Edited 31.05.2021 for grammatical, stylistic and logical errors
20/01/2174 , Serpent Nebula, Widow, Citadel
I had underestimated the ability of the C-Secs bureaucratic apparatus to delay me. I now fully understood why Garrus hated all the red tape that came with his job. Three days ago the morning after I said my goodbye to Kate Shepard I went into one of the C-Sec offices to register a company. If I had only known what kind of headache it would be I would have tried Illium or something. Instead this was the third day of me running around the Citadel and it's various C-Sec departments trying to get all the documentation in order. One small mercy was that all the documents were electronic so all I had to do was walk around with a datapad. Registering a private military company with permission to operate in Council space took gigabytes of documentation. From permission to carry weapons better than civilian issue pistols to registration with Citadel Astro-mining department to Citadel Astro-ecology department and so on and so forth. By the end I had spent thousands of credits and had visited dozens of offices and seen hundreds of people. Asari, turians, salarians, volus, elcor and even hanar made up Citadel's bureaucratic apparatus. Hanar were the worst. Their pinkish pulsating floating bodies were not nice to look at in the first place, but when they moved their tentacles to type things, that was the type of thing where nightmares came from. They were also unbelievable snobs, as if Enkindlers themselves had appointed them to their jobs.
Now three days later I was standing in front of my ship, two heavy bags in each of my hands. They held everything I needed for the first part of my plan. The arms of the Citadel stretching above me, the purple haze of the nebula obscuring, if only visually, the ships moving within. This ship, BAC TSR-3 was given to me by my mysterious employers and if I had their address I would send them a thank you card. It was large enough to be comfortable for long journeys and yet small enough to be nimble and agile. After reading about it's history I couldn't help but be impressed. Walking up to the airlock I input the code to unlock it. The airlock hissed and slid aside giving me entry into the ship.
The layout of the ship was pretty simple, there was a single main deck which housed the cockpit, two crew cabins, bathroom and a small common area, all of that in the long front section of the spacecraft. The back end was cargo and engineering. Cargo was accessible either by an airlock from the crew area or by the lowering of the cargo lift which also doubled as the floor of the cargo area. It was just about big enough to fit in a Mako if you took off the wheels and made it sit on it's belly. Engineering which housed the mass effect core, two main engines, and everything else needed to keep the ship flying was not accessible in flight from inside. Any work that needed doing had to be done either in a pressurized dock or by getting into a spacesuit and going outside.
Walking towards the cockpit I dropped the bags in what would be my room and opening a hatch to the cockpit stepped inside. Two seats next to each other, physical controls and not the new fashionable holographic displays. Dropping into the seat I pushed in the button for main power. There was a slight whine as the capacitors charged from the station and then with a faint click of discharge and a shudder the fusion reactor lit. A few seconds of it drawing power from the station until it went into self-sustaining mode and I flicked a switch to disengage the umbilical cable.
Next was the mass effect core. This time all it had to do was switch from sleep mode to idle. The ship had been given a clean bill of health already before it's ownership was transferred to me so I was not worried. But I still had to go through the pre-light list. It was standard procedure and as boring it would likely be for me after a hundred times, this was my first personal ship. Not pilfered from some smugglers or a part of my cover identity. This one was registered in my name and I was free to go wherever I wanted in it. So I took my time to go through the checklist and enjoyed every moment of it.
Half an hour later I was ready to fly. I sent a request for a flight path and paid the docking fees as I was waiting for the reply. It didn't take long and as it downloaded into the ships navigational computer I pushed the power levers up, spinning up the mass effect core and the main drives. While I was still in atmospheric envelope of the Citadel I had to use the air-breathing electric jets which lead the ship fly like an airplane with VTOL capability. Lifting off carefully I swung the ship around using the flight path displayed on my cockpit screen and giving it a gentle nudge accelerated away. As I was flying through the arms of the Citadel I saw hundreds of ships around me going in every direction, from the huge dreadnoughts doing a show-off pass by the presidium to small pinpricks of light further away moving like startled fireflies in the night. Exiting the atmospheric envelope of the station I switched to the fusion jets and felt the slight kick as the more powerful engines pushed the ship even faster. It really was an illusion as any delay in between the acceleration and the inertia dampening effect of the mass effect field would have been fatal to the crew when pushing more than 20g's of acceleration.
Approaching the relay I angled the approach in a way that would give me an exit drift of around 5k kilometres. Right on the outer edge of the zone where most pilots aimed for. As I felt the Relay grab my ship I relaxed. It was going to be a busy few weeks, my schedule of hitting the Cerberus assets I knew about was tight as they would start to shift them around as soon as they found out that I am hitting them. Adding to that I needed to raise the profile of my newly established PMC.
25/01/2174 Almarcrux, Caspian, Maroon Sea
I hated mud. Hot mud, cold mud, brown mud, green mud. Any kind of mud. It always manages to get stuck in the worst places to clean and you could never be sure what was in it. Slowly crawling across a field of mud, completely covered head to toe was not a nice experience even if I was in fully environmentally sealed armour. Unfortunately there was no other way. The slaver camp was on the only piece of properly solid ground for dozens of kilometres in every direction, a rock formation jutting out of the mud sea. It was a good position. Both to defend and to prevent escape, not that anyone could without at least a sealed helmet for air, the atmosphere was a mix of ethane and methane. The only tactical option of assaulting this base was dropping from above and that approach was covered by an old but still perfectly functioning GARDIAN tower. Hence me crawling in the mud to get to the base.
I was in the nearby Hercules star system on an unmanned Cerberus listening station near the Mass Relay when I came across intel that listed this location as a batarian slaver base. The station VI had been recording ship signatures and comparing them to the list of known pirate vessels. This had been going on for months and I could not grasp a reason why Cerberus was just doing nothing while humans were being taken as slaves.
Crawling the last kilometre had me sweating and I could feel the strain in my body. Having to rely completely on the passive scanners in my helmet and omni-tool to give me direction was not easy holding the course so several times I had to change direction, zig-zagging across the mud field. Reaching the edge of the camp I let myself have a few minutes to recover and then I saw my first target. A batarian coming out of the closest prefab building right at the edge of the base, only had a pistol on his hip. Looked like some kind of Carnifex variant. Waiting until he was within distance I threw a knife driving it into his head right up to the hilt. Fifteen centimetres of razor sharp carbon-ceramic composite dropping him like log, dead immediately.
Syncing my omni-tool with the dead batarian's I rummaged around the memory seeing if there are access codes or anything useful in it. Unfortunately whatever his name was, he was more interested in storing some truly vile pornography on his omni-tool rather than codes. I activated my omni-tool's manufacturing capability and an oversized knuckle duster with short thick spikes formed over my right gauntlet. This was my own recent improvisation, omni-blades while possessing a far superior cutting capability were simply too power hungry. In my left I held my own Carnifex.
I entered the prefab the batarian had come out of I came upon a scene that I expected to see but really hoped I wouldn't. Three batarians standing around a body on the floor. Red blood stained their knuckles and boots. Storming into the room before they turned towards the sound of the cycling airlock, I punched the closest one to me in the back of the head and I could feel the spikes bite deep into his skull, pivoted and kicked at the second one. The kick was not as well aimed as I hoped, only a glancing blow that sent the slaver to the floor in a loud crash. Aiming with my pistol I shot the third batarian in the chest twice and then immediately aimed and shot the one on the ground. Only then I looked at the victim. The young man had scrambled away into the corner holding his hands over his head in a protective gesture.
"I am not going to ask stupid things like are you ok. Can you walk?" I said keeping my voice level. The young man nodded and using the wall for leverage picked himself up. Judging by the yellow angry welts and enough bruises that it was hard to tell where one ended and another one began it looked like it hasn't been the first time batarians had entertained themselves in this manner.
"Do you know how many slavers are there?" I asked knowing that every moment was precious and I needed as much information as I could before more batarians showed up. I didn't know how this base was wired up, if there were internal sensors or if someone in the central hub was keeping tubs on everyone's vitals. Unless they were completely incompetent and had no one keeping watch.
"More than ten. Their faces are too similar for me to tell them apart." young man said mumbling the words through swollen lips
"Ok, take his gun and wait here. Which building are they using to hold people?" I exchanged my pistol for a shotgun and enabled Cryo rounds on it. Really useful for slowing down enemies, makes it easier to manage when it's a situation like this with only one of me and plenty of them.
"The far side, next to the landing field. " the man said as he shook in shock. Knowing there was nothing I could do for him right now I picked up the pistol, still in it's folded state, activated it and put it on a crate near the young man.
"Take this. Which way to the barracks?" I asked and he stared at the pistol.
"The prefab with the comm dish. They live there." he answered stating the obvious and grabbed the pistol.
Still seeing no activity I decided not to wait any longer and left the young man and headed towards the barracks at a jog. There was a batarian just behind the outer door sitting with his feet put up on a crate and a shotgun laying on the ground. He was watching something on the datapad, the back of his head towards me, hearing the airlock hiss he turned his head to look at who was entering. The shot was easy and what used to be his head spread out on the wall behind him messily.
Opening the inner door I stepped in and a shot rang out. Unlike the batarians so far I had my kinetic barriers on and all it did was ping my shields. Katana Mk5 in my hands kicked four times as I swept the room before I was forced to dive in an attempt to evade the shots from several more batarians on the far side of the sleeping quarters. Letting the heat gauge on the shotgun go down I threw a couple of disc grenades, flashbangs. The helmet muffled the explosions and I rolled into a new position leveling the shotgun and squeezing the trigger four more times. I liked Katana shotguns, they could fire about 4 to 5 shots before overheating and they were easy to modify. I had modded mine for rapid fire, had to change the standard ammo block and ammunition shaper to a pre-formed ammo block with a fast cycle ammo shaver. Instead of forming individual pellets out of the block each time a shot was fired all it did was break a few layers off the top. The block itself was not a single piece of metal but rather layers of compacted little pieces. Like staples but all in one block. The upside was obvious. Faster shots and less heat generated, the downside was a more rapid use of an ammo block and a chance to jam if there was enough damage to the assembly.
But it has worked perfectly so far. The cones of deadly projectiles with cryo effect swept the room and it might not have killed all of them but they were incapacitated. Few of them had armour on and they were the only survivors as the rest had chunks missing where my shots had struck. Chunks that were quite vital to being alive. Letting the heat dissipate again I picked myself up and finished the batarians still alive.
The barracks were connected by a prefab corridor to the command centre. Rushing through it before they managed to lock it down I entered the main room of the command centre and a volley of shots hit my shields. I quickly dodged to the side and behind some crates. The room was full of crates. It looked like the batarians had been using this as a storage area for some reason. Looking at the markings they were full of weapons. Mostly cheap Hahne-Kedar and Elkoss Combine. Cheap and easy to come by anywhere in the galaxy. Probably planning to expand once they have a few more raids in. Successful slaver gangs drew more batarian recruits.
Waiting for their guns to overheat I glanced at my omni-tool noting the positions of the enemies filled in by the sensors in the helmet, the HUD in the helmet being a bit simplistic for a proper view. One of the batarians was standing behind the same type of crates I was hiding behind but the other one was on the steps leading to the second floor and the curve of the stairs were giving him a good position. Covering him from the side I was approaching and a higher vantage point. As soon as I heard their weapons overheat I jumped out of cover and sprang into a run. These batarians however were more experienced and instead of waiting for their rifles to cool down they dropped them and took out handguns. My barrier took a dozen shots before collapsing then my armour was hit twice before I had a good shot at the nearest batarian. Without properly aiming I let off three blasts from my shotgun in rapid succession which was enough to collapse the kinetic barrier and leave the batarian slumped on the stairs with half of his chest a bleeding wound and left arm in tatters. Before the other batarian managed to aim at me properly I lobbed a grenade right at him with some force. The grenade hit him in the torso staggering him before exploding. Only a flashbang so it couldn't take him down but gave me ample time to let me bring my own gun on him and finish him off.
Heading upstairs I found several officer's quarters and a comm/security room which was left unoccupied. Going through the logs I discovered that two thirds of the batarians were away on a raid while this group were left here to guard the captives and wait for a transport ship from the Hegemony to pick them up. And it was due shortly. Tapping away on the console I unlocked the slave pens and disabled security on the GARDIAN tower so that in case the pirates returned I had something to greet them with. My current problem was that I couldn't fit all the captives I have freed in my ship. Even if I could stack them like wood in my cargo hold my ship's life support was simply not designed for so many people. It wouldn't be able to process all that CO2 quickly enough. In my opinion there was only one way to get these people home and that was to capture a ship from the slavers. Thankfully the cargo ship would be here in a day or two and they usually only had a few guards. No reason to lug a ship full of armed batarians if you could use that same life support capacity to haul more slaves.
Walking downstairs I was faced with several people, one of them was the guy I had found earlier. He was being treated by a younger girl while the others were rummaging around the room. Noticing me they stopped and turned towards me.
"Are you with the Alliance?" a man in his thirties asked me
"No, I am not with the Alliance. We can't signal the Alliance either because we are too far from the comm buoy to make a connection." I said knowing exactly what will be the next question
"How do we get out of here?" the man asked
"In a day or two a cargo ship is going to arrive, it was meant to take you all to batarian space. Instead we are going to take it, kill the crew and fly to freedom. There are enough guns here for everyone. They won't be ready for an attack. We have the advantage here." I said projecting as much calm and determination as possible. These people were fragile right now, after days in slave pens, beaten and dreading their fate, they needed something to lean on. A display of confidence and a clear goal would hold them together until they do what needs to be done.
"Tell us what to do." the young man stood up, still holding the gun I gave him. That was exactly what I was hoping to hear.
Secondary Codex Entry/Vehicles/TSR-3
British Aerospace Corporation's Tactical Strike and Reconnaissance 3 was a late 2150's design. One of dozens that sprang up after the First Contact War, it was at it's core a re-development of the mid 1960's British design for an aircraft of the same purpose. However it soon became clear that a ship like this would require FLT capability. The design was enlarged and using technology reverse engineered from damaged turian shuttles salvaged after FCW allowed a quick breakthrough in developing a compact mass effect core. TSR-3 went into production in 2162 and in the initial trials with the Alliance Navy proved to be popular with both the flight crews and maintenance crews. Three person crew was required, pilot, weapons specialist and navigator/sensor operator. It's radial fusion jet engines were a proven human technology as was the majority of the technology used to build it, apart from the compact mass effect core based on a turian design and the kinetic shield generator of asari origin.
However despite the popularity and the low cost per unit Alliance Parliament cancelled the program in 2163 in favour of their "big ship" navy. Frigates and cruisers were to be multi-functional ships and only dreadnoughts and carriers retained as specialist ships. By that time BAC had produced over 1200 TSR-3's and several hundred more spaceframes were only waiting for the mass effect cores to be installed.
Faced with a loss of billions of credits in both research and development and the production cost for already completed TSR-3's BAC decided to sell them on the civilian market. TSR-3 was re-branded from Tactical Strike and Reconnaissance to Transport, Survey and Rescue. Internal torpedo bay was redeveloped into pressurized cargo bay, crew comforts increased by reducing the crew complement from 3 persons to two as there was no need for a separate weapons specialist. The craft proved to be popular and BAC even restarted production for a time until 2165 with the end number of produced craft at 3500. The military origin of the craft made it easy to modify and upgrade as it had been designed with that in mind and BAC has continued aftermarket support with release of conversion kits that could allow the basic craft to specialise in one of the roles fitting the re-branded TSR name. TSR-3 at 31m long and 14m wide gives a sharp, predatory silhouette, while it is designed to take advantage of the mass effect core in flight even without it the ship is perfectly capable of atmospheric operation. It's twin engines have an air-breathing mode that allows air to pass through the engines adding to the thrust and as an added bonus aiding in the cooling of the ship systems.
The relative simplicity and reliability of TSR-3 has led it to become sought after in the used ship market by smugglers, bounty hunters and others who have to rely on the strength of their shields or the accuracy of their weapons to carry them through the day.
Thank you all for the reviews, the response was quite a bit more than I had hoped. I know it's been almost a month but I have not been idle. Wanting to improve the quality of my writing in the long term I watched lectures and actually spent time outlining what was going to come next. Before this I was basically throwing whatever came to mind onto a page and hoping it would stick. I had of course a general idea where I wanted it to go but nothing in between the start and end. Now I have a rough outline and I will continue to refine it more. I am also going to start replying to a few of the reviews. Hopefully by engaging with my readers I will be able to improve how I write. This chapter and the previous one might feel a bit disjointed because I wrote them little pieces at a time but I will be aiming at longer, more cohesive chapters as I get into a writing groove and free up more time to write in long sessions as I did at the start. Thank you for your patience.
hakonlh, thank you for the kind words. I saw your review in the morning after I posted the chapter and it made my day
RIOSHO, the timeline will be going increasingly AU, I am not sure yet exactly what events could be considered as "needing to happen" but I hope if I do change something it will be at least a good read
RoachBagg, I am very thankful that you were pleased, it was also a pleasant surprise to me that I am continuing this story
Darlok, I am not sure yet who he will end up with, if anyone at all but I don't know if I could pull off writing a love triangle or a polyamory. There are certain things that Sam will have to experience both good and bad as currently he is not a well rounded character. And you are right, the ease with which mass effect technology was developed has made the galaxy at large blind to other variations. Even other uses of mass effect beyond the simplest. Sam knows this but it's not going to be easy to change that.