A/N: Once again, sorry for the delay. I held my brother's hand and watched him die.
Michael Dean Jordan
January 1968 – April 2019
# # #
*** Torfan, Defeat ***
I don't have time for this, I have to take the shot at the doors, Shepard thought urgently.
Staying in cover and using his pistol's sight as a periscope, his ARO displayed the weapon's view across the silo-encircling balcony to his right; three pirates in heavy armor were on it with him. The one at the rear had spotted one of the drones and had stopped to shoot at it. The drone realized it had been discovered, and was doing its best to be a nuisance. Ultimately aware of its own "health," the drone went into a kamikaze mode wherein it would attempt to crash into its attacker and self-destruct, but slowing down enough to slip through the kinetic shields meant it was moving slow enough to be swatted aside and destroyed.
The three batarian pirates were still far enough around the curve of the balcony to his right that Shepard knew he was reasonably well hidden from view, but he would have to neutralize them before he could make the shots that might get enemy attention off his team.
The Advanced Sensor Pack (ASP) weighed over 90 kilos, and the powered battlesuit made it an option only at the cost of its own added mass and bulk. It had taken several days of training to realize the battlesuit's armor was intended to protect the powered exoskeleton from mere combat abuse, not turn him into a walking fortress.
Though the ASP had proven to be less helpful than expected, the requisite exoskeleton gave him the ability to reach for and lift Jordan's 18-kilo weapon with one hand. It lay on the vented balcony deck to his left. The balcony was too narrow to allow him to reverse it and still stay in cover, so once he had gripped it by the scope-handle, he toggled silent compaction by tapping the key twice. The sound of gunfire from below reminded him that every second counted.
It took almost eight seconds to complete the slower action; to Shepard it seemed to take forever. The weapon was longer and heavier than the stock build because Jordan had replaced the linac with a more powerful one that was 15 cm longer. He flipped it around and decompacted it, again slow but silent.
His ARO popped up a notifier from the weapon's conversation with his onboard computing:
Operator ID mismatch
1LT Shepard, S. H. _ SvcNo 0924-0215-0412
Mission cohort, superior, all permissions enabled
Preferences transferred and active
The display hesitated for almost a full second, and then continued:
100cm D-spread
Benzene-phosphate mod enabled, 64121 mg avail
10 g projectile, 323 g avail
Load ready
Normally, in an enclosed environment like the silo, Shepard would have fired and then cloaked; once the sound of the discharge had identified his location, he relied on stealth to remain hidden as he moved away. But with the pirates walking toward him, and he had yet to set up the shot, he would need to cloak several seconds before firing. He would also have to fire with the weapon in both hands; its kick would be strong, and he couldn't afford to aim through his ARO without potentially losing control of the rifle.
He thumbed a programmable key near the handgrip that activated his cloak; his ARO added a "glow" to the edges of his field of view once the electronic cloak was fully engaged; it would start to flash red as he began to approach the limits of its power supply. He levered the clawed monopod gently up to the balcony rail, and set the stock on the balcony deck so he could change position. His movements were precise and deliberate; they had to be. His cloak might make him difficult to see, but he could still be heard, and the silo seemed to amplify sounds as the pirates approached.
Though his helmet kept him silent to the world outside, he subvocalized out of habit, "Weapon, prepare a duplicate round for subsequent firing. Update dee-spread to maximize horizontal." Numbers and indicators appeared on his ARO, updating in realtime. At this range, he would be lucky to get three meters of spread at point of impact; the closest of the three was only fifty-one meters away. With the weapon fitted to his shoulder, the suit's kinesthetic transfer was subtle enough to let him feel the shift in weight as the accelerators slid to different locations along the inside of the barrel.
Updated D-spread at 50m range: 292cm
Load ready
The scope's dedicated VI detected an authorized human operator holding it in a firing position, and flipped open the scope's protective covers. Without the direct data feed to his ARO, Shepard watched the scope view zoom out and the crosshair circle compress vertically into a 20 degree ellipse, showing the area the shot would cover with its new spread. Because he was aiming to the right, he was having to shoot left-handed. As he moved his body to track the three pirates, his shoulder pressed against a light truss. There was no way to move it, no choice but to take the shot early.
Better make sure I get the two closer ones.
Aiming higher to get the head of the closest pirate at the right-hand edge of the ellipse, he squeezed the trigger just a little too quickly. With the benza-phos coating igniting as it made contact with air, the muzzle flare was spectacular. His accelerated perception just barely allowed him to see the yellow-orange jet of flaming shrapnel as if it were being sprayed like a liquid, growing from the muzzle and expanding horizontally as it did.
The battlesuit kept the weapon from crushing his shoulder against the vertical truss; a red notifier flashed on Shepard's ARO. Warning: Accelerator failure. It added a wireframe assembly view of the weapon, showing which of the four accelerators had burned out.
The batarian shields sparked as they were overwhelmed; the top half of the one batarian, and the head of the other looked like they had been firehosed with black paint before they collapsed. The third, delayed in approach by the drone, was too busy dealing with flaming armor to notice that the cloaked Shepard had dropped back into cover and cancelled the cloak.
The error display appeared to hang in the air in front of Shepard, showing that the functioning linacs were reconfiguring in an attempt to compensate for the failure, but he would have to buy it some time to make the attempt.
Come on, I just need one more shot out of you, he thought to the rifle. "Weapon, update dee-spread to focus at target. Optimize for weapon condition. Benzaphos ordnance dump."
He also chose to get his own weapon started on its ammo order in case Jordan's didn't work out, pulling his compacted rifle under his arm on its sling to where he could get his right hand around its pistol grip. "Weapon, explosive rounds, max available payload that allows for two rapid shots."
The order winked on his ARO just long enough for him to know it was correct; still holding the grip of Jordan's weapon with his left hand, he drew his sidearm with his right. A shot from below ricocheted off the balcony, reminding him to stay in cover.
Though the active cloak kept him difficult to see, the pirates knew approximately where he was; Shepard was betting his life that his cloak would give him time to target the last enemy on the balcony.
The batarian bringing up the rear had been spared much of the impact due to distance, though its shields had been overloaded by the cannon blast from the rifle. Still standing – or at least "dancing" – the pirate swatted at the flames on upper armor and head. The unnatural slowness of the flames' motion reminded Shepard that he had a momentary advantage, but that it was quickly slipping away.
With his pistol already up, he had the luxury of time to aim carefully; the angle of the batarian's head meant three of the alien's four eyes were clearly visible. He fired twice; fragments of ammunition were already embedded in the silo wall by the time the alien's unhelmeted head jerked back.
Shepard's ARO notified him that the shortened cloak had allowed for a speedy recharge: CLOAK AVAILABLE. Gunfire sparked off the deck to his right, spraying shrapnel; the length of the Gorgon's barrel had bought him enough distance to stay unhurt after that first shot. He flung his pistol to the right to draw fire farther in that direction; it clattered along the balcony, sparks of gunfire surrounding it.
The cloak took about a second and a half to engage; once it indicated it was active, he placed the monopod claw on the balcony rail and aimed quickly across the silo. The door in his sights gave every appearance of a ruggedized, armored "blast door," designed to withstand the vertical launch of a cruiser-sized warship even in the event the pirates couldn't lift it to the surface first. Defaulting to protect the base beyond the silo wall, it had closed behind the Alliance team, making escape difficult even if the balcony had not been destroyed. He centered it in the crosshairs, noticed the weapon's report of its current status:
150cm D-spread
15g payload
Benza-phos ammo
Optimized for penetration
This time, he read and noticed the load size, balking at the idea of abusing Jordan's weapon with a load nearly ten times what it was designed to throw. It says it's compensated, and I'm out of options.
The scope of Jordan's rifle showed the new ammo order was READY; he squeezed the trigger. The battlesuit servos made an unusual noise, and he felt the rifle crack unnaturally. He didn't see any warning that it had failed again, but he immediately toggled the rifle to compact and heaved it to his right, using its inertia to roll away to the left.
Without the explosion on the opposite side of the silo, the pirates would have figured out where he'd fired from.
Coming out of the roll, he broke another drone off the other thigh pack and snapped it open, started issuing orders as soon as he had it in hand, "Drone Hotel, continue CFE around the balcony. Autonomous fire mode, aggressive." He tossed it further to his left.
The drone dropped to the balcony, hitting with a clank, seemed to hop about a meter away and bounce off the deck again, continuing to make the sound and placement of running feet. There was no way to tell how long it would be able to remain active, or how far it would get.
Shepard hunkered down and waited for the cloak to recharge from his suit's massive supercapacitors.
A peek through the balcony rails showed that the door was still burning. The hole he had blown in it was large enough that Shepard could see he would have to move to his right to shoot straight down it. Crawling on his belly, moving as quickly as the added mass of the ASP and Gorgon allowed, he headed to his right.
He could see through the balcony enough to tell when the lines of the hall converged at the visual centre of the hole. Checking left and right, he saw no immediate threats. The pirates were all on the lowest level, firing up toward the noise from the drone, where they thought he was. Assault rifle fire from below was mostly hitting to his left. He had time to notice individual pieces of shrapnel spinning as they flew away from the points of impact, apparently in slow-motion, flickering as they glowed.
The drone had apparently judged itself to be far enough away that it could open fire on the batarians below; their return fire created enough noise that Shepard started crawling faster, grabbing and re-holstering his pistol once he came to it.
The renewed noise of the firefight also allowed him to decompact his rifle at full speed. He noticed the drone was both active camouflaged and staying in constant motion; though useless at that range for killing shielded batarians, it was highly effective at drawing fire away from him as it continued to move away from his position on the balcony.
At last: CLOAK AVAILABLE
He tapped the programmable key on his weapon, set its butt stock on the deck as his cloak began to engage, slid the monopod as far forward as it would go, attached it to the balcony rail.
As the cloak indicator lit on his ARO, he rose up on his knees and fitted the stock to his shoulder. The smoking remains of the doors slid back into the crosshairs, he saw through the smoke well enough to adjust his aim down the length of the tunnel.
Rangefinder on the ARO indicated 880 meters to target; that seemed about right. A quick pan of the rifle took a reading on the silo wall, 423 meters to the other side of the silo. He returned the crosshairs to their more distant target.
Can't afford to miss, he thought, methodically squeezing 1500 grams of pressure on the trigger.
Though the dampened recoil still would have been enough to dislocate his shoulder without the exoskeleton, the sound of the discharge seemed little more than a "thoop."
But there was a flash from the hole in the blast doors, and the sound of a distant explosion; the unarmored airlock doors had crazed and shattered under the attack. The explosion at the far end of the access tunnel behaved like the black powder firearm it resembled; even at most of a kilometer's distance, the explosion of the airlock inner door effectively turned the tunnel into a cannon, blowing shrapnel into the silo through the doors.
Debris and smoke were still clearing, so he used the regular lines of the connecting passageway to aim at the same location. Though it was going to take an agonizing 1968 milliseconds for the ultracapacitor to recharge the accelerators, the time required for him to be sufficiently confident of his aim meant he only had to wait a few milliseconds for the status to update:
Load ready
He squeezed the trigger again.
thoop
Another blast from the other side of the silo shoved him back, but this time, the fireball erupting from the airlock accessway extinguished itself as it seemed to drain away from him, pulling him forward as the silo began to quickly lose its atmosphere.
Fire from below momentarily stopped.
Shepard deactivated the monopod claw, lifted his weapon from the balcony rail and moved left; the armor motors made a little extra noise as he hunched forward to stay in cover with the sensor pack.
The silo's entire massive structure groaned and bent; it was surreal to watch the floors seem to compress visibly, as if he were inside an accordion. Designed to contain an atmospheric pressure higher than that of the batarian homeworld, the framework creaked as it deflated; two entire levels of lights in the silo flickered and went out together. The base was more fragile than he'd expected.
The silo continued to sound like it was about to collapse; another level, and then everything below it, went dark as well.
His infrared was suddenly working, and the ARO covered his field of view with locations of heat sources, almost certainly the base personnel.
Shepard switched his LOSI, hoping he might be able to speak to the entire team, "This is Shepard, I've holed the silo. If you're not in the silo, the batarians are going to be in a hurry to get out of it."
Silence.
"Who's alive?"
More silence.
"Task Force Vel, this is Shepard, Lead Tech." He toggled his rifle to compact it, slung it over his back. "Comm check, is anyone on?"
While targets continued to move on his radar, none of the bogeys had tags marking them as team members.
"Victor Indigo, transmit Alliance hail on binary and Morse channels."
Infrared sources scurried about below him, and his ARO displayed the atmospheric pressure dropping quickly, if perhaps not as quickly as he would have liked. Only the silo's seal was compromised; on the other side of the armored doors, the pirates were still breathing. They weren't dead, but they would now be much constrained, at least until they got into pressure suits of some variety.
Getting them out of the silo would be a greater advantage than usual; batarians apparently had some philosophical issues with helmets, and only wore them when actually EVA. Something in their culture that declared the combat protection offered by an armored helmet to be somehow dishonourable. They also believed – almost universally – that when they died, they didn't really die. It wasn't reincarnation, it was more like payment for services rendered. The more one's actions and choices aligned with their caste duties, the greater their reward, regardless of the level of that caste. (Unless one was a noble, and was told that the higher castes received greater rewards.)
It was as rational as any other religion, but it gave him the option to use the tactic of evacuating the air in the silo; the batarians it didn't kill would retreat to the areas that still had atmosphere.
In the back of his mind, Shepard knew it might be too late, but he refused to acknowledge this. He had to get back to Jordan; he at least wasn't going to lose her. His ARO informed him that his cloak would be available in another minute; he pressed himself against the silo wall as he moved toward the nearest hatch, watching for heat signatures. "Jordan." He paused briefly to compact his rifle for easier carrying. "Jordan!"
No answer.
He stepped up the comm to transmit on all the mission-approved channels and scrambler settings.
"Major, are you there?"
His ARO displayed, MAJ. KYLE: Ack, and then indicated it had located the transmission frequency and switched the transmitter back to that channel only.
"Major, I've holed the silo, the team should be able to regroup and recover until the batarians send someone else…like a pirate of another species, if there are any. Are you ERA?"
Silence.
"Do you have a twenty on anyone else on the team?"
Silence. He looked quickly around the silo as if expecting to find anyone he knew.
"Do you still have VOX?"
Silence.
"Major are you still there?"
MAJ. KYLE: Ack
Shepard frowned to himself.
"Major, are you hurt?"
Silence.
Either Kyle was being held at gunpoint and couldn't even risk subvocalizing, or he was seriously wounded and at least partially disabled. Shepard had arrived at the door, but froze once he had his hand on it; opening it would let him check on Jordan, but it would release air from the other side, too. He had too many things on his mind to consider that Kyle's comm might be spoofed.
"Do you need assistance?"
MAJ. KYLE: Ack
Shepard keyed the door and pulled himself inside (the pressure of the outrushing air was briefly challenging.)
"I don't know where anyone else is, sir. Jordan's hurt, and unconscious, but I've holed the silo as a distraction, and I'm headed back to her now. I think the silo is safe for the moment because the batarians won't go into it until they can repressurise, but I'm circling the balcony to take down any of them that I can. I'll stabilise her and then come find you. Shepard out."
# # #
Prazatch had been on the floor of the silo when an explosion at the doors to the dump was followed by a noticable drop in pressure; his upper eyes shifted in their sockets as he adjusted for it. He knew it would take five or six fesar before all the air was significantly evacuated. Getting out of the silo was urgent but not enough to distract him overmuch.
He looked quickly around him for any other invaders before realizing that the explosive decompression had been preceded by a sound. He paused to recall the sound. Not a missile…it was weapons fire! The invaders had not detonated charges deliberately left at the dump airlock; instead, one of them must have used a high-powered rifle with an explosive payload.
It had been a tactic, not their strategy, and such a shot could only have been fired from one location: The balcony, exactly opposite the doors, and the length of the corridor meant there could only be one location on that balcony that would allow it.
He turned quickly, looking up toward the place.
There was a series of clanks from somewhere to his right, high on that same balcony. Was the shooter running in active camouflage? He listened, focused on the balcony for a few seconds. The evacuating air would make it increasingly hard to hear any future noises. He drew his sidearm and fired three shots toward the sound of the running human, then turned and headed to the safety of the circum-silo rooms that remained unbreached, stopping as he realized there was still hope…if he could get there in time. He turned and ran toward the door directly below where the humans had come into the base.
Curse you, humans. You're going to spook the Mighty-born, and she'll do something that will cost all of us.
Yanking the pickup off his shoulder, he barked into his communicator, "Someone get to Level Eight and shoot down at the cursed human, it's opposite the dump doorway and headed east! Ten thousand Favors to the one who brings me its head!"
# # #
Shepard continued to circle the empty side of the dual silo, away from the drone. Motion on the silo floor caught his eye.
Too far to hit 'em reliably with this. He perched his Gorgon-3's clawed monopod on the balcony rail, adjusted its setting for antipersonnel fire rather than antimateriel; better shield-busting, less incendiary on impact, much higher cyclic rate. Three batarians were working their way through the contra-Venturi maze. With the way they were moving, he would not be able to hit all of them with a single shot unless he got lucky and timed it very well.
His combat radar pinged and highlighted a target approaching from his right. He turned, not even having time to pull his rifle back inside the balcony rails before he was hit by a something moving at incredible speed.
Though the impact was unlike anything he'd encountered since getting hit by a ground car, his shields and armor protected him against most of the assault. After his shield failed, the armor on his helmet, right arm and leg cracked and ablated. Though the backpack absorbed much of the impact, it still knocked Shepard several meters along the balcony's length. Before he could get up, he saw the biotically-glowing batarian racing toward him in blade-covered armor combat knives in each hand. With a leap, it was on him.
Shepard's implant compensated for the impact's effects on his brain, and he was already running at 50% acceleration, but the batarian was a dangerous weapon in blade-covered armor. His HUD flickered off as his helmet took the brunt of the impact.
The first blade strike was mostly withstood by Shepard's armor; he didn't have time to notice his weapon had been knocked from his hands and over the rail.
Though pinned face down, his head was not locked in place; he could turn his head freely inside the outer helmet to look around. The VR reproduction of the world let him see what the batarian was doing, as it stabbed at him rapidly and repeatedly.
The N7 hand-to-hand training was freshly in memory, and he could see that his attacker had not completely pinned him as intended; the alien's right foot was within reach. He couldn't bend his arm at the elbow, but slid his right arm along the deck once the weight came off it, grabbed the end of the alien's foot (where its toes would have been,) twisting down and back as hard as he could. As his helmet HUD winked back on, Shepard could feel the armor's motorized joints power up to assist as he torqued the foot.
The effect was gratifyingly instantaneous; the knife came down in the wrong place and entirely the wrong angle, its remaining force deflected by his armor. The bonus was the crunch of bone and metal that followed. The batarian yelped, leaping up and away, its full-auto shotgun clattering across the balcony, slipping under the rail and over the edge. Shepard felt a rush of adrenaline as he heard what was likely a curse in batarian.
Once the weight was off his head, he looked up to see where his attacker was; the internal display covered most of the inside of the opaque armored helmet, showing the view he would have had without it. The batarian had somersaulted forward, landed on its feet, and then sprang into the air again, out of reach.
His implant gave Shepard a little extra time to consider his next move; he rolled over to see the batarian running toward him again, open mouth full of pointed teeth. Pulling a combat knife from his right calf, Shepard spun in place and backed into the alien, letting the oversized backpack again take most of the impact before the alien's knife clanked against battlesuit plate armor. His own knife came down from overhead, the motorized armor powering the blade into the batarian's skull.
No cry of anger or anguish followed; Shepard wondered if he'd missed. As the alien tried to grip him, Shepard released the knife, leaving it embedded, squatting and grasping for the alien's collar. The batarian pushed, tried to drive its hand-blades between Shepard's suit and the ASP, clanking against the human armor as it did. Shepard curled forward and pulling the heavy alien overhead with the help of his power armor, then jumped up and slightly back so he'd land atop the alien, hoping to crush it under a half ton of T-3 and pack.
They landed with a crunch, but before Shepard could press the attack, there was a purple explosion underneath him, and he found himself hurtling toward the balcony above at a speed he simply couldn't believe.
The impact was devastating; it deformed parts of his armor, bending longitudinal exoskeleton supports, knocking the wind out of him and cracking six ribs. More startled than stunned, he took over three seconds to figure out what had happened during the fall back to the balcony four meters below. The batarian was clearly in control; it shoved the human away as they fell, orienting so it could land on its feet.
Shepard's tumble through the air was easy to calculate for the onboard anticipator. The system had started automatically when his VI noticed he had engaged in hand-to-hand, and it painted his impact point on the part of the balcony he could see. His ARO also indicated the attacker was about to be behind him; Shepard hit the deck, bounced once, then rolled onto his back so he could draw his sidearm.
He had only gotten his hand on the weapon's grip before the batarian had run up toward him, hands joined, and delivered an armor-clad blow that would have shattered a human skull. Though the helmet saved Shepard's life, its HUD and external display failed; Shepard found himself in complete darkness.
Such a failure was supposed to be impossible, except with the kind of impact that would have incapacitated or killed a battlesuit operator. Even helmeted, the impact should have rendered him unconscious, but his implant made further adjustments to blood flow within his brain, boosted vestibular functions, and automatically adjusted the overclock down ten percent as adrenaline distorted his perception. As his head slammed against the wall, his implant continued to make consciousness possible with further compensation.
Without stopping to think, he reached for the helmet and tried to remove it, flailing as he did. The pistol clunked uselessly against the armor, allowing Shepard to see that the ARO's anticipator was the only display still working. It rendered the batarian as a wireframe construct, showing it was preparing to bludgeon him to death with an omnitool-like extension on its armored gauntlets.
The power armor on Shepard's legs was still working, and he leapt away clumsily, crashing into a piece of technology projecting from the silo wall, and knocking him on his back. Still, it bought him an extra second.
Relying entirely on the anticipator to see anything, he saw his own hands come up in wireframe, gripping the pistol and recoiling as he fired. Shots deflected harmlessly away as the batarian ran toward him. Highlights made it clear that the attack was useless.
Before the batarian reached him, Shepard fired two more times, both shots veering away from the alien's head thanks to its overpowered shields. The wireframe rendering didn't show the knife handle protruding from above the two right eyes, let alone blood running thickly down the alien face; the combat radar was at the limits of its resolution already.
How close do I have to be?
Only his acceleration made this extra second or two of prediction helpful; the forecast grew and shrank as the system showed what it knew must follow a given set of conditions. Motion, inertia, and mass dictated vectors of force, which in turn dictated how a given body would move. The result was an ability to respond more quickly to changing circumstances of hand-to-hand. Normally, the overlay effect was almost invisible, influencing his subconscious along very specific lines to optimize his responses. By itself, the display was difficult to read.
The batarian's hands were joined to deliver another crushing blow, but Shepard's fall had spoiled the attack. The unexpected stumble resulted in the batarian stepping on Shepard's left leg and tripping to the right, twisting the leg and forcing Shepard to roll left; the human pulled his right leg in and kicked toward his attacker's crotch.
The motorised kick landed squarely, propelling the attacker up and over the balcony rail, but otherwise doing little damage. To Shepard's accelerated perception, the alien also seemed to slow down as it began to reach the top of its arc, glowing with distinctively ultraviolet energy.
A biotic attack? Whatever it was, it had already recharged. There was just enough time to see it pull its arms and legs in closer to its body before it seemed to both explode and race suddenly towards him.
Though his kinetic shields had started to recharge, the impact failed them again; Shepard was smashed to the balcony deck. The exoskeleton saved him from significant injury, but the batarian's armor had blades all over it, making the armor into a Morningstar-like weapon.
Neither had time to react before the impact knocked them apart; pistol still in hand, Shepard snapped off two shots as they fell head-first away from each other, the forecast display highlighting where to aim his weapon parallel to the deck. The "opening" at the bottom of the bell-shaped shields would be toward him if he could get the batarian to fall away from him toward the deck; he aimed the pistol where the batarian would fall, and began to pull the trigger as rapidly as he could.
But another shot hit Shepard's arm first. The pirates on the silo deck had heard the noises of the struggle above, and had fired up toward him in support of their compatriot as they made for the safety of the still-pressurized parts of the base.
Though his shields and armor slowed the round to a "conventional" speed, the impact smashed his arm to the left as if hit by a cricket bat, fouling his aim. The batarian scrambled away from him, the shield opening still facing Shepard; the ARO forecast showing it was likely to roll and try to get back to its feet. Accelerated, Shepard knew he would only be able to get the weapon back on target if he brought his arm back to target without slowing to stop and aim it.
He swept his arm to the right as fast as he could; the single round from his pistol entered below the chin and blew the alien's brains out the top of its skull. His acceleration allowed Shepard to see the organic spray slowed into perfect, shimmering detail, diffused by the shields into a chunk-filled miasma before it covered the wall and balcony above with reddish paste.
In the milliseconds that followed, Shepard was reminded of his wife's suicide; the neurotronics noted this and dutifully replayed the event in all its detail, squeezing it duration into an eighth of its actual time while retaining all the impact of the sound – so loud it seemed to come from all around him – and the spray of red, her last expression, his sense of horror, of loss, of failure.
It was as if he had pulled the trigger himself.
No!
His eyes widened, mouth opened in shock. He rolled forward and dove toward the batarian in another attempt to save his wife.
STOP! STOP!
His "overclocked" brain made the compressed memory flash past more quickly, but impossible to avoid the emotional impact; it felt like his heart was being squeezed in a steel vice, a weight of icy dread at the pit of his stomach. His neurotronics responded to the command by halting playback.
His organic brain was not as easy to control. Having relived it in a fraction of a second, the emotions flooded his brain as if for the first time.
The barrage from below sparked and ricocheted off the balcony struts, bludgeoned him back to the present, white hot outrage, grieving, helpless.
Huddled against the body of his attacker, it took several seconds for him to notice the dead batarian's overpowered shields were still active. He rolled the body toward the railing, using it as cover.
Seeing that their comrade had been killed, the three on the silo floor concentrated fire on the balcony, firing as rapidly as they could.
Shepard huddled against the dead batarian as relativistic bullets continued to spark and ricochet around him. Memories of the colony at Elysium filled his brain; he hadn't been able to stop the slavetaking and butchering there, and the combination of adrenaline and implant-enhanced regret put him in a rage. "Stop, stop! Stop! God damn you all to hell, stop it!"
For a few seconds, all he could do was stay in cover behind the batarian, fighting to stamp the emotional trauma back.
The gunfire brought him back to the present with a gasp. He was beating uselessly at the head of the batarian whose body was currently protecting his own, curled on the grate deck, still grieving his wife, the colonists on Elysium, his team.
The team…may still be alive. Get up, find them, help them! No one else can do it!
"Come on, get up!" He shouted at himself, "Go, go, go!" It was like waking up; his mind began to clear. "Victor Indigo, where are the drones?"
Three windows appeared on his ARO, two showing him what the drones saw, and his combat radar, uselessly blank. It took an extra second for him to realize exactly what the drones were seeing.
"Drone Golf, attack the pirates ahead of you, all weapons authorized, go go go!"
At first, there was no immediate response. Next to him, the dead batarian's shield wavered, about to fail.
Where's my rifle? He looked up and around frantically, saw the barrel of his weapon poking up over the top of the balcony only a couple of meters away, dangling by the monopod's powered claw.
As he scrambled toward it, the drone POV displays showed the still-functioning drone scooting toward the batarian soldiers, an arc of electric assault illuminating all three of them as it raced past. The batarian at the rear jerked and crumpled, the one in the middle froze as the overload essentially shorted out his neurology. The one at the front managed to remain standing and fired after the drone, which had veered sharply right.
Within the few seconds that it took, the attack had collapsed all three aliens' shields. Shepard had used the time to grab his rifle off the balcony rail and bring it to bear. His weapon's electronics connected directly to his ARO, and he suddenly saw the full-color scope view of his weapon's sight. Without a customized ammunition order, or time to fill it, one-gram hollow cones were the ammoshaver's default. Three quick shots resulted in sprays of yellow and red.
Shepard's rifle beeped its overheat warning via his implant, but the silo resonated with the last echoes of the firefight, falling silent as air continued to escape.
# # #
Prazatch sprinted around the ring formed by the main level of the silo, hoping against hope that he could stop the explosive decompression.
The base had been built on the low-gravity aggregated planetescimal with the understanding that its low gravity also meant its consistency was more like a well-packed dirt clod, and not as stable as a fully rocky body. The dump, used for everything from radioactive materials to biohazards to outright junk, had been deliberately put as far from the base as possible. The connecting tube was more like a flexible jetway than a cave passage.
But the tube's excessive length also left it subject to the squeezings and bendings of the moon's low-density composition, and how it responded to changes in its gravitational environment. The tube had been designed to withstand the possibility of significant damage by having explosive foam seals installed at regular intervals along the length of the tunnel. Since the base had begun operations, a number of these had been set off automatically. It was more nuisance than help, and so the charges had been reconfigured so they could only be set off manually.
The door at the end of a hall opened into the the Dump's accessway, and Prazatch found himself facing 60 KPH winds. As the air behind him also began to rush out, he yanked open a service panel and pulled two large mechanical levers.
At the far end of the passage, explosive bolts blew panels off opposing walls of the hexagonal corridor, spilling quick-curing foam into the corridor and sealing it shut.
Prazatch leaned against the control panel and breathed a sigh of relief. He pulled the comm's handheld pickup off his shoulder so he could inform Lady Bundoo that the base was safe.
# # #
The base had never made such noises before, and Lady Bundoo had clearly heard the alarm in Prazatch's voice.
This seems to have been more than common Warriors can handle. She scratched idly at the jewelry hanging around her neck. Perhaps the underling had been right when he first suggested using Golezh. Not to purge the attackers, but to leave them behind: The power of the Leviathan energy weapon could easily bring us victory against the cursed humans in any significant conflict.
She turned to her GPC and replayed the scanner data of the human vessel being completely obliterated by the weapon, at transorbital range, and in motion. The scanner did not even show shrapnel or debris.
She played it again, and considered, The Hegemon has spoken boldly in Council; with a weapon of this power, such bravado could truly allow us to reclaim our rightful resource worlds in the Traverse, and beyond.
Turning to face the enormous image of the Hegemon that hung on a highly visible wall, her major eyes began to squint in avarice. And such a weapon, presented by the Bundoo Peer, would surely be remembered…with generosity.
She paused, imagining the effects of such influence and increased holdings.
Yes, perhaps it is time for me to take the weapon and return to the palace in victory. I have no further use for this place.
She activate the communicator. "Dovan, I am ready to depart and release this base. How quickly can you load the test weapon?"
"My Lady." An image of Golezh's captain appeared on a display. The bow he performed gave him time to consider her words, try to hear through to her intent. "My Lady, it can only operate when powered by its original generators. We will need at least five days to configure them for use aboard Golezh."
"There are other generators," she gestured haughtily. She had seen them, larger and more powerful, gathered from the old, dead starship. "I only want to take the weapon. How long to load that alone?"
"It is in the room next to the top of the silo. Technical Logististics can have it removed to Forward Cargo in about fifty fesar."
She glowered imperiously into the pickup.
The captain was quite accustomed to Lady Bundoo's moods, and offered a padded option, "If we use all hands, we can have it aboard in…ah…fifteen."
Bundoo nodded her approval. "You are granted twenty."
Golezh's captain bowed his head. "My Lady is as generous as she is wise."
Bundoo switched off the comm and reached for the basewide PA, spoke briskly into the pickup.
# # #
With air rushing out of the silo, Shepard had exited through the nearest hatch he could find, fought to close it before realizing he was not at the same one he had entered.
"Victor Indigo, what's wrong with the battlesuit?" Unhelpfully, the ARO only indicated the HATS system had failed completely; he would not be able to control it with his omnitool until the hypervisor restarted it. Damage to his helmet was significant; the opaque visor with its failed HUD still wouldn't open. It would still provide armor, but he'd have to take it off to hear or see anything.
Though the helmet looked unusually large from the outside, its inner and outer shells were separated by a network of synthetic muscles. Normally, they protected the user from kinetic impacts, and allowed the operator to not have to bear its 13 kilos of added load at the neck.
Pressing and turning the manual releases, Shepard struggled out of it, hearing a voice speaking over a PA system as he did. Whatever it was saying, it sounded like it was repeating itself.
He poked and swiped at his omnitool gauntlet; an auxiliary suit VI translated the announcement on his ARO: Flight crew, prepare Golezh for launch. Base crew, prepare for burial.
He subvocalized, "Victor Indigo, what the hell does that mean? They're leaving, but only taking the ship and complement?"
Correct, answered his VI. It provided NetBite links to articles about batarian culture and its essentially four-tier caste system; Shepard waved the summaries away distractedly. This whole mission had gone straight to hell.
The cruiser, still half-bathed in spotlights even after the power failures, mocked him from the other side of the tandem silo. The base was to be self-destructed? The cruiser they were here to stop would launch in spite of everything?
He was suddenly angry. Not to-god-damned-day you don't.
He quietly recompacted his rifle as he limped along the balcony, issuing commands to his omnitool. His ARO displayed handshake data from the sensorpack, then reported all current systems failures. Another command to link the suit sensors to the omnitool had failed at the HATS interface, which would need to be repaired or replaced.
Everything else is broken.
He put a hand to a compartment on his battlesuit's right thigh, found the device unique to this mission.
Except this.
Shepard frowned as he limped quietly toward the pirate cruiser. He stopped only long enough to lower the shattered remains of the ASP, studying the recorded information, checked his own rifle once more via omnitool.
He might not live long enough to save the rest of the team – they might all be dead – but he would stop this ship from attacking another colony, cost be damned.
*** Glossary ***
Ack: Acknowledged
AO: Area of Operation
ARO: Augmented Reality Overlay
ASP: Advanced Sensor Pack
CFE:Clumsy Fire Evasion, a drone protocol that simulates a running or walking biped as a means of drawing enemy fire or attention by descending quickly and making noise on contact with the ground, then lifting off again, flying forward and up, and repeating the process.
Contra-Venturi maze: An engineering reversal of the Venturi effect, used where slowing a flowrate is needed at a blast port intake. In a missile silo, this can reduce a high-speed, high-temp exhaust plume into a flow that can be managed by a less expensive duct or porting system.
DCE: Distributed Computing Environment
ERA: Expert, Ready, and Able
exfil: exfiltration, departing the site of an operation with as much stealth as possible; the term is sometimes incorrectly applied to a team departing a site while still exchanging fire with the enemy
GPC: General Purpose Computer (cf. DCE or VDI)
HATS: Helmet Augmentation and Telemetrics System
Ordnance dump: normally performed during departure from the AO, this is the tossing overboard of all hazardous munitions to minimize their potential to explode at an inopportune time. Grenades, for example, would have pins pulled and be forcibly ejected, conventional ammoblocks would not. Ammunition modifier consumables (such as incendiary or explosive materials) would also be ejected at such time.
PA: Public Address
POV: Point Of View
VDI: Virtualised Data Infrastructure
VI: Virtual Intelligence
VOX: Voice XMIT; incorporating the acronym "XMIT" (for "transmit") it is voice-activated transmission, rather than PTT (Press To Talk,) which requires holding down a key to activate the transmitter
