Aggressor: Rise of Man

Chapter 4

Odysseus

"History may record me as the general who retook Europe, twice, but no event was more impactful on the course of the war than the day I radioed in to HQ about the American alive in Grimsby." -From the memoirs of Gen. (ret.) Rachel Parker, 1987

The sounds of battle slowly faded away under the depth of concrete and steel. Shepard stood unsteadily on his wounded leg, Montoya's Deadhand still clutched to his chest in both hands. Beside him, Spectre Balak checked his weapon. With a grunt, he slammed a fresh ammo block into the underslung hopper, flipping the catch closed. He regarded Shepard with four red-rimmed eyes. He tilted his head to the right "Straighten up that spine, Radioman. You've got a blood price to pay. Prepare yourself to pay that debt."

"Huh?" Shepard responded, confused. Never the less, he felt himself stand up at the charge.

"The Pillars of Strength tell us that every worthy action bears with it a price in blood, be that blood shed in labor, in injury, or even in death. It is through this shed blood that an act gains meaning, becomes worthy. And if that blood is shed on your behalf, it must be repaid, either in blood of your own, or in an act that bears equal meaning. Your Lieutenant Montoya and her squad are about to spend all of their blood to ensure that you reach the command center above. Now it lies upon you to repay that blood with an act of equal meeting." His grim face cracked in the ghost of a smile, "In short, you best send one hell of a transmission."

"Right," Shepard agreed, feeling queasy as the weight of what was happening at the base of the elevator landed fully on his shoulders, "No pressure." He swallowed and stared straight ahead. His mind raced, the thought of what had to be done was crushing. Still, the shaking in his limbs slowly came to a stop. He was ready.

The elevator ground upwards, revealing each level of the station in turn. Each one offered a unique tableau of horror. The Asari had evidently taken out their frustrations at being locked out of the command center on the rest of the base. From behind the chain link gates of the elevator, Shepard watched the upper levels pass by one by one. Many of them had sustained battle damage. Gouges taken out of the walls by errant rounds, each jagged claw mark in the high strength concrete outlined by dark stains. The electric lighting hanging from the ceilings flickered in places, casting a macabre array of stuttering shadows over the spent magazines and pools of blood that ran through the halls. And then there were the bodies. The upper levels carried an abattoir stink that struck Shepard even before the lights flickered on to give sight to the gruesome tableau. Bodies were stacked, sometimes two or three high in places.

The elevator jerked to a halt with a grinding sound and a sharp squeal of distressed metal. Shepard was shaken from his feet by the sudden juddering crunch. He caught himself against the chain link gates and stared down into the dead eyes of a soldier in the uniform of the SRPA Black Ops. The young man's rubberized gas mask had been torn away to reveal a look of shock and surprise. The pale blue eyes augured into Shepard's own. He pushed himself backwards and attempted to tear his gaze away, but he was trapped in their anguished depths.

"We're caught on something," Balak barked, "look, there's a spar lying across the shaft, probably pushed through the floor above. We're going to have to cut it." The Spectre leaned his head back to focus on the gap between the elevator car and the shaft wall. "I don't suppose you have a plasma torch hidden somewhere in that box of junk on your back, hmm?"

"Um, no," Shepard admitted.

"You humans need to hurry up and get an operational omni-tool model into production," Balak said, shaking his head. He shouldered his rifle, locking it to one of the magnetic anchors on the back of his armor. He waved his hand, bringing forth a shimmering sheath of angular orange light that wrapped his forearm in what Shepard realized was a keyboard interface. The Batarian tapped out a short sequence and a small pilot light sputtered into life an inch or two off his extended index finger. "I'll need these gates open to get at the blockage. Grab that side."

Shepard nodded and took a hold of the chain link and hauled backwards. The grating gave way with a tortured shriek that echoed down the corridor. Shepard froze, his eyes panning the darkness beyond. Balak pushed past him, standing in the doorway of the elevator and lifting his flickering pilot light to the roof. "Keep me covered, Shepard. And don't look directly at the light." With a roaring fwoosh, his finger went from candle to blazing torch and silver-white light filled the elevator with blinding radiance. Shepard took up a position behind Balak, raising the Deadhand at the harsh shadows that danced along the walls. The angry ghosts of the dead piled up in their butcher's piles. Then the light fell on something moving at the end of the hallway. Shepard blinked. The hallway was still again. A trick of the light. There was a scraping sound, loud enough to hear above the steady hiss of the Spectre's cutting torch. Something else moved.

"Spectre," Shepard said, voice quavering in alarm.

"Halfway through," Balak snapped back. The torch sputtered and died, throwing the hallway into darkness. After the actinic light of the cutter, Shepard was as good as blind. "Grok spit, I knew I should have refilled the burner paste after tackling that Vorcha nest," the Batarian growled, "hold on, let me switch over to reserves." There was a flutter of keys, their soft orange light the only illumination, a popping sound, and the torch flared back to life. The harsh white light lit the corridor, gleaming off the bulbous, finned helmet of an Asari Reaver. It was crouched, its head cocked raptorlike in the sudden wash of light. Its armor was a ruin of weltering plasma impacts and caked with dark purple blood that oozed wetly with each jerk of movement. It scraped its wounded leg forward, hopping forward like some mad insect. Balak did not see it, his eyes upward at the bright metal of the half-cut spar. Shepard's cry of alarm caught in his throat, only a breathy croak escaping.

The air before the Asari wobbled as if where gong struck by a hammer and the alien leapt forward, reappearing mere meters from the elevator doors. It leapt like a locust, moving with manic insectile movements until it was within arm's reach of the Spectre. It was only then that Shepard's call of alarm burst forth in a terrified yowl. Balak looked down too late as the Reaver's outstretched arms wrapped around his chest. The impact drove him backward, steel shod boots scraping on the elevator floor, but Balak held his ground. It's lunging charge defeated, the Asari howled in frustration and drew back its gauntleted hand for a strike. The fingers appeared elongated, as if the alien pirate had welded metal spikes to each fingertip. It raked them down. Balak moved quickly, deflecting the attack with a chopping back hand. His still ignited torch came up with the other hand. The Asari caught him by the wrist, forcing the attack wide in a sizzling arc that nearly roasted the flesh of Shepard's face. The dueling aliens whirled, each trying to find leverage over the other. The Asari's clawed hand glowed with coruscating blue energy and it swept upwards. Balak countered with a vicious knee to the guts.

Shepard backed away from the swirling melee, his weapon forgotten in numb hands. The Asari screamed as Balak's torch drew bubbling flesh from a near miss. It repaid his attack with a headbutt that drew blood from the Batarian's nostril ridges. The Spectre fell backwards, shaking his stunned head. The Asari didn't let up, going for the throat with a savage glee. The clawed gauntlet closed around his neck, drawing forth a choking sound. Balak was going to die. And then Shepard would be next.

"Shoo 'er," Balak choked. Two of his four eyes settled on Shepard. Shepard blinked in bewilderment. Balak was fading fast, the choking sounds becoming fewer and further in between. "Sh-shoo... 'er"

Shepard's radio set hit the wall behind him, the clattering of its speaker/receiver falling to the ground shook him from his stupor. The weight of the gun in his hands was suddenly unbearable. The gun. Shepard's fingers tightened around the pistol grip. He raised it, shaking. The tall, vertical hammerhead of the Deadhand's business end slipped into his focus, the sights lined up with the shifting blob of the Asari's helmet. Shepard took a step forward, then another. He didn't realize that he was screaming until the Asari jerkily looked up at his approach. The barrel was inches from the smooth forehead. Shepard jerked the trigger. The burst of flaring plasma punched a hole through that bulbous helmet. Dark blue and ichorous green splattered the far wall. The Asari collapsed, twitching and shrieking like a gassed bug. Bright flames burst from the neat hole in the front of the helmet and smoke belched from the shattered rear. Shepard stood over it, breathing heavily.

Balak recovered quickly, whirling on his human companion. His unfocused eyes blinked once, twice; the cloud of confusion replaced by fire. He shoved Shepard's still raised pistol aside. "Next time, when I say cover me, you cover me. Understood?" He coughed raggedly. He looked down at the still fizzing ruin that was the Asari's helmet. "I must admit, human, I did not realize your weapons were so brutally effective. You'd make a Batarian State Arms armorer proud. Tell me, do all of your firearms cause such ignition?"

"Not usually," Shepard said, his eyebrow lifting quizzically. Sure, the plasma pellet launched by the Chimera-tech firearms would leave devastating charred wounds in unarmored flesh, but to do that to an Asari's head... He looked at the last sputtering of flames. Only ash remained behind the hollowed-out death mask. Before the issue could be raised further, the elevator lurched back to life. The spar above them snapped, the metal weakened by Balak's efforts. With a final groan, it gave way, allowing the cage to rise up towards the raised command center.

The metal grating opened on darkness. The command center lights were out. Two flashlight beams flicked out, panning across the rows of unlit computer terminals and chairs abandoned in haste. Balak led with an industrial looking handgun. He flicked the barrel back and forth, searching for an enemy. None materialized. Shepard followed, the flared barrel of the Deadhand taking the right while his impromptu partner took the left. They moved in a slow circuit; wary footsteps carried them deeper into the tiered pit in the center of the room.

"Clear, good. Your Colonel did well keeping the Asari from the room." Balak said.

With a breath of relief, Shepard shoved his borrowed weapon into his belt. He made quickly for the communication section. The station was bulky, taking up an entire length of one of the curved benches. Multiple consoles gleamed in the beam of his flashlight. Shepard couldn't help but let out an appreciative whistle. As New Eden's resident Navy maroon, he'd had nothing but his own, portable gear to play with for far too long. The SRPA gear was cutting edge, top of the line. He ran a finger over the shining chrome of the tuner knobs. It was a far cry from the chipped neo-Bakelite that hunched in its transport crates in his closet-sized office. Not that all that technological finery was much use to him without power. Shepard flicked the starter switch. The console remained stubbornly dark.

Shepard swore. With no juice, the console could not connect to the central hypercomm transmitter, if that even had power itself. No transmitter, no message. No message, no fleet. No fleet... Shepard clamped down on the rising panic. The elevator had just brought them all the way up the central spine, which they wouldn't have done if the power was out. And since the transmitter was also powered off the central spine... but then again, the command center was supposed to be as well.

"Spectre, flip that big red switch," Shepard said suddenly. Balak looked at him in confusion, but the wiry radioman had already ducked under the console. "The one on the desk marked surveillance. Right there, in front of you," he clarified. He shrugged off the hefty radio set and snatched at the folded square of canvas velcroed to its military green hull. He rolled out the miniaturized tool kit and placed his flashlight between his teeth. His fingers followed the seam of the communication console along its underside until they came to a broad, flat panel. Bingo. He flicked out the screwdriver on one of the multitools and started pulling screws. They came out, one by one, agonizingly slow.

"I'm not seeing anything," Balak said, "wait, I'm getting a light."

"Blinking, orange?" Shepard asked hopefully, moving his light from teeth to the crook of his neck.

"Yes."

Shepard felt a thrill shoot through him. So, the command center had power, which meant the comms array issue was localized. "Hit the enter key. It's the one with the bent arrow!" he called out. With a final turn of the driver, the panel came away, revealing the interior. Shepard reached in, disappearing elbow deep as his hands searched for the leads he knew had to hide back there. If the power loss was localized, he'd need to power it up independently. Once he had access to the systems, he could operate the main comms array remotely. If the data runs were still undamaged, that was. His finger brushed the rubberized insulation of one of the power cables. He yanked it off the back wall of the access hatch. The wires spilled out into the light. He dropped the screwdriver and reached for the wire strippers. "Let's hope this line is properly dead," he murmured to himself.

"Ah, now the screen is lighting up," Balak said. Shepard heard the chair squeak as the Batarian Spectre sat heavily. "Ah, I'm getting video now. A lot of feeds out. The Reavers have made quite a mess."

"Anything from the outside? Roof access would be best," Shepard responded. The wire strippers clicked closed. A slight tingle passed through Shepards fingers. So, at least a little power was getting through. That would make things easier. Shepard rolled over on his front and popped another access panel off the radio set. The glowing orange of the Chimeran power cell washed over his face. The little cell, about the size of a hockey puck, should have enough juice to at least wake up the transmitter.

"Let's see." Balak grumbled to himself as he slowly tapped away at the keyboard. "Ah, yes, here we are. Yes, I can see clear to the dreadnaught parked outside.

Shepard grimaced at the dark reminder. But if Balak was seeing a live feed from outside, that meant data was flowing up to the roof. He pulled a spare length of cabling and a handful of clamps. The clamps snapped closed with a small spark. Shepard scrabbled to rise above the desk. The orange status light was blinking. Shepard threw himself into the chair and jammed his finger down on the keyboard. After a brief flickering, the screen in front of him blinked to life and ran through its startup cycle. "Come on, come on," Shepard leaned forward in his chair, willing the program to run its course faster, glaring as if the pressure of his stare could drive the little progress bar faster. The bar shook before his eyes. No, the whole screen shook. Shepard looked up to see Balak's eyes glued to the monitor before him. The shaking was growing stronger. Somewhere in the back of the room, the vibrations shook a metal coffee mug to the edge of the desk until it clattered to the ground. "What's happening?"

"The dreadnaught," Balak answered, "It's lifting off." The shaking slowly abated, leaving only the hissing of the console.

Shepard snapped back to the comms station. The connection was live, the status lights on the hypercomms array all green. Yet still, the hissing and crackle of the jamming remained. Shepard reached for the controls, adjusting the gain, calling up power of the deeply buried plasma power plants in an attempt to punch through. Contacts started filtering through on the board. Shepard jabbed at the fleet command at Ragnar. It stubbornly refused to link. Damn, but that dreadnaught's ECM was strong. Shepard frantically scanned the list, his eyes flickering over familiar civilian codes. None would have the power to relay his call for aid much past the limits of the Utopia system. Another code dropped onto the list. A military code. Hope blossomed once again in Shepard's chest. He quickly requested a connection and flicked the switch on the mic mounted to the desk. The 'Ready to Record' indicator light burned a cherry red.

"Um... this is Petty Officer John Shepard on New Eden Colony. The Colony has been attacked by an unknown force supported by Asari pirates. The SRPA commander on the ground, Colonel Thomas, is dead. The colony is overrun. The enemy is working with a Council Spectre, Nihlus," Shepard pulled the data card from the battle camera mounted on the second-hand flak vest he wore, pushing the files into the transmission, "He took something from the SRPA dig site, we don't know what. Please, we need immediate assistance."

He leaned back in the chair as the message compiled. His vision blurred as he saw the status blink to 'sent'. Somewhere up above, the comms array groaned under electrical loading. The immense feedback from pushing the transmission out beyond the jamming field ripped back through the system. The communication console died in a shower of sparks. Shepard jumped back with a yelp.

"You got the message out before you blew up the whole system, I hope," Balak said.

Shepard nodded, his reactions dulled by shock and the fatigue of all day combat. The words sent were burned into the now dead screen. "I sent it. Now we can get back to the others..." He turned to see the Spectre shaking his head slowly. His heart fell. "They're dead?"

"They died the moment they elected to stay behind. The fact that they fight on still is a testament to their courage. Their determination in the face of such odds... almost Batarian." Balak looked back towards the images still moving across the surveillance screens. Shepard pushed past him, bending to watch, drawn by bile fascination. The battle below raged on.

The husks flooded the entrance foyer, their grasping arms and open, glowing arms pressing all the way to the front desk. This was where the surviving members of the SRPA team had made their last stand. The X-Ray rifleman was nowhere to be seen. The heavy trooper, Garrows stood as the rock of the left flank, blazing away at the horrors that threatened to drown them with his Blizzard heavy machine gun. The storm of fire bright needles swept great swathes of the cybernetic corpses away. To the right, Rawlings and Lowe fired short bursts on plasma into the swarm, covering each other. As Shepard watched, Lowe bent to grab a spare magazine off the belt of a man dead at his feet. The husks got their first. Lowe died screaming as clutching hands caught on his flak vest and dragged him down off the desk. Rawlings followed shortly afterward, torn apart where he stood as the husks lapped over the right side of the counter.

Montoya fired into the crowd, striking down each husk that rose above the desk with single and double shots. Behind her, Garrows bellowed as a husk thrust a sharpened spike into his thigh. He bashed his weapon down upon its head, crushing the skull before sweeping it sideways into another two husks trying to flank around. The X-Ray leader fired wildly from a handgun that left wide furrows in everything that it hit, but it was not enough. A husk leapt at him from behind, wrapping its grey-fleshed arms around his neck and dragging him down. Now Garrows and Montoya fought back-to-back. The big man no longer fired; his weapon likely dry. Still, he fought on as if it were a club. It didn't save him when a husk threw itself from the swarming masses to hit him in the chest. Blood spurted from his neck as the husk bit down with silvery teeth. Montoya was alone.

She went down like a warrior out of ancient history, blazing Razor in one hand, the flash of a bayonet knife in the other. She struck all around herself, cutting down husks wherever her weapons fell. But there were always more husks. They struck her with clawed fists, breaking down her force screen with a howl that drove rippling waves of biotic force. The power lights on Montoya's gear sputtered and died, her Razor fell useless at her feet. Another husk tried to grab her from behind. She struck it in the eye. Her knife stuck, wrenched from her grip as the husk fell. Another leapt from the swarm only to fall back, struck down by a vicious kick. But even this heroic effort could not be sustained indefinitely. Two husks struck at once, each catching an arm. A third husk drove her to her knees with a double fisted blow to the back of the neck. As her final attacker wrapped its hands around her neck, Shepard had to look away. He was thankful that the video feed didn't come with sound, but even still he could swear he heard the wet snap, could feel the light go out in those shimmering yellow eyes. He suppressed a sob.

It was just him and Balak now. Below them, the husks were likely spreading out, picking their way through the facility. Shepard didn't reckon they knew how to summon the elevator, but it was only a matter of time before they would find their way, beating down the doors to the stairwells, climbing the elevator shaft itself, spilling over each other in bloodthirsty search for the last defenders of Research Station GARDEN. Shepard's eyes drifted over to the blued metal of the Deadhand where it lay on the ground, spilled from his belt in his rush to gain access to the console. His minded flickered with images of the crawling creepers below, the woman behind the crates out on the landing field. He didn't fancy being torn apart like Garrow, or Rawlings. Shuddering steps drew him inevitably towards the discarded weapon. Montoya's weapon. Would she still be fighting if she hadn't thrust it into his hands, he wondered. Something caught him by the shoulder. He spun around to catch the full, four-eyed glare of Balak.

"You still have a debt to pay, Radioman. Or do you think one life equal to six?"

Shepard did not respond, could not respond. Slowly, he sank into a nearby chair. Eventually, words found him again. "So, what do we do now?"

"I had thought to get these shutters open, perhaps see the world outside with my own eyes," Balak answered, motioning towards the heavy metal slats that covered the command center's slit windows. "I hear it is quite beautiful as the sun begins to lower. And the smoke of the battle should have started to clear by now." He walked towards the outer wall, gravitating toward the big red button that stood beside the nearest window. The shutters squealed as they slowly withdrew. Red light flooded the room. "Ah, there it is. A red day. It is somehow appropriate."

"You should see it in the summer time," Shepard said, glumly. He could still feel the proximity of Montoya's handgun, even as he studiously kept it out of his field of view, "When the rainy season is just about to pass into the heat of the hot months. God, but if the valley doesn't fill with the most spectacular of rainbows. Almost made it worth being left behind when I first saw it." Shepard's words caught in his throat. "I suppose I won't see another one." Down below, he thought he heard the shrieking of searching husks. To his surprise, the sound no longer filled him with terror. Perhaps he was now too tired to care.

"Oh, I wouldn't be so fast to say that," Balak said from where he leant against the unshuttered window. "Such a beautiful sight..." the Batarian trailed off. He was staring at something beyond the smoke and the fire, something distant, but rapidly growing. Shepard sat up with a start. He could see it now too, floating over Balak's shoulder. His chest shuddered, caught between a thankful sob and a shocked indrawing of breath. The black speck opened wider, its edges bright with coruscating radiation. The hole in space stretched, distorted. And then the most beautiful sight Shepard had ever seen sailed through.

The EDEN Odysseus had the same flat oval main hull as the bulk of Humanity's warships, with its bulbous belly handing below the outer disk, the tall 'sail' rising above like a tall ship of old. And in its center, the open, baleful energies of its core flares in emerald green behind the ring of clutching spines. The wormhole it had just transitioned through closed behind it with a wobble of space-time. Its familiar bulk, black against the reddening sky, stood sentinel over New Eden once again. Shapes dropped from its belly, boxy Raven dropships, rounded, swept winged Hornet fighters, and dozens of dish shaped drones. Rescue was here.

A harsh, choking wind ripped across the landing field. Shepard shivered, though not from the encroaching chill of the evening. The choking nature of the breeze had shifted, no longer poisoned with the smoke of the forest below, but with the stink of corpses. SRPA troopers swathed in hazmat gear were still pulling more from the yawning portal of the Station up on the hill. Shepard pulled the ruin of his navy tunic tighter and kept his hand near the Dead hand stuffed in his belt despite the fire team of surly Marines loitering against a stack of crates nearby. Shepard was sure the stout Armat carbines they carried would make short work of anything that came scurrying up from below, but he still found himself reaching for the butt of the handgun every time the wind shifted. The marines chuckled every time he jumped. He tried to ignore then, instead focusing on the tracked weapon drones that stalked the perimeter of the asphalt with regimented, robotic unison. He was safe now.

"Petty Officer First Class Shepard?" a calm male voice asked, accented in the polite tones of the northern United Americas. A grey zoner, then. Shepard looked up. The man who stood before him was of about average height and clad in the all-black combat gear of the SRPA Sentinels. He'd doffed his helmet to reveal deep brown eyes below a carefully coifed head of black hair. With a start, Shepard's eyes fell on the boxy amplifier collar that wrapped around the back of his neck. A biotic as well. Shepard snapped to attention. If an officer in the SRPA outranked him by default, that went double true for a biotic. The officer nodded and offered him a kind smile. "I'll take that as a yes. You're the one who sent the signal?" The other man said it in a way that made it obvious that he already knew the answer, but when one of the SRPA's psychonauts asked you a question, you answered quickly and you held nothing back.

"Yes, sir. That was me, sir. I'm afraid it was too late for the base." Shepard felt his face heat a little with the shame of it. All the black body bags in their neat rows on the landing field behind him felt like an accusation.

"But not too late for the civilians in the shelters down the valley," the biotic said softly, "your message saved them. That and a particularly spirited defense by some militias we weren't aware of before today." The man smiled, a gesture that did do a little to set Shepard's mind at ease. Which made the next line out of his mouth hit him all the harder. "My name is Major Kaidan Alenko. I've been sent to collect you. If you'll just come with me now, we can put this unpleasantness behind us."

Shepard paled and his blood ran ice cold in his veins. So, this was it, his reward for alerting the fleet. The Major here was going to disappear him into some X-Ray holding cell. Unconsciously, he took a step back only to run into an iron hard grp on his shoulder from behind. He looked back to see another Sentinel staring him down from behind black glass, their partner at their side. Two more Sentinels stood one at each of Major Alenko's shoulders.

"Right this way, Radioman," the Sentinel holding him said, her words distorted by the whirr of her gas mask. She gave him a gentle push. Shepard obeyed bonelessly, allowing himself to be led across the tarmac to a waiting Raven idling a dozen meters away. The black body of the craft was a deep hole in the world as the setting sun dipped beyond the far horizon. The six of them stepped aboard and the sliding side door swallowed them up. Shepard barely registered the slight kick as the powerful twin VTOL engines lifted them from the ground and swept them up, up, and away from the planet that had become his home. There wasn't even a window to watch it go, Shepard thought, bitterly, awash in the irony. When the Odysseus had dropped him off, it had seemed like an exile. Now that it was taking him away again, all he could think of was staying.

Intel

EDEN Charybdis-Class Cruiser

The mainstay of the Earth Defense Executive Navy and a significant upgrade over the older Scylla-Class that fought in the Earth-Turian War, the Charybdis has changed little in form from the Chimeran forebears that made up the airborne armada that smashed the American Liberty Perimeter during the Chimeran incursion. At 800 meters in length and roughly a third that in beam, the Charybdis significantly outmasses its Citadel cruiser-weight equivalents, leading to it being to be classified as a battlecruiser by Hierarchy Intelligence. That increased size comes at the cost of realspace speed, which had earned the ship earning it the nickname of 'the Whale' by its detractors on both sides of the DMZ. Unlike its water going namesake, however, this whale has teeth. Around its central axis are six powerful emitters for the Charybdis' primary armament, the Mark III Particle Lance. Equivalent in effective range to the main gun armament of Turian Dreadnaughts, the Lance is deadly within a 120-degree arc of the cruiser's prow. For engagements at standoff ranges, the Charybdis has exchanged the Chimeran Spire launches that made its ancestors such a terror for a pair of long ranged fusion torpedo launchers. The ship's sides are studded with laser projectors to provide close in defense and anti-fighter capability.

The Charybdis' significant size also comes with a spacious hanger to the rear of the craft. The Charybdis can support a mixed wing of up to 90 spaceframes, or double that in drone craft, but compliments of 64 are typical given the EDEN's manpower concerns. A standard loadout consists of two squadrons of twelve Avro-Nobusuma SF-77 Hornet fighters, a squadron of twelve UAC TB-12 Thunderstorm Torpedo-Bomber, two squadrons of eight SRPA AV-50 Kestrel gunships, two VFW Dunkelstern ECM/AWACs craft, and a Squadron of eight SRPA UV-120 Raven dropships.

The Charybdis is protected by the latest in cemented ceramo-metallic armor plating, the much-vaunted Weyland-Yutani 'Neo-Chobham.' Compared with its contemporaries, the EDEN cruisers have both thicker and higher density armor, providing superior protection against kinetic strikes. This comes at the price of reduced efficiency against Citadel disrupter torpedoes, which have been found to turn the Neo-Chobham's layered nature against it, especially in its relatively brittle ceramic components. In order to lessen this, the Charybdis is also protected by several force screen projectors. Utterly impervious to the low mass disruptor torpedo, the force screen provides excellent protection. However, there are limits to the technology, mainly stemming from the limited understanding of its principles. In effect, the naval force screen is a scaled-up application of the same infantry protection first seen in the Chimeran Auger particle rifle. As such, it is unable to provide the skin-tight 'all over' protection of Citadel kinetic barriers. Instead, it relies on projecting several vectored bands to the flanks, belly, and sail.

The propulsion systems of the Charybdis and its naval cousins are apparently reactionless, giving the ships tremendous range as long as they're reactor banks are able to draw power. The lack of drive plume does create heating concerns on long cruises, necessitating the trademark radiator 'sail' that tops the craft. The Charybdis and its Scylla forebears are the smallest ships in the fleet to mount the powerful wormhole drives that give the EDEN its advantage in strategic maneuverability. The Charybdis is equally able to operate in space and in atmosphere, allowing close support during ground campaigns.

Despite its size, the extensive automation of the Charybdis allows it to run on a crew complement of a 'mere' 300 officers and 3,500 NCOs and other ratings. Given humanity's stark demographic disadvantage in comparison to its rivals, this has allowed the EDEN to punch above its weight as far as available tonnage versus military age population. Given the internal volume, each spacer is allotted a significant amount of personal space, a rare luxury amongst the galaxy's militaries, while still being able to support and deploy ground forces in battalion strength with associated support and even armored elements. In addition, captains of Charybdis-class cruisers can almost be guaranteed to be able to call on a platoon of Marines, with mech and drone support to equal a full company to defend their ship, a fact discovered much to the chagrin of many an attempted boarding action.

Like much of the technology recovered from the Chimera, much of the construction of new Charybdis-class hulls relies on the automated shipyard facilities left behind in liberated Europe, most famous of which being Gerolstein, DDR. These remain the only facilities capable of producing the massive drive units and power plants, a fact that remains a closely guarded secret. However, smaller modules have successfully been replicated at satellite factories, and strides are being made in unlocking the secrets to Chimeran reactor technology at the United Aerospace Corporation's Hellas Planitia facility on Mars.

Author's Note:

And so, we leave New Eden behind us. Where will Shepard's travels take him next? You'll have to tune in next week! Rest assured, you'll be in for some significant departures from canon, though familiar faces will show up, though not always in familiar places. Also, I'd like to apologize for that codex entry getting away from me there. I just couldn't help but scatter in an unseemly dusting of references and a few breadcrumbs for sharp-eyed readers.

OMAC001- Batarians have always struck me as a fertile ground for development. Obviously, their whole deal is to be an unwholesome enemy and something nasty in the backstory, but their position as the North Korea of space by necessity means that canon rarely gets the opportunity to peel back that curtain. The Asari... well, you'll see I have some wide-reaching butterflies coming out of Thessia.

Sorlian- You flatter me, haha. I'm actually pretty excited to be able to work with a Shepard who isn't the number one kick-puncher in the galaxy. Makes the world around him that much scarier. What Balak sees in him remains to be seen, if they both can survive long enough to partner up again, of course.

Coment9- By narrative necessity, the SRPA is going to be the focus, at least early days. I do intend to explore the other fighting forces of post-Chimera Humanity further, both through the plot, and through Codex entries and Intel sheets going forward, though.