Chapter 35. Plan Dravoksha
19. October 2407 AD, Arcturus Station
"Very worrying indeed, Director," she spoke as she folded her hands on the wooden desk in front of her after putting down the report on the most recent series of incidents within the Skyllian Verge. Batarian incursions on secluded human systems, slaver raids seemingly acting as probing attacks, large fleet movements within the outer territories of the Hegemony and of course the complete lack of any communication about it from the batarian government were all signs that something bad was going on.
"Worrying isn't the word I'd use, Ma'am," Jack Harper replied, his unnaturally blue eyes, experimental prosthetics according to himself, narrowing in response. She knew that he was here for more than just reporting on the latest developments.
"What do you propose that we should do about it then?" she asked, her intention less that of actually learning the plan he had most likely prepared some time ago and more along the lines of getting some indication of his standing on the matter. The more experienced members of her government expected a preemptive strike against anything that could remotely pose a threat, projecting their memory of the previous chancellor onto her, a projection she didn't want to live up to. While she had no personal problem with the man, respecting the fact that he had gotten them through the worst times humanity had experienced in centuries, the fact remained that Noé had been too 'trigger happy' for his own good. The aggressive tendencies he had already displayed during his military career had resulted in a rather offensive foreign policy. Unlike herself, the man had never shied away from using the military as one of his first options when faced with situations like this, a habit that involuntarily had caused the unprecedented slaver problem they were currently experiencing.
"For now we need to figure out just what they're up to," the man began as he straightened in his chair. "The batarians have played us in the past, we can't let that happen again. My recommendation is that you order us to launch an independent operation in the region, give us some time to gather intel. We're currently operating under the HSAIS but we could do so much more on our own. Parts of this operation are being prepared in the Terminus, that's a region Cerberus is familiar with. We could get started within the week."
She let out a small sigh as she considered the man's words. She had her reasons for putting Noé's attack dogs onto something akin to a leash for now. With humanity working towards a seat on the council, Cerberus could ill afford to be discovered, an event they had gotten far too close to in the past, when their opponents had been pirates and slavers, not the Batarian Hegemony itself. While she didn't doubt that the other members of the Citadel Council had their own secretive black-ops divisions, the fact remained that none of them officially existed. Sure, the turians would probably be willing to look over it, Cerberus had done them a favour some time ago, and the salarian would consider Cerberus as nothing but yet another unit operating outside of the code of law. The real problem were the asari. While their councilor and some of their republics were very much trying their best to mend the wounds Tevos had created, a lot of the more influential people within their society would use Cerberus as a welcome leverage against them. All kinds of allegations could be made about Harper's subordinates, it would shatter humanity's trustworthyness for years to come. They could make Cerberus responsible for events that had played out only in the HSA's favour and in turn render all of the good will it had gathered over the years in vain.
But none of that changed the reality of Cerberus working better outside of the confines of the HSA, that had been the entire reason it had been founded to begin with. Could she really afford keeping one of their best sources of foreign intelligence out of the equation if the batarians were gearing up for what could very well be an act of war? Could she risk tens of millions of lives for the sake of maintaining a good reputation and the hopes of more diplomatic influence? The answer to those questions was rather obvious and besides, if the talks she had with Noé before formally taking up the office were any indication, 'acting on his own initiative' was not exactly something Harper shied away from when he deemed it necessary. Not only would she hate to dismiss him for insubordination, he was undeniably useful for situations such as this one, but the chance of him doing something rash were also far higher if he was acting on his own. The best course of action for both of them was to give him a formal mandate that would keep him from once more going on his own way.
"Alright, Director Harper," she started as the man kept looking at her. "I'm giving you the permission to separate yourself from the HSAIS for the time being. Find out what the batarians are doing and keep me updated on all developments."
"Yes, Ma'am."
"And if there's even the slightest possibility that this is even bigger than we think it is, do everything in your power to delay it. If they're preparing for war, we don't just need to know it, we need time to shore up our own defenses."
"You can rely on Cerberus," the man nodded before getting up. "If there's nothing else, I best get started immediately."
"Of course, you're dismissed, Director Harper."
Without another word, he left the room, only throwing back a short look as he closed the door. Allowing herself no pause, she decided to summon the heads of all service branches. She needed them to make some preparations or more accurately, she needed them to find a way to move more troops into the Verge without letting the batarians know that they knew what was going on. While she'd exhaust every other option before resorting to armed conflict, nothing stood in the way of tipping the odds in their favour. The batarians weren't the only ones who could put up a decent ruse.
13. March 2408 AD, Cronos Station
"Come on, batarian, start talking," the voice crackled through the recording as he dipped his cigarette into the ashtray, the faint, dampened glow of the star behind him causing some of the larger smoke particles to glisten as they spread through the air. Returning the end of the cigarette to his lips, the wet sound of a fist impacting with the alien's face doing little to lift his mood, he pulled in another breath of smoke.
"Arrogant vermin," a deep, distinctively batarian baritone simply returned through pain-induced grunts, his beaten and bloody face still defiant even when a white gauntlet cracked across his temple hared enough to knock most people out. But in spite of its force and presumably because of the slightly denser bones batarians possessed, the batarian simply spit out some dark-red blood before bursting out into a chuckle. "Is this the best you can do, human? I had worse in basic training. You'll have to try harder," the alien declared as his needlelike teeth presented themselves in a smile only for some of them to fly through the air not moments later when the fist of the operative smashed into the side of his face once more.
"The stupid bastard won't talk, Sir," another human voice from beyond the helmet camera replied, causing the Cerberus operative to cease his beating for a few moments while turning towards the figure in a heavy set of white armor as it stared out of the window of the prefab building they were occupying, the dirt brown wasteland outside making it impossible to tell just where the scene was taking place. "Let's just off him before his buddies come looking for him."
"Negative, we've got to get this information," the first voice countered, slowly cracking his knuckles before looking at the dark-red stains coating their armored surface. "I can do this all day," he reassured the alien, his brownish features clearly betraying the pain he was feeling. When his captive gave no reply, the man that had made the recording fulfilled his promise, throwing another heavy punch at the batarian.
Harper had to give the officer and by extension the Hegemony's External Forces credit, they might not have been as disciplined as turians or as adaptable as human soldiers but they more than made up for it by being fiercely demoted to the Hegemony they were sworn to serve. Out of all the high-ranking officers Cerberus had gotten its hands on in the last few months, not a single one had disclosed just what they were doing in the Skyllian Verge. The HSA had taken down several hidden outposts throughout the area, captured three batarian vessels and cracked down on a large slaver fortress of previously unseen proportions yet they were nowhere close to an answer. Their people simply refused to talk and the few data fragments human forces had managed to save before their previous owners could delete them had been mostly inconclusive.
Except for one thing.
"What's Plan Dravoksha?" the Cerberus operative inquired after stopping his beating when he realised how close to passing out the batarian was. He grabbed the alien's chin to keep his head upright and stared down the four dark eyes looking back at him.
"You'll find out soon enough," the alien simply replied before the human once more continued his improvised interrogation.
'Plan Dravoksha', those two words had kept HSAIS, Cerberus and the entirety of high ranking military officials on edge for the last few months. It was the only reference point that had occurred in all intel fragments they had retrieved and besides its origin, Dravoksha being one of the ghostly presence that supposedly looked over the batarian people as they followed their path to greatness, they had no idea what it was. But even if they lacked knowledge of the most basic details of this plan,just about everyone that held some sort of say in the government, especially Chancellor Goyle, had been convinced that Dravoksha was a very real and very imminent danger the moment they had heard about it, an assumption he by now agreed with. While he and others had voiced their concerns over the situation mirroring the events following the attack on Mindoir, suspecting that Dravoksha might be an elaborate deception created to hide another batarian operation, the recent events had made it clear that the chance of it being just another ruse was unlikely.
The batarians had been preparing for something big for some time now and right now Plan Dravoksha was believed to be that something. While Goyle had increased the military presence in the Skyllian Verge under the guise of a combined exercise of all service branches, sending three marine expeditionary forces to Elysium, Camelot and Mindoir, Cerberus had been searching the region of the Terminus that bordered human space far and wide. Relying on their anonymity to get the drop on unsuspected batarian forces as they prepared for upcoming operations in the presumed safety of the Terminus Systems, his teams carried out dozens of strikes every month. But instead of finding answers, the raids had only succeeded in causing Cerberus to slowly lose one of its biggest advantages. As far as the majority of the galaxy was concerned, they didn't exist, a fact that gave them a lot of room to work with. Unlike the HSA's other various organisations, Cerberus could shift things into humanity's favour without causing the races of the galaxy to start asking questions. They appeared out of nowhere, completed their assignment and vanished with no factual traces of their existence ever surfacing, guaranteeing that no one could be warned about their future activities.
Or at least that's how it used to be.
Ever since they had started working against the batarian forces operating close or even within humanity's territory, someone else had begun working against them as well. It had started subtle enough, his strike teams either found slightly more resistance than expected or missed the target of their operation by mere minutes. Mere coincidental circumstances that would be mentioned in the report before going on the next mission being named as the cause of these complications. Only when encountering slightly more resistance had turned into finding prepared ambushes instead of their targets had it become obvious that something beyond coincidence was at work, while they were hunting the batarians, someone else was hunting them. After that particular realisation had hit Harper and his command staff, it hadn't taken them long to find out just who the Hegemony had unleashed on them.
Looking at the screen he saw the Cerberus operative peak up from his prisoner, going for his gun just a second before the wall opposite to him exploded in fiery spectacle, swallowing him, his team and the batarian captive in a cloud of debris, smoke and shrapnel. As the rifle in his hand began to fire into the greenish mist that was now flooding the room, a squad of red-eyed figures appeared from the hole in the wall, gunfire from several of their own mass accelerators punching through the shields of the human operative, relentlessly marching towards him even when several of their own were cut down by the humans inside. Accompanied by a painful scream, a red mist exploded in front of the camera. The man collapsed to the ground and reached for the pistol on his hip, the adrenaline running through him temporarily keeping the pain from getting the better of him. As the operative looked up ever so slightly, a batarian clad in an olive green suit of armor stepped into view, four distinctivly red lights glowing behind the eyes of his helmet. Harper could see the human lift his backup gun ever so slightly only for four more gunshots to echo through the room as the batarian unloaded his gun on the operative, the rounds impacting with the chest of the operative and causing him to drop his pistol. As the head of the now deceased operative hit the floor, the camera simply kept recording the ceiling under which he had died, the red-eyed figure staring down at the corpse in a rather unimpressed fashion.
His general appearance seemed distinctively familiar yet Harper couldn't shake the feeling that something about him different. For all intents and purposes, the figure was definitely a batarian soldier but at the same time his stature was all wrong. Compared to other members of his race, for example the captive that had until recently been the center of the recording, this batarian was slender, lacking the broad shoulders and pronounced chest muscles commonly seen among batarian military personal. Adding to that he seemed to be noticeably smaller than the Cerberus operative. While the average human was slightly taller than most members the four-eyed race, the perspective of the camera let Harper to believe that the olive green figure, only now towering above the killed operative, was at least a head shorter than him. Both the human and the batarian wore combat armor and even though the hardsuit used by Cerberus strike teams was bulkier than the light version this batarian donned, it couldn't make such a big difference.
So this was the famed batarian Special Intervention Unit. He could see why the Council considered them to be the most dangerous weapon the Hegemony had ever produced. Soldiers with the skill to sneak up on his strike teams were rare. In Cerberus' entire existence, they hadn't suffered as many casualties as the SIU had managed to inflict during the last two months. This was turning into a fight of attrition his organisation could ill afford. While more numerous than Section 13 or ASOC, Cerberus was still in no shape to simply go blow for blow with the batarian unit. He didn't know how big the SIU was but if their lack of concern over simply marching through gunfire was any indication, it was safe to assume that their ranks were bigger than originally suspected.
This was both Interesting and troublesome at the same time. A theory he'd follow up on later was starting to form in his head. For now he decided to keep observing.
"The captive is dead," a voice, deep even by batarian standards, noted as the one in view turned his attention towards the broken helmet, kneeling down to take a longer look at it. As the four red eyes, presumably the product of some kind of optical device, looked directly into the camera, Harper could pinpoint the exact moment that the SIU soldier realised that something was off. Wasting no time, the figure got up from his kneeling position and lifted his foot over it while giving his reply to the other alien in the room.
"Acceptable losses."
The audio and video recording stopped right before the batarian's boot crashed down on the camera, a frozen high resolution picture of a blood-stained shoe sole now occupying the screen of the tablet in Harper's hands. He turned off the device and placed it on the small desk to his right, pulling in another long, deep breath of nicotine before he extinquished the cigarette in his hand by snuffing out its burning tip.
"This is everything there is, Commander Holderman?" he asked the brown-haired man standing behind him, his white uniform only decorated with a yellow hexagon, some black highlights and the rank insignias that indicated his position as Cerberus leading field operative.
"Yes, Sir," the man replied as Harper spun around in his chair to face him. "That's everything we recovered."
"Did you manage to retrieve the other bodies as well?" the director asked as he rubbed his brow. This recording had marked the fifth instance of an entire strike team being killed in action. This couldn't go on for much longer, he couldn't allow the SIU to simply tear Cerberus apart squad by squad, at the rate they were currently going, soon there wouldn't be much more combat operatives left, something that would have devastating ramifications for the organisation. No combat operatives meant no field operations and no field operations meant no people capable of pushing the pieces into the HSA's favour, effectively making Cerberus incapable of fulfilling the overarching directive Chancellor Noé had given to him all those years ago. Furthermore every strike team Cerberus lost were more people that died on his watch. He wouldn't allow this to continue.
"Another team secured the location and all of our casualties were recovered."
"And the batarian fatalities?" he said as he eyed the glass of liquor on the small desk.
"Gone," the man said as he stared at the star behind Harper, his eyes squinting ever so slightly before they adjusted to the brightness. "Only left behind the dead captive."
"Did they take anything off of our casualties?" the director went on.
"Not that we can tell, Sir," the commander shook his head in return, folding his arms behind his back. "All of their gear is accounted for and if they tried to retrieve any sort of data from the corpses, they did so without triggering any of the fail saves."
"Just like before then," he muttered as he placed his hand under his chin, his gaze focused on the black panels that acted as both the floor and the hologram projector of his office. Why wouldn't the batarians try to figure out more about them? His own operatives always retrieved every little shred of evidence they could get their hands on, destroying everything else to avoid leaving behind something of value to the enemy. Why didn't the SIU do this? Were they sending him on another wild goose chase by raising these questions or were they trying to distract Cerberus from something else? Was this just another part of yet another ruse humanity was falling for?
He shook his head ever so slightly as his mind kept racing. While it was already unlikely that the batarians would invest as much as they had already lost in just a long-term deception, it was downright illogical for them to throw the SIU into the mix as well. From what he could tell, the only times the unit deployed outside of their own space were when the Hegemony needed them to solve an issue that no one else could take care of. Whether it was the retrieval of critical information on board of a krogan cruiser or the assassination of information leaks regarding the true extend of the batarian involvement in the attack on Mindoir, the SIU was only used when there was no other option for the Batarian Hegemony. They were the unit that was only called when something incredibly crucial needed to be done. If their aim was to simply distract their opposition from something else, they could throw more expendable troops at them. There was no reason for the Hegemony to use the SIU as a decoy.
As such the chance of this being just another part of an as of yet unknown ruse wasn't just slim, logic dictated that it had to be nonexistent. What little information they had about the SIU confirmed that they were the only unit the batarian military didn't consider universally replaceable. The only justified reason for deploying their best operatives against Cerberus was that his people were getting far too close to finding out the truth for the Hegemony's liking.
He sat up back in his chair as the commander kept looking at him, probably waiting to be dismissed. Reaching for another cigarette, he took the small lighter of the table and ignited it, allowing the orange flame to slowly consume the tip of the paper stick. Puffing out the first cloud of smoke, he crossed his legs and leaned back in his chair, eying the ceiling. As the smoke glistened in the light of the star, the frown on his face disappeared, a stoic expression replacing it once his mind gave its final ruling.
This in turn meant that Plan Dravoksha was the real deal and presumably imminent.
Somehow he liked that scenario even less than being made a fool of. He didn't look forward to finding out just what had caused the batarian's to go to such lengths.
04:15 Local time, 28. April 2408 AD, Elysium
The first indication that something was out of place was when instead of being woken by her omni-tool's alarm clock, a heavy door being torn open on the hall outside caused her to sit upright in her bed.
Something was going on.
Lieutenant Emily Shepard, like the rest of the 6th HSAMC Expeditoniary Force, had been on Elysium for the last three months for the sake of training defensive tactics alongside their army comrades, running simulated ground engagements against one another while the naval fleet that acted as the 6th's transport had been included in ongoing operations within the Verge, patrolling the region and shoring up the numbers of the other fleets currently defending both human and independent colonies in the region. As a platoon leader on the ground, she was let in on the schedule of all upcoming training scenarios, including simulated alarms.
This was not part of their schedule.
Knowing what would happen at any moment, her training overruled her confusion and she immediately began the process of putting on her uniform, probably beating all of her previous records as the realisation that what was about to happen would not be drill kicked in. Just as she closed the blouse of her combat fatigues, a sound that was equally familiar and dreaded among all military personal echoed through the building and probably the rest of the military base. As the sirens blared through her ears, she opened the door of her room and marched over to the room opposite to her, grabbing a hold of the first senior member she could find just as the man was climbing out of his bunk.
"Find Staff Sergeant Gregory and tell him to get everyone into gear right now. I don't know what's going on but I want the platoon ready for anything," she ordered as the barely clothed man nodded exactly once before shooting off into the opposite direction. Putting her faith into the corporal as he practically burst through the NCO's door, she began her own run towards the ground floor, intending to confront the officer responsible for sounding the alarm and figuring out just what was going on. As she rushed down the stairs she heard the barking voice of the platoon sergeant behind her relaying her orders. She cleared the first flight of stairs but before she could take another step closer to the ground floor, the officer in charge of her company, Captain Andrew Kendrick, shot up from the level below them.
"Lieutenant Shepard, I need your platoon outside right now," the man instructed before she could even think about saluting him. The officer was already trying to make his way past her in the middle of his sentence when he stopped a second time. "Be ready for an airlift in ten," he added before climbing up further.
"What's going on, Sir?" she called after him as he rushed towards the third and final floor of their building.
"Elysium Command just declared Saber-Two. The navy's already engaged," it echoed through the halls of the building as the figure in black and grey combat fatigues disappeared in the bent of the stairway. Turning on her heel immediately, Emily made her way to the armory, finding most of her marines in various stages of putting on their hardsuits, the familiar face of her already armored platoon sergeant waiting for her in the doorway.
Threat Condition Saber-Two, while not as bad as Saber-One, meant that an enemy force had cleared the local relay and engaged whatever naval assets the HSA currently had in place above the planet. This being Elysium, the main base of operations for all fleets active in the Fringe and Verge, it meant that whatever force was trying to land on Elysium was big enough to either ignore, or worse, resist the sustained firepower of dozens of HSA frigates, cruisers and capital ships.
This was beyond bad.
"What's the word, Ma'am?" he asked as she opened her locker to start putting on her own armor, beginning a scenario she had calmly completed a hundred times before with a sense of anxiety.
"Saber-Two," she replied grimly, refusing to spent too much time with thinking about the fact that her first taste of combat would be an enemy force attempting to invade Elysium. Occupying her mind with rapidly putting on the pieces of the modular hardsuit issued to all combat personal, time began to blur together as she went over the almost mechanical process of checking her equipment, watching herself receive her SR-8 and slapping a magazine into it before running towards the spot assigned to her platoon. It seemed almost unreal that this was finally it. Every moment of her training had let up to this day. She had spent hours upon hours thinking about the worst case scenario under which this could happen, trying to plan for the first time she'd have to use everything she had learned. But now that the day was actually here, she not only realised that none of that mattered now, she also found herself trying not to think much at all.
"All present or accounted for, Lieutenant," Staff Sergeant Gregory reported as she came to a halt in front of her unit, the whining of Kodiak engines already coming up behind her as she dismissed the NCO.
"Post, Staff Sergeant," she replied before the man stepped into the formation, waiting for him to take his position. "Third platoon, at ease," she began, trying to find some encouraging words not just for her own marines but also for herself. "We've all trained for this day and we all knew it'd come eventually," the young lieutenant froze for a moment as an impossibly loud detonation tore through the dark sky above them and caused the assembled platoon to flinch in its entirety. Almost instantaneously a white flash even brighter than the sun gave the illusion of daylight for exactly a second, revealing the dark green silhouette of a frigate hovering in the sky above them, a cloud of black smoke opposite to its nose. So this was what a frigate blowing up the reactor of another ship sounded like in the atmosphere of a planet. As far as her ears were concerned, she could've lived without that experience. Thankful for the fact that the helmet on her head had most likely prevent her from going deaf, she went on.
"Once we get on those Kodiaks, its the moment of truth for all of us. We've all ran the simulations and we all know the drill for Saber-Two. We'll get onboard and act as a mobile reserve. I don't know where we're going, we'll recieve our orders as they come in, but what I know is that whoever is attacking us picked the wrong planet to invade," another thunderous sound caused her to pause yet again but otherwise failed to recreate its previous result, catching neither her nor her platoon off guard. "Let's make them regret it. Staff Sergeant Gregory, front and center."
"Yes, Ma'am!" The platoon sergeant stepped forward again, and offered a respectful nod towards her before turning to the rest of her unit, realising that they needed to hear something from him as well. After all in the event of her death, something she really didn't want to think about right now, it would be up to him to lead the unit. "Listen up marines, that right there," he called as he pointed at the frigate hanging in the sky, "is the navy trying to steal the corps' thunder. I'm not gonna sit here and let the fucking squids pull this fight from under my nose. Its time to earn our pay for a change. I say we teach those bastards once and for all why you don't mess with us."
"Third platoon, report to your squad leaders and fall out to the Kodiaks," Shepard ordered as the doors to craft closest to her opened, a crew member waving her over. "Double time."
"Oorah!" it echoed back audible in spite of the Kodiaks landing behind her.
Normally the sight of forty heavily armed marines charging past her would cause a familiar sense of security to make itself known but as time seemed to slow down, her eyes darting towards the nametags of the men and women passing her, she felt a somber realisation hit her. Not all of them would make it back. Shaking her head as more marines passed her, Shepard once more felt herself slip into the routine installed in her during training, allowing the soldier in her to take over for the time being. She climbed into the Kodiak closest to her and grabbed a hold of the rails running along the canopy of the shuttle, waiting for the final member of the squad that would follow her to board the craft. When the marine pulled himself inside, she gave a nod to the crewman, went to her own harness, strapped herself in and not a moment later, after the pilot had felt his shoulder being tapped, the doors of the green shuttle closed and the screens acting as its de facto windows turned on, allowing her to see the several Kodiaks flying next to her own shuttle, a gunship escort joining them the moment they left the base behind them. As a blue light illuminated the interior of the crew compartment, Shepard turned her attention from the green shuttles outside to the screen attached in front of the pilot's cabin.
"Alright Fox Company here's what we know so far," the voice of their company leader rang through the cabin as a Kendrick appeared on the screen, beginning a very informal briefing."Twenty three minutes ago eighty six unidentified vessels broke through the Vetus Relay, ignoring all hails and engaging our naval assets the moment they were in range. On any other day the 8th Fleet would've been right behind them but as things are, their big guns are currently out of position. It'll take them at least four days to get here."
"Well, where the hell are they?" the voice of fourth platoon's leader injected, causing Kendrick to pause for a moment.
"The Shasta and her escorts were conducting a training exercise of their own," their superior officer replied as Shepard's own Kodiak took a rather sudden dive, causing her to look at the crewmam sitting opposite to her.
"We've got to get closer to the ground, otherwise our own flak tears us apart," the man shrugged as he noticed the marine looking at him. Satisfied with the reply and the knowledge that they were not crashing right now, she turned back to the screen.
"As things are our best shot is CBG Hawking, command is saying they'll be here by tomorrow. They're hitting the first relay as we're speaking."
"Who's attacking us, Sir?" Shepard finally spoke up the question that had been lingering on everyone's mind.
"Officially, Lieutenant Shepard, they're a bunch of slavers."
"And inofficially, Sir?" another platoon leader countered as the officer sighed, a quick look to her left allowing Shepard to see just how much closer they were to the ground. At this rate, a sneeze of the pilot would kill them faster than their own anti-air. One mistake and they'd make a decently sized hole in the ground.
"The Hegemony. The HSASV Paris gutted a state-of-the-art batarian cruiser on its way through the relay. There's no way they're handing out that kind of gear to slavers without being there themselve-" as the captain simply stopped both speaking and moving for a moment, Shepard though that the screen had frozen or worse the shuttle he had been on crashed. Only when he nodded his head, did the thought that he himself had received a transmission occur to her. "Ok, Foxtrot, our orders are here. Elysium Command just declared Saber-One, we're being diverted to the Northern Territory," the man paused his briefing, apparently trying to find the best way to phrase the rest of what he had just been told. "Also I just got conformation that this is not a localized incursion either. Several other planets are under attack as well."
"So we're at war with the Hegemony then? Great," the same platoon leader reasoned as a hard-right turn caused Shepard and by the looks of it everyone in the formation to get pressed in their harnesses. So much for inertial dampeners. "What's our job in the NT?"
"Enemy forces landed in a desolate valley beyond the Sullivan Mountains and they're trying to push through a tunnel the colonial administrating dug for ground transport back when the area was still being mined. The NT's anti-air positions can't hit anything going down beyond the mountains and only a small army unit is stationed in the region. Command needs us to hunker down in front of the tunnel's southern entrance and make sure nothing gets through. If those forces take out the SAM-sites in the NT they'll have air superiority and a fantastic staging ground for the rest of the invasion. The army can't spare the people to hold them back on their own and won't have the numbers needed to push the landing zone for some time. Therefore we'll have to assist whatever forces they mustered in keeping the batarian's north of that mountain range for as long as needed."
"Two minutes," the pilot called from his cabin as Shepard felt her heart beat increase. A tunnel was a good thing, the enemy would be forced to fight from a bottleneck. While the valley was a decent landing zone, its large plains and lack of HSA forces speaking for itself, they could break the back of their operation if they prevented them from actually leaving it. Even if they failed to gather enough numbers to assault their staging ground, they could simply wait it out and bomb them into submission once the navy regained orbital supremacy. Of course depending on what kind of force had landed beyond the mountains, keeping them contained could either be rather easy or nearly impossible.
"One minute," another surge of adrenaline rocked her world as the screen on her right allowed her a rather good look of an engagement in the distance, dozens of fires blazing on the outskirts of a town, illuminated the otherwise dark night. Given the explosions sporadically dotting the sky above the cityscape, Shepard came to the conclusion that she was witnessing the results of an air engagement between HSA interceptors and whatever air support the batarians had brought with them. As a visible fireball came crashing through the clouds and into the city limits, she simply hoped that it had been a batarian craft coming down on an already evacuated part of town and not a Trident cleaving straight through a still inhabited building.
"Thirty seconds, red light, get ready," it sounded from the cabin as the marine lieutenant undid her harness, pulling herself to her feet through the railings above her and catching the first glimpse of the large tunnel up ahead, spotting several fortified positions and the rare IFV on the ground, small, barely visible figures rushing between them and the few civilian trucks still parked on the road, preparing to repel the batarian push. It seemed like the army had done a decent enough job at digging in, sandbags, machine gun emplacements, a mortar battery and improvised trenches on the side of the road covered most of the area and a part of her began to wonder just how many batarians would come pouring through that tunnel if another company was needed to stand a chance at holding a position as prepared as this one. Before she could place further judgment on the situation, the screen turned off and a green light turned on around them. As soon as that happened, the doors shot open and the crewman began to frantically wave them out of the shuttle. Jumping through the now open hull, she wasted no time with standing around, while no one was shooting yet, that could change at any given time. This was after all a combat zone.
"Relaying your positions to you now, Foxtrot," the voice of Captain Kendrick rang through her helmet as the HUD in front of her eyes pinpointed a trench left of the entrance some hundred meters from their current position.
"Alright third platoon, see that trench west of the tunnel? That's our new home," she explained as the data traveled to her squad leaders and her unit began moving. "I want the squad weapons pointed at that entrance the moment we reach it. Watch your spacing and make sure you don't lose sight of the marine next to you, I don't want people dying because of tunnel vision."
The jog to the position was over almost as soon as it had started, all of them hurrying to leave behind the exposed landing zone in favour of the safety of the trench. She ducked through the hastily dug trench and eyed the few army grunts that would share their position with them. Unlike either the batarians or the marines of the 6th Expeditionary Force, these people actually spent some time in this region beforehand, that knowledge could give them an edge in the upcoming fight. As she stepped past an engineer fiddling with a detonator in his hand, she found herself doubling back as she noticed just how many wires were connected to it. This was beyond any kind of safety regulation and he had to know it.
"Corporal, are you trying to blow all of us up?" she asked as the man peaked up from the box in his hands, his eyes filled with focus and his fingers frozen in the the middle of whatever task he had been performing.
"Orders from the Major, Ma'am," the man replied as he nodded towards the stone ridge above the tunnel, a series of figures in green armor standing out against the greyish stone as they used ropes to descend back on the path below. "No one's getting through that mountain. Even if its takes dropping it on our own heads, the batarian's aren't taking NT."
The army didn't seriously consider dropping a mountain on their own position, did they? Taking a quick moment to look at the emblem on the soldier's shoulder in an attempt to figure out what unit he was from, the depiction of a diving black eagle answered that question for her. While she hadn't heard of airborne units being favoured for colonial duty rotations, it was just her luck to get stuck fighting with the one army unit even the marines considered to be somewhat deranged. Throwing another look at the engineer, his hands still locked in the same posture she had interrupted him in, she shook her head before moving along the trench. The stone ridge was certainly big enough to block the tunnel but as she looked at the mountain, she didn't doubt that the explosives would stop at taking only the ridge with them. If her estimation of how much explosives those crazy bastards had stuffed into that ridge were correct, they'd probably blow half the mountain off in the process. But on the bright side, it gave her yet another reason not to let any batarians past them. Being buried alive under tons of mountain debris was not on her list of ways she wanted to die.
"All squads are in position," the platoon sergeant informed her as she steadied herself against the wall of the trench, looking to the marines on each of her side, one of the resting his machine gun's bipod on the earth in front of him and the other trying his best to keep his rifle steady, the shaking of his arms making it a somewhat difficult task.
"Take a deep breath, marine," she spoke while following her own advice not a moment later, the small but still present quivering of her fingers stopping shortly afterwards. She didn't have time to be scared right now. She needed to be focused, her platoon needed her to be. "Eyes on the tunnel."
Watching the final airborne engineer detach his rope from the rig that had allowed him to climb up to the stone ridge, she saw the man throw a single glance into the darkness of the tunnel before breaking into a mad dash towards the closest position, leaping over the sandbags and quite literally falling face first into the dirt before picking himself up again.
"This is Major Ramos of the 26th Airborne Brigade speaking to all forces defending the Sullivan Tunnel. Be advised, the batarians have covered almost half of the distance between the northern and southern entrances. Once their center is in range of all of our positions, we'll turn on the tunnel's lighting and temporarily blind their NVGs. Open fire the moment you see something with more than two eyes. Good luck and godspeed."
As she leveled her rifle at the tunnel's entrance, a deadly silence began to settle in the trench, each and everyone of them listening for the first footstep, the first voice or the first sound of an engine in an attempt to get some sort of warning for when the lights would turn on. She felt the tension that lingered in the air and undid the safety of the SR-8 in her hands, intending to get off as many shots as possible before the enemy could dart to whatever cover was available inside. Shepard kept staring into the tunnel entrance, trying to decide whether or not the things she was seeing were the product of the tension or actually the first batarians slowly marching through the darkness of the structure. When she could make out something that remotely looked like a torso, she moved her sights over it and waited.
Then everything happened incredibly fast.
Within the blink of an eye, the darkness disappeared as the powerful ceiling lamps were activated, dozens of batarian infantrymen freezing on the spot as a sensory overload got the better of them. She felt her finger slip over the trigger guard and after just the right amount of pressure, the first round left the barrel of her SR-8. Time slowed down as the recoil of each shot vibrated through her shoulder and a wall of fire poured down on the exposed invaders from the positions around the tunnel entrance. It was almost surreal for her to see the batarian she had just observed through her scope drop at the hands of herself, his body going limp like a rag doll as it hit the floor in an ungraceful manner, one of his hands still clutching the boxy assault rifle while the other simply fell to the side of his body. Instead of lowering her rifle to think about what she had just done, she trained its scope on a figure leaping towards an emergency exit at the side of the tunnel's interior wall. She sent a steady stream of rounds into his direction, unable to tell whether or not her own rounds had been the ones to claim his life or if another human had been responsible for it and let her training take reign over her actions.
As the batarian forces shook themselves out of their short paralysis, Shepard noticed that the center of their formation was already receiving heavier support, armored vehicles and IFVs acting as a mobile form of cover for the numerically superior infantry forces advancing alongside them. When her rifle clicked empty right as she expected it to, she knelt down in the trench and grabbed another magazine from the pouches on her chest, using the short break to check on the one IFV she could see from her trench, the sound of its maingun firing followed suitly by an explosion that overshadowed the orchestra of gunfire around her. Peaking up from her trench just as the marine next to her went to reload, she saw just what had happened.
The Mako's railgun had torn a sizeable hole into a batarian vehicle, detonating the fuel and ammunition it had stored in the process and setting ablaze a good chunk of the troops around it. Setting her crosshair over a burning batarian desperately clawing at his helmet, she prepared to commit what she considered an act of mercy. Pushing back the sick feeling in her stomach as she observed the batarian fighting a losing fight against the flammable liquid eating through the cracks of his armor, she made sure to be swift and accurate. In one moment the soldier was still trying to remove the helmet that was slowly melting itself into the skin of his face and in the next he simply dropped to the ground, the orange flames on his body burning all the same, unconcerned with how much pain they had inflicted on the batarian, only interest in consuming his remains.
As the shockwave of another explosion, this one much closer to her, tore through the air, she dropped to the ground as dirt rained down on her. Trying to pick herself up, she could make out the disturbing cries of someone close to her, causing her to look to her left only to realise that the one crying was not the one that had been injured. Stumbling around the bend of the trench, a member of her own unit dropped into the arms of another marine who struggled to reach for the medical kit attached to his hip in an attempt to stop the blood pouring from his comrade's arm, falling backwards as he tripped over a small earth slope. She shot to her feet and let go of her rifle, the sling it was attached to allowing it to stay at her side either way before tearing open the small pouch on the soldier's equipment belt and pulling out the syringe of medigel before applying its contents onto the wound as well. Not satisfied with the amount she had already used on the remaining parts of the limb, she reached for another syringe and repeated the process.
"Get him out of here," she instructed the man while tossing the empty container to the ground. The marine hesitated for a moment but after getting a grip of himself, began pulling the injured soldier off the ground, presumably exposing himself for just a second too long in the process. Without being able to do anything whatsoever, Shepard had to pay witness to the seemingly random high-powered round connecting with the head of the marine, obliterating everything above his neck in a single moment, neither his shields nor his armor standing any chance against the projectile. As the red mist splattered onto her visor, she very nearly suffered the same fate as the assault on their position continued, only the mechanical process of taking cover that had been drilled into her head during basic training saving her. As another sniper round drilled into the dirt just above her helmet, she began crawling away from the position, well aware that peaking up would mean death and wondering if the enemy snipers had been there all along, targeting another trench or simply arrived just as she gave the order that had killed the marine.
Feeling the vibration of the Mako's railgun traveling through the ground, the lieutenant heard another explosion rock the tunnel all the while she crawled to through the trench, only taking a knee once she was sure that she had cleared the sniper's killzone. Next to her a marine, another member of her platoon, fired bullet after bullet into the direction of the tunnel, the barrel of his machine gun already glowing orange and the shell casings collecting next to him forming a respectable pile almost reaching her ankles. Shepard pressed herself against the trench, intending to take over for the marine once his ammunition belt ran dry and he had to reload, only for a radio transmission to interrupt her.
"All forces defending the tunnel, be advised, we now have heavy batarian armor closing in on our position. We're in for a lot of trouble if they get here," the voice of the army major explained, the gunfire accompanying it suggesting that he was fighting in one of the positions on the front himself. "To stop them from doing that, an N7 team waiting inside the tunnels was supposed to prepare an ambush for the end of the batarian convoy, using a series of guided anti-tank charges. But instead of doing that, they've gone black and are presumed dead."
"We can't stop heavy armor with Makos, Sir," her company leader called through his own radio, the battle keeping him just as busy as the other officers on site.
"I know that Captain," the major replied as his voice grew darker. "Which is why I'm going to need you to cover me."
"What are yo-, goddamn batarians," her captain cursed as he interrupted himself, his breath growing faster while he regained his composure between a series of grunts, the tone of his voice now making it evident that he was suppressing some kind of pain. "What are you saying, Sir?"
"You heard me, I'll need every gun firing at once to hold the batarians down long enough for me to make it to the maintenance entrance on the west side of the tunnel. If we don't stop those tanks, we have to bring down the tunnel and there's no guarantee that any of us are walking away from that avalanche."
"That's a one way trip, Major Ramos. And more importantly its impossible," another voice she didn't recognize injected, the thick accent hinting at an earthly origin. "At least for you. We can't maintain that kind of continuous suppressive fire long enough for you to run all the way to the western edge of our line. You'd have to leapfrog from trench to trench, otherwise you'd be cut down halfway to the door when we run out of bullets."
"We don't have the time for that. The tanks are already moving through the tunnel."
"I know, Sir," the voice replied while Shepard considered simply returning to the fight while her superiors figured out this mess. "Which is why someone on the western side needs to go."
"I'm not sending someone else on a suicide mission, Captain," the major muttered in return.
"It's our only option."
"I'm faster than I look."
"You still won't make it, Sir."
"I'm closer than Major Ramos," her company leader offered instead.
"You're injured, Captain Kendrick. You're not making it either."
Looking to the right and left of her position, seeing both injured and dead marines lying between their still fighting comrades. They were giving it their all and none of that would matter when those tanks got here. She wouldn't let those deaths be in vain, she couldn't. Emily Shepard inhaled a single time before pushing down the send-button of her radio, making a decision that unknowingly to her would define the course of her life.
"I'll do it, Sir," she said as she interrupted the heated discussion with a surprisingly steady voice, causing all participants to grow silent.
"Who is this, identify yourself."
"Lieutenant Shepard, third platoon, Foxtrot Company, Sir," she stated as clear as she could, while another member of her unit turned to look at her, apparently catching what was going on. "I'm in the trench closest to the entrance and I haven't been hit yet. I can make it there faster than anyone else, Sir."
"Lieutenant, you do realise that the success of this defense is weighing on those charges being detonated, correct?"
"Yes, Sir," she said as she began making her way closer to the entrance, stepping over the marine that had died as direct result of her orders in the process.
"And you do realise what the odds of surviving the way back are, correct?"
"Yes, Sir," she once more repeated as a burst of mass accelerator rounds jumped over the dirt above her head all the while the machine gun of the Mako next to the trench poured bullet after bullet into the tunnel.
"Understood, I'm transferring the last known position of the team to your omni-tool. Get ready for the run of your lifetime, Lieutenant. We're counting on you."
"Yes, Sir."
Rushing to the end of the trench, she didn't even think about how many rounds her shields caught and how many missed her by chance, her eyes instead focused on the small door next to the much larger tunnel entrance. If she had to guess, it was probably either an emergency exit or some sort of maintenance corridor used to keep the electronics of the tunnel in working condition. By the looks of it it was rather narrow, meaning that any kind of fighting on the inside would take place without cover. She'd have to be fast, accurate and most importantly silent. The only real chance she saw of making it to the N7s' last known position was not getting spotted at all, if the batarians in the main tunnel realised what was going on or even suspected that someone was using the smaller paths on their sides to maneuver around them, they'd sent a squad to investigate.
She was pretty sure that she wouldn't be able to handle a squad.
"This is Major Ramos to all forces receiving me, once you see a red flare you empty your guns into the tunnel. We need to keep every batarian inside suppressed until one of our own can reach the maintenance tunnel. You don't stop shooting until I sent up a blue flare," it rang through her helmet as she decided to use the sound of several hundred human guns as her signal instead. After all, running too early would get her killed as well.
Then for the second time that day, everything happened impossibly fast. As she saw the red glow shooting into the sky in the corner of her eye, she grabbed a tight hold of her rifle and when gunfire erupted from all human positions, her feet began to carry her forward faster than they had ever done before. Feeling every beat of her heart, she simply kept her eyes on her target, refusing to slow down even when her chest began to burn from the strain she was putting on her lungs by running this long. Then, just as she felt like her legs would fail her, she reached the door and pulled it open, stepping inside just as the reddish glow of the flare above her was joined by a blue one.
If she was honest with herself, she had already made it further than she had expected.
Bringing up her rifle and her omni-tool, she began to walk as fast and as silent as humanly possible, the sparse lighting of the tunnel making it difficult to tell what was waiting for her up ahead. Taking a look at the map on her wrist, she realised that she was almost at the position the N7s had last been seen in and as such grew more weary. If someone had managed to kill a team of the navy's best soldiers, she'd have to be more than just careful. As if the universe wanted to reinforce that statement, she spotted the dark shape of a human clad in onyx armor, his back propped against the concrete wall of the maintenance corridor, a pool of fresh blood pouring from a hole in his chest and an emptied SIS-8 next to his corpse.
Normally the sight of a dead N7 was a good indication that one should go the opposite direction but that was hardly an option for her now. As the major had said, they all counted on her. She refused to subject her comrades to the fate the batarian armor would give them if she could do something about it. She stepped over the corpse, spotting another onyx figure further down the corridor, the map indicating that she'd have to move up just a little bit further. She pushed on but after only a few steps, something grabbed her arm, causing her to spin right, expecting to find a batarian gun pointed at her face.
"What the hell do you think you're doing," a distinctively human voice growled as a fourth figure in N7 armor pulled her into the corridor. "Do you want to die?" he demanded to know as he pressed her against the wall, pulling back the knife at her throat she hadn't even noticed up to now.
"Looking for you," she replied in a whisper that was technically far too loud to even be considered one. "You went dark, I was sent to check up on your team. Why didn't you answer?" Instead of giving an answer, the N7 let go of her and simply handed her his damaged radio before tapping on his helmet, indicating why they had gone dark. As he pressed himself against the wall of the small corner he had taken shelter behind, the light of a ceiling lamp allowed her to noticed just how bloody his shoulder actually was, at this point it was probably only the medigel and stubbornness that kept him standing. "The batarian tanks are coming and we can't hold them. Those AT-charges need to explode right now," she countered as the other soldier turned back to her, presumably staring at her through his darkened visor. Yet he didn't move a single muscle to activate the charges. "Well, what are you waiting for?"
"I don't have the detonator," he frowned before peaking around the corner, Shepard herself still unsure just what he was looking for. "It's with my squad leader."
"Well we need to find him, he needs to blow the charges. Those tanks need to be stopped before they reach the line."
"He was killed thirty minutes ago while covering our retreat, I haven't been able to get back to him up to now."
"What happened here?"
"We finished rigging up the charges and went to take up position on the side of the tunnel. Then the batarians rolled up. We got caught in the open and we knew that anything short of running would result in the charges being discovered so we started a fighting retreat into the maintenance corridors," the man sighed before looking at the gun strapped to her leg. "I'll need that."
"What for?" she asked while pulling the pistol from its holster, handing it to the N7 with a hint of confusion.
"To get the detonator," the man replied with a nod into the general direction her omni-tool was pointing in. "I'll need your rifle as well."
"But then I won't have a gun," she protested before eying the SR-8 the N7 was still holding in his left hand. "Besides, what about yours?"
"This one?" he muttered while tossing the gun to the ground. "Just for show by now. It's broken. Why do you think I didn't go after the detonator by now? The only thing I have left is my knife. Even I'm not crazy enough for that."
Deciding that this was probably taking too long, she took a step forward only to be pulled back again, growing frustrated by the N7's apparent obsession with staying hidden.
"Listen to me and listen good, Lieutenant," the N7 whispered as quietly as he could while holding her arm in place. "Their rear guard is patrolling this corridor sporadically and they killed three N7s already, what chance do you think you stand if you walk out there? They'll gun you down the moment they see you. You don't know where the detonator is, you don't know the terrain around the charges and you don't know how many batarians are actually out there right now. If I let you walk out there, you're dead."
"I still have to try. If those tanks get through, the mountain is coming down. If the mountain comes down, a lot of good people will get caught in a stone avalanche and the two of us will be stuck with hundreds of angry batarians."
"I know that," the soldier replied. "But you don't stand a chance out there."
"If I don't stand a chance and you haven't made a move up to now either," she began, taking care to stress the 'I' and 'you' parts to get her point across,"then why are we still standing here, Petty Officer?" Shepard countered as her eyes moved to the rank insignias on his collar before she broke his hold, slowly walking back into the maintenance corridor, nodding towards the way her omni-tool was pointing her. "Come on, we need to move. You can consider that and order if you'd like to."
Looking back between her, the dead N7 further down the corridor and the pistol in his hand, the man smacked the palm of his hand against his helmet to either convince himself to move or, which was more likely, given the grazing shot next to his visor, to fix whatever his damaged HUD was currently doing. He removed the magazine from the gun, checking how many bullets were available to him, and nodded stepped past her.
"Your map is off," he whispered as they began to move forward. "His body isn't in the maintenance area, its in the actual tunnel."
"How far from the closest entrance to the detonator?"
"Twenty meters, tops."
"Understood."
As they pressed themselves to either side of the concrete walls to allow both of them to open fire should they be discovered, they slowly crept towards the closest exit. When they reached the heavy metal door that would've acted as a fire escape under normal circumstances, the N7 stopped her before she could press down its handle, shaking his head and instead pulling out his knife and cutting a small wire that connected the door to what seemed like a fire alarm.
Close one.
Taking a grip of the handle, he turned to look at her.
"The detonator is in his right front pouch, once I fire it, we've got to make a run for it. The AT-charges are smart, they'll find the tanks they're looking for if they're close enough, but their warheads don't discriminate, if we're in the way, we're dead. Understood?"
"Understood."
"Alright, you'll cover me and I'll make a run for it," the N7 said while slowly pulling open the door, before crouching down. Shepard mirrored his movements as he took shelter behind a large abandoned truck, his eyes set on the onyx corpse further up ahead, looking back to her.
"Ready?" he asked as she nodded, only to realise that the sound of tank engines was closing in on them from the north.
"Yes, go," she urged him.
As the N7 got up, he began running to the detonator, only to stop dead in his tracks as both he and Shepard spotted the surprised batarian on the other side of the truck. Before either of them could do something about it, the cigar in his mouth fell to the ground and a warning left his mouth while he brought up his rifle. While her own SR-8 and the pistol she had given to the man were faster than him, riddling his torso with holes before he could do as much as think about squeezing the trigger, the damage had been done. The N7, looking at the tanks appearing from beyond the small curve behind them, deciding that the charges needed to be detonated right now and once more made a run for it, only to be struck down when a batarian round tore through his leg and another punctured his torso, the lack of more shots afterwards indicating that they considered him dead. As he tried to crawl forward to the detonator, Shepard let go of her rifle, looked at the tanks behind her and shot off.
Whether through surprise, disbelief or coincidence, the batarians didn't start shooting until she had already passed her injured companion. Mass accelerator rounds dug into the concrete around her as her vision grew focused on the right front pouch the N7 had named as the location of the detonator, paying no mind to the red flashing warning her of an imminent shield breach. The moment she was close enough, she threw herself to the ground and simply reached into the first pocket that met the description, feeling the shape of a detonator and pressing down on its firing mechanism without even pulling it out to confirm that it was in fact what she was looking for.
The slightly delayed explosion that followed was all the conformation she was needed. As pieces of the tunnel started to come down around her, she looked north.
Where previously batarian tanks and mechanized infantry had been standing, only a blazing inferno of ignited fuel and ammunition remained, the thick cloud of black smoke rapidly draining the oxygen around it. Setting her eyes on the injured N7 who had left a trail of blood in wake of his crawling, she ran over to his body and applied whatever medigel she had left to the much larger wound on his torso, deciding to prioritize it over the comparable insignificant wound on his leg. at first struggling to lift the man up, he was far heavier than he actually looked, she pulled him on his shoulders and began making her way to the emergency exit they had used before, the smoke making it incredibly hard to see just where she was going. She kicked open the door, not even bothering to look if someone was following her, and started running south, her lungs burning with every step and the distance between her and the exit, or rather safety, seeming endless no matter how fast she ran.
The illusion was broken when she fell through the door and collapsed onto the ground outside of the tunnel, rather crudely dropping the N7 in the process. As she turned her head to the trench, she realised that the fighting had stopped but when she decided to take a look at her companion, the lack of motion from him gave her reason to worry.
"Petty Officer?" she asked while getting on her feet as a few isolated gunshots echoed through the air. She didn't go through all of this to have him die. As the hardened surface of his armor made it impossible to tell if he was still breathing, she undid the seal of his helmet and pulled the black armor piece off of his head, revealing a rather young, asian face to her. When looking alone turned out to be not enough to tell if he was still alive, she removed her own helmet and leaned down in an attempt to listen for the faintest breath, only relieved when a barely present wheeze escaped his mouth. "Stay with me," she spoke as she reached for the man's medical pouch, intending to fix the wound on his leg with whatever supplies he had left. Just because he was still breathing, didn't mean he couldn't bleed out at any time. While the hole in his chest had taken priority, a shot to the leg was dangerous as well if left untreated.
"Talk to me, Petty Officer. What's your name, where are you from?" she asked while softly smacking the side of his face before waving towards the closest trench. "I need a corpsman, right now. He's lost a lot of blood."
A weak, unintelligible whisper was all she received at first, the blood loss taking its toll on the soldier.
"What was that? Put a bit of enthusiasm in it, will you? No one understood that," she called as his face stopped growing paler when the medigel finally began to clot the wound. But even if he wasn't losing any more blood, she couldn't afford to let the man drift off. He was still far from saved. "Come on, stay awake. Tell me your name, Petty Officer. That's an order."
"Le-" he meekly began as he stared into the orange morning sky above them, a cough interrupting his answer. The man shut his eyes for a moment before shaking his head ever so slightly, only opening them after another smack to the side of his face encouraged him to.
"You can sleep later, Petty Officer. Spit it out already."
"My name is Kai Leng."
Codex: Medigel
Invented by the Sirta Foundation in 2358 Ad, the human all-purpose medicinal salve is universally considered to be one of the best if not the best medical product currently available to the military and emergency first responders. Capable of sealing most wounds instantaneously and acting against both infection and pain at the same time, the gel has been incredibly popular among human frontline troops ever since its introduction, having saved countless of lives.
While technically considered illegal under genetic modification laws due to some of its properties, the sheer usefulness of the product saw it conquer all corners of the galaxy the moment the Sirta Foundation decided to make it universally available to every individual in the galaxy in 2390 AD, a course of action a sizeable portion of the human pharmaceutical sector tried to prevent, officiallyclaiming that the gel's properties might only work on humans but inofficially afraid of allowing the non-profit Sirta Foundation to become an unrivaled player on the galactic plain.
Raising their concerns to the Noé Administration, the companies expected the chancellor to act on their demands due to their close ties to the Systems Alliance Foundation, the ruling party of the HSA. However in a rather unexpected twist of events, the chancellor, on the grounds of humanitarian intent, blocked off any demands of preventing the Sirta Foundation from sharing its knowledge with the rest of the galaxy.
A/N: So, this is the longest chapter I've written yet. It might also be the longest POV scene now that I think about it.
Well anyway. I hope I managed to create the contrast I wanted to have with this action scene, this Shepard right here is an incredibly different person than the other characters that usually get scenes like that. She's not a special forces officer yet and definitely not on the near superhuman level I've been makingsome of the other characters out to be on. So this is what a standard Semper Vigilo action scene actually looks like through the eyes of someone that's not a battlehardened soldier, elite spy or Spectre like the other characters that usually have action setpieces this detailed. I really wanted to get acorss just how absolutely horrific the stuff most characters do is from the eyes of a normal person while giving Shepard more of a reason to become the person she needs to be for mass effect to be mass effect.
I'll allow myself to say that it worked.
Adding to that, I do remember telling someone that Shepard would meet someone we all know on Elysium. I'm also gonna llow myself to say that you probably didn't think it would be Kai Leng.
I won't go into detail why its him, I'll just say that I've got my narrative reasons for it being him, you'll see. Its gonna be great, at least if I do it right.
Now other than that, this is actually the first background mission and I want the other two, Akuze and Mindoir, to be at least as long Elysium so yeah, you've got something else to look forward to.
Now other, real life stuff, I'll be a bit busy for the next few weeks, I've got some police tests coming up and since I am far from satisfied with the current way I'd pass the physical part (yeah I'm the kind of guy who's never happy with his running time even if its enough to pass, I know, annoying) I'll probably spent less time writing and more time training. Since I don't want the quality of SV to suffer under that, it might be more than the week and a half schedule I've tried to maintain ever since I had to leave the army. (still not happy with that)
So yeah.
For the record we're at 286 reviews, 490 favorites and 593 follows (not quite the 600 I wanted but maybe this time).
Review and let me know what you think about the chapter, as some may have figured out by now, I reply to all of you.
See you around next time.
