Chapter 11
A Heavy Price
"What the fuck?!" Maela yelled into her comms upon hearing that Core Squad—particularly Kevin—was climbing the reaper. Fucking idiots! They're all going to get themselves dead! "That's suicide!" she continued, voice mirroring her thoughts.
The armor-clad asari took a moment to look around, knowing their situation wasn't far off from Core Squad's. Instead of being knee-high on a reaper, however, they were knee deep in advancing reaper troops. Without anyone maintaining control of the battlefield, the majority of the forgotten ground forces were streaming right to the Kaliar apartment complex. The colonial infantry surrounding them were doing a fair job of holding their own, but more than once a strong enemy push forced Shield Squad and Artillery Squad to intervene directly.
"Don't worry, they have a plan!" Relissi assured, though it did very little to dissuade Maela's vast apprehension.
Artemis was the last to give any word on the matter. "Heavy Squad, watch your fire! We can't risk the big boomers with Core Squad so close!"
Like the past several hours, Maela didn't really have the time to come up with a quip of any sort like she normally would. It was one of the few ways she managed stress, alongside belittling others and, occasionally and when desirable, sexual dalliance. Now, however, her focus was entirely spent on trying to hold the enemy at bay with the rest of Shield Squad and trying not to die. So far they were keeping up, but the tide of enemies had only continued to grow steadily.
"T'Vess! Watch your right!" Ventus Hezinca, another member of Shield Squad, warned her. The asari was the furthest south on the line of turians defending the apartment complex, and she unfortunately had the second largest swath of terrain to watch over. It was largely thought that it would also be the least approached, but with how often she had to fight off hostiles, it hardly seemed the case. Luckily her Phaeston was in moderately good condition and she'd gotten pretty consistent at taking out moving targets, so she could at least hold her own for the most part.
Maela pivoted her aim southward to find a pair of cannibals trying moving around from behind obscuring cover to make a beeline for the apartment complex. Wait, not two. Four. Six. Ten?! "Damnit! Melfas! We need another sweep to the south! At least ten are trying to push the perimeter!"
Syne Melfas, the female turian of Artillery Squad who was closest to her, looked over and nodded. She threw her hands up in a few military gestures Maela didn't recognize and the turian known only as "Rawth" joined her in moving south to combat the push. They executed a classic series of one-two attacks—first a biotic warp distortion from Syne to prime the targets followed quickly by Rawth's powerful biotic throw to destabilize the warp and ignite a biotic detonation. In three swift biotic artillery strikes, the cannibal push team was decimated.
"Good eye, T'Vess!" Syne lauded with a nod before promptly returning to her post.
Maela couldn't let herself feel any pride, however. Since they'd joined the fray hours ago, when they first started towards the Kaliar apartments, she'd been the source of several tactical mistakes that would have proved fatal if it weren't for the incredible adaptability of the cabal legion and her squadmates in particular. They seemed to expect that from her, though. At first it enraged her; expectation of failure was not something she was accustomed to. How dare these war mongering turians keep her close like a child prone to trouble? After some time, however, it began to truly settle in that not only was she completely out of her element, but she was outclassed by everyone around her, save for Liam. By now, she was thankful they expected her to mess up—that low expectation of her enabled them to watch her and keep her alive when she made bad choices. For all her experience and knowledge of the galaxy, none of it made a spit of difference here on the battlefield.
One of the larger mistakes was her most recent one. She'd been tasked with watching the southern approach for enemies and got herself distracted on a small push of enemies that should have been someone else's problem to handle. Six cannibals and three turian hybrids had come up from the south during that time and got close enough to flank their position. Syne Melfas, Rawth, and Valina Rulkas had to relocate to handle the emergency, shielding Maela from fire and opening a large section in the middle of their defensive line. Two colonial infantry had died as a result when a number of hostiles got too close because the other three were busy taking out the threat at their flank.
The mistake that hit her the hardest, however, was just before they'd reached the apartments. She was sent with the rest of Shield Squad to cover the back side and prevent enemy intrusion. In the middle of the battle, when things were getting incredibly messy from continued attacks, Maela had backtracked into the building and told the citizens that they needed to relocate. Galien Jethen, another of Shield Squad, had gone with her to help cover them. The squad had split in half and their ability to properly stonewall the troops at their rear flank suffered.
A concentration of grenades blew open a section of wall down the alley from where Maela and Galien were defending. They were too few there and couldn't keep the hostiles at a proper distance. When Galien decided to relocate to the breach, Maela remained where she was, telling herself that someone needed to defend the location she was at. In reality she just didn't want to move again, fearing that the large push of enemies rushing for the breach would overwhelm her.
In the end, despite Galien's incredible resolve and determination to stop them, he just couldn't hold out by himself. Once the citizens had been killed from enemy fire or structural failures, he had to backpedal to Maela's location and fend them off from there. They succeeded, but at a terrible cost. Maela knew the deaths of the citizens and children were because of her tactical errors, and it weighed heavily on her even though everyone claimed it wasn't her fault. She hated being coddled, but more than that, she loathed being patronized.
A shot landed nearby, spitting sparks and tiny collections of dislodged bits across Maela' gun and snapping her attention back to the present. More troops were pouring in from the east and Maela had to duck down into cover to swap out her thermal clip. She was beginning to run low again and wasn't sure there would be another delivery from those inside the apartment complex. "Swapping thermal clip!" She announced to the others. "Running low again!"
"Ease up on that full auto fire, T'Vess!" Valina instructed. "Too many shots are going wide because you can't keep that recoil under control! Short bursts will get you more connection!"
Maela cursed to herself at having to be told how to handle her own gun. She knew the turian was right in every sense, but it still scraped her ridges. She grit her teeth and muttered out a resentful "Understoood!" before hopping back up to fire some more just in time to see the reaper fire off another beam at some buildings to the north that were too close for comfort.
"Fucking hell!" Artemis swore angrily over the comms just after the beam's crimson light died away. "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!"
"Spirits…" Ventus muttered over the gunfire. "That's almost half of Heavy Squad right there!"
Another turian came running up behind them and set up a position well situated to have a commanding view the surrounding battlefield. It was Daenus Targrien, one of the women of Marksman Squad. "How are you guys holding up down here?" she asked as she deployed the bipod under the barrel of her DMR.
"We're getting hit pretty hard!" Valina reported. "We're losing guns all over the defensive line! We'll be overwhelmed at this rate!"
As if in response to Valina's dire reports, two of Vanguard Squad charged in to help support the line, Tauria pointing to a freshly made gap in the colonial infantry's defenses and yelling, "Relissi, let's help them hold this line! Over there, go!"
"Whatever the kebalim is going to do, he better do it soon!" Galien Jethen stated anxiously.
Maela fired another set of burst-fire volleys into an oncoming group, dropping them one at a time. When she ducked back into cover to eject a heatsink, she saw Daenus's aim up high.
"I don't think things are going very well for Core Squad right now!" Targrien announced. "It looks like most of them have fallen off! I saw spheres up there earlier, I think they were swarmed!"
Maela's entire upper body tightened into a complex series of unyielding knots and she felt a numbing tingle cross over her head ridges. She knew this feeling as the epitome of stress and anxiety. She'd felt it several times since their entry into Vallum and occasionally when a critical project was moments away from completion facing a million things that could potentially go wrong. "Goddess… Who's left?"
Targrien adjusted her sights. "It's just the kebalim and the human kid now! They've just run across the inner portion of the leg and started climbing the side of the reaper! It's hard to tell, but I think they have a bunch of explosives strapped to their armor!"
"What?!" Maela said, horrified. She knew Kevin's mind—he was not one for suicidal missions. At all. At the same time, though, she felt a small wave of relief. Kevin hadn't fallen off to his death. What was he up to?
"Damnit! Relissi!" Tauria had called out over the comms despite being nearby. "Vanguard down! I need some help holding this line!"
"What? Relissi, no! No, stay alive! I'm coming!" Valina yelled into her comms as she moved towards the vanguard, voice dripping with dread.
Several of the turians immediately relocated to assist with another aggressive push by the enemy. Artillery squad was barely able to mitigate the damage—several turians had already fallen, including Relissi Stensus of Vanguard Squad. Daenus abandoned her strong position in order to help them hold and try to avert the fate of Relissi, but it was far too late. Maela could hear Valina's cry of dismay all the way back where she was, even over the deafening din of constant battle. With Kevin literally running to stare death in the eye, it hit far too close to home.
Damnit… Kevin you better not leave me all alone out here!
The defensive line managed to regain limited control of the area again and people returned to their original posts to keep the line as strong as they could manage. They were holding, but their numbers were diminishing fast. Maela wasn't sure how much longer they could hold out before they were overrun and systematically eliminated.
Maela's omni-tool blinked to life with an incoming call from Liam. Fucking hell. I'm going to decapitate that son of a bitch if he keeps this shit up. I'm BUSY, IDIOT. She denied the call, now this seventh time since he'd been told to stay behind, with a quick tap between volleys. She looked up to the reaper to see if she could pick out Kevin and that turian somewhere on the reaper, but it was far too dark. Most of their light down here was from fires and temporary flood lights set up to keep the killzones illuminated in the deepening twilight. She did notice, however, that the reaper was starting to focus on the main building ahead of it—the Kaliar apartment complex.
"Oh shit! Shield Squad! The reaper!" she called out to draw attention to the towering avatar of red death.
"She's right, it's going to fire!" Ventus yelled out. "Valina! We need to stop it!"
Valina, half enraged by Relissi's death, appeared from nearby, biotics charged and ready to defy that damn reaper with everything she had. "Shield Squad! Just like we practiced! Layered barrier, but keep it loose enough to move it if we need to!" She growled in fury as she put all of her energy into initiating a massive biotic barrier wall in the air above them between the reaper and the apartment building.
"Marksman Squad, keep Shield Squad covered! They're too busy to defend right now!" Daenus called out to her squadmates as she returned to set up shop in her previous position.
Maela put her Phaeston down to join Shield Squad in what might be the most crucial defensive maneuver they've had to perform since they'd arrived on Taetrus. Channeling her large pool of dark energy into a long and flat super high-mass field right behind Valina's, she added her strength to the barrier. She saw the others do likewise and the barrier was ready as it ever would be to face off against the reaper's attack.
And just as expected, the luminescent eye made good on its terrible promise and fired a crimson beam right at the apartments. Maela braced herself in expectation of hearing the building behind them explode as it was sliced by the reaper's attacked, but none came. She looked skyward where the barriers were holding, the air rippling and shimmering as if the fabric of time and space were about to rupture on the spot. She was relieved to see she didn't have to move the barrier at all, as the beam went straight into the center and stopped there.
Wait a minute. It hit the barrier!
The immensely powerful pillar of death drove right through Valina's barrier, pierced Maela's, and even plowed through Ventus's, but with each barrier it passed through, the beam—clearly not made up of light or energy—weakened in velocity until eventually being stopped entirely by Galien's barrier, the last line of defense. Each barrier rippled fiercely as it combatted the incredible drive behind the mass-effect infused beam of particles, yet they held. When the beam died away, failing to actually hit anything, a tumultuous cry of victory went up around Shield Squad as they all cheered the amazing combined strength of those who figuratively spat in the once-unstoppable reaper's face.
The reaper roared in response. It seemed to everyone that it wasn't happy its only weapon had been stopped dead in its tracks by a small collection of incredibly talented biotics.
When Maela released her concentrated hold on that dark energy to let the barrier vanish, she immediately felt drained. She was already heavily exhausted by the constant fighting and she felt lightheaded now from the exertion put forth to stop the reaper's attack. She bent forward, leaning on a nearby rock with both hands to steady her reeling senses. She felt pats on her back, but she could hardly concentrate on them at all. All around her the sounds blurred together for a short time before she came back to normality.
"Are you alright?" Daenus asked Maela, the turian having come down from her perch to congratulate the asari on a job well done.
Maela intended to respond, but she was cut off by Valina's call for readiness. "It's readying to fire again! Barriers up! Watch for a different firing pattern!" Maela couldn't help but notice the stark evidence of exhaustion in Valina's voice as well. She was panting heavily, but the fury in her eyes hadn't died.
Maela pooled her dark energy as fast as she could, making ready for another barrier. When she released it into a biotic wall above her head, she noted that the red eye was glowing for another shot again. She drew in a deep breath, knowing her endurance to keep this up was already close to being tapped. The beam came at their defiant wall again, though this time it started low and scaled upward as if to cut the building right in two. Maela repositioned her barrier just in time to successfully stop it, but as she followed the path of the beam, she felt her control of the barrier slipping. She was too exhausted and her mental strength had been drained away. As the beam finished off its attempted slice near the top of the structure, her strength completely failed and her barrier dissipated. Her knees buckled out from under her and she fell to all fours. Shit! Shit! Shit! No no no no, too soon!
A massive explosion resounded above them, confirming Maela's worst fears—the barrier had failed to stop the reaper's attack. Debris and flaming pieces of the structure rained down on all of them as distant cries of fear gave evidence to others' awareness of what just happened. Everyone braced themselves in expectation of an implosion.
Large chunks of debris came down in a deadly rain, causing several to have to run for some sort of cover. The majority of the lethal projectiles fell harmlessly on the ground and caused small mushroom clouds of dust amongst deafening crashes. One cabalist, however, was not so lucky. A gargantuan length of metal—a support beam or frame of some sort—came soaring out of the sky to land across Syne Melfas. The blue evidence of her death was brutal, absolute, and painted everywhere.
Upon realizing this, bodies everywhere sprang into motion. It took Maela some time to figure out what was going on, so spent was her energy, but it looked like Valina had straight up blacked out from her efforts to maintain the barrier in the last attack. The other members of Shield Squad were still standing, but they looked just as fatigued as Maela felt. They were not going to be able to make a third barrier. Maela, helped to her feet by Daenus Targrien, stared up at the reaper as it focused hard on its target. It had won. Their efforts had all been for nothing. All it would take was this last shot to kill all those in the building and bury the rest of them in the rubble where they stood. Maela grimaced. Failure was never such a crushing reality as it was at that very moment and her knees buckled again. The only thing keeping her from hitting the dirt this time was Daenus. Kevin… Where are you?
Just as Maela had resigned herself to defeat, a massive explosion split the air and lit up the entire plaza. The powerful concussive force quickly slammed those at the base of the still standing Kaliar complex barely a second later. The blast was centered around the reaper's unforgiving red eye and the hulking machine was sent reeling intensely. The ground shook violently with each unstable stomp the reaper needed to keep from toppling on the spot.
"Shit!" Daenus cursed in astonishment. "That must have been kebalim Corvallus and the human kid!" She nearly leapt up, excited to see the devastating synthetic ready to fall.
Maela lifted her own eyes to see the reaper dancing around the battlefield as it struggled to remain upright. She could only afford a weak smile in her exhaustion, but it was just the tip of the iceberg of relief welling up inside her. She dared to hope this fight was over. She wanted nothing more than to get off of the planet and get the hell away from the reapers. She didn't even know what she'd do after that, but the desire to be away from here with Kevin alive at her side ran faster than her normal process of planning ahead.
And just like that, the hope she nursed for but a few seconds came down to shatter inside her as the reaper steadied itself, stood upright, then roared in ultimate defiance.
Daenus visually sagged as she watched the scene unfold. "Spirits… We'll never take that thing down. We should get everyone out of the apartments as soon as possible. We don't have any more time, we have to evacuate and regroup!"
Groaning, Maela straightened herself out, picked up her Phaeston, and got ready to follow Daenus back into the complex. Just before she turned to leave her position however, she noticed something… out of place. It looked like the entire sky in the direction of the reaper was so hot that it was actively shimmering like digital camouflage, and definitely not because of the heat insignificant fires nearby. No, not camouflage… Biotics! She could see just how much dark energy was gathering there. It was like the air itself was furious, practically crackling with seething, unnatural forces.
"Holy shit!" Maela called out to the others as they prepared to back into the apartments. To her joy they all stopped to see what was happening in the sky. "What the hell is all that?!"
"Dark energy! Lots of dark energy!" Ventus confirmed as he approached, the unconscious Valina in his arms. "Is that the kebalim?!"
The intensity of the shimmer around the reaper suddenly grew, and some sort of ethereal, intangible blue hue filled the sky around the reaper, displaying extraordinary amounts of raw, unstable biotic power.
"That's kebalim Corvallus and Kevin Folner!" Daenus announced with equal parts awe and horror. "Oh shit, they're going to—"
Cutting Daenus off in that same instant, the entire field of biotic power collapsed in on itself in an impossibly violent torrent of force as it detonated. The blue-colored explosion had such tremendous power behind it that the reaper's entire upper half literally crushed in against itself, pressing the huge mass of all affected in the explosion right into the mass of the lower half in a loud, ferocious, almost inconceivable collapse. A brilliant light show of sparks from the metal, strained and warped beyond anything it was ever intended to withstand, exploded outward before getting swept up in the unreal vacuum of force following the biotic detonation.
The resulting concussive shock expanded outward rapidly, forming an ever-growing sphere of particles it swept up with it. The ground immediately around the reaper seemed to flatten out, forming an odd shadow shape on the ground where the reaper's body obscured the path of the wave. The deafening metallic crack that flowed in the wake of the shockwave nearly knocked them all flat on their ass. Whatever windows were left facing the reaper in any of the surrounding buildings all shattered at once, and some buildings even lost walls knocked loose by nearby explosions and fighting.
The reaper's crushed husk stood motionless for a short while after the effects of the detonation had passed, but gravity eventually had its way. The four legs gave out underneath it and the massive, misshapen hunk of black metal toppled down and slightly away from the apartment complex, sending up a fresh, thick cloud of dust.
A palpable sense of victory swept over the entire plaza, igniting cheers from all around. Turians in the battlefield, in the surrounding buildings, and in the apartment complex couldn't help but give voice to the incredible triumph they'd all just accomplished. The endless slaughter all around them fell away, at least for a few moments, to give them all a chance to revel in beating that which was previously thought unbeatable. In their renewed vigor and boosted morale, the straggling reaper ground troops were quickly put to flight, their flow of reinforcements halted at the sight of their downed champion.
Maela didn't give chase, however. She didn't even cheer. She simply kept staring at the place where Kevin had previously been, where the epicenter of the biotic explosion was. Her skin had gone cold and numb despite the sweltering heat she generated inside her hardsuit. The fiero engulfing the surviving soldiers around her had flown right over her, slapped aside with the sole knowledge that Kevin could not have survived that blast. Even if he did, the fall would have been fatal even to a man in perfect health.
Daenus came up behind Maela and picked her up in a tight hug. "We did it! We beat the reaper and saved the refugees here! At least for a while, anyways, but Spirits was that glorious!"
When Maela had been set down, she turned to face the ecstatic turian, her brow deeply furrowed. "Saved? What the hell are you talking about, Targrien? That was a small one! The AHVs still aren't here and we're still surrounded by reapers! Kevin and the kebalim are probably dead and you guys are cheering?" She spat out the last word in furious contempt.
Daenus's excitement withered instantly, smacked across the face with the fact that her kebalim was, in all likelihood, dead. "N-no, the kebalim wouldn't die from a little fall like th—"
Maela bowled right over her, gripping the turian's left arm and pointing with her free hand back to where the reaper once stood. "Didn't you see what just happened? They detonated themselves! Goddess, there's no way they could have survived that blast!" She was shaking now, but not entirely from anger.
Several turians, both from the Sphelix Legion and from the colonial infantry had stopped celebrating and were gathering, staring. Maela didn't care. Everything about this trip to Vallum was a mistake. She felt it in her gut. Even Kevin felt something was wrong and he still went anyways. The already dark gray night seemed to lose even more color and she hugged herself.
Nobody seemed to have any words against what she'd said. Nobody said anything at all until three figures approached from the center of the battlefield, two of them carrying an unconscious turian with them. It was the surviving members of Core Squad, led by Madeen.
"Someone help them get Haekas to the medical beds, now!" she screamed out, face relatively sterile with an ominous darkness to her features. Tycus and Takrien struggled in their exhaustion to pass Haekas off to two turians who'd appeared out of nowhere with a carry stretcher. They carefully lowered Haekas onto it and they carted him off immediately.
Madeen climbed the nearest piece of broken wall to stand high where everyone could see her. "Effective immediately, I've been promoted to kebalim by Senik Corvallus as his… final request."
There was an awful silence that fell after that as Madeen's words confirmed their worst fears. More than awful, it was haunting.
To Madeen's credit, she did her best to push on as the new figurehead of the Sphelix legion. "We've managed an impossible victory through the sacrifices of many, but we are far, far from done here. The enemy has fallen back to regroup, abandoning their campaign in this zone for now. We should use this momentary lapse to regroup, resupply, and rest, as well as gather up supplies and those we can find who have fallen in battle. Sphelix Legion, I need volunteers to search for our dead. Colonial forces can do likewise. The rest of us should head into the apartment complex to resupply."
A small number of turians from each group loyally took up the depressing and grisly task then set out immediately, spreading out to find the fallen and gather up any usable materials they could find. Madeen jumped down from her perch to meet up with the growing number of Sphelix Legion members as they continued to filter in from wherever they previously were on the battlefield. Maela followed, but only because she didn't know where else to go.
As she'd reached the outer circle of the group, Liam came running up to her with a massive grin. "You guys did it! We're safe for now! How did you bring it down? Bloody thing deserved it!"
Several pairs of eyes set on Liam, including Maela's. Madeen was the one to answer, her jaw clenched so tight in seething anger that she could barely speak the words. "The kebalim and your fool of a friend got themselves killed taking down the reaper. The stupid fuckers climbed its face and blew themselves up in a massive biotic explosion to beat it."
As expected, Liam's fervor vanished in the blink of an eye. "Wh—what?!"
Maela didn't even bother to give Liam a look. She simply shouldered passed him and started for the door of the apartment complex with several others. She heard him stumble to the side and lean on a wall, his breath involuntarily gone from his lungs. She planned on getting some food first. She was on the very verge of passing out again and she was left numb from head to toe. She looked over at Valina who had finally regained consciousness and was being helped to her feet. As the cabalist stumbled her way back towards the apartments, her eyes never left the ground, haunted and sunken. Maela understood.
Over the next hour, the search teams managed to find almost all of those who had fallen in the last battle. Turians were still slowly combing the smoky darkness of the plaza, searching for the last few and trying to scavenge the supplies they needed so desperately. When Maela felt strong enough, she stepped back out into the lobby where turians were still gathered together. She looked at them, these proud militants, and saw the weariness of the day beginning to take hold. Their armor was scratched, dinted, faded with dust and dirt, and for some—painted with blood of different colors. Their faces were drawn, tired, and filthy. Their weapons were uncharacteristically unclean and some in dire need of repair. Even Targold needed to sit down for a while, she'd noticed.
And these were the healthy ones that made it through with only minor injuries.
The makeshift medbay a room over had quadrupled in occupancy, echoing endlessly with moans and shudders of pain from gruesome combat injuries. The soldiers and medical staff alike knew they did not have the supplies to tend them all, so some had staggered back into the lobby with a shot arm in a basic sling or a leg dragging under them, guns in hand. They knew they hadn't won yet, and they knew that no one would be spared from the next onslaught regardless of injuries.
Across the center of the lobby, a disheartening number of bodies laid dead under featureless gray blankets, all gathered here from outside to be bundled up and moved to a separate room. With the medical room as full as it was, the lobby was the only space large enough to accommodate them all. A number of them had an emblem crudely painted across the top; Maela recognized it as the insignia for the Second Sphelix Legion. After a moment of hesitation, she sluggishly made her way over there.
She walked around the outside of the block of bodies at their heads, reading the names taken from the bodies that were otherwise—and thankfully—obscured by the gray blankets. Relissi "Eyes" Stensus, Vanguard Squad. Pazet Xalier, Marksman Squad. Syne Melfas, Artillery Squad. Saren Nolencus, Heavy Squad. Lorien Fal, Heavy Squad. Last was an empty bed with a tag reading Auros Volen, Vanguard Squad. His body had already been burned.
No mention of Senik Corvallus or Kevin, she thought with some minor reassurance, allowing herself to mirror the hopes of the rest of the legion. They were all convinced that the last extended search group would find Senik and Kevin injured out there somewhere and be able to bring them back for treatment. This was their coping explanation and expectation against the harsh reality that Senik and Kevin's bodies may just as easily have been completely obliterated in the force of the biotic explosion. It wasn't denial, not yet. Not until that last search group came back with or without them.
Maela hated denying harsh truths. It never did her any good in her field, and it certainly never brought anything good about. This harsh truth, however… she allowed herself to cling onto the chancy fantasy that Senik and Kevin were simply out there too injured to make it back. She looked over at Liam, whose obvious decision was to accept it. He'd been an emotional wreck ever since he'd been told what happened and had secluded himself for the time being to grieve. No one ever went to the desolate corner he'd chosen, and in that, he was getting what he wanted.
Part of her pitied him and part of her empathized. It was an unusual emotional mixture for her that made her incredibly uneasy. It didn't help that the rational half of her mind wanted to accept the grim possibility that she may never see Kevin ever again. She couldn't let that happen. Too many emotions were tied to it, and she was not fond of letting her emotions loose. She knew her distant and calculating visage would crumble the moment she let tears fall. She had to hold on to that hope that the last search team would find him. But this suspense is murdering me.
The room felt suffocating. The stench of death was omnipresent and choking. Even if the blankets covering the dead were designed to contain and neutralize all manner of odors, the rank reality laying in rows across the floor made certain everyone experienced it anyways. And then there were those people.
Maela looked over towards the blanket that covered Relissi's corpse. Valina had kept her distance for a while trying to keep her agony down and under control, but eventually even she couldn't hold the emotions at bay. She'd been quietly weeping at Relissi's feet for well over fifteen minutes now. Soldiers knew that death was always right at their door, but it was quite obvious to Maela that Relissi and Valina were far more than mere legionmates. Harsh reality or not, there's never a true way to prepare yourself for the death of your love.
That only stung Maela all the worse as the minutes dragged on and on without word from the search team.
Maela turned away, hugging herself. She was about to find an empty room to lay down in when there was a call from someone on the roof. The search party was finally back. The entirety of Sphelix Legion filtered into the lobby, hoping against all hope that their kebalim had returned with them. He was the center for them, Maela could easily tell. He made everything work and work well. She didn't know a whole lot about turian cabals, but she'd learned a few things through discussions with various members of Shield Squad.
Very few kebalim ever commanded more than a small number of cabalists at a time, numbering around two squads or less. Senik was a veritable guru in running cabal operations, apparently. He'd been retired for near on five years before the Hierarchy specifically called him up to lead several squads in preparation of some terrible event, which, as Maela now knew, had to be the arrival of the reapers. His service record before then was long, difficult, and had the highest mission completion rate of any cabal squad in the Hierarchy's arsenal. He'd been nominated for the infamous Blackwatch—the highly elite close guard of the most powerful and sensitive figures in turian society—numerous times but turned them down on every occasion, opting to take or stay in a leadership role over his cabal squad, the first Sphelix Legion.
And to cap off his egotistical career, he's made himself a damn hero by taking out the first, and probably only, reaper in this goddess-forsaken war on Taetrus. Egotistical or not, Senik commanded utmost respect from everyone around him. Even Maela had to revel in his commanding presence and natural headstrong leadership. Would the Sphelix Legion stay as strong if he's dead? How would their morale take the hit if he was lost to them? Maela had the crushing feeling she was about to find out as the doors to the lobby began to open to let in the search team.
She looked to the turians as they filed in one at a time and her hands unconsciously began to wring nervously in front of her chest. One, two, three, four… Five. That's… That's all of them. And no more.
The lead turian, Takrien from Core Squad, looked over to where Madeen stood, locking eyes with hers. He then looked straight at Maela, his steely eyes piercing her mind and making her guts churn in a most terrible fashion.
Takrien looked to the floor in front of him and shook his head.
Maela felt like she'd been punched in the gut by a krogan. Every memory she had of Kevin was suddenly and unwillingly conjured up before her mind's eye making her shiver and her limbs go numb until she stumbled back into a wall to slide down to a sitting position. She stared off into nothingness, unable to pull herself from the shock of reality. Kevin was truly gone.
She was startled when Madeen screamed out in fury and punched a nearby wall so hard she nearly broke through to the other side. "Stupid motherfucker! I told him to let me go with him! Auuuugh!" In blind rage, she turned and started for the door to the battlefield, shoving anyone who got in her way aside. "MOVE! I'm going to kill every single last one of those fucking pieces of shit! I don't care if I have to rip their fucking heads off with my teeth! Get out of my way, damnit!"
Several turians from Sphelix Legion had grappled the furious woman to stop her from running out on her unwise suicide mission. Artemis Tenrek was the first to try to talk sense to her while he held her right arm and shoulder."Forget it, Arcellus! That's not our mission!"
"Fuck the mission and fuck you! I'm not stopping until I tear the limbs off of every one of those motherfuckers! I'm not letting a bunch of bitch-ass squadmates stop me!"
"We are stopping you, Arcellus, so get over it!" Takrien shouted as he used both hands to shove Madeen back into her grappling teammates.
Madeen struggled fiercely, making it difficult even for her four legionmates to hold her back. After a few seconds of fruitless struggling, however, she acquiesced to yet another grim reality—even her fury couldn't win the desperately lost battle continuing all around them. One by one she threw off her legionmates and stomped away into an adjacent room. The sound of a table getting upended spoke of her departure.
Maela didn't care. Maela didn't care about any of them. These… turians. They were nothing to her, merely bodies that surrounded her at the start of a terrible war. She looked back at Liam, feeling little more than pity and a slight pang of empathy. They shared the loss of Kevin, but neither Liam nor Targold could empathize with her. No one else knew Kevin the way she did. Not only did she know almost everything about his life fed through details on her terminal way back on Illium, but she knew him on a personal level that was impossible for non-asari. While it was right to say that they hadn't truly bonded, she still felt that inexplicable tether of souls formed when two are meant to spend their lives together. At least, she did.
Climbing to her feet, she was suddenly surprised to find water spilling in tiny droplets from her eyes and a lump in her throat so massive it threatened to shut off her windpipe. She turned away from all the others, not wanting to have her relatively emotionless front compromised. That was, of course, when Telius appeared out of nowhere, stepped up behind her, and placed a surprisingly gentle hand on her shoulder. She threw it off.
"The hell do you want?" she growled out, still hiding her face by looking away. She didn't want to reach up and wipe the tears away—it would be plain what she was doing.
"I… I wanted to offer condolences. I didn't know Kevin much at all, but I knew he meant a lot to you. I saw the way your face went pale when Takrien shook his head. It… it was painful to watch. I know you well enough to know that you're not exactly the type to get attached to anyone, so this Kevin had to be something special to you." Maela could hear him shifting from foot to foot; an unconscious habit he had whenever he was socially uncomfortable. He never did manage to get full control of his nervous habits.
"He was the culmination of years and years of hard work," she said as neutrally as possible.
"I know you better than that, T'Vess. He wasn't just another experiment to you. I could see it in your eyes every time you looked at him. And let's not forget the Appalachian's cargo hold…"
"Shut your damn mouth, Mettack! Goddess!" How did he ever come to know me so well? Was I really that easy to read those years ago?
Telius didn't say anything after that, he merely stared at Maela for a short while before bowing his head curtly and turning to leave. As he departed, he was stopped in his tracks by the sight of a bed covered by a gray blanket being rolled in from the crowded medical room. The blanket had the same insignias as the other Sphelix Legion beds, and there was clearly a body within. The sullen nurses carefully moved the bed to the floor in line with the other Sphelix Legion casualties.
"Shit," Telius cursed, fists clenching tighter at the sight of yet another dead. "Not Haekas too…"
Madeen returned just in time to see Haekas lowered to the floor. Her browplates furrowed heavily and her jaws clenched hard again. It took her a few minutes to get her composure together, at which point she addressed the Sphelix Legion survivors. "Alright Sphelix, listen up. Our late kebalim sacrificed everything to keep these citizens safe, but we've heard no word from the AHVs he sent out. If we still can't contact them within two standard hours we'll gather everything up and evacuate from this location to the city perimeter out west of here."
There were murmurs that cropped up from the surrounding turian citizens that had gathered outside the legion's circle. Nobody was thrilled at the idea of marching across a quarter of war-torn city, especially when hostiles were roaming everywhere. They had little choice, Maela knew, and getting out of the city was something she could agree with. She just wanted to get back to her room on the Citadel and curl up in bed for days. Wiping her eyes dry, she turned to look at the gathering and steeled her resolve to make it out of here alive. She wanted to breathe air without the smell of smoke again, without the crushing oppression of battle and without the constant, ominous sounds of chaos surrounding her.
Looking around at the soldiers and non-soldiers around her, Madeen continued. "Those of you who can, start getting things packed up. Unless something happens, we leave in two hours on the spot at daybreak. Understood?"
Madeen got salutes from all of the Sphelix Legion, but Maela couldn't help but notice that not a single one of them called her 'kebalim' despite her new rank. Once more the turians dispersed, either to try to get a few blinks of sleep before they hauled back to the perimeter or to help gather up what equipment could be brought with them. Some even volunteered to return to guard duty to keep an eye outside for incoming threats.
Maela decided to follow Telius outside, but more to see how Targold was doing than to talk with the cabal liaison. She didn't have to look far—the krogan was leaning sideways against a thick metal pole sticking out of the ground, more out of boredom than of weariness. Whatever could be said about the krogan, she admired their tireless courage and enthusiasm for the fight. She wasn't much of a warrior herself, but having one at your back was far more encouraging than she could say. She walked up next to him, quiet from lacking a way to strike up a conversation with the eight-hundred pound reptilian.
"I heard that bitchy turian addressing the others," he said after he'd spotted her out of the corner of his big, slitted eye. "I take it that means they never found that kebalim of theirs."
Maela nodded, but her thoughts were on the other they didn't find.
"Any word about Folner?" he asked, low and almost quiet against the storm of combat echoing from the rest of the city.
Somehow she knew that he'd ask that, but she was still not ready for it. She closed her eyes, pressed her lips into the thinnest of lines to fight the pronounced frown that would have followed, and shook her head.
"Damn…" The krogan almost sounded solemn. "That kid had a quad, that's for sure. Climbing a reaper to blow its face off with biotics?" He chuckled at the thought. "I knew warlords with less balls than that. Hell of a way to go out, though… A krogan would have earned himself a place in the old clan songs for that."
"Can… Can we talk about something other than Kevin's death, please?" Maela asked rather quietly. She didn't have the strength to keep up her abrasive nature right now.
"It's worth mulling over," Targold replied, looking at her sidelong. "That sort of shit gives courage to troops once they get over crying about it. If the most unlikely pair—an elite turian kebalim and a human kid stuck in a quarian suit—could manage to take down a reaper by themselves, how much more can an entire fleet or army of infantry do once they start thinking outside the box like those two did?"
As much as she hated the continuing topic, Maela couldn't help but nod as she realized the truth of his words. "Unfortunately nobody knows about it except the Sphelix Legion and the remaining colonial infantry." Somehow she didn't think they were going to make it through the next few days to tell anyone about it, either.
"Unfortunately," Targold reiterated as he looked back out to the fire-wracked and battle-torn wasteland that used to be the square. The reaper at the center still towered high, though the evidence of Senik and Kevin's work brought it quite low. Thick pillars of smoke rose up around it both from the fires at its feet as well some fires within that had resulted from its fall. "Guess we'll just have to make sure we get the hell out of here to tell people, yeah?"
"Will we get the hell out of here?" she asked him. "You've more combat experience than me, how does our future look?"
Targold shrugged. "I guess that depends on where we go."
Maela had forgotten that he hadn't heard the current orders. "We're supposed to wait two hours for the AHVs to show. If they don't we're going to pack up and march the survivors back west in an attempt to get everyone out of the city."
Targold grunted in displeasure. "Hmph. Cowards running for the hills. I expected more out of these turians. Still, we probably have better chances doing that than heading further into the city. The reapers are raising quite the shitstorm out there." He hums in thought, scratching his chin. "Going to be hell trying to get all those non-combatants out, though. We should just leave them behind. They'll only slow us down and paint a huge target right on our ass."
Maela agreed, but mainly she was just glad for the chance to get out of dodge. Before she could voice her opinion on the matter, however, she heard the long, drawn-out shouts from some turians on the roof.
"Harvester! Southeast! Ground troop movement there as well!"
"Fucking hell!" Maela muttered fervently as she looked towards the target, spotting it. "Won't we ever get a… W-what?"
Targold, hearing the confusion in Maela's last word, uncrossed his arms and stood upright so he could look for himself. He found the harvester that had been called out, but it wasn't dropping troops or approaching them. It was instead flying low as if investigating the southern line of buildings. It would fly sideways and peer into windows or large cracks or holes in the sides wrought from the recent fighting. They could barely make out the specs of reaper troops at ground level around the same buildings, some heading inside. There weren't a lot of them, but still enough to warrant a militarized response.
"What the hell are they doing?" Targold wondered aloud.
At the same moment, several turians, namely Madeen Arcellus, Tycus Kalkerien, Takrien Vaer, Artemis Tenrek, and Daenus Targrien, had run out to join them. All looked to the harvester, easily visible along the southern structure line despite the dimness of night. All tilted their heads in confusion.
"The hell is going on?" Daenus finally asked in response to the odd sight. "Do we have troops out there?"
Madeen shook her head. "No. Everyone's been pulled back here."
Maela squinted as she stared, trying to make out the features of the enemies in the pre-dawn gloom. "It looks like they're searching for something."
"Or someone," Tycus added.
Targold rolled his head on his neck, his bones snapping audibly. "Whatever it is, it must be important if they're using troops meant for killing to search the place out. Grunt work. Inefficient for their purpose." Maela was always surprised at Targold's occasional intelligence.
"Reapers don't have officers or anything… Do they?" Takrien puzzled aloud.
Artemis reached up to slide an armored hand back across the length of his head and fringes, sweeping up a small collection of ash. "Maybe not reaper officers. It could be some other colonial imports made their way here to see what happened to the reaper that was just here."
"Yeah, but what colonial infantry would be high value enough to warrant specific reaper attention?" Daenus wondered aloud, browplates furrowed in thought. "Berus Persus is on the roof, let me see if he can catch anything from his vantage point," the turian suggested as she opened her comms. "Berus, this is Targrien. Can you focus your scope into the holes and windows of the southern structures ahead of the harvester's search? Let us know if you see anything of note."
"Will do, Targrien. Standby."
Maela continued to watch the enemies in their odd search, hugging herself as if she were cold. There was something unsettling about this sudden and drastic change in behavior. It made sense when they were all mindlessly charging and shooting and generally attacking them, but this… this was something completely different. It made her skin crawl for reasons she couldn't even describe. She felt like she should be doing something about it, as though if that search party wasn't stopped, something terrible was going to happen.
"We need to stop them," Maela finally said out loud.
Several eyes fell on her, but it was Madeen who asked the obligatory, "Why? Do you know what they're up to?"
"No, but I have a very strong feeling that if we don't keep those fuckers from finding what they're looking for, we're going to regret it."
"We don't have enough intel to—" Madeen started, but was cut off by Berus on the comms.
"Targrien, this is Berus. Uh… You're not going to believe what I found."
Maela had never seen turians move so fast in her life.
