This is a doozy boys. Hope y'all enjoy reading it as much as I did writing it.
Shout out to everyone who leaves a review and PM's me. Y'all help me make this story better and y'all need love just like you give me.
*POV: AedoTorchbearer*
The ride in the Mako on our way to the third and final flare was in silence as we just went over our gear separately. It was a nice ride too as it was mostly a straight shot; Shepard didn't get to send us flying over any hills which was nice. Though the nice drive that it was lasted all of a few minutes as we arrived at the Flare's facility.
Upon arriving the turrets surrounding the area turned to life and we went from chilling in the Mako to violently flying around. As per usual with Shepard's driving it didn't bother us. One of the rockets did smoke the side of the Mako but it didn't break the shields, just rattled us. I almost went face first into the wall since I didn't have my harness on but stopped myself short with an outstretched hand. Wrex grabbed the back of my collar and roughly pulled me back.
Still, that aside it was an easy ride in the back and after a couple minutes the turrets were all down for the count. A quick systems check ordered from Shepard went out and the ones with systems to check over did so. All clear and with that we pulled up to the entrance of the facility and got out of the Mako.
Stacking up at the entrance I hit the pulse and there were 20 signatures inside, none in the entrance area. Getting a nod from Shepard across from me I hacked the door open and we all piled through silently. Ghosting to the door leading to the main hall we readied to attack. Taking a couple peeks from where I could at the door none of them noticed me but they definitely were ready for a fight. All in cover with weapons trained on the entrance, we were going through a bottleneck and they were ready; not good. Plus, of the 6 I was able to see 4 of them had helmets on; helmets that were definitely night vision capable.
Relaying that to Shepard he backed off and started pacing around thinking of a solution. As a soldier he knew we were in quite the shitty position, even with shields if they were expecting us going through that bottleneck would rip us to shreds. After maybe a minute of pacing he stopped and looked at both Tali and myself.
"Can you turn off the lights again?" I looked around the area for a quick second spotting a terminal on the far side across the entrance. I would definitely get spotted going to it but it probably doesn't matter at the end of the day.
"I can but they'll see me so when I do it they'll officially know we're here. Plus, from what I saw most had helmets on which are probably night vision capable. So, it won't be all that effective," I said shrugging.
"Better than nothing, we'll use it," he said, looking away from me to Tali. "Can you disrupt their comms in any way?"
"I can send a burst of static in their comms. It'll be loud enough to hurt them but it'll only last a second or two," she answered, looking at her omni-tool and bringing up the exact program that would do what she just said. Shepard nodded at that and looked like he had a plan in mind now.
"Alright. Wynne, you turn off the lights and once the lights go off Tali I want their comms hit. Scramble them every opportunity you get. As for everyone else, stack up at the door, as soon as Tali hits them we go in."
He received nods of affirmation from everyone and they stacked up at the door. I stayed back and got ready to run past the opening. Looking to Shepard for the signal he gave me a nod and I took three quick steps before diving passed the opening. The few Batarians watching the door opened fire at me but were all too late to score a hit.
Standing up from the dive I hacked the terminal and the lights went out. As soon as the lights went out there were shouts of pain from the opening, Tali had set off her program at the exact time the lights went off. With both these things happening simultaneously our storming into the omen area went off without a single problem.
I was the last to enter the area and even then I didn't get shot at. We blitzed the Batarians in front of us taking no prisoners with Wrex and Shepard leading the charge with their shotguns. Liara and Tali supporting them with biotics and tech abilities the whole way. I resisted the urge to charge forward, it would've been awesome but disruptive to how we were positioned.
With my positioning in the back with Garrus I switched my AR to single fire and started popping heads. Precise fire wasn't great in the ark, even with night vision helping but I made it work and racked up a few kills.
Our blitz into the opening would slow when we were shelled from the balcony by a mass of gunfire and grenades. Wrex took a grenade that landed only a foot from him like a champ even though it sent him backwards through some crates. He had created a barrier at the last second that saved his ass, his armor got some new scars regardless. Wrex was not a happy camper after that and hurled a warp up at the balcony and it connected, if the scream of pain was anything to go by.
Getting behind cover a couple meters from Garrus he waved at me getting my attention. When I gave it to him he pointed to where Shepard was, I nodded and tapped the top of my head. Garrus nodded and popped up giving me covering fire as I hopped over my cover and slid next to Shepard.
"How fast can you throw your grenades?"
"Depends on how many I have to throw."
"Three. Blow the Batarians up there to mist," I peaked my head out of cover to get a good look at Batarians on the balcony, 5 in total but 3 were close enough that one well aimed grenade would do them in.
"I'll need at least 3 seconds," he nodded and grabbed his radio before giving the order for covering fire. While he gave that order I rested my hands on a grenade each.
After 5 seconds of waiting the ground team rose up as one from their cover and fired at anyone moving in front of us. As they did so I ripped a grenade out of bandolier with each hand before priming the one in my right and chucking it at the group of three batarians. It exploded right above where they should be.
With that one out of my hand I flicked the grenade in my left hand to my right, priming it immediately as I made to chuck it at the other Batarians. As my arm flung forward my left hand reached into my bandolier and grabbed another grenade. I hit exactly where I was aiming with my second grenade and my third was no different, perfect throw. I wish I had been this accurate in college, might've gotten drafted.
Still, as the third grenade exploded all the batarians on the rafters stayed down and the ones on our level didn't last much longer. Wrex was particularly pissed and pushed them hard. I went with him and flicked my gun back to automatic. As he pushed forward I watched his six but never really made to take a shot at anyone. The only times I did fire were when he would throw one of the batarians off to the side. When they would land I would fire bullets at their faces until one got through.
Wrex and I got quite a bit of attention as we pushed up as we made an incredibly deadly team. With him in the lead and me right behind him plowing straight through the Batarians Shepard and the rest barely had to do any work. They just cleaned up the rest or killed the ones that got themselves caught out in the open rushing Wrex and I.
With Wrex and I playing shock troops and everyone else covering us it didn't take long for us to kill the rest of the Batarians. Once we were in the clear, or thought we were I hit my pulse only to see three more signatures. All of which were walking our way from the corner of the base, there was the distinct pitter patter of pawed feet and I saw a varren walking along with Balak's second and some random nobody.
I know the guy wanted to negotiate a way out with Shepard but it didn't matter to me. He wasn't walking out of here alive, no matter what. To make the statement loud and clear to everyone I pulled out my Breaker pistol and put a bullet through the varren's eye. It dropped to the floor lifeless and everyone's eyes turned to me except for Wrex's next to me; he was looking at the Batarians with his gun pointed at them.
"Talk."
"We never wanted this, Balak wants to kill the planet. We were lead to believe this would just be a regular slave run," at that, if their weapons weren't already raised and ready, they sure as hell were now. Wrong words to say.
"You have 5 seconds to convince me," was all Shepard said from behind me. The Batarian quickly reached into a pocket on the back of his armor and produced a keycard.
"You need this to get into the main base where the rest of the scientists and Balak and his men are," he held up the keycard and then tossed it to me.
Being the closest to him I caught it and tossed it back to Shepard never letting my eyes leave them. Shepard didn't say a word for a few minutes as he held the keycard and contemplated his choices. I wanted to kill these two, badly, but if Shepard let them go I couldn't go after them. At least not here.
"Leave." Fuck. "This is your one chance ever, you continue this and I will hunt you down and kill you."
Neither of the Batarians said anything as they quickly made their exit. I made to follow them but a giant hand held me back. Looking over my shoulder Wrex was there shaking his head. I gave one last attempt to persuade him with my head bobbing in their direction but he shook his head again. Sighing, I nodded and waited for Shepard to give an order.
He did so by sending Tali and myself to turn off the flare. I wish we were able to turn them back on so we could reverse what was happening but Tali shot down that idea. The flares had been locked to only one position from the main base. Only way to reverse it was to go through the main base.
It would've made this way too easy so it couldn't be done. Either way it didn't take us long to turn off the flare and once it was off we rejoined everyone else at the Mako. As we got to leave the voice from earlier began to go into our comms only to stop and scream. There was a loud "Get over here girl," and then the connection went dead.
When that went through the comms Shepard put the pedal to the metal and we were hauling ass to the main station. It was quick and it was not fun, over every single bump and hill he could find as we beelined for the main base. Arriving via flying off a hill and landing right in front of the entrance.
As we fell Garrus began firing on the turrets that were whirring up to fire at the Mako. We hit the ground with the wheels already going and shot off out of the way of two rockets. Shepard proceeded to drive exactly like Shepard does and Garrus didn't miss a single shot. The two turrets were out of the fight before a full minute had elapsed.
Being in the free and clear Shepard parked the Mako next to the entrance and everyone got out. We walked behind Shepard as he walked to the entrance and as he did so I hit a pulse with nothing popping up. With that information Shepard put in the keycard and the door popped open.
Heading inside one by one all our guns were raised as we got ready for the fight that we were about to be into. Eventually we got to an open room with a terminal on the left side and a door to the main area in front of it. From the peek we got from the room we were in the main area was massive.
Not needing the go ahead I hit a pulse to see what we were up against. There were a lot more than expected. 35 to be exact with them spread out evenly all throughout the area. With that coming up we all looked to Shepard and waited for his plan. At least this time around the batarians weren't aiming their weapons as the bottleneck.
Standing to the side of the entrance we all looked at Shepard for his orders.
"Wynne, Ashley and Garrus; you three take the right side. Kaiden, Wrex and Tali you have the left. Liara, you're with me."
We nodded in affirmation and got ready to push forward on his word. Wrex and I at the front we waited until a singular beep went through the radio and we rushed through. As we went through I charged up a sabotage and hit the first Batarian I saw with it. He tried to fire his gun only for it not to obey and got caught out in the open because of it, 4 shots directly to his head and he dropped.
After that I didn't bother firing a burst longer than a few rounds as the rest of the Batarians had gotten into cover. Instead I booked it to the right where the stairs were fired at the glass twice and dived through shattering the glass along the way. Pushing myself up I was greeted with a Batarian shotgun staring down at me. He clicked the trigger and I thought it was over only for the gun to never fire.
As he looked down at his gun in confusion for a second that's all I needed as I whipped out my knife and stabbed it through his neck. When I looked around for whatever saved me I got my answer as Garrus dived through the opening I had made in the glass. Covering him as he got up he patted me on the shoulder and we turned to cover Ashley as she followed our example. As she joined us we took fire from the stairs above us and got right back into cover.
"You're welcome by the way," Garrus said from next to me. I looked over at him and grunted in affirmation.
Looking to him I pulled up the Overload program on my omni-tool and showed it to him. He nodded and brought it up on his, I then motioned to Ashley to give us some covering fire. She nodded and then began firing, as she did both Garrus and I popped out and fired out overloads at the roof above the stairs. The radius of the overloads caught the Batarians up there and we pushed hard.
I got up the stairs first and put two in a Batarians head before putting one more in another's head. Ashley behind me didn't waste a bullet either as she gunned down two and Garrus mopped up the last one that was trying to make a break for it. Gotta love that overloads takeaway shields.
With us on the second floor of the right side we started clearing the few rooms that were there. Garrus found a bomb in one of them and disabled it right away, when we found it we relayed that information to Shepard. Wrex and the others had called in finding one too so we now had our eyes open for bombs.
Entering the far room after finding the bomb we were immediately assaulted by gun fire. So much at one time that they were able to break my shields even with the Predator X's massive shield. I took a round in the gut that knocked out all of my breath and I was dragged behind the door as I fell backwards. Garrus did a quick check over me and I got extremely lucky, my armor caught it.
Waiting a few seconds for my shields to go back up I plucked my last two grenades off my bandolier and hurled them through the door. The resulting cries of pain and terror were music to my ears as Ashley went in after I threw the nades. I followed her with Garrus behind me.
He hit three with one overload and they got dropped by me and him. Ashley had put her gun into overkill before entering and let loose a hellfire of bullets on the Batarians on her side. None in the room had a chance after the grenades did their job. That cleared our side of the base.
Getting to the balcony from the room I spotted another bomb at the end of the walkway. I couldn't get to it right away as there was a turret watching over it and it fired on me. Diving back inside and into cover I called over Garrus and we each readied an overload. Peaking out together we each hit it but it didn't stop and fired on us.
Diving back into cover we each readied another overload only for it to go boom regardless. We exchanged looks before looking towards the other side where Wrex's group was. We spotted Tali getting back into cover and giving us a thumbs up. We returned the gesture and went to the bomb.
Reaching it Garrus went to work on the bomb while I covered him. There were still a good bit of Batarians down on the main floor by Shepard's pair and Wrex's group were giving them the business for now. I wanted to fire upon the Batarians below us but held off as there wasn't a barrier over the railing; Garrus would've been in the open. Didn't matter though as one of them noticed him.
When one of them noticed Garrus working on the bomb I zeroed onto him immediately and put 3 shots into his chest before he was able to get back into cover. I began suppressing those that I could and killing those dumb enough to stay in the open; that number being 2. We got shot at but none of their shots hit and Garrus was able to diffuse the bomb without much problem.
We went back into cover for a few seconds before all three of us took up positions near the balcony. When we were all in position we moved to the balcony evenly spread out from each other and rained hell on the Batarians. With Garrus and I adding onto the already potent tech abilities I don't think any Batarian had a shield for longer than 10 seconds. Not to mention that every time they went out into the open Shepard, Liara, Wrex or Kaiden would fuck them up with biotics.
Long story short, the Batarians were now in the definition of a kill box and they knew it. They became frantic in their fighting and panicking every moment allowing us to thin the herd. So much so that all but one of the 18 that had been left only one was now and he had just been hit by several overloads, his shields wouldn't be coming back for a bit if they came back at all.
He tried to surrender but I wasn't having that and shot him in the head before his gun even hit the floor. No one commented on that and Shepard asked for a regroup. I told Ashley and Garrus to go ahead of me; I knew Balak was about to make his move and introduce himself. I knew this and wanted to head off his escape.
Looking around the area I climbed over the balcony and made my way to where I knew Balak would come in. They wouldn't see me above them so I just waited and got behind some cover so Shepard and co wouldn't see me either. Once in a good spot I waited and I didn't have to wait long.
The doors hissed open, stayed open and Balak walked out with another Batarian and 2 Varren. Before anything could happen or anyone could say a word two shots rang out. Shepard lowered his gun as both Varren dropped to the floor dead with shots through their eyes.
"Talk." was all he said I couldn't help but chuckle. Copycat.
As they talked I used this distraction to go down from where I was undetected by all, going cover to cover quickly and silently. Dropping down behind Balak and his man neither noticed and for how low I crouched when I landed Shepard and Co didn't either.
Leaving them to do their song and dance I knew Shepard would let Balak go if the scientists were in danger. For now I walked down the corridor silent as the grave until I found the airlock. Hacking it open I walked through and onto Balak's ship closing it back up.
I hit a pulse as soon as I got in. There were two red signatures and 15 yellow ones, I assumed these were slaves or Varren, either way they were in the cargo hold and nowhere near me. Looking at where the red signatures were I noticed that they were in the cockpit. Walking up to the doors I heard the pilot talking through the door. Apparently Balak had just contacted them and told them to get ready to leave.
As soon as I heard the radio go silent I grabbed my 1911 from my back and hacked the door open. Neither Batatarian had a chance to do anything as I pulled the trigger on each of them. Each of their heads exploded and absolutely covered me in blood, brain matter and bits of bone. Hollow points from up close on soft targets are not a pretty sight let me tell you.
With the pilots taken care of I turned off all the lights in the ship and sat near the air lock in total silence. When I heard the radio blare back to life in the cockpit I hacked the airlock doors open and Balak walked through with his man.
"Why the fuck are the lights off. Let's go," Balak barked off only to get no response in return. "Hey, why the fuck aren't we at least moving!" he shouted before turning on his weapons flashlight and going to the cockpit.
Opening the door to the cockpit he didn't say anything but instead went straight to his omni-tool. I assumed it was to turn on the bombs but I was having none of that, even though Shepard had probably taken care of them by now. I hacked his omni-tool and uploaded it with a kill virus setting it up in flames.
Balak swore before he ripped the omni-tool off and threw it to the ground. He then started looking around with his weapon and so did his second who had also turned on his flashlight. Sabotaging both weapons was a trivial task and both lights went out.
"Come out fucker! Let me kill you," Balak shouted and I answered him by standing up from my hiding spot.
I don't know what they saw but when I stood up the lights that controlled my eyes sockets turned on and illuminated the space in front of me with a soft red glow. Both men looked at me and I could sense their fear and apprehension. It was glorious and I answered his demand.
"You will be the only one dying tonight."
As they both stood there frozen I made my move. My knife sliced across the chest of Balak's second spraying blood all over me*. He didn't go down and made a move on me but I blocked his knife and then stabbed him in the armpit and then in the neck. He went down in a heap with blood spraying everywhere.
As I finished his second off Balak charged me and tackled me into the wall trapping my knife hand. Raising my free elbow I brought it down on his neck and he grunted pushing through the pain as he punched me in the side.
Hitting him again with my elbow he just kept wailing on my side, keeping me pinned with his superior weight. The guy had at least 30 pounds on me. Saying fuck it I activated the program Ceelo had given me and brought the torch down on on his back, not slicing him but definitely burning his back.
He would hit me one more time before pushing off me and creating space. He saw the torch and a feral grin came to his face illuminated by the torch.
"Torchbearer. I'll love collecting that bounty on your head."
"No. No you won't," was my only response before I dissipated the torch and got on offense.
Balak may have been bigger and stronger than me but he sure as shit wasn't faster and his technique was trash. This man was a brawler only and had no finesse at all to his game, against anyone truly trained like I was he was easy. Not to mention that the only thing that he could see in the darkness was the bright red eyes from my helmet while I could see him with no problem. Still, with how he fought it baffled me that he gained enough prestige to lead anything.
Anyway from the moment the fight began after that it wasn't really a fight. I became the surgeon and he the patient with my knife being the scalpel and the room my operating table. The first thing to go was his right arm with me stabbing through the two nerve clusters that controlled it. It fell limp at his side, completely useless.
Next to go was his bottom left eye. I had punched him in the nose making his eyes close up for a moment but that's all I needed. I stabbed it with my knife and ripped it out. It was at that moment that he began to panic and fight like a cornered animal. It was pathetic and weak.
I dodged a diving leap at me by jumping out of the way. Before he could do anything I stabbed my knife into his left hamstring and severed it. He roared in pain and then I sliced his Achilles Tendon.
He didn't even try to fight after that and just crawled away. He was able to open the airlock from the ground and slowly dragged himself away from me. I watched him go and he got up and started weakly hopping away. I kept the airlock open as he left, he wouldn't get far.
As he got out of the airlock fully I started looking around for a very specific thing. It took me a couple seconds but I eventually found what I was looking for and I couldn't help the chuckle that escaped my lips when I did.
"Found it."
*Commander Shepard*
After Balak had left I was seething. I wanted to kill that man so bad but right now I had to save who I could and the scientists could be saved. Even though we disarmed most of the bombs beforehand there were still two that we didn't plus the one next to the scientists. They got out with little fanfare but thanked us profusely.
With that done I did a quick headcount and noticed that Wynne wasn't with us. With mad dash around the whole area we had been doing looking for those last two bombs I hadn't noticed that he had left. It confused me as he wasn't the one to just up and leave. Then it clicked, the man had gone after Balak.
"Joker, has a ship taken off from the base?"
"No Commander."
That was all I needed and I rounded up everyone and went through the door that Balak had gone through on a hard run. Balak may have been a Batarian but he was their former Spec Ops, he was a good fighter and Wynne would be outnumbered. He was too good of an operator to lose and I needed to get to him before he got injured. However, we didn't need to worry.
As we rounded the corner to get to the airlock where Balak's ship was, we saw Balak. Weight heavily on one leg and from the blood seeping from the limp one he wouldn't be using it anytime soon.
All of us just stared at the Batarian as he raised one arm. His other hanging limp at his side and blood coming out of his shoulder blade and shoulder. The man had been absolutely fucked up. I knew Wynne was good but it seemed that he was getting better every moment he was with us.
"I surrender," Balak got out weakly as he stood there completely defeated but no Wynne. I was pissed.
None of us were inclined to take his surrender and we responded to it by lifting our guns. Though we never needed to. As we did lift our guns there was a soft chuckle coming from the pitch black airlock and two bright red eyes stared at us from the darkness. There was an amount of malice and anger coming from those eyes. It was indescribable and chilling.
"I didn't say you could leave," came the deathly voice of Wynne.
There was a click of a trigger and then a harpoon went through the calf of Balak, a slave harpoon. He screamed in pain and then was slowly pulled back into the darkness. None of us did anything to help him or stop what was happening. He screamed and clawed at the ground to no avail as he was pulled through the airlock and back into the darkness.
We could hear what was happening but couldn't tell exactly what was happening. Balak's screams turned to whimpers and then he turned to begging. For mercy and clemency but he would find none from us or Wynne.
Over the next few minutes we stayed there and watched the darkness. We couldn't see any of the things that happened but he saw flashes of omni-gel constructs being stabbed into the wall. When it was all over Wynne activated his Torch program his mentor, Ceelo, had given him and it illuminated what had been done. Wynne had crucified Balak against the wall of his own ship.
"Balak," Wynne sneered out. "For crimes against sentients and for the attempted genocide of an entire planet. You are sentenced to death by Crucifixion. Suffer, as you made others suffer," and then the torch went out and Wynne walked out of the airlock.
Wynne was absolutely covered in blood but for the most part appeared unharmed. Breathing heavy as he approached us he stood there in front of us. Standing tall he looked at us with his unflinching helmet boring holes into us.
"You injured?" I asked.
"No sir."
"Good. Go get cleaned up and wash off that blood. You aren't getting on the Normandy like that," that got a chuckle out of him and a few others.
"Yes sir. I'm pretty sure they have slaves in there. We should get them."
"We will, you go get cleaned. Don't want to traumatize them any further," I said and he looked down at himself before nodding.
"That's a good idea sir," and then he left. Tali went with him. Seeing that I was happy I had placed money on them getting together. I had done it at the beginning of this campaign after seeing them work together during the biotic hostage situation. They had great chemistry.
As we neared the airlock I had Kaiden turn the lights back on and the sight wasn't a particularly nice one. Balak was still alive and crucified but we didn't touch him. No way in hell were we going to. He deserved this, brought it upon himself. Though burned into Balak's chest was Torchbearers symbol
We went into the cargo hold and got the scientists out of the cages that they had been and walked them out. Every single one of them took pictures of the room and especially of Balak. None of us stopped them and before we even got back to Wynne they had uploaded pictures of Balak.
The most popular of those posts would come a few minutes after we had gotten back with Wynne. It would have a picture of both Balak crucified. Either way the post would say:
For Trying to sell us into Slavery and destroy an entire planet. The punishment fits the crime. #Torchbearer #Nomoreslavery #AsteroidX57
It was honestly quite the post and to be honest I liked it. I couldn't help myself and from the notifications I got everyone else from the Normandy liked the post too. That being said, it absolutely blew up and by the time we had got back to the Normandy Admiral Hackett wanted to talk to me.
"You wanted to talk sir," I asked as I opened the incoming transmission.
"Good work on the Asteroid Shepard. Good work."
"Thank you sir," I nodded to him and he gave me a small smile in return.
"Torchbearer is quite the asset isn't he?" he asked slyly. I couldn't help the small chuckle that escaped my lips.
"He is sir. He is."
"Good. I'd love to see if he'd work for us," I went to respond to that but he held up his hand. "Not now Commander. Ai finally did their job and we got a location on Matriarch Benezia; Noveria."
"Thank you sir. We'll get there asap."
"I expect nothing less. Good work Commander," and then the transmission cut off.
"Joker. Get us to Noveria. We got a twenty on Benezia."
"Aye aye Commander."
Roughly an hour later when we would reach the first Relay on our way to Noveria I checked the post again. It had almost half a quarter of a trillion views and well over several billion likes. Adding onto that every news station galaxy wide was already reporting on what had occurred. Whether he liked it or not Wynne was now officially famous across the galaxy.
Now the whole galaxy knows who he is. The Torchbearer reigns.
Review so I can get better. PM's are welcome as well. I love talking to y'all.
1*: just so y'all know when you stab or slice someone if you hit a vein or artery it will spray everywhere. It isn't like in the movies where they just really die, blood goes everywhere. It's worse for bullets; if you want an accurate description for how bullet wounds bleed or spray, watch a Tarantino movie and you'll have an accurate idea.