I seem to be getting a lot of people following me. Thank you this fills me with hope that I am not writing gibberish. I shall endeavor to not let you down. As always please leave reviews if you can.
Edited 28/05/2021 for grammatical, logical and stylistic errors. Added a conversation and expanded a few descriptions. Added a codex entry.
15/08/2173 Serpent Nebula, Widow, Citadel
The address sent to me by Kal'leena led me to block of mixed warehouse and office units. It was not in the nice part of the ward, it was not even close to the nice part of the ward. Despite keepers doing most of the cleaning and upkeep there was still trash in this place, broken bottles, wrappers of bio-plastic from food intended for all kinds of species. The food waste rotting produced the kind of smell that reminded me of the salarian jungle. Just sweeter.
I took out a pair of AR glasses from my jacket's inside pocket and put them on, a pair of tiny cameras mounted in the frame would allow me to use them as binoculars including allowing me to see more in the light spectrum than a human eye can. I couldn't believe how useful they were and yet how cheap they were, a lot of people I have met here dismissed them as simple toys useful for games, reading, browsing the extranet on the go when you couldn't get comfortable with an omni-tool or a datapad but I had found them absolutely invaluable. The pair of glasses unlike more specialized military spec or even security spec visors didn't arouse suspicion. And yet their capabilities were almost as good as military spec visors that turians so loved to use and even many humans these days have been adopting that single-eye type of visor.
Looking at the office located at the address sent to me I switched on the glasses and then cycled through the various vision modes, one of which included Infra Red. But unfortunately it seemed that the office was well insulated. I remembered an article written back on my Earth how the police was trying to see if it could use wifi signals to see through the walls. Switching to my omni-tool I quickly found the network node that was the closest to the building and connected through it. A few minutes later with a quick program I managed to find on the extranet I could use the wireless network signal as a kind of radar.
Armed with at least some way to see past the walls I quietly dropped down to the street level. I couldn't go in guns blazing without knowing the real situation and trying to sneak into a building used by another operative was just asking to get my ass blown up, tasered or something worse. So I went in the front door. As a customer. After all I did receive an invitation.
Instead of Kal'leena the front desk was occupied by a hanar. I found hanar comical and vaguely disgusting. In games they just looked pink and squishy. In real life you could tell that they were made of flesh, that flesh maybe due to their aquatic origins looked wet most of the time and the way they moved out of the water frankly would have given the old me nightmares. They simply looked wrong to my strictly terrestrial brain, in fact they looked wrong to almost everyone but two groups, drell and salarians. Which was understandable since drell had been living with then for generations and salarians are amphibians so for them it just seems natural.
"This one greets you, this ones face name is Darolor. This one is sorry to say that this office is currently closed. This one apologizes and hopes you find what you are looking for elsewhere." the hanar said his bio-luminescence almost strobe like. Without my glasses I would have simply known that the hanar is nervous. With the glasses and the program that automatically processed and translated the various light sequences into words I could however see that the hanar was talking to someone else. A useful skill in a situation like this but not surprising, their brains did evolve to control several tentacles so it was logical that they could separate their minds into two streams. The second stream wasn't as sophisticated as the first but it was enough for him to signal about my arrival. His exact words were in fact, human, large, danger, maybe.
I grinned. I knew that hanar hated seeing teeth, something about ancient predators in the seas of their homeworld.
"No worries, mate. I'll probs come back. Cannae show me the girlies eh?" I said putting on my best ignorant human voice. Using different accents confused the translators sometimes. His brief confusion helped as I got closer to the front desk. The radar showed me that there are three more humanoid shapes in the back. I still didn't know the real situation and if I didn't leave quickly enough I doubted in the good intentions of the humanoid just behind the door leading to the back office. So I decided to act. While I was not a fan of shoot first ask questions later policy in my training it was made clear that sometimes that's the only policy available.
"This one is sorry..." the hanar started to say at the same time as I vaulted over the desk and jammed my right hand into his body.
"I forgive you" I said as the hanar twitched for a moment as the electricity run through it's body from my omni-tool and slumped into a gelatinous blob on the floor.
Without stopping and preserving my momentum I hung my head low put my left shoulder forward and rammed into the door. The cheap metal and plastic construction gave and the door simply came off the frame. Useful for me since that allowed me to bulldoze the guy behind the door who turned out to be a batarian. I could hear the solid thunk when the back of his head connected with the metal floor as I fell with the door.
Obviously this couldn't have gone unnoticed so I rolled sideways, off the batarian and the door still laying flat on the floor. Instead of drawing a gun, I wasn't about to start a shootout where a hostage could be involved I flicked my omni-tool menu to the combat section and selected an Overload. I had less time than I thought as the second batarian appeared from around the corner and seeing me opened fire a moment before I could use an Overload.
Despite having a damage resistant skin it's not quite bulletproof. He got two shots off before I hit him with an Overload and both shots hit me, one scraped painfully along the side of my head and the second one hit me in the shoulder the small grain sized bullet burying itself about a two centimetres deep. Nothing serious. Walking up to the twitching batarian I kicked him in the head and he went limp. A mild concussion is better than death in my opinion and I wasn't about to go ask his.
Walking around the corner I found the third humanoid. It wasn't Kal'leena but another asari I haven't seen before. With a slave collar around her neck. A collar made specifically for asari and other biotics, it connected right into the biotic amp and would shock the wearer if they tried to use biotics.
"Hah, anti-biotic collar." I couldn't help myself saying that knowing full well that asari would not see the humour in my statement even if she had not been just help captive by thugs so I decided to do the thing I came here for. Rescue an asari.
Either because the batarians were not that smart or because the collar wasn't intended to be a long-term solution it was not password locked so all I had to do was disable the power using my omni-tool. I went to untie the asari and noted that she was already halfway done getting out of her own restraints. Definitely not the smartest bunch of batarians.
"I am Mr Ritter. I got a message to come here." I said
"Thank you for the rescue, I am Erinnia. I sent the message. Mistress Kal'leena instructed me to send it in an emergency. She was taken by a squad of batarians commanded by the second hanar." Erinnia said
"Do you know what these guys wanted?" I asked puzzled, I could have guessed what this was about if it was anyone else but hanar? Usually they would send drell for missions like these, not hire a bunch of batarian thugs.
"We redirected a shipment meant for Kahje last week with artifacts. I don't know the details only Mistress Kal'leena does. She is taking them to our warehouse. We have an aircar nearby. We have to hurry!" she said and grabbed my arm. The same arm that was attached to the shoulder that got shot. I winced inwardly. The little slug hadn't stayed together but fragmented into smaller pieces. It will take a while for my body to push out those shards and repair the damage. No more than a few hours but until then my arm would be sore every time I moved it.
The aircar that Erinnia led me to looked like an angry krogan had headbutted it a few times. The aircars used on Citadel were built to be reliable but they were also built by asari who for all their technical prowess surpassing even salarians were not known for their sturdy construction methods.
"Does it actually fly?" I asked dubious
"What? Oh, the aircar? Yes of course." Erinnia said looking embarrassed, "it's mostly my fault, Mistress tries to teach me how to pilot it properly without the VI assistance but landing it is more than I can do now, and turning."
"You be the navigator then." I said and jumped into the drivers seat. X3M speeder or aircar as it is mostly known is a stupid vehicle. To my 21st century human eyes. It relies entirely on it's mass effect core for flight. It has a small array of thrusters in the back but without a mass effect core working you can't even change direction. Frankly they looked to me like a flying coffin. It didn't help that the asari style seating involved half-lounging in the seat. Aircars along with the asari designed elevators were the two weirdest things that no one seemed to question. Salarians and turians had plenty of their own designs for personal use and on their colonies but anywhere else you would see asari aircars and elevators. Considering that salarians found the Citadel not that long after asari I had a theory that the asari redesigned their elevators to be slow to drive salarians mad. Or make them die of old age.
"Do you have a plan?" Erinnia asked
"Storm in, shoot the bad guys. I am not geared for anything else and I doubt we have time to do it stealthily. Or do you have any suggestions?" I said glancing at her
"No, I am not much of a fighter, my biotics are not impressive. I usually help mistress Kal'leena with VI security and other remote access issues." she said meekly
"So a hacker then? I am guessing you didn't actually pay for that artifact shipment." I said as I banked the aircar following the route on the navigation screen
"Yes, that is why Mistress Kal'leena hired me." Erinnia replied
The route led us through the whole station into the Zakera ward's docks. As I circled around the area pointed out for me by Erinnia I saw a batarian shuttle docked. So it meant that either they found what they were looking for or they were pretty sure that it would happen very soon. Which meant that Kal'leena didn't have much time. Disabling the safeties on the aircar I turned to Erinnia.
"Hold on. We are crashing." I said and flipped the aircar pointing it's nose downwards. At the last moment I leveled off and braked, feeling the mass effect core behind me flip the direction in which it was pushing. The car skidded across the area in between the dock and the warehouse sending several crates flying before crashing into a container. The impact was harsher than I intended but it did what I had intended to do. It got us down fast and if anyone was looking it would have looked like an accident. Jumping out of the car with my Kessler Mk2 in hand I quickly scanned the surroundings.
"Wait here." I said to Erinnia, a biotic would have been useful but without the experience she would be a liability
Four batarians outside, two of them clearly workers, no armour, no weapons and the other two were guards, armour and weapons but no helmets. It seemed that they hadn't anticipated any trouble as both of the guards weapons were folded, shotguns by the looks of it. Without giving them a chance to draw them I aimed and Kessler barked four times. Phasic rounds to bypass shields. Both guards had a neat pair of holes appearing in their skulls. Kessler didn't have enough power to cause massive damage and the Phasic round mod sacrificed damage dealing capability for shield penetration.
The workers had enough time to see what happened but not to react in any other way but stare at me and the two dead batarians. The training said that it was better to kill them, no witnesses and all that, but while I had no problem carrying out a kill order against someone who deserved it I was not about to gun down two guys who were just in the wrong place at the wrong time. Even if they were batarians. I doubted that as workers they had a good life anyway, Hegemony's caste society places them just above slaves. Jogging up to one of the dead guards I took the shotgun that was still folded and in his back brace and unfolded it.
It was an AT-12 Raider. Not a bad shotgun but really only effective at close range. A fear weapon or a riot control weapon rather than one to be used in a serious fight. Without bothering to search the other guard I sprinted towards the warehouse. I saw the door open but instead of trying to shoot through the door at an unknown I shot the window right next to it and dived forward crashing through it. Three batarians were there. One that was opening the door and two behind him. I shot the one opening the door twice in the back and then threw the overheated shotgun at the one right behind him. While he was distracted I lunged forward and drove my fist straight into the third one's face. I could feel the bones crunch inward from my strike. Without stopping I let the momentum carry me and whipped my foot across the second batarians legs bringing him down. Quickly straightening out I stomped down on the batarians neck crushing his larynx and probably a few vertebrae.
I could hear shouts further inward so I grabbed another gun from a dead batarian, this time a Banshee assault rifle by ERCS. It was made for asari or batarian hands rather than turian so I could use it comfortably.
My glasses couldn't provide me the interior map of this place, too many metal containers reflecting the signal so I could only rely on my own senses and reaction speed. A few dozen steps inside I saw a glimpse of an open area and just as I was rounding another container I saw a batarian. He also saw me at the same time but I was faster and while he was still bringing his gun up I let the Banshee whine in a short burst. The heat indicator went halfway up and a dead batarian fell backwards, his own shot going up and wide over me. Out of the corner of my eye I noticed something pinkish and I was already turning to the new threat when a searing pain followed by a retort from an SMG hit me. I fell forward, towards the dead batarian and rolled through the fall dropping a rifle and snatching the batarians AT-12 in the process. Before I had the chance to aim it at the hanar who shot me he was hit by a singularity.
Now, a singularity isn't usually fatal to humanoids especially if they are in armour unless someone detonates it. All that you usually experience is a few seconds of flailing around in the air making yourself a perfect target but that's about it. Neither the event horizon nor the actual mass effect field are strong enough to do any damage. Just loss of mobility and disorientation from the mass effect field interacting with your inner ear.
For hanar however it was a different story. Without the support structure provided by bones…It doesn't end well. The hanar was immobilised, it's implanted mass effect generator that allowed it to float outside of water was not strong enough to counter the singularity but it held him securely in place. The same could not be said about it's tentacles as they were outside the mass effect field of the implant. A series of quiet, wet pops sounded as the tentacles got pulled into the singularity. The hanar screeched or rather his translator did as it strobed in pain.
"Thanks." I said as Kal'leena walked into my view and I noticed that there were several burn marks going along her neck and disappearing behind a collar. I didn't have to ask what the hanar had done. Despite their general weakness outside of water they like some of Earth's jellyfish produced a toxin that could produce strong chemical burns. Judging by the way she held her left arm it was also not the only injury she had suffered.
Instead of answering she took the AT-12 from my hands and pointing it at the hanar still in the immobilizing pull of the singularity pulled the trigger until the shotgun overheated pulping it and destroying the mass effect generator holding it away from the singularity. When the singularity ended a moment later the hanar looked like a shredded party ballon. Or a pile of pink jello.
"Well I am not eating balli'tak ever again." I said picking myself up, for those unfamiliar with asari cuisine, balli'tak was a bright pink asari jello but unlike the Earth variety it was savoury and made from a Thessian version of a crab.
Kal'leena was about to say something in return but instead she snorted and laughed. Looking at her laughing I felt the adrenaline abate and couldn't help but join in. And that is how Erinna found us. Injured, holding on to each other and laughing maniacally over a pile of shredded hanar.
Secondary Codex Entry/Weapons/Upgrades/Phasic ammunition
Phasic round modification is one of the three shield piercing ammo mods used in the galaxy. The modification is inserted into the barrel replacing one of the accelerator coils. It flash vaporises the outer layer of the round converting it into a charged plasma envelope. The loss of mass reduces the impact energy of the round as it strikes the target but the outer plasma envelope allows for superior kinetic shield penetration as the kinetic shields are simply not designed to intercept plasma. Despite the ability to practically ignore a kinetic shield there are several drawbacks, the plasma envelope only lasts over short distances, multi layer kinetic shields completely negate any shield penetrating advantage they have and both loss of acceleration and mass of projectile reduce armour piercing capability. Most effective use of Phasic rounds is against targets with cheap kinetic shields and light or no armour. Medium armour and above as well as multi layer kinetic shields are enough to make phasic rounds useless in a combat situation.