Chapter 30:

Two days later…

January 4th, 2100.

I was sore, so incredibly sore. Every part of my body ached, and it didn't matter how many hot showers I took anymore. The pain wouldn't go away. A footstep made every nerve in my body scream out in agony. Sometimes I'd even moan and groan.

'You wouldn't ache if you stretched before these sessions. Hot water isn't going to help you as much as you think it is.'

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Just focus on bringing us down onto Cyone, Sirius.

'Kyle, you're not taking care of yourself adequately. Once you're down there, I recommend that you get some actual food, instead of this… nutrient paste… that you've been eating.'

I rolled my eyes at Sirius' nagging and looked around the room for a moment. Lyna was currently showering and I was just waiting for Sirius to bring us down into the atmosphere. I'd obviously be taking my ISYLR, since I didn't want some sly thief to sneak onto the ship and take it. Then again, I was a paranoid motherfucker. The power of that weapon in the wrong hands could be catastrophic, as silly and cliché as that sounded. I exited my shared room and made my way onto the bridge. Samara was standing beside Vodnik as I approached the two from behind. "So, what's so special about Cyone?

"There is a man here who has seen Morinth and supposedly knows about her whereabouts. He said he would only meet us in person, so consider this your first mission. I'm not expecting any trouble, but just in case, take your Phaeston. Until we get you a proper set of armor, you won't be needing the ISYLR," Samara said, just barely looking back to me.

"He's seen her outside of the Terminus Systems? That's crazy," I replied.

Vodnik shook his head. "That'd be incredibly stupid of her. He must have fled to Cyone from the Terminus."

"Or she could be hiding in plain sight. We'll know once we get down there," I replied while turning on my heel and heading back into my shared room with Lyna. She had just dressed herself and was looking over her Nemandi rifle when I entered the room. "Grab that and your Acolyte, we're apparently meeting with a man who has seen Morinth and knows where she is. Could turn bad, since he wants to meet in person."

She quickly looked up at me and nodded her head, grabbing both guns off of the desk and attaching them to the magnetic clamps on her armor. She also bent down to grab my Phaeston that had been propped up against the desk and then handed it to me. "Got it," she replied as I took the rifle from her hands and slung it over my shoulder. "Are you taking your ISYLR or not?" The Phaeston was on a sling. I didn't have an official suit of armor yet, so I used what I needed to have to carry my weaponry.

"Samara said not to. Maybe she thinks it's too heavy to use without those magnetic clamps."

Lyna chuckled and hefted my long rifle up, only to clamp it onto her back moments later. "Lugging this thing around isn't any sort of problem for me. If we need to shoot a car out of the sky or something, it'll definitely come in handy."

I patted her on the shoulder, smiling brightly. "That probably won't happen. We're speaking to a guy that knows where Morinth is, not taking on a military complex," I said, but Lyna gave me an inquisitive look. "Okay, fine. I know it pays to be prepared. If Samara chews you out for bringing the person-vaporizer along, don't pin the blame on me."

Now Lyna patted me on the side and walked out of the room, having me follow close behind her. The ship was shaking due to atmospheric re-entry, but thanks to Sirius' expert piloting, it was minimal. Jovian was out of his quarters, drinking a glass of water as we brushed past him. "Set of coordinates confirmed, Samara. Approaching Mikra-Polos. We will touch the surface in ninety seconds," Sirius said from the pilot's omni-console.

Once I got up onto the bridge, I noticed that we were flying above a cityscape, which would be Cyone's capital of Polos. I definitely couldn't absorb every detail that was presented to me, since the ship was traveling at subsonic speeds. All I knew was that it was big, and we were flying away from it. We started slowing down, and I noticed that a much smaller city was presented before us. It couldn't have been bigger than my hometown of Boulder, Colorado back on Earth. As Sirius guided us in to land, I noticed that we weren't going for any docking areas, but rather a warehouse on the outskirts of the city. It had various cargo crates around it, giving me the impression that this served as a cargo port, but wasn't being used at the moment. "Are these the coordinates that he gave us? A run-down warehouse?" Vodnik calmly asked. From what I could tell, Vodnik was wearing medium armor. I couldn't exactly pinpoint who made the armor, whether it be Asari, Batarian, or something else, but it had just enough buff for it to be medium armor.

"Yes. No margin of error. This is the meeting point," Sirius replied. "...Curious. I'm picking up more than one lifesign. Samara, your contact may have hired mercenaries."

Samara was silent as Sirius slowly touched the ship to the ground, which had landing pads protecting our hull from being scraped. Jovian came onto the bridge while brandishing a Batarian shotgun of some kind. It looked brutal, with two newly-sharpened blades sticking out from under the barrel. "Mercenaries? Won't be a problem for us… Well, three of us, at least."

"Two of us have guns that could put your gun to shame," I shot back to Jovian.

He flared his mandibles back at me, but before any of us could say anything, Samara spoke. "Both of you, keep your personal grudges aside. We have a mission to complete, and if you continue to bicker like children, then you can stay on this ship."

That shut us both up. Moments later, I felt the ship shake a small bit, as the cargo-bay doors had lowered and made contact with the surface. We headed down there, and once we stepped out of the ship, we were greeted by a squad of four mercenaries. I didn't recognize the patches from anywhere. The leader of that squad was a Salarian, possibly an engineer from what I could interpret. "Two more than expected. Interesting. Another unknown, with either a huntress or commando. Assuming you're here for our client." The Salarian spoke so quickly that I could barely understand him.

"Indeed. Is Caesivus here?" Samara inquired.

The Salarian took a step forwards, but his squad did not. "Mhmm. Though you'll need to relinquish your weapons before proceeding. He's afraid of weapons. Afraid of everything."

Vodnik craned his neck to the left. "Unless you're local law enforcement, I think we'll all be keeping our guns."

"Look buddy, you're an unknown species. No one would know or care if you died, so why don't you, your squad, and your little justicar fuck off? Clearly you're not going to comply, and our client would get real scared if he heard gunshots," the Salarian Engineer replied as his allies started aiming their own weapons at us.

Sirius?

'Your kinetic barriers are up. I'm reading approximately nine hostile organic lifeforms in your line of sight. Two are cloaked.'

And in the warehouse?

'Seventeen.'

Perfect. Got any other good news for me?

'You have a 43% chance to survive this fight. Please move into cover to increase your odds.'

I rolled my eyes and looked over to Samara, who had her biotic field over her body and was holding the Salarian Engineer in mid-air. In an instant, he was sailing through the air and into his squadmates. A sickening crunch echoed through the air, indicating that the Salarian definitely had broken bones, and his wailing made me recoil in disgust. The sounds pierced my eardrums like a banshee, but I didn't let that distract me too much. I quickly shimmied my Phaeston off of my shoulder and looked around my surroundings. Cargo crates and metal barricades were scattered about, some leading onto the roof of the warehouse, others just scattered about. Everything was quiet for a few seconds before I heard a bullet bounce off of my kinetic barriers, bringing them down to 50%. I didn't know where I had been shot from. I hadn't been in this situation before, so I dove to the ground and army-crawled over to a nearby metal barricade. Jovian seemed to have a similar idea, but there wasn't as much cover near him, only a boulder that barely seemed to hide him. We hadn't fired so much as a single shot yet, but Samara was slowly advancing, bolts of element zero bouncing around on her body. Vodnik had rushed into cover, and his AK-74 was already out. I flinched once I heard him fire off a shot. It had been so loud that I considered pulling up a fair bit of grass and plugging my ears with it.

'I'm mapping out a path for you to flank the two snipers. Activating your tactical cloak in ten seconds.'

Sirius, what?! No, I think I'm perfectly fine staying back here, behind this nice metal cover.

'Activating tactical cloak. You have a maximum of fifteen seconds to move between cool-down periods.'

To say that I was angry with Sirius was an understatement, but it wasn't like I had much choice, so I improvised. I knew that I could reach the top of these crates by at least jumping and clambering onto them, so that's what I did. I ran out of my cover and mantled onto the crate. Vodnik, Lyna, and Jovian were still firing away, so my footsteps were masked by their gunshots. I didn't have to worry about noise for now. By the time I had moved to the edge of the container, my tactical cloak had run out, giving me a fifteen second recharge period. Three more crates to go, then I'd be on an equal playing field to the riflemen. Sirius activated my cloak again and I repeated the same procedure, climbing up and waiting until I was on level ground. Once on the top of the containers, I made myself low until Sirius could reactivate it. As soon as he did, I started a running jump over to the riflemen and came up behind them. The two of them were having a talk of sorts, and hadn't noticed me yet.

"Hey. I've been thinking… Do you ever wonder why we're here?" one rifleman asked.

"Shut the fuck up, Alet," the other responded.

"Fine, fine, you're no fun…" the rifleman finally trailed off, looking at me in absolute terror. "Oh shit, who the fuck are you?!"

I had queued up an overload on my omni-tool, which I launched into the surprised one, absolutely stunning him until he went still and his heart presumably gave out. The other tried to stand up, to which I panicked and slapped him across the face with the butt of my Phaeston. He stumbled back off of his post and down onto the ground, landing on his back and cracking every vertebrae in his spinal cord. I had successfully taken down the two riflemen all alone, and I felt like a sneaky god. I moved over to the crates that I had climbed up, and slowly hopped down them. Samara, Vodnik, Lyna, and Jovian were standing over the Salarian engineer from before, and I approached them from their flank. "So, what's going on down here?" I asked, staring down at the still twitching Salarian, who Jovian had taken the radio off of.

Lyna quizzically looked at me. "Where have you been?"

"Dealing with the two snipers on top. They won't be bothering us anymore."

Jovian stepped back from the body, Lyna and I turning our heads towards him. The radio was blaring out jumbled words, but I could make out a few. "What the hell is going on out there? Hadoks? Livos? Respond damnit!"

Jovian bent over a dead Turian's body, picking up the radio. He deepened his tone, "This is Livos. There was a situation with the justicar. We dealt with her," Jovian replied into the radio, slightly gazing at Samara and Vodnik while he paced around.

"Good! Is she alive or dead? Yvotheri put a pretty hefty price on her head, especially if she's alive."

"Alive and whimpering. You should see her. A broken justicar out here all alone. Do ya want me to bring her inside?" Jovian answered again, earning a gaze of disappointment from Samara. He flared his mandibles at her in response.

"Holy shit! How about her squad? The unknown and the Turian? If we gave that fur-head to the STG, no one in this fuckin' team would have to work again!"

"Yeah, and I've got good news as well. This justicar also picked up an Asari commando or huntress, I'm not really sure, and another one of those fur-heads. We're gonna be rich!"

Everything was quiet for a moment on the other end of the radio before cheering erupted from it. "Hot damn! I owe you an entire bar on Illium. Get your ass in here with those that survived, we're gonna break out the ryncol." The man on the other side of the radio must have been the happiest he had ever been. I could hear it in his voice and I almost felt bad for him, but at the same time I couldn't. He was celebrating that he had captured us, after all. In the back of my head, I knew that we'd go in and slaughter them all. There wasn't anything that I could do about it, so I kept my mouth shut for the time being.

"Mhm. I'll gather the survivors. Don't start without us," Jovian replied, turning off the radio and then looking to all of us. "So this will be interesting. What are our plans, Samara?"

"The Code demands that their lives be put to rest. Leave their client, our contact, alive," she ordered, turning towards a locked door that had an omni-display on it. I saw that Sirius had activated my omni-tool and had already started hacking through it. In about five seconds, the display on the door went green and my omni-tool deactivated. Without Daro'Xen around, Sirius had taken her place in terms of hacking doors and bypassing them.

When the door unlocked, Jovian and Vodnik nodded at each other, taking stances on the left side of the door while Samara opened it. Lyna and I exchanged a quick look that ended with her shrugging her shoulders. "Sometimes I wonder, why can't anything be easy? Why can't we just get in and talk to the guy? Now we're going into combat," she murmured, gazing around at the destruction that we all caused.

I gripped my rifle a bit harder and started walking towards the door with her. "Didn't we just have a vacation, Lyna? We were on Rannoch doing jack shit for a few months."

"Riiight, but t-"

"Quiet, huntress," Jovian barked out. Lyna visibly recoiled from this and flipped him off, copying the gesture from me. I didn't get why she did this, she was trying to have a conversation during the mission. Even I knew that wasn't a good idea.

I leaned forwards while Samara gestured for Lyna to hand me my ISYLR. I planned to use that rifle to the best of my ability. She grasped the back of the rifle and took it off of her back, lightening it with her biotic field. We then traded weaponry, her with my Phaeston, and me with my ISYLR. We were ready.

We weren't ready. The main 'garage' door started lifting up, distracting our whole group from the side door. First I saw a cannon, then bulky armor following soon afterwards. Humming of eezo-based engines filled the air as Lyna and I backed up. Samara and Vodnik followed shortly after us, with the Justicar assuming a biotic field over our small group. "Is that a fucking tank?" I asked with astonishment.

"No, it's a frigate, Kyle," Lyna sarcastically replied, gripping my Phaeston.

I rolled my eyes as I readied my ISYLR, glancing between everyone. Samara bowed her head and locked her eyes with mine. "While I told you to leave that behind, I see now that it could be useful. Target the engine compartment," she commanded.

"Where the hell is the engine compartment?!" I yelled back to the justicar.

"The rear. Shoot the rear!" Vodnik shouted.

Slowly but surely, the cannon turned towards us, to where I gazed right down the barrel. It fired, and a high explosive shell exploded against Samara's biotic barrier. The justicar's teeth were grit, and she looked like she was in a lot of pain. She held her barrier for now, but I was certain that a second shot would certainly kill us all. Raising my ISYLR up, I dug my left foot into the ground, and pressed the weapon's butt against my shoulder. I knew from the previous times that I fired the damn thing that it had a kick to it, one that rivaled a .308. Once I started pulling the trigger, I heard the tank load up another shot and I knew that it was now or never.

"I will not be able to hold on for another blast. Once the barrier falls, fire your weapon, Kyle. Do not hesitate. Everyone else, find cover!" Samara ordered through gritted teeth.

The barrier fell within moments, with everyone scattering off behind crates. I stupidly held my ground, firing off a single shot from my ISYLR. The magnetohydrodynamic energy shot out of the weapon at a fraction of the speed of light. The air around me got unbearably hot, so hot that it felt like I was standing right next to an erupting volcano. When I had fired off the shot, I flinched and closed my eyes, so when I opened them, I was surprised to find that I hadn't just shot a precise shot into the engine, but there was a baseball-sized molten hole where the engine had been, and it was still dripping liquid metal. "Spirits! Kyle, take cover! It's gonna blow the hell up!" Jovian yelled while he yanked me out of the biotic field by the back of my shirt. Molten metal dripped onto what I believed was the fuel tank, and it was a huge tank as well, so I knew what Jovian was scared of. It was going to be a large explosion. He threw me behind a shipping crate while everyone else found their own sorts of cover. Why he did this, I had no idea, as he could have just run and left me to die. It wasn't my time to complain. I covered my ears and still heard a deafening crack in the air seconds later.

Gas ignited under the heat of molten metal dripping down onto the container. As I felt the shockwave hit and further throw me to the ground, I let out a small scream. My ears were bleeding, I couldn't hear anything except for ringing, only pain as I laid there on the ground. A fireball reached up into the sky, windows were shattered, glass rained down from the warehouse. Everything was hot, so very hot, sweat dripped off my prone body while I looked around in a daze. My vision was blurred, my sense of direction was absolutely fucked. I eventually crawled forwards and tried grabbing onto my ISYLR, which was hot to the touch. I couldn't get a stable grip on the metal, so I grabbed onto the sling that it was on and threw it across the ground to my previous bit of cover.

I observed my surroundings. Glass, concrete, and metal was scattered about, so much so that I could barely breathe, let alone see. I pulled the fabric of my shirt up in an attempt to filter the smoke and dust out. My kinetic barriers had since dropped down to 22%, dangerously low. I pushed myself up from the ground and looked at the remains of the tank. What was once a formidable and complex vehicle was now reduced to charred and mangled metal. Blood was on the containers, on the ground, on my clothes even, since I had sustained a few cuts from the initial explosion. Though I wasn't entirely sure if it was my own blood or someone else's. The land around me was eerily silent, save for the sound of crackling fire. I could see Samara and Vodnik just pushing themselves up from where they had taken cover, followed by Lyna and Jovian. "Everyone okay?" I asked from where I stood.

Lyna called out, "I'm fine!"

"Indeed," Samara said.

"Da," Vodnik replied.

"I am, but these fuckers aren't," Jovian responded.

Looking around the area once again, I gave off a shaking breath, approached my ISYLR, picked it up by its still-hot sling, and clenched my fists. I was careful not to let the metal touch me for too long. "Alright. Well, let's get on into the warehouse."

A/N: These scenes are much more fun to write, rather than the political episodes that have occupied the last 100,000 words. Thanks for reading!