The Armory, Ilos…
Fireteam Mantis approached the solid, adamantine cube that was the Armory. Weapons raised, they climbed the short staircase that led to the ruin's only obvious entrance, a pair of double blast doors that broke the smooth stone texture of the walls. As they reached the top of the stairs, Snake moved T3 forward.
"Find us a way in." He bluntly ordered, and the droid immediately moved to follow the command.
Within seconds of T3 interfacing with the Geth's battlenet, the blast doors let out a depressurizing hiss and began to open.
"Wow that was fast." Shepard congratulated T3. "Good work little guy."
"Dooooot." T3 let out a low, cautious whistle.
"I do not believe that this was T3's doing." Thane warned as he raised his gun and began to move back.
As the Armory doors opened a bright glowing eye drew their attention as they felt heavy footfalls shaking the ground around them. Out of the Armory, a massive, four-legged Geth Colossus walked out, plasma already charging in its main pulse cannon.
"Scatter!" Shepard called out as the fireteam took off in different directions.
Shepard felt a burst of heat envelop her as the colossus' plasma bolt exploded next to her, shredding her shields and taking a good chunk out of her aura. Shepard spun and sprinted for the nearest cover, a stack of geth crates that Shepard hoped were strong enough to block any errant plasma sent her way. Same as her, the rest of her fireteam spread out behind their own cover. When the colossus would focus on one legionnaire, firing the energy bolt at them, the rest would peek from their own hiding spots, firing and chipping away at its shields.
Another burst of plasma exploded, this time splashing close to Thane's position. The assassin cried out as the superheated gas overloaded his barrier and burned through his aura. Shepard snarled in return and opened fire with her plasma shotgun, ripping into the colossus' shields. She was particularly annoyed because fighting a colossus wouldn't be all that hard if they had a similar level of ordinance. The relatively slow speed of the plasma meant that vehicles like a mako or warthog could drive circles around it. But on foot, using anything less than heavy anti-vehicle weaponry? It wasn't a death sentence but it was damn near close to one.
"T3!" Snake commanded. "Overload! Take down its shields!"
"Beep!" T3 tweeted as the little droid rolled out of cover. Activating his cyberwarfare suite, T3 sent a burst of electricity that crashed into the colossus, ripping through its shields.
This however, caused the colossus to look right at the utility droid, its subroutines and programs increasing T3's threat rating. T3 let out a concerned beep as the two flashlight headed synthetics stared each other down and the colossus began another build up of plasma.
T3 immediately spun around with a scream as the bolt of plasma exploded behind him, sending him flying through the air. The droid landed inglouriously on the ground, his right foreleg snapped and the lightbulb in his head hanging loose.
"T3!" Shepard called out as she ran from cover herself, blasting her shotgun at the colossus in hopes of drawing its attention.
But the armature would not be dissuaded as it continued on its path forward towards the fallen droid. Charging up another pulse of energy, it launched another ball of blue fire right for T3. As the attack was about to strike, another source of plasma, this one a red blade of concentrated energy intercepted. Thane, holding one of the lightsabers he had looted from the dark jedi in the Temple of Order, had dashed in front of T3, using the energy sword to block the attack.
However, Thane was no jedi, as instead of reflecting the plasma back at the colossus he merely redirected it away, splashing harmlessly against the ground. Ignoring the missed opportunity, Thane charged. With practiced swipes and cuts, Thane burned into the front left leg of the colossus, biting deep into the limb. But the colossus' armor was thick and heavy, the drell's lightsaber only digging in a few inches before stopping. If Thane had enough time, he could probably eventually melt his way through the limb, but he would have no such luxury.
Eager to remove the drell from the battlefield, the colossus swiped with the leg Thane attempted to cut through, kicking him dozens of feet through the air before he slammed into a nearby building. Stunned by the hit, Thane was dazed and confused as the colossus charged up its plasma cannon, aiming right for the assassin.
"Thane get up!" Shepard called out as she charged the colossus, her biotic cannonball slamming right into its side.
But the massive armature remained unmoved, and elected to ignore the commander as it finished charging up its main cannon. With a flash of light, the plasma ball flew right for Thane, who remained unmoved as the attack hit his location, exploding in a burst of ionized gas. Shepard had to take a moment to stop and stare as the smoke dissipated, and nothing remained of Thane. No corpse, no bones, just a charred black burn mark on the alien walls of a dead world.
As Shepard tried to process the death of her friend once more, she heard the unmistakable hiss of a lightsaber activating from behind her. Turning, she saw that atop the colossus itself, Thane stood, no worse for wear, with his lightsaber's angry red blade thirsting for vengeance. Without hesitation, Thane then drove his lightsaber into the back carapace of the colossus. The mech let out a mechanical screech, and twisted and rolled, trying to get Thane off its back.
As it rolled, Shepard blinked and Thane completely vanished from the top of the colossus, only to reappear on the ground beside it. With a swing of his lightsaber, he carved another chunk of metallic flesh off of the mech, white, synthetic fluid evaporating on contact. Strike after strike fell upon the robot, each quick cut burning into the tall legs of the colossus. Soon enough, the colossus could no longer support its own weight, and its chassis fell to the ground. Now immobile, the colossus retracted its damaged limbs in an effort to repair the damage.
With the colossus unable to move, Snake ran forward and pulled out a sliver grenade from his belt. It was a thermal detonator from Galen's world, a powerful explosive that actually creates a small theromonuclear fusion reaction, because of course his world would have nuclear hand grenades. Pushing a switch with his thumb to arm the explosive, Snake gave the grenade his best throw and watched it arc through the air where it landed and stuck to the colossus' chassi. Thane, seeing the explosive coming, blinked away from his spot next to the geth siege weapon, suddenly appearing next to Shepard as the thermal detonator exploded, destroying the colossus.
As the miniature mushroom cloud dissipated, Shepard couldn't help but turn to Thane and yell. "Thane! What the Hell was that?"
Thane thought for a moment before responding, seeming focused on a point on the other side of Shepard, when he vanished and reappeared at that very point. "It appears I have unlocked my semblance. Some kind of short range teleportation."
"Fuck!" Shepard half jumped as Thane blinked beside her, failing to rein in her surprise. "Well it's good you did so. Just don't make a habit of learning new, life saving abilities in the middle of combat. I don't think my heart can take it."
Thane only nodded his head at the joke, flatly saying. "I'll try not to."
As they spoke, Snake and T3 made their way to them, T3 beginning his automated self-repair functions. "We good?" Snake simply asked.
"Green Boss, some more than others." Shepard replied, gesturing to Thane.
"Good. T3, continue your repairs and keep watch out here. Everyone else, we're going in." Snake ordered, also glossing over Shepard's joke.
Shepard sighed as she nodded her head, shotgun raised as the trio entered the now open doors of the Armory.
"What the Hell is this, Willy Wonka's wacky weapons factory?" Shepard muttered to herself as the fireteam walked through the Armory.
Shepard wasn't exactly sure what she was expecting when they entered the ruins. The Archives were a series of maze-like tunnels filled with hostiles, while the Temple of Order was some kind of pocket dimension that Lileath decorated herself. But the Armory was just that, an armory. It was pretty much just a glorified warehouse, with racks, cabinets, and chests filled with a variety of weapons, armor, and other esoteric equipment from who knows how many universes.
On one end there were retro-futuristic looking guns, something right out of a 1950s sci-fi b-movie, next to savage, bloodstained rifles out of the post-apocalypse that looked like they fired some kind of buzzsaw. On the other side were swords, spears, staffs, and suits of armor that wouldn't look out of place in a high-fantasy movie set.
When she was growing up, Shepard was never the kind of girl who would go out of her way to go on extravagant shopping trips. But right now, she wanted to stay for hours and try everything on. As she perused the aisles of weaponry, one weapon in particular stole her attention.
The weapon was obviously some kind of heavy, handheld artillery piece. It was a shoulder-mounted infantry weapon that had a rail-like catapult system, and next to it were a series of football sized miniature nuclear warheads. It very much reminded Shepard of the Davy Crockett from the Cold War. Looking at the side of the gun she found a label saying, "M42 Fat Man Weapon System." Picking the weapon up, she shouldered it and took a practice aim down the sights.
As she did, Thane, who was exploring the weaponry himself, walked up beside her and said, "That's a good look."
Shepard gave a savage grunt as she smiled, holstering the weapon on her back and hoarded as many mini-nukes into a bag as she could. This continued on for roughly half an hour as they looted the Armory for everything they could. They mostly stuck with equipment that they had some familiarity with, as well as those they thought would directly help them in the war. They grabbed several suits of armor, a few futuristic looking guns, some spare weapon and armor parts, and even a few magic staffs, not that any of the Legionnaires there had any idea of what they did. They would sort through it later with the rest of the Legion.
As the commander examined some fanciful two handed sword she found, she heard Boss's voice call out. "Everyone, converge on my position. I found something." Unknowingly placing Narsil back on the rack next to a gigantic blade that was too massive, thick, and heavy to actually be called a sword, Shepard moved to Snake's position.
Shepard found Snake at the far end of the Armory standing beside Thane, who got there first by cheating with his blink ability. Both men were staring at the far wall, and it took Shepard several seconds to understand what they were looking at.
A series of cables extended from the wall, coiled together like a colony of snakes. But underneath the cables, lying on the white-stone ground, was a mech. But it was no mech that Shepard had ever seen. Its torso was rounded in the shape of a breastplate, but massively oversized, with its head hidden by massive shoulders, and an armored hood that extended over its back. It almost looked more like a sarcophagus than a chassis. The head was some sort of helmet designed to look like a face, the expression a visage of hate and anger. Its arms and legs were thick, blunt things, similarly oversized. Its entire right arm was replaced by a kind of gatling gun, while its left was a terrifying, clawed powerfist.
The armor plating of the mech was strangely resplendent, its colors and decoration vivid and baroque despite so obviously being a weapon of war. Its plating was a vibrant purple trimmed with gold edging. On multiple places it was decorated with an aquila, but it was no Roman military standard that Shepard was familiar with, but a two headed eagle stenciled out of pure gold. It was beautiful to behold.
"What is it?" Shepard had to ask as she slowly approached, wary of accidentally awakening whatever this dreadnought of a mech was.
Snake shook his head. "Nothing from my world. Maybe one of the others would know."
Shepard turned to face Snake with an eyebrow raised. "You want to bring this thing back with us?"
"Yes. I believe we were meant to find this machine, whatever it is."
"You're starting to sound like Galen." Shepard muttered. "Alright Boss, it's your call. I'll call Six in for pick up. Maybe we can get the tow cables tied to its legs and drag it out."
Fireteam Mantis had to do just that as Noble-Six arrived with the pelican. Once they had loaded in what equipment they could into the pelican's cargo bay, they focused on moving the immobile mech.
Shepard and Six, the two cybernetic super soldiers, had to take the time to push several tall shelves of potentially highly volatile weaponry out of the way as tow cables were tied to the legs of the mech to drag it out of the Armory. It was a precarious process, so the job to fly pelican fell to T3 and his artificially intelligent abilities.
Once they successfully moved the mech out of the Armory, they then wrapped the towing cables around its waist and torso like a climbing harness, suspending the mech from beneath the pelican. And to their surprise as the pelican took off, the airship which could carry both a scorpion and even the vaunted AT-TE seemed to struggle and chug as it began to airlift the mech out of the Armory.
The flight out of Geth space was shaky with the ever present threat of the pelican just dropping out of the sky should the mech overload the ship's engines. When the fireteam finally returned to Mother Base, the rest of the Legion was there to greet them with wide eyed stares as they deposited the mech into the middle of the castle.
Pyrrha was the first to meet them as the fireteam exited the dropship. "Shepard, Boss… what is that?" she asked as she stared awestruck at the mech.
"Not from your world then?" Shepard cocked her head.
"No… definitely not. The Kingdom of Atlas had similar machines, but nothing as… intimidating."
"Damn." Shepard then turned to the rest of the crowd of dead heroes. "Anybody else know what this thing is?" A collection of refusals and head shakes was the response. "Well that's unfortunate. T3 wasn't able to figure out how to activate this thing, so I guess it's just going to sit around until we can crack it open. Until then, why doesn't everybody take a look at our haul."
As if on cue, Six popped open the hatch to the pelican, revealing weapons within. Slowly the rest of the Legion made their way inside, inspecting the equipment with cautious excitement.
"For the love of Liberty Prime where did you find this!?" Sarah exclaimed as she inspected one of the suits of armor they brought back, a suit of power armor that Shepard thought resembled Sarah's current gear, but with smoother, rounder armor plating and an aggressive, almost insectoid like helmet.
"I've only seen blueprints of this suit back at the Citadel! This is an X-01 power armor! It's one of the most advanced power armor suits from my world. Hell, even most Enclave armor doesn't come close to how good this armor is." Sarah immediately moved to examine the condition of every piece of the armor, before activating its rear valve handle and entering the suit.
As Sarah took the time to calibrate her new armor, Six was taking his time examining the various weapons they brought back, having been too busy actually piloting the plane to do so. He looked over several Imperial Guard Lasguns, something labeled as a torque bow, some kind of gun/bow/grenade launcher hybrid, when his eyes fell one weapon in particular.
It was a massive weapon, almost as wide and tall as it was long, with two wing-like protrusions along the barrel, giving it a T-shaped profile from the front. Along the top of the barrel, the gun pulsated green energy. Six bent down to pick it up, and to his surprise found it difficult to do so. In small white letters along one of the wings Six read the name Bio-Force Gun 9000, or BFG 9000. Six smirked as he tested the weight, aiming down the sights. He knew he was going to have fun with this.
As the rest of the Legion gathered up their upgrades as well, Sev walked up to both Boss and Shepard, who were standing off to the side.
"Boss, Commander." He greeted with a curt nod.
"Sev." Boss returned. "Any news?"
"Yeah. Unfortunately only bad though. I just got back from my recon mission by Korriban. I saw companies of Covenant infantry and artillery moving right into Sith territory. Chaos are consolidating their forces."
"Damn." Shepard cursed. "Looks like they're finally able to put that alliance of theirs to good use."
Snake nodded his head. "Hmm. With the Master dead, the super mutants have been scattered, unorganized. The Covenant must no longer see them as a real threat and can pull forces away from their Northern front."
"Great. Looks like we took down one of the only groups here strong enough and dumb enough to tank the whole of the Covenant head on." Shepard shook her head before turning to the Boss. "Do you think what we found will be enough?"
Boss remained passive, mulling the question over. "I don't know. What I do know is that unless we want Chaos to win, we're going to need some help soon."
The Border of Kabul and the Capital Wasteland…
"Hey, I think I found the exit!" Cayde-6 called out as he scouted ahead of the rest of his party.
"Thank God." Church responded. "I can't wait to be out of this damn radioactive wasteland."
As Johnson rounded the corner with Church in tow, they saw what Cayde had found. A clear divide between two environments, on one side was the post-apocalyptic wasteland they had spent the last few days in, on the other was an arid and mountainous desert. The border was harsh and sudden, as if the two terrains were shoved next to one another.
Church sighed. "Great. We leave a radioactive wasteland for a regular wasteland. Lovely."
Gray Fox however, stepped forward bewildered. "I recognize this place."
Church tilted his head at the obviously out of touch ninja. "You sure about that buddy? Trust me, you see one alien desert, you've seen them all."
"This is no alien landscape." Gray Fox snapped. "No, one does not simply forget the blood soaked sands of Afghanistan."
"Afghanistan?" Johnson asked incredulously. "The Hell is the Middle East doing right next to DC?"
"That is a question that none of us have the answer to." Tassadar's booming voice spoke. "But I feel we shall find an answer should we continue on."
Tassadar strode forward, adamantly moving into the desert. Being the only one that seemed to know where he was going, the rest of the impromptu allies followed closely behind the Protoss. They continued on their hike for several hours, only stopping to rest for short periods of time, until Tassadar seemed to stop alongside a rather unremarkable cliffside that had no discernible differences to any other.
"Find something?" Johnson asked as his hand moved to his shotgun, ready just in case.
"Indeed. There is something here, hidden by powers similar, but different to my own." Tassadar moved his hand over the rocks, feeling and examining it.
"Hm, well my sensors aren't picking anything up. Sure you're not just imagining it?" Church asked.
"No little guy I think I feel it too." Cayde added on, ignoring Church's retort at being called little. "Same with the big guy, it feels similar to my Light. Like uh..."
"Like a tone you recognize, but cannot recall the name of the song." Tassadar filled in as his hand found what he was searching for.
Tassadar pressed down on one of the stones and a glowing rune illuminated itself on the rock face. None of them could recognize the language, but as the rune glowed, its script continued to expand across the cliffside, glowing brighter and brighter, until parts of the cliff started to fade. As the rocks became more and more transparent, fading from existence, behind them they revealed a structure.
The structure was a gateway, made of pure white stone protected by ancient runes, and a pair of gleaming golden doors. Casted onto the doors, was the image of a great raven, wings splayed in all its foreboding glory.
"Well this isn't spooky at all." Church deadpanned, only to be interrupted by Tassadar opening the gates up. "Whoa whoa whoa, you wanna go in there?! Don't you have movies from where you're from? There's like an 80% chance we all die if we go there."
"While I do hate to agree with him, Church does have a point." Johnson said. "I don't exactly have the best luck of going into strange, unknown alien ruins." Johnson shuddered at the memory of his first encounter with the Flood.
"Caution is an admirable trait, but unfortunately I sense something coming from here. Something important that will lead us to answers." Without waiting for a response, Tassadar strode into the darkness of whatever ruins they had just uncovered.
The remaining members all looked at each other, bewildered that Tassadar would simply go in.
"Well… might as well follow to make sure he doesn't die." Cayde nonchalantly said as he drew his revolver and waltzed in. With this, the rest followed in as well, unknowingly being some of the first living souls to step into the Tomb in millennia.
A/N, 9/8/20: "RYLANOR DESERVES BETTER THAN YOU, OH PRIMARCH! RYLANOR DESERVES BETTER THAN ALL OF US!" That's right, the mech they found in the Armory was none other than the loyalist Emperor's Children Dreadnought Rylanor the Ancient of Rites. He's a cool character that fought in the Horus Heresy and also has his own amazing short story called "The Ancient Awaits" by Graham McNeill that I recommend.
We also have another new semblance! Thane's semblance is simply called blink, and allows for a short range teleportation similar to that of Tracer from Overwatch or Corvo from Dishonored.
Review Responses:
MarauderPrime12: Thanks!
Hunter Zickafoose: Cayde was one that was recommended early on and I thought would make a good choice. His demeanor also helps out balance a lot of the very serious characters in the Legion.
And with that, I hope you enjoyed the chapter, and I'll see you all in the next one!