*** Torfan, Ambush ***

Focused on his omnitool's scanner controls, it took almost four full seconds for Shepard to be sure that his emitting another scan burst had not caused the explosion on the other side of the cruiser.

"Missiles from above!" Jordan barked. "The pirates are here, they're in the silo!"

Shepard could hear the sounds of her running over the comm; he looked up through three more levels of balcony and saw motion highlighted on his ARO. "Why didn't we see them? How many? Can you get a shot?"

Sergeant Jordan continued to run. "Soon as I can!"

Shepard switched channels, "Major, are you okay? Can't move, can't see you!"

Leading from the front, Kyle had been one of the first out of the double doors; he was farthest from it when an explosion knocked his legs out from under him. The blast from behind hurled him into a vertical pipe chase; his armor took most of the impact. He turned quickly to look back, smoke and flames covered the balcony, shouts came across LOSI.

"Fuck! I'm down! Help!"

"Where are they?"

"Get to cover!"

Twisted wreckage and smouldering stubs of what had been the balcony meant they had no retreat. The double door through which they had entered the base might as well have been on the other side of the moon.

Though Kyle's voice overrode all others on the comm, he was still difficult to hear over the other noise, "Get into the base and link up; head down, there's no cover on the balconies! Get to whatever cover you can, and head down!"

"Down?! Are you crazy?"

"Get in any door you can find, link up and head down, but get out of the silo!"

Six-shot bursts from Jordan's Vindicator-2 hit one of the pirates, the rounds imparting enough of a vector to slam him against the wall and ricochet him over the low railing; he fell, spinning to the floor hundreds of meters below. "Got him!"

She turned and ran toward the team to render aid if possible; her active camouflage couldn't keep up.

# # #

When the explosion from missile fire rocked the facility, it acted like a seismic charge, revealing things to Shepard's then-active sensors that they had been unable to see before.

He also saw Jordan running toward the impact point of the missiles, and his ARO flashed a huge red warning highlight pointing overhead. "Jordan, hit the deck! Drop, drop, drop!"

She might not have been able to stop, but she could change her vector; grabbing a vertical strut to slow herself down, she dove to the balcony floor. Sparks exploded around her as assault rifle fire ricocheted off the handrail, pipes, and shields.

The fire on Jordan had come from almost directly above Shepard, the shooter's location began flashing on his ARO. Taking his weapon by its scope grip, he directed its barrel upward with a grunt. "Weapon: Armor-piercing," he said. The Gorgon-3 rifle's scope view was still linked to his ARO, its sensor data enhanced by the first-round VI analysis, wireframing the shooter's location. With a hand under its butt, and the rifle held vertically, he aimed with his ARO and squeezed the two-button trigger on its forestock.

The weapon's ammoshaver had cut a one-gram rod, accelerated it to 20 megameters per second. Everything between the muzzle and the batarian – trusses, conduits, rods, vented floorplates – burned and shattered, spraying upward in a shower of red and orange sparks. The part of the "round" that survived the trip found no shielding (batarian shields were bell-shaped, open at the bottom,) driving through the batarian's armored left foot, shin, knee, and continued through the upper heart, several hortebrae, the hindbrain, and exploded out the top of its head.

# # #

Hammanusk watched his two compatriots die, but remained very still as instructed. Remember the Pillars of Strength, he thought. I can avenge the fallen best when I am strongest.

More gunfire came from above; the second defensive unit had apparently evaded detection and was now firing on the invaders, attempting to drive them into a smaller area. His guided missile would make short work of them, but they would have to reassemble for it to work; he only had one shot.

He realized that their first missile attack had blown large chunks of the balcony off the wall. At least three invaders on the next level down were still moving on their own, and five (two on one side, three on the other) still on the access level. But there was no easy retreat from the base now.

"The invaders have scattered in at least three directions," he reported. "I have eyes on the two scouts on levels nine and ten."

The silo echoed with automatic weapons fire as the leader of the Second Defenders was focus-firing on the Alliance troops; as one went down, they moved to another. Of course, the arrangement of the dumping ground access had been a trap, but Hammanusk was still amazed that the defenders had not been detected before entry.

To their credit, the Alliance invaders were not panicking and shooting each other, and they had even killed three of the Second Defenders with a seeking missile. Hammanusk had informed the Second Defenders where to fire and take out one of the human snipers, but so far, they had ignored him.

My leaders must know better. The base was their rightful possession, and no puny human invaders would take it from them.

# # #

"Jordan, what are you doing?"

"Used my cloak to – ungh – drop to the next level. Heading over to link up."

"That last scan finally got it. I have a base map with analysis. Sending to you now."

"We don't have time for this! They're hammering us!"

"Give me your top targets," Shepard said.

The spotter toggled her HUD, focused on the one batarian who hadn't seemed to be using a weapon since she first started tracking him, but of whom she didn't have a clear shot. "Take out this guy, I think he's an officer. He's just sitting there."

The batarian was highlighted on Shepard's ARO, but the cruiser was in his way. He cradled the weapon as he moved, adjusted the firing settings on his rifle to 10 megameters per second so it wouldn't leave a tracer pointing to his location. Looking up, the trusses on the next level were just close enough that he might be able to jump up to it while cloaked, which would make it more difficult to track him.

Too risky for now, he thought. Save it for when I'm being pursued. Noticing the telemetry from one of the drones had gone dark, he pulled another drone "origami" out of his right leg pocket, unfolded it with a wrist snap, and tossed it to his right.

Drone Hotel Active, appeared on his ARO.

"Drone Hotel, blind the base," Shepard said as he searched for another target.

Sounds of rising panic were becoming obvious over LOSI, "Medic down!"

"I'm pinned down at the door!"

"There's no cover!"

"Perling's down, I need help!"

Kyle repeated, "There's no cover on the balconies; head down, head down to the floor now!"

Shepard checked his rich data on the target Jordan had tagged; the pirate was carrying a single-use SMRL. And he was just sitting there with the weapon casually aimed at the few remaining Alliance soldiers below, either waiting for his Fire Order, or for the Alliance team to get to just the right spot.

Not on my watch, he thought. No need for a special load to penetrate overpowered batarian shields to reach its skull; Shepard zeroed in on the missile's explosive head, squeezed the trigger.

High above, the missile detonated; debris erupted toward the cruiser, rained noisily down to the silo floor.

# # #

Prazatch, the base Executive Officer, knew that if he told Lady Bundoo that the Alliance soldiers had killed the First Defenders, she would think he needed to be told what to do next. It would surely be bad instruction, but he would be required to carry it out. Even if she was not monitoring the firefight with base cameras, if he failed to report what was happening, she would likely assume he was out of his depth, and take command of the defence.

Best to inform her of success, or at least progress toward it.

He touched the comm button. "My Lady, the First Defenders have killed almost half of the invaders already. The Second Defenders are driving them to the silo floor maze."

"Well done, Ter Prazatch. I trust you'll see to this personally. I will be undisturbed." The comm chunked off.

Prazatch almost gasped with relief. He would see to it personally, but now he would do so without second-guessing from above. He flicked a selector, tapped a control. "Ter Aubuju, I will join you shortly and assume command of the Second Defenders. Update me as you are able."

As he pulled on his heavy combat armor, Prazatch noticed Aubuju was taking an unusually long time to respond.

There was a burst of static over his headset. "Second Defenders, this is Kallask, assuming command. The invaders are attempting to escape to the lower levels. Third Defenders, advance to the south maze entrance, Second Defenders, drive them into the arms of the Third!"

# # #

Shepard's ASP systems had finished compiling the scan data and integrating it into a tactical map, copied the data to his omnitool, and displayed it on his ARO. In the tradition of snipers and others wishing to avoid detection, their data was routed away from an omnitool because of its illuminated interface. Shepard's implant allowed him to use his ARO, Jordan used the slightly more conventional helmet visor HUD.

The 200,000-square-meter oval floor of the silo was a grid of vented walls with semi-interconnecting passages. Though the cruiser was balanced on a cradle that appeared to be capable of horizontal and vertical movement, the "floor" of the silo was a grid of metal above an emergency exhaust vent (the design intended for the primary warship to be lifted to the surface for launching, but the failsafe was a system of turbulence control that reduced the backwash and force of exhaust by more than four orders of magnitude, and required no operator.)

WARNING: Emergency blast fence (CVT mesh) on silo floor. Traversal of contra-Venturi effect turbulence mesh hazardous, agreed his ARO. Because the display was added at the visual cortex, it wasn't bouncing as he ran, which helped him stay focused.

"Major, you probably want to split up the remaining team so you can watch each other." Shepard was searching for potential targets as he spoke. "But if you're up out of the maze, you're completely visible from the balconies. If you're not out of the silo, stay in cover while Jordan and I take out these other guys. The floor mesh will get you lost or trip you up, at least without VI help."

"Stay up there while you can, sir," Jordan added over LOSI, "It may have cover down here, but it looks like just junk like outside, but…uh…with some remains. Scanner says they were human."

Kyle answered, "Christ, you're right." There was a long pause, with Kyle breathing. "Well, scan 'em for ID if you can stay safe. Eyes up; they don't show up on passive!"

Shepard grimaced angrily; he had failed his team. Now he had to do whatever he could to protect them, get them out of the kill zone. He had moved around behind the cruiser, relying on only stealth and active camouflage to keep him relatively invisible against monochromatic walls. He used his pistol's scope to see around the edge of the cruiser, slowly working his way back to where he could see the enemy troops, circling one of the higher balconies.

His ARO tagged one of them walking around one of the upper levels, and at what seemed a casual pace. The distinctions led one of Shepard's VIs to suspect – and then to study – the target's actions more closely.

By the time it had over 80% confidence that this was an officer, the alien was fully visible, and Shepard had rested his weapon's bipod on a metal strut, set up the shot, adjusted velocity and metarifling. Gravity and spin bias were already factored in by the scope's VI.

Shepard watched him for a few seconds; he was glassing the floor of the silo with his assault rifle only occasionally, walking as if unconcerned. He spoke to a communicator, seemed to get a response, and kept walking.

His ARO warned him that the batarian's shield was engaged. Shepard pushed the muzzle velocity up to 50 megameters per second, began precharging his cloak.

Kyle's voice sounded inside the entire team's helmets, "Shepard, you still have a god's eye view of the base?"

"Yes, sir. Jordan has it, too. I don't know if your TacDis will support all the data depth, but it should give you good locator wireframe. I still don't know why the bad guys aren't visible, so be careful."

"I'm tracking several circling left," Jordan warned. "But they don't show up on anything other than visual. So watch for them high and don't get exposed."

"Keep them busy up there, we're reg-" Static noise filled the line for a full second. "...east we are trying to regroup."

Status lights on Shepard's ARO changed almost at the same time; the shield-piercing ammo was loaded, the weapon was charged for a high-velocity shot, and his cloak was ready for a ten-second activation. He squeezed an additional kilogram of force on the trigger; a blaze of light speared from human to batarian as the pirate's head snapped up and to the side, and the armored body fell to the balcony floor with a distant, metallic krump.

Shepard did not see it; he had already cloaked and moved away from where his shooting location had been identified by a line of light connecting shooter to target.

# # #

Across the silo, Dushoga had been ordered to clear the two sides of the ground-level balcony. He could see occasional small arms exchanges as the base commandos hunted the invaders. He was in no particular hurry, having fallen from grace with the Hegemon when The Coup happened during his youth, and had spent many years as a slave. He knew well the unfairness of life, and pitied for the mortally-wounded human that lay before him. The human had originally held one of its hands toward him; Dushoga thought it looked like the human was trying to push him away. The hand had lowered as life oozed from the human.

Our roles have been chosen for us, he thought grimly. Human gods would surely weigh it more honourable that the alien had fallen in single combat rather than an ambush, and Dushoga knew well that no one would go to the effort to heal a potential human slave, even one as fit as an Alliance soldier. It would be a mercy to end the human's life quickly.

Shepard didn't see Dushoga stoop to reverently fold the human's arms over its chest. Nor that he had asked his family gods to intercede for a fellow warrior. Shepard had only seen the pistol shot into the unarmored gap between helmet and chestplate of an Alliance soldier whose helmet art and equipment he recognized.

A burning sort of pressure started to build behind Shepard's eyes; he liked Kirk, knew the family, thought of him almost as a younger brother. He had recommended the capable soldier apply for the Flaming Sword training; when he completed it, Shepard had been able to attend the –

Focus!

He shoved a thumb along a control on the rifle body to confirm it was as far forward as it would go, then checked himself and pulled it back down. Muzzle velocities above 10,000 kps tended to make the ammunition in flight glow with friction like a tracer, indicating his location to the other pirates.

Through his teeth, he said, "Weapon: Shield-piercing ammo." He swung the rifle deliberately around, sighting down the pirate as the weapon fabricated the customized round. He gestured for his maximum of 50% cognitive acceleration by tapping his left thumb on the little finger's intermediate phalange; electronic crosshairs found the batarian ear, slid up and left to the forebrain.

The scope view trembled until the stabilizer kicked in. On his ARO, the Weapon Status indicator changed to ORDER READY; when the LOAD indicator flipped from EMPTY in green to LOADED in red, Shepard applied another 400 grams of pressure to the trigger.

The antimateriel round weighed fully six grains. The outer layer heated in flight; on contact with the sturdy batarian shield, the cage disintegrated, creating a tiny spray of positrons that disrupted the shielding, and igniting the pellet, which blew through the batarian skull with the ease of a neutrino; had the target material been harder, the ammo would have exploded in its conversion to energy with Einsteinian efficiency. As it was, it simply blew a hole straight through the alien's brain, spraying it down the hallway with a deafening transonic CRACK that reverberated through the silo for several seconds.

Shepard's cloak had engaged when he squeezed the trigger, to give him a chance to misdirect the enemy. As he moved to the right, he said, "Drone Fox, circle left from my location, draw fire with CFE. Go."

The drone scooted around from behind him, its holographic exterior providing camouflage, heading to his left, down behind the balcony's low photoluminescent panels, before it collided with the vertical pipe chase.

The clank of plastic and metal became the center of a hail of fire from the batarian troops positioned around the silo. As he crawled, Shepard's VI noted the locations of the shooters, tagged them on his ARO.

He looked to a place on the opposite side of the silo, focused on it. "Drone Fox, continue on present course." He looked up at one of the balconies above him. "Jordan, do you have drone capability?"

The sound of gunfire came from below, and over LOSI. "It's really slow!"

"Map integration might be slowing it down. Turn off the download, I'll send you the compiled version when it's done. The Major is regrouping directly below you. Be their protector. Use the drone as your spotter and distraction. I'm cloaking and entering the base, I've got to infiltrate their electronic systems."

"On it." Jordan replaced the M-5 Avenger on her pack and decompacted her own Gorgon-3 rifle.

"Every shot gives you away," Shepard reminded her. "Shoot, cloak and move. They can look at you, but don't let them see you." He stopped at a door that led into the base; his scan had revealed it was both fairly isolated, and contained a network node.

As he gripped its manual handle, he tried to think of something to advise her. The younger tech had yet to fully integrate all the different operational modalities under actual fire with an enemy that knew how to locate a shooter. With the team down as badly as it was, he worried about leaving her on her own.

He compacted his 15-kilo rifle and hung it on a sling over his forepack, drawing his Shadow-V pistol off his thigh holster and checking its load, charge, and status. "Stay safe, or I'll kick your ass."

"Stay frosty, sir." Jordan nodded. She liked the N7, but he didn't seem all that amazing, and he went too far out of his way to be funny. If he kept paying attention to the wrong things, he was going to get himself killed, and it was like he didn't even care. (Though she had heard about how he lost his wife, and thought that might be part of it.)

Suddenly someone on LOSI screamed, "Fuck! There's more of 'em on the way, get to cover, get to cover!"

Assault rifle fire sounded again from below; the cyclic and timbre sounded like batarian weapons. Alliance fire was audible, but there was less of it.

"Assholes!" Jordan balanced her weapon on the balcony rail, leaned around a pillar, swung the barrel down toward the noise. The scope cover flipped open as she brought her eye up to it. "Weapon, two hundred see-em dee-spread, benza-phos, ten grams. Optimize em-vee for internal heat."

Shepard squinted across the balcony and up at Jordan as she ordered her ammo; it was a heavy use for a single round, she'd only get maybe 30 or 40 shots like that before she actually had to replace the ammoblock. Worse, there was a three-to-four times higher chance she'd burn out the accelerator doing it.

On the other hand, it was going to hit like she'd dropped a flaming ground car on them, and it was going to set on fire what it didn't pulverize.

He aimed his pistol down at the firefight below, his ARO showing him its view. On the floor of the wall opposite, the "maze" had a clearing about six or seven meters across. The door nearby had weapons firing out of it; three batarians had emerged so far, and were firing on the humans who were trying to get out of the clearing. "See you get the two," Shepard aimed down.

"Done," Jordan replied, and squeezed her weapon's trigger.

The Gorgon actually spat fire, jumped back into her shoulder so hard it lifted her briefly off the balcony. Far below, the area just in front of and to the side of the door shimmered, and then appeared to glow orange, burning. The two pirates within the circle of fire seemed to turn into orange-highlighted black pillars, crumbling where they stood. Professionally, Jordan cloaked and slid away.

Shepard had been watching the shot, and began firing down on the third pirate with his pistol. The shots ricocheted of the top-heavy shields as the batarian dove back into the burning doorway.

Shepard shook his head, realizing he should have used his Gorgon. He knew there were plans for weapons-capable microfacturing omnitools, but they were still ten or fifteen years out. Maybe he could get a shotgun from a pirate. "Jordan, I'm heading into the base."

She gestured, checking indicators on her HUD. "You need me to defend you while you work?"

Though they couldn't even see each other, Shepard pointed urgently down to the bottom of the silo. "No, defend the team. I couldn't take that last guy down, you'll have to get him. I've got three drones in play, four more in pocket, and we need to give the pirates some pressing problems that make the rest of the team not a priority."

"They're on Auto now, but drone control is on Charlie Five." He scrambled toward the nearest door. "Don't get shot. They're counting on you. Hopefully, once I get the batarians' attention, they'll leave you guys alone." As he stepped out of the silo, he shook his head, thinking aloud, "It's bad enough they're cloaking parts of the base, but how in the hell they're keeping their people off infrared?"

# # #

Prazatch's intercom crackled to life. "Ter Prazatch, why can I not see the battle? I require an update!"

Stepping out the lift doors that had just opened, the base XO toggled his comm. "My Lady, I have not yet reached the battlefield. I am told the cameras began to go dark when the invaders arrived because they started shooting them."

"Renew them at once!"

"Once the cameras are shot, they must be repaired or replaced, My Lady. I have already directed repairs to begin, but it will take time."

"How did they know where the cameras were? Have we a traitor in our very midst?"

Prazatch continued to adjust his armor as he jogged down the passageway, tightening shoulderguards one way, and loosening them another. "A camera is very easy to spot, My Lady. I suspect they had one of their lesser soldiers enter first and shoot them. Repair will be a simple matter, but for later, My Lady. We have them trapped in the maze with no escape." Not realizing the humans had already cracked their door codes, he continued, "If you give the command, we could launch Golezh and kill them all. It wouldn't even require full launch thrust to purge the maze of the humans and their stench."

"Launch from the silo directly, rather than lift Golezh to the surface first? It would scorch the walls, Ter Prazatch! Still…" She stopped at the realization, considered leaving the base now with her news of the new weapons' effectiveness, then realized it would be bad form to leave such a thing to chance. She would number the invader bodies herself before she considered the matter closed. "'I shall not leave the battle before it is done,'" she quoted from the Pillars of Strength. "'I will see their bodies wracked in defeat / to know my victory is truly complete.'" She leaned close to the pickup, emphasizing the term of address for an inferior. "Ter Prazatch, I will join the battle myself. A few invaders cannot withstand our strength. How many are they?"

"We originally counted fourteen, My Lady. They are not a large number, but they are–"

"And how many are left? Against our hundred? Ter Prazatch, you insult our race entire!"

"My Lady, they are well contained in our trap. The net closes around them even now."

Bundoo squinted at the video display, flashed her teeth at it. "Very well, Ter Praztch. Do not fail me."

"My Lady."

# # #

Douglass had been hunched over Sylwester, but now sat back on the ground with a sigh. "He's stable, but I'm no doctor. We've got to get to better medical. And it's not like we can just leave him. They know where we are, we can't stay here."

Landers didn't look away from the opening where her weapon was trained. "We should try to connect with the rest of the unit. Major Kyle? Major Kyle, what's your twenty?"

"We were supposed to kick their asses," Douglass said bitterly. "We can't even get back to the LV. Not as if we could take off. We still have people up there." Though hidden in shadows, he looked guiltily at the levels above. "I hope they'll still be alive when we get this place locked down."

"Where'd the Major go?"

Douglass gestured for LOSI. "Major?"

Landers also raised two fingers to the side of her helmet. "Major, are you on LOSI?"

"Yeah, right here. Where are you?"

"My suit is warning me that your laser is out. Did your comm system take a hit?"

"I didn't think so." He consulted his omnitool. "No, it looks like it's okay. Is yours busted?"

"You can't hear Douglass, but I can."

"Douglass? Dou—" His voice suddenly ended.

"Major? Are you there? I lost you mid-sentence, sir. If you can hear us, we can't hear you. Adding radio to comms, suggest you do the same."

Douglass' suit warned him that someone was approaching. "Bad guys at the door, get to cover!"

From the door came a burst of indigo, and a batarian in heavy, blade- and spike-covered armor seemed to appear where Douglass was standing, sending the man flying. The alien already had a semiautomatic shotgun in hand, and blasted quickly around where he was standing, taking down the crouching Landers and killing the injured Sylwester with two shots each, and emptying the assault shotgun into Douglass.

As the batarian vanguard surveyed his work, ground his pointed teeth once in satisfaction, continued searching the surrounding area for more Alliance troops.

# # #

Shepard didn't like standing completely exposed in a well-lit enemy corridor, but it was the first place he could get to a data line that connected directly to the base systems control, and it was the fourth place he'd found where he could attempt access at all. Precious minutes lost trying to create a distraction while the rest of the team continued to take a beating.

He waited impatiently as another VI in his combat suit eavesdropped the local traffic, compared it to hardware known states. A few seconds later, it started testing whether it could integrate with the sensors, devices, and control systems, learning as it went.

Had it been emotive, the virtual intelligence might have felt pleased that the batarian standards in its library were close enough that only minor tweaks were required. It spawned dozens of autonomous VIs and scattered them across the network, noted the security responses, and did not press for deeper access under 98% success probability. It logged the locations of critical hardware, power, stores, recycling, ordnance, and other systems.

Shepard was looking one way down the corridor, his helmet's aft camera displaying what it saw in a translucent "rear-view mirror" on its HUD. When a notifier popped up on his ARO, he squinted when it informed him that the areas of the base that had been opaque to his scanners remained inaccessible and unknown. Without being more aggressive, the cyberweapon would not be able to tell what was there.

There were more pressing matters.

"Victor Indigo, I need a distraction," he said. "Are there any critical systems that I can quickly compromise that will demand the pirates' attention?"

A list scrolled up his ARO with vulnerability assessments expressed as percentages. The most likely was only 74%. The base armory was behind two secured doors and a live guard. Its power supply had two duplicates and was not explosive. Recycling was decentralised. The silo had a Kiggs field with six generator nodes, only three of which were required to maintain it. He might be able to take out four of them with his rifle, but it would take a lot of time. The airlock they had entered through was no longer accessible.

Well…at least not for escape, he realized.

His head was starting to ache from running his cognitive acceleration at 50 percent for several continuous minutes, but he couldn't let the team down. "Victor Indigo, set the puppeteer system to autonomous, and to self-destruct if it's detected." His ARO displayed the VI's acknowledgement.

An idea struck him; he held two fingers to his ear, "Jordan, can you benzaphos the door that leads to the airlock?"

"I'm kind of busy at the moment!"

"Blow that last door and we can shoot all the way down to the airlock. We can hole the silo!"

With crosshairs on a batarian head, Jordan could only relax as a sense of hope began to grow. "On it." A squeeze of the Gorgon's trigger perforated the skulltop of an enemy who thought he was in cover; the head split open as if cleaved, spraying the troops on either side.

"I'll be out as soon as I disconnect," Shepard said. "Weapon, ready a ten-gram benza-phos round."

Jordan swiveled her massive rifle up and right. "Weapon, one hundred see-em, dee-spread, benza-phos, fifteen grams, optimize for internal heat!"

It seemed to her that it took forever for the ammo order to be processed, but just as she was about to check the status, with the door in her crosshairs, the LOAD indicator switched from green to red.

An explosion blew her legs out from under her.

# # #

Shepard heard Jordan's surprised grunt over the comm. "Unh!"

He held two fingers to his right ear, "You okay?"

Nothing.

"Jordan?" He started to run down the corridor to the silo, "Jordan, are you okay? Jordan? Jordan!" With a thumb, he decompacted the rifle, cradling it as it expanded in stages. The door ahead was still open; he pulled the ready weapon tight to his armor, crashed to a halt with his back against the doorframe. A look outside and a check of his ARO showed no enemies near; Jordan was to his left, twenty meters away.

Just past her, the balcony was a smoking ruin. Blood spurted rhythmically from the stumps of both legs.

The team always comes first.

Sprinting along the balcony, he recompacted his rifle, slung it over his forepack, grabbing her by both wrists and hauling her away from the twisted metal and burning plasteel.

"Rifle," she objected weakly. The comm helped amplify her voice so he could hear it.

As he dragged her along the balcony, Shepard glanced back; the other Gorgon-3 was simply lying there. His ARO informed him its ammo order had been filled, and it was ready to fire. Another, color-coded to show it was being provided by Jordan's suit, indicated she was losing blood fast.

How to treat her injuries?

The benzene-phosphate ammo melted flesh, and might cauterize the blood vessels, but it would be messy, might damage him, and would take time to extract it from the weapon; time he didn't have with a weapon he wasn't going to get now. Her backpack was badly damaged, but it had saved her life by crumpling under the impact of the explosion. Now the remains of it kept hanging up on the honeycomb decking; he lifted her by the harness and helmet, and carried her. The sound of occasional gunfire told him that the team was still fighting.

Reaching the still-open door, he turned quickly into the solid-floored corridor and dragged her to where the slanting wall met the floor, turning her perpendicular to it and elevating what was left of her legs.

If she had kept her aidkit in the usual left front leg pocket, it was gone now, and had taken any Medi-goo with it; he pulled his own kit out of a leg pouch and snapped it open; the self-closing tourniquet was easy to find and quickly applied to the stump of a right leg, but every motion seemed to spray blood. The biosuit layer had automatically contracted at the wounds, but once damaged, the damaged active material lacked the strength to stop the loss of blood as effectively. Trying to improvise, Shepard pulled an EVA armor patch off her shoulder and impaled it on what he could see of her left femur; the marrow was too gelatinous and gave no purchase. Blood spattered around it, leaked to the floor, covered his armored hands.

"Shit!" He chucked it aside angrily, checking his motion tracker for enemies, and then grabbing a spool of steel twine from the aidkit, estimated five centimeters of gap from the end of the stump as he twisted one end of the twine, and looped it over the stump, pulling it taut, looped it twice in the opposite direction, and pulling it again. He started winding it around the end of the stump, twisting it back to add pressure, snugging it with both hands, and winding the other way to do it again.

There was blood everywhere. He was surprised she was still conscious, but her standard-issue Alliance augmentations were apparently more help than he had expected.

She was starting to go into shock, but was aware enough to say, "Thanks." She drew her pistol from its hip holster with her left hand and put it on her breastplate. "I can keep myself safe. Go take the shot. They're getting killed down there."

Jordan's comms VI automatically adjusted the gain, but her speech was quiet, and badly slurred. What he heard was, "Thanks…keep masha safe…make a shot…getting killed downer."

"Hang on, you're not getting killed today. But first I have to tie this off. I'm not losing you." Another twist, and the improvised tourniquet would probably hold, at least long enough to go retrieve her weapon, make the door-burn shot with it, and then fire explosive-tipped rounds at the airlock doors at the end of the corridor from his own weapon. He tapped quickly on her helmet top with an armored finger. "Hey, Jordan. Hey! stay with me."

The additional computing Shepard was wearing gave him access to a first aid VI, but it needed time to scan before it could make specific recommendations. Jordan couldn't do it herself while he was away.

He lifted her left arm and worked that omnitool, switching it to First Aid mode, watched it begin its analysis. The system could control any bloodstream biotech she had, starting with the standard-issue neuroactives that would wake her safely, reduce pain, and keep her alert.

Though it would be a few minutes before they really started to help.

Taking her right wrist in one hand, he fitted her pistol back into her hand with the other, made eye contact. "Shoot anyone that's not Alliance. Defend yourself until I get back. I have to try to save the team."

She nodded once; he could see she was weak from blood loss and distress. "Remember you're armed," he patted her hand firmly, "and the saftey's off. I'll be right back." He tapped an armored finger on her helmet top, "Stay awake. We'll get you fixed up. Stay awake."

The door was still open; as he crawled to stay behind the little cover offered by the balcony rails, Shepard's ARO tagged the two drones still in the silo: drone Fox continued to move around the base frying cameras, and drone Hotel had been sent ahead right before Jordan got hit. Though the two reported their operating condition was good, drone Golf was apparently KIA.

"Drone Hotel, execute CFE, and stay in motion after. Send location data on potential targets."

He could see Jordan's weapon ahead, pointed generally toward him, but askew and easy to see against the regular grid of the balcony floor. Between the smoke and his active camouflage, he was fairly hard to see at any significant distance, but his HUD display of the suit's combat radar told him he was about to be in trouble.

*** Glossary ***

ARO: Augmented Reality Overlay

Benza-phos: benzene trinoc phosphate, a multilayer coating for ammunition that renders it explosive on contact, and then incendiary

CFE: clumsy fire evasion, a drone behavior for drawing fire away from its controller, who is either in cover or cloaked. Variations include a repeated "hop" that simulates footfalls, non-destructive collisions with obstacles, pushing open hinged doors or hatches, etc.

dee-spread: destination spread size, the diameter of the impact on weapons with control over this variable.

em-vee: MV, muzzle velocity

hortebrae: batarian's natural exoskeleton twists along two axes, and the vertically-overlapping but laterally-connected segments are referred to by Alliance biologists with a term that distinguishes them with vertebrae

HUD: Heads-Up Display

Kiggs field: an atmospheric containment shield technology, used at docks and on warships to contain atmosphere and protect against some electromagnetic radiation. Most ships carry the generators but use them only if the hull has sustained damage that compromises atmospheric integrity. Warships use them only in such circumstances, because the field is easily detected at megameter ranges.

LOSI: Line of Sight Intersuit; a telecom protocol used by the Alliance to allow fireteams to communicate with each other over short distances without having to worry about interception; primary mode of data exchange is optical, but the fallback radio component is also scrambled

Medi-goo: precursor to Medi-gel, a combination antiseptic, adhesive, and healing-promoting synthenzymes

see-em: cm, centimeters

spotter: nearly all functions performed by a spotter have been automated; a "spotter" after 2095 is just the junior of any two snipers in a group

SMRL: Shoulder-Mounted Rocket Launcher

TacDis: Tactical Display; usually wireframe to allow depiction of 3D space in 2D display media

XO: Executive Officer