Chapter 67. The Vanguard Of Our Destruction


28. January 2415 AD, Virmire, Command Center, Two Hours after Planetfall

"Still nothing?" Haugen asked in regard to Hofmann's attempt of raising the asari. They had just passed the glass cells where the salarians had been held. Yet they hadn't found the commandos or the STG operatives.

"Still nothing," the other invisible soldier replied, making him go through the same line of thoughts all over again.

Since the salarians were gone, the cells had obviously been opened. But there weren't any signs of a fight. No dead bodies, at least not more than the already deceased salarians who had been left behind in their cells, and no other visible damage pointing to a struggle between them and the commandos. Just an empty cell tract.

Had he been wrong?

If so, what had happened to the commandos?

There had been ten of them.

Arterius couldn't have wiped them out that easily, right?

Since there was only one way to find out, he set his eyes on the door up ahead and continued right until a hiss from another door linking this hallway to an adjacent room caused him to stop, readying his SR-9 in anticipation of what might be his chance to shoot Arterius in the back and show him just how a sucker punch felt. As he saw a turian step from the door, his finger slit to his trigger, began squeezing-

-and stopped the same second he saw an onyx-armored N7 follow in his step, pulling back from it as if it had been burned.

Friendlies.

And not just any friendlies.

Spectre friendlies.

"Decloak," he ordered quickly before activating his helmet speakers to get ahead of any potential friendly fire incident. "Don't shoot! Friendlies to your right!" After the N7 and her team, the turian, a krogan and another human, had spun to him and pointed their weapon at his face for as long as it took them to register that he was exactly what he had claimed to be, friendly, the visibly relaxed.

"I take it you're also with Phantom Squad?" the commander asked, prompting him to nod.

"Yes. Captain Haugen," the ASOC officer said, introducing himself. "I take it one of my men already told you what's going on?" he asked.

"You found Arterius," Commander Shepard replied, skipping the pleasantries of an introduction. Not that she needed one.

"Exactly," Haugen nodded before realizing that the N7 was already moving again.

"What about the asari commandos? Are they in contact yet?" she asked.

"I don't know. Can't reach them."

"Are you being jammed?" the Spectre suggested, causing Haugen to shrug and find out.

"Don't think so," he said. "Miller, comm check," he added through his radio.

"Sounds good, boss."

"Copy," Haugen replied before looking at Shepard. "I can't speak for them, but we're not jammed."

"And if our comms are working, the asari's should work as well," the N7 followed up before sighing. "I don't like this. Let's pick up our pace, Captain. The asari probably don't have a lot of time."

As if to underline that statement, a dampened explosion echoed through the corridor up ahead.

Alright.

Time to hurry.


One Minute Earlier, 2156 CE, Virmire

As he watched the door try and fail to hold up against the asari's cyber assault, Saren reached for the Carnifex on his hip and took up position right in front of the entrance, having complete faith in the improvements that had been made on both his gear and himself. He'd take them by surprise, crush them before they ever realized what was going on. Sure, there were ten of them, but when his inferior self had managed to beat all of Matriarch Benezia's personal guard and the councilor himself, then his ascended form could easily handle a squad of less trained and less experienced huntresses.

"Keep their leader alive," he instructed the geth platform behind him, prompting it to give a set of electric noises in reply. While his inferior self would've struggled to make sense of what that meant, he now had no problem with understanding the also ascended synthetic. As the encryption reached its breaking point, he added another order. "And leave the human to me."

Just when he had finished his instructions, the door opened and time slowed down to a crawl, at least to him.

To the asari he probably moved similar to a blur.

First he spotted the hacker, the commando who was standing next to the door and who's omni-tool was still activated. As the geth began to shoot at her comrades, his free hand shot out, grabbed her by her neck, lifted her from the ground and held her in front of him like a shield. When he saw her flare up with purple energy, he squeezed his hand and in an instant the flaring stopped. Unlike with the salarian, this time around he wasn't surprised by his own strength. Next Saren raised his Carnifex and leveled its sight at an asari who's barriers, biotic and kinetic alike, were already crackling in a mixture of purple and blue from the shots the geth were firing with her. He squeezed of a single shot and, just as expected from the phasic ammunition, the round entered her head, caused it to snap back at an odd angle, and finally caused her to drop to the ground. As soon as she died, the still living huntresses overcame their hesitation and started firing at Saren despite him still holding their comrade in front of him. Although the dead asari's body armor caught the majority of the shots, a few managed to pass through.

Hence Saren decided to move again, once more significantly faster than any turian should be capable of. As he jumped and then rolled to the first bit of cover, the corner of the last glass cell of this corridor, adrenaline kept being pumped through his body far faster than normal and time continued to move far slower than usual. After sensing that his biotic barriers were already back at full strength and glancing at his HUD to confirm that the same was true for his new and improved shields, he leaned around the corner of the glass cell and realized that the asari, alongside their salarian 'allies', were retreating back down the corridor they had come from under the cover of a large purple wall of biotic energy. As usual for their doctrine, the asari that appeared to be the leader wasn't taking part in projecting the barrier but instead moving in the center of the formation. This allowed her to focus on guiding their tactical movements and reinforce any other member of her squad at a moments notice.

Before his ascension the formation in front of him would've been impenetrable. Asari commandos practiced this maneuver to perfection and nothing short of heavy ordinance or platoon level fire power could break it quickly. No matter how good of a Spectre he had been, there would've been nothing he could've done to shatter this kind of defense by himself.

But now?

Now he was neither alone nor as weak as before.

First he waited for the salarian sleepers to awaken. When the whispers told him that they now remembered their purpose, he simply turned the corner, now facing a squad of asari that was pinned between them and the surprise attack of the indoctrinated STG operatives and focused all of his biotic strength into the palm of his hand. When it reached its pinnacle, he sent it flying forward in the form of a rapidly shifting wave of biotic energy that cracked the reinforced glass of the cells as it passed them and set off a biotic detonation as soon as it came into contact with the significantly more stable barrier. As soon as he registered the bright purple flare of the detonation, he rushed forward, ignoring the damage the asari gunfire was doing to his barriers during the short dash, and leapt towards the asari at the front of the formation. Aided by his armor's improved servos and his now much stronger muscles, yet another perk of his recent ascension, his hand grabbed a hold of her face and, using the momentum, smashed her skull against the cold metal floor with enough force to dent the ground and presumably cause traumatic damage to the brain inside the now caved in skull.

Not intending to spent anymore time on the spot or allowing the asari that was, at least to him, somewhat slowly throwing a purple-glowing punch in the direction of his head, to hit him, Saren glanced at his HUD, realized that his shields were still untouched, and shifted his focus on what remained of his barriers. Despite the shots of the asari, there was still enough biotic energy surrounding him to produce a violent shockwave. As a cabal he had never managed to fully master this move but now that he was way stronger than any turian biotic could ever hope to be, detonation his barriers wasn't even a challenge. While he didn't care about what happened to the salarians, they were as expendable as the human pawns created on Eden Prime and had already served their purpose of distracting anyone who found them, there was the risk of him killing the leader. But his personal intention of interrogating her had now been overshadowed by the whispers convincing argument that what little information could be gained from her stood in no comparison to the risk of Sovereign's beacon being discovered.

As his barriers expanded outward similar to a regular biotic shockwave, the asari and salarians were hit, all of the latter dying upon impact due to not wearing armor or having kinetic shields to protect them. While the majority of the asari had managed to brace themselves and use their own biotics to defend against the forces he had just unleashed, two hadn't been fast or strong enough to do it. One commando was thrown against the glass walls of the cells with enough force to break her spine. The other, who had tried to get behind his back while he had broken the skull of her comrade, was launched into the direction of his geth honor guard, meeting her end at the hands, or judging by the sound of it rather the feet, of the ascended synthetics.

Before the asari formation could recover from his sudden and unexpected attack, Saren grabbed the commando closest to him by her arm and flung her into one of her comrades. As one huntress tried to catch the other, both stumbled backwards and fell into one of the cells, taking them out of the fight just long enough for the former turian Spectre to set his eyes on the leader of the commando unit. In the process, he registered the red flashes produced by his new kinetic barriers deflecting a close-range blast of her shotgun. While he could probably take another shot without his shields slipping into critical territory, Saren didn't feel like gambling. Not when his very purpose was at stake.

Instantly he grabbed the barrel of the Disciple and pulled on it with all his might, snapping the asari's trigger finger in the process. However instead of flinching away in pain, the commando went on to retaliate. While time still moved slow, the biotic punch she flung at his head struck his helmet like lighting and sent him flying on his back. If not for his new armor bearing the brunt of the force and his stronger muscles and tougher bones providing just enough support for his neck not to snap backwards, he likely would've died then and there. But instead of meeting his end, the turian Spectre recovered from the strike far quicker than the asari expected, catching her just as she was about to strike him again. He intercepted her hand, the one without a broken finger, and pulled her to the ground with him. Then, before she could react, Saren pressed his Carnifex under her chin and pulled the trigger. The first two shots smashed against her barriers, which unlike her shields hadn't been bypassed by proximity. But before he could fire the third one, the shot he was sure would kill her, he heard the warning of his geth drones and turned his head to the left just in time to see a very large krogan rush into him.

Even with adrenaline pumping through his veins and his reflexes having been sharpened beyond the natural capabilities of other organics, there was simply no way he could get away in time.

Hence Saren was hit with what he assumed felt like the weight of a moderately-sized skycar. He wasn't sure how long he was flying through the air, the slower perception of time he was experiencing in the fight kind of made it feel like a small eternity, but he instantly knew when his flight stopped.

The way he hit the steel-floor hard enough to dent it was kind of hard to miss.

After he suppressed a groan and listened to the whispers encouragement that he could get back up and kill these new arrivals with ease, Saren climbed to his feet, looked at the critical state of his barriers and leapt for cover behind the corner of another cell. But in the process of doing so, he registered something that turned the whispers encouragement into a roaring command. An onyx black figure with a small N7 ensignia on her chest.

She was the one who had touched the beacon, the one who had stalked him wherever he went.

His orders were clear.

She had to die.


Meanwhile, 28. January 2415 AD, Virmire

As she saw Arterius leap into cover, giving the large geth platforms behind him a clear line of fire, Emily did the same. With nothing else around, she went with her gut and took shelter inside one of the cells, hoping that it wasn't going to close the moment it registered her presence. Considering the pulse fire that cut through the air of the cell tract where she had just stood, it had been a smart decision. She pressed herself against the door and looked to her right, where it appeared that Alenko had had the same idea as her after Wrex's charge had pulled them into the fight.

"Christ, the asari got slaughtered," the biotic muttered, his voice only standing out over the gunfire due to the squad intercom they shared with each other. It was true. By the time her team and the two ASOC operatives had entered this cell tract, half the huntresses had been dead or dying at the hands of the dark-purple armored figure tearing through their formation like they were a badly trained militia.

Sure, from a logical point of view she knew that it was Arterius. He was simply wearing some kind of experimental power-armor that amplified his already deadly skillset. But in the brief moment she had seen him fight, it hadn't looked like the asari were facing a person. Quite the opposite actually. Between the lighting-fast movements, the force of his attacks and the utter lack of damage the commandos seemed to do, it had looked like they were going up against a perfect killing machine.

As more rounds tore through the corridor, Emily looked at her HUD, worried about Wrex. Judging by vitals it seemed that he had somehow gotten out of the line of fire. How? She had no idea. She simply was grateful that they weren't already down a man or, like she feared for the commandos, basically wiped out.

Alright.

Think.

Their enemy was slowly but steadily advancing on them and as soon as they closed the distance, that'd be it. There was no way they'd beat those geth in a close quarter situations. Her heavy hitter, Wrex, was stuck somewhere in front of her, her biotic was standing next to her and Garrus and the ASOC soldiers were somewhere behind her, presumably hiding inside the other open cells, equally incapable of doing anything but hide from the stream of pulse fire pouring down the corridor. They didn't have the numbers, they didn't have fire superiority and they didn't have time.

As far as firefight tactics went, this was a terrible situation that'd only get worse the longer they stayed in it.

Luckily for her, this was exactly the type of situation N7s were trained to deal with.

Her mind began to race.

Just leaning out of cover and returning fire wasn't an option. They'd be minced meat in an instant.

They still had some grenades.

If they threw them down the corridor, they wouldn't have to expose themselves and might just distract the geth long enough for Alenko to work some of his magic or for Garrus to take off one or more of their heads. But they'd also risk Wrex's life. Emily had no idea where he was. The last thing she wanted was give an order that fragged him by accident.

Hence the option went into the back and she moved on to the next possibility.

ASOC had optical camouflage. It was their trademark.

They were also further back then her. If she got the geth to focus on her and Alenko, they could use their invisibility to eliminate the threat with much less risk than her own team. Sure, the option was counting on the geth taking the bait long enough for them to line up their shots and there not being a countermeasure, but it did beat a blind explosive attack down the corridor. If there was nothing else she could come up with, the two members of Phantom Squad would have to save all of them.

Therefor this option got a solid ranking in front of her last idea, but it was still far from an ideal solution. There were a lot of maybes that had to happen for it to wor-

When the edge of her cover was chipped away by the pulse fire, Emily was torn from her thoughts for as long as it took her to edge further left and away from the danger. Damn it. How long could they keep this up? Their heatsinks had to overheat sometime, right?

Wait.

Of course.

"Alenko, you've got an overload ready?" the N7 asked as she glanced to where the lieutenant was taking shelter. Just like Emily herself he was taking a lot of fire.

"Yes!" the man shouted back, probably forgetting about their squad intercom removing the need for his voice to overpower the sound of gunfire due to the fact that his own cover was disintegrating as quickly as her own.

Good.

Now they just needed a way to give him a windo-

Before she could come up with the next part of her solution, a loud, biotic thud echoed through the corridor and silenced the gunfire. Next Emily noticed that a red and orange silhouette moved passed the corner of her eyes. As it moved into her field of vision, she realized that Wrex, the likely source of the biotic explosion that had just occurred, had just made a move at his retreat. As she was about to use the moment to their advantage, a dark-purple blur launched itself at the bounty hunter and locked him in a biotic death struggle.

Saren Arterius.

Not wanting to waste any more time on the opportunity presented to her, the N7's gun went up, aiming at the back of the turian Spectre with the intention to end it then and there. As her sights aligned with the base of his skull and her finger slipped to the trigger, both of which probably happened a lot faster than it felt right now, a purple explosion erupted between the two combatants, throwing her backwards into the cell where she hit her head right on the corner of the metal bunk hard enough for the reinforced glass to now spot a crack and her vision to get fuzzy all of the sudden.

Alright.

Not good.

As she climbed back on her feet and raised her Valkyrie again, it was just instinct that allowed her to notice, aim and finally start shooting the geth platform trying to get inside the cell to finish her off. The small mass accelerator rounds of her weapon first bounced off of a red kinetic barrier and then off the equally dark-purple armor of the geth, who was still trying and failing to move his large body through the narrow cell door and getting worse at it with every one of her shots that managed to draw white cooling fluid. While she was ready to chalk it up to coincidence, it almost felt like divine intervention when the last round her Valkyrie spat out before overheating caused the big synthetic to 'drop dead', halfway blocking the entrance to the cell in the process.

When she was about to breath a sigh of relief, a very noticeable, very loud gunshot echoed through the corridor, quickly followed by another, much more powerful biotic explosion that sent a dark-purple blur flying past the door, shattering every glass cell along the length of the cell-tract. When the sound of windows breaking finally stopped with a metallic echo, a deadly silence settled in the corridor.

Shit.

Lowering her Valkyrie, it'd be another few seconds before it was ready to fire, Shepard pulled her sidearm out, checked that there still wasn't any pulse fire cutting through the corridor and, upon confirmation of the latter, moved to the door. First she looked the way the geth had come. There, sitting by the door next to a dead asari was a turian in dark-purple armor. Blue blood was flowing from his left arm, or rather what remained of it, and a Carnifex handgun was clutched in his right hand. But other than that, he wasn't moving. Was he dead? While she really wanted to be certain, she couldn't confirm that right now. Not until she knew what had happened to her team.

Moving on, she caught a glance of the empty cell where Alenko had stood a few moments ago in the process. While there wasn't a body, the space right in front of the cell was scorched black with small ripples of purple still dancing over the biotic 'burn marks' and a red blood stain had formed on the ground. Finally both her gaze and her gun turned to face the way she and her team had come from. There she spotted a krogan with a right arm that was injured in a way very similar to Arterius', Alenko, who was being carried by an invisible human shape that was being covered in an increasingly red coat of blood and a turian in C-SEC armor running through the corridor and towards her. Just like Arterius, he was holding a Carnifex in his hands. Behind his visor she could see that Garrus' eyes were set behind her, grimacing at something while barking what sounded 'don't do it!' at someone out of sight.

Hence she took another look and was only rewarded with shock as another squad of geth poured from the door and the seemingly dead turian Spectre rose to his full height despite missing one of his arms, already surrounded with raging flares of biotic energy.

Just who was Garrus talking about? Was he seriously trying to talk down Arterius after everything that had just happened?

Then Emily realized what was going on. And then the last thing the N7 saw before a wave of fire and debris sent her flying backwards was the sight of the asari Wrex' tackle had saved holding up a detonator in one of her blood-stained hands.

Then there was only blackness.


Meanwhile, 2156 CE, Virmire, Deeper Inside the Command Center

"Jenzin?" Kirrahe asked as the faint sound of an explosion reached his squad. They had just left passed a lock door, fought a pair of krogan clones that had fought even harder than their peers to keep them in place and were now facing at yet another grey blast door locking them off from the rest of the facility. The last thing they need now was for the ceiling to fall down on them.

"Source unknown. However unrelated to anti-matter surge," the younger STG operative replied while he followed the trail his omni-tool was giving them all the way to the blast door. "Suggest we continue."

"Agreed," Kirrahe said before gesturing for one of the STG operatives to start working on an overwrite for the door. While security seemed to get tighter the closer they got to the origin of the surge, they had yet to run into something their 'overwrite programs', which of course didn't officially exist and most certainly weren't simply a type of shackled AI that had been outlawed by Council Law centuries ago, couldn't crack.

"Hold up a minute. If you ask me, that sounded like a lot of demo-charges," the human marine that the Spectre had left with them injected before deciding to hail her superior. "Commander, do you read me?" she spoke into her radio. "Commander, please respond," she tried again. Then she turned to look at him.

"Could be geth interference," he offered, knowing that it probably wasn't, "human comms have been susceptible to jamming in the past."

"You try it then," she said with a shrug.

"Fine," Kirrahe nodded. "Commander Shepard? Come in," He didn't get a reply either.

If he combined that result with the explosion he had just heard, he could already draw a pretty clear picture of the Spectre's death. A pity, really. She had seemed like she had had a lot of potential. Just as his experience had taught him, the good always seemed to die young. He shook his head. There'd be time to honor her effort later. Besides, nothing he could do could bring her back.

"Still think it's our comms?" the NCO replied, evidently not as ready to put the death of her allies behind the mission's sake as he was. "We need to get up there, see if they're alright."

Kirrahe let out a small sigh in response. Their mission was to find the source of the antimatter and conclude if there was a danger to the invasion force and if so, stop that danger. Compared to the lives of a squad, even one that included a Spectre, their priorities were clear.

"Anti-matter surges take priority," he replied. "Entire invasion hinges on finding out if it presents a threat to our forces. Can't diverge from mission that saves thousands to try and save ten." While he wasn't sure how to interpret the marine's silence, the fact that she didn't charge off the way they had come from suggested that he had managed to convince her. If he was honest with himself, he hadn't expected this result. Unlike STG operatives, regular soldiers had a tendency to place their sense of comradeship over their mission. It was one of the reasons why the Union sent them and not other units to conduct most missions. With the Special Task Group there was no doubt that the objective would be achieved, no matter the cos-

"Security circumvented, Captain," the operative by the door said, catching Kirrahe's attention.

"Already?" he asked, surprised. He had figured that it'd take at least as long as the last time.

"Yes. Not much resistance from the geth this time. They seem," he paused. "Distracted."

"Understood. Ready to breach," he ordered before taking position at the door. Not much resistance was always worrying. Were they being funneled along a certain path and into an ambush? Or was this an attempt to create a false sense of imminent victory?

"Ready," the STG operative replied. Not a second later they went through the door and funneled into a large room with a very high ceiling. Like the majority of the facility, it had been built into the cliffside and as such was made of a blend of steel and rock. In its midst there was a large spiral that seemed to continue beyond the point where it met the ceiling. Judging by the continuous blaring Jenzin's omni-tool had started to produce from the moment the door had opened, this was the source of their anti-matter surge.

But just what exactly was 'this'?

"Save to continue?" he asked, not daring to take another step closer to the device.

"Yes," the salarian nodded. "No dangerous emissions detected. Only picking up auditory signals."

"You mean the humming?" the human marine asked.

"Yes. Picking up humming," the younger STG operative confirmed.

"Eezo cores hum, right?" she went on.

"Correct. Element Zero drives produce this kind of noise," Kirrahe nodded. "However don't produce red electro-static," he added as he observed the flow of energy that seemed to climb up on the spire.

"Is it a weapon or not?"

"Unknown," Kirrahe said before his ears picked up a noise that stood out from the humming. Heavy footsteps on a metal floor. They stopped right above him. Then there was a grunt and the metal groaned as it was bent.

As fast as his mind could, Kirrahe put two and two together, shoved Jenzin to the side and leap tforward just as a krogan clone dropped from the catwalk above them, hitting the ground right where he had been standing. Like his brethren, his plates were a dirty brown but unlike most of them, the plates on his head had started to fuze, indicating an uncommon state of maturity. Additionally, his eyes were blue and seemed to glow in the same faint light as the dots underneath his skin. Finally he also wasn't carrying one of the cheap, mass produced assault rifles that had allowed Kirrahe to discover this planet in the first place. This krogan was carrying a biotic hammer, a battlemaster's weapon.

Not good.

"Spread out!" he ordered, still lying on the floor.

"You won't interfere with our ascension!" the large beast roared before swinging his hammer on the ground and cracking apart the stone beneath in a demonstration of his anger before charging at Kirrahe. The STG captain jumped to his feet as quickly as he could and barely avoided a collision that would've broken every bone in his body. Then he turned and started to fire at the krogan, who's momentum caused him to stop just shy of the spire. "Hah!" the krogan snarled as he turned around and started running again, ignoring the bursts of Kirrahe's weapon. Since mass accelerator fire didn't seem to do anything, the captain fired off an incendiary blast before dodging the charge at the last possible moment for a second time. As the plasma burnt the krogan's arm, he still seemed distinctively unfazed, even while using his other hand to brush of the red-hot substance.

"You won't rob my people of a future again, Salarian," he declared before suddenly spinning right and throwing his hammer at Jenzin, who had only exposed a small fraction of himself to take a peek. Judging by the crushing noise, the dent in his torso and the odd twitching of what little he could see of Jenzin's legs, the operative had sustained a deadly injury and would be gone in a few moments.

Nothing he could do about it now.

"Don't stay in one spot. Keep moving!" he ordered, hoping to prevent a repetition of Jenzin's fate. Next Kirrahe moved sideways to create distance between himself and the krogan. Simultaneously he reached for his Scorpion, intending to use its grenade launcher function o take care of this threat, the krogan extended his burned arm to the hammer and, with a purple glow, summoned it back into his grip.

"Running won't save you," he declared before flinching and bringing up his arms to shield himself when a shot of the human marine hit the side of his head in a spot that would've killed any non-krogan and at least incapacitated most others. But instead of dropping to the ground, the krogan let out a roar, changing things from 'not good' to 'worse' in an instant.

"He's going into blood-rage!" the other STG operative shouted while Kirrahe centered the weapon on the krogan's torso, managing to fire a total of one shot before again being forced to dodge the charge. While he rolled out of the way, he remotely detonated the sticky grenade and caused the clone to stumble in the last steps of his charge. Before he could even turn around, the Scorpion grenades already began to stick to his back. One, two, three, Kirrahe kept shooting and moving for as long as he could before again being forced to jump to the side. This time it had to be enough grenades to finish him. As soon as there was enough distance, he'd hit the trigger and end this fight. However due to having miscalculated his position in the room, he didn't land in a graceful roll this time around but instead fell against the spire. He knew that he there wasn't enough distance between him and the grenades to safely detonate them but as he saw the krogan turn his bleeding head towards him and bring up the hammer, he realised that this was his only chance to end this fight.

So, after the fraction of a second of hesitation, which he was ready to chalk up to the fact that he really liked being alive, he pulled the secondary trigger and, much to his surprise, was only covered in a shower of orange and brown gore, miraculously not being hit by the explosion itself.

As his eyes widened behind his visor in surprise, he also registered the built-up of red energy around the gaping hole the explosion had torn into the spire. His attempt to clear the situation had clearly caused things to go from 'worse' to 'very bad'. If he had more time, he would've laughed at the irony, but as things were, he simply started to run to the door where the surviving operative and the human marine were waiting for him in another display of comradeship. As he glanced to where the unmoving body of Jenzin was lying, he came to the tough realization that he wasn't going to be able to save him in time and continued to run towards safety. Right when he passed the door, the explosion of the spire carried him forward and forced him to land in a clumsy roll.

Then things turned dark for the brief second it took his HUD to register the lack of light and turn on his night-vision.

A power-outage.

He brought up his omni-tool. The surges were gone.

Had it just been a power-source?

What kind of power-source used anti-matter? The only ones he could come up with right now were the generators the keepers maintained on the Citadel but how exactly had Arterius gotten that tech and more importantly, what exactly did he need it for?

He shook his head. It didn't matter right now.

He needed to notify the general. The invasion force was hinging on it.


Meanwhile, 2156 CE, Virmire, Landing Site Artymek

"Move over there! I need you to reinforce that position!" Nihlus shouted while looking up at the large mech kneeling in front of him, flinching down when a stray round ricocheted off of its armored hull and found its way into the ground between his feet. Spirits. These things really were bullet magnets on an open field.

"Understood," the pilot replied through the speakers of his Paladin, giving his voice a very deep tone. As the machine rose to its full height, the turian officer ducked his head down, pressed his Phaeston against his shoulder and moved behind the cover of the semi-fortified position he had rushed to a few minutes ago. Then he risked another peek at the jungle. They were still being shot at from a hundred different locations and nothing they seemed to do was able to decrease the incoming enemy fire. He ducked back down just as another round hit the sandbag next to his head.

Close one.

He slid into the trench and moved forward. Ever since his CIC had been hit, Artymek had turned into even more of a warzone. They were being pressed hard by both geth and krogan forces, who had seized their lack of air-superiority and air-lifted troops in between their lines through the incredibly narrow route Nihlus had cleared for them when he had rerouted the human anti-air platoon, something that never would've been possible if not for his own mistake and the unexplained but continued existence of the command center that was coordinating the geth's war effort all over the peninsula. While it was a tactic that'd get them encircled and slaughtered in the long run, they didn't seem to care about the longevity of their plan.

They only wanted to overwhelm his position.

As more mass accelerator rounds punched into the dirt of the defensive position the Oma Ker had dug into the grass field around the now destroyed assault ship, Nihlus moved further along the trench and set his eyes on a position that'd give him a better overview instead of returning fire and joining the battle as a regular rifleman. Between the few legionnaires that had stayed behind to provide security, the rear-echolon troops that had picked up guns the moment the attack had begun and the mixture of other units, turian and non-turian alike, that had rallied at Artymek, they had more than enough people returning conventional fire. What this defense lacked was an organized defense, which wasn't all that surprising considering ninety-five percent of the command staff present at Artymek had literally been crushed by a geth gunship.

As he watched the bursts of mass-accelerator and pulse fire being exchanged from the field and the jungle, the major waited for the right moment before breaking into a sprint, leaving one position to hurl himself into the next one, hitting the dirt of the next web of foxholes and continuing to stay low while searching for someone with the rank-insignia of an NCO who could effectively take command of this section.

"Sergeant!" he shouted while pulling down a turian that had been shooting his Phaeston at the mostly unseen enemy. His armor bore the yellow markings of Oma Ker and going by the three orange dots on his collar, he was part of the Engineer Corps. Not the infantryman he had hoped for but as an engineer he'd still have a grasp of advanced squad-tactics. He certainly beat the logistics corporal and comm-technician that commanded the other two position in terms of tactical competence.

"Yes, Sir?" the soldier replied after realizing a major had pulled him out of the fight.

"This is a field promotion! You're now in charge of my center!" he added before pointing the way he had come and the way he'd be going. "Get yourself two runners and have them link up with the battle-net of those squads. You need an overview and overlapping fields of fire! Understood?"

"Understood, Sir!" he shouted back. "Relius, Tripalax, on me! I need you to-" as Nihlus kept moving along the positions, the conversation faded out of earshot. Like every turian NCO that served in a combat role, the soldier had a decade of experience and had been trained for this kind of situation. The engineer didn't need him to hold his hand. So instead of sticking around, the former auxiliary commander located his next cover. A bullet-riddled husk of a medical-transport. While it didn't look perfect, it beat making a long dash to the next foxhole. After he folded up his Phaeston and put it on his back, Nihlus prepared himself to sprint again. While it couldn't be more than twenty paces, it was more than enough room to be hit. But as already established, his chain of command had lost almost all of its links so manually reattaching them and tapping into each battle-net as he did so was a dangerous necessity if he wanted to hold his ground. So he pushed himself out of the trench and started to run straight for the transport, barely registering the human mech first exploding and then collapsing in front of him. Instead of stopping to check on the pilot, who might still be trapped in the mech, Nihlus simply jumped over its burning legs and continued. He didn't know how to free him and if he stopped to figure it out, he'd be just as dead as the unfortunate soul.

After reaching the cover and thanking every spirit in existence for not getting hit, he turned his head left and saw that he was sitting next to the slouched over body of a medical officer. Going by the hole in the wheel of the transport and what little was left of her head, she had been hit straight through the vehicle by an anti-material round while trying to escape the hell unfolding around her. The sight alone was enough to discourage him from staying any longer. He got back to his feet and started to run again right as an explosion threw up dirt in front of the position he had been heading for and one of the legionnaires in it went down screaming. As he jumped into the cover, he saw that the Revenant-gunner was now missing a good portion of his hand and that the wound was spouting blue blood much like a hose. If nothing was done, he'd bleed out. Nihlus reached for the soldier's medical kit, opened it and pressed the syringe of medigel in his good hand. While he wanted to stay longer and do more for his fellow Oma Ker, he simply couldn't waste his time on treating an injury. That was the duty of medics and squad-mates, not commanders. As he searched for the soldier in charge, he was glad to find that it was an actual lieutenant from an actual infantry unit that was commanding this portion of his defense.

"Lieutenant!" he shouted, drawing the attention of the soldier.

"Sir!" he replied equally loud but much calmer than the previous NCOs and officers he had run into.

"This flank is yours! Keep the geth in the jungle and link up with your adjacent positions! You need to establish contact and adjust your fields of fire!"

"I already established contact, Sir. Our fields are overlapping," the officer replied while Nihlus tapped into the battle-net of the Oma Ker unit and as a consequence also into the ones of all of the adjacent ones. That explained why this portion of his line was looking so much better than the rest of Artymek. Someone was actually in command of the defense on this flank.

This made things a lot easier.

"Good work, Lieutenant!"

"Sir!"

Nothing left for him to do then.

He glanced at his HUD. He had almost covered the entire length of the front. The only thing that was missing were some remote pockets further north where the fields met the jungle. He scanned the position with his eyes. It looked like a mix of humans and armigerians were holding the line over there. When he established contact with them, he'd be able to fully organize their defense and crush the enemy between them and the units in front of Artymek.

There was only really one issue.

No cover for nearly fifty paces.

Was he fast and lucky enough to risk that sprint?

Judging by the dead bodies lying on the field between him and the position and the pulse fire cutting through the air, the answer was likely no. He knew that his duty came with a risk but taking this charge wouldn't be risky, it'd be suicide. He'd be of no use to anyone if he got himself killed. So instead of running to his death, Nihlus reached for a signal flare stored in one of his armor's compartments, checked that it was actually bright-blue, aimed the one-shot flare at the ground next to their covered positions and hoped that armigerians used the same signaling system as the Auxilliary Corps. As the light-flare crossed the deadly open field and landed right where he had hoped it would, one of the black-armored armigerian legionnaires instantly looked at him before nodding his head, reaching for something on his belt, took a running start and flung the thing Nihlus' way. While he couldn't tell what it was, it was really small and hard to see, he had to give the soldier credit for his pin-point accuracy. It, a small grey box, landed in the dirt-brown earth in front of his own trench, just one quick grab away. He snatched it, nodded his thanks and took a look.

It was the soldier's omni-tool.

His way into their battle-net.

"Spirits! Get down!" he heard the lieutenant shout but before he could turn to the source of the noise and see what he was supposed to get down from, Nihlus felt a sharp burn in his side and fell down barely managing to break his fall by holding onto the edge of the trench already feeling his armor's automated medical system, a perk of holding a high rank in the Hierarchy's military, inject medigel into his wound. Considering how badly it burned and how long the procedure went on, he'd gotten hit badly, which incidentally also explained why blood was slowly dripping from his mouth and staining the inside of his cracked visor.

"The major's hit!" someone shouted while Nihlus turned his head to face the geth-gunship now hovering over the jungle canopy and spitting death at the trenches with its rotary pulse guns and missile launchers, ignoring the small-arms fire directed at it. When the streak of blue slowly climbed back to where it started, towards him, Nihlus took a split moment to decide that he wasn't going to break turian tradition and get shot in the back. If this was his end, he'd face it. So he took all of his strength together, turned to where he face the gunship and stared at it, looking at its purple silhouette right up to the moment it was consumed by an explosion. "You! Get him into the trench!" the voice from just now shouted again before Nihlus was pulled down into cover, just barely catching a glimpse of the swarm of salarian air-superiority fighters now buzzing over the jungle canopy, clearing the skies for dozens of assault ships similar to the one burning down in the field behind him that were now descending from the sky above him.

"I need a medic over here! Stay with me, Major! You'll be fine! Just stay awake!"

Reinforcements.

About time.


Some Time Later, 28. January 2415 AD, Virmire

The first thing Emily noticed when she woke up was the waterfall flowing down in front of her. She was in some kind of cave, apparently. But it wasn't completely natural. While the lights were out, more than enough sunlight shone through the glass wall that had been carved into the cliff-side to overlook the ocean. As she followed it upwards, she noticed the hole in the ceiling and remembered.

Arterius.

In an instant she was up on her feet, Valkyrie at the ready and scanning the room for the turian.

"Easy, now," a somewhat familiar voice spoke, causing her to turn to its source. It was the decloaked ASOC captain. He was working on one of the two doors that seemed to isolate this cave from the rest of the base. However instead of trying to overwrite its security, it seemed like he was trying to pry it open with a steel rod he had removed from the platform leading towards the glass wall.

"Where are we?" Emily replied and, after looking around and realizing that it was just the two of them, inquired further. "And where's everyone else?"

"Still somewhere up there," the soldier, Haugen if she remembered right, replied before pointing at the hole at the ceiling.

"What happened?"

"You remember us getting blown up?"

"Memory isn't the problem here. I didn't see what happened after Wrex got attacked. I was kind of busy stopping that huge geth from killing me."

"Wrex is the krogan?" the soldier inquired before sitting down on a stone slab, taking off his helmet and running a hand through his sweaty blonde hair.

"Yes."

"Alright," he nodded before looking at the ceiling as if that would help him remember. "So. While that big geth was trying to get to you, Arterius locked your krogan in a death grapple. Looked like he was winning too from where I was standing. So your biotic-"

"Kaidan," she injected.

"Kaidan," he corrected himself before going on, "jumps from his own cover and goes in for the kill with his own biotics."

"Okay."

"But Arterius notices him, turns to him and shoots him point-blank. But before he goes down, Kaidan triggers the biotic energy Wrex and Arterius are producing and causes this big exp-" her face fell flat behind her visor.

"Kaidan got shot?" she asked.

"Yes," Haugen replied with a nod.

"How bad?

"Last time I saw him he was bleeding out all over my combat medic," the memory came back to her.

"Is he-"

"Look I don't know. I think it was bad," the soldier sighed. "But if anyone can save him, it's Hofmann. Best thing we can do now is figure out how to get out of here once I get you up to speed."

"Yeah, you're right," she muttered. "Go on."

"So anyways. There was this big biotic explosion and then we all went flying. Even the geth and Arterius. The bastard hit the wall and stopped moving. So I told Hofmann to grab your man and tried to get up close to Arterius to finish it but before I could do that," the man trailed off, probably testing if she really remembered.

"The asari woke up, misread the situation and blew us up," Emily finished.

"Exactly. I was just about next to you when the floor gave in under us. We got lucky we didn't break anything," he added before looking at the ceiling. He was right. It was easily a four or five meter drop. If it hadn't been for their hardsuits, they would've sustained some serious injures from a fall like that.

"Which brings us to this problem," Emily muttered as she looked up. "Do you have-"

"A rope?" the ASOC captain said as he looked at her and rose from the stone slab. "Yes. But there's no way we can climb that. Nothing up there will hold us."

"I was going to say a rope and a hook but looking at this," she muttered as she inspected the hole they had fallen through," it probably won't make a difference."

"Which is why you are welcome to help me pry open the door."

"You realise this thing was built to contain an explosion, right?" she asked as she walked over to him and looked into his blue eyes, realizing that this was the same ASOC officer she had seen onboard of the turian dreadnought. "Why not overwrite it? Is your omni-tool broken?"

"No. But it wouldn't make a difference either way. The power's out."

"So no overwriting then."

"Yes. No overwriting."

"Why not just wait until someone comes and gets us?" Emily wondered as she grabbed a hold of the steel rod alongside the other officer.

"Because I really, really, really," he groaned as their effort produced little results other than bending the rod, "really don't want to miss my shot at killing that turian son of a bitch. The longer we're stuck here, the further he can get away."

"Sounds personal," she could relate. Especially after what she had just heard in regards to Kaidan. Damn. She hated not knowing what had happened to one of her team members. But that uncertainty wasn't going to do her any favors now. So like a good N7, she pushed it down for the time being.

"Let's just say I had a lot of friends on Eden Prime," Haugen explained before the steel rod was bent to the point where it was of no use to them. "Dammit."

"I guess it's waiting after all," Emily said before watching the soldier toss the piece of steel to the side and move to the platform again.

"No. I still have at least ten tries left," the man replied before grabbing a hold of the next rod and prying it off the platform.

"You know if they're easy to remove, they probably aren't any good as a lever."

"Oh I know," the soldier said as he pulled of the next piece of the platform. "But unless you have a better idea, this is all I've got." He really wanted that revenge, didn't he?

"Like I said. Waiti-" Emily was about retort when a red light flooded into the room, drawing both of their attention. There, floating at the end of the platform and in front of the glass panel was a distorted red shape. While she couldn't make out what it was, it looked familiar, like a shadow of something she had seen in her vision after Eden Prime.

"Alright. What the fuck is that?" her unlikely companion inquired while she walked over to him.

"You are not Saren," a deep voice declared while a red interface appeared at the end of the platform. Although she knew it was coming from some kind of speaker in the room, she couldn't help but feel like the voice actually originated inside of her own head. Judging by the way Haugen grimaced, he was feeling pretty similar. "I have seen you in his dreams. Rudimentary creatures of blood and flesh that oppose us," the shape announced. "Now you stand in front of me and touch my mind, fumbling in ignorance, incapable of understanding the cycle you seek to disrupt."

"Do you know what this is?" Haugen asked while Emily felt a jolt run through her spine, forcing her to grab a hold of the railing so she wouldn't fall over. The last time she had felt anything remotely as intense as this had been when she had gotten the cipher back on Feros. "Hey, are you okay?"

"Yes it's just that-" She caught herself from saying too much to someone who had no idea about the beacons before looking at the shape and narrowing her eyes. "Who are you?"

"I am beyond your comprehension. I am Sovereign."

"What are you doing here?" she added as she looked at the interface. Turian letters and numbers were dancing across it faster than her translator could register. Whatever this thing was, it was obviously used to talking to the rogue Spectre. So instead of wasting time or worrying about breaking the veil of secrecy that had been spun around this entire mess, she got straight to the point. "Are you helping Saren with bringing back the reapers?"

"Reapers?" the voice repeated. "A label created by the protheans to give voice to their destruction. In the end what they chose to call us is irrelevant. We simply are."

Wait.

What?

"Are you going to tell me what's going on here?" her companion inquired, causing her to wave her hand before another electric jolt went through her mind, setting in motion the cogs necessary for her to make the next realization. If he knew where the term came from, that could only mean one thing.

"You were there when the reapers killed the protheans. I don't know how but you were alive back then," she muttered.

"Alive," the voice repeated, this time as mockingly as a synthetic voice could. "What you consider as life is but a genetic mutation, an accident. Your so called lives are measured in years and decades. Then you wither and die. We are eternal. The pinnacle of evolution and existence. Before us, you are nothing," how could a synthetic voice sound thar arrogant? "Like the protheans and all those before them, your extinction is inevitable. We are the end of everything. Past, present and future organics. You all bow to our design."

"We'll see about that," Emily replied as she pushed herself of the railing, feeling the effects of the beacon grow weaker. "I beat Saren on Therum, I beat him on Feros and I beat him on Noveria and I'll keep doing it for as long as it takes to stop him. What makes you think I won't do the same to you?"

"Confidence born of ignorance," the shape spoke before a foghorn echoed towards the from the ocean, which was now seemingly going through a great disturbance with high waves appearing from a spot far behind he islands. "The cycle cannot be broken. The pattern has repeated itself more times than you can fathom. Organic civilizations like your own rise, evolve, advance and at the apex of their glory," at this point Emily was only halfway listening to the arrogant voice, focused much more on the dark-purple shape quickly rising from the distant ocean, "they are extinguished. We impose order on the chaos you create. You exist because we allow it. And you well end because we demand it. Such is the nature of the cycle."

"Shit. Is that the ship from Eden Prime?" she heard the ASOC officer mutter as the gigantic squid-like shape climbed from the ocean, drawing a swarm of geth dropship towards it.

"It's not a ship," she replied with a mutter as another jolt of the beacon's vision and the cipher joined forces to help her understand. "It's a reaper."

"Are you still confident that you can oppose us?" the shape demanded as its blurry depiction cleared up to reveal a perfect representation of the ship floating over the ocean in the distance. "Millions of years after your civilization has been eradicated and forgotten like those before you and those after you, we will endure. We are infinite and as before, the time of our return is coming. Our numbers will darken the sky of every world. You cannot escape your doom."

"You're not even alive. Not really," Emily replied as a flight of three geth dropships stopped to hover in front of the glass window and the turian standing in the middle one looked at her from the exposed cargo compartment, not moving a muscle while she stared at him. Emily had seen pictures of him and he looked nothing like before. The fringes on his head extended beyond their natural length and his eyes shone in a piercing blue. His white faceplates were lined with rows of glowing dots and the arm he had just lost had already been replaced by what appeared to be a geth appendage made from the same material as his dark-purple suit of armor. "You're just a machine. And machines can be broken," she added, full of resolve. At this point she wasn't sure who she was addressing.

"Your words are as empty as your future," Sovereign said before her ears rang when the soldier next to her fired of a burst of Valkyrie hots at the glass wall. If not for its resilience, the shots would've drilled straight into Arterius' head. However he didn't even flinch. He simply stared back at her in silence. "I am the vanguard of your destruction," the voice declared. "This exchange is over."

With that, the dropship broke its holding pattern and fley away, following the flock of ships pouring towards Sovereign.

"Are you please going to tell me what's going on here?" Haugen demanded, again. But Emily couldn't speak. Her eyes were simply set on the hawk-like turian frigates descending from the sky above the ocean, piercing the clouds and coming in guns blazing, firing their entire arsenal at the unmoving reaper.

"Hey, what's the matter? Snap out of i-" as red beams cut through all of the ships with ease, she felt herself get pulled down by the ASOC soldier just in time to avoid the hail of deadly glass shards that came flying at them when the force of the blast waves of six nearly simultaneous drive core explosions shattered its reinforced surface.

So this was it.

Sovereign.

The vanguard of their destruction.

The power of the reapers.


Meanwhile, 28. January 2415 AD, Citadel, Presidium

What an utter waste of his time. That was all he thought about while playing with the knife in his hand.

He could be down in the wards right now, crossing names off his list, or follow up on his lead on the Shadow Broker. But instead of doing that, he was stuck watching over a traumatized, sleeping asari scientist like a glorified sentry.

This had to be one of the absolute worst ways anyone had ever employed a Section 13 specialist, no?

Why was he even asking. Of course it was.

As 'Lancelot' scratched his beard in frustration and decided to close the window, it was getting kind of cold in here for his liking, the beeping of the monitors that the asari was connected to whenever she went to sleep caught his attention.

What the hell. This definitely wasn't supposed to happen.

As the asari shot up from her bed, her eyes as black as the night itself, Lancelot took a cautious step back, well aware that his cover was blown now that one of Shepard's crew actually knew what he looked like. This was exactly what he had warned Udina about.

"By the goddess," the asari half-said, half-sobbed, her eyes slowly losing their color. "I know where it is."


Codex: Organization of the Corps of the Armed Forces of the Turian Hierarchy

Due to its nature as the single largest military in the galaxy, the organigram of the Armed Forces of the Turian Hierarchy, which is more commonly referred to as simply the 'turian military' in the interest of time, is jokingly referred to as the 'most delicate piece of art ever produced by any turian who ever lived' in the circles of sociologists. This is owned to the fact that it basically spans the entirety of turian society.

Although technically just organized into three basic branches, the Combat, Combat-Support and Non-Combat Forces, the fact that every aspect of turian society is in some way integrated into the armed forces has led to the creation of hundreds of different corps of services and military roles unique to turian space. These corps range from traditional combat roles that are fully integrated into individual legions and number much larger than the traditional understanding of a 'corps' to clearly split special operations units, such as the Cabal and Recon Corps that actually fit the description of a corps, to supportive roles like the Logistic Corps and entirely non-combat oriented roles such as the Archivist or the Environmental Inspection Corps, which are only compromised of a couple of hundred individuals at any given time.

While changes in the Combat and Combat-Support Forces are rare due to the training time required for a soldier to thrive in his roles, changes between different Corps within the Non-Combat Forces, which a turian that finishes his period of mandatory service but chooses to continue working under the Hierarchy is bound to enter, happen frequently and fluently. While not as financially rewarding or unrestrictive as a job in the fully civilian corporate sector, turians that choose professions such as public workers or bureaucrats receive the same benefits as individuals that chose to extend their period of service. While not monetary in nature, the rises in citizenship tiers that come from public service are the only way outside of the Armed Forces for a turian to reach the highest tiers of citizenship.


A/N:

Yay. The wwo weeks update scheduel is back!

... this time.

Don't get used to it.

Let's talk chapter.

Virmire is basically done with this, well expect for its fallout. As you can tell, I went a very different road, with no obvious death choice and no obvious death. Not that there won't be any consequences.

Why?

Because I always hated that there had to be a choice and that just about every fic roles with it and puts a predictable death into this point of the story, no matter what happens. I mean come on. Where's the tension in that?If I'm going to kill someone off, it'll be in a way no one expects prior to me actually putting them into the spot where they're going to die.

As for Saren, right from the moment I knew I'd turn him bad anyways, I knew that I wanted to have at least a good chunk of his "fight" (if you can even call it a fight, he kind of just went through them until his arm got blown up) from his POV because well... as you hopefully remember, he kind of is the protagonist of most of Semper Vigilo prior to being indoctrianted. If you think he's too OP... well yes. That was the point. He's supposed to be OP now. After all, he's pumped full of reaper tech.

Furthermore, up until he literally walked into Sovereign, I don't remember him actually ever losing after becoming a Spectre. Saren was always just... the best because that's what I wrote him to be, the shining, ultimate hero of the Citadel who ends up on the wrong side. So yeah. This is what happens when the ultimate hero becomes the ultimate villain. He kind of kills everyone right until the odds get too overwhelming and he becomes too arrogant for his own good. (I mean come on Saren, just standing in the doorway when it opens for the sake of a jumpscare in a medium that doesn't allow jumpscares? Whoever gave you that idea? Some fanfic writer who watches to many horror and action mov-)

MOVING ON!

We also got the first real interaction between the Paragon and Renegade Background and yes, I made it intentionally nice because well, just because I assigned different morality systems to two people, doesn't mean that they have to hate each other.

Other than that, I copied and then altered the talk with Sovereign and gave him an actual chance to show how much of a scary death robot he actually is, sowing a bit of hopelessness in Shepard to really, really hit home that Virmire's fallout will be HER lowest point.

Other than that?

Liara woke up to give us a cliff hanger!
Yay!

That's it. That's all I've got to say.

For the record we're at 577 reviews, 898 favorites and 987 follows.

Keep em coming.

See you around next time.