Flesh and Metal:

Book One:

The Saren Incident:

Chapter Five

The air smelled of smoke and ashes and the skies were blood red with burning streaks of light fall through the clouds as the gutted and burned out carcasses of warships fell through the atmosphere, as bright as any star. Some feel into the sea below, sending geysers of water up half a hundred feet before the water fell back to rejoin with the rest of the seas.

A scream of pain echoed through the air and Private Eric Gaston fell back to the ground, his hands coming up to cover his face as he thrashed in agony on the ground as whatever he had been hit with burned through his face and his skull. Ashley had never heard anything like that and as she took cover behind a low wall, to low, it was like something out of a horror vid from the old classic days.

A few more moments of screaming, of thrashing and kicking and then it was over. It was so sudden how the young private fell still and his scream just...stopped. Ashley shook her head as the sound of more weapon's fire soaring over her head brought her back to the currant shitshow that she was in the middle of, and if she didn't want to end up like poor Eric then she had to keep her focus.

She waited for a break in the firing and popped out of cover and fired her rifle in the direction of the enemies, a cry that sounded like something like a monster out of hell screaming it's rage went up in the air as one of the enemies fell under her fire and Ashley ducked her head to avoid the reprisal. Green bolts of light shoot over her, one came so close to hitting her neck that without even thinking about it she presses herself flat to the ground.

There were so many of them and Ashley didn't think that she was going to walk away from this one alive but what did that matter in the end? She was a Williams, if she died then she was going to die like a marine rifle in hand and spite for her enemies in her heart and she was going to take plenty of the fuckers down with her, in the defense of humanity and home.

Another blast of whatever the hell it was they were shooting at them soared over her head and Ashley chose that moment to fire back into the line of monsters. And that's what they were. Ashley had seen Batarian's before, every now and then a trading vessel from one of the sovereign barbarian worlds would dock at the space port in Constance and it's crew would come out into the city where they would stock up on goods before heading back out to do whatever they were doing.

Ashley had seen enough Batarians to know that what she was looking at were Batarians but they were...wrong. She didn't know any other way to describe it. They were malformed, misshaped. Two of their eyes, they were glowing in the darkness. a cold, blue light that even looking at chilled Ashley to her bones and most Batarian's she had seen were pretty lean, these things were hulking and bent over like their skeletons could not support how massive they had grown.

And all over them, growing out of their flesh like a fungus, there was some sort of black metal that every now and then would spark with red energy. Ashely knew plenty of people with enhancements to make themselves more than what they were or to replace something that they had lost like an eye or a hand. But this wasn't like that, most augmentations were just meant to imitate whatever they were replacing or improving upon.

This was not like that at all, this wasn't cybernetics imitating life. The metal had seemed to be almost seared on to the flesh and was jutting out of their skin in random intervals, thick blue tubes ran all over their bodies pumping something that Ashley didn't want to know what it was all around their bodies. It was some sort of unholy fusion of machine and organic, one of those things in anti synthetic rights pamphlet that Ashley had always laughed off.

But now those things that had seemed so stupid moments ago were right in front of her eyes, murdering her friends and raining hellfire down on all of them. Ashley clung to her rifle tighter and popped out of cover once again and sprayed them down with the mass accelerated fire. She downed another two before she was forced back into cover but it didn't seem to matter, it was an endless wall of flesh that crept closer and closer no matter how many they killed.

It never ended, and while they never seemed to end the same could not be said for their side. More and more of the men and women she served with in the 212 ended up on the floor, some of them dead before they they hit the ground while others were able to scream out their agony for a few moments before they finally stilled as well.

Nirali Bhatia let out a cry of pain and she ended up next to Ashley, her Avenger rifle slipping from her nerveless fingers while her other hand came up to clamp around her upper arm where she had been hit. Her deep brown eyes were blown wide, her pupils had shrunk to dots no bigger than a pen tip and she had turned pale. She was shaking as the smell of burning flesh wafted off from her and thick rivlets of blood began to roll down from underneath her hand and down her arm. "Oh no, oh no. Oh Allah, please no."

"Private, keep it together." Ashley said, trying to make her voice sound stronger than she felt in that moment. Nirali looked at her, her chest heaving and Ashley knew that was only a few moments away from a total break down. "You got hit, you're a marine. It happens in this line of work, it's a graze. It is nothing and we do not have time for you to breakdown. Keep it together."

"I-Yes, Cheif." And with a quick exhale, Niarli Bhatia reached down and picked her rifle back up and joined Ashley in firing into the mass of augmented Batarians and the both of them did their best to ignore the fact that Niarli's wound was still sizzling and that the skin around it seemed to be melting and peeling away, like perfectly cooked meat that just slid off of the bone.

A curse went up when Ashley's rifle overheated and she ducked under cover again as the gun began to vent the built up heat, she had run out of thermal clips what seemed like ages ago and so she had to rely on the automatic venting. Great footsteps shook the earth and Primey walked over to them with both of his revenant machine guns raised and a steady stream of fire began to mow into the ranks of the enemies. A shoulder mounted grenade launcher fired as well, it's rounds exploding into the middle of the enemies, and sent various parts and dark fluid flying into every single direction.

Large scorch marks had been burned into Primey's platform, but all around him floated five small blue repair drones which were constantly scanning him for damage and repairing him. "Attacking hostlie force has been reduced to fourty-five percent strength effective." Primey spoke and Ashley had to admit, when he was delivering that news, his synthetic voice was the most beautiful thing that she had ever heard.

She kept firing and so did Nirali, when her rifle overheated she didn't wait for it to cool down. Instead, she swapped over to her sniper rifle and looked down it's scope, picking off as many of them as she could. What moments ago had seemed like an endless horde suddenly seemed to be a lot more manageable. Even as their numbers dwindled, they fought to the last and seemed to have no care for their own fate.

When the last of the monsters fell to the ground, Ashley lowered her rifle and just breathed for a few moments. The entire world seemed to be tilted on it's side and suddenly Ashley decided that she very much needed to sit down. She slumped down to the ground and suddenly her head was bent forward and she was emptying her stomach on to the grass.

After a bit nothing else was coming up and Ashley got back to her feet after wiping her arm over her mouth, the taste of vomit was still cling to her mouth but considering she could be dead right about now she was going to take it as a win. She glanced around her to see how the rest of the unit it was doing and it was about as much as she expected.

Niarali had turned even paler than she had been just after she was hit and was on the ground and keeping her hand clamped around her arm and even from where Ashley was standing, she could still hear the sound of the wound sizzling. Was the only thing keeping her arm in one peace her hand holding it together? Ashley was about to go over to see what she could do when Corporal Stone came over to Niarali and began to apply first aid.

Corporal Stone was trained in first aid, Niarali would be fine. She had to be fine. There was more to do and so Ashley walked over to Primey who seemed to be studying the battlefield. "Lieutenant, I'm sorry but what do we do now?"

"Processing." Was the only response she got and Ashley nodded and went to see what she could do to help the others, Private Newburg looked like he was about to piss himself and so Ashley slapped him on the back and told him that he had done good but that he needed to hold it together for a while longer, they needed him to do that.

The private nodded and Ashley moved on to share a smoke with two other marines and once that was done she walked over to where Corporal Stone was tending to Niarali and knelt down next to them. "Is there anything I can do?" She asked in a whisper as she stared at the wound, the veins around it were turning black and Niarali seemed to be straining with the effort of just breathing.

Corporal Stone glanced at her for half a moment and just like that his attention was back on Niarali. "Just talk to her, I'm doing all I can but I've never seen any sort of weapon that could do this sort of damage before. I don't understand it, it ripped through shields and armor like they aren't even there." Stone cursed then and tore open a packet of medi-gel and smeared it over her wound. "This isn't going to be enough, she needs to be in a proper hospital and she needs to be in one now."

The fact that there was very little chance of them getting Niarali to a hospital was left unsaid, the entirety of Eden Prime seemed to have fallen into hell. There was a makeshift sort of field hospital at the field camp just off of the place where they had found the beacon, set up in case of the ancient Prothean tech causing adverse effects as apparently there had been reports of that sort of thing happening in the past.

But it was just as likely that the field hospital, as well as the dig site and the beacon, had been reduced to nothing more than a pile of rubble. When Primey had warned her and Niarali that the fleet in orbit had been destroyed, they had both ran to go and get the lieutenant as he had ordered them to do so. When the had ran into the prefab barrack that had been set up for the 212, all that Lieutenant Rabe needed to do was to look at their faces to see that something was wrong and in that moment he was on his feet and barking orders to the rest of the unit.

The problem was that the dig site was not a military base so when the dig site workers and the doctors from the collage at Constant saw a bunch of marines running about, shouting orders at one another and rushing about with their weapons drawn had caused more than a slight bit of panic but the Lieutenant had gotten them in order and told them to take cover while they defended the site, they were under attack.

After that, it had just been the waiting. They had tried to get into contact with Major Harrison in the city but all they had gotten was static, Primey had a connection to the server hub in Constant which contained tens of thousands of Geth runtimes and what they had learned from them had not calmed things down.

The ship they had not been able to identify but weight class had put it as being a super heavy dreadnought had flown over Constant, many had tried to object by saying that a ship of that size would never be able to enter the atmosphere but Primey had been insistent that there was no mistake, and had used it's weapon, readings were inconclusive as to what it was but it looked like a beam of red light, to cut through the city, destroying buildings and roads and much of it's fury had been focused on the base where the rest of the 212 had been stationed.

The massive ship had left after that, moving so fast that no ship that size should be able to, and casualty reports had flooded into the server. One attack from that ship had left hundreds, if not thousands dead. One of it's beams had cut through a fuel line in the south side of the capital and now fires were burning out of control across the city, the base in the city was in disarray, as it seemed that one of the beams had hit the major's office and it had been reduced to a pile of melted scrap and while the major had not been confirmed as KIA the fact that he had last been seen in his office and no one was now able to reach him did lean to the drawing of any optimistic conclusions.

And that was just what the initial attack from the ship had done, after it had left for whatever thing new that had demanded it's attention, reports of the same sort of monstrously augmented Batarians attacking the city followed and what defense against them could be mustered was small and fractured and it was made pretty clear that there was no help coming for them.

So they had done what they could to set up defenses, setting up barriers and laying down mines and the engineering corp had set up turrets and then had come the waiting, the endless waiting. The enemy at least had the decency to announce when they were coming. The shrieks had filled the air and just like that, they were upon them.

Company Delta, the company of the 212 that Ashley was a part of, was two hundred strong. When they had taken down the first wave of enemies that had come against them that number had been reduced to one hundred and thirty-eight, and over twenty others had been wounded and a dozen of them had been wounded quite severely.

And that was just from the first wave of them, another wave had come after them and another and another and another. And with each wave that they fought off, more and more of her fellow soldiers ended up on the ground. By the time they had fought off a fifth wave, there was less than a hundred of company Delta left standing.

And then the scouting drones that the engineering corp had sent out had detected that a large force of hostiles were moving on them from the south while a new wave was massing and ready to attack them again from the north. They couldn't allow themselves to get trapped between two forces while trying to defend the camp and so Lieutenant Rabe had divided the rest of the company half, he would keep control of the first half and they would hold the enemy there at the camp while the other half, under the command of Primey, would march to meet the second half.

Ashley had been with the second half of the company and they had stood against waves and waves of the enemy, even after the communication with with Lieutenant Rabe and the rest of the 212 had gotten cut off and now they stood, undefeated if not a little bloody. And it was fair to say, they were all more than a little bloodied. Of the around fifty or so soliders that had been sent to hold the hostile force off, there were only twenty-two of them left.

"Processing complete." Everyone turned to look at the second lieutenant as it turned around, sparks bursting into the air from where it's repair drones wearing sealing the ruptures in it's platform. "Commuications are unable to be reastablished with Local Command Unit-Rabe, we are unable to gain status update on Command Unit-Harrison, currant fighting efficiency is near critical levels. Recommended course of action, extract from the immediate area."

"You mean run away!?" Private Tyler, who was clinging to his rifle like it was the only thing in the world that was keeping him grounded. "We can't do that! The others are going to need our help, we can't just leave them! There are still civilians!"

When Primey spoke, it's voice was emtionless and logical. "An overwhelming enemy force was bearing down on them, there is no indication that communications are being block as our connection to the serve hub in Constant is strong and we have asked them if they detect any block in communications, they say that there is none. Ninety-five percent likelihood that there position has been overrun by hostile force, there is nothing that we can do for them."

Private Tyler withdrew after that and for a moment there was silence as the information sunk into the rest of them. Only for a moment though, as soon Primey was speaking again. "We will withdraw to the transport hub and take a tram back to the capital, casualties are mounting and we will more likely save more lives if we go and help there. We should hurry."

"Stone-Corporal, status update on Bhatia-Private?"

The Corporal shook his head. "It's not looking good LT, I've managed to stop the bleeding but whatever those bastards hit her with has caused some type of blood posioning. I don't think she's going to be able to move as it is." Nirali really did not look good, her eyes had slide shut and her chest was moving up and down and her entire body seemed to be straining with the effort of it. "She needs proper medical attention and she needs it now."

The massive figure of the super heavy Geth platform stood still for a moment before it holstered it's light machine guns on it's back, walked over to where Nirali was lying and bent down to pick her up. "We shall carry her until we reach the transport station, no marine gets left behind if we can do something for them. Company Delta, we are moving out."

There were a few grim nods and the company fell in line and as they walked down the hill and through the trees at the foot of it, Ashley tried to pretend that she couldn't smell blood and cooking flesh mixed with smoke and burning hair in the air.

End of Chapter Five


I really hoped everyone enjoyed this chapter,

Next chapter, the Normandy arrives at Eden Prime.

With a ton of love,

DiscordantSymphony