Chapter 10
The Eye
"Shit! Xalier was in there!" Berus Persus shouted over the comms. A bright crimson beam had sliced through and erupted a portion of one of the northern buildings and the floors above the damage had collapsed. Pazet Xalier of Marksman Squad had apparently just relocated there before it was obliterated.
"I got a hold of Taetrus Aerospace Squadron Six!" announced Haekas as he hurdled over a piece of debris to keep up with the rest of Core Squad, unable to find time to mourn his legionmate as hostile fire whizzed by their heads and stomps of the reaper shook their ground. "They're moving to intercept the reaper! Maybe we can find a weak point while they harass it!"
"Harvesters incoming! Watch for the drops!" Tauria called out.
Pods crashed to the ground with loud thuds just ahead of Kevin and Core Squad, and cannibals emerged the instant they came to rest. Six were ahead of them now and turning to face the approaching group. Core squad did not turn, nor did they slow down. Kevin had seen this tactic a couple times by now and he'd anticipated its use when he'd simply watched on in the past. All of them, kebalim included, threw down a blink field just ahead of them and lunged into it.
Kevin had drawn his blade from its sheath as he moved through the air, and in a fraction of a second, he was on top of a cannibal stabbing through the face so hard that the head almost caved in. All around him turians were using omni-blades to dispatch the remaining foes at close range, and before the corpses had even fallen to the ground, the team had moved on. They were charging fast for the nearest leg of the reaper and couldn't waste any unnecessary attention on piecemeal skirmishes.
The battlefield was suddenly aglow with bright orange light as a projectile fired from Heavy Squad careened into the reaper and the incredible concussive boom came barely a second later. The massive four-legged machine had turned its front away just as the projectile was en route and it smacked into the flat, curved body that made up most of its upper reaches. It didn't appear to take any damage at all, but it did draw the reaper's attention and it turned to search for the source. That was the goal – draw attention away from the Kaliar complex. The reaper answered by firing its devastating beam into a collection of windows and the area around it erupted in flame and rubble.
"Heavy Squad's doing a hell of a job out there. I just hope they can keep it up." Tycus was breathing hard. He'd taken a cursory shot in his side during the previous skirmish and patched it up himself. He was keeping up, but it was clear that it still pained him.
"Fuck!" Madeen cursed as the leg they were charging for lifted away and stomped in a different location further away. "This is pointless! Every time we get close it moves the leg away!"
"It's not reacting to us," Senik denoted in a calm, sage-like tone as he pointed at a crumbling, yet still standing shard of a building's corner. "It's turning around to try and find Heavy Squad. We'll climb that structure there, it'll get us part of the way up and close enough to latch on."
"What the hell are we doing, exactly?" Kevin asked, wondering why he was the only one who didn't seem to know.
"We're going to climb the leg," Takrien informed between puffs of air. "We can't beat it far away, that's plain. We're going to try and find a hardpoint and blow it all to hell."
"How are we supposed to climb that?" Kevin shot back as one of the reaper's back legs came crashing down in the same place the other leg had earlier.
"Spirits, kid! Don't you know anything about commando ops?" Madeen asked condescendingly. "You fucking fifteen or something?"
Kevin glared at the back of the female turian and fell into a ground slide to quickly pass under a thick beam of metal. "I'm not a turian, Arcellus! You're not helping!" He stood and resumed his run for the half-fallen structure ahead of them. It was the only piece standing from the building that had been leveled sometime before they'd arrived at the Kaliar complex—a small corner with about five floors left to it and a stairwell at its heart.
"Relax, Madeen," Senik ordered. "We'll be using the magnetpods in our gloves and boots. If the reaper is constructed of some kind of metal or alloy like we think, we'll cling and climb."
"I don't have magnetpods in my gloves," Kevin noted with a hint of irritation. He still had ones in his boots thanks to the integration of the hardsuit legs into the quarian envirosuit, but he didn't know anyone made use of magnetpods in the gloves. That's not a bad idea, magne-gloves. Sure would have made some of my more difficult entries in the past a hell of a lot easier.
"We've got that covered," Senik replied curtly.
"Kebalim, this is Relissi. I've got your payload from Heavy Squad. Waiting on a drop point."
"At the base of the only remaining portion of the building central to the battlefield. It's a five-story corner. We'll be there momentarily."
"Understood."
Overhead, a squadron of turian fighters flew in and performed a strafing run on a cluster of reaper troops that were moving to intercept Core Squad before they started swarming about the reaper like angry bees. It didn't look like their weapons were doing much at all, but any additional distraction was welcome in their fight to keep the reaper busy. One fighter made the mistake of trying to attack the reaper from the front, and a crimson vaporized half of the fighter on the spot
Kevin's brows furrowed as he saw he fighter get cloven to bits. Sliced up like it was made of air. Just like the Kellius. The right side piece of the fighter lost a great deal of momentum, and Kevin swore it was heading straight for him and Core Squad. As he watched it fall, he quickly realized that it was definitely falling towards them and he began gathering dark energy in response. "Look out!" he shouted, unsure of whether or not they'd have time to notice the danger.
Someone noticed rather quickly, however, as he heard someone shout, "Shit!" behind him almost within the second he announced the threat. It was Madeen and she suddenly appeared next to him via biotic blink. She was shimmering, which caused Kevin to think that she had the same idea he did. Good. I might not be able to pull this off myself, he thought with some small amount of relief.
The broken fighter careened straight at Core Squad, and while most had blinked to safety, Haekas and Takrien were busy taking out some stragglers when Kevin had called it out. They barely had enough time to turn their heads to see their imminent demise.
"Holy hell!" Haekas shrieked as he glimpsed the flaming debris and reflexively fell to a prone position in hopes of avoiding his death.
"Ohhhhhhh shhhiiiiit!" Takrien yelped in rising tones as he likewise dropped to the dirt.
Rather, it would have been their imminent demise if Kevin and Madeen hadn't been there. Dark energy gathered, the two of them released a biotic throw at the massive projectile in unison as it came within ten meters of their squad. The center of the object crumpled with an odd clunk and the flaming fighter piece instantly flew back the way it came after showering Kevin and Madeen in broken pieces of metal and electronics.
"Yes!" Kevin exclaimed as he spun around to give Madeen a high five.
Madeen let go of a held breath and looked to Kevin, scowling. "You're a fucking moron, Folner," she snarled before turning away and leaving the high-five incomplete. There was, however, a significant lack of bite to her tone. "Challenging a falling fighter in a physics match. Stupid. Ass. Moron."
Haekas and Takrien were getting up to thank Madeen and Kevin when Senik appeared and flicked his head towards their objective. "Move it, Core Squad! Now!"
Kevin didn't need to hear their thanks; it was plain in their eyes. He did his best to keep his pride in check and turned to run to their objective with the rest of the squad. He also let Madeen's words wash over him, well aware that she'd done the same thing. In the short time it took them to handle that little distraction, however, enemies had begun to move in between them and the barely-standing structure. Everyone saw them and no one hesitated.
There was no one synchronous blink this time. As the enemies started firing at the charging squad, everyone scattered to continue charging and make targeting them an ordeal in and of itself. The first one to blink ahead was Senik, as he'd blinked forward and left to fire a burst from his Shuriken into the face of one cannibal and stab a second on his opposite side with his omni-blade before the first had hit the ground.
After that, the blinks came quick, if staggered. Madeen blinked right to kick a turian hybrid in the head and crush its fallen head between her armored gauntlet and the broken stone. Haekas blinked forward and took two steps up a small ramp of rubble to sight on a pair of cannibals and blow them away before they saw him up there. Tycus and Takrien both blinked to the sides of turian hybrids and caught them in a nasty crossfire. Kevin ran up a small pile and leapt into the air to blink over Madeen as she was taking down her target to come down behind a cannibal. He rolled when he hit the ground to transfer momentum, and as he came to his feet, he lashed at the legs of the grotesque with his monomolecular blade and it fell to the ground on the stumps it was left with. A quick stab at the head ensured it would not cause any more trouble.
Senik blinked right. Haekas blinked overhead. Madeen blinked onto a metal beam. Tycus blinked through a hole in a busted wall. Takrien blinked forward. Kevin blinked left. Each time they moved, they took down an enemy. It was incredibly efficient, deadly, and it brought them closer to their objective without having to worry about getting their backs lit up. Once the hostiles had been cleared, they ran the rest of the way.
Right on time, Relissi appeared in a small blast of biotic energy from her charge down from a nearby building right at the entrance to the stairwell that Core Squad was heading for. She had a number of explosives wrapped up in some kind of fabric. They were bundled in pairs, and there were 12 in total—just enough for each of Core Squad, plus Senik, to carry a pair. She didn't say anything but merely held up a bundle for each of them as they came running in to avoid enemy fire. Each looped the bundle over their heads and across a shoulder once he or she had taken it.
It wasn't until after she'd handed out all of the payloads that she spoke up. "The hell are you guys trying to do, anyway?"
"We're going climbing!" Tycus shouted back to her, looking over his shoulder as he ran.
"The smoke and fire makes such a lovely sight at night, we want a better view!" Kevin put in.
"Don't worry, we'll take a holo when we get to the top!" Haekas commented.
"Save me, they're all fucking insane!" Takrien, who was at the tail end of the group, shouted back to Relissi with a two-fingered tap to the side of his head as he started to climb the stairs.
Relissi's jaw hung open as she watched them climb, part confusion and part disbelief plain on her face. A few seconds later, she shrugged it off, turned, and used a biotic charge to return to her previous position. Things needed doing.
A deafening reaper roar chased Core Squad up the stairs and made the standing remnants of the stairwell vibrate so fiercely that loose bits came off and rained down on them. They were sprinting up, taking the stairs two, three, even four at a time. They needed to be at the top by the time the next opportunity passed by, as there was no telling just how long the broken piece of building would remain upright.
At the top, they had a commanding view of the entire battlefield, though this wasn't as useful as they'd hoped. All of the fighting and the reaper's attacks caused the entire square to fill with fire, smoke, and dust. They could at least, see that the Kaliar complex was still in one piece.
Senik turned to Kevin the moment he'd managed to climb to the top. "Folner, here!" Without waiting for confirmation, the kebalim tossed two devices to him one at a time.
He caught them out of the air and stared at them. They were small discs about an inch thick and small enough to fit in the palm of his hand, and they had a heavy duty strap across the back. He looked up to Senik, confused.
"Strap these onto your palms. They'll make up for your lack of glove-based magnets. Be quick about it, our shot's coming up," he said as he looked behind him at the reaper. It was turning again to try and chase down one of the many prioritized threats that plagued it. It shot a beam into a building south of them and a significant portion collapsed once the explosions had racked it.
Damnit, Targold. You better be keeping ahead of those, Kevin thought worriedly as he strapped the magnets onto his three-fingered hands and used his omni-tool to link up to them as a power supply.
Soon after the beam ceased, a projectile launched at the reaper's red eye from a building adjacent to the one that had been cut. The reaper turned sharply and the massive explosion that resulted had been on a broadside, just as before. The way the reaper turned caused its front-left leg to come slamming down into a previously made stomp crater barely a meter and a half away from their position. The stairwell shook violently and something near the base cracked, audible even over the ambiance. Kevin cursed under his breath.
"Now or never, Core Squad! Go go go!" Senik shouted as everyone reeled from the teetering.
Kevin made a mad dash with the rest of the squad for the ledge closest to the reaper. One by one he saw them leap into open air and he followed suit, hoping against hope that the reaper's leg didn't pull away at the last second to send them all crashing five stories down to the jagged wreckage below. He drew in a long breath and held it as he accessed his small pool of dark energy to set a blink field right in his path. The others did likewise, needing the extra distance to make it to the broad, black metal surface ahead of them.
The surface came up in front of him so fast that he almost didn't have his arms and legs ready to magnetically latch onto the reaper's limb. He spread his arms out in front of him as if he were doing a pushup and somehow managed to keep his mask from smashing on the metal surface when he hit it. The jolt of the impact almost made him lose the placement of his hands, and he slammed his feet down to the metal to get the extra support from the magnets in his boots. Shit… Shit… Shit… Don't fall. Not now! Only when he sure that he was not falling did he allow himself to let go of that breath and look around to see if everyone else made it.
They had and clearly fared better than he did, as they were already beginning to shimmy up the reaper's leg while he was busy collecting himself. Haekas looked down at him and he waved an arm frantically to urge him to get a move on and fast. Kevin steadied himself and began to climb.
Not more than ten or so seconds into their ascent, the leg lifted from the ground and came crashing down somewhere else. The incredible force of it nearly shook Kevin off right then and there, but his magnets held true. He and the rest had slid downwards about two seconds-worth of climbing, but to his relief no one had fallen away. Nobody wasted a single breath—they were climbing again the very second it was safe to lift a hand from the metal wall.
Battles for air superiority broke out all around the reaper as sphere-like objects the size of a turian fighter flew in and tried to scatter the turian squadron harassing the target. These things had large lenses that took up most of the 'front' of the sphere, and they shot some kind of crisp, lethal beam through it to try and down the fighters. The beam weapon's accuracy and power proved to be a deadly combination and the things the squadrons were calling 'oculi' soon began to tear through the fighters.
"What the hell is that?!" Gavorn Rozikas of Marksman squad cried out over the comms. "There! On the reaper's front-left leg! Do you see it?"
Kevin thought about making a joke that they'd been found out, but he refrained. There were times when jokes were not welcome and this was definitely one of them.
"Confirmed, I see it," Berus acknowledged. "Wait. Is that… Holy shit, that's kebalim Corvallus and Core Squad!"
"Did I hear that right?" Artemis Tenrek from Heavy Squad asked, almost speechless. "Did you say kebalim Corvallus and Core Squad are climbing the reaper's leg?!"
"What the fuck?!" shouted Maela, concern plain in her tone. "That's suicide!"
"Don't worry, they have a plan!" answered Relissi.
"Heavy Squad, watch your fire!" Artemis ordered. "We can't risk the big boomers with Core Squad so close!"
The way ahead of them wasn't going to be easy. They had to either climb to the top point of this leg's segment and drop down onto the connecting leg piece or try to shimmy around the outside corner laterally at the leg joint if they wanted to continue. Kevin judged that, given the speed and determination of Senik and Core Squad's continued ascent even after they'd reached the level of the machine's leg joint, they were going up and over. Kevin hoped his coordination wouldn't betray him to a long, deadly drop.
"We'll drop down to the next segment after the leg has stepped down onto a new location," Senik briefly instructed. "We don't want to miss."
This plan came to a catastrophic halt when a turian fighter had been shot out of the sky to come suddenly crashing into the leg they were climbing. It smacked wide of their position, but the concussive force from the explosion slammed into all of them and Kevin was almost knocked free again. When he stabilized himself and brought his eyes back into focus, he saw Haekas hanging limply, his armor scorched and only one arm and one leg still magnetized to the reaper. He had been the closest to the blast and it had knocked him clear out and detached two of his four magnets, and those two limbs hung as limp as the rest of him.
"Damnit! Haekas is out!" Kevin shouted over the comms as he watched the turian slide downward. Others looked to where Haekas was to see him slowly descending against the reaper's leg.
Kevin saw Senik begin to swiftly climb downward with purpose. "Press on to the objective! I'll get Tolensen and meet you all there!"
Once again, however, the plan was shot to hell. The reaper lifted its leg to rotate and slammed it down again. Those who were conscious had no problems holding on, but Haekas was not so fortunate. The shock of the downward impact tore his body loose from the metal surface and he fell.
"Fuck! Haekas!" Tycus yelled down to the surface as he watched his squadmate plunge to the ground. Others made their dismay known as well, though there was nothing any of them could do.
Senik watched his subordinate fall, stone-faced and grim. "New plan! Kalkerien, find a way to the surface and check on Tolensen! Vaer, go with him! Toss up your share of the explosives before you go!"
"Y-yes kebalim!" Tycus and Takrien replied and they glanced at each other.
The reaper forces were unwilling to let them catch a breath, however. Just after Tycus and Takrien tossed their explosives to Senik and Madeen, two spheres came to a hovering halt a mere few meters out from their position. Damnit… They know we're here! Some kind of glow began to emanate from their forward-facing lenses and Kevin instantly knew they were in trouble. Oh shit! They're going to beam us to death! he realized and he prepared to drop in hopes of avoiding the deadly beam and catching the reaper leg somewhere lower.
Just before he could execute this maneuver, however, a fighter shot up one of the two oculi and it exploded on the spot. The second lost some control over its hovering position and it rocked unsteadily towards the reaper's leg. Suddenly and with shouts of bravado, Tycus and Takrien leapt from the reaper's leg onto the oculus, magnets holding fast. Takrien immediately coated his fist in a high-mass field and he punched a hole down through the top armor of the sphere and Tycus quickly followed up by firing a volley with his Phaeston down into the gaping breach.
Kevin saw what they were trying to do just then; they were going to ride the disabled oculus down to the ground. His hunch was right on, as after Tycus had stopped firing, the oculus sputtered and sparked before it started to lose altitude. Tycus and Takrien saluted the kebalim as they began their sharp descent.
"They're out of their minds!" Kevin shouted, flabbergasted that someone would even think to try such a thing. Damn cabalists. Only they would pull something like that off and still manage to get a salute in.
"They're getting to their objective," Senik stated plain. "Now let's get to ours."
If there's any of us left to do it by the time we get there, Kevin thought morbidly. They went from a team of six to half that in the blink of an eye and they hadn't even gotten up the first part of the leg yet. Why did it have to be a damn reaper? I've had enough of reapers for a lifetime. Despite is increasing misgivings about the success of this squad's mission, he saw that the other squads were still managing to maintain theirs; the reaper had yet to take a shot at the Kaliar apartments, though he could see that fighting had been growing intense down at the base of the building. Without Core Squad to filter out the incoming ground troops, they were simply walking right up to the defenders under the shadow of their newfound champion.
Still, Kevin somehow found the resolve to continue and he resumed his upward climb just behind Senik and Madeen. He was momentarily distracted by the overwhelming red hue of the reaper's powerful beam making another shot, and like all the others, it came with cries of dismay.
"Fucking hell! Saren fell behind from his injury and Lorien went to help! They were in that very section of the building that got lit up! Repeat, Saren Nolencus and Lorien Fal are down!" Artemis was hardly able to keep himself coherent, as rage began to muddle his speech.
"Shit!" Madeen cursed, voice full of fury. "We're dropping like xemna lined up for the slaughter against this thing!" Even from this distance, Kevin could see the cold fury in her eyes and just how much she wanted to tear this reaper apart piece by piece.
Senik, amidst all of this death and chaos, said nothing and climbed.
They were barely a few meters from the top when another oculus paid them a visit. Kevin looked around for the saving grace of a fighter, but he soon realized that the squadrons had been routed. The oculus settled behind Madeen and began to charge its weapon, and Kevin shouted as he began to gather dark energy. "Madeen, oculus charging behind you! Watch out!"
The turian turned her head to look behind her, wide-eyed as she stared right into the veritable eye of death. Quick like the bite of a snake, Madeen pushed off her magnets to her left and dropped a blink field in her flight path. She successfully blinked straight across to another portion of the leg just above Kevin, but she nearly lost her chance to magnetize again. She reached for the leg and got one hand to attach—her saving move that allowed her to pull herself in on all fours again. The oculus took its shot where she had been, and looked around to follow Madeen's new location and it started to charge again. She did not have the time to perform another blink, as she was still recovering from her near-fall.
Thinking quickly, Kevin encased the oculus in a biotic stasis field, knowing that none of his other moves would have enough power behind them to do any serious or even deterring damage to the huge sphere. It wasn't easy—the oculus was large and had its own mass effect fields to keep it aloft. Kevin strained, as it took a lot of concentration and effort just to keep the field stable enough to hold the enemy in its prison. He wasn't going anywhere as long as he was holding that oculus in place.
"Nicely done, Folner," Senik said flatly as he stared at the oculus and contemplated a huge number of potential tactical uses for this opportunity. The wait didn't last long, however. "Madeen, this one's your ride down."
"What?!" Madeen questioned, staring nonplussed at her superior.
"You heard me. Give me your explosives, disable this oculus, and make your way to Kalkerien and Vaer. They will need your help getting through the mobs of hostiles down there as you all move Tolensen to safety."
"Make the human kid go! He doesn't belong up here with us anyways!" Madeen shouted, the chaos of the intense battle around them nearly drowning out her words anyway.
"Arcellus."
"Kebalim, I'm most efficient when fighting at your side, you know that!"
"Arcellus."
"Why are you tossing me aside?! Let me fight with you, damnit!"
"Arcellus!"
"I'm not backing the fuck dow—"
"Madeen!" Senik shouted, his voice a veritable shockwave. That got her attention. "I'm sending you down to rejoin Sphelix Legion. I'll need you to command them in my absence."
"W-what?" Madeen asked, now quite visibly shocked. "No, the Legion needs you, Senik! You can't—"
"That was an order, Arcellus!" Senik shouted, the first, terrifying hints of anger breaking through at her incorrigible nature. "Get down there now, or by the Spirits, I'll send you there myself!"
Even from where Kevin was hanging he could see the incredible tension in Madeen's jaw. She looked down, not wanting the kebalim to see the absolute frustration on her face. After a few tense and impossibly long seconds, she bobbed her head in acknowledgement. "Y-yes kebalim," she complied without any fervor and she tossed an explosive bundle to Senik and one to Kevin.
Without another second to waste, the cabalist disabled her magnets and leapt backwards off of the wall in a long-arched backflip, her distance aided by a biotic blink. She gracefully landed dead center on the top of the oculus, her face a blank mask. Kevin released the biotic stasis with a grunt and Madeen coated her fist in a high-mass field to punch down into the reaper machine the same way Takrien had earlier. She followed up with her heavy pistol, firing shot after shot into the sparking void her hand had torn into it. The oculus didn't even have a chance to charge its beam up again before it sputtered and quickly lost altitude, Madeen hanging on for the ride.
"Madeen!" Kevin shouted as he watched the sphere sink and explode when it crashed to the ground.
"She'll be fine," Senik assured as he resumed his climb. "Let's go." Nearing the top, the turian looked back down at Kevin. "I hope you're in the mood to be a hero, boy."
"I'd rather not be, sir," Kevin replied. Being a hero usually came with immense sacrifice. Kevin wasn't ready for that, yet he knew he must. Some indescribable sense of duty pushed him onward. Maybe it was just the grim reality that if he was going to face a reaper down, he might as well try before he met his end. Better to go down fighting than to get shot in the back mid-retreat.
"You best kill those knots in your stomach then. We're about to leave our names in the books." He turned upward and grasped at the top edge of the reaper's outer leg segment just as it came crashing down. When the arm-wrenching shake of the impact settled, he continued with quick glance over his shoulder. "And don't call me sir again."
Kevin didn't have time to contemplate why he'd say that, even less to ask about it, but it sounded awfully final and that made Kevin's innards twist even more. He saw the turian disappear over the top and he scrambled to make it there in short order. As he crested over the top edge and blinked away the bright crimson flare of another beam, he vaguely heard some angry and regretful words over the comms about Relissi Stensus, the Vanguard Squad turian who'd escorted their explosives, being killed in that last shot. Goddamnit. By the time we figure out a way to take this thing down, there won't be anyone left.
When he climbed over and carefully dropped down onto the next portion of the leg, he found Senik inspecting the joint between the two leg segments. "Can we cripple it?" he asked.
Senik slowly stood to his feet, arms at his side. "No. This joint is comprised of the same blast-resistant material as the rest of the reaper. The explosives don't have the punch to do enough damage." His jaw clenched and eyes darted around, looking for a different accessible hardpoint – something they could obliterate before the entire legion was turned to dust.
Unbidden, the memory of guttural words of a krogan echoed into his head.
"Then we'll just poke its eyes out."
That's it! Kevin thought victoriously as he and the kebalim ducked low to hold onto the leg with both hand and foot magnets as the leg rose and fell sharply. The reaper turned the red eye away every time Heavy Squad fired at it! It has to be a weak point! "Kebalim, what about that?!" Kevin shouted to the turian and pointed up at the source of the incredibly destructive beams—the red eye, centered at the front and two-thirds the way to the top peak.
Senik eyed the possibility. It was accessible—they just had to cross the leg and blink up to the main body and climb. The explosives could be placed around it. He must have remembered the same detail about the reaper turning away from Heavy Squad's bombardments as well. He nodded and clasped a firm, heavy hand on Kevin's shoulder. "It's a bit of a climb, but it's our best shot. You ready to be a hero yet?"
"Still working on that, si-, kebalim."
"Good, but make it fast." Time was short and the kebalim broke into a full run down the length of the leg segment with Kevin following likewise.
The climb up the body seemed to happen so much faster than the one up the leg, probably because the impacts from the moving legs were hardly felt at all. Kevin was immediately thankful that the reaper troops didn't have any snipers amongst them, as they'd be easy pickings right now. Three quarters of the way up, Kevin realized that the reaper was now facing the Kaliar apartments. No longer being hassled by the damaged Heavy Squad or by any fighters, it had run out of threats and was focusing on where most of the soldiers had gathered around.
Then the red eye's glow grew exponentially until it was blinding and a bright red beam cut the air as it shot towards the structure.
"No! Damnit!" Kevin shouted, but he quickly found that his fears were premature. A powerful shimmer in the air so strong that it seemed to glow blue against the dark greys of the progressing night somehow halted the crimson pillar of death entirely. Holy crap, they did it! Shield Squad came through! Damn fine work, Maela! It seemed the beam weapon fired by the reaper wasn't, in fact, a beam weapon. There had to be something more than light or energy for biotic barriers to stop it.
The reaper roared at the sudden absolute defiance and the kebalim hastened his already grueling pace. "It's now or never, Folner! Shield Squad can't stop that for much longer!"
"Understood!" Kevin shouted as he also quickened his pace, his vigor renewed by Shield Squad's incredible display. It only took him thirty more seconds to climb within arm's reach of the eye and, following the kebalim's lead, began to place explosives just beyond the circle that made up the reaper's red eye. Like roaches circling in on a scrap of food, they each made their way around, carefully placing each device an equal distance away from the others.
As they were placing their final pieces, the reaper fired its beam at the building again starting near the bottom and tracing up the middle as if to cut it in half. Kevin and Senik had no choice but to recoil away from the blazing light, arms across their faces. Again Shield Squad held true, at least for most of it. The top edge of the barrier was too thin to stop it and the center of the top floor exploded as the beam screamed through the structure. Kevin saw it happen, and in his mind's eye the building collapsed, destroying all of their hard efforts and sacrifices. The reality was somehow less brutal, as only the top three floors or so had been turned to rubble. The structure still stood, but it was clear that Shield Squad's endurance was almost spent.
Kevin placed the last explosive he had and he quickly crawled around to meet the kebalim a few meters from the top where the curved angle of the reaper's peak gave them cover from the explosions to come. "Let's blow this thing to hell!"
Senik nodded and was already half-way to doing just that. He had revealed a detonator from one of his bicep pouches and wasted no time in flipping open the top cover and pressing on the little red button. Just as the reaper was charging up to fire again and end the local resistance in a single overwhelming blow, the explosives lit the air around that angry, lethal eye. The blast was nothing short of marvelous.
The reaper reeled backwards, nearly falling despite the two large legs meant to support it. It roared; the sound so powerful at Kevin's location that he feared his organs would rupture and his visor implode from the sheer force of it. It staggered back a few chaotic steps, utterly crushing everything it trampled. It almost seemed as if the reaper felt pain just then, so notable was its reaction to having its eye blasted out. The two of them held tight to their magnetized surface, not wanting to be thrown from the reaper as it fell.
Kevin felt an immense sensation of victory well up inside of him. He, a mere mercenary from Omega, just a guy swept up in a long line of unfortunate circumstances set long before he ever knew, had assisted in the takedown of two reapers. How many people in the galaxy could attest to that? Did the reapers know he was responsible? Did they realize that their push to take the galaxy would not go so easily as long as people like and better than Kevin were there to stand in the way? Kevin wanted to knock it into whatever brain or circuits or whatever was guiding the actions of this doomed machine.
But… was it truly doomed?
The reaper staggered left, right, then left again before the four legs gained enough control to stop the frantic fight against gravity. It roared once more, making Kevin's teeth rattle together painfully. And then it steadied and stood normal, defiant and unstoppable.
"Damnit," was the simple word that Senik had used, and Kevin knew then that their ultimate plan to stop the reaper from ravaging everything they'd worked to protect had failed miserably. Not only did the explosives fail to stop the reaper, but they had no explosives with which to try again. Now they were powerless as they held onto the huge beastly thing like flies trying to hold onto the hull of a fighter as it flew its rounds.
The sense of pride and victory in Kevin shattered. What can we do now? We don't have any more ordinance, the rest of the squad is gone, and our legion is getting killed everywhere around us. Despair at his helplessness began to set in, and he no longer had the strength to fight. He was done. It was over—their efforts were for nothing. If they couldn't even save those turians huddled in that one building, how could he even hope to regroup with the quarians who may or may not even be alive right now?
"You get a fix on feeling like a hero, kid?" Senik asked as he started to climb down the front of the reaper.
Kevin honestly thought about that for a short moment. With their chances of bringing the reaper down to nothing, his chances of survival fell just as hard. He no longer cared about trying to make it out of this in one piece, he knew he wouldn't anyways. Nodding, he voiced his acceptance. "Yeah."
"Good, because it looks like we'll have to do this the hard way. Gather as much dark energy as you can possibly contain and follow me."
The reaper was just finishing steadying itself after the legs had gotten control of its sway when Senik disengaged his magnets. He plunged down the front center of the reaper's body and coated his fist all the way up to his bicep in a super high-mass field. With impeccable timing, he punched forth at the reaper, his arm cracking through the center of the damaged, giant, angry red circle and lodging him in place. The effect looked so jarring that he feared Senik had dislocated his shoulder. If he was in any pain, however, Kevin didn't see a hint of it in the absolute cold of his sterile complexion. With a second mighty punch, he drove his second arm into the reaper's eye, both now buried up just beyond the elbow.
This guy is out of his damn mind! Kevin thought with indescribable levels of astonishment. He's sitting right at the barrel of the gun! He was not about to try his luck with a similar maneuver, but he did allow himself to fall down the front and engage his magnets again when at the same level as the kebalim.
"To me! I need you for this to work!" the turian yelled out. The reaper roared again, seemingly irritated at Senik's bold cling.
Kevin nodded and he began to shimmy over to him. He knew the red material was not metal, however, and it was damaged and cracked in places. If he wanted to get to the kebalim, he'd have to lodge himself into the reaper just as Senik had—right at the source of that lethal beam weapon. Suddenly he was having second thoughts about this whole hero thing.
As he neared Senik however, he noticed something. The entire area around them was shimmering violently. The air was alive and it hummed with an immense power that Kevin could actually feel. Senik was commanding such a strong presence of dark energy that it even made the eezo nodules in Kevin's own body tingle—a sensation he only ever felt once before in the subterranean caverns of the unknown planet at the very edge of dark space. He was very glad he didn't have a biotic implant at this point. It surely would have shorted under such immense levels.
Kevin drew upon his own well of dark energy, and while the amount he gathered was by no means small in any sense, it seemed pitiful in comparison when completely engulfed by Senik's. Whatever the turian was about to do, it was going to be massive. The reaper must have known as much—it roared angrily again.
Kevin looked to the turian calmly lodged in the reaper's red orb. He flicked his head for Kevin to get over to him, and get over to him now. The quarian-suited human had similar doubts about things in the past he knew were absolutely stupid. His free-space lunge through a dense asteroid field amongst a fleet of geth mining vessels was just one example that sprang to mind. His stomach had long since passed twisting itself into knots and now just felt numb. All of him felt numb when he took a moment to think about it; a moment that he couldn't afford. He'd come so far in the past eight or so hours, too far for him to just stop now. Maybe it was time for him to accept the fate he'd brought on himself for wanting to be here. Time to realize that the dangerous life of a merc almost always ends in death, and that he was no one special that he could elude such universal constants.
He sighed, thinking of Arla. Maybe he'd see her when this was done. He didn't know if quarians—or humans for that matter—had any sort of afterlife, but it gave him some sort of peace in thinking that he'd see her again in some hazy eternal place where souls went once the body's life was extinguished. He suddenly longed to be in her arms again. To feel her skin, run fingers through that long dark hair of hers, to sense the bristling of goosebumps as her lips brush his. He could never have that again, and he knew that. Maybe it was time to let go… of everything.
With a heave and a shout, Kevin leapt sideways to get himself as close to the kebalim as possible. He followed Senik's example, coating his right arm in a high-mass field and punching at the red material. He was surprised at how easily his arm crunched through the solid, crystal-like material and lodged itself there, jarring himself as he was forced to a sudden stop just to the right of the turian cabalist. Hanging on for dear life, Kevin brought his dark energy reserves to a point higher than he'd ever intentionally gathered in his life, and he winced as he could feel the instability of the fields as they intermingled. There was a rumble in the air almost too low to hear, but it was there and it was nothing short of ominous.
The reaper's eye started to glow as it charged for another shot.
"What now?" Kevin shouted with untold amounts of urgency.
Senik turned to look Kevin straight in the eye with unwavering determination. "Put some biotics on your arm and hit me with everything you've got!"
Kevin's jaw hung open inside his quarian helmet, knowing full well the result of letting the stable field of his biotic punch rock the massively unstable fields surrounding them. With no time left to debate the issue, however, he gathered a small measure of his dark energy around his left fist.
The reaper roared again, vibrating them each at their very core. Senik's unflinching cyan eyes stared right into the luminescent red mass they held on to, issuing the reaper his final challenge. "Take a good look, you son of a bitch."
With all the strength Kevin had left in him, he punched the kebalim straight in the shoulder.
