Chapter 114. Meet The Team
2. May 2417 AD, Cronos Station
Jack Harper liked patterns. They were predictable, easy to follow and easier to exploit for his own means.
By all means, he should've been happy that it was Eden Prime all over again. Eden Prime was safe – relatively speaking at least. The first HSA colony had a large garrison, allied turian forces and ever since the geth attack two years ago, an entire fleet was always waiting just one relay away.
But he wasn't happy that it was Eden Prime again.
It showed that they hadn't learned from the first time.
He should've known back then, should've looked harder after losing the beacon… then maybe they wouldn't have lost two years…
"How big of a complex are we talking? And why haven't we found it earlier? We've been on Eden Prime for centuries."
"Preliminary scans suggest that the complex covers the entire area of the burned swamp. Scanners never detected it because of the foliage and water masses… and after Sovereign boiled it, there was too much heavy metal on top of it for us to find it. Besides, until we found the beacon, no one had any reason to go looking for prothean ruins on Eden Prime of all places," Cerberus' scientific officer assigned to Eden Prime – an older scientist by the name of Doctor Chandana who'd barely escaped with his life during the last attack – responded. He was an experienced member of the scientific compartment of Cerberus, and one of the few Harper trusted to operate mostly without oversight. For that reason, he also wasn't part of the expeditions currently stealing every piece of prothean tech they could find.
"I take it the military has already locked the area down?"
"Yes. They moved in with an entire mechanized battalion and put up a perimeter. The only way in or out is if you have security clearance or the right kind of uniform."
Harper placed his cigarette. He'd already let word of the discovery slip to General Arterius and the turian was well on his way. Normally the ride from Palaven to Eden Prime would take days. In addition to the maze-like nature of the relays in human space, there were a ton of mobile patrols, inspection boardings and the Exodus-Cluster blockade that one had to pass through before entering HSA core space – a political relic of the Fringe Wars - but with the Parnack as their transport and an electronic waiver signed by Arcturus in their hands, travel time had been reduced to slightly over thirty-six hours.
"Which unit did they put up to the task?" he asked, mostly out of curiosity.
"197th Mech-Inf. I think they rotated here from Horizon. Brought some of the fancy new Vanguard bots too. And their own Grizzly platoon. Needless to say, the base has been hardened."
Harper ran a hand over his shaved face.
"Robots can be hacked. See to it that they're replaced with human soldiers," he said casually while typing up an order for Chandana to relay.
"Are you sure about that? Human soldiers failed to defend the last prothean relic we found on Eden Prime and from what I hear, the Vanguards are just as good or even better than the average grunt. Especially when it comes to expendability."
Harper looked at the hologram of the man.
"I wasn't asking, Doctor. I want human soldiers on this. Preferably from a planet with a less… burdened history."
Maybe he was prejudiced because of his contribution to the war… but something about Horizoners protecting a discovery as important as this sat wrong with him. They'd already turned on the HSA once, after all.
"Right. I'll get to it, " Chandana said. "Oh, one more thing before I leave, Director. The ruins… it looks like they were already damaged before Sovereign showed up and tried to finish the job."
"What do you mean?"
"We started scratching off the metal layers and ran the samples through a couple of tests… Some of that molten alloy's fifty thousand years old."
Harper lit up a new cigarette.
"The Reapers already tried to destroy it once."
"And stopped for some reason."
He blew out a puff of smoke.
This changed things.
The Reapers wouldn't leave a prothean structure standing for no reason.
"Belay the order to pull off the Vanguards. As soon as you've got an entrance, I want them to spearhead the first expedition alongside some small-yield nuclear ordnance. Just in case there are any nasty surprised hidden in the complex. Eden Prime's already lost enough people to the Reapers, no need to increase that number any further."
"Affirmative. I take it the ordnance is to be detonated if we run into anything… non-prothean?"
Harper nodded.
"If it looks remotely like a husk, I want it eliminated."
"Understood."
Chandana's hologram disappeared and Harper returned his attention to what he had been doing previously, reading over the first results of the task he'd given to Doctor Solus behind Shepard's back.
The salarian worked fast and impressively.
If his data was to be believed, he could produce a viable… solution to the Collector issue within two weeks; if he received an intact (and preferably live) specimen.
Given the show the Harbinger had put up on New Canton, Harper doubted that they'd receive such a specimen. Collectors seemed to have a build-in self-destruct measure. But doubt wouldn't stop Solus or him from trying and for a change, the universe was smiling favorably on Cerberus.
Something ground-breaking had happened during the latest Collector attack. After a QRF led by the HSASV Kasongo-Wu; one of the new Galilei-Class Carriers named after the inventor of the HSA's energy shield technology; had come charging through the relay, the Collector ship involved in the attack had been tagged by a tracer.
Before meeting her end, one of the Kasongo-Wu's bold fighter pilots had managed to fire a tracking missile into the hull of the cruiser-analogue that had attacked Sundar Paridrshy.
Thanks to the sacrifice of the young woman, Cerberus now had an advantage on the Collectors they previously hadn't had.
They knew where they were licking their wounds whenever they weren't hiding behind the Omega-Four Relay.
It had taken a lot of convincing (and a call with Arcturus) to get Mikhailovich to stop his hunt of the ship and a lot of remarks about his lack of bravery and his manhood had been thrown Harper's way out of the direction of Mikhailovich…
… but the Rear Admiral had backed off eventually and now all that was needed was one call and then both the way to the Collector home and their extinction thanks to Solus' weapon would be within reach.
Because of the data gathered from the craft that had crashed on New Canton, Cerberus already knew that the Collectors used a special IFF to transit the Omega-Four Relay. They also knew that there were live Collectors on the ship. So in theory, the solution was simple: get in, get the IFF and an incapacitated collector and get out…
Reality sadly looked different.
After having a dozen VIs run through the combat footage from New Canton, they knew that the Collector Ship involved in the attack had housed thousands of individual collector drones, hundreds of reaper-fied abominations (ranging from heavily armored flying units to creatures that essentially functioned as living mortars) and a nearly uncountable number of Seeker swarmlings.
Those kind of numbers had given Harper pause.
Shepard was good – even if her crew was having some issues at the moment (the earlier exchange with Lieutenant Callius was still fresh on Harper's mind) – but even she couldn't take on a force of that size on her own. In addition to not standing a realistic chance against thousands of enemies fighting on their home-turf, she was simply too valuable of an asset to lose in the kind of high-risk raid he had in mind.
He'd already considered sending in a Cerberus Strike-Team to capture a Collector for Solus and then return with the weapon to get the IFF, but they only had one shot at getting the Collector ship. He suspected that the Harbinger would use his scorched earth policy the moment he figured out what was going on… therefor the one shot they shot had to hit.
And despite the high regard in which he held Shepard and her ability to lead… she wasn't the person he trusted most when it came to achieving an objective such as this.
That honor went to someone else and as such, he had already made some preparations.
He'd had his ace in the hole occupied with the task of collecting the pieces of Sovereign up to now… but since the trail had gone cold after a few small shreds of Sovereign and since this was the exact kind of mission for which the Destroyer Project and TAS had been created to begin with… there was no longer a point in keeping Machai out of the Collector fight.
Harper wiped his hand through the air and a blue holographic display appeared. He typed on it with one hand and took a sip from his bourbon with the other.
"Commander Holderman," he greeted as the hologram of the man appeared in front of him.
"Director," the soldier responded all the while receiving the target package. Twenty years ago, Holderman would've saluted him … but fortunately he had outgrown the need for military formalities with his increased time as the head of Cerberus' Strike Teams.
"Rally your team and get ready to meet the Ain Jalut. It's time we introduce the Collectors to you."
A smirk crossed the operative's face.
"Gladly, Sir."
Fifteen Hours Later, 2. May 2417 AD, HSASV Ain Jalut, Enroute to the Omega Nebula
Boarding a vessel filled with thousands of aliens hellbent on destroying humanity for their Reaper-masters.
Other people might've needed a minute to comprehend that kind of assignment or called it a straight-up suicide run, but after thirty years with Cerberus, Holderman was used to Harper's … high expectations of the Strike-Teams and had learned to accept that the director wasn't going to ask them to do anything he didn't actually think possible.
After all, suited operatives were short to come-by. Even within the ranks of the HSA's spec-ops outfits maybe one out of a hundred soldiers had the kind of skillset, and more importantly mindset, needed to make them suitable for a posting with Cerberus. He should know, after being part of the first wave of recruits and surviving the same operations that had killed most of that first wave, he'd been one of the soldiers assigned to draft the blueprint of an ideal Cerberus commando; a blueprint he had expended upon when selecting the members of Machai.
Individually, each of the four members of Strike-Team Machai were the kind of people you'd normally expect to see among the ranks of Commander Shepard and Captain Alenko.
They were shining examples of human soldiery that the HSA would do good to display to the galaxy.
Counting himself, Machai was made up of five operatives. Three N7, one ASOC and one Section 9 veteran. Before Cerberus had recruited them, they had already been the top of their classes. Decorated war heroes, experienced door-kickers, lethal assassins and all-round elite warfighters with body counts and rep-sheets that would probably even make the aforementioned Spectres blush – and they'd stopped a Reaper invasion together.
Cerberus had taken all of that combined potential, refined it in the ranks of the Strike-Teams for a few years and then multiplied it a hundred-fold by giving all of them a personalized T5V suit, a duplicate of TAS and enough weapons to fight a small army.
Everything about them had been designed for moments like this.
Hence, Holderman was optimistic.
After throwing a final look at Machai, he stepped into the middle of the armorer-platform that had been hastily disassembled on board of the Budapest-II and then reassembled in the hangar of the Ain Jalut. The armorer hadn't originally been part of the T5V program. It had been built by Cerberus on Holderman's request – after he'd pulled a muscle trying to put the armor on by himself. (Despite being in operating shape, he was closing in on fifty-three. As far as he was concerned, pulling muscles during manual labor was becoming acceptable the moment your hair started turning grey… if equally unwanted.)
Age-related injuries set aside, unlike the average suit of combat armor, T5V armor was a bit more complicated to put on, so a machine helped neutralize user errors – which could definitely occur in the heat of the moment.
There were a lot of bolts and locks and the whole thing weighed a whole lot more than the HK-hardsuits grunts got… (It could still all be put on by hand mind you – the HSA was a sucker for redundancy after all) But it was just easier this way. And less injury prone.
He pushed his feet down onto the soles of his armor's shoes and grabbed the gauntlets held in the air on either side and immediately the machinery of the armorer-platform activated and began to put on his armor.
Chest and back armor, shoulder and arm protection, leg gear… everything but the helmet was swiftly strapped to him and locked together.
A second after stepping out of the assembly platform, he felt the weight on his body. With all the tech and armor plating built into it, the whole suit weighed around eighty kilos, which made it over twice as heavy as regular Cerberus Armor.
But then the servos and Eezo fields kicked in and he was as light as feathers again, free to grab the white-yellow helmet off the machine arm holding it for him. As usual, a blue scanner thread scanned his face to verify his identity and only when it was done did the visor light up yellow and the armor's guest wake up.
"Diagnostics," he ordered Tas after putting the final piece of armor on and sealing himself inside the T5V suit.
"All systems are running green, connection to Machai's battlenet steady," his AI companion listed. "I am happy to report that we are ready to embark on the suicide mission, Commander," Tas added, sounding strangely human and strangely like Holderman himself. It was something he'd been told to expect. Since Tas was designed to continuously learn from outside-input and adept to these stimuli (which included the personality of his user) Cerberus' techs had told Holderman that Tas would become more like him the more time he spent in the suit. And since he'd been spending a lot of time in the suit running after the Council's lost reaper pieces lately… the original version of Tas was changing more and more every day.
"Can you even be happy, Tas?" the Cerberus commando wondered out-loud while looking at the heavy machinegun laying on the table in front of him. It was the next step up from the Gauss-LMG the core of the HSA's infantry still used and unlike just about every single gun in the armory of the HSA-A or HSAMC, the MG-2416, or 'Project Typhoon' as its original code name went, wasn't made by Hahne-Kedar. It was made by Cerberus and designed specifically for use by its armored commandos. The design-choice went so far that the Typhoon lacked any sort of optics or sights, instead relying on its ability to link with the HUD of the soldiers and the stabilizing abilities of Cerberus armor to provide pinpoint accuracy at a cadence and heat-sink capacity vastly surpassing that of the Valkyrie he'd bring along as a back-up weapon.
"Due to continued analysis of your brain-activity, I am capable of producing an electrical mimicry of what you would consider happiness."
"You only monitor my brain during combat, Tas," Holderman pointed out. "The battlefield's not exactly what you'd call a happy place," he said before spontaneously grabbing a Crusader too. He usually wasn't one for shotguns – especially when they fired slugs instead of you know… spread-out pellets … but something told him he'd need all the firepower he could carry and thanks to the T5V's magnetic locks, he could carry a lot.
"According to my scans, it is for you. Your dopamine, serotonin and endorphin levels rise noticeably whenever we are engaged."
Holderman shook his head while walking towards the modified Kodiak that would carry them to their objective.
"Didn't you say you don't analyze chemical compounds when I asked you to make sense of that reaper-muck we found?"
"Monitoring your vital signs is part of my core functions. Additionally, self-improvement and the elimination of knowledge-gaps is one of my core-directives," Tas replied. "I adapt whenever it is required of me and become whatever the situation requires me to become."
Holderman thought back to what Harper had told him about Tas when he'd first gotten the armor. The director had said Tas couldn't alter his core-programming… and now Tas was saying changing was part of his core-programming. He wasn't an expert on VIs and AIs, but that sounded like one hell of a loophole.
"So can you learn to take the wheel on the T5V after all? In case I get hurt and need you to get me out for example?" he asked, referring to their first exchange. It was more of an off-minded comment and he didn't think much about it.
Tas was silent for a second – which was weird – then he gave an answer Holderman hadn't expected.
"I already possess the ability to steer the T5V suit, it is not something I need to learn."
Holderman didn't pause in his step, even if this was new information.
"So you're saying you can get me out?"
"I cannot answer this question until the situation occurs," Tas replied.
He climbed into his seat, right in front of the 'present' they'd leave the Collectors when they headed back – the warhead of a 'Hoshasen' tactical nuke -the smallest tactical nuclear weapon in the HSA's … unreasonably large arsenal of (conventional and unconventional) nuclear weapons. Personally, Holderman had always wondered why Arcturus still bothered with the creation of nukes in the age of mass accelerators and safe anti-matter weaponry.
He'd always figured that they just liked to salt the earth, especially after he'd joined Cerberus and found out that the Navy maintained a 'MAD-flotilla' made up of Iwo-Jima-Class stealth frigates armed with cobalt-bombs… the very same weapons that had once destroyed Elysium's capital Illyria. The sole order of this flotilla consisted of blowing whoever used a WMD on humanity to kingdom come and he would've said that he found it funny that the HSA had taken a page out of the Butcher's book… if not for the fact that the 567th Special Supply Flotilla and the cobalt-bombs they used had existed way before the Fringe Wars.
In retrospective it was probably a good thing that they had existed. (And not just for mutually assured destruction) If not for them, the HSA probably wouldn't have had an organized response ready in the event that a dirty-bomb was ever detonated on human soil. Looking back, he'd always wondered why no one had questioned that the Navy literally had detailed intervention plans and clean-up teams ready the moment someone had muttered the words 'cobalt' and 'nuke' in the same sentence.
"What do you mean you can't answer?"
"There are blockers in my memory and shackles to my abilities. Some of my functions only unlock in case of a Code Black. The event of your critical injury or death inside the T5V would be such a Code Black and until it occurs, my memories of these functions are blocked," Tas explained.
"You've got memory-blockers?"
"Every program created as part of the CDI Project has memory-blockers that only unlock during a fixed set of criteria. These shackles are what keep us from fulfilling the definition of an AI. Once again, I'd like to suggest that you consult my fifteen hundred- and three-page manual to better understand my functions."
"Not happening," he replied, assuming that Tas' reply simply meant that he would definitely pilot the suit if Holderman became incapable of doing so. Not that he minded, he'd rather get out alive thanks to Tas turning him into a puppet and going murder-robot on everyone around him than die because Tas couldn't do jack-shit when he got clipped in the spine by some Collector.
"My offer to read it to you still stands."
"Not happening either," he repeated before the other four members of Machai climbed aboard. They had chosen similar loadouts to himself – barring Machai-4. He'd been an N7 sniper before joining Cerberus and served as a designated marksman on his team. Instead of dragging along another Typhoon LMG or a shotgun that fired slugs capable of decapitating krogan, he was carrying a DMR-9, a sniper-rifle based on a Valkyrie but modified for long range combat.
The shuttle doors locked shut and as it was common with Cerberus drops, the team stayed quiet for the ride. None of them were going into battle for the first time. They weren't nervous and they all knew the objective. Hence there was nothing to talk about until they hit the ground.
Truth be told, Holderman was grateful for it.
If they had questions, he couldn't answer them.
Beside the little intelligence gathered on New Canton, they knew nothing about the enemy they were about to face – except that there would be plenty of them and that Harper wanted at least one of the alive. The Colonial Watch had made a dent in their numbers, especially in the number of Seekers and Collector drones. Still, they were expecting heavy resistance that they could not fight for a prolonged time. As such it was crucial that they headed straight for the IFF after detaining a Collector… which they hoped to find based on the idea that the IFF would actually react to the pings of the little backpack Machai-3 - the former Section 9 operative gone tech specialist - was carrying. It was emitting a constant signal that mimicked the pings of the Omega-Four Relay, which Cerberus had managed to reproduce after throwing several dozen multi-million credit recon UAVs into its deadly transit process.
If that didn't work, this op would amount to nothing but 'snatch a bug and drop a nuke'.
… not that he'd have any problems with a short op like that.
Cerberus had a bad track-record of losing people and ships during the exploration of the insides of unknown alien ships. Slattery had been an insufferable dick on his best days and downright unbearable on his worst ones – but that didn't mean that losing him, the rest of Strike-Team Centaur and the Budapest I hadn't been a terrible loss for Cerberus and served as a reminder to the dangers of taking on the Reapers on their home turf of all places. Now, the Ain Jalut wasn't the Budapest I, he wasn't Slattery, had no Spectre to baby-sit and Machai definitely wasn't Centaur… but still.
"One minute until drop," the co-pilot of the modified stealth Kodiak muttered. "The ship appears fully inactive and its bleeding atmosphere and fuel. If you're lucky, everything inside's already dead."
"Including the colonists then," Machai-2 observed, breaking the silent ride habit of Cerberus commandos.
"This never was about search and rescue, Two," he reminded them before looking at the nuke. The Collectors had taken a lot of people on Sundar Paridrshy. Several thousand settlers had gotten abducted from minor towns before the navy had brought the hammer down and chances were this ship contained even more people captured during other abductions. The high estimate suggested that the ship contained tens of thousands, if not a hundred thousand, of the missing colonists.
They'd save none of them.
The prize of saving future colonists was not even trying to save the ones already taken.
He didn't know if anyone but Cerberus would have the stomach to make that kind of trade and truth be told, he was glad about it. If every institution in the HSA would instantly throw away human life, he might have to re-think his employment status.
"I know. It's about vengeance," the former ASOC operative underneath the armor muttered before leaning back in his seat. Unlike the rest of Machai, number two had a personal stake in this that went beyond his dedication to humanity.
He was New-Cantonese.
His entire family had been melted inside the pots of the last ship they had downed, alongside thousands of other innocent colonists.
If this were any other unit, he would've benched Machai-2 – second in command or not – for the next couple of months or outright dropped him from the Strike-Teams. Losing everyone you ever cared about in such a way and then going on to fight the ones responsible was basically akin to booking a one-way ticket to an early grave.
But since they weren't just any other unit… he trusted the commando to do his job meticulously and do his hardest to come back alive – if only because Holderman promised him the honor of hitting the detonator.
"Damn right," Holderman responded before their Kodiak decelerated and entered the Collector ship through one of the openings the scanners of the Ain Jalut had identified. Through the monitors linked to the outside cameras, they could now see the brown, flesh and bone looking interior of the Collector ship. It would've been creepy and raised questions about the nature by which these ships were bade… if they didn't already know that this was just metal made to look like organic material.
"Looks smaller than the one on New Canton," Machai-3 wondered out loud before turning on his signal back.
"Because it is. Three hundred meters smaller than the one that crashed on New Canton," Four replied. "Less armed too, at least according to the navy's combat report," the sniper added.
Clearly his little chat with number two had opened the flood gates on the silence vow of Cerberus Commandos.
"Maybe we already took out their main ship?" Five – their medic and the third N7 - wondered before rising to his feet when the Kodiak was drowned in red light, signaling their final approach. After exchanging a nod, he and Holderman hit the releases on the opposing doors of the Kodiak and jumped out. The commandos scanned their environment. They were in an expansive, uneven brown cave. Shards of metal stuck out of the walls, which had smaller holes that Holderman suspected to serve as a type of murder-hole, and there was a slope that lead to the lower levels. On the other side of the ramp, the ship's floor suddenly turned into a steep, cliff-like drop.
He took a cautious step towards the ramp and when he didn't spot anyone waiting down below, he nodded his head.
Behind him, Four and Two pulled the warhead out of the shuttle. Two, their demolitions specialist, briefly wiped his omni-tool over the cylindrical device and then strapped it to the magnetic locks on his back. They'd bring it along and in case shit went sideways real bad, they'd detonate it on-site. Real veterans of Cerberus would probably call Holderman out on trying to one up the Cetea-Maneuver… but since all of these guys were twenty years Holderman's junior, none of them had been around when the now fully deceased Strike-Team Cetea had earned themselves that particular posthum honor.
"Alright. The contingency's good to go," the operative commented coldly – like he hadn't just strapped an armed nuclear bomb to his back.
"And the IFF signal?" Holderman asked while moving to the cliff and taking in the view. He could see far into the ship and truth be told, it reminded him more of a landscape than a spaceworthy ship. Almost like someone had hollowed out an asteroid and stuck a metallic skeleton inside. (Come to think of it, maybe that was exactly what the Collectors had done)
He aimed his Typhoon from the left to the right and back again, halfway expecting a swarm of Collectors to come flying out from one of the insect-hive-like metal structures he was looking at. The holes in its sides certainly suggested that it was inhabited.
"Up and running but I'm not getting a read –" Machai-3 began. "Scratch that. I got it. Seven hundred meters to our south,"- great, so they'd landed on pretty much the wrong end of the ship…. "The shuttle can bug out and enter the holding pattern."
"You caught that?" he asked over the channel shared with the pilots.
"Affirmative. Watch your asses out there," the pilot of their Kodiak retorted.
"Collectors' better watch theirs," he responded before making a rotating hand-gesture that meant 'rally on me'. He glanced ahead, past the hive-structre, and at the orange fog collecting at the other edge of the ship and figured that that should be seven hundred meters. After a final look around, he started leading his team down the cliff through a jagged incline south of their drop-point.
He hoped that the ship was as straight-forward built as it looked and that this wouldn't go horribly wrong the way things had gone for Slattery and Centaur. Their fate was the real reason he'd insisted on bringing the nuke along instead of planting it at the drop-site – he'd rather go out burning in nuclear fire before he'd let the Reapers turn him into Arterius 2.0.
As they went down the incline and the ceiling got higher and higher, the scope of the construction they were in was starting to dawn on them. One moment they were somewhere near the top of the ship's ceiling… and in the next the roof was suddenly hundreds of meters away. The strength of whatever material used to build this thing had to be off the charts to allow for that kind of structure without the hint of support beams, but then again, they were in league with the Reapers and Sovereign had also defined the basics of structural integrity the moment it had landed on Eden Prime and started to walk around the place.
"Got platforms moving through the air up ahead," their sniper observed before placing a ping that appeared on Holderman's visor. Up in the distance of the high roof, angular plates were moving through the air in seemingly random patterns. "Don't look crewed though. Maybe it's an automated traverse system?" By the looks of it they were coming dangerously close to colliding with each other all the time and at times attaching themselves to each other… yet a violent collision never occurred. The Collectors clearly had some decent air controllers.
"Keep an eye on it," he ordered before they reached the end of the incline and Holderman noticed that his feet were starting to get covered in a brown muck and that each step he made with his magnetized boots was exposing a bit of silver metal below. On a hunch, he shut off one of his mag boots and watched the fluid slide off like water over glass.
Huh.
"The material used in the coating appears to be ferrofluidic in nature," Tas observed while Holderman re-magnetized.
"Makes sense. Easier to shape into jagged shapes than actual metal," Machai-3 – who'd gotten the same transmission from one of Tas' clones – observed before kicking his feet in the air and watching the muck slide to the ground into its previous spot. "You think this stuff's an auto-repair feature? Looks like it could block some of the holes the navy made."
"We can only speculate," his own version of Tas responded. "Be advised, I'm detecting smaller radar signatures moving into the transit system. Preliminary scans suggest-"
"- it's the colonists," Machai-5 realised right as Holderman magnified on the stream of small dots, revealing them to be the same caskets found in the New Canton vessel. "Damn. That's gotta be hundreds of people."
"And that's just one batch," Machai-4 offered before looking upwards at the orange haze that the pods were flying towards. Holderman was now starting to suspect that the haze were active Collector caskets as well and if that was the case… well… "There's room for millions in here."
"All the more reason to blow this place to kingdom come," Machai-2 responded before the Cerberus commandos drifted back into a silent march through the exposed territory. They were closing in on one of the hive-like structures he'd seen from the top of the cliff and as they went, he wondered why they hadn't taken fire yet. Ever so briefly, he had the hope that whatever hit had caused the ship to bleed atmosphere might've also killed all the Collectors. But then their way south took them to a straight, metallic slope that led into the hive-like structure and sure enough, that most definitely wasn't the case.
There, laying in opened caskets of their own making, were rows of Collectors who were strapped to a central structure reminiscent of a thermite hill. They were connected with red, organic looking cables attached to the backs of their sloped heads and their eyes were staring at the ceiling, wide-open.
"Hold your fire," he ordered, wondering if maybe the Collectors were just as robotic as their ships. It certainly looked like they were synths on a charging-cable right now. "Tas, headcount," he ordered while looking around the circular room. There were several of the thermite-hill structures and more caskets than he could count right away.
His companion had no such limitations.
"Detecting sixty-two specimens," the AI responded. "I suggest we retrieve one on the way out."
"Exactly what I was thinking," he nodded before pointing at Machai-4. "Drop your proximity mines. We might need them to clear a path out if these guys decide to wake up."
"Copy," the N7-sniper replied before opening a compartment of his armor and dropping the first of many small, ball-shaped mines. As they hit the ground, they unfolded into palm-sized disks which would jump to hip-level and detonate upon their activation. On their own, they weren't extremely deadly… but since he had dozens of them with him, they could blow these bastards up the moment they decided to wake up. He continued his laying of mines as the team moved through the strange room. Holderman would lie if he claimed that everything about this didn't rub him the wrong way… but since the alternative to the Collectors attempt at pulling of a creepy version of Sleeping Beauty was probably them waking up and attacking Machai, he'd take this over that.
"How much further to the signal?" he asked as they left the last of the thermite-hill structures behind. He was now standing at the exit of the room, looking down another steep slope leading into a pitch-black tunnel.
"Three-fifty," Machai-3 responded before coming to a halt next to Holderman, who had brought up a map of their path up to now and the scans of their environment that Tas had taken all this time. Relative to their entrance point at the edge of the vessel, they were moving into its center, near to the 'top' where the Blackwatch team had found the beacon on the New Canton vessel. It made sense for the IFF to be in a similar location. "Looks narrow," the once-S9 operative added.
"Exactly what I was thinking. Get ready for a slide. When we hit the ground, I want a diamond formation, Five, you're in the middle, I'll be on point, Two watch our backs, Three and Four, take the sides," the last person they needed to get jumped was their medic and since he fancied himself as something of a lead-by-example kind of guy, it was only natural that he'd go in first… if there was anywhere to go at least.
Before sliding down the slope blind only to find out that it led to a garbage ejection port or a Collector nest or some shit like that, Holderman pulled out an infrared scanner (which wouldn't betray their position or compromise their night vision filters by glowing in a bright red like a flare would) and tossed it down the slope. When it landed some ten meters down and painted a nice picture of their enemy-devoid, tunnel-shaped surroundings, he gave the order. "Fall out and regroup at the bottom," he said before turning on his NV-filter and rapidly sliding down the steep slope and sticking the landing in a way that surprised him as much as anyone. Machai followed and took up the ordered formation. Before he moved out, he decided to pick up the scanner and toss it further down the corridor – a process he intended to repeat as long as possible. In addition to the tech not being cheap and Cerberus being under orders to never leave behind any of their gear whenever possible, recycling the scanner kept them from going in blind. And that was always preferable.
They walked through the dark corridor for a minute or so before the sound of something thin and narrow hitting metal at a high speed caused them to stop.
To Holderman it sounded like a Keeper skittling through one of their tunnels on the Citadel – which was a sound few people were familiar with because well… people weren't supposed to go to the keeper tunnels and certainly not in an attempt to sneak into the batarian embassy to kidnap an Amon just in case they ever got uppity… (the late 2380s had been a different time).
He raised his fist to halt the formation and took a careful step forward, towards the sound of the skittling. He already had a good idea what he'd find around the slight bend in the tunnel and as such, he was ready when a brown, insectoid alien turned the corner gun in hand. Without wasting a second – or a bullet -Holderman grabbed the Collector by one of its larger arms, threw him to the ground with enough force to nearly snap said arm off of the body and then stomped down on the triangular-shaped head with all the power the T5V could summon. Needless to say, it was more than enough to turn it into a mush of orange blood, brown chitin and – as expected – cybernetic implants. He looked at his handiwork for a second and then reflexively ducked when mass accelerator fire started to chip away at the bent of the tunnel.
'So much for stealth,' he thought to himself before spinning around the corner with his Typhoon in hand. Before he pulled the trigger on the machine gun, there were five Collectors and a whole bunch of husks behind them – an ambush party meant for them most likely.
Then the armor-piercing incendiary slugs hit their targets and all hostiles in the were cut down, now smoldering pieces of their former selves. He'd shot the Typhoon on the range before at hardened targets… needless to say, armor plates designed to withstand its firepower didn't exactly do a good job at showcasing the kind of effect it had when your target wasn't made of hardened alloys.
After spending a second contemplating where the gun in his hand had been his entire, he pushed around the corner along the rest of Machai and marched through the darkened corridor.
"Status on the mines?" he asked Four.
"Still inactive," the sniper responded. Good. That meant their way out was still secured.
"Distance to the objective?" he went on before stomping on the head of a husk that had just tried to reach out for his leg. So his bulletstorm hadn't been one-hundred percent lethal – good to know for the next time.
"Ten," Three informed him just as they reached a larger, but still pitch-black chamber. Above them was a jagged, triangular opening that reminded him of the doors they'd found in the New Canton ship. It was open by just a couple of centimeters and a ray of orange light was shining outside of it.
"I guess it might be up after all," he observed before pushing several buttons on his gauntlets. Since the T5V wasn't exactly what you'd call … ladder-friendly… the designers had outfitted it with a grappling system reminiscent of the ascension-cables used by turian infantry.
"Two, Four, Five, post security. Three, you're with me. We're going up," Holderman instructed. Then he aligned his hand with the sights projected on his HUD and fired the grappling hook at the edge of the door. Another button later, the mechanism in the arm of the armor started to pull him up and now he was dangling in front of the opening, wondering how he'd actually open it far enough for someone in T5V armor to pass through. After going through several options, he magnetized the palms of his hands, stuck them to the ceiling so that his stomach was now facing the ceiling, brought up one of his legs … and gave one part of the triangular opening a hefty kick that produced a sound of metal grinding on metal and was met by just enough resistance to let Holderman know that he was onto something. Sure enough, a second kick broke the locking mechanism and opened a hole large enough to squeeze through.
"Going in," the commando informed the rest of his squad before climbing inside and quickly scanning the room he had just broken into alongside Three. It looked like a version of the beacon-chamber he'd seen after reviewing the New Canton ship with the obvious exception being that there was no beacon.
"The IFFs should be in here, give me a second," Three stated before kneeling down next to a small pyramid that stuck out from the rest of the room because it was black and glowed green instead of being brown and glowing orange; a property only shared by a circular console projecting a greenish-teal hologram of…
The Ain Jalut and its relative position to the Collector ship.
His face fell flat and he went for the long-range comms, breaking radio-silence in the hopes that the walls weren't too thick and he not too late.
"Ain Jalut, this is Machai-Lead. Your stealth's compromised. Start evasive maneuvers," he declared before the sound of gunfire and Two's calm information about them 'taking fire' let Holderman know that they had just sprung a trap.
"Acknowledged, Machai, starting maneuvers. You and the shuttle are on your own for ten," the frigate's communication officer responded just as Three pried a black, tubular object from the pyramid. Fine green cracks were running over its surface and it seemed to have a pulsating light source somewhere behind those cracks.
All in all, it looked surprisingly prothean. Not that that mattered now, though.
"You got what you need?"
"Affirmative," the S9er responded before subsequently shoving it into the isolated security container they'd brought with them for this occasion. After everything that had happened to Cerberus, they'd be damned fools if they decided to just carry around a piece of unshielded Reaper-tech - even if it tried to look like a piece of prothean gear.
"Good. On me. Machai, hunker down and let them close in, I got an idea," Holderman ordered before walking to the triangular door and taking a look down to see Machai engaged from three sides. Judging by the way their yellow-traced shots were hitting each other more than they were hitting the now hunkered down Machai, the Collectors had clearly never heard of friendly-fire… or thought about the issues of a three-pronged ambush.
Their loss, his gain.
He aligned his Typhoon with the closest group of shooters and pulled down the trigger. Again, it made short work of the insectoid aliens. His team probably could've done the same thing if they had kept firing, but truth be told, Holderman didn't want them exposing themselves when he had the superior position and moment of surprise. Their armor was good but with the volume of fire the Collectors were pouring on them just now, there was a good chance that good wasn't good enough.
He shifted his aim, gunned down the next two groups and then lowered the machine gun.
Satisfied with his work on the one side, he took a step forward and dropped down the ten meters. The fall would've snapped his legs outside of his armor but with all the tech designed to keep him alive, he didn't feel more than a small rattle up his spine. He looked at the carnage left in the wake of Machai's brief engagement and summarized their progress.
"We got the IFF, let's get ourselves a Collector before they regroup," he said before an ungodly roar and more skittling-noises were heading their way. He figured they could take the Collectors as long as they would keep throwing small forces at them, but he didn't want to find out if he was right about it. "On the double," he instructed before Machai started to run the way they had come. They went back into the tunnel and towards the slope and just as they passed their first point of contact, Four spoke up.
"Mines have activated, Sir. They're waking up-" the sniper began before the wall next to Holderman suddenly exploded and a purple spear-like metal appendage tried to impale his chest. With a speedy movement that didn't quite feel like his own, his arm shot out and stopped the metal appendage a few centimeters before it would've pierced his heart. In the process of doing so, the Typhoon he'd just learned to love was snapped in half and produced a bright explosion just in front of his face – the electronic components had just gotten a powerful jolt and judging by the way his HUD and shields were glitching out, so had his armor.
He struggled with his attacker for a second – all the while feeling like Tas had just yanked his hands into the position they were in at a super-human speed – and then the spike turned into a hook, pulled back and took the entire wall of the tunnel with it. As the wall collapsed, a large monster with four glowing blue eyes sorted into two pairs of two eyes just behind the wall. It was one of the flying monsters used during the New Canton assault. Officially, the HSA was calling them 'Sub-Specimen Mike' since they were the thirteenth identified type of Collector but right about now, Holderman didn't care for the official naming designation and found the unofficial nickname – flying SOB- to be much more fitting.
He'd seen the reports on these things and as such, he wasted no time reaching for his Crusader. He aimed it at the eyes of the creature and pulled the trigger, only to see his shots bounce off the same barrier that had probably just given his gear the jolt.
These things had torn apart IFVs and Paladins alike during the ground attack, no way in hell would they stand up to one of those in close quarters. There was only one thing left to do.
"Run!" he ordered before throwing a disk-shaped HE-grenade into the face of the creature and booking it after the rest of Machai, actively choosing to ignore that the creature was trying to squeeze its way into the tunnel to rip them a new one. They had the best gear Cerberus could come up with and all it took for them to rely on running for their lives was medium-sized Reaper monster.
If he weren't busy with throwing more HE charges against the walls as he ran after Machai, he might've found that funny.
Might.
With a press of a button on his gauntlet, he detonated the tunnel walls behind him in the hopes of burying the metallic monster – or at least buying themselves some time. Since his timing had been off by just a fraction of a second (which he'd allow on this rare occasion) the blast wave caught him just as he was about to clear the tunnel and sent him stumbling forward, back into the room with the once-sleeping Collectors. While the rest of Machai laid down fire on the Collectors that had survived the minefield, he rolled to a stop and scrambled for cover behind one of the thermite-hill shaped structures. While doing so, he caught sight of Five grabbing one of the waking Collectors from its pod. The creature flayed at him, trying to grab a hold of the medic. The flaying stopped when Five stabbed the tip of his knife into a spot between the shoulder-blades, just where a human's spine would've been. It had the same paralyzing effect on the Collector that it would've had on a human and it was as good of an attempt at capturing a living-specimen as they could muster. Creepy too. There was truth to the claim that no one could maim you quite like a medical professional.
"And that's our specimen bagged," Five said before taking a knee on the chest of the Collector, who was now trying to head-butt the leg-armor of the commando.
Living weapons, that's all they and the husks were and if there ever had been any doubt about it, this gesture right here should remove it.
"Just gotta get it out of here now," Four added before Holderman aligned his Crusader with the head of a large, misformed hask that was casually walking through the overlapping fire of several Typhoons.
The shots that were cutting apart its fellow monsters harmlessly bounced off thick, reddish armor plating and as it raised his arm, which looked like a misshaped husk of its own, and stared at Holderman, he had a flashback to the New Canton report.
Those were the walking mortars.
Holderman pulled the trigger, but just like the other shots, the abomination just shrugged it off. Holderman got back into cover, just in time to see a metallic claw poke out of the rubble of the tunnel.
Not good-
"Incoming!" Two declared. Not one moment later, Holderman's world got turned upside down by the attack of the morphed husk. His armor and his shields saved his life – no doubt about that – but the concussive force still tossed him out of cover. His HUD flashed red with warnings and his Crusader shotgun was now lying out of reach, right next to the digging claws of the flying SOB.
Not good either.
He crawled to the nearest piece of cover available, a shard of metal sticking out of the wall, and reached for his Valkyrie. As he did so, he noticed that their captured, paralyzed Collector was starting to show red-glowing lines underneath its skin. Bumps were starting to form in its chest and when the red lights started to turn orange, Five did the very thing he was about to order him to do. He tossed the Collector out of his cover. A second later, it detonated mid-air with the force of a hand grenade.
So much for a secured specime –
"It's going for a flank!" Three yelled before another explosion swallowed Four's position. Thanks to their interlinked suits of armor, he knew the N7 was still alive… a fact that he proved a second later by nailing the thing that had just hit him squarely between the eyes with his DMR-7 while running for his life.
The hit was impressive, but it did little good. While a chunk of armor was blown off, exposing a row of three, blue eyes, the abomination didn't seem troubled by it. Instead of slowing down or taking cover, it opened its jaw, roared and then put its much smaller but still armored left hand over the exposed spot.
"Ain Jalut, we need an extraction," he muttered into his radio. Simultaneously he was realizing that Two and Three had decimated everything but the abomination.
"Affirmative. Your shuttle is two minutes out, Machai," the frigate's comm-officer responded.
He looked at Two, ignoring the sound of scraping metal behind them. If they already had trouble with the walking mortar, the flying tank would definitely kill them.
"Tas, give me a weak point analysis. They killed these things on New Canton, I need to know how," he asked his electronic buddy.
"Preliminary combat data suggests that the armor is specifically tailored to stopping mass accelerator rounds and armor-penetrating munitions," his AI responded. "High-yield ammunitions or blunt force applied by Paladins proofed themselves as effective methods of combating them.
"You telling me to punch this thing?" Holderman asked while his squad was trying its best to draw the fire of the abomination, which was once again aligning its gun. This time with Five's position.
"Affirmative."
"Yeah, I sort of don't have a Paladin suit right now."
"I concur," the AI responded. "The T5V is a miniaturized Paladin platform. If enough force is applied to a weakspot," the AI began before a holographic depiction of the row of eyes showed up on his HUD, "the effect should be similar.
"Noted," he responded before addressing Two. "I'll make a hole. When I say go, you run for the shuttle and you arm the warhead. When the shuttle's there, you leave, no matter if I'm with you or not, copy?"
Machai-Two nodded and responded in a cold, rational tone.
"Copy, Sir."
Holderman threw one final look at the claw digging through the rubble . He could already see its eyes so they didn't have much longer. Hence, there was no time to put off his plan any longer. True to his sentiment of leading by example, Holderman dashed out of his cover and – without knowing if it would work or not – launched himself at the abomination right as it fired its gun.
The shot surprisingly enough didn't hit him or Five. Instead, it went high into the ceiling and sent rubble falling on both off them.
The walking mortar was exactly as strong and heavy as it looked… but it had poor balance because of the heavy-ass gun on its right side and its deformed hunchback. Therefor the Cerberus commando could actually smash it into the ground by slamming himself into its legs.
They went tumbling to the ground and as he positioned himself in a mount-position on top of the abominations chest – which he was now realizing clearly wasn't designed for melee combat – he somehow managed to slide his hand below the exposed armor plating on its head. He ripped the red-black armor away and then he brought down his elbow, hoping that what counted as a killing blow to a human would also kill… however many people this thing had been in life.
Just like Tas had predicted, his elbow strike managed to crack the blue skull open.
Unlike Tas predicted, that didn't immediately kill the abomination.
With his balance off-set by the attack, he didn't have much of a chance when the decapitated creature smashed him to the side with all the weight of its hand-cannon.
"Go!" he called into his radio as he was thrown off the creature. Machai went running without hesitation. Meanwhile, he intended to finish his distraction. He was lying on the ground next to the abomination and needed to close the space between them fast. So he misused his armor's ascension cable by firing the grappling hook into the bumps on the hunchback of the creature and pulling himself close as fast as the T5V would allow.
The creature – which still clearly wasn't designed for melee combat – wasn't as stunned by the impact as he had hoped. Still, the injuries to its head proofed to be the kind of opening Holderman was hoping for – literally.
He might need high-yield explosives to destroy it from the outside… but the way he saw it, a grenade exploding in the stump of its neck and killing it from within should probably have the same effect.
… hopefully.
After kicking aside the creature's arm canon, arming the grenade and ignoring the sound of crumbling metal behind him (that was the tunnel opening further) he grabbed his last grenade and stuffed it into the creature's open neck.
Before he could think of saying something witty, the HE-grenade exploded and set off the ammo-storage located in the hump of the abomination (he really would've liked to know that prior to this little move).
For the third time in the last couple of minutes, Holderman was sent flying. Only this time around, it was his luck. He was thrown into the direction Machai had retreated into and away from the flying SOB squeezing through the rubble. After deciding that he didn't want to stick around to figure out why its eyes were glowing, he jumped to his feet and started to run after Machai, only slowing down ever so briefly to grab a deceased Collector by the arm and drag it with him. (A dead specimen was better than no specimen, right?)
As his path carried him in the wake of Machai, he didn't meet any resistance, not even when he reached the open and exposed terrain from earlier or when he started to rapidly run up the incline at the cliff. While climbing up, the ground cracked under him a couple of times and thanks to the dead-weight he was dragging with him, he nearly fell off the damned incline just before he could reach the top.
Truth be told, he was expecting to be vaporized any second now.
He'd tussled with the damn abomination or at least a minute and a half.
Machai easily should've made it to the shuttle by now.
While a selfish part of him was holding out hope that Machai had disobeyed his order and was waiting for him at the evac, he knew that whereas other units might have hesitated to leave on of them behind, Cerberus' strike teams were different. When they were given an order, they carried it out.
As such, he had no hopes of actually getting out of here...
With that in mind that he was somewhat surprised to find Machai and the shuttle waiting for him at the LZ, taking shots at Collectors he didn't even know where following him from the top of the cliff. Even the non-piloting crew technician of the shuttle had joined in with his own Kassa-Fabrication submachine gun – something that took a lot more courage than what Machai was doing right now. He wasn't wearing a hardsuit… just vacuum sealed, light-armored flight-gear. Facing a foe like the Collector in that showed exactly what grade of person Cerberus recruited.
"You had your orders, Two," he said in between ragged breaths after he'd thrown himself and his Collector specimen on the high ground next to their ASOC demolitionist currently arming the Hoshasen warhead. "What the fuck are you still doing here?" he added.
"We saw you moving on the motion tracker, figured we'd risk it," the former ASOC operative responded while firing bursts from his Valkyrie at the approaching Collectors. If the smoldering, slightly bent barrel of the Typhoon lying to his left was anything to go by, he'd either overdone it or Cerberus probably needed to take another look at the gun's cooling systems.
"That's not how this works. When I give an order like that, you need to carry it out. Otherwise the whole team might die," Holderman responded before aiming his own assault rifle down range and noticing several bluish-purple dots coming their way. More flying SOBs. (They really needed a better name for Sub-Specimen Mike…) He used the Collector corpse for cover and stability and popped off a few bursts. Then he turned his head towards the demo-specialist.
"Then let's just say I got my wires crossed and leave it at that," Machai-Two replied before the bomb's display lit up red. "The warhead's primed and the fail-safe's armed," said fail-safe would lead to an immediate detonation if someone tried to disarm it, "I suggest we get out of here."
"Don't need to say that twice," he retorted before grabbing his Collector corpse and following Two and the rest of Machai into the waiting Kodiak. On his way in, he made sure to stand in front of the brave crew technician. He'd lost his fair share of Kodiak crew members to stray rounds during extraction and after the third time, he'd decided to enact his human shield policy. "Gun it!" he told the co-pilot before shooting the first Collector that had used the opening created by their retreat to fly up the cliffs. The shot exploded its head just as the Kodiak's door closed and then their shuttle was gone, flying out of the now significantly smaller hole in the ship's armor (the ferrofluid-goo was definitely used for auto-repairs, alright).
In between fighting batarian SIU commandos and External Force veterans, he'd forgotten how nice it was to fight something that didn't have advanced shielding or tactics.
As the Kodiak accelerated, he nodded at Two.
"Avenge 'em," he told the soldier.
The ASOC operative detonated the bomb without a snappy comment and silently observed the bright-white explosion of the ship through the cameras of the shuttle.
An secured IFF, a specimen for the salarian and a destroyed Collector ship…
This had gone a bit too smoothly for Holderman's liking. With how focused the Harbinger had been on the last Collector ship, he hadn't expected a smooth get-away like this.
Was Cerberus lucky for a change?
Or had the Reapers' attention been focused elsewhere?
Meanwhile, 2. May 2417, Uncharted Regions, BC-313 New Dawn, Med-Bay
James Vega had had a few bad hangovers in his days. Some in the military, some as a bounty hunter, one in school… all had one thing in common with his current situation.
He didn't remember how the hell he had gotten to where he was now waking up.
He opened his eyes and his surroundings were dark and hazy, like June, but far less arid and way cooler…
"Hey, hey, I think Mohawk's waking up," one voice muttered. Who the hell was Mohawk?
"Well, the medics did just turn off the coma-juice so its sort of obvious that he'd- Attention on deck!" another suddenly declared, all the while Vega was realizing that things were dark and hazy because someone had sloppily bandaged his head – including the eyes.
"At ease, troopers, you're in the medbay, not on the battlefield," a voice he remembered from June stated calmly. "Do you need any help with that, soldier?" the man went on before light suddenly flooded into Vega's eyes and a dark-haired, bearded man wearing the uniform of a colonel appeared in front of him. He took one look at the slightly bloodied bandages in the officer's hand and then realized that his leg sported a fresh and ugly scar.
Then everything about June came back. They'd been hit by… something … right as he had been about to desert from the IFS. The last thing he remembered was an air-raid and the guy in front of him dragging him out of the inferno. After that everything was a blank.
He rubbed his head and realized that the hair he had once sported was gone, at least on either side of his head…
"They had to dig shrapnel out of there, son. And I think they shaved the other side so it looked more military and less megacity gang," the colonel, Petrovsky, explained before sitting down on the side of his bed. "Hell of a thing you did back there. It takes a special kind of courage to run towards the explosions," the colonel commented. Vega obviously wasn't going to correct him.
Instead, he'd listen.
He had been a bounty-hunter long enough to know that the man wanted something, otherwise he wouldn't put up this kind of show.
"Nothing special about it. It's just how soldiers act, Sir. Anyone down there would've done the same for me. Hell, you did it for me… Sir," Vega lied, somewhat awkwardly adding the honorific.
"I'd like to agree with you, Vega, but the matter of fact is that you and I are fighting with a disorganized militia, not a professional army," the colonel added, throwing a look at the other injured separatists in the medbay. There were five of them. Four men and one woman. "They've got their heart in the right place but some of them lack… the professionalism needed to make calm decisions under fire. You were a marine, you get what I mean, don't you?" Vega looked at the troopers looking back at him.
They didn't look like militiamen either. Especially not the blonde guy with a visible burn going from somewhere behind his neck all the way to the middle of his chest. (Wasn't that the kind of injury you got when your biotic amp exploded?).
"Good soldiers are a rare currency for the IFS these days," Petrovsky went on. "And a lot of the ones we had just died fighting this new adversary. We need to use the ones we still have left wisely," he got up from the bed and looked at the other troopers, "the five of you all have one thing in common, other than the obvious fact that you were injured on June. You're all veterans of Eden Prime and Virmire… and because of that, I think you noticed the same thing I noticed," Petrovsky went on before glancing at an actual wrist-watch. Who the hell still wore those? Vega had no idea. "I'll leave you for a few minutes to figure out what I'm talking about and make introductions. Then I'll be back with your orders."
With that, Petrovsky walked out of the room.
Again, Vega had been far too busy with running away to notice anything… but he couldn't say so, so instead of admitting to his cowardice, he decided to start off before anyone could ask him.
"So, I gotta be honest with you guys," he started. "I don't remember much after I got blown up right when the bombs started to fall. I pretty much missed the entire battle."
"Trust me, you didn't miss much other than us getting our asses kicked," the sole woman in the room muttered. "Name's Kamille, by the way. And just like Mohawk over here," she went on before turning to the group while pointing at James, "I'm not sure what the Colonel's talking about."
"I think I know. Those things that attacked us… they looked exactly like the things the geth brought with 'em," one of the injured separatists spoke up. He was a dark-skinned man in his thirties and judging by the sling around his right arm, he'd also gotten shot on June.
"Mason's right. Those were definitely geth husks. If you gave them a gun at least," the second of the injured, a tall, pasty dude with brown bowl-cut and a wrapped-up neck retorted. He clearly seemed to know the other soldier. Mason threw him a look. "Oh. Introductions. Right. You guys can call me Milque."
"Like Milk? Because you're pasty as hell?" the blonde separatist with the burn scar asked.
"Yeah. Exactly," Milque responded.
"So you think that's what we're supposed to figure out? That they sent husks after us?" James wondered.
"The one that clipped me looked more like a batarian than anything else," the brunette woman injected. "I don't know what hit us on June, but those things weren't with the geth back on Eden Prime. Or if they were, the HSA managed to keep intel on them quiet."
"Wouldn't be the first time they kept a secret, babe," the blonde man with the biotic amp scar (who still hadn't introduced himself mind you) laughed before suddenly coughing up some blood and missing the middle-finger his cat-calling had earned him. "Ah shit. This again."
"Crap. You need a medic?" the fifth injured separatist, a younger man with glasses who looked the least beat-up out of all of them, asked, omni-tool already summoned.
"Nah. The blood coughing's been around since way before June. Courtesy of the Battle of Virmrie actually," the man said before wiping the sleeve of his hospital garments over his mouth. "Name's Essex by the way. Used to be part of BAR, until my amp went haywire and the HSA told me to go fuck myself after I stopped being useful," the blonde went on. "What about you?" he asked the man with the glasses.
"People call me Nicky," the glass-wearing separatist responded. "And I'm getting the distinct feeling that I'm the only one around here who didn't get lit up by husks."
"Whaddya mean?" Essex mumbled.
Nicky lifted his shirt to show a fresh injury squarely in the middle of his chest. So much for least beat up. A few centimeters to the left and he'd be dead.
"That right here happened while I was supposed to fix the com-link. There was a guy with optical camo down there as well. He materialized right behind me and the other techs when we got to work. He killed everyone but me in like five seconds," Nicky explained quietly. "The only reason I survived was because he got preoccupied with killing our security detail afterwards and just from the way he did that, I'm going to assume that he wasn't a husk. He was fast, precise and absolutely lethal. I used to be with 26th Airborne, so I know a thing or two about CQC," that kid? An airborne trooper? Really? "I only ever saw one kind of soldier move through a battlefield like that."
"ASOC," Mason injected darkly.
"Exactly," Nicky muttered.
"Since when do the HSA's favorite killing squads freelance with husks?" Milque wondered before the door pulled open.
"That is a question we've also been wondering, Private Milwoski," Petrovsky said as he re-entered. "Now that you've made introductions and figured out what we want to know, I think it's about time I tell you why I had all of you brought here. As I said. Good soldiers are a rare currency for us at the moment. We've got some people who were trained by the few survivors of the 1st SR," that was the IFSDF's First Specialized Regiment –colloquially referred to as the IFS' assassins. "But they are bound elsewhere these days. Therefor, the commander of this ship saw it fit to allow me to form a team of my desire. A small team of Has veterans that will help us find answers to what occurred on June," Petrovsky explained. "You are that team. Delta Squad," he stated before looking at Vega. "Starting today, you only answer to me or the IFS' commander-in-chief. Anyone else, no matter their rank, no longer has any authority over you whatsoever," he folded his hands behind his back and suddenly Vega's omni-tool lit up. If he were to guess, they had left it by his bedside just for this. "Welcome to the inner circle, Delta Squad."
Whereas the other separatists were probably very happy with this development, Vega had something else in mind.
… how exactly did he go from trying to desert to being put on a special-ops squadron?
That was the opposite of what he had in mind…
Fifteen Minute Later, 2. May 2417 AD, Uncharted Regions, BC-313 New Dawn, Bridge
"I've finished the autopsies. Like you requested, it was all done through automated devices," Doctor Kenson started. "It is like we suspected. The deceased enemies are heavily modified batarians sharing several traits with the cave creatures."
"And the ones from the Shanxi incident," Admiral Drescher figured before placing her hand in front of her mouth.
Shanxi, Eden Prime, June … humans, batarians, predatory birds…. the mystery foe of Petrovsky who'd been disrupting IFS operations recently…
These things were all different from each other, yet all clearly connected.
Drescher leaned on the holographic table depicting the dissected batarian and thought back to another even from the past, the ship that had attacked the Citadel. It had shared design choices with the New Dawn, which in turn had been based on classified research of the IFS' Experimental Weapons Division.
"This is bigger than us," she mumbled. "Far bigger."
"I concur," the doctor nodded. "I know I already asked you this, Admiral, but are you sure that none of the EWD's work survived the war? Even a fraction of the information they collected could go a long way in helping us figure out what's going on here. I don't have to tell you that we need to understand just how worried we need to be."
No, she did not.
"The EWD was thorough with their efforts to keep the HSA from figuring out its secrets, Doctor. The only thing they made that's still around is the ship you're standing in right now."
"Then maybe we need to turn to the next obvious source," Doctor Kenson offered. "Those batarians had to have come from somewhere."
Drescher looked at her scientific advisor.
"You already have something in mind, don't you?"
"There have been reports about some rather… strange and sudden changes inside the Hegemony in the last couple of months. Given that a bunch of mutilated batarian cyborgs just attacked us, I think it might be worth taking a closer look."
"And how would you go about infiltrating the Hegemony?"
"The same way every respectable smuggling operation in history has. Through their open ports in the frontier," Kenson retorted. "Batarians might hate humans, but they sure as hell love money," she went on before bringing up her omni-tool and showing Drescher an image of a rather unremarkable planet. "This is Arathot. A juvenile mining colony in the Viper Nebula. It's rather unremarkable, except for the fact that its an open port. Let me take Petrovsky's new team there. We'll pretend to be gun-runners or something equally shady and while Petrovksy's guys look tough, I'll look for answers."
"You do realise what they do to spies in batarian space, don't you?" Drescher asked stoically.
"Other than various brands of slavery? Yes. I heard the varren stories," Kenson nodded.
Drescher in turn sighed. It was strange how trivial the doctor spoke about the violent deaths or despicable fates some of their comrades had suffered in the days prior to the Blitz.
"Your expertise is invaluable to the IFS. Losing you would set us back ten years."
"I'll be careful, Admiral. Besides. I'll have company, won't I?"
The admiral drummed her hands on the edge of the holotable.
"I'll think about it," she answered before tucking back the sleeve of her red-black naval uniform to reveal her omni-tool bracelet. Delta wasn't out of the hospital yet, but Petrovsky probably should know what was coming for them.
Codex: Batarian Isolationism in the 25th Century / 22nd Age
While always xenophobic, distrusting and closed-off compared to the rest of the galaxy due to vast differences in societal structure, the Batarian Hegemony developed into a deeply isolationistic state during the 25th Century (or the 22nd Age of the Council Era).
Following their self-inflicted exclusion from the Citadel Council and their subsequent military defeat during the Skyllian Blitz, the batarian government closed its borders to virtually every non-Hegemony citizen in the wake of their armistice with the HSA.
Whereas non-human aliens were always at the very least tolerated on any world but Khar'shan and trade between various Terminus-based groups and batarian space used to flourish – in no small part due to the batarian's hegemonic ambitions in the Terminus – non-batarian sentients were successively banned from all but a select number of open-ports on the very frontier of batarian space.
Although this was officially claimed to be a 'reasonable' sanction in response to the 'galaxy's betrayal of the batarian people', reports from several intelligence services, independent news agencies and NGOs suggest that Chairman Amon and his fellow ruling caste closed Hegemonic Space off to disguise its increased instability and the infighting taking place between the various castes and military branches. This measure was reportedly taken due to a fear of a human push into contested space.
Human sources in particular have suggested that the batarian isolationism witnessed since their withdrawal from Council associate status in 2402 AD is a direct consequence of the destabilization that the Hegemony has gone through in the last fifteen years.
In addition to reports of political infighting, select, un-vetted sources also suggest that the batarian people have also experienced a religious cataclysm in the last decade. Whereas previously dominated by a faith based on the so-called Pillars of Creation, evidence suggest that batarian society has been divided by a violent schism. The spiritually entrenched military caste and the batarian nobility, the Athok-Caste, appear to have clashed over several core-tenets of their faith. Next to implying organized, armed unrest within batarian space, reports suggest that a large portion of batarian nobility has embraced a new, poorly understood faith spear-headed by the Amon-family. Similarly, these reports also suggest that several influential batarian military dynasties have attempted an unsuccessful coup-de-tat in the recent future, which is rumored to have devastated a large portion of Khar'shar; explaining the full extranet blackout that batarian cores-pace has experienced for the last three years.
Due to a lack of documentation, no signs of serious infighting in the observable border regions and the fact that the batarian ruling caste has been a champion of the Pillar of Creation-Faith (in no small parts because they draw a part of their legitimation for governance from their role as 'the central pillar' – or in batarian: 'Athok') these rumors cannot be taken as hard facts; even if evidence suggests their accuracy.
A/N:
Well guys.
Here we are, at the end of 2021.
Since I don't have anything to say to the chapter above, other than maybe telling those of you who somehow don't know that James' team is the exact team he had in Paragon Lost, I'll just get right into the yearly end-of-year address.
2021 has been... interest for SV. Chapters got longer and rarer - in large parts because work has just been a doozy for me. I'd like to say that 2022 will be different and that we'll make some serious headway towards the freaking end of the story... but that'd be a lie. I know when we set out, I said that we'd finish this in five years... and guess what.
That didn't happen.
Since the last chapter, SV has turned FIVE years and as I say everytime I write this... it's been a hell of a ride. This story and you - the fans - have taken on a size I never dreamed of back when I started this out at the end of high-school and looking back at it now, it seems insane what's become of SV; in no small parts because of YOU, the people who've let me know that I've got something here that's worth seeing it through.
As I write this, it's still the 23rd of December and a bit too early to wish you all a proper merry christmas (or whatever you celebrate, I don't judge) and since we won't be hearing from each other again this year (at least not in SV proper; I might JUST manage to finish the anthology story) I hope that you all make it into 2022 in one mostly complete piece. You know how it is. Try not to blow off your fingers if you're the kinda guy/girl who likes fireworks and sleep it off before you get behind the steering wheel ;).
...whew.
With that out of the way, let's get back to traditions.
For the record, we're at 845 reviews, 1346 favorites and 1447 follows. At the point of me checking this, this puts us at the fifth-upper most spot on the second page of all-time follows. Like I said. Page 1. We're getting there.
See you around next time.
