ones. They merely hindered his progress, as opposed to posing a serious threat, as the more serious injuries did. The pain in his chest and stomach was more difficult, and indicative of graver wounds. He couldn't tell if his ribs were cracked or if the muscles attached to them had been torn. The pain in his stomach, however, worried him somewhat. He had a canister of biofoam attached to his suit still, which he would need if he started feeling the telltale signs of internal bleeding, but it had not survived the fall either.
"…burn the clothes later and keep the valuables in a locker…"
The canister was cracked and its contents had long since spilled out.
The Spartan made his way past the various scattered crates and supply drops at the front of the camp and walked towards the top of the hill it had been built on. From there, he had an unobstructed view at the heart of the colony, resting in the middle of a massive forest. He spotted tall buildings, cranes, storage facilities and other industrial structures. A thriving, working colony, with no clear signs of a present military organization.
"…remember to check back with the Deliverance if you need more cages."
And that was the extent of the peaceful, human colony he had crash-landed on. The extent of a small, simple community, so mercilessly torn apart by creatures driven by desire and desire alone. In the distance, small ships were flying over and past the industrial zone and the surrounding patches of forest like swarms of angry bees, no doubt carrying the kidnapped civilians.
Slave labor.
"…keep some females fresh. Captain's going to want to have some fun too."
The Master Chief refrained from responding to that particular sentence. He had seen the handiwork of their men; the first victims had died without reason, in pain and without basic human dignity. He had been much too late to do anything for them but close their eyes and put an end to further defilement.
Instead, he crushed the radio in an unyielding gauntlet and discarded it. He flicked open the port for the shotgun, which had overheated during the brief moments of combat, after firing a mere two shots. He inserted a new heat sink and glanced back at the heart of the colony.
Where are you? He had failed to keep her safe. She had needed him to protect her and he had failed to rouse.
The slavers were here for humans. They had not expected the Collector ship, though they had still set up checkpoints and outposts everywhere. It implied they were staying. Depending on salvage for additional money. An advanced AI would have been too valuable to pass up on.
The Chief wondered how long this planet had been besieged like this. Days perhaps. Why had nobody come to its aid yet? Was it like the UNSC colonies, spread too far to coordinate an effective resistance within a few days? But the Mass Relays were meant to overcome that problem. Ships could travel hundreds of lightyears in an instant. So where was the support? The counter-attack?
Had the slavers cut all communications before they struck? If so, there had to be a way to establish contact, get help for these people before the batarians took them.
One way or the other, he was getting Cortana back.
The Spartan turned towards his right and moved out. Clearing out the camps around the perimeter of the industrial zone meant cutting off potential batarian reinforcements, as well as a high chance at finding Cortana. That alien had told him the truth, he was sure of it. Though humanity had never had to worry about slavery with the Covenant -the SOB's were more concerned with wiping them from existence- he was still convinced that a petty slaver would value his own life above all else. When faced with a credible threat, those looking for easy profit would always buckle.
In the dead of night, the forest proved to be the perfect place for a Spartan to inhabit. The trees were large, tall and easy to climb and the bushes were thick and widespread.
John moved silently through the forest, darting from tree to tree to avoid any batarian surprises. In the cover of the night, shrouded in the shadows, the occasional flash of green armor went unseen even by those with the keenest sight. The thick foliage blotted out the faint light of the stars, but he could see clearly.
For ten minutes he marched through the huge forest that encircled the colony, avoiding the sight of small shuttles as they swept overhead, searching for any stragglers with bright searchlights, until he finally made contact with the enemy.
The Chief dropped to one knee, melted into the shadow of a tree and froze.
Four batarians and two alien life forms he did not recognize. Large, reptilian wolves with large, round eyes and long, dagger-like teeth.
They hadn´t spotted him.
Though battered and damaged, his MJOLNIR still easily caught what the aliens were saying and the translation software integrated into his still-functioning omni-tool translated what they said.
"…Keep finding runners. The initial attack caught them off-guard, but the damned apes are hard to catch."
"Don't worry. The varren are trained to sniff them out. Let them run; it's more fun that way."
The third alien only laughed and patted the back of one of the 'varren', which growled with delight.
The Master Chief snorted in disgust. Alien cruelty of a different level.
Gone was the murderous wish to see mankind burn, only to be replaced by an even more perverse desire to use them like property, merchandise and other, darker sources of pleasure. Everywhere he went, mankind was hounded by aliens.
Some things never changed.
He saw a small amber light flicker on his heads-up display. His biomonitor indicated an elevation in his blood-pressure and heart rate.
Spartans rarely allowed their emotions to affect them. To be stricken like this, even if it was purely biological, was a sign that he was approaching his physical limits.
The Chief tried to control the almost imperceptible tremor in his hands and continued observing the hostiles.
Though the second varren seemed aware that something was amiss, it didn't do much more than faintly growl at its surroundings. It sniffed, averted its head, then let loose a soft whine that went unheard by the laughing aliens.
Eventually the trio split up. One handler took the two varren, while the other pair wandered away.
Time to go work, the Chief grimly thought. He knew that the dog-like aliens would alert the batarians to his presence, so they would need to go first.
He scooped up a small rock and pocketed it. Then he threw a second one ahead of the alien's path, right in the middle of a piece of shrubbery.
As predicted, the sudden rustling sound got the alien's attention and it started making its way to the origin of the sound. The two varren started growling and hissing, making quite a scene for a small diversion.
The Chief didn't complain. He slowly made his way towards the three aliens, making absolutely no sound as he unsheathed his combat knife.
The first varren made a faint whining sound as the razor-sharp blade pierces its head. He immediately withdrew his knife and threw the rock at the batarian's head. It whizzed through the air and impacted on the slaver's head with a wet crack, bypassing the kinetic barriers completely. Even as the alien uttered a low garbling growl and fell to the ground, the Chief dispatched of the second varren in the same way he had with the first one.
With those hostiles neutralized, he was free to get creative with the remaining two.
He never got that far however. He was about to move to eliminate the remaining batarians when he ran into a snag, and a serious one to boot.
"Crap! Darak's dead-man just activated!" One of the batarians snapped. Both of them spun around and the Chief barely had the time to conceal himself behind a tree when the two charged back to the position where they had last seen their comrades.
"We've got hostiles in the vicinity!" The other one shouted. "Get word to Captain Gor'vak!"
The Chief, not knowing what a dead-man was supposed to be, knew that he would be compromised if that batarian was allowed to call alarm. He whirled around the tree and opened fire with his shotgun, sending a hail of metal downrange that cut through the shields of one slaver, but failed to drop him. He had to wait until the weapon cooled down, then managed to nail the batarian while his shields were down.
The other one cursed and scrambled to take cover, but the Chief closed in on him with three thundering steps and slammed the butt of his weapon against the alien's face, bypassing his kinetic barriers and cracking his skull.
Too late. Even as the dead body of the other batarian fell to the ground, the alarm had been sent. Seconds later, someone launched a flare into the sky, illuminating a large section of the forest.
The Master Chief cursed under his breath and quickly inserted another thermal clip into his weapon. How the hell had those batarians known that their rear guard had been flatlined? Some kind of shared health monitor?
Now that he was compromised, he had to move quickly. He picked up the pace, stopping only to salvage one of the rifles that the batarians had been carrying. It had a slim handle, a bulbous front and an integrated scope. This one had an identification code on its side too: M8
The Chief found that these weapons were lighter than the MA5 series. However, the shotgun had lacked the punch necessary to punch through the batarian shields. Shields that, had he used his own shotgun, would have been of no consequence to him.
As he made his way through the forest, staying away from sections that were illuminated with bright flares, more of those ships started searching around the area. Their large floodlight bathed sections of the forest in a white-blue light and made it hard for him to stay hidden.
The batarians had occupied this colony in force. The Chief counted at least four of the shuttle-like ships in the time-span of half an hour and each one seemed large enough to fit an entire fireteam onboard. He would not be engaging such invasion forces on his own in a frontal assault.
That did not leave him without options. He had faced worse odds before and he had always prevailed. The key lay in employing guerrilla warfare, striking the enemies in hit-and-run attacks. Once he retrieved Cortana though, she could repair his shield system and there would be hell to pay.
Will-043 believed in the concept of 'the pain repaid'. Throughout the war, he had consistently hunted down and gutted the more savage individuals among the Covenant. John had always thought those actions to be wasteful and useless; after all, it was not their job to hurt things.
He had to know what it was that alerted the batarians to the deaths of their comrades. So when he next encountered a squad of the alien slavers, he employed stealth tactics to separate and eliminate them.
He took out the first one when a batarian with a light skin pattern and red armor hurried to search a pair of bushes. The aien had, after all, heard something move in there.
It must have come as a surprise to the alien then when he accidentally triggered a booby-trap consisting out a large branch with punji sticks attached to them, slamming into his face. The sharpened spikes simply bypassed the alien's shields and lodged themselves into his face.
The Master Chief had never believed in repaying the pain. But here, after having witnessed crimes that even the Covenant had not committed? He no longer saw a reason to treat the enemy with the same clean and efficient courtesy that they so blatantly refused to show to these colonists.
The trap did not kill him, but it served its purpose. Before the batarian had a chance to scream, the Master Chief burst from behind the trap, the color of his MJOLNIR having perfectly concealed him. He grabbed the alien´s head and wrenched it sideways, breaking its neck.
Almost immediately, two other slavers rushed to his side, leaving their other two comrades to guard their flank.
No sound to give him away. So they were outfitted with tech that alerted the rest of their squad to their presence upon death? Interesting.
The Spartan vacated that position before he could be discovered, making his way to his alternate location.
From there, he could keep a close eye on the two batarians that had been left behind. They were alerted to the death of their squadmate, there was no doubt there. It must have been the dead-man he had heard them mention before.
Clever bastards.
But he was patient. Before soon, one of the slavers strode too far from his companion, running past the wrong tree as he tried to get a bearing on this invisible foe that haunted them.
The Chief dropped down from the top of the tree, landed on top of the unfortunate batarian and rolled with his momentum, his sidearm aimed at the other batarian's face.
Gunshots were hard to ignore and the two batarians that were trying to determine how their comrade had died came running.
By then, it was far too late to do anything and the Spartan fell upon them as well.
~0~
Normandy SR-2
Communications Room
"Fell apart?" Jane nearly shouted, a notion which did not seem to escape the Man.
"Yes, Commander. I am not deaf. New Canton registered the arrival of at least four military-grade Frigates. The Ensign manning the Communications outpost reported that they were bombing what little military infrastructure they had, before ceasing all communications."
The Commander calmed herself by crossing her arms, feeling a Biotic pulse ripple through her nerves. She couldn't help it; every time she Biotically overexerted herself, her L5X implants decided that the best course of action to counter the strain would be random spasms and signals. She could suppress it, but it was very annoying.
She still remembered the time she had accidentally lifted Joker from his seat. Poor Jeff had spent the rest of the day carefully avoiding her wherever he went.
"Well, tell me this then, Timmy-"
"That is not my name, Commander, and you know that."
"Yeah?" Jane pointed at the Illusive hologram. "Until you tell me your name, I will call you by your nickname. The crew likes it too."
"I -what did you say?"
"That you never told me your name?"
"No, that other part. Your crew knows what you refer me to as?"
The Commander blinked. She wasn't seeing his point. "Yes? I give all of my teammates nicknames. Some of them don't like theirs, but-"
"Commander, as much as you flatter me, I am not a part of your team.`
Jane smirked. "Sure you are. I help you with your missions, you help me on mine. You give me information, I bark orders at you and give you a headache."
"That-"
"That is teamwork, Tim. It´s part of the course."
The Cerberus leader shook his head and took a whiff of his cigarette. Jane had always wondered why he didn't just pop a real cigar; men in positions of power usually liked those. "I wish it were that easy, Shepard. Unfortunately, a position like mine does not allow for such…bonds."
Jane shrugged. "Well, with Miranda and Garrus here, I know that Joker can accidentally space me without compromising the chain of command. It helps having people around you can depend on. Funny…I thought having all sorts of friends would ultimately pay off for someone like you. Oh well."
The Illusive Man fell silent as he digested her words. He looked somewhat stricken.
But the Commander wanted to know things and he was her go-to man for knowing things. Apart from Mordin of course. "So how do we know that the Collector Ship went down in flames if you lost all contact?"
The Illusive Man was staring at a point behind Shepard, seemingly lost in thoughts.
"Tim?"
"…I am sorry, I got…distracted. We know this because the outpost kept transmitting the automatic logging system. A ship matching the profile of the Collector Cruiser entered the atmosphere roughly an hour after all manual communications ceased. Then, it reported that the ship was gone. In its place was a collection of scrap, debris and broken hull, as well as sporadic Element Zero clouds."
"How do we know those Frigates didn't take it out? We know they're hostile."
"Unlikely. The Collectors are working for the Reapers. Their ship-building skills are much more advanced than what we can currently do. I do not see four Frigates taking out that ship without taking heavy casualties."
"And New Cantonon doesn't exactly stick heavy ordnance on its surface…"
The Commander felt a sudden well of hope. A flash of happiness, pure and undiluted. Internal sabotage? Had the Master Chief someone defied all odds and sabotaged the ship so heavily that it broke apart in orbit?
If so…she would make sure he would receive a post-humorous Star of Terra for his action.
Still…he had been a hell of a soldier, but nobody was that good. "Yeah…it's hard to set up an ambush when you're made out of free-floating atoms, right? So how solid is this intel?"
The Illusive Hologram took another whiff of his cigarette. "Shepard, Intel is my forte. It´s solid."
"Alright then. I'll take a team and check it out. Shepard out."
With that, Jane cut the connection and allowed the table to sink back into the ground. Thoughts were jumping and bouncing through her head, some darker than others. It was difficult to believe that the Master Chief was somehow responsible for this. It might even be a completely different ship, softened up by the four Frigates so that the defensive positions of the colony might gun it down completely.
There was only one way of finding out. She activated her omni-tool and called Joker.
"Shepard?"
"Yeah. Can you plot a course a course to New Cantonon?"
"Sure. We're going to check out the Collector Cruiser's crash site then?"
"Yup. If we're lucky, it's one less thing to worry about. If not…"
"Then we're running into another trap. 'Kay, tell Garrus to finish calibrating those guns already, would you?"
Well, Garrus was still brooding about what had happened to him on Omega. And who could blame him, really? A member of your own team, selling you out to mercenaries and bandits, allowing them to wipe the rest of your old team out? It would have killed her if that had happened. "Give him some time. He likes calibrating."
"Aye-aye…"
Jane first wanted to drop by Mordin. After having given Gatagog Uvenk and his flunkies the same Grunt-treatment as the Thresher Maw had received, she had gone straight to her other ground team to verify whether the mission had been a success.
Thankfully, it had.
She had then asked Morin if he was satisfied with how the situation and turned out.
Thankfully, he was.
But she wanted to be sure. After all, Mordin's involvement with the krogan Genophage had not done him much good.
"Hey Mor'," she said as she entered the lab. As always, the old salarian stood at his desk, working on yet another project of his. "How are you holding up?"
"Good, all things considered," he replied. "Still, hard to believe Maelon willing to go that far. Should have seen it coming."
Samara had briefed Jane on all the details regarding the mission. She had been surprised too at first, just like Mordin. And then she had seen how utterly normal it was for a normal person to feel like Maelon had felt. "Well, you should have. What you two did? Modify the genophage right when the krogan were starting to adapt to it? That wasn't nice."
"Genophage," Mordin started to protest, but she wouldn't have it.
"Creating a weapon that melts the nervous systems and half the muscle tissue of every nine-hundred and ninety-nine krogan babies in a thousand is not nice," Jane then added, sterner. "You've seen what it did to them. How desperate was that female you encountered? The dead, willing test-subject? How guilty did Maelon feel, your own student and comrade-in-arms?"
Mordin opened his mouth to protest, but he rapidly processed her words and he dropped whatever it was he was going to say.
"What did you do to him, anyway?" Shepard then asked, glancing down at one of his tests on the other table.
"Reasoned he wouldn't stop. Thought only choice was to kill him."
"So you shot him?" asked Jane. She shook her head. Another senseless casualty…
"Would have, but Samara interfered."
At that, Jane's head snapped back up. Samara of all people had stopped Mordin from executing his student? "She did?"
He was on to her surprise. "Was as shocked as you are now. Justicar code rarely allows for mercy. Yet, Samara explained Maelon now harmless. No reason to kill him."
Huh…Jane felt vaguely proud of her asari comrade. She would have never expected Samara to do something like that. "Good for her."
"Convinced me to save Maelon's research data, too. Told me-" He held up two fingers in each hand, mimicking a gesture that a certain turian Councilor was so fond of. "Shepard likes krogan. Believes curing genophage in future will unite them for good cause."
"Will unite them for good cause?" Repeated Jane. For some reason, she doubted that this was a precise quote. It didn't matter. As long as he hadn't dismissed any claims.
"Was Samara wrong?"
"No, not at all. I was just wondering where she picked that up. I never told her that."
"Did not? Curious. Must have overheard you talking with Urdnot Wrex then." He closed his eyes and took a deep breath. "No matter. Mission successful."
Jane smiled and patted the old doctor on his head, right between those two horns. He sighed in exasperation and rolled with his eyes.
She them bid him farewell and made her way to the cockpit, where Joker was engaged in vicious…normal conversation with EDI? Huh. Odd.
"You don't understand," Joker then told the AI in a hushed tone. At the Skyllian Blitz, it wasn't just an act of heroism or soldier-ism."
"Mister Moreau-"
"I know soldier-ism isn't a word, but she makes up words as she goes along, so I can do it too."
"Mister Moreau-"
"All I'm saying is, maybe we should give her some time-"
"Hello Jeff," Jane said with the nicest, sweetest tone she could muster, lovingly watching the cold chills run down her pilot's spine as he recognized her voice. "You wouldn't be talking about little old me, would you?" She leant down next to him, but took care to place one hand over the edge of his seat to cut off his escape.
Joker completely flipped out, hitting half a dozen buttons in a spasming panic attack. "Shepard! Of course not! Nope, would never do that! Why would I, I never would, that's why!
"Mister Moreau was expressing concerns about the profile of the four supposedly-hostile Frigates present at New Cantonon," EDI then said, preventing Joker from digging himself a hole the likes he had never dug before. "They are an accurate match for batarian warships."
Jane felt her good mood quickly turn to something very, very ugly. "How accurate?" she brusquely asked.
"They are a ninety-eight point seven-six percent match."
"Ehm…Commander, I think…Shep -Shepard!"
A burst of Biotics had escaped Jane's clutches of self-control and had neatly broken the chair in half. Joker scrambled forwards to avoid falling and nearly ended up in the chair of his co-pilot.
"Commander, wait!"
Jane didn't listen. She whirled around and returned to her quarters, where her armor and weapons were waiting.
~0~
New Cantonon
Local time: 23:49
His group had been patrolling the perimeter of outpost 4B when the news had hit. Two hours ago, humans had ambushed one of the fireteams and killed them. The brave souls had managed to contact the Captain before they perished, which had alerted the entire strike force that there were still enemy soldiers active on the colony.
And they had wept for their fallen comrades, and they had cheered that they might be able to hunt the filthy animals once more.
So their shuttles started searching around the large forest that surrounded the city, even as the Pride of Kar'shan and Trapper of Dis descended towards the surface to deliver an entire army to the eagerly-awaiting soldiers.
It was hardly any sport! Between the seven gunships, ten transport shuttles, four Mako's and six-hundred soldiers, they could even call down precision fire to simply annihilate the humans, just in case the bastards managed to elude them for too long.
So Folly Kral'vaas had not been very surprised when he heard that another fireteam had gone dark, just a few kilometers from their outpost. His comrades had been outraged to hear that a band of filthy humans had managed to best batarian warriors, but not Folly. He was one of the many veterans that the conflicts between the Alliance and the Hegemony had produced. He knew just how dangerous humans could be.
And so did the Captain. Gor´vak had been there, at the Skyllian Blitz. He had been there when their first invading force -an army of at least eighty veteran soldiers- had been utterly destroyed by the Angel of the Blitz or, as the Captain knew the wretched creature, the Seraphim of Elysium. A spirit of unholy retribution that had ravaged their supply lines, devastated their gear and then slaughtered their troops. In a battle that had lasted an entire day, stretching into the night, the Captain had seen his entire force wiped out by a supernatural agent of destruction.
The only survivor had been a badly-injured soldier, terribly shaken by what he had seen. Gor'vak had found him near the shores of the bordering sea, where he had somehow managed to escape the wrath of the Seraphim.
"Wings of blue…" he had muttered to himself over and over again. "Wings of blue…wings of blue…`
Gor'vak had put the insane soldier out of his misery and called the retreat. What the Captain had seen there…it had taken a part of his sanity, too. He would never admit it -and no batarian who wanted to live would confront him about it- but that day had started his obsessions with making mankind pay.
Folly was shaken out of his thoughts when one of the varren started growling, startling him. He raised his Vindicator rifle and lazily scanned his surroundings, a movement loosely mimicked by the seven other batarians in his team as they pushed deeper into the forest.
"Chaff found something," one of the soldiers eagerly said. "Can we-?"
"Release the varren!"
Folly watched as the handlers unchained their warbeasts and stepped backwards, eyeing the varren with shared eagerness.
Of the four warbeasts, only one charged into the forest. The other three sniffed the stale air, whined softly and then lay down on the ground.
What were they doing?
"Useless animals!" One handler said, stepping towards the stupid creatures and lashing out at them with an electrified whip. "There are humans! Go get them!"
It took the collective handlers several whips and a lot of coaxing, but finally the animals realized that they were worse off if they stayed, and charged into the forest as well, following the first one.
"What were they doing?" Folly asked the closest handler.
"Lazy thing probably didn't like what it smelled. I've never seen it happen myself. Hells, varren attack everything! I heard one group even attacked Geth troopers!"
Strange…why would they hesitate to charge?
Folly and the other batarians excitedly awaited the inevitable screams and gunfire, but none came. One minute passed, then two.
They didn't hear as much as a growl.
"What are they doing?"
"I don't know…I can't hear them."
One of the handlers -a large, heavily-muscled veteran, cursed loudly and then stormed after the varren, seemingly intent on giving the animals a well-needed beatdown.
Folly merely rolled with his eyes and waited until the varren realized that they had messed up. The guy would probably kick the absolute-
The soldier's dead-man went off with a sudden alarm and Folly's entire omni-tool flared red.
"Curses!" he snapped and aimed his Vindicator at the woods. All the other batarians instantly took up firing positions and Folly. "Adhamis! Can you hear me? Adhamis!"
There was no response. The dead-man worked perfect; his friend was dead.
But how? How could this be? There had been no screams, no gunshots, nothing! Absolutely nothing to indicate that an enemy lay ahead!
"Commander! What do we do?" One of the soldiers yelled.
It was the human fireteam. It had to be!
"Move forwards, standard formation. Keep it tight and fan out! They can't hide!"
The batarian Commander led his team through the forest, managing to advance about a dozen meters before the dead-man of another soldier activated.
Folly gestured for the group to stop, groaned in frustration and brought up the overlay that, as Commander of the team, only he had access to. Every batarian in this fleet had been outfitted with a dead-man, which was directly linked to their heartbeat. If the soldier died, the dead-man went off and alerted the rest of the team that one of their comrades in the vicinity had just perished.
Gavak, the only Biotic in this squad, just had his activated.
He had been their rear guard.
"Ambush!" Screamed Folly. He activated his Disrupter ammo mod and searched for anything to rip to shreds with his gun. "Take cover, set up positions!"
Those wretched humans! They were deceptive, but clever. Lure them in by killing their varren and then trigger an ambush! No doubt they had ambushed Gavak from behind, killed him in close quarters.
The team was loosely spread throughout the trees and bushes. He had three in his direct vicinity, with another two around he couldn't directly see.
"Movement!" One of his men shouted. The next second, every single batarian opened fire. They filled the air with mass accelerated slugs, firing until their weapons overheated and they were forced to eject another heat sink. As one, the squad reloaded-
-only for the dead-man of another good soldier to activate, prompting the rest of the squad towards the general direction where he had fallen.
"Truak!" One of his men shouted, abandoning his firing positions to go after his brother. "I'm coming!"
"Don't!" Shouted Folly, but it was too late. Truak's desperate brother disappeared into the darkness beyond and the rest of the team, blinded by the brightness of their discharging weapons, were unable to follow him.
"Everybody stay put!"
Alas. Soon, the soldier's brother fell as well, his dead-man triggering mere seconds after he had stupidly charged off.
It became very hard to bite back his fear; there was no gunfire, no screaming, nothing! His damned soldiers fell around him and nobody saw their attacker!"
"Stay close to me, stay tight!" Folly screamed, louder and perhaps a bit higher-pitched than he had intended to. To their unseen attacker, he shouted, "I don't know who you are, but you are dead! Our Captain traces all of us! Soon, this place will be filled with reinforcements and we'll gut you like an animal!"
It wasn't a lie. Not technically; Gor'vak did trace them all via their dead-man tech and from his Frigate he could easily direct dozens of fireteams to their position. But he wouldn't send them; it was much easier to send a hail of mass accelerator rounds into the forest, clear the area around the bunker and allow the soldiers inside said bunker a much easier field of vision.
And that would only happen after Folly and his fireteam had perished.
He knew that, but his men didn't. So he fought on.
There were four of them left. They fell back to a small clove in-between a series of trees, where they could cover every single approach.
At least, Folly thought they could cover every approach. It wasn't until he happened to glance at one of his comrades that he saw…he didn't know what he saw.
A thing. A massive thing, looming behind one of his soldiers. It grabbed the unlucky soul by his neck and then dragged him off, straight out of their "save" zone and into the darkness that lay beyond. Into shadows, and certain death.
It happened so fast, in such a short span of time, that Folly only fired his gun at its general direction when the thing had already disappeared. Its victim screamed; a short, ragged scream that only a desperate or dying man would utter.
And then it was promptly cut off.
Folly was unable to contain his terror and rage and he screamed, firing another burst into the dark forest. He shouted profanities, cursing the monster for killing his soldiers.
It was at that point that he realized that his group had gone from victims being picked off by hostiles to prey being stalked by monsters.
One of his more religious troopers reached the same conclusion; an animalistic bellow wrenched itself from his throat and he jumped to his feet. "It's the Verusian Demon!" He screamed. "It's after our souls!"
More he did not say. He bolted; simply ran for it, ignoring all military customs and giving in to his superstitions.
Except Folly saw the reason behind his decision. The bunker was close-by; Gor'vak could not bomb them if they were alive and well within the bunker and once the Captain knew of the threat that stalked these woods, he would surely see reason.
Folly saw reason already. He lowered his gun and ran, flat-out sprinted towards safety. He heard something loudly break behind him, followed by a short burst of gunfire. He did not look behind him though, not even as the dead-man within both of his remaining soldiers went off, simultaneously.
Something impacted on his left leg just as he leant his weight on it. The blow was so forceful, so unyielding, that his leg bent the wrong way. The bones within snapped and Folly screamed in agony. Half a second later, his full weight came to bear on his wounded leg, which completely collapsed.
The slaver slammed face-first against the ground and weakly groaned, knowing that his fate was sealed. Still, he would not go quietly into the night. He attempted to grab his sidearm, but something massive and solid slammed into his arm and the pistol fell from his fingers.
"Please," he grunted as he propped himself up with his arms, turning himself on his back. "Please! Stop!"
He caught the outline of something massive. A tall, shadowy demon. A behemoth, the Verusian Demon indeed.
The creature placed a heavy boot on his face, pushing him deeper against the ground.
Was this a human spirit of vengeance? An entity like the Seraphim of Elysium?
"Where is your outpost," it growled at him. No, demanded of him. Its voice was heavy, gravelly and very distorted. Folly was certain now; this was an agent of retribution, summoned by the humans in retaliation.
Folly couldn't betray his comrades, but he wanted to live.
Spirits, he wanted to live! "Argh…up ahead…deeper into the forest…" he gestured with his arm. "That way. Please…mercy…"
The Verusian Demon removed that heavy hoof of his and took aim at the slaver's head with a heavy pistol.
"No, wait!"
The weapon discharged.
~0~
There was a loud sound, like something breaking, very close to her head, and she woke with a start.
Mommy? Is that you?
She wasn't aware of what it was at first. It sure sounded loud, and close. Where was she even? There were leaves and thorny branches and the ground as all wet and dirty…
Alice was just barely starting to wake up when all of a sudden something big and horrible stuck its head through the foliage. It was a monstrous dog with a head so large that it could easily swallow hers. It wrestled through the thick foliage and then loudly growled at her, filling her with dread.
An unstoppable desire to scream made itself her master and she did just that; she screamed at the top of her lungs, even as one of the creature's teeth raked her across her face, scraping her cheek. Droplets of blood fell to the ground as she desperately tried to back away, getting hopelessly entangled in the thorns in the progress.
"Over here! I found another!"
She heard voices, loud and evil. Large hands clad in metal gauntlets reached through the leaves and branches and grabbed a hold of her arm. "No!" She screamed, terrified out of her mind. She slammed a tiny fist against the large hand, but it was hard and tough and she only hurt herself. "No! Let go of me! Mommy! MOMMY!"
Nobody came for her. The alien roughly jerked her out of the bushes she had been lying in, not even caring that her hair and her clothes got snagged on the pointy thorns. They didn't care that she was bleeding and crying, only that she was screaming, because one of them struck her across her face.
White spots and stars exploded before her eyes and things went blurry after that. It hurt, too, but not as bad as the cuts did. Her cheek was still bleeding from where the monster had bitten at her.
Alice felt the alien roughly pull her over his shoulder, carrying her away from her hiding spot. She moaned and wiped her hair away from her eyes, watching the ground move underneath her. They were taking her away! They were going to take her to their lair and she would never see the stars again!
The thought filled her with a desperation she had never felt before, and which she never wanted to feel again. She tried to wiggle free, slamming her fists against the back of the devil's neck. It didn't take her long to realize that she couldn't hurt him; his clothes were very hard, just like his metal gauntlets. She might as well be hitting a wall.
That made it worse. The alien carried her through the woods, talking loudly and happily to some of the other devils. Alice couldn't do anything but silently beg whoever was listening to help her, to save her. To take her away from the monsters and give her back to her parents.
When the devils reached their lair -an ugly building made out of metal and stone and trash- she knew that it was useless. There wouldn't be anyone. No knight in shining armor, no angels to take mercy on her. She was utterly alone and utterly terrified.
That terror quickly turned into something much worse when the devils actually entered their lair -when she actually saw what it was that they were doing there.
There were cages with people in them. Some of them children, some of them very old and brittle. Some of them were bleeding, but some of them weren't even moving. They were sleeping, like she had been.
But that wasn't what made her feel so horrified that she wanted to puke. She saw metal beds with people lying on them, naked and obviously just as terrified as she was.
The devils were cutting into them with sharp metal, slicing through their skin and flesh and spilling blood all over the floor. The people were screaming in complete agony, writhing and trembling as the devils cut into their bodies.
At that sight, that display of cruelty and savagery, Alice came to understand that there was no escape at all. She was in a place so horrible, so evil, that she was going to die.
But she didn't want to die! She wanted to live, without pain and with her friends and family and oh Gods make the screaming stop!
The devil holding her laughed at her obvious horror and sudden muteness. He dropped her to the floor, hard, and immediately grabbed her by her hair and started dragging her away.
Alice was brought back to her reality by sudden lances of pain that shot through her scalp, and she involuntarily cried out in pain. She immediately tried to grab the devil´s hand to make him stop, but he didn't seem to care.
He said something to her in his own language as he lifted her to her feet, still by her hair. He wrenched her around and forced her to watch one of the other aliens put a tool to the head of a man she recognized as a shopkeeper she had seen a few weeks ago. With that tool, they made a hole into his head, which made awful, sickening noises that crunched and tore and were all wet.
Then they put something small and metal into the hole they had made, all the while the man was howling in agony.
Alice started crying again.
Nobody cared. They threw her into a filthy, metal cage and shut the door.
One by one, the devils dragged the other people out of their cages, often beating them with blue glowing sticks as they did that. They would operate on the people, who screamed and cried and begged and then slowly started sounding less and less normal.
Alice had closed her eyes, averted her face and crawled as far away from the nightmare as she could. But even with her hands covering her ears, she could still hear so much.
She dreaded the moment when her turn would come.
Time went by like a slow trickle of water. Horrible and slow, but still clear. Alice knew when her turn would come now. There were three people before her still. She hadn't looked at them. She didn't want to see who the aliens would tear apart and murder on that table.
Or whatever it was. It had to be worse than actually dying. When people were dead, they didn't feel anything bad anymore.
She didn't want to be hurt. She wanted to live, but she wanted to stay unhurt so much more. If dying meant not being hurt like the devils hurt you, dying couldn't be worse.
The first person was dragged out of his cage.
Despite herself, Alice still begged her parents to save her. Silently, in her head. In her heart. Her father was strong and her mother would do anything to help her. They wouldn't let them hurt her. They would come in and take her away and they would run, together.
The second person's turn came sometime later. It could have been a few minutes, but it could also have been an hour. It felt like an hour.
The air stunk. Like a bad, clogged toilet and blood and puke and sweat. Breathing it made her feel light in her head, but she could still feel her heart pounding.
More devils came in through the door. They took the people who had been operated and took them away. Now all that was left was Alice and the two other people.
No knights. No heroes. No parents.
Despite not wanting to, Alice saw that one of them was a woman. Old enough to be her grandmother.
Just like grandmother, she would die soon.
The last person was loudly sobbing, knowing that their time was up.
The devils came for him first. They opened the cage. He fought, like they all had. He lost, too. Just like they all had.
Then, the impossible happened. One of the aliens started screaming at the other, who immediately took a gun and aimed at the man.
Outside, something was making loud banging noises. Alice could hear screaming and loud thumping.
The devil shot the man in the face and kicked his body away. Then, with a weird look on his ugly face, he aimed at her.
Alice looked the devil in his four eyes. He was going to kill her?
Then, everything exploded. The door leapt from its heavy frame and impacted on one of the devils, knocking him to the ground as several of his bone audibly cracked. So many things happened at once that she found it hard to keep track of them.
One alien had his head explode and splattered red all over wall. The one standing next to him met the same fate at the exact same time and they fell to the ground together.
The devil aiming at Alice managed to look at the door and gasp before something hit his hand with so much strength that the weapon broke and his fingers went several directions.
One devil moved towards the entrance, but his body was flung through the room a second later, hitting the wall with a wet sound.
And then, something entered the lair and Alice gasped. It was a knight in green armor, covered with the blood of the monsters. He was massive, taller than ever her father! His face was hidden behind a dark-green helmet with a golden mask. He moved unlike anything she had seen before in her life. The dog-thing leapt at him but the Green Knight moved only the slightest bit aside and the dog flew past him and in the blink of an eye, his leg snapped out and the dog-thing was dead.
And then the lair was quiet.
Alice stared at the Green Knight, remembering fairytales from her youth. A mighty hero, sent by angels to protect the innocent against the evildoers. A story, a made-up fable for little children.
And he was here.
The Green Knight stopped by the boy of the man who had been shot and then slowly shook his head. Next, he stopped by Alice.
He was so pretty to look at. She couldn't help it; he said something in a heavy, manly voice, but she was too busy gawking at him. That armour was the color of the forest, yet also beyond it.
The Knight reached out, grabbed the iron lock that kept the cage shut and ripped it out with one simple move. The thick metal did not oppose him at all.
Upon seeing that display of brutal strength, Alice's body moved on its own; she immediately hunkered back into the cage, instinctively seeking shelter from this massive thing. Her limbs were trembling, but she couldn't get the thought of sharp tools and naked skin out of her mind. They hung in front of her eyes and they wouldn't go away.
"I won't hurt you," said the Green Knight. He knelt down in front of the cage. Then, he reached out and offered her his hand.
His giant, armored hand, that could easily fit around her entire head. The hand that had been strong enough to rip through metal and kill devils with simple gestures.
After a few moments, it occurred to Alice that this Knight was a hero as well. He had saved her, and he might be able to save the rest. The devils had taken the people for a reason.
But she had to be sure. "Are you a knight?" she whispered.
The green giant simply nodded.
That was enough for her. The fear and exhaustion of the night finally snuck up on her and she practically fell against his armored body, tears flowing down her face as she hugged its cold, sleek plates.
He let her cry for a few moments, then touched her back and gently pried her off.
"They took my friend," he then told her. "Did you see a small, blue chip here? Did one of them carry it?"
Alice didn't know what he meant, but she also knew that she didn't need to understand it. If he had lost his friend, she would help him. If only she had seen what the devils had taken…she hadn't seen anything.
So she shook her head.
He gently wrapped a massive arm around her waist and lifted her from the ground, placing her on his back.
"Where are we going?" she asked.
"Away from here," he replied.
"Will you save the others?"
He thought about her question for a few moments. "I will."
~0~
Normandy SR-2
Combat Information Center
En-route to New Cantonon
The ship dropped out of FTL at the edge of the system, beginning its silent cruise towards the besieged world. She was sleek and silent, designed foremost for stealth. Not only were they the first Council-associated vessel in range, they were also the only Council-associated vessel in range.
Jane anxiously paced back and forth in front of the air lock, waiting until Joker gave the sign that they had reached the besieged colony. She wore her standard N7 armour, but she had foregone the SMG for something with a little more punch. The old-style automatic weapon had not suited her needs. Its rounds tore through flesh like they had been outfitted with a Shredder-ammo mod, but it took too long to reload for her fighting style.
"Shepard," said Zaeed Massani as he passed her by, taking his place beside Tali right next to the airlock.
Jane barely noticed him. She had violence on her mind; fighting, killing and slaughter. Sometimes, memories would resurface within the back of her mind. Suppressed, unwelcome, yet oddly refreshing.
Yes, the sidearm she had found within the Master Chief's vast arsenal would suit her needs. If it worked like the rest of his weapons -crude, yet overpowerdly effective- the weapon would supplement her style perfectly.
How many should she expect? More or less than Mindoir? Elysium?
What would she find down there on that planet? How many naked, tortured and broken people? How many butchered children, raped women?
"Jane!"
The voice of her quarian friend shook her out of her thoughts and she glanced at the woman.
It felt more like a leer.
"I know what you're thinking," said Tali. She had a shotgun slung over her back and a pistol attached to her holster, though the real way she could dominate the battlefield came not from her gunplay, which was nowhere near as precise or accurate as that of a soldier, but from her Tech abilities. If Jane were to succumb to give in to her inner demons just like on Elysium, having a good tech on her team would be very pleasant.
"Commander, please!"
Jane frowned, realizing that she hadn't even heard what Tali had told her after that initial opening. She must have sunk away in her thoughts again…"Yeah?"
"We don't know if these batarians are hostile. They might be responding to the Collector ship just like we are!"
"Yeah right," Zaeed replied with a snort. "Checking out on a human colony? Those slavering bastards are only keen on one thing!"
Miranda scraped her throat and pushed herself away from the console she had been leaning against. "I agree with Tali, This is a delicate situation; we should proceed with caution. This isn't another Elysium."
"The fuck?" Jack then countered, instantly clashing with the Cerberus Operative, like always. "What's Elysium got to do with this?"
"That's enough," barked Jane. "We're going in quiet, but any sign of hostility will be met with lethal force. You got that, Tali?"
The quarian sighed. "Of course, Commander."
"Good."
She wanted to further lay down the rules of engagement for this operation, but Joker had found something interesting and just had to interrupt her. "Commander? You might want to look at this."
Jane, a bit conscious about having ruined his chair in heartbeat of lost control, nonetheless tried to reply in her normal voice. "What?"
It didn't quite work.
"There's a batarian Frigate in orbit, straight ahead. It almost appears powered down. Strange."
"The batarian Frigate has yet to raise their shields," EDI then chimed in. "Furthermore, attempts at communication have failed."
Jane rolled with her eyes. "The batarian warship in human orbit doesn't want to talk to the human warship? How strange…"
"Negative Commander. The batarian vessel has neither rejected nor ignored communication attempts. It appears our message was blocked."
Alright, that was new. "Blocked? How come?"
"I am unable to discern the causation of this event at this moment. The batarian Frigate is incapable of communicating."
"I know, right?" said Joker. He had propped up the chair from the copilot's seat to replace the one Jane had broken. "It's like they just decided that being able to send and receive was too much of a bother."
Something is wrong, the Commander realized. A batarian ship that isn´t attacking or taking in slaves is useless. Something must have happened.
"Change of plan. Joker, set an intercept course to that Frigate. If it doesn't respond, we'll board it. If it does, blow it out of the air."
"Board it?" Miranda raised an eyebrow at that decision, but kept further comments to herself when Jane gave her a glare.
"Yes, board it. There's no reason for any batarian to be near a human world, especially not at the same time as a Collector ship. I want to know what they know."
"We're taking the fight to the bastards? Hah! Reminds me of that one pirate raid, back in-"
"Zaeed, not now. I need you to take point to the hangar. You're piloting the shuttle."
"Sure. Where do you want me to put it? Straight into their cockpit, I take it?"
His eagerness for this fight gave Jane reason to pause. Pause and think. She remembered Zaeed's own desire for blood and vengeance. She had been shocked by his willingness for violence, disgusted by the way he would put innocents in danger just for his own needs. It had taken her some time to make him see how faulty his actions back then in that refinery had been.
And now, he seemed to like her decision to immediately declare the situation a military one. Her choice to declare the first batarian Frigate a target of opportunity seemed to fill him with approval.
For a few moments, Shepard wondered what that meant for her.
Actually, it meant that she needed to reprioritize. If there were civilians down there, she had to help them. That was clear and simple; helping to fight off the batarian attack could be done in many ways, but the dead could never again be brought back to life. Well, with one exception, perhaps.
Confused, Jane shook her head and tried to push her conflicting feelings away. A crisis of identity was the lowest of priorities right now!
No, she needed to stop thinking. Now was the time for acting; disable and, if necessary, destroy the batarian Frigate. Joker could then keep the other three from dropping supplies, providing fire support and landing more troops by engaging them in long-range combat and in the meantime, her ground team would stop the slavers dead in their tracks.
However, the team in the shuttle awaited her decision nonetheless and as the Normandy closed in on the Frigate, it became clear that the explosive action they had expected would not come.
The ship appeared utterly powered down. Even in light orbit, it appeared that the only thing that kept the ship from being pulled into the atmosphere and crashing was the Mass Effect core.
As for the rest, it just appeared …dead.
Her favorite kind.
Apart from the bleeding, torn-apart kind.
"Zaeed, park us next to the docking tube. Tali can bypass the controls and get us in."
Another flashback from Mindoir. Large clouds of yellow gas, followed by dozens of people choking and dropping, tears flowing from their bloodied eyes.
"They might use chemical attacks to ambush us. Helmets sealed."
Her teammates did as she said, with the exception of Tali, who just tapped against her visor.
Jane nodded at her. Just another mission…she told herself. Just another mission…
Armor seals had been checked and rechecked, ammunition stores had been shared and the ship had been thoroughly checked for life-signs.
None had been detected. Whether that was a good thing or a bad thing was left unsaid.
The batarian Frigate never did anything as their shuttle docked with its main docking tube, allowing Tali to easily attempt a bypass with her omni-too-
-only for the door to effortlessly slide away, sucking what little air the docking tube contained in the telltale suction of a depressurized ship.
No wonder they didn´t reply, Jane thought with a grim sense of satisfaction. A second later, she caught the sadistic pleasure that the lack of atmosphere in the batarian vessel caused her. Not only because this might still be a trap, but also because it was wrong to feel content about the agonizing deaths sapient beings would suffer in a depressurized environment.
"That was fast," Shepard told Tali through their integrated comms. "A personal record?"
"Keelah…Shepard," replied Tali, her voice sounding somewhat muffled by the radio. "It opened before I could finish."
"What?"
"I barely started."
Huh…that was odd. Batarians with special suits, lying in waiting? But why take the extra effort of faking a malfunctioning ship? Why just not fire at their shuttle?
The Commander moved deeper into the ship, the silver-white pistol at the ready. She had strapped several magazines to her waist, but the things were somewhat bulky and unwieldy compared to her regular sidearm. "Fan out, search for survivors."
This ship gave her a bad feeling. The atmosphere felt wrong, and that wasn't just because there wasn't any atmosphere to speak off. This place felt like death and anguish. It was hard to make sense of.
Doors would spontaneously open to her and her team, despite appearing locked when they approached them. Jane looked at Tali in confusion, but the quarian merely raised her shoulders and shrugged.
Not my doing, she seemed to say.
At one point, Tali and Jane encountered two doors, one of them leading deeper into the ship and one of them leading to what had to be the bridge. Several bodies lay sprawled across the ground. Batarians.
All dead.
Tali knelt by one of them and scanned him, while the Commander glanced at the door that led to the bridge. The very second she did that, the door soundlessly slid open.
Every viber of her body screamed trap. But she had to know what was going on here; obviously something had killed these batarians, but who?
"Shepard…they didn´t wear protective suits. When they air was cycled out of the ship, they didn't…Keelah, what a horrible way to die."
"Getting a chip drilled into the wrong part of your brain is worse," Jane briskly replied. "Save your sympathy for those who deserve it."
"I…yes, Commander."
Against her better judgement, Jane led Tali into the hallway leading directly to the bridge. Zaeed, Miranda and Jack were investigating the larger portions of the ship, like the mess hall and the barracks, where the ship would have been carrying its victims. Strangely enough, they had been allowed access there by whatever force controlled this ship.
So why deny them access to engineering? And not to the bridge?
Shepard sighed as she entered the large room where most of the crew was present still.
It quickly became clear that survivors obviously wouldn't be found. The bridge was very different from the Normandy´s; it was large and spacious, easily ten by twenty meters large. The only thing that it had in common with the Normandy were the ordinated, reinforced windows, which provided the crew with a pretty impressive view of the planet they were orbiting,
Or would have been a pretty view for the crew, had said crew not been very dead. They were all lying on the ground or draped across their consoles, yellow foam at their mouths. Their skin had a very unnatural color and most of them still wore the expression they had when they had perished.
One of despair and agony.
Again Jane felt a jolt of elation and again, she had to suppress it.
"Guess we now what happened to the ship," said Tali.
Shepard's attention was drawn by a console, however, and she didn't respond.
The console was the only one still active. All the others had shut down and not even the lights were active, but this console was still active. It's faint, blue light casted an odd shade on the interior of the Frigate.
Something drew Shepard in. A voice…no, multiple voices. Whispering.
This wasn't batarian doing.
"Shepard?"
There was something very wrong with this place. It felt awful. Like they shouldn't be here. "Tali, we´re heading back," she told her companion. "The Normandy can blow this ship to bits."
but she didn't get to take more than a few steps before her omni-tool flashed a deep shade of blue and a female voice spoke to her through her radio, clearer than Tali's, but also completely unfamiliar to her.
"Wait!"
Jane spun around, scanning her surroundings with her weapon. "Did you say something?" She quickly asked.
"No, I…I didn't hear anything. Why? Who did you hear?"
Shepard glanced down at her omni-tool. That color did not belong there.
"You have to help!"
Shepard started lifting her arm, to signal her squad to focus and listen-
"Please, don't tell the others. Not yet, they won't understand."
"Commander?" said Tali. She scanned her surroundings with her shotgun, obviously not comfortable with the ship either.
Jane decided to play along. She had always been able to tell when someone was lying to her and this woman, whoever she was, sounded too genuinely distressed to be part of a trap. What was more, she had heard this voice before. On the derelict, before meeting the Master Chief. "Go ahead and meet up with Zaeed's group. We're leaving in five."
"But-"
"Tali," Shepard kindly said, "In the military, when an officer gives you an order, you should obey it."
"…of course. If you aren't back in five minutes, I am getting you out."
"Thank you. Come on now; move along."
The moment that Tali was out hearing range -and exactly out of hearing range too- the voice in Shepard's helmet continued. "Thank you. I…I didn't know what to do. They took him from me! Took him when he wouldn't wake up and -and confined me to this…this prison!" She pronounced that last word with such hate and bitterness…who was she?
"I want to help you," replied Jane. She muted the comm, making sure her teammates would not be listening in on accident. When she made a promise, she kept it. "But I need to know more. Who are you? How did you contact me?" She paused. "How did you know my name?"
"I'm sorry. I needed something he trusted, someone who would never harm him. You need to find him, you need to save him!"
Her voice was bordering on panic and Jane responded with ingrained experience, taking steps to calm down the mysterious woman who had, if Jane´s hunch was correct, vented the atmosphere and doomed all the inhabitants of this ship. "Slow down. I'm here to help. You already know that, you know my name. Do you want to tell me yours?"
"I…later. I will tell you everything you want to know, just please, later! They're hurting him, they're trying to kill him!"
Jane felt her desperation as though it was hers and it became hard to stay focus. She encountered many more dead bodies as she moved through the ship, talking to this voice only she had heard. "The batarians? Who are they hurting? And where?"
"Jo- the Chief! The Master Chief! Please Jane, you have to get him out of there!"
What?
"Down on the surface. They're swarming him, please, you need to hurry!"
The Commander shook her head. "The Master Chief is dead," she said, but even as she spoke, a faint, nagging stab of doubt took a hold of her mind. Obviously something was wrong with this ship and obviously, if these batarians had been here since before Tim had given them the heads-up, something had delayed them. A lot. "I had to abandon him…and who are you, anyway? How do you know him? How did you get into my helmet?"
There was a brief moment during which the voice was utterly silent. The blue glow in the console however, grew more powerful.
And when the voice next spoke, Shepard forgot about that console altogether. "My name is Cortana…I was created by the United Nations Space Command and paired with Master Chief Petty Officer Sierra one-one-seven. I am an advanced Artificial Intelligence."
~0~
Three hours ago
The Master Chief kicked in the last door of the small, hastily-erected bunker complex and was instantly faced with at least seven batarian Shock troopers, the last survivors of his one-Spartan assault on the outpost. They were all bunched up, concealed behind several overturned tables and concrete blocks.
So he lobbed one of the alien frag grenades in among them, then backed up out of the way, and sprayed the room with bullets. The grenade went off with a satisfying wham! and body parts flew high into the air before thumping to the floor.
The aliens didn't last long under his fire and before long, the Spartan stood alone in the middle of the last batarian camp. The shacks slowly collapsed under their own weight, the metal bars that had supported them having been all but destroyed during the brief, but intense firefight.
Cortana wasn't there.
The Master Chief had spent the entire night rampaging through the woods, eliminating strike teams and clearing bunkers. He had found a few medi-kits scattered throughout the first outpost, so he had taken a quick stop to fix his canister of biofoam with omni-gel, filled it with medi-gel and then inserted the tip of the can into one of his suit's ports, fixing up some of the more grievous wounds.
The batarians had attempted to predict his movements and sent in reinforcements every single time they realized that their forces were taking losses.
Somehow, they succeeded in accurately thwarting his progress every time. They had air support, armored vehicles and more. Had he not hidden the girl -Alice- away in the industrial area of the colony, she would have perished in the hellish crossfire that the aliens kept opening up on him.
Even now, the Master Chief could already hear the faint humming of enemy air support inbound.
It didn't make sense. The several miles of forest that surrounded the industrial zone had been filled with camps and outposts, but Cortana was nowhere to be found! Yet every batarian he interrogated pointed him to the next one, always the next one…
Were they disciplined enough to make him circle around endlessly, until their reinforcements finally whittled him down?
before soon, he spotted two of the alien gunships approaching the camp. He had taken refuge in the treeline, but he only carried alien small arms. He would not be downing those birds by shooting them.
The sun had risen some time ago. His advantage of the night had disappeared. Though most of the slavers' weapons lacked the punch that Collector rifles did, their rounds merely bouncing off of or otherwise flattening against his MJOLNIR, his last encounter with a batarian gunship had left him with yet another blemish on his suit.
The Spartan would not give these vehicles a chance to fire at him again. Stay put, play safe. That was-
Plumes of exhaust appeared at the sides of the two gunships as they fired their missiles into the treeline surrounding the cleared bunker. An entire swarm of streaking explosives annihilated the cover of the forest in a large stretch around the outpost and the Chief was forced to make a run for it.
The overpressure and shockwaves of the explosions weren't so bad and his MJOLNIR protected him against the shower of shrapnel that the explosions kicked up. However, a bight flare and a sudden spike in his suit's internal temperature betrayed the true nature of the missiles.
"Phosphorous shells!" screamed the pilot of the gunship. The alien craft seemed to come with a voice enhancer as well, as his deep voice boomed through the stretch of forest in which he had just raised hell. "Run or burn, bastard!"
The Spartan did just that. As his cover went up in flames, he broke into a flat sprint, digging in his heals with such force that the ground underneath his feet scattered. It took him three strides to build to his top-speed. His adrenaline spiked and his blood burned even as his perception of time overclocked.
He made a beeline straight for the industrial zone, where there would be sufficient cover for him to engage these ships. Behind him, the surface of the hill exploded into clouds of dirt, splintered trees and burning wood. The gunships traced a lethal path behind him, their heavy autocannons chewing through what little cover he had in instants.
The Master Chief ducked, jumped and weaved as he sprinted down the hill, avoiding rocks, logs and gunfire. Up ahead he saw a large collection of pipes and old warehouses, with ample cover and good positions. It had to do.
Even as the gunships came closer and closer to hitting him, he came closer and closer to finding cover and just as the bullets were starting to nip at his heels, he flung himself through a wall into one of the warehouses. He smashed through the brick wall like an armored missile and immediately scampered back to his feet and hid behind one of the crates.
Wasting no time, the Spartan unsheathed his combat knife and immediately moved up through the various catwalks and boxes in the empty warehouse, making his way to the piping.
The first gunship noticed him and came in close for a strafing run, having used all of its missiles to flush him out.
The Chief allowed it to close in on him and then leapt away at the last moment, propelling himself multiple meters in the air with his powerful muscles, augmented by the force circuits in his MJOLNIR.
As the gunship turned around for another pass, suddenly shuddered and tilted, unbalanced. The Master Chief had managed to grab the side of the VTOL's left wing as it passed him by and was now hanging away some distance from his intended target, the cockpit.
Slowly, the Spartan started to claw his way towards the vulnerable side of the gunship, even as the second VTOL located its partner and opened fire, intent on shooting the Chief off.
The pilot of the second gunship merely succeeded in blowing out the gunship's engine. The VTOL started spinning out of control, but its pilot could have saved the bird the bird from going down.
Of course, John had other plans. He slammed his knife into the metal frame right where the armor transitioned into the transparent sheath of glass. With a solid grip, he ripped the plate out, exposing the pilot.
Not about to waste any time on a bird that was falling from the sky, the Chief merely stabbed the pilot in his head and then leapt off, abandoning the spiraling gunship before it could take him with it.
In the resulting chaos, as the smoking wreckage smashed into one of the buildings, the Spartan disengaged and fell back to the cellar where he had told the girl to hide.
Alice…he had failed to find the people she had described as her parents. He had failed to find any people. The slavers must have moved them somewhere else, along with Cortana. They had taken the tortured, surgically-mutilated humans away in their shuttles. It had to be one of those transport ships in orbit.
Jacking one of them was the best option.
The Chief easily disentangled the heavy chains he had draped across the locks, knocked two times on the wooden doors to the cellar and then dropped down. He still checked the room for any hostiles, as it never hurt to check.
Once he was certain that he was in the clear, he lowered his weapon. "I'm back," he called.
Alice, having recognized both his voice as his way of knocking, stuck her little head out from the table she was hiding under. "Did you find them, mister?"
She sounded hopeful. He had told her not to be hopeful.
"No," he replied. "The aliens took them away."
A look of disappointment and sorrow crossed her features and she looked away. Then, as a new thought seemed to pop into her head, she lit up again. "But you can save them, can't you, mister Knight?"
She kept calling him that. Even when he had escorted her through the forest, where they had encountered the first batarian armored convoy. They had remained hidden as the two infantry fighting vehicles rolled by, oddly dubbed 'dragons' by the girl. There, the Chief had quickly and silently dispatched of the vanguard to lure them convoy away, after which her awe in him had been firmly cemented.
The Master Chief knelt down next to her and glanced at the girl. Her clothes were dirty and torn, she had gathered enough cuts and bruises to rival an ODST fresh out of his pod and she had dark rings around her eyes, a clear sign of exhaustion. She was barely old enough to go to school
She was also a liability.
Fighting an entire invasion force while babysitting a civilian was not ideal. In fact, it was about as far away from ideal as possible. He could engage enemies like these with hit-and-run tactics, staying on the move and striking from the shadows. However, guarding a fixed position would ruin that strategy.
He could either leave her here and risk the batarians finding her, or he could take her with him and severely handicap his movements. Again, protecting a civilian -a child even- was the last thing he wanted when he was outnumbered, outgunned and wounded.
However, being unable to protect the many thousands of colonists the Collectors had abducted from their homes, from their loved ones…it suited him very ill. Spartans always succeeded in their missions, or they would die trying. And here he was, alive because he had sentenced thousands to a certain death.
The Collectors would have killed them regardless.
The best course of action would be to ditch the girl.
He wouldn't. He was going to save her, regardless the risks. It was something that Captain Keyes would have done.
Something Avery would have done.
Probably.
"I'll keep searching," he told the girl. "But not with you. I'm going to find a ship, fly us to a bigger ship. From there, the Alliance will protect you."
"Are you leaving?" She asked.
The Chief, realizing he had just attempted to clarify his next tactical decision to what amounted to a six-year old, inwardly sighed and decided to try something else. If only Cortana were here…"The aliens took your people off this planet. I'm going to pursue them. Alone."
"I get it," the girl cheerfully said. "Girls can't be Knights."
At that, the Chief had to suppress a chuckle. Someone ought to tell that to Linda, or Kelly.
If they were still alive, at least.
"I can't save your people and protect you at the same time," he explained. "Someone else needs to protect you."
The girl pouted. "But someone else can't do that. They're all dead."
Hearing those words from a child was nothing new. He had encountered plenty of war-orphans during the war. But somehow, he hoped that it would have been different in this part of the universe. "I know."
What was he supposed to tell her? That he was sorry a bunch of slavering aliens had invaded her home? That the bastards had been looking for money and slaves and, in order to get that, her family had to die?
What child would want to hear that?
"But you're alive," he pointed out. "How did you escape?"
The girl looked away. For some reason, she didn't want to look at him as she recalled the details of her harrowing escape. It involved hiding from patrols, running from those war-dogs and taking shelter in thorny bushes to avoid the 'metal dragons' as they soared overhead.
The Chief was somewhat impressed by her resourcefulness; surviving a complete night in the middle of a batarian slave raid was not something every six-year old could pull off.
Except the Spartans, of course.
He briefly wondered how the situation would have gone had the original team been present. His brothers and sisters, his comrades in arms. Driving off squads with stones and improvised weapons, poisoning the war-dogs and sabotaging their armor and air support.
He quickly dismissed those thoughts as foolish. He had to stay focused on the mission.
"And then you found me," she said, recounting the Chief's breach from her point of view. There was something disturbing about the inner folds of a child's mind witnessing the brutal torture of her fellow people. That innocence that made child soldiers such a viable idea.
The Master Chief was about to tell her that she had one a good job when he suddenly heard something outside. He held up his fist -their signal for total silence and stillness- and listened.
He heard the faint zooming noises and heavy thuds of solid hardware impacting around the industrial zone. Then, the steady humming of enemy dropships.
How did they find us? He wondered as he rose to his feet. Had the gunship called in reinforcements to deal with one entrenched soldier in an abandoned area? How much lives and gear were these SOB's willing to waste to take out one man?
The girl, still remaining silent, stared at him with large eyes.
"They found us," he told her. "We need to move."
~0~
New Cantonon orbit
Hegemony heavy Frigate Deliverance
Local time: 09:49
Captain Adek Gor'vak watched the battle for the human colony unfold before his eyes. The human champion -this Verusian Demon, as his people had so foolishly called him- had entrenched himself deep within the industrial area of the colony.
A stupid decision. Little did he know, that he was now surrounded on all sides by the toughest, most well-trained batarian Shock troopers his army had to offer, along with three of the military-grade Mako's he had…requisitioned from his contacts. The heavy infantry vehicles could blow apart even the most heavily-armed Alliance soldiers. This…this pretender would not stand in their way.
The Seraphim of Elysium…hah! As if this armored shadow could be compared to that…that thing. No. This shadow might have gotten lucky a few times, but his luck would most certainly run out.
And so the Captain eyed the battle with savage glee as his soldiers dropped in by the dozens. The dead-man monitor displayed a whopping hundred-and-seventeen life-signs, all of them scurrying around the large industrial zone.
The reports that came in from his many ground troops were clear; one human girl and her sneaky protector. The last remaining people in this colony. Well…the moment his troops overwhelmed and captured them, he would force one to watch the other die. The protector was most likely a capable worker, but the girl would satisfy a lot of men if properly educated.
Gor'vak was basically gnashing his teeth in delight every time he thought about the ways he could hurt these apes. These filthy, privileged apes, living in lavish luxury because of the hardship and sacrifices of good, batarian people! The success of the human people was built on the suffering of his!
He would see them ruined, all of them. He was going to make them work.
The various other monitors he had employed, were displaying the helmet footage of the commanders in the teams. The direct link was a bit blurry, as high-tech cameras were very expensive and difficult to procure inside the Hegemony, but they had been supplied with enough military hardware to make this work.
Hehe…work.
The Captain watched with delight as the four different perspectives detailed the individual squads working their way through a refinery. The appearance of that strange, rock-like ship had complicated things, but that too could be played to his hand. Its part looked very advanced, and very expensive. He could get away with half of this day's yield and still make a million credits off of those parts.
One of his monitors of the Deliverance's bridge suddenly flickered with an alarm and Captain Gor'vak leant in closer to take a look.
Of the more than five-hundred and fifty troopers remaining, the one-hundred and seventeen he had sent into the industrial zone had properly divided into infantry squads and were ransacking the buildings in their search for this one elusive soldier. However, two soldiers had their Dead-Man suddenly activate, at the same time.
The Captain smirked. There you are…
"Squad Commanders, take your teams and investigate!"
This shadow wasn't very smart. He had just revealed his position-
Two more Dead-Man sensors activated and when Gor'vak activated the Deliverance's advanced systems, filtering through the helmet cams until he found the footage of the Commander responsible for those men, he saw nothing.
What he heard however, sent chills down his spine.
"Where is it? Where is it!?"
"Behind you! Watch out"!
Another Dead-Man activated and the owner of the camera spun around just in time to see one unlucky soldier get pulled straight through the roof, hauled off of his feet like a Thresher Maw had just grabbed him.
The soldiers opened fire, but something exploded behind them and the owner of the cam stumbled forwards, after which three more Dead-Man sensors activated in rapid succession. The Commander was forcibly spun around and then something massive punched straight through his helmet, destroying the camera and probably the poor bastard's entire head.
It had happened so fast that the Captain had no clue as to what had just killed his men. It had been an ambush, that much was certain.
The key to this riddle was simple; there had to be more of them down there. It was a trap; the humans must have somehow coordinated an effective resistance.
No matter.
The rest of the teams quickly converged on the source of all this violence and they would tear the offender limb for limb.
Gor'vak glanced at the active roster of his men. The Deliverance was a special vessel; more than two-hundred meters long and filled with the most advanced military hardware that credits could buy, its bridge could function like the CIC of a Dreadnaught. And now that they had stashed all of the captured humans in the two Sister-Frigates, processed or otherwise, he could turn the full attention of his ship to his army.
From his position, he could monitor every single able body on the ground.
More than eight soldiers had been killed in that skirmish. Plenty of soldiers left.
In the hour that followed, Captain Gor'vak would continue to monitor the progress of his soldiers with increasing frustration, desperation and exasperation, his force having already been whittled down to sixty men. Somehow, this Shadow managed to engage multiple teams as once, as the various Dead-Man sensors that went off would sometimes be a dozen meters apart-
~0~
The Master Chief carefully wrapped the thin fiber around the pin of the grenade and attached it to the door. Then, he took Alice and quietly made his way to the roof, where two batarian snipers had created a bird's-eye view. He took a minute to traverse the wall of the building, but the staircase had been compromised.
He positioned himself underneath the two snipers as the child on his back held on for dear life. He stayed like that for another two minutes, after which a particularly unlucky slaver opened the door that led to the staircase. At the blast of rolling thunder, the Chief leapt upwards, grabbed the two snipers by their legs and pulled them off the roof, sentencing them to a five-story plummet into the concrete below.
~0~
-and nobody seemed to spot him. It was a large complex that the humans had built here, but how damn hard could it be for a hundred soldiers and three Mako's to find two humans in an industrial area that wasn't much larger than a square mile?
Of the original army, only ninety-nine remained. The Shadow had superior training and skills, that quickly became obvious. Gor'vak frantically skimmed through the dozens of helmet cameras that his soldiers carried with him, but not a single one managed to catch so much as a glimpse of the soldier that was hunting them down.
That was, until one particular Shock trooper and his team engaged their target in close quarters. "There!" yelled the Captain. "Freeze at three point seven seconds!"
His crew did as he said, freezing the image of an armored form in the middle of his attack.
"Now magnify by factor seven!"
The under-officers obeyed and before long, Gor'vak was confronted with the wretched appearance of this elusive enemy.
Whatever it was, it wasn't human. Or it carried some form of experimental power armor. Yes, that had to be it. The human was massive, towering over even the largest krogan soldiers. His armor appeared battered and damaged, and it was covered with the blood of good batarian soldiers. Its heavily-armored frame was frozen in movement, in the middle of dragging a knife through the throat of one soldier, while ducking underneath a burst of gunfire from the other.
"Let it play!"
The footage resumed playing, but the event had already transpired and the fates of these men had been sealed the second their Dead-Man's activated. The shadowy behemoth struck the closest foe with one armored forearm, shattering his helmet and crushing his skull. Bullets ricocheted off of his armor like it was the hull of a starship.
In the brief three seconds that the owner of the footage had lived, the monstrous human slaughtered the entire fireteam with such speed and brutality that it couldn't possibly be a human.
It couldn't be!
More Dead-Man sensors had been triggered, and silence reigned on the bridge. Gor'vak was gripping the edge of his chair with a mixture of horror and fury. This…this thing moved so fast! The trooper had been unable to follow him!
A mech. A robot, or something like that. A desperate, last-measure military mech that the humans had sicked on his men.
Gor'vak's fury reached its crescendo as the drivers of Mako-one suddenly called for help. Not reinforcements, but help.
~0~
A small hole was all that it took. The Spartan dug his fingers in the small opening that his ambush had created, digging his fingers into the metal frame. Slowly, he started ripping the door free, the large APC was helpless before his assault. One crewmember tried to stop him, but his strength was more than enough to overcome.
With a tremendous effort, the Master Chief tore the door open, revealing the crew inside. Vulnerable, barely-armed crew.
~0~
And then, just like that, their transmissions stopped. Fifty-three troops remained, and Mako-one was most certainly down.
Gor'vak screamed and smashed his fist onto the console. "All soldiers, converge on Mako-one's position! Every soldier who brings me a piece of its body gets paid double!"
That was more than enough to motivate his troops, but the Captain worried about the effectiveness of said motivation. If they hadn't been able to counter this elusive foe when it had been slaughtering them, what shift of tactics would allow them to prevail now?
"Captain!" One of his officers then yelled. "The Kar'shan's Glory just stopped communicating!"
The news was so unexpected, so utterly conflicting with what had been going on, that Gor'vak barely understood what it meant. "What do you mean, stopped communicating?" He demanded. The Lieutenant of that Escort Frigate would pay for his incompetence!
"Ehm…" the officer nervously eyed his station. "The Glory's kinetic barriers are down…its engines too. The ship is completely nonresponsive, sir."
Not possible! He had been communicating with his Lieutenant half an hour ago! "Gods above…what keeps the Glory lifted, then? Huh? Tell me that!"
"As far as I know, the Mass Effect core seems to be still online. The rest is just…dead."
This stank like sabotage! To perfectly disable a vessel's every vital system yet keeping it from crashing into the surface of the planet? More human treachery.
Captain Gor´vak was growing very tired of this. If a hundred soldiers hadn't been able to kill this Shadow, fifty wouldn't do it either. He no longer cared about one pitiful girl and her protector; he just wanted them dead!
"Captain Gor'vak to all squad Commanders," he growled into his intercom, which patched him through to what remained of his army on the ground. There was just too much cover…too much concealment. Just like the Seraphim of Elysium. "Fall back to the forest. Repeat, fall back to the forest. Judgement Day has arrived…"
This monstrosity, whatever it was, was not the Seraphim. And this wasn't Elysium. What this Shadow -this Demon- was, Gor'vak did not know. But he knew one thing:
It was going to burn.
~0~
Tali'zorah nar Rayya nervously watched the enormous warship descend onto the planet like a hungry vuloture, closing in on its prey. Something was wrong, terribly wrong. She had known it the moment she had heard the word 'batarian'. This mission was going to end horrible.
Shepard -her Jane, her staunchest protector, her closest friend- stood with her back to the rest of the squad, watching footage of the colony that the Normandy had patched through. The quarians made extensive use of unmanned drones to scout unknown locations, and with her help, the engineers on the SR-2 had managed to create an unmanned vehicle that could map its surroundings.
Right now, Jane was benefitting from the view that the little machine granted, but it didn't seem to distract her one bit from the dark thoughts that had to be going through her head right now.
Then, after a minute of awkward silence, during which the shuttle avoides patrols and gunships to touch down somewhere safe, Operative Lawson spoke up. "They're falling back," she quietly said.
"No shit?" Jack glanced at the screen and smirked. "Hah! Fucker's must be scared shitless!"
Somehow, Tali didn't think it was that easy. Batarian slavers were like hounds; once they smelled blood, they would never let it go, unless they were completely routed. And this wasn't a rout.
She glanced at the screen as well and saw a coordinated retreat, abandoning the industrial zone that lay in the middle of a small valley. The surrounding treeline -a ring of forest, easily several kilometers across- wasn't entirely intact. One patch had been completely burnt down, while surrounding zones were burning. Someone had torn a path of destruction from the charred, burning zone, all the way into the heart of the colony.
The poor colonists…Tali understood why her Commander was so utterly infuriated. She too could barely control her outrage at this view. Collectors were abducting entire colonies, batarians invaded and slaughtered their way through those that remained and the Council didn't do a thing.
Just like it had with the Geth.
"Think those bastards are in league with the Collectors?" asked Zaeed, his voice sounding amusingly muffled from the cockpit.
"Hardly…they Collector Cruiser is destroyed and the batarians haven't left," replied Lawson. She always seemed to disagree with someone.
Then, right as Zaeed declared that they he had found a place to touch down, the batarian warship opened fire.
"Oh Keelah!" Tali gasped as the massive vessel of war fired its mass accelerator cannons at the colony. Those weapons were rated to destroy starships, but feeble buildings. "Those poor people…"
Miranda groaned and closed her eyes, averting her head from the large screen.
"What?" said Zaeed. "What's going on?"
"Fuck," Jack swore. "Those four-eyed bastards are fucking that colony up!"
"What?"
"The batarians opened fire on the industrial zone," Shepard softly said. Her voice was remarkably calm, though Tali detected a slight tremor that only she heard. Of all the teammates -friends, as Jane called them- that the Normandy had gathered up to now, only she and Garrus really understood the commander. Tali saw things that the others didn't see, and she saw her friend barely able to keep herself calm. Her limbs were trembling ever so slightly, her eyes were staring and a faint, blue glow emanated from her back.
The large slugs simply tore through the buildings, razing them down to the ground and obliterating them utterly. The trees shook with the shockwaves of the impact and even as the shuttle touched down, the impact of the mass accelerators could be felt.
"Stay down!" Shepard yelled at them. "Wait until that ship finishes! Joker, what's the situation?"
~0~
The sky turned white. Thunder rolled across his body as a rain of hyper-velocity slugs slammed into the heart of the colony. Fire and metal, both molten as shrapnel, blossomed through the air. The ground cracked and shattered, overpressure waves flattened buildings and a thousand daggers stabbed through his body, which was flung through a wall and into a pile of debris.
Something snapped with a loud crack! and a searing pain shot through his face. Blood poured onto his visor, which had gone completely dark.
The Master Chief felt darkness wash over him, but the pain that lanced through his body fought back against the creeping shadow of unconsciousness. He fought to stay awake, and his heads-up display slowly flickered back into existence.
His visor had cracked. Sharp pieces of polymer and glass had torn though the skin of his socket, narrowly missing his left eye. Blood dripped from the wound, but also from between his libs.
He coughed and his chest ached in protest.
Slowly, groggily, the Master Chief rose. He groaned and weakly climbed back to his feet, dizzy and confused.
He remembered having watched the batarian forces retreat. He remembered grabbing Alice and sprinting to cover when the inevitable airstrike had hit, but he had never expected an entire warship to fire at the city…
John looked around, and realized that the slavers hadn't just fired at the colony. They had razed it to the ground. Not a single building remained upright. The warehouses had been reduced to rubble, the towers had completely collapsed and the entire industrial zone was just…just gone.
Alice!
Where was she? Was she safe?
The Chief checked his motion tracker, which had miraculously survived the ordeal. A thin crack ran across his visor at that section, but the radar was still visible enough.
Nothing.
A jolt of anxiety ran through his mind and he started searching for the young girl, before the batarians did. They couldn't lay their hands on her, they wouldn't. He had vowed to protect her.
He searched through the wreckages and piles of debris, ripping through chunks of concrete and stone, silently hoping that he wouldn't find her buried underneath a hill of rebar and stone…
That was then he saw her. She was half-buried underneath a small heap of debris. Heavy, but not lethal.
Not lethal.
The Master Chief hurried towards her, but halfway he stopped as he got a better view on her body.
Her head, oddly positioned, was aimed his way, but her large eyes were staring at nothingness. Vacant. Empty. Her small chest was still and did not move.
He was too late.
John knelt down next to the small body, unwilling to believe it. She had survived so much, lasted for so long…and he had promised her. Promised her he would keep her safe.
He reached out and touched her face. One side had been seared by the blast, but her dark hair fell across the charred skin, making it look like nothing was amiss.
Her body had been broken by the overwhelming shockwaves. Her spine, her neck...she would have died on impact.
The Master Chief felt a hollow feeling spread through his chest that had nothing to do with his wounds. "I'm sorry," he whispered, and very gently closed her eyes.
Then, he looked up at the sky, where the warship was still looming. Gunships were already scouting the wreckages and armoured vehicles were racing down the streets, only barely hindered by the debris.
He felt a sickening sensation of pure, undiluted hate. Something he had not felt for a very long time. It was almost alien to him.
But not too alien that he didn't know what it meant. There would be hell to pay.
~0~
Commander Shepard needed that heavy Frigate down and she needed it now. And she had just the idea for it. Joker was currently engaging the other two Frigates, luring them away from the colony. This one however had its eyes set on the people in the colony and was dead-set on slaughtering them all.
"Tali, is the drone still airborne?"
The quarian machinist nodded. "It is. The gunships didn't bother shooting it. It's just like you predicted; they are too distracted by the ground defense."
Of course they were. All predators preferred live prey and batarians were no exceptions. It was a miracle that there was anyone still alive down there; orbital bombardments like that wreaked hell on unprotected infantry. Anything short of a fully-shielded soldier in an EXO-suit would get nailed by the shockwaves those created.
"Good. We're going to need it."
"For what?"
~0~
Captain Gor'vak had been staring at a monitor displaying the progress of his troops when an alar suddenly blared. He looked up and then screamed in surprise and terror as something round and solid smashed through the windows, seemingly unopposed by the kinetic barriers. It smashed through several monitors, crushing the crewmen that were too slow to dodge the projectile. It came to a violent stop several meters away from his chair, having ruined half his bridge.
"What the blazes is that!" He demanded. It was a big, metal ball, still smoking from having its internal electronics busted. Who had dared to attack his ship?! "How did it get past our defenses?"
The Alliance vessel that had dropped out of FTL close to this system! His incompetent subordinates still had not done away with it? How hard was it to take care of one Frigate with two Heavy Frigates! They had double the manpower, double the defensive capabilities!
Upon detecting the sudden breach in his ship, the internal security systems instantly alerted the closest soldier detail, but they were still one the other side of the ship. It meant that the beautiful bridge was still defaced by this ugly hulk of metal.
One of the techs who had survived this strange assault approached and scanned it with his omni-tool. "It's a drone," he called. "Spirits…a spy drone. It bypassed out barriers because of its slow speed."
Captain inwardly cringed. Of course…slow objects always bypassed kinetic barriers and he had been too preoccupied to notice it approaching. Argh, the sweet taste of vengeance had blinded him to the duties of an officer…
Gor'vak pushed away his personal feelings, realizing the grave tactical mistake he had made. "Man your stations!" he shouted. "Scan for that cursed human vessel!" He would have his bridge sealed, but the sight of the destroyed colony was too entrancing for him to really care. After Elysium, Gor'vak just wanted to see the humans burn. Burn, wither and fade away.
He brought his Frigate close to the surface, closer than any commanding officer would recommend. But what had he to fear? His quarry was gone, the humans all but wiped out. They had no defenses. All that was left was watch the burning corpse through the windows of his bridge.
"Mantis one through seven! Form a perimeter around the Deliverance! Protect the ship from more of those drones!" Whatever tricks they had, it wouldn't work. The Alliance dogs would not interfere now! His gunships would keep the Deliverance protected from further aerial attacks.
A minute later, as the troopers appeared on deck to clear the makeshift projectile and clear the deck of bodies, gore and destroyed electronics, the Captain turned his attention back to the human colony. His soldiers were moving in to make sure that the Shadow was dead and gone. He could never be sure. The Seraphim of Elysium had been active even after five of his soldiers had, on separate occasions, reported its demise!
Gor'vak failed to see the looks that his under-officers gave each other. Failed to see the disapproval and skepticism in the eyes of his soldiers as they cleared the casualties that could have easily been prevented by a rational officer.
Yes, the slaver Captain thought, oblivious to the doubt he was sowing. He looked forward to seeing the burning, battered body of this unholy thorn in his side. It would bring him one step closer to closure, to leaving behind that day of madness and sorrow.
So when he started hearing reports of casualties once again, his scream of rage was enough to send several of his crew scampering for cover.
"How!" He roared, spittle flying from his mouth. "How is that fucking thing still alive!"
~0~
The Master Chief lunged for the batarian shock trooper, cutting completely loose. He punched him in the throat, crushing his windpipe, then followed up with a jab so powerful that it tore loose the alien's lower jaw.
A gunship opened fire and he quickly spun around a charging slaver who had attempted to flank him. He grabbed the soldier, crushed his right knee and then positioned him in front of the incoming shells. Blood sprayed across his chest and helmet. In his adrenaline-fueled, rage-driven state, he still recognized the warship that loomed above the colony. The various shuttles and gunships were keeping a tight perimeter around it.
They didn't protect the vessel. They merely provided him with a way in.
~0~
"Captain!" One of Gor'vak's officers shouted from behind his console. "The hostile-"
But the Captain did not listen. He was glaring at the helmet cams of his Commanders who, after a brief engagement, had lost the Shadow. "Where is it…where?"
"Captain!" That same officer called again, glaring at his monitor in clear disbelieve.
"I threw everything I had at it! EVERYTHING!" In his fury, the captain threw one of the unmanned chairs through the bridge. At that display of violence, the soldiers edged closer, while the crewmen started moving away. "This was supposed to be a simple slave run! I lost TWO-HUNDRED FUCKING MEN TO THIS THING!"
Another chair went flying and the officer merely sighed, showing his monitor to his colleagues. They took one look at the data, then promptly stood and left the bridge, leaving Gor'vak alone with the soldiers.
The Captain failed to notice his crew leaving the bridge, just as he failed to notice that the very quarry he was foaming at the corners of his mouth about, was heading straight for the bridge. It was only when the Shadow steered the hijacked gunship straight into the bridge that Gor'vak realized how horribly, horribly mistaken he had been in ignoring the pleas of his crew. They had seen the armored, blood-covered Shadow leap from gunship to gunship in its mad dash to the Deliverance while he had been raving like a lunatic.
The soldiers all took cover and opened fire on the smoking frame of the abomination, perfectly mirroring the situation on the ground.
Except that Gor´vak was now stuck in their middle. He stared at the Demon.
And its damaged visor turned to meet his gaze. A golden abyss, insurmountable and immovable. An unstoppable force.
The batarian Captain muttered a single, terrified "No!" and ran, abandoning his soldiers to the wrath of the Verusian Demon.
~0~
Shepard rushed through the forest that surrounded what had once been the thriving colony of New Cantonon, carving a bloody path through the few stragglers that remained. The aliens were all charging towards the ruined center, which the warship had just flattened with its main battery. Because of that, they never saw her coming.
The Commander tore through the batarian's feeble shield with a casual flick of her wrist, picked the alien up with her Biotics and then threw it against the charred remains of a tree, impaling it on one of its roots.
Behind her, Tali finished the alien off with a shot from her shotgun. She tore her eyes from the gruesome sight before her Commander charged too far ahead, silently praying that she wouldn't do anything stupid.
Zaeed and Jack were both gunning down the very few survivors of Jane´s onslaught as she made her way towards the destroyed heart of the colony, where most of the fighting seemed to be going on. She caught one batarian unaware and shot out its shields with two shots of her sidearm. Then, she wrapped it in a Biotic field and broke its spine, leaving it writhing on the floor.'
Again, Tali finished it off when Jane wouldn't.
The other batarian managed to turn around just in time to see her unleash a powerful Biotic Throw at it. "Oh shit. No! Don't!"
The cascade of Biotic energy washed over the alien and blasted it down the hill. If the initial force had not killed it, the landing certainly would.
Jane watched the alien come to a sudden stop against a rock with cold indifference. Tali put a hand on her shoulder and, when the Commander turned to glance at her, she pointed at the sky, where the largest warship was about to crash into the field of debris it had caused with its bombardment.
"I´ll be goddamned…" Zaeed muttered. He lowered his weapon and stared at the batarian warship that was careening nose-first into the surface of the colony. Ten of those ships could have fitted into the industrial zone, but the sheer force of its impact crumpled the entire front of the ship and the superstructure seemed to buckle. Rapid series of explosions blossomed outwards from its hull, which sprang open at several places to reveal smoking, damaged decks.
At least half a dozen escape pods had launched from its aft section. Of course.
"Well shit," said Jack. "That's a pretty sight. We do that?"
"No," Tali immediately said. "The trajectory of the drone couldn't have caused a calamity like that."
"That wasn't us," replied Jane, translating for Tali.
It couldn't be; Joker was still keeping the other two Frigates away from the colony, but he wouldn't have had time to engage the big one. No, that was something else. The same something that had taken the Collector Cruiser down?
Their squad wasn't the only one advancing on the crashed warship. "Look," Tali said, pointing at the crash-site. Dozens of batarian soldiers were rushing towards the point of impact, as well as something that looked suspiciously like a Mako. The valley was filling with hostile targets already.
Worst of all, it appeared as if they would all arrive at the same time.
"Shouldn't they have evacuated by now?"
"Slavers are damn cowards! They have their slaves; they should have run!"
"Something obviously didn't want them to run," replied Tali. "Were they ordered to stay behind?"
"It doesn't matter," Jane sharply said. "If they stayed here, they die."
Easier said than done. Tali counted at least fifty well-armed slavers, and that Mako was making short work of the piles of debris and rubble that the bombardment had caused, creating paths for the foot-soldiers to take. While it wasn't exactly an army, it was still a considerable force.
How many slaves had been aboard that ship? How had the that Bosh'tet of a Captain allowed his ship to crash? Could it have been an inside job?
As the squad advanced down the hill, mopping up batarian slavers that were taking up positions to fire heavy weapons from, Tali noticed something at the front of the Frigate, where the bridge had been positioned. The soldiers were gathering there for an assault, as if there was something of interest there.
"Commander!" She said.
"I see it," replied Shepard. She was already covered with the faint glow of her powerful Biotics, and while Tali was very apprehensive of what would happen once she really cut loose, a part of her was also curious.
It wasn't until the batarian soldiers were actually storming the position at the front of the crashed Frigate that Tali realized just what it was that they were storming.
There, in the burnt-down husk of what had once been a tall building, one man fought against overwhelming odds. Even from this distance, Tali realized who he was. He was the one who had stayed behind on the Collector Cruiser. He was the one who had refused to die, the one who refused to surrender even now.
He was, without a shadow of a doubt, the one who had been fighting this invasion force the entire time,
Jane saw it, too. And then she just disappeared in a wash of Biotics.
Tali smiled, lowering her gun. "Rest easy warrior," she spoke, citing an age-old poem of her people. "The Angel of the Blitz is here now."
~0~
Blood sprayed. Dark red. They bled the same as humans.
They died like animals.
A sparkling device attached itself to his arm, magnetically adhering itself to the MJOLNIR. A painful tingling, his arm went limp.
He brought his other arm down on the head of the offending attacker, sending bone, brain and blood splattering across the walls.
Bullets impacted on the wall behind him, followed by a massive boom! as the armored vehicle found him yet again.
Too tired to leap away, he brushed past the wall, crushed the device on his arm and dove for cover. Another supersonic blast exploded over his head, destroying what little cover was left.
Glaring at the APC, the Chief crawled back to his feet, clutching his abdomen. Exhaustion washed over him as internal bleeding and blood-loss slowly assumed mastery over him. The section of his HUD still active displayed his biosign. Erratic, fluctuating.
Every wound ached, every muscle burned.
Yet he went on, even if it was merely to spite his foe.
The butchers rushed him with melee weapons, crude electronic devices and odd spiked chips. Some carried guns, others fired odd, electrified webs at him.
The Chief was too slow to dodge their fire and too sluggish to avoid their tech attacks, but every alien that entered within close range with him died instantly and painfully.
One of the bastards swept at him with a sword that glowed with an orange hue. The Chief blocked the strike with a stolen rifle, but the sword cut through the weapon like it wasn't even there. He barely registered the impact.
The murderer did register the contact as the Spartan jumped upwards and drove his armored knee through his head.
Then, out of nowhere, that damned APC appeared again. It plowed through a solid wall and smashed into the Chief, who was too sluggish to roll out of the way. He dug his heels into the ground and tried to get a grip, but was only able to prevent himself from being run over. After several slow, agonizing seconds, the vehicle slammed him against the outer frame of the crashed Frigate.
There, both it as the Spartan came to a lurking halt.
Wounded but still alive, John tore the pistol he had taken a few minutes earlier from his hip and opened fire. The filthy animals came at him from all directions, intent on finishing him off in close quarters. Through blurry eyes and a blood-splattered visor he returned the favor, slotting the bastards as they came.
Hydrostatic gel was oozing from the various breaches in his suit, sometimes mixed with blood. A steady trickle of blood dripped from between his lips and his heart was hammering over 200 bpm's.
Two of the alien bastards outflanked him from his right and the Spartan was forced to defend himself one-handed, pinned to the ship's hull as he was. He fended off the several frenzied attacks that the butchers threw at him, brained one of them with a well-placed jab and then watched the second back off.
If he was falling apart on the inside, he was going to take as many of murderers with him as he could. For Cortana. For Alice. For every one of his brothers and sisters who had perished in the war, giving their lives to break freaks just like these.
One murderer jumped at him from his right and the Chief blocked its strike with his armored forearm, once, twice, three times. One the fourth time he grabbed the alien´s skull, drove his thumb deep into its eye-socket and slammed its skull down against the APC's hull splattering it across the metal.
The bastards were coming from the vehicle as well. Six of them. Running and gunning. The Master Chief was unable to take them all out and they swarmed over him, stabbing and punching at whatever they could find.
And he did the same to them, ripping and tearing at whatever limb he got his hands on.
More hordes of the butchers appeared, surrounding him. But with them came something else. A flash of the brightest blue he had ever seen in his life appeared right in the middle of the batarian forces. A humanoid figure, radiating so much power and force and magnificence that the butchers fighting with him dropped what they were doing and stared.
Then, the batarians started dying.
It was a sight that filled the Chief with an emotion he could not place. Through darkness and blurriness, he watched something tear through the alien forces. It appeared and reappeared in constant flashes of explosive, reddish blue light, cracking concrete and disintegrating flesh wherever it struck. She was like lightning, straying from the thunder. A lethal, fluid dealer of death, implacable.
Cortana?
Though she never stayed in the same place for more than a heartbeat, he managed to catch glimpses of what she looked like. Humanoid, engulfed in a corona of red-blue light. Each time she disappeared in a flash of light, strange tendrils of light erupted from her back, right before she flickered back into existence and smeared another alien across the wall.
It wasn´t Cortana.
To John, the closest description he could find for her was that of an angel.
~0~
She felt like she was floating in light. Screams, explosions and gunfire had all died down around her as she started moving, never to come to a halt again. In her heart, boiling rage met joyful glee.
A subtle nudge, a hairbreadth's width, that was all that Jane needed. The second she appeared behind a batarian slaver holding a rocket launcher, she placed her boot down and released a Biotic blast along her leg, through the concrete and into her surroundings. Bodies went flying, stones cracked and the trooper stumbled to the ground, both of his legs broken.
Her friend. They wouldn't get him.
The last time she had so utterly cut loose had been Elysium. Elysium, where batarian pirates had butchered innocent civilians. Elysium, where the monsters had attempted to take her again. Elysium, where she had become like a spirit of vengeance, carving through their forces with pitiful ease.
Elysium, where she was now.
A heartbeat later she reappeared behind a trio of troopers who had been about to open fire on the pinned-down man. With a combination of acrobatics and brute force, she dispatched of them. A spinal cord shattered, a neck bent the wrong way and a heart was stopped by a single, Biotic-fueled blow.
She dominated the battlefield like that. One unfortunate group was set up by a singularity, pulling them off their feet, crushing their bones as the dark-energy field easily overcame their muscle strength.
Jane did not stick around for the screaming. In a wash of Biotics, she appeared atop the Mako, perched atop its turret, right above her friend. In that instant, the sensitive field around assessed the brave soul.
His armor was charred, singed and battered. The soldier within was bleeding, drifting near unconsciousness and in pain.
A part was lost to animalistic rage brought on by sorrow and hatred. A part was sharp and calculating, plotting the demise of those who had hurt it.
One part was calmed and comforted by her sight, and aimed at her.
She looked down at him, smiling. There was a hole in front of his left eye, the core of several cracks in his visor.
Bright and blue. Impossibly-bright and blue.
Her thought processes greatly enhanced by the energy-consuming Biotic field that encompassed her very soul, she understood.
Impossibly-bright and blue and very, very much human.
Reassured that her friend was still alive, Jane engaged her Biotics and disappeared in a flash of red and blue light, continuing her rampage.
~0~
Miranda raised her SMG to open fire at one of the last remaining batarian soldiers, but the quarian reached out and gently took her wrist.
The gesture couldn't have stopped her, not with her strength. But the meaning behind it was not lost on her, and out of respect for her teammate, she did lower her weapon.
"Just let her take care of it," said the quarian.
Miranda snorted. "Oh? You want to let Shepard do this all by herself? You know what happened on Elysium! What it did to her!"
There was nothing in the quarian's voice that indicated hostility, or even distress. She sounded utterly calm. "I know. And that is why we shouldn't interfere. We'll only get in her way."
The Operative gritted her teeth, but when she returned her focus to the battlefield, she saw that the quarian was right. Shepard seemed to set the stones underneath her alight with Biotic energy as she virtually danced across the battlefield, ending lives with single strikes. The sheer Biotic energy that she radiated could outshine that of a Matriarch and she applied it to her everything. Her body, her mind, her soul.
Up to this very moment, Miranda had thought the reports of Elysium to be an exaggerating of what had happened. Now, however, as the Commander killed, maimed and otherwise disabled three dozen batarian slavers in a matter of minutes, she understood that the official story had been playing down what had really happened.
Though they could not have possibly heard the quarian's suggestion, both Zaeed as Jack stood down as well. The former nearly dropped his rifle upon seeing the devastation, while the latter stared with a solemn, shocked expression on her face.
It was over as quickly as it had started. If the reports of Elysium were the least bit accurate, Jane had just exhausted herself to the brink of death. Well, it didn't seem that way. She approached the motionless form of the equally-impossible warrior and gently took his helmet in both of her hands.
~0~
"Hello," Jane told the man who had returned from the dead. Her Biotic aura broke down and she felt a trickle of blood run down the corner of her mouth.
Still she smiled. He was staring at her through the broken hole in his visor. The hyper-intuition that had come with the overclocking of her body had faded away, but she didn't care.
She blinked away the exhaustion that crept on her vision and gently placed her hands around the man's helmet. "You have a very special friend," she warmly told him. "You can rest now…we've got you."
At that, the Master chief closed his eye, and with the last of the near-superhuman intuition, Jane felt him drift away.
"We've got you."
