Flesh and Metal:

Book One:

The Saren Incident:

Chapter Seven

"Hit the goddamned deck!"

Ashley didn't need to think about it, she just did it as she allowed her knees to buckle and threw herself flat to the ground as two grenades soared over her head and moments later there was an explosion so loud that it made her ears ring and she could feel the ground shaking beneath her, over the ringing in her ears she could just about hear the high-pitched shrieks of the mutated Batarians as they flew through the air.

A large meaty chunk of one of them landed in front of Ashley's face and she found that she had another reason to be glad for her helmet as blood splattered against her visor, bring up an arm to wipe it clean.

They had been attacked on their way to the transport station, walking through a low valley littered with boulders and scattered belongs from people who had been fleeing in one direction or the other, apprently these monsters could be goddamned sneaky when they wanted to be and three marines had been cut down before they knew what was happening, Corporal Maria Fredrick who had a love for dirty jokes and heavy weaponry had been the first to fall, dozens of wounds bursting out of her chest as the Batarians had hit her with their weapons.

The top of Private Ivan Conners head had vanished into a fine red mist after Maria had fallen to the ground, his body had taken two more steps before he seemed to realise that he was dead and fell to the ground. He had spent far to long twitching on the ground as his blood and grey matter had stained the grass around his head.

Private Michael Tyler had more warning than either Corporal Fredrick and Private Conners had gotten, just enough for his eyes to widen and to raise his rifle and to begin a shout but that was all he had time to do as the sheer force of hostile fire reduced his torso to a melted ruin as he fell to the ground. The rest of them had managed to get into cover, Primey bending down to put Nirali somewhere safe before it rose back to it's full height and unleashing hell with it's machine guns.

It had been Private Ronald Jackson who had been the one to throw the grenade and it was him who offered Ashley a hand to help her up. "You okay Chief?, I think that was the last of them."

"I'm fine Private." Ashley said as she took the hand and allowed herself to pulled up before she tried to wipe his visor clean again and looked around at what was left of her unit.

Primey had taken a great deal of the fire and it wasn't looking good for it, there were deep gorges in it's heavily armoured platform and there seemed to be fires burning out of some of them and the small repair drones that it used to repair itself was struggling to fix the damage, having to try and fix it with their number having been reduced by two during the fire fight.

Nirali looked like she should be getting fitted for a coffin, she was so pale and her chest was barely moving but she was still alive as Corporal Stone continued to do his best to tend to her, seemingly ignoring the thin trickle of blood that was running down his arm from where the shoulder of his hardsuit had been breached.

There were only nineteen of them left now.

Ashley sighed, pushed down her grief, and walked over to where Primey was standing. "LT, we're still aways from the transport station. Be honest, what are the chances we actually get there if resistance is this high for the rest of the way?"

The metal flaps around it's eye moved for a moment, the movement almost seemed a little hesitant to her and that didn't seem at all like a good sign to her. "Williams-Chief...the math is irrelevant, we will keep going. Prepare yourself to move out?"

"Yes sir." Ashley snapped off a salute and rolled her shoulders and put her head up, they could do this. And even if they couldn't, there were lower ranking soliders than her here and for them she needed to look like she believed that they could.

"Come on Nirali, don't give up! We're almost there!" Corporal Stone cursed as his fingers worked over his Omni-Tool, adminstering painkillers and antibiotics to Nirali as he knelt over her.

"LT, I'm sorry but I don't think she's going to make it." Private Jackson said as he looked down at Nirali on the ground even as his words were directed to Primey, Ashley could tell that the man didn't want to say it but that didn't change the fact that part of her wanted to deck him. "You can't carry her and use your weapons, we have a better chance if you can fight. I think we have to leave her."

Ashley still wanted to punch him but once again she didn't, because she couldn't deny that the logic of it made sense to her even if the thought of leaving Nirali behind made her feel ill it might be the thing that saved the rest of them.

Primey was silent, it's head tilted slightly downwards. Ashley knew that it's runtimes would be trying to build a consensus, she only hoped it would make a decision quick.

It raised it's head then and the flaps around it's head began to move but before it could say anything there was the massive crack of a sniper rifle being fired and seconds later a massive crack appeared at the end of Primey's lense, the light dimming and a gush of synthetic Geth blood burst out of the crack and the LT fell to the ground, the ground shook under her feet and it reminded her of a tree toppling and hitting the ground.

They didn't have the time to process it as seconds later there was the sound of the rifle firing again and the blast punched straight through Private Jackson's neck, a large blast of blood splattering out of the wound for the moment before he fell flat on to his face.

"Get to goddamned cover!" Ashley commanded as threw herself behind the large rock that she had been taking cover behind, raising her rifle as she did so.

None of the mutated Batarians they had seen so far had used sniper rifles, they didn't even seem to use any sort of traditional guns at all. They used some sort of weapons that seemed built into their bodies that were pretty damn effective all things considered but they had a medium range for the most part, nothing that she had seen suggest they had long range weapons.

She had assumed and now they were only seventeen of them left and if she didn't do something soon then they could even fewer of them left than that.

Cursing under her breath and then biting her bottom lip she peaked her head around the rock quickly before pulling it back, there was a thick line of trees at the end of the valley they were currently in which could provid good cover for a sniper but she hadn't seen anything moving on their position which seemed more than a little odd to her. These mutated Batarians didn't seem like acting independently of one another, they moved as a shambling horde for the most part.

But this one seemed to be a lone sniper, it couldn't have been there when it's breathern had ambushed them because if it had why had it waited until now to make it's presence known? Unless it wasn't one of them, maybe it was a survivor from the rest of the 212 who had been driven out of their mind by fear and was now taking shots at anyone that moved.

"What are we going to do Chief?" Corporal Clara Agyeman hissed under her breath from her own cover, a large crate that had been placed atop a mass effect assisted cargo carrier that looked like it was meant to be taken up to the dig site but had been abandoned when the firing had started.

"Not going to lie to you Corporal, it isn't looking good. I can't tell where this bastard's firing from." Ashley jutted her head out again and then pulled it back. "Okay, here's what I am going to do. There's another rock a little further down, I'm going to run for it and I am going to take cover behind it. You Corporal are going to watch for the bastard when they pull the trigger so we can get a better idea of where they are, you ready?"

"Not really Chief!"

"Well fair enough, neither am I. But here we go anyway!" Ashley didn't let herself think about what she was doing, she just did it. She was out from cover from the first rock and darting towards the second rock as quickly as she could, that was all that mattered in that moment and she didn't let anything else enter her head in that moment. She just had to move.

In the the last few steps she lunged forward and just about managed to reach the rock as there was the crack of the rifle firing again and the ground where she had been standing seconds ago suddenly getting a new hole in it, a small spurt of dirt flying into the air. Ashley leaned back against the rock and took a moment to catch her breath before she raised her hand to her hardsuit's helmet to activate the comm link inside of it to Clara's helmet.

"Corporal, any luck?"

"The sniper is on the far right of the tree line, Chief." Clara's voice came down through the link, Ashley couldn't help but smirk a little with how breathless the other marine sounded in that moment like she had been the one who had done the hard work and not her. "I think they're within firing range of you but if you move out from cover now then you'll be right n their sights."

Ashley cursed again and then readied herself to move. "Get the rest of the unit up and ready to lay down surpressing fire, I'll keep low and try to get the drop on them, got it?"

"One sec Chief." And just like that for a few moments their was only silence aside from the sound of fires burnings and the odd faraway gunshot. "Okay Chief, we're ready and in posistion aside from Corporal Stone, he's still trying to get Private Bahtia back on to her feet."

"God loves a trier Corporal, on my order you understand?" Ashley waited untill she got the affermative, took a deep breath and just went for it. "Now!"

She pressed herself low to the ground and began to crawl as soon as she heard the sound of gunfire lighting up the air, she moved as fast as she could which wasn't that fast all things considered because big shock it was hard to move when flat on your front but she hade made it to the next piece of cover at the mouth of the valley and raised her Avenger up to her visor so she could look down it's scope.

Sadly, it was a pretty shitty scope all things considered and Ashley found herself wishing that the Alliance would spend more money or at the very least spend enough so she could have a decent damn sniper rifle, but she could make out some movment from in the trees but she couldn't make out any details of who it was but whoever it was they didn't seem to notice that she had moved out of cover.

There was another loud sniper shot and a cry went up into the air. "What was that!?" Ashley hissed down the comm link.

"It was Private Simm, Chief. They got him in the arm but he'll be all right."

"Okay then, now it's your turn you son of a bitch!" Ashley hissed and brought up her rifle again and pulled the trigger, sending a spray of fire into the tree line and Ashley couldn't help when she heard a cry of pain coming out of the trees, a victory roar coming out of her mouth and she wasn't able to stop it even if she wanted to.

"Smith, Jones!" Ashley shouted back down to her unit and the two marines she called out for came up running to her. "Go into the trees and find out what that was, it didn't sound like one of those Batarians when I hit it, go and be careful!"

When both of the privates ran into the trees Ashley headed back down to where the rest of her unit was waiting for her, Corporal Agyeman clapped her on the shoulder when she came back and Ashley walked over to where Primey was laying, Corporal Al-Sward was kneeling over him with his Omni-Tool active. "Any way we can get it back up and running Corporal?"

"I'm just trying to get a better idea of the damage Chief, I'm certified to work on Makos not Geth platforms but I'm doing what I can." The Corporal looked at his display and leaned down to have a closer look, frowning. "I think I found something, it kind of looks like a backup CPU, I think-

Corporal Al-Sward couldn't finish that sentence as Primey suddenly sat up, it's eye was still shot out but it seemed to be looking at both of them. "Williams-Chief, Al-Sward-Corporal, what is out status?"

"So...I guess I was right about it being a backup CPU?"

"It was a date archive unique to this platform that contain copies of each runtime which makes up our core programming, when a runtime is destoryed or damaged we can replace run times from said archive to ensure that we do not lose any functionality?" As it spoke, it rose to his feet and looked down at them from it's great height, hefting up one of it's LMGs. "We are still combat effective."

"No offense LT but...How? It shot out your eye."

"We have taken the liberty of tapping into the live camera feeds of your hardsuit helmets, we see what you see." Ashley knew that she shouldn't have found that so creepy, but she had to admit that she kind of did. "Now, we asked for a status update."

Ashley was about to give one when a cry reached down to them, Smith and Jones were running down to meet them and in between them was...was a...

Was that a Quarian?

"Look what we found hiding out in the woods like a rat!" Smith said as he pushed the Quarian down on to the ground, there was a wound on it's leg that must have been from where Ashley had hit it. From what little she actually knew about Quarians that wasn't good, even the tinest tear in their enviromental suits and they could suffer from a bad infection and die.

"L-leave me alone!" The Quarian, dressed in a golden suit with a green visor, was male going by the voice and he sounded young at that, a kid who was only barely old enough to be a solider. "I-I told you, I live on this planet. I'm a colonist, I grabbed a rifle to protect myself and I thought you were those...those monsters, it's all just a misunderstanding!"

"Bullshit, Eden Primes doesn't have any Quarian colonists! There aren't any Quarians in the Alliance."

"Like we want any of your kind anyway." Clara hissed down at the kid, her normally kind eyes hateful and her gentle voice taking on a sharper edge. "And you still killed one of our squadmates, maybe we should just execute you here and say that was a misunderstanding."

"Agyeman-Corporal, you will stand down." Primey spoke as it stepped closer to them and looked down at the Quarian who seemed to shrink in on himself. "Creator, why are you away from the fleet? Why have you engaged in hostilities here?"

"I-I'm not telling you anything."

"We am not your enemy Creator, we do not wish to cause you any futher harm if we can help it. Would you tell us your name, please?"

"Kenn'San Nar Tonbay." The kid sounded like even saying that much was a greater act of treason than had ever been commited.

"You are on your Pilgrimage, Creator?"

"N-no." It was always hard to tell when a voice was distored by modulation but it sounded a bit like the kid was crying now and, god help her, Ashley kind of felt bad for the kid. "Pilgrimages have been suspended, but they said that if you joined the service then...then you would be considered an adult, they said it would be a greater service to our people than any ship or new technology."

"Who said this creator?"

Nothing, the kid just bent his head.

"Creator, you must answer me."

"Ah, forget it LT. He ain't going to tell you anything." Smith spat at Kenn, and then laughed like a hyena when the spat landed on the gunshot wound on his thigh. "Come on, just haul him up and the AIS in Constant can deal with him."

"Chief Williams, secure the prisoner but there has been a change in the plan, we are not going to Constant."

"LT?"

"Geth runtimes in the main server at Constant have been contacted, an Alliance frigate has entered atmosphere. They are on a critical mission, we are needed."

End of Chapter Seven


Another chapter done and dusted, next chapter we go into a new P.O.V and it should also be the end of the Eden Prime part of this story, maybe? Shrugs.

Also yes, that is Kenn from the Omega markets in 2. I was originally going to have him be Shala'Rann's son here but then I thought that Tali would recognise him as Shala's son so I decided against it.

Also yeah...Humans can be kinda dicks, they are really close to the Geth and are quite protective of them so some of them really don't like the Quarians very much even though the Geth, mostly, have let go of their anger a long time ago.

So...yeah, hope you're enjoying and I'll see you for the next chapter.

With warmest regards,

DiscordantSymphony